this year's black is mendicant brown
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| Sunday, February 20th, 2005 | | 11:53 pm |
WORST BLEND EVER!!!
FOUND ON THE BACK OF A SUMFLOWER SEED BAG.....SNACTIVITY..... actually beats Cowschwitz | | Friday, February 18th, 2005 | | 6:45 pm |
The Plight of the Far Right
There has been a trend here on DailyKos to revel in the fact that the far Right is just now, after the election, finding out that they were “used”. From Bush’s sudden “tepid” stance on Faith Based Initiatives to the virtual media blackout of a Constitution enshrinement endorsing Homophobia, their suddenly appears a lot of hand wringing from the far right and our smug satisfaction which can be succinctly expressed as “I told you so”. As a member of the voting electorate who will most likely always have to settle for the lesser of two evils (I.E. EXTREME LIBERAL AND PROUND OF IT!), I have mixed emotions about the Kos generally pervasive attitude of smugness on this specific issue. I despise almost the entirety of the Republican agenda so I am obviously thrilled that these extremists are dissatisfied, but I am forced to admit I share some kinship with these folks. They, like me, are constantly forced to settle for half a loaf, and had “we” won, this site would currently be overrun with Dissatisfied People, myself included, complaining how Kerry wasn’t liberal enough on issues X, Y, Z, etc. I have seen several comments basically discussing “how stupid” these Republicans were to be used, and then surprised by the outcome. Well guess what. “We” would be in the same boat. I guess the point of my comment is that I feel it is naïve and slightly dangerous for us on the extreme left to laugh at the “plight” of the extreme right. We have more in common with them then we would care to admit. | | Thursday, February 17th, 2005 | | 11:19 am |
Best Aries Horoscope EVER
from the Onion Aries: (March 21—April 19) God will confess that He does play dice with the universe, but explain that He used the 16-sided kind during His Creation-spanning game of Dungeons & Dragons. | | 9:25 am |
Theoretical Bush Speech, prior to war
"I want to invade a country that poses no threat to the United States, spend hundreds of billions of dollas and get thousands of people killed, in order to build a nice Shiite democracy." I kind of don't think we would be there..... | | Tuesday, February 15th, 2005 | | 12:00 pm |
Its a liberal media.....
stolen from kos often when these things pop up, 9 billion missing in iraq, outing a CIA agent for political gain, misleading the nation into an unjust war, those 16 words in the 2003 SOTU, un-armored humvees, paying off media whores to say nice things or male prostitutes in the WH, i always ask myself, "imagine if this was happening under clinton's watch. there would be pitchfork carrying dittoheads at the white house gates and every satellite truck east of the mississippi there to cover it. as is often said around these parts, liberal media, my ass. | | Thursday, February 3rd, 2005 | | 1:18 pm |
How do they know how many Iraqis voted?
They just made the figure up. That's right, it's pure fiction where the fiction was designed to serve a purpose. Check out Yoshie's comment from Jan. 31 at Critical Montages, where he asked the obvious question: I'd also ask where the Independent [sic] Election Commission of Iraq got the figure of 8 million voters. The answer is that's exactly the same number the commission predicted before the elections: A senior election official estimates that half of Iraq's 15 million eligible voters ["[t]here are 14 million eligible voters inside Iraq . . . plus 1.2 million abroad allowed to vote in 14 countries including the United States, Britain, Iran and Syria"] will take part in this month's national election and says that to encourage a high turnout, those living in insurgency-racked areas will be allowed to vote in safer communities. Farid Ayar of Iraq's Independent Electoral Commission said he expected 7 to 8 million Iraqis to vote on Jan. 30 in a ballot seen as a major step toward fulfilling U.S. goals of building democracy here after decades of Saddam Hussein's tyranny. (emphasis added, Hamza Hendawi/Associated Press, "Half of Iraq Population Estimated to Vote," January 14, 2005) What precision! A sign that elections in Iraq have been raised to the level of science, far superior to the 4-billion-dollar election industry in the United States that showed disturbing discrepancies between exit polls and vote tallies? Not! A safer hypothesis is that it's a sign of how scripted Iraqi elections were. If Washington needs about 8 million Iraqi voters to achieve a "respectable" turnout of half the eligible voters (Hendawi, January 14, 2005), the Independent [sic] Election Commission of Iraq has to give that number to Washington before and after the elections. After all, "demonstration elections" are theater -- for the American, rather than Iraqi, audience. I was thinking of linking this on dKos last week, but I decided it was obvious that the Iraqis could not possibly know yet how many people voted. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/3/134855/3139 | | Monday, January 31st, 2005 | | 5:12 pm |
| | 4:38 pm |
Are my senses off?
