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Saturday, May 18, 2002
At Rantburg, Fred Pruitt comments on a typically sloppy, lazy Reuter's news article:
A two-count indictment was unsealed on Friday and the two defendants, Pakistani Imran Mandhai, 19, and Shueyb Mossa Jokhan, a 24-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen, appeared before a federal magistrate, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami said in a statement. Prosecutors requested pre-trial detention.
Details were not immediately available on when the men were arrested or when their alleged plot took place.
To which Fred notes:
Actually, the news was all over the Rantburg street a month and a half ago. Maybe Reuters should read Rantburg?
Damned straight Reuters should. So should everybody else.
edulcorate \ih-DUL-kuh-rayt\ (verb) : to free from harshness (as of attitude) : soften
Example sentence: Desperately in need of a loan, Martin used every trick he knew to cajole, flatter, and edulcorate his well-heeled but frugal Aunt Clara.
Did you know? An old saying advises giving sweets to the sweet, but pragmatic types may feel it's better to use them to edulcorate the sour. "Edulcorate" has the ideal history for a "sweets-to-the-sour" term; it derives from the Latin root "dulcis," which means "sweet." It is often used in contexts that refer to sweetening up a sourpuss, either with something that is literally sweet (such as candy) or that is figuratively so (such as flattery). "Dulcis" is also the source for several terms related to soft, sweet music (such as "dulcet" and "dolce") and an instrument that produces it ("dulcimer").
Solly Ezekiel has a fine take on the possibility of Hamas opposing Arafat in the maybe-possibly-one-of-these-days elections upcoming in the Palestine Authority. He lists several reasons why a Hamas victory might not be such a bad thing, all of which I agree with. I'd add one more, though: if Hamas could somehow be forced into a deal with Israel, they might actually be able to enforce a terror ban - unlike Arafat, who can't enforce anything.
ADDENDUM: Howcum nobody's bought Solly's Blogger ad yet? Come on, people, it's only twelve bucks.
Cynthia McKinney's world -- loony then, loony now.
Almost nothing that passes as outrage among partisans should arouse the plebes during the political season. So desperate are both sides for political leverage that President Bush acquiesces to spending profligacy and the Democrats are all atwitter that a photo of Bush taken on Sept. 11 is being given to campaign contributors. And yes, the greatest outrage of all is reserved for the president's failure to warn Americans of inspecific threats. Keep in mind the partisan ridicule that accompanied Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge's announcement in March of a five-level color-coded terrorism warning system.
In a bulletin from the heart of Cynthia McKinney DelusionLand comes a considered opinion that those panting hoarsely for Bush's scalp are, well, loony:
More frightening than the nonsensical prospect that the nation's leaders were frolicking in fantasyland while tossing aside credible threat warnings is this real prospect: McKinney and the conspiracy kooks who crown her feel vindicated. Her lemmings even call for an apology from U. S. Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.) -- "It was a loony statement last month, and it is still a loony statement today," quite correctly says he.
Michael Tinkler is the Cranky Professor, and he is definitely not the weakest link. Good top to bottom and through and through. Go read him now and improve your weekend. You'll also find his location in my permalinks, to your left.
A number of lawmakers called again Friday for the administration to turn over to the Senate and House intelligence committees both the CIA's Aug. 6 briefing memo to Bush and the Phoenix memo.
But the FBI is holding its ground on the Phoenix memo. "It's classified. It hasn't been released, and I don't think there are any immediate plans to do so," an FBI official said Friday.
The memo recommends that "the FBI should accumulate a listing of civil aviation universities/colleges around the country" to probe the agent's suspicions that Middle Easterners might be using flight schools as terrorist training grounds, according to a government official.
The CIA, which had never seen the Phoenix memo before Sept. 11, recently obtained a copy for the first time and found its contents "remarkable," a senior U.S. intelligence official said.
"It certainly would have set off additional inquiries and work" within the agency had the CIA been aware of its contents, the official said.
The official said that at the time the memo was written none of the names contained in it would have set off alarms at the CIA. "We didn't have those names connected with Al Qaeda at that time," the official said. But two of the names in the memo have since been linked to Al Qaeda.
I think this interchange, buried deep within the LAT article, hints at something I've suspected was bubbling along beneath the surface ever since 9/11: a tooth-and-claw war between CIA and FBI. These agencies are normally antagonistic to each other in the best of circumstances, but under the pressure of the attacks, I suspect the turf-and-gotcha wars are as intense as they've ever been in the history of the two organizations. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me a great deal to learn that a lot of the leaks and counter-leaks occurring in the current brouhaha are originating from either Langley or 935 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Spain and Italy will each take three of the militants, Greece and Ireland will take two each, Portugal and Finland will take one each, and one will stay in Cyprus, state radio said, citing Spanish diplomatic sources.
Oh, damn! I was so hoping they'd divide them up in such a way that each country got a fraction of one.
It is still early days for Mr. Bush. The Democrats seem a long way from proving their case, but gotcha politics, once underway, is hard to stop. Unless there are further major terrorist attacks, or American troops are once again heavily engaged, the taboo against criticizing the commander-in-chief has been broken. We shall soon discover, in all likelihood, what mistakes the White House made and how it sought to cover them up, as all White Houses do. The question is, will we feel at the end that the price in unity and, perhaps, dignity, was worth paying to find these things out in wartime?
