"So What's So Bad ..."

" ... about a second Bush term? We survived the first one."

The question is "how bad can it get", and the answer I come up with is "pretty damn bad":

1. Since Bush thinks the economy is just fine, it will continue to tank. More big corporations will move offshore, along with more white- collar work. Ya want fries with that?
2. We'll have a military draft by May. Since BushCo is as butt- ignorant about the military as they are about everything else, they'll assume that they can run recruits through six weeks of basic and turn them loose in Iraq. Hey, it worked in Vietnam! For a rather strange value of "worked"
3. Before the disaster created by filling Iraq with draftees becomes so obvious that even the neocons can't ignore it, they'll attack somebody else. Main bet is Iran, with a side bet on Syria.
4. They'll continue screwing the pooch with North Korea. Israel will continue to be a disaster area.
5. More tax breaks to campaign contributors, of course, paid for by jacking up the deficit. How long will East Asia be willing to lend us money for cheap? Also clearcut forests, mineral leases on National Parks, and pollution, pollution, pollution.
6. Bin Laden is operating essentially unchecked. Expect him to clock in again. Won't be hijacked airliners this time. What'll it be? I don't know and I'll bet BushCo don't either.
7. Expect a "moral" crackdown. The "outrage" over Janet Jackson's nipple was nuthin'. Expect more crackdowns on naked statues and celebrity bong sellers.
8. So far, the rest of the world has been understanding about our little leadership problems. After all, most countries have experience with leaders they'd really rather forget about. But if we re- elect this clown, I'm guessing that some of the hatred and contempt directed toward Bush will start to be directed toward individual Americans. Don't plan on a European vacation.
9. That European vacation is going to get expensive. The dollar is in the toilet compared to the euro, and it's going to go a lot further.
10. Education is gonna take it in the neck. Eliminating public education is a cornerstone of a lot of right- wing philosophy. Expect more underfunded mandates like "No Child Left Behind", more cuts in university funding, and attacks on tenure.
11. More efforts to "privatize" Social Security. This one may not go anywhere; nobody wants their SS money in Enron stock.
12. Throughout Bush's term, the Republicans have been running out as many high- level career civil servants as the can and replacing them with Party loyalists. Remember why we have "civil service" in the first place? We needed a civil service that would actually do their jobs. The political hacks aren't very good at that.
13. Gas prices will continue to go up. When Bush was first elected, a lot of folks said "Well, yeah, he's a doofus, but at least, with two oilmen in the White House, gas prices will go down." Oops.

Now, you can make the case that these aren't really all that bad — after all, they can be reversed when the country comes to its senses. But if the country doesn't come to its senses on 2 November, it may not have the chance for a long time:

1. Imagine the Supreme Court with Justices Rehnquist, Stevens, O'Connor, and Bader Ginsburg replaced with Scalia/Thomas clones. Essentially, a total rubber stamp. The appointment of wingnuts to lesser courts will continue, of course. Will the Senate roll over and play dead? Probably. Democrats still seem to have this idea of bipartisanship. The Republicans don't.
2. Expect more gerrymandering from Republican- controlled state legislatures.
3. Expect the mainstream news to become even more of an outlet for Administration press releases. The Press has shown some signs of waking up, and if there's one thing this administration is good at, it's revenge. Expect crackdowns on the corporate parents of ABC, NBC, and CNN.
4. So far in this campaign, the Republicans have been able to get away with all sorts of nasty things — throwing away Democratic voter registrations, sending out absentee ballots with Kerry's name left off, mounting massive challenges to voters in black districts, assorted disinformation/intimidation tactics.
5. And then there's the computerized voting machines. Unauditable, unrecountable, unverifiable. "Trust us!" they say. "The computer can't be wrong!" All these machines are made by companies controlled by right- wing Republicans, except one that has ties to the Russian Mafia, which is not an improvement. Already one has shown up "preloaded" with 16,000 votes for Bush (Florida, of course).

