Altercation

• September 24, 2004 | 12:25 PM ET

An irritable Friday:

I’ve got a new “Think Again:” column here -- “Afghanistan and Iraq: Debasing “Democracy.”  It’s too short to do full justice to the awfulness of the Bush administration’s hypocrisy and incompetence in both Iraq and Afghanistan, but if you read Today's Papers  with a clear eye, you’ll see that we are truly living in a rabbit hole….
Which reminds, me, I know it’s Slacker Friday, but I’m angry and I’d prefer not to take it out on my family this weekend. I had always considered CNN’s William Schneider to be typically pompous CNN wind-bag... I never knew he was Ann Coulter out of the closet.
Here’s Dana Milbank's report: “On Fox News, conservative commentator Ann Coulter said, "It's unquestionable that Republicans are more likely to prevent the next attack." Kerry, she said, ‘will improve the economy in the emergency services and body bag industry.’ Whatever the merits, the charges that terrorists prefer Democrats have been echoed by independent commentators and journalists.
" CNN analyst Bill Schneider, asked about Hastert's remarks, agreed that al Qaeda "would very much like to defeat President Bush.”
This is the second time on allegedly liberal CNN one of their paid analysts has made this idiotic claim. Aside from its obvious idiocy—George Bush is al Qaida’s recruitment poster boy—it is a complete abnegation of the station’s journalistic responsibilities. If Schneider has a single remotely decent source close to Al Qaida’s top leadership, I’ll eat Tucker Carlson’s shoes. (Really, even for me, it is harder and harder to believe how awful the quality of the US television media is. Schneider is TV’s idea of a high-brow.)

Would it be too much for John Edwards to respond to this crap, and point out as Reagan NSC adviser William Odom  has explained, "Right now, the course we're on, we're achieving Bin Laden's ends."  How about photoshopping Cheney with Joe McCarthy? Or maybe Joe Stalin?)
Quote of the day Josh Marshall  “Can we re-check the sprinkler system in the Reichstag?”
Dear Religious Americans. How are you? I am fine. Have you notices that the Republican Party thinks  “You are all a bunch of morons.”
(Think I exaggerate? Liberals “banning” the Bible? Can anyone but a paranoid lunatic believe such a thing is possible?)
Oh while we’re on the topic, Little Roy seems to think that Mrs. Kerry should not be allowed to “mouth off” about her husband’s campaign. Does that go for all women? Should the First Lady be told not to “mouth off” as well, Andrew or is it just the women who don’t know their place?
(You know, in attempting to prepare myself for a possible Bush victory, I am preparing  to live a life of nothing but schadenfreude--and I might have to rename this blog--devoted entirely to the enjoyment I will experience in observing Bush supporters getting what they so richly deserve from the man they so admire. Little Roy’s case is one of the easiest.
In this case and this case only, Go Pat Robertson. Go Jerry Falwell. Go John Ashcroft. Go George W. Bush… Go to P-Town and protect your marriages. Perhaps he deserves Mr. Hamdi’s cell at Gitmo, which I hear has been recently vacated, though at least Hamdi was an American citizen, so perhaps it’s a little too cozy—and I’m betting there’s no view of the beach form the toilet. But heck, I’m feeling generous to decadent conservative coastal enclaves this morning.  [And don’t tell me Roy Jr. doesn’t support this Avignon Presidency.
CNN’s favorite Gay-Catholic-Tory-Gap-Model practically put on pom-poms and a big fluffy “W” sweater every time he sat down at his computer for four years. A few months of regret over an issue that happens to affect him personally...well, that’s why the good lord invented my favorite English word, ain’t it.?)

Eric B writes my Nation column before I get a chance to, and not for the first time.
Department of Self-Promotion: (Viking doesn’t really believe in advertising, and I worked for 11 years on this thing, so get used to it.)  From the Boston Phoenix:
"When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and Its Consequences, by Eric Alterman (Viking, $27.95). Alterman has gained a strong following in recent years as a stunningly prolific magazine and book writer, Nation columnist, and blogger. (Disclosure: I edited his writing when I was at the American Prospect.)
Here he breaks away from his work in media criticism and contributes a truly compelling history. "In painstaking detail, he examines the lies told by American presidents about matters of war and peace. He shows how FDR lied to Congress and the public about the deals made with Stalin at Yalta. A powerful section shows how the truth about JFK’s handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis — that JFK and others lied consistently about the deal they made with Nikita Khrushchev to remove US missiles from Turkey — leaked out over two decades.
"LBJ lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident as the war in Vietnam began to heat up. Then there’s Reagan and the web of deceit about arms to Iran and secret funds to Nicaraguan contras.
" Full of moral complexity and challenge, this book ought to be considered one of the most important works the left has produced in recent years. Alterman asks a question rarely taken seriously in elite foreign-policy circles: can the American public be trusted with the truth about the US’s role in the world? He argues not just that democracy is imperiled by secret policies, but that in the long run presidential lies "inevitably turn into monsters that strangle their creators."
The other books reviewed here, are also done justice, given the space.

