The New Republic and CBS News are both reporting that Howard Dean is going to win the endorsement of the SEIU. The SEIU(Service Employees International Union), is the largest union involved in the AFL-CIO.
"It's Howard Dean or no one," said a spokesperson for the SEIU. "He’s the only one with momentum, the only one who there’s any passion for on the board."
The New Republic reports that Andy Stern, president of the SEIU, said, "It's come down to the one candidate who has demonstrated enough support among our members, which is Howard Dean."
This endosement is a major blow to the Gephardt campaign, who thought they could gain some much needed momentum by getting big union endorsements. Also, this most certainly gives Dean a bump in Iowa, which is a blue-collar state. This endorsement gives Dean the votes of many health care workers, and it validates his candidacy with many minority voters.
This endorsement has to be extremely bad news for every other Democratic candidate. If anyone believed that Dean's insurgence would eventually self-destruct, well, what's Plan B? Somebody better have a Plan B. Because it looks like Dean has a commanding lead in New Hampshire, and with this SEIU endorsement it looks likely that Dean will get Iowa as well. I guess all the candidates could just take the position that one Democratic candidate's adviser took, "It's done. It's Dean."
A former producer, Charlie Reina, who worked for the Fox News Channel for six years, wrote a scathing letter about the way the station reports its news. His letter, found on Poynter Online, is not surprising to anyone with half a brain that has ever watched Fox News.
Before I go any further with this entry, I should make it clear that I am not fair and balanced about my feelings towards Fox News. I believe that FNC is the scourge of journalism, and one of the most frightening cogs in the right-wing propaganda machine. If you watch Fox News then you are not getting the real story, you are merely being hand-fed a greasy story that they want you to suck up. (See further evidence of my feelings towards Fox News in my October 12 entry, ‘Fox News Breeds Ignorance'.) I know that many people argue that most news organizations operate with a subjective viewpoint. I disagree, obviously there is always a level of subjectivity in journalism, but I have never seen such a persistently unfair and askew view of the world as is portrayed daily on the FNC, and Charlie Reina’s letter just illustrates the staggering lack of journalistic integrity that this “news” organization projects into our homes.
It has been made abundantly clear that the right believes that the left has been controlling the media for years, and it turns out that the right’s frustration with this myth had driven them so far into mass paranoia that they reacted with Fox News. Namely, Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes reacted. Reina says that Fox is “a news network run by one of the most high-profile political operatives of recent times. Everyone there understands that FNC is, to a large extent, "Roger's Revenge" - against what he considers a liberal, pro-Democrat media establishment that has shunned him for decades.”
Ailes has worked for Nixon, Bush I, Limbaugh, and now he is the president of Fox News. If that doesn’t sound crooked to you, then your eyes must be crossed.
Reina goes on to give a solid example of Fox News outlandish “news” tactics:
For example, in June of last year, when a California judge ruled the Pledge of Allegiance's "Under God" wording unconstitutional, FNC's newsroom chief ordered the judge's mailing address and phone number put on the screen. The anchor, reading from the Teleprompter, found himself explaining that Fox was taking this unusual step so viewers could go directly to the judge and get "as much information as possible" about his decision.
Executives of FNC apparently send out memos every morning to all staff, and these memos address “what stories will be covered and, often, suggesting how they should be covered.” These memo are considered the “bible” of Fox News reporters and anchors. Where did Fox News get the idea for these executive memos? I’ll let Reina tell you since he worked there.
The Memo was born with the Bush administration, early in 2001, and, intentionally or not, has ensured that the administration's point of view consistently comes across on FNC. This year, of course, the war in Iraq became a constant subject of The Memo.
Here is another golden moment from a past memo:
One day this past spring, just after the U.S. invaded Iraq, The Memo warned us that anti-war protesters would be "whining" about U.S. bombs killing Iraqi civilians, and suggested they could tell that to the families of American soldiers dying there. Editing copy that morning, I was not surprised when an eager young producer killed a correspondent's report on the day's fighting - simply because it included a brief shot of children in an Iraqi hospital.
Reina ends his letter with a warning to those of you who still are under the illusion that Fox News is a fair and balanced resource for news.
These are not isolated incidents at Fox News Channel, where virtually no one of authority in the newsroom makes a move unmeasured against management's politics, actual or perceived. At the Fair and Balanced network, everyone knows management's point of view, and, in case they're not sure how to get it on air, The Memo is there to remind them.
I do not write this blog just for kicks. I do not sit at my keyboard stroking keys so that I can stroke my ego. I am here, writing these messages, because I think something has gone horribly wrong in this country, and I feel that in a democracy every citizen has a duty to stand up when they believe something is wrong. Well, something is wrong.
Fox News has the highest rating of any other news network in this country. That truly terrifies me. If such a subjective and obviously extreme, politically driven channel is distributing news and they have the country's ear, then they can have a huge impact on the direction of this country. They have already fooled most of the country by repeatedly saying that WMD’s have been found in Iraq. I fear that this lie, among many others, is just the tip of the iceberg. If our government reports our news, then we no longer live in a democracy. If you don’t believe that the Republicans, and more accurately the Bush administration, are feeding news to the FNC then you are painfully naïve and you will probably find a home with the rest of the morons in this country who sit down every night to eat heaping piles of Fox's greasy, hate-filled lies. Eat it up, stupid! Eat it up!
It is certainly not a new thing for this administration to deflect blame onto another body other than its own, but how far will they go? As you probably already know, Bush gave a press conference yesterday, his first since July. When he was asked if standing under the 'Mission Accomplished' sign on May 1 was presumptuous, he decided to blame it on the Navy. Even if it was the Navy's idea to put the sign up, it would certainly be naive for anyone to think that the president and his handlers did not know it was going to be there, hence the banner's appearance over his head throughout his speech. As Jonathan Micah Marshall from Talking Points Memo wrote today, "every such major event for a modern president is minutely choreographed."
It isn't their claim that it was the Navy's idea that bothers me. What does bother me is that they are dancing with another lie. CNN reports that Scott McClellen, Bush's Press Secretary, said yesterday, "We took care of the production of it. We have people to do those things. But the Navy actually put it up." No one doubted that the Navy put the banner up. It is safe to assume that Karl Rove and Andy Card weren't scrambling to manually hang the thing over an aircraft carrier. Still, if someone comes to you with an idea, and if you like the idea enough to make it happen, then isn't that, in essence, an approval of the idea. Therefore, saying that the Navy did it, is not only embarassingly juvenile, but it is also trying to pass it off as if you didn't think it was a good idea. Well, obviously if you made the banner then you didn't think it was a bad idea. Of course, Bush now says, "I know it was attributed somehow to some ingenious advance man from my staff -- they weren't that ingenious, by the way." First of all, Bush probably shouldn't be ridiculing anybody's lack of genius. Secondly, if they thought it was such a bone head idea, then why did they make the sign? And why was it placed above his head during his speech? Do they expect us to believe that the sign's placement was a coincedence?
The importance of who was responsible for the banner is most certainly superficial. It is just that when you see such an act of such insane bravado, you relish any oppurtunity you may have to poke fun at the idiot about it after the fact, especially when he makes such an incredible faux pas as he did yesterday. I mean here is a guy who landed on an aircraft carrier, and paraded around like Maverick from Top Gun, when it turns out he might as well have been riding the bomb like Slim Pickens in Dr. Stranglove. Because this war has gone to hell in a big way, and the banner is just another way for us to let this guy know how pissed we are about his mess.
Argument:
Molly Ivins makes the case for being a Bush-Hater in The Progressive.
Counter-Argument:
Jonathan Chait makes the case against Bush-Hatred in The Washington Post.
Read Hot Gun Spy's comments on Bush-Hatred in his October 8, 2003 entry, "Silver Lining?".
