Did Randi Rhodes Really Encourage the Assassination of the President of the United States of America?

That's what this looks like to me (italics in original):

.... The queen of venom, Randi Rhodes, followed Franken in the host slot. Her imitation of a cracker military type telling a soldier to "insert this fluorescent light bulb into that man's buttocks" was revolting. She compared U.S. prisons in Iraq to the "Nazi gulag" and said, "The day I say thank you to Rumsfeld is the same day I'll say thank you to the 12 people who raped me."

Rock bottom came when she compared Bush and his family to the Corleones in the "Godfather" saga. "Like Fredo, somebody ought to take him out fishing and phuw," she said, imitating the sound of gunfire.

During a day of torture by radio, I heard ads for Hewlett-Packard, Greyhound and, especially, General Motors. I asked GM why it appeared in such shows.

Ryndee Carney, GM's manager of marketing communications, said the ads were wrongly picked up from an earlier deal with WLIB. She said the station was ordered to "cease and desist" yesterday, and added: "GM will not advertise on any Air America affiliates."

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 05/13/04 08:09:58 PM
Categorized as Political.

John "Here's Looking Down My Long Snoot at You Ignorant Conservatives" Carroll

The whole thing is a lot funnier than the excerpts.

Here's LAT's John S. Carroll pretending to be a high-minded, objective-type journalist.

Don't get mad, Faithful Reader. He ain't worth it. Just laugh at his myopic, blinkered arrogance.

See also "Esteemed Journalist Lectures on Ethics".

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 05/13/04 07:25:06 PM
Categorized as Media.

Ted Rall is Still a Creep

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCXCVII

Does he do this just to get attention?

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

I'll say it again: If you're looking for an example of contemporary anti-American, Communistic agitprop, this would be it.

See also Ted Rall is a Creep.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 05/13/04 08:09:02 AM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Media.

RatherBiased.com

Vide.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 05/13/04 07:45:17 AM
Categorized as Other.

Chappaquiddick Fats Sen. Edward Kennedy Smears the Nation

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCXCVI

"On March 19, 2004, President Bush asked: 'Who would prefer that Saddam's torture chambers still be open?' Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management — U.S. management."

A speech on the Senate floor, May 10, 2004.

Mr. President, I want to comment about the resolution that will be before the Senate. We will vote on it in a very short time.

I support the resolution. The torture and other sadistic abuses of prisoners in Iraq have done immense damage already to America's reputation in the world, and the worst may be yet to come.

Protection of the Iraqi people from the cruelty of Saddam had become one of the administration's last remaining rationalizations for going to war. All of the other trumped-up rationalizations have collapsed. Saddam was not on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons. He had no persuasive link to Al-Qaida. He had nothing to do with 9/11. We have found no weapons of mass destruction.

So it is human rights that the administration turned to in order to justify its decision to go to war. On December 24, 2003 — the day Saddam was captured — President Bush said, "For the vast majority of Iraqi citizens who wish to live as free men and women, this event brings further assurance that the torture chambers and the secret police are gone forever."

On March 19, 2004, President Bush asked: "Who would prefer that Saddam's torture chambers still be open?"

Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management — U.S. management.

Every day brings new photos, new horrors from the same prison and the same torture rooms that Saddam used to commit crimes against humanity. Today, it's the photo of a naked Iraqi man, his hands clasped behind his head in terror, facing snarling German shepherd dogs held on leashes by American soldiers. According to the New Yorker magazine, subsequent photos show the Iraqi man lying on the ground, writhing in pain, blood flowing from wounds on both his legs.

President Bush has presided over America's steepest and deepest fall from grace in the history of our country. The tragedy unfolding in Iraq is the direct result of a colossal failure of leadership.

We all agree that the guards and interrogators who committed these abuses at Abu Ghraib prison should be held accountable. They should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But the responsibility for these abuses does not lie with them alone.

On Friday, the Armed Services Committee held its first public hearing on the abuses. Secretary Rumsfeld and General Myers came to the hearing to tell us what had happened at the prison, but in several instances their answers were incomplete or misleading.

Secretary Rumsfeld testified that the guards at the prison had received training on detention procedures and had been instructed to abide by the Geneva Conventions. Yet in the report on his investigation of such abuses last winter, General Taguba found that the soldiers involved were poorly trained to manage such operations. He found that neither the prison camp rules nor the provisions of the Geneva Conventions were posted in English or in the language of the detainees.