NYT's R.W. Apple is normally as cheerful a liberal warrior as any, but he's of a school old enough to be able to separate run-of-the-mill partisan mudslinging from the more divisive and dangerous variety. Judging by his final sentence, even he has some misgivings about this frontal assault by the Dems on Bush in the middle of a war.
More than a year after California's deregulated electricity market spun out of control, leaving households and businesses in the dark, energy players sounded a dire warning Friday: California has no solution yet for the future. Instead of a plan to fix a badly broken electricity market, the state has a soup of confused and chaotic efforts that could lead California right back into rolling blackouts this summer.
But...but...but...Grayout Davis said he fixed everything.
Eric Olsen at Tres Producers is fast gaining a rep as one of the blogosphere's thinkers (not linkers) with his penetrating, often lengthy, always witty analyses of issues of interest. He's done it again with his thoughts on the blame game currently underway about terror intel and who did, or didn't, do enough with it. One nice thing about the blogosphere is that it functions in a way as a collective memory: bits and bytes are eternal, or so it sometimes seems, and a lot of times Ken Layne's process of "fact checking their asses" consists of not much more than consulting that collective memory.
Olsen does an excellent job here, and points out that, if there is responsibility about bin Laden complacency to be parceled out, George Bush shouldn't be the only recipient. In fact, he shouldn't even be the major recipient.
Fewer than half of Americans say President George W. Bush did all he should have with the warnings received before the September 11 terrorist attacks, according to the latest NEWSWEEK poll.
This is a textbook example of how to spin a poll: this is the first graf of the Newsweek story providing analysis for a poll they ordered up on the question of the day. Now, here are the actual figures on which this lede graf is based:
Forty-eight percent of those polled say Bush did enough with the information he received warning that Osama bin Laden might be planning an airline hijacking; 39 percent say he did not (the remainder were undecided).
Here's how you put on a pro-Bush spin with the same results:
"A majority of Americans expressing an opinion say Bush did everything he should have with terror warnings."
And here is an objective analysis:
"Five out of ten say Bush did as much as he should, four disagree, and one has no opinion.
The tortured syntax ("fewer than half" to characterize 48%) of the lede is necessary to place the Newsweek anti-Bush spin on their own poll - it makes it look at first glance (which is the only glance many readers will give it) that a majority of those polled thought Bush didn't do all he should have.
And guess which graf would have made the lede in a Newsweek analysis only if the rag was published on a snowy day in hell? This one:
FIFTY-NINE PERCENT, meanwhile, lay some responsibility on the Clinton administration, saying Bill Clinton also should have done more to detect and prepare for a possible terrorist attack on the United States.
In other words, fifty percent more Americans think Clinton screwed the pooch than think Bush did.
Rand Simberg has, in my opinion, the best overall take I've seen yet on the big "Bush Knew" controversy. Be sure and read the comments section as well.
Eyewitness News has learned criminal charges may be filed Monday against a Haverford teacher who allegedly pointed a starter pistol at a student.
Authorities say the incident occurred inside a classroom at Haverford Middle School on Tuesday shortly after dismissal. Police say when a number of students who were involved in "horseplay" ignored the teacher's orders to behave, he allegedly pulled out a starter pistol and pointed it at a 13-year-old girl.
Anybody want to bet there might be a little bit more to the story than just this? Starting with the police definition of "horseplay," perhaps?
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer accused Sen. Hillary Clinton Friday of working to divide Americans along party lines. The former first lady responded by saying she is simply "seeking answers and information" about recent revelations that President Bush was alerted prior to September 11 of possible terrorist attacks.
Sure. And if former first lady Clinton's (D-Egomainia) crusade for "information and answers" can be used to hack huge holes in Republican President Bush's popularity numbers, why, what a happy coincidence, eh?
Five months before Sept. 11, the government warned airlines that Middle Eastern terrorists could try to hijack or blow up a U.S. plane and that carriers should "demonstrate a high degree of alertness."
Yes, yes, we know. The government was warned. The airlines were warned. Congress was warned. No doubt even certain insider mediacrats were warned (though I'll bet they're keeping it pretty quiet right now if they were). So what? They were also warned about anthrax and other evils, about global warming and, earlier, global cooling, and probably even about errant asteroid crashes. It's not the warnings that matter, it's how seriously you take them, and how credible you think they are.
And on that question, honest people may differ. Hindsight makes geniuses of us all - but only until the next screwup.
Arab foreign ministers failed to agree on whether to take part in a Middle East Peace conference after two days of meetings Saturday. Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa said it would be difficult to take part in the conference, which was proposed by the United States, the European Union and Russia on May 2, as long as Israeli "occupation, murder and sabotage" continued in the West Bank and Gaza. "As long as this persists, it will be difficult to talk about a conference or otherwise," Moussa said.
