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Rice Watch Day Twenty-Two
From a must-read piece in today's Washington Post (Depiction of Threat Outgrew Supporting Evidence):
Answering questions Thursday before the National Association of Black Journalists, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said she is "certain to this day that this regime was a threat, that it was pursuing a nuclear weapon, that it had biological and chemical weapons, that it had used them." White House officials referred all questions of detail to Tenet.
AB
Guest Blog for Angry Bear
Angry Bear traffic is growing at a healthy clip; nothing kills traffic like taking off for a week and not posting. I need unique IPs to flourish. (When I went to Europe in the spring, it took months for my traffic to recover). Nervertheless, intrepidly placing my personal life before my blog, I am going on vacation to an undisclosed location next week, and will probably not be able to post very often. Therefore, I am officially starting the Be Angry Bear For a Week contest. First priority goes to frequent commenters without a blog, which basically means A Different Chris, Kash, Rickenharp, and my nemesis, Tom (yes, the contest is open to slightly right of center commenters), but the contest is wide-open and there need not be only one Angry Bear For a Week winner. Or, if you have a new blog and are looking for a way to drive a little traffic, guest-blogging just might do the trick.
To enter, send a sample post to angrybearblog@yahoo.com. In the unlikely event that I get too many entries to let everyone who enters guest blog, I'll still post your sample post. Impress your friends with your nerdy nature! Enter now!
AB
Oops, I also should have added Moebius to the list of frequent commenters.
The Smog Thickens
I recently plugged Bob Park's shedding of light on the scientists behind the no-global-warming study that he aministration recently foisted into an EPA report. Morat of Skeptical Notion reports that the administration may be involved in a few other shenanigans to discredit the science behind global warming.
AB
Numbers One Through Five
Notwithstanding the title, these are not really ordered, except that I made some effort to put the "least worst" at the end of the list (don't worry, George W. slipped in near the end). I did not parse it more finely than that--I leave it to you to decide, e.g., if John C. Calhoun was worse than George Wallace, or whether Benedict Arnold or Aldrich Ames was the greater traitor.
One more note: I intentionally excluded murderers and even assassins, choosing instead to focus mostly on political figures, since this is a political blog. Certainly, Manson, Jim Jones, Gacy, Dahmer, Bundy, as well as the political killers Oswald and Booth, were on my mind for this list, but killers would have taken up too many spots that I had saved for political figures. This does not mean that I think, for example, that Herbert Hoover (my #12) is more evil than these cold-blooded killers (he wasn't; he was just really, really, bad at policy).
1. Jefferson Davis: For his major role in the Southern secession that lead to the Civil War (a war that, as a percentage of the current U.S. population, killed six million people. Actual number dead: 620,000 Americans-more than double the number who died in World War III). Secondarily, Davis makes the list for authoring The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, a rather sad attempt to blame the Civil War on the North (the Southern States seceded after Lincoln was duly elected).
2. George Wallace: This infamous statement saves me the time it would take to explain his inclusion in this list:
"Let us rise to the call of freedom-loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny . . . and I say . . . segregation today . . . segregation tomorrow . . . segregation forever."
3. Richard M. Nixon: Primarily for subverting Democracy by using intelligence agencies for political purposes; secondarily for his contribution to heightening the politics of scandal. Bombing Laos and Cambodia contribute to his position on the list.
4. James Kimble Vardaman: Eventual Governor of Mississippi and Jim Crow pioneer. In the dismantling of Reconstruction, Vardeman and Mississippi lead the way; the rest of the defeated Confederate states quickly followed suit. Here's Vardaman at his best:
There is no use to equivocate or lie about the matter. Mississippi's constitutional convention was held for no other purpose than to eliminate the ni--er from politics; not the ignorant -- but the ni--er.
5. Sen. Joseph McCarthy: "You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"-Army Council Joseph Welch, 1954.
AB
The Votes Are In
A while back, John Hawkins of RightWingNews.com (which is actually a fairly readable Righty site--the Dean posts are hilarious, what Joe Lieberman might write if he had a sense of humor) took a poll of who fellow conservative bloggers thought were the worst figures in American history, leading to the conservative's list. Then he wondered how that list compares to ones that liberal bloggers would construct, so he emailed about 100 of us "left wingers" (and "slightly left of center"-ers) and then compiled the liberal's list.
It was fun coming up with my list, and this week I'll be posting who I chose along with a short description of why. In the meantime, I do think the lists are somewhat telling about the differences between liberal and conservative bloggers.
First, some conservatives are nuts. Al Sharpton, Hillary Clinton, Noam Chomsky, Jesse Jackson, and Robert Byrd? There really aren't 20 people in American history who've done something worse than the Tawana Brawley incident? Hillary really annoys conservatives, but what has she actually accomplished that is so bad? Had her health care plan actually involved nationalizing health care, and had it come close to passing or actually passed, I could see including her on the list, but seriously? Chomsky? Sure he says stuff that's nuts, but what the heck has he ever influenced? Would history be remotely different if he never existed? Jackson--at least conservatives left MLK off the list.
As near as I can tell, Robert Byrd only made the list because he was the most outspoken in his opposition to the war in Iraq, opposition that looks more justified by the day (and also had no impact). Seriously conservatives, can't you admit that McCarthy was a bad guy, an opportunist of the lowest sort, who actually did have a negative impact on American history?
The Liberals' List, by contrast, really does seem to demonstrate more historical perspective. I would view including Coulter, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, etc... as loosely analogous to the Conservatives including Sharpton and Chomsky on the list; Gingrich would be Hillary Clinton's counterpart. None of them made the Liberal list. In Conservatives' favor, McCarthy almost made the list and they did leave Gen. William T. Sherman of their list.
On the other hand, by virtue of making both lists, the following are truly reprehensible figures in American History: Lee Harvey Oswald, Aldrich Ames, Richard Nixon (I give credit to conservatives for this one--though perhaps he made their list for the damage he did to the Republican party?), Aaron Burr, Timothy McVeigh, John Wilkes Booth, Benedict Arnold, and the Rosenbergs (or at least Julius--he got votes for just him; there were none for just Ethel).
Since Hawkins didn't put them side-by-side, here they are:
| Conservatives' List | Liberals' List |
| 17) Franklin Delano Roosevelt (6) | 20) The Rosenbergs (3) + Julius Rosenberg (3) (6 total votes) |
| 17) John Walker (6) | 20) Pat Robertson (6) |
| 17) Lee Harvey Oswald (6) | 20) Oliver North (6) |
| 17) Robert Byrd (6) | 20) William Randolph Hearst (6) |
| 16) Aldrich Ames (7) | 20) Aaron Burr (6) |
| 14) Richard Nixon (8) | 20) Aldrich Ames (6) |
| 14) Aaron Burr (8) | 18) George Lincoln Rockwell (7) |
| 12) Al Sharpton (9) | 18) Robert McNamara (7) |
| 12) Charles Manson (9) | 14) Richard Mellon Scaife (8) |
| 8) Timothy McVeigh (10) | 14) Lee Harvey Oswald (8) |
| 8) Lyndon Johnson (10) | 14) Charles Coughlin (8) |
| 8) Hillary Clinton (10) | 14) Strom Thurmond (8) |
| 8) John Wilkes Booth (10) | 13) Ronald Reagan (9) |
| 7) Alger Hiss (12) | 12) George Wallace (10) |
| 6) Noam Chomsky (13) | 11) Andrew Jackson (12) |
| 4) Jesse Jackson (14) | 9) Jefferson Davis (13) |
| 4) Jimmy Carter (14) | 9) George W. Bush (13) |
| 3) Bill Clinton (15) | 6) Benedict Arnold (14) |
| 2) Benedict Arnold (19) | 6) Henry Kissinger (14) |
| 1) The Rosenbergs (15) & Julius Rosenberg (5) (20 total votes) | 6) John Wilkes Booth (14) |
| .. | 3) Timothy McVeigh (16) |
| .. | 3) Nathan Bedford Forrest (16) |
| .. | 3) J. Edgar Hoover (16) |
| .. | 2) Richard Nixon (25) |
| .. | 1) Joseph McCarthy (26) |
Thanks to John Hawkins for putting this together.
AB
UPDATE: Rex Stetson does some additional analysis, of the two lists.
That Didn't Take Long
Not three hours have passed since I wrote about some fool in Wahington (state) getting taken to the cleaners, and taking his church's and friends' money with him, and now I get this:
EMAIL: gf11an@XXXXXX@ZZZFax number and email address deleted to protect the stupid.
FAX: 130XXXXXXXX
HELLO
I want you to patiently read this my offer and make up your mind whether you will accept it or not. I will not be able to disclose my name for security reasons. Iwork with the World Health Organisation. We were sent to Iraq for medical research. During the research we came across the sum of $10.5 million us dollars believed to have been looted by the late sons of SADDAM HUSSEIN, Qusay and Uday Hussein. I and my colleagues decided to keep this money to ourselves...I want you to assist me to claim this money...I will give you 20% of the fund for this assistance....
Best regards,
A FRIEND
ABA FRIEND.
Matt Needs Money
Matt Yglesias is now soliciting contributions (DC is very expensive and being a young writer for The American Prospect does not pay much). I couldn't decide if I should just quietly give him a few bucks or use the awsome power of my blog to send a deluge of cash his way.* Then I read this on Matt's blog:
Representative Issa's motives in funding the recall are beyond my understanding, but I think what's really going on is that people understand that even a syphilitic goat could have beaten Gray Davis in 2002. Nevertheless, the GOP chose to run not a goat, but Bill Simon, and they lost.That's gotta be worth a few bucks.
AB
(*) Actual results may differ markedly from those implied by this sentence.
Nigeria Letters Update
This time, I'm back to talking about fake "business opportunites" from Nigeria (e.g., here, I said "The really distubing thing about these emails is that they indicate that at least one person smart enough to turn on a computer, and also able to read, fell for this"), not fake uranium sales from Niger. Today's Washington Post recounts the tale of just such a person, and it really is sad:
...Daniels, 67, who, as treasurer of Dupont Park Seventh-day Adventist Church in Southeast Washington, secretly invested and then lost $1.3 million of church money. Daniels put that money -- along with hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own -- into a get-rich-quick scam that law enforcement authorities refer to as the Nigerian advance fee scheme.
...Daniels is among hundreds, if not thousands, of people across the nation who lose money each year in Nigerian advance fee schemes, lured by a promise of a big payoff that never comes, according to the U.S. Secret Service. Authorities estimate that victims in the United States have lost at least $2 billion in the past 12 years.
...On April 11, 2000, Daniels met in Amsterdam with two Nigerian men involved in the scheme, prosecutors said. Three weeks later, he wired $98,750 to an Amsterdam bank -- the first of more than 30 payments over 19 months, law enforcement officials said.
The Post story has a lot more detail. Thank to reader Tom for the heads up on this one.
AB
Texas Update
The Dallas Morning News (free account required) reports that the Texas Supreme Court has refused to order the Texas Senate Democrats to end their boycott. Score one victory for the separation of powers. It seems like this was pretty clear cut because, absent issues of constitutionality, the Judicial Branch has no business interfering in Legislative Branch business. On the other hand, every Texas SC judge is a Republican, including stymied Circuit Court nominee Priscilla Owens, who is presumably not particularly happy with Democrats in general. (There was no published opinion, and I can't find any information on which if any court members were in favor of issuing an order forcing the Democrats to return).
Democrats also filed a lawsuit, this one in Federal court:
In their lawsuit against the state, Perry and Dewhurst, the Democrats claimed that GOP leaders violated the federal Voting Rights Act by dropping a traditional rule that requires two-thirds of the Senate to agree to debate a bill.
Democrats argue that the two-thirds rule is vital in protecting the representation of political and racial minority groups in the Senate. Without the rule, voting "practices and procedures" in Texas are changed, Democrats' attorneys say...
"This single issue is a violation of the Voting Rights Act, silencing the voices of every minority member of the Texas Senate and forcing a redistricting bill through the Legislature against the interests of minority voters, against the will of every minority member of the Senate and those senators who represent minority districts," said state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, chairwoman of the Senate Democratic Caucus.
It probably is true that eliminating the 2/3 rule would reduce the power of minorities in the legislature. Yet while the Democrats might have a slight chance in a District Court in Laredo, I doubt that a victory would survive on appeal in the conservative 5th Circuit. Nor is the Ashcroft Justice Department particularly likely to support a lawsuit based on the Voting Rights Act.
AB
I've Been Busy...
...Partly due to the day job and partly due to all the Red/Blue posts. As a result, I'm now catching up on all my blog reading. Here are the highlights:
Let's get something straight. There will be a Democratic president in the oval office in 2005. We are going to defeat President Bush next year.
Re-Wrap
I know I said I was done, but then I thought it would be interesting to have all four maps (the vote; income levels; housing appreciation; and lights from space) in a single four-paneled page.
