More and more, retired general Wesley Clark, former commander of NATO and Vietnam veteran, is making sounds like he is going to run for office. He just bashed Bush, saying, “We went into Iraq under false pretenses. There was, you call it deceptive advertising, you’d be taking him to the Better Business Bureau if you bought a washing machine the way we went into the war in Iraq.” Many have been trying to “draft” the general into service as a candidate.

He says that he’ll decide in the next two or three weeks. I don’t know too much about him, but the prospect of having a veteran military commander going up against Bush is highly appealing. Next to Clark, Bush’s flight-suit carrier-landing fake-soldier routine will look a lot more like Dukakis riding in a tank, as it should. After dodging the draft, going AWOL from the Guard and lying to invade Iraq, he should be lambasted, and Clark seems to have the authority to do it thoroughly and without it backfiring on him in anyway. The GOP, still fantasizing about Al Sharpton being the nominee, will have to sit up and take serious notice if he enters the race.

Another scenario is if Clark becomes a vice-presidential candidate. Can you picture Dean and Clark, from Vermont and Arkansas? That wouldn’t be too shabby, either.

A Clark aide just announced a few minutes ago that after considering the most recent primary results, retired general Wesley Clark has decided to drop out of the race, and will make the official announcement tomorrow. Clark scored third in both Virginia and Tennessee, and despite coming out way ahead of Howard Dean in those states, he still has only half of Dean’s number of delegates. Clark was probably hoping for at least second-place victories. The question remains, was his decision fully independent, or was more spoken during his phone conversation with John Kerry than we have been so far told?

Dean, in the meantime, is likely to stay in past Wisconsin now, despite twin pastings in the south (with 4% and 7% showings, both distant fourth place finishes) and his former statement that Wisconsin is make-or-break (I guess it was a fundraising “ploy” after all). He is second in the delegate count, with 182, a bit ahead of Edwards’ 163, but far, far behind Kerry’s 510. Although things could indeed shift, I would be very confident now to call the race for Kerry, unless something huge happened. I do not believe there will be any more unpredicted sudden shifts like we saw in Iowa, despite Dean’s hopes for such an event. Sharpton and Kucinich, just specks on the delegate horizon now (12 and 2 respectively), are presumably staying in for recognition power.

At first, any candidate you’ve never heard of before is naturally a blank canvas; before the media paints the picture, we ten to project our own hopes and desires onto it. Dean was that way. I’m still not too sure of him. He’s able to generate a groundswell and seems to have liberal enough leanings, but he’s also been conservative in the past. So I’m seeing an indeterminate canvas for him.

Retired general Wesley Clark is another new face, the details still largely absent. But unlike with Dean, the substantive things I learn about him are more positive, with fewer negatives so far. The main negative thing you’ll hear is how he’s bristly, a little arrogant, harsh, and not too friendly. But few commentators who mention these qualities seem to realize that these characterizations come from people who knew him as a general, and as the NATO commander. I mean, what else would you expect? Warm and fuzzy?

You also hear words like brilliant, talented, driven, brave–words that suggest both character and ability. Four-star general, NATO commander, Silver Star–not tokens you can pick up lightly. He was against the Iraq war from the get-go. He is for gun control, is firmly pro-choice, pro-affirmative action, and is against Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy. He would avoid war except where absolutely necessary, and feels it is vital to work together with our allies. He is still more a blank slate where domestic issues are concerned, but the “brilliant” and “driven” qualities will likely make up for that. I would presume that, after all this time looking at the prospects, that he has done his homework and has forged a base of stands on issues, both foreign and domestic.

We’ll have to wait and see how he does, if he can keep up a warm demeanor with the press and public, if the press takes kindly to him or starts shooting him down, if he stands up on the issues, if he can improve his oratory, and many other intangibles. But there is hope in this candidate.

There comes a point where the sheer volume of fault- and falsehood-ridden conservative “facts” and ideas is rather breathtaking to behold. With sadly lowered expectations of what passes for logic and standards of evidence, and then to be assaulted with such claims on an almost daily basis, we sometimes fail to appreciate the startling number of assumptions and opinions held by conservatives which are not only demonstrably false, but usually obviously so.

Here is a list of ones that come to mind at the moment. I had to stop at fifty, the list was getting so long.

You cannot say the word “God” in the public square. Yes you can. God is everywhere, in every public oath and on every piece of currency. How many children are compelled daily to mention God in the pledge in public schools? How many television and radio shows and even stations are dedicated to preaching 24/7? Clearly, you can say the word all you want. Myths about people practicing religious freedom in public and being arrested for it are inevitably about people failing to secure parade permits and the like. If this claim is instead made to mean that god cannot be mentioned in government buildings, then a person claiming such may be referred to any American legislative session at any level, virtually all of which are initiated, daily, by a clergyman saying a prayer.

You cannot say the word “God” in a public school. Of course you can. The only restriction is that no one representing the school may advocate a specific religion to the exclusion of others.

Children are not allowed to pray in public schools. Wrong. Students can and often do pray in public schools. Any “private, voluntary student prayer that does not interfere with the school’s educational mission” is allowed.

There is a war on Christianity in American society. Quite the contrary. It is other belief systems that are discriminated against; Christianity is safely dominant in American society. The perceived “war” on Christianity is nothing more than (1) appropriate and yet often-less-than-wholly-effective resistance to unconstitutional encroachments by Christianity in violation of the First Amendment, such as resistance against teacher-conducted prayer in public schools; or (2) fictional “attacks” on religion which are nothing of the sort, such as a business using the expression “Happy Holidays!” to greet all customers, including Christians.

Conservatives fight for freedom of belief. Not true; they do so only when the religion in question is Christian; all other belief systems are second-class or worse. Religious discrimination is in fact practiced in the United States—only it’s conservative Christians who are the most often guilty of it. Blocking the building of mosques, demanding atheist billboards be taken down, shouting down a Hindu cleric delivering an invocation—even harassing a Jewish family when they object to their daughter being pressured to convert to Christianity.

Secularism is anti-religious. Secularism is not the banning of religion, it is the policy in which no one religion is allowed to be presented as the official religion of the state, as it is a historical fact that when a belief system is endorsed by the state, all other belief systems suffer as a result. Christians who want state officials and representatives to overtly promote Christianity are in violation of this principle, but do not see things that way. They see their dominance in state affairs as a given, only natural and right; they see secularism as a means of preventing their “religious freedoms,” i.e. to impose their religious beliefs (which they see as moral imperatives) on others. In a way, this is similar to the claim that science is anti-religious when it announces observations such as life evolves from simpler forms or that the universe is billions of years old; these claims do not attack religion, but instead simply contradict religious excursions into realms in which religion has no right to dominate.

Separation of church and state is an offense to religion; the founding Pilgrims would have abhorred it. Very similar to the claim above. The invocation of the Pilgrims is especially ironic, as their plight was one of the reasons that separation of church and state was established, and serves as an excellent example of why the principle is sound. The Pilgrims were driven out of England when the state-endorsed religion enacted a series of laws requiring all subjects to attend state-sponsored churches and to read from state-authorized prayer books, else face fines and imprisonment. The only way to allow all belief to flourish is to do so in a state where no one belief system is allowed to dominate; the only way to assure that is to maintain a strict separation of church and state.

Corporations are job creators. As Nick Hanauer pointed out, businesses, by nature, are opposed to creating jobs. Employing people is an expense, and businesses avoid every expense possible. Businesses hire people only when there is no other choice, and fire people whenever possible. Job creation is most accurately attributed to demand for goods and services, which is mostly driven by middle-class consumption.

Wealthy people are job creators. Untrue, for many of the same reasons listed above. Consumption by rich people is far less responsible for creating jobs than is consumption by other groups, including the poor. Investment by wealthy people does not create jobs, rather said investment is a response to demand that presents an opportunity to a wealthy person to gain more money by purchasing ownership in a business which will attempt to hire the fewest number of people possible to respond that that demand.

Cutting taxes raises tax revenues. The idea that the government can raise more revenues by cutting the amount of taxes people pay is dubious at best. There may be stimulative tax cuts if they are targeted precisely, but it is more likely that there are far better stimulative alternatives—amongst which the strongest include issuing food stamps and spending on infrastructure projects. Worse, conservative tax cuts are aimed primarily at the wealthy, a type of tax cuts which is rather plainly not stimulative.

Cutting taxes for wealthy people and businesses spurs investment in businesses which create jobs. This is usually argued when conservatives wish to cut the capital gains tax, or other taxes which mostly affect wealthy people. It is patently untrue. If a market is depressed and no one is spending, you can give all the money in the world to wealthy people and businesses, and they will not invest it in job-creating industries—precisely because no one is buying anything. Why should a wealthy person build a factory to create things when no one is buying them? In contrast, if you give wealthy people and businesses no tax cuts, or even if you raise their taxes, they will always find revenue to invest (by using their collected wealth or by borrowing from banks) if people are buying something.

Wealthy people will stop working if you raise their taxes. And people will stop eating if you take away most of their food. Or, wait, that’s incredibly stupid.

Reagan cut taxes and doubled revenue. Net taxes actually went up under Reagan, and most revenue increase claimed to his credit was inflationary.

Conservatives want to cut taxes for all Americans. This is contradicted by the most recent election cycle, in which conservatives wanted to repeal both the estate tax and slash the capital gains tax and corporate taxes—and at the same time also advocated raising taxes on the poorest Americans, most specifically by eliminating tax credits and breaks aimed squarely at low- and middle-class earners. This was proposed under the infamous “47%” claim, in which it was usually asserted, either overtly or by inference, that 47% of Americans paid no taxes. The number referred to those who owed no federal income taxes, but who still paid sales, property, payroll, and many other taxes, some even in excess of the percentage paid by the excessively wealthy Republican presidential candidate himself.

Liberals are “takers” who tax hard-working conservatives so they can live off of government entitlements. It is usually not directly stated that liberals are the takers and conservatives are the makers, but that is clearly what is meant. What is ironic is that it is conservative states that take more than they contribute, conservative areas that take more than they give. Generally speaking, the division is much closer to equal than otherwise; there are takers and makers on both sides. However, it is clear that conservatives are just as enamored of entitlements as liberals are; they are just less willing to pay for them when they go to other people.

Democrats are tax-and-spenders; Republicans want to cut the budget. Everyone in government is a “tax and spender.” If there is a differentiation, it works out that Republicans are “spend-and-debtors,” in that they are less willing to pay the bills at the end of the day. The vast majority of spending, the deficit, and the debt has been incurred by Republican administrations and policies over the past several decades.

Business owners built their businesses without any government help. Nobody lives in a vacuum, nobody lives cut off from everyone else. Everyone depends upon resources created by others, many created by or nurtured by the government. Everything from trade deals to education to infrastructure contributes to every business; without the government, business as we know it today would be completely unrecognizable, and certainly far less robust. The assertion to the contrary is part of the recent conservative desire to stop having to pay for what they receive by denying they receive anything at all.

Private industry created the Internet. Yes, people really claim that. I refuted it here. Spoiler alert: the claim is not true.