Here’s the Man.
CHARLES PIERCE
NEWTON, MA.
Hey Doc --
Riddle me this: if I forge a letter from U.S. Grant in which are described the events at Appomattox, and I sell it to someone, and I get caught and  tried for fraud, and they prove that the document is fake, does that mean the Civil War never really ended?
Lord, I'm tired of the reign of pipsqueaks, aren't you?
As it happens, a profile of Dan Rather was one of the first things I did during my five years at GQ. The man has his flaws, always has had them, most notably a screaming insecurity about his place in the world. I suffered through "Courage," and through the Connie Chung Project, and through that awful moment in 2001 where he pronounced himself ready to "line up" with his Commander-In-Chief, an episode that seems to have slipped the mind of most people in the last couple of weeks.
  However, as the great Max Cleland once said about John McCain -- the man has the holes in his T-shirt. To wit:
   How silly did everyone look now who ridiculed him as Gunga Dan when he went to Afghanistan, especially the network bean-counters who cut back on foreign coverage and thus weren't ready when foreign coverage came back in 2001 and flew some jetliners into tall buildings? How stupid did THEY look that day? Hell, Rather only wore a funny hat.
How trivial did all the political wiseguys look who gave George H.W. Bush big points for "standing up" to Rather in 1988 when it was revealed that all that tea-cosy macho from Poppy only served to cover for the fact that he was lying his ass off about his involvement in Iran-Contra?
  How ashamed must, say, Tim Russert be for his unseemly truckling to C-Plus Augustus when he sees those clips of Rather standing up against to Richard Nixon? Can you imagine Little Russ -- whom Big Russ warned not to traumatize the nation by asking the president whether he lied us into a war -- in a moment like that? Hell, have you ever seen him standing at all?
  So, as Dan Rather becomes everybody's dinner for a while, it's important to remember that he had some very big moments in a media culture that was not yet so corrupted that it would give voice to liver-spotted bagmen like Pat Buchanan and William Safire. It's important to remember that he had these moments in a media culture that was not yet fully tolerating the likes of George Will, Conrad Black's poolboy, his cabana full of purloined debate materials. It's important to remember that he did so in the days when the media culture at least tried to keep crazy people at bay, where the likes of Jonah Goldberg would be covering the sewer commission in Plattsburgh, if he were lucky, and Ann Coulter would be screaming at people on a subway platform.
  I'm a reporter. That's all I've ever wanted to be. So is Dan Rather, so I feel comfortable in saying that he screwed up in a very big way. But he doesn't deserve to have an aging hack like Dick Thornburgh as a professional proctologist, and he really doesn't deserve the cheap shots that are coming his way from people unfit to fasten his kaffiyeh.

Name: Stupid
Hometown: Chicago
Hey Eric, it's Stupid to say "No Oil for Blood!!!"  Oops, sorry, I was having a United Nations Sudan/Darfur moment. 
I'll be brief: my advice to Kerry for the first/"homeland security" debate is to do some fear mongering of his own.  There have been too many abstract catch phrases ("we're no safer now"/"the war is a distraction").  When I talk about terrorism with friends, it's things like "what if the 9/11 terrorists had changed plans, waited until the Friday after Thanksgiving, gone to a bunch of suburban shopping mall food courts and blown themselves up?"  Or what would happen to the timber industry if terrorists took a long road trip to the Pacific Northwest, dropping Asian longhorn beetles in the forests along the way.  Or about how earlier this year New Republic writer Michael Crowley discovered the Department of Homeland Security wasn't answering their phones: people only got an "all lines are busy" message with no voice-mail.   I'm not fond of the left's "the Iraq war created more terrorists" argument, but if Kerry is going to make it, he needs to get people to think beyond airplanes and bridges.   
No surprise here, but I also think that Kerry should raise China. Americans intuitively understand that we have over focused on one threat and ignored the other ("the Republicans once called Communist China our nation's greatest threat, now they can't wait to sell Chinese National Bank more of our national debt.")  In fact, -- any issue -- that throws Dubya and Jim Lehrer off the script would be a good thing. The press is ready to regurgitate the Iraq story: give them something new, feed the beast, and generate interest in the next debates.

Name: Nancy P
Hometown: San Francisco
Hey Eric,
There was another notablefront-pager on who's the flip-flopper, from Marc Sandalow today (9/23) in the SF Chronicle.  
Maybe we don't really count as "the rest of the media" out here in SF, since our reporters have been known to commit honest-to-goodness acts of journalism on a regular basis.  But both he and Carla Marinucci have been doing some top-notch reporting this political season, and they should get their due when talk moves to "the rest of the media". 
Of course, two articles do not a new meme make, so I'm not holding my breath for the Full Drudge either.

Name: Jeff Lichtman
Hometown: El Cerrito, CA
You might want to mention that your appearance at The Commonwealth Club will be broadcast on KALW (91.7 FM in the Bay Area) on Oct. 26.

Name: Dave
Hometown: Albany, NY
Dr. Alterman,
Fun with wordsmithing.  Here's a Bush quote from the Rose Garden love-fest with Allawi: "If we stop fighting the terrorists in Iraq, they would be free to plot and plan attacks elsewhere, in America and other free nations," he said. "... If we wilt or leave, Americaâ?Ts security will be much worse off."
Now, replace the word 'Iraq' with the word 'Afghanistan' and tell me if that quote doesn't ring a lot truer. 
It's also good to know that the elections in Iraq this January are possible “because the prime minister told me they are.”  Nothing like a reinforcing quote from one of your own puppets to mollify any fears about how Iraq is coming along. Ugh.

• September 23, 2004 | 12:25 PM ET

I know you are, but what am I?

Remember this? “The story line is Bush isn't smart enough and Gore isn't straight enough. In Bush's case, you know he's just misstating as opposed to it playing into a story line about him being a serial exaggerator.” That was Cokie Roberts four years ago. She wasn’t a real journalist but she sure knew how to play one on TV. And what’s the storyline today. ‘Bush is resolute and Kerry’s a flip-flopper.’ It’s a lie, of course. But who cares, it works. The Washington Post’s John Harris has a front pager demonstrating just this, here. Don’t hold your breath waiting for the rest of the media to catch up, however; that would be ‘liberal bias.’
In the meantime, how about we screw the poor and give away more money to the rich? Oh, and let’s explode the deficit while we’re at it. That’s the ‘conservative’ way. Match policy to reality in Iraq? What are you, some kind of girlie girl? Real men pretend so that others may die…

He Does Not Know What Death Is.
E. L. Doctorow writes: "I fault this president for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our 21-year-olds who wanted to be what they could be. On the eve of D-Day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.
But this president does not know what death is. He hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the weapons of mass destruction he can't seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man.
He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country." Keep reading, here.

