Me: Frank Lynch

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For something less spontaneous, I maintain The Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page (over 1,800 Johnson quotes), with a weekly essay springing from one of Johnson's quotations.

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Intelligent conservative discourse. Yes, it's not dead, it does exist, and you can find an example right here.
Link 10:59 PM Home

It's final: no Nader on the Pennsylvania ballots. The U.S. Supreme Court won't hear it. (Maybe Jeb Bush will send Pennsylvanians special registration apps?)
Link 10:04 PM Home

No band like the Kinks. Cooking ground to a halt last night when the Kink Kronikles arrived at "Sunny Afternoon." Has there ever been a band which has done so many different musical styles so successfully? Sunny Afternoon trumpets this pompous protagonist who thinks the world revolves around him, and cannot understand why he's so burdened with everyday, workaday trappings like taxes... and the music melds music hall, high harmonies, low bass... it's just absolutely wonderful. It's really odd, the business of Kinks CD's: their RCA/Arista recordings of the 70's and 80's are now in their third editions on CD (first, basic transfers on Rhino; then, remastered versions on Velvel/Koch, and now SACD/CD hybrids). And yet, Kinks Kronikles has only one edition. Warner- Reprise is just sitting on a wonderful selection, making money, and not putting a penny into it.
Link 9:15 PM Home

Sentimental value. Today I wandered through the Gowanus neighborhood, where many artists had opened their studios to display their works to the wandering public. (It's still happening tomorrow, if you're here in New York; click here for details.) I saw a lot of great, fun, and serious works, and took lots of shots of the canal and fire escapes. But on the way back, walking through Park Slope, I encountered this sign taped to a tree... Like, the wedding band has sentimental value because it was bought at the WTC. I have all sorts of questions, and maybe I'm being harsh, but like, why was it off your finger on 7th Avenue? And, wouldn't it have sentimental value because it's your wedding band?
Link 7:56 PM Home

Bush makes an issue of 1973, sourcing his compassionate conservatism from that era. Why are some things that old legitimate to talk about while others aren't?

UPDATE: I thought more about this, and the article says that Bush's work was volunteer work that may have been some sort of required duty:

[T]he associates said, [P.U.L.L. head] White told them he agreed to take Bush on as a favor to Bush's father, who was honorary co-chairman of the program at the time, and Bush was unpaid. They say White told them Bush had gotten into some kind of trouble but White never gave them specifics.

(snip)

A White House spokesman, told about the interviews, denied Bush had been in any trouble or Bush's father, who was ambassador to the United Nations at the time, had arranged the job at P.U.L.L. He acknowledged, however, Bush was not paid for his work there. Bush's father declined a request for an interview.

"It was incorrect to say he was working there," spokesman Trent Duffy said. "He was doing volunteer service and getting paid by the Guard."

My synapses clicked, and I remembered an exchange between WH press secretary Scott McClellan and columnist Helen Thomas back in April:

Q You never did answer my question on whether the President ever did community service when he was in the National Guard. I wonder

MR. McCLELLAN: Helen, I'm not going to engage in political -- in responding to the latest political attack by Senator Kerry --

Q It's not political, it's a very simple question.

MR. McCLELLAN: And if you want to address -- this is relating to the most recent political attack by Senator Kerry. I'm happy for you to address that question to the campaign.

Q Can you answer that question, yes or no?

MR. McCLELLAN: The campaign responded to this yesterday. They addressed it.

Q Why don't you answer it?

MR. McCLELLAN: It's been addressed. I addressed it previously.

Q What did you say?

MR. McCLELLAN: And if you want to keep bringing up these questions, you're welcome to. But I'm not going to dignify them.

Q What did you say?

MR. McCLELLAN: Go ahead.

Q What's undignified about community service?

MR. McCLELLAN: We've already been through this. We've already addressed all these issues. This is trying to get me to engage in the most recent political attack by Senator Kerry. I'm not going to do it from this podium.

Q That is not true.

MR. McCLELLAN: If you want to talk about those questions, you can direct those questions to the campaign.

Q Do you think it's legitimate to bring up your service in the past?

MR. McCLELLAN: We've already been through this, Helen. Thank you.

Now, I haven't found the campaign response which McClellan is talking about yet, but it seems as if it's a prickly subject. And his getting into P.U.L.L. as a favor is too too reminiscent of an article I read at Salon in early September, by Mary Jacoby; in it, an old Bush confidant recalled that the younger Bush needed to leave Texas and go to Alabama because he'd just been too wild in Texas and it was thought that the change would do him good; levers were pulled to make it happen.

I remember the 70's. Does the President?
Link 1:49 PM Home

The Bush team has been fighting back against the Kerry charge that U.S. forces let Osama Bin Laden slip away in Tora Bora by outsourcing the operation to corruptible Afghan warlords. Not true, they say, with no real hard evidence. Josh Marshall has details on contemporaneous reports from before Presidential politics were at stake, supporting the Kerry charge.

UPDATE: Josh has more, including a 2002 Washington Post paragraph noting that administration had concluded that Bin Laden really was in Tora Bora and that we'd made a mistake in not committing ground troops.
Link 10:56 AM Home

I don't know if you've seen this, but you need to. Another late day link from Atrios: voter suppression in Florida is happening right now in an absentee ballot scam. Low income neighborhoods are being canvassed by "absentee vote collectors." Of course they're not real, and it's a safe bet the ballots aren't reaching the county elections offices.