Freedom on the Internet is threatened by government regulation. To the contrary, the “regulation” claimed to be throttling Internet freedom is that which prevents private industries, primarily telecommunication firms, from asserting ownership over a public resource, which would result in diminished freedom, not to mention higher costs.

Government never creates jobs. This claim is obviously ludicrous, considering the 22 million jobs held in federal, state, and local governments, many of them life-long, in fields ranging from education to the military. One can only assume that the claim being made is that specific stimulative spending does not create jobs in private industry, under the assumption that “creating jobs” means permanent lifetime employment. However, no matter how absurdly you parse the claim, it is utter nonsense; the 2009 stimulus saved millions of jobs, and helped create millions more. Claims of its “failure” are as unfounded as all the other conservative claims on this list.

Conservatives support higher wages and better working conditions, which can only result from a free market system without government regulation. This is one of a class of statements which predicts riches for everyone if only the government stops interfering and businesses can do virtually anything they like. Needless to say, the relentless drive to deregulate business, dismantle unions, and block minimum wage raises has resulted in a workforce remunerated far less than before. It is a rule of business that, unless forced otherwise, wages must be driven down and benefits cut wherever possible, while “efficiency” (fewer people doing more work for less pay) is driven as high as it can be. Witness the rare exception, Costco, paying better wages and benefits—and being castigated by Wall Street for doing so.

Academic excellence can only be achieved through government-regulated standardized testing. Which, when you think of it, is kind of ironic when you consider how conservatives are against anything being government-regulated. Unless, of course, it is something they don’t like, in which case, the government should regulate or ban it. Suffice it to say that standardized testing is a horrible way to run public education.

Conservatives freed the slaves. Conservatives to blacks: “You’re welcome.” This claim is dredged up when conservatives feel like minorities, for some weird, inexplicable reason, seem to be voting less and less Republican. The logic: conservatives today are Republicans, the Republican Party was founded by Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln freed the slaves—therefore, conservatives freed the slaves and are champions of civil rights. They even sometimes try to claim that liberals supported slavery, hinting that liberals oppose religious groups (another common conservative fallacy), and religious groups were abolitionists (most religious groups of the day were not).

Martin Luther King, Jr. opposed corrective or reparative measures against racism. An old idea to combat Affirmative Action by citing King’s statement about judging a person only by the content of their character—whilst conveniently ignoring that King was speaking of a future devoid of racism, not a present in which racism flourishes and corrective measures are the best manner to at least partially counteract such forces.

Racism is no longer an issue in America; the country is color-blind, and corrective measures are reverse racism against whites. This is essentially what the conservative bloc on the Supreme Court recently decided. Within hours of that decision, states which had formerly been restrained by the Voting Rights Act immediately begin passing and enacting strongly discriminatory redistricting and laws, aimed at robbing minorities of the ability to vote and elect representatives for their interests. So, no, we’re not color-blind, and the Voting Rights Act was not reverse racism.

Laws intended to offer equal protection to women and minorities are “special privileges.” “Special privileges” is one of those code words for equal rights and treatment under the law. How a law, for example, requiring equal pay for women and allowing them to sue when they do not receive it, is a “special privilege” is somewhat difficult to reason. Conservatives will likely point to hate-crime legislation as a “representative” example of such special treatment; however, such laws apply to everyone—including violence against whites—and are in effect not to give special treatment to minorities, women, or gays, but to protect society from individuals who pose a special threat as they wish to do violence against entire classes of people.

Businesses and workplaces are often forced to hire unqualified women and minorities in order to satisfy quotas. If such a thing ever happened, it would only as a misapplication of the law, usually due to people believing this very myth. No quota ever required any business or office to hire someone unqualified for the job.

The free market is self-regulating. No it’s not. Oh, it regulates certain economic factors in very crude ways, but it does not self-regulate the behavior currently handled by government regulations. Left to itself, it would abuse employees, pollute the environment, and cheat people to no end. Its chief goal is to make money; all other considerations fall in that wake of that prime directive. It does not react to consumer complaint by cleaning itself up and regulating itself; if it did, government regulation would never have been necessary in the first place. Besides which, non-governmental factors which would help regulate certain aspects of business—such as unions—are consistently opposed by conservatives.

Treatment for drug addicts is coddling criminals / a waste of money. All evidence to the contrary. People have a tendency to reject treatment over incarceration because it means spending money to help people they disrespect or outright despise. No matter that it costs far more to incarcerate, and creates an incredible drag on the economy as well as general damage to society as a whole. Like drug laws overall, it is not about what makes sense or is best for people, it is about appearances and appearances only.

The context of the Second Amendment has not changed at all in 222 years, but the context of the Voting Rights Act has completely changed in 48 years. Do I even need to go into details?

We have never executed a person innocent of the crime for which they were executed. Wrong. Statistical evidence proves it beyond any rational doubt. Most individual proof is extremely difficult as states regularly destroy all evidence after someone is executed, and police and prosecutors refuse to investigate the crime further. Not to mention the fact that we do know of such specific cases. Ironically, conservatives who claim the government never does anything right and do not trust the government at all to regulate business, educate children, or run health care, nevertheless seem to trust the government explicitly to never wrongly execute someone.

States rights must prevail. Except when they want to do something conservatives don’t like. If a state, for example, wants to legalize marijuana, allow gay marriage, or permit people dying of terminal illnesses the right to end their own lives, then states do not have rights over the federal government. But if a state wants to ban abortion, relax gun control, or outlaw gay marriage, medicinal marijuana, and right-to-die, then state’s rights becomes the absolute principle that must be respected. Historically, “state’s rights” has a powerful racial impact due to its use to defend slavery, and later, segregation; like “strict constructionism” and “judicial activism,” “state’s rights” is really just a code word for advocating conservative agendas; these are by no means actual “principles.”.

Conservatives are against “big government.” Funny, then, that every time they get control of things, we get bigger government. Not that Democrats are much better at it—but at least they don’t pretend to be against something they clearly support. For conservatives, “big government” is yet another code word, this one meaning “spending we don’t like.” Medicare, for example, is “big government,” while an exploding military budget which vastly outspends the rest of the world combined is somehow defensible.

Conservatives want to “save” Medicare and Social Security. By dismantling them and replacing them with programs given the same name but not resembling the original programs at all.

Conservatives support the troops; liberals hate the soldiers. Remember how liberal protesters spat on returning Vietnam vets on the tarmac of airports? So do a lot of people—which is strange, as it never happened. In fact, war protesters were usually supportive of vets, which is evidenced by the fact that so many of the protesters were themselves veterans. The specific story as well as the general myth that conservatives are pro-soldier is false. Conservatives have gained the reputation for being pro-military primarily for their support of military spending, in addition to their generally hawkish stances. They mouth support for the troops, but fall short of actually giving it. In fact, when it comes to supporting veterans’ causes, it is liberals who often do the best job, while conservatives do their best to block such support. Conservatives have even claimed that Obama’s efforts to increase benefits and support for troops is evidence that he hates them—I shit you not. Veterans groups typically give very high scores to Democrats for supporting veterans’ issues, and very low scores to Republicans. Republicans, despite their reputation, are much more liable to block the granting of benefits and programs for vets. As General Wesley Clark said in 2004, “Republicans like weapons systems; Democrats like the soldiers.”

If a conservative says something that offends people and results in damage to their reputation or career, their First Amendment rights are being violated. This is a common dodge to controversy. Although conservatives have no problems pushing for boycotts to punish people and causes they disapprove of, when the same happens in reverse, they often claim that the person’s first-amendment rights are being violated. This despite the clear fact that the First Amendment protects your right to say what you want, and not your right to avoid people shunning you for it.

Obama caused high unemployment. Conservatives who claim that Obama was responsible for high unemployment consistently and conveniently ignore that the rate began to skyrocket under Bush, who took it from 5.0% in April 2008 to 7.8 % in January 2009, a rise of 2.8% in just 9 months, and that it hit a high of 10% in October 2009, a 2.2% rise in another 9 months. However, to hold Obama responsible for the latter rise is questionable at best, and most likely completely inaccurate. Imagine Bush piloting an aircraft at 40,000 feet: he pushes the airplane into a steep dive, and at 28,000 feet, as the plane plummets, he hands over the controls to Obama. Obama struggles to level out the plane, but cannot manage to do so until it reaches 20,000 feet—at which points conservatives blame him for the low altitude and do everything they can thereafter to impede his piloting duties. In addition to sheer inertia, the fact is that the unemployment rate is a “lagging indicator,” meaning that the current rate indicates the response to what was happening in the economy 6 to 9 months previously. Meaning that Obama only began “owning” the unemployment rate when it was already at its peak—and has consistently driven it down ever since.

Obama skyrocketed the deficit. Nope. As with the unemployment rate, the deficits skyrocketed under Bush; Obama has done nothing but reduce them. The current deficit is primarily a result of Bush-Cheney tax cuts, the wars in the Middle East, and the 2008 economic collapse. Obama has initiated far less deficit spending than Bush; Bush went from incipient surpluses to a trillion-dollar deficit; Obama has only brought down spending and deficits. Historically, over the past half-century, Democratic presidents have presided over deficit reductions, while Republican presidents have exploded them.

Republicans have always fought hard to balance the budget, but are confounded by Democrats who bust it. See above. When Republicans had control of the presidency and both houses of Congress, they went from a surplus to a nearly $600 billion deficit—and that was before the 2008 collapse. They try to take credit for the deficit reduction in the 90’s, but that was due as much to the Internet boom and to Clinton’s 1993 tax hike. Even under Reagan, who supposedly tried to cut spending while Democrats foiled his efforts, the facts are that the Democratic Congress passed budgets which were lower than Reagan’s proposals 7 of 8 times.

Gay marriage will undermine the institution of marriage, leading to polygamy and bestiality. See my recent post. In short, no.

Gay marriage will undermine population growth. Again, no. Stupid claim.

Global warming is a myth. Funny that Fox News doesn’t put Al Gore’s book on the sidewalk now. Do we really need to discuss how global climate change is real? I hope not.

Scientists disagree on global warming / evolution. There is no consensus. It can be said that scientists disagree on virtually everything. When 97% believe it is happening, that’s pretty conclusive. When only 1% ~ 6% of climate scientists claim that humans have had little or no effect on climate change, claiming that the debate “isn’t settled yet” is disingenuous at best. As for evolution, only 0.15% of scientists in fields relating to evolution disbelieve in it.

Evolution is “only a theory.” So is gravity, but you ain’t floating away, are you? This chestnut is just a distortion of the meaning and use of the term “theory.” The evidence for evolution is overwhelming; we simply do not understand all of the details yet. The creationists use the “theory” dodge to avoid the mountain of evidence supporting evolution, and contradicting their own claims which are supported only by faulty interpretations of ancient scripture. As stated near the top of this list, noting certain realities such as evolution does not attack religion, but instead simply contradicts religious claims about science which religion is not justified to make.

