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3:47 PM
Still no difference?
When Nader breaks the news on 'Meet the Press' this Sunday, Tim Russert is sure grill his guest. But when it comes to a pair of the most obvious questions ('why now?' and 'do you still think there's no difference between the Republican and Democratic agendas?'), Nader's already on record. The answers come in the form of Nader's response to a Nation editorial urging him to stay on the sidelines.
The response makes two things very clear: Ralph doesn't think much of being offered advice, and "anybody but Bush" isn't reason enough to keep him on the sidelines.
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3:07 PM
It's Official: Nader 2004
Here we go again, folks. Ralph Nader is running for president.
"He's felt there is a role for an independent candidate to play," spokeswoman Linda Schade told FoxNews today. Nader is expected to make a formal announcment this Sunday on "Meet the Press."
Let the hand-wringing begin!
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1:10 AM
Popping the Question to Mary Cheney
President Bush has all but endorsed an constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Dick Cheney is on record saying he'd rather leave the question up to the states, but has said he would back the president.
That leaves the folks at DearMary.com wondering what Dick's openly gay daughter thinks about all this. They've started an Internet "post card" petition, imploring her to pipe up:
Dear Mary: Vice President Cheney, your father, recently said he would support adding anti-gay prejudice to the US Constitution, making you and millions of other Americans second-class citizens. As an open lesbian who has worked for years as a public advocate for gay civil rights, you are in a unique position to defend yourself and your community in this dire hour. Won't you join us in publicly opposing this bigoted un-American proposal?
Vistitors to the site have sent more than 3,000 post cards, and donations for a milk-carton Have You Seen Me? ad campaign are pouring in.
But don't expect Mary to crack under the pressure. After all, she's still managing her father's re-election campaign.
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4:00 PM
Give me a home
A million bucks doesn't go as far as it used to. According to a report out of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard, owner-occupied, single-family homes costing $1 million or more have become pretty common in some cities. In fact, the Census Bureau had to increase its top category from "$500,000 or more" in the 1990 Census to "$1,000,000 or more" in 2000.
There are about 314,000 million-dollar homes in the U.S., 11.6 percent of the total in Cambridge, Mass. (the highest concentration), 7 percent in San Francisco, and 3.2 percent in Berkeley, CA.
"One driving force," says the report "is the rapid growth of household wealth in this country and the widening gap between the wealthy and the poor. Another is the rapid growth in income among the top quintile." Price appreciation and a tight housing market account for some of the rise, which has also affected houses lower down the price scale; the median single-family home sale price recorded last year was about $170,000, up from $148,000 in 2001.
"While low income people in much of the country are struggling to afford downpayments on ordinary homes," says a piece in today's Wall Street Journal, "lots of wealthy buyers can easily afford million dollar houses." According to Coldwell Banker, 31 percent of people who paid $1 million or more for their home ponied up the entire sum in cash.
Tax cuts for the wealthiest, anyone?
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1:30 PM
Bush in drift
A new USA Today poll has Kerry and Edwards beating Bush in a head-to-head. Kerry creams him 55 to 43 among likely voters, Edwards 55 to 44. Sixty percent of respondents said they have a favorable opinion (26 unfavorable) of Kerry, versus 56 for Bush (42 unfavorable).
We can't read too much into this -- not yet, anyway. Bush's approval numbers are still decent, at 51 percent. (USAT points out that since World War II, every president who kept his job approval above 50% in the re-election year has won another term.) A majority (55 percent) think he's basically honest, down from 73 in April, but still reasonable, and 72 percent think he has a "strong moral character."
(Of course, as well as having a "strong moral character," Bush has a pile o' money. As a Brookings scholar tells USAT, "To say that Bush has not yet begun to fight is an understatement for a man who is sitting on $100 million.")
Interestingly, the question mark over Bush's National Guard service isn't getting much traction as an issue. Eighty (80!) percent say it won't affect how they vote (and 78 percent say Kerry's service in Vietnam won't influence their vote, either).
But, with all these caveats and hedges, the poll shows that Bush is on the slide. The question now, of course, is whether Democrats can sustain their advantage -- not a given (just ask Howard Dean).
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4:33 PM
The Daniel Pipes show
Daniel Pipes is a radical neocon firebrand, a Zionist rogue of academia, a stateside satrap of the Israeli government, a cynical abuser of the very freedoms he seeks to curtail. Or he's a rare and pragmatic visionary, a brave critic of academic excess, a proud supporter of Israel's embattled democracy, a clear-eyed realist who recognizes our beloved liberties are being taken advantage of.
