January 2004 Archives

Do you want Denver's own Child's Pay to be the first political ad ever run during the Super Bowl? Make it so.

Building on the power and creativity of this work, were making an important announcement: With your help, we can take the winning ad to the Super Bowl. We were planning to play the winning ad nationally on CNN during the week of Bush's State of the Union address, but the response to the ads has been way beyond our expectations. We've been working to put together something even more exciting. A political ad has never been placed on the Super Bowl before, and with your help, "Child's Pay" will be the first. Together, let's send Washington a clear message: no more politics as usual.

The Super Bowl ad will cost $1.6 million to place nationally, but we can afford this if we can complete our $10 million dollar grassroots campaign, which now stands at $7.5 million. Can you help?

To make an instant, secure contribution, by credit card or check, go to:

http://www.moveonvoterfund.org/superbowl/

Remember, for every two dollars you give, a dollar is added by a matching grant, so your contribution goes even further.

[Update]

Child's Pay, not Play. I've been misreading it this whole time. Clever naming ;)

Slate is hosting a discussion (yesterday's entry and today's) with several liberal (generally speaking) hawks on the topic: "With the benefit of hindsight, do you still believe that the United States should have invaded Iraq in March 2003?" It will be going on all week and is a must read. The panel includes Paul Berman, Thomas Friedman, Christopher Hitchens, Fred Kaplan, George Packer, Kenneth Pollack, Fareed Zakaria and opens with Slate editor Jacob Weisberg's thoughts on the matter:

Let me kick things off by volunteering some of my own qualms. I had been in favor of deposing Saddam Hussein since the premature end of the first Gulf War in 1991 for two primary reasons, which I explained in an earlier Slate dialogue. The first was humanitarian: Saddam was (is) a genocidal butcher on an epic scale, and I wanted to see Iraq freed from his grip. The second was Saddam's seemingly incorrigible pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons. March 2003 was not the time of my choosing—I would have gone in back in 1993 (when Saddam tried to assassinate former President Bush), or in 1998 (when he booted the U.N. inspectors out), or waited for a genuine emergency and a more propitious moment to reassemble an international coalition. But when George W. Bush chose to finally act, I supported him despite serious reservations about timing and method because I wanted the job finished at last.

To me, the liberation of 25 million Iraqis remains sufficient justification, which is why I don't think the failure to find weapons of mass destruction by itself invalidates the case for war (though it certainly weakens it). What does affect my view is the huge and growing cost of the invasion and occupation: in American lives (we're about to hit 500 dead and several thousand more have been injured); in money (more than $160 billion in borrowed funds); and in terms of lost opportunity (we might have found Osama Bin Laden by now if we'd committed some of those resources to Afghanistan). Most significant are the least tangible costs: increased hatred for the United States, which both fosters future terrorism and undermines the international support we will need to fight terrorism effectively for many years to come. Of course, the fall of Saddam has made us safer and is likely to produce all sorts of positive side effects, such as Qaddafi's capitulation. But the diminution of America's ability to create consensus around actions necessary for collective security makes us less safe. So, while I still think the Iraq war was morally justified, I'm not at all sure it was worth the costs.

Many of those costs—human, financial, and diplomatic—could have been reduced substantially if President Bush hadn't gratuitously alienated so many potential allies, and sympathizers, and if arrogance and ideology hadn't prevented his Pentagon team from properly planning for the occupation. But as a supporter of the war, I can't get myself off the hook by saying Bush has screwed things up, because he has screwed things up in ways that were evident in advance of the invasion. This was elective surgery, and we had a pretty good idea what the surgeon's limitations were. The choice wasn't between an invasion led by George W. Bush and an invasion led by a president who would make an eloquent case to the world and build a credible global coalition. The alternatives were Bush's flawed war or no war. So, the question I'm asking myself now is whether the marvelous accomplishment of deposing and capturing Saddam justifies costs that I really ought to have expected.

[emphasis added by me]

Bush screwed the pooch. Help Wesley Clark clean up.

Clark appears to be emerging as TNR's popular vote choice for the nomination. Considering Lieberman's chances in the primary season, it's certainly one of the more realistic choice (as is being discussed in an internal debate over the endorsement). In any case, here's another take on Clark for President that again addresses some of my commentors unfair and uninformed charges that Clark would put multilateralism before real threats to national security.

That leaves one candidate who has made restoring America's position in the world a major theme of his campaign. It's unsurprising that it's also the man who led an awkward, 19-nation NATO coalition against Slobodan Milosevic in Kosovo. Clark is alone among the Democratic candidates in having had to negotiate with foreign leaders, both friends and enemies. He has spent much of his life abroad as a soldier (and Rhodes scholar), as compared with Bush, who had barely left the country before taking office. Clark understands that it matters what the world thinks of America, and has promised to act accordingly.

An easy, and patently false, charge against Clark is that he is a reflexive multilateralist and NATO fetishist who would not protect America without asking permission first. But nothing in his record suggests he'd feel the need to consult Luxembourg before dealing with an imminent threat. If anything, the opposite criticism of him, also widely made, is probably truer--that he is intensely hard to dissuade once he has made up his mind. (Witness his doggedness in urging NATO to go into Bosnia earlier, and to intervene in Kosovo.)

