June 30, 2003
Even with both houses of Congress in Republican hands,
I think George W. Bush and his administration still have
a sizable political problem on their hands considering
the myriad ways they've misled the country on Iraq. Republicans
in the House and Senate will probably successfully block
any meaningful investigation into the Administration's
tampering with pre-War intelligence, which would be absolutely
sinful, but Bush and friends have screwed up in broad
daylight so many times now that I think questions about
Iraq could still be front and center in the 2004 Presidential
Campaign.
First off, remember months ago when Bush triumphantly
masqueraded as an American fighter pilot and then gave
a photo-terrific speech with a big banner announcing "Mission
Accomplished" placed behind him? Over 50 American soldiers
have died in Iraq since that event, and the number grows
almost daily. How in the world can you justify telling
all of us "Mission Accomplished" with our soldiers still
in this kind of jeopardy? You can't. Such a message, at
such an event, at a time of such uncertainty, was morally
repugnant. A total disgrace. If Bush wanted to thank the
troops and mark the beginning of a new phase in Iraq, certainly
there was a less self-serving way to do it.
Secondly, regardless of what kind of WMD discoveries occur
in Iraq in the future, nothing can protect the Bush Administration
from claims that they sold Americans on the war trumpeting
arguments based on information they themselves knew to
be questionable. In the June 30
The New Republic,
Spencer Ackerman and John Judis comprehensively catalogue
the Bush Administration's selling of the war in Iraq,
and you should read
every
word of it.
I'll excerpt a few of their main findings for you, though,
including the central idea that:
Iraq hawks in the Pentagon and in the vice president's
office, reinforced by members of the Pentagon's semi-official
Defense Policy Board, mounted a year-long attempt to
pressure the CIA to take a harder line against Iraq--whether
on its ties with Al Qaeda or on the status of its nuclear
program.
Such pressure resulted in Senate Intellignce Committee
members like then Chairman Bob Graham getting cooked intelligence
reports:
In the late summer of 2002, Graham had requested
from Tenet an analysis of the Iraqi threat. According to
knowledgeable sources, he received a 25-page classified
response reflecting the balanced view that had prevailed
earlier among the intelligence agencies--noting, for
example, that evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program or
a link to Al Qaeda was inconclusive. Early that September,
the committee also received the DIA's classified analysis,
which reflected the same cautious assessments. But committee
members became worried when, midway through the month,
they received a new CIA analysis of the threat that
highlighted the Bush administration's claims and consigned
skepticism to footnotes. According to one congressional staffer
who read the document, it highlighted "extensive Iraqi
chem-bio programs and nuclear programs and links to
terrorism" but then included a footnote that read, "This
information comes from a source known to fabricate in
the past." The staffer concluded that "they didn't do
analysis. What they did was they just amassed everything
they could that said anything bad about Iraq and put
it into a document."
The Bush-Cheney White House were also able to bully the
CIA into not contradicting ridiculous cases that Bush
would make to the public, like 2 that Bush pushed in his
State of the Union Address this year. On the first case,
Bush said:
"We have also discovered through intelligence that
Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial
vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or
biological weapons across broad areas. We are concerned
that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for
missions targeting the United States."
Of which Ackerman and Judis wrote:
This claim represented the height of absurdity.
Iraq's UAVs had ranges of, at most, 300 miles. They could
not make the flight from Baghdad to Tel Aviv, let alone
to New York.
Bush's second State of the Union whopper was debunked
before (and after) he gave the speech, but it didn't prevent
him from using it:
In his State of the Union address on January 28,
2003, Bush introduced a new piece of evidence to show that
Iraq was developing a nuclear arms program: "The British
government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently
sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
... Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these
activities. He clearly has much to hide."
One year earlier, Cheney's office had received from
the British, via the Italians, documents purporting
to show Iraq's purchase of uranium from Niger. Cheney
had given the information to the CIA, which in turn
asked a prominent diplomat, who had served as ambassador
to three African countries, to investigate. He returned
after a visit to Niger in February 2002 and reported
to the State Department and the CIA that the documents were
forgeries. The CIA circulated the ambassador's report to the
vice president's office, the ambassador confirms to TNR.
But, after a British dossier was released in September
detailing the purported uranium purchase, administration
officials began citing it anyway, culminating in its
inclusion in the State of the Union. "They knew the
Niger story was a flat-out lie," the former ambassador
tells TNR. "They were unpersuasive about aluminum tubes
and added this to make their case more persuasive."
One of the reasons we need an investigation into this
is to determine whether Bush was kept in the dark by his
people or if he himself made the decision to make such
misinformation a prominent part of his public case. Whichever
it is, Judis and Ackerman sum it up better than I can:
In some cases, the administration may have deliberately
lied. If Bush didn't know the purported uranium deal
between Iraq and Niger was a hoax, plenty of people
in his administration did--including, possibly, Vice
President Cheney, who would have seen the president's
State of the Union address before it was delivered.
Rice and Rumsfeld also must have known that the aluminum
tubes that they presented as proof of Iraq's nuclear
ambitions were discounted by prominent intelligence
experts. And, while a few administration officials may have
genuinely believed that there was a strong connection between
Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, most probably knew they were
constructing castles out of sand.
The Bush administration took office pledging to restore
"honor and dignity" to the White House. And it's true:
Bush has not gotten caught having sex with an intern
or lying about it under oath. But he has engaged in
a pattern of deception concerning the most fundamental
decisions a government must make. The United States
may have been justified in going to war in Iraq--there
were, after all, other rationales for doing so--but it was
not justified in doing so on the national security grounds
that President Bush put forth throughout last fall and winter.
He deceived Americans about what was known of the threat
from Iraq and deprived Congress of its ability to make
an informed decision about whether or not to take the
country to war.
June 26, 2003
Today, the Supreme Court not only struck down a bigoted
Texas law which criminalized homosexual sex, but also
the existing antisodomy laws in the other states. These
words from Anthony Kennedy, author of the
majority
opinion, represent a huge, resounding, progressive
victory for our country:
The present case does not involve minors. It does
not involve persons who might be injured or coerced or
who are situated in relationships where consent might
not easily be refused. It does not involve public conduct
or prostitution. It does not involve whether the government
must give formal recognition to any relationship that
homosexual persons seek to enter. The case does involve
two adults who, with full and mutual consent from each
other, engaged in sexual practices common to a homosexual
lifestyle. The petitioners are entitled to respect for
their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence
or control their destiny by making their private sexual
conduct a crime. Their right to liberty under the Due
Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their
conduct without intervention of the government. "It is a promise
of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal
liberty which the government may not enter." Casey,
supra, at 847. The Texas statute furthers no legitimate
state interest which can justify its intrusion into
the personal and private life of the individual.
It's a good day, but it's sad that it's taken until 2003
for the Supreme Court to so explicitly recognize gays'
right to privacy. What's worse is that 3 justices – Rehnquist,
Thomas, and Scalia – still refuse to recognize it. Scalia
showcased his
position
by reading his dissent from the bench – a flamboyant,
atypical move, Liberace-like, almost:
Today's opinion is the product of a Court, which
is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely
signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which
I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists
directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has
traditionally attached to homosexual conduct.