So this women comes into my house, with a bit of a husky voice, whom my father seems to know....it turns out this 'women' is a well chisled construction man who has done a lot of work on my parents house...and I swear he was hitting on me.....and you know what the disturbing part of it was....I am 26 years old....I should know when someone is hitting on me....especially since I just learned he has a son and a wife....my God....have I really been out of circulation so long that I can't tell when someone is hitting on me.....truly depressing thoughts! | | Thursday, January 27th, 2005 | | 9:54 am |
Pity Liberals in Oklahoma
Ok...first we can kind of chortle that a liberal would still live out there... This jumped out at me today in the NYT: The effort to pass the Clear Skies Act as an amendment to the Clean Air Act is being led by Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. Mr. Inhofe, mindful of the costly technology needed for industry to control emissions, has made no secret of his opposition to carbon dioxide caps, calling global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/27/politics/27enviro.html?oref=login&pagewanted=all-Yes, Orwell fans. The Clean Air Act's leading advocate is worried about corporations having to spend money to control how much they pollute AND he thinks global warming is a hoax. AND I THINK THAT THAT THE CLEAN AIR ACT IS THE GREATEST HOAX EVER PERPETRATED ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. OR WAS IT THE HEALTHY FORESTS INITIATIVE? THIS IS THE MOST CRITICAL PART!! Keep in mind that the above Senator is the SANE ONE!!!! For more information on recent Senatroial Insanity see Coburn, http://dailykos.com/story/2005/1/27/95118/3017 | | Friday, January 21st, 2005 | | 11:26 am |
Ode to Bill Simmons
Now we have Championship Weekend, which is shaping up like an especially inspiring episode of "Elimidate." Before you think I'm crazy, check out these astounding parallels: The Bachelor = The Super Bowl trophy They just want to go home with someone, even admitting that their longest relationship was just one year. By the end of January, the trophy is practically in heat. All it's missing is the bad cologne, the Viagra and the tank top. The Favorite = The Patriots They're the good-looking, cocky, confident blonde with an ample cleavage who just finished a modeling tour with Hawaiian Tropic. They say things like "I've never had a problem getting a date" and "Honey, if you think I'm worried about trash like you, you have another thing coming." They don't need to dress like a slut. They don't need to flash anyone on the dance floor. They refuse to kiss the trophy until all the other contestants are eliminated. They're just grinding out the date, acting like pros, avoiding any turnovers and expecting to get chosen in the end. And if you trash-talk them, you end up paying for it. (But that's the weird thing about this show -- just when you think someone's a sure thing, they end up stumbling at the strangest time.) The Contender = The Steelers Maybe they aren't the cutest contestant, but they have a good personality and don't mind rolling up their sleeves and getting dirty. They nearly ran away with the date on the dance floor, then they lost some steam near the end of the third act when they got a little too drunk and admitted that, "Yeah, I've been in a threesome, so what?" Now they're underdogs to go home with the trophy, even though they already got to second base in the men's bathroom with it. The Wild Card = The Falcons They don't say much, they're not very good at trash-talking, they haven't proven anything, they have a nose ring ... but they also have HUGE breasts. You can never count out anyone with huge breasts. You just can't. (And yes, Mike Vick counts as 38DDs.) The Longshot = The Eagles Things were going great for them until they lost a "I'm not ugly, you're ugly" trash-talk battle to The Contender, then broke a heel on the dance floor and sprained an ankle. It's also their fourth time on "Elimidate" and they haven't won yet. Things keep going wrong, to the point that their fans are expecting the worse. But that's the great thing about The Longshot ... you never know. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/050121 | | Sunday, January 16th, 2005 | | 1:10 am |
Know your enemy! (Right wing media in your face)
