|
For The Trees
Who is our economy FOR, anyway? About the Authors: Dave Johnson John Emerson Richard Reich Thomas Leavitt
Recent Posts: BEST OF STF: Dave's: Articles not at STF: The ATLA Speech on building a progressive infrastructure Lowering the Bar The Attack on Trial Lawyers and Tort Law Who's Behind the Attack on Liberal Professors On the Right and their communications infrastructure: Why Republicans Win Win or Lose The "Conventional Wisdom" Machine Some History of the Conservative Movement HOW TO FIGHT BACK An Amplifier Of Our Own Don't Blame the Democrats How They Do It 1 2 3 4 Getting Rolled Other: You're Gonna Get Drafted Scalia and Self-Government Who is Our Economy For? Voting Machine Story Link Collection What's Wrong with this Picture? (Voting Machines) Like Meat in the Supermarket Get Active Thin Line 1 2 3 Fixing Social Security Seeing the Forest I, II, III "Incredibly Positive News" The Breadth of It The Republican Crony Club Moon Bush Ralph Nader is a Scab John's Best Of: Kerry Smear Page Bandar Bush 9/11 Commission Report Damages Bush -- if you read it Florida Goon Squad Intimidated the Supreme Court The Use and Abuse of George Orwell Zizka's Archives (John's previous identity) Zizka Sampler News Sources: AlterNet BuzzFlash Common Dreams Cursor Drudge Retort Information Clearing House Smirking Chimp TruthOut What REALLY Happened Links to Other Weblogs: |
 10/31/2004 Robert F. Kennedy on Vietnam I've been flipping through "The Vietnam Reader: Articles and Documents on American Foreign Policy and the Viet-nam Crisis" (revised edition, 1967). Most of the articles were written early on in the conflict (at least those that I've scanned so far). The parallels between Viet-Nam and Iraq at this point, in terms of the justifications for continued involvement, and the difficulties inherent in achieving a successful resolution along the lines originally envisioned are all too clear. Strikingly so, in fact--for some of the passages, all that is needed to make them relevant to today's conflict is to substitute "Iraq" for "Viet-Nam". I'll probably write about other portions of the book at a later point, but I was most struck by the following passages from RFK's speech to the United States Senate on February 19th, 1966:
Take that, Dick. Now, for some truly prophetic words (these are what struck me most strongly as I read through his speech, even more so than the above ringing phrases):
But it wasn't "impossible", was it? I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to come up with a similar list of reasons why it is "impossible" to withdraw from Iraq. RFK also discusses the requirements for a military victory, including among others, that "we continue to occupy South Viet-Nam as long as our presence is required to insure that hostilities, including insurgency, will not be resumed. And this will be a long time indeed." (sound familiar?) His many cautions and admitted acknowledgement of the vast resources required for a military victory are accompanied by the assertion that there may be "no alternative" and that "[t]he American people possess the bravery and the will to follow such a course if others force it upon us." Of course, there was an "alternative": unilateral withdrawal, because the American people did NOT (very rationally) have the will to continue investing the blood and treasure of the American people in an apparently endless war against a foe who did not measure victory and defeat in terms of battles and lives won and lost, but simply in terms of sustaining resistance. RFK had the wisdom to re-evaluate and modify his positions as the course of the war in Viet-Nam progressed... will President (we hope) John Kerry? Will the rest of the Democratic Party? Republicans? (fat chance, that) Or will Iraq be "Kerry's war" four years from now... Kerry's $1 trillion dollar investment in futility... Kerry's albatross around his neck, dragging down every other initiative? Will we ultimately wind up creating a "Wall of Memory" for Iraq war veterans, visits to which will be as painful and cathartic as the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. is for veterans of that war? On that note, where will the "Wall of Memory" be for the untold millions whose lives will suffer when the health, education, housing and welfare programs that would otherwise have been funded are sacrificed on the altar of "Operation Iraqi Freedom"? (much as the "War on Poverty" was strangled by Viet-Nam) The "insurgency" in Iraq is not "military", in any sense of the word... most of the fatalities have not been due to "armed battles", but carbombs, remotely detonated roadside bombs, and hit and run mortar attacks. Every time we have fought a "conventional" battle, we have inflicted massive and overwhelming casualties on the "enemy" (witness the hundred to one ratio of casualties sustained by the Mahdi Army vs. the American Army in Najaf) yet that has done little or nothing to demoralize or discourage even those foes suffering the conflicts, let alone "Al-Quaida in Iraq". Would/will more or different troops truly change that calculus? Did 500,000 troops on the ground in Vietnam have much more impact than 50,000? Did we learn nothing from that experience? I hope not. --Thomas Leavitt --- Posted at 10/31/2004 10:27:00 PM by Thomas Leavitt Link to this | | | | e-mail this post  
NOOOOO! Today I went into Manhattan with Erick Erickson of redstate.org. In town we met up with Tom Burka, from Opinions You Should Have. (Yes, it's true. All bloggers know each other and hang out together.) We were waiting for someone who was going to give us a tour of the sets MSNBC has at "Democracy Plaza" and were killing some time in a downstairs cafeteria. So we're at a table and one table over is Pat Buchanan, busy working, preparing for his broadcasts. I was thinking of saying "Hi" and handing him my Seeing the Forest card but left him alone because he was busy. (He seems like a nice guy.) This card is made in Word, and printed on my printer. (Real bloggers have self-printed cards.) It has a graphic at the top -- the graphic you will see when I finally move the weblog from Blogspot, and reads: A weblog for Liberals who are FED UP with Bush and the Right! seeingtheforest.com So I was thinking, that card is from a right winger's nightmare: you wake up from a 3-day bender, and you look in your pocket and find that card, and you hold your head and scream, "NNOOOOO! WHAT DID I DO!!!!" --- Posted at 10/31/2004 07:26:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Matt Hubbard's Final Electoral College Status update Matt Hubbard's final Weekly Electoral College Status update is now up. Explanation here. --- Posted at 10/31/2004 05:03:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
I predict a Kerry victory OK, it's time to stick my neck out. I think that Kerry will do better than expected, taking all the states he plans to and two or three unexpected states. I'm not going to guess at numbers but I think that it's 50/50 that Kerry's win will be decisive enough to cancel out the Republican dirty tricks and late smears, and also to make the Bush legal challenges irrelevant. So here's my call: 60% -- Kerry is sworn in Jan. 20. 25% -- Bush is sworn in, probably in the face of protests at massive Diebold fraud and voter intimidation 15% -- the election is not resolved by Jan. 20, and that the country is approaching civil war. It's in the realm of possibility that the Democrats will retake the Senate or even the House, but I'd put that at less than 50/50 -- let's say 25% for the Senate. Too many things would have to go right, so I think that this will happen only in the best case of a Kerry landslide. I don't really see the possibility of a legitimate Bush win. But as I've said before -- if Kerry isn't elected, I will obviously have worse problems than a bad election-prediction track record. It will mean that I am totally out of tune with this country and don't understand its people. --- Posted at 10/31/2004 03:28:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
If Bush Wins I think that if Bush wins, we're all going to have to make individual decisions whether to forget about politics, to struggle on as lonely dissidents in the face of increasing intimidation, or to emigrate as our ancestors did when they came here. I've already received a solicitation from an EU recruiter looking for talented and skilled Americans, and it's a darn shame that I'm not talented or skilled. (Every nation has its own supply of disgruntled political polemicists). I think that Bush's election would trigger an exodus somewhat comparable to the Jews' exodus from Spain and Germany or the Huguenots' exodus from France. I hope that there's someone out there preparing to welcome us. Once reelected, I expect Bush to get worse rather than better. He will have won by dint of a moron fluff campaign, without having having made any significant concessions to moderate Republicans or rational conservatives, and he will thus have a four-year blank check. I would expect a draft, an expanded Middle East war, the demolition of the New Deal (sooner rather than later), and increasing police-state measures against American citizens. (Many of the provisions of the Patriot Act have never been used yet). I have been mostly arguing against defeatism up until now, but if we can't beat Bush this year I don't see how we will ever be able to do so. The second victory will ratify Bush's policies, just as Reagan's second victory did, and upon reelection he and his team (with the help of movement-conservative thugs) will work effectively to turn the U.S. into a one-party state. No, Bush isn't Hitler. History doesn't repeat itself, and I don't really expect Bush to try to murder millions of Americans. I do think that he'll turn out to be some kind of lesser fascist, like Admiral Horthy or Francisco Franco. --- Posted at 10/31/2004 02:49:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Ground Operation Wins It? Don't Know. The Democrats are counting on the strong ground operations that have been put together to help win in the swing states. But I just don't know. I used to think that precinct operations are the key to