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February 28, 2005

Big Brother or We the People? Who runs this country

Vermonters are scheduled to engage in an intriguing exercize in representative democracy that could potentially put the question of where ultimate power in this country resides to the test.

One fifth of Vermont's towns and cities will consider resolutions asking what role Vermont National Guard troops should play in the Iraq War.

The Vermont model "brings into discussion the very people who should be discussing the impact of this war: National Guard families, local politicians, police departments, school officials," says Nancy Lessin, co-founder of Military Families Speak Out, an antiwar organization. The group is planning a state-based campaign that urges local officials to study the effects that the war, especially the deployment of National Guard units, is having on communities from Oregon to Maine.

Of course the various state National Guards don't ultimately answer to their state government's leadership. They answer to the Pentagon. And the Pentagon answers to the President. However, the President is vulnerable to political pressures, which is how our system was designed to work. So, these Town Hall meetings are not as toothless as they appear to be on the surface.

Abraham Lincoln famously stated, "... this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863.

Vermonters intend to test the truth of Lincoln's assertion on who holds true power in this nation.

Posted by Kevin at 02:45 PM |

David Reinhard tosses bullcookies

Several times a week, Oregonian columnist David Reinhard regales the citizenry with his conservative talking points. Yesterday's column was no exception.

In his usual patronizing manner, Reinhard attacked Governor Ted Kulingoski for daring to appoint former Democratic Governor Les AuCoin to the Oregon Board of Forestry rather than reappointing rancher/farmer Chris Heffernan:

The governor has decided not to reappoint Chris Heffernan -- a rancher and small woodlands owner from Eastern Oregon who was recently named Oregon and Western Regional Tree Farmer of the Year -- in order to appoint someone who has gone out of his way to oppose the signature forest policy of the Oregon State Board of Forestry and the Kulongoski administration. That is, Les AuCoin.

Yes, the congressman-turned-commentator has opposed the forestry board's management plan for the Tillamook and Clatsop state forests and publicly supported last fall's Measure 34, which would have prohibited logging in more than half of Oregon's state forests. Of course, Kulongoski favored the board's plan and opposed Measure 34's irresponsible lock-up of the Tillamook, but never mind. The governor now wants to reward AuCoin's contrariness with a seat on the State Board of Forestry. AuCoin the Jefferson Public Radio pundit might call this "Kulongoski vs. Kulongoski."

My "real job" includes working with foresters, the forest products industry, enviornmental agencies and enviornmentalists, among others. I'm very familiar with tree farmers and with ranchers that have a stake with this issue. While I don't know Mr. Heffernan personally, I do know that ranchers and tree farmers tend to trump economics over enviornment.

Measure 34 was also known as the "50/50 Plan". The purpose of 34 was to create areas in two Oregon forests that would remain unharvested while allowing part of the forestland to be cut. The measure failed in November by a wide margin.

I personally didn't support 34 because of funding. Taxes on cut timber in Oregon help fund schools and essential services. Cutting that without having an adequate plan to replace the dollars wasn't something I could support. However, the enviornmental reasons for the measure are sound. If they bring it back again with a better funding piece, I would support it. The Oregon Board of Forestry actively opposed 34.

But the Board didn't oppose it for the same reason I did, in my opinion. The Board is made up of at least some individuals who profit personally from timber sales in Oregon. Here are the current members:

Barbara D. Craig is a partner at Stoel, Rives LLP attornies-at-law. Ms. Craig invests in a business that buys and sells timber and timber land, and personally represented some of them: specifically Longview Fibre Company.

Larry Giustina is a timber company executive. Giustina has worked on emphasizing the economic side of Oregon's forests.

Stephen Hobbs is Associate Dean for research at Oregon State University's college of forestry.

William Hutchison is an attorney with with Foster, Pepper and Tooze in Portland. Hutchison practices corporate, real property, cooperative and enviornmental law.

Jennifer Phillippi is Business Manager of Rough and Ready Lumber Company. She's also President of Perpetua Forests Company.

Diane Snyder is a rancher/landowner. Ms. Snyder is the executive director of Wallowa Resources, a nonprofit organization that seeks "to blend the ecological needs of the land with the economic needs of the community".

Chris Heffernan is a tree farmer and rancher from North Powder, Oregon.

Of the seven Oregon Board of Forestry members, five profit directly from timber sales in the State of Oregon. The OBF mission statement reads:

It is the Mission of the Oregon Board of Forestry to... lead Oregon in implementing policies and programs that promote environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable management of Oregon's 28 million acres of public and private forests.

It seems to me from the composition of this group there's a pretty heavy lean toward "economically".

AuCoin is an inspired choice specifically because he supported Measure 34. This board needs someone who wants to put enviornment over economics to act as a counterbalance. I also appreciate that Kulingoski isn't afraid to appoint someone that he's butted heads with in the past. It shows he doesn't need to put loyalists in positions of authority...something the current Republican Party appears to abhor.

Posted by Carla at 01:42 PM |

Our domain host sucks

If you tried to post comments to this blog yesterday, you received an error message. So did we. In fact, I couldn't even put up a new post yesterday and I don't think Kev could either.

We've had all sort of trouble with our domain host. We're currently in the process of shopping for a new one. We're also shopping for someone who can move us to the new domain.

It's an arduous process, to be sure. But we ask your patience and indulgence as we progress.

Thanks.

FYI: Steer clear of 0catch.com when shopping for a domain host. There are better, cheaper, more responsive hosts out there who don't go down every other month with no warning or explanation.

Kevin

Posted by Carla at 07:36 AM |

February 26, 2005

Hatred is as hatred does

I have a great deal of affection and respect for our good friend Tom Carter. Having had many personal conversations with him I find him to be funny, smart and interesting.

That said, his blog post from today entitled The Politics of Hate is one of the most one sided, inequitable mischaracterizations I have read in quite some time.

Tom begins:

I've been thinking about how often the word "hate" is used in a political context these days. It almost always comes from the left, directed at George W. Bush.

Apparently stuff like this from Ann Coulter doesn't count?

"Liberals become indignant when you question their patriotism, but simultaneously work overtime to give terrorists a cushion for the next attack and laugh at dumb Americans who love their country and hate the enemy."

"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war."

"When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors."

Or Bill O'Reilly Nazi-izing Michael Moore:

O'REILLY: I believe that he [Michael Moore] has power now. He has more power than probably anybody else other than [Senators John] Kerry and [John] Edwards. It's scary. It's scary. You know this happened in Nazi Germany. ... Who was the most powerful person in Nazi Germany other than Hitler and Himmler and Goering, who? You guys know? ... Goebbels. The propaganda minister. That frightens me when truth no longer exists, gentlemen. It doesn't exist for Michael Moore, it doesn't.

O'Reilly went on to further compare Moore and radio host Al Franken to Goebbels, incidentally.

And then there's rightwing radio host Michael Savage..also on the Goebbels train:

In addition to labeling Soros "a dangerous crazy man" and a "lousy snake," Savage also compared Soros to "Hitler's media man" -- in reference to Hitler's Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels -- and repeatedly called Soros "Goebbels". (Soros is a Hungarian-born Jew who survived the Nazi occupation of Communist Budapest.)

Savage also called MoveOn a bunch of "rat bastard communists".

And then there's Sean Hannity...who has given this fan a reason to spew hatred toward liberals.

And here's the rightwing blog Little Green Footballs namecalling embattled University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, "Little Eichmans".

Tom goes on to say:

The depressing reality is liberals may be so committed to their hatred of the President that they can only rejoice in American failure and disgrace. Is their hatred of Bush so deep and personal that anything is acceptable to justify it? Since they so delight in beating up the President with each new American casualty in Iraq, seemingly in the inane belief that he doesn't care, would they actually be disappointed if fewer and fewer American soldiers were killed and maimed?

The politics of hate has no place in America, and I have no respect for those who embrace it. Ultimately we have only one president, and no matter how much we disagree with him we must respect and support him. Any American who feels otherwise has seriously lost his or her way.

Perhaps Tom might consider what liberals have had shoved at them from the rightwing for the last two decades. The vitriol and hatred spewed out against our ideology and our leaders has been thick and constant. We've had it..and we're fighting back.

I notice Tom give the rightwingers a free pass..despite years of nasty, mean, hatefilled rhetoric toward the Clintons, the Democrats and liberals in general.

If one is going to write a piece about hate filled politics...it's unfair to begin and end with liberals. In fact it's more than unfair...it's dishonest.

Posted by Carla at 05:34 PM |

Cage Match: Abortion v Gay Marriage

The rightwing birdcage liner World Net Daily had a piece up today who's headline caught my eye:

Bill would ban abortions of 'gay' fetuses

While the bill in question is likely never going to become law...it does beg the question, Are rightwingers finally understanding sexual orientation is not a 'choice'?

Not likely. If the story from WND is even factual (and that's a stretch), then denying same sex couples the same rights given to heterosexual couples will be a tougher argument to make for those who back such an abortion law.

The "being gay is a choice and therefore we get to abridge the rights of gays" argument gets very anemic, very quickly.

Posted by Carla at 05:12 PM |

February 25, 2005

More problems for DeLay

The Raw Story reports that tomorrow's National Journal will drop a bombshell about Congressman DeLay. Reportedly DeLay is being charged with a new violation of House ethics rules.

This coming on the heels of Newt Gingrich, ethically challenged himself, expressing dismay at DeLay's ethics makes you wonder just how much longer House Republicans intend to protect him. And if they continue to close ranks around him... how much longer will their constituents tolerate it before voting the crooks out?

Posted by Kevin at 07:46 PM |

Shorter Vatican

The pope is old and he is suffering in pain. But he's hanging in there to show everyone that they can get old and suffer, too. It's what God would want.

Yikes.

Posted by Carla at 07:22 PM |

My Blue Heaven

Here's a short little roundup of juicy tidbits from around the blue states......

California:

The NYT business section has a profile of Dr. Hans Kiersted. Kiersted is considered one of the foremost researchers of stem cells and their uses. He is an assistant professor at the University of California at Irvine.

Connecticut:

The Connecticut Legislature moved closer to legalizing civil unions for same sex couples. The Joint Judiciary Committee voted to pass a bill Wednesday giving same sex couples the same rights as married couples, except to obtain a marriage license.

Oregon:

Blue Oregon blog has a wonderful piece on Oregon's Death With Dignity Act.

Massachusetts:

Tom Keane of the Boston Herald writes about why Howard Dean's fundraising was so successful and why Dean has the right "common touch" and his refusal to conduct "business as usual" may be the part of the Dems solution.

Washington State:

Joel Piniero is likely to be the #1 starting pitcher for the Seattle Mariners.

Posted by Carla at 03:15 PM |

February 24, 2005

Jeff Gannon/Guckert is back

You can't keep a good hack down.

Seriously...after seeing his advertisements on the web for his other job...it creeps me out to even look at a picture of his face.

Yech.

Posted by Carla at 05:39 PM |

Defeat DeLay Daily

You know hip-waders will no longer suffice when even Newt Gingrich is appalled at Tom DeLay's ethical lapses.

Yesterday's Houston Chronicle ran a column by Cragg Hines entitled, If Newt is warning DeLay about ethics, times are bad

Talking with Newt Gingrich about ethics may be like talking to Willie Sutton about bank robbery. You listen carefully to such an experienced practitioner, but you wonder: If he's so smart why did he get caught so often.

No matter. Gingrich is currently as cautionary, if not as vocally indignant, about the House Republican leadership's slide into the muck as he is about debating "patriotic immigration" or "the myth of judicial supremacy."

As usual, Gingrich is taking the long view, not something that current House leaders such as Tom DeLay are regularly accused of doing.

Well, of course, House Republicans are not being careful. They are profligately displaying their power, including the power to abuse the House's tenuous-at-best policing of itself.

Gingrich made clear he thinks DeLay is on thin ice.

"The Republican Party's majority comes from the Perot voters who want real reform," Gingrich said. "Anything which weakens that is difficult."

Had enough of DeLay's capers? Wanna do something about it?

Richard Morrison was unable to take away Tom DeLay's Congressional seat this last November. But he did manage to do something that nobody has managed in a very long time. He forced DeLay to actually got to Texas to defend his seat.

Morrison is running a new campaign called Defeat DeLay Daily. The idea is for concerned Americans to donate a small amount every month to Morrison's effort to hold DeLay accountable to the same laws DeLay wants the rest of us held accountable to.

From an email I received from the Morrison campaign:

am asking each one of you to give at least $10 per month. $10 per month is 33 cents a day; 33 cents a day to beat Tom DeLay. Please make this commitment to democracy. You can't afford not to

Donate today!

Posted by Kevin at 01:00 PM |

Fishing for red herrings..this time in the felon pool

Yesterday at Sound Politics blog, Stefan Sharkansky opines over Republican claims of 1000+ felons voting in the November 2004 election.

Sharkansky cites a Seattle PI story quoting Democratic lawyer Jenny Durkin as saying the GOP will have to prove that the felons voted for Gregiore in sufficient enough numbers as to push the election to her, away from Rossi. Rossi's spokesperson Mary Lane, appears flustered in the piece, in my opinion. But Sharkansky of course spins it by namecalling Durkin and ignorning any actual substance.

Also cited in the Sound Politics piece is book review of John Fund's tome, Stealing Elections: How Vote Fraud Threatens Democracy. The review was written by Paul Froehlich, GOP Congressman from Illinois' 56th Congressional District. The review points out that 68% of the felons who voted in the 2000 election in Florida were registered as Democrats.

For Sharkansky, this is proof that Rossi won because felons registered as Democratic in Florida means they're voting Democratic.

Pssst....Stephan, which Presidential candidate won in Florida in 2000 despite Democratic registrations vastly outnumbering Republican?

This entire line of "reasoning" is ridiculous. The counties in Washington can only purge felons from the voter rolls when they get the information from the courts. There's apparently supposed to be a statewide database but the legislature has failed to fund it (Republicans don't like to raise taxes to cover expenditures, after all). It's also apparent that many of those who voted illegally honestly believed that they were entitled. This whole notion that there was some sort of conspiracy to allow people who knew they shouldn't be voting is tin foil hat stuff.

But in the end it all boils down to the fact that Rossi chose to make the felon vote the crux of his legal contest. Rossi's people (and the State GOP) are complaining that taking affadavits from felons is a nonstarter because a felon can't be trusted to swear to the truth. Too damn bad. The law is the law. Rossi must prove that enough illegal votes went to Gregiore to tip the election to her (RCW 29A.68.110).

