zabbo

Last weekend’s Meet the Press was another one worth catching. I enjoyed watching the triumvirate from the Times — Maureen Dowd, Tom Friedman, and Bill Safire — play off each other.

MS. DOWD: Well, I think that the whole point of the trip was to reach out. But you know, it’s hard to have a charm offensive when your message basically is we were right, we ignored you, we blew off everything that was important to you and now we’re going to allow you to help bail us out of Iraq. So it’s a tough message.

MR. RUSSERT: You’re nodding your head.

MR. SAFIRE: I’m still thinking of what Tom said about…

And in particular, Tom Friedman was in pretty good form.

MR. FRIEDMAN:…. Democrats need to be in there. Joe Biden, who was here, gave a lot of good advice during the last two years to Rumsfeld that was ignored–OK?–about troop levels. And I believe that Democrats should be not only participating in this with their enthusiasm but with their ideas, and embracing it and trying to shape it. This is the biggest democratization project in the world going, and one that is fundamental to our national interests. The idea that the Democrats would just sulk on the side and basically put them in a situation where they only succeed if the country fails–that, to me, is as dumb as the day is long.

Sometimes, when I’m all alone, I like to pretend that this kind of programming is popular in the US.

I was a little surprised to see Bill Moyers stepping down from NOW. It makes me wish I’d found the show a little earlier so I could have seen more of them. Ah, well. His final episode had a piece on independence in the right-wing media that was interesting for the interviews. Richard Viguerie’s description of journalism being just opinion was particularly awesome. I’d love to see that tagline on FOX. “Just opinion, just like all journalism.”

The espisode also had Anthony D. Romero saying typically level-headed things. This interview, and their recent work on behalf of same-sex couples in Oregon, reminds me that it’s time to throw more money at the ACLU.

I’ve been trying to find a permanent link to this NOW episode but can only seem to find current links that will shift. I suspect it will appear at http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript351_full.html, but it hasn’t quite yet.

The talking heads have been making lots of noise about red and blue states recently. This all reminded me of a nice article over a style.org (boy do I wish they’d produce some more content) on the misleading geographical maps of California’s gubernatorial election. I was hoping to find some similar work on the 2004 presidential election and I wasn’t disappointed. I think my favourite is the work done by a team at the University of Michigan: “Maps and cartograms of the 2004 US presidential election results”. (also, get your purple map shirts today!). I’m probably a big dork for coming to this a month and a half late, but here we are.

Also, while we’re at it, everyone point and laugh at the ever-useful Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections for mispredicting what the rest of the world would mean by red and blue.

Tom Kean, chair of the 9/11 Comission, was on NBC News’ Meet The Press this weekend. While trying to make the case for substantial reform of the US intelligence services he compared the body count of the attacks of 9/11 and the war in Iraq. An excerpt from the transcript:

… When we say we want to reform intelligence and change it fundamentally, making this restructuring of government one of the largest in history, we think that’s pretty major. We have to remember that we know we’ve got this problem with the military. But more people died on September 11, double the number that have died so far in Iraq. I mean, we are facing very serious problems on the home front here, …

Presumably he meant to compare US and coalition casualties of the Iraq war so far (roughly 1400) to the number of people killed in the attacks on 9/11 across all nationalities (roughly 3000). Ignoring what conclusions one could possibly draw from that comparison, his startlingly poor choice of words imply that Iraqi casualties don’t count. Mr. Russert should have called him on it.

While googling around for well-grounded counts of human casualties of the Iraq war, regardless of nationality, I ran across an interesting piece in The Economist on statistical methods of estimating Iraqi casualties that I missed in the print edition.

John McCain was on NBC News’ Meet The Press again this weekend and continued his strong tradition of presenting himself as someone I would vote for. An excerpt from the transcript:

MR. RUSSERT: … Congress voted for a $388 billion spending bill. They passed it 65-to-30 in the Senate. You said it’s a big, fat turkey.

SEN. McCAIN: … It’s outrageous. The system is broken. We need to fix it. We’ve got to have some kind of way of challenging these earmarks. …

MR. RUSSERT: Senator, Republicans control the Senate.

SEN. McCAIN: Yes.

MR. RUSSERT: Republicans control the House.

SEN. McCAIN: Yes, sir.

MR. RUSSERT: Republicans control the White House.

SEN. McCAIN: Yes, sir.

MR. RUSSERT: It’s a Republican problem.

SEN. McCAIN: It certainly is, and we’re going to have to fix it. …

They go on to discuss the absurdity of voting for bills that spend the taxpayers’ money without reading the bills. Indeed.

Then, later that day, I happened to be catching up on some NOW which included a piece on abuse of Indian tribes by lobbyists. There was Sentor McCain, again. From his opening statement:

I want Mr. Abramoff and Mr. Scanlon to know that their failure to cooperate in the face of compulsory process will not be tolderated and their attempt to slow roll this Committee will not be brooked. Once the Chairman has ruled on their outstanding objections, I will urge the Committee to pursue contempt, if their compliance with the subpoenas is not immediately forthcoming. The time for games has ended.

Some weeks ago I also noticed him being praised in this HRC quarterly, of all things, for speaking out against the “Federal Marriage Amendment”.

All of this from an immensely popular Republican. I find this encouraging and keep it in mind when my less rational friends are — with straight faces — comparing the entirety of the Republican party to Nazis.