From Dr. Seuss to the Statue of Liberty, these American mainstays would have been decried by modern conservatives David Sirota
Wednesday, Sep 28, 2011
http://www.salon.com/news/david_sirota/2011/09/28/american_icons_conservatives/index.html
Boogeymen are everywhere these days, if you believe the conservatives' Perpetual Paranoia Machine. A few years ago, WorldNetDaily and the American Family Association warned that Barney the Dinosaur was trying to "surreptitiously indoctrinate young children into [homosexuals'] lifestyle." Then, Fox News' Bill O'Reilly warned that "secular progressives" were waging a "War on Christmas" and pressing the "legalization of narcotics, euthanasia, abortion at will [and] gay marriage." Now, schools are busy banning books for their "filthy" messages, while Fox and Friends warns that SpongeBob is leading a sinister plot to convert kids to Al Gore's eco-crusade.
Welcome to America at the edge of insanity, where even the most innocuous items are now considered diabolical threats to the culture.
Exceptions like "Slaughterhouse Five" aside, the products that generate the most manufactured outrage and hysteria today tend to be new -- puppets, celebrities' vanity tomes, cartoons and other detritus in our cultural waste dump. However, it stands to reason that if the same Perpetual Paranoia Machine applied its standards of manufactured outrage across the board, it would end up targeting many of the most long-standing "American" symbols for elimination.
Pondering which of those symbols is an important thought experiment -- it locates our relative position on the psychological map, telling us just how extreme our sociopathy is at this moment of chaos. So without further ado, here are the top 10 most universally "American" symbols that would be labeled as seditious, unpatriotic anti-American agitprop if they had been first introduced today.
10. The Collected Works of Dr. Seuss
For most of the last half-century, being a kid meant reading and loving the collected works of Theodor Seuss Geisel -- aka Dr. Seuss. Think back to your earliest years, and you are likely to recall Geisel's legendary catalog. His works are as integral to American childhood as fireworks on July 4 -- and thankfully, Geisel published his books before the advent of Fox News. For if this New Deal liberal had published them today, they would likely be burned in televised Tea Party rallies.
For example, 1957's "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" -- which criticizes the commercialization of the holiday season -- would be held up by Bill O'Reilly as an example of the vicious War on Christmas. Likewise, 1971's "The Lorax," which is a parable about the downsides of hyper-industrialization and environmental degradation, would be at least as viciously denigrated as Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth." And had 1984's "The Butter Battle Book" been introduced during the "War on Terror," it would have gotten Dr. Seuss put on a no-fly list and labeled a seditious, al-Qaida-loving traitor.
9. The Golden Rule
Treat others as you would want them to treat you. This idea, which undergirds the concept of human rights, is as old as organized religion, and is a proud basis for America's dominant Judeo-Christian traditions. In the Old Testament, scripture says to "love thy neighbor as thyself," while New Testament says "Do to others as you would have them do to you" -- and we teach this to kids at the earliest age.
But had someone published these words for the first time today, that person would seem like a radical left-wing ideologue. After all, America is a country whose definition of "class warfare" is making the rich pay the same tax rates as everyone else. It is a nation that gets angry at leaders who suggest redistributing some of the wealth.
In the context of that me-first-screw-everyone-else culture, and in the context of drone warfare, rendition, torture, warrantless wiretapping, Wall Street predation and budget cuts to social services, the Golden Rule would be vilified as a Marxist idiom -- and its proponents would, at best, be depicted as coffeehouse communists who refuse to live in the real world. More likely, they'd be attacked as unpatriotically justifying blowback against the United States for our military actions across the world.
8. The South Carolina State Flag
Though you wouldn't know it from the every-presidential-campaign-year brouhaha over the flying of the Confederate stars and bars, South Carolina's state flag happens to be a crescent moon flying over a palm tree. This design is rooted in pure, chest-thumpingly proud Americana, having something to do with the Revolutionary War, the Stamp Act and a military official named William Moultrie. But had it been a new design proposed today, South Carolina would likely be accused by conservatives of trying to create a terrorist cell in the heart of Dixie.
Take a look at South Carolina's flag next to, say, Saudi Arabian iconography and you see that it's a flag that could easily double up as the national symbol of an Islamic country in a Middle Eastern desert. The crescent moon, of course, is an Islamic symbol already featured on many Muslim nations' flags, and the palm tree has long been a symbol of an oasis in a Sahara-like desert.
No doubt, South Carolinians would vehemently deny the charge that its flag suggests any kind of tolerance for Muslims. This is a state that seems totally psyched about its long heritage of bigotry -- a state that continues to fly symbols of slavery on its public grounds. But there's little doubt that outfits like WorldNetDaily would make the same Islamophobic claims about the South Carolina flag that it's made about other public symbols.
7. The Statue of Liberty
As any elementary school trip to New York City teaches, the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of warmly welcoming the world's refugees to America. Indeed, Lady Liberty is so synonymous with a pro-immigration stand, she is the home of a famous plaque memorializing the 1883 poem, "The New Colossus," which says, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."
Yet, had this statue been first erected today with the same message, it would generate an orgiastic anti-immigrant protest that would make last year's Park51 pandemonium look tame. With talk of building walls at the border and with mass deportations of undocumented workers on the rise, this age of xenophobia would have zero tolerance for any kind of state-sanctioned sculpture enthusiastically welcoming the world's "wretched refuse" and "the homeless, tempest-tost."
6. Labor Day
Try to imagine an America without Labor Day. Then, try to imagine a modern-day president of the United States signing a bill creating a national holiday to honor unions -- and try to imagine that bill being seen as a necessary election-year compromise.
Most likely, you can't imagine this, even though this is exactly what happened in 1894 when President Grover Cleveland signed such a measure as a peace offering after he deployed federal troops to violently crush the Pullman strikes. You can't imagine this, because a president today wouldn't merely be lambasted for considering such a national holiday -- he'd probably be impeached for treason in a nation that now euphorically celebrates ever more vicious attacks on organized labor and makes political folk heroes out of union-busting governors.
Labor Day today, of course, involves national festivities that (outside of the day's union events) all but avoid mentioning organized labor. If the holiday is celebrated at all, it is celebrated as the last gasp of summer fun -- and nothing more. But the history of the holiday, though buried and willfully ignored, reminds us of just how impossible it would be to legislate such a quintessentially American day in the 21st century.
5. "This Land Is My Land"
Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" is one of those iconic summer camp jingles regularly bellowed out by kids roasting marshmallows around the fire. It teaches children those universal lessons about sharing and inclusion. Which is why it would be excoriated as a subliminal plot against capitalism had it first come out today.
Think about it: Had Guthrie first released his ditty in 2011, rather than in 1945, it would surely become the top target of the arch-conservative private-property-rights movement in America. Guthrie would be promptly accused of being a land "redistributionist" looking to wage a Marxist holy war on the very concept of ownership. The protest signs at his record label's offices -- which would inevitably become bumper stickers -- would be red-white-and-blue-themed placards, reading: "This Land is My Land, NOT Your Land."
4. Bert and Ernie
America has never been a particularly gay-friendly nation, so it's a miracle that Bert and Ernie were ever allowed on television in the first place. But they've been there consistently since 1969.
And yet, had the Children's Television Workshop waited a few years more to introduce the pair to America's kids, they probably would have faced a much more hostile reception. Modern-day America is a nation whose leading right-wing Christian groups now insist that anti-bullying laws promote homosexuality among children. Can you imagine what that same right-wing Christian movement would do to a child-focused puppet show about two adult men cohabiting in the same bedroom? Of course, Bert and Ernie are clearly depicted as sleeping in separate beds (and, let's face it, they're puppets who, as the show's creators themselves have pointed out, are about as asexual as you can get), but that would hardly tamp down the anti-gay hysteria.
3. The Weekend
The epic struggle for a 40-hour work week in America culminated in the late 1930s with the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Effectively, this legislatively cemented the contemporary concept known as the American Weekend.
Today, though, such a law probably could never be passed. With corporations dominating our politics so completely, and with the United States now in a race-to-the-bottom competition with slave-labor countries, the notion of a weekend -- had it not already existed -- would likely be cited by lobbyists and by Rupert Murdoch's attack machine as yet another ultraliberal scheme to help lazy layabout workers live a life of undue luxury. Just as the indigent have been criticized as "welfare queens," so too would proponents of two-days-a-week of off-time be hammered as "weekend queens."
2. The First Amendment
The constitutional right to freely express one's opinion and to freely worship one's own religion -- our First Amendment distinguishes our founding Constitution from so many other nations'. But had we not been lucky enough to get it on the books back in the 18th century, it's hard to imagine it being legislated into law today.
During the so-called War on Terror, we've seen citizens arrested and jailed for daring to stage public protests, media-backed mobs try to prevent Islamic cultural centers from being erected, presidential candidates insist that communities can outlaw places of worship, and a president target an American citizen for assassination (without charge) for the "crime" of speech. Likewise, as corporate media conglomerates have risen to prominence, we've seen political messages censored off the publicly owned airwaves.
In this cauldron, had a group of legislators proposed a constitutional amendment guaranteeing a right to freedom of speech and freedom of religion where one did not yet exist, those same forces would undoubtedly align those lawmakers, accusing them of making common cause with terrorists.
1. The Holy Bible
Often touted as the catechism for right-wing religious politics, the Holy Bible is the ultimate American bestseller, appearing everywhere in our country. It's in our churches, our bookstores, our libraries and our motel desk drawers. But had the Good Book first been published today, it's hard to imagine it not being the target of a censorship campaign by Fox News, which would bill it as a new and dangerous Communist Manifesto.
You see, when you actually read the Bible (rather than making selective political reference to it as so many often do), you find that it is filled with passages echoing progressive liberation theology, from "the meek shall inherit the earth" to its diatribes against usury. Additionally, one of its central characters seems to have anti-capitalist tendencies. As reported by the Washington Post's Gregory Paul:
Jesus is no free marketeer. Improving one's earthly financial circumstances is not nearly as critical as preparing for the end times that will arrive at any minute. He does offer substantial encouragement for the poor, and warns the wealthy that they are in grave danger of blowing their prospects of reaching paradise, as per the metaphor of a rich person entering heaven being as difficult as a camel passing through the eye of the needle...
To understand just how non-capitalistic Christianity is supposed to be we turn to the first chapter after the gospels, Acts, which describes the events of the early church. Chapters 2 and 4 state that all "the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need ... No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had ... There were no needy persons among them. From time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need."
Now folks, that's outright socialism of the type described millennia later by Marx -- who likely got the general idea from the gospels.
Paul is exactly right -- and only because the Bible is a few thousand years removed from its first publication run is it allowed to remain immune from the wrath of the Right Wing Hate Machine.
David Sirota is a best-selling author of the new book "Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at http://www.davidsirota.com/.
Showing posts with label Al Gore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Al Gore. Show all posts
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Friday, May 6, 2011
Top Government Insider: Bin Laden Died In 2001, 9/11 A False Flag
Paul Joseph Watson
May 4, 2011
http://www.infowars.com/top-us-government-insider-bin-laden-died-in-2001-911-a-false-flag
Top US government insider Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik, a man who held numerous different influential positions under three different Presidents and still works with the Defense Department, shockingly told The Alex Jones Show yesterday that Osama Bin Laden died in 2001 and that he was prepared to testify in front of a grand jury how a top general told him directly that 9/11 was a false flag inside job.
Pieczenik cannot be dismissed as a “conspiracy theorist”. He served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under three different administrations, Nixon, Ford and Carter, while also working under Reagan and Bush senior, and still works as a consultant for the Department of Defense. A former US Navy Captain, Pieczenik achieved two prestigious Harry C. Solomon Awards at the Harvard Medical School as he simultaneously completed a PhD at MIT.
Recruited by Lawrence Eagleburger as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Management, Pieczenik went on to develop, “the basic tenets for psychological warfare, counter terrorism, strategy and tactics for transcultural negotiations for the US State Department, military and intelligence communities and other agencies of the US Government,” while also developing foundational strategies for hostage rescue that were later employed around the world.
Pieczenik also served as a senior policy planner under Secretaries Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, George Schultz and James Baker and worked on George W. Bush’s election campaign against Al Gore. His record underscores the fact that he is one of the most deeply connected men in intelligence circles over the past three decades plus.
The character of Jack Ryan, who appears in many Tom Clancy novels and was also played by Harrison Ford in the popular 1992 movie Patriot Games, is also based on Steve Pieczenik.
Back in April 2002, over nine years ago, Pieczenik told the Alex Jones Show that Bin Laden had already been “dead for months,” and that the government was waiting for the most politically expedient time to roll out his corpse. Pieczenik would be in a position to know, having personally met Bin Laden and worked with him during the proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan back in the early 80's.
Pieczenik said that Osama Bin Laden died in 2001, “Not because special forces had killed him, but because as a physician I had known that the CIA physicians had treated him and it was on the intelligence roster that he had marfan syndrome,” adding that the US government knew Bin Laden was dead before they invaded Afghanistan.
Marfan syndrome is a degenerative genetic disease for which there is no permanent cure. The illness severely shortens the life span of the sufferer.
“He died of marfan syndrome, Bush junior knew about it, the intelligence community knew about it,” said Pieczenik, noting how CIA physicians had visited Bin Laden in July 2001 at the American Hospital in Dubai.
“He was already very sick from marfan syndrome and he was already dying, so nobody had to kill him,” added Pieczenik, stating that Bin Laden died shortly after 9/11 in his Tora Bora cave complex.
“Did the intelligence community or the CIA doctor up this situation, the answer is yes, categorically yes,” said Pieczenik, referring to Sunday’s claim that Bin Laden was killed at his compound in Pakistan, adding, “This whole scenario where you see a bunch of people sitting there looking at a screen and they look as if they’re intense, that’s nonsense,” referring to the images released by the White House which claim to show Biden, Obama and Hillary Clinton watching the operation to kill Bin Laden live on a television screen.
“It’s a total make-up, make believe, we’re in an American theater of the absurd….why are we doing this again….nine years ago this man was already dead….why does the government repeatedly have to lie to the American people,” asked Pieczenik.
“Osama Bin Laden was totally dead, so there’s no way they could have attacked or confronted or killed Osama Bin laden,” said Pieczenik, joking that the only way it could have happened was if special forces had attacked a mortuary.
Pieczenik said that the decision to launch the hoax now was made because Obama had reached a low with plummeting approval ratings and the fact that the birther issue was blowing up in his face.
“He had to prove that he was more than American….he had to be aggressive,” said Pieczenik, adding that the farce was also a way of isolating Pakistan as a retaliation for intense opposition to the Predator drone program, which has killed hundreds of Pakistanis.
“This is orchestrated, I mean when you have people sitting around and watching a sitcom, basically the operations center of the White House, and you have a president coming out almost zombie-like telling you they just killed Osama Bin Laden who was already dead nine years ago,” said Pieczenik, calling the episode, “the greatest falsehood I’ve ever heard, I mean it was absurd.”
Dismissing the government’s account of the assassination of Bin Laden as a “sick joke” on the American people, Pieczenik said, “They are so desperate to make Obama viable, to negate the fact that he may not have been born here, any questions about his background, any irregularities about his background, to make him look assertive….to re-elect this president so the American public can be duped once again.”
Pieczenik’s assertion that Bin Laden died almost ten years ago is echoed by numerous intelligence professionals as well as heads of state across the world.
Bin Laden, “Was used in the same way that 9/11 was used to mobilize the emotions and feelings of the American people in order to go to a war that had to be justified through a narrative that Bush junior created and Cheney created about the world of terrorism,” stated Pieczenik.
During his interview with the Alex Jones Show yesterday, Pieczenik also asserted he was directly told by a prominent general that 9/11 was a stand down and a false flag operation, and that he is prepared to go to a grand jury to reveal the general’s name.
“They ran the attacks,” said Pieczenik, naming Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Stephen Hadley, Elliott Abrams, and Condoleezza Rice amongst others as having been directly involved.
“It was called a stand down, a false flag operation in order to mobilize the American public under false pretenses….it was told to me even by the general on the staff of Wolfowitz – I will go in front of a federal committee and swear on perjury who the name was of the individual so that we can break it open,” said Pieczenik, adding that he was “furious” and “knew it had happened”.
