Poverty in America is primarily a cultural phenomenon, driven by a shattered work ethic and sexual irresponsibility.

The contrast between the attempt to understand a human life on the one hand and to willfully ignore tens of millions on the other produced a kind of psychological whiplash. (Lowry was advocating that we culturally engineer the US out of poverty by marrying everyone off. That, apparently, corrects shattered work ethics and sexual irresponsibility.)

Lowry's venal politics here are clear--isolating America's needy from our understanding so that they deserve none of our compassion. It's justification as public policy. When you're trying to give as much money as possible to corporations, there's nothing to spare for programs like school lunches or child care. But as literally taking money from poor kids to give to fat industrialists is a hard sell rhetorically, he instead resorts to a Calvinist view, arguing that the poor are actually the corrupt. Don't think about the flow of money, think about how lazy and slutty the kids' moms are (that's his his argument), and then you won't mind giving their money to Halliburton. Hell, they had it comin'.

I have long found US attitudes toward responsibility mystifying. As a society, we regard a sexually-abused five-year-old as a victim. But when that child turns fifteen and abuses a 12-year-old, he becomes a criminal no longer worthy of help. We divorce cause from effect.

Monster is an exploration of the life of Aileen Wuornos, a prostitute who started killing johns in the late 1980s and who was executed by Jeb in 2002. In the course of the film, we learn that she first started getting raped at 8 and was a prostitute by 13. Her first murder happened during her own rape and attempted murder by a sociopathic john. During the incident, she managed to break free and kill her attacker. That moment, combined with a blossoming relationship (not quite lesbian, not quite platonic) with a young woman, turned Wournos into a predator.

It's not possible to see Wournos' life as a morality play, to distinguish between good and evil. She is human, and she acts like a human who has suffered intense humiliation and abuse for a lifetime. It is a story of increments--of sliding into the pool of murder one inch at a time. You don't have to imagine how it was possible for her to get submerged, you can see it play out moment by moment.

Lowry, for his part, has also allowed himself to slide into a pool--this one of ignorance. He has trained his focus ever more narrowly on sections of lives, thinking that this may somehow justify cruel policy. He is the viewer who walks into the theater just at the moment Wornous is standing over the bloody body of her first murder victim.

Lowry concludes with this platitude:

You can argue with the particulars of this program, but if you're not talking about how to increase work and marriage among the poor, well then, you're not serious about addressing poverty.

It's the kind of sentiment that makes me want to either punch him in his self-satisfied nose (a base instinct) or offer a platitude of my own (an impotent one). Better yet, I'll just shut up. We already have the rebuttal: Monster. How is possible to see that film and seriously consider marriage as the solution?

Howard Dean
An Ultra-Liberal On Social Issues Who Is Out Of The Mainstream And Wrong For America.

"Gov. Dean is an unabashed, unapologetic liberal . . . against the huge tax cut and for a dramatic universal health care plan. . . . Yes, Gov. Dean and the rest of New England are outside the current mainstream." (Editorial, "About Gov. Dean," Bangor [Maine] Daily News, November 18, 2002)

John Kerry
KERRY: DUKAKIS’S LT. GOV. WHO VOTES LOCKSTEP WITH TED KENNEDY

Wes Clark
A Flip-Flopping, Liberal Clinton Crony With A Penchant For Whoppers And Poor Foreign Policy Decisions.

John Edwards
An Unaccomplished Liberal In Moderate Clothing And A Friend To His Fellow Personal Injury Trial Lawyers.

"Edwards has become a captive of the trial lawyers and the left-wing special interests in Washington. He has lost touch with the average American. Clearly, he is not ready for 'prime time.'" (Marc Rotterman, "Way Out Of Touch," The [Raleigh] News And Observer, December 8, 2002)

Joe Lieberman

Joe Lieberman's not really so bad. We really don't have anything bad to say about him. Thank God he's not going to win or it would be a shame to have to smear him.

With inflation low, the President’s Budget limits the growth in non-defense, non-homeland security discretionary spending below 1%, while still providing necessary increases for our important domestic priorities, such as the No Child Left Behind Act.

Total annual discretionary spending will increase at less than 4% under the President’s Budget – in line with the average growth in American families’ incomes.

America is a nation at war, and President Bush’s Budget supports our effort to win the War on Terror and protect the homeland by providing a 7% increase for the Department of Defense and a 10% increase for homeland security.

In his State of the Union Address, the President called on the Congress to join him in focusing on priorities, cutting wasteful spending, and being good stewards of taxpayer dollars. With the continuation of the President’s pro-growth economic policies and the spending restraint proposed in his FY 2005 Budget, we can cut the deficit in half within five years.

Background: Holding the Line on Spending and Focusing on Key Priorities

By fighting the War on Terror, the President is protecting our country. By reducing taxes, restraining Federal spending, and focusing on key priorities, he is helping more Americans take advantage of the opportunities of our Nation. Consistent with his policies to help all Americans take part in our Nation’s growing prosperity, the President’s Budget proposes to make tax relief permanent for American families and small businesses, and proposes a Jobs for the 21st Century initiative to help Americans develop the skills they need to succeed in a highly competitive, highly productive economy.

President Bush has been clear – we will provide the resources needed to win the War on Terror. Three-quarters of the discretionary spending increases in his Administration are related to the global War on Terror and protecting the homeland.

Federal discretionary spending not related to security increased by 15% in the last budget year of the previous Administration (FY 2001). Under President Bush, the rate of growth has been reduced every year, and his new budget proposes to hold the growth of spending not related to security to less than 1%.

The current deficits were primarily caused by a series of shocks that slowed the economy, including a sharp drop in the stock market beginning in 2000, the terrorist attacks of 9/11, revelation of corporate scandals that shook investor confidence, and the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. We would still have a deficit today if President Bush had not signed one dime of tax relief into law, but the economy would not have seen its fastest rate of growth in nearly 20 years, and hundreds of thousands of Americans that have been hired in the last several months would still be out of work.

The deficit is projected to peak in FY 2004 at 4.5% of GDP. America has had deficits this large or larger in six of the past 25 years. With adoption of the President’s pro-growth economic policies and spending restraint, America will be on a solid path toward cutting the deficit in half within the next five years, toward a size that is less than 2% of GDP -- well below the 2.2% average deficit of the last 40 years.

Ratcheting up pressure on broadcasters to clean up their programming, the Bush administration on Wednesday endorsed legislation that would sharply increase fines that government regulators could impose on television and radio stations for indecency.

Another election cycle, another GOP initiative to bash the entertainment industry....

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Dean campaign has blown through all but $5 million of the $40 million it raised last year. With no public funds forthcoming and fundraisers cancelling events after the Iowa loss, keeping the campaign going means keeping the fundraisers on board.

