Politics

Yesterday Dad asked for thoughts on possibilities of a Dean/Clark (or Clark/Dean) ticket. I deferred answering right away so that I could bounce it around in the back of my head for a bit.

Well, after letting it bounce around for the past day, I have to say that my only thought right now is that I haven’t got a clue. At this point, I really don’t know all that much about Wesley Clark. I know that he’s well respected by many people, which seems to cross party bounds, after having a strong military career. He apparently had strong ties to the Republican party in the past, and has recently crossed party lines to toss his hat in with the Democrats. It appears that his entrance into the Democratic nomination ring was predicated not so much by wishes of his own (at least at first), but by a grass-roots campaign from his supporters (and apparently he’s now looking to disband those grassroots weblogs, which may be a mistake, if he ticks off the very people that started giving momentum to his campaign before it ever even existed). Apparently during yesterday’s Democratic debate, he said nothing, but said it with style.

He delayed his entrance into the Democratic field until the last possible moment, playing a big “will he or won’t he?” game. That doesn’t seem like a good idea strategically — while there were some people on the ‘net tracking his every step, the major media didn’t bother with him until just a day or two before his official announcement, which gave a lot of press time to the other nine contenders. Delaying his entrance also limited the amount of time he could use to raise money.

Essentially, as I look at it all together, Clark worries me. At least to me, he’s coming off as wishy-washy. He couldn’t decide whether he was Republican or Democrat. He couldn’t decide to run or not. He doesn’t seem to care about the organizations that started his roll towards the nomination race. Most worrying to me is that while he may have had a good military career, he’s not been a player in political fields at all. He strikes me as someone who’d make a very good cabinet member or advisor to the President on military matters, but not someone I’d be terribly thrilled to be voting into office — and that may go for a vice-presidential position as well as a presidential position.

Dean may not be perfect — his campaign’s current “5 million in 10 days” fundraising drive struck me as fairly ludicrous when I saw it (even with the fundraising skills they’ve demonstrated, that’s a lot of money in very little time, and if they don’t make their goal, then no matter how much money they do raise, it will be perceived as a “failure” because for the first time, Dean couldn’t meet or break a fundraising goal…they seem to be setting themselves up for bad press) — but I still believe that he’s by far the best choice, and the only candidate that really gets me excited. As I’ve said before, should he fail to get the nomination, I’ll support whichever Democratic candidate does land it — we need to get Bush out of office, and that’s the bottom line — but none of the others have really struck me as someone I could support as strongly.

Actually, I should amend that. I have liked a lot of what I’ve seen and heard from Carol Mosely-Braun. Unfortunately, I have to concede that I don’t think there’s any way she’d get elected were she to land the nomination — America’s still not about to elect a black woman president, unfortunately. The reports of how chummy she and Dean have been at various points did toss a fun (if completely unfeasible) scenario into my head, though.

Suppose that there’s more to Clark than I’m seeing right now. Bush’s numbers continue to drop, and after Dean picks up the Democratic nomination, he does choose Clark as his VP. America, sick of Bush’s presidency, sees the combination of Dean’s platform and Clark’s military skills and elects them to the White House. Once they’re in, Dean appoints Mosely-Braun to a fairly high-ranking and visible position in his cabinet. Over the next four years, America visibly starts to crawl out of the hole that the Bush administration has dug for us — jobs come back, international relations start improving, etc. As 2008 approaches, it’s clear that we are in a far stronger position that we were in 2003, thanks to the Dean/Clark administration, and it becomes nigh-impossible for any Republican contender to have a realistic chance at getting back into the White House. Suddenly, Clark decides that politics isn’t for him after all, steps down from his VP position — and Dean announces Mosley-Braun as his VP for the 2008 election. He might take a bit of a hit in votes from the ~~more inbred~~ less forward-thinking voters, but if his first term had been strong enough, it might be enough for us to suddenly have a black female Vice President in 2008.

Okay, it’s a pipe dream. But I have to admit, it’s a pipe dream I like.

The President of the United States has accepted an invitation from The Queen to pay a State Visit to the United Kingdom from Wednesday 19th November to Friday 21st November 2003.

