Eschew Obfuscation

January 20, 2009

2009-01-23T12:57:00.000-08:00

"With Malice Toward None"

2008-11-16T09:55:00.000-08:00

From Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Obama! - Pattern Recognition in Newpapers

2008-11-03T10:02:00.000-08:00

Editor & Publisher has a list of the newspapers that have endorsed Barack Obama or John McCain. In 2004 John Kerry had a small edge over George Bush. But in 2008, Obama has the endorsements of 240 papers compared to 114 for John McCain. The difference in circulation is even larger - 21 million for Obama and 7 million for McCain.

In 2004, E&P's Greg Mitchell correctly forecast the winner in 14 of 15 key states simply by looking at the endorsements in those states. So what is he forecasting for tomorrow?

Obama Will Win Easily Tomorrow -- At Least Based on Newspaper Backing in Key Swing States!

By Greg Mitchell

Published: November 03, 2008 12:20

NEW YORK Everyone's making predictions on Tuesday's election with, as usual, the key "swing" or "battleground" or "tossup" states getting the most attention. Experts, or just plain gasbags, can juggle all sorts of information, from reports on the ground to one of seemingly 500 polls. But here at E&P, we do it a little differently on election eve: We predict the winner in key states purely on the basis on newspaper endorsements in that state.

Before you laugh too hard, consider this: In 2004, I did the same thing in this space -- and picked 14 of the 15 tight races correctly. Only missed on Florida (still waiting for that recount).

So, with perhaps undue confidence, allow me to take the plunge once again. We have been tallying endorsements here, with much national attention, for the past weeks, with an Obama landslide in that measure nationally. But what about in the specific states?

Using this strict measure, I predict Obama will take 11 out of 13 battlegrounds, losing in West Virginia and in Virginia (though I expect he will end up winning there).

Here is a rundown, in no particular order. Again, my picks are based purely on newspaper endorsements -- both the number and the size/influence of the papers in each candidate's column.
***

PENNSYLVANIA
Forget McCain "narrowing the gap." He lost both big Philly dailies and split in Pittsburgh--gaining the lesser paper there. Obama has taken the smaller dailies by 2-1 with the papers in York, Easton and Erie, among others, switching from Bush. Winner: OBAMA

OHIO
In 2004, Bush won because he nailed Columbus -- and Cleveland sat it out. This year, Columbus remains in the GOP column but the Plain Dealer went for Obama. The Cincy paper again went Republican. But once again, Obama takes the smaller papers 2-1, with about half dozen switching over from Bush. The Akron, Toledo, Dayton, Canton and Youngstown papers give this state to OBAMA.

WEST VIRGINIA
Papers in our soon-to-be updated list fully back McCAIN.

NORTH CAROLINA
We have to give Obama an upset here since he has in the bag all of the leading papers. A loss here would be embarrassing for...me. OBAMA.

COLORADO
We correctly gave this to Bush in 2004 largely because he won the Denver papers. This time around, the Post backed Obama and the Rocky managed to endorse no one. Obama does well elsewhere here, too, with some Bush flip-floppers. OBAMA.

FLORIDA
Will I blow this one again? Well, I will stick my neck out and give it to Obama, since, like Kerry in 2004, he dominates the editorial picks. But he only picked up one Bush paper that we know of (Naples) while losing one Kerry backer (Bradenton). Still, I have to be faithful to my formula and pick OBAMA.

INDIANA
With the Indy Star begging off the GOP candidate and remaining neutral, the state leans OBAMA.

IOWA
Easy OBAMA win.

MISSOURI
I have to give this to OBAMA, too, as he held the likely papers and picked up a Bush switcher in Joplin.

NEVADA
The candidates split the two Vegas papers but Obama got Reno, so give this to him, too.

NEW HAMPSHIRE
Pretty much a toss up, but Obama leads by 5 dailies to 3 in our most recent count, so he can have that one, too.

NEW MEXICO
Ditto.

VIRGINIA
Well, I am probably going to take it on the chin here. The endorsements, big and small, definitely favor McCAIN.

OoooooBAMA!

2008-11-02T10:32:00.001-08:00

Tip of the hat to Chris Eaton who sent the link for Yes We Carve!

Obama: One on One

2008-10-31T18:09:00.000-07:00

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I like the counterpoint with my last post. Apparently, Obama can connect with 100,000 people or just one. I think the photo above is also in Missouri but taken yesterday. The photo below was taken in Pittsburg.

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100,000 Rally In St. Louis for Obama

2008-10-18T12:48:00.000-07:00

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Endorsement Battle: 6,299,363 to 1,502,163

2008-10-17T13:45:00.000-07:00

Editor & Publisher is keeping track of newspaper endorsement in the Presidential race. Today was another big day for Barack Obama who picked up both the LA Times and the Chicago Tribune.

NEW YORK The Obama-Biden ticket maintains its strong lead in the race for newspaper endorsements, picking up 12 more papers in the past day, including the giant Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune on Friday afternoon (see separate story). This brings his lead over McCain-Palin by this measure to over 3-1 so far, at 51-16, including most of the major papers that have decided so far. In contrast, John Kerry barely edged George W. Bush in endorsements in 2004, by about 220 to 205.

The readership of the 51 newspapers backing Obama now stands at 6,299,363 daily circulation. He gained two biggies yesterday in The Washington Post and San Francisco Chronicle and today picked up the Modesto Bee in addition to the L.A. Times, plus La Prenza and La Opinion.

The Columbian in Washington was an unexpected win for Obama, since the newspaper endorsed President Bush in the 2004 election. Obama has now picked up at least seven "flip flops" of this type.

The Mountain Valley News in Colorado adds to McCain’s endorsement list, bringing his total to 16 newspapers. The daily circulation of his newspapers now stands at 1,502,163.

Who Do You Want At The Wheel?

2008-10-16T12:37:00.000-07:00

Clay Bennett

John McCain - The Incredible Shrinking Man

2008-10-13T09:22:00.000-07:00

On a day that saw 17 newspapers endorse Barack Obama for President (just two for McCain), the St. Louis Post Dispatch was pretty damn blunt!

Over the past nine months, Mr. Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, has emerged as the only truly transformative candidate in the race. In the crucible that is a presidential campaign, his intellect, his temperament and equanimity under pressure consistently have been impressive. He has surrounded himself with smart, capable advisers who have helped him refine thorough, nuanced policy positions.

In a word, Mr. Obama has been presidential.

Meanwhile, Mr. McCain, the senior senator from Arizona, became the incredible shrinking man. He shrank from his principled stands in favor of a humane immigration policy. He shrank from his universal condemnation of torture and his condemnation of the politics of smear.

He even shrank from his own campaign slogan, “Country First,” by selecting the least qualified running mate since the Swedenborgian shipbuilder Arthur Sewall ran as William Jennings Bryan’s No. 2 in 1896.

Socialism For the Rich and Free Enterprise for the Rest!

2008-10-12T13:55:00.000-07:00

Edward Sorel

In the current Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchins says:

In a statement on the huge state-sponsored salvage of private bankruptcy that was first proposed last September, a group of Republican lawmakers, employing one of the very rudest words in their party’s thesaurus, described the proposed rescue of the busted finance and discredited credit sectors as “socialistic.” There was a sort of half-truth to what they said. But they would have been very much nearer the mark — and rather more ironic and revealing at their own expense — if they had completed the sentence and described the actual situation as what it is: “socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the rest.”

"Be Logical, Captain"

2008-10-08T15:27:00.001-07:00

Drew Friedman

Galloping Gallup!

2008-10-08T11:37:00.000-07:00

2008 Gallup, Inc.

These results, based on Oct. 5-7 polling, are the best for Obama during the campaign, both in terms of his share of the vote and the size of his lead over McCain. (To view the complete trend since March 7, 2008, click here.)

Nearly all interviews in today's report were conducted before Tuesday night's town hall style debate in Nashville. Any movement in voter preferences as a result of this debate will be apparent in coming days.

Voter preferences seem to have stabilized for the moment, as Obama has held a double-digit lead over McCain in each of the last three individual nights of polling.

The Choice

2008-10-04T14:02:00.001-07:00

Illustration by Tom Bachtell

The Editors of The New Yorker have endorsed Barack Obama.

The incumbent Administration has distinguished itself for the ages. The Presidency of George W. Bush is the worst since Reconstruction, so there is no mystery about why the Republican Party—which has held dominion over the executive branch of the federal government for the past eight years and the legislative branch for most of that time—has little desire to defend its record, domestic or foreign. The only speaker at the Convention in St. Paul who uttered more than a sentence or two in support of the President was his wife, Laura. Meanwhile, the nominee, John McCain, played the part of a vaudeville illusionist, asking to be regarded as an apostle of change after years of embracing the essentials of the Bush agenda with ever-increasing ardor.

