JUSIPER
Thursday, September 30, 2004
Put your newfound enthusiasm to work
Volunteer for the campaign if you are in or near a battleground state. And donate to the DNC.
Money that is received in the next few days can be used effectively; the Kerry campaign has to decide whether it has enough money to make ad buys down the road. Having the money on hand now will help them remain in states they might otherwise pull out of. New money is helpful anytime, but your contribution will be far more effective now.
11:42 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Network polls
CBS: Kerry 44, Bush 26, Tie 30. The network's people meter group went up to +2 for Kerry (from -5 to +5), but didn't seem to move that high for Bush, ever--and even went below 0 at times.
ABC: Kerry 47, Bush 36, Tie 17.
NBC's focus group of 6 undecided voters in Ohio: Kerry 100%, Bush 0%. Yes, that's right. All six of them said Kerry won.
CNN: Kerry 53, Bush 37, Tie 8.
Frank Luntz? Unemployed.
11:26 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Who won the debate
With 254,000 votes in at MSNBC.com, the answer is clear. John Kerry, 70% to 30% for George W. Bush.
11:26 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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OH and PA winnable
Gallup's ridiculous national numbers are countered by their own state numbers, which suggest that both Ohio and Pennsylvania remain very much in play for Kerry. Although he is 2-3 behind among likely voters in both states, he is up by 3-4 among registered voters.
The notion that Kerry could win Ohio and Pennsylvania despite a 3-5 point disadvantage nationwide has huge implications. It means, among other things, that losing Wisconsin may not be the end of the world.
Say Bush carries Wisconsin and Kerry wins New Hampshire and Ohio. Kerry has 262 electoral votes without Iowa (7), New Mexico (5), Nevada (5) and West Virginia (5), assuming all other state results from 2000 remain constant. Any two of these would put him over the top
Colorado's nine, of course, would win it outright. If the proportional electoral vote referendum there were to pass, Kerry would get four or five regardless, bringing him to 266 or 267. He would then only need one, rather than two, of the four smaller tossup states.
None of these states is out of reach for Kerry. Gore won Iowa and New Mexico four years ago. And Bush has been below 50, though rarely behind, even in recent polling from all of those states.
But the key is turnout, turnout, turnout.
Your help mobilizing voters, either directly or through contributions to groups like ACT could make all the difference in the world.
As Patrick implied Monday, the Left has to stop looking at polls and start taking action.
Increasing turnout in the right places must be our main goal in the few weeks we have left. And the Kerry campaign has to do everything it can to make up for the six months it frittered away without a strategy for mobilizing African Americans and Latino voters.
We can win this thing. Let's get to work.
1:19 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Krugman and Marshall on the post-debate spin wars
Must reading.
3:40 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Paper stock
Sign ACT's petition regarding the Ohio voter registration outrage. And while you're at it, send them some cash for the final turnout push.
3:51 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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How the Court stole the election
Get that Vanity Fair article here, thanks to SCOTUS blog.
Never forget the day that America ceased being a democracy.
2:19 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Bruce Springsteen- "We’ve Been Misled"
A must read interview in Rolling Stone in which he takes on Bush and the SCLM.
2:09 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Monday, September 27, 2004
Go door-to-door for Kerry. It works.
The Yale Civic Engagement Project compared door-to-door canvassing with other get-out-the-vote methods in the 2000 (and other elections) and discovered this:
Face-to-face contact raised turnout in the treatment group by as much as 8.5 percentage points. In addition, we found that face-to-face contact with this group produced spillover effects. That is, the intervention even had a positive impact on voter turnout among other household members of the treatment group, raising their turnout by 2.7 percentage-points. Thus, for every 100 treatment subjects assigned to a canvassing campaign, 4.3 additional votes were mobilized through intended contact and another 4.1 votes were mobilized through incidental contact, or spillover.
(Via Sam Wang's Meta-Analysis of State Polls page.)