Bush said today that his administration was, and has been cooperating with the 9/11 commission, but he did not offer any evidence that he, or his staff, was going to hand over high level briefing documents. ABC News reports that Bush said, "Those are very sensitive documents." Somebody should tell this guy that usually when an commission is threatening to subpoena documents it is precisely because of the sensitivity of those documents that make them so crucial to a viable investigation.
A story in Newsday says that Sen. Joe Lieberman has said, "I call on the White House to turn over the documents they are withholding from the independent commission - and do it now." Lieberman co-wrote, along with Sen. John McCain, the legislation that put the commission into effect. Lieberman went on to say, "If they continue to refuse, I will urge the independent commission to take the administration to court." But Joe don't you realize that you are being insensitive. The White House probably has a lot of personal conversations during their morning briefings.
Imagine Bush confiding in his top advisers that he has an intimate relationship with silk sheets and that he often escapes alone to the Lincoln bedroom with his dog Barney, a Judy Garland CD, and a bottle of baby oil hidden in his pocket.
"Why do you take the dog?" Asks Condoleeza Rice
"Oh, I don't take the dog. Who said I took the dog?
Then, in a leter meeting, Karl Rove admits that he once ate roadkill on a bet.
What was the bet? Asks Condoleeza Rice.
That I wouldn't do it. Well, I showed them.
In a particularly sensitive moment, Dick Cheney reveals that he once slept with a sheep that he liked to call, Maureen, but later he found that Maureen's actual name was Butch, and that this revelation triggered a long series of a seemingly never ending array of night sweats and heart attacks.
So, you can understand why it is so important for them to keep these breifings secret. Indeed, they are very sensitive.
Bush and his administration are becoming synonymous with hoarding documents under the guise of presidential privilege. Well, a commission organized by Congress to investigate the attacks of 9/11 has had enough of the administration's secret society politics. Thomas Kean, a moderate Republican and chairman of the commission, told reporters that if the documents that the commission has asked for are not forthcoming then he is prepared to subpoena them from the White House. In a New York Times article today, Kean said, "I've argued very strongly with the White House that we are unique, that we are not the Congress, that these arguments about presidential privilege do not apply in the case of our commission."
Former Georgia senator Max Cleland gave us a little taste of why the White House might be snowballing the commision. Cleland said, "As each day goes by, we learn that this government knew a whole lot more about these terrorists before Sept. 11 than it has ever admitted." Cleland also told the New York Times that he believed the administration was trying to cause the committee to reach its May deadline without the ability to turn over a full and conclusive report. Sen John McCain, who was an integral part of organizing the commitee, put that concern to rest, saying that he would fight for an extension "if the commission feels it can't get its work done."
So, the Bush boys will probably need to find a bunker to hide in with all their whispers and secret handshakes, and they better stay down there well beyond next November. That may be the only way for them to win next year's election.
On a day where the President was getting all cozy at Camp David, there was a helicopter shot down in Tikrit. Five soldiers were wounded, and this is after five more troops were killed yesterday. As I said, the President was nice and protected at Camp David, doing what he usually likes to do, which is to relax away from all that nasty policy stuff in Washington. So, while he was busy not working, ten of thousands of protesters got together in Washington D.C. and San Francisco to voice their opposition to the war, and to demand that the American troops be brought home.
In Washington, it was reported by ABC News, that about 30,000 people protested against the war. Among them wasRev. Al Sharpton , and he said something that I thought only Dennis Kucinich was saying. Sharpton said, "Don't give Bush $87 billion, don't give him 87 cents, give our troops a ride home." Out of all the Democratic Presidential nominees Kucinich and Sharpton are the only two who are really going out on a limb to demand that the troops be brought home.
Of course, the protests were peaceful, and why wouldn't they be, these are presumably peace loving people. I would feel safer in Washington in the middle of a protest than I would in a room full of lobbyists any day of the week.
That all being said, of course the Christians had to try and break the peace. A bunch of wackos holding 'Trust Jesus' signs began shouting at some of the protesters, which once again goes to show you that the majority of Christians in this country are morons. Any sensible, rational Christian would know better than to believe something so magnificently ludicrous as looking to Jesus for trust in wartime, for obvious scriptural reasons. Of course, since the White House is also full of the moron-sect of Christianity, we all know that they are all in the situation room wearing their WWJD bracelets and waiting for His good grace to show them the light at the end of the Iraqi tunnel. There's no light in sight, boys.
The San Francisco Gate, reported that at the SF protest Danny Glover said, "This war is not about us. It is against us, against Iraqi people, and against our children." He could not be more right. The war is much broader then just Iraq. If you don't believe in this war, and you don't believe in the ideological positions of this administration, then you are as much a part of this war than the soldiers and citizens of Iraq. There is a divide in this country that just seems to be getting larger and larger everyday. The "Trust Jesus" folks are a surprisingly strong contingent, and though there is no doubt that they are morons, they have successfully waged the largest and most deadly missionary movement in centuries.
What would Jesus Do?
I think he would like to give them all a nice, hot golden shower. That would invoke a whole new meaning to Shock and Awe.
Go visit the Presidential Prayer Team. What? Oh, you didn't know that there was a Presidential Prayer Team. Go and take the PPT Poll, which is, naturally: "Do you think the United States should continue to be a member of the United Nations?" It is of vital importance for us to get the Presidential Prayer Team's opinion on the UN. Last I checked 69% of the PPT think its a good idea to leave the UN.
"Pray that freedom to practice religion in America will be maintained." Yea, that freedom is crucial whereas the constitutional seperation of church and state, well, that is merely a suggestion.
By the way, John Ashcroft apparently needs your prayers this week. He desperately wants to know what God has been borrowing from the library.
Is the Department of Defense about to reintroduce the draft? Go check out the Defend America website. The website's subtitle is: 'The Department of Defense News about the War on Terrorism'. Then it announces, "The Selective Service System wants to hear from men and women in the community who might be willing to serve as members of a local draft board." Sounds like a draft is at least becoming apart of the conversation. What does this say about the current state fo the war in Iraq?
Today, in a Slate article, Fred Kaplan puts a spin on the Rumsfeld memo that I hadn't thought about. He points out the parallels to internal concerns that were not being made public during Vietnam, when Robert McNamara was Secretary fo Defense under LBJ, to concerns that we can see in yesterday's leaked memo. (Read about The Pentagon Papers here.)
Kaplan also sums up the Rumsfeld memo in a rather concise fashion, "we're losing the struggle for hearts and minds in the broader war against terrorism. Not only that, we don't know how to measure winning or losing, we don't have a plan for winning it, we don't know how to fashion a plan, and the bureaucratic agencies put in charge of waging this war and drawing up these plans may be inherently incapable of doing so." Yea, it is simplified, but it is almost exactly what Rumsfeld said. Read the memo.
Kaplan also points out how the leaked memo really undermines the Bush administration's PR blitz of the last few weeks. My personal favorite has been the commerce secretary, Don Evans. Evans has the face of a car salesman, smile painted firmly across his nicely tanned mug. You get the feeling that he really wants to believe that things are going well, but he oversells it so badly, that you would be a moron not to see he is selling you an 1982 AMC Pacer. I saw Evans last week on CNN, and he was smiling so big that I literally feared he might swallow his own face. His optimism was so over-the-top, I think it went something like this(don't hold me to this): I ran across many Iraqi's when I was over there, and from what I heard on the news, I thought they all would kill me, but they started dancing, and I feared it was some kind of bizarre muslim sacrificial-type ritual. Then they brought out some pretty girls and some clowns. So, I started dancing, too. Before I knew it we were all dancing, and then I swear the whole country broke out into song. We sang and dance and laughed all night. So, as you can see I am shocked to see that the media doesn't report all this glorious singing and dancing. What about all the clowns? I havn't seen one clown yet on CNN, and when I was over there, I swear, I saw at least a thousand clowns, and besides the group of 55 that were shot in that Volkswagon at an American checkpoint, they have all been safe and happy."
