Car 54 Where Are You? UPDATE

Via Kos, it appears that the Dems weer already on the ball. The following is from a Harry Reid press release:

As a matter of comity, the Minority in the Senate traditionally defers to the Majority in the setting of the agenda. If Bill Frist pulls the nuclear trigger, Democrats will show deference no longer.

Invoking a little-known Senate procedure called Rule XIV, last week Democrats put nine bills on the Senate calendar that seek to help America fulfill its promise.

If Republican's break the rules Democrats will use the rule to bring to the Senate floor an agenda that meets the needs of average Americans, such as lowering gas prices, reducing the cost of health care and helping veterans.

"Across the country, people are worried about things that matter to their families - the health of their loved ones, their child's performance in schools, and those sky high gas prices," said Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid. "But what is the number one priority for Senate Republicans? Doing away with the last check on one-party rule in Washington to allow President Bush, Senator Frist and Tom Delay to stack the courts with radical judges. If Republicans proceed to pull the trigger on the nuclear option, Democrats will respond by employing existing Senate rules to push forward our agenda for America."  

Democrats have introduced bills that address America's real challenges. (Details attached)

1. Women's Health Care (S. 844). "The Prevention First Act of 2005" will reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions by increasing funding for family planning and ending health insurance discrimination against women.

2. Veterans' Benefits (S. 845).  "The Retired Pay Restoration Act of 2005" will assist disabled veterans who, under current law, must choose to either receive their retirement pay or disability compensation.

3. Fiscal Responsibility (S. 851).  Democrats will move to restore fiscal discipline to government spending and extend the pay-as-you-go requirement.

4. Relief at the Pump (S. 847).  Democrats plan to halt the diversion of oil from the markets to the strategic petroleum reserve. By releasing oil from the reserve through a swap program, the plan will bring down prices at the pump.

5. Education (S. 848).  Democrats have a bill that will: strengthen head start and child care programs, improve elementary and secondary education, provide a roadmap for first generation and low-income college students, provide college tuition relief for students and their families, address the need for math, science and special education teachers, and make college affordable for all students.

6. Jobs (S. 846).  Democrats will work in support of
legislation that guarantees overtime pay for workers and sets a fair minimum wage.

7. Energy Markets (S. 870).  Democrats work to prevent Enron-style market manipulation of electricity.

8. Corporate Taxation (S. 872).  Democrats make sure companies pay their fair share of taxes to the U.S. government instead of keeping profits overseas.  

9. Standing with our troops (S. 11). Democrats believe that putting America's security first means standing up for our troops and their families

"Abusing power is not what the American people sent us to Washington to do. We need to address real priorities instead -- fight for relief at the gas pump, stronger schools and lower health care costs for America's families," said Senator Reid.

This is a good start. But I still don't understand this hesitation: "If Republicans break the rules Democrats will use the rule to bring to the Senate floor an agenda." Hit me again and I'll leave you. Right.

Car 54 Where Are You?

For the first time since the elections I finally took the time to go poke around the DNC, DCCC, and DSCC homepages, and my worst suspicions were confirmed. The Democrats are playing offensive defense without any offense of their own.

For the DNC, the headline image is funny and DeLay in nature:


For the D-trip, it's "DeLay's House of Scandal":


For Harry Reid and the DSCC, it's a rather lame petition highlighting Frist's Abuse of Power:

his time they've gone too far.

The Republicans are injecting religion into the battle over President Bush's effort to pack the federal courts with right-wing rejects.

The Republicans want to shut down the entire United States Senate because of ten right-wing lawyers.  Each one of them, of course, is a right-wing activist--with legal and political views three steps to the right of Atilla the Hun.

Now, I think that the Dems will get great mileage out of this stuff in the midterms. The more they connect individual members of Congress to DeLay and Frist, the more they can drive down incumbent positives and hike up negatives. Duh.

But am I wrong in thinking some other things need to be done? That a high profile attempt must be made to introduce legislation that puts Republicans in awkward positions? That Dems must court the media to illustrate that they are not simply obstructionists?

Already, the RNC counterattack has started. Here's a preview of forthcoming rightspeak, courtesy of the NRCC:

"Democrats are subjecting us all to this 'Groundhog Day' scenario," National Republican Congressional Committee Communications Director Carl Forti said. "Every year, every election cycle it's the same. When will the Democrats stop telling us how bad they think our ideas are and tell us instead what their solution is? When will we stop reliving the same debate over, and over and over?"

