Bush, Robot

I know the whole Bush-wired-for-sound story is already passé, but look at these images at Salon. Apparently some guy who analyzes photos of Mars for NASA did a little job on the captures from the first debate, and really, there is no doubt about it: Bush was wired -- for something.

Prigs for Kerry!

Who'd of thunk it? The Economist endorses John Kerry for President. Their "confidence in Bush is shattered".
This is Bush's fatal weakness: his 'deny reality' tactics only work with the faithful; capitalists like results.

Quickie from the BBC

I'm in the middle of a presentation to some folks from the Small Arms Survey, an outfit out of Geneva that funds a lot of our research on disarmament. And they are all smiles today because a study they funded in Iraq just got published in the British medical journal Lancet. The conclusion of this study, which seems methodologically sound, is that 100,000 excess Iraqi deaths have occurred since the invasion.

It also shows that violence is now the #1 cause of death. Before the war it was heart disease.

The risk of death by violence has risen 58%.

Supposedly the article got play on ABC, CBS, CNN and NY Times, but I checked their websites and couldn't find it. I suspect that these findings will scare a lot fo US editors.

The UK on the other hand will likely be greatly troubled. Jack Straw has already said the government will investigate. (Can you imagine anyone from the Bush administration saying that?). Take a look at the article. It's pretty chilling. Will we ever pay for what we have done there?

Washington Post endorses Kerry

Learning with Freedom Tickler

One comment I've gotten about this site from a number of people is that they have heard about things that haven't appeared in the mainstream press.

You shouldn't reveal your sources and all, but I feel I should level with my public and point out that most of the news items that go up here are culled from other political blogs much more well-connected than mine. (Particularly good is Talking Points Memo, from whom I am pinching material for this post.) It's not that these guys are uber-journalists or anything, it's just that they are in front of their computer all day, reading e-mail and comments from their readers, who send in local stories or tips because they know that the blog will have a rapid response. The Sinclair boycott was a perfect example (Sinclair backed down, in the end).

The other side of the coin, and the point of this post really, is that the mainstraim press, including the big papers and more thoughtful outlets like the New Yorker, are simply not covering some of the most important issues during this campaign. Like, say, massive voter disenfranchisement. And when I say "cover", I don't mean getting opposing quotes from GOP and DNC officials, throwing your hands up in the air, and reiterating that it's a tight race. I mean investigating, evaluating claims, and drawing conclusions.

I won't repeat previous posts here. But Talking Points has a good piece up today on the Bush team's efforts to neutralize Kerry's "You let Bin Laden get away at Tora Bora" argument. You may have seen Gen. Tommy Frank's op-ed in the Times dismissing the notions that we knew Bin Laden was there and that we outsourced the job to local warlords. It certain feels like a definitive refutation. Until you go back to what the administration said at the time:

The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora late last year and that failure to commit U.S. ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against al Qaeda, according to civilian and military officials with first-hand knowledge. -- Washington Post, April 17, 2002

This was not contested in any way by Franks or the administration at the time. Indeed, Kerry's charge is really not controversial at all: it's based entirely on the accepted, conventional wisdom view of what happened. And the major news agencies could prove that by simply going back to their own coverage of the event. But they have done no such thing. This is really kind of stunning. The president is having another one of those "I never said I'm not concerned about Bin Laden" moments, but where is the split-screen with the original footage? I suspect the difference is he's got Gen. Franks and Dick Cheney doing the lying, so the press can't just pretend it's a short memory or verbal slip.

Yes! Michigan!

I've known that Senator Carl Levin is a national treasure ever since he sent me a personalized letter congratulating me on winning a Fulbright. But if that doesn't convince you, check this out: Levin, head of the Armed Services Committee, just filed a report specifically accusing Douglas Feith, #3 guy at the Dept. of Defense, of having misled Congress on the issue of Iraqi ties to terrorism.

(Feith, you will remember, is second only to Wolfowitz in pure hawkish neoconism, and is also the man that Gen. Tommy Franks, now a hired gun for the Bush-Cheney election campaign, called "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth.")

According to the article, this was something Levin and other dems wanted included in the Senate Intelligence Report, but were blocked by Republicans who bargained to postpone issues of political misinterpretation of intelligence until after the elections (wonder why). So Levin just went and issued his own report.

It's pretty damning. There is the whole bit about the Prague meeting of Mohammad Atta and an Iraqi intelligence official, which the CIA already knew was bogus while Feith (and the rest of the Bush crew) were still hawking it. It also -- Kerry operatives take note -- destroys the president's argument that "Kerry saw the same intelligence I saw." The juiciest bit, I think, is this communication from Feith to Congress:

A classified annex sent by Feith to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Oct. 27, 2003... asserted in part that "Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003," and concluded that "there can be no longer any serious argument about whether Saddam Hussein's Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda to plot against Americans."

But Levin discovered that

...the CIA, in December 2003, had sent Feith a letter pointing out corrections he should make to the document before providing it to Levin, who had requested the document as part of the investigation.

If this all seems like minutiae, it bears remembering that Bush and co. spun the intelligence community and Congress the way they are currently spinning the media -- by fabricating counterclaims (Prague, the Niger forgeries, Zarquawi-had-an-operation-in-Baghdad, etc.), relativising questions of objective fact (we must take all claims equally seriuosly regardless of the evidence because the threat is grave), and then insisting that preferring one version of reality (Iraq had operational ties to Al-Qaeda) to another (an on-going relationship since the 1990s) is simply a matter of partisan bias.

Levin, to his inestimable credit, seems to recognize the gravity of what has happened, and has taken it upon himself to try, in a not particularly vicious or partisan way, to stop this perilous landslide into insanity. And don't doubt that it is insanity: there really are terrorists out there and the only way we will ever be able to avert or minimize that threat is by having first-rate intelligence gathering and by listening to what that intelligence says, whether we like it or not.

Freedom from Tickler

I know it's dangerous to go taking a hiatus at this embryonic stage in FT's development -- the blogosphere is so unforgiving -- but I in a phase of unprecedented activity at work.

FYI, I am preparing two major presentations, one on economic aspects of the Brazilian small-arms industry, one on factors that determine demand for firearms in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, both for the directors of the Small Arms Survey, a Geneva outfit that is the world standard on small arms issues, who are arriving in Rio next Thursday.

At the same time, I am preparing a proposal for a Tides Foundation grant on Drug Policy Reform, which has to go out by November 1.

Not to mention planning for my birthday (I'll still be with the Small Arms Survey guys, ooh what fun). And trying to scrounge up enough heavy pharmaceuticals to keep me fully anaesthetized on Nov. 2 (ironically, a national holiday in Brazil).