winning. But I remember being confident that the huge volunteer army that Dean brought to Iowa would clinch it for him, and look what happened. It did not bring him victory and seemed almost irrelevant. So, like everything else in this election, I just don't know. But there were several other factors in Iowa that contributed to Dean's defeat. Joe Trippi writes about Iowa in his book, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. (I highly highly recommend this book!) I don't have the book in front of me in my hotel room in Secaucus, NJ, home of MSNBC, so this is from memory - but Joe wrote that Gephardt's attacks on Dean drove voters to Kerry and Edwards, and that the ground operation was not well-organized and needed more seasoned professionals. And I have my own pet opinion about what happened to Dean in Iowa: message. However much the Dean campaign was tuned in to the Voice of the Grassroots, in the last weeks before Iowa they were not. Every person I was talking to in California, and every voice I was hearing on the web -- and from what I am told every voter in Iowa -- was concerned with "How do we beat Bush?" But Dean was not answering that question. I think the Dean campaign failed to understand that. They should have had a good, short, one-sentence answer to that question and he should have been repeating it over and over, no matter what question he was asked. He should have been repeating that answer until people were running away from him with their hands over their ears, and only then moved on to any other subject. Kerry sure was, and that is why Kerry won in Iowa. Kerry was a war hero, and Bush was not, and that was how he was going to win. But what do I know? I was so happy that Dean had a strong ground operating in Iowa. But it didn't win it for Dean, and some say it may have even hurt because the door-to-door operation annoyed the locals. The current swing-state ground operations ARE managed by seasoned pros and ARE well-organized. Does TV and spin nullify hard work and direct contact? I just don't know. --- Posted at 10/31/2004 07:57:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Stolen Honor MaxNews.com will be running Stolen Honor, the notorious movie about John Kerry, almost constantly from now until the election on various stations as a paid program. I haven't gotten this morning's paper yet, so I don't know if it's listed by name. Last night's showing, on PAX, was listed only as "Paid Program." I stumbled across it by accident. If Kerry wins, I'm sure we'll be seeing variations of this theme constantly over the next four years. The bitterness still with us because of the Vietnam war is not going to go away. Old ghosts never die. There's a lot of painful truth, but even more half-truths, in the message being brought to us, and we would do well to try to understand it. The most immediate lesson we can learn is that we must not treat the veterans of the Iraq war the way the Vietnam veterans were treated. The soldiers who fought in that war were not to blame for the war and the country turned against them and dishonored them as though they were. The Iraq war is every bit as misguided as the Vietnam war. In both wars, not only the public but even the highest levels of government were tricked and deceived. There are wars which cannot be won except by killing everybody. If the population of a country is determined not to be defeated, it is impossible to defeat them, even by bombing them back into the Stone Age. Shock and Awe just can't cut it. Military might and power have their limits, hard as this is to believe. There are other examples that this is true, one of the best being that feeble, rag-tag army that defeated the British and founded the United States. There was Ghandi's brilliant passive resistance, which defeated the British in India. Russia pulled out of Afghanistan once it was clear that even bombing them into the Stone Age wasn't enough. The Nazis made it clear that they would, in fact, be perfectly happy to kill everybody, and they scored a brutal but temporary victory in Europe. During the Vietnam war, we could see for ourselves what was going on. It was served to us every evening as we ate dinner watching the news on TV. My most vivid memories are of the napalmed children; hardly enemies of anybody. There were indeed savage atrocities, our soldiers were not a bunch of blessed saints, and much of what is now being dumped on Kerry is denial of their own guilt. There was no way for them to be certain who was an enemy, who harbored enemies, they were trapped in a war for which there was no obvious justification they could not win without killing everybody. This was not the fault of the soldiers, but of those who lied and deceived the country, including most of the government, into continuing the war. Blaming Kerry for having the courage to speak out against this is a fine example of attempting to Kill the Messenger. Somebody had to finally speak out, make it clear that the citizens of this country would no longer tolerate and support the war. Kerry did what he does best, have the courage to tell the truth to the country. Thank God he had the guts to do this. There are those who will never forgive him, but lets put the blame where it belongs. --- Posted at 10/31/2004 06:06:00 AM by Meryl Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
10/30/2004 Right-wing delusions. On October 29th, the Chron ran a feature that briefly quoted the thoughts of nine separate historians on the long term consequences of the war in Iraq.
There was one exception to that overall consensus: Victor Davis Hanson, of Stanford's Hoover Institution, who was bold enough to predict that "in five years, if we persevere, there will be a stable consensual government, and then both Iraq and Afghanistan will properly be seen as the anchors of a new Middle East". Which is, of course, exactly what I thought to myself as I opened up the article: that if any voice dissented from the overall consensus ("reality"), it would be one associated with an identifiably "conservative" institution like the Hoover Institute (who give my great uncle a bad name). ... because, of course, these organizations don't pay their "fellows" to do anything but toe the party line. Side note: I've been making a habit of reading through the paper each day... I find that you get more out of a paper that way, as you see stories develop over time, and you begin to follow larger threads in the news that transcend individual stories. Admittedly, the San Francisco Chronicle, in comparison to the Los Angeles Times (the paper I grew up reading) is mediocure at best, but it is still better than nothing. I find reading a paper exposes me to a wider variety (in terms of topics and points of view) than merely getting my news on-line. This is a change from my previous position that "I get all my news on-line and don't need a paper." Side, side note: Debra Saunders really is a Republican talking point parrot. We need more people writing the Chronicle and other papers complaining about this phenomenon, wherein allegedly "independent" pundits spew Republican talking point propaganda in barely edited form. --Thomas Leavitt --- Posted at 10/30/2004 07:33:00 PM by Thomas Leavitt Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Citizen Journalist Another thing MSNBC is doing for the election is a "Citizen Journalist" experiment. Joe Trippi writes, "I am hoping you will be a citizen journalist and file your story or stories with us from now through Tuesday." Report your stories to MSNBC.com. And see them here. --- Posted at 10/30/2004 05:19:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
First Post at MSNBC's Hardblogger Part of what I'll be doing for MSNBC is helping put together a sort-of "pulse of the blogosphere" for Hardblogger. My first post is up, at The buzz from Bloggers' Cafe. (Scroll to "The Little Gift.") This is sort-of a dress rehearsal post. In fact, they're doing a real dress rehearsal for Tuesday night's election broadcast in the big studio around the corner (and lots of remote locations) and it's on the monitors. "Pennsylvania is still too close to call." --- Posted at 10/30/2004 05:12:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Osama isn't running and he isn't hiding. He's laughing. Osama doesn't have to run, and he doesn't have to hide. He's kicking back , and he's laughing. "I truly am not that concerned about him", says George. Osama is looking forward to laughing at Bush for four more years. --- Posted at 10/30/2004 01:16:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Election Day at Seeing the Forest For your Election Day pleasure Seeing the Forest will have a blogger writing from the Kerry Headquarters in Boston. Sam Perry will introduce himself in a post Tuesday or maybe sooner. I'm writing this from a Starbucks in Manhattan. I took an overnight flight, and will be working from MSNBC through Tuesday night. I'll post details later. And the other regulars will also be keeping you informed. So bookmark Seeing the Forest and check in regularly. --- Posted at 10/30/2004 09:25:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
October Surprise Right on schedule we've had our two terrorist warnings now. Will they help Bush? Were they intended to help him? I have no idea. I can't read Osama's mind, and I can't read the mind of the American people either. We've been waiting for months for something fishy to show up, and now we have it. Pray for the Kerry spin doctors -- let's hope they're up to the job. So far the Bush spin hasn't been too powerful, but it usually takes them a few days to saturate the media. The Osama tape came at almost exactly the right time for Bush, if his guys succeed in winning the spin war. He sure needs the help. I have no evidence, but I can't help suspecting that both warnings were fake -- Rove's magnum opus. (Did they unload a couple of the loose billions floating around Iraq on Osama?). But probably that's just me. --- Posted at 10/30/2004 07:28:00 AM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
10/29/2004 Stop Bush / Vote Kerry Powerful images from the current cover feature of LA Weekly (via pandagon.net). 
