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New SV poll out of Washington State: Cantwell 49%, McGavick 39%. Cantwell's job approval is at 49%.
A couple of other interesting results:
--- Republican Dino Rossi easily beats Christine Gregoire in a hypothetical 2008 rematch of the Governor's race, 51%-38%
--- Bush job approval 32%
--- 56% favor immediate withdrawal from Iraq within six months.
--- 57% of Republicans say Bush isn't a Reagan conservative.
It's like clockwork. Whenever a liberal columnist gives off even the slightest hint of violating progressive orthodoxy they get absolutely blasted by readers, and as sure as the sun will rise in the East that pundit's next column will contain some sort of modification or qualification, inevitably packaged in an unhinged rant against the right. You see this pattern somewhat frequently with Richard Cohen, and to a lesser extent with guys like Tom Friedman and E.J. Dionne.
One person you never see it happen to is Paul Krugman, because he's so consistently, rabidly anti-Bush and anti-Republican. Last week, however, Krugman wrote about "some uncomfortable facts about the economics of modern immigration, and immigration from Mexico in particular."
Krugman stated up front he was "instinctively, emotionally pro-immigration" but went on to acknowledge that low-skill immigrants threaten to "unravel" the social safety net and that "realistically, we'll need to reduce the inflow of low-skill immigrants" with "better controls on illegal immigration."
Even though Krugman took a few gratuitous partisan shots, the column was noticeable for its attempt to deal, at least in part, with some of the realities of a very complex, difficult, and emotional issue. Mickey Kaus noticed it too, commenting that "Krugman is clearly way off the PC/Dem/elite legalization reservation here."
Indeed, judging by the opening of his column today (Times $elect), Krugman seems to have been threatened with being excommunicated from the Upper West Side cocktail party circuit:
For now, at least, the immigration issue is mainly hurting the Republican Party, which is divided between those who want to expel immigrants and those who want to exploit them. The only thing the two factions seem to have in common is mean-spiritedness.
Nothing like a vicious slander to reestablish your liberal bona fides and moral superiority. Krugman goes on to recast his argument and reiterate that "it's important to be intellectually honest, even when it hurts," but his column today is vastly different in tone from the one last week, with much more emphasis on his unequivocal support for total amnesty.
So it looks like Krugman has more or less paid the penance for his little indiscreet episode of independent thinking. It must have been a nervous few days at Princeton fielding the angry phone calls and emails from fellow members of the progressive intelligentsia.
Looks like I was a bit premature yesterday in declaring "case closed" on gesturegate. Peter Smith, the photographer who snapped the pic of Scalia for The Pilot says "It's inaccurate and deceptive of him [Scalia] to say there was no vulgarity in the moment." Smith also says Scalia accompanied the gesture by saying "Vaffanculo!", which is apparently an Italian expletive that is pretty darn close to what Dick Cheney told Pat Leahy to do to himself in the Senate last year.
If Scalia got caught making an off-color gesture while trying to be funny, fine - though he probably shouldn't have publicly chastised the reporter, even if her coverage was ridiculously over the top. I still find all of this fuss to be amusing, though if you read the column Ron Cass wrote for RCP this morning you'll see there's more to the media's obsession with Scalia than just fun and games.
It will be interesting to see where the story of the Duke lacrosse team heads in the next several weeks. For those unaware, the top-ranked Duke team was suspended from play after an exotic dancer claimed that she was gang raped by three players at a private party. There is a clear racial element to the story, as the alleged victim is black and 46 out of the 47 members of the team are white.
All 46 white players on the team were asked to provide DNA to the local authorities investigating the case (the accuser says her attackers were white). The Smoking Gun has the document filed by Durham police outlining the alleged victim's account of what happened on the night of March 14th. The alleged crime is brutal and if true, these young men are in a world of hurt and deserve to be met with the full force of the law.
The team's three captains have issued a statement on behalf of the team stating "unequivocally that any allegation that a sexual assault or rape occurred is totally and transparently false."
I don't even pretend to know what happened at this party. It's easy for me to believe that there are some real bad apples on this team and the alleged victim was subjected to something like Jodie Foster in The Accused, or worse. It's also possible this young woman was demeaned and treated shabbily by a bunch of drunk college athletes and decided she would show them by making up a story about being gang raped. And then, of course, there are all of the gray areas in between.
I do, however, find this quote in USA Today from Duke student Alvaro Jarrin protesting the incident just a wee bit hysterical:
It is important that we not let this go down easily, There's a culture of rape at Duke, so we're hoping this will get them to speak up. This rape is a symptom of a larger problem at Duke.
Being a Maryland basketball fan I have no love for the Duke student body, but the idea that there is some kind of "culture of rape" at Duke University is just absurd. This type of attitude is a by-product of the Women's Studies, leftist mentality that is so prevalent among student activists and faculty on college campuses.
