National

Fri - September 2, 2005

A National Disgrace

It's hard to disagree with this statement, on WWL-TV's blog:

Terry Ebbert, the head of emergency operations for New Orleans. "This is a national disgrace. FEMA has been here three days, yet there is no command and control. We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans."

Why can't the locals do command and control? Because they don't have authority over federal personnel. The unique role of the federal government in circumstances like this is to create one, single decision-making body to coordinate all efforts. That did not happen for several days after the hurricane hit. And you can see the results on your television.

Posted at 10:56 AM

Thu - September 1, 2005

Hell on Earth - New Orleans after Katrina

CNN.com is reporting serious problems at the Superdome, with respect to looting, crowd control, and sanitation:

Troops and police have been working to evacuate tens of thousands of people, who are growing weaker and more desperate each hour.

Thousands of people have been sleeping on streets, interstate access ramps, bridges or any dry spot they can find.

Outside the New Orleans Convention Center, a huge crowd waited on the sidewalks for aid that could be a long time coming. The building was used as a secondary shelter when the Louisiana Superdome was overwhelmed. (Watch report on the desperate conditions at the convention center -- 2:54 )

CNN's Chris Lawrence reported that conditions inside the building were appalling -- a number of bodies were visible, including a baby.

"We are out here like pure animals. We don't have any help," Rev. Issac Clark told the Associated Press.

Spellman said that there were also bodies outside the building and that no one had come to collect them

Given the large number of people at the Superdome, why can't some National Guard or Army unit helicopter in and take control?

One of my hobby sites is Saabcentral.com, and this morning "Rob from Atlanta" reports on e-mails he's getting from government officials with access to inside data:

Our office has contacts with certain governmental officials in Louisiana. These people are normally reliable, but I have no way of determining if the information is correct. THIS INFORMATION MAY PROVE TO BE WRONG OR OVERSTATED. We have received several emails in the past hour with similar information to the effect of the following:

Quote:

1. Superdome is on fire

2. approximately 200 armed looters have taken control of superdome - armed military on way to take back control

2. 6 18 wheel refrigerator trucks of dead bodies at the superdome alone

3. looters are shooting at military and civilians trying to help.

4. the news media is stirring the pot, going into areas and rallying people up complaining the government doesn't care about them and then leaving them with no water, food, or taking anyone out and providing no help

5. they have declared total marshal [sic] law (shoot to kill)

This is without a doubt the worst natural disaster ever experienced by the United States. And early reports on the effectiveness of the federal response are not encouraging.

Posted at 11:37 AM

Tue - August 23, 2005

Robertson Calls for Political Assassination - More Coverage, Please

The top story on CNN.com is Pat Robertson's call for the U.S. to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

It's about time the mainstream media pays attention to the wacky and dangerous crap which establishment right-wingers regularly put forward. Crazy utterances by Ward Churchill are used to characterize of the "left" as a means of discrediting any opposition to President Bush, while the conservatives skate by unmolested when their political allies make outrageous statements like Robertson's.

Memo to CNN: More like this, please.

Posted at 02:55 PM

Mon - July 18, 2005

The Plame Game

I have not commented on the Valerie Plame affair because any comments before the investigation is concluded are premature. Either serious crimes have been committed or they haven't, and we'll find out in the end what the special prosecutor has in store.

The revelations over the last week do show just how far down the bar has been lowered for misconduct in high office, though. Karl Rove, through his lawyer, has admitted discussing the classified status of a CIA operative with a reporter for political reasons. Whether or not this action constitutes a crime, it amounts to a serious breach of the public trust.

The latest right-wing talking points seem to be aimed at Joe Wilson personally - he's a liar, partisan hack, etc. All of this is utterly beside the point. The CIA invested a great deal of time, money, and personnel in setting up Valerie Plame as a covert operative. Even if she had not been active in her covert role for a period of time, her network of associates was still in place. Blowing her cover, even after the fact, allowed the enemies of the United States to trace back her steps for years, including her associates and contacts. An entire intelligence network aimed at fighting the spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction has been blown up because of the short-term political needs of the Bush Administration.

