Month: August 2004

Tax Bomb

Atrios posts that Bush has launched a trial balloon about abolishing the IRS. He explains various reasons why this is a problem, but what I’d like to see is how they plan to tell all the people who’ve put billions of dollars of retirement money into Roths and IRAs and 401Ks that all those tax incentives are no longer operative. Wall Street, particularly the mutual fund industry, might just have some reservations about this little plan.

I have a little feeling that this zeppelin is going nowhere — just like their last “big” idea, a manned mission to Mars. (Now, if the Democrats were inclined to employ a little of that Rovian bitchiness, I’d say that Mars speech would make quite a fine sound bite in a commercial.)

Republican Outreach

Here’s an interesting story in the NY Times that links domestic militia groups with Islamic terrorists. According to yet another whistleblower, the FBI refused to investigate:

…officials with knowledge of the case said the investigation took place in the Tampa, Fla., area and centered on an informant’s tip about a meeting between suspected associates of a domestic militia-type group and a major but unidentified Islamic terrorist organization, who were considering joining forces. A tape recording of the meeting appeared to lend credence to the report, one official said.

Law enforcement officials have become increasingly concerned that militant domestic groups could seek to collaborate with foreign-based terrorist groups like Al Qaeda because of a shared hatred of the American government. This has become a particular concern in prisons.

The Tampa case is not known to have produced any arrests. But Mr. German, in an April 29 letter to several members of Congress, warned that “the investigations involved in my complaint concern very active terrorist groups that currently pose significant threats to national security.”

He also wrote, “Opportunities to initiate proactive investigations that might prevent terrorist acts before they occur, which is purported to be the F.B.I.’s number one priority, continue to be lost, yet no one is held accountable.”

Well, it’s understandable. The white supremecist militia groups are part of the president of the United States’s base. Allowing the FBI to arrest them could negatively affect Republican turn-out.

South African Terrorists?

Sara, one my most astute commenters, points out in the comments section that some “chatter” that may or may not be related to the latest terrorist threat is actually right out there for anyone to see:

Actually you can track some of the chatter if you regularly use Google News to track articles on al-Qaeda in the World Press. And something is going on.

The arrest of the Tanzanian last sunday which broke in the US on Thursday just before Kerry’s speech, involved a 14 hour gun battle in Gugera, with follow up arrests in four other cities — I think a total of 17. Apparently all had South African Passports — some good, others frauds. The Pakistani’s found that over 60 local police were involved with hiding these al-Qaeda linked persons, most of whom had recently left Waziristan — the police have been fired and arrested.

Additional arrests were made in neighboring towns after the gunfight, and then two days ago an attempt was made on the newly designated Prime Minister’s life — Suicide Bomber, and many were killed.

South African papers are full of material on their investigations subsequent to the identification of the passports. Turns out someone in the passport office was part of a syndicate stealing and selling SA passports to al-Qaeda. This apparently also ties to recent arrests in Italy, which also involved people with SA passports. Then last weekend in McAllan Texas a woman with a modified SA passport was arrested who had walked over from Nexico, and was trying to board a plane for NYC. Her passport tracks back to the SA syndicate. She was carrying a large amount of money.

The South African connection here is to the Muslim-Asian population in the Cape area of S. Africa, a population decended from Muslim-Indians brought in the mid 19th century by the British for indentured servant work. Apparently al-Qaeda has been successful in recent years recruiting from this group.

It may all be related to Ridge’s warnings — may not be, but it is a breaking story in several parts of the world right now, and worth following.

This is interesting because Ridge was asked directly if the woman arrested in McAllen had anything to do with this and he denied it. (He gave Pakistan, however, high praise.) But, obviously others are on this same wavelength. As Sara says, this may not be related, but it is certainly a big al-Qaeda story that is breaking right now.

One of the more interesting aspects of this is the South Africa connection, which I hadn’t known about. (Yet another group to get hysterically frightened of when they go to the bathroom in an airplane.)