Actually Evans did go to Iraq, and though he was on all the networks praising the adminstraion for all of its good work, Kaplan reports that Evans may have not truly been able to assess the way things were going. "How long had Evans been in Iraq? About 24 hours. Where did he sleep that night? In Kuwait." So, Iraq was in such great shape that he stayed one day, and then travelled to Kuwait to sleep safely away from the "long, hard slog" that is our war.
A Rumsfeld memo was leaked today to the press, and Rumsfeld is none too happy about it Who could blame him? The memo gave the public something that this administration has been unable to do since Bush's inauguration, which is to give us some truth. The New York Times reports that Rumsfeld acknowledges, "It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog." Rumsfeld might have tried to deny that it was his memo, but as soon as reporters in D.C. saw the word slog, they had to have known it was authentic Rumsfeld.
It is clear that we finally got some well needed truth out of this leaked memo, but we also got, what I think to be an extremely scary admission, "We have not yet made truly bold moves, although we have made many sensible, logical moves in the right direction, but are they enough?" What! You have not made any bold moves. If Rumsfeld does not think that the doctrine of preemption, or going to war unilaterally while lying to sway public opinion, is not bold then I shutter to think what it is he would characterize as bold.
(Is it just me, or does his face just get scarier and scarier every time new words come out of it? Have you seen his teeth? I wouldn't doubt that he chews children with those mashers. OK, maybe not, but i'll bet he wouldn't object to watching someone else do it.)
The Iowa caucuses can be seen as a great way to show your campaign's grassroots and organizational muscle. However, it can also take a whole lot of man hours, and crucial handshake time from other primary states. So, it depends on which side of the polls you are on for you to be able to say what is most important. Do you think showing your strong grassroots organization in Iowa is more important than showing your face in South Carolina more often, or shaking more hands in California?
Obviously the answers to the questions differ from campaign to campaign. If you are Howard Dean then you see Iowa as your rocket to the Democratic nomination. Right now, Dean is neck and neck with Gephardt, and he shouldn't be. As the Washington Post reports, it would be hard for anyone to compete with "Gephardt's 15-year history of building relationships in the state." Gephardt should be leaving everybody in the dust. He is from neighboring Missouri, and he won Iowa when he ran in 1988. So, what's the problem? The problem is Dean. Dean has not just showed a skill for organization and grassroots-style campaigning. His campaign has proven to be so good at it that they did in a matter of months what it took Gephardt 15 years to do. Dean is working extremely hard, and spending a whole lot of money to make Iowa his in January, and I think he will get it. If he does, then this makes him the front runner. Because Iowa is the first big primary, and it gives him serious momentum going into New Hampshire. It also gives him the headline on every national newspaper and his face on the cover of every weekly news magazine. And what do you think all these stories will be saying about Dean? Yep, they will be gushing about how magnificent his grassroots organization was in Iowa.
On the other hand, we have Clark and Lieberman, who have decided to pack up their things and leave Iowa for greener pastures. They are on the side of the polls, the low side, that tells them that a caucus is a lot of money and a lot of missed handshakes in other, more winnable, states. So, it is a good idea for them to get why the getting is good.
For Lieberman, it was clear long before his decision to leave that he had very little chance to win Iowa. Most, Iowans that go to caucuses are pretty liberal, and, well, let's just say that it is a stretch to call Joe a liberal. Joe gets booed louder at Democratic events than Michael Moore did at the Academy Awards. So, I don't think he was counting on Iowa to fall into his column this time around.
Then there is Clark, and quite frankly, he was just too late. You can't go to Iowa in October and expect to organize overnight. Clark's campaign spokesman, Matt Bennett told the Washington Post, "We have made the decision that we don't have the time or the money to compete there." He is absolutely right. The Dean campaign will be the first campaign to have visited all 99 counties in Iowa during this race, and it will have taken them nearly a year to do it. The Clark campaign would have made themselves dizzy if they tried to do that. However, the dizziness wouldn't have been the worst part. The worst part would have been all the face time you would have to miss in other crucial states. Clark needs to spend time down south. If he gets the nomination, that is where he will get it. He wouldn't have gotten Iowa, and its a plus for his campaign that they saw it early.
Some conservatives in Congress are defending Gen. Boykin's comment that the war on terrorism is a war against Satan. Remember, he also referred to the Islamic God as an idol. It is funny to me that no one is pointing out that the Christian God and the Islamic God(Allah is Arabic for God), are the same God. Gen. Boykin might dispute the contention that Muhammed is a prophet, which would be a legitimate Christian concern, but that isn't what he said. He, like most American Christians, is so eager to judge people that are different from him, but too ignorant to take a moment to try and understand what it is he judges.
The major Hollywood studios are close to making a deal that would lift the ban on "screeners". It looks like their fears of piracy might be calmed by sending out coded videotapes(DVD's will not be lifted from the ban), to Academy Award voters. The videotapes will be coded with the voter's name for the purposes of tracking the video. So, in the case one of these videos ends up in a dirty pirate's hands, the Academy will know the culprit. 'Ay! Matey! I just watched Tony Randall's copy of Chicago, and those scalawags at the Academy robbed Richard Gere. Robbed him, I say. And if they don't aim to give him the gold, well, then I aim to rob and pillage for it. Arrrrgghh!'
Also, Claudius Flauberius has discovered more scary details involving those pesky voting machine corporations, specifically Diebold. It seems that Diebold isn't satisfied with stealing our votes, they are now trying to muzzle websites that offer evidence of security flaws within the voting machines.
"This is frightening, really frightening," said Rebecca Mercuri, a research fellow at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. "I feel that unless we stop it here and stop it now," Roxanne Jekot says, "my kids won't grow up to have a right to vote at all." Both of these women are talking about a very scary trend in modern American voting. They were apart of a wonderful story in the British publication, the Independent exposing the improper use, and serious corporate abuse, of the new touchscreen voting machines.
We all remember the hanging chad fiasco in Florida, and the eventual push to change the outdated punchcard systems to a more modern method of voting. The problem is that in the mad rush for states to obtain these touchscreens voting machines, there are many questions being raised about the machines ability to accurately register your vote, and more serious questions about the possibility of votes being stolen by the very companies that make the machines.
The Independent reports that in last Novermber's elections, academic institutions showed "Georgia touchscreens to be poorly programmed, full of security holes and prone to tampering, and with thousands of similar machines from different companies being introduced at high speed across the country, computer voting may, in fact, be US democracy's own 21st-century nightmare." One of the reasons that this rush to grab these machines is so scary is that, "The vote count was not conducted by state elections officials, but by the private company that sold Georgia the voting machines in the first place, under a strict trade-secrecy contract that made it not only difficult but actually illegal - on pain of stiff criminal penalties - for the state to touch the equipment or examine the proprietary software to ensure the machines worked properly. There was not even a paper trail to follow up."
However, this is not the only reason to be worried. It seems that in all the races across the country that were proven to be statistical anomalies, and were conducted on touchscreen machines, all of them benefited Republican candidates. Dr. Rebecca Mercuri recounted a story about voters in Dallas learning to use the machines, in a mock vote before the election, noticed that no matter how many times they voted for a Democrat, the Republican candidate got the benefit of their vote. "And those were the ones where you could visually spot a problem. What about what you don't see? Just because your vote shows up on the screen for the Democrats, how do you know it is registering inside the machine for the Democrats?" Well, the problem is that you can't tell. Most machines do not offer you a printed verification of your vote. Dr. Mercuri told the Independent, "One has to wonder why this is going on, because the way it is set up it takes away the checks and balances we have in a democratic society. That's the whole point of paper trails and recounts." So, how can you be sure that your vote was counted? You have to trust the machine, and even worse than that, you have to trust the people operating the machines.