More from Tapped:

In any case, none of this has to do with Trippi. Tactically and strategically, Trippi ran a brilliant campaign. He turned Dean from a dark horse into a frontrunner, and in doing so, changed politics forever, whether or not Dean wins. And it's especially odd that Dean would hire Neel as a replacement. Neel, a former Gore aide, is a classic K Street Democrat, a Beltway insider with a thriving career lobbying for the telecom industry. Those of Dean's hard-core supporters who aren't disillusioned by Trippi's firing will probably will be by Neel's hiring. More to the point, Neel's one of the guys who was in charge of Gore's lackluster 2004 campaign. How many more chances do these guys get?

Nick Confessore, who wrote that last bit, hints at the broader problem at the Dean campaign: what's Dean standing for?

Under Trippi, he was the populist from the "Democratic wing of the Party," a man who made his own decisions and charted his own course, focus groups be damned. I felt that those who saw contradictions between this Dean and the staid Montpelier politician just weren't looking hard enough. Whatever his personality, after his tenure as governor, Vermont was a decidedly more progressive place than when he found it. I compared his results to my home state's (Oregon), where a fiery liberal MD ran the state over the same period. Despite great politics, at the end of his two terms, Oregon was near fiscal collapse, his own healthcare system was dying on the vine, and the state was far less progressive. So I gave Dean some latitude.

But where's independent Dean? Where's the guy who's running on a vision for America, not a personal history of moth-eaten accomplishments? Where's the unconflicted populist who knows his course, focus groups be damned? Yesterday on an interview with NPR, Dean failed to offer any vision at all. Bob Edwards asked him a silly slate of questions befitting a political analyst, not a candidate, but Dean was surly and uncommunicative. Offered the opportunity to describe why voters thought Kerry was more electable, Dean dismissed the question. (How about: "John Kerry is a national hero. His service to the country should make every American proud and thankful. But this election can't be about a person's resume, it has to be about a vision for America. If we're going to beat George Bush, we need a leader with a strong vision who can take us into a new era of peace and prosperity. John Kerry is a wonderful man, but I'm the candidate with the vision.")

Instead, Dean fires his biggest asset, the one guy who seemed to sense--literally a year before the rest of the country--what the electorate would want in 2004. We had a guy with a great resume last time, and we yawned. Dean was poised to capture that latent desire among most Americans to see real change, to hear a new hopeful vision. Even with losses in Iowa and New Hampshire, Dean was in the position to make the argument. Firing Trippi and hiring Gore's man Neel seems to indicate that for Dean, maybe the charting-your-own-course rhetoric was focus grouped. Dean's appeal was his independence. Either he finds it damn quick and proves it on the campaign trail, or he'll lose even his ardent supporters. And with them, of course, the election.

Democrat Howard Dean shook up his faltering bid for the White House on Wednesday, replacing his campaign manager with a longtime associate of former Vice President Al Gore.

In a further sign of distress, the one-time front-runner implemented cost-cutting measures as he looked ahead to a series of costly primaries and caucuses, asking staff to defer their paychecks for two weeks.

"Governor Dean asked Roy Neel to join the campaign as CEO and Joe Trippi resigned as campaign manager," said Tricia Enright, a campaign spokeswoman.

Let's just remember that things looked terrible for Kerry when he put his house in hock to fund his then-faltering campaign. (How's that for a lame silver lining?)

Through the third quarter, based on data from the Center for Responsive Politics, the Kucinich campaign had brought in $2,188,700 from contributors giving $200 or less. This compares to Kerry's $2,067,116, Gephardt's $1,640,029, Lieberman's $1,060,141, Clark's $1,042,678, Edwards' $419,756, and Sharpton's $24,614.

In current numbers as of January 26, the Kucinich campaign has brought in over $3,038,000 from 60,890 contributors of $200 or less.

I know I've disappointed many of you for not sticking with Dennis, but I'm proud to say I was one of those 60,890 Americans who supported him.

And, for those of you who wonder why Dennis won't just give up the ghost and get the hell out of the election, go have a look at his campaign webpage. It's second to only MoveOn in terms of information and organization: on the dangers of electronic voting; encouraging the "Steps for Peace" program; and promoting labor issues among many others. Kucinich may not get elected president, but his campaign is a cottage industry of leftist action. Anyone who would call his a vanity candidacy has spent even less time than the media looking at his campaign.

Oh, and apropos of my earlier post, there's this, too:

Dennis yesterday announced plans to create as President a full public inquiry into why the Bush Administration made the claims it did about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He asked the other Democratic candidates to make the same commitment.

A state judge has ruled that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger violated state campaign finance law by using a $4.5 million bank loan to cover campaign costs in the closing days of the recall election last fall.... He said the maneuver avoided the $100,000 limit and thus constituted legalized "money laundering."

| link |

Does this call for a recall?

"There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a gathering threat to America and others. That's what we know. We know from years of intelligence -- not only our own intelligence services, but other intelligence gathering organizations -- that he had weapons -- after all, he used them.... There is no doubt in my mind the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein. America is more secure, the world is safer, and the people of Iraq are free."

George Bush, yesterday

Doesn't this sound a whole lot like an earlier President, feebly trying to find some truth in the massive whopper he offered the nation?

This is the moment for Congressional Democrats to act. Last week, David Kay announced his findings that WMD don't exist. "My summary view, based on what I've seen, is that we're very unlikely to find stockpiles, large stockpiles, of weapons. I don't think they exist." That means that in the rosiest scenario, George Bush sent us on an unauthorized, pre-emptive wild goose chase.

And given the statements we've heard from--and keep hearing from--administration officials, there's more than enough evidence to support an inquiry about possible lies. In fact, listen to Colin Powell over the weekend: "The open question is how many stocks they had, if any. And if they had any, where did they go? And if they didn't have any, then why wasn't that known beforehand?" This is the same Powell who said a year ago:

"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.

So which is it? You knew or you didn't know?

It seems like the Democrats are scared of the issue. They either fear the President, the very real ramifications of Kay's report, or perhaps their own complicity in the issue. Daschle the Timid rolled out a variant of his usual gentle criticism: "I think it is critical that we follow up and find out what went wrong." What went wrong was, at the very least, a fanatically overzealous White House. Perhaps Daschle doesn't want a probe to discover that Senate and House Democrats had access to intelligence that would have thrown doubt on dubious White House claims.

If the country means anything to Dems, though, they've got to investigate this potential crime. We went to war to find WMD that were guaranteed to be a threat by the President. But they weren't there, and the President has to answer for his words, actions, and the dead who paid the price for his ignorance.

In isolation, this wasn’t such a bad result. Dean took a heavy blow in Iowa, collapsed in the polls, and then battled his way back to what he rightly called a “solid second.”

