Maria Bello, The Cooler
Hope Davis, American Splendor
Scarlett Johansson, Lost in Translation
Charlize Theron, Monster

I really wanted to like The Cooler. I like the people in it, I liked the idea of the film, and I liked the way first-time director Wayne Kramer shot the film. Unfortunately, it failed on almost every level. Even Maria Bello's role as a hard-luck casino waitress was deeply flawed. Despite the lack of cohesion from a writing level, Bello sold the role. The heart-of-gold role is usually played either vapidly or with world-weary wisdom. Bello gave it much more--her hard-luck waitress was playing out a losing hand, but she was still naive enough to believe it might change. Her sexiness wasn't played as object, but rather part of her personality. She made me believe that her character could have loved William H. Macy.

Hope Davis had the unenviable role of playing a human who happened to not only be alive, but featured in the very same film. What more can you say than she really became Joyce Brabner? Wonderful.

It's hard to imagine Lost in Translation without Scarlett Johansson. Maria Bello had to make us believe she could love an older man, but Johansson had to show us infatuation. She did it so organically that it almost seemed like not acting. Alas, how often have we seen the other side of that coin?

Charlize. Suffice it to say that the critics are divided. Ebert called it "one of the greatest performances in the history of the cinema." But the Post's Manohla Dargis was not amused: "Phony choppers and a startling resemblance to Jon Voight aren't enough to transform Theron into Wuornos, and I didn't buy either the performance or the character for a second." I don't know that I'd go as far as Ebert, but almost. After I saw the movie, I wrote that it put me in an altered state of consciousness that persisted for a good 24 hours. The movie itself was flawed, but Theron's performance was so good that I related to her as a person. I felt for her so keenly--not for the actress, but the character. I tend to shy away from the classic "big" performances that often win awards. Not this time. It was amazing.

And the Jeffy goes to: Charlize Theron.

For the men, the winner wasn't as clear. There were five performances I enjoyed, and I could make a serious argument for each as the best performance of the year. The nominations:

Chiwetel Ejiofor, Dirty Pretty Things
Johnny Hallyday, Man on the Train
Paul Giamatti, American Splendor
Bill Murray, Lost in Translation
Jean Rochefort, Man on the Train

In a movie almost no one saw (Man on the Train), Johnny Hallyday and Jean Rochefort give two delightful performances. I knew when I started the nominations that it was going to either have to be both or neither, because they were both so good. It's a story of odd couples where the couple are neither really so odd nor, despite appearances, so different. Hallyday plays a noirish thief, Rochefort a provincial school teacher. Their paths cross, and the lives of the other is a balm to each. The movie is itself a balm to anyone with blockbuster-itis.

Chiwetel Ejiofor also gives a very human performance in the similarly un-Hollywood film Dirty Pretty Things. Ejiofor plays an illegal Nigerian immigrant who drives a cab in London, but is in fact a doctor. He becomes the moral center of a movie that swims with immoral sharks. (Review here.) It's a generous character and a generous performance.

I reviewed Giamatti earlier this week, which leaves us with Bill Murray. When a guy like Murray finally gets a nomination, you hope he wins it for a life's work. That's how I feel about him now--except he also deserves to win. For a number of years now, Murray has been playing roles where his humor is a very modest side note. It's a part of his personality, in service to something a little sad or tired. A strange irony that after becoming famous for his comedic roles and his wild SNL lifestyle, latter-day Murray is all in a minor key. When she wrote Lost in Translation, Sofia Coppola had Murray in mind for the role, and it brings together all the depth he has had in recent films. It's the ultimate Bill Murray movie.

And the Jeffy goes to: Bill Murray.

Sean Astin in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Zlatko Buric in Dirty Pretty Things
John Robinson in Elephant
Andy Serkis The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Khleo Thomas in Holes

Neither Khleo Thomas, who played the wonderful character "Zero" Zaroni in Holes nor Zlatko Buric, as the morally neutral Ivan in Dirty Pretty Things has gotten any attention. They should: they give perfect supporting performances, adding depth and realism to a movie that doesn't seem possible without their vivid roles. Selecting anyone from Elephant is risky, because it's an ensemble piece. To the extent that John (who played the blond kid also named John in the movie) is our window into the movie, he could be called the central figure. Yet as the observer, he does play a supporting role in the narrative. Again, I can't imagine the movie without him.

Finally, the two performances from Lord of the Rings. For a movie who has such an embarrassment of riches, it's hard to argue that it gets slighted critically, and yet it does. The acting is perhaps--perhaps--the trilogy's greatest strength. These characters are far from cookie-cutter placeholders for the action. Jackson also did an interesting thing in the three movies by selecting one character who was a metaphor for the action. In the first film, it was Boromir, who demonstrated the power of the ring. In the second, Aragorn, who placed the narrative in dramatic and historic context. And in the final film, it was Sam Gamgee, loyal servant of the film's nominal hero, Frodo. If the entire trilogy is a meditation on the importance of humble contribution, it's Sam, not Frodo, who is the true hero. I felt that in the books, and I felt it again in the movies. Sean Astin held the movie together with his heroic humility. Andy Serkis chewed the scenery, but Astin carried the dramatic arc.

And the Jeffy goes to: Sean Astin.

Best Supporting Actress
In this category, the performances garnering the most attention were in the kind of film I avoided this year--studio-produced Oscar bait. Shohreh Aghdashloo in House Of Sand And Fog, Renee Zellweger in Cold Mountain, Holly Hunter in Thirteen Sad to say, but this was a very lean year for great supporting roles for women. I missed a few key performances as well: Patricia Clarkson Pieces of April and Miranda Richardson in Spider. The official Jeffy list:

Miranda Otto in Return of the King
Archie Panjabi in Bend it Like Beckham
Christina Ricci in Monster

I'm well aware of the lameness of this list. I might have tried to pad it a bit, just so I wouldn't look lame. But the truth is, this is really represents the performances I thought were worthy of mention (Maria Bello, who gave a great performance in The Cooler, was sometimes nominated in this category. I don't see how--she was clearly in the lead.)

Archie Panjabi plays the mother of Jess Bharma in Bend it Like Beckham. She had a small role, but really knocked it out of the park (if you're in the mood for a feel-good pick-me-up, this is a good movie). Christina Ricci gave an understated performance in Monster, one that has been derided and praised. I side with those who praise--this is the story of Aileen Wuornos; Ricci's character is there to help explain Wuornos's mindset. Ricci did a great job with the role. Finally, in another small performance, Miranda Otto played Eowyn, the daughter of Theoden. She'll always be remembered for her retort to the Nasgul who taunts her during battle: "You fool. No man can kill me." In reply, she pulled off her helmet, and declared "I am no man" before killing him. But actually, I liked her subtle performance off the battlefield, where she had to juggle showing longing for Aragorn and also pride and strength as a warrior and leader.