The Republicans hired a firm which shredded democratic registrations in Nevada; the Republicans hired people to push fraudulent Nader petition signatures in Pennsylvania; the Republicans in Ohio tried to hold firm to a requirement that registrations had to be on paper which met an obsolete requirement on the thickness of the paper. Florida Governor Jeb Bush (related to, um, I forget) has said we don't need a paper trail on the electronic voting machines, because they can be trusted, even though California outlawed them and the head of Diebold, a company that makes them, said he would do everything he could to deliver Ohio to the President. Jeb Bush's operations also sought to prevent tens of thousands of people from voting because their names and demographic profiles matched felons (over 40,000 African Americans would have been purged, and only sixteen Hispanics — the former group is a traditional Democratic block, and the latter is a traditional Republican block).

At what point does the Federal Government step in and de-certify the G.O.P.? Have they no shame? They're worried about abortion, and want to rape the Constitution. Am I Shrill? Yes. Times demand it.

But we are not defeated, and we are resolute. I will make sure every single one of my friends votes, and I hope you will do the same. They cannot steal the election if the vote totals are overwhelming, so please help swamp them.
Link 7:26 PM Home

Doing the math on Al Qaeda. This is a Condoleezza Rice quote which Al Franken is fond of calling on... The Bush administration (Bush himself, and Rice here) have claimed that 75% of al Qaeda leadership has been captured. Of course, in order to say 75% you need to know both the numerator and the denominator. In case you want to read it or have a link, here it is, from Rice's appearance on CNN Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, October 3:

RICE: To be clear, we are after Osama bin Laden. He is being chased by Pakistani forces and Afghan forces and American and other forces. We have broken up 75 percent of the al Qaeda known leadership. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia fully...

BLITZER: Well, when you say 75 percent, of how many leaders are we talking -- 75 percent of a quantity of what? 30, 25?

RICE: Of its known leadership.

BLITZER: But how many...

RICE: I would suspect that that's in the tens to hundreds -- tens to 100.

So Rice doesn't know what the denominator is, it ranges from the tens up to a hundred. "Tens" could mean 30-40, or it could mean 50... A hundred obviously mean 100. The difference between 30-40 and 100 is about a factor of three, but somehow they're comfortable assuming they've captured 75% of them. How do we know it's not really only 25% (75% taken down by a factor of three...)? As Franken points out, they don't know what they're talking about.
Link 2:56 PM Home

Bush has eked out a 2 point lead in the latest Reuters/Zogby poll, and the conventional wisdom seems to run that while many voters don't approve of Bush's performance, they're not yet comfortable enough with Kerry.

It's easy to see why: I got this piece of crap in my mailbox a couple nights ago:

I FOUND THIS QUOTE FROM KERRY. I HOPE NONE OF YOU WERE GOING TO VOTE FOR HIM, BUT IF YOU WERE, THINK ABOUT WHAT HE IS SAYING. ESPECIALLY THE LAST LINE, " RECLAIM OUR COUNTRY FROM THE CHURCH GOERS, THE MIDDLE AMERICAN FOLKS AND THE UNEDUCATED CONSERVATIVE MASSES ". WOW!!!!

HE WAS AT THE VIEWING OF REAGAN'S BODY IN CALIFORNIA.

"This moment in Simi Valley is a moment of truth," Kerry said. "Not just for my campaign, but for the future of my party as well. For some of us, this may be our only chance to confirm the demise of the man who is solely responsible for turning the American people away from liberal philosophy. As Democrats, we need to put small differences aside and be certain that this man is truly gone. Next, we must reclaim our country from the churchgoers, the middle America folks and the uneducated conservative masses."

Please pass this on, for the future of free America!

Famed urban legend debunkers snopes.com dealt with this months ago ("False"), and identified as an intended humor piece, removed from its context and now either mistakenly or willfuly used to denigrate Kerry. The piece was written in June, so this has been floating around for over four months. Of course people are uncomfortable with Kerry when crap like this is running around...

I also received an email claiming that we should consider the financial expenses associated with a Kerry presidency due to "round the clock" security at all the homes owned by him and his wife, world wide. Again, debunked by Snopes.

Snopes has a whole list of rumors running around about Kerry, uncontrolled.

This is another reason why liberal bloggers were upset when the Fox News web site had a page of fictitious quotes from Kerry up, a page originating from it's Kerry correspondent Carl Cameron. The quotes dealt with manicures and so on, were completely fabricated, and show how little concern many in the nation have with a productive election that represents the will of the people.

Is this desperation by the Bush-Cheney campaign to keep these things going? Who knows... But some people have been led to fear Kerry, and when they get garbage like this in their email boxes, gullibly forward it on to their friends without doing any checking whatsoever.
Link 11:54 AM Home

An astonishing absence of sense. During the second Bush-Kerry debate, Bush was asked about mistakes:

GRABEL: President Bush, during the last four years, you have made thousands of decisions that have affected millions of lives. Please give three instances in which you came to realize you had made a wrong decision, and what you did to correct it. Thank you.

BUSH: I have made a lot of decisions, and some of them little, like appointments to boards you never heard of, and some of them big.

And in a war, there's a lot of -- there's a lot of tactical decisions that historians will look back and say: He shouldn't have done that. He shouldn't have made that decision. And I'll take responsibility for them. I'm human.

But on the big questions, about whether or not we should have gone into Afghanistan, the big question about whether we should have removed somebody in Iraq, I'll stand by those decisions, because I think they're right.

That's really what you're -- when they ask about the mistakes, that's what they're talking about. They're trying to say, "Did you make a mistake going into Iraq?" And the answer is, "Absolutely not." It was the right decision.

