Thursday, July 29, 2004

Posted here Thursday, July 29, 2004 at 8:00:24 PM     The speech had the best, and some of the problems, of america. The problems: american exceptionalism, nationalism, exaggerated expectations. It is right out of DeToqueville - and I loved it. ********

Posted here Thursday, July 29, 2004 at 2:42:02 PM     Before tonight's speech, one of the downsides of Bush's approach to 9/11 and terrorism has been a general militarization of the whole atmosphere. Instead of a precision incision orchestrated among the many friends after 9/11 we got blustery i can do it myself  mega war (the promise of the big blow in Baghdad fizzled in the first hours of the war) and grade-school bullying. Kerry's war posturing now is a direct result of Bush's escalation into that zone. It might take a long time, given the mounting world pressures (china, economy, migrations) to get past this defining moment. Just as the body can overreact to a bee sting, so we are killing ourselves by our reation to being stung. ********

Posted here Thursday, July 29, 2004 at 11:25:19 AM     An excellent ananlysis of al queda now by Juan Cole at www.juancole.com   excerpt Vice President Dick Cheney gave his stump speech in Utah on Wednesday, attempting to rally the Republican faithful while the national spotlight remained on the Democrats. Rebecca Walsh reports: Cheney said terrorists are as determined to destroy America as the "Axis powers" of Germany, Italy and Japan during World War II. Borrowing a quote from the 9-11 Commission's report on the terrorist attacks of Sept. 2001, the vice president said the terrorists are "sophisticated, patient, disciplined and lethal." "This enemy is perfectly prepared to slaughter anyone man, woman and child to achieve its ends," Cheney said. "This is not an enemy we can reason with. This is an enemy we must vanquish." Although it may be true that al-Qaeda is as determined to destroy the US as the Axis Powers were in World War II, this observation is a Himalayan exaggeration if it is meant to suggest a parallel. Al-Qaeda is a few thousand fanatics mainly distributed in a handful of countries. If Zacharias Moussaoui and Richard Reid are any indication, a lot of them are one step away from from collecting old soda cans on the street in their grocery carts while mumbling about the radios the government implanted in their asses. So while their determination may be impressive (or just creepy), they are not comparable to the might of three industrialized dictatorships with populations in the tens of millions. Some 13 million men served in the German army (Heer) alone between 1935 and 1945. (And WW II killed 55 million persons, not 3 thousand). I repeat, al-Qaeda proper only has a few hundred fighters, those who pledged allegiance personally to Bin Laden, and a few thousand if you count other Afghan Arabs and their ideological soul mates. Most of them are not wealthy or trained or competent, and a lot are just crackpots. (Read an account of the misadventures of Richard Reid again). September 11 was possible mainly because Ramzi Bin al-Shibh lucked out and managed to recruit some high-powered engineering Ph.D. students in Hamburg who knew something serious about kinetic energy. The organization does not have a lot of persons of that caliber, though Cheney has done everything in his power to make them easier for al-Qaeda to recruit. These few thousand scruffy terrorists are not comparable to the Axis in any significant dimension except maybe "determination" (which they share with all kinds of cults around the world, including Aum Shinrikyo). The question that I have, though, is why, if Dick Cheney is in fact so desperately worried about al-Qaeda, he hasn't done more about it. Of the 1000 or so al-Qaeda operatives who fled to Pakistan, 500 or so have been captured, almost all of them by the Pakistani military. Although there are 20,000 US troops in Afghanistan, they have captured no top al-Qaeda leaders at all to my knowledge. In fact, it is difficult for me to understand what exactly they are doing there. The Pushtun warlords all around them are selling $2 billion of heroin annually to Europe, to which you would have thought the US might object (and isn't it likely some of the $2 billion is going straight to al-Qaeda?) ********

Posted here Thursday, July 29, 2004 at 8:53:51 AM     An easy site with all the DNC speeches is http://www.presidentialrhetoric.com/campaign/dnc.html ********

Posted here Thursday, July 29, 2004 at 8:51:43 AM     And, the raw fact is quite shocking. I had no idea it was such a decrease. Note, during this time the wealth of the Forbes 400 went up. But the rich genrally were hurt, below the very top teir. (this article talks of income, not wealth). The details are worth a serious look. In many ways this is an xray of the country, and like an xray,  it shows the infrastructure but not the spirit. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/29/business/29tax.html?hp The overall income Americans reported to the government shrank for two consecutive years after the Internet stock market bubble burst in 2000, the first time that has effectively happened since the modern tax system was introduced during World War II, newly disclosed information from the Internal Revenue Service shows. The total adjusted gross income on tax returns fell 5.1 percent, to just over $6 trillion in 2002, the most recent year for which data is available, from $6.35 trillion in 2000. Because of population growth, average incomes declined even more, by 5.7 percent. Adjusted for inflation, the income of all Americans fell 9.2 percent from 2000 to 2002, according to the new I.R.S. data. It is clear that the high spending on tech in 98 99 led to a reduction in IT budgets in 2000 after y2k. The resulting break in the bobble is not Bush's fault, and would also have happened to Gore. The problem with Bush is his instinct on how to handle a problem, not the underlying economic or security realities. 9/11 was planned long before the election. I happen to think Kerry looks pretty good. Flexible, lots of freinds, knowledgeable, cagey, slightly detached and observant. That seems to me to have more to do with the election than issues that would have been difficult for anyone. The remaining issue for many is, can Kerry do anything about the corporate takeover of the country, the power of concentrtaed media, and issues like China. He has a chance, whereas Bush cannot handle these issues. ********