Fester's Place: 10/01/2003

This scares me....

A couple who met at Wal-Mart got married at Wal-Mart. That is just wierd and completely unromantic. I should pull this article up the next time my girlfriend accuses me of being an unsensitive boor...

National Democratic Polls

A new wave of national polls are coming out right now and there are a couple of interesting things going on. The first poll is a Zogby found by Folkbum and it has
Howard Dean 12% (12%)
Wesley Clark 10% (12%)
John Kerry 9% (7%)
Joe Lieberman 8% (5%)
Dick Gephardt 5% (6%)

The second is from Fox News found at the Polling Report and it was done on Oct. 14-15

10/14-15 9/23-24 9/9-10
Wesley Clark 13 20 n/a
Howard Dean 12 13 14
Joe Lieberman 11 9 16
John Kerry 10 10 17
Dick Gephardt 9 9 6
John Edwards 3 5 4
Wouldn't vote (vol.)/Not sure 35 21 26

ABC News, also at the Polling Report and done on Oct. 9-13 show these partial and relevant results:
10/9-13 9/10-13
Howard Dean 16 15
Richard Gephardt 14 14
Wesley Clark 13 6
John Kerry 11 14
Joseph Lieberman 10 21
Carol Moseley Braun 6 4
Al Sharpton 4 5
John Edwards 3 3
Wouldn't vote (vol.) 1 2
No opinion 12 8

So from these three polls we see a couple of things going on of interest to me. First Dean has stabilized his lead right now but he is not growing it nor losing ground to Clark. This is probably the ideal position for Dean at this moment because it means the press and the other candidates are not shooting every bullet at him. Secondly, Wesley Clark is coming back to earth right now, and he'll actually have to run a very solid campaign to win the nomination. Thirdly, John Edwards is either tied or below Braun in two polls, and barely beating her in the third. He really needs to catch fire soon or he should take some of his remaining dignity and leave the race while positioning himself for a potential VP or Cabinet slot if he decides not to run for NC governor in a couple of years.

Meta Post on Blogging Identities

Daniel Drezner normally a very enjoyable and non-snarky read has a fairly nasty respones to Atrios in particular and anonymous bloggers in general concerning media criticism. The context is a final discussion about
Gregg Easterbrook and his termination from his job at ESPN as a writer of the Tuesday Morning Quarterback column. The official cause of his termination is he insulted his boss's boss's boss, Michael Eisner. The unofficial reason is Easterbook has been making some pretty dumb statements lately including his "No really does not mean NO" defense of Kobe Bryant, and the Jews need to be more responsible than everyone else wrt television.

Dresner takes issue with the Schradenfreude that he perceives Atrios to be taking and he states this

You know what I find creepy? Anonymous bloggers hypocritically lambasting Easterbrook and other bloggers with the guts to write under their own name.
A hypothetical: what happens if Atrios had posted something equally offensive? Does he lose his day job? No, because of his anonymity. He clearly prefers it this way, and I'm not saying that bloggers must out themselves. However, the cloak of anonymity does give Atrios a degree of insulation that other bloggers don't have. Say what you will about Easterbrook -- at least he put his real name on his posts. It's not clear to me that Atrios is willing to bear the real costs of free speech that have now entangled Easterbrook.

This is an unwarranted and illogical attack. Different people blog for different reasons, and these reasons have a good amount to do with the amount of publicity and exposure people want to take with their blogging. Some people, like Daniel Dresner are comfortable in blogging under their own names, and using their names as their web addresses. Others, like Tom Spencer are comfortable blogging under their own names, but at a different website. Then we have the Daily Kos situation which was an anonymous blog for a couple of years, and then Mar(kos) revealed his identity. Finally we have the anonymous bloggers like me, and Atrios. The motivations for these situations are different, so lets examine them.

The completely open bloggers such as Dresner and Easterbrook gain several advantages and disadvantages from being open. The largest disadvantage is the possibility of saying something really, really stupid and losing a job from that action. However there are several advantages to be a completely open blogger which includes a higher level of access now-a-days, as shown by Natasha C. at Pacific Views being an official Dean blogger for the Sleepless Summer Tour. There is also the ability of a named blogger to make a call to his own authority and credibility. I read both Juan Cole and Steve Gilliard regularly, but I trust Juan's read on the internal political dynamic of Iraq because that is his job, while with Steve, it is his hobby. Next, a named blogger can use their blog as part of their professional development as Matthew Yglesias has been able to parlay his blogging into a fulltime job or Josh Marshall is able to hawk his articles from his blog.

The best example of the advantages of being a named blog is to look at Daily Kos started as a political hobby blog and then it started to grow in its influence because the content and the analysis was excellent. However, Kos wanted to spin off his idea of netroots participatory democracy in action, and his best advertisement has been his blog. He revealed his name and he is using his blog as a means to demonstrate his skills.

Being an anonymous or pseudonomynous blogger has its advantages in that it is much less expensive to be wrong. However there is a question of how much influence one can bring from one's blogging to a more general political discussion. If Kos was to go to the Dean campaign with an urgent idea about how to use blogs to make the sun come up from the West tomorrow morning, he would get an audience because they already know him. If I came up with the same idea, because I am not known, I have no influence. I also can not use my blog as a piece of my portfolio of work.
Additionally, unnamed bloggers are far more dependent on their ability to write good material in order to consistently draw readers then named bloggers who can make calls to their resumes and expertise. Brad DeLong, a former Treasury Dept. official and current professor of economics at Berkley, can call upon his expertise and say "When I was at DoTreas. we never did it this way for reasons X,Y,Z" and that statement is believable because we can verify that Brad DeLong was actually at the Department of the Treasury and they never did it this way....while an anonymous blogger can not make that type of claim.

Finally, bloggers of all types live and die on their readership. There is always the corrective mechanism of people no longer linking to a particular blogger who has gone off the deep end with either horrendous analysis or by being outright disgusting. It will never stop a person from blogging, but it does dimish the viciousness of their ideas if their readership disappears.

Disclosing or not disclosing one's name while blogging is irrelevant. The important issue which should be addressed is the content of the posts which are on the blogs themselves.

Labels: iraq

Federal Tax incentives

Almost every economist believes that taxes are a marginal drag on the economy because they increase the price of goods and discourage the production or purchase of one marginal good. This is not a revelation to anyone. Some economists will argue, in my correctly, that the current US tax burden is comparatively light when compared to the rest of the world, and that there are not too many major distortions caused by marginal rates in the US tax codes while there are plenty of strange and occassionally perverse incentives caused by the US tax code. Other economists and economist-wannabees will argue that the US is grossly overtaxing its most productive members of society and that this is the cause of the downfall of western civilization. I disagree with them. However, almost all economists will agree that an ideal tax code has a couple of features; structurally balanced, minimal creation of perverse incentives and minimal dislocations.

Most economists believe that an efficient tax code to produce a given level of government revenue should include the lowest rate possible on the widest base possible. This reduces the economic distortions that can occur when two goods(A and B) in a non-taxed world are indifferent to each other while in the taxed world one good remains untaxed(A) while the other has an oppressive level of taxation on it(B). Good A all of a sudden has a massive demand for it because it is significantly cheaper while Good B has no demand even though in the orginal situation it was just as good as Good A. Distortions like this cause economic inefficiency, job losses and income stagnation.

Currently, our system has plenty of distortions like this built into it. Home ownership is very high due to the fact that interest is deducted on mortages while rental payments are now comparatively more expensive. Large SUVs are now tax advantaged over mid-sized sedans, so more people will now be able to afford monsters. Oil and gas are tax subsidized versus conservation.

Nathan Newman shows that our current system massively favors capital investment income rather than the income of labor and creativity. Professionals who earn 80,000 dollars a year are taxed at a marginal rate of 35.65% and pay an effective tax rate of 28% while a person who receives 150,000 in capital gains and no wages pays a marginal tax rate of 15% and an effective tax rate of 15%. That is not fair and worse, it is distortionary against growth. The US already has too much capacity and not enough employment. Owners of capital still have strong incentives to invest in capital instead of labor.

If I was emperor of the United States tax code, I would seek to treat capital income exactly the same as wage income and find the lowest rate possible to progressively create enough tax revenue to finance the US government over the course of a business cycle. Let the market place decide if it needs more capital or more labor, not the Bush campaign contributors.

Iowa Caucuses

CNN is reporting that both Lieberman and Clark are planning to skip the Iowa caucuses this year to focus on second temporal tier states. I agree with the analyis at Kos that it makes sense for Lieberman to start saving his money and focus on states where he has a chance in hell of competing for delegates.

Now the question remains as to whom else will drop out. According to this Iowa poll by Bread for the World Dean leads at 23%, Gephardt is at 20%, Kerry at 17% with Clark bringing up the second tier at 7%, Edwards with 6%, Lieberman at 3% and Kucinich at 2%. This poll has a margin of error of +/-5%. It also looks like there is a large undecided swath of Iowa caucus goers. Right now, assuming the poll is accurate, Dean, Gephardt and Kerry would get delegates, everyone else is not even close.

Edwards is having money problems in Iowa and nationally so it may be worthwhile for him to drop out of Iowa, save a couple of bucks and avoid embarrassment so he can make his stand in the first week of February on more favorable terrain. That is what I would recommend if I was a campaign consultant. I am assuming that Kucinich, Sharpton and Braun will remain in the race just because it is costing them almost nothing to do so, including a the non-existent chance to actually win.

So if Edwards joins Clark and Lieberman in dropping out, who do those voters migrate to? Is this the start of state-by-state anti-Dean coelescing, or can he pick up enough supporters from Clark and Edwards to win big time?

What's the counterfactual

That is the refrain of one of my former teachers in grad school when ever we were evaluating a program. The idea is to measure our reality against a set of desired conditions that we ennunciated hopefully at the beginning of the program design phase or at least before we actually began collecting evaluation data.

CalPundit is asking what is the countefactual concerning Iraq and he is using the neo-con "greet with flowers and fucking as the only serious resistance to Baghdad" counterfactual as his program metric. It is not a pretty evaluation. I just wish that I had thought of using this technique for it is great... Go read him

Labels: iraq

Troops for Iraq

I have been blogging and been worried about the effects of the Iraq occupation has had on the United States Army in particular and the military in general. The current security situation is a teetering wreck, nearing the tipping point of a potential active Shi'ite guerilla campaign in addition to the current primarily Sunni campaign. The current US led coalition force structure is barely sufficient to maintain force protection much less improve the daily lives and security of the ordinary Iraqis as shown by the skyrocketing murder rate in Baghdad and other major cities. Yes, the electricity is on, and the schools are open but as Tom Spencer says, that is a low bar to cross as the schools were open last May and no hospitals were closed due to the fighting.

The US Army has a fantasy plan to reduce the occupation force level from the current 130,000 US soldiers to 100,000 next summer and 50,000 by summer of 2005. The plan relies on massive Iraqization and an influx of foreign troops to supplement the US forces that are withdrawn from the theatre.

Foreign troops are unlikely to be sufficient to allow for this rotation plan to occur. The Turks are already wary of committing the two brigades that they sold to the US for 8.5 billion dollars in loans. Now they will only commit those two brigades if the Iraqis want them. Juan Cole believes that this is extraordinarily unlikely that the Turks will send any troops in any significant number.

The South Koreans have decided that they may commit up to 5,000 soldiers or a brigade equivilent for peacekeeping operations in the Kurdish regions of Iraq. The timeline for deployment is for early spring. I am unsure as to why they are doing this unless the Bush administration is placing some heavy pressure on the South Korean government by first refusing to give North Korea a non-aggression pact and secondly threatening to withdraw major elements of the 2cd Infantry Division unless the Koreans cough up troops.

However there is strong political and popular opposition to the South Korean deployment at home. Right now I am unsure if the Koreans are actually planning on deploying troops, or just not saying "No" while looking for a good way out of the problem of sending troops. The current President of South Korea has to be looking at the electoral prospects of every other leader besides Bush who has sold out on popular opinion and sent combat troops to Iraq and reconsider his position. We will be facing a question of how much is being in the good graces of the United States really worth if it costs leaders their next election.

So the question is: what will we be doing for troop rotation come next April when there are no more international committments and the Iraqization is still small and not trusted? The only solution besides a complete bug-out is to call up and fundamentally destroy the combat effectiveness of the National Guard combat maneuver units as they get deployed again for at least fifteen to eighteen months.

You have any other ideas where the troops are going to come from? I don't.

Labels: iraq

Week 7 Patriots Thoughts

Today is a pretty good day to be a Patriot's fan. The team pulled out a gutsy overtime win down in Miami, a place where they have not had success in the past decade while the weather is quarter decent. They beat their division rival, improved the position of a second round draft choice in next year's draft, watched as Baltimore, whose first rounder they own, lose to the Bungles, and got out of the stadium without any devestating injuries. So it is not that bad of a week for Patriots fans.

However, they played mediocre at best in most categories. They were able to hold the Dolphins to under 100 yards rushing, but the Pats barely broke fifty yards on the ground. Neither team was able to get any consistent pressure on the quarterback, so the O-line did well, but the D-line was neutralized. The secondary played reasonably well as Poole and Wilson both got picks and Harrison was flying around but it seemed to me that the Dolphins were able to exploit the seams effectively with McMichael. On offense, Troy Brown finally had a big day, as well as Deion Branch and David Givens, but the tight ends were almost invisible. The Patriots had a horrendous case of fumbleitis.

With that said, a win is a win is a win, especially a divisional win on the road. Good job New England!

Capacity

MB at Wampum notes that the recent capacity utilization rates and business inventory rates for US industry are still mired at very low levels compared to historical norms. Atrios notices this too. And these are forward looking indicators.

Businesses stock up on their inventories because they expect that they will be able to sell a lot more goods in the near future. They let their inventories decline if they think that demand for their goods will be flat. So looking at the inventory numbers, we are seeing companies thinking that consumer demand in the next three to six months will not be surging. Consumer confidence coincides with this judgement.

So businesses are not expecting any more sales, so the only reason for them to make large scale capital investments is if their capacity to produce the current volume of goods was constrained. However, industrial capacity is still hanging out around 73-75% of theoretical capacity. Therefore no one really wants to invest in new plants and equipment until new sales can already be generated from either increased domestic demand or increased exports. Domestic demand can come from either income/disposable income growth or from import substitution as US products should soon become cheaper due to a weaker currency. Export growth can only occur as US goods become comparatively cheaper and foreign economies start picking up steam. The problem here is that as Kash at Angry Bear points out, the Euro and the Yen are also trying to devalue their currencies against the dollar, so we are entering 'beggar thy neighbor' policy making right now.

Therefore, I see the current good economic news as a rather one off event due to the increased money circulating through the economy due to increased military spending, the tax cuts and slightly lower gas prices. If Romer and Romer are correct, and Brad DeLong thinks that they might be, then the monetary policy pump priming that has occurred during the summer of 2003 has almost already run its course through the US economy. So if the pump priming of more tax cuts and lower interest rates have not kick started the US economy by December then I think that the economy will have settled into a new equilibrium that looks a lot like the old equilibrium but at a slightly higher base level... I know that I am pessimistic, especially as I am spending this afternoon job-hunting, but I do not see a reason to be optimistic yet.

Dean Fundraising in da 'Burgh

Howard Dean came to town last night and raised another 75K in big money donations in two hours. While this is not a George W. Bush size event where he can pull in two million dollars in three hours, it is still the bread and butter of most campaigns. It is also the key to Dean being able to compete financially with Bush in the general election.

Dean right now is collecting massive amounts of small donations. Even his reportable donors (those who contribute over 250 dollars in the primary cycle) are doing so in small amounts. Open Secrets reports that the average Dean disclosed donation is $546 which is less than half of the average disclosed donation for Bush, Kerry, Gephardt, Edwards and Lieberman. Wesley Clark has roughly the same size of average disclosed donation.

Dean has been able to hit the small donors extremely effectivey, now it is a question of him being able to hit the medium to large size donors with the same effectiveness as Edwards had been able to hit up his large scale donors. I think that Dean will be able to do this as he is actively not pissing off the rank and file leadership cadres. Tom Flaherty, chair of the Allegheny County Democratic Party said of Dean :
"I think he has a great message of social and economic justice," Flaherty said. "He sounds to me like he's a real Democrat, and he's certainly energized the party."

Quotes like these should start persuading the institutional donors to start opening up their pocketbooks or at least their ears for a Dean pitch.

Viable Pittsburgh Solution???

Pittsburgh has been spinning plans to relieve itself of its structural deficit this year. Some of the plans include merging fire and EMS services, raising taxes, floating bonds, raiding the capital project funds for a short term fix, and dancing for dollars to rain down from the heavens.

Teddy over at It's still the Economy, Stupid is worried that this city's situation is a harbinger of things to come. I agree with him, but there is a workable plan that seems to be a solid compromise that actually address the major problems that the city faces (too large of a workforce, too many tax-exempt institutions, free riding suburbanites) with a reasonable plan.

An unofficial, but powerful bi-partisan group of the Pittsburgh elite have put together a good plan of action that should be passable in Harrisburg. The city would receive a powerful oversight board that had the authority to override arbitration awarded contracts, approve the city budget, and make up to forty million dollars in cuts and cost savings. After these cuts are in place, then the city would be allowed to impose new taxes that are aimed primarily at the tax exempt institutions and the commuters.

This could be a workable and passable solution. Good job Pittsburgh for coming up with something that makes sense

A harbinger of things to come

This week was a bad week for US casualties: 12 dead between Oct. 12 to Oct. 18. There are an untold number of wounded soldiers who we really do not know about and for whom my heart goes out to as they begin the long process of recovery.

However this is a week that is categorically different than most weeks in Iraq because of the location of the attacks. Three US soldiers dies in a confrontation with a Shi'ite militia, at least one in Tikrit, two near Kirkuk,attacks in Baghdad, and successful attacks elsewhere in the so-called Sunni Triangle. The difference between this week and any other week is not the number of casualties but the location of the attacks. The Iraqi resistance or resistances is going national.... make your own conclusions from there.

