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The Weblog at The View from the Core - Monday, January 19, 2004
   
   

Five Hundred and Ninety-Nine

Spams so far since last Tuesday.

Way down from last week's Seven Hundred and Forty-Seven.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 01/19/04 11:02:25 PM
Categorized as Other.


   
   

A Sweet Double Treat from the Bay Area

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CXXV

Our favorite San Francisco Gate columnists froth at the mouth again.

Up first, Fear Trumps Freedom In A Perpetual War by Harley Sorensen, Jan. 19 (ellipsis in original).

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As World War II ground to a halt, the United States set out to obliterate Japan. Our B-29s rained terror on Japan's major cities. Tens of thousands of civilians were blown apart or burned to death in the summer of 1945.

Then, on Aug. 6, came the coup de grace, the atomic bomb ("Little Boy," they called it) dropped on Hiroshima. Three days later, before the Japanese had a chance to holler "Uncle!" we followed up with a second A-bomb ("Fat Man") on Nagasaki.

Thus did the war end. Our troop ships, ferrying GIs from Europe to Japan, did U-turns in the middle of the Pacific and headed for home. The Japanese, on Sept. 2, in a ceremony aboard the battleship USS Missouri, agreed to an unconditional surrender.

It was a glorious time for the United States. To get a hint of our involvement, turn to the paid death notices in your local newspaper. Nearly every obituary for a man in his 80s lists his service in World War II. We were all involved, one way or another.

We Americans, never known for our humility, were pumped with our success. We had finally emerged as a world power to be taken seriously. We were not kings of the world, as we imagine ourselves now, but we certainly were crown princes.

It didn't take us long to flex our newly discovered muscle. When North Korea invaded South Korea in July 1950, we came dashing to the rescue of the South Koreans, overlooking the fact that North Korea was friendly with China. When China sent massive numbers of troops in to reinforce the North Koreans, we were almost blown off the peninsula. We survived, and prevailed, but the experience made us a little more cautious.

Our mentality became that of a barroom brawler or schoolyard bully. Ask any bully why he fights so often, and he'll tell you he never looks for trouble. Then he'll add, "But I never back down from a fight, either."

Here's a list of 23 nations we didn't back down from since 1945: Japan (1945), China (1945 and 1950), Korea (1950), Guatemala (1954 and 1960), Indonesia (1958), Cuba (1959), Vietnam (1961), Congo (1964), Laos (1964), Peru (1965), Cambodia (1969), Lebanon (1983), Grenada (1983), Libya (1986), El Salvador (1980s), Nicaragua (1980s), Panama (1989), Iraq (1991), Somalia (1993), Bosnia (1995), Sudan (1998), Yugoslavia (1999v, Afghanistan (2001).

(I took the above list from a Web site and can't vouch for its accuracy. However, it seems to fit with my memory of events over the years.)

Looking at that list, it would be fair to conclude that we've become a warlike nation. Rather than printing "E pluribus unum" on the Great Seal of the United States and on coins, we should consider "Have bombs, will travel."

Fighting limited wars has replaced baseball as our national sport. And we love it. We love the parades, the flag waving, the patriotic songs, the flyovers, the funerals, the memorial services, the "defense" contracts.

Most of us consider ourselves "Christian soldiers, marching as to war," so we've declared war on crime, poverty, drugs -- just about anything we consider undesirable.

Now, thanks to the events of Sept. 11, 2001, we've talked ourselves into a state of perpetual war, probably the most accurate definition of our culture ever. But, in true 1984 newspeak, we don't call it that. We call it a war on terrorism. We admit it'll be a long war, but we're not yet ready to admit it will never end.

As the Soviets learned during their long period of oppression against organized religion in the U.S.S.R., you cannot defeat an "ism." Isms, like religion, know no boundaries. Trying to defeat an ism is like trying to defeat crime or bad manners or the hiccups. No matter how hard you try, they'll still pop up in the most unexpected places.

Vice President Dick Cheney was in Los Angeles last week drumming up support for the never-ending war on terrorism. Before the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, Cheney reassured a hushed audience, "The use of military force is, for the United States, always the last option in defending ourselves and our interests."

Even on C-SPAN, one could almost hear the united hearts of his listeners thumping in pride at America's nobility and restraint.

Why, oh, why, one wonders, do the nations of the world so often force us to reluctantly use our last option?