George Bush is unlikely to walk around the streets kissing babies because of the large number of people that wish to blow him up. However, a ‘Brits love Bush’ photo-op of happy crowds greeting the man may be in the offing and it’s vitally important that we rob him of such a lucrative propaganda device. By attending such gatherings (by accident or design) and ensuring that you bare your buttocks as he passes by, you either render any photos taken at that moment unusable or make a very clear indication of what Britain thinks of this bigoted warmonger.

Hey, I’d do it! Maybe it’s time we rethink our protest strategies here in the U.S., too.

(via Atrios)

According to ABC News, Howard Dean is on-track to come close to the quarter-million mark in fundraising so far, and has already beat Clinton’s fundraising record.

Dean, raising millions on the Internet, will probably take in \$13 million to \$16 million this quarter, a campaign insider said. That would lift him to at least \$23.5 million for the race so far and probably make him the Democratic money leader for the year.

Democratic strategists say Dean could raise at least double what his party’s other top hopefuls will collect during the three-month fund-raising period. The former Vermont governor has already passed the Democratic record set by President Clinton, who took in \$10.3 million over three months in 1995 for his re-election.

While it wasn’t explicitly mentioned in the article, I thought the attached photo was interesting — a shot of Dean receiving a framed picture of Martin Luther King, Jr. from labor leader Dennis Rivera.

Rivera, head of one of New York’s most politically powerful labor unions, Local 1199 of Service Employees International, put his fund-raising muscle behind the former Vermont governor.

While I don’t know whether this was an official endorsement from Local 1199, or whether any other labor unions have officially backed Dean, there has been a fair number of mentions of support and good words from various labor unions concerning Dean. From what I understand, this could be a major, major boost to Dean’s campaign — and blow to Bush’s — if he can pick up endorsements from some of the country’s largest unions. While most of the media talk lately has been about Clark’s entry to the Democratic field, Dean’s momentum certainly hasn’t seemed to slip any. Good to see.

(via Mathew Gross)

George W. Bush is in the worst political trouble of his presidency, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Wednesday night. Bush’s approval rating now stands at 49 percent, the lowest point of his tenure.

[…]

In other questions from the poll released Wednesday night, 52 percent disapproved of Bush’s handling of the economy, his highest disapproval rating ever and the first time it has been above 50 percent.

About damn time, too.

(via Kos)

There’s a good article on Salon looking at the issues with Diebold’s electronic voting machines, which are being used to replace troublesome punch-card voting machines after the 2000 voting debacle. It doesn’t look like our votes are any safer under the new system.

…according to Bev Harris, a writer who has spent more than a year investigating the shadowy world of the elections equipment industry, the replacement technologies the court cited may be worse — much worse — than the zany punch-card systems it finds so abhorrent. Specifically, Harris’ research into Diebold, one of the largest providers of the new touch-screen systems, ought to give elections officials pause about mandating an all-electronic vote.

Harris has found critical flaws in Diebold’s voting software, and she’s uncovered internal Diebold memos in which employees seem to suggest that the vulnerabilities are no big deal. The memos appear to be authentic — Diebold even sent Harris a notice warning her that by posting the documents on the Web, she was infringing upon the company’s intellectual property. Diebold did not return several calls for comment.

Not only has Diebold refused to comment, they’ve gone so far as to force Bev Harris to take down her site exposing the vulnerabilities.

Due to a dispute with Diebold, Incorporated, and its wholly owned subsidiary Diebold Election Systems, Inc. (collectively “Diebold”), which is claiming links to certain materials that do not reside on the blackboxvoting.org website constitute  copyright infringement, blackboxvoting.org has been temporarily disabled.

Congressman Rush Holt has sponsored a bill that would require electronic voting machines to produce a paper trail — this measure should definitely be supported.

(via Kos, [Kos [again]], Chris)

• Slate: Bush to World: Drop Dead! The president lays an egg at the U.N.
  

  Has an American president ever delivered such a bafflingly impertinent speech before the General Assembly as the one George W. Bush gave this morning?

• Star Tribune: Strib’s view of the speech Editorial: Bush at the U.N. / For good reason, he lacks credibility
  

  During the 2000 campaign, Bush famously spoke of the need for the United States to be a strong but humble nation. In action, his foreign policy has been predicated on being strong and arrogant. The president gives good speeches. Too bad that they can’t be believed.

