Things start out with the war justifications: Iraq definitely possesses WMD and poses an imminent threat to the US. This forms the backdrop to the newly-unveiled pre-emption doctrine designed specifically to justify an attack on Iraq. In the months leading up to the invasion, members of the administration are unequivocal in their language about the Iraqi threat.

Bush submits a brief in support of a legal challenge to the University of Michigan's admissions policies. The policies encourage black enrollment; later, when the Supreme Court endorses Michigan, Bush praises the decision.

In response to Iraq's declaration that it had no WMD, Condoleezza Rice publishes "Why We Know Iraq is Lying" in the New York Times.

The Department of Homeland Security--the first organizational expansion of the Federal government in decades--comes into existence.

Bush delivers the State of the Union, in which he says that Iraq has sought nuclear material from "Africa"--a claim he later admitted was false.

Bush meets with Silvio Berlusconi, a man so corrupt he had to change Italian law to keep out of the pokey.

Bush releases his 2004 budget, which includes tax cuts for the wealthy and further expansion of the federal government. A half-trillion dollar deficit is projected. Later, in the face of criticism of the projected deficits, Bush restyles the tax cuts a "jobs package."

Colin Powell speaks to the UN and holds aloft fake vials of anthrax to demonstrate Iraq's danger; later, Bush declares that the UN's failure to endorse the invasion will threaten its "relevance."

Bush champions faith-based initiatives, rewriting the "establishment" clause of the first amendment.

Bush introduces the "Roadmap for Peace" in Israel. Distracted by the war in Iraq, the situation in Israel festers as bombings on both sides increase.

The US invades Iraq.

The Bush administration hints it may invade Syria.

Bush visits Africa, touting his AIDS relief package. Meanwhile, violence rages in Liberia, and the US refuses to act.

Bush proposes cuts for pay to military and decreased funding for education to military children. When the Senate pushes to offer full benefits to part-time reservists, the administration comes out in opposition.

The President asks for $74 billion in funding for the war, later adding $87 billion to the tab.

On May 1, Bush vamps in a flight suit and announces the end to "major combat operations" in Iraq in front of a "Mission Accomplished" banner that he later denies hanging up.

Signing into law the latest tax cuts, Bush calls the legislation an "economic jobs and growth bill" that will help "those who suffer." Despite focusing his remarks on working families, the bulk of the cuts go to the wealthy.

Berlusconi visits Crawford.

Uday and Qusay Hussein killed in Iraq.

After major combat operations end, violence continues. In August, the number of soldiers killed in the "peace" exceeds the numbers killed in the war.

The Valerie Plame scandal begins when Robert Novak inadvertently "outs" an undercover CIA agent. The tip was apparently leaked to Novak in order to punish ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had called Bush a liar for mentioning the Iraq-Niger connection in his State of the Union Speech.

The UN is bombed in Iraq.

With Bush's backing, the FCC passes sweeping legislation that will allow further consolidation of media holdings. A horrified Senate overturns the rules in September.

Bush pushes his "Clear Skies" initiative, which will relax industrial pollution rules. Broad coalitions form to oppose the legislation, which languishes.

After forest fires rage throughout the Northwest, Bush successfully pushes through his "Healthy Forests" legislation, allowing increased logging.

As Iraq becomes an increasingly dangerous quagmire, Bush begins to court the "old Europe" he excoriated for not supporting his invasion.

Bush pushes his energy bill--a giveaway to coal, oil, and electrical companies--though even many GOP leaders find it irresponsible.

Late-term abortion act becomes law.

After last minute wrangling tips the balance, Bush gets his Medicare Bill passed, the first major expansion in decades. Later, Rep. Nick Smith of Michigan alleges that he was offered a bribe for his vote.

Bush visits the troops in Iraq clandestinely for Thanksgiving. The image of him standing in front of a roasted turkey is beamed throughout the world. It is later revealed that the turkey was fake--soldiers get a more meager meal.

Saddam Hussein is captured, and Bush's approval numbers jump up.

November growth skyrockets--the highest number since the early 80s. The Dow pushes over 10,000 and later the NASDAQ moves above 2,000. Deficits are below earlier predictions. Employment, however, does not improve.

Halliburton accused of overcharging the government in Iraq.

Libya pledges to abandon its own WMD.

Bush announces over the Christmas holiday that he will allow logging of the Tongass National Forest, America's last substantial stand of old-growth forest. Few hear the news.

The Bush administration dominated the news in all corners of the globe last year. Bush's Iraq invasion provoked tens of millions to protest. In 2003, the word "Empire" was readily applied to the US, and is accepted without controversy--in the Atlantic Monthly, Robert Kaplan even asserted that the American empire was a positive force in the world.

Time chickened out by calling American soldiers their person of the year. They were but the instruments of a much larger force in the world: George W. Bush (and his administration), the real Person of the Year.

[Note: I reread this post and discovered some language that wasn't quite English. I fixed it.]

In the 2004 election, the boys (and girls) on the bus have been joined by a new class of political arbiters: the geeks on their laptops. They call themselves bloggers. Their mission: to remake political journalism and, quite possibly, democracy itself. The plan: to run an end around big media by becoming publishers on the Internet.

For some reason, they didn't contact this very powerful and influential blog in writing the story. Imagine.

To have pulled Saddam Hussein from his hole in the ground brings the possibility of pulling an entire country out of the dark. In an exhausting year when we've been witness to battles well beyond the battlefields—in the streets, in our homes, with our allies—to share good news felt like breaking a long fast, all the better since it came by surprise. And who delivered this gift, against all odds and risks? The same citizens who share the duty of living with, and dying for, a country's most fateful decisions.

Scholars can debate whether the Bush Doctrine is the most muscular expression of national interest in a half-century; the generals may ponder whether warmaking or peacekeeping is the more fearsome assignment; civilians will remember a winter wrapped in yellow ribbons and duct tape. But in a year when it felt at times as if we had nothing in common anymore, we were united in this hope: that our men and women at arms might soon come safely home, because their job was done. They are the bright, sharp instrument of a blunt policy, and success or failure in a war unlike any in history ultimately rests with them.

This is a magazine that's chosen Stalin (twice), Khomeini, Deng Xiaoping (twice), and Nikita Kruchev--though no one particularly thorny recently, of course. Neither Osama bin Laden nor Saddam Hussein have made the cover--despite provoking the US to war. Instead, Time has timidly retreated into a false shell of security. America's fightin' men (and women) can be depended on to save the day. If the next decade looks anything like the decade that started in 1950, wherein we retreated to a syrupy, Disney-like simalcrum, I'm not looking forward to it.

Listen to how Time envisioned the world in 1950:

As the year ended, 1950's man seemed to be an American in the bitterly unwelcome role of the fighting-man. It was not a role the American had sought, either as an individual or as a nation. The U.S. fighting-man was not civilization's crusader, but destiny's draftee.

But in fact, I'm selling the editors in 1950 short--they at least appeared to have some insight. What's really creepy is how much of their description can be used today.

Most of the men in U.S. uniform around the world had enlisted voluntarily, but few had taken to themselves the old, proud label of "regular," few had thought they would fight, and fewer still had foreseen the incredibly dirty and desperate war that waited for them. They hated it, as soldiers in all lands and times have hated wars, but the American had some special reasons for hating it. He was the most comfort- loving creature who had ever walked the earth—and he much preferred riding to walking. As well as comfort, he loved and expected order; he yearned, like other men, for a predictable world, and the fantastic fog and gamble of war struck him as a terrifying affront....

No matter how the issue was defined, whether he was said to be fighting for progress or freedom or faith or survival, the American's heritage and character were deeply bound up in the struggle. More specifically, it was inevitable that the American be in the forefront of this battle because it was the U.S. which had unleased gigantic forces of technology and organizational ideas. These had created the great 20th Century revolution. Communism was a reaction, an effort to turn the worldwide forces set free by U.S. progress back into the old channels of slavery.

The American fighting-man could not win this struggle without millions of allies—and it was the unfinished (almost unstarted) business of his government to find and mobilize those allies through U.N. and by all other means. But the allies would never be found unless the American fighting-man first took his post and did his duty. On June 27, 1950, he was ordered to his post. Since then, the world has watched how he went about doing his duty....

Like all British observers of the U.S. Army, this observer was both envious and appalled at the bulk and variety of U.S. equipment and its "amenities." One Briton in Korea says that he saw tanks held up for hours by beer and refrigerator trucks. Another, who had been with U.S. troops landing in Southern France, said last week. "In France, I thought someone was just having his little joke when they brought the office wastebaskets ashore from the ship. But damned if they didn't do the same thing in Korea, too."

...More surprising—and disgraceful—was the fact that the American fighting-man in Korea, despite his country's vaunted industrial superiority, found that his government had not given him weapons as numerous or as good as he needed and had a right to expect.

So congratulations, Time, you've offered up analysis with a 53-year-old layer of dust. I have an idea for who should have been the Person of the Year--and it wasn't the poor saps who were used as pawns in a game of international chicken. But more on that later this morning.