Oh, and while you're at it, take a good long look at Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the House. Why? Well, he's second in line for the Presidency if something happens to Bush. Why should we worry? Well, VP Cheney has a famously bad ticker, and Bush has been showing some rather unfortunate physical signs. There's a measurable chance that neither of them will survive for four years.

Woof!

The latest Bush ad shows a bunch of wolves being spooky. Sheesh! What are these guys thinking? Wolves are not a scary image to Americans. There is no record (including Native American legends) of a North American wolf ever attacking a human. Nature programs have rammed the picture of warm fuzzy lovable wolves down our throats for years. It's only been in the last couple of years that you'd know that wolves are carnivores. Before then, you'd think they ate nothing but Alpo.

Hypothesis: the Republicans are outsourcing their ads to Russia.

North American wolves are harmless.

Unless you're a sheep.

LATER — Now, of course, we have Wolfpacks for Truth:

They told us we were shooting a Greenpeace commercial!

As We Dodge Another Bullet ...

Cards top Astros, to face BoSox in World Series

If the Astros had won, the national media would probably have collapsed with a case of terminal Metaphor Overload. I don't think they could stand having both the Presidency and the World Series be Massachusetts vs. Texas.

Quote of the Day

From the Head Girly Man:

I don't know why I watched the presidential debates. If I want to watch a smart liberal Democrat and a Republican leader argue, all we have to do is go out to dinner. They were lucky. They only had to do it three times.

— Arnold Schwarzenegger

Seems Ahnold got to sleep on the sofa for a couple of weeks after his RNC speech ...

The Congressional Evaluation Project

Over there on the right, you'll notice that one of the “You should read this” blogs is Kit's Concatenation. There's a good reason for this. Kit is a journalist and public policy analyst, and she's put together a doozy. “The Congressional Evaluation Project” is a massive compilation of information on the voting records of all Congresscritters and all Senators who are up for re- election. Want to know what that bozo in Washington is doing in your name? Here's where you can find out.

From the blog post announcing the Project:

This is a comparison of the evaluations publicly available from a wide range of evaluating groups, from Americans for Demorcratic Action to the Christian Coalition. It includes each lawmaker's voting record on issues including civil liberties, education, health care, abortion, the environment, firearms, neoConservatism and the Religious Right. There are omnibus tables with all the information available; following those are tables that examine specific issues. I've spelled out the assumptions I made in creating the project, the sources of the information, and the limitations.

Anyway, good stuff. Check it out.

“Winning” the Debates

Well, the next big Campaign Events are the “debates”. “Debates” is in quotes because they don't resemble any real debate format I'm familiar with. They're rigged for Georgie, both in format and, especially, in terms of expectations. The format is ideal for his “off- the- cuff” speaking style, which is to blather incoherently until he hits on a (possibly) relevant memorized talking point. Georgie will “win” if he manages to avoid peeing in his pants or throwing up on the moderator.

Fortunately for Kerry, he just might be able to make Georgie do this:

• Georgie hero-worships Poppy. Criticizing Poppy might be enough to make Georgie lose it. Some ideas:
  • Poppy gave the go- ahead for Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait.
  • Poppy didn't finish the job in Iraq. Now, anybody with a long memory knows exactly why he didn't finish it, but there aren't many long memories around.
  • Poppy encouraged the Marsh Arabs to revolt and then stood back and watched them get massacred.
  • Poppy stood by and let the former Soviet Union slide into chaos. They needed help in setting up a modern economy; they didn't get it.
• Bring up Ken Lay. Last time somebody did this, Georgie stormed off in a huff.

I'm sure that Kerry's advisors can come up with more. Point is, they need to.

Paranoid Airline Conspiricy

Well, the airlines and their stupid security programs seem to be back into the blogosphere. Ted Kennedy getting stuck on the “watch list” seems to have a great deal to do with it. It took him, with all his connections (Homeland Security Secretary Ridge returns his calls) three weeks to get things unscrambled — and the name that was causing the problem was “T Kennedy”. I'd have expected it to be “E Kennedy”, at least.