The reason it is so difficult to trust the people running these machines is because it seems that the heads of these companies are handing out serious contributions to Republicans. Again, from the Independent, "If much of the worry about vote-tampering is directed at the Republicans, it is largely because the big three touchscreen companies are all big Republican donors, pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into party coffers in the past few years." Think about that, remember your elected officials are not getting a paper trail of the vote, and so who is in charge of this system? Well, the Republicans are in charge. Maybe, you think I am just being paranoid. Let me give you an example.
I live in Ohio, and my state is one of the many states rushing to get these machines. Well, one of the big three companies that offer touchscreen voting machines is a company by the name of Diebold. It turns out that the cheif executive from Diebold wrote an e-mail to Ohio Republicans that said that he was "committed to helping Ohio to deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." He wrote this e-mail after his company had placed a bid on Ohio's contract for voting machines. The winner of the contract will be awarded by the Republican Secretary of State, and he has already put Diebold on a short list as a preferred vendor.
Rebecca Jekot notes, "Corporate America is very close to running this country. The only thing that is stopping them from taking total control are the pesky voters. That's why there's such a drive to control the vote. What we're seeing is the corporatisation of the last shred of democracy." If she is right, and it seems that there are certainly reasons to suspect she could be, then our democracy is in real danger.
There has been a lot of talk from the Democratic Presidential hopefuls so far in this campaign about how to handle Bush's tax cuts. It has become painfully clear that the cuts are currently lifting the deficit so far into the red that its becoming purple, and it is going to keep growing as more cuts continue to take effect. So, any rational person recognizes that these cuts have to go. The problem is that Bush's strategists have set the Democrats up for a no-win situation. The Republicans have set up the next campaign with a ready-made slogan: Democrats want to raise your taxes. It is true. Democrats will raise your taxes when they take office in 2005, and for a noble reason; saving the country from a fiscal meltdown.
However, the Democrats still have to watch out for the trap that has been set for them. The current front-runner, Howard Dean says he is going to rescind all of Bush's tax cuts, including those on the middle class. He says that this has to be done if we, as a country, seriously expect to do something about the debilitating health care system that we have at the moment. That is certainly a compelling arguement, but one that is going to be met with one phrase by every media personality that interviews him from now until November: 'So, you're going to raise taxes.'
Other than Dick Gephardt, who is really in Dean's camp on this issue, most of the serious contenders are talking about getting rid of Bush's cuts for the wealthiest Americans, and allowing the middle-class to keep their cut. This actually could play into the Democrats' hands. As Paul Krugman puts it in the New York Times, those Democrats "who want to restore fiscal sanity probably need to frame their proposals in a way that neutralizes the administration's demagoguery."
The Democrats can easily neutralize this issue by ditching all of Bush's tax cuts except the ones that benefit the middle class. Americans realize that Bush is Corporate America's water boy. You don't have to run as a populist to beat Bush, you become a populist simply by running against his tax cuts for the insanely wealthy. This will become an extremely important issue in this campaign, as well it should be. There is not alot of talk about the balooning deficit right now, but it will intensify the closer we get to the election. So, Bush's tax cuts will certainly be in the discussion. Bush will never scale them back, he is too afraid of repeating his father's mistakes in '92. So, according to Krugman, only one question remains , "Will someone be able to find the political sweet spot, the combination of fiscal responsibility and electoral smarts that brings the looting to an end? The future of the nation depends on the answer."
Lawrence Lessig wrote recently in Wired magazine, "When they write the account of the 2004 campaign, it will include at least one word that has never appeared in any presidential history: blog." He goes on to say that "the blog may be the first innovation from the Internet to make a real difference in election politics." He specifically points to the Howard Dean campaign as the model for success, and for good reason. As Lessig puts it, "The trick is to turn the audience into the speaker." That is exactly what the Dean campaign has done. Howard Dean's blog has made his supporters feel as though they are an integral part of the campaign team by allowing them to leave comments on blogs posted throughout the day. Until this Presidential campaign, most voters felt removed from the political process. Well, most probably still do, but blogging has proven to be a way for a voter to keep track of a candidate on a daily basis, and to let that candidate, his staff, other supporters, or potential supporters know exactly how they feel about those day to day activities.
Lessig is certainly right to point out the Dean campaign. Dean was the first candidate to really tap into the power of blogging, and until recently he was the only candidate who was doing it successfully. What happened to cause some of the other candidates to start blogging? Well, it has been clear for a couple of months now that Dean's campaign has demonstrated an extremely successful grassroots campaign online. So, all the other campaigns started paying attention to what Dean's campaign was doing. It is a good thing they did. You may have heard that Dean raised almost 15 million dollars in the third quarter, almost all of which was from online contributers. They all want a piece of the Dean action.
Many will argue that Dean's success is more to do with his consistent criticism of going to war in Iraq, or that he has tapped into an anger that has long been brewing in the liberal wing of the Democratic party. I think those two things are indeed true, but I think that blogging has also been a key to his success. I know that might sound like a hard pill to swallow, but think about his base: mostly young, middle-class white people. These are the people most likely to spend time online.
Dean has been running as an outsider, but the way that he has been most successful has been to make his online supporters feel like insiders, and blogging is the way that he has done this.
Now, supporters of John Kerry will want to say that Kerry has had a blog up for months, and they are right. The problem with Kerry's blog was that there was usually only one entry a day, sometimes not even that, and very few comments accompanied those entries. However, if you go to John Kerry's blog today you will find that it has been improved greatly. His campaign blogs about half a dozen messages a day, and there might be as many as 150 comments on any given blog.
Gen. Wesley Clark's campaign got off to a slow start, but quickly had a functional blog page up just a few days after he announced he was running. The problem is that his blog is inconsistent (much like his campaign has been thus far). Some days they may run one entry, others they may have six or seven. Even the comments are inconsistent. When I was there I saw a range of about 30 to 530 comments on any given blog (Incidentally the blog with 530 comments was about designing a new logo for the blog).
John Edwards, who is really suffering in the polls, has made a valiant effort to join the other candidates in the blog world. Unfortunately, his campaign is asking you to create an account before you look at their blog. They offer you a short list of the most recent blog entries that you can look at without registering, but it is too short (when I was there it was a list of three). Still, I gathered from what I saw that the Edwards' campaign leaves only a few blogs a day with anywhere from 10 to 20 viewer comments, but the really great thing about Edwards' blogs is that each blog has its own page and the comments are displayed right underneath the blog. That is, I think, an even better way to make supporters feel like an integral part of the campaign.
Dick Gephardt hasn't seemed to learn much of anything from Dean's successes. He seems to be one of those that believe that Dean's uprising has more to do with voter anger than an online grassroots effort. So, Dick has tried to tap into some of that anger that he believes makes Dean successful (Hence all the "Miserable Failure" rhetoric), but Dick has it all wrong. After a quick search of Dick's website, I did not find a blog link anywhere. Dick, I think this makes your campaign a miserable failure.
Also, Joe Lieberman, who has had serious trouble raising money, does not have a blog. He does, however, have a campaign diary that he contributes to a few times a month, which is absolutely worthless.
It just goes to show you that when candidates get caught running a campaign without their eyes open, like Gephardt and Lieberman, they will pay the price. Both of these guys have chosen not to take Dean's lead like the other contenders have, and this will be to their detriment. Mark my words, the Democratic Presidential candidate will have a blog, and he better have a damn good one if he expects to be President.
Our government, and specifically the current administration has tried over and over again to deny charges that the U.S. is fighting a holy war against Islam. You might remember thBush using the word 'crusade' in a speech soon after 9/11, but quickly had to back track and change his language. A U.S. News Wire report released today reminds us that Bush even went as far as to say, "Islam is Peace... When we think of Islam we think of a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world. Billions of people find comfort and solace and peace. And that's made brothers and sisters out of every race." Well, a high ranking member of the Department of Defense has reopened the pandora's box that Bush was successful, at least here in the states, of shutting two years ago.
