Altercation

• October 8, 2004 | 11:39 AM ET

Pre-Debate Slacker Friday
I am headed out to Seattle, San Francisco and Palo Alto this morning.  I’m at Elliott Bay tonight after the debate, at the Stanford University Bookstore at 3 on Sunday and the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on Monday night.  You can check for details here.  In the meantime, we have a new Think Again column, “Torturous Logic, Media Silence,” here and the Nation was nice enough to give me the cover for When Presidents Lie.  (They may have signed copies, by the way.)  You can read the excerpt they chose here and check out this cool, funny cover they did here.

Now here’s The Man:

CHARLES PIERCE -- THIRTY DAYS OUT
Day 23 -- October 8, 2004

Hopkins, SC --  The thousands of Altercation football fans undoubtedly will be pleased to know that Purdue quarterback Kyle Orton -- to date, the favorite for this year's Heisman Trophy by a couple of furlongs -- told Jim Rome on the radio yesterday that he's a stone John Kerry man. We are all Boilermakers now.

Oh, there's a piece of work running for Senate down here.  Joe Conason teed up this Jim DeMint character on Salon yesterday, but your man is the gift that keeps on giving.  Not only did he announce that gay people shouldn't be allowed to teach in public schools, he also said that unmarried pregnant women should be banned as well.  (Is this a nationwide problem?  Where's CNN?)

The local D's are delighted.  The local teachers seem befuddled.  And I, as an extremely temporary resident of the Palmetto State, come away wondering whatever happened to that deep Republican bench.  I mean, really?  This cluck?  The Coors guy in Colorado?  The blitherer that the GOP coughed up to run against Russ Feingold in Wisconsin?  And, of course, let us not forget The Honorable Ambassador Bats**t J. Crazee in Illinois.  (BJC has been such a disaster that Barack Obama has been campaigning all over the country.  If he's not careful, he might wind up being elected to represent 14 different states.)

It may just be that hitching their wagon to the Christian thooleramawn wing of the party may finally be biting them back.  The real wingnut Congressmen don't play real well on the bigger stage, and a lot of promising Republican moderates were bled out at the local level.  And, of course, the top of the national ticket has about a three-inch margin of error among the "base," which is a big reason why we're all going to be hearing Kerry say a lot about willful scientific ignorance in tonight's debate.

Name: Stupid
Hometown: Chicago
Hey Eric, it's Stupid.  Two points:

1)  Red flashing light to the Kerry campaign: stop ignoring your African-American base!  You're polling 15% less than what Gore received from the largest and most loyal Dem voting block in 2000.  Worse, from my vantage point (and my reliable urban-radio-listening sources), it seems like you're hardly talking to them.  Meanwhile the Karl Rove-shilling AmericasPAC is following the script of the Swift Boat Vets: spend a little money on inflammatory ads, generate a lot of buzz and sow confusion.  And talking about voting rights alone is not enough -- if this block sees you as a condescending establishment guy taking them for granted you've got big problems.  If I were you I'd run understated ads on UPN and radio simply vowing not to take any group for granted and that you'll do the little things that make a big difference (i.e., enforcing civil rights laws on the books).  

2)  Thursday's NY Times lead editorial begins "Sanctions worked."  As if taunting me not to go ahead with my plans to say for the record that I was wrong and the Iraq war was a mistake.  And I was willing to cut Dubya a lot of slack -- fog of war, hindsight is 20-20, etc.  But it is impossible to reconcile any support for the administration when, as desperate as things are, they let 90% of the Iraq rebuilding money go unspent for months (I have serious issues with Naomi Klein, but her reporting in Harper's a couple issues ago was pretty compelling).  The left deserves some criticism for the war's failure too: not pushing Dubya on the Greater/Broader Middle East Initiative (regional democracy) and allowing their anti-war stance to dampen (muzzle?) well-deserved rage against the United Nations.  I expected better of them.  I hope 20 years from now Iraq is seen as the regional turning-point that the neocons intended, but if so that will be by Providence, not by Rumsfeld/Cheney.  Anyway, for the record: I was wrong -- I'll try to do better next time. 

Name: Val
Hometown: Encinitas
Dear Eric -
You're taking John 8:4-7 out of context.  Jesus was talking about personal forgiveness.  However, the Bible, and Jesus, is clear about capital punishment.  In fact, the most compelling illustration of that is Jesus' own submission to "the State" in allowing himself to be killed.  Furthermore, in Jesus's case, sentenced to death without moral (or seemingly legal) justification (claiming to be "King of the Jews" was not a capital crime under Roman law).

The Bible says that we are to be civilly obedient and to submit to our governments, and presumably, their laws (Romans 13:1-7).

The Bible clearly justifies capital punishment (distinguish this from "murder", which is the unjustified taking of a human life).

With both Biblical (moral) justification, as well as secular justification (the federal and various laws in a majority of states), compels Christians to obey.

Bush was right, though he didn't articulate his answer well.

Cheers,
VCM

Name: Jim Hill
Hometown: San Francisco
Re: the protest song canon...This weekend in San Francisco we were treated to the fourth Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival.  (Strictly Bluegrass.com)  A free three day festival by over 50 acts on 4 stages.  While I certainly expected political commentary from Steve Earle, I was pleasantly surprised to be reminded of the simple eloquence of John Prine's early work.  Introducing a song long since retired but recently revived after a "request from the president," Prine performed Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore.  I have never felt such resonance from a thirty-plus year old protest song.  The song had seemed a quaint relic just months ago.  It is well worth remembering and truly worthy of a revival.

Name: Michael Rapoport
Eric:
In re the recent Rapoport/Stupid colloquy on whistleblower laws, you (and he) might be interested in this story from this morning's WSJ.

Name: Helen Graves
Hometown: New York
You know, I was at No Nukes too (age about 23), and have never forgotten Springsteen's performance of "The River" (a v. early performance of that song, yes?), which has stayed with me all these years in a way that no one else's performance that day did.  The song itself isn't about, um, WMD's, but the emotion behind it felt perfectly in line with the spirit of the day.  (The march itself was amazing - was a Bread and Puppet volunteer, helping with that ark/ship thing - where ARE they?)

So glad to know you saw Patti Smith Saturday night too.  It's been such a scary rotten time, I actually needed her, like a fix, to make all the anger more hopeful.

Name: Glenn Lambert
Hometown: Area 51
Eric -
The Bruce Philly appearance you just saw (lucky you) isn't quite his first political show since "No Nukes."

In November, 1990, Bruce joined Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, and the ubiquitous Minnie Moore at a benefit for the Christic Institute, held at the Shrine Auditorium in L.A.  I was there (lucky me).

Bruce appeared solo (and seemed surprisingly nervous doing so), debuting some of the "Human Touch"/"Lucky Town" material at the show.  I remember "Real World," with Bruce at the piano, as a high point.

The Christic Institute was a leader in trying to expose the Iran/Contra conspiracies of the Reagan/Bush years.  Unfortunately, they, and in particular their founder, Danny Sheehan were discredited and had their cases thrown out of court.  You could Google it up, as Casey Stengel would say.

In fact, Google tells me that Danny Sheehan has more recently been drawn into other conspiracy theories, specifically about UFOs.

Maybe the Bushes are tied in with the aliens?  At this point, I'll believe anything.

Eric replies:  Yes, the memory goes first.  Great bootleg.  Idiotic cause.  Maybe that esplains something…

• October 7, 2004 | 2:53 PM ET

No Weapons, No Apologies, No Excuses, No Nuthin’
“Iraq had destroyed its illicit weapons stockpiles within months after the Persian Gulf war of 1991, and its ability to produce such weapons had significantly eroded by the time of the American invasion in 2003, the top American inspector for Iraq said in a report made public Wednesday.”  That’s here.