Even if everything the right-wing says about Joe Wilson is true, national security was compromised for politics.

This is a grave mistake. Part of the job of President is to shoulder unfair political criticism if it is in the national interest to do so. If the President has to make an unpopular decision on the basis of classified information which he can neither reveal nor discuss, so be it.

Good intelligence will dry up quickly if Presidents or their staff burn covert operatives for domestic political reasons. Regardless of how good those domestic politic reasons are alleged to be.

If it's not a crime to do what Karl Rove did, it ought to be.

Posted at 10:33 AM

Fri - July 1, 2005

Moving the Goal Posts on Supreme Court Nominations

Atrios has a very good post up, about how Bill Clinton handled Supreme Court nominations when Democrats controlled the Senate:

"In the early 90s, when the Democrats were in control of the Senate, President Clinton consulted with the ranking minority member, Orrin Hatch, about SC appointments. Hatch himself bragged in his autobiography that he was the person who suggested Ginsburg and Breyer.

This rather important fact will, of course, be left entirely out of the media conversation on this topic."

There are many factors that have lead to the intense polarization of American politics. But the Bush Administration is the first to have used intense polarization as the sole method by which it governs. Subsequent administrations, left or right, will have to be equally polarizing or else risk defeat by the intense partisanship of the other side.

I point this out because there's no going back to a more cooperative time. The blindly aggressive tactics of the Bush Administration will dominate our politics for many years, long after President Bush leaves office.

Not a happy development for the country.

Posted at 04:09 PM

Wed - June 15, 2005

Quick Hits

1. Michael Jackson's acquittal is evidence that the rich get off more often because they can afford a better defense. That's not the same as saying Jackson should have been convicted. The rich/poor problem in criminal law is not that the guilty rich get off too often, it's that the innocent poor are convicted too frequently.

2. When she died Terri Schiavo had only half a brain. That might be more than some of the people who were trying to "save" her.

3. The Downing Street Memo is not the smoking gun. However reliable British observation of the Bush Administration might be, it is still theoretically possible that in 2002 and 2003 Bush was telling the truth when he claimed to be pursuing diplomacy, and went to war only as a last resort.

4. By way of contrast, if the evidence showing Richard Nixon was involved in the Watergate cover-up consisted not of tapes, but of a British memo based on conversations with senior administration officials, Nixon would not have been forced to resign.

5. Lying to the American public about an ongoing criminal investigation is obstruction of justice, and can be criminally prosecuted. Lying under oath about private personal conduct is also a crime.

6. Lying to the American public about the reasons for going to war is not a crime.

Food for thought.

Posted at 12:23 PM

Thu - June 2, 2005

Mark Felt and Watergate - the Real Agenda

Much has been written, and will be written, about the disclosure that W. Mark Felt, deputy director of the F.B.I. at the time, was the anonymous source known as "Deep Throat" during the Watergate crisis. The debate is now - is Mark Felt a hero or a wrong-doer?

But a more fundamental mystery may been unraveled. After Watergate, Woodward has become America's foremost chronicler of internal elite debate and discussion, in books like "The Commanders," "The Agenda," etc. I have always been curious about Woodward's journey from intrepid investigative reporter to stenographer for the ruling class.

The mechanism for this transformation is no mystery. In the form of Deep Throat, Woodward established his ability to find credible sources deep inside the federal government, sources he knew how to both use and protect. After Watergate, when Woodward put his phone calls into high government officials, those officials faced a very stark choice -- talk to him, feed him information off the record, or don't talk to him and wait for their political enemies feed him information. I doubt Woodward ever had to say a threatening or cajoling word to his high government sources -- Woodward's history as the guy who found Deep Throat and bought down Nixon was enough to get his foot in the door.

No, how Bob Woodward became the stenographer of the ruling class is not a mystery. The mystery has always been why. Why would someone who made their name as a revolutionary journalist so quickly join the elite, chattering class?

