For antiwar Yellow Dog Democrats, 1968 looms again

(@2 – promoted by buhdydharma )

Six months ago, I was confidently telling people that if the Democrats couldn’t win the presidency in 2008, we should just disband the party.

Lately, I have started hedging my bets.  

And an hour with the front section of Sunday’s New York Times was enough to make me think that we are headed for another heartbreaking and unnecessary loss.

What did we learn today from the “liberal media?”

1. Violence is on the decline in Iraq.

2. One brigade of US troops has started to pull out.

3.  The troop surge has not produced the political progress that was promised, so the Bush administration is simply downsizing its goals, to make it look like progress.

4.  The Democratic presidential candidates appear ready to soften their stances, or at least their language, on Iraq and change the subject to domestic issues.

Here we go again.  

We will be fooled again, it would appear.

Which brings us to the question: What is an antiwar Yellow Dog Democrat to do, after reading that one of Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy advisors, Michael O’Hanlon, is saying:

“The politics of Iraq are going to change dramatically in the general election, assuming Iraq continues to show some hopefulness,” said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who is a supporter of Mrs. Clinton’s and a proponent of the military buildup. “If Iraq looks at least partly salvageable, it will be important to explain as a candidate how you would salvage it – how you would get our troops out and not lose the war. The Democrats need to be very careful with what they say and not hem themselves in.”

Ah, yes, caution is certainly called for.  You wouldn’t want to be too strongly against the war when only 60 to 70 per cent of the American people think it was a mistake, want to end it and bring our troops home.

After four and a half years of bloodshed, it is hard to believe — no, I refuse to believe — that any kind of minimal gains and Republican propaganda campaign will swing what is now a silent antiwar majority in the other direction.

A reduction in carnage and fewer US troops in harm’s way are good news. The unasked question is always “compared to what?”  Troop levels will still be higher than before the surge, and violence levels are said to be the lowest since February 2006, a high water mark after the bombing of a Shiite mosque.  But the number of US troops killed in 2007 remains the highest of any year since the war began.

That is hardly a cause to celebrate or for Democrats to change course.

The cautious general election strategy of trying to appeal to everyone by saying nothing — the Democrats’ secret plan in recent years — hasn’t worked too well.

While the Dems try desperately to peel a few votes off of the Republican base, the GOP plays to its base, although softening it with a little “compassionate conservative” talk now and then.

The leading Democratic candidates already have refused to say they will have all US troops out of Iraq by 2013.

But that’s the Big Three — Obama, Clinton, and Edwards. Kucinich and Dodd would move more quickly. Then there’s this:

One candidate favors withdrawing all troops immediately and unconditionally: Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico.

“Let’s be clear: 40 dead American troops is 40 too many,” said Tom Reynolds, a spokesman for Mr. Richardson. “Measuring progress through body counts is wrong. Sixty-five percent of Iraqis support killing American soldiers. There is no national political progress. None. It can only happen when we send a clear signal we are leaving.”

Richardson has not been my candidate.  I’ve hoped — probably against hope — for an Obama-Edwards or Edwards-Obama ticket, a dynamic duo from a new generation that could excite voters and bring some real change.

In all likelihood, things will shake out in the next two months and the nominee will be obvious in early February.

But if it’s the triangulating Clinton who seems headed for the nomination, there may be an opportunity for a challenge from an antiwar candidate like Richardson.

I’m reminded frequently, as I promote the Iraq Moratorium and other antiwar efforts, that it is not 1968.  I acknowledge that.  Opposition to this war among the general public is higher than opposition to the Vietnam war in 1968, but the people are not in the streets.

Eugene McCarthy didn’t win the nomination in 1968, of course.  But his antiwar campaign forced a sitting president, Mr. LBJ, to drop out of the race.  And the eventual nominee of the fractured party, Mr. HHH, went down to defeat because many in the antiwar wing of the Democratic Party saw him as more of the same, another hawk, and withheld their votes.

Others were horrified by what they saw in the streets of Chicago and in the convention hall, and turned away from Humphrey, too.

So, here’s a scenario:  Clinton wins most of the early primaries, Edwards and Obama drop out or are crippled, and Richardson — recognizing that he won’t get the nomination — takes up the cause, on principle, and becomes a strident antiwar candidate, competing for delegates in the many remaining states.