If taxation is restricted to the levels that prevailed in the past, the growth of entitlement spending will have to be substantially reduced. Restricting the growth of outlays for defense, education, transportation, and other discretionary programs would not be enough to ensure fiscal sustainability.

Likewise, economic growth alone is unlikely to bring the nation's long-term fiscal position into balance.

From the Executive Summary (.pdf).

But of course, these things won't become profoundly obvious until after next November. By then, Republicans hope to have safely installed a plutocracy to ensure that it won't matter.

"I've been around people who have lost a family member or have lost someone close to them and they say that person's there watching or angels, whatever. I would say two weeks ago I didn't really believe in that, but I think we'd better start believing in something."

Brett Favre, after yesterday's stunning Arizona win

Go Packers!

About 20 Republican congressmen -- all fiscal conservatives -- gathered nervously in a back room at the Hunan Dynasty restaurant on Capitol Hill on Nov. 21, trying to shore up their resolve to defy President Bush. It was the night of the big vote on the Bush administration's Medicare prescription drug bill, which they had concluded was too costly, and they began swapping tales about the intense lobbying bearing down on them....

But the most dramatic account was given by Rep. Nick Smith (Mich.), who is to retire next year and hopes his son will succeed him. According to two other congressmen who were present, Smith told the gathering that House Republican leaders had promised substantial financial and political support for his son's campaign if Smith voted yes. Smith added that his son, in a telephone call, had urged him to vote his conscience, and with the support of dissident colleagues, Smith stuck to his no vote.

Rep. Gil Gutknecht (R-Minn.), who was present at the dinner, recalled Smith saying it was "people from leadership" who had offered the money. He said Smith did not say who it was, but he assumed it was someone who controlled a "large leadership PAC, who can raise a hundred thousand dollars by hosting a few fundraisers."

"I think something happened," Gutknecht said. "If it happened, then somebody in the leadership is guilty of at least gross stupidity. . . . Whoever made that comment should resign."

"It's all going to be just as Nick said," said Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett (R-Md.). "When you see people making more than a million dollars a year on K Street, there is just too much money in the process."

Of course, the coverage happened over the holidays, when a minimum of people were reading about it (including me). So I guess I shouldn't expect it to exactly set the world on fire. You'd think some ambitious reporter who wanted to become the next Bernstein would dig around and find out who offered the bribe. That'd find its way on to the cover of the papers.

Symbol (n) [from the Greek sumbolon: mark, token] 1. a thing conventionally regard as typifying, representing, or recalling something. (Oxford)

Flag day is an odd thing. Other national holidays more obviously celebrate events or people--New Year's, MLK jr. Day--or concepts, as in Labor or Memorial Day. But for Flag Day we ritually celebrate a symbol. The flag, after all, represents the US. But we have a holiday for that--Independence Day. For flag day we honor not the country but one of the country's symbols.

(Presumably, this means the positive elements of our liberal democracy--our Constitution, freedoms, government and so on. Yet we don't hold that opinion when we see the flags of other nations. China's, for example, reminds us more of the government's repression than its original, pure fidelity to human equality. Likewise, one could argue that the flag represents the whole of America, too--the Bill of Rights as well as slavery; the liberation of Europe and the horrors of Vietnam, and so on.)

The US has always regarded its own government with something of the awe afforded to religion, and flag day is a psychological tell to this tendency. The flag, as representation of the sacred faith, is itself worthy of veneration. Normally we don't confuse the symbol with the thing it's symbolizing--tearing a picture in half is not like killing the person in the portrait. But that's not the case with the flag. For Americans, the flag is itself more than dyed and sewn cotton fiber. It is somehow imbued with the very sacred nature of the country.

When the founding fathers cleared the continent of timber and Indians, they built a society based on values, rather than race. This may not have been the first such occasion, but it was certainly a rare thing. America's self-image has always been one of values: founded by "the people"--equal, not part of a medieval caste system--who wanted to create a more perfect union celebrating life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It was a country of beliefs, not heritage. Though those beliefs have always been open to interpretation, the nature of being an American means only a belief in these ideas--nothing else is required.

It's a strange quirk then that the religion of most of the early citizens in this country-of-ideas had an almost identical theology: it doesn't matter who you are or where you came from, just what you believe. The result was an emotional response to the beliefs of the country that mirrored the emotion people felt for their Protestant Christianity. Subsequent democracies, borrowing almost wholesale from the US Constitution, resisted this identification--partly because they hadn't knitted the country together solely from the fabric of thought, partly because they had other, pre-existing self-images about what it meant to be, say, French or Indian.

So America has always deified itself, inadvertently, innocently, and unconsciously. So many examples exist, but veneration of the flag has always been the most provocative. That veneration leads self-proclaimed patriots burn the flag--either in celebration of the purity of the rights granted in the Constitution, or ritually, once a flag had become stained and tattered. The debate isn't as much about the sacredness of the flag as to the appropriate ritual with which it should be honored.

But at the end of the day, the flag is nothing more than cloth, a symbol. What it represents--liberty or enslavement, opportunity or oppression--is a moving target. In American history we find all of them. As a symbol, the flag is only a reflection of the civic good we embody in our policies and actions. This weekend, I've heard a lot of discussion about how people plan to celebrate flag day. But thinking about the celebration of the flag (or even its ritual meaning) misses the larger point: it's not the symbol we should be considering, it's the policies of the country that flag represents. After all, a symbol can only reflect the thing for which it stands.

Northwest residents probably have eaten meat from a Holstein with mad cow disease, agriculture officials said Friday, as several grocery chains recalled specific kinds of beef that could contain the cow's meat.

On a personal note, after reading Fast Food Nation, I made a personal promise to refrain from eating beef until the entire beef processing industry was reformed. (By then I'd essentially quit calling myself a vegetarian, due to regular meaty lapses.) I was successful until last week, when I relapsed and had a burger while watching (the delightful) School of Rock at the Mission Theater. Which means: for the next ten years I'll be wondering if my brain is about to rot. I will not be proudly serving beef at Christmas or any other meal.

And just for the record, we have yet another cabinet member on record lying to the public. Yeah, yeah, good ol' Ann may have been ignorant to her lie and so the NRO types will give her a pass. Fine, go ahead. But let me ask: did anyone actually believe the woman when she trotted out the official announcement? No administration has done more to erode public confidence than this one, and public safety is a perfect example of why it matters.

The dictator of Iraq has got weapons of mass destruction. . . . We know what it means to disarm; we know what a disarmed regime does. We know how a disarmed regime accounts for weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein is not disarming, like the world has told him he must do.

Closer to the invasion, Bush's rhetoric heightened.

Great Britain, Spain, and the United States have introduced a new resolution stating that Iraq has failed to meet the requirements of Resolution 1441. Saddam Hussein is not disarming. This is a fact. It cannot be denied.

Saddam Hussein has a long history of reckless aggression and terrible crimes. He possesses weapons of terror. . . .

If the world fails to confront the threat posed by the Iraqi regime, refusing to use force, even as a last resort, free nations would assume immense and unacceptable risks. The attacks of September the 11th, 2001 showed what the enemies of America did with four airplanes. We will not wait to see what terrorists or terrorist states could do with weapons of mass destruction.

We are determined to confront threats wherever they arise. I will not leave the American people at the mercy of the Iraqi dictator and his weapons. | link |

This pointed speech was given after he'd trotted out Colin Powell, who had given the particulars of these weapons:

Let's look at one. This one is about a weapons munition facility, a facility that holds ammunition at a place called Taji. This is one of about 65 such facilities in Iraq. We know that this one has housed chemical munitions. In fact, this is where the Iraqis recently came up with the additional four chemical weapons shells.

Here you see 15 munitions bunkers in yellow and red outlines. The four that are in red squares represent active chemical munitions bunkers.

How do I know that? How can I say that? Let me give you a closer look. Look at the image on the left. On the left is a close-up of one of the four chemical bunkers. The two arrows indicate the presence of sure signs that the bunkers are storing chemical munitions. The arrow at the top that says "security" points to a facility that is a signature item for this kind of bunker. Inside that facility are special guards and special equipment to monitor any leakage that might come out of the bunker. The truck you also see is a signature item. It's a decontamination vehicle in case something goes wrong. This is characteristic of those four bunkers. The special security facility and the decontamination vehicle will be in the area, if not at any one of them or one of the other, it is moving around those four and it moves as needed to move as people are working in the different bunkers.

| link |

Alternative Reality
The war is over, but the press is behaving like it's still embedded. Rather than investigate the administration's lies--perhaps because the prospect is too shocking--media are now happily using the Bushian language of "intelligence failures." As in, "Pressure mounts to find causes of intelligence failures." I Googled the phrase and found 193 references. In a week I expect to see ten times that amount.

