CAUGHT RED-HANDED
CNN finally gets around to mentioning the tax-return scandal, managing to write the entire article without mentioning the author of the provision (Ernest J. Istook, Jr. R-OK) or addressing how it got buried in the appropriations bill
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/21/tax.provision/index.html
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Sunday that "accountability will be carried out" against whoever slipped a provision into an omnibus spending bill that would have allowed two committee chairman to view the tax returns of any American…"I have no earthly idea how it got in there," Frist said on CBS's "Face The Nation…Nobody is going to defend this."
Sen. John McCain said Sunday that the episode points up the problems created when Congress passes gigantic spending bills at the end of a session, before anyone has time to read them…”If there is ever a graphic example of the broken system that we now have, that certainly has to be it…How many other provisions didn't we find in that 1,000-page bill?"
Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer of New York called Sunday for a "full and complete" investigation into how the language got into the bill, followed by "appropriate punishment" for those responsible…"This harkens back to the days of [FBI Director] J. Edgar Hoover, when some unknown person could go and snoop on you," he said…
What were the motivations behind the Istook provision (not an amendment, strictly speaking)? Josh Marshall pieces some clues together
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_11_21.php#004079
Today, Istook and the House Appropriations Committee are scrambling to redefine the whole matter as a misunderstanding and “no big deal" – the problem is that their excuses are belied by the plain language of what they tried to sneak through
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_11_21.php#004085
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_11_21.php#004086
The earth movers roll in, trying to cover it all over
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_11_21.php#004084
SCHIEFFER: Do you even know who put it in the bill?
Sen. FRIST: I personally don't know but obviously somebody's going to know and accountability will be carried out. It was wrong. Everybody says--nobody's going to defend this. I wouldn't even spend any more time on it. It was fixed…
Sen. Hutchison...
I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that that clause that was inserted about IRS documents or people's tax returns being able to be gotten to by any member of Congress or any staff -- can't be blamed on the right wing. That's totally inappropriate. I don't think we know how that got in, and I can't -- it's not fair to put blame. It's just not fair.
The Istook controversy shines light on the explosion of secret provisions added during conference committee sessions intended to reconcile House and Senate bills (from a stunning Boston Globe series, published last month)
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_11_21.php#004088
The panels, made up of a small group of lawmakers appointed by leaders in both parties, added a record 3,407 "pork barrel" projects to appropriations bills for this year's federal budget, items that were never debated or voted on beforehand by the House and Senate and whose congressional patrons are kept secret. This compares to just 47 projects added in conference committee in 1994, the last year of Democratic control.
Bush cuts Pell grants, but finds money to try to buy back Nixon’s old Presidential yacht. Isn’t this the kind of thing the Repubs would kill a Democratic President for?
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2004/11/presidential-yacht.html
Yes, you read that right: “Mr. Education” decimates one of the few truly successful federal education programs
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/education/21pell.html
Nearly 100,000 more students may lose their federal grants entirely…
Rumor: Bush to appoint Joe Lieberman head of Homeland Security? I seriously doubt it – we all know that only Republicans can keep us safe
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/21/104642/18
Lest there be any doubt who torpedoed the Intelligence Bill
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-hunter22nov22,1,1077643.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
The Pentagon controls about 80% of the intelligence agencies' annual estimated budgets of $40 billion.
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001417.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/politics/21cnd-inte.html?ex=1258779600&en=692e3085f191383f&%2338;ei=5090&%2338;partner=rssuserland
[NB: It really does speak volumes about this administration that, close on the heels of his election “mandate,” Bush couldn’t override Rummy’s efforts to block this bill…But there’s another possible reading, that while Bush had to make a show of lobbying to get the bill passed, his heart wasn’t really in it. (Difficult to believe he couldn’t have put on a harder full-court press if he’d really wanted to.) Support for this latter hypothesis: http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/21/congress.intelligence/index.html "Some of it is turf, you know, quite frankly," the Kansas Republican said on "Fox News Sunday." "Some of it is from the Pentagon. Some of it, quite frankly, is from the White House, despite what the president has said."]
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/22/politics/22panel.html?oref=login&ex=1258866000&
"It was clear that I wanted the bill passed," the president said. He declined to respond directly to a question about whether reports of opposition by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had contributed to the bill's collapse not quite three weeks after Mr. Bush won a second term and his party expanded its control over Congress.
More on Porter Goss’s “astounding” memo to CIA staffers (thanks to Laura Rozen for the link)
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-cia21nov21,1,4124491.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
And a glimpse into the kind of folk Goss has brought into the organization
http://fugop.blogspot.com/2004/11/patrick-murray.html
Until a few weeks ago, Patrick Murray was just another ambitious Capitol Hill staffer. As a top aide to Rep. Porter Goss, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, Murray had a reputation as a sharp-tongued partisan lawyer. When Democrats on the committee asked the CIA for information, Murray would cut them off, reminding the agency that only requests backed by the Republican majority should be honored. "He was just impossible," says one staffer who dealt with him. "He was sarcastic, snide and had this uncanny ability to push people's buttons." One former CIA official told NEWSWEEK that Murray leaned on him more than once to declassify information so he could use it to "embarrass the Democrats." Murray was irritated when the agency declined. He regarded much of the CIA as a nest of obstructionist bureaucrats, time-servers who had schemed to undermine the administration's policies—especially in Iraq.
In Iraq: those who will not learn from history are condemned to repeat it
http://www.suntimes.com/output/otherviews/cst-edt-ref21.html
During World War I, Britain invaded Mesopotamia (as the three neglected Turkish provinces were called) for oil and only for oil. Despite this, the British declared in their May 18, 1918, proclamation, read aloud in Baghdad: ''Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators.''…This invasion enabled Britain to cobble three ethnically separate provinces together -- Kurdish Mosul, Sunni Baghdad and Shiite Basra -- into a single land that London would rename Iraq. The name ''Iraq'' came from the ancient Arab cartographic designation.
The British then established Iraq as a nation for the sole purpose of structuring the exploitation of its oil. Arnold Wilson, the British civil administrator of Mesopotamia, the man who authorized General William Marshall's unauthorized push into Mosul, wrote, ''Thanks to General Marshall, we had established de facto, the principle that Mosul is part of 'Iraq,' to use the geographical expression. . . . Whether for the woe or weal of the inhabitants, it is too soon to say.''…
But Arab and Islamic nationalists in the newly invented Iraq did not want to share their land with infidel European Christians. Nor did they choose to share European values of democracy and pluralism…It did not take long for the Iraqis to rise up in terror raids, burning, bombing, kidnapping and massacring Westerners, including those sent to commercially develop the land and its waterways.
The outraged British response to such horrors was aerial bombardment to shock and awe the villages. But the Iraqi violence and the British resolve to combat it with troops and tanks persisted, all for the oil wealth of Iraq…The British worked hard to instill democratic values in Iraq, thus creating a stable environment for the oil to flow. But it was a governance disaster because the people did not want it. Genocide against minorities, ethnic cleansing, repression, corruption and neglect were the rule in Iraq for years.
Major John Glubb, the British officer who organized the Arab Legion, complained bitterly in a letter to Whitehall. ''We . . . imagined that we had bestowed on the Iraqis all these blessings of democracy. ... Nothing could be more undemocratic than the result. A handful of politicians obtained possession of the machinery of government, and all the elections were rigged. . . . In this process they all became very rich.''
For eight more decades, the West -- now with the United States joining France and Britain -- has tried to hang onto its oil lifeline in the Middle East, using our diplomats, corporate surrogates and militaries. That has only fueled the cycle of insurrection and now world terrorism from a people who resent our presence and resource exploitation, and have always understood better than anyone exactly why we are there. It is not sand we crave in Iraq, it is oil.
Speaking of history: from Colin Powell’s memoir
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/opinion/21danner.html?ex=1258779600&en=6fe51440fb8517e3&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
"Our senior officers knew the war was going badly. Yet they bowed to groupthink pressure and kept up pretenses. ...Many of my generation, the career captains, majors, and lieutenant colonels seasoned in that war, vowed that when our turn came to call the shots, we would not quietly acquiesce in halfhearted warfare for half-baked reasons that the American people could not understand."
Iraq elections set for January 30
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/international/middleeast/21cnd-iraq.html?oref=login&ex=1258779600&
On Jan. 30, Iraqis will vote for members of a 275-seat national assembly, which will then install an executive government and draft a permanent constitution. Elections for a full-term government are planned for the end of 2005.
The same day, Iraqis will also vote for members of provincial councils in the country's 18 provinces. In the northern Kurdish region, residents will vote in a third election, one for a Kurdistan Assembly.
Expatriate Iraqis in at least 14 countries are expected to be able to vote in the National Assembly elections. Smaller countries such as Jordan and Great Britain will have a voter registration and polling center in the capital, said Safwat Rashid, an electoral commissioner. Larger countries, like the United States, Australia and Iran, will have multiple centers, he added.
[Fill in punch line here…]
Analysis: http://www.juancole.com/2004/11/vote-set-for-january-30-interim.html
International outrage over Fallujah offensive
http://www.juancole.com/2004/11/large-protests-against-fallujah.html
World revulsion against the US attack on Fallujah reached a crescendo during the past five days, with significant street protests breaking out in the Middle East and Latin America. Turkey, Palestine and Libya in the region, and Chile in the New World saw thousands of angry protesters come out against the US.
The brutal way the US conducted the assault, and the continual aerial bombardment of civilian neighborhoods in the weeks leading up to the attack, suggested to many observers that the operation was intended as a form of collective punishment against the people of Fallujah, and a warning to the residents of other Iraqi cities not to let the guerrillas operate freely in their urban areas. Collective punishment is forbidden by the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 governing militarily occupied territories.
So NOW they tell us: the election safely behind them, need for troop increases finally announced
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2565-2004Nov21.html?nav=rss_nation
A really sad story: why you didn’t see this quote plastered over every major paper before the election – you had to read blogs like this one to hear about it
http://www.houston-press.com/issues/2004-11-18/news/news_print.html#
According to Baker's report, Herskowitz said that Bush felt frustrated with his image as an "underachiever" compared to his father, that he had "failed" to complete his National Guard requirement during the Vietnam War and that his private business efforts had been "floundering."…Herskowitz said that Bush had Iraq on his "to do" list as early as 1999. "[Bush] said, 'If I have a chance to invade…if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it,' " Baker writes…
I ran a piece like this once before, but this is pretty funny (thanks to Matt Yglesias for the link)
http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaardvark/2004/11/the_iranian_pro.html
There's a lot of talk these days about a possible confrontation between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States. Leaving aside the admittedly big question of nuclear weapons for a moment, it's pretty easy to see the reasons for concern.
The country is ever more dominated by conservatives and advocates of political religion. There was a time in the 1990s when the country seemed to be moving in a more liberal direction, but those days are long past. Conservatives and religious movements have spent the last few years consolidating their control over the major political institutions - the executive branch, the legislative branch, the judiciary, even the media. Indeed, in the most recent elections, the conservatives routed their liberal counterparts. These conservatives and their religious base express open contempt for liberals and their values. Pretty much the only remaining opposition seems to be among university students and among some liberal newspapers, but their limited power doesn't really threaten the ruling coalition. What's more, the country has recently been very active inside of Iraq, which threatens important national security interests. Leading conservative figures, including some known for very close ties to senior government leaders, have openly declared their hostility and have even spoken about the need for military action. Even relatively moderate foreign policy officials have been sounding pretty hawkish lately.
You can see why the Iranians might be worried about a country like the United States these days.
What can the Dems learn from Colorado successes?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A821-2004Nov20.html
On the need for a “shadow government”
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/22/31512/197
Arnold’s national aspirations
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2004/11/21/schwarzeneggers_plan.html
Clarence Thomas for Chief Justice? You can see how the cynical Bush advisors think: even though he is a mediocre justice by any measure, little more than a rubber stamp for Scalia’s decisions, they would try to frame any opposition to him as racist in origin (and Ted Olson may finally get his reward for running the Clinton witch hunt)
http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak21x.html
Thomas is reportedly unwilling to undergo another confirmation battle.
Justice Dept enforcement of civil rights laws “plummets”
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-civilrights22nov22,1,2655186.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
[I’m sure Alberto Gonzales will get right on it]
“Hello Alberto”
http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/fiore/
[I know, I know, opposition to him is “anti-Latino”]
Colin Powell really did want to stay on, apparently, but was…ahem…not invited back (thanks to Laura Rozen for the link)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/11/21/wpow21.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/11/21/ixnewstop.html
The New York Times just can’t stop ridiculing protests over election regularities
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/weekinreview/21word.html?ex=1101618000&en=a58484a5621642f7&ei=5006&partner=ALTAVISTA1
Comment: http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00000979.htm
And a reminder: “The election’s already over, we’ve won. It’s all over but the counting, and we’re taking care of the counting”
http://homepage.mac.com/duffyb/nobush/iMovieTheater256.html
Ohio vote to be challenged in court
http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/04/11/con04509.html
In Ohio, Blackwell’s foot-dragging
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240
The…recount effort was underscored last week by their letters to Blackwell insisting he hurry up and finish certifying the count well before the announced deadline of December 6, because otherwise, there won’t be enough time for the recount before the voting of the Electoral College on December 13.
