No More Mister Nice Blog

Sunday, February 15, 2004   I'm going to be away from home (and computerless) for about a week and a half. I'll miss you, I'll miss ranting here, but I'll be back a week from Wednesday, tanned, rested, and ready to be appalled by the world again. posted by Steve M. | 11:42 PM |   So Caiaphas, the Jewish high priest, no longer utters the "blood libel" against Jews in Mel Gibson's Jesus movie -- right? You know: "His blood be on us, and on our children" -- Mel cut that out, didn't he? The cover story in this week's Entertainment Weekly (subscription only) says maybe, maybe not: Last fall, Gibson reportedly cut the line; in fact, at the [November] screening attended by [Jim] Caviezel [the star of the film] and [actress Rene] Russo, it wasn't there. But in recent weeks, Gibson showed thousands of Christians a version that retained the line. Word got out. Controversy erupted. The press pounced. Gibson was heard to suggest that dark forces were moving against him. And again, interest was piqued. The capper: In February, The New York Times, whose coverage of The Passion Gibson has deplored, was allowed to see the film, and broke the news that the "blood libel" reference had been deleted. The magazine thinks this is just a clever way to garner publicity. I doubt it. I think when the movie opens, the line will be gone -- at least on the West Coast and in the Northeast. Now, maybe it would be too risky for Gibson to retain the line in the prints that are distributed in the red states. Maybe he'll just wait and restore it in the DVD ("UNCUT CHRISTIAN EDITION!"). Maybe the line will be absent in American prints, but will show up in prints distributed in, oh, I don't know ... Indonesia and the Middle East? Or maybe, in the future, when church groups ask for copies to help in proselytizing, the line will slip in. posted by Steve M. | 4:06 PM |   These guys will say anything, won't they? "This idea that's developed that we're going to run against Kerry like he is Mike Dukakis is a bunch of baloney," said [Matthew] Dowd, [Bush's chief campaign stategist].... "Mike Dukakis was an outsider, and compared to John Kerry, Mike Dukakis is mainstream. Michael Dukakis was a governor who balanced a budget. I don't remember Michael Dukakis ever advocating defense cuts, and I don't remember Michael Dukakis ever advocating against cuts in taxes." --New York Times Here's the restrained, high-minded way Bush the Elder and his surrogates talked about the "mainstream" Michael Dukakis: "It’s time to talk issues, to use the dreaded 'L' word. Liberal, liberal, liberal!" --Ronald Reagan taunting Dukakis, 8/14/88 "The liberal governor of Massachusetts -- I love calling him that!" --Bush campaigning in Albuquerque, 10/4/88 "He did not go to Canada, he did not burn his draft card and he damn sure didn't burn the American flag!" --George Bush favorably contrasting Dan Quayle with Dukakis and his backers (and making a gutter-level allusion to an utterly unsupported rumor that Kitty Dukakis once burned an American flag), 8/22/88 "There's a lot of things we can refer to the man from Massachusetts as. We can call him 'Mr. Tax Increase.' ... We can call him 'Mr. Weak on National Defense.' But let me tell you something. Come November 8th, there's one thing we'll never call the governor of Massachusetts, and that is 'Mr. President.'" --Dan Quayle, 9/17/88 "Want to hear a sad story about the Dukakis campaign? The governor of Massachusetts, he lost his top naval adviser last week. The rubber duck drowned in his bathtub." --Dan Quayle, 9/13/88 (All quotes from Paul Slansky's 1989 book The Clothes Have No Emperor.) Incidentally, the absurdity of the Dowd quote is acknowledged in the online version of the Times story: Dowd is said to be "offering a view of Mr. Dukakis that no doubt would have turned the head of Lee Atwater, the mastermind of George H.W. Bush's 1988 campaign." This coment does not appear in my copy of the print Times, however -- which means that someone actually had to point this out to Times editors. posted by Steve M. | 3:58 PM | Saturday, February 14, 2004   OK -- this is a cheap shot, but I can't resist: First Daughter Barbara Bush's dirty-dancing partner has been hot-footing it from the law. Gotham gadabout Fabian Basabe - pictured in a hip-lock with Babs on the front page of the Daily News yesterday - is wanted on three warrants in California. The social climber has been busted for speeding, driving under the influence and trespassing. He even jumped bail in one case, court records show. Other court files show a string of infractions - but no open warrants - in Virginia, North Carolina and Florida, including two collisions. ... His first warrant dates back to an Oct. 22, 1999, bust for driving more than 100 mph and without a license in Riverside, a city in Southern California. ...Three months later, Basabe was nabbed for trespassing on the Malibu campus of Pepperdine University at 6:30 a.m. and driving with a suspended license.... ...On May 21, 2000, he was stopped for driving under the influence at the wheel of a friend's 1996 Volkswagen Jetta.... I guess she's looking for a guy like Dad. Oh, and while I'm here in the gutter, I see that TBogg has linked this report on the evening Babs spent with Basabe ("Commenting on the trays of margaritas and Veuve Clicquot champagne delivered to Bush's table before her gutsy performance, one wag quipped, 'I hope the Secret Service is driving her home'"). ****** OK, I know: a lot of you think this stuff ought to be be off limits. I understand. I'd rather it stayd off limits too. But you know what? For years, Republicans have been attacking the character not only of Democratic politicians but of everyone who isn't a God-fearing Republican conservative. Here's Newt Gingrich back in the '90s: "Woody Allen having non-incest with a non-daughter to whom he was a non-father because they were a non-family fits the Democratic platform perfectly." And here's Gingrich talking about child-killer Susan Smith: "I think the mother killing her two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we have to have change. I think people want to change and the only way you get change is to vote Republican. Thats the message for the last three days." (Smith's stepfather, of course, was a prominent South Carolina Republican and Christian Coalition member who molested her.) And Republicans talk a hell of a lot about "the family." They don't think you can be a good person, or a good parent, if you don't accept their definition of family and if you don't raise your kids the way they do. And the flip side of that is the implication that if you do what they do, you are automatically a good person and your family is automatically a good family. A weird result of this is what Paul Krugman alluded to yesterday -- the fact that George W. Bush is seen as a man of "character" and "integrity, " as a good, decent man, no matter how dishonest or reckless or irresponsible or mean-spirited or rude he is. It's as if a large percentage of the country agrees with Pat Robertson's assertion about Bush: "It doesn't make any difference what he does, good or bad, God picks him up because he's a man of prayer and God's blessing him.'' If there's going to be a gutter GOP campaign that paints not only the Democratic nominee but all Democrats as moral decadents and threats to "the family," then at some point it really might not be out of line to talk about just what kind of family George and Laura Bush have. (First link via INTL News.) posted by Steve M. | 4:30 PM |   By the way, they love playing this game of reveal-and-withhold, don't they? The White House distributed the two-inch stack of papers, and allowed reporters a brief look through another several dozen pages of medical records that were not allowed out of a briefing room.... --AP on yesterday's "release" of Bush's Guard file The document was made available to The New York Times on Sunday, with an accompanying translation made by the military. A reporter was allowed to see the Arabic and English versions and to write down large parts of the translation. --Dexter Filkins on the request for al-Qaeda aid allegedly written by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, The New York Times, 2/9/04 Responding to earlier threats of a subpoena, the White House agreed last year to allow three members of the 10-member commission and the panel's Republican staff director to review portions of the President's Daily Brief from before the Sept. 11 attacks.... In recent weeks, however, the White House has refused to give permission for the four members of the delegation to share with the full commission their handwritten and computerized notes, which are retained by the White House under the agreement.... --Philip Shenon, New York Times, 2/10/04 posted by Steve M. | 12:39 PM |   Why is every news story saying that there's been a release of Bush National Guard documents? It's not a release: The White House distributed the two-inch stack of papers, and allowed reporters a brief look through another several dozen pages of medical records that were not allowed out of a briefing room... In any case, it didn't work: Hundreds of pages of documents that the White House said comprise President Bush's entire military record offer no new answers to the election-year questions that have swirled around his Vietnam-era service. Democrats who have led the criticism greeted Friday's release of documents with skepticism. posted by Steve M. | 9:18 AM |   Did the FDA cave in to Christian Right pressure on the morning-after pill? Sure looks that way -- and it looks as if the agency did it at the time most cowardly acts are done in Washington, on a Friday afternoon: ...On Dec. 16, two expert advisory committees to the F.D.A. recommended, by votes of 23 to 4, that the drug [the morning-after pill] be sold over the counter. But that did not stop the lobbying for and against the drug. On Jan. 9, some 35 members of Congress wrote to President Bush asking him to urge the F.D.A. to deny the over-the-counter application.... And then, late this afternoon... The Food and Drug Administration has told Barr Laboratories, the marketer of a so-called morning-after pill, that it is delaying its decision on whether to allow the drug to be sold over the counter. The company's president and chief operating officer, Dr. Carole Ben-Maimon, said the F.D.A. called about 2 p.m. today and then faxed the company a letter saying it was extending its Feb. 20 deadline by 90 days. The agency wants Barr Laboratories to provide more information about the use of the emergency contraceptive, especially among teenagers, according to the company.... If there were a betting pool for approval of over-the-counter sales of this drug in the U.S., I'd put money on "never" -- or at least on "never as long as Republicans control the federal government." posted by Steve M. | 12:02 AM | Friday, February 13, 2004   From faith-based prison to faith-based courts in Jeb Bush's Florida? The Miami Daily Business Review reported Jan. 8 that Broward Judicial Nomination Commission (JNC) member O’Neal Dozier has asked several candidates for Broward County judgeships inappropriate questions about their religious beliefs, such as whether they attend church and are “God-fearing.” ... Dozier has repeatedly expressed an intolerant and theocratic approach to government. According to a report in the New Times Broward-Palm Beach late last year, Dozier told a Religious Right gathering, “We as Christians must take control of the government. We should be the ones in charge of the government.” New Times said Dozier also observed that homosexuality is “something so nasty and disgusting that it makes God want to vomit.” According to the more recent Miami Business Review article, Dozier said, “There is no such animal as separation of church and state in the Constitution.” Dozier was appointed to the judicial nomination commission by Gov. Bush.... --Americans United for Separation of Church and State posted by Steve M. | 4:39 PM |   So why did Congressman Mark Souder of Indiana recently invite Mike Haley to testify on faith-based initiatives? Haley works for the far-right Focus on the Family, which doesn't take any federal funds. To be specific, Haley travels the country proselytizing for the "ex-gay" movement as Focus's "Manager of Gender Issues." So what wisdom did he have to offer the committee? A press release from a pro-gay-conversion group explains, sort of: Although Focus does not accept federal funds, Mike Haley explained to the subcommittee that he offers a unique insight into the causes and recovery of the homosexual condition because he lived as a gay activist for 12 years. OK -- and the federal government should be interested in this for what reason exactly? Is someone perhaps hoping to send federal funds to those who claim to be able to "cure" homosexuals, if that can be arranged? Incidentally, this college newspaper says Haley's "ex" status is not exactly 100%: Haley admitted that reparative therapy has not worked for everyone and that he is still tempted by homosexuality. "I will never be as though I never was," he said. "But I had an unmet emotional need that was sexualized, now my needs are met appropriately." Whatever you say, Mike. posted by Steve M. | 4:06 PM |   Earlier today I linked this Kerry article (from Murdoch's Sun), but I didn't mention what I says: Presidential hopeful John Kerry was branded a “sleazeball” last night by the parents of a young woman he allegedly tried to woo.... Her mother Donna claims Kerry, 60 — dubbed the new JFK — once chased Alex to be on his campaign team and was “after her”. There is no evidence the pair had an affair, but her father Terry, 56, said: “I think he’s a sleazeball. I did kind of wonder if my daughter didn’t get that kind of feeling herself. “He’s not the sort of guy I would choose to be with my daughter.”... If it's true, sure, it's sleazy and wrong, but ... he chased her? Is that what all the fuss is about? Excuse me, didn't the Republicans practically call for putting Schwarzenegger on Mount Rushmore after he did a lot more than that? posted by Steve M. | 1:22 PM |   We're still nickel-and-diming our airport security, and the result is understaffing and poor performance. Good thing we have those tax cuts! Airport screening jobs are turning over faster than expected at some of the busiest airports and the government isn't moving fast enough to fill them, a congressional investigator and airport officials told lawmakers Thursday.... The turnover of Transportation Security Administration screeners averages 14% a year but is as high as 36% at very large airports, according to Cathleen Berrick, director of Homeland Security and Justice at the General Accounting Office. She testified that recent interviews revealed 11 of the 15 busiest airports didn't have enough screeners. The GAO said low pay and undesirable hours are reasons why part-time jobs go unfilled. One federal security director told the GAO that the delay in filling vacant jobs made it hard to improve screeners' performance and "contributed to screener complacency because screeners were aware that they were unlikely to be terminated due to staffing shortages," Berrick's written testimony said.... This is the part that makes me furious: Rep. James Oberstar, D-Wis., said Congress set an arbitrarily low limit on the number of full-time screeners who could be hired. "TSA has been handicapped by the ill-advised cap of 45,000 full-time screeners imposed by the Appropriations Committee, a cap imposed without any basis for determining that 45,000 was the right number," Oberstar said. Berrick reported that the TSA is trying to improve its work force planning. Among the changes: hiring part-time workers to fill in during the busiest shifts. As The Boston Globe reported last December, people, quite logically , don't want to go through extensive for a poor-paying part-time job -- and hiring enough full-timers seems not to be an option: The TSA stopped hiring full-time workers after it laid off 6,000 screeners nationally in May to cut costs and alleviate overstaffing. Many airports have since struggled with long lines during peak travel hours and on holidays, causing the agency to seek part timers to work at 40 airports, including Logan [Airport in Boston, departure point of the two planes that crashed into the World Trade Center]. But few people have shown interest in applying for a part-time position that requires intensive background checks, weeks of training, and long, odd hours dealing with a frustrated traveling public.... Why can't we alleviate these shortages? Is paying a decent wage to non-CEOs just intolerable to Republicans? posted by Steve M. | 9:48 AM |   Are you surprised that the first "legitimate" media outlet to print the name of Kerry's alleged girlfriend is owned by Murdoch? (UPDATE: Whoops! Sorry, the name's also here -- and gosh, what do you know? That's a Murdoch paper, too!) posted by Steve M. | 9:25 AM | Thursday, February 12, 2004   In The New York Times, Sheryl Gay Stolberg depicts Ted Sampley as just another aggrieved vet: The photograph with Mr. Kerry [and Jane Fonda] was taken two years earlier. But it brings up deep memories for people like Mr. Sampley.... Tomorrow I'm going to snail-mail this to her. It's the chapter on Sampley from Prisoners of Hope: Exploiting the POW-MIA Myth in America by Susan Katz Keating (I quoted from it earlier today). Sampley is a sociopath who has hated Kerry for years because Kerry won't say that there are thousands of POWs and MIAs still in Vietnam. Oh, and another thing, Sheryl: In your story you say that on Thursday, a new photograph of the senator and the actress began circulating via e-mail. Unlike the image Mr. Sampley bought, which shows Mr. Kerry seated several rows behind Ms. Fonda, this picture — its origins are unclear — shows them side by side, Ms. Fonda behind a microphone and Mr. Kerry, holding a notebook, to her right. That wouldn't be the photo even the Freepers say is fake, would it? (UPDATE: Atrios points to this Snopes page, which shows the "photo" and debunks it.) posted by Steve M. | 11:32 PM |   "Democrat" Zell Miller -- now in bed with Judge Roy Moore: Federal courts could not curb state court rulings that allow an "acknowledgment of God," according to a measure two senators introduced Thursday as a response to the dispute over a Ten Commandments display in Alabama. "I think it's a good time to have a debate on it," said one sponsor, Sen. Zell Miller, D-Ga. "We'll run it up the flag pole and see how many salute." ...Much of the work on the legislation was done by Roy Moore, who was ousted as Alabama's chief justice after refusing a federal court order that he remove the Ten Commandments monument from the state courthouse. Miller said he has "great respect and admiration for Moore" and volunteered to help with the bill. The other Senate sponsor is Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala. ... Want a theocracy, Zell? Iran's that way. posted by Steve M. | 8:01 PM |   The chutzpah. The unbelievable chutzpah: Republicans, already preparing for the general election race, launched a pre-emptive strike on Kerry, with Republican Party chief Ed Gillespie accusing him of planning "the dirtiest campaign in modern American politics." He said Kerry supporters planned to spread rumors about Bush in Internet chat rooms.... He had the gall to say that today. posted by Steve M. | 7:22 PM |   ...On the other hand, if all this gets thrown at Kerry now and it doesn't stick, what's left? There's a lot about Bush that hasn't gone primetime, but unless somebody knows something about Kerry running guns or selling crack in schoolyards, what else is there? Three weeks before the election, "Kerry's rude to checkout clerks" ain't gonna cut it. posted by Steve M. | 3:41 PM |   Oh, fer chrissakes: Kerry unfaithful? Now we have Drudge with the flashing-light logo and five scare headlines (all linked to the same speculative story). Gee, I guess the GOP has unilaterally repealed the "Schwarzenegger rules" (you know -- everything a candidate ever did is off limits, even the illegal stuff, if it happened prior to the Oprah appearance). Damn, it's only February. Where do we go from here? If Kerry weathers this, remember than an aide of his told The New York Times, This is not the Dukakis campaign. We're not going to take it. And if they're going to come at us with stuff, whatever that stuff may be, if it goes to a place where the '88 campaign did, then everything is on the table. Everything. Everything? The cocaine? The rather alcoholic-seeming wedding video? Laura's car accident? "Bring it on," a lot of you are thinking. But eventually one of the candidates is going to climb up onto the high ground, however disingenuously, and say, "Enough" -- and the Leader of the Fight Against Terror might look rather credible to a lot of voters if he does it first. Also, a lot of anti-Bush dirt is unverifiable (if only because no one will step up and do the verifying), while some, surely, is just untrue -- and unverifiable charges don't do us much good. Plus, very dirty campaigns just confirm most voters' belief that politics is a cesspool -- and the party that gains from that is the one that, even though it's run the federal government for most of the past quarter century, always manages to persuade voters that it's the anti-government party. Finally, er, wasn't this campaign supposed to be about how the Bush administration is governing? So OK -- some carefully targeted scrutiny of Bush's life is worthwhile. I just worry about losing an all-out war. posted by Steve M. | 12:45 PM |   Yesterday's scurrilous Washington Times article "Photo of Kerry with Fonda Enrages Vietnam Veterans" made at least one leap up the media food chain, to CNN ("Kerry Takes New Fire Over Vietnam," plus this interview with Jane Fonda). Meanwhile, the good Roger Ailes points to this page, where you can read a chapter on Ted Sampley from Susan Katz Keating's book Prisoners of Hope:  Exploiting the POW-MIA Myth in America.  