As it turns out, Woodward's Watergate career is not at all different from his later activities. I submit for your inspection the following passage from Woodward's piece in today's Washington Post, describing his first meeting with Mark Felt in 1970:

"This was a time in my life of considerable anxiety, even consternation, about my future. I had graduated in 1965 from Yale, where I had a Naval Reserve Officers' Training Corps scholarship that required that I go into the Navy after getting my degree. After four years of service, I had been involuntarily extended an additional year because of the Vietnam War.

During that year in Washington, I expended a great deal of energy trying to find things or people who were interesting. I had a college classmate who was going to clerk for Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, and I made an effort to develop a friendship with that classmate. To quell my angst and sense of drift, I was taking graduate courses at George Washington University. One course was in Shakespeare, another in international relations.

When I mentioned the graduate work to Felt, he perked up immediately, saying he had gone to night law school at GW in the 1930s before joining -- and this is the first time he mentioned it -- the FBI. While in law school, he said, he had worked full time for a senator -- his home-state senator from Idaho. I said that I had been doing some volunteer work at the office of my congressman, John Erlenborn, a Republican from the district in Wheaton, Ill., where I had been raised.

So we had two connections -- graduate work at GW and work with elected representatives from our home states.

Felt and I were like two passengers sitting next to each other on a long airline flight with nowhere to go and nothing really to do but resign ourselves to the dead time. He showed no interest in striking up a long conversation, but I was intent on it. I finally extracted from him the information that he was an assistant director of the FBI in charge of the inspection division, an important post under Director J. Edgar Hoover. That meant he led teams of agents who went around to FBI field offices to make sure they were adhering to procedures and carrying out Hoover's orders. I later learned that this was called the "goon squad."

Here was someone at the center of the secret world I was only glimpsing in my Navy assignment, so I peppered him with questions about his job and his world. As I think back on this accidental but crucial encounter -- one of the most important in my life -- I see that my patter probably verged on the adolescent. Since he wasn't saying much about himself, I turned it into a career-counseling session.

I was deferential, but I must have seemed very needy. He was friendly, and his interest in me seemed somehow paternal. Still the most vivid impression I have is that of his distant but formal manner, in most ways a product of Hoover's FBI. I asked Felt for his phone number, and he gave me the direct line to his office."

In other words, from the very beginning Bob Woodward's goal was to connect to the Washington power structure. It was his good fortune to connect with Felt - it gave him access and information he was able to leverage brilliantly later on.

Bob Woodward was not, and has never been, a heroic crusading journalist. He is a scribe, a stenographer, the public voice of certain factions of elite opinion. He has filled that role well, and his work by and large is accurate and informative. And Woodward's work in Watergate was the first of many instances where he furthered his career by serving the public relations goals of his elite friends.

Had Deep Throat been a White House employee with a conscience, had Woodward played a role in convincing Deep Throat to do the right thing against his own partisan or personal interests, the "journalist as hero" narrative might have been appropriate. But instead, Deep Throat is a high-ranking FBI official out to protect the independence and traditional prerogatives of his agency from White House interference. Instead of "journalist as hero" the more appropriate frame is "journalist as foot soldier in inter-agency warfare."

In my humble opinion, the history of Watergate needs to be revised, downplaying it as an example of victorious investigative journalism, and framing it more accurately as inter-agency warfare.

Posted at 03:02 PM

Fri - May 27, 2005

Peak Oil

Kevin Drum, at Washington Monthly, has been making some points for awhile about the "Peak Oil" hypothesis, that worldwide oil production will peak and begin to decline in the relatively near term. Well, apparently "peak oil" is now a mainstream assumption of the oil industry itself, as he outlines in this post.

The larger question raised by all of this is, of course, political -- particularly whether our hyper-partisan, dysfunctional, and myopic political system can even begin to address a problem that 10, 20, or 30 years off.

(And Social Security doesn't count here -- Bush's Social Security "reform" proposals actually illustrates why the current political system cannot process rational and coherent long-term policy. Bush's Social Security effort has more to with the need to use the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for his tax cuts than anything else.).