The Republican disaster begins at home. Even before taking into account whatever fantastically expensive plan eventually emerges to help rescue the financial system from Wall Street’s long-running pyramid schemes, the economic and fiscal picture is bleak. During the Bush Administration, the national debt, now approaching ten trillion dollars, has nearly doubled. Next year’s federal budget is projected to run a half-trillion-dollar deficit, a precipitous fall from the seven-hundred-billion-dollar surplus that was projected when Bill Clinton left office. Private-sector job creation has been a sixth of what it was under President Clinton. Five million people have fallen into poverty. The number of Americans without health insurance has grown by seven million, while average premiums have nearly doubled. Meanwhile, the principal domestic achievement of the Bush Administration has been to shift the relative burden of taxation from the rich to the rest. For the top one per cent of us, the Bush tax cuts are worth, on average, about a thousand dollars a week; for the bottom fifth, about a dollar and a half. The unfairness will only increase if the painful, yet necessary, effort to rescue the credit markets ends up preventing the rescue of our health-care system, our environment, and our physical, educational, and industrial infrastructure.

At the same time, a hundred and fifty thousand American troops are in Iraq and thirty-three thousand are in Afghanistan. There is still disagreement about the wisdom of overthrowing Saddam Hussein and his horrific regime, but there is no longer the slightest doubt that the Bush Administration manipulated, bullied, and lied the American public into this war and then mismanaged its prosecution in nearly every aspect. The direct costs, besides an expenditure of more than six hundred billion dollars, have included the loss of more than four thousand Americans, the wounding of thirty thousand, the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis, and the displacement of four and a half million men, women, and children. Only now, after American forces have been fighting for a year longer than they did in the Second World War, is there a glimmer of hope that the conflict in Iraq has entered a stage of fragile stability.

The indirect costs, both of the war in particular and of the Administration’s unilateralist approach to foreign policy in general, have also been immense. The torture of prisoners, authorized at the highest level, has been an ethical and a public-diplomacy catastrophe. At a moment when the global environment, the global economy, and global stability all demand a transition to new sources of energy, the United States has been a global retrograde, wasteful in its consumption and heedless in its policy. Strategically and morally, the Bush Administration has squandered the American capacity to counter the example and the swagger of its rivals. China, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other illiberal states have concluded, each in its own way, that democratic principles and human rights need not be components of a stable, prosperous future. At recent meetings of the United Nations, emboldened despots like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran came to town sneering at our predicament and hailing the “end of the American era.”

I recommend that you read it all.

The Bush/McCain Record

2008-09-16T11:49:00.000-07:00

Not much to add.

"I'm John McCain and I Approved this Mess"

2008-09-14T14:53:00.000-07:00

Clay Bennett

George W. Bush - Stealing Second

2008-08-31T07:59:00.000-07:00

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland brought down the house at the Democratic National Convention Tuesday night with a crack about President Bush -- and John McCain -- that harked back to one of the sharpest verbal stones ever thrown at Bush's father.

"You know, it was once said of the first George Bush that he was born on third base and thought he'd hit a triple," Strickland said. "Well, with the 22 million new jobs and the budget surplus Bill Clinton left behind, George W. Bush came into office on third base, and then he stole second."

As the crowd roar, Strickland added, "And John McCain cheered him every step of the way."

The first version of the line was delivered with a wry smile at the 1988 Democratic convention in Atlanta by the first President Bush's fellow Texan Ann Richards, then the state's treasurer and later its governor.

From the Boston Globe.

History, Hurricanes and Birthdays

2008-08-29T12:28:00.000-07:00

Newseum

Last night, Barack Obama made history in Denver. He accepted the nomination of the Democratic Party for President of the United States. Today's front page of The Times-Picayune as featured at the Newseum is shown above - both celebrating Obama's nomination and warning of the approach of Hurricane Gustav.

National Hurricane Center

Today is also John McCain's 72nd birthday. Here is a photo of him celebrating three years ago with George Bush - while New Orleans was drowning.

Firedoglake

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Obamacans and Foreign Policy

2008-08-12T19:46:00.000-07:00

In tomorrow's Financial Times you can read why some prominent Republicans are endorsing Barack Obama.

Foreign policy lures 'Obamacans'

By Edward Luce in Washington

Published: August 13 2008 03:00 | Last updated: August 13 2008 03:00

Barack Obama yesterday netted the endorsement of three prominent Republicans, including Jim Leach and Lincoln Chafee, both of whom lost their congressional seats to Democratic opponents in the 2006 mid-term elections.

The announcement boosts the ranks of so-called "Obamacans" and is likely to fuel speculation about the possibility of bigger names - such as Colin Powell, former secretary of state, and Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator for Nebraska - also endorsing the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Describing Mr Obama's call for change as "more renewal than departure" and thus in line with traditional conservative principles, Mr Leach said: "This is simply not a time for politics as usual . . . I have no doubt that a lot of Republicans will be attracted to Obama in spite of the flaws in this year's primary process."

The two Republicans, along with Rita Hauser, a former White House intelligence adviser, stressed foreign policy as their principal motivation for endorsing Mr Obama. Ms Hauser described as "bellicose" the response of John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, to Russia's conflict with Georgia.

Most "Obamacans" come from the so-called realist wing of the Republican party which has fallen into deep disenchantment with the -foreign policy of George W. Bush, the president.

Some have stressed their hope that Mr Obama would take a more aggressive approach to solving the Israeli-Palestinian crisis even though the Democrat has taken a strongly pro-Israel line. All said they supported Mr Obama's pledge to talk to US adversaries, including Iran.

"There is a deepening split between the traditional Nixonian realist wing of the Republican party and the neo-conservatives that has become more pronounced with John McCain's hardline anti-Russia rhetoric," said Steve Clemons at the New America Foundation.

"I have good reason to believe that there will be other Republicans, such as James Baker [the former secretary of state], who may withhold endorsement from McCain rather than endorse Obama directly."

Electoral analysts say there is unlikely to be a large switch of Republican voters, although Mr Obama's endorsement by prominent Republicans could help sway independents into the Democratic column or encourage others to stay at home.

Mr McCain is working hard to win over hawkish Democrats to his camp, following his endorsement by Joe Lieberman, the former vice-presidential candidate, this year.

There is a possibility that both Mr McCain and Mr Obama could choose running mates from opposition ranks in a bid for centrist voters. Mr Hagel is thought to be an outside choice for Mr Obama's ticket and Mr Lieberman is on Mr McCain's shortlist. Mr Hagel is leaving the Senate in January.

John McCain - Mr. Excitement!

2008-08-12T12:36:00.000-07:00

Hat tip to Devilstower.

Ready To Lead?

2008-08-08T12:27:00.001-07:00

Clay Bennet

Fiscal Conservative?

2008-08-08T09:15:00.000-07:00

Steve Greenberg

John, I Am Your Father

2008-08-02T18:49:00.000-07:00

Tom Toles

Obama - A Reminder of Shared Destiny

2008-07-25T09:51:00.000-07:00

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This cover of today's International Herald Tribune published in Paris is from the Newseum.

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Jonathon Freeland writing in The Guardian (and also appearing on last night's Lehrer report) had this to say:

Taking what he calls his "improbable journey" to the heart of Europe, Barack Obama succeeded in closing down one of Berlin's main thoroughfares last night, luring the city's young in their tens of thousands to stand in the evening sunshine and hear him spin his dreams of hope - not for America this time, but for the whole world.

snip

Poetically, he reminded Berliners of what they would surely regard as their finest hours, their resilience during the blockade some 60 years ago - when the Soviet Union tried "to extinguish the last flame of freedom" - and the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, an event which, he said, opened the "doors of democracy" all over the world.

But the loudest applause came when Obama, however subtly, offered himself as the coming antidote to all that Germans, Europeans - and most non-Americans - have disliked about the Bush era.

After listing a series of global problems, from genocide in Darfur to loose nukes, he declared: "No one nation, no matter how large or how powerful, can defeat such challenges alone." It was a promise to end the unilateralism of the early Bush years and the crowd could not contain their delight. There was no less warmth when Obama explained his belief in "allies who will listen to each other, who will learn from each other, who will, above all, trust each other".

Again and again he uttered sentences that could never have come from the mouth of George Bush. "This is the moment to secure the peace of the world without nuclear weapons," he said. On Iraq, the aim was "to finally bring this war to a close".

He asked if today's generation was ready to seize the moment that was at hand. "Will we reject torture and stand for the rule of law?" he asked. "Will we welcome immigrants from different lands?" As for the threat of climate change, he spoke in language that could not have been more sweeping or epic: "This is the moment we must come together to save this planet."

snip

By common consent, last night - and the entire Obama week - has been a huge success, generating priceless images for TV consumption back home and helping the Democrat cross the credibility gap, making it easier for American voters to imagine him as a player on the world stage.

His team believes the notion that the US will regain the world's respect under a President Obama will help persuade many American voters to back him.

Last night's pictures from Berlin will have further discomfited John McCain, who has struggled for media oxygen during a week of near-constant coverage of his opponent's grand tour.

He complained on Fox News on Wednesday that he was barely getting a look in. "All I can do is be amused," he said manfully.

The Right Stuff?

2008-07-21T13:56:00.001-07:00

Add your own caption!

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Hat tip to Ben Smith at Politico.

