Altercation

• May 7, 2004 | 12:02 PM ET

We’re flying back today.  Chris Mooney turned in another terrific “Think Again” column on the failures of science reporting. 

And I've got a new Nation column about Sinclair and Koppel up too.

Take a look even though it’s …

Slacker Friday

Name:  Charles Pierce
Hometown: Newton, MA
Eric:
Fire the bastards.  Every damn one of them.  And then lock them all up.  Build a new wing at Leavenworth, if you have to do it.  You can start with Rummy, who's not turning out to be quite the iconic figure in American history that his Beltway lackeys have been pitching us for the past three years.  (Apparently, what happened was abuse, but maybe not torture.  And maybe his shoes will turn to gold if he wishes hard enough.)  God, if they pitch him any further overboard, he's going to wash up in Guam.  Right now, at every news conference he looks like Tessio, standing in the driveway at the end of "The Godfather," asking Tom Hagen to bail him out.

"Nothing I can do, Rummy."

Thanks to Sy Hersh, and to whatever benevolent God put him on earth, the prison story has sent the pundit right on a descent into utter incoherence.  It doesn't fit any of the precious paradigms -- not even their phony concern for Our Troops, who are over there doing a Great Job keeping Sean Hannity's book sales in the stratosphere.  Hey, guys and gals, I can assure you that professional soldiers are more sickened by this story than any reporter is.  In fact, the ones I know sound very much like the good priests I knew who we're devastated as the abuse stories rolled out, day after day, over the last couple of years.  And that exactly what we don't need  -- now that Rummy and C-Plus Augustus, and Colin The Oval Office Chiffarobe have stuck us in this place for another 10 years -- is a cover-up so this story festers and demolishes morale even more than it has.

Hearings, please. In public. On television.

Lock the bastards up.

Never fear, though. The 99th Airborne "Screaming Pillpoppers" are on the case.  Colonel Pilonoidal Limbaugh, take it away:

"This is a pure, media-generated story.  I'm not saying it didn't happen or that the pictures aren't there, but this is being given more life than the Waco invasion got.  It’s almost become an Oklahoma City-type thing.”

Would Little Tim Russert or Mr. Matthews like to explain what in the name of Christ their junkie pal is talking about here?  Congratulations, boys, on mainstreaming idiocy.  Waco was a "pure, media-generated story"?  "An Oklahoma City-type thing"?  The media made up the attack on the Murrah Building?  It made too much of it?  Jeebus Christmas, must've been the maid's day off at Casa Dirigible.

Name: Stupid
Hometown: Chicago
Hey Eric, it's Stupid to avoid Iraq for a moment and talk about Thomas Friedman.  Has anyone noticed the change in his columns in the past month or so?  Take globalism, the cause he's championed for years.  It was just this spring Friedman defended companies outsourcing jobs overseas.  He reasoned that because America was such an innovative place, we would get all of this lost income back and more in orders for our value-added products and services.  But last month, in a column titled "Losing Our Edge," Friedman had the warning sirens on full blast: other nations are closing the innovation gap by investing in their technology infrastructure and science education (proving Robert Reich correct - he has compelling argued this for I don't know how long).  We're now seeing "serious" research and development being outsourced, not just phone bank jobs.  Friedman pronounces this a crisis equal to the war on Iraq (!) and makes good suggestions for a call to action. 

But darker things are left unsaid: if his innovation premise falls, doesn't globalism become our enemy?  Have we been committing economic suicide because it's our trade deficits funding this foreign r&d?  If so, how realistic is it to think that we can or will "invest ourselves" out of this trend?