And the Jeffy goes to: Miranda Otto.

Ebert: "It simply looks at the day as it unfolds, and that is a brave and radical act; it refuses to supply reasons and assign cures, so that we can close the case and move on."

Christian Science Monitor (David Sterrit): "Van Sant gives no pat or easy answers. Instead he makes us squirm, worry, and think. That's why Elephant is a must-see movie."

Baltimore Sun (Michael Sragow): "The parable sums up the futility of finding the truth in any one man's observations. But the film itself is an exercise in frustration. Van Sant is too determined to show the impossibility of gleaning anything useful from a day in the life of high-school kids before they kill or are slaughtered."

New York Daily News (Jami Bernard): "A movie that takes impartiality to new places artistically. The film is infuriating."

Some great films are universally loved and acclaimed--The Godfather, for example. Elephant is in a second category of art: the controversial. In many ways, making a controversial film is harder than making a great film--finding that ribbon of gray area and exploiting it effectively is a tall order. Subtle changes in emphasis can turn a controversial film bad pretty easily.

I personally found Elephant revelatory. It's a meditation on human behavior, starting at the place that murderers possess the same emotional range as non-murderers. (Plot thumbnail: Elephant explores the lives of high schoolers on a day shattered by Columbine-like shootings; the two kids who commit the murders are in the ensemble, but their roles are not emphasized.) It explicitly avoids issuing a moral position, because Van Sant recognized that the moment a moral judgment is made, exploration and understanding stop.

Watching the film unfold, seeing the naivete in everyone's experience, it's hard to regard the shootings as a simple, dismissible act of evil or madness. In particular, watching what happens to the kids as they progress along the shooting spree, as madness comes to them, it's not even possible to regard them solely as perpetrators.

It's not surprising that some people loved it and others hated it: as a viewer, that's an uncomfortable place to find yourself.

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday he will run again for the presidency, declaring that Washington has become “corporate occupied territory” and arguing there is too little difference between the Democratic and Republican parties.

My take, which is far from unique, is that this won't make a whit of difference. Without even the auspices of the Green Party, poor Ralph will be running alone and against most of his most ardent supporter's wishes. The worst thing about this news is that Nader's legacy, which is rich and wonderful, may be forever marked by his quixotic political campaigns.

Not this year, Ralph.

We and our colleagues at The Princeton Review have spent many years training students to take the SAT II, and have carefully analyzed the College Board's essay-grading criteria. To receive a high score a student should write a long essay of three or more paragraphs, with each paragraph containing topic and concluding sentences and at least one sentence that includes the words "for example." Whenever possible the student should use polysyllabic words where shorter, clearer words would suffice. The SAT essay will not be a place to take rhetorical chances. Flair will win no points; the highest-scoring essays will be earnest, long-winded, and predictable.

On a personal note, I knew of the SAT's failings even before seeing this article, because a twin version appears on the grad school version, the GRE, which my significant other (Sally) took late last year. She didn't do as well as she would have hoped. This isn't surprising, because she's a fantastic writer. Her prose is original, clear, and accessible--just what the College Board now instructs its graders to punish.

The article in the Atlantic is called "Would Shakespeare Get Into Swarthmore?" I find it ironic, because that's the school Sally went to, after a nearly flawless performance on a 1980s version of the SAT.

THE NOMINATION of Alabama Attorney General William H. Pryor Jr. to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit was, from the beginning, a provocation on the part of the Bush administration. Yesterday Mr. Bush made that provocation all the more provocative by installing Mr. Pryor -- who has been held up by a Democratic filibuster -- by recess appointment. Mr. Pryor is the second judge the president has placed on the bench using this procedure, which allows the president to bypass Senate confirmation for appointments made on a temporary basis. The result is that Mr. Pryor will be a judge for now, but he will leave office unless both Mr. Bush and a filibuster-proof Republican Senate majority win election this year. In other words, his prospects of longer-term service on the bench will be bound up with the electoral fate of the Republican Party -- exactly the sort of political dependency from which judges are supposed to be insulated.

(AP) -- Bypassing angry Senate Democrats, President Bush installed Alabama Attorney General William Pryor as a U.S. appeals court judge on Friday in his second "recess appointment" of a controversial nominee in five weeks.

Pryor's federal appointment has been vigorously opposed by Democratic senators who have objected to his past comments and writings on abortion and homosexuality.

I can draw your attention to two locations should you wish to research the delightful Judge Pryor. People for the American Way have worked up a nice rap sheet, and at the Dossiers, you can get the full scope of the "activist judges" the President so hypocritically derides. Naturally, TalkLeft is also on the case. "Here's a nice summary by PFAW of some of his worst offenses:

Pryor is a leading architect of the recent states rights or federalism movement to limit the authority of Congress to enact laws protecting individual and other rights. He personally has been involved in key Supreme Court cases that, by narrow 5-4 majorities, have restricted the ability of Congress to protect Americans rights against discrimination and injury based on disability, race, and age. Worse, he has urged the Court to go even further than it has in the direction of restricting congressional authority. Just last month, for example, the Court, in an opinion by Chief Justice Rehnquist, rejected Pryors argument that the states should be immune from lawsuits for damages brought by state employees for violation of the federal Family and Medical Leave Act.

"Pryor believes that it is constitutional to imprison gay men and lesbians for having sex in the privacy of their own homes, and has filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to uphold Texas Homosexual Conduct law, which criminalizes such conduct. Pryor believes that singling out gay men and lesbians in this manner does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In the same brief, Pryor equated for purposes of legal analysis sex between two adults of the same gender with 'activities like prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia.'"

You think Bush is trying to send a message to Massachusetts and San Francisco (and the entire Democratic electorate)? Things are getting ugly...

Is cooking a hamburger patty and inserting the meat, lettuce and ketchup inside a bun a manufacturing job, like assembling automobiles?

That question is posed in the new Economic Report of the President, a thick annual compendium of observations and statistics on the health of the United States economy.

The latest edition, sent to Congress last week, questions whether fast-food restaurants should continue to be counted as part of the service sector or should be reclassified as manufacturers.

Sound familiar? Listen:

The Labor Department today announced a change in the way jobs will be classified. The Department called it an effort to reflect changes in the workforce over the past twenty years. The last time jobs were reclassified was in 1978, before computing altered the workforce.

The largest change will affect the manufacturing sector. Under the new rules, restaurant employees are being recategorized as industrial workers. "Most restaurant workers today are emplyed in the fast food industry," explained Roland Grimes, economic undersecretary. "These employees work on an assembly line and manufacture a product, pretty much just like Henry Ford's old factory workers, so we felt this made a lot of sense."

Employment figures released today show that industrial and manufacturing jobs were up 347% over last month. President Bush praised the figures and hailed the increase as further evidence that his tax cuts were spurring job growth.