--- Posted at 10/29/2004 05:00:00 PM by richard Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Vote or Die From an e-mail I received:
They have an airplane pulling a banner along Florida beaches, so young people will see them. The idea is to suggest they might want to go vote... --- Posted at 10/29/2004 03:10:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
10/28/2004 When You Vote I recomment a post titled, Pacific Views: Emergency aid for U.S. voters. It outlines things to do before and when you vote, and includes a downloadable voter rights card from MoveOn. --- Posted at 10/28/2004 09:02:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Hersh, Quoted at American Street The American Street -- Seymour Hersh Speaks: "I hope it comes out the right way in the election. If it doesn't then we're all in trouble. The Europeans so far give us a pass on the grounds that, well, you've got these crazy leaders and they do crazy things. But if we re-elect them, then it's not just the president they're mad at. They're going to be mad at all of us." --- Posted at 10/28/2004 08:48:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
10/27/2004 Curse Eclipsed The Curse of the Bambino comes to an end in Busch Stadium during an eclipse of the moon, and two Boston teams are now world champions. That should swing the remaining undecideds for us! --- Posted at 10/27/2004 08:43:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Some people don't want you to vote SOME PEOPLE DON'T WANT YOU TO VOTE ISN'T THAT A PRETTY GOOD REASON FOR VOTING? --- Posted at 10/27/2004 08:16:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Some people don't want you to vote SOME PEOPLE DON'T WANT YOU TO VOTE ISN'T THAT A PRETTY GOOD REASON FOR VOTING? --- Posted at 10/27/2004 08:16:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
911Truth.org 911Truth.org - Only the Truth will Set Us Free.: "An alliance of 100 prominent Americans and many family members of those killed on 9/11 today announced the release of the 911 Truth Statement, a call for immediate inquiry into evidence that suggests high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur. The Statement supports an August 31st Zogby poll that found nearly 50% of New Yorkers believe the government had foreknowledge and "consciously failed to act," with 66% wanting a new 9/11 investigation. Focusing on twelve questions, the Statement highlights areas of incriminating evidence that were either inadequately explored or ignored by the Kean Commission, ranging from insider trading and hijacker funding to foreign government forewarnings and inactive defenses around the Pentagon. The Statement asks for four actions: an immediate investigation by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, Congressional hearings, media analysis, and the formation of a truly independent citizens-based inquiry. " And they have a blog. --- Posted at 10/27/2004 04:14:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Republican Switchers Republican Switchers: "WHY REPUBLICANS ARE SWITCHING FROM BUSH TO KERRY and why you, and the conservatives you love, should vote for Kerry, too!" --- Posted at 10/27/2004 04:10:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
DRAFT Dodging FAQ At Enjoy The Draft: But I'm a girlRead them all! --- Posted at 10/27/2004 02:39:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Iraq vs Vietnam From an e-mail I received: Q) What's the difference between Iraq and Vietnam? A) Bush had a plan to get out of Vietnam. --- Posted at 10/27/2004 01:50:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
DRAFT - Freeway Blogging At Gropinator. --- Posted at 10/27/2004 12:56:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Math Pun Ouch --- Posted at 10/27/2004 10:48:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Voting Machines There is a washingtonpost.com - Live Online question/answer thing coming up. I submitted this question: I have to say it matters little to me what anyone TELLS me about an electronic voting machine. If I can not see for myself that a machine recorded my vote and other votes correctly, then the election is not legitimate in my eyes, period. Why should I have to accept ANY other person's word that the machines are secure, working, etc.? Why can't it just print a ballot that I SEE FOR MYSELF, and that I place into a ballot box, and that can be looked at to verify that the machines reported accurate tabulations? And who in their right mind ever accepted these machines that do not do that?There is no reason to accept the results from any election conducted with these machines. --- Posted at 10/27/2004 09:43:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Story Was Reported Here October 14 Iraqi nuke sites "carefully stripped", post-invasion which included the line, "Jesus honking Christ!" --- Posted at 10/27/2004 08:58:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Kristof Is A Nitwit I don't know why I bothered to read it ... well, I do know why, it was the title of the piece, Pants on Fire? Otherwise I just skip most of the "mainstream" pundits. Anyway, in the piece I came across this: "One example is Mr. Bush's determination since 9/11 to add to the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, even though this pushes up gasoline prices. Mr. Bush's approach is foolish economically, and it is crazy politically. Yet his grim willingness to raise gas prices during his re-election campaign underscores a solidity of character and convictions."This guy is writing in the NY Times, and he doesn't even follow the news. No, it isn't a grim willingness, a sign of solidity of character. Jeeze. It's BECAUSE THE CRONY THAT BUSH GAVE THE CONTRACT TO FUNDS THE RIGHT! Even though oil is at the highest price EVER, we are BUYING it from Koch Oil, sending them BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of tax dollars, instead of releasing oil from the reserve to lessen the burden on American consumers. And the money is used to fund the Right's massive propaganda machine (and enrich Bush's cronies.) DOH! Does anyone know how to reach Kristof with this info? --- Posted at 10/27/2004 08:45:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
10/26/2004 http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/04/10/int04054.html http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com consortium sex --- Posted at 10/26/2004 05:54:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
The Bush Defense -- Just Lie I'm listening to Rush Limbaugh. He's saying that the story about the 380 tons of explosives is ... a lie. He's saying this is an attempt by "the liberal media" to affect the election, and that the explosives were gone before the war. He's just making shit up. This is how Bush defends himself -- just lie. Just lie. Spend hundreds of millions of dollars on lies, and the right's infrastructure spends hundreds of millions ore just lying. And when anyone tries to alert the public they launch a loud smear campaign to destroy the messenger, like terrorism advisor Richard Clarke or Ambassador Joe Wilson or Treasury Secretary O'Neill... Then they tell the public not to believe the mainstream press, as Bush did during the final debate. Democracy is gone -- history. The Congress has not done their job of oversight and has not investigated a single thing the Administration has done; the Justice Department has stopped investigations of crimes committed by Republicans; the Federalist Society court appointments have dismissed lawsuits and stopped investigations; the ideologues in the Defense Department have purged any opposition to their war plans; the Right's media has misled the public about crucial facts. And now the Democrats in the Senate have gone along and allowed a partisan to take control of the CIA and he is purging non-ideologues. They just lie, and smear anyone who gets in their way. --- Posted at 10/26/2004 10:43:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
On His Watch! The AFL-CIO has a Flash presenation, titled Can America Afford Four More Years? --- Posted at 10/26/2004 07:54:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
10/25/2004 Pakistani schoolgirls for Kerry Respected in the world. 
