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September 30
Bush Blew It
OK, obviously a first(ish) impression.
Kerry cruised. His answers were generally tight. I don’t know who decided on the two minute, 90 second format but it clearly favored Kerry who sounded concise while filling his time and Bush sounded lost at sea trying to fill the void.
Bush blew at least three rebuttal responses where he could have made much better points than he did but stuck to his script instead. Sure, I heard portions of the Kerry stump speech in there, but his rhetoric was simply better.
This debate keeps Kerry in it so strong Bush is now on very dangerous ground. It’s his election to lose and lose it he will.
Kerry kept his tone calm and focused; Bush sounded like the whiny defensive 80 lb. intellectual weakling he truly is.
About half an hour into the debate Bush nearly lost it. He began to sound very defensive, leaned over the podium too much and pounded his fist repeatedly, while also losing his train of thought over and over.
This is not one of those “Ha, Bush is dumb!” arguments. This is the heart of what a polticial debate is supposed to show us. It shows us a leader who dislikes being questioned. A man who cannot react to pressure in a logical or concise manner. A man who, frankly, is completely unfit to lead.
Kerry kept it together, kept it tight, and wiped the floor with Bush.
Way to go! Now we have ourselves an election.
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Debate Preview
Predictions for the Debates Tonight:
I am going to lay it all out on the line; I am going to make a prediction about the debates tonight. I know that if I am wrong, everyone will point it out in the coming days, weeks, and months, but here it goes.
First, some background: Kerry and his liberal buddies have been undercutting Bush’s intelligence for 5 years now. They point out his inability to pronounce simple words and have made countless references to his seeming inability to speak. At the same time the left have been building Kerry’s reputation as an East Coast intellect. (This incorrect portrait of Kerry’s and Bush’s intelligence is thanks to Moore et al.)
Now, what this does is lowers the bar for Bush and raises it for Kerry. In the eyes of the American people (with the help of the democrats) the bar is so low that Bush can trip over it, while Kerry’s is so high, a high jumper would have problems getting over it. Now, Bush will do well in the debates and that will be the end of John Kerry as we know it. Bush has had four years to polish his debating and speaking skills and will trot around Mr. Kerry. Yes, I am sure Kerry has some zingers and sound bites that will resonate on broadcast media for a week or so, but in the end, Bush will trot around ol’ Kerry.
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September 29
If Kerry’s a flip-flopper…
…how come everybody knows where he stands? The Program on International Policy Attitudes, a joint program of the Center on Policy Attitudes and the Center for International and Security Studies (University of Maryland), has released poll results indicating that voters who favor Bush (as well as swing voters) tend to misunderestimate Bush’s foreign policy positions, while Kerry voters and swing voters are fairly accurate about Kerry’s own positions.
Majorities of Bush supporters incorrectly assumed that Bush favors including labor and environmental standards in trade agreements (84%), and the US being part of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (69%), the International Criminal Court (66%), the treaty banning land mines (72%), and the Kyoto Treaty on global warming (51%).
[snip]
Steven Kull, director of PIPA, comments: “What is striking is that even after nearly four years President Bush’s foreign policy positions are so widely misread, while Senator Kerry, who is relatively new to the public and reputed to be unclear about his positions, is read correctly.”
Continue reading "If Kerry’s a flip-flopper…"
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September 28
“It’s like the poorest village in Africa.”
That’s the awesome quote from a South African election monitor after they toured Florida’s ridiculously messed up state election systems.
Man, the above article is worth the time to read because it will remind you that elections in this country just aren’t up to snuff.
Which is apparently OK if you’re Gen. John Abizaid or Donald Rumsfeld .
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Crawford, TX paper endorses Kerry
The Lone Star Iconoclast, a paper based in Crawford, Texas (where George W. Bush’s ranch is located), has issued an endorsement of John Kerry that also outlines the shortcomings of Bush’s term. The Iconoclast endorsed Bush in 2000.
In those dark hours after the World Trade Center attacks, Americans rallied together with a new sense of patriotism. We were ready to follow Bush’s lead through any travail.
He let us down.
When he finally emerged from his hide-outs on remote military bases well after the first crucial hours following the attack, he gave sound-bytes instead of solutions…
Bush said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction trained on America. We believed him, just as we believed it when he reported that Iraq was the heart of terrorism. We trusted him.
The Iconoclast, the President’s hometown newspaper, took Bush on his word and editorialized in favor of the invasion. The newspaper’s publisher promoted Bush and the invasion of Iraq to Londoners in a BBC interview during the time that the administration was wooing the support of Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Again, he let us down.
Once and for all, George Bush was President of the United States on that day. No one else. He had been President nine months, he had been officially warned of just such an attack a full month before it happened. As President, ultimately he and only he was responsible for our failure to avert those attacks.
We should expect that a sitting President would vacation less, if at all, and instead tend to the business of running the country, especially if he is, as he likes to boast, a “wartime president.” America is in service 365 days a year. We don’t need a part-time President who does not show up for duty as Commander-In-Chief until he is forced to, and who is in a constant state of blameless denial when things don’t get done.
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Botox Man Takes on New Look
John Kerry officiall looks like a pumpkin.
Now I am left wondering if he will turn back into a candidate at midnight.
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CIA to “influence” Iraqi elections
A major cornerstone of Bush’s defense of his foreign policy is his claim that, thanks to US intervention, Iraq will now be able to hold free and fair elections.
Following the discovery of an alarming internal memo, the Administration is claiming that the CIA won’t be used to rig the purported upcoming elections in Iraq per se—it just wants to make sure pro-US candidates win.
The only thing more ridiculous than this is the news that Saddam Hussein plans on being the comeback kid of the elections if and when they happen.
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September 27
Rugged individualism, indeed
New data released by the Tax Foundation (a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit org) show which states “win” in the game to acquire more than their share of federal funding dollars, and which lose. 32 states receive more dollars in federal funding than they pay in federal taxes; of the top 20 “winners”, 17 are among the “red” states whose electoral votes George W. Bush won in 2000. 16 states are the “losers”—paying more in federal taxes than they receive in federal funding. 7 of the bottom 10 states are “blue” states that Bush lost in 2000, including California, New York, Massachusetts, and Illinois. (Interestingly, the two states whose funding and taxation are equivalent are Oregon and Florida, the two closest states in the 2000).
On the whole, “red” states which tend to vote Republican take more than their fair share of federal government funding, and “blue” states which tend to vote Democratic are forced to pay the difference.
What does this tell us about the upcoming election, and which states are likely to benefit from a Bush win (and which are likely to suffer*)? Do the math.
Continue reading "Rugged individualism, indeed"
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Banned!
Republicans admit they want voters to think that Kerry will ban the Bible if elected. Suggestions also abound that Kerry would call for same-sex marriages, even though he does not in fact support same-sex marriage.
Best line: The RNC has several different outreach categories, including snowmobilers, but not gays and lesbians.
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Child Advocates = Pedophiles
That’s electoral logic, Rove Style.
There’s a piece out in the most recent Atlantic Monthly documenting some of Karl Rove’s underhanded techniques in a slew of state races in the 1990s. The whole piece isn’t available online, but some of the more lurid details are (via TPM).
Continue reading "Child Advocates = Pedophiles"
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September 25
The Lighter Side of Political Journalism
The Columbia Journalism Review has published a list of what they consider to be the top ten journalists and reporters working in the field today. (Un?)surprisingly, John Stewart of the Daily Show on Comedy Central is the only TV journalist to make the cut.