There are so many cross currents here (race, rape, privileged athletes, poor victim, college politics) it will be fascinating to see how this story unfolds as the facts spill out......which they will.
This has the potential to blow up into a huge story.
Today is the 25th anniversary of John Hinckley's attempted assassination of President Reagan. The Washington Post's Sue Anne Pressley has a look back on that day 25 years ago and its effect on the country and those involved. Here also is David Broder's report from Tuesday, March 31, 1981.
Welcome to Part III of our look at the Boston Herald brouhaha over the allegedly "obscene" gesture made by Justice Scalia (For backstory see Part I and Part II).
In today's episode, poor Herald reporter Laurel J. Sweet discovers what it's like to be publicly taken to task by a Supreme Court Justice who swims in the deep end of the IQ pool:
To The Editor:It has come to my attention that your newspaper published a story on Monday stating that I made an obscene gesture - inside Holy Cross Cathedral, no less. The story is false, and I ask that you publish this letter in full to set the record straight.
Your reporter, an up-and-coming "gotcha" star named Laurel J. Sweet, asked me (o-so-sweetly) what I said to those people who objected to my taking part in such public religious ceremonies as the Red Mass I had just attended. I responded, jocularly, with a gesture that consitsted of fanning the fingers of my right hand under my chin. Seeing that she did not understand, I said "That's Sicilian," and explained its meaning - which was that I could not care less.
[Scalia goes on to quote at length from a book by Luigi Barzini, The Italians, explaining the origins of the gesture.]
How could your reporter leap to the conclusion (contrary to my explanation) that the gesture was obscene? Alas, the explanation is evident in the following line from her article: "'That's Sicilian,' the Italian jurist said, interpreting for the 'Soprano's' Challenged." From watching too many episodes of the Soprano's, your staff seems to have acquired the belief that any Sicilian gesture is obscene - especially when made by an "Italian jurist." (I am, by the way, an American jurist.)
Sincerely,
Antonin Scalia
Case closed.
Illiinois Democratic Congressman Lane Evans announced his retirement yesterday after serving 24 years in the House representing the 17th district. Evans was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease in 1995 but didn't make the news public it until three years later.
In 2004, Evans' opponent, Republican Andrea Zinga, made his health an issue by saying ""People who are on the medications he is on may have trouble with judgment, which can be worsened by excitement or stress." Bad move. Evans easily fended her off, winning by 22 points.
With Evans stepping aside the 17th is suddenly very much in play, though Democrats feel confident they'll be able to hold the heavily-gerrymandered district with a hand-picked successor. Republicans note that the district showed a big swing toward Bush in 2004 - he lost it to Kerry by only 3 points, 51-48 - after losing it 54-44 to Al Gore in 2000.
Ms. Zinga is back as the GOP nominee after squeezing out a victory in last Tuesday's competitive three-way primary by roughly 300 votes. The upside is that she's a known quantity with high name recognition in the district, the downside is she exits the primary essentially broke.
Here is Senator Rick Santorum on the floor of the Senate yesterday:
Mr. President, I have to respond to my colleague from Illinois, who suggested that somehow the Iraqis are not standing up and fighting for the freedom of their country and the comment, ``How much longer do we have to wait?''Ask the Iraqi families of the men who were beheaded--30 of them most recently--whether they are waiting for the Iraqis to step forward and sacrifice for their country. Ask the Iraqis who are in the military who are dying today, sacrificing for the freedom of their country, whether they are waiting. The people of Iraq are stepping forward and fighting for their country. We are helping them do that. It is the clear intention of our policy in Iraq to hand over the responsibility, and it is happening.
I find it almost remarkable that here now, 3 years into this conflict, where we are trying to transform an entire society, that the level of patience for this very difficult process, given all the progress made and all the elections that have been held and the Constitution drafted--I think in all but four of the provinces, there is very little terrorist activity, or insurgent activity, or whatever you want to call it. There is a concentration in a few provinces where there are problems.
But I met with people from Mosul yesterday--elected officials--who came here and talked about the dramatic improvements that are going on in that area, and the lack of any kind of al-Qaida operations and terrorist operations in that area, saying that
life is dramatically advancing. We don't hear talk about that. We hear talk about the problem spots, and that is legitimate. But the idea that the Iraqis are not fighting for their country, that they are not stepping forward--as we see day in and day out that they are conducting missions and they are eliminating the terrorist threat in Iraq--I think it is almost incredible. I don't know how you can read the news and suggest that the Iraqis are not stepping forward to defend their country and fight for their freedom.
