July 28, 2005
Now it's a global struggle against extremism
Of course, when they wanted to go to Iraq, that was a central battle in the War on Terror. Now that Iraq is not going so well, it's only one small part of a "global struggle against violent extremists" which presumably includes a lot more groups than just Al Qaeda.
Interesting indeed, from the New York Times:
"It is more than just a military war on terror," Steven J. Hadley, the national security adviser, said in a telephone interview. "It's broader than that. It's a global struggle against extremism. We need to dispute both the gloomy vision and offer a positive alternative."The language shifts also come at a time when Mr. Bush, with a new appointment for one of his most trusted aides, Karen Hughes, is trying to bolster the State Department's efforts at public diplomacy.
Lawrence Di Rita, Mr. Rumsfeld's spokesman, said the shift in language "is not a shift in thinking, but a continuation of the immediate post-9/11 approach."
"The president then said we were going to use all the means of national power and influence to defeat this enemy," Mr. Di Rita said. "We must continue to be more expansive than what the public is understandably focused on now: the military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq."
By emphasizing to the public that the effort is not only military, the administration may also be trying to reassure those in uniform who have begun complaining that only members of the armed forces are being asked to sacrifice for the effort.
New opinion polls show that the American public is increasingly pessimistic about the mission in Iraq, with many doubting its link to the counterterrorism mission. So, a new emphasis on reminding the public of the broader, long-term threat to the United States may allow the administration to put into broader perspective the daily mayhem in Iraq and the American casualties.
Posted by Mike at 12:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
July 18, 2005
Clarence Page is right for once
I'm almost ready to take back everything bad I ever said about him.
Fineman: If nobody is indicted here this whole story will go away.Page: Should the story go away? (cross-talk)
Fineman: It's going to go away (cross-talk)
Page: That's the point it should not go away and it won't go away even if it takes the bloggers to keep it alive. It is going to stay alive.
Visit DowningStreetMemo.com for more information.
Posted by Mike at 12:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
June 24, 2005
Fuck all these mother fuckers
If I hear one more ass hole say Karl Rove was right, I'm gonna drive down to their cushy Manhattan studio and put someone in the hospital.
"Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers," Mr. Rove, the senior political adviser to President Bush, said at a fund-raiser in Midtown for the Conservative Party of New York State.Citing calls by progressive groups to respond carefully to the attacks, Mr. Rove said to the applause of several hundred audience members, "I don't know about you, but moderation and restraint is not what I felt when I watched the twin towers crumble to the ground, a side of the Pentagon destroyed, and almost 3,000 of our fellow citizens perish in flames and rubble."
First it was "The Beltway Boys" talking about some lame MoveOn.Org petition and saying Rove should have said "some" perhaps not "all" liberals. Then Tucker Carlson and one of his guests say "we all know Rove is right" and we just won't admit it because it makes us look bad. Now I hear the same grain of truth story line on all the damn morning shows today. All propaganga has a grain of truth you fucking idiots! But I can't turn on the goddamn TV without hearing this shit?
A White House official said Friday the administration finds it "somewhat puzzling" that Democrats are demanding presidential adviser Karl Rove's apology or resignation for implying that liberals are soft on terrorism."I think Karl was very specific, very accurate, in who he was pointing out," communications director Dan Bartlett said, contending the comments weren't aimed at all Democrats. "It's touched a chord with these Democrats. I'm not sure why."
Congressional Republicans earlier joined the White House in standing solidly behind Rove, saying he shouldn't apologize and that he was outlining a philosophical divide between a president who sought to win the war on terrorism by taking the fight to the enemy and some Democrats who questioned that approach.
Is your memory that fucked up, or have you lost touch with reality?
Presidential Radio Address from September 15, 2001:
In Washington, D.C., the political parties and both Houses of Congress have shown a remarkable unity, and I'm deeply grateful. A terrorist attack designed to tear us apart has instead bound us together as a nation.
If you really think "liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers" you need to get your fucking head examined before someone sends you bleeding to the ER and gets it examined for you.
Posted by Mike at 09:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
May 27, 2005
Power 101 or Propaganda 101?
EJ calls it Power 101, but I'd call it something else:
Conservative academics have long attacked "postmodernist" philosophies for questioning whether "truth" exists at all and claiming that what we take as "truths" are merely "narratives" woven around some ideological predisposition. Today's conservative activists have become the new postmodernists. They shift attention away from the truth or falsity of specific facts and allegations -- and move the discussion to the motives of the journalists and media organizations putting them forward. Just a modest number of failures can be used to discredit an entire enterprise.Of course journalists make mistakes, sometimes stupid ones. Dan Rather should not have used those wacky documents in reporting on President Bush's Air National Guard service. Newsweek has been admirably self-critical about what it sees as its own mistakes on the Guantanamo story. Anonymous sources are overused. Why quote a nameless conservative saying a particular columnist is "an idiot liberal" when many loyal right-wingers could be found to say the same thing even more colorfully on the record? If the current controversies lead to better journalism, three cheers.
But this particular anti-press campaign is not about Journalism 101. It is about Power 101. It is a sophisticated effort to demolish the idea of a press independent of political parties by way of discouraging scrutiny of conservative politicians in power. By using bad documents, Dan Rather helped Bush, not John Kerry, because Rather gave Bush's skilled lieutenants the chance to use the CBS mistake to close off an entire line of inquiry about the president. In the case of Guantanamo, the administration, for a while, cast its actions as less important than Newsweek's.
Back when the press was investigating Bill Clinton, conservatives were eager to believe every negative report about the incumbent. Some even pushed totally false claims, including the loony allegation that Clinton aide Vince Foster was somehow murdered by Clinton's apparatchiks when, in fact, Foster committed suicide. Every journalist who went after Clinton was "courageous." Anyone who opposed his impeachment or questioned even false allegations was "an apologist."
We now know that the conservatives' admiration for a crusading and investigative press carried an expiration date of Jan. 20, 2001.
When the press fails, it should be called on the carpet. But when the press confronts a politically motivated campaign of intimidation, its obligation is to resist -- and to keep reporting.
Posted by Mike at 03:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)
May 16, 2005
Frist's nuclear option is simply illegal
Not being familiar with the rules of the Senate, I had assumed from all this talk that changing the rules was within Frist's power to do. It's not. You can only change the rules with a two-thirds majority vote for cloture on the motion to change the rules! The Senate rules are very clear on this point. Kudos to P6.
http://rules.senate.gov/senaterules/rule22.htm
"Is it the sense of the Senate that the debate shall be brought to a close?" And if that question shall be decided in the affirmative by three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn -- except on a measure or motion to amend the Senate rules, in which case the necessary affirmative vote shall be two-thirds of the Senators present and voting -- then said measure, motion, or other matter pending before the Senate, or the unfinished business, shall be the unfinished business to the exclusion of all other business until disposed of.