Sampley, as I noted yesterday, was the only actual enraged veteran quoted in the Washington Times story, apart from two GOP congressmen. More important, Sampley is, as Ms. Keating makes clear, a piece of work. What do you want to know about? The time he told the family of a missing soldier in the first Iraq war that he had been killed and mutilated by an anti-Semitic Iraqi mob because of his Jewish-sounding name? (The soldier later returned home alive and in one piece.) The time he punched an aide to Senator John McCain? The time he created a potentially deadly road hazard as a publicity stunt? Yeah, let Keating tell you about that one: In 1986, for example, when Sampley was in Washington, D.C., attending one of his many POW functions, he set up a publicity stunt that could have killed or seriously injured someone. Shortly before 2 A.M., bar closing time, Sampley and a few confederates erected a barrier at the top of a freeway on-ramp that handles traffic coming from Capitol Hill. They coated the ramp with oil, so that unsuspecting motorists would slither wildly before crashing into the barrier. The cars' headlights would illuminate a sign on the barrier that read "Free the POWs." The next day I learned about the on-ramp trap from Sampley, who called to announce what he had done. He was proud of his effort but disappointed that the trick had not come off. While Sampley and friends had watched from a nearby hiding place, police officers had found and dismantled the arrangement before any cars ran into it. When I told Sampley he had risked people's lives with the stunt, he accused me of being a spoilsport. He also said he was dismayed at missing the chance for newspaper coverage. That's The Washington Times's idea of a reliable source. Oh, and just for good measure: Is this the same Ted Sampley who pushed for the Kinston, North Carolina, city council to pass a resolution "recognizing God as the foundation of this country's heritage," a resolution that claims that "the majority of those who drafted and signed the U.S. Constitution … never intended that there be a separation between [God] and the affairs of government" -- which many Kinston city councillors felt was "crammed down [their] throat"? (Answer: Yup. Here's a story about Sampley's POW bracelets, accompanied by a picture of Jan Barwick, who's ID'd as his business partner in the city council story.) posted by Steve M. | 11:22 AM |   May I just say for the record that I don't give a good goddamn whether or not Comcast buys Disney? And may I also add that the Disney-Pixar split was absolutely meaningless to me? Why are these rearrangements of the deck chairs on the capitalist luxury liner inevitably on the front page of my morning paper? Is it for any reason other than primitive worship of our tribe's alpha males? People complain about the lingering influence of the 1960s -- but potential megamergers are sexy again, Donald Trump has a hit TV series, luxury goods are selling like hotcakes again while the non-rich have to pinch pennies, and I have to ask: When the hell are the '80s going to be over? posted by Steve M. | 9:47 AM |   Israeli police have come up with plans to place bags of pig lard on buses in a bid to deter Palestinian militants from carrying out suicide attacks, the Maariv daily reported. Rabbinical authorities have given the idea its approval on the grounds that it could be a life-saving measure even though pigs are also considered impure by Jews. Authorities believe that the move could discourage Palestinians from carrying out attacks as pieces of their exploded body could come into contact with the pig fat, prejudicing their chances of entering into paradise.... --Agence France-Presse Please tell me this is a joke. Please tell me they don't actually believe this will work. posted by Steve M. | 9:37 AM | Wednesday, February 11, 2004   As Atrios notes, the headline of this AP story -- "Kerry Signed Letter Backing Gay Marriage" -- is an utter distortion of the truth. Rightly or wrongly, Kerry's support for gay rights stops at the altar -- he supports civil unions. The proposed state constitutional amendment he objected to in the letter would have banned civil unions as well as gay marriage. The text of the amendment is here and (in fuller form) here: It being the public policy of this Commonwealth to protect the unique relationship of marriage in order to promote among other goals, the stability and welfare of society and the best interests of children, only the union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Massachusetts. Any other relationship shall not be recognized as a marriage or its legal equivalent. So when Kerry signs a letter objecting to a "proposed Constitutional amendment that would prohibit or seriously inhibit any legal recognition whatsoever of same-sex relationships," because of "the likelihood that it will prevent not only the state government, but also the cities, towns and counties from acting as they might wish to provide some form of recognition for same-sex relationships," and he later says he's never backed full gay marriage, there's no contradiction. But Closet Case Drudge is trumpeting the story, so expect lazy superstar "journalists" to begin telling you Kerry's a flip-flopper and a liar. posted by Steve M. | 11:20 PM |   Are you following the story of Dave Louthan? He killed the cow in Washington State that was found to have mad cow disease; now he's insisting that there must be more BSE in America. This is from a February 3 New York Times story: Contrary to reports from the federal Department of Agriculture, he asserts that the cow he killed was not too sick to walk. And it was caught not by routine surveillance, he says, but by "a fluke": he killed it outdoors because he feared it would trample other cows lying prostrate in its trailer, and the plant's testing program called for sampling cows killed outside only. "Mad cows aren't downers," he said. "They're up and they're crazy." The Agriculture Department disputes his account.... In his new role as bloody-handed industry critic, Mr. Louthan argues that too few cattle are tested for mad cow to say with certainty that beef is safe. "One mad cow is a scare, but two is an epidemic," he said. "They absolutely, positively don't want to find another."... Mr. Louthan, who lives across the street from Vern's, said that the slaughtering was "still going like crazy" but that an inspector in the plant told him no more mad cow testing was being done. Here's his Web page, on which he also insists that no BSE testing is now being done at the slaughterhouse where he worked; he's also given interviews to Counterpunch and to the blog bad things. I'm not qualified to judge what he's saying. However, I do think we were far too quick to accept the all-clear from the USDA. In the Times article, read the description of carcass splitting, a job Louthan used to do -- if he's right, the segregation of "good" and "bad" tissues in slaughterhouses is far less precise than they want you to believe. (Thanks to Skimble for the links.) posted by Steve M. | 5:26 PM |   I get confused when I read the Democrat-hating press: Is Hillary Clinton so evil that it's just a matter of time before she's Global Dictator for Life (see, e.g., William Safire's now-laughable prediction of her rise from the undead at a brokered Democratic convention)? Or does fate regularly thwart her schemes while she howls, "Curses! Foiled again"? Susan Estrich -- commentator for Fox News and NewsMax, even though she insists she's a Democrat (no, really) -- apparently believes the latter: IImagine that Howard Dean's December had come in the fall instead. Ideological warfare, tearing the party apart, attacking the Clintons, the Democratic Leadership Council -- what could have been better for Hillary? Let Dean take the party to defeat, and she could've been the savior, rising from the rubble to unite the defeated Democrats. Who could deny her the nomination four years later? Maybe that's what she was thinking... If Kerry wins [with John Edwards as his running mate], Hillary Clinton can't run for president for eight more years. And then it would be the 58-year-old vice president's turn, maybe for the next eight. That makes 16. That's it.... Zounds! Why didn't Hillary's good friend Satan warn her? But there's still a chance if Kerry loses ... no? Kerry may not be Hillary's biggest problem. John Edwards is the real threat. He's the other half of most Democrats' dream tickets, and by any reckoning, the obvious next nominee.... Oh, right. Of course! Edwards has to be the 2008 nominee if Kerry loses -- in the proud tradition of ticket-toppers Ed Muskie, Sargent Shriver, Geraldine Ferraro, Jack Kemp, and Joe Lieberman. posted by Steve M. | 3:15 PM |   TWO NATIONS While lefties are examining Bush's Air National Guard years, conservatives, led by Matt Drudge, are bouncing off the walls because The Harvard Crimson has just posted this 1970 interview with John Kerry (and this summary). The young Kerry, back from Vietnam, sounds, yeah, a bit left-wing: he calls for the virtual elimination of the CIA and for that reddest of flags in the eyes of right-wing bulls, placing U.S. troops under U.N. control. (As I type this, the U.N. quote from the interview tops Drudge's page; right-wingers have absolutely no idea that this is not a burning issue anywhere but on the right.) I don't know what the reaction to all this will be among average voters. I think they'll sigh and just continue trying to decide who's going to provide jobs, health care, and security. I do, however, like the fact that the Democratic Party managed to strike first. It seems to me that Democrats who are attacked suffer a double blow: They have to respond to an allegation, plus they look weak. And many voters, of course, think Democrats are naturally weak. But in this race, so far, Bush is on the defensive. That means it's not 1988. (By the way, you might have some trouble getting to those Crimson links -- the Drudgistas are really jamming the servers.) posted by Steve M. | 11:25 AM |   The headline in The Washington Times reads, "Photo of Kerry with [Jane] Fonda Enrages Vietnam Veterans." Odd, then, that with all those outraged veterans, the only ones WashTimes reporter Stephen Dinan could find who would actually express outrage were two Republican members of Congress and Ted Sampley, publisher of U.S. Veteran Dispatch, an organization largely devoted to the notion that POWs and MIAs are still alive in Vietnam and there's a massive effort to deny this fact. Sampley despises not only John Kerry but John McCain, whom he calls "the Manchurian Candidate"; note the lovely, racist cartoon here, as well as the description of McCain as "a fraud, collaborator, and danger to the security of the United States." In the '90s McCain and Kerry worked to debunk the notion that Vietnam POWs and MIAs are unaccounted for; I can't help suspecting that, even before the picture emerged (in which Kerry is shown a couple of rows behind Fonda, and not in contact with her at all), Sampley's baseline for anti-Kerry rage was already a tad high. posted by Steve M. | 9:26 AM | Tuesday, February 10, 2004    U.S. Nixes Subpoenas Against Protesters DES MOINES, Iowa - Federal prosecutors withdrew a subpoena Tuesday ordering Drake University to turn over a list of people involved in an antiwar forum in November, as well as subpoenas ordering four activists to testify before a grand jury. Brian Terrell, leader of the Catholic Peace Ministry and one of the four, told a crowd of about 100 cheering people outside the federal courthouse: "We made them want to stop, and we have to make sure they never want to do this again." The U.S. attorney's office had no immediate comment on why the subpoenas were withdrawn just one day after federal prosecutor Stephen O'Meara issued a statement acknowledging an investigation was under way.... --AP posted by Steve M. | 7:29 PM |   I've added a few links in the right column: Seeing the Forest and Sisyphus Shrugged, which probably should have been there a long time ago; the homepage/blog of Michael Berube, professor, critic, and foe of David Horowitz; and, finally, the unique link stylings of INTL News. (Also, in a Monk-like moment, I alphabetized the links.) posted by Steve M. | 5:50 PM |   This is weird: A visit to Free Republic leads me to Christianity Today, where I learn that the evangelizin' pilot -- now identified as Roger Findiesen -- has broken his silence and given his first interview to -- I'm not making this up -- The Advocate. ("At no time did Findiesen mention homosexuality or say anything antigay," The Advocate's interviewer notes -- understandable when you realize that the guy seems to have no earthly idea what The Advocate is.) An excerpt from the interview: "I just got back from a mission in Costa Rica," said Findiesen, a tall white man with neatly trimmed thick white hair and a mustache, both lightly peppered with black. "I felt that God was telling me to say something." He went on to explain that he felt God wanted him to witness to the passengers on his first flight upon returning to work for American Airlines after his mission. Despite this feeling, he said, he had decided not to say anything--but then he got another sign from God. A minor problem with the plane's braking system had developed during final checks before takeoff, he said, a problem that might have grounded the aircraft, on which every seat was taken, in part because another American flight from Los Angeles to New York had been canceled that morning. But after a simple maneuver involving a power source, the braking problem inexplicably "disappeared," Findiesen said, and the plane was cleared for departure, and that's when he knew he had to use the P.A. system to talk about his Christian faith. Yeah -- well, when I was eight years old I stepped on a crack, and two days later ... well, nothing broke exactly, but my mother did have a mild lower back twinge, and I never, ever, ever stepped on a crack again, because I knew that lower back twinge was all my fault. posted by Steve M. | 4:46 PM |   I have absolutely no idea what to make of this: MOSCOW police said they were carrying out chemical tests at the Moscow office of the oil company BP on Tuesday, after employees reportedly felt ill following the reception of suspicious mail. Police said a person calling from the BP office said that employees suffered headaches, rashes and felt a stinging in their eye after handling mail that arrived from Houston, Texas, the Interfax news agency reported. Police experts were testing the air and the mail for chemicals, but found no powder or liquid inside the envelopes, Moscow police spokesman Pavel Klimovsky said. Officials at BP in Moscow could not immediately reached for comment. --News.com.au (Australia) posted by Steve M. | 2:58 PM |   Michael Berube has word of an endorsement in the presidential race that might surprise Limbaugh and Lileks. posted by Steve M. | 1:51 PM |   I see the Coalition Provisional Authority has had to explain to the Japanese that freedom of the press is pro-evildoer:  SAMAWA, Iraq -- The Coalition Provision Authority (CPA) has ordered police in Samawa to withhold security information from Japanese media covering Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) activities there, the Mainichi has learned. Karim Helbet Monahar al-Zayday, police commissioner in the southern Iraqi province of Musanna where Samawa is located, said the gag rule was imposed to improve the image of the town. "Some members of the Japanese media have reported that Samawa has security problems," al-Zayday told the Mainichi. "We just want to make Japanese understand that Musanna is a safe place." ... Yeah, and refusing to provide any information to back up a claim of safety is really the best way to make sure it's believed, isn't it? This is ham-handed, but it's also idiotic: If the CPA won't talk (in its usually Pollyannaish way) to the Japanese press, the stories are going to get more negative, not less -- which is what the CPA deserves. posted by Steve M. | 11:24 AM |   The story in today's New York Times doesn't even have this quote, but The Seattle Times caught it and (appropriately) made it the lead: Bush report: Sending jobs overseas helps U.S. WASHINGTON — The movement of American factory jobs and white-collar work to other countries is part of a positive transformation that will enrich the U.S. economy over time, even if it causes short-term pain and dislocation, the Bush administration said yesterday. The embrace of foreign "outsourcing," an accelerating trend that has contributed to U.S. job losses in recent years and has become an issue in the 2004 elections, is contained in the president's annual report to Congress on the U.S. economy. "Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade," said N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisors, which prepared the report. "More things are tradable than were tradable in the past. And that's a good thing." ... Let them eat cake. posted by Steve M. | 10:03 AM |   Shorter David Brooks: Bush's problem on Meet the Press was that he didn't talk enough like Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter. posted by Steve M. | 9:50 AM |   ABORTION WARS First, here's Ashcroft, out of control: A move by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to subpoena the medical records of 40 patients who received so-called partial-birth abortions at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago was halted -- at least temporarily -- when a Chicago federal judge quashed the information request. The ruling is the first in a series of subpoenas by the U.S. Justice Department seeking the medical records of patients from seven physicians and at least five hospitals... In a 16-page decision, U.S. Chief District Judge Charles Kocoras denied the government's request to obtain patient medical records from Northwestern, citing the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) and Illinois' medical privacy law. Northwestern received the subpoena in December, a month after obstetrician/gynecologist Cassing Hammond, a member of Northwestern's staff and medical school faculty, was served with subpoenas seeking his patient records. Hammond is one of seven doctors and three groups who has challenged the constitutionality of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.... While the Justice Department has said it is not seeking information that would identify the patients, that did not persuade Judge Kocoras.... --Chicago Business Then there's this: A bill is gathering support in the Virginia legislature that would require unborn children be administered a painkiller before abortions are performed. A measure introduced by Republican Dick Black will be considered by the justice committee of Virginia's lower chamber, the House of Delegates, Monday, reported WRC-TV in Washington, D.C. The Senate will address a similar measure Thursday. "We must do everything possible to relieve the terror and suffering of children as they are aborted," said Black in a statement.... That story's from WorldNetDaily, and, fortunately, it says nothing about how likely the bill is to pass -- from which I infer that it probably won't. (If the bill had substantial support, the far-right WND would be delighted to tell us.) But still -- let's all go to the Bible Belt and find liberal kids who are over 20 years and 3 months old, but under 21. Let's buy beers and sell them to the kids on the steps of police stations -- and when we get arrested, let's say that the kids are really 21 because, hey, life begins at conception, doesn't it? As every God-fearing Christian knows? (Both links via BuzzFlash.) posted by Steve M. | 7:51 AM | Monday, February 09, 2004   This AP story about the Zarqawi letter basically gets it right: A letter seized from an al-Qaida courier shows Osama bin Laden has made little headway in recruiting Iraqis for a holy war against America, raising questions about the Bush administration's contention that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror. The 17-page letter, cited as a key piece of intelligence that offered a rare window into foreign terrorist operations in Iraq, appealed to al-Qaida leaders to help spark a civil war between Iraq's two main Muslim sects in an effort to "tear the country apart," U.S. officials said Monday.... "Many Iraqis would honor you as a guest and give you refuge, for you are a Muslim brother," it said. "However, they will not allow you to make their home a base for operations or a safe house." That suggests that Iraqis may be willing to support their homegrown insurgency but have little interest in backing foreign infiltrators. The letter's appeals for outside help raises questions whether al-Qaida had a support network here before Saddam's downfall.... But the cynical bastards in the White House know this is all hard for most Americans to follow. Alas, they know that they can robotically repeat the Big Lie ("White House spokesman Scott McClellan said that the letter, first reported Monday by The New York Times, shows that 'Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism'") and most of us will swallow it. And there's a chance they're actually going to revive the "increased violence means we're succeeding" line they tried out a few months ago: One senior U.S. officer, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, warned the plea could mean more "spectacular" attacks because the rebels were despairing that their devastating car bombs and the steady killing of U.S. troops were failing to shove the Americans from Iraq or spark massive discord. And now the administration can blame any truly nasty violent act in Iraq on al-Qaeda, with or without evidence -- just in time for the campaign. posted by Steve M. | 10:58 PM |   By now you know all about God's self-appointed copilot. But do you know about jellybeans for Jesus? Parents Sue To Allow Daughter To Distribute Religious Jellybeans DAYTON, Ohio -- Parents have sued a school district because a kindergarten teacher stopped their daughter from distributing bags of jellybeans with an attached prayer to her classmates. Allen and Sheila Wuebben, of suburban Kettering, say the school's policy of prohibiting students from distributing religious literature in the classroom violates their daughter Madison's rights to freedom of speech and religion.... According to the lawsuit, Madison sought permission from her teacher, Angela Helwig, to distribute "The Jelly Bean Prayer" to her Orchard Park Elementary School classmates before last Easter. The prayer's first two lines are: "Red is for the blood He gave, Green is for the grass He made." ... The teacher said no Jesus jellybeans in the classroom. The family cried "Persecution!" The superintendent said Jesus jellybeans were OK on the bus, in the playground, or after school. That wasn't good enough for the family. Oh, by the way: The family's lawyer is from the Rutherford Institute, legal backers of Paula Jones. Now, let me get this straight: According to religious conservatives, gay marriage is an intolerable infringement on the lives of married heterosexuals, even when those married gay people don't go anywhere near non-consenting heterosexuals -- yet if someone gets in my face and starts trying to convert me to Christ in a setting I can't readily leave (an airplane, my kindergarten class), that just fine. A kindergartner doesn't have a right to proselytize in the classroom, any more than a tenth grader has a right to get up in the middle of a math test, whip out an electric guitar and a portable amp and start working his way through the Good Charlotte songbook. No one says that guitarist's First Amendment rights are being denied if he's told to take it back to the garage. It's about common courtesy and mutual respect. It's about not being a rude, inconsiderate boor. Proselytizing Christians? You say Jesus loves us? We get it. Now, if we