The more I think about it, the more I think that this whole "Kos was getting paid" flap is actually a perfect example of what David Brock labeled "The Right Wing Noise Machine" working overtime. It's almost a remarkable case study of exactly how it works, from top to bottom. Let's examine what happened here, starting at the very beginning. About a week ago, the Armstrong Williams story broke. It came out that the Administration had been paying a journalist/commentator to publicise the NCLB act with taxpayer dollars. Rumors spread rapidly that this wasn't the only case we were going to see of this behavior. Rapidly, David Corn was saying Mr. Williams told him there were more people, bloggers and a few journalists realized that the people associated with the payments was the same company associated with similar funding to try to support the Medi-Can't bill, and news organizations started filing dozens of FOIA requests to see where else the Administration had used this tactic. Diaries :: balta1701's diary :: So right here, we have a geniune scandal brewing - there's clearly been wrongdoing, and there is no way that anyone can justify spending the tax dollars on paying a journalist to create positive noise about a highly controversial bill, a journalist who didn't disclose the payments during his work. It's clearly getting bigger. And there looks to be no way that anyone can honestly defend the administration - even the right wingers are saying it's wrong. So now, what happens next? The right wing noise machine kicks in. Clearly, if the Republicans want to defend themselves from obvious wrong-doing on the part of the Administration, they need to come up with something that a crazy Democrat has done that they can attack. A few days later, an article appears in the WSJ featuring a person from the Dean campaign who had the shocking revelation that the Dean campaign had paid a pair of bloggers in the hopes of getting good publicity from the bloggers at the time. Right away, people start talking. It goes up on Instapundit, maybe on Drudge for a while. People start asking - so why didn't these bloggers disclose that they were being paid? Now, as the story starts to spread, the truth of the situation falls by the wayside. As people start questionning why they didn't disclose, it is conveniently forgotten that Kos actually did disclose that he was being paid by the campaign. Moreover, it is also conveniently forgotten that the other blogger in question actually quit his blog during the time he was working for the Dean campaign. On top of that, it's ignored that no where in the agreement that either of these bloggers signed did they agree to give positive publicity or positive posts to the campaign - their actual agreements were for consulting work or something along those lines. Every single part of the truth of this story gets completely ignored by the people who pick it up. Why? Because most of the people are too lazy to actually check into it themselves, and they don't bother to see whether or not the story about lack of disclosure is accurate. It's just assumed to be true, so it spreads to a few more sources. And on top of that, it's long enough ago that it's not immediately in people's memory - it even took me a few hours to remember that Kos had that discIaimer on the side of his page - it's not like I based my life on that disclaimer. So the story doesn't die off, despite the fact that anyone who actually is paying attention is laughing their ass off at how pathetic the story is. As the story grows, it hits CNN.com's front page for a few hours under a headline saying something like "Dean campaign paid off blogger" or something to that effect. It literally gets posted without anyone doing a single fact check. At the same time, almost no media organizations even try to make a connection to the Thune/Daschle race, where the Thune campaign paid $35,000 out to a pair of bloggers to post stories going after Mr. Daschle, some of which actually even made it into the regular press in South Dakota. And while Kos had disclosed everything he was doing (and in fact bragged about it & used it to help grow his page), none of the South Dakota bloggers had disclosed the payments at all. So what happens then? It moves into the full mainstream media, and is accepted totally without question, and even blown up even more. Robert Novak, (the guy who never disclosed that he had significant personal interests in the company publishing the Swift Boats book even as he gave it publicity and complimented it on the air) goes on the air and calls it "pay for play" & says Mr. Dean clearly was engaging in dirty politics. And then the glorious opposition, Paul Begala, comes in and says that sort of behavior would be "reprehensible" and just like the Armstrong Williams matter. And then it just keeps growing, like a cancer. It gets to O'Reilly, as I noted below, who absolutely insists that the disclosure was inadequate, and who has a guest on, a Conservative blogger, who naturally agrees with him totally. It's a clear setup, and it's 100% false. But it's still all over the place. Look where this story has gone. It started off as a single story in the WSJ. Then the Right Wing noise machine picks up on it and it starts to spread. It serves a purpose - it makes Mr. Williams's