In late August, Democrats at their national convention in Denver are split over the platform plank on Iraq, but Clinton and the voices of triangularization prevail.  Maybe there’s even a strong antiwar presence in the streets of Denver.

The war grinds on, but it’s less of an issue, since the Democratic candidate voted for the war, says she’d do it again, and says there will be no precipitous withdrawal of troops.

I ask again:  What is an antiwar Yellow Dog Democrat to do?

Maybe it really is 1968 again.

Vice Presidential Treason, 1807-style

“There! You see?  I was right!  I was only thirty years too soon.  What was treason in me thirty years ago, is patriotism now.”

                — Aaron Burr, upon hearing of the Texas Revolt, 1836

Perhaps someday, if the neocon plan works out and America does manage to establish itself as the master of a global hegemony of subject nations and enslaved peoples, the 9% of our fellow citizens who don’t think Dick Cheney sucks will be able to point to some future event and try to use it to vindicate not impeaching the current veep now – but I rather doubt it.  History is not kind to fools and poor leaders – and only occasionally rewards the schemers and the scammers – yet it has always been notoriously difficult to pry such men from perches of power, since the people with the ability to do so often lack the chutzpah of their intended target.  

Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight we’ll meet a veep whose poor decision-making skills (and chutzpah) may have actually eclipsed those of Fourthbranch.  We’ll also contemplate the scary truth that it wasn’t until after he’d left office that our first Treasonous Veep engaged in his zaniest schemes of usurpation.

Originally, the office was designed for runners-up.  The Founding Fathers, in their pitiable naiveté, thought that the guy who came in second in a race for the presidency would naturally find solace in serving the country that had recently rejected his application for leadership, so the Office of the Vice Presidency was tossed into the Constitution almost as an afterthought.  When this arrangement proved unworkable due to the rise of political parties and basic human nature (and in no small part, the actions of tonight’s subject), the Founders adopted the 12th Amendment, thereby ensuring that the second-fiddle office would often be filled by second-rate men.  In an ethical sense at least, that trend continues to this day.

It could be argued, however, that the morality bar for the vice presidency had been set pretty low, pretty early on.  In the last (rather ill-attended, tsk tsk) historiorant, I babbled about America’s third Vice President, whose actions in office included nothing less than the shooting and killing of the former Secretary of the Treasury.  Still, in the end, that wasn’t what got Aaron Burr dragged before a judge (and not just any judge) on charges of treason – it was his part in a conspiracy to commit an act of illegal immigration of the north-to-south variety.

Who Needs Blackwater?  I’ll Do It Myself!

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at PhotobucketBy 1804, Aaron Burr didn’t have much to lose.  He’d run against Thomas Jefferson for the presidency in 1800 and very nearly orchestrated a victory for himself, but when the dust settled and the House broke the electoral deadlock in TJ’s favor, he wound up with the number two slot.  By all accounts, he did a fair and impartial job presiding over the Senate, but he was ostracized by a Washington society that was all about the guy who beat the Barbary Pirates and purchased Louisiana from Napoleon.  Accurately perceiving that he had about as much chance of succeeding Jefferson as Cheney does Bush, Burr returned to his home in New York and sought the Democratic-Republican nomination in the governor’s race.  Failing to secure it, he pulled a Lieberman and ran as an independent (lacking the Republican and turncoat Dem backing that his brother in slime got, Burr went on to lose by the largest margin in the state’s history).

The campaign was vicious, with the opposition being organized by no less a political operative than Alexander “$10 bill” Hamilton.  In the midst of it all, both sides said the kind of things that you just can’t take back – Hamilton probably won in this regard when the claim was advanced by his side that Burr was sleeping with his own daughter – and events proceeded along a Zell Milleresque line of reasoning to their (il)logical conclusion: Hamilton lying mortally wounded on the ground in Weehawken, New Jersey, in the summer of 1804.  

It would later be discovered that the former Treasury boss hadn’t exactly approached the matter with his honor intact; his pistol had been altered for a “hair trigger” effect; it required only about a half pound of pressure to fire, as opposed to the normal 10 to 12 pounds.  Ironically, Hamilton’s attempt to cheat was probably his undoing, as his weapon discharged prematurely, leaving Burr with plenty of time to aim at his nemesis and fire a 56-caliber ball of lead at Hamilton.  (hat tip to blueness and the several commenters who brought up some of these aspects of the duel last week – u.m.)