AB
Red and Blue Wrap Up
First, Sincere thanks to James Galbraith and The University of Texas Inequality Project (be sure to check it out) for all the maps and analysis.
Galbraith ran some more numbers, this time relating income levels to votes for Bush and Gore. The Theil Score is an index that give the highest scores to counties that both (1) have income farthest above the national average and (2) have larger populations. Such counties appear as dark red on Galbraith's maps. Conversely, counties that have large populations but income well below the national average get negative Theil Scores (colored Blue in Galbraith's maps). Counties that have either (a) very small populations or (b) income near the national average get Theil Scores near zero; these are the yellow and green regions on the map.
Here are Galbraith's results connecting income and population to votes for Bush or Gore.
A. Of the counties with the top 100 Theil scores, Gore won 67.
B. Of the next 100, he won 39.
C. Of the next 500, he won only 43.
D. Of the next 800, he won only 118.
E. Of the bottom 1600, he won 356.
F. Of the bottom 100, he won 39.
[Keep reading Red and Blue Wrap Up...]
Another Red-Blue Juxtaposition
Commenter Bear (no relation) points out that pictures from outer space also identify most of the Blue regions of the United States: areas that have light are overwhelmingly Blue (one could almost say that the enlightened regions of the country vote Blue). As with the income maps below, this only gives a subset of the Blue Regions because it fails to highlight the poor, rural, counties that also voted Gore in 2000.
 |
| ************************* |
 |
The picture is from a super-cool clickable and zoomable real time map of the earth as seen from space, maintained by Fourmilab Switzerland.
AB
UPDATE: Link to second picture fixed.
Bloggered Update
Still no archives and I've been unable to publish for about the last 24 hours (I think that in the process of trying to fix the archives I messed more stuff up). Anyway, still no archives but posting seems to work now.
AB
Climate Change
You may recall that recently the White House altered a report on Global Warming, replacing a statement that temperatures have risen significantly in the last decades with a reference to a paper by two astronomers, Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas. The Soon and Baliunas paper argues that
...These results offer strong evidence that the climate of the 20th century was not unusual, but fell within the range experienced during the past 1,000 years...The available scientific evidence does not support the claim that the climate of the 20th century was unusual when compared to the climate of the previous 900 years.
That paper, its methodology, and its conclusion have been widely criticized (see also here).
Now, in his weekly newsletter, physicist Bob Park gives us some important background on Soon and Baliunas:
To appreciate its [the S&B paper] significance, we need to go back to March of 1998. We [presumably, members of the American Physical Society] all got a petition card in the mail urging the government to reject the Kyoto accord (WN 13 Mar 98). The cover letter was signed by "Frederick Seitz, Past President, National Academy of Sciences." Enclosed was what seemed to be a reprint of a journal article, in the style and font of Proceedings of the NAS. But it had not been published in PNAS, or anywhere else. The reprint was a fake. Two of the four authors of this non- article were Soon and Baliunas...The article claimed that the environmental effects of increased CO2 are all beneficial...It was a dark episode in the annals of scientific discourse.
Read the first part of Park's newsletter for a little insight into how the current administration chooses among conflicting scientific--or purportedly scientific--reports.
AB
Bloggered
I was just about to write a post complimenting Google on how much more reliable Blogger has been lately. But now my archives are gone. Hopefully they'll be back soon.
AB
Ask and Ye Shall Receive
Earlier, I wrote about some new Red/Blue posts by Atrios and Nate Newman. Atrios linked to a map highlighting the areas with the most rapid increases in housing values and points out that the areas with the most rapid increases over the last few decades, meaning they are the places people want to live, are all Blue (i.e., Gore) "decadent liberal socialist enclaves." In turn, this led me to speculate that it would be hard to tell a map with Blue highlighting Gore Counties from a map using Blue to highlight the counties with the greatest gains in property values. I left the proof as an exercise for the reader.
Reader and Researcher James K. Galbraith, who wrote a book on income inequality and also heads The University of Texas Inequality Project, sent me a great map with counties color-coded by the extent to which their income is above or below the national average. His conclusion:
As a rough cut, Gore won the rich places and the poor places. Bush won the middle-income places and the empty places.
Take a look at the two maps together (click to enlarge):
|
| ************************* |
| Income Inequality by County |
 |
In Galbraith's map, as he explains, "Red indicates the largest positive contribution--counties where the money is. Blue indicates the largest negative contributions: counties with significant populations and incomes well below average. Greens and yellows are counties with either insignificant populations or incomes near the average--[areas that contribute] little to inequality." |
The high income areas, Red in Galbraith's map, are all Gore areas. But large swaths of the lowest income area, Blue in Galbraith's map, also voted for Gore (e.g., the border areas in Southern Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico). This highlights the main point of Judis and Teixeira's book, The Emerging Democratic Majority, that areas that (1) have a lot of people, (2) have a lot of money, or (3) are growing most rapidly, are all trending Democratic.
Back to my original hypothesis from the earlier post, you would be able to tell the vote map from the housing value appreciation map because Blue counties come in two varieties: (a) urban or (b) rural, non-white, and low income. The most rapid housing appreciation, on the other hand, is remarkably concentrated in urban areas.
AB
P.S. Here's the original file (pdf) that Galbraith sent me; this paper (see the appendix) explains the Income Inequality measure used to construct his map.
Gore Speaking Out at MoveOn.org
The DLC loves Gore, or at least likes him, but they don't like Howard Dean. Meanwhile, Gore is starting to out-Dean Howard Dean:
Former Vice President Al Gore, assailing U.S. policies in Iraq and at home, on Thursday argued that the Bush administration "routinely shows disrespect" for the "honest and open debate" that produces the truth..."...I think it's partly because they feel they already know the truth, and aren't very curious to learn about any facts that might contradict it"
*****
"...The direction in which our nation is being led is deeply troubling to me, not only in Iraq but also at home, on economic policy, social policy and environmental policy.
Millions of Americans now share a feeling that something pretty basic has gone wrong in our country, and that some important American values are being placed at risk, and they want to set it right."
*****
The Department of Defense's planned surveillance system, Total Information Awareness, was "right out of George Orwell's '1984,"' Gore said.
...Gore argued that the administration used false pretenses to launch the war against Saddam Hussein, including claims that the Iraqi leader was involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and was on the verge of providing terrorists with chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
"As a result, too many of our soldiers are paying the highest price for the strategic miscalculations, serious misjudgments and historic mistakes that have put them and our nation in harm's way."
And, in case you missed it, there's a growing Draft Gore movement and this will surely increase his standing with such groups, though sadly it probably does little for his electability.
AB
Red vs. Blue Update
Nathan Newman reports that The Tax Foundation has issued its latest report on who pays and who gets paid. The results: the Red States are subsidized by the Blue States. In Newman's words,
"And large industrial "blue states" inevitably receive less. California receives only $5592 per capita for its citizens, New Jersey only $5509, Illinois only $5373. New York is doing better on getting aid than a few years ago, but still ranks only 26 on list of per capita receivers of aid.So the next time you hear about a "welfare state", think Bush-voting state.
Meanwhile, Atrios links to this NYT analysis of changes in housing prices from 1983 to 2003. In a nutshell, if you believe that people vote with their pocket books, then they are overwhelmingly voting for the Blue regions.
For previous Red vs. Blue posts, see the Topics section at the top left.
AB
P.S. Here's a project for someone with lots of time on their hands: Take this map of red and blue counties in 2000. It's one that Fox News and various conservatives love to cite because it is in fact overwhelmingly red, although most of the red areas are sparsely populated (if democracy were "one square mile, one vote" instead of "one person one vote" then Republicans would rule the country, but it's not). Back to the project: Now find county-by-county data on changes in housing prices over the last 10 or 20 years. Sort them in decending order of changes in housing values. Identify the top 677 and the bottom 2,434 (the respective number of counties carried by Gore and Bush). Now use mapping software to color-code the map in Red (top 677 counties) and Blue (bottom 2,434 counties). Finally put the maps side by side--can you tell them apart?
Good News, but Where are the Jobs?
"America's business productivity soared in the second quarter of 2003 and new claims for unemployment benefits dropped to a six-month low last week, a double dose of good news as the economy tries to get back to full throttle." Productivity in the second quarter grew at an annualized rate of 5.7%, which is extremely high by historical standards (note that the number is still subject to revision, but even if it's cut by 1/3, it's still very high).
New application for jobless benefits stayed below 400,000 per week for the third consecutive week. However, a slowing of the rate of layoffs is not the same as creating more jobs (recall that the recent drop in unemployment from 6.4% to 6.2% was triggered by people abandoning their job search, not by people finding new jobs; also see Matt Stoller's post at ISTES). But the productivity growth in the second quarter, if it reflects a trend and not an aberration, is good news in the long run: it will mean that when the economy starts expanding, inflation will not be a major concern.
On the other hand, excess capacity and the accompanying downward pressure on prices have been a major business problem of late. Because of that excess capacity, it would not be difficult for measured productivity (output divided by hours of labor) to increase quite a bit in the short run without reflecting what is typically thought to cause long run productivity growth--new, more efficient, technologies and processes (think 1990s). Time will tell. At the least, the latest news is not bad news; how good it is unknown.
AB
Mike Hawash Update
You may recall the story of Mike Hawash, a U.S. citizen arrested in March and held without access to council for five weeks until charges were filed. The eventual charges were for attempting to aid the Taliban, conspiring to levy war against the United States, and conspiring to provide material support for terrorism. Yesterday, Hawash plead guilty to the attempting to aid the Taliban charge and agreed to testify against the other members of the Portland Seven in exchange for the government dropping the latter two charges (full plea agreement here).
Not, as far as I can tell, part of the plea agreement was an explanation of why civil liberties and the Constitution had to be taken down along with Hawash.
AB
Hey!
Did you hear that Arnold Schwarzenegger is, should Gray Davis be recalled, running for for Governor of California? What? You already knew that? Ok.
Here's a Terminator-worthy line from Mr. S.:"I will go to Sacramento, and I will clean house." Still, I think it would have been better if he held his press conference in Sacramento, just he could end with his trademarked "I'll be back."
AB
Ahh, The Daily Show
Tonight, Jon Stewart gave Dean a bit of a hard time, which is a good sign for Dean--it means the writers think viewers now know who Dean is, unlike, say, Dennis Kucinic. Then he turned to Lieberman and played his wilderness line, which I wrote about here. Here's Jon, echoing my thoughts, only funnier:
Yes Dean could lead the Democrats into an unpredicted wilderness where they would have no control over the White House, both Houses of Congress, or the Supreme Court. Oh, wait, nevermind. It appears they're already in the wilderness...I wonder who lead them there?[Flashes Gore-Lieberman poster from 2000]
Oh riiiight.
AB
P.S. Hey, Angry Bear, how are you able to so easily quote TV shows that don't publish transcripts? The answer is the magic of TiVo.
UPDATE: For undisclosed reasons, I was visiting rightwingnews.com and the first post I saw was hilarious
"Gov. Dean Heals Leper, Walks on Water...Gov. Howard Dean cemented his Democrat presidential frontrunner status today when he healed a man of leprosy then walked across the surface of a small lake to his next campaign appearance.
Thank the Lord
The Rev. Cn. Gene Robinson was cleared today of the ridiculous on their face charges against him. On Sunday, Rev. Robinson won confirmation in the first of two votes required for him to become the first gay Bishop of the Episcopal Church. That victory led to last minute charges of inappropriate contact and porn-linkery.
Though he denies involvement in one of the two last-minute smears, the Rev. David Anderson, president of the American Anglican Council (AAC) is apparently the leader within the church of the anti-Robinson faction. Rev. Anderson basically said that he would oppose Robinson by any means necessary and that, should Robinson be confirmed, the Episcopal church would split:
"There are apparently many in the Episcopal Church who have decided that homosexuality is more important than remaining a part of the vibrant and growing Anglican family. Sadly they are willing to divide the family over an issue that the vast majority of the Communion has already concluded to be inconsistent with the Biblical faith.We will see at Convention if their voices win out. If they do, the Anglican Communion will see one of its family members leave the fold. As for the AAC, we are committed to remaining very much a part of the Anglican family. We're staying."
Curious about Rev. Anderson, and mindful of how easy it is to find wacky quotes from conservative Christians, I took a quick look and found this:
"The Episcopal Church needs people who are called to stand, and perhaps even to suffer, for doing the right thing. This is the most exciting time to be an Anglican since the days when Bloody Mary was burning people at the stake every day."
Bloody Mary was known, among other things, for turning the English Church over to the Vatican and executing many Anglicans along the way, including the Archbiship of Canterbury. (Hence the "Bloody" appellation). Seriously, is one gay Bishop, or even a host of them, really that bad?
AB
UPDATE: OK of Gay Bishop May Split Anglicans.
What's Wrong With This?
Texas Dems are still safely holed up in New Mexico. Meanwhile Republicans are launching a radio offensive. From an Austin-American Statesman story today:
State Republican leaders will take to the airways today...Hosts of four talk radio shows will interview Gov. Rick Perry, House Speaker Tom Craddick and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst at the Capitol. The shows air on stations in Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio and Corpus Christi."
