Reading notes

Howard Dean announced yesterday that he had raised close to $9 million this year, establishing himself as a top-tier candidate in the Democratic presidential field. The figure stunned his rivals and transformed Dr. Dean from a maverick into a more traditional contender.

Much of the money was collected over the Internet, his aides said, leaving little doubt there are now ways to solicit contributions other than the telephone calls and elaborate fund-raisers that are the stock and trade for most mainstream candidates.

[via Daily Kos]

Meeting last month at a sweltering U.S. base outside Doha, Qatar, with his top Iraq commanders, President Bush skipped quickly past the niceties and went straight to his chief political obsession: Where are the weapons of mass destruction? Turning to his Baghdad proconsul, Paul Bremer, Bush asked, “Are you in charge of finding WMD?” Bremer said no, he was not. Bush then put the same question to his military commander, General Tommy Franks. But Franks said it wasn’t his job either. A little exasperated, Bush asked, So who is in charge of finding WMD? After aides conferred for a moment, someone volunteered the name of Stephen Cambone, a little-known deputy to Donald Rumsfeld, back in Washington. Pause. “Who?” Bush asked. …

How can this be?

As the search drags on through its third largely futile month, the blame game in Washington has gone into high gear. And as Bush’s allies and enemies alike on Capitol Hill begin to pick apart some 19 volumes of prewar intelligence and examine them one document at a time, the cohesive Bush team is starting to come apart. “This is a cloud hanging over their credibility, their word,” Republican Senate Intelligence Committee member Chuck Hagel told ABC News. …

The Administration has argued that to counter new kinds of threats posed by terrorists, rogue states and WMD, it has to be able to act pre-emptively. But pre-emption requires excellent intelligence, and the whole doctrine is undermined if the intelligence is wrong — or confected.

[via Daily Kos]

Despite misleading presidential rhetoric, almost half of all American taxpayers will get less than $100 this year and next from President Bush’s just-passed tax plan. In 2005, three-quarters of taxpayers will get less than $100, and in 2006 and later years almost nine out of ten will get less than $100.

A state-by-state analysis of the effects of the tax bill over the next four years by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy finds:

In 2003, 49 percent of taxpayers will get $100 or less from the tax bill. For these 65.7 million unlucky taxpayers, the average tax reduction will be only $19. …

And it gets no more beneficial in coming years.

[via The Daily Outrage in The Nation]

Just about the only thing liberals have going for them these days is that most Americans agree with them on the issues. This is partly due to the annexation of the Republican Party by its Taliban faction. It is also likely a product of the relative conservatism of today’s liberals, present company included. Today, “liberal” is just another word for “not nuts.” Don’t go around invading countries that do not pose a threat and lie to the world to justify it; don’t destroy the nation’s fiscal health in order to give trillion-dollar gifts to the wealthy; don’t gratuitously insult countries whose help we need to maintain world peace and security; don’t shred the Constitution at every opportunity, etc., etc.

Absolutely fascinating:

President Bush, like many dominant personality types, uses dependency-creating language. He employs language of contempt and intimidation to shame others into submission and desperate admiration. …

Poll after poll demonstrates that Bush’s political agenda is out of step with most Americans’ core beliefs. Yet the public, their electoral resistance broken down by empty language and persuaded by personalization, is susceptible to Bush’s most frequently used linguistic technique: negative framework. A negative framework is a pessimistic image of the world. … Catastrophic words and phrases are repeatedly drilled into the listener’s head until the opposition feels such a high level of anxiety that it appears pointless to do anything other than cower.

Psychologist Martin Seligman, in his extensive studies of “learned helplessness,” showed that people’s motivation to respond to outside threats and problems is undermined by a belief that they have no control over their environment. …

Bush is a master at inducing learned helplessness in the electorate. He uses pessimistic language that creates fear and disables people from feeling they can solve their problems. …

People do not support Bush for the power of his ideas, but out of the despair and desperation in their hearts. Whenever people are in the grip of a desperate dependency, they won’t respond to rational criticisms of the people they are dependent on. They will respond to plausible and forceful statements and alternatives that put the American electorate back in touch with their core optimism.

[via E7L3 (2003-06-02)]