Labels: iraq

Going Hiking

Out for the day to enjoy the foliage and the fresh air.

Edwards as an ideal?

Always beware when your opponents give advice to you is a good rule to follow but it is not an absolute categorical imperative. Atticus over at Tacitus does a conservative analysis of the Democratic field in a reasonably objective manner.

First he concedes that the Dems have a reasonably decent chance of picking up the White House in 2004 if they nominate the proper candidate. I agree, although I think the chance is better than decent. The area of disagreement is over whom the proper candidate is; we both agree that Sharpton, Kucinich and Mosely Braun are unelectable. Lieberman possesses the public perception that he is a moralizing Republican-lite even if his voting record is liberal. Kerry is everyone's 2cd choice, and very few people's first choice.

After this point I need to disagree with Atticus's handicapping of the field. Clark is doing a reasonably decent job of getting himself established and he is grabbing key Democratic demographics of support. Gephardt has some basis of support while Dean has been able to bank the left and liberal part of the Democratic party by style but not substance. Any of these three candidates are electable as the latest head to head match-ups versus Bush have shown.

Edwards is an intriguing candidate, and one who I can not figure out why he has not been able to get any traction outside of South Carolina. He is a good speaker, good on television and developing some really good policy positions along with an extremely effective delivery mechanism concerning morality of work versus wealth. However he is not doing a good job of reaching across the Democratic coalition as it is currently constituted, so why will he reach across Middle America? I like Edwards, but he is not gaining any ground and he is tight for cash.

Now the question is whether or not the economy is turning around fast enough to help Bush. I don't think so because I believe that what we are currently seeing is the result of a one-time cash infusion that will soon deflate again because people are unable/unwilling to go into any more debt as long as there is high levels of job and income insecurity.

I am assuming that Iraq will not be throwing flowers at the feet of US forces any time before November 2004 and I am assuming that the Democrats will not intentionally shoot themselves in their own feet before then either. So I think that the Senate and the White House are both reachable goals.

I partially agree with Atticus that the Dems need to both fire up their base, which Dean does extremely well, and reach out to the undecideds which right now Clark is doing reasonably well. What Atticus needs to realize is that a Dean-Edwards or a Clark-Edwards ticket could achieve both of the objectives that he sets out. But I am having more and more trouble every day seeing Edwards as the top of the ticket.

Labels: iraq

Right Idea

Teddy at It's still the Economy, Stupid notes that everyone likes to receive something for nothing, and that is what deficits are. We receive services without receiving an immediately noticable bill, so people politically like deficits. So the Democrats need to stay away from the words "Tax Cuts" and instead it is

better to focus on just how few jobs have been created, how overtime pay is being cut back, and health care benefits are being slashed, along with veteran's benefits and pay for the troops. Better for the Democrats not to even let the words "tax cut" leave their lips.

So Howard Dean may want to rework his economic stimulas plan a little bit in light of this viewpoint.

Bad Policy, good politics

The vast majority of the time, good policy becomes good politics as you are delivering the goods to your constituents who will want you back to continue delivering the goods. However there are times when good policy is horrendous politics such as the 1993 Clinton Budget and the 1990 Bush tax increase. Both of those actions were needed to control the deficit and both actions cost their sponsors dearly. There are also times when good policy is really, really dumb and bad politics and bad policy is great politics. The Republican Party, in my opinion, has been more capable and willing to exploit bad policy for positive political gain (No Child Left Behind, Bush tax cuts, estate tax cut etc.) But now the Democratic Party is taking an easy alley-oop and going for a political slam dunk by converting half of the reconstruction bill for Iraq into contigent loans.

I can understand why the Democrats are taking this hanging curve and smashing it. It is the easiest political points that they can score in years as it plays into American xenophobia, tax aversion, desire for services and misperceptions of reality all at once. I agree with Kos that the Democrats should grandstand, should point out that Iraq is getting money that we don't have for things that we need because Bush needed to confront an Oedipal drama with Papa and appease his base at the same time. We should grandstand and try to rescind upper bracket tax cuts, we should raise hell and fury as amendment after amendment is voted down that would give equal infrastructure funding to domestic issues. We should make it a circus, but finally we should deliver the money as grants.

However this is just wrong on several levels.

First there is the moral argument. It is now fundamentally apparant that Saddam Hussein and the country of Iraq posed no plausible threat to the safety and security of the United States. It is also evident that the United States and Great Britian went to war against Iraq on the basis of an extremely circumstantial and trumped up case. It is evident that we broke the functioning society that was Iraq. We, as a country, even us anti-war folks who were making the above statements and arguments ten months ago, are responsible for the mess that we have made. Fundamentally, I am arguing the grocery store sign "You broke it, you bought it.

Secondly I do not believe that this is legally possible. The 4th Geneva Convention places fairly strict limits on what an occupying power can change economically in an occupied territory and society. Normal taxes must be collected and used to either provide pre-war services or placed in trust. The laws that were in effect before the conquest must be respected in most cases except when the laws encourage lawlessness. Pre-existing contracts and debts are still held to be valid. The occupier is responsible for the well being of the occupied population and can not undertake economic policy making that is radically different than the previous economic policy, or at least it cannot do that until there is a new sovereign local authority. So loans will be violating a treaty that the United States has signed and ratified. The Democrats have made a good deal of fuss for Bush's willingness to ignore treaties that he does not like in the past, so please be consistent. We are a party that believes in an international order based on shared norms and laws not the naked use of power.

Thirdly, there is a practical argument against loans. The US and the CPA are trying to jawbone the French, Russians and other major creditors to forgive the Iraqi sovereign external debt which totals between 185 to 400 billion dollars. So lets see here, the US is trying to get other countries to take a substantial economic hit by getting them to eat a couple hundred billion dollars in debt while also issuing new debt and claims against future Iraqi oil revenues. The other countries are going to diplomatically laugh at us. There is a clawback provision in the Senate bill which would convert the loans to a grant if 90% of the foreign debt is forgiven, but that is not likely.

Finally, there is an image problem. First we have wackos like the new commander of US Special Forces who believes that this is a holy war. Then we have the problem that most of the Arab world and a reasonable chunk of the rest of the world believe that the United States invaded Iraq as a pure and naked oil grab. This lends credence to that idea..

So Senate Democrats, please act responsibily and kill the loans in conference. You will have gained all of your poltical points that you can from this piece of good policy, but we need to get Iraq stabilized and functioning sooner or later, and I would prefer sooner. Loans will not help that cause.

Labels: iraq

Yep, its started

Three US MPs and 2 Iraqi police officers werekilled yesterday in Karbala after they tried to disarm an armed band near the Karbala mosques. Karbala is a Shi'ite city where there is continual maneuvering and fighting between the different Shi'ite factions for control of the pilgrimage mosques and other issues. The Coalition is blaming Al-Sadr and his forces, which do not have the greatest of strength in this particular city.

A couple pieces of analysis: first CNN is reporting it was at least a medium size platoon involved on the guerilla side (20-30 men) with platoon level weaponry. That is an impressive amount of organization and firepower. Secondly, they mauled the patrol causing five dead and seven others wounded. That is the type of casualties you can expect in urban fighting, which is why the Madr Army is to be feared as they are an urban guerilla force if they go active.

Next year

The Sox lost even though they were up 5-2 with 1 out no one on, bottom of the eigth.... maybe next year.

Leaks

Kos and Tom Spencer at Thinking It Through link to an article in which Bush is said to be extremely angry at continual leakers. Bush threatens punishment to anyone whom he catches leaking.

This has the interesting implication as it blows up the "I don't think we'll catch the leaker" approach with Plame and Intimigate. If he can identify current leakers to punish them now, why the hell can't the White House identify the leakers in the Plame case.

This leak will come back continually next summer to establish that Bush is a small, petty, vindicative political man with no scruples or honesty.

Mixed signals

The economy is still acting funky. Some of the signals are not bad, such as new unemployment claims (384K) while others are great, such as a projected % growth rate, as reported by Billmon. However, we also have some negative signals coming into play such as the decrease in mortage applications, now done to the lowest level since April. Long term interest rates are also increasing which is killing real estate demand.

I think that there are a couple things at play right now. First the neutral and positive signs are indications that the massive Keynesian dump is working its way though the economy right now. However, the effects are not that long lived and I do not think that they are strong enough to jump start further consumer demand as people are still seeing too many of their friends and family lose jobs. Secondly, I think the recovery is fairly weak and parametricaly sensitive to interest rates. There are almost no houses out there left to be refinanced at any rate, and thus no more cash injections. I am not too optimistic about the economy right now.

The dollar as a bet of competency confidence

Kash at Angry Bear forwards an article from the Economist in which all the dollar, euro and yen all want to depreciate against each other. There is the obvious problem that currency prices are always relative to other currencies so it is mathamatically impossible for both the dollar to be down against the yen, and the yen down against the dollar.

The solution to this problem involves investors choosing better vlaues than a US dollar denominated investment. Kash introduces the idea that there is a possible way for a devaluation to happen to all three currencies and that would be for gold or other precious metals to rapidly appreciate. He rejects that possibility, as do I. I would however hazard that there is a partial probability in the Yuan increasing in its comparative value compared to all three currencies. That would relieve some pressure on the dollar, yen and euro blocs. Now, I have no idea as to how to measure the likelihood but it is plausible.

However the important point that Kash is making is that in a zero sum currency devaluation game like this, currencies will be valued according to how competent believe the currency and the country which uses that currency is managed. I agree, this is an OH-Oh shit potentiality.

Congratulations to the Bush Administration

I am not a big fan of Bush or his foreign policy, but every now and then they do deserve some congratulations and recognition for being able to learn. I am extending my congratulations to their ability to achieve another United Nations resolution after being forced to go back and actually listen to the critical concerns of several member nations. I applaud their willingness to actually tone down their arrogance for a second in order to get something done.

Now the question remains how many new troops and how much money will this resolution bring in? I am guessing not many and not much, but it is better than none and almost nothing which is where the US was looking at a month ago when this UN process began.

Better Analysis Q-3

Go check out the Left Coaster for more detailed analysis of the Q-3 Democratic fundraising. The basic conclusions that I agree with is that Edwards and Lieberman are on life support because of the soft fundraising support while Gephardt has to truly and decisively win Iowa.

Q-3 Fundraising

Well, no massive surprises have come in from the initial, official reports Dean pulled in 15 million, while Kerry had trouble reaching 4.5 million dollars, and Clark came in strong with 3.5 million.

The interesting question that I saw in this article is the cash on hand. Dean supposedly has a little over 12 million in available cash which means that he has a massive burn rate. This almost neccissates Dean getting out of the caps. Right now if Dean was to accept matching funds, he would only need to raise another 3-5 million before he is done fundraising for the year.

Kerry is in trouble, and Clark has established the meme that he is a money machine... beyond that nothing new.

Thoughts on the 2004 Patriots

I was just looking at the New England Patriot's roster on Miguel's page and I am just amazed at how young the team actually is, especially next year. The past two years have seen the Patriots go from the veteren cast-off chicken wire and duct tape job that won the Super Bowl to a team that in 2004 will be starting six or seven players on offense with less than 5 years of experience, and at least five players on defense with less than 5 years of experience. They have done this rebuilding while still being able to field an extremely competitive team.

Now the question remains, what do you think that the Patriots should do based on a little less than half a season during the next off-season?

The Patriots have several major free-agent decisions that it needs to make. First they need to decide what type of offer they will offer to Woody. I want the Patriots to resign him to a long term top 5 deal for a guard, but not offensive tackle money. If Woody does not accept this offer, do the Patriots franchise him? If they do, is it a real franchise tag move, or is it for trading leverage?

Secondly, what do the Patriots do with Ty Law and his cap number? Next year Law is due a 6.6 million dollar salary and a 9.44 million dollar cap hit. His contract expires at the end of the 2005 season. I am torn as to what I want the Patriots to do. That is a massive cap number, but Ty right now is having a massive year which justifies that cap number. Ideally I would want Ty to restructure and extend his contract to 2007. The deal would be this: 10 million signing bonus with a 3.5 million dollar salary in 2004 so as to not completely screw the future cap. If a deal like this can not be accomplished, I would start shopping Law around looking for at least a 1st and another first day pick. If I can not get that, I would want the Patriots to keep Law for 2004 and then apply the heavy leverage in 2005.

The third question that the Patriots need to answer before the free agent season starts is the identification of which of its own free agents it wants to keep. I would want Faulk to stay with the team at roughly 3 years 2.5 million total contract. Additionally, one of the three of Hamilton, Lyle and Pleasent will probably be resigned. I would want the focus to be on Hamilton and an offer to Pleasent to be an assistant coach. I want to see how Washington recovers and then give him an incentive loaded contract offer. Beyond that, there are very few free agents that the Patriots need to resign in my mind.

Now who do the Patriots cut before free agency begins? I would say that the best candidate besides Ty Law is Ted Johnson and Antowain Smith. Additional veterens on the bubble include Ken Walter, and Joe Andruzzi.

So now we are to free agency. I think that between free agency and the draft the Patriots need a starting running back, an inside linebacker, another guard, a fullback, a replacement for McGuinest, a free safety, a fifth cornerback and a third tight end.

I think that Bellicheck will be chasing the linebackers, guards and safeties in the free agent market while cornerbacks and running backs will be found in the draft. I do not think that the Patriots will be making too big of a splash in free agency next year, at least not a splash like this year because I think that the young core is being established and accelerated with lots of unanticipated playing time due to injuries this year.

Finally the Pats are looking at 2 low 1st rounders, 2 low 2cd rounders, a low 3rd, a high 4th and a low 4th. Do you want the Patriots to stay relatively put (+/-5 spots), move up aggressively, or move down aggressively?

Cold Front approaching Hell

The Red Sox won game 6 of the ALCS, decisively beating the Yankees 9-6. Now lets see if the Cubs can pull off a win at home.

Staten Island Ferry

A Staten Island Ferry has crashed into its pier. There are deaths although the AP via Yahoo is reporting 12 dead while CNN is reporting 5 dead.

Damm, it is not just the South

Who has the crazy lunatics... my illusions are shattered as Canada has a character right out of a bad satire of Alabama... The Globe and Mail is reporting that a Canadian farmer is suing to stop driver's license photographs from being taken because they are the instrument of Satan...

no more comments needed

Update on Meet-up Support

I have previously noted the growth of Meet-Up support for various candidates, and I figure that today is a good time to do so again.

Currently the top 5 Democratic Meet-Up lists are:
Dean: 123,300
Clark: 39,500
Kucinich: 16,000
Kerry: 12,900
Gore in 2004: 1,800

Dean has added approximately 10% since September 19th, while Clark has added another 70% to his previous total. Kucinich added 33% while Kerry is treading water, adding only a couple of hundred new Meet-Up supporters. Edwards still has not been able to get past the Draft Gore groups, which is pretty pitiful.

Well, what does this mean? Clark is doing really well as more people are finding out about him; they like him enough to be willing to spend a couple of hours on a worknight to learn more about him. Dean has reached the last of his easily reachable initial target audience and the politically intererested and tech savvy pissed off liberal base is about tapped out in giving support to him. He needs to reach out to more women, more African Americans and more to the poor, as he is getting hammered by Clark among the last two and not decisively beating Clark among women.

Kucinich is still doing a good job of locking up the Greens and the outer limits of the left and he is most likely getting plenty of college kid support. The last statement is more a hunch justified by seeing the number of Kucinich for President bumper stickers I see on cars near the University of Pittsburgh, then any hard evidence. Kerry is floundering in recruiting either dedicated supporters or potentially dedicated supporters, while Edwards is off the screen.

Swell, the bond rating just dropped

I am fascinated by the fiscal crisis that is occuring in Pittsburgh for two reasons. First, I live here. Secondly, I believe that the situation here in Pittsburgh is a microcosm of the situations of thousands of municipalities and state governments. I outlined the history on this blog previously. I have been worried about the fiscal stability of the city as the original plan to solve the structural problems (give up some control through a state approved budget board, raise a couple of taxes, tax commuters and the suburbs a little more, merge fire and EMS services to save money, and consolidate some services with the county) has gone nowhere in Harrisburg. Instead the GOP majority legislature is doing their best to ignore the problem and to keep the city from taking action that would allow it to avoid bankruptcy.

Well, the cost is starting to get paid today. Pittsburgh has just taken a huge hit on its bond rating. It dropped from a low S&P A- investment grade rating to a high junk bond BBB rating.

OUCH!

Stupid moves

Juan Cole notes that the Coalition Provisional Authority (Bremer's the leader) has declared Moqtada Sadr an outlaw and the responsible party for everything that has gone wrong in the past month in Baghdad. This, I believe, is a dumb idea for several reasons.

First, as Steve Gilliard points out, Sadr and his Madr Army is not the cause of all problems in Baghdad and beyond. They most likely do not have car bombing skills, and they are definately not fighting in Fallujah or Tikrit. I am 95% confident that they were involved in the ambush of a 1st Armored Division patrol in Sadr City which killed 2 US soldiers and wounded at least 4 others. So the CPA is overreacting and becoming Orwellian... It is all Snowball's fault!!!

Secondly, the CPA is personalizing this too much, much like it has done with Hussein and Bin Laden. Taking out the top leader will not solve the problems. Most likely it will create a matyr for the Madr Army, and already this is an army of radicalized Shi'ites who have a theological disposition to matyr's tales. Even if Sadr was to walk up to the Baghdad Hotel and commit suicide tomorrow morning, the CPA will have a massive problem with the poor, pissed off urban Shi'ites. He is almost irrelevent. The same logic goes with Saddam Hussein; if he is captured tomorrow, the resistance will continue on its natural course.

Thirdly, if the CPA goes after Sadr, it is declaring him to be a big deal. It is also opening the way to a potential fiasco. Imagine a 300 man raiding force goes into Sadr City (population 2,000,000), hits an empty building, and now that force is either surrounded by 300,000 unarmed men, women and children, along with camera crews... they withdraw showing the powerlessness of the US... or worse case, that 300 man force is surrounded and cut off by 20,000 armed men who have mortars, RPGs and SA-7s that can keep the choppers away. All of a sudden Mogadishu looks like a good day in the recent history of urban raids.