But Iowa and New Hampshire were his two best states. And now he’s going into seven states which should all be harder for him to win than these two. Some vastly more difficult.

What this race is now about is whether John Kerry can carry this momentum into the Midwest and the South. If he can -- and that's not at all clear -- then it's over.

So the question is, if Josh is right, how does Dean win? The primaries in '04 are new and different. In the past, NH was followed by a weeks-long gulf of inaction, and the primaries dribbled along slowly. (Who knows, if the GOP had a similar primary system to this year's Dems, McCain might not have been sandbagged in South Carolina.) Terry McAuliffe wanted to get in the battle with Bush as early as possible, so now the season is designed to produce a winner by early March.

Things get interesting very quickly. Next week is called "Mini Tuesday," with primaries or caucuses in South Carolina (45 delegates), Missouri (74), North Dakota (14), Arizona (55), New Mexico (26), Delaware (15), and Oklahoma (40). I haven't seen any polls, but leave prognostication aside--what does Dean need to stay alive?; to become the frontrunner? If Clark or Kerry win SC and Kerry takes Missouri, would Dean limp forward with a Delaware or New Mexico? What if Dean finishes strongly in every state but doesn't win any, and other candidates split the states? He might gather delegates but lose momentum.

There are a number of scenarios for him to stay alive, which is what he must be on February 3rd. If the headlines across the nation proclaim Kerry as the de facto nominee, that alone might doom support Dean has in states down the line. Because that's surely where his calculation extends. No doubt he's looking to at least February 7, when Washington and Michigan vote. Dean is a shoo-in in Washington (even with the headlines), and possibly he'll be competitive in Michigan with his union backing.

And then comes Super Tuesday on March 7, which Dean must really be eyeing. Included in that prize are California [370] (another big opportunity for Dean), New York (236), Massachusetts (93), Minnesota (72), Maryland (69), Connecticut (49), and the homies in Vermont (15). I don't know how many of those states Dean could win now, nor whether he'll be considered viable in a month. But the Dean team must play their hand to be competitive in these later states if Dean is to have an opportunity.

Josh said Iowa and New Hampshire were Dean's best states. I think that is relative to the Mini Tuesday states next week. The Upper Midwest and West Coast probably look a lot more like "best" states to Dean. They're not that far off, so maybe he can hang on until then. I have an idea about the message he'll have to send to make it that far; I'll post on that later today.

All in all, as a Deanie, I have to say I'm feeling relieved and hopeful, if not confident. Every sign points to an electorate riled up and ready to boot Bush. A candidate like Dean can capitalize on that energy with the right message. Things are so volatile, it's far too early to lose hope now.

Written off by pundits after his "I have a scream" moment in Iowa, Howard Dean has rebounded in the final days of the New Hampshire contest by displaying a sense of humor. He has appeared on David Letterman's late-night show as well as on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on cable's Comedy Central poking fun at himself.

He also tried the self-deprecating shtick on the campaign trail. "Thank you for the applause. It makes me so happy I could just scream," he quietly told a Nashua crowd on Jan. 26. The audience roared its approval. "We'll scream for you," yelled one man. "We're angry, we're angry," yelled another. Retorted the subdued Dean: "This campaign is about hope, not anger."

Later, the happy, happy candidate broke into a big smile when his audience joined him in listing the countries that guarantee their citizens health care. "All right, you wise guys," he told the voters, "some of you have heard the speech before. What's the next line?" The roaring response: "Costa Rica." The candidate was most amused. "Who says you can't have fun and run for President?" he asked.

What a difference a week can make in politics.

Dean remains the candidate who sets the agenda for all the candidates. I'd love to see people get excited enough to set aside their (misplaced) misgivings about his electability and choose him as the nominee--after all, it is his message. In any case, I'm pleased to see he's back to that message. It will compell the rest of the field to respond.

But at some point, be it 2004 or 2008, Democrats are going to have to confront the GOP coalition in a way that challenges its particular vulnerabilities: the preemptive-war doctrine, the excessively sweeping definitions of sin and the primitive views of the congressional party on family planning, reproductive rights and even evolution. Bob Jones University is a joke in Charleston and Hilton Head, not just Boston and Madison. The fact that 50 percent to 55 percent of Bush's 2000 voters believe in Armageddon is not likely to be a recommentation on Long Island or in La Jolla, any more than on Downing Street or New York's UN Plaza.

What's surprising is that Phillips doesn't say the Democrats should soft-peddle their own views of morality and religion. He says that blasting those views will appeal in key districts in the South.

Urban and suburban upper-middle-class districts diverged from rural and small-town fundamentalist districts--the division between metropolitan Atlanta and rural and small-town Georgia is the classic example. The odds are that a shrewd campaign to cast the Robertsons, Falwells, and Joneses as extremists in the North would also have some success in parts of the South, as Key's state profiles and McCain's [2000] results suggest.

This is a fascinating recommendation, flying as it does in the face of the current conventional wisdom dictating Dean appear in as many churches as will allow him through the door.

Phillips offers a valuable insight here. (Beyond noting that the South might be regarded as something other than a monolith of pick-up trucks and confederate flags. Even within segments who would generally tack more toward Bush--religious, rural, parochial--his message may overstep their views on religion and morality. And his cultural friendliness toward their values in general may be compromised by his policies favoring the wealthy as well as wars they and their families must fight.)

He suggests the radical notion that Dems lead with their most stongly-held views instead of pandering to product-tested policy. Clinton rewrote political strategy when he reached across the aisle and reclaimed the Reagan Democrats. The holy grail has since been adopting a hodgepodge of popular conservative ideas to woo key segments of the electorate.

There's an older and far more successful example the Democrats could follow: the GOP. When Reagan sought to finally destroy the last vestiges of Democratic supremacy (which Phillips first wrote was in decline in 1969), he didn't craft an offend-no-one strategy. He led with radical ideas that sharply opposed many of the chestnut values of the Great Society. In the process, the GOP became the juggernaut I hope is about to begin its decline.

The now-beleagered Deaniboppers have been arguing the boldness position for a year, and slowly but surely the Kerrys and Clarks are talking a slightly uppity game. Hard to see how they're modern-day Reagans (or FDRs, for that matter), but you never know. Maybe they found the faith.

My guess is that any serious Democratic national strategy is going to have to make boldness work. For all that, it may take a couple of elections--and if the party does, even the South may sit up and take notice.

Whatsay we skip the couple elections and move right to the boldness now?

From the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003, members of the GOP committee staff exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic communications without a password. Trolling through hundreds of memos, they were able to read talking points and accounts of private meetings discussing which judicial nominees Democrats would fight -- and with what tactics....

With the help of forensic computer experts from General Dynamics and the US Secret Service, his office has interviewed about 120 people to date and seized more than half a dozen computers -- including four Judiciary servers, one server from the office of Senate majority leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, and several desktop hard drives....