5:11 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Friday, September 24, 2004
Evangelicals against Schwarzenegger
If you believe it's Democrats who will be the first to oppose the proposed amendment to allow a foreign-born president, think again. It's evangelicals in the GOP who will bust out of the gates first. It's not just that Arnold Schwarzenegger is for civil unions but that he's, yes, for hate crimes legislation. There's a reason that the Christian Coalition didn't back George W. Bush until he proved his evangelical bona fides by killing Texas' hate crimes legislation in 2000.
As soon as the proud Nixon backer signed the bill, the Family Research Council was on the warpath:
While Arnold Schwarzenegger may be governor of the world's third largest economy, his head is still in Hollywood. Yesterday he signed his second major homosexual rights bill into law -- SB 1234 that expands the definition of 'hate crimes' to include gender-bias crimes, 'anti-reproductive rights crimes' (pro-life protestors), and even those committed on the basis of 'actual or perceived homelessness.' This law will increase the penalties for those crimes committed against specially protected categories of people 'whether real or perceived' and is yet another attempt to dampen free speech by criminalizing thought. Laws like these have been the first step toward restricting religious liberties and silencing pastors who preach about homosexuality. This sends the message that some people are more deserving of protection than others, a fundamentally un-American idea.
We applaud the FRC and the right for recognizing the hatefulness of its own theology, almost (but not quite) as much as we applaud every American who votes this president out of office for pandering to it.
1:30 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Thursday, September 23, 2004
Dolly Parton: Accessory to terrorism
The Daily Mirror (which like every other paper in the U.K., incidentally, is newspaper of the year) reports the true purpose of Cat Steven's trip to the United States was to "to travel to Nashville to meet Dolly Parton."
Which is really rather odd, considering Cat/Yusuf's evangelical-like version of Islam. Now I know Dolly recorded a version of "Peace Train" some time ago and even made a "Holy Roller" mix of it. But I'm guessing, just guessing, that their conversation would have stuck to music, not religion, given some of Dolly's beliefs:
I believe in 'human rights' and the Scripture, 'Judge not, lest ye be judged.' I have many gay friends who I love dearly... I've always said that if I hadn't been a woman, I would have been a drag queen. I have seen men impersonate me, and I consider it flattering. I especially like it on Halloween. Then I can go anywhere in Hollywood and never be noticed. All I know about sex change operations I learned from my good friend Jason, who used to be my good friend Suzie.
For all their clashes, it's astonishing how much George W. Bush, the Pope, Osama bin Laden and Yusuf Islam have in common. If they could only stop fighting and join forces for a moment, George W. Bush has a little amendment he'd like to pass so that Mary Cheney can just shut up about getting married already.
8:17 PM | Post or Read Comments (1)
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Best year ever
So what country had its best exports ever, with "annual oil sales of more then $100 billion for the first time...due to boiling prices and greater-than-expected global demand?"
You guessed right, Saudi Arabia.
That unexpected windfall, of course, is the direct result of increased demand and the "risk premium" added on by Bush's elective war in Iraq.
If you ask the Saudis, I'm sure they will assure you that none of it, none of it will end up being funneled to furthering Wahhabism worldwide or, God and Bandar forbid, to "charity" groups that buy arms for use against American troops and Israel.
You wouldn't believe them. But this nation's two highest leaders have chosen to.
7:47 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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I kid you not
George W. Bush just said this in his press conference with Allawi: "The right track/wrong track in Iraq is better than it is in America."
1:43 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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More on the Artist Formerly Known as Cat
There's the Bush Administration for you: incompetent in its insanity:
Meantime, there was confusion about how someone on the government's "no-fly list" was allowed to board a plane. Airline personnel are supposed to check passengers' names against people on the list. Anyone who matches is to be kept off flights.
United spokesman Jeff Green said the airline followed procedures in checking Islam's name, and it wasn't on the list.
"The information did not match," Green said.
Green and Homeland Security Department spokesman Dennis Murphy said the airline and the government are working together to figure out what happened. It's possible Islam's name was spelled differently on the list, Homeland Security officials conceded
12:04 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Wednesday, September 22, 2004
Jack Straw is outraged. Really.
Cat Stevens was refused entry into the United States, signaling an end to the period when only cool musicians were roughed up by immigration authorities. Purveyors of Christian Rock will presumably be exempt from the new policy.