Or more generally, from the same house of snakes:

n the 109th Congress, Democrats choose to make use of negativity and obstruction, but House Republicans choose instead to focus on what we can do - indeed, Republicans choose to focus on what is possible. House Republicans will work harder than ever before to find positive - possible solutions to problems never before faced. It is only right that problems our country has never before faced are greeted with optimism and a forward-looking positive vision of what is best for our country. Nothing is impossible with teamwork and a positive outlook.

As Josh Marshall points out, this stuff is already starting to stick with the so-called mainstream media--and on issues that seem preposterous, like the Fristian "nuclear option" business.

What can be done to declaw this oncoming attack? Well, as the minority party of course there are serious limitations. But I keep thinking back to the Gingrich Revolution and the lessons it holds out.

Why not a national-level retreat for all democrats to discuss the Iraq war? Or Social Security? Or something?

Why not try to introduce a resolution that bars all government interference with the individual exercise of the 1st amendment? After all, you can sell it as free speech protection and protection of religion.

Its not going to be enough to paint House republicans as loyal DeLay-ites--remember, for part of America, that is a good thing. All of this necessary defensive offense is great for whipping up the Democratic base, but it does nothing to reach out to the I-voted-for-George-cause-he-makes-me-feel-safe crowd. Instead, Democrats need to use PR savvy and other tools to construct a record, and to put the Republicans on the wrong side of the fence on a bunch of issues.

And its not too early. The Republicans have done a fine job in creating bad press for themselves, putting the ball in motion. Why not roll with it?

Quack, Quack?

The Congressional Quarterly:

wonders if Bush is already quacking. Hard to know what to make of this. On the one hand, the fact that Bush never really garnered much support for specific policies, despite his re-election, counts for something. That is, people aren't going to get behind Social Security Reform, etc. Yet still, these are dastardly effective politicians we are talking about. Don't count them out yet.

By Craig Crawford, CQ Columnist

Is George W. Bush a lame duck yet? The president’s political guru, Karl Rove, naturally resists the dreaded label that can so suddenly become a political death sentence for second-term presidents. But Rove acknowledges the inevitable — that the Age of Bush will eventually pass. “There’ll be a geological age that’s going to come and go before the 2007/2008 presidential election begins to warm up,” Rove said last week in an interview with CNN.

Geologists have the luxury of observing precise changes in rock formations to distinguish one material age from another. In Washington, we probe for more subtle shifts to gauge the trajectory of presidential power. Signs abound that the Bush presidency is winding down. And those signs are largely coming from cracks in the GOP ranks, a pattern that one aide to a House conservative described as “selfish fear” that next year’s midterm elections will go badly for Republicans if they don’t show at least some independence.

It was a Republican senator who has emitted this year’s most powerful signal of trouble for the White House on Capitol Hill. George V. Voinovich of Ohio stunned colleagues April 19 by saying that he “did not feel comfortable” voting for John R. Bolton, the president’s nominee to be U.N. ambassador. At that point, another wavering Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, said he was “less inclined” than before to support Bolton as more stories surfaced about the nominee’s supposedly bullying State Department management style.

Bush aides were caught off guard on this one. In the old days, such an appointment would have been routine, a blip on the screen. Democrats would have fumed to no avail, according to the White House script. But despite efforts by Bolton’s backers to portray his troubles as a Democratic-led media conspiracy, it was a Republican mini-mutiny that led to the delay of a confirmation vote.
All About DeLay

At the same time, while the president is holding steady in his public support for embattled House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas, one by one some Republicans are signaling they might be ready to throw the GOP leader under the bus.

Christopher Shays of Connecticut was the first to say publicly that he did not think DeLay could survive as leader in the wake of the swirl of questions about his ethics. It was no shock that Shays, a moderate who also predicted then-Speaker Newt Gingrich’s demise in 1998, would lead this break in ranks. But the worm turned harder when House Republican loyalists, such as Ray LaHood of Illinois and Tom Tancredo of Colorado, openly worried about DeLay’s image endangering the party’s fate on Election Day 2006.