--- Posted at 10/25/2004 05:24:00 PM by richard Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Electronic Voting Machines Electronic Voting Raises New Issues, Voters using screens similar to ATMs are guided step-by-step through a ballot. They cannot pick too many candidates or leave marks that would have to be scrutinized to guess their intent. Counts will be generated automatically and almost instantaneously. There will be no paper ballots to transport, store or pore over. Advocates said recounts will be a thing of the past.No possibility of recounts is GOOD? Let me raise an issue. You can't tell me to vote on a machine that can not PROVE to me that it recorded my vote correctly. If there is no way for ME to verify that MY vote is recorded the way I voted, then forget it. Never mind enhanced security, open source software, independent verification that the machines are working correctly, or ANYthing that OTHER people assure me makes everything OK. Doesn't matter. Not relevant. Some crank - namely me - is going to show up at every single precinct where these machines are used and say, "PROVE IT." Well, the problem is that they CAN'T prove it. THERE IS NO WAY TO PROVE THAT THE MACHINE CORRECTLY RECORDED WHAT THE VOTERS WANTED. And without that, there is no legitimacy to the election. --- Posted at 10/25/2004 03:20:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
380 Tons of Fun, Coming Your Way Thanks to Bush 380 tons of high explosives are missing in Iraq because the Bush administration did not bother to post guards. This is a Seeing the Forest moment. This is one of those times when the fog of propaganda is so thick that it's best to put your hands over your ears, and do nothing but look at what you can actually see for yourself as certain, and reject everything else. They use words to misdirect you so you do not see what they are really doing. Sometimes their words-of-confusion are just so thick that you can't even figure out if your name is really your name. That's when it is important to step back and look at what they DO rather than what they SAY. Ignore everything you have been led to think, everything you hear, everything coming from their mouths ad their media channels. Just believe what your own eyes can see for themselves. They did not guard a cache of 380 tons of extremely dangerous high explosives. They did guard the oil pipelines, the oil ministry... This HAS TO have an effect on Bush supporters. Circulate this story! I have gathered a few sources - starting with FOX News - for you to send to Bush supporters, and ask them to please explain why they are endangering all of our lives by voting for Bush! Don't attach any of my highly-sophisticated, ultra-nuanced, subtle but insightful, intellectual, deep analysis -- that's just between you and me (our little secret.) Just send the stories, and ask them to please explain to you how this kind of thing squares with the idea that Bush is making us safer. 380 Tons of Explosives Missing in Iraq U.N.: Explosives Missing from Former Iraq Atomic Site Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq --- Posted at 10/25/2004 09:07:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Kerry Facts John Kerry for Dummies at Compassiongate. --- Posted at 10/25/2004 08:20:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Astroturf on the editorial page I sent the letter below, which I have edited slightly, to Michael Arrieta-Walden, the the Oregonian public editor: Dear Michael: Your piece on astroturf was good. The internet can be a valuable tool in spotting that kind of thing. You might also take a look at some of your columnists, for example Debra Saunders. Of the 784 words in this piece, all but 88 (see below) could have been written by a Bush campaign spokesman. The arguments and talking points are identical. The Bush people have a powerful outreach program, which makes it easy for columnists to write a column with minimal research. Furthermore, if you look at the 88 words in context, yoiu will see that they're concessive -- she's setting up other, pro-Bush points. A Bush spokesman could not allow himself make these concessions, because the Bush campaign is mostly directed at true believers who are unwilling to admit anything at all. But it is very helpful if a surrogate like Saunders makes these concessions in order to immediately dismiss them, as she did. Your own Rick Reinhardt often writes similiarly. I am not asking for ideological uniformity, but when columnists coordinate their efforts with the RNC (as many do -- the meaningless, endlessly repeated "flip-flop" charge being an example) rather than doing their own research and writing independently, it makes the Oregonian into an unpaid RNC organ. When the media came under pressure to represent the conservative point of view better, it did not have to mean that there would be Republican plants in the newspapers, but that's what happened. If someone is hired as the result of outside pressure of that type, he or she is more or less invulnerable, and furthermore, the ideological content of their thinking is effectively written into their job description. I know of very few columnists anywhere who parrot the Democratic line the way that Saunders, Reinhardt, and others do the Republican line. Of the Democratic columnists I know of -- Paul Krugman, Molly Ivins, Joe Conason, Anthony Lewis, E. J. Dionne, Frank Rich, and a handful of others -- all work independently, and they are all more likely to be ahead of the Democratic Party than they are to be following it. Yours, John Emerson "The world now knows that Bush, the CIA and other countries' intelligence agencies -- and even Hussein's Iraqi lieutenants until December 2002 -- were wrong about Iraq possessing WMD.... " "Did the Bush administration make mistakes? Of course. There is strong reason to believe this administration sent too few troops to Iraq. And it doesn't help that the top Bushies have a way of freezing out those likely to tell them news they don't want to hear. Also, Bush so overvalues loyalty that it leads him to overlook incompetence." PS. Blogger REALLY can be annoying at times. --- Posted at 10/25/2004 06:33:00 AM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
10/24/2004 Things You Can Do Visit America Coming Together | ACT for Victory for things you can do between now and election day. Click on the Campaign for a New Majority button on the left, of just click here, and make a contribution. The DCCC will apply the money as necessary in a close House race, helping bring a Democratic Majority to the House of Representatives. Even $5 helps, because there are a lot of us. --- Posted at 10/24/2004 06:26:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Things You Can Do Visit America Coming Together | ACT for Victory for things you can do between now and election day. Click on the Campaign for a New Majority button on the left, of just click here, and make a contribution. The DCCC will apply the money as necessary in a close House race, helping bring a Democratic Majority to the House of Representatives. Even $5 helps, because there are a lot of us. --- Posted at 10/24/2004 06:10:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Weekly Electoral College Status Update Matt Hubbard has a new Weekly Electoral College Status update.
--- Posted at 10/24/2004 04:41:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
10/23/2004 Reasons for Optimism III I don't know if Oregon here is still listed as a swing state. Probably not, but I don't think that it ever should have been in the first place. Oregon was close in 2000, but the Democratic voter registration and GOTV effort this year is the most intense by far that I've ever seen. (Canvassers end up canvassing each other.) Nader isn't a factor this year, and a significant number of moderate Republicans, including former statewide officeholders, have come out in support of Kerry. (The wingers Bush plays to have crippled the Oregon Republican party statewide, and winger control of the legislature has led to crisis after crisis.) Furthermore, I've seen reports that in Southern Oregon, which is usually reliably right-wing, Kerry and Edwards are doing far better than expected. Everything I know tells me that the media are lowballing Kerry's chances to prevent the bandwagon effect. Some of it is political bias, some of it is pure airheadedness, and some of it might just be the desire to see a close election. But I don't think that there's any countervailing anti-Bush media tendency at work, and there's also not much voter movement in Bush's direction from Democratic ranks. Kerry is in the driver's seat -- if the voters get to vote, and if the votes are counted. The only other thing to worry about the October Surprise, and people have been talking about that for so long that its effect should be pretty diluted by now. (Or I could be wrong. But if I am, I'll have far more serious things to worry about than simply having miscalled this election. ) --- Posted at 10/23/2004 05:50:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Send To Relatives and Friends! Go see Needlenose: Visualize Winning and send it to relatives and friends. --- Posted at 10/23/2004 02:54:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