Traveling Band:
Announcing When Presidents Lie: The Tour.
Here’s where I’ll be speaking about When Presidents Lie, What Liberal Media, and the Book on Bush, as well as whatever we end up taking about, in the next few weeks. Come see me and say hello if it’s convenient. In any case, buy the book.
New York, NY
Tuesday, Sept. 28, 7:30 PM  ET
BARNES & NOBLE #1979
Upper West Side
2289 Broadway (@82nd St.)
New York, NY  10024
212-362-8835 store
__________________________________
Philadelphia, Pa.
Friday, Oct. 1, Lunchtime (They won’t tell me exactly when and I can’t find it on the website) book signing at the National Constitution Center, 525 Arch Street, Independence Mall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 19106,  ph.215.409.6600 http://www.constitutioncenter.org
__________________________________
Princeton, NJ
Tuesday, Oct. 5, 4:30 PM  ET
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY STORE
36 University Pl
Princeton, NJ  08540
www.pustore.com
609-921-8500
__________________________________
Seattle-Tacoma, WA
Friday, Oct. 8, 7:30 PM  PT
ELLIOTT BAY BOOK COMPANY
101 S. Main Street
Seattle, WA  98104
www.elliottbaybook.com
206-624-6600 store
__________________________________
Palo Alto, CA
Sunday, Oct. 10, 1 PM  PT
STANFORD UNIVERSITY BOOKSTORE
519 Lasuen Mall
Palo Alto, CA  94305
www.stanfordbookstore.com
650-725-6136
__________________________________
San Francisco, CA
Monday, Oct. 11, 6 PM  PT
Commonwealth Club events are open to the general public and to the press. Members of the press are permitted to submit questions at Club events.
COMMONWEALTH CLUB OF CALIFORNIA
595 Market St
2nd Fl
San Francisco, CA  94105
www.commonwealthclub.org
The event is open to the public, but tickets ($18) must be purchased from 800-847-7730 or from the web site. The talk is free for Commonwealth Club members.
___________________________________
Tampa Bay-Sarasota, FL
Tuesday, Oct. 19
7 PM  ET
SARASOTA NEWS & BOOKS
@ The Ritz Carlton Sarasota
1111 Ritz Carlton Dr.
Sarasota, FL 34236
www.sarasotanewsandbooks.com
941-365-6332 store
___________________________________
Boston, MA
Wednesday, Oct. 20, 7 PM  ET
BARNES & NOBLE COLLEGE BOOKSTORES
@ Boston University
660 Beacon Street
Boston, MA 02215-2002
617-267-8484 main
__________________________________

Brooklyn, NY
Thursday, Oct. 28, 1:30 PM
Brooklyn College, City University of New York
Jefferson Lounge, SUBO (Student Center on Campus Road).
____________________________________
Correspondence Corner:

Barry Ritholtz
The Big Picture
Hey Doc,
I stumbled across an interesting website this weekend: Job Tracker. Just punch in your zip code, and you can see what companies in your area are outsourcing jobs overseas. Pretty neat. Its an interesting tool for those of us who work in the financial industry, but it also points to something new:  Has organized labor actually gotten "web savvy?" That's a big story in itself. I can't recall seeing anything of significance via the internet from the AFL-CIO. Outsourcing is exactly the sort of bread and butter issue that would lend itself well to an internet based advocacy. Let's see how long it takes to get from my superficial observation and analysis to mainstream media discussion.

Tracking Job Exporters
(alternative title: Organized Labor Discovers the Web) I received an email (several in fact) from a person all hot and bothered about the investment possibilities of outsourcing: "This is a potential huge money maker! I'm going to invest in all these companies that are outsourcing, and make a mint!"
I don't know how savvy an investment strategy that might be, as we are already deep into the outsourcing process. The low hanging fruit have already been picked. The same is probably true for the outsourcing firms themselves (although that is less conclusive).
But the questioner got me thinking about this issue from a research perspective. How can one find the companies -- by region or industry -- and quantify who is outsourcing? There are clear economic and political consequences of this issue.
In delving deeper into this, I discovered Job Tracker. The site claims to be able to able to track what companies are sending jobs overseas by ZIP code, industry or company. It seems to be a pretty helpful tool -- for politics, as well as financial research -- if it works as advertised.
Heres their spiel:
Corporations increasingly are shipping U.S. jobs overseas, with  America's middle-class hardest hit. Since January 2001, the nation has  lost 2.7 million manufacturing jobs, and some studies say 14 million white-collar jobs could be sent overseas in the years ahead. Unfair trade deals and large tax breaks often encourage corporations to export jobs overseas.
Sources:
Job Tracker
US website tracks job exporters
Indo-Asian News Service, Sept. 18

Name: Chris Green
Hometown: Los Angeles, CA
Comments:
Hi Eric: Long-time reader, first-time caller, first-time self-promoter. I've got a piece up on ESPN.com about Carlos Delgado & his Iraq protest... a must-read for all fans of baseball, lefty protest, and the schizophrenic NYC political mind.  In other words, up your alley.  Here's the url: Hope ya like it.  Thanks.

• September 22, 2004 | 12:25 PM ET

WHY LIBERALS LOSE, CONTINUED
Michael Bloomberg, New York’s liberal Republican mayor, throws fundraisers for Republican candidates, shuts down the city and arrests lawful protesters during the convention so that nothing should interrupt their calling us Commie pinkos, and is rewarded by an administration that throws our poor out onto the street.  Thank you sir may I have another!

Nick Kristof is a Fox News producer’s idea of a liberal. 

Swift Boaters lie about John Kerry’s record in Vietnam, which is too bad, but I don’t agree with John Kerry’s positions on trade, so they’re kind of the same.

This is “on-the-one-handism” run amuck.  What’s next? 

President Bush was wrong to drop a nuclear bomb on New York City, but liberals should ask Michael Moore to please be more polite when pointing out that Mr. Bush may not have completed every single little requirement of his manly military service.

