Month: September 2004

He’s Simple

One of my readers, who works at the UN, noticed something unique about George W. Bush’s speech last week.

Evidently, the official UN transcript is the exact speech that Bush read off the teleprompter. My reader says that nobody who works there can ever remember a leader having to have words phonetically spelled out before, as it is here (pdf):

In the last year alone, terrorists have attacked police stations, and banks, and commuter trains, and synagogues … and a school filled with children. This month in Beslan [bez-LAN] we saw, once again, how the terrorists measure their success in the death of the innocent, and in the pain of grieving families. Svetlana Dzebisov [day-BEES-off] was held hostage along with her son and her nephew and her nephew did not survive.

This is the best the so-called greatest nation on earth can do?

Embolden This

Matthew Yglesias makes an interesting observation about this new charge of “emboldening” the enemy by criticising the war in Iraq. As he notes:

Does anyone really believe, after all, that our enemies currently lack for boldness of all things? One can say accurately various nasty things about Osama, his hardened core of terrorists-cum-special-forces, his more conventional guerilla fighters, Zarqawi, al-Sadr, their followers, etc., but one thing they certainly aren’t is some kind of chickenshit force that would be really scary if only they got bolder.

[…]

The notion that the USA could possibly impress these guys with grand displays of machismo is silly. The bad guys here are hard core and that’s just the way it is. A strategy to beat them has to be smart and has to use the many advantages America really does have. Worrying about the other side’s boldness isn’t going to get us anywhere.

And anyway, doesn’t it seem a bit, well…girlie-manish…for our swaggering Crusdader Codpiece to be tremulously waving his hands and shushing his opponents because it might make the nasty terrorists even bolder than they already are? Surely, superheroes such as he are much too strong and manly to care whether the bad guys are emboldened by talk of any kind. Real men say “bring it on,” right?

Clearly, people who are willing to blow themselves up aren’t suffering from a lack of physical courage. That is not the problem. Indeed, until we create a corps of suicide bombers they have the advantage in willing human cannon fodder material. Our military superiority isn’t supposed to be our “courage” and “boldness” it is our international leadership, advanced technology and smart strategy, none of which Junior has employed worth a busted fuck.

This has been part of the fallacy driving Junior’s misbegotten strategy from day one. While it’s obvious that a fair amount of his ridiculous Hopalong Cassidy bullshit was calculated to thrill the rubes here at home, there is ample evidence that many of the starry-eyed neocons truly believed that a thrilling show of Big American Power would snap some of those Ay-rabs out of their little dreamworld and bring them around right quick to the knowledge that they can never win against us, the Ubermenschen.

As Richard Perle memorably said back in October of 2001:

Having destroyed the Taliban, having destroyed Saddam’s regime, the message to the others is, “You’re next.” Two words. Very efficient diplomacy. ” You’re next, and if you don’t shut down the terrorist networks on your territory, we’ll take you down, too. Is it worth it?” Of course it isn’t worth it. It isn’t worth it for any of them.

You can almost smell the testosterone, can’t you? These guys really believed this Neverneverland nonsense. I’m afraid our Boy King still does.

He’s just being his typical two-faced self bellowing “bring ’em on” one day and then falling over with the vapors the next because Kerry’s words might make the badguys mad. Nothing new there.

You can’t build alliances if you criticize the efforts of those who are working side by side with you.

The President:

President Musharraf is a friend of our country, who helped us capture Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the operational planner behind the 9/11 attacks. Today, because we are working with Pakistani leaders, Pakistan is an ally in the war on terror, and the American people are safer.

The Ally

ZAHN: Is the world a safer place because of the war in Iraq?

MUSHARRAF: No. It’s more dangerous. It’s not safer, certainly not.

ZAHN: How so?

MUSHARRAF: Well, because it has aroused actions of the Muslims more. It’s aroused certain sentiments of the Muslim world, and then the responses, the latest phenomena of explosives, more frequent for bombs and suicide bombings. This phenomenon is extremely dangerous.

ZAHN: Was it a mistake to have gone to war with Iraq?

MUSHARRAF: Well, I would say that it has ended up bringing more trouble to the world….

ZAHN: Has that happened in Iraq?

MUSHARRAF: Well, there are difficulties. One can’t predict. Maybe the difficulties are surmounted and then it ends up with a victory, with a success. But, at the moment, we are bogged down, yes, yes indeed….

