Wednesday, July 28, 2004
Convention:
The Liberal Media: Plenty to complain about, though hardly novel. Two examples: When the Democrats went through their 9/11 remembrance, ABC/CBS/NBC talked over it; Then Fox talked through the national anthem. You can be sure that won’t happen with the Republicans.
The radio was full of conservative voices commenting on Kerry’s failings, too rarely challenged or labeled as partisan. One grievous example is the presence of a Right “Truth Squad” that is criticizing much of what is said. One member, Brent Bozell (founder of a conservative media group, the “Media Research Center”) is introduced simply as “part of the truth squad” and he repeats the oft-mentioned Lie that Ken Lay was very chummy w/ Clinton, sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom 13 times. This stuff goes unchallenged, and the non-thinkers come to accept it as fact.
Carter: The most blunt: Praising Kerry, “He showed up when assigned to duty.” Again the media: As he went through how our credibility has been harmed by the Bushies amorality, two cable networks interrupted his speech and talked over it.
Clinton: Quiet, almost subtly effective in portraying the Democrats as the peace and prosperity party, vs the unilateral, preemptive Republicans, that they are cooperative and idealistic, not selfish and unilateral, cooperating only when they have to, that they stand for hope, not fear. Made Howard Dean seem awfully small/ordinary.
Bush explains Kerry’s Tax Plans: Unintentional humor
In the campaign, you'll hear, we're only going to tax the rich," Bush said. "That's what you'll hear. Now, this from a fellow who has promised about $2 trillion of new spending thus far. And only taxing the rich, first of all, creates a huge tax gap, which means buyer beware. "You see, if you can't raise enough by taxing the rich, guess who gets to pay next?" Bush asked. "Yes, the not-rich. That's all of us." That's all of us? Somehow, I think some "not rich" folks are doing better than the rest of us "not rich."
So it turns out that Bush, unlike your typical grandsons of senators, sons of presidents and graduates of fancy prep schools, Yale and Harvard business school, is just another "not rich" guy, a regular working stiff. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the average annual wage for the Cedar Rapids area is $34,600. So that crowd was clearly "not rich."
But who else are the "not rich"? Well, Bush last year reported an income of only $822,000, and his assets were worth as much as $19 million. That includes his 1,583-acre ranch in Crawford, Tex.
Clearly not rich. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13915-2004Jul25.html
Labor and Kerry: SEIU head lacks passion for the ticket.
Breaking sharply with the enforced harmony of the Democratic National Convention, the president of the largest AFL-CIO union said Monday that both organized labor and the Democratic Party might be better off in the long run if Sen. John F. Kerry loses the election.
Andrew L. Stern, the head of the 1.6 million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU), said in an interview with The Washington Post that both the party and its longtime ally, the labor movement, are "in deep crisis," devoid of new ideas and working with archaic structures.
Stern argued that Kerry's election might stifle needed reform within the party and the labor movement. He said he still believes that Kerry overall would make a better president than President Bush, and his union has poured huge resources into that effort. But he contends that Kerry's election would have the effect of slowing the "evolution" of the dialogue within the party.
Asked whether if Kerry became president it would help or hurt those internal party deliberations, Stern said, "I think it hurts."
Stern's dissatisfaction with the AFL-CIO and the Democratic Party is not new, but his decision to voice his frustration on the opening day of a carefully scripted convention was an unwelcome surprise to Kerry's convention managers, who had been proclaiming their delight at the absence of any internal conflicts. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16387-2004Jul26?language=printer
Kevin Phillips on Kerry: The thoughtful conservative on NOW:
MOYERS: Let's turn to the Democrats. John Kerry supported the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and passage of the Patriot Act. He is on the record as saying he would consider sending even more troops to Iraq. The Democratic platform next week will call for at least 20,000 more troops to be sent. Is he offering an echo and not a choice?
PHILLIPS: I think in some ways he is. It puts me in mind of back in 1968 and '69, when Nixon came in, he would talk about how we have to get tougher and do more things or all kinds of possibilities on Vietnam. But in fact there really wasn't a strategy. And he just got suckered into extending sort of what was there and Vietnamizing and getting out.
And now we're — how do you say it — Iraqifying? And is it another mess? Is it another quagmire? Are we Vietnamizing with, you know, Bedouins? What is this? I don't think the Democratic policy process is worth much more than the Republican policy process.
And my big problem with John Kerry is I can't figure out… I hope he's a seven on a scale of one to ten, but I think he's a five. I don't think he's saying anything. But the ex-politician in me can say, well, would I want to say a whole lot? No, I wouldn't.