But it was DeLay’s ideological chum on the other side of Capitol Hill, Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who may have undercut the majority leader’s standing the most when he called on DeLay to give a full accounting of his ethical issues. That surprising move, billed by party colleagues as an outgrowth of Santorum’s worries about his own re-election chances next year, underscores one of the biggest reasons that more and more in the GOP fear a campaign based on the Bush agenda.

Perhaps above all other Capitol Hill Republicans, Santorum aggressively and publicly advocates Bush’s call for privatizing a portion of Social Security investments. He was almost alone in his party in deciding to headline a series of town halls in his home state defending the proposal during the spring recess. Protesters at those sessions dominated the media coverage.

A recent Quinnipiac University poll of Pennsylvania voters indicated that Santorum’s vocal support of the president was costing him in this swing state. He trailed state Treasurer Robert P. Casey Jr., next year’s likely Democratic challenger, by 14 percentage points. More than one-third said Santorum’s support for Social Security changes made them less likely to vote for his bid for a third term.

A hint of Bush’s faltering status, even within his own party, quietly came in the Senate on April 14 when Robert C. Byrd, the venerable West Virginia Democrat, offered an amendment challenging the Bush administration’s prepackaged news videos distributed to television stations around the country. Every Republican on hand voted to require disclaimers revealing the government as the source of the hotly debated videos produced and distributed by some federal agencies. Sensing the Senate’s rebellious mood, the White House chose not to go to bat against Byrd’s amendment, which was then adopted 98-0.

Quibbling over who’s to fill the U.N. ambassadorship, which is not a powerful policy-making job, and tinkering with how the government produces video press releases certainly do not make Bush irrelevant. But it does show that, although the president is not yet a lame duck, he is starting to wobble a bit.

167,000 people are in jail in Texas

Number of Prisoners in States


Sunday April 24, 2005 10:16 PM

By The Associated Press

The number of prisoners under the jurisdiction of state and federal correctional authorities on June 30, 2003, and June 30, 2004, and the percentage change. An additional 713,990 inmates were held in local jails on June 30, 2004.

State 2003 2004 Pct Change

Ala. 28,440 26,521 -6.7

Alaska 4,431 4,515 1.9

Ariz. 30,741 31,631 2.9

Ark. 12,378 13,477 8.9

Calif. 163,361 166,053 1.6

Colo. 19,085 19,756 3.5

Conn. 20,525 20,018 -2.5

Del. 6,879 6,973 1.4

Fla. 80,352 84,733 5.5

Ga. 47,004 48,625 3.4

Hawaii 5,635 5,946 5.5

Idaho 5,825 6,312 8.4

Ill. 43,186 44,379 2.8

Ind. 22,576 23,760 5.2

Iowa 8,395 8,611 2.6

Kan. 9,009 9,152 1.6

Ky. 16,377 17,763 8.5

La. 36,091 36,745 1.8

Maine 2,009 2,014 0.2

Md. 24,186 23,727 -1.9

Mass. 10,511 10,365 -1.4

Mich. 49,524 48,591 -1.9

Minn. 7,612 8,613 13.2

Miss. 20,429 20,542 -0.6

Mo. 30,649 30,775 0.4

Mont. 3,440 3,800 10.5

Neb. 4,103 4,042 -1.5

Nev. 10,527 10,971 4.2

N.H. 2,483 2,441 -1.7

N.J. 28,213 28,107 -0.4

N.M. 6,145 6,341 3.2

N.Y. 65,914 64,596 -2.0

N.C. 33,334 34,917 4.7

N.D. 1,168 1,266 8.4

Ohio 45,831 44,770 -2.3

Okla. 23,004 24,767 7.7

Ore. 12,422 13,219 6.4

Pa. 40,545 40,692 0.4

R.I. 3,569 3,701 3.7

S.C. 24,247 24,173 -0.3

S.D. 3,059 3,101 1.4

Tenn. 25,409 25,834 1.7

Texas 167,532 169,110 0.9

Utah 5,603 5,802 3.6

Vt. 1,984 2,033 2.5

Va. 34,733 35,472 2.1

Wash. 16,284 16,559 1.7

W.Va. 4,703 4,980 5.9

Wis. 22,352 22,905 2.5

Wyo. 1,809 1,923 6.3

Nation 1,464,197 1,494,216 2.1

Up in Smoke

Maybe all this attention on smokestacks and black smoke...