Those, at least, are the contrary sides of the conventional wisdom -- wisdom which has made Pipes a popular speaker and serial Middle East commentator. The man behind Campus Watch, Pipes has been one of the loudest voices arguing that the war on terror is nothing less than a religious war, and that U.S. universities are refuges for anti-western extremism. Predictably, he inspires extremes of emotion. But Tim Cavanaugh, the web editor at Reason, wonders if there's really anything to Pipes beyond that emotion. Cavanaugh considers Pipes' February 10 appearance at Berkeley -- an appearance, he writes, as remarkable for its visiting-head-of-state-type security and stage-managed delays as for the vehemence of the crowd. The evening was pure theater, Cavanaugh writes -- and unsatisfactory theater, at that.
Pipes himself, the hecklers, the supporters—they're all here to put on the same show. If it hadn't been for the constant interruptions, Pipes' performance would have been the biggest nothing to hit California since Webvan.I do, on the other hand, have a more refined appreciation of the Pipes method. I realize now that it was pointless to regret his passing as a serious scholar — to feel this way is to take too literally his persona as a tough-talking firebrand. Pipes is much closer to the grand tradition that stretches from Jack Paar to Regis Philbin and beyond: a low-impact, low-information, soft-edged performer, a channeler of looniness rather than a creator of it.
Predictably, Pipes himself has a different view of the evening in question, offered up on his personal web site.
I spoke on February 10 at the University of California-Berkeley to a crowd of about 550; a sizeable number could not get in. As I had expected, this was the most out-of-control talk of the roughly one thousand I have given, with a core group of about 150 Islamists, Palestinian radicals, and far-leftists constantly disrupting me, mostly with insults that I would prefer to forget....
The videotape that my hosts were supposed to make of this event did not happen, so before commenting in any depth on what happened I am waiting to get hold of one of the several others made that evening. For the moment, suffice to say that the vice-chancellor of the university present at this event, plus the UC police arrayed at it in large numbers, both showed weakness in permitting the disruptors to dominate. I should not have been subjected to this treatment. To make matters worse, none of the offenders was arrested. I shake my head with dismay at this; and a second time on recalling that UC-Berkeley is a taxpayer-funded institution.
Clearly, Pipes isn't about to burst his own theatrical bubble. But his account can't help but reinforce the suggestion, floated so neatly by Cavanaugh, that by now the controversial views emanating from the Pipes bubble serve little purpose beyond frothing up the raw feelings on which the man's gadfly career is floating.
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3:29 PM
Shout out
TomPaine.com has launched a new blog that's worth including on your daily spin 'round the web. 'The Dreyfuss Report' is compiled by veteran investigative journalist (and Mother Jones contributing writer) Robert Dreyfuss. His take on the news of the moment -- particularly news from the Baghdad-Washington corridor -- is particularly interesting and enlightening. Of course, that will come as no surprise to anybody who's read his latest piece published here ('The Lie Factory').
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2:23 PM
Dean in the progressive rearview
Back when Howard Dean was the frontrunner, when the former Vermont governor was thought to have the Democratic nomination sewn up even before the voting began, progressives were wondering whether he was really their man. Now, with pundits of all stripes writing Dean's political obituary, progressives are struggling to figure out exactly what the good doctor's candidacy meant, and how to preserve some of his campaign's energy.
Two pieces, both on TomPaine.com, attempt to at least define the question. Art Brodsky argues that, if a Democrat manages to dethrone George W. Bush in the fall, the party must not forget Dean's vital role. In that context, he writes, the somewhat chaotic end to Dean's campaign "obscures the bigger truth -— that when the Democrats were are their darkest, Dean was at his brightest." Brodsky sums it up thus:
In a just world, Howard Dean's legacy for this campaign would be recognized. His accomplishments in fundraising and in bringing in a new generation of political activists are unquestioned. This isn't a just world, so let's make sure Dean gets the recognition he deserves. By the first week in March, the nominee will be known. At that point, Dean can do a couple of things. He can start campaigning for the nominee to be anointed at the convention. But more than that, he owes it to all of those people he brought into the political process to continue to provide the inspiration he gave them until then. Whether it's urging his followers to turn their attention to congressional races, or to help fight off Bush, Dean will have a vital role to play. It won't be the one he or his supporters envisioned, but it will be valuable just the same.
Steven Rosenfeld, a senior editor for TomPaine.com, is concerned primarily with those followers. The real legacy of the Dean phenomenon, he asserts, will be determined by what happens "to his 600,000 highly motivated supporters and his fund-raising machine." Sadly, Rosenfeld sees reason for despair.