That's okay. I'd guess that the Israelis prefer their own methods of "peace-seeking," at least for the time being. They were getting a major human-sacrifice attack every couple of days before the IDF went in and stomped the Palestinian murder squads into mush. Since then, they've only had one in the past two months. Any peace conference that refers to Israel as "occupiers, murderers, and sabatoeurs" isn't likely to do much to bring peace to the Israeli people anyway. Better for them to ignore such proposals entirely, until some sort of sensible attitude begins to prevail.
Forty-five per cent of Canadians believe the Chrétien government is corrupt, according to a new poll by Pollara Inc., the Liberal party's own pollster.
The F.B.I. had been aware for several years that Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network were training pilots in the United States and elsewhere around the world, according to court records and interviews at flight schools and with federal law enforcement officials.
What's infuriating about this article is that it's a perfect example of the excellent job of reporting NYT is capable of doing when it isn't trying to grind one of its many axes.
This huge, calm, deeply researched compendium and chronology of who knew what, when, and why on the subject of terror hijackings and major building destruction will tell most reasonable people everything they need to know, to wit: There have been indications for the past several years that terrorists, and al-Qaeda in particular, have at least considered hijacking planes for the purpose of crashing them into buildings. Those indications have been pretty much ignored, both by the Clinton and Bush administrations, most probably through a failure of prediction, probably from a lack of enough hard facts to make a believable prediction. As blogger Don McArthur has pointed out, there is a big difference between "Who could have imagined?" and "Who could have predicted?" I'm a science fiction writer, and I can imagine a whole bunch of the damnedest things you've ever seen. But do I predict them? No, in most cases, I don't. There's also a huge - and similar - difference between the possible and the probable, and a big part of intelligence is sorting the second from the first. And it's a sad fact of all large bureaucracies that they tend not to assign high probability numbers to any event that has never occurred before - possibly because a high percentage of humans also think that way.
I'm with Glenn Reynolds - and on record as saying so - that we need to determine the errors that were made, and make those responsible pay the price. But there is a material difference between failure to imagine, and failure to predict. The US government - no government, in fact - has the resources to to protect against every imaginable assault. And only those who worship at the false altars of omnipotent government believe that it could - or, more important, that it should. Any government that actually tried to do so would end up making the intrusive horror that is now airline checkin look like a peaceful stroll along an empty beach.
Hide the women and lock up the children! He's back!
Actually, I always loved that medley of his commercials he used to sing. In fact, probably more people know his tunes than know those of The Beatles. They just don't know they're his tunes.
Editor -- Letter writer Sue Clark (May 17) might like to know that $150 divided by 3,043 is 4.9 cents, not 49 cents. She reinforces my belief that liberals became extinct because they couldn't do simple math. BILL McGREGOR Berkeley
I post your missive, Bill McGregor, solely for your jaw-dropping contention, as a resident of Berkeley, that liberals have become "extinct." What neighborhood are you living in? (Note I uncharacteristically refrained from the cheap shot about your planet of residence....)
Diane E. at Letter From Gotham has been doing a bit of journo-critiquing and letter-to-the-editor writing. Sweet Jeebus, I don't ever want this woman angry at me.
Thieves stole Anne Scott's van from the driveway of her Seminole Heights home four years ago. Now, she doesn't worry about losing her van, after moving to Northdalelast summer with her husband, Richard, and two young daughters. "The primary reason we wanted to move was the public schools, but I found that the crime in my old neighborhood was much higher than it is here," Scott says. She compared the crime rates of the two neighborhoods on the Web site Realtor.com, and what she discovered mades it easier for her to sleep at night.
One of the things the Web allows is the much faster and more complete transfer of market signals. This leads to much more vigorous competition, as here: now communities must compete on property taxes, edu rankings, climate averages, pollution, and now crime statistics. What this will mean over time is that the quality of the entire marketplace will be lifted, as communities compete with each other for residents on a host of criteria many never paid much attention to before.
Two men who allegedly planned to carry out bomb attacks on power stations and a National Guard Armory in South Florida were charged on Friday with conspiracy to damage and destroy property with explosives, justice officials said.
Word first surfaced on these two several months ago, along with the customary "no indications of a connection with Osama bin Laden." I wonder if that will hold true once the trial gets underway.
Accusing critics of politicizing the attacks of Sept. 11, President Bush said Friday that he would never do anything knowingly to hurt his country.
Which is the point, isn't it? How many people take seriously the insane varieties (Hi there, Cynthia McKinney!) of "Bush knew?" Even of those tossing around these lame-brained accusations, how many actually believe that George Bush knew that al-Quaeda terrorists were going to hijack airliners and fly them into the WTC, the Pentagon, and other targets, and cold-bloodedly allowed those attacks to occur? Because, at bottom, that's what they are accusing him of, wriggle how they may.
On a somewhat different tack, a bit ago I mused thusly:
Why is it that when I hear a guy like Cheney say that people "need to be very cautious," I think of Don Corleone?
I wonder what sort of interesting information about the various current and former Demo grandees and their lapses against terror the White House might be sitting on? Do you think we might be about to find out?
According to the rest of this article, the answer is a resounding yes:
The action plan was part of a follow-up to an existing report that dated back exactly two years before the Sept. 11 attacks. The report, written during the Clinton administration, cautioned the executive branch that bin Laden's terrorists might hijack an airliner and dive bomb it into the Pentagon or other government building.
