October 15
One of the interrogators at Abu Ghraib, Roger Brokaw, told his story to Minnesota Public Radio (scroll down to "Inside Abu Ghraib"), and blew away any remaining notion that the abuse of prisoners was just a few people getting out of control. He described the abusers as having "carte blanche". He reported it to superiors who blew it off. Prisoners were kept off the books to fool the Red Cross. He estimates 90% of the prisoners knew nothing, yet until the scandal broke there was no prospect for release. Enlisted men who committed abuses are being scapegoated. This stuff starts with the Secretary of Defense and with the acting president himself. Don't think so? Look how court ruling about prisoners at Guantanamo are being ignored. If you listen to the program, you'll hear callers trying to excuse the scandal as overblown and encouraging insurgents.
Kerry doesn't need to stop repeating his figure of 1.6 million jobs lost under Bush, but he does need to mention that those are just private sector jobs. That wouldn't just be more accurate, but offers a chance to make an ironic point. The actual figure is about 800,000 after the public sector is figured in. That's right, conservatives are relying on growth in the public sector for job growth.
Another bit of conservative irony is the story about Bill O'Reilly being sued for sexual harassment. The plaintiff was a Fox News employee, so is presumably quite conservative. So here is a conservative relying on sexual harassment laws passed by liberals and opposed by conservatives who consider the expansion of women's rights as interference with business or an attack on family values. I hope the plaintiff and other conservative women will learn that feminism is a good thing.
Sen. Mark Dayton is being called a coward for moving his staff out of his Washington office. More irony I guess, because these same people think Bush should be taken at his word when he says he has intelligence, but don't want to give Dayton the same benefit of the doubt. It's also just a strange accusation to throw at someone whose idea of a congressional junket is Iraq and Afghanistan. Here is the most thorough article I've seen on this, and the first where Dayton got to defend himself.
On the House side, this is small but just typical. Public funds are being used for Republican campaign mailings. Remember that the House leaders are chosen by members of the majority party. If you want these crooks out of office, you have to elect a Democratic Congress.
October 14
George Bush really shouldn't take laughing gas right before a debate. He seemed to alternate being giggling and smirking until the gas wore off about half way through. Then he was able to focus on what he came to do: mix in some new lies with the ones already discredited, as well as show that few questions can't be answered with the words "Pell grants". Among the already discredited lies were his contentions that Kerry's medical insurance proposal is a government takeover. No, Kerry shouldn't have said his plan would cover everyone when so far it doesn't, unless he's making it more ambitious, which would actually be good. As Kerry pointed out, every other industrialized democracy covers everyone. Another whopper Bush told: "Our health-care system is the envy of the world...". Is that why no one has adopted our system?
Another old lie was " Most of the tax cuts went to low- and middle-income Americans." He's been repeating that one since the 2000 campaign. The opposite is true.
A new lie was saying Kerry had gotten only five bills through. Kerry said the number was 56, and NPR came up with 57 in their post-debate analysis. I don't know if that's a respectable number or not, but the point is the Bush campaign comes up with these imaginary numbers, like Kerry raised taxes 98 times, and in the Twin Cities they're still claiming 350 times in a TV commercial. Kerry stretched some numbers, and he shouldn't do that, but he's not making them up out of thin air.
Regarding the flu vaccine shortage, Bush said, "...we took the right action and didn't allow contaminated medicine into our country." There was nothing for him to allow. Britain had already stopped it. I really don't think Bush lied on this one. I think he really didn't know. Wouldn't you think he would be better informed on something so big, so recent, and bound to come up? Why does anyone entrust the country to someone so chronically uninformed?
Some Republicans have learned smears from their Bush mentors. Rep. Mark Kennedy must be in a tight race, because he's trying that against his opponent, Patty Wetterling. Wetterling became an advocate on crime issues after her son disappeared, presumably abducted. It must be hard to smear someone with that background, but Kennedy is trying. This afternoon I heard a radio ad where one nice middle class sounding woman was telling another about how Wetterling was getting money from liberal special groups run by "union bosses" (that's a code word to associate her with people only vaguely known but sure to be corrupt.) I guess attack ads work, because I went right to Kennedy's opponent's site and made a donation. I subsequently heard that in a TV commercial, Kennedy is accusing Wetterling of opposing the war in Afghanistan, which she never did (when the linked page opens, there will be links on the right to the audio version of the story and the ad). He justifies this on the grounds that she received money from MoveOn, and some people in MoveOn opposed the war. Then perhaps we can pin problems with No Child Left Behind on Kennedy, even though he voted against it, because it's backed by his party?