Jack Straw meanwhile, in a conversation that really should have been recorded for posterity, expressed his government's official outrage to Colin Powell.
Just when you thought it wasn't possible for us to look sillier.
10:41 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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On C-SPAN now
Congressman Jay Inslee of Washington (check out his insanely democratic official blog) and his colleagues hold the latest in their spectacular Iraq Watch "debates" on the House floor. Watch it live.
A set of transcripts of previous sessions is available here.
10:20 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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ARG's state polls are out, all 50 of them
The pollsters at the American Research Group, which appropriately includes Nader in some states but not others, and which Ruy Teixeira and Alan Abramowitz praise for their methodology, have this to say:
George W. Bush is at 47% and John Kerry is at 46% in the weighted national popular vote.
Bush leads outside the margin of error in 17 states with 133 electoral votes.
Kerry leads outside the margin of error in 10 states with 132 electoral votes.
Bush has any lead in 29 states with 253 electoral votes.
Kerry has any lead in 20 states with 270 electoral votes.
Bush and Kerry are tied in Wisconsin and West Virginia.
Bush needs to defend small leads in 5 states - Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Ohio.
Kerry needs to defend small leads in 5 states - Maine, Florida, Minnesota, Oregon, and Pennsylvania.
Everybody, stop freaking out. We knew a year ago that it was going to be tight, and now it is. Instead of shouting at the news, sign up to make phone calls or to canvass for the Kerry campaign.
9:50 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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On applause
It was a speech replete with those lines that get rapturous applause in God's Country.
But the thing that got me, watching on C-SPAN, was the silence. No one clapped, not even once, till the very end, when they had to.
And it's not me reporting it--it's NBC affiliates in Idaho: "Delegates sat in silence. No applause."
This from Glasgow's Herald:
Iraq dominated Mr Bush's UN speech which met an oppressive silence from its audience, the only applause arriving when the president gathered up his notes to leave the lectern. This was not anger on display but resignation bordering on despair.
And don't think for a moment that it was the usual collection of hack diplomats and their toadies present today: The Guardian reports that the speech was "attended by 64 presidents, 25 prime ministers and 86 foreign ministers."
It's not that applause is prohibited at the U.N. Jacques Chirac spoke today, as did Kofi Annan. "Mr Bush's speech was received with polite applause from the 191-member states, while his critics were given a far warmer reception."
So which was the speech that, according to The Times of India "drew applause from the presidents and ministers on hand?" Well, naturally, it's the one that CNN didn't cover, but that most new outlets in the rest of the world did, not least because their leaders may have been there to witness it.
Opening the UN's annual debate, Annan said Iraqi prisoners had been "disgracefully abused" and made veiled references to the United States in a wide-ranging speech calling on all nations to obey the rule of law.
[...] Aides had insisted Annan, an outspoken critic of the war who last week called it "illegal," would be keen to avoid re-opening old wounds. But he cited the prisoner abuse among "flagrant" examples of lawlessness across the globe.
"In Iraq, we see civilians massacred in cold blood, while relief workers, journalists and other non-combatants are taken hostage and put to death in the most barbarous fashion," Annan said with Bush in the audience.
"At the same time, we have seen Iraqi prisoners disgracefully abused," he said, drawing a parallel between the Iraq bloodshed and the prisoner scandal in a way destined to irk the US administration.
Annan has repeatedly been at odds with Bush's contention that the UN Security Council, which had passed a resolution threatening "serious consequences" for Saddam, had provided the legal basis for the war.
The UN chief last week called the war "illegal" and on Tuesday said Security Council resolutions were the "best foundation" for bringing law to a lawless world marked by bloodshed, genocide and attacks on the innocent.
[...]Annan also repeated a warning he gave the assembly last year, that the United Nations was at a "fork in the road" following the UN split over the US decision to launch the war without full backing from the UN Security Council.
"If you, the political leaders of the world, cannot agree or reach agreement on the way forward, history will take the decision for you, and the interests of your peoples may go by default," Annan said.
"More than ever, the world needs an effective mechanism through which to see common solutions to common problems. That is what this organisation was created for," he said.