transgression look not as bad. The right wingers - Drudge, the Instaguy, pick up on it and give it a little notice. A few news organizations look into it and realize its bogus and run nothing, and a few just pick it up from Drudge and the WSJ and mindlessly run with it without doing a proper fact check. The story grows exponentially, all based on people not doing their jobs and checking the story out. The right wing blowhards, Novak and O'Reilly, pick up on it and insist its the truth, 100%, and no one challenges them on it. And so on. This is how the right wing noise machine works. Someone ran a story that sounded kinda like the Armstrong Williams thing, it slips into a few right wing websites, it expands when no one fact checks the thing, and before you know it, CNN's running it like fact, they're blaming both Kos and Dean for being dirty, and then both the Crossfire and O'Reilly viewers (millions of people)are treated to the hosts saying that it's 100% true and there was no disclosure. The whole story is garbage. It's not a story. In a week, there'll be a few small retractions issued. Kos is demanding one from the WSJ - who knows if he'll get it. The person who the original WSJ article was written about calls herself "Criminally stupid" for giving the other side ammunition. But even if full retractions happen, the story is already out there, and the next time that an administration "Payola" FOIA comes out, there'll be a few million folks out there who remember this Democrat "Scandal" and tie it all together. O'Reilly'll probably mention it a month or so on some other topic. And then, the icing on the cake; people get pissed off at how ridiculous the story is, and Instapundit decides to complain about all the sniping and snarking from the left and how angry they are. Clearly, someone so angry is no where near qualified to lead the country. Wow. None of it's the fault of the people not fact checking. It's all that evil left. A 100% manufactured, pure B.S. story, and it reaches millions of people who will never hear the truth. The Right Wing Noise Machine, right in front of your eyes. http://dailykos.com/story/2005/1/16/15110/2882 | | Thursday, January 13th, 2005 | | 12:34 pm |
Summing up the War
This is completely stolen, and contains no origional thought on my part, although it does cover most of my thinking on the issue, although I am a bit fuzzy about the economics. http://dailykos.com/story/2005/1/12/172147/990The above link has lots of additional embedded links for those who want to read more. How to make sense of Bush and the GOP. The story is below the fold. Diaries :: Lestatdelc's diary :: The 1357+ of our finest have been lost in a tragic mistake that didn't have to happen, and certainly didn't have to happen this way. The tragedy is that this didn't have to happen, certainly not like this. If this administration had honestly dealt with the UN there would have been broad support. Even France offered a proposal that it would give a specific deadline for full compliance and final report of noncompliance from inspectors. If Iraq had not fully complied, we would have had a real coalition, and a real chance at success. But that was not what this administration was after. WMD, was pre-text for war... not a real threat that required a war to be launched. This administration if it had been honestly working with the UN, instead of badgering and hurling insipid "smoke `em out", Texan hold-em, bullshit-bravado, could have had a real coalition and a real chance at making this misguided war still turn out for the better if it needed to be done. (and why Kerry's vote can be justified in that context). But this administration went into Iraq not to disarm or eradicate WMDs. That rationale was entirely pre-text. Anyone who advances the notion this administration went into Iraq with the real belief that WMD removal was the reasons for this war are either a liar or a fool (or both). I finished reading the book A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies by James Bamford (the author who broke open to the public the power of the NSA with his seminal book The Puzzle Palace back in the early 80s) last fall, which, while it may not be entirely shocking to those paying attention, lays it out fully (and from solid source evidence). The administration had to launch its war, because the inspectors were in, and if Iraq fully complied with the UN inspections, the rationale for sanctions would be removed, and instead of a "coalition" backing regime change, it would be a "disaster" because the UN would calling for sanctions to be lifted. The administration used WMDs as pre-text, assumed that there would be enough foot-dragging and clear evidence of violation to give them cover. Their bluff was about to be called though, and the war had to move forward before