Frist's office said he is on leave "pending the results of the investigation" -- he denied that any of the handwritten comments on the memos were by his hand and said he did not distribute the memos to the media. He also argued that the only wrongdoing was on the part of the Democrats -- both for the content of their memos, and for their negligence in placing them where they could be seen.

Given that the law no longer seems to apply to elected Republicans, I can't imagine this will do anything but enrage you.

Angry?

Nevertheless, the economy produced an anemic 1,000 jobs in December. And while unemployment dropped from 5.9 percent to 5.7 percent last month, economists say the slight decrease is due to the fact that long-term unemployed people have stopped looking for work.

Things are dicier on the 35 troop-contributing countries (my count yesterday was a nation shy).

Yet the total of 35 force-contributing countries can be deceiving. While the United States has roughly 130,000 troops in Iraq, there are about 25,000 troops from other countries. The United Kingdom has contributed roughly 11,000 troops, making them easily the second-largest source of military forces. While a few other countries -- Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, Spain, and Ukraine, for example -- have made contributions that number more than 1,000 troops, most have made only token contributions, according to a compilation by GlobalSecurity.org, a defense-oriented think tank in Virginia. Norway, for example, has contributed 104 engineers. Macedonia has contributed approximately 28 people.

Wait a second. Engineers? People? Let's review the tape of Bush's claim: "This particular criticism is hard to explain to our partners in Britain, Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Italy, Spain, Poland, Denmark, Hungary, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Romania, the Netherlands, Norway, El Salvador, and the 17 other countries that have committed troops to Iraq." Let's see, troops=people. Well, it's not as big a lie as last year's Niger claim. I guess that's improvement.

The Globe doesn't touch on the tax cuts for the poor, but does mention a few other items. I guess we'll file 'em all in the Dubious Claims Department.

Throughout most of the Iraq and terror section, the GOP side of the assembled rarely offered more than polite applause. A few seal-like orps emerged when he mentioned tax relief at the start, and then everyone seemed to brace themselves until he got to domestic issues.

The President continued to suggest that his invasion of Iraq had more than a passingly personal quality. He twice flashed his schoolboy smirk in the speech--first when he was building to the news of Saddam's capture, then when he boasted of Saddam sitting in a prison cell.

"Weapons of mass murder?" A new bit of jargon, or just something to break up the monotony?

This was just pathetic: "Already, the Kay Report identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations. Had we failed to act, the dictator's weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day." Who you trying to fool, George?

When he mentioned the renewal of the Patriot Act, it seemed like I heard some cheers interrupting Bush after the first sentence: "Key provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire next year." Maybe it was just me. In response, the GOP reared up like good seals after he got to the punchline--"You need to renew the Patriot Act"--and orped especially loudly.

During the section on gay marriage, the camera flashed to Rick Santorum. Did everyone crack up then, too?

During that embarrassing section where he told the story of the ten-year-old who'd written to praise the troops, the camera panned to some soldiers in fatigues. They seemed completely nonplussed, only remembering to clap a few seconds after the rest of the crowd had already begun.

I haven't had time to investigate these claims, but they seem suspect (see what happens when you lie in a SotU--people don't believe you the next time around).

1. Bush made this claim: "This particular criticism is hard to explain to our partners in Britain, Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Italy, Spain, Poland, Denmark, Hungary, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Romania, the Netherlands, Norway, El Salvador, and the 17 other countries that have committed troops to Iraq."

Is that true? Are there troops from 34 countries there?

2. Referring to the Congress's actions, Bush said: "You have doubled the child tax credit from $500 to $1,000, reduced the marriage penalty, begun to phase out the death tax, reduced taxes on capital gains and stock dividends, cut taxes on small businesses, and you have lowered taxes for every American who pays income taxes."

Is that true? I was under the (possibly false) impression that many lower-income Americans saw exactly diddly in the way of tax cuts. At least the childless ones.

3. "Productivity is high, and jobs are on the rise."

This one is pushing it. In a country with 150 million workers, you're going to create jobs every month. But "on the rise" means more jobs each month, right? Hmmm.

All right, that's probably more than enough for this year.

Dennis Kucinich is not acquitting himself well. Kucinich's 1 percent does not provide much justification for continuing his progressive campaign. But he also committed a misstep when he struck a deal with John Edwards and pledged his voters to Edwards in caucuses where Kucinich would not reach the cutoff. Since Kucinich is running as an antiwar candidate--boasting he will pull the troops out of Iraq faster than the others--it was odd that he forged an alliance with Edwards, who has supported the war in Iraq. Why not Dean, who shares Kucinich's opposition to the war? In any event, this tactical move made little difference in the final results. But it did tarnish Kucinich's status as a stand-by-principles politician.

So let's see, stand by your principles in the face of pragmatism and you're a traitor, but pragmatically leverage your influence and you're a sell-out. What say we point them there guns the other direction, eh fellas? Rove's got plenty of ammo without us shooting ourselves.

All right, off to listen to Dubya take a spin in his own private Bizarro World.

Democratic presidential candidates John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich have struck a deal to support each other should one candidate fail to draw the minimum support needed to compete in Monday night's Iowa caucuses, Edwards campaign sources said.

The decision could give Edwards, a U.S. senator from North Carolina, a boost in the convoluted caucuses, the first major Democratic contest of the election year. An Iowa poll published over the weekend shows Edwards is in a tight race with the four front-runners. The same poll has Kucinich, an Ohio congressman, drawing the support of just 3 percent of likely caucus-goers.

Maybe Edwards will make a showing--Iowa's famous for the big upset.

Dean, F. He's vague about what he's for, but he's venomous toward anyone who disagrees with him. If elected, political discourse would sink to new lows.

That "F" is the grade the conservative has given to the liberal on his servility and docility. Apparently, he doesn't toe the Bush line nearly as well as Joe Lieberman, who scored straight A's from Brooks (good ol' Joe, the Republican's Democrat). Dean may not be the guy at the end of the day, and I'm sensitive to the fact that he's a polarizing figure. But I tell you, anyone who can piss off the jackbooted GOP like Dean can inspires a certain amount of respect from me.

Oh how sad a day it is when even the Wall Street Journal's 'Review & Outlook' section cribs its material right from the RNC fax printout. Today one of the 'Review & Outlook's' pieces is entitled 'General Wesley Perle'.

They take the cherry-picked quotes Drudge ran yesterday -- the ones he seems to have gotten from Ed Gillespie, who also used them in a speech yesterday in Little Rock -- and use them to argue that Clark has flip-flopped on the war.

