[2004.07.29 - 08:15 P.M.] Convention - Night Four
The General
Dammit! Just got back from the gym and we missed most of Wesley Clark's speech. Kind of interesting at the end. He had been just plodding along, covering all the bases, and then it was like he hit the nitrous and took off. Real powerful ending. Whipped the crowd up nice.
We Interrupt This Convention...
Lieberman's on right now, so I'll take this opportunity to turn from the TV and address the Big News of the Day. Are you ready? Are you sitting down? Steel yourselves for a shock, readers:
Pakistan captured a high-level Al-Qaeda operative today. One Ahmed Khalfan Ghailini, wanted - dead or alive, one would think - for the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings. That thur bad guy's gonna be brought to justice, folks. Raise your fist and say, Hell yeah, people! We're winning the War on Terra!
Man, what are the odds, you think, that something like this would go down on the final day of the Democratic convention? Who would've thought? Wait, wait, wait. Just give me a second. Oh, here you go. This is from The New Republic's article "July Surprise", published earlier this month:
[A Pakistani] official who works under ISI's director, Lieutenant General Ehsan ul-Haq, informed [The New Republic] that the Pakistanis "have been told at every level that apprehension or killing of HVTs before [the] election is [an] absolute must." What's more, this source claims that Bush administration officials have told their Pakistani counterparts they have a date in mind for announcing this achievement: "The last ten days of July deadline has been given repeatedly by visitors to Islamabad and during [ul-Haq's] meetings in Washington." Says McCormack: "I'm aware of no such comment." But according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July"--the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.
Here are my original comments on the above TNR article. At the time, Kevin Drum made the point that the request for the actual dates of the convention seemed a little too convenient, a little too pat, as if the Pakistanis were bullshitting to get back at the Bushies for pressuring them.
Guess not, huh?
These guys defy belief. They take the worst possible expectations we could have for them and they shred them. Their corruption exceeds all definitions of the word. Let me tell you, every time I have uttered the phrase "They have no shame", there's been this one neuron buried in the back of my brain saying "Well, they must have some shame, right?" That neuron just burned out.
Keep an eye on the coverage of the convention tonight. Josh Marshall poses today's media puzzler:
I'd be very, very curious to hear whether when, oh say, CNN goes on about how this al Qaida guy has been hauled in they will mention at all, or with any consistency, that one of the most respected political magazines in the United States reported just weeks ago on the pressure the administration has been placing on the Pakistanis to serve up an al Qaida bad guy on this day.
Will they make the obvious connection? Or will they just ignore it?
I've got $10 bucks on "Ignore". Any takers?
People You Don't Know
If you're not watching C-SPAN, you're probably missing something pretty cool. They're rolling out a series of "everyday people" speakers in rapid succession. Each speaker is representing a group of like individuals. Farmers, firefighters, clergy, teamsters, people who pause too much when they're speaking, odd looking people.. whoops, sorry. Yeah, it could be kinda corny, except it's not. Hell, I'd have volunteered to do one of these:
"Good evening America, my name is [Toast], and I'm a cube-dwelling IT worker. We cube-dwelling IT workers support John Kerry, because he's got a clue about hard work and education. You know, unlike some people we know, who have no experience with either. John Kerry knows it sucks to bust your ass and succeed in a "knowledge economy" only to have some douchebag CTO sell your ass out. At the very least, he won't appoint administration officials who boast about what a great thing the offshoring of programming jobs is. So word up, my IT brethren. Vote for John Motherfuckin' Kerry. Peace. Out.
You're wondering why I'd turn into a rap artist at the end of my speech, aren't you? Well, I'm not sure how long the IT thing is going to hold out, so I'm thinking if I get my 15 seconds onstage, I could audition to be a celebrity VJ or something. I mean, why not me?
Wow, the stuff they're doing right now sure is goofy. But it sure beats hell out of watching Wolf Blitzer look down his nose at his interviewees, or watching Matthews being all snide, or watching right-wing hacks like Joe Scarborough share their "insights" on the Democratic speakers. Anybody remember what the media was like before the right took it over?
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Next President of the United States
The biographical video was outstanding. Very well produced, yes, but the real power of the video comes from the facts of the man's life. How do you argue with that? How do you tear that down? My fiancée and I are sitting here as Morgan Freeman is recounting the story where Kerry goes up to the bow of his swift boat and rescues his crew mate, and she asks "How can they try to smear that?" I don't really know the answer to that. My quick and dirty answer is that they're scumbags. They're people with no morals, no scruples. At the least, the GOP operatives who try to tarnish John Kerry's courage are people who are very, very disconnected from everything it means to be part of the human community. If they win, one thing won't change: Kerry will still be a good, honest, courageous individual, and ten times the man George Bush will ever be.
Speaking of heroes who the GOP has smeared, here's Max Cleland. Great intro.
OK, nutshell: The first 20 minutes of the speech were absolutely A+ work. Kerry was loose, genuine, and hitting on all cylinders. I loved when he was giving the run-down on his administration and he said "I will have a Vice President who will not hold private meetings with the polluters." That's great stuff. The biographical bits? Again, first rate. But we're coming up on ten minutes of eleven here, and he's still going. Too long. Too much filler. If he had cut it to half an hour, this would have been a landmark speech for Kerry.
Still and all, that criticism aside, I never imagined John Kerry could speak like this.
Oooooooh.... a note of unhappiness here. He's in the God segment of the festivities. He's promising that he'll welcome people of faith in his administration. Um... what about non-believers, John? Will they be welcome? Man, I hate this conceit that the religious are some kind of persecuted minority. I want a candidate to say "I welcome conscientious, principled atheists in my administration." Right. Keep dreamin'.
Ah, shit, he's got to play that card. I'll move on.
I think he's wrapping up now. He's circled back to the swift boat story. All in all, great speech by any standard, let alone John Kerry standards. Fifteen minutes shorter and lose the religious rhetoric... (sigh)... OK, I'm just going to be happy with what we got. If that's the re-tooled John Kerry, I think we've got a hell of a chance in November.
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[2004.07.29 - 03:45 P.M.] Bad Slogan Confirmed
Well, that crappy slogan I've been harping on? "Stronger at home, more respected in the world?" They're not test-marketing it. They've apparently settled on it. I suppose the "Stronger at Home, Respected in the World" quote which adorns the banner at the official convention site might have tipped me off if I'd looked a little closer. But, in any case, I ran across this exchange in David Corn's Capital Games column today:
Hours before lawyer-turned-senator John Edwards was to appear before the convention and deliver the most important summation of his life, I ran into Tad Devine, a senior Kerry campaign strategist, in the bowels of the Fleet Center. I asked if Edwards would reprise the "Two Americas" speech that won rave reviews (at least from me) during the primary campaign.
"Two Americas? I think he'll be talking about one America," Devine said. But wasn't the message of his presidential campaign "Two Americas"? I inquired. "His message will be the Kerry-Edwards message of an America stronger at home and more respected abroad."
"Yeah," I said. "I've heard about that message." In case you have missed it, Stronger at home and more respected abroad has been the mantra of the campaign. Devine didn't smile, and he raced off.
Oh. Joy.
Like I said earlier, I think this is a pretty lame-ass slogan. I don't think it's going to resonate with the Man on the Street. Not only does it have a flat, corporate marketing sound, but -- and this might just be me -- it seems to generate a perversely negative tone by implicitly emphasizing what we're not:
"Stronger at home." (i.e. "The U.S. is weak and vulnerable.")
"Respected in the World." (i.e. "Everybody fucking hates us.")
Obviously, both of those things are true. We're relatively vulnerable here in the "homeland". Most of our vaunted military is tied up in this useless Iraq boondoggle. And, yeah, everyone hates us. All true. But is this what voters want to hear? Doesn't the CW tell us that people hate campaigns that emphasize our nation's negatives?
I don't know, I just don't see this slogan working for us. So I've come up with a few ideas of my own:
"Nowhere To Go But Up."
"Getting America's Shit Together."
"Fool Us Twice... Fool Us... Can't Get Fooled Again."
"Spankin' That Monkey Right Back To Crawford."
"Are You Better Off Now Than You Were Before Fuck-Face Stole The Election?"
"Relax, It's Almost Over."
Man, I'm good. Anyone sees Bob Shrum, be sure to give him my e-mail address.
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[2004.07.28 - 10:45 P.M.] Convention - Night Three
I've decided to go with MSNBC tonight instead of CNN. That condescending moron Wolf Blitzer was really getting on my nerves. I figured I'd let the blithering idiot Chris Matthews get on my nerves tonight instead. Speaking of Matthews, I turn on the TV, switch to MSNBC, and immediately his high-speed yammering fills the room. My fiancee, from the other room, asks "Is that the college basketball guy?" She meant Dick Vitale, of course. Too rich. Yeah, I think Chris Matthews pretty much is the Dick Vitale of politics.
First stupid Matthews comment of the night: Talking about the VP debate, he makes some crack about how Edwards is going to have to face "an adult", and that Dick Cheney has "an IQ of about 160". Uh... First off, John Edwards is no dumbass. You don't get to be a successful trial lawyer by being stupid. (On the contrary, I'm quite convinced you can get to be a CEO while being dumb as a rock.) Second, Dick Cheney might measure up as smart on an IQ test, but I think he'll be seriously handicapped in a debate by the fact that he is insane. All Edwards needs to do is steer the conversation to Iraq's non-existent WMD's and non-existent ties to Al Qaeda and then let our crazy Veep batter his head into that terrible edifice called Consensus Reality.
Al Sharpton Is Shouting At Me
Ouch. I thought this guy was supposed to have a smooth delivery, at least until he ramps up into Fire & Brimstone Preacher Mode. This has been verbal assault from Word One.
The Reverend Al really wasn't capturing my attention for the first ten minutes there - the "Promise of America" bit - but, man, when he started answering Bush's "questions", he got me. That "We didn't get the mule, so we're ridin' this donkey" line was drop-dead beautiful. Even having read it earlier, it still rocked.
BTW, Chris Matthews lasted all of forty minutes. Hey Chris: Don't interrupt the talent, jackass.
We're over on C-SPAN now, probably to stay.
Graham on 9-11
You know what would be great? If Bob Graham had let Al Sharpton give his speech. Sharpton's speech was fiery and entertaining but short on substance. Graham is going up one side of the administration and down the other for their bungling the war on terror, but his delivery is so tepid it's like listening to an academic paper. Still, style points aside, this is a hell of an important speech.