ask you to back off, back off. (Jellybean link via INTL News.) posted by Steve M. | 5:30 PM |   If you're enjoying Hans Blix's comments on the Iraq debacle, you'll be pleased to know that the book tour should be starting very soon. posted by Steve M. | 4:59 PM |   Last week I mentioned a Fox News story hyping the discovery of a block of cyanide salt found at a Baghdad compound reportedly used by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has been identified as a jihad-friendly terrorist. (Cyanide salt is commonly found in chemistry labs and jewelers' workshops.) Now, in today's New York Times, Dexter Filkins says that Zarqawi recently wrote a letter to al-Qaeda begging for help with the Iraq insurgency. Filkins summarizes the Bush administration's prewar rap on Zarqawi, and its relationship to the truth: In the period before the war, Bush administration officials argued that Mr. Zarqawi constituted the main link between Al Qaeda and Mr. Hussein's government. Last February at the United Nations, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said, "Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network, headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda lieutenants." ...Since the war ended, little evidence has emerged to support the allegation of a prewar Qaeda connection in Iraq. Last month, Mr. Powell conceded that the American government had found "no smoking gun" linking Mr. Hussein's government with Al Qaeda. If the document Filkins writes about is genuine, we now have Zarqawi begging al-Qaeda for help with the insurgency -- which implies that al-Qaeda isn't providing a whole lot of help with the insurgency now. If you're trying to make the case that Saddam = Osama and the Afghan and Iraq wars were part of one big war on terrorism, this isn't a very convincing Exhibit A. Nor is this: "Many Iraqis would honor you as a guest and give you refuge, for you are a Muslim brother," according to the document. "However, they will not allow you to make their home a base for operations or a safe house." In fact, all this even undermines the "flypaper theory" (you remember: the notion that war in Iraq was a neat idea because even if all the evildoers weren't in Iraq when we invaded, fighting the war there encouraged them all to show up later). Alas, Iraq = al-Qaeda could well be the message an awful lot of people take from this story, even though it's utterly wrong. posted by Steve M. | 11:41 AM |   I hope you've read about the federal judge who's ordered Drake University to turn over information about meetings of antiwar protesters; if not, the story's here. I'm amused that this story broke exactly one day after Jeffrey Rosen of The New Republic wagged his finger on the op-ed page of The New York Times and told liberals opposed to Ashcroftism to mind their manners and be reasonable. Rosen said that reason and compromise could remove all the nasty excesses from the Patriot Act -- after all, he said, it had removed them from our system of scrutinizing airline passengers, hadn't it? Well, according to this story, it hasn't: The airport counter: This is as far as Rebecca Gordon and Janet Adams say they are allowed to go at San Francisco International Airport. The last time they checked in for a flight to Boston to visit Gordon's 80-year-old father, an airline employee called the police. "She came back and said you turned up on the FBI no-fly list. We have called the San Francisco police. We were shocked, really shocked,” recalled Adams. "We were detained. We were definitely detained. I couldn't even get a drink of water," Gordon remembered. So why would two women in their 50's, U.S. citizens, San Francisco homeowners and long-time peace activists with no criminal records be on a federal watch list with suspected terrorists? ... The list is now alleged to include not only suspected terrorists and those believed to be a threat to aviation security but civil rights activists say it also targets people based on their political views. A list that is thought to include members of the Green Party, a Jesuit priest who is a peace activist and two civil rights attorneys. In Gordon and Adams’ case, the ACLU believes the couple may have been targeted for their work on War Times, a free bilingual newspaper that has been critical of the war and the Bush administration's policies on terrorism. It’s very scary that two people who pose no danger, who are publishing something, which last time I looked we were allowed to do, are being detained at the airport and having the police called and they won't tell us why," Adams said. And as of today, Gordon and Adams still don't have any answers from the government but have a court hearing set for April 9th. This controversy isn't likely to go away anytime soon, since the government is planning on implementing a color code system this summer to track passengers and that list too is expected to be secret. (Frist link courtesy of BuzzFlash; last link courtesy of INTL News.) posted by Steve M. | 9:53 AM |   More on that proselytizing pilot, from AP: Passenger Amanda Nelligan told WCBS-TV of New York that the pilot called non-Christians "crazy" and that his comments "felt like a threat." She said she and several others aboard were so worried they tried to call relatives on their cell phones before flight attendants assured them they were safe and that people on the ground had been notified about the pilot's comments. You'd be torn, wouldn't you? You'd think: Am I merely being insulted by a self-righteous jerk who should just shut up and do his job, or am I about to be the victim of a mini-9/11 in Jesus' name? posted by Steve M. | 8:06 AM | Sunday, February 08, 2004   "Iraqization" -- er, no, it's not working: Iraqi Police Major, Gunmen Attack GIs TIKRIT, Iraq - Gunmen, including a major in the new Iraqi police force, attacked a group of American soldiers, sparking a gunbattle in which the officer was killed and two other attackers wounded, the U.S. military said Sunday. The soldiers were observing a house belonging to a person suspected in rocket-propelled grenade attacks on American forces in the village of Qadisiyah, 30 miles south of Tikrit, when the gunmen opened fire Saturday evening, the military said in a statement. The Americans fired back and threw a hand grenade at the attackers, killing one and wounding two. Two more gunmen were captured. The slain attacker was identified as an active Iraqi police major.... --AP posted by Steve M. | 11:23 PM | Saturday, February 07, 2004   Fareed Zakaria may be a centrist (and, by his own admission, a friend of one of the authors), but he gets in a few good digs in his New York Times review of David Frum and Richard Perle's An End to Evil: While terror mounted, Frum and Perle say, the Clinton administration did nothing. They remind us that in one case (an anti-Semitic attack in Argentina) ''it opened negotiations with the murderers.'' Now one can make the case that America's halfhearted responses have egged on Middle Eastern terrorists. But one should surely begin this story where the terrorists do themselves, with their huge attack on the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983 and America's disastrous decision to pull out immediately. Nor do the authors mention the most important instance of the United States ''negotiating with murderers,'' which was, of course, the decision to trade arms for hostages in the mid-1980's. Both events took place during the Reagan administration, when Perle was in high office. Moreover, the impression the authors give is that they and their confederates were outraged by Clinton's (weak-kneed) efforts against Al Qaeda. In fact neoconservatives were silent about Al Qaeda during the 1990's. One searches vainly through the archives of the Project for the New American Century, the main neoconservative advocacy group, for a single report on Al Qaeda or a letter urging action against it before 9/11. (There are dozens on the China threat, national missile defenses and Saddam Hussein's weapons.) Clinton may merely have lobbed missiles at terrorists, but the neoconservatives did not even launch a blast fax. Ouch. posted by Steve M. | 11:13 PM |   Is there something about pressurized jet-cabin air that turns some people into self-important, self-righteous jerks who can’t tolerate difference of opinion? The second American in a month was arrested while entering Brazil for making an obscene gesture while being photographed by an immigration official, police said on Saturday. Federal police in Foz do Iguacu on Brazil's border with Argentina and Paraguay said retired U.S. banker Douglas Allan Skolnick, 56, was jailed overnight for flipping his middle finger in a photo now required to be taken of all U.S. tourists entering Brazil. Brazil began fingerprinting and photographing Americans entering the country in January after the U.S. government imposed a similar process on foreigners, except for those from 27 mostly European countries.... --Reuters An American Airlines pilot flying passengers to New York asked Christians on board to identify themselves and suggested the non-Christians discuss the faith with them, a spokesman for the Fort Worth-based airline said today. Flight 34 was headed from Los Angeles to John F. Kennedy Airport on Friday afternoon, said spokesman Tim Wagner. The pilot, whose identity was not released, had been making flight announcements and then asked that the Christians on board raise their hands, Wagner said. The pilot told the airline that he then suggested the other passengers use the flight time to talk to the identified Christians about their faith, Wagner said. The pilot later told passengers he would be available at the end of the flight to talk about his first announcement. Wagner said the airline was investigating the incident, and that the company had guidelines about appropriate behavior. He said the pilot had just returned to work from a weeklong mission trip to Costa Rica. "It falls along the lines of a personal level of sharing that may not be appropriate for one of our employees to do while on the job," Wagner said. --AP posted by Steve M. | 11:09 PM |   On ABC's news broadcast last night, there was deep skepticism about Bush's new commission: PETER JENNINGS: ...President Bush signed an executive order today which many people believed as of yesterday was going to have as its prime mission an investigation of prewar U.S. intelligence in Iraq. The president used that intelligence to justify attacking Iraq, and much of it turns out to be flawed. Tonight, the official mission of this new commission is much less about Iraq than anticipated, and it is clearly the president's commission. Terry Moran is at the White House, and Terry, this afternoon -- late this afternoon, on a Friday -- you've had a chance to look at the finer print. TERRY MORAN: Indeed, Peter, and under this executive order, which the president just signed, the main job of this commission is not to look at that flawed intelligence on Iraq, and there's nothing in this order directing the commission to investigate how the Bush administration used that intelligence to justify war. Instead, the president wants this commission to look at the much broader question of gathering intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, and only secondarily to look at what went wrong in Iraq.... Moran concluded by noting this interesting factoid about the commission's report, which is due next March: ...there’s nothing in this order that would require that report to be made public. (Not available as text only; video available here.) posted by Steve M. | 10:00 AM |   Abdul al-Latif al-Mayah was never safe. Not before the war started, and not after. A couple of weeks ago, Dr. Mayah, a 53-year-old political scientist and human rights advocate known in his neighborhood here as "the professor," was driving to work when eight masked gunmen jumped in front of his car. They yanked him into the street, the police said, and shot him nine times in front of his bodyguard and another university lecturer. In an instant, he became one of hundreds of intellectuals and midlevel administrators who Iraqi officials say have been assassinated since May in a widening campaign against Iraq's professional class. "They are going after our brains," said Lt. Col. Jabbar Abu Natiha, head of the organized crime unit of the Baghdad police. "It is a big operation. Maybe even a movement."... --New York Times Read the story. Abdul al-Latif al-Mayah wasn't just a human rights advocate after Saddam was overthrown -- he was a human rights advocate when Saddam was in power. Back then he survived. posted by Steve M. | 9:12 AM |   Fred Phelps presses on, and idiots who just can't seem to grasp how church-state separation has to work on public land are making it possible: ...The Rev. Fred Phelps, from Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., has chosen Boise and roughly 10 cities around the country to be locations for an anti-gay monument because those cities all have Ten Commandments monuments on city property. He believes that, based on a federal court ruling, those cities have to allow his religious monument on city property because there is already another religious monument, his lawyer said. Boise City Councilman Alan Shealy proposed returning the Ten Commandments monument to the group that gave it to the city in 1965, the Fraternal Order of Eagles, rather than get into a court fight with Phelps over what Shealy called a "repugnant" message.... ...but a local Christian group led by the Rev. Bryan Fischer of the Community Church of the Valley is fighting the move, taking the issue to federal court.... Reverend Fischer thinks the you can permit "good" religious speech on public land and keep out "bad" religious speech. That's not how it works. For those of you who don't know who Fred Phelps is, well, he's a real sweetheart: Phelps has sent letters to several cities around the country seeking to put up a monument on city property with a picture of a gay Wyoming college student who was killed in a gay-bias attack, with the words, "Matthew Shepard. Entered Hell October 12, 1998. In Defiance of God's Warning: 'Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind; it is abomination.' Leviticus 18:22." Because of the Biblical quotation the monument is considered religious, and should be allowed to stand in public parks where there are already religious monuments, said Phelps' daughter and lawyer, Shirley Phelps-Roper. "That's basically the linchpin to it all, that they put up some religious monument in their public spaces, so they can't refuse ours," Phelps-Roper said.... Is this coming to your town? She said she could not recall all the cities the group has sent letters to, but among them are Nampa, Idaho; Cheyenne and Casper, Wyo.; Greeneville, Tenn.; St. Paul, Minn.; and Lebanon, Pa. ... --ABC posted by Steve M. | 8:54 AM | Friday, February 06, 2004   SILBERMAN President Bush named seven people Friday to sit on an independent study commission to look into intelligence failures on Iraqi weapons, choosing former Democratic Sen. Charles S. Robb and retired judge Laurence Silberman, a Republican, to head the panel.... --Associated Press BUZZFLASH: ... You also seemed quite involved with the Silbermans. It was still astonishing to see the extent that a sitting federal judge was interacting with the efforts to attack Clinton -- Judge Lawrence Silberman and his wife that is. Silberman gave you advice on proceeding with articles that attacked Anita Hill and the President. DAVID BROCK: Judge Lawrence Silberman, who sits on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, was an appointee of President Reagan to that court. His wife Ricky was the vice-chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission during the period that Clarence Thomas was the chairman on the Commission. I met them originally as sources for my first book on the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings. They went beyond the role of source. BUZZFLASH: And he was a sitting judge at the time? DAVID BROCK: Yes he was a sitting judge. For example, they reviewed in draft the galleys of that book. And so it certainly went beyond a reporter-source relationship. And coming out of that, Judge Silberman became a mentor to me and was someone who I relied on, as well as Ricky, for political advice while I was at the American Spectator pursuing a lot of the anti-Clinton stories. When Ricky Silberman left the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, she founded, or was one of the co-founders, of the Independent Women's Forum -- it was actually her idea. And it was actually Ricky Silberman's idea to approach Ken Starr to file that friend-of-the-court brief in the Paula Jones case. And Ricky knew the Jones case was simply payback for the Anita Hill affair. She thought, wouldn't it be delicious that Clinton would now be accused of sexual improprieties in the same way that Clarence Thomas had been? Judge Silberman played an absolutely key role at a critical juncture.... --BuzzFlash interview posted 5/29/02 posted by Steve M. | 3:45 PM |   George W. Bush -- still confusing the armed services and prop services: ..."Knowing what I knew then, and knowing what I know today, America did the right thing in Iraq," Bush told a handpicked crowd of applauding supporters on a Charleston Harbor dock.... The morning was raw, with wind whipping his hair, script and overcoat. Moments before the speech, the White House staff had to get the Coast Guard to reposition a cutter anchored behind him because it had drifted out of position and was no longer providing a perfect backdrop.... --Washington Post (Thanks to salto mortale for the link.) posted by Steve M. | 2:28 PM |   Paul Krugman writes today: Do you remember when the C.I.A. was reviled by hawks because its analysts were reluctant to present a sufficiently alarming picture of the Iraqi threat? Your memories are no longer operative. On or about last Saturday, history was revised: see, it's the C.I.A.'s fault that the threat was overstated. Given its warnings, the administration had no choice but to invade. A tip from Joshua Marshall, of www.talkingpointsmemo.com, led me to a stark reminder of how different the story line used to be. Last year Laurie Mylroie published a book titled "Bush vs. the Beltway: How the C.I.A. and the State Department Tried to Stop the War on Terror." Ms. Mylroie's book came with an encomium from Richard Perle; she's known to be close to Paul Wolfowitz and to Dick Cheney's chief of staff. According to the jacket copy, "Mylroie describes how the C.I.A. and the State Department have systematically discredited critical intelligence about Saddam's regime, including indisputable evidence of its possession of weapons of mass destruction." He's right -- and there's a bit more in An End to Evil, the book Perle recently wrote with David Frum. An excerpt: The CIA's analysts could not emancipate themselves from the ideologically liberal assumptions they brought with them from their elite colleges [during the cold war].... The CIA's reports on the Middle East today are colored by similar ideological biases -- exacerbated by poor understanding of the region's culture and a politically correct disinclination to acknowledge unflattering facts about non-Western peoples. No, I'm not making that up. posted by Steve M. | 1:09 PM |   I'm deeply, deeply flattered, World O'Crap (but obviously you've never seen my apartment). posted by Steve M. | 12:22 PM |   I'm picking up the distinct odor of rat: I just came across an apparently pro-Democrat but anti-Kerry Web page, called "Anybody but This Guy." It seems to be brand new -- its only entry is dated 2-5-04 -- yet it has somehow sidestepped the difficulties most of us have had getting attention for our political Web pages and instantly earned links from both Lucianne Goldberg (see "Some Blogtruth About Kerry") and Mickey Kaus (see "ABK404"). I smell a rat because, despite the site's "Who are we? People who want to see that Bush serves only one term" and its links to the sites of Dean, Clark, and Edwards, it's a one-stop link source for most of the GOP's anti-Kerry bullet points -- and it has this: How many hit pieces on Kerry are we going to see featuring Ted Kennedy and Michael Dukakis? You'll be seeing this picture soon. Er, yeah -- we've seen that picture, or pictures like it. It's a picture of Kerry with Kennedy. So? Only Republicans think Ted Kennedy is a liability for the Democrats. Real Democrats know that only hardcore, yellow-dog Republicans hate him -- nobody else does. I think this fake-lo-fi site is a pathetic attempt at political dirty trickery. posted by Steve M. | 10:25 AM |   Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has an anti-gay-marriage editorial in today's Wall Street Journal. The title of the editorial is "One Man, One Woman." Romney writes, ...marriage is not "an evolving paradigm." It is deeply rooted in the history, culture and tradition of civil society. It predates our Constitution and our nation by millennia. The institution of marriage was not created by government and it should not be redefined by government. I've said this before, but let me remind you again that Romney's own great-grandfather would beg to differ. Romney's father was former Michigan governor Gene Romney, whose grandfather, as The Washington Post has noted, "emigrated to Mexico in 1886 with his three wives and children after Congress outlawed polygamy." posted by Steve M. | 9:59 AM |   NO MILLIONAIRE LEFT BEHIND Floyd Norris's column in today's New York Times points out a little-noticed provision in the new Bush budget: ... a proposal to reduce the maximum capital gains tax on gold coins from 28 percent to 25 percent. These guys never run out of ways to make the wealthy wealthier, do they? posted by Steve M. | 9:23 AM | Thursday, February 05, 2004   ...which candidate do you think Al-Qaeda might root for in this election, John Kerry (should he be the Democratic nominee), or George W. Bush? ... do you think Al-Qaeda kind of enjoys John Kerry saying let's take our defense and give it to the UN and the French and the Germans? --Rush Limbaugh, from his 4/4/04 radio show ...who do you think Al Qaeda wants to win the election? ... Who would Iran want to deal with when it comes to its nuclear program – Cowboy Bush or “Send in the bribed French inspectors” Kerry? --right-wing columnist/"humorist" James Lileks, from his 4/5/04 blog entry I'm sure this is an astonishing coincidence and not, y'know, part of an elaborate process of test-marketing GOP talking points or anything like that. posted by Steve M. | 5:59 PM |   Now we're being told that no one tried to shoot Sistani. Strange. posted by Steve M. | 4:28 PM |   No boycotts or protests outside movies are planned for the Feb. 25 release of Mel Gibson's hotly anticipated "The Passion of the Christ." However, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee will sponsor lectures, interfaith talks and other programs.... --The