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September 24
Bushies’ confusion on Iraq elections
Edwards (via Kos) excoriates Bush and Administration officials for offering competing accounts of the upcoming Iraqi elections. Dubya had said the elections will be held in January, but Cheney says that Iraqis themselves must make the decision. Rumsfeld, meanwhile, in an almost-admission that the Mission might not be quite so Accomplished, has said that only about two thirds or so of Iraq will be holding elections (or maybe he just means that Katherine Harris will be running the show). Armitage appears to have recently disagreed.
None of this is really surprising, because Bush is far more interested in using a putative Iraqi transition to democracy to curry political favor here than in actually committing the U.S. to the nation-building he denounced in 2000.
Continue reading "Bushies’ confusion on Iraq elections"
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September 23
It All Falls Apart
Wow. The Bush administration is taking it from just about everyone these days. If it was the stony silence of the UN General Assembly, or the recent loud and public musings of centrist Republicans that our president isn’t fit to lead (and really, who thinks he is?) in Iraq, now it seems by their own admission that they can’t prosecute the War on Terror, because they have no legal underpinnings to it.
What am I talking about? The release of Yaser Hamdi to Saudi Arabia of course. This man, once considered so dangerous by the Army and Justice Department that he was held incommunicado for roughly two years, is being released to his family in Saudi Arabia, no trial, no hearing, just a boot to the butt and don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
When the Supreme Court bluntly refuted President Bush’s stance that he could detain without a hearing or deny a visit from a lawyer for an indefinite period of time, not a single person bought that argument.
And now, instead of risking a sure to fail prosecution, we’re releasing one of the most “dangerous” criminals we’ve seized back to his home country. The home country of 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers and the home of Wahhabist Islam, the most virulent and intolerant strain of Islam today.
Truly, Bush no longer has a single foothold on which to take a moral and principled stand in the war on terror, as he calls it. He can’t detain prisoners like he wants, he cannot show that Iraq is safe, or even free (Iyad Allawi is not to be confused with Nelson Mandela) and he cannot show us to be safer these days.
In fact, the security of America has been seriously compromised by diverting resources we could have used on port security, airline security, and a host of other security related issues, but instead have poured them into the desert.
Oh, that $75 million in back-up cash for the Iraq war that was to be spent next spring? It’s getting spent now.
Bush CANNOT run on the war on terror, it’s great. He’s losing it, wholesale, through his inept, misguided policies. And it’s going to cost him the election. Kerry has finally hit his stride and is nailing Bush to his own cross.
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September 22
Democratic Chaos
Now, now, Rob — us conservatives aren’t giving up — we’re just taking the time to enjoy some new poll numbers!
Today I am struck by the sheer chaos within the Democratic Party. The NY Sun and Matt Drudge are reporting that Bill Burkett - the most imaginative news source since Jayson Blair’s bartender - is preparing to sue CBS for libel and/or defamation of character (I’ll avoid asking just what character the guy had to defame).
Burkett is a well-known Democrat. In fact, it looks like he is in bed with the Kerry campaign between some pow-wows he has had with Max Cleland and a bizare triangular connection between him, the network and an old Clinton spokesman now working for the Massachesetts Senator.
So one must wonder: why would Burkett, a well-known ABB guy, go so far out of his way to make sure that his 15 minutes of infamy extend until as close to Election Day as possible?
If anyone were running this party (and don’t tell me McAuliffe is), they would stop this. But, alas, the Democratic Party seems to be slipping into the quite chaos that allows Kerry to have seemingly more senior advisors than grassroots phone bank workers.
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Wolves at the Door for DeLay
One of the most prolific fundraisers for the Republican National Party and polemical politicians just got a few steps closer to scandal land. Is that even a real metaphor?
Rep. Tom DeLay, a well-known player on the national scene and one known for pulling no punches in national politics had aides indicted for ethics and money laundering charges in Texas. Illegally funnelling money from corporate contributions to the RNC and then telling the RNC who and how to distribute them is the accusation by a Houston prosecutor (one who is a Democrat, in Houston (!?)).
What does this have to do with the national election? The PAC that DeLay’s people ran was called, transparently enough, Texans for Republican Majority, and the money they illegally raised and sent to the RNC was to be sent back to Texas Republicans running for the state legislature. Remember the Texan Democrats fleeing to New Mexico to keep their state from being redistricted? It was redistricted because Republicans retook the state legislature and now it appears their electoral victory is smeared with the taint of illegally raised money.
So Texas secures itself a Republican majority in the state for Congressional districts and freezes out many Democratic voters who now don’t necessarily vote because they don’t think it makes a difference in their district.
The ethics investigation against DeLay in the House regarding this same issue is getting new life from the indictments in Houston.
Maybe when the financial and ideological leadership of the Republican House is finally called to the carpet we’ll expose their hypocrisy and corruption. Yeah, that’s gonna happen.
Here’s to DeLay going down hard.
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Just can’t vote for Bush
Anybody but Bush. I know, I know, that sounds like something Hunter and I have been saying for weeks on this blog (and hey, Smith, Ver Standig, Baumgardner…what’s up? Have you just conceded the blogosphere to the liberals or what? Come on! Put up a fight!).
But I’m not saying it. A Republican Senator is. Senator Lincoln Chafee, a moderate Republican, has told the Boston Globe that he can’t promise he’ll vote for Bush, that he’ll have to write-in another candidate.
While not quite the Zell Miller brainwashing we witnessed at the convention, Chafee is expressing what a lot of Republicans are worried about these days, namely, Bush is incapable of leading us out of Iraq. In fact, never should have put us there in the first place.
Well, duh.
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Lest we forget…
Even though CBS and Rather have admitted they were mistaken on the TANG memos, there’s still plenty of evidence that Bush was AWOL, as this Air Force Times article explains.
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September 20
Who’s uncivil?
Those good-for-nothing Kerry supporters, of course.
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“The trouble with technology”
A good breakdown of the dangers, as well as the advantages, of switching to electronic voting. It’s been months, but I still can’t get over that Diebold exec’s promise that he would “deliver the votes” that Bush needed.
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Kerry: Iraq war was a “mistake”
Kerry has made his strongest (and most unambiguous) claim yet over whether or not the invasion of Iraq was justified, saying that Bush displayed “colossal failures of judgement” and that the war was a “mistake”. The move seems to indicate that the Kerry campaign will attempt to move away from the economy and (let’s hope) the battle over the candidates’ Vietnam records and is instead going to focus on the most divisive event of Bush’s term. Whether or not it will pay off remains to be seen. This is a risky and potentially dangerous move—while a a great number of Americans now believe the war was a mistake, Bush is still seen as the better anti-terror candidate, and you can be sure that the Bush camp will continue to attempt to link Iraq with Al-Qaeda. Kerry will also be open to attacks that this is too little, too late—critics will undoubtedly claim that Kerry’s waited this long to make such a claim because he’s such a “flip-flopper”. (His platform has, in fact, never been ill-defined, but critics have made much of his “nuanced” approach as opposed to Bush’s so-called straight-talk.)
Supporters of Kerry will at least be relieved that Kerry has finally come out and unequivocally thrown down the glove.
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Is Bush about to bolt and run in Iraq?
Even Bob Novak thinks the answer is yes.
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Judge sez: S Dakota voting districts illegal
A heartening victory for opponents of gerrymandering everywhere.
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FEC taken to task on CF rules
The dust hasn’t settled yet, but the ruling is clearly a victory for those who supported the new campaign finance rules in 2002. It remains yet to be seen how the rules will be rewritten, and how they will affect the remaining month-and-a-half before Election Day:
The judge overturned several FEC rules, including those that:
— Imposed a narrow test to determine whether a lawmaker is violating the soft money solicitation ban. Under the FEC rules, the only way a federal candidate or officeholder could violate the solicitation ban would be by explicitly asking for soft money.