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at PhotobucketBurr was charged with murder in both New York and New Jersey, so he stuck to a succession of undisclosed locations for a few months.  At a point early in his lam-travels, he made his way to Philadelphia, where he tried to involve the British minister to the U.S. in a scheme to separate the states west of the Appalachians from the Union.  He also began conspiring (no, it’s not too strong a word) with General James Wilkinson, whom Burr had first met while serving under Benedict Arnold during the failed troop surge into Canada in 1775-76.  Wilkinson had an unfocused resume of various important staff jobs around the Army as he first impressed, then pissed off, a succession of high-ranking officers (the job-bouncing might have been considered Cheney-like, were it not for the most un-Cheney-like fact that Wilkinson actually had the balls to join the Army when his country needed him) with a candor that makes the American Revolution sound like the Iraq Occupation:

I have commented on the progress of this war, the imperfect manner in which all events are communicated to those whose station calls for the most accurate account of every material transaction. One characteristic is applicable to most of our public relations and is particularly applicable to those from this quarter. Fxaggeration of successful opperations [sic], diminution to adverse. From hence arises those false hopes which influence our councils and operate on the exertions of the people. This single consideration ought to influence to perfect communication between those in the field, and those at the head of affairs.

Spaniards, Scoundrels, and Statesmen

All served-together-under-a-traitor and frustrated-Machiavellian-prince ironies aside, Burr and Wilkinson were peas in a pod when it came to deviousness.  Between them, they had arranged a cipher with which to communicate, and now began plotting in earnest how to carve themselves a little kingdom out of Spanish territory west of Louisiana.

“the most consummate artist in treason that the nation ever possessed.”

                                                          – Frederick Jackson Turner

Wilkinson was no stranger to dealings with the Spanish – he’d been on their government’s payroll since 1787 – and he had plotted to sell out the United States before.  Like Cheney groveling before the oil sheiks, Wilkinson had tried to come to an arrangement with the King of Spain, whereby Kentucky would divorce itself from Virginia and the United States, and would thereafter dedicate itself to supporting Spanish interests west of the Mississippi.  A letter he wrote to the King has the odd air of Cheney selecting a running mate for a presidential candidate about it:

His description of the ideal man for this position implied that he was recommending himself:

   I comprehend that it is not out of reason that a man of great popularity and political talents, co-operating with the causes above mentioned, will be able to alienate the Western Americans from the United States, destroy the insidious designs of Great Britain and throw those (Western Americans) into the arms of Spain.

ibid.

Nothing much ever came of Wilkinson’s plans for an independent Kentucky and alliance with Spain; he was frustrated by parliamentary dealings related to adoption of the Constitution and Kentucky’s status as a state, and his support ebbed away.  Though he continued to receive secret payments from the Spanish government for many years, the Spanish governor was instructed not to extend to him any of the bribes land grants and monopolistic river-trade concessions for which Wilkinson had asked, and the “Spanish Conspiracy” quietly came to an end.

Wilkinson had quite the name-dropping career in the decade and a half before he and Burr reignited the old schemes of western empire.  In 1791, he donned the uniform once again to fight Indians along the Ohio River, and served under “Mad Anthony” Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794.  There, Wilkinson commanded the right flank of Wayne’s forces, among which included a young William Henry Harrison, destined to be the ninth President of the United States and the first to pass on the office to his veep.  By 1800, Wilkinson was the senior officer in the U.S. Army, and in 1805, President Jefferson made him governor of the newly-organized Louisiana Territory.

To Blennerhassett’s Island…and Beyond!

Though it’s difficult to tell who, exactly, came up with the plan (or even if Alexander Hamilton had had a similar one of his own), Wilkinson’s career advancement fit perfectly into it.  He would now have troops at his command, and it would be a simple procedure to either secure their support for a rebellion, or to have them otherwise (and otherwhere) occupied should one happen to come about.  Burr set out organizing the fundraising, paying visits to all the rich, seditious types he could think of; being Dick Cheney’s soul-ancestor, he could think of quite a few.  Chief among these was one Anthony Merry, His Majesty’s Minister to the United States, and his lordship doesn’t seem to have been all that opposed to Burr’s ideas:

I am encouraged to report to your Lordship the substance of some secret communications which [Burr] has sought to make to me since he has been out of office…Mr. Burr has mentioned to me that the inhabitants of Louisiana [the lands recently purchased from France] seem determined to render themselves independent of the United States and the execution of their design is only delayed by the difficulty of obtaining previously an assurance of protection and assistance from some foreign power….It is clear that Mr. Burr means to endeavor to be the instrument for effecting such a connection….He pointed out the great commercial advantage which his Majesty’s dominions in general would derive from furnishing almost exclusively (as they might through Canada and New Orleans) the inhabitants of so extensive a territory…

The Treason Trial of Aaron Burr

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at PhotobucketHe might’ve raised some British eyebrows, but there wouldn’t be any frigates forthcoming, so Burr made his way west, arriving at Pittsburgh on April 29, 1805.  He had hoped to meet with Wilkinson there, but as the General had been delayed, Burr set off down the Ohio in a specially-outfitted boat he termed his “ark.”  Soon he found himself alighting on the shores of Blennerhassett’s Island, now a West Virginia (hi Carnacki!) State Park, but then an island paradise inhabited by wealthy and refined Irish immigrant Harman Blennerhassett.  Since his arrival in the States in 1796, Blennerhassett had been collecting books and creating what some visitors described as “Eden” or an “enchanted isle” on his 300-acre spread, and when Burr rafted up, it was natural that he and Blennerhassett would talk deep into the night.  Later that year, he signed on to Burr’s cause:

I should be honored in being associated with you, in any contemplated enterprise you would permit me to participate in….Viewing the probability of a rupture with Spain,…I am disposed, in the confidential spirit of this letter, to offer you and my friends’ and my own services in any contemplated measures in which you may embark.

ibid.

Burr kept up the recruiting drive as he sailed down the river.  He met with former Senator John Dayton in Cincinnati, and there presumably cemented the deal that would later see them tried together for treason, then left the ark in Louisville while he traveled overland to Nashville.  Burr stayed as a guest of General Andrew Jackson before continuing to Fort Massac (now a State Park on the southern tip of Illinois, overlooking the Ohio River), where he finally got a chance for some good ole fashion’ collusion with General Wilkinson.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at PhotobucketBurr took to the Mississippi on an “elegant barge” given to him by Wilkinson, and had the General’s letters of introduction on hand when he arrived at New Orleans.  There he met with Daniel Clark, a slime-buddy of Wilkinson’s since back in the old Spanish Conspiracy days.  Burr apparently promised Clark a dukedom in the empire tomorrow in exchange for 50,000 bucks today; Clark was so on-board that he traveled to Mexico to assess defenses and the public mood regarding regime change.  This, of course, betrays an un-Cheneyism in Burr’s schemes – Cheney would never waste time gathering intelligence on a presumed target, and certainly could not be counted upon to go and get it himself.

Whenever Wilkinson got a new job, it was, Bush-like, just a matter of time before his self-serving personality asserted itself and he started running afoul of the higher-ups.  He knew this as well as anyone, so when he got wind that people were already complaining about his ham-handed administration of the new territory, the ever-wily Wilkinson started hedging his bets.  After Burr visited him in St. Louis in the summer of 1805, ostensibly to finalize plans for their joint operation, Wilkinson started laying the groundwork for later whistle-blowing by writing a letter to the President quoting Burr’s seditious ramblings.

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The Trial of Aaron Burr: Map Showing Key Locations

Burr, meanwhile, was aggressively, if secretly, fundraising and traveling about.  The winter of 1805-06 found him back in Washington, talking to disaffected officers, and his recruiting continued when he headed west again – this time with his daughter Theodosia and her young son in tow.  He headed up to western Pennsylvania, where at a dinner with an influential local pol named Colonel Morgan and his son, a General, Burr seems to have forgotten the first rule of villainy: Never expose your plans to anyone not known to be as corrupt as you are.

Unbeknownst to Burr, Colonel Morgan wrote a letter to President Jefferson that would become a whistleblower’s classic, even as Burr got his logistical ducks in a row.  By the end of August, he was back at Blennerhasset’s Island, awaiting shipments of pork, cornmeal, whiskey, flour, 15 transport vessels (about 500 soldiers’ worth), and a keel-boat for hauling all the guns and butter.  Later, he paid Andrew Jackson $4000 for six more boats, and bought a 300,000-acre chunk of territory on the Washita River called the Bastrop Land to serve as either a staging area, feudal baronies after victory, or a fall-back position/legitimate land-speculation cover, depending on whose story one believes.