The Right Time Frame for Withdrawal

2008-07-19T14:06:00.000-07:00

The German Magazine Spiegel Online International reports today that:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki supports US presidential candidate Barack Obama's plan to withdraw US troops from Iraq within 16 months. When asked in and interview with SPIEGEL when he thinks US troops should leave Iraq, Maliki responded "as soon as possible, as far as we are concerned." He then continued: "US presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."

snip

"So far the Americans have had trouble agreeing to a concrete timetable for withdrawal, because they feel it would appear tantamount to an admission of defeat," Maliki told SPIEGEL. "But that isn't the case at all. If we come to an agreement, it is not evidence of a defeat, but of a victory, of a severe blow we have inflicted on al-Qaida and the militias."

He also bemoaned the fact that Baghdad has little control over the US troops in Iraq. "It is a fundamental problem for us that it should not be possible, in my country, to prosecute offences or crimes committed by US soldiers against our population," Maliki said.

Imagine What We Could Have Done

2008-07-15T10:26:00.000-07:00

Here is part of the text of Obama's Iraq speech given today in Washington DC. Read it all here.

Imagine, for a moment, what we could have done in those days, and months, and years after 9/11.

We could have deployed the full force of American power to hunt down and destroy Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, the Taliban, and all of the terrorists responsible for 9/11, while supporting real security in Afghanistan.

We could have secured loose nuclear materials around the world, and updated a 20th century non-proliferation framework to meet the challenges of the 21st.

We could have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in alternative sources of energy to grow our economy, save our planet, and end the tyranny of oil.

We could have strengthened old alliances, formed new partnerships, and renewed international institutions to advance peace and prosperity.

We could have called on a new generation to step into the strong currents of history, and to serve their country as troops and teachers, Peace Corps volunteers and police officers.

We could have secured our homeland--investing in sophisticated new protection for our ports, our trains and our power plants.

We could have rebuilt our roads and bridges, laid down new rail and broadband and electricity systems, and made college affordable for every American to strengthen our ability to compete.

We could have done that.

Instead, we have lost thousands of American lives, spent nearly a trillion dollars, alienated allies and neglected emerging threats - all in the cause of fighting a war for well over five years in a country that had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.

"America, This Is Our Moment"

2008-06-04T08:51:00.000-07:00

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This headline in today's San Francisco Chronicle speaks for itself. You may want to check out the front pages of papers around the world at Newseum.

Below is a photo I saw on BAGNewsNotes by Scott Olson of Getty Images that really captures a moment.

Scott Olsen/Getty Images

Crosses of Lafayette - Memorial Day 2008

2008-05-29T18:02:00.000-07:00

Click To Enlarge

This doe and two fawns came to the Crosses of Lafayette on Memorial Day to pay their respects during the vigil to honor U.S. men and women who have perished while in military service to their country.

California Consolidates Behind Obama

2008-05-22T12:02:00.000-07:00

According to a new survey released by the Public Policy Institute of California, if the election were held today Obama is favored by 17 points over McCain by likely voters. By comparison, Clinton is favored by 12 points.

If the general election were held today, likely voters would favor Obama over McCain by 17 points (54% to 37%), an improvement for Obama since March (49% to 40%). Likely voters favor Clinton over McCain by 12 points (51% to 39%), an improvement for her also since March (46% to 43%).

U.S. News and World report summarizes:

SAN FRANCISCO—A new poll released today in California finds political momentum shifting dramatically toward Barack Obama—and away from both Hillary Clinton and John McCain—in the nation's most populous state. According to a survey conducted over the past 10 days by the Public Policy Institute of California, 59 percent of likely voters here now have a "favorable" impression of Democrat Obama, while a majority view both of the other candidates unfavorably. In a state whose Democratic primary Clinton won in February, 51 percent of voters now say they have an unfavorable opinion of her; 53 percent of voters feel the same way about Republican McCain.

Obama, meanwhile, seems to be making strides across nearly every constituency. If the general election were held today, 54 percent of Californians say they would vote for him, compared with 37 percent for McCain. That gap has widened by 8 points since March. Obama enjoys the support of more than 80 percent of Democrats here, along with over half (55 percent) of independents. He leads McCain among men and women and is viewed favorably by nearly 70 percent of Latinos—a powerful political group, experts note, not just in California but in several other western states, including Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada.

That Was Quick: Obama Lead at 16% Nationally

2008-05-19T16:27:00.001-07:00

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The pattern above is clear. Wonder if it's connected to this photo below?

Obama Rally in Portland, OR
Originally uploaded by Tom Turnbull

Gallup Daily Tracking Poll: Obama up by 11 over Clinton

2008-05-19T09:38:00.000-07:00

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On May 18, 2008, Gallup's daily tracking poll showed Obama's nationwide lead over Hillary Clinton widening.

Crosses of Lafayette: 4065

2008-05-14T23:04:00.000-07:00

Colette Swim-Headley, May 13, 2008

Cross Posted at The Crosses of Lafayette.

Disasters Around The World

2008-05-13T11:41:00.000-07:00

Clay Bennett

Clay Bennett may have moved to the Chattanooga Times Free Press but he is still the best.

Obama - The Die is Cast

2008-05-11T17:42:00.000-07:00

Photo by Alan Chin

Tip of the hat to Michael Shaw at BagNEWsNotes for posting this photo taken by Alan Chin in Westerville, Ohio, outside Columbus on March 2, 2008.

Clinton and the Superdelegates - "There's a pattern emerging here."

2008-05-09T22:29:00.000-07:00

New York Times

In today's New York Times, there is an annotated graph entitled "How Clinton Lost the Lead in Superdelegates" that mirrors the pattern of Hillary Clinton's primary run. She begins with a huge lead and all the advantages - in name recognition, in party connections and in money - but over time, she gets overtaken by that skinny kid with the funny name.

It is possible for reasonable people to disagree about the reasons but the trend is indisputable. As Hillary said in an interview with USA Today in a different context -

“There’s a pattern emerging here.”

Masters of War

2008-04-30T19:45:00.000-07:00

Karim Kadim/AP. Via Kansas City Star

I pulled this photo from BAGnewNotes.

April 29, 2008. Sadr City, Baghdad.

Above is yesterday's photo of two-year-old Ali Hussein, pulled from the bombed rubble of his home, who died shortly after in the hospital. It's the shot which could have, would have and otherwise should have woken up all the sheep and cast a fiery and pin-pointed attention on the urban carnage inflicted on an overcrowded, poverty-stricken, urban Baghdad slum by U.S. fighter bombers.

From Bob Dylan's Masters of War

You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins

Almost Great Horned Owls

2008-04-26T09:31:00.001-07:00

Photo by John Eaton

Taken at 1:15PM on the Claremont Canyon Trail in Berkeley, CA on Friday, April 25, 2008.

Another Clinton Pattern

2008-04-23T19:39:00.000-07:00

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I saw this graph over at MyDD but they rightly credit 2008 Democratic Convention Watch.

As in the pattern discussed below, Clinton's pledged super delegate lead on February 10, 2008 stood at 97. But on April 20, 2008 that lead stood at 25. A decline of 74% in a little over 2 months time.

Primary Patterns: Clinton vs. Obama

2008-04-23T09:40:00.000-07:00

Gallup

Remember the joke about the person who makes a small fortune? The humor comes when you learn they started with a large fortune. This is the Hillary pattern against Barrack Obama. She starts the primary season with an overwhelming advantage in name recognition, fund raising and long time connections in the Democratic party. Consequently, her lead in the polls appears to be insurmountable - especially for a Junior Senator for Illinois. In the contested states that she wins, she is able to turn those large leads into much smaller leads which include 15 of the 29 states with contested primaries to date. However, a deeply flawed campaign strategy or execution of that strategy yields only a single win in 14 caucus states. Overall record: 16 wins in 43 contests. Pennsylvania is just more of the same. Hillary starts with a 20-25+ point lead and finishes with a 9+ lead.

So Hillary can sometimes turn a large lead into a small lead and can more often turn a large lead into a loss. In business terms, she reminds me of the Industry leader that loses out to the new, under-capitalized upstart with fresh ideas.

Currently, against McCain, both Hillary and Barack are losing in the Polls by three percent. The pattern to date shows that Obama can overcome an opponent's early lead. On the other hand, the pattern for Hillary is that she more often than not loses, even when she had the early lead.

OBAMA in Philly - April 18, 2008

2008-04-19T13:29:00.000-07:00

AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

Growing Up Fast

2008-04-17T22:19:00.000-07:00

Photo by John Eaton

Photo taken on April 16, 2008 on Claremont Canyon Trail in Berkeley. There are three chicks in this photo. The one on the left is much smaller. The one behind is the same size as the one on the right but its head is tucked in. Mom or Dad was no where to be seen.

Great Horned Owl

2008-04-08T10:07:00.001-07:00

Photo by John Eaton
This photo was taken just before 1:00 PM on April 7, 2008 on the Claremont Canyon Trail in Berkeley, CA.

Crosses of Lafayette: 4,000

2008-03-23T21:27:00.001-07:00

Crosses of Lafayette: Five Years

2008-03-19T08:04:00.001-07:00

Photos from March 17, 2008

Five years on and according to Iraq Coalition Casualties, the number of US Troops killed in Iraq now stands at 3,990. We honor the warriors - not the war.

