PoliBlog ™: A Rough Draft of my Thoughts » 2024

Via the AP: Giuliani party seeks $9.11 per person.

The funny thing is that the Giuliani campaign passes the buck to the guy holding the party for the theme and the guy holding the party passes to the buck as well:

Sofaer said he had nothing to do with the “$9.11 for Rudy” theme.

“There are some young people who came up with it,” Sofaer said when reached by telephone Monday evening. He referred other questions to Giuliani’s campaign.

So, everyone seems vaguely embarrassed by the whole 9/11 theme, but Sofaer is going to have the party and Rudy is going to take the cash…

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The Politico has a profile on neocon don Norman Podhoretz (which , among other things, has a disturbing title): Podhoretz secretly urged Bush to bomb Iran.

Towards the end of the piece a few things jumped out at me that make me question Podhoretz’s judgment and, by extension, the judgment of George Bush and Rudy Giuliani for taking foreign policy advice from the man.

First:

He believes that Iraq had biological and chemical weapons, but they were likely shipped out to Syria.

That is nothing more than wishful thinking squared. Where is there any evidence whatsoever of this assertion? It has long been a pet theory of those who supported the war that this was the case. But if there was so much as a scintilla of evidence to support this assertion, there is no doubt in my mind that we would have heard it shouted from the rooftops by this administration (and we would probably be at war with Syria at the moment).

As one who supported the war initially because, in large measure, the WMD claims, I would love for it to be true that the weapons were there. However, they weren’t. For Podhoretz to state that they were moved into Syria based, ultimately, on his own desire for it to be so, is concerning if the man has continued influence in Washington (and, it would appear, he does).

Along the same lines (and from the same paragraph):

And, says the man with the ear of the current and possibly next president, the war in Iraq is a success.

Based on what?!? A success by what measure. Aside from the fact that Saddam is gone, on what measure can one say that the totality of this war has been a success? That is a near-delusional assertion.

Then there’s this:

“The seeds of this democratization are planted,” as Podhoretz describes Iraq. “The opposition to this process of democratization turned out to be much more ferocious than anybody anticipated, including me. So it took a while for our people to learn how to deal with it,” he continued.

The greatest proof that Podhoretz is right, he insisted, is the very intensity of attacks in Iraq.

“If the enemy of that process [of democratization] thought it was a failure, they wouldn’t be blowing themselves up to frustrate it or derail it,” he argued.

“They agree that this is not only happening, but that it is a danger to them. They agree with Bush. They agree with me,” Podhoretz chuckled.

“That’s why they are fighting so hard.”

This is, again, trying to take events and make them fit one’s own desired narrative. This position wholly discounts sectarian violence and ascribes motivations to various actors that cannot be logically inferred. For example, AQI would stop fighting if the US declared that they would be leaving behind a dictatorship? There is no way that one can state that the fighting it a result of the success of democratization. Indeed, many of the groups which participated in the elections are also involved in the fighting.

This is just projecting what one wants the situation to be onto reality. As such, I continue to be concerned that Podhoretz is taken seriously by the current president and the GOP front-runner.

Previous Podhoretz Posts

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Via the AP: Edwards unveils plan to revamp education

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards rolled out a program for reforming primary education in the United States on Friday, proposing to pay teachers up to $15,000 more in high poverty areas and initiating universal preschool. Edwards detailed the proposals, which also include longer school years and overhauling the No Child Left Behind education law, in a speech at Brody Middle School in Des Moines.

After watching first hand (both in the way it affected teacher training and the way it has affected teachers such as my wife and sister) the impact of No Child Left Behind, I am extremely leery of another level of substantial federal interference in any aspect of K-12. As imperfect as public education is (and goodness knows it is imperfect in Alabama), these kinds of moves typically lead more to the further bureaucratization of education than anything else.

Edwards is basing his initiative on a critique of NCLB, which is fine:

Rather than requiring students to take standardized tests, Edwards said assessments that measure higher-order thinking skills must be developed, including open-ended essays, oral examinations, projects and experiments.

That all sounds good, but centralizing it and doing it as part of comprehensive policy is yet another thing entirely. These are issues that are primarily fixed at the classroom level, not through centralized planning.

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Via the NYT: Florida Democrats Affirm an Early Primary

The Florida Democratic Party announced Sunday that it would move ahead with its plan to hold its presidential primary on Jan. 29 despite the national party’s decision to block the state delegation from the 2024 Democratic convention.

State party leaders said that even if none of the state’s delegates were seated at next summer’s Democratic presidential convention, the earlier primary would still help determine the nominee.