Why do public leaders applaud? Usually because they have to, most particularly if they are elected or have to deal with a restive populace or military. And here's a fact which plenty of ousted ruling parties the world over (and failed opposition parties, as in Germany) whose onetime MP's and premiers can attest to: you don't stay in power if you applaud George W. Bush.
Sadly for our troops in Iraq and their families, that also means that the rest of the world will do nothing, nothing, to help ease their burden. Anyone who saw the bevy of foreign ministers telling Wolf Blitzer what they were willing to do to help reconstruct Iraq (we'll let you bring Iraqi policemen to Germany and we'll train them, we just won't send any German troops to Iraq) can attest to our national predicament.
A country no one will applaud is a country that international leaders cannot afford to cooperate with. It is impossible to overstate how devastating that is for national security.
And no one will cooperate with the United States in a meaningful way until there is a new president.
2:15 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Any speculation as to why?
Is it because Bush knows vacuous stands and "optimistic" lies don't play well without applause?
The voters at the town-hall debate won't be undecideds, but, rather 'soft' supporters of each side — and we have yet to figure out what that means or why Team Bush prefered that — but Baker got it.
My question: will the media begin talking about the height deficit? You know they would have had Dean been the Democratic nominee.
1:14 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Tuesday, September 21, 2004
After Abu Ghraib
What will happen five years from now, when the national government of Shiite Southern Iraq, led either by an Ayatollah or someone Ayatollah-approved, holds the hearings of its Truth Commission? What will happen when they are televised live by Al Jazeerah?
This narrative is not over. This horrifying chronicle comes from the Guardian..
Sy Hersh stated last week that the pictures and articles published thus far on prisoner abuse are only the tip of the iceberg. Unfortunately, because the Bush Administration did not follow John McCain's advice and release all the reports of abuse immediately, stories like this will trickle out over the next few years, enflaming unemployed young men's passions, and endangering our troops anew with every revelation.
4:38 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Seymour Hersh wishes for Kissinger II
This comes from Salon via Shrillblog, via Brad DeLong. Hersh has been saying something along these lines in every media appearance he has made over the last few weeks (including the Hardball program referenced in the Kitty Kelley article below); this interview with Salon's Mary Jacoby provides a summary of his views for those of you who have missed him.
Jacoby: Is there someone who is the Henry Kissinger in this administration?
Hersh: Oh, believe me, I pray for one [clasps his hands and looks beseechingly upward]. Wouldn't it be great if the reality was that they were lying about WMD, and they really didn't believe that democracy would come when they invaded Iraq, and you could go to war with 5,000 troops, a few special forces, a few bombs and a lot of American flags, and Iraq would fold, Saddam would be driven out, a new Baath Party would emerge that's moderate? Democracy would flow like water out of a fountain. These guys believe it. They believe WMD. There's no fallback with these guys. These guys are utopians. They're like Trotskyites. They believe in permanent revolution. They really believe. They believe that they could go in with few forces. They believed that once they went in it would happen quick. Iran would get the message. What they call occupied Lebanon would get the lesson. Even the Saudis would change.
Jacoby: They thought it would happen quickly?
Hersh: Very quickly. I don't have any empirical basis for it, but if I had to bet, the plan was to go right into Syria. That's why the fourth division was hanging for so long in the desert out there right on the border with Syria. In the early days of the war, before this government figured out how much trouble they were in -- which took them a long time -- they would drive practice runs... that amounted to the distance from the border to Damascus. It's my belief... that the real reason [Paul] Wolfowitz and others were mad at [Gen. Eric] Shinseki when he testified before the war about [the need for] 200 or 300 [thousand] troops -- it wasn't about the numbers -- was, "Didn't he get it? What had he been listening to in the tank? Didn't we explain to him...?... Shinseki just didn't get it! It wasn't about the numbers. He wasn't a member of the clan. He didn't join the utopia crowd....
Jacoby: With Kissinger, there were lies, and he knew exactly what he was doing ...