...will cause people to start thinking about:

Selenium in drinking water:

While selenium exists naturally in a wide variety of habitats, and small amounts are crucial to the survival of humans and wildlife, high levels can cause severe reproductive impairment and even death in fish, birds, and other wildlife. In humans, selenium is linked to kidney and liver damage, and damage to the circulatory and nervous system. [....] he proposal increases the allowable concentration of selenium in fish to 7.91 parts per million, far above the current limit of 5 parts per million.

Smog in our national parks:

Affected parks include the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee and North Carolina, Acadia in Maine, Glacier in Montana, Grand Canyon in Arizona, Shenandoah in Virginia, Yellowstone in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, and Sequoia and Yosemite in California. [....] The haze is formed by small particles in the air that come mainly from sulfur dioxide from coal-burning power plants in the East and nitrogen oxides from other sources in the West. Other EPA rules also aim to cut those pollutants. Among the targets of the rule are more than two dozen types of industrial facilities built between 1962 and 1977, including power plants, industrial boilers, smelters, refineries, chemical and cement plants, and pulp and paper mills.

(e.g., The Smoky Mountains:

The Smokies, which has been labeled the country's most polluted national park, experienced its first day of elevated smog levels of the year on Sunday as ozone concentrations barely exceeded the 85 parts per billion threshold for an eight-hour period.

Cesspools in Hawaii:

Five federal, state and county agencies that missed an April 5 deadline to close their large-capacity cesspools have signed consent agreements with the Environmental Protection Agency that will give them several extra years to find alternatives and avoid fines of as much as $32,500 a day.The agencies operate 401 cesspools statewide, said Wayne Nastri, the agency's Pacific Southwest regional administrator, who announced the agreements yesterday.

Shit in Ohio drinking water:

The Ohio EPA has approved a permit for the South Beach Mobile Home Park to discharge up to 2,000 gallons of treated wastewater per day into an unnamed tributary of Rocky Fork Lake.The tributary empties directly into the lake.

Ok, wait. This one deserves a bit more attention. Jeff Gilliland, the author of this article, has a truly remarkable punchline. It turns out that drinking shit can indeed be beneficial to one's water supply:

That does not necessarily mean, though, that the change in water quality will be for the worse. According to Joshua Jackson, an EPA environmental specialist, the South Beach Mobile Home Park, located at 11418 Spruance Road, has been discharging wastewater into the unnamed tributary and Rocky Rock Lake since late 1960s without any type of a permit.

I never really laked him post-Dawson's anyway.

If I were Peggy Noonan...

I'd dedicate all my psychic power to figure out: what pitch was that?

And before I forget, a great fake rumor proposed by the soon-to-be-Mrs. Geist:

Is all this revived talk about the 'death tax' W's attempt to maximize his inheritance? Given his track record with cash money (his family's and our country's), it's an absurd thesis that is remarkably realistic sounding.

What happens in...stays in...

Totally unpolitical rant, or maybe not. Not sure.

Thanks Las Vegas Board of Tourism. Thanks a lot Toby Keith.

This google search should be ample evidene that this trope needs to be destroyed:

What Happens In Davos, Stays In Davos (Iowa)

What Happens in Sin City Stays in Sin City

What Happens in the Blog Stays in the Blog

What happens in Celtia, Stays in Celtia!

What Happens in Fargo, Stays in Fargo

What Happens In De Party (Rupee song)

What happens in Venturas, stays in Venturas.

What Happens in Garden Grove, Stays in Garden Grove

What happens in school, stays in school

What happens in America stays in America

what happens in moganshan, stays in mogan

What Happens in Chicago Stays in Chicago

~What Happens in Cabo Stays in Cabo~ (note creativity)

What happens in Ghraib-us, stays in Ghraib-us (Don Rumsfeld can only wish...)

What Happens in Disney World/Orlando Stays in Orlando.

What happens in Tulsa stays in Tulsa

What happens in Kato, stays in Kato

What happens in Madison stays in Madison (also mentions: "“What happens in Cancun stays in Cancun.")

What happens in Britney stays in Britney (you think?)