Vigil tonight, March 19, 2008 at the Crosses of Lafayette from 5-8 PM. No candles.

The Cost of War

2008-03-06T13:56:00.000-08:00

Illustration by Edward Sorel/Vanity Fair

In his blog at Atlantic Monthly, Matt Yglesias shows how Bush/McCain and their Ship of Fools created a war strategy that crippled the US economy by dragging us into "quagmires abroad."

Good column from Bob Herbert on Iraq's hefty price tag and, of course, there's Stiglitz's book as well. If you look at something like the economic problems in Ohio right now and consider how much better that situation would look had that kind of money been invested in productive infrastructure in the US, it's pretty infuriating. Spent directly, that money would have meant jobs. But spent on something more useful than a fruitless occupation of Iraq, it would have laid the groundwork for continued prosperity. Now at best it's down the drain.

This reminds me of something John Brennan, formerly of the CIA then director of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center and then the National Counterterrorism Center until retiring in 2005, said on Sunday, namely that in contrast to John McCain, Barack Obama "understands the direct correlation between tremendous expenditures of blood and treasury in Iraq and the US economy." Brennan points out that "al-Qaeda strategy has been to bleed the US into bankruptcy" and thus to do as McCain proposes and "continue with the same approach will have severe consequences for U.S. national security." Obviously this came out in the midst of a primary campaign, but it's hardly an Obama-specific point; rather it's one anti-war candidates of any stripe can (and should) make.

Few people seem to appreciate it, but it's quite literally true that al-Qaeda's strategy is to cripple the U.S. economy by dragging us into quagmires abroad. Osama bin Laden himself has said this, and it's the only strategy that makes sense. A smallish number of people with no base of resources can't possibly defeat us unless we shoot ourselves in the foot repeatedly as Bush and McCain propose.

For more on the $3 Trillion War, check out the Joseph Stiglitz article in Vanity Fair.

Crosses of Lafayette: Fire In The Sky

2008-03-01T18:12:00.000-08:00

Photo by John Eaton

Leap Day, 2008.

Hillary's Red Phone Moment

2008-02-29T11:04:00.001-08:00

Daryl Cagle

The Cold War - What Did We Win?

2008-02-29T08:51:00.000-08:00

Joseph Cirincione reviews Richard Rhodes' "Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race" in the New York Review of Books.

I recommend the entire review but would highlight the sections on "threat inflation."

The exaggeration of foreign threats, however pernicious, is a tactic. The arms buildup it serves is the greater folly. "Threat inflation," Rhodes writes,

was crucial to maintaining the defense budgets of the Cold War.... Fear was part of the program, the psychological response to threat inflation that delivered reliable votes.

The cold war arms race was not, he argues, a natural condition of the US–Soviet rivalry. Those who claimed to act out of patriotism perpetuated the waste of billions of US tax dollars, squandered the possibility of achieving lasting nuclear security, and weakened America's global standing.

The $5.5 trillion spent on nuclear weapons—"enough to buy everything in the United States except for the land," noted Carl Sagan—was money not invested in domestic needs. Rhodes writes:

Far from victory in the Cold War, the superpower nuclear-arms race and the corresponding militarization of the American economy gave us ramshackle cities, broken bridges, failing schools, entrenched poverty, impeded life expectancy, and a menacing and secretive national-security state.

Circinione endorses Obama's plan for transforming nuclear policy but gives credit to Clinton as well.

Barack Obama has promised to lead a global campaign not just to reduce but to eliminate nuclear weapons. Obama has the most developed plan in the campaigns, based in part on work he has done with Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana and a bill he has introduced with Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. In an October 2007 speech he endorsed a comprehensive plan to control and eliminate nuclear weapons around the world. According to the plan, the US would (1) secure during his first term as president all nuclear materials in the fifty countries that have them; (2) negotiate radical reductions in US and Russian nuclear stockpiles; (3) negotiate a verifiable global ban on the production of fissile materials; (4) create an international nuclear fuel bank; (5) increase funding for the inspections and safeguards done by the IAEA; (6) seek a global ban on all intermediate-range missiles; and (7) lower the current alerts that keep thousands of nuclear warheads ready to launch within fifteen minutes, thus reducing the risk that the weapons would be used by accident or misperception.

The Obama Pattern

2008-02-26T10:54:00.000-08:00

Click to enlarge

Nationally, Obama is repeating his pattern from individual primary states. The numbers in the graph above are from the New York Times / CBS poll. More analysis here. The trend seems clear.

In the 43 days from January 13 to February 25, national support for Obama has doubled - from 27% to 54% - while support for Clinton has slipped by 4 percent - from 42% to 38%. Said differently, Obama has turned a 15 point deficit into a 16 point lead.

Obama Can - Clinton Can't

2008-02-14T14:16:00.000-08:00

Click to enlarge

Today, Rasmussen Reports that in Colorado, McCain loses to Obama but beats Hillary. The simple message is that today in Colorado Obama Can Win - Clinton Can't Win.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Colorado’s Electoral College votes have ended up in the Republican column for the past three Presidential election, but it has always been competitive. Four years ago, President George W. Bush won the state by less than five percentage points over Senator John Kerry.

It’s not clear which party will claim Colorado and its nine Electoral Votes in 2008.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey shows that Barack Obama (D) currently holds a seven-point advantage over John McCain (R), 46% to 39%. However, if the Democrats nominate Hillary Clinton, McCain will begin the race with a fourteen point advantage, 49% to 35%. National polling, updated daily, currently shows the same general trend with Obama currently performing better than Clinton in match-ups with McCain.

Sixty percent (60%) of Colorado voters currently have a favorable opinion of Obama while just 36% hold an unfavorable view.

McCain earns favorable reviews from 55% and less flattering assessments from 42%

Clinton is viewed favorably by 44% and unfavorably by 54%.

If this trend holds up, Hillary Clinton will never have a Day 1 on which to be ready.

Crosses - January 28, 2008

2008-02-10T14:25:00.000-08:00

Click to enlarge

Cross posted at The Crosses of Lafayette.

Thoughtful Thoughts

2008-02-05T22:40:00.000-08:00

In all the speculative analysis I heard tonight in the reporting on Super Tuesday, two thoughts stood out:

1. Richard Norton Smith, the historian, pointed out that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both talk about change but define change differently. Hillary defines change as challenging the last 7 years of the Bush Administration. But Barack Obama defines change as challenging the process by which decisions have been made in Washington for the last 16 years or longer. That's why Obama's message is so much more uplifting.

2. George Will (I know, I can't believe I am citing George Will) pointed out that it will be interesting to see what the Democratic Primary vote in California totals among voters who voted today as opposed to voting early. That tabulation will underscore the state of things on February 5, 2008 - not the the total vote including early votes cast before Edwards dropped out or Obama started to climb.

Obama and Pattern Recognition

2008-01-30T17:02:00.000-08:00

Pollster.com

Over at TPM, Eric Kleefeld reports on the Gallup Poll released just today.

The new Gallup poll shows the national Democratic race might be really tightening — Hillary's lead is down to the single digits. Here are the numbers, compared to their last poll from two days ago:

Clinton 42% (-2)
Obama 36% (+3)
Edwards 12% (-2)

Only a week ago, Hillary was up by 16 points.

We'll find out soon enough what the impact of Edwards' withdrawal will be, and also where the remaining undecideds will end up.

So the pattern is clear. But is there enough time in our "front-loaded" primary free for all?

Bush and The Road to Ruin

2008-01-27T17:13:00.000-08:00

Rob Rogers

Bush Legacy

2008-01-21T22:07:00.001-08:00

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The Frankfurt Stock Exchange's DAX index plummeted 7.2 percent, its steepest one-day decline since Sept. 11, 2001. Fears that the United States might be in a recession sent markets from Germany to India into a tailspin.

Let's see what happens tomorrow when the US markets open. Given the Bush track record, I am not confident.

Sophistry and the Bush Administration

2008-01-21T15:15:00.000-08:00

On January 18 Paul Krugman published a column that contains the following quote:

All of this was right, except for one thing: U.S. financial markets, it turns out, were characterized less by sophistication than by sophistry, which my dictionary defines as “a deliberately invalid argument displaying ingenuity in reasoning in the hope of deceiving someone.”

Wikipedia elaborates that:

A sophism is a specious argument used for deceiving someone. It might be crafted to seem logical while actually being wrong, or it might use difficult words and complicated sentences to intimidate the audience into agreeing, or it might appeal to the audience's prejudices and emotions rather than logic, like raising doubts towards the one asserting, rather than his assertion.

Seems to me this pretty much describes the entire Bush Administration starting with the stolen election, including misleading the country into invading and occupying Iraq, the unforgivable mishandling of Katrina and now the coming recession.

Longevity and Health Care Spending - Patterns and Outliers

2008-01-04T11:53:00.000-08:00

The Big Picture

This graph shows two very interesting things: the US rank in life expectancy relative to other countries and US per capita spending on health care.

Who Pays the Price?