I wrote that two weeks ago as part of my regular Friday satire series. Is that freakin' CREEPY or what?

"Kerry strikes me as just another side of the same old, tired coin. He's a war criminal, he's in tight with corporations, he's pro-war..."

"Edwards is supposedly trying to get Kucinich and Sharpton barred from the next debate. If that turns out to be true, the asshole just lost my vote even if he does get the nomination."

After a pretty nice honeymoon with the voters, one of the Johns is about to enter the phase of shock and awe--a fair amount of which will be friendly fire. Great.

John Kerry is no revolutionary. He's been around for 20 years, which means he's had to vote for or against a whole raft of legislation. And you know what? Politics doesn't work cleanly. Legislation gets bundled--you throw a little pork on top of a good bill in order to buy off enough senators to get the thing passed. That's how politics works. Blaming Kerry for being a politician is naive and short-sighted. He hasn't been the kind of politician who will only vote for the few pork-free bills that came down the pike. His calculus is the same as most politicians: to get you must give.

Truth: John Kerry has one of the most liberal voting records in the senate. Truth: he has a nearly perfect record on the environment. Truth: the red herring of gay marriage aside, Kerry has a very strong record on civil rights.

Since the beginning I was only lukewarm about Kerry. He's a droner, he's boring, and he's firmly enmeshed with big money (though how he could become a US Senator from Massachusetts without courting corporate interests is beyond me). But he's a good guy, an honorable man, oh, and incidentally a liberal. If Kerry does become the nominee, he will be the most liberal Democrat we've had in 12 years.

I'm tired of folks on the left going scorched-earth on anyone with the temerity not to be their candidate. John Kerry isn't Dennis Kucinich. But calling him a war criminal or saying he's indistinguishable from Bush is just ignorant. He's a decent guy and I'll be proud to vote for him.

"I think it is what it is."

Scott McClellan, from today's beating (a gaggle not yet online, but available here.)

Well, there's no arguing with that.

[House Majority Leader Tom] DeLay has made plans to use a nonprofit, tax-exempt charitable foundation created by him and operated by his daughter and several of his associates to fund political events at the Republican National Convention over Labor Day weekend. DeLay weakened House ethics rules last year, ending bans on free trips to and lodging at charity events where lawmakers mingle with lobbyists and businesspeople. His latest maneuver could free both political parties to use captive charitable organizations as vehicles for off-the-books influence peddling.

The brochure for DeLay's charity, Celebrations for Children Inc., openly solicits funds to be used to pay for a luxury hospitality suite for big donors, a yacht cruise, VIP tickets to Broadway shows, a golf tournament and a late-night party. For $500,000, a donor gets a private dinner before and after the convention with DeLay and colleagues as well as high-level staffers. These are functions for which political soft money was used during the 2000 conventions.

The President will not be satisfied until every American looking for work has found a job. (Bold theirs.)

President Bush, ladies and gentlemen: dissatisfied.

Meanwhile, Scott McClellan was getting his daily beating by the press. Tired of goring him on the President's military record, they went after jobs today. Some of the exchange:

Q Can you answer the specific question, though? Was this report -- was the prediction of this many jobs, 2.6 million jobs, vetted prior to publication by the entire economic team?

MR. McCLELLAN: It's an annual report, David. It goes through the usual -- it goes through the usual --

Q That's not the question. Was it or was it not vetted by the entire economic team?

MR. McCLELLAN: It's an annual report. It goes through the usual --

Q So you don't know, or it was, or it wasn't?

[Here there's a lot of badgering before McClellan finally answers the question.]

MR. McCLELLAN: -- it goes through the normal -- it goes through the normal vetting process.

Q So the answer is, yes. I'm not done yet, I've got another one.

MR. McCLELLAN: Okay.

Q Why -- if you're suggesting that people will debate the numbers, that's kind of a backhanded way to say, oh, who cares about the numbers. Well, apparently, the President's top economic advisors do, because that's why they wrote a very large report and sent it to Congress. So why was the prediction made in the first place, if the President and you and his Treasury Secretary were going to just back away from it?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, one, I disagree with the premise of the way you stated that. This is the annual Economic Report of the President and the economic modeling is done this way every year. It's been done this way for 20-some years.

Q So why not -- why aren't you standing behind it?

MR. McCLELLAN: I think what the President stands behind is the policies that he is implementing, the policies that he is advocating. That's what's important.

Q That's not in dispute. The number is the question.

MR. McCLELLAN: I know, but the President's concern is on the number of jobs being created --

Q My question is, why was the prediction made --

MR. McCLELLAN: -- and the President's focus is on making sure that people who are hurting because they cannot find work have a job. That's where the President's focus is.

Q Then why predict a number? Why was the number predicted? Why was the number predicted? You can't get away with not -- just answer the question. Why was that number predicted?

MR. McCLELLAN: I've been asked this, and I've asked -- I've been asked, and I've answered.

Q No, you have not answered. And everybody watching knows you haven't answered.

MR. McCLELLAN: I disagree.

You can almost hear McClellan mutter under his breath "hey, these lame responses worked when Ari fed them to you; why are you comin' after me?"

"I have watched carefully what's happening in San Francisco, where licenses were being issued, even though the law states otherwise," Bush said. "I have consistently stated that I'll support law to protect marriage between a man and a woman. Obviously these events are influencing my decision."

Never mind that he was probably exaggerating this claim. (More likely, he was unaware of San Francisco until one of his advisors mentioned they were marryin' off gays there. But I digress.) What burns my bacon is the following statement : "I am troubled by activist judges who are defining marriage."

Well man, if you're troubled by activist judges, why do you keep nominating them?

In the coming weeks, we will be launching a new initiative to continue the campaign you helped begin. Please continue to come to www.deanforamerica.com for updates and news as our new initiative develops. There is much work still to be done, and today is not an end--it is just the beginning.

This Party and this country needs change, and you have already begun that process. I want you to think about how far we have come. The truth is: change is tough. There is enormous institutional pressure in our country against change. There is enormous institutional pressure in Washington against change, in the Democratic Party against change. Yet, you have already started to change the Party and together we have transformed this race. Along the way, we’ve engaged hundreds of thousands of new Americans in the political process, as witnessed by this year’s record participation in the primaries and caucuses.

The fight that we began can and must continue. Although my candidacy for president may end today, the most important goal remains defeating George W. Bush in November, and I hope that you will join me in doing everything we can to support the Democrats this fall. From the earliest days of our campaign, I have said that the power to change Washington rests not in my hands, but in yours. Always remember, you have the power to take our country back.

Yesterday I expressed the wish to hear him say roughly these same words. I know many folks thought he was a loose cannon or a sell-out; many felt he might even try to destroy the party on his way out. Perhaps his campaign was crushed as much by people's strong opinions of Dean (he was neither a mythic hero or villain) as by the whole "electability" issue. Who knows. But I'm pleased to see Dean leaving on the honorable note I expected.