Graham, eminently qualified from his time on the Senate Foreign Intelligence Committee, has the goods on Leader Bush. No progress on securing our ports. No progress on securing our borders. No progress on plugging up the financial networks used to fund terrorism. Cutting funds for first providers. Conflating Al Qaeda and Iraq. These are the crimes Graham accuses Bush of in pretty much every speech he gives. We all know the defendant is guilty, we've just had a bitch of a time getting the word out.
Military and Foreign Policy Big-Wigs for Kerry
The video presentation featuring generals, joint chiefs, and foreign policy leaders was quite compelling. Like to see a streamlined version of that -- maybe a 60-second clip -- used as a national ad. Those speakers had gravitas.
Right now, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Shalikashvili (phew!) is on, working the "converted Democrat" angle. This is great. It's one thing to hear some mid-western waitress who's been a lifelong Republican say she's going to support Kerry. It's quite another to hear a guy of Shali's stature come forward and make that commitment. (Yes, he said I could call him "Shali".) I mean, this guy's bio is incredible. Warsaw uprisings. Viet Nam. Gulf War I. Yeah, I think he's got some credibility as a military reference for John Kerry.
OK, Guys, I'm Ready...
I think the approach of the convention committee tonight was "let's put them into a coma so that when Edwards comes on he seems really electric!" Seriously, ever since Sharpton left the stage I feel like I've been at an Army War College policy conference. Not great pacing. Better, IMO, to break up the weighty stuff with some red meat, some inspiration... something to keep the blood pumping.
At Long Last... Edwards!
Listening to Elizabeth Edwards, I'll say this: Theresa Heinz Kerry might wind up being First Lady, but Liz Edwards will be First Wife. And, political correctness be damned, I mean that as compliment.
OK! Showtime! The Breck Girl is in the hizzouse!
This might be my first full John Edwards speech. Quick take? Dude has got the "Aw Shucks" charm dialed in. I would not want to see that face on the other side of a courtroom. Or a debate table.
(Note: He just slid in the "More secure at home, more respected in the world" formulation. See? I was right. Test marketing their tag line. Still don't like it.)
He's good. Winding into the "Two Americas" phase of the speech, and he's starting to get that... common sense indignation in his voice. It works. Powerful, forceful, without being strident or didactic. Please tell me Kerry's been taking notes.
Here's one promise I want to see the next Democratic administration make good on:
"No forever to anyone working full time and living in poverty. Not in our America.
That one sentiment, translated into sound policy, would do more to cure the ills of this nation than virtually anything else I can think of. You work forty hours a week, you get a roof over your head, food on your table, and clothes on your back. Period. Think of how that guarantee would transform this nation.
"Hope is on the way"? Kind of a weak bastardization of Bush/Cheney's "Help is on the way"? Isn't it?
He's winding it up. Here's what I'm feeling: Good, but not Great. As I said, this is my first exposure to a full speech by Edwards. I was expecting more. My immediate reaction is that the Kerry crew ordered him to put a governor on the engine for this one, so as not to overshadow the top of the ticket. Another thing: For a renowned speaker, I'm reading a definite self-consciousness in him. Not a nervous self-consciousness, not at all. More of a damn-I'm-good, teacher's-gonna-give-me-a-gold-star self-consciousness. Make no mistake, he is very good. I was just expecting more.
He's no Bill Clinton. For that matter, he's no Barack Obama.
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[2004.07.28 - 07:45 A.M.] Night Two Followup
QOTN: Barack Obama, who probably won Quote of the Night five times over, takes it with this:
"If there’s a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child. If there’s a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandmother. If there’s an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties."
That, my friends, is one of the finest distillations of liberalism I have ever heard voiced. That is the urge that separates liberals from conservatives in a nutshell: We give a damn about the abstract somebody, the unknown other, even when their fate does not directly affect us.
I swear, I thought my heart was going to come out of my chest listening to Obama speak. Kevin Drum made the mistake of saying Obama's speech was great but had no "content". After hoards of angry commenters mauled him, he corrected this to specify he meant no "policy content". He's right, of course. Obama didn't reach in his back pocket and take out a wish list of proposed funding amounts for cherished government programs. He didn't advocate a course of action in Iraq. He didn't offer insight on the 9-11 Commission's prescriptions for increased security. His was not a nuts & bolts speech.
No, all Obama did was get up there and express, in the kind of soaring rhetoric, with the sort of passion that comes along on the national stage once or twice in a lifetime, the unabashed idealism and life-affirming philosophy that draws most progressives to politics in the first place. He was brilliant. He made me cheer. He, um.. made me cry. He made me proud of my party.
I think he's got a future.
Links to full transcripts of last night's prime-time speeches:
Inexplicably, the convention site doesn't have the text of Ron Reagan's speech posted. If I can find a transcript elsewhere, I'll link to it.
Oh, and in case we've forgotten how important this election is, over 50 more dead in Iraq this morning. The bill for Bush's Blunder just keeps adding up. We cannot allow such a horrid misuse of American power to ever happen again.
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[2004.07.27 - 10:35 P.M.] Convention - Night Two
Teddy's Speech
Long, boring boilerplate intro. Gas pedal's on the right, Teddy. Ah, here we go. Power, privilege, and inequality in Colonial America. I think he's making an oblique reference to the Bushies...
Kennedy's presentation seems uneven to me. He was working on a really good point about how we need our democratic institutions to be strong because "concern for our fellow man is not hard-wired" into humankind. Suddenly, he breaks from that to throw in a slam about Dick Cheney retiring to an "undisclosed location". Then, it's back into high-minded rhetoric on the philosophy of government. Poor time for a non-sequitur.
The decision to segue into the final stanza of the Pledge of Allegiance, deliberately including (emphasizing?) "Under God", strikes me as, at best, entirely inappropriate and, at worst, craven pandering, considering the proximity in time to the Supreme Court's cowardly decision. It's a damned shame that even America's foremost liberal can't see what a stain on our pledge that phrase is, what a slap in the face it is to the nonbelievers who share this nation with the religious majority.
Wonderful. More religious rhetoric. Scripture references. I think Teddy's been reading Amy Sullivan. Man, this is a major disappointment.
Finally, he seems to be finding his groove, twenty minutes or so in. Loved the part about "false patriots bullying dissenters into silence." And, whoops, that's it, all over. Folks, if you came in for the last three minutes of that speech, sadly, you didn't miss much. Overall, like I said, it was very uneven. In a departure from the tone set last night, he piled on a fair amount of Bush/Cheney bashing. I don't normally mind this, I just don't think he did it in a particularly artful way. Didn't do it for me.
A Note On What Seems To Be An Emerging Theme
I'm can't say I'm keeping accurate score on this, but it seems like every big speaker so far has incorporated a phrase along the lines of "America: Stronger at home; Respected in the world".
I get the feeling the campaign is test marketing this as a slogan. If so, here's a tip: Can it.
No problem with the sentiment here. Restoring our stature abroad is going to be a top priority as soon as Bush is out of office, but, as a selling point to the general public, I doubt it even cracks the top 5 in importance. Fact is, most Americans don't give a flying fuck how we're perceived abroad. So, you know, you might not want to give that top billing in the campaign's catch phrase. Just a thought.
Convention Meme Watch
Maybe it's just the Blitzer and the CNN gang, but this is, like, the third time tonight that I've seen the following question jabbed in the face of an interviewee -- first Kerry's daughter, then, just now, Governor Richardson: "You say the campaign's just getting started, but Kerry's already spent $80 million dollars and the public's still not convinced!"
How ludicrous is this? Let me count the ways.
The Bush campaign has spent just as much money trying to define Kerry negatively, and more than half the country isn't convinced that Kerry's an unacceptable choice.
Regardless of how much money the Kerry campaign has spent, the majority of Americans don't start paying attention to the campaign until the convention. There are a lot of people out there who can still be won over.
For months, polls have shown Kerry even with or slightly ahead of Bush. He's actually in the strongest position of any challenger in recent memory, and yet Blitzer's whole tone suggests Kerry is on the ropes.
George Bush has had three and a half years to convince the American people to elect him in 2004, and guess what? A majority of Americans aren't convinced.
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, media whores.
Dean
Wow, Dean is getting the biggest reception of the convention. Seriously, I think the crowd is crazier for Dean than they were for Clinton. Wow.
Strong opening, followed by an odd detour. Dean's recounting stories of people who gave money to his campaign because they were disillusioned with our political system. Then he pulls out one of his old standards from his stump speech: "Politics is too important to be left to politicians." Um..... Howard? Dude? John Kerry is nothing if not a politician. You should probably stash that rhetoric away until after the election.
Holy shit! It's over??? That was the shortest of any of the prime time speeches. Was this the plan? Did something go wrong? One minute we're in the meat of the speech, then suddenly Howard's doing the old (You've Got The Power)x3 formula, and he's walking off the stage. Am I the only person who found that a little... truncated?
Barack Obama
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the first black President of the United States.
Holy shit. I'll try to say more about that... that... masterpiece... tomorrow. Right now I just want to bask in the warm afterglow.
Ron Reagan on Stem Cell Research
"The theology of the few should not be able to forestall the health and well-being of the many."
-- Ron Reagan (looking, oddly enough, not unlike Mr. Spock)
Outstanding speech. I never thought I'd see the day when a man would stand up in front of a national audience and say, without fear or hesitation, that a clump of friggin' cells is not a person, dammit. And how about this: A choice between "reason and ignorance", between "true compassion and mere ideology"? Am I dreaming? Are the rest of you seeing this, or is Comcast sending me some kind of personally tailored video feed?
On a personal note, as I alluded to recently on a completely unrelated subject, I spent several months in 1991 and 1993 working with a travelling Parkinson's Disease awareness campaign. I've seen the suffering of the people with this disease up close. I've seen the side effects of the drug treatments. And I've been hearing about the promise of stem cell research for a long time.
This is an area of medical research that is right there, just waiting for the funding and the backing to make it a reality. I've said so many times that religious beliefs cannot be allowed to interfere with good government. People say it's a fringe issue. That this is just anti-religious fear mongering. Well, there is no better crystallization of the dangers inherent in mixing church and state than the case we just heard so eloquently made, is there?
Theresa Heinz-Kerry
This should be interesting. Great intro by her son. Funny guy.
Oh my... she's got that accent, and she just opened with "My name... is Theresa Heinz Kerry". I was half expecting her to say "You kill my father. Prepare to die."
Sorry.
