A Beginner's Campaign (post 4)

I had a little chat with my opponent this evening. I think he was concerned that I might have a particular beef against him (which I don't). As far as I know he has been doing a good job. I explained that I was a rookie candidate just getting my feet wet and my main purpose was to call attention to an off-year election by doing some things that were a little different. He sympathized on being a rookie candidate because he was in that position 4 years ago. Interestingly enough he recognized my name from letters to the editor I've written in times past.

Counter-intuitive

Some recent studies show that planting trees may create deserts instead of mediate them. There are many active projects trying to hold back or reclaim desert by putting in trees. It may be that that is not such a good idea.

I know in Texas they found if they bulldozed all the brush mesquite in an area the water table came up ten feet. But mesquite is notorious for deep tap roots that enable it to survive in arid climates.

A Beginner's Campaign (post 3)

I guess my secret is out. The newspaper published a list of the candidates who have filed so far and my name is on it. Members of the cast of the summer musical I am involved in congratulated me at our performance tonight. I had hoped that I would have a little more time to get some stuff organized before it became public knowledge. But it's too late now.

The Pincus File

Our media is waking up to an old story that is somehow new again.

"In that exchange, Mr. Pincus says, 'an administration official, who was talking to me confidentially about a matter involving alleged Iraqi nuclear activities, veered off the precise matter we were discussing and told me that the White House had not paid attention' to the trip to Niger by Joseph C. Wilson IV 'because it was a boondoggle arranged by his wife, an analyst with the agency who was working on weapons of mass destruction.'"

...

Mr. Pincus has not identified his source to the public. But a review of Mr. Pincus's own accounts and those of other people with detailed knowledge of the case strongly suggest that his source was neither Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's top political adviser, nor I. Lewis Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, and was in fact a third administration official whose identity has not yet been publicly disclosed.

Mr. Pincus's most recent account, in the current issue of Nieman Reports, a journal of the Nieman Foundation, makes clear that his source had volunteered the information to him, something that people close to both Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby have said they did not do in their conversations with reporters.

Medical insurance - Children Lose

Our vaunted health-care system is costing our children.

"For every child who lacks health insurance, another has gaps in coverage and is just as likely to miss out on seeing a doctor or getting a prescription refilled, suggests a new comprehensive study of federal data.

The research also reveals some surprises: About four out of five children with insurance coverage gaps have parents who work; two-thirds of them live with both parents; and more than half are white."

A beginner's campaign (post 2)

I was interviewed over the phone by my local newspaper already. Basic vital stats and stuff. Basic question of course was, why are you running? I gave a decent answer but it's clear I'm going to have to come up with a nice, slick one with some snap that can be easily repeated since that is going to be a frequent question. I can already see that much of what appears in the media is canned answers to anticipated questions.

And thanks for the words of support from fellow blogger, Pudentilla, out in Maine. You're the first (other than family) and I couldn't ask for better.

Baghdad blues

I've been expecting this. The first TV series based upon the Bush (hswib) War is out. It's a Bochco product so expect it to be good. From the review the cast of characters is predictable at the start. It will be interesting to see how it develops. Other Bochco products have tended to take on a life of their own.

A beginner's campaign (post 1)

I filed today as a candidate for a city council office. I don't think I have a snowball's chance of winning and would probably make a lousy councilman if I did. What I do hope to do is a) get an insider's view of what running for office is like, b) use the platform as an opportunity to make the off-year elections more visible, and c) just have some fun in a performance theater sort of way.

I hope to log my experiences here for future reference by myself or perhaps others.

Filing itself was pretty painless. Fill out a simple form and plop down your C-note and you're on your way. The County Auditor provides a nice information packet that explains the legalities of running for office and the PDC gives you a CD of their electronic financial disclosure and reporting program. If you are not going to be receiving any large donations or spending much money you don't have to do the PDC thing at all. But heaven help you if take a big donation later on and don't have the reporting mechanism all set up. I don't plan to run big bucks but for the purpose of the exercise I'm going to set up a special checking account and everything just as if I were.