Lt. Gen. William Boykin, the new deputy undersecretary of defense of intelligence, has characterized the war on terrorism as a war against Satan. The Toronto Star reports that he "has said publicly that he sees the war on terrorism as a clash between Judeo-Christian values and Satan." Boyken has even said that when he was in Somalia and battling against a Muslim warlord, "I knew my god was bigger than his. I knew that my god was a real god and his was an idol." Needless to say, that this is not faring very well in Muslim circles, and it certainly doesn't help that the United States is already largely thought of as Anti-Muslim overseas, and it is certainly not unheard of for someone to accuse the U.S. of fighting a new crusades.
Boyken has also opened up another argument that has been going on in this country for a long time, and has been rearing its ugly head in recent months again. That is the argument over the seperation of church and state. Boykin has said the reason that Islamic fundamentalists hate us is "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christians. ... And the enemy is a guy named Satan." Well, it is true that our roots are largely Judeo-Christian, but it is not true that we are a Christian nation. That would be a clear violation of the seperation of church and state. Some people will argue that the Ten Commandment are not a violation. They will argue that saying, 'under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance is not a violation(The Supreme Court will determine that soon enough). However, only a fool, or a Christian Fundamentalist would argue that saying we are a Christian nation is not a violation of the Constitution. You may think I am dissecting Boyken's words too carefully, but I haven't told you the worst part yet. He delivered this speech in a church and in his uniform. That's right, he was wearing a U.S. military uniform when he said that the U.S. is a Christian nation.
If you are not convinced that this guy, Boyken, is a total whacko, he also thinks that Bush was selected by God to be the President. Alert Net has reported that he said, "Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he's in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this." Oh, I see. So, it wasn't the Supreme Court that decided to bypass our democracy to put Bush in the White House, it was the Supreme Being. At least now I know who to blame.
Now you might be wondering what does Donald Rumsfeld think about all this. Take heart, he is happy to point to our country's freedoms, "There are a lot of things that are said by people that are their views, and that's the way we live. We are free people and that's the wonderful thing about our country, and I think for anyone to run around and think that can be managed or controlled is probably wrong." What? Does he not know what this lunatic said? Does he not know that he delivered his sermons wearing his military uniform? I agree with Rumsfeld that people have a right to their views, but they don't have a right to express that views while wearing a unform that represents National servitude. Also, I would prefer that a guy with such influence over our military at least fulfill one requirement: sanity.
I am taking a break from politics tonight because I, like many Americans, will be immersed in baseball tonight. I have become more interested in this game tonight, this Game 7 of the National League Championship Series, for the sake of the guy who dropped the foul ball. This poor guy who made the innocent mistake of trying to catch a foul ball, has been treated so badly by Chicago Cubs fans that the police are staked out in front of his house for his safety. He had to call in sick to work today, and if the Cubs lose today, then his name will be synonymous with keeping the Cubs from the World Series. Nobody seems to want to talk about the fact that it was simply a foul ball. It didn't score any runs and it didn't put any additional runners on base. Nobody wants to talk about how it was the Cubs, and the Cubs alone, who fell apart after the foul.
It occured to me while watching the Yankees and Red Sox game today, and seeing some plastic sacks fly behind the catcher like tumbleweeds, that this game is still a showdown between two men: the batter and the pitcher. Mark Prior, the pitcher for the Cubs last night, pitched 6 and 1/3 priceless innings, but he watched that poor guy try to catch that foul ball, and he watched the leftfielder's (Moises Alou)tantrum-like reaction, and he was shook. He choked. He walked the next batter, and the hits just kept coming, even after he was pulled out of the game. It wasn't just Prior. The whole team was in a daze. Gonzalez, Chicago's normally flawless shortstop, missed an extremely easy ground ball, one that should have been a double play. He missed it because he was shook. He was so shaken that he was pulled out of the game after that inning. The Cubs had the curse in their mind. Their coach, Dusty Baker, doesn't want to talk about the curse. He waves it off and denies it over and over again. If you saw Baker in his post-game interview he was shook. If he didn't believe in the curse before, he believes now.
However, it wasn't just the team that fell apart, so did the fans. The poor guy who tried to catch the foul ball had to leave Wrigley Field under a shield of security, not to mention a film of beer and spit all over his person. The Cubs, the fans, and quite frankly all of Chicago should be ashamed of themselves. Even ESPN should apologize to this guy. They are not shy about putting his name on the screen, and they even showed a fairly close shot of his home. This guy was a little league coach for God's sake. He was such a big fan of the Cubs that he was not only wearing their cap, but he was also listening to the local commentators on a headset. This is a guy who was a diehard baseball fan, and maybe that is where we all go a litte wrong. We take this stuff too far, too seriously. The world will continue if the Cubs don't win. The Cubs will be back next year whether they win or not. They may be back with one less fan, and we know what happened once before when they escorted out a guy they treated badly, they kicked him and his goat out of Wrigley Field and he cursed them. The Cubs and their fans better hope that they didn't make that poor guy too mad, or they might just be in for another sixty years without winning a championship.
This past weekend I wrote about how the Motion Picture Association of America(MPAA), had decided last week to ban free screener copies of eligible movies to Academy voters, fearing a rampant outbreak of piracy. Well, Reuters is now reporting that not only have directors come out against this decision, but now actors have as well. Many high profile actors, including several past Academy Award winners will release a newspaper advertisment calling for a lift on the ban of 'screeners'.
The list of players involved in this controversy is growing. A producer from the Screen Actor's Guild Awards said, ""we are concerned that if screeners are not made available, our members will not be able to view all eligible performances." Even the Writers Guild Of America West issued a statement that said, "to place a gag order on 'screeners' is to tilt the playing field from small films to large." So, it is clear that this issue is not going away easily.
Dennis Kucinich officially announced his candidacy for Presidency of the United States today in Cleveland, Ohio. The media seems to paint these formal announcements as a bit of a joke. Obviously, Kucinich has been running for months. So, why is he making an official announcement? We have seen him in all the Democratic debates for the party's nomination for the Presidency. So, isn't it obvious that he is already running? Yes, it is, but how many times have you heard Dennis Kucinich's name mentioned on the news. Probably not much. That is why he made an official announcement. And it worked. He has finally gotten some media attention.
Rep. Kucinich has never been a favorite to win the Democratic nomination. According to the polls he has nowhere to go but up. However, he has a strong grassroots following that the New York Times called "almost cultlike". This impassioned support for Kucinich is not an accident. As he said in an interview with Judy Woodruff on CNN, " I'm the only candidate in the race who actually voted against the war in Iraq, the only candidate in the race who actually voted against the Patriot Act, and now I'm the only candidate who has a plan to get out of Iraq." These issues make him very popular to people on the left, especially young people. Here is a guy who doesn't just play the part of a peacenik populist. He lives it. He breathes it. He is so intense in his convictions that you know that he is the genuine article, a politician that genuinely wants things to change in a radical way.
Also, he is the real populist in this race. You hear Gephardt and Edwards talk about humble beginnings, but the New York Times reports that Kucinich's "family lived in 21 places by the time he was 17, including in cars, and literally counted pennies to pay the bills." That makes Gephardt's dad, who was a milkman, sound like Milquetoast, and Edwards, whose dad was a Mill Worker, sound like a crybaby.
It should be noted that his plan for Iraq is to remove all the American troops and to turn power over to the United Nations. The other Democratic candidates, and almost anybody else who you will here talking on the news, say that we can not remove the troops. So, overall his position is not taken seriously. Still, it is important to remember that Gov. Howard Dean was not being taken seriously when he was challenging the President and the Congress for going to Iraq in the first place, and now he is arguably atop the heap for the nomination. If things take a turn for the worse in Iraq, and let's hope they don't, but if they did then Kucinich's position sounds really good to a public that does not want to continue seeing troops coming home in bodybags.