Personally, I’m not worried one bit about this. Zell Miller told Little Russ this morning that we are fighting all the terrorists in Iraq so we don’t have to fight them here. Tom Ridge must be talking about something else.

Here are a few links. There are many more:

SA woman held in US ‘not al-Qaeda’

New twist in al-Qaeda arrests

SA men in Pakistan face battle

What were SA men doing in Pakistan?

Gujrat raid for Qaeda: South Africa wants access to held nationals

S. African Detained in Texas May Have Terrorist Ties

Back To Iraq

I have heard stories about Iraq’s child prisoners and we all know that there is a story out there of some horrible video footage of child rapes, but this story in the Sunday Herald is the first I’ve seen that puts all the details of what is publicly known together, from UNICEF, the ICRC, Amnesty International and others. It’s very disturbing.

I had not, for instance, heard about this:

The [UNICEF]report also states: “A detention centre for children was established in Baghdad, where according to ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) a significant number of children were detained. Unicef was informed that the coalition forces were planning to transfer all children in adult facilities to this ‘specialised’ child detention centre. In July 2003, Unicef requested a visit to the centre but access was denied. Poor security in the area of the detention centre has prevented visits by independent observers like the ICRC since last December.

Another jail — for kids? The article goes on to note an obvious problem with this strategy. Young muslim males are not exactly the smartest group to send to a prison to be radicalized:

“The perceived unjust detention of Iraqi males, including youths, for suspected activities against the occupying forces has become one of the leading causes for the mounting frustration among Iraqi youths and the potential for radicalisation of this population group.”

The article points out that we have no jurisdiction anymore to be holding anyone, really, but it seems that we are and juveniles are among them. The credibility of the military on these matters being what it is, the following must be taken with a grain of salt. And surely, by now, we should have learned that these processes must be transparent. Apparently not.

High-placed officials in the Pentagon and Centcom told the Sunday Herald that children as young as 14 were being held by US forces. “We do have juveniles detained,” a source said. “They have been detained as they are deemed to be a threat or because they have acted against the coalition or Iraqis.”

Officially, the Pentagon says it is holding “around 60 juvenile detainees primarily aged 16 and 17”, although when it was pointed out that the Red Cross estimate is substantially higher, a source admitted “numbers may have gone up, we might have detained more kids”.

Officials would not comment about children under the age of 16 being held prisoner. Sources said: ‘‘It’s a real challenge ascertaining their ages. Unlike the UK or the US, they don’t have IDs or birth certificates.” The Sunday Herald has been told, however, that at least five children aged under 16 are being kept at Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca.

A highly placed source in the Pentagon said: “We have done investigations into accusations of juveniles being abused and raped and can’t find anything that resembles that.”

The Pentagon’s official policy is to segregate juvenile prisoners from the rest of the prison population, and allow young inmates to join family members also being detained. “Our main concern is that they are not abused or harassed by older detainees. We know they need special treatment,” an official said.

With the political season upon us, it’s easy for me to forget the horror of what we did in these Iraqi prisons and how utterly stupid it was in terms of the threat of islamic fundamentalism. But, as Yglesias pointed out today, this story is so over just as Karl and Dick knew it would be once we passed the magic meaningless date they set forth as the crucible. The media are pulling their people out. It is now like Afghanistan — one of those foreign hotspots that boring ugly people on PBS are always yammering about.

But, GI’s are still getting picked off daily, ever bigger car bombs are exploding and kids are mouldering in jails and nobody knows or cares about it. It’s as if the Iraq war was one of those summer shark stories.

Bouncing and Spinning

Following up my post below, here’s an interesting analysis from the LA Times:

Kerry Campaign Isn’t Banking on a ‘Bounce’

Observers on both sides predict a tight contest that will not be decided until late in the game.

Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry can expect at least a modest bounce in popularity following his star-studded convention, where the most serious hitch was a balky balloon drop. But now he faces an important question: Can he keep his momentum going until November?

