As the election approaches, the Republicans see the disaster they have created in Iraq and are looking elsewhere to change the subject. They are best off finding another issue yet again after trying and failing to make the economy one that helps their cause. Here’s why: the housing market has slowed down, and debate continues about whether the next direction is up or further down. As businessweek.com noted:

“While the most bearish scenarios may be becoming increasingly unlikely, the housing market probably isn’t out of the woods yet. Even the most upbeat forecasts call for new-home construction to keep declining nearly as much as it already has so far.”

All this doesn’t seem to matter to some Republicans, who often lie and mislead about the economy. Here’s what George Will said on Sunday (via mediamatters.org):

“Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. You can have your opinion about whether the economy is doing well but objectively, again, the economy — 4.6 unemployment. Growth quarter after quarter over three percent. It is just objectively good.”

Using the word “objective” is very clever, George, but it only increases the falsehood of the claim when checked. Here’s the actual data about that “growth quarter after quarter,” from courier-journal.com:

“Economic growth slowed to a snail’s pace of 1.6 percent in the just-finished quarter — the most sluggish showing in more than three years, the Commerce Department reported yesterday in Washington.

The main culprit: a housing market that has turned sour. Investment in homebuilding was cut by the largest amount in 15 years.

“A downturn in the housing market packed a wicked punch for the U.S. economy … but it was not a knockout blow,” said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group.”

The government, even after all this modest growth, is still running borrowing billions every year more than it takes in. War profiteering has continually embarrassed Halliburton-KBR, a company where Dick Cheney used to be the CEO. Jack Abramoff and Ralph Reed, both closely connected to the Bush administration, turned government control of the gambling racket into a private tool of enrichment. Michigan’s economy has gotten worse as the U.S. auto industry continues to decline. George W. Bush has offered America stupid ideas like increased steel tariffs and farm subsidies and trying to dismantle Social Security and war for oil in Iraq, and they haven’t worked. Bush and the Republicans have done a lousy job on economic policy–growth rates for jobs, wages, the stock market and GDP are all at lower levels than under Bill Clinton–and hiring a guy from Goldman Sachs to try to make it all sound good doesn’t work this time, with such a lousy record to sell.

[photo: Marcus Jerard and Derrick Carter DJ at the Endup, San Francisco, 10/29/2006, by Daniel J. McKeown]

Phil Angelides is probably not the kind of candidate Warren Beatty would have been, but he should be chosen as governor of California in this 2006 election. As his Wikipedia entry (currently) states, he has a solid liberal record that would align him with most of the state’s popular politicians:

“In 1972 he walked door-to-door, campaigning for Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern. In 1973, while still in college, Angelides unsuccessfully ran for Sacramento City Council against a popular incumbent. He again ran unsuccessfully for City Council in 1977 – these races, however, fostered relationships with political and business mentors that lead to later opportunities. He was an early supporter and fundraiser of the eventual 1988 Democratic Presidential Nominee, Michael Dukakis, and maintains a strong friendship with him to this present day. Mike Dukakis has referred to Phil as “one of the five or 10 best people in American politics today.” [4] His work with Dukakis led him to serve as the chairman of the California Democratic Party from 1991 to 1993. He helped to lead not only Bill Clinton to become the first Democrat to carry California in 28 years but also having California be the first state to elect two female senators in the same election, Democrats Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein. His efforts have been beneficial for the California Democratic Party, because since 1992, California has consistently been a Democratic-leaning state in each subsequent Presidential election, and both Senate seats have remained Democratic.

After losing in the general election on his first attempt as State Treasurer in 1994, he was elected to this post in 1998 as a Democrat and re-elected in 2002. Also, before his election as Treasurer, he served as Co-Chair of the Sacramento Mayor’s Commission on Education and the City’s Future from 1995 to 1996. Angelides worked for a number of years for the state of California‘s Housing and Community Development agency (from 1975 to 1983).”

Arnold Schwarzenegger is a lousy choice–has a below average record on state policy, having spent his early term pushing far-right measures and only in the last year repositioning himself politically. As the Los Angeles Times reported (via Huffington Post), Schwarzenegger’s attempt to force through his right-wing agenda failed terribly in 2005:

“In a sharp repudiation of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Californians rejected all four of his ballot proposals Tuesday in an election that shattered his image as an agent of the popular will.

Voters turned down his plans to curb state spending, redraw California‘s political map, restrain union politics and lengthen the time it takes teachers to get tenure.