Anti-bigots and those of us who believe a government should
value privacy as a right can rejoice over the battle won
today, but as long as people like Scalia, Rehnquist, Thomas,
Santorum, DeLay, Falwell, Limbaugh, and other moral disasters
fight so hard to preserve a state's right to squash individuals'
privacy, we have a long way to go to win the war.
June 19, 2003
Despite near unanimity by scientists not employed
by big oil companies on the dangerous reality of global
warming, George W. Bush has always been a non-believer.
When his own E.P.A. published a report last year acknowledging
that "human activity – the burning of fossil fuels" was
primarily responsible for global climate change, Bush
disowned the report as "a product of the federal bureaucracy."
He left little doubt that he sees the E.P.A. as little
more than a nuisance.
Today, the
New York
Times reports further evidence that the Bush Administration
is not gonna let a little antiquated concept like scientific
truth get in the way of their "let the polluters regulate
themselves" prerogative. Next week, the E.P.A. was set
to publish a report which included a section affirming
the risks of global warming, which editors from the Bush
White House then "whittled to a few noncommittal paragraphs."
The Times reports:
Among the deletions were conclusions about the likely
human contribution to warming from a 2001 report on
climate by the National Research Council that the White
House had commissioned and that President Bush had endorsed
in speeches that year. White House officials also deleted
a reference to a 1999 study showing that global temperatures
had risen sharply in the previous decade compared with
the last 1,000 years. In its place, administration officials
added a reference to a new study, partly financed by
the American Petroleum Institute, questioning that conclusion.
Who needs the Environmental Protection Agency when you
have the "American Petroleum Institute"? Who needs the
C.I.A. when you've got Paul Wolfowitz?
There's a growing body of evidence that suggests that
these are questions George W. Bush and Dick Cheney actually
ask themselves, only without the irony.
June 17, 2003
It's hard to find fair-minded commentary on what happened
to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, which if I recall
correctly may have had something to do with our war there.
Fareed Zakaria's
recent
Newsweek
article on the subject is a must-read.
Fareed reminds us that there's good reason to believe
Iraq was hiding WMD. But he also reminds us of the following:
...For decades some conservatives, including many
who now wield great influence, have had a tendency to vastly
exaggerate the threat posed by tyrannical regimes.
It all started with the now famous "Team B" exercise.
During the early 1970s, hard-line conservatives pilloried
the CIA for being soft on the Soviets. As a result,
CIA Director George Bush agreed to allow a team of outside
experts to look at the intelligence and come to their
own conclusions. Team B--which included Paul Wolfowitz--produced
a scathing report, claiming that the Soviet threat had
been badly underestimated.
Of course, the CIA had not badly underestimated the Soviet
threat, and Team B badly overestimated it. This shows
the pervasive corrupting influence that ideologues like
Wolfowitz, one of the primary architects of this war,
can have on intelligence gathering, analysis, and dissemination.
But Bill Keller, in his
New
York Times Op-Ed Saturday, gets to the most important
point of all this, which is that we need a very serious
and thorough investigation into all this:
... the consequences of crying wolf — and
the belief is widespread among the dispirited spies of the
A Team that the administration did exactly that — are
grave. Honest, careful intelligence is our single most
important weapon in the global effort against terrorism.
It is also critical to winning the support of allies
against nuclear proliferation, most urgently in North
Korea and Iran. Already rather compelling evidence of
Iran's development of nuclear weaponry is being dismissed
as just more smoke from the Bush propaganda machine.
So far, the passion to investigate the integrity of
American intelligence-gathering belongs mostly to the
doves, whose motives are subject to suspicion and who,
in any case, do not set the agenda. The pro-war Democrats
are dying to change the subject to the economy. The
Republicans are in no mood to second-guess a victory.
Just when we really need some of that Team B spirit,
the hawks have chickened out.
The truth is that the information-gathering machine
designed to guide our leaders in matters of war and
peace shows signs of being corrupted. To my mind, this
is a worrisome problem, but not because it invalidates
the war we won. It is a problem because it weakens us
for the wars we still face.
Keller couldn't be more right.
June 15, 2003
Simon and Schuster reports
that
Hillary's
book sold 200,000 copies yesterday, a record for a
non-fiction book. Just a couple weeks ago on
Crossfire,
Tucker Carlson repeatedly mocked Hillary's sales potential
and promised to eat his shoes on air if it sells its first
printing (one million copies). Bon appetit to that smug,
bow-tied bastard.
Hillary Clinton isn't one of my favorite politicians,
but on the whole I like her. Moreover, I would be thrilled
to see a woman elected President in the near future, and
she probably will have a decent shot in 2008 if our Democratic
nominee loses next year (unfortunately, popular Michigan
Governor and rising Democratic political superstar
Jennifer Granholm
was born in Canada and thus
ineligible to ever be on the national ticket).
Who knows what's gonna happen next year, much less '08,
but right now she certainly has huge political benefits.
With her name i.d. and fundraising abilities, sewing up
the Democratic nomination could be a cakewalk. She's a
divisive figure, sure, but so are George W. Bush (he's
nearly as unpopular among Democrats as Bill Clinton is
among Republicans, and his poll numbers with independents
ain't great, either – Bush's political strength is due
almost entirely to stratospheric popularity with registered
Republicans) and Jeb Bush, another potential '08 nominee. And
can you imagine how many new voters, especially young women,
would register if Hillary ran? An awful lot, I think.
What a wonderful evolution that would be.
When I sized up Hillary's chances for my girlfriend Michelle
while we watched Hillary on
Barbara Walters Sunday
night, she called me an idealist. I think I'm a realist.
We'll see.
There's not much question that George W. Bush has
driven the federal budget into ruins, but how do Democrats
vivify the consequences of his gluttonous tax cuts? Tom
Friedman has a pretty good suggestion in
his
New York Times
column today, urging Democrats to substitute "services
cuts" for "tax cuts" when they address the budget. I don't
know how the press would react, but Dems could credibly
do it. After all, even the tooth fairy has limited funds.
Friedman mentions Peter G. Peterson's
New York Times
Magazine article. Peterson is a lifelong Republican
and fiscal conservative who was Nixon's Commerce Secretary,
and he's appalled by Bush's irresponsibility. For me,
this was the most compelling sentence of his piece:
I hope that in the search for a durable majority,
Republicans will sooner or later realize that it won't
happen without coming to terms with deficits and debts,
and Democrats will likewise realize it won't happen
for them without coming to terms with entitlements.
Most people don't know it yet, but Bush and Congressional
Republicans have laid the groundwork for insidious privatization
of medicare and social security. Due to their budget busting,
the only way to deal realistically with long-term federal
spending is to restructure these entitlements. Democrats
must recognize this and get there first, so "reform" doesn't
just mean "privatization." To Republicans, the two words
are interchangeable.