Money equals free speech. It may be true legally, but not in fact. Free speech is free speech; money is a means to elevate one person’s freedom to speak above everyone else’s. You have the right to speak, just not the right to be heard. Money allows a very few the assurance that one will be heard. That is not a right. It is a means of granting extraordinary power and special rights to those who possess wealth, with all of the freedoms a right confers so as to avoid any attempts to level the field. Arguably, the idea that money is free speech actually degrades the freedom of speech for most people.

Corporations are people. This is a legal fiction constructed to allow corporations to create contracts, participate in lawsuits, and shield individual shareholders (e.g., prevent the collection of debt from reaching personal possessions). Although the legal fiction describes the corporation as a legal “person,” this had never been assumed to grant corporations constitutional rights—at least until the right wing of the Supreme Court made the ethically repellent decision of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and declared that corporations have First Amendment rights, as if they were actual people. This is a break from tradition, and has poisoned our political process since then, far in excess of the toxic mess it already was. The conservatives on the court, from thin air, created a right that had not existed before—as audacious a case of “legislating from the bench” as has ever been witnessed before. Suddenly, corporations could be wielded as a super-person by people who already enjoy their own individual rights, giving them extra powers—not by all shareholders, but just those few wealthy and power people who actually control them.

Capital gains tax is double-taxation. No it’s not. Corporate shareholders are shielded by the “body” of the corporation; the price for this is that the corporation is treated separately from the shareholders. It is not double taxation when an employer is taxed and then an employee is taxed. The same principle applies here. Those who make this claim simply want all the protections a corporation supplies without paying any of the costs—an all-too-common conservative theme.

Liberal justices legislate from the bench; conservatives are strict constructionists who want to preserve or “restore” the original constitution. In simple terms, a conservative will define any decision that conservatives disagree with as “judicial activism” and “legislating from the bench,” no matter what the grounds. It is little more than a reflexive response to dismiss judgments that go against them.

Actual judicial activism is when a decision is handed down that goes beyond or contradicts precedent, engages in judicial overreach (the court going well beyond what is necessary to settle the case), and defies standards of judicial restraint.

While it can be argued that both liberal and conservative judges and justices have practiced such activism, there is ample evidence that this is far more a practice among conservative jurists than of liberal ones. Roe v. Wade is the primary and usually sole arguable example of liberal judicial activism. Conservatives, however, have been going on a spree of such activism in recent years. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, Bush v. Gore, District of Columbia v. Heller (rewriting the Second Amendment to match current conservative views), or the recent fiasco of Shelby County v. Holder (essentially gutting the Voting Rights Act)—there has been a long string of outrageous decisions by conservative jurists which go beyond any precedent and often any standing law and create completely new legal assumptions based upon little else than a egregiously unrestrained conservative agenda. In 2005’s McCreary v. ACLU, for example, Scalia attempted to rewrite the Establishment Clause.

This flies in the face of “strict constructionism,” which has historically been, according to William Rehnquist himself, a philosophy used when a judge is not “favorably inclined toward claims of either criminal defendants or civil rights plaintiffs.” Strict constructionism, nominally at least, is supposed to be about interpreting the law very narrowly. It holds that anything not clearly expressed may not be interpreted, and—in complete contradiction to the Ninth Amendment—that if a right is not positively granted by the constitution, it does not exist.

Not only is this “philosophy” patently unconstitutional, it is not even consistently applied—as the many cases of conservative judicial activism, exemplified by the cases above, evidence more than clearly. In addition, for a group that claims to be “preserving” the constitution, it seems strange that they are constantly trying to amend it.

Voter fraud is a serious issue. No it’s not. Voter fraud is rare, and conservative claims to the contrary are completely unevidenced. Usually cited are cases where people hired to collect registrations create false documents to collect more money—documents which are found, trashed, and never result in actual stolen votes, mostly due to the fact that there was never any intent to do so.

Election fraud, on the other hand, is copious these days—and is quite notably a completely conservative practice. From Katherine Harris’ historical perverting of the Florida Central Voting File throwing the 2000 election illicitly to Bush, to the current right-wing judicial activism allowing conservative states to gerrymander and rewrite voting laws to specifically disenfranchise minorities, conservatives have rigorously and rather openly driven to abuse their legal power in order to win elections dishonestly.

The media has a liberal bias. I’m not even going to dignify that long-standing piece of excrement with an explanation; if you are not fully aware of why it is wrong, then there’s no talking to you; you may return to viewing Fox News, which is totally unbiased.

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If conservatives comment on this list, they will most likely do so in their usual fashion: to ignore the bulk of the list, go after the one or two points they believe are weakest, and within those points focus on only one contention or a subset of the entire point—and never, ever concede everything (and possibly anything) else. We’ll see.

Republicans don’t. Democrats do.

I am struck by how Republicans have begun to criticize Obama over Afghanistan. Clint Eastwood seems to think that Obama started the war. As with bin Laden’s capture, Romney and Republicans try to find any way they can to criticize Obama for a war Republicans fumbled and Obama has finally brought to a close. And though Romney has not, like many in his party, promised war in Iran, it is implied if we are to take his statements on the issue seriously—and a war with Iran could turn out to be even longer and bloodier than the last two we have only just now begin to close the door or.

And yet, somehow, still, Republicans have the reputation for being on the side of the soldier, when nothing could be further from the truth.

The public image is reversed, but the public image is wrong. As General Wesley Clark so aptly put it in 2004, “Republicans like weapons systems; Democrats like the soldiers.”

Republicans use soldiers as tools regardless of their safety. Republicans started two massive land wars in Asia, the longest wars in U.S. history, bound to be meat grinders for the soldiery. One was made necessary by a security blunder by a Republican administration and was not only mismanaged by that administration, but was all but forgotten about by them. Bin Laden at Tora Bora. Allowing the Taliban to resurge while Bush started a wholly unnecessary war in Iraq. Soldiers were sent in without body armor or armor for their vehicles. Oil fields were protected while armories full of weapons later used against the troops were left open to looters. Conservatives’ plans for Iran show similar disregard for how many of the military will be struck down as a result. A third land war in Asia within just 15 years? I would agree that a draft would be a bad but perhaps necessary way to bring the real cost into focus for these people, except that these people have always found ways to shelter their own, draft or no; Bush was an excellent example of this.

Republicans love to use the military as backdrops to make them look strong. It seemed that every other public speech given by Bush had a wall of soldiers in the background. Bush made huge PR runs on aircraft carriers (Mission Accomplished!) and on military bases (where soldiers who were not loyal Republicans were pre-screened and locked out of the Thanksgiving dinner Bush used as a PR event; non-Bush-supporters were kept in the barracks and given MREs instead). Meanwhile, military coffins and funerals were banned from sight, out of fear that Americans would care too much for the fallen, and Bush did not even deign to sign letters to families whose loved ones had given the ultimate sacrifice.

But worst, Republicans’ greatest abuse of the soldiery is to use them as a human shield. Reagan used the valor and sacrifice of the troops he sent needlessly and uselessly into Lebanon as a shield when a reporter questioned his reasons for sending them, castigating the reporter for daring to question the honor of the troops, when the reporter was only questioning Reagan’s judgment in putting them in harm’s way. Bush used this coward’s retreat often; any attack on him was morphed into an attack on the troops; a new rule was established that you cannot criticize the president while troops are in the field, a rule conservatives abandoned the moment Obama came into office.

Meanwhile, Republicans cut benefits for the troops, mercilessly extended their tours of duty, and left their families with less and less support, spending money primarily for enticements to get more people to sign up, but then ignoring their needs once recruitment is no longer an issue. While lavish fortunes were spent on mercenaries and fortunes are sunk into often unneeded Defense contracts, relatively trifling amounts that could make big differences for soldiers are struck down by Republicans. The IAVA gives methodologically sound ratings to Congress based upon votes that affect veterans, rating in which Republicans consistently score dead last.

Democrats, on the other hand, have acted with care and caution where it has concerned the troops. Clinton’s war in the Balkans and Obama’s actions in Libya were examples of modern war by Democrats: good causes (stability and human life, not oil) in actions defined by the surgical use of force with minimal or even no loss of life among the soldiery. What funerals there were were not hidden; due homage was paid. Obama has been less than satisfactory in Afghanistan, true; but had he been in charge from the start, do you really think the war would have lasted 11 years? The only bloody military actions Democrats have presided over since Vietnam have been ones left them by presidents named “Bush.”

In the meantime, after the last Bush left, al Qaeda has all but been decimated, with bin Laden at the bottom of the ocean with a bullet in his head. For which, conservatives have only complaint, studiously avoiding any praise for Obama where they would have ordered apotheosis had a Republican been in office.

Democrats do not shy from giving speeches in front of troops, but it is not the common standard that it was for Bush and Republicans that came before. They spend more time actually doing stuff for the troops as opposed to only using them as a convenient backdrop.

Democrats do not use the troops as a human shield. You did not hear Clinton and will not hear Obama saying that an attack on the president is actually an attack on the troops.

But mostly, Democrats care about the soldiers in a contrast with conservatives which could not be deeper or more sharp. Where Republicans cut benefits for the troops, Democrats restore and even shower the troops with help.

Republicans not only disapprove, they despise this.

That’s right. I do not exaggerate. Allow me to give a definitive example.

Less than a year ago, conservatives ripped Obama for praising the troops. They created the false impression that Obama had never said anything good about the soldiers, but then suddenly started praising them for political gain; a false claim, of course.

But the worst part was that they accused Obama of actually abusing the troops, making them into “victims dependent on social-welfare and medical services.” Yep, that’s right. By giving the troops education and job assistance, by giving them good medical care upon their arrival home and paying attention to the emotional scars which have increased the suicide rate, Obama is actually, in the conservative’s view, disrespecting the troops.

Better to do it the conservative way: give them a handshake, salute them, mouth a few cheap platitudes—and then leave them to fend for themselves in a shattered economy in which your are dismantling health care.

That, apparently, is how you “support the troops.” Use them, grind them down, pose with them for a photo shoot, and then abandon them so they can learn self-reliance.

What astonishes me is that the men and women in uniform still trend conservative. Well, maybe not so much, considering the conservative cultural and religious influences built into the military infrastructure; how Fox News and radio shows like Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham are featured in military media.

No doubt the message below will be ruthlessly ripped by the conservatives. The troops are for swiftboating, not for supporting godless liberals.

Tucker Carlson’s agitprop outfit just came out with a rather stunning slant in a piece where they criticize Obama for… praising the troops. Now, how, you may ask, could they criticize Obama for that? Easy: make it seem like Obama actually hates the troops, usually reviles them, thus making his current lavish praise seem “unfamiliar” and “unprecedented,” in effect suggesting that he’s doing it purely for shallow and dishonest political reasons.

Their evidence in this regard, of course, is non-existent–the article is heavy with implied claims that Obama has somehow ignored or even hated the troops until now, thus creating the larger impression that his current praise can be explained away as posturing, thus explaining how he could heap such praise and yet still not contradict the right-wing fiction that he hates the troops.

