Year: 2004

But first . . .

Springsteen speaks! (Executive Summary: for God’s sake, vote Kerry.)

And this . . .

‘The characteristics embodied by these plaintiffs are ones that our society and the institution [of marriage] need more of, not less. Let the plaintiffs stand as inspirations for all those citizens, homosexual and heterosexual, who may follow their path.‘ –
decision of Superior Court Judge William L. Downing, yesterday, overturning Washington State laws that deny equal rights to same-sex couples (of special note: the respect with which Judge Downing treated the arguments of both sides)

And now . . . (I have a larger point here, so bear with me) . . .

Mark P: ‘I receive virtually daily e-mails from friends and family saying various negative things about John Kerry. It would be really helpful if there were a web site where people could go to get responses to those e-mails, so we could reply with facts.’

☞ Well, start with this, from the best known of the Urban Legends web sites. I especially like the one that has Senator Kerry voting against every vital weapons system. (‘Status: False.‘)

Most of the folks forwarding this message around the Internet probably don’t know how dishonest it is (‘inaccurate and grossly misleading,’ as the web site characterizes it, and ‘all the more ridiculous’ because Dick Cheney opposed some of the very same weapons systems himself) . . . but its originators surely knew what they were doing.

Indeed, this is not a casual effort. It was the same calculated dishonesty that led nearly half the voters in 2000 to favor for President a man whose top priority (his budgets have now confirmed) was the plight of the very rich rather than the challenges faced by ordinary Americans.

Why would so many Americans vote against their own economic interest?

A large part of the answer is the Republican ‘echo chamber’ that so effectively diminished a very good man (Gore), and which now attempts to diminish another.

To wit, and well worth reading, excerpted almost in full from yesterday’s Daily Howler:

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 4, 2004
It isn’t that hard to debunk phony spin.
Let Jon Stewart-a comedian!-show you:

. . . [I]t isn’t that hard to debunk bogus spin-points-the scripted, repetitive, ginned-up claims that now decide our White House elections. On Monday night’s Daily Show, in fact, Jon Stewart showed how easy the process can be. By Tuesday morning, we were flooded with e-mails about his effort, like the one we report below. But then, we often get rueful e-mails about Stewart:

E-MAIL (8/3/04): Did you see The Daily Show last night? Jon Stewart interviewed Congressman Henry Bonilla and actually forced the issue about the ‘number one liberal’ statement, citing the National Journal’s actual lifetime averages. It’s a sad day when we have to rely on a ‘fake’ news show to tell the truth.

Readers often note how sad it is-that Stewart, a comedian, debunks this crap, but our ‘journalists’ resolutely will not.

. . . As we’ve noted, Republicans cite the National Journal when they claim-as they now do whenever they breathe-that Kerry and Edwards are the first and fourth most liberal members of the Senate. But as the Journal has clearly explained, those figures cover 2003 alone-a year in which Kerry and Edwards, out campaigning, missed about half the relevant votes. (Note: That’s the way our system works. While still governor, Candidate Bush spent seventeen months campaigning outside Texas.) Indeed, as the Journal has made abundantly clear, Kerry is far from the ‘number one liberal’ if you measure his lifetime record, and Edwards is nowhere near number four, the claim voters hear again and again, recited by a gaggle of hacks who are sent on the air to mislead them. But so what? RNC shills state their bogus point-and millionaire ‘journalists’ sit, drool and stare. For example, here’s how Newt Gingrich began his closing remarks on this week’s Fox News Sunday:

GINGRICH (8/1/04): I think what decides this race in the end is, do you think America can go forward better with President Bush continuing to lead, or do you really want the most liberal member of the Senate and the fourth most liberal member of the Senate, people to the left of Teddy Kennedy, people to the left of Hillary Clinton? And I think that choice is going to be so wide and so clear by mid-September.

Did Chris Wallace challenge this scripted point-a claim which baldly misled viewers? Of course not! Instead, here’s what he said when Gingrich stopped speaking: ‘I’ve got to say, Speaker Gingrich, that’s the biggest bumper sticker I ever heard, but it was a good answer.’ In short, it’s easy to mislead voters this way. Our ‘press corps’ is happy to let you.

Which brings us back to that fateful moment when the RNC began its campaign against Gore. As noted yesterday, the RNC made it clear, in May 1999, that it hoped to make Gore a figure of ridicule; quoting major Republicans, Alison Mitchell described the plan in some detail, right in the New York Times (see THE DAILY HOWLER 8/3/04). The GOP had run endless probes of Clinton, she noted, but they were planning a different approach with Gore. ‘[W]ith Mr. Gore, Republicans are betting that well-timed ridicule can be more devastating than any inquiry,’ Mitchell wrote. ‘In essence, they are trying to do to him what Democrats tried to do to former Vice President Dan Quayle.’ As we noted in yesterday’s HOWLER, history is repeating itself; Republican sources described a similar plan for Kerry in a front-page report in Sunday’s Times. ‘Mr. Bush’s advisers plan to cap the month at the Republican convention in New York, which they said would feature Mr. Kerry as an object of humor and calculated derision,’ Adam Nagourney wrote. The plan he described was the very same plan that proved so effective with Gore.