Hersh: Yes, one of his aides was assigned -- literally assigned on one of the secret flights they made to China -- to keep track of the lies ... But these guys, do you realize how much better off we would be if they really were cynical, and they really were lying about it, because, yes, behind the invasion would be something real, like support for Israel or oil. But it's not! It's not about oil. It's about utopia. I guess you could call it idealism....
Jacoby: So you don't think that this is some Machiavellian, cynical, manipulative ...
Hersh: I used to pray it was! We'd be in better shape.... I think these guys in their naiveté and single-mindedness have been so completely manipulated by -- not the Israelis -- but the Iranians. The Iranians always wanted us in. I think there's a lot of evidence that Iran had much to do with [Ahmed] Chalabi's disinformation [about nonexistent Iraqi WMD].... I think Iran was very interested in getting us involved. We get knocked down a peg; they become the big boys on the block.... I think Chalabi thought he could handle the Iranians. They were helping him all along with disinformation and documents he could give to the White House. Don't forget, once the neocons decided to go to Iraq in the face of all evidence, they were like a super-reverse suction machine, and anything in the world that furthered the argument that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction was hot. I call it stove-piping, because it's a technical work of art. But it was much more than that. It was anything -- vavoom! -- into the president's [office]. It was so amateurish, it was comical. How hard was it to get some crapola into the White House about WMD without the CIA looking at it?
4:26 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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The best piece I've read on the Kitty Kelley book
It's Village Voice Tuesday, evidently. There's too much good stuff in this piece by John Powers to quote. It places Kitty in our popular culture, reviews the book, and positively skewers the media's reaction to it.
4:15 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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More reports of RNC civil liberties violations
Bloomberg better step up.
4:05 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Bush in Florida
James Ridgeway reports:
Bush himself was in Florida, walking among the hurricane victims and saying such things as 'Hang in there' and 'I want to tell the citizens of this part of the world that we're praying for you, that we'll get help out here as quick as we can and that we ask God's blessings on you and your families.'
Hurricanes are widely thought to be among early signs of intensifying storm systems caused by global warming. The Bush administration, which doesn't officially believe that there is such a thing as global warming, has kept the U.S. out of international agreements aimed at controlling it. Among other things, global warming and rising oceans swollen by melting North Pole ice bode ill for the Sun Belt (where Bush is strongest), threatening cities like Miami and New Orleans with truly catastrophic floods and leading to a gradual retrenchment of urban development all along the American coastline.
But the Christian fundamentalists don't believe this is what God's got in store for the planet, so it made good sense for the president on Sunday not to open a discussion on global warming and instead offer the Lord's blessings. Bush's line on the hurricanes also happens to be another example of the GOP's call to the working class to stop selfishly thinking about jobs or health care, and instead concentrate on things that really enhance the quality of life, such as religious beliefs.
3:57 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Monday, September 20, 2004
I hate quoting RCP
But I am afraid this analysis is fairly accurate.
It is, on the other hand, only a snapshot. A lot can change in six weeks.
9:11 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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It only took two years of avoidable GOP control of the Senate
And if there is a Republican I would write in for President, it surely, surely wouldn't be George H. W. Bush, but still give Lincoln Chafee props for putting the fear of God into the GOP and its plans for a continuation of single party rule.
9:07 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Sunday, September 19, 2004
Injustice Department
The thing about Bush's Plan B is that it's already operational. Jeffrey Toobin in a must read in last week's New Yorker.
UPDATE: The link is fixed.
11:37 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Saturday, September 18, 2004
West Virginia shenanigans
Via Josh Marshall.
According to this Associated Press story, the RNC is sending mailings to West Virginia voters that claim that the Dems will ban the bible and legalize gay marriage if they get elected -- presumably they'll both be included in one omnibus bill (that's a little parliamentary humor there.)
I keep hearing from the direction of the Bush campaign that one of their big fears is that some Democratic 527 will put together an ad based on Kitty Kelley's Bush abortion claims and run it in West Virginia. Given the voters Bush-Cheney '04 is banking on in the state, they know that could be very damaging.
When you see stuff like this, from the RNC no less, it's hard to see why they shouldn't.