Perry was recently outed as Tom DeLay's Bitch; Craddick was the one who successfully requested that The Homeland Security Department take a break from fighting terrorism to help track down Democrats back when the House Democrats went to Ardmore, Ok. And Dewhurst is the one who triggered Operation Town Lake by announcing that--despite his promises otherwise--if Gov. Perry called a second special session then he would recind the Senate rule requiring approval of 2/3 of the Senate before a matter can go to a floor vote.
It makes perfect sense to have these guys on the radio in Texas--they are making news after all. But there's no mention of having any Democrats on at all, even though they are available by phone and video. If not some of the Texas Eleven, at least bring on one or two hapless Colmes-like Democrats to take the other side, so you can make a pretense of being fair and balanced.
AB
Dean Responds
See the previous post for some comments Lieberman made about Dean. Now Dean is firing back--by focusing on his own record and positions rather than attacking fellow-Democrats like Joe Lieberman. Here's Dean:
"I am in the center. I balanced budgets. The president hasn't done so. I believe that states have the right to make their own gun laws, after enforcing the federal laws vigorously. There's nothing that's not centrist about me..."More impressively, Dean also realizes that the next election is about much, much, more than who gets to be the nominee. Here's more Dean:...Dean, who was Vermont's lieutenant governor in 1991 when Gov. Richard Snelling died, balanced the state's budget for 11 consecutive years -- although Vermont is the only state in the union that does not require a balanced budget...
"...They all say, 'He's so liberal. Well, if liberal is balancing budgets, please do call me a liberal. ... If you want jobs and investment in the country, you're going to have to have a Democrat because the Republicans simply can't handle money."
"I will support the nominee. It is essential that George Bush not be re- elected for the future of this country. It is essential for our economy. It's essential, so we can regain the respect we had around the world...I'm starting to like this guy more and more, though it's still far too early for the coveted AB-endorsement....Any one of [the Democratic candidates] would be better than the president they have now," he said. "But what our party really has to have is some backbone."
AB
UPDATE: In comments, Moebius reminds me of Reagan's Eleventh Commandment: "Thou Shall Not Speak Ill of a Fellow Republican." Reagan followed his own rule for the most part and now Republicans are trying to name everything in the country after him. Think about it.
Joe Lieberman
Kos recently defended Lieberman, mostly by pointing out that, based on American Conservative Union ratings of Senators, "the most liberal GOoPer is FAR MORE CONSERVATIVE than Lieberman!" Kos advised laying off Lieberman, a sentiment echoed by CalPundit and Yglesias, and I agree: Lieberman on his worst day is miles better than Bush on his best day. Still, this doesn't make it easy to like the guy:
WASHINGTON— Presidential contender Joe Lieberman warned Tuesday that rival Howard Dean, the hottest candidate in the field, could be "a ticket to nowhere" for Democrats in 2004 by advocating discredited Democratic policies on taxes and national security.""A candidate who was opposed to the war against Saddam, who has called for the repeal of all of the Bush tax cuts, which would result in an increase in taxes on the middle class ... could lead the Democrat party into the political wilderness for a long time to come," Lieberman said when asked about the former Vermont governor during an appearance at the National Press Club.
"I share the anger of my fellow Democrats with George Bush and the direction he has taken this nation," the Connecticut senator said at another point. "But the answer to his outdated, extremist ideology is not to be found in the outdated extremes of our own."
Hey Lieberman and Kerry: notice how the guy attacking Bush and Bush policies--rather than other Democratic candidates--just made the covers of Newsweek and Time? Or how before that the guy criticizing Bush policies, not other Democrats, raised more money than you? Maybe you could follow suit perhaps? Just a thought.
AB
P.S. In fairness to Kerry, his campaign is only cosidering attacking Dean; Lieberman's is actually doing so.
Conservative Bias?
Earlier, I referenced an NYT story in which the content indicates that Bush's support has dropped substantially among Hispanics--a story mysteriously titled Hispanics Back Big Government and Bush, Too. I speculated that the titles was an effort, conscious or unconscious, to avoid charges of liberal bias. To which frequent AB contributor Tom replied,
The NYT is erring conservative to avoid the label of a liberal bias?The NYT?
Somehow I don't buy that one...
Now the standard response is to talk about Jeff Gerth and the NYT's role in trumpeting Whitewater, or the NYT's hapless exploiting of Wen Ho Lee in order to attack Clinton. But now I've got something even better and, remarkably, it comes via Howie Kurtz. Kurtz describes a study done at the Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy (admittedly, the author is a well-known liberal, Michael Tomasky, but read the study before alleging bias). Here's a sample of the results:
The liberal papers criticized the Clinton administration 30 percent of the time, while the conservative papers slapped around the Bush administration just 7 percent of the time.ABThe liberal papers [NYT, Washington Post] praised the Clintonites 36 percent of the time, while the conservative papers [WSJ Editorial, Washington Times] praised the Bushies 77 percent of the time.
One more set of numbers: The liberal papers criticized Bush 67 percent of the time; the conservative papers criticized Clinton 89 percent of the time.
Rice Watch Day 14
Bob Somerby first points out the obvious, but in incomparable fashion:
Because Rice is a press corps icon, there is no attempt—repeat that, none—to hold her work to normal standards. Rice doesn’t read 90-page reports? The press corps completely ignored that matter (for a fuller chronology, see below). But it’s hardly the first time the slumbering press corps looked away from Rice’s odd performance. To help flesh out the amazing way the corps behaves toward Icon Condi, let’s review a previous howler which the press almost wholly ignored.
He then goes on to make a decent case that, rather than currently positing Rice as Powell's replacement, we could instead be in Rice Watch Day 445. Way back on 5/16/2002, Rice made another statement that was also either a display of naked mendacity or blinding incompetence (in fairness to Rice, the 2002 statement was much less consequential, as it did not contribute to the case for war; instead it was typical CYA and not really cause for a resignation or a "Rice Watch").
AB
Even the Conservative Economist
The current Economist has an interesting piece, Hidden dangers: The American government's accounts look about as reliable as Enron's (article here--subscription required). The story reports on a study by two AEI economists, Jagadeesh Gokhale and Kent Smetters, that uses two new measures of how sustainable deficits are. One of them is the Generational Imbalance (GI) index, which measures (in net present value) how much society will spend on the current generation over their lifetimes versus how much society will collect from that generation over their lifetimes. They estimate that Medicare alone represents a transfer of $20 trillion (1.7 times GDP in today's dollars) from future generations to the current one!
This seemed a bit high at first, so I took a look at the 2003 Status of the Social Security and Medicare Programs, where I found this graph:
Chart C-Medicare Expenditures and Non-Interest Income by Source as a Percent of GDP
I didn't run the numbers, but based on this the Gokhale and Smetters number seems plausible. Not surprisingly, the AEI economists use their result to argue against expanding Medicare and Social Security benefits (a position I agree with, unless taxes are raised or other spending cut to pay for them). On the other hand, exacerbating the transfer from "the children" to the current generation via massive tax cuts and the accompanying deficits seems like an equally bad idea. Oh wait, I forgot, the solution is trivial: use more tax cuts to increase revenue--we better get taxes down and pronto!
Back to The Economist's assessment of the situation:
As the late Herbert Stein, a noted economist, once said, "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." One way or another, America's budget gap will have to be closed. The question is, will it be done responsibly, by coming clean about the hidden liabilities now and taking the necessary, if painful, steps to deal with them? Or will the top management, like Enron's, stave off admitting the true state of America's finances until it is forced to do so by some spectacular collapse?Indeed.
AB
Liberal Media
A number of bloggers (e.g., Atrios and Yglesias) are taking note of Billmon's solid analysis of an NYT piece that inexplicably has the headline, "Hispanics Back Big Government and Bush, Too," yet contains this statement:
Mr. Bush won the support of 35 percent of Hispanic voters in 2000; in this poll, 21 percent of Hispanics who say they are registered to vote said they would vote for his re-election.Election-wise, there are only two kinds of support: money and votes. The story doesn't mention the former and on the latter account, a more accurate headline would be, "Bush's support among Hispanics plummets," or something to that effect.
In fairness to Nagourney and Elder, they don't write the headlines. And while they could easily have put the fact that only 21% of Hispanics plan to vote for Bush earlier in the story, they did put this near the front, in paragraph four:
In many ways, the Hispanic respondents questioned over the course of two weeks mirrored traditional Democratic ethnic constituencies. They were twice as likely to call themselves Democrats as Republicans, viewed the Democratic Party more favorably than the Republican Party and, by a margin of 49 percent to 21 percent, said the Democratic Party was more likely to care about the needs of Hispanics.So, unlike the headline, the story itself is gives a fairly accurate portrayal of the poll results. The real issue question is, "what story did the headline-writer read, because it clearly wasn't this one?"
My guess is that it's another instance of the working the refs phenomenon that Alterman discussed at length in What Liberal Media? Specifically, newspaper staff, weary and leary of incessant charges of liberal bias, look for ways to head the charges off at the pass. In this instance, it takes the form of attaching a good-news-for-Republicans headline to a story that's in fact almost entirely good news for Democrats. Sadly, working the refs like this has proven effective for Republicans. The refs need to open their eyes.
AB
Rice Watch Day 13
Events continue to indicate that the Rice Watch may extend into triple digits:
CRAWFORD, Tex.
President Bush slipped speedily into vacation mode this past weekend at his furnace of a ranch in Central Texas, where he spent Sunday fishing, clearing cedar and going for a walk with the first lady and his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. But before the president ducked out of public sight, he made sure to address one of the biggest re-election anxieties of Karl Rove, his chief political adviser: the nation's continuing loss of jobs and the uncertainty about the economy.
But CalPundit reports that somebody will be leaving, though not until the next inauguration on Jan. 21, 2005:
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, have signaled to the White House that they intend to step down even if President Bush is reelected, setting the stage for a substantial reshaping of the administration's national security team that has remained unchanged through the September 2001 terrorist attacks, two wars and numerous other crises.Armitage recently told national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that he and Powell will leave on Jan. 21, 2005...
While not as much of a restraining influence as I had hoped, Powell is the sole voice with any authority in the White House that is not entirely in agreement with the neocon agenda. Bush foreign policy without Powell will be even more scary than it already is, and I suspect that a good portion swing voters will realize this and adjust their voting plans accordingly.
AB
Point of Clarification
A note to conservatives: when states legalize gay marriage or civil unions, it does not mean that you (or any of your loved ones) have to personally engage in gay sex or marriage, witness gay marriages or sex, subsidize gay sex or marriages, have your church or other religious institution support gay sex or marriage, contemplate gay sex or gay marriage, or otherwise involve yourself in any way with anything related in any way to gay sex or gay marriage. I point this out because the only explanation I can come up with for the conservative histrionics I've heard on this subject is that conservative are suffering from one of these misconceptions.
AB
UPDATE: This, at least, is a positive step.
Surely the Next Tom DeLay
Who? Why Paul Kelly Tripplehorn, Jr., of course, for he is apparently much better than you. Assuming this story is true (which it likely is since it comes from Roll Call, a reliable source for Capitol Hill goings on--subscription required, but see the teaser here), it provides a deeply disturbing, yet highly amusing, peek into the soul of a Republican intern (Link via Ted Barlow).
It seems that Mr. Tripplehorn the II (I suppose that's six horns?), until recently an intern to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), sent an email--in what I sincerely hope was an exceptionally drunken state--to another intern with whom he had some sort of relationship. Horn3II's email closes with this:
Once again from your intellectual, moral, social, and emotional superior,
Paul Kelly Tripplehorn, Jr.
But there's much more, including his ruminations on the social merits of owning a house in Aspen, "hipocrits", the presumably meritocratic value of ones parents having influential friends, and how those at the top of the ladder view those on the lower rungs (hint: "I [Horn3II] am at the top and people like me hate people like you").
AB
UPDATE: More Young Republicans Gone Wild here.
Tom Tomorrow Today
His latest book of hilarious yet scary comics is out now (conveniently available via the link to the right). Note that it's a greatest hits collection, so if you own every other Tom Tomorrow book, it might be redundant.
AB
It's Funny Because It's True
Charles Kuffner, who recently had a brush with fame, links to this hilarious must-see photograph. The arrow is pointing to the front gates of the Texas State Capitol, which I suppose is ironic since the man holding the sign is standing on Martin Luther King Boulevard whereas Gov. Rick "Boss" Perry is leading an effort to disenfranchise many minorities.
AB
Rick Santorum Must be Outraged
They say that Dog Bites Man is not newsworthy; Man Bites Dog, on the other hand, is news because it's unlikely and unexpected. Well this essay (titled "'Conservative' Bush Spends More than 'Liberal' Presidents Clinton, Carter") from the libertarian Cato Institute falls into the category of man and dog doing something that keeps Ricky S. awake at night. (Link via Atrios).