More importantly, it appears Dean plans to continue working at the grassroots. He may well contribute more to the party than he would have as President. I've taken a lot of heat on this blog for backing Dean down the stretch after it was clear Dennis Kucinich wasn't going to emerge. My switch is fair game for derision and I'm happy to take the heat for it. But on the occasion of his departure, I'd like to thank Howard Dean for his vision and courage in the race. I hope everyone would extend the same thanks.

"The tax relief was a vital part of this economic recovery."

President Bush, today.

Much like "relief" here has a specific definition, I think we shoud recall what a Bush "recovery" looks like.

Of even greater concern, though, is the kind of emerging conservative rhetoric that paints liberals not only as "desperate" but evil vermin who deserve to be exterminated.

(Answer: as dirty as their creativity permits. It's going to be a back-alley knife fight.)

The reason is because the GOP strategy-setters have been co-opted by the neocon fringe (which is to say the fringe of the neoconservative wing). The Republican Party still a pretty varied stew--red meaters like Tom DeLay, sure, but there are also healthier ingredients like Olympia Snowe. In local politics, the GOP is even more varied. City republicans are as likely to be gay, nonwhite, or secular as their Democratic foes. But those folks aren't charting election strategies.

Francine Prose, in an article in the March Harper's (if you subscribe to only one magazine, Harper's should be the one), compared the philosophical underpinnings of the neocon wing to reality shows.

Observant readers may already have noted that the guiding principles to which I've alluded--flinty individualism, the vision of a zero-sum society in which no one can win unless someone else loses, the conviction that altruism and compassion are signs of folly and weakness, the exaltation of solitary striving above the illusory benefits of cooperative mutual aid, the belief that certain circumstances justify secrecy and deception, the invocation of a reviled common enemy to solidify group loyalty--are the exact same themes that underlie the rhetoric we have been hearing and continue to hear from the Republican Congress and our current administration.

If Democrats wish to defend themselves against this approach, they have several options, most of them bad. They can respond in kind--but unlike the group loyalty GOP overloards can expect, Dems will get a bronx cheer from their own camp, and drive waffling Republicans back to George. They can ignore the attacks, which is the classic Daschle Maneuver. But smiling and praising the guy who's carving you up in a knife fight has shown to have its flaws as well.

The Democrats have about a month to come up with a coherent response that works. Elements from the campaign--calling the GOP on these tactics rather than responding with slimier smears; demanding that the press ask hard questions about the behavior of politicians; demanding that the GOP stand behind its actual record rather than its PR--have worked. But they mostly worked among the Democratic faithful and during a relatively attack-free phase.

Another tactic is to target the moderates with a reasonableness campaign. Trying to separate the Snowes from the Bushes might be easier than Dems imagine--after all, with very soft support and a growing list of black marks, Bush may not even be around next year. Senators have a longer view. Congressional Dems can give support to this tactic by pushing for moderate legislation--in the Bush years, moderation is a wedge issue for Republicans.

In any case, soon the knives will start glinting under streetlights. How will the Dems respond?

The dominant theme of American politics since the nineteen-sixties has been freedom: cultural freedoms under Democrats, economic freedoms under Republicans. The pursuit of happiness became a private affair, and the sense of civic responsibility withered among liberals and conservatives alike. The political choice was between two versions of hedonism.

In the conservative case, ideological creep has led to a kind of democratic totalitarianism in which the urge to democratize comes at the point of a sword. The US no longer participates in international democratic institutions and foreign policy has become the "coalition of the billing"--the US dragging along whomever it can buy off. Thus the conservative vision offers conquered nations little hope of self determination. Weakened vassal state are dependent on their "liberators," and countries like Afghanistan and Iraq have little choice but to accept democracy on American terms.

But if the conservative vision offers too little self-determination, the liberal vision offers too little structure or support.

Certain mental traits that have spread among Democrats since the Vietnam War get in the way--not just the tendency toward isolationism and pacifism but a cultural relativism (going by the name of "multiculturalism") that makes it difficult for them to mount a wholehearted defense of one political system against another, especially when the other has taken root among poorer and darker-skinned peoples.

Liberals, for very different reasons, have not been willing to put in the effort to rebuild democracies, either. Stung by past quagmires, they are unwilling to stick around and do the hard work, hoping that liberation will become the source of democracy. Their impetus is further limited by the relatively smaller bump they receive in the polls at home.

The dimension Packer doesn't mention in his article (which has a different focus) is this: sincere regional commitments to democracy ask that US foreign policy be reshuflled entirely. Holding the line on "evil" Iran while protecting "good" Saudi Arabia and Israel completely undermines US credibility in the Mideast. This exposes the real strategic disadvantage of promoting democracies: it's risky. The best symbol for this conflict is Iraq itself. While the US wishes to appear supportive of democracy there, it can't really afford it--at least not in the short term.

If you want to lose that unwanted beer belly, eventually you have to come to the reality of physics. Either you cut back on the beer, or you exercise more. There are a lot of other options, but solutions are finite.

So it is with democracy. If the US has a sincere desire to promote it, the reality has to be confronted. Without the foundation of physical safety, economic stability, education, functional services, and so on, the country will be lost to chaos. Without a national commitment to democratic principles--free press, minority rights, civil liberties--the country's nascent democracy will be lost to tyranny. And without confronting the power of ideological opposition within a culture--generally fundamentalism in the Mideast--the country's democracy will co-emerge with its opposite embedded into government and have to fight a downward spiral of internal conflict.

The US must also put greater systemic changes in its own foreign policy into place. It must begin leading in international cooperation (whether through the UN or independently), and it must abandon policies that coddle dictatorships in neighboring countries.

Without the long-term commitment to building these structures and changing its own policy, "promoting" democracy will remain confused and contradictory and function mainly as domestic PR.

An initial review of the more than 300 pages found no additional documentation about why Bush went months without attending required drills while he was living in Montgomery, Ala., and at his home base in Houston between May 1972 and May 1973.

The documents also do not clear up another mystery about Bush's military service: why then First Lieutenant Bush, a fighter-interceptor pilot, did not take his required annual flight physical examination in mid-1972. On Aug. 1, 1972, he was suspended from flight status for not taking the physical, and never flew again.

Although this story continues to explode (Google News article count: 2,030--a 30% increase since Wednesday), I'm ambivilent about its significance. I imagine everyone more or less thinks the following scenario is pretty close to the truth: George Bush, a young man with no taste to die in an unpopular war, took advantage of his Daddy's position to get in the Guard. Once there, he farted around and did the minimal amount of work until, as the war was essentially over, he took advantage of an early exit. Big whoop.

