The Raven' s Blog, Web Log of Eric Ferguson: Second Half of October Archive

Reactions from tonight's Democratic debate
October 30

Tonight MSNBC presented maybe the worst moderated debate of this campaign. The only one that sticks out as competing was also moderated by Tim Russert, which I doubt is a coincidence. Tonight Russert was helped by Brian Williams, but that didn't help. Their questions managed to combine a focus on the horse race with attempts to provoke personal conflict between the candidates. Especially early, the questions were along the lines of "tell us about the hypocrisy of the person next to you", though really what they were after was prompting the others to go after Clinton. They would have done it anyway, and it's not the moderators' job to provoke them to it. It's like they're more interested in the show than the debate. It might explain why when Tony Snow quit as the acting president's press secretary, his constant sparring with reporters instead of just answering questions was considered praiseworthy.

Russert especially is fond of "gotcha" questions. If someone's caught in a lie then OK, but he searches for ways to embarrass the candidates instead of digging up something important. In an earlier debate he gave Clinton one of her better moments when he tried to pin on her something Bill once said, and she deftly pointed out that she was the candidate. Russert didn't learn and tried again tonight. The subject was Social Security but that's beside the point, it was a dumb question referring to something Bill said in 1998. Russert tried it with Kucinich too, asking about the report that Shirley MacClaine said in her book that Kucinich saw a UFO, which is a necessary question for Kucinich to answer, but he got it in the "lightning round", which meant just seconds to answer it. It's amazing Kucinich got any time, since about half the time outside the lightning round went to Clinton, Obama got a lot, Edwards some, and the other four were set decoration. It's like they appropriated time according to poll standing, but I hasten to point out that press preference preceded any polling.

A few other interesting bits:

The other candidates seem to be getting irritated with Richardson claiming to have the best resume. He has a point, but he doesn't have an agenda, just a resume. My observation is such candidates are less likely to win than someone who wants the office in order to accomplish something specific, not just accomplish something.
Several things bug me about Clinton, but one was in clear display tonight: she can't give a straight answer.
Obama's best moment was when Clinton did her usual talking around a question about releasing some documents and he seized on the lack of secretiveness of Bush, and the crying need for transparency, not just more of the same.
Dodd is impressing me more and more. I still agree most with Kucinich, but I have to admit that Dodd seems to do better at getting others to follow. He showed guts by threatening a filibuster of the FISA bill for granting immunity to telecom companies, and he was the first to oppose Michael Mukasey's nomination as AG, and in both others have joined him. Tonight he combined a resume, good specific ideas, and a clear agenda. He's in a clear second place in my personal poll, and gaining on Kucinich.
To give Kucinich his due, he has started seeking impeachment of Bush. Regardless of whether he gets anywhere with it, it's the right thing to do. He's still the only one seeking a single-payer medical system.
To give Dodd some due, a couple specific things he mentioned was the carbon tax being more realistic than waiting for alternative fuels, and that a bigger concern than Iran is China. It was Biden however who mentioned Pakistan first, and he and Dodd are right that it's a bigger concern for us than Iran. Hey, Clinton never would have thought of that stuff until it came up in poll questions. Is it really so bad to have an original thinker as president? We have several, so why is Clinton leading?
Though I'm not fond of the moderators' "let's you and him fight" manner of running the debate, I admit it's possible having the frontal attacks on Clinton for refusing to give straight answers might have been necessary to get more viewers to notice it. Maybe it will get them past the "she looks so presidential" crap. Any answer serves as an example but to pick one, look at her answer on Social Security and tell me she addressed it all. So she's in favor of "fiscal responsibility", whoopee, and she wants yet another commission, but she wouldn't say what she would do.
Social Security reminds me: while the moderators asked a lot about it, giving validity to Clinton's claim they were using Republican talking points, they never asked about Medicare which is funded the same way but faces a real crisis, not a long term problem. I also can't recall that they asked a medical insurance question. It was mentioned a lot, but that was the candidates finding a way to work it in.
I have grown more sympathetic to candidates who go off-topic. Sometimes they're dodging, but sometimes the questions are lousy and they have to ignore them to talk about anything important.

Assorted pieces
October 22

While I've found little time to blog, I've still been stacking up a backlog of items I consider interesting, worthwhile, or even important, so even if I can't expound at length, I can direct readers where to find this stuff themselves, plus maybe some thoughts that may pr may not deserve lengthy explanations.