“I taught stand down and false flag operations at the national war college, I’ve taught it with all my operatives so I knew exactly what was done to the American public,” he added.
Pieczenik re-iterated that he was perfectly willing to reveal the name of the general who told him 9/11 was an inside job in a federal court, “so that we can unravel this thing legally, not with the stupid 9/11 Commission that was absurd.”
Pieczenik explained that he was not a liberal, a conservative or a tea party member, merely an American who is deeply concerned about the direction in which his country is heading.
May 4, 2011
http://www.infowars.com/top-us-government-insider-bin-laden-died-in-2001-911-a-false-flag
Top US government insider Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik, a man who held numerous different influential positions under three different Presidents and still works with the Defense Department, shockingly told The Alex Jones Show yesterday that Osama Bin Laden died in 2001 and that he was prepared to testify in front of a grand jury how a top general told him directly that 9/11 was a false flag inside job.
Pieczenik cannot be dismissed as a “conspiracy theorist”. He served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under three different administrations, Nixon, Ford and Carter, while also working under Reagan and Bush senior, and still works as a consultant for the Department of Defense. A former US Navy Captain, Pieczenik achieved two prestigious Harry C. Solomon Awards at the Harvard Medical School as he simultaneously completed a PhD at MIT.
Recruited by Lawrence Eagleburger as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Management, Pieczenik went on to develop, “the basic tenets for psychological warfare, counter terrorism, strategy and tactics for transcultural negotiations for the US State Department, military and intelligence communities and other agencies of the US Government,” while also developing foundational strategies for hostage rescue that were later employed around the world.
Pieczenik also served as a senior policy planner under Secretaries Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, George Schultz and James Baker and worked on George W. Bush’s election campaign against Al Gore. His record underscores the fact that he is one of the most deeply connected men in intelligence circles over the past three decades plus.
The character of Jack Ryan, who appears in many Tom Clancy novels and was also played by Harrison Ford in the popular 1992 movie Patriot Games, is also based on Steve Pieczenik.
Back in April 2002, over nine years ago, Pieczenik told the Alex Jones Show that Bin Laden had already been “dead for months,” and that the government was waiting for the most politically expedient time to roll out his corpse. Pieczenik would be in a position to know, having personally met Bin Laden and worked with him during the proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan back in the early 80's.
Pieczenik said that Osama Bin Laden died in 2001, “Not because special forces had killed him, but because as a physician I had known that the CIA physicians had treated him and it was on the intelligence roster that he had marfan syndrome,” adding that the US government knew Bin Laden was dead before they invaded Afghanistan.
Marfan syndrome is a degenerative genetic disease for which there is no permanent cure. The illness severely shortens the life span of the sufferer.
“He died of marfan syndrome, Bush junior knew about it, the intelligence community knew about it,” said Pieczenik, noting how CIA physicians had visited Bin Laden in July 2001 at the American Hospital in Dubai.
“He was already very sick from marfan syndrome and he was already dying, so nobody had to kill him,” added Pieczenik, stating that Bin Laden died shortly after 9/11 in his Tora Bora cave complex.
“Did the intelligence community or the CIA doctor up this situation, the answer is yes, categorically yes,” said Pieczenik, referring to Sunday’s claim that Bin Laden was killed at his compound in Pakistan, adding, “This whole scenario where you see a bunch of people sitting there looking at a screen and they look as if they’re intense, that’s nonsense,” referring to the images released by the White House which claim to show Biden, Obama and Hillary Clinton watching the operation to kill Bin Laden live on a television screen.
“It’s a total make-up, make believe, we’re in an American theater of the absurd….why are we doing this again….nine years ago this man was already dead….why does the government repeatedly have to lie to the American people,” asked Pieczenik.
“Osama Bin Laden was totally dead, so there’s no way they could have attacked or confronted or killed Osama Bin laden,” said Pieczenik, joking that the only way it could have happened was if special forces had attacked a mortuary.
Pieczenik said that the decision to launch the hoax now was made because Obama had reached a low with plummeting approval ratings and the fact that the birther issue was blowing up in his face.
“He had to prove that he was more than American….he had to be aggressive,” said Pieczenik, adding that the farce was also a way of isolating Pakistan as a retaliation for intense opposition to the Predator drone program, which has killed hundreds of Pakistanis.
“This is orchestrated, I mean when you have people sitting around and watching a sitcom, basically the operations center of the White House, and you have a president coming out almost zombie-like telling you they just killed Osama Bin Laden who was already dead nine years ago,” said Pieczenik, calling the episode, “the greatest falsehood I’ve ever heard, I mean it was absurd.”
Dismissing the government’s account of the assassination of Bin Laden as a “sick joke” on the American people, Pieczenik said, “They are so desperate to make Obama viable, to negate the fact that he may not have been born here, any questions about his background, any irregularities about his background, to make him look assertive….to re-elect this president so the American public can be duped once again.”
Pieczenik’s assertion that Bin Laden died almost ten years ago is echoed by numerous intelligence professionals as well as heads of state across the world.
Bin Laden, “Was used in the same way that 9/11 was used to mobilize the emotions and feelings of the American people in order to go to a war that had to be justified through a narrative that Bush junior created and Cheney created about the world of terrorism,” stated Pieczenik.
During his interview with the Alex Jones Show yesterday, Pieczenik also asserted he was directly told by a prominent general that 9/11 was a stand down and a false flag operation, and that he is prepared to go to a grand jury to reveal the general’s name.
“They ran the attacks,” said Pieczenik, naming Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Stephen Hadley, Elliott Abrams, and Condoleezza Rice amongst others as having been directly involved.
“It was called a stand down, a false flag operation in order to mobilize the American public under false pretenses….it was told to me even by the general on the staff of Wolfowitz – I will go in front of a federal committee and swear on perjury who the name was of the individual so that we can break it open,” said Pieczenik, adding that he was “furious” and “knew it had happened”.
“I taught stand down and false flag operations at the national war college, I’ve taught it with all my operatives so I knew exactly what was done to the American public,” he added.
Pieczenik re-iterated that he was perfectly willing to reveal the name of the general who told him 9/11 was an inside job in a federal court, “so that we can unravel this thing legally, not with the stupid 9/11 Commission that was absurd.”
Pieczenik explained that he was not a liberal, a conservative or a tea party member, merely an American who is deeply concerned about the direction in which his country is heading.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Sarah Palin Steampunk Comic
A comic book starring Sarah Palin in a futuristic universe has been released, and whether you love her or hate her, it looks like a hoot.
In Steampunk Palin, Sarah proposes to use steam energy as a replacement for oil and nuclear power. The nuke and oil industries respond by blowing her up. Fortunately, she survives thanks to cyborg technology, which apparently includes silicon in her already awesome boobs. Armed with hi-tech weaponry and massive jugs, the half-robot Palin battles the evil mastermind behind the oil-nuke conglomerate (spoil alert) Al Gore. As Gore puts it: "Who were you expecting, Sarah, George Bush? It should have been obvious from the start that it would come to this... After winning the Academy Award and Nobel Peace Prize, I found out I love money, I love having power and influence over people, and all those alternative energy sources I kept touting are PATHETIC!"
The story is only fifteen pages long, but fortunately they also include eight pages of pin-up fantasy drawings. If they ever adapt this to film, I nominate Eva Angelina to play her...
'Steampunk Palin' Comic More Insane Than You Imagined
Jan 20th 2011
Chris Murphy
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/01/20/steampunk-palin-comic
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Bush v. Gore's Dark American Decade
http://consortiumnews.com/2010/121210.html
Bush v. Gore's Dark American Decade
Robert Parry
December 12, 2010
Ten years ago, the United States stood at a crossroads though the dimness of the future made it hard for many to see which path led toward a brighter day and which headed toward disaster. But then, a partisan Republican majority of the U.S. Supreme Court made the choice for the nation.
At 10 p.m. on Dec. 12, 2000, the Supreme Court issued one of its most controversial rulings ever, telling Florida that its recount of the presidential election must include all legally cast ballots but giving the state the absurdly short time of two hours to complete the process.
Everyone immediately understood what the five partisan Republicans – William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy – had done: they had awarded the presidency to George W. Bush.
They did this even though it was clear that Bush had lost the national popular vote to Al Gore by half a million votes. It also appears that Bush would have lost Florida if the full recount had been given the necessary time.
Even if the butterfly ballot fiasco and other irregularities were ignored, Gore still was likely to prevail narrowly if all the legally cast ballots – those expressing the clear intent of the voters – were counted, as an unofficial tally by news organizations determined a year later.
So, instead of the deeply qualified Gore becoming president, the largely unqualified Bush took over, carrying with him an anti-government philosophy of tax cuts tilted toward the rich and reduced regulation for business, combined with a tough-guy-ism toward the world – essentially the script crafted three decades ago by President Ronald Reagan.
By virtually all objective measures, the consequences of Bush’s eight-year presidency were disastrous, including massive federal deficits, an economy ravaged by reckless gambling on Wall Street, and two costly wars still hemorrhaging money and blood.
However, after two years of President Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress undertaking emergency (and often unpopular) steps to stabilize the collapsing economy, the Republicans pounded a campaign drum of fiscal responsibility and deficit reduction, deriding Obama’s modest stimulus efforts and health-care reform as costly failures.
In their comeback, the Republicans also were aided by another Supreme Court ruling in early 2010, the Citizens United case, in which two right-wing appointees of President Bush – John Roberts and Samuel Alito – joined with Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy to strike down restrictions on corporate spending for political ads.
The ruling unleashed an unprecedented wave of TV commercials pounding the Democrats as fiscally irresponsible, accusing them of burdening America’s children with debt while failing to solve the nation’s economic troubles.
Many Americans responded to this messaging about fiscal responsibility by going to the polls on Nov. 2 and handing the Republicans a resounding victory, including GOP control of the House of Representatives and a much stronger hand in the Senate.
However, instead of attacking the deficit, the first act of the victorious Republicans was to coerce Obama into accepting an extension and expansion of tax cuts for the rich, in exchange for more unemployment insurance and various tax breaks for small business and the middle class, a package that would add nearly $1 trillion to the debt.
To the dismay of the liberal Democratic base, Obama apparently has surveyed the power shift in American politics and concluded that he has little choice but to surrender to the Republicans. So the consequences of Election 2000 and the Supreme Court’s Bush v. Gore ruling live on.
Down the Rabbit Hole
Fittingly perhaps -- given the absurdity that has overtaken American politics -- the Bush v. Gore ruling was an Alice-in-Wonderland exercise in turning legal logic on its head and making a mockery of bedrock democratic principles, such as the one that says the candidate with the most votes is supposed to win.
But how that momentous decision was reached is still little understood by Americans, even a decade later.
The behind-the-scenes court drama began on Dec. 8, 2000. Bush was clinging to an official lead of only a few hundred votes out of six million cast in Florida when the Bush forces were dealt a crushing blow. A divided Florida Supreme Court ordered a statewide review of ballots that had been kicked out by antiquated counting machines.
The recount began on the morning of Dec. 9. Immediately, the canvassers began finding scores of legitimate votes that the machines had rejected.
Despite a supposed reverence for states’ rights and a disdain for federal interference, Bush’s lawyers raced to the U.S. Appeals Court in Atlanta to stop the count. Dominated by conservatives, the appeals court held to established precedents and refused to intervene.
A frantic Bush then turned to the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington. There, in the late afternoon, the high court took the unprecedented step of issuing an injunction to stop the counting of votes cast by American citizens.
Justice Scalia made clear that the purpose of the court’s action was to prevent Bush from falling behind in the tally and thus raising questions about his legitimacy should the Supreme Court later declare him the winner.
That outcome would “cast a cloud” over the “legitimacy” of an eventual Bush presidency, explained Scalia. “Count first, and rule upon the legality afterwards, is not a recipe for producing election results that have the public acceptance democratic stability requires,” Scalia wrote.
Trusting the Law
Nevertheless, on Dec. 11, Gore and his lawyers voiced confidence that the rule of law would prevail, that the U.S. Supreme Court would rise above any partisan concerns and would insist that the votes be counted and that the will of the voters be respected.
The Gore team went before Rehnquist’s court apparently still unaware that whatever they argued, the five Republican partisans were determined to make Bush the next president.
The evidence is now clear that Rehnquist and his four Republican colleagues decided on the outcome first and worked out the rationale second. Indeed, their legal logic flipped from the start of their deliberations to the end, but their pro-Bush verdict remained steadfast.
USA Today disclosed this inside story in an article about the strains that the Bush v. Gore ruling created within the court. Though the article was sympathetic to the pro-Bush justices, it disclosed an important fact: that the five were planning to rule for Bush after oral arguments on Dec. 11. The court even sent out for Chinese food for the clerks, so work could be completed that night. [USA Today, Jan. 22, 2001]
At that point, the legal rationale for stopping the Florida recount was to have been that the Florida Supreme Court had made “new law” when it referenced the state constitution in an initial recount decision – rather than simply interpreting state statutes.
Even though this basis for giving Bush the White House was highly technical, the rationale at least conformed with conservative principles, which are supposedly hostile to judicial “activism.” But the Florida Supreme Court threw a wrench into the plan.
On the evening of Dec. 11, the state court submitted a revised ruling that deleted the passing reference to the state constitution. The revised ruling based its reasoning entirely on state statutes, which permitted recounts in close elections.
This modified state ruling opened a split among the five conservatives. Justices O’Connor and Kennedy no longer felt they could agree with the “new law” rationale for blocking the recount, though Justices Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas were prepared to stick with the old thinking even though its foundation had been removed.
Finding a Reason
The plans for finishing up the formal opinion on the evening of Dec. 11 were scrapped as O’Connor and Kennedy veered off in a very different direction.
Through the day on Dec. 12, they worked on an opinion arguing that the Florida Supreme Court had failed to set consistent standards for the recount and that the disparate county-by-county standards constituted a violation of the “equal protection” rules of the 14th Amendment.
The logic of this argument was quite thin and Kennedy reportedly had trouble committing it to writing. To anyone who had followed the Florida election, it was obvious that varied standards already had been applied throughout the state.
Wealthier precincts benefited from optical voting machines that were simple to use and eliminated nearly all errors, while poorer precincts with many African-Americans and retired Jews were stuck with outmoded punch-card systems with far higher error rates.
Some counties had conducted manual recounts, too, and those totals already were part of the tallies giving Bush a tiny lead
The statewide recount – ordered by the Florida Supreme Court – was designed to reduce those disparities and thus bring the results closer to equality. Applying the “equal protection” provision, as planned by O’Connor and Kennedy, turned the 14th Amendment on its head, guaranteeing less equality than would have occurred by letting the recount go forward.
Indeed, if one were to follow the “logic” of the O’Connor-Kennedy position, the only “fair” conclusion would have been to throw out Florida’s presidential election in total. After all, the U.S. Supreme Court was effectively judging Florida’s disparate standards to be unconstitutional. But that would have left Gore with a majority of the remaining electoral votes.
Or, more rationally, the U.S. Supreme Court could have given Florida more time to conduct the fuller recount that the O’Connor-Kennedy position envisioned, bringing in not only so-called “under-votes” in which a choice was hard to detect but “over-votes” in which citizens both punched the hole for their choice and wrote his name in.
However, Gore stood to benefit from either approach and that went against the pre-determined outcome to put Bush in the White House, whatever the legal excuse had to be.
Even more telling than the stretched logic of the O’Connor-Kennedy faction was the readiness of Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas to sign on to a ruling that was almost completely at odds with their original legal rationale for blocking the recount.
On the night of Dec. 11, that trio was ready to bar the recount because the Florida Supreme Court had created “new law.” On Dec. 12, the same three justices were voting to block the recount because the Florida Supreme Court had not created “new law” – by establishing precise statewide recount standards.
The five conservatives had devised their own Catch-22. If the Florida Supreme Court set clearer standards, that would be struck down as creating “new law.” If the state court didn’t set clearer standards, that would be struck down as violating the “equal protection” principle. Heads Bush wins; tails Gore loses.
There was one other clever twist to the conservative majority’s maneuvering. When the ruling was issued at around 10 p.m. on Dec. 12, the O’Connor-Kennedy rationale asserted that the 14th Amendment required a recount with equal standards applied statewide, but then gave Florida only two hours to complete the process before a deadline of midnight.
