Bad moon rising

One line I read in some book said there are seven things that can happen when a quarterback drops back to throw a pass, and six of them are bad -- the good one is that the pass is accurately thrown and successfully caught; the bad ones are quarterback sack, interception, quarterback injury, receiver injury, incomplete pass, and fumbled catch.
Anyway, I was reminded of this in relation to the stories I am reading now about Bush's campaign -- Slate's article about the pseudo-religious persona that Bush is using on his campaign stops had an aura of desperation about it in spite of the reporter's own warm fuzzies. Note the description of his audience as "hand-picked Ohioans intended to represent a particular Bush policy". Both Bush and Cheney now seem to prefer to speak only to the previously converted -- and these will become fewer in number as a cascade of bad things happens in the next three months:
- the Afghan election Oct. 9 will likely be a mess.
- the Iraq insurgency will continue to get worse. By the end of October, there will be 1,200 American troops dead.
- US job numbers will continue to tank, the market will continue to fall. The market usually falls anyway from mid-September to the end of October. This year will be worse because of oil prices.
- the Plame inquiry will report and, considering how many of top Bush administration people they have interviewed, its unlikely (though possible, I suppose) that the result will be innocuous.
- chances are that more prisoner abuse photos will emerge.
- and if there is a terrorist attack on US property anywhere in the world, it may not turn out to be a positive for Bush. In fact, it could be a negative, particularly if it concerns some area like chemical plants, about which the Bush administration has been warned but has done nothing to fix (and considering how much has been neglected, the odds are that this will be the case.)
Now, Kerry could blow it somehow, and he will need to present himself well in the debates. We'll have a better idea after the Republican convention how their speaking styles will compare.
But for the most part, the indicators for Bush are pretty bad.
Clinton said in last night's CBC interview that Bush had already lost, and this is certainly the sense I get when I see news coverage of his campaign appearances -- though most of the media are still trying to be "balanced" about it.

The choice

Clinton put it simply and clearly in his CBC interview:
The Bush administration has outsourced the war against Al Quaeda to Pakistan while it went to war against Iraq. If Americans agree with those priorities, they will vote for Bush. If they do not agree with those priorities, they will vote for Kerry.

Sorry, slowdown in posts for a couple of weeks

Hi -- well, my laptop has apparently died, and it will take a while to revive it -- in the meantime, I will try to keep up, using my son's computer -- but unfortunately, he likes to use it sometimes too. So expect fewer posts until I can get it fixed.

Alternate realities

A Record of Recovery
Hmmm -- Reagan's former secretary of state says that the charts show Clinton inherited prosperity and bequeathed recession.
Just as logically, one could say that the charts show the economy tanks during Republican administrations - particularly Bush administrations -- and begins showing signs of life again when the prospect looms of being able to vote them out.

Laughing while Rome burns, I guess

Dem pundits plan to lose this race the same way they did in 2000
So it turns out that the republican strategy to make fun of the democratic candidate was also used against Gore in 2000.
I though "everything changed" after 9/11, but I guess not.
And the dems had better react his time, as the Howler points out -- they need their own talking points and they need to get their people to use them.

Window-dressing with a fall-guy

Bush Calls for New Intelligence Director
"President Bush urged creation of a national intelligence director Monday to coordinate the war on terrorism but without the sweeping powers for hiring, firing and spending at the CIA, FBI and other agencies as recommended by the Sept. 11 commission . . . Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, questioned Bush's decision. "The power and authority given to these new entities will determine whether these changes actually fix the problem or make it worse," he said. If the new director cannot control the budgets of intelligence agencies, he said, "this new position will be no more than window dressing."
How can newspaper headlines credit Bush for enacting the 9/11 commission recommendations? This is NOT what they said they wanted. This is just a new fall-guy.

Oh, for crying out loud

So I just told my husband we should sell any Prudential stock we owned, then this story comes out: Reports That Led to Terror Alert Were Years Old, Officials Say
Key quote: "What we've uncovered is a collection operation as opposed to the launching of an attack" apparently from 2000 and 2001.
But every nameless official referred to in the article says that things could still be dangerous, no one really knows, be ever on your guard.
Gee, they're acting like everything is still exactly the same as it was before 9/11, that general security practices for large office buildings really haven't improved one bit!
The people I feel sorry for are the poor souls who have to continue to show up at these buildings every day -- going to work shouldn't be a death-defying act (though sometimes. of course, it is.)
And I predict the next real estate bust and boom -- an exodus from the big, signature highrise office buildings right downtown; instead businesses will demand lowrise, unobtrusive office buildings sprinkled around the suburbs -- harder to find and easier to protect.

Never underestimate the republican desire to get their clips onto the Daily Show

Bush Planning August Attack Against Kerry
"President Bush's campaign plans to use the normally quiet month of August for a vigorous drive to undercut John Kerry by turning attention away from his record in Vietnam to what the campaign described as an undistinguished and left-leaning record in the Senate. Mr. Bush's advisers plan to cap the month at the Republican convention in New York, which they said would feature Mr. Kerry as an object of humor and calculated derision."
Don't worry -- this will blow up in their faces.
While Kerry and Edwards are running around the country talking about the important stuff like health care and the economy and jobs and Iraq -- they wrote a book obout their platform, for heaven's sake -- there will be Bush and Cheney trying to get anyone to care as they carp about 10- or 20-year-old Senate votes and make fun of how Kerry looks.
Teenage boys may like it -- it sounds like a typical teen movie plot -- the adults vs. the teenagers. John Kerry is not Eugene Levy, however. And teenage boys don't vote.
Now, joking their way through a presidential campaign may make some of their base happy (how intense, among democrats, is the desire to take cheap shots at Bush, too).
But "everything" changed after 9/11, including the public's desire to take politics more seriously.
And by the way, how DOES Kerry's four months in Vietnam contrast with Bush's four or five or six months of partying with secretaries and not even showing up for duty?
How DOES Kerry's 20 years of senate work contast with Bush's 20 years of partying and drinking?
And how DOES Kerry's height contrast with Bush's short stature? Side-by-side, Kerry may look like Herman Munster, but Bush looks like a shrimp with a smirk.
And if any of the Bush-Cheney quips do actually get onto the Daily Show, you can bet that Jon Stewart will be asking these questions as well.
UPDATE: Josh Marshall says the dems should mock Bush, too -- I disagree, this will just make them look cheap and it isn't Kerry's style. They took the high road at the convention and they should keep it.