Has anyone else noticed that since the GOP Petraeus in September campaign kept the surge going, we haven't heard squat about Petraeus? Maybe he fulfilled his political sales role, so good enough. Or maybe as happens, the news cycle moved on to the new outrage of the week. From the controversy over the MoveOne "Betray Us" ad, we had the Limbaugh "phony soldiers" controversy, partly, I freely admit, to show conservative sthat wo can play that game if that's all they think our political discourse has to be. On the substance of the "phony soldeiers" remark, once you hear it in context without Limbaugh's editing, it's clear that Limbaugh refused to be leive an anti-war caller who claimed to be a veteran and Republican. Limbaugh called him a liar regarding being a Republican. The next caller, also claiming to be a veteran (without challenge from Limbaugh since he claimed to be backing the war) was the one who said veterans who oppsoed the war were "phony soldiers", and Limbaugh parroted the phrase. So whatever spin you've heard, hear it for yourself, and you'll hear the Limbaugh was reacting to the prior caller and meant it to refer to veterans who oppose staying in Iraq.

Speaking of Limbaugh, he was part of the smear campaign against the family of Graeme Frost, the 12-year-old who had brain surgery paid for by S-CHIP, and told his story on the Democrats' Saturday radio broadcast. I thought again of this controversy after Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) called for Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) to resign for saying the killing in Iraq is partly for Bush's amusement. Did he or anyone among Republicans call for Sen. Mitch McConnell to resign after he was caught lying about the smear campaign against the Frosts? It turned out ThinkProgress got it right in the report linked above, where they said McConnell staffer Don Stewart was partly behind it, having sent an e-mail with the "facts" about the Frosts to the conservative blogs and media. It turns out McConnell was told his staff was behind the smear, and then --- after he already knew --- denied his office was involved. That's a flat out lie. Should he resign too, GOP? For the record, Stark did go over the top. I say that as someone who has called Bush a war criminal, still hopes to see the law catch up to him, and refers to Bush as "the acting president" because he stole both elecitons and has no right to occupy the White House; therefore, he merely occupies it until there's a real president. Yet even I don't say Bush is amused. I think he's callous, oblivious, uninterested in the harm he's causing, but not amused.

This story is almost two months old, but received too-little attention. Someone handed out memos describing a couple Democratic representatives in ways one of them described thus: "This is beyond parsing. This is being slimed in the Green Zone." Reps. James P. Moran Jr. of Virginia and Ellen O. Tauscher of California discovered that eveywhere they went in the Green Zone, people had these pieces of paper. They turned out to be biographies of the Moran and Tauscher describing them in unflattering terms. It's an example of the blatant propagandizing of our soldiers by our government. When you look at incidents like this, the Petraeus controversy, the preponderence of conservative talk radio on Armed Forces Radio, it looks like the Defense Department has been politicized like a US Attorney's office. At least, that would be a fair description had it not been apparent a long time before the DOJ was politicized, when the DOD was so involved in selling the invasion of Iraq. But could they at least spare the soldiers in the field having to listen to the propaganda? What, they don't have enough to deal with?

When it comes to religion, is Hillary just W with brains? This article from Mother Jones indicates that it isn't only in the realm of wealth that Clinton hangs out with people liberals would rather she didn't associate with. She participates in religious activities with some of the nutcase right. I hope she isn't as delusional as Bush about God having picked him for great things so he can do no wrong, but with a bunch of candidates about whom we need not have this concern, someone please tell me why she's leading the polls?

How bad is the corruption in Iraq --- not just the Iraqi corruption, but American too? It can be summed up by the final paragraph in this expose in Vanity Fair by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele: "The simple truth about the missing money is the same one that applies to so much else about the American occupation of Iraq. The U.S. government never did care about accounting for those Iraqi billions and it doesn't care now. It cares only about ensuring that an accounting does not occur."

Speaking of how bad the corruption has gotten in Iraq, the Iraqi government official whose job was investigating corruption has been kicked out of the country, apparently for trying to do his job. Radhi al-Radhi is stranded in the US, and the Bush administration won't help. Is it really a surprise Iraq has gotten so corrupt when its government was established by a US government that is safely described as a Culture of Corruption earned that name by invading on false pretenses, lying continually since then, and letting those with connections steal everything in sight? A really sad thing about all this corruption: John Nichols, author of The Genius of Impeachment was interviewed on Rachel Maddow on Friday, and mentioned that while we in the grassroots have strong support for impeachment, it isn't even being talked about inside the beltway.