The Duelfer report confirmed that decision today, because what Saddam Hussein was doing was trying to get rid of sanctions so he could reconstitute a weapons program. And the biggest threat facing America is terrorists with weapons of mass destruction.

We knew he hated us. We knew he'd been -- invaded other countries. We knew he tortured his own people.

On the tax cut, it's a big decision. I did the right decision. Our recession was one of the shallowest in modern history.

Now, you asked what mistakes. I made some mistakes in appointing people, but I'm not going to name them. I don't want to hurt their feelings on national TV. (Emphasis mine.)

So Bush has said that his mistakes have really only been in his appointments, he won't name names, and some of them may have been "appointments to boards you never heard of." Because of an article in today's Washington Post, the appointments thing looms larger.

Following the debate, there was lots of speculation about who Bush was referring to, and whether or not they were still in the Administration. Truth be told, there have been very few exits: George Tenet (CIA), Christie Todd Whitman (EPA), and Paul O'Neill (Treasury) pretty much sums it up.

Now, you would think that the President, having an MBA and gone to some of the finest universities in the land — Yale and Harvard Business School — would have covered performance evaluations at some point. And you would also think that he would deploy his sharp business acumen (you know, the business acumen which made him so much money in the oil business) by either publicly rebuking or replacing the stumblebums who have let not only him but the country down. Right?

Condoleezza Rice would of course have to be high on that list. While it's been pointed out that the Administration was not well served by the CIA in the run-up to the war in Iraq, her behavior is a clear example of the Administration's failure. (I'm referring specifically to how she went on CNN in 2002 and expressed certainty that the aluminum tubes could really only be used for refining uranium, even though she knew that the most authoritative experts in the federal government had pretty much ruled that out. So she lied.)

And of course there's also her reactions to the August 6 2001 Presidential Daily Brief (the one entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S."). The 9/11 Commission report said they could find no evidence of any high level White House meetings on Bin Laden or Al Qaeda following that PDB. We know from her testimony to the commission that she regarded the memo as being a "historical" document without ongoing relevance. This was in spite of an absence of language that would suggest this; it's also in spite of language that suggests lulls are deceptive ("his attacks against the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he prepares operations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks"), cells exist in the United States ("Al-Qa'ida members—including some who are US citizens—have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks"), and lower Manhattan has been cased for targets ("FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York"). This was also, of course, in spite of a Presidential Order which Bush signed on June 30 noting al Qaeda's continued commitment to striking at the US and its nationals.

I also read somewhere about what she was doing for the President that August — she was monitoring some situation way outside her purview, it might have had something to do with congressional politics, I can't find it; but it certainly wasn't any kind of proactive effort on her part to protect the U.S., which would have been more consistent with doing her job.

And there was also her failure to make sure the yellow cake anecdote didn't make it into the President's 2003 State of the Union address. CIA had her take it out of the speech in Cincinnati the previous fall, and she did. But come time for the SOTU address she "forgot" it shouldn't have been there, and later had to confess that the information "didn't rise" to the quality a SOTU address requires.

Why am I paying so much attention to Rice this morning? Someone who the President should have fired a long time ago? Well, today's Washington Post has a scary story speculating on cabinet changes should Bush get re-elected, and one of the potential changes is making Rice the Secretary of Defense, and a domino of charlatans thereafter, such as Paul "I can't remember how many people I've sent to their deaths in the Iraq War" Wolfowitz taking Rice's old slot. Wolfowitz was of course the mover for attacking Iraq in retaliation for 9/11, who insisted to Clarke that just because there was no evidence implicating Iraq didn't mean they didn't do it.

Is this scary, or what?
Link 10:49 AM Home

The wrong war at the wrong time? Tough for Bush to disagree when even George Tenet, former head of the CIA who said it was a "slam dunk" says it was wrong. (Link via Atrios.)
Link 6:38 PM Home

White House attention to Al Qaeda prior to September 11. You may not know this, but the White House web site's "advanced search" page lets you put in date parameters, so, like, you could search on the term "Al Qaeda" for WH statements between the days January 20, 2001 and September 10, 2001. Here's what you get... Five documents: four of them pertain to the 2003 FY budget, and appear to have been backdated to January 20, 2001. Clicking on any of these four leads you to a page that says "document not found." Which is kind of fine, because these documents couldn't really have been issued that early.

But there's one more, which they show dated August 16 2001, entitled "Remarks by the President to Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention." Oddly, this speech not only mentions Al Qaeda, but it also mentions the events of September the 11th. This is food for the conspiracy wackos, certainly, but the paucity of references prior to 9/11 is pretty disturbing. Even when you check under the alternative spelling "Al Qaida" you only get one document, concerning the Taliban. But here's an interesting sentence from the second paragraph of the Presidential order, dated June 30, 2001:

The Taliban continues to allow territory under its control in Afghanistan to be used as a safe haven and base of operations for Usama bin Laden and the al-Qaida organization who have committed and threaten to continue to commit acts of violence against the United States and its nationals. (Emphasis mine.)

So, Bush signs this order on June 30, and about a month later (on August 6) gets a brief entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S." Isn't it surprising that in the context of that June 30 Presidential order, he could get that August 6 PDB, and there would be nary a ripple in the White House prior to September 11? (The 9/11 Commission said it saw no evidence of senior level meetings at the White House in response to the August 6 PDB.)

