Invisible Cities
Odds and ends|
Archive Search |
| Links |
| Sites of interest:
Popular culture sites:
Political sites
Other: |
| Past weblog: Objects are Closer than they appear I got impatient with Blogger because I can't see how to post permalinks. |
 and s-integrator |
Thursday, January 23, 2003
Asked by Mr. Lehrer if he felt "sandbagged" by the French, Mr. Powell replied, "Well, I wouldn't say `sandbagged' is the word." But he said it was "unfortunate" that Mr. de Villepin transformed a meeting on terrorism into a forum on Iraq.
Thursday, January 09, 2003
What catches my attention, and what probably did not catch Mr. Lehrer's seeing as how he had the secretary of state before him, is that it's exactly that transformation done by the White House a few months after 9/11. That is, we were supposed to be pursuing terrorism in the person of Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda-related folks--remember them?--and then the subject was changed to going after Iraq. So why should we blame M. de Villepin if his conversation follows the same pattern?
This morning the stories are all about the polls and how Bush needs to do a sales job to get the American public behind him. Well, I think the dropping poll numbers reflect the American public's dim awareness that all we have been seeing is a sales job. At some point there has to be some reality, some substance to be sold.
I'm waiting for newspapers to begin picking up on the astroturf letters sent out to (so far) 53 newspapers saying the identical same thing in support of untaxing dividends. Do a Google search on "demonstrating genuine leadership" and you'll pick up 182 hits, either newspapers running the same letter or bloggers commenting on it (I suppose this will show up some time after I hit "post and publish").
Here's most of it:
Bush shows leadership
APPLETON ? When it comes to the economy, President Bush is demonstrating genuine leadership. The economic growth package he recently proposed takes us in the right direction by accelerating the successful tax cuts of 2001, providing marriage penalty relief, and providing incentives for individuals and small businesses to save and invest.
Contrary to the class warfare rhetoric attacking the President?s plan, the proposal helps everyone who pays taxes, and especially the middle class. This year alone, 92 million taxpayers will receive an immediate tax cut averaging $1,083 ? and 46 million married couples will get back an average of $1,714. That?s not pocket change for a family struggling through uncertain economic times. Combined with the president?s new initiatives to help the unemployed, this plan gets people back to work and helps every sector of our economy.
Edward T. Kranick
This post is from the Green Bay Press Gazette
It may not be in the mainstream press yet, but it's on
the Inquirer: Here's the follow-up. I first sussed to this from Metafilter on Tuesday. Gary Stock of Unblinking suggests that the cause is alien transmissions . . .
Rob Larsen of Drunkenfist points out that similar results can be turned up for Oct. and Nov. 2002 with the phrase "taking a courageous stand against Saddam" (though not so many so far). Perhaps we could rate the popularity of W's policies by how many Spammers clicked on the
automated letter-generator (going further into the site would require that I register as a GOP Team Leader, and there are some depths . . .).
(it's entertaining that Google's own salesbot thinks this search marks me as someone interested in developing my own genuine leadership:
Expert advice for improving your leadership and strategy skills
[URL]
Inc Magazine: The leading resource to start and grow your business
Well, apparently some news organizations are concerned about being spammed in this way. NBC Channel 10 of Rochester, NY shows up on the fourth screen of today's Google search, so I thought I'd check it out . . . searched the phrase on their internal search engine and got nada, but the
Google cache tells a different story.
I could join the mass of webloggers who are spreading this story around, but rather than extend the list, I want to return to my original point: the present Bush administration is all about sales. Recall in August when W was on his extended vacation, clearing brush in 100-degree weather, and Andrew Card pointed out that they weren't talking vigorously about invading Iraq yet because you don't roll out a new product until September . . . Every presidential administration has to use rhetoric to get its programs through Congress and onto the public agenda. But this administration is all sales and no consistent program, beyond three things: 1) Benefit those segments of corporate America that donate most consistently to the Republican party / Bush; 2) Take care of family and personal loyalties and, where possible, screw the opposition; 3) Get positioned for re-election.
The obvious comparison / contrast is with Papa Bush, but procedurally this administration (apart from his leftist stands on the environment and going to China) looks more like Nixon to me. I'm just sorry to see decent people like Colin Powell associated with it.
glt 07:21 - [Link]
...
Long break. Partly it's the end-of-semester rush and some other business, partly vacation travels, partly . . . I don't know. A lot of what I feel moved to write about in this venue is political stuff, and it's all so discouraging these days.
Last posts before the break were on the Lott flap, which might have told the Republicans that race was the third rail and that raising the issue would call attention to their
The Washington Post's Dana Milbank suggests that this is a strategy of sorts, that rather than compromising in advance, the Bush team puts out extreme versions of what they want, and thereby gets half of it (more or less) without too much difficulty and with no penalties for showing themselves other than "compassionate conservatives."
I don't think that calling the public's attention to the way that the GOP has played footsie with racists does the Republicans any favors. But it does fit Bush's personality, which tends to rub people's noses in what they don't like. Whether this is a successful trend or not remains to be seen--as reported in the mainstream press, his popularity doesn't seem to be hurt by it. One lesson to draw from this is that if you seem like a nice guy, most of the poll-answering public won't pay attention to what you are doing behind the scenes.
What they will pay attention to is whether the economy goes in the tank. There are a lot of questions about why Bush is hell-bent on going to war in Iraq, and the tax-the-poor rationale behind the "economic stimulus" plan is going to attract notice if the economy stays in the tank for 18 months or so more. But in the meantime, the administration's control over the mass media (through conservative dominance on the air and through intimidation of reporters in the allegedly liberal media) is keeping the lid on things.
You see why I'm discouraged.
glt 09:10 - [Link]
...