— Exempted an entire class of tax-exempt organizations from a ban on the use of corporate or union money for ads mentioning presidential or congressional candidates within a month before a primary or two months before a general election.
— Defined coordination as only cases where there was agreement between a spender and candidate or party.
— Exempted Internet ads from rules on coordination among interest groups, federal candidates and national party committees.
— Excluded coordinated ads aired more than 120 days before an election or excluding a federal candidate or political party from those that would be considered a contribution to a candidate or party committee.
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September 19
Proportional Representation
In case you haven’t heard Colorado is trying to kill off the “winner take all” electoral vote system that they current employ.
They want to switch to a proportional system of vote distribution and with their nine electoral votes, this means roughly 1 electoral vote to about 10% of the vote is. I’m not a mathematician, obviously.
There’s been some interesting analysis on this subject and whether you agree or disagree it’s definitely thought provoking.
The obvious criticism is that it may take away the focus presidential candidates give to smaller states and send them back to the big ones they currently ignore.
Kerry is currently Texas phobic, and I don’t think Bush has seen the Pacific in California for a long time because they both know they can’t campaign hard or long enough to take back those states. But if this idea were to catch on, it could bring those big states back into play where a five percent swing could pick you up six electoral votes.
My take is that is that were this to catch on, we’d see a more polarized country than we already have.
On the other hand, big states like New York and California would feel more like they were in the mix for the presidential race (and given their size, shouldn’t they be?).
This is definitely an interesting topic, one that should be discussed….
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Analysis of the CBS TANG memos debacle
Kurtz looks at the problem the way no one else can. Implicit throughout the article is the perception that CBS would still have had a great story without rushing to publicize the memos as genuine.
[update] CBS now says it was “misled” on the authenticity of the memos. [/update]
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September 18
Nader back on FL ballot—again!
He was on, he was off, now he’s on again.
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September 17
“Political Human Sacrifice”
Among the non-presidential election stories this season, few are as bizarre as this.
Conservative southern California AM talk radio hosts John and Ken (a.k.a. John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou) want to unseat the most powerful California Congressional Republican they can in order to demonstrate their ire over illegal immigration, which they claim steals “native” Americans’ jobs (even though the jobs that most illegal immigrants take are ones that Americans won’t poke with a 10-foot stick). Even though caller after caller on the show has complained about the dangers of allowing another Democrat into Congress, John and Ken feel that not even Republicans are doing enough to stop the tide of illegal immigration, and want to send a message by organizing a campaign to defeat Republican Congressman David Dreier (chairman of the insanely powerful House Rules Committee), a 20-year incumbent with a $3 million campaign fund running against a no-name Democrat with $25,000 on hand. Dreier is heavily supported by real estate firms, insurance concerns, and health care conglomerates.
Rants against illegal immigration are often flimsy disguises for racism; to their (partial) credit, John and Ken are also calling for employers and businesses to be fined and CEOs jailed for relying on illegal immigrant labor. It seems unlikely that they’ll either unseat Dreier or advance the anti-illegal-immigrant agenda very far, though; illegal immigrants constitute a vast pool of cheap labor for American corporations, and Republicans and Democrats alike know that there is a strong proportional relationship between the growth of the U.S. economy and how porous American borders are.
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Kerry’s tone is catching on
We’ve known for a long time that John Kerry is a relatively heartless candidate who will say or do just about anything (like voting against funding our troops) to win. But now we are beginning to see his heartlessness spreading to his supporters.
As this photo sadly shows, Kerry supporters have continued to crash Bush events and make little children cry.
Nice going John Kerry: Your campaign is actually heightening the tone of incivility.
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September 16
A happy ending…
for Lynne Gobbell, who is now working for the Kerry campaign.
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“It’s beyond pitiful, it’s beyond embarrassing. It is now in the zone of dangerous.”
When a Republican Senator says this in regard to the spending (or lack thereof) in Iraq, I sit up and pay attention.
Sen. Chuck Hagel (R) of Nebraska along with others have made it known they aren’t happy with the transfer of funds from development to security in Iraq.
Everyone except senior members of the Bush administration seem to know you can’t win the fight in Iraq by killing people. You can kill and kill and kill and all you get are more dead bodies on both sides, but no end in sight. There isn’t a magic number of Mahdi Army members or terrorists (and man do I hesitate to even use that word to describe who is fighting in Iraq) that you have to kill and then magically we win.
This isn’t a video game, this a war we are losing.
I’m not a pessimist, I’m just pessimistic.
I have a friend in Iraq right now, in the Special Forces stationed between Ramadi and Falluja. He described the “no-go” zones to me as so dangerous he dreads going into those places every day. And it’s his job to go in and “draw contact” which is a euphemism for getting shot at.
A few days ago he saw an 18-year old get his head blown off. Literally.
This disaster I describe in Iraq is not a liberal whining because I want peace or think that Saddam was a nice guy. It’s because as someone with a background in international relations, relying on pretty much the same intelligence that the President had (because it turns out he had NOTHING), I would not have made the same decision he did.
This is Bush’s biggest and most glaring weak spot. He says we’re winning, but he’s lying. There is nothing about Iraq right now that looks like victory. Every reason he postulated for going to war has been proven wrong.
Nothing about Iraq is legitimate. Were this country rational Iraq would sink him faster than being woken up tomorrow morning by Dan Rather and finding a dead hooker in the White House and the original files from his National Guard days proving he utterly skirted his responsibilities.
This is why decrying Kerry for having “voted for then voted against” the war in Iraq is just wrong, wrong, wrong. He is absolutely correct to say he authorized the President to go to war, but wouldn’t have necessarily made the same decision.
He could have made just about any decision but what Bush did and done better than where we are now.
I know Spc. Mark Denler, US Special Forces agrees.
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Update: Nader off the ballots in FL
“Circuit Judge Kevin Davey overruled a move this week by Florida’s elections supervisor to include Nader on the ballot for the November 2 election as a Reform Party candidate…
Davey … said that if counties had already sent out ballots with Nader’s name on them, they must send corrected versions without it.”
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September 15
Rule of law, part 2
The Dems appear to have a few more scruples when it comes to the insane game of Florida electoral politics than does the GOP…
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527s Win Court Battle
The Bush campaign’s petition for a preliminary injunction against hostile 527 groups in the case Bush-Cheney ‘04, Inc. v. FEC was denied. Apparently, the fact that the Bush complaint was over 500 pages long caused Judge James Robertson to view the petition with skepticism, since it could not be processed expediently before the election and there is no statutory requirement to force the Federal Election Commission to move quickly on the complaint. It’s unlikely there will be time for further court challenges before the election, so look forward to more truly high-level discourse on the airwaves.
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And they’re off!
Here’s a nice little breakdown of the horse race, electoral vote style. The long-term trend favored Kerry until the post-RNC bounce. If you take a look at the archives you’ll see that Wisconsin has been an exceptionally volatile state, judging by the Badger Poll. It’s refreshing to know that in our state, unlike California or Texas, the result isn’t a foregone conclusion.
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September 14
Losing Wisconsin
There is a brilliant news piece in tomorrow’s Washington Post that takes care to document just how carelessly John Kerry has moved through the state of Wisconsin.
For a guy so used to swinging between both sides of seemingly every issue, you’d think Kerry would be more comfortable in a “swing state” like Wisconsin.
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September 13
Nader to appear on FL ballot despite court order
Just goes to show you how committed the GOP is to re-stealing the election in Florida…
“Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader’s name can appear on Florida ballots for the election, despite a court order to the contrary, Florida’s elections chief told officials on Monday in a move that could help President Bush in the key swing state.