More disturbing was Friedman's newfound amoralism regarding China.  Sunday he wrote that we need to apologize -- apologize! --  for calling the Chinese leadership "the Butchers of Beijing."  Not because they aren't butchers, but because the world has become economically "hooked" on China.  Instead we're supposed to pray that there is no economic instability there.  How nice, let's condemn Tibet, Hong Kong, and a billion Chinese citizens to dictatorial rule because...I dunno, labor in China is cheaper than labor in Laos.  The left heard the word "appeasement" a lot with respect to Iraq -- isn't this the same thing?  Like we really want this Communist/Nationalist hybrid in China to become a greater power than it already is!  Didn't the fall of the Soviet Union teach us anything?  It's the economy, but also it's that a morality-free foreign policy usually comes back to haunt you. 

• May 6, 2004 | 12:11 PM ET

Eric Rauchway is today's guest Altercator.

HARD FOR ME TO SAY, THE HARDEST WORD, WHAT WERE WE TALKING ABOUT AGAIN?

The president appeared on Arab television Wednesday to not-quite-apologize to Arab viewers for the actions of American troops and (as we now say) "contractors" in Saddam Hussein's old torture rooms.  "It's also important for the people of Iraq to know that in a democracy, everything is not perfect, that mistakes are made."  Well:  I take it all back, he really does seem Reaganesque.

Asked why the President wouldn't explicitly apologize, Scott McClellan stepped up:  "I'm saying it now for him."

Anonymous Pentagon official on Abu Ghraib: "You mean the six morons who lost the war?"

Anonymous senior Bush administration official:  Arabs and Muslims "are certain to seize upon the images as proof that the American occupiers are as brutal as ousted President Saddam Hussein's government."

Hearts and minds:  Not won.

And there may be more than six morons, come to that:  Seymour Hersh mentions a commander who "was recommending exactly doing the kind of things that happened in that prison."  As Kevin Drum writes, "it just keeps getting worse and worse."

Fear not:  the president has "chastised" Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for keeping the problem from him these long months since December.  And the president gave Rumsfeld a "dressing-down," too. 

So: justice?  Served.

But for consumption on the home front:  In Niles, Michigan on Tuesday, the president reminded Americans, "Because we acted, torture rooms are closed"; and again in Kalamazoo, "the torture chambers in Iraq are closed."

IN FOR A DIME, IN FOR A DOLLAR

Or as they say in the empire business, in for a couple hundred billion (or so), in for $25 billion more.  Congress is going to vote on it soon and at some point, someone will tell the president.  Although just yet, he "has not been told that there is a resource problem."

I know of only one standing rule about empires.  Mark Twain put it most simply in 1897, the year before we started ours:  "It is easier to stay out than get out."  As they say about cutting the long story short, "too late."

INVADING POODLE-DOGS! WITH CRUCIFIXES!

Since Pierce brought up the Catholic issue, here's something to think about.  At a tanning factory down in Middlesboro, Kentucky, a couple of workers told an interviewer they were voting Republican for president. 

The interviewer asked, do you "think we are having good times under the Republicans"? 

No, the men said. 

So why won't you vote Democrat? 

"Well they say he's a Catholic." 

What's wrong with that?

"Damned if I know." 

Okay, cheap historian trick, that was 1928 and the Democrat was Al Smith.  But you get the point.  It doesn't matter what it means that he's a Catholic.  He's a Catholic, and apparently, a bad Catholic because just like a number of other public officials (Tom Ridge and Arnold Schwarzenegger among 'em, I hear), he's a pro-choice Catholic -- 'cept unlike them he's  a Democrat.  Which is, apparently, Bad.  Like being a Catholic; see above.

Like Herbert Hoover's missus said; I can't abide bigotry but my God, being Catholic's a sin.  And as the Reverend John Roach Straton said about Al Smith bein' Catholic, why, he represented "card playing, cocktail drinking, poodle dogs, divorces, novels, stuffy rooms, dancing, evolution, Clarence Darrow, overeating, nude art, prize fighting, actors, greyhound racing, and modernism."

(On "evolution," well, we are not done with that, as events just up the road from me show.  H.L. Mencken, thou shouldst be living at this hour.  Well, there is The Panda's Thumb anyway.)

And, well, come to it, maybe that Democrat's not even properly Irish Catholic, but some amalgam, some mongrel combination of German, Italian, and Irish -- at least, that's what they said about Smith.  Possibly, you know, he looked a little French, too.