Because this two-hour window was absurdly unrealistic, the result of the ruling was to give Bush the White House based on a 537-vote lead in the “official” Florida results, as overseen by the state administration of his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush.
Denying Politics
After the court’s ruling and Gore's gracious-but-pained concession speech the next day, Justice Thomas told a group of high school students that partisan considerations played “zero” part in the court's decisions.
Later, asked whether Thomas's assessment was accurate, Rehnquist answered, “Absolutely.”
In later comments about the court’s role in the case, Rehnquist seemed unfazed by the inconsistency of the court’s logic. His overriding rationale seemed to be that he viewed Bush’s election as good for the country – whether most voters thought so or not.
In a speech on Jan. 7, 2001, Rehnquist said sometimes the U.S. Supreme Court needed to intervene in politics to extricate the nation from a crisis. His remarks were made in the context of the Hayes-Tilden race in 1876, when another popular vote loser, Rutherford B. Hayes, was awarded the presidency after justices participated in a special election commission.
“The political processes of the country had worked, admittedly in a rather unusual way, to avoid a serious crisis,” Rehnquist said.
Scholars interpreted Rehnquist’s remarks as shedding light on his thinking during the Bush v. Gore case as well.
“He’s making a rather clear statement of what he thought the primary job of our governmental process was,” said Michael Les Benedict, a history professor at Ohio State University. “That was to make sure the conflict is resolved peacefully, with no violence.” [Washington Post, Jan. 19, 2001]
But where were the threats of violence and acts of disruption in the 2000 election?
Gore had reined in his supporters, urging them to avoid confrontations and to trust in the “rule of law.” The only violence had come from the Bush side, when the Bush campaign flew protesters from Washington to Miami to put pressure on local election boards.
On Nov. 22, 2000, as the Miami-Dade canvassing board was preparing to examine ballots, a well-dressed mob of Republican operatives charged the office, roughed up some Democrats and pounded on the walls. The canvassing board promptly reversed itself and decided to forego the recount.
The next night, the Bush-Cheney campaign feted the rioters at a hotel party in Fort Lauderdale. Starring at the event was crooner Wayne Newton singing “Danke Schoen,” but the highlight for the operatives was a thank-you call from George W. Bush and his running mate, Dick Cheney, both of whom joked about the Miami-Dade incident, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The Journal noted that “behind the rowdy rallies in South Florida this past weekend was a well-organized effort by Republican operatives to entice supporters to South Florida,” with House Majority Whip Tom DeLay's Capitol Hill office taking charge of the recruitment. [WSJ, Nov. 27, 2000.]
Republican Defiance
In other less violent ways, Bush-Cheney operatives signaled that they would not accept an unfavorable vote total in Florida.
In the chance that Gore pulled ahead, the Republican-controlled state legislature was preparing to void the results. In Washington, the Republican congressional leadership also was threatening to force a constitutional crisis if Gore prevailed in Florida.
If one takes Rehnquist’s “good-for-the-country” rationale seriously, that means the U.S. Supreme Court was ready to award the presidency to the side most willing to use violence and other anti-democratic means to overturn the will of the voters.
Rehnquist’s approach suggested that since Gore and his supporters were less likely to resort to violence – while Bush and his backers were ready to provoke a crisis if they didn’t get their way – that the high court should give the presidency to the side most committed to disruption.
A far more democratic – and rational – approach would have been for the Supreme Court to accept the O’Connor-Kennedy logic and simply extend the deadline for Florida to turn in its results. The court could have ordered the fullest and fairest possible recount with the winner being whichever candidate ended up with the most votes.
However, if that had occurred, the almost certain winner would have been Gore.
When a group of news organizations conducted an unofficial recount of Florida’s disputed ballots in 2001, Gore came out narrowly on top regardless of what standards were applied to the famous chads – dimpled, hanging or punched-through.
Gore’s victory would have been assured by the so-called “over-votes” in which a voter both punched through a candidate’s name and wrote it in. Under Florida law, such “over-votes” are legal and they broke heavily in Gore’s favor.
In other words, the wrong candidate had been awarded the presidency. However, this startling fact became an unpleasant reality that the mainstream U.S. news media decided to obscure.
The tally wasn’t completed until after the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and the prevailing view among senior news executives became that it would be harmful to the nation’s need for unity if the press reported that Gore was the rightful winner of Election 2000.
So, the major newspapers and TV networks hid their own scoop when the results were published on Nov. 12, 2001. Instead of stating clearly that Florida’s legally cast votes favored Gore, the mainstream media bent over backwards to concoct hypothetical situations in which Bush might still have won the presidency, such as if the recount were limited to only a few counties or if the legal “over-votes” were excluded.
The discovery of Gore’s rightful victory was buried deep in the stories or relegated to charts that accompanied the articles.
Misleading the Readers
Any casual reader would have come away from reading the New York Times or the Washington Post with the conclusion that Bush really had won Florida and thus was the legitimate president after all.
The Post’s headline read, “Florida Recounts Would Have Favored Bush.” The Times ran the headline: “Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote.”
Some columnists, such as the Post’s media analyst Howard Kurtz, even launched preemptive strikes against anyone who would read the fine print and spot the hidden “lede” of Gore’s victory. Kurtz labeled such people “conspiracy theorists.” [Washington Post, Nov. 12, 2001]
After reading these slanted “Bush Won” stories, I wrote an article for Consortiumnews.com noting that the obvious “lede” should have been that the recount revealed that Gore had won. I suggested that the news judgments of senior editors might have been influenced by a desire to appear patriotic only two months after 9/11.
My article had been up for only a couple of hours when I received an irate phone call from New York Times media writer Felicity Barringer, who accused me of impugning the journalistic integrity of then-Times executive editor Howell Raines. I got the impression that Barringer had been on the look-out for some deviant story that didn’t accept the pro-Bush conventional wisdom.
Today, the dominant conventional wisdom appears to be that while the Bush v. Gore decision was a case of politicized justice, it’s not something that Americans should get too upset about. There is even a school of thought that asserts that it was encouraging that U.S. citizens did not take to the streets to protest this overturning of their democratic judgment.
In a Sept. 13, 2010, interview with NBC’s Brian Williams, Justice Stephen Breyer, one of the dissenters in the Bush v. Gore ruling, said he still believed the majority was wrong, but added that he found the aftermath remarkable in a positive way.
“That remarkable thing, is even though more than half the public strongly disagreed with it [Bush v. Gore], thought it was really wrong, they followed it,” Breyer said. “And the alternative, using guns, having revolutions, is a worse alternative.
“And it’s taken quite a long time, many, many years, decades and decades for Americans to come to that understanding. And that fact — that America will follow court decisions made by fallible human beings, even when those decisions are very unpopular — has not always been true.”
In other words, Breyer believes it is preferable for Americans to accept an anti-democratic judgment made by five partisans in black robes than to rise up in outrage against a powerful institution that has usurped the role of the voters and overturned the consent of the governed.
Yet, is that acquiescence really preferable to the courageous actions by people all over the world who have staged protests and risked their lives in defense of democracy when autocratic rulers have refused to accept the results of an election?
A decade after the fateful court ruling – with the results of Bush’s presidency now painfully apparent and his own appointed justices helping to open the floodgates of special-interest money to further distort the democratic process – Bush v. Gore must be viewed as a moment when the United States started down a very dark road.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there.
Bush v. Gore's Dark American Decade
Robert Parry
December 12, 2010
Ten years ago, the United States stood at a crossroads though the dimness of the future made it hard for many to see which path led toward a brighter day and which headed toward disaster. But then, a partisan Republican majority of the U.S. Supreme Court made the choice for the nation.
At 10 p.m. on Dec. 12, 2000, the Supreme Court issued one of its most controversial rulings ever, telling Florida that its recount of the presidential election must include all legally cast ballots but giving the state the absurdly short time of two hours to complete the process.
Everyone immediately understood what the five partisan Republicans – William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy – had done: they had awarded the presidency to George W. Bush.
They did this even though it was clear that Bush had lost the national popular vote to Al Gore by half a million votes. It also appears that Bush would have lost Florida if the full recount had been given the necessary time.
Even if the butterfly ballot fiasco and other irregularities were ignored, Gore still was likely to prevail narrowly if all the legally cast ballots – those expressing the clear intent of the voters – were counted, as an unofficial tally by news organizations determined a year later.
So, instead of the deeply qualified Gore becoming president, the largely unqualified Bush took over, carrying with him an anti-government philosophy of tax cuts tilted toward the rich and reduced regulation for business, combined with a tough-guy-ism toward the world – essentially the script crafted three decades ago by President Ronald Reagan.
By virtually all objective measures, the consequences of Bush’s eight-year presidency were disastrous, including massive federal deficits, an economy ravaged by reckless gambling on Wall Street, and two costly wars still hemorrhaging money and blood.
However, after two years of President Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress undertaking emergency (and often unpopular) steps to stabilize the collapsing economy, the Republicans pounded a campaign drum of fiscal responsibility and deficit reduction, deriding Obama’s modest stimulus efforts and health-care reform as costly failures.
In their comeback, the Republicans also were aided by another Supreme Court ruling in early 2010, the Citizens United case, in which two right-wing appointees of President Bush – John Roberts and Samuel Alito – joined with Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy to strike down restrictions on corporate spending for political ads.
The ruling unleashed an unprecedented wave of TV commercials pounding the Democrats as fiscally irresponsible, accusing them of burdening America’s children with debt while failing to solve the nation’s economic troubles.
Many Americans responded to this messaging about fiscal responsibility by going to the polls on Nov. 2 and handing the Republicans a resounding victory, including GOP control of the House of Representatives and a much stronger hand in the Senate.
However, instead of attacking the deficit, the first act of the victorious Republicans was to coerce Obama into accepting an extension and expansion of tax cuts for the rich, in exchange for more unemployment insurance and various tax breaks for small business and the middle class, a package that would add nearly $1 trillion to the debt.
To the dismay of the liberal Democratic base, Obama apparently has surveyed the power shift in American politics and concluded that he has little choice but to surrender to the Republicans. So the consequences of Election 2000 and the Supreme Court’s Bush v. Gore ruling live on.
Down the Rabbit Hole
Fittingly perhaps -- given the absurdity that has overtaken American politics -- the Bush v. Gore ruling was an Alice-in-Wonderland exercise in turning legal logic on its head and making a mockery of bedrock democratic principles, such as the one that says the candidate with the most votes is supposed to win.
But how that momentous decision was reached is still little understood by Americans, even a decade later.
The behind-the-scenes court drama began on Dec. 8, 2000. Bush was clinging to an official lead of only a few hundred votes out of six million cast in Florida when the Bush forces were dealt a crushing blow. A divided Florida Supreme Court ordered a statewide review of ballots that had been kicked out by antiquated counting machines.
The recount began on the morning of Dec. 9. Immediately, the canvassers began finding scores of legitimate votes that the machines had rejected.
Despite a supposed reverence for states’ rights and a disdain for federal interference, Bush’s lawyers raced to the U.S. Appeals Court in Atlanta to stop the count. Dominated by conservatives, the appeals court held to established precedents and refused to intervene.
A frantic Bush then turned to the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington. There, in the late afternoon, the high court took the unprecedented step of issuing an injunction to stop the counting of votes cast by American citizens.
Justice Scalia made clear that the purpose of the court’s action was to prevent Bush from falling behind in the tally and thus raising questions about his legitimacy should the Supreme Court later declare him the winner.
That outcome would “cast a cloud” over the “legitimacy” of an eventual Bush presidency, explained Scalia. “Count first, and rule upon the legality afterwards, is not a recipe for producing election results that have the public acceptance democratic stability requires,” Scalia wrote.
Trusting the Law
Nevertheless, on Dec. 11, Gore and his lawyers voiced confidence that the rule of law would prevail, that the U.S. Supreme Court would rise above any partisan concerns and would insist that the votes be counted and that the will of the voters be respected.
The Gore team went before Rehnquist’s court apparently still unaware that whatever they argued, the five Republican partisans were determined to make Bush the next president.
The evidence is now clear that Rehnquist and his four Republican colleagues decided on the outcome first and worked out the rationale second. Indeed, their legal logic flipped from the start of their deliberations to the end, but their pro-Bush verdict remained steadfast.
USA Today disclosed this inside story in an article about the strains that the Bush v. Gore ruling created within the court. Though the article was sympathetic to the pro-Bush justices, it disclosed an important fact: that the five were planning to rule for Bush after oral arguments on Dec. 11. The court even sent out for Chinese food for the clerks, so work could be completed that night. [USA Today, Jan. 22, 2001]
At that point, the legal rationale for stopping the Florida recount was to have been that the Florida Supreme Court had made “new law” when it referenced the state constitution in an initial recount decision – rather than simply interpreting state statutes.
Even though this basis for giving Bush the White House was highly technical, the rationale at least conformed with conservative principles, which are supposedly hostile to judicial “activism.” But the Florida Supreme Court threw a wrench into the plan.
On the evening of Dec. 11, the state court submitted a revised ruling that deleted the passing reference to the state constitution. The revised ruling based its reasoning entirely on state statutes, which permitted recounts in close elections.
This modified state ruling opened a split among the five conservatives. Justices O’Connor and Kennedy no longer felt they could agree with the “new law” rationale for blocking the recount, though Justices Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas were prepared to stick with the old thinking even though its foundation had been removed.
Finding a Reason
The plans for finishing up the formal opinion on the evening of Dec. 11 were scrapped as O’Connor and Kennedy veered off in a very different direction.
Through the day on Dec. 12, they worked on an opinion arguing that the Florida Supreme Court had failed to set consistent standards for the recount and that the disparate county-by-county standards constituted a violation of the “equal protection” rules of the 14th Amendment.
The logic of this argument was quite thin and Kennedy reportedly had trouble committing it to writing. To anyone who had followed the Florida election, it was obvious that varied standards already had been applied throughout the state.
Wealthier precincts benefited from optical voting machines that were simple to use and eliminated nearly all errors, while poorer precincts with many African-Americans and retired Jews were stuck with outmoded punch-card systems with far higher error rates.
Some counties had conducted manual recounts, too, and those totals already were part of the tallies giving Bush a tiny lead
The statewide recount – ordered by the Florida Supreme Court – was designed to reduce those disparities and thus bring the results closer to equality. Applying the “equal protection” provision, as planned by O’Connor and Kennedy, turned the 14th Amendment on its head, guaranteeing less equality than would have occurred by letting the recount go forward.
Indeed, if one were to follow the “logic” of the O’Connor-Kennedy position, the only “fair” conclusion would have been to throw out Florida’s presidential election in total. After all, the U.S. Supreme Court was effectively judging Florida’s disparate standards to be unconstitutional. But that would have left Gore with a majority of the remaining electoral votes.
Or, more rationally, the U.S. Supreme Court could have given Florida more time to conduct the fuller recount that the O’Connor-Kennedy position envisioned, bringing in not only so-called “under-votes” in which a choice was hard to detect but “over-votes” in which citizens both punched the hole for their choice and wrote his name in.
However, Gore stood to benefit from either approach and that went against the pre-determined outcome to put Bush in the White House, whatever the legal excuse had to be.
Even more telling than the stretched logic of the O’Connor-Kennedy faction was the readiness of Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas to sign on to a ruling that was almost completely at odds with their original legal rationale for blocking the recount.
On the night of Dec. 11, that trio was ready to bar the recount because the Florida Supreme Court had created “new law.” On Dec. 12, the same three justices were voting to block the recount because the Florida Supreme Court had not created “new law” – by establishing precise statewide recount standards.
The five conservatives had devised their own Catch-22. If the Florida Supreme Court set clearer standards, that would be struck down as creating “new law.” If the state court didn’t set clearer standards, that would be struck down as violating the “equal protection” principle. Heads Bush wins; tails Gore loses.
There was one other clever twist to the conservative majority’s maneuvering. When the ruling was issued at around 10 p.m. on Dec. 12, the O’Connor-Kennedy rationale asserted that the 14th Amendment required a recount with equal standards applied statewide, but then gave Florida only two hours to complete the process before a deadline of midnight.