William Safire, meanwhile, will have none of this crap. Here’s his position.

It’s OK for President Bush to lie the country in the war because I like that war.  (Ariel Sharon likes it so I like it, got a problem wit that, punk?  What are you, an anti-Semite?)  Come to think of it, I think I may be the only person, besides Dick Cheney, who continues to pretend that Mohammed Atta met with the head of Iraqi intelligence in Prague in April 2001.  The Times lets me get away with this—without printing any corrections—because my misinformation is said to be ‘opinion.’  But if Dan Rather reports something that turns out to be false, well, that’s a National Security Emergency because he’s the ‘Liberalmedia.’

Thank God for the liberal New York Times.

Eric R. has more on this liberal conundrum thing:

You don't like Tomasky's Unified Theory of Liberal Loserdom.  Being a lowdown mean campaigner, may I make a few off-the-cuff, ranting suggestions?

(1)  Both Tomasky and you think American political discourse is conducted on a fairly stupid plane.  Let's agree that it is BUT only if you're comparing it to what we would like it to be.  But is it

(a) stupider than it used to be or
(b) stupider than the politics of other countries? 

As for (a) maybe we want the Federalist Papers, but we have the Aurora.  And we did in the late c18, too.  As for (b) well, I can't speak for all the earth but I did live in England for three years.  Every day I woke up to the Today Programme on BBC Radio 4.  It's supposed to be the agenda-setting program of the political day.  You should listen to it sometime.  You'll notice that Today interviewers give politicians a rough time (despite this, prime ministers and cabinet members are much more likely to appear on the show than their counterparts in the States, which suggests a maxim of politics Wonkette might have made up: treat them roughly and they'll show up willingly), much rougher than our genuflecting press corps do.  But do they generate more enlightenment?  No, for two reasons. 

(a) Because the reporters are, normally, being reflexively hostile rather than knowledgeably hostile; you can do your own Today interview by asking "Isn't your agenda awfully expensive?"  "Doesn't it imperil public health?"  "Aren't you insulting the ordinary British person with all this jargon?" and then saying, "Thank you very much."   

(b) Because the politicians know what they're up against and they learn to spin this kind of interview.  You get a different grade of political blather over there, but it's still blather.

So, I'm not persuaded of your premise -- that American political discourse is today notably stupid.

(2)  What to do?

(a) Hire those who play dirty, and (someone flinchingly suggests) have dinner with them?  My son, the Democrats never won an election any other way (except maybe Clinton and Carter, both of whom had major asterisks by their presidential accessions, Carter because of Watergate and Clinton because of Perot). 

(i) Every Democrat from the late 1880s to Lyndon Johnson needed the votes of Southern states where blacks were disfranchised.  And don't say they didn't know it was wrong.  They knew.  They knew when they wrote the laws depriving blacks of the vote and they knew every time they had to enforce those laws whether by lawsuit or night-ride.  Every "progressive" coalition -- Populists, Progressives, New Dealers, Great Society -- depended on it. 

On this view the big failure for any progressive politician has been the failure to confront race head-on.  Proof of this theory can be found in the behavior of the major progressive Republican, Theodore Roosevelt, who likewise failed by appeasing the segregationists in 1912.

Given that this only began to wane within the lifetime of about 40% of Americans now living (i.e. those over forty), the progressives have a lot to answer for and may spend a long time answering for it.

(ii) And do you think that all those giggles about Mayor Daley stuffing ballot boxes and Joe Kennedy buying West Virginia and so on back through Tammany Hall were only jokes?

So,

(iii), Tomasky wants to hire or abet someone who'll say mean and untrue things about the other guy, well, that's probably less of a moral failing than (i) or (ii), possibly even a moral failing that a liberal could stomach.  Maybe.

(b) Improve the electorate?  Well, do you think the American electorate is lower grade than that of other modern nations?  Maybe you could make a case that it's less well-educated based on poor public schooling.  And you could probably make a case that this is getting worse because of Prop. 13 and its children.  But still, the electorate in other modern nations isn't really a UNICEF filmstrip of shiny social-democratic people holding hands.  Have you ever seen a football (soccer) riot?  Okay then. 

Hey, as a liberal, or in fact as a decent human being, you should do everything you possibly can to make sure there are good public schools in your district.  But that'll take a while to pan out, even if you succeed.

(c) Improve the governing class?  Yeah, this is probably where we fall down hardest, and it's for good, structural, historical reasons.  Look, the U.S. can get away with a lot because the world loves to invest capital and labor here.  This has been true on and off since the late c19.  It gives us a magic safety net.  We haven't developed a culture of serious permanent government -- though, you know, we have had the makings of a serious permanent government since the Civil Service reforms of the 1880s.  The idea of serious permanent government is that you have people in public life who do jobs that are too important to taint with partisan politics -- even if you have partisan affiliations you would still be a professional and do a good job.

Almost nobody in our journo-political public life actually believes in this ethic of professionalism anymore.  But you could make a case that Dennis Ross fits the bill, or Richard Clarke.  Anyway you could certainly make the case that there are jobs -- national security and economic management -- that actually should be left to professionals.  Proof of this lies in the fact that officials will say that national security must be apolitical even while they're giving a speech that politicizes it (you know Rochefoucauld's Maxim 218).

This point is a version of one that Niall Ferguson makes.  Our universities do not produce people keen to go off and administer empire.  Fair enough.  Why don't they produce people keen to go off and administer, period?  Why is there no Yes, Secretary on American television?  Discuss.  Because until you have an answer you can implement, you will not have political discourse even remotely approaching the kind you want.

This just in:  Jimmy Swaggart says he thinks it’d be fun to kill a gay man, who looks at him the wrong way, congratulates Bush.

This also just in:  Press Reports on U.S. Casualties: About 17,000 Short, UPI says.