ZAHN: Do you think that the war in Iraq has undermined the overall war on terror?

MUSHARRAF: It has complicated it, certainly. I wouldn’t say undermined. It has further complicated it. It has made the job more difficult.

The Vice President:

America does not create terrorists. But under President Bush, we will defeat them. (Applause.) And we will defeat them where they live and plot and plan so that we do not have to fight them on the streets of our own cities. (Applause.)

Senator Kerry

The invasion of Iraq was a profound diversion from the battle against our greatest enemy, al-Qaida, there’s just no question about it. The president’s misjudgment, miscalculation and mismanagement of the war in Iraq all make the war on terror harder to win.

Uh Oh.

This is the kind of thing that gives Lil’ Crusader Codpiece a headache and makes him want to drink some choco-milk, eat a PB&J, grab his favorite pilly and go to bed early.

Do You Believe In Fairies?

I didn’t have a chance to see Bush’s speech before the UN last week but I recorded it so I could watch it this week-end. It May have been a litle bit optimistic, but for the life of me I can’t figure out why John Kerry keeps saying Junior is living in fantasyland:

Here’s a transcript:

Terrorists and their allies believe the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the American Bill of Rights and every charter of liberty ever written are lies to be burned and destroyed and forgotten.

They believe that suicide and torture and murder are fully justified to serve any goal they declare. And they act on their beliefs.

We’re determined to destroy terror networks wherever they operate, and the United States is grateful to every nation that is helping to seize terrorist assets, track down their operatives and disrupt their plans.

Defending our ideals is vital, but it is not enough. Our broader mission as U.N. members is to apply these ideals to the great issues of our time.

Our wider goal is to promote hope and progress as the alternatives to hatred and violence. Our great purpose is to build a better world beyond the war on terror.

Because, it’s a world of laughter, a world of tears, it’s a world of hopes and a world of fears. There’s so much that we share, it is time we’re aware. It’s a small small world.

It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all. There’s so much that we share. It is time we’re aware. It’s a small small world.

There is just one moon and a golden sun. And a smile means friendship to everyone,

Though the mountains divide,and the oceans are wide, it’s a small small world.

It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all. There’s so much that we share,it is time we’re aware it’s a small small world.

It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all.It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all.It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all.It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all.It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all.It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all.It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all.It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all.It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all.It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all.It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all.It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all.It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all.It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all.It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all.It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all.It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all.It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all.

That John Kerry is just a big ole meanie pessimist! If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands!

Do Something

All of you Democrats out there who are just aching to do something tangible to get Kerry elected, ACT is the place to go.

If you live in or near a swing state, volunteer on the ground. If you don’t, there are programs in place (travelling where you’re needed, writing letters, calling with your week-end minutes, etc) to help get newly registered voters to the polls.

And, apparently, there are a bunch of them:

A sweeping voter registration campaign in heavily Democratic areas has added tens of thousands of new voters to the rolls in the swing states of Ohio and Florida, a surge that has far exceeded the efforts of Republicans in both states, a review of registration data shows.

The analysis by The New York Times of county-by-county data shows that in Democratic areas of Ohio – primarily low-income and minority neighborhoods – new registrations since January have risen 250 percent over the same period in 2000. In comparison, new registrations have increased just 25 percent in Republican areas. A similar pattern is apparent in Florida: in the strongest Democratic areas, the pace of new registration is 60 percent higher than in 2000, while it has risen just 12 percent in the heaviest Republican areas.

While comparable data could not be obtained for other swing states, similar registration drives have been mounted in them as well, and party officials on both sides say record numbers of new voters are being registered nationwide. This largely hidden but deadly earnest battle is widely believed by campaign professionals and political scientists to be potentially decisive in the presidential election.

“We know it’s going on, and it’s a very encouraging sign,” said Steve Elmendorf, deputy campaign manager for Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee. The new voters, Mr. Elmendorf said, “could very much be the difference.”

A spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, Christine Iverson, declined to comment on The Times’s findings and said she did not believe Republicans were lagging in the registration battle. “We’re very confident that we have a ground game that’s as good as the Democrats’, and better,” she said.

The precise impact of the swell in registration is difficult to predict, as there is no reliable gauge of how many of these new voters will actually vote. Some experts, though, say that the spike has not been accurately captured by political polls and could confound prognostications in closely contested states.