The only support they provided for the claim that Obama abused the troops was that he had provided the soldiers and their families with a large number of programs to help them out, making sure they got good medical and psychological care, assuring that the families were looked after sufficiently, seeing to the education of their children–stuff like that. In other words: supporting the troops.

How, exactly, did conservatives paint Obama as abusive to the troops with this? They claimed he had painted them as “victims dependent on social-welfare and medical services offered by the Democratic coalition.”

You see, when you do things like recognize soldier trauma and high suicide rates and needs for things like education for their children, you are actually hurting the troops, insulting them by making them into victims and robbing them of their pride and self-reliance. Instead, you should let them suffer without support, and not reward them substantively for their service, so when they come through it all, they’ll be more proud. Apparently, only lip service is required from the rest of us. That is the Republican definition of “supporting the troops.”

Liberals don’t hate the troops; quite the opposite, they have, from individuals up to national politicians, always been concerned about the health and welfare of the men and women in the armed forces, and mindful of their needs. I am sure that most rank-and-file conservatives respect the troops in general, but the conservative establishment sees them as more of a resource to be used. This attitude is more aptly expressed in how they weild the troops as a tool, a means to an end. The best example of this is when they use the troops as human shields to avoid political criticism; when conservatives screw up, they deflect any disparagement of their actions as “attacking the troops.”

It is simply a long-standing lie that liberals hate or disrespect the troops. The lie has been propagated since the Vietnam War, when liberals protested the war and the political administrations, and conservatives wanted to deflect those criticisms. So they created the cowardly lie that any criticism of the war was somehow criticizing the troops, and not the leaders.

On a general level, the lie fits in with the conservative myth that right-wingers are “pro-military” and liberals are anti-military. The distinction is sometimes blurred in the eyes of the public because conservatives are hawkish and want more military spending, whereas liberals oppose egregious or harmful use of the troops and the military, and often disapprove of the corporate-military complex. Because these are not simple divisions, they are easily mischaracterized, and thus we get the current mythos.

The conservative “pro-military” stance, however, is not so inclusive of the troops; it is more about wanting to send troops to war, and reward wealthy patrons who are military contractors, like Halliburton. Democrats, on the other hand, tend to run wars where troops are kept out of harm’s way, and try to run a leaner yet fully-capable military.

As General Wesley Clark so aptly put it in 2004, “Republicans like weapons systems; Democrats like the soldiers.”

Remember how liberal protesters spat on Vietnam vets on the airport tarmacs as the vets returned from Vietnam? That’s an image ingrained upon the America psyche–and is pure fiction. There was not one soldier who got spat on by a liberal protester on any airport tarmac–it never happened. We know that because liberal protesters were never allowed on military bases to protest, and soldiers returning on civilian airlines were not in uniform nor were their arrivals publicly announced–nor were protesters allowed to congregate on civilian tarmacs in any case. The entire thing is a fiction produced by right-wingers who wanted to vilify liberals as soldier-haters, a lie perpetuated by–of all things–Hollywood, in movies like Rambo, whose title character famously said, “I come back to the world and I see all those maggots at the airport, protesting me, spitting. Calling me baby killer and all kinds of vile crap!” People saw that made-up right-wing fantasy and other such characterizations and simply accepted the idea.

The fact was, liberals during Vietnam were mostly the same as liberals during the Iraq War: they protested the political administration or elements of the military hierarchy which propagated the war–but not the troops themselves.

Am I claiming that there were never any liberals anywhere who hated soldiers in general? Of course not, there must have been–just as there are extremists on the right today who see soldiers as jack-booted thugs. You’ll find crazies at the extreme of any movement or group. Conservatives are simply extraordinarily talented at taking such extremes, exaggerating them and padding them with lies, and then painting the entire opposition with that brush.

The fact is, many of the liberal protesters were soldiers themselves, vets who returned from the war and saw the liberal protesters as forwarding their cause–to stop the war and bring the soldiers home. Troops who would never had associated with the liberal movement in general had that movement been populated with people who spat on returning soldiers.

Conservatives more crassly use troops as a resource, as cannon fodder, easily starting ground wars and even mercilessly extending tours of duty, whilst promoting G.I. benefits only as a way to entice recruitment, but otherwise not giving a crap about their actual welfare. Soldiers are raw material to be used militarily, politically, even sometimes socially. They are to be proselytized and reshaped to a conservative ideal, to be used and then discarded. Not, of course, by all conservatives, not by a long shot–but that is how they are treated by the conservative establishment.

In the past few decades, maybe longer, whenever we saw a bill to raise the troops’ pay or benefits or help them in some way other than signing bonuses, it was the Democrats pushing for it and the Republicans balking, while Republicans were mostly responsible for cutting pay and benefits, and for abuses like we saw done with stop-loss and failure to outfit the soldiers with body or vehicular armor.

Republicans committed the lion’s share of our forces to not one, but two decade-long land wars in Asia, where more than 4500 soldiers were killed. Democrats started actions in Bosnia and Libya, where mostly air power was used on a short-term basis to positive effect, with a minimum risk to the troops.

I think Republicans burn at seeing Obama lavish praise on the troops because they know Bush didn’t do it as much. Bush not only tried to hide military funerals, he didn’t even sign condolence letters; Obama reversed that trend of neglect. Bush slashed soldier’s benefits and cut their families adrift; Obama passed dozens of programs to bring back support to the troops and their families–and right-wingers hate him for it.

What does that tell you?

I will leave you with a post from nearly a year ago when I laid out much the same case:

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During the Bush years, Republicans made their usual big deal about supporting the troops. When it comes to actual support though, the right wing really only supports the military contractors, who are, after all, among those paying the bills. Despite their talk about cutting spending, they won’t touch Defense, despite there being a lot to cut; Lockheed Martin alone receives an average of something like $260 from each taxpaying American family.

When it comes to the soldiery, the support from the right is not quite so strong. Oh, yes, the words come out. Support the troops and all that. But actions speak louder than words, and during the Bush years, much of the action was abusive. Lengthening tours of duty, employing stop-loss, scaling down pay increases, cutting benefits, failing to outfit them properly–basically chintzing the soldiers on nickels and dimes while pouring billions into the pockets of firms like Halliburton. When a veteran’s organization ranked senators on how they voted on veteran’s issues, the disparity was striking: Democrats occupied the top of the list, while Republicans uniformly failed to support the troops themselves where it counted.

There is one aspect in which Bush and the Republicans liked the troops: as a prop to help them politically. How many times did you see Bush–the AWOL draft-dodger–give speeches before uniformed audiences, helpfully arranged behind him for effect; how many times did we see him reviewing the troops, a purely PR-related activity?

Whenever Bush’s decisions were questioned, the reply very often was to use the troops as a human shield. Anyone who criticized Bush was accused of attacking the troops–an act of hatefully vile cowardice which I personally despise.

When a selflessly patriotic man gave up a lucrative personal career and volunteered to serve, and then was killed in “friendly fire,” the details of his death were covered up while the Bush administration shamelessly used him as a poster boy for their PR campaign after their disgrace at Abu Ghraib.

But people believe that liberals are the ones who abuse the troops. After all, wasn’t it liberals who spat on soldiers on the airport tarmac as they returned from service in Vietnam? Well, no. It’s an urban legend, another lie generated to discredit liberals. In fact, during the Vietnam War, liberals supported the soldiery just like they do today; it was the administration they despised. Again we see the tactic of using soldiers as a human shield, to very great effect–so many people even today believe the image of liberal hippie protesters spitting on deplaning soldiers, despite the fact that it would have been physically impossible for that to even happen.

Whenever a bill to support the actual soldiers came through, it was almost always a Democratic effort, and was usually opposed by Republicans, who, after throwing billions at contractors, could not see themselves clear to tossing a few million to actually support the troops. Take this GI Bill for example. The only time Republicans assented to spending more on the troops was in order to bring more people in the door–enticements for signing on or staying on. When it came to helping the troops without an ulterior motive, simply because it’s the right thing to do, Republicans suddenly had other things to do, leaving the Democrats to pick up that particular ball.

That continues today. From the White House:

President Barack Obama on Monday announced a governmentwide series of 50 programs and proposals to increase support for U.S. military families.

The 50 initiatives — including more counseling to prevent suicides, increased education grants and expanded child-care assistance — resulted from efforts by first lady Michelle Obama and Jill Biden, the wife of Vice President Joe Biden, to address concerns of military families.

Seriously, do you ever recall Bush doing anything even remotely like this during his eight years in office?

Me neither.

None of the reports indicate that this will have to pass through Congress. Let’s hope not, because you know who would most likely decide that it’s not worth doing, or should be pared down somewhat.

When Bob Schieffer hailed John McCain as a man of character because he was shot down over Vietnam, Wesley Clark (after having spent a few minutes praising McCain as a “hero”) said that that did not qualify McCain for president; that was without a doubt not swift-boating, no matter what the wingnuts want to claim.

The latest book by noted sleaze merchant James Corsi, however, is the epitome of swift-boating–not because it was by a former associate of Obama’s who claimed to know him. a usual key ingredient in the definition. It is swift-boating because the author of the book is the original swift-boater himself, and the book carries the signature quality of being jam-packed with errors, innuendo, and mostly bald-faced lies. This time, not even the media will give this book any credibility, but that won’t stop the Republicans from trying to float a “popular” campaign based on it.

The book will premier as #1 on the New York Times best-seller list (one can only assume the editors had to swallow hard when labeling it as “non-fiction”), but not because people are buying it–rather because right-wing organizations are buying it in bulk quantities likely for no better reason than to artificially put it on the “best-seller” list and so inflate the book’s cache with the mindlessly-inclined. McCain’s quip on the book: “You gotta keep your sense of humor.” Yeah, right–like he’d react better if a book of the same caliber on him came out. Maybe he’d like to comment on this YouTube commercial–slimy, even though factually accurate.

This is the essence of the conservative run for the presidency: don’t just lie, but lie about the lies. Yet another reason not to vote Republican–unless you would like this kind of thing to define your personal politics.

McCain throws a hissy-fit on his bus when a reporter has the temerity to ask him a pertinent question:

McCain bristled at the comments on "Face the Nation" last weekend by an Obama supporter, retired general Wesley Clark, who belittled the relevance of McCain’s wartime experience as a qualification for the Presidency.

"I think it’s up to Sen. Obama now not only to repudiate him but to cut him loose," McCain said.

McCain became visibly angry when I asked him to explain how his Vietnam experience prepared him for the Presidency.

"Please," he said, recoiling back in his seat in distaste at the very question.

McCain allies Sen. Lindsey Graham stepped in to rescue him. Graham expressed admiration for McCain’s stance on the treatment of detainees in US custody.

"That to me is a classic example of how his military experience helped him shape public policy in a way no other senator could have done,’’ Graham said.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, also traveling on the trip, expressed admiration for McCain’s wartime service as well.

McCain then collected himself and apologized for his initial reaction.

"I kind of reacted the way I did because I have a reluctance to talk about my experiences," he said, noting that he has huge admiration for the "heroes" who served with him in the POW camp and said the experience taught him to love the U.S. because he missed it so much.