Is Frist proposing that any Vice President can simply re-write the rules of order as he pleases? Any motion to change the rules is still a motion.
http://rules.senate.gov/senaterules/rule05.htm
1. No motion to suspend, modify, or amend any rule, or any part thereof, shall be in order, except on one day's notice in writing, specifying precisely the rule or part proposed to be suspended, modified, or amended, and the purpose thereof. Any rule may be suspended without notice by the unanimous consent of the Senate, except as otherwise provided by the rules.
The Constitution itself leaves it up to the Senate:
Article I. Section 5.Clause 2: Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.
Conservatives like to cite United States vs Ballin from 1892 which says in part:
As appears from the journal, at the time this bill passed the house there was present a majority, a quorum, and the house was authorized to transact any and all business. It was in a condition to act on the bill if it desired. The other branch of the question is whether, a quorum being present, the bill received a sufficient number of votes; and here the general rule of all parliamentary bodies is that, when a quorum is present, the act of a majority of the quorum is the act of the body. This has been the rule for all time, except so far as in any given case the terms of the organic act under which the body is assembled have prescribed specific limitations. As, for instance, in those states where the constitution provides that a majority of all the members elected to either house shall be necessary for the passage of any bill. No such limitation is found in the federal constitution, and therefore the general law of such bodies obtains.
Based on that, Sean Rushton from National Review says:
So the restoration of Senate rules and traditions for judicial nominees enjoys both historical support and Senate precedent. But the constitutional power of a majority of Senators to strengthen, improve, and reform Senate rules and procedures is also expressly stated in the Constitution, and was unanimously endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court in United States v. Ballin.In Ballin, the Court unanimously held that unless the Constitution expressly provides for a supermajority vote, the constitutional rule is majority vote. For example, the Constitution clearly states that each house of Congress “may determine the Rules of its Proceedings” (Article I, Section 5).
There is no way in hell Sean's arguent would ever hold up in court.
Rushton also says the following:
The vote on the Harkin proposal was not the only effort to reform Senate rules. It is important to note that in 1975 the Senate voted three times in support of the power of a Senate majority under Article I of the Constitution to change the rules. Those precedents forced the Senate to act and led to a major change in the cloture rule.
Really? Let's go back to 1975. The motions Sean is referring to are the ones that established the current rules and specifically require the 2/3 majority for changing the rules, not a simple majority! Search on "cloture" in 1975 over at Thomas to see for yourself. Notice how the changes were passed by a 2/3 majority, too! Sean just made the case for me.
S.RES.93SPONSOR: Sen Byrd (W. Va.) (introduced 2/28/75)
Revises rule XXII of the standing Rules of the Senate to close debate on any measure, motion, or other pending matter when three-fifth of all Senators vote affirmatively to invoke cloture (Rules presently require two-thirds vote of those present and voting). Provides that a motion to close debate on any measure or motion to amend the Rules of the Senate shall require a two-thirds vote.
Bruce Ackerman sums it all up in today's Financial Times, as reprinted in The Washington Note:
Their prime target is Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader. As a leading candidate for the presidency, Mr Frist is especially eager to pacify his religious constituency. But the Senate rules do not make this easy. A special provision requires "two-thirds of the senators present and voting" to end debate on rule changes and Mr Frist will fall far short of the 67 senators this requires. His predicament is exacerbated by another provision stipulating that no rule may be changed except as "provided in these rules".Faced with this unambiguous command, the Republican leadership has manufactured a constitutional objection to the rules themselves. The constitution says each house "may determine the rules of its proceedings", and for two centuries the Senate has exercised this power in a distinctive fashion. As only one-third of its members enter with every election, the Senate has viewed itself as a continuing body. Unless there is a challenge at its opening session, the Senate continues to operate under its established rules.
Mr Frist is urging his fellow Republicans to repudiate this understanding. He claims that the Senate has the constitutional right to be like the House of Representatives, which approves its rules each session by simple majority vote. Conservatives do not often insist on repudiating a practice dating from the founding fathers. In any event, Mr Frist's analogy to the House does not get him where he wants to go. Once the House organises itself at its opening session, it must follow its own rules if it wants to change them later. In contrast, Mr Frist claims that a Senate majority may simply repudiate the rules at any time. This raises the question, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Reference Service, of wheth-er the Senate will become "a chaotic environment in which a temporary majority could change precedents any time it wanted to". The constitution gives the Senate the power to "determine its rules", but nothing gives it the authority to ignore them.
Here is a thorough debunking of the recent idea conservatives have been floating that rule changes by a simple majority is "The Byrd Option" - which it clearly is not.
Posted by Mike at 01:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
April 05, 2005
Bush assures foreign investors: "It's just paper!"
Given that we rely on foreign holders on U.S. Treasuty notes for almost $2 trillion dollars of the $7 trillion public debt Bush has run up:
MAJOR FOREIGN HOLDERS OF TREASURY SECURITIES
(in billions of dollars)
Japan 701.6
Mainland China 194.5
United Kingdom 163.0
Caribbean Banking Centers 92.5
Korea 67.7
OPEC 64.7
Grand Totals 1960.3
And given that lack of confidence by foreign investors in U.S. treasury notes is one of the leading causes for concern about the decline of the dollar:
And the foreign holders of all those bonds are listening to our debate. They are listening to a country that is refusing to raise taxes, and an administration talking about borrowing an additional $2 trillion so Americans can invest some of their Social Security money in stocks. If that happened, it would almost certainly weaken the dollar, further depreciating the U.S. Treasury bonds held by all those foreigners.On Monday, the Bank of Korea said it planned to diversify more of its reserves into nondollar assets, after years of holding too many low-yielding and depreciating U.S. government securities. The fear that this could become a trend sparked a major sell-off in U.S. equity markets on Tuesday. To calm the markets, the Koreans said the next day that they had no intention of selling their dollars.
Oh, good. Now I'm relieved. "These countries don't have to dump dollars - they just have to reduce their purchases of them for the dollar to be severely affected," Mr. Hormats noted. "Korea is the fourth-largest holder of dollar reserves. ... You don't want others to see them diversifying and say, 'We'd better do that, too, so that we're not the last ones out.' Remember, the October 1987 stock market crash began with a currency crisis."
Clearly, there was only one option for winning back some confidence in U.S. Treasury bonds:
President Bush sought to dramatize Social Security's solvency problems Tuesday by pointing to government IOUs stored in a file cabinet that are supposed to finance America's future retirement needs."A lot of people in America think there is a trust that we take your money in payroll taxes and then we hold it for you and then when you retire, we give it back to you," Bush said in a speech at the University of West Virginia at Parkersburg.
"But that's not the way it works," Bush said. "There is no trust `fund' just IOUs that I saw firsthand," Bush said.