October 13
The armed forces and veterans have been a Republican constituency for a long time. This is a legacy of Vietnam, when the Republicans were seen as more pro-defense while Democrats leaned more towards the peace movement. That might be breaking down, or at least there's evidence that military and veterans should be a little slower to assume they'll get more support from Republicans. This example comes from Stars and Stripes. When the Republicans passed the corporate tax break bill giving $136 billion to every special interest, including companies that import Chinese ceiling fans, they refused to give a break to employers who pay the salaries of reservists and guardsmen on active duty. Democrats threatened to filibuster the bill until Republicans agreed to a separate bill giving employers that break. Employers are required by law to allow guardsmen and reservists to return to their jobs or equivalent positions, but they don't have to pay them and most don't, which for many servicemen means a financial loss while they're activated. Wouldn't it be a way to support people in uniform to encourage employers to keep paying them? A tax break would certainly take the sting away for the employers, yet the Republicans felt corporate pork was more important. This is the same pattern as when Bush and/or Congress tried to cut combat pay, shortchanged combat troops on body armor and armored humvees, and tried to cut veterans benefits. They took good care of Halliburton though. Servicemen and veterans may be good sources of votes, but the GOP knows where the money is. Meanwhile, those education benefits that go with being in the armed forces were a liberal program. Democrats have been the ones who pushed for help for homeless veterans. The late Senator Paul Wellstone went from being despised peacenik to getting veterans groups' endorsements because of what he did for them. I'm just saying that before reflexively voting Republican, think about who really has helped peope in uniform.
Getting back to the corporate tax break bill, how did it start? The WTO overruled a tax break for exporters as an illegal subsidy. To make up for the loss of $5 billion through that break, the Republicans larded up a bill to replace it with so many new breaks that it grew 27 times in size. Now that the Senate approved both the special interest giveaway and the break for employers who pay servicemen's salaries, watch for the conference committee to pass the first but not the second. One of the abuses of Republican congressional leadership has been making major changes in conference rather than just resolving differences between House and Senate versions of bills. They even add things that passed neither house.
October 12
Both sides of the political divide have an army of lawyers ready to jump on every voting problem, and there are lots of problems. Provisional ballots have already been fraught with problems, mostly uneven application of the rules. While some election officials know their job is to help voters vote, others see their job as finding excuses to disqualify them. Local officials in Ohio intend to defy their Republican state secretary of state who has ordered them to break the law. This is the same guy who tried to reject registrations on the wrong paper, even though the federal government has downloadable forms. Some in Minnesota are refusing to post posters from the state Division of Homeland Security warning about "homicide bombers". That's a term the right tried to use a year or so ago to replace "suicide bombers". The poster gives warning signs to watch for, like bald heads. There has been contention that the state's secretary of state has been acting in a partisan way, though so far this has been limited to opinion pages. The Newsweek article mentions a Claude Hawkins in Kansas City who registered three times to make sure he got registered, but still found when he went to vote in the August primary that he wasn't listed. The state hadn't told him the right location. He went to several places to try to find where he was supposed to vote, and finally was allowed to put in a provisional ballot. It was disallowed because he was in the wrong precinct. This seems to be a common maneuver to suppress turnout: not tell people where they can vote, then reject the provisional ballot because they're in the wrong precinct. Sometimes ballots are rejected if there's any mistake in filling out the form. Democrats have been raising a stink because so much has been happening to voters in predominantly Democratic areas, leading to concerns about selective enforcement. The people most likely to have problems are those who've recently registered, since the offices that handle registrations are overwhelmed by the huge numbers. They probably won't set out to suppress Democratic voters, but the voter registration efforts of Democrats have been outpacing the Republicans this year, sometimes by large margins, meaning Democrats will be hurt by problems more than Republicans. The scary part: that's Minnesota, Ohio, and Missouri I just mentioned. I didn't even bring up Florida, or touchscreen machines. Ouch.
