In today's New York Times Op-Ed, Nicholas Kristof writes the following:
... is President Bush a liar?
[...]
I'm against the "liar" label for two reasons. First, it further polarizes the political cesspool, and this polarization is making America increasingly difficult to govern. Second, insults and rage impede understanding.
Put aside the argument about Bush lying - something Kristof asserts Bush did not do. Focus instead on Kristof's notion that using the word "lie" is an insult which "impede[s] understanding". That's simply not true. If someone has lied, saying so does not impede understanding. If anything, it enhances understanding of the president.
Kristof's column is one long pitch to get readers to:
Accept the notion that Bush has merely "stretched the truth", peddled "exaggerations", and avoided "the most blatant lies" on matters of national security and war. And that's no big deal.
Even if you don't accept Kristof's assessment of Bush, you should shut the hell up and not call Bush a liar.
We watched the film yesterday and frankly, weren't impressed. For example, in the movie there is no mention whatsoever of PNAC (Project for the New American Century). The decision to invade Iraq pretty much "just happens". Also, Moore wastes valuable time with Oregon state troopers and folks in a tiny Virginia town - to make the point that the domestic security program of the administration is a mess. Also, despite critics raving about Moore's segment of Bush in a Florida elementary school on the day of the attack - it was poorly presented. In the film, all the viewers see are clips of Bush reading along with the class while timestamps appear on the bottom of the screen (e.g. 9:05, 9:09, ...) and that takes up a total of about 45 seconds. What Moore should have done is split the screen, run the entire seven minute period while the other half is footage of what was happening in New York at the same time. A truly missed opportunity.
Then there were the cheap shots of Bush, Cheney, Rice, and others getting made-up for the television cameras.
Finally, there was no solid thread throughout the movie. Or rather, there was a flimsy one: It's all about money and oil. While those are certainly elements in the mix of why the U.S. went to war, it misses the core reason for the policy: A revolutionary, radical ideology - one that disdains diplomacy and believes that brute force is all that's needed to transform the world.
Now that we've expressed our view, we still think that given the hopeless situation with the media, Moore's efforts are overall beneficial to the public discourse.
Kerry Spokesperson Calls on Bush to Apologize for Using Images of Hitler on Website
6/25/2004 5:33:00 PM
To: National Desk
Contact: Phil Singer of John Kerry for President, 202-464-2800
WASHINGTON, June 25 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Kerry campaign spokesperson Phil Singer issued the following statement in response to the Internet ad on George Bushs website featuring images of Adolph Hitler: The fact that George Bush thinks its appropriate to use images of Adolph Hitler in his campaign raises serious questions about his fitness to spend another four years in the White House. Adolph Hitler slaughtered millions of innocent people and has no place in a campaign that is supposed to be about the future and hope of this nation. The Presidents use of these images during a month that evoked the memory of World War II is remarkably insensitive to the sacrifices of the millions of people who lost their lives during Hitlers reign of terror.
The Bush Campaign should immediately remove these hateful images from its website and apologize for using them. The use of Adolph Hitler by any campaign, politician or party is simply wrong.
You can see it here (yes, on the official GWB website).
On 22 June, the Senate voted (on Amendment 3464) "To increase the penalties for violations by television and radio broadcasters of the prohibitions against transmission of obscene, indecent, and profane language."
That vote raised the penalty to $3,000,000 for an infraction. We took a look at the amendment. Actually, it was an amendment to an amendment. That "parent amendment" was S3235 - and was the initial legislation for increased penalties. Sponsored by Republican Sam Brownback of Kansas. But look who co-sponsored it:
Sen Miller, Zell [GA] - 6/17/2004 Sen Lieberman, Joseph I. [CT] - 6/17/2004 Sen Murkowski, Lisa [AK] - 6/22/2004 Sen Byrd, Robert C. [WV] - 6/22/2004
While the amendment passed easily (99-1) it is still interesting to see that Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller decided to co-sponsor it. (FYI: Murkowski is a Republican.)