Mary Lane complains that the convicted felons can't be placed on the stand because they're criminals.

Maybe you guys should have thought of that before you hung your contest on the illegal felon vote, Mary.

Posted by Carla at 09:25 AM |

February 23, 2005

Investigating Guckert/Gannon

Congressional Democrats are asking for Justice Department and GAO investigations of former White House press pool plant Jeff Gannon(aka James Guckert).

In a letter (PDF) to US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, Representative Louise Slaughter (D-New York) and Representative John Conyers (D-Michigan) have asked for an investigation into the possible connection between Jeff Gannon and the Valerie Plame leak investigation.

Slaughter and Conyers are asking the GAO (PDF) to investigate whether or not the White House violated the ban on prepacked news stories:

As you stated in your February 17, 2005 letter to agency and department heads, it is illegal for the Administration to use appropriated money to broadcast or publish propaganda without taking credit for it. According to recent press, the White House itself directly violated this ban when it gave prepacked print stories to Mr. Guckert, which he reprinted wholesale without disclosing that the Administration authored it, As mentioned in your letter, you have already ruled that agencies authoring newspaper articles and op-ed pieces to be published as a reporter's original work clearly violates this ban. This is precisely what transpired between the White House and Mr. Guckert.

I've neglected to blog on Gannon/Guckert up until now because it's been beaten to death in the blogosphere. But these requests for investigations put an uptick into the importance of this story.

The White House is apparently engaged in a pattern of paying columnists to shill for them. This practice is not only unethical, it's also illegal to use taxpayer dollars in this manner.

Imagine if the Clinton Administration had handpicked an individual who was trained by James Carville to sit in the White House Press Briefing room and lob softball questions at Dee Dee Myers or Mike McCurry. Rush, O'Reilly, Hannity, Coulter, Malkin, Savage, Scarborough and the rest of the rightwing hackosphere would be in a full fledged onslaught. There would be 24/7 cable news reporting Gannon's every move and Clinton's every excuse. Now imagine if he were a gay prostitute soliciting US Marines....holy crap.

Instead...the echo chamber is rife with Social Security privatization schemes and Bush's trip to Europe.

There's your restoration of honor and dignity to the White House.

Posted by Carla at 12:35 PM |

Portland couple used in anti-gay AARP ad

(via Kos)

In case you hadn't heard, the Swift Boat liars are back. And this time they're doing Bush's dirty work for Social Security. And since the AARP is going after Bush's privatization scheme...they're first out of the on deck circle:

Yes folks...the baby boomers are a bunch of gay agenda pushing, anti-troop blue hairs. Good grief.

The gay couple in the photo is from Portland,

and the photo may have been sold to these clowns by The Portland Tribune. Apparently the photo is in the public domain because the photo was taken outside on a public sidewalk.

I'm no legal expert, but I can't imagine these guys don't have a defamation case. Creeps.

Posted by Carla at 01:31 AM |

February 22, 2005

Wonk this way

With profuse apologies to Aerosmith.

Torrid Joe over at AlsoAlso has all the wonky goodness that's fit to print on the Washington Goobernatorial court hearings from February 4th in Chelan County. Joe has taken apart the transcripts. It's a two part series that you can view here (part I) and here (part 2).

Joe dissects the rulings from Judge Bridges and gives his take on what it all means.

After reading Joe's analysis...it looks to me like Rossi and the GOP (not to be confused with Josie and the Pussycats) are in more trouble that I thought. The Democrats indeed lost several of their motions. But those motions were about whether or not a trial could really happen. The threshold for actually prevailing in the contest appears to be much higher:

The sentence isn't even finished before Bridges brings up the standards for prevailment, rather than contest. Until this point, the judge has ruled strictly on whether enough evidence existed to hold a trial. Obviously without that ruling, the Rossi campaign is dead in the water, so they had every reason in the world to be happy about how things had gone so far. But they didn't even get to enjoy the period of the sentence, before the judge shifted rhetorical gears.

Out come sections 68.100 and 68.110, both of which deal specifically with illegal votes. Section 100 specifies that all illegal votes must be made into discovery, names of voters attached, three days before trial. But it's 110 that seems to be the entire case in a single, ridiculously tortured sentence: the election can't be set aside unless some number of votes for a candidate exist that can be shown aren't legitimately for that person, to the extent that the person is no longer the winner. (My sentence is a serious shortcut, and even that's incomprehensible). It now appears clear that Bridges will hold a pre-trial hearing on predominantly this section, and whether the Rossi team has to identify votes for Gregoire, actually and in numbers to overturn the count.

Bridges also talks about the Hill v Howell standard. Hill v Howell is a precedent case in Washington from 1912. In a nutshell, H v H says any ballot not identified as illegal must stand as legal.

That puts the onus on Rossi to come up with the legal voters AND who they voted for.

That's gives the GOP a very tough uphill climb.

Posted by Carla at 04:35 PM |

Dr Assisted Suicide goes to the USSC

Oregon's Doctor Assisted Suicide Law has reached it's last (and highest) hurdle.

The US Supreme Court agreed to review a lower court ruling by the 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco delivered last May. That ruling said that the government may not sanction doctors for writing prescriptions of lethal doses under the Doctor Assisted Suicide law.

Oregon first passed the law in 1994 and reaffirmed it a few years later. The law allows doctors to write lethal prescriptions of medication for patients with terminal illness who wish to end their life early.

Personally, I think it's an excellent law. It allows for individuals to have a choice at the end of their time about how they want to die. I believe the most important aspect of the law is the peace of mind it gives many terminally ill patients who have concern about the pain they face. According to the state's annual report on Doctor Assisted Suicide many patients who ask for the prescription never use it. It gives them a feeling of control in a situation that often seems out of control.

It's the ultimate prochoice law.

The Bush Administration has fought this law tooth and nail, mostly under the Ashcroft regime. It's twistedly hypocritical for an organization that sent troops to Iraq and such a cavalier manner to be fighting a law used by less than 50 people a year.

Posted by Carla at 07:53 AM |

February 21, 2005

Focusing on the myopia of variances and felons

It occurs to me as I wade through the various articles and posts on the 2004 election that there is a recurrent theme: Republicans claim "fraud" when they lose. Further, these claims mask legitimate election problems that need to be addressed.

I've blogged extensively about this issue when it comes to Washington State. But it's readily apparent that it happens throughout the nation.

Take Wisconsin for example, where Republican shrieks of fraud bellow aimlessly throughout the landscape. Not so consequently, Republicans lost in Wisconsin. And to what do they base these cries of fraud? Voter/ballot variances and absentee voters not getting their ballots. Yet when it's time to pony up the proof, evidence is startlingly tough to come by. Ring familiar?

And then there's Ohio, where evidence of of genuine malfeasance on the part of election officials is being drowned out by Republicans.

I'm sure a lot of Republicans really do believe that Democrats go out of their way to find as many felons as possible to vote. They also likely believe that Democrats are stacking the ballot boxes with deceased voters or stuffing ballots boxes like the old days in Chicago. Their paranoia is keeping officials and the electorate alike from seeing and addressing fundamental problems in our elections.

For example, in the November 2004 election we have documented evidence that individuals waited in line for hours to vote. There's also places all over the country where people are using voting machines that have no paper trail and no way to validate for the voter that their vote is properly tabulated. We also have attempts in some quarters to purge voters from voter roles who are legally within their right to vote.

Republicans in Washington State have focused on King County in their attempts to get Dino Rossi the Governor's job through the courts. Yet King County had a verifiable 99.8% accuracy rate despite having one of the largest numbers of polling places/precincts in the country. Why the focus? It's a Democrat leaning county...and Republicans lost.

The focus on voter/ballot variances has nothing to do with accurate vote counts. In King County especially, it's a red herring.

Convicted felons voting when they're not legally allowed is certainly an issue. But it's miniscule compared to the massive numbers of people disenfranchised by having to stand in long lines or not having their vote properly counted/checked by voting machines.

It seems highly irresponsible to the electorate for Republicans to focus on issues that will only serve to get their side into office while disenfranchising scores of voters.

Posted by Carla at 10:41 AM |

February 20, 2005

Joementum: or why Democrats keep losing national races

Josh Marshall illustrates why the DLC/Lieberman approach to policy and politics makes it so insanely difficult for Democrats to win national races:

While Lieberman has concerns about the idea, he is continuing to study it while hoping for more details on Social Security from the president, a Lieberman aide said today. "He's still in a listening and learning stage and is keeping an open mind, but he does have concerns about private accounts as carve-outs that would potentially undermine the guaranteed minimum benefit and worsen our fiscal health and debt load," a Lieberman aide said today.

Take a stand for crying out loud, Joe.

It's this sort of mealy mouthed, wishy washy approach to dealing with issues that have served, in part, to erode away the Democrats.

I have long advocated on this blog for Democrats, liberals and progressives to articulate their beliefs and then stand up for them. This lack of standing up for the core belief set is typical of Lieberman...who seems to constantly stick his finger in the breeze to test the trade winds.

Having a "concern" about the idea is meaningless. You either like the idea or you don't. Joe isn't stupid and he hasn't surrounded himself with stupid people (we hope). Private accounts aren't a mystery that needs to be solved with Scooby-Doo and those meddling kids. The basics involved in such a plan are out there to be read and digested. Take a stand.

Posted by Carla at 01:53 PM |

February 19, 2005

"It's like they're speaking different languages....."

The quote in the subject heading was said to me by two gentlemen sitting next to me at the Tom McCall Forum presented by Pacific University.

The Forum this year was a debate between newly minted Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean and former assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle. The debate topic of the evening was, "American Foreign Policy Post 9/11".

Perle gave his opening statement first...talking about his experience as a staffer for Scoop Jackson (Kev has noted the neocon connection to Jackson before). Perle went on to say that previous to 9/11, the United States had conducted a series of inadequate responses to terrorism conducted against us. He sees terrorism as deeply ideological, like Communism and Fascism. Perle used the example of Afghanistan being a pre 9/11 state sponsor of terrorism: Pre 9/11 the US gave Afghanistan more humanitarian aid than any other nation, yet the Afghan government harbored terrorists and saw no punishment for doing so.

Perle believes that 9/11 is the example of why preemptive action is necessary. He admitted that he doesn't understand the depth of size of the reaction against the preemption doctrine. It only makes sense, according to Perle, to knock out missile factories for those countries who might lob those missiles at us. Acting before it's too late is "prudence". And even though Iraq had no WMD...what would have happened if they actually did? (Kevin mentioned the unruly protester in his write-up so I'll skip it).

Dean gave his opening remarks next. Dean believes Democrats have a stronger and more thoughtful policy than do Republicans. But he decided to first cite places where he believed the GOP and Dems had common ground: we all want Iraq to succeed and for Iraqis to have a better life.

Dean then wondered aloud why Bush chose to address Iraq first, rather than North Korea or Iran, which have posed a much greater threat to the US and our interests. He also wondered why the US was dumping money so heavily into nuclear missile defense...a program that clearly doesn't work (Dean noted the most recent test failure of last week).

Dean went on to say that he believes the Republicans are failing to take a long term view of defense in three ways:

1. It's weak defense policy to run up the national debt and have the debt held by foreign governments.

2. It's weak defense policy to continue to support policies that give the US energy resources that don't come from stable sources.

3. It's weak defense policy to continually cut the benefits of US veterans.

Dean emphasized that a wider debate must happen and that we must look at the long term issues. Those long term issues involve the doctrine of preemption and how it's eroded the moral authority of the United States. A strong military isn't enough to generate a strong US defense. We must have a successful and integrated world where capitalism and democracy work for everyone. Focusing only on a strong military misses the point of yielding long term opportunities for democracy.

The two gentlemen then answered some panel questions. Dean's main idea throughout the questioning was the fundamental weaknesses of Republican foreign policy as it's currently being conducted. The GOP focus only on the military at the expense of moral authority and goodwill is undercutting the nation's ability to have a strong defense. Perle consistently maintained that the only way to conduct a proper defense against terrorism was to dump money heavily into defense and build it up in such a way that it can overpower anything and everything...whenever it wants and however it wants.

The world views held by these to men are completely different. Perle really does believe that all we have to do is have a military that can completely overpower any foe and we will intimidate all enemies into submission. Those that we don't intimidate...we bomb into submission or wipe them out.

Dean really does believe that we need a strong military to back us up when necessary. But he also believes that we can't beat terrorism unless we show ourselves to be the better alternative. That cant' be done without moral authority.

You can view the debate tonight on CSpan's American Perspectives.

Posted by Carla at 09:32 AM |

February 18, 2005

Shooting red herrings in a barrel

The Washington State Republicans have had a really, really bad day.

First they had to contend with this story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer praising King County (the GOP whipping boy) for their "very accurate" election results.

Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters Conny McCormack praised King County for having a 99.8% accuracy rate. McCormack also noted that the voter/ballot variance issue (that we've discussed here at length) is little more than a red herring. She further noted that such variances are bookeeping issues and have nothing to do with the ballot counting:

"It has nothing to do with the ballot-counting. It's a separate process," she said this week. A nationally recognized authority on election administration and reform, McCormack made the comments in an interview given at the urging of King County election officials.

The criticism, she said, is "maligning the accuracy of the count based on something that has nothing to do with the accuracy of the count."

And to top it off, the Republican Secretary of State agreed with McCormack's contentions:

Secretary of State Sam Reed, a Republican, and Bob Bruce, King County's former elections director, likewise said yesterday that the discrepancy for which King County is being criticized is unrelated to election accuracy.

More bumpy roads are ahead for the Republicans and Dino Rossi in their bid to overturn the election as well. Chelan Superior Court Judge John Bridges refused set a court date for April. Thus the GOP's attempt to have an abridged conclusion to their court filing was dashed.

Bridges also refused a Democratic attempt to gain clarification on his previous rulings (PDF file) regarding the tabulation of "illegal" votes.

Rossi's spokesperson Mary Lane has worked overtime to spin today's events into a win for Rossi. A win? I guess if the threshold for "win" is losing the main piece of your court argument for today and having your PR spin completely eviscerated by an expert is a win.....

Posted by Carla at 04:35 PM |

The best laid plans....

...of mommies don't always work out.

I had planned to blog this morning on the Dean/Perle debate held in downtown Portland last night.

I had planned to live blog the WA Governor court stuff from Chelan County this morning.