There is an anti-war founded by veterans of the current war in Iraq called Iraq Veterans Against the War. A founder and former marine, Mike Hoffman, was interviewed by Mother Jones Magazine for an article about soldiers opposing the war. The group has received support from veterans going back to World War II. Not everyone welcomes their opposition of course. Marine Staff Sergeant Jimmy Massey, despite being a combat veteran and marine since 1992 was was fired from his civilian job for speaking at an anti-war rally. When walking in his marine uniform holding an anti-war sign, he hasn't almost been deliberately run over more than once. And Republicans act like martyrs because their lawn signs get taken (which happens both ways, by the way). What's undermining military morale? They know they've been lied to. They say as much.
The reports of price gouging with the limited amounts of flu vaccine show one of the problems with Bush much touted prescription drug program. The law specifically prohibits Medicare from negotiating prices. It has to accept whatever price drug suppliers want to charge. The flu vaccine has risen as much as ten times in price with the shortage. You might think the need for it would hold the price down, but that's the reason for the gouging. This surely won't be the last drug ever to be in great shortage. The flu vaccine isn't a prescription drug being bought by Medicare, however, since Medicare has to pay whatever price, the gouging will continue until the law is fixed --- which Bush the Republicans won't do. They belong to the pharmaceutical companies.
October 11
First things first: some states are still accepting voter registrations. Minnesota's last day for pre-registration is tomorrow. However, in Minnesota, you can register at the polls, so don't let the passing deadline be an excuse not to vote. Do register ahead of time if you can just in case there is a long line on election day. Turnout is expected to be high.
There is a good question asked of the Kerry campaign which they've answered, but not with what I consider a good answer. There's also a common assertion I'd like to see countered differently, though I admit there's no reply that would fit neatly in a ten second sound bite.
The question is how they think just replacing Bush with someone more respectful of allies will get France and Germany to send soldiers to Iraq. The Kerry campaign's answer is usually something along the lines of the fresh approach they'll take to consulting allies and giving them greater say in how Iraq is run, which Bush hasn't done (nor in Afghanistan either, another source of hard feelings). I'd like to hear Kerry point out that there are something like 180 recognized sovereign nations that didn't join Bush's grand coalition of 30 (eight or nine who sent troops and about 20 who said sure, they support it). France and Germany are big, but they're still just two. That leaves 178 to be approached for help. Many refuse to go in without UN approval. Perhaps if they get to have something to say about how the reconstruction is done, probably they'll want it via the UN, we might get some help. We're not going to get help without giving allies and the UN a whole lot more to say.
The assertion is that Saddam would still be in power if Kerry or fill in the blank with any Bush critic had their way. What's unspoken is we critics would be just fine with that, Saddam was a grave threat we still can't see, and above all it was a choice of Bush's way or nothing. What nonsense. No one can know if Saddam would still be in power when obviously there would have been some policy regarding Iraq with a different president. More to the point, lots of dictators have fallen without invasions. We forget that thanks to our tendency to compare every confrontation with a dictator to World War II. However, I seem to recall the apartheid regime in South Africa didn't require an invasion. We put peacekeepers into Liberia not so long ago, and Charles Taylor was gone without an invasion. Chile, the Phillipines, South Korea, Taiwan, and Albania all replaced dictators. All that's without before mentioning the whole Soviet bloc. They were contained, like Saddam was contained, and they crumbled. What was so unique about Saddam that he needed a foreign invasion?
October 10
I had a chance today to see parts of the last debate which I had only heard on radio. Sometimes pictures do say something, particularly when Bush cut off the moderator for some remarks he just had to get in. Never mind that Kerry could control himself when Bush got the last word on a question. This is the exchange, though Bush's obnoxious behavior came across better on TV:
GIBSON: Mr. President, let's extend for a minute...It's consistent with his attitude that the rules don't apply to him. It's the same pattern as when he got to jump the line into a champagne unit to avoid Vietnam, when he got into Yale with lousy grads on the family plan, when he got handed business opportunities and investment cash no matter how badly he did, when he was saved from an SEC investigation for Harken, when he cheated to "win" the 2000 election, when he stonewalled the 911 commission, and of course when he invaded Iraq on false pretenses. We have a spoiled brat for a commander in chief. We also have a chance to give him his first time out in his life, if we just take it, and if we won't stand for cheating this time. We didn't see it coming in 2000. That's not the case this time.