Now take a look below.  As I recall, these statements were originally collected on Billmon, though they flew around the Net a great deal.  The point about them is not that Bush and company believed one thing to be true and discovered it wasn’t.  Rather, it is the fact that they believed something to be true so strongly that they left no room for honest disagreement.  Clearly the evidence was confusing.  Clearly it was easy enough for even experts in the field to misread in either direction.  But because these Bush ideologues wanted an invasion they read it only one way and worked overtime to de-legitimize anyone who sought to question them.  That is the point of phrases like: “no doubt… There isn't any debate about it…. [It is] beyond anyone's imagination… know for a fact…sure he does… leaves no doubt…. No question…. No doubt…. Absolutely sure.”

For this colossal lack of judgment, every single top administration official deserves to be fired or lose his or her job.  But in fact not only has no one been so or done so, the only people to leave the administration were those who insisted on telling the American people the truth.  No administration member has even gone so far as to question whether Iraq was such a good idea in light of the fact that they presented no threat and the postwar period has been an unending catastrophe.  That the president feels he is able to run for a second term on this record—and he may even be successful in doing so—is a profound indictment of the mainstream media’s unwillingness to call a proverbial spade a spade in this horrific, counterproductive and unnecessary war.  (Have you read the e-mail?)  Anyway, remember these quotes when Bush looks you in the eye tomorrow night and tells you how hard his job is:

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."
-Dick Cheney Speech to VFW National Convention, Aug. 26, 2002. [i]

"Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons."
-George W. Bush Speech to U.N. General Assembly, Sept. 12, 2002. [ii]

"We know they have weapons of mass destruction … There isn't any debate about it."  "[It is] beyond anyone's imagination" that U.N. inspectors would fail to find such weapons if they were given the opportunity.
-Donald Rumsfeld, September 2002. [iii]

"If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world."
-Ari Fleischer Press Briefing, Dec. 2, 2002. [iv]

"We know for a fact that there are weapons there."
-Ari Fleischer Press Briefing, Jan. 9, 2003. [v]

"We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more."
-Colin Powell Remarks to U.N. Security Council, Feb. 5, 2003. [vi]

"We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have."
-George W. Bush Radio Address, Feb. 8, 2003. [vii]

“Does Saddam now have weapons of mass destruction?  Sure he does.  We know he has chemical weapons.  We know he has biological weapons. ... How far he’s gone on the nuclear-weapons side I don’t think we really know.  My guess is it’s further than we think.  It’s always further than we think, because we limit ourselves, as we think about this, to what we’re able to prove and demonstrate. ... And, unless you believe that we have uncovered everything, you have to assume there is more than we’re able to report.”
-Defense Policy Board Chair, Richard Perle, speaking to a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee hearing, March, 2003. [viii]

"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
-George W. Bush Address to the Nation, March 17, 2003. [ix]

"Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly... all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes."
-Ari Fleisher Press Briefing, March 21, 2003. [x]

"There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. And... as this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them."
-Gen. Tommy Franks Press Conference, March 22, 2003. [xi]

"We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
-Donald Rumsfeld ABC Interview, March 30, 2003. [xii]

"I'm absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there and the evidence will be forthcoming. We're just getting it just now."
-Colin Powell Remarks to Reporters, May 4, 2003. [xiii]

Dick Cheney: I just make stuff up.

Hello.  My name is George W. Bush and I am running for president.  Please consider my qualifications as set forth in the following resume.

Hey, this is hard work.

Fahrenheit, footnoted.

Tina Brown has gotten damn good at this, and I’m not just saying that…

And why did the SCLM give Bush nearly an hour of free TV airtime yesterday to mock Kerry? And when will Kerry be given the same opportunity?

CHARLES PIERCE -- THIRTY DAYS OUT
Day 24 -- October 7, 2004
Athens, GA --
Hey Doc:  I'll bet you didn't know that Zell Miller used to work the grill at Allen's here back in the day, which at least proves that he's flipped both burgers and his lid.

I have this theory about the effect that 9/11 had on the Beltway crowd - to wit, while all New Yorkers accept the reality that the horrors happened in their city, the elites in D.C. have such a powerful sense of being at the red-hot center of things that they believe that the attacks were aimed at them.  Now that we are three years into the aftermath, New Yorkers seem made of sterner stuff.

Consequently, every so often, you get a bunch like the exceedingly dampish crew with whom Matthews surrounded himself the other night who did everything but beg Dick Cheney as their surrogate Daddy to hand them their blankies.  They don't care about the lies -- the haplessly obvious ones and the deeply serious ones -- that Daddy tells them, as long as they believe he's keeping safe the profitable lives in which relatively homely people can become television stars.

I swear, it's raw, knee-rattling fear, and the lowliest person who works on the tracks of the NYC subway exhibits more public courage than most of these tremulous souls do in front of the audience of dozens before which they regularly play out their phobias and beg for a binkie.

Name: Eric Rauchway
Hometown: Davis, CA
Does Dick Cheney live in Oblomovka, or does he just want us to live there?  After last night's debate I'm not sure I see a third possibility.

At Oblomovka everything was believed in--including even ghosts and werewolves.  Had you informed an inmate of the place that a haycock was walking about in the fields, he would have believed it.  Had you spread abroad a rumour that (say) a certain sheep was not a sheep at all, but something else, or that Martha or Stepanida had become turned into a witch, the company would thenceforth have walked in terror both of the sheep and of the maidservant.  Never would their heads have thought it necessary to inquire why the sheep had ceased to be a sheep, or why Martha or Stepanida had become turned into a witch.  Rather these credulous folk would have thrown themselves upon any doubter--so strong was Oblomovka's belief in supernatural phenomena.

Name: Barry Ritholtz
Hometown: The Big Picture
Hey Doc,
Here's a surprise: The WSJ/Zogby Swing State Polls have Kerry significantly ahead in electoral votes.  A new WSJ.com projection of the Electoral College map, based on online polling done in 16 battleground states by Zogby Interactive, shows that under the survey's current trends, and assuming Mr. Kerry wins states where he has razor-thin leads now, he would have 322 electoral votes and the president would have 216 (see map at link above).

Projected Electoral College Vote: Swing States, 8/06/04
(mirror)

Here's an excerpt from the Journal:

A strong performance in the first of three presidential debates appears to have helped Sen. John Kerry among likely voters in 16 battleground states, according to the latest Zogby Interactive poll.  Mr. Kerry now holds leads, albeit some of them razor-thin, in 13 states, an improvement from the 11 he held three weeks ago.

Notably, Mr. Kerry overtook President Bush in Ohio, a critical swing state where he had been trailing since mid-July. However, the senator's position there is tenuous -- the lead, by 0.3 percentage point, falls well within the margin of error and is one of the closest in the latest poll. Mr. Bush, meanwhile, also dropped Nevada but continued to lead in Missouri, Tennessee and West Virginia -- though the spread narrowed in all three.

In total, Mr. Kerry holds leads outside the margin of error in six states, including Michigan and Pennsylvania; none of Mr. Bush's leads are outside the margin. The margin of error varies between +/- 2.2 and +/- 4.3 percentage points for each candidate.

The WSJ does note, however, how dynamic and unsettled this race is: "The race remains volatile, and reading conditions across battleground states can be more art than science, given wide variations in polls from state to state, and the sometimes-conflicting opinions of party strategists.  The exercise is made all the more difficult this year by higher levels of voter registration and intense partisan feelings in both political camps."