MOYERS: The ECONOMIST has a cover this week, look at it, says, "He robot?" And it says, "It's high time for Kerry to show what he's made of."
PHILLIPS: Yeah, and that's I guess what we're worried about. When we say we hope he's a seven and worry that he's a five, you know, is there stuffing in there? What is there? What makes him tick? I don't understand how somebody can run for the Democratic presidential nomination and not be outraged at a lot of stuff that's gone on in the last 10 or 15 years. http://www.pbs.org/now/printable/transcript330_full_print.html
Richard Dreyfuss: The actor doesn’t mince his words…
Dreyfuss called Bush ``arrogant and incompetent'' and said ``his appeal to patriotism is simplistic and thuggish.''Dreyfuss added, ``He is the enemy of thoughtfulness.''``I wasn't raised in George Bush's America, and I wouldn't be comfortable in it,'' Dreyfuss said. ``In this America, you point toward a sin and you are pointed at. You are the irritant not the gatekeeper. You smell funny -- sinister funny. Terrorist-friendly. You mention due process and the silence is not respectful, it is ominous.''The delegates gave him a standing ovation, which led Dreyfuss to give a few last remarks, urging them to counter the Republicans' every attack and ``be consistent and in their face.' ' http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/9255219.htm?1c
Danny Schechter on the Democrats: The veteran media commentator observes:
They have pre-sanitized the event, and squeezed any debate or controversy out of it. They have cooperated with the marginalization of debate and have insured that the war, THE ISSUE dividing Americans and America from the world, is barely mentioned, "STRENGTH is their watchword as if they plan to out macho Bush and challenge the school yard bully with a tougher guy. They have turned Kerry into an unlikely caricature. The anti-war activist is now the war hero proud of serving America in a war he once eloquently denounced. The liberal policy wonk is now the middle of the road say nothing candidate. The Bush bashing that arouses and motivates the base has been banned from the arena. http://64.224.42.246/weblog/dannylog.cfm
Electoral Shenanigans: Florida, again; Enough to keep us nervous.
Almost all the electronic records from the first widespread use of touch-screen voting in Miami-Dade County have been lost, stoking concerns that the machines are unreliable as the presidential election draws near.
The records disappeared after two computer system crashes last year, county elections officials said, leaving no audit trail for the 2002 gubernatorial primary. A citizens group uncovered the loss this month after requesting all audit data from that election.
A county official said a new backup system would prevent electronic voting data from being lost in the future. But members of the citizens group, the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition, said the malfunction underscored the vulnerability of electronic voting records and wiped out data that might have shed light on what problems, if any, still existed with touch-screen machines here. The group supplied the results of its request to The New York Times.
"This shows that unless we do something now - or it may very well be too late - Florida is headed toward being the next Florida," said Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, a lawyer who is the chairwoman of the coalition. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/28/politics/campaign/28vote.final.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
What’s Happening, Iraq: July was a casualty month. The first month of the “transition” showed “no let-up.” Mark Turner for the Financial Times:
The spate of post-transition violence in Iraq showed no sign of let-up yesterday, as insurgents bombed an airfield in Mosul, a senior interior ministry official was assassinated in Baghdad, gunmen opened fire on five women cleaners working for the US company Bechtel in Basra, and kidnappers seized two Jordanian drivers." http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1087374001379
What’s Happening, Iraq and Afghanistan: From Lakhdar Brahimi, former UN special envoy to Iraq in Deutsch Press Agentur, conveyed by Juan Cole:
' [Brahimi] said Iraq would no doubt recover from the chaos in which it was presently. ''The question is only, how long will it take? And what will the normalization cost?'' The price up till now had already been very high . . . Brahimi said the resistance in Iraq was difficult to analyze. Alongside the old cadres of the Baath regime of Saddan Hussein, there was a strong group of Iraqis which for patriotic reasons attacked any form of occupation. . . Here, action was needed by the Interim Government of Iyad Allawi.''It must prove that it has real sovereignty, and that it's not just a puppet of the Americans. But that's difficult with 150,000 foreign soldiers in the country.'' . . .Asked whether the Iraq war had harmed the ''war on terrorism'', Brahimi said: ''The Iraq war was unnecessary. It created more problems than it solved - and it brought terrorism to Iraq.'' Brahimi, who was formerly U.N. envoy for Afghanistan, warned that the country was on a dangerous course. The regional warlords had too much power and influence. ''There are presently developments similar to those events of 1992 which led the Taliban to success.'' www.juancole.com
What’s Happening, Thailand: Unrest
Thailand has ordered the closure of at least two Islamic boarding schools, saying the staff were linked to unrest that has left more than 250 people dead in the kingdom's Muslim-majority south.
