Dean on guns

Here's an excerpt from a New York Times piece on Dean's gun views:

Campaigning in Wapello, Iowa, the other day, Dr. Dean made a similar argument, saying, "We've got to get guns off the national agenda — it is not a national problem, it's a state problem — so we don't lose 20 percent of union members who vote against their economic interests for that one issue."

Dr. Dean said that one year, his home state had just five homicides, "so we don't need any gun control."

"Let New York and New Jersey and California have all the gun control they want," he often says in campaign stops. "But don't impose it on Montana or Vermont or Iowa, where we don't need it."


Personally I think Dean should be rabidly pro-gun. I understand that he is trying to win over the liberal Democratic primary electorate, but I think they will understand him on this issue. It makes him "electable", and that has it's own separate appeal.

I've said it time and again: Democrats need to drop gun control as an issue. They will never win in West Virginia or Florida if they keep harping on gun control. I'm increasingly convinced that gun control is pointless anyway. We have a waiting period and an assault weapons ban. What more can we do? Our society is so saturated with guns that it is pointless to try to micro-legislate to keep them out of criminals hands.

Explaining GDP away

During the next few days, there will be many attempts on the left to explain the GDP numbers away as irrelevant or inflated...

I'm going to join them.
These numbers are inflated by the billions spent on the war in Iraq. Unlike most government spending, this type is either going abroad or hitting one particular industry (arms production) instead of spreading around the economy. You also have to look at how GDP is calculated. A large part of the formula is derived by subtracting exports from imports. Since the dollar has significantly weakened abroad, people are able to buy our goods at a much lower price. That has decreased the trade deficit (exports - imports) and increased GDP.

GDP explodes

GDP grew at a annual rate of 7.1% last quarter. That number is absolutely unbelievable. We haven't had that kind of growth since 1984.

233 attacks in the last 7 days?!?!?!

According to the Washington Post (and they're using the Pentagon as their source) there have been 233 separate attacks on US troops during the last 7 days. That is outrageously high. It's almost near the level of a full scale war. This is certainly not getting any better - it's getting worse.

Meanwhile, in Iowa

Gephardt is coming on strong. He was probably buoyed by the recent Washington Post article that cited him as the candidate that Republicans worried most about. Gephardt, I'll admit, has entered the first tier. I define the first tier as the group of candidates who, at this moment, actually have a shot at the nomination.

First tier:
Dean, Gephardt, Kerry
Second tier
Clark, Edwards, Lieberman

So that leaves us with:
Dean - a candidate who will be crippled by gay rights/tax issues.

Gephardt - a candidate who has "cultural" appeal (he's as exciting as a chunk of mulch, and that plays well in the midwest) but who's fiscal plans are outrageously irresponsible (hundreds of millions for universal health care, no NAFTA or free trade, erasing ALL of Bush's tax cuts, etc, etc, etc.)

Kerry - He doesn't have any particular down sides except that he has already been framed as "aloof" and "French" by the media. His other problems: He can't win any primary states except in the Northeast - in other words, he won't get the nomination.

John Edwards - Youth and experience.

Clark - Bizarre statements about the war. In fairness, it's hard for anyone to make consistent statements about this war....but Clark's have been consistently inconsistent.

At this point, I'm throwing my hands up in the air. I don't know who I support. I suppose it's a mixture of Dean, Clark, and Kerry.

Clark - a joke at this point

Clark has been saying, "I never supported the war" pretty consistently - for the last few weeks. During his stint on CNN, however, I remember him as fully supportive of the war effort. If Clark ever received the nomination, couldn't the Bush campaign just splice together a video of Clark on CNN and Clark on the campaign trail making inreconsilible statements? Sure they could.

Pull out of Iraq early to secure reelection?

Would Bush do that? Would he pull out of the country early (say, next June), securing his reelection but destroying the country? I think he would. And the media would follow him out of the country, leaving it just like every other third world nation - away from the American public eye. If Iraq collapsed into chaos after we left, would anyone know? Would the media cover it? I doubt it. Look at Afghanistan. Look at the entire continent of Africa.

This whole Iraq exercise was a joke. History is NOT going to be on George W. Bush's side, however. Historians will NOT ignore the chaos and instability that this war will cause.

Today's TNR
Today's TNR contains an intelligent criticism of Bush's statements over the last few days. Bush seems to want to equate success with terrorist attacks. I doubt that even right-wing talking heads are employing this rhetoric.

Princess Diana

Note to readers: for a brief moment tonight, my blog contained a post that expressed my incredulity towards the recent media coverage of Princess Diana and a vague threat of violence towards anyone who actually cares about Diana, her butler, or anyone else in the royal family (dead or alive). I deleted the post since it reeked of poor taste.