AB
UPDATE: It's nice to have Atrios back and in full effect. He also bring us this great quote from Nobel Prize Winner (and all-around genious) George Akerloff:
"I think this is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history. It has engaged in extradordinarily irresponsible policies not only in foreign policy and economics but also in social and environmental policy...This is not normal government policy. Now is the time for (American) people to engage in civil disobedience. I think it's time to protest - as much as possible."
Rice Watch Day 11
Or should it be Cheney-watch? Via Matt Yglesias, I find this story in Slate's Chatterbox. The title of Noah's piece is somewhat misleading: Did Condi Give the Game Away? Her Yellowcakegate alibi doesn't add up, because Noah's real target is not Rice, but Dick Cheney. Why Cheney?
Tenet knew that his complaint [about the unreliability of the African Uranium story] was not a command and that somebody at the White House still needed convincing. But who would have the standing to tell the CIA director to go jump in the lake? Surely not Fall Guy No. 2, the National Security Council's nonproliferation expert, Robert Joseph. Surely not Fall Guy No. 3, the NSC's deputy, Steve Hadley. And surely not even Fall Person No. 4, Condi Rice.By application of the Wobble Method, Noah concludes that Cheney is responsible. But the Rice Watch will continue. Bush can't fire Cheney, and Cheney resigning to pursue other interests is simply not even a remote possibility. So let's suppose thet Noah is right and that Cheney insisted on knowingly citing questionable intelligence in the SOTU for the sole purpose of bolstering the case for war. If the pressure on Cheney turns up, Rice will be the perfect scapegoat, regardless of whether she, or Cheney, is truly to blame.
AB
Good News, Right?
On the wire: "The Labor Department reported the nation's unemployment rate declined to 6.2 percent in July from 6.4 percent in the previous month." But before you get excited, read the next sentence:
The figure was slightly better than analysts' estimates, but much of the drop came from 470,000 disenchanted people who abandoned job searches.Remember that the unemployment rate is computed as
(# people actively seeking work)/(#people in the labor force),so when would-be workers get discouraged and stop looking for a job, they are not counted as part of the labor force and the measured unemployment rate falls.
AB
Rice Watch Day 10
It looks like the heat on Rice is easing up a bit, but the watch endures. In large part, this is because reporters aren't asking the Administration questions like the one Bob Somerby suggests:
Mr. President, we have been told that Dr. Condoleezza Rice did not read last October’s National Intelligence Estimate and therefore did not know that the State Department doubted the claim that Iraq sought uranium in Africa. We’re also told that she didn’t read CIA memos on this subject. Are you concerned when your National Security Adviser is so poorly informed on such a subject? And do you now believe what you said in your State of the Union—that Saddam Hussein “recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa?”AB
Hold on for a second. You’re through.
I'm waiting for a good chance to use that line the next time someone asks me a question I don't like.
AB
Wish I'd Said That
Digby on the DLC trashing Dean:
"The Internet may be giving angry, protest-oriented activists the rope they need to hang the party," wrote Randolph Court in the DLC's bimonthly newsletter, The New Democrat Blueprint.There's a lot more on the DLC, and it's well worth taking the time to read. And while you're there, be sure to read the four posts after/above the one I linked.Digby: I sure wish that the Republicans had believed that about talk radio because then we’d hold both houses of congress, the presidency and the courts today.
AB
Here's another paragraph (same post) that I wish I'd written:
It seems that by the DLC’s calculation, the “far left” doesn’t consist of Green party members or anti-globalization protestors or radical groups like Earth First and Peta. According to them, middle aged, middle class Democrats like me who enthusiastically backed charter DLC favorite sons Clinton and Gore in 3 successive presidential elections, supported the wars in Kosovo and in Afghanistan, aren’t fond of bureaucrats whether they work for government or the corporations, respect the need to curb long term deficit spending and come down on the side of the CATO institute as much as the ACLU when it comes to civil liberties…are now “far left.”(Uh…Viva Che!)
The Mountain Might Get 'em, but the Law Never Will
There's more to the story of the Texas Democratic Senators leaving the state than meets the eye--or, at the least, some interesting details--according to this amusing account of the Democrats' getaway plan, Operation Town Lake:
Planning [for a getaway] picked up two weeks ago, when Republican Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said he would suspend a key Senate rule to muscle through a redistricting plan if Mr. Perry called a second special session.Changing old rules in midstream in order to change districts midstream, Dewhurst was clearly taking a page from Orrin Hatch's book.
[ed--if possible, you should read the remainder of this tale in the voice of the narrarator from the Dukes of Hazzard].
...Now the GOP had set a trap for the Boys, but they were on to Ole Boss Rick Perry (R-Texas) and his sheriff, David "Rosco P." Dewhurst (R-Texas). See, the Republicans planned to capture 'em with a surprise second session, but Miss Leticia Van de Putte (D-San Antonio) was lookin' out for the boys:
"I had a bad feeling all weekend. Call it a mother's intuition. ... On Sunday I told everyone to pack as if they were leaving for a couple of days."
Come Monday, they had to skedaddle. They had to find a place to lay low, somewhere as they could get some help, some vittles, and a good doc for their ailin' friend, Eddie Lucio (D-Brownsville). And they knew right where to go, Boss Richardson's. See, Bill Richardson (D-New Mexico) and Boss Perry had been feudin' since before John Whitmire (D-Houston) was born. Bill always said Boss Perry smelled like a polecat and was twice as ugly. Yep, if they could git to Richardson's place, they'd be all right.
Thing was, Boss Richardson's place was 800 miles away. The boys knew Boss Perry's men would be watchin' every stretch of open road from Austin to Abilene an' in between. Miss Leticia and the Boys were in a mess o' trouble.
One thing Boss Perry hadn't reckoned on was Uncle Juan "Jesse" Hinojosa (D-McAllen) catchin' wind o' his plan. Juan'd been shootin' the breeze down at The Boar's Nest where it seems a few o' the bosses men couldn't take more 'an a thimble full of whiskey 'fore they started yappin' about Boss Perry's new plan. Quicker 'an you can say fried okra, Uncle Juan rounded up two jet planes, grabbed Letecia and the Boys, and high-tailed it to Boss Richardson's place, clear across the border (click here). But they weren't out of the woods yet. No sir. Come to find, Mario Gallegos (D-Houston) was plum outa clean drawers(*). Worse still, round about supper time came word that Boss Perry'd put a price on their heads(**).
Stay Tuned.
AB
(*) True detail from the Dallas Morning News story.
(**) Sadly, also true. Richardson gave the 11 Democrats protection, though: "At least three uniformed and plainclothes New Mexico state police officers are watching the lawmakers wherever they go."
UPDATE: Who knew? Apparently the Dukes of Hazzard narrarator was none other than Waylon Jennings (via Charles Kuffner, who has more info on the latest Texas antics here).
Bait and Switch Program Revisited
Via Matt Yglesias, Kevin Drum apparently did the hard work of reading the transcript of Bush's Press Conference today. Therein, Kevin found this:
And in order to placate the critics and the cynics about intentions of the United States, we need to produce evidence. And I fully understand that. And I'm confident that our search will yield that which I strongly believe, that Saddam had a weapons program.If you've forgotten the difference between a program and an imminent threat, click here. If you feel yourself starting to fall for this switcharoo, or you have a friend suffering from severe gullibility, click here for a refresher (make sure you check the dates--there are quotes about weapons programs, but those are all from May 2003 or later).
AB
Good News
Filibuster blocks Estrada nomination:
WASHINGTON - Senate Republicans lost a seventh filibuster vote Wednesday in their fight to make Miguel Estrada the first Hispanic on the federal appeals court in the nation's capital. Democrats appeared to be setting up more filibusters on President Bush's judicial nominees.
But read it closely and witness your "liberal media" in action (it's an AP story). First, were the Republicans really fighting to "make Miguel Estrada the first Hispanic on the federal appeals court?" More accurate would be this characterization: "Estrada is the first Hispanic Appellate Court Nominee Republicans have fought for", followed by an explanation of the political views, insofar as they are publicly known, of Estrada. And the story says that Democrats are setting up more filibusters, but fails to mention the number of judges confirmed (well over 100) or compare the rate of confirmation to historical rates.
The AP story does give a consice update on the status of the various controversial (i.e., extreme-right) nominees:
Republicans, who also lost a filibuster vote Tuesday for Texas judge Priscilla Owen, will try Thursday and Friday to win confirmation for Alabama Attorney General William Pryor and California judge Carolyn Kuhl. But both nominees are expected to be filibustered, as is Mississippi judge Charles Pickering when he comes before the Senate again.
Henry Saad of Michigan is also likely to be filibustered, this time on procedural grounds: the Senate has long required both Senators from a nominee's home state to approve a nominee (the "blue slip"); neither Michigan Senator (Levin and Stabenow) has given a Blue Slip for Saad (here's a nice history of the blue slips; also, here). During the Clinton Years, the Blue Slip policy was strictly enforced by Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin "Piracy Virus Hatch. Back then, Hatch went so far as to have this printed on the blue slips: "[n]o further proceedings on this nominee will be scheduled until both blue slips have been returned by the nominee’s home state senators." They now read "Please complete the attached blue slip form and return it as soon as possible to the Committee office"--a change made in January 2001.
I can't find a link right now, but I recall that shortly after Bush's inauguration, Hatch said one slip would do. Now the Saad nomination is proceeding with none (Kuhl apparently had one, but blue slips are anonymous so it's unknown whether it was from Boxer or Feinstein). Patrick Leahy, Senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, has a great statement on the blue slips and their contrasting use under Clinton (and before) vs. under Bush. There's a lot more, but here's an excerpt:
While it is true that various Chairmen of the Judiciary Committee have used the blue-slip in different ways, some to maintain unfairness, and others to attempt to remedy it, it is also true that each of those Chairmen was consistent in his application of his own policy -- that is, until now. Today is the first time that this Chairman will ever have convened a hearing for a judicial nominee who did not have two positive blue slips returned to the Committee.
Republicans are up in arms about the Democrats using procedural measures like blue slips and filibusters to block complete and total Republican hegemony, but such measures have a long and storied tradition. While they've been misused (both were used by southern Senators to block Civil Rights legislation and the appointment of minority judges to the federal courts), they are part of the system of checks and balances. Before Republicans go to far, I must remind them of Grover Norquist's Hillary Test:
"Someday Hillary Clinton's going to be attorney general and I hope conservatives keep that in mind."AB
The Truth About Dean
Nice to see the common wisdom on Dean challenged in an accurate fashion, in the New York Times:
With his [Howard Deans'] early and intense opposition to the American-led attack on Iraq, his call for universal health insurance and his signing a bill that created civil unions for gay couples in Vermont, Dr. Dean, 54, is seen as the most liberal of the major Democratic candidates. Many of the people donning his "Give 'em hell, Howard" buttons hail from the left wing of the party and beyond.But in Vermont, whose political center of gravity lands left of the nation's, one of the secrets to Dr. Dean's success was keeping the most liberal politicians in check.
Over 11 years, he restrained spending growth to turn a large budget deficit into a surplus, cut taxes, forced many on welfare to go to work, abandoned a sweeping approach to health-care reform in favor of more incremental measures, antagonized environmentalists, won the top rating from the National Rifle Association and consistently embraced business interests.
Opposing the war appears leftist because so many Democrats folded on the issue--a waffling that many now publicly regret. As far as universal healthcare goes, Dean's plan"First, and most important, in order to extend health coverage to every uninsured child and young adult up to age 25," which Gore advocated in 2000 (for children, but as I recall, not for the 18-24 group). So that's not crazy-left, either. Steps 2-4 in Dean's plan are more amitious and longer term, but they center around the free-market, not socialized medicine, nor even single-payer.
And as for Dean on gay rights, well, ok, that's pretty liberal ("I will work to expand equal rights to same sex couples and ban workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation, strengthen federal protections against anti-gay violence, give federal employees the right to name same-sex partners as beneficiaries, remove bias from our immigration laws, and end the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Policy"). Fortunately, it's also the just and moral position. It's nice to see him take a stand rather than take the easy way out and say that it's a matter for the states, a la McCain on the Confederate Flag.
Looking at the underlined part of the [accurate] description of Dean's fiscal and business policies, it's really hard to see why the DLC fears him so.
AB
UPDATE: Joan Walsh has more in this inanely-titled but otherwise good editorial in Salon.
Rice Watch Day 8
There's a pun to be made that involves steamed rice, a pot, and a watched pot never boiling, or watched rice never resigning, or something like that. In any event, this makes it look like Rice is not going anywhere soon:
"I take personal responsibility for everything I say, absolutely," the president said at a White House news conference where he sought to quell a controversy that has dogged his administration for weeks.AB[snip]...National security adviser Condoleezza Rice has also come under criticism in connection with the speech and events leading to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Bush strongly defended his aide Wednesday, saying she was an "honest fabulous person" and the United States was lucky to have her in government.