10/22/2004 Prediction I have a prediction for election day. Republicans will be challenging lots of voters at lots of Democratic-majority precincts. The intent will be to tie up the polls, creating extremely long lines, and causing people to turn away and not vote. I usually work at a polling place on election day, and I know how quickly one roblem can back up a line. I can imagine that a few people, frequently challenging voters, could cause as very large percentage of voters to leave without voting. Anyone want to bet this happens all over the country, in the Democrat areas of swing states, as well as in minority districts in the South? Update - Right after posting that I came across this story. In Ohio the Republicans are hiring thousands of people to do exactly that - to challenge voters in minority precincts, in an attempt to cause long lines. Ohio is a swing state with a very close race. Causing a few thousand voters to leave without voting could very well change the results! --- Posted at 10/22/2004 10:15:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Another Defector Paul Craig Roberts defects. Writing at VDARE, in a piece titled Three Books On The Brownshirting Of America, he says: "Bush’s conservative supporters want no debate. They want no facts, no analysis. They want to denounce and to demonize the enemies that the Hannitys, Limbaughs, and Savages of talk radio assure them are everywhere at work destroying their great and noble country.Here is a brief bio for Roberts, from the end of the piece: Dr. Roberts served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. During the Cold War era, he was a member of the Committee on the Present Danger. He is a former Associate Editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal editorial page and a former contributing editor of National Review. --- Posted at 10/22/2004 02:48:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Reality-Based Election The phrase "reality-based" entered the lexicon last weekend, in a New York Times Magazine story by Ron Suskind, titled Without a Doubt. The story contained the following remarkable passage: In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.Salon has an interview interview with Suskind, titled Reality-based Reporting. Along these lines, a public attitudes poll released yesterday by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes shows how voters' understanding of reality itself is affecting the election. From the survey: 72% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq had actual WMD (47%) or a major program for developing them (25%). Fifty-six percent assume that most experts believe Iraq had actual WMD and 57% also assume, incorrectly, that Duelfer concluded Iraq had at least a major WMD program. Kerry supporters hold opposite beliefs on all these points.I think this points to a major failing on the part of those opposed to Bush. The Republican "machine" - their network of "think tanks", and advocacy/communications ideology marketing organizations - has for decades studied how people receive and retain information about the world and is using that information to get their information into people's minds. And they certainly have been using their understanding of the ways people receive and retain information to full advantage in this election. We should not underestimate how important the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Paul Harvey and Fox News are to the election process! I suspect that many of you sophisticated, well-informed blog readers don't know that Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, etc. reported -- over and over -- that the recent Iraq Duelfer WMD report supported President Bush's position that Iraq had WMD, and that the 9/11 Commission found that Iraq did support al Queda! You probably assumed that these reports would help Kerry in the election because they flatly contradicted Bush's positions. But Limbaugh and the rest have a lot of listeners and viewers, and they repeated over and over that the reports backed up President Bush, as this poll shows. How many of us make assumptions based on what we know about the facts? But what if others are using different facts? What if others believe that 2+2=5, and are using that as the basis for their decision making? You can not effectively communicate with them if your arguments start with an assumption that you share agreement that 2+2=4, when actually you do not. Instead, to be effective, you need to start your discussion by proving that 2+2=4! Where MoveOn and The Media Fund have been running election ads based on an assumption that basic facts are understood, it might have been better to run ads that served the function of news organizations and simply reported over and over nothing more than basic facts, like that the Duelfer Iraqi WMD and the 9/11 Commission reports did NOT back up Bush. That is the starting point -- proving that 2+2=4 before you can move on to broader arguments. Another example of the basic facts problem -- as we saw above, the survey found that among Bush supporters, "An overwhelming 74% incorrectly assumes that he favors including labor and environmental standards in trade agreements." Sheesh. When President Bush said during the most recent debate that we should not accept mainstream news organizations as credible sources of factual information, he was revealing his understanding of the core deciding factor of this election, in my opinion. That core fact is that people are being propagandized by a right-wing machine that simply tells lies. They are intentionally misinforming people, tricking them into voting for people who will, once in office, do things like hand their retirement savings over to big corporations, start wars, ignore public health concerns -- and tell them not to believe what they hear on the "mainstream" news. The entire report of findings is available as a PDF document here. --- Posted at 10/22/2004 11:49:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Voting Machines in Florida See a short video about electronic voting machines in Florida. --- Posted at 10/22/2004 11:36:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
10/21/2004 "Win Back Respect" Via Josh Micah Marshall, here's a link to "Win Back Respect", a group which produced an ad juxtaposing Bush's clown show in front of a media group last March (the one where he joked about the missing WMD) with statements by the sister of a GI killed at shortly after then. I haven't been able to view the ad because of my software-hardware problems, but it's guaranteed to be very powerful. At the WBR site it is possible to donate money so the ad can be shown more widely. --- Posted at 10/21/2004 10:23:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Social Security Here is my Social Seucrity post from Wednesday's American Street. I'm hoping we can get a discussion going here. There's a lot of talk about Social Security today, so I thought I would weigh in. You and I pay a big Social Security tax, something like 15%. (If you work for someone the employer pays half of that.) But you don't pay when you make more than about $88,000. You don't pay it at all on capital gains, which are also taxed much lower than income, or dividends, which are not taxed at all. For many people this is the largest tax they pay. Once again, just to make sure you hear it, you only pay this tax on the first $88,000 of your income, even if you make vastly more than that. And rich people don't pay it at all if their income is from capital gains or dividends. So where does this money go -- this money collected from a tax that ONLY lower and middle incomes pay, and only on income from actually working for a living? Read more » --- Posted at 10/21/2004 09:42:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
How Kerry can blow this race wide open There's been a lot of chatter about Kerry's goose-hunting expedition. Supposedly it makes him seem like a down-to-earth, regular guy with a macho streak. Maybe, but any yuppy can hunt goose. In England, that kind of hunting is the preserve of the pansy aristocracy. What Kerry really wants to do is go to the town dump somewhere and shoot rats. Shooting rats is so down-to-earth it makes you sick. He'll put himself right square in the middle of NRA / militia territory, and Dubya won't know what hit him. --- Posted at 10/21/2004 03:14:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Famous asshole Karl Malone endorses Bush The Bush campaign has scraped together 24 -- count 'em -- Olympic and professional athletes from five decades to endorse George W. Bush. Included on the list are Todd Walker, Janet Lynn Salomon, Dot Richardson, Natalie Golda, Adam Dunn, Chris Spielman, Josh Davis, and Daniel Beery, plus 16 other people who you've actually heard of. Altogether there are eight football players, seven Olympians, seven baseball players, a basketball player, and a golfer. Here's what Rove is having them say, and tell me if you think it makes any sense at all:
That's not George W. Bush. Maybe they forgot what year it is or something. I was saddened to see Ernie Banks and Bob Feller on the list, but a lot of the rest of them could have been predicted: Steve Largent, Roger Staubach, and Jack Nicklaus, for example, or the notorious asshole Karl Malone. Rove might have asked himself whether some of these guys actually are going to gain the Republicans more votes than they lose. If that's the best they can do, I think that we should just award the election to Kerry right now. P.S. "Beneath our belts" sounds odd -- shouldn't it be "under our belts"? Perhaps the phrase "under our belts" sounds a little too close to the groin for these nice Republican folk. --- Posted at 10/21/2004 01:05:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Voting Machines - MOVIE! There's a new movie about the problems with electronic voting machines! Go see Votergate. (If you move your mouse over the brown "Card" at the top of the page you'll see a button that says "Enter." Click that to enter the site.) (full disclosure.) --- Posted at 10/21/2004 09:03:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
10/20/2004 Well done, young man The Grey Lady nods approvingly in the direction of Jon Stewart. One wonders what might be said were Stewart to tell the world what he thinks of Judy Miller. --- Posted at 10/20/2004 06:42:00 PM by richard Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
How to Jeanne at Body and Soul regularly amazes me. She has a special talent for putting a simple story, something that lots of blogs cover, into a genuinely personal context. It's enlightening, not some stupid kool kids me-me-me framing. Jeanne runs a how-to for blogging. --- Posted at 10/20/2004 05:49:00 PM by richard Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