Clark's opposition to the Iraq war is easily caricatured as putting him in the "antiwar" camp. But, unlike Howard Dean, Clark openly expressed jubilation at the liberation of Iraq. And, as J. Peter Scoblic's endorsement of Clark shows, his positions on the war are both far more consistent and more sophisticated than he has been given credit for: Simply put, Clark's instinct is that some elective wars--which few can now doubt Iraq was--should be fought, but only with as much forethought, and as much international support, as possible. Going into Iraq may have been justifiable, but the Iraq war that George Bush fought did not meet those tests, particularly not at a time when the war on terror loomed as a higher priority.

Good sense prevails: Child's Play wins! Incidentally, 2 of the 4 award winners are from Colorado. We rule.

A 30-second TV ad that focuses on George W. Bush’s trillion-dollar debt legacy to America’s children is the winner in the MoveOn.org Voter Fund’s nationwide search for the best spot to tell the truth about the Bush Administration’s policy failures. The ad also got the highest rating from members of the public, who gave it the “People’s Choice” award as well.

"Child’s Pay," by Charlie Fisher, 38, of Denver features young children working in difficult service and manufacturing jobs – washing dishes, hauling trash, repairing tires, cleaning offices, assembly-line processing and grocery checking – followed by the line: “Guess who’s going to pay off President Bush’s $1 trillion deficit?”

The overall winner is an advertising executive who was a registered Republican until the end of the first Bush administration, in 1992.  He is currently on assignment in Denmark and flew in to attend the awards ceremony with his camera man, P. Dreyer.  The ad he produced will run nationwide January 17-21 sponsored by MoveOn.org Voter Fund, coinciding with the President’s State of the Union address on January 20.

Wesley Clark unveiled his plan today for closing the pay gap for women. The highlights:

Today, women still earn only 73 cents for every dollar men earn.  The statistics for women of color are even worse: African American women earn only 64 cents, and Hispanic women earn only 55 cents, for every dollar earned by white men. Wes Clark has a three-part plan to close the pay gap:

1. Increase penalties on employers who discriminate
• Allow women who have been discriminated against to recover compensatory and punitive damages
• Make it easier for women to build a case against employers who discriminate
• Enhance data reporting to eliminate discrimination
2. Improve pay for women
• Increase the minimum wage to $7 an hour by 2007
• Promote Families First Tax Reform to benefit women
• Expand continuing education and job training
3. Support working women
• Expand the Family and Medical Leave Act to business with 25 or more employees
• Expand the Family and Medical Leave Act to cover routine school and medical appointments and appointments related to domestic violence
• Provide paid leave for employees
• Increase funding for child care and provide pre-school education for all children

Gregg Easterbrook over at TNR breaks down the costs and lack of scientific justification that make Bush's latest plan to distract the electorate from his previous plan to distract the electorate the most ridiculous plan yet.

I'm sitting here trying to figure out what possible reason--other than science illiteracy at the White House--there could be for George W. Bush to announce a plan to build a Moon base. Manned exploration of Mars is even crazier.

As this space pointed out last month, minimum weight at departure from low-Earth orbit for a stripped-down, austere Moon base might be 600 tons, and at current NASA launch prices, it costs $15 billion to place 600 tons into low-Earth orbit. Fifteen billion is NASA's entire budget--and that's just the cost to launch the Moon thing, not to build it, staff it, and support it.

An Apollo spacecraft at departure from low-Earth orbit for the Moon weighed about 45 tons, and the manned part was tiny--astronauts could not stand up or move inside--as most of the weight was fuel. Considering that Moon-base weight would also be mostly fuel, numerous launches firing 600 tons toward the Moon for the purpose of making a base would actually result in little more than a couple of metal huts, some supplies and some antennas. Program cost for the International Space Station, currently losing air pressure, is about $100 billion, and it does not leave orbit. A rough guess would be that to build something about the size of the International Space Station (ISS) on the Moon would cost at least twice as much, $200 billion. And the ISS itself is mainly cramped modules, supplies, and antennas.

Heee.

That fucking Saddam. He tricked us again. He had the weapons of mass destruction...but he and the U.N. Axis Of Beezle used their magic anti-Americanism to force the Earth to rotate on its axis several thousand times in between when he had the weapons and when we decided we cared about them.

Now, more than ever, we must go to war with the Axis of Axis and stop the dangerously pro-Saddam rotation of the planet.

Things are looking increasingly bad for the Administration's "Iraq as Imminent Threat" story.

O'Neill, fired by the White House for his disagreement on tax cuts, is the main source for an upcoming book, "The Price of Loyalty," authored by Ron Suskind. Suskind says O'Neill and other White House insiders he interviewed gave him documents that show that in the first three months of 2001, the administration was looking at military options for removing Saddam Hussein from power and planning for the aftermath of Saddam's downfall, including post-war contingencies like peacekeeping troops, war crimes tribunals and the future of Iraq's oil. "There are memos," Suskind tells Stahl, "One of them marked 'secret' says 'Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq.'" A Pentagon document, says Suskind, titled "Foreign Suitors For Iraqi Oilfield Contracts," outlines areas of oil exploration. "It talks about contractors around the world from...30, 40 countries and which ones have what intentions on oil in Iraq," Suskind says.

Let's send Bush back to Texas. Put Wesley Clark in the White House.