Meanwhile, in Washington (sound familiar?) GOP goes to court to STOP a recount
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-washgov22nov22,1,6319393.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
John Pilger: The Greatest Political Scandal of Our Time (thanks to Megan Boler and Doug Kellner for the link)
http://www.counterpunch.org/pilger11152004.html
David Meyer writes a great summary of why we are RIGHT and they are WRONG – I’m just going to clip the whole thing
http://fugop.blogspot.com/2004/11/power-mad.html
The GOP has again fallen prey to an old vice: believing their own spin, acting as though they have a mandate for revolutionary change. After a bruising election determined by a litany of ultimately insurmountable GOP distortions, conservatives have renewed their assault on the weary American people. Congress came back for a five day lame-duck session less than a week ago. In that brief time, Republicans have again revealed their true colors: contempt for the American people and disdain for the rule of law.
As evidence of criminality continues to accumulate against House Majority Leader Tom Delay, the GOP erected a shield around their wayward leader. "In an unrecorded voice vote conducted behind closed doors," the Republican Caucus voted to change an 11 year old rule prohibiting Congressional leaders from enjoying their positions while under indictment. Three of Delay's underlings were indicted in September for illegally funneling corporate contributions to Texas state politicians, an effort "engineered" by Delay himself. Delay's defenders have responded with a formal smear campaign against Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, who is leading the criminal investigation. Unsurprisingly, the smears have already percolated into the press, despite the complete lack of supporting evidence. Delay gloats that the "crushing defeat" suffered by Democrats because of "Democrat (sic) obstruction and vicious personal attacks should show them that the American people are tired of a politics of personal destruction." A majority of the GOP voted to protect this unethical man because the GOP won the election, and has a mandate for more of the same.
Again scoffing at the people's right to hold their representatives accountable, the Republican Congress has passed an omnibus spending bill loaded with egregious riders. They have authorized the pillaging of the environment. They have undermined health care for women and families. They tried to hand unfettered access to our private tax information to Republican legislators. They, at the request of the President, allowed the Department of Education to reduce student loan spending by as much as $300,000,000, cutting off aid for as many as 100,000 lower middle class students and reducing aid for a million more. The bill is 3000 pages long and it was finalized in the dark of night, mere hours before it was voted on. Rest assured that more contemptible riders will come to light. The GOP won the election, and has a mandate for more of the same.
While the GOP fiddled with its stealth riders, intelligence reform burned. The 9/11 Commission's intelligence reform proposals are not going to become law, allegedly because of objections from Republican Congressmen Duncan Hunter (California) and James Sensenbrenner (Wisconsin). Hunter supposedly ignored the Department of Defense's support for the reform, deciding that it would hurt our military intelligence capabilities. Sensenbrenner's objection was even more facile: he wanted to make sure illegal immigrants didn't get driver's licenses. It is inconceivable that a bill supported by the President, the Vice President, the Speaker of the House, and the Senate Majority Leader could be blocked on such weak grounds. After spending the final months of the campaign courting reform advocates, the GOP sent them packing without the courtesy of breakfast. President Bush won his election, and has a mandate for more of the same.
While the GOP was submarining real intelligence reform, Bush's Director of Central Intelligence surfaced to launch his own reforms: driving objective and professional civil servants from the CIA, to be replaced by GOP loyalists. The Republican staff he put in place to head the agency insulted the professional staff to the point of resignation. Porter Goss responded by circulating a memo admonishing analysts and operatives to toe the Party line. Take no action to defend the American people from administration perfidy, support administration allegations, truth be damned. Bush won his election, and has a mandate for more of the same.
While Goss was busy protecting the administration from truth, Bush elevated to his cabinet two more partisans of fantasy. "In nominating Alberto Gonzales to be the next attorney general, President Bush has selected a man with a long record of giving him the kind of legal advice he wants, [WP]" especially when Mr. Bush wants to torture, execute, or evade international law and public accountability. In nominating Condoleezza Rice to be the next Secretary of State, President Bush has selected a woman with a long record of telling him exactly what he wants to hear, especially when Mr. Bush wants to go to war, blame Clinton, or save face. In even considering promoting the likes of Danielle Pletka and John Bolton, the administration is flaunting its distaste for rationality. Bush won his election, and has a mandate for more of the same.
While Bush was elevating friendly fabulists, old stories were being retold. At the same time that the administration was declaring victory in Fallujah (despite on the ground intelligence), Iraq erupted in flames and insurgents remobilized, leaving Iraq on the brink of formal civil war. Afghanistan is again dominated, socially, economically, and politically, by the opium trade. Following a European diplomatic breakthrough on Iran's nuclear weapons development, the administration leaked dubious intelligence to "preemptively sabotage" any real progress, escalating tensions. Bush won his election, and has a mandate for more of the same.
Democrats, on the other hand, have merely reaffirmed their decency. Former President Clinton asked if he was the "only person in the entire United States of America who likes both George W. Bush and John Kerry, who believes they’re both good people, who believes they both love our country and they just see the world differently?" Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, in his farewell address to a room virtually devoid of Republicans, nonetheless embraced the "firm middle ground based on common sense and shared values." New Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has pledged to "work with [Bush] 'to get things done so that we might actually fulfill the promises we hear so often on the campaign trail.'" Unfortunately, the GOP views decency as a character defect, an invitation to abuse. Senator Kerry is correct to place the burden of bipartisanship on Bush.
The GOP has misinterpreted the results of the 2004 election. A people too preoccupied to wade through innumerable lies reelected a President based on misconceptions, yet the GOP hears this muddled cry for help as vindication for its deplorable politics. They have managed to repeat four years worth of mistakes and malfeasance in less than three weeks. I once heard an old saying from Texas: "fool me once, shame on you - fool me [twice] - you can't get fooled again." Let's make sure the saying is true, and that the American people can't get fooled again.
Bonus item: the power of boycotts
http://www.adnausea.org/
***If you enjoy PBD and believe in what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).
I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
Sunday, November 21, 2004
WHAT THEY DO IN THE DARK
More on the “party of sleaze” trope, which has been given even more ammunition in the past couple of days. When the GOP surged to dominance in Congress in the 90’s, it was built on three principles: term limits, promoting a balanced budget, and criticizing the Democrats’ complacency and arrogance in power. Well, we know what they did as soon as THEY got into office. A clever and coordinated Democratic assault on GOP corruption and how it has failed to enact its OWN principles could make 2006 into our 1994. (No, I'm not suggesting the Dems advocate term limits; but hold the GOP's feet to the fire for going back on its "Contract.") Is “clever and coordinated” an oxymoron for the Dems? We’ll see
Rumsfeld’s marionettes in the House find excuses to scuttle the Intelligence Bill: even the slanted version agreed to in conference went too far in compromising his power – and Bush’s personal intervention was not enough to get it passed. (So exactly where is all this “political capital” he had accumulated, and if he has no leverage even in overriding his own Cabinet official why should anyone else listen to him either?)
House leadership won’t even allow a vote
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/politics/21panel.html?oref=login&hp&ex=1101013200&en=8062b82eec4a69ec&ei=5094&partner=homepage
House Republican leaders blocked and appeared to kill a bill Saturday that would have enacted the major recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, refusing to allow a vote on the legislation despite last-minute pleas from both President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to Republican lawmakers for a compromise before Congress adjourned for the year.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2110012/fr/rss/
The WP quotes 9/11 Commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean, who points out that with the support of Democrats and a fair number of Republicans, the bill probably would have passed had it come to a vote. But the notion of relying on Democrats to pass the bill was evidently too humiliating for House leaders to contemplate.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20041120/ap_on_go_co/congress_intelligence
Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the White House, and the blame for this failure is theirs alone," added House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California…The agreement had been reached between Collins and Lieberman and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., and Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., early Saturday…Harman, D-Calif., said the Pentagon has worked to scuttle the bill…"The forces in favor of the status quo are protecting their turf, whether it is in Congress or in the bureaucracy. And at a time when we are in a war we can't allow turf concerns" to triumph, Collins said.
The things they do when no one is watching. GOP hides provision (the Istook Amendment) in the massive spending bill, giving committee chairmen and their staffs access to YOUR tax returns. When caught at it, everyone says it was a “mistake” – yeah, you bet it was
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/20/tax.returns.ap/
Conrad said the measure's presence in the spending bill was symptomatic of a broader problem -- Congress writing legislation hundreds of pages long and then giving lawmakers only a few hours to review it before having to vote on it…Some Democrats didn't accept the assertion that the provision was a mistake and demanded an investigation…"We weren't born yesterday, we didn't come down with the first snow," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California. "This isn't poorly thought out, this was very deliberately thought out and it was done in the dead of night."
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/008828.html
“Hereafter, notwithstanding any other provision of law governing the disclosure of income tax returns or return information, upon written request of the Chairman of the House or Senate Committee on Appropriations, the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service shall allow agents designated by such Chairman access to Internal Revenue Service facilities and any tax returns or return information contained therein”
Analysis
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_11_14.php#004073
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_11_21.php#004077
[Josh Marshall] So I guess the questions on the Istook Amendment are pretty straightforward.
What is Rep. Istook's explanation for inserting the provision in the omnibus spending bill?…Subject to the quality of that explanation, will Rep. Istook face any disciplinary action, either formal or informal?
On the Senate floor, Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens said that neither he nor House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young knew that provision had been inserted into the bill. Beside Istook, which members of congress and/or congressional staffers knew about the Istook Amendment prior to the matter being brought up by Senate Democrats?…Who gave the sign off to insert the provision into the bill?
How GOP House members voted on the DeLay Rule
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_11_21.php#004075
According to [the] latest tally, only 42 reps. have been willing to say publicly that they voted for the DeLay Rule -- a rule which reportedly passed overwhelmingly on a voice-vote in a caucus of over 230 members.
http://dailydelay.blogspot.com/2004/11/votes-on-delay-rule.html
Back in Texas, DeLay’s proxies go after Earle in a big way. Only one person is surviving this death match – let’s see who it will be
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_11_14.php#004072
Hey, how are things going in Iraq? Just great, great
Baghdad explodes
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20041120/D86FN52G0.html
http://www.hipakistan.com/en/detail.php?newsId=en74048&F_catID=&f_type=source
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2004/11/one-road.html
One of the things I actually find a bit confusing is... why the hell can't we even secure the road to the Baghdad airport?
Losing the battle for hearts and minds
http://www.juancole.com/2004/11/engagement-of-rules-rod-nordland-and.html
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6542346/site/newsweek/
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FK20Ak01.html
Beneath this general problem lie three key problems that made the attack on Fallujah a desperation measure in the first place, and which is now creating a new and deeper crisis for the US military in its aftermath.
First, and most important, the people of Fallujah hate the Americans and support the guerrillas (even if they may have complaints about much of what they do). This means that as soon as the people return, so will the resistance…
Second, the US cannot depend on Iraqi police or military to fight this next phase of the "battle of Fallujah". Here's how this problem was reported by the Times: "Senior officers have said that they would keep a sizable American military presence in and around Fallujah in the long reconstruction phase that has just begun, until sufficiently trained and equipped Iraqi forces could take the lead in providing security…
The key thing here is that when the Americans entered the Fallujah battle they believed that the Iraqi forces would be ready to take over immediately after the city was cleared. But the mass defections and unwillingness to fight exhibited by the Iraqis have forced a drastic revision in these estimates…
The third problem is that the US simply does not have enough troops to hold Fallujah and also do all the other fighting that is now necessary…the only remedy for the third problem is a vast increase in the number of US troops in Iraq. And that means a draft in the United States.
How desperate for warm bodies are they? Military prepares AMPUTEES to return to duty (no this isn’t a joke)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4626234,00.html
Marine commander says zero Iraqi civilian deaths in Fallujah (Red Cross says 800, at least)
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000724487
A range of opinions on the Marine shooting of a wounded Iraqi prisoner
http://slate.msn.com/id/2109853/fr/rss/
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2004_11_14_digbysblog_archive.html#110100158214458173
Bush threatens Iran and North Korea (and manages to tick off Russia in the process)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/politics/21prexy.html?oref=login&ex=1258693200&
Remember that State Dept report on progress in the war on terror? The one that said things were getting better, then Powell had to come out a few days later and admit the analysis was wrong and the numbers actually showed things were getting much worse? On closer review, even the corrected version isn’t worth the paper it's printed on
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-terror21nov21,1,5730705.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
The department's independent investigative unit concluded, however, that politics played no role in allowing so many mistakes to be published in the original version of the "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report for 2003.