Because this two-hour window was absurdly unrealistic, the result of the ruling was to give Bush the White House based on a 537-vote lead in the “official” Florida results, as overseen by the state administration of his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush.
Denying Politics
After the court’s ruling and Gore's gracious-but-pained concession speech the next day, Justice Thomas told a group of high school students that partisan considerations played “zero” part in the court's decisions.
Later, asked whether Thomas's assessment was accurate, Rehnquist answered, “Absolutely.”
In later comments about the court’s role in the case, Rehnquist seemed unfazed by the inconsistency of the court’s logic. His overriding rationale seemed to be that he viewed Bush’s election as good for the country – whether most voters thought so or not.
In a speech on Jan. 7, 2001, Rehnquist said sometimes the U.S. Supreme Court needed to intervene in politics to extricate the nation from a crisis. His remarks were made in the context of the Hayes-Tilden race in 1876, when another popular vote loser, Rutherford B. Hayes, was awarded the presidency after justices participated in a special election commission.
“The political processes of the country had worked, admittedly in a rather unusual way, to avoid a serious crisis,” Rehnquist said.
Scholars interpreted Rehnquist’s remarks as shedding light on his thinking during the Bush v. Gore case as well.
“He’s making a rather clear statement of what he thought the primary job of our governmental process was,” said Michael Les Benedict, a history professor at Ohio State University. “That was to make sure the conflict is resolved peacefully, with no violence.” [Washington Post, Jan. 19, 2001]
But where were the threats of violence and acts of disruption in the 2000 election?
Gore had reined in his supporters, urging them to avoid confrontations and to trust in the “rule of law.” The only violence had come from the Bush side, when the Bush campaign flew protesters from Washington to Miami to put pressure on local election boards.
On Nov. 22, 2000, as the Miami-Dade canvassing board was preparing to examine ballots, a well-dressed mob of Republican operatives charged the office, roughed up some Democrats and pounded on the walls. The canvassing board promptly reversed itself and decided to forego the recount.
The next night, the Bush-Cheney campaign feted the rioters at a hotel party in Fort Lauderdale. Starring at the event was crooner Wayne Newton singing “Danke Schoen,” but the highlight for the operatives was a thank-you call from George W. Bush and his running mate, Dick Cheney, both of whom joked about the Miami-Dade incident, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The Journal noted that “behind the rowdy rallies in South Florida this past weekend was a well-organized effort by Republican operatives to entice supporters to South Florida,” with House Majority Whip Tom DeLay's Capitol Hill office taking charge of the recruitment. [WSJ, Nov. 27, 2000.]
Republican Defiance
In other less violent ways, Bush-Cheney operatives signaled that they would not accept an unfavorable vote total in Florida.
In the chance that Gore pulled ahead, the Republican-controlled state legislature was preparing to void the results. In Washington, the Republican congressional leadership also was threatening to force a constitutional crisis if Gore prevailed in Florida.
If one takes Rehnquist’s “good-for-the-country” rationale seriously, that means the U.S. Supreme Court was ready to award the presidency to the side most willing to use violence and other anti-democratic means to overturn the will of the voters.
Rehnquist’s approach suggested that since Gore and his supporters were less likely to resort to violence – while Bush and his backers were ready to provoke a crisis if they didn’t get their way – that the high court should give the presidency to the side most committed to disruption.
A far more democratic – and rational – approach would have been for the Supreme Court to accept the O’Connor-Kennedy logic and simply extend the deadline for Florida to turn in its results. The court could have ordered the fullest and fairest possible recount with the winner being whichever candidate ended up with the most votes.
However, if that had occurred, the almost certain winner would have been Gore.
When a group of news organizations conducted an unofficial recount of Florida’s disputed ballots in 2001, Gore came out narrowly on top regardless of what standards were applied to the famous chads – dimpled, hanging or punched-through.
Gore’s victory would have been assured by the so-called “over-votes” in which a voter both punched through a candidate’s name and wrote it in. Under Florida law, such “over-votes” are legal and they broke heavily in Gore’s favor.
In other words, the wrong candidate had been awarded the presidency. However, this startling fact became an unpleasant reality that the mainstream U.S. news media decided to obscure.
The tally wasn’t completed until after the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and the prevailing view among senior news executives became that it would be harmful to the nation’s need for unity if the press reported that Gore was the rightful winner of Election 2000.
So, the major newspapers and TV networks hid their own scoop when the results were published on Nov. 12, 2001. Instead of stating clearly that Florida’s legally cast votes favored Gore, the mainstream media bent over backwards to concoct hypothetical situations in which Bush might still have won the presidency, such as if the recount were limited to only a few counties or if the legal “over-votes” were excluded.
The discovery of Gore’s rightful victory was buried deep in the stories or relegated to charts that accompanied the articles.
Misleading the Readers
Any casual reader would have come away from reading the New York Times or the Washington Post with the conclusion that Bush really had won Florida and thus was the legitimate president after all.
The Post’s headline read, “Florida Recounts Would Have Favored Bush.” The Times ran the headline: “Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote.”
Some columnists, such as the Post’s media analyst Howard Kurtz, even launched preemptive strikes against anyone who would read the fine print and spot the hidden “lede” of Gore’s victory. Kurtz labeled such people “conspiracy theorists.” [Washington Post, Nov. 12, 2001]
After reading these slanted “Bush Won” stories, I wrote an article for Consortiumnews.com noting that the obvious “lede” should have been that the recount revealed that Gore had won. I suggested that the news judgments of senior editors might have been influenced by a desire to appear patriotic only two months after 9/11.
My article had been up for only a couple of hours when I received an irate phone call from New York Times media writer Felicity Barringer, who accused me of impugning the journalistic integrity of then-Times executive editor Howell Raines. I got the impression that Barringer had been on the look-out for some deviant story that didn’t accept the pro-Bush conventional wisdom.
Today, the dominant conventional wisdom appears to be that while the Bush v. Gore decision was a case of politicized justice, it’s not something that Americans should get too upset about. There is even a school of thought that asserts that it was encouraging that U.S. citizens did not take to the streets to protest this overturning of their democratic judgment.
In a Sept. 13, 2010, interview with NBC’s Brian Williams, Justice Stephen Breyer, one of the dissenters in the Bush v. Gore ruling, said he still believed the majority was wrong, but added that he found the aftermath remarkable in a positive way.
“That remarkable thing, is even though more than half the public strongly disagreed with it [Bush v. Gore], thought it was really wrong, they followed it,” Breyer said. “And the alternative, using guns, having revolutions, is a worse alternative.
“And it’s taken quite a long time, many, many years, decades and decades for Americans to come to that understanding. And that fact — that America will follow court decisions made by fallible human beings, even when those decisions are very unpopular — has not always been true.”
In other words, Breyer believes it is preferable for Americans to accept an anti-democratic judgment made by five partisans in black robes than to rise up in outrage against a powerful institution that has usurped the role of the voters and overturned the consent of the governed.
Yet, is that acquiescence really preferable to the courageous actions by people all over the world who have staged protests and risked their lives in defense of democracy when autocratic rulers have refused to accept the results of an election?
A decade after the fateful court ruling – with the results of Bush’s presidency now painfully apparent and his own appointed justices helping to open the floodgates of special-interest money to further distort the democratic process – Bush v. Gore must be viewed as a moment when the United States started down a very dark road.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Dan Quayle still pushing "Perot elected Clinton" nonsense
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/04/02/dan_quayle_still_blaming_perot_for_clinton/index.html
Friday, Apr 2, 2010
Dan Quayle still pushing "Perot elected Clinton" nonsense
For nearly 20 years, the right has been arguing that the Democrats' 1992 win should come with an asterisk
By Steve Kornacki
In 1992, Bill Clinton won a decisive victory in the presidential race, snagging 370 electoral votes and relegating George H.W. Bush to a smaller share of the vote than any incumbent president since William Howard Taft in 1912.
The right is still pretending this didn’t really happen. Oh sure, they acknowledge that Bill Clinton was elected and sworn-in as the nation’s 42nd president. They just claim it wasn’t really a legitimate victory. Case in point: an op-ed from Dan Quayle set to appear in Sunday’s Washington Post. Quayle writes:
Many remember the Reform Party of the 1990s, which formed around the candidacy of Ross Perot. I sure do, because it eliminated any chance that President George H.W. Bush and I would prevail over Bill Clinton and Al Gore in 1992. What started as a grass-roots phenomenon ended with 19 percent support at the ballot box -- and a majority of those voters would probably have gone Republican in a two-party race. Speaking on behalf of the Bush-Quayle campaign, to this day we firmly believe that Perot cost the Republican Party the White House.
Republicans have been blindly pushing this argument for nearly 20 years now, acting like George H.W. Bush was all set to win a second term until some crazy Texas billionaire came along and messed it all up. It’s understandable why they like this narrative: it lets them off the hook for losing the public’s confidence in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s -- and casts Clinton’s electoral triumph as an accident of history.
But let me try, one more time, to set the record straight: there is absolutely no rational reason -- none -- to believe that Perot cost Bush and Quayle the 1992 election. To understand why, let’s quickly review what happened in the ’92 campaign.
In the early stages of the race, just after the Gulf War in 1991, Bush looked positively unbeatable. As a result, every big-name Democrat -- Bill Bradley, Mario Cuomo, Al Gore, Jay Rockefeller and on and on -- backed out. And for the spring and summer of ’91, virtually no other Democrats stepped up to the fill the void. Former Massachusetts Senator Paul Tsongas was the only active candidate until the middle of the summer, and few took him seriously.
But as the Gulf War afterglow faded and the sputtering economy gained more attention, Bush’s popularity returned to earth. Several Democrats, including Clinton, Tom Harkin, Bob Kerrey and Jerry Brown, entered the race. And when, in December, Cuomo resisted a last-minute push to recruit him into the race, Clinton emerged as the clear front-runner. He was badly damaged by scandal in early ’92 and nearly overtaken by Tsongas, but by April, Clinton had emerged as the inevitable Democratic nominee.
At that point, he was given little chance of winning, mainly because of the scandals (Gennifer Flowers, draft-dodging and so on). But economic anxiety was widespread, and Bush’s job approval ratings were poisonous. He was a plainly vulnerable incumbent. This is where the Perot phenomenon took hold: With voters initially unwilling to trust Clinton, Perot stepped forward and rocketed to the top of national polls. By the late spring, he led in three-way trial heats, with Clinton lagging in a very distant third place.
Then came the Perot crack-up. Faced with media scrutiny he’d never before experienced, Perot’s erratic, paranoid and even delusional tendencies became evident to the general public. His numbers began to slide. He grew cranky – with the media and with the campaign team he’d assembled. In July, hours before Clinton was to deliver his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention, Perot withdrew from the race.
Here the GOP’s “blame Perot” excuse-making falls apart, because immediately after the Democratic convention, Clinton soared ahead of Bush in polls -- by more than 20 points. This was with no Perot in the race. The explanation was obvious: Clinton, after a beautifully choreographed convention, had convinced millions of Americans to give him a second look. It had been clear for months that voters were ready to throw out Bush, but they’d been unwilling to embrace Clinton. After the convention, though, they were.
Clinton’s one-on-one lead over Bush survived for the next 11 weeks. Not a single independent poll after the Democratic convention ever showed Bush leading Clinton – not even immediately after the August ’92 GOP convention (after which Bush temporarily closed the gap, to as few as six points in one poll). By Labor Day, the Bush convention bounce was gone and Clinton was back ahead by double-digits -- a lead that endured all the way through September.
It was then, as October arrived, that Perot jumped back in the race. But his re-emergence didn’t disproportionately hurt Bush -- who, it cannot be emphasized enough, was already being drubbed by Clinton. In a CBS poll on the eve of Perot's re-entry, Clinton led Bush by 13 points in a two-man race – and by 11 in a three-way race. In other words, Clinton’s lead actually declined (very slightly) with Perot back in the mix.
Throughout October, Clinton maintained a steady, commanding advantage over Bush. Three presidential debates were held that month. In the first, Perot stole the show and earned a measurable polling bounce -- from single digits back to double-digits. In the second, Bush was excoriated for glancing at his watch, feeding the impression that he was insufficiently energized and engaged as president; his poll numbers ebbed. In the third, Bush fared better, and by the end of October, he’d pared Clinton’s lead back to the mid- to high- single-digits.
Any last-minute Bush momentum, though, was undermined on the Friday before the election when Iran-Contra independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh indicted Caspar Weinberger, Ronald Reagan’s old Defense secretary – and, in a statement released with the indictment, implicated Bush, who had been dogged for years by questions about his Iran-Contra involvement.
The following Tuesday, Clinton nabbed 43 percent of the vote, good for 370 electoral votes. Bush finished with 37 percent and 168 electoral votes. Perot tallied nearly 20 percent, and exit polls showed that his voters were roughly split evenly on whom their second choice would have been.
In other words, take Perot out of the mix, and Clinton still wins -- handily. The argument of Quayle and other Republicans that Perot cost Bush the election would be more credible if there had been even a single independent poll after the Democratic convention giving Bush the lead over Clinton in a head-to-head race. There never was. Clinton won the race and Bush lost it -- no asterisks needed.
Friday, Apr 2, 2010
Dan Quayle still pushing "Perot elected Clinton" nonsense
For nearly 20 years, the right has been arguing that the Democrats' 1992 win should come with an asterisk
By Steve Kornacki
In 1992, Bill Clinton won a decisive victory in the presidential race, snagging 370 electoral votes and relegating George H.W. Bush to a smaller share of the vote than any incumbent president since William Howard Taft in 1912.
The right is still pretending this didn’t really happen. Oh sure, they acknowledge that Bill Clinton was elected and sworn-in as the nation’s 42nd president. They just claim it wasn’t really a legitimate victory. Case in point: an op-ed from Dan Quayle set to appear in Sunday’s Washington Post. Quayle writes:
Many remember the Reform Party of the 1990s, which formed around the candidacy of Ross Perot. I sure do, because it eliminated any chance that President George H.W. Bush and I would prevail over Bill Clinton and Al Gore in 1992. What started as a grass-roots phenomenon ended with 19 percent support at the ballot box -- and a majority of those voters would probably have gone Republican in a two-party race. Speaking on behalf of the Bush-Quayle campaign, to this day we firmly believe that Perot cost the Republican Party the White House.
Republicans have been blindly pushing this argument for nearly 20 years now, acting like George H.W. Bush was all set to win a second term until some crazy Texas billionaire came along and messed it all up. It’s understandable why they like this narrative: it lets them off the hook for losing the public’s confidence in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s -- and casts Clinton’s electoral triumph as an accident of history.
But let me try, one more time, to set the record straight: there is absolutely no rational reason -- none -- to believe that Perot cost Bush and Quayle the 1992 election. To understand why, let’s quickly review what happened in the ’92 campaign.
In the early stages of the race, just after the Gulf War in 1991, Bush looked positively unbeatable. As a result, every big-name Democrat -- Bill Bradley, Mario Cuomo, Al Gore, Jay Rockefeller and on and on -- backed out. And for the spring and summer of ’91, virtually no other Democrats stepped up to the fill the void. Former Massachusetts Senator Paul Tsongas was the only active candidate until the middle of the summer, and few took him seriously.
But as the Gulf War afterglow faded and the sputtering economy gained more attention, Bush’s popularity returned to earth. Several Democrats, including Clinton, Tom Harkin, Bob Kerrey and Jerry Brown, entered the race. And when, in December, Cuomo resisted a last-minute push to recruit him into the race, Clinton emerged as the clear front-runner. He was badly damaged by scandal in early ’92 and nearly overtaken by Tsongas, but by April, Clinton had emerged as the inevitable Democratic nominee.
At that point, he was given little chance of winning, mainly because of the scandals (Gennifer Flowers, draft-dodging and so on). But economic anxiety was widespread, and Bush’s job approval ratings were poisonous. He was a plainly vulnerable incumbent. This is where the Perot phenomenon took hold: With voters initially unwilling to trust Clinton, Perot stepped forward and rocketed to the top of national polls. By the late spring, he led in three-way trial heats, with Clinton lagging in a very distant third place.
Then came the Perot crack-up. Faced with media scrutiny he’d never before experienced, Perot’s erratic, paranoid and even delusional tendencies became evident to the general public. His numbers began to slide. He grew cranky – with the media and with the campaign team he’d assembled. In July, hours before Clinton was to deliver his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention, Perot withdrew from the race.