Serious journalists are on the scene. But they are the same folks who were questioning all the logic-defying war justifications in the first place. The alternative, bombs-bursting-in-air reality won the day. The FBI and CIA are already national scapegoats--how convenient will it be to place this at their feet?

The President has again lied to the people. But this lie, unlike that made-for-Fox reality lie of President Clinton, is hard for Americans to confront. It's inconceivable that our President would blatantly make up facts to justify invading another country. And because two thirds of the population supported the invasion, accepting this truth means the country must admit they've been taken as rubes. The president's a liar? My patriotism has been taken advantage of? We put our soldiers in harm's way based on a lie?

No. It can't be. Must be the damn CIA and their intelligence failure.

Capping more than 10 years of intense controversy over the fate of some of the nation's last remaining old-growth forest, the Bush administration yesterday finalized the opening of 300,000 acres of Alaska's Tongass National Forest for logging and other development.

"This is the end of a very long process," said Mark Rey, undersecretary for natural resources and the environment at the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the national forest system. "We used the best scientific information available to strike a balance between protecting as much as we could . . . while maintaining a small part of the Tongass for use and management to sustain the 72,000 people who live in southeastern Alaska."

This functions like a gut-shot to those of us who give a damn about the US's natural resources, and I'm guessing that's what it was intended to be. Bush plays his politics with bare knuckles. Nice to see that our last remaining substantial stand of old-growth will pay the price along with pesky liberals. What the hell--it's a decision that will take only five hundred years to reverse.

And Merry Chritsmas to you, too!

DIANE SAWYER: But let me try to ask — this could be a long question. ... ... When you take a look back, Vice President Cheney said there is no doubt, Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, not programs, not intent. There is no doubt he has weapons of mass destruction. Secretary Powell said 100 to 500 tons of chemical weapons and now the inspectors say that there's no evidence of these weapons existing right now. The yellow cake in Niger, in Niger. George Tenet has said that shouldn't have been in your speech. Secretary Powell talked about mobile labs. Again, the intelligence — the inspectors have said they can't confirm this, they can't corroborate.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Yet.

SAWYER: — an active —

BUSH: Yet.

SAWYER: Is it yet?

BUSH: But what David Kay did discover was they had a weapons program, and had that, that — let me finish for a second. Now it's more extensive than, than missiles. Had that knowledge been examined by the United Nations or had David Kay's report been placed in front of the United Nations, he, he, Saddam Hussein, would have been in material breach of 1441, which meant it was a causis belli. And look, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein was a dangerous person, and there's no doubt we had a body of evidence proving that, and there is no doubt that the president must act, after 9/11, to make America a more secure country.

SAWYER: Again, I'm just trying to ask, these are supporters, people who believed in the war who have asked the question.

BUSH: Well, you can keep asking the question and my answer's gonna be the same. Saddam was a danger and the world is better off cause we got rid of him.

SAWYER: But stated as a hard fact, that there were weapons of mass destruction as opposed to the possibility that he could move to acquire those weapons still —

BUSH: So what's the difference?

There's more, but let's just pause for a moment to consider that last comment. What's the difference. Indeed, one imagines this is not a rhetorical question. And that is what's shocking. (But it's Howard Dean who's a little slow on foreign policy.) The exchange continues:

SAWYER: Well —

BUSH: The possibility that he could acquire weapons. If he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger. That's, that's what I'm trying to explain to you. A gathering threat, after 9/11, is a threat that needed to be de — dealt with, and it was done after 12 long years of the world saying the man's a danger. And so we got rid of him and there's no doubt the world is a safer, freer place as a result of Saddam being gone.

SAWYER: But, but, again, some, some of the critics have said this combined with the failure to establish proof of, of elaborate terrorism contacts, has indicated that there's just not precision, at best, and misleading, at worst.

BUSH: Yeah. Look — what — what we based our evidence on was a very sound National Intelligence Estimate. ...

SAWYER: Nothing should have been more precise?

BUSH: What — I, I — I made my decision based upon enough intelligence to tell me that this country was threatened with Saddam Hussein in power.

SAWYER: What would it take to convince you he didn't have weapons of mass destruction?

BUSH: Saddam Hussein was a threat and the fact that he is gone means America is a safer country.

SAWYER: And if he doesn't have weapons of mass destruction [inaudible] —

BUSH: Diane, you can keep asking the question. I'm telling you — I made the right decision for America —
SAWYER: But-

BUSH: — because Saddam Hussein used weapons of mass destruction, invaded Kuwait. ... But the fact that he is not there is, means America's a more secure country.

As a special envoy for the Reagan administration in 1984, Donald H. Rumsfeld, now the defense secretary, traveled to Iraq to persuade officials there that the United States was eager to improve ties with President Saddam Hussein despite his use of chemical weapons, newly declassified documents show.

Mr. Rumsfeld, who ran a pharmaceutical company at the time, was tapped by Secretary of State George P. Shultz to reinforce a message that a recent move to condemn Iraq's use of chemical weapons was strictly in principle and that America's priority was to prevent an Iranian victory in the Iran-Iraq war and to improve bilateral ties.

During that war, the United States secretly provided Iraq with combat planning assistance, even after Mr. Hussein's use of chemical weapons was widely known. The highly classified program involved more than 60 officers of the Defense Intelligence Agency, who shared intelligence on Iranian deployments, bomb-damage assessments and other crucial information with Iraq.

The disclosures round out a picture of American outreach to the Iraqi government, even as the United States professed to be neutral in the eight-year war, and suggests a private nonchalance toward Mr. Hussein's use of chemicals in warfare. Mr. Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials have cited Iraq's use of poisonous gas as a main reason for ousting Mr. Hussein.

What we need next is a little excavation--finding quotes wherein the Bushies talked about their own moral clarity in dealing with Iraq, while in the meantime slagging France and others for their dealings with the dictator. Supporting quotes from the rah-rah crowd, praising the moral clarity, would also be nice. Anyone got anything handy?

Declassified Rummy documents here. now that I am more caffeinated and alert, I'm reminded of why Rummy's not such a nice guy.

Last August, in a moment of supreme synergy, Mr. Perle, wearing his defense-insider hat, co-wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed praising the Pentagon's controversial Boeing tanker deal. He didn't disclose Boeing's $2.5 million investment in Trireme.

Sure enough, Hollinger also invested $2.5 million in Trireme, which is advised by Lord Black. In addition, Mr. Perle was paid more than $300,000 a year and received $2 million in bonuses as head of a Hollinger subsidiary. It's good to have friends.

The real surprise, though, is that two prominent journalists, William Buckley and George Will, were also regular paid advisors to Hollinger.

This is fascinating because, as many of you will recall, the right has long attacked Krugman for his "connections" to Enron. There wasn't anything in those slanders (but that's rarely germaine to a right-wing hit project), but now the question will be: is there anything to Krugman's charges? Time and again, the right has pointedly assaulted Krugman, assuming he'd respond the same way most other timid lefties responded in the PD era ("pre-Dean")--by "aw shucks"-ing an apology cum justification. Are they reaping more of what they've sown? No doubt Will and Buckley will fire back. I look forward to the sparring.

(Meanwhile, to give David Brooks his due props, today's article is right on the money. He's irritated that the other Dems aren't trying to demolish Dean--I wonder why?--but his analysis about the dynamic in the Democratic Party seems accurate. He has also (I think unwittingly) uncovered the reason the Dean campaign is very good for the party.)

Nationalism (n) the conviction that the culture and interests of your nation are superior to those of any other nation. (Princeton)

Last night I watched I Am Cuba, a 1964 Soviet-produced anti-American movie about the Cuban revolution. (And not because—as the suspicious among you might imagine—I was in an anti-American pique after the President’s announcement of unilateral pre-emption. Actually it was because a friend had loaned us that DVD, left the country, and is due to return tomorrow: I couldn’t face the prospect of confessing I hadn’t watched it in the five months he was gone. I was, of course, caught in the throes of an anti-Bush pique as well.)

The film is a product of the socialist realism school, and it’s claim to fame is the extraordinary camerawork of director Mikhail Kalatozov. Deservedly so. But beyond that it’s a pretty lousy film, because the dogma is so obvious and cartoonish. It shows creepy American businessmen in the Batista era indulging their basest, capitalist-imperialist desires at the expense of hard-working Cubans. One narrative follows a prostitute whom we realize in 1.3 seconds is a metaphor for Cuba—prostituted to imperialists. And so it goes.

The film’s failure as art is revealed in 2003 much more obviously than it would have been 40 years ago. The hypotheses that saturate the film—that capitalism is the root of all evil, and assorted manifestations—seem silly and quaint at best. Film is most successful when it challenges the viewer to think. I Am Cuba doesn’t, because all the issues are settled in our mind: the result is an oddity from a lost age with bitchin’ camerawork.

Or maybe not. Watching a movie like I Am Cuba reminds us that so much of what we “know” is actually what we assume. It is instructive because we know that at one time, such a film—and films like it—were effective because people held different assumptions. Through the eyes of history, all nationalist rhetoric looks silly and quaint and often deadly dangerous. Nazi nationalism, particularly, fills me with dread because its so easy to see where it came from. Out of the desperation of WWI, Hitler fashioned a nationalism of pride and rage.