"I am always reluctant to talk about these things," McCain said.

Um, yeah. The service he wrote his memoirs about, that he bases his campaign ads on, that he constantly makes opportunistic jokes about, and that he talks about all the time. That’s the thing he’s so “reluctant” to talk about.

Look at his campaign logo: see the military star? Even the Optima font is reminiscent of military style–it’s the font used on the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial, for example. McCain’s campaign is based upon his military service, and upon playing it up, all the way up to the hilt. This latest round of tantrums about Clark is simply the latest salvo in this long-running military campaign.

And, oh yeah, didn’t he vote for torture, in yet another of his long list of flip-flops policy “evolutions”?

About ten days ago, when commenting on the testimony given by General Petraeus, I wrote this:

I know what the knee-jerk right-wing response will be: what about Wesley Clark? Well, his service in the military gives him the same basic standing as Petraeus. Because we know Clark has presidential ambitions, we weigh his words with those ambitions in mind. The exact same applies to Petraeus. Both generals must be considered not to simply give the straight story, but rather the story that serves them best as far as a political campaign is concerned.

I soon noticed in my web stats that several people were coming from a web page, in which someone had linked to me saying this:

The blogger points out that Petraeus is politically ambitious and his testimony must be weighed in the light of that. He expects the right wing’s response to that criticism of Petraeus will be to say “what about General Clark?”, to which he responds, no problem, we can weigh General Clark’s words with his ambitions in mind as well. … I thought General Clark might be amused by this blog.

Clearly this supporter sees his preferred candidate as above such things. And well he might be. Perhaps I did not make myself clear enough; perhaps this commenter thinks that I see Clark as being no better or more honorable than Petraeus.

A quick search of my blog would tell you differently, but as I said, I may not have expressed myself as clearly as I should have.

Here’s the concept: generals carry weight with public opinion for two reasons–first, their service and perceived accomplishments to earn their rank, and second, because they are thought to represent the military, and to be dedicated to serve the people of the United States of America, gutsy enough to be willing to tell truth to power, brave enough to tough out the consequences and give up everything for their honor.

We have seen this quality demonstrated well enough in the past four years; how many generals have spoken up and and then been taken down by the Bush administration? How many have quit instead of prop up this sham? The answer is, quite a few.

Petraeus is not one of them. He has turned out to be a politician. He may still lay claim to the first reason why people respect generals–the assumption that he has earned the rank, until proven otherwise–but he cannot be expected to claim the second, that he is giving it to us straight. In revealing his political ambitions, he has set aside that automatic presumption and revealed a built-in bias. He may or may not be lying, we must judge that for ourselves–but he can no longer step up and expect the fact the he is a general in the armed forces be enough for the public to believe in what he says. That is why Petraeus does not deserve the sacred honor that Republicans try to paint him as having, as being above suspicion or reproach.

So what of Clark? Is what he says suspect? Of course. He lays claim to the same genesis–he worked his way up to be a general, he served in the armed forces, and that means something to most Americans. But he no longer serves in the armed forces, and he has his own political ambitions. That does not mean he is lying, or that he has allowed his ambition to overpower his duty to give it straight to his countrymen.

But it does mean that we cannot automatically expect that of him. It means that we have to weigh his words like we weigh the words of any politician. As with Petraeus, he has the credibility of a man who has worked his way up to be a general. Also like Petraeus, he must now earn our trust by telling it straight because we know both have ambitions that could potentially cloud their judgment.

Petraeus has failed that test; he has clearly told us a story that is politically skewed. He has contradicted well-known fact, and revealed his fealty to a politician rather than to his people. Had he done the latter, he might have told us that he feels we need to stay in Iraq and finish the job, but he would not have snowed us with twisted statistics and rosy fantasies of how “well” things are going. He has discarded the trust he earned via his position by way of his current actions.

Clark, on the other hand, has stayed true to the principles he swore to uphold, and has continued to earn the trust we first placed in him. Again, read my blog posts on the general and you’ll see why I respect him.

But I also respect the process of critical thinking and sound judgment, which is why I hold both generals’ statement as suspect due to their ambitions, until their words and actions prove otherwise.

And I expect that General Clark would agree, if he is the man I expect him to be.

A great deal of the credibility of the Petraeus report is based upon the idea that since he’s a general, he is therefore respectable and we can trust us to give it to us straight.

The problem, of course, is that by this time, any high-level Iraq War posting is more likely than usual to attract a general who is more oriented towards political ambition than would be otherwise. The good generals have resigned over this in principle. Among what we have left are the kind of people who gravitate to the top in an administration like this one.

Evidence of the fact: Petraeus, it seems, has presidential ambitions.

The US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, expressed long-term interest in running for the US presidency when he was stationed in Baghdad, according to a senior Iraqi official who knew him at that time.

Sabah Khadim, then a senior adviser at Iraq’s Interior Ministry, says General Petraeus discussed with him his ambition when the general was head of training and recruitment of the Iraqi army in 2004-05.

“I asked him if he was planning to run in 2008 and he said, ‘No, that would be too soon’,” Mr Khadim, who now lives in London, said.

General Petraeus has a reputation in the US Army for being a man of great ambition. If he succeeds in reversing America’s apparent failure in Iraq, he would be a natural candidate for the White House in the presidential election in 2012.

Which means that Petraeus is a political animal as much as, if not more than, a clean-cut military man, and what he does now is very likely colored by what he believes will serve him in a political campaign not too far in the future.

I know what the knee-jerk right-wing response will be: what about Wesley Clark? Well, his service in the military gives him the same basic standing as Petraeus. Because we know Clark has presidential ambitions, we weigh his words with those ambitions in mind. The exact same applies to Petraeus. Both generals must be considered not to simply give the straight story, but rather the story that serves them best as far as a political campaign is concerned.

The difference is, Petraeus is active, still serving in the military, and so should be above such things. That is precisely the image the White House is depending on: this report comes not from a politician, but from a general, and we can trust them.

Petraeus, as it turns out, however, is just another politician. And his performance in spinning the data to political advantage certainly gives us no reason to doubt this.

How many times have you heard right-wingers twist a criticism against the president or against the war into sounding like a criticism against the troops serving in Iraq? I’ve heard it countless times. When John Kerry directly and specifically criticized Bush, RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie immediately transformed that into Kerry blaming the troops. Or when Wesley Clark criticized Bush for allowing an unnecessary war in Iraq take resources away from finding bin Laden, a Fox News anchor directly accused him of denigrating the troops. This technique is used widely and often by conservatives to deflect criticism about the war, essentially using the troops as a human shield to make Bush and the conservatives in general impervious to criticism for their massive blunders and incompetence.

The essence of this strategy is simple: conservatives say that liberals, or any critics of the president, hate the troops. Liberals want to blame the troops for everything.

The irony here is, it’s Bush who blames the troops. Take prisoner torture, for example. Bush and Gonzales advocated torture as an acceptable technique. Bush advanced the use of torture in the military hierarchy, giving the go-ahead for its use. But when we actually see the horrifying images of how prisoners were treated at Abu Ghraib, who gets blamed by the Bush administration?

The troops.

Instead of taking responsibility for their own policy, for their own commands, they use the troops the same way they use low-level staffers, as the fall guy for their own crimes. Instead of standing by the policy they engendered and enacted, they instead claim that it was the troops, and the troops alone–not even higher-ranking officials–that are guilty, that shoulder all the blame. And then they send the troops to prison. Not that the soldiers shouldn’t have rejected illegal orders, but their culpability in this matter is definitely the lesser. The administration is guilty, they set the policy, they gave the orders. And they shove all the blame on the soldiers.

And they do this without shame.

But this should not come as a surprise. Bush has never given a rat’s ass about the troops–he regards them as tools, and has never seen them as being anywhere near his elitist level. This should have been obvious from how he used his family influence to escape going to Vietnam while castigating others for dodging the draft. As president, Bush sent troops into battle without sufficient armor, without care for their immediate or long-term safety, and without any consideration for an exit plan. You can’t say that he simply didn’t know they didn’t have armor, because the problem was highlighted and told to the administration early on, and yet still long afterwards troops were forced to dig through garbage to find scraps of armor to protect themselves with. Bush has more often than not cut soldiers’ pay and benefits, while callously using them as window dressing whenever he needs a PR boost. He hides from criticism by troops both by enacting the law that threatens prison for any active soldier who speaks badly of him, and by filtering troops, sequestering away those who don’t answer correctly when asked if they support him 110%. Instead of honoring fallen troops, Bush has tried to hide them so he won’t be embarrassed, not even taking the few seconds a day to sign form letters to their families.

Liberals are the ones who care about the troops. Al Franken becomes angered to the point of tears when the troops are unfairly criticized. Wesley Clark becomes furious when troops are criticized. These people actually and actively support the troops (Franken frequently goes to Iraq with the USO), they genuinely care, while conservatives only use the troops as a prop.

Like Wes Clark said, “Republicans like weapons systems; Democrats like the soldiers.” Republicans have gotten the reputation for being pro-military only because they vote for huge Defense bills, and have co-opted the military hierarchy into Republican-izing the military and pushing their agenda within. Liberals got a bad reputation in this when some, during Vietnam, thoughtlessly chose to blame soldiers en masse alongside the administration. But today, when it comes to actually giving a damn about the people, about the troops themselves, about the men and women who serve, it’s the liberals who care, the liberals who want to protect and honor the troops. It’s the conservatives who use the soldiery and then discard them like so much trash.

So, who are your favorites?

Let’s take a look at the candidates here, those that are being tossed around in the blogosphere, in alphabetical order:

Al Gore, former Vice-President
Al Sharpton, former candidate for Mayor/Senator/President
Barack Obama, Senator from Illinois
Bill Bradley, former Senator from New Jersey
Bill Richardson, Governor of New Mexico, former US Ambassador to the U.N.
Blanche Lincoln, Senator from Arkansas, youngest woman elected to Senate
Bob Graham, Senator from Florida
Chris Dodd, Senator from Connecticut; might run for Governor of Connecticut in 2006
Dennis Kucinich, Congressional Representative from Ohio
Ed Rendell, Governor of Pennsylvania, former chair of DNC
Evan Bayh, Senator from Indiana
Gary Hart, former Senator from Colorado
Harold Ford, Jr, Congressional representative from Tennessee
Hillary Rodham Clinton, Senator from New York and former First Lady
Howard Dean, former Governor of Vermont, DNC Chairman
John Edwards, Senator from North Carolina, former VP candidate
John Kerry, Senator from Massachusetts, former presidential candidate
Joseph Biden, Senator from Delaware, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Joseph Lieberman, Senator from Connecticut
Mark Warner, Governor of Virginia
Pat Leahy, Senator from Vermont, ranking member of Senate Judiciary Committee
Phil Bredesen, Governor of Tennessee
Richard Gephardt, Congressional Represenative from Missouri
Rod Blagojevich, Governor of Illinois
Russ Feingold, Senator from Wisconsin
Tom Daschle, Senator from South Dakota
Tom Vilsack, Governor of Iowa
Wesley Clark, former US Army General

Al Sharpton is included simply because it seems likely that he’ll run and make some noise. Kucunich is almost as unlikely, but is popular in some quarters, and may decide to weigh in so his ideas may be heard and given some weight. In my opinion, former candidates who may enter but who have no chance of winning would include Kerry, Dean, Lieberman and Gore. Dean and Gore probably will not even try; Kerry and Lieberman might, but I think their stars have fallen too much to be real contenders. Kerry won’t be seen as winning material, and Lieberman is practically a Republican. There has been talk about Gary Hart, and while most scoff, some say he’d be a viable elder (but at age 71, he may be too elderly). Tom Daschle is really not a big hope as he was beaten for his senate seat in ’04.