That being said, Kucinich is far too left for the voters of this country. The New York Times reports that he "called for a study into whether reparations should be paid for slavery." Boy Howdy, that will make him real popular down south. He is also a vegan, which will make him a delicious choice for dairy farmers in the northeast. Also, let's face it, he is a short, funny-looking guy that looks more suited to play Willie Loman at the local dinner theater production of 'Death of a Salesman', than he does to be the President. I know that is extremely superficial, but we live in an age of visual media that exports heaping piles of superficiality.
Nevertheless, he is an impassioned voice for the left, and I hope he continues to be the conscience of the left after another one of the nine candidates is chosen to run for President. I hope Kucinich is there to whisper in that candidate's ear so that he(come on, we know it's not going to be Carol Moseley-Braun), will not venture too far to the center.
If you have watched any news over the last few weeks then you have certainly heard more than a few conservatives spouting off something along these lines, 'The media is only reporting the bad things happening in Iraq and ignoring all the good that is happening there.' This has obviously become one of the major talking points of the republican party after weeks of deaths and suicide bombings in Iraq. They have resorted back to their old, whiny refrain, 'It is all the media's fault.'
Well, now the 'support the war' effort has gone a step beyond the republican party. Now, the government has decided to release letters, the same identical letter, to local newspapers from hometown soldiers fighting in Iraq. The Olympian, Olympia, Washington's local newspaper, "received two identical letters signed by different hometown soldiers: Spc. Joshua Ackler and Spc. Alex Marois, who is now a sergeant. The paper declined to run either because of a policy not to publish form letters." The letter states many of the same things you'll here republicans mention on cable news programs. The letter talks about building fire houses, restoring sewage systems. They describe an Iraq where people greet them as liberators and not as occupiers.
Obviously, some of the soldiers that have been contacted about these letters say they agree with the content of the letter, but as one soldier stated, "It makes it look like you cheated on a test, and everybody got the same grade." We, as Americans, should be outraged that our troops are being used as mindless propagandizers, especially when we are the recipients of their propaganda. It is one thing when a congressman or a conservative puppet regurgitates their prerequisite talking points for the news, but it is an entirely different matter when you bring the American troops in to spoonfeed questionable schmaltz to the hometown paper, whose readership is eager to believe the local soldiers are honest men and women.
However, The Olympian also reports that one "soldier didn't know about the letter until his father congratulated him for getting it published in the local newspaper in Beckley, W.Va. 'When I told him he wrote such a good letter, he said: 'What letter?' " Now, many of the soldiers that signed the letter did know about it, and had read it before they signed it, but nobody really knows who wrote it. Joshua Micah Marshall from Talking Points Memo has a few ideas. It could be "the innocent, but over-eager effort of a single Army public affairs officer somewhere in northern Iraq." Then again, it might have been one of "a number of firms in Washington whose business it is to orchestrate phony letter writing campaigns on behalf of pricey clients." If the latter possibility were to be true, well, then who might be behind this very expensive effort to orchestrate a message that things are going better than the media is reporting in Iraq. Could it be the same people that are telling republicans to regurgitate this same message on cable news programs?
Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America(MPAA), along with the seven major studios and Dreamworks SKG, agreed last week to stop sending the Academy Awards' voters free screeners of contending movies for fear of the screeners being illegally copied and sold. The Guardian reports that, "From now on, Academy members who want to see the dozens of films competing, will have ot seek them out at cinemas or specially organised screenings." The problem is that the MPAA and the studios know that this hurts independent films, but they don't care. The studio pictures play on more screens, therefore the voters will have a much easier time finding those pictures then they will smaller features that play less screens nationally. Perhaps, piracy was the perfect excuse for the studio systems to use to try and hold back the independents that have been so popular at the Academy Awards for the past decade. Many Hollywood insiders see this move "as a way for the big studios to consolidate the power of their expensive blockbusters."
The good thing is that, according to Reuters, a who's who list of Hollywood directors, 142 of them, have signed an open letter to Jack Valenti expressing their outrage at this decision. In the letter, which was published this week in all the prominent Hollywood trade papers, the filmmakers stated, "Many great films, and in particular films that take risks, rely on critical acclaim and, when the film is fortunate enough, Academy consideration to reach a broad audience. The MPAA decision to ban screeners irreparably damages the chances of such films."
This letter must have gotten Mr. Valenti's attention because by the end of the week the New York Times was reporting that he was considering lifting the ban on videotapes, by way of electronically marking the videotapes, and sending them to Academy voters via certified mail. The ban would still remain on DVD's.
In a report realesed earlier this month by the Programs on International Policy Attitudes(PIPA), we were told that when it comes to supporting the war in Iraq, what network you watch has a great impact on your level of support. Of course, those that supported the war are shown to have been the most ignorant about the issues regarding the war. It turns out the people that were most ignorant about the war were viewers of Fox News. If you watch Fox News(Why would you do that?), you are more likely to have believed one of three of the following untruths:
1.) There are proven links between Iraq and Al-Queda.
No matter how many times Dick Cheney says it, that doesn't mean it is true. As a matter of fact, pretty much anything Dick Cheney says should automatically be cause for skepticism, except if he tells you he is having a heart attack, that is probably true- but then again, that would be presuming that he has a heart.
2.) Weapons of Mass Destruction have already been found.
This, of course, is not true. David Kay has said that WMD's have not been found. He said this repeatedly last week when he was reporting back to Washington(-->See my blog "Does Bush actually believe the things he says?" from October 4th) Now, again, the Bushies and Fox News, which are both pretty much interchangeable, would have you believe otherwise. They, of course, are liars, and sadly a good deal of the American public believe what they say.
3.) World public opinion supported the war in Iraq.
It is hard for me to imagine the idiot that believes this one. The largest world-wide protest in human history happened before this war. Country's hate us more because of this war then ever before, and they fear us more then ever before(hence, North Korea, Iran, and Saudi Arabia all scrambling to find a way to acquire nuclear capabilities to protect themselves from our insane policy of preemptive aggression.)
If you watch Fox News(And, again, why would you do that?), then you probably believed at least one of these three things are actually true. They are not. According to the PIPA study, 80% of people that watch Fox News believe one of the three above fantasies. The most trustworthy news souce, having only 23% of its viewers believing one of the above three delusions, was NPR/PBS, which will not be at all surprising to those of us who watched and listened to public television and radio during the war.
Steven Krull, director of PIPA, said, "While we can not assert that these misperceptions created the support for going to war in Iraq, it does appear likely that support for the war would be substantially lower if fewer members of the public had these misperceptions."
Well, Mr. Krull may not be ready to make such a bold assertion, but he is no Hot Gun Spy. I assert that believing any of the above three premises for supporting the war makes you a moron and a danger to a punch card ballot in all fifty states, and I strongly encourage you not to vote in 2004, and in any subsequesnt election for the rest of your days. Also, please, please, please, do not breed.
Tonight's debate on CNN was one of the worst debates I have ever seen. Judy Woodruff was, by far, the worst moderator in memory. She seemed to have almost no control in making the candidates stay within their time constraints, and she seemed to want to debate everyone herself. She often tried to interrupt the candidates, and often was completely ignored, which she should have been. This was not the nine Democratic hopefuls vs. Judy Woodruff.
I am still trying to figure out why Woodruff tried to sandbag Dean, throwing an unprecedented curve at him from a press release from the Kerry campaign. When did Judy join the Kerry campaign? Kerry even seemed shocked by her questioning Dean on the press release, and gave it a throw off rebuttal on his way to quickly changing the subject.
Also, if I hear one more question about Dean's voting record on Medicare in the mid-90's, I am going to combust. I am so tired of this question. It was relevent the first hundred times he answered it, now it is just annoying.
Another thing, Clark is a Democrat. Why does he have to keep repeating this? He is on the stage of a Democratic Presidential debate and his positions on most issues correspond with the positions of most liberals I know, including myself. So, what's the problem?