Makes for an interesting compare and contrast with the recent Gallup numbers . . . It is worth recalling that Zogby was the most accurate pollster in the 2000 presidential election, while Gallup had then Governor Bush with a double digit popular vote lead right before the actual election (Bush lost the popular vote by at least 540,000 votes).

Final thoughts:  The table at the site (here) shows many of the states credited to the Dems -- Arkansas, Tennessee, Ohio, Nevada, Florida, Wisconsin -- with a Kerry lead of less than the margin of error.  That suggests the race is much tighter than this study makes it appear.

Name: Amelia Schwartz
Hometown: Denver
We have owned a small limo company since 1995.  Before 9/11 we had built our business up from one car and one driver to 5 cars and as many drivers.  We were proud that we could contribute to the support of so many families on our small earnings. 

Since 9/11, we have had to sell 3 cars and are down to two employees, one of which is my husband.  My husband and our driver, who is Muslim, often work from 4:00 AM to 10 PM or later, at least six days a week.  I, too, work every day in the office, taking appointments, bookkeeping, etc. 

I am writing to tell you that we are two of the millions who cannot afford even a simple health insurance plan.  When our insurance went from $525 a month to $881 we canceled.

Last week, we had to take a loan to help our daughter finish her last year of college because college loan funding was cut. 

Therefore, we are voting for Kerry & Edwards and praying to God that all of the U.S.'s money will not end up in Iraq.  We'd really like to be able to keep contributing to the economy and families of OUR country.

Name:  Donald L Feinberg
Hometown:  Naperville, IL
Dick Cheney told an uncomfortably large number of lies during his debate with John Edwards last night. Perhaps the easiest of all of them to check was this: "Now, in my capacity as Vice President, I am the President of Senate, the presiding officer. I'm up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they're in session."

Really?  "They" do keep records on this kind of thing, you know.  Anyone can go over to this site and see what the actual records are.  I did.  And the record is this:

--  In all of 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004, Dick Cheney showed up in the Senate as President for a GRAND TOTAL OF TWO Tuesdays.  TWICE IN FOUR YEARS!

--  But in all of 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004, John Edwards also served as pro-tem President of the Senate twice!

Hence, the Government's own records shows that (a) Cheney was only in attendance ONE PERCENT of the time, and (b) John Edwards spent as much time in the role of (rotating) President of the Senate as Cheney did.

This kind of thing comes out of Cheney's mouth so smoothly, so assuredly, so convincingly, so easily, so practiced.  It is simply pathological.

Name: Jeff Markel
Hometown: Maplewood, NJ
Just wanted to let you and your readers in the NY Metro area know about a nice musical fundraiser for Kerry/Edwards on October 17. It'll be in Maplewood NJ, and will feature Odetta, Marshall Crenshaw, Greg Brown, Iris DeMent, and The Roches. The venue is pretty intimate - 400 people or so - so it should make for a great show.
More details are available here.

Borrowed from Romenesko:

From GREG GILLAM: As a semi-informed reader, I'm stunned that the Washington Post gets away with writing things like this:

A senior defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said yesterday that Bremer never asked for more troops when he was the administrator in Iraq -- except for two weeks before he left, when he requested forces to help secure Iraq's borders.

This spin has been repeated in many different forms all over the media.

I'm not a professional reporter, but it took a 3 second Google search to come up with dozens of articles like this:

Posted on Wed, Jul. 02, 2003
U.S. overseer in Iraq seeks reinforcements
By Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel

Inquirer Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - The top American administrator in Iraq, confronting growing anti-U.S. anger and guerrilla-style attacks, is asking for more American troops and dozens of civilian officials to help speed up the restoration of order and public services.

I find it sad the media is repeats administration lies on this point without as if they had any validity when the record clearly shows otherwise.  Every "he never asked" statement should be followed by "Bremer made a widely reported request in July 2003."  I can't believe this.  How much blatant misrepresentation must go on before the press starts using the word "lies"?  This is the lowest lap dog behavior yet.
_____________________________________________________

[i] Vice President Dick Cheney, “Vice President Speaks at VFW 103^rd National Convention; Remarks by the Vice President to the Veterans of Foreign Wars 103^rd National Convention,” August 26, 2002, www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/08/20020826.html.

[ii] President George W. Bush, “President’s Remarks at the United Nations General Assembly; Remarks by the President in Address to the Unitd Nations General Assembly,” September 12, 2002, www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020912-1.html.

[iii] Mitchell Landsberg, “Ample Evidence of Abuses, Little of Illegal Weapons,” Los Angeles Times, June 15, 2003, p.1.

[iv] Ari Fleischer, “Press Briefing by Ari Fleischer,” December 2, 2002, www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/12/20021202-6.html.

[v] Ari Fleischer, “Press Briefing by Ari Fleischer,” January 9, 2003, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030109-8.html.

[vi] Colin Powell, “Remarks to the United Nations Security Council,” New York City, February 5, 2003, http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2003/17300.htm.

[vii] George W. Bush, “President’s Radio Address,” February 8, 2003, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030208.html.

[viii] Seymour M. Hersh, “Selective Intelligence; Donald Rumsfeld Has His Own Special Sources. Are They Reliable?” The New Yorker, May 12, 2003, p. 44.

[ix] George W. Bush, “Address to the Nation,” March 17, 2003, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030317-7.html.

[x] Ari Fleischer, “Press Briefing by Ari Fleischer,” March 21, 2003, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030321-9.html.

[xi] David Anthony Denny, “U.S. Central Command report,” March 22, 2003, http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/terror/03032203.htm.

[xii] Donald Rumsfeld, “This Week _with George Stephanopolous,” March 30, 2003, http://www.dod.gov/news/Mar2003/t03302003_t0330sdabcsteph.html.

[xiii] Colin Powell, Remarks after “NBC’s Meet the Press,” Washington D.C., May 4, 2003, http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2003/20166.htm.

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• October 6, 2004 | 2:19 PM ET

When Smart Pundits Act Stupid
I watched the debate with an overstuffed poker game of journalists, bankers, ex-Clinton-types and a couple of stray actors, and the like.  The consensus was that Edwards blew Cheney away—to a far greater degree than Kerry did Bush—during the first half-hour, after which we figured that people stopped watching.  We kind of stopped watching, though we kept it on and heard most of it.  The more we watched, the more we figured people had stopped watching.  (Don’t forget the play-offs were on.)  If you think that even a significant percentage of people tuned in at the beginning and stayed only briefly, then I think Edwards walked away with it.  Cheney looked as if he might explode for a while if he was forced to listen to this crap for another G.D. minute.  (Which was the same problem Bush had; live by the bubble, die by the bubble.)

But I don’t want to argue that we were necessarily right, just that the post debate polling is nonsensical.  In the first place, polling only people who stuck around for all ninety minutes of a vice-presidential debate is by definition polling a non-representative group of voters.  What’s even worse, they don’t even believe their own polls, but report them as if they do.  Our host’s satellite service was on the fritz so we only had the networks.  We picked ABC and after the usual post-debate BS, Peter Jennings came on and gave numbers that had Cheney beating Edwards, but consisted of 38 percent Republicans and 31 percent Democrats.  Now nobody with even a quarter of a brain thinks that Election Day will be even remotely that skewed.  I’m willing to go on record saying given the new registration numbers, Democrats will outpoll Republicans this time and that’s why Kerry will win—or the Republicans will have to steal it even more blatantly than they did last time.

The people at ABC News are smart enough to know that a 38-31 percent skewing makes their poll nonsense, but they go ahead an report it anyway because it’s so important to them to be able to report something even if it is so fundamentally flawed as to be deliberately misleading.  I didn’t see any other broadcasts so I don’t know if they did the same, but shame on Jennings and ABC. 