Now, the usual explanation for this kind of nonsense is that the Homeland Security people don't have the foggiest idea what they're doing, but have to work really, really hard at looking like they're doing something. Bureaucracies want you to judge them by their input (“look at all the work we've done”) rather than by output (“look at what we've accomplished”). Reason is, oftimes, there isn't any output. This is probably true.

But it's fun to play Paranoid Conspiracy. Now, Once Upon A Time, the airlines were heavily regulated. Routes, fares, schedules, all had to be approved by the Government. People didn't fly much because the prices were high, but the airlines still made lots of money. Then came deregulation. Suddenly, the airlines were in control of their business. They could fly pretty much where they wanted and charge a market price. This was a disaster. Many airlines went out of business; the rest had to restructure their operations drastically. The result was the airline industry we have today -- low prices and full schedules to common destinations, coupled with incomprehensible fare structures, minimal “service”, and airlines on the verge of bankruptcy.

Airlines are selling a "commodity"; in other words, any airline is pretty much indistinguishable from any other airline. In this kind of market, the lowest- cost supplier wins and everybody else loses. If you want to fly to San Diego next Tuesday and Airline A wants $200 and Airline B wants $300, who are you going to fly? Well, you know that the main difference between Airline A and Airline B is the color of the planes. You'll go with A every time.

This is just what we see. Southwest Airlines and JetBlue are making money hand over fist and everybody else is on the verge of bankruptcy.

The traditional way of making money in a market like this is to differentiate your services. In the example above, suppose that Airline A has itchy, uncomfortable, narrow seats, and no food or drinks while Airline B has wide, comfortable seats and a nice meal. Now the choice is not obvious. Is the extra comfort worth $100? Your call. If you have to get off the plane and go straight into a meeting it almost certainly will be. Fly Airline A and you'll go into your meeting all twitchy and grouchy. As a matter of fact, Midwest Airlines has this extra level of service, and they're making money.

What would happen if the major airlines started going bankrupt? Well, they'd certainly have to keep flying. Equally certainly, they'd use the opportunity to wage- bust their hourly employees. Right now, United Airlines has stopped payment to its employees' pension plan and US Airways wants to.

It seems that this is the perfect opportunity for the airlines (other than Southwest and JetBlue) to get themselves re-regulated. Your trip to San Diego costs $400, no matter who you fly with. The airlines breathe a deep sigh of relief and give their CEOs big bonuses. Well, they'll get the bonuses anyway.

So in this scenario, the fewer people who fly, the better. Easiest way to keep people from flying is to make it as inconvenient as possible. Hence lots of stupid rules and regulations that accomplish nothing. This pushes the airlines closer to bankruptcy, without having to do obvious things like raise prices.

From the Manual of Business in the Twenty First Century — whenever possible, get somebody else (Government is ideal) to do your dirty work for you. Also try to get the Government to order you to do what you want to do anyway.

Typewriters

Well, it seems that the Blogosphere is all atwitter over the possiblity that the documents that CBS News got from Georgie Bush's commanding officer might be forged. Now, CBS News claims that they checked the docs out thoroughly with forgery experts and that they're authentic. Lambert, over at Corrente, has a good rundown on the hoohah, with links. The most notable thing about these memos is how little they add. Now we know that Georgie got into trouble for not taking his physical. Before, it was just obvious.

Some observations. Why do I seem to be the only one around who remembers the late 1960s and early 1970s?

The font is not Times New Roman. It's Times Roman, developed in the early 1930s by the London Times. Gimmick is that fonts can't be copyrighted; font names can. Microsoft had to change the name. Times Roman and Times New Roman are almost identical.

The IBM Executive typewriter had all the features needed to produce a document like this. The Selectric series didn't (the ^th), without far more jiggering with type balls than anybody'd do for a short “memo to file”. Note to those claiming that the docs were done with Microsoft Word -- run your tests on this and see how they come out. Gary Farber has a good post with typewriter details.

The individual letters are uneven, both in weight and vertical spacing. Hard to do with a word processor; impossible to avoid with a non- Selectric typewriter.