More people who don’t seem to be able to count
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2004-2_archives/000573.html
Dan Morgan of the Post:
Domestic spending controlled by Congress in annual spending bills began growing sharply in the final two years of the Clinton administration when budget surpluses replaced years of deficits. But after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, the Bush administration began applying the brakes.
[Nowhere near true – read on]
Rick Santorum’s woes: couldn’t happen to a nicer guy
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/20/233427/51
Vote fraud update
A nice wiki on all Ohio shenanigans (thanks to Kos)
http://www.dkosopedia.com/index.php/2004_Ohio_Irregularities
Why recount Ohio?
http://www.votersunite.org/info/mapflyerohio2004.pdf
The Ohio recount: where things stand
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/20/151250/92
Thorough review of exit poll data, and what it does (and doesn’t) prove
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/20/9555/0527
Kerry conceded too soon (thanks to Doug Kellner for the link)
http://www.observer.com/pages/frontpage8.asp
Recounting NH (a Kerry state), and why it could be important
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041129&s=baker
One of Rove’s evil insights was that they could use gay marriage as a wedge issue to drive a larger proportion of African-American votes into the Bush camp. Now, a scurrilous insert included with the Washington Post – why they agreed to run it, I can’t tell you – continues the lies
http://americablog.blogspot.com/archives/2004_11_01_americablog_archive.html#110097728685621475
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/09/27/BAGQM8VI8E1.DTL
Bonus item: Me first! Me first! (thanks to BuzzFlash for the link)
http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/11/19/national/19library.4.583.jpg
Bush Tries to Push His Way Past Clinton to be the First to Emerge from the Door for Clinton's Library Opening
***If you enjoy PBD and believe in what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).
I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
More on the “party of sleaze” trope, which has been given even more ammunition in the past couple of days. When the GOP surged to dominance in Congress in the 90’s, it was built on three principles: term limits, promoting a balanced budget, and criticizing the Democrats’ complacency and arrogance in power. Well, we know what they did as soon as THEY got into office. A clever and coordinated Democratic assault on GOP corruption and how it has failed to enact its OWN principles could make 2006 into our 1994. (No, I'm not suggesting the Dems advocate term limits; but hold the GOP's feet to the fire for going back on its "Contract.") Is “clever and coordinated” an oxymoron for the Dems? We’ll see
Rumsfeld’s marionettes in the House find excuses to scuttle the Intelligence Bill: even the slanted version agreed to in conference went too far in compromising his power – and Bush’s personal intervention was not enough to get it passed. (So exactly where is all this “political capital” he had accumulated, and if he has no leverage even in overriding his own Cabinet official why should anyone else listen to him either?)
House leadership won’t even allow a vote
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/politics/21panel.html?oref=login&hp&ex=1101013200&en=8062b82eec4a69ec&ei=5094&partner=homepage
House Republican leaders blocked and appeared to kill a bill Saturday that would have enacted the major recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, refusing to allow a vote on the legislation despite last-minute pleas from both President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to Republican lawmakers for a compromise before Congress adjourned for the year.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2110012/fr/rss/
The WP quotes 9/11 Commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean, who points out that with the support of Democrats and a fair number of Republicans, the bill probably would have passed had it come to a vote. But the notion of relying on Democrats to pass the bill was evidently too humiliating for House leaders to contemplate.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20041120/ap_on_go_co/congress_intelligence
Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the White House, and the blame for this failure is theirs alone," added House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California…The agreement had been reached between Collins and Lieberman and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., and Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., early Saturday…Harman, D-Calif., said the Pentagon has worked to scuttle the bill…"The forces in favor of the status quo are protecting their turf, whether it is in Congress or in the bureaucracy. And at a time when we are in a war we can't allow turf concerns" to triumph, Collins said.
The things they do when no one is watching. GOP hides provision (the Istook Amendment) in the massive spending bill, giving committee chairmen and their staffs access to YOUR tax returns. When caught at it, everyone says it was a “mistake” – yeah, you bet it was
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/20/tax.returns.ap/
Conrad said the measure's presence in the spending bill was symptomatic of a broader problem -- Congress writing legislation hundreds of pages long and then giving lawmakers only a few hours to review it before having to vote on it…Some Democrats didn't accept the assertion that the provision was a mistake and demanded an investigation…"We weren't born yesterday, we didn't come down with the first snow," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California. "This isn't poorly thought out, this was very deliberately thought out and it was done in the dead of night."
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/008828.html
“Hereafter, notwithstanding any other provision of law governing the disclosure of income tax returns or return information, upon written request of the Chairman of the House or Senate Committee on Appropriations, the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service shall allow agents designated by such Chairman access to Internal Revenue Service facilities and any tax returns or return information contained therein”
Analysis
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_11_14.php#004073
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_11_21.php#004077
[Josh Marshall] So I guess the questions on the Istook Amendment are pretty straightforward.
What is Rep. Istook's explanation for inserting the provision in the omnibus spending bill?…Subject to the quality of that explanation, will Rep. Istook face any disciplinary action, either formal or informal?
On the Senate floor, Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens said that neither he nor House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young knew that provision had been inserted into the bill. Beside Istook, which members of congress and/or congressional staffers knew about the Istook Amendment prior to the matter being brought up by Senate Democrats?…Who gave the sign off to insert the provision into the bill?
How GOP House members voted on the DeLay Rule
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_11_21.php#004075
According to [the] latest tally, only 42 reps. have been willing to say publicly that they voted for the DeLay Rule -- a rule which reportedly passed overwhelmingly on a voice-vote in a caucus of over 230 members.
http://dailydelay.blogspot.com/2004/11/votes-on-delay-rule.html
Back in Texas, DeLay’s proxies go after Earle in a big way. Only one person is surviving this death match – let’s see who it will be
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_11_14.php#004072
Hey, how are things going in Iraq? Just great, great
Baghdad explodes
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20041120/D86FN52G0.html
http://www.hipakistan.com/en/detail.php?newsId=en74048&F_catID=&f_type=source
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2004/11/one-road.html
One of the things I actually find a bit confusing is... why the hell can't we even secure the road to the Baghdad airport?
Losing the battle for hearts and minds
http://www.juancole.com/2004/11/engagement-of-rules-rod-nordland-and.html
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6542346/site/newsweek/
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FK20Ak01.html
Beneath this general problem lie three key problems that made the attack on Fallujah a desperation measure in the first place, and which is now creating a new and deeper crisis for the US military in its aftermath.
First, and most important, the people of Fallujah hate the Americans and support the guerrillas (even if they may have complaints about much of what they do). This means that as soon as the people return, so will the resistance…
Second, the US cannot depend on Iraqi police or military to fight this next phase of the "battle of Fallujah". Here's how this problem was reported by the Times: "Senior officers have said that they would keep a sizable American military presence in and around Fallujah in the long reconstruction phase that has just begun, until sufficiently trained and equipped Iraqi forces could take the lead in providing security…
The key thing here is that when the Americans entered the Fallujah battle they believed that the Iraqi forces would be ready to take over immediately after the city was cleared. But the mass defections and unwillingness to fight exhibited by the Iraqis have forced a drastic revision in these estimates…
The third problem is that the US simply does not have enough troops to hold Fallujah and also do all the other fighting that is now necessary…the only remedy for the third problem is a vast increase in the number of US troops in Iraq. And that means a draft in the United States.
How desperate for warm bodies are they? Military prepares AMPUTEES to return to duty (no this isn’t a joke)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4626234,00.html
Marine commander says zero Iraqi civilian deaths in Fallujah (Red Cross says 800, at least)
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000724487
A range of opinions on the Marine shooting of a wounded Iraqi prisoner
http://slate.msn.com/id/2109853/fr/rss/
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2004_11_14_digbysblog_archive.html#110100158214458173
Bush threatens Iran and North Korea (and manages to tick off Russia in the process)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/politics/21prexy.html?oref=login&ex=1258693200&
Remember that State Dept report on progress in the war on terror? The one that said things were getting better, then Powell had to come out a few days later and admit the analysis was wrong and the numbers actually showed things were getting much worse? On closer review, even the corrected version isn’t worth the paper it's printed on
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-terror21nov21,1,5730705.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
The department's independent investigative unit concluded, however, that politics played no role in allowing so many mistakes to be published in the original version of the "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report for 2003.
More people who don’t seem to be able to count
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2004-2_archives/000573.html
Dan Morgan of the Post:
Domestic spending controlled by Congress in annual spending bills began growing sharply in the final two years of the Clinton administration when budget surpluses replaced years of deficits. But after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, the Bush administration began applying the brakes.
[Nowhere near true – read on]
Rick Santorum’s woes: couldn’t happen to a nicer guy
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/20/233427/51
Vote fraud update
A nice wiki on all Ohio shenanigans (thanks to Kos)
http://www.dkosopedia.com/index.php/2004_Ohio_Irregularities
Why recount Ohio?
http://www.votersunite.org/info/mapflyerohio2004.pdf
The Ohio recount: where things stand
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/20/151250/92
Thorough review of exit poll data, and what it does (and doesn’t) prove
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/20/9555/0527
Kerry conceded too soon (thanks to Doug Kellner for the link)
http://www.observer.com/pages/frontpage8.asp
Recounting NH (a Kerry state), and why it could be important
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041129&s=baker
One of Rove’s evil insights was that they could use gay marriage as a wedge issue to drive a larger proportion of African-American votes into the Bush camp. Now, a scurrilous insert included with the Washington Post – why they agreed to run it, I can’t tell you – continues the lies
http://americablog.blogspot.com/archives/2004_11_01_americablog_archive.html#110097728685621475
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/09/27/BAGQM8VI8E1.DTL
Bonus item: Me first! Me first! (thanks to BuzzFlash for the link)
http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/11/19/national/19library.4.583.jpg
Bush Tries to Push His Way Past Clinton to be the First to Emerge from the Door for Clinton's Library Opening
***If you enjoy PBD and believe in what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).
I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
Saturday, November 20, 2004
THE PARTY OF SLEAZE
The nerve. House Ethics Committee, while upholding charges against DeLay, does say that his accuser “exaggerated” some assertions. DeLay then claims this finding “vindicates” him
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/19/politics/19cnd-delay.html?ex=1258606800&en=1eb4487839dec75f&%2338;ei=5090&%2338;partner=rssuserland
Read on, if your blood pressure can take it
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_11_14.php#004054
Supporters of “DeLay Rule” say, jaw-droppingly, they would still apply the principle to others (i.e., Democrats), but THIS case is different because the charges against DeLay are “politically motivated”
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_11_14.php#004063
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_11_14.php#004067
Oh to be a fly on the wall
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_11_14.php#004068
Bob Novak on the DeLay Rule ...
The closed-door meeting of House Republicans Wednesday that was supposed to quickly protect House Majority Leader Tom DeLay from a political indictment turned into a contentious debate lasting several hours. Rep. Rob Portman of Ohio, the appointed chairman of the House Republican Leadership, came up with a compromise that won assent…The original proposal would have simply repealed the 1993 Republican rule requiring the resignation from the House party leadership of any member who is criminally indicted. The Portman compromise sets up a review by the House Republican Steering Committee of each case…At Wednesday's conference, several Republican House members expressed fear that a straight repeal of the rule would send a bad political message.
David Brooks on DeLay
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/20/opinion/20brooks.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
Tom DeLay is bleeding and he doesn't even know it…This week, House Republicans bent their accountability rules to protect their majority leader from what they feel is a partisan Texas prosecutor. But they hated the whole exercise. They sat in a conference room hour after hour wringing their hands. Only a few members were brave enough to stand up and say they shouldn't bend the rule. But afterward, many House Republicans came up to those members and said that secretly they agreed with them…Somewhere in the psychology of the caucus something shifted. That ineffable thing called political capital began seeping away from DeLay. Someday people will look back and say this could be the moment when his power begins to ebb.
It's shifted because many House Republicans know that DeLay has been playing close to the ethical edge for years. They've noticed the number of scandals - the latest involving lobbying fees for some Indian casinos - that trace back to DeLay cronies. They still remember that delicious feeling of possibility when they arrived in Washington and vowed they would not turn into the corrupt old majority they had come to replace. They know Delay symbolizes their descent from that reformist ideal…Tom DeLay is a scandal waiting to happen. He casts himself as the enemy of Washington, but he's really a conventional (if effective) pol who wants to use dollars to entrench power. He represents the greatest danger the Republicans face, bossism. He wants to be the G.O.P.'s Boss Tweed…Deep in the recesses of their minds, many Republicans know that voters around the country may never hear of Tom DeLay, but if the Republicans become just another self-dealing power clique, there will be hell to pay.