This also just in:  Israel knows how to spell, will attack nation with nuclear program, WMD, ties to Al Qaeda, here.  Unreported. “Richard Perle, reached at his summer home in the South of France promises ‘cakewalk,’ praises Conrad Black.”

Get on the Peace Train, but get off the United Airlines plane.  A wild world, indeed.  Where were these guys when known terrorists were coming in for flight school and living in San Diego under their own names? (!)

Alter-review:
The Silos by Eric Boehlert 
(Note: I do believe that Altercation is, today, the only Web site to offer first-rate political, cultural, and intellectual coverage of modern life by three people named “Eric.”  Congrats to all of us Erics for that.)

When The Telephone Rings
Confident, muscular, and uniquely American, the Silos’ latest boasts a handful of rock gems--the glorious opener, “The Only Love,” as well as “15 Days” and “Holding On to Life”--that breathe new life into a band that’s been playing hard for nearly 20 years.

Anchored by Walter Salas Humara, whose warm growl still draws you in, it’s his smart songwriting that’s always elevated the Silos above the ranks of barroom champs.  A folk singer at heart, whose minimalist touch celebrates the everyday--vows, first steps, funerals--Salas-Humara is smart enough to always have a great rock band behind him in the Silos. And on “When the Telephone Rings” that lineup gets additional, inspiring help from chanteuses Amy Allison and Mary Lee Kortes, as well as violinist Mary Rowell.

Salas-Humara’s an old pro.  He’s seen the Silos be named Best New American Band by Rolling Stone (back in the late `80s), been signed and dropped by RCA (early `90s), has toured the country in a van playing bars and clubs more times than he’d probably like to count.

For me, part of the appeal of “When the Telephone Rings,” which returns the Silos to top form, might be nostalgia.  During the end of my UMass stay (pre-Calipari), I discovered the Silos’ low budget “Cuba,” which still stands among the most underrated rock records of the last 20 years. (The opening track, “Tennessee Fire,” deserves its own, stand-alone spot in the Rock ‘N Roll Hall of Fame.)  I spun it religiously on my interloping radio show at Smith College’s WOZQ-FM, and stood in rapture when the Silos came through the Pioneer Valley for a gig at Northampton’s tiny Iron Horse Café.  Later living in New York, I’d drag friends to regular Silos gigs at the Rodeo Bar and CB’s and we’d shake our heads over how an unassuming, jean jacket band could be so good, so smart and so fun to watch.

The band did get a shot on RCA Records, which released “The Silos” in 1990.  But coming about five years ahead of the mini- alt.country boom, as well as the mainstream birth of Triple-A adult rock radio, the band had trouble finding an outlet.  Soon after that, bassist Bob Rupe, a crucial part of the early Silos success, departed for a spot in Cracker.

During the ensuing decade Salas-Humara experimented with different types of sounds as well as an occasional solo approach.  But with “When the Telephone Rings,” he and the Silos return to their roots, and remind you why you fell in love with guitars, bass and drums in the first place.

Quote of the Day: Eric Blair, “Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.  One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits.”

The “Not Eric” section:

Name: Withheld
Hometown: Balad, Iraq
Eric,
Tried to submit this letter yesterday using my military e-mail address, but received a strange MSNBC message.  Sorry if I'm doubling my portion of mail in your inbox, but persistence is a necessary virtue if we ever want change from our current horrible direction.

I mailed my absentee ballot today, proudly casting a Pennsylvania swing state vote for change.

Since I'm on active duty in the military, I'm supposed to avoid talk of politics - So, while I won't tell you for whom I voted, I can tell you that when making my decision, I kept in mind the fact that 3 years ago, Osama Bin Laden killed 3000 Americans, and yet he is still free, in part because our "strong" leader diverted untold Special Forces, linguists, intelligence analysts and dollars from the hunt.  Meanwhile more than 1000 young Americans are dead in a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and that posed no threat to us whatsoever.

As difficult as it is to swallow, our servicemembers and the American people need to know that nothing we have done or will do in Iraq has any effect on making America safer, except maybe to recruit more members for Al Qaeda and like-minded groups.  Perhaps Iraq will one day be a better place without Saddam, but America is a lesser place for having lost so many brave souls for no good reason.

Off my soapbox now.....Keep up the great and important work that you do - In a world increasingly devoid of ANY substantive journalism, your fact-based arguments are a light in this present darkness.

Best to keep my name anonymous in our McCarthy-esque state.

Name: Chuck Miller
Hometown: Evanston, Illinois
Why do our troops in Iraq hate America?

Name: Rakesh Wahi
Hometown: Charleston, WV
Clearly by the mid nineties there was a general consensus in the U.S. foreign policy establishment that the status quo with Saddam was not working -sanctions made the life of Iraqi hell, lifting the sanctions with Saddam in power was unthinkable.

No one could have imagined a situation where Saddam would be gone, sanctions would be lifted and Iraqi would be worse off.  Despite Saddam's brutality and the rape rooms it is clear that more rapes are being committed now and Iraqi are dying at a faster rate than under Saddam.  Without Saddam we should have been safer and Iraqis should have been better off.  It took incredible incompetence to turn a Saddam-less Iraq into a worse place.

To the question are we safer with or without Saddam, the sad answer is with a little foresight we should have been much safer unfortunately we are not.

Name: Keenan Kline
Hometown: Santa Rosa Beach, Florida
Moyer's speech deeply touched me and furthered my descent into gloom.  I'm a retired Army veteran living in an archconservative enclave in the Florida Panhandle.  I work primarily with active and retired military members who've become conservative ideologues, fearful of facts or ideas unsupportive of their ideology.  Lively discourse died long ago with the rise of "Support the President" and "you're either with us or against us" mentality.  The mean-spiritedness of their attacks on any dissent has made me question what it means to be an American today.  I feel incredibly sad that the country I once admired exists only as a childish, naive construct.  The naked, unadorned arrogance, abuse of power, secrecy, and deceit by the current administration has utterly stunned and embittered me.  How is it that we are so easily deceived and made fearful?  Was the fearful, racist, fanatic always right there, just under the surface? Frankly, I'm so disappointed in my countrymen and so fearful for democracy that an abiding weariness has beset me.