So it was interesting to watch that film on the day our own President (sort of) declared war. Over the coming days and weeks, Americans will be thrown into deep ambivalence: support for the troops on one hand, resentment and fear that the whole endeavor is a massive debacle on the other. Polls already show that the country is rallying around the President and the troops. Presumably, when the slightest events turn negative, those numbers will drop, reflecting the fear and resentment.

Standing on the edge of the abyss, I can’t help but think that the President’s arrogance is of the same, garden variety arrogance the world has seen so many times. I am willing to bet the farm that in 40 years, his nationalist rhetoric will look as quaint and silly as the Soviet Union’s does now. Americans are not patriots if they follow his blind arrogance—they’re nationalists. The commitment to the ideals of the Constitution are not embodied by a United States that invades countries pre-emptively and against the wishes of its allies. American nationalism is particularly alluring because we all participate in its manufacture—it doesn’t come from the propaganda ministry. But it’s still the same old nationalism. Real patriots question their leaders: patriotic leaders welcome the questions.

Oppose Bush's folly.

By the end of this year's congressional session, Republicans had tightened their already firm grip on the House and moved to marginalize Democrats' influence in both chambers by shutting them out of negotiations on the final version of major bills.

They excluded Democrats from endgame bargaining over legislation to spur energy production. They allowed only Democrats of their choosing to participate in negotiations over restructuring Medicare -- Democrats who, it turned out, were willing to support the GOP-drafted version. And, after a bipartisan start, they barred Democrats from final decisions on the $328 billion spending bill for nonmilitary activities of government....

"It's almost anything goes," said Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.). "I think we're on the edge of something dangerous if we don't turn it around. . . . It's like the Middle East. You just keep ratcheting up the intensity of the conflict."

"It really is one-party, winner-take-all rule, almost like parliamentary government," with its top-down chain of command and strong party discipline, said James Thurber, a political science professor at American University.

"Now Republicans have established the principle: We can do it without them," said Norman Ornstein, an expert on Congress at the American Enterprise Institute.

That Bush, he really is a uniter, not a divider.

When a federal appeals court in New York ruled that President Bush lacked the authority to detain indefinitely a United States citizen arrested on U.S. soil simply by declaring him an "enemy combatant," some of the headlines called the decision a setback for the Bush administration's war on terrorism....

For a president who takes seriously his oath to abide by the Constitution, such a ruling would not be a burden. If it proves to be a burden for Bush, whose familiarity with the Bill of Rights appears to be woefully limited, so be it. But this is not the news that mattered....

The news that matters is this: With these rulings, the courts have begun to reassert the primacy of the Constitution. They have reminded us that the intention of the founders remains the guiding principle of the land: The United States will be ruled by laws, not men. This simple precept, so cherished throughout our history, has been under serious assault since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. President Bush, Attorney General John Ashcroft and much of the Congress lost sight of the most basic of their duties - to defend the Constitution. A few members of Congress, most notably Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., did their best to remind official Washington that the Bill of Rights still applies.

And now I'm off shopping ... for a couch (long story).

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) announced yesterday that he is putting $850,000 of his own money into his presidential campaign and will put more in as soon as he gets a mortgage on his home on Beacon Hill in Boston....

Sources said Kerry was close to running out of money to finance his campaign. After getting off to a fast start, raising more than $7 million in the first quarter of 2003, sources said he is likely to raise between $1 million and $2 million in the final three months of the year, just when demands for travel, staff and television advertising are escalating rapidly.

Between one and two million? That's shockingly low. Sometime after the first of the year, numbers will come out again, and the polling deficit in New Hampshire will narrow compared to the money deficit.

I suspect Kucinich will raise more than that--he did last quarter, and his campaign is looking more robust than Kerry's. Kucinich has done something Kerry and Lieberman never did manage--he found a grassroots base. Because he polls so badly, he's inevitably thrown in the Sharpton and Braun camp. But those candidates have no base--do they even have a network of supporter websites? Kucinich is out working, setting up broad support.

Part of the reason he hasn't gotten the press he needs to get the support in the polls (which will give him the press--that old vicious cycle) is because he hasn't raised that much money. Let's see what happens if he comes in as a credible second-tier candidate and finishes ahead of Kerry. Could be an important boost.

Currently, Oregon allows its citizens a tax credit ($100 for couples, $50 for individuals) for donations to political action committees, also known as PACs. But this credit is only available until December 31, 2003. If you don't make your PAC donation by then, you'll lose the opportunity to claim this special credit forever.

It won't cost you anything - despite what you may have heard about getting something for nothing.

Here's how it works: You send your $100 or $50 donation before December 31, and next April 13 as you're madly filling out your tax returns, you'll be able to take a credit for that same amount. That means you'll owe the state $100 or $50 less than you would have without making the donation.

This works with any PAC, of course, not just the Bus Project. They're a pretty good choice, though, so I'll include information about them here. I'm happy to post a list of how to give to other worthy PACs if people send me along their contact info. This is a great opportunity, folks, so I hope you all take advantage of it.

BusPAC
PO Box 15132
Portland, OR 97293
503.233.3018
email info@busproject.org.

President Bush does not have power to detain American citizen Jose Padilla, the former gang member seized on U.S. soil, as an enemy combatant, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

The decision could force the government to try Padilla, held in a so-called "dirty bomb" plot, in civilian courts.

In a 2-1 ruling, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Padilla's detention was not authorized by Congress and that Bush could not designate him as an enemy combatant without the authorization.

After rulings against the DOJ yesterday, the Bush administration must be starting to feel a little picked-on. No doubt this will fire them up to be that much more intent on placing ideological judges on federal benches.

(As a reminder, Talk Left has the last word on issues legal. Jeralyn has some nice stuff about the Ashcroft decisions. I expect her to begin posting on Padilla later today.)

The Ohio congressman boasts atrocious poll numbers in New Hampshire and Iowa but has struck a chord in Portland. Kucinich for President 2004 lays claim to the only local office for any presidential candidate (1420 SE 37th Ave.). This fervent following has a database of 600 volunteer names, including a core group of about 65 who have helped raise more than $150,000 with 2,000 individual donations in Oregon.

In general what should be called left v. liberal in economics comes down to market intervention. Liberals support tax and transfer policies and public spending but (relatively speaking) shy away from market regulation, especially in the realm of trade. Liberals think you should balance the budget over the business cycle, uphold a minimum wage, expand environmental protection, and absolutely leave trade alone. They also think you should let the Federal Reserve do whatever it likes, to preserve its "independence" (sic) from politics. For liberals, labor is just another "interest group" -- something to superintend and care for, given the limits implied by fiscal moderation, free trade, and Fed supremacy....

The constructive leftist is amenable to deficit finance, as long as debt does not grow too fast. She is more amenable to regulation and a European-style public sector (i.e., 40 percent of GDP, rather than less than 30% as in the US). She would like to incorporate social clauses on human and labor rights and environmental standards into trade agreements. She would like to restructure the Fed towards democratic norms. She looks to labor for industrial action in defense of economic justice, not obedience to Democratic Party orthodoxy....

The left is criticized for favoring "equality of result" rather than opportunity. The implication is that those so favored are undeserving, unqualified. This assumption is used to prove itself, in rebuttal to actual demographic data on qualifications. A fair selection process for jobs or other opportunities would roughly conform to demographics (including factors going to qualifications, such as education). When results are observed that diverge radically from what we could expect, there is a case for government intervention. Fairness or its lack derives from where the power to control selection is.

I don't want you to think this is a fair summation of Max's point--it's not. It is one of the best posts I've read there, so do yourself a favor and go read it.

Next we turn to Crooked Timber, where Dan Davies argues that econ ain't science, it's rhetoric. A hotly-contested point, as you might imagine.

The point is this; economics is, as Deirdre McCloskey points out regularly, a form of rhetoric. At its heart, it is and has always been about the construction of a certain kind of argument, which is meant to be persuasive over human action. I state this without argument, in the knowledge that many people at work in the field believe that they are involved in a project of genuine scientific enquiry. I feel no argument of mine is ever going to carry the day on this issue, so if anyone wants to make the case for economics as a science, I’ll simply respond thus: "Sir, I gracefully concede that you yourself and your department are engaged in a value-neutral quest for scientific facts about the allocation of resources under conditions of scarcity. I apologise for having suggested otherwise. But would you at least grant me that the description 'A form of rhetoric … the construction of arguments aimed to be persuasive over human action' is a decent description of what all those other bastards are up to?"

Brad DeLong, criticized in the article, rebuts.

The court on Tuesday ruled that prosecuting medicinal marijuana users under the 1970 Controlled Substances Act is unconstitutional in states that allow such use under the advice of a doctor, if the cannabis isn't sold or transported across state lines or used for non-medicinal purposes.