The success of the Republican convention lay in making Bush synonymous with patriotism and all-American values. That is the reason that Tennessee, West Virginia, Ohio and Virginia, for the moment, seem out of reach (It's also, I suspect, one of the reasons that Bush's 4-8 point nationwide lead isn't translating into a devastatingly huge lead in battleground states; red states are trending Bush 2-1 postconvention but the rest of the country may not have moved as much as we fear).
The GOP is, therefore right to be terribly fearful about the possibility that Bush's worse-than-Clinton morals issues might become a campaign issue.
But it's also right to be optimistic, since the Democratic Party (and even the 527's) is unlikely to take a road so low.
4:48 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Friday, September 17, 2004
Alan Keyes has company
Tom "The Sterilizer" Coburn is the hero to the right among this year's Senate candidates, largely because he gives voice to their deepest aspirations.
But he may be going too far.
Gaybashing and white power, of course, are the very reasons Oklahoma and many Southern states go Republican and are by no means electoral liabilities. So I doubt his forced sterilization of a Native American woman or his expressions of Christian hate represented a vulnerability.
Calling the people of Oklahoma City, a major population center which includes many straight, white, Christian people "crapheads," on the other hand, could be a problem.
Unlike Alan Keyes, Coburn may win anyway; one should never underestimate white power as a force in Southern Republican politics. But his chances are lower than they seemed three weeks ago.
1:28 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Count the whores
Count them:
Senator John McCain, the maverick Arizona Republican who has lately emerged as a strong supporter of President Bush, called Thursday for the Supreme Court of Florida to allow Ralph Nader's name on the state's presidential ballot.
[...] []In several swing states, Republicans have been helping Mr. Nader, largely by circulating petitions to get him on the ballot and by raising money for him.
Mr. McCain cast his stance as a matter of ballot access. "Keeping Nader off the ballot in the hope that his voters will be forced to support another candidate is patently unfair to those Floridians who, for whatever reason, have decided he's their man," he said in a statement from the Reform Institute, which is devoted to increasing ballot access for third-party candidates. He is chairman of the institute.
If the Florida Supreme Court rules against Mr. Nader, and if federal issues arise, Mr. McCain is likely to file a friend-of-the-court brief on Mr. Nader's behalf, said Trevor Potter, the institute's general counsel and former chairman of the Federal Election Commission.
Mr. Potter said that the Nader campaign first sought Mr. McCain's backing in the case last week and that subsequently the Bush campaign also asked him to get involved.
"They have expressed an interest in this and reached out to McCain's staff, knowing of his interest in ballot-access issues," Mr. Potter said.
[...]But [Bush campaign spokesman] Mr. Dickens indicated that the Bush campaign thought Mr. Nader should be on the ballot, saying of the battle in Florida: "This is a continued and coordinated effort on the Kerry campaign's part to keep third-party candidate off the ballot in November."
Mr. Nader is being represented in the current Florida case by Ken Sukhia, a former United States attorney who helped represent Mr. Bush during the Florida recount in 2000.
12:01 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Thursday, September 16, 2004
Colorado is key
Bush is only one point ahead in Colorado (46-45, according to This ARG poll), even after his convention.
Kerry can win the Gore states. I don't see MN or NM going to Bush, while IA, PA and WI remain in contention. That gives Kerry 264 from the Gore states, plus 3 from NH, or 267, three short of a victory. Colorado's 9 electoral votes would give him 276 (of course if the EV's are split as per the proposed referendum, Kerry would still get a minimum of 4, which would bring him to 271).
Colorado and Florida, at this point, seem to be the only remaining Bush 2000 states that remain winnable in a close national race, far more so than West Virginia, Missouri, Arkansas or Ohio.
Ken Salazar's presence on the ballot, furthermore, may also increase turnout among Hispanics, who in the Southwest are backing Kerry by a 2-1 margin.
Note that Nader is at 3, while "don't know" is at 6. Kerry should be able to make inroads among these voters as well.
Colorado, not Ohio, may be the key to a Kerry presidency.
9:10 PM | Post or Read Comments (1)
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No heroes
If you're listening to a Spanish language radio station, it's likely owned by either Republican Univisión or Republican Clear Channel.