Not Geniuses is on fire right now. The first post is detailing the electoral advantages of Clark as a candidate as he can go across the country and say to former Bush supporters "I was like you, hopeful that the 'uniter not a dividor' and 'compassionate conservative' rhetoric was real. However I have become disenchanted with the diveregence between reality and rhetoric and that is why I am running."

Clark runs hard on this as he pitches his national service proposal. The core thrust is a DLC-ish proposal on national service and a Civilian Reserve force that would, presumably, free up resources from the National Guard and their disaester relief mission. It is nothing too innovative or important, but it was used as a way to illustrate Clark's journey away from being a middle of the road indpendent to a middle of the road Democrat. The weakness to this approach is that it does not fire up the base.

He then comments on Howard Dean's ability to believe that good policy becomes good politics. Both of these messages are extremely powerful general election messages that should be able to beat Bush. Dean's approach is to fire up the base while Clark has a much better chance of reaching across to the traditional Rockefeller Republicans. I am not sure what will work better, but the top of the field is deep AND competent.

Clark

I am fundamentally an Anyone But Bush Democrat right now although I have a definate preference towards Dean because I like his organization, I like his willingess to call Bullshit and I think that he is extremely electable. However Digby makes a very good case for me to change my vote and my efforts from Dean to Clark. Digby is arguing that Clark is appealing to the voters who normally do not vote for a Democrat (white males and self-described Conservative democrats.) The extension of that argument is an assumption that the moderates, the African American community and the liberals are going to be voting ABB no matter, the question is turnout, but that the persuadables are more easily persuaded by Clark than by Dean.

This is an extremely valid point, but right now I want to see Clark operate for more than a couple of weeks before I switch my vote, but it could happen.

Lieberman has an up-arrow

I really do not want Joe Lieberman to be the Democratic nominee for President as I would be drinking fairly heavily every time before I would go work for his campaign. I would still be working his campaign but my beer bill would dramatically increase. With that said; I caught him on C-SPAN this morning and he actually sounded like he had some energy and anger which was directed at Bush along with a reason to vote for him. Not too bad at all.

Then I saw, over at the Left Coaster, that he has issued a rather detailed tax plan that would lower taxes for people earning under 115,000 a year, and raise taxes for people who earn over $200,000 a year. I like how the news story detailed the actual income amounts instead of what percentage of the income distribution is covered by those who earn over $200,000. I like how Lieberman is willing to say that most of the money would be used for deficit reduction. Finally, the proper way for any of the Democrats to respond to the Republican screed that any tax increase will kill the economy is to ask in a grave and somber voice "Do you like the economy of the 1990s when Bill Clinton raised taxes on the richest Americans while giving tax relief to the middle class, or do you like Today's economy when Bush cut taxes for the richest Americans, while raising taxes on the middle class" and then explain that you are looking at the aggregate taxation picture, not just the federal income tax.

So, Joe is still not in the first rank of my preferences, but he got a little up arrow from me in my personal cattle call.

Workforce growth for the next generation

Economists for Dean has a very interesting take on the nature of the new labor economy. It was the conventional wisdom of the booming 90s that the economy suffered from massive labor shortages and that any means of getting skilled labor into the country was a good idea, specifically lots of political support for the H-1B visa program and legalizing the status of unskilled, illegal immigrant labor primarily from Mexico. Now the CW is that there will be a permanant slack economy with low wage growth, low job growth will mean that we will not have a labor shortage.

Both of those CWs are wrong, as the Economists for Dean blog points out, the Boomers are retiring and the US economy with its current structural productivity growth will be encouraging greater economic growth and long term employment growth. The EfD are arguing that this means two things; first less political resistance to immigration and skilled-worker immigration. I have no real dog in that fight, and no real ability to make that political judgement call. Secondly, the EfD are arguing that this neccessitates a massive investment in education. I agree that this is a partial solution, but it is not a complete solution as new workers with the needed technical skills would not be coming on line for another five to ten years.

As the Center for Policy Analysis points out, life expectencies are increasing for men and women while workforce participation rates for men over the age of 65 have plummetted from 46% in 1948 to 17% in 1997 (the current level is even lower). Could we create retirement policies that do not penalize skilled workers from retiring and removing themselves from the labor pool for an additional two or three years. I imagine that we could remove the SSI earnings caps so as to reduce the marginal taxation of benefits. Or we could change IRA distribution rules so that for each year that you work past the Normal Retirement Age you add a year to which you do not need to make a minimum IRA distribution, or we could reduce the size of the OASDI FICA tax bite?

What other policies alternatives would encourage greater workforce participation by older Americans who still have their good health?

Radicalization of the guerillas

Yahoo is reporting a third suicide bomber attacked the Turkish Embassy in Baghdad today, causing little damage and only wounding two people. This is the third suicide bomber this week (police station, Baghdad hotel, Turkish Embassy.) This is an indication to me that there is a segment of the resistance movement which is fundamentally religious in nature, as Juan Cole astutely points out a couple of days ago. Secular groups such as the Ba'ath Party tend not to go for suicidal actions while religious groups who believe in a glorious after-life are more likely to take part in suicide attacks because there is a reward for the bombers after they are dead.

If this assumption is true, and IF the religious groups are larger than a couple of lunatics (which I think is a reasonable assumption as they have been able to assemble three car bombs in a short period of time) then I am assuming that we will be seeing a carbombing a week for as long as the US is still in Iraq.

Labels: iraq

Bio-cybernetics

Nathan Newman has an interesting insight on the news report that monkeys are able to control robotic arms by thought. He is right in that the first application will be biomedical improvements for amputees and possibly paralytics.

However he has the strong incite that this is the beginning of just general enhancement. The key technology here is not the robotic arms, that is old hat which a good research center can do in its sleep; the key technology is the neural-mechanical interface. That interface can be used to connect the brain to silicon chips which can be used to store information.

I would definately believe that this type of interface would be extremely popular after a couple product generations because it is the ultimate in getting your kids ahead of the field. I would want two different chips. The first one would teach me rhythm (you never want to see me dance right now) and the second one would be to help me with languages. These are just a couple of the applications that could be created in a short period of time.... It will be interesting.

Brits get hit with IED

Juan Cole is reporting that four British soldiers were wounded near Baghdad after their vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device that was planted near a road. IEDs require a moderate amount of sophistication to construct and to use effectively, so if the Shi'ites are using them against the British, then they have some training. It could be either from the pre-war's army soldiers or from current Sunni guerillas.

Iraqi In-fighting

The Shi'ites are starting to shoot at each other according to Yahoo The Madr Army which is loyal to Sadr and has its strength based in the slums of Baghdad and probably Basra appears to be trying to consolidate its strength and secure the pilgrim destination mosques in Karabala and Najaf in order to seize the treasury. Al-Sistani Dawa forces fought back and seized control of the area under contestation.

I believe that the Madr Army will soon be taking part in active combat operations against the United States.

Boston Sports

Life is good, the Patriots won an ugly one on Sunday and the Sox came back and evened up the series last night 2-2 after a fine pitching performance by Tim Wakefield.

I think that the Sox need to keep Wakefield ready for game 7 if need be because the Yankees have not figured out how to hit him when he is on. I can not figure out the knuckle ball, when he is on, no one can. I feel pretty confident that between Lowe, Pedro and Wakefield that the Sox can pick up two more wins.

Now onto the Patriots; they won, but they won ugly. Somehow the Pats have pleasently surprised me and found a running game. I am liking the use of Faulk on the quick hitters between the tackles. The line is holding up their blocks and creating small creases. The defense is looking real good, although they are giving up lots of passing yards, they are creating turnovers and stopping the run.

I am really impressed by the rookies as I think that four of them started on Sunday and another two were making massive contributions. This is one of the best draft classes that I remember for the Patriots. I also think that the Pats are going to get really really scary good when they start getting their starters back from injury.

YEAH!

Freedom of the Press

The Pontificator advocates another simple and easy way to solve the Intimigate scandal; arrest Bob Novak and then sweat him until he starts coughing up names.

Much like the Move-On make everyone sign an affadavit strategy, I reject this approach. Reporters are not covered under the 1982 law that forbade the disclosure of a CIA agent's identity and/or cover. It is the actual leaker who is covered by this law. Secondly, while the courts do not recognize a reporter's privilege, there has traditionally been a deferral to reporters who wish to protect their sources unless there is absolutely no other reasonable way to gain that information. Right now, we are relatively sure that at least 6 other reporters know who the leakers are, one of them works for the Washington Post and is leaking like mad to the Post's own writers. We also know that there is at least one senior administration official leaking and a second potential source someplace within the conspiracy. So I think that it is fairly evident that Novak is not too important to the case any more and that he does not provide unique information.

I just do not want to set a precedent that can be used to muzzle reporters who are telling an uncomfortable but legal truth in the future. Keep Novak out of jail but sweat him by attacking his professional credibility as Josh Marshall is doing here. That is the proper way to make Novak sweat, not throwing him in jail.

Maintaining the Social Safety Net

The BBC is reporting that the World Bank believes that the food distribution network in Iraq needs to be kept in place for at least the next three to five years in order to ensure an orderly transition to a market economy. This is the food distribution network that Jerry Bremer wants to dismantle by January because it is "socialist" and we wise white Americans need to destroy the delusions of those little brown people... sorry, I am slightly bitter right now.

Iraq is a mess right now, and we lucked out during the war that there was not a massive refugee crisis and that the Iraqi government did a decent job of ensuring that there were sufficient civilian food stockpiles distributed throughout the country. However, dismantling this network will be throwing millions into starvation because there are currently not enough jobs or other means available to earn the needed income to pay for food.

As it is, the US could soon be facing a Sunni-Kurdish-Sadrist Shi'ite alliance and spitting on the rest of the population does not seem to be a good idea.

Labels: iraq

Legitimacy (Pt.2)

The United States has been trying to push that IGC as a legitimate governing body of Iraq although the US retains veto power over any and all decisions that the IGC makes, so it is nothing more than a rubber stamp/consulting body.
That is how most of the world views the IGC. It also makes for an easy way to say no to the United States.

This view was reinforced this week at the International Islamic Conference held in Mayalasia. The IGC representatives went begging for more Muslim troops to be peacekeepers and they also said that the US would be in Iraq for a long time and that sovereignity would not be handed over for a significant period of time.

So the IGC is just shilling for the US, at least in the eyes of countries which could choose to help the occupation, but realistically why do they want to get involved in an upopular occupation that has the potential of turning into a civil war?

Labels: iraq

Human Rights

I believe in human rights and I believe that Amnesty has done wonders for the human rights of millions across the globe. I want human rights to be advanced as often as possible for the concept of human rights instead of state-granted rights helped to bring down the Eastern Bloc and it is effectively, albiet slowly changing Iranian society.

I also believe that the United States should embrace its committment to human rights whenever and wherever we have the ability to do so. That means in the United States, both on Rodeo Drive and in Roxbury, and overseas. I am disgusted that the United States has not done so in Iraq, as it appears that the US is engaging in collective punishment in an attempt to suppress the guerillas by making the cost to the populace of non-cooperation with the US too high. The US has been bulldozing orchids of farmers who live in villages that continue to shoot at US convoys.

Collective punishment/retribution is illegal under the Geneva Convention to which the US is a signatory. This is also part of a pattern of behavior which constitute probabable war crimes and violations of the Geneva Convention. The most notable reported event is a hostage taking by the 4th Infantry Division.

Come on, this country is better than that... we need to seize and maintain the moral highground if the war on terrorism is to have any hope of success. And that high road includes respecting human rights especially when it is not convienent for us to do so.

Labels: iraq

Anger versus smarts

Matt Ygelsias takes issue with Matt Stoller's call for more anger among reasonable liberals. Matt Y. believes that the Dems just need to make smarter tactical decisions and he pulls as his example the 2002 funding decisions to candidates who were wiped out instead of towards winnable states that the Dems lost.

I agree with Matt Y. that smarter decisions need to be made, but Stoller has a very legitimate point that carries more weight in my mind. Democratic candidates have been losing in California and in 2002 for Congress because turnout has not been proportional to the registratrion. As I have outlined in the past, the base is going to be critical, and it is far easier to get an angry base out to vote than a happy base out to vote. So lets get angry, but focus that anger, as Kevin Drum at CalPundit suggests, on the critical tipping point states.

Do cry for US Argentina for the truth is We'll be with you.....

At least that is one conclusion which can be made after reading two different reports that came out in the past week. Atrios passes along an article from the Washington Post which reports on a CBO report. The CBO report details how tax collections are at the lowest point since 1959 and the trend is one that has not been seen since the Great Depression, while government spending is growing as a proportion of the economy. The federal government is now spending 20.2% of GDP while only collecting 16.6% of GDP in taxes. This is a trend that is likely to continue as long as Bush is in the White House and Tom “nothing is more important than tax cuts in wartime” DeLay is in House as we will continue to have an endless war on terror, a fiascesque cash cow in Iraq and an unwillingness to be serious.

This unwillingness to take governance seriously could cause this country to have a fiscal meltdown. At least that is according to an article which CalPundit analyzes. The Economist is worried about the economic fundamentals of the United States of America and it analyzed the US as if it was a developing market. We barely passed that test where the passing grade is non-high expectation of a financial crisis within twelve months. Talk about setting the bar low and barely being able to jump over it.

These are the concerns that quite a few liberals and conservative critics of the administration have. I applaud the liberals for realizing that social justice is far easier to accomplish when there is economic health in this nation, while I give praise to the few conservatives who have not sold themselves out for power. I do not believe that this country should ever be in a position where we need to be compared to a Third World disaster country in order to come out in a favorable light. However, economically, that could soon be the case.

Labels: iraq

Going with the Sox

Right now the series is tied 1-1, Pedro is pitching at Fenway, and life is good as I am taking the rest of the day off to enjoy a beautiful day of Indian summer here in Pittsburgh.

Edwards down?

This is a bit insider baseballish but in this Washington Post article that is primarily dealing with Clark's attempt to raise more money in California and tap into the institutional Democratic money sources there is one very juicy line concerning John Edwards.

"From Sept. 17, the day of his announcement, to Sept. 30, Clark raised $3.5 million, substantially more than Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) raised during the three months of the third quarter"

Now this states that the Post knows that Edwards raised less than 3.5 million dollars. The question is what constitutes "substantially" less money than 3.5 million. I would hazard that it would have to be at least 20% less for me to use the term substantial, so being slightly kind to Edwards, the Post may have a source that says Edwards raised just 3 million for 3-Q. Probably less than that.

Can Edwards afford to stay in if he only raised 3 mil? I do not know. The pressure has got to be getting intense on him to produce some positive uptick anywhere besides South Carolina.

A good guess?

Julia over at Why Your Wife Won't Have Sex with You has a very good theory as to how the White House or at least the National Security Council was able to find out that Valerie Plame was under cover. Julia points out that Mary K. Sturtevant is the "Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Intelligence Programs, National Security Council staff" who had previously been at the "Central Intelligence Agency, where she served in senior positions in the Directorate of Operations, the Directorate of Science and Technology, and as Agency Comptroller."

So this is a good line of speculation as to how the information got to the White House, and it would point the finger looking for the actual leakers at either the NSC or other national security folks. It is an interesting thesis that deserves some more looking into.

Civility

There has been quite a discussion going on about civility that was prompted by a David Brooks New York Times column in which he calls for a return to civility. Quite a bit of the Left would like to return to civility in the public discourse, and would listen to Brooks' call if he himself had not been so uncivil and viscious when Clinton was President. But now that Bush, his guy is in trouble, we must be polite.

Paul Krugman, the favorite columnist for the left and the most hated by the right notes that "there's more going on than a simple attempt to impose a double standard. All this fuss about the rudeness of the Bush administration's critics is an attempt to preclude serious discussion of that administration's policies. For there is no way to be both honest and polite about what has happened in these past three years. "

Many bloggers have joined this discussion. Ezra at Not Geniuses believes that a new era is about to approach. He also discourages the Left from conducting the attacks of personality that the right has made a staple of their rhetoric although he concedes that the right has been extremely effective in gaining and consolidating power using this style of rhetoric.

The normally calm and willing to be convinced of moderation CalPundit urges only tactical caution in using outrage and emotional arguments, saying that we should remember that our goal is to remove Bush in November, and anything that distracts us from that effort is a waste of our time and energy. He has also hit the ball out of the park this week with these two posts.

Brad DeLong argues that it is rather evident that the Republicans are not arguing their positions in good faith (see 2001, 2002, 2003 tax cut rationalizatoins, Iraq war, Homeland Security formation, Healthy Forest, Clear Skies etc.) and that it is proper and fair for liberals to question the public motivations of people who have a history of lying through their teeth and also a respect for Straussian interpretation of texts.

Others are urging full bore, no holds barred attacks even when the evidence is not on our side. This view can be found at Democratic Underground and a couple of the further left/activist boards. I think that thees guys are wrong because I still want to believe in facts and the fact that the facts support the left.

Frank at in the comments at Not Geniuses notes that this is a prisoner dilemna collective action problem and that the tit for tat strategy is perfectly suited for this type of game.Morat at Skeptical Notion notes that the conservatives truly are unable to take any effective return fire when the liberals actually call Bullshit on the worst of the right's charges. This is a potential way to break the cycle, beat the right senseless with facts, arguement and verifiable and incisive invesctive.

This is the position that makes the most sense and appeal to me. I would strongly prefer that the political discourse in this country is civil, that people are able to have serious agreements to disagree about serious issues without impugning their parentry, their morality or their honor. I wish that we could treat issues as if we are mature adults. I want policy decisions made on the basis of what will achieve the most public good. However that is not happening. So we need to gain power and that means defeating the politicized practice of slander, rumor and insinuation. Tit-for-tat is an effective strategy, and as a Party the Democrats need to realize that compromise is not fundamentally possible with the Texan wing of the Republican party. As soon as we get a GOP that allows Rockefeller Republicans and other moderates influence and power within their party, then compromise and civility can be restored. Until then, not fighting back will ensure the destruction of the Democratic party.