The web site does not include documents from the previous administration, so I can't make a comparison to the eight months before Bush was inaugurated.
Link 2:30 PM Home

How do they do this with a straight face? In an interview with USAToday, Teresa Heinz Kerry forgot Laura Bush's experience in education and as a librarian when she said about the First Lady, "I don't know if she's ever had a real job." When the error was pointed out, she quickly issued an apology, and the First Lady was very gracious in the way she accepted it:

"Mrs. Bush knows it's not always easy when your husband runs for president," [Laura Bush spokesperson Gordon] Johndroe said. "She knows that some days there's lots of interviews where lots of things are said, and knows that everyone looks forward to Nov. 2 coming around."

But oh no, Karen Hughes had to step into the fray. Before Heinz Kerry had apologized, she said this was "indicative of an unfortunate mind-set that seeks to divide women based on who works at home and who works outside the home." And after Heinz Kerry apologized, kept it up, saying that Heinz Kerry's apology "made it worse because she left out the very important real job of a mother."

Yes, Karen being a mom is a real job. But your job, on the Bush campaign, is to try to stay calm. Perhaps you could learn a lesson from the First Lady.
Link 10:33 AM Home

Baseball, and Joshua 7. One of my brothers tells me that the unprecedented come from behind victory of the Boston Red Sox over the New York Yankees was of Biblical proportions: he says that in Joshua, chapter 7, a city's victory doesn't occur because it harbored something tainted. This summer, the city of Boston hosted the Democratic National Convention, and New York hosted the Republicans'.
Link 10:10 AM Home

Jobs, jobs, jobs. The Paul Krugman column I referenced in the post below reminded me of an important benchmark for examining job growth: the President's own projections. In his 2004 forecast (available here as a .pdf), the projection was for us to have 132.7 million non-farm jobs by the end of 2004 (see page 98 of the forecast). Now, we're not at the end of 2004 yet, only the 3rd quarter, but according to the U.S. Department of Labor, the average for the 3rd quarter for non-farm jobs was only 131.5 million. In order for the President to achieve his own projections — released this year and calculated well after 9/11 and the recession early in his term — the economy would need to add 1.2 million jobs in just three months.

Think he'll make it? Well, only 96,000 were added in September, so he'll have to quadruple the job growth rate to come close.

So: when the Bush-Cheney campaign talks about how many jobs they've added in just over a year, remember how many more they said they'd add.
Link 11:41 AM Home

No matter how Bush says he'll start Social Security savings accounts for younger workers without cutting benefits for seniors, it will be worth taking his proposal with a grain of salt. Or maybe a salt mine? There's not only how we were misled on WMDs in getting into Iraq, there's the unrealistic optimism the Administration has perpetually displayed regarding jobs growth. Take a look at this Paul Krugman column from March, showing the difference between White House predictions of job growth and the job growth that's actually been achieved. It's not just that the White House's optimism was there, but that it persisted in spite of under-performance. With that in mind, how could anyone trust a Bush claim that he'll allow younger workers to divert money which supports seniors into untouchable savings accounts without cutting seniors benefits? Where will the cuts really come from, Mr. President?
Link 11:10 AM Home

George Carlin had this throwaway line in a monologue about novelty shops: "Put two things together which have never been put together before, and some schmuck will buy it." How about Black Sabbath songs in Latin, and on 14th century musical instruments? I kid you not. It could actually be good, I dunno; I remember I liked the koto versions of Mozart's 40th symphony and his Eine Kleine... They had pluck.
Link 9:37 AM Home

Does the end of the evil empire loom before us? The Red Sox have forced a Game 7 against the Yanks, and if they win tonight this will surely be remembered as one of the greatest sports comebacks in American sports history. (Europe may still yawn.) But after being down three games to none — and losing the third game by an incredibly lopsided score — the Red Sox' having pulled even is already a moral victory, and New York fans are wonderfully silent as they contemplate the abyss.
Link 8:36 AM Home

John Kerry's playing of the Senior card. It won't sway my vote for him, but I really disagree with the way Kerry is talking to senior citizens about Social Security. Bush has said on several occasions that he won't cut benefits for our seniors and that his privatization plans will only apply to younger workers. For Kerry to go on talking about how Bush is going to cut benefits to seniors leaves him vulnerable to charges that he's lying. Kerry would be better off, I think, leaving it open ended: explaining the cash flows of Social Security and how you can't transition the younger workers' money in another direction without creating a funding gap in the trillions of dollars. Americans can understand that. But don't take it all the way to say "Bush will cut your benefits." Finesse it so that voters draw their own dangerous conclusions: say something like, "Bush says he won't cut benefits, but I don't understand how he'll maintain them. He also said in 2000 that 'by far, the vast majority' of his tax cuts would go to those in the bottom half, and we know that didn't happen. So you tell me how you think he'll make it work, because he's not telling."
Link 7:20 PM Home

Lou Dobbs' memory failure. CNN host Lou Dobbs was just discussing an effort by UK newspaper The Guardian to have its readers write letters to voters in Ohio, hoping to persuade them to vote for John Kerry. I thought Dobbs was over the top when he kept describing it as "intervention:" as if, when a US citizen talks to another citizen it's persuasion, but when a furrner talks to a U.S. citizen it's intervention (still using nothing more severe than words, not stopping anyone from going to the polls, and so on). But after also mentioning that Putin had said he supported Bush, Dobbs said he couldn't ever recall another U.S. presidential election where foreign powers were trying to be so influential. Perhaps he's forgotten 1980, and how the Iranian government held on to the U.S. embassy hostages right up until the day when Reagan was inaugurated? Even if there was no deal between Reagan and the Iranians, you can't tell me that the Iranians weren't trying to influence the election; and we all remember how that crisis hung like an albatross on Carter's neck.
Link 7:07 PM Home

Anything you'd still like to know about 9/11?