It may be an artifact of the scanning process, but the copies sure look like carbons to me. Again, hard to do on a computer; impossible to avoid on a typewriter.

Given that the military is officially as uniform as possible, office equipment was a big status item. Having a fancy typewriter was something to feel good about.

Mrs. Killian says that her husband didn't write memos like that and that her husband would never say anything bad about a Guardsman. I call bullshit on this; these memos are exactly what you'd expect to see with a guy who is having problems. Look, airplanes, especially fighters, are horribly dangerous hunks of machinery. If something goes wrong, your nose had better be very, very clean.

As to her husband “not being a paper person”; again, bullshit. Work with the military and you're going to be buried in paper whether you want it or not. And everybody learns the value of a “CYA” “memo to file” in about a week.

Now some speculation:

If I were going to forge a document from the 1970s, I'd use a bog- standard Selectric typewriter.

If this really was done on a word processor, it has to be the clumsiest forged document possible, next to a signed letter by Julius Caesar dated “46 BC”. Now, why would anybody do this?

• CBS News is utterly, flamingly, incompetent.
• CBS News is the victim of a very elaborate hoax to discredit them in general and Dan Rather in particular.
• CBS News is under the control of Karl Rove, to the extent that he can force them to do this, in order to have a Great Debunking later.

I'm no fan of CBS or Rove, but, bluntly, CBS isn't that bad and Rove isn't that good.

Tentative conclusion: genuine, until I see some info from people who know what they're talking about. Blogosphere “experts” can bring up interesting points, but I want to see something from people who you'd want to call as expert witnesses.

LATER — Coupla more things might need explaining. Sorry if I'm stating the obvious.

CYA

Cover your arse. Also occasionally seen as CYAWP (cover your arse with paper) Utterly necessary for survival in any bureucracy. If your arse isn't covered, you'll get blamed for everything.

Memo to File

Just like it says; a memo whose only destination is your file cabinet. This has a number of uses:

• To document an idea that you can't act on right now.
• To CYA. “I told them this wouldn't work. Here's the stuff they wouldn't listen to.”
• To vent frustration. Since you're the only one that sees it, you can say things you wouldn't want to say officially or in person.

The Killian memos seem to be a combination of these.

Nothin' to See Here, Move Along

OK, I watched the “Sixty Minutes” segment where former Texas Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes talked about pulling strings to get George W. Bush his slot in the “champagne Unit” of the Texas Air National Guard. Whoop de do. Anybody who was anywhere near draft age in the late 1960s could have told you that. Nobody got into the Air National Guard without having some strings pulled somewhere. Look — there was a five year waiting list to get in. You could sign up before you got out of high school and still get bumped by some rich kid.

One new thing was a memo where Lieutenant Colonel Killian (head of the Texas Air National Guard at the time) noted that Bush had disobeyed a direct order to take his physical. Military types — what do they call disobeying a direct order? We already knew he skipped his physical; we still don't know why.

Now, I'm not claiming that Bush was wrong for wanting to stay out of Vietnam. Everybody did. I'll just say that his actions there raise some very serious doubts about his much- vaunted “character”. It looks like, after four years of perfectly honorable and boring service (In the military, boring is good, especially during a war.), he lit out for Alabama, and later Cambridge, and left the Powers that Be to clean up after him. His sworn obligation to the Guard got in the way of what he wanted to do, so he simply blew it off and let others cover his tail. Character. Right.

---

In the normal college crowd that I was in, there was a distinct hierarchy of respect on the subject of Vietnam:

1. At the very top were the resistors. These are the people who put their arses on the line for their beliefs, and ended up going to jail or to Canada. This took an amount of guts far, far higher than any other option.
2. Then there were the volunteers. Most of us thought the war was wrong, but those who didn't agree and who were willing to put their arses on the line were certainly worthy of respect.
3. Next are the people who “played the game”. There were all sorts of medical deferments; problem was that, as each new deferment came up, the draft boards would tighten restrictions on it until it was useless.
4. Next are the ones who “did their duty” and didn't try to stay out of the draft. Yeah, you do what other people expect of you, even if you know it's wrong. (If you really believe it's right, enlist.) This was a small group; everybody I knew was trying to stay out. Getting drafted was the penalty for losing.
5. At the very bottom, with no respect whatever, was what we called “4F Hawks”. (The phrase “chickenhawk” meant something entirely different at that time.) These are the guys who didn't have to fight, but were happy to see others “do their duty” by marching through minefields.