The irony of smearing
October 18

Something struck me about the smear campaign conservatives, including allegedly the leader of Senate Republicans, have run against the Frost family. Isn't it ironic that the whole reason they want to destroy this family is to refute the notion they're mean-spirited?

Don't get too giddy
October 17

It's been a while again. I do this in my spare time, the quantities of which can vary. If someone wanted to hire me to blog for living... Anyway...

Some Democrats are getting too optimistic about the elections a year from now. Mark Green, for example, posting on Air America's blog, about all the trends going the Democrats' way. I'm not saying he's wrong, and I don't see some counter-trend no one else sees. It's just that the elections a year from now are, well, a year from now. That's a long time, lots of things could happen, such as Democrats thinking this thing is in the bag. Warning against taking your opponent lightly sounds like a sports metaphor, but I don't need it in this case, because I need only think of other elections that were won well before election day, like Paul Wellstone's upset in against a safe incumbent in 1990. I guess "safe" should have been in quotes in that one. I'm also thinking of the veto-proof majority congressional Republican won in 1998. Oops, I mean the veto-proof majority they were going to win, before they defied history and lost seats in the second midterm election of a president of the opposing party.

OK, I concede I was more pessimistic than was justified last year. I saw the polls too, knew Karl Rove wasn't as smart as he was made out to be, hoped Democrats finally had caught on to the election fraud Republicans were pulling in the last few elections, but I still kept thinking the Republicans would still steal it again and get away with it. I kept thinking something big would go wrong, which isn't unreasonable since something big DID go wrong on 2004, and 2002, and 2000. Nothing big went wrong, at least not from a Democratic point of view (though I will say it took a perfect storm against Mike Hatch for Tim Pawlenty to squeak out his reelection, but that's just one office) and we did much better at stopping fraud. But it's not like they didn't try.

So a year is plenty of time for something big to go wrong and no, I don't know what that would be. It's plenty of time for the Republicans to seek new ways of stealing elections, not to mention at least one more election DREs. A year before last year's blowout, the blowout was unexpected. Republicans called 2005 "the year from hell" apparently thinking the worst was past. Democrats too, if we're honest, would have to admit we feared Katrina, as much as it showed Bush's gutting of the federal government, would be forgotten or chalked up as a one-off. No one knew if a big terrorist attack would send scared people running back to Big Tough Daddy GOP.

So you'll excuse me if I don't let myself get too excited. I'd rather go hard at it like the election is in doubt, which I hope Democratic/liberal/progressive leaning readers do too (Conservatives, you've got it in the bag, sit home). Please, Democratic elected officials, if you have any scandals, quit to spend more time with family RIGHT NOW. Maybe you think it's hidden, but could it be the reason the acting president wants no records of his surveillance is he's been spying on domestic political opponents, including elected Democrats? Maybe he's just that secretive, but do you want to count on that?

And for crying out loud grassroots Democrats, don't pick Republican-lite Clinton for the top of the ballot.

"You don't care about me."
16 year old Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr, when he realized the Canadian agent he thought had come to take him out of Hell and home to Canada was just another interrogator.

"Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose, and you allow him to make war at his pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after having given him so much as you propose."
Abraham Lincoln in 1848, during the Mexican War, expressing why allowing a president sole discretion to decide when to invade another country is dangerous to the liberty of his own country.

"The OPR [the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility]also has been far behind in producing required annual public reports summarizing its activities. Last month, it released its report covering fiscal year 2005. That means many investigations undertaken during the tenure of former Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales remain under wraps."
LA Times reporter Richard B. Schmit, in an article written in July 2008, on how the OPR is hiding the results of investigations --- assuming they actually are investigating.

"Mr. Chairman, I think the number's actually higher than that now. Last time I checked it was 108, and the total number that were declared homicides by the military services, or by the CIA, or others doing investigations, CID, and so forth � was 25, 26, 27."
Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, on the number of detainees killed in Bush's prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan, and locations still secret.

"Democracy works, but sometimes churns slowly. Time is short. The 2008 election is critical for the planet. If Americans turn out to pasture the most brontosaurian congressmen, if Washington adapts to address climate change, our children and grandchildren can still hold great expectations."
James Hansen, on the 20th anniversary of his testimony before Congress where he informed them global warming was now certain, and how little time remains to prevent catastrophes.