Also, coming back to the issue of patience, I thank God sometimes that some of the elected officials who are here today were not around in 1777, 1778, and 1779. We would still be singing ``God save the queen,'' not ``hail to the chief.'' It took us 11 years to put a democracy together, in circumstances that I suggest were far less difficult, in a neighborhood that was far less problematic than the neighborhood Iraq happens to be situated in. So the idea that we have lost our patience in a struggle against Islamic fascism, which is a real present danger to the future of the United States of America, to me, is almost unconscionable.
This is a struggle we are engaged in. This is a struggle for our time. It is one that I believe history will look back upon and suggest that we met the threat that would have fundamentally changed the future of the world, and we met it before it did so. We met it with strength, with determination, and we overcame the doubters, overcame those who would have rather cut and run. I am not for cutting and running when it comes to the future security of this country. I have patience because things that are difficult and meaningful take time. We have to give that time.
I suggest there are some things that we are finding out now. Another effort I have been working on in Iraq is the intelligence information we have been able to gather from the former regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. This has been a project that Congressman Peter Hoekstra, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has been working on--and I have worked with him--to make sure these 48,000 boxes, containing roughly 2 million documents, are released to the American public and the world to determine what was the intelligence assessment and the activity level and, in particular, in Iraq with Saddam, and with his interaction with elements of al-Qaida or other terrorist organizations.
What we are finding is that some of the statements that have been made on the floor and statements that were made just as recently as March 19, 2006 by my colleague from Pennsylvania, Congressman Jack Murtha who said:
There was no terrorism in Iraq before we went there. None. There was no connection with al-Qaida. There was no connection with terrorism in Iraq itself.Yet if we look at some of the documents that are being released by Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte--and, again, only a few hundred of the millions of documents have been released. As a caveat, while Congressman Hoekstra and I are excited about the fact that DNI decided to release these documents, the pace of the release is, let us say, unsatisfactory to this point.
We have, with the blogosphere, the Internet, the opportunity to put these documents out there and have almost instantaneously translated postings about what these documents contain.
During the time the Director of National Intelligence Negroponte has had these documents--this is 3 years ago--less than 2 percent of the documents have been translated. At this pace, my grandchildren may know what is in these documents.
We need to get these documents out. Mr. President, 600 over a little over a 2-week period is almost the same pace as translating with the people they had over in DNI Negroponte's shop. We need to get these documents out quicker. Why? Because if we look at what is in these documents, there is important information in understanding the connection between Iraq and terrorist organizations and the threat we were facing, the potential threat we had talked about, which is the coordination between a country that had used chemical and biological weapons, was thought universally to have chemical and biological weapons, and terrorists who have expressed a direct desire to use those weapons and get access to them.
If we look at a report that was issued by the Pentagon Joint Forces Command translating and analyzing some of these documents, called the ``Iraqi Perspectives,'' on page 54, they write: Beginning in 1994, the Fedayeen Saddam opened its own paramilitary training camps for volunteers--this is 9 years, by the way, before the Iraq war--graduating more than 7,200 ``good men racing full with courage and enthusiasm'' in the first year.
Mr. President, 7,200 in the first year, 1994.
Beginning in 1998, these camps began hosting ``Arab volunteers from Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, `the Gulf,' and Syria.'' Volunteers. I wonder why they would be volunteering to help Saddam. It is not clear, it says, from the available evidence where are all these non-Iraqi volunteers who were ``sacrificing for the cause'' went to ply their newfound skills. Before the summer of 2002, most volunteers went home upon the completion of training. They didn't stay in Iraq. They came for training from countries in the gulf regions, and they went home. Odd that they would be fighting for the cause which would, in that case, be Saddam, if they went home.
Before the summer of 2002, as I said, most volunteers went home upon completion of the training, but these camps were humming with frenzied activity in the months immediately prior to the war.
As late as January 2003, the volunteers participated in a special training event called the Heroes Attack.
Stephen Hayes, who deserves a tremendous amount of credit for his reporting on these documents in the Weekly Standard, has brought this issue to the forefront and has awakened Members of Congress, myself included, to the importance of discovering the content of these documents as well as some of the information contained in these documents.
He reminds us of the special significance of that training in 1998:
That is the same year that the U.N. weapons inspectors left Iraq for good; the same year a known al Qaeda operative visited Baghdad for 16 days in March; the same year the U.S. embassies were bombed in East Africa; the same year the U.S. bombed Baghdad in Operation Desert Fox; and, the same year Saddam wired $150,000 to Jabir Salim, the former Iraqi Ambassador to the Czech Republic, and ordered him to recruit Islamic radicals to blow up the headquarters of Radio Free Europe.What we have here is, again, information that I believe is vitally important for the American public to see. I encourage Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte to step up the pace. Congressman Hoekstra and I have introduced legislation which would require just that: it would require the release of these documents and provides a way to do so.