So, dear readers (all 6 of you), I'll probably post more today and tomorrow, then be out until Halloween. Please be patient, and come back and see me on election day. With luck, I'll pass out on the keyboard and post something like this:

"This is bullshit... Kerry totally won Pennsyllllllbababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk"

Which, if Bush wins, will be about as meaningful a commentary as any.

Publicado!

If you can't get your articles about Brazil published anywhere in the states because of Iraq and the goddamned election (believe me, it's been impossible for like 6 months now), then what other course but to publish an article in Brazil about the goddamned elections?

Read it and weep, my first clip in a foreign language (and hey, I wrote in Portuguese. Not bad.)

For those who read Portuguese, let me say that the original was funnier and sharper, that this all happened very quickly with zero time to review the editor's cuts. But whatever, it's newspaper.

For those of you who don't read Portuguese, suffice it to say that the article is brilliantly argued, beautifully constructed, and possessed of an eloquence heretofore unseen in gringo prose.

The article basically pats the Brazilians on the back for having such clean elections and such great electronic ballot boxes (gotta work the crowd, after all), and rails us yankees for what is looking like it will be one of the sleaziest elections of all time. I point out something I'd like to write about in English as well: that in Brazil, where the vote is obligatory, a national strategy that relies on systematic disenfranchisement ("suppress the Detroit vote") would simply be unthinkable. Since many here want to make the vote optional, I thought they should at least know about the good work of Nathan Sproul.

The irony here is that readers of Jornal do Brasil now know as much or more about Voter Outreach of America than readers of the NY Times. Go Team USA!

The Relativism of the Right

For a real surreal experience, take a look at the NY Times' endorsement of Kerry. It's actually pretty righteous, systematically taking the Bush presidency apart, blow by blow, error by error:

• The hard right agenda: "Mr. Bush came into office amid popular expectation that he would acknowledge his lack of a mandate by sticking close to the center. Instead, he turned the government over to the radical right. "
• The inept war on terror: "The Justice Department cannot claim one major successful terrorism prosecution, and has squandered much of the trust and patience the American people freely gave in 2001."
• The Saddam-has-nukes language, even after officials learned the evidence was bogus: "Top members of the administration knew this, but the selling went on anyway. None of the president's chief advisers have ever been held accountable for their misrepresentations to the American people or for their mismanagement of the war that followed."
• The utter failure of our foreign policy: "The international outrage over the American invasion is now joined by a sense of disdain for the incompetence of the effort. Moderate Arab leaders who have attempted to introduce a modicum of democracy are tainted by their connection to an administration that is now radioactive in the Muslim world. Heads of rogue states, including Iran and North Korea, have been taught decisively that the best protection against a pre-emptive American strike is to acquire nuclear weapons themselves."
• Radical judge appointments: "Thanks to Mr. Bush, Jay Bybee, the author of an infamous Justice Department memo justifying the use of torture as an interrogation technique, is now a federal appeals court judge. Another Bush selection, J. Leon Holmes, a federal judge in Arkansas, has written that wives must be subordinate to their husbands and compared abortion rights activists to Nazis."
• Fiscal irresponsibility and incompetence: "The Bush White House has always given us the worst aspects of the American right without any of the advantages. We get the radical goals but not the efficient management. "
• And the uppercut: "We look back on the past four years with hearts nearly breaking, both for the lives unnecessarily lost and for the opportunities so casually wasted. Time and again, history invited George W. Bush to play a heroic role, and time and again he chose the wrong course. "

All in all, quite gratifying reading. And most surprisingly, clearly focussed -- for the most part -- on the kind of hard reality issues that the newspaper of record should truly be focussing on: the real failure of Homeland Security and Justice departments to make the country safer; the real deception that took place in the runup to the Iraq war; the real idiocy of bogging our troops down in Iraq while Iran and North Korea go nuclear.

So why surreal? First, because the actual news part of the paper is so afraid to talk about any of these points. The editors seem to believe that any facet of reality that reflects badly on Bush is, by nature, a partisan attack, and must either be countered by some kind of stab at Kerry, or relegated to the opinion page. Under a normal presidency you might not even notice, but with so much going wrong for Bush, this policy has created a situation where a great deal of reality simply cannot be thoroughly discussed.

Where did the Times get the crazy idea that reporting fact is somehow an act of liberal bias?

Could it be, say, from the rabid, venomous right?

"To readers [of the Times], it means that President Bush is wrong, not only because the editorial page of The Times says he's wrong, but because the president's views fly in the face of what are being presented as objective facts. No technique of bias is more powerful - more useful as a means of influence - than presenting a candidate's unadulterated views through a prism of advocacy passed off as hard news."

That would be Bob Kohn, charming author of Journalistic Fraud: How The New York Times Distorts the News and Why It Can No Longer Be Trusted, writing in -- guess where -- the Times! Please sir, may I have another?

The piece, pit against an uninspiring Todd Gitlin effort arguing that the Times lets Bush off too easy, is a fascinating study in how the right works. Worth a full read. It takes advantage of a lamentable column Okrent wrote in July declaring that yes, the Times is a liberal paper, because more people write telling him that the paper is too liberal than too conservative. He also points out that there are stories about cross-dressers in the metro section, and that creationists are not represented in the Science Times. (Once again, the right stakes out a position out beyond the ether, tells the left that they are out of the mainstream, then waits for the center to shift over to them.)

So, back to Kohn. He can't come up with any actual evidence that the Times was biased in its campaign coverage, but he latches onto this admission of social bias, saying that social issues are part of the campaign, ergo the paper is inherently biased against Bush. That is, reporting that gay couples who have married are happy, or that minorities have been helped by affirmative action, is in and of itself an attack on Bush.

Then he argues that the paper does the same on hard news. For example, by simply stating that the Dalfour report shows that Saddam didn't have WMDs, as opposed to accepting the administration's "See!-Saddam-was-this-close-to-using-oil-for-food-to-rebuild-his-WMD-program-so-we-HAD-to-invade" spin hook line and sinker, the Times was being biased.

I'm going to lengths here because this really captures how the right works. The key is conflating real issues of objective fact with murky social issues. Social issues are good for conservatives, because they come down to values and liberals' instinct is to respect everyone's values, be equanimous, etc. Then, once the pick is set, you switch to matters like the economy or Iraq, but you maintain the assumption that there is no objective truth. You make up your own version of reality, insist vehemently on it, and argue that the other side is making stuff up. You present the choice between real objective reality and your fantasy version as just another undecidable clash of values, like abortion or prayer in school. You reduce everything to a question of ideology. And often enough, the press buys it, running your spin alongside the cold hard facts and "letting the reader decide".

