Ted

Either Bob Somerby has invented a transcript out of whole cloth, or he has caught Vice-President Dick Cheney lying on tape.

CHENEY: John Kerry is, by National Journal ratings, the most liberal member of the United States Senate. Ted Kennedy is the more conservative of the two senators from Massachusetts.

(LAUGHTER)

It’s true. All you got to do is go look at the ratings systems. And that captures a lot, I think, in terms of somebody’s philosophy. And it’s not based on one vote, or one year, it’s based on 20 years of service in the United States Senate. (emphasis added)

That’s not a matter of interpretation; that is a baldfaced lie. The National Journal ranking that Cheney is referring to is based on one year, 2003. Kerry and Edwards missed a lot of votes in 2003, because they were out campaigning. When the National Journal looked at their lifetime voting records, both Senators were in the middle of the Democratic pack. Here are the ten most liberal Democratic senators currently serving, according to the National Journal:

1. Mark Dayton, D-Minn.
2. Paul Sarbanes, D-Md.
3. Jack Reed, D-R.I.
4. Jon Corzine, D-N.J.
5. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.
6. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.
7. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa
8. Richard Durbin, D-Ill.
9. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J.
10. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt

When Republicans say that Kerry was ranked as the most liberal Senator, that’s an extremely misleading claim, but it’s technically true (for one year, according to one publication). When Cheney said that the ranking applied for 20 years of Kerry’s service, that’s not even technically true.

It’s fun to see Jon Stewart humiliate Rep. Henry Bonilla on this issue (the video is on the right). It’s not nearly as fun to realize that Kerry’s opponents get away with it constantly in front of professional journalists.

P.S. Googlebomb for most liberal senator. Pass it on.

Honest libertarian Jane Galt looks at the new jobs number and says, “I think we in the media should start practicing saying ‘President Kerry’.”

Honest self-proclaimed liberal Republican William Saletan has read the polls in some detail. My favorite part:

Look at the data going back to February. Over that period, Bush’s top score in the ABC trial heat is 48. In the CBS and ARG polls, it’s 46. During that time, Newsweek has repeatedly asked respondents, “Would you like to see George W. Bush re-elected to another term as president, or not?” The percentage saying Bush deserves re-election hasn’t risen above 46. The percentage saying he doesn’t deserve re-election hasn’t fallen below 50. During the same period, Zogby surveys have repeatedly asked voters, “Do you think George W. Bush deserves to be re-elected as president of the United States, or is it time for someone new?” The percentage saying Bush deserves to be re-elected hasn’t risen above 45. The percentage saying it’s time for someone new hasn’t fallen below 51.

Honest liberal Billmon also looks at the new jobs report and says:

High unemployment, high energy prices, inflation-driven wage gains that still fail to keep up with prices. Gee, where have we seen that picture before? Jimmy Carter shakes his head sadly and says, “Don’t ask.”

Further:

I just can’t help but point out that the latest Fox News poll shows a five-point swing towards Kerry among registered voters, and a three-point swing among Fox’s definition of “likely voters,” following the Democratic convention – the same one the Fox talking pinheads spent four days trying to redefine as a liberal hate rally.

Meanwhile, Bush’s approval rating has dropped to 44% – a record low for the Fox poll. That’s down three points from before the convention. His disapproval rating has risen to 48% – a record high – from 45% before the convention…

I fully expect to see the smoke pouring out of Bill O’Reilly’s ears as he rails against those biased liberals at Fox News.

JuliusBlog has assembled a timeline of terror alerts, along with the bad news for the Bush Administration that preceeded them. They’ve done a good job of finding links and backup.

My take: It looks like a pattern- bad news for Bush is followed by a terror alert or the announcement that a terrorist has been captured- but I don’t think that I buy it. Any administration will consistently face a stream of bad news, large and small, bogus and legitimate. Even if the dates had been chosen by throwing darts at a wall calendar, a dedicated researcher could probably come up with a timeline that looked much like this.

I don’t think that it’s too hackish to say that a lot has gone wrong for Bush in the last year, but many of the most harmful stories were not met by a timely terror warning or capture announcement. I’m thinking of Richard Clarke, Valerie Plame, and the first release of pictures from Abu Ghraib.

I just don’t want to see this approach turned around on President Kerry, I guess.

* Michael Savage, the nationally syndicated conservative radio talk show host with two best-selling books under his belt, said this yesterday:

“When you hear “human rights,” think only one thing: someone who wants to rape your son. And you’ll get it just right. OK, you got it, right? When you hear “human rights,” think only someone who wants to molest your son, and send you to jail if you defend him.”

* “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” come in for a debunking from Matt Gunn, and more from Bob Somersby. For example: I had heard of Grant Hibbard, Kerry’s former commanding officer who has questioned Kerry’s first Purple Heart. Many, many sources have repeated his recollection that Kerry’s wound “resembled a scrape from a fingernail.” I had not heard that his recollection was so bad that he misidentified where Kerry was wounded. (Hibbard said that he recalled the “scrape” on Kerry’s forearm; medical records show that the shrapnel was actually removed above Kerry’s elbow.)