Now is the time of year when everyone traditionally posts their "Best of" lists. Partially in that spirit, but more in an effort to chronicle for myself what I enjoyed in 2003, I present some lists of my own. Some of this stuff was just new to me in 2003, having been released in 2002. I also think the "Best of" tag implies some nonexistent objective authority in "judging" the merits of art. In light of these points, I'll call these lists "My Favorites of 2003 Or So" and leave it at that. I'll start with music. Since these lists are meant to be topical, I'm leaving off a lot of older recordings and films I discovered this year and by all rights should be here (Some stuff by Lee Morgan, Larry Young, Daniel Johnston and Cibo Matto come to mind). Assuming I find the time, I'll also have a list of favorite movies and reading of the past year in the near future. I know you will all be holding your collective breath. Let us begin:

White Stripes: Elephant

I was late on the White Stripes bandwagon for no good reason and to my own detriment. Seeing their week in residence on Conan O'Brian in April got me all aboard. This album is all over my most-played lists in iTunes, so I can't really single out a favorite song, but if pressed I'd have to point to "In The Cold Cold Night" and "Hypnotise" but only by a hair. In retrospect, the White Stripes sub-conciously opened up a world of music I never would have bothered with before, including several items on this list. I've since bought all their albums, but this one is still my favorite.

The Mountain Goats: Tallahassee

I wouldn't even have know about The Mountain Goats (aka John Darnielle and friends) if not for one of my then houseguests mentioning that they'd be playing a show in Denver and we should check it out. The show, at Larimer Lounge, was great (and actually contributed another entry on this list) and the CD better. Intense acoustic lo-fi folk rock with a story line. Strictly speaking, this was a 2002 release, but it was new to me and kind of entwined with the next entry, which was a 2003 release

Baptist Generals: No Silver/No Gold

More lo-fi rock from the aforementioned Larimer Lounge show. This album flirts with ear-grating rawness (mostly thanks to the vocals of Chris Flemmons), but somehow comes across as a very intimate and compelling personal effort. Not for everyone, but it's definately worth a listen to find out if it's for you.

Juana Molina: Segundo

Strange but beautiful, minimalist blip-blooping elecronica/acoustic music from a former Argentinean sitcom star. One listen was all it took to confirm its place on this list.

Anti-Pop Consortium: Anti-Pop Consortium vs. Matthew Shipp

This album is the greatest mix of hip-hop electronica and jazz that I've yet heard. It's part of the Matthew Shipp curated "Blue Series" on Thirsty Ear Recordings. There are many recordings on this label that deserve a place on this list (The Blue Series Continuum sessions and Spring Heel Jack Live spring to mind) but in the interest of space and diversity, I will let this be the placeholder. Shipp is mining the future of creative music in this series, and you should give every release in the catalog a listen.

The Bad Plus: These are the Vistas

Rock, Jazz, Both? The Bad Plus caught my ear because of some really good reviews of their live shows on several mailing lists I am on. Since there didn't seem to be many live shows circulating (a situation that still needs to be remedied) I decided to give their first major studio release a try and was quite pleased with the results. They often get written off as a novelty response from the labels to the jazz-rock scene, but that point of view ignores the fact that these guys are amazing musicians who make some great, straight-ahead music. Drummer David King is right up there with the best jazz drummers playing today.

Outkast: Speakerboxxx/The Love Below

I'm not sure I can say anything about this that hasn't been said a few thousand times before. I'd say this album is everything good about hip-hop, except that it's so much more. Hey Ya might just be the catchiest pop song ever.

Junior Senior: D-D-Don't Don't Stop the Beat

Nothing really groundbreaking with this album, but this Danish duo makes really fun catchy music. Don't miss my favorite video of the year!

Miles Davis: The Jack Johnson Sessions

I owe Rob for setting me straight on Miles Davis. My past experiences with Mile Davis were characterized by the execrable "Doo Bop" and "Tutu". After hearing those album, I unfairly wrote off most all of his work. In hindsight (in any sight really) of course, this was absolute obstinate retardedness for which I have no excuse other than youthful musical stupidity. In any case, many thanks to Rob for setting me straight. This album is probably my favorite of the year and a must for any jazz (or rock or funk) fan.

There are a few items that, given more time, would probably end up on this list. Most of them I just picked up in the last few weeks, but I thought it important to mention them because of their potential for becoming a favorite: Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey: Slow Breath, Silent Mind, The Shins: Chutes Too Narrow and Kaki King: Everybody Loves You.

Further news on the WMD front. For those who haven't been daunted by the lack of WMD in Iraq, because everyone (or at least everyone who takes Debka and Newsmax as the gospel truth) knows they were moved to Syria before the war, here's the real word, straight from the horses mouth (via every hawk's favorite, al Guardian).

The United States has no credible evidence that Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria early last year before the U.S.-led war that drove Saddam Hussein from power, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said Friday.

Rice said, "Any indication that something like that happened would be a very serious matter.

"But I want to be very clear: we don't, at this point, have any indications that I would consider credible and firm that that has taken place, but we will tie down every lead," she said at a White House briefing about Bush's trip Monday to a hemispheric summit in Mexico.

[via Drudge Report]

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace unveiled a comprehensive report today contrasting the Administrations case for war with the truth. The findings summarized:

Iraq WMD Was Not An Immediate Threat

• Iraq's nuclear program had been suspended for many years; Iraq focused on preserving a latent, dual-use chemical and probably biological weapons capability, not weapons production.
• Iraqi nerve agents had lost most of their lethality as early as 1991.
• Operations Desert Storm and Desert Fox, and UN inspections and sanctions effectively destroyed Iraq's large-scale chemical weapon production capabilities.

Inspections Were Working

• Post-war searches suggest the UN inspections were on track to find what was there.
• International constraints, sanctions, procurement, investigations, and the export/import control mechanism appear to have been considerably more effective than was thought.