Posted at 11:43 AM

Mon - May 23, 2005

"Peace in Our Time"? Not Really . . . (Filibuster Compromise)

A compromise has been reached that defeats the nuclear option in exchange for up-or-down votes on three of President Bush's seven controversial nominees. This does not necessarily mean that all three nominees will be confirmed -- apparently Sen. Lindsay Graham said on MSNBC that one of the three will be voted down on a bi-partisan basis.

If this is true, and if Janice Rogers Brown (the uber-Libertarian, anti-government nominee for the D.C. Circuit) is the one of the three that will go down on a bi-partisan basis, it's a reasonable deal. Both the 5th and 11th Circuits are already dominated by conservatives, so the other two nominees are not going to fundamentally change either court.

The commentators at DailyKos have been very critical on the assumption that Reid had the votes to defeat the nuclear option and blinked -- the evidence of that is Frist's reluctance to proceed -- i.e., he knew he didn't have the votes.

But the GOP moderates in the middle didn't show their hand to either side - neither Frist nor Reid knew for sure how the vote was going to come out. Had the trigger been pulled I think that the nuclear option would have gone down, but that's a guess.

The question is not whether this deal is better than a clear defeat of the nuclear option (answer: No), but whether the deal is better than rolling the dice on the nuclear option, which, if lost, would let Bush put Owens **and** Brown **and** some other radical right-winger on the Supreme Court with 51 votes.

Maybe all this does is postpone the inevitable until Stevens or O'Connor retires, but for now it's pretty good.

There was part of me that was rooting for the nuclear option to succeed -- someday the Democratic Party will control the two political branches of government again, and if 51 Senators can do whatever they want (on grounds that 51 Senators can "interpret" the Senate rules to mean whatever they want them to mean), we could avoid future conservative filibusters against a whole host of progressive legislation -- most of which which would be as difficult to repeal as Social Security has been. For example, if it hadn't been for the filibuster, we might well have had national health insurance in the late 40's, and a real civil rights bill 10-12 years earlier.

There is also the issue of political consequences -- the Democratic Party is just strong enough to prevent the religious wing of the Republican Party from implementing the more radical elements of its social agenda. This, of course, has the perverse effect of making easier for people to vote Republican, because voters get their low taxes and tough foreign policy without having to swallow the right-wing social policies that go with it. In some respects then perhaps the best outcome for the Democratic Party would have been for the religious right to succeed with the nuclear option and remake the court system in its image -- e.g., overturning Roe v. Wade, keeping the next Terri Schiavo alive, etc.

On the other hand, living through 20 years of James Dobson's America is an awfully high price to pay for national health insurance.

I'm being overly dramatic, though -- after the Schiavo affair, the nuclear option debate makes it clear enough that the balance of power in the Republican Party has shifted to the social conservatives. The beauty of the compromise is that, having made the point about radical Republicans, the Democrats still get to keep the filibuster as a safety net.

It's not a complete win, but a win nonetheless. I'll take it.

Edited for grammer - 11:55 pm CDT

Posted at 11:25 PM

Wed - November 3, 2004

Why We Lost - to be continued

CNN is reporting this.

We should salute John Kerry for the strong race he ran, and for his gracious common sense in declining to challenge to an all-but-insurmountable deficit of over 130,000 votes.

I have some thoughts about why we lost. If I were to list them in order, I would say:

(1) gay marriage;
(2) fear of terrorism/Osama bin Laden tape;
(3) Republican GOTV successes; and
(4) over-rationalizing and over-estimating the lingering effects of Gore's loss in 2000.

But I want to chew on this for awhile. I'll be back next week after an internet-free vacation - my wife and I are leaving on an airplane shortly to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary in the California wine country.

Blogging will resume some time next week.

Posted at 11:35 AM

Tue - November 2, 2004

Well, I was Wrong

Bush has won Florida, and as of the time of this post, he leads by about 130,000 votes in Ohio. Kerry has to have Ohio mathematically to win.

What about the incumbent rule? Well, we'll have to look at the numbers in the days and weeks ahead. The first brush at an explanation has been offered by Chris Suellentrop at Slate -- the undecideds broke against Bush, but for the other challenger, Ralph Nader, not John Kerry.

