Tuesday, July 06, 2004
Electoral Politics: Edwards:* Avoiding boring Gephardt; smart move.
* The inevitability of Hillary is no longer; if Kerry wins, Edwards is 4 or 8 years away from being the heir apparent. If Kerry loses, Edwards is still the star (and I’m in Melbourne).
* The Republican machine was ready with their opposition research yielding talking points that were everywhere, flooding the airwaves with ‘he’s another liberal, he’s lightweight, he’s inexperienced, he’s a trial lawyer, he didn’t support the troops’, etc. In the early hours they overwhelmed the Democratic presence on radio/t.v. They repeatedly ran a campaign ad w/ John McCain, now a Bush “supporter.” But keep in mind, there’s no love there.
Recall: Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is launching perhaps his harshest attack yet on his own party and his gushiest praise of Democrats.
"I believe my party has gone astray," McCain said yesterday, singling out GOP stands on environmental issues and racial set-asides.
"I think the Democratic Party is a fine party, and I have no problems with it, in their views and their philosophy," he said. "But I also feel the Republican Party can be brought back to the principles I articulated before."
And he took another shot at President Bush. "You can't fly in on an aircraft carrier and declare victory and have the deaths continue. You can't do that." http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/4/2/115508.shtml
*The Repubs would be smart to counter with Giulani, Condi, Powell.
*Ignore the polls. Kerry will establish a lead this month, Bush will rebound in late August. We’ll know what’s what on Sept. 15th or so, after the conventions and the 9/11 anniversary.
*We know VP’s make little difference. Maybe, just maybe, Edwards will help with North Carolina (and Florida).
* Edwards may mobilize the business community. From the WS Journal:
Mr. Edwards's political and policy views are more moderate -- and more in line with business -- than those of Gov. Dean, Rep. Gephardt or even Sen. Kerry.
But Mr. Edwards is a trial lawyer. His campaign for the presidency was financed by trial lawyers. And there is nothing that makes America's CEOs see red these days like America's trial lawyers. "It's visceral," says one person who works with a group of chief executives. "You can feel it in a room." The nation's top executives view the plaintiff's bar as modern-day mobsters, shaking down corporations by bringing endless lawsuits that are too costly and too dangerous to litigate and that result in settlements costing billions to the corporate bottom line. The antipathy, while not new, has never been greater. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108906847567455577,00.html?mod=at%5Fleisure%5Fmain%5Feditors%5Fpicks%5Fdays%5Fonly
Speaking of Polls (ha!)North Carolina (Rasmussen) Bush 49-42%
National (Gallup): Bush up 53-41% with White men
Kerry up 81-12% with Blacks
Kerry up 57-38% with Hispanics
Sudan: Genocide
Since early 2003, tens of thousands of Sudanese citizens of African descent who live in the Darfur region have been systematically killed, raped, and displaced as their villages have been destroyed. Through coordinated land and air attacks; the burning of homes and crops; the rounding up of livestock; the destruction of wells, granaries, and irrigation works; the uprooting of trees; and the theft of all possessions, the government of Sudan and the government-supported Arab militia, Janjaweed, have displaced more than 1 million people. http://www.alternet.org/story/19147/
The Physicians for Human Rights are urging intervention via letters to Powell. Go to their website for the specifics. http://www.phrusa.org/research/sudan/action_colinpowell.html
What’s Happening, Iraq: Fascinating. The CIA was keeping the Administration in the dark about how weak the wmd ‘evidence’ was. So, they were getting back at ‘em for (Cheney’s) pressure tactics. From the lead, ironic story in Tuesday’s NY Times (James Risen):
The Central Intelligence Agency was told by relatives of Iraqi scientists before the war that Baghdad's programs to develop unconventional weapons had been abandoned, but the C.I.A. failed to give that information to President Bush, even as he publicly warned of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's illicit weapons, according to government officials.
The existence of a secret prewar C.I.A. operation to debrief relatives of Iraqi scientists — and the agency's failure to give their statements to the president and other policymakers — has been uncovered by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The panel has been investigating the government's handling of prewar intelligence on Iraq's unconventional weapons and plans to release a wide-ranging report this week on the first phase of its inquiry. The report is expected to contain a scathing indictment of the C.I.A. and its leaders for failing to recognize that the evidence they had collected did not justify their assessment that Mr. Hussein had illicit weapons. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/06/politics/06INTE.html
Controlling the New Iraq: ‘Shameless in Iraq’ (Naomi Klein)
If occupation chief Paul Bremer and his staff were capable of embarrassment, they might be a little sheepish about having spent only $3.2 billion of the $18.4 billion Congress allotted--the reason the reconstruction is so disastrously behind schedule. At first, Bremer said the money would be spent by the time Iraq was sovereign, but apparently someone had a better idea: Parcel it out over five years so Ambassador John Negroponte can use it as leverage. With $15 billion outstanding, how likely will Iraq's politicians be to refuse US demands for military bases and economic "reforms"?