Meanwhile, this morning on “The Note,” ABC’s really smart guys do the same thing, though they qualify their comments by noting, “Cheney won the ABC News insta-poll, which also suggested more Republicans watched the debate than Democrats.”  That’s really hardly any better than Jennings.  They tell you more Republicans watched the debate but they don’t explain that that made their instant poll worthless.  I understand the rule of corporate loyalty but why even mention it when it is clearly crap?

Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg’s “Democracy Corps” did what they say is the “only national representative panel survey” based on 1,000 respondents who watched the debate, and completed pre- and post-surveys.  Data was collected by Knowledge Networks, a survey research firm that maintains the only nationally representative Web-based survey platform.  That survey showed Edwards with what they term to be “a slight edge in the vice-presidential debate among key swing groups in the electorate, though overall Cheney had a slight edge of 40 to 37 percent on who won the debate.  Where it matters, Edwards had the edge.

    o  Among independents, Edwards by 37 to 34 percent.

    o  Among undecided voters (with only 60 cases), Edwards won by 43 to 25 percent.

    o  Among battleground states, Edwards had 40 to 38 percent advantage. “

They also note that the  debate produced “a yawning gender gap, with Cheney winning by 16 points among men (47 to 31 percent) and Edwards winning women by 9 points (43 to 34 percent) -- a 25-point gender gap.”

The Note, we also note, mocks The New York Times' editorial board for caring about a silly little thing like “substance.”  That’s here.  And then they add, “Thus, even though he was wrong about meeting Edwards before last night… we snap judge that it was a better night for the R's than the D's.”  I actually think it’s unimportant that Cheney made that stuff up about never meeting Edwards, but whoh, remember Al Gore “lying” because he confused James Le Wit with some other guy from FEMA?  And far more significant was Cheney’s lie that he never directly linked Al Qaida to Iraq.  HE did so repeatedly and we’ve footnoted it in The Book on Bush.  Finally, his discussion of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was also deliberately misleading, as you can see from this article.   Not calling him on this was Edwards’ biggest failing.

Quote of the Day, Dick Cheney: “The first time I ever met you was when you walked on stage tonight."

Charles Pierce:  THIRTY DAYS OUT
Day 25; October 6, 2004
Hey Doc:
ATHENS, GA.--  Every Tuesday evening at five, a group of women dressed in black stand in silent vigil for an hour under the Arch at the corner of Broad and College here.  (The Arch is one of those Warner Brothers campus traditions.  For many years, freshmen at UGA weren't even allowed to pass beneath it.)  The whole place smells sweetly of the end of summer.

As it happens, last night, my oldest son and I went to see George Butler's documentary about John Kerry's life and, most notably, about his service with the Vietnam Veterans Against The War.  It's hard to explain to anyone who wasn't around how powerful a moral witness the VVAW was -- and it's even harder still to countenance a party full of smug little chickenhawks who have nothing better to do than slander the men who were there -- both in Southeast Asia, and on the Mall in 1971.

What I do know for a fact is that, if the war continues the way it's been going, and more gross lies come to light, there is going to be a major anti-war movement in this country by the middle of 2006, and returning veterans may very well be at its forefront again.  However, I do despair of the political culture in which this movement will take place.  Snarky twerps with sinecures at tinpot think-tanks.  Ashcroft in charge of the Justice Department.  Fox idiocies, and dead-in-the-eyes pols with sinecures at CNN.

I watched the women on the steps for a long time last night.  Then I went and watched a debate.

We missed it: From Backstreets:  Neil Young showed up the VFC show in St. Paul and “faced off with Bruce for monster jam on "Souls of the Departed" and a fierce "All Along the Watchtower."  And the wind began to howl... Neil was back in the encores trading off vocals with Bruce on "Rockin' in the Free World" along with Fogerty, all of REM, and Neil's wife Pegi.  Fogerty got a huge cheer when he announced, "I got a final score for you: Minnesota Twins 2, Yankees nothin'!"

Alter Review:
And speaking of the above, I’ve been listening to a wonderful tribute record recorded by Warren Zevon’s friends, called “Enjoy Every Sandwich,--The Songs of Warren Zevon,” to be released shortly on my friend Danny Goldberg’s Artemis Records.  It’s got live performances by Bruce and Dylan, and studio contributions from Don Henley, Steve Earle, Jackson and Bonnie, together, The Pixies, Jill Sobule, Ry Cooder with David Lindley, the Wallflowers, Jennifer Warnes with Jorge Calderon, Pete Yorn, and Warren’s son Jordan, who sounds just like his dad.  Billy Bob Thorton is on it too, which is OK.  My only complaint, but it’s a pretty big one, is giving “Werewolves” to Adam Sandler, who tries to play it straight, the way Joe Piscopo did when he ruined his career by thinking he really was a rock star.  Otherwise it’s damn near perfect, with my only criticism being that it’s too short.  It’ll be available on October 19 and you can read more about it here.

Correspondents’ Corner
Name: David S. Bernstein
Hometown: Boston, Mass.
Eric:
Why John Edwards turns out to be a brilliant VP choice:

Most of us get thrown off our game when lied to transparently and aggressively.  I don't mean the lies you know are coming, like Iraq is "well in hand."  I mean the out-of-left-field, you-know-I-know-that's-a-lie whopper, like "The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight."

Now, most of us get rattled when someone does that, and start stammering something or just stare slack-jawed in disbelief.  But Edwards has lengthy experience with people saying things they know are untrue -- things like "No, I never knew that my product disembowels children."
In retrospect, a key qualification for the challenger to Mr. Cheney.

Name: Jim Merrigan
Hometown: East Windsor, CT
Eric:
Just in case you haven't seen, there is going to be a 4 1/2 hour documentary on the Vote For Change Tour on the Sundance channel on 10/11 at 6:30. It is going to be part footage from the tour, and the rest will be the live show that night from DC. I saw Bruce in Cleveland on Saturday, and everyone I mentioned it to hadn't heard about it. Take care, Jim

Name: A. Campbell
Hometown: Toronto
Here's what candidate Cheney said in his last V.P. debate on October 5, 2000 (4 years to the day) and what's about to come back and bite him in the ass, with any luck, when you combine it with any of his more recent statements on the matter of Iraq:

The thing about Iraq, of course, was at the end of the [1991] war we had pretty well decimated their military.  We had put them back in the box, so to speak.  We had a strong international coalition raid against them, effective economic sanctions, and an inspection regime was in place under the U.N. and it was able to do a good job of stripping out the capacity to build weapons of mass destruction, the work he had been doing that had not been destroyed during the war in biological and chemical agents, as well as a nuclear program.

Name: Barry Ritholtz
Hometown: The Big Picture
Hey Doc,
It's become pretty apparent why W lost the debate:  He's been in a protective cocoon for the past year.  The best analogy I can find is that of a prize fighter getting ready for the championship bout.  If he fails to spar, and only hits the speed bag, he's in for a rude awakening when his opponent's first punch connects.

That's what happened last week:  In real combat, the President got his bell rung.

Here are some more details...

Post-Debate "Meet the Press"
(Mirror)

Sunday, October 3, 2004 --National Review's Washington Editor Kate O'Beirne had a fascinating comment this morning on Meet The Press:

I wonder if it's much easier -- or less intimidating -- to prepare a Senator for a debate -- where you can say, "Gee, that answer is lame, Senator" -- than it is a sitting President, where there aren't a lot of people in the room who are willing to say, "That answer doesn't work, Mr. President.

O'Beirne's comments were rather telling.  They go a long way on explaining some of the more puzzling behavior of this administration.