Earlier, Susan Chapman of the Office of Public Debt Accounting had shown Bush an ivory four-drawer filing cabinet with numeric locks. "This is it," she said.
"This is what exists," Bush said, illustrating his point that the promise of future Social Security benefits are simply stashed in a file.
Chapman opened the second drawer and pulled out a white notebook filled with pseudo Treasury securities pieces of paper that offer physical evidence of $1.7 trillion in treasury bonds that make up the trust fund.
The pieces of paper he saw are not real Treasury securities. In today's computer age, investors no longer get honest-to-goodness Treasury bonds they can hold in their hands. But, by law, the bureau creates paper bonds to put in the file cabinet just in case anybody, like Bush, wants to see the trust fund.
"Imagine," Bush said in his speech. "The retirement security for future generations is sitting in a filing cabinet. It's time to strengthen and modernize Social Security for future generations with growing assets that you can control that you call your own assets that the government can't take away."
Posted by Mike at 06:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
February 17, 2005
Ministry of Patriotism and Preserving the Homeland
Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge met privately with Republican pollsters twice in a 10-day span last spring as he embarked on more than a dozen trips to presidential battleground states, according to records obtained by The Associated Press.Ridge's get-togethers with Republican strategists Frank Luntz and Bill McInturff during a period the secretary was saying his agency was playing no role in Bush's re-election campaign were revealed in daily appointment calendars obtained by the AP under the Freedom of Information Act.
"We don't do politics in the Department of Homeland Security," Ridge told reporters during the election season.
His aides resisted releasing the calendars for over a year, finally providing them to the AP three days after Ridge left office this month.
Posted by Mike at 04:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
November 16, 2004
Centrist cleansing
With a zeal that would make Slobodan Milosevic proud, Bush is using his claim of a mandate to purge the government of moderate voices:
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has resigned as expected a day after his boss and close friend, Colin Powell, announced he was stepping down, a State Department official said on Tuesday.
This follows similar developments at the CIA:
The White House has ordered new CIA Director Porter Goss to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George Bush or of leaking information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden."The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House," said a former senior CIA official. "Goss was given instructions...to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president’s agenda."
And on the Senate Judiciary Committee:
Sen. Bill Frist, the Republican majority leader, said Sunday that he was troubled by recent remarks by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., about potential judicial nominees, and that Specter must convince his fellow Republicans that he deserves to be chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee."Arlen made some statements the day after the election," Frist, of Tennessee, said on Fox News Sunday in an interview with Chris Wallace. "They were disheartening to me; they were disheartening to a lot of people."
Specter said just after he won re-election that Supreme Court nominees who wanted to undo abortion rights would face tough confirmation fights in the Senate. Those remarks, in keeping with Specter's support of abortion rights and with his maverick personality, put him at odds with conservative Republicans and annoyed the White House.
Why does this all sound so familiar?
“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you treat everything like a nail.” In contemporary Russia, President Vladimir Putin is wielding a particularly active hammer, taking on just about any institution capable of holding him and his associates to account.Paradoxically, Putin has willfully smothered the very institutions that are indispensable if Russia is to improve the quality of its public policy decision-making and meet the profound security and economic challenges his country faces.
The Kremlin’s most recent steps to exert greater control have focused on regional governors, the State Duma, and the judiciary. Until now, half the members of the lower house, the Duma, have been elected in first-past-the-post contests. Going forward, the entire Duma will be composed of party lists, which will push aside independent legislators. Until now, the governors of Russia’s 89 regions have been directly elected. From now on, they will be chosen by the president. The careers of Russia’s politicians will now depend even more on the president himself.
Meanwhile, Putin has squeezed the judiciary. Last month, Russia’s upper house of parliament approved a bill that gives Putin effective control over the Supreme Qualification Collegium, the body that approves candidates for the country’s higher courts and disciplines senior judges.
But these efforts to rein in independent institutions and curb dissenting voices are part of a pattern of power consolidation that began far earlier in the Putin administration.
Independent media, especially television, have already been systematically pushed to the margins. The firing this summer of Leonid Parfyonov, the host of the popular news magazine Namedni, and the cancellation of the live political discussion program Svoboda Slova drained NTV, the most independent of the national channels, of the last of its programs with a political bent. Since that time there has been no meaningful critical broadcast voice in Russia. In September, Raf Shakirov, the editor in chief of Izvestiya, was forced to resign because of his paper’s frank and critical reporting of the Beslan horror.
Likewise, the Kremlin has neutered independent policy and polling organizations, and has put independent academic research under surveillance.
I guess now we know what Bush meant, when he said of Putin:
I used to think that we'd establish a relationship of trust with one another and then the other members of our administrations would have greater trust in one another. Trust is an important concept.I'll never forget the first question I was asked after meeting Putin in Slovenia. "Do you trust Vladimir Putin?" I said, "Yes." I was asked why and I said: "I have looked him in the eye and seen his soul." We'd just finished a very long conversation.
We talked about family matters, our personal lives. I realised that Vladimir is a genuine person. He's someone I can trust. That doesn't mean we agree on everything. It means we have a common platform, the basis for relations between our governments to develop.
Well, at least Bush wouldn't use a tragedy to consolidate power.
Posted by Mike at 02:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
October 03, 2004
Judicial branch (of the campaign)
Looks like corruption has finally taken it's toll on the man:
Antonin Scalia, one of George W. Bush's favorite justices, was up at Harvard's John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum the other day, sharing his views with students, faculty and others on some distinctly extrajudicial matters.He raised more than eyebrows in the room.
With the tiniest of promptings, Scalia shared his own personal view about the number of people needed for group sex.
You read that right: the number of people needed for group sex.
"Presumably, it is some number between five and the number of people required to fill the Coliseum," he said, according to an account in the Harvard Crimson....
Most surprising of all, he also weighed in on the benefits of orgies. "Sexual orgies," he said, "eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged."
All this from one of the most reliable conservatives on the modern Supreme Court. Scalia was nominated in 1986 by Ronald Reagan. From that day forward, he's been an intellectual stalwart of the court's conservative wing.
And it turns out he has orgies on his mind.
What else could he have on his mind? Well, there's this:
It is widely believed that Justice Antonin Scalia will be the next chief justice if George Bush wins a second term. But a number of recent incidents call Scalia's ethics into question.Vice President Dick Cheney had to answer accusations over his involvement in the energy task force in court last year. It was later revealed that Cheney and Scalia had spent a few days duck hunting together at a private camp in southern Louisiana at the same time that Scalia was hearing Cheney's case, which brought Scalia's impartiality into question, leading to calls that he recuse himself from the case.
This was not the first time Scalia had assisted the Bush-Cheney team. It was Scalia's judgment that helped uphold their claims about the Florida polls in the 2000 US presidential elections. Scalia heard the case even though his son was a member of a law firm that was working for Bush.
