meta-roj

just a guess, but i think we saw the bushism that makes a crack wide enough to stick a lever in…

“I don’t think you can win it.”

… now we enter the republican national convention news cycles explaining (and when you’re explaining, your losing) that it depends on what the meaning of win is.

ational public radio’s live special coverage of the republican national convention in new york now includes several short segments where an npr (and apparently other) reporters are being diverted by the secret service and event officials while trying to interview michael moore.

that’s a mistake that’s going to come back to haunt the republicans.

Bush Dismisses Idea That Kerry Lied on Vietnam [ny times, august 27, 2004]

“Five twenty-sevens – I think these ought to be outlawed, ” he said. “I think they should have been outlawed a year ago. We have billionaires writing checks, large checks, to influence the outcome of the election.”

they might’ve been outlawed a year ago, mister bush, except that you opposed that approach back when you signed the campaign finance reform act…. remember?

President Signs Campaign Finance Reform Act [march 27, 2002]

However, the bill does have flaws. Certain provisions present serious constitutional concerns. In particular, H.R. 2356 goes farther than I originally proposed by preventing all individuals, not just unions and corporations, from making donations to political parties in connection with Federal elections.

I believe individual freedom to participate in elections should be expanded, not diminished; and when individual freedoms are restricted, questions arise under the First Amendment.

I also have reservations about the constitutionality of the broad ban on issue advertising, which restrains the speech of a wide variety of groups on issues of public import in the months closest to an election. I expect that the courts will resolve these legitimate legal questions as appropriate under the law.

there aren’t any constitutional reservations anymore? did we just see a flip?

back on august 23rd, i left this as a draft, but with the recent blogspam for swift vets, i felt an urgency to go ahead and get this out too.

the swift vets are running an ad based largely on kerry’s 1971 testimony before congress. it opens with this quote: “They had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads” which, i would like to take a moment to put into context. what i’m going to do is copy a big chunk of kerry’s testimony, link the whole thing for you, and highlight the bits that the swift vets pulled out to create their ad.

John F. Kerry’s testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on April 22, 1971 [the national review]

I would simply like to speak in very general terms. I apologize if my statement is general because I received notification yesterday you would hear me and I am afraid because of the injunction I was up most of the night and haven’t had a great deal of chance to prepare.

Winter soldier Investigation
I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.

It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit, the emotions in the room, the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam, but they did. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.

They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

We call this investigation the “Winter Soldier Investigation.” The term “Winter Soldier” is a play on words of Thomas Paine in 1776 when he spoke of the Sunshine Patriot and summertime soldiers who deserted at Valley Forge because the going was rough.

We who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back to this country; we could be quiet; we could hold our silence; we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel because of what threatens this country, the fact that the crimes threaten it, no reds, and not redcoats but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out.

when you read the quotes in context, it does change the story just a little bit. when you read the whole thing, it changes a lot.

this wouldn’t be worth mentioning in any form, if it weren’t for the golden quote at the end.

what we have here is a story about a utah republican that’s spent $30k or so buying up domain names that seem capital-d democratic and pointing them to the bush/cheney ’04 re-election site. there’s potential for blowback on all this, of course, but mostly it’s a non-story. people play games with domains all the time.

then i saw this:

Utah Man Buys Up Domain Names in Bush Push [ap via abc news, august 26, 2004]

Kevin Madden, a spokesman for Bush/Cheney ’04, said the campaign’s Internet staffers were unaware of the connection.

“But anything that directs traffic to our site is fine with us,” he said.

which seems to be about as close to the truth as i’ve ever seen from a political spokesperson.

two thoughts: 1) i’m sure there’s something that would cross even kevin’s line when it comes to drivig traffic to the site, and 2) isn’t that just begging for a ddos attack?

politicians are politicians, i guess. they’re all just slippery bastards.

bush made a lot of political hay from this little kerry gem: “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.” but yesterday, he stood in front of reporters, took questions, and insisted that he was in the front ranks supporting mccain-feingold and opposing soft money.

president george w. bush [august 23, 2004]

