An important, loooong article by Howie Kurtz in this morning's Washington Post, based on impressive access to Dean for America insiders, about the internal "civil war" that raged in the Dean campaign, primarily between Joe Trippi, the fotched-on campaign manager from Washington, D.C., and Kate O'Connor, "the quiet, shrewd, low-profile Vermont confidante who never left Dean's side." Seems clear that in the clinches, O'Connor had more power than Trippi.
It's all here ... the financial mismanagement, the stupid little resentments and conspiracies among staff, the inability to handle the media.
But what comes as something of a shock -- make that a big, jaw-dropping wha-a-a-a? -- is Kurtz's assertion that Howard Dean never really WANTED to be president.
Kurtz writes, "In different conversations and in different ways, according to several people who worked with him, Dean said at the peak of his popularity late last year that he never expected to rise so high, that he didn't like the intense scrutiny, that he had just wanted to make a difference. 'I don't care about being president,' he said. Months earlier, as his candidacy was taking off, he told a colleague: 'The problem is, I'm now afraid I might win.' "
You can read the whole article here (but you have to register, and it's free).
Sunday, February 29, 2004
Saturday, February 28, 2004
The Epicenter for Meth
Another big article -- this one from the Associated Press -- datelined BOONE and all about the scourge of methamphetamine and the war on it being led by Sheriff Mark Shook. Surely someone is working on a movie script by now.
The Politics of Gay Marriage
Daily Kos has a MOST interesting post here, where someone has gone to the trouble of googling all 100 Senators to get their on-the-record comments about George Bush's proposed anti-gay-marriage amendment. The conclusion (which seems pretty solid to us) is that the amendment is already "toast."
Which is actually what astute political analysts were saying approximately one minute after the Prez made his speech about it last Tuesday ... that he KNEW it would never make it through Congress, that he cynically realized he was only tossing a symbolic hunk of red meat to the Jerry Falwell/Pat Robertson foot soldiers ... that he's counting on the move to win him more extremist votes than lose him moderates.
The problem for Karl Rove NOW is that the TV screen is full of the faces and voices of REAL people, actual non-abstractions lining up to get married in San Francisco and now in New Paltz, New York (and where else by next week?). It's gotten much harder to hate gay marriage in the abstract when real gay couples in the flesh are so palpably well-meaning and good-hearted and family-fricking-oriented in front of all our faces now (excepting perhaps Rosie O'Donnell). Which perhaps helps to explain the article in today's New York Times with interviews of highly religious fundamentalists saying, "Maybe we ought not mess with the U.S. Constitution over this."
Wouldn't it serve them right if this blatant wedge-driving and hate-mongering backfired spectacularly on them?
Which is actually what astute political analysts were saying approximately one minute after the Prez made his speech about it last Tuesday ... that he KNEW it would never make it through Congress, that he cynically realized he was only tossing a symbolic hunk of red meat to the Jerry Falwell/Pat Robertson foot soldiers ... that he's counting on the move to win him more extremist votes than lose him moderates.
The problem for Karl Rove NOW is that the TV screen is full of the faces and voices of REAL people, actual non-abstractions lining up to get married in San Francisco and now in New Paltz, New York (and where else by next week?). It's gotten much harder to hate gay marriage in the abstract when real gay couples in the flesh are so palpably well-meaning and good-hearted and family-fricking-oriented in front of all our faces now (excepting perhaps Rosie O'Donnell). Which perhaps helps to explain the article in today's New York Times with interviews of highly religious fundamentalists saying, "Maybe we ought not mess with the U.S. Constitution over this."
Wouldn't it serve them right if this blatant wedge-driving and hate-mongering backfired spectacularly on them?
Bush League Science: Opinion Comes 1st
The evidence of President Bush's war on science continues to pile up. (For starters, see this earlier post and its internal links.)
The Washington Post today adds to that with a report on Bush's firing of two members of his handpicked Council on Bioethics -- "a scientist and a moral philosopher who had been among the more outspoken advocates for research on human embryo cells." Maybe they deserved firing. We don't know. But the three new members of the council that Bush put in their place make one wonder: "a doctor who has called for more religion in public life, a political scientist who has spoken out precisely against the research that the dismissed members supported, and another who has written about the immorality of abortion and the 'threats of biotechnology.' "
It's not science ... it's politics. (Side-note: as Carl Bernstein said on Joe Scarborough's show last night on MSNBC, Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" is "not about Christians and Jews. It's about Right and Left." It ain't religion ... it's politics. Side-note 2: reportedly, President Bush has requested a private White House screening of Gibson's film, a.k.a. "The Jesus Chainsaw Massacre." Everything into and out of this White House is politics.)
One of the dismissed members from the bioethics council, Elizabeth Blackburn, a renowned biologist at the University of California at San Francisco, said she had no warning she would be fired and had not heard from the council's director, University of Chicago ethicist Leon Kass. According to the WashPost, she said she believed she was let go because her political views do not match those of the president and of Kass, with whom she has often been at odds at council meetings.
Michael Gazzaniga, a Dartmouth neuroscientist who also sits on the council, said he was "upset" by Blackburn's ejection. "She was one of the basic scientists who understood the biology of many of the issues we're talking about," Gazzaniga said. "It will be a loss for sure."
But what is a loss for science here is a gain for the brand of political correctness that this White House practices.
The Washington Post today adds to that with a report on Bush's firing of two members of his handpicked Council on Bioethics -- "a scientist and a moral philosopher who had been among the more outspoken advocates for research on human embryo cells." Maybe they deserved firing. We don't know. But the three new members of the council that Bush put in their place make one wonder: "a doctor who has called for more religion in public life, a political scientist who has spoken out precisely against the research that the dismissed members supported, and another who has written about the immorality of abortion and the 'threats of biotechnology.' "
It's not science ... it's politics. (Side-note: as Carl Bernstein said on Joe Scarborough's show last night on MSNBC, Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" is "not about Christians and Jews. It's about Right and Left." It ain't religion ... it's politics. Side-note 2: reportedly, President Bush has requested a private White House screening of Gibson's film, a.k.a. "The Jesus Chainsaw Massacre." Everything into and out of this White House is politics.)
One of the dismissed members from the bioethics council, Elizabeth Blackburn, a renowned biologist at the University of California at San Francisco, said she had no warning she would be fired and had not heard from the council's director, University of Chicago ethicist Leon Kass. According to the WashPost, she said she believed she was let go because her political views do not match those of the president and of Kass, with whom she has often been at odds at council meetings.
Michael Gazzaniga, a Dartmouth neuroscientist who also sits on the council, said he was "upset" by Blackburn's ejection. "She was one of the basic scientists who understood the biology of many of the issues we're talking about," Gazzaniga said. "It will be a loss for sure."
But what is a loss for science here is a gain for the brand of political correctness that this White House practices.
Thursday, February 26, 2004
Greenspan Needs To Go
Josh Marshall, on the Greenspan bombshell of yesterday ... RE Let's torpedo Social Security: "Create the deficit with upper-income tax cuts; shrink the deficit with Social Security benefit cuts. That sort of typifies the Bush-era Republican shell game on fiscal policy. And it's what Alan Greenspan said today on the Hill. But Greenspan did the White House no favors with this one."
Why no favor? Because it sorta sends a shiver through a large portion of the voting public to have its worst fears about this crew confirmed by The Oracle at the Federal Reserve.
Please recall that Howard Dean -- bless his large heart! -- called for the firing of Alan Greenspan back on January 23rd, saying that Greenspan "had become too political."
The full quote: "If he lacks the political courage to criticize the deficits, if he was foolish enough -- and he's not a foolish man -- to support the outrageous tax cuts that George Bush put through, then he has become too political and we need a new chairman of the Federal Reserve."
Howard Dean is proven right once again, not that anyone in Washington will give the good doctor the credit.
Why no favor? Because it sorta sends a shiver through a large portion of the voting public to have its worst fears about this crew confirmed by The Oracle at the Federal Reserve.
Please recall that Howard Dean -- bless his large heart! -- called for the firing of Alan Greenspan back on January 23rd, saying that Greenspan "had become too political."
The full quote: "If he lacks the political courage to criticize the deficits, if he was foolish enough -- and he's not a foolish man -- to support the outrageous tax cuts that George Bush put through, then he has become too political and we need a new chairman of the Federal Reserve."
Howard Dean is proven right once again, not that anyone in Washington will give the good doctor the credit.
Foxx-Trot
The Winston-Salem Journal published a blistering editorial yesterday against our State Senator Virginia Foxx, and it appears for all the world like she is caught red-handed in a developing scandal involving the violation of at least the spirit of campaign finance laws, if not the letter. (This editorial followed up a news report by David Rice on Sunday, detailing specifics from her campaign reports.) The W-S Journal, at least, believes that the charges are "worthy of a full review by the Federal Election Commission."
"Foxx's Lame Excuses" opens by comparing Foxx to Bill Clinton, a comparison guaranteed to wound to the quick any garden-variety Republican politician (not that there's anything common about Virginia). Seems that Foxx has been raising money for her congressional campaign (where she is limited to $2,000-per-donor) by laundering the money through her state senate campaign committee (where her limit-per-person is twice as generous, at $4,000). "Foxx's use of state campaign funds for purposes that will help her congressional effort are troublesome," says the W-S Journal, and could be a violation of federal law. (See this earlier item we posted about Foxx's being caught raising money for her state senate campaign, published in the Raleigh News & Observer. She's notorious state-wide. And see this, about her fund-raising coupled with her tireless poor-mouthing.)
Apparently Senator Foxx has attempted to explain away the expenditures out of her state senate account as "constituent services," amounting to some $34,746 in supposed constituent service, for a state senator who has consistently spent an average of $5,000 on those expenses. The Journal comments on this discrepancy: "What voters have here is a politician who thought she could fudge on the rules and then talk her way out of trouble."
As if the Bill Clinton comparison wasn't wound enough, the Journal then rubs a little salt into the cut: "Foxx also tries to hide behind the veil of ignorance. She didn't know of some improper spending, and she only learned of it only when contacted by reporters. That sounds like the excuse that Meg Scott Phipps, the state's soon-to-be-imprisoned former agriculture commissioner, used when confronted with evidence of fraud in her campaign. Phipps had been a judge; Foxx has been a senator for 10 years. Both know enough to closely oversee their campaign's spending."
The Journal editorial ends with this zinger: "Her record in Raleigh is one of self-righteousness toward all with whom she disagrees. Now she's the one who messed up, and she expects voters to believe that she's as innocent as a lamb. No one's going to buy that, and the FEC shouldn't either."
"Foxx's Lame Excuses" opens by comparing Foxx to Bill Clinton, a comparison guaranteed to wound to the quick any garden-variety Republican politician (not that there's anything common about Virginia). Seems that Foxx has been raising money for her congressional campaign (where she is limited to $2,000-per-donor) by laundering the money through her state senate campaign committee (where her limit-per-person is twice as generous, at $4,000). "Foxx's use of state campaign funds for purposes that will help her congressional effort are troublesome," says the W-S Journal, and could be a violation of federal law. (See this earlier item we posted about Foxx's being caught raising money for her state senate campaign, published in the Raleigh News & Observer. She's notorious state-wide. And see this, about her fund-raising coupled with her tireless poor-mouthing.)
Apparently Senator Foxx has attempted to explain away the expenditures out of her state senate account as "constituent services," amounting to some $34,746 in supposed constituent service, for a state senator who has consistently spent an average of $5,000 on those expenses. The Journal comments on this discrepancy: "What voters have here is a politician who thought she could fudge on the rules and then talk her way out of trouble."
As if the Bill Clinton comparison wasn't wound enough, the Journal then rubs a little salt into the cut: "Foxx also tries to hide behind the veil of ignorance. She didn't know of some improper spending, and she only learned of it only when contacted by reporters. That sounds like the excuse that Meg Scott Phipps, the state's soon-to-be-imprisoned former agriculture commissioner, used when confronted with evidence of fraud in her campaign. Phipps had been a judge; Foxx has been a senator for 10 years. Both know enough to closely oversee their campaign's spending."
The Journal editorial ends with this zinger: "Her record in Raleigh is one of self-righteousness toward all with whom she disagrees. Now she's the one who messed up, and she expects voters to believe that she's as innocent as a lamb. No one's going to buy that, and the FEC shouldn't either."
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
The Howard Dean Legacy
No less a centrist Democrat than Ruy Teixiera, co-author of "The Emerging Democratic Majority" and a strategist with close ties to the "New Democrat" organization that propelled Bill Clinton into the White House (the Democratic Leadership Council) ... Teixiera has written on his own blog about Howard Dean as a "third force" in Democratic Party politics. Says Teixiera, now that the Vermont doctor is out of the race, "the temptation will be great to just forget about Dean's movement." Not a cool move. Dean revitalized the Democrat Party with a "transformative process" which must be honored, copied, propagated, and nurtured. To ignore that transformative energy, as many top-level national Democrats seem bent on doing, or -- worse -- to try to punish or silence those who supported Dean, as some of our suicidal national leaders are inclined to do (some of the same ones beating up on Ralph Nader like the Roman soldiers in Mel Gibson's new movie ... you know who you are, James Carville!) ... to diss Dean and what he accomplished is to willfully choose failure in 2004.
Andrew Sullivan on the Gay Marriage Amendment
This is well worth reading on El Presidente's move yesterday to divide us over sexual orientation, from an avid supporter of Bush's in the last election and right through the war in Iraq. He ain't supporting him any more, it seems.
Craven Cowards
The North Carolina state legislature did not approve the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote, until 1971, 50 years after it had been ratified by enough OTHER states to become a part of the Constitution.
The North Carolina state legislature did not approve the 26th Amendment, giving 18-year-olds the right to vote, until it had already been ratified by enough OTHER states to become a part of the Constitution, also in 1971.
But there are many scum-suckers right now in our state legislature, like House Republican Speaker Richard Morgan, who are just ITCHING to get a chance to pass a ban on gay marriage, which would become the 28th Amendment. Or like State Rep. Russell Capps, a Raleigh Republican who sponsored North Carolina's 1996 law banning same-sex marriages. Capps said he would just be pleased pink to introduce the amendment in the North Carolina General Assembly, as soon as it clears the U.S. Congress.
Once it passes the U.S. Congress, the new amendment will have seven years to be approved by at least three-fourths of the states, or a total of 38. Morgan and Capps are eager to deliver the Old North State to the Will of Intolerance.
So are Senator Elizabeth Dole ("Unfortunately, a constitutional amendment is now necessary to preserve marriage as the union between a man and a woman," she said in a statement), Republican congressmen Walter Jones and Robin Hayes, and -- get this! -- N.C. Democratic Congressman Rep. Mike McIntyre, from Lumberton. "We do not need a few judges trying to redefine marriage," McIntyre said Tuesday.
It's going to take North Carolinians expressing themselves to these fine North Carolina politicians to change their (small) minds. You can do that via e-mail by going here for Senator Dole and here for Congressman McIntyre (you have to register, but you should do it!).
The North Carolina state legislature did not approve the 26th Amendment, giving 18-year-olds the right to vote, until it had already been ratified by enough OTHER states to become a part of the Constitution, also in 1971.
But there are many scum-suckers right now in our state legislature, like House Republican Speaker Richard Morgan, who are just ITCHING to get a chance to pass a ban on gay marriage, which would become the 28th Amendment. Or like State Rep. Russell Capps, a Raleigh Republican who sponsored North Carolina's 1996 law banning same-sex marriages. Capps said he would just be pleased pink to introduce the amendment in the North Carolina General Assembly, as soon as it clears the U.S. Congress.
Once it passes the U.S. Congress, the new amendment will have seven years to be approved by at least three-fourths of the states, or a total of 38. Morgan and Capps are eager to deliver the Old North State to the Will of Intolerance.
So are Senator Elizabeth Dole ("Unfortunately, a constitutional amendment is now necessary to preserve marriage as the union between a man and a woman," she said in a statement), Republican congressmen Walter Jones and Robin Hayes, and -- get this! -- N.C. Democratic Congressman Rep. Mike McIntyre, from Lumberton. "We do not need a few judges trying to redefine marriage," McIntyre said Tuesday.
It's going to take North Carolinians expressing themselves to these fine North Carolina politicians to change their (small) minds. You can do that via e-mail by going here for Senator Dole and here for Congressman McIntyre (you have to register, but you should do it!).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)