The thing about that 1928 election is, the Democrats probably should have won.  The trends were all running their way; the Republicans used to win all the major cities, but in 1928 the Democrats won 'em.  And the Democrats won formerly rock-ribbed Republican Massachusetts.  And they benefited from long-term tendencies to look past sectional voting toward interests shared across sectional divides.  But the cultural attack levied by Hoover surrogates gave the Republicans the edge, garnering Southern support (Hoover won Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Texas, and Florida -- unheard-of for a Republican then) because, as Mencken had warned, as soon as the Democrats nominated a Catholic the "Ku Kluxers of every State south of the Potomac would begin building forts along the coast to repel the Pope."

But Smith couldn't win by fighting back in the Kulturkampf; once you accept the terms of cultural struggle you lose.  He had to win by showing Americans their common interests across cultural and sectional lines.

Well:  show us.  And, as Mencken would gently say, words of one syllable, please.  There are journalists among the audience.

Reading list:

• Finan, Christopher M.  Alfred E. Smith:  The Happy Warrior.
• Slayton, Robert A.  Empire Statesman: The Rise and Redemption of Al Smith.
• Mencken, H. L.  On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe.

• May 5, 2004 | 10:47 AM ET

Charles Pierce here, altercating alternately while Doc wings his way to the coast for God lone knows what purpose.  If you missed him on Scarborough Country Sunday night – and, if you blinked, you did – what can I tell you?  Doc left Old Scrunchy Face in the ha’penny place, as my granny once put it.  However, the best moment came when Christopher Hitchens, after 20 minutes of playing the role of Erudite Two-Fisted Man Of The Left, ventured to point out that our religious leaders had been “next to useless” through the whole thing.  This did not go down well with his new pals among the assembled theocrats.  Joe set a new land-speed record for going to commercial, and Rep. David Dreier (R-Green Room)  looked like he was going to take an ax to the cameras.

I really do have to get out more, don’t I?

Anyway…  I once got a letter from a woman who believed Dan Rather spoke to her, personally, through her television set.  It was in response to a piece I’d done on the big guy for GQ, and she wanted some confirmation of what she knew to be the case.  I never did write her back, but I didn’t worry much about the impact she might be having on our society, either.

Look, this being the United States of America, and the USA being populated in the main by human beings, I take it on faith that there are among my fellow citizens a vast exaltation of opinions that can be safely confined to the ranks of the crazoid.  Never has a nation so dedicated itself to the proposition that its people should not only hold their nutty ideas, but that they should share them as widely as possible.  I awake every morning full in the knowledge that hundreds – nay, THOUSANDS – of my fellow citizens believe that space aliens landed in New Mexico, that Lyndon Johnson killed John F. Kennedy from ambush, that the Bavarian Illuminati control the outcome of fourth race at Louisiana Downs, and that Tom Clancy can write.  I am content in this knowledge because I know that this is  -- and, of a right, ought to be -- the greatest society ever devised in which to be a public crank.

I thought of the woman over the past two weeks when the country got itself into an uproar over a column written in the University of Massachusetts Daily Collegian by somebody named Rene Gonzalez.  The column took some bizarre (and marginally grammatical) hacks at the late Pat Tillman.  It took less than a day before the piece was blowing all through the media wind tunnel, even though far more people denounced the column than ever would have read it 10 years ago.

I mean, honestly, I know there’s no economy of scale in the new media marketplace.  But, after all, this was nothing more than the blithering of a graduate student in a college newspaper, the kind of thing that usually gets stapled to a telephone pole beneath flyers seeking lost house pets and handbills advertising some music club.  I feel quite safe in saying that Rene Gonzalez’s constituency can fairly well be found between the “R” and “Z” keys on his computer.  Nevertheless, to hear the punditocracy rave, you’d have thought Gonzalez was somewhere between Thomas Paine and St. Paul on the scale of earthmoving polemicists.