Washington Times No ... please ... not the interfaith talks! Oh, those jackbooted non-Christian liberal thugs! posted by Steve M. | 3:06 PM |   Er, who almost shot Grand Ayatollah Sistani? posted by Steve M. | 2:37 PM |   Those Iraqi evildoers talk tough... A coalition of insurgent groups has vowed to take over cities vacated by U.S. troops, and warned of "harsh consequences" for Iraqis who resist.... "America is getting ready to withdraw its forces from our country with its tail between its legs ... pressured by rockets and explosive devices," the statement said.... Despite the threats, U.S. officials have expressed confidence Iraqi police will be able to handle the security situation.... The U.S. Army has said it will gradually reduce its presence in Iraqi cities and hand over control to Iraqi security forces. The Army has so far given a detailed withdrawal plan only for the capital, Baghdad, which it envisages to be virtually free of U.S. troops by May.... But our well-trained Iraqi replacements will kick their butts! Right? Er ... right? The men of Bravo Company hold an important distinction: They are the first members of the Iraqi civil defense forces to be sent out on their own in Baghdad. But the first three weeks of that experiment have left them exasperated. At the start of this week, despite what they said were repeated requests to the U.S. battalion that is supposed to support them, they were working without radios, bulletproof vests, gasoline, furniture or a functioning vehicle. "We go on our patrols every day," Capt. Haider Salah, the unit's commander, said Tuesday. "But we go without radios or vests. . . . Even the pens and paper are from home." U.S. officials frequently hail the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, a paramilitary force akin to a national guard, as the cornerstone of U.S. plans to transfer security tasks to Iraqis. Sending Bravo Company, part of the 36th Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, to live and work without any U.S. soldiers by their side was to be a major test of the plan to train and deploy 40,000 such troops across the country by May. And Bravo's experience is a testament to the challenges ahead.... OK, OK -- never mind. posted by Steve M. | 11:22 AM |   Could gay marriage in Massachusetts hurt a John Kerry candidacy? Yeah, I suppose -- but I don't think harm is inevitable. Gay people will legally be allowed to marry in Massachusetts starting May 17. For a few days, the press will prowl the Bay State, desperate for the perfect, unrepresentative photo of sodomite matrimonial makeup excess. And then it'll be over, and we'll all move on to the next celebrity felony or orange alert. Don't believe me? Notice the complete evaporation of the "Saddam bounce" in Bush's approval ratings in the latest Gallup poll. We have no memory for news in this country. (Turkey? Did Bush serve turkey somewhere on Thanksgiving?) Oh, sure -- the Bushies will try to make the campaign all gay marriage, all the time, especially in the South and Midwest. But all Kerry has to do is hone a response -- and he's had months to prepare. The Bushies will be refighting the family's last war against a "Massachusetts liberal," and they'll expect Kerry to be as passive as Dukakis. And it's almost biochemically impossible for any other human being to be as passive as Dukakis was. posted by Steve M. | 9:55 AM |   "Was the situation in Iraq worth going to war over, or not?" In the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, the percentage saying yes has dropped a new low -- 49% (Yes-no is now a 49%-49% tie.) And 53% of poll respondents disapprove of Bush's handling of the war -- a new high. (But ... but ... what about the "Saddam bounce"?) Full report here (including some lovely graphs showing the decline in support). posted by Steve M. | 9:40 AM | Wednesday, February 04, 2004   The New York Times article about today's opening of the fancy-schmancy new Time Warner Center in Columbus Circle mentions Cindy Crawford swanning past a tray of risotto and mushroom tarts, but not the leafletters outside protesting CNN union-busting. For more information, read these letters from the unions involved, NABET and CWA (1, 2; warning: PDFs). Also see this December article from Broadcast Engineering: CNN, a business unit of Time Warner, has terminated its agreement with a unionized contractor that provides more than 220 technicians and camera crews for its Washington and New York bureaus. CNN said it wants to bring the jobs in-house with nonunion workers. The technicians, who are represented by the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians (NABET), have been invited to apply for nonunion jobs at CNN. Some already have been hired.... Your liberal media in action. (Thanks to Blah3 for the last link.) posted by Steve M. | 11:37 PM |   I wondered why, a few months ago, we were suddenly seeing a barrage of well-produced public-service announcements promoting 1-800-MEDICARE as an information source. Now I know: Just two days after the White House proposed serious budget cuts and the President said he's "calling upon Congress to be wise with the taxpayer's money," ... the White House will use $9.5 million from the Department of Health and Human Services – money that is supposed to be used to implement the law and could go to restore some of the cuts to social services for the poor – on political commercials that "rebut criticism of the new Medicare law." ... The new Medicare ads urge citizens to call 1-800-MEDICARE to hear more about the new law.... So the Bushies were setting us up to regard this phone number as a benign source of friendly information, and now they've turned it (at least in part) into a tax-funded political propaganda unit. (Though it's hard to imagine that it'll be a particularly successful one, if, as the link reports, you have to shout "Medicare improvement" into the phone in order to hear the propaganda. Hey, schmucks, if you want to use Orwellian doublespeak, use it yourselves -- but don't think you're going to make it sink in by forcing us proles to use it.) posted by Steve M. | 3:17 PM |   Google News hits for "jackson apologizes": 68. Google News hits for "timberlake apologizes": 0. You really don't have to be Katha Pollitt to suspect that we have a rather sexist double standard about Areolagate. posted by Steve M. | 2:21 PM |   I think a lot of us assume that we're going to have a Kerry-Edwards ticket in the fall -- but it was pointed out last night, by some pundit or other, that John Edwards has said he doesn't want to be vice president. Here's the quote, from the Today show a week ago: "No, no. Final. I don't want to be vice president. I'm running for president." And, for all we know, Kerry might not want to pick Edwards. If Kerry and Edwards don't pair up, I think Kerry's might try to gobsmack the two noncombatants on the other ticket by pairing himself with a fellow veteran -- Max Cleland. We know Cleland has campaigned for Kerry. And we know that a campaign that's willing to revisit the Bush AWOL issue is willing to bring up other issues the press considers old news -- such as the disgraceful Republican campaign ads that compared Cleland to Saddam and bin Laden. With Cleland on the ticket, those ads would go nationwide -- the ads would run on the nightly news, juxtaposed with footage of Cleland in his wheelchair, and the whole country would get a glimpse of the GOP in all its sleazy glory. Two Nam vets? I know the rules say that running mates are supposed to "balance" each other -- but Clinton threw the rulebook out in '92, picking a fellow young Southerner as his #2, and it worked. That said the Democrats were ready to battle for the South. This would say the Democrats are really ready to take on the flight suit. posted by Steve M. | 12:59 PM |   Parodying Massachusetts is a way to keep old resentments alive without getting into any of the inconvenient details. It also allows a pro-business, Yale-educated president with an MBA from Harvard to cast himself as anti-elitist by implying (as his Yale-educated father did in 1988 with that line about the "Harvard boutique") that Massachusetts people are a bunch of snobs. The people selling this stuff should know that in my hometown, folks get punched out for being snobs.... Massachusetts voted for McGovern over Richard Nixon -- not so much because of the Harvard boutique but because the old factory towns such as the one where I grew up remained loyal to the party of Al Smith, Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy. In any case, why, in light of history, is voting against Nixon so dishonorable? ... That's from "The Truth About Massachusetts," a good column by The Washington Post's E. J. Dionne (a native of Fall River, Mass.). I grew up in Boston and I'm very pleased to see that this GOP crap is getting more and more Bay Staters' backs up. posted by Steve M. | 11:19 AM |   Here's a thought: Howard Dean's campaign is struggling now -- but he's a hell of a speaker. Assuming he doesn't make an amazing comeback in this race, why not offer him a show on Progress Media, the in-development liberal talk-radio network? I think Dean's got just the right touch for radio -- he's pointed, funny, and (yeah, at times) pugnacious, but the sound of his voice goes down easy. And he could probably do the show out of Burlington -- Judy wouldn't have to give up her patients. Hey, why not? posted by Steve M. | 7:36 AM | Tuesday, February 03, 2004   OK -- is this story going to be part of the administration's Saddam = al-Qaeda = ricin terrorism case? (Or, at least, part of an attempt to blur the distinctions in people's minds?) A 7-pound block of cyanide salt was discovered by U.S. troops in Baghdad at the end of January, officials confirmed to Fox News. The potentially lethal compound was located in what was believed to be the safe house of Abu Musab Zarqawi, a poisons specialist described by some U.S. intelligence officials as having been a key link between deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and the Al Qaeda terror network. ...Zarqawi, believed to have been operating in Iraq before March's invasion, was still being sought by coalition forces. It was not clear if anyone had been apprehended in connection with last month's find.... U.S. officials, who said they were getting new intelligence in the hunt for Zarqawi, also believe he had been attempting to produce large quantities of the toxin ricin in northern Iraq. --Fox News (emphasis mine) First, cyanide salts: I don't know much about 'em, but I guess they're used in electroplating, so you might want to tell the FBI if you have any neighbors who are jewelers. Now, as for Zarqawi: You might have heard of him because he's an alleged al-Qaeda operative who once got medical treatment in Baghdad; as a result, right-wingers see him as a human smoking gun, a Saddam-Osama link. But a lot of other people think (a) he may not have had strong al-Qaeda ties and (b) his presence in Iraq, even in Baghdad, may not be a sign of a Saddam endorsement -- possibly it's a sign of Iraq's instability just before the war. (Zarqawi was captured near Baghdad last April, yet the capture somehow hasn't managed to generate proof of any of the Bushies' more melodramatic theories.) And meanwhile, the Senate ricin mailer might just be an American trucking company owner, so go figure. posted by Steve M. | 11:31 PM |   I guess they really just can't stop, can they? HILLARY'S VEEPSTAKES by DICK MORRIS The demise of Howard Dean's candidacy opens the door to a Kerry/Clinton ticket in 2004.... Here's Step 1 for you, Dick: "I admit I am powerless over my Hillary obsession -- that my life has become unmanageable...." posted by Steve M. | 6:39 PM |   Saddam did try to kill an ex-president of the United States ... right? In The Nation (subscribers only), Scott Sherman says, er, maybe not: A few weeks ago, Slate asked a number of "liberal hawks"--among them George Packer, Kenneth Pollack, Thomas Friedman, Paul Berman and Fareed Zakaria --to reflect on their support for the Iraq war. For several days, Slate readers witnessed a steady stream of linguistic acrobatics, graceful, guilt-ridden prose and, in some cases, genuine contrition. But if contributors like Pollack and Slate editor Jacob Weisberg expressed deep misgivings about their initial support for military intervention, they accepted Administration claims that, in Weisberg's words, "Saddam tried to assassinate former President Bush." Weisberg and Pollack echoed what Bush himself said of Saddam in 2002: "This is a guy that tried to kill my dad." Is Saddam guilty as charged? Backtrack to spring 1993, when the Clinton Administration announced that Iraqi intelligence had attempted to assassinate George Bush Sr. with a car bomb during a ceremonial visit to Kuwait. In retaliation Clinton ordered a missile attack on Baghdad, which killed eight civilians. Our knowledge of the plot against Bush might have ended there if not for the efforts of Seymour Hersh, who revisited the episode in a lengthy piece for The New Yorker in November 1993. After numerous interviews with high-ranking US and Kuwaiti officials, along with electrical engineers and bomb experts, Hersh concluded that the key suspects in the plot were beaten (and possibly tortured) by Kuwaiti authorities, and that "there is no evidence that any of the alleged assassins took any overt steps to deploy any bombs." In February 2003, in a little-noticed article, the Baltimore Sun disclosed that "the former FBI chemist who tested the explosive recovered in Kuwait says he told superiors it did not match known Iraqi explosives"--a fact that does much to bolster Hersh's reporting. Do Weisberg and Pollack know something Hersh doesn't? One can only speculate, since they didn't return phone calls. posted by Steve M. | 5:29 PM |   Hey, folks, it's the BUSH BOOM! Job Cuts Top 100,000 in January - Report Planned job cuts in January were 26 percent higher than in December as U.S. jobs moved to countries like India, China and the Philippines, and as mergers made some jobs redundant, according to a report on Tuesday. The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., said post-holiday job cuts reached 117,556 in January surpassing the 100,000 threshold for the first time since last October. ...According to Challenger, consumer product companies led the January cutbacks with 22,775 job cuts, the largest number of reported job cuts in that sector in a single month since 1993, according to Challenger. Challenger said one of the main factors for the job cuts in January was an increase of employers eliminating jobs in the United States and shifting to service providers in India, China and the Philippines among other countries. Another factor was an increase in mergers so far this year. The survey's head, John Challenger, noted in a statement that one of those mergers will result in "as many as 10,000 job cuts to take place as redundant positions are eliminated." --Reuters posted by Steve M. | 4:00 PM |   Well, we can't really say what we're thinking, can we? You know what I mean -- that the sudden appearance of (what seems to be) ricin is a Bushie plot that coincides with plummeting poll numbers and the rise of John Kerry as a serious threat. We can't say it, we can't even speculate about it, we can't even consider it and dismiss it, because that would make us conspiracy wackos. Even though we were practically required to believe, or at least to consider the possibility, that the bombs Bill Clinton dropped on Iraq in 1998 were a craven attempt to use deadly force to distract voters from his failings. David Kay, of course, said that ricin was one of the few irregular weapons Iraq was still actively working to produce just before the war. The Right desperately grasped at this straw (see paragraph #2 of Charles Krauthammer's last column), and righties assume you were paying attention, too. You don't have to believe that the administration did this to believe that the Bushies will try to exploit it. Of course, if the administration does try to exploit the ricin attack (assuming it is a ricin attack), spinning it as a justification for administration policies, and particularly the Iraq war, that just makes no sense -- if it's ricin and it came from the Saddam's labs, then that the proves that the war didn't protect us from him ... and if it's ricin and it came from another foreign source, that says that maybe there were some resources we shouldn't have redirected to Iraq. (And if it's ricin and the mailer is domestic, well, did we nickel-and-dime domestic anti-terror efforts to pay for tax cuts?) But the administration knows that, for most Americans, it's all just a muddle -- according to a Newsweek poll, most Americans interviewed just after David Kay's recent interviews and testimony said they believe Iraq had banned chem or bio weapos in the days before the war. I don't know if this is "wag the ricin." I don't like succumbing to conspiracy theories. I think it's more likely that we're dealing with a Kaczynski, someone both schizophrenic and craftsmanlike, who might not even have a political agenda (or at least not a coherent one). But I do think we'll hear a lot from the administration about how "the world is a dangerous place" and Bush is the guy to keep us safe -- even though he obviously isn't keeping us safe. And I worry that it might work. posted by Steve M. | 1:27 PM |   Notice that what got up the nose of the FCC's Michael Powell wasn't some pirate post-post-post-post-punk radio station run by two NYU students, or some struggling independently owned AM station in Oklahoma, but, rather, one of the very behemoths he wants to reward handsomely through his push for media deregulation? And notice that one of the behemoths (actually the same one, Viacom) was the employer of the shock jocks who upset Powell last year by broadcasting (alleged) sex at St. Patrick's Cathedral? And notice that Viacom is also the employer of the much-fined Howard Stern, while Clear Channel (as that second link notes) was recently being disciplined for a radio show in which teenage girls were encouraged to discuss sex at their high school? Hey, Michael, how many more times are you going to go out of your way to try to reward these huge companies, only to find yourself shocked, shocked, at what they broadcast? posted by Steve M. | 12:47 PM | Monday, February 02, 2004   So I stumbled on this a few days ago. It's a reasonably amusing little poke at the Democrats ... but look at the bottom of the page. The person who put the page up is a Democrat who really wants Bush out of office. The same goes for the person who maintains DeanGoesNuts.com -- this person is not only anti-Bush but passionately pro-Dean, even though the Dean scream remixes on the page attract a lot of Democrat-haters. This is a big difference between our side and the other side: We sometimes make fun of our own. They don't. Oh sure, I guess P. J. O'Rourke has occasionally made a joke about conservatives. But he's old-school, a Reagan-era relic, not representative of modern conservatism. And yes, occasionally Peggy Noonan or David Brooks will write a column in which a bit of right-wing self-deprecation appears in a subordinate clause somewhere -- but the point of the rest of the column will be that Democrats and liberals are dangerous freaks. Is there any aspect of the right-wing worldview that strikes right-wingers as a wee bit ridiculous? The Hillary-hate? The schoolgirl crush on capitalism? Bush's padded crotch in that flight suit? Who on the right has a sense of humor about the right? I can't think of anyone. posted by Steve M. | 5:15 PM |   Has John Kerry ever tried to get his way from a service worker by saying, "Do you know who I am?," as some of his detractors claim? I have no idea -- though Jonah Goldberg at National Review Online sure wants me to think it's true. But, er, Jonah? A word of advice? If you want me to believe that "such tales are not rrare [sic] in the blogosphere," it'd be a tad more convincing if a few more of the hits in the Google search you offer as evidence actually referred to your subject. Let's see -- we have: * an anecdote about Australian billionaire Kerry Packer * some ER fan fiction involving the character Dr. Kerry Weaver; * some spam quoted in a blog that contains the phrase "do you know who i am"; * an anecdote about Gwyneth Paltrow; * an anecdote about Prince... ... you get the point. posted by Steve M. | 3:44 PM |   Robert Novak's latest column is here. It's actually heartening -- Novak says Republicans worry about their guy running against Kerry, and I think Novak is being sincere (in other words, this isn't like that "Republicans say I'm the opponent they fear most" nonsense Joe Lieberman is spouting). But this passage pisses me off: Republican National Chairman Ed Gillespie, given the assignment of rolling out Kerry's liberal record, has come under private criticism by his GOP colleagues. They knock Gillespie, not for trying, but for failing to clearly expose Kerry as a compulsive liberal. "Compulsive liberal"? What the hell is that supposed to mean? Republicans love suggesting that being a Democrat or a liberal is a variety of mental illness -- maybe not an out-and-out psychosis, but certainly a neurosis or an obsessive tic. Back in the '80s, the subtext of all that talk about "tax-and-spend liberals" was that Democrats raised taxes because they just couldn't stop themselves. (Which is a bit ironic now, as we watch Bush bankrupting our grandchildren and moving on to the great-grandkids.) The right has never stopped doing this -- and our side, even with a snappish, pettish, compulsive-spending ex-alcoholic narcissist as president, hasn't figured out how to react in kind. posted by Steve M. | 12:11 PM |   Direct elections in Iraq? Impossible! Surely not this summer! We can't even compile voter rolls by then! But somehow the CPA was able to cobble together hardware, software, and experts to make this happen: ...Jay Hallen ... was hired by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to oversee the establishment of the new Iraq Stock Exchange, where trading is expected to start within a few weeks. "When this opens, it will be a big sign that normalcy has returned to Iraqi life," Hallen says in a phone interview from Baghdad. "There's great excitement about an economy that's been suppressed and is ready to boom."