It's not uncommon in flagging campaigns for candidates to close ranks and soldier on—blind to advisors' words and supporters' concerns. But the fate of Dean's organization will be of historic importance for progressives and liberal Democrats. Dean's base, if directed in a timely manner, could become a significant force in restoring the party's liberal wing. But if history is a guide, the legacy may be mass disappointment.
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5:25 PM
Some bad pilot
The following paragraph appears in a long, wrenching article by Gail Sheehy in the New York Observer about the hijacking of American Flight 11, the first plane to hit the World Trade Center.
Mr. Bush was notified 14 minutes after the first attack, at 9 a.m., when he arrived at an elementary school in Sarasota, Fla. He went into a private room and spoke by phone with his national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, and glanced at a TV in the room. Mrs. Homer’s [the wife of first officer on United Flight 93, the second plane to hit the WTC] soft voice curdles when she describes his reaction: "I can’t get over what Bush said when he was called about the first plane hitting the tower: ‘That’s some bad pilot.’ Why did people on the street assume right away it was a terrorist hijacking, but our President didn’t know? Why did it take so long to ground all civilian aircraft? In the time between when my husband’s plane took off [at 8:41 a.m.] and when the second plane hit in New York [9:02 a.m.], they could have turned back to airfield."
That's some bad pilot? That's some bad pilot!?
If the president thought what had happened was an accident (and, contrary to what Mrs. Homer says, a lot of people, even on the ground, initially did), his reaction is merely astonishingly callous. If he thought it was a terrorist attack, then it's astonishingly callous -- squared. Either way, Bush comes off very badly.
Why haven't we heard this quote before? A quick Lexis-Nexis search turns up three matches in addition to Sheehy's current article. Two mentions show up in Australian papers, and the other, the very first, appears in another piece Sheehy did for the New York Observer last August, as in:
According to the official timeline provided by his press secretary, the President arrived at an elementary school in Sarasota, Fla., at 9 a.m. and was told in the hallway of the school that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. This was 14 minutes after the first attack. The President went into a private room and spoke by phone with his National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, and glanced at a TV in the room. "That's some bad pilot," the President said.
It's still not clear, at least to me, where Sheehy got this quote, or why nobody thought to wonder about it in August, but both questions bear looking into.
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4:00 PM
Just a soldier
It should be obvious to everyone by now that conservatives are worried about John Kerry's status as a veteran of the Vietnam War. When not defending President Bush's own less-than-complete wartime service record, administration officials and their surrogates in the mediasphere are busy arguing that Kerry's turn as an outspoken anti-war activist somehow tarnishes his record as a decorated in-country combatant. But James Taranto, the Kerry-bashing blogger behind the Wall Street Journal's "Best of the Web," has hit upon a novel way of doing even more. In a dispatch disparaging Kerry's highly-publicized 1971 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Taranto offers this little gem:
Kerry wasn't just a serviceman; he was also an antiwar activist. His record in this capacity may be more revealing of his views on national security than his record in the Navy, where, after all, he was just following orders.
Just following orders. Taranto deserves a certain amount of credit here. After all, who would believe that anybody could find another cynical, self-serving use for such a cynical, self-serving phrase.
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12:15 PM
A chilling 'malfunction'
How much harm can a single breast do? Filmgoers who saw Woody Allen's 'Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex' might have fun with that question. But the free speech fallout from 'Nipplegate' -- Janet Jackson's breast-exposing 'wardrobe malfunction' during the Super Bowl halftime show -- is nothing to laugh about.
As Julie Hilden writes on Writ, Congress and the FCC have used the incident "as a wedge to try to enact further speech restrictions -- restrictions that have nothing to do with the original incident." And that's something we should all be concerned about.
In sum, the chilling effect here seems to have been expanding. Not only has the investigation into the Jackson/Timberlake incident grown to encompass the whole Super Bowl half-time show, but cable programming is under scrutiny; networks are making pre-emptive changes even to programming, like "E.R." that is designed to be watched primarily by adults; and MTV is changing its video rotation, so that controversial videos are played only when children are likely to actually be asleep....
We should worry greatly about chilling effects that inhibit free speech -- especially an ever-expanding chilling effect such as the one that is occurring here. When speech is silenced, not only the speakers, but the potential listeners -- and society as a whole -- lose out. Fewer messages are sent; the diversity of views is lessened; and our communications media -- in this case, television -- are impoverished.
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3:42 PM
Just like old times
John Dean knows something of Washington coverups and whitewashes. So it's worth noticing when the man who served as Richard Nixon's White House lawyer for 1,000 days calls Bush's plan for an independent investigation of WMD intelligence "a sham."