(I pause here to mention that cartoonist Ted Rall – who is to the American Left what goats are to ballet – has inflamed folks with a cartoon covering much the same ground that Gonzalez did, and has far less of an excuse for arrant nonsense than should be granted the latter.)

The reaction to Gonzalez’s piece had everything to do with the desperate need of the modern pundit to be beside his/herself – which, in most cases, is one too many.  However, the reaction was not aimed at the expression of an opinion, but to the very existence of that opinion itself, anywhere, even in the most dimly lit corner of the collegiate media.  The overwhelming impression was that Gonzalez had offended against a brand new icon – that he had blasphemed more against the use people had decided to make of Tillman, than against Tillman himself, who never wanted to be more than an ordinary soldier, and died bravely as just that.  And who now is having done to him in death everything that he disdained while he was alive.  This is a modern media culture utterly unprepared for what happens when a war begins to go sour.

Unkind souls – not me, certainly – might suggest that Gonzalez’s opinions were no less nutty than many of those spouted by the Wall Street Journal editorial page between the years 1992 and 2000.  Souls even less kind – not me, surely -- might ponder whether or not the opinion of a president that God put him in office to fight evil, or the opinion of an attorney general that the Republic is threatened by nekkid statues, might both have more of an effect on the polity than the artless maunderings emanating from some garret in the Berkshires.

Pat Tillman died a soldier. A good friend of mine who is also one said he would have been happy to have commanded him, and that’s good enough for me.  At his memorial service on Monday. Tillman’s family spoke with great passion against turning their lost son into a marble statue, so I will pay them the respect of not doing that, and of not using his death to score cheap political points, and to remember amid all the wild talk, that iconization can be the worst form of forgetting.

OK, if you’re keeping score at home, it goes John DiIulio, Paul O’Neill, Richard Clarke, and now Joseph Wilson who have told you over the past two years how this White House works.  Their stories are consistent in tone and have gone largely without rebuttal by anyone of consequence.

Wilson’s the best of them – smart, judicious, and outraged about all the right things, but especially about how the Mayberry Machiavellis went to work on his wife.  He stood Little Tim Russert on his ear last Sunday, and put on a bravura show with Charlie Rose last night.  He also introduced the phrase “frog-marched” into the political lexicon, for which he should be congratulated.

OK, so it’s not Vietnam. No jungles. Minarets. Sand. Lots of sand. Nevertheless, this is not good news.  Maybe it’s Gaza?  Belfast?  Mr. Quag?  Mr. Mire will see you now.

OK, hearts and minds are probably out. How about livers and kidneys?  Do we still have a shot there?

On the other hand, this is really bad news, too. It's a strange, strange world we live in, Master Jack.

And speaking of public droppings, it’s nice to see that Chuck Colson’s work lives on.  This is a dirty trick that is right out in the open.  We’ve certainly come a long way from the days in which Don Segretti and the lads felt obligated to write their letters anonymously.

Apropos of that, the newest issue of The Atlantic – there appears to be a hostage photo of Tony Blair on the cover – has a piece by Joshua Green on opposition research in presidential campaigns that suffers from an excess of fairness.  There simply is no moral equivalence between an admittedly tough operative like Chris Lehane and a worthless bottom-feeding slug like David Bossie, and no amount of journalistic on-the-other-handedness can create one.  And any study of the oppo phenomenon ought to have at least a glancing familiarity with the phrase, “Arkansas Project.”

Oh, and what he said, too.

Mini Alter-Review:  The great T. R. Pearson has a new novel.  It is called “True Cross.”  In it, we learn about the perils inherent in both true love and the keeping of casual fowl in the front yard.  In a truly advanced society, this all would occasion parades.

• May 4, 2004 | 12:05 PM ET

Alter-reviews:  I have to fly to LA early this morning and Pierce and Dr. Eric II will be stepping in tomorrow and Thursday. In the meantime, I’ve been paging through a few major biographies lately, Sally Bedell Smith’s Grace and Power and Simon Sebag Montifiore’s Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. 