The initial signs Friday were favorable for the Massachusetts senator: strong Nielsen ratings for his acceptance speech; a wave of generally positive news coverage; a record-breaking day of fundraising that pulled in more than $5 million on the Internet; and a poll that suggested support for President Bush may be slipping.

But Kerry’s strategists warn that the contest is tight, focused on a dozen or so of “battleground” states and a relatively small number of undecided voters who are unlikely to settle on a choice until the fall.

“We never expected great movement in the horse race” to result from the convention, Kerry strategist Tad Devine said. “We just expected to build here, not to end the race.”

Neutral analysts said that Kerry largely succeeded at the tasks he set for himself at the convention: introducing himself to millions of voters who had not tuned into the presidential race before and conveying a message that a Kerry administration would be strong on defense in the struggle against terrorism.

“I think Kerry comes out [of the convention] having unified his Democratic base,” said Stuart Rothenberg, editor of a nonpartisan political newsletter. “Maybe he didn’t close the deal, but he moved the ball down the field. I still expect a close race,” he said. “Kerry should get a two- to four-point bounce [in the poll numbers] and then, unless the Republicans mess up, they’ll get a two- to four-point bounce from their convention” in early September.

The actual increase in support Kerry reaps from the convention — especially from having his message showcased in news coverage — won’t be known until next week. But every presidential candidate in recent history has benefited from at least a modest bounce, with the exception of George S. McGovern, the 1972 Democratic nominee, whose acceptance speech was delayed by convention chaos until after 2 a.m. and was seen live by few voters.

Kerry’s speech Thursday evening was seen by an estimated 24.4 million viewers, according to Nielsen — compared with the 21.1 million who watched Democratic nominee Al Gore in 2000.

In another rough index of the convention’s potential effect, the Kerry campaign said it had raised $5.2 million on the Internet on Thursday, breaking its own record of $3 million set the day before.

Equally important, news coverage amplified the convention’s core messages: that Kerry volunteered for military service in Vietnam, that he will not shrink from military action now and that he believes the Bush administration has needlessly divided the nation.

[…]

A Zogby poll released early Friday — based on surveys performed before Kerry gave his acceptance speech at the convention — found that the percentage of voters who said they planned to vote for the Democrat was unchanged at 48%. But that the percentage of respondents who said they planned to vote for Bush had slipped from 46% to 43% when compared to a similar poll taken two weeks earlier.

That confirmed the most basic finding of other recent “horse race” polls: The contest is tight, but discontent with Bush has given Kerry a slowly growing chance to win.

“It’s a competitive race with a narrow advantage to Kerry,” Rothenberg said. “Most of the dynamics appear to favor the challenger … [but] it’s still a question of what events will move late-breaking voters. There are a lot of scenarios that are possible,” he added. “I’ve kind of thrown out the book. Historical analogies don’t work in an election like this.”

“We’re in uncharted territory,” Republican pollster Bill McInturff agreed. “We’re looking at a list of things we haven’t seen before in this generation of American politics, so we should be modest about making predictions.” Among the new factors, he said, was the stubbornness of voters on both sides of the partisan divide, which has kept Bush’s job approval rating — and his likely vote in November — hovering near the 50% mark.

In the six most recent elections that included an incumbent president as one of the candidates, the three who lost their jobs — Gerald R. Ford in 1976, Jimmy Carter in 1980 and George H.W. Bush in 1992 — all had slipped well below the halfway point.

“By historic standards, Bush does not look like the three winners, but he doesn’t look like the three losers either,” McInturff said. “He’s in between, in a new category. And a campaign with these numbers is not like any of the last six campaigns.” The number of undecided voters in the electorate is unusually small this year, he added, meaning the contest is unlikely to shift dramatically in either direction.

“You’re talking about 88% to 90% who say they’re locked in,” he said. As a result, both sides will campaign furiously throughout August, traditionally a lull before the Labor Day kickoff.

And both are focusing intently on the battleground states that probably will decide the contest in the electoral college — most notably Ohio, where Kerry and Bush will be campaigning today.