As with all his speeches, Cheney's talk last week was liberally sprinkled with flattering references to his boss, President George W. Bush. At one point in his speech, he outlined the dangers of terrorism:

"We know, ... from the training manuals we found in Afghanistan and from the interrogations of terrorists we have captured, that they are doing everything they can to gain the ultimate weapon: chemical, biological, radiological and even nuclear weapons.

"Should they ever acquire such weapons, they would use them without any constraint of reason or morality. Instead of losing thousands of lives, we might lose tens or even hundreds of thousands of lives as the result of a single attack, or a set coordinated of attacks."

That danger, he said, requires "a shift in America's national-security strategy. There are certain moments in history when the gravest threats reveal themselves. And in those moments, the response of our government must be swift, and it must be right."

Cheney, who missed his calling as an undertaker, had his audience exactly where he wanted them: in terror.

The American people, who certainly must love wars, considering how often we fight them, seem also to love fear. The enemy is everywhere and knows no constraints. So we, you and I, look for strong leadership and assurance that everything possible is being done to protect us.

It would be terrible, would it not, if other nations some day did to us what we've been doing to them over the years?

So we have agreed to airport searches, and, soon, to government-issued travel documents. We have agreed to let our federal law-enforcement agents scour the world for would-be terrorists and bring them to the Guantánamo U.S. Naval Base, our foothold on Cuba, for indefinite "investigation." We have agreed to secret trials and even to no trials for people Mr. Bush decides are "enemy combatants."

We are now, like Nazi Germany before us, like the old Soviet Union, like Iran in the days of our good buddy, the shah, content to have people "disappear," as long as they have Arabic-sounding names.

Torture has become an acceptable tool of interrogation for us. When we use it ourselves, it's usually "mere" mental torture, primarily sleep deprivation. If we feel more intensely physical methods are called for, we farm out our interrogations to governments less squeamish than ours.

So, while we're protecting American lives, we are destroying American values.

This is what Dick Cheney brings us. This is what the boss he slobbers over, George W. Bush, brings us. This is what our cowardly Congress brings us, with its "Patriot" acts. And this is what we bring upon ourselves, by supporting senators and representatives who are willing to sell out our freedoms in the hope of buying a little security.

Our collective cowardice virtually assures George W. Bush a second term.

In 1945, as World War II wound down, we were a beacon of liberty to the rest of the world.

That was then. What are we now?

Harley Sorensen is a longtime journalist. His column appears Mondays. E-mail him at harleysorensen@yahoo.com.

©2004 SF Gate

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The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes.

If I weren't petrified with terror, Faithful Reader, I could probably blog more.

And now, Mars Needs Dim Republicans by Mark Morford, Jan. 14.

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Oh right like this is exactly what we need.

Let us imagine the discussion: "Boys, the nation's in massive reeling record-breaking debt and morale's at an all-time low and disposable American soldiers are dying brutal horrific deaths every day over nothing at all except our greed and flagrant cronyism and corporate petrochemical profiteering.

"Our cities are gasping and health care is a joke and we've mauled Medicare beyond recognition, and we're plundering the living hell out of Social Security, the last remaining stable and sound fund left, to try and shore up our rapacious and gluttonous spending.

"There are no WMDs and our former allies openly resent us and the poll ratings are slipping and the big glops of warmongering lies are drying like blood stains into a carpet. And it's an election year. Damn.

"What's to be done? What could rally a wary country during its time of humiliated need and force-fed ignorance? What could turn this troubled nation around in the face of oily corporate war and fiscal gluttony and environmental savagery?

"Why, neato space stations on the moon, and sending men to Mars, that's what!"

Yes indeed. Leave it to BushCo to try and slap an astronomically expensive, useless balm on the nation's gaping wounds by vainly attempting to recapture some of that droning faux-'50s and -'60s nostalgia no one really asked for.

Remember that time? The "greatest generation"? A time when white-bread repressed often unhappily married segregationist America gathered 'round the ol' black-and-white to gaze in passionate wonder at the images beamed back from the Apollo landings?

What a time it was. Don't you want some of that sense of desperate hopefulness back? Of course you do. Got $500 billion to pay for it? Hey, that was the cost estimate for a similar man-on-Mars scheme when Dubya Sr. proposed it in 1989, just before he was promptly laughed off the fiscal stage.

Of course, like every obscene BushCo proposal, there was never a mention of how NASA could ever possibly pay for such a venture, and no mention of how BushCo could rape the Treasury that much further to fund random exercises in ridiculous excess. Oh well.

Look at it this way. Dubya will, by every account, go down as the worst environmental president in American history. He will also be remembered as the most blindly warmongering president and the least articulate president and the most corporate-shilling president and the most flagrantly fraudulent and borderline treasonous president.