2007-12-27T11:34:00.001-08:00

clay Bennett

The Crosses of Lafayette - Christmas Eve 2007

2007-12-26T10:02:00.001-08:00

Click to enlarge

973 US Troops Killed in Iraq in Last 12 Months

2007-12-06T14:17:00.000-08:00

The Iraq Study Group was published one year ago today.

Although the final report was not released until December 6, 2006, media reports ahead of that date described some possible recommendations by the panel. Among them were the beginning of a phased withdrawal of US combat forces from Iraq and direct US dialogue with Syria and Iran over Iraq and the Middle East. The Iraq Study Group also found that the Pentagon has underreported significantly the extent of the violence in Iraq and that officials have obtained little information regarding the source of these attacks. The group further described the situation in Afghanistan as so disastrous that they may need to divert troops from Iraq in order to help stabilize the country. After these reports began surfacing, co-chair James Baker warned that the group should not be expected to produce a "magic bullet" to resolve the Iraqi conflict.

According to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, 973 US Troops were killed in Iraq from December 6, 2006 through December 5, 2007.

Tip o' the hat to Atrios.

Pattern Recognition: Representing Failure as Success

2007-12-05T16:34:00.000-08:00

Mike Lukovich

Currently, I am reading "Legacy of Ashes" by Tim Weiner. Well, I am not really reading it. Instead, I am listening to it on my iPod having downloaded it from Audible.com. I just listened to the following observation:

"The ability to represent failure as success was becoming a CIA tradition."

I know from Chalmers Johnson's review of the book that it occurs on page 58.

The Bush administration has the same tradition. The war in Iraq is an obvious failure that the Bush administration keeps representing as a success. And the mainstream media is still happy to report or least repeat the Bush administration representation. Other countries knew even before the occupation that failure was in the offing. Now the entire world - or at least, the entire world outside of the Beltway, is certain of that failure.

Likewise, the intelligence hyped by the administration about WMD leading up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq was a complete failure but represented as a success. And now we know that intelligence about Iran's development of WMD is also a failure as was the policy of saber rattling toward Iran. So the pattern would be that Bush will now represent that failure as a success. And, sure enough he is. And we also know that the mainstream media will report, I mean repeat, that representation.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2007-11-21T13:08:00.001-08:00

Click To Enlarge

Crosses of Lafayette

2007-11-11T22:02:00.000-08:00

The "Crosses of Lafayette" project was started back on Veterans Day in 2006. Veterans Day is an American holiday honoring military veterans. Both a federal holiday and a state holiday in all states, it is celebrated on the same day as Armistice Day or Remembrance Day in other parts of the world, falling on November 11, the anniversary of the signing of the Armistice that ended World War I. (Major hostilities of World War I were formally ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 with the German signing of the Armistice.)

Here is a picture from December 1, 2006 when the number of troops killed in Iraq was 2,885.

December 1, 2006

Now the number is higher by more than 1,000 heroes.

November 11, 2007

In Lafayette, California, we are trying to make a difference. And we owe a debt of gratitude to Louise Clark.

Louise Clark

Fun House Republicans

2007-11-11T16:42:00.000-08:00

David Horsey

Bill of Rights

2007-10-15T20:56:00.000-07:00

Clay Bennett

Crosses of Lafayette: Gold Star Moms and Vandalism

2007-09-25T09:57:00.001-07:00

Photo by John Eaton

This photo is an event honoring Gold Star Mothers at the Crosses of Lafayette on Sunday, September 23, 2007.

Later that night vandals struck the memorial. This from Tuesday's Contra Costa Times:

Vandals attacked the memorial crosses in Lafayette on Sunday night or Monday morning, leaving pieces of broken, jagged wood lying haphazardly at the bases of those left standing.

Of the 3,623 crosses lining the hillside as a memorial for American troops killed in Iraq, between 150 and 300 of the crosses have been knocked down or destroyed, said Chris Donton, a site organizer.

Calling General Petreus

2007-09-24T16:46:00.000-07:00

Click to enlarge

Here are the numbers from the Department of Defense on Iraq Casualties. Do they look way down to you?

If you are interested they are part of report on Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq. Click the PDF titled September 2007.

Crosses of Lafayette

2007-09-19T09:12:00.001-07:00

Photo by John Eaton

The sign at the Crosses of Lafayette memorial was changed briefly from the number of US Troops killed in Iraq to the number of Iraqis who have died during Bush's distastrous misadventure.

The sign simply said: 800,000

Job Growth? Ouch!

2007-09-07T15:41:00.000-07:00

Click to Enlarge

The Economic Policy Institute reports that:

In an unexpectedly and extremely weak employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the nation's payrolls shrunk last month, the first monthly decline since August 2003. Prior months' job gains were revised down by 81,000, leading to an average monthly gain of just 44,000 over the past three months. Such a low monthly rate of job growth provides the first solid evidence that economic turmoil in financial markets has found its way into the job market.

Troop Deaths Greater in Each Month of 2007

2007-09-06T11:22:00.000-07:00

Stolen from Angry Bear

Over at Angry Bear Frank de Libero has posted a much better graph than mine. He also provided this further analysis:

But this is just part of a pattern of communicating, where true facts are presented within a limited context, so that the resulting asymmetry of information creates a false impression. Most of us don't know that Iraq temperatures reach 120 degrees in July so that physical activity like combat is down. On the other hand, if an official announced that lowland US snow fall in July was the lowest it's been all year -- duh. The difference is that here in the US we all know about July snow fall, so there's no asymmetry.

I would add that the Bush Administration also tried to roll out numbers based on "combat deaths" as opposed to "troop deaths" in order to exclude the deaths from two helicopter crashes. In this way, the claim could be made that "combat deaths" in August were lower than in July of 2007.

Check out Madeleine Albright in today's WaPo on How To Change Iraq:

A cynic might suggest that the military's real mission is to enable President Bush to continue denying that his invasion has evolved into disaster.

US Troop Deaths in Iraq

2007-08-31T13:49:00.000-07:00

Click to enlarge

In a post this morning entitled Arguments Over Night of The Living Dead in Iraq, Juan Cole points out the obvious:

I personally find the controversy about Iraq in Washington to be bizarre. Are they really arguing about whether the situation is improving? I mean, you have the Night of the Living Dead over there. People lack potable water, cholera has broken out even in the good areas, a third of people are hungry, a doubling of the internally displaced to at least 1.1 million, and a million pilgrims dispersed just this week by militia infighting in a supposedly safe all-Shiite area. The government has all but collapsed, with even the formerly cooperative sections of the Sunni Arab political class withdrawing in a snit (much less more Sunni Arabs being brought in from the cold). The parliament hasn't actually passed any legislation to speak of and often cannot get a quorum. Corruption is endemic. The weapons we give the Iraqi army are often sold off to the insurgency. Some of our development aid goes to them, too.

The average number of Iraqis killed in 2007 per day exceeds those killed in 2006. Independent counts by news organizations do not agree with Pentagon estimates about drops in civilian deaths over-all. Nation-wide attacks in June reached a daily all-time high of 177.5. True, violence in Baghdad has been wrestled back down to the levels of summer, 2006 (hint: it wasn't paradise), but violence levels are up in the rest of the country. If you compare each month in 2006 with each month in 2007 with regard to US military deaths, the 2007 picture is dreadful.

I saw on CNN this smarmy Bush administration official come and and say that US troop deaths had fallen because of the surge, which is why we should support it.

Fallen? You be the judge. Figures in the graph posted above are from Iraq Coalition Casualty Count.

UPDATE: The main stream media is putting out the message that "combat deaths in Iraq" have fallen in half during the surge (even while civilian deaths have risen). Of course, US Troop deaths fell last summer as well. In part the Bush administration is parsing the data by using combat deaths rather than troop deaths. But what are the real patterns?

1. Troop deaths fall in the summer in Iraq.
2. The number of US troop deaths in 2007 has exceeded deaths in 2006 in EACH AND EVERY MONTH.

Read Kevin Drum for more.

Universal Healthcare?

2007-08-28T15:16:00.000-07:00

Click to enlarge

More posters at Old American Century.

Farewell Alberto

2007-08-27T11:17:00.000-07:00

From today's statement by House Democratic Cause Chairman Rahm Emanual:

“Alberto Gonzales is the first Attorney General who thought the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth were three different things."

Can This Be True?

2007-08-26T19:31:00.000-07:00

Dave Ortiz - Nam Y. Huh/AP

With a four-game sweep against the White Sox, the Red Sox are 6-1 on their 10-game, three-city road trip. The Red Sox are 10-4 since Aug. 13 and head into a three-game showdown with the Yankees holding a 7 1/2-game lead in the American League East.

Boston scored 46 runs to 7 for Chicago in the four games.

Trends in US Troop Deaths in Iraq since "Mission Accomplished"

2007-08-26T17:58:00.000-07:00

Click to enlarge

The Bush Administration wants you to believe that the "surge is working." In fact violence is down! Really? What do you make of the above trend? Does it look up or down to you?

Today the AP is reporting that:

BAGHDAD - This year’s U.S. troop buildup has succeeded in bringing violence in Baghdad down from peak levels, but the death toll from sectarian attacks around the country is running nearly double the pace from a year ago.