Democrats still reeling from the Bush v. Gore decision in December must have cringed when President Bush announced his choice for solicitor of the Labor Department. In April, Bush appointed Eugene Scalia, the 37-year-old son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, to the number-three spot at Labor. The younger Scalia's nomination was no mere act of nepotism, like, say, the appointment of 28-year-old Strom Thurmond, Jr., as South Carolina's U.S. attorney, or the appointment of Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning's son to a federal judgeship, or even the appointment of Janet Rehnquist, daughter of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, as the inspector general of the Health and Human Services Department. Scalia's nomination is on an entirely different scale.As a labor lawyer at Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, Eugene Scalia specialized in representing management in labor disputes. His area of expertise: downplaying the importance of worker safety, especially the dangers of repetitive-stress injuries. Scalia made his name fighting ergonomics rules like the ones enacted last year by the Clinton administration and recently repealed under Bush. "While the nomination of Scalia reflects Bush's affinity for children of powerful people, [it] also seems to reflect the administration's anti-regulatory priorities," says Marcia Kuntz, legislative director of the Alliance for Justice. "In fact, unlike Strom Thurmond, Jr., Scalia is already completely in sync with what the administration is trying to do. In a very narrow sense, you could even say he's qualified."
But Scalia has done more than just advocate his clients' opposition to ergonomic standards: Along with Baruch Fellner, another partner at Gibson, Dunn, he has emerged as the leading architect of the anti-ergonomics movement. Scalia refers to repetitive-stress injuries, which afflict 600,000 American workers annually, as "junk science," "quackery," and "strange." Though ergonomics is a well-documented science, he paints repetitive-stress injury as a "psychosocial issue"--in effect, calling those who suffer from it fakers. "The evidence is clear," Scalia has written, "that the employees most likely to complain of musculoskeletal discomfort are those who do not like their jobs." He has also advocated exempting unionized workplaces from OSHA inspections, to "free" workers from the "cigar-chomping, rough-and-tumble world of labor-management relations."
But during this case, it became clear that the Justices are not as insulated as we like to believe. Clarence Thomas' wife draws a paycheck from the conservative Heritage Foundation, where she has been vetting resumes for positions in a Bush Administration an Administration her husband's vote helped usher in. Mrs. Thomas denies her work is for Bush and says she and her husband don't discuss his cases. But Lisa Lerman, a legal-ethics expert at Catholic University, calls the situation "unseemly."Justice Scalia, the Bush camp's fiercest defender, has two sons employed by law firms working on the Bush postelection phase. And according to the Wall Street Journal, O'Connor's husband said at an election-night party that his wife, a 70-year-old breast-cancer survivor, would like to retire but that she would be reluctant to leave if a Democrat won the presidency and got to select her successor. Hers was a key swing vote that ensured a Republican victory. A conflict? Says Lerman: "At the very least it creates an appearance problem."
Within the first hundred days and while media pundits were absorbed with wondering whether Chelsea Clinton had political aspirations, Colin Powell's son became head of the FCC. William Rehnquist's daughter was nominated for Inspector General with Health and Human Services. Antonin Scalia's son was made Solicitor of Labor. Clarence Thomas's wife was nominated for a top position in the Office of Management and Budget. And Strom Thurmond's son, only three years out of law school, was handpicked by Strom himself to be South Carolina's US Attorney.At this rate, eight years from now Rudolph Giuliani's son will be our new Decency Czar, Newt Gingrich's fourth wife will head up the Compassionately Conservative Commission on the Alarming Breakdown of Family in the Inner City and Linda Chavez's favorite charitable donees will be directing the Spanish-for-the-House-and-Garden Literacy Campaign.
It's an orgy alright, just not the sexual kind. I'd call it an orgy of corruption.
Posted by Mike at 04:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
April 05, 2004
Executive branch (of the campaign)
What is an honest broker anyway? Is there really such a thing as a non-partisan government official? Why not just let the President run his campaign and the executive branch under the same donor-based funding scheme? Noticed this surreal story today at TNR:
The Treasury tapped civil servants to calculate the cost of Sen. John Kerry's tax plan and then posted the analysis on the Treasury Web site. A federal law bars career government officials from working on political campaigns.[e.g., Kerry's proposal would represent a tax increase of as much as $477 billion on "hardworking individuals and married couples"]
But Pamela Olson, who stepped down as the Bush Treasury's top tax official last month, countered that the Treasury should do even more analyses. "The obligation at the Treasury Department is to advance the president's legislative agenda," which includes making the individual income-tax cuts permanent, she said. "Something that goes in the opposite direction" -- as Mr. Kerry's proposal would -- "would be inconsistent with the president's legislative agenda," she said.
If only George Orwell were alive to see it.
Posted by Mike at 09:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
June 30, 2003
Rise of the Machines
This is the third installment in a series on the role of propaganda in the political tactics and strategy of Karl Rove and his candidate of choice, George W. Bush. In the first installment, I showed how Rove plans to use 9/11 to convince us that Bush is not just our civilian leader, but a military hero in America's great war on terror. Despite the fact that Bush is only a civilian - not a member of the military, and Congress - not the President - has the power to declare war. In the second installment, I warned of the parallels between the Bush administration and fascist, propaganda-fueled political movements of the past. In this third installment, I'll take a deeper look at what the hell is going on. Why would any party depend on propaganda to achieve it's goals? Why not just give the people what they want, and reap the rewards at the ballot box? I'll tell you why. The public's needs are in direct conflict with Rove's agenda!
As Paul Krugman wrote on Friday:
In "Welcome to the Machine," Nicholas Confessore draws together stories usually reported in isolation from the drive to privatize Medicare, to the pro-tax-cut fliers General Motors and Verizon recently included with the dividend checks mailed to shareholders, to the pro-war rallies organized by Clear Channel radio stations. As he points out, these are symptoms of the emergence of an unprecedented national political machine, one that is well on track to establishing one-party rule in America.Mr. Confessore starts by describing the weekly meetings in which Senator Rick Santorum vets the hiring decisions of major lobbyists. These meetings are the culmination of Grover Norquist's "K Street Project," which places Republican activists in high-level corporate and industry lobbyist jobs and excludes Democrats. According to yesterday's Washington Post, a Republican National Committee official recently boasted that "33 of 36 top-level Washington positions he is monitoring went to Republicans."
Of course, interest groups want to curry favor with the party that controls Congress and the White House; but as The Washington Post explains, Mr. Santorum's colleagues have also used "intimidation and private threats" to bully lobbyists who try to maintain good relations with both parties. "If you want to play in our revolution," Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, once declared, "you have to live by our rules."
Lobbying jobs are a major source of patronage a reward for the loyal. More important, however, many lobbyists now owe their primary loyalty to the party, rather than to the industries they represent. So corporate cash, once split more or less evenly between the parties, increasingly flows in only one direction.