Honor Among Thieves

It’s hard to know what motivated General Wilkinson to turn on his erstwhile partner in crime, but he did.  That he reported to President Jefferson the contents of a ciphered letter which read, in part,

I have obtained funds, and have actually commenced the enterprise.  Detachments from different points under different pretenses will rendezvous on the Ohio, 1st November– everything internal and external favors views–protection of England is secured.  T[ruxton] is gone to Jamaica to arrange with the admiral on that station, and will meet at the Mississippi– England—Navy of the United States are ready to join, and final orders are given to my friends and followers–it will be a host of choice spirits.  Wilkinson shall be second to Burr only–Wilkinson shall dictate the rank and promotion of his officers.

The Treason Trial of Aaron Burr

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket…ought to give us hope: Wilkinson’s betrayal of the betrayer proves that even dirtballs are capable of patriotic whistleblowing, whatever their self-serving motivations might be.  In his case, the General/governor raised the alert status at New Orleans to Elmo, and moved his troops to protect the approaches to the Mississippi Valley.

Jefferson, now at DefCon 2, moved swiftly against Burr.  He issued a proclamation declaring an insurgency afoot, and urged all government and military types to spend some time “searching out and bringing to condign punishment all persons engaged or concerned in such enterprise.”  He also dispatched a State Department clerk/agent/spy named Graham to give Burr’s plot the Mission Impossible treatment, and it seems the guy was up to the task.  Graham fooled old Harman Blennerhassett into thinking he was in on the game, and Blennerhassett unwittingly revealed a few choice details – classic human intelligence of the sort poo-pooed by our Predator-loving Number Two.

Graham trekked over to Chillicothe, Ohio (then the capital) and convinced the governor to send the militia to Marietta, where Burr’s undelivered boats were being stored.  When they arrived, they found 11 of the 15 boats prepared for delivery the next day; the other 4 were already at Blennerhassett’s Island, along with 3 conspirators and about 30 Blackwater types.  These quickly got word that the plan was falling apart, and they left the island just before the militia arrived the next morning.  Angry at having missed their quarry, the militia acted like looters in a Baghdad museum, trashing furniture and art, firing bullets into the ceiling, and drinking from the gentleman’s private whiskey cellar.

Burr was in Nashville when he heard that the feds were on to him, so he fled north to a predetermined rendezvous at the Falls of the Ohio.  At this point, he still thought Wilkinson was on his side; he didn’t become aware of the General’s duplicity until he reached Bayou Pierre, about 30 miles north of Natchez.  Realizing that the jig was up, Burr moved to cover himself with one of the most Dana Perino-sounding letters of the early 19th century:

“If the alarm which has been excited should not be appeased by this declaration, I invite my fellow citizens to visit me at this place, and to receive from me, in person, such further explanations as may be necessary to their satisfaction, presuming that when my views are understood, they will receive the countenance of all good men.”

ibid.

The ex-veep had between 60 and 100 men with him, but they didn’t fire on the 30-man detachment of Mississippi militia that delivered a letter from their governor demanding Burr’s surrender.  Burr did so the next day after meeting with the governor, and was declared by a grand jury in the town of Washington to be “not guilty of any crime or misdemeanor against the United States.”  Since back in those days it was unacceptable to hold a citizen without charges, the governor was forced to grant Burr his freedom, and the would-be emperor disguised himself as a boatman and slipped into the swamps.

Mounting evidence compelled the issuance of a second warrant, and in February, 1807, Burr was re-arrested on the banks of the Tombigbee River, in present-day Alabama.  He was held at an army fort for a couple of weeks, then escorted by nine armed men to Richmond, Virginia, to stand trial for treason.

Enemies (and friends) in High Places

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at PhotobucketThe cast of characters in the Burr trial is a who’s who of early U.S. politics and jurisprudence.  The driving force behind the prosecution was Thomas Jefferson, but the fact that Chief Justice John Marshall would preside over the trial threw a kink into things, as there was no love lost between the two men.  A former Attorney General (the office was somewhat less tarnished in those days; being an ex-AG didn’t necessarily mean that one was a disgraced, incompetent boob) and future presidential candidate argued for the prosecution, and two attendees of the Constitutional Convention presented the defense.  The trial was preceded by an examination, during which Burr professed “who, me?,” and the Chief Justice considered various pretrial motions.  