June 10, 2003
Democraticunderground.com gives Fox phoney Bill O'Reilly
both the 1st and 2nd slots in their
"Top 10 Conservative
Idiots" this week, which is both amusing and appropriate.
Every time I hear about O'Reilly, I go back to a
March 2, 2001
Washington Post column written by Michael Kinsley.
It's dead-on in its summation of O'Reilly. Nothing more really
needs to be written about him.
June 8, 2003
A few weeks ago, The Daily Kos wrote of former Vermont
Governor and Democratic Presidential Candidate Howard
Dean: "...remember that silly notion that helped get Bush
elected -- "who would you rather have a beer with, Bush
or Gore?" Dean wins the 'Beer Primary'." That line has
stuck with me, because Dean's campaign has caught some
fire, and as I watched him on
Charlie Rose I asked
myself 2 questions:
1) What do I think of this guy?
2) Does he have a chance to beat Bush?
There's a lot to like about Dean. He's smart, a fighter,
and gets to the point. On
Charlie Rose, he showed
an ability to hammer Bush clearly, articulately, and effectively.
I believed him when he said that his Southern strategy
would be, to paraphrase, to go out and tell Southern blacks
to stay with Democrats because Democrats appreciate them,
and to ask Southern whites what Republicans have done
for them, and remind them that the answer to that, especially
given the horrible economic conditions of rural whites
in many Southern states, is nothing. In a Dean-Bush match-up,
I vote for Dean in a heartbeat.
But there are also things to dislike about Dean. His mouth
is a dead ringer for
Batman's The Joker, he can
come off as extremely petulant – even crybabyish, TOO
eager to fight, and he's a devoted NRA supporter. Most
importanly, while I don't agree entirely with
New
York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, the
DLC,
and the host of others who've called Dean unelectable,
I certainly don't think he gives us our best shot at the
White House.
First, we need a unified Democratic Party to unseat Bush,
and the fiery Dean only encourages civil wars between
the party's right (represented by the DLC) and its pure
progressives (
to
whom Dean has excelled at throwing red meat at events
like Friday's
Campaign
for America's Future gathering). This may be good
Democratic Primary politics, but it's disastrous general
election politics.
Secondly, very shortly after American soldiers took Baghdad,
Dean said of Saddam Hussein, "We've gotten rid of him,
and I
suppose that's a good thing." Is he going
to win a single swing state after the Bush Campaign airs
10,000 commercials of him saying those words? Especially
when the thing he was most noted for nationally before
his Presidential run is signing
Vermont's Civil
Union Law, which I applaud him for and support him on 100%,
but Republicans can easily haunt him with in several pivotal
states and I just don't think he has the political will
and dexterity to overcome it.
Which Democratic candidate do I think has the best chance
to unify the right and left of our party? Without question,
John Kerry. His Senate voting record is very liberal (except
in a couple areas, like free trade), but the DLC and other
right-leaning Democratic groups are friendly to him. He
supported regime change in Iraq, but he correctly blasted
Bush Adminstatrion diplomacy, or lack thereof. So he's
got the policy background that can appeal to both wings
of the party and the war hero background that potentially
appeals to conservative Democrats and even moderate Republicans.
If Dean finds a way to beat Kerry in New Hampshire next
February 3, I think Democrats are in trouble.
Speaking of Kerry, he showed courage in
urging
Democrats to be strong on national defense to the
audience at the same Campaign for America's Future event
that Dean attended. He's certainly the only Democratic
candidate able to say something as striking to swing voters
as this:
When I was in the Navy, I learned something about
aircraft carriers for real. Landing on an aircraft carrier
at the hands of a good, well-trained Navy pilot does
not make up for a failed economic policy in this country.
It doesn't make up for union-busting. It doesn't make
up for degrading our environment. It doesn't make up
for standing in the way of civil rights. And it won't
convince Americans to allow you to privatize Social
Security.
May 30, 2003
Everything you need to know about the Bush tax cut:
- Amount that a married couple with 3 kids and a combined
income of $26,650 will get back this year: $0.
- Approximate amount that Warren Buffet, the second
richest man in America who unselfishly opposes the
tax cut, plans to save this year on his income tax:
$326 million.
This won't
be the last sad story you read about this tax cut.
May 23, 2003
Everyone's favorite hillbilly aristocrat,
George W. Bush, held a
fundraiser
on Wednesday night that grossed over $22 million. Most
of it will go to House and Senate Republican candidates
in '04, not Bush-Cheney '04, but it shows how quickly
G.W. can raise money, and what an extra fundraising advantage
he gives the G.O.P. ("Greedy Old Party") over Democrats.
Dinner at the fundraiser was $2500 a plate, and you could
get a picture with Dub for the bargain price of $25,000
(all of this, of course, had to go to a Republican Party
Committee to bypass the $2000 limit on contributions from
individuals). Over 150 Republican nutjobs shelled out
the big money to pose with Bush.
To put this one-night total in perspective, the 9 Democratic
candidates spent the first quarter of this year running
all over the country chasing down Democratic donors, and
their COMBINED total was just a little over $22 million.
For the Bush-Cheney re-elect, White House sources are
saying that they'll raise anywhere from $200 to $400 million
over the course of the campaign. They set a record in
2000, raising over $100 million, but are confident that
they'll saunter past that figure this time. In fact, reading
between the lines of the articles I've read on this, I
sense that the sky's the limit on what's a realistic fundraising
total, and their only concern is what the public might
perceive as "too much."
Democrats can only hope that we have a good messenger
able to convey a message that trumps money. We're certainly
accustomed to being outspent. Also, if John Kerry's the
nominee, another hope is that Teresa Heinz Kerry would
open up her estimated $550M checking account to defend
"attacks against her husband." She's on record saying she might
use her personal fortune for such a purpose, and the odds are
1 to 1 that if Kerry is the nominee he'll be attacked.
Republican donors are getting a terrible return
on their investment in this Administration's post-war
management of Iraq, that's for sure. As the fighting phase
of the war in Iraq wore down,
Fareed Zakaria wrote the following
in
one of
his typically insightful articles for
Newsweek:
President George W. Bush has often said that America
wants to help build democracy in Iraq. He has also said
that America will hand over power to Iraqis as soon
as possible. These are, of course, the politically correct
things to say. Washington does not want to look like
an occupying power. But the history of political and
economic reform around the world suggests that building
democracy in Iraq will require a prolonged American
or international presence. We can leave fast or we can
nurture democracy, but we cannot do both.
Guess what? Early last week it was leaked that Bush and
Co. plan to reduce the number of troops in Iraq from 130,000
to 30,000 by this fall. 130,000 troops, as
Phillip
Carter's Washington Monthly article points out, have
been woefully inadequate to find WMD, protect evidence
that might lead to convictions on human rights violations
in the Hague, or begin to assist the Iraqi people in establishing
even the most basic building blocks of democracy. The
editors
of The New Republic concur.