The report, entitled the "Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why?," described the suicide hijacking as one of several possible retribution attacks Al Qaeda might seek for the 1998 U.S. airstrike against bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan. It was not immediately known what action, if any, had been taken by the Clinton administration in response to the report.
So the Big He was specifically warned that al-Qaeda might hijack an airliner and dive-bomb it into the Pentagon...? And we don't know what response the Big He took, except that it was most likely nothing? I wonder how this report, no doubt top secret, managed to get such a quick release?
I don't know, but I'll bet if you ask Dick Cheney nicely, he'll make you an offer you can't refuse.
In Call Off the Dogs, NRO's James S. Robbins takes a cool-headed look at the overheated hysteria surrounding the wild "BUSH KNEW!" exaggerations:
It is critical to understand the difference between information (the dots) and intelligence (the act of connecting them). Analysis is an art form, and intellectual process, a means of looking at a body of information and extracting important patterns based on a set of premises and objectives. Often the dots do not seem to connect, or only connect when forced to by reasonable inferences (sometimes called WAGs, or "wild-ass guesses"). Sometimes they connect easily, but erroneously. They are not numbered like pictures in a children's book. It is the job of the analyst to use his judgment to figure out what the mass of dots really mean. It is not a foolproof or objective process.
The sad thing is that the Demo partisans and their hackeys (part hack, part lackey, all idiotarian all the time) in the media know this, but they don't care. Anything they can find to use as a weapon against the Republicans will be used, since for them the possibility of damage to the War on Terror pales into insignificance against the possibility of advancing the War on Bush.
Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat told reporters Friday that elections would only be held in the West Bank and Gaza Strip once Israeli occupation had ended, but his advisers later clarified that the voting is being linked to a far more modest withdrawal demand. Palestinian sources said that elections would be held within six months, on condition that IDF troops first withdraw to positions they held before the outbreak of the intifada, some 20 months ago.
Arafat's hold on power is obviously slipping as it becomes more and more clear the extent of the devastating defeat wreaked on his terror-forces by the IDF. With the US overseeing a remodel of Palestinian "security forces" to exclude the private armies of mad bombers Arafat supported, and the expedited timetable for elections, (Who is going to keep an eye on those, I wonder?), one can almost see a way clear to a post-Arafat regime. The continued necessity for other Palestinian "advisers" to "clarify" Arafat's various rantings and ravings, however, indicate that Arafat himself may not survive the changeover, either because he is himself moving further and further from reality, or because somebody will remove him from reality permanently.
A month after Israeli forces pulled out of Jenin and the adjacent refugee camp, Palestinian fighters can be found swaggering down the main commercial strip, their weapons at the ready.
Buried in the tail graf of this piece is a quote from one of the "swaggering Palestinian fighters:"
``It is true Israel is more powerful than the Palestinian fighters, but we have the patience to resist and regain our land,'' Mustafa said.
This is actually quite a change from the triumphalist statements of victory prior to the IDF incursions. Remember when the Palestinian mantra was that Israel had no way to resist the suicide bombers because their "love of life" made them weaker than the terrorists?
Three men described as being of middle-eastern descent have been arrested after suspicious activity at the Easton Reservoir in Easton.
Police got a call about 7:30 p.m. Thursday about three men who were spotted on a water supply tank at the Easton Reservoir Dam and Filtration Plant.
One of the three men had a video camera and was filming the area of the dam and the filtration plant, according to Chief John F. Solomon.
It's early moments, and who knows what this might turn out to be? Yet the mere appearance should be enough to remind us that we're still at war, and there are more important goals than those advanced by participants in the current partisan efforts to destroy the presidency of George Bush.
As far as I'm concerned, I think Bush should simply release the intelligence reports he received on the matter (properly redacted so no intelligence sources are exposed) and let the American people decide. It would be the best way to quiet the yapping of partisans who, I believe, are far less interested in the safety of the American people or prosecuting the war on terror than they are in winning their own War on George Bush.
Gumbel also takes a thinly veiled swipe at Couric - who took some flak last February for complaining about her "brutal" hours while covering the Winter Olympics, right after inking a $65-million contract. "I kind of promised myself that if you're going to get up and do it, don't complain about the hours," Gumbel says. "There are an awful lot of people in this world who get up very early for an awful lot less [money] . . . and the last thing they need is to hear Bryant Gumbel griping about his hours."
Much as I think Bryant Gumbel is one of the most overrated talking heads in history, he's right on the money here. And perky Katie, as usual, is a pain in the rear.
SADDAM HUSSEIN may be ready to end his years of defiance of the international community and allow United Nations weapons inspectors into Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction.
Now is the time we will learn what President Bush and the rest of his administration are made of. This is definitely a low point for them, with Yasser Arafat still strutting about claiming a great victory, with American Democratic leaders howling that Bush bears responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, and now with Saddam providing the perfect handle for every timorous EuroQuisling and MidEastern Oilbags to start screeching that Iraq has complied with UN orders, and so now America must renounce its quest to unseat Saddam.