This is awfully good news for us, guys. I always knew there were more of us than there were of them. But, the Republicans are all set to cry foul and say that felons and illegal immigrants and dead Democrats stole the election so we have to do this right and that means grassroots involvement on our side to make sure the voting is transparent and everything is out in the open.

This takes a little time and effort, but it’s key. The media are determined to help Bush (for reasons I simply cannot fathom) so we just have to win the hard way, one voter at a time.

Blog Fever

LA Times, today:

Blogging Sells, and Sells Out by Billmon.

By most accounts, blogs — web logs to the uninitiated — scored a major coup last week when CBS News admitted that it couldn’t vouch for the authenticity of memos supposedly written by George W. Bush’s commander in the Texas Air National Guard. The conservative bloggers who led the charge against the CBS story were hailed as giant slayers. And yet it’s the blogging phenomenon itself that may need the last rites.

That may seem a strange thing to say, given the flattering coverage of blogs triggered by the CBS affair. But the media’s infatuation has a distinct odor of the deathbed about it — not for the blogosphere, which has a commercially bright future, but for the idea of blogging as a grass-roots challenge to the increasingly sanitized “content” peddled by the Time Warner-Capital Cities-Disney-General Electric-Viacom-Tribune media oligopoly.

Matt Yglesias said more or less the same thing a month or so ago (I can’t be bothered to find the link) only his thinking was that blogs were rapidly devolving into an exclusive forum for professional writers in various specialized fields and the amateur players were fading away into obscurity.

Steve Gilliard, (via Atrios,) believes it’s commercial advertising that fuels the blogosphere already.

Meanwhile, The NY Times does a big story on liberal bloggers that apparently has the right blogosphere in a complete tizzy.

Blogging as we know it is dead. Long live blogging.

Update:

I should make it clear that I was in no way beDrudging any blogger’s success. I’m thrilled if anyone can make a buck doing this thing. If I got any real traffic on a regular basis, I’d think about doing it myself. And, believe me, on the days when I get one of those links from Atrios or some others, I think about it a lot because my traffic goes through the roof.

It’s all about linkage, folks.

The blogosphere is a beehive in which the queenbee bloggers (and I’m not just talking about Sullivan) serve and are served by the rest of the colony. As Atrios points out in the comments, as long as some of the top bloggers continue to link to other blogs, the blogosphere as we know it will continue to thrive. People need hubs and starting points to make their way through all the buzzing and that’s what the popular blogs provide.

Commercialization in terms of blogads doesn’t have much to do with it so far because the ads don’t seem to conflict with the content. That could change, I guess, but I think we are dealing more on a Nation model than Newsweek, anyway. Nobody’s going to buy an ad on Kos or Atrios who isn’t trying to reach liberals. They know exactly what they are getting into.

In my opinion, if there is any real danger of the old political blogosphere going extinct, I think it’s more in what Yglesias describes than strict commercialization. It may be moving toward “professionalization” which is truly a big change. Marshall, Drum, Sullivan, Kaus and The Corner may be the new developing paradigm.

It’s not that the blogosphere isn’t incredibly enhanced by the presence of those writers, it’s that they may develop the habit of only reading and linking to each other which, as Billmon points out, takes it one step closer to the insularity of the mainstream media. In academic fields this is generally a good thing — consult the experts, talk amongst yourselves, get feedback. But, in politics it’s not such a good idea. The blogosphere may not be the best sample of regular folks in the world, but it does consist of some intelligent, well informed citizens outside of the political and media world who are not required to please that establishment either socially or professionally and who bring a different perspective that may not make it into the Washington conference room on Monday morning or the cocktail party on Friday night.

In that sense, politics are more like art than science. The pros need fresh insights and passion or they get stale and repetitive. The blogosphere is a very convenient way to access some of that and it would be a shame if it contracted into a mirror image of the professional political media.. If it does,(with some relief I must admit) I’d probably just go back to reading newspapers and magazines and yelling at the TV, both of which I can do from the much more comfortable position of lying flat on my back.

As a political organizing and fund raising tool, the blogosphere has definitely shown its worth this round and it will remain a player, no doubt about it. Look at how much $$$$ just Atrios and Kos have managed to raise. If they were Republicans they’d be called “Conquerors.”

But other than that, I think the blogosphere will continue to change in largely unpredictable ways. Certainly, anything the mainstream media says about it (now that they’ve discovered it like it’s the Macarena of 2004) is almost assuredly wrong. So, I think it just keeps keepin on. Who knows what it all means and as long as it provides some good fun then there’s really no reason to question it.