Marshall issued his opinion on April Fool’s Day, 1807, and decreed that there was insufficient evidence to charge Burr with treason, but that he’d be held on $10,000 bail and charged with a high misdemeanor.  The case was to be taken up by a grand jury in a few weeks.  Jefferson went into an evidence-collecting frenzy, even going so far as to have his Secretary of State, James Madison, write to Andrew Jackson asking for the future Old Hickory to go around Nashville collecting anti-Burr depositions; this series of letters gives some indication of how Jefferson regarded his ex-veep’s actions.  Still, he was going to have his work cut out for him, if he wanted to secure a conviction:

The prosecution, noting that “the evidence is different now,” again moved for commitment of Burr on the charge of treason.  The defense countered, arguing that to establish the crime of treason the prosecution must prove that an overt act of treason had been committed by the defendant in a war and that, under the Constitution, the overt act must be testified to by two witnesses and must have occurred in the district of the trial.  When Marshall sided with the defense’s narrow interpretation of treason, the prosecution knew it had its back to the wall.

ibid. (emphasis original)

Marshall also considered a motion by the defense to subpoena certain of Wilkinson’s letters, then in Jefferson’s possession, that might help Burr’s case, but even though the Chief Justice issued just such a subpoena, Jefferson ignored the order.  Thus, in a case full of precedents that didn’t necessarily bode well for we of the Bush/Cheney era, Jefferson dropped a doozy – his explanation sounds almost contemporary:

The leading feature of our Constitution is the independence of the Legislative, Executive, and Judiciary of each other; and none are more jealous of this than the Judiciary.  But would the Executive be independent of the Judiciary if he were subject to the commands of the latter, and to imprisonment for disobedience; if the smaller courts could bandy him from pillar to post, keep him constantly trudging from north to south and east to west, and withdraw him entirely from his executive duties?

ibid.

In June, Wilkinson himself arrived in Richmond, and entered the room with what author/Nancy Grace fan Washington Irving termed a “strut,” afterwhich the General “stood for a moment swelling like a turkey-cock.”  His testimony was enough for the grand jury to return an indictment on treason charges.

The trial commenced on August 3, 1807, in an overflowing Virginia Hall of Delegates.  The prosecution produced a parade of witnesses who clearly placed Burr at the heart of a conspiracy, but after a couple of weeks of listening to them, Burr’s side issued a motion to arrest any further evidence that didn’t serve to prove an actual crime had been committed.  Since back in March, Burr had been insisting that this was all just a big misunderstanding

that the manner of his descent down the river was a fact which put at defiance all rumors about treason and misdemeanor; that the nature of his equipments clearly evinced that his object was purely peaceable and agricultural; that this fact alone ought to overthrow the testimony against him; that his designs were honorable, and would have been useful to the United States.

Statement of Aaron Burr (March 31, 1807)

…and besides, he’d been over 100 miles away from the single overt act of treason (the gathering of forces at Blannerhassett’s Island) that was being alleged.  Marshall’s regrettable decision – which took three hours for him to read – agreed with Burr, and in so doing set a very high bar for proof of treason.  “If those who perpetrated the fact be not traitors, he who advised them [Burr] cannot be a traitor,”  he intoned.  He then instructed the jury to disregard any testimony related to treasonous events which may or may not have occurred on the Island.  Their hands tied by one of the greatest legal minds of the age, the jury didn’t have much choice but to find Burr not guilty, but in so doing, they delivered a slight barb at the Chief Justice who’d done the tying:

“We of the jury say that Aaron Burr is not proved to be guilty under this indictment by any evidence submitted to us.  We therefore find him not guilty.”

Historiorant

Jefferson had a pretty good inkling of what could come of all this:

The scenes which have been acted at Richmond are such as have never been exhibited in any country, where all regard to public character has not yet been thrown off.  They are equivalent to a proclamation of impunity to every traitorous combination which may be formed to destroy the Union.

