Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Campaign Finance Epiphany

I love how Bush has suddenly adopted McCain-Feingold as one of his signature issues.He’s just appalled that these “shadowy” groups are undermining his fine achievement.

Q There’s a new ad by MoveOn.org that talks about — that criticizes Bush’s record in the National Guard. What’s your response to that, and what do you say to Harkin, who called Cheney a coward for not serving?

MR. McCLELLAN: We have been on the receiving end of more than $62 million in negative political attacks from these shadowy groups that are funded by unregulated soft money. And the President has condemned all of the ads and activity going on by these shadowy groups. We’ve called on Senator Kerry to join us and call for an end to all of this unregulated soft money activity. And so we continue to call on him to join us in condemning all these ads and calling for an end to all of this activity.

[…]

The President thought he got rid of all of this unregulated soft money activity when he signed the bipartisan campaign finance reforms into law. And so it’s another example of — the senator’s latest comments are another example of him saying one thing and doing another.

It makes you wonder why he signed the bill in private, allowed Mitch McConnell to promptly sue to overturn it and didn’t even ask McCain to attend the ceremony. And his shock at these “shadowy groups” is especially rich considering that one of his primary objections to the bill was the limitation on issue ads and unregulated soft money by individuals.

Without any fanfare, U.S. President George W. Bush signed the campaign finance overhaul bill into law in the Oval Office Wednesday morning before heading off for fund-raising events in South Carolina and Georgia, the White House announced.

[…]

“The president believes the legislation, while far from perfect, will improve our current finance system,” said White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer.

As expected, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging the constitutionality of the new law.

McConnell’s legal team, led by former Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr and First Amendment expert Floyd Abrams, plans to argue that the new law violates the First Amendment’s protection of free speech and the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment because it restricts the political speech of political parties and interest groups, but not the news media.

Bush also has reservations

In his written statement, President Bush praised provisions in the measure that ban unions and corporations from making unregulated contributions to political parties and the provisions raising the decade-old limit on individual giving.

The Bush statement also says that while the bill goes “a long way toward fixing some of the most pressing problems in campaign finance,” the measure also has flaws.

In particular, the president wrote that he continues to object to the ban on unlimited contributions by individuals to political parties in connection with federal elections.

“The president believes the individual freedom to participate in elections should be expanded, not diminished,” Fleischer said.

He said the president also has reservations about the limitations on issue advertising. The bill bans unions and corporations from using “soft money” to broadcast what are known as “issue ads” that mention a federal candidate within 60 days of a general election and 30 days of a primary. Hard-money issue ads may run up to the election.

Fleischer said because of his concerns, Bush chose to sign the bill privately in the Oval Office as opposed to hosting a public signing ceremony at the White House.

Fleischer said it was the president’s view that a South Lawn ceremony “would not have the aura of consistency…befitting with his beliefs in the bill in its totality.”

His newfound concern for unregulated money in politics is quite touching. Who says he hasn’t grown in the job?

Dear Roger Simon,

I wonder if you realize that your words on Meet the Press saying “‘sensitive’ is the kind of word a French candidate for president would use” were played several times by Rush Limbaugh on August 16 as evidence of Kerry’s essential “frenchness.”

While many of you in the press corps obviously find this “french” appellation hilarious, I’m sure you are also aware that this term is being used as a Republican code word in this campaign for cowardly and effeminate. As such, even though I know it is hard to keep from sharing those side-splitting one liners with the public, it might be more ethical to refrain from using these manufactured Republican punchlines. Of course, I’m assuming that you don’t wish to be used by a propagandist like Limbaugh to push GOP talking points. Perhaps I assume too much.

Sincerely,

digby

Journalism

Lou Dobbs just had that con artist scumbag David Bossie on his show taking the Democrats to task for their “unprecedented” negative ad campaign comparing Bush to Hitler for over a year and a half.

And, in a most satisfying fashion, David Axelrod responded that Bossie was the guy who ran the Willie Horton ad, ran the 1992 ad with doctored tapes of Gennifer Flowers and was fired from the House for doctoring the Web Hubbell tapes.

Dobbs was shocked that Axelrod was personally attacking little Davy and interrupted. Bossie then decried negative advertising again.