We introduced this legislation prior to the decision to release these documents, but, again, I just make the point that the pace with which these documents are being released is inadequate. We need to continue to step that up, allow this information to get out for people to see, pro and con--all the information that is available to us. These are old documents. They are at least 3 years old; in some cases much more than that. The classified nature is specious, at best. We want to protect names, obviously, if there are reasons to protect certain names because of potential fallout from having their names released. If there are recipes for chemical weapons, fine. But the bottom line is most of this information should be released, can be released, and is not being released.
I assure my colleagues--and I think I can speak for Congressman Hoekstra in this regard--we will stay on this issue, and we will make sure all of this information is made available to the American public so we have a better understanding of what the situation was in Iraq prior to the war.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
For those who just can't get enough of the D.C. parlor game, here is a quick round up:
Jim VandeHei of the Washington Post says Card's resignation is evidence that "Bush is more often deferring to the expectations of Washington conventional wisdom." That sounds like a bit of stretch to me. Nevertheless, at the very end of the piece VandeHei also drops the news that "aides said more changes will come and that Bush is strongly considering adding one or two well-known Republicans to help soothe relations with Congress."
Dick Polman of the Philadelphia Inquirer characterizes the Card-Bolten switch as little more than a minor tweak: "There is no outsider element in this personnel shuffle." Polman rounds up a host of reactions, including a quote from John Hinderaker at Powerline.
David Sanger of the New York Times takes a similar angle, writing that Bush's move is "unlikely to satisfy calls within his own party for fresh thinking to address the administration's troubles."
Deborah Orin writes the New York Post: "Republicans have been fuming about White House fumbling in dealing with Congress and overall communications strategy, especially on Iraq. Bolten, meanwhile, has been skillful at dealing with Congress and has no press disasters on his watch."
Eli Lake in the New York Sun also writes an ominous first graph: "Conservatives are warning that President Bush's decision to bring in a new White House chief of staff won't be enough by itself to salvage an administration lagging in the polls." Grover Norquist gives the best quote on the White House's move (page 2): "Nobody with the possible exception of their wives will notice this change."
James Gerstenzang of the Los Angeles Times quotes a less than satisfied Trent Lott on the move: ""They still need men and women of stature and gravitas in a number of slots there in the White House. They need to bring in some experienced hands to get a handle on things." Gerstenzang also offers a pro-Bolten snip from former White House Congressional liason Nick Calio, who called Bolten "the logical and best choice" and also said that President Bush is not "particularly susceptible to calls that he needs to shake things up for the sake of shaking things up."
Lastly, Michael Kranish & Susan Milligan of the Boston Globe go even further with the "not enough of a change angle" by reporting the deep disappointment of beltway Democrats:
Some Democrats want the ouster of top Bush aides such as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, an architect of the Iraq invasion, and deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, Bush's powerful political guru. Both men remain in their posts.Democratic leaders said the president missed an opportunity to reinvigorate the White House, suggesting that Card -- who is popular and respected by Republicans and Democrats -- was not part of the problem.
''I have always found Andy Card to be reasonable, professional, and a man of his word," said Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois. ''If the White House is looking to change course, they picked the wrong person to toss overboard."
One thing is for sure, if President Bush stubbornly refused calls from members of his own party to make changes in his administration and eventually settled on swapping out Bolten for Card, he's certainly not going to pay any heed to calls from the D.C. chattering class (but especially Dick Durbin) to fire either Don Rumsfeld or Karl Rove.
UPDATE: Missed this one from John McKinnon and Jackie Calmes in The Wall Street Journal. It's essentially more of the same, best summed up by this quote from Vin Weber: "The biggest distinction between Josh and Andy is that Josh's job has been primarily a policy job for the last five years, while Andy has been focused on management and administration. That might mean some differences at the margin."
No surprise: Spitzer continues to spank Suozzi in the lastest Quinnipiac poll, 69 - 14, and he holds big leads over all potential Repubican challengers.
On the GOP side, John Faso pulls 22%, William Weld is at 16% and Randy Daniels gets 8%. Forty-eight percent of registered Republicans remain undecided.
Yesterday, Jim McDermott lost in court - again:
A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott violated federal law by turning over an illegally taped telephone call to reporters nearly a decade ago.In a 2-1 opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that McDermott violated the rights of House Majority Leader John Boehner, who was heard on the 1996 call involving former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
The court ordered McDermott to pay Boehner more than $700,000 for leaking the taped conversation. The figure includes $60,000 in damages and more than $600,000 in legal costs.
I wrote about the last time the wheels of justice spun against McDermott in this case. In late December, 2004, a U.S. Court of Appeals judge ruled that Congressman McDermott's "willful and knowing misconduct rises to the level of malice."