I had planned to do lots of other blogging today, too.

And then my daughter woke up with a 103.7 fever...and that's that.

Update: It's 3:09 in the afternoon. After a day of Tylenol, cough medicine, chicken soup and cool washcloths on the forehead, we've returned from the pediatrician with a diagnosis of Influenza B. So now not only does my daughter get to take medicine...EVERYONE gets to take it so we don't all get sick. Kev...you might wanna take your girl in to see the doctor. Ugh.

Posted by Carla at 03:11 PM |

Goin' off the rails on the Kool Aid Express

Conversation with a DittoHead

We've got a subcontractor working out of our facility where I work. Apparently he's a former employee from a number of years ago. Seems like a nice guy. I've helped him out with some of his equipment needs and we've gotten into the habit of greeting each other every morning when he comes in.

I end up walking past his work area multiple times each day. And sometimes I'll stop and chat with him for a while. So, I know that he's a DittoHead because he never misses the Rush Limbaugh show on his radio. In fact, I've never heard his radio tuned to anything other than "Conservative" talk shows. He's also got a couple of prominently place Bush 2004 stickers on his pickup.

This morning I'm strolling by and knowing that he's into politics I mention that he missed a great debate last night. He doesn't seem to have known about it so I tell him that it was a debate between Howard Dean and Richard Perle.

The first thing he says is to ask me who Richard Perle is. I tell him, amazed that he could be a political junky and not know who Richard Perle is. Then he says something about Dean being a nutcase.

I briefly describe what last night's debate covered and we end up talking about Iraq. I pointed out to him that Richard Perle criticized Bush's decision to occupy Iraq after Saddam had been toppled from power. He doesn't like that and launches into a forced analogy of what would have happened if in D-Day we had stormed Normandy Beach, killed some Nazis and then withdrawn.

One thing leads to another and he asserts that we know that Saddam and Al Queda were working together and that while Saddam didn't play a direct role in 9/11 that the relationship was still there and that this justified our invading Iraq. As supporting evidence he cites the $25k payments that Saddam was making to the families of Palestinians who participated in suicide bombings against Israel. I point out that Al Queda had nothing to do with that arrangement and that it had more to do with Hamas than Al Queda. Further, Syria and Iran are the powerbases for Hamas, not Iraq.

Then he wants to talk about WMD. He says that John Kerry said that Saddam possessed WMD, as if this was relevant to whether Saddam actually possessed any. I let it slide and point out that the subsequent searches of Iraq while Bremer was in control failed to find a shred of evidence that Saddam possessed what the Bush administration had claimed he possessed. Then I pointed to Iran's and Libya's nuclear programs and how those trace back to Pakistan, not Iraq. I asked him how did it make any sense to go after Saddam rather than deal with Pakistan. Then he absolutely floors me...

He says that Pakistan got it's nuclear technology from Clinton and Gore. Stunned, I just look at him incredulously. He repeats that Clinton and Gore gave Pakistan the technology to make nukes and that therefore what Iran and Libya received from Pakistan is Clinton and Gore's fault.

I just walked away. What do you say to someone who thinks they know things that simply aren't factual? I could have pointed out that President Reagan believed that Pakistan might possess functional nukes in 1988. Or that the Thatcher government if Britian believed that Pakistan had functional nukes in 1987. Or even that Pakistan's leading nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan stated in a published interview that `what the CIA has been saying about our possessing the bomb is correct.' That also in 1987. Clinton and Gore didn't take office until early 1993.

Bush voters took great offense at suggestions that they are stupid based on last year's PIPA survey of Bush and Kerry supporters perceptions of what the respective candidates actually advocate. Okay... they're not stupid. They're ignorant. Or at least most of them are.

Clinton and Gore gave Pakistan the technology to build nukes???

I'm supposed to respect that kind of tinfoil hat lunacy???

Posted by Kevin at 01:32 PM |

Dean vs. Perle

Carla and I went to see new DNC Chair Howard Dean and Bush's former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle debate last night in Portland. The debate was part of the annual Tom McCall Forum which Pacific University puts on.

Carla will put up a more detailed post when she able to. For now I just wanted to post my somewhat less organized thoughts and observations on the debate.

Reportedly C-SPAN carried the debate, or so we were told when it opened up. But, I can't find anything on C-SPAN's site about it. Perhaps they're planning on showing it today or over the weekend.

WREG in Memphis has this AP piece on the debate, for those who want to see a MSM report on it.

Howard Dean was very warmly received by the audience, who payed to see the event, BTW. Richard Perle somewhat less so. I would estimate that something over 60% of the audience were solidly supportive of Dean and somewhere around 5% were similarly supportive of Perle, with the remainder less boisterous and less obviously partisan. Clearly this was a Dean-friendly crowd!

As noted in the WREG-carried AP piece, a protester disrupted Perle's opening remarks. Carla and I were on the opposite side of "the Schnitz" concert hall, which is best known as home turf for the Portland Symphony, and so our vantage point wasn't the best. The guy threw one shoe at Perle, while yelling something unintelligable to me, which missed badly... sailing well over Perle's head. He then threw his other shoe which likewise missed badly, failing to even clear the stage. He bent down to pick it up and was gang tackled by several security. Perle reacted calmly by just standing there and looking at the guy.

While I think the protester's opposition to Perle was probably shared by the large majority of the crowd, he angered most of us with his infantile tantrum which I can't imagine could possibly have been less constructive... which probably occurred to him as he tried to sleep on the concrete slab that passes for a bed in his jail cell last night. I certainly didn't lose any sleep feeling sorry for him! He certainly slept in a bed of his own making.

This morning I related the incident to my boss, who reacted much the same way I did. That then spun off into a discussion of Bush as a President and the Iraq War. My boss is a registered Republican. He said that he likes Bush personally. But, he believes firmly that the Iraq War was about Bush wanting to settle the score with Saddam for having attempted to assasinate his father, George H. W. Bush and nothing more. He utterly rejects the attempts by Bush partisans to associate anything about Iraq with what Al Queda did on 9/11 or with the wider War on Terrorism.

I was struck by how Dean clearly didn't talk like the wimpy pacifist that many NeoCons try to paint him as. One example would be Dean bringing up Iran and North Korea as having been and continuing to pose a greater security threat to the United States than Iraq. Dean focused squarely on terrorism, WMD and the potential for WMD technology spreading. As far as I could tell, Perle didn't dispute any of it.

In general Howard Dean articulated two primary areas where he disagrees with the Bush administration. One is, to borrow the old "the carrot and the stick" analogy, that the Bush administration has all but thrown the carrot away. The other criticism he offered was the lack of foresight. More to the point, the lack of apparent willingness to consider the longer-term consequences of the Bush administration's short-term foreign policy dictates such as the preemptive doctrine.

Anyway... I'm at work and have a lot to get done today. So, I'm going to leave it at this.

Check back later and Carla will have a more comprehensive review of the debate. She took copious notes while I just sat and watched.

Posted by Kevin at 11:32 AM |

February 17, 2005

Lynne Cheney: It's only sexual when Buster does it.

In an interview with NPR Fresh Aire host Terry Gross on February 9, author/VP spouse Lynne Cheney gave an unchallenged "both ends against the middle" analysis of lesbianism/female intimacy.

During the interview, Cheney is asked by Gross about the new Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings. Specifically, Gross queried Cheney about Spellings' quest to remove the Department of Education seal and all references of DOE funding from the animated children's show, "Postcards from Buster". Spellings' objection to Buster stems from an episode where on a trip to Vermont, Buster meets some children with lesbian parents.

Cheney responds that she believes parents want control over what their children see and hear, especially in terms of things having to do with sexuality. (The Buster episode in question contains no references to sex or sexuality in any way. The children have two women as parents. There is no reference to their sexuality).

Later in the interview, Gross asks Cheney about her book Sisters,which contains the following passages:

"'To my Helena, my dearest lover...Thine always, A.T.' Helen and Amy Travers? No, it couldn't be, simply couldn't."

"Helen, my joy and my beloved...Let us go away together, away from the anger and the imperatives of men...There will be only the two of us...In the evenings I shall read to you while you work your cross-stitch in the firelight. And then we shall go to bed, our bed, my dearest girl..."

"Society as a whole might conclude that women were sexless creatures, but she knew otherwise. She also knew that claiming a relationship was not erotic, thinking it could not be would not keep it from being so. There could be no tearing off of one's clothes and lustily hopping into bed, not if one would preserve the love-religion. But the loving words and the warm embrace were permitted, and the kiss before sleep, the arousal gentle enough so that its nature would not have to be acknowledged."

"The women who embraced in the wagon were Adam and Eve...-- no, Eve and Eve, loving one another as they would not be able to once they ate of the fruit and knew themselves as they truly were. She felt curiously moved...she saw that the women in the cart had a passionate, loving intimacy forever closed to her."

Cheney tells Gross that these passages aren't about lesbianism and that those who believe so are guilty of "presentism": assigning the notions of today to pioneer women as some, Cheney says, are trying to now do with Lincoln.

Cheney further goes on to claim that a loving relationship between two women isn't necessarily sexual. Indeed. But here's the problem: she just told Gross a few minutes earlier that two women in the Buster episode are sexual, even though there are absolutely no sexual references.

Of course Gross doesn't challenge Cheney on this very duplicitous labeling...which is probably why Cheney agreed to the interview in the first place.

Posted by Carla at 09:42 AM |

February 16, 2005

From the dishonest fingers of James Taranto

The right wing has worked very hard to cast the label "liberal" into a light so negative and digusting that no ethical human being would wish to be attached to it.

In yesterday's Wall Street Journal editorial page, James Taranto practices this exercise in completely dishonest labeling:

Things That Don't Appall Liberals--I
Did you know liberals aren't appalled by child molestation? Before you send us angry letters about this, let us explain: We're not saying it, Reuters is. From a dispatch about the Michael Jackson trial:

Legal experts say prosecutors will look for jurors who are older, conservative, less taken with celebrity, willing to accept authority and appalled by child molestation.

Jackson's attorneys may look for more liberal jurors who have advanced degrees and are critical thinkers who question authority.

Is it possible that Reuters has a heretofore undetected conservative bias? After all, not only does this dispatch make liberals look like degenerates; it also omits the scare quotes around the emotive phrase child molestation.

So for Taranto: People who question authority + willing to listen to both sides=people unappalled by child abuse/liberals. But of course he's not the one actually saying it...Reuters is...so don't send your complaints to James. Even though he's the dishonest boob floating the charges.

And Tarantino isn't finished!

Things That Don't Appall Liberals--II
Folks who complain about American "torture" of terrorists don't seem to have much to say about the conduct of U.N. "peacekeepers" in Africa. The Associated Press reports:

The Moroccan mission to the United Nations has announced it arrested six U.N. peacekeeping soldiers in Congo accused of sexually abusing local girls and discharged the contingent's commander. . . .

There have been more than 150 allegations of sexual exploitation of girls as young as 13 by U.N. peacekeepers in Congo.

Annan last Wednesday urged the Security Council to add at least 100 military police to the peacekeeping mission in Congo to help prevent sex abuse by the U.N. forces.

Great, the U.N. is going to send troops to prevent U.N. troops from abusing women. But hey, at least it's all multilateral, right?

In Tarantino's mind, it's perfectly okay for US soldiers to abuse and torture prisoners, because some UN peacekeepers sexually exploited young girls in the Congo.

This is the kind of dishonest rhetoric that causes the intellectually honest to shake their heads in wonder. How is it possible that this guy works for one of the premier newspapers of the MAINSTREAM MEDIA? The Wall Street Journal allows this sort of stench to eminate from their paper only to be swallowed up as the oxycontin of the conservative mindset.

But don't you dare call them stupid.

Posted by Carla at 02:08 PM |

Correction: WA Governor Analysis

A reporting error in Friday's co-published article on county "discrepancies" in the contested Washington election, requires several things: a correction, a retraction, an apology, a restatement of the facts and a firming of the premise laid out in the original article.

The first county that provided information to TJ at AlsoAlso on the subject of ballot discrepancies was Spokane, whose Paul Brandt responded immediately and specifically. Noticing that the discrepancy was the more unusual "voters without ballots," TJ called back and confirmed the numbers which ended up in our original article. We then moved on to collect similar information from other counties across the state.

During yesterday's presentation by Dean Logan in front of King County Council, a by-county comparison of discrepancies listed Spokane with what appeared to be a total of 77. In checking the information, it was discovered that what was initially reported as a 976-ballot shortage was an unadjusted number. The county recorded 1,052 absentee ballots mailed after the deadline, but awarded "voter credit" to those voters so as to maintain them as active registrants. Stripping these "courtesy credits" is necessary to attempt an apples to apples comparison of discrepancy. King County has not used the credit system since 2002. To repeat, the initially reported discrepancy for Spokane was accurate, but we failed to fully refine our question to them, so as to receive the appropriate information.

Spokane's adjusted variance ratio is .04%, much lower than the originally reported .47%. They are in fact one of the counties more able to fully reconcile their tables, particularly given their population size relative to the others. AlsoAlso and Preemptive Karma regret the error, and retract the conclusion that another county had a higher rate of comparable discrepancy than King. So far in our analysis, none has. Allegations of anyone ignoring data for partisan reasons have also been redacted from the original text.

Interestingly, when told over the phone of King's report about Spokane, the Spokane representative clucked a bit and said something to the effect of, "See,that's why we don't recommend trying to compare these things..." Logan's presentation to Council stressed the non-regulatory, unusual circumstance of a "reconciliation" conducted 1/3 on poll night, the rest several weeks later. We have discovered in this exercise the folly of an overly serious look at the ballot/voter variances. To do so is to admit that they are legally or administratively relevant. Comments to the originally posted article have in fact stressed this theme. We clearly have some smart folks here.

Another comment that came up was the request to run a linear regression on the relationship we discussed: the hypothetical that the number of total ballots has a material effect on ballot variance. In light of the changed information, King's total of both ballots and discrepancies were both so far ahead of the rest of the pack, that we knew it would distort our attempts to see an honest correlation, making the relationship appear much stronger than perhaps it is. So we re-ran the Pearson and two non-parametric correlations, and then added a simple linear regression, but without King County's numbers, to be more confident of the results. The adjusted r-squared value remained a very strong .909, meaning roughly speaking that the number of ballots is responsible for about 90% of the variance in ballot/voter discrepancy. The relationship was significant to less than 1 in 1,000, as the possibility the results were random. So despite the change in discrepancy for Spokane, our original conclusions still appear valid, strengthened now by extra research.