Think about this:  If hardly anyone is willing to challenge the President of the United States of America when he gives a 'lamo answer in debate practice,' fer cryin' out loud, riddle me this, Batman: Who the hell is challenging him when he gets basic facts about the world wrong?  Does she mean to tell me that the President is surrounded by "Yes Men," people who do not provoke, challenge or even play "devil's advocate" with him on major policy discussions?

I suspect it's even worse than that: The President has been in a bubble, with minimal contact with challenging questioners.  Recall the Irish journalist who had the temerity to ask follow up questions to the President's aphorisms and soundbites.  The White House cancelled a pre-scheduled interview with the First Lady as payback for asking tough questions.

At BC04 rallies, attendees sign loyalty oaths.  James Wolcott wrote that Bush has only "been wheeled out into forums where no one can dare question or contradict his majesty, where he can lean forward and repeat ad nauseam his patented sound bites."

Now, the repercussions of these kid gloves are being felt.  Over the course of 12 months of swinging at only lobs from hand chosen questioners, the President forgot what real questions are like. 

Now, a rematch is scheduled for a mere 8 days later.  Can the President get fully prepped in that short time period?  Especially this Prez, with famously lazy work habits?  How quickly can he get control of his obvious disdain for the entire process?

We shall see soon enough...

Update: October 3, 2004 6:18 PM
Just got back from a delightful day outside, and plowed through the McLaughlin Group (courtesy of TiVo).

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell raises several similar points to what we discuss above. Namely:

1. The debate process got "under the President's skin -- he didn't want to be there, he was in over his head;"
   
   
2. This is the problem with the President's party having constructed a vacuum in which the campaign has taken place;
   
   
3. The almost self-delusionary quality of the MSG rally convention where no contrary thoughts were allowed to even take place [didn't help the presdient prepare];
   
   
4. Lastly, these crazy Bush public events where a ticket is required sealed the President off from reality.  (Crosstalk: McLaughlin: Are Presidents too hermetically sealed for their own good?)

The questions from Jim Lehrer, someone on the panel observed, were a cold dose of reality...

• October 5, 2004 | 2:42 PM ET

Sivacation, again
Hello everybody.  It's Siva Vaidhyanathan, the chief advocate of the Utopian form of government known as Sivacracy and author of The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System.

Eric is still on the road, discussing the finest book he has yet produced, When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and its Consequences.

When Presidents Prevaricate
What would the title be if Eric had hired John Kerry's consultants?  "When Presidents Mislead?"  How about if Eric worked for CNN?  "When Presidents Claim (and What the Other Side Claims in Reply)."  The title When Presidents Lie reminds us that presidents often lie about very serious matters and that we have a right and a duty to call them on it.  It seems that our political culture has become so paralyzed with fear of offense against those in power that we can't find anyone significant calling a lie a lie.  Telling lies yields no repercussions these days.  But calling a lie a lie is somehow deemed too risky.

Some journalistic outlets this week have not let Bush get away with his latest lie: Claiming that Kerry said he would submit to the wishes of foreign leaders before initiating military action to defend the United States.  In fact, as we read in a few places (and saw live on television last week) Kerry pledged just the opposite of what Bush is saying he said.  Bush's accusation is a baldfaced lie.  There.  I said it.  See, nothing bad happened to me.  Go ahead.  Try it for yourself.

Yet this morning on NPR's Morning Edition, even Juan Williams bowed to the creeping laziness and conservativeness of NPR management and repeated Bush's accusation as if it were fact.  "He talked about getting global consent for America to take preemptive action," Williams said of Kerry.  The anchor, Renee Montaigne, said nothing to correct Williams.  Don't they watch the debates or read the newspaper at NPR?  Why don't we help them.  Clearly, folks at NPR are overworked and understaffed.  So here is their correction policy.  Everybody click on this NPR Corrections mail link and tell NPR's editors they need to correct Williams' error.

More Laziness and Carelessness
Were you impressed by all those media outlets doing "fact checking" of both candidates' statements just after the debate last week?  Neither was I.  The only thing they could get Kerry on was that he includes money planned for Iraq as part of the $200 billion cost of the war.  Of course, Kerry's estimate is debatably accurate.  But they had to say something against him.  So what the heck.

The fact checkers got Bush on a bunch of little lies (although no one called them lies).  But they all missed a doozy.  In the debate, Bush said, "We busted the A.Q. Khan network. This was a proliferator out of Pakistan that was selling secrets to places like North Korea and Libya."  And later, he said, "The A.Q. Khan network has been brought to justice."

This is a lie.  There.  I said it again.

A. Q. Khan is sitting in comfort, considered a national hero and a friend of the corrupt and brutal dictator of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf (you might remember Musharraf as one of the global leaders Bush could not name last time he ran for president).  In fact, Musharaff officially pardoned Khan!  Not only is Khan suffering not at all for endangering you, me, and the entire world, Musharraf has not allowed U.S. intelligence officials or U.N. weapons inspectors to interrogate him.

The failures of the Bush administration are many, perhaps uncountable.  But 10 years from now, Bush's failure to interrogate or prosecute A. Q. Khan could be the most serious and dangerous of all.  I sincerely hope I am wrong about this.

What about Poland?
Meanwhile, remember how insistent Bush was that Kerry include mighty Poland as an active member of this bogus alliance helping out in Iraq?  Well, Poland no longer wants in.  Sorry, George.  Time to practice pronouncing other leaders' names.

The Veep Show
If Dick Cheney thinks attacking plaintiffs' attorneys is a good move to use on John Edwards tonight, he is sadly mistaken.  Edwards can just challenge Cheney to cite any case he handled that Cheney would disagree with.  Cheney can't.  Edwards spent his life protecting the victims of negligence from the impersonal machinations of faceless corporations.  Trial lawyers are the only instruments of justice for the working class in South, where unions are weak or absent.  Besides, the Republican candidate for Senate in Florida is one of those slimy trial lawyers, right Dick?  Cheney is the failed CEO of a faceless corporation, Halliburton, that is now sucking away our tax money and making Cheney even richer.  Go ahead, Dick.  Let's talk about the private sector.  I dare you.

What Conservative Media?
Why does George Bush hate veterans?  Is he jealous of their bravery in the face of his cowardice?  Is he ashamed of their selflessness in the face of his self-indulgence?  Whatever the reason, his vicious lying about brave and decorated men like John Kerry, Max Cleland, and John McCain is well documented (if widely ignored).  Now we find that reporters are finally getting around to documenting how badly the Bush administration is treating all veterans from all recent wars.  How can anyone from a military family give this guy the time of day?  It's shameful how he treats those in uniform.

If we had real liberal media, we would have seen such stories about Bush's mistreatment and disrespect for our soldiers two years ago.  The liberal media would have been aching to score hits on the hypocrisy of the fraud in a flight suit we have to call our president.

If we had real conservative media, we would have seen the brutal, realistic honesty that serious conservatives have been offering for centuries.  But we don't even have that.  Instead, we have shallow, sloppy, untrained hacks like the entire staff of Fox News.  In case you missed Atrios this week, the Fox staff actually took a spoof group called Communists for Kerry seriously.  And this was just after Fox chief political correspondent Carl Cameron was "brought to justice" (wink, wink, Pakistani style) for making up some crap about Kerry claiming to be a Metrosexual.

I wish we had a real conservative news channel (besides CNN and NPR, of course).  It would at least be interesting and responsible.  The few, remaining honest, bold, and independent conservatives are a brave lot.  And they will remain endangered for some time.  Sadly, McCain and Colin Powell are no longer among them, having been broken by Karl Rove's machine.  America deserves honesty and diversity in its political discussion.  All we get is bickering, bantering, and bowing to pressure.