Some of the recent bloodshed appears the result of militant fighters drifting into parts of northern Iraq, where they have fled after U.S.-led offensives. Baghdad, however, still accounts for slightly more than half of all war-related killings — the same percentage as a year ago, according to figures compiled by The Associated Press.

The tallies and trends offer a sobering snapshot after an additional 30,000 U.S. troops began campaigns in February to regain control of the Baghdad area. It also highlights one of the major themes expected in next month’s Iraq progress report to Congress: some military headway, but extremist factions are far from broken.

In street-level terms, it means life for average Iraqis appears to be even more perilous and unpredictable.

The AP tracking includes Iraqi civilians, government officials, police and security forces killed in attacks such as gunfights and bombings, which are frequently blamed on Sunni suicide strikes. It also includes execution-style killings — largely the work of Shiite death squads.

The figures are considered a minimum based on AP reporting. The actual numbers are likely higher, as many killings go unreported or uncounted. Insurgent deaths are not a part of the Iraqi count.

The findings include:

—Iraq is suffering about double the number of war-related deaths throughout the country compared with last year — an average daily toll of 33 in 2006, and 62 so far this year.

—Nearly 1,000 more people have been killed in violence across Iraq in the first eight months of this year than in all of 2006. So far this year, about 14,800 people have died in war-related attacks and sectarian murders. AP reporting accounted for 13,811 deaths in 2006. The United Nations and other sources placed the 2006 toll far higher.

—Baghdad has gone from representing 76 percent of all civilian and police war-related deaths in Iraq in January to 52 percent in July, bringing it back to the same spot it was roughly a year ago.

—According to the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization, the number of displaced Iraqis has more than doubled since the start of the year, from 447,337 on Jan. 1 to 1.14 million on July 31.

New Orleans: Two Years Later

2007-08-25T09:26:00.000-07:00

The Internet Weekly Report

The AP is reporting that Bush will visit New Orleans next week to commmemorate "the most destructive natural disaster in U.S. history" as well as the most unforgivable failure of the Bush Administration.

CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) - President Bush will return to the Gulf Coast next week, where hard times and resentment linger two years after Hurricane Katrina's massive strike.

Bush will fly into New Orleans on Tuesday after giving a speech about the Iraq war to the American Legion convention in Reno, Nev. On Wednesday, the anniversary of the storm, he is expected to examine recovery efforts in New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

The monster hurricane was the most destructive natural disaster in U.S. history. It swamped a beloved city, killed 1,800 people across the Gulf Coast, destroyed or severely damaged more than 200,000 homes and made more than 800,000 people homeless overnight.

In New Orleans today, despite progress, signs of a shattered city abound. Neighborhoods are in ruins. Crime, inadequate health care and faulty infrastructure are pervasive.

The Bush administration is still dogged by charges of an inadequate response - first, for the way it handled the crisis, and more recently, for not spending more time on it.

What Do The Experts Say About Terrorism?

2007-08-22T20:24:00.000-07:00

The Nonpartisan Survey of Foreign Policy Experts from the Center for American Progress and Foreign Policy have just published their Third Semi-annual, Nonpartisan Survey on the Terrorism Index.

Wait a minute. Just who are these experts, you may well ask. Have a gander:

Madeleine Albright, Jon Alterman, John Arquilla, Ron Asmus, Scott Atran, Andrew Bacevich, Rand Beers, Dan Benjamin, Peter Bergen, Ilan Berman, Mia Bloom, Philip Bobbitt, Joseph Bouchard, Jarret Brachman, Paul Bremer, Matthew Bunn, Daniel Byman, Kurt Campbell, Ted Carpenter, Ashton Carter, Joseph Cirincione, Richard Clarke, Steve Coll, Roger Cressey, Sheba Crocker, PJ Crowley, Matthew Devost, Larry Diamond, Dana Dillon, Jim Dobbins, Daniel Drezner, Lawrence Eagleburger, R.P. Eddy, Robert Einhorn, Michael Eisenstadt, Ivan Eland, Clark Ervin, John Esposito, Douglas Farah, Michelle Flournoy, Steve Flynn, James Forest, William Frenzel, Aaron Friedberg, Jay Garner, Gregory Gause, Leslie Gelb, Fawaz Gerges, William Gertz, Larry Goodson, Slade Gorton, Mort Halperin, Gary Hart, Bruce Hoffman, John Hulsman, Jo Husbands, Robert Hutchings, Michael Jacobson, Larry Johnson, Robert Kagan, Kenneth Katzman, Geoffrey Kemp, Bob Kerrey, Daryl Kimball, Christopher Kojm, Lawrence Korb, Charles Kupchan, Anthony Lake, Anatol Lieven, Thomas Lippman, Jane Holl Lute, Robert Malley, Thomas Marks, John McCarthy, Mary McCarthy, Michael McFaul, Doris Meissner, Steve Metz, Bill Nash, Vali Nasr, William Odom, Charles Pena, Paul Pillar, Daniel Pipes, Christopher Preble, Charles Pritchard, David Rapoport, Susan Rice, Bruce Riedel, Barnett Rubin, Marc Sageman, Michael Scheuer, Steve Simon, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Gayle Smith, James Steinberg, Jessica Stern, Ray Takeyh, Raymond Tanter, Shibley Telhami, Jack Vessey, Edward Walker, Stephen Walt, William Wechsler, Lawrence Wilkerson, Jim Woolsey, Dov Zakheim, Jim Zogby.

Okay, what are their conclusions?

In the third Terrorism Index, more than 100 of America’s most respected foreign-policy experts see a world that is growing more dangerous, a national security strategy in disrepair, and a war in Iraq that is alarmingly off course.

And?

The world these experts see today is one that continues to grow more threatening. Fully 91 percent say the world is becoming more dangerous for Americans and the United States, up 10 percentage points since February. Eighty-four percent do not believe the United States is winning the war on terror, an increase of 9 percentage points from six months ago. More than 80 percent expect a terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11 within a decade, a result that is more or less unchanged from one year ago.

snip

No effort of the U.S. government was more harshly criticized, however, than the war in Iraq. In fact, that conflict appears to be the root cause of the experts’ pessimism about the state of national security. Nearly all— 92 percent —of the index’s experts said the war in Iraq negatively affects U.S. national security, an increase of 5 percentage points from a year ago. Negative perceptions of the war in Iraq are shared across the political spectrum, with 84 percent of those who describe themselves as conservative taking a dim view of the war’s impact. More than half of the experts now oppose the White House’s decision to “surge” additional troops into Baghdad, a remarkable 22 percentage-point increase from just six months ago. Almost 7 in 10 now support a drawdown and redeployment of U.S. forces out of Iraq.

Helluva job, Georgie!

Trends in Party Identification

2007-08-20T19:35:00.000-07:00

Pew Research Center

The Economist has an interesting report on trends in party identification.

The obvious cause of the right's implosion is the implosion of the Bush presidency. Mr Bush has the worst approval ratings since Jimmy Carter—29% according to Newsweek and 31% according to NBC News. Only 19% of Americans think that America is headed in the right direction under Mr Bush. An astonishing 45% of Americans, including 13% of Republicans, support impeaching Mr Bush, according to the American Research Group.

The most obvious cause of the implosion of the Bush presidency is the disaster in Iraq. The Republican Party's biggest advantage over the Democrats has long been on foreign and defence policy. You voted Democratic if you cared about schools and hospitals. But you voted Republican if you cared more about keeping America safe in a dangerous world. September 11th 2001 turbo-charged that advantage. The Republicans used the “war on terror” to roll over the Democrats in elections in 2002 and again in 2004.

But the war in Iraq has buried this vital advantage under a mound of discredited hype (“mission accomplished”) and mind-boggling incompetence. A CBS News/New York Times poll found that only 25% of people approved of Mr Bush's handling of the situation in Iraq. An ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 63% of respondents did not trust the Bush administration to report honestly about possible threats from other countries. The damage is not limited to the Bush administration: a Rasmussen poll on July 25th-26th found that Mrs Clinton outscores Mr Giuliani as the candidate voters trust most on national security.

The article concludes:

The Republicans have failed the most important test of any political movement—wielding power successfully. They have botched a war. They have splurged on spending. And they have alienated a huge section of the population. It is now the Democrats' game to win or lose.

You can find more graphs on these trends at The Pew Research Center.

What is Really Going On in Iraq

2007-08-19T09:44:00.000-07:00

Juan Cole of Informed Comment highlights from the essay in today's NY Times OpEd page written by soldiers currently serving in Iraq:

As Bill Maher has quipped, we have had a balanced set of commentaries on the Iraq War on television news. We have heard from the generals and the retired generals. Today at the NYT we hear from some specialists and sergeants. In a thoughtful, analytically precise, and informed essay, they lament the pie in the sky thinking in Washington, admit that 'hearts and minds' are not being won and are unlikely to be, and decry contradictory US policies trying to please everyone that end up alienating everyone. They point to the massive number of Iraqis displaced abroad and the similar number internally displaced, to the lack of electricity, services, potable water, and above all security. They highlight how unreliable they find the Iraqi military, which they think penetrated at the street level by Shiite militiamen and their supporters. They tell a chilling story of a US patrol hit by a roadside bomb between two Iraqi military checkpoints, and almost certainly set by their Iraqi 'allies' or with their knowledge. One of the six suffered a severe head wound while in action during the period they were writing the piece. We can't be too grateful for what these guys are doing for us. The essay is a major part of seeing through their duty to the American people, since in a democracy, for the people to have a clear-eyed view of the situation is essential to informed policy-making. I hope they will let us in the blogosphere know if we can help Staff Sergeant Jeremy Murphy and his family in the wake of his injury, which he is expected to survive.