But don't count on seeing it before November 2. Remember: incompetence costs lives, and if the incompetent remain in office, we risk losing more lives.
Link 4:39 PM Home

The battle over the meaning of the word "privatization" is only one of the examples of 1984-ish behavior at the White House. There's the public relations videos they sent out to television stations packaged as news (that would be the Ministry of Truth parallel) and changing content on the White House web site (the page titles that referred to "Combat Operations in Iraq" being over vs. "Major Combat Operations" being over (that one's the Memory Hole parallel). The Memory Hole at the WH web site now has another example, this time on who was in the coalition. I wonder if Poland wasn't on the original list?
Link 3:24 PM Home

They're playing with semantics again. "Savings accounts" are fine, but they won't call it "privatization."

To large, unrestricted audiences, Bush has talked about Social Security in this manner:

• "Social Security reform must offer personal savings accounts to younger workers who want them. Today, young workers who pay into Social Security might as well be saving their money in their mattresses. That's how low the return is on their contributions. And the return will only decline further -- maybe even below zero -- if we do not proceed with reform."
    —in the White House Rose Garden, announcing a new committee to devise Social Security reforms, May 2, 2001 (emphasis mine);
   
• "In an ownership society, more people will own their health plans and have the confidence of owning a piece of their retirement. We'll always keep the promise of Social Security for our older workers. With the huge baby boom generation approaching retirement, many of our children and grandchildren understandably worry whether Social Security will be there when they need it. We must strengthen Social Security by allowing younger workers to save some of their taxes in a personal account, a nest egg you can call your own and government can never take away."
    —televised acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, September 2, 2004 (emphases mine);
   
• "[L]et me make sure that every senior listening today understands that when we're talking about reforming Social Security, that they'll still get their checks... We'll honor our commitment to our seniors. But for our children and our grandchildren, we need to have a different strategy... I believe that younger workers ought to be allowed to take some of their own money and put it in a personal savings account, because I understand that they need to get better rates of return than the rates of return being given in the current Social Security trust."
    —3rd Presidential debate, October 13, 2004 (emphasis mine).

Here's how he's supposed to have spoken to a more restricted audience, regarding a second term:

• "I'm going to come out strong after my swearing in," Bush said, "with fundamental tax reform, tort reform, privatizing of Social Security." The victories he expects in November, he said, will give us "two years, at least, until the next midterm. We have to move quickly, because after that I'll be quacking like a duck."
    —speaking "at a confidential luncheon a block away from the White House with a hundred or so of his most ardent, longtime supporters, the so-called R.N.C. Regents," according to Ron Suskind, New York Times Magazine; (emphasis mine)

Here's how the head of the Republican National Party responded to the privatization quote in the New York Times article, on CNN:

[CNN host Wolf] BLITZER: Were you at that event where he was quoted?

[RNC head Ed] GILLESPIE: I'm not sure. I don't know the date of it, but it's likely that I was. The president never said that. I've been around him many times in these events. He never said it.

Suskind, the author of the piece, is a registered Democrat. The fact is that, unlike the interview that John Kerry was quoted in The New York Times -- it was verbatim, out of his mouth to the reporter -- this is a secondhand report, and it is just flat inaccurate.

BLITZER: He said he spoke to people who were there. But how do you know he is a registered Democrat?

GILLESPIE: Because he's a registered Democrat in the District of Columbia.

BLITZER: All right. [DNC Head Terry] MCAULIFFE: I don't know what his -- I don't go around chasing what reporters' political affiliations. The New York Times, very important publication, I think their journalists report news accurately.

And, you know, if you think Ron Suskind lied about -- the bottom line is George Bush wants to cut benefits. He wants to move to privatization of Social Security, at a time now when many of the baby boomers are moving into it.

GILLESPIE: This is Kitty Kelley journalism. This is reporting what somebody purported to have said, taking it from somebody else, not from talking directly to the source. (Emphases mine.)

This is an echo of the 2002 congressional races, where candidates were pushing privatization while avoiding the label:

So Republicans ... have rewritten their political dictionary and now disavow "privatization," an idea supposedly made radioactive by Democratic mantra that the GOP wants to dismantle the entitlement program.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, the arm of the party that oversees House campaigns, has even banned use of the term by its candidates.

There's more over at TomPaine.com. But for some reason, Republicans object to having savings accounts called "privatization" without explaining why. If they have a good reason, they should do more than just contradict. Otherwise they're trying to steal our language, too. But this shouldn't surprise, given programs with such sugar-coated names as the Clear Skies Initiative.

We want our country back. And our language too.
Link 10:31 AM Home

Kerry has pulled even with Bush in the Zogby poll, pretty much as I predicted yesterday when I said it was trending down for Bush. How was I so astute? To review, Zogby collapses across three days' surveys, and reports the most recent three days every day. When you see a shift from one day to the next, it means the most recent people were different from those three days before: so those who participated on Sunday were more pro-Kerry than those who participated on Thursday and were dropped from today's results. When those Thursday people came in, there was an up-tick for Bush, but that positive Bush momentum didn't continue, meaning they might have been an aberration, and that when they left the sample Bush's numbers would go down.