One of the minor rituals of American presidential politics is the post-election self-examination (or perhaps I should say self-flagellation) by the press. Quadrennially, we regret having pursued some lines of inquiry while ignoring others, or having gotten caught up in momentary feeding frenzies over unimportant things, or having been too susceptible to spin -- and then we resolve to do a better job next time. But now we have a new tool. In 2004, the Web makes it possible to analyze and criticize press coverage in real time, so that suggestions for improved coverage might actually be heeded, and incorporated into campaign coverage, while the campaign is still under way....

The Desk will be politically nonpartisan. While it will call attention to journalistic sins, both of omission and commission, it will by no means be exclusively a finger-wagging operation.

A couple of thoughts spring to mind. The first is revisiting what a blog is. Earlier, I was reading where Josh Marshall, who was this year awarded "blogger of the year" by The Week, was trying to explain to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. what the blog medium is (long story). This is what he told Schlesinger: "I ended up telling them that it was something like political commentary structured like a personal journal with occasional reporting mixed in."

That's an accurate description, but a bad one. Reading CJR's self-description, where nowhere was the word "blog" mentioned, I had a bit of deja vu. Blogs just ain't credible yet. This despite the fact that they are both necessary and useful tools and represent, I think it's safe to say, a new medium. The fact that they're spontaneous, do-it-yourself, and ungoverned makes them somehow slightly tawdry. Then describe something as a "personal journal," and you've lost all credibility. Of course there are millions of crappy blogs out there, but that doesn't mean the medium shouldn't be credible. Look at TV--how much of that content is crappy? Yet it dominates our discourse. Eventually things will sort out and blogs will find a system of governance--possibly democratic, in the current mode, but more likely commercial, in the American mode. Still, if CJR's adoption of the medium shows us anything, it's that the medium is credible.

The second thing I pondered--is it possible to be politically nonpartisan and objective? An example. Back in the heyday of the Gilded Age, objectivity might have dictated that the press give a fair shake to corrupt corporations who were enslaving broad swaths of the population. Yet looking back, we could just as easily argue that objectivity demanded a crusade against those corrupt corporations. They were, after all, objectively corrupt. What journalistic ethic says you have to give them a platform to lie?

If the system is broken, isn't it more objective to make that point than to tell both sides equally? Possibly this isn't the CJR's goal; it'll be interesting to watch and see.

(So far, they seem to be going after some of the larger sins of the press--which of course are committed against Dems in larger measure than the GOP. But it's early.)

U.S. Sen. Zell Miller, a Georgia Democrat who has frequently broken with his party to support Republican policies, has agreed to campaign for President Bush's reelection, a campaign spokesman said.

The move gives the campaign a major name for its efforts to organize Democrats for Bush around the country, after a similar push struggled in 2000.

Ah, I don't think this really requires much analysis by me--you may provide your own expletive.

(Didn't I write some satire about this? It's so damn hard to stay satirically ahead of these idiots.)

Dennis Kucinich's campaign is getting a boost with the arrival of a group of young activists from around the country, who showed up in a bio-diesel powered, psychedelic-colored converted school bus.

The group drove from Santa Cruz, Calif., stopping in Des Moines, Iowa, to attend the Democratic candidates debate there on Jan. 10....

The group calls itself the Democreation Project; its goal is to unite young artists and political progressives behind candidates that represent their values. They will stay in the state until the Jan. 27 primary and plan events at colleges and high schools.

| link |

On electability
"Fear leads to muddled thinking. Fear has led us down many wrong paths in the past two years. But voting for the candidate most likely to defeat President Bush is exactly the right approach. Vote for the candidate who presents a strong contrast to Bush, who will excite the majority of Americans who typically don't vote, who opposes the occupation of Iraq, opposes leaving HMOs and private insurance companies in control of our health, opposes NAFTA and the WTO, and promises to repeal the 'Patriot Act.'"
--Interview in the Portland Mercury, Jan 8, '04.

[More: Just noticed an article in the Washington Post about DK today. What is it--all of a sudden he's getting huge press. Fat lot of good it'll do him now. Selected quote:

He points out that he has raised $3.4 million to date, almost all of it in small donations, including $120,000 at a Willie Nelson-Bonnie Raitt concert on Jan. 3 (Kucinich can also count the endorsement of such celebrities as author Alice Walker and actors Danny Glover, Ed Begley Jr., Ed Asner and Linda Blair).... "We're going to be a $10 million campaign," he says, both delighted and a little surprised by the figure.]

That’s why Beltway Dems are so alarmed by Dean: he’s not an insider. And even though his record as governor of a small state was, by any reckoning, centrist, Clintonites worry -- and are charging that Dean is too “liberal” to be successful against Bush. If Dean is at the edge of respectability, where does that leave Kucinich?

The success of Howard Dean’s candidacy would not be possible without Kucinich and Sharpton at his shoulder, providing the more “extreme” cover that gives his statements context. Their continued presence in the race ensures that ideas like getting U.S. troops out of Iraq, or prioritizing racial justice, aren’t forgotten by candidates otherwise reluctant to go there. There are plenty of reasons to support Dennis Kucinich -- even if he won’t be our next president.

Late at night before the house party, I experience a deep connection with Kucinich. I can't believe there is no other press covering him. They assign 10 press people to watch John Kerry implode. Why ride in the back of the death bus when the front seat is open and waiting in the happy van? You want to get to know a candidate, this is the way to do it, with your knees touching. At first we were a little cold on each other; after all, I've called him a kook in print before, and I made fun of his veganism, which is ironic considering our moment of connection comes while talking about diets. I confess to Kucinich I drink too much coffee and I've been eating a hamburger a day for the last week. He shakes his head, because he knows writers, and writers always push their emotions too far and their diets reflect that. He explains how he used to drink six cans of Pepsi a day, and how he originally became a vegan to impress a girl.

"That's what I do!" I say, overjoyed. "I do things to impress girls too!" At the second-to-last stop of the day, at a public library, one of his supporters shows up with a huge home-cooked vegan meal. Dennis insists on splitting it with me. "Are you hungry?"

This next passage captures why the candidate who supports a Department of Peace should have gotten serious consideration as a candidate. And why, of course, he didn't:

Several tables are set up and Kucinich walks among them talking mostly about the war in Iraq. When he's done, a man asks him what he intends to do about drug addiction. "Something I have personal experience with," he says smugly. Kucinich takes a while answering and the junkie regularly interrupts him with comments like "That's me," "You got that right," "OK." This is always a problem with far-left candidates. The people who show up at their events are often crazy, lonely, and starved for attention. Drug addicts are common. As are shamans, witches, and congressional candidates. And what they really want to do is talk about their own issues. They see a spotlight and an opportunity to steal it. And because the lefties are so p.c. nobody says, "Hey, shut up you crazy bastard." You can bet that wouldn't happen at a Bush rally, or a John Edwards rally for that matter, where press secretary Jennifer Palmieri would throw a full-body tackle on the junkie before the nightly news was ready to reposition its cameras. And everyone would pretend nothing happened.