The Florida Democratic Party reacted with outrage, calling the move ‘blatant partisan maneuvering’ by Gov. Jeb Bush, the president’s younger brother, and vowed to fight it.
In a memo to Florida’s 67 county supervisors of elections, Division of Elections director Dawn Roberts said the uncertainty of Hurricane Ivan, which could hit parts of the state by week’s end, forced her to act […]
‘I’m in disbelief,’ said Scott Maddox, chairman of the Florida Democratic Party. ‘This is blatant partisan maneuvering on the part of Jeb Bush to give his brother a leg up on election day.’”
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Submitted for your consideration…
…a sour episode in this election season that is more than a little telling about the Bushistas’ philosophy on the rights of labor…
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Democratic denial
There is a brilliant cartoon in this morning’s Los Angeles Times, an otherwise flagrantly liberal rag that employs a remarkably witty illustrator. Give it a gander — it does a superb job of explaining just what the Democrats are up to these days…
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September 12
Who…
…is a bigger flip-flopper?
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September 11
Gotcha!
Bush and his supporters…
1) Abuse protesters
2) Abuse detainees and admit to it
Film at eleven.
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September 10
Questions Raised….
So, the memos, are they real? Or are they fake….
What we’re referring to are the memos uncovered by 60 Minutes so gleefully and immediately attacked by the right…and by that I mean the Weekly Standard.
Turns out that the group behind the press release that brought up the allegations of fraud has done work for….Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Hmm.
Creative Response Concepts, run by Pat Buchanan’s former press secretary, is the group responsible for the news release that alerted major media to the possiblity of forgery. They do work for the Republican National Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee and National Republican Senatorial Committee. Its client list also includes the Christian Coalition, National Taxpayers Union, Media Research Council and Regnery Publishing. As is pointed out in the link below, Regnery Publishing put out “Unfit for Command.”
As has been pointed out in other sources , the possiblity of a typewriter or word processor writing these memos is clearly present. The fact that the right would prefer to obscure their validity with a tarnish of untruth is classic right-wing smear and withdraw tactics.
Eric Boehlert at Salon.com does a great job drawing the connections but I won’t hyperlink the article since it requires subscription, not just registration to read. You can go to Salon.com and read it after watching an ad. The link is below.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/10/forgery/index.html
This is frankly outrageous. No one has officially disputed their validity. All sources who think that this is a fake have done nothing but read the documents off a website. All those who have seen the originals contend they’re authentic.
Until proven wrong, this is all just the standard smoke and mirrors.
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The Memos
Everyone’s talking about CBS’s reporting about leaked memos that were supposedly written in the 70s by the CO of the 111th Fighter Squadron of the Texas Air National Guard in which he complained about political pressure to ignore the fact that Shrub was disobeying orders and being generally unpleasant. Right-wing blogs have begun circulating rumors, taken up by the national media, that the memos are forgeries written in MS Word and post-processed with a copier.
Coverage by the Washington Post is beginning to suggest that the documents may, in fact, be forged. It is not the case, however, that typewriters of the type that would have been used to draft such memos (i.e., those capable of producing superscript text) were not available in the 1970s, as some have suggested (proportional-space typewriters have actually been around since 1941, thanks to IBM).
The whole episode is ugly and rather pointless. The memos are not connected to either campaign (although that hardly makes a difference; most Americans probably believe that the SBVFT and TFT ads were created by the campaigns, not 527s), although some have suggested that the controversy is actually a brainchild of Karl Rove—the Bush campaign might be hoping to run the clock down with meaningless trivia about the candidates’ records rather than discuss substantive issues like Iraq, the economy, and the future of the Supreme Court.
Things you should look out for:
- Will CBS issue a mea culpa for being so gullible?
- Will one or both of the campaigns pick up on this, or will it drop?
- Are we going to see (a) any real campaigning, or (b) just more bunk like this?
Sadly, I don’t think the answer to #3 will be (a).
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Bush Cooks Books With Terror Numbers
If it isn’t his overestimation of budgetary numbers in order to produce a “shrinking deficit” that is in fact growing, it seems Bush is able to catch more terrorists without doing anything.
Recently, Bush’s speeches have increased the number of Al-Queda terrorists captured from two-thirds to three-quarters. This is without any proof, disclosure, or evidence of any more Al-Queda arrests.
Newsweek points out that this increase in terror suspects captured is “meaningless,” which pretty much sums up the Bush’s case for terror. By rolling out pundit and politico one after the other to drum the fear of terror into our heads (including the low, low blow of equating a vote for Kerry as a vote for terror) the Bush campaign is engaged in an election of fear that I don’t think we’ve seen since the Red Menace last threatened our national welfare.
When Bush and Cheney ridicule Kerry for fighting a “sensitive” war on terror, or claim that a law enforcement tactic is the wrong way to proceed against Al-Queda, they reveal their inadequacies.
First, almost all the Al-Queda captures since the invasion of Afghanistan (which was disastrous at actually capturing Al-Queda memebers) have been through law enforcement and counter intelligence methods. So they’re ridiculing their own efforts when claiming Kerry wouldn’t handle the war on terror correctly.
Besides, it’s obvious the Bush administration is dropping the ball on the law enforcement level anyway. So if Kerry makes the claim he would do better, I believe him. He couldn’t botch it up much worse than Ashcroft’s Justice Department is.
Second, the ridicule of Kerry by Cheney for his “sensitive” comments belies the fact that the U.S. wants Russia to wage a sensitive war in Chechnya. Appparently what is good for the goose is not good for the gander. Putin and his foreign minister have made many bold pronouncements about Russian policy in the Caucasus and the U.S. has told him to tone it down and negotiate with the terrorists in Chechnya. Whaaaa? Isn’t that a little too sensitive? A little too….wishy-washy? Perhaps a flip-flop on our foreign policy?
Ahh, as Hunter’s link on what American’s think point out, no one would understand that subtle point. But it does point out the inherent hypocrisy in American foreign policy right now.
We can do whatever we want, whenever we want, and want others to follow, but if they don’t screw them, and if they do, point it out, and if they act contrary, slap them down, but pretend you aren’t changing your position. Wow, the coffee is really kicking in.
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September 9
“Vote for us or we’ll kill you”
A dissection of the current administration’s use of terror and fear to cow American voters, and:
“Cheney implies that John Kerry couldn’t protect America from an attack like Sept. 11, blithely ignoring the fact that he and Bush didn’t protect America from the real Sept. 11. Think of what brass-knuckled Republicans could have made of a Sept. 11 tape of an uncertain Democratic president giving a shaky statement that looked like a hostage tape and flying randomly from air base to air base, as the veep ordered that planes be shot down. Cheney threatens against falling back “into the pre-9/11 mind-set,” when, in fact, the pre-9/11 mind-set of the Bush team was all about being stuck in the cold war and reviving Star Wars - which doesn’t work and is useless against terrorist tactics. The Bush crowd played down terrorism because Bill Clinton and Sandy Berger, Clinton’s national security adviser, had told their successors that Osama was a priority, and the Bushies scorned all things Clinton.”
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Wait a minute… Actually, wait 60 minutes!
As noted in Rob Deters’ recent post, 60 Minutes has unconvered documents suggesting that President Bush’s service in the National Guard was, well, less than a service.
But now there is a minor problem: it looks like the documents are forgeries. According to the Weekly Standard, experts are now saying that the supposedly 30 year old documents damning to the Commander in Chief may well be the product of Microsoft Word.
The attacks on Bush’s service go all the way up the chain to the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
How low will Democrats go?
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What Makes Us Tick?
Here’s an excellent piece on why, for example, American voters simply aren’t aware of the fact that both candidates’ spending proposals will spell disaster for the national deficit. A good overview of the political science behind voting behavior analysis.