I think what I find most disappointing are the people who know better. They know that this group is untrustworthy, but they find the charges too useful not to promote. And yes, I’m sure that there are ample ways to turn this charge around on liberals. Poetic justice as fairness, once again.

* Roy Edroso points to an old article by Mark Goldblatt about how his debut novel, 176 pages of racial shock-jockery called Africa Speaks, has been “whiteballed” because he hasn’t gotten any big-name reviews. There’s a lot of competition for this title, but I really believe that this self-pitying tripe may be the Worst National Review Article Since They Stopped Openly Supporting Segregation. Worse than “I hate Chelsea Clinton.” Worse than “Howard Dean’s incest vote.” Worse than their stint hosting Donald Luskin’s Poor and Stupid blog. It may be worse than Ann Coulter’s “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity”- at least Ann had the excuse that she was in genuine state of grief and shock. Yes, the competition is stiff, but this scrappy guy is a real contender.

(Fun fact: did you know that there were 175,000 books published last year? It’s true!)

I cannot tell you how good Daniel Drezner and The Volokh Conspiracy look to me right now. We need rational right-wingers more than ever.

Ken Layne is back from a long hiatus, and he’s smelling opportunism in the Sunday terror alert. He begins:

After getting through the insane security at CitiBank Headquarters — caused by four-year-old Evidence of Terror Plans released Sunday to scare the bejesus out of you — you get to say “Hi” to Laura Bush in the lobby! That’s neat. (emphasis added)

It’s neat when schedules work out that way.

Oh, and the Immediate Alert Scary-Ville terror info? Now they’re saying it actually refers to an attack planned for Sept. 2. You know, the last day of the Republican Convention in New York, when Bush gives his big speech?

This stinks. Go ahead and say, as Tom Ridge did this morning, “This is not about politics. It’s about confidence in government.” If you have to deny it’s about politics — while your party is actively campaigning in the locked-down buildings of New York City filled with teevee cameras and photographers and frazzled employees who wonder if today’s Terror Day — then you have done a Poor Job of showing us otherwise.

I didn’t know that. I’ve been content to be agnostic about this; I genuinely sympathize with the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” dillemma that the Administration faces.

But, yeah. If Homeland Security seriously believed that the CitiBank building was under direct threat- an “enemy target area”, specifically- what was Laura Bush doing there? Wouldn’t it put her safety at risk, while making the building a more attractive target?

I’ve recently read some of the Sandman graphic novels by Neil Gaiman. Few who have picked them up will be surprised to hear that I’m finding them to be very, very good. But it occurred to me, while reading them, that virtually all of the non-human characters so far seem to act like humans.

They do things that real people can’t do, but they all seem to share the same motivations as people- pride, jealousy, duty, family ties, anger, love of power, and so on. Despite all the things separating them from humans- immortality, immense power, the obligation to hop around the universe picking up people when they die- the non-humans can be psychologically understood as super-people. They don’t seem noticeably less human than, say, Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, or Humbert Humbert from Lolita.

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“I felt I should do my part to counter the prevailing notion in my neighborhood that Republicans are all obnoxious blowhards.”

Catherine Seipp, Beyond the Valley of the Bush-Bashers, in National Review Online

“I’m glad to be reminded that not everyone on the left is a Stalin apologist.”

Catherine Seipp, same article

via Roy Edroso

It’s been a great pleasure having Ross Silverman of The Bloviator as a guest poster this week. Ross is a genuine expert, and The Bloviator is an excellent addition to anyone’s blog diet. Many thanks to Ross.

Need a fresh reason to dislike Bill O’Reilly?

O’Reilly scolds guest who outed gays, then calls judge a lesbian

Fox News Channel’s star talk-show personality, Bill O’Reilly, says he is uncomfortable with the practice of outing gay political figures–except, it seems, when he is doing the outing.

On his show Monday night, O’Reilly chastised guest Michael Rogers for maintaining a Web site publicizing the names of gay staffers working for politicians who oppose gay marriage….

But on the same show–and for at least the third time in the last year–O’Reilly described one of the justices on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court as a lesbian, a claim that the justice herself, through a spokeswoman, denies.

For the record, I am opposed to outing, whether it’s done by Bill O’Reilly or by people on my side.

UPDATE: “I gave up the homosexual lifestyle four years ago.” Terrific New Republic first-person story on gay marriage.

Dwight Merideth had an excellent post the other day called “The Top 10 Ways To Change The Tone in Washington (For the Worse).” He could not have anticipated that the White House would have such a spectacular topper:

The White House helped to block a Republican-brokered deal on Wednesday to extend several middle-class tax cuts, fearful of a bill that could draw Democratic votes and dilute a Republican campaign theme, Republican negotiators said.

The White House blocked a package of tax cuts, targeted at middle- and lower-income taxpayers, because the bill was moderate enough to attract Democratic votes. They chose to fail, by their own principles, rather than allow a small amount of concilliation with the other party. I have a hard time thinking of a more effective way to give the finger to the principle of bipartisanship.