The Perfect Candidate
If only we could find a candidate for Governor of California who is both conservative and liberal, but actually liberal. How could that be possible? One reporter and his editor at the Chicago Tribune think that Arianna Huffington fits the bill. In the same story, Recall election drive is a California classic, Tribune national correspondent Vincent J. Schodolski first says this:
Huffington, a Cambridge University-educated conservative, had a brief tussle with political life when she was married to multimillionaire Michael Huffington, who spent about $29 million in 1994 trying to win a U.S. Senate seat in California.Then, seventeen words later, Schodolski says that,
Arianna Huffington recently started a very public campaign against sport-utility vehicles and in favor of cars with combined gasoline and electric engines.
Damn those far-Right Christian Fundamentalists and their Biblical prophecy-driven hatred of large polluting vehicles! Who hires these ignorant clowns and their editors?
AB
P.S. While I'd prefer that the recall fail on practical and democratic principles, a part of me wonders what could possibly be better than watching the Republicans successfully fund a campaign to recall Gray Davis only to see the much, much, further left Huffington become governor of California? Here's a sample of Huffington: "If, as [Republican challenger] Bill Simon says, Gray Davis is fiscally irresponsible, then George Bush is fiscally insane."
UPDATE: Digby has another great scenario here.
DLC
I actually consider myself a "New Democrat" in the Clintonian sense, and I think the Democratic Leadership Council did a lot of good for the party. Nevertheless--and I'm definitely not arguing for far-left policies--it is disturbing to see nonsense like this directed at Howard Dean:
Al From, the founder of the organization and an ally of Mr. Clinton, invoked the sweeping defeats of George McGovern in 1972 and Walter F. Mondale in 1984 as he cautioned against a return to policies — including less emphasis on foreign policy and an inclination toward expanding the size of government — that he said were a recipe for another electoral disaster.Dean is not my first choice, but he's definitely in the top five. And Dean is not that liberal--not nearly as liberal as McGovern or Mondale and it is stupid to allege that he is, and no good can come from attacking him.
Hey, Al From, stop acting like narrow-minded jackasses: the importance of your preferred candidate winning pales in comparison to having the strongest possible candidate emerge from the Demcratic primaries. You may think that attacking Dean is a way to achieve that, but that's myopic because it fails to anticipate the response it will induce. You think that if Bill Bradley had not called Gore a liar, Gore might have picked up a few hundred more votes in Florida? Every drop of blood spilt in the primaries is sweet, sweet, mother's milk to Karl Rove. So stop it. Ok, thenTM.
More generally, the time has come for the DLC to realize that everything exhibits diminishing returns. To think that "if a chunk of centrism worked in 1992 and 1996, then a gigantic wad of centrism will do the trick in 2004" is folly. By all means, don't go left of Clinton, but that's no compelling reason to leap right of him.
AB
Correction: Edited due to Charles Kuffner correctly pointing out that Terry McAuliffe is not in the DLC--I suppose I tossed him in there because he does annoy me sometimes. In fairness to McCauliffe, back in April he made the same point I make above:
In an interview at a DNC fund-raiser Tuesday, Terry McAuliffe said he understood the need for the nine candidates to draw distinctions on issues, but he fears the war of words is escalating.So to clarify, this is the DLC leadership:"We do not and I do not encourage any of our candidates to go after fellow Democrats," McAuliffe said. "I want to discourage it early on. ... We expect all of them to abide by a good code out there to make sure the focus is on George Bush and not on each other."
"Al From is founder and CEO of the DLC; Bruce Reed is president; Pennsylvania State Representative Jennifer Mann is Chair of the DLC's State Legislative Advisory Board (SLAB); U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh is chairman of the DLC; U.S. Sen. Tom Carper is chair for Best Practices; Detroit (MI) Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is chairman of the DLC's Local Elected Officials Network; and U.S. Rep. Ellen Tauscher is vice chair of the DLC."
A Thought
It's a bit beyond my expertise, but one thought comes to mind when I hear Iraq compared to Vietnam or other "quagmires". When the Soviet Union got bogged down in Afghanistan, the Unites States was arming the mujahidin. Similarly, in the Korean War, the Soviet Union and China were arming the North Koreans. And in the Vietnam War, the same parties provided arms to the North Vietnamese. Even back in World War II, the heroics of the Warsaw partisans were backed by British ordnance.
This all raises one question: who will arm the Iraqi resistance? Ideally, stability will occur before those hostile to the U.S. occupation run out of RPGs and bullets. But failing that, and unlike in previous conflicts, it seems that there is a real chance that the opposition could run out of supplies. Despite U.S. belligerency, I don't view it as likely that Iran or Syria will supply arms to Iraq (individuals could probably carry small arms over the border, but I doubt either government would participate). Turkey? Jordan? Saudi Arabia? Jordan? Kuwait? Those seem even less likely.
AB
The Hydra
Texas provides, if nothing else, outstanding theatre:
Eleven of 12 Democratic state senators abruptly left the state Capitol this afternoon and headed for Albuquerque after learning that Gov. Rick Perry was about to call a second special session on congressional redistricting.
In case you've forgotten the chronology, here it is:
The nice thing about Albuquerque is that it's quite scenic with lots of nature-related activities, so the Democrats should, barring pressing family or work (most Texas Legislators have day jobs) needs, enjoy staying there for a while if necessary. So far, neither the House nor the Senate has a quorum, and it looks like the Texas Democrats have adopted a "by any means necessary" mindset--but so have the Republicans. Republicans are at least 5 years into that mindset (dating back to Lewinsky/Impeachment, if not sooner). This is the first real sign of life from Democrats--and, as is to be expected, it's Democrats from the "Remember the Alamo" state.
AB
P.S. I suppose the judicial filibusters by U.S. Senate Democrats also count as a sign of life, but while extremely important, those are probably less noticed by the public.
UPDATE: Needless to say, Off the Kuff will be your best source for up to date information on this.
Recall them All
California is not the only state with budget trouble, which is apparently now grounds for recall. Based on this story, deficits and spending cuts are widespread. California's is by far the largest in magnitude, but I don't know whether it is largest on either a per capita basis or as a percentage of state income.
Here's the sequence of events: Bush becomes president; a recession hits; Bush lowers taxes once, in a way that makes taxes less progressive; many states had already cut taxes or now follow suit; there is an alleged recovery (the "jobless recovery" in which GDP growth is positive but unemployment growth is negative); Bush lowers taxes again, again moving the tax code towards regressivity; states go into a budget crisis:
The cuts in state spending are just starting to be felt, with the impact landing disproportionately on the poor. "We have been shifting a lot of spending for social services from the feds to the states," said Robert M. Solow, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Nobel laureate. "And that means the cuts that are taking place are hurting people at the bottom of the income distribution."
Moreover, state taxes are generally regressive (fees and consumption taxes make up a large part of states' revenue). So the net effect of all of this is that the people who will spend any additional dollar they get are (1) getting less dollars, in the form of decreased social services spending (and rising unemployment); (2) about to pay more taxes, due to impending increases in state taxes; and (3) in the process, federal tax cuts reduce the overall tax burden on the well-to-do. As a rough guess, the top 20% are better off, tax-wise; the bottom 25% are worse off. For the middle 55%, cuts in federal taxes are likely to be roughly offset by increases in state and local taxes. Given all of this, there's not a lot of stimulus in the Bush Tax Cuts, just large deficits. These tax cuts are unlikely to shorten the recession in a Keynesian fashion.
AB
P.S. Just don't recall the Republican Governor of Alabama.
Rice Watch Day 7
Making the rounds today on the AP wire today is a story titled "9-11 Report Questions Rice's Statements" :
The congressional report on pre-Sept. 11 intelligence calls into question answers that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice gave the public last year about the White House's knowledge of terrorism threats.ABIt's a fresh credibility issue for the adviser whose remarks about prewar Iraq information also have been questioned by members of Congress...
[snip]...At the same May 2002 press briefing, Rice also said that "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile."
But the congressional report states that "from at least 1994, and continuing into the summer of 2001, the Intelligence Community received information indicating that terrorists were contemplating, among other means of attack, the use of aircraft as weapons."
Rice Watch Day 6
Remember, you first heard it here at Angry Bear. Now you can hear it in the mainstream media, U.S. News and Word Report:
As White House officials try to control the latest fallout over President Bush's flawed suggestion in the State of the Union address that Iraq was buying nuclear bomb materials, there's growing talk by insiders that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice may take the blame and resign.
The same article mentions Brent Scowcroft, Paul Bremer, and some guy I don't know anything about (Sean O'Keefe) as possible replacements. I view Scowcroft as a great replacement, and therefore the least likely (I don't think he's on board with the neocon agenda).
Also see today's Washington Post for another damaging article, Iraq Flap Shakes Rice's Image:
"If Condi didn't know the exact state of intel on Saddam's nuclear programs . . . she wasn't doing her job," said Brookings Institution foreign policy specialist Michael E. O'Hanlon. "This was foreign policy priority number one for the administration last summer, so the claim that someone else should have done her homework for her is unconvincing.
But was her true mistake intelligence-related, or political?
When the controversy intensified earlier this month with a White House admission of error, Rice was the first administration official to place responsibility on CIA Director Tenet for the inclusion in Bush's State of the Union address of the Africa uranium charge. The White House now concedes that pinning responsibility on Tenet was a costly mistake. CIA officials have since made clear to the White House and to Congress that intelligence agencies had repeatedly tried to wave the White House off the allegation.
It's a damning article that, in conjunction with the inexorable pressure from Angry Bear, should turn up the heat on the Rice-cooker. (I've knew the time would come for a rice, rice-cooker, watched pot never boils type of line--it took six days but there it is).
AB
UPDATE: For more, see The Likely Story and Josh Marshall.
AB
The Blue Dress
Scarlet Pimpernel sends me this photo that she took on I-5, which runs through California and Washington:
But what does it mean? The message could be that we're all being screwed by the president, but which president? The current one? Or is the ClenisTM to blame?
On a related note, could "wearing the blue dress" become an official part of the lexicon, joining such great phrases as "screwing the pooch," "keeping your nose to the grindstone," and being "wet behind the ears"? The next time I screw something up, or perhaps after landing in a difficult situation, I'll say "boy, I was really wearing the blue dress on that one" or "damn, you've really got me in a blue dress on this one" and try to gauge the reaction.
AB
UPDATE: Another suggested usage: Condi Rice is in the blue dress now.
Domain Registration
How does one go about registering a parody site with a URL ending in ".gov"? Because this is clearly a parody site, right? Maybe you won't realize that it's a parody site just by going to the front page, but what else can explain this ? It leads with this line:
Good afternoon, or, as John Kerry might say: “Bonjour!”
Now, that's actually funny even though it's wildly innacurate (Kerry served in Vietnam with distinction; Tom DeLay alleges that he wanted to sign up but minorities--and apparently Democrats as well--took all the spots). What do you think, real or a parody? (Thanks to commenter sreg for the link).
AB
Also, Tom DeLay's redistricting plan for Texas has failed. See the details here.
Blogathon
Go Mary Beth! Go Jesse! And Go Drinking Guys!
AB
UPDATE: It's now 4:45 a.m. Eastern, Not Geniuses are still blogging strong, even if they've only reached their sixth beer. Jesse's still going, and finding really weird stuff. And Mary Beth's still going strong too; she thinks the site I talk about in the post above is not a parody (though she admits it took her ten minutes to reach that conclusion--with sleep, she could have figured it out sooner).
Edward Kennedy Wants Money
And I might have given it to him, until I read this in the solicitation: "Recently, Democrats led the successful charge to slash President Bush's massive tax cuts for the wealthy."
AB
Rice Watch Day 4
Guest-blogging for Altercation, David Sirota has a post, ”The Amazing Stories of Condoleezza Rice” (scroll down), that documents some of the inconsistencies in Rice's statements, dating all the way back to the spring of 2002.
AB
On a Roll
Is it just me, or is Dwight Meredith on a roll lately? I can explain the deficit in a clear and perhaps even convincing fashion, if you can stay awake throughout the entire post. Dwight makes it fun to read.
And, while I'm plugging, the non-evil Roger Ailes has a novel idea.
And, via TBogg, see this cartoon.
And, in case you haven't heard about the blogathon, it starts tomorrow: 24 hours of non-stop posting. Pandagon is blogging for Amnesty International (<==click to sponsor) and Wampum's MB is blogging for Cure Autism Now (<==click to sponsor). Mary Beth reports that "I've just been offered a challenge grant from a friend's business - If I reach the $1000 goal, he'll add another $500! So pull out your penny jars." That's right, by donating even a small amount, you could effectively be donating over $500!
AB
UPDATE: Getting very close now:
Wampum
Cure Autism Now
935.00 from 26 Sponsors
Sponsor this site
That leaves, as of 11:30 Eastern, "0 days, 9 hours, 3 minutes until Blogathon 2003".