I don't buy that explanation -- Nader's numbers just aren't that high. My wild-ass election night guess is that the increase in turnout of decided Bush supporters was larger than the shift away from Bush among the smaller, and less motivated, group of undecided voters. But for a firm answer we'll have to sort through the data down the road.

I'll save my substantive comments for later, when we know more about a possible winner. But in the meantime, perhaps we need to rename the incumbent "rule." Incumbent guideline, perhaps?

Posted at 11:42 PM

Vote . . . and Wait

I really don't have much to add. The Democratic GOTV is incredibly impressive. I've been door-knocked twice this morning to make sure I voted, once by some party volunteers, and just now by some ACT volunteers.

Cautious optimism prevails. I'm worried about Ohio, but confident about Florida. Without Ohio, Kerry wins in 290's, I think. With Ohio, he heads up to 311 plus any bonus pickups, like WV or AR.

But we shall see tonight.

UPDATE - 6 pm Central -- I got a GOTV phone call this afternoon from an environmental organization. That's three GOTV contacts today for me. I don't remember any GOTV election day contacts in the past. I have friends doing GOTV throughout the city, and they're organized down to the block level.

Wow.

Posted at 12:54 PM

Sun - October 31, 2004

Kerry's Southern Strategy

The latest Gallup poll in Wisconsin (49-46 Bush) creates an unusual scenario in the latest "Incumbent Rule" poll. This takes Wisconsin out of Kerry's column if undecideds break for Kerry at a 2:1 or 3:2 ratio, resulting in a 287-251 Kerry victory.

If undecideds break 2:1 or 3:2 for Kerry, he wins the election with Arkansas and Florida, but loses Ohio and Wisconsin.

An unusual scenario, to be sure, but that's where the poll data takes me. I report, you decide.

Here's the latest chart on the closest states - with a 3:1 undecided break Kerry barely hangs on to Ohio and Arizona for 317 EV:

For what it's worth, the difference between a 3:1 undecided break for Kerry and a 2:1 break is about 0.4 percentage points in net margin. At 2:1 Kerry loses both Ohio and Arizona for a 287-251 victory.

(edited to fix math problems)

Posted at 11:19 PM

Kerry Wins "Incumbent Rule" Poll of Polls

Here are the daily trends for the days I have done the "incumbent rule" analysis of state-by-state polls:

Allocation of undecided voters against incumbent:

It's Sunday night, less than 48 hours before the election. Looking at these numbers, I'd rather be in John Kerry's position than George Bush's.

Posted at 08:20 PM

Today's "Incumbent Rule" Poll - Kerry 327, Bush 211

Today's "Incumbent Rule" poll of polls shows John Kerry with a lead of 327 electoral votes to 211 EV for George Bush. This assumes a 3:1 break of undecided voters against the incumbent. If undecideds break 2:1 or 3:2, Kerry receives 297 EV to Bush's 241.

The states that change based on the difference between 3:1 and 2:1 are Ohio (20 EV) and Arizona (10 EV). Subjectively, looking at the range of polls, I believe Kerry is likely to win Ohio in any event, and not likely to win Arizona (or if Kerry does win AZ it will be part of an unpredicted high turnout landslide). Of this list, I also think New Mexico (5 EV) and Arkansas (6 EV) are a bit iffy -- certainly iffier than Ohio.

Taking NM, AZ, and AR from Kerry still leaves him with a 306-232 EV lead.

It's significant that, in the five days I've been doing this, Bush has never led. Four of the last five days Kerry has held a substantial lead, and Bush was only able to achieve a 269-269 tie on one day, based solely on unusual polling results that popped up that day in Minnesota and Florida.

The early leading indicators of how well Kerry is doing on election night are Florida (duh) and Virginia. Bush has never been able to put Kerry away in Virginia. If Kerry gets a net bump of about 3-4 points from high Democratic turnout, he could win Virginia. If Virginia gets called for Kerry, he will be on his way to a 350+ electoral vote landslide.

Here's the daily table of close states: