B and B

Debate Matters

Fox News, of all the possible choices, will apparently be in control of the video cameras at the Presidential debate tonight, as I've learned via Josh Marshall. We are playing on a lop-sided field.

As always, beware the post-debate spin. For example, Marshall also relates that MSNBC had plans to put a hard-core Republican operative, Frank Luntz, in charge of their debate focus group. Fortunately, pressure from Media Matters appears to have caused them to back off. But given how media anchors love to pass along GOP spin as their own words, we still have to fight back hard. The success of Media Matters with MSNBC indicates that we can have an effect if we bother to let these organizations know our displeasure.

For me, first on the list is NPR and Mara Liasson, who were guilty of shoving the Bush flip-flopping lie on Kerry down our throats this morning without any further analysis. Oh, except to mention how "effective" that line has supposedly been. That the thanks for that goes to reporters like her, she does not mention.

More on Wilgoren's pseudo-analysis in the New York Times

It turns out that my earlier post about Wilgoren's piece of political pseudo-analysis in today's New York Times was not nearly hard-hitting enough. I failed to mention that the quote from Douglas Brinkley, an author who has written about Kerry's Vietnam service, stretched the bounds of plausibility. Here is what Wilgoren quoted Brinkley as saying:

"Every American now knows that there's something really screwy about George Bush and the National Guard, and they know that John Kerry was not the war hero we thought he was," said Douglas Brinkley, the historian and author of a friendly biography of Mr. Kerry's war years, acknowledging that Mr. Kerry's opponents had succeeded in raising questions about his service.

The part about Kerry immediately struck me as fishy, and no doubt taken out of context. I now wish I had said something about this in my earlier post, as it turns out that Brinkley is indeed quite unhappy with how he was quoted. Enough so that the Kerry campaign issued a press release:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 24 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Author and historian, Douglas Brinkley, issued the following statement to correct a report by the New York Times today:

"A story in the September 24 New York Times leaves the false impression that I think John Kerry was not 'the war hero we thought he was.' Nothing could be further from the truth. He was a great American fighting man in Vietnam and deserved all of his medals. Over the past year I have vigorously defended Kerry's military record and will continue to do so.

"My comment was meant to be about the political consequences of the anti-Kerry Swift boat attacks vs. the anti-Bush National Guard ones. I was speaking about public perceptions not my personal beliefs."

What will the New York Times do now?

Junky analysis from the New York Times

New York Times political writer (I avoid the term "journalist" purposefully) Jodi Wilgoren has an extremely weak, one-sided piece of campaign analysis published today.

In this piece, she manages to re-live for all of us all the supposed "controversy" over the Vietnam-era records of Bush and Kerry. As if the press hadn't focused way too much time on this stuff already. She brings up the Swift Boat Smear Campaign's claims all over again without mentioning any of the abudant evidence that they are completely without merit.

The bigger picture is that these supposed pieces of political "analysis," by major media outlets, are way, way too common. As this one is, they tend to be extremely shallow, with no new reporting, and merely reflect the conventional wisdom of the Washington press corps, which is already dripping all over every other story they write. And which is commonly twisted by spin into some unrecognizable version of reality. This genre should be completely junked.

Over-analyzing polls

There is a recent post at The Left Coaster, a normally very worthwhile political blog, that does some analysis of the 50-state ARG poll just released. Unfortunately, the entire analysis is an exercise based upon statistical noise.

The author takes the margin between Gore and Bush from the 2000 ARG 50-state poll and the margin between Kerry and Bush from the 2004 ARG 50-state poll, differences them, and calls this number a "trend". Supposedly it is measuring how much better or worse Kerry is doing relative to Bush in each state than Gore was doing at this time four years ago. Unfortunately, since the statistical error alone on that double difference is over 8%, and virtually all the supposed trends are less than that, all that is being measured are statistical fluctuations.

A few states in the analysis have "trends" outside that 8% margin of error: New Hampshire (+9% for Kerry over Gore), Louisiana (-10%), and Kentucky (-18%).

Is the Kentucky trend meaningful? Even the post's author concludes not. Does anyone really believe that Gore was ever ahead of Bush by 6% in Kentucky in 2000? The 2004 poll shows Kerry behind in Kentucky by approximately the same amount that Gore lost the state. So this "trend" is just an outlier poll returning to normalcy. The same applies to the supposed Louisiana trend.

All that leaves is New Hampshire. But that is just barely outside the statistical error, and so is also probably not meaningful. Given the large number of states analyzed, there are bound to be a few outlier polls (e.g., the Kentucky and Louisiana 2000 polls), just based on statistical fluctuactions.

So, unfortunately, that leaves nothing to be learned. Except that single polls can be very unreliable in a given state, and aren't to be taken too seriously.

Bush is drowning. And he's taking us down with him

Last week, I heard that the Daily Show's John Stewart had come up with a good summary of Bush's alleged leadership on Iraq up to now. Apparently his line went something like this: "He drove us off a cliff, but he didn't blink!" Now, Josh Marshall has come up with another analogy describing where Bush plans to take us next:

[New York Times columnist David] Brooks, like Bush, is like a man in the sea, a fifty pound lead weight chained to his feet, slowly sinking into the waves. It's a tough road, he says as the water laps around his neck, but I'm going to keep at it as long as it takes until I start floating up instead of sinking down.