This post was updated to include the paragraph starting with Brad DeLong as of 5:15 Oct. 10, 2003. I had wanted to use him in the initial draft, but I could not find the passage that I wanted to use but remembered that I had recently read.

Labels: iraq

Private Police forces

Phil Carter of the Intel Dump has a good discussion about Fed-Ex being authorized to form its own private police force in order to gain access to better intelligence to protect its aircraft fleet. I agree with Phil that this is generally a good idea as he correctly points out, the vast majority of the critical infrastructure in the United States is owned, used and protected by private corporations. However I have a few concerns about private companies actually having their own police forces.

I know that officers in an authorized and deputized police force have to follow the state laws in the state that they have jurisdiction. However the badge and the enforcement authority that is behind it can be used negatively for such purposes as intimidating unions, covering up for crimes committed by company executives etc.

Phil has faith in the free market to correct those problems by installing the proper incentive systems by enough stakeholders will ensure that no "abuse of this power that could lead to a lawsuit -- or worse yet, a class action suit on behalf of a large injured class" will occur. He also argues that Fed-Ex bases its business on its public image. I can understand the theoretical justification for this viewpoint, as it makes sense. However I am more cynical and slightly less trusting of the idea that we already have perfect and free information flows that would allow for the appropriate corrective and/or warning signals to be sent.
I am suspicious of this private police force and its potential to be abused because of the principal-agent problem. Any agent, including the CEO, does not control the entire company. Instead he works for the principal (shareholders) and other stakeholders. The agent also controls some information flows and has his own interests at heart constrained by doing enough to not get fired. There are too many opportunities for short term gains present for there to be no abuse. And since there are fewer feedback mechanisms, only stock price, bad publicity and potential arrest, then in the public sector police forces (resignations, re-election campaigns, arrest, police work slowdowns, neighborhood groups causing hell, the ACLU) I think that the opportunity to cause mischief, intentional or unintentional is present to a greater degree than Phil Carter believes.
So that leaves us the problem of bringing good intelligence and security procedures to the private sector. Could we develop an effective system of targetted warnings, training for non-deputized security forces so that they know how to deal with sabotage and attacks better, and general private sector intelligence sharing. I would imagine most insurance companies would be willing to make this worthwhile for the clients to foot the bill as it reduces their risk. But what else can we do?

Clark analysis

I am interested in Wesley Clark as both a candidate for President and as an organization. I share Kos's concern about the process of politics, although I have done 1/1,000,000th of what he has done to implement that vision. I find Wesley Clark interesting as he should be able to destroy Bush and the neo-con job Administration in the November election. I want his campaign to succeed.

However there are apparant structural problems that are starting to show up. Clark has been given a pass by the press in the first debate because he was only running for nine days. However as last night showed, he is being targeted by his rivals for the nomination and he has not done a great job of parrying the attacks and then playing jujitsu to go on the counter-offensive. His organization while strong, is slightly chaotic as his campaign manager Donnie Fowler resigned this week after he faced a massive demotion. His internet supporters are still backing him in very large numbers but a small segment of fairly crucial gatekeepers and nodal organizers are getting disenchanted. More details on how his campaign is organized can be found at the Clark Sphere which is maintained by a Fowler ally.

The line that caught my attention was this one in which Donnie Fowler spoke to volunteer field coordinators:
""Fuck Little Rock, just keep doing what you are doing." Little Rock is the current campaign headquarters.

This is the difference between the Dean and Clark volunteer/netroots strategy and the part of the process that I am concerned about. Dean and his entire campaign are based on giving the volunteers in the field great power, the ability to initiate actions that they think fit the local circumstances. Sometimes they screw up, as happened last night on the Daily Show. The DC for Dean organizer got flummoxed on TV. But the volunteers have the power to screw up without worrying about getting screamed at. There is definately some command and control as exercised through Meet-Up organizational talking points such as letter writing, Dean Corps, Generation Dean, Visibility Day etc. But it is only exercised through broad patterns and guidelines. The volunteers are not micromanaged. They would not expect to hear their Burlington contact to say "Fuck Burlington, keep on doing what you are doing." They already are doing what they are doing.

It is looking like the Clark people want to run a traditional campaign with their grassroots as a tack-on extra accessory instead of using the grassroots as their way to build a new organization that can do more than just win the White House for the Democrats. This strategy may still work in winning the White House (I have some small doubts as I believe that the entire Democratic base needs to come out in record numbers) but I do not like the process involved.

USA Today on the Creative Class

USA Today has a massive cover article on the Creative Class and the young professional attraction movement that is occuring in a variety of larger, older cities that did not do particulary well in the past forty years. I thought it was a very good article and it encompasses the argument for a Creative Class based economic development strategy; we are young, don't consume that many city services, higher income than average, mobile, and very high human capital. The Creative Class as a whole is also the engine of economic growth in this country.

However, it brings out one very good critique and one that I agree with from Katz of the Brookings Institute who says that good cities also rely on the basics: ""Quality of our educational system, quality of life, tax rates, poverty."

I believe that the proper response to this critique is that the Creative Class introduces new economic activity into a region which raises the size of the tax base allowing for lower rates, more income produces more jobs which should lower poverty rates and improve the quality of life. As far as the educational system; I am not sure.

I found this article interesting, and worth a recap here. You should go read it.

Go

Read and enjoy this comic NOW

Everyone outraged about the Plame Affair needs to show this comic to people who may be buying into the President's Kool-Aide. This will produce laughs and realizations of the soft bigotry of low expectations that Bush thrives upon.

(link via CalPundit)

Dean on the Daily Show

Dean made his first appearance on the Daily Show with John Stewart last night and I think that he came off reasonably well and human which is the main point of appearing on the show. The set-up was one of the correspondants went to a DC for Dean rally and made an ass out of himself (I greatly respect the patience of the Dean aides who had to deal with him) and also stole a mini-cam from NBC.

The gov was 'ambushed' coming out of the hotel, got to hold the camera, make a joke and look at the correspondant make an ass out of himself. The bit worked, and definately made Dean look human... I think that Dean and the rest of the Dems should be trying to book themselves on the Daily Show at least once a quarter becuase it is a good news program (what is my commentary on that statement... I know) and it reaches perspective liberal voters cheaply.

Oh Shi'ite

Two more Americans were killed yesterday in Baghdad. This is bad news. However the truly bad news is where the attacks took place. The ambush did not occur in the middle class or upper class Sunni areas of the capital where there has been a strong network of guerilla activity.

Instead the attacks took place in Sadr City which is a million person large Shi'ite slum in Baghdad. It is also the main power base for Al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army. As I have noted earlier, Al-Sadr is the leader of the most militant and anti-occupation group of Shi'ites. However his militia has not been actively operating against Americans. It looks like they may just be beginning operations now.

If you're innocent, don't worry

I hate that line of reasoning which is brought up whenever one of our Constitutional and or common law rights are to be violated by a new law. I hate it when the speaker is on the right, and I especially hate it when the speaker is either a liberal or a liberterian because they should know their ideological belief system better than that.

Right now Move-On, an organization that I belong to, and have given money to in the past, has an affadavit up on its site asking for people to declare their innocence. Right now it is a public relations stunt, and as such, I approve of it. However, I do not approve of forcing people who actually are suspects of committing a major felony to fundamentally entrap themselves. This is fundamentally the same BS fraud charge that Martha Stewart is being charged with. Alleghegations came up about her behavior, she proclaimed her innocence and now she gets hit with a securities fraud charge for delivering misleading information to her investors. People have the right to not incriminate themselves and proclaim their innocence.

I know that in the orginal version as proposed by Mark Kleiman that the affadavit is a voluntary affadavit but if the senior administration officials refused to file such an affadavit they would be asked to resign by Bush. It is not a mandatory affadavit in the same way that being asked to take a Breathalyzer is not mandatory. I don't like that law either. Only investigate people when there is reasonable suspician.

I am conflicted though. I want this White House brought down to its knees, and a perjury/obstruction of justice sideshow to the national security endangerment scandal would be a useful adjunct to this process. However, I still want to have a slightly naive faith in the American way... process still matters to me

A good point about executive privilege

The good Roger Ailes raises the point that the stupidity defense that is being spun by Michael Isikoff has a fatal flaw. It presumes that the President is out of the loop.

This has the normal problem of making Bush look incompetent and controlled by his advisors, but that is not the insight that Roger sees. Instead it destroys any claim towards executive privilege that White House Counsel Gonzales can legitimately make and expect to have upheld. If the President does not know about a leak nor was informed of it by his senior advisors, then what can he claim privilege to in order to ensure a free flow of advice to him. The stupidity and out of the loop defense states that Bush received no information from his advisors, therefore executive privilege is moot.

This will only matter if the Justice Department pushes the issue. It has the right to either accept or contest an executive privilege claim. I, along with Billmon have little faith that the Justice Department will hotly pursue these leads. This is why I would prefer a special prosecutor. Failing that, I would like the Wilsons to file suit soon and seek rapid discovery in order to out the leakers.

Destroying the Reserves (PT.XXI)

South Knox Bubba has a couple letters from Reserve and National Guard MPs who are complaining about the conditions in Iraq. In one letter, the writer has been mobilized without any downtime for at least ten months as of now, and it expects demobilization to occur no earlier than July, 2004. Another writer writes that his Reserve unit is on the bottom of the supply and respect chain in Iraq and that everyone who can will be getting out.... Just go and read these letters...

I am sorry for harping on this so frequently, but Bush truly is destroying this country's ability to protect itself in the future by decimating the Reserve Component.

Labels: iraq

Successful Dehumanization

I am working right now in an after school program that is designed to help lower income and lower skill girls catch up on their math and science skills. It is also a social program that encourages people to "pay it forward" by engaging in community service. Today we had two different service projects available for the girls to choose; one was to help bag food at a local food pantry and the other was to collect toys and clothes for a local refugee population that is primarily composed of Bosnian and Afgani Muslims.

One of the girls involved in the program said "I vote for the food pantry; I ain't dealing with any crazy murdering lunatic refugees... they love Bin Laden. "

The propaganda campaign has worked well, unfortunately.

My ZIP code is active

I was just perusing Open Secrets and entered my zip code into the contribution list. I was expecting that my area of Pittsburgh would have had higher than average donations because it is a well organized neighborhood with above median income, but I was not expecting an 8x greater than normal political contribution rate. I was surprised that the 10 biggest donations were to Republican causes because the ZIP code is part of the infamous People's Republic of the 14th Ward here in Pittsburgh.

I just found this interesting, and I encourage people to check it out.

Oh yeah, if you do a personal search, you find that the Mayor of Pittsburgh and the Governor of Pennyslvania have made no personal contributions to any federal candidates as of Q-2. Interesting

Going on the Offensive Pt. 2

We have the disparate elements that we need among the different candidates that the Democrats are running right now. Dean runs on empowerment and anger. Edwards runs on a moral vision of America. Clark has his New Patriotism which again is an empowerment and moral vision for America. The elements are there, now the Democrats have to go on the offensive.

The core elements of the offensive should be contrasting the Bush vision for America and the Democratic vision for America. It should be a positive comparison. It should take advantage of the fact that the Democratic vision is positive for families and for people just like you, whomever that 'you' is. It should emphasize facts such as this; Clinton and the Democrats allowed states to have the flexibility to fund maternity and medical leaves while Bush repealed that rule. It should show that we value work as well as wealth.

There should be the serious question of fairness as in; is it fair for someone who is making $300,000 a year to be paying a lower effective marginal tax rate than someone who is making $30,000 a year. Americans love fairness. The offensive should be aimed to create the beginnings of a brand name that the Democratic Party is the party of fairness. People who work hard in the Democratic America will get ahead and be treated well in our society while under the Bush vision, people whose grandfathers worked hard will be ahead while everyone else will be stuck in place.

The Democrats need to make the idea of fairness central to their appeal. Explain why corporate crime is inherently unfair to the average American worker, explain why we believe in multi-lateral foreign policy, so that the world will want to pay their fair share of the costs proportional to their benefits versus the high costs that we are currently bearing in Iraq. Explain the Democratic platform in terms of fairness and contrast that to the Bush administration's unfairness. Do not enter the discussion of right and wrong as that is moral language that the Republicans usually score big on, concentrate on fair and unfair.

This is the offensive that the Democrats need to take. Emphasize a positive and responsible vision for America that treats its citizens fairly and honestly.

Labels: iraq

Going on the Offensive (Pt.1)

Orginally this was going to be a single post, it got long, so I am splitting it up

Hesiod at Counterspin is documenting some of the stupidity that the California Democrats are engaging in. They are fighting to keep the car tax in place because they believe that the state needs the revenue. As a policy analyst, I agree with that position, the state of California needs more revenue right now in order to close the budget gap. However, the people of California disagree. They want lots of services without having to pay the needed taxes for them. Fine, the Democrats should allow the car tax to be repealed and then let Arnold propose a budget that is balanced without using new taxes. It can be done, as Governor Granholm of Michigan has shown. However, it will be painful.

The question remains for the Democrats as to how they go on the offensive. Right now I am engaged in a productive discussion with Mays at Not Geniuses regarding how the Democrats can win in 2004. My basic contention is that we have been having our asses kicked in a battle of the bases because the Republicans have been better able to motivate their base with what they deem a positive vision of the world, however skewed it may be. The Democrat message has been a fairly negative and reactive message. It is what they will not do, or will do in opposition to the Republican party.

The majority of the Democrats running for President are guilty of running against Bush and the Republicans instead of running for a vision that they desire to implement and that they believe will improve the quality of life for all Americans. Dean has the largest degree of guilt. He built his campaign on captivating and focusing core Democratic anger on a number of issues, Iraq, taxes, social justice and directed it towards empowerment and ABB feelings. I believe the empowerment angle is critical, as it is a positive vision. However it is not enough.

John Edwards has had a strong positive vision for the United States that he has outlined well. He is casting himself in a quasi-populist, moralist role. The basic thrust is that this Adminstration values wealth and unearned income far more than it values honest hard work, and that is wrong. Hard, honest work is an American tradition and value system that produces what is good for all people. Therefore government is needed to be an honest and neutral broker between capital and work which means government needs to impose effective but minimal regulation to make sure that the economic game in the United States is fair. That is a positive vision that explains core American and Democratic values. Other candidates need to adapt that vision and expound upon it.

Now the question is how do we meld anger and vision into a positive vision statement that will win us the November election. We need anger to motivate the base. The hardest of hardcore political junkies readily believe and agree with the Kissinger via Krugman analysis of the GOP as a revolutionary regime. Kevin Drum, a radicalized moderate, notes this when he posted the 2000 Texas GOP party platform. It is a radical document. However this is insider baseball to most swing voters. We need to appeal to their morality, to their sense of fairness and to their sense of hope. We need to empower them to feel that they can make a difference in this country. We need a combination of Dean's organization which allows people to be in positions to screw up but because they are allowed to screw up, they take care not to, and Edward's vision.

We need hope, we need anger, we need vision, we need dreams to win in 2004.

Labels: iraq

Army wants to go to Unit Rotation

The US Army has decided that it wants to go to a unit rotation system according to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. The current policy is an individual rotation system where a person is assigned to a unit as an individual and knows that, barring emergencies, he will be there for a fixed amount of time until his next transfer. The current system is good for career and professional development as it allows younger soldiers to get the training that they need to develop. However it does have a slight cost on unit cohesion as you get news guys into the organization every month.

Unit rotation takes a basic unit such as a company, assembles all of the soldiers needed to fill out the organization and then puts that battalion together for three or four years. People can not rotate in or out unless there are casualties. This scheme makes sense from a transportation point of view and for unit cohesion. However the US tried this once in the late 80s and the men hated it because it killed their careers if they missed a particular school they wanted because they could not transfer.

Turnout

As it is pointed out at Kos and CNN turnout among Democrats was very poor compared to the turnout for Republicans and Indpedents. This is at least the second election in the past two years that the Democrats have gotten their asses handed to them because the smaller Republican base was energized and motivated while the Democratic base stayed home.

I believe that the 2004 election will primarily be a battle of the bases. If that is the case, then the Democrats are in trouble if they do not identify means of engaging the base and giving them a good reason to turn out. The base needs to be respected and the candidate needs to be able to make nods to the base without the press calling him a wild lefty socialist. We also need to change our assumption about the base and how it will come into play. It might be worthwhile to target more money and staff towards cultivating ties with organized groups in order to faciliate their turnout.

I also believe that the ability to turn out the Democratic base in record numbers is one of the critical keys towards electability. Right now Dean has the academics, liberals and gays as supporters, and these three groups are part of the base. Gephardt has a good deal of labor support. Edwards and Clark are running campaigns that assume the base will come along with a winner while Kerry has been trying to grab a chunk of the base but he has been outmaneuvered several times. Finally, Lieberman is running against a good chunk of the base. So I think that we need to rethink what electability means if we assume that next year is a battle of the bases.

Bombing in Baghdad

A car bomb went off in an Iraqi police station. It killed at least eight police officers. We have not seen a successful car bombing attack since Al-Najaf. Again the bombing was aimed at collaborators to the American occupation. Is this a shift in tactics or a target of opportunity. If it is a shift in tactics, where the Iraqi resistance targets Iraqi collaborators, then US troops are slightly safer in the short term as they are not the prime targets but they are at higher risk long term because their eyes, ears and cultural interpreters on the ground are either dead, fighting for their lives, or scared of working with the US.

Finally, the bombing occurred in a Shia neighborhood. Does that have any additional significance? I do not know.

Red Sox steal Game 1

The Red Sox put together an impressive 5-2 victory against the NY Yankees last night. I was a little surprised at how effective Tim Wakefield was; I guess his knuckleball is either really on or really off with little in between and last night it was really on. Now the Sox have a good chance of winning tonight with Derek Lowe pitching and tomorrow with Pedro Martinez starting. Where will the fourth win come from?

Who hasn't been pissed off?