My Local Daily Newspaper
I did not miss having Tom Friedman greet me at the breakfast table in the morning.  His summer off from the New York Times editorial page was wonderful.  I took some clean shots at Friedman in The Anarchist in the Library.  He wrote a column just after September 11, 2001 in which he traveled to Silicon Valley to see how tech executives felt guilty because the terrorists had used Travelocity and e-mail to make their arrangements.  Astounding.  The guy actually thought that the Internet was invented by companies in Silicon Valley!  Hey, Tom.  It was invented by a wide collaboration among military scientists and academics.  And before Travelocity, there were telephones.  How can a man so accomplished and privileged be so clueless?

Keeping the Net Free
If you are not familiar with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, you should be.  This cyber-rights organization is working hard to keep freedom and information flowing over this very medium that you are enjoying right now.  The EFF has scored two major victories in the past few months.

First, EFF lawyers liberated Woody Guthrie's song "This Land is Your Land" by showing the publishing company that controls its rights that the song is actually based on multiple works in the public domain, and itself entered the public domain since the early 1970s.

Then last week it took down Diebold, the incompetent electronic voting machine company that had tried stop students and journalists who dared to criticize the company by accusing them of violating the Digital Millennial Copyright Act.

Now EFF is trying to stop a stupid bill making its way through the U.S. Senate.  It's called the INDUCE Act, and it could potentially threaten innovation within industries that produce goods that COULD be used to facilitate copyright infringement: your photocopy machine, fax machine, personal computer, and the i-Pod.  Oh, BTW, those Bush supporters over at Microsoft would like to make your i-Pod illegal, too.  (Disclosure: This site is a Microsoft project, but I don't get paid for doing this. -- Siva)

Outsourcing Torture
In case you missed it (and since most media outlets ignored it, you should not be surprised you missed it), Republicans in Congress are trying to explicitly allow what we all know has been going on illicitly: the outsourcing of torture to countries that have no respect for human rights.  Kos tells you what you can do about it.

What's the World Talking about?
Once again, I urge you to check out the best global site on the Web, OpenDemocracy.net.  Not only would you see interesting columns by the likes of Todd Gitlin and yours truly, this Thursday you will see the debut of an in-depth and wide-ranging series of articles on the debates over voting technology world-wide.  That's right, it's not just a problem in Florida and Ohio.  India, Brazil, Venezuela, the Netherlands, Ireland, and many other countries are working their way through the perils and challenges of electronic ballot technology.  I wrote the kickoff article for the series, and my next big book will be a history of the ballot.  So check it out.

Altercation Book Club
Last month I went to the Christening of the daughter of a dear friend from Texas.  Her father (the new grandfather) and I had lots of nice time to hang out.  As long as I have known him, this gentleman from a small town in Central Texas has been the quintessential Texas conservative: proud, independent, libertarian in spirit, practical in attitude, and patient with the world.  Classic Texas conservatism was always thus, and it usually got expressed by Democrats like Lloyd Bentsen, Charlie Stenholm, and Sam Rayburn.  Only in recent decades have radical Republicans hijacked Texas conservatism and twisted it into its present Jihad.

Anyway, this gentleman took a moment with me to describe his reaction to a recent e-mail he received from a former co-worker.  Apparently, the e-mail contained all sorts of lies and exaggerations about what John Kerry would do to this country when he wins next month. He was appalled.

"I wrote back to this fellow," my friend's father said, "and I told him that I am old enough to remember when there was no electricity in Caldwell.  My mother had to get up before dawn and haul wood into the house to start the stove and heat water for bathing and breakfast.  I told him I will always remember that it was the Democrats who brought electricity to rural Texas."  He went on to share with me his deep doubts that Bush and Company had done the right thing in Iraq and in keeping this nation safe from another attack.  And he saw the fraying of the social safety net as a premonition that things would get worse in this country before they got better.  He was moving and sincere.  He is still conservative, practical, and careful in his politics.  He just had made up his mind that these Republicans are bad for the country he loves so much.

I remembered this conversation as I read through Cass Sunstein's new book, The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need it More than Ever.  It's an effort to reclaim and remind America of the visions of greatness and justice that once flowed freely in this country.  It was not too long ago that popular presidents could dream out loud about guaranteeing good education and economic security to Americans who had been battered and bruised by the failed market fundamentalism of the 1920s.  Sunstein's book is refreshing, illuminating, and well written (disclosure: Sunstein and I share an editor at Basic Books).

After our back-and-forth last week over Tom Frank's new book, Eric Rauchway and I decided to go all "East Coast vs. West Coast" on y'all.  So welcome to Altercation Book Club.

Here is Rauchway:
Dear Siva,
So I read Cass Sunstein's Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More than Ever and have some concerns maybe you could help allay.  I should explain, though, that my take on it was filtered through the other two books on FDR's America currently on my bedside table, Philip Roth's Plot Against America and Eric Alterman's When Presidents Lie, each of which puts a thoughtful counterpoint to Sunstein.

Briefly to summarize, Sunstein thinks that FDR's 1944 State of the Union address, which refers to "economic truths [that] have become accepted as self-evident," amounting to, "so to speak, a second Bill of Rights" constitutes a nearly official second Bill of Rights, what Sunstein calls a set of "constitutive commitments" analogous to the Declaration of Independence.  This is to say, they don't have the force of law, as a Constitutional Amendment or a set of judicial rulings would, but they represent a shared dedication, born of crisis, to some important amendments to the social compact.

The second bill of rights enshrined economic rights -- the right to a job, to a minimum standard of living, to a home, to medical care, to security in old age and poor health, to good schooling. (This is my inelegant summary; read the original for FDR's language.)

Sunstein argues that Americans accepted these commitments in response to the crises of the Depression, that the Supreme Court began responding (as of 1937) to these commitments in its rulings, and that they didn't begin to fade till the Nixon era -- but that even so, Americans (if asked) still believe in them.  "In 1998," Sunstein writes, "64 percent of Texans [Texans! he does not add] agreed that the 'government should see to it that everybody who wants to work can find a job.'"

Here's my first reaction (ensured in part by my contextual readings): maybe it would be nice to live in Sunstein's America, but I'm afraid we live in Alterman's if not Roth's.  Or more to the point, David Kennedy's.  In Freedom from Fear, which Sunstein mentions but does not, I think, directly engage, Kennedy seemed to me to argue that FDR cajoled, harassed, and (as Alterman especially notes) deceived Americans into accepting, against their prejudices but for their own good, the New Deal.  This is not quite the same as deliberatively achieving a constitutive commitment, is it?  How do we know when we've signed on to a new social compact?
_________________________________

Dear Eric R.:
The constitutive commitments that Sunstein celebrates and Roosevelt articulates did not emerge solely from the president's hand and mouth. They bubbled up through the writing of progressives like Herbert Croly and Adolf Berle.  They had been swimming in public discourse for almost two decades by the time FDR assembled them in a series of speeches, culminating in the 1944 State of the Union.  You can find them expressed through the lyrics of Woody Guthrie, the Carter Family, and Leadbelly.  You can find them in the narratives of John Dos Passos and John Steinbeck.  And you can find them in the photographs and oral histories commissioned by the Works Progress Administration.

As Sunstein rightly notes, FDR was pretty careful and pragmatic.  He was bold and sure when he spoke.  But his governing and thinking style was deliberate and experimental.  FDR's anti-democratic streaks were clear and troubling (I would include Greg Robinson's By Order of the President among the strongest works assessing FDR's failure to lead democratically).  But the book (and the Second Bill of Rights) is not just about Roosevelt and what he wished for us.  It's about the ways the elements of this vision of social security (small s) made their way through two decades of American policy and remain important parts of our political imagination.