... William Bautz, former chief technology officer at the New York Stock Exchange ... is an adviser to the newly named Iraq Stock Exchange through the Financial Services Volunteer Corps (FSVC), a nonprofit group in New York that assists developing economies. Last November, he took part in a planning conference in Amman, Jordan, where the volunteers helped Iraqi brokers and officials set up securities laws in line with international standards.... Technology is another issue. Previously, each company kept its own records, so the exchange needs an electronic depository to track prices, trades, and shareholder identity numbers. Temporarily, the depository will be based in Egypt or Jordan, neighbors that have more sophisticated capital markets and are eager to help.... For staff at the 52 licensed brokerages in Iraq, the opening bell of the new exchange will be a welcome sound. (A consultant from the Philadelphia Stock Exchange has offered to bring a small replica of the Liberty Bell.) ... Priorities straight, as usual.... posted by Steve M. | 10:55 AM |   Lead story in today's amNewYork: Although $5 million is needed to re-open the Statue of Liberty, amNewYork has learned that the foundation asking the world for donations is already sitting on at least eight times that much money -- $40 million. ...the non-profit Statue of Liberty Ellis Island Foundation refuses to say how much cash it has collected or when it will use that money to reopen the monument.... The foundation said it will make an announcement in March on the status of the "Re-Open Lady Liberty" campaign, but [foundation president Stephen] Briganti said it won't be anytime soon and certainly not before July 4. Let me take a wild stab in the dark here: You think maybe they're planning to reopen the statue sometime between August 30 and September 2? posted by Steve M. | 9:35 AM |   John Tierney wagged a finger in yesterday's New York Times: When they walk on stage to address their cheering supporters this Tuesday night, the Democratic presidential candidates might want to consider a new mantra: It's the living room, stupid.... ...in New Hampshire last Tuesday, the candidates were still spending their precious moments on national television thanking aides and volunteers. Just when they could finally stop pandering to voters, they went on rhapsodizing about the locals' hospitality for so long that the networks cut them off in midspeech.... It may seem cruel to subject a roomful of supporters to a stump speech they already know word for word. John Kerry's volunteers presumably do not want to be rewarded at a victory party with a speech about his tax policies; John Edwards's workers do not need to hear for the millionth time that he is the son of a millworker. But only 20 percent of Americans know that Mr. Edwards's father worked in a mill, and two-thirds do not recognize the most rudimentary distinction in the candidates' tax policies, according to the latest National Annenberg Election Survey from the University of Pennsylvania. It's hard for the crowd at an election-night party to imagine so many Americans know so little about the candidates, but those channel-surfers in the living rooms are the ones who will be picking the next president. Oh, I get it, John: It's the candidates' fault if voters don't know their stories and their platforms. The fact that you and most of your media colleagues can't bear to cover anything besides the horse race or gaffes (Dean's scream) has nothing to do with it. posted by Steve M. | 9:20 AM | Saturday, January 31, 2004   Some not-exactly-satisfied Bush customers: When she could find an extra quarter during the Depression, Marie Scott saved it in a coffee can. When she could afford Stride Rite shoes for her daughters, she bought them a half size bigger so they could be grown into. She didn't think a car was broken in until the odometer said 50,000 miles. For all of her 77 years, Marie Scott did everything the straight and narrow American way – including paying her Social Security taxes – so she could enjoy a secure retirement. Now she feels like her country punched her in her gut. It passed a Medicare prescription drug bill that, she says, will hurt her – and millions of other senior citizens. Scott has a coronary heart condition. The new bill could cost her $3,600 per year in drug costs.... She was one of a crowd of 50 who turned out for the first meeting of the revived Senior Legislative Action Committee, which featured Rep. Maurice D. Hinchey, D-Saugerties, blasting the bill he called "obnoxious." "We are no longer the silent majority,'' said Priscilla Bassett. "I'm 70 plus and I'm angry."... --Times Herald-Record (Monticello, N.Y.) So ordinary citizens are holding meetings to get this legislation repealed (and they're coming out in weather that's pretty damn cold) -- and a congressional Democrat (i.e., by definition a member of a highly risk-averse group) shows up to egg them on. Remember when this bill was being described as a political home run? posted by Steve M. | 7:02 PM | Friday, January 30, 2004   Burke would refuse communion to Kerry If Sen. John Kerry were to stand in Archbishop Raymond L. Burke's communion line Sunday, Burke would bless him without giving him communion. Kerry, a Catholic, has voted to support abortion rights, contrary to Catholic Church long-held teaching opposing abortion. "I would have to admonish him not to present himself for communion," said Burke. "I might give him a blessing or something," he said.... --St. Louis Post-Dispatch This would be a cheap stunt, perhaps, but, assuming Kerry's the nominee, I think it would boost him in the polls if, next October, he walked into a Mass that was being said by Archbishop Burke and Burke yanked the host away. Bring it on, Father.... posted by Steve M. | 5:48 PM |   Don't know much about the American Research Group, but its poll has George W. Bush with a 47% approval rating and trailing Kerry, 47%-46%. Bush loses to Kerry among independents, 55%-39%, in this poll. Nice. posted by Steve M. | 3:17 PM |   Bloody hell ... the GOP-majority Georgia Senate has voted to erect a statue of Zell Miller. You know Miller -- the alleged Democrat who's endorsed George W. Bush and written a book attacking his own party? Hey, it's working for him: Once relatively obscure, he's now a New York Times bestselling author and a golden god on the Right. Maybe, when they unveil this objet d'art, they can invite all the Democrat-hating Democrats -- Joe Lieberman, Mickey Kaus of Slate, freelance pundit/blowhard/racist Tammy Bruce. Folks, here's a prediction: I don't think Bush is going to drop Cheney from the ticket, but if he does, his running mate is going to be Zell Miller. I'm dead serious about this. And idiots in the commentariat will tell you with a straight face that it's a sincere act of "bipartisanship." (Thanks to Pandagon for the statue story.) posted by Steve M. | 1:13 PM |   AP, January 13, 2004: Guerrilla attacks on the 150,000 U.S.-led coalition soldiers in Iraq have dropped sharply since the Dec. 13 capture of Saddam Hussein, and the number of troops killed and wounded has plummeted as well. The figures appear to show the capture of Saddam has taken some of the sting out of the Iraqi insurgency.... The slump in combat casualties comes alongside a 22 percent drop in attacks on American-led forces in those four weeks.... According to U.S. military figures, insurgent attacks against coalition forces declined to an average of 18 a day in the past four weeks, compared to 23 a day in the four weeks before Saddam's capture. ... Financial Times today: US combat deaths in Iraq have risen sharply during January despite a drop in the number of attacks and the capture of former dictator Saddam Hussein over a month ago. As of Thursday, 33 American soldiers and one civilian had been killed by hostile fire during the month. That compares with 24 US combat deaths in December, and a total of 32 coalition combat deaths.... Overall, January has been one of the bloodiest post-war months for the coalition. Combat deaths in the first 28 days of January alone exceeded those in every post-war month except October (35) and November (94), according toIraq Coalition Casualty Count - a website devoted to tracking coalition deaths.... Oh, and I love this: The US military on Thursday declined to confirm or deny the figures for combat deaths in Iraq this month, which were calculated from press releases from US Central Command in Florida. A US military spokesman in Baghdad said figures were only kept for two-month periods, and a computer malfunction made it impossible to calculate an official casualty count for separate months. Oh, please. (Thanks to Cursor for the FT link.) posted by Steve M. | 11:58 AM |   The much awaited Hutton report is an absolute vindication for Tony Blair and a catastrophe for the BBC. --Andrew Sullivan on Wednesday Some 56% of [British] voters believe the Hutton report was a whitewash, according to a YouGov poll in the Daily Telegraph. Despite the report, the poll found 67% of people still trust BBC news journalists to tell the truth and 31% trust the Government. In an NOP poll, half of those questioned said Lord Hutton was wrong to clear Mr Blair and his aides of any "underhand and duplicitous" naming strategy. A clear majority, 56%, said the peer was wrong to lay all the blame at the door of the BBC. His inquiry was branded a whitewash by 49%, with 40% disagreeing, in the survey for London's Evening Standard. And a full independent inquiry into the reason Britain went to war with Iraq was supported by an overwhelming 70%. Three times as many people trust the BBC to tell the truth than the Government, another poll showed today. However, almost half, 49%, trusted neither side, the ICM survey for The Guardian found. Just one in 10 had faith in ministers compared with 31% who believed the Corporation. --icWales ****** Update: Well, even Sullivan seems to be figuring it out now. Today he quotes an e-mail he's received about the Hutton inquiry, which the e-mailer calls "a joke": Everyone I have spoken to here who is not directly involved in politics (but who keeps a "watching brief" on events as they affect our daily lives) is horrified. We seem effectively to live in an elected dictatorship: over-reaching powers of Tony Blair without any check whatsoever; supine parliament (whose powers of scrutiny have been wrecked by said Prime Minister); pliant judiciary; and a commercial media hamstrung by regulation preventing any form of political partiality. The inquiry seems to have suddenly clarified the unease that a number of us here have felt deep down for some time.... posted by Steve M. | 10:13 AM |   Attention Wal-Mart shoppers: The US economy braked fiercely in the last quarter of 2003, slowing to an unexpectedly low 4.0 percent annualized growth pace... Growth shrank to less than half the blistering, 19-year record 8.2 percent pace of the third quarter, defying economists' predictions of a 5.0 percent expansion to wrap up the year. Over the whole of 2003, output in the world's biggest economy was up 3.1 percent, the Commerce Department said Friday. --AFP today China's economy grew a surprising 9.9 percent in the final quarter of last year, the government said Tuesday, signaling a quick recovery from the economic fallout of the SARS epidemic and hinting at a favorable outlook for 2004. Investment and foreign trade helped drive the country's annual gross domestic product growth to 9.1 percent, according to the official figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics. --AP, 1/20/04 posted by Steve M. | 9:38 AM | Thursday, January 29, 2004   Via TBOGG, I learned about this post from Jonah Goldberg at National Review Online's blog. He quotes an e-mail: ...I was recently in my local Meijer store, which is a Wal-Mart like mega-store, and walked down the cheap art aisle and was stopped in my tracks by a painting of George W. Bush. It was at least 18x12 in size and portrayed our President on one knee, with an open Bible in his right hand, and a clear and distinct wedding ring on his left. He is wearing a shirt and tie, but has the sleeves rolled up. It surprised me, in that, even out here in red country, there is still plenty of cynicism about our leaders. I guess I just don't expect our generation to lionize heroes like our parents generation did.... Hmmm -- what does this remind me of? Oh yeah -- this: Live appearances by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein on state-run media have been rare of late, but you're never far from his image. It's on the streets and in stores and offices, often in three dimensions. Unlike many past dictators, who usually depicted their leaders in heroic, militaristic poses, Hussein can be seen in murals handing out flowers, blessing a child, saying prayers and riding a horse. ...Salam Abid has been painting Saddam Hussein's portrait since 1976, and sells three or four a month at a price of $100 US, a whopping sum for most Iraqis. "I paint him in military uniform, or holding a sword, or in traditional Arab-Muslim dress, but I like him best in a suit," Abid says.... Bush with a Bible ... Saddam in a traditional headdress -- is there a difference? posted by Steve M. | 10:49 PM |   Georgia's Republican schools superintendent wants to clear something up: A change that would strike the word "evolution" from Georgia's science classes is only a suggestion and far from becoming official policy, a spokesman for state schools Superintendent Kathy Cox said Thursday. Cox's proposal for new middle and high school science standards would ban references to "evolution" and replace it with the term "biological changes over time." "The whole point for us is we really don't have a stance on the issue," said Cox spokesman Kirk Englehardt. "We're very open to hearing every side of the issue." The proposed change is part of more than 800 pages of revisions to Georgia's curriculum that were posted Jan. 12 on the Department of Education Web site for educators to consider. The new curriculum ... is expected to be voted on by the state Board of Education in May.... But hey, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, this isn't provincial know-nothingism -- it's about freedom of choice! Cox, a Republican elected to the state's top public school position in 2002, addressed the issue briefly in a public debate during the campaign. The candidates were asked about a school dispute in Cobb County over evolution and Bible-based teachings on creation. Cox responded: "It was a good thing for parents and the community to stand up and say we want our children exposed to this [creationism] idea as well. . . . I'd leave the state out of it and I would make sure teachers were well prepared to deal with competing theories." Well, sure -- except that a lot of the material on the one "theory" every respectable scientist on the planet believes has been snipped out, as has the name of that "theory." So what happened? The Georgia Department of Education based its biology curriculum on national standards put forth by a respected source, the American Association for the Advancement of Science. But while the state copied most of the national standards, it deleted much of the section that covers the origin of living things. A committee of science teachers, college professors and curriculum experts was involved in reviewing the proposal. The state did not specify why the references to evolution were removed, and by whom, even to educators involved in the process. Terrie Kielborn, a middle school science teacher in Paulding County who was on the committee, recalled that Stephen Pruitt, the state's curriculum specialist for science, told the panel not to include the word evolution. "We were pretty much told not to put it in there," Kielborn said. The rationale was community reaction, she said. "When you say the word evolution, people automatically, whatever age they are, think of the man-monkey thing," Kielborn said. Oh. Ick! Monkeys! Well, that explains it. Can't have monkey discussed in the same breath as people, can we? Ignorance is infinitely preferable than exposing impressionable youngsters to talk about monkeys. posted by Steve M. | 5:06 PM |   Afghan Weapons Cache Blast Kills 7 GIs Yes, that's Afghanistan -- not Iraq. posted by Steve M. | 2:58 PM |   Oh jeez -- here it comes (from CNN/Money) ... Why Kerry worries the Street Securities firms may have donated big to his campaign, but that doesn't mean the market likes him. ...In his economic plan, Kerry has said he is against Bush's dividend tax cut, but that he would lower capital gains and dividend taxes for the middle class. Among other things, Kerry's plan calls for setting up tax incentives that would encourage businesses to create manufacturing jobs in the United States. He has also said he would use the scaling back of the Bush tax cuts to reduce the federal budget deficit. ... for those who believe the tax cuts are directly linked to the 2003 stock market rally and the surging economy, Kerry's talk is worrisome. "I think it would be difficult for Kerry to prove that the tax cuts were not effective," said Ned Riley, chief investment strategist at State Street Global Advisors.... And on and on and on. And all this despite the fact that the story includes a link to another CNN/Money story that says stocks are in fact less volatile and perform better under Democratic presidents. That story is here. It cites a study published in the Journal of Finance. Looking at the 72-year period between 1927 and 1999, the study shows that a broad stock index, similar to the S&P 500, returned approximately 11 percent more a year on average under a Democratic president versus safer, three-month Treasurys. By comparison, the index only returned 2 percent more a year versus the T-bills when Republicans were in office. ...On average, value-weighted portfolios returned 9 percent more under Democrats than Republicans during the 72 year period, while equal-weighted portfolios returned 16 percent more under Democrats. This is described in the article as a "strange little irony." A market analyst, told of the study's results, is quoted as saying, "I think plenty on Wall Street would be pretty shocked to hear that." Why? The authors of the study have their own theories, but here's mine: Consumer spending drives the economy. The rich simply don't spend as great a percentage of their income as the non-rich do. GOP policies mostly put money in the hands of non-spenders, while any tax cuts for the non-rich are offset by hikes in other taxes, job losses, increases in fees, and so on. I know businesspeople would rather have money just handed to them, in the form, say, of tax loopholes, but sometimes being forced to make money by actually selling the stuff you're ostensibly in business to sell can be good for the soul. And profitable. posted by Steve M. | 1:56 PM |   I keep hearing people on TV say that John Kerry is "aloof". Why? Because he doesn't walk around in a flightsuit and a cowboy hat? Up here we call that "not acting like a jackass". Why does the Northeast always have to apologize for who we are? We're Americans, too. New Englanders were the ones who stood up to King George. New Englanders risked their necks (literally) by tossing the tea into Boston Harbor. New Englanders lowered their muskets and fired at British soldiers when the whole world trembled at the sight of them. Sorry if we talk too fast; it gets really cold here, ok? We do everything quickly so we can go home. There's a pot of chowder on the stove, and the game is on.... That's from a blog called 201k.com, and as a native of Boston I say thank you. Read the rest here (under the heading "A New England Primer"). (Thanks to Cursor for the link.) posted by Steve M. | 1:15 PM |   A few days ago, I asked why John Kerry's hockey playing can't be construed as mythically manly, like, say, Bush's clearing of brush in Crawford. The Mahablog has an (unfortunately) good answer -- There are two aspects to the Andrew Jackson/John Wayne mystique. First is to be a rugged man of action, yes. But second is that you have to be a little uncivilized. The macho-mystique guy is instinctual rather than intellectual; more rough than polished; and a person for whom the rules do not apply.  