OK, have to say, she's kind of unfocused. Having a hard time locking onto a coherent theme here. She has plenty of interesting things to say, but she doesn't seem to be relating them too well. One minute it's the native peoples of sub-Saharan Africa, next minute it's the Cassini probe. Interesting woman, but, as a political speaker, decidedly not ready for prime time.
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[2004.07.27 - 07:15 P.M.] Tucker Gets Defensive Over Jacuzzi Comments
By now you've probably heard the flap over Tucker Carlson's "Jacuzzi" comments. Referring to a personal injury case which John Edwards litigated on behalf of a little girl who was sucked into a defective pool drain and partially eviscerated, Carlson, on Crossfire, glibly dismissed Edwards as specializing in "Jacuzzi Cases". This has caused quite a stir in the blogosphere. People are seriously hating on Tucker.
The fine folks over at Salon's War Room caught up with Tucker at the convention and had some words with him:
"My contention is not that the girl wasn't grievously injured or deserves compensation, nor is it that he doesn't have the right to make $8 million off her suffering. My only point is that if you're going to make 7 or 8 or 6 or whatever million dollars off her suffering, don't claim it's an altruistic act," Carlson said.
Right, but isn't calling it a "Jacuzzi case" -- without further explanation -- somehow dismissive of what actually happened? "Are you going to lecture me? Are you going to ask me a question or lecture me? My point is not that it's a wine-and-cheese thing, and I'm not against Jacuzzis. That's not my point at all."
Carlson said calling the Lakey tragedy a "Jacuzzi case" is just a "shorthand" way to ask whether Edwards should really be seen as acting altruistically for the "little people" when he made so much money off the case. "I'm merely saying that, if you're going to make all that money, don't turn around and tell me that you're better than I am," Carlson said.
Two points to make here.
First, is this a classic case of conservative projection or what? At what point did John Edwards claim he was better than Tucker Carlson? I must have missed that episode of Crossfire. The truth behind this twisted accusation is this: It's Tucker and his Republican buddies who have been claiming that they're better than John Edwards. They do this every time they disparage "Trial Lawyers" - which they do at every possible turn - telling Americans that those who practice Edwards' former profession are no better than blood-sucking leeches praying on the tragedy of others.
Second, while it's a stretch to claim that any lawyers outside of a public defender's office are acting out of "altruism", surely Carlson must realize that cases like the one in question are taken on a contingency basis. If Edwards had lost, the girl's family would have paid nothing. That is, in fact, the only way that most individuals and their families can take on big corporations in court. So, yes, Edwards was taking on a risk in representing that girl. Contrast that with the lawyers representing the drain company. I assure you, despite the loss in court, they took home a fat paycheck.
I don't dislike Tucker Carlson as strongly as many people do (I think it's the bow tie that provokes the visceral reaction). I'm not saying I want to go bowling with the guy, but he is one of the few 'winger pundits who has shown any remorse for the way the right treated Clinton. I think what happened here is he was in his Snarky Conservative Commentator persona, and, perhaps without even realizing it until the words were out of his mouth, he crossed the line and made light of something he shouldn't have made light of. It's something everyone does from time to time. Too bad Tucker can't just admit it, apologize, and move on.
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[2004.07.27 - 07:50 A.M.] Night One Followup
QOTN: Bill Clinton wins Quote of the Night honors with this line:
"Strength and wisdom are not opposing values."
Just seven words, and yet it simultaneously parries Republican attacks on the Democratic ticket's wartime leadership abilities, impugns the wisdom of the course the Bush administration has chosen, and suggests that holding to that course after it has proven a failure is deeply unwise. Pure, vintage Clinton.
Josh Marshall really captures the tone of the convention here:
When it first occurred to me to write this post I was going to say that partisan Democrats have decided to give Kerry a free hand in appealing to independents and swing voters. But that doesn't get it quite right. That was the case in 1992 when the party's core voters, after twelve years out of the White House, were willing to give Bill Clinton all sorts of leeway with what most viewed as his DLC heterodoxies. But something different is at work here.
Among Democrats, the rejection of this president is so total, exists on so many different levels, and is so fused into their understanding of all the major issues facing the country, that it doesn't even need to be explicitly evoked. The headline of Susan Page's piece in USA Today reads: "Speakers offer few barbs, try to stay warm and fuzzy." But the primetime speeches were actually brimming with barbs, and rather jagged ones at that. They were just woven into the fabric of the speeches, fused into rough-sketched discussions of policy, or paeans to Kerry.
Perhaps it's a touchy analogy, but like voters who understood the code-words Republicans once (and often still do) used to flag hot-button racial issues they dared not voice openly, these Democrats could hear the most scathing attacks on President Bush rattling through the speeches they heard tonight.
That's just about right. Most of the post-convention coverage in the papers and on NPR this morning stress how the four main speakers barely mentioned Bush by name at all. The attacks we saw were not the full frontal assault (think Dick Gephardt's "Miserable Failure") we saw during the primaries. They were oblique. And yet they were equally devastating. Carter's implicit attack on Bush's Guard service, which I highlighted last night, was a perfect example. He never said Bush's name. He certainly never claimed he was AWOL. He didn't have to.
I think if the rest of the speakers can, um, "stay the course" with the tone and tactics we were treated to last night, this could be a mightily successful convention.
Here are some links to full transcripts of last night's prime-time speeches:
Join me tonight for more up-to-the-minute reactions.
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[2004.07.26 - 10:36 P.M.] Convention - Night One
Gore's Speech
Good speech. Hit all the right notes. I think he tried to stuff in one too many jokes about the 2000 election, but then again he had to appear "loose" to keep the Kool Kids in the DC press from tearing him apart, so I'll give him a pass. I particularly liked the olive branch he extended to Clinton at the end. That was classy, considering the well known tension between the two.
I wanted to comment on something Judy Woodruff said after Gore was finished. She was picking up on the part of Gore's speech where he exhorted Democrats to take the anger and frustration of the 2000 election and channel that into working as hard as humanly possible to put Kerry into office. Only she didn't say "anger", as Gore did, she said "bitterness". There's a big difference between those two words. Anger can be a good thing. Bitterness almost always is not. Anger can be justified. It can be righteous. Bitterness implies pettiness and self-absorption.
I'm sorry, but Democrats aren't "bitter" about the 2000 election, we are filled with a righteous and wholesome anger. The Republican machine corrupted our democratic process. They abused their power and stole a presidential election. Those of us who backed Gore are not being petty and we're not "sore losers". We have a right to be upset. We have a responsibility to express our anger and turn it to good purpose. And Gore was on the money with the way he expressed that feeling and that drive.
Carter's Speech
Apparently it's true that older men remain virile and potent for life, because Jimmy Carter was sporting a huge pair of nuts tonight.
Carter took the military and foreign policy beat for the early festivities. For the most part, he pulled off the "Elder Statesman" act with flying colors, drawing on the extensive diplomatic experience he's put together since leaving the White House to make the case that the United States has lost its standing as a moral and political leader in the world.
But let's not dwell on that.
The highlight of Carter's speech, beyond doubt, was the big, roundhouse swipe he took at Bush over his National Guard service. Right out of the gate, he zeroed in on Kerry's Navy experience, and how when his country called on him Kerry discharged his responsibility "honorably". There was no doubt who he meant to draw a contrast with. Immediately afterward, coming right back to Viet Nam, he quipped that when Kerry was in the service, "he showed up". My oh my.
I have to say, of all the speakers, Jimmy Carter was the last one I expected to pick up Michael Moore's favorite cudgel and start beating President Flightsuit with it. But I am not complaining. It was a beautiful thing, and, coming from such a distinguished gentleman of the Democratic establishment, it leant the subject a gravitas which it has heretofore been denied. Good job, Mr. President.
Convention Meme Watch
Larry King is practically gushing about how upbeat and charged the convention is. He just said he's "never seen this party come together like this." And, wait, Bob Dole just repeated the same point. This is good. Wouldn't it be a new nice, new, shiny script for our nation's lazy media if they were to tell America "Hey, these Democrats look to have their shit together!" instead of the same tired crap about those rudderless, infighting Democrats?
9-11 Remembrance
I'm sorry, I know the organizers deemed this necessary, but I am completely burned out on somber 9-11 remembrances.
Here Come the Clintons!
Hillary's winding through her intro. Good words for Kerry. Framing the choice well. Just heard the first mention of stem cell research of the convention. And now she's pumping up Edwards. All in all, solid presentation.
Just one note of an aesthetic nature: If Hillary really does have ambitions higher than the Senate, she's got to work on her "Speech Voice". She's got that cadence, not dissimilar to Kerry's, actually, that makes me feel like I'm being bludgeoned about the face with her words. Gore used to do that all the time too, although he's improved recently. It makes me nuts. I do not need to have EACH AND EVERY WORD HAMMERRED INTO MY EARDRUMS. Stop it! Speak conversationally. Like your husband. Modulate your voice naturally. Don't belt it out until you need to.
Anyhow, sorry for the speaking critique. Senator Clinton is making many fine points. I like the way she worked in praise for the 9-11 Commission and acknowledgement of the importance of their recommendations while, at the same time, noting that Bush opposed the Commission's creation.
OK... Here comes the Big Dog...
That. Was fucking. Epic.
Goddamn that guy can speak. I think one of the most enjoyable things about that speech was watching the expressions on the faces of the people in the audience. They were spellbound. They wuz hypnotized. And, if they were like the two of us sitting in my living room, they couldn't help but juxtapose this masterful performance with the vocal emantions of the sputtering robot who stole Al Gore's desk.
Clinton was relentless in casting the election as a real choice between contrasting sets of policies. He inoculated himself beautifully against the "Bush Bashing" charge by prefacing each segment of his discussion of the administration with the admonition that these people truly believe these policies are better. You know, the "They're Not Evil, They're Misguided" frame for looking at the GOP. Not sure I agree with it, but it's certainly more palatable for general media consumption.
Bottom line: That was a masterful speech. Typical Clinton, it was long-winded and yet worth every line. I'll link to a transcript tomorrow.
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[2004.07.25 - 05:00 P.M.] A Call To Arms
I don't know about the rest of you, but to me this sounds like a call to arms:
With the average U.S. drinker failing to increase his intake, the United States has fallen behind China, with its much larger population, in terms of worldwide beer market share, according Euromonitor International, a research firm. In 2003, China accounted for 20% of global beer sales and the U.S. tallied 18.4%. A recent article in the Denver Post indicates that experts attribute sluggishness in beer consumption to several factors, including younger consumers choosing alternative drinks such as flavored alcoholic beverages. Mass-market brewers like Coors are also forced to compete with an ever growing number of regional micro-brewers at home and with giants abroad.