"The intrastate, non-commercial cultivation, possession and use of marijuana for personal medical purposes on the advice of a physician'' is different from drug trafficking, the court wrote in its majority opinion [the ruling was 2-1]. "Moreover, this limited use is clearly distinct from the broader illicit drug market.''

This effort was Ashcroft's attempt to subvert state law (upheld by the California Supreme Court) in his continuing crusade to bend the law in order to punish those he finds immoral. He has a similar effort pending to use drug laws to punish doctors in Oregon who participate in the voter-passed and state-supreme-court-upheld Death with Dignity Act.

The Federal Election Commission has determined that Attorney General John D. Ashcroft's unsuccessful 2000 Senate reelection campaign violated election laws by accepting $110,000 in illegal contributions from a committee Ashcroft had established to explore running for president.

In documents released yesterday by the FEC, Garrett M. Lott, treasurer for the two Ashcroft committees, the Spirit of America PAC and Ashcroft 2000, agreed to pay a $37,000 fine for at least four violations of federal campaign law. Lott agreed "not to contest" the charges.

U.S. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft was sanctioned by a federal judge on Tuesday for twice violating a court-imposed gag order in the Detroit terror trial….
"Two serious transgressions committed in this case are simply one too many for the court to abide with no response," U.S. District Judge Gerald E. Rosen wrote in an 83-page opinion. "More than a warning is necessary here."

Rosen criticized comments Ashcroft made at two press conferences -- the first on Oct. 31, 2001, and the second on April 17 -- in which Ashcroft praised a government witness during the trial of four Arab immigrants in Detroit….

In a Nov. 26 letter to Rosen that was made public Tuesday, Ashcroft apologized for what he said was an inadvertent violation of the judge's order.

Immigration advocates file a suit charging that it is unlawful to use police crime databases to target illegal immigrants. The Justice Department began adding the names of immigration violators to the databases about two years ago as part of post-Sept. 11 reforms.

Audio here.

All of this is ripe for inclusion in the Dossiers. So it shall be.

Howard Dean is the only guy who goes to the Beverly Hills area for a gravitas implant. He went to the St. Regis Hotel, a mile from Rodeo Drive, to deliver a major foreign policy speech, and suddenly Dr. Angry turned into the Rev. Dull and Worthy....

Dean tried yesterday to show how sober and serious he could be. In fact, he has never appeared so much the dreamer, so clueless about the intellectual and cultural divides that really do confront us and with which real presidents have to grapple.

So much for the pretense of objectivity.

(CNN) Nader has formed an exploratory committee for a 2004 run and said he would gauge his support through the success of fund-raising efforts and the number of volunteers who come forward.

Let him run: he's dead. The Greens don't want anything to do with him and neither do the Democrats. Liberal voters feel alternately betrayed, disenfranchized, or embarrassed by him. Who's going to back him? In electoral politics, you get one good shot at it. After a half-assed run in '96, Nader got his serious shot in 2000. That's the last you'll ever see of him, "exploratory committee" or no.

RIP, Ralph.

Maybe I'm giving Paul Wolfowitz too much credit, but I don't think this was mere incompetence. I think the administration's hard-liners are deliberately sabotaging reconciliation....

In short, this week's diplomatic debacle probably reflects an internal power struggle, with hawks using the contracts issue as a way to prevent Republican grown-ups from regaining control of U.S. foreign policy. And initial indications are that the ploy is working -- that the hawks have, once again, managed to tap into Mr. Bush's fondness for moralistic, good-versus-evil formulations. "It's very simple," Mr. Bush said yesterday. "Our people risk their lives. . . . Friendly coalition folks risk their lives. . . . The contracting is going to reflect that."

Care to hazard a guess about whether the K-haters will see it in these terms? I'm going to guess they won't. Shockingly.

29% Dean, 29% Gov. Howard, VT - Democrat
29% Kucinich, Rep. Dennis, OH - Democrat
17% Bush, President George W. - Republican
7% Clark, Retired General Wesley K., AR - Democrat

The day after Presidential Candidate Dennis Kucinich took ABC debate moderator Ted Koppel to task for avoiding questions that would be useful to voters in favor of questions about endorsements, money, and polls, ABC pulled its fulltime "embedded" reporter from the Kucinich campaign, a reporter who had been given no warning that such a move was coming and who had discussed at length yesterday with the Kucinich campaign staff her plans and her needs for the coming months.

The only winners are those few billionaires wealthy enough to fund ballot initiatives, influence elections and buy attack ads against groups such as the NRA and labor unions who are left unable to defend themselves. This law also protects incumbents and wealthy, self-funded candidates because it puts a premium on raising or having money and harms the ability of grassroots organizations to participate in our democracy. Only incumbents are able to hire the lawyers and accountants they need to advise them on how to get around this complicated and draconian law. Regular people will be intimidated and choose not to participate in politics for fear of running afoul of its provisions.

If something about that strikes you as a little off (perhaps you recall headlines of gerrymanders in Pennsylvania, mid-decade redistricting in Colorado and Texas), you're starting to see the GOP's strategy emerge. Having gerrymandered every district down to specific homes (there's also a good article in last week's New Yorker on that), Republicans (generally, although Dems are at fault, too) have narrowed the competitive races in the US to about 30 (for congressional seats).

That's a PR problem for the GOP. So along comes McCain-Feingold, which sort of sucks because it means the GOP is going to have to figure out new ways to get its political payoffs. Ah, but wait!--why not blame the incumbency problem on McCain-Feingold, demonizing a law that sucks for the corrupt, and hiding a an unrelated, but also corrupted process that looks pretty bad.

In the next few days and weeks, the GOP are going to strenuously argue that McCain-Feingold is bad because it restricts "free speech." You have to ask yourself how much sense that makes coming from the party of John "Material Witness" Ashcroft, Dick "Undisclosed Location" Cheney, and George "No Need for an Investigation into Why I Lied My Ass Off to Conduct a Misguided Invasion" Bush. Let's just say that they have not, heretofore, been such enormous free speech advocates. You also might consider why it is that the party in control of both houses of Congress, the presidency, and the majority of statehouses, is so interested in making sure incumbents don't have too much power.

All of that may incline you to think that campaign finance laws ain't so bad. You'd be right.

A sharply divided Supreme Court upheld key features of the nation's new law intended to lessen the influence of money in politics, ruling Wednesday that the government may ban unlimited donations to political parties....

Congress may regulate campaign money to prevent the real or perceived corruption of political candidates, a 5-4 majority of the court ruled. That goal and most of the rules Congress drafted to meet it outweigh limitations on the free speech of candidates and others in politics, the majority said.

You will not be shocked to learn that it was the the partisan four (Scalia, Rehnquist, Thomas, and Kennedy--who, along with O'Connor, voted for Bush in Gore v. Bush) opposed it. The ruling is 300-pages long, so details will trickle out as people begin to understand the implications. In short, though, it's a massive victory for those who want to regulate money in elections, and in demonstrating that the earlier "money is speech" ruling is not inviolable. It may be hurting Dems in the short run, but it will benefit voters over time. Among the provisions upheld: soft money bans are okay and bans on hit pieces before an election are okay (this was expected to be ruled unconsitutional). That last one in particular should be important in slowing the erosion of trust in our elected officials.

Break out the champagne.

Looking at Dean now, one can see that he is the energetic/passionate/populist successor to Gore. Like it or not, that emotion resonates with Democratic voters. Will he be too hot for swing voters? Perhaps. But those folks weren't necessarily turned off in 2000. Also, its more likely than not that Dean will appeal to the bulk of the Ralph Nader supporters next time around. Besides, Gore was the epitome of the "establishment" Democrat for years. In fact, one of the reasons why Clinton picked Gore in 1992 was because he was part of the Democratic elite (as well as being another southern member of the Democratic Leadership Committee). Gore's blessing will now free other wary establishment Democrats to feel comfortable joining Dean....

If Dean goes on to win the Democratic nomination — as now seems likely — the partisan and geographic split in the country will be almost complete. A candidate of the blue northeast — with likely appeal to the blue Pacific states — will be running a tough campaign against a president clearly identified with the red south and mountain states. The various values of each region could hardly be more different. It's uncomfortable to think that even after 9/11, America could conceivably be just as polarized as ever. Given what occurred in 2000, expect a general election battle royal in the midwest states (where at least a couple are annoyed with the president because of the steel tariff flip-flop).

Karl Rove said he wanted Howard Dean. It appears he's got him. It might not be Bush-Gore II, but it could be the second-best/worst thing.

Gore to endorse Howard Dean.

By choosing Dean, Gore would be bypassing Sen. Joseph Lieberman, one of Dean's Democratic rivals -- and Gore's running mate from the 2000 election.

Does this signal the death rattle of the DLC? Or is Al just setting Hillary up for a run in '08?