The former is a sort of Vanity Fair-ish history of the Kennedy administration, as can be discerned from its recent appearance on the cover of Vanity Fair.  That said, I’ve looked into the sourcing quite a bit on the parts that concern me and I’m impressed.  There is actual new ground covered on the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is incredible.  The verdict: so far, so good.

Interestingly (ironically) much the same might be said of Montifiore’s Stalin.  Though the quality of its research puts it in its own category, it is written very much the way Vanity Fair would cover Stalin if Vanity Fair were written and edited by really solid and dilligent historians.  The focus on the personal is relentless, but inevitably, our stock of knowledge on the key events of Stalin’s life is increased, though most mysteries remain.  I find myself in agreement with this anonymous, intelligent review published originally in Publisher’s Weekly:

The reader learns about sexual peccadilloes of the top Communists: Stalin's secret police chief Lavrenti Beria, for one, "craved athletic women, haunting the locker rooms of Soviet swimmers and basketball players." Stalin's own escapades after the death of his wife are also noted. There's also much detail about the food at parties and other meetings of Stalin's henchmen.  The effect is paradoxical: Stalin and his cronies are humanized at the same time as their cruel misdeeds are recounted.  Montefiore offers little help in answering some of the unsettled questions surrounding Stalin: how involved was he in the 1934 murder of rising official Sergei Kirov, for example.  He also seems to leave open the question of Stalin's paranoia: he argues that the Georgian-born ruler was a charming man who used his people skills to get whatever he wanted. Montefiore mainly skirts the paranoia issue, noting that only after WWII, when Stalin launched his anti-Semitic campaigns, did he "become a vicious and obsessional anti-Semite." There are many Stalin biographies out there, but this fascinating work distinguishes itself by its extensive use of fresh archival material and its focus on Stalin's ever-changing coterie.

One biography that I did recently read cover to cover is Connie Bruck’s life of Lew Wasserman, When Hollywood Had A King.  In many ways the book is the mirror image of those above. Wasserman never really comes alive as a person.  But I read the whole book because I found myself learning so much about how so many different worlds worked and came together: organized crime, Hollywood, agenting, politicking, philanthropy, etc.  Bruck is an almost Caroesque researcher.  One discovery of the book that has gone unremarked is the degree to which Bruck nails Ronald Reagan as president of SAG for selling out his members and playing a front-man for some extremely dastardly dealings.  Reagan appears to have been paid off for much of this work, but exact arrangements will probably never be known.

Last year, I recommended my friend Michael Waldman’s book and CD collection of presidential speeches, My Fellow Americans: The Most Important Speeches of America's Presidents, from George Washington to George W. Bush.  I’ve been meaning to recommend another historical book/CD combo as well, John Prados' The White House Tapes: Eavesdropping on the President.  Here, you can eavesdrop JFK meeting with civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King and discussing the pros and cons of supporting a coup in South Vietnam with his National Security Council in October of 1963, days before he was killed.  It begins with FDR and racial integration and ends with Ronald Reagan and Iran Contra.  It is really something to be able to hear these conversations for oneself, both for history buffs and historians.

Novelistically, I’ve just been loving, Tom Perrotta’s Little Children.  It is supposed to be his breakthrough novel, but I also very much liked Wishbones and Joe College.  I am a student of the east coast suburban novel and among his contemporaries, nobody does it better.

Alter-review II:  My favorite company has graced us with a lovely six-CD collection by everybody’s favorite  four-and-half fingered guitarist, Jerry Garcia.  It’s called “All Good Things: Jerry Garcia Studio Sessions.  It’s got all five studio albums released between 1972 and 1982: Garcia, Garcia (Compliments), Reflections, Cats Under The Stars, and Run For The Roses.  Each album includes previously unreleased bonus tracks, and a sixth disc gathers 12 more.  The packaging is nice, with a 130 or so page booklet with new liner notes for each individual album, a forward by Robert Hunter, an essay by Blair Jackson, and plenty of archival photos.  As for the CDs themselves, Reflections and the first “Garcia” are both great.  “Garcia (Compliments)” is decent.  The other two are for completists only, though the archival stuff is, in many cases, better than the stuff that was on the CDs.  The collection of archival material at the end is, aside from the improved sound quality and the handsome housing, the thrill of the collection.  Its final song is “Accidentally Like a Martyr.”