My campaign is going to be a completely unserious one in the spirit of Pat Paulsen and Mike the Mover with homage to the style of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I intend to be completely uninhibited in what I say along the way because I'm not in it to win. My slogans will be something like, "Don't be stupid, don't vote for me!", or "Don't elect a clown like me, vote for a real candidate". The idea is to thoroughly bury tongue into the cheek.

Ricky boy

I saw Rick Santorum on the Daily Show last night with Jon Stewart. The boy really has sexuality issues. I certainly wouldn't want him around my children.

The 12-hour gap is worse than you think

It would be interesting to find out if there were any unusual activity at the White House on a certain weekend in September.

"It's not as if the Gonzales notification — on the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2003 — told Rove & Co. something new. MSNBC told the world about the investigation that Friday night. This means Rove & Co. learned on Friday night that they were being investigated, but weren't formally told to start securing relevant materials until Tuesday morning. In case the MSNBC report wasn't clear enough, a front-page article was published in the Washington Post about the Justice Department's criminal investigation a full 48 hours before WH staffers were told to preserve potentially incriminating evidence."

A neighbor's view of Valerie Wilson

There is a human story behind all the press. When the elephants dance the mice get hurt.

Butterfly unlocks evolution secret

The process of speciation reveals its secrets in the behavior of butterflies.

Depleted Uranium, Never Mind

A recent Sandia study says that the health effects of battlefield depleted uranium are not significant. They are probably comparable to those of an equivalent amount of lead. Both tend to cause heavy metal problems when ingested but the uranium has no significant additional problems because of radiation because it is (duh) depleted. That means depleted in the isotopes that are radioactive. Depleted uranium is less radioactive than natural uranium.

Methane, the New Greenhouse Gas

A new analysis indicates that methane plays a much bigger role than previously thought.

"According to new calculations, the impacts of methane on climate warming may be double the standard amount attributed to the gas. The new interpretations reveal methane emissions may account for a third of the climate warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases between the 1750s and today. The IPCC report, which calculates methane’s affects once it exists in the atmosphere, states that methane increases in our atmosphere account for only about one sixth of the total effect of well-mixed greenhouse gases on warming."

Pulling Threads Together

Matt Yglesias makes a case that claims, 1) the British second source for the Iraqi uranium search is either not credible on its own or is based ultimately on the forgeries once-removed, and 2) noone in the administration is at all interested in finding the ultimate source of the forgeries because they knew they were fake when they planted them in the first place.

The noose tightens

It seems the more we dig into this cover-blowing issue, the more the noose tightens around his pudgy little neck. On Meet the Press:

"RUSSERT: When one is given classified clearance, they are asked to sign an oath, and they are given a briefing book with form. Standard Form 312, it's called.

And if you read this briefing book, it says this:

'Before...confirming the accuracy of what appears in the public source, the signer of [the] SF 312 must confirm through an authorized official that the information has, in fact, been declassified. If it has not...confirmation of its accuracy is also an unauthorized disclosure.'

So by confirming a story from Robert Novak or sharing information with Matt Cooper, no matter where it came from, if, in fact, it was classified information, without seeking to determine whether it was declassified, it is an unauthorized disclosure."

Not only was confirming that Plame was CIA a violation but mentioning anything about how the CIA selected Wilson was a violation. It doesn't matter if the info came from a reporter. If Rove did not explicitly know that these things had been declassified, he done a baaaaad thing.

Time for a media strike

Everyone seems to be wringing their hands about how reporters have become trapped by their need for access. This has led to lousy reporting by even the most prestigious media outlets. Almost all have found themselves co-opted into being nothing more than a straight channel for the administration. What our media have either forgotten (or chosen to ignore) is that this trap cuts both ways. They have forgotten that the administration needs them as much as the media need access. Administration officials have said to the media, “If you write bad things about us, we will stop talking to you.” This has, so far, successfully cowed them into compliance. It’s time for our reporters to say, “If you burn me by giving me misinformation, I will stop allowing you to use my resources to spread your message.” Our media has lost its awareness of its own power in dealing with officialdom. Only when both sides have a proper appreciation of the balance of power they hold in their hands can we hope to have properly balanced output from both. It’s time our media restore the lost balance by calling the administration’s bluff. It would be telling if McClellan held a press conference and the only reporters there were from the Talon News and Fox while the rest of the media were out there digging up the truth instead.