DeLay Peace
DeLay is on his way to the Middle East to do what he can to prevent Palestinian statehood--even if the plan is acceptable to the hawkish prime minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon. Why? Apparently God wants him to:
As an evangelical Christian, he [DeLay] is the most prominent member in Washington of the Christian Zionist movement, a formidable bloc of conservative Republicans whose support for Israel is based on biblical interpretations, sometimes putting them to the right of Israeli government. His persistent skepticism about Mr. Bush's peace initiative indicates that the president may yet have to wrestle with his right flank in pursuing a plan that ultimately calls for a Palestinian state.
DeLay also may have tipped his hand on the real motivation for war in Iraq, parroting the Neo-Con line (though in fairness, the neocons put more emphasis on the shining example of democracy and less on intimidation):
"In the Arab world before 9/11, they thought the United States was a paper tiger," said Mr. DeLay, who will also make a brief visit to military commanders in Baghdad next week. "We had a president at the time whose retaliation at terrorism was throwing a few bombs in the desert. They laughed at that. And now they see this is real stuff and real power. And they respect power. If the experiment going on in Iraq comes off, it will have a huge, huge impact in the Arab world, showing people who want freedom and self-government and education that they can have it."
I guess if that doesn't work, then the next step is slaying the first-born?* I've been to DeLay's district, Sugarland; it's a nice suburb with nice people on the outskirts of Houston. But seriously, Sugarlanders: what the hell is wrong with you?
AB
*Passover: "Passover thus refers to when the Angel passed over the homes of the Jews during the 10th plague [Slaying of the First Born] so that their first-born children were not killed like those of the Egyptians. After the 10th plague, Ramses II released the Jews again."
Bush and Pelosi
As you may recall, the latest expansion of the child tax credit excluded low income families who pay little or no income taxes (although they pay payroll taxes). The Senate tried to extend the credit to all families, but the House blocked it. Bush is giving lip service to the Senate plan, but not pushing House Republicans to do anything. Here's Bush in the swing-state Pennsylvania trying to explain his deficit:
"We've got a deficit, as well, because I'm spending the money necessary to win the war...My attitude is when we put our troops in harm's way, they deserve the best."
On Bush's first point, see this post (and here). On the second point, let's check in with Nancy Pelosi:
"Mr. President: Be honest. Twelve million children, including 250,000 children of active-duty military families, are not getting these checks. They want to know what you are going to do about it besides pose for pretty pictures. They want you to get the House Republicans to expand the child tax credit now."
Look for House Republicans to fold on this sometime today. Although I think that if they could swing it, the Republicans would only extend the child tax credits in Michigan and Pennsylvania, two states Bush narrowly lost in 2000. I will at least give Bush credit for finally being honest and saying that the economy was "sliding into recession", rather than "in a recession", when he took office (not that he was able to stop the slide).
AB
Uday Qusay Hussein Dead Jokes
Skimming my traffic logs, I see that I'm getting a lot of hits from morbid people searching Google for "Uday Qusay Hussein dead jokes", even though this site sin't particularly relevant for that. The problem is that I've got jokes about the Green Party (e.g., here), and I have a post about the deaths of Uday and Qusay, so Google thinks that I'm the fifth most relevant hit on the web for such jokes. Nothing's perfect.
In any event, welcome, accidental visitors. I don't have any jokes specifically on topic, but to avoid making your visit a complete waste, I offer you these (there are many more here):
AB
Rice Watch Day 3
Via Josh Marshall, this from Rice's top aide Stephen Hadley in a Tuesday, July 22, 2003 White House Q&A:
"Memo number two" refers to the second of two memos that the CIA sent to the NSC; each explained that the CIA (and the State Department) didn't find the Niger allegations credible. This is Dr. Rice back on June 8th, 2003, on Meet the Press:Question: But as of memo number two, certainly Dr. Rice was aware of the concerns, the CIA --
Hadley: What we know is, again, a copy of the memo comes to the Situation Room, it's sent to Dr. Rice, it's sent -- and that's it. You know, I can't tell you she read it. I can't even tell you she received it. But in some sense, it doesn't matter. Memo sent, we're on notice.
We did not know at the time--no one knew at the time, in our circles- -maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the Agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery.
In last Saturday's Washington Post, the two Danas (Milbank and Priest) reported that
President Bush and his national security adviser [Condoleezza Rice] did not entirely read the most authoritative prewar assessment of U.S. intelligence on Iraq, including a State Department claim that an allegation Bush would later use in his State of the Union address was "highly dubious," White House officials said yesterday......the document also included a pointed dissent by the State Department, which said the evidence did not "add up to a compelling case" that Iraq was making a comprehensive effort to get nuclear weapons.
...[A senior administration official said,] "They did not read footnotes in a 90-page document," said the official, referring to the "Annex" that contained the State Department's dissent.
I'm not quite sure what an annex is, but I'm assuming this means either that the National Intelligence Estimate had endnotes in an "annex", rather than footnotes. Alternatively, the objections from State (and also the Dept. of Energy) were in an appendix, which does after all start and end with the same letters as "annex". Now, I can readily accept President Bush taking a briefing on the report rather than reading the entire document--that's what high level staff are for. But to say that Rice did not read it? Either it's the height of dereliction of responsibilities, or an outright lie. And neither scenario makes Rice look good. (See also this post).
AB
P.S. Marshall also links me to this great Slate piece by Tim Noah, which has another quote from Hadley: "Condi wants it clearly understood that she feels a personal responsibility for not recognizing the potential problem presented by those 16 words." Be sure to read all the way to the end.
UPDATE: Skimming Suburban Guerrilla, I found an interesting Clinton quote from his recent appearance with Bob Dole on Larry King:
Well, here's what happens: every day the president gets a daily brief from the CIA. And then, if it's some important issue -- and believe me, you know, anything having to do with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons became much more important to everybody in the White House after September the 11 -- then they probably told the president, certainly Condoleezza Rice.
On balance, Clinton was on Bush's side on this issue, saying,
But this State of the Union deal, they decided to use the British intelligence. The president said it was British intelligence. Then they said on balance they shouldn't have done it. You know, everybody makes mistakes when they are president.
But the first quote really takes away from the plausibility of Rice's "bowels" statement (see above).
Ouch
There's some language that reflects rather poorly on FBI Director Freeh (emphasis in original):
...Rule 6(e) restricts the disclosure of information actually revealed in the confidence of the grand jury chamber. This prohibition, however, does not actually reach other information in the possession of law enforcement entities......Sadly, however, Rule 6(e) increasingly came to be used simply as an excuse for not sharing information...for years, it was routine FBI and DOJ practice to respond to virtually any Intelligence Community requests for information with the answer that "Rule 6(e)" prevented any response...
...Indeed, by this account, NSC officials met with Attorney General Reno in 1993 about the obstacles this dynamic presented for counterterrorism analysis. "Although the issue was revisited many times over the next four years," nothing happened: "The FBI balked at the proposal, and [Attorney General] Reno, although she was [FBI Director] Louis Freeh's boss, could never bring him around."
This from Republican Senator Richard C. Shelby's statement on. pp 93-94 of the Additional Views of Members of the Joint Inquiry
You may recall Freeh from memorable episodes such as Wen Ho Lee, Robert Hanssen, Richard Jewel, not catching Eric Rudolph, and his clashes with Janet Reno over whether to appoint another independent council appointed to investigate Democratic fundraising practices in 1996—requests that Reno denied. In the plus column, Freeh's FBI did quickly identify and then capture Oklahoma City bomber Timoth McVeigh.
AB
9/11 Report
If you have a lot of time on your hands, the full 950 page report is available here. For a pdf of the summary, click here.
AB
UPDATE: I've read the summary now. Some of the findings in the report are fairly disturbing. The report explicitly avoids saying that 9/11 was preventable, but other than that, the words are un-minced:
…On July 10, 2001, an FBI Phoenix field office agent sent an "Electronic Communication" to 4 individuals in the Radical Fundamentalist Unit (RFU) and two people in the Usama Bin Ladin Unit (UBLU) at FBI headquarters, and to two agents on International Terrorism squads in the New York Field Office. In the communication, the agent expressed his concerns, based on his first-hand knowledge, that there was a coordinated effort underway by Bin Ladin to send students to the United States for civil aviation-related training. He noted that there was an "inordinate number of individuals of investigative interest" in this type of training in Arizona and expressed his suspicion that this was an effort to establish a cadre of individuals in civil aviation who would conduct future terrorist activity. The Phoenix EC requested that the FBI headquarters consider implementing four recommendations:
- accumulate a list of civil aviation university/colleges around the country;
- establish liaison with these schools
- discuss the theories contained in the Phoenix EC with the intelligence Community; and
- consider seeking authority to obtain visa information concerning individuals seeking to attend flight schools.
However, the FBI headquarters personnel did not take the action requested by the Phoenix agent prior to September 11, 2001. The communication generated little or no interest at either FBI Headquarters or the FBI's New York field office.
_________...Prior to September 11, the Intelligence Community had information linking Khalid Shaykh Mohammed (KSM), now recognized by the Intelligence Community as the mastermind of the attacks, to Bin Ladin to terrorist plans to use aircraft as weapons, and to terrorist activity in the United States.
_________...Despite intelligence reporting from 1998 through the summer of 2001 indicating that Usama Bin Ladin's terrorist network intended to strike inside the United States, the United States government did not undertake a comprehensive effort to implement defensive measures in the United States.
Must-Watch Daily Show
You should probably be watching the Daily Show anyway, because Jon Stewart is more informative than Larry King any day of the week. In any event, tonight's Daily Show guest is none other that Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who first outed the SOTU deception and whose wife was apparently outed as a CIA agent in return by the administration.
AB
Look! Over there! Photographs of Quday and Usay!
That didn't take long (warning: if you follow the link you'll see fairly graphic pictures). From Fox News, Uday, Qusay Pictures Released:
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon released pictures Thursday of the bodies of Saddam Hussein's (search) much-feared sons.ABThe extremely graphic photographs were distributed on CD- ROM in Baghdad, where many news wire services have reporters stationed. The pictures later were distributed to other news outlets...
Green and Greenerer
Matt Yglesias linked to my original Green post and got some good responses from Greens, former Greens, and Democrats really angry with the Greens. CalPundit got even more comments on the same topic here. In my comments, as well as theirs, one line of argument keeps resurfacing from the Greens: "If only Gore and the DNC would have thrown us a bone or two in 2000, we would have voted for him." And I just can't for the life of me figure out how they felt that Gore didn't offer them anything more than Bush did. Most notably, Gore is very strong on the environment (e.g., Love Canal. See also his book).
Here's a quick list off the top of my head of "bones" that were thrown to the alleged progressives in the Green Party. Note that each of these were known well before 9/11, so the line that the attacks changed everything is not a good excuse:
Republicans are against all of these things--always have been and always will be. Plus, Gore had a lockbox. The only substantive issue that the Greens disagreed with Gore on was free trade and NAFTA. Bush purported to also be in favor of free trade, so they were about the same on that one issue (though we quickly saw that free trade only gets lip service from Bush if the threatened domestic industry is in a swing state--Steel and Textile tariffs). And even on free trade, which party is more likely to tie MFN status to things like worker safety and child labor restrictions?
So does Green opposition to free trade outweigh all the rest? If that's your case for working to elect Bush, then make that argument. But saying the parties' economic and social policies are the same is just wrong. I really just don't get it. Seriously, what's the objective? To say "Ha Ha! You're all the same!" as the progressive tax code, economy, deficit, environment, and international relations all go to crap?
AB
P.S. It's not technically a joke, but since Molly Ivins wrote it, it's funny and apt (and Ivins supported Nader, just not in swing states):
My voting philosophy is simple: In the primaries, go with your heart; in the finals, vote your brain.
As a veteran Texas voter, I am an artist in the art of lesser-evilism. I have voted for more dreary, worthless characters than I care to recall, on the excellent grounds that they were a shade better than the other guy in the race. And what I have learned is that the lesser of two evils `does' make a difference, especially to those of us on the margins of society.
To put it inelegantly, we live in a society where the sewage flows downhill, and those on the bottom are drowning in it. To those who are barely keeping their noses above the sewage, it makes all the difference in the world whether, for example, you pass an awful welfare reform bill or you pass an awful welfare reform bill with an especially nasty amendment by Phil Gramm attached to it.
Veto Proof
F.C.C. Media Rule Blocked in House in a 400-to-21 Vote
WASHINGTON, July 23 — The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed legislation today to block a new rule supported by the Bush administration that would permit the nation's largest television networks to grow bigger by owning more stations.
The vote, which was 400 to 21, sets the stage for a rare confrontation between the Republican-controlled Congress and the White House, because there is strong support in the Senate for similar measures, which seek to roll back last month's decision by the Federal Communications Commission to raise the limit on the number of television stations a network can own.
I think that a margin this large leaves the White House little room to follow through on its veto threat, however. So it looks like the rules change is dead.