It may be six months too late, but at least someone finally gave him some love.

To begin with, Balloon Juice goes with the party line.
"NO one, and I repeat, no one, has stated that there was no planning regarding Saddam Hussein.... No one, however, has suggested, spun, stated- you choose the word, that there were not always plans for regime change in Iraq. Period.

"These guys have gone beyond stupid to stoopid with two o's. Straightjackets and rubber rooms are right around the corner."

After that, it's just brutal.

Luskin
"O'NEILL RECANTS Why would anybody believe a word this man says? Turncoat ex-Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill...."

Right Wing News
"I'm not going to spend too much time talking about Paul O'Neill's latest accusations against the Bush administration, because quite frankly, I consider them to be little more than sour grapes from a crybaby whose big ego couldn't take the indignity of being fired."

Man Without Qualities
So many exciting questions! Has anyone been checking just how much time Mr. O'Neill spends these days talking to puddles? Or has he been using Mr. Suskind as a puddle-surrogate? Will the new Krugman/O'Neill love affair survive longer than Britney Spears' marriage?

Opinion Journal
"Far from being a truth-teller, Mr. O'Neill comes across in Mr. Suskind's book as a vengeful Lone Ranger, someone bitter because his advice was spurned but who stubbornly chose to stay in the job anyway. 'He could have resigned quietly on principle,' one White House aide told me. 'Instead we had to push him out.'"

(All right, that one's not a blog.)

When you look beneath the headline data, you see at least one important change. The events of the past three years have brought to the foreground issues that divide Democrats, and pushed to the background issues that divide Republicans.

His evidence? Republicans support the war overwhelmingly, but Democrats do not similarly oppose it. Oh, and Dems have some issues with religion. Thus, Brooks pleads, "as we dive into this period of intense Democratic primary competition, it's worth keeping in mind that Democratic primary voters are a misleading snapshot of the electorate as a whole."

In the real world, the GOP is wracked by dissention. We have a former Bush appointee calling his old boss a liar. We've heard accusations of bribery, goombah strong-arming on the Medicare bill, and divisions over, among other things Bush's immigration amnesty proposal, steel tariffs, deficits, and tax cuts.

On the Democratic side, things are heated--but there's an election on, after all. Except for ocassional fireworks, most have been surprised by how genteel the campaign has been. And on the issues, despite a lot of posturing, the Dems are very close in position. Compared with the coming split in the GOP between moderate conservatives and extreme conservatives (there are no moderates left in the GOP), things on the Democratic side look pretty peachy, support for the war or not. (Wonder why Brooks didn't cite polls about whether the President lied? Perhaps because Dems overwhelming agree he did while Republicans are divided?)

But Brooks' piece is evidence that the autocrats still have control. For now.

And, no, the stated policy of my administration towards Saddam Hussein was very clear. Like the previous administration, we were for regime change. And in the initial stages of the administration, as you might remember, we were dealing with Desert Badger, or fly-overs and fly-betweens and looks, and so we were fashioning policy along those lines. And then, all of a sudden, September the 11th hit. And as the President of the United States, my most solemn obligation is to protect the security of the American people. That's my -- to me that's the most solemn thing an American President -- or any president -- must do. And I took that duty very seriously.

It's not exactly the strongest rebuttal in the world. Apparently, Bush has decided not to get in a credibility war with the man he fired for accurately predicting the cost of the Iraq war and occupation. Instead, he's called the dogs of law on O'Neill.

I'm not the first person to say that this may be misguided. There are two possibilities about O'Neill's claims: they're accurate or exaggerated (read: lies). If they're accurate, a probe may punish O'Neill--but it will damage Bush a lot more. (And there's evidence they are not only accurate claims, but come from publicly-available documents.) If they're false, Bush will still have to spend valuable news cycles defending the justification for invasion. And that, as the US Army War College argued in a paper released yesterday, may have been bogus in any case.

"The global war on terrorism as presently defined and conducted is strategically unfocused, promises much more than it can deliver, and threatens to dissipate U.S. military and other resources in an endless and hopeless search for absolute security," Record wrote, concluding his 56-page monograph. "The United States may be able to defeat, even destroy, Al Qaeda, but it cannot rid the world of terrorism, much less evil."

As I said yesterday, it's shaping up to be a great show.

For those who do not cooperate, Norquist plays enforcer. Democrats are "bad guys," but errant Republicans are "evil"....

When Alabama Gov. Bob Riley (R) tried to pass a state tax increase, Norquist helped defeat it. "We're going to keep him on life support," he said. "We'll put him in a freezer, as an example."

(In her article, Whitman ultimately toes the line. After a few limp critiques of conservatives, she derides liberals for attacking Democratic moderates. Zell Miller, that great "moderate" Dem, garners her sympathy. Read the Norquist piece first, then see if you can guess why Whitman wimps out.)

Within the Republican Party dissent is not only discouraged, but harshly punished. This has allowed the GOP to become a juggernaut of power over the past 3 years. Politicians don't question the Party, the media don't question the Party, and no one listens when liberals question it. The upside for autocracy is pretty obvious.

Meanwhile, liberals love dissent. We encourage people to exercise their heterodox views, to demand their voice in the process. Democrats, nominally liberal, have been plagued by dissent, weakening the Party to the point where they couldn't even block the Medicare bill earlier this year. The downside of dissent is pretty obvious.

But at a certain point, negatives and positives start going sideways. Autocracy is only good so long as the people at the bottom regard their lot as being better wid ya than agin ya. The GOP is pushing the envelope. Dissent is bad until the autocrats overplay their hand and the dissentors start looking like the reasonable ones. Democrats--and Howard Dean in particular--are starting to sound reasonable to a lot of people.

George W. Bush will be elected if the autocrats stifle dissent among their ranks. This Paul O'Neill news is huge--but only in the historic, real sense. In the political sense, it may be about as important as the 16 words, the Plame outing, or any of the policy initiatives that will reap real catastrophe (tax cuts, deficits, the Iraq quagmire, "Clear Skies," packing the courts, logging the Tongass, etc. etc. etc.). As long as the face of the establishment--that's the administration, the House, Senate, statehouses and state legislatures--continue to tell the same lie, then the political reality will be another four years of Bush.

If the "16 words" or Plame scandals demonstrate anything, it's that facts don't matter--so long as no one believes they do. On the other hand, once the dissentors start dissenting, look out. Trent Lott told a group of good ol' boys that it would have been a good thing if a senator had been elected President. It cost him the majority leadership. Bill Clinton dropped his drawers in the Oval Office and got impeached. But Bush can lie to America about war and suffer no ill effects.