It's certainly unpleasant--to be lauded in print by one such as Orcinus as having followed journalist-worthy practices--and not 48 hours later have to print a retraction. We're not journalists, we're not paid, and we're not subject experts. We merely engage ourselves in a subject in order to present an educated review. But we hope if we are honest and forthright with our missteps, you will stick with us as we continue. Kevin and Zap will surely have some useful and illustrative Scripture here; please leave your own verses or other comment below.

--TJ and Carla

Update: A transcription error has led us to one other minor correction. In our table, Yakima County was credited with 15 more voters than ballots. In reality, that number is 15 more ballots than voters. While the mathematical variances remain unchanged, we regret the error.

Update II:Corrections have been updated for the table linked here.

Posted by Carla at 10:30 AM |

Bubba the Straw Man

Dead Armadillos has an interesting post on a recent WSJ piece rhetorically asking if Democratic Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen is The Next Bubba? The WSJ commentary is by Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee and publisher of one of the Big Boys in the Conservative side of the blogosphere, Instapundit.

I knew next to nothing about Bredesen prior to reading the WSJ piece. He sounds like a definite rising star in the Democratic Party, and certainly sounds like he's got the chops to pull off a Presidential bid.

What stuck in my craw was this paragraph from Reynolds' WSJ piece:

One of the things that's struck me most is how well Gov. Bredesen does on conservative talk radio. He answers questions rather than ducking them or retreating into slogans and sound bites, and as a result the hosts (and listeners) respect him even when they disagree. That's an important skill: If you can imagine a Democratic presidential nominee who will hold his own on Rush Limbaugh or Hugh Hewitt's shows, you're imagining a Democrat who could win the general election. (emphasis supplied)

Why?

Why do the Democrats have to field a candidate who "answers questions rather than ducking them or retreating into slogans and sound bites"? Haven't Republicans won two consecutive Presidential elections with a guy who retreats into trite slogans and soundbites rather than answer questions honestly?

Undoubtedly Reynolds and his fans see his commentary as some sort of evidence that he's objective because he wrote some nice things about a Democrat. And he did write some nice things about a Democrat. No doubt about it! But, in the process he followed what I've come to recognize as a trademark tactic by Conservatives when he created a Democratic Straw Man with the very attributes of his own party's President.

This is supposed to be an example of "fair and balanced" journalism as opposed to the "Liberal Mainstream Media" boogeyman the Right has been beating on for years?

Does anyone seriously believe that George W. Bush, far and away the most gaffe-prone President in my 40 years, could hold his own in an open, unrehearsed and unscripted interview with Randi Rhodes or Ed Schultz?

Doesn't Occam's Razor dictate that the extraordinary vetting and loyalty-oath signing that was required to even get into a Bush 2004 campaign rally is indicative of a politician whose own handlers worry about what he'll say if surprised or challenged?

Apparently, Glenn Reynolds, the "Instapundit," would have us believe that the American people are incapable of holding a Democratic presidential hopeful to the same standard as a Republican presidential hopeful.

Posted by Kevin at 08:58 AM |

February 15, 2005

Bribery by any other name

A big Republican donor goes to his governor and senator, saying he was told by President Bush's chief fund-raiser he'd be getting a plum ambassadorial appointment but it wasn't delivered. The senator takes his case right to the top of the White House.

Nothing happens for two years.

The donor then helps stage a fund-raiser for Bush. A week later, the donor lands an appointment as the chairman of the federal board overseeing billions of dollars of student loans.

This is the story of Duane Acklie, a Nebraska businessman and a 2000 Bush Ranger ($200,000) and 2004 Bush Super Ranger ($300,000) as revealed by an AP reporter. The story is "detailed in the Nebraska gubernatorial files of new Agriculture Secretary (and former Nebraska Governor) Mike Johanns."

The actual letter in PDF format can be found here.

Of course Democratic Presidents have done the exact same thing with mega-donors. Clinton rewarded at least five 1992 $100,000 donors with diplomatic posts. Consistent with his entire record, Bush far exceeded Clinton's largesse by rewarding at least two dozen of his 2000 "Pioneers" ($100,000) or their spouses with diplomatic posts. Still, it's unquestionable that Democrats are as guilty of this as Republicans are, even if on a demonstrably lesser scale. Stealing a candy bar versus robbing a bank. Both are theft. Both are unethical and immoral. Dems don't deserve a pass for doing it to a lesser scale, IMHO.

The pisspoor ethics of it all aside... what struck me about this story was how eloquently it underscores how the wealthy have significantly greater access to the Halls of Power in this nation.

( cross-posted at Indie Castle )

Posted by Kevin at 01:38 PM |

Duh!

Former Deputy Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, David Kuo, has criticized President Bush's dedication to his own faith-based initiatives.

David Kuo... said in published remarks that the White House reaped political benefits from the president's promise to help religious organizations win taxpayer funding to care for "the least, the last and the lost" in the United States. But he wrote: "There was minimal senior White House commitment to the faith-based agenda."

Duh! How can Evangelicals be so gullible? Can't they see that Bush has been playing them for political fools?

Kuo isn't the first White House official to criticize Bush on this issue. Former director of the same office, John J. DiIulio Jr, was the first Bush advisor to quit.

In an interview with Esquire magazine a year later, DiIulio said the Bush White House was obsessed with the politics of the faith-based initiative but dismissive of the policy itself, and he slammed White House advisers as "Mayberry Machiavellis." (emphasis supplied)

Duh!

Get a clue, Evangelicals. President Bush doesn't give a flying rodent's backside about your pet projects. You're nothing more than convenient political pawns who are easily manipulated by sweet little lies because you are so freakin' gullible it's not funny.

Posted by Kevin at 10:23 AM |

King County Council meeting: It takes a Horse's Ass

Yesterday's King County Council Meeting in Seattle was attended by Dave Goldstein of Horse's Ass blog.KC was meeting about issues surrounding the ever circus-like Washington Goobernatorial Election.

Dave has two pithy and informative pieces up this AM on this topic. A lot of it is material we've already hashed out here at PK...but Dave puts them into perspective nicely. And in his usual inimitable style, manages a smackdown of a few folks who are in need.

Posted by Carla at 07:28 AM |

February 14, 2005

The rise of fundamentalist Iraq?

Brother Kenya links to his fav Iraqi blogger, Riverbend of Baghdad Burning, who offers a "woman on the street" perspective of the political situation in Iraq.

Riverbend points out the growing signs of conservative Islamic treatment of woman in Iraq and warns that the future of woman's rights in Iraq looks bleak.

It's interesting that she uses her secular Shia cousin to illustrate a point in the post. Saddam was famous for having engendered a decidedly secularist society. That was the root of why Osama bin Laden wanted to see Saddam ousted from power. How could he spread his radical Wahhabist brand of Islam to Iraq when Saddam enforced secularism with an iron-fist?

Looks like Bush did Osama and like-minded Islamic Conservatives a huge favor with respect to Iraq.

Time will tell how and where the new crop of Iraqi leaders take the country if and when they regain real sovereignty. The handwriting seems to be on the proverbial wall, with respect to the treatment of women, though.

Posted by Kevin at 01:06 PM |

Compassionate Conservatism ala Keyes

Apparently perenial Republican Presidential candidate Alan Keyes has kicked it lesbian daughter out of the family home and cut off her college tuition. This according to a Marc Fisher piece in yesterday's Washington Post.

What I find interesting in all of this is how the conservative side of the blogosphere is reacting.

Joe Gandelman, a self-identified moderate, guest blogging over at Dean's World put up a post on the story. A quick perusal of the comments reveal a nearly uniform condemnation of Keyes.

Doc Rampage backtracks the Gandelman post and defends Keyes while jumping all over Dean et al for "slandering" Keyes.

Compassionate Conservatism indeed.

Posted by Kevin at 12:52 PM |

February 13, 2005

Just when I am convinced Gordon Smith is nothing more than a hack....

...he tries to redeem himself:

Gordon Smith sometimes shows up in expected places.

Right now, for example, on the subject of Social Security, he appears on a list called the "Conscience Caucus," kept on a liberal Web site called Talking Points Memo. It's a tallying of "those Republicans who either oppose the president's plan or appear open to doing so," and it counts 19 House members and five senators -- with Smith the only senator west of Ohio.

Is the Conscience Caucus the accurate address for him?

"That's an appropriate conclusion," says Smith. "I have not signed up to anyone's plan.

"I'm open to the debate. I'm keeping my counsel."

It remains to be seen if Smith will eventually cave to the certain pressures to come from the White House.

In the last eight years, Smith has consistently pissed me off with his votes. Rarely do I feel he works in the best interest of Oregonians. I declare right here and now that if he votes for the Democratic plan and against privatization, I will personally write a public thank you to Smith.

Not that he probably cares what I think.....

Posted by Carla at 09:54 PM |

Riding on the Kool Aid Express

Richard of Mossback Culture is one of many who could be considered a poster child for why it's so important to debunk the righwing echo chamber of Washington State:

Sometimes it takes a blogger to do the math. Sims claimed his accuracy would have made a bank happy, but Sharkansky pointed out that it amounts to an error of $2000 for every million counted, not so good in fact.

Isn’t it odd that we can bring democracy to Iraq but not to Seattle? In Iraq, we only had to defeat Baathists and terrorists, but in Seattle we have a Democratic Party machine to cope with.

Well golly gee Richard...Iraq's election isn't exactly reconciling perfectly. Further, Richard should consider consulting with auditors.

Elections don't usually reconcile completely, especially since pretty much every election has waste and voter/poll worker errors. A 99.8% rate, such as Sims discusses, is well within an acceptable accuracy rate for an election. Ask any auditor.

But even with all of the facts at hand, Richard apparently doesn't care. Note the comments from him on this post at Notes in Samsarra. Numbers and statistics are "red herrings" and the laws in Washington State don't matter. Only the rhetoric eminating from Sound Politics and the GOP Republicans can be trusted.

Gulp. Gulp. Gulp.

Posted by Carla at 12:33 PM |

Witchunting Ward Churchill

The right leaning blogosphere has of late been in a collective viscerous screech over University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill.

The thrust of the essay that has placed Churchill in the righty hangman's noose is the notion that America's aggressive self interest in pursuing it's agenda in the Middle East has been a major root cause of terrorism. Churchill goes on to say that continued and ramped up aggression will sow seeds of more terrorism, rather than the opposite.

The most controversial of Churchill's remarks stem from his points on 9/11. Churchill contends that those who were killed on 9/11 aren't innocent victims. They're part of a larger payback of American aggression.

Churchill has since released this statement defending his views.

Personally, I find Churchill's thesis on 9/11 disgusting and without merit. There is no excuse for what happened on 9/11 and in no way should anyone attempt to make them. I found his work sloppy and iniquitous. Churchill deserves to be criticized and verbally beaten back on these views.

However, as Dave Neiwert points out, there are plenty of noxious rightwing "academics" who hold views just as heinous:

James Everett Kibler, a University of Georgia English professor. A founder of the secessionist and white-supremacist League of the South, Kibler is mostly noted for his outspoken admiration for defenders of slavery and white upper-class rule.

Thomas DiLorenzo, an economics professor at Loyola College in Baltimore, who promotes a historical view of Abraham Lincoln as a wicked man "secretly intent on destroying states' rights and building a massive federal government."

Clyde Wilson, a University of South Carolina history professor. Wilson is another League of the South founder, and remains an unapologetic neo-Confederate. He says the only thing wrong with The Birth of a Nation is that it was too sympathetic to Lincoln.

Dave provides a list of eight, in total.

It's very easy for the right to spotlight a lefty with extreme views. The part that chaps me about this Churchill situation is the hypocrisy. Churchill is receiving threats on his life. There are calls for his resignation. Yet these rightwing extremists who haunt the halls of some of our nation's most venerable institutions of higher learning don't merit a blip on the radar screen. In fact, I'd venture a guess that if they were spotlighted, the rightwing blogosphere would be clamoring to defend them.

Posted by Carla at 10:21 AM |

A sign of Spring

Yeah, baby.

Sox Equipment heads to Spring Training.

Countdown to pitchers and catchers reporting.

Posted by Carla at 01:45 AM |

February 12, 2005

Voice of a Veteran

Just over a year ago, Kevin attended a Dean Meetup in this area. At the Meetup, he listened to a speaker who has since moved us both very deeply with his passion and commitment to the causes of veterans and to a better America.

That man is Colonel John Zall, USAF--retired. Colonel Zall served for 27 years in the Air Force. Parts of the speech are no longer timely...we're all familiar with what happened to the Dean Campaign and with the Presidential election. But much of the speech still rings true.

In honor of Howard Dean and Colonel Zall...the speech:

Until just five months ago, I wasn't going to consider any Democrat for President in 2004. After all, for almost 40 years, I like many veterans and military people, had usually voted Republican. But not this time!

I no longer believe that the Bush administration has the best interests of our military and our veterans in mind. Before I go further, we may have some veterans out in the audience and maybe even some folks on active duty or in the guard and reserves. Those on active duty are not as free to express themselves politically as the rest of us, so we don't want to get them in trouble for being here, but let's give them a big hand anyway.

Now let's see if we have any veterans out in the audience? Please stand. I'd be honored to talk with any of you afterwards. And some of you have family and friends now in the Middle East. We as veterans support you, as well as them. My son is on his way back there for a second time as well.

Veterans, active duty troops, Reserves and National Guard and their families: there are millions of them out there, and many are now beginning to understand that there is a better alternative for 2004 than George Bush----Gov Howard Dean!

Most people don't realize the importance of this bloc of voters or that the military absentee ballots from overseas, along with veterans and their families. Votes in 2000, may have swung the results in many states, including Florida. In August of last year, I emailed Mr. Bush and several Democrat candidates about the problems I was seeing in the support of our veterans and our military, perhaps naively hoping someone might actually respond - only the Dean campaign did.

So I said to myself, if the Dean campaign is the only one interested, so be it. That's how Veterans for Dean the Blog got started.

You have seen the bumper stickers, "Support our Troops", and I know most all of you do, regardless of this administration's policies and actions. But I say to you this: Patriotism doesn't just belong to Mr. Bush and the Republicans.

Please also understand that "troops" includes our veterans, many of whom are being forgotten in a variety of ways by this administration.