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“We Look Forward To Having A Debate About Debates”
The Washington Post (click here if you don’t want to register) reports that Bush will most likely duck out of one of the three scheduled presidential debates this season, citing concerns that “undecided voters” selected to be the audience by the Gallup organization could become “partisan”. It’s clearly to the Bush team’s advantage to minimize Bush’s exposure in the debates after the post-RNC bounce. Thus far only one Cheney-Edwards debate (which, to my mind, sounds more exciting) is scheduled.
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Kerry supporters turn to violence
According to WKRN, an anti-Kerry heckler who chose to sound-off at a Kerry rally may have been violently assaulted by Kerry supporters.
The Kerry camp knows plenty about crashing opposition events - there were repeated intrusions during the RNC - but in New York no Bush supporters turned to violence.
While it certainly would be unfair to say that the batterers were representatives of the Kerry campaign, it does speak volumes when one side is so horrified of the other’s opposition that they turn to violence.
Could this be a sign of frustration from supporters of a plummeting candidate?
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September 8
The God Gap and the Income Gap…
…as discussed by a sociologist and a priest.
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The World Wants Kerry
On a bizarre note the Internation Herald Tribune reported the results of a poll to determine who would be elected president if the whole world could vote. Turns out it would be Kerry in a landslide.
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Kerry Ratings
Here’s an interesting site I just picked up off instapundit. Check it out to see how various lobby and interest groups rate John Kerry in terms of how he has voted in the past on their issues. The Kerry ratings seems to be very black and white where as the many of his fellow Senators have more middle of the road ratings. This shows how much of a leftist Kerry really is in terms of his voting record, which ultimetly speaks to his core beliefs.
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Newsweek Rejects Kitty Kelly Book Claims
Newsmax is reporting today that Newsweek has rejected the Kitty Kelly book because “a key allegation in the book coudln’t be nailed down.” The allegation is the one Deters refered to in an early entry that new cocain rumors about Bush were about to surface. Apparently Kelley’s only source is Bush’s former sister in law who Newsweek’s Harold Fineman suggest “may have her own motive for things.” When even Newsweek is rejecting anti-Bush claims you really need to question their validity.
On another note I went to the first meeting of the College Republicans yesterday and I coudln’t beleive how many people showed up. The meeting was held in a Grainger lecture hall that the CR’s anticipate would be large enough but the crowd seemed to be at least double the room’s capacity with the stairwells and entranceways completely packed. This tells me that the Bush base is energized and ready to go. I am sure that College Democrats at this school get at least as large a crowd at there meetings but the proportionaly growth in attendence at the CR meeting certianly says something about the fact that the Republicans are now out and proud to be Republican which certainly hasn’t been the case on this campus for a long time. If the two campaigns keep running the way they have been running I am certain that the Bush base will continue to grow while the Kerry base will continue to stagnate.
If Kerry is lucky his recent hiring of former Clinton thugs such as James Carville and Paul Begala will get his campaign turned around. It is more likely that the American people, already tiring of the lefts baseless attacks on the President, will grow more disgusted.
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One less Kerry country
John Kerry has enjoyed attacking President Bush over and over for not going into Iraq with the approval of the entire world. In fact, Kerry seems to think that France, Germany and Russia should all hold vetoes on any actions taken by the US in the protection of its own citizens.
But a funny thing is happening to those countries that Mr. Kerry holds so dearly: they are seeing the light! France and Russia are both now the victims of terrorism, and beginning to understand the need America - and President Bush - has felt to take action.
In fact, Russia, one of the notorious UN balkers, is now beginning to sound as flip-flopish as Sen. Kerry. An AFP article (a French news organization, ironically) is claiming that Russia is now ready to take pre-emptive action against terrorists throughout the world.
It is unfortunate that Russia had to learn - through two plane crashes and the slaughter of hundreds of school children - the true horrors of terror and the true dynamic facing the world today. But it is refreshing to see that the powers of the world are beginning to see President Bush’s wisdom and, hopefully, grasp Senator Kerry’s ignorance.
France is in the midst of a terror crisis at the moment too. You must wonder if Chirac isn’t second-guessing his UN games.
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Are They Different?
Simply put, if you haven’t seen this flash cartoon, hop to it! It’s funny as hell and points up the inanities of this election.
www.jibjab.com
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Fun with Maps!
In the interest of providing our readers with something other than the usual partisan pabulum, here are a couple of links to the NYT’s and the WSJ’s electoral calculators. Note that Bush’s lead in the national polls doesn’t directly translate to victories at the level of the battleground states. Even so, Bush clearly has his second wind and is doing better than he has for months. The nationwide distribution of the two candidates’ supporters means there’s still a lot of volatility in the battle for electoral votes, which in the end is the only battle that matters.
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September 7
Cheney Fearmongering in Iowa
Vice President Cheney all but explicitly claimed that a Kerry win would somehow trigger a fresh wave of international terrorist attacks against the U.S. Apparently Al Qaeda offers refresher courses in American Constitutional law, since the terrorists would be embolded by a supposed change in the White House’s philosophy on terror back to a legalistic perspective, in which terror attacks are regarded as criminal acts, as opposed to the current military perspective, which regards terror attacks as acts of war and incidentally enables the executive to engage in various side projects under the expansion of executive powers that wartime politics generally allows. That’s right, folks—bin Laden and his buddies are just waiting for you to cast your ballot for the anti-American Democrats this November.
Unfortunately, we can probably look to even more messages of the “if Kerry wins, so do the terrorists” variety before this whole ordeal is over. The whole thing is reminiscent of the flurry of claims a few months ago that the Al Qaeda bombings in Spain somehow managed to get the Socialists in power, even though outgoing President Aznar admitted that he first blamed the Basque separatists ETA, thus arousing the ire of the electorate.
Rant mode off. End communication.
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Triple Whammy for Bush
Bush may be enjoying a modest bounce post-RNC but this week he’s going to take a beating.
Item A) New cocaine rumors surface.
The book published prior to the 2000 election that brought up allegations of Bush’s coke usage was not released by major publishing houses and slammed by the Bush camp as utterly untrue.
Cash-in biographer Kitty Kelly is publishing a book shortly that has the former sister-in-law of Bush quoted as saying current Bush did coke while Bush the Elder was in office, at Camp David no less. The book also says Laura Bush smoked pot, which might have contributed to her current affectless demeanor.
Item B) 1000th death in Iraq now official.
This week has been hell in Iraq and the insurgency there seems to be gaining in momentum and sophistication. This is Bush’s Achilles heel and his greatest strength, an odd paradox. Most Americans believe that he is the best leader to get us through Iraq, which is ironic as it deteriorates there, because it was Bush, and only Bush who put us there.
No reason for us to be dying in Iraq right now. It was a war of choice, it was the wrong choice (I’m not using the W stands for Wrong rhetoric of the Kerry campaign, I’ve been saying this since before the war) and it’s the wrong war.
Item C) Further National Guard questions
60 Minutes II should be running this Wed. night more revelations on Bush’s service in Texas, including an interview with the man who claims to have performed special services for Bush’s family to get Bush into the Guard.
Bush has always claimed he received no special privilege, even though he skipped almost 500,000 other young men waiting to serve in the Air National Guard. He also served with many other sons of privelege from the Dallas area, earning his unit the nickname the “Champagne Unit.” Honestly, it was all a coincidence.
Hopefully, people really start to see how disingenous, shady and utterly unfit to serve our current Commander-In-Chief is. Really, people, wake up!