The obvious big-name front-runners: Hillary Clinton, especially if she slam-dunks the senate election in 2006. The GOP is trying to pull a Daschle on her and put her down in ’06, but her rival, D.A. Jeanine Pirro, fumbled badly upon announcing her run by starting a sentence with “Hillary Clinton….” and then saying nothing for 32 seconds because she couldn’t find the page of her speech. If you recall, Bill Clinton delivered a complex State of the Union speech with no teleprompter or notes when an old speech was mistakenly put up for him; Pirro couldn’t figure out anything to say about her opponent for 32 seconds without page ten in front of her. Then there’s John Edwards, who lost as VP candidate in ’04, but still has appeal.

Other well-known names: Joe Biden, who announced his intention to run in 2008 recently, though he’s going to see if he can raise enough money by the end of the year. Biden is said to have a winning personality, and could run as an elder statesman, but he lost to Dukakis in ’88 when it appeared that he plagiarized a speech, and there were questions about his law school records.

Russ Feingold, well-known for the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance reforms, is looking at a run from Wisconsin. He stood out by being the only one to vote against the Patriot Act and opposed the Iraq War, so might be seen as someone unafraid to speak out, like Dean was. However, he has recently divorced, for a second time; while this would be a standard resume filler for a Republican, that won’t stop the GOP from using it to savage him.

One problem here is position: Senators don’t often win the White House, and governors do. And if you look at the list, there are not too many governors, and aside from Dean who almost certainly will not run, few if any have any name recognition or notoriety at all.

On the Washington-outsider front, Wesley Clark is said to be all but decided to join the race, and many say the only reason he didn’t do well before was that he entered the race way too late. He’s a strong speaker; I’ve seen him go up against the right-wing talking heads and eat them for lunch. Some say he doesn’t have what it takes, but between his background and his style, I think he has more of a chance than many think.

Bill Bradley, former NBA star and Senator from New Jersey, now radio talk-show host, is mentioned as a candidate, but he’s not likely to run in 2008.

Other names you might recognize: Chris Dodd, elected three times to the House, and five times to the Senate, and said to be considering a run for Governor of Connecticut in ’06, though he has denied it publicly. He’s been successfully on the offensive against the Bolton nomination. He decided against running fro president in 2004, and declined candidacy for the post of Senate Minority Leader. Considering all of that, it’s not too likely he’d run in 2008. And of course, Barack Obama, a shining name at the moment in Democratic circles–but probably far too inexperienced to be a serious contender. Yes, I know Bush only had six years as governor, but it’s easier for governors and he had the Bush family machine and most of the GOP behind him.

And there are a lot more, as you can see from the list. So here’s an invitation: who are you betting on for being the Democratic candidate in 2008, and who could be a likely running mate? An additional point could be who is your dream team, who do you think has the most chance of winning?

For me, barring some scandal or a rather unlikely win by Pirro, I would say Hillary Clinton is likely to be the candidate. She has powerful name recognition, a lot of pull in the Democratic party, sympathy and popularity with many Americans. Like Dubya, she is polarizing, but mostly in the sense that many die-hard Republicans despise anyone named “Clinton” out of knee-jerk reaction and years of indoctrination by right-wing media figures–and those who see her so negatively won’t vote Democratic anyway, no matter who runs. But she has more going for her than against her in that department, and promising to be the first woman president would likely turn out more voters than not. And by 2008, with the deficit soaring, the economy probably still floundering, the country awash in right-wing corporate and political scandal, and the quagmire in Iraq, the idea of another Clinton presidency, eight years of prosperity, will be pretty appealing to a lot of people, no matter how little the association might actually be relevant. The point is, she won’t be as afraid to capitalize on that as Gore was, to his downfall.

Who might her running mate be? Excellent question. John Edwards would be a good choice, but he probably wouldn’t demur to the second seat a second time. Geographically, a southerner would fare well considering Clinton’s Illinois roots and New York Senate seat–but then again, Edwards didn’t do Kerry much good in the South, or so it would seem. Wesley Clark might be a good choice; he’s a good speaker and a respectable veteran and leader, and never having held political office, could bring the image of Washington outsider.

However, I’m going to go to left field here and make my dream-team choice the same as my real-life guess: Barack Obama. This guy can give a speech. This guy has the potential to rally support, and more than coming from a state or balancing a ticket, he could actually motivate people and get them to come to vote. He is inclusive, he is positive, and he is young and energetic. He’s also one of the most popular senators around. On the more cynical side, his color will be both a positive and a negative; he will attract minority voters, but for some Americans, a woman president and a black vice-president may just be too much. Nevertheless, I am willing to bet that these people will mostly be solid right-wingers anyway, and Obama’s positive enthusiasm and inclusiveness will win the day.

All that said, I would still be comfortable with Wesley Clark being the candidate, and there are likely some other faces bound to enter the race which didn’t get on the list above.

So go ahead and comment. How much am I guilty of wishful thinking or political naivety when it comes to electoral realities? But more importantly, who do you think will be there, and who do you wish will be there?

And please, no Jimmy Smits jokes.

On the tail of the story that Bush and Rumsfeld care so little about the troops that they won’t even sign the letters to the families of the fallen, comes this bit of news from Kuwait, where Rumsfeld was answering soldiers’ questions in a ‘town hall’ style meeting. Apparently he figured he’d just get praise and adulation, but one soldier asked a very pointed question from an airplane mechanic from the 278th Regimental Combat Team of the Tennessee Army National Guard:

Why do us soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-arm our vehicles? And why don’t we have those resources available to us? … A lot of us are getting ready to move north relatively soon. Our vehicles are not armoured. We’re digging pieces of rusted scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass … picking the best out of this scrap to put on our vehicles to take into combat. We do not have proper armament vehicles to carry with us north.

Now that’s a good question. It’s not as if this problem hasn’t been known about, much less been in the spotlight, for more than a year now. We’ve heard stories about soldiers draping bullet-proof vests along the side of their humvees in order to compensate for this. So what was Rumsfeld’s flinty response?

It isn’t a matter of money, it isn’t a matter on part of the Army of desire. It’s a matter of production and capability of doing it. As you know, you go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have.

That’s his response. “You go to war with the army you have.” Okay, let’s say that’s true. The war started 21 months ago. The deficit of vehicle armor was brought up by many in the initial months of the war. So, as Rumsfeld suggests, does it take more than a year an a half to produce and send armor parts to the battlefield? Of course not. Just the same as with body armor–the government could have provided the troops with enough, they just didn’t fucking care. There was always enough money for that. There was enough money to give their cronies multi-billion dollar no-bid contracts of which we now see huge portions were stolen or pissed away. They got the $87 billion money which they touted as being “for the troops,” which Bush lashed out at Kerry for because he voted for an alternate $87 billion bill and therefore “denied” money “for the troops.” It was always “for the troops” when they wanted to win a political fight.

But now those same troops still don’t have the equipment they need, equipment that the Bush administration could’ve gotten them long ago. And those troops are still dying (1,276 as of today, most recently Private 1st Class Andrew M. Ward, KIA in Ramadi) and they still don’t have what they need, they’re digging through garbage to find “hillbilly armor” and Rumsfeld just stares back at this kid and tells him to suck it up. Worse than that, he actually tried to tell the soldier that he was being stupid about it: “I’ve talked a great deal about this with a team of people who have been working hard at the Pentagon… if you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up. And you can have an up-armored Humvee and it can be blown up.” I’m sure that made the soldiers feel better about it. Of course, Rumsfeld was talking out of his ass at that particular moment; most vehicles aren’t blown up with such excessive amounts of explosives, and the armor would save many lives.

These are the people who got voted back into office. Rumsfeld is almost the only cabinet secretary who will stay on. I can only imagine that the primary reason soldiers vote predominantly Republican is due to the induction process in which the soldiers’ self-image is deliberately stripped down so it can be rebuilt, a process which, indirectly, has a political flavor. Here’s an interesting study someone should do: find the political leanings of people about to go into the military, then find those same people after one year in the military and ask the same questions. Because I have trouble understanding why people who are so abused and mistreated by Republicans vote for them so enthusiastically.

As General Wesley Clark said, “The Republicans do like weapons systems and Democrats like people.” He was being charitable, of course. The truth is, the Republicans in power don’t give a shit about the troops.

I have written before about the political art of shifting blame to others: when you’ve made a colossal blunder and it threatens your political career or agenda, if reporters ask you if you made an error, then twist the question to make it appear like they are blaming an honorable group of people. Reagan did this when the Marine barracks were blown up in Lebanon, making it appear that any accusation of wrongdoing was equal to dishonoring the soldiers who died, saying their deaths were in vain. In my prior article on the subject, I noted that a FOX reporter tried the same thing on Wesley Clark, implying that if Clark said that Iraq was a sideshow and Bush was missing the real target in Afghanistan, that was equal to belittling the troops in Iraq.

The Bush campaign is in full-gear blame-shifting mode this week. First was the criticism that Bush outsourced the hunt for bin Laden to the local warlords, who let bin Laden escape. Searching for a way to dismiss this cogent and damaging criticism, Bush said:

Now my opponent is throwing out the wild claim that he knows where bin Laden was in the fall of 2001, and that our military passed up the chance to get him in Tora Bora. This is an unjustified criticism of our military commanders in the field. This is the worst kind of Monday-morning quarterbacking.

In other words, if there was a blunder made, it wasn’t me, it was the generals. And how dare he criticize the generals!

But they didn’t stop there. Ed Gillespie, the chairman of the RNC, sent out a mass email to millions of people, claiming that the ultra-super-liberal media was at it yet again, daring to report that the explosives in Iraq were looted after the invasion, when in fact American troops found the cache had been looted already, on Saddam Hussein’s watch, and that an NBC News crew had confirmed it, therefore making Kerry’s criticism and the press coverage of it a howling outrage.

Of course, he was wrong: the troops only stayed at al Qaqaa for the night, they did not look for the weapons (and would not have been qualified to make that determination anyway), and the NBC crew in fact contradicted the claim that the explosives had been found already missing. CNN’s report of the NBC team and the soldiers finding the weapons gone was not even based on an NBC report, it was in fact based on a Matt Drudge story, and we all know how reliable he can be. Josh Marshall is all over the story.

