Compassionate conservatives and the working poor
Once again the administration and its friends show why they should be unemployed.

A campaign worker for President Bush said on Thursday American workers unhappy with low-quality jobs should find new ones -- or pop a Prozac to make themselves feel better.

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?" said Susan Sheybani, an assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt.

That might be good advice, but the working poor can't afford it on their crappy pay and they don't have insurance to help them. If Susan Sheybani had ever had to make an honest living she might know that.

Florida - the bad TV movie
If you live in a sit com never utter the words, "well, at least it's not raining," because as soon as the last syllable leaves your lips, thunder rumbles and the big fat drops start to fall from the sky. The words, "what else can go wrong?" often have the same effect on the weather. If you find yourself living in a "Law and Order" episode and can't get a break in the vexing case your working on, stand by the phone and tell your chief about it. The phone will always ring with the most unexpected development in the case you were just talking to the chief about.

Suppose you find yourself playing the governor in a made for TV movie, a black comedy about elections. In this plot, your state has had unending problems trying to hold a simple election. Stand next to a telephone while holding your press conference to announce your complete confidence in the new election system you just spent millions on. In TV land, what happens next?

Some states, worried about the potential for abuse with voting machines that leave no paper trail, have banned their use this November. But Florida, which may well decide the presidential race, is not among those states, and last month state officials rejected a request to allow independent audits of the machines' integrity. A spokesman for Gov. Jeb Bush accused those seeking audits of trying to "undermine voters' confidence," and declared, "The governor has every confidence in the Department of State and the Division of Elections."

Ring. Ring. It's for you Mr. Governor.

A computer crash erased detailed records from Miami-Dade County's first widespread use of touchscreen voting machines, raising again the specter of election troubles in Florida, where the new technology was supposed to put an end to such problems.

[...]

The malfunction was made public after the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition, a citizen's group, requested all data from the 2002 gubernatorial primary between Democratic candidates Janet Reno and Bill McBride.

[...]

The loss of data underscores problems with the touchscreen voting machines, the citizen's group said. "This is a disaster waiting to happen," said Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, chairwoman of the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition. "Of course it's worrisome."

Jeb would be funny if this wasn't an election we're talking about.

We’ve wanted to hear this for a long time
By now everyone knows that Barack Obama’s keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention was amazing. In my opinion, this is the first great speech of the century. My wife cried.

Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

I’ve never liked the flag-waving, in-your-face, jingoistic style of patriotism, but I’m a sucker for the gooey, idealistic variety. Obama’s we-are all-Americans message was pure idealism. This was not a disingenuous call to bipartisanism, which, coming from either side, usually means your side gives our side everything we want and never objects.

It’s a common observation that the Republican coalition is held together by hatred of domestic Liberalism (and by making the Democratic Party synonymous with Liberalism). This line of interpretation usually cites a transformation in the Party when they lost their previous unifying enemy, international Communism. The transformation was a little more complicated than that. In 1990, when Communism was on the ropes, the Republican Party had a faction that had been professional Liberal haters for over twenty years. These were the Movement Conservatives, mostly fundamentalist Protestants who had separated themselves from secular culture and rarely participated in politics. In the late sixties, these Protestant separatists were brought back into secular politics by the cultural movements of that decade. Over the next twenty years they very effectively organized, expanded their numbers, and pioneered new political tactics. By the early nineties, after they absorbed the remnant of the old anti-Communist radicals, they could take over the Republican Party.

We’ve spent the last decade in shock at how angry and effective they are. Only in the last two years have we begun to effectively counter organize and develop our own organization and tools. Bush hatred will only serve us as an organizing principle for one election (or three if we lose this fall). Hating the Conservatives back might build a new Liberal Movement around which we can rebuild the Democratic Party, but in the long run it will be disastrous for America. Answering their hate with better hate would first paralyze and then destroy America. An America made up of two unwaveringly opposed cultures would be ticking time bomb, a giant Yugoslavia.

Someone needs to de-escalate this race. Not all Conservatives, not all Republicans, not even all Fundamentalists are radical thugs. We need to make it safe for Conservatives of good will to stand apart from the radicals. We need to be honest negotiating partners with anyone who will themselves be honest negotiating partners. We need to answer divisiveness with consensus building. We need to emphasize what we have in common as Americans and work on those areas of agreement, rather than beat our heads against the areas of disagreement.

Obama’s words hinted to me of that different vision. That was some speech, indeed.

Wrong enemy?
While taking my wife to work this morning we heard about the latest kidnapping in Iraq. Two Jordanian truck drivers named Ahmad Salameh Hussein and Fayez Saad al-Adwan were kidnapped Monday. Their employer, Daoud and Partners, has agreed to stop working for the US in Iraq, in order to save the lives of their drivers. I notice we keep blaming these kidnappings on unnamed militants, terrorists, and Islamic extremists. But while I was listening to the story, I had a thought. "Maybe," I said to my wife, "this isn't being done by bad guys who hate our freedom. Maybe it's the Iraqi Teamsters' Union trying to protect their jobs." She changed the subject to gardening.