• September 21, 2004 | 2:11 PM ET

Deluded in Disneyland?
David Brooks is the best of the conservative pundits.  It is therefore a measure of the desperate straits to which Bush has brought us in Iraq that Brooks is forced to degrade himself with arguments like this one in order to confuse readers about the decisions that face the nation in Iraq and in the election.  “Does he really want to imply that 1,000 troops died for nothing?”  Brooks asks.  Actually, they died for far less than nothing.  Instead of fighting the Islamic fundamentalist who declared war on us on 9/11/01, they died as unwilling recruiters for that enemy, just as many of us warned they would before there war. 

There were no weapons, no significant connections to Al Qaida, no nuclear programs in Iraq: in short, there was no threat. Now they are killing Americans on a daily basis and forcing us to kill them—and occasionally torture and sexually humiliate them.  All of this brings new converts to the jihad and more future terrorists who will one day become sufficiently emboldened to attack us in some catastrophic manner. 

Again, this was all predicted by the war’s opponents on the basis of CIA analyses and information.  While the likes of Brooks and company were waving around the lies of convicted embezzler and accused spy Ahmad Chalabi, and his patron, Conrad Black’s bagman, Richard Perle, those of us who opposed the war were listening to Generals Anthony Zinni and Gen. Eric K. Shinseki.  Now that Bush has blown up the place, Brooks and his fellow neocons act as if it is somehow an act of  “strength” and “resolve” to refuse to face the horrific reality their lethal and politically unprecedented combination of arrogance, incompetence, corruption and dishonesty have created in Iraq.  And he has the nerve to term Kerry's belated willingness to come to terms with the magnitude of the catastrophe "completely irresponsible."

Bush has created a “Disneyesque fantasy.”  Really, it shocks even me.  Finally, Brooks could hardly be more disingenuous if he were trying to win some sort of contest when he writes, "Finally, if the whole war is a mistake, shouldn't we stop fighting tomorrow?  What do you say to the last man to die for a 'profound diversion'?"  We broke Iraq and just as Colin Powell warned his feckless commander-in-chief, we own it.  We have no choice but to stick around until we help them find a  way back to some sort of orderly life.  No responsible party argues that we should cut and run tomorrow.  Much of this would be evident to Brooks if he took the time to read around his own paper’s pages here and here. (Josh Marshall proves to be another great mind.)

I have nothing to say about Dan Rather.  To say something, I would have to read all the stories and I don’t feel like it.  I never liked Rather much.  (The fact that Bernie Goldberg hates him is not a good enough reason.)  I have no investment in CBS News or “60 Minutes.”  I never thought CBS was “liberal” before they screwed up so why should I think they are now?  In fact, I share with much of the nutcase right, the fury at the arrogance of all big media and Rather is no less deserving than the rest.  (Remember how quick he was to call Florida for Bush?)  I am a little furious that the network’s sloppiness has allowed Bush to—once again—mislead the nation about his likely desertion of National Guard post despite the special treatment he received in getting it—while John Kerry was risking his life in a war Bush supported—but too much of this kind of thing is not healthy and I feel like that’s already too much. 

And it is beyond crazy that this somehow ‘proves’ the case of a “liberal media,” but if you are silly enough to believe that, nothing I say is going to convince you otherwise.  Oh, and if Dan goes, then guess who ought be out thirty seconds later? 

And here are documents showing the more than 30 ways Bush's National Guard service was a joke.

I mean look.  More than 60 percent of respondents said Mr. Kerry was either "hiding something" or "mostly lying" in discussing his service in Vietnam.  That’s suspiciously close to the number of people who think Saddam attacked us.  How can you have a democracy under circumstances like ours?

And why is the military blocking GIs from visiting casualty-count sites and locking them down before it ships them off to Iraq?  What the hell kind of country are we becoming?

Is Tomasky right? Is the Pope Hindu?  But seriously folks, Tomasky is basically right here, particularly when you throw in Tom Frank’s arguments, with which I agree, though I also agree with some of Eric R’s criticisms—but I’m not sure where it leads us.  I mean, I thought we knew this.  Didn’t we at least learn it in the election of 1988 or in the Republicans' destruction of the Clinton health care program.  In all of these cases—to stay nothing of the impeachment and 2000 election coverage—Hello, What Liberal Media?— but to me the question is not how can we learn to win but if we -and when I say “we” I mean liberals, not Democrats— can without giving up what we are.  Would I prefer if someone like a liberal Swift Boat Liars’ group destroyed Bush’s character in this election in the manner that Kerry was destroyed?  I suppose I would, given what a better world it would be, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to be the one to do it. 

I don’t even think I want to be friends with the person who does it, or have them over for dinner.  And therein lies the conundrum.  Liberals don’t want to live and work in a world where Karl Rove rules.  But he does.  So they/we live in their own world and lose, except in places with exceptionally enlightened electorates.  That leaves three choices.  We could move to Europe.  We can continue to lose.  Or we can find our own Karl Roves, invite them to degrade further the quality of our democracy and public discourse, and then try to pick up the pieces while in power—which is what the first President Bush did after winning the election on the back of Willie Horton.  I have to write a book this year on how to be a liberal so I’ll be thinking about this more, but right now, I’m stumped.

In re the debates, the Democrats got snowed again, I’m afraid.  The candidates are not allowed to address one another and the town-hallers are not allowed to ask follow-ups.  This will allow Bush to make all manner of ridiculous statements— “We had to invade because he would not allow the inspectors in” or “We have already found weapons of mass destruction” and there will be no way for him to be called on it.  To call these “debates” when the candidates cannot even address one another is, of course, inaccurate, but since the Kerry campaign is pinning almost all its hopes on them, this is bad news indeed.