And the evidence is clear-in the case of Gore, the campaign of ridicule worked. From March 1999 through November 2000, the RNC churned a string of bogus stories about Delusional Gore, the guy who ‘doesn’t know who he is,’ and the mainstream press corps made little attempt to challenge their idiot renderings. (Indeed, the mainstream press corps took the lead in conducting the War Against Gore.) Al Gore said he invented the Internet. Al Gore said he discovered Love Canal. Naomi Wolf told Gore to wear earth tones. Al Gore misstated the cost of dog pills. The tales were bogus-and never-ending-but the mockery and misstatements worked. Mocking Gore became second nature.

. . . The RNC had hoped to make Gore a figure of ridicule. With the corps’ active help, they succeeded.

And the RNC will succeed with Kerry-unless more pundits perform like Jon Stewart. Everyone knows what the current spin-points are-we’ll list them on Friday-and we’ll soon learn what the new points will be. In most cases, these points are fairly easy to debunk, as Stewart made clear Monday night. But last Friday, we saw a more typical effort-an effort typical of what he saw from pundits in Campaign 2000 as well. Performing his usual yawning vivisection, Sean Hannity ate Janeane Garofalo for lunch, belched three times, then spat her back out (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 8/2/04). Liberals, progressives, centrists-and all Dems-have to stop accepting this level of performance. Democrats have to tell Dem pundits-this hapless work isn’t OK.

Why, oh why, are Dem-friendly pundits so incapable of strong performance? One thing is clear-your ‘press corps’ won’t challenge fake RNC claims until Dem pundits go out there and make them. Our e-mailers ask us the obvious question: When a comedian, like Stewart, can do so well, why can’t other pundits perform? The answer leads straight to the DNC, an organization with which Dems should be furious. [Needless to say, as DNC Treasurer, I don’t agree. – A.T.]

TOMORROW: Why on earth can’t Terry McAuliffe prep our major Dem pundits?

WATCHING SPIN GROW: Your mainstream ‘journalists’ sleep, snore and burble. For example, here was Kate O’Beirne, pimping the script on The Capital Gang:

O’BEIRNE (7/31/04): In a 45-minute speech, this is [Kerry’s] fundamental problem, one of his problems, he spent 26 seconds talking about 20 years of his public career. He acted as though he disappeared after 1971, when he testified against the war in the Senate, and reappeared magically 30 years later. But an object of the exercise in Boston was to try to persuade people that he’s not a Massachusetts liberal, and of course, his voting record has him No. 1, the most liberal member of the Senate, so he ain’t gonna talk about that much, even though he has 45 minutes.

Except in Cartoon Nation, of course, Kerry isn’t ‘the most liberal member of the Senate.’ But how are American voters supposed to know that? Shields, Hunt and Carlson sat, drooled and stared. No one challenged what O’Beirne said. This is how White House elections are now decided, but your millionaire pundits-Hunt, Shields and Carlson-in a phrase, just don’t really care. They simply don’t care if the rubes are misled. They no longer care about that. How much longer will Dems and their allies put up with their sit-and-stare conduct?

TOMORROW: Tom Vilsack, chumped by Bill Hemmer!

FROM THE GREAT PLANET WASHINGTON POST: On what planet does the Washington Post’s editorial board now reside? In Tuesday’s paper, the board expressed pride in Tom Ridge’s recent performance:

WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL (8/3/04): In his statement, Mr. Ridge stayed away from politics, although he did, as in the past, find it necessary to attach a list of his homeland security achievements along with the warning, which did reduce its impact.

Really? Mr. Ridge ‘stayed away from politics?’ That came as news to a letter writer whose missive appeared in yesterday’s New York Times. . .

NEW YORK TIMES LETTER (8/3/04): I live in northern New Jersey and work in Midtown Manhattan, near the Citicorp Center. I was listening carefully to Tom Ridge’s warning, as the sites he was mentioning for possible attacks basically encompassed all of my daily life. Then he said, ‘We must understand that the kind of information available to us today is the result of the president’s leadership in the war against terror.’

I realized that I was listening to a paid political announcement and turned the radio off. The credibility of the announcement had been reduced to zero.
J- M-
Ridgewood, N.J.

‘We must understand that the kind of information available to us today is the result of the president’s leadership in the war against terror.’ There was more to Ridge’s TV ad, but let’s keep it simple. To the Post, that wasn’t politicization. Indeed, the Post went out of its way to say that Ridge didn’t do that.