President Bush's assured commitments to both Afghanistan
and Iraq that the U.S. would dedicate our resources to
help them rebuild their broken societies and establish
democratic institutions is proving to be little more than
lip service in both places. Bush was just masquerading
as a nation builder after all, which I suspected, but
I honestly didn't expect his Administration to be this
blatant about it. Such lack of commitment is a terrible,
tragic, long-term mistake with far-reaching consequences that
will probably haunt us for decades.
May 13, 2003
Treasury Secretary John Snow was all over the place
in his Sunday talk show performances, trying to dodge
bullets from Russert and Stephanoupolos that couldn't
miss. How could they? This Administration's fiscal policies
are nothing short of a joke. Bush sold tax cuts as a panacea
for the economy when he signed the largest tax cut in
American history ($1.3 trillion) just a couple years ago,
but the economy has done nothing but deteriorate. Unemployment's
up 46% since the Clinton Administration's last day and
we've lost 2.1 million jobs. We're laying down literally
trillions of dollars of accumulated debt on our kids.
Now, he's pushing another gargantuan (the third largest in history,
actually, despite his insistence that it's "little bitty")
tax cut, again selling it as a panacea. As James Carville
said on
Meet the Press Sunday, Hillary Clinton's
statement that this Administration's fiscal mismanagement
is the worst in our history since the Hoover Administration
"is an insult to the Hoover family."
I can't link to John Cassidy's article, "Bushonomics,"
that appeared in "The Talk of the Town" section
in last week's
The New Yorker, but I must reprint
at length some of his analysis of Bush's latest proposed
cuts here, because he nails it:
It would be far cheaper for the federal government
to give private firms subsidies to hire more people, or
to give money to the states, which are facing their
worst financial crisis since the Second World War, and
which at this moment are being forced to fire teachers,
troopers, and health workers. Parks, museums, and libraries
are closing; cultural programs are being cut. College-tuition
fees are rising, and scholarships are vanishing. Hundreds
of thousands of people stand to lose their state-sponsored
health care coverage. (Meanwhile, taxpayers will be
laying out billions of dollars to reconstruct Iraq.)
None of this factors in the Bush tax plan's impact over
the long term. A few years back, the big debate in Washington
was what to do with the surplus, which was projected
to be five trillion dollars over the coming decade.
Now, after the stock-market crash, a prolonged economic
downturn, and the 2001 tax cuts, the deficit for this
year alone could reach five hundred billion dollars,
a figure that even Ronald Reagan and David Stockman
failed to match during the last disastrous experiment
in "supply-side" economics. And phasing in the tax cuts,
which the White House is considering to alleviate the
concerns of Republican moderates, will do nothing to reduce
their long-term cost. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities
calculates that a dividend-tax cut would deprive the
federal government of some seven hundred and fifty billion
dollars between 2014 and 2023, just when the baby boomers
will be lining up for Medicare and Social Security.
Cassidy concludes with a discomforting quote from Kenneth
Rogoff, the IMF's chief economist: "Suppose for a minute
that we were talking about a developing country that had
gaping current account deficits year after year... a budget
ink spinning from black into red... open-ended security
costs, and a real exchange rate that had been inflated
by capital inflows. With all that, I think it's fair to
say we would be pretty concerned."
Amen.
May 7, 2003
On the day when Dick Cheney confirms
he'll be on the ticket again in '04, I'd like
to remind you what a crappy public servant he is. On April
30, California Congressman Henry Waxman, Ranking Democrat
on the House Government Reform Committee, wrote a letter
to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld expressing concern
about Halliburton's ties to terrorist-sponsoring states
both during and after Cheney's reign as Halliburton's
CEO. Waxman is a liberal Democrat, but he's no conspiracy
theorist – he's a very serious guy, and
his letter is well-footnoted
and substantive. I encourage you to read it in full, and
spread the word about it, because despite the important
questions it raises it hasn't received much attention
in major news outlets yet.
The letter has helped convince me of the following:
1) Halliburton has, to quote Nancy Sinatra,
"been messin' where you shouldn't be a messin'" for many
years in Iran, Iraq and Libya, and Cheney knew about it.
2) It's a vital public interest for
the Bush Administration to divulge everything they know
about Halliburton's business dealings in these terrorist
states, because a significant amount of our tax dollars
are going directly into their coffers. If they don't,
it's Independent Counsel time – the questions Waxman asks
are certainly important enough that Democrats must force
the public debate.
3) The Bush Administration's awarding
Halliburton enormous contracts in Iraq while rejecting
even listening to any other corporate bids is, at best,
a terrible idea, and, more likely, totally unethical.
Also, one of the articles about Halliburton's business
dealings Waxman cites is
this
one from the Washington Post, which reminded me of
Cheney's and the Bush Administration's stance on Iraq
sanctions in the summer of 2001:
A long-time critic of unilateral U.S. sanctions,
which he has argued penalize American companies while failing
to punish the targeted regimes, Cheney has pushed for
a review of U.S. policy toward countries such as Iraq,
Iran and Libya.
In the first expression of that new thinking, the Bush
administration is campaigning in the U.N. Security Council
to end an 11-year embargo on sales of civilian goods,
including oil-related equipment, to Iraq.
How does Cheney reconcile advocating the supply of oil-related
equipment at that time to a regime he was calling an immediate
threat to the U.S. just several months later? Bad policy.
Stupid policy. Policy for which his judgment should be
held accountable, along with all the other times he's
advocated big business interests over the general interests
of U.S. citizens.
Further required reading on Dick is
this
Washington Monthly article from
Josh Marshall.
I'm disappointed that the news media still hasn't
pinpointed the central irony of Bush's dressing up as
a pilot last week for an '04 campaign photo-op: he seeks
celebration, somehow, for his military prowess despite
turning his back on military service when offered the
opportunity to fight for his country many years ago. But
thankfully some Democrats are getting close. Senator Robert
Byrd (D-W.Va) blasted Bush in a speech on the Senate floor
today using these words:
I do not begrudge his salute to America's warriors
aboard the carrier Lincoln, for they have performed bravely
and skillfully, but I do question the motives of a desk-bound
president who assumes the garb of a warrior for the
purposes of a speech.
Well put, Senator Byrd. He pegs another central reality
here, one that will bug the hell out of me when the Bush
Campaign starts airing the Bush as pilot footage in campaign
ads – there's a sacred difference between actually fighting
in a war and ordering, from a place of complete safety,
others to fight in a war. Don't mess with the sacred.
Byrd also called Bush's speech "flamboyant showmanship,"
and lambasted him for using the Lincoln "as an advertising
backdrop" and American soldiers "as stage props." Damn
right. Despite repeated requests, neither anyone in the
White House nor Republican Party officials have ruled
out using the taxpayer-funded events of last week in campaign
ads. Boy, do you think they'll actually use them? A lot
of voters will love them, too. I only hope John Kerry
is our candidate so we can juxtapose the existing super-8
footage of him actually commanding a Navy gunboat in a very
real Vietnam War to Bush posing as a warrior today.
