Day: April 9, 2006

Santos Would Have Won Florida

Trish

I was surprised to see the folks at NBC award Florida to Vinick in the West Wing presidential election, even before Leo’s untimely death.

This only shows how pervasive the whole red state/blue state stereotypes have become, and how, like most generalizations and simplifications, they are both wrong and self-perpetuating.

Gore won Florida in 2000 – BEELEEVE it! The final result — the absolute best you could say for Bush, even with all the revisionist shenanigans — was 48.8% for Bush to 48.8% for Gore.

This only shows how pervasive the whole red state/blue state stereotypes have become, and how, like most generalizations and simplifications, they are both wrong and self-perpetuating.

In 2004, even with the world’s worst Democratic candidate on the ticket (sorry Jon), for whom I myself could just barely stand to cast my vote, and could only do so by reminding myself repeatedly just how bad Bush was in comparison to Herman Munster-Kerry, a minimum of 47.1% of Floridians were able to force themselves to do the same, depending on whether you believe exit polls or Diebold machines.

Kerry lost Hispanic votes nationwide, and I think that had less to do with Bush’s appeal than with Kerry’s awkward, New England Yankee elitism. It’s the same reason all those people said they would rather quaff a beer with Bush — Kerry just wasn’t one of us.

But the fictional Santos is, and despite slanted redistricting, real-life Republicans aren’t a slam dunk in the Sunshine State. And even though in the 2000 census only 2.3% of the total 16.8% of Floridian Latinos were Mexican-American, you can depend on Florida to line up behind a legitimate Latino/Hispano/Cubano/and even Mexicano candidate.

Santos would have won Florida. I hope in 2008 we have a real choice again, and I am proven right. And Diebold is out of the picture.

‘So Long, Suckers’ — DeLay Slams His Successors As He Exits the House

Jon Ponder

The Bug Man is a real class act:

The House leaders failed to get party conservatives and moderates to unite on a budget bill, so they threw up their hands and sent everyone home a day early for a two-week recess. Mr. DeLay, meanwhile, told The Washington Times that the new House leadership lacked vision and an agenda.

“Breaking up our leadership team has taken its toll,” Mr. DeLay said.

Here was the man who, having kept conservatives in power by his relentless insistence on party discipline, was now turning around on his way out the door and telling his former followers that they were falling down on the job.

“These guys went out on so many limbs for DeLay,” said the Congressional scholar Norman J. Ornstein. “And now he saws it off just as they’re trying to get their act together.”

Hiroshima 2006

Jon Ponder

Seymour Hersh:

The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack. Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups. The officials say that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium.

Italian Spy ‘La Signora’ Said to Have Forged Niger-Iraq Uranium Documents

Jon Ponder

The forgeries were blatantly obvious. For one thing, the Nigerian official whose signature was forged had been out of power for a decade. Their source has been uncovered. It reads like a treatment for a 1970s spy spoof, including a double-spy known as “La Signora.”

You have to wonder why President Bush believed he could base his false statement in 2003 that Saddam Hussein had acquired uranium from Niger on such dubious sourcing. He must think that all Americans are as dim-witted as his supporters:

Two employees of the Niger embassy in Rome were responsible for the forgery of a notorious set of documents used to help justify the Iraq war, an official investigation has allegedly found.

According to Nato sources, the investigation has evidence that Niger’s consul and its ambassador’s personal assistant faked a contract to show Saddam Hussein had bought uranium ore from the impoverished west African country.

The documents, which emerged in 2002, were used in a US State Department fact sheet on Iraq’s weapons programme to build the case for war. They were denounced as forgeries by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) shortly before the 2003 invasion.

The revelation spawned a series of conspiracy theories, most alleging that the British, Italians, or even Dick Cheney, the American vice-president, had had a hand in forging them to back the case for war…

According to the sources, an official investigation believes Adam Maiga Zakariaou, the consul, and Laura Montini, the ambassador’s assistant, known as La Signora, forged the papers for money.