And, hence, you can bet your big snakeskin Texas cowboy boots he wants this "big ol' Mars thingy" to be some sort of, you know, legacy. He wants his name in the history books as the one who decided to meet the little green men. He wants to stick a flag in the rusty planet and claim it in the name of, you know, Ronald Reagan.

This from a man who never cared a whit for space exploration in his entire spoon-fed career, a man who never even once visited the famed Johnson Space Center in Houston while serving as Texas governor. And you just know half the impulse for this inane new idea is so Shrub can get himself flown to the space-shuttle launch pad and have his picture taken in a shiny spacesuit. How cute.

It's got that reek. It's got that reek of typical macho Republican election-year BS, the sort of hollow grandiose chest thumping that stains so many BushCo PR stunts, all war and guns and rockets and oil and big slabs of chemically blasted hormone injected semirancid Texas beef (hey, it's what's for dinner).

Look. NASA is wonderful. Space exploration is magnificent and essential and we learn enormous amounts about ourselves in the process. The Spirit rover on Mars right now? Breathtaking.

Astounding new technologies are developed during major NASA missions, ideas that trickle down into the cultural mainstream and make life, if not easier, then at least more interesting, or lighter, or thinner, or edible at temperatures down to minus 450 degrees with a battery pack that lasts 127 hours and a new infrared extrasensory ink that can be read by blind comatose monkeys. Space is good.

But look again. Our schools are desperate. The Wal-Mart/SUV mentality is a national cancer. Basic services nationwide are being starved and shut down as cities scramble for fiscal scraps. John Ashcroft still has a job.

The national treasury has been looted and plundered like never before in American history, toppling from a record surplus to a record deficit in a little over three years, with 3.1 million newly unemployed Americans as a bitter kicker. That tiny blip of an economic "recovery" you keep reading about? Tell that to your unemployed neighbors.

And it's just shy of appalling that BushCo is suddenly all atwitter over a massive, impossible, ridiculously expensive scheme to send a manned mission to Mars, when any 5-year-old could come up with roughly 2,323 more vital and needful areas where such huge sums of money could be spent. Can you think of five, just off the top of your head, as you step around that homeless person? Damn right you can.

Do we need to recall that sucker-punch $87 bil BushCo reamed through Congress to help pay for our continued occupation of Iraq, a nation that doesn't want us and was never a threat to us and that is now equaling Vietnam in costs, both fiscal and humanitarian? Does Mars mean we get to bring our troops home and save those budget-gutting billions and redirect them toward something progressive? One guess.

Maybe we should just shrug it off. Just dismiss it as yet another a silly exercise in political ego and bogus machismo. After all, it's all about big dumb gesture, all about trying to cover up appalling atrocities and insulting policy in an election year -- much like suddenly pretending to care about immigrants, or health care, or gay rights, when your party defines itself as the world headquarters of homophobic pro-corporate isolationism.

This is what it boils down to, really: a big joke. There will be no men on Mars in 2020. There will be no massive, super-keen space station on the moon anytime soon. Even BushCo's own financial advisers openly cringe when the Mumbly One tosses up such an obvious and impossibly costly PR stunt, one so clearly designed to instill a false sense of hope and "America rules!" faux patriotism in a country heavily drugged on fear and false righteousness.

All well and good, right? All just silly politics as usual, really, just so much election-year flatulence from the administration that brought you the New Vietnam.

That is, until you realize who the joke is on.

Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate, unless it appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which it never does. He also writes the Morning Fix, a deeply skewed thrice-weekly e-mail column and newsletter. Subscribe at sfgate.com/newsletters.

©2004 SF Gate

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The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes.

Honestly, I think this proposal to put men back on the moon and send a manned mission to Mars is wide open to lots of legitimate criticism. Most folks could do it, though, without verbal apoplexy — and even without dragging in Ronald Reagan.

What about you, Faithful Reader? I can't wait until November and December. If these two guys survive the election returns, it's gonna be Double Treat heaven for weeks and weeks and weeks. :-)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 01/19/04 08:05:58 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Media & Political.


   
   

"Earth To Gore: No One Is Listening"

Steven Hayward responds to the great Beacon Theater Speech.

(Thanks, Peter.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 01/19/04 07:48:59 PM
Categorized as Political.


   
   

"Peace Activists Remember Bush's '16 Words'"

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CXXIV

According to a CNS story today.