Link update: The proper URL for the piece on Zionism I mentioned yesterday is here.  It was changed after I initially used it.  Also, read this terrific piece on adjunct life and the now defunct adjunct blogger.

• May 3, 2004 | 12:05 PM ET

The Bush Administration and its allies are claiming that the economy is in great shape.  However, to do that, they need to redefine what constitutes economic progress.  Christian Weller and John Lyman from the Center for American Progress document the “black is white” world of conservative economics in a recent column and an overview of conservative rhetoric vs. reality.  Working families are suffering from a lackluster labor market, regardless of the way the numbers are spun.

It is hard to imagine that people will actually buy the rhetoric about the economy.  A recent report found that more than half of the labor force is very concerned about the job security of those currently working.  Two-thirds of workers feel now is a bad time to find a quality job—up from 16% three years ago.  This pessimism stems from workers’ experiences.  Lay-off notices became a reality for one out of every five workers at some point during the last three years, and of those who were lucky enough to escape lay-off themselves, one third worked with someone who wasn’t.  No wonder people are reluctant to buy into the idea of recovery--more than half of all workers think there are no steps they can take to reduce the likelihood being laid-off over the next three to five years.  Surprisingly, employers are even more pessimistic—fewer than 30% believe they can reduce the probability of having to lay people off in that same time period.

I’ve always thought Robert Kagan to be the most thoughtful of the Neocons.  Here he refuses to buy into the happy talk coming from the administration and its various apologists and finds himself confronting what he terms “the great mystery in this mounting debacle”: George W. Bush.  Kagan writes: 

“His commitment to stay the course in Iraq seems utterly genuine. Yet he continues to tolerate policymakers, military advisers and a dysfunctional policymaking apparatus that are making the achievement of his goals less and less likely.  He does not seem to demand better answers, or any answers, from those who serve him.  It's not even clear that he understands how bad the situation in Iraq is or how close he is to losing public support for the war, a support that once lost may be impossible to regain.  Bush politicos may take comfort from polls that show the public still trusts Bush more than Kerry when it comes to conducting the war.  That won't be worth much, however, if the public turns against the war itself.  The tragedy may be that Bush will not understand until it is too late.  In which case we will lose in Iraq, and the dire consequences that he has rightly warned of will be upon us.”

The rest is here.

The Sy Hersh article is here.  Keep clicking to see additional photos.

Showing both loyalty and intelligence, David Greenberg defends his old boss Bob Woodward.

David Brock has launched Media Matters.  I’ve never taken a position on whether to trust Brock now that he agrees with me, though I was interested to see that none of the conservative complainers about his book were able to punch any significant holes in it.  Moreover, I think this kind of operation is incredibly valuable and should be allowed to rise or fall on its own merits.  Of course most journalists will stick to their own lazy preconceptions, but for the enterprising few—as well as for media activists seeking to emulate four decades of right-wing “working the refs”-- this ought to be a terrific resource.

Meanwhile Howard Kurtz needs a few more sources, perhaps tiring of Little Roy and Jonah, so he’s writing front-page Style section valentines.

Everyone who shares an emotional attachment to the state of Israel should ponder this essay by National Journal writer, Paul Starobin.

This piece on the current concern about the rebirth of anti-semitism from Salon also seems quite intelligent.

Quote of the Day, from George Bush’s close friend Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, "Zionists' hands are behind what is going now...the devil made them daring and they are supports of the devil and colonialism."

Yet another foreign policy failure.  You’d think the odds would be with these guys, just once.