I was also curious to see who the 21 opposers were, so I went to the roll call vote. Not too much exciting in terms of who voted against the bill. There were five Democrats, but no big names. The only big names Republicans voting against were Oxley and Tauzin. Now apparently recovered from his brush with death (in the form of 71-year old fruitcake-yelling Rep. Pete Stark), Rep. Scott MicInnis was also able to vote against the bill.
More interesting than who voted against was this name in the list of representatives who did not vote: Dick Gephardt. I know Gephardt is campaigning and all, but this was a pretty big issue to Democrats, particularly the ones most likely to vote in the primaries.
AB
Blogs in The Boston Globe
The Globe has a story on political blogs that you might find interesting. Oliver Willis gets a big plug, as does Howard Dean's blog. Unlike other stories on blogging that I've seen in the press, there's not much to disagree with in this one. The story also raises a question I ask myself sometimes:
But as the mass of online opinion grows, some skeptics question whether every supporter's passing thought deserves a public platform, or whether the musings of an almost anonymous voter are worth reading. Even among the wired, there is a debate over whether blogs are a new form of discourse or simply an endless feedback loop, a self-enclosed circle of political junkies echoing and challenging one another.
AB
Rice Watch Day 2
Josh Marshall reports (permalink broken, scroll down to "Interesting insider info") that today's Nelson Report says this:
...yesterday, Hadley performed a virtual repeat of Tenet's highly qualified "taking responsibility" pose by making it clear that if he has to take a fall, then Ms. Rice needs to explain why she didn't read the memos he gave her.
As one Administration source put it, privately, today: "Between Tenet and Hadley, Condi now has the choice of saying she's a fool, or a liar…if not both. Bottom line is she failed to protect the President…look at all this lame stuff about him not being a 'fact checker'. It's just incredible."
The underlined part sounds a lot like what I said when I started the Rice Watch. The report also says that "...a source reported talk of trying to replace Tenet with Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz; replacing Wolfowitz with Hadley..." Yikes.
AB
Look! Over there! Photographs of Quday and Usay!
Just thought I'd get that over with since you'll be hearing it a lot over the coming weeks in response to any questions about the conduct of the war, faulty intelligence, how said intelligence got into the SOTU speech, the White House outing a CIA agent, and so forth.
Note: The phrase is from a post by Eschaton's Lambert.
AB
UPDATE: To wit, check out this NYT headline: "Deaths of Hussein's Sons Allow Change of Subject".
Green Update
Tomasky has a new story in the American Prospect, "Gang Green: The Democrats can cure their Ralph Nader problem by attacking him -- immediately and ferociously." Tomasky writes
First, if it was the intention of Nader voters in New York or Massachusetts (or any state Al Gore was certain to win in 2000) to send a message to the Democrats, that's an understandable and respectable intention. But as the Christian Coalition model shows, such messages are far more effectively sent inside the party than outside it-- the Greens really influence almost nothing in this country, whereas the Christian Coalition, with its power in the GOP, influences almost everything."
Tomsaky speculates that about half of Nader's 2.8 million voters in 2000 are beyond redemption, but that the other half--the one that learned that some is better than none--is amenable to reason. What should the Democratic candidates for president do about this? Attack Nader early and often, and in the process, shore up centrist credentials:
Attack Nader right now, and with lupine ferocity. Say he's a madman for thinking of running again. Blast him especially hard on foreign policy, saying that if it were up to the Greens, America would give no aid to Israel and it would cease to exist, and if it were up to the Greens, America would not have even defended itself against a barbarous attack by going into Afghanistan. Have at him, and hard, from the right. Then nail him from the left on certain social issues, on abortion rights and other things that he's often pooh-poohed and dismissed as irrelevant. Cause an uproar. Be dramatic. Don't balance it with praise about what he's done for consumers. To the contrary, talk about how much he's damaging consumers today by not caring who's in charge of the Food and Drug Administration or the Federal Communications Commission.
Well, Mr. Tomasky, I'm not running for president and I'm not sure that I can convey "lupine ferocity" in a blog, but I'll give it a shot.
AB
UPDATE: See this CalPundit post for more.
Condoleezza Watch Day One
I was tempted to start the watch back on July 6th when I made this post, but I thought it was premature. Now, via Atrios, I see that Rice's top assistant, Stephen Hadley, is trying to do a George Tenet:
"'I have failed in that responsibility,' Hadley said during the off-camera briefing at the White House today. 'The high standards the president sets for his speech were not met.'"
I don't think blaming Hadley will work, because if he really has culpability for the questionable uranium and aluminum tube references, then it's nearly impossible for Condoleezza Rice not to have known how sketchy the claims were. Moreover, Hadley didn't "fail in a responsibility", he actively abrogated his responsibilities, according to Josh Marshall who wrote this on July 13th:
...the real question is less whether Tenet's CIA didn't push hard enough to keep bogus information out of the president's speech as why others were pushing so hard to keep it in...Rice's efforts to work her way out of this tight knot of logic -- especially the new revelation that George Tenet personally told her deputy, Stephen Hadley, to keep the uranium canard out of a speech in October -- were, to put it mildly, pathetic. The fact that the CIA Director had to intervene personally with the Deputy National Security Advisor [Stephen Hadley} to get the bogus information out of an earlier speech raises the obvious question: just how many times did the Agency have to warn the White House off the bogus uranium claim before they got the message and stopped trying to put it into the president's mouth?
Hadley's statement just puts the blame closer to Bush, and directly at Rice's feet. Can she really say that she knowingly let Bush put faulty intelligence in the SOTU, yet not resign? Also problematic for Rice is that on July 11 she said that no one at her level knew of the CIA's doubts about the Niger intelligence. For that to be true, it must be the case that her top deputy was not keeping her aprised of intelligence regarding Iraq's nuclear capabilities--outrageous if true, but more likely preposterous. So the Rice Resignation Watch starts today.
AB
UPDATE: Atrios has more, including then and now statements from Rice.
Green Joke Update
I have the first submission, and it made me laugh out loud (via blogger Alex Frantz):
Q: How many Greens does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: There's no important difference between darkness and the so-called light that is created by destructive multinational corporations. The only real answer is to pruduce natural light that doesn't depend on global capitalism, by burning down the house.
If I get to five, I'll start an archive. Phrasing in the form of a lightbulb joke is optional.
AB
Dead Sons
I suppose that the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein constitute good news, particularly insofar as Saddam's sons were actively encouraging attacks on U.S. soldiers and Iraqi infrastructure. Capturing them might have been better, but it appears that they were determined to go down shooting. It does seem bit odd that they were in Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, because of the large number of Christians and Kurds in the city (Mosul is in Northern Iraq, about 60 miles from the Turkish border). Indeed, current reports indicate that a "walk-in" informant that lead them to the sons, but I haven't yet heard the ethnicity of the informant.
Already on CNN and MSNBC I've heard multiple pundits speculate or claim that these deaths are likely to reduce attacks on U.S. soldiers and other forms of resistance. Hopefully, these predictions are right, but it seems rather optimistic. Baghdad is reportedly one of the more problematic cities, and it's over 200 miles away from Mosul, so it seems unlikely that resistance in Baghdad is reliant upon Uday or Qusay. Tikrit, Saddam's home town, is also a problematic city, but it's over 100 miles from where Uday and Qusay were found.
In an even bigger stretch, I caught the tail end of former CIA Directory James Woolsey on MSNBC. Woolsey was arguing that as a result of the deaths of Saddam's sons, previously intimidated scientists will now come out and tell inspectors where the WMD are. I would think by now that the pro-war crowd would stop saying that WMD are just around the corner, and simply wait and hope quietly.
AB
Green Jokes (and a small rant)
Back in the day, I remember a wide array of jokes that played on the alleged stupidity of either Aggies or Polish people. I suppose that the times have changed enough that such jokes are no longer fashionable in polite company. But there's a viable alternative for those of you in need of a group of actual buffoons that you can mock without fear of denigrating any racial, ethnic, gender, or alumni group: The Green Party.
Lest you think I overstate the case, take a look at this press release announcing the Greens' intention to run a presidential candidate next year. Or witness the formation of this circular firing squad:
Both [Green Party meetings] were closed to the news media. But participants said the discussions came to at least a symbolic close when they were asked to stand in different parts of the room depending on how they felt about the presidential race.
Those who wanted a presidential candidate who would run the strongest possible campaign were asked to stand in one area. Those who wanted someone who would run only in areas where electoral votes would not be pulled from the Democratic presidential candidate stood in another. Those who wanted to skip the race altogether and, instead, support the Democratic candidate stood in yet another.
The unusual exercise was intended to help participants visualize where the highly decentralized and often fractious party stood, literally and figuratively, on the issue.
Guess which zone had the most Greenies? As I recall, there are actually some good things on the Green platform, though I'm too annoyed right now to dig up or cite any. But the "Republicans and Democrats are the same" B.S. that the diehard Greens still spew is now thoroughly discredited--go tell it to, e.g., thousands of dead Iraqis, families of dead American soldiers, or the millions of newly unemployed. Running a candidate in 2004 will only highlight how wrong the Greens are on this point; the terrible results of the candidate they run will only underscore the ineffectiveness of the current Green Party strategy. Yet still, .2%-1% of the vote could swing a tight state and thus the 2004 election, which explains my anger rather than usual amusement with the Greens.
If you know any Greens and you live in a contested state, I encourage you to spend a good chunk of the next 1.5 years tossing them the front page and asking them, "Happy now?"
Back to the issue at hand, making Greens the politically correct butt of jokes, I offer you this from Ted Barlow's Lightbulb Joke Warehouse (scroll down):
Q: How many Green party voters does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Dude, we shouldn't have to change light bulbs. GE has this secret lab in Costa Rica, and they made a light bulb out of hemp that totally lasts forever.
Add yours in my underused comments.
AB
P.S. Sometimes the jokes write themselves. Prospective presidential nominee Carol Miller of New Mexico (a close Gore-win in 2000) said, "I think Bush and Cheney are probably not going to run [in 2004]. There are very troubling accusations [about Iraq]." She then finished smoking her hemp sandals and proceeded outside to wait for Leon Trotsky, Abbie Hoffman, and St. Francis of Assisi to give her a ride home in their hydrogen-powered solar eco-carriage.
P.P.S. In fairness to some Greens, see RepentantNaderVoter.com (and their Ten Reasons Why Bush is So Bad).
And Now in Words
For anyone who gets tired of charts, graphs, and excessive numbers, Dwight Meredith uses compelling prose to lay out the current budget deficit situation. Even if you are a chart and numbers kind of person, go read it. And, most of all, if you think everything the government touches is a waste, read Dwight's post and decide what should go in order to fund Bush's tax cuts (assuming that the U.S. is unwilling to repudiate its debt, today's deficits are only deferred tax hikes or spending cuts--at some point, taxes must go up or services down).
If you really want to cut spending, I'll help you get started: how about increasing the retirement age by one month per year for the next 30 years (to 67.5)?
AB
More Deficit Data
I just came across OMBwatch, another good site for those excited by data on federal revenue and spending. There, I found a page devoted to "Interpreting the Return to Budget Deficits". The analysis and findings are similar to my earlier post, but with more detail and some additional graphs. In OMBwatch's estimation,
There are several reasons for the dramatic deterioration of the budget situation. The primary cause has been the dramatic decline in revenues, which have dropped to 16.3% of GDP – the lowest level since 1959. To a lesser extent increased expenditures, especially on military activities, have played a role as well.
Part of this can be explained by a weak economy, and part by the tax cuts enacted over the past three years. However, the recession that began in March 2001 was, by historical standards, relatively mild. In addition, recent recessions have not seen revenue declines of nearly the same magnitude as the current recession (see Figure 4.) This suggests that a large part of the revenue reduction was due to enacted tax legislation.
Using conservative numbers, I allocated approximately 53.3% of the blame to the tax cuts, which seems supported by this report (full disclosure: OMBwatch is not non-partisan; based on its "what we do" and "who we are" pages, it's clearly a lefty think tank. Still, the deficit numbers are sufficiently straightforward that I think this particular analysis can be taken at face value).
And the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (which is non-partisan, though some might judge it center-left) has a similar analysis, "SANITIZING THE GRIM NEWS: The Administration's Efforts to Make Harmful Deficits Appear Benign." This report leads with this:
"...a number of policymakers on Capitol Hill this week began describing the deficits as 'spending driven' and arguing that tax cuts had nothing to do with the deterioration of the budget outlook. This analysis seeks to draw a more balanced picture of the causes and implications of current and future deficits."Then, in a section titled Tax Cuts or Spending Increases?, the CBPP concludes that
and then concludes thatOMB’s own figures in the Mid-Session Review show that tax cuts account for 54 percent of the cost over the 2002-2008 period of all legislation that has been enacted since the Administration took office or that the Administration is now proposing. In other words, under Administration policies, tax cuts will account for the majority of the deterioration in the budget caused by actions taken by policymakers."