I remain hopeful. History, even on a short term, seems to move in cycles or waves. At the moment, the Bush administration is beleagured at every turn. Everything that goes up comes back down, at least for a time. Even as vultures gather, I look to tomorrow. George Bush has the oddest tendency to make his - and America's - enemies look like fools. He also tends to beat them like a drum.
Cheney said Democrats in Washington "need to be very cautious not to seek political advantage by making incendiary suggestions . . . that the White House had advance information that would have prevented the tragic attacks of 9/11."
Why is it that when I hear a guy like Cheney say that people "need to be very cautious," I think of Don Corleone?
I wonder what sort of interesting information about the various current and former Demo grandees and their lapses against terror the White House might be sitting on? Do you think we might be about to find out?
Dan Rather, one of the most respected and well-known broadcasters in the United States said last night that the mood of extreme patriotism engulfing the country since 11 September had stopped the media asking difficult questions of America's leaders. He said he was personally guilty of self-censorship. "It is an obscene comparison ... but you know there was a time in South Africa that people would put flaming tyres around people's necks if they dissented," said Mr Rather. "And in some ways the fear is that you will be necklaced here, you will have a flaming tyre of lack of patriotism put around your neck.
If it's an "obscene comparison," why the hell are you making it? Jeebus, what frequency is this guy on? Do you know, Kenneth?
Editor -- The Cuban people should be very wary of Jimmy Carter's intentions. During the early 1990s, Carter's "diplomatic" skills were instrumental in helping the military despots in Haiti keep the power they gained. Carter gives lip service to democracy, but was in no hurry to aid the democratically elected president of Haiti take office. While I am no supporter of Fidel Castro's dictatorship, I can only scoff at Carter's references to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights -- his administration supported murderous regimes in Indonesia and Nicaragua. ZACHARY SCRIBE Berkeley
Interesting viewpoint, Zachary Scribe. Berkeley is one of the few places where President Carter would be viewed as an enemy of the Cuban people.
The State of Israel, the first Jewish state for nearly 2,000 years, was proclaimed at 1600 on 14 May 1948 in Tel Aviv. The declaration came into effect the following day as the last British troops withdrew. Palestinians remember 15 May as "al-Nakba", or the Catastrophe. The year had begun with Jewish and Arab armies each staging attacks on territory held by the other side. Jewish forces, backed by the Irgun and Lehi militant groups made more progress, seizing areas alloted to the Jewish state but also conquering substantial territories allocated for the Palestinian one. Irgun and Lehi massacred scores of inhabitants of the village of Deir Yassin near Jerusalem on 9 April. Word of the massacre spread terror among Palestinians and hundreds of thousands fled to Lebanon, Egypt and the area now known as the West Bank. The Jewish armies were victorious in the Negev, Galilee, West Jerusalem and much of the coastal plain. The day after the state of Israel was declared five Arab armies from Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq immediately invaded Israel but were repulsed, and the Israeli army crushed pockets of resistance. Armistices established Israel's borders on the frontier of most of the earlier British Mandate Palestine. Egypt kept the Gaza Strip while Jordan annexed the area around East Jerusalem and the land now known as the West Bank. These territories made up about 25% of the total area of British Mandate Palestine.
From what I recall of history in that region at that time, this seems a bit, ah, slanted. If there are any alternate views to this BBC version, I'd be happy to hear them. Feel free either to email me, or post in the comments.
Dawn O. at Up Yours has posted another of her amazing interviews, this one with Marc Weisblott of Weisblogg. Among other things, Weisblott, no shrinking violet, lists a few of the blogs he doesn't like:
DISLIKES: MW: 1. VodkaPundit. A totally pretentious twit. 2. Asparagirl--thinks she's the belle of the ball because Andrew Sullivan acknowledged her. If I remember correctly, he cited her as being a GOP lesbian, which wasn't exactly accurate ... anyhow, she's basically the kind that writes neurotic online journals about the minute details of her life, but somehow figured she should apply those sentiments to writing about politics. Me: Well - no need to read her ramblings then! MW: 3. PejmanPundit. Roped me in with a story he wrote about eating a pepperoni pizza that conflicted with his keeping semi-kosher, but is possibly the biggest self-absorbed bore around. All art forms need a crusty critic, don't they? I am willing to take on that role in the blogosphere. I don't give a damn, Scarlet.
It's hard to imagine a "feel good" piece about the Taliban, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Yasser Arafat, and Palestinian human-sacrifice bombers from Jenin, but Victor Davis Hansen pulls it off. Read it and smile - but read that last line twice. And keep it in mind.
According to Chris Kanis at Spoons, evidently Mayor Daley of Chicago has decided to suspend the U.S. Constitution, an urge that seems to run in the family.
A NEW MYTH. Brendan Nyhan of Spinsanity, a sometime TAP Online contributor, has caught another apparently self-replicating falsehood that's filtered out into the mainstream media. (He's done so with the help of Jonathan Chait and ABC's "The Note.") And this time, the source of the falsehood may be George W. Bush himself. It seems Bush keeps repeating the following claim, in various iterations:
You know, when I was running for President, in Chicago, somebody said, would you ever have deficit spending? I said, only if we were at war, or only if we had a recession, or only if we had a national emergency. Never did I dream we'd get the trifecta. The only problem is, as Nyhan writes, "Bush may indeed have had the conversation he claims occurred in Chicago. But there is no record of him publicly telling the 'American people' what he says he did." The whole thing may as well have been spun out of whole cloth.