Epistemologically, we are in Stalin and Lenin country here, where there is no truth, only party lines.

Letter to NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post

Dear Sirs,


On Tuesday, October 12th, the CBS news affiliate in Las Vegas reported that the firm Voter Outreach of America, a voter registration outfit which is partially if not entirely funded by the Republic National Committee, had allegedly destroyed the registration forms it had collected from Democratic voters, registering only Republican voters. The station obtained actual shredded registration forms of Democratic voters, brought them to state officials, and confirmed that they had indeed not been registered. As if that were not serious enough, the firm has represented itself as America Votes, a liberal Get Out the Vote outfit; has pulled up stakes and fled Las Vegas; and is apparently now operating in Oregon.

No mention of this story has appeared on your pages. This is perplexing, to say the least. I find it hard to understand an editorial mindset that devotes space to Lynn Cheney’s feelings about her daughter or the Bush’s crooked smirk during the debates but passes over a breaking story about systematic attempts to disenfranchise voters.

Perhaps the explanation lies in your well-meaning efforts to remain objective during these elections. A story linking the RNC to massive voter fraud could be seen (and will certainly be characterized) as a partisan smear dreamt up by the “liberal media”. And it is true that Get Out the Vote campaigns are often partisan in intention, targeting areas thought to contain more Democrats or Republicans as the case may be. But when an operation goes from registering voters for its side to actively destroying the registration forms of its opponents (or in any other way disenfranchising voters) it has crossed a stark moral line, and becomes guilty of an affront to what may be our nation’s single most important institution, the right of all citizens to vote. This is surely something all reasonable Americans can agree on, Republican or Democrat. If we as a nation cannot respect one another’s right to vote, then how can we expect to be a beacon of democracy to the world?

Given the numerous warning signs that the election will be fraught with problems and the apparent unlikelihood that state and federal authorities will deal with these problems in a timely, fair, and non-partisan way, the press must take it upon itself to keep America informed. Issues of balloting, computer malfunctions, excessive police presence at polling stations, and voter harassment must be addressed before, not after, November 2. Above all, the press cannot be silent, apathetic, or timid about reporting – and more importantly, investigating -- voter fraud. Defending the integrity of the upcoming election -- by helping to ensure every eligible American’s right to vote and have that vote counted -- is a higher mission, above and beyond partisan politics, and the press must avidly denounce all arguments to the contrary. As the CBS affiliate in Las Vegas put it:

"As with everything else in this election year, [the Voter Outreach of America case has] now become a political football being tossed between the two parties, with charges and countercharges, but at its core, there still remains the matter of registration forms that were ripped up and tossed in the trash."

Behind each of those ripped-up forms is a citizen whose most basic democratic right is in jeopardy. Tomorrow it could be you or me. Please give this issue the attention it deserves.

Benjamin Lessing
979 Clark St
Birmingham, MI 48009
(248) 642 4160

Feckless Conservative Cabal

or FCC for short. Confirming my prediction, the FCC announced today that it would not interfere with Sinclair Broadcasting Group's plan to force its affiliates to air a 1-hour anti-Kerry propaganda piece.

But what did you expect from Colin Powel's brother Michael? As he so eloquently put it: "Don't look to us to block the airing of a program."

I suppose we also shouldn't look to the FCC to prevent media concentration, to guarantee public interest programming, to investigate conflicts of interest, and to prevent illegal campaign advertising. But when it comes to handing out fines for attempts "to titilate", well, Michael is our boy.

As I said before, the only way to beat Sinclair is for individuals to call local advertisers of Sinclair stations. This seems to be working already: here is one success story. Once again, if you want to get involved, go to this database and contact local advertisers, politely informing them that you will boycott their products unless they pull their ads from the Sinclair affiliate.

Beating Bush the Freedom Tickler Way

So far, it looks like the grand strategy of the Kerry campaign is to try and hang on to its post-debate bump and weather Bush's attacks, without falling into any traps and avoiding any risky moves that could scare off swing voters. This is sound enough, as far as it goes. Incumbents below the 50% approval line usually lose, and whatnot.

But I am not convinced that this approach will be enough to win on November 2. Between now and then there are three crucial, no-debate weeks, with Bush in control of the terror alert apparatus and the U.S. forces' actions in Iraq (both of which he is clearly willing to manipulate in the interests of his campaign). This plus the numeros dirty tricks up Karl Rove's sleeve mean, at a minimum, an attrition of a few percentage points, in a race that currently has Bush in front in terms of electoral votes.

Kerry needs, in other words, something up his sleeve.

I suggest taking a page from Rove's book and attack Bush where his is strong. His character.

Three memes, three lines of attack: 1. Bush cannot be trusted. 2. Bush is incapable of admitting a mistake. 3. Bush is out of touch with reality. I would add a 4th, Bush is in the pocket of the big corporations. But I'm too far from the US to gauge if this would fly with swing voters.

I think that Kerry needs, and I mean needs, to hammer on at least two of these in the next three weeks. Get these ideas out there, so that Bush's reactions will be interpreted in terms of them. Repeat and repeat lines like "You are going to believe him? This is the president who told you Iraq had nukes!" Or, "You think the president understands the economy? this is the guy who says everything in Iraq is going well!" or, "You trust this guy to win back our allies? He's the one who said he hasn't made a single mistake in 4 years!", or "You think Bush will create responsible energy policy? This is the guy who let Enron get away with murder!"

The non-trustworthy meme is crucially important for the debate tonight. On domestic policy, Bush's arguments are almost entirely based on outright distortion. If Kerry doesn't address this, it will just come down to he-said-she-said. The only way Kerry can decisively win this debate is to bring the issue of Bush's distortions to the fore, to convey that Bush is simply lying much more and more seriously than Kerry is. That said, the "unable to accept reality" meme is equally valid: Kerry should repeatedly link Bush's rosy vision of the economy to his rosy vision of Iraq.

After the debate, Kerry needs to hit Bush in unexpected ways. Get headlines with unforeseen attacks, and be thinking one step ahead about how to frame Bush's (predictable) responses.

Here are two ideas:

1. Take back the Dalfuer report. This report is not ambiguous: Bush was wrong about WMD. Way wrong. End of story. Kerry (or his surrogates) should repeatedly call on Bush to make a public apology. "He owes it to the American people to acknowledge his error and the degree to which he exagerrated the nuclear threat." As the Times noted, Condi Rice knew the threat was exagerrated, so either Bush is responsible because he knew as well or he is responsible for not holding Condi responsible. Either way, he should apologize.

Of course, Bush will refuse to apologize. But in the process he will confirm all three memes mentioned above.