As long as it takes.

I'm staying the course.

Bubble, gurgle, bubble ...

Denial ... and did I mention the weight is chained to your feet too?

September 11 widows endorse Kerry

The group of September 11 widows who pushed the Bush administration into finally agreeing to appoint a commission to investigate the tragic events of that day have come out of the political closet. They have endorsed John Kerry for President. Steve Gilliard relates the news via an article in the online magazine Salon (emphasis added):

Sept. 15, 2004 | WASHINGTON -- Over the last three years, the group of 9/11 widows turned activists dubbed the "Jersey Girls" have become a fixture on the Washington political scene. Some of them are Republicans, others Democrats or independents. But they are all determined to hold official Washington accountable for the attacks that killed their husbands and nearly 3,000 others. .....

And their conclusion: For the sake of the country's future, John Kerry must replace George W. Bush.

Gathering at the National Press Club in Washington on Tuesday, the widows announced their endorsement of the Massachusetts Democrat for president, a move made "in good conscience and from our hearts," as former Bush supporter Kristen Breitweiser told the news cameras. "In the three years since 9/11, I could never have imagined I would be here today, disappointed in the person I voted for, for president," she said. Added fellow Jersey Girl Patty Casazza: "It was President Bush who thwarted our attempts at every turn."

The widows said they endorsed Kerry because three years of studying the facts has convinced them he will do a better job than Bush at protecting the nation. "This was not an easy decision to make. We agonized over this," said Monica Gabrielle of West Haven, Conn., an honorary Jersey Girl. "We have always been very careful about not being partisan. We have always attempted to uncover the truth. We have always looked for the greater good." Still, the women said they expect to be trashed as partisan hacks.

This should be gigantic news, as few people deserve more credibility in recent years for the tireless pursuit of our country's best interests than this group of women. I am waiting to see how the major national media outlets play this story. Or will they bury it? As of now, the signs don't look good.

Hypocrisies and Lies

Steve Soto has a good summary of a mere sampling of Bush's hypocrisies and lies. The highlights:

"Bush's $3 Trillion lie" (Note that if it's hard to comprehend how much $3 TRILLION is, it is $3,000 BILLION, or $3,000,000 MILLION. Thought of another way, it's over $10,000 for each and every individual in the United States, or over $40,000 for a family of four.)

"Bush's Lies On The Assault Weapons Ban Expiration"

"Bush's Lies On Health Care"

and "Bush Is The Ultimate Flip-Flopper".

UPDATE: Corrected my mathematical error!

Get active!

We trekked into town last weekend to visit the local Kerry headquarters, and signed up for training for two Bexar County get-out-the-vote initiatives. The training sessions were last night and the night before. This is the first on-the-ground political activism I've ever participated in. It's not the first time I tried, however.

Two years ago, I tried to volunteer for the Ron Kirk for Senate campaign in mid-October. Alas, when I visited the campaign headquarters here in San Antonio, no one was there to provide any kind of guidance. The only people there were two or three Tony Sanchez for Governor people. This was on a Saturday, only two or three weeks before the election! In retrospect, it is not surprising how miserably both those campaigns turned out, despite so much early promise.

This year is looking much, much better. Democrats are actually organized already, and lots of new people are wanting to help out. We probably won't win Texas, but we can do a lot better than past elections, and we can lay the groundwork for future victories here. And fortunately, Kerry doesn't need Texas to win.

If anyone is reading this, and if any of you are in a swing state (or even if, like me, you aren't), please get involved in your local get-out-the-vote efforts. It could make the difference between victory and defeat.

Shocking revelations

Read The Poor Man for the details. The words 'miserable failure' come to mind.

Richard Clarke speaks out again

The former White House head of counter-terrorism, Richard Clarke, is speaking out again:

War against terror is a failure, ex-White House official says
Richard Clarke tells Berkeley audience U.S. still isn't safe

Charles Burress, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 8, 2004

The Bush administration has bungled the war on terrorism, doing little to provide security at home while breeding legions of new enemies abroad, the government's former anti-terrorism chief, Richard Clarke, told a large Berkeley audience Tuesday night.

Clarke, who made international headlines last spring when he emerged as the highest-ranking whistle-blower from inside the White House's war on terrorism, painted an alarming picture of a White House still pursuing a losing strategy while America's safety hangs in the balance.

"The pool of people who really hate us is so much greater than it was on 9/11 because of this needless and counterproductive war in Iraq," Clarke said to applause from nearly 2,000 people at UC Berkeley's Zellerbach auditorium.

On the home front, except for improved airline safety, little or nothing has been done to protect the many other vulnerable targets such as trains, chemical plants, Wal-Marts and financial headquarters, said Clarke, who served as counterterrorism czar under both Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, he and other counterterrorism officials urged a wide range of protective actions, such as security for commuter trains vulnerable to the type of backpack bombs that later blew up a train in Madrid.

"That could happen in the BART system today," he said. He described most homeland-security measures in the past three years as "token efforts."

Miserable failure.