BUSH: Let me just -- I've got to answer this.
GIBSON: Exactly. And with Reservists being held on duty...
(CROSSTALK)
BUSH: Let me answer what he just said, about around the world.
GIBSON: Well, I want to get into the issue of the back-door draft...
BUSH: You tell Tony Blair we're going alone. Tell Tony Blair we're going alone. Tell Silvio Berlusconi we're going alone. Tell Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland we're going alone.
By the way, Kerry's response, which couldn't have been very planned since he couldn't have known Bush would do this, was brilliant:
GIBSON: Senator?Here is the debate transcript.
KERRY: Mr. President, countries are leaving the coalition, not joining. Eight countries have left it.
If Missouri, just given the number of people from Missouri who are in the military over there today, were a country, it would be the third largest country in the coalition, behind Great Britain and the United States.
That's not a grand coalition.
October 9
As I was driving home tonight, I heard part Laura Ingraham's program on a local right-wing talk radio station. She was joining in the spin conservatives have engaged in to try to salvage something from the Duelfer report. I mentioned Norm Coleman a couple days ago. Tonight, or whenever the program was recorded, she said the report showed that in another 3-10 years Saddam may have become a serious threat. She said this despite the report saying the opposite, that Saddam's programs had deteriorated. The sanctions had him disarmed. Here's the full report. See for yourself.
But that's not all. She kept going on about something Thomas Friedman had written in Salon backing the war. She indicated it was new. She linked it from her home page. I followed the link. It was written in January. He has since finally realized that the arguments for war and goals of the war he argued for weren't at all what Bush was thinking about. Anyone who thinks he's backing Bush needs to read this column from a few days ago.
Something else I found on Ingraham's web site, her top link in fact, is a link to a Drudge report on an inside memo at ABC telling reporters to go harder after Bush than Kerry. She calls what Drudge published a "transcript". I followed that link and discovered why Matt Drudge has his reputation for faking the news. He printed what he called the text of the memo, and for proof linked to a photo of a memo which is utterly unreadable. It could say anything. That's his proof, and she passed it along like it was proven. If this case is reminding you of Dan Rather's memos, she did mention that further down the page. Apparently the hypocrisy has gone right past her. Oh, and the link to the CBS story: it goes to the Wall Street Journal editorial section. Not the news mind you, the editorials, which are staunchly right wing. Another link went to the Washington Times. For the unfamiliar, that's the right wing newspaper owned by the moonies, with all the objectivity you'd expect. If you ever follow a link from here to an opinion piece, it's to show I was accurate about what I said someone else said. Otherwise, I try to link to original documents, articles from objective news sources, archived broadcasts, or transcripts of programs.
October 8
You came looking for a dose of debate related lies, right? Good. Here are a couple I noticed during tonight's debate. One is a twisting of Kerry's words, the other a flat contradiction of the Duelfer report. Click here for a transcript so you can see I'm getting it right. I also found a Republican cheap trick and misinformation about Michael Moore while perusing the newspaper this evening.
The twisting is something Bush has been saying on the stump, that Kerry won't protect the country without passing a global test first: "You remember the last debate? My opponent said that America must pass a global test before we used force to protect ourselves." Kerry said that in the first debate, except he said the test would have to be met after the hypothetical preemptive attack, not before. Bush was there when Kerry said it, and has had plenty of opportunity to check what Kerry said, so that's just a lie. For the xenophobes out there who don't like a global test, remember that the Declaration of Independence refers to "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind...", so this is not a new idea. By the way, the next thing he said was sanctions didn't work in Iraq. The inspector's report just said they did indeed disarm Saddam.
The contradiction was, "He keeps talking about, 'Let the inspectors do their job.' It's naive and dangerous to say that. That's what the Duelfer report showed. He was deceiving the inspectors." That's exactly opposite what the report said. The inspections had disarmed Iraq, and when they resumed right before the war, the inspectors found nothing, like like Bush has found since. He could have "Let the inspectors do their job" and the war could have been avoided.