And furthermore, as he goes on to explain:
Mr. Confessore suggests that we may be heading for a replay of the McKinley era, in which the nation was governed by and for big business. I think he's actually understating his case: like Mr. DeLay, Republican leaders often talk of "revolution," and we should take them at their word.Why isn't the ongoing transformation of U.S. politics which may well put an end to serious two-party competition getting more attention? Most pundits, to the extent they acknowledge that anything is happening, downplay its importance. For example, last year an article in Business Week titled "The GOP's Wacky War on Dem Lobbyists" dismissed the K Street Project as "silly and downright futile." In fact, the project is well on the way to achieving its goals.
Whatever the reason, there's a strange disconnect between most political commentary and the reality of the 2004 election. As in 2000, pundits focus mainly on images John Kerry's furrowed brow, Mr. Bush in a flight suit or on supposed personality traits. But it's the nexus of money and patronage that may well make the election a foregone conclusion.
Now from the article itself, which you really need to read in full, from the July/August issue of The Washington Monthly:
If today's GOP leaders put as much energy into shaping K Street as their predecessors did into selecting judges and executive-branch nominees, it's because lobbying jobs have become the foundation of a powerful new force in Washington politics: a Republican political machine. Like the urban Democratic machines of yore, this one is built upon patronage, contracts, and one-party rule. But unlike legendary Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley, who rewarded party functionaries with jobs in the municipal bureaucracy, the GOP is building its machine outside government, among Washington's thousands of trade associations and corporate offices, their tens of thousands of employees, and the hundreds of millions of dollars in political money at their disposal.At first blush, K Street might not seem like the best place to build a well-oiled political operation. For most of its existence, after all, the influence industry has usually been the primary obstacle to aggressive, ambitious policy-making in Washington. But over the last few years, Republicans have brought about a revolutionary change: They've begun to capture and, consequently, discipline K Street. Through efforts like Santorum's--and a House version run by the majority whip, Roy Blunt (R-Mo.)--K Street is becoming solidly Republican. The corporate lobbyists who once ran the show, loyal only to the parochial interests of their employer, are being replaced by party activists who are loyal first and foremost to the GOP. Through them, Republican leaders can now marshal armies of lobbyists, lawyers, and public relations experts--not to mention enormous amounts of money--to meet the party's goals. Ten years ago, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, the political donations of 19 key industry sectors--including accounting, pharmaceuticals, defense, and commercial banks--were split about evenly between the parties. Today, the GOP holds a two-to-one advantage in corporate cash.
That shift in large part explains conservatives' extraordinary legislative record over the last few years. Democrats, along with the press, have watched in mounting disbelief as President Bush, lacking either broad majorities in Congress or a strong mandate from voters, has enacted startlingly bold domestic policies--from two major tax cuts for the rich, to a rollback of workplace safety and environmental standards, to media ownership rules that favor large conglomerates. The secret to Bush's surprising legislative success is the GOP's increasing control of Beltway influence-peddlers. K Street used to be a barrier to sweeping change in Washington. The GOP has turned it into a weapon....
Bush's Medicare legislation could still stall or get watered down. But the fact that the White House and the GOP have pushed it so far, so fast, regardless of the risk and downside, hints not only at the power of an organized K Street, but at the political end to which it is being directed. For years, conservatives have tried and, mostly, failed to significantly reduce the size of the federal government. The large entitlement programs in particular command too much public support to be cut, let alone abolished. But by co-opting K Street, conservatives can do the next best thing--convert public programs like Medicare into a form of private political spoils. As a government program, Medicare is run by civil servants and controlled by elected officials of both parties. Bush's legislation creates an avenue to wean people from Medicare and into the private sector--or, at least, a version of the private sector. For under the GOP plan, the medical insurance industry would gradually become a captive of Washington, living off the business steered to it by the government but dependent on its Beltway lobbyists--themselves Republican surrogates--to maintain this stream of wealth. Over time, private insurers would grow to resemble the defense sector: closely entwined with government, a revolving door for Republican officials, and vastly supportive, politically and financially, of the GOP. Republicans are thus engineering a tectonic political shift in two phases. First, move the party to K Street. Then move the government there, too.
In conclusion, Nick paints a pretty bleak picture for the next few decades:
If the GOP is willing to be aggressive enough, even the federal payroll can become a source of patronage. Recently, as part of Bush's "competitive sourcing" initiative, the Interior Department announced that over half of the Park Service's 20,000 jobs could be performed by private contractors; according to the Post, administration officials have already told the service's senior managers to plan on about one-third of their jobs being outsourced. (Stay tuned for "Yosemite: A division of Halliburton Corporation.") But the Park Service is only the beginning. Bush has proposed opening up 850,000 federal jobs--about half of the total--to private contractors. And while doing so may or may not save taxpayers much money, it will divert taxpayer money out of the public sector and into private sector firms, where the GOP has a chance to steer contracts towards politically connected firms.Anyone who doubts this eventuality need look no further than Florida. There, as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman pointed out last year, Gov. Jeb Bush, the president's brother, has outsourced millions of dollars worth of work formerly performed by government employees to private contractors. There's little evidence that doing so has improved state services, as the governor's own staff admits. But it has vastly improved the financial state of the Florida Republican Party. According to an investigation by The Miami Herald last fall, "[t]he policy has spawned a network of contractors who have given [Bush], other Republican politicians, and the Florida GOP millions of dollars in campaign donations."
The Bush brothers would not be the first political family to turn government contracts into a source of political power. When the current mayor of Chicago, Richard M. Daley, won his father's old job 14 years ago, civil service reform had already wrecked the old system of bureaucratic patronage. So the new mayor began to farm out government services to private contractors, many of which returned the favor by donating generously to Daley's reelection campaigns. Today, Daley dominates Chicago politics almost as thoroughly as did his father. Like his father, Daley has used his power, in part, to improve city services voters care about, from better schools to the flower beds lining Lake Shore Drive. By contrast, the fruits of today's Republican machine--tax cuts and deregulation--have been enjoyed mainly by corporations and upper-income voters, while federal services, from college aid to environmental protection, are getting scaled back.
Indeed, it's striking how openly and unapologetically Bush and his party have allied themselves with corporations and the wealthy. The rhetoric of compassion aside, no one who pays attention to what goes on in Washington could have much doubt as to where the Bush administration's priorities lie. If the economy doesn't improve or unemployment continues to get worse, the GOP may find it's not such an advantage to be seen catering so enthusiastically to monied interests. But most Republicans seem confident that the strength they gain by harnessing K Street will be enough to muscle through the next election--so confident, in fact, that Bush, breaking with conventional electoral wisdom, has eschewed tacking to the political center late in his term. And if the GOP can prevail at the polls in the short term, its nascent political machine could usher in a new era of one-party government in Washington. As Republicans control more and more K Street jobs, they will reap more and more K Street money, which will help them win larger and larger majorities on the Hill. The larger the Republican majority, the less reason K Street has to hire Democratic lobbyists or contribute to the campaigns of Democratic politicians, slowly starving them of the means by which to challenge GOP rule. Already during this cycle, the Republicans' campaign committees have raised about twice as much as their Democratic counterparts. So far, the gamble appears to be paying off.