Why should military veterans, or anyone associated with the military, or any of you, consider any option other than Mr. Bush for the coming 2004 election?

Here are just a few things that caused me, as a Veteran to change my mind about Mr. Bush, but I think they affect most of you, or your family or your friends as well, so I would ask your careful consideration of them.

In less than a year, George Bush has radically changed our national strategy, and because everything Mr. Bush does is cloaked in the 9/11 terrorist attack, no one who supports him seems to object. That new national strategy, known as the Bush Doctrine, provides for regime change in other countries.

Now some of you will rightly point out that Iraq isn't the first time in our history that we have gone after another country preemptively or another country's leader in past administrations. Fidel Castro comes to mind - and you should critically look at those actions as well. Mr. Bush is even using the excuse, and his poor understanding of history, to now claim that Bill Clinton started the idea of regime change.

But here's what's different under George Bush: Regime change and pre-emptive invasions of other countries (unilaterally, if necessary) are now a matter of written as well as verbally stated policy of this administration and therefore the policy of the United States of America. Think about that.

The Bush Doctrine contains no statement that preemptive war and regime change will be policies of last resort, used only when all other options have been tried.

I don't know about you veterans out there, but I did not serve in the military to forcefully project Democracy into other countries. I served to defend our country and our allies from threats, foreign & domestic: that's what my oath as an officer said. There's a big difference.

This administration got us into war, based on two primary assumptions: WMDs & Saddam's supposed ties to Al Qaeda and 9/11, neither of which has proven to be true.

Yes we know Saddam was a ruthless sadistic dictator, but they exist in many countries. Only after the problems started in Iraq did George Bush give us the ultimate bait-and-switch (real?) reason for invading Iraq - to get rid of Saddam, the thorn in his father's side.

Nobody was sorry to see Saddam Hussein go down. Nevertheless, a growing number of veterans, and virtually all of you out there, did not agree with how the Bush administration justified its actions in going to war - did you?

As we start 2004, it's worth making a New Year's resolution that we will not forget the more than 500 who have fallen and the many more thousands of wounded, nor the administration's bait-and-switch tactics for getting us into this pre-emptive war, that in fact has not made us safer from the terrorism that threatens us.

In case you missed it over the holidays, as Gov Dean confirmed this fact, and was getting hammered on all the networks for saying so, they all had to break off to announce that the country had elevated its terror alert to "orange." Interesting isn't it, that not one of them commented on this irony afterwards, but instead continued to flood the airwaves with criticisms of Gov Dean.

Now, briefly why else should you care about what this administration is doing to veterans, active duty troops, the Reserves and National Guard? Because this administration is failing in Leadership 101 with regard to veterans, and is putting our best-in-the-world military at risk for the future.

Some examples:

When Mr. Bush committed us to war in Iraq: Gen Shinseki, his Army Chief of Staff told Mr. Bush that the intended use of the military was badly flawed. Gen Shinseki was fired.

We're committed around the world in many places like Korea, and a war in Afghanistan that's still going on. But instead, because Mr. Bush had his personal agenda blinders on, to take care of the Iraq aftermath, we've had to use Reserves and the National Guard for 18-month call-ups, many of them in combat areas longer than active duty troops - with no guarantee that they won't have to be used further. Their job return guarantee by law is just 12 months.

You probably know we have an all-volunteer force these days, but our Reserves and Guard are at risk in many ways for the future, because this administration has put them there.

Their families, businesses, and incomes are being shredded as these men and women faithfully follow their oaths of service. This administration has bitten the hand that helped deliver it's victory and worse yet sidetracked us from focusing our efforts of going after the real terrorists of 9/11 and others who would harm us.

And by the way, this is no scare tactic, many military experts say that if Mr. Bush is re-elected, expect the draft to be reactivated in 2005. Richard Perle a Bush inside advisor, in his new book, An End to Evil, pushes Mr. Bush to end the regimes in Iran and Syria, treat France and Saudi Arabia as enemies, blockade North Korea, withdraw from the United Nations, and abandon what Perle calls the illusion of a Palestinian State.

In other words, continue to use our military to keep us in a permanent state of aggressive warfare. Mr. Bush simply does not have the numbers of people to carry out more of his wars of pre-emption without adding a lot more forces through ready sources like the draft.

Something else: In his determined push to prove himself right about WMDs, Mr. Bush had over 1,400 military intelligence experts chasing WMDs for 6 months after the war supposedly ended, while we continued to sustain casualties.

When it became clear that WMDs weren't going to be found, many of these experts were finally free to help in critical areas where we've sustained most of our casualties like the Sunni Triangle. Not coincidentally, in my opinion, just over a month later, we were able to track Saddam Hussein down.

Furthermore, until last month, military retirees who had been disabled on active duty, could not receive both their military retirement pay and full VA disability compensation. Why? Because George Bush opposed it.

For several years a Democrat, Senator Tim Johnson from South Dakota and his colleagues from both parties in the Senate have worked to fix the concurrent receipt problem, as it is known.

However according to Sen Johnson, every time the Senate made the decision to provide full concurrent receipt benefits the Bush Administration fought it. The provision was only partially approved in the new military appropriations bill. And now Mr. Bush is taking credit with veterans. What a sham!

These are the last examples I'll cite. there are many others. Many VA hospitals are being closed and other veterans health benefits cut back including prescription drug benefits to veterans. The Disabled American Veterans, a group with no political ax to grind other than helping disabled veterans obtain their benefits authorized by law, has been blocked from visiting wounded and disabled GIs at Walter Reed hospital for "security reasons", and the list goes on.

What's the bottom line here? George Bush has broken this country's contract with its Veterans, its Reserves and National Guard, and its active duty forces. He's broken this country's relationships with long time allies. He has flagrantly misused our ability to respond to the real terrorists behind 9/11 by pre-emptively invading Iraq. He thumbed his nose at the international community and yet now expects their cooperation. He's signed into law Patriot Act I and parts of Patriot Act II that threaten your freedoms. And he plans to do more of the same. He's divided this country, in ways not seen since Vietnam. Is this who you want again in 2004?

Contrary to the hogwash put out by the media talking heads, Gov Dean has clearly stated his support for a strong military, strong support to veterans, and a presidency based on hope, not the fear of a John Ashcroft coming through your door.

Here's what Gov Dean has promised to do for you, veterans: "As President, I will ensure that veterans receive the respect and recognition they so greatly deserve for the sacrifices that they have made serving our nation. This is fundamental to the ideal of the American Community, which my campaign seeks to restore."

Mr. Bush and Mr. Rove are said to be salivating at the prospect of facing Howard Dean. Maybe they are so overcome with bloated self-confidence that they have failed to notice that Gov. Dean has confounded the other candidates, party insiders, and the media who continue to attack him, bewildered by the fact that it's having the opposite effect than they intended.

Mr. Bush, on behalf of veterans here in Oregon and all around this country who believe as I do, have a nice trip back to Crawford, Texas, next January-- permanently.

Posted by Carla at 09:04 AM |

February 11, 2005

The Bush deficit and Social Security

Robert B. Reich, Professor of Social and Economic Policy at Brandeis University and secretary of labor under Clinton exposes the dirty little secret which Bush doesn't want you to understand.

Here's a hint: Bush's record-breaking deficits are actually a lot bigger than you think. And the reason they're not as big on paper is because the Social Security surplus is being raided to pay against Bush's deficit. To be fair, Clinton raided the SSI surplus too. But, he used it to balance the budget. Whereas Bush has used it to perform a slight-of-hand trick so that he could claim on the campaign trail that he has a plan to pay down his own deficit.

Boomers, Budget And A So-Called Bust

Posted by Kevin at 10:02 PM |

Fisking Sharkansky (again)

(This post was co-researched by Carla of Preemptive Karma and Torrid Joe of Also-Also blog. You can find it crossposted at Also-Also as well.)

We want to begin this second part in our series by noting that we believe Washington State has room for improvement when it comes to having a well run and error free election. Unfortunately, this can also be said for many other states in the Union, and reflects a wider problem of accountability and attention to detail in our election systems that must be substantially addressed.

To briefly account for the King 1,860:
· 1,217 was the adjusted discrepancy initially reported by King (a figure which seems to no longer exist at the Elections website, but seems consensually accepted as the initial figure).
· Due to an identification of 636 duplicate entries in the voter registration files, the discrepancy was then boosted to 1,853.
· Of the 348 misfed provisional ballots cited by the County, 341 were conclusively identified as either valid or invalid registrations. 252 of those were deemed properly registered, credit for voting thus assigned. The seven unidentified provisionals are added to the discrepancy list, yielding 1,860.

We’re certainly not going to claim that 1,860 is the precise final accounting of the voter discrepancy in King County. Our contacts with Bill Huennekens of King County Elections yielded “essential confirmation” of that number, however. While KC acknowledges that 348 provisionals were accidentally fed through the Accu-Vote system before verification, they also believe that their recognition of those 348 constitutes an accounting of those votes, to the extent that they explain why voter credits for those ballots were not found.However, Huennekens admitted it was fair to include the remaining seven unresolved provisional ballots as part of the total discrepancy, as we have done. The release of King County’s post-mortem report today highlights the “provisional errors,” among others. As they indicate in the report, they faced challenges and did not always meet them. But we’re not convinced that King County’s problems are outsized or endemic.

This is a key point for Rossi. His strategy seems to revolve around the “nobody knows who really won” argument. He said just that in his press conference on Feb. 8th: "I believe we have more than enough evidence to show, really, that we'll never know who won this election." His strategy relies on the abnormality of error to provoke an annulment of the election. We find it extremely difficult to believe that any jurist would set aside an election occurring within a normal rate of error even if the extent of the error seems surprising. Election issues are to be fixed by the legislatures in most cases, after all.

Rossi must therefore prove that this election was absurd, crazy and possibly a suspicious abrogation of both custom and practice. They’ve chosen to zero in on King because it easily contains the largest number of mistakes, discrepancies and messy bureaucracy. Stefan Sharkansky rhetorically hammers this point repeatedly: King can’t be trusted.

Or can it? We wondered whether King was truly singular in its administration of the election. So we set out to compare errors as a ratio of all ballots, for 14 other counties featuring a cross-section of the Washington electorate. Respected Washington journalist David Neiwert was kind enough to suggest a list of 12 for us. We contacted each of the 12 counties for their numbers. We augmented those results with four counties that Sharkansy provided to his readers at Sound Politics (we hope he got them right).

View table here(Excel required)

***[These numbers were obtained directly from county election officials in all cases except Snohomish, Stevens, Jefferson and Pierce, where we provisionally accept and reprint the figures shown by Sharkansky at SP. In some cases the Secretary of State's listing of the manual recount ballot totals were used to extrapolate the number of registered voters. Since all variance counts the same, we chose to assume that the discrepancy was more ballots than voters when not otherwise known.]

Notice Spokane County. Rossi won this county easily. Total voters are fewer than one fourth of King County’s. But they have twice as many errors as King per voter. Moreover, their discrepancy represents more voters than ballots, a condition which Sharkansky claimed lacked plausibility as a type of honest error. However Spokane is apparently a Republican leaning county—is it therefore not worth mentioning? Are their errors not so egregious?

Now notice the pattern within the table: Handling fewer than 150,000 ballots seems to make reconciliation a lot easier. The three counties with perfect accounting don’t even total 75,000 ballots between them. This is one-twelfth the number of ballots King had to count. Problems of scale seem to crop up at around the 200,000 voter mark, as you examine the table.

Next we figured we’d better validate our visual clue that population size could be connected to error rate. We ran a Pearson’s correlation on ballots cast and variance to voters credited. On a scale from 0 to 1, where 1 represents a perfect positive relationship (ie, as total ballots rise, so does discrepancy), the set of variance figures here yields a very strong score of .91. The margin of error—that is, the chance that this correlation is the result of random chance—is less than 1 in 1,000.

There are always caveats. Having one county too far away from the rest of the group can increase the appearance of correlation. To try to correct for that we ran two additional correlative types, both of which showed lesser but very strong relationships. To include all 39 counties would be ideal, but a sample of 16 represents more than a third of Washington’s counties. Finally, the old standby: correlation is not causality.

We believe that the difficulties surrounding King’s effort reflect poor planning and inadequate training. But a natural tendency for error is also reflected when handling large numbers of ballots. Problems are further exacerbated by a record number of registrations, a record number of absentees, a compressed general election cycle, a first-ever manual recount in King, and registration management technology that was rushed into service and brand new to users.

We wonder if Rossi will continue to make “nobody knows who really won” the focus of his contest. Especially given the relative harm of such unattributable error. Discrepancies do not necessarily produce illegal ballots. And now that the counties are all dismissed it’s much more difficult to paint them (King, specifically) as having messed up the election.

The counties can and likely will be called as witnesses and will have to provide records for discovery. But the GOP has lost the technically adversarial relationship with King, something it might like to have kept.

We also believe Rossi is no longer finding Sharkansky and Sound Politics a net positive, except to keep the faithful in a froth. The state GOP already has the list of felons and deceased. They will most certainly bring that to the forefront should they need to show proof of serious irregularity.

If Rossi is truly finding SoundPolitics less useful these days, their habit of serial conclusion-jumping and lackluster fact checking are likely just some of the reasons.

Carla and TJ

Posted by Carla at 02:46 PM |

Yay us

We've been syndicated!

Baby steps. :)

Posted by Carla at 11:59 AM |

Lies and the Lying Liars who tell them

Media Matters and Air America lynchpin Al Franken are taking it to Fox's Brit Hume.

Hume was outed this week by Media Matters David Brock for deliberately distorting statements made by FDR in an attempt to falsely characterize Roosevelt's notions about Social Security:

HUME: In a written statement to Congress in 1935, Roosevelt said that any Social Security plans should include, quote, "Voluntary contributory annuities, by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age," adding that government funding, quote, "ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans."

Brock fact checks Hume:

But Roosevelt was not advocating that the present system of guaranteed Social Security benefits "ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans." Rather, he was proposing that both mandatory contributions and voluntary annuities would eventually eliminate the need for a different fund which was established to provide pension benefits to Americans who were already too old in 1935 to contribute payroll taxes to the Social Security system.

In case you don't want to take Brock's word for it...the SSA provides the proof. Brock provides several other links in the story to provide further evidence.

Brit Hume is the ANCHOR for Fox News. He's their main news guy. Top of their heap.