The election probably depends as much on whether the GOP can stifle dissent for 10 months as it does on who emerges from the Democratic side. During those months, Republican members of Congress are going to have to have to make a calculation: am I better wid 'im or agin 'im? With mounting deficits, skyrocketing spending, collapsing employment, and a vast army of boomers headed for retirement, that's going to be a tough call.

The Supreme Court refused Monday to consider whether the government properly withheld names and other details about hundreds of foreigners detained in the weeks and months after the Sept. 11 terror attacks....

The government grabbed people on thin suspicion, then moved to deport detainees who had no demonstrated link to terrorism but who had violated civil immigration laws, lawyers for Martin's Washington-based group argued to the court.

The government sealed immigration records and omitted detainees' names from jail rosters, among other tactics, to make sure that details of hundreds of arrests remained secret, the lawyers said.

The only mitigating circumstance one could ascribe to the this is the Court's recent decision to hear the Yaser Esam Hamdi case, which presumably will answer many of the same questions. Anyway, that's the pretty little story I'm telling myself.

Testing the blog.

posted by Emma | 9:51 PM | Comment (0)

Yes, flashes of brilliance indeed.

I should take the day and do a few celebratory posts, but instead, I'll be watching the Packer miracle continue. Or end, as the football gods will.

How old is the Grand Canyon? Most scientists agree with the version that rangers at Grand Canyon National Park tell visitors: that the 217-mile-long chasm in northern Arizona was carved by the Colorado River 5 million to 6 million years ago.

Now, however, a book in the park's bookstores tells another story. On sale since last summer, Grand Canyon: A Different View, by veteran Colorado River guide Tom Vail, asserts that the Grand Canyon was formed by the Old Testament flood, the one Noah's Ark survived, and can be no older than a few thousand years.

We've become a nation of belief, not reason. This puts us in a special kind of bind. Before postmodernism, the supremacy of belief always depended on at least passably connecting to science and reason. This is why scientific discoveries were so devastating to the religions whose views they contradicted.

But now belief no longer has to be tethered to reason. Postmodernism has set it free. It won't be enough for those who disagree with religious beliefs to merely disprove them--they have to win the hearts of the believers. This is why the Democrats are worried. And why, I suppose, Bush can sustain his bizarro world policies. How exactly to you defeat views that need nothing other than their mere assertion to achieve legitimacy? Iraq has WMD. Tax cuts for the wealthy will benefit workers. Deficit spending has no long-term consequences. These aren't statements of reason, they're statements of belief.

I don't want to overstate this--Americans aren't ninnies. But if our society has an achilles heel (and all societies do), ours is that quixotic devotion of the Puritans. The antidote, and our other propensity, is reason. But what happens when, as a culture, we start systematically abandoning one for the other? Lewis Lapham, the editor of Harper's, has been worried by this phenomenon since Bush took office. Back in March 2002, he speculated on that question. I'll give him the last word.

Defined as a ceaseless process of change, democracy assumes the pain of contradiction and new discovery not only as the normal but also as the necessary condition of existence. As has been said, a hard act to perform, and one that failed and was abandoned by nearly every country in Europe n the generation between the First and Second World Wars. In place of truthful and therefore possibly unpleasant argument, the Bush Administration offers warm and welcome lies, advising us to lay aside the tool of thought and rest safely on the pillows of glorious and world-encircling empire. We accept the invitation at our peril.

President Bush will announce plans next week to establish a permanent human settlement on the moon and to set a goal of eventually sending Americans to Mars, administration sources said last night.

According to NPR, he also plans a manned trip to Mars. The pricetag for these adventures? $1 trillon. This won't benefit big business, of course, because it will never happen--not while we continue to bleed money and cut taxes. But it does make the mind do a funny little jig trying to figure out how it could possibly translate into anything but chortles.

1.
The Bush tax cuts are a disaster; they've given us the worst deficits in our history. I will repeal all of them and start over, reforming our tax code so that it is fairer, doesn't punish hard work and doesn't subsidize corporations who harm our environment or export jobs.

2.
As president I will work to make tax policy fair to working people. I will repeal Bush's tax cuts, simplify the tax system and close loopholes that encourage U.S. companies to operate abroad. I will work with Congress to provide tax incentives for investments and savings, and will direct incentives toward infrastructure, the environment, and manufacturing.

The first is Dean, which you may have expected. It's not a bad answer, but it highlights the fault of the President more than it offers a solution for fixing the problem. The second response is by Carol Mosely Braun. Her language identifies the cause of the problem--the Bush tax cuts--but offers several real solutions. It's fine to throw out red meat sometimes--it's better to enrich it will substance.

This will definitely be a site to watch when we come down to the general elections, though. Then the choices will be clear and distinct. And the quiz will be fast--useful for the electorate it was aimed at.

America is riven today by a "God gulf" of distrust, dividing churchgoing Republicans from relatively secular Democrats. A new Great Awakening is sweeping the country, with Americans increasingly telling pollsters that they believe in prayer and miracles, while only 28 percent say they believe in evolution. All this is good news for Bush Republicans, who are in tune with heartland religious values, and bad news for Dean Democrats who don't know John from Job.

If this is true, the Democrats better just cash it in. Fortunately, it's not. This has been a minor theme with Kristof, but I think his own experience betrays him. He was raised among churchgoers in rural America, and seems familiar with the motives of average, religious Americans. Later in the article, he describes it as the difference between "elitists" and "populists," with the elitist Dems standing firm on their Ivory Tower ideals of secularism and evolution. He worries that the Dems will lose the great religious war because they will condescend, as Dean did, to populist Christians.

In fact, Kristof is the one condescending: he imagines that the populist Americans are unable to distinguish between Bush's hypocritical religiosity and true Christian values. It is true that most Americans don't read the news as obsessively as bloggers and pundits, but this doesn't mean they will blindly vote for anyone with sincere faith.

Much of the analysis for all of this comes from a Pew study done last summer, when researchers found that Americans were heavily influenced by religion (Kristof refers to findings from their report in his article). But the fact that religion is a factor in people's decisions doesn't mean they will always vote for the religious candidate--or even the moral candidate. In a matchup between an undeniably moral, religious man and a scoundrel, the voters took the scoundrel in 1996. Is there any doubt they would have chosen the scoundrel again if he had been able to run against Bush?

The Dems can't make themselves more religious than they are personally. But they can talk in the language of morality and tie this to deeply-founded beliefs all Christians have about generosity, humility, compassion, and honesty. No one disputes that Bush is a true believer, but his policies have been anything but Christian. There are a lot of issues that will come into play in '04--religion will be one only if the Dems stumble into the GOP trap and make it one. Otherwise Americans will do what they always do--vote for the candidate they think is the better leader.