The Treason Trial of Aaron Burr

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…but John Marshall didn’t care, and after a while, neither did anybody else.  Utterly disgraced, Burr slithered off to Europe, where even Napoleon got hit up for a chance to support another Burr plot at Southwestern glory.  Failing to find any takers, he quietly returned to New York in 1812, and was greeted by two crushing blows: first news of his grandson’s death, then the loss at sea of his beloved daughter Theodosia.  Settling in to a life of lonely misery, he became a moderately successful attorney.  In 1833, at the age of 77, he married a widow named Eliza Jumel.  She was granted a divorce on the day he died – September 14, 1836, just a few months after the Battles of the Alamo and San Jacinto secured the independence of the Republic of Texas.

Aaron Burr is not the perfect analogy for Dick Cheney – the types of crimes in which they engage/d are quite different, among a thousand other discrepancies – but as I mentioned in Episode I, my point isn’t so much to try to wrench a parallel tale out of a pair of miscreants who lived 200 years apart as it is showing that we need not so frequently resort to hyperbolic expressions like “Darth Cheney” and all that other futuristic/satanic imagery conjured up by a mention of the his name – all we have to do is recall that our own history already contains dirtbaggery on a truly Vice Presidential scale.  If you don’t believe me, wait’ll you hear about John C. Breckenridge…

Historically hip entrances to the Cave of the Moonbat can be found at Daily Kos, Never In Our Names, Bits of News, and DocuDharma.

Pony Party: Sunday music retrospective

Gifts



Kansas: Wayward Son

Not being able to find embeddable music from the folks I wanted to link to (see the lagniappe), I decided to link to some stuff I have on vinyl for no other reason than they were gifts.  Maybe they were from people who didn’t know me that well.



Icarus (Borne on Wings of Steel)



Boston: More than a Feeling



Boston: Don’t Stop Believing

Please do not recommend a Pony Party when you see one.  There will be another along in a few hours.

Glenn Greenwald: How Beltway reporters mislead the country

I have recently started visiting some of the blogs in the blogroll (from a meta standpoint I’ll tell you that while a lot of the places you can visit are the same here as at dK, here they open in a NEW window which is a feature I find highly superior).

One author I find is almost as important as Monday through Thursday with Jon Stewart (who memorably said to Tucker)-

  • “It’s not so much that it’s bad, as it’s hurting America.”
  • “It’s not honest. What you do is not honest. What you do is partisan hackery.”
  • “You have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you fail miserably.”
  • “You know what’s interesting, though? You’re as big a dick on your show as you are on any show.”

and Stephen who said this about all of them, the vacant gape mawed Villagers drooling at the trough of slime that turns them into zombies-

… let’s review the rules. Here’s how it works: the president makes decisions. He’s the Decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ’em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know – fiction!

is Glenn Greenwald at Salon (that’s a zoom link btw, that way you can decide how you want to open it.  That and using a storyonly/Permalink are two courtesy lessons I owe to CSI Bentonville).

Every day he comes up with something that is at least worth looking at and today was no exception-

Exactly like a stenographer in a court proceeding, their only job is to record the words that they hear accurately, not to identify what actually is true. And here is Klein admitting — finally — that this is exactly what he did (although in this case, he wasn’t even a good stenographer since he only wrote down what one side said, not both).

The very idea of a reporter and a major news magazine publishing a piece about a crucial bill that neither the reporter nor any editor has ever even bothered to read is amazing. No blogger that I read regularly would ever think about doing that. But that’s how the Bush administration has been able to depict all of its false statements about Iraq, and its illegal spying on Americans, as some sort of complex, impossible-to-resolve “controversy.” GOP operatives say “X” and reporters write it down, and it would be terribly “partisan” for them to point out that “X” is actually an outright lie.

Had Klein even bothered to read the Democrats’ bill before calling it “well beyond stupid” and passing on lies about it, he would have had a real story. This:

Last week, House Democrats passed a bill that allows the government to eavesdrop on foreigners outside of the U.S., but requires court approval to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens inside the U.S. But GOP operatives/politicians have spent the week telling reporters that the bill does the opposite, falsely claiming that it gives the same rights to Terrorists that it gives to U.S. citizens.

Those are the objective facts. That is actually what happened. Yet Klein’s function — like those of most of his colleagues — isn’t to report what actually happened, so he’ll never say that. And thus, Time has yet again completely misled its readers on a critical political issue by passing on GOP falsehoods as fact, and they are highly unlikely to do anything in the way of alerting their readers to what they did, let alone reporting the real story here: how and why that happened.