House, Senate negotiators hide last-minute anti-abortion provision in $388 billion spending bill
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-spending20nov20,1,1922730.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/19/23225/191
Two ways to cut taxes: (1) cut taxes, (2) make it easier to evade them
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2004/11/index.html#004847
http://www.davidsirota.com/2004/11/still-letting-them-off.html
Framing the GOP as the Party of Sleaze
http://www.discourse.net/archives/2004/11/the_party_of_sleaze.html
It ties so many threads together: secret energy task force, Haliburton, tax breaks for the millionaires, DeLay, and many more.
Greenspan warns of the dire consequences of Bush’s spendthrift policies
http://money.cnn.com/2004/11/19/news/economy/fed_greenspan/index.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Greenspan.html?oref=login&hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
Don’t you realize that the deficit is the Democrats’ fault?
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/19/congress.spending.debt.ap/index.html
"The president commends the Congress for passing the debt limit increase," the White House said in a written statement that did not mention the magnitude of borrowing involved or its causes. "Passage of this legislation was important to protect the full faith and credit of the United States."…Republicans said they were being responsible because the increased borrowing will let the government pay Social Security benefits and its other bills. They blamed Democratic spending for the problem, and accused them of playing politics by opposing the measure…
Democrats said the red ink was due to GOP tax cuts and their refusal to require budget savings to pay for tax reductions or spending increases. They accused Republicans of passing the buck to future generations.
[NB: Not that anyone asks my opinion, but I think this trope -- not passing off problems to the future and caring for our children and their children, is a framework for a progressive agenda: not passing on deficits, not passing on environmental problems, making a commitment to education and health care and good jobs, and so on. This has resonance to people and a clearly “moral” core. Let’s get started….]
Pre-election report (held and released after the election): 12 million families “worried about not being able to feed everyone”
http://bestoftheblogs.com/2004_11_19_bestof.html#110092302966064776
Kerry’s next campaign
http://www.johnkerry.com/petition/everychild.php
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/19/152117/74
Kerry criticized for ending campaign with $15 million unspent
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2004/11/index.html#004839
And his wobbly semi-endorsement of election fraud theories (thanks to Gale Ronning for the link)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/
More on future Democratic strategy: on the pros and cons of “obstruction”
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=8863
GOP moderates, an endangered species: why isn’t the Democratic game plan to forge an alliance with them?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/19/203041/42
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=18100
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2004/11/20/gop_preps_stage_for_bush_agenda/
And an important issue emerging, with the abortion amendment, the intelligence bill, etc: why is the Senate letting the House set the agenda?
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/20/politics/20spend.html?oref=login&ex=1258693200&
Ms. Boxer said that she complained to Senator Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican who is the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, but that he told her that House Republican leaders insisted that the provision, which was approved by the House in July but never came to the Senate for a vote, be included in the measure…"He said, 'Senator, they want it in, and it's going in,' "
Conason nails Frist (thanks to Doug Kellner for the link)
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/11/19/frist/
Why the Specter “loyalty oath” is such a bad precedent
http://slate.msn.com/id/2109983/fr/rss/
Carlyle Group ties to new Army Sect’y
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/11/19/BUGVD9TQA71.DTL&type=printable
Shady procurement dealings by the Air Force Sect’y
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63815-2004Nov19.html
Air Force Secretary James G. Roche asked a lobbyist for Boeing Co. to use the company's Washington contacts to "quash" a deputy undersecretary of defense and make him "pay an appropriate price" for objecting to the Air Force's decision to lease Boeing 767 tanker aircraft, according to e-mails released yesterday by a Republican senator critical of the tanker deal…Roche also pressured independent military cost analysts who questioned the high price of the lease, described other internal Pentagon critics as "animals," and ridiculed executives at European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. (EADS) and its Airbus division, the consortium that offered a competing plan, the e-mails show. He told his top public relations aide to "blow . . . away" the EADS chairman for raising questions about the Air Force decision to work with Boeing…At one point in the three-year Air Force campaign for the lease, Roche e-mailed a friend at Raytheon Co., "Privately between us: Go Boeing!"
McCain at his best (which has been rare lately) – I guess this means he won’t be Rumsfeld’s replacement after all
http://mccain.senate.gov/index.cfm?fuseaction=NewsCenter.ViewSpeech&Content_id=1332
Nearly three years ago, behind closed doors, appropriators slipped a $30 billion rider in the FY2002 Defense Appropriations Bill. This rider authorized the Air Force to lease from Boeing up to 100 767s for use as aerial refueling tankers. Before the rider appeared in the bill, Air Force leadership never came to the authorizing committees about it. In fact, tankers have never come up in either the President’s budget or the Defense Department’s unfunded priority list…The rider was in fact the result of an aggressive behind-the-scenes effort by the Boeing Company, with considerable assistance from senior Air Force procurement official Darleen Druyun and others. After the President’s signed that bill into law, the Air Force embarked on negotiating with Boeing on a lease that would have cost taxpayers about $6 billion more than buying them would have…
[I recommend reading the whole speech – it’s too long to clip here. But the extent of the scandal and lying about it is astonishing even by cynical Washington standards]
Iraq…I mean Iran…I mean Iraq…I mean Iran…
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/19/international/middleeast/19diplo.html?hp&ex=1100926800&en=ad2df99dcfb9e1cc&ei=5094&partner=homepage
In an eerie repetition of the prelude to the Iraq war, hawks in the administration and Congress are trumpeting ominous disclosures about Iran's nuclear capacities to make the case that Iran is a threat that must be confronted, either by economic sanctions, military action, or "regime change."
Source of Powell’s claims about Iranian nuclear plans termed “unreliable” (gee, this all sounds terribly familiar)
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/11/19/powell.iran/index.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6525369/
Who might be the source of this shady intelligence? Hmmm…
http://fugop.blogspot.com/2004/11/leaker.html
But here is the upshot: the CIA has now asked the Justice Dept to investigate who leaked that story. So, we are starting to see the worm turn. Bush Co. uses the pretense of a Plame investigation to shatter the precedent of reporter confidentiality, then – without following through on that investigation – starts applying the same principle to leaks it DOES care about
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001412.html
In Iraq, a bad time to be Sunni
http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2004/11/19/mosque/index.html?source=RSS
Marine intelligence report on the “success” of Fallujah
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041118/wl_mideast_afp/us_iraq_falluja_report
Marine intelligence officials have issued a report warning that any significant withdrawal of troops from the Iraqi city of Fallujah would strengthen the insurgency…The assessment, distributed to senior Marine and Army officers in Iraq, also said that despite the heavy fighting with coalition forces, the insurgents would continue to increase in number, carrying out attacks and fomenting unrest in the area…One officer said the seven-page classified report -- parts of which were provided to Thursday's edition of The New York Times -- was "brutally honest" and appears to contradict the US government's victorious account of the US-led fight against insurgents in Fallujah and other parts of northern Iraq.
Troop levels to be raised before the elections – but where will they come from?
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/008819.html
http://fugop.blogspot.com/2004/11/troop-levels.html
War costs: $6 billion a month
http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,FL_cost_111804,00.html?ESRC=eb.nl
One way to think about how the US is trying to pacify Iraq: controlled civil war, turning the Kurds loose as part of the coalition to smash the Sunnis for us
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2004/11/index.html#004846
David Gergen on Bush’s “hubris”
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2004/11/19/the_power_of_one.html
“By closing down dissent and centralizing power in a few hands, he is acting as if he truly believes that he and his team have a perfect track record, that they know best, and that they don't need any infusion of new heavyweights.”
More deep reading of Bush’s character and foibles
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/19/12381/034
Those of us who've spent at least five minutes thinking about the family dynamics of the Bush dynasty have almost all concluded that one of George W. Bush's strongest personal motivations is to show up his dad. Unlike his father, Dubya never served in combat, so he seems compelled to prove to his dad he's sufficiently bellicose. Unlike his father, he's never accepted responsibility for anything, including his class privileges. (In at least one way Prescott Bush appears to have been a better father than his son George HW Bush, because George HW Bush appears to have lived by the earlier generation's ethos of noblesse oblige, but he apparently never inculcated it in his son George W Bush, who probably thinks the term noblesse oblige is Frenchish for "atheist gay communist.") And in too many instances, he's openly defied his father's positions and policies, be it internationalism, respect for the intelligence agencies, the occasional necessity to raise or at least not lower taxes, and most obviously in regard to invading and occupying Iraq…Filial rivalry and rejection seems an obvious factor in George W. Bush's actions and beliefs. But until reading Bob Herbert's column this morning, I had never associated filial rivalry and rejection with which staff Bush relies on and with whom he allies himself. Herbert suggests it is, and his exhibit A is Condoleezza Rice…
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/19/opinion/19herbert.html?hp
[More: http://fugop.blogspot.com/2004/11/scowcroft.html]
Why Social Security “reform” won’t happen: you can’t pass it without doing two things. (1) Explaining what will happen to people who make bad investment choices – will they be SOL, or will they be covered anyway? (2) How do you cover the massive transition costs? Since Bush won’t answer those questions (and you know why he won’t), he’ll never get it passed
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2004-2_archives/000569.html
Dems won’t fight Gonzales nomination
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2004/11/19/alberto/index.html
Ben Nelson says no to Bush Cabinet post
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2004/11/19/nelson_will_stay_in_senate.html
[Nelson won’t give GOP another Senate seat; also touted as a possible red-state candidate for President in 2008: http://www.politics1.com/]
Who will become Condi’s deputy, if it isn’t John Bolton?
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001411.html
An insight into Doug Feith’s “thinking” (could he really become the next Homeland Security chief?)
http://gadflyer.com/warandpiece/index.php?Week=200447#1203
...Q: Neocon influence on the rise for second term?
A: Neocon used to mean someone who believed (1) peace thru strength and (2) ideas matter; now is just used to mean "hawk, or Jew". [Said just like that.]
Q: Israel/Palestine two-state question.
A: Main problem in that conflict is the disastrous Palestinian
leadership over the last 80 years. If the Palestinians can pick
leaders now who are "untainted by terror" and not corrupt, then
prospects for a solution are quite bright. Israel will engage with
the right Palestinian leadership.
On topic of goals...3 overarching goals for war on terror:
(1) Homeland protection
(2) Attack & disrupt terrorist organizations
(3) Counter the ideological support for terrorism
If all we do is (2), we're on a treadmill that will only accelerate from here. More terrorists will get created, etc. So ideological component of the war is the essence.
"We need to change the way millions of people think" about the acceptability of terror. "There have been examples in history" of successfully changing the way millions of people think, specifically fascism, communism, and his favorite analogy (which he returned to later), the 19th century British war on the slave trade, which took 50+ years.
The goal is to get people thinking that terrorism is unacceptable, much the same way that slavery, piracy, and genocide are unacceptable.
He really does want to eliminate the whole idea of targeting civilians with violence for political purposes, like the idea of slavery and the slave trade were eliminated by the British in the 19th century.
[I found this the most interesting part. People are wrong to think that when neocons say "war on terror" they are mistaking a tactic for an enemy or that they are simplifying the war on radical Islam for mass consumption. He really does mean "war on terror" in the sense of "war on terror as an idea that anyone sensible in any society will accept". He was very clear about that.]
[Left unaddressed was the possibility that US invasion of Iraq has been a huge setback in his pursuit of this goal.]
Q: Iraq
A: Goal is for Iraqis to run their own country. Most important part of this is building Iraqi security capability. Security and intimidation are a huge problem, which he attributes primarily to Iraqi peoples' fear that the Baathist regime will return. Our major problem in the country is fear of the Baathists.
Insurgency -- we're making progress -- Najaf, Samarra, and now hopefully Falluja are largely under the control of the Iraqi government.
Key is still political progress... Iraq "moving toward elections"; "we hope" there will be elections in January...
Q: Abu Ghraib
A: Dreadful; hurt us with many people; will hurt us for a long time. Terrorists clearly exploiting it.
Q: Geneva Convention applied to prisoners in war on terror and in Iraq.
A: "Glad you asked that question", have worked on the issue for a long time. [Check this out:] "I'm a very strong supporter" of the Geneva Convention. But -- it is in accordance with the GC that the US is not extending POW status to all detainees. GC has incentive system built in where POW status is only given to combatants who behave the right way in war -- wear uniform, display weapons openly; obey laws of war -- incentive system is there to protect the interests of noncombatants. It's against the GC to grant POW status to detainees who disobey those rules, and doing so would weaken the incentive system and hence be against the interest of noncombatants.