Paging Doctor Parker

Doctor Nosy Parker

A judge ruled the state can suspend the driver’s license of a man who lost his driving privileges after his doctor reported to police that he drank a six- pack of beer a day. But the judge also said Keith Emerich may obtain restricted driving privileges as long as he uses a device that tests his blood-alcohol content before starting his car. Emerich, 44, a printing company employee, was notified in April he would lose his license, about two months after he disclosed his drinking habit to doctors treating him for an irregular heartbeat.

Be very careful what you tell people, even your doctor. There is no evidence from this story that this guy was ever driving drunk. He might have downed all six of those beers after work and never left his house which, the last I heard, was still legal.

This is where my libertarian leftist tendencies come in to play. Fuck a bunch of moralistic assholes trying to tell people how they should live, in the name of “public safety.” Cops, bureaucrats, do-gooders and religious zealots (and apparently doctors, now) are the very last people on the planet who should have the power to invade your private life because they are the very first in line to do it whenever they get the chance.

This is the preemption doctrine writ small.

What’s Whiz This?

Campaign Desk highlights one of the typically egregious Inside Politics bitch fests about Kerry and Bush’s relative machismo as illustrated by how they eat a Cheese steak.

I have one question for all of you Philly homeboys and girls. Unlike Kerry who ordered the wrong kind of cheese and proved he was a eunuch, Bush apparently showed that he had a giant dick by saying:

“A lot of people are wondering why I’m coming so much,” he said. “It ought to be obvious to you. I like my cheese steak ‘Whiz with.'”

I understand that this means he prefers it with Cheez Whiz. But, do real men have to order it “Whiz with” or are you a french pansy if you say “with Whiz?”

Why’d He Bother?

Be careful of these folks who travel around the country making all these big promises, and say, oh, don’t worry, we’ll pay for it by taxing the rich. You know how that goes. The rich hires accountants and lawyers and you get stuck with the bill. But we’re not going to let him raise your taxes.

I don’t get it. If “the rich” hire accountants and lawyers to avoid paying taxes, why in the hell did Bush bother to lower their tax rates twice in the last three years? He could have saved himself a lot of grief if he’d just let the rich do what they always do instead of changing the tax code in ways that made it appear that he was granting them a favor. (And think of the economic stimulus all those extra billable hours would have created — and from the private sector, too!)

Are people actually buying this nonsense or is it some kind of a focus group glitch?

The Expert

President Bush reaffirmed his administration’s commitment to building an antimissile system, accusing opponents of the program of “living in the past.”

Although Bush did not mention his Democratic rival by name on Tuesday, his speech here at a Boeing Co. plant included a thinly veiled attack on John F. Kerry’s stance on missile defense. “I think those who oppose this ballistic missile system don’t understand the threats of the 21st century,” he told 1,400 cheering Boeing employees and supporters.

The guy who invaded a country on the basis of its huge scary cache of unconventional weapons only to find it didn’t even have one is lecturing people about understanding the threats of the 21st century.

Poison Stinger

Key Evidence Cast in Doubt on a Claim of Terrorism

Federal prosecutors acknowledged possible flaws yesterday in a major piece of evidence used in their case against two leaders of an Albany mosque on charges that they supported terrorism.

[…]

Prosecutors said they were given information from the Defense Department that a notebook with Mr. Aref’s name and address had been found in what they said was a terrorist training camp in the western Iraqi desert near the Syrian border. They also said that a word in the notebook, written in Arabic, had referred to Mr. Aref as “commander.”

As it turns out, the word is Kurdish, albeit written using the Arabic alphabet, and the translation may be incorrect. “Commander” could be translated as “brother,” according to federal prosecutors.

Nijyar Shemdin, the United States representative for the Kurdistan Regional Government in Washington, reviewed a copy of the page at the request of The New York Times and said he did not see how a translation would have come up with the word “commander.”

Mr. Shemdin said that Mr. Aref is referred to with the common honorific, “kak,” which could mean brother or mister, depending on the level of formality.

[…]

In court last week, Mr. Kindlon did not have access to the note, and he expressed frustration at having to rebut the clearly ominous implications of the word “commander.”