The Mary Poppins solution

Iraq confounds, Kerry contorts Shorter John MacArthur (and lots of other columnists): "John Kerry must present a detailed plan for ending the war in Iraq and creating democracy right away, or else he loses credibility to George Bush (who had no plan for Iraq at all)."
I've seen this kind of article all over -- its a republican talking point, nothing more.
First, its ridiculous to expect that someone who is not the president yet to come up with a detailed "answer to Iraq" when the people presently in power are at a complete loss about what to do there.
Second, they're looking for Mary Poppins magic. They cannot accept the fact that there is no "solution" which will enable America to emerge from Iraq, even with "peace with honour" much less with a successful democracy. They will howl derision, however, if a presidential candidate has the temerity to tell them so.
UPDATE: And columnist Richard Reeves agrees with me:
We are going to have to cut and run without appearing to cut and run. We have to execute the most difficult of military maneuvers, retreating under fire, without admitting it, as Richard Nixon did in Vietnam. Certainly Kerry could not admit that last Thursday night; few of us can. The almost criminal incompetence of the occupation cripples us all. But Kerry has to fudge that. For now, on Iraq, he has to mimic Bush. We all do. The final futility is just Vietnamization all over again, turn the country back to the locals, keeping Americans out of harm's way and getting out of there as fast as we can -- or repairing to bases where bullet-proof-vested soldiers, watching videos and eating ice cream, will occasionally venture forth like Romans on punitive missions. But Kerry would be dead politically if he admitted that. So would Bush.

Super-sized

Ah, the "liberal" media distorts the benign reality of Abu Gharib yet again!. New England Journal of Medicine -- Doctors and Torture After all, the Journal is published in Boston, you know -- very suspicious! And in the same issue, the very same issue, they also talk about laser eye correction surgery -- obviously, they're not seeing things straight.
But seriously, this article does lead to some thoughts about whether some of the doctors and nurses, not to mention the soldiers, who have had horrible experiences, and been complicit in horrible crimes, will be able to live again as civilized people after they are finally permitted to come home. We know the horrors of Vietnam resulted in PTSD for years afterward in many soldiers -- if Iraq is "Vietnam on crack", will their homecoming be "PTSD super-sized"?

Keeping it positive

This Newsweek poll of 1,010 adults looks pretty positive to me.
In the Washington Post story describing the trip to Wendy's, there was this tidbit:
Heinz Kerry was told that Newburgh is heavily Republican and a local television reporter asked her how she felt "in the heart of enemy territory." . . . she responded, "It's not enemies. It's Americans. We're all Americans."

Ouch!

The networks must be flipping out -- on the Republican Convention website they list their tentative speaker lineup -- Rudy Giuliani and John McCain Monday night, Schwarzeneger and Laura Bush Tuesday night, Cheney Wednesday night, and of course Bush on Thursday night -- 2004 Republican National Convention NYC
So which night are they going to skip?
And if they do cover all four nights, how in the world will they explain why the dems got only three nights?

Ahhh, the poor little hamster

Rapid Response Team on Democratic Convention on National Review Online I knew it, I just knew it, that some Republican would fall into the trap of saying mean things about the poor defenseless little hamster -- talk about stooping to low attacks.

It gets worse

Warning -- The Secret File of Abu Ghraib will make you feel sick to your stomach.

"One and one is two, two and two is four, I feel so bad because I'm losing the war" *

Rebels' writ runs large across the troublesome Sunni triangle
What, exactly, are 135,000 US troops doing in Iraq? What is the point?
Whenever they patrol, someone shoots at them. Forget about building schools or repairing hospitals or fixing generators or protecting pipelines -- whenever they leave their fortified bases, someone shoots at them. They have to hide in mosques.
The DOD briefing last week, Gen. Myers said that the US " goal is to make sure that for major supply routes and coalition forces in the area, that these hotbeds don't become centers where they can spin out and create other havoc" -- so its a defensive war now for the Americans, a rearguard action to keep their own supply routes open. They don't appear to be on the offensive anymore.
The quietest and most secure place in Iraq today, apparently, is Fallaujah, after the US military pulled out in April -- there is no violence on their streets anymore -- of course, its now an Islamic dictatorship iin this city -- so much for democracy, I guess. And its now become a bomb factory for the rest of the insurgency, which the US keeps trying to shut down by air raids, which just kill more civilians.
Now it looks like Ramadi is going the same way. The Financial Times reports that "several large Iraqi towns have recently fallen outside the control of US forces and its allies in the Iraqi interim government."
People in the US keep saying that the Americans will be needed in Iraq for five years, or ten years -- nope, its not going to take nearly that long for them to lose this war. They seem to be retreating at the rate of about one city a month now, and its a geometric progression, so give it another year at most. And people keep wanting Kerry to present a detailed plan for what he would do to win in Iraq -- but how could he? It is impossible to come up with a plan to herd cats.
"Winning" is no longer an option in Iraq, and pretty soon America will realize this.
*Riff sung by Dick Shawn, playing Hitler, from The Producers.