Unwilling to let go of their own money, the shameless ones have had no qualms about dipping into funds belonging to Iraqis. After losing the fight to keep control of Iraq's oil money after the underhand, occupation authorities grabbed $2.5 billion of those revenues and are now spending the money on projects that are supposedly already covered by US tax dollars.
But then, if financial scandals made you blush, the entire reconstruction of Iraq would be pretty mortifying. From the start, its architects rejected the idea that it should be a New Deal-style public works project for Iraqis to reclaim their country. Instead, it was treated as an ideological experiment in privatization. The dream was for multinational firms, mostly from the United States, to swoop in and dazzle the Iraqis with their speed and efficiency http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20040712&s=klein
Blair Gives it Up: Will Cheney Eventually Follow?
[Tony Blair] conceded today that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction "may never be found" but claimed that they could have been "hidden, removed or destroyed".
Appearing before the Commons liaison committee of senior MPs, the prime minister said: "I was very, very confident the Iraq Survey Group would find them - I have to accept we haven't found them and we may not find them." http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,11026,1255124,00.html
How They See Us: Pepe Escobar of the Asia Times with a snapshot:
Before hitting America's roads in the crucial 2004 electoral year, it helps to keep a few things in perspective. The US government is moving toward the red at a rate of almost US$1 million a minute. Sixty-one percent of Americans think that the narrative of God creating the world in six days is "literally true". Since 2001, under Bush, corporate tax collection has fallen by $11 billion. American adults added an estimated total of 150 million pounds (68 million kilograms) to their waistlines in 2003. One in every 115 Americans works for Wal-Mart. Halliburton has more people working in Iraq than the British army contingent. Sixty-one percent of American workers say they received "no meaningful rewards or recognition" for their work in 2003. For every 1,000 murders, Oklahoma - the land that gave us Brad Pitt - sends 51 to death (Texas sends only 20; 25 is the national average). http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FG07Aa01.html
-R
* The inevitability of Hillary is no longer; if Kerry wins, Edwards is 4 or 8 years away from being the heir apparent. If Kerry loses, Edwards is still the star (and I’m in Melbourne).
* The Republican machine was ready with their opposition research yielding talking points that were everywhere, flooding the airwaves with ‘he’s another liberal, he’s lightweight, he’s inexperienced, he’s a trial lawyer, he didn’t support the troops’, etc. In the early hours they overwhelmed the Democratic presence on radio/t.v. They repeatedly ran a campaign ad w/ John McCain, now a Bush “supporter.” But keep in mind, there’s no love there.
Recall: Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is launching perhaps his harshest attack yet on his own party and his gushiest praise of Democrats.
"I believe my party has gone astray," McCain said yesterday, singling out GOP stands on environmental issues and racial set-asides.
"I think the Democratic Party is a fine party, and I have no problems with it, in their views and their philosophy," he said. "But I also feel the Republican Party can be brought back to the principles I articulated before."
And he took another shot at President Bush. "You can't fly in on an aircraft carrier and declare victory and have the deaths continue. You can't do that." http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/4/2/115508.shtml
*The Repubs would be smart to counter with Giulani, Condi, Powell.
*Ignore the polls. Kerry will establish a lead this month, Bush will rebound in late August. We’ll know what’s what on Sept. 15th or so, after the conventions and the 9/11 anniversary.
*We know VP’s make little difference. Maybe, just maybe, Edwards will help with North Carolina (and Florida).
* Edwards may mobilize the business community. From the WS Journal:
Mr. Edwards's political and policy views are more moderate -- and more in line with business -- than those of Gov. Dean, Rep. Gephardt or even Sen. Kerry.