During his current coast-to-coast tour, which will end in Seattle, Kerry plans to fill out a policy agenda that he only hinted at during the convention, focusing on four issues: economic and tax policy, healthcare, energy independence and national security.

[…]

The question, Rothenberg said, is whether the GOP convention will have “a single, appealing message that can both mobilize the [traditional] base and reach out to swing voters.”

“The Democrats managed to do that,” he said. “They often talked in platitudes, they didn’t put a lot of meat on the bones, but they avoided the danger of sounding angry and bitter.”

[…]

“The biggest problem for Democrats is that some sort of event could happen that allows the president to present himself as a strong, decisive leader,” Rothenberg said. “We’re all prisoners of events, and that includes the campaigns.”

So, the lack of a significant bounce is predictable in this current climate. However, after building up the expectations, the GOP has the much better hand and will spin it, as David Brock notes, as a sign that the American people reject the Democrats for being “out of the mainstream” as Bush launches his new (gack) “Heart and Soul of America” Tour. (Picture Judy Woodruff and Bill Schneider tomorrow…)

Since this election has no historical analogies, perhaps the old saw about “new voters” really will come to pass this time. As I wrote below, we should all make it our business to get at least one of our apolitical friends to vote this time. It’s not asking too much of anyone.

No Resting On Laurels For Us

No boost for Kerry after convention:

The Democratic National Convention boosted voters’ perceptions of John Kerry’s leadership on critical issues, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll finds. But it failed to give him the expected bump in the head-to-head race against President Bush.

In the survey, taken Friday and Saturday, the Democratic ticket of Kerry and John Edwards trailed the Republican ticket of Bush and Dick Cheney 50% to 46% among likely voters, with independent candidate Ralph Nader at 2%.

Before the convention, the two were essentially tied, with Kerry at 47%, Bush at 46%.

The change in support was within the poll’s margin of error of +/- 4 percentage points in the sample of 763 likely voters. But it was nonetheless a stunning result, the first time in the Gallup Poll since the 1972 Democratic convention that a candidate seemed to lose ground at his convention.

USA TODAY extended its survey Sunday night and tonight to get a fuller picture of what’s happening with the electorate.

A Newsweek survey taken Thursday and Friday showed the Democrats with a lead of 49% to 42%, a four-point bounce compared with a poll taken three weeks earlier the smallest in the history of the Newsweek poll.

Analysts say the lack of a boost for Kerry may reflect the intensely polarized contest. Nearly nine of 10 voters say in the survey that they are confident they won’t change their mind between now and the Nov. 2 election. That leaves little room for a candidate to gain support even when major events occur.

This isn’t actually bad news, but it will be spun like a whirling dervish. The networks barely covered the convention and it wasn’t watched by very many people, so in a close contest, this shouldn’t be unexpected. But, we have our work cut out for us guys and gals. There is no landslide. We are going to have to fight for every single swing vote out there and there aren’t very many of them.

The New York Times reports today that:

Mr. Bush’s advisers plan to cap the month at the Republican convention in New York, which they said would feature Mr. Kerry as an object of humor and calculated derision.

The Tucker Carlson convention. This is one of their patented tactics and it is very powerful and very difficult to counter. Just ask Al Gore. And it is guaranteed to get the media howling and laughing right along with them. That is one of the main reasons they do it.

Bush is also going to have his convention coming off of the flag waving pageant of the Olympics and right up on the 9/11 anniversary. People will also be beginning to pay attention more as they always do after labor day. Be prepared for him to get a better bounce.

If this article is true is should serve as a galvanizing cry for the grassroots to get out there. If all of us persuaded just one person who doesn’t normally vote to vote this time we’d win. I have a relative in a swing state who is apolitical but will vote the way I advise because she knows me and respects the fact that I follow these issues. I am taking the time to get her to register to vote and will hound her into following through. I think everyone can do that. Just one vote per Democratic political junkie could make the difference in this close election. Yes, it’s going to be that close.