Intelligence Failed and Was Misrepresented

• Intelligence community overestimated the chemical and biological weapons in Iraq.
• Intelligence community appears to have been unduly influenced by policymakers' views.
• Officials misrepresented threat from Iraq's WMD and ballistic missiles programs over and above intelligence findings.

Terrorist Connection Missing

• No solid evidence of cooperative relationship between Saddam's government and Al Qaeda.
• No evidence that Iraq would have transferred WMD to terrorists-and much evidence to counter it.
• No evidence to suggest that deterrence was no longer operable.

Post-War WMD Search Ignored Key Resources

• Past relationships with Iraqi scientists and officials, and credibility of UNMOVIC experts represent a vital resource that has been ignored when it should be being fully exploited.
• Data from the seven years of UNSCOM/IAEA inspections are absolutely essential. Direct involvement of those who compiled the more-than-30-million- page record is needed.

War Was Not the Best-Or Only-Option

• There were at least two options preferable to a war undertaken without international support: allowing the UNMOVIC/IAEA inspections to continue until obstructed or completed, or imposing a tougher program of "coercive inspections."

In response, Colin Powell sputters

“I have not seen smoking gun, concrete evidence about the connection, but I do believe the connections existed,”

In the same article covering Powell's faith in Feith-based intelligence, we find that David Kay, head US inspector, is resigning without issuing a report, following on the heels of the quiet withdrawal of the WMD hunters.

Senior U.S. officials told NBC News on Thursday that David Kay, head of the U.S.-led Iraq Survey Group hunting for weapons, was planning to resign, without issuing a final report.

Kay’s team, which has been scaled back since it began work last year, has found illegal missiles but no stockpiles or ongoing production of chemical or biological weapons, sources told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell. Only a rudimentary nuclear program, which had not started, has been found, they said.

“I think Mr. Kay and his team have looked very hard. I think the reason they haven’t found it is it’s probably not there,” Charles Duelfer, former deputy chairman of the U.N. weapons inspection agency, said in an interview.

This was a war of choice, not an imminent threat. Make them pay, let Wesley Clark at 'em.

Sealing their move to the middle (somewhere to the right of the DLC, but the Left of the Republican mainstream), The New Republic has endorsed Joe Lieberman out of principle.

However, in keeping with their well-earned reputation for fairness, they provide dissenting editors opinions, including "The Case for Wesley Clark: Credibile Threat"

But all the talk about how Clark's biography makes him electable has overwhelmed the more important point: It would also make him a good president. In the last decade, the specter of genocide arose twice in the Balkans; both times, Clark was instrumental in beating it back despite tepid support among political and military elites. In Bosnia, in 1995, Clark fought to continue bombing Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic's forces--a move that forced their withdrawal from Sarajevo and enabled the Dayton peace process, which yielded a successful peacekeeping and reconstruction operation. And, in 1999, with the world sitting idly by as thousands of ethnic Albanians were slaughtered in Kosovo, Clark--by then nato's supreme allied commander of Europe--repeatedly bucked his Pentagon superiors and pushed for intervention. He then proceeded to hold together the fractious nato alliance through a 78-day air war that succeeded in stopping the atrocities and ultimately resulted in Milosevic standing trial for war crimes.

More than just an asset for Clark's political campaign, this diplomatic and military experience provides the brains and the brawn behind a worldview that prioritizes threats to U.S. security without sacrificing humanitarian imperatives, that seeks to solve problems through negotiation but is bolstered with a proven willingness to use force. Unlike Democratic rivals who try to demonstrate their foreign policy bona fides by showcasing their Senate votes, the retired general has actually waged the "muscular multilateralism" that his opponents use as a catchphrase. For this reason, Clark is the best solution for a Democratic Party struggling to prove it can protect the United States from terrorists and weapons of mass destruction--not only because Americans will sleep better with a general, rather than a politician, in the Oval Office, but because they'll sleep safer.

And to address the nuance-impaired in the comments that claim Clark would bow to foreign pressure against military intervention, the article has this to offer:

Clark's multilateralism is pragmatic, not fetishistic. His foreign policy puts self-interest first while allowing for humanitarian interventions, emphasizes diplomacy and international institutions while reserving the right for unilateral action, and endorses the value of nonproliferation treaties while acknowledging their weaknesses. His take on the use of force is pitch-perfect: "We always have the right of self-defense, including inherently the right to strike pre-emptively," he writes. "But force must be used only as a last resort--and then multilaterally if possible." In these respects, Clark again stands out not so much for the uniqueness of his philosophy as for the fact that he has actually put it to use. While many of the Democratic presidential candidates might agree with the tenor of Clark's broad policy guidelines, it's not clear that they would be willing to back up the soft side of U.S. power with its harder edge. With Clark, on the other hand, there is little doubt. It was Clark, after all, who during the Bosnian war demanded--to the point of hectoring a furious superior officer--that bombing continue until Milosevic withdrew from Sarajevo. And it was Clark, together with a handful of Clinton officials, who pushed for military intervention in Kosovo when the Pentagon brass and many nato leaders preferred to do nothing. Clark, unlike his rivals, has actually led wars, not just voted for them.

Read the whole thing. It's the best summation of why Clark must be President I've yet read.

Try and attack this, Howard "turned Vermont into an Enron tax shelter" Dean.

Wes Clark's Families First Tax Reform will crack down on corporate loopholes that benefit special interests, making the tax code simpler and fairer. Wes Clark's plan will save, conservatively, at least $10 billion annually. These saving will go towards paying for Families First Tax Reform, which eliminates taxes for a family of four making up to $50,000 and cuts taxes for all taxpaying families with children making up to $100,000. As President, Wes Clark will fight to simplify the tax system by cracking down on corporate loopholes and tax shelters. He will end corporate welfare as we know it.