"...A final point is that many of the recent spending increases that have been instituted are not truly elective. The nation had little choice but to rebuild after 9/11 or to strengthen homeland security. Large, permanent tax cuts do not qualify as necessities for the nation in the way that some of the spending increases do."
IndeedTM to both analyses.
AB
P.S. In other news, Matt Yglesias is back and appears to be in full pre-Europe force.
It All Depends on What Constitutes an Imminent Threat
By now, you've probably heard about the House Republicans--specifically Rep. Bill Thomas--calling the cops on the Democrats, or rather one Democrat. Eschaton's Lambert has the money-quote from an Austin-American Statesman piece on the incident:
Republicans defended Thomas, saying he had no choice but to call in police to head off physical attacks they said appeared imminent from Rep. Fortney "Pete" Stark, a 71-year-old Democrat from California.
The Republicans allege that Stark was threatening 50 year old Colorado Representative Scott McInnus (left). Mr. McInnis' biography states that, "Prior to serving in Congress, McInnis worked as a police officer and a family attorney in Glenwood Springs," and that he "was named Man of the Year by the Korean Veterans Association." Each of these occurred prior to his recent fit of cowardice in the face of the 71 year-old Stark. Here are the two principals--note the beady menacing eyes of Rep. Stark (right):
Also, Stark was the only Democrat in the room at the time, as the other Dems were in the Ways and Means Committee Library discussing various strategies that might allow them to actually review a bill before voting on it (Republicans delivered a new draft of a bill on changing pension rules shortly before midnight on Thursday, then sought to force a vote early on Friday; the altercation broke out when Democrats resisted).
So, to recap:
Sounds at least as reasonable as some other justifications for confrontation that I've heard recently from Republicans.
AB
UPDATE: Jesse reports that the odds Stark was facing were actually 9 to 1. Jesse also has the full "wimp and fruitcake" quote from Rep. Stark; based on the quote, it looks like Stark made the statements before the police arrived.
One in Fifty-One Republican Senators Agree with Angry Bear
"To just throw George Tenet's body from the train and say, 'That takes care of the problem,' I don't think is the way to do this."
Hagel pointed to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Vice President Dick Cheney as part of the process that led to Bush including the report in the annual presidential address.
AB
Good News
Unfortunately, 37 + 16 is still 53, but this is still a step in the right direction:
The same poll also reports that Bush's approval rating is down 8 points to 55%, a small majority say the president is mishandling the economy, only 40% say the Iraq campaign has been a success, and 46% of respondents claim it is unlikely that they will support Bush in the 2004 election (with 50% likely).
AB
Axing Private Lynch
In a move surely unrelated to "fatigue, stress, mechanical malfunctions and a disastrous series of errors" being much less exciting than an ambush, attack, and heroic soldier defending herself with every bullet in her revolver, CBS is cancelling its Private Lynch movie. CBS Chairman Leslie Moonves also admits that the apparent quid pro quo of offering a movie of the week in exchange for an interview may have been "over the line":
"As these companies [CBS News and CBS Entertainment] become more and more vertically integrated, you know, sometimes you do go over the line."
If Mr. Moonves had reached that conclusion a bit earlier he might have saved Viacom $1.7 million in 2002 campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures leading into the FCC's media ownership rules changes vote this year.
AB
This is Just Weird
Ten years later, there are still people who question Vince Foster's death. This (and this) definitely won't hasten the waning of the press maelstrom:
The BBC confirmed today that Dr. David Kelly, the British weapons expert who committed suicide on Thursday, was the source for a story on doctoring intelligence files that led to a highly publicized running battle between the broadcaster and the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair.
This quote refers to the 'sexed up' quote (as in "intelligence was 'sexed up' to maximize the apparent threat posed by Saddam"). Just two days before his death, Kelly denied the BBC's allegation before a Parliament committee.
AB
Better Late than Never
I just caught a recent Spinsanity piece on the spinning of the deficit. They have a great exchange from McClellan's first day:
Q: One more thing, if I may. You had a laundry list, basically, about what has contributed to the deficit, and you didn't include the tax cuts in there. Was that an oversight?
MR. McCLELLAN: No, no. Again, there's going to be a full briefing on there. But, clearly, it was, you know, the slower economic recovery and weak stock market that caused revenues to decline, which explains the biggest change that you'll see in our budget position -- followed by cost of war and the economic growth plan.
Oops! Must have slipped his mind. A recession would in fact explain some of the big drop off in revenue--except that GDP has not fallen (see this post). And blaming the weak stock market for the drop off in revenue is also a stretch because so much stock is held in nontaxable accounts (IRAs and endowments) that a decline in the market has a disproportionately small impact on tax revenues.
Spinsanity's got a lot more, including some additional analysis of what portion of the deficit is attributable to Iraq and Afghanistan.
AB
A Half-Answer Creates More Questions
Back when the White House first said the African Uranium line should not have been in the SOTU, the NYT's telling of the tale included this:
How Mr. Bush's statement made it into last January's State of the Union address is still unclear. No one involved in drafting the speech will say who put the phrase in, or whether it was drawn from the classified intelligence estimate.
At the time (7/8/03), I said, "I also think that the vagaries and unanswered questions in the admission--not saying how the mistake was made or who made it--means that the issue probably won't die in the press as quickly as the administration hopes. And rightly so." As it turned out, I was right.
Now the AP reports that "White House Releases Documents on Iraq Flap", and it again looks like they are creating more questions than they are answering:
The Bush administration released the material -- a sanitized version of the top-secret National Intelligence Estimate prepared for the president -- as it sought to shield Bush from rising criticism that he misled the public in making his case for war with Iraq in his Jan. 28 speech.Administration aides suggested that the eight pages of excerpts, out of 90 in the document, demonstrate that the notion that Saddam was trying to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program permeated the U.S. intelligence community -- and was not just based on a suspect British intelligence report that relied in part on forged documents.
8 out of 90 pages? I can't wait for the stories and leaks about what's in the other 82 pages. I'm picturing redacting along the lines of "...there are reports of Iraq trying to buy uranium from Africa, but these reports are at best unsubstantiated and likely to be completely false."
AB
Blaming Tenet
I've heard Lieberman call for Tenet's resignation, and now apparently Dean is joining him. I see two major problems with this. First, it really doesn't seem like Tenet's fault that the bad intelligence made it into the SOTU. It's clearly the responsibility of the NSC. Ultimately, the responsibility is the President's, notwithstanding new Press Secretary Scott McClellan's best efforts not to admit it. The second problem with calling for Tenet to resign is that doing so makes it more likely that this issue will fade away without obtaining the resignation, or at least acknowledgement of responsibility, of those who are at fault.
AB
Which is it?
Skimming the headlines, I spotted this: "Resistance to Aids virus is growing, say scientists." That's good, I thought. Then I read the first sentence of the story:
The Aids virus is becoming increasingly resistant to the drugs used to treat it, researchers said yesterday.
This story is in the British paper The Independent, leading me to suspect that the headline writers were previously employed by Prime Minister Blair as reviewers of intelligence reports on Iraqi nuclear programs.
AB
The Press Herd
Bob Somerby has been taking some heat for criticizing the way the press is covering the allegations of intentional deception by Bush. Somerby doesn't have problems with critical stories per se, but rather that they bury or fail to present the presiden'ts side of the story (i.e., that he wasn't talking about Niger and that the British stand by their intelligence). I agree: if a journalist is going to lead a story with allegations that the president lied, the president's side should at least be told, and told up front. Imagine how different the world might be today had Gore received that courtesy.
This clearly is not liberal bias. If a journalist were out to get the president, it would be much more effective to state the president's case and then dissect it. Instead, it's just plain laziness. Once it gets started, the idea that Bush lied is simple to write, sells papers, and so everybody is writing it. And if a story or headline has to be slanted a bit to fit the story line, then so be it.
What brings the issue to mind now is this story in the NYT: In Ohio, Iraq Questions Shake Even Some of Bush's Faithful. See? Even in conservative Ohio, full of the Bush "Faithful", the faith of the faithful is being shaken! It makes a nice story, but it's not true.
Clinton won Ohio in 1992 and 1996. Both of Ohio's Senators are Republican, but moderate (Sen. Voinovich briefly opposed Bush's tax cut before folding like a towel on laundry day). And in 2000, Bush did win Ohio, but it was close: 49.9 to 46.5 with Nader pulling in 2.5% of the vote and Buchanan .6%. Wake me up when Bush starts getting a hard time in Wyoming (67.8%), Texas (59.3%), Oklahoma (60.3%), or Montana (58.4%).
AB
P.S. An intresting bit of information I picked up while checking out the numbers: Gore carried the District of Columbia 85% to 9%!
UPDATE: Eschaton contributor The Farmer puts the laziness and ineptitude of the press into historical context here.
There's Nothing Like Data
Tom DeLay says spending is causing the deficit. Is he right? What's really causing the deficit? War? Recession? Spending? Tax Cuts? Some of each? If the latter, how much of each?
To take a quick look at some of these issues, I grabbed data on Federal Revenue, Spending, and GDP from 1992-2004E. First, the Revenue and Spending Numbers. Note that the Bush budgets and tax plans were in effect from roughly 2002 onward (Spending in 2001 was authored by Clinton; Bush's 2001 rebate did cut into what 2001 revenue was under Clinton's budget).
First, in raw numbers (inflation has been modest, so while these are not inflation-adjusted, doing so would only have a minor effect). Under Bush, Federal Spending has skyrocketed. It was $1.86 trillion under Clinton's last budget but 2.01 trillion under Bush's first budget. Under Bush's third budget (authored with a Republican House, Republican Senate, and Republican White House), spending will be $2.27 trillion. That's a 22% increase over Clinton's last year, at most 3-5% of which is due to inflation. Now that's big government. How to pay for all of this?
Certainly not with tax revenue. That's down from $2 trillion in 2001 to $1.8 trillion in 2004. But that must be the fault of the recession, right? Wrong. Here are the GDP numbers:
2000: $9.7 trillion; 2001: $10 trillion; 2002: $10.34 trillion; 2003: $10.76 trillion; 2004E: $11.3 trillion.
So while slow and accompanied by rising unemployment, growth is still positive, meaning the tax base of national income increased. The only mechanism by which terrorism could affect revenue, as opposed to spending, is by reducing GDP, and that just hasn't happened. The only explanation is the Bush Tax Cuts. If we're not paying for the Bush spending now, when do we pay? Later, starting right around when the Baby Boomers retire.
But maybe our ability to pay is also increasing, so that as a percent of GDP, the increased spending and deficit are not so bad? Wrong. Bush increased spending as a percent of GDP from about 18.5% to over 20% (and inflation affects both the numerator and denominator equally and so is not a factor). But he did get the tax burden way down, from over 20% to 16%. But there are no free lunches. If spending is over 20% of GDP and revenue is 16% of GDP, that gap has to be paid at some point. But the bill will come after the 2004 election, and Bush is hoping you are too stupid to realize that (click to enlarge).
Back to the original issue of what caused the deficit, it's not the recession because the tax base has not fallen. The Wars on Terror and Iraq amount to at most $100b per year, so that without them, spending in 2003 might have been 19.63% of GDP instead of 20.56%--still well above the 18.6% mark in Clinton's last budget. So at most 20% of the deficit can be tied to terrorism (and that's just the sort of unforseen need Democrats were referring to when arguing, in vain, against Bush's tax cut). And that's perhaps generous, since it increasingly appears that the War on Iraq was discretionary spending by the Bush administration, rather than anti-terrorism spending. Of the 80% of the deficit not related to terrorism, roughly 1/3 of the blame goes to increased spending and 2/3 to the Bush tax cuts, resulting in this approximate allocation of responsibility (click to enlarge):
AB
Data Sources:
DeLay Speaks
On the giant Bush deficits, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) says the deficit is "a spending-driven deficit." DeLay is actually partly right here--spending increased somewhere around 9% over the last two years, but that's only around $100 billion. The other $400 billion of projected deficits must have come from somewhere... massive tax cuts for the wealthy--cuts that do little to stimulate the economy. And, throughout that time, the Republicans controlled the House and White House and now control the Senate as well. Yet still, they will blame the spending on the Democrats. The same story has another amusing bit of information: back in April of 2001 when BUsh was pushing his first tax cut the White House projected a surplus of $242 billion for 2003. They were off by over $600 billion!
DeLay on appropriating Homeland Security resources to help his now-faltering Texas redistricting efforts:
"The IG report went and pointed out exactly what we did. We asked for publicly available information. In fact, I think the report pointed out that in order to answer our questions, they went to the Internet to get the answers quicker than they could going through their own processes."
Of course, the IG report also said that non-public information was used. Also, staff in the Dept. of Homeland Security were gathering that public and non-public information on DeLay's behalf instead of, say, protecting the country from terrorism.
AB
UPDATE: typo corrected to read "$400 billion". Thanks RW.