Update:

Here’s an interview with David Brock by Liberal Oasis which sheds some light on the strategy:

LO: How successful has the right-wing been in counterspinning the convention?

DB: I think we don’t fully know the answer yet. I think the main thing is really going to be after we get the first polls…

…[the GOP] has attempted to set it up for Kerry to have a huge bounce…

…the fact of the matter is that with the race so tight, and Kerry’s base having [already] gelled…that it’s not really realistic for there to be a 15-point bounce or 10-point bounce, which is what the Bush pollsters have been saying they think will happen.

So what I anticipate is a bounce that is less than what Bush said will happen.

And then the entire spin will be about how America had met the ticket this week and decided they were too liberal.

That can’t happen yet until they get the polls. That’s number 1.

This is probably where the derisive humor begins it’s arc.

The Cry Wolf Conundrum

So, they are raising the threat level for DC and NYC. Perhaps they are really hearing something different this time. But, once you lose your credibility it’s very difficult to get it back. Half the country thinks they’re lying for political purposes. In fact, the only way that many people will ever believe this administration again on the subject is if there is another catastrophic terrorist attack. That’s not a position I’d want to be in.

On the other hand, catastrophic terrorist attacks have been the lifeblood of Bush’s poll ratings, so wtf. It’s not like NY or DC are planning to vote for him anyway.

Nukular Meltdown

This seems to me to be the worst possible politics in the world — not to mention that it is purely insane:

Administration now opposes inspections as part of nuclear treaty:

In a shift of U.S. policy, the Bush administration announced this week that it will oppose provisions for inspections and verification as part of an international treaty that would ban production of nuclear-weapons materials.

For several years the United States and other nations have been pursuing the treaty, which would ban new production by any state of highly enriched uranium and plutonium for weapons. At U.N.-sponsored Conference on Disarmament in Geneva this week, the Bush administration told other nations it still supported a treaty, but not verification.

The planned treaty wouldn’t affect existing stockpiles or production for non-weapons purposes, such as energy or medical research. Mainly, it was designed to impose restraints on India, Pakistan and Israel, whose nuclear programs operate outside the reach of Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty inspectors.

Administration officials said they made the decision after concluding such a system would cost too much, require overly intrusive inspections and wouldn’t guarantee compliance with the treaty.

Nuclear proliferation is a potent issue politically and an extremely important issue on the merits. That Bush and his team think it’s smart on either level to do this right now is simply inexplicable to me. I’m starting to wonder if those Capital Hill Blue reports of a White House on drugs aren’t true.

There can be no peace, no winning the GWOT, no safety for the people of the United States and the world without new measures and controls on the development of nuclear weapons. The idea that they are not doing absolutely everything possible to get formal and informal information about those weapons, whatever the cost, is shocking. That they aren’t concerned particularly about Pakistan and India, one of which is the prime breeding ground of islamic fundamentalism ferchristssake, is completely and totally bizarre.

Are these the kind of deals is this government making with the Musharef government these days to get bin Laden at the right moment? Or have the neocons finally decided that their loyalties really are to Israel rather than the US — although I find it very difficult to believe that Israel is safer with loose nukes in the hands of terrorists? I swear, my tin foil hat is buzzing and honking as I write.

Update: In the post above, the final paragraph mentions neocon loyalties to Israel which seems to set off alarms that I’m an anti-semite or a believer in the Protocols. I doubt that you can find much evidence of that in any of my writing on the subject here on this blog or anywhere else, but suffice to say that it is disturbing enough to me that I feel the need to explain further.

I think that the neocon worldview is as distorted by its view of Israel’s strategic and moral importance as the apocapyptic Christians’ are — indeed that’s partially why they have such a bizarre alliance. There are many reasons for it, some of them no doubt are religious or ethnic identification, but mostly they are the result of an intellectual movement that has fetishized “democracy” and become obsessed with the idea of muscularity and strength as the only way to spread that gospel. Israel, with its historical and religious significance AND as the only democracy in the middle of various quasi Stalinist and theocratic totalitarian regimes has become a symbol of something much bigger than its religious identity. Indeed, I would argue that for the neocon movement the fact that Israel is a Jewish state is far down the list of significant factors explaining their obsession.