Specifically Wes Clark will:

Outlaw tax shelters.

From 1996 to 2001 Enron paid only $63 million in taxes despite reporting billions of dollars in profits. As soon as one tax shelter is shut down, companies set up a new one to take its place. Wes Clark will end that practice by passing a law that will prevent companies from taking advantage of artificially generated losses in tax shelter transactions. The definition of a tax shelter-as an artificial transaction whose only purpose was to avoid paying taxes-will be codified in law. Outlawing tax shelters will not only make the tax code simpler and fairer, but will also promote economic growth by encouraging companies to pursue productive activities rather than tax avoidance.

Double fines for abusive transactions - and quadruple them for repeat offenders.

Wes Clark will double the fines and penalties on abusive tax shelters - and quadruple them for repeat offenders.

Close corporate loopholes, including the janitor's loophole.

Currently companies get tax deductions when they take out life insurance policies for their non-executive employees, like janitors. When the janitor dies, his or her family doesn't see a penny of the benefit - the company pockets all of it. Wes Clark will end the practice of companies deducting life insurance policies for non-executive employees. In addition, he supports closing loopholes along the lines of legislation championed by Senator Baucus.

Recapture taxes from individuals that renounce their U.S. citizenship to avoid taxes

Ultra-wealthy individuals can renounce their U.S. citizenship, ship their assets overseas, and avoid taxation entirely. Wes Clark will apply capital gains taxation to individuals who renounced their citizenship.

Don't miss the finalists for the Bush In 30 Seconds contest, sponsered by Move On. My favorites, and the only ones that effectively target anyone who doesn't already agree with the ad makers - which after all is the point of a political ad, are Child's Play and Desktop. Also, don't miss the right wing "flapdoodle" over the contest.

The opportunistic flapdoodle that Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie has made of the two Bush/Hitler comparisons on the left political-action group MoveOn's Web site is a slyly convenient ploy. If Gillespie can convince the media that the ads, two of more than 1,500 submitted as part of MoveOn's "Bush in 30 Seconds" ad campaign contest, are typical of all the responses, he'll be able to divert attention from other, first-rate entries.

Count me in as a volunteer! Run Gary Run!

Former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart is seriously considering a challenge to Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, according to party sources.

The two-term senator and two-time presidential candidate recently discussed a possible bid with national and state party leaders who are urging him to jump in, said Democratic sources in Washington and Colorado who requested anonymity.

From Slate's "on the trail" feature, which is following Clark for the next few days, more evidence that Clark has arrived and Dean is scared. Just days after complaining that the DNC wasn't condeming attacks on him, Dean is slinging mud at The General. Clark's response: "I guess that's what professional politicians do."

The metaphorical moment of my first 24 hours on the Clark trail took place late Tuesday, when a college student handed her résumé to a Clark aide and asked for a job. The objective emblazoned across the top of the page stated that she wanted a position with the Kerry campaign, except the word "Kerry" was scratched out and "Clark" was hand-written below it in ink. If that's not proof of Clark'snewfound No. 2 status in New Hampshire, Howard Dean's campaign produced still more evidence when it authorized volunteers to distribute anti-Clark flyers at a Clark town-hall meeting Wednesday here in Peterborough.

On one side, the flyer reads "WESLEY CLARK: PRO-WAR," followed by a list of the general's much-discussed statements in support of the congressional Iraq war resolution. It's the stuff that gave Clark grief when he entered the race in the fall: He advised Rep. Katrina Swett in October 2002 to vote for the resolution, and he told reporters this past September that "on balance, I probably would have voted for it." On the other side, the flyer reads "WESLEY CLARK: REAL DEMOCRAT?" followed by Clark's much-discussed statements in praise of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and the Bush Cabinet, plus evidence of his pro-Republican voting record in presidential elections (until 1992).

Clark strategist Chris Lehane paints this as hypocrisy on Dean's part. After calling on Terry McAuliffe to put a stop to intra-party bickering, the former Vermont governor aims his guns at his fellow Democrats when the tactic serves his interests. Fair enough, but who cares? More important is Clark campaign's sense of pride that it has arrived as a serious Dean rival. No campaign has ever been happier to have a target on its back.

Some of my readers will find this amusing.

Cable TV made a West Bend man addicted to TV, caused his wife to be overweight and his kids to be lazy, he says.

And he’s threatening to sue the cable company.

Timothy Dumouchel of West Bend wants $5,000 or three computers, and a lifetime supply of free Internet service from Charter Communications to settle what he says will be a small claims suit.

Dumouchel blames Charter for his TV addiction, his wife’s 50-pound weight gain and his children’s being “lazy channel surfers,” according to a Fond du Lac police report.

Apparently he called 4 years ago to have his cable cancelled, and they stopped billing him but didn't disconnect his cable. Sounds about par for the course for Charter. The funny part is that he thinks he'd get some sort of better quality Internet service out of them ;)

[via Drudge Report]

A nice piece in the Washington Post today on the "imminent" threat from Iraq's WMD programs. The conclusion: there was no imminent threat, and the sanctions were working.

The nine-month record of arms investigators since the fall of Baghdad includes discoveries of other concealed arms research, most of it less advanced. Iraq's former government engaged in abundant deception about its ambitions and, in some cases, early steps to prepare for development or production. Interviews here -- among Iraqi weaponeers and investigators from the U.S. and British governments -- turned up unreported records, facilities or materials that could have been used in unlawful weapons.