"Who will chair the commission investigating the secrets of warrantless spying, years from today? Will it be a young senator in this body today? Will it be someone not yet elected? What will that senator say when he or she comes to our actions, reads in the records how we let outrage after outrage after outrage slide, with nothing more than a promise to stop the next one? I imagine that senator will ask of us, 'Why didn't they do anything? Why didn't they fight back? In June 2008, when no one could doubt anymore what the administration was doing---why did they sit on their hands?'"
Sen. Chris Dodd, in his speech on the Senate floor opposing the FISA bill and retroactive immunity.

"We had the worst natural disaster in the history of this country Katrina, and there wasn't a drop of oil spilled."
Sen. Norm Coleman, proposing more offshore oil drilling. There was actually enough oil spilled to match the Exxon Valdez. Whether Coleman is lying, or ignorantly repeating Republican talking points, is unknown.

"I'll go back to square one on this: We squandered a lot of gifts. Human beings were given a lot of great gifts. We were given the ability to reason, this extra-large brain, walking erect, having binocular vision and the opposable thumb, and all of these things, and we had such promise, but we squandered it on goods and superstition. We gave ourselves over to the high priests and the traders, and they are the ones we allow to control us."
George Carlin, in an interview with Salon, on how he became a disappointed idealist.

"To date, seven long years after we scooped up our first detainees in Afghanistan, not a single one of them has faced evidence, his accusers, or anything remotely resembling a legal court hearing on his guilt or innocence."
Joseph Galloway, military correspondent for McClatchy, on how responsibility for war crimes goes right to the top, despite efforts to confine consequences to the bottom, in light of the recent McClatchy series on detainees.

"As I was leaving the UN food distribution center in Damascus, Layla Atiya, the widow with seven children, touched my arm. 'Can you tell me one thing?,' she pleaded. 'Why did America do this to us? What did we do to America to make her hate us so?'"
Medea Benjamin, cofounder of Code Pink, writing about her visit to Iraqi refugee camps.

"So we're sitting here and, for example, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who said that he wanted to be a martyr on 9/11, make no mistake about it --- he said that he just couldn't get a visa --- launched into a description of what kind of psychotropic drugs he's taking here at the prison camp, or being given here at the prison camp. And the media monitors hit the white noise button. We didn't get to hear what exactly he's being given and we didn't exactly hear his explanation about why he's on medication.

And one of the escorts here explained that this was HIPAA protection, the Health and Information Protection Act on a place where the Bush Administration says the Constitution doesn't apply."
Miami Herald reporter Carol Rosenberg, on the restrictions placed on the press and mistreatment of detainees.

"If the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court was really concerned about fairness, it could have simply asked the Florida Supreme Court to devise a universal standard, appoint a judge to enforce it, and then extend the state's meaningless 'safe harbor' deadline to make it possible to complete the recount. It did not do so because it was not interested in counting the votes. It wanted George W. Bush to win."
Gary Kamiya, Salon writer at large, in a review of the HBO's "Recount", on how the Supreme Court stole the election for Bush.

"Convicting and imprisoning Paul Minor on corruption charges could be a powerful way to curtail contributions to the local Democratic Party."
U.S. House Judiciary Committee report on political prosecutions by the Bush DOJ. Minor was a vital contributor to the Mississippi Democratic Party.

"Where does the madness end? Where do words lose their meaning? Al-Qa'ida is not being defeated. Hizbollah has just won a domestic war in Lebanon, as total as Hamas's war in Gaza. Afghanistan and Iraq and Lebanon and Gaza are hell disasters � I need no apology to quote Churchill's description of 1948 Palestine yet again � and this foolish, stupid, vicious man is lying to the world yet again."
Robert Fisk, columnist and resident of Lebanon, responding to remarks by Bush that show he hasn't the least understanding of the region he's mucking up.

"The short version: Republicans in Congress, McCain included, have slashed the United States budget for wind energy since Carter was president, which is why McCain has to speak at a Danish turbine manufacturer instead of an American one."
Mother Jones reporter/blogger Jonathan Stein, noting that McCain made his climate change speech in a Danish wind turbine factory after repeatedly cutting funding for wind development here.

"We get off on warfare."
Rev. Rod Parsley, McCain's spiritual advisor, who calls for mass murder, in a snippet of a sermon in a video by Mother Jones and Brave New Films. That line of Christian charity comes about 1:25 into the video.

Quotes Archives