But the Bush team, intrepid spinsters when they are on the offense, show no such agility on defense. Rather than admitting that his service was undistinguished and moving on, Bush has allowed a non-story--or a small one--to fester into a major issue. Clinton showed that it's not the blowjob that gets you, it's the lie about the blowjob. Yet Bush seems to be wandering into the same territory. Now, even if he is exonerated on the service issue, his character has taken a pretty big hit. Americans have a bad taste in their mouths over this one, and it will be hard for the President to reverse that. Instead, he seems to be offering more of the same. Now the press will have a weekend to tell a new variant of the story--Bush releases more ink into the water, hoping to cover up the issue.

Which means two more days of asking, "What's he hiding?'

"Everyone may wear dresses so long as they are women."

Happy hunting.

____________________________
*If you actually want it. Should you wish to auction the book, give it to the (satirically) needy, or pawn it at Powell's for beer money, that's your business--provided you abide by rule #1.

**I'll even spring for postage.

***This book is satirical. For an actual White House employee handbook, go here. The views expressed in the White House Inc. Employee Handbook are not those of "Notes on the Atrocities," it's member sites, or any of the multiple personalities of the blogger. Unless you enjoy the book, in which case I may claim them.

Intrigue surrounds a woman who recently fled the country, reportedly at the prodding of Kerry, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

A serious investigation of the woman and the nature of her relationship with Sen. John Kerry has been underway at TIME magazine, ABC NEWS, the WASHINGTON POST, THE HILL and the ASSOCIATED PRESS, where the woman in question once worked....

In an off-the-record conversation with a dozen reporters earlier this week, General Wesley Clark plainly stated: "Kerry will implode over an intern issue." [Three reporters in attendance confirm Clark made the startling comments.]

Apparently the Post is denying it.

Leonard Downie Jr., executive editor of The Washington Post, acknowledged that his staff had begun to dig deeper into the life and career of Kerry, but said he had not heard anything about an alleged infidelity. "What we're finding, I don't know," he said. "This is the first we are looking into him this way."

Clark today endorsed Kerry, so that doesn't exactly square with the Drudge report. More?

Like every other institution, the Washington and political press corps operate with a good number of biases and predilections.

They include, but are not limited to, a near-universal shared sense that liberal political positions on social issues like gun control, homosexuality, abortion, and religion are the default, while more conservative positions are "conservative positions."

They include a belief that government is a mechanism to solve the nation's problems; that more taxes on corporations and the wealthy are good ways to cut the deficit and raise money for social spending and don't have a negative affect on economic growth; and that emotional examples of suffering (provided by unions or consumer groups) are good ways to illustrate economic statistic stories.

A familiar charge. Bernie Goldberg has turned this view into a cottage industry since he published Bias. Let's leave this question aside for the moment. "The Note" extends the argument:

The press, by and large, does not accept President Bush's justifications for the Iraq war -- in any of its WMD, imminent threat, or evil-doer formulations. It does not understand how educated, sensible people could possibly be wary of multilateral institutions or friendly, sophisticated European allies.

It does not accept the proposition that the Bush tax cuts helped the economy by stimulating summer spending.

It remains fixated on the unemployment rate.

CAP refutes the claim in pointed language--fairly predictably; I don't think I need to quote it here. I'm actually more interested in this charge as it stands. I'm wondering, where is this powerful cabal of "Washington and political press corps" "The Note" references?

It obviously excludes the WSJ, Washington Times, Christian Broadcasting Network, and Fox News (among many others). It excludes the myriad print, radio, and television news sources devoted to business. (Maybe writers of "The Note" are so busy reading the World Socialist Press that they're unaware of Forbes, Fortune, and Inc.) Presumably, "The Note" exludes editorial boards as well, because the majority of them supported Bush's invasion.

Am I missing something? Is there any evidence to support this statement? From where I sit, the facts point to the opposite conclusion.

Unlike government agencies, private contractors can resist Freedom of Information Act requests and are insulated from direct congressional oversight. Private companies ... can conceal details of their missions from public scrutiny in the name of protecting trade secrets. They are also largely exempt from salary caps and government ethics rules designed to protect policy from being polluted by politics.

Halliburton has already been accused of fraud. How do Americans discover the truth? It's not clear they can.

Why are government contractors able to lobby Congress?
It's not a shocker that government agencies aren't allowed to give money to politicians. Having the CIA dumping federal funds into the coffers of a powerful senator for favorable legislation would constitute corruption in nearly everyone's book. The same is true with government employees. Why then are government contractors like Halliburton and its employees allowed to do it? Mayer again:

Halliburton has no such constraints. The company made political contributions of more than seven hundred thousand dollars between 1999 and 2002, almost always to Republican candidates or causes. In 2000, it donated $17,677 to the Bush-Cheney campaign. Indeed, the seventy or so companies that have Iraq contracts have contributed more money to President Bush than they did to any other candidate during the past twelve years.

Does contracting make it too easy to conduct war?
The neocon hawks introduced the pre-emption doctrine 18 months ago. The military required to conduct optional wars would be vast, and the politics of drafting soldiers to fight them untenable. Solution? Hire out the work. Mayer:

There are some hundred and thirty-five thousand American troops in Iraq, but [retired Air Force colonel Sam] Gardiner estimated that there would be as many as three hundred thousand if not for private contractors. He said, "Think how much harder it would have been to get Congress, or the American public, to support those numbers."

Inadvertently, privatizing military operations has begun to drive foreign policy. One wonders who's on the hook if Iraq gets too messy and expensive and Congress turns off the spigot. Will Halliburton pack up and go home? What if it gets too dangerous to do business and Halliburton pulls out?

Should government contractors abide by US policy?
Despite the "God Bless America" goose-stepping that Republicans demanded in the build-up to the invasion, the very infrastructure they created under privatization had been supporting terrorist regimes. Why not? They're not beholden to the policies or even values of the US government. They're beholden only to stockbrokers and the bottom line.

The United States had concluded that Iraq, Libya, and Iran supported terrorism and had imposed strict sanctions on them. Yet during Cheney?s tenure at Halliburton the company did business in all three countries. In the case of Iraq, Halliburton legally evaded U.S. sanctions by conducting its oil-service business through foreign subsidiaries that had once been owned by Dresser. With Iran and Libya, Halliburton used its own subsidiaries. The use of foreign subsidiaries may have helped the company to avoid paying U.S. taxes.

Who's working for whom?
The most troubling aspect of privatization is that contracting isn't responsive to quick policy shifts. It's a slow, often speculative process. In order to be prepared to invade Iraq, the government was secretly negotiating with Halliburton--even while the President was publicly saying he had made no decision to invade. After the invasion, Congress discovered it didn't have oversight over the scope of the contract.