But investigators have found no support for the two main fears expressed in London and Washington before the war: that Iraq had a hidden arsenal of old weapons and built advanced programs for new ones. In public statements and unauthorized interviews, investigators said they have discovered no work on former germ-warfare agents such as anthrax bacteria, and no work on a new designer pathogen -- combining pox virus and snake venom -- that led U.S. scientists on a highly classified hunt for several months. The investigators assess that Iraq did not, as charged in London and Washington, resume production of its most lethal nerve agent, VX, or learn to make it last longer in storage. And they have found the former nuclear weapons program, described as a "grave and gathering danger" by President Bush and a "mortal threat" by Vice President Cheney, in much the same shattered state left by U.N. inspectors in the 1990s.

A review of available evidence, including some not known to coalition investigators and some they have not made public, portrays a nonconventional arms establishment that was far less capable than U.S. analysts judged before the war. Leading figures in Iraqi science and industry, supported by observations on the ground, described factories and institutes that were thoroughly beaten down by 12 years of conflict, arms embargo and strangling economic sanctions. The remnants of Iraq's biological, chemical and missile infrastructures were riven by internal strife, bled by schemes for personal gain and handicapped by deceit up and down lines of command. The broad picture emerging from the investigation to date suggests that, whatever its desire, Iraq did not possess the wherewithal to build a forbidden armory on anything like the scale it had before the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Courtesy of Whiskey Bar, some of my favorite Administration deceptions:

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."

Dick Cheney Speech to VFW National Convention August 26, 2002

"Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons."

George W. Bush Speech to UN General Assembly September 12, 2002

"If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world."

Ari Fleischer Press Briefing December 2, 2002

"We know for a fact that there are weapons there."

Ari Fleischer Press Briefing January 9, 2003

"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

George W. Bush Address to the Nation March 17, 2003

These were all lies. We all got played. This was a war of choice. There was no imminent threat, and Bush shredded our international prestige and long standing alliances, setting a dangerous preemptive precedent for other world powers - China being the prime example - for no reason other than politics. Make him pay.

[Update]

The team searching for WMD has been quietly withdrawn from Iraq.

IRC rules.

Don't forget to join the online chat with General Clark and some of the leading political bloggers on the Internet.

Date: January 7, 2004
Time: 5:00 PM to 5:30 PM EST
Server: irc.forclark.com
Closed Read-Only Channel: #wireside [Mirrored web page: http://clark04.com/chat/]
Open Discussion Channel: #clark04

The chat will be taking place on our new IRC server, which allows for hundreds of people to participate in a live discussion. Due to the number of participants, the chat with the General will be read-only and be broadcast live on the closed #wireside channel. This channel's contents will be simultaneously mirrored on a web page that refreshed every 20 seconds. This allows those without IRC software like MIRC (for Windows) to read the chat as it happens.

If you'd like to participate in the open discussion that happens at the same time, you will need to log into the IRC server with an IRC client and join the #clark04 channel.

Jonathan Cohn at the tough-on-policy TNR Primary likes the General's tax plan.

Of all the tax plans out there right now, this would certainly seem to be the most cleverly conceived. Other candidates have offered tax breaks for the poor and middle class, but only Clark lets people escape the painful process of tax-filing in the first place--something voters are bound to like, even if only a relatively small number of them can actually take advantage of it. And while this plan would raise taxes on a handful of wealthy Americans--by a whopping 10 points--Clark is cannily taking on that issue directly, daring Karl Rove to fight him on it:

Also noted in the TNR Primary is Dean's about face on his plan to cut ALL of Bush's tax cuts, almost certainly in direct response to the great reception The General's plan is getting. Those who can lead do, and those who can't lead copy.

According to a campaign aide, Dean will probably discard his (and Dick Gephardt's) contention that America can achieve economic security only by repealing President Bush's tax cuts. As Dean-o-phobe has pointed out, this means raising taxes on the middle class, which, of course, is tantamount to political suicide. At long last, thankfully, Dean is coming to a position for which Wesley Clark, Joe Lieberman, and John Kerry have been stumping all season. Tagged with the moniker "tax reform," Dean's forthcoming plan will probably do the same thing as theirs: preserve the middle-class tax cuts while reversing the upper-class ones.

There's more discussion of Clark's tax plan available at the the CCN as well as a calculator to show those of you with kids how much you'll save under Clark's plan.

On the subject of The General's reception:

The crowds at his campaign appearances are growing. At one stop over the weekend, a fire marshal barred more people from entering a building where Clark came to talk-and two more busloads of supporters were still on the way. A second meeting for the overflow crowd was quickly arranged at a restaurant across the street.

Momentum is growing for a big showing in New Hampshire, and even though Clark withdrew from the Iowa caucuses a while back, I wouldn't be surprised if we got a nice surprise.

Dean is worried...

In a telephone conference call that reporters were invited by mistake to hook into, Dean's campaign staff spoke candidly about strategy surrounding the impending Bradley endorsement.

"Tomorrow, (Tuesday) we're going to start by having Bradley do sort of a subtle thing, if we can, by saying that Dean is a real Democrat, and then follow that up the next day with an in-state person that's probably a little more direct," one unidentified staffer said.

The "in-state" appeared to be a reference to New Hampshire, where Bradley, Al Gore's opponent for the 2000 Democratic presidential nomination, was to appear this morning at a previously unscheduled breakfast.