One thousand
Tresy brings up something I’ve been pondering for about a week. At the present rate of American military casualties in Iraq (about two deaths per day), we will probably lose our one thousandth soldier during or near the Republican convention (I estimate September 9). How will we recognize this unpleasant milestone? By we I mean as a country, as amateur and professional punditocracies, and as shrill Bush haters.

I think we can safely assume that the Republicans and the right-wing media machine are also aware of where the lines on the graph are pointing. If their past history is any guide, they are planning to take possession of the memory of these people and use them as a campaign prop. Bush will put on his saddest hound-dog eyes and piously proclaim for the cameras that we make sure these fine Americans did not die in vain. To do that, we must stay the course and reelect him. The slime machine will be ready to attack should any family members protest this crass exploitation.

Is there anything we can do to deny Bush this tool? Is there any way we can turn it against him without being as crassly exploitative as they would be? If we can’t, should we just hold our noses and be exploitative for the sake of getting the frat boy out of the Oval Office? We have a month to think about this.

Update: I have also published a longer and better edited version of this post at American Street.

A bad choice of words
A Republican state representative in Michigan is in trouble for being too honest about the GOP's election strategy.

Democrats on Wednesday denounced a Republican lawmaker quoted in a newspaper as saying the GOP would fare poorly in this year's elections if it failed to "suppress the Detroit vote."

State Rep. John Pappageorge, R-Troy, acknowledged using "a bad choice of words" but said his remark shouldn't be construed as racist.

Pappageorge, 73, was quoted in July 16 editions of the Detroit Free Press as saying, "If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time in this election."

"I'm extremely disappointed in my colleague," state Sen. Buzz Thomas, D-Detroit, told reporters Wednesday during a conference call. "That's quite clearly code that they don't want black people to vote in this election."

Blacks comprise 83 percent of Detroit's population, and the city routinely gives Democratic candidates a substantial majority of its votes.

No doubt, Rep. Pappageorge was thinking of the fine accomplishments by presidential brother Jeb Bush in 2000, when the Florida State Police set up roadblocks around polling places and poll workers turned away voters in predominantly black precincts.

 
Pappageorge shows his sincerity and values in the phrasing of his apology: "If I have given offense in any way to my colleagues in Detroit or anywhere, I apologize." His apology is aimed at his legislative colleagues, with whom he has to work on a regular basis, not at the voters that he has suggested disenfranchising. Like most political non-apologies, he is only sorry that he has made his work environment more difficult by stating an awkward truth. He does not recognize that the action he endorsed is wrong and un-American.

Who will read the report?
The 9/11 report is out. Reporters, columnists, bloggers, and political junkies are all buying and downloading their copies to read and study. Many sat up last night and read the whole thing in one over-caffeinated sitting (I was not one of them). These are people who want to understand the issues and be able to discuss them intelligently. Unfortunately, understand and discuss is the extent of our influence.

What about the people who can actually do something about the issues? We know George Bush will not read the full report. But does he have contact with anyone who will themselves read the full report? Will any of the relevant cabinet people read the full document? We know reading reports isn't Condi's strong suit. What about Rummy, Cheney, Ashcroft, Powell, or Ridge? Rove? Probably not. Will any of their top advisors and assistants read the complete report? Probably not.

So who will take the responsibility of sitting down and reading every word of the report? If anyone at all in the executive branch does, it will be low level staffers. They will write summaries for the advisors to brief the cabinet members who will talk to the president. We can assume the same process holds for most members of congress, though with a layer or two less.

To put this another way: The president will not read the report. The president does not regularly talk to anyone who will read the report. The president does not regularly talk to anyone who regularly talks to anyone who will read the report. The leaders, whom we have entrusted with the task of remedying the flaws described in the report, will act on second, third, even fourth-hand knowledge of the contents of the report. The closest anyone in a decision-making position will ever come to the full report will most likely be reading newspaper accounts and editorials by journalists who really did read (or at least skim) the whole thing.

This is the nature of governmental (and corporate) decision making. Usually it’s just annoying. Sometimes it’s plain scary.

Most. Political. Administration. Ever.
You will probably want to read this several times to try and get some sense out of it

The White House helped to block a Republican-brokered deal on Wednesday to extend several middle-class tax cuts, fearful of a bill that could draw Democratic votes and dilute a Republican campaign theme, Republican negotiators said.

Okay. Stop reading it now. Don't hurt yourself. You can't squeeze sense out of nonsense. Blood, turnips, all that.

The president's people are showing themselves to be more cynically and nakedly political than even I believed possible. I didn't think they could get any lower; I was wrong.