What happens in Canada stays in Canada

What Happens In Bear Mountain, Stays In Bear Mountain

What Happens in Camelot Stays in Camelot

Whatever Happens In Bangkok, Stays in Bangkok

What happens in Fallujah, stays in Fallujah (except for insurgencies, I guess)

What Happens in Baltimore Stays in Baltimore.

Errors of Mass Destruction

So the White House's indictment of the intelligence community continues. A new month, a new public pillory. This time it is the Silberman Report, co-authored by this...character:

Silberman, 68, served as a member of a Reagan-Bush advisory group in the 1980s and was appointed to the bench by President Reagan in 1985. Now that he's again taken on a prominent role in public life, it's time to examine his past. Here are questions for Silberman that Democrats should be asking -- and demanding the answers to:

1. Is it true that you met with an Iranian envoy in a Washington hotel in 1980 and spoke about a deal to prevent an "October Surprise," which, as author Gary Sick describes, would have meant the release of American hostages shortly before the presidential election? What, specifically did you tell the Iranian envoy who offered "to ensure President Jimmy Carter's defeat in the upcoming election by arranging to release to [Ronald] Reagan the 52 U.S. hostages being held in Tehran," as you told a Miami Herald reporter (April 12, 1987)?

2. Why, four years after your meeting with the Iranian envoy, did you decide not to step down from being a judge in the case of Colonel Oliver North, who'd been accused of making a secret deal to free U.S. hostages in Lebanon even though, as the late Lars-Erik Nelson wrote in Newsday (June 14, 1994), a judge "who has personal involvement with the principals in a case should recuse himself"?
[....]
5. What were you referring to when you complained on June 13, 1992, about The Wall Street Journal ("its reporters, not its simpatico editorialists," according to Tony Mauro in American Lawyer, June 22, 1992), The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and The Associated Press? What did you mean when you called Nina Totenberg of National Public Radio the "wicked witch of the airwaves," and when you ripped into The New York Times' Supreme Court reporter, Linda Greenhouse, citing the "Greenhouse effect"?

6. Can you explain why, as David Brock writes in his book Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative, you winkingly ignored judicial ethics when you encouraged Brock to pursue rumors that Bill Clinton used state troopers to procure women for him while he was governor -- and offered advice and moral support while Brock was preparing a scathing book about Anita Hill? And what did you mean when you prefaced your "advice to [Brock] with the wry demurrer that judges shouldn't get involved in politics"? As Brock writes, "'That would be improper,' he'd say -- and then forge ahead anyway." And why did you and your wife, as Brock explains in his book, respond so enthusiastically to some of Brock's writings, "literally squealing with joy about the case [Brock] had constructed implicating [former Senator Paul] Simon, a vocal critic of Silberman's during the judge's own confirmation hearing"? "They were passing the phone to each other," writes Brock, "marveling at my 'genius' at the top of their lungs. 'You got him. You nailed him. You fucked him. You killed him.'"

7. Why did you explode over then-Attorney General Janet Reno's efforts to keep Secret Service agents from testifying before Kenneth Starr's grand jury in July 1998, saying she "sold out her integrity to protect her boss," according to the New York Post (July 18, 1998), and accuse the president of "declaring war" on Starr, the independent counsel, during the Monica Lewinsky scandal? And why did you act as a judge in the case if, as Brock says, you had personal knowledge about the president's affair with Lewinsky?

8. And why, when serving on a three-judge panel in a federal courthouse, did you threaten liberal-minded fellow Judge Abner Mikva with physical violence, shouting, "If you were 10 years younger, I'd punch you out!'" as Michael Winerip writes in The New York Times Magazine (September 6, 1998)?[....]

Just a sense of Silberman's "credentials" for the important job of reviewing American intelligence gathering in the so-called run-up to operation Fuck Iraq.

But EVEN Silberman, as he tries to deflect attention away from Bush Co.'s systematic manipulation of intelligence, points to the inescapable conclusion: it was the White House's restrictions on the intelligence community that produced such structural failures of the intelligence apparat. Here are some egregious examples...

In essence, analysts shifted the burden of proof, requiring evidence that Iraq did not have WMD.

I'm sorry to interrupt so soon, but I can't get this obnoxious voice out of my head...something about the evidence of absence and the absence of evidence...just a thought.