Nobody really won the debate tonight. It was a mess. People were answering questions that weren't asked of them, or answering questions that were asked several questions before, and no one really made any major mistakes. The biggest thing that came out of this debate was that Clark did not stand out from the crowd. He didn't look like a front-runner, but Dean didn't look so hot either. So, the winner, I guess, was all the other candidates. This race is still relatively wide-open. However, let us not forget that Carol-Moseley Braun, Dennis Kucinich, and Rev. Al Sharpton are just there as decoration at this point. They have no shot. So, when I say "everybody else", I really mean those that have a shot, meaning Kerry, Lieberman, Edwards, and Gephardt. However, none of them did well enough to shake up the polls.
So, where are we now? Well, we have questions about the leadership skills of Dean and Clark, considering that neither of them were able to capitalize on their leads. Also, we know that none of the other candidates were able to exploit their deficiencies.
I guess, this means were pretty much where we left off, only now we realize how happy we are that Judy Woodruff is not moderating all the debates. I never, ever thought I'd say this, but she almost made me miss Brit Hume.
I received an e-mail earlier tonight with a subject line reading, "Silver Lining". I knew what the message would contain before I opened it. It was going to be about how bad it was that Gov. Gray Davis was recalled, but how good it was that there is palpable anger from voters against government insiders, and the reason that this is good is because it spells doom for the Bushies in 2004. I had heard Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic National Committee's chairman say this last night on television, and it seemed to me that it was going to be the talking point of the day for Democrats across the country.
The e-mail I received was from a progressive action group called Moveon.org. I am proud to be a member of the group, and think they do a lot of great work for progressives in this country. However, I do not think that anger should ever be called a "silver lining". They say, "This anger can and should be properly directed toward the Bush administration and congressional leadership. This will be our mission in the coming year." It seems all well and good to try and find something positive in a bad situation, but this seems like a stretch, and a dangerous stretch at that.
Even, Howard Dean's campaign were spouting these talking points. Dean released a statement that, "Come next November, the anger might be directed at a different incumbent- in the White House." Well, that seems awfully presumptuous. Sure, people are mad today, and for the moment there is much anger towards Bush, maybe not as much anger as Californians had towards Davis, but everyone needs to have a little perspective. The election is still over a year away. It is absurd for us to talk like we are going to defeat Bush in 2004 because people are mad at him in 2003. It is a good thing that his approval numbers are going down because of this anger right now, at least it removes some of the media teflon he has had since 9/11, but what happens if the anger starts to clear and all that's left is two guys standing at a debate? Someone needs to look like he knows what he's doing, and that would entail that he at least appear composed.
The recall election was a seven-week farce. You might be able to win a seven-week campaign on anger, but a Presidential campaign is a lot longer, and therefore should be more substantive.
So, I hope that the candidate that wins the Democratic primary has more than some anger towards Bush to work from. Because if they don't we could be looking at another four years of Bush, which is a long time to live without a silver lining.
For the moment the only silver lining that comes from the results of the recall election is that I don't live in California.
Gen. Wesley Clark's Campaign Manager, Donnie Fowler, quit today citing differences in the direction the campaign was headed. USA Today reports, Fowler "was leaving over widespread concerns that supporters who used the Internet to draft Clark into the race are not being taken seriously by top campaign officials."
Reuters reports that Fowler left because he was asked to take a lesser role in the campaign. The shake-up may have been caused by some early Clark clumsiness, especially with his early flip-flop over whether he would or would not have voted for the war resolution. Many campaign insiders felt that things could have been handled better. "Clark needs some more experienced political hands running things," a campaign source told Reuters.
Fowler felt that many of the new staff, mostly old staffers from the Clinton/Gore days, as was he, were focusing far too much on Washington and not on key primary states. It is crucial for Clark to win in South Carolina, and it is certainly not a freebie just because he is a Southerner. He has Edwards to contend with, and Edwards looks strong in South Carolina, and Sen. Edwards should be the front-runner seeing as he is from neighboring North Carolina.
It is hard to see how Clark will win this race from Washington. His senior advisers have been through a couple of these Presidential elections before and maybe they know something the rest of the front-runners don't know, or maybe they're desperate. His advisers might be trying to garner support for the retired General by grabbing endorsements from Democratic Congressmen, getting them to endorse Clark in their districts. Perhaps, they are realizing that Clark got in the race too late to aggresively campaign in the key primary states: Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. Maybe, they think they can win the small but important Washington D.C. primary, get the free press from winning so early in the primary season(Washington D.C.'s primary is the first), and with the steam from the media attention and key endorsements from Congressmen in crucial primary districts, grab support in fringe states to pull off a miracle victory. Nah, I don't think that will happen.
Clark's advisers, though, proved how savvy they were today by having this story break on a day when they knew it would get buried by the Recall election in California. Traditionally, a resignation of a presidential candidate's Campaign Manager signals a serious problem within a campaign, but this story will hardly register a whisper in the next few days.
Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, one of the 10 Democrats running for President, has just announced on CNN's Larry King Live that he is dropping out of the race. I thought Sen. Graham was a great candidate who got in too late, got no real media attention, and whose campaign never really got off the ground. You may remember him as the quiet guy in the debate that instead of illustrating his positions, would hold up a book and ask you to visit his website. For those of us who were rooting for a candidate that didn't vote for the war resolution, we lost an ally today. Sen. Graham was the only senator of the four senators running that did not vote to give Bush preemptive power to go to war in Iraq.
Since Florida is such an important state in this election, as it was in the last election, I hope that the eventual Democratic candidate will seriously consider Bob Graham for Vice President. Although, I am pretty sure that John Edwards will be the Vice Presidential nominee, unless Clark loses the nomination, then Clark will probably be asked. Still, they should at least consider Bob Graham.
Tomorrow there is a recall election happenning in California. I, not being a citizen of California, have tried to keep my interest in this story to a minimum. I have pledged no allegiance to Gray Davis, and have no feelings on the guy one way or another. Still, it seems to me if you elect a guy eleven months ago and he has broken no laws, then you should keep him. However, if you decide to vote for a boorish moron tomorrow then I imagine you'll get exactly what you deserve, a boorish moron for a Governor.
As I said, I tried to steer clear of this story for as long as I could, but after being pummelled by this story day after day after day, I finally couldn't help myself, and so I, like alot of people, watched the last debate, the only one Arnold showed up for. I watched the whole thing. I did not miss a single word. I was certain that when it was over that the winner of the debate was Gov. Gray Davis. Imagine how surprised I was when Arnold's numbers soared a few days later. Did Californians watch a different debate? Did they not watch the same stuttering, catch-phrase riddeled moron that I saw? Do they really hate Gray Davis that much that they would be willing to let this buffoon run their state? Do they hate themselves that much? I guess we'll see.
Finally, tomorrow is the release day of Michael Moore's new book, "Dude, Where's My Country?". (If you have a minute, go and read a new article about the book at the Guardian Limited.) Moore says that the mission of his new book is "regime change". The cover alone will be enough to cause controversy. It shows Moore pulling a chain over his shoulder pulling down the infamous Saddam statue, only this Saddam statue is not Saddam. Bush's face has been superimposed over Saddam's. If this isn't enough to cause controversy wait until Moore shows the ties between the Bin Laden family and the Bush family. It is going to be a very interesting to read, and equally as interesting to experience the public's reaction to Moore's newest ready-made controversy.
In a July 22nd report in Newsday, Timothy Phelps and Knut Royce reported that Bob Novak's response to how he received the leak of a CIA operative's name from a Senior Administration official was, "I didn't dig it up, it was given to me. They thought it was significant, they gave me the name, and I used it."
In recent times, under the hot lights of public interrogation, if you will, Novak is changing his tune. He has repeatedly said this week that the leak was given to him casually. He has even flip-flopped quite a bit on the Newsday quote he gave to Royce and Phelps in July. When asked about the quote on Wolf Blitzer Reports, Novak responded that Royce and Phelps "made a bad mistake. They said they[Novak's sources] came to me with the information. I never told them that. And that's not in quotes, is it?" Then he added, "So, they made that up. I never said that."