Also, White House Max Headroom Ari Fleischer
changed
his tune on why Bush had to land on the Lincoln via
fighter jet. C'mon, the operational details behind this
thing were made 100% with political motives at the forefront,
so stop insulting our intelligence.
May 5, 2003
South Carolina Senator Ernest Hollings had the best
quote of the weekend at the South Carolina Jefferson-Jackson
Dinner: "I saw President Bush on that aircraft carrier
in the Pacific yesterday. Incidentally, that's the closest
he's ever got to the War in Vietnam."
Al Sharpton had the second best line at Saturday's Democratic
Presidential Hopefuls Debate: "I call George Bush's tax
breaks – even the small amounts that he gave working class
people – is like Jim Jones givin' cool aid. It tastes
good, but it'll kill you."
I've never been very good at handicapping political
debates, because usually I'm rooting for one side and
against the other, and because most people just walk away
with general impressions while I record each rhetorical
punch as if I were the Compustat Operator at a boxing
match. But I'll offer some individual notes on each debater
Saturday night:
KERRY: I'm biased here, because he's the guy I like the
most in general and think has the best chance of beating
Bush. I think he did okay. While some thought he belittled
himself by getting into a spat with Dean, his citing that
90.5% of people in Vermount had health insurance coverage
before Dean and 90.4% after him is a good way to tag a
guy seeking to promote himself as the "health care candidate."
This won't be the last time we hear that stat from Kerry.
And Dean threw nothing back at him on almost any point
– in fact, he praised Kerry's record on gay rights. Yes,
I wish Kerry had the common touch of Clinton, but I think
he has a biography, policy grasp, and gravitas unmatched
by any '04 candidate, including G.W..
GRAHAM: He was very relaxed and as personable as I've
ever seen him. I think he lacks the fire (and probably
the $$$ and organization) to win the nomination, but he's
by all accounts the single most popular politician in
Florida – more popular than G.W. or Jeb – so he's sitting
pretty as a potential VP pick.
EDWARDS: Several people I've read/talked to today have
declared him a winner, but he didn't impress me a whole
lot. He did fine, but I think a relative political neophyte
like him has to dazzle. Edwards may have been a great
pre-9/11 candidate, but I think people will be scared
to vote for somebody with scant foreign policy experience
in '04. If the events of 9/11/01 had occurred on 9/11/00,
Al Gore would have won big because nobody would have trusted
Bush on international affairs. Still, after Kerry I think
Edwards has the best chance to beat Bush. That is, if
he ever gains any traction in this field, which he hasn't at
all so far. It'll be interesting to see if he does now. We'll
see if the 36 people nation-wide who actually watched this
debate impact the polls at all.
DEAN: His mouth looks a lot like Jack Nicholson's as The
Joker in "Batman." And he performed okay, and has positioned
himself well as an outsider that a lot of party people
are talking about and other candidates feel the need to
dress down. He's come a long way. But he's said some really
irresponsible things about the war ("I SUPPOSE it's a
good thing Saddam Hussein is gone") and is in the wrong
place on a number of issues. Also, will the far left of
the Democratic Party, whom he desperately needs, be so
supportive of an ironclad NRA enthusiast?
MOSELY-BRAUN: She's not an embarrassment, but I really
think she is in the race to siphon votes from Sharpton.
LIEBERMAN: He's another one who was as relaxed and personable
as I've ever seen him, but he's too far to the right to
be the nominee. And his first quarter fundraising totals
were terrible. I think he's a sanctimonious drip who's
made some really anti-First Amendment statements, too,
so you won't hear me saying much good about him. How could
any serious Democrat respect a guy so chummy with Supreme
Hypocrite and Sanctimonious Tub Bill Bennett (by the way,
check out the
latest
on that phoney)?
SHARPTON: Funniest, most charismatic guy on the stage.
We better get used to this. A little more reasonable than
you might expect, too, and his reminder that Jesse Jackson's
candidacy in '84 led to more favorable outcomes for Senate
Dems in '86 has some truth to it. I just hope he doesn't
detract too much from the eventual nominee, because that
Tawana Brawley and IRS stuff in particular make him an
undesirable representative for the party.
GEPHARDT: I think Gephardt's handling himself well. He
could have been stronger in response to the attacks on
his health care plan (for instance, he could have questioned
pointedly whether Edwards really understood his plan at
all, and used Edwards own attacks to highlight his inexperience),
but I buy that he's passionate and knows why he's running.
KUCINICH: I wouldn't buy a doughnut from this guy, much
less take him seriously as a Presidential candidate.
Very interesting "Charlie Rose" episode last Thursday
focusing on Donald Rumsfeld's latest run as Secretary
of Defense. Two guests, Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings
Institute and Thomas Ricks, military correspondent for
The Washington Post, brought up the same very important
but seldom mentioned point:
O'HANLON: "Rumsfeld has essentially rubber-stamped Bill
Clinton's military."
And then later Ricks commented on the irony of Dick Cheney's
marveling at how superior our military is now compared
to what he saw in Gulf War I in 1991. This despite
campaigning in 2000 against a suggested erosion in U.S.
military power. Remember all his "Help is on the way..."
crap on the campaign trail?
Everybody knows that a bureaucracy like the Pentagon changes
at a snail's pace, and Cheney can't escape the reality
that what he's praising now is more attributable to reforms
instituted in '93-'01 than in the last 28 months.
May 2, 2003
I challenge you to start counting every trapping of
military power – tanks, bombers, troops – placed behind
George W. Bush from now until the 2004 election. I
guarantee you those trappings will be ubiquitous, as they
were for
his
speech this evening, because campaign 2004 has begun
in earnest. Karl Rove, Bush's campaign strategist,
knows that his greatest sales portrait of Bush is as decisive
Commander-In-Chief, and he intends to bang this idea into
the short-term memory of every last American voter.
It's
no
secret that this is the White House strategy.
Fair enough, but by so loudly advertising Bush's military
credentials, the White House also invites scrutiny of
Bush's full military record, some of which can be found
here (warning:
this site I link to is a little bombastic, but its information
is good and comprehensive and adequately details Bush
dodging military service in Vietnam and then not even showing
up for his Air National Guard duty for a year or more, despite
ballyhooing his piloting in the 2000 campaign, so I'll let
you decide for yourself). A lot is made of Bush's
integrity, and he himself promised to "restore honor and
dignity to the White House," but no decent person with
his military record would masquerade in a pilot's uniform
for a huge campaign photo-op, as he did today. He
had his one opportunity to wear such a uniform proudly,
over 30 years ago, and he chose not to. The hypocrisy
of it sickens and embitters me. So does the irony
of so many Americans embracing him as some courageous
military man.
My only hope is that
John
Kerry will be the Democratic nominee and the press
will contrast his
soldierly
heroics with President Bush's not even showing up for National
Guard duty. Like Bush, Kerry was well-connected and
could have gotten a deferment. Unlike Bush, he volunteered
to serve because he didn't want someone less privileged
than he to have to go and die in his place. Three
Purple Hearts, a Silver Star, and a Bronze Star later,
he's well-positioned to take on Bush in '04, and I hope
to God the news media does their job this time and adequately
contrasts their military records. They've got to,
right?