Here the GOP’s “blame Perot” excuse-making falls apart, because immediately after the Democratic convention, Clinton soared ahead of Bush in polls -- by more than 20 points. This was with no Perot in the race. The explanation was obvious: Clinton, after a beautifully choreographed convention, had convinced millions of Americans to give him a second look. It had been clear for months that voters were ready to throw out Bush, but they’d been unwilling to embrace Clinton. After the convention, though, they were.
Clinton’s one-on-one lead over Bush survived for the next 11 weeks. Not a single independent poll after the Democratic convention ever showed Bush leading Clinton – not even immediately after the August ’92 GOP convention (after which Bush temporarily closed the gap, to as few as six points in one poll). By Labor Day, the Bush convention bounce was gone and Clinton was back ahead by double-digits -- a lead that endured all the way through September.
It was then, as October arrived, that Perot jumped back in the race. But his re-emergence didn’t disproportionately hurt Bush -- who, it cannot be emphasized enough, was already being drubbed by Clinton. In a CBS poll on the eve of Perot's re-entry, Clinton led Bush by 13 points in a two-man race – and by 11 in a three-way race. In other words, Clinton’s lead actually declined (very slightly) with Perot back in the mix.
Throughout October, Clinton maintained a steady, commanding advantage over Bush. Three presidential debates were held that month. In the first, Perot stole the show and earned a measurable polling bounce -- from single digits back to double-digits. In the second, Bush was excoriated for glancing at his watch, feeding the impression that he was insufficiently energized and engaged as president; his poll numbers ebbed. In the third, Bush fared better, and by the end of October, he’d pared Clinton’s lead back to the mid- to high- single-digits.
Any last-minute Bush momentum, though, was undermined on the Friday before the election when Iran-Contra independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh indicted Caspar Weinberger, Ronald Reagan’s old Defense secretary – and, in a statement released with the indictment, implicated Bush, who had been dogged for years by questions about his Iran-Contra involvement.
The following Tuesday, Clinton nabbed 43 percent of the vote, good for 370 electoral votes. Bush finished with 37 percent and 168 electoral votes. Perot tallied nearly 20 percent, and exit polls showed that his voters were roughly split evenly on whom their second choice would have been.
In other words, take Perot out of the mix, and Clinton still wins -- handily. The argument of Quayle and other Republicans that Perot cost Bush the election would be more credible if there had been even a single independent poll after the Democratic convention giving Bush the lead over Clinton in a head-to-head race. There never was. Clinton won the race and Bush lost it -- no asterisks needed.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
George W. Bush in 2000
“I’m not so sure the role of the United States is to go around the world and say ‘This is the way it’s got to be’... I think one way for us to end up being viewed as the ‘ugly American’ is for us to go around the world saying ‘We do it this way, so should you.’”
George W. Bush, during the 2000 debates with Al Gore
George W. Bush, during the 2000 debates with Al Gore
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Pelosi, Rahm do not scare Rep. DeFazio
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/72889-pelosi-rahm-do-not-scare-rep-defazio
Pelosi, Rahm do not scare Rep. DeFazio
By Walter Alarkon
12/18/09
Rep. Peter DeFazio’s phone rang. On the other end was Rahm Emanuel.
The White House chief of staff last month expressed frustration with DeFazio’s resignation calls for President Barack Obama’s top two economic aides — Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and White House chief economist Larry Summers — and appealed for cooperation, according to DeFazio.
But Emanuel, known for his blunt manner and ability to bend members of his party to his will, did not raise his voice with the Oregon Democrat.
“Rahm does not yell at me,” DeFazio said, “because he knows that I yell back.”
Others are learning that DeFazio, who has served in the House since 1987 and describes himself as a “progressive populist,” is not easily intimidated. He has emerged in recent months as one of the most vocal liberal critics of the Obama administration, blasting the president’s team for not getting tough enough with Wall Street. He’s also taken on his own party for failing to move left-leaning legislation through the Congress.
Personal calls from Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and former Vice President Al Gore couldn’t persuade him to vote for the Speaker’s climate change bill. He also opposed the $787 billion stimulus, citing concerns that only 7 percent was devoted to infrastructure spending.
DeFazio was one of only two Democrats to vote against those measures and the $700 billion bank bailout. (The other was Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) a Blue Dog conservative.)
Yet he’s also a pro-gun Democrat who has a B rating from the National Rifle Association.
“I would have less of a voice and I would have less respect if I voted for things I didn’t believe in because of pressure from the leadership,” DeFazio told The Hill in an interview.
Obama himself has taken notice.
“Don’t think we’re not keeping score, brother,” Obama told DeFazio during a closed-door meeting of the House Democratic Caucus, according to members afterward.
But poking a stick at those in power is what DeFazio does.
He gives partial credit for his special brand of liberalism to having worked at a country club as a teenager. Each summer, his father ran a camp for troubled inner-city kids on Cape Cod, where they caddied for golfers at a country club. DeFazio would work alongside the kids.
“They were servants for the rich, as was I,” he said. “I shagged golf balls for rich people. I carried golf clubs for rich people, and I learned very early on, when I was pretty young, that this was a group of people that had nothing special to offer to me or to society.”
His populism has played well back home. DeFazio won his 2008 election with 82 percent of the vote, even though his district isn’t overwhelmingly Democratic. Obama won it by 11 percentage points, but President George W. Bush won nearly as many votes as Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) in 2004.
“He is incredibly popular in a district that is actually somewhat difficult for a Democrat,” said Rep. David Wu (D-Ore.), who says DeFazio does it by standing up for his beliefs.
DeFazio has been a leading liberal voice complaining that the Democratic Congress and White House have failed to capitalize on significant victories in last year’s elections. His latest target is the Senate, where he says Democrats’ struggle to move healthcare legislation is preventing the Congress from sending a job-creation bill to the president’s desk. With the unemployment rate at 10 percent, House Democrats see jobs as the No. 1 campaign issue heading into the midterm election year.
“It’s just incredible frustration,” DeFazio said. “The killing ground of the Senate is ultimately, potentially, the killing ground of the Democratic Party.”
DeFazio and other House Democrats led what he called a “revolt” at a caucus meeting several weeks ago. Though Democratic leaders called the meeting to discuss the president’s decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, rank-and-file members began talking instead about jobs.
DeFazio stood up and called for attaching a new job-creation bill to the annual defense-spending measure, which typically gets bipartisan support and is considered must-pass legislation. His speech and others in favor of a new jobs bill drew cheers from colleagues, said House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larson (Conn.).
DeFazio has spent most of his time over the past year pushing for the $500 billion, six-year transportation reauthorization bill. DeFazio, the chairman of the House Highways and Transit subcommittee, has argued infrastructure could lead to far more jobs and have a much more lasting impact than tax cuts or other stimulus spending. While Pelosi has thrown her support behind the bill, sponsored by House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.), the Senate and the White House, reluctant to raise the gas tax or other levies to pay for the bill, have said that it should be taken up next year.
DeFazio wants to tax Wall Street to help pay for the programs. Specifically, he wants a tax on financial transactions, which economists have said could generate $150 billion. Though Geithner has opposed it, DeFazio is holding out hope that Obama will find ways to get tougher on Wall Street.
He praised the president this week for dialing up his criticism of Wall Street bankers and the bonuses they’re expected to receive, just months after receiving billions in federal bailout dollars.
“That was one good speech by the president, but he’s got to mean it, he’s got to live it, he’s got to do it every day,” DeFazio said. “And these are tough people; these are the most powerful people in the world. They seem to control a majority of his economic team.”
Pelosi, Rahm do not scare Rep. DeFazio
By Walter Alarkon
12/18/09
Rep. Peter DeFazio’s phone rang. On the other end was Rahm Emanuel.
The White House chief of staff last month expressed frustration with DeFazio’s resignation calls for President Barack Obama’s top two economic aides — Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and White House chief economist Larry Summers — and appealed for cooperation, according to DeFazio.
But Emanuel, known for his blunt manner and ability to bend members of his party to his will, did not raise his voice with the Oregon Democrat.
“Rahm does not yell at me,” DeFazio said, “because he knows that I yell back.”
Others are learning that DeFazio, who has served in the House since 1987 and describes himself as a “progressive populist,” is not easily intimidated. He has emerged in recent months as one of the most vocal liberal critics of the Obama administration, blasting the president’s team for not getting tough enough with Wall Street. He’s also taken on his own party for failing to move left-leaning legislation through the Congress.
Personal calls from Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and former Vice President Al Gore couldn’t persuade him to vote for the Speaker’s climate change bill. He also opposed the $787 billion stimulus, citing concerns that only 7 percent was devoted to infrastructure spending.
DeFazio was one of only two Democrats to vote against those measures and the $700 billion bank bailout. (The other was Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) a Blue Dog conservative.)
Yet he’s also a pro-gun Democrat who has a B rating from the National Rifle Association.
“I would have less of a voice and I would have less respect if I voted for things I didn’t believe in because of pressure from the leadership,” DeFazio told The Hill in an interview.
Obama himself has taken notice.
“Don’t think we’re not keeping score, brother,” Obama told DeFazio during a closed-door meeting of the House Democratic Caucus, according to members afterward.
But poking a stick at those in power is what DeFazio does.
He gives partial credit for his special brand of liberalism to having worked at a country club as a teenager. Each summer, his father ran a camp for troubled inner-city kids on Cape Cod, where they caddied for golfers at a country club. DeFazio would work alongside the kids.
“They were servants for the rich, as was I,” he said. “I shagged golf balls for rich people. I carried golf clubs for rich people, and I learned very early on, when I was pretty young, that this was a group of people that had nothing special to offer to me or to society.”
His populism has played well back home. DeFazio won his 2008 election with 82 percent of the vote, even though his district isn’t overwhelmingly Democratic. Obama won it by 11 percentage points, but President George W. Bush won nearly as many votes as Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) in 2004.
“He is incredibly popular in a district that is actually somewhat difficult for a Democrat,” said Rep. David Wu (D-Ore.), who says DeFazio does it by standing up for his beliefs.
DeFazio has been a leading liberal voice complaining that the Democratic Congress and White House have failed to capitalize on significant victories in last year’s elections. His latest target is the Senate, where he says Democrats’ struggle to move healthcare legislation is preventing the Congress from sending a job-creation bill to the president’s desk. With the unemployment rate at 10 percent, House Democrats see jobs as the No. 1 campaign issue heading into the midterm election year.
“It’s just incredible frustration,” DeFazio said. “The killing ground of the Senate is ultimately, potentially, the killing ground of the Democratic Party.”
DeFazio and other House Democrats led what he called a “revolt” at a caucus meeting several weeks ago. Though Democratic leaders called the meeting to discuss the president’s decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, rank-and-file members began talking instead about jobs.
DeFazio stood up and called for attaching a new job-creation bill to the annual defense-spending measure, which typically gets bipartisan support and is considered must-pass legislation. His speech and others in favor of a new jobs bill drew cheers from colleagues, said House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larson (Conn.).
DeFazio has spent most of his time over the past year pushing for the $500 billion, six-year transportation reauthorization bill. DeFazio, the chairman of the House Highways and Transit subcommittee, has argued infrastructure could lead to far more jobs and have a much more lasting impact than tax cuts or other stimulus spending. While Pelosi has thrown her support behind the bill, sponsored by House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.), the Senate and the White House, reluctant to raise the gas tax or other levies to pay for the bill, have said that it should be taken up next year.
DeFazio wants to tax Wall Street to help pay for the programs. Specifically, he wants a tax on financial transactions, which economists have said could generate $150 billion. Though Geithner has opposed it, DeFazio is holding out hope that Obama will find ways to get tougher on Wall Street.
He praised the president this week for dialing up his criticism of Wall Street bankers and the bonuses they’re expected to receive, just months after receiving billions in federal bailout dollars.
“That was one good speech by the president, but he’s got to mean it, he’s got to live it, he’s got to do it every day,” DeFazio said. “And these are tough people; these are the most powerful people in the world. They seem to control a majority of his economic team.”
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Gargantuan Industry Of Climate Alarmism Exposed
http://www.prisonplanet.com/gargantuan-industry-of-climate-alarmism-exposed-by-climategate.htmlGargantuan Industry Of Climate Alarmism Exposed By ClimateGate
“Scientific Consensus”, rather than skepticism, is driven by profit and big business
Steve Watson,
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, Dec 2, 2009
The leaking of thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit has shined a light on an industry of climate change alarmism, highlighting the hypocritical claims of corporate cronyism on behalf of proponents of the anthropological global warming theory (AGW).
A common accusation made by AGW theorists, or “the consensus” as they like to be known, is that dissenting groups are only interested in the financial kickbacks they can secure from big oil companies.
For example, in 2008, ExxonMobil donated around $7 million, less then 0.01% of it’s annual profits, to a selection of think tanks and institutes. Among these donations was a combined $125,000 to the National Center for Policy Analysis and the Heritage Institute, right of centre public policy groups that have questioned the “consensus” on climate change.
The NCPA website states: “NCPA scholars believe that while the causes and consequences of the earth’s current warming trend is still unknown, the cost of actions to substantially reduce CO2 emissions would be quite high and result in economic decline, accelerated environmental destruction, and do little or nothing to prevent global warming regardless of its cause.”
The London Guardian and other left leaning mainstream media outlets have pounced on Exxon’s small donations to such groups, reporting it as detestable corporate funding of “climate change denial”.
However, when it comes to the funding of AGW proponents, the figures are infinitely greater, many of the sources take their money directly from our pockets, and yet the Guardian and its ilk, conveniently, remain completely silent.
The leaked emails from the Hadley centre reveal that (now former) CRU chief Phil Jones has received 55 endowments since 1990 from agencies ranging from the U.S. Department of Energy to NATO, worth a total of £13,718,547, or approximately $22.6 million.
$19 million alone came between the years 2000 and 2006.
Massaging the scientific data, hiding a decline in temperatures, hijacking the peer-review system and blackballing dissenting scientific opinion does not look good for Jones in the context of such financial gain.
Another document leaked from the CRU, titled potential-funding.doc, lists sources of potential funding and shows that the scientists considered pressing “energy agencies” that specifically deal in new technology to reduce carbon emissions.
Three agencies listed as potential sources of funding are UK based Carbon Trust, the Northern Energy Initiative, and the Energy Saving Trust. Renewables North West, an American company promoting the expansion of solar, wind, and geothermal energy, is listed as a fourth potential benefactor.
Of course, all these potential financial backers have a vested interest in maintaining the conception that human-induced global warming is a reality backed by science.
In an article entitled Climategate: Follow the Money, columnist Bret Stephens at the Wall Street Journal points out that the funding of climate skeptics is a drop in the ocean compared to the huge industry that human-driven climate change science has spawned.
“The European Commission’s most recent appropriation for climate research comes to nearly $3 billion, and that’s not counting funds from the EU’s member governments. In the U.S., the House intends to spend $1.3 billion on NASA’s climate efforts, $400 million on NOAA’s, and another $300 million for the National Science Foundation. American states also have a piece of the action, with California—apparently not feeling bankrupt enough—devoting $600 million to their own climate initiative. In Australia, alarmists have their own Department of Climate Change at their funding disposal.” Stephens writes.
“And all this is only a fraction of the $94 billion that HSBC estimates has been spent globally this year on what it calls ‘green stimulus’—largely ethanol and other alternative energy schemes—of the kind from which Al Gore and his partners at Kleiner Perkins hope to profit handsomely.”
Billions of dollars in grants for one research institute or university does not go unnoticed by the rest, and there is a valid point to be considered in the notion that this is where the “scientific consensus” has it’s roots.
“Today these groups form a kind of ecosystem of their own.” comments Stephens.
Al Gore, the first carbon billionaire, has proven that he is only interested in solutions to environmental problems that line his pockets. The industry beneath him depends on anthropological global warming like the dot com industry depended on the internet he claims to have invented.
If you follow the money it becomes clear that it is the “consensus” that is being driven by gargantuan financial backing, not the skeptics, as climate change alarmists would have everyone believe.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Title, but Unclear Power, for a New Climate Czar
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/12/us/politics/12climate.html
Title, but Unclear Power, for a New Climate Czar
By JOHN M. BRODER
Published: December 11, 2008
WASHINGTON — Much remains unknown, and perhaps undecided, about Carol M. Browner’s new position as White House coordinator of energy and climate policy.