the entire house of cards came down. "We" invaded Iraq because of three fundamental (and conjoined) things: Iraq being cleared of WMD by the UNMOVIC/UNSCOM meant Desert Storm (when Saddam went off the reservation) was over and sanctions had to be lifted. Iraq had European contracts for their oil. Iraq was going to trade the oil in Euros not petrodollars. One must remember that Bush/Saud are in effect the same thing. Never forget that BDM/Vinnel (Carlyle at the time) arm, train, equip and man the mercenaries that keeps Saud in power. Saudi crude funds the whole Bush/Saud crew. Iraq suddenly free again to sell its oil, and in Euros not dollars, not only screws Bush/Saud but would cripple the US economy along multiple fracture lines. First and obviously, having the 2nd largest oil reserve of accessible crude come onto the market will drive the value of Saudi crude into the basement. That Iraq would end run the rest of OPEC to make up for a decade of being starved would scatter the cartel members into the winds to fend for themselves. So what is better, to let Iraq crude take out your own operation at the knees... or take it over and roll it into the same portfolio? Second, because Iraq was going to devalue your assets in the first place, doing so outside our traditional partner firms and instead with European (French, Russian, German) firms, the prospect of Chinese orders for ME crude means you are not getting a dip at those petro-dollars (even in the later stages in the supply chain). Third, and most critical (and actually more "forgivable" in a strange circumpolar way) is that trading in Euros not petrodollars would collapse our capital market funding of our debt and deficits, both Governmental budget and general economic. If China (as its demand for oil goes through the roof in the next 10 years) starts trading with Iraq, and the Euro becomes the currency for oil (not to mention it is already on the edge of surpassing the dollar for capital markets anyway based on value as it is) suddenly China has no need to continue to buy our debt. It would get more of a return in Euros, plus it buys oil from Iraq in Euros, etc. etc. The chasing after buyers for our currency to fund our deficits (trade and monetary) would mean radically raising interest rates to keep people buying it. There goes most of our economy as the ripple of interest rates would throw us into a recession/depression. And there would be an even worse problem/risk then facing us as well. If China and the capital markets stop buying our debt, our economy falls into an economic black hole and could only emerge when China (the rest of the developing world) and the US are on economic parity. That is the abyss for America. China can do without the American market as it has a ready built market 5 times as large as the North American continent within its own borders. And because of outsourcing and production off-shoring of the past decade and a half (and heading into the next half) it has the manufacturing base to feed their domestic market whether those factories turn out NikesTM for US consumption to "whatever" name to the domestic market. Controlling the oil has been the underpinning of our core foreign policy intrests since the end of WWII. This has been the power fulcrum of the PNAC strategies, which dove-tails with their Israeli-centric world-view. The "realities" of control of oil reserves is why we installed the Shah in '53, this is why the CIA kept the Ba'athists (Saddam) from going to far into Soviet procurement arms (by our kicking Saddam back into Iraq after his first coup attempt in the 50s) even though the Ba'athists where a "nationalist" (read socialist) movement. This oil-centric mania is why we have propped up Saudi Arabia from the moment the guns fell silent on WWII. This was for two (at the time coequal which became singular) reasons. keep it out of the Soviet hands, and keep it in "our" big oil hands. OPEC in the early 70s was testing the price limit to find the outer edge for oil. But "our" number one client/puppet was the Shah. We sold him F-14s, something we would not even sell to our NATO allies. He had SAVK, which made Saddam's secret police seem like Haight-Ashbury. He (the Shah) was, like Saddam, secular which was not the case with Saud (Wahhabism), which are tribal/religious extremists who the British put in place to take out the Turks in WWI. So when the population got feed up, it turned to religion (since the Shah was a corrupt western secular puppet) and revolution. Students start the revolution, and the Ayatollah becomes the rallying figure. The Shah falls, flees... we (now the "Great Satan") throw our lot in with Saddam to hold the line. We sell him WMDs, intel, attack gun-ships (American made UH-1H helicopters and Hughes MD-500 Defender helicopters) to set-up a back-burn