Sunstein's biggest problem in this book is that he slights the creative avenues of political culture, those that most successfully foster passionate deliberation over questions of value and justice.  He seems deaf to the rhythms of the times.

So no, we don't live in Sunstein's America.  We don't even live in Roosevelt's America any more.  But we do live in Roosevelt's world.  His articulation of these rights owed much to Eleanor Roosevelt (another disclosure: my dog is named Eleanor Roosevelt) and her visions of social justice.  She went on after his death to ensure these rights are embedded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and remain part of the vision of the United Nations.  As Sunstein shows us, many democratic, capitalistic countries have codified these rights in their own constitutions.

I don't think any American leader will be bold enough to pronounce these rights any time soon.  But I hope we never forget that dreaming this big is possible in America.  It was not considered crazy or radical to do so, not so long ago.  Croly's book The Promise of American Life took two decades to make a difference in America.  Maybe books like Sunstein's will matter some day as well.

The vinyl bin
Eric Alterman wants me to let y'all know that there is a new Vote for Change date just added: October 13 at Continental Arena in New Jersey. The bill will include Jackson Browne and the lovely Patty Scialfa, "instead of bright eyes and REM."  Tickets go on sale Wednesday at 10 a.m. via evil Ticketmaster only (can't we vote for Ticketmaster change?).

Charles Pierce: THIRTY DAYS OUT
Day 26 -- October 5, 2004
BOSTON, MA. - ATHENS, GA.
Hey Doc:

Well, REM's out there with Bruce these days, so it's quieter here between the hedges than it probably would be otherwise.  As we round into tonight's Veepstakes, let us pause for a moment of silence in memory of Joe Lieberman's political soul, which he traded for the undying love of Little Tim and the rest of the Beltway Heathers at this very event four years ago.  Remember how civil he was?  Remember how nice he was to Dick Cheney?  Remember how much your head hurt from banging it against the wall?  Probably won't happen the same way against Huckleberry Cutthroat tonight.

So it's a hard job being president, is it?  In all my days, which go back to the end of Second Ike, I have never heard an incumbent president mention how difficult the job is.  They're always "honored by the trust" the American people -- or, in this case, Antonin Scalia -- have placed in them.  I mean, as I have learned in this big old new book of political history that I brought with me, FDR served for 16 years, through the Great Depression and World War II, and it was only at the very end that he even made mention of the fact that he was in a wheelchair.  That C-Plus Augustus made (by my count) nine references to the difficulty of his job last week is the best measure that he was coming a little unstrung.  What did he possibly hope to gain by it?  The sympathy of some laid-off sheet-metal worker?  The understanding of some wounded vet?  A pat on the head from Karen Hughes?

It's supposed to be hard, as Tom Hanks says in that women's baseball movie.  If it wasn't hard, everybody would do it.  And, as we've come to learn, not everybody can.

• October 4, 2004 | 8:37 AM ET

A Whole New Ballgame
Lucky us, Pierce has volunteered to begin regular, possibly daily reports from the Most Important Election of Our Lives:

THIRTY DAYS OUT --
DAY 29 -- BOSTON, MA. - OCTOBER 4, 2004:

GEORGE W. BUSH (with Bill O'Reilly in 2000): "Well, I -- yeah, and I'm not so sure he (Jesus) addressed the death penalty itself in the New Testament.  Maybe he did."

THE GOSPEL OF JOHN; CHAPTER 8, VERSES 4-7:
They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.  Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?  This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him.  But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.  So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

One element of the essential C-Plus Augustus that few people dare examine is the possibility that he's as ignorant of his professed Christianity as he of so many other important things in this world.  I mean, that is one of the most famous passages in Christ's public ministry.  Hell (you should pardon the expression), "casting the first stone" has become a famous secular colloquialism.

I think his Christianity is simply a form he found with which to give structure to what was rapidly becoming a wastrel's life.  I think it's a set of exercises -- the way some reformed drunks take to jogging or lifting weights to fill up those long, thirsty hours.  I think he has some faith-based palaver that he runs through as though it were calisthenics, the same way he tosses around words like "freedom" and "liberty" when he can't think of anything else to say to explain the hash he's made of things in Iraq.

We've had a year in which John Kerry's fitness to receive communion was a topic of extended debate, but the sincerity of his opponent's religiosity was taken on, well, faith.  Here's what I think:  I don't think this guy knows enough Scripture -- let alone enough theology -- to throw to a cat.  And I can't think of an institution less capable of examining this question than the modern mass media.

Alter-updates
Working with the Author’s Guild, Paul made me a new personal Web site here and he managed to post the wonderful L.A. Times review as well.  You can see there’s an events page which should list, for this week, Princeton University Bookstore on Tuesday at 4:30 and Elliott Bay in Seattle after the second debate on Friday night.

My weekend:
These past few days were a good few days to be me.  Thursday night I got to enjoy the hospitality of Mr. and Mrs. Atrios (and their noisy friends) and watch a presidential debate, that unlike almost everything else related to this campaign, bore some semblance to reality and may have provided the necessary ‘tipping point’ for common sense to triumph in this election.  The next morning, after doing a debate for WHYY in Philly, I signed When Presidents Lie at the new(ish) National Constitution Center where a number of Altercation readers and contributors came by to say “hello” and discuss the state of the world.  One of my frequent correspondents wrote this about the Web site’s relation to its readers recently, and while much of it strikes me as accurate, it was nevertheless extremely gratifying to hear from people how much a part of their lives we have become.

The Center, by the way, is an amazing achievement, inspired originally by my friend Stuart Feldman, who is one of the most creative and public-minded Americans of many generations.  Anyway, its brilliance lies in its ability to make American history live in fun and interesting ways for young people and others who would otherwise be put off by “dusty old documents,” without doing an injustice to documents themselves.  Do go see it if you’re anywhere near Philly.

Friday night was the “Vote for Change” concert, which our man Boehlert reviewed here.  I am down with Eric’s description of the show, but here are a few things I would add:

1. Michael Stipe and Bruce sang the Patti Smith lyrics to “Because the Night,” not the Springsteen lyrics.  This is the first time I’ve ever heard him do this.
   
   
2. I would have said the version he played of Johnny 99 was brand new, but I asked the guy next to me if he had ever heard it, and he said, “Shea, nights one and three.”  Guy turned out to be Chris, the editor of the nearly professional quality fanzine “Backstreets” to which Bruce recently gave his only interview in thirty years of dissing them.
   
   
3. While there wasn’t much preaching, true, I’ve never been to a political concert where the politics mattered at all.  But everyone seemed to be on the same page here, with cheers every time Kerry’s name was mentioned and everybody in a good mood about how awful Bush turned out to be in the first debate.
   
   
4. “People Have the Power” while an almost comically simple song, was a brilliant choice for a final encore, and I love the idea of updating the protest song canon.  “Come On, People Now Smile on Your Brother…” would have felt a little silly
   
   
5. It was 25 years since Bruce did something like this.  That was “No Nukes,” produced by my friend Danny Goldberg, and at that show, he was too nervous to say a word.  Now he’s practically an elder statesman, with a polished political rap and a clear sense of how and where his voice fits in.  Right or wrong—and fortunately, he’s right-- it’s powerful stuff.

And a shout out to my friend Kerry Antholis, macher behind “Angels in America” and “Everyday People” for making the cross-country trip for a good cause.