There are some big problems in Baghdad as there are large Shi'ite protests occuring in Baghdad. The protests are occuring because the US arrested an iman for storing light weapons in a mosque.

Most likely the protesters are supporters of Al-Sadr, a young Shi'ite firebrand of a cleric. His primary support comes from the slums of Baghdad and he has been calling for active resistance against the American occupation.

So right now we have the Kurds extremely concerned wrt the Turks coming into the country, a large proportion of the Sunni Arab population being at best neutral in regards to the active counter insurgency and now a group of extremely pissed off Shi'ites who are organized and armed. Is the occupation really going that well that we can afford to piss off 70-80% of the country in under a week?

UPDATE 9:50am EST Oct. 9, 2003Juan Cole confirms that the protesters are supporters of Al-Sadr. GO READ HIM if you want to learn more.

Down Arrow for Clark

This has been a bad week for Clark as his campaign is still trying to jell into a coherent and single-purposed whole. Clark has the difficult task of integrating two Internet organizations, Clinton/Gore political professionals, and his own personal views into a campaign. There would always be some infighting and tensions but quite a few people hoped that Clark would be able to take the excitement, self-direction and energy of his netroots and effectively meld them with a more traditional campaign that would allow for a two front approach to winning the nomination. The hope was that he would take the best of Dean's organizational approach, add Southern military experience and then defeat Bush.

That hope has been getting pounded this week. His campaign manager resigned because the Netroots were losing out to the insiders. His chief blogger has written a letter in which he said "It will be clear across the country that the campaign of Wesley Clark is nothing more than the Gore campaign with a better candidate - this will mean that activists, the people who can create a field organization that can win Iowa and New Hampshire, will know that this campaign is nothing more than a media creation."
The American public has seen and knows very little about General Clark. He has no political resume to run on, he has no "Success by Six," program to point to as a means of domestic policy experience, he has no bills upon which his name is attached to. The only thing that people will be familiar with is his campaign and the meta-story that it spins. As Josh Marshall notes "The thing about campaigns is that they end up telling us something about the candidate. Getting a campaign up to speed in a few weeks is no simple task. If Clark is someone who will make a good president, he'll get this situation in hand." This is what the American public has to judge Wesley Clark with.

Now can he pull it off?

Consitutional change

Tom Tomorrow has a post concerning Sen. Hatch's and Rep. Conyer's attempts to amend the Constitution to allow foriegn born, by naturalized citizens, be eligible for President. Hatch is doing this for Schwartznaegger while Conyers believes that Gov. Jennifer Granholm of Michigan would make a great President.

I disagree with their efforts. The Constitution should only be changed when their is a dired need for change. The current rules exclude a very very small subset of people who would want to be President and the logic behind these rules is to ensure that the President has sole loyalties to the United States and not to a foreign power.

Recall a preview for 2004

There are quite a few reactions in the blogosphere concerning the California recall: some outright negative, some slightly hopeful,or exhausted or outright confused.

Well, we have already seen this in 2000 with the Bush administration. We got an illusion of machoism and a media created desire for change from the Clinton administration. We got an outright liar and a probable drunk receiving a free pass from the press while his opponenet was being slimed as a liar for things that he did not say. Gore got it for the Internet, Bustamante got it for MECHA.

We are going to see this entire strategy of flooding the airwaves with wall to wall advertisement with an empty suit mouthing the proper populist buzz words while his advisors consort and conspire to screw those who respond to the populism. Let's be aware of it.

(The populist buzz phrase angle I got from Arianna Huffington, Daily Show, Oct. 7, 2003. I just can not find the link right now)

Arnold

Arnold as governor. All I can say is good luck to the people of California for going for the glitz and glitter of a twenty five million dollar marketing campaign. I think that he will fail miserably because no one in the Assembly owes him anything, and the Dems have strong majorities.

Failure at the UN

Billmon has a good take on the US pulling the UN resolution from the table because most likely it would be voted down. The question remains whether or not Bush went to the UN on the advice of the polls, the advice of his generals, or on the advice of the few adults in the Administration who actually want to do things right. I think that it is critical to identify his reasoning for going to the UN.

If he was going in order to shore up his polls, then he will have failed miserably. The American people are starting to have strong doubts about George W. Bush's ability to effectively lead in Iraq. This poll was taken before the Kay report, before the general brush aside that the US has given the UN and the continuing casualties. The American people were looking for someone else to pick up the tab and for someone else to do the dying. The donor conference may get a couple of billion dollars and the only troops are 10,000 Turks who have massive targets painted on their backs by most of Iraq.

If he was going to the UN on the advice of the generals he again failed. They are worried, as I have blogged about, about the effects of long deployments on retention and recruitment. They see a need for more troops, and they realize that the US has no more active duty formations available and the reserves are getting stretched thin. The only sources of new troops are the Iraqization policy and foreign troops. Again, Bush failed.

Now I will not address the adults argument because there are so few in the administration and they have little influence.

Labels: iraq

Clark Fissures

Yahoo News is reporting that Clark's campaign manager has resigned from the campaign due to an internal power struggle that he evidently lost with Fabiani and Klain over the role of the Draft Clark people in the campaign.

The Clark campaign has had a couple of weeks of being the new guy on the block and it has received favorable media. Now it will also see some of the process stories which are the bread and butter of campaigns. It received a favorable fundraising process story, now it is getting a negative organization story. The Clark campaign has the difficult task of integrating at least three distinct organizational cultures into a single entity headed by a man who has no national campaign experience. It will be an interesting task.

I recommend that you all head over to Daily Kos to learn more in the near future.

Logic of WMDs

I blogged earlier today about the opportunity cost of going to war in Iraq, and now Kash at Angry Bear blogs about the logic of going to war. The Kay report confirms that Iraq was contained by the United Nations' sanctions and inspections teams, and that Colin Powell fundamentally admits this fact. So why did we go to war again? I do not like the 300+ US lives and 225 billion dollar Bush re-election commercial as the production values and script sucks.

Labels: iraq

Pennsylvania Senate

The Pennyslvania Senate race is a potential pick-up for the Democrats in 2004. Senator Arlen Specter is a tough candidate to beat, as he has been a consistent winner in Pennsylvania politics for the past two generations. He is widely popular and well-respected throughout the state because he can gain the institutional support of the Republican Party plus his Rockefellar Republican moderation does a good job of pulling swing voters to his tally.

However this year, he is facing a hard right wing challenge in the primary from Patrick Toomey, a three term congressman from the Allentown region. Toomey is being supported by the Club for Growth and numerous other hard right organizations. The National Review will lend ideological support to Toomey as they have called Specter the ‘worst Republican Senator.’

Specter should be able to beat Toomey in the primary as Arlen currently has 8.6 million dollars on hand as of the end of Q-2, 2003 (p.2 of report). Toomey only has 1.5 million dollars on hand as of the end of Q-2, 2003 (p.3) Specter is in pretty good shape fundraising wise, although we will learn more next week when the fundraising is disclosed for the third quarter.

The primary challenge is getting nasty. Both sides have begun running ads in selected regions across the state. I believe that Specter will win next April, but he will be wounded and he will be far less well-funded than he is right now.

This leads to an opportunity for the Democrats if they can field a strong candidate. This year, they are fielding Rep. Joe Hoeffel, a vetern Congressman from the eastern part of the state. He is not facing any significant primary challenges and he should be able to bring in enough money to remain competitive. He needs to raise some significant funds as he currently only has 300,000 in the bank from Q-2 (p.2 of report). He should be aided in his fundraising by the DSSC as they have declared Pennsylvania to be a targeted state. If he can run a strong campaign against a damaged Specter, we should see a moderate Democrat balance Santorum out in the Pennsylvania delegation.

Slime and Defend

Via Suburban Guerilla we have a report that is asking for the Justice Department to investigate and possibly charge Ambassador Wilson with disclosing state secrets. A Republican Congressman wants to flip the tables and distract us from the real crime: at least one, most likely two senior Administration officials blew the cover of a non-official cover secret agent to gain minor political revenge. The story is not about Wilson any more, except for the fact that if he and his wife decide to file a civil suit they can further the leak investigation. The story is about the White House blowing the cover of Valerie Plame.

Opportunity Costs and Iraq

World Net Daily via Pontificator writes

Forget that Bush lied about the reasons for putting our sons and daughters in harm's way in Iraq; and forget that he sent 140,000 troops there with bull's-eyes on their backs, then dared their attackers to "bring it on."

It was the height of irresponsibility to have done so in the middle of a war on al-Qaida, the real and proven threat to America. Bush diverted those troops and other resources – including intelligence assets, Arabic translators and hundreds of billions of tax dollars – from the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders along the Afghan-Pakistani border. And now they've regrouped and are as threatening as ever.

That's inexcusable, and Bush supporters with any intellectual honesty and concern for their own families' safety should be mad as hell about it – and that's coming from someone who voted for Bush.

The core of this statement is that the primary liberal anti-war critique, not this war at this time because we have inspections that are working, has been substantiated. The United States is the sole superpower, but our ability to project power thought vast is finite. All serious liberals agreed that Saddam Hussein was an evil man but most concluded that the war on Terror and the War in Iraq were at best tangentially related and that the US military was better used to secure Afganistan, hunt down OBL and the rest of the top cadres of Al-Quaeda and secondly provide a strong gloved fist in order to effectively negoatiate with North Korea. The opportunity cost of going to war in Iraq was too high was a primary argument against doing so. Yet we were called traitors for being right....

I love this country, but it frustrates me at times to have to deal with this crap.

Labels: iraq

Dollar is crashing

The Canadian dollar is gaining value against the US dollar as the loonie is now worth $0.75 US. This will start placing some severe pressure on the Canadian raw material export economy as their goods will start getting more expensive for US consumers to purchase. I anticpate higher oil, wheat and timber prices in the next couple of months due to the weaker dollar. I also anticipate a slight increase in tourism to the US side of Niagara Falls as things are getting more expensive on the Canadian side.

Oh yeah, interest rates will, all else being equal, increase as we need to compensate other countries for the weakness in the dollar by providing a higher dollar denominated rate of return. Just what the economy needs.

A test for Legitimacy

As I blogged earlier, the US has been able to persuade the Turkish government to supply 10,000 troops, dependent on receiving the approval of the Turkish Parliament. The price for this troop contigent seemed to be several billion dollars in low interest loans and loan guarantees and a promise that the US would eliminate the PKK, a seperatist Kurdish party/guerilla group that is reforming itself in northern Iraq.

However this plan is hitting a major snag; the Iraqi Interim Governing Council has unaminously voted against allowing Turkish troops to enter Iraqi territory no matter where the Turks would be garrisoned.

This presents a problem. The IGC is solely an advisory board, all of its actions can be overruled by Vice-Consul Bremer and now Condi Rice. However the US is trying to maintain a shimmer of Iraqization by relying on the IGC to present a friendly face for the occupation. If the US overrules the IGC it illuminates the powerlessness of the local players who have been willing to forgoe armed resistance to the United States in order to seek out a political solution. It will also alienate any other foreign country that may be willing to send troops as long as their is a short roadmap to Iraq becoming sovereign again. However if the US bows down to the IGC, Bush will have to activate several more National Guard brigades in the next two months.

What will Bush pursue; the national interest and activate the National Guard or his political self-interest by bringing the Turks in despite the fact that this may break the uneasy truce called by the Kurds and the Shiites against the US occupation.

Labels: iraq

Back to Nine

Bob Graham has officially dropped out of the race. I am glad that he is gone as he was sucking up money and shutting down support for other Dems in Florida. He contributed some good ideas and good attacks on Bush, but he was not contributing anything unique to the race. I hope that he holds his Senate Seat next year, although Steve Yellim at Daily Kos thinks that the Democrats have a strong chance of running a strong candidate even if Graham does not run. I would just prefer the advantages of incumbency instead of a newcomer.

A good Court Ruling

An appeals court ruled today that the FCC miscategorized the nature of broadband internet connections as a data service while it should have been categorized as a telecommunicaitons service. This is a good ruling for most consumers as it will force the FCC to write new rules that will treat broadband networks as if they are regular telephone networks. This means that the owners of the networks have to open their lines to competive leasing of space. This should mean some combination of improving service and lower prices.

The old rules treated the broadband internet connections like AT&T's long distance lines were treated pre-break-up. A local natural monopoly in the cable system could effectively shut out competition because they could keep the lines closed and use their franchise rights to restrict new lines coming into an area. Now under telecommunication rules, competition can lease space over the pre-exisiting networks and drive down prices.

I like this ruling.

Losing Leverage

Japan has been disinvited to the future North Korean nuclear weapons talks by North Korea. These multi-lateral talks were viewed as a major diplomatic victory for Bush last summer but now they are going nowhere. There are very few means in which the United States can pressure North Korea to accept Japan back into the talks. The first and most direct is just outright bribery which will not go down well with either the US government or the Japanese government. The second is to reduce any more ties between North Korea and the outside world. This will not be that effective because North Korea has so few ties right now. Finally the military option is fundamentally off the table because the North Koreans have Seoul in their artillery's sights and that is an extremely effective deterrence. The North Koreans only need a couple more months and then they'll be able to test if they want to so I guess that they will delay until Christmas and test right after the New Years.

Der Tag?

Baghdad is a mess right now. Soldiers are rioting, the Foriegn Ministry is being attacked, frequent attacks are occuring against US soldiers, the Shi'ites are demonstrating against US forces. That perfect storm of events that would lead to the culmination of Iraqi nationalism is starting to boil up from the streets. What is going on over there? What are the actors doing?

Pentagon a proliferation threat

According to a GAO report, the Pentagon has disposed of plenty of duel use materials and machines that could be used to produce biological weapons. The GAO also notes that these materials including centifuges and protective suits are available on the open market.

Another note we should make is that these are the types of materials and duel-use pieces of equipment that Bush is claiming constitutes the Iraqi WMD program, but the question remains that if these goods are so dangerous, why does the Pentagon dispose of old items on the open market.

Why I blog

I blog because I enjoy politics and current events. I also enjoying the opportunity that writing gives to me in that it forces me to slow my mind enough so that I can create order within my thoughts. I blog because I want a political system that respects the grass roots, including the new Creative Class grass roots that Dean has been able to mobilize.

I do not blog because I am convinced that blogging is a world changer. I do not blog because I believe that my little corner of the web will change the political discourse. I blog because I need a hobby and I like to write.

I wrote this post after I read Oliver Willis and his comments on the incestous amplification of bloggerdom at the Blog-Con this weekend. Blogging should be for fun and for education, not to change the world; or at least not yet :)

Kerry and the Ketchup Fortune

There has been a belief out there on the web that if need be John Kerry could be a self-financing candidate for President. I can see the attraction for the Democrats to be able to self-finance as the nominee will be facing $200,000,000 in attack ads from Bush between March and July. The basic idea behind the Kerry self-finance scheme is to tap into his wife's family fortune that is estimated to be worth ~$550-$600 million dollars.

. The FEC requires self-financing candidates to control the assets that they use to self-finance before the election season begins. John Kerry’s 2001 Senate disclosure forms indicates that the vast majority of the assets which are held by his family are in the H. John Heinz III Marital Trust which means that the assets are in Theresa’s name as of 2001. John has only a couple of million dollars (to be found on page 2-6) that are in his name. He can use those assets to self-finance, but he can not tap the Heinz family fortune. It is illegal for Theresa Heinz to help her husband to finance his presidential campaign past a $2,000 donation. Now if Theresa wanted to run, and if she was constitutionally eligible to do so, she could use the family fortune, but not John.

I also would have severe doubts about a suggestion made in Matt Yglesia's comment section that Theresa uses her money in 'issue ads' that do not support or name a candidate. The 2002 Campaign Finance Reform Bill prohibits coordination of non-candidate expenditures, specifically in Sec. 202 and 214. I believe that there is a prima facie case that would be made if Theresa Heinz dropped $100,000,000 in issue ads that there would be coordination between her and her husband.

So lets get the facts right as they have been reported in the past

This is why Iraq is not a success

From Riverbend we have a great passage about the normalization of life in Iraq which is the story that the Administration wants us to hear, and then we have this passage:
My cousin and S. made arrangements on how the kids would get to school and back. They agreed that my cousin would walk them to school (which was two blocks away) and wait around to see when school would be out and what sort of security arrangements the administration had made.

This morning, at 8:30, they headed out to the school, the girls dressed in their uniforms, new pencils and deceptive erasers ready for use… my cousin, pistol at his waist, clutching each girl firmly by the hand, reached the school just as other parents and kids were getting there- school normally starts no later than 8 am, but today was an exception.

For little girls to walk two blocks to school you need an armed guard in the capital city. That is why the US has little Iraqi cooperation.

Labels: iraq

Power ubbes alles

Morat at Skeptical Notion is a little surprised that the Republican Party closed down the Congressional Office for Technology Assessment. COTA used to be a small agency which provided scientific and engineering expertise to Congress that could then be used to formulate policy. It was similar in its independence and role to the Congressional Budget Office.

Morat blames the Heritage Institute and the medieavalists which is a valid critique. However I would also be willing to blame the fact that we are dealing with fundamentalist revolutionaries that came to power with Gingrich in the Class of ’94. They could not accept a 90% victory they needed to completely crush their competition and their opponents instead of win outright. Paul Krugman writes in Brad DeLong’s favorite essay that the Republicans wanted to defund government sponsored economic research and data collection even thought:

”The irony is that much of this research provides support for Republican free market ideology. But the motivation for cutting the funding is easy enough to understand: If your doctrine depends on a view of the economy that is flatly contradicted by reality, then the fewer facts, the better.”

This is a world view that is independent of the current Bush administration, it is the world view of the movement conservatives. They were the ones who insisted on shutting down the government, they were the ones who insisted on going forward with impeachment even though it cost them the ’98 elections, it is they who are insisting on bankrupting the country. It is not medievalism per se instead it is fanactism. I do not believe that the Republican party as it is currently constituted has any per se against science, as long as that science further increases its power. This relationship towards science is the same relationship that the Republican party has towards free and fair elections, counting ballots, cracking down on corporate cheats, respecting women’s rights, upholding sexual harassment laws and most other issues. If doing so helps to gain more power, they will do what is right, if not, they invent reasons as to why it is not relevant.