Alter-reviews:  I was lucky enough to see Karen Akers sing last week at the Oak Room in the Algonquin Hotel, where she’s been through the middle of the month.  Whenever I’m in that room, I feel transported back to a time that probably existed in “Thin Man” movies or Cary Grant/Irene Dunn screwball comedies.  It’s a wonderfully romantic (and incredibly expensive) place and Akers plays her part well.  With a set entitled “Time after Time,” Akers plucks a few of the less obvious gems from the portfolios of Anderson and Weil and Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne, mixed in with classics that are almost impossible to get tired of from the usual suspects, Porter, Kern, Gershwin, Loesser.  You get a nearly perfect hour of wonderful music, intelligently sung and elegantly presented.  Akers is starting her own label for this newest CD. We’ll put it on sometimes, when we need cheering up.

Correspondents’ Corner:

Name: Joe Yanoschik
Hometown: Monroe, MI
Thanks for printing "A Soldier's Soldier" about Bradley Fox.  Fox was from Adrian, Michigan, the county west of me, about 70 miles SW of Detroit.  The article states Fox was a high-school dropout.  In this article, his uncle states he was working towards a Masters and looking forward to a recruiting posting in the Midwest after Iraq.  Apparently, the boy took the ball and ran to daylight, as far as getting his education.  That would be consistent with what the Army does with many of the kids that join.  They come in with either a high school diploma or as dropouts, and our military provides them with motivation, responsibility and opportunity. 

Fox may have been an exceptional soldier, but he was not alone in overcoming a less than bucolic upbringing after joining the military.  Lenawee County, where Adrian is the County seat is a "Silent Majority" kind of county, a mix of farming with some rapidly disappearing manufacturing.  The good factory jobs that used to draw kids like Fox to a respectable middle class life are gone, or are going, first to Mexico, now to China.  Its good we'll have endless war to provide kids a chance for advancement.  It'll provide our youth a chance to earn a living, so they can pay taxes to finance the debt.  Wonder if Fox ever got food stamps for his family as a young soldier? 

If Mrs. Kerry wants to help John, she'd immediately announce that she will use the bully pulpit afforded a first lady to call attention to, and improve the lot of the military family.  The military has done a fine job in educating military children, but things like housing for enlisted families is atrocious at best.  She'd get mileage out of a "fact finding tour" of military housing for our enlisted families.  Might even turn out the military vote for John.

B.H. Liddel-Hart, in Strategy, said of the Normans, "They so valued Norman blood that they expended endless amounts of brains in substitution thereof."  Too bad our present rulers don't share the same philosophy.

Name: Edward Furey
Hometown: New York
Charles Pierce understated how Catholic the Democrats have been.  Both Sargent Shriver and Tom Eagleton, the man he replaced for Vice President on McGovern's 1972 Democratic ticket were Catholic.  Not sure if this counts as one or two more on a national ticket.  Ed Muskie, Hubert Humphrey's running mate in 1968, was also Catholic.  To date, the only Catholic on a GOP ticket was William Miller, Goldwater's running mate in 1964.

Name: Martin Henderson
Hometown: Woodstock, New York
I love Charles Pierce's work, but I have to correct one misleading impression:  that Republicans never had a Catholic on the ticket, largely because of southern objection.

Perhaps he's too young to remember, but in 1964, Barry Goldwater's running mate was William E. Miller, a congressman from western New York and a Catholic.  The ticket lost overwhelmingly, but did manage to win all five Deep South states. 

Other than that, Pierce is right.

Name: Chris Sonne
Hometown: Yankton, SD
And Lo! when the multitude saw that Pierce now published at the Prospect, they rejoiced greatly with timbrel and lyre.

Name: Barry Ritholtz
Hometown: The Big Picture
Hey Doc,
Dunno if you saw this buried in the Saturday NYT.

Sure, coincidences are possible -- but there are simply way too many for anyone to believe this is anything other than a purposeful course of behavior...