A federal three-judge panel has upheld new boundaries drawn for the state's 32 congressional districts, giving Republicans a chance to win up to 22 of the seats in elections this year.

The GOP pushed the new map through the Legislature this year to try to overturn a 17-15 Democratic majority in the Texas congressional delegation. Democrats and civil rights groups challenged the plan in court, but were overruled. An appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court is expected.

"The truth is, a number of Lieberman's statements could have been written by the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign."

Byron York, National Review, Jan. 5, 2004

Joe Lieberman, who has absolutely no chance of becoming the next President (he may not win in his home state), is a cancer to the Democratic Party. He spent yesterday bleating about what a bad, bad man Howard Dean is, ensuring that he'll become the Republican darling--and possibly take the Dems out of the Presidency as he goes down in flames. Listen:

Joe Lieberman surely wouldn't want the endorsement of National Review, but it's hard to deny that he makes a lot of sense for a member of the current field of Democratic presidential contenders.

In the Portland market yesterday, Lieberman and Clark were on the Sunday shows simultaneously (on This Week and Meet the Press, respectively). I toggled back and forth and listened as they were both questioned about Dean. Lieberman the lapdog was giving This Week slag after slag on Dean. Clark, cognizant that he might actually emerge as the candidate, was far more diplomatic. And, ah, presidential. It was an instructive moment. It went to show that while a candidate may not be able to win an election, he may well lose it--for his party.

To date, Lieberman has excited no voter interest (along with Braun and Sharpton he refused to estimate his fundraising totals for the fourth quarter), but he has gotten conservatives excited. They'd love nothing more than to watch the Democratic candidate spend the entire campaign season praising the President. Democrats, on the other hand, should be badly alarmed. It's about time for some of the major players in the party to pull Joe aside and tell him to knock it off. It's one thing to say Dean's got bad policies or that you'd be a better president, but to call launch volley after volley of personal attacks sure to show up in GOP ads is inexcusable.

2. ...But Bush had told a more important whopper in that address. He noted that the International Atomic Energy Agency "confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program." This was lying by omission, for he left out the fact that the IAEA had also reported that it had dismantled this nuclear program. And the day before Bush’s speech, IAEA inspectors had said there were no new signs of a vigorous nuclear weapons program in Iraq. Bush neglected to mention that finding.

The Sierra Club offered its "worst environmental exploits of the year." Again, you know the highlights. This one got less coverage than others, though:

7. NEXT STOP, SHINOLA - Allowed untreated sewage to be blended with treated sewage, cut funding for local sewage treatment, and didn't require health officials to warn public about sewage in water.

From Common Dreams, Medea Benjamin reflects on some of the good news. You know this one very well (you're a part of it), but hey, let's mention it anyway:

7. Progressives now have a powerful new tool for organizing: the internet. E-activism through venues such as MoveOn, Working Assets, and Meetup.com have allowed ordinary people to challenge big money and powerful institutions. We raised millions of dollars to run ads, we’ve confronted corporate-dominated institutions like the Federal Communications Commission, and e-activism has allowed an anti-war candidate, Howard Dean, to become a frontrunner in the 2004 elections.

From the Center for American Progress, a naughty/nice list that includes this:

NICE – Lawmakers Who Care About Troops: For forcing the President to fund more body armor for soldiers.
NAUGHTY – Lawmakers Who Care About Food Names: For spending energy renaming foods like Freedom Fries instead of adequately protecting our troops.

Special recognition to TomPaine.com for their exhaustive list of Bush claims and the reality, an example of which is:

White House Claim: "At the Madrid donors' conference, 73 countries and 20 international organizations joined together and pledged over $30 billion for Iraq."

Fact: "Six weeks after organizers of an international donors conference in Madrid said that more than $3 billion in grants had been pledged to help Iraq with immediate needs, a new World Bank tally verifies grants of only $685 million for 2004." —New York Times, 12/7/03

The last quote to Barbara Ehrenreich, whose antipathy for the administration is barely contained:

6. Balls. There are few tidier examples of the Bush administration’s continuing effort to give the phrase “imperial arrogance” new currency than its request, prior to Bush’s visit to London, that the British government grant Secret Service sharpshooters immunity from prosecution should they carelessly take out a bystander or six. Tony Blair briefly sprouted a pair, and refused.

3. First to fall from power will be (a) Little China's Chen Shui-bian, whose two-China campaign oratory on Taiwan is asking for trouble with Big China; (b) Pakistan's Musharraf, double-crossed by his Islamist military; (c) the U.S.'s Bush, after abandoning fiscal restraint; (d) Russia's Putin as his electorate miraculously awakens; (e) Cuba's Castro.

I like it particularly because of (e)--one year it will be right, but who's going to bet on it? Safire does, with the explanatory: "I've made this yearly prediction for three decades and now is not the time to stop." (I'd guess Musharraf, but maybe that's just because he's been in the news. How about (f), Kim Jong Il? That would be the best news.)

5. The economy will (a) see a booming 13,000 Dow and 3,000 Nasdaq; (b) grow more slowly as a weakening dollar drives up interest rates; (c) be rocked by the abuse of manipulative derivatives in hedge funds.

Safire selects "all," (he's wily that way) and he's probably right. But those won't be the only effects: the dollar will continue to weaken against the Euro, unemployment will remain stubbornly fixed, and spending and consumer confidence will weaken. None of it, though, will be definitive enough to damage Bush.

12. Howard Dean will (a) sweep Iowa and New Hampshire and breeze to a boring nomination; (b) lose to Gephardt in Iowa and do worse than expected in N.H., leading to a long race; (c) transform himself into the centrist, affable "new Dean"; (d) angrily bolt and form a third party if the nomination is denied him.

Safire believes (b), but I think it will actually be somewhere between (a) and (b). Dean will emerge.

14. Debating Cheney on TV will be the Democratic running mate (a) Wes Clark; (b) Bob Graham; (c) Bill Richardson; (d) Dianne Feinstein; (e) John Edwards; (f) Carl Levin.

Safire goes with (b), grossly misunderestimating Dean. (c) is actually an interesting choice, but I expect Dean to find someone with foreign policy cred, not someone to appeal to minority voters. Clark isn't likely to play second banana to anyone, so how about Merrill McPeak? He's a general who didn't equivocate about the war back in February and March: he was solidly agin it. And of course:

2. Iraq will (a) split up, like all Gaul, into three parts; (b) defeat the insurgents and emerge a rudimentary democracy; (c) succumb to a Sunni coup.

Safire, of course, likes (b). He's a little more optimistic here than the situation justifies. I'd say it's either (d) violence and terror continue to plague the country, preventing any meaningful move toward a functioning government (see Afghanistan) or (e) succumb to a Shi'a coup.

Fun stuff if you're looking to kill a little time--Safire has produced a typically thought-provoking quiz.