By the way, my esteemed colleague has jumped the gun. Mr. Drudge ran a picture of Kerry holding a shotgun he claims was illegal. It is not. The issue is the style of the grip, which Drudge seems to think is a pistol grip. It is not.
Mr. Ver Standig, card-carrying member of the NRA not-with-standing, should have caught that.
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Carter Takes “Crazy as Zell” Miller to Task
Here’s the text of a letter that President Carter sent to Sen. Zell Miller, the crazy, duel-happy DINO (Democrat in Name Only) who spoke at the Republican National Convention.
God, Zell is just nuts. Not only does he challenge Chris Mathews to a duel on national TV (hilarious!) he simply froths at the mouth and delivers the rote Bush / Cheney mantra over and over and yet claims he’s a Democrat.
Note how Carter says Strom Thurmond had the “decency” to become a Republican.
After a speech like that, Zell really has only one option. Bow out of the party he so clearly doesn’t represent.
The text of letter is below.
You seem to have forgotten that loyal Democrats elected you as mayor and as state senator. Loyal Democrats, including members of my family and me, elected you as lieutenant governor and as governor. It was a loyal Democrat, Lester Maddox, who assigned you to high positions in the state government when you were out of office. It was a loyal Democrat, Roy Barnes, who appointed you as U.S. Senator when you were out of office. By your historically unprecedented disloyalty, you have betrayed our trust.
Great Georgia Democrats who served in the past, including Walter George, Richard Russell, Herman Talmadge, and Sam Nunn disagreed strongly with the policies of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and me, but they remained loyal to the party in which they gained their public office. Other Democrats, because of philosophical differences or the race issue, like Bo Callaway and Strom Thurmond, at least had the decency to become Republicans.
Everyone knows that you were chosen to speak at the Republican Convention because of your being a “Democrat,” and it’s quite possible that your rabid and mean-spirited speech damaged our party and paid the Republicans some transient dividends.
Perhaps more troublesome of all is seeing you adopt an established and very effective Republican campaign technique of destroying the character of opponents by wild and false allegations. The Bush campaign’s personal attacks on the character of John McCain in South Carolina in 2000 was a vivid example. The claim that war hero Max Cleland was a disloyal American and an ally of Osama bin Laden should have given you pause, but you have joined in this ploy by your bizarre claims that another war hero, John Kerry, would not defend the security of our nation except with spitballs. (This is the same man whom you described previously as “one of this nation’s authentic heroes, one of this party’s best-known and greatest leaders — and a good friend.”)
I, myself, never claimed to have been a war hero, but I served in the navy from 1942 to 1953, and, as president, greatly strengthened our military forces and protected our nation and its interests in every way. I don’t believe this warrants your referring to me as a pacificist.
Zell, I have known you for forty-two years and have, in the past, respected you as a trustworthy political leader and a personal friend. But now, there are many of us loyal Democrats who feel uncomfortable in seeing that you have chosen the rich over the poor, unilateral preemptive war over a strong nation united with others for peace, lies and obfuscation over the truth, and the political technique of personal character assassination as a way to win elections or to garner a few moments of applause. These are not the characteristics of great Democrats whose legacy you and I have inherited.
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Kerry flops yet again
Internet columnist Matt Drudge has dug up photos of John Kerry sporting a firearm this weekend, as part of his apparent effort to show voters that he enjoys the same hobbies as them. (Apparently not everyone in swing states can afford to go yachting…)
There is one problem with the photos, though, which Mr. Drudge has kindly pointed out: Senator Kerry is sporting a gun that would be illegal if the legislation he personally co-sponsored had passed!
Only John Kerry could be against the American people using semi-automatic firearms, but for his personally using them at campaign stops.
Unreal.
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September 6
NYC fined for holding protesters
New York State Supreme Court Judge John Cataldo has imposed more than half a million dollars in fines on New York City, holding the city in contempt for not abiding by his earlier order to release more than 500 people arrested during protests against the Republican National Convention. The city is protesting the decision, of course, claiming that it was burdened by the many arrests it made. [rant] Perhaps if the NYPD hadn’t exercised prior restraint by herding people into unconstitutional “First Amendment zones” and arrested so many people on minor and non-offenses, the city wouldn’t have been saddled with the oh-so-important job of establishing the identities of people who are so dangerous as to believe they’re still entitled to free speech. [/rant]
[update] Apparently protesters were also videotaped all the way back to their homes (those who lived in NYC, anyway). Good to know that the NYPD is busy maintaining J. Edgar Hoover-style dossiers on citizens exercising Constitutional rights when it isn’t filling them with forty-one rounds at a time. [/update]
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September 5
Moveon.org & John Glenn
Buried at the very end of a Washington Post article in Saturday’s paper is a John Glenn comment that should give sensible individuals reason to pause, “You’ve just got to separate out fact from fiction… . Too often, too often, in this country, if you hear something repeated, it’s the old Hitler business — if you hear something repeated, repeated, repeated, repeated, you start to believe it.” (In the interest of full research discolure, the quote has been picked up by the GOP website, where I found it.)
That’s right, John Glenn - the man who cast the vote at the Democratic National Convention that put John Kerry over the top as the party’s nominee - is comparing Kerry detractors to Hitler.
Now I know it’s fashionable on the left to compare right-leaners to Hitler; Moveon.org actually ran ads online morphing George W. Bush into the German dictator. But it just seems a touch radical to compare the man currently supported by more than half of this country to a genocidal lunatic. Bush wants to leave no child behind; Hitler wanted to leave no Jewish child.
There’s a big difference between compassionate conservatism and eugenics, and it’s about time the left learns it.
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September 4
Deconstructing Time’s RNC poll
Classical American political wisdom tells us that a candidate’s supporters regard polls as scientifically infallible when they show support for their candidate, and as bluntly inaccurate when they show support for the other guy. While I want to refrain from sounding like an outraged Kerry partisan, I do feel compelled to point out some rather strange aspects of the much-ballyhooed Time Magazine Poll conducted during the RNC.
The Time Poll was conducted over three days during the RNC. However, major polling houses almost never conduct electoral opinion polls during national party conventions in election season. The reasons for this should be obvious: partisans are more likely to be at home, watching the convention, and the increased media attention places the candidate in question even more prominently in respondents’ minds. It’s important to remember that the polls conducted during August 24-26 (just before the RNC) showed Bush and Kerry tied 46-46.
The Time DNC poll was of course not conducted during the DNC, but from the fifth to the seventh days after it. It showed Kerry leading Bush 51-44 among both likely and registered voters.
Time’s RNC poll, however, was conducted during the heat of the convention. What’s more, unlike the DNC poll, and in fact any polls normally conducted at this point in a presidential election season, Time’s RNC poll pushed undecided likely voters to name a candidate. Pushing leaners and undecideds is, from a methodological perspective, inadvisable this early in an election season and especially during a convention. UVs don’t yet feel like they know who they prefer, and when pushed by a pollster, they’re more likely to name either the candidate who’s been in the news a lot or the incumbent candidate, since they already are familiar with him. In this case, Bush was both featured more prominently in the news (it was the RNC, after all), and also happened (have you noticed?) to be the incumbent.
I’ve read on some unabashedly pro-Kerry blogs that the RNC poll asked to speak to male respondents first and female respondents only if a male was unavailable. This would lead to responses skewed toward Bush, since men tend to skew Republican and women tend to skew Democratic. I can’t substantiate any of this though, so it should be ignored in the final analysis.