2. Frame any possible terrorist threat to come as evidence of Bush's failure to make us safer. There is a 99% of terror warnings, whether real or imaginary, so frame the issue now. Talk about the latest school warning, which turned out to be unwarranted, and talk in plain language about how irresponsible fearmongering makes us less safe.

And while Kerry is at it, why not throw in some coded barbs about being a cokehead?

How to Make Another Florida

You know, the most Orwellian name going around isn't Clean Skies, No Child Left Behind, or even Operation Iraqi Freedom. It's the Republican Party. A republic, you will remember, bases its legitimacy on the concept of regular, free, honest elections, making leaders accountable to the populace as a whole. Not happy with the foiled attempt to once again purge Florida's voter roles, the GOP is now resorting to outright voter fraud, via wildcat front companies.

From KLAS TV in Las Vegas (as in Nevada, 5 electoral-vote swing state):

(Oct. 12) -- Employees of a private voter registration company allege that hundreds, perhaps thousands of voters who may think they are registered will be rudely surprised on election day. The company claims hundreds of registration forms were thrown in the trash.
Anyone who has recently registered or re-registered to vote outside a mall or grocery store or even government building may be affected.
The I-Team has obtained information about an alleged widespread pattern of potential registration fraud aimed at democrats. Thee focus of the story is a private registration company called Voters Outreach of America, AKA America Votes.
The out-of-state firm has been in Las Vegas for the past few months, registering voters. It employed up to 300 part-time workers and collected hundreds of registrations per day, but former employees of the company say that Voters Outreach of America only wanted Republican registrations.
Two former workers say they personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats.
"We caught her taking Democrats out of my pile, handed them to her assistant and he ripped them up right in front of us. I grabbed some of them out of the garbage and she tells her assisatnt to get those from me," said Eric Russell, former Voters Outreach employee.
Eric Russell managed to retrieve a pile of shredded paperwork including signed voter registration forms, all from Democrats. We took them to the Clark County Election Department and confirmed that they had not, in fact, been filed with the county as required by law.
So the people on those forms who think they will be able to vote on Election Day are sadly mistaken. We attempted to speak to Voters Outreach but found that its office has been rented out to someone else.
The landlord says Voters Outreach was evicted for non-payment of rent. Another source said the company has now moved on to Oregon where it is once again registering voters. It's unknown how many registrations may have been tossed out, but another ex-employee told Eyewitness News she had the same suspicions when she worked there.
[...]
The company has been largely, if not entirely funded, by the Republican National Committee. Similar complaints have been received in Reno where the registrar has asked the FBI to investigate. [Emphasis added]

There is no mystery. The voter list hijinks, openly advocating a policy of "suppress the Detroit vote", now this. The GOP has made vote suppression a pillar of its campaign strategy, and it is clearly willing to break the law and betray the very spirit of democracy if it will deliver even a slight advantage. None of us here like Bush, but I don't believe anybody would tear up Republican votes and throw them in the trash. That is not what this election is about.

In any case, this is one of the most important issues for the next three weeks. We cannot wait for the FBI or anyone else to investigate. The media should be talking about this, raising the alarms (how about a color-coded voter fraud system?), and -- I know this may shock them -- investigate. I mean, what happened in Las Vegas (and maybe Reno too) is a major crime, and the criminal has now moved on to the next town. This is national news. If enough of us talk about it, maybe it will be.

Sinclair Update

As Josh Marshall points out, talking to the Sales Manager may be more trouble than it is worth. The key here is talking (or writing) to the advertisers, who will end up talking to the Sales Manager and pulling a lot more weight. He also points out that if you live in a Sinclair market can just watch the news and identify the advertisers yourself.

How to Stop Sinclair

By now, you've probably heard of Sinclair Broadcasting Group's plan to force its affiliates to air a 1-hour smear piece on Kerry in its primetime news slot. I've been following it all weekend, and just heard it on NPR, so word must be getting out.

And today, the Anti-Defamation League condemned a Sinclair executive for comparing his critics to Holocaust deniars.

What you may not know about Sinclair's dastardly scheme: you can do something about it. There is a kind of virtual flash mob happening right now, with people around the country calling local Sinclair affiliates and their advertisers, pressuring the stations not to run the anti-Kerry piece. It's pretty cool to see, and even cooler to participate in. And it's especially important for anybody living in Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan (Yes! Michigan!) and other swing states.

Here is what you can do:
1. Go to this list of Sinclair owned stations, and locate a station near you to target.
2. Check this database of Sinclair advertisers, organized by city.
3. Call your station and speak with the Sales Manager. Explain (politely) that you find Sinclair's decision to air "Stolen Honor" and that you will be calling the station's advertisers (mention them by name). They may pass the buck, or ask you to contact the Corporate Office first, but insist that you will be calling local advertisers.
4. Call the local advertisers, and explain your objection to Sinclair's behavior, then tell them that unless they pull their advertising from the Sinclair station, you will be boycotting their product/store.

There are also some on-line petitions to sign, and the dems are calling for investigations, which maybe just maybe will chastise Sinclair in time for Bush's 2006 State of the Union.

The only way to actually keep this program from airing is the direct approach. Which, by the looks of things, the campaign has already scored some victories. For updates, I'd stick with Talking Points Memo.

Dismal Scientists for Kerry

I don't always think much of the political opinions of my fellow economists. Too much time shut in an office with Malthus, indifference curves and rational self interest and a guy starts to think of his own moral conscience as nothing more than a sunk cost. But I see that even the solidly right-wing opinions of American Economic Review referees are no match for the Bush adminsitration's utter incompetence.

Of 56 economic professors surveyed by The Economist 70% rated Bush's policies "bad" or "very bad". 20% consider health care costs and the budget deficit to be in "crisis". Kerry was ranked higher on every question except foreign trade. (Summary and graphic here, full results here)

Doesn't that tell you something?

These guys aren't pussy leftists or tax and spend liberals. These guys are hard nosed, free market, free trade, anti-regulation gurus. It's not about politics; Bush's economic program is simply insane.

But then, this isn't the only area where respected conservative experts have balked at Bush's irresponsible actions. Brent Scrowcroft and Henry Kissenger warned against the preemptive war. Nowadays even the National Review is getting skittish. And then there was that letter from the Nobel laureates censuring Bush's science policy.

Bush's appeal to the radically religious and his attendant preacherman antics ("We have climbed the mighty mountain") are no accident: these days one cannot support Bush without a faith capable of withstanding any incursion by reality and rationality. Watch his diehard backers on TV, especially Karen Hughes -- they look possessed, like members of a cult. And there's Bush, leading them off to some utopian Bushtown where they'll drink the national Kool-aid of endless war, infinite deficits, the end of social security and medicare, no taxes on wealth, the final dismantling of all government regulation, and the long-awaited reunion of church and state. Too bad for us, it won't be in Guyana.