Secretary Rumsfeld and General Myers testified that the abuses at the prison lasted from October to December 2003. They said that the military leadership's first indication of trouble was when a low-ranking soldier came forward in January 2004.

Yet, since the beginning of the war, the International Committee for the Red Cross had provided Pentagon officials with repeated reports of abuses at the prison. Some of these abuses, the Red Cross reported, were "tantamount to torture."

As early as May 2003, the Red Cross had sent Pentagon officials a memorandum describing more than 200 allegations of mistreatment during the capture and interrogation of Iraqi prisoners.

In October 2003, the Red Cross inspected the Abu Ghraib prison, including the unit where the worse abuses at the prison occurred. They saw prisoners being held naked in cells and forced to wear women's underwear. They saw evidence of burns, bruises, and other injuries consistent with the serious abuses that the prisoners had alleged.

After this October 2003 inspection, the Red Cross put officials at Abu Ghraib prison and at Central Command on notice that they were violating international humanitarian law. Yet October 2003 is when the military now says that the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison began, and that they didn't know anything was wrong until 3 months later.

Clearly, the military leadership failed to respond properly to the reports and recommendations of the Red Cross. During 2003, both the State Department and the Coalition Provision Authority repeatedly appealed to top military officials to stop the mistreatment of military detainees. Secretary Powell himself raised this issue at cabinet meetings and elsewhere, pleading for proper care and treatment of detainees, but the Defense Department failed to act.

The military leadership is also responsible for putting troops in charge of the prison who were not trained to do the job. They assigned too few soldiers to the prison than were required to do the job right. They relied on civilian contractors to perform military duties, including the interrogation of Iraqi prisoners.

The military leadership failed to respond in a systemic way even after it had initiated 35 criminal investigators into the alleged mistreatment of detainees in both Iraq and Afghanistan; 25 of these investigations involved deaths. In December 2002, military doctors at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan ruled that two Afghan men in U.S. custody had died from "blunt force injuries." No one in the military has been held accountable for these homicides.

Since 9/11, top officials in the administration have shown an arrogant disregard for the protections of the Geneva Conventions in dealing with detainees. In January 2002, Secretary Rumsfeld was asked why he believes the Geneva Conventions do not apply to the detainees at Guantanamo. He replied that he did not have "the slightest concern" about their treatment in light of what had occurred on 9/11. In other words, they are terrorists, and torture is too good for them. The British magazine The Economist called his remarks "unworthy of a nation which has cherished the rule of law from its very birth."

It is clear that it is not enough for us merely to pass a resolution condemning the abuses. We need a full and independent investigation and fully accountability, including a comprehensive review of all detention and interrogation policies used by military and intelligence officials abroad, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo, and elsewhere. The American people and the Iraqi people deserve answers, and they deserve them quickly.

I yield the floor.

(Source.)

I must say, Faithful Reader, that the current barrage on the administration and the nation being conducted by the Democratic Establishment is precisely similar to that conducted against the administration and the nation during the Vietnam War. Read John Kerry's 1971 Senate Testimony and you will see it all: change a few names and dates, and it's the same strategy. Take outrageous, isolated incidents, blame the entire military & administration, and then indict the whole nation.

It's the same anti-American, Communistic agitprop.

BTW, Chappaquiddick Fats neglects to mention he is one of about 17 Congressmen who had been notified of the prisoner abuse as early as Feb. 26.

So, why didn't all hell break loose until last week? Well, agitprop works much better with visual aids.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 05/13/04 07:16:45 AM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode.

"A Kerry Landslide?"

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCXCV

A very enjoyable read.

Over the last year, most political TV shows handicapping the upcoming presidential election have repeated the refrain that the race will be extremely tight. Last month, CNN's astute commentator Jeff Greenfield hosted an entire segment on how easily this election could turn out like 2000, with President Bush and Sen. John Kerry splitting victories in the popular vote and the electoral college. Greenfield even threw out the possibility of an electoral college split of 269-269, brought about by a shift of just two swing states that went for Bush last time, New Hampshire, and West Virginia. He ended his feature with the conventional wisdom among Washington pundits: "We're assuming this election will stay incredibly close." Reporters covering the campaign echo this expectation, sprinkling their campaign dispatches with references to the "closely fought" electoral race and "tight election."