This essay describes an Iraq I recognize from reading the Iraqi newspapers every day and watching Arabic satellite television. It has the Byzantine political intrigues, the seedy militiamen, the back-stabbing and deal-making, the electricity-deprived tenement dwellers baking in the August sun, the 4 million homeless families, the incommensurate political goals of the factions. It does not depict 'a war we could win.' Money graf:

'In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.'

How I Spent the Iraqi Parliament's Summer Vacation

2007-08-09T20:00:00.000-07:00

Clay Bennett

See more Clay Bennett.

Spinning US Troop Casualties in Iraq

2007-08-07T11:01:00.000-07:00

Juan Cole of Informed Content has a new column at Salon that discusses the latest Bush administration spin on the surge in Iraq. Predictably, the Bushies would have you believe that the surge is working despite the fact that the "political situation has deteriorated substantially."

What really caught my eye, however, is the trend of US Troop casualties in the month of July. The Bushies point to the death count of 80 as evidence that the surge is working because 80 US troops killed in action in Iraq is the lowest number since November '06 when 70 US troops were killed.

What does the trend look like when comparing the death count in July from previous years?

Click to enlarge

For more information, see Foreign Policy and Iraq Coalition Casualty Count.

Stumbling To The Finish Line

2007-06-29T10:49:00.000-07:00

Graph by Pollkatz

Bush seems to be headed into uncharted waters. Will he make it?

American Spring

2007-06-20T10:07:00.000-07:00

Photo by John Eaton

Last month, in a small tavern in Verona, an Italian told me this joke:

"The U.S. has now exported so much democracy, there is none left for Americans."

Michael Moynihan takes a good look at this issue in a column in today's Boston Globe.

Call it an "American Spring." After a long winter of fear, the return of debate in Congress and the prospect of a new administration have begun to stir the roots of democracy. It is still too soon to tell if spring will truly blossom or whether winter will return. But it is a perfect moment to reflect on the state of American freedom.

America began the 21st century with freshly burnished democratic credentials from its support of democratic transitions abroad and the world's strongest democracy at home. No country had a stronger system of checks and balances. In no country was freedom so central to individual identity or civic institutions so deeply rooted. Wealth was comparatively widely distributed and a belief in fairness ruled. Yet each of these assets has been taxed.

With the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as its excuse and using fear as its political currency, a clique around President Bush appropriated an unprecedented level of control over the levers of power.

This group launched the Iraq war, began warrant less domestic surveillance, depreciated Congress with the theory of the unitary executive, embraced torture, weakened habeas corpus, and politicized, wherever possible, implements of power. Tax policies widened the gap between rich and poor while the renunciation of human rights and the Geneva Convention eroded America's reputation as a beacon of freedom.

To hide many of these actions, the administration employed secrecy and fear. This moment of reprieve is a good one to survey just how American democracy held up.

Alberto Gonzales: The Killdeer Strategy

2007-05-18T09:20:00.000-07:00

Photo by John Eaton

The killdeer is best known for its acting ability. The parent (Gonzales) will pretend to have a broken wing to lure intruders (congress, the press, the American people) away from its nest (Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and George Bush).

On Bill Moyers Journal, John Stewart points out that Gonzales is willing to look like a "pinhead" on national TV in order to protect Bush. He compares Gonzales to the mafioso who shows loyalty by "giving up nothing" after being arrested:

And "you went up there and said nothing. You gave them no legal recourse against you, and you made yourself a smart man, a self-made man look like an utter pinhead on national television, and you did it for me."

But Gonzales is also the decoy. He focuses attention on himself because he is willing to look vulnerable, easy prey - like the killdeer in the photo above. The same killdeer is pictured below.

Crosses of Lafayette: Tribute to Johnson Clark

2007-05-07T11:43:00.000-07:00

Photo by Brant Ward, 11/27/2006

Yesterday at the Crosses of Lafayette, there was a memorial service for Johnson Clark who together with his wife Louise and Jeff Heaton, conceived and promoted the Crosses of Lafayette project to protest the war in Iraq and pay tribute to our fallen heroes. The first crosses were planted the weekend of Veterans Day, November 11, 2006 and my first post was on November 14, 2006.

What began as a small local effort to bring our troops home has generated worldwide attention and support. The latest convert is the Los Angeles Times. We can all be proud of Johnson Clark.

Yesterday's LA Times featured this editorial:

Bring them home
Iraqis need political reconciliation, not occupation; and U.S. troops shouldn't referee a civil war.
May 6, 2007

WHATEVER THE future holds, the United States has not "lost" and cannot "lose" Iraq. It was never ours in the first place. And however history will judge the war, some key U.S. goals have been accomplished: Saddam Hussein has been ousted, tried and executed; Iraqis have held three elections, adopted a constitution and established a rudimentary democracy.

But what now? After four years of war, more than $350 billion spent and 3,363 U.S. soldiers killed and 24,310 wounded, it seems increasingly obvious that an Iraqi political settlement cannot be achieved in the shadow of an indefinite foreign occupation. The U.S. military presence — opposed by more than three-quarters of Iraqis — inflames terrorism and delays what should be the primary and most pressing goal: meaningful reconciliation among the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

This newspaper reluctantly endorsed the U.S. troop surge as the last, best hope for stabilizing conditions so that the elected Iraqi government could assume full responsibility for its affairs. But we also warned that the troops should not be used to referee a civil war. That, regrettably, is what has happened.

The mire deepens against a backdrop of domestic U.S. politics in which support for the ill-defined mission wanes by the week. Better to begin planning a careful, strategic withdrawal from Iraq now, based on the strategies laid out by the Iraq Study Group, than allow for the 2008 campaign season to create a precipitous pullout.

With four out of five additional battalions now in place, there is no reason to believe that the surge will help bring about an end to what is, in fact, a multifaceted civil war.

Ocean Beach - Peace Now

2007-05-03T16:05:00.000-07:00

Protesting the Occupation

2007-04-10T09:02:00.000-07:00

Wathiq Khuzale/Getty

Today's New York Times reports:

BAGHDAD, April 9 — Tens of thousands of protesters loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric, took to the streets of the holy city of Najaf on Monday in an extraordinarily disciplined rally to demand an end to the American military presence in Iraq, burning American flags and chanting “Death to America!”

Residents said that the angry, boisterous demonstration was the largest in Najaf, the heart of Shiite religious power, since the American-led invasion in 2003. It took place on the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad, and it was an obvious effort by Mr. Sadr to show the extent of his influence here in Iraq, even though he did not appear at the rally.

Too Many Cooks

2007-03-29T10:36:00.000-07:00

Clay Bennet

Crosses of Lafayette: The Image of our Discontent

2007-03-26T15:42:00.000-07:00

Getty Images / Justin Sullivan

This week's Economist has a feature article about how the Iraq War has damaged the Republican party. The image picked by the Economist to represent everything that has gone wrong features the Crosses of Lafayette.

Collateral damage
Mar 22nd 2007 | WASHINGTON, DC
The Republican Party is among the war's victims

FOUR years ago, as American troops rolled across Iraq, the Republican Party was on a roll too. Republicans not only controlled the whole of Washington (seven of the nine Supreme Court justices had been appointed by Republican presidents). They controlled the majority of governorships as well—including those of mega-states such as Florida and New York—and they were winning the war of ideas, thanks to a division of conservative think-tanks.

Republican strategists were consumed by heady visions of power without end. The “war on terror”, which was dividing the Democrats, was encouraging Republican factions to bury their differences. Karl Rove, George Bush's chief strategist, liked to compare his boss to William McKinley, the late-19th-century president who had ushered in an age of Republican dominance. Grover Norquist, an anti-tax crusader, dubbed Mr Bush “Reagan's son”.

snip

There are plenty of reasons for the party's agonies. The Republicans fell victim to all the diseases of incumbency—from spending like drunken sailors to corruption to cronyism—and the Bush administration made a hash of responding to Hurricane Katrina. But the Iraq war lies at the heart of the party's problems. The war has deprived Mr Bush of the oxygen of popularity. A recent CBS News/New York Times poll found that only 39% of Americans now think that invading Iraq was the right thing to do, compared with 55% who think it was a mistake. It has also provided the Democrats with a huge stick with which to beat the opposition.

snip

Stephen Bainbridge, a conservative academic at the University of California, Los Angeles, has argued that Mr Bush's decision to go to war has “pissed away the conservative moment by pursuing a war of choice via policies that border on the criminally incompetent.” William Buckley, the pope of the conservative movement, says that if Mr Bush were the leader of a parliamentary system, “it would be expected that he would retire or resign”. Richard Viguerie, another conservative veteran, says that “I've never seen conservatives so downright fed-up as they are today.”