It wouldn't be the first time. A little over a century ago, William McKinley--Karl Rove's favorite president--positioned the Republican Party as a bulwark of the industrial revolution against the growing backlash from agrarian populists, led by Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan. The new business titans flocked to McKinley's side, providing him with an extraordinary financial advantage over Bryan. McKinley's victory in 1896 ushered in a long period of government largely by and for industry (interrupted briefly, and impermanently, by the Progressive Era). But with vast power came, inevitably, arrogance and insularity. By the 1920s, Republican rule had degenerated into corruption and open larceny--and a government that, in the face of rapidly growing inequality and fantastic concentration of wealth and opportunity among the fortunate few, resisted public pressure for reform. It took a few more years, and the Great Depression, for the other shoe to drop. But in 1932 came the landslide election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the founding of the very structure of governance today's Republicans hope to dismantle. Who knows? History may yet repeat itself.
If you needed any more proof of how important Republicans consider control of K Street, consider this amazing update from politics1.com:
TWO GOP CONGRESSMEN MAY RESIGN. According to various news reports, Congressman Chip Pickering (R-MS) and Congresswoman Mary Bono (R-CA) are both interested in private sector positions that -- if they land the new jobs -- would cause both to resign from Congress. According to the AP, Bono would like to become the new top lobbyist for the RIAA, the trade association for the recording industry -- although she is not yet actively pursuing it. Pickering, meanwhile, confirmed Wednesday for a Mississippi TV station that he is considering leaving Congress for a job as president of a trade group that lobbies on telecommunication and Internet issues. Both positions reportedly offer salaries of at least $1 million per year.
Besides that fact that it ought to be illegal for Congress persons to even consider offers worth millions of dollars from industries they are supposed to be passing laws on and regulating, consider the deeper meaning. Two national elected officials are considering stepping down to work as lobbyists, when they were elected to serve out a two year term and represent the interests of their constituents. I think it shows you exactly how important the RNC and Rove consider K Street control to be. A top lobbyist position is more important to them than a seat in the House of Representatives! I'm sure they are both safe Republican seats, though. So even if Gray Davis is still in office, and appoints a Democrat to take Bono's seat, the Republicans would no doubt win it back in 2004 - even if they nominated Bozo the Clown. If you think it is just the two members pursuing these positions on their own, you must have forgotten the Santorum screening process, and "De Lay School" of lobbyists that Confessore documents to death in the article I link to above. In other words, top RNC brass are definitely involved with the move. They want those K street spots.
I don't see how any more proof could be needed. We've established the fact the Republicans are joining forces with corporate interests, and demanding control of corporate campaign contributions in return. It should also be clear now, why Rove has become so dependent on propoganda. Corporations do not get to vote! Citizens - many of whom suffer every day due to ruthless corporate greed - are the ones who get to vote. Rove's only hope is that all their corporate support will be enough to finance all the propaganda needed to convince voters that the Republican party has not sold out to corporate interests. That's right, the very same propaganda being financed with corporate money! How obscene can they get?
Personally, I think that now more than ever, as a life-long champion for regular people fighting major corporations, Edwards is the perfect candidate to expose the deep corporate loyalties Bush tries to cloak under a cowboy public image.
Watch this clip from Edwards' closing statement at the first Democratic debate, then tell me that I'm wrong:
I'm running for president because I believe this president has betrayed people like my parents and the people I grew up with. People who work hard every day, try to do the right thing, act responsibly, and build a better live for themselves and for their families.Just because you speak the language of regular Americans doesn't mean your agenda is not the agenda of corporate America.
Just because you walk around on a ranch in Texas with a big belt buckle doesn't mean you understand and stand up for rural America.
Do you really think any of the other candidates can make as powerful a case?
Posted by Mike at 02:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
June 13, 2003
Dawn of Fascism?
This is the second installment in a series on the role of propaganda in the political tactics and strategy of Karl Rove and his candidate of choice, George W. Bush. Click here to read the first installment, Rove's September Strategy.
While I don't think anyone can credibly call George W. Bush a fascist:
fascism - n.
A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
A political philosophy or movement based on or advocating such a system of government.
Oppressive, dictatorial control.
It is interesting to note that many of the techniques used by fascist regimes have been gradually introduced into American politics the last few years. It is hard for me to say how fair - or accurate - this article is, but I would tend to give Free Inquiry more weight than, say, the Drudge Report. Let me emphasize again that I am not accusing George W. Bush of himself being a fascist - no matter how much he relies on propaganda or attempts to suppress democracy. All I am saying is that we should remember every journey begins with a single step, including the road to fascism. Have we already taken that step? Perhaps only history will be the judge.
Fascism Anyone? by Laurence W. Britt:
We are two-and-a-half generations removed from the horrors of Nazi Germany, although constant reminders jog the consciousness. German and Italian fascism form the historical models that define this twisted political worldview. Although they no longer exist, this worldview and the characteristics of these models have been imitated by protofascist1 regimes at various times in the twentieth century. Both the original German and Italian models and the later protofascist regimes show remarkably similar characteristics. Although many scholars question any direct connection among these regimes, few can dispute their visual similarities.Beyond the visual, even a cursory study of these fascist and protofascist regimes reveals the absolutely striking convergence of their modus operandi. This, of course, is not a revelation to the informed political observer, but it is sometimes useful in the interests of perspective to restate obvious facts and in so doing shed needed light on current circumstances.
For the purpose of this perspective, I will consider the following regimes: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Francos Spain, Salazars Portugal, Papadopouloss Greece, Pinochets Chile, and Suhartos Indonesia. To be sure, they constitute a mixed bag of national identities, cultures, developmental levels, and history. But they all followed the fascist or protofascist model in obtaining, expanding, and maintaining power. Further, all these regimes have been overthrown, so a more or less complete picture of their basic characteristics and abuses is possible.
Analysis of these seven regimes reveals fourteen common threads that link them in recognizable patterns of national behavior and abuse of power. These basic characteristics are more prevalent and intense in some regimes than in others, but they all share at least some level of similarity.
1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism....
2. Disdain for the importance of human rights....
3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause....
4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism....
5. Rampant sexism....
6. A controlled mass media....
7. Obsession with national security....
8. Religion and ruling elite tied together....
9. Power of corporations protected....
10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated....
11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts....