to stop the Islamic Revoltuon wildfire that is now burning towards the oil fields, having already lost a vast supply to the now radicalized Iranian Revolutionary Council. Just after the USSR collapses, Saddam goes off the reservation by the sucker move that "We have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts" in the context of Iraq's long-standing quest to get at Kuwaiti oil fields, stop their (Kuwaiti) lateral drilling and gain port access that wasn't spitting distance from the Iranians he had been engaging in an 8 year, 1 million+ dead war with. This is used as pretext to scare the shit out of the Saudi's with doctored intel that Saddam is amassing Republican Guards to move into Saudi Arabia, and we start building bases, and moving in 500k+ troops, and making permanent installations. All this whole time (and decades prior) we have been training, arming and equipping the Saudi Secret police and internal security forces as Saudi unemployment rises to 30% (remember in the US a 25% unemploment rate was called the Great Depression). Bush Sr. builds Desert Shield, then executes Desert Storm, and takes out the Iraqi military with a robust 3rd generation military vs. a depleted 2nd generation military, but Bush Sr. doesn't pull the trigger then on Saddam, because we are not sure of his WMD capability. We risk the entire shooting match if we turn the wrong way in the Euphrates river valley. Because of this uncertainty Bush Sr. does not go for the decapitation then and there. We impose the no-flys, insist on WMD removal through the UN, and hint that if the Iraqi's overthrew Saddam we wouldn't feel bad about Saddam going... but then... the unthinkable happened. Bush with a 71% approval rating in less than a year loses the election and Bill Clinton and the Democrats suddenly have the keys to the White House, the first time in 12 years and first time since OPEC was brought into the fold after Carter's undoing. Clinton wasn't "supposed" to win the election. This was the birth of PNAC, Bush not winning the election and "bunggling" the the tipping point of Saddam's regime in the post Desert Storm enviroment. This is a central reason why Clinton was hunted. Through this prism, trooper-gate, travel-gate, bimbo-gate, Vince Foster's murder-gate, Ron Brown's murder-gate and then a fucking blue dress suddenly makes sense. Allowing the inspections to run their course, and with Wilson lobbing grenades at the fiction of yellowcake claims were a threat to the successful playing of the WMD card, which was the pre-text to finish off Iraq. Not because he was a "bad guy", not because he was military threat, not because of terrorism, not of any reason other than he went off the reservation in `91, and Bush Sr. lost the White House. Under Clinton, the WMDs were removed via robust inspections, Desert Fox, and Saddam halting the programs. Saddam was de-fanged, but if sanctions ever got lifted, Bush/Saud (and even to some extent the entire US) would be be screwed. Saddam had to go. WMD and terrorism was a conflated pre-text to save Bush/Saud. | | Friday, November 12th, 2004 | | 8:01 am |
What happened to the exit-polls?
http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/04/11/The_unexplained_exit_poll_discrepancy_v00k.pdfThe author hits it on the head. The biggest problem is that a larger and larger number of people don;t feel that they can trust election results. However, I do have one caveat. Of the several people that I have spoken to in CA who were Bush supporters, all were suprised that he won. Now, this could be looked at as an example of fraud, OR it could be looked at to explain the phenomenon of Bush supporters being less desirous to participate in exit poll surveys. After all, the desire to back the perceived winner is a strong and recognized phenomenon so...... | | Sunday, November 7th, 2004 | | 10:24 pm |
| | 10:20 pm |
| | Wednesday, October 27th, 2004 | | 2:11 am |
| | Sunday, October 24th, 2004 | | 1:17 pm |
Becky Buckingham
Becky has made it her personal goal to register and bank 200 votes. She followed her 22 year old daughter around and registered all of her friends....she went to all her family, friends and neighbors and got them too. She hit her goal on election day and not only got them registerd but their Absentee Ballots returned.....she presonally added 200 votes to the Kerry side in a state that we only won by 2 votes per precinct, or 4000 votes statewide..... And she did all this while raising a kid on her own and working full time..... | | Thursday, October 21st, 2004 | | 6:54 pm |
Whats wrong with Rethugs