But the point in this entry is that Gillespie used this blame-shifting technique; note carefully the words in bold, as well as Gillespie’s careful use of quotation marks:

John Kerry seized on the New York Times headline to launch a political attack on President Bush, saying U.S. troops “failed to guard those stockpiles” and that is “one of the great blunders” of the war.

Senator Kerry and the New York Times leave the impression that these weapons went missing recently and U.S. troops were derilict in their duty to guard the stockpile — neither of which is true.

Not only does this shift the blame to the troops instead of the president, but it also carefully misquotes Kerry, whose original quote was:

After being warned about the danger of major stockpiles of explosives in Iraq, this president failed to guard those stockpiles. … Now we know our country and our troops are less safe because this president failed to do the basics, this is one of the great blunders of Iraq, one of the great blunders of this administration. The incredible incompetence of this president and this administration has put our troops at risk and put this country at greater risk than we ought to be.

Notice Gillespie’s careful and intentional editing of Kerry’s quote, cutting it off just so he can take the blame Kerry puts squarely on Bush, and make it appear like Kerry is criticizing the troops. When in fact, Kerry not once said it was the fault of the troops, and quite clearly blamed the Bush administration, not once but repeatedly–kind of hard for Gillespie to miss.

We know these people are lying bastards, folks… but it’s hard not to use even stronger language when you see such blatant lies such as these–not to mention cowardly attempts to hide behind honorable people in order to save your own sorry political ass.

Of Matt Drudge’s three abortive attempts to smear John Kerry earlier this year (the first two were the fake Botox and Jane Fonda stories), the most famed was the charge that Kerry had had an affair with an “intern” named Alexandra Polier. The story was false, of course, but that didn’t stop Drudge, a boatload of conservative pundits and a wave of tabloid reporters from sinking their teeth into it and acting like it was real.

Now it’s time for Polier to have her say. In a six-page story in the New York Metro, Polier gives an exhaustive account of the story, from her first meeting with Kerry to the genesis of the rumor and finally, an interview with Matt Drudge. The story, told in a light that makes neither side of the political spectrum appear very attractive, gives a personal account of how she weathered the story, and then how she went about investigating its origins.

She describes how she met Kerry in Switzerland, then attended a fundraiser where she met Kerry’s finance director whom she later dated. But her relationship to Kerry was nothing more than a few public encounters, never alone with him. And then the rumor struck.

Though my name wasn’t mentioned in the initial Drudge “exclusive,” it made its first appearance in the British tabloid The Sun on Friday, February 13. The article, by one Brian Flynn, referred to Kerry as a SLEAZEBALL in the headline and said I was 24 (didn’t I wish). It purported to quote my father at home in Pennsylvania discussing the senator, saying, “I think he’s a sleazeball.” The article also claimed to quote my mother as saying Kerry had once chased after me to be on his campaign. My mother was not even home when Flynn called, and Flynn didn’t tell my father—who at this stage was unaware of the Drudge allegations—that he was interviewing him. Instead, he presented himself as a friend trying to get hold of me to talk about John Kerry. My father, a Republican, who believed Kerry had flip-flopped on various issues, said, ‘Oh, that sleazeball.’ ” Here’s how it reappeared in Flynn’s piece: “There is no evidence the pair had an affair, but her father, Terry, 56, said: ‘I think he’s a sleazeball.’ ” Drudge quickly linked to The Sun’s interview.

By that time, Polier had already moved to Nairobi to be with her new fiancé. There, she was mostly trapped in her fiancé’s home as swarms of reporters amassed outside, desperate for some kind of story, offering anyone who had a photo of her massive amounts of money.

When she finally issued an official denial, the story began to die down, and eventually, Polier decided to start investigating the story behind the story. Interestingly, she found one of the earliest reports to have been on a blog, some guy who had posted a vague rumor which was then picked up by reporters. One reporter, who like the others has spent weeks looking into it and found nothing, told her, “We shook the tree. A bunch of names fell out, and yours had the most flesh to it.” Furthermore, Polier reports on the genesis of the infamous Clark comment that Drudge reported:

Drudge claimed Clark himself had told reporters on his campaign bus that Kerry was going to “implode” over a scandal, but when I called Wesley Clark Jr., a screenwriter in L.A., who had helped out on his father’s campaign, he told me Drudge had ignored the context of his father’s quote. “He was reacting to the latest issue of The National Enquirer, which had just run a front-page story about Kerry and possible scandals, when he said that.”

In other words, Clark was reportedly only commenting on the rumor itself, not providing any personal knowledge of the matter–a fact ignored by Drudge.

The story quickly gained steam, however, as Bush was under attack for his National Guard record, and conservatives were hungry for any scandal to throw in the opposite direction. “Rush Limbaugh spent the first hour of his program discussing Kerry’s ‘affair’ with his 10 million listeners. Dozens of conservative commentators followed suit.”

Polier tracked down the reporter from The Sun, and tried to pin him to the wall for fabricating a quote from her mother and taking out of context a remark by her father, “evidence” which seemed to give the story weight when it in fact had none.

“Why did you quote my mother when she wasn’t even home?” I persisted.

“I really can’t talk about this right now, Alex,” he said.

When I finally tracked him down the following week, he was brusque and told me to go through The Sun’s PR office. I asked him about my mother again, but he kept saying, “Sorry, Alex, proper channels.”

Of course, she never got through to him. But she did get through to Drudge, who told her, “In retrospect, I should have had a sentence saying, ‘There is no evidence to tie Alex to John Kerry.’ I should have put that,” and then blamed the Wesley Clark quote for pushing him forward.

All in all, a very informative article, one which outlines the serpentine and often messy path a rumor takes from the mists of obscurity to the front pages of the world press.

Watch out, the professional dirty-tricks teams are beginning to show their colors.

Kerry has already withstood three dirty-tricks attacks, all of those coming from Matt Drudge. The first was the Botox scam, where Drudge chose two groups of photos–one where Kerry had his eyebrows raised and was lit from above, accentuating his forehead wrinkles, and another group where Kerry had his eyebrows lowered, had a relaxed expression, and was photographed with straight-on flash lighting, thus de-accentuating the wrinkles. Drudge then called these evidence that Kerry had Botox treatments. The charges were ridiculously false, of course.

Drudge’s second attempt was to try to frame Kerry as being diabolically in league with “Hanoi Jane” Fonda. The evidence? A photo of Kerry in an audience standing several rows back and many meters away from Fonda, two years before she went to Hanoi. The fraud was initially taken as serious when another photo of Kerry and Fonda on stage next to each other was discovered, except that photo turned out to be a fake. The frame-up died a silent, withering death.

Drudge’s final attempt was his most bold: a claim that Kerry had had an affair with a woman who worked for the Associated Press, labeled an “intern,” who “fled to Africa” to escape the scandal; Drudge claimed this was being seriously investigated by several major news agencies, and claimed that three reporters had revealed to him that Wesley Clark, in an off-the-record comment, had claimed that Kerry would “implode over an intern scandal.” Well, the intern was not an intern, there was no affair, the woman’s parents, who were quoted as saying Kerry was a “scumbag” said nothing of the sort and planned to vote for him, and the woman had gone to Africa to be with her fiance. And the Clark quote was fake as well.

That was strike three for Drudge. I don’t know if he’s tried to put any more whoppers out there, but if he ever does, it is doubtful that anyone but the GOP faithful will take him as anything other than a sad joke.

Time for the next batter: the real dirty tricks artists. And they’ve just taken two swings at the plate.

First was an attempt to silence the public opposition with a letter to TV stations “urging” them to yank ads critical of Bush. The letter, fired off by the Republican National Committee (RNC) counsel Jill Holtzman Vogel, claimed that ads produced by the liberal advocacy group “MoveOn.org” violate federal campaign laws. The letter from the RNC chief lawyer name-dropped the FCC in a threatening manner, obviously intended to scare the stations into pulling the ads immediately.

MoveOn.org drew attention a short while ago when it put out the call for Americans to come up with “Bush in 30 Seconds” ads, designed to showcase the damage done by Bush, and reasons why he should not be re-elected. Many ads were submitted, a great many making salient points in both entertaining and sometimes poignant ways. These ads have been running on cable for a while, and MoveOn tried to get one aired during the Super Bowl–but CBS shot it down, claiming that it did not air “advocacy ads.” But recently, MoveOn has spent $1.4 million of small-denomination donations to air the ads nationally, with another $1 million coming soon. In steps the RNC, trying their hardest to distort the law and get TV stations to pull opposition ads while at the same time trying to smear the other side, not being able to fight on the actual issues themselves.

The RNC lawyer claims that MoveOn had to have used donations that exceeded the legal limit and pointed out big donations from George Soros and Steven Bing, and hinted that MoveOn could not possibly cover the ads with smaller donations only. But the letter is crafted in such a way that it does not actually name specific figures or provide any actual proof of wrongdoing–the closest it comes in actuality is that vague and unsupported claim that there are not enough small donations, and otherwise quotes a lot of legalese to make it sound like there’s an illegality. MoveOn, however, immediately pointed out that they have received $10 million in small donations, and points out that the RNC is distorting the law in order to scare FCC-regulated broadcasters into silencing the president’s critics.

So strike one. Next comes the second pitch, a wild throw, this in the form of a bizarre accusation against Kerry himself. The claim is that a Harvard Crimson reporter, some 30 odd years ago, trailed Kerry for a time and learned that Kerry had asked for a student deferment to study in Paris for a year, but was turned down, and that in response to that, Kerry volunteered for the Navy. Reported by the right-wing Telegraph news agency in the U.K., it quotes none other than veteran Republican dirty-tricks master Lucianne Goldberg as saying, “This means that Kerry didn’t jump into all that heroic service until he was pushed, and it is a very nice piece of information.” Republican strategists tagged this story as somehow canceling out Bush’s evading Vietnam by joining the National Guard.

That reaction is not just bizarre, but utterly insane. Those two cases are equal? Bush asked for, and got, student deferments all the way through Yale, and only after he had finished them and no more were forthcoming, did he use privilege to jump over 500 people in line and get the red-carpet welcome into the Texas ANG, his golden ticket out of Vietnam service–and after savoring several luxuries awarded solely for being the son of a politician, he went AWOL and then got out early. And let’s not even talk about Cheney’s string of deferments, because he had “other priorities” than serving the nation at that time.

Kerry, on the other hand, asked for one deferment to study, did not get it, and volunteered for actual duty in combat. And then he served in combat, saved lives, got shot, performed heroically, was awarded some of the highest decorations there are, and came back a veteran. And that’s the same thing?

Fortunately, it looks like this fell so spectacularly flat that Republicans have taken their hands off it like a red-hot potato (excuse me, “potatoe”). After the initial release of the story, few are jumping on it any more.

Strike two.

Anyone want to wager on what the third pitch will be, and how the RNC will strike out with it?

After that, it’s either Bush or Cheney left to come up to bat, and they’ll have no one on base to clean up with. Pity.