At the same time, Seattle PI columnist Joel Connelly got his hands on a fundraising plea being circulated by Mr. McDermott to help fill the coffers of his legal defense fund. The letter cited Tom DeLay - who has nothing whatsoever to do with the case - and accused the GOP House leadership of "using the courts" to "pursue" him. "We cannot allow Republican leaders to financially destroy a member of Congress who has a proven track record of standing up for endangered democratic values," the McDermott letter said.
But three years ago the vicious Mr. Boehner offered McDermott a deal: Boehner would drop the suit if McDermott would admit he was wrong, apologize to the House, and donate $10,000 to charity. McDermott refused and has been appealing the case since - and losing every time, with legal fees now totalling over a $1 million. Sometimes saying you're sorry is not only the right thing to do, it's the cheap thing to do as well.
America can breathe a sigh of relief: Ted Turner says he won't run for president. The AP quotes Turner as saying, "I've thought about it a lot" but that at 70 years of age his "opportunity has passed."
Our friend Rich Karlgaard sent this audio of an interview Cap Weinberger gave just two weeks ago on U.S., India relations. It shows Weinberger's mind to be undiminished by age and his failing body. Rich also has some reflections here on his last time with Cap in August 2005.
Another one of the Reagan old guard passes away. "Cap Weinberger was an indefatigable fighter for peace through strength." - Former Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Richard Brand has a fascinating article on how Smartmatic, a company with close ties to Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, quietly purchased Sequoia Voting Systems, a U.S. e-voting company. Smartmatic was an integral part of the Chavez strategy to survive the 2004 recall aimed at legally removing him as President. Prior to the recall effort, Venezuela had a relatively modern and up-to-date voting system which Chavez ordered replaced by Smartmatic, a company that had no previous experience with electronic voting machines.
A Wall Street Journal editorial a month after the August 2004 recall vote points to a study by MIT professors Ricardo Hausmann and Roberto Rigobon suggesting Chavez stole the August '04 election with the aid of the Smartmatic voting machines.
Mr. Hausmann told us that he and Mr. Rigoban also "found very clear trails of fraud in the statistical record" and a probability of less than 1% that the anomalies observed could be pure chance. To put it another way, they think the chance is 99% that there was electoral fraud.
Brand elaborates on Smartmatic's checkered past in his column:
Smartmatic has a brief but controversial history. The company was started in Caracas during the late 1990s by engineers Antonio Mugica and Alfredo Anzola. They worked out of downtown Caracas providing small-scale technology services to Latin American banks. Despite having no election experience, the tiny company rocketed from obscurity in 2004 after it was awarded a $100 million contract by the Chávez-dominated National Electoral Council to replace Venezuela's electronic voting machines for the recall vote.When the council announced the deal, it disingenuously described Smartmatic as a Florida company, though Smartmatic's main operations were in Caracas and the firm had incorporated only a small office in Boca Raton. It then emerged that Smartmatic's ''partner'' in the deal, Bizta Corp., also directed by Anzola and Mugica, was partly owned by the Venezuelan government through a series of intermediary shell corporations. Venezuela initially denied its investment but eventually sold its stake.
When the vote finally came, exit polls by New York's Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates showed Chávez had been defeated 59 to 41 percent; however, when official tallies were announced, the numbers flipped to 58-42 in favor of Chávez. Venezuela's electoral council briefly posted machine-by-machine tallies on the Internet but removed them as mathematicians from MIT, Harvard and other universities began questioning suspicious patterns in the results.
Flush with cash from its Venezuelan adventures, Smartmatic International incorporated in Delaware last year and purchased Sequoia, announcing the deal as a merger between two U.S. companies.
Sequoia's machines were used in the most recent election here in Chicago. A March 24th Chicago Tribune article detailing problems with the new voting system refers to the company as "California-based Sequoia." Nowhere in the article is it mentioned that the company is owned by Smartmatic. Brand details the Sequoia/Smartmatic ownership chain further:
Smartmatic International is owned by a Netherlands corporation, which is in turn owned by a Curacao corporation, which is in turn held by a number of Curacao trusts controlled by proxy holders who represent unnamed investors, almost certainly among them Venezuelans Mugica and Anzola and possibly others.
One would think with all of the connections to the Chavez regime the Smartmartic purchase of Sequoia would have raised some red flags inside the U.S. government. The truth is with all of the foreign policy focus on Iraq and the War on Terror, Chavez has been able to fly beneath the radar on many strategic issues. Sixty-dollar plus oil has given Chavez the opportunity to play sugar-daddy to many of the poor countries in the region, with the goal to make him the power broker in the region, not the United States. The U.S. should be under no illusion: the Chavez regime is a growing and dangerous menace.