Though current comparative statistics are hard to come by, even as of 1999, U.S. drinkers ranked just 12th in beer consumption per capita, drinking 84.4 liters per year, according to the Kirin Brewery. That was barely half the per capita consumption of the world-leading Czech Republic (160.7 liters per man, woman and child). Surprisingly, Canada lagged even behind the U.S. at 68.1 liters per capita, and South African drank just 54.3 liters. Today, the U.S. numbers might be even worse. The U.S. is still home, however, to the world's largest brewer, Anheuser-Busch.
Twelfth??? Are you shitting me? We didn't even crack the top ten? That's just wrong.
Isn't America the Home of the Party? Are we not the world leaders in decadence? Have we lost our edge?
Well, I will have none of this. Join me, my countrymen (and countrywomen). Let's show the world what we're made of. Let's show them that here in the U.S.A., we've got guts. Great, big beer guts. Yes, it's time for all True Americans to stand up and raise a glass, then raise another one, and another one, until we reclaim our nation's honor. Or we fall down. Whichever comes first...
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[2004.07.25 - 02:00 P.M.] Who's "We"?
Richard Cohen -- the Washington Post's "liberal" op-ed contributor who, strangely, backed the Iraq war and, disgustingly, trashed Fahrenheit 9-11 -- typed up a disturbingly stupid column titled "Our Forgotten Panic" on Friday. The piece is Cohen's attempt to explain his support for the war, and it falls miserably short, largely because the excuse he offers seems so completely unserious. Why did Cohen back the war in Iraq? Because he was scared of the anthrax mailings. No, readers, I shit thee not. Here are his words:
I mention anthrax for the simple reason that no one does anymore. It's a curious silence since, along with the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, it all but dominated the news. Some of us did not get mail deliveries and, when they resumed, we went into secure rooms where we donned latex gloves and face masks before opening letters. On a tip, I asked my doctor early on to prescribe Cipro for me, only to find out that, insider though I thought I was, nearly everyone had been asking him for the same thing. People made anthrax-safe rooms, and one woman I know of had a mask made for her small dog. I still don't know if that was a touching gesture or just plain madness.
My point is that we were panicked. Yet that panic never gets mentioned. Last month the New Republic published a "special issue" in which a bevy of very good writers wondered whether they had been wrong to support the war in Iraq. Most of them admitted to having erred about this or that detail or in failing to appreciate how badly George Bush would administer the war and the occupation. But none confessed to being seized by the zeitgeist. I read the magazine cover to cover and unless I somehow missed it, the word anthrax never appeared. Imagine! Not once! Not a single one of these writers admitted to panicking over anthrax.
Well, I did. I'm not sure if panic is quite the right word, but it is close enough. Anthrax played a role in my decision to support the Bush administration's desire to take out Saddam Hussein. I linked him to anthrax, which I linked to Sept. 11. I was not going to stand by and simply wait for another attack -- more attacks. I was going to go to the source, Hussein, and get him before he could get us. As time went on, I became more and more questioning, but I had a hard time backing down from my initial whoop and holler for war.
Let's see if I've got this straight: Cohen was terrified by the anthrax mailings that occurred in the Fall of 2001. So, a year and a half later, despite absolutely no evidence linking Saddam's regime to these events, he supports sending 150,000 troops to invade Iraq. Because, you know, 5 people died from what was probably a lone, demented loser right here at home sending anthrax-grams. Right. That makes sense.
Honestly, if I were Richard Cohen, and I were responsible for that little gem of rationalization, I would never have committed it to paper, for the simple fear that my bosses would declare me unfit to produce coherent output and fire my ass.
Atrios tees off on Cohen's closing remarks, in which he blames the insane march to this useless war on a "failure of leadership":
Yes, we did [lack leadership]. We lacked leadership from people in leadership positions like Richard Cohen. Yes, obviously the Bush administration's leadership was horrible for many reasons. But, Richard Cohen writes a column for what is the most influential foreign policy newspaper in the country. He is an opinion leader. He can't just say "if only Daddy had made me feel better and done the right thing" and wash his hands of it.
Now, first off, here's hoping that, with this sort of putrid work, Cohen is not long for the post of "Opinion Leader". Still, Atrios' point is well taken, and it's much bigger than just one shitty op-ed writer at the Washington Post.
In newspaper after newspaper around the country, we saw star writers -- opinion leaders all -- line up behind a war which was a transparently phony Bush Studios production effort. Not just the right-wing hacks, either. Liberals and centrists contorted themselves into logical pretzelwork trying to find ways to justify invading a country that had nothing to do with 9-11. A country which had no weapons to threaten us with and wouldn't have dared to attack us even if they had. A country whose last serious transgression against its neighbors was over a decade in the past. It was a fucking joke that any serious person should have seen right through, but our "Opinion Leaders" decided to play "Let's Pretend" and they took a good portion of the country along with them.
What bothers me even more than Cohen's pathetic attempt to cry that he was misled, however, is the dishonesty, the sheer cowardice, in his use of the first person plural:
"Our Forgotten Panic".
"We were panicked..."
Who's "We", motherfucker?
I wasn't panicked, that's for damned certain. Sure, 9-11 was scary as hell, but not everybody in this country went into long-term bouts of frothing, paranoid lunacy. Not everyone walked out their doors in the morning cowering in fear, obsessed with the possibility of another attack. Not everyone lost their mind amid the chest beating, hypnotized by Fearless Leader's endless pap about "evildoers", "smoking 'em out of their holes", and "the threat of terra." A great many reasonable, intelligent people were able to keep their wits about them, put 9-11 in context, and, most importantly, keep their eye on the White House's shell game.
Richard Cohen wasn't one of those people. He was too busy playing crazed cheerleader to the War President. Now he wants to talk about how "we" lost our minds. Bullshit. Speak for yourself, dumbass.
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[2004.07.25 - 11:30 A.M.] Heavy Drinker
Kevin Drum has an entertaining post up today about fluid consumption:
I've long been flabbergasted by the volume of liquid that most people drink. "Drink eight glasses a day!" our doctors recommend, for no apparent reason (I've asked) — and we do. In fact, judging by the size of fast food cups these days, which are rapidly exceeding their already Bunyonesque proportions, most people consider eight glasses to be a lower limit.
And me? I could probably make it from morning through dinnertime on one glass of water and barely notice that I was thirsty. A couple of months ago I tried drinking a glass of water every hour (for reasons I won't go into) and almost exploded. I was peeing every 30 minutes.
So, since the eight-glasses-a-day rule seems to exist for no particular reason (I've checked), I pay no attention to it. I drink when I'm thirsty, and if my urine is a nice healthy color I figure I'm doing fine.
And today I got happy news. My friend Dr. Marc (PhD, that is, not MD) sent me word that the Institute of Medicine has undertaken some vast new research on this issue and confirmed my belief: most people "meet their daily hydration needs by letting thirst be their guide." Hallelujah!
But wait — there's more. It turns out that they also set some "general recommendations" for water consumption, and long story short, the midpoint of those recommendations for men is.....
100 ounces per day. That's over 12 cups per day. 50% more than the old-wives-tale version from our childhood.
What to think? I must be at about the 99th percentile of water requirements. Judging by these recommendations, I'm a human camel or something.
Kind of a drag, though. I finally find something I'm at the 99th percentile of, and it turns out to be personal hydration needs. That's just great. I'm sure there's loads of money in that....
I, too, imagine myself to be in the 99th percentile of the fluid consumption curve. In the other direction. Picturing a typical day in my head, I realized that not a moment goes by when I don't have a drink at hand. Seriously. Here's an average day for me:
5-6 Cups of Coffee (6 oz. cups)
1 Cup of Tea (Earl Grey - Hot!)
8 Glasses of Water (10 oz. glass)
2-3 Glasses of Seltzer (10 oz. glass)
One or two of the following (Exc. Fridays, which include all three):
Now, obviously, all the coffee/tea and booze are going to skew my "requirements" for water since the former group tends to dehydrate. Still, I have to marvel at my total fluid through-put.
I think the urge that drives this behavior is a borderline obsessive/compulsive need to be drinking something at all times. If I'm sitting at my desk coding (or, just as likely, surfing the web), I feel downright uneasy if I don't have my water glass topped off and within reach. Same thing sitting on the couch at night reading or watching TV: Whether it's my good old Adirondack seltzer or two fingers of Dewars, there better be a glass next to me on the end-table. This isn't thirst, it's an oral fixation that's gone non-linear.
I have no idea how much I'd drink if I restricted myself to only drinking when I was actually thirsty. Might be worth looking into though. I'm sure my kidneys are out of their warranty period...
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[2004.07.24 - 07:30 P.M.] Time Flies. Or It Doesn't.
Sitting at my desk yesterday (Friday) afternoon, I found myself thinking "Damn, it seems like Monday morning was just five minutes ago." Strangely, at the same time, however, it seemed like things were crawling by. Wasn't unusual, either, given how the last week has gone. I've been bored to tears at my job, cranking out tedious T-SQL procedures for the project I'm on. Nothing challenging to do, really. I'm currently mired in the unimaginative, uncreative, uninteresting grunt work that seems to make up 95% of what goes on in the IT universe.
Anyhow, I digress.
What struck me about these two thoughts -- "Man, this week flew by!" and "Will this day ever end?" -- was the apparent paradox they presented. I've always had a casual fascination with the passage of time. Specifically, how I perceive it and how that perception varies under different circumstances. Want to hear my theory? Sure you do.
Subjective perception of time is driven primarily by one thing: Novelty.
I think the human brain assesses time intervals based on the rate at which it receives and processes new information and experiences. The more novel the experience, the more intense and unexpected the information, the bigger the impact on the way we experience time, both instantaneously and in retrospect. And, strangely, the effect of novelty seems to influence those two types of temporal experience in different directions:
Instantaneous: When you're bored, time crawls. Hours, as Captain Spock would put it, might seem like days. This much everyone knows.
Retrospective: This is the strange part. Those five grueling, tedious days that seemed to take forever as you were living them? In retrospect they seem to have taken no time at all. You survey your memory and there's nothing there to look at. Nothing novel happened for the brain to get a handle on, so it condenses all that memory of routine, robotic events into a blip. And on Friday afternoon, Monday seems like five minutes ago.