And that analysis is that, quite simply, the methodology of this poll was flawed (even if that last bit turns out not to be true). The fact that Time conducted the poll during, not after, the convention, and pushed undecideds to name a candidate (something Time DIDN’T do during its DNC poll) is enough to make me regard the results of this poll as bunkum. There’s no doubt that Bush did receive a bounce from his convention speech, but there’s no reason to believe that he could have leaped so far so quickly. The Kerry-favorable results of the Time DNC poll (in which a majority of respondents named Kerry WITHOUT being pushed) were not paraded in the national press as proof that Kerry was “beating” Bush, but that’s just what’s happening now with this push-poll for Bush. Time’s poll creates a non-story (about Bush’s supposed superiority in the polls) that is likely to bias future stories for some time. Again, to name just another widely-known nugget of political wisdom, it’s not being popular that counts, only the perception of being popular.
[edit] Here’s a link that points to what is probably a more accurate picture in the polls. I’ve read elsewhere that it’s believed that Bush probably has a 3 or 4 point lead at the moment. [/edit]
Continue reading "Deconstructing Time’s RNC poll"
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September 3
Breaking away
The newest Time Magazine poll is out, and President Bush has commenced to pull away with a double digit lead. Conducted over three days, only a third of the poll accounts for the President’s stunning convention speech, and that means that things should only begin to look better for him from here on out.
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Jobs Better, Poor Still Screwed
So the jobs report came out today, and Republicans are sure to point to it as a) Bush’s tax cuts creating jobs and b) signs that I am an economic girly-man.
While it is true what Schwarzenegger said, that America always finds a way to recover, I’m positive it isn’t Republicans that will lead us to that recovery.
This article shows how the poor in this country are increasing, and the numbers of Americans without health care are increasing.
http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3146724
Fact is, creating jobs (and the Labor Department has no idea what kind of jobs were created) is more than numbers. It’s about quality, benefits, room for improvement among other considerations.
Am I an economic girly-man? No.
I just know that Wal-Mart jobs are not going to solve the average American’s problems.
Bush has no plan to revamp the economy to change with global concerns. He thinks the market will do it for him.
It won’t. Or it will, but it will be straight to the bottom. The global market is an equalizing engine. We will average out, globally, not on a high level, but in a mid to low level (by American standards) unless choices are made about how we want to live. Letting the market choose it means forced overtime, no raises, no benefits, and a rich get richer, poor get poorer environment.
That probably pleases, or at least doesn’t disturb most Republicans, but the rest of us are rightfully worried.
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September 2
Kerry Overshadowed by a Real Commander in Chief
In a marvelous delivery the President presented a speach that was more than any of his supporters could have asked for. He hit all the issues, defense, social security, education, welfare, jobs, abortion, gay marriage, and everything else. Bush spoke like a commander in chief and the latest poll numbers show that he probably will be for the next four years.
In an unprecedented move Kerry made a pit stop in Ohio to respond to the president’s speach, which he hadn’t even seen. In the speech, which was started late on 2 of the 3 cable news networks and cut out of before its completion on all 3 the challenger talked about the angry rhetoric at the RNC. I’m confused. What do the Republicans have to be angry about. Bush is presidentm and likely will remain as such and the Republicans control the Congress. If calling Kerry out on his voting record and Vietnam service, which he made and issue in the first place, make the Republicans “angry,” then I guess I need to look up the meaning of the word. Edwards and the rest of the Democrats have been all over the news talking about the anger at the RNC: get a clue, there is nothing for the Republicans to be angry about, you’re the ones who are angry.
I would discuss the rest of the speach but there is no reason to, it was all nonsense. There was no substance, no valid conclusions, and basically made no sense. This campaign is crumbling. Its evident in the tactics taken. Kerry’s speach, which was supposed to steal the headlines, isn’t even showing up on nytimes.com. Kerry is quickly becoming old news. Its excting to watch a campaign deteriorate before our eyes. Kerry jsut needs to hope Michael Moore can pull something out of his hat to save this one for the Democrats.
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The RNC Ends
Regardless of one’s political orientation, it must be said that President Bush delivered what is arguably his finest speech of the past two years this evening. Not since his last momentous occasion in New York City - his post 9/11 visit to “Ground Zero” - has the Commander in Chief seemed so self-confident.
Moreover, President Bush nailed his speech with a level of comfort that is perhaps unprecedented in his national political life. There were no “Bushisms,” there was but a single notable stutter, and over one hour passed while he gracefully held the stage.
On a partisan note, the man couldn’t have delivered a finer address. Every major issue - from the economy to Iraq - was handled with the utmost care. One cannot charge that he dodged the topics of our time; one can only beg to differ with his stances.
And so now President Bush rides out of his convention with as much momentum as was seemingly possible. John Kerry will take to the stage at midnight eastern this evening in hopes of regaining the headlines, but it seems unlikely that he can even hope to share the news with President Bush this weekend.
Then again, there is a hurricane headed for Florida, and it might just be that - an act of G-d - that is the only thing capable of stealing this weekend’s headlines from the 43rd President.
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What you won’t hear from Bush tonight
According to GlobalSecurity.org the dreaded 1000th death milestone in Iraq has already been surpassed.
Will you hear that tonight in New York? No.
GlobalSecurity acknowledges that they use information posted by the Army that indicates that the families have not been notified so officially, the count is under 1000, yet in real terms, there are 1012 U.S. soldiers dead, and this August was the deadliest month in Iraq.
My good friend Mark is in the Special Forces and riding a convoy into Iraq from Kuwait as we speak. I’m very, very afraid for his safety.
The link if you want to read it yourself is here.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_casualties.htm
Frankly, Bush has no exit strategy. I don’t think Kerry has articulated a great one yet either, but the mess that is Iraq is not being remotely solved or adequately addressed by this administration.
This is the war we need to address and this is the most pressing issue of foreign policy we are facing today. The horrorshow that is our response to terrorism under Bush cannot be overstated.
There is no worse President for us in this time and no worse idea than invading Iraq created by a President in my lifetime.
The 1000th death in Iraq is a tragedy and the where to point the finger is obvious.
But will it resonate and how will it be played by the media? We’ll have to wait and see.
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Mel Martinez - Millionaire Trial Lawyer
Mmmmm, I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning!
This campaign we’ve heard plenty about how you can’t be pro-trial lawyer and pro-patient at the same time.
Bill Frist made the (incorrect) statement that a hospital in Florida might close down it’s trauma services because of rising malpractice costs (and laid the blame on the doorstep of tort pursuing attorneys). The hospital he named, Ft. Lauderdale’s Broward General, if it would close, would shut down emergency room service for the region.
This is true if that region were only 10 miles in radius. Hollywood Memorial Regional Hospital is only 10 miles away and Broward General, when asked for comment, said there was no talk of shutting down it’s emergency room.
And what about Mr. Martinez? He’s been endorsed by Bill Frist (patently anti-trial lawyer) who seems to forget or ignore the fact that Martinez is a millionaire trial lawyer himself. Not just a trial lawyer, but former head of the Florida trial lawyer bar.
It seems you can flip-flop and be a Republican too…or at least abandon all principle.
Oops! Forgot to add, Martinez ran anti-gay ads that were so virulent it caused Gov. Jeb Bush to denounce them and the St. Petersburg Times to withdraw their endorsement of him. They didn’t want to be associated with his “bigotry” and did not want to part of his “hateful and dishonest attacks.”
Follow this link to archived editorials for their denunciation of Martinez.
http://www.sptimes.com/
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RNC Heats Up
Coming in to day four I don’t see how the Bush Campaign or the RNC could have hoped for a better convention thus far. Monday night’s performances by McCain and Rudy, two moderate Republicans, gave moving endorsements of the commander in chief. On Tuesday night Arnold blew the roof off The Garden. Last night’s speech by Zel Miller, Clinton’s ‘92 keynote speaker, gave a chilling disaproval of the Democratic nominee. Anyone planning on voting for Kerry needs to seriosuly reasses their decision after hearing a life long Democratic say “There is but one man to whom I am willing to entrust their future and that man’s name is George Bush.”