This might describe most hockey players, but not, I think, to John Kerry. -- as well as the sage observation that brush clearing is a perfect activity for Bush because the brush can't fight back. Yup -- that's it. Meanwhile, George Will is telling us that Kerry's campaign seems to mark "a retreat from the feminization of politics," yet fellow right-wing Michelle Malkin insists that Kerry is an, er, "insufficiently attentive spouse" to his wife (who, Malkin implies, is nuts and wears the pants in the family). But then Ann Coulter tells us that Kerry takes advantage of rich women, his wife being the most recent. So confusing! And maybe this is reason enough for the Democrats to nominate Kerry: We know the Right is going to argue that the Dem nominee, whoever it is, is a spawn of Satan who isn't fit to be around decent people -- so maybe the best we can hope for is that they'll strongly disagree on exactly why the nominee is the Antichrist. Confusion to our enemies! posted by Steve M. | 9:45 AM | Wednesday, January 28, 2004   I have a good feeling about this guy. I've asked a few somewhat alarmist questions about mad-cow disease in this blog recently, but this scientist sounds like just the person you'd want examining suspect (human) brains, and if he says he's ruled out variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in hundreds of brains he's examined (variant CJD, as opposed to plain old CJD, is mad cow disease), I believe him. But he does say he'd like more brains of the deceased to examine, in case he's missing something. Twenty-six states require reporting of CJD. C'mon, what's wrong with the other 24? And are we really only now realizing that mad cow can spread via transfused blood? Is there a lot more we need to discover about vCJD? posted by Steve M. | 11:15 PM |   The Hutton report severely chastized the BBC and exonerated Tony Blair. In The Guardian, Ewen MacAskill and Richard Norton-Taylor aren't satisfied: ...Lord Hutton leaves himself open to accusations of having cherrypicked the evidence that supports the government case and sidelined that which supports the BBC. Awkward bits of evidence that do not fit his final conclusion are left lying around unanswered. He ignores the issue of the reliability of the intelligence in the government's dossier on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction published on September 24, 2002. Instead, he focuses on the specific issue of the claim by the BBC Today reporter Andrew Gilligan in May last year that the government had tampered with intelligence to strengthen the case for war. The evidence of the BBC science correspondent Susan Watts, whose taped conversation with Dr Kelly corroborates much of Gilligan's report, is ignored.... Evidence emerged during the inquiry from John Scarlett, the head of the joint intelligence committee (JIC), who drew up the dossier, that the 45 minutes related not to long-range weapons as had been widely assumed at the time but to battlefield weapons. This is significant, because it supports the BBC case that the threat from Saddam was not as grave as the government dossier suggested. But Lord Hutton said in his report that the distinction between battlefield weapons and long-range ones deployable within 45 minutes "does not fall within my terms of reference".... ...Nor does he address the extracts from the diary of Alastair Campbell, the then Downing Street director of communications, hinting at a personal vendetta against Gilligan taken to the final conclusion. At one point in his diary Mr Campbell said it would "fuck Gilligan" if Dr Kelly turned out to be the source of his story.... Also in his diary, Mr Campbell refers to a conversation with the defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, in which he spoke about "a plea bargain", suggesting that the defence secretary would offer a deal to Dr Kelly. Lord Hutton again brushes this aside, saying: "One of those areas of uncertainty is whether in his discussion with Mr Campbell, Mr Hoon used the term 'plea bargain' in relation to Dr Kelly and, if he did, what did he mean by that term." It was revealed last night that the family of Dr Kelly expressly referred to Mr Campbell's diary entries in its final submission to the inquiry. The family argued that the government wanted Dr Kelly's name to come out as a way of assisting its battle with the BBC. The family said: "Alastair Campbell's diary reveals that it was his desire and the desire of others, including the secretary of state for defence, that the fact and identity of the source should be made public." ... posted by Steve M. | 10:58 PM |   Direct elections, reliable electricity -- oh, and one more thing.... (I gather this has been kicking around for a while. I don't know the source.) posted by Steve M. | 4:30 PM |   Dean, on "Meet the Press" in March 2003, said he believed that Iraq "is automatically an imminent threat to the countries that surround it because of the possession of these weapons." Yet, in his now familiar flip-flop style, candidate Dean later declared, "I never said Saddam was a danger to the United States." --right-wing columnist and talk-radio host Larry Elder, 1/22/04 column Maybe that's the difference between conservatives and the rest of us: They think the U.S. is in the Middle East. posted by Steve M. | 2:59 PM |   Ezra at Pandagon worries that this bit of gossip from MSNBC's Jeannette Walls might be true: A well-placed source says that the president will "most likely" drop Dick Cheney from his re-election ticket and his first choice for a replacement is former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani. I don't like going out on limbs, but I think this is impossible. It isn't just that Giuliani is pro-gun control, or pro-choice, or pro-gay rights -- the dealbreaker, I think, is that he signed New York City's domestic partnership bill into law. What could be more infuriating to Bush's base, more likely to keep them home on Election Day? I can think of a lot of other reasons this won't happen -- Rudy's too much of an egomaniac to want to be a second banana for four years; criticism makes Bush dig in his heels, so (like his father) he won't drop a VP who's a potential liability; Jeb probably is the Bush family's choice for the '08 nomination, and a Cheney vice presidency doesn't harm Jeb's chances (though wouldn't it be a kick in the collective Bush pants if Cheney suddenly decides that he's not to sickly to head the ticket in '08?). Don't give this another thought -- New York insiders regularly declare that local pols are on the verge of going national. (Funny how that Bush-Pataki ticket The New York Observer promised us in '00 never quite happened.) Jeannette Walls is a gossip columnist; her expertise is the entertainment world. She doesn't know that whoever told her this was blowing smoke. posted by Steve M. | 1:16 PM |   So that's the message from talk radio and Drudge -- that Kerry is unfit to govern because he might have had a facelift? Two words, my Republican friends: Arnold Schwarzenegger. Two more words: Laura Bush. (Yeah, I know -- if it turns out he's had cosmetic work they'll say the point isn't so much that as the lying. And that's an important moral litmus test for Republicans because, of course, Honest Ronald Reagan never dyed his hair.) There's so much plastic surgery among the regularly televised that this idiocy may not migrate to the "respectable" media, but you never know. (If the Drudge link above doesn't show the Kerry story, try this.) posted by Steve M. | 12:43 PM |   Good Lord -- isn't there something in the stalker laws that Hillary Clinton can use against this sicko obsessive? (Scroll to the end.) posted by Steve M. | 9:42 AM |   John Kerry flipflopped on the war, but I think that's actually working to his advantage. I'm reminded of what a pollster named Jeff Levine told Matt Bai of The New York Times Magazine recently about responses to survey questions: ''The pauses people have can be very telling,'' Levine said as we eavesdropped. ''There's an emerging school of survey research that actually times the length of the pauses. The finding is that there's a very strong correlation between the time it takes to answer the question and the strength of a person's belief.'' (The longer the pause, the weaker the respondent's attachment to the answer.) ''You saw a lot of pauses on a question like, 'Was it worth going to war in Iraq or not worth going to war?''' Levine pointed out. ''People don't feel comfortable picking one or the other.'' I can live with this -- complete rejection of a war that unseated a guy like Saddam is further than some people can go, yet many of these people hate the unholy mess of the aftermath, hate the cost in money and lives, feel betrayed by the lies that got us in, and so on, and that's good. Even if voters are responding better to the "evolving" position on the war of Kerry than to the pure opposition of Dean or Kucinich, it's still a rebuke to Bush and a rejection of Bushism. posted by Steve M. | 9:10 AM | Tuesday, January 27, 2004   By the way, here's a curious thing: If you go to the State of the Union page at the White House Web site, you automatically get bounced to the page for this year's speech. OK, fine -- but what if you were trying to find last year's speech -- the one with all the claims about Iraqi weapons that turn out not to be true? Well, there's a "State of the Union - 2003" link on that '04 page. But try clicking on it. You won't get the '03 speech -- you'll get looped back to the main SOTU page, which bounces you to '04. Yeah, the '03 speech is still available. But the only way you can get it at whitehouse.gov, I think, is by clicking on the 2002 link and replacing "2002" with "2003." Interesting glitch. posted by Steve M. | 7:15 PM |   (UPDATE: I fixed the main link in this post.) Remember the $15 billion pledged in the 2003 State of the Union address to fight HIV/AIDS? Well, apparently the check's still in the mail. This is from Newsweek:  ... In his 2003 speech, the president pledged the monies would assure the treatment of "at least 2 million people with life-saving drugs.” But the Global AIDS Alliance estimates that just 1,000 people overseas have received treatment funded by the United States over the past year—all from programs that predate Bush’s big announcement. Last fall, Stephen Lewis, the United Nation’s top AIDS official, said he was enraged that "rich powers” like the United States were still neglectng the crisis in Africa. Yet, the administration’s office of the Global AIDS Coordinator still operates with a skeleton staff borrowed from other departments while dozens of its positions remain unfilled.  As you may have read elsewhere, the Bush administration bargained down the initial outlay (which then became part of an omnibus spending bill that was held up until recently): ...while Bush—to much fanfare—authorized Congress to spend up to $3 billion on AIDS this year, the administration lobbied lawmakers privately to hold that appropriation to $2 billion. They eventually compromised on $2.4 billion. The administration’s rationale: time is needed to build healthcare infrastructure in the targeted 15 AIDS-stricken countries so that the money can be utilized effectively.... But the Global Fund [to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria], a two-year-old program created with help from the U.S. and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan that now works in 120 countries, says it has the capacity to effectively spend the full $3 billion—and then some—right now. The administration, however, prefers to distribute the money through U.S. aid agencies, even if that means getting to work more slowly.... Activists say the administration views the Global Fund with the same hostility it revealed toward the U.N. in the run-up to the Iraq War. This in spite of the fact that, around the time of last year's State of the Union, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson was named chairman of the Global Fund's board, replacing a former Ugandan health minister. Oh, and of course, there's this: Another reason the administration prefers to distribute the aid unilaterally is that it can then spend it on programs that fit its socially conservative agenda. A third of the money to be spent for prevention is for “abstinence-only until marriage” programs. Compassionate conservatism..... posted by Steve M. | 7:03 PM |   Bush in 2004 after losing the election? (Update: Link corrected.) posted by Steve M. | 5:00 PM |   In The New York Review of Books, Ahmed Rashid, writing about Afghanistan, reports on a character assessment: When US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld visited Herat on April 29, 2002, he described [Ismail] Khan as "an appealing person, thoughtful, measured, and self-confident." Rashid notes that this is perhaps too kind: In two reports at the end of 2002, HRW [Human Rights Watch] described the horrific situation in western Afghanistan where Ismail Khan had established a dictatorial fiefdom over three provinces, ignoring the Karzai government with tacit approval from the US. In an HRW report entitled "'We Want to Live as Humans': Repression of Women and Girls in Western Afghanistan," several women described the situation under Khan as virtually similar to living under the Taliban. Local police were stopping girls in the street and forcefully carrying out virginity tests. "Herat is the worst province for women in Afghanistan," said a UN official working with women's groups in Afghanistan. Women were allowed to study only in segregated schools, were discouraged from working, and were forbidden to ride in cars with foreigners. Those caught riding in cars with an Afghan male who was not their husband were taken off to hospitals where doctors would examine them to determine whether they had recently had sexual intercourse. Doctors said that up to ten girls a day were being tested and many girls were too ashamed even to talk about it. Ismail Khan has also revived the Taliban's much-feared Department of Vice and Virtue, which encourages young male goons to walk around streets and schools to make sure that segregation is being enforced. "You have the right to monitor whether people obey Islamic rules, whether it be inside school, outside school, or even in the national park," Ismail Khan told a group of schoolboys who were being trained as a vigilante squad in early October 2002. By the end of 2003 the Department of Vice and Virtue was still banning all independent press and censoring television to the point where women appearing in movies were being replaced by a flower on the screen. The department continues to harass local civic leaders and journalists and to ban professional organizations such as women's and lawyers' groups, even a literary society where people read poems to one another. The violence against women by Taliban members was memorable not just for their violation of genuine Islamic values but for their obsessive attention to sexual and gender detail. The same can be said about Ismail Khan today when he forbids women to wear makeup outside the house even though they must wear the burqa at all times. Men are forbidden to wear neckties or shake hands with local or foreign women. Acts of torture were, and are, according to HRW, commonplace in Herat -- "beatings...hanging upside-down, whipping, and shocking with electrical wires attached to the toes and thumbs." Nice to see Rummy's as good a judge of character as ever. posted by Steve M. | 12:20 PM |   David Horowitz appeared on Dennis Miller's show last night as part of a panel that also included David Frum and Naomi Wolf. (Miller, Frum, and Horo versus Wolf -- exquisitely balanced, no?) The first topic, discussed at length, was David Kay's acknowledgment that he never found WMDs in Iraq. Wolf was a lot better than I expected her to be -- but she was unfailingly polite. Now, it could be argued that the proper response to Miller would have been to grab him by the scruff of the neck and beat him senseless while shouting "Apologize! Apologize!" and force-feeding him multiple transcripts of his appearance on The Tonight Show last spring: You know Hans Blix to me is like Weapons Inspector Clouseau or something. They're in there foraging around, they're in the Scooby Doo van looking for weapons. (Crowd laughs) But that would be wrong. In fact, there was no mention of Miller's little quip on last night's show. posted by Steve M. | 9:28 AM |   Kay also said that he thinks the weapons -- there are weapons of mass destruction in Syria. --David Horowitz on Dennis Miller's CNBC show last night Er, not exactly. Here's James Risen in yesterday's New York Times: Dr. Kay said there was also no conclusive evidence that Iraq had moved any unconventional weapons to Syria, as some Bush administration officials have suggested. He said there had been persistent reports from Iraqis saying they or someone they knew had see cargo being moved across the border, but there is no proof that such movements involved weapons materials. Now, Kay did say something rather different to The Telegraph, but it still doesn't jibe with what Horowitz said (emphasis mine): In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, Dr Kay, who last week resigned as head of the Iraq Survey Group, said that he had uncovered evidence that unspecified materials had been moved to Syria shortly before last year's war to overthrow Saddam. "We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons," he said. "But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD programme. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved." So it's not clear what Kay really believes, but he seems to believe that, at most, components of the program went to Syria -- though he's not sure even about that. posted by Steve M. | 7:42 AM | Monday, January 26, 2004   "...evil chemistry and evil biology..." Uh-oh -- did somebody replace John Ashcroft's sleep-learning tapes with audiobooks by Hunter Thompson? posted by Steve M. | 4:33 PM |   You may have heard that Charles Duelfer, who's replacing David Kay as America's lead WMD hunter in Iraq, is a "skeptic" on the subject of whether those weapons will be found; The New York Times used that word to describe him a few days ago. But in a story posted Friday, the far-right NewsMax site correctly points out something about Duelfer that was overlooked by the Times: The investigator picked by the CIA to replace David Kay as head of the U.S. team in Iraq hunting for weapons of mass destruction has told British reporters that he saw terrorists training near Baghdad in airplane hijack techniques resembling those used in the 9/11 attacks. In a November 2001 account to the London Observer, Charles Duelfer, the former No. 2 United Nations weapons inspector who was appointed Thursday to head the U.S.'s Iraq Survey Group, corroborated the testimony of Iraqi military defectors who said they helped train radical Muslim recruits to hijack U.S. airliners aboard a Boeing 707 fuselage parked at the terrorist training camp Salman Pak. At the time the London Observer reported: "Duelfer said he visited Salman Pak several times, landing by helicopter. He saw the 707, in exactly the place described by the defectors. The Iraqis, he said, told Unscom it was used by police for counter-terrorist training." "Of course we automatically took out the word 'counter,'" Duelfer told the Observer. "I'm surprised that people seem to be shocked that there should be terror camps in Iraq," he added.... (The Observer story is here; the quotes are accurate.) So is Duelfer in Iraq to beat the Saddam = Osama dead horse? Today, in another story, NewsMax alleges that, as a U.N. staffer during the Clinton years, Duelfer, working with Madeleine Albright, was engaging in back-channel communications with Iraq to avoid "regime change." But the story also adds this: NewsMax has also learned that during his final months at the U.N., Duelfer had numerous dealings with the Bush-Cheney campaign, specifically Condoleezza Rice. Sources at the U.N. claim that the acting U.N. arms chief was "unofficially" providing "thoughts" on Iraq to the Bush campaign. Curious, if true. And there's this: NewsMax has learned that Duelfer first entered Iraq shortly after U.S.-U.K. troops invaded in March 2003. Neither the U.S. government nor Duelfer would disclose what he was doing in the Persian Gulf war zone during the period in question. And even the Times story links Duelfer to spooky doings, however obliquely: Near the end of [Duelfer's] tenure [at the U.N.], the disclosure of a covert American effort to install listening devices and otherwise gather intelligence in Iraq under cover of the inspections effort strained relations between Washington and the United Nations. Paging John le Carre.... posted by Steve M. | 1:39 PM |   Golly, I hope the president doesn't fire Dick Cheney for this. We know that when Bush said he wanted U.N. backing for the war, he really, really, really meant it: Dick Cheney, US vice-president, "waged a guerrilla war" against attempts by Tony Blair, the British prime minister, to secure United Nations backing for the invasion of Iraq. Mr Cheney remained implacably opposed to the strategy even after George W. Bush, US president, addressed the UN on the importance of a multilateralist approach, according to a new biography of Mr Blair. ...One Blair aide remarked: "[Mr Cheney] waged a guerrilla war against the process . . . He's a visceral unilateralist". Another agreed: "Cheney fought it all the way - at every twist and turn, even after Bush's speech to the UN." ...Mr Stephens' book reveals a string of acid interventions by Mr Cheney during critical talks between the president and prime minister at Camp David in September 2002. Once, he directly rebuked Alastair Campbell, Mr Blair's communications director. In occasional contacts with British officials, Scooter Libby, the vice-president's chief of staff, made little secret of his boss's scorn for multilateralism. He once jibed: "Oh dear, we'd better not do that or we might upset the prime minister."... --Financial Times (Thanks to Rational Enquirer for the link; story also available here.) posted by Steve M. | 12:04 PM |   Joe Lieberman Deserves Your Vote Yup, Lieberman got an endorsement -- from NewsMax. You know NewsMax -- home to Rush's brother, Gary "The Clintons Hung Sex Toys on the White House Christmas Tree!" Aldrich, and other fine writers. Congratulations, Joe. People who loathe and despise Democrats almost as much as you do have endorsed you. This must be a great day for you. posted by Steve M. | 10:53 AM |   Oh yeah -- these people love us: Anti-U.S. tunes big hits in Iraq ...Americans have flooded [Iraq]'s airwaves with harmless Western and Arab pop tunes, but many are drawn more to the catchy rhythms of crooners such as Sabah al-Jenabi. "America has come and occupied Baghdad," he sings in one popular number. "The army and people have weapons and ammunition. Let's go fight and call out the name of God." U.S.-led coalition authorities have barred the media from promoting any kind of violence, but there is a hot market in the bazaars of central Iraq for cassettes by singers calling for insurrection. "The men of Fallujah are men of hard tasks," Mr. al-Jenabi sings in a dialect decipherable only to people in the Sunni Muslim heartland cities of Fallujah and Ramadi. "They paralyzed America with rocket-propelled grenades. May God protect them from [U.S.] airplanes." ...      At Sabah Recordings, a popular cassette shop in a Fallujah alleyway, owner Maher al-Ajrari initially denied that he sold Mr. al-Jenabi's music. But after an hour of conversation, he admitted that the resistance tapes are best sellers. Mr. Ajrari even carries multimedia "video" versions of the CDs, in which the anti-U.S. tunes are accompanied by footage of American troops killing and maiming Iraqis.... --Washington Times posted by Steve M. | 10:03 AM |   Just noticed this: David Horowitz will appear as a regular on the new Dennis Miller Show starting Monday night on CNBC at 9PM EST (6PM PST) Wow, that ought to be -- how can I put this? -- unusual. What is Horowitz going to do on TV? Give us exactly the same humorless rants week after week, over and over and over, the way he does in his books and articles? ("All college professors in America are left-wing totalitarian fascists! And all of America's cultural institutions are dominated by fascist leftists! I used to be a fascist leftist, so I should know! All college professors are...") That should work really well -- after all, America's TV viewers have always had a soft spot for whiny, humorless, paranoid, repetitive jeremiad-spewers: Forgive me this rant. I don't know what it is -- the increasingly hysterical, increasingly lunatic Bush-hating left all over the media and the press, my particular edition of the leftwing Sunday Times promoting yet another brain dead reactionary Marxist movement -- this time against copyright law -- before I could get to my crossword puzzle, the nasty Frank Rich repeating the "mistakes" he made thirty years ago in agitating to get America to leave the Vietnam war and expose two and half million Indochinese to the tender mercies of their Communist executioners, or the two minutes of the increasingly Marxoid Democrats I indulged myself in on C-Span before flipping it off? ... Our universities, our principal media and the Democratic Party are ... Oh yeah -- people are definitely going to click away from Everybody Loves Raymond to watch that. posted by Steve M. | 9:16 AM | Sunday, January 25, 2004   Inspired by these folks, I put Fatboy Slim's "Rockafeller Skank" and the Howard Dean Iowa speech in the audio Cuisinart (actually a copy of ProTools Free that likes to crash my PC); the result was "The Dean Skank." I think this link will work -- if not, try this. posted by Steve M. | 2:49 PM |   OK -- we know that Kerry plays hockey. Now, the gold standard for myth-building recreational activities in presidential politics is still JFK's touch football -- but since Kennedy, the two presidents who've gotten the most mileage out of what they do in their leisure time have been Reagan (horseback riding) and George W. (clearing brush and other ranch activities). There's been a slight undercurrent of fear in the discussion of these two presidents' leisure, as if the press is cowering before a dominance challenge: OK, you pasty East Coast liberals, you wanna try doing some of this? We're regularly told that no one from the Northeast can ever be president -- it's never said in so many words, but the implication is that the South and West breed real men, partly through rugged physical activity that's native to those regions, while the Northeast breeds pantywaists. But New Englanders play hockey, which is a pretty tough game. Oh, sure, it's played all over the place now, but it's a game with deep roots in New England. Why shouldn't New England get a little respect from the press for characteristic activities that involve toughness? Why is Bush with a chainsaw regarded as any more mythically macho than Kerry with a hockey stick? posted by Steve M. | 1:44 PM | Saturday, January 24, 2004   In 2002, the Bush administration and the GOP Congress gave certain laid-off workers what they claimed was a nifty way to obtain health insurance -- tax credits! Tax credits that would pay part of the cost of health insurance for people who have no jobs whatsoever (and thus, presumably, little or no income). Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) simply can't figure out why laid-off workers aren't taking advantage of this program. The New York Times quotes her: "We have to find out immediately what's limiting the success of this program. We are talking about health insurance for people who have lost their jobs. The delays are troubling and unacceptable." Roy J. Ramthun, a senior adviser on health initiatives at the Treasury Department, is equally baffled: "We are surprised that more people have not signed up for the advance payment option. We've tried to do everything we can to make the process of qualifying for the credit as simple as possible." E, you don't suppose these laid-off workers aren't giving the miss because, y'know, they can't afford the co-payment, do you? Mrs. Craven said she and her 61-year-old husband had lost their jobs in a Pillowtex mill where they worked for three decades. She has asthma. He is diabetic and has had a heart attack. Mrs. Craven said the premiums for the insurance offered to them ranged from $1,700 to $5,400 a month. Their share of the premiums would be $595 to $1,890 a month. The couple, drawing $416 a month in unemployment benefits, was in no position to pay such costs, Mrs. Craven said.... Nah! That can't be the explanation! It's obviously a complete mystery! posted by Steve M. | 11:57 PM |   Terrific news from Newsweek: Overall, 52 percent of those polled by NEWSWEEK say they would not like to see Bush serve a second term, compared to 44 percent who want to see him win again in November. As a result, Kerry is enjoying a marginal advantage over Bush, a first for the poll. Forty-nine percent of registered voters chose Kerry, compared to 46 percent who re-elected Bush. In fact, all Democrats are polling better against Bush, perhaps due to increased media attention to their primary horserace: Clark gets 47 percent of voters’ choice compared to 48 percent from Bush; Edwards has 46 percent compared to Bush’s 49; Leiberman wins 45 percent versus Bush’s 49 percent; and Dean fares the worst with 45 percent of their votes to Bush’s 50 percent. posted by Steve M. | 11:47 PM |   Good Lord -- did a New York Times reporter actually refer to Joe Lieberman's smile as voluptuous? Yup -- in the eleventh paragraph of this story. The mind reels. posted by Steve M. | 12:17 PM | Friday, January 23, 2004   David Kay stepped down as leader of the U.S. hunt for banned weapons in Iraq on Friday and said he did not believe the country had any large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons.... "I don't think they existed," Kay said. "What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last (1991) Gulf War, and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the '90s," he said.... --Reuters If he keeps saying this, I think Mr. Kay is about to get a little visit from the Politics of Personal Destruction Fairy.... posted by Steve M. | 7:11 PM |   Not even trying to conceal it, are they? Two senators have written Chief Justice William Rehnquist to raise concerns about Justice Antonin Scalia's impartiality in a case that involves the White House's energy task force. Scalia went on a hunting trip to Louisiana with Dick Cheney, a longtime friend, shortly after the court agreed to review a lower court's decision that required White House to identify members of the vice president's task force. Scalia has said there is no reason to question his ability to judge the case fairly. But in their letter, Democratic Sens. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, a presidential candidate, and Patrick Leahy of Vermont questioned whether the court can disqualify a justice who declines to withdraw from a case. The lawmakers asked if the court has issued any guidelines about accepting gifts or travel.... Scalia also had dinner with Cheney in November, two months after the administration asked the justices to overrule the lower court.... --AP And, annoying as we may find him, let's give Lieberman a little credit for this. You know, he wouldn't be such a bad guy if he'd just stop telling us how superior a human being he is to all other Democrats. posted by Steve M. | 6:28 PM |   This is weird: MOSES LAKE, Wash. -- In the days after the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that mad cow disease had been discovered in a Holstein in Washington, officials insisted that the cow was a "downer" -- unable to walk. The government's most significant subsequent step to prevent spread of the disease -- a Dec. 30 ban on processing "downer" cows for food -- stemmed from that finding. Now, three people have come forward to assert that the cow was not a downer. While their stories vary on what happened Dec. 9 at Vern's Moses Lake Meats, their accounts agree on a key point: The cow was able to walk on its own. The distinction on whether the cow could stand is significant. The department's search for mad cow disease has focussed on downed cattle or those with obvious signs of neurological damage.... ... three people who were at Vern's Moses Lake Meats on the day the cow was killed told The Oregonian the cow was a "walker." Those men include the plant manager, a former employee and a man who was present when the cow was delivered to the site. The third man asked not to be identified.... --The Oregonian We've really shrugged this incident off -- OK, we'll test a few more downer cows and everything will be hunky-dory again (not that it wasn't hunky-dory already!). But if this wasn't a downer, that's a reminder that we don't really know what warning signs to watch for, isn't it? posted by Steve M. | 5:12 PM |   Rod Dreher is the Dallas Morning News columnist who's collaborating with Peggy Noonan on the Case of the Mysterious Papal Quote. Dreher's a Catholic -- but he thinks the Vatican might be trying to screw with him by denying that the Pope praised his favorite movie, and it's really pissing him off. Here's the lead of his latest column: Whom do you trust, Hollywood or the Vatican? That used to be an easy call. Not anymore. This week, we see that either top officials of Mel Gibson's production company are manipulative deceivers or the top aide to Pope John Paul II and the papal spokesman is. "Manipulative deceivers"! But wait -- Dreher's not finished. Here he is talking to ABC News: Dreher is not convinced and says he thinks the Vatican is trying to reverse itself, adding, "I think it's a disgrace. I think the Vatican has to remember the commandment 'Do not bear false witness.'" Lecturing his church on morality? Sure. If the church is getting in the way of the right-wing culture war, then the church is The Enemy. posted by Steve M. | 3:28 PM |   Lucianne Goldberg, vileness personified, on the ABC interview of Howard and Judy Dean: Judy, the un-Hillary sweet., with just a tiny touch of Hedda Nussbaum In case you don't recognize the allusion: Ten years ago, Hedda Nussbaum became a household name. Her face, shattered and scarred after years of physical abuse by her live-in partner, Joel Steinberg, was splashed across newspaper and magazine covers when Steinberg beat the couple's 6 year old adopted daughter Lisa to death. (That's from SafeNet, which also reproduces a picture of the abused Nussbaum shortly after Steinberg's arrest -- an image that's burned into a lot of memories around here.) Goldberg worked this riff yesterday as well. And Peggy Noonan and National Review Online's Kathryn Jean Lopez have had a good chuckle over this little quip, in reference to Dean's Iowa speech: There's an old joke that Goerge Bush 41 reminds women of their first husband. Howard Dean last night reminds women of their first husband against whom they had to take out a restraining order. Yeah, I know -- your opponent's drowning, you toss in an anvil. But there are anvils and anvils. Absence evidence, a charge like this, or even jokes like this, should be beyond the pale. This is essentially calling the man a domestic Hitler. posted by Steve M. | 12:06 PM |   Lead story in today's Wall Street Journal: Wage inequality -- the gap between America's highest and lowest earners -- has started widening again.... New data from the Labor Department show that after adjustment for inflation, salaries of the country's lowest-paid workers -- those who fall just inside the bottom 10% of the pay range -- fell 0.3% last year from 2002. Meanwhile, the salaries of the highest paid workers -- those who are just inside the top 10% -- were unchanged. The divergence appeared to grow in the fourth quarter as higher-paid workers gained ground and lower-paid workers slipped further.... (Emphasis mine.) Gee, the fourth quarter of '03 -- that's the quarter the Bushies are always boasting about, isn't it? The numbers continue a movement to greater wage inequality that began around the time President Bush succeeded President Clinton.... posted by Steve M. | 11:14 AM |   As we belabor the subject of "temperament" and a certain candidate's marriage, let's not forget that four years from now many of the people who are criticizing or questioning Howard Dean (and Judy Dean) will be calling for a Giuliani presidency. You remember Rudy Giuliani -- a guy who was really angry much of the time (no, not in the aftermath of 9/11, but virtually every day prior to that in his eight years as mayor). Giuliani as mayor was snappish, punitive, and vindictive. Giuliani also once went ballistic before a crowd in the midst of a campaign, in 1992 -- but he didn't merely rally the faithful with an overabundance of enthusiasm. What he did was unleash a profanity-laden denunciation of then-mayor David Dinkins before a crowd of cops objecting to a proposed mayoral commission on police corruption. The cops subsequently rioted. (See Wayne Barrett's Rudy!, pp. 259ff.) Oh, and Giuliani's wife also famously absented herself from many events she was expected to attend with him -- she too said it was because she had a career separate from her husband's. Her absence was the subject of occasional snickers on the inside pages of the papers, but that was that ... until it became clear that, unlike the Deans, the Giulianis hated each other's guts and were headed for the sort of ugly divorce you'd try to avoid if you were a grown-up. But none of this will matter in '08. Rudy doesn't stand a chance to get the GOP nomination -- he's pro-choice and pro-gay rights, although I suppose his positions on these issues could "evolve" -- but he's loved in the media. And among the people who'll gush over Rudy most audibly will be Diane Sawyer and David Letterman, who took Dean to the woodshed last night on national TV. posted by Steve M. | 9:26 AM | Thursday, January 22, 2004   Yikes! Report: Rumsfeld considers striking Hizbullah to provoke Syria US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is considering provoking a military confrontation with Syria by attacking Hizbullah bases near the Syrian border in Lebanon, according to the authoritative London-based Jane's Intelligence Digest. In an article to be published on Friday, the journal said multi-faceted US attacks, which would be conducted within the framework of the global war on terrorism, are likely to focus on Hizbullah bases in the Bekaa Valley of eastern Lebanon. It noted that the deployment of US special forces in the Bekaa Valley, where most of Syria's occupation forces in Lebanon are based, would be highly inflammatory and would "almost certainly involve a confrontation with Syrian troops." Such a conflict might well prove to be the objective of the US, said the journal... The journal noted that the US administration has long considered Damascus "a prime candidate for regime-change," along with Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and, possibly, Saudi Arabia. "Syria, once a powerhouse of Arab radicalism that could not be ignored, has been seriously weakened, both militarily and politically. Washington may feel that the time is coming to oust Assad and the ruling generals.... --Jerusalem Post UPDATE: Here's part of the Jane's story. (The rest is for subscribers only.) Yeah, I think this is coming. The lead story in today's edition of Conrad Black's New York Sun was "Syrians Airlifted Arms to Hezbollah." It's not available to nonsubscribers, but here's how it starts: A Syrian earthquake-relief flight to Iran returned to Damascus from Tehran earlier this month loaded with a lethal cargo of weapons bound for the Hezbollah terrorist organization, American intelligence shows. Administration officials told The New York Sun that American intelligence agencies have collected overhead photographs of a Syrian aircraft that delivered relief aid in December to the victims of the Bam earthquake. The plane was loaded with small arms in Tehran before its return flight to Damascus. This was also confirmed by American signal intercepts suggesting that the weapons were destined for Hezbollah camps in southern Lebanon.... And there's this, from Reuters: U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Pat Roberts says there is some concern Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have gone to Syria, as Washington vowed to carry on searching for such arms in Iraq. Roberts, a leading member of President George W. Bush's Republican Party, said in Washington on Wednesday: "I think that there is some concern that shipments of WMD (weapons of mass destruction) went to Syria." He did not elaborate.... Weapons shipments or no weapons shipments, I think an attack of the kind that's apparently being contemplated would make a lot of center-dwellers start asking whether we lefties have been right along when we've said that Bush is a war-happy lunatic. posted by Steve M. | 6:40 PM |   A couple of weeks ago, a Sean Hannity fan sent Sean a funny: Many thanks to the loyal 3-hours a day listener that sent in this unique photo of a soldier meeting New York Senator, Hillary Clinton while she was on her "troop tour." Pay attention to the "hand shaking." Enjoy! Here's the picture. Now imagine this photo with Laura Bush or Barbara Bush substituted for Hillary -- and with the little message at the top of the photo the same. Think our soldier would already have been dishonorably discharged, under pressure from right-wing Web vultures, GOP congressmen, and talk radio? posted by Steve M. | 4:04 PM |   The Economic Policy Institute confirms what we already know: Jobs shift from higher-paying to lower-paying industries In 48 of the 50 states, jobs in higher-paying industries have given way to jobs in lower-paying industries since the recession ended in November 2001. Nationwide, industries that are gaining jobs relative to industries that are losing jobs pay 21% less annually. For the 30 states that have lost jobs since the recession purportedly ended, this is the other shoe dropping -- not only have jobs been lost, but in 29 of them the losses have been concentrated in higher paying sectors. And for 19 of the 20 states that have seen some small gain in jobs since the end of the recession, the jobs gained have been disproportionately in lower-paying sectors.... A story in the L.A. Times summarizes the findings for California: Statewide, since the national recession officially ended in November 2001, the jobs that have been created are in industries that pay an average of 40% less than do those in which jobs have disappeared, the Economic Policy Institute said.... ...California lost 127,000 manufacturing jobs and 55,000 jobs in the information sector from November 2001 to November 2003. Meanwhile, the leisure and hospitality sector gained 48,000 jobs, retail trade grew by 32,000 and health and education, which includes day-care teachers and low-wage hospital crews, grew by 65,000. It's pretty much like that for every state in the union. Here's the EPI's data chart (warning: it's a PDF) and here's the California story in graph form from the Times. posted by Steve M. | 12:39 PM |   Weird: U.S. Official: No Truth to Rumor Bin Laden Captured --Reuters OSAMA CAPTURE DENIED --Sky News "There is no way this could be true. Drudge never mentioned it." --comment at Free Republic Are we actually getting somewhere in this quest, or are the Bushies floating disinformation because, post-Iowa, they now think they're going to have a competitive election? posted by Steve M. | 11:41 AM |   Skimble has turned a Washington Post profile of the vice president into a poem that I find quietly chilling: It's called "The Silence of Cheney." An excerpt: He likes to ask questions, pointed and at times rapid-fire. This is a variation on silence in that he does not explicitly express his views or divulge information. He just acquires. posted by Steve M. | 10:51 AM |   A lot of people (myself included) have called Peggy Noonan a liar for declaring in December that the Pope had said of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, "It is as it was" -- which the Vatican denies. But Noonan insists she's not a liar. She's not a liar because the movie's producer told her that Monsignor Stanislaw Dziwisz told him that the Pope told him, "It is as it was." In a follow-up column today, Noonan acknowledges that, er, yeah, when she e-mailed the Pope's spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, hoping for confirmation of the quote, she didn't get it: So I e-mailed Dr Navarro Valls at the Vatican telling him I wanted to write a piece for OpinionJournal and asking him about the quote. I didn't hear back and sent another: "Dr. Navarro Valles [sic], my deadline is in two hours and I do hope you'll let me know if there is anything on the Pope's reaction beyond 'It is as it was'--wonderful words, and I know you have already been in touch with Steve about them, but I would greatly appreciate it if there's anything you could add regarding general Vatican feeling on the film, any further comment from the Holy Father, etc. Best, Peggy Noonan" I got a response. "Dear Peggy, I don't have for now any other comment on this. I [sic] anything is said in the future I will send it to you. Greetings, J. Navarro-Valls." So, no confirmation. But the guy who produced the movie -- and who presumably stands to make or lose a lot of money, depending on how it does at the box office -- said the quote was legit. And that was enough for Ol' Peggy. After Noonan's "It is..." column appeared, the producer sent her an e-mail that included a Navarro-Valls message confirming the quote. But Navarro-Valls has now e-mailed Noonan and said that that quote confirmation was fabricated. (Gosh -- a Hollywood guy faking a rave review? That would never happen, would it?) Of course, Noonan ran with the quote before getting any confirmation of it whatsoever, real or fake, and after failing to get a confirmation from the Vatican. But hey -- pass up a major propaganda coup? A good right-wing apparatchik would never do that. (UPDATE: Yeah, World O'Crap got to this story first, and is a lot funnier.) (UPDATE: And TBOGG is funny and nasty.) posted by Steve M. | 9:45 AM | Wednesday, January 21, 2004   Let's do the math: Bush proposes $250,000,000 for job training. We have 8,774,000 unemployed people. That's $28.49 for each unemployed person in America. That wouldn't buy much job training, would it? posted by Steve M. | 11:15 PM |   I should also have mentioned a couple of other highlights of the new New York Times bestseller list: Not only is Ron Suskind's book at #1 on the nonfiction list, as I noted below, but at #3, #4, and #5 (after Pete Rose at #2) are American Dynasty, the Kevin Phillips book on the Bushes; Dude, Where's My Country? by Michael Moore; and Lies ... by Al Franken. Oh, and John le Carre's Absolute Friends, which includes passages critical of the Iraq war, is at #3 in its first week on the fiction list. posted by Steve M. | 10:48 PM |   On the new bestseller list that was e-mailed today by The New York Times, the #1 nonfiction hardcover is Ron Suskind's The Price of Loyalty. That's good, but unfortunately this book is already "so five minutes ago" as far as the press is concerned. We proles are just going to have to be gauche and keep talking about it. posted by Steve M. | 5:42 PM |   Reuters reports that a Belgian cardinal has called the vast majority of gay men and lesbians "sexual perverts"; at National Review Online's blog, Mike Potemra declares that this is actually a compassionate statement. Don't ask me to explain Potemra's logic -- just read the links yourself. Where does the right find these people? (OK, maybe this will help: Potemra notes that the cardinal thinks only about 5-10% of gay people are really gay -- the rest are just, in Potemra's paraphrase, "libertine dabblers." Can we safely assume that this cardinal doesn't get out much? And didn't I see the Libertine Dabblers opening for Wall of Voodoo at Irving Plaza back in the '80s?) posted by Steve M. | 2:16 PM |   When last weekend's New York Times/CBS poll showed Bush's approval rating slipping to 50%, Andrew Sullivan declared that the books were cooked: He quoted "a seasoned Republican analyst" who said in an e-mail, ...in the CBS/NYT poll on Sunday, the party ID was 34 percent GOP and 47 percent Democratic. Is it any wonder the numbers were what they were? This is more evidence, in my judgment, why you shouldn't trust the NYT polls. It's not clear where the "seasoned Republican analyst" got these numbers -- they didn't appear anywhere in the stories on the poll published by The Times and CBS -- but if "a seasoned Republican analyst" said it was so, that was good enough for Andy. He called for an investigation by the Times ombudsman. Then Sullivan heard from Rich Meislin, the Times's editor for news surveys and election analysis. To his credit, Sully reprinted what Meislin had to say: I'm not sure where your seasoned Republican analyst is getting his numbers, but they seem to be incorrect.... The latest NYT/CBS News poll, taken Jan. 12-15, has this party ID breakdown: Republicans 28 Democrats 32 Independents 31 So Sully libeled the Times based on a GOP operative's lie. Incidentally, Gallup has an instant poll today on the State of the Union address. Here's the headline: Speech Watchers React Positively to Bush's Message Want to know what the breakdown of poll respondents was? The sample consists of 46% of respondents who identify themselves as Republicans, 26% who identify themselves as Democrats, and 28% who identify themselves as independents. Nearly twice as many Republicans as Democrats. No comment on this from Sullivan. posted by Steve M. | 11:40 AM |   I thought it was the most belligerent State of the Union that I have ever seen. It was the return of President Bring 'Em On featuring one narrowed eye, the smirk, and an occasional glare towards the Democrats, particularly when they applauded at this: Key provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire next year. (Applause.) ...throwing the boy off his rhythm. It was scattershot and bizarre (steroids? WTF?)