Q: Iraq/WMD.
A: "Strategic rationale" for invading Iraq still correct despite lack of WMD.
Q: Iran strategy
A: Wouldn't say much. Did say that in Iran, the population is discontented with the "oppressive and corrupt" clerical leadership, and implied that would be the leverage point somehow.
Said that military action "not a sensible option" for Syria, Iran, or North Korea.
[I will post the full transcript if I can find it]
GOP consumer profiling – and what I want to know is, how did they get this data?
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2004/11/19/bushs_secret_for_victory.html
In a speech described as "boastful and at times revealing," Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman revealed the "unusual methods" that Republicans used to get out the vote, the New York Times reports…Specifically, Mehlman said the campaign "had moved away from traditional operations, adopting the tactics of corporate America to identify potential Bush supporters." Instead of "dispatching troops to knock on doors in neighborhoods known to be heavily Republican... the Bush campaign studied consumer habits in trying to predict whom people would vote for in a presidential election."…Said Mehlman: "We acquired a lot of consumer data... Based on that, we were able to develop an exact kind of consumer model that corporate America does every day to predict how people vote - not based on where they live but how they live."
Vote fraud updates
Ohio (Blackwell) dragging feet on recount
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/112004W.shtml
Re-analyzing the data from the UC Berkeley study, cited yesterday
http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002890.html
Nicholas Kristof offers a number of perfectly sensible suggestions on election reform (none of which will happen)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/20/opinion/20kristof.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
Clinton’s interview with Peter Jennings (hope you read this far)
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/008817.html
Clinton added that he doesn't care about what his detractors think about him. Jennings then said it seemed to him that Clinton did care.
The former president responded, "You don't want to go here, Peter. You don't want to go here. Not after what you people did and the way you, your network, what you did with Kenneth Starr. The way your people repeated every, little sleazy thing he leaked. No one has any idea what that's like."
"You never had to live in a time when people you knew and cared about were being indicted, carted off to jail, bankrupted, ruined, because they were Democrats and because they would not lie," he said. "So, I think we showed a lot of moral fiber to stand up to that. To stand up to these constant investigations, to this constant bodyguard of lies, this avalanche that was thrown at all of us. And, yes, I failed once. And I sure paid for it. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the American people. And I'm sorry for the embarrassment they performed."
Bonus item: something to cheer you up after the election (thanks to A.G. Rud for the link)
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0445/fiore.php
***If you enjoy PBD and believe in what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).
I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
The nerve. House Ethics Committee, while upholding charges against DeLay, does say that his accuser “exaggerated” some assertions. DeLay then claims this finding “vindicates” him
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/19/politics/19cnd-delay.html?ex=1258606800&en=1eb4487839dec75f&%2338;ei=5090&%2338;partner=rssuserland
Read on, if your blood pressure can take it
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_11_14.php#004054
Supporters of “DeLay Rule” say, jaw-droppingly, they would still apply the principle to others (i.e., Democrats), but THIS case is different because the charges against DeLay are “politically motivated”
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_11_14.php#004063
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_11_14.php#004067
Oh to be a fly on the wall
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_11_14.php#004068
Bob Novak on the DeLay Rule ...
The closed-door meeting of House Republicans Wednesday that was supposed to quickly protect House Majority Leader Tom DeLay from a political indictment turned into a contentious debate lasting several hours. Rep. Rob Portman of Ohio, the appointed chairman of the House Republican Leadership, came up with a compromise that won assent…The original proposal would have simply repealed the 1993 Republican rule requiring the resignation from the House party leadership of any member who is criminally indicted. The Portman compromise sets up a review by the House Republican Steering Committee of each case…At Wednesday's conference, several Republican House members expressed fear that a straight repeal of the rule would send a bad political message.
David Brooks on DeLay
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/20/opinion/20brooks.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
Tom DeLay is bleeding and he doesn't even know it…This week, House Republicans bent their accountability rules to protect their majority leader from what they feel is a partisan Texas prosecutor. But they hated the whole exercise. They sat in a conference room hour after hour wringing their hands. Only a few members were brave enough to stand up and say they shouldn't bend the rule. But afterward, many House Republicans came up to those members and said that secretly they agreed with them…Somewhere in the psychology of the caucus something shifted. That ineffable thing called political capital began seeping away from DeLay. Someday people will look back and say this could be the moment when his power begins to ebb.
It's shifted because many House Republicans know that DeLay has been playing close to the ethical edge for years. They've noticed the number of scandals - the latest involving lobbying fees for some Indian casinos - that trace back to DeLay cronies. They still remember that delicious feeling of possibility when they arrived in Washington and vowed they would not turn into the corrupt old majority they had come to replace. They know Delay symbolizes their descent from that reformist ideal…Tom DeLay is a scandal waiting to happen. He casts himself as the enemy of Washington, but he's really a conventional (if effective) pol who wants to use dollars to entrench power. He represents the greatest danger the Republicans face, bossism. He wants to be the G.O.P.'s Boss Tweed…Deep in the recesses of their minds, many Republicans know that voters around the country may never hear of Tom DeLay, but if the Republicans become just another self-dealing power clique, there will be hell to pay.
House, Senate negotiators hide last-minute anti-abortion provision in $388 billion spending bill
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-spending20nov20,1,1922730.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/19/23225/191
Two ways to cut taxes: (1) cut taxes, (2) make it easier to evade them
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2004/11/index.html#004847
http://www.davidsirota.com/2004/11/still-letting-them-off.html
Framing the GOP as the Party of Sleaze
http://www.discourse.net/archives/2004/11/the_party_of_sleaze.html
It ties so many threads together: secret energy task force, Haliburton, tax breaks for the millionaires, DeLay, and many more.
Greenspan warns of the dire consequences of Bush’s spendthrift policies
http://money.cnn.com/2004/11/19/news/economy/fed_greenspan/index.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Greenspan.html?oref=login&hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
Don’t you realize that the deficit is the Democrats’ fault?
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/19/congress.spending.debt.ap/index.html
"The president commends the Congress for passing the debt limit increase," the White House said in a written statement that did not mention the magnitude of borrowing involved or its causes. "Passage of this legislation was important to protect the full faith and credit of the United States."…Republicans said they were being responsible because the increased borrowing will let the government pay Social Security benefits and its other bills. They blamed Democratic spending for the problem, and accused them of playing politics by opposing the measure…
Democrats said the red ink was due to GOP tax cuts and their refusal to require budget savings to pay for tax reductions or spending increases. They accused Republicans of passing the buck to future generations.
[NB: Not that anyone asks my opinion, but I think this trope -- not passing off problems to the future and caring for our children and their children, is a framework for a progressive agenda: not passing on deficits, not passing on environmental problems, making a commitment to education and health care and good jobs, and so on. This has resonance to people and a clearly “moral” core. Let’s get started….]
Pre-election report (held and released after the election): 12 million families “worried about not being able to feed everyone”
http://bestoftheblogs.com/2004_11_19_bestof.html#110092302966064776
Kerry’s next campaign
http://www.johnkerry.com/petition/everychild.php
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/19/152117/74
Kerry criticized for ending campaign with $15 million unspent
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2004/11/index.html#004839
And his wobbly semi-endorsement of election fraud theories (thanks to Gale Ronning for the link)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/
More on future Democratic strategy: on the pros and cons of “obstruction”
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=8863
GOP moderates, an endangered species: why isn’t the Democratic game plan to forge an alliance with them?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/19/203041/42
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=18100
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2004/11/20/gop_preps_stage_for_bush_agenda/
And an important issue emerging, with the abortion amendment, the intelligence bill, etc: why is the Senate letting the House set the agenda?
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/20/politics/20spend.html?oref=login&ex=1258693200&
Ms. Boxer said that she complained to Senator Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican who is the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, but that he told her that House Republican leaders insisted that the provision, which was approved by the House in July but never came to the Senate for a vote, be included in the measure…"He said, 'Senator, they want it in, and it's going in,' "
Conason nails Frist (thanks to Doug Kellner for the link)
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/11/19/frist/
Why the Specter “loyalty oath” is such a bad precedent
http://slate.msn.com/id/2109983/fr/rss/
Carlyle Group ties to new Army Sect’y
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/11/19/BUGVD9TQA71.DTL&type=printable
Shady procurement dealings by the Air Force Sect’y
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63815-2004Nov19.html
Air Force Secretary James G. Roche asked a lobbyist for Boeing Co. to use the company's Washington contacts to "quash" a deputy undersecretary of defense and make him "pay an appropriate price" for objecting to the Air Force's decision to lease Boeing 767 tanker aircraft, according to e-mails released yesterday by a Republican senator critical of the tanker deal…Roche also pressured independent military cost analysts who questioned the high price of the lease, described other internal Pentagon critics as "animals," and ridiculed executives at European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. (EADS) and its Airbus division, the consortium that offered a competing plan, the e-mails show. He told his top public relations aide to "blow . . . away" the EADS chairman for raising questions about the Air Force decision to work with Boeing…At one point in the three-year Air Force campaign for the lease, Roche e-mailed a friend at Raytheon Co., "Privately between us: Go Boeing!"
McCain at his best (which has been rare lately) – I guess this means he won’t be Rumsfeld’s replacement after all
http://mccain.senate.gov/index.cfm?fuseaction=NewsCenter.ViewSpeech&Content_id=1332
Nearly three years ago, behind closed doors, appropriators slipped a $30 billion rider in the FY2002 Defense Appropriations Bill. This rider authorized the Air Force to lease from Boeing up to 100 767s for use as aerial refueling tankers. Before the rider appeared in the bill, Air Force leadership never came to the authorizing committees about it. In fact, tankers have never come up in either the President’s budget or the Defense Department’s unfunded priority list…The rider was in fact the result of an aggressive behind-the-scenes effort by the Boeing Company, with considerable assistance from senior Air Force procurement official Darleen Druyun and others. After the President’s signed that bill into law, the Air Force embarked on negotiating with Boeing on a lease that would have cost taxpayers about $6 billion more than buying them would have…
[I recommend reading the whole speech – it’s too long to clip here. But the extent of the scandal and lying about it is astonishing even by cynical Washington standards]
Iraq…I mean Iran…I mean Iraq…I mean Iran…
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/19/international/middleeast/19diplo.html?hp&ex=1100926800&en=ad2df99dcfb9e1cc&ei=5094&partner=homepage
In an eerie repetition of the prelude to the Iraq war, hawks in the administration and Congress are trumpeting ominous disclosures about Iran's nuclear capacities to make the case that Iran is a threat that must be confronted, either by economic sanctions, military action, or "regime change."
Source of Powell’s claims about Iranian nuclear plans termed “unreliable” (gee, this all sounds terribly familiar)
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/11/19/powell.iran/index.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6525369/
Who might be the source of this shady intelligence? Hmmm…
http://fugop.blogspot.com/2004/11/leaker.html
But here is the upshot: the CIA has now asked the Justice Dept to investigate who leaked that story. So, we are starting to see the worm turn. Bush Co. uses the pretense of a Plame investigation to shatter the precedent of reporter confidentiality, then – without following through on that investigation – starts applying the same principle to leaks it DOES care about
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001412.html
In Iraq, a bad time to be Sunni
http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2004/11/19/mosque/index.html?source=RSS
Marine intelligence report on the “success” of Fallujah
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041118/wl_mideast_afp/us_iraq_falluja_report
Marine intelligence officials have issued a report warning that any significant withdrawal of troops from the Iraqi city of Fallujah would strengthen the insurgency…The assessment, distributed to senior Marine and Army officers in Iraq, also said that despite the heavy fighting with coalition forces, the insurgents would continue to increase in number, carrying out attacks and fomenting unrest in the area…One officer said the seven-page classified report -- parts of which were provided to Thursday's edition of The New York Times -- was "brutally honest" and appears to contradict the US government's victorious account of the US-led fight against insurgents in Fallujah and other parts of northern Iraq.
Troop levels to be raised before the elections – but where will they come from?
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/008819.html
http://fugop.blogspot.com/2004/11/troop-levels.html
War costs: $6 billion a month
http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,FL_cost_111804,00.html?ESRC=eb.nl
One way to think about how the US is trying to pacify Iraq: controlled civil war, turning the Kurds loose as part of the coalition to smash the Sunnis for us
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2004/11/index.html#004846
David Gergen on Bush’s “hubris”
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2004/11/19/the_power_of_one.html
“By closing down dissent and centralizing power in a few hands, he is acting as if he truly believes that he and his team have a perfect track record, that they know best, and that they don't need any infusion of new heavyweights.”