How much real authority will Ms. Browner wield? Will her office have the same bureaucratic clout — the ability to knock heads together at other agencies — as the National Security Council and the National Economic Council? Will she be able to hold her own against the two powerhouses that will lead those established councils, James L. Jones, a retired Marine general, and Lawrence H. Summers, a former Treasury secretary? Will she outrank the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council? Will she have office space in the West Wing? How big will her staff be?
But this much is known. Ms. Browner’s thinking on climate change, environmental regulation, energy conservation and new technology are very much in line with those of President-elect Barack Obama and the other members of his environmental team. Ms. Browner, who has close ties to Mr. Obama’s transition chief, John D. Podesta, started laying the groundwork for the handover with him back in August.
Aides said Wednesday that Mr. Obama intended in the next few days to announce the nominations of Ms. Browner, Steven Chu as secretary of energy, Lisa P. Jackson as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and Nancy Sutley as head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. But the scope of Ms. Browner’s job remains under discussion, the aides said.
Her views and government record are well known.
Long an acolyte of Al Gore, she has called climate change “the greatest challenge ever faced” and echoed Mr. Obama’s call for a cap-and-trade system to control carbon dioxide emissions. Before leaving office in 2001, she set out to give the E.P.A. authority to regulate the carbon emissions that cause climate change, a power the Bush administration subsequently refused to use despite a Supreme Court ruling endorsing it. She supports California’s ambitious global warming law, which will force automakers to cut tailpipe emissions deeper and faster than current federal law.
After leaving the Clinton administration, Ms. Browner became a founding partner at the Albright Group, an international consulting firm. It has helped Coca-Cola and Merck with foreign operations, but a spokeswoman for the firm declined to identify other clients.
Ms. Browner’s work with the Albright Group attracted attention in early 2006, during the controversy over a Dubai firm’s takeover of a company that operated several American seaports. In February 2006, Ms. Browner and a lobbyist for the Dubai company met with the staff of Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York and a vocal opponent of the deal.
A spokesman for Mr. Schumer told a reporter at the time that the visitors had been “unpersuasive.” Neither Ms. Browner nor the Albright Group registered to lobby Congress about the deal. The firm’s spokeswoman said Thursday that the meeting “was for informational purposes only” and that “the Albright Group does not lobby.”
Ms. Browner also sits on the board of APX, which specializes in handling cap-and-trade emission credits, as well as several environment groups.
Her most notable accomplishment in the Clinton years came when she pushed through tough air quality rules over intense opposition from industry groups and from some in the administration who viewed them as too costly. But even as she pressed ahead, her favorite slogan was “common sense.” How far she will be able to go in pursuit of vastly more comprehensive and costly energy-conservation goals remains to be seen.
The transition team is still trying to draw the increasingly complex White House organization chart, with a proliferation of top-rank positions with as-yet-undefined roles. On Thursday, Mr. Obama designated former Senator Tom Daschle as not only his secretary of health and human services but also the White House “health czar.” Ms. Browner is informally known within the transition and in the environmental community as the “climate czarina,” a title that conceals as much as it reveals.
She showed her bureaucratic muscle in one of the critical environmental battles of the Clinton era, the drive to write tough rules for permissible levels of ozone and fine particles of air pollution. The rules, drafted at Ms. Browner’s E.P.A., set strict standards that industry groups and scores of members of Congress said would be too costly to meet.
Mr. Gore, then the vice president, was Ms. Browner’s top ally in the administration, but the president’s economic advisers and Office of Management and Budget officials were wary of the supposed economic and political costs of the new regulations.
Ms. Browner stood her ground and eventually persuaded President Bill Clinton to support her. The rules went into effect and survived determined challenges in the courts and in Congress. In navigating that maze, Ms. Browner stepped on many toes, and she remains unpopular with assorted industry groups and conservatives in Congress.
Charlie Savage contributed reporting from Washington.
A version of this article appeared in print on December 12, 2008, on page A28 of the New York edition.
Title, but Unclear Power, for a New Climate Czar
By JOHN M. BRODER
Published: December 11, 2008
WASHINGTON — Much remains unknown, and perhaps undecided, about Carol M. Browner’s new position as White House coordinator of energy and climate policy.
How much real authority will Ms. Browner wield? Will her office have the same bureaucratic clout — the ability to knock heads together at other agencies — as the National Security Council and the National Economic Council? Will she be able to hold her own against the two powerhouses that will lead those established councils, James L. Jones, a retired Marine general, and Lawrence H. Summers, a former Treasury secretary? Will she outrank the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council? Will she have office space in the West Wing? How big will her staff be?
But this much is known. Ms. Browner’s thinking on climate change, environmental regulation, energy conservation and new technology are very much in line with those of President-elect Barack Obama and the other members of his environmental team. Ms. Browner, who has close ties to Mr. Obama’s transition chief, John D. Podesta, started laying the groundwork for the handover with him back in August.
Aides said Wednesday that Mr. Obama intended in the next few days to announce the nominations of Ms. Browner, Steven Chu as secretary of energy, Lisa P. Jackson as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and Nancy Sutley as head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. But the scope of Ms. Browner’s job remains under discussion, the aides said.
Her views and government record are well known.
Long an acolyte of Al Gore, she has called climate change “the greatest challenge ever faced” and echoed Mr. Obama’s call for a cap-and-trade system to control carbon dioxide emissions. Before leaving office in 2001, she set out to give the E.P.A. authority to regulate the carbon emissions that cause climate change, a power the Bush administration subsequently refused to use despite a Supreme Court ruling endorsing it. She supports California’s ambitious global warming law, which will force automakers to cut tailpipe emissions deeper and faster than current federal law.
After leaving the Clinton administration, Ms. Browner became a founding partner at the Albright Group, an international consulting firm. It has helped Coca-Cola and Merck with foreign operations, but a spokeswoman for the firm declined to identify other clients.
Ms. Browner’s work with the Albright Group attracted attention in early 2006, during the controversy over a Dubai firm’s takeover of a company that operated several American seaports. In February 2006, Ms. Browner and a lobbyist for the Dubai company met with the staff of Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York and a vocal opponent of the deal.
A spokesman for Mr. Schumer told a reporter at the time that the visitors had been “unpersuasive.” Neither Ms. Browner nor the Albright Group registered to lobby Congress about the deal. The firm’s spokeswoman said Thursday that the meeting “was for informational purposes only” and that “the Albright Group does not lobby.”
Ms. Browner also sits on the board of APX, which specializes in handling cap-and-trade emission credits, as well as several environment groups.
Her most notable accomplishment in the Clinton years came when she pushed through tough air quality rules over intense opposition from industry groups and from some in the administration who viewed them as too costly. But even as she pressed ahead, her favorite slogan was “common sense.” How far she will be able to go in pursuit of vastly more comprehensive and costly energy-conservation goals remains to be seen.
The transition team is still trying to draw the increasingly complex White House organization chart, with a proliferation of top-rank positions with as-yet-undefined roles. On Thursday, Mr. Obama designated former Senator Tom Daschle as not only his secretary of health and human services but also the White House “health czar.” Ms. Browner is informally known within the transition and in the environmental community as the “climate czarina,” a title that conceals as much as it reveals.
She showed her bureaucratic muscle in one of the critical environmental battles of the Clinton era, the drive to write tough rules for permissible levels of ozone and fine particles of air pollution. The rules, drafted at Ms. Browner’s E.P.A., set strict standards that industry groups and scores of members of Congress said would be too costly to meet.
Mr. Gore, then the vice president, was Ms. Browner’s top ally in the administration, but the president’s economic advisers and Office of Management and Budget officials were wary of the supposed economic and political costs of the new regulations.
Ms. Browner stood her ground and eventually persuaded President Bill Clinton to support her. The rules went into effect and survived determined challenges in the courts and in Congress. In navigating that maze, Ms. Browner stepped on many toes, and she remains unpopular with assorted industry groups and conservatives in Congress.
Charlie Savage contributed reporting from Washington.
A version of this article appeared in print on December 12, 2008, on page A28 of the New York edition.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
The price of dissent on global warming
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24700827-7583,00.html
The price of dissent on global warming
David Bellamy November 25, 2008
Article from: The Australian
WHEN I first stuck my head above the parapet to say I didn't believe what we were being told about global warming, I had no idea what the consequences would be. I am a scientist and I have to follow the directions of science, but when I see that the truth is being covered up I have to voice my opinions.
According to official data, in every year since 1998, world temperatures have been getting colder, and in 2002 Arctic ice actually increased. Why, then, do we not hear about that? The sad fact is that since I said I didn't believe human beings caused global warming, I've not been allowed to make a television program.
My absence has been noticed, because wherever I go I meet people who say: "I grew up with you on the television, where are you now?"
It was in 1996 that I criticised wind farms while appearing on children's program Blue Peter, and I also had an article published in which I described global warming as poppycock. The truth is, I didn't think wind farms were an effective means of alternative energy, so I said so. Back then, at the BBC you had to toe the line, and I wasn't doing that.
At that point, I was still making loads of TV programs and I was enjoying it greatly. Then I suddenly found I was sending in ideas for TV shows and they weren't getting taken up. I've asked around about why I've been ignored, but I found that people didn't get back to me. At the beginning of this year there was a BBC show with four experts saying: "This is going to be the end of all the ice in the Arctic," and hypothesising that it was going to be the hottest summer ever. Was it hell! It was very cold and very wet and now we've seen evidence that the glaciers in Alaska have started growing rapidly, and they have not grown for a long time.
I've seen evidence, which I believe, that says there has not been a rise in global temperature since 1998, despite the increase in carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere. This makes me think the global warmers are telling lies: CO2 is not the driver. The idiot fringe has accused me of being like a Holocaust denier, which is ludicrous. Climate change is all about cycles. It's a natural thing and has always happened. When the Romans lived in Britain they were growing very good red grapes and making wine on the borders of Scotland. It was evidently a lot warmer.
If you were sitting next to me 10,000 years ago, we'd be under ice. So thank God for global warming for ending that ice age; we wouldn't be here otherwise.
People such as former American vice-president Al Gore say that millions of us will die because of global warming, which I think is a pretty stupid thing to say if you've got no proof. And my opinion is that there is absolutely no proof that CO2 has anything to do with any impending catastrophe. The science has, quite simply, gone awry.
In fact, it's not even science any more; it's anti-science.
There's no proof, it's just projections, and if you look at the models people such as Gore use, you can see they cherry-pick the ones that support their beliefs. To date, the way the so-called Greens and the BBC, the Royal Society and even political parties have handled this smacks of McCarthyism at its worst.
Global warming is part of a natural cycle and there's nothing we can actually do to stop these cycles. The world is now facing spending a vast amount of money in tax to try to solve a problem that doesn't actually exist.
And how were we convinced that this problem exists, even though all the evidence from measurements goes against the fact? God knows. Yes, the lakes in Africa are drying up. But that's not global warming. They're drying up for the very simple reason that most of them have dams around them.
So the water once used by local people is now used in the production of cut flowers and vegetables for the supermarkets of Europe. One of Gore's biggest clangers was saying that the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan was drying up because of global warming.
Well, everyone knows, because it was all over the news 20 years ago, that the Russians were growing cotton there at the time and that for every tonne of cotton you produce you use a vast amount of water. The thing that annoys me most is that there are genuine environmental problems that desperately require attention. I'm still an environmentalist, I'm still a Green and I'm still campaigning to stop the destruction of the biodiversity of the world. But money will be wasted on trying to solve this global warming "problem" that I would much rather was used for looking after the people of the world. Being ignored by the likes of the BBC does not really bother me, not when there are bigger problems at stake.
I might not be on TV any more but I still go around the world campaigning about these important issues. For example, we must stop the destruction of tropical rainforests, something I've been saying for 35 years.
Mother nature will balance things out, but not if we interfere by destroying rainforests and overfishing the seas. That is where the real environmental catastrophe could occur.
David Bellamy is a botanist, author of 35 books, and has presented 400 television programs.
The price of dissent on global warming
David Bellamy November 25, 2008
Article from: The Australian
WHEN I first stuck my head above the parapet to say I didn't believe what we were being told about global warming, I had no idea what the consequences would be. I am a scientist and I have to follow the directions of science, but when I see that the truth is being covered up I have to voice my opinions.
According to official data, in every year since 1998, world temperatures have been getting colder, and in 2002 Arctic ice actually increased. Why, then, do we not hear about that? The sad fact is that since I said I didn't believe human beings caused global warming, I've not been allowed to make a television program.
My absence has been noticed, because wherever I go I meet people who say: "I grew up with you on the television, where are you now?"
It was in 1996 that I criticised wind farms while appearing on children's program Blue Peter, and I also had an article published in which I described global warming as poppycock. The truth is, I didn't think wind farms were an effective means of alternative energy, so I said so. Back then, at the BBC you had to toe the line, and I wasn't doing that.
At that point, I was still making loads of TV programs and I was enjoying it greatly. Then I suddenly found I was sending in ideas for TV shows and they weren't getting taken up. I've asked around about why I've been ignored, but I found that people didn't get back to me. At the beginning of this year there was a BBC show with four experts saying: "This is going to be the end of all the ice in the Arctic," and hypothesising that it was going to be the hottest summer ever. Was it hell! It was very cold and very wet and now we've seen evidence that the glaciers in Alaska have started growing rapidly, and they have not grown for a long time.
I've seen evidence, which I believe, that says there has not been a rise in global temperature since 1998, despite the increase in carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere. This makes me think the global warmers are telling lies: CO2 is not the driver. The idiot fringe has accused me of being like a Holocaust denier, which is ludicrous. Climate change is all about cycles. It's a natural thing and has always happened. When the Romans lived in Britain they were growing very good red grapes and making wine on the borders of Scotland. It was evidently a lot warmer.
If you were sitting next to me 10,000 years ago, we'd be under ice. So thank God for global warming for ending that ice age; we wouldn't be here otherwise.
People such as former American vice-president Al Gore say that millions of us will die because of global warming, which I think is a pretty stupid thing to say if you've got no proof. And my opinion is that there is absolutely no proof that CO2 has anything to do with any impending catastrophe. The science has, quite simply, gone awry.
In fact, it's not even science any more; it's anti-science.
There's no proof, it's just projections, and if you look at the models people such as Gore use, you can see they cherry-pick the ones that support their beliefs. To date, the way the so-called Greens and the BBC, the Royal Society and even political parties have handled this smacks of McCarthyism at its worst.
Global warming is part of a natural cycle and there's nothing we can actually do to stop these cycles. The world is now facing spending a vast amount of money in tax to try to solve a problem that doesn't actually exist.
And how were we convinced that this problem exists, even though all the evidence from measurements goes against the fact? God knows. Yes, the lakes in Africa are drying up. But that's not global warming. They're drying up for the very simple reason that most of them have dams around them.
So the water once used by local people is now used in the production of cut flowers and vegetables for the supermarkets of Europe. One of Gore's biggest clangers was saying that the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan was drying up because of global warming.
Well, everyone knows, because it was all over the news 20 years ago, that the Russians were growing cotton there at the time and that for every tonne of cotton you produce you use a vast amount of water. The thing that annoys me most is that there are genuine environmental problems that desperately require attention. I'm still an environmentalist, I'm still a Green and I'm still campaigning to stop the destruction of the biodiversity of the world. But money will be wasted on trying to solve this global warming "problem" that I would much rather was used for looking after the people of the world. Being ignored by the likes of the BBC does not really bother me, not when there are bigger problems at stake.
I might not be on TV any more but I still go around the world campaigning about these important issues. For example, we must stop the destruction of tropical rainforests, something I've been saying for 35 years.
Mother nature will balance things out, but not if we interfere by destroying rainforests and overfishing the seas. That is where the real environmental catastrophe could occur.
David Bellamy is a botanist, author of 35 books, and has presented 400 television programs.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Ahtisaari Wins Nobel Peace Prize
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/social_issues/july-dec08/peaceprize_10-10.html
October 10, 2008
Former Finnish President Ahtisaari Wins Nobel Peace Prize
Finland's former president Martti Ahtisaari won the Nobel Peace Prize Friday for his career of diplomatic efforts and skillful negotiations to buoy peacemaking and resolve international conflicts.