I hope this means the Republican rhetoric over Mary Cheney is going nowhere.
Link 12:20 PM Home

Good famous old quote: "I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin." — Oscar Levant.
Link 11:01 AM Home

While the Mary Cheney idiocy has continued, the world has lost sight of the fact that President Bush is an uncaring man who thinks little about issues before he decides he wants Constitutional amendments. And that he doesn't care about humanity, and in my mind doesn't deserve the label "Christian." He may practice the outward behaviors (actually that's open to question, since he doesn't go to church with any regularity), but it hasn't affected him in any deep way that would suggest he's on a continual path of improvement.

The Mary Cheney debate question is just one more example. In the 3rd debate, moderator Bob Schieffer asked Bush about his opposition to gay marriage. Here is the exchange (I'll show Bush's answer in full, emphases mine):

SCHIEFFER: Mr. President, let's get back to economic issues. But let's shift to some other questions here.

Both of you are opposed to gay marriage. But to understand how you have come to that conclusion, I want to ask you a more basic question. Do you believe homosexuality is a choice?

BUSH: You know, Bob, I don't know. I just don't know. I do know that we have a choice to make in America and that is to treat people with tolerance and respect and dignity. It's important that we do that.

And I also know in a free society people, consenting adults can live the way they want to live.

And that's to be honored.

But as we respect someone's rights, and as we profess tolerance, we shouldn't change -- or have to change -- our basic views on the sanctity of marriage. I believe in the sanctity of marriage. I think it's very important that we protect marriage as an institution, between a man and a woman.

I proposed a constitutional amendment. The reason I did so was because I was worried that activist judges are actually defining the definition of marriage, and the surest way to protect marriage between a man and woman is to amend the Constitution.

It has also the benefit of allowing citizens to participate in the process. After all, when you amend the Constitution, state legislatures must participate in the ratification of the Constitution.

I'm deeply concerned that judges are making those decisions and not the citizenry of the United States. You know, Congress passed a law called DoMA, the Defense of Marriage Act.

My opponent was against it. It basically protected states from the action of one state to another. It also defined marriage as between a man and woman.

But I'm concerned that that will get overturned. And if it gets overturned, then we'll end up with marriage being defined by courts, and I don't think that's in our nation's interests.

The President not only said that he didn't know whether or not homosexuality was innate or elective, he also didn't suggest any familiarity with research on the topic, nor any interest in pursuing it further or finding out more before proceeding with a Constitutional amendment. That is, he wants laws based on his value system; he is content with his ignorance when using the bully pulpit of the Presidency to enforce the status quo.

Let me be clear: I'm not arguing for gay marriage. I'm arguing that a President who seems not to have done an iota of investigation into homosexuality is in no position to force a social amendment; it's tyranny, and his answer shows not only how little he cares about humanity but how extremely arrogant he is. The President is content in "professing" tolerance, as if professing suggests he's done his due diligence; profess tolerance, show respect, and talk about 'em at home behind their backs.

By and large, Bush's arrogant answer to Schieffer has gone unnoticed, because the Bush-Cheney campaign has spotlighted a comment of John Kerry's on whether or not homosexuality is a choice, when he mentioned that Cheney's daughter, a lesbian, would probably say that she was born as a lesbian. Kerry's remark has been derided as unfeeling and opportunistic, that he's trying to drive a wedge between the President and some of his supporters.

While I think he was showing compassion in his answer, there's no denying all that his answer contained: if the President really wants to know whether or not homosexuality is a choice, he could try understanding the perspective of his vice-president's daughter. The President never suggested he'd ever even spoken to any homosexuals to hear what they've had to say, much less cared; Kerry suggested that the President wouldn't have to go very far to find one if he were so inclined.

Some have complained that Kerry could have cited "very" public homosexuals like Rosie O'Donnell or Ellen Degeneris (as opposed to Mary Cheney, who has only worked in gay marketing at Coors Brewing — she's not a celebrity). But O'Donnell and Degeneris are not working on the Bush-Cheney campaign, and if the President ever asked them, it would become news. But he could have asked Mary Cheney what she thought any time he pleased and it wouldn't have been public. Yet the President never suggested he'd asked anyone. Not a single person.

Now, let's look at how the press has been treating this. We have another instance today, in William Safire's column. He not only hammers on a supposed "wedge motivation," he suggests that the press has higher standards because they gave Mary's sexual orientation no attention ("respecting family privacy") when the VP mentioned it in a campaign appearance (it's even on the White House web site, so it's not like they thought it unseemly to give people access to the idea). I'm not so sure this indicates a respect for privacy on the press's part so much as an understanding of what the larger issues are: this appearance was just before the Republican convention, and the media was caught up in that other tea-cup storm, the Swift Boat Veterans' outrageous claims against John Kerry. Safire's complaints are unjustified: Mary Cheney was not only publicly gay, she had leveraged her sexual orientation while working at Coors in gay outreach marketing programs, and she was working on Cheney's campaign. Kerry never said anything like "that evil woman," at worse he had suggested that Bush could have easily found out how his own VP's daughter had felt. If it's a "wedge issue," that's not Kerry's problem, it's the Republicans. Are we to suppose that the Republicans can mention it and Kerry can't?
Link 9:10 AM Home

Imagine where we'd be in a world based not on observations, hypotheses, and experimentation, but on gut instinct. We'd have far fewer effective health treatments (both medicines and regimens); educational procedures would never have advanced... in short, we'd understand our world far less, and be in little or no position to take advantage of God's blessings. So a profile of George Bush in today's New York Times Magazine is very disheartening:

"This is why [Bush] dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts," Bartlett went on to say. "He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence." Bartlett paused, then said, "But you can't run the world on faith."