The converse of the Boring Week Scenario also holds true. Years ago I worked as a sort of roadie for a Parkinson's Disease fundraising tour. We'd wake up in one city at 4:30 AM for an interview, then go to a breakfast with a local support group, then check out of our hotel, drive 400 miles to another city, check into the next hotel, do a walk, another interview, a gala dinner with guest speakers, then back to the hotel at 1:00 AM to plan for the next series of events. Man, those days, I'd go to bed and think "We were where this morning? That can't possibly have been less than a day ago."
Again, it was the Novelty Effect at work. So much new stuff to do. So many new things to see. My brain mapped them onto my internal timeline, which stretched out to accommodate them. As they were happening, I was so preoccupied that the day blew by in a heartbeat. In retrospect, however, there were so many things to contemplate that my day seemed like a week.
So that's my theory. 'Course, some psychologist or neurologist probably figured this out years ago. I don't care. Reinventing an insight is good enough for me...
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[2004.07.24 - 04:30 P.M.] MCM Nails the Conservative Movement
Mark Crispin Miller, in this interview with BuzzFlash, really captures the essence of the Conservative Movement:
The far right's shamelessness, I believe, marks a certain turning-point in American politics. Throughout the history of our politics, of course, there's always been a streak of lunacy, there have always been explosive types, and public vitriol per se is nothing new. But what we've been experiencing since the Clinton era represents a whole new ball-game. Imagine a game where one team wants not just to win, but to destroy the other side, which they regard as evil. They use their bats as clubs, they throw their fastballs at the batters' heads, they tamper with the scoreboard, wreck the field and take over the stadium. They need to feel that kind of animus -- which is really all that they're about. And what makes them shameless is their firm belief that God approves of everything they do.
What we're confronting now, in other words, is something wilder, something much harder to deal with, than mere political corruption -- although this bunch is so corrupt that it defies description. I think that there is madness at the top of this enterprise -- not just in the Oval Office, as in Nixon's case, but all throughout the upper tier of Bush & Co.'s managers. Whether it's Bush melting down onstage or, say, Karl Rove behind the curtain, there's a fanatical unreason -- an unnatural unanimity of viewpoints -- that you finally cannot argue with, and that you can't defeat in the traditional way because they will do anything to win. The same mind-set is evident at the grass roots. Certain millions of our fellow-citizens enjoy Bush's short temper, his intransigence, his swaggering, because it makes them feel vicariously powerful. There's certainly no other reason to explain why any have-nots would support this administration, which has been screwing them royally from the get-go.
This may sound odd, but I wish that Bush and Cheney were all about the bottom line, and nothing else. Such an impetus would at least be rational. Of course, there is a certain craziness in trying to burn up every last drop of oil in the whole world, but there is a nationalistic logic to it. Everybody needs power, and we might as well be the ones to control the world's power supply. Such partial explanations sell Bush/Cheney short: I think there's an important pathological dimension to this moment that most of this regime's detractors overlook by imputing to Team Bush a certain kind of craftiness, deliberateness, detachment that just isn't there.
I am continually astonished that seemingly normal people don't see what's going on here. Even if you're ideologically conservative, I don't see how you can look at the tactics the right has used over the last decade and approve.
Cue the highlights:
Abuse of Congress' investigative powers.
Shutting down the government over a budget impasse.
An unjustified and unconstitutional impeachment.
Deliberate disenfranchisement of voters.
Outright theft of a presidential election.
Illegal redistricting schemes.
Abuse of California's recall statutes.
Exposing an undercover CIA agent as an act of political revenge.
Flouting tradition and established procedures in Congress.
Arrogating dictatorial "war-time" powers for the executive branch.
At some point, you would expect that even people who support the GOP on policy would say "Enough! We can't behave this way. This is not who we want to be." You would expect... Decency? Fairness?
Well, you'll get none. Republicans - and I mean the voters here, not the pols - seem to be in a perpetual fugue state, unable or unwilling to see what's going on in front of their eyes. Refusing to acknowledge the destruction and shame that their side is heaping on this nation. Point out the empirical evidence that unmistakably shows a pattern of corruption and pathological behavior by their "leaders" and they'll throw Clinton lying about a blowjob in your face. Worse, this week at least, they'll say "Oh yeah? Well Sandy Berger stole copies of some papers! So there! You guys are corrupt too!" Then they'll wipe the drool from their chin.
We are in the fight of our lives. Democrats, liberals, progressives, principled conservatives, and independents, we have to come together. We have to put aside differences over policy for now. What's important at this juncture isn't getting this or that bill passed. What's important now is affirming our commitment to civilized governance and the rule of law.
Anyhow, please take the time to read Crispin's interview. More than just about any writer I've encountered, he sees the Right for what they are, and he doesn't flinch from the truth.
UPDATE: Just ran across this little neologism from Miller: "Bushevik". Great word. Captures the revolutionary aspect of this administration's agenda.
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[2004.07.23 - 10:00 P.M.] Stupid Shit That Annoys Me - Item 4
Car commercials that emphasize performance on non-performance vehicles.
Most recent case-in-point: I'm sitting here watching this commercial for the Ford Fucking Focus - one of the lamest vehicles a human being can buy - and the girl pimping the car says "It has a powerful engine..." Seconds later, the stats flash on the screen. 145 Hp.
Um, sorry, but for 145 Hp to be considered "powerful", that engine would need to be on a moped.
Reality, people. Heard of it?
You see this all over the place lately. Performance is the rage (understandably so) and so that's what the advertisers are emphasizing. Remember the commercial during the Superbowl with the guy in the Camry? Fucking Camry for chrissakes. And they show him doing donuts, ripping down the freeway, generally raising hell. I mean, get a grip people.
Let's propose a rule for car ads: A company cannot boast about a car's performance unless it can run 0-60 in under 7 seconds. I think that's a fair number to draw the line at. I've driven economy cars, mid-level sports coupes, and my current Subaru WRX (227 Hp, AWD, 0-60 in 5.4s). I've got a pretty good sense of the full range of performance that's available in today's cars. And let me tell you, the Focus, with its mammoth 145 horsepower engine, is not a "powerful" car. In fact, it "sucks". Put that in your ad.
I'm just tired of this shit. I am a Car Guy. I worship at the Altar of Performance. I'm glad that so many manufacturers are making high(er)-performance vehicles these days. But don't push your low-end cars on the basis of performance, OK? I've got nothing against economy cars. They do what they do, and that's cool. Just don't try to claim that a slow-ass grocery-getter is a road rocket. That's just wrong.
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[2004.07.16 - 10:00 P.M.] War On An Emotion?
Aaron Kinney, ruminating on a piece by Geoffrey Nunberg in the Times on the same subject, has some thoughts on the media's migration from the phrase "War on Terrorism" to "War on Terror". Specifically, Aaron's looking to point the finger at the party responsible for this linguistic journey:
[Nunberg's] piece itself is relatively insightful but stays away from the political implications of the fact that the "war on terror" has largely replaced the "war on terrorism" in the mainstream media. In other words, it's milquetoast, which I guess shouldn't be too surprising, considering Nunberg is, according to his blurb, a regular contributor to NPR's "Fresh Air," the Let's-not-offend-those-whom-we're-causing-to- fall-asleep program.
Here's the one statement I really take issue with:
"And the shift from 'terrorism' to 'terror' has been equally dramatic in major newspapers, according to a search of several databases. Broad linguistic shifts like those usually owe less to conscious decisions by editors or speechwriters than to often unnoticed changes in the way people perceive their world."
Rather than investigate why this particular "terrorism">"terror" linguistic shift has occurred, Nunberg let's that generalization stand. And it's just Wrong.
[T]here's no need to speculate here, because it's very clear what has happened. The shift started within the Bush administration and it was, in fact, very much a "conscious decision" to start calling the campaign against terrorism "the war on terror," a decision that I don't really need to spell out here, but has to do with the political advantages of a frightened population and the president's own predilection to see things in terms of black and white, good and evil, freedom and terror.
The shift was picked up by the right-wing media, from Rush Limbaugh to Fox News to the Wall Street Journal, who are of course distributed the White House's talking points on all issues, domestic and international.
This shift in language - and I have to be frank, I didn't even notice it happening - takes an unwinnable "War" against a tactic, terrorism, and further bastardizes it into a war against an emotion, terror. What are those of us living here in consensus reality to make of this Bush initiative?
What should the "War on Terror" encompass? Personally, I am more terrified of right-wing extremist violence in the United States than I am of foreign terrorism. Should the "War" therefore focus on infiltrating neo-nazi groups, collaring Aryan Nation types and other domestic malcontents? I am terrified, also, of cancer. Specifically brain tumors. Should the "War" include a crash program to find a cure? More than anything in my life at this particular moment, I am terrified of the prospects of a second Bush term. Should the "War" thus involve campaigning against Bush? Preventing his supporters from reaching the polls? What?
Sorry, I don't mean to annoy you, dear readers, with these smart-ass comments, but think about this. Terror is an emotion, nothing more. Declaring war on it makes so little sense that, by comparison, the "War on Drugs" seems like a standard military engagement. And do not for a minute trivialize this choice of words. "Terror" is not simply shorthand for "Terrorism". Words matter, and the phrase which currently holds sway over our media was chosen carefully.
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[2004.07.16 - 09:00 P.M.] Just a Thought
I was reading the New York Times' latest mea culpa on the quality of their pre-war analysis of Bush's claims when I came to this (emphasis mine):
At the time, we believed that Saddam Hussein was hiding large quantities of chemical and biological weapons because we assumed that he would have behaved differently if he wasn't. If there were no weapons, we thought, Iraq would surely have cooperated fully with weapons inspectors to avoid the pain of years under an international embargo and, in the end, a war that it was certain to lose.
This is the famous "If Saddam had nothing to hide, why wasn't he more cooperative?" defense of the war, which we've all heard and read from many a hawk. Reading it here, however, I remembered this recent post from Josh Marshall, where, as an aside to the still-unfolding Wilson drama, he states:
As a very knowledgeable intelligence source pointed out to me recently, one of the things the Iraq Survey Group found was that from time to time Saddam would call aside this or that scientist or general and ask something to the effect of, 'If we had to, how long would it take us to restart this or that WMD program?'
(Beneath this there is an even further debate and question as to whether Saddam himself knew the extent of the decrepitude of his own army or just how shuttered his WMD programs were.)
OK, so here's my quarterly attempt to contribute something insightful to the blogosphere. Here we go. Fingers crossed that this isn't something hundreds of others have already suggested...