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Self-described peace activists say they will hold a "powerful, respectful remembrance" of the American soldiers who have died in Iraq, just as President Bush delivers his annual State of the Union message Tuesday night.

The peaceniks are still furious about sixteen words in last year's State of the Union address.

They accuse President Bush of deliberately frightening the American people and rushing the nation into war with the following phrase: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Protestors insist the Bush administration knew at the time that those words were false.

"Soldiers were sent to war on the basis of this lie," said the group Military Families Speak Out. The group also insists the Bush administration lied about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction.

"American soldiers and Iraqi innocents died because of such lies," said Military Families Speak Out in a press release.

The Tuesday night rally - organized by Military Families and supported by Veterans for Peace, other peace groups and faith communities in the Washington, D.C., area - will include a "human chain of remembrance" stretching along a street near the U.S. Capitol.

"Each person will bear the name of a soldier who died in Iraq and hold a candle to symbolize the light of that person's life," the press release said.

"We will bear witness to these lost lives as the President and VIPs pass by in their dark vehicles on the way to the Capitol."

According to rally organizers, at the very moment President Bush begins his speech, a banner with the "16 words" will begin a "death march down the line of lights."

As the march proceeds, the press release said, "a drum will sound and the people will call out the name of each fallen soldier, stating their rank, full name, branch of service and age at death. Iraqi names will be remembered and called out.

"The candle will then be extinguished to symbolize that President Bush's words brought death to this person and cast a pall of darkness over the nation."

In his State of the Union speech, President Bush is expected to hail progress in Iraq and Afghanistan and he'll focus on job growth and tax cuts, among other concerns.

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The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 01/19/04 07:40:55 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Political.


   
   

Irrelevant Old Loser Backs Clark

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CXXIII

That's the way I see it.

Reuters reports that one of the biggest losers in the history of presidential elections is supporting General Wesley I Used To Be Tickled Pink About The War Against Saddam Hussein Clark.

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Democratic presidential hopeful Wesley Clark, whose party loyalty and war opposition have come under new scrutiny, won the endorsement on Sunday of George McGovern, the 1972 Democratic Party nominee known for his antiwar politics.

At a pancake breakfast in Keene, New Hampshire, McGovern described the retired general and former NATO commander as a true Democrat and the only one of eight party candidates with "a success strategy" for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq.

The endorsement came as opinion polls showed Clark in a dead heat against Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry for second place in the Jan. 27 New Hampshire primary, behind front-runner Howard Dean.

Clark's Democratic rivals criticized him for voting for Republicans Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, who was McGovern's 1972 opponent. And Democrats joined Republicans in questioning Clark's opposition to the Iraq war, citing his testimony before Congress in 2002.

Opposition to President Bush's war effort in Iraq has been a major issue in the Democratic primary race since Dean, the former governor of Vermont, vaulted into the front-runner position last year with a strong antiwar message.

Clark, 59, responded to criticism by agreeing to open his personal records, which were expected to become available on Monday.

"There are a lot of good Democrats in this race, but Wes Clark is the best Democrat. He is a true progressive. He's the Democrat's Democrat," said McGovern, who lost the 1972 New Hampshire primary to Edmund Muskie but won the nomination.

McGovern, an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War, went on to a landslide defeat against Nixon in the 1972 election.

On Sunday, the former South Dakota senator also applauded Clark for proposing higher taxes on wealthy Americans and the elimination of income taxes for low-income families.

The latest American Research Group daily tracking poll on Sunday showed Kerry's popularity rising to 19 percent of likely New Hampshire voters, up from 10 percent early last week.

That put him neck-and-neck with Clark, whose New Hampshire campaign advanced to a high of 24 percent on Thursday, but drifted back to 20 percent by Sunday.

The survey of more than 600 Democratic voters showed Dean's front-runner position falling to 28 percent, from 36 percent on Monday. The results have a 4 percent margin of error.

As the battle intensified in New Hampshire, the Kerry and Clark camps traded barbs over the weekend.

Clark's campaign staff denounced a Kerry brochure that emphasizes the general's previous job as Washington lobbyist and his Republican votes, while Clark's staff called on Kerry to release tax returns and records of his own meetings with lobbyists. A Kerry spokesman said the Massachusetts senator had already agreed to make records available.

The two camps also announced competing endorsements. Clark won a second endorsement of filmmaker and liberal activist Michael Moore, while Kerry picked up newspaper endorsements from the Concord Monitor and the Nashua Telegraph.

© Copyright Reuters 2004. All rights reserved.

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The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes.