But Mr. Edwards is a trial lawyer. His campaign for the presidency was financed by trial lawyers. And there is nothing that makes America's CEOs see red these days like America's trial lawyers. "It's visceral," says one person who works with a group of chief executives. "You can feel it in a room." The nation's top executives view the plaintiff's bar as modern-day mobsters, shaking down corporations by bringing endless lawsuits that are too costly and too dangerous to litigate and that result in settlements costing billions to the corporate bottom line. The antipathy, while not new, has never been greater. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108906847567455577,00.html?mod=at%5Fleisure%5Fmain%5Feditors%5Fpicks%5Fdays%5Fonly
Speaking of Polls (ha!)North Carolina (Rasmussen) Bush 49-42%
National (Gallup): Bush up 53-41% with White men
Kerry up 81-12% with Blacks
Kerry up 57-38% with Hispanics
Sudan: Genocide
Since early 2003, tens of thousands of Sudanese citizens of African descent who live in the Darfur region have been systematically killed, raped, and displaced as their villages have been destroyed. Through coordinated land and air attacks; the burning of homes and crops; the rounding up of livestock; the destruction of wells, granaries, and irrigation works; the uprooting of trees; and the theft of all possessions, the government of Sudan and the government-supported Arab militia, Janjaweed, have displaced more than 1 million people. http://www.alternet.org/story/19147/
The Physicians for Human Rights are urging intervention via letters to Powell. Go to their website for the specifics. http://www.phrusa.org/research/sudan/action_colinpowell.html
What’s Happening, Iraq: Fascinating. The CIA was keeping the Administration in the dark about how weak the wmd ‘evidence’ was. So, they were getting back at ‘em for (Cheney’s) pressure tactics. From the lead, ironic story in Tuesday’s NY Times (James Risen):
The Central Intelligence Agency was told by relatives of Iraqi scientists before the war that Baghdad's programs to develop unconventional weapons had been abandoned, but the C.I.A. failed to give that information to President Bush, even as he publicly warned of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's illicit weapons, according to government officials.
The existence of a secret prewar C.I.A. operation to debrief relatives of Iraqi scientists — and the agency's failure to give their statements to the president and other policymakers — has been uncovered by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The panel has been investigating the government's handling of prewar intelligence on Iraq's unconventional weapons and plans to release a wide-ranging report this week on the first phase of its inquiry. The report is expected to contain a scathing indictment of the C.I.A. and its leaders for failing to recognize that the evidence they had collected did not justify their assessment that Mr. Hussein had illicit weapons. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/06/politics/06INTE.html
Controlling the New Iraq: ‘Shameless in Iraq’ (Naomi Klein)
If occupation chief Paul Bremer and his staff were capable of embarrassment, they might be a little sheepish about having spent only $3.2 billion of the $18.4 billion Congress allotted--the reason the reconstruction is so disastrously behind schedule. At first, Bremer said the money would be spent by the time Iraq was sovereign, but apparently someone had a better idea: Parcel it out over five years so Ambassador John Negroponte can use it as leverage. With $15 billion outstanding, how likely will Iraq's politicians be to refuse US demands for military bases and economic "reforms"?
Unwilling to let go of their own money, the shameless ones have had no qualms about dipping into funds belonging to Iraqis. After losing the fight to keep control of Iraq's oil money after the underhand, occupation authorities grabbed $2.5 billion of those revenues and are now spending the money on projects that are supposedly already covered by US tax dollars.
But then, if financial scandals made you blush, the entire reconstruction of Iraq would be pretty mortifying. From the start, its architects rejected the idea that it should be a New Deal-style public works project for Iraqis to reclaim their country. Instead, it was treated as an ideological experiment in privatization. The dream was for multinational firms, mostly from the United States, to swoop in and dazzle the Iraqis with their speed and efficiency http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20040712&s=klein
Blair Gives it Up: Will Cheney Eventually Follow?
[Tony Blair] conceded today that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction "may never be found" but claimed that they could have been "hidden, removed or destroyed".
Appearing before the Commons liaison committee of senior MPs, the prime minister said: "I was very, very confident the Iraq Survey Group would find them - I have to accept we haven't found them and we may not find them." http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,11026,1255124,00.html
How They See Us: Pepe Escobar of the Asia Times with a snapshot:
Before hitting America's roads in the crucial 2004 electoral year, it helps to keep a few things in perspective. The US government is moving toward the red at a rate of almost US$1 million a minute. Sixty-one percent of Americans think that the narrative of God creating the world in six days is "literally true". Since 2001, under Bush, corporate tax collection has fallen by $11 billion. American adults added an estimated total of 150 million pounds (68 million kilograms) to their waistlines in 2003. One in every 115 Americans works for Wal-Mart. Halliburton has more people working in Iraq than the British army contingent. Sixty-one percent of American workers say they received "no meaningful rewards or recognition" for their work in 2003. For every 1,000 murders, Oklahoma - the land that gave us Brad Pitt - sends 51 to death (Texas sends only 20; 25 is the national average). http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FG07Aa01.html
-R