The Eerily Prescient Peggy Noonan

In doing a bit of google research for my last post, I dug through some old Peggy Noonan columns and came up with some real gems. I'm sure this stuff has been posted somewhere by others, but I can't resist:

"I have been wondering which candidate would be most likely to lie to me. My impression of Mr. Bush is that he doesn't lie because if he did he'd feel so guilty and so insecure in his ability to pull it off that his face would redden and his eyes shift and he'd break out in sweat. But Mr. Gore seems to me capable of telling a lie, of spinning just about any fiction, and with utmost conviction, too."
September 1, 2000

"[Gore's] lying looks at this point not like a foible but a compulsion, a tendency that is ungovernable, like a tic... If Mr. Gore cannot help but lie about lullabies and grandma's medicine, will he lie about troop movements, and espionage, and what our intelligence is telling us about what Saddam is up to?" [emphasis added]
September 22, 2000

"This is Mr. Gore's problem: Lies are so built into everything he stands for, everything he says, everything he campaigns on--lies are so built into him, that he can barely tell the difference between the truth and a lie anymore. The difference doesn't even seem important. Winning the presidency is all that matters." [emphasis added]
October 27, 2000

You know, if you just switch the names, she's pretty spot on.

Getting All Veepy

I've been given the Tickler a rest for a few days -- something about the VP debate left me cold and depressed. I agree with most of what's been said: Edwards held his own, maybe even won, certainly is light years ahead of Cheney in terms of popularity. But just seeing Cheney up there, hard and stubborn as a gall stone, spewing lies and distortion with what for him passes as a straight face, it made me feel that all the commentary and debunking in the world just won't make the slightest difference.

I mean, here you have it: seven outright, easily verifiable, subtantive lies spoken on national TV by the VP. Not quotes out of context or truth-stretching. And not petty, insignificant misstatements. Lies. Little or no media coverage of this. Certainly nobody pointing out that Cheney has been doing this for almost 4 years now, certainly nobody suggesting that he might be "a verbal kleptomaniac, grabbing untruths from the rack, shoving them in his pocket and hoping to make it past the metal detectors". And the next day, Cheney is out there saying that the Duelfer report actually confirms their case for war (!) and they call it "positive spin".

Bush gets the cable news networks to cover a "major policy address" and proceeds to make what the Times freely describes as a "scathing stump speech", containing no new policy whatsoever. The Times duly reports every scathing line out of Bush's mouth, but makes no mention of the fact that the media had just been duped into giving Bush massive free publicity.

The press is getting played again and again, just as it got played in the run-up to war, and they don't even seem to care.

Of course, at this point, Cheney / Bush have no choice but call up down and the Sunni triangle "a valley of peace". Reality, from Samarra to Scranton, is contriving against them. They need to publicly deny that reality, not only to retain Bush's aura of strong and determined leader, but to empower their supporters to likewise deny the reality they see around them. They are locked in now, all they can do is stick to their guns.

But the chocie of denial as a campaign strategy should in no way compel the press to treat administration rhetoric as above dispute or just one side of the story. Things have long since gone beyond two differing interpretations of events, and I think the media, at least the print media, has an obligation to assert the truth of objective facts, even if they contradict Bush or Cheney's public statements. Moreover, the press has a responsibility to draw the obvious conclusion: Bush and Cheney are deliberately misleading the public. And further still: the press has a responsibility to draw a distinction between minor errors or distortions (e.g. $200 million spent as opposed to $120 million spent and $80 million earmarked through 11/05) and substantive misleading (links between Hussein and Al Qaeda).

Bottom line: this week's news should have been a disaster for Bush. The press would have you think he's bounced back.

Part of the reason this gets me so down is it makes Kerry's efforts seem sisyphean.

But let's stay positive: Kerry has some real advantages. For one, reality is on his side. Bush can't stop the bad news from rolling in, nor his own appointees from telling the truth. Second, and maybe more importantly, Bush has no credibility as a centrist, and Kerry does. And I'll go three: Bush took the last swing, yesterday. It's pretty clear what his strategy will be on Friday. That means Kerry can block and counterpunch at the debate, when Bush is at arm's length, and has nobody to help him defend himself.

But really, shouldn't Kerry demand a free nationally publicized speech? And if the press is so damned worried about bias, shouldn't they grant it to him?

Sedition on 42nd Street

Is the New York Times calling for the president's resignation?

The Times editorial page today does a good job of taking the Bush adminsitration to task for misleading the nation about Iraq's nuclear capabilities and ambitions. Particularly reassuring is their dismantling of a number of Bush's defenses, such as "Kerry saw the same intelligence I saw":

The foundation for the administration's claim that it acted on an honest assessment of intelligence analysis - and the president's frequent claim that Congress had the same information he had - has been steadily eroded by the reports from the Senate Intelligence Committee and the 9/11 commission. A lengthy report in The Times on Sunday removed any lingering doubts.

Or the aluminum tube hokum:

...the president and his closest advisers told the American people that the overwhelming consensus of government experts was that these new tubes were to be used to make nuclear bomb fuel. Now we know there was no such consensus.

The conclusion is stern and well argued, but it stops a frustrating single step short of stating the obvious:

If Ms. Rice did her job and told Mr. Bush how ludicrous the case was for an Iraqi nuclear program, then Mr. Bush terribly misled the public. If not, she should have resigned for allowing her boss to start a war on the basis of bad information and an incompetent analysis.

Now let's think this through: If Rice didn't inform the president, it means she misled him, she's responsible for the war, and so she should resign. If Rice informed president, it means the president misled the people, he's responsible for the war, and so he should...??

Anybody??

Mango and milk

Today I ordered a mango milkshake at one of Rio's million and one juice bars. As I knew would happen, the guy behind the counter was like, "Mango with milk? Really?" Yes, I said. All the employees and customers watched me drink it like I was crazy. Some made comments. "Don't you feel sick?" someone asked when I finished.

Any Brazilian worthy of the name will tell you that you can't mix mango and milk. You'll get a stomach ache. You'll throw up. You could get food poisoning.

The folk legend behind this folk legend is that the plantation owners made it right up and told it to the slaves, who apparently were just constantly eating mangos, to keep them from demanding milk. Plausible, though it doesn't explain the other common Brazilian fruit-beverage mixture warning, "Never mix watermelon and wine".

Anyway, I know you can mix mango and milk -- I drank mango lassis every day for two months in India. Is there anything more delicious in this world? Some Brazilians recognize this truth, but still prefer not to partake of the mango milkshake, just like you probably don't walk under a ladder even if you are a rationalist. And to be honest, I couldn't fully enjoy my milkshake; all those people watching me made me think, "Hey, maybe I do have a stomach ache."