Speaking of the race for the Democratic nomination,
the candidates debate for the first time Saturday night
in South Carolina. A full recap will take place
on Sunday's
This Week With George Stephanopoulos
on ABC at 8am (Stephanopoulos is moderating the debate)
and CSPAN will run the debate in full a couple times on
Sunday, and on Monday night, I think.
The smartest thing I heard today came from former
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Richard Holbrooke: "War is
only as good as the peace that follows it."
Who was the most popular politician in America
during the war? George Bush, you say? Nope.
None other than British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
This is an important thing for Democrats to keep in mind
as we move towards '04, and
this
Washington Post editorial even coins the moniker "Blair
Democrats."
April 28, 2003
Yesterday morning on "This Week with
George Stephanopoulos," Michel Martin,
the great Fareed Zakaria,
and George Will – 3 people paid to disagree with each
other – each lavishly praised Dick Gephardt's health
care plan. I agree. Good going, Dick. I
support John Kerry for President, but I think Gephardt
has helped his chances for the nomination with this
plan. It's great politics, not only because a
plurality of Americans now see health care as our nation's
#1 problem, but because it forces voters to confront
the choice between universal health care and an enormous
tax cut for billionaires (only those, like
Robert
Novak, who have a crumpled and dirty $20 bill in place
of their hearts would choose the latter). Also, it's
financed largely using tax incentives for employers, which
makes it more than a Democratic pipe dream.
The New Republic's Jonathan Cohn has a
good article
on it.
Incidentally, although Fareed Zakaria and George Will
agreed on the Gephardt plan, they disagreed on plenty
else. There's nothing I enjoy more than watching
Fareed dismantle Will's arguments piece by piece, which
he does before millions on a near weekly basis. One
of these days, I can't wait for Fareed to dress Will
down for popularizing the idea in his
baseball
book "Men at Work" that St. Louis Cardinals manager
Tony LaRussa is some kind of genius. Any true
Cardinals fan knows that's hogwash.
This weekend, at Princeton University, there was
a
conference entitled, "The
George W. Bush Presidency: An Early Assessment." There's
hundreds of pages of really smart essays on Bush and his
administration if you go to the link and click on "Conference
Schedule" in the lower left corner. Warning: it's
a little wonkish, but great stuff. Print it up and
you've got a definitive biography of the Bush Administration's
first couple years. You used to have to wait about
10 years for that sort of thing.
Speaking of Bush... Last week, both he and
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist called Rick Santorum
"inclusive." Inclusive of what? Homophobes?
Also, I unearthed an old quote from Tommy Jefferson that
G.W. would be wise to listen to right about now, as he
sends our federal deficit into the stratosphere: "...
the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity,
under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on
a large scale."
April 25, 2003
George Bush spent his day in Ohio to
put political
pressure on that state's junior Senator, George Voinovich,
to support his monstrous tax cut.
Let me talk about Bush's policy: his tax cut proposals
are irresponsible and idiotic. It's that simple.
He passed a $1.3 trillion dollar cut less than 2
years ago which was a complete failure. We've lost over
2 million jobs and have returned to huge federal deficits.
Now, he wants to take another $700+ billion out of the
federal budget. To give you an idea of how huge
these tax cuts are, keep in mind that our entire federal
budget for one year is roughly $2 trillion dollars. You've
got that right – in under two years, Bush has proposed
the elimination of an entire year's worth of federal income.
Despite this, he's hellbent on eliminating more and today
called the Senate compromise to reduce his tax cut to $350
billion "a little bitty tax cut," although that total
is huge by almost any historical standard. And he
drives in the screws on an economic conservative like
Voinovich who's responsible enough to recognize there
are no free lunches in life – something G.W. has always
had a difficult time accepting.
As Ronald Reagan did in the 1980s, he's imploding the
federal budget. What's not talked about so much,
though, is that in both cases I think it was intentional.
Not because either man has some sinister plan to
destroy our economy (although both have succeeded pretty
well at it), but because they honestly believe that nearly
all federal spending should become state or private spending.
Already, you hear buzz about "medicare reform" and "social
security reform," different ideas about ways to reallocate
education costs – this is just part of the radical plan
to push federal costs onto states and private companies.
If you caught someone on the Bush economic team on an
honest day, they might acknowledge this (after all, it
wasn't long ago that their ideological allies were openly
advocating the elimination of the Department of Education,
and some Bushies will still honestly call their social
security plan what it is, "privatization"). And
they call themselves economic "conservatives." They're
not. George Voinovich, the man Bush was attacking today
in Ohio, is the very picture of economic conservatism.
He's like your Dad – he'll tell you that if you
only make $30,000 a year, you shouldn't buy a Ferrari.
One last thing... this tactic of running around hammering
your own party's senators in their home states, and the
way he went after Democratic Senators in 2002 who'd worked
with him and voted with him on most things is not what
Bush promised in his 2000 campaign. Take a look
at his old 2000 stump speech, which consisted almost entirely
of promises to "reach across the aisle," "change the tone
in Washington," and "I'm a uniter, not a divider." It
drives me crazy when I see these average Americans on
t.v. who like Bush because they think he "talks straight"
or some nonsense like that. Let's get this straight:
he's the most partisan President in modern American history,
and it's killing us.
Unfortunately, beating
Bush in 2004 is going to be quite a challenge, if
this
New York Times article is accurate. Read it.
It details how team Bush plans to raise over $200
million and milk 9/11 for all the political advantage
it can. Thank God those people restored honor and
dignity to The White House.
George Bush did one smart thing on September 11th, and
that was to make it clear that the U.S. would no longer
distinguish between terrorists and the governments of
the countries who harbor them. It's not an original
idea, and others had called for this kind of policy even
pre-9/11, but I still give Bush props for stating it firmly.
But am I crazy, or is that the only thing he did that
day that didn't merit an F? Have people forgotten
how embarrassing his morning ("We're gonna find the folks
who did this!") and afternoon speeches (when he was so
scared he looked as if he'd just wet his pants) were that
day? How he went AWOL for several hours in Air Force
One as we were all wondering when the hell he was gonna
show the world we still had a President? How his
White House made Air Force One being threatened that day
the central story the following Monday, but there's serious
doubts that it's true, and absolutely no evidence of it?
The Bush PR campaign has worked brilliantly in recreating
the public memory, and sadly nobody does seem to remember
these things any other way. I do, and as much as
I don't like Bush's conduct on 9/11 being politicized,
if they must do it than at least we should state the truth
of how it all went down.
If I were going to
cast Ahmed Chalabi in an action film, I think he'd
be perfect not as the main bad guy but as bad guy #2 –
you know, the one who sells out the action hero and then
breaks down and cries when the action hero returns to face
him later. My visceral reaction to Chalabi when I watch
him on t.v. can be summed up in one word: "bozo." Nonetheless,
the Bush Administration, backed by Senate Republicans
and Joe Lieberman, seems to be pushing Chalabi into a
major role in rebuilding Iraq, and this is a very bad
sign for the rebuilding ahead.