The war has eviscerated the administration's reputation for competence—and with it the idea that the Republicans have an inherent advantage as the “Daddy” party. An administration that once boasted about its clutch of CEOs will forever be remembered for phrases such as “slam dunk” (of WMD intelligence) and “Mission Accomplished”, or for disasters such as the failure to prepare Walter Reed and other military hospitals to deal with casualties. The same CBS News/New York Times poll found that only 28% of people approved of Mr Bush's handling of the situation in Iraq.

snip

But the Iraq war has destroyed the Republicans' advantage of decades. The party is losing support even among the once solid armed services. Today only 46% of servicemen describe themselves as Republican, compared with 60% in 2004—and only 35% of them approve of the handling of the war. Voters are now much more willing to listen to the Democrats on war and peace. Barack Obama's statement in 2002—“I'm not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars”—is a perfect refrain for a resurgent party.

snip

At the same time, the war has taken a huge toll on the administration's domestic policies. After the 2004 election Mr Bush sketched out an ambitious agenda for avoiding the fate of previous second-term presidents and moving the country in a more Republican direction: reforming immigration and Social Security, simplifying taxes and lifting regulations. That agenda has come to almost nothing. Senior figures have been constantly distracted by dealing with the fallout from Iraq. (One reason the administration was so tardy in dealing with Katrina was that Karl Rove was worried he might become a victim of the Plame affair.) In late 2005 the administration concluded that it was impossible to push through big initiatives, such as Social Security reform, in a time of war.

The man who will pay the biggest political price for Iraq will ultimately be Mr Bush. It is hardly surprising that liberal historians debate whether he is the worst president ever. But now conservatives are beginning to play the same game. A recent poll of hard-core conservative activists found that only 3% described themselves as George Bush Republicans, compared with 79% who regarded themselves as Ronald Reagan Republicans. But the damage will not be limited to the party leader. For years to come, the Republicans will be paying a collective price for the “stuff” that happened in Iraq.

Crosses of Lafayette: "Thanks For Doing This"

2007-03-26T12:28:00.000-07:00

Click to enlarge

This photo was taken Sunday, March 25, 2007. In addition to this group paying their respects to the fallen, I met a soldier wearing a Notre Dame cap who is returning to Iraq in two weeks. We chatted briefly after I finished planting 6 new crosses. He said that he had heard about the memorial and wanted to come see the crosses. Then he added, "thanks for doing this. We appreciate it." I was speechless.

Crosses of Lafayette: Sky Pilot

2007-03-19T23:31:00.000-07:00

On the morning of March 19, 2008, the fourth anniversary of the War in Iraq, this cross was seen in the sky in Lafayette at about 7:30 in the morning.

Photo by John Eaton

Twelve hours later there was a candlelight vigil marking this tragic anniversary.

Photo by John Eaton

Crosses of Lafayette: Sense of Scale

2007-03-15T18:39:00.000-07:00

Photo by John Eaton

This shot taken from the far side of Highway 24 with Bart in the foreground provides some scale of the Crosses of Lafayette project.

Crosses of Lafayette: Blossoms and Crosses

2007-03-14T22:21:00.000-07:00

Photo by John Eaton

Spring blossoms on March 14, 2007 partially obscure the hillside of crosses just before sunset.

Photo by John Eaton

Crosses of Lafayette: 3188

2007-03-08T22:20:00.000-08:00

Photo by John Eaton

Today, Melanie Morgan brought her Move America Forward caravan to Lafayette to demonstrate in front of the hillside crosses together with the "Lafayette Flag Brigade's" Never Forget 911.

Photo by John Eaton

While everyone at the gathering in Lafayette today supports the troops, the caravan believes that it is also necessary to support the war to support the troops. Furthermore, many in the caravan also believe that the troops "can win."

Photo by John Eaton

The caravan pulled out before 11:00 AM but the crosses remained. All 3188.

Crosses of Lafayette: BART

2007-03-05T18:49:00.000-08:00

Photo by John Eaton

At the San Francisco Chronicle, Jason B. Johnson posted this article today about the Crosses with video and photos by Carlos Avila Gonzalez:

A controversial Iraq war memorial in Lafayette reached an emotional milestone Sunday, when a group of volunteers added 290 new crosses to the site so there were enough symbols to represent each of the 3,170 American soldiers killed in Iraq since the start of the war. (The count by the Associated Press reached 3,173 late Sunday.)

About 50 people hammered nails, painted the crosses and planted them under a clear blue sky. In clothes flecked with white paint, many smiled and chatted while others worked quietly.

A group opposed to the war has expanded its stark display overlooking the Lafayette BART Station over the past several weeks -- gathering in cold weather and at times staging candlelight vigils. Several members said blanketing this green hillside with a sea of crosses, Stars of David and Muslim Crescents has reinvigorated their sense of civic activism.

Crosses of Lafayette: March 4, 2007

2007-03-04T19:05:00.000-08:00

The Crosses of Lafayette memorial now has one cross for each soldier killed in Iraq.

Photo by John Eaton

Photo by John Eaton

Here is a photo taken at dusk on March 4, 2007.

Photo by John Eaton

Check out the full set of photos of the Crosses of Lafayette on Flickr.

Honoring The Warriors

2007-03-04T16:49:00.000-08:00

Clay Bennett

Dougie Feith: What was he like as a kid?

2007-02-28T16:55:00.000-08:00

Dougie Feith (left) and Gary Greenberg - 1966

Have you heard? Dougie Feith now has his own website for the purpose of clearing his good name and resurecting it back into the pantheon of heroes. This may be harder than he thinks. In the meantime, let's explore what he was like as a kid.

Fortunately, Gary Greenberg, a talented writer and very funny guy in Florida has already done the job. I went to college with Gary's brother - but that's another story.

And Dubya always does what Dubya’s told. In fact, that’s how my old pal Dougie Feith helped lead our country on a crusade to conquer the Middle East.

Dougie and I were best friends in the latter stages of elementary school and went to the same overnight camp for years. Even as a kid, Dougie was elitist and egotistical, one reason he fits in so well with the current administration. I recall him often saying, “It’s not bragging if you can back it up.”

And Dougie could back it up. He was brighter than most of our teachers and a champion tennis player who even intimidated adults with his precocious arrogance. Other kids thought he was a jerk for being so bossy, but as the youngest child of my family, I was used to being ordered around. And Dougie was cool. He was smart, rich and had a control over things that I lacked.

I also felt indebted to him because he got me out of class an hour every day for weeks to help him type up an abridged version of A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream for our sixth grade play. He was the only one in the class who could type, including the teacher, and needed someone to dictate the play to him because one of his few failings at that point in life was he couldn’t touch type. And that someone was lucky me, even though reading A Midsummer’s Dream aloud for an hour straight was a lot more work than sitting in class daydreaming about sports and/or Linda Goldfine.

Eventually, Dougie and I parted ways in junior high. He went to private school, presumably because he was too smart for public school, then Harvard and Georgetown Law, no doubt to prove it. Now Dougie has become the honorable Douglas J. Feith, the Defense Department’s undersecretary of policy and self-appointed protector of the state of Israel.

When it comes to Israel, Dougie is so far right he’s wrong. And he helped influence our very easily influenced president on our country’s current Middle Eastern crusade to democratize (read conquer) this oil rich region under the guise of...well, I’m not sure they even bother with a guise since the weapons of mass destruction didn’t pan out. Dougie, of course, would do anything to stabilize the Middle East for Israel’s security and must have figured a war with Iraq was a good start.

Surely there is something funny here. A rabid Jew telling a fanatical Christian how to deal with Muslim extremists? We’re talking sitcom material. Yet I still can’t find a punch line.

The rest, as they say, is history. And now there is a punchline. But it is tragic and not one bit funny.

Crosses of Lafayette: Morning Commute

2007-02-16T14:47:00.000-08:00

Photo by John Eaton

Check videos!

Crosses of Lafayette: Shrinking the Sign, Not the War

2007-02-13T09:25:00.000-08:00

Here is the AP report in today's International Herald Tribune:

California war memorial sign could shrink under pact between city and organizers
The Associated Press
February 13, 2007

LAFAYETTE, California: A large sign at a war memorial that tallies the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq will be shrunk to half its size after city officials and memorial organizers reached an agreement.

The current 64-square-foot (5.76-square-meter) sign is about twice the size the city allows without a permit on residential property. It will be reduced to 32 square feet ( 2.88 square meters).

The hillside memorial, which also includes 1,600 crosses, has stirred emotional debate in this upscale suburb east of San Francisco. The sign has been vandalized twice since it was raised on Veterans Day last year.

Memorial organizer Jeff Heaton also agreed Monday to restrictions on candlelight vigils at the site. No longer will candles be left unattended beneath the crosses, which spurred fire concerns from nearby residents.

Organizers said they planned to continue erecting crosses until they have one for every U.S. soldier killed in the war.

Here is a link to Catherine Tam's article in today's Contra Costa Times.