I don’t think we ought to have 527s. I can’t be more plain about it. And I wish — I hope my opponent joins me in saying, condemning these activities of the 527s. It’s the — I think they’re bad for the system. That’s why I signed the bill, McCain-Feingold. I’ve been disappointed that for the first six months of this year, 527s were just pouring tons of money, billionaires writing checks. And I spoke out against them early. I tried to get others to speak out against them, as well. And I just don’t — I think they’re bad for the system.

but that’s just not right either. so in the kerry “flip flop” tradition, let’s get bush on the record too, with a little help from dan shupp and asheesh laroia, who actually dove into a somewhat rhetorical question on the subject… and gave me some otherwise inaccessible resources to draw upon.

reading the things you’re signing

let’s review that same q&a with the press to pick up another bush statement to help build this story. sure, we all know that bush signed mccain-feingold, but maybe he didn’t read it.

president george w. bush [august 23, 2004]

And I asked Senator Kerry to join me in getting rid of all that kind of soft money, not only on TV, but used for other purposes, as well. I, frankly, thought we’d gotten rid of that when I signed the McCain-Feingold bill. I thought we were going to, once and for all, get rid of a system where people could just pour tons of money in and not be held to account for the advertising. And so I’m disappointed with all those kinds of ads.

i realize it’s asking a lot of the president to read the bills he signs, but we can do some reading of our own if we are so inclined. the commonly-known mccain-feingold bill is technically known as the bipartisan campaign reform act of 2002 [pdf] and was signed by president bush on march 27, 2002. it’s only 36 pages. the tricky part about reading legislation is that you often have to do some cut-and-paste for all the “inserts and deletes” in the text of the legislation. so you can go with the original text, or you can drop by the federal election commission pages for official positions on the subject. if you really want to do some reading, there’s plenty there for you. a shorter version might be found in the wikipedia.

but back to the question of “getting rid of that” with the president’s signature on mccain-feingold.

Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold On The President’s Remarks Regarding the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act [august 23, 2004]

The McCain-Feingold bill dealt only with political party soft money and phony issue ads run within 60 days of the general election, not with the so-called 527 groups. The President knew that. In fact, in his signing statement in March of 2002, the President even objected to the fact that our bill prohibited individuals as well as corporations and unions from contributing soft money to the political parties. The 527 issue has nothing to do with the McCain-Feingold bill; it is caused by the failure of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to enforce the law that has been in effect since 1974.

the president objected? no way! can’t be! he told us he was a supporter!

President Signs Campaign Finance Reform Act [march 27, 2002]

However, the bill does have flaws. Certain provisions present serious constitutional concerns. In particular, H.R. 2356 goes farther than I originally proposed by preventing all individuals, not just unions and corporations, from making donations to political parties in connection with Federal elections.

I believe individual freedom to participate in elections should be expanded, not diminished; and when individual freedoms are restricted, questions arise under the First Amendment.

I also have reservations about the constitutionality of the broad ban on issue advertising, which restrains the speech of a wide variety of groups on issues of public import in the months closest to an election. I expect that the courts will resolve these legitimate legal questions as appropriate under the law.

it depends on what the definition of early is

so, step with me into the time machine. set the dial for january, 2001, and we have a new president george w. bush taking a position on the mccain-feingold legislation, just ten days after his three-day, $40 million innaugural celebration.

For McCain, Now’s the Time. But Bush? [new york times, january 28, 2001]

The new president has said he favors some revamping of the federal campaign finance laws, but not the unilateral soft-money ban that is the keystone of the McCain-Feingold bill (Mr. McCain’s chief ally is Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin). Mr. Bush has
proposed banning soft-money checks from corporations and labor unions, which helped stuff the coffers of Democratic Party committees with $243 million in the last election, but not from individual donors. He also wants more stringent limits on how unions can use the dues of members for political activities, a provision Democrats say would kill McCain-Feingold, which has bipartisan support from 60 senators, including all 50 Democrats, according to Mr. Feingold.

emphasis in this quote is mine, because i want you to realize that on august 23, 2004, president bush now claims he “spoke out against” “billionaires writing checks” early. not as early as 2001, it seems.

just to get a concept of what “early” means in terms of mccain-feingold, it was first introduced in 1997. so in the timeline of debate on the bill, the first four years (1997-2001) must be considered “pre-early” so the last part of 2001 might be “early” and then the first couple months of 2002 would be “late.” with that timeline, bush counts as an “early” supporter before signing the bill in march 2002.

