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Marc
To be fair, this is a policy with bipartisan support. Clinton did the same thing the last time Haiti went down the tubes. Utterly shameful.
Marc
From today's Washington Post:
Additionally, two of Kerry's biggest fundraisers, who together have raised more than $400,000 for the candidate, are top executives at investment firms that helped set up companies in the world's best-known offshore tax havens, federal records show.
Tony
Finally, a high-ranking government official has come right out and stated the obvious. Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, in testimony given to the House Budget Committee yesterday, said that Social Security benefits that have been promised to future retirees must be cut in order to deal with a ballooning long-term federal defecit. Greenspan urged Congress to consider spending cuts before tax increases, although he noted that both would probably be necessary in order to deal with the impending budget crisis. Although Greenspan again urged that current retirement benefits should not be cut, he listed two specific ways in which Congress could cut spending: gradually raise the retirment age to reflect the increased life expectancy of Americans, and linking cost of living increases to something other than the Consumer Price Index, which many experts believe over-states the rise of overall prices.Hopefully we'll look back on this testimony as the beginning of a long and sometimes painful (but nonetheless neccessary) reexamination of entitlement programs in this country.
Tony
Marc
Marc
Read more at Wonkette and Magnifisyncopathological.
Marc
MOORE ACTING MORE LIKE A CANDIDATE. Ousted Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore (R) -- the "Ten Commandments Judge" -- is starting to act more and more like a third party Presidential candidate. For a guy who isn't running for President "right now" (to quote his spokesperson), he's sure doing things that candidates seem to do. In fact, according to the Constitution Party's website, Moore is speaking at party events in Oregon and Montana this month. With President Bush currently trailing both Kerry and Edwards for re-elction by double-digits -- according to the latest CNN poll -- that last thing he wants in November is a "Ralph Nader of the Right" draining Christian conservative votes from his essential base.As a pro-life libertarian who supports a strong national defense, I am somewere between the LP and the Constitution Party. I like some of the stuff in their platform (banning abortion, pulling out of the UN), if not the whole thing (immigration moratorium, NAFTA repeal). But this Moore guy is a total buffoon, and I'm glad he got thrown out on his ass from the Alabama Supreme court. Here is another piece about a potential Moore run that notes the Constitution Party had its presidential candidate on the ballot in 41 states in 2000.
By the way, some guy from Glen Burnie is running for president on the Constitution Party ticket. His slogan is "God, Family, Republic". Good luck!
Marc
1) GOP Senator Saxby Chambliss criticizes Sen. Kerry's "32-year history of voting to cut defense programs and cut defense systems."Marc2) Kerry responds:``I don't know what it is about what these Republicans who didn't serve in any war have against those of us who are Democrats who did."
If Kerry's response to every substantive GOP charge about his record as a Senator is going to be 'I served in Vietnam,' it'll be a long campaign. [You mean "long"="tedious" or "long"="losing"?-ed. Both! Expand pls--ed. a) It will get old very quickly; b) It's not a rational response to a question about his defense voting record. "I support a robust defense but not wasted spending that leads to crippling GOP budget deficits" would be a rational response.]
Massachusetts Democrats are devising a plan to keep John F. Kerry's US Senate seat in their party's hands by blocking Governor Mitt Romney from naming an interim replacement if Kerry wins the White House.Yet another example of fair play from the party that elected a dead man's wife to the Senate from Missouri in 2000, and pulled a political dead man off the ballot at the last minute in the 2002 NJ Senate race.Beacon Hill lawmakers want to pass legislation that would leave Kerry's seat vacant for two months or more, until a special election is held to fill it. That would prevent the Republican governor from naming an interim senator, as is currently required by state law.
The initiator of the proposal -- Representative William M. Straus, Democrat of Mattapoisett -- insisted he is not being partisan.
Marc
The overall thrust of the article is that moderates, and more specifically the DLC, torpedoed Dean's campaign because they didn't agree with his policy positions and, as Mohaiemen implies, feared his radical, liberal message. Before I delve into that, however, I'd like to quote from the article.
By the sixth paragraph, after complaining about the Republican tactics that defeated Jimmy Carter and Michael Dukakis (and also failing to present one logical reason why either candidate should have won his race, save for a mention that "Carter's gentle ways secured the historic Camp David Egypt-Israel accord") Mohaiemen brings up the DLC. The resentment is palpable as the author explains how the DLC moved the party toward the center, a move that resulted in a Democratic president winning two elections in a row, something that hadn't happened since FDR. The piece then turns to the 2000 race.:
Nothing succeeds like success. Buoyed by Clinton's popularity, a balanced budget and an era of prosperity, the DLC became the standard-bearer for the Democrats' political identity. That is until 2000, when the DLC's next king-apparent, Al Gore, took a stumble in the Florida panhandle and was then hog-tied by the Supreme Court. When the dust had settled and King George was safely inside the palace, a recount revealed that Gore had actually won, but the damage was done. The DLC's critics now came out of hiding - attacking the party for being too centrist, too cautious and too much like "Republican-lite." If you try to ape the right-wing of the nation, voters may decide to go for the "real thing"!