For the record, someone else noticed the politicization. And yes, you guessed it-at The Daily Show, Jon Stewart played tape of that very statement by Ridge, and his young audience hooted and groaned. So let’s see. A letter writer in Jersey could see it. A comedian and his comedy audience could see it. But the brilliant eds at the Washington Post? Somehow, they just couldn’t see it-indeed, insisted it hadn’t occurred! And readers, this is the context in which those spin-points are being recited, embroidered and spun. And this is why Dems and liberals must insist that their public spokesmen be better prepared. Your mainstream ‘press corps’ is asleep, snoring, absent. Dems must remember Campaign 2000, and they must insist-they must insist-that the hapless, inert, inept DNC not let this mess happen again. Your spokesmen are good at losing elections. More on this problem tomorrow.

☞ I do think this is unfair to the DNC. We don’t control the Washington Post editorial page or the TV pundits . . . and if Jon Stewart can nail it night after night, why can’t others?

But . . .

(a) You can be sure I will be reading tomorrow’s Daily Howler (which is to say, today’s).

(b) The problem the Daily Howler has identified is hugely important and very real.

The morning after John Kerry’s home-run Convention speech, I watched CNN’s Bill Hemmer interview former RNC chair Mark Racicot. And sure enough, there was Racicot feigning perplexity, pretending to try to square Senator Kerry’s strong defense rhetoric with the fact that he’s voted against every major weapons system (or words to that effect).

Obviously, Mark Racicot knows this is ‘inaccurate and grossly misleading‘ – just as he must know Senators Kerry and Edwards are not the first and fourth most liberal senators in the Senate . . . and just as the Republican leadership surely knew Al Gore never said he invented the Internet and all the rest.

Just as, indeed, candidate Bush must have known it was a trillion-dollar lie to look into the camera and tell the American people, with regard to his proposed tax cut, that ‘by far, the vast majority of the help goes to the people at the bottom end of the economic ladder.’

But what does Bill Hemmer know? It would be ideal if he knew enough to challenge Mark Racicot on an inaccurate and grossly misleading statement. Failing that (and I’m not saying I would be any better in such a situation than Mr. Hemmer), wouldn’t it be great if CNN and others had a segment called REALITY CHECK periodically throughout the day? What more valuable role could CNN and all the other news organizations play than to give prominent and repeated air time to moments like this?

The effect would be two-fold. First, of course, and most directly, millions of people would be better informed. The next time they heard the same false charge echoed, they could nudge their compatriot and say, ‘That’s not really true. They’re scamming us.’

Second, and of perhaps even more significance, talking heads on TV (on both sides of the desk) might make an effort to avoid the embarrassment of a REALITY CHECK, and thus better serve the viewing public.

Yes, ‘my side’ might come in for the occasional REALITY CHECK, too. But to quote James Carville again from the 1992 campaign: ‘We say one plus one equals three, and the Bush folks say one plus one equals three thousand, and [the press reports], ‘both of them are wrong.”

Why is fake news guy Jon Stewart doing the best job out there? C’mon, real news guys, catch up!

THE TWO THINGS ABOUT INVESTING

John Lange: ‘I think ‘the two things about investing’ are:

1) Diversify

2) Start early (or start NOW as in “the two best times to plant a tree are 20 years ago and now”)

IS THIS BOREALISTIC?

As some of you saw yesterday, Borealis issued a press release that its Chorus Motor does not deliver three times the start up torque of same-size traditional motors, as originally claimed – but five times. All I know about TORQUE is that, like QAT, QAID and FAQIR, it’s good for Scrabble. But for those of you who understand such things, behold (or debunk).

PROTECTING AMERICA

So the 9/11 Commission issued its report a couple of weeks ago calling for strong action to avert grave danger. The House Republican leadership sprang into action, spending six hours on a bill to prevent courts – even the Supreme Court – from challenging anti-gay-marriage laws . . . passed that (surely unConstitional) law . . . and then adjourned for summer vacation.

SOFTBALL OF THE WEEK

Bill Davis: ‘I voted for W. in 2000 and have had enough of him and his cronies. My question is this: How can I contribute, besides donations, to the Kerry campaign?’

☞ Visit johnkerry.com and sign up at the Volunteer Center for lots of ideas.

DOING BETTER THAN YOU THINK?

Economist Robert J. Samuelson had an interesting piece in the July 26 Washington Post that included this interesting paragraph:

On average Americans are the best-housed people in history. Since 1973 the median size of new homes has jumped almost 40 percent, from 1,525 square feet to 2,114 square feet in 2002. Meanwhile, average household size has fallen almost 20 percent, from 3.14 people to 2.58 in 2002. (There are more singles, fewer children and more elderly couples.) Americans have bigger homes for smaller families. Now 36 percent of new homes have four bedrooms or more; in 1987 that was 23 percent. And everyone needs a bathroom. In 1971, 15 percent of new homes had 2.5 bathrooms or more; by 2003, 56 percent did.