Another staffer indicated that in a survey of voters Monday by telephone, people expressed concern that "this guy (Dean) is indecisive" and Bradley, a former Hall of Fame player in the National Basketball Association and a three-term senator from New Jersey, could help counter that.

"The Bradley message could be, like, (Dean) knew where he stood on the war, is still a Democrat, takes . . . positions, blah, blah, blah," the staffer said.

The next day, the speaker said, "surrogates" for Dean, both local and national, could "then hit Clark on the flip side of the argument: that he's indecisive, didn't know what party he's with, doesn't know his position on the war," she said.

The strategists ended their conversation when another reporter joined the conference, telling him, "I think you may have the wrong call-in number. This isn't a press call."

...and he should be says Mother Jones...

It makes sense that Wesley Clark, having decided to skip the Iowa caucuses, was a no-show at Sunday's Iowa debate. And since the Democratic debates seem to have devolved into raucous shout-fests, Clark may have calculated, probably correctly, that staying above the fray could only work to his advantage. Clark's absence certainly won him some attention, which in turn fed the growing sense, bolstered by his recent money-raising success, that the former general may be emerging as the Anyone-but-Dean candidate.

...and the latest USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll!

Democratic presidential contender Howard Dean, pounded by rivals in recent weeks for his positions and his temperament, has lost ground in the USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll, and retired general Wesley Clark has emerged as his chief rival.

Dean still tops the Democratic field in the national survey, at 24%, but the 21-point lead he held over Clark less than a month ago has narrowed to just 4 percentage points, within the poll's margin of error.

Things are looking good. Want to help keep the momentum building? Head over to the web site and take action! Join TechCorps and help develop the software that keeps the campaign running, Contribute some cash, Help get the word out in New Hampshire, or Iowa, or the February 3rd Primaries. There's all sorts of ways you can help Wesley Clark to the Whitehouse.

General Clark has today unveiled the most comprehensive progressive tax plan of any of the serious candidates. The plan aims to relieve (and in many cases eliminate) the tax burden on low and middle income families. Give it a read. It's unclear how the plan addresses married couples and singles without children, but honestly they're not the ones that really need the help. Regardless, I would like to see this point addressed, at least as far as making it clearer that it wouldn't hurt these groups [see update below]. There is some discussion of this issue, and hopefully more, over at the CCN.

Wes Clark's Families First Tax Reform is a major tax simplification proposal that will restore progressivity to the tax code, relieve the working-family squeeze and reduce poverty. Under Wes Clark's Families First Tax Reform, a family of four making up to $50,000 would pay no federal income taxes, and all taxpaying families with children making up to $100,000 would get a tax cut.

Wes Clark's plan will accomplish all this by consolidating and expanding on an existing confusing and uneven set of tax benefits for children, creating a new tax credit of $2,250 for each child available for families making $20,000 or $50,000 or $100,000.

• Wes Clark's Plan is Fair. Under President Bush, typical families have seen their incomes fall by nearly $1,500 - while President Bush provided an average tax cut of $128,000 to taxpayers making over $1 million. Under Wes Clark's Families First Tax Reform:
  • A married couple with two children making $50,000 would get a $1,583 tax break.
  • A married couple with three children both earning the minimum wage, or $21,000 annually, would get a tax break of $2,287.
  • A married couple with two children making $85,000 would get a $975 tax cut.
  • 31 million working families would get tax relief, with the typical family getting a $1,477 tax cut.
• Wes Clark's Plan is Progressive. Wes Clark's proposal not only provides relief for middle-income parents struggling not to fall behind in the Bush economy, but to the working poor struggling to work their families out of poverty and into economic independence.
  • Hundreds of thousands of children will be lifted out of poverty.
• Wes Clark's Plan is Simple. Under Wes Clark's plan, families will only need to fill out a simple, three-line form to find out if they need to pay federal income taxes, providing their income, number of children, and marital status. And the majority of families will no longer be required to file tax forms.
• Wes Clark's Plan is Responsible. The plan will provide $33 billion annually in tax relief for working families. This will be paid for without increasing the deficit by:
  • A 5 percentage point increase in the tax rate only on income over $1 million per year. This surcharge, which could be used only for working family tax relief, would not apply to the first $1 million of income or to any capital gains - so it will not affect 99.9 percent of taxpayers.
  • Closing corporate loopholes, including the ones that Enron took advantage of to unfairly cut its taxes.

[Update]

Incidentally, this passage from the announcement speech makes me warm and fuzzy.

So if Karl Rove is watching today, Karl, I want you to hear this loud and clear - I'm going to provide tax cuts to ease the burden for 34 million American families and lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty by raising the taxes on one-tenth of one percent of families in America, those who make more than a million dollars a year. You don't have to read my lips, I'm saying it.* And if that makes me an "old style? "Democrat, then, I accept that label with pride and dare you to come after me for it. Because what I am talking about today is in the best tradition of Wilson and Roosevelt; of JFK, LBJ, and Bill Clinton - and it is in the best interest of the United States of America!

[Another Update]

Apparently, I'm blind.

Expanded benefits for low-income adults without children. Clark's Tax Reform builds on the existing EITC for childless adults, raising the maximum credit from $382 to $500.

Bush's "War on Terror via Iraq" has not made us safer. Iraq and that region of the world is better off with Saddam in custody, but here in the US, we are no safer from the real imminent treat than we were before the war. The Administration has as much as admitted this with the Orange Alert and high level of paranoia of late. There's a long article in Sunday's NY Times on the opening for the Democratic candidates to get to Bush's right on the War on Terror and the effective exercise of global power.