What are at stake here are three popular tax cuts that genuinely helped the working classes: the $1,000 child tax credit, the reduction in the "marriage penalty," and an expansion of the 10-percent tax bracket. These were minor parts of the 2001 and 2003 tax cut packages intended to make the larger cuts for the rich and very rich (
Bush's base) more palatable to the rest of us. These cuts are set to expire at the end of this year. Most members of congress are willing to extend these cuts. The only real debate was over whether to link them to cuts somewhere else or extend them without conditions. House and Senate Republicans worked out a deal last week that many Democrats agreed to (extend the cuts for a limited time without conditions). With a clear majority of both houses in clear agreement, that should have been that.

Enter the White House (via NY Times).

Republican Congressional officials said the administration did not want a deal that Democratic lawmakers might support, giving them a tax-cutting credential, too.

Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, had already said he would retain most of Mr. Bush's middle-class tax cuts, and many Democratic lawmakers said they would vote for a modest extension of the tax cuts even if the extension was not paid for.

"If the Democrats had been on the same side, it would have taken a lot of arrows out of the quiver,'' said one Republican staff member.

Via Washington Post.

Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. put in a round of angry phone calls Tuesday night, several Senate aides said. Then White House counselor Karl Rove and Bush himself called GOP tax writers yesterday urging them to kill the deal.

"I won't officially pronounce it dead, but let's put it this way: It is expiring," said a senior Republican tax aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail backroom negotiations.

The administration would rather abandon its tax-cutting principles and hurt the working classes than allow Democrats to take any credit for something that might be popular, especially in an election year. These people would have made Nixon feel dirty.

Dark and stormy goodness
Via Tbogg, we find that the 2004 Bulwer-Lytton winners have been announced. They’re all so bad, it’s hard to pick just one or two to run, but if I ran them all I’d be guilty of copyright violation. I like these:

The notion that they would no longer be a couple dashed Helen's hopes and scrambled her thoughts not unlike the time her sleeve caught the edge of the open egg carton and the contents hit the floor like fragile things hitting cold tiles, more pitiable because they were the expensive organic brown eggs from free-range chickens, and one of them clearly had double yolks entwined in one sac just the way Helen and Richard used to be.
Pamela Patchet Hamilton
Beaconsfield, Quebec

As Reynoldo lit the votive candle at the grotto for San Jose de los Platanos and prayed for the healthy delivery of his first child, he heard a disembodied voice say, "Your daughter will be 17 inches long," to which Reynoldo replied, "do you know the weight, too, San Jose?
Tom O'Leary
Covina CA

Lord Tarlington gazed upon the crazed Egyptian hieroglyphics on the walls of the ancient tomb of the petrified pharaoh, he vowed there would be no curse on him like on that other Lord, unless you count his marriage to Lady Tarlington who, when the lost treasure was found, will be dumped faster than that basket in the bulrushes.
Melissa Rhodes
Cherry Valley, CA

Florida’s problems are not over
For almost four years the state of Florida has been trying to figure out how to hold an election that allows all entitled citizens to vote and leaves the public with some level of confidence that their votes would be accurately counted. This task, which is routinely accomplished by the other forty-nine states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and several dozen foreign countries, appears to be beyond their ability.

The latest fiasco occurred just over a week ago when they released a new list to be used in ensuring that reformed felons are properly disenfranchised as required by Florida law. The previous list was riddled with mistakes and disenfranchised many of the wrong people. The new list also appeared to be filled with mistakes. The most glaring was that it included almost no Hispanic ex-felons. Hispanic voters in Florida overwhelmingly favor Republican candidates. The almost exclusively Republican state officers charged with creating and enforcing the list loudly announced that that was just a coincidence, before withdrawing the list and telling Florida’s 67 counties to make do as best they can.

Not so fast, says the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights:

Members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights called Thursday for a federal investigation to determine whether Florida officials violated the Voting Rights Act when they put together an error-plagued list designed to purge felons from the state's voting rolls.

[…]

Mary Frances Berry, outspoken chairman of the commission that produced a scathing report on the 2000 election in Florida, did not express much optimism that the Justice Department would take serious action. But because the commission has no regulatory or enforcement power, she said, handing the complaint to Justice is the only thing to do.

[…]

Commissioners said they were shocked that the state somehow managed to end up in a bigger mess in trying to pare felons from the voting rolls than it had four years ago. Meg McLaughlin, a partner at Accenture, the company that compiled the flawed list, was peppered with questions about how things went so awry.

McLaughlin explained that Accenture -- which earned at least $1.8 million for the database -- had nothing to do with the flaws in the data that went into it.

You may remember Accenture. They were formerly known as Anderson Consulting, a branch of Arthur Anderson, Enron’s auditors. AC, as they were known, had the luck to break away from Arthur Anderson and change its name just before Enron imploded and took the mother company with it. Lately, they’ve been in the news over a Department of Homeland Security contract to design a system to track foreign visitors entering and leaving the United States. Accenture’s partner in the tracking contract is Titan Corporation, the contractor who provided consultants to Abu Ghraib prison. Small world, isn’t it.

Meanwhile, Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood has ordered her own audit of the felon list to determine how the state got such a bad list and whether it exposes Florida to further lawsuits. She needn’t waste her time; the answer is yes. The law suits are already on the way.