In a New York Times article about Greens debating whether to support Nader or not, we read the following: (emphasis added)
"The battle here is not between Nader and [Green activist] Cobb," said Peter M. Camejo, a Green activist from California whom Mr. Nader recently named as his running mate. "It is between Nader and Kerry. The Greens who want to vote for Kerry are supporting Cobb. And we can't let that happen, because Kerry is against all of the values of the Green Party."
Okay, Camejo is clearly in the Nader camp and is vigorously campaigning for his side. But that is no excuse for assailing Kerry as "against all the values of the Green Party."
Sec. RUMSFELD: Well, you're the ... only people I've heard use the phrase `immediate threat.' I didn't. [...] if you have any citations, I'd like to see 'em.
Mr. FRIEDMAN: We have one here. [...] `No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world and the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.'
Gloria Borger: “Well, let’s get to Mohammed Atta for a minute, because you mentioned him as well. You have said in the past that it was quote, “pretty well confirmed.”
Vice President Cheney: No, I never said that.
CHENEY - 8 December 2001 - Meet the Press
Vice-President Cheney: “It’s been pretty well confirmed that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April.”
Our attention has been directed to a weblog that contains news and satire and shares our political inclination (i.e. doesn't like Bush). It's called the Daily Beast, and is just getting started. Check it out.
What do you do when the facts don't support your case? We see in William Safire's column, a classic defense. Safire wants to keep alive the notion that there was a (meaningful) connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. So he does the following:
It's not the commission report, it's somebody else's (Zelikow or a rogue staff ):
... not a judgment of the panel of commissioners appointed to investigate the 9/11 attacks
... runaway staff, headed by the ex-N.S.C. aide Philip Zelikow
... the staff's sweeping conclusion ...
The Zelikow report ... fuzzed up the distinction ...
... the staff had twisted the two strands together to cast doubt ...
Zelikow & Co. dismissed the reports ...
Kean and Hamilton have allowed themselves to be jerked around by a manipulative staff.
... the Zelikow bombshell ...
Frame the 9/11 commission report as partisan:
... the politically charged Zelikow report.
What can the commission do now to regain its nonpartisan credibility?
... Democratic partisan Richard Ben-Veniste ...
But most important of all, avoid reaching a consensus:
Require every member to sign off on every word that the commission releases, or write and sign a minority report. No more "staff conclusions" without presenting supporting evidence, pro and con.
We were surprised to read a strong editorial in the New York Times this Saturday. It's in response to the "contacts" between Hussein and al Qaeda that the White House claims are significant.
When the commission studying the 9/11 terrorist attacks refuted the Bush administration's claims of a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, we suggested that President Bush apologize for using these claims to help win Americans' support for the invasion of Iraq. We did not really expect that to happen. But we were surprised by the depth and ferocity of the administration's capacity for denial. President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have not only brushed aside the panel's findings and questioned its expertise, but they are also trying to rewrite history.
Mr. Bush said the 9/11 panel had actually confirmed his contention that there were "ties" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. He said his administration had never connected Saddam Hussein to 9/11. Both statements are wrong.
When it comes to 9/11, someone in the Bush administration has indeed drawn the connection to Iraq: the vice president. Mr. Cheney has repeatedly referred to reports that Mohamed Atta met in Prague in April 2001 with an Iraqi intelligence agent. He told Tim Russert of NBC on Dec. 9, 2001, that this report has "been pretty well confirmed." If so, no one seems to have informed the C.I.A., the Czech government or the 9/11 commission, which said it did not appear to be true. Yet Mr. Cheney cited it, again, on Thursday night on CNBC.
When you declare an extremely low standard for suspicious activity ("contacts") and reserve for yourself the exclusive right to interpret the evidence, that's a formula for Total Control. We see that when Condoleeza Rice tells the public how they should interpret the 9/11 Commission report. We read: (emphasis added)
In publishing a report that cited no evidence of a collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, the Sept. 11 commission actually meant to say that Iraq had no control over the network, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said on Friday.
As the White House strove to curb potential damage to President Bush's credibility on Iraq, his closest aide on international security denied any inconsistency between the bipartisan panel's findings and Bush's insistence that a Saddam-Qaeda relationship existed.