Cheney's Incredibly Fortuitous (and purely Coincidental) Timing: (mirror)

You couldn't make this stuff up if you tried:

"On Oct. 6, 1965, the Selective Service lifted its ban against drafting married men who had no children.  Nine months and two days later, Mr. Cheney's first daughter, Elizabeth, was born."

This quote comes from a Saturday NYTimes article -- "Cheney's Five Draft Deferments During the Vietnam Era Emerge as a Campaign Issue" -- discussing the lengths VP Dick Cheney went to in order to avoid serving during the Viet Nam war.

It is apparent from the piece that Richard Cheney did everything humanly possible -- short of fleeing to Canada -- to avoid military conscription: He applied for and recieved 5 student deferments, a number described as "incredible" by professor David Curry of the University of Missouri in St. Louis. Curry has written extensively about the draft, including a 1985 book, "Sunshine Patriots: Punishment and the Vietnam Offender."  The Times quotes Mr. Curry as observing:  "That's a lot of times for the draft board to say O.K."

• Three weeks and a day after the Gulf of Tonkin resolution passed (giving President Johnson unlimited military force in Vietnam), Cheney married Lynn Cheney.
• Within a day or so of the end of deferment for "Married w/o children," Mr. and Mrs. Cheney conceived their first child.

Here's the rest of Cheney's well timed actions:

In February 1962, when Mr. Cheney was classified as 1-A  available for service  he was doing poorly at Yale. But the military was taking only older men at that point, and like others who were in college at the time, Mr. Cheney seemed to have little concern about being drafted.

In June, he left Yale. After returning home to Casper, a small city in east-central Wyoming, he worked as a lineman for a power company.

At that point, the Vietnam War was still just a glimmer on the horizon. In 1962, only 82,060 men were inducted into the service, the fewest since 1949. Mr. Cheney was eligible for the draft but, as he said during his confirmation hearings in 1989, he was not called up because the Selective Service System was taking only older men.

But by 1963, ferment in Vietnam was rising. Mr. Cheney enrolled in Casper Community College in January 1963  he turned 22 that month  and sought his first student deferment on March 20, according to records from the Selective Service System. After transferring to the University of Wyoming at Laramie, he sought his second student deferment on July 23, 1963.

On Aug. 7, 1964, Congress approved the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which  allowed President Lyndon B. Johnson to use unlimited military force in Vietnam. The war escalated rapidly from there.

Just 22 days later, Mr. Cheney married his high school sweetheart, Lynne. He sought his third student deferment on Oct. 14, 1964.

In May 1965, Mr. Cheney graduated from college and his draft status changed to 1-A. But he was married, which offered him some protection.

In July, President Johnson announced that he was doubling the number of men drafted. The number of inductions soared, to 382,010 in 1966 from 230,991 in 1965 and 112,386 in 1964.

Mr. Cheney obtained his fourth deferment when he started graduate school at the University of Wyoming on Nov. 1, 1965.

On Oct. 6, 1965, the Selective Service lifted its ban against drafting married men who had no children. Nine months and two days later, Mr. Cheney's first daughter, Elizabeth, was born. On Jan. 19, 1966, when his wife was about 10 weeks pregnant, Mr. Cheney applied for 3-A status, the "hardship" exemption, which excluded men with children or dependent parents. It was granted.

In January 1967, Mr. Cheney turned 26 and was no longer eligible for the draft.

Quite frankly, I would have done the same thing as Cheney (if I wasn't 9 at the time).  The difference between the Veep and me is that I wouldn't have the temerity to criticize someone who not only served in Vietnam, but was wounded three times and won several honors for
courage and bravery.

That would simply be hypocritical.

Cheney apparently has no such restraints.  Of the American involvement in Vietnam, Dick Cheney was asked: "Was it a noble cause?" His answer: "Yes, indeed, I think it was."

Just not for him...

Source:
Cheney's Five Draft Deferments During the Vietnam Era Emerge as a Campaign Issue
Katharine Q. Seelye
NYTimes, May 1, 2004

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