The Republican governor had cast the four initiatives as central to his larger vision for restoring fiscal discipline to California and reforming its notoriously dysfunctional politics.

The failure of Proposition 76, his spending restraints, and Proposition 77, his election district overhaul, represented a particularly sharp snub of the governor by California voters. It also threw into question his strategy of threatening lawmakers with statewide votes to get around them when they block his favored proposals.”

So instead, Schwarzenegger is running again this year the way he ran in the recall campaign of 2003 that put him in office–throwing around “centrist” gestures like signing some sort of bilateral agreement with Tony Blair and trying not to link himself with George W. Bush. Well for those who heard him say that “To link me to George Bush is like linking me to an Oscar,” consider the change that represents from his 2004 Republican convention speech:

“We are one America — We are one America and President Bush is defending it with all his heart and soul.

That’s what I admire most about the President: He is a man of perseverance. He’s a man of inner strength. He’s a leader who doesn’t flinch, who doesn’t waiver, and does not back down.

My fellow Americans — My fellow Americans, make no mistake about it: Terrorism is more insidious than communism, because it yearns to destroy not just the individual, but the entire international order. The President did not go into Iraq because th
e polls told him it was popular. As a matter of fact, the polls said just the opposite. But leadership isn’t about polls. It’s about ma — It’s about making decisions you think are right and then standing behind those decisions. That’s why America is safer with George W. Bush as President.”

So unless that above passage sounds reasonable (it doesn’t–not now, not then), Phil Angelides is the better pick for California governor this year.

[photo: Reuters]

The staff of Tan Nguyen, a Republican running for the Congressional seat in California currently held by Rep. Loretta Sanchez, mailed thousands of letters written in Spanish aimed at intimidating Latino voters from staying home on election day. But Tan seems rather confused as to who has done wrong. The Washington Post reports:

“Nguyen, a Vietnamese immigrant trying to unseat popular Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez, last week blamed an unidentified staffer for sending out 14,000 letters warning immigrants they could be deported or jailed for voting in next month’s election. The mailings sparked state and federal probes.

[…]

“There has been no crime committed so why is there a criminal investigation three weeks prior to a very important election? What is going on? Who is fueling this investigation?” he asked.”

Tan has no chance of winning in November, but he is certainly illustrating the kind of choice people across the country have to make–do they want more Republican candidates offering racist immigration policies alongside assurances that there has been “no crime committed” over their disreputable political tactics?

[photo: AP]

Writer Spencer Ackerman had his “Iraq’d” blog shut down some time ago, but now he’s gotten the full dismissal. He has announced on his blog that he no longer works at the New Republic:

“On Wednesday, The New Republic and I parted ways, ending my four-year association with the magazine. The ostensible reason for my release concerns my relationship with Franklin Foer and the magazine’s other editors. However, the irreconcilable ideological differences between myself and the top editors at the magazine have been clear to me for months now, and clear to them as well.”

Months is the key word. A few years ago in 2003, he seemed to be more in step, writing this:

“It had the feel of a victory lap. After delivering his devastating Iraq presentation to the U.N. Security Council this week, Secretary of State Colin Powell basked in the adulatory glow of the Sunday morning talk shows. Tim Russert brought the trophy, a Gallup poll showing public trust in Powell eclipsing trust in his boss on the Iraq issue by more than two to one(Powell 63 percent, Bush 24 percent). Powell, with military discipline, waved it off. “I just go about my business and don’t worry about polls,” he said, with every muscle in his face struggling valiantly to suppress a pie-eating grin.

But any celebration would be premature. Powell may have been lionized in the press last week for his deft U.N. performance, but his diplomatic skills will face a far greater challenge this week, when his task will be considerably harder than keeping Security Council foreign ministers awake through over 90 minutes of communications intercepts and satellite photos. It is this Friday, after all, that chief weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei will update the Council on the state of Iraqi compliance. At that point, Powell told Russert, the United States will ask the Council to “immediately determine” the fate of Saddam Hussein.

The hitch is that over the weekend the press reported that France and Germany would try to preempt any U.S. action at the Security Council by presenting an alternative proposal to send hundreds more inspectors to Iraq backed with U.N. peacekeepers as a way to enforce the “serious consequences” clause of Resolution 1441. The eleventh-hour proposal–which the Bush administration had to read about in Der Spiegel–could place serious pressure on Britain, where public support for war is rapidly deteriorating, and perhaps on the Bush administration as well.

In the meantime, Powell proved no exception to reports that administration officials were privately fuming that they had to learn about the proposal from reporters. “It’s the wrong issue,” Powell told Russert, demonstrating the approach he may have to pursue in New York this week. “The issue is not more inspectors. The issue is compliance on the part of Saddam Hussein. … If he is not complying, then what is more time for? For what purpose?” While he diplomatically allowed that he had not seen what the French and Germans were proposing, Powell basically nixed the idea, calling it a “diversion, not a solution.” To George Stephanopoulos, who began his Powell interview with questions about the French and German proposal, the secretary was even more dismissive. “What are these blue-helmeted U.N. forces going to do?” Powell sneered, sounding for a moment like Donald Rumsfeld. “Shoot their way into Iraqi compounds?” The proposal, Powell implied, would continue to allow Saddam to force “inspectors to play detectives or Inspector Clouseau, running all over Iraq to look for this material.””

In 2002, Ackerman authored a piece outlining the mechanics of stoking a war with Iraq, seeing widespread international opposition as something to be circumvented rather than taken seriously, writing a piece called “Storm Window: How to Time War in Iraq”:

“For all of their differences over U.S. policy toward Iraq, Brent Scowcroft and Donald Rumsfeld agree on one essential point: Our allies have no appetite for preemptive strikes to destroy Saddam Hussein’s regime. “There is a virtual consensus in the world against an attack on Iraq at this time,” Scowcroft wrote in his now-famous Wall Street Journal op-ed opposing a first-strike against Iraq. During a visit to California‘s Camp Pendleton last Tuesday–a visit designed to bolster support for the strikes–Rumsfeld essentially conceded the point. “It’s less important to have unanimity than it is making the right decision and doing the right thing, even though at the outset it may seem lonesome,” the defense secretary asserted.

But international opposition to a preemptive war on Iraq might not be as steadfast as these two men–and their many supporters on either side of the Iraq debate–seem to think. Writing in The Washington Post last week, Richard Holbrooke, the American ambassador to the United Nations at the end of the Clinton administration, sketched out how it could be done. Basically, the United States would have to go through the U.N. Security Council and obtain a resolution authorizing a new inspections regime–a resolution demanding unfettered access, no timetable for completion, and unconditional acceptance, and authorizing the use of force to punish noncompliance. Although Iraq‘s history completely justifies this sort of treatment, the Iraqis will never accept such stringent international demands. Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz yesterday admitted that Iraq will not acknowledge the legitimacy of such a inspections team, stating in Johannesburg that “if [the United Nations] send[s] people who will drag their feet for years without reaching a conclusion as they did for seven and a half years, that’s not going to work.” Assuming Iraq indeed rejects such an inspections regime–and there’s every reason to believe it would, given the history–the resolution would justify waging war. “[F]ew Americans today understand the enormous force, both moral and political, that a Security Council resolution carries in the rest of the world,” Holbrooke wrote. “It mobilizes international opinion, forces concerted action and can mute much criticism.”

Of course, the trick here is getting the Security Council to go along with such a strongly worded resolution in the first place. Of the council’s four other permanent members–Britain, China, France, Russia–each has veto power over resolutions. And each has misgivings, in some cases profound, over war with Iraq.

But that doesn’t mean these misgivings can’t be overcome. It’s at least conceivable–and some would say likely–that even the most steadfast U.S. critics on the council could be won over with the right diplomatic maneuvering. In some cases, it would just be a matter of making visible multilateral gestures to quell mounting international criticism of U.S. policy. In other cases, the United States might have to give other nations certain economic incentives for cooperation.”

“It’s fair to wonder,” indeed, why Ackerman didn’t look in a more substantive way at the doubts about the Iraq war rather than simply looking at the political mechanics of getting there. Here he questions “how successful” Joe Biden would be, in 2003, in raising some questions about the upcoming attack:

“By staging his hearings before the recess, Biden gives Congress a chance to raise questions and establish appropriate criteria for going to war, as he had begun to do during the week. But it’s fair to wonder just how successful this effort can be. No matter how cogent Biden sounds, the administration always has a rhetorical weapon against him. All they have to do is change the subject to the 1991 Gulf War–a subject as likely to leave Biden stammering as it did on Sunday.”

So it’s good that Ackerman now finds himself at odds with the neocons at the New Republic, but it it’s hard to understand where all this (thinly veiled with praise and pleasantries) righteousness (or those “irreconcilable differences”) comes from. Of course, I may not be fully briefed on the latest, the New Republic is a magazine in marked decline and I have glanced at it less over time like many readers, as this page at stateofthenewsmedia.org discusses the circulation problems the magazine has been having:

“According to its own estimates the New Republic has taken a large hit in circulation, dropping by almost 25,000 from 85,904 in 2002 to 61,124 in 2003 (the latest numbers available). That would be a drop of 29% in one year.”

Iceland went back to the reprehensible practice of whaling this week, cutting up a large, intelligent mammal for no good reason and in violation of international norms against commercial hunting of whales and the concerns for survival of some whale species. The Guardian reports:

“Iceland broke the global moratorium on whaling yesterday when it killed an endangered fin whale for the first time since the 1980s. It attracted international condemnation for the resumption of its commercial whaling operations.

Icelandic television footage showed the whale being towed into harbour. The 20-metre (65ft) long mammal was harpooned in the north Atlantic, about 200 miles west of the country.

The government announced it plans to issue licences to kill nine fin whales and 30 minke whales by next August. Conservation groups denounced the move. Joth Singh of the International Fund for Animal Welfare said the hunt was “cruel and unnecessary”, while the European commission urged the country to reconsider its decision.”

[photo–Iceland —Oct. 22, 2006: AP via Yahoo]

Russia’s Putin continues to intimidate and threaten out of business some of the last vestiges of democracy. From the Washington Post:

“Russia on Thursday suspended the activities of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the International Republican Institute and more than 90 other foreign nongovernmental organizations, saying they failed to meet the registration requirements of a controversial new law designed to bring activists here under much closer government scrutiny.
Across the country, foreign grass-roots organizations that investigate human rights abuses, promote democracy and work with refugees folded their tents until further notice, informing staff that all operations must cease immediately. The only work officially authorized was the paying of staff and bills.
The law, signed by President Vladimir Putin at the start of the year, drew broad criticism as part of a general rollback of democratic freedoms in Russia. Activists said it was intended to rein in one of the last areas of independent civic life here; Putin called it necessary to prevent foreigners from interfering in the country’s political process.”

This CNN report from 2001 shows George W. Bush’s opinion, at least initially, about Putin:

“After nearly two hours of face-to-face talks on Saturday, Bush said he felt he could “trust” Putin.

The leaders agreed to meet for summits in each country. Bush invited Putin to his ranch in Crawford, Texas, in the autumn. Putin returned the courtesy with an invitation to his home in Moscow.

They will also meet at the Group of Eight meeting in Genoa, Italy, next month and in Shanghai at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in October.

“I wouldn’t have invited him to my ranch if I didn’t trust him,” Bush said at a joint news conference after the two spent 1 hour and 40 minutes in one-on-one talks — more than twice the time originally scheduled. “We can make the world safer, more prosperous.”

[…]

The body language between the two appeared genuinely comfortable. Bush said the talks never digressed into “diplomatic chit chat” and that during the talks he took a measure of Putin’s soul, finding the Russian leaders “straight-forward and trustworthy.”

“Mark me down as very pleased,” Bush said at one point.

Putin said the new U.S. president understood Russia‘s history and found himself impressed with his global perspective on a number of issues. Significantly, Putin said it was “very important” for him to hear Bush say Russia was no longer an enemy.”

Many people in America don’t like those human rights organizations much either, by the way. Are their reasons entirely different than Putin’s? As Aryeh Neier writes in the New York Review of Books:

“One of those who responded angrily to the Human Rights Watch report was Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. He said, “Human Rights Watch’s approach to these problems is immorality at the highest level,” and he accused Kenneth Roth of engaging in “a classic anti-Semitic stereotype about Jews” for using the term an “eye for an eye” when referring to Israel’s policies.[2] Rabbi Avi Shafran, a spokesman for Agudath Israel of America, a leading Orthodox group, compared Roth to Mel Gibson.[3] Martin Peretz of The New Republic said that “this Human Rights Watch libel has utterly destroyed its credibility, at least for me.”[4] And Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, never to be outdone, wrote in The Jerusalem Post, “When it comes to Israel and its enemies, Human Rights Watch cooks the books about facts, cheats on interviews, and puts out predetermined conclusions that are driven more by their ideology than by evidence.”[5]”

[photo of Putin: flickr.com]

“Union Square, San-Francisco” 10/14/2006
“Dinosaur Pictures presents 48 wild seconds at the southeast corner of Union Square, San Francisco, California, on Oct. 14, 2006. Producer: Jessica Dryden-Cook; Exec. Producer: Daniel J. McKeown.”