First it was Botox. Then it was Jane Fonda. Then Drudge seemed to score big when he “broke” the story about Kerry and an “intern.” He claimed it started when Wesley Clark told a dozen reporters off the record that Kerry would implode over an intern, and three of those reporters–never named, never confirmed–told Drudge they absolutely confirmed it was true. Then he claimed that several big news outfits were “investigating” it (what, they heard about it and found it was baseless?), and reported it as if it were then well-established fact–and millions of conservatives across the nation accepted it as such.

But the really telling thing was that everything hinged on Drudge. The Clark story, the news outfits reporting on it, the entire story, in fact, every last detail, came directly from Drudge. No evidence, no corroboration. It sounded like maybe there was something when the girl’s parents called Kerry a sleazeball, even though they denied the affair in the same breath.

And guess what?

You got it. It’s all fake. To the last drop. Kerry denied it. The woman’s parents denied it. Now the woman, Alex Polier, denies it.. Drudge’s story that she “fled” to Africa seem false as well; she apparently now lives in Africa, with her fiance. Clark endorsed Kerry, making it fairly certain the reports of his statement were false. The woman’s parents now even say they’ll be voting for Kerry, and when you note the “sleazeball” quote was only sourced by “The Sun,” a British tabloid reeking of sleaze itself, you begin to wonder if even that quote wasn’t manufactured. And still not a shred of evidence.

And golly if conservatives aren’t still running with the story! (That includes nearly all the conservatives on the forums I frequent.) And Drudge himself has moved on to even more bizarre sleaze, now claiming that Polier had an affair with Kerry Finance Director Peter Maroney. Oh, those goofy right-wingers.

But hang in there folks. So Drudge has struck out, and there’s one down on the Right-wing line-up. But this is just the first out of the first inning. We got nine more months of this to go. To buckle up, and make sure you’re wearing your foulies–the mud and sleaze will be thick and heavy from Right field in this game.

Okay, here is some live (and therefore sloppy) reporting on what is happening.

Mr. Skip Orr speaks for John Kerry; a lifelong Democrat, he nonetheless served in the Reagan administration, and tells that the Bush administration, particularly what he calls the “Bush cabal” are strong neo-conservatives, way farther right than Reagan and his people ever were. He spoke of a nightmare–January 2005 and Bush is at the Rotunda, with his trademark smirk, taking the oath. Unfortunately, probably because he was trying to save time, he didn’t say too much, didn’t speak too long.

The rep for Wesley Clark, Sven Serrano, has stepped up and presented three quick video commercials, and made a very good presentation. As might be expected, everyone is wowed by Clark’s credentials. But with his low numbers in recent primaries and caucuses, there are probably a lot of people who would like to cote for him but won’t. (He later got 11 of the 140 votes cast.)

Bob Scheele came to represent John Edwards. He gave a pretty straightforward campaign stump speech, fairly much in line with the basic Democratic party lines, as with everyone else. But like Clark, behind Kerry in the voting so far, probably a lot of people are wishing he weren’t quite so vocal against taking a vice-presidential spot should he eventually drop out.

The Dean people are a very strong presence here. Lauren Shannon (of Fujimama’s) gave the presentation, with a nice TV spot and a good letter from Dean. She spoke about the Dean people from Japan and all over who came to Iowa to help with the Dean campaign. And of course, there was the inevitable mention of Dean as the outsider, and particularly as the one who protested and stood up against Bush first, and got this whole ball of wax rolling as it has. The Dean people are indeed committed, a lot of fire in their bellies, but the Dean campaign is lagging after not having won a single state yet, and with Dean so far behind in Wisconsin, which he has pretty much tagged now as a do-or-die state. But this is really a Dean stronghold here, and a lot of votes are going to Dean. (Dean later got the most votes, though because this is a caucus, he got one of three delegates.)

Wayne Parton speaks for Dennis Kucinich, although he was not the official representative–so he read from a script. Told the story of Kucinich, which was impressive enough. Youngest mayor of Cleveland, college instructor, and Congressman from Ohio, replacing the Republican incumbent. Also fought against the “Enron-like” takeover of Cleveland’s power system. He also spoke well on how Kucinich voted against the Patriot Act, against the war in Iraq–and spoke honestly about his chances, but pointed out rightly that Clinton was way down in January, and that getting to the convention and contributing to the party plank is important. This “unofficial” rep spoke on and on, but he said great things–and was eventually shouted off the podium for time.

John McCreery has given us a reminder that the important thing is not just electing a president, but that getting twelve representatives, two senators, and one president–and even then, it is just the beginning.

The official count is in–156 people are here today, more than tripling past turnouts, and everyone is energized.

The straw poll is now being counted, and the figures coming in soon.

There was also discussion of how Americans abroad can vote–and according to Mr. McCreery, we should be able to vote for President, Vice President, and for members of Congress. The laws and regulations are laid out at www.fvap.gov.

Brent has the figures, I think, and is ready to announce the count: instant gratification–from the least: Al Sharpton got 1 vote; Wesley Clark with 11 votes; Uncommitted with 12 votes; Edwards with 15; Mr. Kucinich with 18; Kerry got 43; and Howard Dean came out with 52. Only groups with at least 15% of the straw poll can get candidates–you need 23%. However, another relevant rule is that we only get to elect three delegates to Scotland, so that three groups only can elect delegates. In the case of more than three viable groups, the three largest groups get the delegates. So there will be some horse trading as groups get together and talk about how votes get assigned and swapped and bartered and so forth.

More as it comes in. And I’ll clean this up later.

My own choice among the Democratic candidates has become Wesley Clark. For a beginning of an idea, you might take a look at the biographical short “American Son,” similar in ways to Clinton’s “The Man from Hope” film made during his own campaign.

Clark appealed to me from the beginning, with his focus on people (“Republicans like weapons systems; Democrats like the soldiers”), his willingness to stand and fight when the media gave him crap, and the fact that he so clearly saw through Bush and has not been shy to speak about it. His stance on the issues is laudable, especially his willingness to reform the tax system–cutting taxes for the middle and lower classes, and adding a 5% increase on millionaires. He is serious about education, is critical of the Patriot Act, and is on the right side of health care, labor, gun control, the environment and many other issues.

Furthermore, his personal abilities and accomplishments are impressive; his intelligence and drive are extraordinary, his willingness to serve and sacrifice admirable, his career remarkable. And think of this highly honorable, incredibly intelligent four-star general going up against AWOL draft-dodger Bush… it almost makes one giddy to think.

Another feather in his cap from my point of view is his endorsement by Michael Moore, who has been watching Clark carefully and whose judgment a lot of Americans trust.

You will not see much about Clark in Iowa, where he pulled out (his late entry into the race meant he missed too much time in that state), but he is waiting to make a surprise showing–he is now second in New Hampshire, 23% to Dean’s 32% and rising–he has pulled far ahead of Kerry and stands to challenge Dean on his home turf in New England. We will definitely be hearing more about Clark. Time Magazine has called Clark “Dean 2.0,” and for good reason–he’s better, stronger, faster, the six-million-dollar candidate, so to speak. As much as Dean seems like a strong candidate, Clark seems stronger–and less assailable in many ways. But Clark’s message, though public, has not been clearly or loudly heard yet. We’ll see how it goes.

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It is not surprising that the Bush White House pulled the plug on Katherine Harris’ hopes to become the next Senator from Florida–clearly, in this presidential election year, the last thing that Bush wants is for people to be reminded of how Bush stole the last election by spotlighting the woman responsible for stealing it for him, seriously abusing her power to do so.

The lame excuse for her not running? She has too much important work in the House of Representatives. Riiiiiight.

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Bush, in the meantime, is not having a much of a picnic in public opinion. His artificial boost from the capture of Saddam Hussein has evaporated, he is back down to around 50%, and shows as two points behind an unspecified Democratic candidate, according to a new CBS/NYT poll.

This should not come as too much of a surprise considering that the capture of Hussein has not led to much at all–though I am still convinced that Bush is holding back Hussein until a time when he can take full political advantage of him, trotting him out on the stage to earn Bush extra points and take attention away from the fact that our soldiers are getting killed as much now as they were before Hussein got nabbed.

Additionally, Bush now faces the rather predictable issue of free elections and sovereignty in Iraq: 60% of the country is Shi’ite Muslim, and their religious leader is now insisting that free democratic elections be held. Bush is pushing for a caucus system, but it will not be easy to placate the Shi’ites, who can certainly make a lot of trouble. If free elections are held, then you can expect things to go in a way America most definitely does not want to see.

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Some of that fundamentalism may already be showing in Iraq. Under Saddam Hussein, there was at least a secular state, and women had rights and legal protections not commonly found in the Arab world. But the governing council–backed by the Bush administration–has voted to bring back the Sharia, traditional Islamic law, which would deal a serious blow to those rights and legal protections that Iraqi women have had for the past four decades.

Bush’s representative in Iraq, administrator Paul Bremer, has to approve such decisions; it is suspected that he will reject it–but if even the relatively moderate governing council will try to do this now, what will happen after America leaves?

You know the news, of course, unless you’ve been hiding in a “spider-hole” in Iraq. Bush is presently on the air, doing his expected crowing over this PR boon. The question is, what impact will it have? Bush just announced that, now that Saddam is in custody, the Baathist uprising is over, and there is no hope for their return to power. That, of course, is just slightly jumping the gun. While Saddam may have been moving from location to location, it is highly unlikely that he was frequenting some command and control center and leading the struggle personally; and it is dangerous to assume that Saddam is necessary to any uprising, as if there is no other leader the Baathists could follow, or that if they do maintain such intense loyalty to Saddam and not just their own power structure, or that the imprisonment of Saddam might not prompt them to step up their attacks.

There is a settling that will occur. Bush now has Saddam as a plaything and can do what he wants with him, parading him out before tribunals, stringing out trials until the next election, or, if he prefers, forcing a quick trial and execution. But then there is the bloodshed in Iraq, and if our soldiers continue to die, Bush could find Saddam to be, well, irrelevant. Saddam’s capture will definitely give Bush a short-term boost, but the benefit will only be maintained if–as we all certainly hope–this somehow stops the Baathist attacks, settles the question of WMDs, and allows Iraq to stabilize so we can stop spending so much money and bring our troops home. But if Saddam stays silent, the WMD, if any, stay missing, and the attacks continue, then capturing Saddam may be just as relevant to the war in Iraq as ESPN’s firing Rush Limbaugh was relevant to the NFL.

And that brings us back to a larger topic, which is the relevance of Iraq to America; was it really necessary to go in there in the first place? Was this not, as Wesley Clark has suggested, a side-show to the “war on terror”? But then again, we have all known from the start that the “war on terror” is one of those Orwellian endless wars; we can never hope to get rid of terrorists, alas.

The best we can hope for now is that Iraq settles down and we stop losing so many of our people, that we stop killing others. I am not one to wish for calamity for the sake of bringing down a politician I hate; I would rather see Bush re-elected than have Iraq go on as it is (as intensely painful as four more years of Bush might be). But experience has taught me to be a bit cautious about celebrating a victory when only a superficial goal has been achieved. The mission has still not been accomplished quite yet.