And this isn't the first time that Hume has deliberately lied to his audience using partial and out-of-context quotes.

How is what Dan Rather did worse than this?

Franken is demanding that Hume resign.

If it's good enough for Rather, it's good enough for Hume.

Posted by Carla at 08:02 AM |

February 10, 2005

The buck stops nowhere for 9/11

NYT:

In the months before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal aviation officials reviewed dozens of intelligence reports that warned about Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, some of which specifically discussed airline hijackings and suicide operations, according to a previously undisclosed report from the 9/11 commission.

But aviation officials were "lulled into a false sense of security," and "intelligence that indicated a real and growing threat leading up to 9/11 did not stimulate significant increases in security procedures," the commission report concluded.

The report discloses that the Federal Aviation Administration, despite being focused on risks of hijackings overseas, warned airports in the spring of 2001 that if "the intent of the hijacker is not to exchange hostages for prisoners, but to commit suicide in a spectacular explosion, a domestic hijacking would probably be preferable."

Another example of the information being out there and the Bush Administration dropping the ball.

And for those of you who think Bush shouldn't be blamed...there's no way he could have known....I remind you of the August 6th Presidential Daily Briefing.

And in case that doesn't convince you:

The Bush administration has blocked the public release of the full, classified version of the report for more than five months, officials said, much to the frustration of former commission members who say it provides a critical understanding of the failures of the civil aviation system.

This report is crucial to understanding what went wrong in the lead up to 9/11. Bush has been blocking it. It's difficult to understand why a report so important to the protection and security of the United States of America is being kept from the public. Especially given that so many involved in the report's creation believe that the report needs to be released.

It's also clear that all of the warnings for the FAA were there:

Among other things, the report says that leaders of the F.A.A. received 52 intelligence reports from their security branch that mentioned Mr. Bin Laden or Al Qaeda from April to Sept. 10, 2001. That represented half of all the intelligence summaries in that time.

Five of the intelligence reports specifically mentioned Al Qaeda's training or capability to conduct hijackings, the report said. Two mentioned suicide operations, although not connected to aviation, the report said.

"Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to strike America, to attack us, I would have used every resource, every asset, every power of this government to protect the American people."--George. W. Bush, May 6, 2004

Update:A new memo has surfaced proving Clarke was telling the truth. He tried urgently to get Rice to meet about Al Qaida eight months before 9/11.

This one is getting a push to the top.

Posted by Carla at 07:40 PM |

Like sands through the hourglass....

Having a day job has precluded me from being able to participate in the day to day goings on in Washington State's Governor circus.

Fortunately, Dave Goldstein at HorsesAss has the latest in the brouhaha that I have dubbed Goobernorgate.

Yesterday at a press conference, King County Executive Ron Sims was treated to a nasty interruption by the Sound Politics thug Stefan Sharkansky:

Minutes later, however, election critic and conservative blogger Stefan Sharkansky pointed out that the executive stated the accuracy rate inaccurately -- that it actually was a slightly lower 99.8 percent.

Dave on the fact check:

Snark points out that the 1,800 vote “discrepancy” between the voter list and the ballots cast, represents a 0.2% error rate out of 900,000 votes. And that would be true, assuming the “discrepancy” actually represented “errors.”

I have talked to a number of auditors offices, and they all tell me the same thing: the two lists come out of different processes, and are never intended to reconcile. I know that Rossi supporters, desperately hoping for massive vote fraud, refuse to accept this explanation… but the “discrepancy” is not evidence that there were more ballots than voters. At the very worst, it represents the lack of evidence to the contrary.

The 22 ballots left in the bases of voting machines? Those were errors. The 348 provisional ballots improperly scanned at polling places? Definitely errors. The 735 ballots that weren’t counted because signatures were not in the computer? That was an awfully big error, that fortunately was fixed before the final count was certified.

But this “discrepancy” is simply not evidence of errors in the casting, canvassing, or counting of ballots. Snark is demanding that King County prove a negative, and while that kind of (il)logic may sell on (un)Sound Politics, it’s not going to find any buyers in a court of law.

Once again, someone has to pick up the ball and fact check material being floated about by Sound Politics.

Sadly, since they refuse to do it themselves and the rightwing echo chamber enables them, it's up to the Seattle papers and a few dedicated bloggers to get to the truth.

Posted by Carla at 07:06 PM |

WA Gov: Rossi's legal team

One of our readers sent me an email with some research on Rossi's legal team. It's often an interesting exercise to understand who an individual in a situation like this chooses to surround himself. In Rossi's case, it looks like some relatively big guns:

First is Harry Korrell. Korrell is a member of Davis Wright Tremaine, LLP in Seattle. He is Executive Director of Washington Chapter of the Lawyers for Bush - Cheney Coaltion; Federalist Society Member and Member of the Executive Board of the Puget Sound Laywers Chapter.

(So much for all lawyers being liberal ambulance chasers. This one is a conservative)

One of Korrel's most telling treatises is this diatribe against the filibustering of judical nominees:

Seattle attorney Harry Korrell argues that Democratic senators who are blocking federal judicial nominees “are doing a great disservice to the country by discouraging others who might otherwise be willing to give up comfortable and lucrative private work for a life of government service. They are doing perhaps irreparable damage to the separation and balance of powers … by engaging in an unprecedented, arguably unconstitutional filibuster to prevent nominees from ever getting a full Senate vote.” Korrell argues that Democratic senators, by filibustering nominees with “stellar qualifications and bipartisan support,” are “alienating mainstream Americans, particularly minorities and religious groups they have counted on in the past,” a move that he predicts will hurt them in the next election.

Where was Korrell when Republican Bill Frist was blocking a Clinton nominee?. But I digress.

Next is Robert J. Maguire, also of Davis Wright Tremaine. Maguire once worked for Arent Fox Kintner Plotkin & Kahn in Washington DC who happen to be (unsurpisingly) heavily involved with the Republican Party.

The interesting one of the group however is Mark Braden:

Summary:
E. Mark Braden concentrates his work principally on election law and governmental affairs. This field includes work with Congress, the Federal Election Commission, state campaign finance agencies, ballot access issues, political broadcast regulation, contests, recounts, the Voting Rights Act, initiatives, referendums and redistricting. Each is an area in which he has substantial knowledge and unusual experience.

Mr. Braden spent ten years as Chief Counsel to the Republican National Committee prior to joining Baker & Hostetler. He has worked intimately with many elected officials, the major national political consultants, and pollsters providing successful, and often highly innovative, legal guidance. For example, in campaign finance, he can rightly claim to be the father of "soft money" as now used in national political campaigns. In redistricting, he has been involved in litigation across the nation. In addition to his experience in the area of federal election law, Mr. Braden is widely recognized as an authority on state election laws, having served as Chief Counsel to the Ohio Elections Commission and Election Counsel for the Secretary of State in Ohio. He was a principal lawyer in two of the largest recounts in our political history--governors' races in New Jersey and Illinois.

Mr. Braden was a key negotiator for the site city agreements and many of the other contracts for four Republican National Conventions and has been special counsel to the House Oversight Committee. He has also worked with many nonprofit organizations on government affairs issues.

Mr. Braden has testified before congressional committees and the Federal Election Commission on numerous occasions. His experience in these areas has been recognized by numerous invitations to be guest lecturer at universities and institutes across the nation.

Mr. Braden is a member of the adjunct faculty of George Washington University and Catholic University of America.

A Lexis/Nexis search (thanks to Kevin Drum for the assist) revealed Mr. Braden's current employer. Presumably Braden is paid by the Republican National Committee for services when he works for Republican candidates. I can find no information which confirms however how payment is rendered.

Braden appears to be a journeyman GOP attorney operative. He had his fingers in the 2000 election mess in Florida, was point man in a redistricting struggle in Nevada,represented the formerly convicted Oliver North in a campaign ad scandal and may have been involved in some underhanded goings on in New Mexico for Bush/Cheney 2000.

All in all, Braden has been working for Republicans in a legal capacity for several decades.

Hear no evil..see no evil..and just plain evil? (joke..sorta)

Posted by Carla at 02:11 PM |

Ah, the heavy price of freedom

This tidbit showed up on my daily email newsletter from PaintandCoatings.com (registration required), which I subscribe to as a trade professional.

Our first amusing little note is that due to the finger paintings inspired by the recent elections in Iraq, purple paint there has run in short supply, boosting its price to over $90 per barrel - more expensive than Iraqi crude. Ah, freedom - indisputable proof that it's not free.

LOL - I doubt any of the industry leaders could have predicted this outcome.

Posted by Kevin at 08:43 AM |

February 09, 2005

You wanna be where everybody knows your name....

Cheers!

Stefan Sharkansky apparently wants to know my name. This in lieu of actually being able to defend his sloppy work and lack of fact checking. As I was reminded today..ad hominem attack is "...the last refuge of a scoundrel." And so it is.

Even after being resoundingly refuted on this blog here and here in his attempts to claim military ballots in King County weren't sent out on time, Sharkansky trots the old saw out again. Presumably if you hear a lie enough times....

Today's Seattle Times article "Official disputes gubernatorial vote-tally assertion"

David Irons, R-Sammamish, said yesterday that in the 2000 general election the discrepancy between the numbers of ballots cast and voters credited with voting was only 17 — far less than the 1,230-vote variance that election officials are citing.

Fact check: Former King County Elections Superintendent Julie Ann Kempf says 17 is the correct number--for 1999. And Kemp was fired in January 2003 after then-Elections Director Bob Roegner accused her of lying about the late mailing of absentee ballots in the 2002 general election.

And the sloppy Sharkansky work doesn't end there. Sharkansky breathlessly claims that King County hasn't proved they mailed the ballots on time despite Keith Ervin of the Seattle Times seeing the logs and verifying they were mailed out on time. And in the next sentence, Sharkansky tries to soft peddle:

I'm not asserting that I know that the ballots were not mailed out on time, only that four months after the fact, the county is unable to provide the documentation that the ballots did go out on time. Stonewalling a County Councilmember is not going to help them make their case.

I guess actually showing the logs to the media doesn't count, eh? That would seem a lot more accurate than claiming they were mailed out with the wrong bulk mailing permit without bothering to check with King County as to how they mail the ballots. But then perhaps the Seattle Times isn't in business to throw stuff against the wall and see if it sticks.....

Torrid Joe does the heavy lifting to fact check Sharkansky one more time:

If King in fact did not trim the "courtesy credits" from their discrepancy total when reporting in 2000, on a comparable basis the error from 2004 is undoubtedly larger. But is it yet an anomaly? Sharkansky's detail of King's discrepancies since 2000 shows an error rate of .16% in 2003, after the time Logan claims the County stopped including courtesy credits in their totals. That would be roughly analagous to the .21% for 2004, especially when you note that the number of ballots cast was over twice that of 2003--

Damn those pesky facts.

And finally, back to the "name controversy" a la Sharkansky:

I welcome anybody who engages in a serious debate and discusses real issues. Hopefully, writing under his real name would inspire him to raise the bar and actually engage in serious debate and bring some new information to the table, instead of simply spouting the baseless nonsense that he (TorridJoe) currently trafficks in.

Curious. It hasn't made Stefan engage in serious debate or bring new factual information to the table in significant doses.

Posted by Carla at 03:25 PM |

February 08, 2005

The Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party makes hay in Mass

Working from the ground up:

A self-described lunch-bucket Democrat, DeLeo receives poor ratings from antitax advocates, but wins praise from environmental and education advocates. He opposed the sweeping campaign finance Clean Elections Law and gay marriage. Advocates for the poor and elderly said yesterday he is a strong supporter of human services.

DeLeo said he wanted to use his new position to make progress on issues he has focused on in recent years -- healthcare, education, local aid, drug enforcement, and problems created by drug addiction.

''The most important role we have in government is to help those people who can't take care of themselves," DeLeo said yesterday. ''We've heard that is our primary role. I think that's so true."

Romney (the GOP governor) has to be hating this. Yee-haw!

This kind of stuff is going to make Dean's new job so much easier.

Posted by Carla at 03:15 PM |

They call him Flipper..Flipper...faster than lightning...

Losing GOP Gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi made a whopper of a flip flop at a news conference yesterday.

Rossi has said previously that he would only accept the governorship if he were elected, not appointed by a judge. Yesterday...he let it slip to the contrary:

Rossi said that "if somehow we overturned (the election) by 130 votes and the judge (installed) me as the new governor, the first thing I'd do as governor would be to go to the Legislature and find a way to order a new election."

"And guess what? I think they'll be real receptive to that," he added, alluding to the fact that both houses of the Legislature have Democratic majorities.

After Rossi ended the news conference and left the room, reporters asked his campaign spokeswoman, Mary Lane, to explain why his statement about "the first thing I'd do as governor" seemed to contradict his earlier vow not to accept the governorship through a court order.

"I don't think he meant to say anything different," Lane said, adding, "The only way he will accept being governor is through an election."

Lane then retrieved Rossi so that he could explain himself. Asked if he meant he would refuse to take office if a court declared him to be governor, and that he then would go to the Legislature as a private citizen to ask it to call a new election, Rossi replied, "That's probably what we'd have to do." He reiterated that he wouldn't take office without an election.

Sheesh.

Pick a side and stick with it, Dino.

Update: Torrid Joe at AlsoAlso notes that Rossi spokesperson Mary Hall has issued a press release, further muddying the waters:

From the time this became an issue, Dino has said he doesn't want to become governor by a court overturning the election. If he were installed by a court, he'd ask the Legislature for a new election and then resign. He doesn't want to be the governor-"select" -- he wants to be the governor legitimately elected by the people of Washington. The only scenario he'll accept is a new election. Period.

Huh? So if Judge Bridges stays the election and appoints Rossi...Rossi WILL accept the Governorship. Then resign. Then ask the legislature for a new election?

I'll ask Joe's question again...what if the legislature refuses a new election?

And my own question: Is the GOP spending all this taxpayer money just to get the Lt. Governor promoted?

Posted by Carla at 08:32 AM |

February 07, 2005

Silicone deficiency?

A lot has been said, tongue lightly brushing cheek, about how Conservative Republicans are anti-science. But, perhaps the reality is that they simply don't understand science.

From somewhere well beyond the Twilight Zone:

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), a new member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was at last week's meeting on a bill restricting class-action suits. "You know," he said, "I immediately thought about slicone breast implants and the legal wrangling and the class-action suits off that. And I thought I would just share with you what science says today about slicone breast implants. If you have them, you're healthier than if you don't. That is what the ultimate science shows...In fact, there's no science that shows that silicone breast implants are detrimental and, in fact, they make you healthier."