WHO’S GONNA WIN

Mark Wilson: ‘Another electoral college map is Dale’s Electoral College Breakdown. I prefer it over those other two you posted since his methodology is transparent.’

☞ Just to have them all in one place, here was the first Electoral College map I posted, and here was the second.

RON REAGAN IN THE SEPTEMBER ESQUIRE

Here are two (separate) paragraphs from a piece called ‘The Case Against George W. Bush,’ by Ron Reagan:

… [C]hances are your America and George W. Bush’s America are not the same place. If you are dead center on the earning scale in real-world twenty-first-century America, you make a bit less than $32,000 a year, and $32,000 is not a sum that Mr. Bush has ever associated with getting by in his world. Bush, who has always managed to fail upwards in his various careers, has never had a job the way you have a job—where not showing up one morning gets you fired, costing you your health benefits. He may find it difficult to relate personally to any of the nearly two million citizens who’ve lost their jobs under his administration, the first administration since Herbert Hoover’s to post a net loss of jobs. Mr. Bush has never had to worry that he couldn’t afford the best available health care for his children. For him, forty-three million people without health insurance may be no more than a politically inconvenient abstraction. When Mr. Bush talks about the economy, he is not talking about your economy. His economy is filled with pals called Kenny-boy who fly around in their own airplanes. In Bush’s economy, his world, friends relocate offshore to avoid paying taxes. Taxes are for chumps like you. You are not a friend. You’re the help. When the party Mr. Bush is hosting in his world ends, you’ll be left picking shrimp toast out of the carpet.

. . . Understandably, some supporters of Mr. Bush’s will believe I harbor a personal vendetta against the man, some seething resentment. One conservative commentator, based on earlier remarks I’ve made, has already discerned “jealousy” on my part; after all, Bush, the son of a former president, now occupies that office himself, while I, most assuredly, will not. Truth be told, I have no personal feelings for Bush at all. I hardly know him, having met him only twice, briefly and uneventfully—once during my father’s presidency and once during my father’s funeral. I’ll acknowledge occasional annoyance at the pretense that he’s somehow a clone of my father, but far from threatening, I see this more as silly and pathetic. My father, acting roles excepted, never pretended to be anyone but himself. His Republican party, furthermore, seems a far cry from the current model, with its cringing obeisance to the religious Right and its kill-anything-that-moves attack instincts. Believe it or not, I don’t look in the mirror every morning and see my father looming over my shoulder. I write and speak as nothing more or less than an American citizen, one who is plenty angry about the direction our country is being dragged by the current administration. We have reached a critical juncture in our nation’s history, one ripe with both danger and possibility. We need leadership with the wisdom to prudently confront those dangers and the imagination to boldly grasp the possibilities. Beyond issues of fiscal irresponsibility and ill-advised militarism, there is a question of trust. George W. Bush and his allies don’t trust you and me. Why on earth, then, should we trust them?

TOM OLIPHANT ON JOHN KERRY

Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant has known Senator Kerry for 34 years.  His piece in The American Prospect concludes:

In his remarkably thorough book on Kerry’s formative youth, Douglas Brinkley tells a story about the two of us in the moments just before Kerry began his [famous] statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971. . . . When we entered the Dirksen Senate Office Building and raced up the stairs a few minutes before he was due to speak, we were struck by the absence of people in the stairwell and in the long corridor approaching the hearing room. It felt like a Sunday.

But when we reached the door and opened it a crack, Kerry drew back suddenly, stunned at the sight of a completely packed room. I nudged him forward again and attempted to cut the tension by saying, “Go ahead. Be famous. See if I care.”

It never occurred to me or to him where that moment might one day lead. I think it’s important that the presidency looms on his horizon not as a codicil in some trust fund, a virtual entitlement by virtue of lucky birth. Instead, it looms at the end of a long climb up the ladder from assistant county prosecutor.

John Kerry is a good, tough man. He is curious, grounded after a public and personal life that has not always been pleasant, a fan of ideas whose practical side has usually kept him from policy wonkery, a natural progressive with the added fixation on what works that made FDR and JFK so interesting. I know it is chic to be disdainful, but the modern Democratic neurosis gets in the way of a solid case for affection. Without embarrassment, and after a very long journey, I really like this guy. . . .

YOUR TAXES

Chris: ‘I came across the Citizens for Tax Justice website tonight and even though I consider myself a news junkie, I was surprised to see this. How many voters out there realize that in 2006, for 88% of all taxpayers, 118 million taxpayers, the average tax reduction will be $4?’

YOUR COUNTRY

John: ‘For the heartfelt words of Ted Sorenson, to whom America owes so much, click here.’

☞ This is a must read. We can do better.