12. Obsession with crime and punishment....
13. Rampant cronyism and corruption....
14. Fraudulent elections....
Does any of this ring alarm bells? Of course not. After all, this is America, officially a democracy with the rule of law, a constitution, a free press, honest elections, and a well-informed public constantly being put on guard against evils. Historical comparisons like these are just exercises in verbal gymnastics. Maybe, maybe not.
I'd encourage you to read the full article for all the details on each item listed. I'd also encourage you to check out this opinion piece from the L.A. Times. Bush's Scorched Earth Campaign by Neal Gabler makes some serious accusations about Rove's tactics, especially in light of the list above:
The difference between Rove and former political operatives like Michael Deaver in the Reagan administration and Dick Morris in Clinton's is that he doesn't just advise on the political consequences of policy; he seems to be involved in crafting policy, making him arguably the single most important advisor in the White House. Rove's hand and guiding spirit are everywhere evident. As John DiIulio, who briefly headed Bush's faith-based initiative, indiscreetly put it in an interview last year, everything in this administration is political, by which he meant that everything is the product of political calculation and everything is devised specifically for political advantage.Every administration tilts decisions to reward friends and hurt enemies, though none since the days of Warren G. Harding has been as zealous in delivering largess to supporters and none since Nixon has seemed so ruthless in meting out punishments as this one. (Coming under intense administration criticism for his remarks, DiIulio apologized and expressed deep remorse for his "groundless" charges.)
Still, Rove has had something more up his sleeve than lining up support for his master's reelection. Rove's genius and the true genius of this administration is that he (and it) recognizes that political machinations don't have to be ancillary to policy. If Rove's mission is to ensure Bush's reelection and the formation of a GOP electoral monolith, he wants to devise policies that not only appeal to the party's core voters. They should also disable the Democratic Party from contesting elections. This is government expressly designed for its own self-perpetuation government designed to undermine the political process.
Rove's template for his new idea of governance is "tort reform" enacting laws that will reduce jury awards for various malfeasances, from product liability to medical malpractice. According to Lemann, this was Rove's earliest legislative crusade in Texas. To this day, Republicans insist that businesses have been unfairly burdened by excessive jury awards, but the political reason this has become a fervent GOP cause is that trial lawyers contribute heavily to the Democratic Party. Choke off their income and you choke off a major source of Democratic money.
Similarly, the president's huge tax cuts have been touted both as an economic stimulus and a way to shrink the federal government by denying it future revenues to spend. The latter goal was also Reagan's when he pushed tax cuts more than 20 years ago. Reagan genuinely believed that government was bad. It was a central tenet of his ideology. But for this nonideological administration, there's an overriding political reason to scale back government: Federal workers and employee unions are among the biggest contributors to the Democratic Party. Forget the economy. Tax cuts hit the Democrats where it hurts: right in the wallet.
Could it be that the real reason Bush supports annual tax cuts and record deficit spending has more to do with crushing the Democratic base than advancing any specific idealogical cause? That it is a power grab, pure and simple? I hope not, but if it's true, Rove's propaganda machine has a lot of work ahead of it! How else can you run a thriving economy into the ground, yet gain in popularity?
Rebuilding officials said yesterday that they hoped to complete a review of the environmental impact of the proposed construction at the World Trade Center site by next April. This would allow them to lay the cornerstone of a 1,776-foot tower in August 2004, during the Republican National Convention.The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation is expected to be the lead agency on the environmental review, according to a letter, released yesterday, from the agency to the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, which is overseeing the federally financed rebuilding project.
In giving the corporation less than a year to complete an environmental impact statement and review, officials said they realized that they were setting an aggressive timetable.
On the other hand, they could only put off the convention for so long.
This side note on the rebuilding story, from thememoryhole.org:
On 12 June 2003, the New York Times ran an article headlined: "Goal Is to Lay Cornerstone at Ground Zero During GOP Convention." It appeared in the print version and on the Web.At some point during the day, the Web headline was changed, thus becoming: "Officials Plan Speedy Ground Zero Environmental Review."
A reader alerted me to the change, and I read the article, noting that the first paragraph said:
"Rebuilding officials said yesterday that they hoped to complete a review of the environmental impact of the proposed construction at the World Trade Center site by next April. This would allow them to lay the cornerstone of a 1,776-foot tower in August 2004, during the Republican National Convention."
Later in the day, this first paragraph changed. It now reads:
"Rebuilding officials said yesterday that they hoped to complete a review of the environmental impact of the proposed construction at the World Trade Center site by next April. This would allow them to start construction by the summer of 2004."
The part about laying the cornerstone during the Republican convention has been excised, not only from that paragraph but from the entire article.
Apparently, the NYT--that bastion of the "liberal media"--didn't want to upset the GOP by pointing out that the building of the new World Trade Center tower is being cynically timed to give the Republicans a photo-op during their convention. Lords knows we wouldn't people to know that some politicians are using the deaths of 3,000 people as a way to boost their chances in the 2004 elections.
Posted by Mike at 01:02 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
May 10, 2003
Rove's September Strategy
This is the first installment in a series on the role of propaganda in the political tactics and strategy of Karl Rove and his candidate of choice, George W. Bush. Click here to read the second installment, The Dawn of American Fascism?
In case you missed the message that this photo from the White House website (and similar images playing on the nightly news) are meant to convey, let me spell it out for you: Bush is not just our civilian leader, but a military hero in America's great war on terror.
This is propaganda, pure and simple. And breaks a long tradition of American Presidents not dressing up in military garb. They are civilians, not military leaders, and it betrays the public trust for them to pretend otherwise. It also conveys the image that one political party has the military on its side, not the other, something we have not seen since the Civil War.
BASIC ELEMENTS OF PROPAGANDARepetition - owing to the infantile limitations of collective memory, a message must be continuously propagated in order to take hold within the collective consciousness.
Simplicity - The message must be designed in such a way that it appeals to or is quickly understood by the lowest common intellectual denominator of the collective. This is not only true because of the vast ignorance of the masses, but also because the collective attention span is virtually nonexistent. We now live in a world of sound-bite discourse. The simple lie always conquers the complex truth.
Imagery - The most powerful propaganda is embedded within appealing imagery. This imagery could be pictorial or descriptive. This is why movies and music are such potent forms of pr propaganda.
Sentiment - The message must contain as little detail as possible, and instead be designed in such a way that it appeals to some strong emotion or sentimentsuch as sex or sympathy.