The October 2002 NIE and other pre-war intelligence assessments failed to articulate the thinness of the intelligence upon which critical judgments about Iraq’s weapons programs hinged.

"Failed to articulate the thinness..." I mean, I knew it was "thin," as did many, many, many others. I guess we are all so much smarter than the White House, the National Security Council, etc. Who knew?

during the course of its investigation the Commission reviewed a number of articles from the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) relating to Iraq’s WMD programs. Not surprisingly, many of the flaws in other intelligence products can also be found in the PDBs. But we found some flaws that were inherent in the format of the PDBs—a series of short “articles” often based on current intelligence reporting that are presented to the President each morning. Their brevity leaves little room for doubts or nuance—and their “headlines” designed to grab the reader’s attention leave no room at all.

No silly, that's just unfiltered intelligence. I guess Silberman wants fancy pants intellectual intelligence.

But these errors stem from poor tradecraft and poor management. The Commission found no evidence of political pressure to influence the Intelligence Community’s pre-war assessments of Iraq’s weapons programs. As we discuss in detail in the body of our report, analysts universally asserted that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments. We conclude that it was the paucity of intelligence and poor analytical tradecraft, rather than political pressure, that produced the inaccurate pre-war intelligence assessments.

Nothingt to see here folks. Keep going...I think McClellan is going to have those phrases burned into his brain by the time of tomorrow's gaggle. The wording here is kind of cagey as well.

Thus, after the departure of inspectors, the Intelligence Community assumed that Iraq had the opportunity and the desire to jumpstart its covert nuclear weapons program; by the end of 2000, however, the Community had seen no firm evidence that this was actually happening. This judgment began to shift in early 2001 as a result of a discovery that, in hindsight, was the critical moment in the development of the Intelligence Community’s assessment of Iraq’s nuclear program. In March 2001, intelligence reporting indicated that Iraq was seeking high-strength tubes made of 7075 T6 aluminum alloy. The Intelligence Community obtained samples of the tubes when a shipment bound for Iraq was seized overseas.

Translation: at the end of the Clinton administration, Saddam was not a threat. When Bush II came into power, this was "the critical moment" in deciding that Saddam was a threat.

October 2002 NIE . The Intelligence Community judged in the NIE with moderate confidence that “Baghdad ha[d] reconstituted its nuclear weapons program.” 45 Only INR dissented from this assessment, although INR judged in the President’s Summary of the NIE that the overall evidence “indicates, at most, a limited Iraqi nuclear reconstitution effort.”

Is "moderate confidence" and "limited...reconstitution" the stuff to make the tough decisions with?

Yellowcake!

The Iraq Survey Group also found no evidence that Iraq sought uranium from abroad after 1991. With respect to the reports that Iraq sought uranium from Niger, ISG interviews with Ja’far Diya Ja’far, the head of Iraq’s pre1991 enrichment programs, indicated that Iraq had only two contacts with the Nigerien government after 1998—neither of which was related to uranium. One such contact was a visit to Niger by the Iraqi Ambassador to the Vatican Wissam Zahawie, the purpose of which Ja’far said was to invite the Nigerien President to visit Iraq (a story told publicly by Zahawie). The second contact was a visit to Iraq by a Nigerien minister to discuss Nigerien purchases of oil from Iraq—with no mention of “any kind of payment, quid pro quo, or offer to provide Iraq with uranium ore, other than cash in exchange for petroleum.” The use of the last method of payment is supported by a crude oil contract, dated June 26, 2001, recovered by the ISG.

There was this guy named Joe Wilson who said the same thing to the CIA and White House, but lets not get bogged down in details.

OK, this is brilliant. Really brilliant.

The ISG [Iraq Survey Group] found only one offer of uranium to Baghdad since 1991—an offer that Iraq appears to have turned down.

Source, you ask?

Raymond Whitaker, “Niger Timebomb: The Diplomat, the Forgery, and the Suspect Case for War,” The Independent on Sunday (Aug. 10, 2003), page 11

That couldn't pass for scholarship in an 8th grade language arts class.

The so-called spy, Curveball, will be getting some press from this report. Here's a line that probably won't make it onto the O'Reilly Factor:

Second, the detailee was concerned by Curveball’s apparent “hangover” during their meeting.