More deep reading of Bush’s character and foibles
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/19/12381/034
Those of us who've spent at least five minutes thinking about the family dynamics of the Bush dynasty have almost all concluded that one of George W. Bush's strongest personal motivations is to show up his dad. Unlike his father, Dubya never served in combat, so he seems compelled to prove to his dad he's sufficiently bellicose. Unlike his father, he's never accepted responsibility for anything, including his class privileges. (In at least one way Prescott Bush appears to have been a better father than his son George HW Bush, because George HW Bush appears to have lived by the earlier generation's ethos of noblesse oblige, but he apparently never inculcated it in his son George W Bush, who probably thinks the term noblesse oblige is Frenchish for "atheist gay communist.") And in too many instances, he's openly defied his father's positions and policies, be it internationalism, respect for the intelligence agencies, the occasional necessity to raise or at least not lower taxes, and most obviously in regard to invading and occupying Iraq…Filial rivalry and rejection seems an obvious factor in George W. Bush's actions and beliefs. But until reading Bob Herbert's column this morning, I had never associated filial rivalry and rejection with which staff Bush relies on and with whom he allies himself. Herbert suggests it is, and his exhibit A is Condoleezza Rice…
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/19/opinion/19herbert.html?hp
[More: http://fugop.blogspot.com/2004/11/scowcroft.html]
Why Social Security “reform” won’t happen: you can’t pass it without doing two things. (1) Explaining what will happen to people who make bad investment choices – will they be SOL, or will they be covered anyway? (2) How do you cover the massive transition costs? Since Bush won’t answer those questions (and you know why he won’t), he’ll never get it passed
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2004-2_archives/000569.html
Dems won’t fight Gonzales nomination
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2004/11/19/alberto/index.html
Ben Nelson says no to Bush Cabinet post
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2004/11/19/nelson_will_stay_in_senate.html
[Nelson won’t give GOP another Senate seat; also touted as a possible red-state candidate for President in 2008: http://www.politics1.com/]
Who will become Condi’s deputy, if it isn’t John Bolton?
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001411.html
An insight into Doug Feith’s “thinking” (could he really become the next Homeland Security chief?)
http://gadflyer.com/warandpiece/index.php?Week=200447#1203
...Q: Neocon influence on the rise for second term?
A: Neocon used to mean someone who believed (1) peace thru strength and (2) ideas matter; now is just used to mean "hawk, or Jew". [Said just like that.]
Q: Israel/Palestine two-state question.
A: Main problem in that conflict is the disastrous Palestinian
leadership over the last 80 years. If the Palestinians can pick
leaders now who are "untainted by terror" and not corrupt, then
prospects for a solution are quite bright. Israel will engage with
the right Palestinian leadership.
On topic of goals...3 overarching goals for war on terror:
(1) Homeland protection
(2) Attack & disrupt terrorist organizations
(3) Counter the ideological support for terrorism
If all we do is (2), we're on a treadmill that will only accelerate from here. More terrorists will get created, etc. So ideological component of the war is the essence.
"We need to change the way millions of people think" about the acceptability of terror. "There have been examples in history" of successfully changing the way millions of people think, specifically fascism, communism, and his favorite analogy (which he returned to later), the 19th century British war on the slave trade, which took 50+ years.
The goal is to get people thinking that terrorism is unacceptable, much the same way that slavery, piracy, and genocide are unacceptable.
He really does want to eliminate the whole idea of targeting civilians with violence for political purposes, like the idea of slavery and the slave trade were eliminated by the British in the 19th century.
[I found this the most interesting part. People are wrong to think that when neocons say "war on terror" they are mistaking a tactic for an enemy or that they are simplifying the war on radical Islam for mass consumption. He really does mean "war on terror" in the sense of "war on terror as an idea that anyone sensible in any society will accept". He was very clear about that.]
[Left unaddressed was the possibility that US invasion of Iraq has been a huge setback in his pursuit of this goal.]
Q: Iraq
A: Goal is for Iraqis to run their own country. Most important part of this is building Iraqi security capability. Security and intimidation are a huge problem, which he attributes primarily to Iraqi peoples' fear that the Baathist regime will return. Our major problem in the country is fear of the Baathists.
Insurgency -- we're making progress -- Najaf, Samarra, and now hopefully Falluja are largely under the control of the Iraqi government.
Key is still political progress... Iraq "moving toward elections"; "we hope" there will be elections in January...
Q: Abu Ghraib
A: Dreadful; hurt us with many people; will hurt us for a long time. Terrorists clearly exploiting it.
Q: Geneva Convention applied to prisoners in war on terror and in Iraq.
A: "Glad you asked that question", have worked on the issue for a long time. [Check this out:] "I'm a very strong supporter" of the Geneva Convention. But -- it is in accordance with the GC that the US is not extending POW status to all detainees. GC has incentive system built in where POW status is only given to combatants who behave the right way in war -- wear uniform, display weapons openly; obey laws of war -- incentive system is there to protect the interests of noncombatants. It's against the GC to grant POW status to detainees who disobey those rules, and doing so would weaken the incentive system and hence be against the interest of noncombatants.
Q: Iraq/WMD.
A: "Strategic rationale" for invading Iraq still correct despite lack of WMD.
Q: Iran strategy
A: Wouldn't say much. Did say that in Iran, the population is discontented with the "oppressive and corrupt" clerical leadership, and implied that would be the leverage point somehow.
Said that military action "not a sensible option" for Syria, Iran, or North Korea.
[I will post the full transcript if I can find it]
GOP consumer profiling – and what I want to know is, how did they get this data?
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2004/11/19/bushs_secret_for_victory.html
In a speech described as "boastful and at times revealing," Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman revealed the "unusual methods" that Republicans used to get out the vote, the New York Times reports…Specifically, Mehlman said the campaign "had moved away from traditional operations, adopting the tactics of corporate America to identify potential Bush supporters." Instead of "dispatching troops to knock on doors in neighborhoods known to be heavily Republican... the Bush campaign studied consumer habits in trying to predict whom people would vote for in a presidential election."…Said Mehlman: "We acquired a lot of consumer data... Based on that, we were able to develop an exact kind of consumer model that corporate America does every day to predict how people vote - not based on where they live but how they live."
Vote fraud updates
Ohio (Blackwell) dragging feet on recount
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/112004W.shtml
Re-analyzing the data from the UC Berkeley study, cited yesterday
http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002890.html
Nicholas Kristof offers a number of perfectly sensible suggestions on election reform (none of which will happen)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/20/opinion/20kristof.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
Clinton’s interview with Peter Jennings (hope you read this far)
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/008817.html
Clinton added that he doesn't care about what his detractors think about him. Jennings then said it seemed to him that Clinton did care.
The former president responded, "You don't want to go here, Peter. You don't want to go here. Not after what you people did and the way you, your network, what you did with Kenneth Starr. The way your people repeated every, little sleazy thing he leaked. No one has any idea what that's like."
"You never had to live in a time when people you knew and cared about were being indicted, carted off to jail, bankrupted, ruined, because they were Democrats and because they would not lie," he said. "So, I think we showed a lot of moral fiber to stand up to that. To stand up to these constant investigations, to this constant bodyguard of lies, this avalanche that was thrown at all of us. And, yes, I failed once. And I sure paid for it. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the American people. And I'm sorry for the embarrassment they performed."
Bonus item: something to cheer you up after the election (thanks to A.G. Rud for the link)
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0445/fiore.php
***If you enjoy PBD and believe in what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).
I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
Friday, November 19, 2004
SHINING LIGHT ON DARK PLACES
Okay, the vote fraud story moves back to the lead. For anyone with an open mind, this study has got to raise some serious questions
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2004/11/18/florida/index.html
It’s not proof of voter fraud -- at least not yet -- but it seems that somebody has some explaining to do about the election results from Florida. In a report released this morning, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, say that George W. Bush received 130,000 more votes in Florida in 2004 than he should have received, and that the only real explanation has something to do with electronic voting machines…Through multiple-regression analysis, the Berkeley researchers examined the increase in Bush’s support, on a county-by-county basis, between 2000 and 2004. Their conclusion: A county’s use of electronic voting machines resulted in a "disproportionate increase" in votes for Bush which "cannot be explained away by other factors."
http://ucdata.berkeley.edu/new_web/VOTE2004/index.html
- Irregularities associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded 130,000 excess votes or more to President George W. Bush in Florida.
- Compared to counties with paper ballots, counties with electronic voting machines were significantly more likely to show increases in support for President Bush between 2000 and 2004. This effect cannot be explained by differences between counties in income, number of voters, change in voter turnout, or size of Hispanic/Latino population.
- In Broward County alone, President Bush appears to have received approximately 72,000 excess votes.
- We can be 99.9% sure that these effects are not attributable to chance.
[NB: Note that this analysis is NOT based on exit poll disparities]
More vote fraud news
Public testimony in Ohio reports numerous violations (thanks to Doug Kellner for the link). And did you know that Sect’y of State Blackwell, like Katherine Harris from Florida, was chair of the Bush-Cheney Re-elect?
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/886
Ohio Democrats start showing some spine
http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/110077402787260.xml
League of Women Voters adds its voice
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/WO0411/S00225.htm
In California, one of the few states that DOES require a paper record of e-votes, a move to abolish the practice (thanks to Megan Boler for the link)
http://www.pe.com/localnews/riverside/stories/PE_News_Local_election16.a0e78.html
Do exit polls ALWAYS overcount Democratic support?
http://www.tnr.com/etc.mhtml?pid=2406
One of the silliest defenses of e-voting written so far: if you don’t worry about your ATM why worry about e-voting?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55691-2004Nov16.html
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2004/11/how-low-can-bar-go.html
Yesterday's column by Anne Applebaum is perhaps the stupidest thing ever published in a major paper.
http://dailyhowler.com/dh111704.shtml
Applebaum is more than a Washington journalist; she’s also part of a ruling elite, and her cohort has been busy this week mocking those who question the systems by which we conduct our elections.
If you read the DeLay rule story carefully, you probably noticed that it was passed in a secret meeting, by voice vote. I can’t link to all the entries, but Josh Marshall has a hilarious series of posts on who admits to voting for the rule, with their absurd justifications, who now claims to have voted against it, and who isn’t saying. This stinks so bad that people are running away from it as fast as they can (and even red state newspaper editorials are condemning the move)
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
http://www.discourse.net/archives/2004/11/how_did_gop_representatives_vote_on_the_delay_rule.html
http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/corruption_in_washington_/2004/11/delay_rule_update_legs.php
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/19/73328/793
Ha ha – good one, Mark
http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/corruption_in_washington_/2004/11/st_john_on_the_delay_twostep.php
...men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
That's from the Gospel According to John, Third Chapter, Verses 19 through 21.
Killing the messenger
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-ethics19nov19,1,4167027.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
The House Ethics Committee turned the tables on Majority Leader Tom DeLay's accuser Thursday night, rebuking Rep. Chris Bell (D-Texas) for allegedly exaggerating misconduct allegations against the GOP leader…Although the complaint by Bell led to an ethics report that admonished DeLay (R-Texas), Bell nonetheless violated a rule barring "innuendo, speculative assertions or conclusory statements," a committee letter said.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200411180003
Republicans have claimed that Travis County, Texas, District Attorney Ronnie Earle, who is investigating DeLay, is doing so for purely partisan reasons. This charge was dutifully echoed on FOX News Channel, and most other news outlets have reported it -- without noting that Earle has, in fact, prosecuted more Democratic politicians than Republican politicians.
Flu vaccine, Vioxx, etc. This is what happens when govt regulators are in the pocket of the drug companies: oversight gets overlooked. That’s no surprise, but will people start connecting the dots to the larger picture of Bush Co. policies?
http://fugop.blogspot.com/2004/11/dr-david-graham-blows-whistle-on-fda.html
Dr. David J. Graham, "a 20-year FDA veteran who is the associate director for science at its Office of Drug Safety," claimed before the Senate Finance Committee that "26,000 to 55,600 patients might have died as a result of taking Vioxx," and that "the FDA, as currently configured, is incapable of protecting America against another Vioxx." He pointed to five other currently on-market drugs that present similar risks.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58470-2004Nov17?language=printer
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/19/business/19fda.html
Marine shooting of unarmed, wounded Iraqi called a “tragic incident.” Now this is a meaning of “tragic” that is new to me. Let’s see, he intentionally shoots the guy in the head after saying “He’s faking he’s dead, he’s faking he’s dead…Well, he’s dead now.” Not an accident, but a deliberate act. In what way is this “tragic”? Well, tragic for the victim, certainly. And perhaps tragic that a young, overstressed, possibly undertrained soldier has been plunked into the middle of an urban combat zone. But somehow I don’t think that’s what was meant
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-wopent174044858nov17,0,3209118.story?coll=ny-worldnews-headlines
The killing of a wounded Iraqi by a U.S. Marine in Fallujah was termed a "tragic incident" by the U.S. military commander in Iraq yesterday as Arab satellite channels replayed unedited footage of the shooting as often as every half-hour.