Part of Dean's appeal is that he behaves in recognizably human ways. He talks with real emotion and seems to respond to events (if sometimes poorly) as they come. In this election season, Dean's responsive, even angry, voice has had political resonance. Many Dean supporters objected not just to the war in Iraq itself, but also to the Bush administration's failure to even maintain the appearance of listening to the massive protests and U.N. resolutions. By contrast, responsiveness is the essential sound of the Dean campaign. It is embodied not only in Dean himself, but also in the blog, which creates the impression of a constant dialogue between supporters and campaign staff, and in the organizing on the ground.

Progressives and Kucitizens: if we have to lose, this is not an unkind cut. He may not have the politics of Dennis, but it's been a long time since we've had a major candidate to support who didn't get his policy position from a polling firm.

The unemployment rate has remained between 5.6% and 6.4% since the recovery began two years ago, and this sustained period of relatively high unemployment has led to diminished growth of hourly wages (see figure). Since November 2002, hourly wages are up 2.1% (approximately the rate of inflation), the slowest annual growth rate since March 1987. On a quarterly basis, wages are growing at an annual rate of less than 1.0%, well below inflation. Thus, despite high productivity and profits, many workers are losing ground in the current labor market. (Itals mine.)

In other words: things could be better.

"Today I signed a proclamation ending the temporary steel safeguard measures I put in place in March 2002. Prior to that time, steel prices were at 20-year lows, and the U.S. International Trade Commission found that a surge in imports to the U.S. market was causing serious injury to our domestic steel industry. I took action to give the industry a chance to adjust to the surge in foreign imports, and to give relief to the workers and communities that depend on steel for their jobs and livelihoods.

"These safeguard measures have now achieved their purpose. And as a result of changed economic circumstances, it is time to lift them. The U.S. steel industry wisely used the 21 months of breathing space we provided to consolidate and restructure. The industry made progress, increasing productivity, lowering production costs, and making America more competitive with foreign steel producers.

Well, it makes a good story (though not as good as the British Airways dodge). Is anyone buying it? I should say, is anyone not employed by Clear Channel or Fox buying it? No, particularly not those in Europe, who are gleefully declaring victory. The Economist, who endorsed Bush (and lost me), had this scathing appraisal:

On December 4th, a mere 20 months after imposing the tariffs, Mr Bush withdrew them. The president said his decision was based on his “strong belief” that America was “better off with a world that trades freely and a world that trades fairly.” It would be nice to think that a chastened Mr Bush had recovered his zeal for free trade. The truth is that the White House's electoral-college-vote-counters, led by Karl Rove, realised that a fight with Europe, as well as with the steel-making countries in Asia who stood ready to pile in, was not worth it....

The EU's strategy of retaliation was especially clever. It would slap new tariffs on Floridian oranges and a host of other American exports from Republican southern and western states. The last thing Mr Rove wanted was for textile workers in the Carolinas to start voting Democratic. Steel executives called the Europeans' threat “blackmail”, which it undoubtedly was.

Blackmail the President paid, without so much as a whimper. He did offer a pretty story, though, so he gets some points for that.

The story gained altitude when White House communications director Dan Bartlett walked into the media cabin on the return flight from Baghdad and announced that Air Force One had come within sight of a British Airways flight over water. The British Airways pilot, Bartlett said, radioed to ask, "Did I just see Air Force One?," and, after a pause, the Air Force One pilot radioed back, "Gulfstream 5." After a long silence, Bartlett said, the British Airways pilot seemed to realize he was in on a secret and said, "Oh."

But Bartlett's story was no more real than the Thanksgiving turkey Bush posed with in Baghdad. We know this because British Airways, which actually does exist, didn't see Air Force One. Oops. Milbank continues,

The White House then brought out Version 2.0: Bartlett said the pilot of a British Airways plane had the conversation with air traffic control in London, not Air Force One, while the two planes were flying off the western coast of England just before daybreak. But British Airways said that did not happen either. And Britain's National Air Traffic Services agreed.

Wising up, the administration yesterday decided to be a bit more vague so that the pesky reporters couldn't check up. Here we go to Scott McClellan, sweating while he recites the official new story.

"The pilot of the aircraft asked whether the aircraft behind it was Air Force One. After consulting the flight plan of those aircraft in the sector at that time, the center responded that the aircraft was a Gulfstream V. NATS notes reports that U.S. officials have said that for security reasons, Air Force One had filed a flight plan which stated that the service would operated by a Gulfstream V."

So as they pointed out, it was a non-U.K. operator. What Colonel Tillman and the pilots on board Air Force One believed at the time when they heard the conversation was that it was a British Airways plane, because there had been a British Airways plane that had been in the vicinity of Air Force One on the way across. And Colonel Tillman -- and, in fact, they knew it was there because they had been using the call sign that British Airways uses when they communicate with the control center. Colonel Tillman and the pilots then heard the conversation, and to them the conversation sounded like it was coming from a pilot with a British accent. And so that's why they had concluded that it was a British Airways plane.

Got that?

Washington's governor, Democrat Gary Locke, has summoned the Legislature back to Olympia to do just one thing -- to cancel the 2004 presidential primary, now scheduled for early March.

Locke: "There's no need for a presidential party that neither party is going to use. We can save $7 million in the process by canceling the primary for this one time."

Let me ask: does a democracy seem out of whack when the government has to cancel elections because it's broke, but the candidates are raising record sums?

Smith, self term-limited, is leaving Congress. His lawyer son Brad is one of five Republicans seeking to replace him from a GOP district in Michigan's southern tier. On the House floor, Nick Smith was told business interests would give his son $100,000 in return for his father's vote. When he still declined, fellow Republican House members told him they would make sure Brad Smith never came to Congress. After Nick Smith voted no and the bill passed, Duke Cunningham of California and other Republicans taunted him that his son was dead meat.

The rest of the story's here. Go tell someone about it.

bizarro world (n) The alternative reality created by the Bush administration in which logic runs backward or forward, or both, in order to justify whatever it is the Bushies are trying to justify at the moment. Bizarro world logic is not beholden to the laws of physics or scientific fact. In a triumph of appropriation, the Bush administration is the first, truly postmodern regime: everything is subjective.

Example: Saddam Hussein is a nuclear risk, so the US must invade. The absence of any evidence that he was actually in possession of, or even trying to make nuclear weapons, is therefore a triumph of the US's policy to stop them.

Or, if you prefer, Bush's derring-do to visit Baghdad for Thanksgiving was an example of how much the President is committed to his troops. What a great guy, a down-to-earth guy, having turkey with the boys, never mind the personal risk he was taking. It wasn't for the press, it was for the troops.

But outside of bizarro world, things looked a little different:

In the most widely published image from his Thanksgiving day trip to Baghdad, the beaming president is wearing an Army workout jacket and surrounded by soldiers as he cradles a huge platter laden with a golden-brown turkey....

But as a small sign of the many ways the White House maximized the impact of the 21/2-hour stop at the Baghdad airport, administration officials said yesterday that Bush picked up a decoration, not a serving plate....

White House officials do not deny that they craft elaborate events to showcase Bush, but they maintain that these events are designed to accurately dramatize his policies and to convey qualities about him that are real.

"This was effective, because it captured something about the president that people know is true, that he really cares about the soldiers and gets emotional when he sees them," Mary Matalin, a former administration official, said about the trip to Baghdad. "You have to figure out how to capture the Bush we know, even if it doesn't come through in a speech situation or a press conference. He regularly rejects anything that is not him."

And something else that's real: Bush's approval numbers jumped following the stunt. You just, you know, have to show the "real" President. Even if he's standing in front of a fake turkey.

Sixteen Republican legislators who voted this year for an $800 million tax increase should resign if voters reject the increase, Libertarian Party of Oregon officials declared Monday.

If those Republicans don't resign, Libertarian candidates will run against them next year in an effort to pull fiscally conservative votes away and prevent the Republicans from winning, said Libertarian Chairman Tom Cox and other party officials....

Most of the lawmakers voting for the [$800 million] tax increase [in the legislature this summer] were Democrats, but Cox said Republicans, as members of a party that supports fiscally conservative policies, are the ones who should know better than to vote for a tax increase.

This isn't an idle threat: radicals on the anti-tax, culture wars side of the aisle have tanked more than a few moderate Republican candidates. Playing the punitive spoiler role will only further erode unity on the right.

What's particulary ironic (and I'll admit gleefully, amusing), is that the Republicans are being attacked by their own Frankenstein's monster. For fifteen years the hardcore right (in Oregon politics, right and left tend to be really far right and left) has cashed in on the anti-tax sentiment, throwing the ocassional bigoted bone out to the faithful along the way (Oregon righties started that anti-gay movement in the early 90s).

Ooops: the tail's wagging the dog, now. That hollow rhetoric was good for getting elected; it proves to be worse for governing. Confronted with the complexity of a collapsing economy (Oregon's revenues plummeted by 17% in the last biennium), Oregon Republicans had to make actual decisions rather than sneer about what morally corrupt idiots Dems were. The Speaker of the House led 11 Republicans to compose this tax increase, and now she's being targeted by the base her party has spent years nurturing.