Chavez is hoping to install Smartmatic voting machines in other Latin American countries, and while there are enough safeguards here in the U.S. to make it extremely unlikely Chavez would be able to influence U.S. elections through the Sequoia/Smartmatic machines, the same can not be said of other Latin American countries where Smartmatic may soon be employed - and where the Sequoia purchase and U.S. contracts will be used to lend credibility to the Smartmatic machines.
This is a story that deserves far greater press attention.
I have to admit this is a bit silly. Yesterday I posted an item on the report by Laurel Sweet of the Boston Herald that Supreme Court Justice Scalia had made an "obscene" gesture to reporters (flicking his hand under his chin) outside the Cathedral of the Holy Cross on Sunday. Today, reader CM emails to say that Margery Eagan of the Boston Herald writes in her subscriber-only column today she can't find any Italians to back up the charge that the gesture Scalia used was "obscene."
Nevertheless, the Herald carries a follow up story by Ms. Sweet today gauging reaction to Scalia's "off-color 'Sicilian' salute" which borders on the comical:
"He's got a reputation as being a cantankerous guy," said Andrew Perlman, who teaches legal ethics and professional responsibility at Suffolk University Law School.Still, said Perlman, the indiscretion by Scalia, who can be judge for life if he minds his Ps and Qs, doesn't rise "to the level of questioning his ability to do his job."
Thank God we got that straightened out. Surely the Boston Herald can find more burning questions for their reporters to probe, no?
Ever since the current recovery began, a disconnect between the economy's performance and the public's perception of that performance has existed. Time has not closed this gap.
According to a survey sponsored by the American Research Group, taken between March 18th and 21st, only 40% of Americans rated the national economy as excellent, very good or good, while 59% thought it was bad, very bad or terrible.
When these very same people were queried about their own household finances, 65% said they were excellent, very good or good, while just 32% thought them bad, very bad, or terrible.
People seem to think they are doing well, but their neighbors are not. With unemployment down to 4.8%, the stock market up, interest rates low, incomes and wealth growing, and the economy expanding solidly, this divergence in opinion is hard to fathom.
Part of this disconnect is due to an unending onslaught of negative news about the economy. Certainly, there are some bad things happening. Hundreds of thousands of workers at auto and auto parts manufacturers face an uncertain future. These problems come on the heels of major problems at large US airlines. But, a great deal of the fear about our economy comes from a group we call the Pouting Pundits of Pessimism who see potential calamity behind every bush and around every corner.
Illegal immigration, low savings rates, bird flu, terrorism, foreign enmity of the US, slow wage growth, high energy prices, Fed rate hikes, China, global warming, pension problems, budget deficits, and trade deficits are not an exhaustive list.
It is impossible to analyze each of these "issues" in such a short space. In brief, however, the last time we can remember so much negativity was in the early 1980s, when Japan and Germany were "stealing" all our manufacturing and pundits fretted constantly about deficits, savings and wage growth.
But, in the 1980s and 1990s, the US economy continued to grow much faster than other developed countries. The same is true today. The US is growing two or three times faster than Germany or France, a record number of people are employed in the US, average hourly earnings have expanded at a 4.8% annual rate in the past three months, and household wealth has hit an all-time high. Moreover, in February, the Federal Reserve's manufacturing output index rose to a record high - the US manufacturing sector has never produced more "stuff." China is not stealing all our manufacturing.
The data speak for themselves, but so do the polls and surveys. Despite a good economy, people are worried. The "old" ways of doing things are giving way to "new" ways. For many, these changes cause consternation and fear.
This is unfortunate. The US has been the world's most successful economy for nearly two centuries. The reason for this has been a focus on freedom. Immigration, free trade, low taxes and limited government interference are the signposts of this freedom. Any deviation from that path threatens that success.
(Brian Wesbury is the Chief Economist for First Trust Advisors in Chicago, IL)
Boston Herald reporter Laurel J. Sweet tut-tuts about "conduct unbecoming a 20-year veteran of the country's highest court," though I suspect this little incident will only make Scalia's supporters like him even more:
Minutes after receiving the Eucharist at a special Mass for lawyers and politicians at Cathedral of the Holy Cross, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had a special blessing of his own for those who question his impartiality when it comes to matters of church and state."You know what I say to those people?" Scalia, 70, replied, making an obscene gesture under his chin when asked by a Herald reporter if he fends off a lot of flak for publicly celebrating his conservative Roman Catholic beliefs.
"That's Sicilian," the Italian jurist said, interpreting for the "Sopranos" challenged.
"It's none of their business," continued Scalia, who was the keynote speaker at yesterday's Catholic Lawyers' Guild luncheon. "This is my spiritual life. I shall lead it the way I like."