8:38 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Wednesday, September 15, 2004
National embarrassment
BBC photo essay on America's uninsured.
1:32 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Possible light blogging alert
As storms near and in their aftermath Wednesday to Friday. Hopefully we'll be back by the weekend.
5:45 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Yet another gay -- and gaybashing -- GOP congressman
House Rules Committee chairman David Dreier.
4:58 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Question
What is the #1 bestselling book right now at Amazon.com?
2:55 PM | Post or Read Comments (1)
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Monday, September 13, 2004
Josh Marshall on the flypaper theory
It needs to be said. Yet again.
The key fallacy, as so many have pointed out, is the notion that there are a finite number of 'terrorists' who we can kill and be done with.
Added to this, is the idea -- as antiquated as it is ridiculous -- that fighting 'the terrorists' in Iraq prevents them from hitting us in the United States. Have these fools heard about globalization? Grant the false premise that the Iraqi insurgency is being run by bin Laden. He can't spare a couple dozen jihadis to come over here to spring another 9/11 on us? What about al Qaida demonstrates their strategy of hitting us where our defenses are strongest?
As a TPM reader put it to me both hilariously and brilliantly more than a year ago, this 'fly paper' thesis is like saying we're going to build one super dirty hospital where we can fight the germs on our own terms.
Clearly that analogy points in some uncomfortable directions. But the salient point is clear: everyone who is not an utter fool knows that the number of young and disaffected men in the Muslim world who are potentially willing to take up arms against America is, for practical geopolitical purposes, all but infinite. Killing those already bent on suicide missions againt the US is undeniably a good thing. But doing so in a way that is guaranteed to replace them with ten new volunteers is the most foolish way to go about it. It is the classic case of dousing the fire with gasoline.
Of course that leaves untended the fact the guerillas we're blowing up in Iraq aren't the folks running the safe houses in Karachi and Peshawar who constitute the real threat. Adrift as well is the straightforward matter that turning Iraq into a killing field isn't really compatible with making it into a redoubt of democracy, prosperity and western values.
Knocking holes in this argument is really too easy and after a bit beside the point. The real problem with this argument is its proponents -- folks who seem inclined to put insipid wordplay above the lives of American soldiers and marines, indeed, above against the future security of the country itself.
11:46 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Here, Kitty Kitty
Three days in a row, starting Tuesday morning on Today.
11:22 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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GOP wishful thinking
Bob Novak tells us that keeping Nader off the ballot is good for Republicans. While much of the article is nonsense, I do agree that the efforts could have been limited to battleground states.
Going back to yesterday's post, however, I still see no reason that Democrats shouldn't play legal hardball, if possible, to keep George W. Bush off the Florida ballot in the fall.
3:04 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Sunday, September 12, 2004
More on that New Mexico poll ...
A crucial tidbit on the the Albuquerque Journal that gave Bush more positives than Kerry on the open-ended question:
The poll was conducted during the height of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth television ads that attacked Kerry's Vietnam War record and during the first three days of the Republican National Convention, during which Kerry was described as weak and indecisive in prime-time speeches.
This says to me that some of the respondents were simply parroting what they were hearing at the moment. It's been almost two weeks since the poll was taken. That makes me wonder: WHY is the paper still reporting on it? And what would people say now?
The poll also came at the end of a month in which Kerry had withdrawn most of his advertising, in order to be able to spend at the same level as Bush in the fall. Now that Kerry's spending money again, and that Bill Richardson will be campaigning like hell for him, I can only hope things will change.
I totally agree that Democrats should never have allowed Bush to be associated with the words "honest" and "doing a good job". I just don't know exactly how much this poll really shows. The newspaper doesn't report how many people gave those impressions - it might have been as few as twenty or thirty percent, especially since there were a lot of responses listed. And despite the different tone in the answers to open-ended questions, Kerry and Bush are dead even on favorable/unfavorable ratings.
Can someone get Ruy Teixeira or the guys at MyDD to take a look at this poll?
8:33 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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The biggest problem for Kerry
Is that between the Republican's convention and the swift boat smears, Bush is now seen as acceptable, while Kerry is seen as not quite right for the job, even to those who sympathize with him on many issues. This poll is a case in point.