• Washington Post: A Vague Pitch Leaves Mostly Puzzlement
  

  In his speech today to the U.N. General Assembly, President Bush tried to walk a fine line between defending a war deeply unpopular in much of the world and looking for help from reluctant countries to rebuild Iraq. The result left diplomats and lawmakers puzzled about his ultimate intentions.

(via Atrios and Joe Rospars)

Bits and pieces from yesterday’s address to the U.N. by President Bush:

The Taliban was a sponsor and servant of terrorism. When confronted, that regime chose defiance, and that regime is no more.

• News 24, South Africa: Taliban Takes Control
• Financial Times, UK: Taliban’s shoots start to sprout from roots that the US failed to eradicate
• Pak Tribune, Pakistan: Afghan Govt helpless against Taliban activities

The regime of Saddam Hussein cultivated ties to terror while it built weapons of mass destruction. It used those weapons in acts of mass murder, and refused to account for them when confronted by the world. The Security Council was right to be alarmed. The Security Council was right to demand that Iraq destroy its illegal weapons and prove that it had done so. The Security Council was right to vow serious consequences if Iraq refused to comply. And because there were consequences, because a coalition of nations acted to defend the peace, and the credibility of the United Nations, Iraq is free, and today we are joined by representatives of a liberated country.

Do I even need to link to anything? We’ve found no evidence of nuclear or biological weapons. The rationale for war has shifted over the months from “Saddam has WMDs” to “Saddam’s making WMDs” to “Saddam was planning to make WMDs” to “We’re liberating the people of Iraq (because all our other justifications haven’t panned out [and oh yeah, just ignore the fact that the country’s in worse shape than when it started])”. And yet Bush still hauls out that excuse for his actions. It’s almost laughable, except for what has been done in the name of those nonexistant WMDs.

The Iraqi people are meeting hardships and challenges, like every nation that has set out on the path of democracy.

Hardships and challenges that include losing valuable contracts to rebuild their own nation to American Bush-backed companies that charge ludicrously inflated prices.

Across the Middle East, people are safer because an unstable aggressor has been removed from power. Across the world, nations are more secure because an ally of terror has fallen.

That “unstable aggressor” may be removed from power, but do we know where he is? Or where Osama bin Laden, the man that we believe was actually behind the 9-11 attacks is? They’re both loose, and while the U.S. occupies Iraq, more and more people in the middle east see us as an occupying force creating a police state. In other words, the bad guys. I certainly don’t feel any safer now knowing that every day more and more people, sick of what the U.S. is doing in Iraq, may be searching out other people loyal to Saddam or bin Laden and planning ways to take their revenge on the U.S.

Our actions in Afghanistan and Iraq were supported by many governments, and America is grateful to each one.

Of course, many of those governments were as bad as or worse than Iraq. Such fine company we keep.

Our international coalition in Iraq is meeting it responsibilities. We are conducting precision raids against terrorists and holdouts of the former regime.

And they’re conducting less-precise, but equally effective, raids against U.S. and U.N. forces in Iraq.

Our coalition has made sure that Iraq’s former dictator will never again use weapons of mass destruction.

Considering that he’s on the loose and we don’t know where he is, I’d almost expect that he’d be more likely to find WMDs now if he is free to travel around and make good contacts on the black market than when he was busy holding the reins on a country that wasn’t able to work on a WMD program due to international supervision.

We’re training Iraqi police and border guards and a new army, so the Iraqi people can assume full responsibility for their own security.

Of course, it’ll be easier for them to do their jobs if we’d stop accidentally shooting them.

The old regime built palaces while letting schools decay, so we are rebuilding more than a thousand schools. The old regime starved hospitals of resources, so we have helped to supply and reopen hospitals across Iraq. The old regime built up armies and weapons, while allowing the nation’s infrastructure to crumble, so we are rehabilitating power plants, water and sanitation facilities, bridges and airports.

Now wouldn’t it be nice if someone would flip this around and do the same for the U.S.?

That’s enough. I’m only about halfway through his address, but something tells me it doesn’t get any better from there, and I’ve got to get ready for work. You get the point, I’m sure.

The King is a fink.

(via Kos)