The Department of Defense?s decision to award Halliburton the seven-billion-dollar contract to restore Iraq?s oil industry was made under "emergency" conditions. The company was secretly hired to draw up plans for how it would deal with putting out oil-well fires, should they occur during the war. This planning began in the fall of 2002, around the time that Congress was debating whether to grant President Bush the authority to use force, and before the United Nations had fully debated the issue. In early March, 2003, the Army quietly awarded Halliburton a contract to execute those plans.

After months spent trying to obtain more information about the classified Halliburton deals, Representative Waxman's staff discovered that the original oil-well-fire contract entrusted Halliburton with a full restoration of the Iraqi oil industry. "We thought it was supposed to be a short-term, small contract, but now it turns out Halliburton is restoring the entire oil infrastructure in Iraq," Waxman said. The Defense Department?s only public acknowledgments of this wide-ranging deal had been two press releases announcing that it had asked Halliburton to prepare to help put out oil-well fires.

The enmeshment between the White House and the company was invisible to Congress, who was learning after the fact what the score was. In fact, the Halliburton contract was actually driving policy, not responding to it. Should the Congress have known this? Should Americans have understood this relationship?

The questions about profiteering are more complex than just making money. It's not surprising that Americans--who must surely assume that Halliburton's defrauding them--are inured to the idea. Corruption seems part of the cost of doing business these days, public or private. But they are still sensitive to the question of safety and security. Mayer's article is instructive because it points to the unintended--and perhaps far more inflammatory--consequences of privatizing the military.

"Our goal remains the same, to change the direction of our country and bring a higher standard of leadership to the White House," Clark said. "And there is no party more committed to that effort and there is no party more committed to the people than this party, my party, the Democratic Party."

| link |

And in other news, this is how part of the US Constitution will read if George Bush has his way:

"Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups."

The United States does not casually or capriciously charge its own citizens with providing support to terrorists. But the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, serve as a constant, stark reminder that America has enemies in the world . . . and sometimes the enemies are here at home. The plea agreements in the Portland case would have been more difficult to achieve, were it not for the legal tools provided by the USA Patriot Act.

Yesterday, Ashcroft called it a "defining day in America's war on terrorism." But he didn't mention that none of the defendants were being tried as terrorists, nor that laws pre-dating the Patriot Act would be used to prosecute them. In fact, one could argue that the Portland Seven were the perfect example of why the Patriot Act isn't necessary.

Now that we've reached the end of the road, the lessons aren't clear. Hawash yesterday took full responsibility for his actions, saying he was "Proud to be a US citizen." For those who wanted this to be a test case for the Patriot Act, Hawash was something less than perfectly innocent, but also something far more less than traitorous. Neither civil liberties proponents nor racists like Reinhard are going to feel comfortable identifying this case as the symbol of their cause (and although Ashcroft must ride this horse politically, it's unclear whether legislators will see it as a triumph of the Patriot Act).

Like the larger drama playing out nationwide, the prosecution of Maher Hawash was confusing and painful. It didn't lead back to the clean concept of "evil" that began with Bush's rhetoric, but neither did it sever Islam's role. Everyone wanted more clarity after 9/11, but this case, if it's symbolic of anything, shows that the road is going to be a lot muddier than we'd hoped.

[Clarification: Al-Muhajabah pointed out that my use of the phrase "neither did it sever Islam's role" was a little sloppy. My intent there wasn't implicate Islam as a contributor to terror.]

50% of municipalities reporting (200 out of 403)

Sen. John Kerry 45%
Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean 26%
Rep. Dennis Kucinich 15%
Sen. John Edwards 9%
Retired Gen. Wesley Clark 4%
The Rev. Al Sharpton 0%
Uncommitted 1%

Fifteen percent for DK? Holy Moly! This is after he finished third in Washington (more distantly, with 8% of the vote). I'm not going to seriously argue that Kucinich is on the move here, but as the candidates thin out, Kerry emerges as the de facto candidate, and Dean sinks to his doom, progressives are now shifting votes to the true liberal. (It's really too bad Lieberman didn't carry his Joe-mentum through the weekend; I'd have loved to see him getting beaten by Dennis.)

All right Kucitizens, it appears this simple blogger is ripe for his weekly pile-driving. Come get me.

List of Grammy Award Winners

... and Marcy Marxer.

Spoken Word Album for Children: "Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf/Beintus: Wolf Tracks," Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev and Sophia Loren.

Spoken Word Album: "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right (Al Franken)," Al Franken.

Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance...

The trouble is that accepting that excuse requires forgetting a lot of recent history. By February 2002, when the administration released its fiscal 2003 budget, all of the bad news — the bursting of the bubble, the recession, and, yes, 9/11 — had already happened. Yet that budget projected only a $14 billion deficit this year, and a return to surpluses next year. Why did that forecast turn out so wrong? Because administration officials fudged the facts, as usual.

It misleadingly claims that the government is on a path to cut the deficit in half in five years. It denies that the president's tax program is a big part of the fiscal mess we're in. It deflects election-year criticism by shoving the most difficult budget cuts until after Nov. 2. It hides the lengths to which the administration will go to protect its tax cuts for the wealthy.

Yes, that first paragraph was Krugman, the second EJ. Editorial mind meld. But wait, still on the budget deficits, Brad DeLong, writing for the Center for American Progress, picks up the thread.

You'll have an easy time finding the Bush administration's official deficit forecast for 2009: $237 billion.... You'll find news reporters writing with a straight face about Bush's "confidence" that the deficit can be halved by 2009 alongside big boosts in Defense and Homeland Security spending and the extension of all the Bush tax cuts.

Finally, we conclude with the Economist, the sorriest mag in the world (they've been beating themselves up since endorsing Bush in 2000).

If this all looks too good to be true, it is. For once, the administration has not fiddled the books by relying on unrealistically high growth rates in the coming years; but it has relied on other fibs. For a start, the budget does not factor in the future costs of keeping soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan: even Mr Bush's own budget director says costs could be as much as $50 billion for Iraq alone in 2005. Then the usual implausible savings are found from “waste, fraud and abuse”. Third, all the president's cuts are to fall on the one-fifth of the total budget that counts as domestic discretionary spending—hardly likely to happen in an election year.

Read those four paragraphs in a row, and you'll see they could all have come from the same article. And when Paul Krugman and the Economist are writing the same article about Bush's budget, you know something's up.

...the country had illegal missiles, as well as the ability and intent to quickly produce biological and chemical weapons.

But he said the agency never described Iraq as "an imminent threat" in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion....

Providing some details of an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, Tenet said analysts "never said there was an imminent threat" from Hussein's Iraq. "Rather, they painted an objective assessment for our policymakers of a brutal dictator who was continuing his efforts to deceive and build programs that might constantly surprise us and threaten our interests."

The even bigger news, however, is a report that the Valerie Plame leaks came from two aides in Cheney's office--and one of them was chief of staff "Scooter" Libby. Josh Marshall's following the story and claims to be "sitting on some other key developments in the case." So stay tuned.