The Chicago Sun-Times weighs in with Part II of "A State of Shame", its special report on Illinois veterans:
Reservists fight to keep jobsMarch 27, 2006
BY CHERYL L. REED STAFF REPORTER
Edgar Montalvo has been deployed overseas six times in 10 years. First Sgt. Brandi Schiff has spent more time overseas for the military in the last six years than in the United States. Montalvo and Schiff aren't full-time soldiers. They're Army Reserve officers. And they say their civilian careers have suffered as a result.
Montalvo had been with the same employer for 19 years. Then, six weeks after returning from an overseas deployment, he got a negative job review and immediately accepted a buyout to leave. Schiff was laid off six hours after telling her bosses the Army was sending her to Afghanistan.
Part I can be read by clicking here.
Rasmussen Reports out with a new poll showing Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm tied with Republican challenger Dick DeVos, 44%-44%.
Granholm's approval rating in the latest SurveyUSA monthly tracking poll is only 45% (52% disapprove), but that actually represents an improvement and her best showing over the course of the last eleven months.
Don Van Natta, Jr. clearly thinks he's found a smoking gun. How else to explain his treatment of the contents of a top-secret British memo in this morning's New York Times:
Bush Was Set on Path to War, Memo by British Adviser Says By DON VAN NATTA Jr.LONDON -- In the weeks before the United States-led invasion of Iraq, as the United States and Britain pressed for a second United Nations resolution condemning Iraq, President Bush's public ultimatum to Saddam Hussein was blunt: Disarm or face war.
But behind closed doors, the president was certain that war was inevitable. During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by The New York Times.
There are two ways to frame this story, and it's clear which angle Van Natta takes. He starts by suggesting that President Bush's private discussions about Iraq were somehow at odds with his public declarations telling Hussein to "disarm or face war" and casting the contents of the memo as more evidence of a President hell-bent on war regardless of the circumstances.
A more benign - and some would say fair - view of the meeting would be to say that by late January, 2003 President Bush had lost almost all hope that Saddam would comply with the demands for immediate, accurate and complete disclosure of his WMD programs laid out in Resolution 1441, passed unanimously by the UN Security Council on November 8, 2002.
In fact, President Bush had every reason to be pessimistic. As I've written about before, by late January 2003, Iraq had already submitted a WMD declaration which many experts found dubious, and only four days prior to the meeting Van Natta writes about Hans Blix had gone before the UN Security Council and declared that "Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament which was demanded of it and which it needs to carry out to win the confidence of the world and to live in peace."
Furthermore, the idea that the U.S. would have "penciled in" a date for the invasion at that point isn't all that surprising. Military experts had been warning for months that it would be difficult for the U.S. to maintain a substantial military presence on the border of Iraq for any length of time (one of the reasons Saddam grudgingly allowed inspectors to continue operating, it should be pointed out) and also that military action would need to be conducted sooner rather than later to avoid starting an invasion at the height of the Middle Eastern summer.
There's more in the Van Natta story that could be seen as favorable to the President, though it's all buried well below the lede. What Van Natta's "march to war" story misses, as do so many others about the subject, is that ultimately the choice for war was Hussein's not Bush's. Once Resolution 1441 passed, the onus on WMD disclosure and thus the responsibility for avoiding military action fell on Saddam. He had months to comply, but failed to do so fully or convincingly even by the lenient standards of the United Nations. Even up until the last hours before the invasion Hussein could have prevented military action by coming clean on WMD or by going into exile, as many called for him to do. In the end Hussein did neither, and so the invasion began as promised.
(Editor's Note: the other day Jay Cost wrote a post on the Boston Globe story suggesting potential Republican vulnerability in the Northeast this year. Yesterday, we posted an email from a Republican in Connecticut providing anecdotal evidence supporting that notion. The following is Jay's repsonse to the reader who emailed.)
There is no doubt that something is going on in the Northeast. I would actually go a few steps further than you and say that not only is a tidal wave building, but it is already in existence and has been operative for several decades. If you track the GOP's shares of US Senate seats, US House seats, state senate seats and state house seats in the Northeast over the last 60 years, it becomes very clear. In 1944, the GOP held more than 60% of all state senate and house seats; they held about 55% of all US Senate and House seats. Today, all of those numbers are at or below 45%.
Your anecdotal perspective is consistent with this.
However, the real question for 2006 is: does this translate into pickups for the Democrats this year? The answer is: not necessarily. National trends like this are usually only operative in open seats. If, for instance, CT 04 were open this year, i.e. Chris Shays had decided to retire, then clearly the Democrats would pick it up because the district is Democratic. This is how they have picked up most of the seats they have acquired since 1944. As it stands, the only seat that is open in the Northeast is Boehlert's, which is more conservative than the rest of the region.