Turks are in

The BBC is reporting that the Turkish government has approved a motion that it will send to Parliament to allow for the deployment of Turkish troops into Iraq. I am slightly curious as to how the vote will go in Parliament, but I am reasonably sure that it will pass.

I must congratulate the Bush administration for securing foreign troops, although I wonder what the cost will be. If the Turks send 2 brigades, that should allow most of the 101st to redeploy home come March/april with only a brigade or two of Americans needed to supplement the Turks to maintain the current OOB. I am also curious as to what the Kurdish reaction will be as one of the major concessions made by the US to Turkey was a committment to go after the PKK a Kurdish group.

Labels: iraq

Good news for Me, bad for you

As of this morning I am gainfully employed as a management analyst/community capability builder. So that means that I will have a whole lot less time for blogging during the work day, so my blogging levels will be a whole lot lower.

Fester

Clark comes in with a good score

Wesley Clark is claiming that he has been able to raise 3.5 million dollars for the third quarter. That is an impressive sum and pace for the new candidate, although it appears that his average donation of $167 shows that he is more dependent on medium to large donors than the shallower but wider donor base taht Dean has been able to cultivate.

News my girlfriend would like

Yahoo News is reporting that Australian researchers have conducted limited and effective trials of reversible male hormonal birthcontrol.

If the side effects are less severe than the side effects that most women get from the Pill and if the prices are the same as condoms, then I would definately be willing to switch from my girlfriend being on the pill and us using condoms to just me being on a quarterly shot.

Interesting news.

Electability

Matthew Yglesias is linking to an OxBlog analysis of a new poll that asks a very interesting question about the Democrats. Are people supporting the person or the title? This question is primarily relevant for Wesley Clark as a good portion of his supporters have been saying that General Clark provides instant credibility on national defense that Howard Dean or most of the other Democrats can not offer.

However, looking at these polling numbers we see that Democratic primary voters do not respond well to General Clark, but they respond much better to Wesley Clark. So I believe that the Democratic primary voters do not believe that national security is a critical issue for the nominee to be able to address, at least compared to domestic issues.

I believe that if the economy continues to be stuck in first gear and Iraq continues to be a quagmire which will destroy the US Army reserve system next year then this preference for a domestic focus will be the correct one. However if there is improvement on either front, then Bush will be able to play to his advantages more. So what should we do? I do not know!

Labels: iraq

Good Polls in Allegheny County

The Pittsburgh Post Gazette is reporting that Dan Onorato has a significant lead over incumbent Republican Jim Roddey for the County Executive race.
Already the campaign is getting fairly nasty as Roddey is trying to paint Onortato as responsible for the City of Pittsburgh's problems. There is some truth to this charge in my opinion as Onorata was on city council during the 90s when they decided to defer problems into the future, however he has not been on the City Council since 1999 so the charge comes off weak and negative.

Now the question is how are the Democrats doing in the suburban districts. Right now they control 9 out of 15 seats on the County Council, they want to gain one more seat to form a veto-proof majority that they had in the first session of the home rule charter.

Get ready for the Draft

Billmon is doing his normal wonderful job of posting great examples of reality intersecting with desire concerning Iraq. The NY Times starts off its report that the US Army believes that it can sustain the occupation in Iraq for as long as it desires. At first this contention is in defiance of what the CBO reported a couple of weeks ago. However as you read further along, you see the assumption that the Army makes; it will be able to pull three divisions out of Iraq by next September. YEAH RIGHT, that is assuming massive corps level international deployment. By whom?

The other article that Billmon links to is more realistic. The Chicago Tribune quotes General Sanchez saying "that it will be years before" forces can be drawndown. He is also warning against catastrophic attacks, spectacular attacks and more destruction ambushes by the resistance.

So assuming that the second article is closer to true than the first article we can make a couple of conclusions about our force structure. First the active duty forces are stretched thin. That is common knowledge. Secondly, if you are in a National Guard enhanced seperate brigade that has not been called up, you will be called up by next July. Third, the active and reserve components are too small to indefinately maintain 5 divisions in Iraq while still allowing the US to possess an ability to respond elsewhere in the world and maintain a strategic reserve.

The National Guard is already short recruits while the regular Army is doing okay, although it had to lower recruiting standards to achieve its FY03 goals. Next year the Army and the Guard will be having massive retention issues and probably large recruitment problems as units will rotate back and the veterens look for other alternatives.

So by March of 2005 the National Guard will be hollow and the US Army will be working its way there, destroying the progress and professionalism that took thirty years to build. So the only way to get enough troops into Iraq for a long term occupation is to start drafting. If Bush was concerned about doing Iraq right, the first draftees would be getting called on January 1 so that they would be available to go to Iraq by June 1, 2005.

Thanks Bush

Labels: iraq

Novak Pt. 2

Over at Atrios there is a speculation as to who is setting Novak up to fall on his sword. The speculation is based upon Novak blowing the cover of the CIA front company of Brewster-Jennings & Associates.

All this speculation is good, however the easiest and most probable solution is that Novak did a tiny bit of digging at the FEC or at opensecrets.org and typed in the name of "Valerie Plame" "Valerie Wilson" "Valerie Plame Wilson" and then wrote the story about her. He forgot to follow up and verify the story. I suspect laziness and incompetence more than corruption in this case.

Wilson and Plame looking for Lawyers

John Dean of Watergate fame has been a strong critic of this administration. He previously called for Bush's impeachment for fraud and making false statements to Congress in his State of the Union address. However, he is also an expert on crooked administrations and the way that the law can be applied to crooked administrations.

In a recent Salon article, where it is worth the one-day pass, John Dean advised that Ambassador Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame initiate a civil action against the Bush administration and the likely leakers for emotional pain and suffering and the economic consquences of Mrs. Wilson's lost future earnings because her career as both an energy analyst and CIA operative has been compromised by their actions.
He says that the Watergate civil suit put a lot of pressure on the career prosecutors at the FBI and the Justice Department to get things right.

Well according to the Agonist via the New York Post, the Wilson family is seeking out attorneys in order to file the suit against suspected leakers and the accessories after the fact. Hopefully this will put pressure on the Justice Department to do a thorough and deep investigation on this matter.

Soldiers rioting

Former Iraqi soldiers are rioting in both Baghdad and Basra They are pissed that they are not getting paid consistently after the army has been demobilized and the general employment situation.

A couple of days ago, Lt. Gen. Sanchez, commnader of US and coalition ground forces in Iraq stated that the Iraqi resistance was getting "little bit more lethal, little bit more complex, little bit more sophisticated and in some cases a little bit more tenacious."

A good assumption as to why the resistance is getting more sophisticated and complex are that the quality of training is getting higher when compared to the early attacks in April. Some of that training is from the brutal Darwinian (I saw this expression at Billmon) process of combat as the dumb attackers have a much higher probability of dying then the smart ones. It also has to do with experience of the resistance, they can see what is working and not working and adapt to that. Finally, as Steve Gilliard frequently notes, the Iraqi resistance is using pretty standard reasonably complicated infantry tactics that are capable of holding off and repulsing the combined arms attacks of US mechanized infantry. This implies that there are some soldiers already active in the resistance. If the rest of the dissolved Iraqi Army or a good chunk of it decides to actively seek redress of its grievences through violent means, the US is in trouble.

Labels: iraq

A little more piling on

This is not too important but the hed of the Minnesota Republican Committee is being indicted for campaign finance violations. Yeah this is minor league stuff compared to what is going on the national and California stage but it is enjoyable to watch. Additionally Bush wants to put Minnesota into the battleground state column next year and a weaker state party makes Minnesota a safer state for the Democrats.

Why we need to properly fund government

All of the states are in a fiscal crisis, although some states like Vermont, have been able to weather the storm far better than Alabama or California because they have more flexibility and better management in place. The past two years have seen some painful cuts and tax increases but the worst effects have been covered by the use of one-time non-recurring revenues and reserves.

However most states are out of these reserves. Taxes need to be raised or services and spending needs to be cut. Those are the two choices states have in balancing their budgets. Tough decisions need to be made. California has decided to engage in a flight of fancy and unseriousness while Alabama has decided that it can ignore its basic needs as it voted against a tax reform and increase package a couple of weeks ago.

War Liberal is the place to go to check out what a state that decides that all taxes for any reason are evil will look like. Do we really want this country to look like Alabama?

Seaborne Piracy

I really can not believe this but John Derbyshire at the National Review has a good mini-post concerning strange patterns in seaborne piracy and the potential terror threat against the US and the world economic system.
The traditional pattern for 20th century pirates have been that they operate in straits, restricted waters, and cluttered waters where the major navies of the world do not operate in any great numbers. Their typical M.O. is to capture the ship, loot any valuables, maybe bring smaller ships into port, repaint, redo the superstructure and then sell the ship. However, Derbyshire is linking to an Economist article that is stating that this pattern is changing. Ships are being taken over, and then the pirates leave after several hours, taking very little with them.

I believe that Derbyshire could be on the right track. There are plenty of maritime chokepoints of which canal gates are the most vulnerable and valuable. A 10,000 ton merchie loaded with high explosives would shut traffic through Suez for months. Or the same merchie doing 17 knots straight into an off-shore oil distribution platform near Dharhan could cause an economic and environomental catastrophe while destablizing the Saudi regime by depriving them of their cash flow.

The proper means of suppressing piracy is to have the world's navies deploy lots of light combatants and patrol boats to cover the straits and restricted waters. This is primarily a mission that the US Coast Guard would be good at with only minimal US Navy support.

Shi'ites flexing their muscles

Iraqi Shi'ites are demanding that they be able to elect their own constitutional convention defying the Bush prescription of 'constitution, elections, sovereignity.' Right now SCIRI, the civilian Shia party which controls the Badr Brigades, is demanding that they elect their own convention. This is part of a Shia strategy of maintaining an uneasy truce with the United States because they realize that if they are allowed to vote, the Shias will dominate the country for the next couple of generations because they are 60% of the population. However ifthe US refuses to allow a vote, the truce is off.

Being Responsible is not popular

Brad DeLong outlines his nightmare fiscal scenario; a Democratic victory where the operating assumption is that the country does not care about deficits and therefore goes on a massiev spending binge on social programs without raising taxes.

I do not fear this too much as all of the Dems with the exception of Kucinich have indicated that they will be raising some taxes, repealing parts of the irresponsible Bush tax cuts and otherwise behaving relatively responsibly at least compared to Bush. However this does illustrate the power of institutional building as the Republican goal of shrinking the government through starvation will work. They get to be irresponsible in cutting taxes too far, the Dems take the political heat (see Clinton 1993 budget and the 1994 Republican Revolution) and then the GOP gets back into power again to again be irresponsible.

Shia Kurd Alliance

A little useful nugget was contained in this Washington Post article. It was mainly concerned with doing a round-up of the news in Iraq including a rally for the 40th day since the assassination in Najaf. The security for the rally was handled by the Badr Brigade, uniformed Iraqi police (approved by the US) and uniformed Kurdish peshmerga.

The Badr brigade and the peshmerga are unofficial militias which shows that the US does not control the situation on the ground as much as one would hope. More significantly the Kurds are there only on the invitation of the Shi'ites. This is an indication of a fairly strong alliance between these two groups.

I also think that the US should see that the Shias will aid the Kurds if and when the Turks arrive in Iraq. I also believe that this is a warning signal against the US cracking down on the Kurdish PKK party in northern Iraq.

(Link via Lunaville

Labels: iraq

Is the leaker a Terrorist?

UPDATE: 4:55pm EST October 3, 2003 I am retracting this story as the Interesting Times is also retracting this post as the section of the Patriot Act which this post referred to was stripped from the actual law while the Patriot Act was still a bill before Congress. I apologize and take all responsibility for this error. I am not having a good day here.

Chris over at Interesting Times thinks that a case can be made that whomever leaked Valerie Plame's name is violating at least two laws. The first one is the 1982 law which made leaking the name of a covert operative illegal. However, the second law is the PATRIOT Act. The PATRIOT act defines terrorism as intimidating or retaliating against the government or people who are working for the government for their government work. Well that looks like the case that this leak was aimed for retaliation.

What is that phrase about a petard now.......

Treating the Troops right

Today we are seeing two examples of how to treat the troops and their effects on morale. The first example is a positive example. Previously the military required that wounded personal who have been evacuated out of the war zone pay back their meal per diem of $8.10. Now as long as a person is in the hospital, they are allowed to keep the per diem. It is double dipping, but it is minor double dipping for people who have far bigger concerns than trying to scam the government $8.10 a day.

The second is a negative. The Boston Globe is reporting that soldiers from Massachusetts units were told that the military had no available flights out to either Germany or the United States while they were on leave. Therefore their commander told them to purchase non-refundable commercial tickets. Well their leave and therefore their tickets got cancelled and the soldiers are out 480,000 bucks between them all. Great way to improve morale.

Potential Conservative Talking Point #442

Right now the conservative enablers of the Bush Administration are coming out with new talking points that are seeking to minimize the damage to our intelligence networks and danger to all of America that they have done by leaking the name and cover of Valerie Plame. They have come up with some doozies...
Well I am proposing another point that I think we'll here about in a couple of days

TP 442: The CIA leaked the name and the cover of its own agent in order for her photograph to get into the newspapers.

Let me explain my reasoning here: A couple of weeks ago, the CIA hired actress Jennifer Gardner to appear in several recruiting videos. This move resulted in a lot of laughter throughout the blogosphere and the land. They knew months in advance that they would have a PR problem so they decided to leak a name to prove that hotties do work at the CIA. Enter Valerie Plame. Evidently Valerie Plame has "Bond-girl looks"
See that solves everything... now go agitate for another tax cut

sorry for the throwaway post, I could not help it

Correction

The Left Coaster is reporting that Bob Graham is planning to stay in the race until either Iowa or South Caralina. I am sorry for the post in which I passed along the article in which it said Graham was dropping out.

The tide is turning

Steve Gilliard is posting the NY Times/CBS poll in which the majority of Americans are said to express distrust of Bush on foreign policy, the economy and the environment. Steve is correct in that we in the blogosphere are information junkies so what is common knowledge here is uncommon knowledge in reality. Matthew Yglesias makes the same point slight point slightly more eloquently.

What we need is for one of the leading Democrtatic Presidential candidates to start going on the stump with a fairly complicated speech that ties everything together....get people used to thinking that Bush is fundamentally dishonest as evidenced by Clear Skies and Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Tax Cut, and also fundamentally incompetent by looking at the above. Start banging the drum and people will start listening. And it won't hurt that candidate's poll ratings.

Are they crazy?

Congress is considering yet another 500 billion dollars in tax cuts that they want Bush to sign by Christmas. Max Speaks has some more details on the overall analysis. Basically the Center for Budget Policy and Priorities is banging their head against the wall as they are looking at the long term budget trends and going "Do we want to make Argentina look like a paragon of financial virtue? This proposal will do that."

Nathan Newman notes in a link to the New York Times story, that the proposed tax cut creates a massive perverse incentive for companies to relocate their production overseas.

What are they thinking is my only question!

Congratulate Senator Spectar

Arlen Spectar has gone off the reseveration in an act of both political courage and probable political self-preservation. According to the Left Coaster, Spectar is calling for Ashcroft to recuse himself from any investigation. The question now goes to whom should replace Ashcroft, and an independent prosecutor is a probable alternative.

I want to congratulate my Senator for this act of courage as he will be facing the full retaliation that Karl Rove can muster. It will be a massive attack, most likely through the funding of the arch conservative primary challenger, Patrick Toomey. I want Arlen Spectar to be able to win the primary election. I also want him to be decisively defeated by a Democrat in the fall, but Republicans need to feel that it is to their advantage to do what is right instead of what Rove wants because the retaliation will not be too effective.

Graham is out

Via the Left Coaster, Fox News is reporting the Bob Graham will be dropping out of the Presidential race tomorrow.

I am happy that he is taking an honest look at reality and realizing that he is adding no value to the Democratic field at this time and also that there is no realistic path to which he could win the Democratic nomination. I applaud his courage and willingness to call a lie a lie when Bush uttered his nonsense to get his war. Now I encourage us to support Bob Graham as he begins to defend his Senate seat.

Good envrionmental news

Toyota is claiming that it is capable of mass producing cost competitive hyrbid sedans which get at least eighty miles a gallon. Also, a French company believes that it can make solar cells that are cost competitive with any other form of electrical production.

This is good news for the environment because it will allow us for to meet Kyoto targets without noticing it. It has long been an article of derision among some conservatives that Kyoto and other environmental regulations would kill the economy. These two technological changes, if they pan out as two large companies are willing to bet a significant sum of their own money on them panning out, destroys that argument.

Liberal Validation Day

I have to steal that phrase from Trapper John over at Kos's comments

We are now finding out that the official Kay report is that there are no significant WMDs, we have the father of Micheal Spann (the CIA agent killed in the prison uprising at Mazar Al Sharif) saying that the act of leaking an agent's cover is "treason" while Billmon has a great list of other things to celebrate.

CNBC just had David Gergen on and he is saying that plenty of people in the Reagan admininstration "far better people" quit/resigned over far smaller crimes than these... then he brought up North Korea as a probable crisis that Bush can not handle because he pissed away national unity, the military and international support.... Even the Republicans are feeling safe enough to attack Bush.

These are the things that liberals have been saying for the past six to nine months while we have been called anti-Americans, traitors and defeatists.

My take on the Cattle Call

I will be posting these thoughts over at the Daily Kos Cattle Call also.

I believe that this week will primarily be determined on the basis of last week’s buzz and momemtum. I do not believe that there will be much new news that will be specifically beneficial or detrimental to any of the ten Democrats who are running for office. Their news and their oxygen is being doubly drowned out by California and the Treason Scandal.