First, Chalabi was convicted of bank fraud in Jordan and
sentenced 22 years in absentia. If I had that on
my resume, I couldn't get a job selling lemonade, but
I guess things are different when you've got friends higher
up in the executive and legislative branches...
Second, and more importantly, the CIA and many in the
State Department regard him as not much more than an oft-successful
punchline. Chalabi's attempts in the 90's as the
President of the Iraqi National Congress to oust Saddam
militarily could be generously described as comically
inept. Kenneth Pollack, current Brookings Institution
Middle East aficionado who was the director of Gulf Affairs
at the National Security Council under Clinton and whom
I frequently pay homage to on this page, writes this about
Chalabi on page 97 of
"The
Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq":
When the CIA had created the INC after the
Gulf War, it had been intended to be only a coordinating
body, which was why Ahmed Chalabi, with his money
and organizational skills but no base of support inside
or outside the country, had been perfect to run it.
However, over time, Chalabi came to believe
that he could be something more than the "office manager"
the CIA had originally envisioned and that the other
opposition groups had been willing to accept. By
1997-98, Chalabi wanted to head a consolidated opposition
and adopted somewhat ruthless methods to try to bend
other groups to his will. Increasingly, Chalabi
developed a network of supporters among the right wing of
the Republican Party and used these powerful friends to
wage an internal war within the Iraqi diaspora for control
of the opposition. Many Iraqi oppositionists
found this particularly galling since Chalabi did
not "bring anything to the table" other than his friends
in the U.S. Congress. Chalabi's politically
astute but militarily ludicrous scheme to train 5,000
to 10,000 INC fighters (fighters he had never been
able to produce when the INC had actually been in
Iraq with U.S. backing in 1992-96) and then take over
60 percent of the country with support from U.S. air
power was one aspect of this game and only further alienated
other Iraqi opposition groups, who recognized it as a recipe
for disaster. The result was the fragmentation
of the INC as an umbrella organization.
The only certain qualification Chalabi appears to possess
is agility in garnering support from conservative American
politicians, which is a serious problem in the eyes of
the Iraqis he'd have to unite.
Can't we do any better than this guy?
April 24, 2003
Here's a link to the full excerpt of
yesterday's
AP interview with bigot Rick Santorum, the third-ranking
Republican in the Senate. It's much scarier when read
whole – the quote cited yesterday is just one of many
Santorum eye-opening remarks – and I think substantiates
what I wrote yesterday about his pitifully narrow view
of our right to privacy. In fact, it's pretty
clear that he would support all kinds of laws that would
restrict "letting people live out whatever wants or
passions they desire."
It's also clear that Santorum takes up an old, hard-line,
anti-gay Catholic point of view. But it's important
to remember that this is not "THE" Catholic point of
view, which I have heard many times today. The Catholic
Church does have its share of bigots, but many Catholics,
including myself, will tell you that the idea that homosexual
acts are inherently sinful is a relic of hierarchical
Church teaching which has much more to do with historical
prejudices, fear and politics than the teachings of
Jesus. It's kind of obvious, isn't it? I
suppose the Santorum Catholics of the world envision
Jesus 2000 years ago telling a crowd, "Love your neighbor
as yourself, except for that gay gentleman over there."
Kudos to 2004 Democratic Presidential candidates
John
Kerry and
Howard Dean
for condemning Santorum's remarks. But where's G.W.
on this? Ari Fleischer dodged the Santorum questions
by stating that the President doesn't talk about Supreme
Court cases, but didn't he call a press conference just
a couple months ago to announce his anti-affirmative
action stance in the University of Michigan case now
before the Supreme Court? How long is it gonna
take the "uniter, not a divider" to condemn the Santorum
remarks? He waited a week before he'd say anything
critical of Trent Lott's obviously racist sentiments,
and I think he'll never say anything about this. Where's
the moral clarity when things get hot?
April 23, 2003
Conservative extremist Pennsylvania Senator Rick
Santorum, the third ranking Republican in the Senate,
defended Senator Trent Lott's infamous racist remarks
'til the bitter end over four months ago. Yesterday, he
dazzled with a little of his own bigotry, this time aimed
at gays. Suggesting that the Supreme Court should
uphold
a
silly Texas law against "Homosexual Conduct," Santorum
said:
"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right
to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have
the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy,
you have the right to incest, you have the right to
adultery. You have the right to anything."
Any person who can read that without having to sound out
each word out loud knows that Santorum is a bigot. But
what may be even scarier is
his
excuse for saying such a thing and his refusal to apologize
for it. It was not meant as a comment on "individual
lifestyles," he asserts, just a comment on constitutional
privacy. In other words, Santorum's view of what entails
constitutionally protected privacy is so thin you could
fit it into a thimble. Which gets to the heart of
why these bigoted statements made by Republicans like
Lott and Santorum are a very, very big deal. They're
not just isolated instances of bigotry or insensitivity,
but rather revelations of how bigoted laws and policies
are born and nurtured. Laws like Texas's "Homosexual
Conduct Law" are the shame of our nation, but it's no
secret how they got there in the first place and why they
still exist. I'd venture to say that if you took a poll
you'd find that a significant percentage of Republican leaders
hold views of constitutional privacy as narrow as Santorum's
(who, as Republican Conference Chairman is the 3rd top
Republican in all the Senate). William Rehnquist's,
for instance. Clarence Thomas's, for instance.
Antonin Scalia's, for instance. George Bush's, for
instance. Until we vote men like Santorum and Lott
and Bush out of office, and stop electing like-minded
men who appoint judges like Rehnquist, Thomas, and Scalia,
we're fucked.
April 22, 2003
Conservative commentator Ann Coulter's brain is
the shame of our nation. She's currently the sole
inductee in my Jackass Hall of Fame, it's my birthday,
and I'm starting to cozy back into a partisan spirit,
so I thought it'd be appropriate to do a quick top ten
of her best material:
10. "I think there should be a literacy test and
a poll tax for people to vote." –
Hannity and Colmes,
8/17/97
9. After asserting we don't need any more
laws, she answered how far back she would go to repeal
laws we already have: "Well, before the New Deal... The
Emancipation Proclamation would be a good start."
–
Politically Incorrect, 5/7/97
8. "They (anti-war Democrats) know that the
American people support defending America, unlike them.