Whoa. When you have to specify that somebody is the best Democrat in the Democratic race for the presidency, something's wrong somewhere.

Well, I shouldn't be too hard on McGovern: I'm sure he'll swing a lot of FDH votes to Clark.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 01/19/04 06:08:31 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Political.


   
   

"Bush's Atlanta Visit Marked By Protests"

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CXXII

CNN reports.

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About 400 protesters lined the street across from the King Center in Atlanta as President Bush laid a wreath at the tomb of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to commemorate the 75th birthday of slain civil rights leader Thursday.

Carrying signs and chanting to rhythms pounded from conga drums, members of the crowd resisted efforts by police to move them to a designated protest area about 150 yards from the reflecting pool in front of the simple white marble crypt.

King's widow, Coretta Scott King, walked with the president to her husband's tomb. After Bush laid the wreath, he stood, head bowed, for about 15 seconds.

Although King Center officials did not invite Bush to join their planned celebration, Mrs. King met briefly with the president.

Shortly before Bush's arrival, a line of city buses parked in front of the center, preventing Bush and the protesters from seeing each other, although the demonstrators' jeers and slogans were not muted.

Their signs indicated the protesters were drawn from a wide coalition. "War is not the Answer," "Promote Peace, Not Halliburton," "HUD Sponsors Racism," "Impeach the Liar" and "No Blood for Oil" were just a few of them.

Two people were taken into custody when they attempted to cross the street.

Bush later issued a statement marking next Monday [that is, today, Jan. 19] as the Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday.

"America has come far in realizing Dr. King's dream, but there is still work to be done," the statement said. "In remembering Dr. King's vision and life of service, we renew our commitment to guaranteeing the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all Americans."

The wreath-laying ceremony was part of a two-city swing into the South by Bush that included a speech to a mostly black church and a fund-raiser at the D-Day Museum, both in New Orleans, Louisiana, and another fund-raiser later in Atlanta.

Among the civil rights leaders angered by Bush's appearance at the King Center was the Rev. Tim McDonald, pastor of First Iconium Baptist Church in Atlanta and a demonstration organizer.

"The thing that is most hypocritical is choosing the 75th anniversary of his birth -- the man who was the epitome of peace, perhaps the most noted African-American anti-war individual," McDonald said.

"To come on his birthday ... when this president unilaterally went to war, is still engaged in war, an illegal and unjust war."

McDonald said Bush has adversely affected minority communities through his policies on criminal justice, the elderly, Medicare, housing and unemployment.

"That is what we think Dr. King would be speaking out against," McDonald said. "For him [Bush] to try to overshadow that and photo-op and hijack our appreciation and admiration for Dr. King is just not going to be tolerated."

McDonald accused Bush, who won just 9 percent of the African-American vote in the 2000 election, of being motivated more by politics than by any admiration for King.

"They're trying to woo black votes to the Republican Party," McDonald said. "It's turning African-Americans off. Now everybody sees the arrogance and the hypocrisy of this administration. This is nothing personal. It's his policies -- in direct opposition to what Dr. King lived and died for." ....

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It's turning African-Americans off. Now everybody sees the arrogance and the hypocrisy of this administration. If that were true, I think this fellow would do better to just shut up about it, no?

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 01/19/04 05:55:46 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Political.


   
   

Romish. Romish? Romish!

Unbelievable.

Tech Central Station. What a modern ring the name has to it. What a shock, then, to go there and be greeted by spectres of the sixteenth century.

All I have time for now is a brief notice to the editors at Tech Central Station:

Sincere, casual use of the word "Romish" is a BIG CLUE that the article in which it is employed is most likely a heaping, steaming pile of excrement.

TCS really needs to be blasted for this.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 01/19/04 12:06:24 PM
Categorized as Religious.


   
   

"I Will Concede Ten Times Sooner Than My Opponents"

An hiliarious satire at Broken Newz today:

As Democratic candidates for the 2004 Presidential election wrap up their campaign drives heading into the all-important Iowa primary, the tightly contested race was ratcheted up a notch today when candidate Dick Gephardt challenged his opponents on their “punctuality of concession.”
“The failure of Al Gore to shut the hell up and go back to the farm hurt us as a political party very badly,” said Gephardt. “I promise America right now that I will concede the 2004 Presidential election within ten minutes of the final vote being cast, if I am your candidate.” ....
Former vice president Al Gore has reportedly made numerous attempts to offer his services as a consultant “whiny little bitch,” however, sources within the Democratic party have already been busy reviewing hundreds of hours of mind-bending, sleep-inducing 2000 election coverage for model examples of lilly-kneed, cowardly behavior.
In related news, Senator John Edwards has scheduled a press conference for Tuesday, January 20th, to declare his existence.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 01/19/04 09:18:04 AM
Categorized as Political.