If They Win With Lies II Rick Perlstein, in 'Sucking democracy dry': "These are the people whose candidate just might win this election. If he does, he will have proven but one thing: Those who are willing to do anything to win can win."Go read. In If They Win With Lies?, I wrote, What does it mean for the future of the country, and the world, if they are able to hold power using methods like these? In history, what kind of governments emerge from such tactics and lies, and what are the consequences to the citizens and the rest of the world?What is in store for us if they do win? What do you think they will do? Will they be putting bloggers in jail? Maybe that's not as important to you as to me ;-) --- Posted at 10/20/2004 05:42:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
DRAFT  Enjoy the DRAFT!  --- Posted at 10/20/2004 05:37:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Another "chain letter" from our side. [Nancy Macy is a prominent Santa Cruz area environmental activist. I thought this was a detailed and well written letter, so I'm passing it along, and encourage you to do likewise. -Thomas] Here is a letter my sister and I composed and are sending to family and friends throughout the US. I hope you will do something similar. Feel free to use any of this if it helps. Thanks Nancy Macy [deleted] October 20, 2004 --- Posted at 10/20/2004 04:39:00 PM by Thomas Leavitt Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Social Security Street I have a piece on Social Security, over at The American Street. --- Posted at 10/20/2004 01:19:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
"Left Out" Tour - Interview with Pat LaMarche [One more short one. Then I'll return you to your regularly scheduled Anybody But Bush Again programming. The Green Party's nominated candidates are laying it on the line for the values and principles that they advocate. John Edwards talks about "Two Americas" - Pat LaMarche lives it. Actually, I think John Edward's "Two Americas" speech leaves out the "Third America" - people like the ones Pat encounters in this article, who aren't just struggling, but are completely wiped out. I'm proud to have my party's banner carried forward in 2004 by people like David Cobb and Pat LaMarche. Oh yeah... Pat on the Bush Administration: "The bums need to go. Period. End of sentence. They’ve got to get fired. It’s the worst administration in the history of the United States of America. And it’s run by cowards." Pat on the Democrats: "Well, you know, I think your toaster oven would be better. And you’d get toast. An occasional Pop Tart. So, they can’t help but be better. Will they be better enough? No. If they would be better enough, I’d be a Democrat." -Thomas] Pat LaMarche feels left out And not just because Dick Cheney and John Edwards wouldn't let her debate with them David Cobb, the Green Party’s presidential candidate, resorted last Friday to civil disobedience, getting himself arrested in St. Louis while ambushing the second presidential debate of the campaign. That’s the kind of tactic you need to get attention in the presidential campaign if you’re a third-party candidate. It’s clear that getting ballot status in 28 states and representing a party that collected 2,882,995 votes in the last presidential election isn’t enough. Cobb’s running mate, Maine’s Pat LaMarche, took a slightly different tack. She decided to embark, on September 21, on her "Left Out" tour, during which she would sleep either on the streets or in homeless shelters in 14 cities across the US, "to raise awareness about America’s least-privileged citizens" because "no vice-presidential candidate has ever been bold enough to walk in their shoes." Sure, it was a bit of a public-relations gambit, but LaMarche hardly took the easy way out. She traveled by herself, with fellow Greens picking her up at airports and helping her with transportation but then dropping her off to fend for herself in what were possibly dangerous situations. As LaMarche herself notes in the following interview, women are raped after only an average of 11 days on the streets. LaMarche spent a total of 14, winding up in Cleveland on the day when John Edwards and Dick Cheney debated there, while the rest of the vice-presidential candidates had their own debate across town. [...] full story on the Portland (Maine) Phoenix web site --Thomas Leavitt --- Posted at 10/20/2004 04:42:00 AM by Thomas Leavitt Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Top 12 Issues Censored From the Bush-Kerry Debates. [Excerpts from a Green Party press release. Greens have a fundamentally different agenda from that of the two major parties in the United States--who are happy to remain silent about the unweaving of the global web of life and the fact that our economic and trade policies under the last two presidents, Clinton and Bush alike, have fostered a global "race to the bottom". Opinion surveys I've read recently show that a majority of Americans favor a single payer system (which is what senior citizens have with Medicare), and yet it isn't even on the radar screen of the national Democratic Party. -Thomas] Thursday, October 14, 2004 GREENS LIST THE TOP 12 ISSUES CENSORED FROM THE BUSH-KERRY DEBATES WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Green Party leaders and candidates charged that the presidential debates, limited to the candidates George W. Bush and John Kerry, have effectively censored numerous issues important to Americans. [deleted] Greens listed the top twelve issues censored from the Bush-Kerry debates: (1) When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, it violated international laws against "preemptive" and "preventive" war (enacted after Hitler used these excuses to justify invading Czechoslovakia, Poland, and France); and violated the U.S. Constitution's limit on the deployment of armed forces to immediate protection of U.S. borders (Article I, Section 8), and requirement that the U.S. adhere to international treaties (Article VI). [four other Iraq-specific issues deleted -Thomas ] (6) The USA Patriot Act violates numerous rights afforded by the U.S. Constitution, especially freedom of speech, freedom from search and seizure without a warrant, and guarantee of due process. Whether Mr. Kerry or Mr. Bush is elected, if another terrorist attack occurs there are already plans to extend the USA Patriot Act even further, effectively nullifying the Constitution. (7) If we intend to avert catastrophic global climate change, the U.S. must rejoin the Kyoto agreement, strengthen and adhere to its provisions, and make conversion to non-fossil and non-nuclear energy the great project of the 21st century. (Mr. Bush withdrew the U.S. from Kyoto, Mr. Kerry is silent about rejoining the accord.) (8) Republicans and Democrats have abandoned working people, while coddling CEOs and major shareholders with a $137 billion tax break package for corporations. Neither Mr. Bush nor Mr. Kerry mentioned a national guarantee of livable wages, repeal of Taft-Hartley limits on workplace organizing, or the Million Worker March, planned for October 17 in Washington, D.C. (9) Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry rejected "government-run" coverage, but Congress's General Accounting Office has determined that the only health care reform that will save money is single-payer national health insurance. Under single-payer, all Americans would be guaranteed quality treatment and medicine regardless of income, employment, age, or prior medical condition, and patients will enjoy choice of physician. Middle and lower income Americans will pay far less for single-payer coverage than they do now for private coverage through profit-driven HMOs and insurance firms. (10) The 'War on Drugs' has not only failed to stem drug abuse, it has resulted in the highest number ever of Americans incarcerated (over 5.6 million have served time, the highest percentage in the world) -- especially young people, poor people, African Americans, and Latinos. (11) Thanks to the 1996 Telecommunications Act and other deregulation measures, fewer and fewer corporations own more and more of the media and regulate our news and entertainment. Democrats who voted for the Telecommunications Act have only themselves to blame for the Sinclair Broadcast Group's plan to air an anti-Kerry documentary on 62 TV stations. (12) At-large winner-take-all elections have allowed two parties corrupted by corporate lobby money to dominate our political system. We can restore our democracy through various reforms: Instant Runoff Voting, Proportional Representation, "clean election" options that enable candidates to run without taking corporate money, free time for candidates on our publicly owned airwaves, and auditable paper ballots. More information on election reforms: http://www.fairvote.org Read the complete release on the Green Party web site. --- Posted at 10/20/2004 04:28:00 AM by Thomas Leavitt Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Renegade Green for Cobb [Take that Dave. :) From the Boston Globe. The question is not: is there a real difference between Kerry and Bush... but rather, is there more of a difference between David Cobb/the Green Party, than there is between John Kerry/the Democrats and George Bush/the Republicans? David Cobb makes a strong case that there is. -Thomas] WELCOME TO THE MAINSTREAM BY DAVID COBB IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT OBJECTIVELY AND IGNORE EMOTIONS AND UNSUPPORTED PERCEPTIONS, JOHN KERRY AND GEORGE BUSH ARE IN AGREEMENT ON A WIDE RANGE OF ISSUES WHICH DEFINE OUR DOMESTIC AGENDA, OUR FOREIGN POLICY, AND WHO WE ARE AS A PEOPLE. WHAT MAKES THIS ALL THE MORE INTERESTING IS THAT THIS PLACES BUSH AND KERRY AT ODDS WITH MANY MAINSTREAM AMERICAN BELIEFS. IN FACT, THESE MAJORITARIAN AMERICAN VALUES ARE ACTUALLY BEST REFLECTED IN THE PLATFORM AND POSITIONS OF THE GREEN PARTY. Most Americans, I'm sure, believe