... That's TBOGG on the speech. I agree, I agree. More here. posted by Steve M. | 10:45 AM |   OK -- it was an easy speech to criticize. But the Iraq section of the speech was premised on the notion that Democrats have no reply when Bush says, Hey, I got rid of Saddam, and what was your plan? Not getting rid of Saddam? -- and that's still a compelling message for a lot of voters. We talk about Bush's "ever-shifting" justifications for the Iraq war, but for him (and for roughly half of America, alas), that ever-expanding list of reasons for war is a strength: Hey, the Iraqi people now have FREEDOM!, and Saddam had weapons programs, and ... and ... and hey, Qaddafi just disarmed! That's another good thing! Everyone in America knows the reason-turned-multiple-reasons for the Iraq war. The counterargument just isn't as familiar to American voters. Oh, sure -- people say, "Well, what about doing something for this country?" But an awful lot of Americans still think we did a Good Thing in Iraq. We gave them Freedom. Did we? Despite the best efforts of the troops on the ground, it looks as if we gave them chaos and anarchy, thanks to the Bush administration's "Duh, what do we do now?" approach to the "postwar" period. Bush says, without fear of contradiction, "The world is a safer place." But Iraq is dangerously unstable. How does that make the world a safer place? And we have ten times as many troops in Iraq as we have hunting al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. We captured Saddam, yet air travel got more dangerous -- and even in Iraq violence and unrest didn't abate. And where was the threat to the U.S. in Iraq? Where were the weapons? We had Saddam in a box. Republicans talk as if we did nothing unpleasant to Saddam between the end of the '91 war and March of 2003 -- as if the sanctions and the bombing runs in the no-fly zones were a slap on the wrist. These measures were rarely mentioned by the media, so Republicans can argue that Clinton wrung his hands while Bush did something. The fact is that we had an unpleasant but measured and effective response to Saddam, then, using 9/11 as a pretext, Bush launched a war that killed five hundred Americans (and counting) to contain a threat that was already contained -- and that had nothing to do with 9/11. I'm belaboring the obvious -- but it's not obvious to a hell of a lot of voters. This counterargument just isn't familiar out in the heartland. If that continues to be the case, the winner in November, appalling as we may find it, will be Bush, the war hero. posted by Steve M. | 9:36 AM | Tuesday, January 20, 2004   Practically the first thing out of George Stephanopoulos's mouth on ABC was his assertion that the State of the Union address framed the upcoming election as a choice "between optimism and pessimism." Hunh? I defy you to find anything in the speech itself that makes that assertion. It's just not there. It's not in the speech -- it's in the spin. I heard the same "optimism" line on NPR this morning, and no doubt you've heard or read it too, somewhere or other. Does our press even know the difference anymore between objective reality and spin? (UPDATE: Now Peter Jennings -- who's sometimes kind of snarky about this administration -- is asking John Kerry about Bush's "optimistic" speech. Kerry, defensively: "Well, I'm optimistic." Enough already!) posted by Steve M. | 10:23 PM |   Well, they removed the Ten Commandments monument. No, not that one -- another one: A Ten Commandments monument has been removed from the grounds of city hall in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.... A city council member had the granite marker placed in front of city hall yesterday, when it was closed for the Martin Luther King Junior holiday. Vernon Robinson says he was inspired by Alabama's former chief justice, who had installed a Ten Commandments monument at the state courthouse -- and lost his job over it. A Winston-Salem city spokeswoman says officials feared the four-foot-tall monument would topple over.... --AP The right-wing World Net Daily had this when the monument went up: ...Vernon Robinson, a candidate for a vacant U.S. House seat, said he paid $2,000 out of his personal funds to install the monument on a walkway yesterday in front of the city hall, which was deserted because of the Martin Luther King holiday, the Winston-Salem Journal reported. ...The city council member said he wanted the monument to be a surprise to the city's citizens and insisted he had no thought of what effect it would have on his campaign for the Republican nomination for the 5th Congressional District, the Winston-Salem paper said. No thought about how it would affect his campaign for Congress -- oh yeah, that's plausible. So, who is Vernon Robinson anyway? Well, he's not really himself. Click on the "candidate for a vacant U.S. House seat" link in that quote and you get, in addition to the home page, a pop-up ad that says, proudly, "Jesse Helms is back! And this time, he's black." --The Winston-Salem Journal The ad features a picture of a smiling Mr. Robinson -- who is, yes, black -- along with Ol' Jesse, who's also smiling. Not much more you need to know about Vernon Robinson, is there? But you should go to the Robinson for Congress issues page. Among the matters that exercise Mr. R. are "the feminization of the military"; his discussion of abortion fixates on a prostitute who is pregnant for the eighth time. In the ninth month of her pregnancy she finds out that her child is a girl and not a boy, so she decides to have a late term, sex-selection, partial birth abortion. Because she is too poor to afford the procedure, she wants you to pay for it with your tax dollars. Because that happens all the time in this country -- right? Oh, and the godly Mr. Robinson believes in guns. Dusty Rhoades, a columnist for The Pilot in Southern Pines, North Carolina, wrote this a year ago: Robinson, a Republican city councilman from Winston-Salem, suggested during the recent Orange Alert that folks preparing for terrorist attacks make sure they augment their survival kits with their trusty shotgun, rifle, or other firearm of choice. Robinson made his remarks at a joint meeting with Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines, held at the Green Street United Methodist Church.... Does Robinson think that we’re going to need weapons to fight off human wave attacks of wild-eyed, shoe-bombing Muslim extremists? Nope. The threat Robinson envisions comes from your fellow Americans, or to be more specific, those folks who failed to heed the words of Homeland Security and who didn’t stock up. "Robinson said people who stocked up on food and water would need guns to fend off people who had no supplies," according to a story in the News and Observer.... Yeah, that sounds just like the approach Jesus would take, doesn't it? posted by Steve M. | 5:00 PM |   Ah, if only... If Iraqis ever see Saddam Hussein on trial, they want his former American allies shackled beside him. "Saddam should not be the only one who is put on trial. The Americans backed him when he was killing Iraqis so they should be prosecuted," said Ali Mahdi, a builder. "If the Americans escape justice they will face God's justice. They must be stoned in hell." ... In street interviews, Iraqis said Saddam must be tried by an Iraqi court prepared to hand down the death penalty and examine his ties to past U.S. governments.... "Saddam was a top graduate of the American school of politics," said Assad al-Saadi, standing with friends in the slum of Sadr city, formerly called Saddam City, a Shi'ite Muslim area oppressed by Saddam's security agents. "My brother was an army officer who was executed. Saddam is a criminal and the Americans were his friends. We need justice so that we can forget the past." ... "The Americans and Saddam should face justice. Do you really think the Americans are going to put themselves on trial?" said Ali, a U.S.-trained policeman. "Of course we hope the Americans and Saddam will face trial. But will it ever happen? I doubt it." --Reuters posted by Steve M. | 2:17 PM |   The Vatican makes it official -- Peggy Noonan is a liar: Pope never commented on Gibson's 'Passion' film, says papal secretary Pope John Paul II never said "It is as it was" after watching Mel Gibson's film on the passion of Jesus, said the pope's longtime personal secretary, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz. "The Holy Father told no one his opinion of this film," the archbishop told Catholic News Service Jan. 18.... --Catholic News Service Here's the lie, in a December Wall Street Journal column from lying liar Noonan: 'It Is as It Was': Mel Gibson's "The Passion" gets a thumbs-up from the pope. Here's some happy news this Christmas season, an unexpected gift for those who have seen and admired Mel Gibson's controversial movie, "The Passion," and wish to support it. The film has a new admirer, and he is a person of some influence. He is in fact the head of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church. Pope John Paul II saw the movie the weekend before last, in the Vatican, apparently in his private rooms, on a television, with a DVD, and accompanied by his closest friend, Msgr. Stanislaw Dziwisz. Afterwards and with an eloquent economy John Paul shared with Msgr. Dziwisz his verdict. Dziwisz, the following Monday, shared John Paul's five-word response with the co-producer of The Passion, Steve McEveety. This is what the pope said: "It is as it was."... In yesterday's New York Times, Frank Rich could confirm only that the film's assistant director said that Archbishop Dziwisz said that the Pope had said the film "is as it was" -- third-hand hearsay. Today's Times follow-up summarizes what's in the Caholic News Service story, though it ends with a blind quote that's clearly intended either to spare Noonan embarrassment (assuming she's capable of it) or to express solidarity with her and with Robert Novak, Matt Drudge, and all the film's other right-wing defenders: One prominent Roman Catholic official close to the Vatican, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said he had reason to believe that the pope probably did make the remark about the film. "But I think there's some bad feeling at the Vatican that the comment was used the way it was," the official added. "It's all a little soap-operatic." Rich's column, by the way, quotes a few viewers who've seen the film and have been less than enthusiastic: Mark Hallinan, a priest at St. Ignatius Loyola Catholic Church, found the movie's portrayal of Jews "very bad," adding, "I don't think the intent was anti-Semitic, but Jews are unfairly portrayed." Robert Levine, the senior rabbi at Congregation Rodeph Sholom in Manhattan, called the film "appalling" and its portrayal of Jews "painful." On Christmas Day, Richard N. Ostling, the religion writer of The Associated Press, also analyzed "The Passion," writing that "while the script doesn't imply collective guilt for Jews as a people, there are villainous details that go beyond the Bible." A discussion of Rich's column at the right-wing chat site Free Republic doesn't mince words -- it's called The Pope's Thumbs Up for Gibson's 'Passion' (Liberal Jewish writer accuses Mel of using the Pope) Lovely. posted by Steve M. | 12:35 PM |   Too soon for direct Iraqi elections? As Juan Cole notes in his blog, the British are saying no, according to this story from the Financial Times: British officials in Basra no longer oppose early elections in Iraq, saying security and procedural obstacles to polls could be surmounted before the transfer to civilian control on June 30. "We have a working hypothesis that you could manage an electoral process within the timeframe and the security available," said Dominic D'Angelo, British spokesman for the UK-led southern zone of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Basra. ...British officials said their discussions involved a plan whereby voters in municipal and provincial polls would elect two-thirds of the Electoral College that will nominate delegates for a national assembly. The remaining third would be selected by the Governing Council. The officials said that, while Ayatollah Sistani's proposal to base an electoral roll on ration cards was "flawed", an electoral roll drawn up from a mixture of ration, health and identity cards could prove acceptable.... Cole does note that The British may in part been driven to this announcement by pure fear. They appear to have upped their estimate of the number of protesters last Thursday from 30,000 to 3 to 10 times that. posted by Steve M. | 9:16 AM |   Iraqi women recently got shafted -- something your newspaper didn't tell you. Here's the lead of a story from last night's All Things considered: Despite Saddam Hussein's tyranny, women in Iraq enjoyed some of the broadest legal protections in the Muslim world. But the U.S.-backed Governing Council has voted to eliminate those protections. The decision came in an unpublicized meeting last month, when the council ordered that the "personal status" law, as it's known, be canceled. Family issues would be placed under the Islamic legal doctrine known as sharia. To listen to the story, scroll down to "Iraqi Women Protest Loss of Rights" here; you can read Juan Cole's article on this here. posted by Steve M. | 7:32 AM | Monday, January 19, 2004   Dean is the only major Democratic candidate to evade the sissifying barbs of the GOP's shock-jock surrogates. First, comely John Edwards was labeled "the Breck girl." (He trimmed his hair, to no avail.) When Edwards flagged and John Kerry emerged, he was dubbed "Mr. Ketchup," implying that his wife's fortune, and by extension Teresa Heinz Kerry herself, wears the pants in their manse. --Richard Goldstein in last week's Nation I bring this quote up because a lot of people have been worried that Howard Dean would have been too vulnerable to attacks in the general election, and many of those people, I guess, are relieved, if not delighted, to see the Iowa result. I understand that. But remember: Kerry's not going to be the candidate -- he may be the party's nominee, but if he is, Ketchup Boy is going to be the candidate. And if Edwards is nominated, Breck Girl is going to be the candidate. You know what I mean: The process of turning the Democratic nominee into an awkward, pathetic loser and oddball is going to happen, no matter what -- the process just happened to kick into high gear a lot earlier for Dean. The mainstream press isn't parroting GOP attacks on most of the Democratic candidates yet, but it'll happen soon. And you have to ask yourself who has the backbone to stand up to that kind of crap. Does Kerry? Does Edwards? I worry, especially about Edwards -- it's not that a sunny-dispositioned guy can't fight a bare-knuckle brawl and win (see Clinton, Bill), but right now Edwards is getting so many brownie points from the press for being nice that I'm afraid he'll be putty in Karl Rove's hands. Well, we'll see. I suppose you could say these guys fought back in Iowa. But their primary antagonist was Howard Dean, and when they responded, the press piled on with them. The press damn sure isn't going to pile on with the Democratic nominee in the fall. I want someone who can take hits and keep swinging. It doesn't have to be someone like Dean who seems like a battler -- maybe someone whose personality is a little less "hot" (as ol' Marshall McLuhan used to say) would play better in Peoria. But it's got to be someone who can take a low blow without crumpling, and who can battle back. I have trouble seeing Edwards as that candidate, or Kerry for that matter. But maybe they'll surprise me. posted by Steve M. | 11:16 PM |   Over in the A section of yesterday's New York Times, did Jodi Wilgoren, in what was supposedly a straight news story on Howard Dean, really go on about milkshakes for three paragraphs? Yup: And Dr. Dean, the man who would be president, stood at [Senator Tom] Harkin's feet, slurping a strawberry milkshake. Never mind the 12 pounds, mostly from chocolate-chip cookies, he has put on in the past few months of the campaign. Forget the cameras following his every move. In 109 days of campaigning here in Iowa since February 2002, Dr. Dean has rarely missed a milkshake opportunity. He even had one poured into a glass perched on his head last month at Stella's Diner in Urbandale. Unsure whether to believe the lengthening list of polls showing his lead here and elsewhere slipping, or the ever-expanding cadre of consultants assuring him that his ground troops are unmatched, Dr. Dean stared into his glass. Strawberry is his favorite. And a few paragraphs later, utterly pleased with herself, she returns to the beverages again, calling Dean "shake drunk" as she describes him pressing the flesh. Oh well -- at least she's not doing what they did to Al Gore in 2000 with all that talk about "earth tones." At least she's not wasting time talking about Dean's clothes.... He even borrowed a sweater from his deputy campaign manager to fit in better with his new roadie, Mr. Harkin, but instead of looking more comfortable, he seemed to miss having sleeves to roll above the elbow. Whoops -- sorry. I guess she is. posted by Steve M. | 9:14 AM |   In a fine New York Times Magazine article about a woman's futile strruggle to leave the ranks of America's working poor, David K. Shipler makes an important observation about what's sacrosanct in this country. The woman, Caroline Payne, gets a manufacturing job but is required to work rotating shifts -- sometimes days, sometimes evenings, sometimes nights. She can't construct a regular routine, for herself or any caregiver, so she sometimes has to leave her profoundly retarded 14-year-old daughter (who also has epilepsy) home alone -- which leaves her open to charges of neglect. Shipler writes: Perhaps the most curious and troubling facet of this confounding puzzle was everybody's failure to pursue the most obvious solution: if the factory had just let Caroline work day shifts, her problem would have disappeared. She asked a supervisor and got brushed off, but nobody else -- not the school principal, not the doctor, not the myriad agencies she contacted -- nobody in the profession of helping thought to pick up the phone and appeal to the factory manager or the foreman or anybody else in authority at her workplace. Indeed, this solemn regard for the employer as untouchable and beyond the realm of persuasion unless in violation of the law permeates the culture of American antipoverty efforts, with only a few exceptions. The most socially minded physicians and psychologists who treat malnourished children, for example, will advocate vigorously with government agencies to provide food stamps, health insurance, housing and the like. But when they are asked if they ever urge the parents' employers to raise wages enough to pay for nutritious food, the doctors express surprise at the notion. First, it has never occurred to them, and second, it seems hopeless. Wages and hours are set by the marketplace, and you cannot expect magnanimity from the marketplace. It is the final arbiter from which there is no appeal. Business in this country is like an abusive father -- it causes pain, but we need it, or assume we do, assume we'd be left out in the cold without it, so we protect it -- we close ranks with it and don't let anything harm it. posted by Steve M. | 9:05 AM | Sunday, January 18, 2004   There's one little flaw in Maureen Dowd's argument today: Presidential campaigns trace the patterns of mythological adventure, as contenders strive to show they are superior in the knightly virtues of temperance, loyalty and courage. Once candidates showed that they had completed the "hero-task" by highlighting their war exploits — J.F.K. and PT 109, George Bush senior getting shot down as a young Navy pilot over Chichi Jima. Candidates in the Vietnam War generation who chose not to go to Vietnam had to find more personal dragons and giants to slay. Bill Clinton told the story of confronting an abusive and alcoholic stepfather; George W. Bush recounted overcoming alcoholism and career drift by embracing Christ.... ...a race rooted mainly in attacking the president may not take Dr. Dean far enough. Voters want someone who's been through the fire. They care about character. They want to know the evolution of the man, even if it's a myth. The flaw is that in 2000 George W. Bush got fewer votes from the Great Unwashed, for whom Dowd claims to speak, that Al Gore did. Gore didn't talk much about his own "character"-- maybe a bit in the convention speech. And what the public thought it knew about his life story was nonsense concocted by the GOP and spread by willing accomplices in the press, as Bob Somerby's Daily Howler points out regularly (e.g., here). Yet Gore got half a million votes more than the guy who told us his liquor cabinet was personally emptied by God. posted by Steve M. | 11:52 AM |

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(also here) "Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming President" (from Scotland's Sunday Herald) "Yankee Go Home: Who's leading the anti-war movement? Congressional Republicans" (1999 Slate compilation of GOP antiwar quotes) "The Press vs. Al Gore: How lazy reporting, pack journalism and GOP spin cost him the election" by Eric Boehlert (from Rolling Stone) America's Taliban (Coulter, Falwell, etc.) in their own words Language: A Key Mechanism of Control (Gingrich's guidelines, still in use today) John Scalzi's "I Hate Your Politics" Column IS IT ANN COULTER -- OR IS IT DAVID DUKE? IS IT CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS -- OR IS IT DWIGHT SCHRUTE? SORELY MISSED: * Americans Are Dumb * Anti-Coulter * Billmon (Whiskey Bar) * The Blog Report at Salon * Busy, Busy, Busy * Cursor * Greg T. * Happy Furry Puppy Story Time with Norbizness * The Jed Report * Little Green Fascists * Main and Cenral * Martini Republic * MaxSpeak * mfinley * Mykeru * Nathan Newman * The News Blog (R.I.P. 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