Fuck you Uncle Larry....I know you aren't one of these swine...yet you are going to vote Bush anyway....you deserve the pain that your president inflicts on others! From www.salon.com The link to dailykos has lots of other goodies on this article http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/10/21/163942/51Even if they don't like to say it out loud, lots of Democrats think that George Bush's supporters are a horde of ignoramuses. Now comes evidence that they're right! A remarkable new report titled "The Separate Realities of Bush and Kerry Supporters" from PIPA, the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, suggests that rank and file Republicans are more benighted than even the most supercilious coastal elitist would imagine. Analyzing data from a series of nationwide polls, the report finds that a majority of Bush supporters believe things about the world that are objectively untrue, while the majority of Kerry supporters dwell in the reality-based community. For example, Bush backers largely think that the president and his policies are popular internationally. Seventy-five percent believe that Iraq was providing "substantial" aid to al-Qaida, and 63 percent say clear evidence of this has been found. That, of course, would be news even to Donald Rumsfeld, who earlier this month told the Council On Foreign Relations, "To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two." Though its language is dispassionate, the report lays responsibility for this epidemic of ignorance at the White House's door. "So why are Bush supporters clinging so tightly to these beliefs in the face of repeated disconfirmations?" it asks. "Apparently one key reason is that they continue to hear the Bush administration confirming these beliefs." Indeed, it says, "an overwhelming 82% [of Bush supporters] perceive the Bush administration as saying that Iraq had WMD (63%) or a major WMD program (19%). Only 16% of Bush supporters perceive the administration as saying that Iraq had some limited activities, but not an active program (15%) or had nothing (1%). The pattern on al Qaeda is similar. Seventy-five percent of Bush supporters think the Bush administration is currently saying Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda (56%) or even that it was directly involved in 9/11 (19%). Further, 55% of Bush supporters say it is their impression the Bush administration is currently saying the US has found clear evidence Saddam Hussein was working closely with al Qaeda (not saying clear evidence found: 37%)." These people aren't going to be swayed by the argument that Bush has alienated American's allies and left the country isolated in the world, because they don't believe this to be the case. "Despite a steady flow of official statements, public demonstrations, and public opinion polls showing that the US war against Iraq is quite unpopular, only 31% of Bush supporters recognize that the majority of people in the world oppose the US having gone to war with Iraq," the study says. Bush supporters also think that world public opinion favors Bush's reelection. In a poll taken from September 3-7, the study says, "57% of Bush supporters assumed that the majority of people in the world would prefer to see Bush reelected, 33% assumed that views are evenly divided and only 9% assumed that Kerry would be preferred." In fact, a PIPA study released in early September found that a majority or plurality of people from 32 countries preferred Kerry to Bush. PIPA surveyed 34,330 people, ages 15 and above, from regions all over the world. A Pew poll released this spring similarly found that "large majorities in every country, except for the U.S., hold an unfavorable opinion of Bush." Bush supporters are also mistaken about the president's own positions (a pattern of misapprehension that an earlier PIPA report also documented). "Majorities incorrectly assumed that Bush supports multilateral approaches to various international issues -- the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (69%), the treaty banning land mines (72%); 51% incorrectly assumed he favors US participation in the Kyoto treaty -- the principal international accord on global warming... Only 13% of supporters are aware that he opposes labor and environmental standards in trade agreements -- 74% incorrectly believe that he favors including labor and environmental standards in agreements on trade. In all these cases, there is a recurring theme: majorities of Bush supporters favor these positions, and they infer that Bush favors them as well." According to the report, this reality gap is something new in American life. "So why do Bush supporters show such a resistance to accepting dissonant information?" it asks. "While it is normal for people to show some resistance, the magnitude of the denial goes beyond the ordinary. Bush supporters have succeeded in suppressing awareness of the findings of a whole series of high-profile reports about prewar Iraq that have been blazoned across the headlines of newspapers and prompted