Is it possible that Saddam didn't know he had nothing to hide? Is it possible that the dysfunctional flow of information between Saddam and his ministers created such a SNAFU that he continued acting in a secretive, guilty, and defiant fashion years after his illegal programs were defunct? Just a thought.
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[2004.07.16 - 07:20 P.M.] They Never Stop
AP (Miami, FL) - Officials at the Justice Department today announced that they are filing an anti-trust suit against the national Republican Party. "We feel that the GOP has achieved an effective monopoly on electoral dirty tricks, abuse of government power, and general scumbaggery," said Associate Attorney General Bob Nutz. "Since the 1994 election, they've been aggressively moving to consolidate their gains in these areas, using every illegal tactic at their disposal. This is, quite frankly, un-American. We just want to return to the good old days when both political parties were more or less equally corrupt." The move goes against the express wishes of Attorney General John Ashcroft, who stated that he thought the department's scarce resources would be better spent acting against more dire threats, like terminal cancer patients using medicinal marijuana.
(sigh) ...
Yes, they're at it again. They never seem to stop. The scene of the latest crime is the scene of their greatest crime: Florida, where the voter rolls seem to allow for endless creativity on the part of Jeb Bush's political hack squad. Once again, the sunshine state has tried to "refine" its list of felons who are ineligible to vote. The results were, um, unsurprising.
Courtesy of Billmon, courtesy of Publius, courtesy of Kevin Drum, here's the story:
The state had tried to keep the list a secret. It fought a lawsuit aimed at opening the records to the public. A series of errors emerged once a Tallahassee judge rejected the state's arguments and released the records on July 1. The error that proved final — and garnered national attention — was that Hispanics were largely overlooked because of glitches in how the state records information about race and ethnicity. The list was created by cross-checking voter registration and criminal records. Of the more than 47,000 voters on the potential felon list, Hispanics made up one tenth of 1 percent — this in a state where nearly 1 in 5 residents is Hispanic. Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood issued a written statement Saturday saying the exclusion of Hispanics was "unintentional and unforeseen." "We are deeply concerned and disappointed that this has occurred," Hood said. . . . Many Hispanic voters vote Republican.
After the numbness wore off, Kevin had this to say:
[T]hink about what happened: we're in Florida, site of the biggest election meltdown in the country's history. An inaccurate list of felons is a big part of the meltdown. The state, headed by the president's brother, promises to do better in 2004. The eyes of the nation are on them. The state produces a new list. But....
It won't show the list to anyone. In fact, it resists showing the list with all the power at its disposal. Finally, when it no longer has any choice due to a lawsuit and a judge's order, it gives up the list. And....
It's wrong again! In a way that just happens to favor Republicans! Again! But it was just mistake, honest! We are deeply concerned and disappointed! Honest!
Sometimes it's just more than you can stand.
If you read the story, you'll see that in the aftermath of all this, the Florida election officials responsible have been forced to scrap the "revised and improved" felon list. But, really, is there any doubt - any doubt at all - that Jeb is busy conspiring to hand the election to Brother George in some other, as yet unknown, underhanded fashion?
People, if there is one among you who still believes that both political parties in this country are playing the game by the same rules, I say you are blind. The Republican Party has made corrupting our electoral system their stock in trade. There is not a single instance in recent memory of the Democrats engaging in these sorts of activities. Open your eyes. The guilty party stands exposed before you.
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[2004.07.16 - 07:50 A.M.] The Drama That Feeds the Fire
After thirty years of creeping conservative dominance, we now live in a country where the right seemingly controls everything. Yet one rarely has to look far to find 'Wingers complaining vociferously about the liberal agenda, the liberal media, and the "scheming liberal elite".
I've often wondered how they manage to hold this delusion stable even as their side overwhelms the public discourse. The answer, according to Thomas Frank in today's Times, is superior "Enemy Maintenance". This ritualistic tilting at perceived liberal windmills, seen most recently in the failed attempt to pass the Federal Marriage Amendment, allows the right-wing base to continue perceiving themselves as the little guy being smacked around by Big, Bad Liberals:
For more than three decades, the Republican Party has relied on the "culture war" to rescue their chances every four years, from Richard Nixon's campaign against the liberal news media to George H. W. Bush's campaign against the liberal flag-burners. In this culture war, the real divide is between "regular people" and an endlessly scheming "liberal elite." This strategy allows them to depict themselves as friends of the common people even as they gut workplace safety rules and lay plans to turn Social Security over to Wall Street. Most important, it has allowed Republicans to speak the language of populism.
..
Failure on the cultural front serves to magnify the outrage felt by conservative true believers; it mobilizes the base. Failure sharpens the distinctions between conservatives and liberals. Failure allows for endless grandstanding without any real-world consequences that might upset more moderate Republicans or the party's all-important corporate wing. You might even say that grand and garish defeat — especially if accompanied by the ridicule of the sophisticated — is the culture warrior's very object.
The issue is all-important; the issue is incapable of being won. Only when the battle is defined this way can it achieve the desired results, have its magical polarizing effect. Only with a proposed constitutional amendment could the legalistic, cavilling Democrats be counted on to vote "no," and only with an offensive so blunt and so sweeping could the universal hostility of the press be secured.
Losing is prima facie evidence that the basic conservative claim is true: that the country is run by liberals; that the world is unfair; that the majority is persecuted by a sinister elite. And that therefore you, my red-state friend, had better get out there and vote as if your civilization depended on it.
Update: Digby also has a post on this, with an interesting tie-in that compares right-wing victimization with the animus that feeds Islamic terrorism.
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[2004.07.15 - 09:00 P.M.] Kerry's Healthcare Plan
Rob Salkowitz at Emphasis Added has an excellent post on John Kerry's healthcare plan (the permalink isn't working, so just go to the site and scroll down to the post titled "Better Medicine"):
One area where John Kerry has indubitably offered pro-active solutions for real problems is in health care. Kerry has a bold and interesting plan whose central feature transfers the high costs of catastrophic health care from the private insurance system – which is increasingly unable to handle the rising costs of treatment without dramatically raising premiums – to state and federal government. This accomplishes two things. First, it socializes the costs across a broader revenue base, which will help ensure that those relatively few patients who require catastrophic medical coverage will actually receive it. And second, it removes a high cost from the insurance system, which means that insurance companies will have more resources to cover routine and less-costly procedures at lower cost to their customers.
If this works, it will have a profoundly beneficial effect on millions of Americans by making private medical insurance more affordable, and by relieving those unlucky families struck by medical catastrophe from an unreasonable burden of costs and uncertainty. This is a good idea in big throbbing capital letters. Nearly everyone who knows something about the issue thinks so, and the only reason to oppose it is if you are so blindly ideological that the idea of any state involvement whatsoever in the lives of American citizens is flat unacceptable.
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You hear a lot lately that Kerry is “just about the negatives” or is running only on not being Bush. This is one area where he’s made a serious and substantive policy proposal that is relatively modest in scope, yet will address a problem that faces millions of Americans. Moreover, this catastrophic health care proposal is just one of several policies meant to address critical shortcomings in the system in a much more serious way than empty talk about medical savings accounts, tax breaks and tort reform.
Speaking as one who works at a major health insurance provider, I can tell you that, despite the industry's bloodsucking ways, most of the major players really are looking for a way to cut down expenses and stop the current trend of skyrocketing premiums. Not for altruistic reasons, mind you, but for the simple fact that they're pricing themselves out of the market and losing customers as more and more employers just say "fuck it" and forgo providing health insurance at all. If they're sane, they'll welcome Kerry's plan with open arms. And so will the millions of Americans who won't have to worry about being bankrupted by a major health problem.
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[2004.07.14 - 07:30 P.M.] Around The Web
UK Report on Pre-War Intelligence Exonerates Blair
Well, at the very least, it's reassuring to know that we're not the only country where leaders are not held accountable for the lies they tell their citizens:
Prime Minister Tony Blair has lived up to his "Teflon" tag, emerging almost spotless from a critical report into the intelligence used to justify last year's invasion of Iraq.
Although the report on Wednesday by former top civil servant Lord Butler found major holes in the intelligence, it spared Blair any personal responsibility.
"It looks very much like the man they call Teflon Tony has come out of this unscathed again," said John Benyon, politics professor at the University of Leicester. "But the trust issue is going to continue to be a problem."
It was the fourth report in a year into the process that reinforced the government's justification for war from which Blair has escaped with little more than a slapped wrist.
In all my life, I have never seen such a charade as we've seen in the past week. Two leaders who absolutely, positively lied to their people to gin up support for an illegal, unjustified war. Two reports that place the blame on the poor slobs who labored to provide those men with a reason for a decision that was already made.
Man, there must be a whole lotta raw buttholes at CIA and MI5 right now.
Oh, Really?
David Cole of The Nation made the mistake of going on The "Oh, Really?" Factor. He brings us back an inside look from the sweaty bowels of the Spin Zone:
I sat in the Washington studio as the taping of the show began in New York with a rant from Bill O'Reilly. He claimed that "the Factor" had established the link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, and then played a clip from Thomas Kean, head of the Senate's 9/11 Commission, in which Kean said, "There is no evidence that we can find whatsoever that Iraq or Saddam Hussein participated in any way in attacks on the United States, in other words, on 9/11. What we do say, however, is there were contacts between Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Iraq, Saddam--excuse me. Al Qaeda."
I was impressed. O'Reilly, who had announced his show as the "No Spin Zone," was actually playing a balanced soundbite, one that accurately reported the commission's findings both that there was no evidence linking Saddam and 9/11, and that there was some evidence of contacts (if no "collaborative relationship") between Saddam and Al Qaeda. Maybe all those nasty things Al Franken had said about O'Reilly weren't true after all.
But suddenly O'Reilly interrupted, plainly angry, and said, "We can't use that.... We need to redo the whole thing." Three minutes of silence later, the show began again, with O'Reilly re-recording the introduction verbatim. Except this time, when he got to the part about Kean, he played no tape, and simply paraphrased Kean as confirming that "definitely there was a connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda." The part about no link to 9/11 was left on the cutting-room floor.
Gets better, too. Sounds like the real fun began when Cole called O'Reilly on this bullshit editing move during his segment on the show. Check it out.
You have to love O'Reilly just for the entertainment value. The guy's a complete lunatic. For some reason, though, Fox keeps letting him interact with liberals who invariably slap him around, get under his skin, and embarrass him. By all means, Bill, keep it coming. The cable news world is waiting for the day when you really come unglued.
Good Guys 50, Stupid Bigots 48
The Senate today blocked a vote to add an amendment to the Constitution banning gay marriage. For a while earlier in the week, it sounded like the Faux Morality Brigade backing this thing wouldn't even be able to agree on language for the amendment. Sources report that Zell Miller kept trying to add verbiage to the effect that "Homos shouldn't be allowed to breathe the same air as straight people, neither!" Apparently, they set aside their differences, however, so they could have their big showdown in the Culture War. Too bad for them the Good Guys won.
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[2004.07.13 - 08:00 A.M.] Just Say It
Excellent editorial in the Los Angeles Times this morning:
If not murder, John F. Kerry and John Edwards have accused President Bush of something close to criminally negligent homicide in Iraq. "They were wrong and soldiers died because they were wrong," Kerry said of the Bush administration over the weekend.
This is strong language, but not unjustified. Last week's Senate Intelligence Committee report adds to the pile of studies and reportage that has undermined the key reasons Bush gave for going to war: Saddam Hussein's imperial designs, links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, weapons of mass destruction and so on.
The trouble is, both Sens. Kerry and Edwards voted yes on the resolution authorizing the war in Iraq. And now they refuse to say whether they would have supported the resolution if they had known what they know today. Both say they can't be bothered with "hypothetical questions."
But whether it is a hypothetical question depends on how you phrase it. Do they regret these votes? Were their votes a mistake? These are not hypothetical questions. And they are questions the Democratic candidates for president and vice president cannot duck if they wish to attack Bush on Iraq in such morally charged language.
I have to emphatically agree with this sentiment.
Enough dodging, John. And you too, John.
If you had known prior to the vote that Saddam had absolutely no weapons of mass destruction and absolutely no ties to Al-Qaeda, then of course you wouldn't have voted to authorize the use of force against him, correct? What reasonable person would have?
Just answer the question honestly and move on. Distinguish yourself from Bush by showing that you are able to re-evaluate a position based on new data and admit error.
Why is that so hard for people to do? Not just presidential candidates, but damn near everybody?
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[2004.07.12 - 09:30 P.M.] Why Postpone When You Can Prepone?
With the nation's collective blood pressure elevated after Tom Ridge's recent warning that a [insert degree of threat] terrorist attack on [insert location] using [insert means] could occur on or around [insert date], it's comforting to know that the administration is attending to what should obviously be the first order of business in the event of such an attack: Postponing this year's presidential election. This heartfelt concern for the stability of our government is no doubt honest and laudable. I would like, however, to propose an alternative course.
Recall a few short weeks ago, when the worry was that insurgents in Iraq might launch some sort of attack to disrupt the handover of "sovereignty" to the interim Iraqi government. The response of those wily, ingenious Bushies? Defuse the situation by handing over power early.
Brilliant! Brilliant, I say!
Why not, then, deploy this masterfully elegant solution in the current scenario? Rather than delay the presidential election, hold it early. Next month, maybe. Or, no, let's be fair and wait until after the Republican convention. Hold the election in, say, mid-September. If we start carefully (and covertly) planning this now, we could take the terrorists completely by surprise.
I realize that Bush and Cheney are the sort of men who, due to their natural humility, do not want to beat us over the head with their greatness by using the same tactic twice in such a short span. But I say, gentlemen, your crackerjack scheme is the ready answer to the conundrum we find ourselves in. Bask in your glory, but set us free!
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[2004.07.11 - 02:00 P.M.] Conservatism: Bad For Your Health
The hallmark of today's conservative policies, it seems to me, is not so much that they are wrong-headed - although they are almost uniformly so - but that they are so consistently and positively harmful to the well-being and happiness of humanity. Whether it is the war in Iraq abroad or the war on the poor at home, conservatives seem hell-bent on pursuing the greatest possible misery for the greatest number of people. In fact, it is not a stretch to declare that conservatism amounts to a sort of anti-Utilitarianism.
One manifestation of this tendency, which is reported on at length in this New York Times article, is the concerted effort being made by Republican lawmakers and conservative activists to stymie meaningful research on sexual behavior, cut off science-based health and sex education, and aggressively pursue religious-based "abstinence only" programs that are doomed, by the very nature of our biological and psychological make-ups, to failure.
For years, Advocates for Youth, a Washington-based organization devoted to adolescent sexual health, says, it received government grants without much trouble. Then last year it was subjected to three federal reviews.
James Wagoner, the president of Advocates for Youth, said the reviews were prompted by concerns among some members of Congress that his group was using public funds to lobby against programs that promoted sexual abstinence before marriage. Although that was not the case, Mr. Wagoner said, the government officials made their point.
"For 20 years, it was about health and science, and now we have a political ideological approach," he said. "Never have we experienced a climate of intimidation and censorship as we have today."
Mr. Wagoner is among the professionals in sex-related fields who have started speaking out against what they say is growing interference from conservatives in and out of government with their work in research, education and disease prevention.
A result, these professionals say, has been reduced financing for some programs and an overall chilling effect on the field, with college professors avoiding certain topics in their human sexuality classes and researchers steering clear of terms like sex workers in the title of grant applications for fear of drawing attention to themselves.
"Programs almost have to hide what they do," said Richard Parker, a professor at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. "We have a major challenge ahead of ourselves."
Indeed we do, and that challenge is to get an administration back into the White House that grounds its policies in reason and evidence, not ideology and religious extremism. It's a challenge we desperately need to meet, if we are in any way serious about our commitment to life, liberty, and happiness. Especially the happiness part.
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[2004.07.09 - 08:30 P.M.] Emphasis Added
Dave Niewart of Orcinus is going to be busy for a few days, so he was thoughtful enough to direct his readers over to a blog called Emphasis Added, written by his friend Rob Salkowitz. Figuring Niewart was unlikely to steer his readers wrong, I read the post he linked to on the topic of how our "liberal" media treats dissent in America. It was outstanding. So then I read another post on the topic of how free market capitalism has become de-coupled from any discussion of morals or values. It was even better. It seemed like this guy was on a roll, so I continued on to read yet another post about, um, Spider Man II. Which was also quite good.
Then I came home and added Emphasis to my Blogroll.
Great stuff. Highly recommended. It's the kind of blog I would write if a.) I could write better, b.) I had a longer attention span, and c.) Blogging, for me, was primarily an attempt to contribute to the public discourse, rather than an emergency release valve for venting excess political frustration.
In closing, I give you Mr. Salkowitz's sage words on Fahrenheit 9-11:
To me, the most depressing thing about F911 is that it is considered an act of courage by a radical filmmaker to state the obvious truths that Moore sprays at us for two highly-concentrated hours. Bush fumbled badly in the hours following the attacks. He is a lightweight, ill-prepared for the burdens of office, and deeply compromised by long-standing family connections to Saudi Arabia, the Bin Laden family and the energy industry. War is more than fireworks, and the lives of thousands of brave young Americans, mostly from modest backgrounds, are being sacrificed on the altar of greed and duplicity, while a few well-connected corporations make out like bandits. All of this is in the public record, and it seems to me the work of mainstream professional journalists to present these facts to the American public. Since they wouldn't, it falls to Moore, an imperfect vessel to be sure, to deliver the goods.
There's a lot of truth in F911 and a lot of genuine ugliness. I guess it's considered “anti-American” to ask Americans to consider the consequences of their actions, and actions performed in their name. We can look down the scopes of radar-guided bombs as they close in on their target, but please don't point the camera at the soldier's amputated leg or the terrified Iraqi man being taken from his home by US soldier in the middle of the night. It's clearly unpatriotic to ask embarrassing questions of our sainted leaders, or point out holes in the noble narrative of good, evil, sacrifice and triumph our government seems to feel we need to keep our resolve in the “war on terror.” Most of all, it's terribly pessimistic to expect our democracy to actually live up to its ideals at the moment when we’re making a public spectacle of our virtue and strength.
Moore presents his critics on the right with a big target, and Fahrenheit 911 is not likely to win him a column on the Wall Street Journal editorial page. But for all his quirks, pretensions and imperfections as a journalist and historian, he is excellent at his craft, and, by his willingness (exuberance, even) to put his money where his mouth is, has become the indispensable man at this critical moment for our country. Love him, hate him, agree with him or fume with outrage, at least take the time to consider F911, the irreducible power of a few of the scenes and images, and what it says about our the sickness of our society that we need a cure this strong.
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[2004.07.09 - 06:00 P.M.] Reading In Decline
So you've probably heard about the new study out which shows a sharp decline in reading for pleasure among Americans:
Despite monster bestsellers like Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" and Alice Sebold's "The Lovely Bones," it appears that the reading of literature is declining in America.
That is the thrust of a grim report issued yesterday by the National Endowment for the Arts. Titled "Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America," the NEA study reports marked declines in the reading of fiction, plays, and poetry since 1982, with a steeper decline since 1992.
At first glance, I found this alarming. What could be the cause of this disturbing trend? MTV? Video games? Crack? Surely, I thought, Americans still love to read. They must. So why don't the numbers reflect this like they used to?
Then I re-read the criteria they were tracking:
"..the reading of fiction, plays, and poetry.."
Suddenly, I saw the problem: That whole slew of "best-sellers" by Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Michael Savage Weiner which have clogged the shelves at supermarkets, warehouses, and Wal-Marts across the country must have mistakenly been categorized as non-fiction. Move those puppies over to fiction where they belong and I bet those numbers will jump right back up.
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[2004.07.08 - 06:00 P.M.] Around The Blogosphere
Are You Experienced?
Avedon Carol has a priceless take on the whole "John Edwards is Too Inexperienced" meme the GOP is desperately trying to spread (emphasis mine):
The reason people said so much about Cheney's experience four years ago is that the top of the Republican ticket was filled by a man with virtually no experience - and what experience he did have was marked largely by failure; the Kerry ticket doesn't have that problem.
But there's no evidence that Edwards is less fit to govern than either Bush or Cheney - the former goes out of his way to inform us that he has learned nothing from the last few years, and the latter is a maniac who has learned criminality all too well. Edwards, by contrast, appears to have done something neither one of them have experience at: making a success of himself without screwing the rest of us.
July Surprise? Won't Be Now...
TNR's "July Surprise" article, by Judis, Ackerman, and Ansari, is causing quite a stir. Short version: The Bushies have been pressuring -- no, demanding -- that Pakistan deliver "high value" Al Qaeda targets, dead or alive, and make it snappy. Why the sudden urgency? Some key nuggets that convey the authors' thesis:
This spring, the administration significantly increased its pressure on Pakistan to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri, or the Taliban's Mullah Mohammed Omar, all of whom are believed to be hiding in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan. A succession of high-level American officials--from outgoing CIA Director George Tenet to Secretary of State Colin Powell to Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca to State Department counterterrorism chief Cofer Black to a top CIA South Asia official--have visited Pakistan in recent months to urge General Pervez Musharraf's government to do more in the war on terrorism...