The other way to take seats that "should" belong to one party or another is to (a) run really good challengers who (b) can tie incumbents to unpopular elements of the party of the incumbent. This is how the GOP was able to get so many Southern Democratic incumbents in 1994. They ran strong challengers who tied individual representatives to the 1993 Omnibus Budget Act, the assault weapons ban and the Brady Bill. The reason that you have to do this with incumbents is because there is a strong bias toward them in congressional elections. Voters tend not to associate incumbent politicians with what they dislike about their party or the government. Voters also tend not to know anything about the challengers. In 2002, for instance, only about 15% of the public could name the challenger in their district. Voters tend to view House elections in terms of what they think about the member personally -- not about the national context. And, who provides them with information about the incumbent? Almost always, it is the incumbent.
All in all, it adds up to what is known as the "incumbency advantage." In the last two election cycles, the reelection rate has averaged 99%.
All of this is why Democrats in the South could hang on for as long as they did. The national party was becoming increasingly unpopular (the first southern revolt against the Democrats occurred in 1948), the electorate in presidential elections increasingly voted Republican -- but Democratic members could survive because of weak challenges and the ability to run away from the party. The GOP did as well as they did in the South in 1994 because they ended both features of southern congressional politics. They were able to tie individual members to the national mood by referencing specific roll call votes and they offered up more appealing, better known, more viable challengers.
This year, I just do not see the Democrats as being able to do either.
First, as I mentioned in the column, recruitment is lackluster -- many of the opponents of these GOP reps have NEVER held office before. This means that they are amateurs -- and it is hard to beat a pro with an amateur. Further, and more importantly, it will be hard to tie somebody like Chris Shays to "Bush Republicanism." Ditto, I think, for Nancy Johnson (she was, after all, first elected in 1982 -- a year that was a big one for the Democrats; she has survived several Democratic years, including 1992, 1996, 1998). Bob Simmons, I think, is the only GOPer from the CT delegation who might be going down.
It is important to remember that Chris Shays and Nancy Johnson know what is going on up in CT just as much as you do, probably more so. Their jobs, after all, are entirely dependent upon gauging in advance the district mood and positioning themselves to maximize their chances of reelection. So, both Johnson and Shays have been defying the Bush Administration of late -- so they can go to their districts and say, "We agree! And we are your *independent* voices in Washington!" On election day -- the average voter in CT 05 will be mad at Bush, will still like Nancy Johnson, and will not recognize the name of the challenger. What will she do? She'll vote for Johnson.
Again, the reason for this is that House elections are not a very good representation of the national mood. Over the course of the next 10 years, I fully expect the Northeast GOP delegation to get whittled away due to the regional realignment that has been occuring for some time, but the Democrats have not put themselves in a situation to capture a lot of these seats in 2006. - Jay Cost
Howard Kurtz discussed the subject of the media's coverage of Iraq yesterday on the Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. There's a good deal worth reading, but here's the takeaway from Blitzer's final quetion:
BLITZER: Very briefly, is there any sign of a backlash against the mainstream media because of our coverage of what's happening in Iraq?KURTZ: Yes, among conservatives, among military family members and others. A lot of people, as we saw that woman from West Virginia, blaming us for the situation there.
I think Kurtz misspoke here: nobody is blaming the media for the situation on the ground, only for largely failing to present a balanced picture of what's taking place in Iraq. There is also an implication, however, that by providing so much of a one-sided, negative picture of the war the media is buoying the hopes and spirits of the insurgents and making things harder on our troops, as well as depressing public opinion back here at home.
Right after the interview with Kurtz ended, Jack Cafferty came on to provide what I think could be accurately described as the prevailing point of view of the MSM on the subject:
JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: You know, I just have a question. I mean, part of the coverage, they don't like the coverage, maybe because we were sold a different ending to this story three years ago. We were told that we'd be embraced as conquering heroes, flower pedals strewn in the soldiers' paths, a unity government would be formed, everything would be rosy this -- three years after the fact, the troops would be home.Well, it's not turning out that way. And if somebody came into New York City and blew up St. Patrick's Cathedral and in the resulting days they were finding 50 and 60 dead bodies a day on the streets of New York, you suppose the news media would cover it? You're damn right they would.
This is nonsense, it's the media's fault and the news isn't good in Iraq. The news isn't good in Iraq. There's violence in Iraq. People are found dead every day in the streets of Baghdad. This didn't turn out the way the politicians told us it would. And it's our fault? I beg to differ.
First, Cafferty errs in saying that anyone ever suggested the troops would be home in three years - or any amount of time, for that matter. Second, it's clear he's opposed to the war in Iraq - he thinks we were misled, the policy is a failure, etc - and that the media is just fulfilling its obligation to report on the violence that is taking place as a result of the administration's