What are the quotations there for? In my experience, you are either hungover or not. But I'm not a secret agent man, or a right wing stooge. Maybe there is an unpleasant middle world? A bit more on this

This message was eventually re-conveyed to Directorate of Operations supervisors via electronic mail on February 4, 2003—literally on the eve of Secretary Powell’s speech to the United Nations. The electronic mail stated, in part: I do have a concern with the validity of the information based on Curveball having a terrible hangover the morning of [the meeting]. I agree, it was only a one time interaction, however, he knew he was to have a [meeting] on that particular morning but tied one on anyway. What underlying issues could this be a problem with and how in depth has he been vetted by the [foreign liaison service]?

Can you imagine this meeting? Hey spy, are you wearing those sunglasses because you don't want to get caught? Nope...just got real hammered with the bros last night, got home at like 5 am...actually I'm still kind of drunk.


Well, I'm comforted.

Snow Job: John Snow, Non Policy, and Social Security "Reform"

Do we have a real economic policy in the US, designed by people that…well, know economics? Not according to Forbes. Case in point is John Snow, economist and one hit wonder recording artist.

Snow, the U.S. secretary of the Treasury, is, by many accounts, no longer a player in crafting economic policy. But he is selling it. Currently, Snow is in the middle of the "60 Stops in 60 Days" tour in which he and other Bush Administration officials are "crisscross[ing] the nation to take the President's message of strengthening Social Security to the American people." [....]

While no one is suggesting that Snow is cooking the books, there is a serious question as to whether Snow has stopped making policy and is no longer the watchdog of America's finances. He has been left simply to sell the plan, which is rapidly being revised with him out of town.

An Associated Press article filed this morning calls Snow the "nominal head of the [Administration's] economic team," but says flatly he has "little of the clout that most previous Treasury secretaries have wielded, either within the administration or on Wall Street." It adds that "Snow is not seen as having a major role in policy making." Instead, the policy function has been kept within the White House. Snow, for his part, has hit the road.

Imagine a road trip with John Snow? Every time you stop for a burger you are forced to hear a lecture about how you, as you bite into your char-burned piece of sort of meat, are singlehandedly

He's a good news man. He sells good news and, if one remembers from last summer, he also can magically turn bad news into very good news. On a "bus tour" of the nation, gearing up for Bush's reelection push, Snow had the following encounters:

"Right now I am very disillusioned with the Republicans' policies," said Michael Retzer, a Republican and a consultant to a supplier for Harley-Davidson. Mr. Retzer told Mr. Snow at a Harley plant near Milwaukee that he did not see how the tax cuts would stimulate the economy when so many consumers would spend the extra money on goods made overseas. Later, in the kind of confrontation with a disgruntled citizen almost never seen on the president's trips, Mr. Snow tangled with an unemployed software programmer at the drive-through at Culver's Frozen Custard and ButterBurgers in Wausau, Wis. "He said, `But your tax cuts haven't done anything for me,' " Mr. Snow recounted the next day to reporters, as the bus traveled through Minnesota. "And I said, `Well, now, let's just take a second and talk about that.' "

Looks bad right? Nope, not if you have the good news mojo:

As Mr. Snow put it, "I'm going to go back and tell the president, `Mr. President, I ran into a lot of people who asked me personally to express my gratitude to you for worrying and thinking about us.' "

So he is a crony par excellence...the anti-Paul O'Neill, who was supposed to be a crony par excellence. O'Neill, however, thought (for some strange reason) that he should actually care about the economy. That simply cannot do.

It strikes me that this Social Security plan was poorly timed. Sure, Bush Co. had political momentum after the election but they had no legislative feats to build on nor--contrary to the CW--did they have any semblance of a 'mandate.' Whats more, the economy remains stuck in neutral. Not unlike the past three+ years, we hear plenty of talk about a rebound and whatnot but the numbers have not drastically changed. It would have been much easier to pitch Social Security reform and especially private accounts in a time of economic gains, when people are not focused upon, or relying upon, the very safety net that they want to remove.

So why now and why reach so far? The amazing thing about ideologues is that they believe in the unreality that they consciously sell to constituent/subjects. Bush Co. probably thought that the economy would turn around in time for the second term--that the laissez-faire method (also known as the 'ignore it until it goes away' method) of trusting the invisible hand would sweep them gently out of recession and into the plush fields of stable growth. And when it was clear that this had not happened, that the invisible hand had actually slapped them in the face, then they likely justified it by saying improvement was inevitable. This can't go on forever, right?