So 180 million people cheated out of the pleasures of mango lassis because of some stingy slave owner 200 years ago. Meanwhile nearly a billion Indians spalsh in redolent pools of mango and milk, without a stomach-ache-related care in the world.

On the other hand, Brazilians are pretty open about anal sex, so maybe it all evens out.

Hot Gossip: Bush Wired for Sound

This one is too good to pass up. Wondering why Bush suddenly and for no reason said, "Let me finish," in the middle of his rebuttal, when nobody had interrupted him and he still had plenty of time?

Maybe you figured it was just force of shut-down-the-opposition habit? Nope. A synaptic misfire due to pre-1973 coke use? Good guess, but no. Talking to the voices in head? In a manner of speaking. An invisible friend? Getting warmer...

You see, it turns out that George may have been using an earpiece. That would explain the outburst, plus the many long pauses where he seemed to be lost, then suddenly got back to his message. Not buying it? Check out the photo.

Turns out it wasn't the first time, either.

C'mon dems, this is your chance. Get Al Gore to come up with some kind of gizmo that will intercept the transmission, run a mike line to the dem war room, then just whisper in Bush's ear, "I'm a stupid moron with an ugly face and big butt and my butt smells and I like to kiss my own butt", sit back, and watch the votes roll in.

Now that would be cunning.

Of Basques and Moors

The Rio Film Festival is still on here, and I just got back from a rather bizarre double feature: the very appropriately named The House of Flying Daggers (highlights: wicked kung-fu-in-the-bamboo fight scene even better than Crouching Tiger; heroine accurately described as “beautiful, but cunning”) and The Basque Game, a documentary on the Basque conflict and the ETA by Julio Medem. Medem directed Lovers of the Arctic Circle and Sex and Lucia, both great films, but I have a special soft spot for The Red Squirrel ever since seeing it, strangely enough, in Bangkok.

The Basque Game, made up almost entirely of interviews with something like 70 people, isn’t exactly as alluring as his narrative work, and at 115 minutes it might be a little bit more about the Basque issue than you really wanted to know (the film was a phenomenon in Spain, the most widely seen documentary in that country's history). But it’s well shot and cut, and it’s sincere in its efforts to make some sense of the situation. It certainly cleared up some of my doubts about what exactly was and is the deal with ETA, as well as the 2003 elections, the fall of Aznar, the pulling of Spanish troops from Iraq, etc..

I can’t sum up 200 years of history or even two hours of testimony (if you're interested and understand Spanish, you can watch hours of footage from the film at the official site), but the basic picture I got goes something like this: ETA has its roots in resistance to Franco, who had it out for the Basques. After Franco fell and there was a transition to democracy in the late 70s early 80s, the Basques thought their demands for autonomy would be met, but the transition was slow and partial. ETA had its heyday then, killing up to 100 people a month, mostly generals and police chiefs, occasionally politicians. They enjoyed moderate support from other sectors of society hoping for strong social change post-Franco.

By the late 90s ETA had brought so much anger and repression down on the Basques that many of them had repudiated it. In response, ETA began to threaten and assassinate Basques who spoke out against it. They no longer enjoyed public support, and the scale and number of their attacks was diminishing. In 1998, ETA offered an open-ended truce to lay the foundations for negotiations with the government. However, government made no gestures or efforts to further those talks, leading to a resumption of hostility in 1999.

It turns out that the Jose Maria Aznar’s conservative Popular Party (PP), which had been in power since 1991, had for some time been running on a platform of fear and outrage at ETA’s terror attacks, promising and delivering hard-line tactics while refusing to negotiate with even moderate Basques until all violence had ceased. Furthermore, it made a practice of vilifying any party or person who did not follow its policy of publicly denouncing ETA and refusing to negotiate, accusing them of aiding and abetting the terrorists. This recipe stymied the Basque's own peace initiatives and virtually guaranteed that there would be no end to violence, since the radical Basque separatists could use the government’s intransigence as an argument for militant action.

And yet, for what were probably their own calculating reasons, ETA offered a truce in 1988. The PP government could have made any number of peace offerings, such as the return of jailed ETA members to prisons in Basque territory (whose family have to travel across Spain and to the Canary Islands to make visits), and cashed in on a peace settlement. Bizarrely, it antagonized the Basques further, essentially scuttling the negotiation process and all but asking ETA to end the truce.

Since then, the PP has continued made a campaign issue of – guess what – the war on terror, more specifically, the war on ETA. It has made public heroes out of those threatened by ETA, and made great political use of the suffering of victims of ETA’s attacks. It has also come to control a great deal of the Spanish media (this was said in the film, I don’t know what the media situation in Spain is), and has played up the risk of impending attack. It passed legislation banning one popular Basque party from the March elections (forcing out a number of incumbent mayors and representatives), and tried to have The Basque Game itself banned.

Hmm, let’s see here: fearmongering, manipulation of the media, no interest in negotiations or peaceful solutions, a preference for violent action, impugning the patriotism of your critics, anti-democratic tendencies... any of this starting to ring some bells?

Is it any wonder these guys were willing to go along with Bush?

The film was made before the March 11 Madrid bombings and the election that brought down Aznar, which is a shame. But it is clear that the PP’s support had been eroded by growing dissatisfaction with a government “crackdown” on terrorism that seemed interminable. In the run-up to the election, the PP, with its conservative base, was just barely able to maintain an edge over the socialists by constantly accusing them of weakness towards ETA (read: sending the wrong message).

Then came March 11.

In the David Brooks / William Safire version, the bombings turned the Spanish overnight from brave, willing allies to sniveling yellow appeasement monkeys. Leveler heads pointed out that the population had largely opposed the war, and that this had already eroded Aznar’s support. But judging from the film, what probably happened, and I think Krugman may have pointed this out at the time, is that much of the PP’s majority was based on its perceived strength in the fight against ETA. (Spaniards too are more worried about their own safety than Iraq). When the government was caught lying about the bombing, blaming it on ETA when evidence pointed to Al Qaeda, they instantly lost their credibility with their “swing” supporters on what was their key issue. The socialists were already on the PP’s heels; the scandal over the bombing investigation tipped the scales.

The parallels are many and unpleasant. For one, it sounds like the PP has essentially been relying on the same technique of scaring the crap out of people and cracking down on civil liberties in order to act on an unpopular conservative agenda that the Bush administration is. Moreover, the PP, like Bush, seems to have an aversion to diplomacy, and has actually effectively torpedoed negotiations before they could off the ground. Instead, they advocate violent confrontation, and make heavy use of coercive, you’re-either-with-us-or-against-us rhetoric.