extensive, high-profile and agonizing reflection. The fact that a large portion of Americans say they are unaware that the original reasons that the US took military action -- and for which Americans continue to die on a daily basis -- are not turning out to be valid, are probably not due to a simple failure to pay attention to the news." The analysis says that the roots of this denial could lie in the trauma of 9/11 and people's desire to hold on to their image of Bush as a "capable protector." It offers no guidance, though, on how ordinary Republicans might be coaxed back to reality. And while "The Separate Realities of Bush and Kerry Supporters" may be perversely satisfying to Democrats in its confirmation of blue-state prejudices, it carries a pretty disturbing question for all rational Americans: How can arguments based on fact prevail in a nation where so many people know so little? | | Wednesday, October 20th, 2004 | | 11:12 am |
| | Saturday, October 16th, 2004 | | 6:47 pm |
Bush or Animal Fram
From the Bershire Eagle Article Published: Tuesday, October 05, 2004 - 10:21:58 AM EST Bush or 'Animal Farm'? By Bill Shein HAS "ANIMAL Farm," George Orwell's 1946 satiric fable about the rise of totalitarianism, become the blueprint for the president's re-election campaign? It seems unthinkable, but review the following and judge for yourself. Bush campaign -- "The mother of a soldier killed in Iraq was arrested Thursday after interrupting a campaign speech by first lady Laura Bush ... [she] screamed questions at the first lady as the audience tried to drown her out by chanting, "Four more years! Four more years!" -- UPI, Sept. 17. Or "Animal Farm" -- "Then, as usual, the sheep broke into 'Four legs good! Two legs bad!' and the momentary awkwardness was smoothed over." Bush -- "The Bush administration warned Thursday that terrorists might launch a 'large-scale attack' in the United States to influence November's presidential election, but critics questioned whether the White House was spreading fear of an attack for political purposes." -- San Francisco Chronicle, July 9. Or "Animal Farm"? -- "The animals were thoroughly frightened. It seemed to them as though Snowball were some kind of invisible influence, pervading the air about them and menacing them with all kinds of dangers." Bush -- "During Bush's Columbus visit this month, a select group of people was chosen to ask him questions, many of which were prearranged." -- Columbus Dispatch, Aug. 16. Or "Animal Farm"? -- "Napoleon rarely appeared in public, but spent all his time in the farmhouse, which was guarded at each door by fierce-looking dogs. When he did emerge, it was in a ceremonial manner." Bush -- "It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2nd, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again." -- Dick Cheney, Sept. 7. Or "Animal Farm"? -- "[Napoleon] would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?" Bush -- "Moments after the landing, the president, wearing a green flight suit and holding a white helmet, got off the plane, saluted those on the flight deck and shook hands with them." -- CNN.com, May 2, 2003. Or "Animal Farm"? -- "Napoleon emerged from the farmhouse, wearing both of his medals (for he had recently awarded himself 'Animal Hero, First Class,' and 'Animal Hero, Second Class')." Bush -- "The idea for a Sept. 11 commission, championed by many victims' families, gained inexorable momentum when the Bush administration last week dropped its opposition." -- Associated Press, Sept. 22, 2002. Or "Animal Farm"? -- "That evening Squealer explained privately to the other animals that Napoleon had never in reality been opposed to the windmill. On the contrary, it was he who had advocated it in the beginning." Bush -- "Three purple hearts and never bled that I know of." -- Bob Dole on John Kerry's wounds in Vietnam. Or "Animal Farm"? -- " 'But [Snowball] was wounded,' said Boxer. 'We all saw him running with blood.' " Bush -- "A combination of escalating bloodshed, gloomy assessments and deteriorating security conditions in Iraq are challenging the Bush administration's upbeat view of the struggle to establish democracy in the beleaguered Middle East nation." -- L. A. Times, Sept. 17. Or "Animal Farm"? -- "They had nothing to go on except Squealer's lists of figures, which invariably demonstrated that everything was getting better and better." Bush -- "Fully one-third of the president's tax cuts went to the top one percent of income earners." Non-partisan Congressional Budget Office report on 2001-2003 tax cuts. Or "Animal Farm"? -- "Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer -- except, of course, for the pigs and the dogs." "And yet the animals never gave up hope." -- "Animal Farm," final chapter. |
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