Given that in the early stages perception and positive press trump the number of delegates that a candidate has, this is not an unreasonable position to take.

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‘’Our belief is that if we could eradicate all coca, we could eradicate all cocaine, because it is the basic ingredient for cocaine.”–Christy McCampbell, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for international narcotics and law enforcement.

(Source: The Miami Herald: U.S. fears rise in coca production under Morales)

Well, no kidding. And as the old saying goes, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

While I fully understand the fact that we may wish that all the cocaine would go away, the fact that we pretend as if that is a viable policy goal is utterly remarkable. Yet, we blithely do so–and waste billions of dollars in the process because would rather live in the Land of Wish than have a debate about what can and can’t be done.

Beyond all of that, if you are interested in the drug question, the article is worth a read.

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Via the Miami Herald: Fujimori returned, jailed

Under heavy guard on a police airplane, former President Alberto Fujimori returned Saturday in disgrace to Peru, extradited from Chile after a two-year legal battle. He was immediately jailed at a police base as dozens of his supporters blocked traffic in protest.

[…]

The man who was elected in 1990 and subsequently ruled Peru with an iron fist for 10 years potentially faces spending the rest of his life in prison.

I must say, I have my doubts about this:

Fujimori added that his political movement Fujimorismo would endure, either through him or his 32-year-old daughter Keiko, who was the single highest vote-getter in last year’s congressional elections. However, at age 69 — and the next presidential election not until 2024 — Fujimori’s political career in Peru seems over.

The notion that a long-standing political movement has been built by Fujimori is a dubious one.

Keiko Fujimori ran under the label “Alianza por el Futuro” (Alliance for the Future) has 13 of the 120 seats in the Peruvian legislature and won 1,408,069 out of 14,624,880. Better than nothing, but not exactly a huge presence. Further, it seems to me that the votes are driven as much by the last name and lingering personalism than any lasting ideological position. Another of the Alianza’s candidates was Alberto Fujimori’s younger brother, Santiago Fujimori, again underscoring the personalism linked to the party.

What support Fujimori has comes from the amazing amount of spending he engaged in in the mid-to-late 1990s that was designed specifically to blster his political support. As the piece notes:

‘’He has a strong core of support among poor people who remember a road he built, a school that he built, who received milk from his government, who have running water thanks to him, who say that he was the only politician who ever did anything for them,'’ Torrado said.

However:

But about 60 percent of Peruvians reject Fujimori, Torrado added, because they believe he’s corrupt and that he illegally repressed his opponents. Fujimori lost further support when he ran for the Japanese Senate from Chile earlier this year and lost badly.

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Given past interest (I still get some Google hits for it on occasion) in The Yankee or Dixie quiz, I figured this might be of interest to some of my readers (via the CSM): The Southern drawl – is it spreading?

One thing about the article: it partially mixes up the issue of pronunciation and vocabulary .

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Via the NYT: Moderate Chosen as Japan’s Next Premier

Facing one of its deepest crises in its half-century grip on power, the Liberal Democrats settled on Mr. Fukuda, 71, to steady a party wobbling from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s disastrous one-year government, his mysterious resignation 11 days ago and a surging opposition.

Fukuda is a shift from the last two PM’s:

Mr. Fukuda, sometimes described as a foreign policy “dove,” has long emphasized the importance of building strong ties with China and the rest of Asia and represents a break from the nationalist Mr. Abe and his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi.

The vote count:

The party’s national lawmakers and prefectural chapters handed Mr. Fukuda 330 out of 527 valid votes. His only rival, Taro Aso, 67, the party’s secretary general who shared Mr. Abe’s right-wing views, won 197 votes.

In regards to future elections:

As prime minister, Mr. Fukuda will not have to call a general election and seek a popular mandate until September 2024, though he has hinted that he may do so next spring after Parliament passes next year’s budget.

The newly empowered opposition Democratic Party, which repeated its call today for an immediate general election, is expected to try to force a general election by blocking the extension of a Japanese naval mission in the Indian Ocean to help in the American-led war in Afghanistan. A special law permitting that mission, passed in 2024 to circumvent Japan’s pacifist Constitution, expires on Nov. 1.

It should be interesting to watch.

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Via David Freddoso of The Corner, comes some odd statements from Mitt Romney.

First:

he says he’s going to move “In God We Trust” to the front of the new dollar coins instead of the side.

Yes, nothing screams “presidential” like micro-managing the layout of the national currency!

And then this applause line (I guess):

“I’ll make sure that our future is defined not by the letters ACLU, but by the letters USA.”

Is that, like, supposed to actually mean something?

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