Politics

New Mexico is going to host a “conversation” style debate among the nine contenders for the Democratic nomination tomorrow night, at the University of New Mexico, Albequerqe. Unfortunately, due to both my work schedule and my not having cable TV, I won’t be able to watch it, which is something of a bummer. Still, it should be interesting to see what comes of it. MSNBC political columnist Howard Fineman gives his ‘Debate Prescription for Dr. Dean:

CAMPAIGN 2004 already has been an amazing show, and it hasn’t even started. With shrewd management, high-tech savvy and an angry anti-Bush message, Dean—the one-time internist and former governor of Vermont—has surged to the lead in the race for the Democratic nomination. An obscurity a few months ago, he is the frontrunner now, and everyone knows it.

As a result, the dynamic in New Mexico (with its heavy Hispanic vote and pivotal early primary) will be Dean and anti-Dean. The storyline of the night—foreshadowing, perhaps, the fall season in its entirety—will focus on the question of how he responds to the inevitable attacks I expect to begin Thursday night. The sound bite that makes the TV news, and the lead that makes the New York Times, will be the one that features the sharpest, nastiest exchange between the good doctor and … whoever.

I’ll certainly be looking forward to reading the reports of this once it’s done.

The Guardian has a fascinating and disturbing article posted where psychologist Oliver James analyzes George W. Bush.

The outcome of this childhood was what psychologists call an authoritarian personality. Authoritarianism was identified shortly after the second world war as part of research to discover the causes of fascism. As the name suggests, authoritarians impose the strictest possible discipline on themselves and others – the sort of regime found in today’s White House, where prayers precede daily business, appointments are scheduled in five-minute blocks, women’s skirts must be below the knee and Bush rises at 5.45am, invariably fitting in a 21-minute, three-mile jog before lunch.

Authoritarian personalities are organised around rabid hostility to “legitimate” targets, often ones nominated by their parents’ prejudices. Intensely moralistic, they direct it towards despised social groups. As people, they avoid introspection or loving displays, preferring toughness and cynicism. They regard others with suspicion, attributing ulterior motives to the most innocent behaviour. They are liable to be superstitious. All these traits have been described in Bush many times, by friends or colleagues.

(via Len)

The last time I got to see Henry Rollins do a spoken word performance, I picked up his most recent spoken word album, Talk is Cheap (Vol. 1, Vol. 2). About halfway through the track titled “Getting Snippy With It”, there is a section that I keep thinking about whenever I see people getting really excited about Howard Dean, or when I see articles such as the Stranger article I linked to earlier describe him as a “rock star”.

And wouldn’t it be great, every country has the same problem, wouldn’t it be really bitchin’ if you had a political leader who was running for the big office, if he or she — I don’t care, whoever has the best idea, I don’t care about the sex — where you could like them as much as you like your favorite musician? So instead of like, “Okay, time to vote,” you could be like, “Fuckin’ A, this guy fuckin’ rocks! This guy’s awesome!” It would be like if you were voting for Ozzy, or Bob Dylan, or someone really bitchin’, “This fuckin’ guy is so cool, I can’t wait for this, it’s gonna be bitchin’!” I’d love to be stripped of my political cynicism for just one time, it would be so refreshing to be so into somebody and to trust them and know that they want to do the right thing.

This is exactly what’s going on, and this is exactly why people are gathering around Dean in such staggering numbers. I think that the wish that Henry expresses here is a wish that many of us have had for a long, long time, and Dean’s straightforwardness, charisma, energy, and fire have tapped into that.

Bitchin’ indeed.

From this week’s The Stranger: Flying High, Howard Dean has gone from nobody to the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. Now he’s a political rock star, and he just went on a coast-to-coast tour to prove it. The Stranger tagged along for the ride.

Toward the end of the tour when one of the other reporters aboard the Grassroots Express asked Dean to describe the most important personal moment, Dean brought up the Seattle rally–I didn’t ask him the question and I wasn’t standing by taking notes; I got this quote from the reporter later, so Dean wasn’t pandering to his Seattle supporters when he said this about last Sunday’s rally in Westlake Center:

“Seeing all those people out there [in Seattle],” Dean said. “The enormity of it all really struck me. For the first time I realized what it really means to be President of the United States–seeing all those people out there, counting on you.”

Reading this article reminded me of one of the primary reasons I’m supporting Dean: for the first time I can remember, I’m seeing a politician who actually strikes me as being honest. When he gives his speeches, I believe him — and coming from someone who’s quite cynical about all this political mumbo-jumbo, that’s saying a lot.

The Village Voice takes a look at the upcoming “docudrama” DC 9/11:

The upcoming Showtime feature DC 9/11: Time of Crisis is a signal advance in the instant, ongoing fictionalization of American history, complete with the president fulminating most presidentially against “tinhorn terrorists,” decisively employing the word problematic in a complete sentence, selling a rationale for preemptive war, and presciently laying out American foreign policy for the next 18 months. “We start with bin Laden,” Bush (played by Timothy Bottoms) tells his cabinet. “That’s what the American people expect. . . . So let’s build a coalition for that job. Later, we can shape different coalitions for different tasks.”

[…]

The “Battle Hymn of the Republic” swells as Bush flies into ground zero, where he astonishes even Rove (Allan Royal) by spontaneously vaulting a police barricade to hop on the rubble and grab the microphone. A nearby fireman, compelled to tell the president that he didn’t vote for him, swears allegiance, mandating Bush to “find the son of a bitch who did this.” Once Bush realizes that “today, the president has to be the country,” Rove considers the image problem solved. Bush, he explains, has become commander in chief and taken back “control of his destiny.” The climax is Bush’s televised, prime-time September 20 speech—a montage of highly charged 9-11 footage that ends with the real-life, now fully authenticated Bush accepting the adulation of Congress as he fingers the talismanic shield worn by a fallen New York police officer.

What’s really scary is that people will eat this up, and accept it as the truth — and it’s a far, far cry from what really happened.

(via Len)

You’d think that if Bush was really concerned about keeping jobs in America, and getting Americans back to work, his campaign wouldn’t be outsourcing fund raising phone calls to India.

The US Republican Party now has a band of young and enthusiastic fund-raisers in Noida and Gurgaon.

HCL eServe, the business process outsourcing arm of the Shiv Nadar-promoted HCL Technologies, has bagged a project to undertake a fund-raising campaign for the US Republican Party over the telephone.

This is the first time such a project has been handed out to a company outside the US. The market research and public relations companies engaged by the party usually undertake such projects.

HCL eServe has put in place a team of 75 people to work on the project out of its call centres in Noida and Gurgaon. According to industry sources, the number of seats could be ramped up depending on the success of the campaign. These operators are required to call up people in the US seeking their support for President George W Bush and a donation for the Republican cause.

(via Tom Tomorrow)