There was a dumb statement that stuck out: " I hear there's rumors on the Internets (sic) that we're going to have a draft." You hear that there are rumors? You don't know if there are rumors? You could check it out yourself. Clinton used the Internet connection, so I'm sure you could find it. Actually Mr. Acting President, you could just listen to Kerry's Q&A sessions where he gets asked about it. That would tell you people are concerned about it. You could also know if you would take unscreened questions yourself.
Now for the cheap trick I mentioned. The parties and other political groups urge members to write letters to the editor, and provide points to mention and even complete texts. There's nothing wrong with that. In this case however, the letter praising Cheney and criticizing Edwards was written before the debate started. Probably the writer is a regular guy who thought he was helping his side by sending the pre-fab letter, and didn't think to wait until the debate was over. Shame on the Republicans for being so blatant about spin, that they spin before the event.
In the same issue of the Star Tribune was this piece about the release of the Fahrenheit 911 DVD. Writer Rob Lowman of the Los Angeles Daily News said there errors: "Assertions that the members of the Bin Laden family were allowed to leave the country after Sept. 11 without being interviewed and cleared by the FBI were not true." That's the only example he has, and unfortunately he's wrong. Moore said the interviews were perfunctory. He interviewed a former FBI agent who held that opinion. It's a matter of opinion if the interviews were thorough enough, but not a matter of opinion what Moore said or did not say. Moore is often accused of lying. Go see the movie to see what he really said, or at least read Moore's side before calling him a liar (scroll down to "The FBI conducted 'a little interview, check[ed] the passport.'". If the whole country saw that video of Bush at the elementary school on 911, the election would be over.
October 7
Today I have a couple examples of doublespeak, just like 1984 (the novel, not the year), but first, a small but cheesy thing that tells something about the Bush campaign. While doing some research I looked to see if John Edward's own site was still up, so I tried to go to www.johnedwards.com but accidentally left out the "." between the "www" and the "j". It turned out that wwwjohnedwards.com redirected to georgewbush.com, the Bush campaign site. The technical explanation is that without the period, the browser thought I was looking for www.wwwjohnedwards.com. Go ahead, try it: wwwjohnedwards.com. By the way, wwwgeorgewbush.com goes to a domain parking site.
Now for the doublespeak. Yesterday I linked to a report of Tom delay being rebuked again by the House ethics committee, and today Delay thanked the committee for exonerating him (scroll down to DeLay Not Contrite over Ethics Panel Rebuke). Yes, he actually said that in his statement to the press. Then a string of toadies called the charges against him a partisan witchhunt, and the press left when they gave up waiting for Delay to answer questions. So far, the press has been willing to say his spin is the opposite of what was said. Leading Democrats called for his resignation as majority leader. The crook should resign from Congress altogether.
The other example comes from Senator Norm Coleman. He responded to the inspector's report stating clearly Saddam was no threat to the U.S. by saying the report "provides extensive new documentation that Saddam Hussein was without question a threat to international peace and security." I don't know if that's any worse than Bush now saying the war was about abuses of the UN oil for food program. At least he's saying something new.
Now for some good news. Voter registrations are way up, and they appear to be mostly in Democratic leaning areas. I followed that article's link to an Atlanta Journal Constitution article about registration being much higher in Georgia, particularly among blacks. Maybe Georgia has become a swing state? On the bad news side, I also followed the link to The Progressive, which catalogs the many attempts to suppress the vote of Democratic leaning groups. I note that a common one is to tell voters they need a photo ID to vote, which they don't, and turning them away. Though you don't need a photo ID, at least not in many places, bring it anyway just to avoid problems. One more bit of good news though is that a Zogby poll shows Tennessee is a tie (it isn't up as I write this, but look for the Hardball transcript from Oct. 7).
October 6
Cheney's statement about not suggesting a connection between Iraq and 911 wasn't just the subject of my first paragraph last night, it's been the most widely discussed moment of the debate. Both Al Franken and Rush Limbaugh replayed it, and the clip of Cheney on Meet the Press I mentioned. Somehow Limbaugh said the whole clip showed Cheney made no such suggestion. It was that rare case of twisting someone's words to try to help them. Another thought struck me though. That's the moment that will stand out as the gaffe because it's bad either way. Either we who have caught Cheney lying are right, so, he lied, or Cheney didn't suggest the connection in which case, why not? Because he doesn't think there's a connection? Then he just repudiated the main justification for the war. I call it "main" because they didn't use human rights as the justification and other countries are just as bad, and other countries have WMD but only Iraq, so we were told, had the connections to Al Qaida.
Lots of interesting things were said but one that stuck out that I haven't heard commented upon elsewhere was Cheney saying he wasn't familiar with any of the cases Edwards worked on as a trial lawyer. That allowed Edwards to say anything about his cases without refutation until after the debate. More to the point, this is what Edwards did his whole working life before running for the senate, and the Bush campaign hasn't looked into his record? They mock him for being a trial lawyer, but they haven't bothered to learn anything about the cases he tried. That would be fine, if only the voters who oppose Edwards or feel uncomfortable with him because he was a lawyer would do what Cheney didn't, and look at his cases.
News of the weirdos: Republicans in Michigan want to prosecute Michael Moore for bribing people to vote for Kerry. They're serious. Among the bribes are clean underwear and a package of ramen noodles. And here us innocents thought he was just using humor to encourage people to vote. Moore responded that they don't mind assault weapons but have problems with clean underwear. By the way, the rumor that Moore is getting $40,000 for each of these appearances isn't true.
News of the corrupt part 1: As if we needed more proof Iraqi WMD were a fabrication, the top U.S. arms inspector said Saddam had no WMD and his capacity to start building them was diminishing, not growing.
News of the corrupt part 2: House Majority Leader Tom delay has been rebuked by the House ethics committee yet again. The really bad part is that if Republicans keep their majority, they'll keep electing him to leadership positions. That's why they have to go.
October 5
Acting Vice-President Cheney told a real whopper during his debate with John Edwards tonight. In one of the numerous times he said Edwards has his facts wrong, he said, "The senator has got his facts wrong. I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11, but there's clearly an established Iraqi track record with terror." A year ago, he did suggest that on Meet the Press. He stuck to that position last June, when the 911 commission report said definitely there was no connection. He's repeated this so much, I expect other bloggers, columnists, pundits, and Democratic officials will be hauling out lots of examples. So let's move on to a point that might be true, but raises another question.
Cheney said that when Iraqi combat casualties were counted, Americans make up only half the dead soldiers. I don't know if that's true or not, but it avoided the point Edwards was making that Americans are 90% of the coalition. The question it raises it why is it OK to count Iraqis for the purpose of diluting the American body count, but not OK to count Iraqi businesses when it comes to handing out contracts?
Trying to make the point that Edwards was frequently absent from the Senate, Cheney said, "The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight." What, Edwards was campaigning his whole time in the Senate? Cheney is notorious for not meeting with Democrats. After the debate on MSNBC, Sen. Pat Leahy said Cheney is the first vice-president to meet only with his own party during his weekly visits. Otherwise, how often is Cheney actually presiding over the senate? He presides at ceremonial occasions and breaks ties. You'd think he could be bothered in four years to meet all the senators. In the same exchange, Cheney said, "Senator, frankly, you have a record in the Senate that's not very distinguished." It's not distinguished in the sense of ignoring every chance of stopping 911, attacking the wrong country on trumped up evidence, screwing up the occupations of two countries, blowing up the deficit, and despoiling the environment, but maybe that sort of distinguished record is something best done without.