The campaign staffs themselves have been saying for months that they anticipate that the race will go down to the wire. In late April, Republican party chairman Ed Gillespie told The New York Times that he expected a "very, very close" race. This winter, Democratic party chairman Terry McAuliffe urged Ralph Nader not to enter the race, fearing that the perpetual candidate could take precious votes away from Kerry in a race sure to be won by a hairline margin.

There are perfectly understandable reasons why we expect 2004 to be close. Everyone remembers the nail-biting 2000 recount. A vast number of books and magazine articles describe the degree to which we are a 50/50 nation and detail the precarious balance between red and blue states. And poll after poll show the two candidates oscillating within a few percentage points of one another. There are also institutional factors that drive the presumption that the race will be tight. The press wants to cover a competitive horse-race. And the last thing either campaign wants to do is give its supporters any reason to be complacent and stay home on election day.

But there's another possibility, one only now being floated by a few political operatives: 2004 could be a decisive victory for Kerry. The reason to think so is historical. Elections that feature a sitting president tend to be referendums on the incumbent — and in recent elections, the incumbent has either won or lost by large electoral margins. If you look at key indicators beyond the neck-and-neck support for the two candidates in the polls — such as high turnout in the early Democratic primaries and the likelihood of a high turnout in November — it seems improbable that Bush will win big. More likely, it's going to be Kerry in a rout.

Bush: the new Carter

In the last 25 years, there have been four elections which pitted an incumbent against a challenger — 1980, 1984, 1992, and 1996. In all four, the victor won by a substantial margin in the electoral college. The circumstances of one election hold particular relevance for today: 1980. That year, the country was weathering both tough economic times (the era of "stagflation" — high inflation concurrent with a recession) and frightening foreign policy crises (the Iranian hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan). Indeed, this year Bush is looking unexpectedly like Carter. Though the two presidents differ substantially in personal style (one indecisive and immersed in details, the other resolute but disengaged), they are also curiously similar. Both are religious former Southern governors. Both initially won the presidency by tarring their opponents (Gerald Ford, Al Gore) with the shortcomings of their predecessors (Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton). Like Carter, Bush is vulnerable to being attacked as someone not up to the job of managing impending global crises.

Everyone expected the 1980 election to be very close. In fact, Reagan won with 50.8 percent of the popular vote to Carter's 41 percent (independent John Anderson won 6.6 percent) — which translated into an electoral avalanche of 489 to 49. The race was decided not so much on the public's nascent impressions of the challenger, but on their dissatisfaction with the incumbent.

Nor was Carter's sound defeat an aberration. Quite the opposite. Of the last five incumbent presidents booted from office — Bush I, Carter, Ford, Herbert Hoover, and William Howard Taft — only one was able to garner over 200 electoral votes, and three of these defeated incumbents didn't even cross the 100 electoral-vote threshold: — 1992: 370 (Bill Clinton) to 168 (George H. W. Bush) — 1980: 489 (Ronald Reagan) to 49 (Jimmy Carter) — 1976: 297 (Jimmy Carter) to 240 (Gerald Ford) — 1932: 472 (FDR) to 59 (Herbert Hoover) — 1912: 435 (Woodrow Wilson) to 88 (TR) to 8 (Taft)

Poll sitting

Historically, when incumbents lose big, they do so for sound reasons: The public sees their policies as not working — or worse yet, as failures. That's certainly increasingly true of Bush today. From the chaos in Iraq to an uncomfortably soft economic recovery to the passage of an unpopular Medicare bill, the White House is having a harder and harder time putting a positive spin on the effects of the president's decisions.

And while Bush still retains a loyal base, he has provoked — both by his policies and his partisanship — an extremely strong reaction among Democrats. One indication is that turnout in this year's early Democratic primaries was way up. Nearly twice as many Democrats turned out for the 2004 Iowa caucuses as they had for those held in 2000. The turnout in New Hampshire for the Democratic primary was also extraordinarily high, up 29 percent from the previous turnout record set in 1992 — the year Bush's father lost his reelection bid.

The Democrats' recent enthusiasm at the polls may in part be because this year's primary featured nine candidates, and Howard Dean's unusual campaign mobilized many new voters — both for and against him. However, the excitement in the Democratic race can't explain primary voter behavior on the other side of the aisle. Republican turnout in the New Hampshire primary was lower than in 2000, but that isn't surprising considering that Bush's nomination was never in question this year. A fairer way to gauge the eagerness of the president's base to rally behind him is to compare this GOP primary to the last one that featured an incumbent running for reelection with no real primary opposition: Bill Clinton in 1996. That year in New Hampshire, 76,874 Democrats cast ballots for Clinton. This year, 53,749 Republicans cast ballots for Bush. This is especially astonishing, considering that, in New Hampshire, there are more registered Republicans than Democrats.