I believe Oregon is the canary in the national coal mine. Republicans advanced untenable anti-tax laws (mostly through initiative) during the bubble. Democrats argued that these laws were untenable, but Republicans fired up the base, calling them Chicken Littles. (One anti-tax advocate, standing in the ashes of Oregon's post-boom collapse, said, "Now I want to see the calamity." He did.) Sound familiar? The national GOP is currently doing what the Oregon GOP was doing four years ago: giving out huge tax bonuses to favored backers and planting the seeds for later collapse while calling the Dems Chicken Littles. Anyone care to hazard a guess about what the economy will be looking like in about 2006?

Have a look at Oregon.

When George H. W. Bush ordered American forces to the Persian Gulf--to reverse Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait--part of the administration case was that an Iraqi juggernaut was also threatening to roll into Saudi Arabia.

Citing top-secret satellite images, Pentagon officials estimated in mid–September that up to 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks stood on the border, threatening the key US oil supplier.

But when the St. Petersburg Times in Florida acquired two commercial Soviet satellite images of the same area, taken at the same time, no Iraqi troops were visible near the Saudi border – just empty desert.

"It was a pretty serious fib," says Jean Heller, the Times journalist who broke the story.
The White House is now making its case. to Congress and the public for another invasion of Iraq; President George W. Bush is expected to present specific evidence of the threat posed by Iraq during a speech to the United Nations next week.

But past cases of bad intelligence or outright disinformation used to justify war are making experts wary. The questions they are raising, some based on examples from the 1991 Persian Gulf War, highlight the importance of accurate information when a democracy considers military action....

That [Iraqi buildup] was the whole justification for Bush sending troops in there, and it just didn't exist," says Heller. Three times Heller contacted the office of Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney (now vice president) for evidence refuting the Times photos or analysis – offering to hold the story if proven wrong. The official response: "Trust us." To this day, the Pentagon's photographs of the Iraqi troop buildup remain classified....

"My concern in these situations, always, is that the intelligence that you get is driven by the policy, rather than the policy being driven by the intelligence," says former US Rep. Lee Hamilton (D) of Indiana, a 34-year veteran lawmaker until 1999, who served on numerous foreign affairs and intelligence committees, and is now director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. The Bush team "understands it has not yet carried the burden of persuasion [about an imminent Iraqi threat], so they will look for any kind of evidence to support their premise," Mr. Hamilton says. "I think we have to be skeptical about it."

Lies about ties to Halliburton
Some folks were worried that a Secretary of Defense who becomes the CEO of a defense contractor and then becomes the Vice President might present a conflict of interest--particularly if he was still on that contractor's payroll. Not to worry, said Cheney, I'm off the clock. Except that he wasn't. From a Boston Globe report on September 9, 2003:

"Since I left Halliburton to become George Bush's vice president, I've severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interests. I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had now, for over three years."

Within 48 hours, Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey pointed reporters toward Cheney's public financial disclosure sheets filed with the US Office of Government Ethics. The sheets show that in 2002, Cheney received $162,392 in deferred salary from Halliburton, the oil and military contracting company he ran before running for vice president. In 2001, Cheney received $205,298 in deferred salary from Halliburton.

The 2001 salary was more than Cheney's vice presidential salary of $198,600. Cheney also is still holding 433,333 stock options.

Flushed into the open, Cheney spokeswoman Catherine Martin said the vice president will continue to receive about $150,000 a year from Halliburton in 2003, 2004, and 2005. If President bush wins a second term, that means Cheney will make at least $800,000 from the company while sitting in office.

Martin said the payments did not represent a lie. She said Cheney had already earned that salary. She said Cheney took out an insurance policy that would guarantee the money would be paid to him no matter what happened to the company.

Lies about Halliburton’s activities
Another fact that would seem particularly embarrassing to an administration who made such a show of the evil of Saddam Hussein was the revelation that Dick Cheney was doing business with him at Halliburton. Of course, he was embarrassed to admit it was true, so he lied and said it wasn't. It was. From a report by Counterpunch, March 19, 2003.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Cheney adamantly denied such dealings. While he acknowledged that his company did business with Libya and Iran through foreign subsidiaries, Cheney said, "Iraq's different." He claimed that he imposed a "firm policy" prohibiting any unit of Halliburton against trading with Iraq.

"I had a firm policy that we wouldn't do anything in Iraq, even arrangements that were supposedly legal," Cheney said on the ABC-TV news program "This Week" on July 30, 2000. "We've not done any business in Iraq since U.N. sanctions were imposed on Iraq in 1990, and I had a standing policy that I wouldn't do that."

The Washington Post first reported Halliburton's trade with Iraq in February 2000. But U.N. records obtained by The Post two years ago showed that the dealings were more extensive than originally reported and than Vice President Cheney has acknowledged.

We don’t know. You and I talked about this two years ago. I can remember you asking me this question just a few days after the original attack. At the time I said no, we didn’t have any evidence of that. Subsequent to that, we’ve learned a couple of things. We learned more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the ’90s, that it involved training, for example, on BW and CW, that al-Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained on the systems that are involved. The Iraqis providing bomb-making expertise and advice to the al-Qaeda organization.

We know, for example, in connection with the original World Trade Center bombing in ’93 that one of the bombers was Iraqi, returned to Iraq after the attack of ’93. And we’ve learned subsequent to that, since we went into Baghdad and got into the intelligence files, that this individual probably also received financing from the Iraqi government as well as safe haven.

Now, is there a connection between the Iraqi government and the original World Trade Center bombing in ’93? We know, as I say, that one of the perpetrators of that act did, in fact, receive support from the Iraqi government after the fact. With respect to 9/11, of course, we’ve had the story that’s been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack, but we’ve never been able to develop anymore of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don’t know.

It was such an outrageous lie that in the next few days, members of his own administration, including President Bush, were forced to directly repudiate him.

Bush: "No, we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th."

Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld: "I've not seen any indication that would lead me to believe that I could say that."

National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice: "We have never claimed that Saddam Hussein had either direction or control of 9-11. What we have said is that this is someone who supported terrorists, helped to train them (and) was a threat in this region that we were not prepared to tolerate."

Iraq has Nuclear Weapons
During the buildup, Cheney constantly beat the drum for Iraq possessing or being almost able to possess nukes. He didn’t call them a possibility, he used the clear language of "we know."

"We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons."

"There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."

"We know he's reconstituted these programs since the Gulf War."

"We know that he has a long-standing relationship with various terrorist groups, including the Al Qaeda organization."

"We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." (He later said he meant "nuclear weapons programs.") [Source: Boston Globe.]

But when pressed on it by Russert in the September 2003 interview, he admitted:

"Yeah, I did misspeak. I said repeatedly during the show 'weapons capability.' We never had any evidence that he had acquired a nuclear weapon."

[Charles] Lewis [executive director of the Center For Public Integrity] says the trend towards privatizing the military began during the first Bush administration when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense. In 1992, the Pentagon, under Cheney, commissioned the Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root to do a classified study on whether it was a good idea to have private contractors do more of the military's work.

“Of course, they said it's a terrific idea, and over the next eight years, Kellogg, Brown & Root and another company got 2,700 contracts worth billions of dollars,” says Lewis.

“So they helped to design the architecture for privatizing a lot of what happens today in the Pentagon when we have military engagements. And two years later, when he leaves the department of defense, Cheney is CEO of Halliburton. Thank you very much. It's a nice arrangement for all concerned.”

During the five years that Cheney was at Halliburton, the company nearly doubled the value of its federal contracts, and the vice president became a very rich man....

Even before the first shots were fired in Iraq, the Pentagon had secretly awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root a two-year, no-bid contract to put out oil well fires and to handle other unspecified duties involving war damage to the country’s petroleum industry. It is worth up to $7 billion.

Under normal circumstances, the Army Corps of Engineers would have been required to put the oil fire contract out for competitive bidding. But in times of emergency, when national security is involved, the government is allowed to bypass normal procedures and award contracts to a single company, without competition.

How the contracting works

Defense Policy Board
Lewis says the best example of these cozy relationships is the defense policy board, a group of high-powered civilians who advise the secretary of defense on major policy issues - like whether or not to invade Iraq. Its 30 members are a Who's Who of former senior government and military officials.

There’s nothing wrong with that, but as the Center For Public Integrity recently discovered, nine of them have ties to corporations and private companies that have won more than $76 billion in defense contracts. And that's just in the last two years.

“This is not about the revolving door, people going in and out,” says Lewis. “There is no door. There's no wall. I can't tell where one stops and the other starts. I'm dead serious.”

“They have classified clearances, they go to classified meetings and they're with companies getting billions of dollars in classified contracts. And their disclosures about their activities are classified. Well, isn't that what they did when they were inside the government? What's the difference, except they're in the private sector.”

Richard Perle resigned as chairman of the defense policy board last month after it was disclosed that he had financial ties to several companies doing business with the Pentagon.