A defense, of sorts
http://slate.msn.com/id/2109904/fr/rss/
How it’s playing throughout Iraq (hint: not well)
http://www.juancole.com/2004/11/more-on-marine-mosque-killing-iraqis.html
Red Cross counts 800 civilian dead in Fallujah (thanks to Megan Boler for the link)
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/17/1524239
But, it’s all been worth it: here is a forceful, definitive argument for why the whole invasion was a success. I am sure it will persuade you
http://www.ericumansky.com/2004/11/dept_of_questio.html
"Based on some of the records that we've been able -- and ledgers we've been able to uncover, we feel right now that we have, as I mentioned, broken the back of the insurgency and we have taken away this safe haven." - Marine Lt. General John Sattler, commander of forces in Fallujah
In fact, argues Juan Cole, Fallujah has now made the elections much less likely to be successful
http://www.juancole.com/2004/11/did-fallujah-sink-elections-among.html
And this cheerful bit of news: why we CAN’T start withdrawing troops from Fallujah
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/18/international/middleeast/18troops.html?oref=login&ex=1258520400&
When will the govt be held accountable for its policy of outsourcing torture to other countries – in this case, the torture of a US CITIZEN?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60916-2004Nov18.html?nav=rss_nation
Gee, when I said Specter would have to sign a loyalty oath to get his chairmanship, I thought I was joking. But he DOES - no joke
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/18/specter.judges.ap/index.html
http://www.electablog.com/2004/11/washing-his-mouth-out-with-soap-not.html
Specter's latest effort to get his judiciary chairmanship and prove his loyalty to W and Jesus is a letter he is writing wherein he will promise to be predisposed to quickly approve all of W's judicial nominees (regardless of their opinions on Roe v Wade)…Specter also plans to write "I will not be moderate, I will not be reasonable," a thousand times on the Senate chalkboard.
A moment of schadenfreude: far Right very, very unhappy that he got the post
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/008810.html
Intelligence Bill, like so many others, being larded up with horrific provisions in conference that have nothing to do with its main purpose
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/008814.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/19/politics/19panel.html?oref=login&ex=1258520400&
Congressional aides said the compromise would allow the Pentagon to maintain significant power over how tens of billions of dollars are spent each year for intelligence gathering, as House Republican leaders had insisted.
Bush fiscal mismanagement: criminally negligent
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2004-2_archives/000563.html
The international financial markets have voted since Bush's re-election, and the verdict is thumbs down. The dollar is weaker than ever, and could start dropping like a stone if America doesn't get its fiscal acts together. Of course, that must mean it's time for another tax cut, right? Let's expand our deficits, and play chicken with the global economy. This could all get ugly, and all too soon.
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2004/11/18/taxes/index.html
So many times over the past four years, we've thought ourselves beyond the point where we could be shocked by the administration's schemes. Each time, though, we've misunderestimated our president, who continues to amaze us with his audacity.
The latest example comes from a plan for overhauling the tax code floated in today's Washington Post. According to the paper, Bush wants to " shield interest, dividends and capitals gains from taxation," and expand tax breaks for business investment. Of course, we knew all that -- this is a president who, in the words of John Edwards, believes in taxing work, not wealth. The stunner comes from how the administration is thinking of paying for these giveaways. According to a Bush advisor, the Post says, "the administration is considering eliminating the deduction of state and local taxes on federal income tax returns and scrapping the business tax deduction for employer-provided health insurance."
The first part would screw the blue states, especially urbanites who pay high city taxes to support municipal services. The truly evil surprise, though, is the second part. At a time when millions of Americans are without health insurance, the Bush administration is actually talking about eliminate the tax incentive for employers to cover their workers, in order to give even more tax breaks to the rich. Says Atrios, the blogger and economist, "bye bye health insurance for a hell of a lot of people."
More
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59947-2004Nov18.html?nav=rss_politics/administration/whbriefing
http://markschmitt.typepad.com/decembrist/2004/11/red_state_tax_r.html
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2004/11/index.html#004838
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2004/11/index.html#004835
One third of the top fundraisers in Bush’s 2000 campaign received government posts
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/18/fund.raiser.perks.ap/index.html
Everyone notes the weird paradox that “red state” voters by and large have suffered under Bush’s policies, even as they support him by huge margins. Part of this, I suppose, is the imperviousness of religious and quasi-religious faith to the impediment of facts. But you might think that for a short time after the election, at least, Bush would be favoring those who put him in power (aside from the elite fundraisers who are his buddies) – but huh-uh
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/18/155249/54
Inside baseball on the struggle over John Bolton (from the Nelson Report)
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000194.html
In the foreign policy community, TOTAL focus is on whether Undersecretary of State John Bolton can force Secretary-designate Condi Rice to take him as the Deputy, replacing Rich Armitage. Bolton has been working Capitol Hill for support (not the kind of thing the Bush White House likes), and his former AEI colleagues are trying to create the image of a done deal. For example: rumors at State today have Bolton with his own list of new INR staffers, ready to clean house.
Reality check: Rice has made it clear she is aware of, and does not want to endure, the leaks and separate agenda behavior which characterized Bolton's service to Powell. Outsiders are portraying this as a "test" of whether VP Cheney is the "real" foreign policy boss, or does Condi truly have the mandate from President Bush that Powell never secured.
Some "insiders" argue that to put it that way shows how little one understands the real play in the Bush Administration. For what it's worth, Rice deputies are telling friends that she is not a neo-con, but a realist in the Scowcroft tradition, from whence she came originally.
And some interesting theories on why Bush likes to promote loyalty over competence
http://www.tnr.com/etc.mhtml?pid=2404
[Noam Scheiber] I count two schools of thought on why the Bush administration tends to reward people who screw up (Condoleezza Rice, Don Rumsfeld, Stephen Hadley, etc.) while dismissing those who speak out when they see mistakes being made (Colin Powell, Paul O'Neill, much of the upper ranks of the CIA). In one camp are those, like the editors of TNR, who argue that, since the administration values loyalty above all else, it's only natural that it would promote or extend the tenures of toadies and yes-men while showing internal critics the door. In the other camp are those, like Matt Yglesias, who argue that the administration has to hang on to the screw-ups because to fire them would be to admit mistakes, something this administration is incapable of doing.
But there's a third, hybrid option I don't think anyone's considered: What if the administration sticks with people who've screwed up because having screwed up makes you even more loyal to the administration, while having not screwed up would tend to make you disloyal. This occurred to me while reading yesterday's profile of Hadley in The Washington Post. Hadley, you may recall, is the guy who took responsibility for the erroneous uranium-from-Niger claim in the president's 2003 State of the Union Address. In most cases, that would not only be a firing offense, it'd be the kind of thing that prevented you from working for future administrations--maybe even limited your career options outside government.
But, then, maybe that's exactly the point as far as this White House is concerned. Because Hadley is such damaged goods, he owes much more to this administration than would someone who had other employment options, meaning he'll be even more loyal than even your standard administration yes-man. I don't think it's crazy to suspect that the White House actually prefers people whose career prospects would be grim the second they fell out of the president's good graces. Conversely, the people who manage to keep their reputations intact and avoid screwing up must scare the hell out of this White House, since they don't owe the president anything and since, for that matter, it's in their interest to distance themselves from any screwing up that goes on there in order to preserve future career options.
Bush’s strategy of “perception management”
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/111804.html
Goss’s “secret” address to the troops at CIA (almost immediately leaked, of course)
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2004/11/index.html#004841
A simple rule of thumb should always apply - all Agency business with the media or Congress should be conducted solely through these elements to ensure that we protect against the release of unauthorized documents, sources or methods. We remain a secret organization.
In other words -- no leaking! And, of course, the intelligence community really shouldn't leak information that's being kept secret for some important national-security reason. Time and again, however, the information that's been coming out of these leaks has been secret only because the administration is trying to cover up something embarrassing. A team that had less to fear from the truth might have the time to focus on some more substantive reform issues.
Afghanistan drug trade reaches record levels
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/19/international/asia/19afghanistan.html?oref=login&ex=1258606800&
Déjà vu all over again. Step one, Powell (!!?) shovels out reports that Iran “may be” developing nukes – based on a single, unverified source. Step two, Bush Co. immediately starts talking about the need for military action
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61079-2004Nov18.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/19/international/middleeast/19diplo.html?ex=1258606800&en=d4828ade7ffd1848&%2338;ei=5090&%2338;partner=rssuserland
In an eerie repetition of the prelude to the Iraq war, hawks in the administration and Congress are trumpeting ominous disclosures about Iran's nuclear capacities to make the case that Iran is a threat that must be confronted, either by economic sanctions, military action, or "regime change."
Analysis: http://fugop.blogspot.com/2004/11/powell-and-iran-nukes.html
Bush/Rove reach out across aisle in spirit of open bipartisanship (and if you believe that…)
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2004/11/18/white_house_seeks_democrat_for_cabinet.html
Regular like the sunrise: Ann Coulter slithers out to accuse liberals of "racism" for questioning Condi Rice’s qualifications for Sect’y of State
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2004_11_14_digbysblog_archive.html#110084144116825396
COULTER: Dick Clarke, the flamboyant opponent of the Bush administration, came out with a book earlier this year, claiming that Condoleezza Rice, when he talked to her about Al Qaeda, her face showed that she was perplexed, that she had never heard of Al Qaeda before…Can you imagine somebody saying that about, you know, Wolfowitz? No. That's my fourth example now of liberals having a problem with blacks.
[Just the facts, ma’am: http://mediamatters.org/items/200411180004]
Bonus item: Eeeeeeew! This gives me a queasy feeling
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2004/11/18/quote_of_the_day.html
"It has taken my ego decades to recover."
-- Karl Rove, quote by the Houston Chronicle, on being rejected for a date in 1982 by Education Secretary-desginate Margaret Spellings.
***If you enjoy PBD and believe in what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).
I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
Okay, the vote fraud story moves back to the lead. For anyone with an open mind, this study has got to raise some serious questions
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2004/11/18/florida/index.html
It’s not proof of voter fraud -- at least not yet -- but it seems that somebody has some explaining to do about the election results from Florida. In a report released this morning, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, say that George W. Bush received 130,000 more votes in Florida in 2004 than he should have received, and that the only real explanation has something to do with electronic voting machines…Through multiple-regression analysis, the Berkeley researchers examined the increase in Bush’s support, on a county-by-county basis, between 2000 and 2004. Their conclusion: A county’s use of electronic voting machines resulted in a "disproportionate increase" in votes for Bush which "cannot be explained away by other factors."
http://ucdata.berkeley.edu/new_web/VOTE2004/index.html
- Irregularities associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded 130,000 excess votes or more to President George W. Bush in Florida.
- Compared to counties with paper ballots, counties with electronic voting machines were significantly more likely to show increases in support for President Bush between 2000 and 2004. This effect cannot be explained by differences between counties in income, number of voters, change in voter turnout, or size of Hispanic/Latino population.
- In Broward County alone, President Bush appears to have received approximately 72,000 excess votes.
- We can be 99.9% sure that these effects are not attributable to chance.
[NB: Note that this analysis is NOT based on exit poll disparities]
More vote fraud news
Public testimony in Ohio reports numerous violations (thanks to Doug Kellner for the link). And did you know that Sect’y of State Blackwell, like Katherine Harris from Florida, was chair of the Bush-Cheney Re-elect?
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/886
Ohio Democrats start showing some spine
http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/110077402787260.xml
League of Women Voters adds its voice
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/WO0411/S00225.htm
In California, one of the few states that DOES require a paper record of e-votes, a move to abolish the practice (thanks to Megan Boler for the link)
http://www.pe.com/localnews/riverside/stories/PE_News_Local_election16.a0e78.html
Do exit polls ALWAYS overcount Democratic support?
http://www.tnr.com/etc.mhtml?pid=2406
One of the silliest defenses of e-voting written so far: if you don’t worry about your ATM why worry about e-voting?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55691-2004Nov16.html
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2004/11/how-low-can-bar-go.html
Yesterday's column by Anne Applebaum is perhaps the stupidest thing ever published in a major paper.
http://dailyhowler.com/dh111704.shtml
Applebaum is more than a Washington journalist; she’s also part of a ruling elite, and her cohort has been busy this week mocking those who question the systems by which we conduct our elections.