It starts to seem like a number of governments in a number of countries are all using the same plays out of the same playbook. Certainly Sharon has appropriated Bush’s preemption and no-negotiating-with-terrorists talk to accomplish his own ends. Berlusconi, I wouldn't know, but he certainly controls the media. Maybe what we have here is a kind of technology, a set of best practices, transferable across national borders, for disarming political opposition and implementing a radical conservative agenda against the will of the people.

But then, this technology really isn’t really so new. It goes back at least to 1933.

The other parallel, also unpleasant, is with the Iraqi militants, and really all terrorist groups. ETA has learned to propagate itself, indoctrinating youth, funneling adolescent rage and discontent into violence, using each new government attack or crackdown to recruit new members and sympathizers. It’s almost 30 years since ETA was born, most Basques are opposed, but it has yet to be stamped out. Force alone will simply not work, ever. It only perpetuates the cycle. Unfortunately, that makes force a perfect policy for those who benefit politically from the conflict. And there will always be those who benefit from conflict. (If you are Allawi, unpopular among Iraqis and digging the powers you granted yourself under martial law, do you really want peaceful, legitimate, all-inclusive elections?)

In any case, the fact that the Spanish ended up throwing out the PP does offer some hope. A democracy can get fed up of being manipulated. It could happen here: imagine if on October 30, somebody blows up Grand Central or Union Station. Bush says “We know its Al Qaeda,” insists it was Bin Laden, but the next day we find out that it was some kind of Timothy McVeigh and that Bush knew it. What would be the effect? Bush would lose all but his most ardent supporters, just like the PP.

But would that ever happen? Is the American media at this point capable of calling a lie a lie?

I think we already know the answer to that one. We don’t have to wait for Bush to lie about another attack: he already blamed Saddam for 9/11. That’s no worse (nor less ridiculous) than blaming ETA for March 11. The difference is, the press let him get away with it. It's two years and 1,000 U.S. deaths later, and they still can't bring themselves to say it.

Peter Davis Blames it on Rio

Last Friday we saw another Peter Davis film, The Selling of the Pentagon. Not a film actually; an hour-long CBS News special investigative report, tearing the Pentagon a new one, that apparently aired during primetime.

Imagine that!

Of course, it then led to a major furor that went all the way to Congress and didn't subside for several months.

The point is that this kind of stuff just doesn’t get made these days: a full-hour exposé of the Pentagon’s public relations department and how it wastes taxpayer money promoting a vision of the cold war (active confrontation) that was no longer in harmony with current U.S. policy (which by 1971 was known as Peaceful Coexistence). The narrator (Roger Mudd) actually argues that foreign policy is the domain of the State Department, and that therefore the Pentagon’s actions violated democratic principles. Can you imagine? Today's news would never air such a thing, and if it did, it would feel the need to add that Kerry missed a senate vote, however, which also violates democratic principles.

But then, wasn’t Vietnam the living room war? And who was responsible for that? The network news crews. They were in there, back before imbedding, showing all the gory reality that the Pentagon didn’t want shown. So I guess it shouldn’t have come as such a shock that things were so different back then. After all, the boys in the war room didn’t learn nothing in Vietnam.

Anyway, Peter Davis was there again (the guy is loving life here in Rio, getting the warmest reception I think he’s ever had), and during the Q and A someone asked him why the news has became less critical of the war, had the Pentagon gotten smarter. He said he doubted it, but they don't need to be smart now because all the TV news agencies are owned by a handful of companies, none of who would bankroll a serious critique of the military industry complex.

Which got me thinking: maybe the whole liberal media / conservative media thing is a red herring. The more important shift isn't left/right but the shift from a posture of resourceful investigation to supine passivity, from hell-raising and nosy to utterly innocuous. Is there any way back?

Another great moment: someone asked where his films could be purchased, and Davis responded that he just didn’t know, that most of them belonged to CBS, which was no longer distributing them. Then he turned to the organizer of the Festival who had introduced him and said, “Alright, let’s do it like this. You’re the director of the festival. The films are all here. Please, before you send the films back, make pirated copies of all of them. A lot of pirated copies.” Totally righteous.

Games without fronteirs

O.K., enough debate analysis for now. I'll leave it to the pros.

Comparative advantage and all.

Which, of course, dictates that I should serve up the blog equivalent of low-cost raw materials or textiles, perhaps to later be repackeged and distributed with a great deal of value added.

But my real comparative advantage here is that I haven't watched American TV for like three or four years. Seriously. I followed the entire primary season via the web (never saw the Dean scream) and I haven't seen a single TV appearance by any of the major Bush team players (not Cheney, not Rumsfeld, not Powell or Rice, not McLellan or Fleisher, nobody). I've never heard Edwards speak. In fact, before the debate, I'd only heard Bush and Kerry speak once each: Kerry at the convention, and Bush a few hours after the 9/11 attacks (dubbed into Spanish, watched over the heads of a barful of Argentines, in Buenos Aires). My entire sense of the candidates, of the campaign, of the Bush presidency, comes entirely from print. Believe it or not.

So tuning into the debate was a real shocker. To my untrained ears and eyes, the whole spectacle was just bizarre. On the one side, a clearly intelligent and thoughtful man trying very hard not to sound nerdy or know-it-all (like Gore did) and surpress or severely muffle deeply held convictions (that internationalism makes the U.S. safer, say, and even still he probably said too much). On the other, a man willfully misrepresenting a muddled chaos of his own design as a simple, uplifting, and essentially biblical narrative, also of his own design, and utterly unhinged from reality. Both sides ran through a series of what appear to be de rigueur set pieces designed to prove that they possess certain character traits (personable, human, sympathetic, family man, regular guy, understands sacrifice, etc.) that are themselves de rigueur for eligibility to public office. Both men went through more or less subtle but complete transformations when given the chance to speak into the camera (with teleprompter) for the last two minutes. But throughout an undergirding fear seemed to inform every instant of bothe men's performances: everything you say, everything you profess to stand for, every gesture, every intonation, in sum your entire person will be cut up into little bits, quoted out of context, misrepresented, used against you, and it will be the result of that process that will decide who won.

Kerry said later that it felt great to break out of the 30-second sound-bite box and be able to lay his ideas out, and it showed. But he still seemed like a man boxed in. I mean, were the debates really anybody's idea of rhetorical freedom? Just ask yourself this: did either of these two men sound anything at all like two normal human beings discussing ideas, policies, history, etc.? Is this the way that any American who is not running for president talks? Maybe I am out of touch, but what struck me was the complete artificiality of the dialogue. And of course it is artificial: the Republicans mastered a way of framing issues and encapsulating them in five to fifteen word chunks, repeating them ad nauseum, and then sending out armies of shills to talk about these chunks as though they were obvious and indubitable aspects of reality (e.g. Gore has a lying problem, Kerry has a "medals" problem).