I still feel the need to express my frustration, however. The media obsesses over random events, personalities, or celebrities. For example: Laci Peterson. Who is this person, and why was she on my television? Does anyone know what is special about her murder? Please, email me. Enlighten me. This nonsense was playing 24/7 on cable news during the build up to the war in Iraq. But it was obviously more important than devoting air time to the administration's flimsy and easily falsifiable claims about WMD, Iraq-Al Qaida links, and Iraq-9/11 links. I don't mean to suggest a conservative bias. I don't know what kind of bias it is. A bias towards irrelevancy? That's what we'll call it.

So now we wait. We all wait for the next irrelevant story to dominate the air waves. Right now it's Diana's butler. When I find the next pointless event that will dominate cable news, I'll tell you. I'll be on the lookout for more irrelevancy bias in the media.

This is different from a bias towards entertainment, because these stories really aren't entertaining. They're tiresome. They're repetitive. Maybe I'm out of touch with most of America. Maybe they're rivited. Maybe I'm on a late night rant. It shall stop here.

Great Krugman column

Today's NyTimes features a great column by Paul Krugman. It's his best in quite a while. I was beginning to wonder if he still had it in him.

Bombings in Iraq

According to the AP, the death toll is 30, not 35 as I reported earlier. Bush spoke today, condemning the bombings and describing the terrorists as "freedom hating" and the usual tiresome bluster. He claimed that the insurgents attacked because of US "progress" in Iraq. I think he confused the word, "progress" with "presence".

One interesting thing to note: despite a relatively large British presence in Iraq, there are very few British casualties and almost no deaths. Why? Because they are all stationed in Southern Iraq. These areas are largely stable. Perhaps its because the area is largely dominated with friendly Shiites, but I would also venture to guess that the British are doing a much better job. I'm also wondering, how did the British get to patrol and control such a passive zone of influence? Was this a condition for British support for the war (that they wouldn't have to get their hands dirty)?

Coalition of the willing. Ha.

Update, 4:45 PM
I was wrong earlier when I claimed that these were not suicide bombings. They actually were.

Should we advertise the 20$ bill?

Slate has a humorous article about that very subject. My brother and I had a very heated argument about the US Treasury advertising it's new currency several years ago (I think it was the gold coin dollar). Personally, I believe there needs to be SOME kind of ad campaign to 1. spread information (so people don't think they have monopoly money) and 2. to inspire confidence.

Then again, the ads seem silly and the changes to the twenty are minor. The price tag of the campaign is 34 million. Ouch.

Car bomb update

Right now the death toll has risen to 35, with over 200 injured. More on this as the day progresses.

Two more bombings in Iraq

There were two more bombings in Iraq today. Right now it is unclear how many are dead/hurt, but Reuters has 3 killed and many injured. One bomb was probably ambulance rigged with explosives (at the International Red Cross center in Iraq) and the other was probably a conventional car bomb (at the Iraqi Industry Ministry). Both of these targets were soft targets that were not heavily fortified.

On a related note, I think tonight marks the death of the "fly paper theory" of terrorist warfare. As you may remember, the fly paper theory states that terrorist attacks in Iraq are good, because we can face the terrorists on our own terms in Iraq rather than in America. Even if this was a good theory, it depends on the US capturing or killing terrorists in Iraq. In all of this weekends incidents - in fact, in every instance I can recall, the perpetrator slinked away into the shadows undetected. None of the attacks are suicide attacks. Rather, the terrorists employ remote control bombs. The terrorists aren't even blowing themselves up (usually a leading cause of terrorist mortality).

Newsweek cover slams Bush

Newsweek ran a cover story this week that tears President Bush's Iraq plan apart.

Here is one key paragraph in that story:

Iraqis like to point out that after the 1991 war, Saddam restored the badly destroyed electric grid in only three months. Some six months after Bush declared an end to major hostilities, a much more ambitious and costly American effort has yet to get to that point.

The key companies named in this article are the usual suspects, Betchel and Haliburton. The companies reconstructing Iraq have a difficult task. They have to factor in security. They are largely using cheap imported labor from South East Asia and India. So far, the results have been pathetic. This entire operation is pathetic, and it was planned and executed by an equally pathetic President.

Things are going well in Iraq

Right.

I'm sure you've all heard about the attack on the convoy, attack on the black hawk helicopter, and the mortar attack on the hotel. What are the implications of these events? I hate to employ the tiresome Vietnam analogy, but as attack after attack occurs, we're all waiting for the Tet Offensive-type event that turns the tide of public opinion sharply against the US occupation. Could this be it? I'll be watching the polls in the coming days.

There is something that I've been grappling with for the last few days: When will it be time to remove our troops? Is there a possibility that it will become prudent to remove them even if it will mean catastrophe in Iraq (Ba'thists coming to power, radical Shi'a coming to power, a Kurdish civil war, etc.)? I think there actually is a point where liberals can legitimately argue, "Enough is enough. Let's get out of here." Eventually, our presense in Iraq could suck so much money away from the US Treasury that we are FORCED to raise taxes (not even a Republican President could resist the political pressure to do so). We are certainly not at that point yet, however.