I also believe that if Davis and or Bustamante are able to win this week all of the Democrats will be able to run with the meme that they are strong and getting stronger. A Davis defeat and an Ah-nold victory would be negatively spun, especially as many of the Presidential candidates have campaigned for the ‘No on Recall, Yes on Bustamante’ platform.

Finally, I am tired of the comparisons of Bush’s 50 million dollar Q-3 haul to any of the individual Democrats’ hauls. If you combine the predicted hauls, the Dems will have brought in around 35-38 million dollars, which is not that bad of a showing.

1) Dean --- same ---He will have outraised his closest opponent by 2.5 or 3 to 1. He has a slight down arrow in not being able to meet his orginal fundraising goals but that number is still impressive. He hit his 450,000 e-mail list goal along with 120,000 Meet-Up members. He has the organization and the money to be the last man standing if the Democratic primary gets messy.

2) Clark --- same --- His fundraising will be low but that is only because he has been in the race for two weeks. However he should have enough money to beat at least one of the top five Q-2 fundraisers. He had a damm good interview with Talking Points Memo where he is displaying some great policy chops and intellect.

3) Gephardt --- down --- Reasonable fundraising levels, however his campaign has taken a pretty good hit in not getting the rapid AFL-CIO endorsement that he was counting on. He is still having trouble in Iowa according to the latest polls and he is in trouble with the February 2cd states. His path to victory has gotten a whole lot harder than it was three months ago.

4) Edwards --- Big Up --- His fundraising is a worry, although his apparent strategy of getting more face time is paying off as he is moving in the polls in South Carolina.

5) Kerry ---Down --- Fundraising was decent but not great, especially compared to Dean. He was the apparent front runner for a while, but he still has not reacted nimbly enough to recover from the 1-2 punch of Dean, Clark. I like him, I just do not see how he will be able to win the nomination.

6) Lieberman --- Even --- His fundraising is stagnant, especially given that his strategy was to ride his name recognition to Establishment money to dominance. However he is wisely getting in on the pig-pile concerning the Plame Affair. I am having problems seeing a realistic strategy for him to win.

7) Kucinich --- Up --- For a fringe candidate, his fundraising was pretty good (1.5 million dollars for Q-3) he’ll be around for as long as wishes to be around.

8) Graham --- Down --- fundraising is horrendous, no poll recognition anywhere. He is thinking of making a one state stand in Iowa hoping that a respectable showing there however unlikely could give him enough momemtum to get to South Carolina.

9) Mosely Braun/ Sharpton EVEN

Kurd Betrayal Watch

The Kurds have done reasonably well in the Iraq war and negoatiations that led up to and proceeded the war. The only foreign troops in Kurdish controlled regions are Kurdish peshmerga, Americans and Albanians. The Turks have mostly stayed out of the region and the Sunni Arab population is engaged in only low level fighting.

However this bliss may soon end. The BBC is reporting that the United States and Turkey have made a deal in which the US will take military action against the paramilitary rebel group the PKK. The PKK is a leftist Kurdish nationalist group that has been fighting the Turkish central government for most of my lifetime. They normally retreat to the Iraqi mountains when the Turkish army is too effective.

I do not like this idea. The Kurds are the one reliable group that are cooperating with the United States right now. I do not know if that cooperation will last long if the US takes military action against their compatriots. The PKK will fight back if for no other reason then for its own survival, and my guess is that they will resort to the same tactics, guerilla tactics, that they have used against the Turks.

The motivation for this offensive against a Kurdish group is to gain Turkish troops (probably a strong brigade or a weak division) to relieve the 101st Air Assault Division so that the United States will not have to mobilize more National Guard units.

Labels: iraq

The Boy Scouts disgust me now

I was a Boy Scout. I joined when I was seven years old because my best friend’s mother was the Den Mother for the Cub Scouts and they lived across the street from me. I stayed with the organization moving up and through the ranks until I left the organization at the age of sixteen because I had discovered girls, cars, sports and beer. I also discovered that the opportunity cost was fairly high in time and frustration. When I was in the Boy Scouts I solidified my friendship with three guys who will be in my wedding party (eventually) and I in their’s. They are my boys.

However in the past couple of years I have been appalled by the direction that the Boy Scouts have gone in. I believed that scouting was a chance for boys to explore themselves, to take responsibility for their growth and their own enjoyment. I do not believe that it matters whether a scout is straight or gay when they apply for Eagle recognition. I do not believe that a scoutmaster’s preference of sexual partners matters if he does a good job as a scoutmaster. I do not believe that the Boy Scouts should be a political rally for conservatives or liberals.

As a liberal and a former Boy Scout, I am offended and disturbed that the Boy Scouts of America allows this type of behavior to go on in its name. When I have children, I will not let them be scouts because they do not need to grow up in the environment currently being promoted by the National Council.

No new Penguins Arena

I just read today in the Post Gazette that the Penguins are selling the prime land where they have wanted the city and the county to build them a new hockey arena. I am glad that this is happening as I am generally opposed to publicly financed stadiums and arenas because the price is socialized while the profits are privatized. I have also heard from my sources at the Sports and Exhibition Authority and the Urban Redevelopment Authority that an arena for the Penguins is a pipe dream if the team expects the government to pick up 60% of the tab.

Finally, some sanity may return to local government.

Kay will speak

And this should be interesting. David Kay, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, the guys and gals who are hunting for the Weapons of Mass Destruction/distraction is heading to Congress this week to brief them on the progress of the ISG. The reports are saying that he will say nothing too interesting, although I expect that he will get grilled as to why the Bush administration wants 600 million dollars to continue the search for WMDs when it looks like there really are not any to find. I can not wait for the leaks from that hearing to come out.

Labels: iraq

How to cauterize the cancer

The Valerie Plame scandal is critical to the health of this republic because we as a country should not allow the leaking of classified identities and information for petty personal and partisan gains to be tolerated. Our leaders should always be seeking to improve the position and well being of the United States. However they have a vested interest in protecting their own ass because it is their own ass and they are human. The Republican Party's strategy to ride through this storm of criticism is to "Slime and Defend." Slime Ambassador Wilson, slime the Democrats as partisan, slime the investigators at the FBI as incompetent, slime everyone possible. Then the plan is to maintain party unity so that no information comes out.

I do not think that stonewalling will work, nor does Tom Spencer. Josh Marshall at Talking Points links to an article that indicates that the stone wall has leaks in it. Senator Hagel (R-Nebraska) is asking some serious questions and he is straying from the talking points put out by the RNC.

This is the way to get truth or at least justice out of the Administration on this issue. We need to make the cost of not acting too great for all of the White House's political allies. That means we need to coordinate a nation wide and targeted campaign of letter writing, e-mails and faxes to Republicans. The Republicans are the key because they control the government and the ability to investigate. So we need to crank the pressure up on vulnerable incumbents such as Senator Spectar, Lisa Murkowski and Christopher Bond We need to make it too expensive for marginal Republicans to support Bush.

The Tipping Point?

Last night, after I came back from the Dean Meet-up, I was talking politics with my girlfriend. She is like most Americans, interested in politics and governance, but not actively seeking out loads of new information like her info-junkie boyfriend does. She brought up the Plame Scandal and asked if I had talked about it a while ago... and then she said that she doesn't trust Ashcroft to fairly investigate.... We are getting close to the tipping point... she is middle of the road liberal with fiscally conservative, socially liberterian positions.

Then this morning I was able to read Billmon's great analysis and conjecture that the American people are willing to entertain the idea that Bush is really a very small and petty man with a good PR department which is ruthless in the extreme. I encourage everyone to go read his post.

Pig Pile on Rush

ESPN just regained another viewer this morning. Rush Limbaugh quit/asked to leave the ESPN football pre-game show due to his racist remarks concerning Donovan McNabb. I am glad that he is gone, as is much of the blogosphere (Calpundit, Kos, Gilliard and Atrios

I turned ESPN off when I heard that Limbaugh had been hired because to me it seems that ESPN was intent on alienating at least half of its potential audience and a good percentage of its actual audience in a lame attempt to improve their ratings. I do not want to nor need to listen to an arrogant huckster peddle hatred, intolerance and bigotry. If I did, I'll go listen to the street preachers Downtown during Rush Hour. However my first reaction was "let's keep him on so most of middle America can learn about how small and tiny his mind really is and how much bullshit he spews... People will learn to tune him out as an
extremist as they learn more about him." Then I remember that Schwartznagger is in the lead in California and Fox News is the leading cable news network, and my cynical idealism was quashed for the day.

The price of arrogance

The AP via Yahoo is reporting that North Korea is constructing new nuclear weapons with the freshly reproccessed plutonium. Whoops, this is yet another stunning diplomatic success for the Bush administration as the North Koreans feel so threatened that they beleive that their horrendously large but largely outdated army does not protect them or give them enough leverage to negoatiate with the outside world. I am hoping that the grown-ups are willing to talk and take out the checkbook if need be, to buy the North Koreans out of their nuclear arsenal, but I doubt it.

Sentencing Guidelines

Eugene Voloch over at the Conspiracy has a good informational post about the sentencing guidelines for people who leak the name and cover of a covert CIA employee. Most people with no previous criminal record would be looking at eight to ten years if they fight in court and 5 to 6 if the plea bargain. Also from what he is saying it seems to me that there is only one charge of violating the act as it was only one agent, and not six charges dues to six different reporters were leaked to.

Now if the Justice Department does identify the leaker, which really should not be that hard to do, these sentencing guidelines could be extremely useful in applying leverage to the smaller fish as someone in the White House who is an accessory after the fact will most likely decide that Bush is not worth 10 years in a federal 'pound me in the ass prison' and cop a plea to start naming names and get a sentence reduction. People in the White House should start looking for their lawyers and looking at their families and think that this is an attractive option.

No to Iraqi Loans

Ezra Klein at Not Geniuses is right in denouncing the Democratic plan to make a good portion of the twenty billion dollar reconstruction tab that Bush wants into loans and loan guarantees. This is not the right thing to do, nor is it the moral thing to do, nor is it the legal thing to do.

The Iraqi people and the IGC did not contract the United States to invade their country, nor did they contract for their infrastructure to be destroyed. We as a country invaded Iraq as a matter of choice and not neccessity. We have a moral obligation to leave the country in better shape than before we took action. That means we pay for the reconstruction not the Iraqi people, although the Iraqi people and firms should be the means of actually doing the reconstruction. That means either the US increases taxes or its deficits or cuts services to US citizens to fund that 20 billion dollars.

I expect the Democrats to play politics on the 87 billion dollar price tag. I approve of playing politics when it is proposals to make sure that taxes are raised to cover the costs, or neccessitating an equal amount be appropriated for domestic infrastructure. However I do not approve of forcing the Iraqi people and the successor Iraqi government pay to be invaded and occupied.

Labels: iraq

Ph.D's Hooligans

Juan Cole is a great source for what is going on in Iraq. He is usually a great writer. However every now and then a great phrase slips from the pens of any writer that brings howls of laughter to their readers for the wrong reasons. Today he had one of those phrases:
. The US may not respect academics, but it should recognize that getting a bunch of Ph.D.s angry at it is not a good idea.

I am sorry, I am just trying to imagine the fear that a bunch of nerds who are very similiar to myself and my drinking buddies must instill in Jerry Bremer....

Labels: iraq

Dean's Decisions

Dean will be enjoying a reasonably good week in the press as his fundraising numbers dominated the Democratic field. Right now his campaign is on a little bit of downtime in order to let everyone get some sleep, get some exercise and get their minds back together after an extremely hectic ten day rush to end the third quarter. After the rest period he'll start campaigning again and the grassroots machine that he and Trippi have built will really start hitting the streets and pounding the pavement. He'll continue to focus on the early states and build organization in the second and third round states. He'll continue his attacks on George W. Bush and the miserable failure that he is. He was given a golden gift with the Plame affair. He'll continue to campaign and continue to build his campaign.

This is what everyone knows as these are decisions and strategies that were made weeks or months ago. Now there are a couple of strategic questions which Dean and Trippi need to answer in a fairly short amount of time. First is the question of whether or not Dean should pay too much attention to the other Democrats or seek to make it a national race against Bush? Secondly if he does decide to go against Bush, should he not accept the spending caps that come with matching grants?

The first question is I think the easier question to answer. My opinion is that Dean should adapt a 80/20 rhetorical approach while adapting a 20/80 footwork and money approach. By this I mean that 80% of his speeches should be aimed against Bush, against the Republican agenda and as a means of correcting those disaesters which he will outline in his speeches. He should not be shooting at the other Democrats unless he is directly attacked. He should allow the other candidates to sling mud at each other as they all are competing for the elusive "Anti-Dean" spot in the primary elections. Their first concern is not Dean, it is the other six major candidates, so why get caught up in the negative work. If Dean is skillful he should be able to differentiate his policies and positions from the other Democratic candidates while he is also attacking Bush. However, the anti-Dean will emerge so Dean will need to continue a high level of retail political operations in order to beat the lsat surviving Democrat.

Now the more interesting question is should Dean stay within the campaign finance reform limits that gives primary candidates matching funds if they follow the rules. As of the second quarter this question was purely academic as Dean was in fourth place among all candidates, and third place among Democrats in cashed raised. However, Dean will have raised close to or above fifteen million dollars this quarter. More importantly, he is the only Democratic candidate, besides Clark who was not in the race in Q-2, to raise significantly more money in the third quarter than in the second quarter. Other candidates are defending their fundraising totals by stating that they are on pace to meet their yearly goal.

However Dean is the only major Democrat to show quarter over quarter fundraising improvement.(I think Kucinich has done this also) Kerry and Gephardt are stuck in second gear and have not been able to accelerate their fundraising pace. Edwards and Lieberman have declined between the Q2 and Q3 totals. Dean has the momentum right now, and none of the other Dems beside possibly Clark do.

So if we are to assume that Dean is to run a nationwide campaign against Bush instead of the other nine Democrats, we need to look at the money situation. Dean will have raised roughly 25 million dollars for the primary season by September 30, 2003. He will have appoximately 20 million dollars left to raise and spend for the primary season before he runs into the spending caps if he accepts matching funds. He would not get any new money until after the convention in July. Given the nature of Dean's fundraising I estimate that he would need to raise no more than another ten million dollars before he would be up against the limit if he was to accept matching funds. I predict that Dean is slated to receive 10-15 million dollars in matching funds.

I believe that Howard Dean will be able to raise at least another ten million dollars in the fourth quarter. If he does that, he either has to believe that he can not raise another ten million dollars by March and then accept federal matching funds, or he will believe that he can raise the equivilent of matching funds that he would lose by going unmatched and unconstrained through his current private donation strategy. Also remember, the matching funds are 100% spendable while private donations need money to be spent on them to be raised. So I would say Dean would need to believe that the 10 million dollars that he gives up in matching funds would have to be replaced by at least twelve million dollars in donations.

So giving up matching funds is expensive. However disarming oneself could be even more expensive as Dean and any other Democrat is worried that Bush will just flood the airwaves from March to July with 170 million dollars of negative attacks against the Democratic nominee who is to broke too respond. If Dean believes that he will win the nomination, and can raise an additional forty to fifty million dollars above the amount that he has now, then that will leave him a reserve of twenty to thirty million dollars to respond to the Bush attacks.

I would recommend, short of a massive and unexpected meltdown, that Howard Dean forgo the federal primary matching funds and the spending limits that come with those funds. I would also recommend that Howard Dean spend as if he is under the spending limits until he has the nomination mathamatically assured.

Kerry is here for a while

Kos is starting to take stock of the Democratic field now that we are starting to get reports of third quarter fundraising plus the continual stream of polls which are giving good results in state to state comparisons. We have good trend lines and we have a reasonably good predictor of success in fundraising amounts. Kos suggests that Lieberman and Graham should bow out while Kerry is on the buble.

I can see the logic that Kos is using to arrive at this conclusion, but I disagree with his statement that Kerry is on the bubble. I agree that he faces an extremely tough campaign and a much more difficult scenario to win the nomination than the other leading candidates (Clark, Dean, Edwards, Gephardt in alphabetical order only) now that Clark has entered the race and Edwards is starting to get moving. Right now he is behind in Iowa which was expected, however he is competing for third place now, not second place as he expected. He is also behind by a wide significant margin in New Hampshire although a private poll says that he is closing again on Dean. The conventional wisdom has been that the loser of New Hampshire between Dean/Kerry is out. However I think that Kerry has demonstrated that he has the money and the organization to propel himself forward if he is able to make a strong second place showing in New Hampshire by beating Clark.

Kerry has a difficult campaign as the assumptions that he made in the summer of 2002 about the future in which he would run appear to be wrong. He did not count on Iraq being this long standing political football, he did not count on an insurgency candidate becoming the front runner by the summer of 2003, he counted on the fact that he is a master of the traditional campaign to get him by. He has a difficult road ahead, but right now it is way too early to ask or expect John Kerry to step out of the race. I think that he would do so after losing New Hampshire and having a bad week in South Carolina.

Labels: iraq

New Hampshire to be invaded

You have a right to be strange. That is one of the fundamental rights that is bundled into the First Amendments guarantees of freedom of speech and religion. You also have the right to embrace strange political theories (see supply-siders) and make moves to enact your agenda.

Well, we are seeing a reasonably well organized group exercising the above rights. 5,000 Liberterians have voted to invade New Hampshire by 2005 (They hope to be reinforced by another 15,000 like minded individuals) They believe that they can create a Liberterian utopia in the northern section of that state. I wish them luck but I do not believe that they will succeed.
Steve Gilliard believes that these people will soon run into the hard head of reality and law suits which will stop their project. I disagree. I think that they will just be swamped by the rest of the New Hampshire electorate as I think that the Liberterians are unwilling to compromise their beliefs to get behind candidates who do not represent their entire portfolio of preferences. I think that they will be a harmless joke by 2008.

Blair embarrassed

This week is the Labour Party conference which I think is approximately a yearly convention in which the party votes upon its priorities and orientation for the next year. So it is like an annual platform writing convention.