For the keynote speaker [at the aforementioned New American Strategies conference], the sponsors invited not a conventional liberal but Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's hawkish national security adviser, a fervently anti-Soviet Polish emigre reviled during the cold war by the Democratic Party's left wing. I expected Brzezinski to be at least mildly sympathetic to the Bush administration. I was wrong. ''American power worldwide is at its historic zenith,'' he told his audience, which consisted largely of technocrats and midlevel Clinton administration officials. And yet, he noted: ''American global political standing is at its nadir. Why?'' First, Brzezinski said, because of the ''paranoiac view of the world'' summed up in the expression -- a paraphrase of President Bush -- ''He who is not with us is against us.'' Second, because of ''a fear'' -- of terrorism -- ''that periodically verges on panic'' and is stoked by ''extremist demagogy.'' To Brzezinski, the Bush administration's unilateralism, and its militarism, constituted a radical break with a consensus that stretched across several generations and presumably included not only cold warriors like himself but also the liberals he once opposed, like Cyrus Vance, Carter's secretary of state.

More striking still was the closing speech delivered by Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator from Nebraska, who is often spoken of in Washington as a probable presidential candidate in 2008. Hagel sounded a decorous, Midwestern version of Brzezinski's rather frantic alarums. ''Crisis-driven coalitions of the willing by themselves are not the building blocks for a stable world,'' he said. And, ''Iraq alone cannot define our relationships.'' And even, ''Other countries have their own interests, and those interests need to be acknowledged and heard.'' Presumably that included France. Hagel also observed that ''the American image in the world is in need of immediate and long-term repair'' and suggested such instruments of ''soft power'' as educational and professional exchange programs, as well as increased language training for American students.

There are two very large inferences that can be drawn from comments like these and, more broadly, from the current debate over national security issues in policy institutes, academia and professional journals. One is that the Bush administration stands very, very far from the foreign-policy mainstream: liberal Democrats, conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans have more in common with one another than any of them have with the Bush administration. The other conclusion is that the administration's claim that 9/11 represents such a decisive break with the past that many of the old principles no longer apply is right -- but the new principles need not be the ones the administration has advanced. A different administration could have adapted to 9/11 in a very different way. And this is why national security should be, at least potentially, such a rich target of opportunity for a Democratic candidate.

The mixed conclusion drawn for the Democratic party is that while most of the candidates, even Dean, could plausibly execute this strategy - and in fact already are to differing extents - the Democratic base has forgotten the traditional Democratic "Wilson-F.D.R.-Truman-Kennedy idea" and are more interested in nominating someone who sees multilateralism as a brake on American exercise of power rather than a more effective exercise of power than Bush's unilateralism.

The difference between the idea that international law, multilateral institutions and formal alliances enhance our power -- the Wilson-F.D.R.-Truman-Kennedy idea -- and the view that they needlessly constrain our power, is a very important difference indeed. In an article last spring in World Policy Journal, Dana H. Allin, Philip H. Gordon and Michael E. O'Hanlon, foreign-policy thinkers from the conservative side of the Democratic spectrum, proposed a doctrine of ''nationalist liberalism,'' which would ''consciously accept the critical importance of power, including military power, in promoting American security, interests and values,'' as the neoconservatives had in the 1970's. But the doctrine would also recognize that America's great power ''will create resistance and resentment if it is exercised arrogantly and unilaterally, making it harder for the United States to achieve its goals.'' The authors laid out a ''generous and compelling vision of global society,'' which would include ''humanitarian intervention against genocidal violence; family planning; effective cooperation against global warming and other environmental scourges''; foreign aid; free trade; and large investments to combat AIDS.

All the major Democratic candidates could be considered nationalist liberals. And it's no surprise: since this is more or less the consensual view of the foreign-policy establishment, practically everybody the candidates have been consulting takes this view. With the very important exception of Iraq, the major candidates hold essentially the same views. Hawkishness or dovishness on Iraq thus does not correlate with some larger difference in worldview, as, for example, the left and right views on Vietnam once did.

O.K., then, it doesn't. And yet it sure feels as if it does. Iraq has, in fact, become the Democratic manhood test. One of Howard Dean's 30-second ads in Iowa showed Gephardt standing next to President Bush in the Rose Garden while an announcer said, ''October 2002: Dick Gephardt agrees to co-author the Iraq war resolution, giving George Bush the authority to go to war.'' Dean is running as the candidate who stood up to the president and his own party on Iraq, just as Wesley Clark is running as the candidate whose whole experience demonstrates the madness of Iraq. Dean may well be a nationalist liberal, but his audience members -- the activists, the students -- often are not; he is exploiting that deep discomfort with the exercise of power, the skepticism about American legitimacy that Condoleezza Rice was writing about. (A candidate who says, as Dean does, ''We're all just cogs in a big machine someplace,'' is not catering to the middle.) This is the cliff that Democratic thinkers fear the party is heading over. As one Senate aide tells me, ''I don't see how a Democrat who is easy to stereotype as soft, even if it's unfair, is going to win.''

My money so far has been on Clark, and still is. But Dean is trying - albeit awkwardly and to much contempt - to move to the right of Bush on these issues. If he can successfully get there quickly enough to dim the memory of his past peacenik image well before the convention, he might be the best positioned to move to Bush's right while keeping the base happy. His supporters will still be there. He's in no danger of losing support to his left; they have too much invested in him already. If he can make this move successfully, we might end up with the best of both words: a plausible foreign policy attack on Bush and a energized and rebuilt grassroots party structure. If.