The budget purports to resurrect the “Pay-As-You-Go” rules that played an important role in moving the nation from deficits to surpluses in the 1990s.... The Pay-As-You-Go rules enacted as part of the 1990 Budget Enforcement Act, and signed into law by the President’s father, required that any entitlement expansions or tax cuts be fully paid for through offsetting entitlement cuts or tax increases.

<>Entitlement increases would have to be offset.

<>The costs of refundable tax credits — i.e., tax credits for low- and many moderate-income working families — also would have to be offset.

<>But the costs of other tax cuts — including the large savings tax breaks in the budget, which would represent a bonanza for the wealthiest individuals in the country — would not have to be offset.

<>Furthermore, the only offsets that could be used to pay for entitlement improvements would be cuts in other entitlement programs. Savings on the tax side — such as from closing abusive corporate tax shelters or other tax-avoidance scams — could not be used to finance entitlement benefit improvements.

For low- and middle-income Americans, government benefits are provided principally through entitlement programs. For high-income people, by contrast, government subsidies are provided primarily through what budget analysts and the Joint Committee on Taxation refer to as “tax expenditures” and Chairman Greenspan has referred to as “tax entitlements.” By requiring increases in entitlement programs to be offset but not expansions of tax expenditures, the proposal has reverse “class warfare” aspects. (All emphasis theirs.)

And thus the ideological attacks on the poor and middle class are hidden in a rules change deep within thousands of pages of governmentspeak.

Al: 48,903
Joe: 62,318

(By comparison, John Kerry got 86,751 votes in South Carolina, where he finished a distant second.)

We all wrote Joe's eulogy six months ago, so this is barely a footnote in the election. We've had enough time to digest the trends, shocking after Iowa, of a surging Kerry and rallying Edwards. New theories about why and how this happen have replaced the old ones that had us celebrating Howard Dean's victories. It seems all perfectly normal now. Kerry, of course.

But let's go back to Joe. Considering that he received 50 million votes from Americans three years ago and was leading in national polls six months ago, barely beating Al Sharpton on Mini Tuesday is a fairly shocking result. In the carefully re-woven fabric of conventional wisdom, this is the loose thread.

The DLC, who were the earliest and most vitriolic Dean assailants (handily beating out conservatives, who were slow to attack), have called Kerry's emergence a triumph of "answers, not just anger." After New Hampshire, they wrote:

For the second week in a row, rank-and-file Democrats have spoken loud and clear: The Democratic Party is moderate, middle-class, and motivated by hope, not anger. Sen. John Kerry firmly established himself as the big comeback story of the nominating process. He won a second straight victory by following the path urged on Democrats by the original Comeback Kid, President Bill Clinton: showing the country not just what Democrats are against, but what they are for.

That's an interesting pirouette, but what about Joe? He was the true moderate--Kerry, recall, is the candidate Global Stewards gave the highest "liberal quotient" rating. He received a 93%, with Joe pulling up the rear at 76%. (John Edwards was third at 88%).

In fact, the DLC has it exactly backwards. Kerry emerged only after he adopted the Dean message. When he got angrier (at Bush) and more clearly liberal, people finally started to take him seriously. If there's a big loser in this campaign thus far, it's not Dean, but Clintonism. Dean's message is going to be the Dem's message. Clinton's old strategy of appeasement and corporatism rode not under the Kerry banner, but Lieberman's. And last night, it managed a bare 62,000 votes.

Come April, Kerry will be tempted to turn back toward Clintonism--both because that's what advisors will say conventional wisdom dictates and because there's a pile of gold in Clintonism. Progressives need to keep his feet to the fire, though--the Democrats are going to beat Bush this year. This is absolutely no time for appeasement or corporatism. As we move forward, Deaniacs and Kucitizens are going to have to hold this line. Our candidates may not have won, but it's still our party.

A review of Bush's military records shows that Bush enjoyed preferential treatment as the son of a then-congressman, when he walked into a Texas Guard unit in Houston two weeks before his 1968 graduation from Yale and was moved to the top of a long waiting list.

It was an era when service in the Guard was a coveted assignment, often associated with efforts to avoid active duty in Vietnam. Bush was accepted for pilot training after having scored only 25 percent on the pilot's aptitude test, the lowest acceptable grade.

In 2000, the Boston Globe examined a period from May 1972 to May 1973 and found no record that Bush performed any Guard duties, either in Alabama or Houston, although he was still enlisted.

According to military records obtained by The Washington Post, Bush first requested and received permission in May 1972 to be transferred to the Alabama National Guard so he could work on a U.S. Senate campaign. After he was in Alabama, he received notice from the Guard personnel center that he was "ineligible" for the Air Reserve Squadron he requested.

In August 1972, Bush was suspended from flying because he failed to complete an annual medical exam. A month later, Bush requested to be assigned to a different unit in Alabama and was approved. Although he was required to attend periodic drills in Alabama, there is no official record in his file that he did....

Bush said in 2000 that he did "show up for drills. I made most monthly meetings, and when I missed them I made them up."

Bush returned to Houston after the election, and again his service is vague in the records. His officers at Ellington Air Force Base wrote in May 1973 that Bush could not be given his annual evaluation, because he "has not been observed" in Houston between April 1972 and the following May. Ultimately, another officer states in a subsequent document that a report for that one-year period was unavailable for "administrative reasons."

All of this is, of course, well-documented, and is well-known to those of us who care if our President is a layabout liar. It has, however, not been well-reported. Any more of this and bloggers might be in trouble.

What's fictitious about it is when the president says he's going to cut the deficit in half over the next five years. He is not. He's not going to come close to cutting it in half. He gets that by just leaving out big things that he's going to spend money on, like the continuing war on terror, he leaves out that he's going to take every penny of Social Security surplus over the next decade, all that money is going to have to be paid back. He's doing the same thing to the Medicare trust fund. And on and on it goes. He pays for the alternative minimum tax problem in the first year, but no year after that.

So the true deficit five years from now under the president's plan is not going to be cut in half, it's going to be over $600 billion added to the debt. In addition to that, we know that the budget that he's put out there is not his real budget. Over the last three years, he's added spending after he's proposed his budgets of $250 billion, and his OMB director today acknowledged they're going to do it again after this year's election, they're going to come in and ask for over $50 billion more. So this is a fiction in every way.

To this responds Iowa Congressman Jim Nussle, chairman of the House Budget Committee, weakly:

Well, the president of the United States received when he took office a deficit with regard to job creation in this economy. We inherited a recession. He inherited a security deficit from the previous administration that had gutted homeland security and gutted national defense....

Now that we have done that, now that the economy is starting to recover, we're starting to see job creation, now that the country is protected, thank goodness, and needs to be protected even more, we can turn our focus toward dealing with the deficits. The president has a plan to cut the deficit in half, in five years. It's not a fiction to do that.