[…]

The judge gave the prosecution seven days to give the defense a copy of the note. The prosecutors asked the Defense Department for a copy, which they received and had the F.B.I. translate independently. That brought the discrepancy to light.

Mr. Kindlon said his client would seek a new bail hearing.

He said that Mr. Aref, a Kurd, had three brothers in northern Iraq and that there was no independent verification that the note had been found in a terrorist training camp. According to court documents, United States soldiers found the document on June 12, 2003, near the town of Rawah.

The sting operation being conducted in Albany was already underway then and was not tied to the discovery of the note, according to court documents.

[…]

However, many of the conversations between the informant and the men were in Urdu, as well as in Arabic and English, and Mr. Kindlon said there might be problems with the translations of those meetings, as well.

In court documents, the government provided only snippets of the conversations already translated.

This case is another one of those travesties in the making, you can tell. It’s a bullshit sting that apparently relies on mistranslated notes the DOD conveniently found in a “terrorist training camp” in Iraq after the sting had already been initiated.

Evidently, they’ve caught all the active terrorists so they are now busy entrapping random people as a test of their loyalty. Good to know.

Deep Breath

Josh Marshall has posted an analysis by Charlie Cook that I had also planned to write about which shows that the electoral college count is still tilted slightly to Bush. He says:

A veteran politics watcher like Cook can see through that smoke and take into account the poor quality in some polls and deeper trends at work in given states. For that reason, I put a lot of stock in Cook’s opinion.

I’ve also always found Cook to be very astute and his analysis makes wonder if we Democrats aren’t in the middle of another one of those fugue states in which we start having visions of landslides and certain winners without any data to back it up. Cook writes:

In adding up all the electoral votes that are in the safe and lean columns for each candidate, President Bush has a tight 211 to 207 lead in the Electoral College. Bush also has 120 votes in the toss up column. However, if you pushed each of the 10 toss up states to Kerry — who seems to be ahead by a slight margin — he would come out on top.

I am feeling optimistic about this election, but I don’t see where everyone is getting the idea that it’s a done deal. As much as I’d like it to be so, I still see a race that’s neck and neck where anything could happen.

The crowds on the ground are very encouraging and you can’t dismiss that. But, I don’t think there’s any doubt that the Democratic base is riled up this time and so it’s not all that surprising to me that more people would show up at rallies. And, we really can’t measure the Bush rallies by the same yardstick since they are completely scripted and controlled media events. We don’t know if his crowds would be just as large if he opened them up.

I’m not trying to rain on anyone’s parade and I hope just as fervently as anyone that we win in a huge landslide. But, I’m not seeing any reliable evidence of this so-called new CW that it’s “Kerry’s to lose.” It’s still tied.

Lame

Before everybody gets all upset that Kerry condemned the MoveOn ad, think about it for a minute.

Personally, I think it’s too late for this ad — the story was already losing its momentum in the mainstream media. Editorials called Bush out. Even O’Reilly was condemning the swiftboaters. The timing is off.

Mostly, I agree with Chris Bowers at MYDD that the ad itself sucks (particularly in comparison with the SBVT ad.) I think they could have alluded to the Bush guard stuff with visuals and saved the righteously indignant VO to address the swiftboat smear. A little subtlety is called for if you are taking a position from the high road while you are sticking a shiv in someone’s belly.

But, it’s done and since our side demanded that Bush condemn his ad, Kerry has little choice now but to stand with McCain and condemn the MoveOn ad and and try to make Junior look bad by comparison. Kerry refused to distance himself from Admiral Turner and General Clark who are out there as attack dogs every day on the issue, (and explicitly bringing up the Guard) so he’s not making the subject off limits.

Bush may end up looking slimy for being the only one who refuses to explicitly condemn these ads, and maybe just getting the Guard thing out there again in contrast to Kerry’s record is what they are really after. If the ad had been a little bit more clever, that might have worked better. I think the best that can be hoped is that the whole subject looks so muddy now with flying charges and counter charges that people discount the whole thing as politics, no harm no foul to either side.

I honestly think the way to attack back would have been to let the swiftless do their thing and then brutally call into question Bush’s behavior on 9/11. You want to go nuclear on these guys, that’s the way to do it. My Pet Goat, baby. That’s the soft white underbelly.