Quote of the Day, Philip Roth:  “And now Aristophanes, who surely must be God, has given us George W. Bush, a man unfit to run a hardware store let alone a nation like this one, and who has merely reaffirmed for me the maxim that informed the writing of all these books and that makes our lives as Americans as precarious as anyone else's: all the assurances are provisional, even here in a 200-year-old democracy.  We are ambushed, even as free Americans in a powerful republic armed to the teeth, by the unpredictability that is history.”

And while we’re on the topic of Roth, check out this brilliant review by America’s most talented young literary critic, Keith Gessen.

I like this review right up to the point where Mr. Marty implies the book is not going to send the kid to college, but I’ll take it, sir, I’ll take it.

I went to a party last night for the CD release of “The O’Franken Factor” on Artemis Records. Great food, great people, and I’m sure the CD is great too, etc, but my point is, someone handed me the best-footnoted comic book I’ve ever seen.  It’s called “What Are You Voting for?” and you can find it here.

Correspondents Corner:

Name: Stupid
Hometown: Chicago
Eric, Instastupid.  I love Michael but come on now, I've only got 340 words here - beyond saying the laws are a hodgepodge and linking to the Federal Whistlelbower Center myself how much can I do?

For the record, there's another expansion I'd make other than covering the non-governmental claims Michael mentions.  I'm pretty sure the California False Claims Act eliminates certain evidentiary immunities in whistleblower cases.  You can make a good case for a limited exemption for whistleblowers to allow them to tape phone conversations.

Siva inspired me: I e-mailed Kerry and volunteered to drive to a neighboring state (save Missouri - that could be a 600 mile drive!) and pitch-in however they want.

Name: Larry Howe
Hometown: Oak Park, IL
Eric--
You continue to do a great job of highlighting the hypocrisy of the Bush administration and of the media in general.  I'm hoping you'll make some mention of Sue Niederer, mother of one of the 1000 plus Americans killed in Iraq, who Maureen Dowd mentioned in her NY Times column Sunday. 

For daring to challenge the president's deployment of other parents' children but not his own, Ms. Niederer was jeered by supporters of the Bush campaign and taken away in handcuffs.  This event exposes the false rhetoric of the Bush campaign and the president's assertions of pride in the men and women of the military and their families.  His expressions of personal pride for his own questionable service, and for his daughters despite their unwillingness to make the same sacrifice that others are making for his priorities, reveal the hollowness at the core of his accolades for those who sacrifice.  One need look no further than Ms. Niederer’s experience to discern what the president and his ilk really believe.  It is as true today as it was in the 1960s when the president sought refuge in the “Champagne” unit and Mr. Cheney benefited from five draft deferments:  Sacrifice is for suckers.

Ironically, Dowd doesn't highlight the media's failure to cover the facts implicit in Ms. Niederer's experience.  Many have complained for years now that the press and broadcast media are fixated on the horserace and not the issues.  I'd suggest that the media is doing more than covering the horserace, they're weighing in on it.  And had not Ms. Niederer managed to breach the otherwise tight security of Republican campaign events, this story would not have made it into Dowd's column.  Sadly, Dowd misses the failure of her colleagues and simply points back to more polls that show how soccer moms have become security moms more enamored of Bush than Kerry. 

Name: Bob Carrick
Hometown: Salida, CO
Sir,
The Moyers article was powerful.  I'm retired USMC, vet of the first Gulf War and a high school principal.  As such I do not think I would qualify as some latte drinking pansy assed liberal.  However, I am a liberal and proud of it.  I told my students during a ceremony remembering 9/11 that democracy is not a given and that it is a very fragile thing that requires a great deal from its participants.  I went on to tell them how important education is to their being able to make the informed decisions required of the electorate.  I asked them if they would sit quietly and reflect on whether they and their daily efforts were worthy of the sacrifices being made by their peers in Iraq and they did.  Now I will send to them copies of Moyers speech to explain the dangers of looking for simple solutions and to teach them the dangers of trusting their government unwaveringly and how important a free press is to the survival of democracy.  Powerful stuff.  Scary in this age but powerful just the same.  Thank you for your time.

• September 20, 2004 | 12:16 PM ET

Who lost Zarqawi?
Conservatives, including President Bush have been complaining an awful lot lately about the danger inside Iraq deriving from the terrorist machinations of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who is thought to be orchestrating deadly attacks on U.S. soldiers in Iraq.  What he is not saying is that the Bush administration repeatedly rejected Pentagon plans to neutralize Zarqawi in 2002 and 2003 before the war. Here’s the NBC News report:

Long before the war, the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself - but never pulled the trigger.

In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma [the northern Iraq region not controlled by Saddam Hussein].

The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council.
...
Four months later, intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe. The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it.
...
In January 2003, the threat turned real. Police in London arrested six terror suspects and discovered a ricin lab connected to the camp in Iraq.

The Pentagon drew up still another attack plan, and for the third time, the National Security Council killed it.

Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi's operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam." 

Oh and thanks, Ralph.

Re-enlist or else!
Soldiers from a Fort Carson combat unit say they have been issued an ultimatum:  Re-enlist for three more years or be transferred to other units expected to deploy to Iraq.  Here.

Quote of the Day: William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency:  "Right now, the course we're on, we're achieving Bin Laden's ends."

Moyers valedictory:  Just read it.

Correspondence Corner:

Name: Charles Pierce
Hometown: Newton, MA
Hey Doc:
Because every day, even a High Holy Day, is Slacker Friday, Part The XXXV.

First of all, belated Happy New Year to the extended Altermans.

