Thursday, March 11, 2004 The Bush Administration- Stopping the Truth from Getting Out Since 2001
Knight-Ridder: The government's top expert on Medicare costs was warned that he would be fired if he told key lawmakers about a series of Bush administration cost estimates that could have torpedoed congressional passage of the White House-backed Medicare prescription-drug plan.
How can anyone say this administration has any credibility on fiscal matters? (not to speak of its willingness to withhold crucial information from lawmakers until they cannot revoke their votes)
Darby Conley does Get Fuzzy, a nationally syndicated strip which has been spending the past week assailing the idea of frivilous changes to the Consitution. Even though the Bostonian is a Sox fan, i have always enjoyed the strip. Worth reading regularly.
Posted by Brian,
11:34 AM
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It's Official: Democrats and Republicans are Actually the Same Party
Or so it seems, now that John McCain has said he'd consider running as Kerry's VP. Yet another reason why this country desparately needs a strong third party.
And yes, I know this has been posted on Dartlog. But as much as they complain, a 400-comment word comment limit is a lot friendlier than their 0 word limit. Way to encourage free debate, guys! Oops: I meant to say 400 character limit.
Emmett has also argued that before the war, "everyone thought [Saddam] had WMD", and that "no one thought that the evidence of his stockpiles was insufficient." He's even included Germany, France, and Russia in this assessment. This echos the Bush Administration's recent tack that we were all wrong on WMD, not just the neo-cons.
It sounds nice, but isn't true. I just found this juicy little refutational nugget in the U.N counter-resolution proposed by Russia, France, and Germany in response to the more publicized U.S./Britain/Spain U.N. resolution:
"While suspicions remain, no evidence has been given that Iraq still possesses weapons of mass destruction or capabilities in this field." (02/24/2003)
So Bush's claim that everyone else was as ignorant as his administration was on Iraqi WMD is, well, ignorant... Apparently, their hindsight is even worse than their foresight.
Posted by Justin Sarma,
1:32 AM
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Tuesday, March 09, 2004 Aristide's Electoral Corruption Charges Overblown?
I'm throwing this topic out tentatively, partly to see if anyone can refute it. The thought came up when Emmett compared Aristide to Saddam Hussein in a comment to "Different Take On Haiti". This struck me as a bit black and white, so I'd like to delve into the Aristide presidency a bit more:
The backdrop for the coup in Haiti was allegations that the elections in 2000 were a massive fraud. But looking at contemporary reports, this seems like an exaggeration. In '94, Aristide's power was secured by US forces after he won free and fair elections. In '97, he willingly stepped down from power in keeping with the constitutional provision precluding consecutive terms. His successor, Preval, was also fairly elected.
The trouble begins in May 2000, when the senatorial elections are called corrupt. Reading the criticism, note that even the critics agree that each election was won by the person with the most votes. The complaint was that there was no runoff vote in 18 of 19 elections because the leading candidate got more than 50% of the vote. The thing about this vote that was unconstitutional was that only the leading 4 candidates' votes were counted, causing an inflation of all the percentages, making it easier for a candidate to win 50% and prevent a runoff. This sort of fraud would not appear to distort the final result of an election, because clearly the candidates with the most votes still wins; and to make a partisan cheapshot, that's more than we can say about our own presidential election.
After the senate election, Aristide ran for president in November. Alleging that the senate elections were fraudulent, the opposition boycott the election. In the week preceding the election, there were even several bombings. It's unclear who was behind them, but considering that the opposition was boycotting the election, it seems like it would have been in their interest to commit these acts in order to discourage people from going to the polls (their stated goal was low turnout). Add in that the two opposition leaders, Guy Philippe, and Chamblain, are respectively a drug dealer and a convicted murderer, and Aristide starts to look like the lesser of two evil, or at least, in a different class of evil than our friend Saddam.
Perhaps, I'm being an apologist for a terrible dictator, and I deserve to be corrected. But I think sometimes the problem with liberal foreign policy is that it judges leader's actions by an absolute standard rather than judging them relative to their environment. This can be dangerous, because in places like Haiti, where there are no real "good guys", we're left morally unable to support anyone, which can lead to the kind of instability we're seeing in Haiti.
Posted by Justin Sarma,
3:17 AM
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Monday, March 08, 2004 Interview with Aristidefrom Democracy Now ( via Notgeniuses)