Well, maybe Jonathan Chait and the TAPPED scandal-mavens don't know how to use a search engine. But if they did, they'd find this, for instance, carefully hidden away in plain sight on the White House web site. It's the first known report of this Bush tale, and it didn't come from George Bush:
The President favors conditions of budgetary balance, and -- particularly looking ahead to the unfunded liabilities of our nation -- surplus, and the reduction of outstanding national debt against the day when those bills come due, and has been pursuing a balanced fiscal policy that included tax reduction for long-term growth, debt reduction, and moderate spending growth to make those first two objectives possible.
He had always listed, throughout his campaign and since, the reasons why the nation might depart from this policy, reasons he had given as acceptable for running fiscal deficits: for war, recession, or emergency. As he said to me in mid-September, "Lucky me. I hit the trifecta."
As it happens, this speech was given by OMB director Mitchell B. Daniels, Jr., on October 16, 2001 - so the "September" he refers to is the month that the "trifecta" became complete with the 9/11 attacks. That given, the first part of the Chait/Nyhan/TAPPED slur - "the source of the falsehood may be George W. Bush himself" - is obviously wrong.
So the only remaining question is whether George Bush said, during his campaign, that he would run a deficit only in the event of war, recession, or national emergency. On that issue, for starters, OMB Director Daniels said Bush listed those reasons throughout his campaign. Also, NewsMax.com reported on August 29, 2001, prior to the WTC completion of the "trifecta," that:
In recent speeches, Bush has said the only reason to tap Social Security funds were national emergencies like war and recession, which is defined by most economists as two fiscal quarters of negative GDP growth.
I've not yet found a Bush campaign speech, statement, or press conference transcript where he spoke the precise words Chait, Nyhan, and TAPPED reference. But the timing and the corroboration of both Director Daniels and the NewsMax report make it clear these tropes were in use before 9/11, and probably during the campaign.
One final note: If, as Nyhan admits, "Bush may indeed have had the conversation he claims occurred in Chicago," then how can his later statement about the trifecta be factually presented as a "falsehood" on its face?
Maybe the "self-replicating falsehood" isn't coming from President Bush? Maybe it's actually coming from Jonathan Chait, Brendan Nyhan, ABC's The Note, and TAPPED?
UPDATE: I read the TAPPED piece, but not Chait's piece for TNR. Unfortunately for my arguments, Chait has already cited the same things I did in refutation, though from different sources. As I read it now, the essence of the Chait argument is that Bush has lied twice: First, by claiming that he said during his campaign that he would only tap the social security surplus in the event of a war, a recession, or a national emergency when he did not actually say this, and, second, later embroidering the falsehood to not just tapping the SS surplus, but actually running an overall deficit during war, recession, or national emergency.
As I noted, I've not been able to find a speech or transcript from the campaign (needless to say, nothing is more ephemeral than dead campaign material) that has Bush saying what he claims he said. Nor, Chait says, has the Bush administration been able to produce any such material. And absent such documentation, my arguments above don't really disprove Chait's charges. On the other hand, Chait's charges themselves hinge on Bush never having uttered those caveats during his campaign, something he has not been able to prove, either - which still leaves the absolute assertion of falsehood on somewhat shaky ground.
Second, Chait indulges in a bit of disingenuousness in his own article, thus:
On February 27, 2001, in his first address before Congress, Bush assured that his budget would "prepare for the unexpected, for the uncertainties of the future" by setting aside "a contingency fund for emergencies or additional spending needs" totaling "almost a trillion dollars." (In case you're wondering what happened to that contingency fund--we sure could use it right about now--the answer, as you might have guessed, is that it never existed.)
No, nor could it have existed, because the one trillion dollars was a total to be generated over many years of surpluses. Chait even notes the amount of the annual surplus: "Because Social Security takes in around $200 billion more than it spends every year..." Obviously this isn't enough to generate the trillion dollar "contingency fund - we sure could use right about now," though Chait's dishonest spin tries to make it seem that the fund somehow should exist.
UPDATE TWO: Issues2000.org reported during the Bush Campaign 2000 that:
Supports Balanced Budget Amendment Gov. Bush stated that he would support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution requiring an annual balanced federal budget. Source: Vote Smart NPAT 1998 Jul 2, 1998
This offers details on the Balanced Budget Amendment that Bush supported during his campaign:
"Congress will be allowed to waive these requirements [not to run deficits -ed]for any fiscal year in which a declaration of war is in effect."
Also, according to Project Vote Smart, on September 22, 2000, Bush told Paula Zahn on The Edge:
Secondly, if the economy turns south, that's a reason to accelerate the tax cut. See, I come from the school of thought that during a RECESSION, it's important to give people more money back faster. Now, that may cause us to run a short-term DEFICIT, but the fundamental question is: How do you cause the economy to grow?
This may not be the precise language Chait et al. are looking for, but it is a public acknowledgment by candidate George W. Bush, made during his campaign, that he would possibly run deficits in the event of a recession, and, at least implicitly, in wartime as well.