If you read the DeLay rule story carefully, you probably noticed that it was passed in a secret meeting, by voice vote. I can’t link to all the entries, but Josh Marshall has a hilarious series of posts on who admits to voting for the rule, with their absurd justifications, who now claims to have voted against it, and who isn’t saying. This stinks so bad that people are running away from it as fast as they can (and even red state newspaper editorials are condemning the move)
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
http://www.discourse.net/archives/2004/11/how_did_gop_representatives_vote_on_the_delay_rule.html
http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/corruption_in_washington_/2004/11/delay_rule_update_legs.php
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/19/73328/793
Ha ha – good one, Mark
http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/corruption_in_washington_/2004/11/st_john_on_the_delay_twostep.php
...men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
That's from the Gospel According to John, Third Chapter, Verses 19 through 21.
Killing the messenger
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-ethics19nov19,1,4167027.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
The House Ethics Committee turned the tables on Majority Leader Tom DeLay's accuser Thursday night, rebuking Rep. Chris Bell (D-Texas) for allegedly exaggerating misconduct allegations against the GOP leader…Although the complaint by Bell led to an ethics report that admonished DeLay (R-Texas), Bell nonetheless violated a rule barring "innuendo, speculative assertions or conclusory statements," a committee letter said.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200411180003
Republicans have claimed that Travis County, Texas, District Attorney Ronnie Earle, who is investigating DeLay, is doing so for purely partisan reasons. This charge was dutifully echoed on FOX News Channel, and most other news outlets have reported it -- without noting that Earle has, in fact, prosecuted more Democratic politicians than Republican politicians.
Flu vaccine, Vioxx, etc. This is what happens when govt regulators are in the pocket of the drug companies: oversight gets overlooked. That’s no surprise, but will people start connecting the dots to the larger picture of Bush Co. policies?
http://fugop.blogspot.com/2004/11/dr-david-graham-blows-whistle-on-fda.html
Dr. David J. Graham, "a 20-year FDA veteran who is the associate director for science at its Office of Drug Safety," claimed before the Senate Finance Committee that "26,000 to 55,600 patients might have died as a result of taking Vioxx," and that "the FDA, as currently configured, is incapable of protecting America against another Vioxx." He pointed to five other currently on-market drugs that present similar risks.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58470-2004Nov17?language=printer
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/19/business/19fda.html
Marine shooting of unarmed, wounded Iraqi called a “tragic incident.” Now this is a meaning of “tragic” that is new to me. Let’s see, he intentionally shoots the guy in the head after saying “He’s faking he’s dead, he’s faking he’s dead…Well, he’s dead now.” Not an accident, but a deliberate act. In what way is this “tragic”? Well, tragic for the victim, certainly. And perhaps tragic that a young, overstressed, possibly undertrained soldier has been plunked into the middle of an urban combat zone. But somehow I don’t think that’s what was meant
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-wopent174044858nov17,0,3209118.story?coll=ny-worldnews-headlines
The killing of a wounded Iraqi by a U.S. Marine in Fallujah was termed a "tragic incident" by the U.S. military commander in Iraq yesterday as Arab satellite channels replayed unedited footage of the shooting as often as every half-hour.
A defense, of sorts
http://slate.msn.com/id/2109904/fr/rss/
How it’s playing throughout Iraq (hint: not well)
http://www.juancole.com/2004/11/more-on-marine-mosque-killing-iraqis.html
Red Cross counts 800 civilian dead in Fallujah (thanks to Megan Boler for the link)
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/17/1524239
But, it’s all been worth it: here is a forceful, definitive argument for why the whole invasion was a success. I am sure it will persuade you
http://www.ericumansky.com/2004/11/dept_of_questio.html
"Based on some of the records that we've been able -- and ledgers we've been able to uncover, we feel right now that we have, as I mentioned, broken the back of the insurgency and we have taken away this safe haven." - Marine Lt. General John Sattler, commander of forces in Fallujah
In fact, argues Juan Cole, Fallujah has now made the elections much less likely to be successful
http://www.juancole.com/2004/11/did-fallujah-sink-elections-among.html
And this cheerful bit of news: why we CAN’T start withdrawing troops from Fallujah
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/18/international/middleeast/18troops.html?oref=login&ex=1258520400&
When will the govt be held accountable for its policy of outsourcing torture to other countries – in this case, the torture of a US CITIZEN?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60916-2004Nov18.html?nav=rss_nation
Gee, when I said Specter would have to sign a loyalty oath to get his chairmanship, I thought I was joking. But he DOES - no joke
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/18/specter.judges.ap/index.html
http://www.electablog.com/2004/11/washing-his-mouth-out-with-soap-not.html
Specter's latest effort to get his judiciary chairmanship and prove his loyalty to W and Jesus is a letter he is writing wherein he will promise to be predisposed to quickly approve all of W's judicial nominees (regardless of their opinions on Roe v Wade)…Specter also plans to write "I will not be moderate, I will not be reasonable," a thousand times on the Senate chalkboard.
A moment of schadenfreude: far Right very, very unhappy that he got the post
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/008810.html
Intelligence Bill, like so many others, being larded up with horrific provisions in conference that have nothing to do with its main purpose
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/008814.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/19/politics/19panel.html?oref=login&ex=1258520400&
Congressional aides said the compromise would allow the Pentagon to maintain significant power over how tens of billions of dollars are spent each year for intelligence gathering, as House Republican leaders had insisted.
Bush fiscal mismanagement: criminally negligent
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2004-2_archives/000563.html
The international financial markets have voted since Bush's re-election, and the verdict is thumbs down. The dollar is weaker than ever, and could start dropping like a stone if America doesn't get its fiscal acts together. Of course, that must mean it's time for another tax cut, right? Let's expand our deficits, and play chicken with the global economy. This could all get ugly, and all too soon.
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2004/11/18/taxes/index.html
So many times over the past four years, we've thought ourselves beyond the point where we could be shocked by the administration's schemes. Each time, though, we've misunderestimated our president, who continues to amaze us with his audacity.
The latest example comes from a plan for overhauling the tax code floated in today's Washington Post. According to the paper, Bush wants to " shield interest, dividends and capitals gains from taxation," and expand tax breaks for business investment. Of course, we knew all that -- this is a president who, in the words of John Edwards, believes in taxing work, not wealth. The stunner comes from how the administration is thinking of paying for these giveaways. According to a Bush advisor, the Post says, "the administration is considering eliminating the deduction of state and local taxes on federal income tax returns and scrapping the business tax deduction for employer-provided health insurance."
The first part would screw the blue states, especially urbanites who pay high city taxes to support municipal services. The truly evil surprise, though, is the second part. At a time when millions of Americans are without health insurance, the Bush administration is actually talking about eliminate the tax incentive for employers to cover their workers, in order to give even more tax breaks to the rich. Says Atrios, the blogger and economist, "bye bye health insurance for a hell of a lot of people."
More
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59947-2004Nov18.html?nav=rss_politics/administration/whbriefing
http://markschmitt.typepad.com/decembrist/2004/11/red_state_tax_r.html
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2004/11/index.html#004838
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2004/11/index.html#004835
One third of the top fundraisers in Bush’s 2000 campaign received government posts
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/18/fund.raiser.perks.ap/index.html
Everyone notes the weird paradox that “red state” voters by and large have suffered under Bush’s policies, even as they support him by huge margins. Part of this, I suppose, is the imperviousness of religious and quasi-religious faith to the impediment of facts. But you might think that for a short time after the election, at least, Bush would be favoring those who put him in power (aside from the elite fundraisers who are his buddies) – but huh-uh
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/18/155249/54
Inside baseball on the struggle over John Bolton (from the Nelson Report)
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000194.html
In the foreign policy community, TOTAL focus is on whether Undersecretary of State John Bolton can force Secretary-designate Condi Rice to take him as the Deputy, replacing Rich Armitage. Bolton has been working Capitol Hill for support (not the kind of thing the Bush White House likes), and his former AEI colleagues are trying to create the image of a done deal. For example: rumors at State today have Bolton with his own list of new INR staffers, ready to clean house.
Reality check: Rice has made it clear she is aware of, and does not want to endure, the leaks and separate agenda behavior which characterized Bolton's service to Powell. Outsiders are portraying this as a "test" of whether VP Cheney is the "real" foreign policy boss, or does Condi truly have the mandate from President Bush that Powell never secured.
Some "insiders" argue that to put it that way shows how little one understands the real play in the Bush Administration. For what it's worth, Rice deputies are telling friends that she is not a neo-con, but a realist in the Scowcroft tradition, from whence she came originally.
And some interesting theories on why Bush likes to promote loyalty over competence
http://www.tnr.com/etc.mhtml?pid=2404
[Noam Scheiber] I count two schools of thought on why the Bush administration tends to reward people who screw up (Condoleezza Rice, Don Rumsfeld, Stephen Hadley, etc.) while dismissing those who speak out when they see mistakes being made (Colin Powell, Paul O'Neill, much of the upper ranks of the CIA). In one camp are those, like the editors of TNR, who argue that, since the administration values loyalty above all else, it's only natural that it would promote or extend the tenures of toadies and yes-men while showing internal critics the door. In the other camp are those, like Matt Yglesias, who argue that the administration has to hang on to the screw-ups because to fire them would be to admit mistakes, something this administration is incapable of doing.
But there's a third, hybrid option I don't think anyone's considered: What if the administration sticks with people who've screwed up because having screwed up makes you even more loyal to the administration, while having not screwed up would tend to make you disloyal. This occurred to me while reading yesterday's profile of Hadley in The Washington Post. Hadley, you may recall, is the guy who took responsibility for the erroneous uranium-from-Niger claim in the president's 2003 State of the Union Address. In most cases, that would not only be a firing offense, it'd be the kind of thing that prevented you from working for future administrations--maybe even limited your career options outside government.
But, then, maybe that's exactly the point as far as this White House is concerned. Because Hadley is such damaged goods, he owes much more to this administration than would someone who had other employment options, meaning he'll be even more loyal than even your standard administration yes-man. I don't think it's crazy to suspect that the White House actually prefers people whose career prospects would be grim the second they fell out of the president's good graces. Conversely, the people who manage to keep their reputations intact and avoid screwing up must scare the hell out of this White House, since they don't owe the president anything and since, for that matter, it's in their interest to distance themselves from any screwing up that goes on there in order to preserve future career options.
Bush’s strategy of “perception management”
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/111804.html
Goss’s “secret” address to the troops at CIA (almost immediately leaked, of course)
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2004/11/index.html#004841
A simple rule of thumb should always apply - all Agency business with the media or Congress should be conducted solely through these elements to ensure that we protect against the release of unauthorized documents, sources or methods. We remain a secret organization.
In other words -- no leaking! And, of course, the intelligence community really shouldn't leak information that's being kept secret for some important national-security reason. Time and again, however, the information that's been coming out of these leaks has been secret only because the administration is trying to cover up something embarrassing. A team that had less to fear from the truth might have the time to focus on some more substantive reform issues.
Afghanistan drug trade reaches record levels
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/19/international/asia/19afghanistan.html?oref=login&ex=1258606800&
Déjà vu all over again. Step one, Powell (!!?) shovels out reports that Iran “may be” developing nukes – based on a single, unverified source. Step two, Bush Co. immediately starts talking about the need for military action
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61079-2004Nov18.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/19/international/middleeast/19diplo.html?ex=1258606800&en=d4828ade7ffd1848&%2338;ei=5090&%2338;partner=rssuserland
In an eerie repetition of the prelude to the Iraq war, hawks in the administration and Congress are trumpeting ominous disclosures about Iran's nuclear capacities to make the case that Iran is a threat that must be confronted, either by economic sanctions, military action, or "regime change."
Analysis: http://fugop.blogspot.com/2004/11/powell-and-iran-nukes.html
Bush/Rove reach out across aisle in spirit of open bipartisanship (and if you believe that…)
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2004/11/18/white_house_seeks_democrat_for_cabinet.html
Regular like the sunrise: Ann Coulter slithers out to accuse liberals of "racism" for questioning Condi Rice’s qualifications for Sect’y of State
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2004_11_14_digbysblog_archive.html#110084144116825396
COULTER: Dick Clarke, the flamboyant opponent of the Bush administration, came out with a book earlier this year, claiming that Condoleezza Rice, when he talked to her about Al Qaeda, her face showed that she was perplexed, that she had never heard of Al Qaeda before…Can you imagine somebody saying that about, you know, Wolfowitz? No. That's my fourth example now of liberals having a problem with blacks.
[Just the facts, ma’am: http://mediamatters.org/items/200411180004]
Bonus item: Eeeeeeew! This gives me a queasy feeling
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2004/11/18/quote_of_the_day.html
"It has taken my ego decades to recover."
-- Karl Rove, quote by the Houston Chronicle, on being rejected for a date in 1982 by Education Secretary-desginate Margaret Spellings.
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