An Albuquerque Journal poll finds Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry faces an identity problem in New Mexico.
A number of voters queried in a telephone survey said they don’t know him, don’t like him, or don’t trust him.
In a copyright story Sunday, the Journal detailed the responses from polled voters asked to describe their thoughts about Kerry and President Bush.
The top five responses for Kerry in order were “don’t know,” “not honest,” “indecisive,” “not trustworthy,” and “really cares about people.”
On Bush, they said “strong leader,” “wrong on Iraq, “honest,” “good moral values,” and “doing a good job.”
Unfair? Surely, just as unfair as McCain in 2000 or Dole in 1988. But that's the way the Bush family has always conducted itself in politics. The Democrats' "positive convention" was part of the problem; it was the right convention for 1992, when Bush 41 was considered completely inept. It was not right for 2004.
Contrast, as Ann Richards suggested in her extraordinary Emily's List speech, is important too. The party should not have assumed that people don't need to know exactly why Bush isn't up to the job. They do, and they need to know early, not in September and October, when most undecided voters think that everything is "just politics."
It should never have been this easy for the American people to once again believe that George W. Bush is "honest" and has "good moral values."
The media will not fight this battle for Kerry any more than it did for Dukakis in 1988. They will simply report whatever they are fed, by one party or the other, and only when they have time. In other words, next week is all about the hurricane and Bush's cocaine and abortion problem, not Kerry being an acceptable alternative.
Can the debates turn it around? Absolutely. Is Kerry best when he's down? Yes, at least thus far. Is it time to despair? No.
That said, right now it's Kerry who needs that October surprise, not Bush.
5:35 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Count the draft dodging lies
Via Atrios. And here's another one.
5:22 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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GOP foreign policy hands think Bush is nuts
Hey Robert Novak, maybe that's why the administration can't find spokespeople to defend it:
The daily Bush-Cheney campaign conference call Wednesday expressed concern over lack of an effective response to the attack on President Bush's foreign policy by Madeleine Albright, the Clinton administration's second-term secretary of state.
James A. Baker III, the first Bush administration's secretary of state, does not want to be a surrogate. The former President Bush's national security adviser, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, is not in tune with the current President Bush's policies. The top two Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee -- Richard Lugar of Indiana and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska -- cannot be counted on to stick to the Bush line. Albright was all over television Wednesday morning, appearing on NBC, CBS, ABC and CNN, contradicting Secretary of State Powell. The Bush campaign did not have a ready responder to send out.
2:07 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Powell: The rich should be drafted next time too
And does the best a toady can do to slam his boss:
Powell said he disagreed with the policies that allowed people like Bush to serve out the war in a National Guard unit. ``But those were the policies that were in place at that time,'' Powell said.
``The policies determining who would be drafted and who would be deferred, who would serve and who would escape, who would die and who would live, were an anti-democratic disgrace,'' Powell, a leading black in the Republican administration, said in his 1995 autobiography, ``My American Journey.''
``I am angry that so many sons of the powerful and well-placed managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units,'' wrote Powell, a 35-year career soldier and four-star general who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Bush's father, former President Bush and Democrat Bill Clinton.
With the Iraqi war causing greater casualties and extended deployments, legislation has been introduced in the U.S. Congress to revive the draft, which was ended in 1973 as the Vietnam War wound down and subsequently replaced by an all-volunteer army.
But Powell said on Fox, ``If we ever go back to conscription -- and I don't think we will have to go back to conscription under any set of circumstances I can see -- I hope that at that time it will be the kind of conscription that was put in at the end of the Vietnam War.''
``And that is everybody is equally liable to be called to serve the nation in time of conflict.''
2:03 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Bush should be off the Florida ballot
Tell the Florida Democratic party to stand up for the rule of law.
1:59 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Laser beam
John Kerry actually is focused and wonderfully on message in his interview with Time.
11:07 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Saturday, September 11, 2004
The perfect analogy
For the president, from Slate's William Saletan:
Seventy-five years ago in the Rose Bowl, a University of California football player named Roy Riegels pick