The stage is set for Bush tonight to offer an address that promises to be “future oriented,” “optimistic” and “visionary,” and I suspect it will be. Bush will tell the country how he plans to keep our vibrant economy on the upswing and how he will ensure our troops are equiped with more than spitballs to defend our families.
One must wonder why Foxnews beat out all the networks and more than tripled CNN on convention viewership. I’ll leave analysis on this for a future post.
Meanwhile the Kerry surrogates are out trying to counter the RNC. Dean was told people in Wisconsin that we need to remove the Republicans so they will “stop borrowing and spending, borrowing and spending, borrowing, and spending” and “giving tax money to Enron and Halliburton.” Where is the substance to the Kerry campaign? Sound desperate to anyone?
Its almost amusing to watch Kerry try to save his campaign. The presidential hopeful Vietnam Vet’s speach to the American Legion yesterday was met with silence broken up by the occassional reserved applause. As Bush is watching all the pieces falling into place to ensure his reelection Kerry is wondering when his post convention boost is going to kick in. The answer Mr Kerry: never, you’re campaign is history. The election is Dubya’s to lose.
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September 1
Night 3 at the RNC
Perhaps lost in the hoopla of Zell Miller and Dick Cheney speaking tonight will be the address of Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin representative in the House. It is not a mistake that he was slated to speak in primetime on a night so major as to include a tribute to Ronald Reagan, a turncoat Democratic senator and the Vice President. Ryan proved a remarkably charismatic - and party loyal - young leader who shouts of potential.
Traditionally, a convention keynote is used to elevate a lesser-known politician to party prominence. Zell Miller can hold no such claim, as he is not a rising star but rather a retiring senator. And that is where Ryan’s primetime address comes in. He is the rising star in the GOP that Obama is in the Democratic Party to a certain degree. Janesville, his home district, is very much enamored with his leadership. And his politics seem mightily compatible with those of Wisconsin in its entirety.
So once Darrow, Welch and company finish their election this fall, and eyes turn to the next senatorial showdown - over Kohl’s seat - don’t be too surprised if you see this evening’s featured rising star on a statewide ballot.
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Awesome Electoral Site
This site is freakin’ great. it compiles polling data from every state to determine how close they are and then shows you where the election is at were it held today.
Keep in mind it doesn’t weigh polls, so some polls are certainly more reliable than others.
For instance, any poll that polls all potential voters than already registered voters is inherently less accurate. Any poll that doesn’t have a set of at least 500 is also inherently less reliable.
This site is simply a great way to monitor the current electoral situation, just always remember to take your polling data with a healthy dose of realism.
http://www.electoral-vote.com/
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Republicans Mislead on Tax Hikes
As usual, fudging the numbers is the name of the game for Republicans at this RNC this week.
Since they can’t produce jobs (see the upcoming and sure to be disappointing August job numbers) and they know how to rile the base with threats of a tax and spend liberal, Republicans have been reduced to duping the public.
Why? Did you hear that Kerry voted to raise taxes 98 times? It’s in ads and been repeated in speeches on the floor of the convention.
Except, that isn’t really true. Why? Because politicians vote numerous times on the same bills and in many cases vote on a budget measure which doesn’t actually raise taxes.
In this case, the 98 votes that Republicans are touting include six votes on a bill to raise taxes on cigarettes or 16 votes on Clinton’s 1993 deficit reduction bill (which actually worked, unlike the current “cut and spend” policies of these so-called fiscal conservatives).
A full analysis is here.
http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docid=247
But hey, you can always count on the ignorance of the American public to lap up any half-truth or fudged fact thrown their way.
Let’s admit it, the Republicans in this convention are smearing, distorting, bending, and mashing up history like I’ve never seen before.
Don’t let them get away with it.
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Voter Registrants “Irk Clerks”
If you have been on State St. at all this summer you’ve been approached by the New Voters Project. It’s impossible to avoid them, seeing as they’ve been registering voters in bars, on the street, in restaurants, coffeeshops, parks, you name it.
Recently the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal ran an article about how many of the registrations they’ve acquired don’t have the identification information on them required by the state (a valid license or state ID # or the last four digits of your Social Security #). As a result, municipal clerks have to send out letters to the voter asking them to provide the information or the registration won’t be valid on election day and the voter will have to re-register at the polls.
Two thoughts.
First, the NVP should get it as right as possible and get that information if they can. After all, very few people aren’t carrying their license or don’t know their social security number (or don’t have either). So they should really try to get that information right off the bat.
Second, as someone who organized a GOTV effort in Milwaukee this summer, clerks are, on a whole, just like many other bureaucrats, frustrated when extra work comes their way.
If every four years the clerks of this state have a tough time registering all these voters, to that I say, do your job! My god, maybe it is a little more expensive and time consuming, but hey, the democratic process isn’t a piece of cake! Budget the extra money, do whatever it takes, but get those people registered!
Whiny bureaucrats and good hearted, but incomplete civic do-gooders….ah, election year fun!
-=Rob Deters=-
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It begins….
So the Herald Election 2004 blog opens up smack dab in the middle of the RNC. And what a trip the past two nights have been.
McCain. Giuliani. Schwarzenegger. The three most popular and recognized names in the GOP each gave incredible speeches.
McCain came across as strong yet compassionate. Obviously preceded by his reputation, the Arizona Senator continued his quest to mend the deep rifts between this nation’s two parties, and I think his kind gestures, while likely to be unnoticed by those undeterred in their hatred of Republicans, were well spirited, honest and sincere. McCain is undoubtedly the most popular politician in America, and with good reason. I think he made a great argument for the war in Iraq, even better than any made by the President himself (a big problem to be sure). The only thing that could have been better about his speech? If it had been his acceptance speech for the nomination. Grade: A/B
Giuliani. If its not McCain they’re nominating this time in 2008, it’ll be “RUDY! RUDY! RUDY! RUDY!” He was on fire. My mother, a socialy liberal suburban mom, who constantly questioned my support of Bush, called me right after Giuliani’s speech to tell me that she understood why I supported these guys. I sure haven’t been able to get that out of her, and the fact that Giuliani could speaks loud and clear to the incredible power of his message. And the “bear-hug” story was so much better than the “hampster CPR” junk from Boston. I mean.. come on! Grade: A+
Ah-nuld’s speech was unbelievably partisan. “True Lies?” I mean, wow. His speech had more shock and awe moments for political junkies nationwide than the entire Iraq war. And then he pulls out the “girlie-men” bit again? This guy is a giant. Then again, you’d have to be living under a rock not to have known that for the past decade or two. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the best thing to happen to the GOP since Ronald Reagan. Yeah, he may be a big meathead, but to call him brainless is to simply be that. His speech, while no Giuliani, was one of the most cogent recitations of the fundamental beliefs held by Republicans ever made. Historic? Maybe. Awesome? Damn straight. Grade: A
But theres one more speaker I want to mention, and no, its not Laura Bush (although who can honestlydeny that any American can more easily relate to her than to the multilingual Teresa Heinz-Kerry. Who plays better in Peoria? Isn’t it obvious?)
If the Democrats have an incredible new rising star in Barack Obama, the Republicans have found their answer in Maryland’s Lt. Gov. Michael Steele. His speech was moving (especially the part about his mother) and poignant. Hope alone didn’t bring down the Berlin Wall? Who would think to say that? Unbelievable counterpoint to the Dems. Watch out everyone, Obama’s not the only future member of the next generation of great black American politicians. These two are going to have quite the future in politics. You can count on that.
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