that people working full-time should be able to support their families without using public assistance, but many full-time wage earners making minimum wage have to do just that. I support increasing the minimum wage to a living wage; Bush and Kerry do not. Most Americans are burdened and scandalized by the skyrocketing costs of health insurance and prescription drugs. I support single-payer health insurance that will provide lifetime coverage to every single citizen and cost less than our current system; Bush and Kerry do not. Most Americans value their privacy, cherish the Constitution, and believe in due process. I support a repeal of the invasive and unconstitutional USA Patriot Act in its entirety; Bush and Kerry do not. Most Americans are tired of spending cuts in education, social services, and environmental protection. I support shifting 50 percent of the military budget over 10 years to fund these programs; Bush and Kerry do not. more on unrepentandnadervoter.com... --Thomas Leavitt --- Posted at 10/20/2004 04:16:00 AM by Thomas Leavitt Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Republican National Convention in a nutshell. This hilarious video montage (courtesy of BuzzFlash) of Repblican National Convention quotes demonstrates quite concisely the Republican Party's strategy in this election cycle. Terrorize the American public into re-electing Dubya. Pure and simple. --Thomas Leavitt --- Posted at 10/20/2004 02:12:00 AM by Thomas Leavitt Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
10/19/2004 Don't let up A diarist at dKos has the right take on Sinclair: See, almost everyone is missing the point here. Sinclair has not changed its position one bit. They are spinning, hoping to relieve the pressure of the boycott by giving a false impression of what they are doing. But what they are doing is even worse than if they were airing Stolen Honor in full. In fact, the whole thing is a winger's dream, a Free Republic version of the perfect media event.Read what he says, and don't let up on Sinclair. These are really nasty bastards and they will say anything to get you off their backs. But they won't stop the smear! --- Posted at 10/19/2004 06:02:00 PM by richard Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Calming the Public -- THIS Time The Bush Administration is doing everything it can to calm fears caused by the shortage of flu vaccine. "We've successfully worked through vaccine supply problems in the past and we're doing so this time as well," said Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson. "We need all of us to take a deep breath."This is because the flu vaccine shortage makes the Bush administration look bad, and they are afraid people might vote against them as a result. Compare this to the Bush Administration's stoking of terrorism fear! IMAGINE Bush telling people to take a breath,calm down, and not be afraid! Ain't gonna happen. --- Posted at 10/19/2004 02:04:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
"Love of power for its own sake is the original sin of this presidency." Al Gore yesterday: "Most of the problems he has caused for this country stem not from his belief in God, but from his belief in the infallibility of the right-wing Republican ideology that exalts the interests of the wealthy and of large corporations over the interests of the American people. Love of power for its own sake is the original sin of this presidency. --- Posted at 10/19/2004 08:50:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
DRAFT - Krugman Krugman: Feeling the Draft: "Those who are worrying about a revived draft are in the same position as those who worried about a return to budget deficits four years ago, when President Bush began pushing through his program of tax cuts. Back then he insisted that he wouldn't drive the budget into deficit - but those who looked at the facts strongly suspected otherwise. Now he insists that he won't revive the draft. But the facts suggest that he will. --- Posted at 10/19/2004 07:07:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Vote Watch Vote Watch 2004 Vote/Election fraud, vote suppression, voting irregularities, voter intimidation in Election 2004 --- Posted at 10/19/2004 07:03:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
10/18/2004 No one wants us to vote The Republicans don't want us to vote. Neither do the terrorists. Voter suppression, terror alerts, terrorist attacks -- be sure to vote, no matter what. Kos on voter suppression Recent history of voter suppression Education department declares all schools (many of them polling places) to be terrorist targets Terror warnings spread fear Election day terrorism warnings have chilling effect --- Posted at 10/18/2004 06:20:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
"Mission Accomplished" again He's going to fly to Iraq again for another flightsuit photo-op? Mmmm... someone tell Peggy Noonan. He's one sexy guy who can really dish out the turkey. He just has to move that bulge down where it belongs. But this is Halloween, not Thanksgiving -- maybe an Alfred E. Newman mask might help the troops lighten up a little. Some of them are reportedly taking all this more seriously than they really should. Or he could give them all little Snickers bars. The same old "Mission Accomplished" banner should be fine. He'll be able to use it every year from here on out, if he gets reelected. The war against terrorism is an endless one, so you can declare victory any time you want to. Or maybe make it an annual event -- every Halloween, maybe, or every April first. Peggy's a sentimental, old-school babe, and she never gets tired of that kind of shit. --- Posted at 10/18/2004 04:23:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
October Surprise? There's a rumour going around. October Surprise: Would Bush Make Another Visit to Baghdad? Would this be an effective gimmick by Bush, or just transparent? And what do YOU think the October Surprise will be? --- Posted at 10/18/2004 03:25:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Reasons for Optimism, II Reading the polls can be depressing, so here are a few things to remember: 1. Very few of the polls take new voters into consideration, and this year the Democrats are putting on the biggest voter-registration drive in my memory. 2. Traditionally, undecideds break for the challenger. 3. Some of the polls have a Republican bias, especially Gallup. (And incidentally, did anyone take the recent GI poll seriously? The military has its own special way of handling that sort of thing, and I wasn't too surprised at the 70-30 Bush advantage. Let's just hope that the troops get to fill out their ballots personally.) 4. In 2000, the polls wildly underestimated Gore's vote in the Presidential race. The main things we have to worry about are election fraud, voter suppression, and the October Surprise. I think that given the present polling numbers, Kerry should be the favorite. Salon on the polls Soto on Gallup (October) Soto on Gallup (September) --- Posted at 10/18/2004 11:04:00 AM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Reality-based community A lot of people are commenting on the following passage in Susskind's NYT article. According to a Bush aide, Bush's critics are from "the reality-based community....[people] who believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.....That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'' You can get a great anti-Bush zinger out of this, and I heartily endorse doing so. However, people are, to a significant degree, missing the point. The Bush aide's statement actually highlights one of the Republican party's strengths and one of the Democrats' weaknesses, especially in political campaigning. Democrats are too tied to public administration and to the normalizing social sciences, where you try to keep things under control and running smoothly, or try to figure out the most likely thing to happen based on observed regularities. Republicans are more likely to come from wildcat entrepreneurial backgrounds, often of a semi-criminal type, where the goal is to seize a momentary advantage, find an exception or a weak spot, or find a new angle. As a result Republicans are better at spotting and exploiting the unrevealed potentials of an unstable or evolving situation. If you don't believe me, name a national political campaign since 1976 when the Democrats outcampaigned the Republicans. There's only Bill Clinton, and he strikes me as a pretty good guy at finding an angle. Republicans hated Clinton's sleaziness, not because they hate sleaziness, but because they want a monopoly on it. Clinton beat them at their own game. On Matt Yglesias's comments, "Cranky" pointed out that the Republican aide's assertion is pretty much what they teach in business schools these days – you don't manage based on your past experience, but upon what is going to happen in the future – and the future is something that you can do something about. Another commenter, JS, cited Marx: "Philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point is to change it." Ariel Sharon's "facts on the ground" is another example of what I mean. By taking bold actions, the executive can make his opponent's objections and proposals irrelevant, and this method works even if the bold action makes things worse. "So what are you gonna do now, buddy?" However, most entrepreneurs fail, and most adventurists are defeated. Bush's great adventure is in collapse phase. In Iraq, things didn't go the way the Bush team had planned. (This is true even if you grant that their actual plans were different than their publicly-expressed plans). They gave it their best shot, but that wasn't good enough. Adventurists cannot afford to admit defeat, because they've staked too much on success; once the jig is up, they're through for good. Bush can only try to save himself by upping the ante. If he wins in November, we can expect him to invade Iran, institute a draft, and attack the traitors and naysayers in our midst even more viciously than before. Adventurists are only forgiven if they succeed, and Bush didn't. He gambled and lost, and now is in the running to be named the worst President in American history. It's time to escort him off the stage. --- Posted at 10/18/2004 10:08:00 AM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
T-Shirts  
These two designs happen to be by my wife Sudeep. --- Posted at 10/18/2004 10:05:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Tricked Kevin at The Washington Monthly adds his voice to corporate efforts to block consumers from being able to sue corporations that harm them -- except he doesn't really realize that he has done so. He cites a right-wing article, written by a right-wing think tank fellow, saying "huge awards in liability lawsuits" is part of why much of the American public can't get flu vaccines this year. This triggers readers to leave comments like, "Thank the trial lawyers, and those in power who get furious if a medical company makes a profit." This is how it works. Watch your backs. --- Posted at 10/18/2004 09:17:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Renegade Greens for Kerry Go here. --- Posted at 10/18/2004 08:33:00 AM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Christians will be judged too Everything that the Bush team has done in the last several months has been calculated to stave off disaster in Iraq until after the election. At this point, even the Green Zone is no longer secure, so disaster looks pretty close. If Bush wins, he'll have a free hand and a four-year blank check. If he loses, Kerry will have to clean up the mess (sort of like Clinton inheriting Somalia from Bush the first, except a hundred times worse). There are literally thousands of media people and Republicans who pretty well know what's going on, but who aren't saying anything because of their career agendas, ideological obsessions, and utter cynicism and shallowness. If Kerry wins, there really have to be recriminations and score-settling (as I think Krugman has said). One peculiarity of the moral-clarity people and the religious right is that they frame their political fight as a moral fight against cynicism and relativism, but seem completely unaware that they too will be judged. The most dangerously cynical people in the U.S. today are conservative Republicans. Anyone who's knocked around a bit has met cheesy, semi-criminal revival Christians who think that their piety gives them a special connection to Jesus, who they're counting on to save them if they ever get caught. That describes the Bush administration to a T. (Apropos of Susskind's NYT article and this thread on Brad DeLong. Krugman called for recriminations here). --- Posted at 10/18/2004 06:37:00 AM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
10/17/2004 Times Change(s) In 1971, in what is known as the Pentagon Papers case, the NY Times went to the mat to defend the right of the press to reveal that the government was lying to us about a war. A courageous individual risked everything to bring the "Pentagon Papers" and the information they contained to the public, and the Nixon Administration was trying to stop their publication. Revealing government lies and corruption used to be an important role of the press. Times sure have changed. The Times sure has changed. And, as we all know so well, the press and the role they see for themselves sure has changed. Now The Times and others are going to the mat to protect government officials who conspired to make war, and who hurt efforts to stop weapons of mass destruction from reaching terrorists. A courageous individual named Joe Wilson risked all to reveal to us that the Bush administration was lying about their reasons for starting a war. To punish him, White House officials illegally revealed to reporters the identity of his wife, Valerie Plame, a covert CIA operative. (This also intimidated others in government who might talk to the press.) To make matters even worse, Valerie Plame's job was hunting down people trafficking in weapons of mass destruction. They not only stopped her from this effort, by revealing her identity they alerted countries and organizations worldwide to look at who she has been meeting with over the years, in case they were informing on them. See some editorials against revealing who in the White House did this: here, here, here, here, here, here ... many more... --- Posted at 10/17/2004 01:56:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Electoral College Update Matt Hubbard has a new Weekly Electoral College Status update. Explanation here. --- Posted at 10/17/2004 01:30:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
10/16/2004 A "chain letter" from our side of the fence. [Just got this from my mother. Did a Google search, and confirmed that yes, there is a State Senator named Howard Carroll who serves in the Illinois State Senate as a representative from the Chicago area. I was only able to find one copy of this list (posted on the 15th of October), so I think this is new stuff. Pass it on! -Thomas] Date Sent: 12 Oct 2004 09:54 AM Absolutely Infuriating! Please pass this along. FW: Military experience Hi all - As Sen. Carroll requests (see below,) please keep this info moving... Pattern here? What does this say? Democrats: * Richard Gephardt: Air National Guard, 1965-71. * David Bonior: Staff Sgt., Air Force 1968-72. * Tom Daschle: 1st Lt., Air Force SAC 1969-72. * Al Gore: enlisted Aug. 1969; sent to Vietnam Jan. 1971 as an army journalist in 20th Engineer Brigade. * Bob Kerrey: Lt. j.g. Navy 1966-69; Medal of Honor, Vietnam. * Daniel Inouye: Army 1943-47; Medal of Honor, WWII. * John Kerry: Lt., Navy 1966-70; Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat V, Purple Hearts. * Charles Rangel: Staff Sgt., Army 1948-52; Bronze Star, Korea. * Max Cleland: Captain, Army 1965-68; Silver Star & Bronze Star, Vietnam. * Ted Kennedy: Army, 1951-53. * Tom Harkin: Lt., Navy, 1962-67; Naval Reserve, 1968-74. * Jack Reed: Army Ranger, 1971-1979; Captain, Army Reserve 1979-91. * Fritz Hollings: Army officer in WWII; Bronze Star and seven campaign ribbons. * Leonard Boswell: Lt. Col., Army 1956-76; Vietnam, DFCs, Bronze Stars, and Soldier's Medal. * Pete Peterson: Air Force Captain, POW. Purple Heart, Silver Star and Legion of Merit. * Mike Thompson: Staff sergeant, 173rd Airborne, Purple Heart. * Bill McBride: Candidate for Fla. Governor. Marine in Vietnam; Bronze Star with Combat V. * Gray Davis: Army Captain in Vietnam, Bronze Star. * Pete Stark: Air Force 1955-57 * Chuck Robb: Vietnam * Howell Heflin: Silver Star * George McGovern: Silver Star & DFC during WWII. * Bill Clinton: Did not serve. Student deferments. Entered draft but received #311. * Jimmy Carter: Seven years in the Navy. * Walter Mondale: Army 1951-1953 * John Glenn: WWII and Korea; six DFCs and Air Medal with 18 Clusters. * Tom Lantos: Served in Hungarian underground in WWII. Saved by Raoul Wallenberg. Republicans -- and these are the guys sending people to war: * Dick Cheney: did not serve. Several deferments, the last by marriage. * Dennis Hastert: did not serve. * Tom Delay: did not serve. * Roy Blunt: did not serve. * Bill Frist: did not serve. * Mitch McConnell: did not serve. * Rick Santorum: did not serve. * Trent Lott: did not serve. * John Ashcroft: did not serve. Seven deferments to teach business. * Jeb Bush: did not serve. * Karl Rove: did not serve. * Saxby Chambliss: did not serve. "Bad knee." The man who attacked Max Cleland's patriotism. * Paul Wolfowitz: did not serve. * Vin Weber: did not serve. * Richard Perle: did not serve. * Douglas Feith: did not serve. * Eliot Abrams: did not serve. * Richard Shelby: did not serve. * Jon! Kyl: did not serve. * Tim Hutchison: did not serve. * Christopher Cox: did not serve. * Newt Gingrich: did not serve. * Don Rumsfeld: served in Navy (1954-57) as flight instructor. * George W. Bush: failed to complete his six-year National Guard; got assigned to Alabama so he could campaign for family friend running for U.S. Senate; failed to show up for required medical exam, disappeared from duty. * Ronald Reagan: due to poor eyesight, served in a non-combat role making movies. * B-1 Bob Dornan: Consciously enlisted after fighting was over in Korea. * Phil Gramm: did not serve. * John McCain: Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross. * Dana Rohrabacher: did not serve. * John M. McHugh: did not serve. * JC Watts: did not serve. * Jack Kemp: did not serve. "Knee problem," although continued in NFL for 8 years. * Dan Quayle: Journalism unit of the Indiana National Guard. * Rudy Giuliani: did not serve. * George Pataki: did not serve. * Spencer Abraham: did not serve. * John Engler: did not serve. * Lindsey Graham: National Guard lawyer. * Arnold Schwarzenegger: AWOL from Austrian army base. Pundits & Preachers * Sean Hannity: did not serve. * Rush Limbaugh: did not serve (4-F with a 'pilonidal cyst.') * Bill O'Reilly: did not serve. * Michael Savage: did not serve. * George Will: did not serve. * Chris Matthews: did not serve. * Paul Gigot: did not serve. * Bill Bennett: did not serve. * Pat Buchanan: did not serve. * John Wayne: did not serve. * Bill Kristol: did not serve. * Kenneth Starr: did not serve. * Antonin Scalia: did not serve. * Clarence Thomas: did not serve. * Ralph Reed: did not serve. * Michael Medved: did not serve. * Charlie Daniels: did not serve. * Ted Nugent: did not serve. (He only shoots at things that don't shoot back.) Please keep this information circulating Sen. Howard W. Carroll senhwc@Hotmail.com --- Posted at 10/16/2004 09:41:00 PM by Thomas Leavitt Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Copyright © 2002-05. |
Blogger's RSS feed 
Please help Seeing the Forest meet expenses. You can contribute using Paypal or Amazon by clicking either of the following buttons. Thanks! I took out the Amazon "donate button" because they are a red company, helping fund the right. Archives 
|
|||