The Hole in the Right-wing Version of the Joe Wilson Story

Joshua Micah Marshall reports that the evidence is clear that the reason Wilson's version of the Iraq-Niger connection (or absence thereof) didn't make it into the administration's consciousness was that the intelligence community had learned that such information was going to be ignored anyway.

"The explanation confected by the authors of the SSCI report was the rather contradictory one that either Wilson's trip generated no substantive information or that it in fact tended to confirm suspicions of an illict uranium traffic between the two countries. No one who's looked at the evidence involved believes that. Nor is that cover story compatible with the CIA's subsequent and repeated attempts to prevent the White House from using the Niger story.

Here in Pincus's reporting -- before the evidentiary and political battle lines were drawn -- is the answer: 'Information not consistent with the administration agenda was discarded.'

It never made it back to Cheney's office because it wasn't what Cheney's office wanted to hear. They were looking for evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program, not ambiguous data and certainly not evidence that contradicted the claim.

In this key respect, the dismissal of the information is displaced from the VP's office to the CIA. And the reason is that they already understood what was wanted and what wasn't.

I think it's still an open question whether it made it back up the chain or not. But this remains the key question. Why did all the disproving evidence not get reflected in public statements? And why, if there was no disproving evidence -- as the harpies of the right want us to believe -- was the CIA constantly trying to get the White House to stop using it?"

If Wilson was so wrong, why did the CIA keep pushing his version of the facts? While the White House was scoring points with an Iraqi nuclear threat, the CIA kept trying to pull the forgery-based data from the narrative. In the end it is not the least bit surprising that we found no nuclear threat in Iraq because our government had made the mistake of jumping to a conclusion that meshed with their fantasies. When power forces fantasy to triumph over fact really bad things can happen...like illegal wars.

And that's the real crime that was committed. Our leaders, in their righteous zeal, intentionally blinded themselves to the facts. THAT is why we are in this mess and for THAT they need to be held accountable.

Like I've said before, sometimes it seems that the only way to win is to bet a bluff. But the guy sitting there with the pat hand is going to walk away with your stake. These jokers went all-in and lost it. It's time for them to leave the table.

The Priorities are Clear

When the Bush administration announced a heightened security alert during the week of the Democratic Convention, they managed to screw up our only mole in Al
Qaida.

In its effort to either prove that the alert was serious, or to try and scare people during the Dem Convention, the administration gave the press too much information about WHY they raised the alert. This put the media on the trail of Khan - they found him, and they published his name.

Because the US let the cat out of the bag, the media got a hold of Khan's name and published the fact that he had been captured - his Al Qaeda contacts thus found out their "buddy" was actually a mole, and they fled. Our sole source inside Al Qaeda was destroyed. As a result, the Brits had to have a high speed chase to catch some of Khan's Al Qaeda associates as they fled, and, according to press reports, the Brits and Pakistanis both fear that some slipped away.

These were the same people that have now given us the London bombings. Way to go, George! In the War or Terra politics is more important than actually doing anything about the terrorists. Londoners should be truly thankful for the continued bungling that has enhanced their work. They couldn't ask for a better White House occupant than George W. Bush. (And that political guy, Rove, too.)

More Rove

From Timothy Noah:

"To believe that Rove is innocent of any wrongdoing, you have to believe that Rove had all these conversations with journalists about Wilson's wife being a CIA employee, and then, over a course of several days, never asked anyone in the government whether what the journalists were telling him was true. I suppose anything is possible. But that stretches credulity to the breaking point."