(emphasis supplied by your's truly. Hat tip to Oliver Willis for bringing this to our attention)

Yes, Tom... Studies have shown that much of the hype about silicone breast implants was not based on good science. But, silicone makes you healthier?

HEALTHIER???

ROFLMAO!!!

Posted by Kevin at 03:57 PM |

WA Gov: definitive analysis--TJ and Carla style

This piece was coresearched and written by Carla and TorridJoe from Also Also blog. You'll find it crossposted at AlsoAlso as well.

Since the election contest in Washington appears to be moving forward to the trial phase, we felt it was important to understand the evidence being proffered by the Republicans to have the election set aside. The prime Republican target for allegations of misconduct has been King County. King is the largest county in the state and has become a lightning rod for Rossi, the state Republican Party (led by the obstreperous Chris Vance) and the rightwing talk/blog echo chamber, led on this issue by Stefan Sharkansky and SoundPolitics.com.

We want to be clear: King County has made some mistakes in this election. Perhaps the most glaring is the one SoundPolitics has dropped from their radar: the 723 ballots initially rejected for not having signatures on file in the computer when they knew that some signatures weren’t yet in the computer. In our opinion, the rejection of valid votes is always worse than the acceptance of invalid votes, unless the result of official fraud.

But where Democrats in a place like Ohio were frustrated by attempts to gain more information from election officials, we have found election officials in Washington to be generally open, helpful and dedicated. Surpisingly this has remained true even in the face of a vitriolic echo chamber and a heavy burden placed on them by the contest litigants.

These experiences are what gives us such a dim view of the way Sharkansky and SP have gone about their campaign. Too often, the charges have been leveled in a careless manner. Unfortunately, what's emerged is a pattern of discovery and accusation, then publication and THEN perhaps checking to see whether the story's right. Corrections are often made grudgingly and fleetingly.

The most visible mistake was asking the postal service about bulk mailing of military overseas ballots, and not asking about the right bulk mail license. With a minimum of fact checking, Carla was able to suss that one out and defuse the allegations. It's not just election stories, either--this week an associate was incredulous that state laws regarding art set-asides on building projects, would cause an unholy 16mil to be spent on art in front of a sewage plant. Apparently no one asked the development team until later, when it was discovered that the set-aside is not calculated on the total development cost, as SP had blithely assumed. SP corrected their error, but not until well after their article ran.

So when Sharkansky declared with typical hyperbole that he was compiling the "definitive" analysis of King County's votes, we were interested but skeptical.

Sharkansky acquired the public records that were available on the county's results and voter rolls, compared them, and concluded that contrary to King's assertion of around 2,100 anomalies, the total number was actually more than 3,700. Wow! “County Underestimates, Hides Vote Discrepancy 70% Bigger Than Initial Report!” Get Brit Hume on the horn!

Sharkansky's prime contention was that the 2,100 figure represented only a net discrepancy: voters without ballots and separate ballots without voters were allowed to cancel each other out, rather than counting as two separate errors instead of zero. That's a valid charge, if proven. An unmatched vote is an unmatched vote. But the devil is definitely in the details, and that's where it would have helped to pursue some extra knowledge about trying to replicate the county's totals. (Hopefully ignorance is the excuse, anyway).

The two vital pieces in reconciling the books are the voter list, and the tally of cast ballots. Ballot tallies are easy enough to compile, we did it as easily as Sharkansky or anyone else can, by downloading data files available at the County site. King County released a list of registered voters as of Nov 1. The next two releases were lists of voters credited with voting (December 30 and January 7). Both were preliminary but successively refined lists.

Sharkansky’s analysis is precinct-based. In other words, he’s taken the number of ballots cast in a precinct and tried to match it up to the number of ballots credited for that precinct. If the two didn’t match up, he counted the variance. So if he missed one proper registrant, or misplaced one in a precinct when they belonged in, the number would be off.

There are over 2600 individual precincts in King County. Most polling places serve multiple precincts. Cast your ballot at the wrong table and you'll be misfiled. Allow for just one reconciliation error per precinct, and suddenly Sharkansky is vulnerable to 2,600 mistallies in his analysis. King County recorded less than one discrepancy per precinct, according to their figures.

By Sharkansky’s own admissions, he struggled to create a file that he believed would match what King worked with to reconcile their data. But his struggle was futile from the start, which he must have known: King didn’t reconcile their data at the precinct level, they did it voter by voter, pollbook line by pollbook line. How can you claim you’ve done the definitive analysis, when you don’t even have the right file defined? We don’t think you can.

In the next piece, we’ll talk more about King’s electoral process, and see whether their performance is out of step with the rest of the state.

--TJ and Carla

Posted by Carla at 01:58 AM |

February 06, 2005

Scoop Jackson and NeoCons

I just stumbled across this gem: Scoop Jackson's protégés shaping Bush's foreign policy.

I had no idea that the legendary Democrat is considered by some to be the, or at least an, intellectual father of NeoConservatism. Yes, he was one of the most strident Cold Warriors. But, I never made the connection to NeoCons at all. Yet, a veritable who's who list of prominent NeoCons have strong connections to Scoop Jackson.

• Richard Perle is an adviser to the Defense Department and considered a major influence on Bush administration foreign policy.
• Doug Feith is undersecretary of defense for policy at the Pentagon.
• Elliott Abrams, special assistant to the president focusing on Middle East affairs, worked as special counsel to Jackson.
• Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense and one of Bush's Iraq policy experts, never served directly under Jackson. But they had a long relationship that began when Wolfowitz, then a 29-year-old graduate student, helped Jackson prepare charts when the senator wanted to persuade fellow lawmakers to fund an antiballistic-missile program in 1969.

There are more:

"I wanted to work for Scoop Jackson. He was the last Democrat who embodied the high tradition of internationalism," said Charles Horner, a former aide who is now a scholar at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.

"Bush is the embodiment of that tradition," Horner added.

Even President Reagan. When Reagan presented Scoop Jackson's widow with a posthumous Medal of Freedom in 1984, he said: "I am deeply proud — as he would have been — to have Jackson Democrats serve in my administration. I am proud some of them have found a home here."

Jackson's son Peter, a former speech writer for former Washington Governor, Gary Locke (D), indicates that his father might not agree with where some of his followers have taken his philosophy. "My father would never grandstand or question someone's patriotism. Since he died, the debate has become shriller."

Perhaps most telling was his final thoughts emailed to the author of the Seattle Times piece: "Intellectually, neocons are children of a common father, but what can the father do after a lowly few race off and elope with Republicans? Most Dads would sigh, lament their kids' poor taste, but love them anyway."

Posted by Kevin at 01:20 PM |

WA State GOP: taking straw grasping to a new level

Washington State Republicans attempt to have Dino Rossi annointed to the Governor's seat is hanging by a thread. And it's starting to look like that thread is making them snap.

Matt Rosenberg at SoundPolitics pixels this angry rant in a sad attempt to debase one of the more vocal Democrats. Unfortunately for Rosenberg..his attempt at shoveling manure tips his hand:

Uh, no, Ms. Brost. Your problem, and your party's, if you read this morning's Seattle Times, is that there was a court ruling yesterday that misconduct or neglect by election officials would be enough to overturn Gregoire's razor-thin and highly suspect victory. And was there EVER plenty of misconduct and neglect.

The judge dismissed all of the counties from the case, Matt. ALL OF THEM. The only "election official" left in the case is GOP Secretary of State Sam Reed. Your allegations of misconduct against the county election officials didn't fly.

The only part of the case that's still alive is the "illegal votes" allegation. Like it or not, in Washington State there's a very high threshold to overturn an election that way. While GOP attornies are publicly saying that they don't have to prove which candidate received the votes of illegal felon voters...Judge Bridges has indicated he doesn't agree:

Bridges said that at least at this point in the case, it is "sufficient to state generally" that there are enough illegal votes to cast doubt on the true outcome of the election.

But the judge cited a 1912 state Supreme Court case often mentioned by Democrats. In that case, the court found that if it is unknown which candidate received an illegal vote, "it must be treated as a legitimate vote."

Bridges also said it "may be problematical for petitioners to ultimately prevail on a theory or a cause of illegal votes."

Your side is going to have to prove that felons voted for Gregiore in a sufficient number as to tip the election to her.

If Rossi wants to remain politically viable in any way..he needs to drop these shenanigans.

Posted by Carla at 09:40 AM |

Iraq, Democracy and Israel

Retired U.S. Army colonel Norvell De Atkine wrote a fascinating article called Why Arabs Lose Wars which was originally published in December 1999. De Atkine has long experience working with various Arab military establishments as an U.S. military attache, a security assistance officer and as an observer officer, along with some thirty years studying the Middle East. So, he speaks from no small amount of personal knowledge and experience.

The gist of what De Atkine wrote is that several traits inherent in the Arab culture and societies inhibits the effectiveness of their formal military forces because effective, competent military leadership is largely absent. He notes that while a "regular Jordanian army infantry company, for example is man-for-man as good as a comparable Israeli company; at battalion level, however, the coordination required for combined arms operations, with artillery, air, and logistics support, is simply absent. Indeed, the higher the echelon, the greater the disparity."

The culprit? De Atkine identifies three primary problems.

• First, the well-known lack of trust among Arabs in anyone outside their own families adversely affects offensive operations.


• Second, the complex mosaic system of peoples creates additional problems for training, as rulers in the Middle East make use of the sectarian and tribal loyalties to maintain power.


• Third, Middle Eastern rulers routinely rely on balance-of-power techniques to maintain their authority. They use competing organizations, duplicate agencies, and coercive structures dependent upon the ruler's whim. This makes building any form of personal power base difficult, if not impossible, and keeps the leadership apprehensive and off-balance, never secure in its careers or social position.

The end result, with few exceptions, is that Arab officers are not concerned about the welfare and safety of their men, and their men know it. Initiative on the part of junior officers, or any officers for that matter is not only not encouraged, but is highly risky and sometimes fatal. Responsibility is avoided and deflected, not sought and assumed. Career advancement and sometimes survival is based on political paranoia rather than openness and team effort in the Arab military establishments. And he notes that this is not genetic, but rather is due to "matters of historical and political culture."

De Atkine concludes,

Change is unlikely to come until it occurs in the larger Arab political culture, although the experience of other societies (including our own) suggests that the military can have a democratizing influence on the larger political culture, as officers bring the lessons of their training first into their professional environment, then into the larger society. It obviously makes a big difference, however, when the surrounding political culture is not only avowedly democratic (as was the Soviet Union’s), but functionally so.

Think about this for a moment. What is it that President Bush has said we are doing in Iraq that is so important? "Iraqi democracy."

The problems that De Atkine describes explain why Saddam's military couldn't defeat the Kurds despite fighting them for decades. They explain why his forces fared so badly against an Iranian military that was badly weakened by our embargo which denied them replacement parts for their U.S. made weapons... Why vast segments of his military performed incompetently and then surrendered in droves at the first opportunity during the Gulf War in 1991.

So then if functional democracy is even only a partial solution, and Bush is intent on Iraqi democracy, then one byproduct would be a superior, more capable Iraqi military. But, wouldn't that pose a direct national security threat to Israel? In fact, wouldn't the threat be directly proportional to how effectively Iraqis adopt and impliment democracy? The more thoroughly Iraqi democracy takes root, the more thoroughly the root problems plaguing their Arab military establishment would be eliminated, and the more capable the military would be as a direct result. No?

Would President Bush deliberately do something that could result in Israel's national security being threatened?

Surely nobody can honestly expect that Iraqi democracy will somehow equal a newfound love of Israel. There remain fundamental injustices which Israel thus far has resisted addressing with respect to Palestinian Arab civilians who lost their homes and lands to Israel when they fled from the fighting during the various Arab/Israeli Wars. Here we are, the world's greatest democracy and we used not entirely dissimilar provocation's to bomb the shit outta Serbia over Kosovo Albanians losing homes and property to Serbians. So, clearly there is nothing inherent in democracy which prevents said democracy's political leaders from dispatching their military to redress inequities in other nations.

Your thoughts?

Posted by Kevin at 01:17 AM |

February 05, 2005

Stupid is as stupid does

So I'm a liberal because I'm well educated!

I guess that means on the flip side...conservatives are uneducated.

And because I'm educated...I'm supposed to wallow in the shame of it all, according to David Brooks:

Over the past two years, what we might loosely call the university-town elite has come to dominate the Democratic Party not just intellectually, but financially as well.

How dare you dogs live in a university town with well educated people! You elitists!!

Conservatives seem to have a very fundamental problem with people who are well educated. And what's worse...they sit in their stew complaining that liberals think they are stupid.

Hello?

When conservatives set liberals apart as well educated and intellectual..and then work to rubber stamp those traits as a net negative, it encourages less education and less intellectuality. And when conservatives substitute religion for education, it pushes things down even more.

If someone spends the bulk of their formative years being told that getting a good education, exercising intellectuality and opening their mind to new ideas is "bad" and "elitist", they're not going to do it. So what's the alternative?

In some cases, it's unscrewing the cranium and doing an information dump courtesy of King James.

In other cases, there's a knowledge vacuum that's slowly filled up with whatever is on "Fear Factor" or "Who Wants To Marry My Dad?".

And this is what many Americans want us to aspire to. Because being educated and intellectual is bad.

It makes you liberal.

Posted by Carla at 04:31 PM |

The only thing we have to fear is...Jonah Goldberg?

Juan Cole lays down some big smack:

Extremist rightwing hawks like Jonah Goldberg used their privileged position as pundits to terrify the US public that Iraq was a threat to the US. He repeatedly said in the buildup to the war that Iraq was a menace to the US, and he repeatedly brought up North Korea's nuclear weapons as a reason for a preemptive attack on Iraq.

Iraq never has had nuclear weapons. Iraq never has been as close as two decades from having nuclear weapons. Iraq dismantled all vestiges of its rudimentary and exploratory nuclear weapons research in 1991. Iraq did not have a nuclear weapons program in 1992, 1993 and all the way until 2002, when Jonah Goldberg assured us Americans that we absolutely had to invade Iraq to stop it from imminently becoming a nuclear power just like North Korea.

By the way, I am in print in January 2003 saying that I did not believe Iraq posed a danger to the United States. It did not.