Well, Tony Blair and his allies were able to keep the question of war off the ballot to avoid a major embarrassment. They were able to do this by stuffing a bunch of domestic policies that they want to execute. Well, they lost the vote on the first one; the creation of foundation hospitals which would have decentralized control of the health services. Blair is facing increasing opposition to all of his proposals from his own party, and governing will be even more difficult in the future.

Good point about Jobs

One of my friends just got hired last night, so out of the still-in-Pittsburgh crowd of 15 people from my graduating grad school class, we have nine people gainfully employed, two others (including myself) massively underemployed, and four still with no luck. What I have noticed is that it is feast or famine. Jobs are either there for a week or two or there is nothing for a month.

I thought that this was just an incidentical ancetodal experience. However, Nathan Newman links to a report that is saying that there is quite a bit of creative destruction in the US economy where almost as many new jobs are being created as old jobs are loss, but there is still a net loss. Also these new jobs tend to be shorter term, contract work where people are classified as contractors and not as employees. So the jobs that are being created are lower paying, less secure and more ephemeral. I can agree with that assessment and it is nice to see some evidence backing that intuition up.

More Roads?

Hit and Run a blog put out by the Reason Institute has a post on the new report that shows that Americans are driving more often and are stuck in traffic even longer although a Census Report stated that commutes were getting shorter. They are advocating building more roads as the obvious solution to the problem without being willing to accept the notion that shaping the structure of the community can also change commuting patterns. Higher densities and mixed use constructions have reduced automobile dependence in two ways; people are able to walk to more of their jobs and the higher densities makes public transit options feasible. I know that as I live in an area that has high density and mixed used development in Pittsburgh right now, and I lived in Paris which again is very high density and mixed used.

The question then remains what to do with the transition costs between an automobile society to one where automobiles are only a part, maybe the dominant, but not exlusive part of the transportation puzzle.

Honest Conservatives

Hesiod at Counterspin has been on the Plame Affair for since it first broke in the Novak column. Today he brings up a good point that we are getting one hell of a sorting experiment this week between the conservatives who are actually principled conservatives and those who call themselves conservatives but are actually shills for power.

Some of the principled conservative bloggers have stated that if the allegations are proven then there is a cancer on the Presidency, others agree that this is a reason to vote Democrat while others will sit out this election in order to punish Bush if these allegations are true.

Others including Instapundit, and Andrew Sullivan are claiming that this is not a big deal and thus have proven that they are hacks motivated by power and not principle. I have noticed this same divide between some of my friends and coworkers who are conservatives. It is interesting to watch as a party tries to achieve perfect doublethink and can't.

The Daily Show and 4th Rate conservatives

I am a big fan of the Daily Show with John Stewart for a variety of reasons. Stewart's delivery is amazing with the slight dash of incredulous belief while he is saying the strangest things that are true, the correspondent's reports are beyond bizzarre but illuminating and the guests are usually pretty good. The show has been able to snag some good people for its guests; Senator Edwards, Ambassador Wilson, Madeline Albright are just some of the recent ones. However in the past two weeks the quality of the non-movie promoting guests has gone down dramatically with both Jonah Goldberg and Joe Scarbourough coming onto the show and ranting and raving about how the press is out to get Bush. If you are going to get conservatives, get good ones at the very least; Safire or Brooks from the NY Times, Kristol from the Weekly Standard. Get people who are able to analyze the news and the world from a conservative viewpoint instead of talking points readers.

I was wrong about being wrong

About John Kerry as he was able to barely breach the million dollar barrier in one last blitz. So he and John Edwards were able to achieve their stated fundraising goals. If Kos was to hold a cattle call right now, that would be a minor up arrow for both of them from me.

Good Goal Resetting

Trippi who is Dean's campaign manager, does a pretty good job of rallying the faithful around the fact that the 15 million dollar goal was not reached by midnight last night (I think that they will just make it as checks come in the next day or two). Trippi is saying that Dean+co. had already beaten three of their previous goals (equal Q2, beat Clinton's number, raise 5 million in 10 days) so don't feel bad. I have to admire this little piece of spin control because the base that Dean is building needs to feel committed and successful with their candidate, and that is what the above link does.

S. Koreans staying home

CNN is reporting that the South Koreans will not be deploying any peacekeeping/occupation troops to Iraq beyond the small reconstruction team that is alreay deployed to An-Nassiryah. The official excuse is that they are afraid of the North Korean nuclear crisis turning into a full fledged war, so why send the legions through the other gate when it can not count on rapid American reinforcements due to the fact that most units are either in Iraq or reconstituting from Iraq or preparing to go to Iraq.

What this means is that the international division that the US wants to replace the 101st Air Assault Division is even less likely to form as S. Korea, India and Pakistan have refused to send troops while Turkey wants the US to crush the Kurds in Northern Iraq before they send troops. Start looking for more National Guard call-ups soon.

Labels: iraq

I was wrong

I was just checking Kerry's site, Dean's blog and Lieberman's site. None of them look like they will be able to achieve their last minute goals. Kerry is still about 40,000 bucks short while Dean is short $350,000 although he has a fundraiser right now that will make up most of that amount, and Lieberman is 30% short of his $300K goal for the last week.

The only one who has made their last minute surge goal is John Edwards So the conclusion is that my predictions are wrong on this case and my instincts still are not that good yet.

An easy exit strategy?

Juan Cole has a wonderful post up on his blog in which he analyzes the current political situation of the IGC and the constitutional process. The US wants a constitution written in six months so that troop levels can decrease, while the French want an even faster constitution written. However, the leading Iraqi experts are saying any constitution is 12-18 months away because they can not make effective decisions while elections are another 12-18 months behind the adaptation of the constitution. This 2-3 year wait would be disaesterous to the United States.

However, Juan Cole has a good solution that involves the US losing a little bit of power and authority in dictating the details of the constitution that will govern Iraq but would have the advantage of moving elections to early winter 2004. Adapt the 1925 Iraqi Constitution but remove references to the monarchy. Then using the government empowered by that constitution, write a new one. I think that this idea deserves further investigation as a plausible and feasible solution.

Labels: iraq

Iraq is bad for US Security confirmed

One of the big issues that I have been following has been the effect the war and occupation/anti-insurgency campaign in Iraq has had on the reserve system in the United States. My basic concern is that long term call-ups and deployments followed by additional mobilizations will hollow out the Guard. People join the Guard because they want to serve, but they do not want the activity and deployment cycle of the regular army.

Well right now the reserves are getting the active duty deployment cycle with second hand equipment. The results are coming in. Enlistments are sufficient to maintain full strength for the regular Army and the Army Reserves (combat service support units) while the National Guard is facing a 15-20% recruiting shortfall, or in other terms, that is enough manpower missing that at least two brigades would be removed from the OOB if the shortfall was concentrated.

Daily Kos is speculating that retention numbers will be horrendous as soon as the most needed soldiers in civil affairs, MP, engineer, and intelligence units are removed from the stop-loss list that prevents soldiers from leaving their enlistment contracts. I would also imagine that if the economy vaguely improves, the Pentagon will be in trouble. So Thanks Bush for destroying the all-volunteer force!

Labels: iraq

Graham losing expectations

The Miami Herald is reporting that Bob Graham is having an extremely difficult time meeting his fundraising goal of 2 million dollars this quarter which had already been downgraded from the initial goal of 4-5 million dollars when the campaign started. Also from Kos, Graham is losing to both Sharpton and Braun in South Carolina. He is done.

The clock is on as to when he will gracefully bow out of the race.

(( Miami Herald lead from J.R. in Kos's comments from this post))

Even the Tribune Review is on Plame

The Pittsburgh Tribune Review is the rag that is funded by Richard Mellon Scaife. It tends to be a step below the National Review in the quality of its writing and arguments. It also tends to be extraordinarily partisan.

However it is on the Plame affair, and it is not reading the NRO approved talking points of "What's the big deal, everyone does this all the time, and she is just a woman." The Tribune Review is actually calling for an independent counsel to investigate this matter. I may be cyncial in assuming that they want an 'independent' counsel with intimate ties to the Bush family to quash this matter, but in my non-cynical moment for the day. I applaud the Tribune Review for its courage to call for the finding of truth.

Time to get depressed....

I am a big fan of "It's still the Economy, Stupid but it is not always the best spot to go when you are already have a downer of a day. So be forewarned:

Teddy is reporting that money supply is growing at less than a 2% rate. This means that credit is getting tight because no one is demanding enough of any good to make expansion or rehabilitation of already mothballed facilities worthwhile. He is also reporting that due to the extremely short term interest rates there are profitability concerns for American banks because the interest rate spreads are tightening and international foreign exchange problems because people are unable to game the system to buy US assets with borrowed cheap yen.

If banks are losing money, they cut back the risks that they are willing to take which means reducing the marginally performing loans and denying credit to creditworthy but risky new borrowers. The international news is bad because it will lead to higher long term interest rates in the United States as we try to attract the needed foreign capital which has to contend with the interest rate risks and currency exchange risks that Brad DeLong talked about. Higher interest rates will also kill plenty of marginal businesses which will lead to higher unemployment.

Dean's Bat

Morat at Skeptical Notion is a little more optimistic about Dean being able to break the bat by midnight tonight than I am. Right now the Bat is at 13.6 million dollars in confirmed and received donations. I think that Dean and Trippi are praying for an avalanche of 1.4 million dollars to come in over the servers today but their plan B is to add in the fundraisers and the checks that they have not yet received but expect in the mail soon enough from the House parties to pad the total.

John Kerry will easily break his goal. He just needs another 63,000 dollars before midnight and that should come in easy enough. John Edwards needs another $70,000 to meet his goal. That might be close.

Its the Economy Stupid!

Bush will not be sunk by Iraq, although casualties are occurring every day.(via Lunaville) Bush will be sunk by the economy as his father was also sunk by the economy. Bush will be sunk because people believe that the economy is bad because they can not find jobs and the jobs that they can find do not pay well.

This realization and opinion formation is occuring at the worse possible time for George W. Bush, just as people are starting to pay attention to the Presidential election news meta-cycle. Jobs are still being lossed, incomes are stagnating, interest rates are increasing and more people are joining the ranks of the official and unofficial poor.

People are looking around at their family members, their neighbors and their co-workers and they are wondering "Who is next?" That question is being reflected in the large drop in consumer confidence reported today. People do not feel secure economically. Security will be the theme of Bush's re-election campaign, so he is extremely vulnerable as soon as the Democrats can broaden the word security to the same level of abuse that Bush and the Republican Congress has done with "energy security, education security, technical security, contributor security etc...."

Labels: iraq

Down the Homestretch they go

Today is the day that a lot of campaigns have been praying for or praying against. Money is being added up, one last surge is expected, the IT guys have been given a special dispensation to be as wierd as hell as long as the servers are still up, and the candidates wonder if they have the legs to last another six months at this pace.

I think that the person who is most worried about looking at their money totals today is Joe Lieberman. If he finishes fifth or worse his campaign is done for that means either Edwards or from his perspective, Clark will have finished ahead of him. I think that this is unlikely, although John Edwards is having a pretty good online blitz.

Now the question remains is how much of a surge can people expect? This question is most relevant to Howard Dean because as of 8:00am EST his bat is at 13.49 million dollars, or 1.51 million dollars short of his goal. He will need a massive surge to get him over 15 million dollars but I think that he can make it. In Q-3 he made $800,00 in online contributions alone with about half the Meet-up and e-mail list that he has now. He also has two California fundraisers today that should boost the total. Everyone else looks like they will meet their online fundraising goals and Kerry looks like he should nicely exceed his million dollar target.

Today will be good theatre for political junkies.

Terror Trials that work

The Old European country, Belgium, was able to break up a planned Al-Quaeda attack against a US air base in that country and it was able to do so without any special powers. Additionally, according to the Toronto Globe and Mail Belgium was able to put the suspects on trial with their normal rights and still convict them. Amazing!!! The United States may want to send a fact finding mission to Brussels to see if they can learn anything there.

Not good

The New York Times is reporting that there are vast ammunition depots in Iraq which the US Army does not know where they all are located nor have tight 24 hour security around them all. General Abizaid, US Commander Central Command, estimates that there are 650,000 tons of high explosives floating somewhere in Iraq. And we wonder why the Iraqis are able to fight back effectively?

Labels: iraq

Damm Greens

I know this is the end of the quarter and I know that my junk e-mail address, the one that I give out to campaigns is widely circulated throughout at least the liberal mailing lists so I get a fair amount of campaign solicitations for candidates that I do not care for including Dennis Kucinich. I have no problem receiving the e-mail as I have the choice of either reading or deleting.

However I did have a problem with this e-mail. At first it was your standard begging for money. And then it had a line like this "We do not want a third party, as America needs a second party first" As soon as I read that the e-mail lost me! This line was put into the mouth of a fairly intelligent public figure and it made me boil. Yes, the Democratric party is a fairly conservative party when compared to the European and Canadian left, but it is definately different than the modern Republican Party and if you detest the Republican Party the structural imperative of American politics is that you need to support the Democrats and win influence from within the party. Damm Greens for not wanting to realize that

Labour's Soul

I wish that I knew more about British politics than I do as my predictions have been pretty bad lately. On comments boards during the summer, I had predicted that Blair would have stepped down by now. I need to learn more.

Steve Gilliard is helping to educate me. This week the Labour Party is having its annual conference and now it is turning into soul searching about Iraq, Blair and the future direction of the party. The question seems to me should the Party be about some core principles or should it be about being able to win. The left wing of the party is pissed about the war, about the reconstruction, about the lies, about the cutting of public services, about the privatization of assets about pensions. The New Labour Blair faction is on the defensive as they have tried to keep a straight face as their continued claims of justification slowly peel away as more evidence comes out to the public light.

This week will be a week where the soul or the ego of the Labour party will be decided.

Labels: iraq

Casualty in Afghanistan

CNN is reporting that another US soldier was killed in combat in Afghanistan. The ongoing low level war against the United States and medium level war against the allied warlords and the Kabul central government by the reorganized Taliban continues.

Impeachment

I have seen the word “impeachment” used around a couple of times today. I agree that if the charges in the Plame Affair can be sufficiently proven to a grand jury to warrant indictments along with evidence that George W. Bush was intimately involved in the execution of this leak and violation of the relevant federal laws that a high crime will have been committed. However, I think that the probability of impeachment is only slightly greater than the United States finding Weapons of Mass Destruction tomorrow morning in Iraq. I have several reasons for this judgment; some are political calculations and others are more theoretical.

Impeachment of the President has been done twice in this country; both times it was made clear that first and foremost impeachment is a political exercise, not a judicial exercise. The Clinton impeachment was a noted failure because the Republican Party was unable to convince the majority of the public and even a significant faction of the Democratic Party that the crimes that Clinton was accused of rose to a level that merited an extra-electoral removal. Clinton and his way of governance was not a threat to the basic fabric of the American way of life and government.

The one averted impeachment was that of Nixon. He resigned before he was impeached because his significant portions of his party realized that Nixon and the activities that he planned, organized and condoned were a threat to basic democratic government. This particular case about outing a CIA agent does not constitute a threat to basic governance although if it is taken as part of a pattern of operations by the Bush Administration it does qualify for that distinction.

As I stated above, impeachment is a political solution to a political problem. Therefore the question of timing is important as there is an election within one year of the any Congressional investigations. A judgement must be made by those who advocate impeachment and that judgement is this; Is the damage that will be done during the many months of impeachment proceedings worth booting Bush if the same result can be accomplished by traditional electoral means? I think that waiting is justified.

Secondly practical concerns dictate reality. A successful impeachment drives needs the opposition party to control at least one branch of government in order to keep the pressure on the President. Right now the Democrats are in the minority in both the House and the Senate while the courts have a conservative tilt.

The Republican Party would need to implode before there would be enough rebels to join with the Democrats to force a realignment of the rules in either the House or the Senate. I do not believe that the Plame Affair would cause three of the four moderate GOP Senators (Snow, Collins, Chaffee and Spectar) to change parties. The Republican Congressional leadership decide what is impeachable and what is not. They will not impeach Bush unless Bush melts down on his own.

Labels: iraq<

Fester's Place

Monday, October 20, 2003

This scares me....

National Democratic Polls

Blogroll

Meta Post on Blogging Identities

Federal Tax incentives

Iowa Caucuses

What's the counterfactual

Sunday, October 19, 2003

Blogroll down

Troops for Iraq

Week 7 Patriots Thoughts

Capacity

Dean Fundraising in da 'Burgh

Viable Pittsburgh Solution???

A harbinger of things to come

Saturday, October 18, 2003

Going Hiking

Friday, October 17, 2003

Edwards as an ideal?

Right Idea

Bad Policy, good politics

Yep, its started

Next year

Thursday, October 16, 2003

Leaks

Mixed signals

The dollar as a bet of competency confidence

Congratulations to the Bush Administration

Better Analysis Q-3

Q-3 Fundraising

Wednesday, October 15, 2003

Thoughts on the 2004 Patriots

Cold Front approaching Hell

Staten Island Ferry

Damm, it is not just the South

Update on Meet-up Support

Swell, the bond rating just dropped

Stupid moves

Tuesday, October 14, 2003

Clark

Lieberman has an up-arrow

Workforce growth for the next generation

Radicalization of the guerillas

Bio-cybernetics

Brits get hit with IED

Iraqi In-fighting

Boston Sports

Monday, October 13, 2003

Freedom of the Press

Maintaining the Social Safety Net

Legitimacy (Pt.2)

Human Rights

Sunday, October 12, 2003

Anger versus smarts

Saturday, October 11, 2003

Do cry for US Argentina for the truth is We'll be with you.....

Going with the Sox

Friday, October 10, 2003

Edwards down?

A good guess?

Civility

Private Police forces

Clark analysis

USA Today on the Creative Class

Go

Dean on the Daily Show

Oh Shi'ite

Thursday, October 09, 2003

If you're innocent, don't worry

A good point about executive privilege

Destroying the Reserves (PT.XXI)

Successful Dehumanization

My ZIP code is active

Going on the Offensive Pt. 2

Going on the Offensive (Pt.1)

Army wants to go to Unit Rotation

Turnout

Bombing in Baghdad