Michael Froomkin says, “This may be one of the most cynical ploys in US politics I ever read about. And I read a lot.” Paperwight has much more; he makes a good comparison to the Republican refusal to accept a Democratic deal to confirm most of Bush’s judicial appointments. And, he notices that the White House is attempting to soothe tempers by allowing more pork in the budget.

These guys have got to go.

Mr. Bush noted: “The enemy declared war on us. Nobody wants to be the war president. I want to be the peace president. The next four years will be peaceful years.” He repeated the words “peace” or “peaceful” many times, as he has done increasingly in his recent appearances. (emphasis added)

A few weeks ago, Kevin Drum asked, just what is it that people who support Bush on security grounds think that Bush will do and Kerry will not? Gregory Djerejian at the Belgravia Dispatch answered, in part:

To Kevin’s query: “(b)ut does anyone think there are any more wars coming up in the near future?”–I’d answer–we’re in the middle of a war right now….

There’s, er, a lot going on–and I’m not confident that Kerry a) fully gets the stakes and b) will field a national security team that will be up to the challenge.

I’ve seen some version of this sentiment on a lot of pro-Bush blogs, and I think that it enjoys a lot of support. But how can it hold if Bush has decided to go around making the ludicrous promise that the next four years will be peaceful?

Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan

(Ron Burgundy is off tonight.)

From Radley Balko:

If you plug the latest battleground state poll results from Real Clear Politics into the L.A. Times’ handy interactive electoral map, the race right now stands at Kerry 322 and Bush 216.

Charlie Cook, via Mark Kleiman:

This race has settled into a place that is not at all good for an incumbent, is remarkably stable, and one that is terrifying many Republican lawmakers, operatives and activists.

Tony Fabrizio of the Republican polling firm Fabrizio McLaughlin & Associates, via Ryan Lizza:

Fabrizio found that undecided voters in 2004 are overwhelmingly anti-Bush and pro-Kerry. By almost every criteria they look like Kerry voters, according to the memo…

As the memo notes, “Clearly, if these undecided voters were leaning any harder against the door of the Kerry camp, they would crash right through it.”

Ruy Teixeira:

And in the last four Gallup polls, independents are averaging a 14 point margin against Bush. To make up that deficit, Republicans would have to not only equalize their turnout with Democrats–against historical patterns–but actually beat the Democrats by about 4 points as a proportion of voters.

I don’t think this is remotely plausible. Such a scenario is only possible with high mobilization of Republicans that is not counterbalanced at all by mobilization of Democrats. That just isn’t going to happen this year (memo to Rove, Dowd and loveable ole Grover: we’re not in 2002 any more); to think it might is a complete fantasy.

UPDATE: From the Washington Post:

John F. Kerry and the major Democratic Party committees have collectively outraised their Republican counterparts this year, blunting one of the GOP’s biggest and longest-standing political advantages, new Federal Election Commission reports show.

For the first time since 1992, the Democratic candidate and the national and congressional fundraising committees combined to outraise their GOP counterparts over a six-month span of an election year, FEC data compiled by The Washington Post found. (emphasis added)

I recently read Emmanuel Carrere’s The Adversary cover-to-cover in one night. It’s the true story of a man named Jean-Claude Roland who takes a terrible path.

Roland missed an important exam at the end of his second year of medical school, but never rescheduled it. Impulsively, he told his parents that he had passed. Roland pretended to continue his studies. He married and had children, convincing everyone in his life that he was a high-ranking official with the World Health Organization. He paid the bills by defrauding his parents, in-laws, and friends. He told them that he was investing their money, or sold them worthless cancer treatments. He managed this way for eighteen years. Eventually, on the verge of being uncovered, he murdered his wife, his children, his parents, and made a (strikingly half-hearted) effort to kill himself.

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1. I went to see Outfoxed at a MoveOn house party this weekend. A good time was had by all. The house was easy to identify; it was the one surrounded by cars with pro-Kerry, anti-war or anti-Bush bumper stickers.

One car, in particular, was just plastered with at least 30 or 40 liberal bumper stickers. I happened to meet the woman who drives it, and she said that she’s had the bumper stickers on the car since the 2000 election. In all that time, living in Houston, she’s never had anyone say anything rude or critical to her. Not one middle finger, one “why do you hate America”, or anything.

2. Another woman at the party mentioned offhand that under Bush, we now spend over half of the federal budget on the military. This isn’t even close to being correct. She was an activist, and surely considered herself quite well-informed.

3. Some people that I know well had a MoveOn house party in Houston to discuss Fahrenheit 9/11 after its premiere. A couple of guys brought lawn chairs and rifles and sat on public property across the street, watching people drive up. They apparently weren’t breaking any laws by doing this, but the police sent them on their way when some people who had come for the house party crossed the street to argue/fight with them. (I don’t know which.)

David Brooks, are you listening? You can coast on this stuff for a week.