   
   

Is It Over Yet?

Is. It. Over. Yet?

The Iowa Caucuses.

Only three weeks ago, Howard Dean thought he had everything wrapped up so tightly he chastised the DNC for not calling off the opposition. Now, it seems that everything is up for grabs.

O joy!

Apparently, it's a three-way race between Dean & Gephardt & Kerry — the last of whom, as you may recall, was mainstream media's first-anointed darling amongst the candidates way back when: funny how he's come back from nowhere the past week, no?

Here are a few interesting articles.

Peggy Noonan writes at OpinionJournal, Jan. 15:

The press has kicked in and is playing a part in the drama. The journalistic establishment has become an anti-Dean mover. Tuesday's New York Times piece on the absent Mrs. Dean, for instance--that was a piece with a sting. They decided to front-page it six days before the caucuses. The morning network news shows and the cable news shows are full of Mr. Dean's gaffes, Mr. Gephardt's rise and Mr. Edwards's potential.
Why? It is true the press wants a race. They don't want to spend the next three months filing "Dean Wins Again" and "Why Kerry Failed to Ignite." But it's more than that. Reading between the lines and listening between the lines, it's hard to avoid the thought that reporters don't really like Mr. Dean. The last time a viable Democrat rose, in 1992, the columnists for the newsmagazines and profile writers for the newspapers loved Bill Clinton with a throbbing love. None of those columns are being written now. They don't love Mr. Dean.
This is not a shock. He seems as unlovable (unless you're a Deaniac) as he is improbable. But I suspect there's something else at work. I wonder if mainstream media aren't trying to save the Democratic Party from Mr. Dean. They know he's not a likely winner down the road. Boomer reporters who've been through the Clinton experience have sharp eyes. I suspect they're put off by Mr. Dean's Clintonian aspects, such as his tendency to dissemble. They're pushing Gephardt and Edwards and even Kerry. They may push Wesley Clark. But they're not pushing Dean....

James Lileks writes at Newhouse News, Jan. 14:

OK, so perhaps it won't be Howard Dean. Perhaps the day before the New Hampshire primary he'll throw himself off the stage and choke an audience member who accuses him of being too angry. The evening news might show him rhythmically squeezing some old guy's neck while shouting "I -- DON'T -- THINK -- I'M -- ANGRY -- ENOUGH!"
End of campaign -- unless such an outburst boosts his numbers. If the Democrats thought that this egotistical, bad-tempered, scary-eyed, say-anything guy could whomp President Bush, he'd be a shoo-in. But Dean is starting to turn off the middle that he needs to win. Perhaps they'd best look around.
So who's left?...

Robert Kuttner writes in The Boston Globe, Jan. 14:

THIS COULD BE the first year since 1960 that the Democratic nomination contest goes all the way to the convention. In that year, John Kennedy eked out a first ballot win, but the roll call of the states went all the way to the letter W -- Wyoming -- before Kennedy went over the top. You have to go back to 1952 for a convention that went more than one ballot (Adlai Stevenson won it on the third).
Most knowledgeable observers think I'm inhaling something. The usual view is that after a few primaries, the race must narrow to the top two contenders because everyone else's money dries up. But consider these unusual factors, which have all converged this year:
Proportional voting. The Democrats no longer use a winner-take-all-system. Thanks to party reforms, votes are allocated proportionally. So, in a nine-person field, a candidate can "win," say, South Carolina with a plurality of 30 percent of the vote -- but only get about 30 percent of that state's delegates. In the old days, the winner would have taken them all.
A persistent field. Several also-rans will doubtless drop out after a few primaries. But the first few primaries could well splinter and give five or six candidates a reason to stay in through March 2 (Super Tuesday), by which time 2,046, or nearly half, the delegates will have been chosen (and splintered).
Flukey front-loading. The Democrats keep trying to front-load the primary process, so that the party unites behind a nominee early and the in-fighting ceases in February rather than July. But this year, front-loading could backfire....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 01/19/04 08:45:14 AM
Categorized as Political.


   
   

Second Day of Christian Unity Octave 2004

Please pray!

See First Day of Christian Unity Octave 2004 / January 18 through January 25, inclusive. / "My peace I give to you" (Jn 14: 23-31).

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 01/19/04 07:03:57 AM
Categorized as Religious.


   

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