You see the problem, don't you? The GOP doesn't really have a response to the ballooning budgets because they can't blame it on the Democrats. Blame, obfuscation, and misdirection are the game plan of the GOP. Problem is, these work a whole lot better when you're not actually passing laws.

The reasons blame, obfuscation, and misdirection have worked so well for three years are these: 1) the bills hadn't come due yet, so the obfuscated and misleading remained hidden, and 2) the Democrats failed to call them on the strategy. But now the bills are due, and for once it seems the Democrats may have actually have found their courage. Listen to the final exchange:

MARGARET WARNER: All right, let me ask Congressman Nussle. You said you'd like to see further cuts and do you have many conservative Republicans who are upset about this level of deficits. How are you going to manage all that, and are you going to try to put in even greater cuts than the president is proposing on the domestic side?

REP. JIM NUSSLE: Sure, well, we will have a real plan and it won't just be rhetoric. And what we will try and do is go not only through the discretionary side but also through what we call the mandatory side and look for better ways to deliver the product for people who are in need.

But Senator Conrad mentioned that this is a revenue issue and I just have to respond to that. The revenue I'm concerned about is the revenue that is coming into the checkbooks of families in Iowa and North Dakota and California and across the country. Those are the families who are having revenue problems right now.

We wring our hands as politicians in Washington about the poor government not having enough of your money. It's you that has had a difficult time with your job or a difficult time being able to make ends meet, and making sure you can keep more of those tax dollars is job one to get this economy going again, and I'm proud of that fact -- not only have we coupled that with getting the economy going, but protecting America, and that was worth running a deficit for a short period of time. Now we will get about the business of making sure we control spending so that we not only can cut it in half in five years but get us back to a balanced budget.

MARGARET WARNER: Senator Conrad, brief ten-second response?

SEN. KENT CONRAD: Well, all I can say is I'm concerned about the pocketbooks of North Dakotans and Iowans and the rest Americans too. The problem with this Republican budget is by 2009, they're going to have $35,000 of debt beside the name of each and every American, every man, woman and child in this country, because of the fiscal irresponsibility of this administration.

Spine indeed.

Kerry: 53%
Bush: 46%

Edwards: 49%
Bush: 48%

Clark: 50%
Bush: 47%

Dean: 45%
Bush: 52%

Seems the lies and tax cuts are finally starting to take their toll.

Last October 16, [Thomas C. Frazier] decided to take the day off to go to San Bernardino from his home in Santa Ana. His purpose, he says, was "to engage in a legal and peaceful protest" against George W. Bush. The President was in town that day at the Radisson Hotel and Convention Center to support the candidacy of now-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger....

Frazier wrote in a complaint he filed with the San Bernardino Police Department[,] "For no apparent reason, Officer Montecino raced towards me screaming, 'No, no, no, no. Get there, Get there!'" Shortly thereafter, "without any provocation, Officer Montecino then grabbed my sign by enveloping my arms and sign together in one rapid swoop," Frazier wrote....

"I then asked Officer Montecino, 'Can I have my sign back, and I'll just leave then?' Officer Montecino responded by stating, 'I don't have time for this,' while simultaneously striking my right forearm with a smashing blow with one side of a set of handcuffs. I asked Officer Montecino if I was free to go, and he stated, 'No, you're being arrested.' As Officer Montecino put the other cuff on my left wrist that I voluntarily put behind my back, I asked him, 'Sir, why am I being arrested?' and he replied, 'For not doing what I told you to do.' "

Another officer took Frazier down to the police station, and Montecino arrived a little later. "You're being arrested for obstructing a police officer. Your sign could have been a weapon," Montecino said, according to Frazier's complaint.

Now personally, I think "fascist" is a little strong. Fascism, according to American Heritage, is marked by "centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism." I mean, Bush hasn't really invoked stringent socioeconomic controls--I'd call them "soft." Also, he's not belligerently racist. More like "surreptitiously."

In an unrelated story, Bush will name his own "independent panel" to investigate whether he lied to justify invading a nonthreatening country against international wishes.

To wit:

He has slated military spending to increase by 7%--double the rate of spending growth overall, but defensible given we've got two wars to clean up. Except it's not 7%. That's just regular spending--the Iraq and Afghanistan expenditures aren't included (sound familiar?).

The bill is backloaded so expenditures come due after Bush leaves office. Example: his Mission to Mars farce gets only $1 billion in new funds now. Big vision my ass.

Bush wants to make tax cuts permanent, which is essentially one of those no-interest-payments-'til-2010! deals, after which the massive bill comes due. While Bush is vacationing safely in Barbados.

Of course, even the Prez's own numbers are grim, so that means cuts to all those nasty government agencies Grover so despises. Leaving aside non-discretionary funds (the accounts Bush isn't allowed to raid and give to the rich) and the military, the fat left to cut must come from less than 18% of the total budget. The result will mean elimination of 65 federal programs, and substantial cuts to seven of the 16 cabinet-level agencies. Hated agencies like the EPA and Agriculture Department are bearing the brunt. Those follow substantial cuts Bush made last year to pay for wars and tax cuts.

This is all a first-blush look at a budget released today. When the likes of Max, Brad, and Nathan get on the case, I'm sure we'll have a lot more to talk about.

There is a big difference between politicians who cave in to the opposition for political opportunity, versus those who work out compromises based on principles, when the opposition has more votes. Had Clinton been a politician full of principle, when his health care plan got shot down, he would have come back with another, one that answered some of the criticism leveled at the first.

(Incidentally, he wrote that three weeks ago--long before Dean trashed Trippi for Neel. Looking pretty prescient, L.)

I also noticed that the Times is flogging itself.

In the last several weeks, three stories launched elsewhere have been either diminished or disregarded by The Times. (Of course, among major news organizations, this not-invented-here attitude is no more exclusive to The Times than are commas.) In each case, the effort to maintain a high level of what people around here call "competitive metabolism'' has not served the readers well.

This is from the Public Editor, who cites the examples of the Toledo Blade's story of the Tiger Force slaughter of Vietnamese villagers; the Paul O'Neill revelations, and the Post's coverage of Iraq's on-paper-only WMD arsenal.

But if I may: the Times has again missed the point. Navel-gazing and self-flagellation seems par for the course lately, but good journalism less so. In the past two years, and particularly since late 2002, the Times has been breaking fewer stories than its more ambitious colleagues. The Globe recently announced that the GOP had been (possibily illegally) eavesdropping on the Democrats. The LA Times has been a reliable source of orginal news, and the Post remains the gold standard on press critical of the President's handling of the war.

The Post, in fact, offers a nice contrast to the Times. While they endorsed the war and backed the President, they have also been the most critical of him since, including the likelihood that he misled everyone. Had the Times felt similarly guilty about backing the war, I expect we would just have received an apology. I prefer the news.