The government said the schools were used as bases to launch attacks since January and hinted at harsher measures against rebels who had targeted Thai Buddhists, security officials and civil servants. http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/A525EE1D-0091-4309-8CA1-3186A7B5DFE7.htm
Sharon and Land Grabbing: Grab now, give back (some) later- hoping to establish new ‘facts on the ground.’
Months after Ariel Sharon announced his dramatic plan to pull Jewish settlers out of Gaza, portraying it as a sacrifice for peace, the government is grabbing more land for West Bank settlements.
Israeli peace groups and Palestinian officials say thousands of homes are under construction in the main settlements, in addition to an expansion of Jewish outposts that are illegal under Israeli law. Mr Sharon has promised the US he will dismantle the outposts, which are usually clusters of containers or trailer homes serviced by government-built roads, but has failed to do so.
One Israeli group, Settlement Watch, says in the three months to May, West Bank settlements expanded by 26 hectares (65 acres).The government has approved construction of thousands more homes in the three main settlement blocs on the West Bank, encouraged by an apparent endorsement by George Bush for their eventual annexation.
In a letter to Mr Sharon, Mr Bush praised the Gaza pullout and agreed that "in light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centres", it was unrealistic to expect a full return to the 1967 borders. http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1269880,00.html
What's Happening, Iran: Part of the Axis of Evil; the 9/11 Commission thought they had more links to al-Qaeda than Iraq. Ho hum.
Iran starts atom tests in defiance of EU deal: The Telegraph (Anton La Guardia)
Iran has broken the seals on nuclear equipment monitored by United Nations inspectors and is once again building and testing machines that could make fissile material for nuclear weapons.
Teheran's move, revealed to The Daily Telegraph yesterday by western sources, breaks a deal with European countries under which Iran suspended "all uranium enrichment activity".
It will also exacerbate fears that the regional power is determined to make an atomic bomb within a few years.
Enrichment is the most controversial part of Iran's "peaceful" nuclear programme because the same technology used to make low-enriched uranium to fuel nuclear reactors can be used to refine material for bombs.
America has in recent weeks renewed its call for Iran to be referred to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;sessionid=3UINBUQWD1QBVQFIQMFSM5OAVCBQ0JVC?xml=/news/2004/07/27/wiran27.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/07/27/ixportal.html
-R
The Liberal Media: Plenty to complain about, though hardly novel. Two examples: When the Democrats went through their 9/11 remembrance, ABC/CBS/NBC talked over it; Then Fox talked through the national anthem. You can be sure that won’t happen with the Republicans.
The radio was full of conservative voices commenting on Kerry’s failings, too rarely challenged or labeled as partisan. One grievous example is the presence of a Right “Truth Squad” that is criticizing much of what is said. One member, Brent Bozell (founder of a conservative media group, the “Media Research Center”) is introduced simply as “part of the truth squad” and he repeats the oft-mentioned Lie that Ken Lay was very chummy w/ Clinton, sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom 13 times. This stuff goes unchallenged, and the non-thinkers come to accept it as fact.
Carter: The most blunt: Praising Kerry, “He showed up when assigned to duty.” Again the media: As he went through how our credibility has been harmed by the Bushies amorality, two cable networks interrupted his speech and talked over it.
Clinton: Quiet, almost subtly effective in portraying the Democrats as the peace and prosperity party, vs the unilateral, preemptive Republicans, that they are cooperative and idealistic, not selfish and unilateral, cooperating only when they have to, that they stand for hope, not fear. Made Howard Dean seem awfully small/ordinary.
Bush explains Kerry’s Tax Plans: Unintentional humor
In the campaign, you'll hear, we're only going to tax the rich," Bush said. "That's what you'll hear. Now, this from a fellow who has promised about $2 trillion of new spending thus far. And only taxing the rich, first of all, creates a huge tax gap, which means buyer beware. "You see, if you can't raise enough by taxing the rich, guess who gets to pay next?" Bush asked. "Yes, the not-rich. That's all of us." That's all of us? Somehow, I think some "not rich" folks are doing better than the rest of us "not rich."
So it turns out that Bush, unlike your typical grandsons of senators, sons of presidents and graduates of fancy prep schools, Yale and Harvard business school, is just another "not rich" guy, a regular working stiff. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the average annual wage for the Cedar Rapids area is $34,600. So that crowd was clearly "not rich."
But who else are the "not rich"? Well, Bush last year reported an income of only $822,000, and his assets were worth as much as $19 million. That includes his 1,583-acre ranch in Crawford, Tex.