I saw the Al Franken Show today during their stop in Minneapolis on their national tour. I arrived well before showtime and walked past the theater doors on my way to the end of the line, which had formed early. The signs on those doors demonstrated how badly Minnesota has slid downhill since the progressive era came to an end and the regressives came to power. Those signs were a bit of a shock since I've been working in Illinois the last couple months (thus why I have so many links to the Chicago Tribune) and hadn't seen them for a while. The signs I refer to are the signs everybody has now stating that handguns aren't allowed. The aforementioned regresives included a provision in the concealed carry law that permits concealed handguns on private property, even if the owner doesn't approve, unless there is a sign posted with legally mandated language on a sign of the right size. When the law first went into effect, not only were the signs invalid if they didn't meet those specifications, but the owner also had to verbally say something or else anybody had a right to carry a gun on their property. I believe they've fixed those things, but every business and non-profit has to have the sign. One weird aspect, besides the law itself, is that conservatives have always pretended to be the defenders of property rights, but now they feel the right of a permit holder to carry a concealed gun anywhere they please trumps property rights. At least businesses can ban guns with a sign: local governments are prohibited from banning guns on municipal or county property. This from the party that opposes intrusive government. The legislators did protect their own buildings from guns however. At least the state house isn't safe from election this year. There's another collection of bums to be thrown out. If you haven't registered yet, check if it's still open in your state and get it done. If you missed registration in Minnesota, you can register at the polls.
On the non-depressing side, both Al Franken and his co-host, Katherine Lanphear, are from Minnesota so this was a bit of a homecoming. Franken seemed quite moved by that at times, particularly when they were interviewing the parents of a childhood friend of his, just two of the Minnesota related guests. Before going on the air, some in the audience urged him to run for senate in 2008, which has been rumored for a while. He hasn't said anything definite yet, which is reasonable for a race four years away. My guess is he'll run, because he knew the late Sen. Paul Wellstone and complained in his book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, of the false charges thrown at Wellstone during his last campaign and the Republican spin of the public memorial. In fact, he gave it a whole chapter. He also keeps referring to his Minnesota roots, which may not play with the national audience but works in Minnesota. The other Minnesota guests included Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak, Tom Davis, who went to high school with Franken and worked with him on Saturday Night Live, locally based folk singer Leo Kottke, and Walter Mondale, former ambassador to Japan after being vice president and a Minnesota senator. Mondale comes across as charisma-free, but he can hit hard when he wants, like when Franken asked him as an ambassador in the far East about Bush's criticism of Kerry on North Korea. Bush says Kerry's willingness to meet with North Korea bilaterally undercuts the multilateral talks, an either/or choice. Franken asked, "Does that make any sense?", to which Mondale replied, "No." Actually, he tried to elaborate, but the audience's instantaneous laughter and applause made him wait.
October 4
No one has suggested that I harp on bad news in Iraq just to make things look worse than they are, though I could understand that impression. I'm not pretending there is no good news, though I do think we sometimes are expected think some refurbished schools makes up for another few tens of people being killed every day or two in terrorist attacks. I'm also not under the false impression the bad news would stop if Bush suddenly was gone. The fighting will continue if Kerry wins, I don't doubt it. If you look at the points I'm making and the sources I linked to, you'll see what I'm going after isn't bad news, but deception and incompetence. The deception has come in telling the public things are getting better when the opposite is true, or pretending abuse of prisoners is the acts of a few bad apples when it has been encouraged by people at the top of the administration. Incompetence has come in making the wrong decision every step of the way, like excluding Iraq's state owned businesses from reconstruction work, or protecting only the ministry of oil while the country gets looted. For a new example of incompetence, Iraqi police are not getting paid with anything approaching regularity (after clicking this link, scroll down to "Delays in Baghdad Slow Sunni Triangle Progress"). $200 billion has been spent or appropriated and we can't make payroll. If that's not enough, here's yet another journalist, Hannah Allam, appearing on Now with Bill Moyers, confirming what the other prior reports I've linked to have said about how bad things have gotten.
October 3
Here's a bit of background on why those of us who believe we were lied to about the war in Iraq think that. In May 2003, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, one of the leading neocons who brought us the war, said in this interview that WMD was the one reason for war everyone in the bureaucracy could agree upon. There was some disagreement about connections to Al Qaida. Since then, now that we know the WMD and Al Qaida ties were bunk, the reason usually given for the war is human rights, but Wolfowitz said then it wasn't a good enough reason to go to war. He makes an argument I could actually accept, that Saddam was a destabilizing influence in the region. I also could accept his argument that democracies are inherently more stable because they've solved the problem of changing regimes. However, he and the other neocons never said any of this to the public before the war. They sold us the threat of WMD and connections to Al Qaida, which not only were false, but not what our leaders were thinking about. Interestingly, in an article about that Wolfowitz interview, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld suggested the weapons had been moved. They told us before the war they knew right where the weapons were, but magically they got moved without detection. In the time that has passed, they still offer this possibility despite the utter lack of evidence.