Well worth your time to read the whole thing...
Link 4:53 PM Home

For those of you who admire fine writing, or have friends who do, this link's for you.
Link 4:41 PM Home

This is what I was talking about with respect to the daily Zogby numbers. The Sunday results are out (based on Thursday through Saturday surveys), and Bush's lead is again down to two points, leading Kerry 46-44. I kind of expected this: you may remember that yesterday I hypothesized that Friday participants were not as Bush-favorable as Thursday's, since yesterday's results were no better than those two days ago. (For the full explanation you'll have to read what I wrote yesterday, I'm not repeating it.)

It also means that Saturday's participants were not as Bush-friendly as Wednesday's participants. Zogby doesn't share the single day data, wisely, but I'm guessing there was some momentary spike with the Thursday participants which hasn't been sustained, and in tomorrow's data, which will not include the Thursday participants, it might be a little better for Kerry still. (The reason why Zogby is wise to withhold daily survey results and report three-day rolling averages is because so much happens from day to day, one tends to overreact to transitory shifts in the results.)

John Zogby said he thinks that the third debate is beginning to "sink in" with voters.

UPDATE: Just to be more explicit, let me lay out the probable data differences in specific days' surveys which would explain what we've seen... And if you want to re-read each day's news to figure it out, knock yourself out. (You can even use the comment box here if you like.)

• Thursday participants were more positive to Bush than last Monday's. (I think this was because of bad news on the minds of Monday participants rather than a post-debate boost on Thursday.)
   
• Friday participants were no more/less positive to Bush than Tuesday participants, but probably less positive than Thursday's;
   
• Saturday participants were less positive to Bush than Tuesday's Wednesday's.

My gut feel, then, is that aside from Thursday it's trending down for Bush.
Link 12:39 PM Home

So it turns out that our first MBA President doesn't know the first thing about project management. Surprised? Project management means you plan and adjust as needs arise; it doesn't mean you go into a venture with empty holes and hopes that things will work out: hope is not a plan.

Knight-Ridder is confirming suspicions that there was too little planning regarding the rebuilding of Iraq:

Near the end of his presentation, an Army lieutenant colonel who was giving a briefing showed a slide describing the Pentagon's plans for rebuilding Iraq after the war, known in the planners' parlance as Phase 4-C. He was uncomfortable with his material - and for good reason.

The slide said: "To Be Provided."

A Knight Ridder review of the administration's Iraq policy and decisions has found that it invaded Iraq without a comprehensive plan in place to secure and rebuild the country. The administration also failed to provide some 100,000 additional U.S. troops that American military commanders originally wanted to help restore order and reconstruct a country shattered by war, a brutal dictatorship and economic sanctions.

"We didn't go in with a plan. We went in with a theory," said a veteran State Department officer who was directly involved in Iraq policy.

Got that? There was no plan. And even though Bush claimed to have staffed according to military requests in the second debate ("Of course, I listen to our generals. That's what a president does. A president sets the strategy and relies upon good military people to execute that strategy"), he did not.

The blood of our soldiers is on his hands, for his stubbornness in invading, in spite of inspectors who were finding that there were no WMDs; for his failure to grapple with what he was getting us into; and for his failure to properly staff the peace. He had no plan, and our soldiers have died because of his incompetence.
Link 7:14 PM Home

The Zogby poll numbers from yesterday have held, because today's numbers (which include surveys from Wednesday through Friday) still show Bush with a 48-44 lead over Kerry. Now, here's the weird part: I think this means that the numbers from Friday surveys alone are not as positive for Bush as those from Thursday surveys alone. Here's why: since there was an up-tick reported Friday (on data which included Tuesday through Thursday), we know that Thursday's figures were better for Bush than Monday's (see below). Unless the Monday figures were really low, I think this means that Thursday's numbers were also higher than Tuesday and Wednesday, therefore higher than the figures for Tuesday through Thursday combined (which is what Zogby reports, since it's a three day rolling average). Since the number didn't change at all today, the Friday interviews were basically the same as Tuesday's, right? This is why I think there's a good chance that Friday's surveys are less positive for Bush than Thursday's were. So let's stay tuned.
Link 2:34 PM Home

It must be a coincidence. Fox has fired the Bill O'Reilly producer who sued him, Fox, and his radio network for sexual harassment. Here's the hilarious part: they want a judge to rule that they didn't fire her in retribution. Don't they have any idea how to handle a scandal?
Link 12:27 PM Home

In SUCH a way... From yesterday's White House "gaggle:"

Q Did [Bush] wade into the issue of the Mary Cheney remarks? Was he disturbed by them at all?

MR. McCLELLAN: I think the Vice President and Mrs. Cheney addressed the matter. The President does not believe it was appropriate.

Q Are you looking for an apology from the Kerry camp?

MR. McCLELLAN: That's something for Senator Kerry to decide.

Q Why does he think it was not appropriate?

MR. McCLELLAN: I don't think it's just the President, I think it's a lot of people viewed it in that context, John. I think that -- I cannot think of a single instance where a presidential candidate has talked about his opponent's child in such a way.

I really love that "in such a way." It sounds so sinister to put it that way, as if Kerry said something negative or unkind about Mary Cheney. Let's review what Kerry said. Responding to a debate point as to whether or not homosexuality is a choice, Kerry said:

We're all God's children, Bob. And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as.

I think if you talk to anybody, it's not choice. I've met people who struggled with this for years, people who were in a marriage because they were living a sort of convention, and they struggled with it.

And I've met wives who are supportive of their husbands or vice versa when they finally sort of broke out and allowed themselves to live who they were, who they felt God had made them.