so that’s a very long-winded way to throw out the 10-word political answer that isn’t getting covered in all the swift vets noise:

president bush actually did oppose mccain-feingold before he signed it.

just another version of the “bush doesn’t see it” issue with the republican campaign…

West Virginia Man Heckles Presidents, Gets Fired: ‘You Disagree With Them and It All Turns Evil’ [ap via tbo, august 22, 2004]

Hiller was ushered out of Hedgesville High School on Tuesday after shouting his disagreement with Bush’s comments about the war in Iraq war and the search for weapons of mass destruction. The crowd had easily drowned out Hiller with its chant: “Four more years.”

there’s more to the story, like the part where the heckler loses his job, but it’s more interesting to me that the “ushered out of…” news keeps going.

[snarky comment follows]
if bush can’t keep his opponents out of high schools with the full weight of the secret service at his disposal, how is he going to keep the terrorists out of my shopping malls? what if these people start wearing explosives instead of t-shirts?

if he can’t protect himself, how can he protect the rest of us?

i’m just compelled to say something about the last couple rounds from the bush campaign… both of which got a “wtf?” reaction from me.

the first was the ad where bush pondered, out loud, the personal crisis of being a parent on september 11:

president george w. bush “solemn duty” campaign ad

My most solemn duty is to lead our nation to protect ourselves. I can’t imagine the great agony of a mom or a dad having to make the decision about which child to pick up first on September 11

in the second, bush doesn’t do the talking…

voiceover “victory” campaign ad

In 1972…there were 40 democracies in the world.
Today…120.
Freedom is spreading throughout the world like a sunrise.
And this Olympics… there will be two more free nations…
And two fewer terrorist regimes.
With strength, resolve and courage, democracy will triumph over terror.
And, hope will defeat hatred.

the bush team really thought it was a good idea to invoke the olympics? i hope this doesn’t become the latest “reason” to go into iraq. maybe i’m just too cynical to see this the way it was intended, but i’m guessing the 12,000 dead iraqi civilians and [about] 1000 dead american soldiers weren’t thinking of the olympics during the firefights.

personally, i think these two subjects should be beyond campaign ads, and using them will generate more negatives than positives, but i’m not the genius campaign strategist that’s signing off on this stuff.

a mediocre law student went to a bush rally and a kerry rally to see what he could see. he saw about half.

this is why bush doesn’t see it.

[via barry]

george and laura bush were recently interviewed by larry king. larry is a great interviewer, and early in the interview, the question of the presidents opponents came up…

larry king live, with george and laura bush [august 15, 2004 airdate]

KING: You don’t have your opponent[s], though?

G. BUSH: Not at all. Listen…

L. BUSH: No, of course not.

G. BUSH: There’s a chattering class of kind of, you know, professional politicians who get on the airwaves and they kind of feel like it’s their duty to stir things up. But the American people are — they’re focused on their families, and they’re focused on their work. And they’re interested in, you know, how government can help secure this country during these dangerous times. But I just don’t see it. When I travel the country, and I’ve been traveling a lot, there are thousands of people who come out and wave, and they are — you know, they respect the presidency. Sometimes they like the president, but I have this — I don’t have a sense that there’s a lot of anger.

i’m just feeling a bit compelled to emphasize this bit… opponents? bush just doesn’t see it.

the easy angle on this is that bush travels in a criticism free zone – a truth -free zone, sheltered from uncomfortable facts on the ground with his opponents (the ones he doesn’t see) kept at a safe distance in designated free speech zones, even when he’s visiting our allies. he simply doesn’t realize he has opposition, because even the t-shirts are screened to protect his view of reality.

we could blame the security and political apparatus that support this president for protecting him from any realization that some americans don’t support his policies. that could be enough to do it. i’m reminded of a story about an emperor and a pair of tailors.

“Besides being invisible, your Highness, this cloth will be woven in colors and patterns created especially for you.” The emperor gave the two men a bag of gold coins in exchange for their promise to begin working on the fabric immediately.

why do i feel like i have a few coins in that bag? oh yeah. this empire is a democratic republic. that’d do it.

on the other hand, the righteous know no opposition.