The exclusion of detail allows for the quicker processing of the message, while the underlying sentiment reinforces it. The message need not be logically or factually based, this only clouds the affective force of the message. If any logic or fact is included, it must be very simple and plain, requiring virtually no processing time the use of cliches and platitudes is quite effective
This insightful commentary from Paul Krugman of the New York Times:
Some background: the Constitution declares the president commander in chief of the armed forces to make it clear that civilians, not the military, hold ultimate authority. That's why American presidents traditionally make a point of avoiding military affectations. Dwight Eisenhower was a victorious general and John Kennedy a genuine war hero, but while in office neither wore anything that resembled military garb.Given that history, George Bush's "Top Gun" act aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln c'mon, guys, it wasn't about honoring the troops, it was about showing the president in a flight suit was as scary as it was funny.
Mind you, it was funny. At first the White House claimed the dramatic tail-hook landing was necessary because the carrier was too far out to use a helicopter. In fact, the ship was so close to shore that, according to The Associated Press, administration officials "acknowledged positioning the massive ship to provide the best TV angle for Bush's speech, with the sea as his background instead of the San Diego coastline."
A U.S.-based British journalist told me that he and his colleagues had laughed through the whole scene. If Tony Blair had tried such a stunt, he said, the press would have demanded to know how many hospital beds could have been provided for the cost of the jet fuel.
Step one was exploiting a war in Iraq to repeat the message that Bush is our heroic military leader in America's great war on terror. The imagery of Bush in a full flight suit, helmet under arm, was priceless imagery. As the banner on the USS Lincoln put it, "Mission Accomplished!"
Step two is to exploit 9/11 during his re-election campaign to remind the American people that Bush is still our heroic military leader in America's great war on terror. Witness his plans to hold the latest Republican convention in history, at Madison Square Garden in New York City, just one week before the third anniversary of September 11th.
Here are some more details from News24 in South Africa:
United States President George W Bush's bid for re-election will start late in 2004 and coincide with the third anniversary of the September 11 2001 attacks, with organisers spending twice as much as during his first campaign, said the New York Times on Tuesday.Focused on national security and combating terrorism, Bush's campaign will start with his official acceptance speech on September 2 2004, Republicans close to the White House told the daily.
Starting on August 30 - one month after the opposition Democrats choose their contender - the Republican convention for the November 2004 presidential elections will be held in New York and Bush will shuttle between the convention centre and Madison Square Garden, where a commemoration of September 11 will be held.
The venue will highlight Bush's commitment to national security and the fight against terrorism, said party officials.
Several states are complaining the September convention does not leave enough time to print absentee ballots, and misses their official deadline for a party to declare it's candidate. As a result, Bush may have to be a write-in candidate in a few states, unless their state legislatures change the law to accomodate Bush's September 2nd acceptance speech. So far, several states have changed the law specifically to accomodate Bush's plans. When has Rove let something like a few silly election laws get in his way before? From the Washington Post:
First came the news that officials in Alabama may have to put President Bush on the ballot as a write-in candidate. It turns out Alabama isn't the only state scrambling to figure out what it needs to do to ensure that the president's name will appear on the state ballot next year.The GOP's unusually late nominating convention -- it does not begin until Aug. 30 -- is the problem. Bush is not scheduled to accept his party's nomination until Sept. 2, 2004. That falls after the deadline for certifying presidential candidates not only in Alabama, but also in California, the District of Columbia and West Virginia. There are bills in the Alabama legislature to move its deadline from Aug. 31 to Sept. 5. But if, for some reason, they don't pass, the president would be forced to run there as a write-in candidate.
In other states, along with the District, the situation is a bit more murky. The D.C. City Council will need to change its Sept. 1 deadline to accommodate the convention, said Alice Miller, executive director of the Board of Elections and Ethics. She declined to speculate on what might happen if that deadline isn't changed. Cindy Smith, an elections official in West Virginia, can probably sympathize. Her state requires candidates to file by Aug. 31. Smith said she does not know of any effort to move that deadline -- and is unsure of what might happen if the president misses it.
But the biggest question may be in California, where election officials plan to begin printing about 15 million ballots almost immediately after its Aug. 26 deadline -- and begin mailing its absentee ballots Sept. 3. A spokeswoman for the secretary of state said she did not know of any effort to move the deadline or how the state might accommodate the Republicans. "It's not clear at this point," Terri Carbaugh said. "It certainly poses a dilemma."
Several other states have already moved their deadlines. The Idaho legislature moved that state's by five days for the president, according to information from the National Association of Secretaries of State. Indiana lawmakers have approved a similar change, which is awaiting the governor's signature.
Bush's acceptance speech will be September 2nd, and the news lead into September 11th memorials could deprive his opponent of any news coverage at all for weeks. With the first Tuesday of November 2004 falling on November 2nd, this leaves exactly two months between the start of Bush's campaign and the election. I can hear Ari Fleischer now, "With only eight weeks between the convention and the election, I think there is simply not enough time to organize more than one, maybe two, Presidential debates." If you don't think Bush is capable of that degree of chutzpah, witness his rhetoric on the failed 2001 tax cut, and why he says we need even more tax cuts now.
Rove's September strategy not only exploits a national day of mourning, but conveniently enough leaves just eight and a half weeks for Bush to spend up to the $75 million limit from his campaign war chest, plus RNC soft money. Although Bush will not be opposed in the primary, he can fund his campaign up to September 2nd with a separate set of funds, pretending as if he were opposed in the primary. Soft money restrictions that were recently overturned in court will no doubt help the Bush campaign considerably. So expect to hear a lot about 9/11 during the Bush re-election campaign, despite the fact that Bush is still fighting to keep a Congressional report on the attacks secret.
Rest assured, myself and millions of my fellow New Yorkers. Those who protested the War and Iraq, and those like me who agreed with it in principle, will be out in large numbers protesting from August 30th to September 2nd, 2004. Then again if Bush's strategy at his 2001 Inaugural is any guide, and it will be, those who wish to protest better bring foldable, rollable signs that can be concealed from the wary security personnel. I spent hours at the Inauguration trying to get within a half mile of the swearing in ceremony or parade route. Every officer who saw my sign told me "Sorry, you can't go in there" while thousands of others were able to pass through, no tickets required. The offensive message on my cardboard sign? Gore's number of popular votes in blue, and Bush's number of popular votes in red. Later in the afternoon, I tossed the sign and walked to the parade route unobstructed.
This means if you want to protest at the 2004 convention you had better have signs you can hide. Expect them to be confiscated, even if you are only carrying them on a public street. Have a backup plan, blank signs and markers are a good idea, or a place near by that you can stash extras. You may think this sounds silly, but ask anyone who was there in January 2001. There is no such thing as freedom of speech at a Presidential event. That was even before September 11th! It might be risky to be there in 2004, too, given that Usama is still on the loose, and has vowed to exact his revenge in a personal suicide attack. Regardless, I hope I see a sign in New York that says two things.
HEY BUSH, 9/11 IS NOT A SLOGAN
GO EXPLOIT SOME OTHER TRAGEDY
Madison Square Garden. August 30-September 2, 2004.
Posted by Mike at 09:16 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)