Pakistani police say they believe a body recovered Thursday is that of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. However, they say the identity has not yet been confirmed.
If nothing else, this must be a blessed relief to Daniel Pearl's family. And for the rest of us, a timely reminder of the sort of maniacs the free nations must now deal with.
Still, it’s not as if we suffer from a shortage of information. While blogger critics of the mainstream media claim that they’re serving a need unfilled by the existing corporate media, what we need is better journalism, not more. Does anyone really believe that adding 40,000 more opinion columns is going to make ours a better-informed society?
I don't know what it is about these ARPANET and FIDONET dinosaurs, but they seem as ossified in their thinking as those risible, harrumphing fatcats who puffed clouds of cigar smoke while rumbling, "Airplanes? Against God's will. Computers? They'll never replace the good old adding machine."
Here's a clue, Jim: The way you get better journalism is you let 400,000 (not forty thou - do some research) bloggers have at it, and then you let the marketplace of taste and ideas decide who's producing the good stuff. Blogs lower the cost of entry to punditry and opinion writing nearly to zero. That means a lot of voices - those, say, lacking the precious union ticket of a J-school degree - actually have a chance to let their voices be heard. And as any clear-eyed, objective perusal of the blogosphere will reveal, not all the best writing talent is currently sucking a paycheck from SingleBigCityDaily.inc.
And while we're at it, how the hell did your penetrating analysis miss Glenn Reynolds, smart guy? Or is it that he doesn't fit into your little box?
...fairness demands that we point out that many of those folks are only visiting Postrel’s and Sullivan’s sites because of the reputations they crafted in traditional media. They were celebrities before they began blogging. Your blog or my blog just ain’t gonna get that kind of traffic.
Reynolds, not a celeb before he began blogging, gets sixty-seventy thousand hits a day. Maybe your blog doesn't get that kind of traffic because you don't do it as well as Glenn does his? Is that a possibility?
Judging from your little screed here, I'd hazard a guess that the answer is "yes." (Link courtesy Ken Layne).
Alert reader James Miller twigs me to this: Guess who was number one on the NYT business best-seller list last Sunday? What do you think? Is American business about to start running its companies according to the Commie Fatboy Principle?
Local unions are scrambling to intervene as the torrent of 750,000 ``no-match'' letters the federal agency has mailed out nationwide since January -- seven times the number they sent out last year -- is sparking a storm of jitters and controversy in the Bay Area. One immigration law specialist says that since February she's heard of at least 30 Bay Area companies that have fired workers as a result of the intensified accuracy campaign. There are no doubt more, she said.
One 35-year-old San Jose supermarket worker who has been in the United States without legal documentation for 12 years said he just lost a good $12.20-per-hour job. The letter from his employer gave him two weeks to get an official letter from the Social Security Administration with his Social Security number on it, or be suspended and then fired. The man, who asked not to be identified, said he couldn't do it and quit.
Oh, horse patooties. A man who's been "without legal documentation" for twelve years is an illegal alien. As such, he has no right to a job in the United States, in fact, does not even have a right to be in the United States. Obviously far too many in the San Francisco Bay Area are having trouble digesting this simple fact.
Outside of emerging great military powers like China, India, and Japan (What? You forgot about Nippon?), it's beginning to look more and more as if the United States will retain its status as a military hyperpower by default as much as anything else.
Where have we heard this story before? Was there some sort of illegal alien job placement agency that specialized in airport work? Oh, yeah, I forgot. The Democratic party.
As the contracts signed by the administration of Gov. Gray Davis come under scrutiny in the wake of the Oracle deal, one deal stands out for the unusually generous benefits it bestows on one of the governor's biggest financial backers. The state's new contract with the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, which has given Davis more than $2.6 million since 1998 -- including $251,000 in a single March contribution -- provides the state's prison guards with a more than 30 percent raise by 2006 and some perks critics say are unparalleled in other state labor contracts, the Mercury News has found.
Anybodywho paid any attention at all over the past eight years knew that Grayout Davis was by far the most corrupt politician in California in the last hundred years, and yes, I include Willie Brown and Jesse Unruh in that tally. Davis has cheerfully bartered state monies and authority for campaign contributions with all the zest and ethical probity of an Afghan rug salesman.
He's doomed. There are dozens of these stories. You can expect a new one to magically surface at least once a week, every week, until the election. At which point the auguries now predict a "Deathwish" Bill Simon victory by at least five points.
Zacarias Moussaoui accused the government of stretching death penalty laws to get retribution for the Sept. 11 attacks on America while a judge criticized him for twice refusing to meet with a psychiatrist, court documents revealed on Thursday.
I'm glad this case is pretty much taking place beneath the national radar. Of course, that's because it's not getting the constant drum-beat coverage of, say, the OJ trial, and one is free to speculate why that is. Is it the media elites who choose to downplay the story, or do they downplay it because their readers aren't really that interested?