"What I believe the 9-11 commission was opining on was operational control, an operational relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq which we never alleged," Rice said in an interview with National Public Radio.
Mark Shields on the NewsHour this Friday: (emphasis added)
And I think what's at stake here, Margaret, is the credibility of the White House, the credibility of President Bush. President Bush has not relied upon fancy rhetoric and prose, he's been a straight talking, plain spoken guy. And what this does is it goes right to, once the weapons of mass destruction argument was gone, once obviously a mistake was incredibly that the military quite frankly, that they were complicit and not objecting to the inadequate number of troops that the troops would be overburdened and overstretched and strained, that we didn't have enough troops, everything about it, the war has been costly, deadly and increasingly unpopular.
Now to find out that what had been a stated implicit argument by the administration that now we're talking about connection versus collaboration but that to have them say that there was none, that this was not a relationship, that ten years ago Osama bin Laden met in Sudan with an intelligence official from Iraq requesting training facilities in Baghdad, never heard back, and that to have this come out I think really raises the question of credibility in the election and no president wants to run for reelection, especially one who is based on his integrity and outspoken candidness on the basis of did he mislead us into this war and knowingly deceived the American people.
What credibility is Shields talking about? We have heard this refrain over and over. It's always, "This time the president has to come clean with the American people." But after a couple of weeks, especially in the face of sustained lobbying by the White House, people forget the mendacity or deception or incompetence. When a subsequent exposure of White House obfuscation surfaces, our tired ears hear, yet again, "This time the president has to come clean with the American people."
Via Political Animal, we learn of an Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times that claims secularism is a competing religion to other faiths. The essay is objectionable on multiple grounds (like citing the Discovery Institute) but we wish to highlight the following claim made by the author:
What is a religion, then? Simply, a system of beliefs based on stories that explain where life comes from, what life means, and what we, as living beings, are supposed to be doing with our few allotted years.
This is followed by an assertion that secularism is a religion based, in part, on the fact that it has a creation account - which other faiths have as well. Then he concludes:
... what we're seeing is an unacknowledged interreligious civil war."
Let us be clear: A religion is a religion if it has supernatural elements (e.g. a god or immaterial soul). Other systems of thought that do not have supernatural elements can never be considered religions.
If Republican's manage to put Reagan's portrait on the $10 bill, it will at least have one advantage. Henceforth, it will be easy to answer the following question:
Who is the least intelligent person depicted on U.S. paper currency?
UPDATE/NOTE: Yes, we know Grant is not ranked as one of the great presidents, but that was Grant as president. As a general, he was quite astute.
In light of recent news, we took a look at National Review's The Corner to see what they are discussing. Here are two interesting statistics for 1 and 2 of June 2004:
Posts discussing coinage*: 16
Posts discussing Ahmed Chalibi: 1
* mostly in response to Safire's call to abolish the penny posted by Quiddity at 6/02/2004 07:19:00 PM
Why, if you thought there was a chance your communications were being read by U.S. intelligence, would you send a message saying that the U.S. was believed to have that capability?
You should never, within a secure channel, report about that secure channel's weaknesses.
The New York Times tries to explain it away thusly: (emphasis added)
Chalabi Reportedly Told Iran That U.S. Had Code
American officials said that about six weeks ago, Mr. Chalabi told the Baghdad station chief of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security that the United States was reading the communications traffic of the Iranian spy service, one of the most sophisticated in the Middle East.
According to American officials, the Iranian official in Baghdad, possibly not believing Mr. Chalabi's account, sent a cable to Tehran detailing his conversation with Mr. Chalabi, using the broken code. That encrypted cable, intercepted and read by the United States, tipped off American officials to the fact that Mr. Chalabi had betrayed the code-breaking operation, the American officials said.
Via Atrios, we learned of an excellent and fun graphic that was developed for Joe Hoeffel's website. (He's running for Pennsylvania's Senate seat as a Democrat.) It's a look at the process and rules associated with the Medicare Drug Card.