Clearly not rich. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13915-2004Jul25.html
Labor and Kerry: SEIU head lacks passion for the ticket.
Breaking sharply with the enforced harmony of the Democratic National Convention, the president of the largest AFL-CIO union said Monday that both organized labor and the Democratic Party might be better off in the long run if Sen. John F. Kerry loses the election.
Andrew L. Stern, the head of the 1.6 million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU), said in an interview with The Washington Post that both the party and its longtime ally, the labor movement, are "in deep crisis," devoid of new ideas and working with archaic structures.
Stern argued that Kerry's election might stifle needed reform within the party and the labor movement. He said he still believes that Kerry overall would make a better president than President Bush, and his union has poured huge resources into that effort. But he contends that Kerry's election would have the effect of slowing the "evolution" of the dialogue within the party.
Asked whether if Kerry became president it would help or hurt those internal party deliberations, Stern said, "I think it hurts."
Stern's dissatisfaction with the AFL-CIO and the Democratic Party is not new, but his decision to voice his frustration on the opening day of a carefully scripted convention was an unwelcome surprise to Kerry's convention managers, who had been proclaiming their delight at the absence of any internal conflicts. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16387-2004Jul26?language=printer
Kevin Phillips on Kerry: The thoughtful conservative on NOW:
MOYERS: Let's turn to the Democrats. John Kerry supported the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and passage of the Patriot Act. He is on the record as saying he would consider sending even more troops to Iraq. The Democratic platform next week will call for at least 20,000 more troops to be sent. Is he offering an echo and not a choice?
PHILLIPS: I think in some ways he is. It puts me in mind of back in 1968 and '69, when Nixon came in, he would talk about how we have to get tougher and do more things or all kinds of possibilities on Vietnam. But in fact there really wasn't a strategy. And he just got suckered into extending sort of what was there and Vietnamizing and getting out.
And now we're — how do you say it — Iraqifying? And is it another mess? Is it another quagmire? Are we Vietnamizing with, you know, Bedouins? What is this? I don't think the Democratic policy process is worth much more than the Republican policy process.
And my big problem with John Kerry is I can't figure out… I hope he's a seven on a scale of one to ten, but I think he's a five. I don't think he's saying anything. But the ex-politician in me can say, well, would I want to say a whole lot? No, I wouldn't.
MOYERS: The ECONOMIST has a cover this week, look at it, says, "He robot?" And it says, "It's high time for Kerry to show what he's made of."
PHILLIPS: Yeah, and that's I guess what we're worried about. When we say we hope he's a seven and worry that he's a five, you know, is there stuffing in there? What is there? What makes him tick? I don't understand how somebody can run for the Democratic presidential nomination and not be outraged at a lot of stuff that's gone on in the last 10 or 15 years. http://www.pbs.org/now/printable/transcript330_full_print.html
Richard Dreyfuss: The actor doesn’t mince his words…
Dreyfuss called Bush ``arrogant and incompetent'' and said ``his appeal to patriotism is simplistic and thuggish.''Dreyfuss added, ``He is the enemy of thoughtfulness.''``I wasn't raised in George Bush's America, and I wouldn't be comfortable in it,'' Dreyfuss said. ``In this America, you point toward a sin and you are pointed at. You are the irritant not the gatekeeper. You smell funny -- sinister funny. Terrorist-friendly. You mention due process and the silence is not respectful, it is ominous.''The delegates gave him a standing ovation, which led Dreyfuss to give a few last remarks, urging them to counter the Republicans' every attack and ``be consistent and in their face.' ' http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/9255219.htm?1c
Danny Schechter on the Democrats: The veteran media commentator observes:
They have pre-sanitized the event, and squeezed any debate or controversy out of it. They have cooperated with the marginalization of debate and have insured that the war, THE ISSUE dividing Americans and America from the world, is barely mentioned, "STRENGTH is their watchword as if they plan to out macho Bush and challenge the school yard bully with a tougher guy. They have turned Kerry into an unlikely caricature. The anti-war activist is now the war hero proud of serving America in a war he once eloquently denounced. The liberal policy wonk is now the middle of the road say nothing candidate. The Bush bashing that arouses and motivates the base has been banned from the arena. http://64.224.42.246/weblog/dannylog.cfm
Electoral Shenanigans: Florida, again; Enough to keep us nervous.
Almost all the electronic records from the first widespread use of touch-screen voting in Miami-Dade County have been lost, stoking concerns that the machines are unreliable as the presidential election draws near.
The records disappeared after two computer system crashes last year, county elections officials said, leaving no audit trail for the 2002 gubernatorial primary. A citizens group uncovered the loss this month after requesting all audit data from that election.