What's more, Dean suggests there is a single hand behind that sham; Dick Cheney's. Writing in Writ, Dean compares the current inquiry plan with the 1974 Rockefeller Commission, formed to investigate the CIA's domestic misdeeds. As is the case today, the Rockefeller Commission was the product of a White House keen to keep the Congress and the media away from a politically embarassing issue, Dean writes. And, as today, Cheney was at the center of it all.
In December 1974, during the Ford presidency, a four-column headline-grabbing story by Seymour Hersh appeared in the New York Times. The headline was as follows: "Huge CIA Operation Reported In U.S. Against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents In Nixon Years." Hersh laid out a "massive, illegal domestic intelligence operation" by the CIA, which by its charter was restricted to foreign intelligence gathering.Dick Cheney was well aware of the story. At the time, he was deputy chief of staff under Donald Rumsfeld at Gerald Ford's White House (and traveling with the President during the holiday). Cheney can't have forgotten the lessons that were garnered from President Ford's response, given his role in crafting it.
...
On December 26, 1974, Dick Cheney drafted a memo to President Ford in which he cautioned that when the commission was selected, it was important that it not appear to be "a 'kept' body designed to whitewash the problem."
On December 27, 1974, in another memo to President Ford, Cheney spelled out the goals for a proposed commission: it would prevent Ford from being put on the defensive; it could minimize damage to the CIA by heading off the "Congressional efforts to further encroach on the executive branch" (a refrain that Cheney repeats to this day three decades later); and it would show Ford's leadership.
In the end, Dean notes, the Rockefeller Commission didn't play by the rules Cheney sketched out. Its report, released over Ford's objections, was an explosive indictment of the intelligence community's practices. And the same might happen again. But this time around, Dean asserts, "Cheney appears to have learned from that mistake."
They have preempted the Congress successfully by appointing a commission with little expertise in intelligence matters that will not report until after the election. They have mandated the commission to do everything but what was being demanded -- namely, that it examine the role of the Bush administration in dealing with the intelligence that was collected, then exaggerated and manipulated.They have loaded the commission with work unrelated to the reasons the public (and Congress) sought the inquiry. Finally, they have created a study that will be reported only to the president (and vice president), so unless Bush decides to disclose its work, no one will ever know what was, or was not, done by this commission.
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2:18 PM
One mother's words
One of the astonishing things about the mainstream media's coverage of the current debate over gay marriage is how little we are hearing from the men and women directly involved. Certainly, gay and lesbians are being quoted in the scores of stories being written out of San Francisco, and a few mainstream papers and sites, like Salon, are taking the time to seek out individuals and tell their stories in some depth. But such profiles are the exception. Which is why pieces like the recent column by Susan Wells of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution are so valuable. As Wells puts it:
I'm a lesbian soccer mom and I'm fed up.If you want to talk family values, I'm one of the most family-oriented people I know -- and one of the strictest parents. I even drive an SUV, for crying out loud.
Yet I'm accused of trying to destroy the very fabric of American life.
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1:00 PM
Griping in Gotham
Young Republicans in New York City may be a beleaguered lot, living as they do in the heart of enemy territory; but they're no less conservative for that. In fact, they're more conservative for that, as witness a piece in today's Guardian.
Reporter Matthew Wells dropped in last week on a meeting of the New York Young Republican Club in Manhattan. (Recent calendar item: "Safety class and target shoot at the Westside Rifle and Pistol Range, 20 West 20th St. between Fifth and Sixth avenues. $30 covers rental of rifle, one box of ammunition, eye/ear protection, instructions, and safety class. All levels welcome.") This being New York, much time was given over to denunciations of Hillary Clinton. But Wells also found "open dismay" among the "besuited" young conservatives at what they regard as President Bush's "lurch to the left."
Here's an illustrative exchange:
An ultra-Conservative suggested that Bush was destroying the party's ideals and was "not fit to stay in office". Club member Alexander De Filippi had been fuming for ten minutes already, and when the attack came, it was too much to bear."You're a liar" he shouted, urging everyone in the room to get back into the mainstream, behind their president.
But the rumblings continued. One woman expressed her dismay at the president's "lurch to the left", and several members lamented the president's hour-long TV interview on February 8, tying it to an unimpressive State of the Union address at the end of January.
"It wasn't stellar," said one. "He should have had a lot more ammo, and been better briefed" said another.
One participant was clearer than most about what was alienating the party's grassroots. "This compassionate conservative crap is what kept three million people at home [in the 2000 race]. If it was three last time, six million could stay at home this time."
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