My guess is the second. Big media has no qualms about running continuous coverage of issues hardly anybody is interested in - witness the avalanch of "news" about campaign finance reform - but I think that in this case, any newsie with a functioning brain understands that most people have already decided that Moussaoui is guilty (I know, I know, he's innocent until proven, yabba blabba), and are only interested in how long it will take the court system to get around to frying him. And you know what? I think even the likes of Peter Jennings and Jonathan Alter won't be shedding too many tears when the little creep burns.
I missed this terrifying column Mona Charen wrote on May 10th about the auto accident her eleven year old son suffered. At the time, the boy was in a coma, and the outcome was uncertain.
Now, Mona reports that Jon is sitting up, (albeit in rehab) watching videos, talking and laughing even doing a bit of walking. Her message to all of you is that she was thrilled with your concern, grateful for your prayers and said, "I thank you from the bottom of my heart." Good luck, Jon. Childhood is tough.
Yeah, it is. The fact that Charen's son was wearing a bike helmet when the car struck him probably saved his life.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Terence R. McAuliffe had planned to build a new headquarters for the party at 501 C St. SW for $32 million, including a $12 million technology upgrade. But now, party insiders say, they're leaning toward retrofitting the DNC's existing headquarters off South Capitol Street and combining it with the adjacent National Democratic Club. Some Democrats had grumbled that the cost of McAuliffe's building was draining money from Democratic election efforts. The New Republic magazine first reported the possible change of plans in its current issue, mentioning that McAuliffe associates "acknowledge that he felt pressure from agitated fellow Democrats over the headquarters."
One of the most telling indications that some dynasty of long-standing is finally crumbling is a sudden tendency to engage in empty monument-building.
"Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.
The government is lobbying Washington to place Iranian nuclear proliferation high on the agenda of next week's critical summit between US President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, which is expected to go a long way toward codifying a new world order. The topic of the transfer of nuclear and missile technology from Russia to Iran was discussed at high-level US-Israeli talks in Washington over the last two weeks.
I've noted several times before that the emerging alliance between Russia and the United States is the single most important geopolitical change to come out of the 9/11 attacks. This is just one more example that shows how much of the American press, still accustomed to its wildly outdated Cold War reflexes, is missing the real story entirely.
Editor -- The Chronicle bends over so far backward in an effort to remain "neutral" that it is not until the eighth paragraph of an article subtitled " Pro-Israel students clashed with supporters of Palestinians" (May 15) that we learn that, according to the president of San Francisco State University, who referred the matter to the D.A.'s office for possible criminal prosecution, that the "issue" is really that "a small but terribly destructive number of pro-Palestinians demonstrators, many of whom were not SFSU students, abandoned themselves to intimidating behavior and statements too hate-filled to repeat." Anyone reading just the headline of your article or even, for that matter, the first seven paragraphs, would have been left with the impression that a "pro-Israel peace rally by members of . . . a Jewish student group" had gotten out of control and attacked Arab students. Do you still deny bias in your coverage? SANFORD H. MARGOLIN Piedmont
It's hopeful to see your letter in the Chron, Sanford H. Margolin. Pressure from folks like you will help to keep local reporting honest - something the Chron is not exactly famous for, expecially when its own biases are involved.
And that pressure is absolutely necessary, if there are any conclusions to be drawn from a noxious piece on the SFSU riot also published yesterday in the Chron, written by a SFSU professor of secondary education named Mark Phillips:
I WRITE AS part of my continuing attempt as a secular Jew to make sense of the madness in the Mideast that I read and hear about every day and with the continued hope that influencing even a few of my neighbors, colleagues and friends can make a small difference.
This was reinforced last week when I attended a rally at San Francisco State, where I teach. Sponsored by Hillel, the pro-Israel rally was emotional but free of hate speeches. When it ended however, the physical barriers between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian supporters became permeable and I suddenly found myself on the edge of a shouting match between a Jewish student and a Palestinian student. The Palestinian, on the verge of tears, yelled about the land taken from his family. The Jewish student yelled about how important Israel was to his family and about his grandparents who survived Auschwitz. While my eyes were still moist from the poignancy of the encounter, I was approached by a Jewish colleague who told me not to waste my tears -- the Palestinian was "probably lying." Her absolute rejection of the pain of this Palestinian stunned me. Moments later, I watched Palestinian students scream hateful epithets in the faces of a small group of Jewish students.
Well, there you have it. Earlier, Phillips noted:
I have ceased making judgments about solutions. My knowledge base and experience are too limited.
Apparently, Phillips has ceased making judgments about anything, and physical attacks by Palestinian supporters (copiously documented, but not by Phillips) on peaceful Israeli supporters are mushed together in the moral vacuum of his mind with the peaceful ralliers themselves, so that predator and victim become the same to him.
The Chron, already well known for "forgetting" to cover a pro-Israeli rally thousands strong that occurred only a few blocks from its offices, evidently thinks that publishing dishonest pieces like the one by Phillips, which makes absolutely no mention of the physical violence peaceful Israeli ralliers suffered at the hands of pro-Palestinian thugs, is necessary for "journalistic balance." But that's not balance, it's an attempt to spin the Chron's own prejudices.
What a shame. What a travesty. What a "newspaper."
Republican candidate for governor Bill Simon told a radio audience Wednesday that the GOP's use of an image from Sept. 11 for political fund-raising "doesn't sound good to me."
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