A county official said a new backup system would prevent electronic voting data from being lost in the future. But members of the citizens group, the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition, said the malfunction underscored the vulnerability of electronic voting records and wiped out data that might have shed light on what problems, if any, still existed with touch-screen machines here. The group supplied the results of its request to The New York Times.
"This shows that unless we do something now - or it may very well be too late - Florida is headed toward being the next Florida," said Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, a lawyer who is the chairwoman of the coalition. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/28/politics/campaign/28vote.final.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
What’s Happening, Iraq: July was a casualty month. The first month of the “transition” showed “no let-up.” Mark Turner for the Financial Times:
The spate of post-transition violence in Iraq showed no sign of let-up yesterday, as insurgents bombed an airfield in Mosul, a senior interior ministry official was assassinated in Baghdad, gunmen opened fire on five women cleaners working for the US company Bechtel in Basra, and kidnappers seized two Jordanian drivers." http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1087374001379
What’s Happening, Iraq and Afghanistan: From Lakhdar Brahimi, former UN special envoy to Iraq in Deutsch Press Agentur, conveyed by Juan Cole:
' [Brahimi] said Iraq would no doubt recover from the chaos in which it was presently. ''The question is only, how long will it take? And what will the normalization cost?'' The price up till now had already been very high . . . Brahimi said the resistance in Iraq was difficult to analyze. Alongside the old cadres of the Baath regime of Saddan Hussein, there was a strong group of Iraqis which for patriotic reasons attacked any form of occupation. . . Here, action was needed by the Interim Government of Iyad Allawi.''It must prove that it has real sovereignty, and that it's not just a puppet of the Americans. But that's difficult with 150,000 foreign soldiers in the country.'' . . .Asked whether the Iraq war had harmed the ''war on terrorism'', Brahimi said: ''The Iraq war was unnecessary. It created more problems than it solved - and it brought terrorism to Iraq.'' Brahimi, who was formerly U.N. envoy for Afghanistan, warned that the country was on a dangerous course. The regional warlords had too much power and influence. ''There are presently developments similar to those events of 1992 which led the Taliban to success.'' www.juancole.com
What’s Happening, Thailand: Unrest
Thailand has ordered the closure of at least two Islamic boarding schools, saying the staff were linked to unrest that has left more than 250 people dead in the kingdom's Muslim-majority south.
The government said the schools were used as bases to launch attacks since January and hinted at harsher measures against rebels who had targeted Thai Buddhists, security officials and civil servants. http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/A525EE1D-0091-4309-8CA1-3186A7B5DFE7.htm
Sharon and Land Grabbing: Grab now, give back (some) later- hoping to establish new ‘facts on the ground.’
Months after Ariel Sharon announced his dramatic plan to pull Jewish settlers out of Gaza, portraying it as a sacrifice for peace, the government is grabbing more land for West Bank settlements.
Israeli peace groups and Palestinian officials say thousands of homes are under construction in the main settlements, in addition to an expansion of Jewish outposts that are illegal under Israeli law. Mr Sharon has promised the US he will dismantle the outposts, which are usually clusters of containers or trailer homes serviced by government-built roads, but has failed to do so.
One Israeli group, Settlement Watch, says in the three months to May, West Bank settlements expanded by 26 hectares (65 acres).The government has approved construction of thousands more homes in the three main settlement blocs on the West Bank, encouraged by an apparent endorsement by George Bush for their eventual annexation.
In a letter to Mr Sharon, Mr Bush praised the Gaza pullout and agreed that "in light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centres", it was unrealistic to expect a full return to the 1967 borders. http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1269880,00.html
What's Happening, Iran: Part of the Axis of Evil; the 9/11 Commission thought they had more links to al-Qaeda than Iraq. Ho hum.
Iran starts atom tests in defiance of EU deal: The Telegraph (Anton La Guardia)
Iran has broken the seals on nuclear equipment monitored by United Nations inspectors and is once again building and testing machines that could make fissile material for nuclear weapons.
Teheran's move, revealed to The Daily Telegraph yesterday by western sources, breaks a deal with European countries under which Iran suspended "all uranium enrichment activity".
It will also exacerbate fears that the regional power is determined to make an atomic bomb within a few years.
Enrichment is the most controversial part of Iran's "peaceful" nuclear programme because the same technology used to make low-enriched uranium to fuel nuclear reactors can be used to refine material for bombs.
America has in recent weeks renewed its call for Iran to be referred to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;sessionid=3UINBUQWD1QBVQFIQMFSM5OAVCBQ0JVC?xml=/news/2004/07/27/wiran27.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/07/27/ixportal.html
-R