The revelation this weekend that the first whistle was blown on the CBS documents by a conservative functionary in Georgia illustrated (again) that the Republican party is now nothing more than a vehicle for various organized exercises in political hatchetry -- some of them appallingly extreme.  Earlier, we had the emergence of a tape on which Grover Norquist heaps abuse on Republican Governor Robert Taft of Ohio, and that said even more about the fact that the Republicans have allowed themselves to be hijacked root-and-branch by their wildest fringe.  That a Taft from Ohio isn't "conservative" enough for a nihilist barracuda like Norquist should chill Bill Buckley right down to the cubes in his highball glass.

And now this "Buckhead" character in Georgia (Wasn't the Southeastern Legal Foundation the good Christian operation that had to change presidents a while back because the incumbent was out soliciting sex in a public park?  Just wondering.) turns out to have been heavily involved in the anti-Clinton underground, whence came creeping a great number of the political sub-vertebrates currently afflicting our politics.

Sooner or later -- and before they can do any further damage, one hopes -- the Republicans are headed for a spectacular crack-up.  You just can't allow your most lunatic adherents to drive the train for this long without one.  (For all the historical revisionism about the damage done by "McGovern Democrats," they never allowed, say, Abbie Hoffman to become so influential within the party that he felt free to slander sitting governors in important swing states.)  The important thing for the Democrats to do is to build up a party ready to take advantage of the inevitable, and not, as I suspect would be their wont, to cushion the shock.  Reagan and his people simply let the old Democratic coalition collapse, and they were ready with something to take its place.  That is the Democratic Party's great task, even if John Kerry loses in November.  Alas, it also means fewer good-hearted Tom Daschles, and even fewer spruced-up bagmen like Terry McAuliffe, in leadership positions.

Don't take my word on it.  Back in 2000, when he was truly authentic, John McCain gave an angry and very prescient speech on this very topic after the wolverines had been loosed upon him in South Carolina.  As far as I know, he's never given it again.  Which should tell something very important to whatever Republicans of goodwill are left.  They are not on your team. They are using your team for something that is as far removed from American conservatism as Lenin was from Walter Reuther.  They are your enemies within.  Deal with them while you still have a chance.

Name: Brad Youtz
Hometown: Wilmington, DE
Doc,
I hope you had an opportunity to hear the NPR story on Thurs. about the first recording of a 17-year-old Bruce Springsteen when he played with The Castiles.  The recording was done in 1967 at The Left Foot in Freehold, NJ.

The link is here.

Samples of their set are included in the story.

Name: Mark Paul
Hometown: Chicago
Pierce is fundamentally right, of course, about media silence over the connection between global warming and the intense hurricane season this year.  But oddly enough, both Chicago dailies addressed the connection today and in an even odder space: the sports sections.  The man who made the connection was Cubs manager Dusty Baker, while musing on the possibility that a doubleheader with the Marlins in Miami scheduled for Monday as a make-up from the previous hurricane, may have to be played in Chicago.

On another note, we exchanged a few e-mails a couple of months ago over Pigpen.  I mentioned some duets with Janis on a couple of Haggard tunes.  I've assembled a cadre of agents to track down those recordings.  In the meantime, they've located a Turn on Your Lovelight duet from later that night.  This was a few weeks after the Festival Express tour, in a Quonset hut in San Raphael large enough to hold about 500.

It's here.

Name: Michael Rapoport
Comments:
Eric:
Stupid should know that something like the "bounty for whistleblowers" he's suggesting already exists, and has since the Civil War.  It's called the False Claims Act, and the National Whistleblower Center calls it "perhaps the single most effective whistleblower law in the U.S."

Under the FCA, whistleblowers can file suit - on the government's behalf, and under seal - against companies that are defrauding the government.  If the government later intervenes in the case and recovers money from the company through judgment or settlement, the whistleblower gets a big cut.

The catch, of course, is that the FCA is limited to cases in which the federal government itself is victimized, by a company acting as a federal contractor - you often see FCA actions come up in cases of Medicare or Medicaid fraud, for instance.  You can certainly argue that the scope of the law should be expanded, though it's questionable whether that would be politically feasible.  But even as it stands, the FCA isn't a bad carrot for whistleblowers; according to the Justice Department, whistleblowers received more than $319 million in fiscal 2003 from sharing in FCA recoveries.  See this DOJ release and more on the FCA here.

Best,
Michael Rapoport

Name: Alan Hampton
Hometown: Austin, TX
Can someone please explain to me how the Bush campaign can tell within 24 hours that a scan of a fax of a Xerox of a document that restates known facts about W's National Guard service is a forgery, but the same people couldn't determine for several months that the Niger "yellowcake" letters were obvious fakes?  Are we supposed to hold 60 Minutes II to a higher standard than the State of the Union address?  Are the pundits that are screaming that Dan Rather has lost credibility willing to apply the same standards to Bush?

Name: Kurt G
Hometown: Evanston, IL
Wow, I like your Nader article in the Nation.  I'm beginning to wonder, though, whether or not the poll/vote support he now claims may actually come from the same place as his petition/financial support -- that is, Republicans.  Sure, the top and most visible Republican backers of Nader are clearly trying to wreak havoc for Kerry and the Democrats, and there are too many (though not as many this year) deluded and self-righteous "liberals," but I wonder if many of his (eventual?) voters may actually be Republicans who can't find themselves voting for a Massachusetts liberal like Kerry, but neither can they vote for Bush in good conscience.  So they're allowing themselves the personal cover of "mischief-maker" while also being able to sleep at night for the next four years.  That is, I wonder if Nader might not actually steal as many votes from Bush as he does from Kerry.  Not that that in any way absolves him of his deeply wrong and destructively egotistical nihilism, but it's a thought.  I have, by they way, no hard evidence for this, other than the word of my brother, a very conservative Christian defense-industry business owner living in Virginia, who voted for Nader last time and may very well do so again this year.  Which I found perplexing, annoying, and somewhat heartening -- I believe (hope?) that a critical mass of Republicans may pause momentously in the privacy of the voting booth, seen only by their conscience and their god.

Just a thought.

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