Well, according to Meet the Press, everything Novak said to Royce and Phelps was in quotes, and Novak is now backing off the claim that Newsday misquoted him. When Tim Russert challenged Novak with the quote, his reponse was, "That isn't very artfully put. What I was trying to say was that I didn't do an investigative report in the CIA." That is quite a different response then the firm denial of the quote's authenticity to Wolf Blitzer just a few days before.
On a similar note, but regarding a different set of people, Newsweek's Evan Thomas and Michael Isikoff are going to report this week that a source close to Amb. Wilson is saying that Hardball's host Chris Matthews called Wilson and said, "I just got off the phone with Karl Rove, who said your wife was fair game." Mattews has refused to discuss any coversations he may have had with Karl Rove. However, a source close to Rove ackowledges "that Rove spoke to Matthews a few days after Novak’s column appeared."
If you listened to Bush's speech yesterday morning, and I always recommend against listening to him speak, then you might have believed that David Kay and his team actually found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. This is the same administration that over and over again manipulated the majority of the public into believing that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11. This is not an administration that is eager to be straight forward with the American people.
It is important to constantly remind one's self what was being said before the war, before over 300 Americans and thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens had been killed. We heard over and over again that Iraq was an imminent threat because of their weapons of mass destruction.
Let me take a moment to define the word "imminent" for the Bush administration.
imminent
adj., ready to take place; esp: hanging threateningly over one's head-- im.mi.nent.ly adv
Thank You Brittanica Ready Reference (If only you had been available to the most powerful office in the world.)
According to Reuters, Bush said yesterday, "Saddam Hussein was a danger to the world." Was he an imminent danger? Well, according to David Kay, the guy that wrote the report that caused Bush to exclaim Hussein's apparent dangers, he was not. On Newshour with Jim Lehrer this past Thursday, Kay said, "We have found no actual weapons at this stage." Well, that doesn't sound like a country that was a danger to the world and certainly not an imminent danger. Even Colin Powell, a normally sobering administration official, found reason to be optimistic, "We are more convinced by the Kay report that we did the right thing." Well, Mr. Powell, was it the part where they reported not finding any weapons that made you so sure killing thousands of people, none of which being the actual guy who posed this apparent imminent danger, was the right thing to do.
In an MSNBC article yesterday, Hans Blix(the UN inspector that was doing his job before America decided it was time to "Shock and Awe" the world with our big toys) said, in regard to the Kay report's claims that Iraq had programs in place to possibly develop WMD's in the years to come, "If they could develop weapons of mass destruction in five or ten tears, well, that certainly is not imminent." I wonder if Mr. Blix has the Britanica Ready Reference. He seems to know the meaning of the word imminent.
In a New York Times article released today, there is further evidence that Attorney General John Ashcroft can not be trusted to investigate the CIA leaks from the White House.
As I wrote yesterday, the suspect that has been pointed to over and over again is Bush Chief Political Stategist Karl Rove. Well, it turns out that Rove's mass mailing company was paid $300,000 for direct mailing and other services during Ashcroft's 1994 Senate run in Missouri. This connection is "in addition to his[Rove's] roles in two earlier campaigns."
How can we trust a Justice Department to fairly investigate its friends and political bedfellows? We can't, and we shouldn't be asked to accept such a conflict without suspicion.
One name that has been coming up over and over again in the investigation of alleged White House leaks of a CIA operative to at least 6 reporters is Bush’s Senior Political Adviser Karl Rove(The president's pet name for him is "Turd Blossom"). However, there are many precedents for Rove playing these political games in the past. I have been surprised that more coverage hasn’t linked these past transgressions and paralleled them with this new information. There are several reasons that the public should suspect Rove of being behind these leaks, and all of these reasons would certainly warrant the investigation starting in his office.
Why should you believe that Rove was behind the CIA leaks?
Reason #1
In 1970, the New York Daily News reports that Rove campaigned for Alan Dixon, a Democratic candidate for state treasurer of Illinois. Of course, Rove was only there to infiltrate the campaign and to do everything he could to make sure that they would lose to the Republican candidate. He decided the best way to derail Dixon’s campaign was to use Dixon’s campaign letterhead to send out one thousand copies of an invitation to a fictional party that promised “free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing.”
Rove’s stunt caught the attention of many Republican lawmakers, one of which was George H.W. Bush, who had at the time held a high position for the Republican National Committee. Needless to say, Bush must have been impressed because he later hired Rove.
Reason #2
The Austin Chronicle reports that in 1986 Rove was working for Bill Clements, a republican running for Governor of Texas against the incumbent Democrat Mark White. A debate between the two candidates was only days away, and Rove decided to stick a listening device inside a needlepoint of an elephant that he had on his wall (at least we know he has good taste, who among us does not have a needlepoint on our wall). He called the FBI to report that his office had been bugged, and before the investigation was able to take its course, the debate took place under charges that the incumbent democrat had bugged the office of the republicans. Of course this wasn’t true. Rove had planted the device. Still, White was so busy trying to fend off questions about the bugging that he was really unable to focus on relevant policy issues.
Reason #3
Guerilla News reports that in 1992, Rove was working for the senior Bush. However, he was fired after he leaked criticisms of George H.W. Bush's campaign fund raising chief, Robert Mosbacher. Do you know who Rove leaked this story to, that’s right, Robert Novak. For those of you that don’t know, Novak is the only reporter of the six that were leaked to that reported the CIA operatives name. This is probably the best reason to believe that Rove is behind these CIA leaks. We know that he has a history of dirty politics, and of leaks, specifically leaks to Robert Novak.
Also, Wilson said on Nightline that he has talked to reporters that he trusts that say that Rove was telling reporters even after the leak that Wilson’s wife, the CIA operative that was outed by the leak, was “fair game”.
Even Guardian Unlimited reporter Julian Borger says, "Several of the journalists are saying privately 'yes it was Karl Rove who I talked to.'"
Reason #4
This is my personal reason, and it is the least credible. I really, really, really despise Karl Rove. I have had a habit over the last few years of not being able to utter his name without immediately uttering, “He’s a snake” ( My apologies to all snakes). I have always just had a gut feeling about this guy. He looks rotten and slimy, and even though Amb. Joseph Wilson has backed off his original statement that he would like to see Karl Rove marched out of the White House in handcuffs; I personally would love to see Rove led out of the White House in handcuffs. The only difference between Ambassador Wilson and me is that I would rather see him dragged out of the White House kicking and screaming.
I am sure he will have plenty of time to practice his love for needlepoint in prison.
A new poll that will be published tomorrow in the Washington Post shows that 69 percent of the public thinks that an independent prosecuter will do better to investigate the CIA leaks from the white house then would Ashcroft's Justice Department.
Who can blame them?
John Ashcroft was by far the most controversial of Bush's picks when he strutted into the White House in 2001. However, when his appointment was allowed to move through Congress he annointed himself as if he were royalty. No, he really did anoint himself as if he were divinely chosen. Thank goodness he did, or else God might have really poured his wrath on us. Who knows, we may have even lost a good deal of our civil rights, oh! wait a second... I guess it didn't matter.
I think most of the public, like me, were certainly ready to say goodbye to the independent prosecuter, especially after the cost and mess left behind in the wake of Ken Starr. However, Ashcroft is too slippery to get the job done. He makes too many people nervous with the ease that he wipes away our rights to privacy, not to mention our rights to see an attorney.
One last thing, if Ashcroft is so intent on doing anything, including looking in our library books and searching our homes without a warrant, then why wasn't he going after this case when the story broke in mid-July. Somebody needs to remind Mr. Ashcroft that terrorism includes intimidation, and there is no doubt that these leaks were put forward to intimidate other detractors from coming forward with critical information that could hurt the administration's case for war. I suppose it is only terrorism when John Ashcroft says it is, or perhaps he waits for God to tell him.