Now the Democrats are beginning to catch up, which is great to see (though Kerry has a congenital disadvantage in that he sincerely is interested in policy issues, and so must find a way to pack actual, complex ideas into a nice easy to swallow capsule, where for Bush, the packaging either is the policy (Stay the Course), or else bears no substantive relation whatsoever to the actual agenda (Clean Skies, No Child Left Behind), allowing for total creative freedom.) Again, it's an enormous relief to see the dems finally learning how to play the game, but what kind of game is it? Is being the better player of this ugly contest of marketing, of constructing and defending a simplistic and ultimately dishonest image, of manipulating the press, of appealing to the worst in the electorate, and above all, of shouting loudest, is this even remotely acceptable as the test for who will run the country? Worse, now that the dems are learning to play, will anybody ever take action to change the rules? Is this really the final destiny of modern democracy?

Recommended viewing

If you haven't seen it yet, the "Faces of Frustration" video from the Dems is deeply gratifying. Nice job on the soundtrack too.

Limeys for Kerry

You know, Bush’s spiel about “You can’t denigrate our coalition allies and then expect others to join us,” has a rough-and-ready logic that may win over the suggestible and the unreflective, and I bet it will serve him well in the next few weeks. If Americans can be stirred to care at all about the “feelings” of any foreign country, the U.K. and Australia are probably strong candidates.

But one important point -- that I doubt Kerry or anyone in the media will make -- is that the majority of the citizens of these countries are strongly opposed to the war, and always were. (Why do you think their governments sent so few troops?)

I watched the debates with an English friend of mine, and it didn’t even occur to him to be offended by the whole “coalition of the bribed” thing. He liked Kerry. He said, “He’s the first presidential candidate I can remember who actually seems to truly think and care about what other countries think of the U.S.” That’s true, and Kerry not only conveyed it with no apologies, but made Bush’s unilateralism seem retrograde. Bush’s only argument is that things have gotten so bad now that nobody could possibly get an estranged ally to get on board.

That’s not a bad argument, actually – I too found myself doubting whether Kerry could really convince anybody to help foot the bill for our fuck-up. But my friend’s reaction makes me think differently. People haven’t given up entirely on America, and neither have their leaders. In any case, they know they have to deal with us. They’ve learned to live with Bush, but they’re thirsty for a little reasonableness, non-arrogance, competence, and honesty. Kerry, if elected, could use that to win a great deal of sympathy and cooperation (What you might call the Viola Swamp principle in action.)

Sure, a single Brit isn’t exactly a meaningful sample size, but if this is how your average European sees Kerry (“sincere”, “intelligent”, “probably make a good president”), then it’s just possible that Kerry really could restore our alliances and our credibility.

Poland to the rescue

Check out this nice catch on Bush's lame "You forgot about Poland" gotcha... This is why they invented blogs.

The day after

After a good night's sleep, I can admit that the debate wasn't exactly a knock-down drag-out affair. Kerry missed some opportunities (he forgot to hammer home the "Bush is out of touch with reality" meme). And he still has a go-on-the-defensive tic he should have more thoroghly suppressed.

Bush had a few delightful deer-in-the-headlights moments, but he usually managed to swerve back on to message before disaster struck.

Most of all, Kerry failed to land a knockout punch when he had Bush on the ropes. He didn't go in for the kill. He didn't seize on Bush's weak moments to rub his beady-eyed face in the mud. (Didn't he learn anything at Yale?)

How could he have done this? How about saying "How can you have a serious debate with a guy who just keeps repeating the same two sentences?" Taking it to the next level. Stating plainly that the emperor has no clothes.

Would it have worked? Maybe, maybe not. I think it would have been worth the risk. Bush was so unconfortable with even minor criticism, imagine full-on mockery.

Moreover, Bush's onlly high marks so far have been in "relentlessly hammering home his message" (i.e. however bad he is, Kerry changed his position and doesn't agree with the war so can't be voted for). But with a single sarcastic phrase, Kerry could have transformed "hammering" into "mindlessly repeating the same phrase", and its consequent "has nothing else to say for himself". This would utterly disarm Bush, who relies on his two or three stock phrases to get himself back on track when his mind goes blank.

Anyway, back in the real world, Bush has to hope that his endless repetition of the “inconsistent" and “sending bad messages” trope will win the day, but my feeling is that it has already run its course, and may backfire now. Whereas the press bought his “Gore is a liar” epithet, it is beginning to question the flip-flop assertion and is defending Kerry's right to criticize the war. More importnatly, where Gore essentially ceded the point, Kerry is flatly, succintly denying it. As a result, I can’t see anyone who isn’t already convinced getting convinced by it in the next six weeks.

I can, on the other hand, see people being convinced by Kerry, especially if he keeps up the attack.

In fact, I'd say the same applies to the race as a whole: the only kind of person who could watch last night's debate and conclude from it that Bush is somehow "stronger" or "firmer" is one who already holds that to be an a priori truth. Bush's performance was good enough for those who are already in his camp, but I cannot honestly imagine a truly undecided voter (as opposed to Republican stooges posing as undecideds) being won over by what was on display.

Go Freedom Tickler, Go!

I'll try to make a more sober assessment of the debate tomorrow. But before I go to sleep, I can't resist mentioning a great FT moment: when Kerry attacked Bush's absurd mini-nuke Bunker Buster development program, a point which went totally unrefuted.

Unless you count a $53 billion non-functional missile defense system as a refutation.

Anyway, a big Freedom Tickler salute to Kerry for bringing up a very real and important issue, and for turning it to good rhetorical use. Not to mention giving me my first blog victory: I wrote about the mini-nukes just yesterday, in my 2nd ever post. Cyberscore, dude!

Don't believe the hype...

Kerry rocked tonight.

Whatever the pollsters and pundits and other assorted shills are saying on the cable networks, whatever faux-even-handed compromise solution the big papers come to tomorrow, whatever cock and bull story they try to sell about it being a draw or Kerry having been on the defensive, about Bush having shown his strength to the American people, man, don't even waste your time.

These guys have been instructed and paid to say that. They would be saying exactly the same thing no matter what had happened in the debate. Now that Bush took such a beating, they have to say it, to pretend they are winning, just like Bush has to keep pretending that we are winning in Iraq.

Don't listen to the hype. Just believe what you saw with your own eyes:

Kerry kicked Bush's lilly-white ass.

Bush is going to lose this election.

Know it. Believe it. Say it.