The next night, Saturday in New York, I got to hear a second show that ended with a final encore of “People Have the Power.”  This was the Patti Smith Group with Television, at Roseland.  Both bands got their start at CBGBs together and nobody back then would have dreamed that they would still be here, making essentially the same kind of music as they did.  If punk appeared to be anything at all in the late seventies, it was something transitory and particular to late adolescence.  But it turns out that it had room to grow and envelop the full circle of life struggles while infusing them with a certain spirit of life-long rebellion. 

While Television relies primarily on their incredible technical virtuosity, Patti remains a visionary -and an attractive and inspirational one at that.  After the show, I tried to tell her about her star turn the night before in Jersey but was informed that Michael Stipe had beaten me to it.

After the show, I got myself invited to a midnight New Yorker festival dinner where on one side of me I got to talk to Kate and Anna McGarrigle (who had been interviewed by Rick Hertzberg at Joe’s Pub) about their experiences with Dylan, and with Lillian Ross, on the other side of me, about her experiences with Hemingway and Salinger.  Is this the greatest city in the world or what?

• October 1, 2004 | 4:12 PM ET

Slacker Post-Debate Friday

I hate high school metaphors but this is a blog and there are no archives so I can eventually deny it. Anyway, I’m down with Our Man Pierce. Last night was the A- nerd straining to be likable vs. the low C cut-up attempting to sound like a grown-up. The latter was given his three lines to repeat over and over to impress the committee (for whatever) and he did his best, though he couldn’t remember to keep a straight face when he wasn’t speaking. (Live by “body language.” Die by “body language.” Kerry missed two key opportunities. He never once said “Here’s what the president said before I voted for the war resolution and here’s what I voted for. I did not vote for THIS.” He also never spelled out just how horribly things are going in Iraq, leaving it to people to get their impressions elsewhere, including the fantasy spin of the man at the other podium. But he was well-spoken, well-disciplined and almost likeable: in other words “Presidential.” Anyway, the debate matters less than the post-debate spin. There’s no question Kerry got the better of the former. The question will be is the line of the day, “Kerry did well but not well enough” or will it be, “It’s a whole new ballgame.”  Last night seemed to be leaning to spin #2, which normally would surprise me, since the right-wingers always control this stuff, but reporters like a good story almost as much as they like to swallow canned conservative talking points. So it looks like “it’s a whole new ballgame.” Thank, God (I think.)

There’s an interview with me about When Presidents Lie in the new Philadelphia Weekly. Because I know that, (and because I am in Philly, where I watched the debate “grumpily” on Mr. and Mrs. Atrios’s couch) I can report that the headline of the paper is “Vote for Kerry or Burn in Hell.” Finally a message for lefty evangelicals. Also, I got a little obsessed with the lunacy of the Rather/CBS story this week and so I wrote about it both here and here.

They are different enough to justify themselves, though, (I think).

Onto Slacker Friday.

Correspondent’s Corner.

CHARLES PIERCE
NEWTON, MA.

Hey Doc:
     All right, on my card, I make it a TKO.
     My son, the Brandeis sophomore, who has spent far too many nights watching professional fistfights with me, had the best evaluation. It was a body attack -- relentless and withering. There were no spectacular sweat-spinning punches. No mouthpieces flew into the third row. But, as an old trainer once told me, the ones you can't see are the ones that hurt. At long last, I think, somebody finally made the case that C-Plus Augustus is not up to the job by illustrating that the guy simply doesn't know enough about enough.
     Time and again, Kerry cut off the ring. At least three times by my count, on the subject of the North Korean nukes, he maneuvered Bush into the absurd position of defending a policy under which there are, well, North Korean nukes. Which is not to say that Kerry didn't establish the jab. The quote from Poppy's book was a stiff one, as was the mention of how Bush left Colin Powell hanging out to dry, again over North Korea.
     (By the way, if I wasn't afraid of Kim Jong-Il's bombs before last night, I am now. Yeesh.)
     But, mostly, he did what all good body-punchers do. He didn't let him breathe. He even snuck a few in there during the clinches -- wedging into a discussion of the cost of the Iraq debacle a couple of short, crisp ones about global warming and the tax cuts. Referee Jim Lehrer -- who is no Mills Lane, by god -- didn't see them, but they landed.
     Did he miss a couple of chances to land some bombs upstairs? Well, yes. That missile-defense thing should have been a putaway, and I wish to god Kerry had dropped a right hand over the top on the whole "mixed signals" thing by citing the incumbent's ambivalence toward the Department of Homeland Security, and his ungainly fandango over the entire course of the 9/11 commission. But he kept digging to the ribs, over and over again. Port security. Loose nukes. A nice little hook on the president's good pal, Vladimir, there in Russia, who's fitting himself for the crown of the Romanovs.
     And this was supposed to be Bush's wheelhouse last night. Does he really plan to get up on a stage twice more with this guy and talk on subjects about which he manifestly knows and/or cares even less? Stem cells? The right to choose? Chief Justice Scalia? The (shh!) economy?
     TKO, Doc. Fifth round.
     Only one president on that stage last night.

Name: Stupid
Hometown: Chicago

Hey Eric, it's Stupid to be an armchair activist.  Actually I was out volunteering last week (first time since Mondale!), but some of the volunteers I was with were talking up the Dean campaign's use of handwritten letters. 

Indeed, phone calls are efficient, but there's something powerful about a personal letter.  Plus it's something easy to do on your own.  So, on a whim, I looked up some suburban swing state voters this week and wrote them the following:
  
Dear ----:

Please excuse this intrusion into your mailbox -- you are not on some "list" and I promise not to bother you again after this!  I'm acting on my own and got your name from an Internet phone book.

I am writing to urge you to vote for John Kerry this November 2nd.  I don't know who you are supporting, but if you are planning to vote for President Bush I hope I can convince you to reconsider.  While there are many issues which people of good faith disagree on (the war in Iraq especially), there are some that both liberals and conservatives recognize are immediate threats to our future: the record-setting budget deficit, the sharp rise in our dependency on foreign oil (which sends billions of dollars out of our economy forever) and the unchecked outsourcing of good, quality jobs.  I don't know if John Kerry has all the answers -- I really like some of his proposals, others are typically vague politician-speak. But the President's record shows that he will make these problems much worse.  In fact he doesn't even talk about them.

I hope that you will seek out as much unbiased information as you can about these issues -- I believe you'll conclude as I did that we really need to elect John Kerry.  Either way I hope you'll vote - it makes our democracy stronger.  If you'd like to talk to me about any of this, my number is - and e-mail is -.  Otherwise, thank you for reading!

Beth Woodall
Hometown: Charleston, SC
Comments:
Eric,
So pleased to read the letter from Mike in Pittsburgh, PA., the Christian who will be voting for the Democratic ticket. It's hard to be a Christian Democrat these days, especially with the neocons telling folks that it is their Christian "duty" to re-elect George W. Bush. Rubbish!  I have found direction and inspiration from a faith-based organization called Sojourners.  Sojourners weaves religion, politics, and today's pressing issues into sane and very insightful commentary. Indeed, they have launched an aggressive campaign entitled "God is not a Republican. Or a Democrat." The ad was run in the NY Times during the Republican National Convention. For more info, check out www.sojo.net 

Name: Bob Mangino
Hometown: Seattle
Comments:
Eric,
Get your Schadenfreude here:  Bush's hometown paper endorses Kerry.
The circulation of 425 won't sway a lot of locals and it hardly makes Bush suffer, but it does make him look a little ridiculous if he can't win over his homeys and the message will hopefully resonate all over. The editorial is a pretty cogent-sounding analysis of where Bush is taking us--off a cliff. Please, pleeeease Kerry campaign, take this and run with it, lighheartedly make fun of W every chance you get, smile a lot and nod knowingly.

Name: Jennie Saxena
Hometown: Dayton Ohio
Commen