Starting off so badly might explain why things have gone so badly. When you start with a tissue of lies, it makes sense that nothing would go as expected. In case someone out there believes the claims that progress is being made, read what Wall Street Journal reporter Farnaz Fassihi wrote in his account of life in Baghdad. Just to dispel the idea these neocons have learned anything, look at this: they want to get around laws against torture by outsourcing to countries that use it more freely by deporting detainees to these countries, even when they came from somewhere else. The bill got through the House Judiciary Committee on a party line vote. Since the Republicans are the majority, that means they are pushing a bill to allow torture despite the violation of U.S. and international law. These House Republicans really have no shame. That's why I can't strongly enough urge anyone reading this to get to the polls, even if the presidency is settled in your state and there's no senate race, and vote these bums out. Even if your Republican isn't so bad as the leadership, he'll vote for that leadership, so you'll have to vote for someone else to get rid of the likes of Hastert and Delay.
Speaking of the House Republicans, a couple commercials have told me something. I got worried when a couple Democratic congressional candidates seemed more anxious to be seen with Bush than with Kerry. That's a bad sign when congressmen avoid their party's nominee. I had flashbacks to prior elections when Democrats avoided or even ran against their own nominee. Thus was I equally cheered when I heard a couple radio ads for Rep. Mark Kirk of Illinois which sounded like they were run by a Democrat. They emphasized his environmental positions, like keeping mercury out of Lake Michigan. There was no mention of Bush or even a conservative position. The other ad was a TV spot for Rep. Mark Kennedy of Minnesota. That it was positive told me he has a comfortable lead, but that he ran an ad told me his election is not in the bag. His opponent in Patty Wetterling, well known in Minnesota as an advocate for missing children. Another Minnesota female Democratic challenger, Teresa Daly, has a chance of unseating Jon Klein, who votes pretty hard right. Both districts lean Republican, but maybe with some money and good voter turnout they could win.
October 2
One of the most interesting things about the presidential debate actually occurred not in Miami, but in Washington. The House ethics committee gave Majority Leader Tom Delay a slap on the wrist for tryng to threaten and bribe a fellow Republican into supporting the new prescription drug program. The punishment consisted of the report saying he was naughty for seriously abusing his power. That's the expected part though, not the interesting part. This report was released the sameevening as the debate, when the House Republicans could count on the story being unmentioned on TV and buried deep inside the daily newspapers. This prescription drug program shows just how arrogant the Republicans have become. Not only did they feel free to intimidate one of their own members, but they held the vote open as long as necessary past when it was supposed to close so they could somehow get a few members to switch votes. They normally vote 10-20 minutes, but this time it was five hours. Here's the full report.
History shows that those who start wars are rarely right about what will happen, a profound application of the law of unintended consequences. One of the more obscured, but very telling, consequences, is that leaders of democracies find that Bush is so universally despised among their voters, that their own electoral success is related to how closely tied they are to Bush, and how they stood on a war unpopular everywhere. Gerhard Schroeder narrowly won reelection when he was expected to lose due to Germany's chronic economic problems, but his opposition to the war in Iraq gained him the votes of otherwise disgruntled voters. Spain's prime minister lost to the opposition which had opposed the war, as the majority of Spaniards did. I was in Canada when the party leaders debated before the national elections, and the Conservatives were leading until the other parties managed to connect the Conservative leader with Bush in the voters minds, which turned the election around. Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair is facing challenges from within the Labour Party. The war was opposed by most of his party and most of the public, making him vulnerable to charges he's too close to Bush. He at least caught a break with the support for the war by the Conservative Party, which therefore won't be able to challenge him on that. On the other hand, Charles Krauthammer laments that Australian Prime Minister is facing a tough challenge due to his support of Bush. (Ironically, in a column the central point of which is that Kerry insults our allies, he insults them twice, once by accusing some of turning tail and running, and again by three cutting references to France. Maybe he should be embedded with a French unit in Afghanistan until he learns better.) The point of course is that if Bush is such political poison, just maybe he's not such a strong leader after all.
See the archives for earlier entries.