And, as I have said many times, it beats putting your fist through a wall or kicking the cat. In fact, it’s downright therapeutic. Maybe that’s the real point after all.

Props To Joe Biden

Joe just turned Chris Wallace into a puddle on Fox, refusing to back down and challenging all the predictable assumptions. At the end, Wallace made a crack about Biden needing to go on decaf and Biden retorted, “the way you guys misrepresent thing, it’s just disgraceful.”

Correction: Evidently I heard Biden say “you guys misrepresent” meaning Fox, when he actually said “these guys misrepresent” meaning the Bush administration.

Not that there’s any real difference…

Say It Loud

I’m shrill and I’m proud.

Shivering In Our Boots

Andrea Mitchell just said that the Kerry campaign knows that if they take the fight to the president they have to be respectful because he is extremely well-liked and very popular. And Kerry talks in long sentences and is boring but there’s not much they can do about it.

Gosh, I think she’s being much too generous. John Kerry is not only long winded and boring, he is also known to hold forth on aboriginal history in town meetings and sing Andrew Lloyd Webber songs for hours on end on the stump. It will be a miracle if he manages to even stay in the race after debating our very sharp, entertaining president who I understand usually hands out hundred dollar bills and tells hilarious jokes while laying out a cogent, simple plan for all Americans to become millionaires by 2008. I sure hope he doesn’t do that in the debates or old boring Kerry will definitely lose.

Epic Disaster

Charles Peters at the Washington Monthly asks, “Was I right?”

Boy, he most certainly was:

Just before we went to war in Iraq, I wrote in this space, “This country has been conned by Karl Rove and the super-hawks. They have succeeded in changing the subject from Bush’s failures and embarrassments, putting Iraq first on the national agenda for nearly six months at the expense of more important matters–like finding Osama bin Laden, securing peace between Israel and Palestine, drastically improving the FBI and CIA’s ability to deal with terrorism, keeping nuclear weapons from being used by nations that already have them, including North Korea, and engineering economic recovery here at home. If we end up paying practically all the bill for Iraq and subsequent military occupation, that money won’t be there for badly needed health and education programs … Once you consider these other higher priorities, the danger from Iraq isn’t nearly imminent enough to justify war.” I haven’t changed my mind.

I think that one of the most frustrating things about Bush’s smarmy rejoinder “they world is better off without Saddam in power” is that you have to answer…”well, yes, BUT THERE ARE PRIORITIES, GODDAMIT…”

It is impolitic to say it, (and probably suicidal) but in a very real sense, the answer to the question “is the world better off without Saddam in power?” is no.

9/11 did change everything. It meant that we could not afford to go around willy nilly experimenting with Wilsonian democracy schemes in the mid-east without further endangering Americans by ramping up terrorist recruiting. It meant we needed to be smart and cunning, not blustering loudly with half baked information or “liberating people” without considering the consequences. It meant that creating another failed state crawling with lawless terrorists was the most dangerous thing we could do. But, that is exactly what we did.

Clearly, if we had left Saddam in power and used the excuse of 9/11 to get inspectors back in, we would probably have made more progress against the fight against the Islamic radicals who pose the greatest threat to us. At the very least we wouldn’t have been creating more terrorists every single day with our corrupt mismanagement of the occupation.

Saddam was not an imminent or even near term threat. We knew it then and we certainly know it now. If one had asked the American people in the fall of 2002 if they thought it was worth it to “liberate” Iraq if it made Americans less safe, I think we know what the answer would be. We are a good people but we aren’t that good. Sadly, it appears that we will have to have that fact demonstrated before many people will understand that this is precisely what we just did.

And those poor schmucks who are over there fighting and dying for this misbegotten war need to believe that they are doing a good deed for their fellow man and protecting their own. I understand that. But, their commander in chief has made a series of terrible, terrible errors and he is setting them up for death right now by manipulating the situation on the ground in order to get elected here at home. It just gets worse and worse.

Two-faced Bush can pretend and lie and prevaricate and mislead all he wants. But, the facts are what they are. He sent American soldiers to die for no good reason. It has resulted in a large number of unnecessary Iraqi deaths in the process and it is creating Anti-American terrorists much faster than they can even kill themselves.

It’s a disaster of epic proportions.