Where does it stop? We all know the basic standards for defining abuse. Either the ideology is abusing these ideologues or these ideologues have drastically misunderstood free market economics. Judging by the corporate cartel alliance with certain sectors of the federal government (see: halliburton, boeing), its likely the latter.

As for John Snow...I think he put it best in 1993:

You'd never know me Daddy Snow
I'm the Boom Shakata
I'll never lay down flat
in one cardboard box
Yes me Daddy Snow
I'm gonna reached the top, so.

Harold Cruse: 1916-2005

Harold Cruse, one of the most influential political thinkers in my life and one of the most underappreciated Americna cultural critics ever passed away yesterday. Cruse was one of the few postwar American thinkers who with equal force could criticize the cultural politics and posture of the 1960s while simulataneously deriding the idiotic sectarianism and tunnel vision of late twentieth century communism. In my mind, he was always one of the great rejoinders to the derisive continental derision-'why is there no important socialist thinker in America." If there are any RG readers left out there following our not-so-brief hiatus, I urge you to check out his brilliant (and often funny) "The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual." Below is the NYT Obituary:

Harold Cruse, Social Critic and Fervent Black Nationalist, Dies at 89
By CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT

Published: March 30, 2005

arold Cruse, an outspoken social and cultural critic who was best known for his angry collection of essays, "The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual," died Saturday in Ann Arbor, Mich. He was 89. The cause was congestive heart failure, his companion, Mara Julius, said.

Largely self-educated and widely read, Mr. Cruse taught African-American studies at the University of Michigan and was one of the first blacks to get tenure at a major university without a college degree. He ranged over many subjects in his writing: politics, radicalism, music, culture and the situation of black people in America.
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In "Crisis" he summed up a set of positions that left him isolated from almost everyone else in the political spectrum of the mid-1960's.

He was against integration. "Integrate with whom?" he asked. He deplored the black-power movement as being all slogans and no political program. He opposed the back-to-Africa campaign, although he had grudging admiration for Garveyism. Despite a brief association with the Communist Party, he abominated Communists and liberals - in particular, Jewish intellectuals, whom he blamed for black anti-Semitism. He was critical of almost everyone, from James Baldwin to Ossie Davis to Lorraine Hansberry, for accepting too readily the premises of white culture.

He concluded that blacks must form their own political, economic, social and cultural base to work on all fronts toward an accommodation with capitalism as it was modified by the New Deal.

Mr. Cruse's book stirred up strong reactions in many quarters. But Christopher Lasch wrote in The New York Review of Books that he agreed with book's thesis, as he put, "that intellectuals must play a central role in movements for radical change." A new edition of "Crisis" will be published next month.

A year after its original publication, Mr. Cruse was asked to lecture at the University of Michigan, where he became involved in the African-American studies program until his retirement in the mid-1980's as professor emeritus.

Harold Wright Cruse was born in Petersburg, Va., on March 8, 1916, and moved with his father, a railway porter, to New York City as a young child. After graduating from high school, he worked at several jobs but was ambitious to become a writer. He served in the Army in Europe during World War II.

After the war, he attended the City College of New York briefly but never graduated. In 1947, he joined the Communist Party and wrote drama and literary criticism for The Daily Worker, although he was never doctrinaire. In the 1950's, he wrote several plays, and in the mid-1960's he was co-founder, with LeRoi Jones (now Amiri Baraka), of the Black Arts Theater and School in Harlem.The more he learned about the arts, the more he deplored what he saw as a white appropriation of black culture, particularly as exemplified by George Gershwin's folk opera "Porgy and Bess." He called for blacks to embrace their cultural uniqueness.

His later books include "Rebellion or Revolution?", "Plural but Equal: A Critical Study of Blacks and Minorities and America's Plural Society" and "The Essential Harold Cruse: A Reader" edited by William Jelani Cobb with a foreword by Stanley Crouch.

In addition to Ms. Julius, his survivors include two half sisters, Shirley Toke, of Richmond, Va., and Catherine Jones, of Petersburg.