I think we have to respect that.

Let's face it: Kerry said the unspeakable, that we have to respect the fact that homosexuals were made by God, that they are God's children, and they didn't choose to be the way they are; and Mary Cheney, as a homosexual, was made by God, is one of God's children, and was made that way by God.

To which part of that was McClellan referring when he objected that he'd never heard a candidate refer to his opponent's daughter "in such a way"? Or, alternatively, is there something in what Kerry said that McClellan considers untrue? Is he suggesting that Mary Cheney is not one of God's children, or that she wasn't made that way by God?

Kerry's kindness towards Mary Cheney may be unprecedented, but it would be better if candidates took time to show compassion for each others' families. It's also not the first time the candidates discussed their families in the debates; in the first debate there was this exchange, on character:

KERRY: Well, first of all, I appreciate enormously the personal comments the president just made. And I share them with him. I think only if you're doing this -- and he's done it more than I have in terms of the presidency -- can you begin to get a sense of what it means to your families. And it's tough. And so I acknowledge that his daughters -- I've watched them.

I've chuckled a few times at some of their comments.

(LAUGHTER)

And...

BUSH: I'm trying to put a leash on them.

(LAUGHTER)

KERRY: Well, I know. I've learned not to do that.

So Kerry can speak with compassion and understanding about the families of the candidates, we see. It's just so inappropriate to talk about them in such a way, don't you think?
Link 12:07 PM Home

A drop in consumer confidence. The University of Michigan's consumer confidence score, based on a survey of 500 households, dropped to 87.5 in October from 94.2. This is well below what had been expected (something in the 92 to 96 range), and is the lowest figure they've recorded in a year and a half (April 2003). This is consistent with what's been reported elsewhere; recent figures from The Conference Board also show declines.

Figures like this don't bode well for Bush; I wish our country were better off.
Link 3:22 PM Home

The Zogby poll shows Bush opening his lead? United Press International reports that Bush now leads Kerry 48-44 in Zogby's three-day tracking poll; the latest results include one post debate day of interviewing. "The previous day's tracking poll had Bush ahead by a slimmer 46-to-45 percent margin.".

First, let's note that it's a very small shift: the margin of error is 2.9%-points; Bush went up less than the MOE (2 points) and Kerry went down by even less (1 point). So while I engage in some cheerleading here, remember that the difference could well be transitory and speculation unnecessary.

When a poll reports rolling three-day results (as this one does) and you see a shift like this in one day's results, what it means is that in some way Thursday was dramatically different from Monday. (That is, today's announced results included surveys done Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday; yesterday's announced results included surveys done Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Tuesday and Wednesday are common to both, so they should be a constant; the net difference must be due to the difference between Monday and Thursday.)

It's difficult to imagine a real shift due to the third debate, because Kerry won the third debate in more people's eyes. But it's quite possible that the Monday participants — who were "replaced" in the latest data — were even more negative about Bush (or more positive about Kerry) than those who participated on Thursday. That is, you can't just think about Thursday's participants, but also Monday's. Monday's participants, for instance, might have been thinking more about the recently-released Duelfer report, which discussed the absence of WMDs in Iraq; they might have encountered Edwards on any of the half dozen Sunday morning talk shows he appeared on; they might also have been thinking about the town hall debate between Bush and Kerry, which included not only domestic issues but foreign policy (Iraq, Iran, and North Korea); they might have been thinking about the explosion outside an Iraqi police academy on Sunday, killing eight, as well as other bombs the same day; or perhaps Rumsfeld's warning that more Iraqi violence was likely.

So the shift, if it's real, doesn't necessarily mean that voters are immune to Kerry's superior debate performance, so much as Bush's Thursday wasn't as bad as his Monday.
Link 2:47 PM Home

Kerry's right on port security, you know. ABC successfully smuggled in uranium, and the Department of Homeland Security admits the failure. Perhaps there is a similarity to Swiss Cheese:

"Improvements are needed in the inspection process to ensure that weapons of mass destruction or other implements of terror do not gain access to the U.S. through oceangoing cargo containers," according to the four-page report made public yesterday.

What makes me think that terrorists are more aggressive than the Swiss? You'll love this part:

Homeland Security officials have accused the network of breaking the law by making false declarations about the contents of the container in shipping documents.

Fortunately, we can rely on the terrorists to fill in the phrase "materials for a dirty bomb" on their packages.
Link 12:05 PM Home

HEY MR. PRESIDENT! Do you really support the 9/11 Panel recommendations, or not? Then get your party in gear to do the intelligence reforms. It's hard work, I know, but as you say, leadership matters. Look, this is not complex: either you support the 9/11 commission's recommendations or you don't.
Link 11:32 AM Home

A good encapsulation of the Bush campaign, from E. J. Dionne:

The health care debate is a metaphor for the larger problems with Bush's approach to politics. He thinks he can say anything about an opponent, true or not. He figures that if he tosses out a few moderate-sounding phrases, voters will ignore how conservative he is. He calculates that if he says scary things about Kerry's taxing and spending plans, Americans will ignore the deficits he's run up. And Bush hopes that if he gets all of us arguing about labels, we'll forget about the problems that are going unsolved.

Bush took off his mask in the first debate; remember that.
Link 11:16 AM Home

Paul Krugman is just so shrill. Republicans are working hard to stop Democrats from voting in many states in the country. Florida, Nevada, Oregon, Ohio... This is another reason why you have to vote, and why you have to get your friends to vote.
Link 9:54 AM Home

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