If Jonah Goldberg had asserted that he could fly to Mars in his pyjamas and come back in a single day, it would not have been a more fantastic allegation than the one he made about Iraq being a danger to the United States because of the nuclear issue. He made that allegation over and over again to millions of viewers on national television programs, to viewers who trusted his judgment because CNN and others purveyed him to them.

Jonah Goldberg is a fearmonger, a warmonger, and a demagogue. And besides, he was just plain wrong about one of the more important foreign policy issues to face the United States in the past half-century. It is shameful that he dares show his face in public, much less continuing to pontificate about his profound knowledge of just what Iraq is like and what needs to be done about Iraq and the significance of events in Iraq.

There's more, that's just a taste.

The fearmongering goes on too. Now we've moved on to Iran...where we're supposed to get all spun up about nukes and terrorism because Bush tells us so.

Just like Iraq.

And frankly, not that much different than Social Security.

That's their modus operandi: fear.

Posted by Carla at 10:37 AM |

February 04, 2005

WA Gov: Okay...maybe they didn't lose

Wow. Talk about postus prematurus.

I should have stuck around this afternoon and watched the rest of Bridges' rulings. He has ruled that he will not order a revote, even if he finds in favor of Rossi.

This is a MAJOR victory for the Democrats in Washington State.

Since Bridges will not order a revote, the decision to have a revote would go to the Washington State Legislature, which is Democratically controlled. I honestly don't know what would happen at that point.

Anyone else have an idea?

Update: A commenter at Kos found this piece in the Seattle Times that gives a more detailed explanation.

Posted by Carla at 05:35 PM |

WA Governor: Dems lose court battle

Judge Bridges has ruled against the Democrats motion for dismissal and the request for change of venue.

And so we go on.

I'm wondering how much longer the taxpayers of Washington State are going to allow this to continue. Rossi lost. He and Gregiore were on a completely level playing field, which is why we have election rules in the first place.

This is a very expensive, very resource-sucking temper tantrum being played out by Washington State Republicans and by Dino Rossi. Rossi lost...and trying to change the rules after the fact is wrong.

Update: TorridJoe at has a great post up outlining the blow by blow from today's court hearings.

Posted by Carla at 11:49 AM |

Not as many purple fingers as we thought?

I wondered when the other shoe would drop:

It appears so. For days, the press repeated, as gospel, assertions offered by an election official that 8 million Iraqis went to the polls on Sunday, an impressive 57% turnout rate. I questioned those figures as early as last Sunday, and offered the detailed analysis below on Wednesday. Finally, on Thursday night, John F. Burns and Dexter Filkins of The New York Times reported that Iraqi election officials have quietly "backtracked, saying that the 8 million estimate had been reached hastily on the basis of telephone reports from polling stations across the country and that the figure could change."

Then, in Friday's paper, Burns and Filkins noted that one election commision official was "evasive about the turnout, implying it might end up significantly lower than the initial estimate." They quoted this official, Safwat Radhid, exclaiming: "Only God Almighty knows the final turnout now." They revealed that the announcement of a turnout number, expected to be released this weekend, has been put off for a week, due to the "complex" tabulation system.

(via Kos)

Complex tabulation system? Either 8 million people voted or they didn't. Even here in the US where so much is disputed, we can figure out how many people are credited with voting. It's not all that complex. This appears to be a set up to have an excuse when the numbers come in much more flat than we were originally told.

And it appears that the woman "Iraqi-voter" from the SOTU address Wednesday night might not be complete above board.

Nothing in that piece seems especially a bombshell...but it does raise questions about how she is characterized by Bush in his speech.

Posted by Carla at 10:46 AM |

February 03, 2005

The Outsiders

In this very readable TNR piece, Ryan Lizza gives a view of the insiders angst at the power of the "reform wing" of the Democratic Party. Leading the angst for the former glory days...James Carville:

"I think it's pathetic," says James Carville. "It's so indicative of the Democratic Party. Now we're just playing into every stereotype: We're weak, disorganized, flopping around. ... Somebody should have fixed this damn thing in November. I wish someone would have taken charge and three or four people would have gotten together in a smoke-filled room. ... They're not running for president! They are running for party chair. This is supposed to be a rigged deal. You think the Republicans would do it this way?"

Hack.

No, I don't think the Republicans would do it this way. That's why it's a GOOD THING, James.

That reform wing may be about to get what they've been asking for: Howard Dean.

I think Dean will make a magnificent Democratic Party chairman. He's in touch with the grassroots, he knows how to fundraise and he's learned a lot about strategy.

America needs a strong and vital opposition party. I think Dean is just the guy to get the Democrats there.

And it pisses off James Carville, so it can't be all bad.

Posted by Carla at 08:29 PM |

SOTU 2005: To hell with the future!

As predicted, Bush used last night's State of the Union speech to hawk his Social Security privatization scheme. But not before the White House made sure dissenters would remain out of the gallery.

Most noteably, Bush worked the "divide and conquer" notion. Those over age 55 won't have any changes. The rest of us..the idea is to tell us we're screwed if we don't go with privatization.

In essence, the 55+ crowd is totally safe. Bush won't touch them. It's the rest of us who will get benefits slashed. The very politically influential baby boomers will make no sacrifices. And those private accounts? The carrot is supposed to be that you'll get to pass them down to the next generation. The stick? You'll most likely have to die at an early age to be able to do it.

In addition, welcome to the Birth Tax:

"Too many of the President’s economic policies have left Americans and American companies struggling. And after we worked so hard to eliminate the deficit, his policies have added trillions to the debt - in effect, a ‘birth tax’ of $36,000 on every child that is born."

And with the privatization of Social Security all those under 55 will lose their guaranteed safety net. So these kids will come into the world with a $36k credit card bill and leave it without their safety net.

Social Security is not in crisis. But it is prudent to make sure it remains solvent. The best solution in my opinion, is to raise the payroll tax deduction past $90,000. It eliminates the costs involved with privatization and keeps the program solvent.

Problem solved.

Posted by Carla at 12:52 PM |

Of bumbershoots and rubber boots

This was sent to me via email. If you've ever lived in the Pacific Northwest, this will make you giggle:

You know you've lived the Pacific Northwest if...

1. You know the state flower (Mildew).

2. You feel guilty throwing aluminum cans or paper in the trash.

3. Use the statement "sun break" and know what it means.

4. You know more than 10 ways to order coffee.

5. You know more people who own boats than air conditioners.

6. You feel overdressed wearing a suit to a nice restaurant.

7. You stand on a deserted corner in the rain waiting for the "Walk"
Signal.

8. You consider that if it has no snow or has not recently erupted, it is
not a real mountain.

9. You can taste the difference between Starbucks, Seattle's Best, and
Veneto's.

10. You know the difference between Chinook, Coho and Sockeye salmon.

11. You know how to pronounce Sequim, Puyallup, Issaquah, Oregon, Yakima
and
Willamette.

12. You consider swimming an indoor sport.

13. You can tell the difference between Japanese, Chinese and Thai food.

14. In winter, you go to work in the dark and come home in the dark - while
only working eight-hour days.

15. You never go camping without waterproof matches and a poncho.

16. You are not fazed by "Today's forecast: showers followed by rain," and
Tomorrow's forecast: rain followed by showers."

17. You have no concept of humidity without precipitation

18. You know that Boring is a town in Oregon and not just a state of mind.

19. You can point to at least two volcanoes, even if you cannot see through
the cloud cover.

20. You notice, "The mountain is out" when it is a pretty day and you can
actually see it.

21. You put on your shorts when the temperature gets above 50, but still
wear your hiking boots and parka.

22. You switch to your sandals when it gets about 60, but keep the socks
on.

23. You have actually used your mountain bike on a mountain.

24. You think people who use umbrellas are either wimps or tourists.

25. You buy new sunglasses every year, because you cannot find the old ones
after such a long time.

26. You measure distance in hours.

27. You often switch from "heat" to" a/c" in the same day.

28. You design your kid's Halloween costume to fit under a raincoat.

29. You know all the important seasons: Almost Winter, Winter, Still
Raining (Spring), Road Construction (Summer), Deer & Elk season (Fall).

Posted by Carla at 10:02 AM |

February 02, 2005

SOTU: Reinventing broken wheels

(cartoon viaThe Indy Voice):

This morning on the Today Show, Presidential Advisor Dan Bartlett regaled Matt Lauer with what to expect tonight for Bush's State of the Union.

The first piece? Social Security
Bartlett's meme: The left have no plan, just complaints.

First of all, there is no crisis with Social Security and there's no hurry to throw something together, as Bartlett insists.

Second, there are a several very solid plans that have been generated by the left for Social Security. You can see one example here.

As we've seen in the news and around the blogosphere, privatization schemes in Chile and Britain haven't worked. Bush intends to reinvent a broken wheel.

The next theme: Iraq
Bartlett's meme: Iraq is an unmitigated success and any complaints about Iraq are just more liberal obstructionism.

Weird. Bush has changed positions on Iraq so often that it's impossible to know why we're there anymore. It's also pretty tough to take someone seriously who says he's for freedom and for torture.

A couple of other things to look for in tonight's speech:

"Health Savings Accounts"

Or how to ensure that working people will no longer have employee health benefits.

"Permanent tax relief"

Or how to ensure that the US will consistently owe massive amounts of money to other nations.

Posted by Carla at 09:09 AM |

Kill Phil Vol I

That damn groundhog saw his shadow.

Posted by Carla at 08:22 AM |

February 01, 2005

UN weapons inspectors - 1, NeoCons - 0

So, the CIA has Officially Disavowed their own prewar assessment of Iraqi WMD. The only surprise there is that they did it officially. The real story is in the context behind it.

The NeoCons running this country loudly and repeatedly asserted that Saddam had WMD and was continuing to manufactor more. For his part, Tony Blair dutifully dittoed the official NeoCon line at every opportunity. Now that we know that their assertions were untrue, the blame game is in full swing.

Brendan O'Neill at Spiked does a masterful job of explaining how it works with Dubya at the helm and Blair riding shotgun: WMD: 'Wasn't My Decision'
.

But, Not Everyone Got it Wrong on Iraq's WMD.

Scott Ritter, former head of the UN weapons inspection team in Iraq didn't get it wrong. In fact he repeatedly challenged Bush and Blair to back up their assertions. They responded with more false assertions. Ritter explains,

"In this I was not alone. Rolf Ekeus, the former head of the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq, has declared that under his direction, Iraq was "fundamentally disarmed" as early as 1996. Hans Blix, who headed UN weapons inspections in Iraq in the months before the invasion in March 2003, stated that his inspectors had found no evidence of either WMD or WMD-related programs in Iraq. And officials familiar with Iraq, like Ambassador Joseph Wilson and State Department intelligence analyst Greg Theilmann, both exposed the unsustained nature of the Bush claims regarding Iraq's nuclear capability."

One after the other UN weapons inspectors didn't get it wrong. Yet, if we listened to the Bush apologists we'd get the idea that the UN can't get anything right. I'm not so sure that this was simple coincidence. The NeoCon echo chamber did everything in their power to drown out the relatively few voices who we now know were asking the questions that needed to be asked before 1427 American soldiers were sent to their deaths in Iraq.

How many of you readers knew that Iran backed Bush and Blair's WMD claims? I sure didn't. And I can't see how Iran lending their support could have failed to raise red flags about the WMD claims. One need only give a cursory glance at Iran's history with Saddam to see that they had very compelling and very obvious motives to do or say whatever would get Saddam's regime toppled. But, we are apparently expected to believe that the CIA was unable to see that. We are apparently expected to believe that none of the American or British intelligence services were capable of competently analyzing what Ritter, Blix, Ekeus et al were saying about there being no evidence to support Bush's assertions and to then arrive at what we now know to be the truth - that the WMD didn't exist.

President Harry Truman famously stated, "the buck stops here!" He had not just the courage, but the moral fiber necessary to take responsibility for what he was responsible for. A real leader is honest. That's what a real leader does. Neither George W. Bush nor Tony Blair have either the courage or the moral fiber that a man like Harry Truman had. In short, they lack either the capacity or the willingness to be honest with those they lead.

There are some out there who do have the courage and moral fiber to be honest about their role, however small, in lauding on Bush's rush to war:

Australian Anglican Bishop Tom Frame supported the invasion. Now he seeks God's forgiveness. Read his heartfelt mea culpa.

John Maples, a member of the British Foreign Affairs Select Committee and a former Shadow Foreign Secretary, similarly offered his mea culpa.

This isn't just about the moral courage to admit when you are wrong. It's about fundamental honesty between a leader and those who have a reasonable expectation that said leader will competently do everything in his or her power to protect them and their interests. Not the least of which is the lives of their sons and daughters in uniform. George Bush has failed to lead and compounds that by shirking responsibility for what he has done.

Posted by Kevin at 06:41 PM |

Sifting through more info on the WA Goobernatorial

Yesterday as I was working away on my data collection for the various counties in Washington, I was handed what I think is a very interesting, very important piece of the informational puzzle.

I spoke on the phone with Winnie Flores-Logan, Chief Deputy Auditor of the Kitsap County, Washington Elections Office.

Ms. Flores-Logan informed me that individuals can register to vote in Kitsap County for just one election. Kitsap County can do this because they're relatively small. This allows military voters, snowbirds and citizens living overseas to vote in one election, and then be dropped off the voting rolls.

Flores-Logan informed me that immediately following the printing of poll books for the election, those individuals who have registered to vote for just the one election are purged from the rolls.

Why is this relevant?

Any individual or organization attempting to reconcile the November 2004 election based on voter rolls from any date before all of the registered voters were on the poll books would have incorrect information. And any individual or organization attempting to reconcile the November 2004 election with voter rolls after the 2004 election would also have incorrect information.

The only way to properly reconcile ballots/voters in Kitsap County is to do it in person, with the polling books.

Posted by Carla at 01:51 PM |

Iraqi Christians not allowed to vote

It seems our Kurdish allies deliberately prevented Christians from the Assyrian minority in Kurdish-controlled territory from voting in the recent election.

One wonders why the Freepers aren't up in arms over this. That is of course assuming that they buy into their own rhetoric.

The Freepers were in a dither over the summer about Senators Kerry and McCain allegedly bearing responsibility for selling out Montagnard Christians in Vietnam. But then Halliburton hasn't ripped off the American taxpayers for millions of dollars in Vietnam.

Posted by Kevin at 01:08 PM |