"No one better than he could win the Nobel Peace Prize," former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said of the award, according to wire reports. "He is the only man I know who has made peace on three continents -- Africa, Asia and Europe -- and I always found him ready to answer the call to make this world a better place."
Among his accomplishments, Ahtisaari brokered peace between Indonesia and rebels in Aceh province in 2005, ending 30 years of fighting in the region. Until March of last year as U.N. envoy, he led Serb-Albanian talks on Kosovo.
He was also the designer of a European Union-backed plan for Kosovo's independence from Serbia, which guaranteed Serb minority rights and was implemented peacefully after the wars that tore apart Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
Ahtisaari, 71, also is credited with playing a key role in establishing independence for the African nation of Namibia.
"These efforts have contributed to a more peaceful world and to 'fraternity between nations' in Alfred Nobel's spirit," the Nobel committee said in announcing the prize.
"He has also made constructive contributions to the resolution of conflicts in Northern Ireland, in Central Asia and on the Horn of Africa," the citation said.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was pleased to hear Ahtisaari had won the prize, a spokesman said, according to the Associated Press.
"We have known him to be a man of honor, a man of integrity and a man who not only has full devotion to the cause of peace but also has the rare talents to help make it to practical priority on the ground," the spokesman said.
Ahtisaari encountered bouts of tough opposition in his years as a peace negotiator. Serbia forcefully rejected his attempts to forge a compromise on Kosovo, which declared independence in February. Ahtisaari's blueprint forms the foundation of Kosovo's constitution.
Serbia considers Kosovo its historic and religious heartland and has long maintained that it should remain a Serbian province.
"He is a professional diplomat and a very skilful negotiator," Serbia's former Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic told Reuters. "However, in Serbia he represents a symbol of Kosovo's independence and he will be remembered as an architect of Kosovo's secession."
By selecting Ahtisaari for the peace prize, the Nobel committee returned to the historical focus of the award after changing tracks last year and giving the honor to climate activist and former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N. panel on climate change.
Ahtisaari spent the early part of his career as a primary school teacher and later joined Finland's Foreign Ministry in 1965. He spent 20 years abroad, first as ambassador to Tanzania and then to the U.N. in New York.
Ahtisaari is the first peace broker to win the prize since former President Jimmy Carter in 2002 and the first European in a decade. He is also the first Finnish peace laureate.
"We have been waiting for a long time for this. He really deserved it. He has worked for a long time on solving problems of different groups. That's what he is really good at," Helsinki resident Leni Tornqvist told Reuters.
October 10, 2008
Former Finnish President Ahtisaari Wins Nobel Peace Prize
Finland's former president Martti Ahtisaari won the Nobel Peace Prize Friday for his career of diplomatic efforts and skillful negotiations to buoy peacemaking and resolve international conflicts.
"No one better than he could win the Nobel Peace Prize," former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said of the award, according to wire reports. "He is the only man I know who has made peace on three continents -- Africa, Asia and Europe -- and I always found him ready to answer the call to make this world a better place."
Among his accomplishments, Ahtisaari brokered peace between Indonesia and rebels in Aceh province in 2005, ending 30 years of fighting in the region. Until March of last year as U.N. envoy, he led Serb-Albanian talks on Kosovo.
He was also the designer of a European Union-backed plan for Kosovo's independence from Serbia, which guaranteed Serb minority rights and was implemented peacefully after the wars that tore apart Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
Ahtisaari, 71, also is credited with playing a key role in establishing independence for the African nation of Namibia.
"These efforts have contributed to a more peaceful world and to 'fraternity between nations' in Alfred Nobel's spirit," the Nobel committee said in announcing the prize.
"He has also made constructive contributions to the resolution of conflicts in Northern Ireland, in Central Asia and on the Horn of Africa," the citation said.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was pleased to hear Ahtisaari had won the prize, a spokesman said, according to the Associated Press.
"We have known him to be a man of honor, a man of integrity and a man who not only has full devotion to the cause of peace but also has the rare talents to help make it to practical priority on the ground," the spokesman said.
Ahtisaari encountered bouts of tough opposition in his years as a peace negotiator. Serbia forcefully rejected his attempts to forge a compromise on Kosovo, which declared independence in February. Ahtisaari's blueprint forms the foundation of Kosovo's constitution.
Serbia considers Kosovo its historic and religious heartland and has long maintained that it should remain a Serbian province.
"He is a professional diplomat and a very skilful negotiator," Serbia's former Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic told Reuters. "However, in Serbia he represents a symbol of Kosovo's independence and he will be remembered as an architect of Kosovo's secession."
By selecting Ahtisaari for the peace prize, the Nobel committee returned to the historical focus of the award after changing tracks last year and giving the honor to climate activist and former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N. panel on climate change.
Ahtisaari spent the early part of his career as a primary school teacher and later joined Finland's Foreign Ministry in 1965. He spent 20 years abroad, first as ambassador to Tanzania and then to the U.N. in New York.
Ahtisaari is the first peace broker to win the prize since former President Jimmy Carter in 2002 and the first European in a decade. He is also the first Finnish peace laureate.
"We have been waiting for a long time for this. He really deserved it. He has worked for a long time on solving problems of different groups. That's what he is really good at," Helsinki resident Leni Tornqvist told Reuters.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Bill Clinton's advice to Barack Obama
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/13394.html
Bill Clinton's advice to Barack Obama
By: John F. Harris
September 12, 2008
There they were in Harlem on Thursday, the 42nd president and the Democrat who hopes to be the 44th, for a two-hour lunch hour chat at Bill Clinton’s office.
It is not at all clear that Barack Obama particularly wants Clinton’s advice about how to win the presidency — after all, he kept the former president at a cool distance, with just occasional phone calls, for months — but many Democrats believe it is increasingly clear that he could use it.
The fact that Obama is even with or behind John McCain despite so many favorable trends for Democrats shows that there is still plenty he could learn from the master — the political Houdini who is the only Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win two terms.
We do know that Clinton was happy to share his thoughts. He recently offered 10 minutes of “here’s what Obama needs to do” wisdom while standing in the popcorn line with someone he just met at a New York movie theater, according to one Democrat privy to the conversation.
The Clinton-Obama meeting was closed. We don’t know for sure what they said.
But it is not hard to make an educated guess. Here, based on 16 years experience watching Bill Clinton campaign — and interviews with a half-dozen veterans of his political teams — is a reasonably safe bet about his campaign advice to Barack Obama:
1. Don’t make this about you.
Clinton is always skeptical of politicians who try to win races on the basis of their life story or supposed personal virtues. Those can be nice side dishes (“The Man from Hope”) but they can’t be the main entrée. Voters just don’t care that much about you. They care about themselves and what you will do for them. Clinton believes, plausibly, that this is why he emerged from sex scandals and all manner of other controversies with his job approval ratings intact.
“What Bill Clinton always told me is, ‘If we make this about their lives instead of mine, we’ll be better off,'” recalled Paul Begala, who served as strategist in the 1992 election and the second-term White House. “It’s always about the voters, never about the candidates.”
What’s more, the politics of biography can turn in an instant, as happened to John F. Kerry in 2004 when what was supposed to be an asset — Kerry’s Vietnam service — was turned into a distraction and even liability by the Swift Boat Veterans.
Clinton thinks Obama has erred by putting too much focus on himself and on his supposedly transformational brand of politics — it’s too airy, and it puts him at risk of being branded a hypocrite when, as inevitably happens, he needs to play rough.
2. Define yourself through policies — yours and theirs.
Clinton would often dismiss proposed speech drafts handed him by his staff writers with a mocking phrase, “Words, words, words!”
He has never thought much of Obama’s rhetoric-driven campaign.
While Obama has plenty of policy proposals, there are not many that he has managed to make recognizable signatures, the way Clinton promised to “end welfare as we know it” in 1992.
Most people know Obama claims to represent “Change you can believe in.” But Clinton believes people won’t believe him — or any politician — unless change is defined with specificity. That means describing, in language that sounds plausible rather than partisan, what you believe in versus what the other guy believes in.
3. Have more fun.
Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton are both obsessed with how — as they see it — Republicans have perfected the art of the bogus attack, the distracting wedge issue, “the politics of personal destruction.”
From the Clinton vantage point, both Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004 lost when they allowed Republicans to get under their skins and hijack their public images.
Obama has hinted that he believes that, too, and has signaled that he will fight back hard.
But that is not as easy as it might sound. A candidate needs to do more than just complain about the unfairness of it all, as when Obama this week shouted “enough!” and denounced “lies, outrage and swift-boat politics.”
The trick is counter-punching without looking rattled, and without letting your opponents set the agenda of the conversation. Though he did not always follow his own advice, Clinton believes humor is one tool that can help a politician connect with audiences and convey toughness rather than whininess.
Mark Penn, the Clintons’ longtime pollster and strategist, said Obama may have listened too closely to people urging him to “fight back, fight back.”
“He’s got to learn how to completely eviscerate the guy with a smile,” he said.
4. Make the election about something big.
It’s a mistake, Clinton believes, for a presidential nominee of one party to be arguing about the vice presidential nominee of the other party, as Obama has been over Sarah Palin in recent days.
The best way for Obama to convince people he’s ready to be president is by talking about ideas that sound presidential.
During both his presidential runs, Clinton gave major speeches at Georgetown University that were not partisan or even in the strict sense political — they were wide-ranging discourses about where the United States stood at that moment in history.
Clinton believes Obama is on losing terrain if he allows the election to be about pigs and lipstick. Obama needs to soar above that by talking about large themes like energy and global warming, and how to harness the opportunities of a global economy.
5. Spend more time speaking to your opponents.
Most Democrats, Clinton believes, spend too much time enjoying the cheers of the home crowd — and not enough trying to persuade people who do not already agree with them.
One of his favorite rhetorical tactics is to describe an opponent’s ideas in ways that sound perfectly fair and reasonable — as a prelude to why the opponent is dead wrong.
Successful politicians, he believes, look for opportunities to speak to skeptical audiences. Clinton went to New Hampshire to talk to gun owners — even though many hunters there were furious over passage of a crime bill that hunters feared would take away their guns. “All our guys in Washington thought I was crazier than the March Hare,” Clinton once told me and Mark Halperin. “And they said, ‘Well, you don’t want to talk about this.’ I said, ‘Oh, yes, I do.’”
Obama’s convention speech in Denver was a spirited performance that thrilled Democrats, but did not have enough passages aimed at people who don’t already support him. What’s more, Obama has not taken enough positions that make clear he is not a standard-issue Democrat.
6. Don’t take Hillary voters for granted.
Obama’s strategists believed that they did not have to worry that much about Hillary Clinton’s female backers, because they figured that most of them were liberal, abortion-rights supporters who will vote for the Democrat even if the nominee was not their first choice.
That was probably true for about two-thirds of those voters, according to one Clinton strategist’s appraisal of polling data. But another one-third of Clinton’s women supporters were more conservative-tilting, working-class women, who were drawn to Clinton because they admired her pluck — and these voters are now a key target group for McCain-Palin.
7. Stop smoking whatever it is you are smoking.
In his cool treatment of both Clintons over the summer, and in the way he allowed expectations among Democrats and the news media to build, Obama has acted as if he were on a glide path to a relatively easy victory.
Clinton knows this attitude is delusional. Someone who grew up in Arkansas as the state — and much of the South — was growing more conservative can never forget how hard it is for Democrats to win in what for the past two generations has been a center-right country. Democrats have only won more than 50 percent in a presidential election there twice since 1944. Republicans have done it seven times.
One important thing to remember: Obama has never faced a serious race against a Republican. His important victories in Illinois and this year have all been against other Democrats in nomination battles.
Some Clinton allies say this may tend to warp his perspective about how politics works and what kind of issues and stories matter in a presidential context. Bottom line: it does not matter who is getting better coverage in the New York Times.
“This is a new experience for Obama — facing a Republican who will do and say things far different from the Democrats he has faced. Republicans don’t care what Frank Rich, Maureen Dowd or establishment media has to say about them,” said Penn.
8. And while you are at it, give me an apology.
The meeting in Harlem was friendly, and Obama could hardly have hoped for a more lavish endorsement than he got from Clinton at the Democratic convention in Denver.
But he errs if he thinks the former president does not still have resentments toward Obama, and that those resentments might not surface at unwelcome times, in the view of many former aides.
Simply put, Clinton will never be fully at peace with Obama until the Democratic nominee makes clear — in emphatic words, in public — that Clinton is not in any way racist, and that he did not try to “play the race card” during the Democratic nomination contest, as some commentators have suggested.
There’s no question that Clinton was impolitic in comparing Obama’s victory in South Carolina to Jesse Jackson’s victory 20 years earlier. But Clinton is understandably outraged that people would argue this remark negated a career-long commitment to racial equality — and that Obama stood by mute while such charges were made.
Clinton swallowed his medicine with his speech for Obama in Denver. Obama has still not fully swallowed his by making a public defense of Clinton on race.
John F. Harris, the editor-in-chief of Politico, has written two books about Bill Clinton and his politics, “The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House,” and “The Way to Win; Taking the White House in 2008.”
Bill Clinton's advice to Barack Obama
By: John F. Harris
September 12, 2008
There they were in Harlem on Thursday, the 42nd president and the Democrat who hopes to be the 44th, for a two-hour lunch hour chat at Bill Clinton’s office.
It is not at all clear that Barack Obama particularly wants Clinton’s advice about how to win the presidency — after all, he kept the former president at a cool distance, with just occasional phone calls, for months — but many Democrats believe it is increasingly clear that he could use it.
The fact that Obama is even with or behind John McCain despite so many favorable trends for Democrats shows that there is still plenty he could learn from the master — the political Houdini who is the only Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win two terms.
We do know that Clinton was happy to share his thoughts. He recently offered 10 minutes of “here’s what Obama needs to do” wisdom while standing in the popcorn line with someone he just met at a New York movie theater, according to one Democrat privy to the conversation.
The Clinton-Obama meeting was closed. We don’t know for sure what they said.
But it is not hard to make an educated guess. Here, based on 16 years experience watching Bill Clinton campaign — and interviews with a half-dozen veterans of his political teams — is a reasonably safe bet about his campaign advice to Barack Obama:
1. Don’t make this about you.
Clinton is always skeptical of politicians who try to win races on the basis of their life story or supposed personal virtues. Those can be nice side dishes (“The Man from Hope”) but they can’t be the main entrée. Voters just don’t care that much about you. They care about themselves and what you will do for them. Clinton believes, plausibly, that this is why he emerged from sex scandals and all manner of other controversies with his job approval ratings intact.
“What Bill Clinton always told me is, ‘If we make this about their lives instead of mine, we’ll be better off,'” recalled Paul Begala, who served as strategist in the 1992 election and the second-term White House. “It’s always about the voters, never about the candidates.”
What’s more, the politics of biography can turn in an instant, as happened to John F. Kerry in 2004 when what was supposed to be an asset — Kerry’s Vietnam service — was turned into a distraction and even liability by the Swift Boat Veterans.
Clinton thinks Obama has erred by putting too much focus on himself and on his supposedly transformational brand of politics — it’s too airy, and it puts him at risk of being branded a hypocrite when, as inevitably happens, he needs to play rough.
2. Define yourself through policies — yours and theirs.
Clinton would often dismiss proposed speech drafts handed him by his staff writers with a mocking phrase, “Words, words, words!”
He has never thought much of Obama’s rhetoric-driven campaign.
While Obama has plenty of policy proposals, there are not many that he has managed to make recognizable signatures, the way Clinton promised to “end welfare as we know it” in 1992.
Most people know Obama claims to represent “Change you can believe in.” But Clinton believes people won’t believe him — or any politician — unless change is defined with specificity. That means describing, in language that sounds plausible rather than partisan, what you believe in versus what the other guy believes in.
3. Have more fun.
Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton are both obsessed with how — as they see it — Republicans have perfected the art of the bogus attack, the distracting wedge issue, “the politics of personal destruction.”
From the Clinton vantage point, both Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004 lost when they allowed Republicans to get under their skins and hijack their public images.