..This public pressure would be appropriate, even laudable, had it not been accompanied by an unseemly private insistence that the Pakistanis deliver these high-value targets (HVTs) before Americans go to the polls in November...
..The New Republic has learned that Pakistani security officials have been told they must produce HVTs by the election. According to one source in Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), "The Pakistani government is really desperate and wants to flush out bin Laden and his associates after the latest pressures from the U.S. administration to deliver before the [upcoming] U.S. elections." Introducing target dates for Al Qaeda captures is a new twist in U.S.-Pakistani counterterrorism relations.. but the November election is apparently bringing a new deadline pressure to the hunt. Another official, this one from the Pakistani Interior Ministry, which is responsible for internal security, explains, "The Musharraf government has a history of rescuing the Bush administration. They now want Musharraf to bail them out when they are facing hard times in the coming elections."
A third source, an official who works under ISI's director, Lieutenant General Ehsan ul-Haq, informed tnr that the Pakistanis "have been told at every level that apprehension or killing of HVTs before [the] election is [an] absolute must." What's more, this source claims that Bush administration officials have told their Pakistani counterparts they have a date in mind for announcing this achievement: "The last ten days of July deadline has been given repeatedly by visitors to Islamabad and during [ul-Haq's] meetings in Washington." Says McCormack: "I'm aware of no such comment." But according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July"--the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.
Kevin Drum's comments on the piece are here. One point Kevin makes that I actually had to agree with despite myself:
[T]here's also a niggling note of caution. The article quotes one official saying that the White House told them "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July" — the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston. This quote has the ring of being a little too perfect to me, and makes me wonder what axe the Pakistani sources have to grind in all this.
There's nothing -- nothing -- that I would put past the scheming bastards in this administration, but would they actually be stupid enough to hold up a calendar in front of their Pakistani bag boys, circle the Dem convention in red, and say "Now this would be a particularly great time to have Osama's head show up at the White House door on a platter."? That seems to be an awfully big stretch. Of course, even if, as Kevin suggests, the Pakistanis are "embellishing" a bit in the re-telling, that certainly doesn't invalidate the larger picture the article draws. Hell, the Bushies have had almost three years to bring in AQ's top-tier bad guys. You'd have to be naive, at this point, to think they're not trying to bring off some sort of dramatic move to deliberately coincide with the election.
Finemanberg, Hitchensberg, Kurtzberg, Dowdberg...
Meanwhile, venturing into the world of Subatomic Journalism, Aaron Kinney discusses The Heisenberg Media Principle:
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states that it is impossible to measure the velocity and location of a subatomic particle simultaneously, meaning that you can never measure with absolute certainty what in Sam Hill is going on inside one o' them little suckers (atoms).
This principle is at the heart of quantum mechanics. Extrapolated from it is the more general principle that you cannot measure, observe or experiment on a subject without affecting the subject you're trying to observe.
At least, I think that's right. I can't be bothered to google it and make sure.
There is a similar effect at work in today's mainstream media. The previous post about the media's assertion that the public views John Kerry as an elitist is a prime example. The Heisenberg Media Principle is always at work -- in other words there is no such thing as objectivity and reporting is inevitably an act of interpretation -- but never is it as salient as when the media tries to determine what the public is thinking and feeling.
Because most often, the media, rather than read the public mood like a quiet instrument, makes an assumption about the public mood, the broadcast of which assumption to the public then affects the public mood the media is monitoring.
Look no further, in the political sphere, than Newsweek's coverage of Howard Dean in '03 and '04, which went something like this: "HE'S A LOSER, HE'S A LOSER, HE'S A LOSER, HE'S A LOSER, HE'S A LOSER, HE'S A LOSER, HE'S A LOSER, HE'S A LOSER, HE'S A LOSER, HE'S A LOSER, HE'S A LOSER, HE'S A LOSER, HE'S A LOSER, HE'S A LOSER, HE'S A LOSER, HE'S A LOSER, HE'S A LOSER, HE'S A LOSER, HE'S A LOSER ... Hey, whaddya know? He lost."
So true. And yes, Aaron, that's a pretty decent nutshell version of uncle Werner's crazy principle.
TERROR! TERROR! IGNORE THOSE DEMS! TERROR!
Buzzflash, reporting on Tom Ridge's announcement of the possibility of scary terrorists attacking us this summer, plunked his link under the headline:
"Obedient Lapdog Tom Ridge Trots Out Terror Alert About Elections, Coincidentally At a Time of Heavy Positive News for the Dem Ticket. He's Not Raising the Alert Status -- A Definite Sign This Alert is Politically-Motivated."
That's what I love about Buzzflash: the headlines really do make the stories themselves superfluous. Still, I had to click through. Here's the first graf:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge on Thursday warned Americans that al Qaeda may try to carry out a large-scale attack to disrupt upcoming elections but offered no details and had no plans to raise the terror threat level.
Wow. I think "obedient lapdog" actually confers an undeserved mantle of sentience upon Mr. Ridge. He's more like a cuckoo clock. No no, wait, those convey information. He's a jack-in-the-box. Purely mechanical, signifying nothing, just meant to startle the kiddies.
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[2004.07.07 - 07:00 P.M.] Toppling a Myth
If there's one thing everyone agrees on, it's that Saddam was a brutal dictator, and an awful lot of Iraqis were overjoyed to see him go. Right? And perhaps no moment better captured that raw emotion than the toppling of his statue by a mob of his former subjects in Baghdad. Neither the lies used to get us into this war nor the mess we've made of the place since should put a damper on that spontaneous outpouring of emotion, that spark of liberty that flared in Firdos Square that day, that clean breath of freedom that...
What? Yeah, yeah. We already know that the, um, "mob" was a little smaller than we were initially led to believe. The military camera crew cropped a few shots to make the crowd of a hundred or so Iraqis seem much larger. So what? Doesn't change the fact that there was a rumbling in the ground that day, and that rumbling's name was Democracy, that tremor was the first harbinger of...
Huh? Yes, I'm aware that U.S. troops helped them topple the statue. Big deal. It was a huge statue and our guys happened to have some heavy machinery handy that could pull the sucker down.
Look, you're not taking this moment away from me! It is the One Moment of Purity we've had in this shitty war, OK? Jon Stewart -- Jon fucking Stewart, for chrissakes -- told me not to be cynical about this! The day they toppled that big, bronze Saddam, he soberly intoned on his show that "If you are incapable of taking joy in these images, then you are lost to the ideological left." Well I, for one, am not lost to any ideology, OK, Pal? My heart and mind are not bound by the chains of some dour worldview...
What did you say?
The WHOLE FUCKING THING WAS STAGE-MANAGED FROM START TO FINISH??!! You're joking?
Oh, you're not joking.
(ahem)
As the Iraqi regime was collapsing on April 9, 2003, Marines converged on Firdos Square in central Baghdad, site of an enormous statue of Saddam Hussein. It was a Marine colonel — not joyous Iraqi civilians, as was widely assumed from the TV images — who decided to topple the statue, the Army report said. And it was a quick-thinking Army psychological operations team that made it appear to be a spontaneous Iraqi undertaking.
After the colonel — who was not named in the report — selected the statue as a "target of opportunity," the psychological team used loudspeakers to encourage Iraqi civilians to assist, according to an account by a unit member.
Ultimately, a Marine recovery vehicle toppled the statue with a chain, but the effort appeared to be Iraqi-inspired because the psychological team had managed to pack the vehicle with cheering Iraqi children.
Moral of the Story: Only by maximizing one's cynicism can one even begin to get an approximate picture of our current circumstances. There are no storybook endings in BushWorld. Don't ever forget it.
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[2004.07.06 - 07:55 P.M.] Competence First
Kevin Drum has a post up which, in my opinion, might just frame the argument that puts enough voters in the Kerry column to notch us a win come November. It's short, so I'll post it here in its entirety:
LIBERTARIANS FOR KERRY....Now that John Kerry has chosen someone other than Dick Gephardt as his running mate, libertarian supporter Jacob Levy plans to vote for a Democrat for president for the first time in his life:
I've had leanings in previous races, but they were uncertain, and typically mitigated by a sense that both major-party candidates had crossed some threshold of unacceptability. This time, it seems very clear to me that the Bush Administration has failed basic tests of competence in policymaking and execution, and of trusteeship of long-term interests like alliances and trade negotiations and moral credibility. I expect to dislike an awful lot of John Kerry's policies. But I don't expect that kind of failure of the basic responsibilities of the office. Four or eight or twelve years ago, I guess I wouldn't have known how important I found those considerations, as I hadn't seen a president who had failed along those dimensions. Now I have, and I do.
I don't imagine that this kind of "competence" argument is going to sway many voters, but Jacob is dead right: it's not just his ideology that makes Bush a bad president, it's his seemingly utter contempt for policymaking of any kind. He just doesn't care whether specific facts are true or false or whether specific policies will work or not.
It's something that's frankly hard to get your arms around, this idea that Bush apparently doesn't think that policy analysis is even a valid field of study. And yet it seems to be true: he has about the same respect for policy that creationists do for, say, carbon dating, and with the same disastrous results for his ability to understand and influence the real world.
We've never really had a president before — at least in recent history — who thought this way. The resulting mess is going to take someone a long time to clean up.
I think Kevin is too quick to dismiss the potential here. No, this line of reasoning won't sway any hard-core GOP partisans, but I can see a lot of independents, Greens, Libertarians, maybe even "Reform Party" types stepping back and thinking their way through the Competence Question.
America's great mass of disaffected voters, who are moved neither by the ideological offerings of the two major parties nor by concern for their political success or failure, rouse themselves, if at all, to back a Perot or a Dean or some other insurgent. More typically, they stay away from the polls in droves. There's some sense to this. While the old "Demicans and Republicrats" canard offered by Naderites everywhere may not be true, that doesn't mean that the two distinct offerings we do have available don't leave many people cold.
Bush, however, with his patented one-two punch of ignorance and arrogance, may have fundamentally altered the equation that keeps these people home on election day. The question this time is no longer just about which direction we should head in or what route we should take. The question is whether the guy behind the wheel can drive at all. And that's usually enough to engage the self-interest of even the most jaded passenger strapped into the back seat.
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