The most obvious evidence cutting against the historical trend of elections featuring incumbents being won or lost by large margins is that opinion polls have consistently shown Bush and Kerry running neck and neck. But look carefully, and you'll find a couple of nuances in the most recent poll data that point to the potential for a big Kerry win. First, in polls that implicitly assume a higher turnout, Kerry performs better than he does in other polls. Most of the polls you hear about — and the ones that prognosticators trust the most — are surveys of "likely voters." Among the criteria pollsters typically use to identify likely voters is whether the subjects participated in the last election. These polls have proven more accurate in recent elections, like 2000, when voter turnout was relatively low — of the last nine presidential elections, only two showed lower turnout than 2000. But there are strong reasons to think that voters will turn out in larger numbers this year — especially among Democrats.

Four years ago, when the economy was strong, the country wasn't at war, and both presidential candidates ran as moderates, just 43 percent of adults told an early April Gallup poll that they had been thinking about the election "quite a lot." This April, when the issues seem much bigger and the differences between the candidates much starker, Gallup found that 61 percent of adults said they had been giving "quite a lot" of thought to the election.

So, presuming higher turnout, an arguably better predictor of election results would be polls of registered voters — both those who voted and those who stayed home in 2000. In an early April Gallup poll, Kerry trailed Bush 46 percent to 48 percent among likely voters, but led 48 percent to 46 percent among registered voters. Kerry's support had dropped incrementally in a late April Gallup poll, but he continued to garner higher support among registered voters than likely voters.

The second nuance to look at is what political consultant Chris Kofinis calls "the Bush bubble": the gap between the president's overall approval ratings and his approval ratings on specific policy areas. According to the most recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, Bush's approval rating now stands at 51 percent. That isn't bad, though it is noticeably below what the last two incumbents who won reelection had at this point in the election cycle: Reagan's approval was 54 percent and Clinton's was 56 percent. But even Bush's 51 percent may be softer than it looks. In the same poll, on seven of nine major policy issues — the economy, Iraq, Social Security, health insurance, taxes, jobs, the deficit — less than half of respondents said that they approved of the president's performance. In several cases, his approval was well below 50 percent. Only 45 percent approved of Bush's handling of Iraq; 44 percent of his performance on the economy; 34 percent of his performance on the deficit; and 33 percent of his stewardship of Social Security. Even on policy areas in which the president's approval is now relatively high — education and the war on terror — he is vulnerable to later substantive attacks by Kerry. For instance, he currently garners 51 percent approval on education, due largely to his role in passing a bold education measure; increasingly, however, educators and the public are alarmed about the effects of No Child Left Behind.

Kerry's challenge

Of course, the tight polling data does reflect a fundamental reality: For all the fallout from his policies, Bush still appeals to many Americans because of his seeming decisiveness, straight talk, and regular-guy charm — not qualities that John Kerry prominently displays. The historical pattern may strongly suggest that if Kerry wins, it will be by large margins — but that is hardly fated. It will only happen if Kerry successfully highlights Bush's failings while showing himself to be an appealing alternative. Otherwise, the senator could see himself losing an electoral rout, not winning in one. In fact, the second most likely outcome of this election is a Bush landslide. With just one exception, every president to win a second consecutive term has done so with a larger electoral margin than his initial victory. The least likely result this November is another close election.

Right now, the president is vulnerable. As The New Republic's Ryan Lizza argued in a recent New York Times editorial, undecided voters "know [the incumbent] well, and if they were going to vote for him, they would have already decided. Thus support for Mr. Bush should be seen more as a ceiling, while support for Mr. Kerry, the lesser-known challenger, is more like a floor."

That points to both an opportunity and a challenge for the Kerry campaign. Kerry needs to convince voters that he's up to the job — and that Bush isn't. If he can woo voters dissatisfied with Bush's policies, there's a potential — and historical precedent — for Kerry to win big.

Chuck Todd is the editor in chief of National Journal's Hotline.

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

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 05/13/04 07:08:22 AM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode.