Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Masterdebator

Ezra has it right on the debates.

We know he beat the friendly, funny, charismatic Weld. But what’s rarely noted is that he also beat John Edwards in the series of one-on-one debates they held at the end of the primary. Edwads came off as nicer and funnier, sure, but he lacked the gravitas and policy knowledge of Kerry. I watched those confrontations expecting to vote for Edwards, but got up from the couch a Kerry supporter. It was clear to me then, as it is now, that the empathy and charm that pols like Edwards and Clinton possess are not applicable to elections fought on serious, scary ground. As I’ve said before, Bush only won (and he didn’t even do that) in 2000 because the country was at peace and the economy was doing well, voters were unconcerned and thus won over by the friendlier, funnier candidate — that was a popularity contest. But in a time when voters want serious leaders who demonstrate competence, strength and judgment, Bush’s glib moralizing and self-effacing jokes are not going to save him. In contrast, Kerry’s boring wonkishness and obvious thoughtfulness (not to mention his 4-inch height advantage — two of the debates are standing) just might.

I sincerely hope that’s true. I also think that this time the press may just be a bit less likely to fall back on their script simply because the Iraq story seems to be heating up as we go into the stretch. They used the press conference today to talk almost exclusively about Iraq and didn’t mention the CBS nonsense.

I can’t believe there is any question that Kerry will beat Bush in the debates when it’s obvious that your average ten year old would beat him. But we have to take into account the press corpse which seems to adore his incoherent blather and buy into the idea that making sense is secondary to winning debates than presenting a manufactured regular guy image. So, it’s always possible that in spite of what we all see with our eyes, we will be told that Bush won the debate because Kerry was too tall or something. But, I’m hopeful that the electorate is a bit more serious than last time and will see the contrast between a man of real substance and an empty suit.

I do think that Ezra took Atrios and Yglesias a bit too literally. I think their gnashing of teeth about Bush’s great strength in the town hall format was a little tongue in cheek exercise in lowering expectations. Nobody really believes that Bush is good in debates, but the game requires that you set up Kerry as a big loser in order to defy expectations. Politics is so dumb these days.

Why Should I?

40 percent of Army reservists fail to report to Fort Jackson

COLUMBIA–Only about 60 percent of reservists ordered to report to Fort Jackson have reported so far, Army officials said.

As of Tuesday, 186 of the 309 members of the Individual Ready Reserve ordered to report to the Columbia base had arrived, said Lt. Col. Burton L. Masters, spokesman for the Army’s Human Resources Command.

“We’re not surprised by those numbers at all,” Masters said.

Most of those who have not reported are seeking exemptions from active duty or delays in reporting, he said.

Those who have not reported or applied for a delay or exemption will be considered deserters if they do not show up within seven days of the date they were told to report for duty, Masters said.

“We are going to go the extra mile to work with people,” he said. “But if they don’t report, the Army will track them down.”

Troops subject to the recall have been on active duty but have not completed their eight-year obligation to the Army.

The Army said 5,600 individual reservists were being recalled to active duty; 4,500 were to report to Fort Jackson. However, orders have been cut for only 3,667 of the soldiers to return to active duty, Masters said.

Many people believe that the fact that the president went AWOL during his time in the National Guard has set a bad example for those he has called to serve in Iraq today. They fail to see why they should be forced to do something the president used his influence and connections to avoid.

One Republican has spoken out:

The President’s actions have had an intangible and coercive impact upon military personnel. To turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to it would be shame on us. The question soldiers and sailors ask is: I took an oath to swear to tell the truth. And I also took an oath to uphold the Constitution. How can this President take the same oath and not be truthful and remain in office? If I were to have done what the President did, I would be court-martialed.

You see, we also have to recognize that each of the services are recruiting young people all across the Nation. At boot camp they infuse these young people with the moral values of honor, courage and commitment, and they’re teaching self-restraint, discipline and self- sacrifice. Military leaders are required to provide a good example to those young recruits, yet when they look up the chain of command, all the way to the Commander in Chief, they see a double standard at the top. Again, it is the President that sets the tone and tenor in the military, just as he does for law enforcement.

I believe the President has violated this sacred trust between the leaders and those of whom he was entrusted to lead. I also spoke in my presentation that it was the President’s self-inflicted wounds that have called his own credibility into question not only in his decisionmaking process, but with regard to security policies.

Oh wait. Pardon me. That was House Manager Steven Buyers speaking before the Senate during president Clinton’s impeachment trial. A president getting a blow job obviously sets a very bad example for the troops. But, running out on your own military committment and then sending men and women to fight in a useless war overseas is a perfectly fine example and nobody in the military should ever think otherwise. My bad.

Makeup to Breakup

This article pretends that the reason the campaigns insisted on having their own makeup people for the debates is because of Richard Nixon’s five o’clock shadow, but the real reason is that in the last debates somebody sabotaged Al Gore by making him look like a circus freak on national television. I’ve always been curious as to how that happened. I’m glad to see that the Kerry campaign isn’t taking any chances.

It’s also not surprising that the Bush team agreed seeing as how they must have makeup special effects professionals close at all times to cover Junior’s many pratfalls flat on his face.

Dreams and Visions

I just had the strangest dream. I thought I saw a president who spoke in complete sentences, in great detail, in direct response to questions posed to him in a press conference. It was bizarre and freakish. It made me feel fevered and nostalgic for some reason.

Then I heard a president talk about the pessimistic National Intelligence Estimate. He explained, “The CIA laid out several scenarios. It said that life could be lousy, life could be OK, life could be better. And they were just guessing as to what the conditions might be like,” he said. “The Iraq citizens are defying the pessimistic predictions.”

I realized that I was not sleeping and our waking nightmare is still ongoing.

Still, it was nice to dream of what might be if we had a president who was sentient and aware — how much more secure we would all feel with someone in charge who is in control of his faculties. Someone who wasn’t living in a fantasy world. It would be such a relief.

OhMyGoodness

New York Post :

The hot rumor in New York political circles has Roger Stone, the longtime GOP activist, as the source for Dan Rather’s dubious Texas Air National Guard “memos.”

The irony would be delicious, since Rather became famous confronting President Nixon, in whose service a very young Stone became associated with political “dirty tricks.”

Reached at his Florida home, Stone had no comment.

Well, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time ole Rog has been called upon to do a little dirty work. He was one of the original ratfuckers back in the day. I wrote about Stone back in August of 2003. Here’s just one of his more recent forays into dirty tricks:

What the world watched was a G.O.P. melee. When Geller walked out of the room with a sample ballot, the crowd accused him of stealing a real one and responded as if he had just nabbed a baby for its organs. Geller says he was pushed by two dozen protesters screaming, “I’m gonna take you down!” Luis Rosero, a Democratic observer, claims he was punched and kicked. Republicans dispute the charges, but video cameras caught scenes of activism that had morphed into menace. The organizers in the RV outside, who G.O.P. protesters have told Time were led by hardball Washington strategist Roger Stone, had phone banks churning out calls to Miami Republicans, urging them to storm downtown. (Stone could not be reached for comment.)

I have no doubt that he could have done this. And, by the standard of proof set forth over the past 12 years by Chris Vlasto, Jeff Gerth, Susan Schmidt, Ceci Connolly, Brit Hume, Judith Miller, Howell Raines, Lisa Myers, Jackie Judd, Dan Rather, John Stossell, Chris Matthews, Paula Zahn, Bill O’Reilly, Fred Barnes, and all the rest of our news media, that makes it worthy of endless hours of speculation and long in-depth articles about his past quoting many unnamed sources saying that he’s guilty. Bring it on.

Smart Polls

Today DonkeyRising features a study by Alan Abramowitz that shows the ARG September poll was was highly accurate in the the 2000 election —- certainly far more accurate than the wildly up and down Gallup poll.

They’ve just released the first 20 states of their 50 state poll for this year. Unsurprisingly it shows what we all know to be true. The reds are red and the blues are blue — and it’s going to be a street fight in the purple states.

Here’s the ARG web site.

Deja Vu Vu

This passage from “Citizen Perot” by Gerald Posner reminds us that where there’s a Bush campaign, there are often strange Texans wielding information and evidence that blows back on the ones who fall for it:

IN JULY 1992, Ross Perot hastily called a press conference to announce he was dropping out of the presidential race. He reentered the race on Oct. 1 and, through infomercials and solid performances in the presidential debates, soon approached 20% in the polls. Then he made a decision that stopped his momentum cold: he agreed to a 60 Minutes interview to present the “real reason” for his earlier withdrawal.

On Sunday, Oct.25, he told startled viewers he had pulled out after receiving “multiple reports” that there was a Republican plot to embarrass his daughter by disrupting her summer wedding, and that there was also a plan to distribute a computerized false photo of his daughter. After the show Perot was widely ridiculed, and many believed his reasons were bogus.

Some aspects of this scandal have long been known, yet the details were always murky. The full account, now available, reveals that while Perot did have some basis for his bizarre charge, he appears to have relied on sources of dubious credibility. The episode provides insights into the behind-the-scenes intrigue of political campaigns, as well as painting a disturbing portrait of FBI incompetence.

Read the whole thing. It’s very reminiscent of the bizarre tales we’ve been reading about these last few days. Funny that.

The Big Mea Culpa

Tim Grieve at Salon.com thinks that Dan Rather may have inadvertantly provided the template for the speech we’ve all been waiting for George W. Bush to give:

I no longer have the confidence in the intelligence that led me to take our country to war. I find I have been misled on the key question of whether Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. That, combined with the complete lack of evidence that Saddam Hussein had any role in the attacks of Sept. 11, leads me to a point where — if I knew then what I know now — I would not have started a war in Iraq, and I certainly would not have done so if I’d known that more than a thousand U.S. troops and thousands more Iraqi citizens would be killed in the process.

“But I did start the war. I made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry. It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to make America safer.

“Please know that nothing is more important to me than people’s trust in my ability and my commitment to keeping America safe. “

As Grieve points out, all it would take is a very little bit of cutting and pasting on Microsoft Word and Junior could show that he has as much integrity as Dan Rather.

Chapter Two

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Washington, DC–Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie issued the following statement on CBS’s admission today that memos regarding the President’s National Guard service are not real.

“We accept CBS’s apology for a breach of the journalistic standards that provide the American people confidence in news organizations, but some disturbing questions remain unanswered.

“CBS has now answered questions about the authenticity of the documents but questions remain surrounding who created the documents, who provided them to CBS and if Senator Kerry’s supporters, Party committee, or campaign played any role.

“Did Bill Burkett, Democrat activist and Kerry campaign supporter, who passed information to the DNC, work with Kerry campaign surrogate Max Cleland? Did Bill Burkett’s talks with ‘senior’ Kerry campaign officials include discussions of the now discredited documents? Was the launch of the Democrat National Committee’s Operation Fortunate Son designed with knowledge of the faked forged memos? Terry McAuliffe said yesterday that no one at the DNC or Kerry campaign, ‘had anything to do with the preparations of the documents,’ but what about the distribution or dissemination?

“In an effort to regain the trust of the American people CBS should not only investigate the process that led to the use of these documents but they should identify immediately those engaged in possible criminal activity who attempted to use a news organization to affect the outcome of a Presidential election in its closing days.”

This is where it’s going folks and the cable-whores are eating it up with a spoon tonight. Look for congressional and justice department investigations (maybe a grand jury) and nightly ratcheting up of leaks and speculation on the gasbags shows. They may even call the Barbizon School of blond former prosecutors up from the minors for this one. That’s how these trumped up Wurlitzer frenzies work. I could write the narrative in my sleep.

Here’s a little parlor game for everyone. Let’s assume that I’m right and this story is rapidly shifting to a “whodunnit in the Kerry campaign.” What should Kerry’s strategy be and what should the surrogates do on the cable shoutfests to get ahead of this?

Rigged

Following up my post below on the new stepped up Justice department efforts to root out Democratic voters and throw out the votes of those who do manage to vote, Jeffrey Toobin has an article in the New Yorker on the same subject. Jesus, it’s going to be tough to win this one even if we win this one. It’s not just the voting machines:

On October 8, 2002, Attorney General Ashcroft stood before an invited audience in the Great Hall of the Justice Department to outline his vision of voting rights, in words that owed much to the rhetoric used by L.B.J. and Lincoln. “The right of citizens to vote and have their vote count is the cornerstone of our democracy—the necessary precondition of government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” Ashcroft told the group, which included several veteran civil-rights lawyers.

The Attorney General had come forward to launch the Voting Access and Integrity Initiative, whose name refers to the two main traditions in voting-rights law. Voter-access efforts, which have long been associated with Democrats, seek to remove barriers that discourage poor and minority voters; the Voting Rights Act itself is the paradigmatic voter-access policy. The voting-integrity movement, which has traditionally been favored by Republicans, targets fraud in the voting process, from voter registration to voting and ballot counting. Despite the title, Ashcroft’s proposal favored the “integrity” side of the ledger, mainly by assigning a federal prosecutor to watch for election crimes in each judicial district. These lawyers, Ashcroft said, would “deter and detect discrimination, prevent electoral corruption, and bring violators to justice.”

[…]

Von Spakovsky, a longtime activist in the voting-integrity cause, has emerged as the Administration’s chief operative on voting rights. Before going to Washington, he was a lawyer in private practice and a Republican appointee to the Fulton County Registration and Election Board, which runs elections in Atlanta. He belonged to the Federalist Society, a prominent organization of conservative lawyers, and had also joined the board of advisers of a lesser-known group called the Voting Integrity Project

The V.I.P. was founded by Deborah Phillips, a former county official of the Virginia Republican Party, as an organization devoted principally to fighting voting fraud and promoting voter education. In 1997, von Spakovsky wrote an article for the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, a conservative research group, that called for an aggressive campaign to “purge” the election rolls of felons. Within months of that article’s publication, the V.I.P. helped put von Spakovsky’s idea into action. Phillips met with the company that designed the process for the removal of alleged felons from the voting rolls in Florida, a process that led, notoriously, to the mistaken disenfranchisement of thousands of voters, most of them Democratic, before the 2000 election. (This year, Florida again tried to purge its voting rolls of felons, but the method was found to be so riddled with errors that it had to be abandoned.) During the thirty-six-day recount in Florida, von Spakovsky worked there as a volunteer for the Bush campaign. After the Inauguration, he was hired as an attorney in the Voting Section and was soon promoted to be counsel to the Assistant Attorney General, in what is known as the “front office” of the Civil Rights Division. In that position, von Spakovsky, who is forty-five years old, has become an important voice in the Voting Section. (Von Spakovsky, citing Justice Department policy, has also declined repeated requests to be interviewed.)

Well, I feel much better about these coming elections knowing that such a fair minded, non-partisan civil servant is working to ensure that all goes well.

In case anyone is wondering about the Voter Integrity project, it is another poisonous tentacle of the VRWC run by Helen Blackwell, wife of Morton Blackwell uber-conservative co-founder of the Moral Majority, recently renowned for the classy act of handing out purple band-aids at the Republican convention. (More on Blackwell at Democratic Veteran.)

I think it’s also a good bet that Spakovsky is friends with the infamous Buckhead, fellow Atlanta republican elections board supervisor and federalist society clone.

Sometimes I think this whole VRWC could fit into a large jacuzzi.