But Perle still sits on the board, along with former CIA director James Woolsey, who works for the consulting firm of Booz, Allen, Hamilton. The firm did nearly $700 million dollars in business with the Pentagon last year.

Another board member, retired four-star general Jack Sheehan, is now a senior vice president at the Bechtel corporation, which just won a $680 million contract to rebuild the infrastructure in Iraq.

That contract was awarded by the State Department, which used to be run by George Schultz, who sits on Bechtel's board of directors.

“I'm not saying that it's illegal. These guys wrote the laws. They set up the system for themselves. Of course it's legal,” says Lewis.

More on Cheney's Halliburton connections are at the Center for Public Integrity, which Lewis directs.

But at least Halliburton is keeping America safe, right?
Well, no. Despite publicly denouncing the "evil" regime of Saddam Hussein, Halliburton was as recently as the late 90s selling goods and services to Saddam (in contravention of US sanctions). And he wasn't the only baddie paying Dick's paycheck.

Libya
Libyan dictator and suspected anti-U.S. terrorist Moammar Gadhafi engaged a foreign subsidiary of Halliburton company Brown & Root to perform millions of dollars worth of work. According to the Baltimore Sun, Brown & Root was fined $3.8 million for violating Libyan sanctions. (Although Cheney wasn't leading Halliburton when these sales started, subsidiaries' sales to Libya continued throughout his tenure.)

Burma (.pdf)
In Burma, Halliburton joined oil companies in working on two notorious gas pipelines, the Yadana and Yetagun. According to an Earth Rights report, "From 1992 until the present, thousands of villagers in Burma were forced to work in support of these pipelines and related infrastructure, lost their homes due to forced relocation, and were raped, tortured and killed by soldiers hired by the companies as security guards for the pipelines. One of Halliburton’s projects was undertaken during Dick Cheney’s tenure as CEO."

And of course, Iraq
Cheney claimed that he supported the U.S. sanctions on Iraq, but the Financial Times of London reported that through foreign subsidiaries and affiliates, Halliburton became the biggest oil contractor for Iraq, selling more than $73 million in goods and services to Saddam Hussein's regime.

Throughout February and March, executives representing electricity, coal, natural gas and nuclear interests paraded quietly in small groups to a building in the White House compound, where the new administration's energy policy was being written.

Some firms sent emissaries more than once. Enron Corp., which trades electricity and natural gas, once got three top officials into a private session with Vice President Dick Cheney, who headed the energy task force. Cheney did "a lot of listening," according to a company spokesman.

Many of the executives at the White House meetings were generous donors to the Republican Party, and some of their key lobbyists were freshly hired from the Bush presidential campaign. They found a receptive task force. Among its ranks were three former energy industry executives and consultants. The task force also included a Bush agency head who was involved in the sensitive discussions while his wife took in thousands of dollars in fees from three electricity producers. The final report, issued May 16, boosted the nation's energy industries. It called for additional coal production, and five days later the world's largest coal company, Peabody Energy, issued a public stock offering, raising about $60 million more than expected. While Peabody was preparing to go public, its chief executive and vice president participated in a March 1 meeting with Cheney.

The report also touted new gas extraction technologies. An early draft noted controversy over a gas recovery technique offered by Halliburton Co., the firm Cheney ran from 1995 to 2000, before becoming vice president. The plan released to the public deleted the negative language.

Electricity

The director of its major lobbying arm, the Edison Electric Institute, roomed at Yale University with George W. Bush. Electricity generators and marketers contributed $19.7 million to Republicans since 1998, roughly double what they gave Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. And electricity companies negotiated contracts with administration friends, political operatives and, in one case, a family member.

Take Haley Barbour, former chairman of the Republican National Committee. In the spring of 2000, the Bush campaign recruited him to help with strategy.

A year later, as a lobbyist for several electricity producers, he pushed Bush and Cheney to renege on a campaign promise to restrict power plant emissions of carbon dioxide. The gas has been linked to global warming.

On March 1, Barbour sent a sternly worded memo on the subject to Cheney. "A moment of truth is arriving," the note began. Complying with carbon dioxide limits would be so expensive that Bush should reverse his position, Barbour argued.

"Clinton-Gore policies meant less energy and more expensive energy," he wrote. "Most Americans thought Bush-Cheney would mean more energy, and more affordable energy."

Within weeks, Cheney's task force had adopted the same reasoning on carbon dioxide. Bush cited the task force position when he announced in March that he had changed his mind.

Coal

"The president is friendly to energy, and so is the vice president, and thank God," said Fred Palmer, a vice president at Peabody Energy, the world's largest coal producer. "Our society needs energy."

Peabody, an affiliate called Black Beauty Coal and their employees have directed $900,000 to Republican coffers over the last two years. Peabody Chief Executive Irl F. Engelhardt personally gave $100,000 to Bush's inaugural committee.

Two Peabody executives and one from Black Beauty were named to Bush's energy advisory team after his election victory.

Two weeks after the task force was formed, Peabody announced plans to make a public stock offering. Several weeks later, on March 1, Palmer and Engelhardt attended a coal-interests meeting with task force members Abraham and Lindsey and Cheney's energy director.

On May 21, five days after the task force report touted coal, Peabody's stock went on sale. The company received $420 million, about $60 million more than analysts expected.

Other Documents relating to Cheney and the energy talks
GAO Report on the energy dealing
Documents Cheney was forced to make public

Boosting Share Prices
"Judicial Watch, based in Washington DC, says Mr Cheney artificially boosted the share price of the Halliburton energy company during the time he was chief executive in the 1990s. Judicial Watch alleges that Halliburton overstated profits to the tune of $445m during the period 1999 to 2001, resulting in some investors 'suffering huge losses.'" (Source: BBC)

"Vice President Cheney said he had 'great affection and respect for Halliburton,' but declined to discuss whether its accounting practices would hold up under investigation. He referred interested persons to the Halliburton web site for additional information, and declined further comment on the grounds that newspaper editorial writers around the country would condemn him for attempting to exert 'undue, improper influence' on the SEC. However, as a person directly involved in the Halliburton scandal, there is an expectation that Mr. Cheney must be accountable for his actions and answer questions. On the other hand, President Bush, who has already made public statements absolving Vice President Cheney from any wrongdoing, appears to be trying to influence the SEC and the courts in Judicial Watch’s lawsuit." (Source: Judicial Watch)

"During revelations of Halliburton’s major accounting scandal while Cheney was CEO, Cheney actually gave a speech saying, 'Where there is corporate fraud, the American people can be certain that the government will fully investigate and prosecute those responsible.' [Speech, 8/7/02] Of course, no criminal charges have been filed by the government in the matter, despite the fact that Halliburton was forced in a civil suit to 'agree to pay $6 million to settle 20 shareholder lawsuits that accused it of using deceptive accounting practices while Vice President Dick Cheney led the company.'" [AP, 5/31/03] (Source: Buzzflash)

Inviting Bush supporters to a fund-raiser, the host wrote, "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." No surprise there. But Walden O'Dell — who says that he wasn't talking about his business operations — happens to be the chief executive of Diebold Inc., whose touch-screen voting machines are in increasingly widespread use across the United States....

Early this year Bev Harris, who is writing a book on voting machines, found Diebold software — which the company refuses to make available for public inspection, on the grounds that it's proprietary — on an unprotected server, where anyone could download it. (The software was in a folder titled "rob-Georgia.zip.") The server was used by employees of Diebold Election Systems to update software on its machines. This in itself was an incredible breach of security, offering someone who wanted to hack into the machines both the information and the opportunity to do so.

As "Get HR2239 Passed Now" would no doubt point out, this is the issue most basic to our democracy--it is democracy. There's only one reason why a group wouldn't want to ensure that the votes are counted down to the last ballot, that there's a clear and uncorrupt paper trail, and that the people going to Washington (or statehouses) are actually selected by a majority of citizens: they want to rig the election.

If you wish to help get involved with legislation to eliminate vote fraud, go to this website (the official HR2239 website). They have information about what you can do.

8:27 p.m. (7:27 p.m. Texan): Air Force One was airborne. Journalists peeked out the shades and saw that the plane had on none of the running lights that are customarily visible, including the red or green ones on the wings. The movie "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" had begun playing in the press cabin.

The journalists form a corps of what will become an incredibly elite group of insiders. Along the way, they are treated to the finest imperial treatment--presidential seals on china and rolled-out carpets--as well pulse-increasing 007 secrecy. Before touching down in Baghdad, everyone is outfitted in "camouflage, Velcro-front 'ballistic vests.'" What happened once they arrived is now well-known--thanks to the work of these very same, wowed reporters.

The President didn't do anything wrong. Taking reporters was a good call. But the way they were treated, and the context of their inclusion, surely affected them more than a little. In what was one of the President's few unambiguous success of recent weeks, it makes me ponder the question: just how out of focus was the lens through which we viewed the whole thing?