The 4Fs (guys who, for one reason or another, were not eligible for the draft) were outside the system. Everybody envied them, even if the reason for their deferment was, say, missing legs. Problem was, they tended to gloat.

Generally, the guys who got into the National Guard were rated about one small step above the 4F Hawks. It was automatically assumed that they had gotten in by political pull, whether they did or not. They tended not to care.

The attitudes toward veterans varied by their attitudes. Most of them were glad to be home; we accepted them as guys who'd been through a really bad time. Some were obnoxious; they tended to get shunned. Who wants a party pooper? They usually hung out with the 4F Hawks, who tended to worship them.

There was one guy who claimed to have spit on a returning veteran. We called him “Crazy Harv”. He was a violent, radical Maoist to the extent that the other radical Maoists wanted nothing whatever to do with him. Did he really do it? On one hand, he was crazy enough to try (getting beaten to a bloody pulp didn't seem to bother him). On the other hand, he was seriously delusional.

Anyway, I wrote up some other draft- era notes a while back. They're still good, if you need a refresher on what it was like to be in college under threat of the draft.

I Feel a Draft

Well, come on all of you, big strong men, Uncle Sam needs your help again. Yeah, he's got himself in a terrible jam Way down yonder in Vietnam So put down your books and pick up a gun, Gonna have a whole lotta fun.

— Joe McDonald

I've said before that if Bush is reelected, we'll have a military draft by May of 2005. Now, every time this gets brought up, the arguments come rolling in. It won't do any good because it will take two years to get actual troops. The Selective Service is just a relic. The American people won't stand for it.

Sorry, guys. The military is stretched uncomfortably tightly now, and the Grand Neocon Plan involves taking over at least five more countries (Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Somalia and Sudan, according to Wesley Clark) each of which will be as big a quagmire as Iraq. We're gonna need a lot of manpower, along with a vast increase in the budget for material. (Neocons seem to think that Bradley treads and Humvee tires grow on trees. Not to mention bullets.)

Here's a description of how it will be done (via). Nice and simple; no fuss,no bother.

Protest? Resistance? Not bloody likely. A lot of noise, a few high-profile protesters thrown into Leavenworth to be beaten, maimed, and probably killed, and any protests will turn into just noise. Note that, for all the noise that the Vietnam-era draft protests made, nothing was actually done until the war was effectively over.

Legal challenges? Even less likely. Here is a sample of the Supreme Court opinion on the case that conclusively legalized the draft:

Finally, as we are unable to conceive upon what theory the exaction by government from the citizen of the performance of his supreme and noble duty of contributing to the defense of the rights and honor of the nation as the result of a war declared by the great representative body of the people can be said to be the imposition of involuntary servitude in violation of the prohibitions of the Thirteenth Amendment, we are constrained to the conclusion that the contention to that effect is refuted by its mere statement.

— U.S. Supreme Court, ARVER v. U.S. , 245 U.S. 366 (1918)

This is, bluntly, one of the most appalling Supreme Court decisions I've ever read. Basically, it says that the right of the United States to raise armies means that the US has the right to raise armies by any means whatever. Its language is absolutist and dogmatic. It does not argue that the Draft is legal on Constitutional grounds; aside from the right to raise armies, there are none. Instead, it makes its arguments with phrases like "in the light of the fundamental principles with which the subject is concerned", "the inevitable consequence of the provisions of the Constitution", "its unsoundness is too apparent to require us to do more", and, of course, "refuted by its mere statement".

This isn't law. This is bluster. It's what you say when you don't have a real argument.

Georgie will love it.

LATER — Looks like the Army is looking at a little problem next year ...