The neocons have never, to my knowledge, been consciously working against American interests. Indeed, they believe that Israel and the United States’ interests are the same, which in many cases they are. But, in my view, many of the policies set forth by the Likud party, to which the neocons actively serve as advisors (see “Clean Break”) are counterproductive to real American interests in the region and serve the neocons fevered troskyite wet dream of a democratic world revolution under the Pax Americana.

But, this last year has been something of a disaster for the neocon vision of American hegemony. We have demonstrated to the entire world in as vivid a way as possible that we are something of a paper tiger. It is perhaps impolitic of me to suggest that this might have induced a nutcase like Josh Bolton (who isn’t Jewish, btw) to try to use Israel to undermine America’s now very practical necessity to play fair in that part of the world as regards nuclear proliferation. But, I would not put it past him. His loyalties to the US can surely be questioned when in light of failure after failure on this most serious of issues (let’s not even discuss North Korea) he continues to press on. If that’s anti-semitic, so be it.

One of my commenters raised the question of needing Israel’s complicity regarding the new nuclear threat in Iran. Actually, the fact that Iran is actively pursuing nuclear weapons proves that continuing the fiction that Israel isn’t a nuclear power is useless and renders the laughable UN “mid-east nuclear free zone” finally moribund. Israel and the rest of the region are safer overall allowing inspections under a nuclear proliferation treaty. And, if somebody decides that the nuclear facilities in Iran need to be bombed, there is absolutely no reason that anyone would believe today that Israel acted alone as they did in 1981. If it happens it will be seen as done by the US no matter who takes on the physical task.

As for deterrence, we have thousands and thousand of ICBM’s and submarine precision guided nuclear missiles. There is nobody on this earth who thinks that the United States cannot launch a nuclear strike against any place on the planet if we choose to do so. We don’t need Israel for that.

Nuclear proliferation must be dealt with on many levels, but the first thing we must do is set out clear, understandable international guidelines and procedures for controlling it. That alone will not solve the problem, but it is an absolutely necessary part of the process. Parochial arguments at this point about Israeli exceptionalism are counterproductive to that particular task and I would argue are counterproductive to Israel’s security as well.

Poll Fucked

Damn it. Reuters is using that incorrect Newsweek poll and I’m sure others are too, just in time for the Sabbath gasbags to inscribe “baby bounce” in granite:

“A Newsweek poll released on Saturday showed Kerry gained a four-point bounce from last week’s Boston convention where he was formally nominated. “

Donkey Rising explains the problem with the poll:

…as their story sheepishly admits, half of their poll was conducted on Thursday night, before Kerry had delivered his acceptance speech! Moreover, their results differ on the two nights, with Kerry leading by 2 points in the pre-acceptance speech data and by 10 points in the post-acceptance speech data.

What possible excuse can there be for presenting these data as measuring Kerry’s bounce from the convention, when the effect of the most important event of the convention isn’t included in half the data? Perhaps there is one, but I can’t think of it.

And that’s not all that’s wrong with their bounce measure. To make their sin even more egregious, the previous poll they use as a point of comparison is way too long ago (July 8-9) to be a real before/after comparison. What if the race was closer before the convention than it was on July 8-9? Then using July 8-9 as a point of comparison would further contribute to understating Kerry’s bounce from the convention.

And in fact that appears to be the case. In the Gallup poll, Kerry was leading 51-44 on July 8-11 but only 49-45 on July 19-21. So using July 8-9 as the comparison period probably knocks several more points off Kerry’s bounce.

I’m assuming that the Kerry campaign is blastfaxing the whores like crazy with the problems in this poll. if they’re not, they’re stupid. Once these things gel in the minds of the kewl kid chatterers it’s almost impossible to get them to revise it.