Their real feelings are coming out as much as they
can right now, which is that they're desperately trying
to provide aid and support to al-Qaeda." – WOR radio,
9/21/02
7. "We need to execute people like John Walker
in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making
them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise,
they will turn out to be outright traitors." – CPAC convention,
2/02
bonus quote: "The presumption of innocence only means
you don't go right to jail." –
Hannity and Colmes,
8/24/01
6. "God gave us the earth. We have dominion
over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said,
'Everything's yours. Take it. Rape it! It's
yours.'" –
Hannity and Colmes, 6/20/01
5. "... a cruise missile is more important
than Head Start." – 11/01 speech
4. "If you don't hate Clinton and the people
who labored to keep him in office, you don't love your
country." –
George, July 1999
bonus quote: "The backbone of the Democratic Party is
a typical fat, implacable, welfare recipient." – 10/29/99
syndicated column
3. "We should invade Muslim countries, kill
their leaders, and convert them to Christianity." –
National
Review Online, 9/14/01
2. "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is
he did not go to the New York Times Building." – 8/21/02
New York Observer interview with George
Gurley
1. To a VIETNAM VETERAN DISABLED DURING THE
WAR: "People like you caused us to lose that war." – MSNBC
Tragically, I believe these quotes are all accurate. More
tragically, Coulter's book still sits atop national bestseller
lists, and she's taken seriously as a political commentator
by nearly every cable news channel and many of the networks.
For more on the disaster that is Ann Coulter, read
The
Washington Monthly,
Practical Radical,
American Politics
Journal, and
Spinsanity.
April 21, 2003
I saw the best movie I've seen this year,
"Lilja 4-Ever,"
last night (its writer-director, Lukas Moodysson, also
did the must-see
"Fucking
Amal," retitled "Show Me Love" in our prudish United States).
One of the unshakable things about Lilja, a 16 year-old
from "someplace in the former Soviet Union" impoverished
and doomed to prostitution, is her dream to live in America,
which she sees as heaven on Earth. Her ideal date is spent
playing American-made video games and eating McDonald's,
and she has a prolonged conversation about sharing the
same birthday as Britney Spears and how much better things
could have turned out if they'd been born in the same
hospital and accidentally switched at birth.
"Lilja 4-Ever" is not documentary, but it's heartbreaking
to imagine the staggering numbers of child prostitutes
throughout the world who are just like Lilja. The
film makes me painfully aware of them, and I wish I knew
something to do other than feel grateful to have lucked
into being born in the United States.
THE DEMOCRATS’ “INVISIBLE
PRIMARY”
The 2004 Democratic Presidential candidates announced
their first quarter earnings this week, and John Edwards
came out the big winner, raising $7.4 million (which is,
by historical standards, a tremendous amount). John
Kerry was close on Edwards’ heels at just over $7 million.
The rest of the field was far behind, with Gephardt next
at $3.6 million, Lieberman $3 million, and Howard
Dean $2.6 million (not bad for a second-tier guy).
These totals are very important to party insiders and
the press, and I think the headline is that Edwards and
Kerry, both of whom have advantages as national candidates
other than their abilities to raise funds, have separated
themselves from the rest of the pack and become frontrunners.
MORE ON JOHN KERRY
Kerry got into some hot water with Republicans
this week by saying we need a “regime change” in the United
States. I love
his
response. The most important quality a Democratic
candidate can have is toughness, and Kerry’s got it in
spades.
Andrew Sullivan,
a conservative blogger who’s sometimes thoughtful but
nearly always a Bush apologist, called Kerry’s arguing
that we need a change of administration during war “spectacularly
stupid,” which I suppose is exactly what you’d expect
a Bush apologist to call it. Here’s what I emailed
him:
To call Kerry's arguing that we need a change of
administration during war "spectacularly stupid" is stupid
itself. Look at the politics of it:
1) Kerry uses the term "regime change," which he later
admits wasn't a great choice of words, but it gets some
press and a lot of war protesting Democrats appreciate
him for using just those words.
2) I don't know if anybody is seriously offended by
his use of the term "regime change" -- I don't think
it was an elaborately thought out comment and really
doesn't register as anything more than a little mistake
to a reasonable person -- but the RNC and many prominent
Republicans suggest that they are outraged (perhaps
to score political points? imagine that). They
overreact, and self-righteously impugn Kerry's integrity and
question his patriotism.
3) Kerry blasts Republicans for doing this, and reminds
everyone that he doesn't need to be lectured by those
who haven't served, including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney,
Tom Delay, and Dennis Hastert -- draft dodgers all.
Kerry looks tough fighting back, and appeals to Democrats
of all stripes who are sick of having their patriotism
questioned by these guys and other Republican hypocrites
who were busy deferring while Kerry was accumulating
Purple Hearts (including Rush Limbaugh, Bill Bennett,
Trent Lott, Newt Gingrich, John Ashcroft, and you could
go on and on). Kerry also reminds Democrats of
all stripes that Republicans who want to pound their chests
and criticize him on "patriotism" or "integrity" issues better
have the background to back it up.
In the end, Kerry appeals to Democrats essential to winning
the primary and signals to Republican partisans who hate
him already that if he's the Democratic nominee they better
get in the trenches. People in the middle ground
don't care much, and won't care at all months from now,
but they hear Kerry's name a few times as the potential
Democratic nominee. All that, in addition to separating
himself, along with John Edwards, from the rest of the
Democratic pack when it comes to fundraising. Not
a bad couple days...
I forgot to add that a U.S. General also referred to domestic
regime change last week and no Republicans registered
outrage because he’s not running for President.
Their “outrage” is entirely political.
John Kerry’s smart enough to realize right-wing vitriol
helps him in the Democratic Primary, so let them bring
it.
ANOTHER LONG-WINDED E-MAIL
A friend forwarded me an email alerting people to Dennis
Kucinich fundraisers in our area, and suggested that Kucinich
could make a difference. Here was my response:
Ugh. Kucinich is already talking about a third
party candidacy, which is bad for anybody who opposes
George Bush. He has absolutely 0% chance of winning
the Democratic nomination, and of doing anything as
a 3rd party candidate other than taking votes away from
the Democrat running against Bush (whom I predict will
be either John Kerry or John Edwards, both of whom
you could consider liberal Democrats and both could
win). Some may remember way back in 2000 a fella
by the name of Ralph Nader ran a "progressive" campaign
which served only to progress the agenda of G.W. Bush,
because a vote for Nader effectively ended up being
a vote for Bush. It's fair for people to defend
their votes for Nader as a vote to support bold progressive
politics in the long term, but any scientific analysis
verifies that those votes cost Al Gore the 2000 election.
The same could definitely happen in 2004, because the electorate
is so closely divided and a third party candidate easily
could make the same difference. I think Ralph
Nader knows this in his heart of hearts and will end
up not running so the Democrat, a far better if imperfect
alternative to Bush, can win. I hope Kucinich
will
recognize it, too. Most of all, I hope progressive
voters realize it.
A couple things progressive-minded people might like to
know about Kucinich:
1) He was ardently pro-life his entire career and has
voted accordingly until he decided to run for President
a couple months ago and, miraculously, turned at least
nominally pro-choice.
2) Some have accused him of a very slithery kind of racial
politics in the 1970s, although I'm not ready to conclude
that those allegations are fair. But
here's
one article that refers to it a little bit so people
can make up their own minds.
It's very important, beyond important, that progressives
unite to beat Bush in 2004.