Obama has hinted that he believes that, too, and has signaled that he will fight back hard.
But that is not as easy as it might sound. A candidate needs to do more than just complain about the unfairness of it all, as when Obama this week shouted “enough!” and denounced “lies, outrage and swift-boat politics.”
The trick is counter-punching without looking rattled, and without letting your opponents set the agenda of the conversation. Though he did not always follow his own advice, Clinton believes humor is one tool that can help a politician connect with audiences and convey toughness rather than whininess.
Mark Penn, the Clintons’ longtime pollster and strategist, said Obama may have listened too closely to people urging him to “fight back, fight back.”
“He’s got to learn how to completely eviscerate the guy with a smile,” he said.
4. Make the election about something big.
It’s a mistake, Clinton believes, for a presidential nominee of one party to be arguing about the vice presidential nominee of the other party, as Obama has been over Sarah Palin in recent days.
The best way for Obama to convince people he’s ready to be president is by talking about ideas that sound presidential.
During both his presidential runs, Clinton gave major speeches at Georgetown University that were not partisan or even in the strict sense political — they were wide-ranging discourses about where the United States stood at that moment in history.
Clinton believes Obama is on losing terrain if he allows the election to be about pigs and lipstick. Obama needs to soar above that by talking about large themes like energy and global warming, and how to harness the opportunities of a global economy.
5. Spend more time speaking to your opponents.
Most Democrats, Clinton believes, spend too much time enjoying the cheers of the home crowd — and not enough trying to persuade people who do not already agree with them.
One of his favorite rhetorical tactics is to describe an opponent’s ideas in ways that sound perfectly fair and reasonable — as a prelude to why the opponent is dead wrong.
Successful politicians, he believes, look for opportunities to speak to skeptical audiences. Clinton went to New Hampshire to talk to gun owners — even though many hunters there were furious over passage of a crime bill that hunters feared would take away their guns. “All our guys in Washington thought I was crazier than the March Hare,” Clinton once told me and Mark Halperin. “And they said, ‘Well, you don’t want to talk about this.’ I said, ‘Oh, yes, I do.’”
Obama’s convention speech in Denver was a spirited performance that thrilled Democrats, but did not have enough passages aimed at people who don’t already support him. What’s more, Obama has not taken enough positions that make clear he is not a standard-issue Democrat.
6. Don’t take Hillary voters for granted.
Obama’s strategists believed that they did not have to worry that much about Hillary Clinton’s female backers, because they figured that most of them were liberal, abortion-rights supporters who will vote for the Democrat even if the nominee was not their first choice.
That was probably true for about two-thirds of those voters, according to one Clinton strategist’s appraisal of polling data. But another one-third of Clinton’s women supporters were more conservative-tilting, working-class women, who were drawn to Clinton because they admired her pluck — and these voters are now a key target group for McCain-Palin.
7. Stop smoking whatever it is you are smoking.
In his cool treatment of both Clintons over the summer, and in the way he allowed expectations among Democrats and the news media to build, Obama has acted as if he were on a glide path to a relatively easy victory.
Clinton knows this attitude is delusional. Someone who grew up in Arkansas as the state — and much of the South — was growing more conservative can never forget how hard it is for Democrats to win in what for the past two generations has been a center-right country. Democrats have only won more than 50 percent in a presidential election there twice since 1944. Republicans have done it seven times.
One important thing to remember: Obama has never faced a serious race against a Republican. His important victories in Illinois and this year have all been against other Democrats in nomination battles.
Some Clinton allies say this may tend to warp his perspective about how politics works and what kind of issues and stories matter in a presidential context. Bottom line: it does not matter who is getting better coverage in the New York Times.
“This is a new experience for Obama — facing a Republican who will do and say things far different from the Democrats he has faced. Republicans don’t care what Frank Rich, Maureen Dowd or establishment media has to say about them,” said Penn.
8. And while you are at it, give me an apology.
The meeting in Harlem was friendly, and Obama could hardly have hoped for a more lavish endorsement than he got from Clinton at the Democratic convention in Denver.
But he errs if he thinks the former president does not still have resentments toward Obama, and that those resentments might not surface at unwelcome times, in the view of many former aides.
Simply put, Clinton will never be fully at peace with Obama until the Democratic nominee makes clear — in emphatic words, in public — that Clinton is not in any way racist, and that he did not try to “play the race card” during the Democratic nomination contest, as some commentators have suggested.
There’s no question that Clinton was impolitic in comparing Obama’s victory in South Carolina to Jesse Jackson’s victory 20 years earlier. But Clinton is understandably outraged that people would argue this remark negated a career-long commitment to racial equality — and that Obama stood by mute while such charges were made.
Clinton swallowed his medicine with his speech for Obama in Denver. Obama has still not fully swallowed his by making a public defense of Clinton on race.
John F. Harris, the editor-in-chief of Politico, has written two books about Bill Clinton and his politics, “The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House,” and “The Way to Win; Taking the White House in 2008.”
Saturday, September 13, 2008
The Political Machine 2008
Thanks to About.com's ( http://compsimgames.about.com/ ) Computer Sim Games Guide for alerting The Konformsit of the following game.The Political Machine 2008
Description: The Political Machine 2008 puts players in control of the 2008 presidential campaign. Play as the campaign manager for a host of candidates including Barack Obama, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, historical candidates or design one from scratch. Players then choose their campaign battlegrounds and are off on the campaign trail to face a host of challenges including fund raising, talk show appearances, hiring spin doctors and winning endorsements. The game is won on Election Day by the player who gets the necessary electoral votes to become President. The Political Machine is both a single and a multiplayer game - players can either compete against the computer or against others online.
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http://www.politicalmachine.com
Welcome to the new Political Machine!
Ever thought you could run for President? Now's your chance with The Political Machine. Pick a candidate (real or imaginary) or design your own from scratch. Then choose a political party and start your campaign.
The Political Machine is a strategy game that takes the real world mechanics of political campaigning and uses it to create an award-winning strategy game. Raise money, hire spin-doctors, win the endorsements of important groups, go on TV interviews, take out ads, fight off smear merchants and much more in your quest to win the 270 electoral votes you need to get into the white house.
Your opponents can be controlled either by human players over the Internet or by a diabolical computer AI designed by Stardock's renowned artificial intelligence team. With multiple maps and scenarios to choose from, a candidate editor and much more, The Poliltical Machine is not just a timely bit of fun during the campaign season but a strategy game that will stand the test of time.In between your gaming exploits, hang out here on PoliticalMachine.com, discussing the issues of the day on a non-partisan site where people of all political persuasions can advocate their positions.
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From Wikipedia.org:
Presidential candidates
Democrats
Fmr. President Bill Clinton (D-AR)
Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY)
Fmr. Sen. John Edwards (D-NC)
Fmr. Vice President Al Gore (D-TN)
Sen. John Kerry (D-MA)
Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL)
Gov. Bill Richardson (D-NM)
Fmr. President Jimmy Carter (D-GA)
Fmr. President John F Kennedy (D-MA)
Fmr. President Lyndon B. Johnson (D-TX)
Fmr. President Woodrow Wilson (D-NJ)
Fmr. President Thomas Jefferson (D-VA)
Fmr. Senator Mike Gravel (D-AK)
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)
Republicans
Lord Kona (fictional)
President George W. Bush (R-TX)
Vice-President Dick Cheney (R-WY)
Fmr. New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R-NY)
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)
Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX)
Fmr. Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA)
Fmr. President Ulysses S. Grant (R-OH)
Fmr. President Richard Nixon (R-CA)
Fmr. President Ronald Reagan (R-CA)
Fmr. President Theodore Roosevelt (R-NY)
Fmr. President George Washington (VA)
Fmr. President Abraham Lincoln (R-IL)
Fmr. Governor Mike Huckabee (R-AR)
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http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/thepoliticalmachine2008/news.html?sid=6191527
The Political Machine 2008 Q&A: Tackling the Issues
The election simulation and satire is back in 2008. Who wins?
May 23, 2008
The Political Machine was a tongue-in-cheek look at North American politics released just in time for the 2004 presidential election. Using John Kerry, George W. Bush, or any number of fantasy candidates such as Ulysses S. Grant, you didn't simply tackle the issues; using spin doctors, PR machines, celebrity endorsements, and negative advertising, you ran right over them. Now The Political Machine is back, revised for 2008 with a new list of issues, a new list of candidates, and some pleasant surprises, like the 1860 election, which was informed by slavery and the Civil War. For the latest on The Political Machine 2008, we sat down with Brad Wardell, the lead designer as well as the president and CEO of Stardock Corp. Here's what he had to say (and mud in your eye).
GameSpot: The 2004 election was intense, to be sure, but nothing in American history rivals what we've seen in 2008 in terms of media coverage, political trickery, and outright passion. Have you intensified the action in The Political Machine 2008 to capture such a charged political climate?
Brad Wardell: Definitely. Players can bring in spin doctors, smear merchants, media consultants, fixers, and more to help get themselves elected. We've created a custom candidate maker, scenarios, better multiplayer, more operatives, etc.
GS: In addition to creating your own candidate, which real-life candidates will we see? You also had a great cast of fictional candidates in 2004, including Arnold Schwarzenegger. Is there any chance of an unlockable Al Gore, John Kerry, or Bob Dole?
BW: Absolutely. One of the nice things about a game like this is that it lets us do some fun things with the release. For instance, as the political season heats up this summer and fall, we'll be releasing free candidates up on PoliticalMachine.com for users to download and add in. The game comes with most of the big names, either as default or unlockable, but we plan to continue to add more and more as the election nears.
GS: Any candidate-specific special attacks in the Machine? A Hilary "crying button"? A McCain war-story dialog tree? Huckabee dancing minigame?
BW: Haha. No, we have tried to stay away from anything that might give the impression that the game is rooting for any particular candidate.
GS: Certainly many of the issues in 2004 have changed, while many have sadly remained the same. What are the hot-button topics candidates will touch on this election, and what are some of the best strategies for handling them?
BW: There are some interesting topics that have come up this time. You still have the war in Iraq, and the economy is right at the top too. But this time we have things like alternative fuels being a hot topic, as well as freezing mortgage rates and other things in which the political parties differ on.
One of the biggest changes is that we have scenarios. So we not only have the 2008 US election, but we include a Civil War scenario with the issues from 1860. We also include "Europa," which is Europe as seen by a typical American tourist (i.e., highly politically incorrect satire); "Germania," "that little country by Poland"; "Australia" (as opposed to Austria), with the issues being, well, let's just say not accurate.
And of course, this time you can finally run for Emperor of the Drengin Empire. Are you pro slavery or pro genocide? These are the tough issues that Drengi politicians have to deal with.
GS: Aside from the issues, The Political Machine was a great satire on political media coverage, featuring fiery talk-show hosts and endorsements from celebrities. How have you updated this for 2008?
BW: Big time. This time we have a satire on the Colbert Report. It's a big upgrade.
GS: One issue we had with the original game is that the AI candidates didn't always focus on the most important states. Tell us how you've updated the AI and some of the different political strategies we'll see from them.
BW: This is one of those things where time helps. We've had a lot more time to focus on the computer AI to master the strategy. When I program computer AI, I'm playing the game and learning the game, and then incorporate those strategies into the computer players. When we did the 2004 edition, I hadn't had much time to play the game, so my strategies weren't as far along as they are now.
GS: The 2004 edition was somewhat of a crystal ball in that it predicted 48 of the 50 states, and also George W. Bush to defeat John Kerry. What factors are you looking at, and why do think the game predicted the outcome so accurately?
BW: For the most part, it's all about demographics and issues. The election is really decided by issues and turnout. It's not as sexy as the media might like it to be, but at the end of the day, it's really just about a) getting your base out to vote, and b) getting independents to care about an issue that makes you different from your opponent. Last time, the game got every state right except for Ohio and I think Iowa (and that was in June of 2004, prior to the Swift Boat advocacy).
This time it's a lot more complicated because the candidates are not quite as different as they were in 2004. McCain has a number of atypical positions for a Republican. There is also a significant difference in financial resources between the parties this time. On the other hand, Obama has weaker demographic support in key electoral states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, which the Democrats have to win.
GS: We haven't seen many blue states go red in the general election, or vice versa. How can a candidate like Obama win Texas? Is it even possible?
BW: In The Political Machine, anything's possible. In the real world, candidates play as true experts. But in The Political Machine, players can do gambits that just would never happen in the real world. For instance, with enough spin doctors, advertisements, and other operatives, I've won California with McCain, which is certainly not going to happen in November.
GS: Thanks for your time.
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http://www.gamepro.com/article/reviews/195968/the-political-machine-2008/
Review
PC - Simulation - The Political Machine 2008
By Andrew Dagley June 30, 2008
We take a look at Stardock's latest political sim!
Political junkies have had one hell of a ride these last few months. The recently concluding primary season has been perhaps the most bitterly contested, but still vicariously entertaining spectacles of the last few decades. So it comes as no surprise that when The Political Machine 2008 landed on my desk I was more than a little excited - what exciting matchups could I concoct? Barack Obama vs. John McCain? Bill Clinton vs. Richard Nixon? Woodrow Wilson vs. Theodore Roosevelt? Sufficed to say, The Political Machine doesn't disappoint, offering an excellent improvement over the last version released four years ago - but it's ultimately hamstrung by some nagging issues and the lack of full-fledged improvements.
The Political Machine ships with four full scenarios - the 2008 campaign, 1860, a hypothetical (and highly amusing) European Union scenario, and a scenario based of Stardock's successful Galactic Civilizations series in which you play as a candidate for the highly militaristic Drengin Empire. It is a nice mix of scenario's and does give players an interesting mix of potential what if's. These can often manage to descend into the realm of pure amusement that comes only when you can pit Bill Clinton against Dick Cheney in 1860, where Clinton makes speech after speech supporting slavery, or Al Gore setting up TV ads across Europe extolling his hatred of America and love of partying.
Most campaigns take place over a period of 41 turns - one turn per week - you'll select your candidate who has their own specific statistics (McCain is old for instance, and has less stamina, and therefore can't do as much per week), and thereafter begin attempting to sway individual states over to either the Democratic or Republican parties. While many of the states are swingable the game does keep many safely in the realm or either party - it's unlikely you'll ever get Massachusetts to swing Republican for instance. Each turn candidates can make appearances in individual states, giving speeches on individual issues, fund-raising, creating ads, or gaining endorsements. During the scenario for this years election you'll find just about all current issues popping up on the campaign trail, allowing you to take positions on subjects such as the War in Iraq, Health Care, Climate Change, and smaller (often state specific issues) such as farm subsidies or Katrina relief. Each candidate has his own values for each specific issue - Obama is naturally going to have the upper hand on McCain on the economy for instance, and vice-versa when it comes to Iraq and the War on Terror. You'll find different issues in all four of the scenarios, and each time you play a campaign - even with the same candidates - things such as the importance of issues in each state are randomized just enough to keep things interesting. One election the topic of high gas prices might be the key to winning, but attempting to do that a second time might backfire as the important issues have changed.
This all works fairly well and creates its own dynamic campaigns. As noted, you'll never experience the same campaign twice, but the AI has some significant limitations. For one it frequently manages to ignore the most important swing states or states in which its human opponent is paying the most attention. Moreover computer candidates often pay too much attention to areas in which you're not going to be competitive or aren't visiting - Republicans paying visits to Alaska every four or five turns to name one such oddity. Besides this there are a few other disappointments. Only the top candidates of either party this year are represented in the game - it would be nice to play a campaign as Mike Gravel, Tom Vilsack, or Sam Brownback. More importantly, after this years important and highly engaging primary season the lack of a primary season, no matter how short, is a disappointment in game. Endorsements, gained through political clout, while a good idea - giving candidates bonuses to certain issues - are also little used, being too few and so cheap as to limit their effectiveness to early in the campaigning season only. Vice Presidential running mates also don't feel as fleshed out as they could have been.
These issues are, however, ultimately minor. As it stands The Political Machine 2008 is a fine follow-up to Stardock's earlier political gem. Though most games only last an hours or two, the game offers enough to keep potential candidates coming back from just one more campaign. Political junkies will almost certainly find themselves sucked in, along with those who have only a smattering of knowledge about the American political process.
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