Forgetting for the moment the petty use of royal imagery, Mohaiemen is dead wrong. While it's true that Al Gore was once a poster boy of the "New Democrats," he did not lose the 2000 election because he was a moderate. He lost the election because he was a moderate who tried to run as a populist. Gore ran away from himself in 2000, and in the process failed to win even one southern state, including his home state of Tennessee and his boss' home state of Arkansas. Rather than running on the still-booming economy and his own personal efforts to scale back the size and scope of the federal government, Gore's campaign was consumed with fighting anything big: Tobacco, Drug Companies, Oil, HMOs, etc. You name it, Gore was ready to take it on. He was fighting for "the people, not the powerful." He didn't lose because of his moderate beliefs, but rather in spite of them.
Am I making too big a deal of this one paragraph? Maybe. But there must be some degree of accountability on this matter. You can't say that Al Gore was a moderate and that's why he lost the election because it fits nicely into your piece. You cannot wish things true by merely writing them down.
Moving on to the overall point of the piece -- that Dean was brought down by the sinister forces of moderate members in the Democratic party. While there were undoubtedly moderate members of the party who didn't like Howard Dean's rhetoric, there was also no denying that Dean had a relatively conservative gubnatorial record while Governor of Vermont. Even before Dean was a presidential candidate he was on record as advocating raising the retirment age, a position he took back at the behest of members of the Democratic party. As Governor Dean received glowing marks from the NRA. And as a candidate he argued that gun control laws should be different in rural areas than they are in urban areas, a position that many liberals deemed obliquely racist. Dean even went so far outside of accepted liberal orthodoxy as to say that he wanted the votes of white guys with Confederate flags painted on their pick-ups. Dean may have been caustic in his remarks about the war in Iraq and his anger at President Bush, and his supporters were certainly more liberal than the rest of the Democratic Party, but it's hard to say Dean was a dyed-in-the-wool liberal.
Although Mohaiemen claims (typically without offering any evidence) that the "DLC reacted with fury to the Dean candidacy...[and] attacks were carried out by DLC operatives," Dean's most vocal critic prior to the Iowa caucus was Missori Rep. Dick Gephardt, hardly a DLC-er, who attacked Dean in Iowa over tax breaks to insurance companies, Medicare, and Dean's derogatory comments about the Iowa caucus.
I know that Mohaiemen's piece is small article published on a fringe website, but I can't help the anger that reading it stirs in me. To me, as a (for the time-being) moderate Democrat, this is important because websites like AlterNet is a major news source for a number of liberal and left-leaning people. Articles like this one paint a picture for the reader that is already in the reader's mind. However, the real danger comes when articles like this are so devoid of facts, and predicated on false notions that the author might really wish were true. When this happens the state of public discourse takes another hit, not to mention the ability of those who would criticize the President (and there is ample room to do so, both on the right and left), to present a clear and accurate argument.
Do I think that Naeem Mohaiemen purposefully misled readers? No. I think that Mohaiemen honestly believes everything in the article. It's not as if these facts weren't avaiable to the author. I mean, I researched this article on the internet while writing it. The problem is that facts do not find refuge in the pen of a true-believer. After all, when yours is the side of good and righteous, facts often become just something to write around. If this is liberalism, you can officially count me out.
Tony
Tony
TIME OF DECISION: Almost six in 10 voters decided in the last week, including about two in 10 who decided in the last three days and almost that many who decided Tuesday. Edwards led by a 2-to-1 margin among those who decided in the last three days. Kerry led by 30 points among those who decided in the last month or earlier. Edwards got major newspaper endorsements in the closing days of the campaign and performed well in a debate Sunday night. More than six in 10 independents decided in the last week, and Edwards got half of them.
The Zogby poll was taken on Friday and, as the exit poll results show, Edwards made great strides by Tuesday. By looking at this poll, the results and the exit polls, we see that Edwards was able, in the waning moments of the contest, to take votes away from Kerry in order to secure his suprising second place finish. Further, Zogby's Dean number is only about five points off the final result, and when you factor in margin of error, that's not bad.
Polls should never be designed nor interpreted as if they will predict the winner and the margin, although sometimes they can. They are a snapshot of the race at the time the poll was taken, with a shelf-life of, at max, a couple of days. I think Zogby's analysis (as if his numbers preclude the need for an actual vote) is wrongheaded. But, I don't see this as an example that Zogby's a fraud.
| Candidate | Feb 13 -15 |
| MA Senator John Kerry | 47 |
| Former VT Governor Howard Dean | 23 |
| NC Senator John Edwards | 20 |
| OH Congressman Dennis Kucinich | 2 |
| Civil Rights Activist Rev. Al Sharpton | 1 |
| Undecided | * |
Maybe Edwards made another amazing comeback.
Marc