Now lots of people have talked about Glenn’s piece- kos, and Atrios, and Jane Hamsher at FDL (Things I Know Today That I Didn’t Know Yesterday), and Booman Why is Joe Klein the Way He Is? (in Orange), and…

I think this is an Imus momement of media accoutablity.  How much buzz does this take to show up on KO or (if we had writers ::sigh::) TDS/TCR?

I think this is the arena that we are most effective in, media criticism.

If these guys are so sensitive to a good badmouthing then that’s what we ought to give them- EACH AND EVERY TIME THEY MISBEHAVE!.

The press is a gang of cruel faggots.  Journalism is not a profession or a trade.  It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits – a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.

(I)t (is) a low trade and a habit worse than heroin, a strange seedy world full of misfits and drunkards and failures.  The business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs.  There’s also a negative side.

Objective journalism is one of the main reasons American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long.- Stockton

Now you can discuss in detail if you want whether Joe is a misfit or a drunkard or a failure, but MY point is that they’re ALL like this.

Every last Vanity Fair strutting peacock and tut-tuting hen of them.

Number Nine

Impeachment: If not now when?

The title comes from an op/ed published in Sundays Seattle Post Intelligencer.

Americas Founding Fathers no fools they understood that humans were flawed and will always be flawed. So, in constructing the foundations that would become the Republic of the United States of America they included provisions within the constitution which gave the legislative branch the right to remove from public office those officials which had violated official ethics standards or the law it self.

Given that as a starting point isn’t it a reasonable assumption that when an elected official or officials deliberately obstruct the Constitution and the  Bill of Rights that the legislative branch would take upon themselves to not only investigate the violations but initiate impeachment proceedings if the allegations are proven to be true? Yet the legislative branch and its leaders have failed in their responsibilities as elected officials to represent the citizens of the country who elected them.

Leadership and the responsibilities  that come with it are difficult if it were not then anyone could be chosen to lead. No matter ones party affiliation your allegiances are not to the party or its supporters its to the Constitution.  I know this has been said a thousand times but the oath office does not say “I will preserve protect and defend my right to hold power and my political party.” It does say Preserve protect and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies both foreign and domestic.

Impeachment: If not now, when?

Lawmakers need to stand up for the Constitution and support impeachment

By LINDA BOYD

GUEST COLUMNIST

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. — Article II, Section 4

On Nov. 6, Rep. Dennis Kucinich introduced articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney on the floor of the House of Representatives. For one shining moment the will of the majority of Americans and the promise of this nation’s founders were truly represented.

The detailed charges were solemnly read from the House podium and televised on C-Span. House Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer made a motion to table the bill. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi lobbied hard for votes to table.

Iraq: What we do know has happened

Whatever the reality behind the statistical studies of civilian deaths in Iraq, some hard facts are known. In an online chat, Thomas Ricks of the Washington Post, and author of Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, gave some hard answers. As recounted on the Editor & Publisher website:

Well, things are going better. I just got back from Baghdad last week, and it was clear that violence has decreased. But it hasn’t gone away. It is only back down to the 2005 level — which to my mind is kind of like moving from the eighth circle of hell to the fifth.

I interviewed dozens of officers and none were willing to say we are winning. What they were saying is that at least now, we are not losing. But to a man, they were enormously frustrated by what they see as the foot-dragging of the Baghdad government.

And speaking of the Baghdad government, things are not looking better. In fact, today’s New York Times reports:

With American military successes outpacing political gains in Iraq, the Bush administration has lowered its expectation of quickly achieving major steps toward unifying the country, including passage of a long-stymied plan to share oil revenues and holding regional elections.

So, the improved levels of violence are very relative, the political conditions seem to be a complete failure, and the attempts, by some, to portray what’s happening in Iraq as some pending victory is simply false. Things have gotten better, in terms of daily violence, but that’s not saying much. And the reasons behind the current decrease in violence also don’t say much.

Ricks:

Yes, one reason that the city is quieter is because of the presence of American troops. But yes, another reason is that some Sunni neighborhoods are walled off, and other Sunni areas have been ethnically cleansed. In addition, the Shiite death squads, in addition to killing a lot of innocents, also killed some of the car bomb guys, I am told.

How effective has the ethnic cleansing been?  

The Independent reported, in May:

The state of Iraq now resembles Bosnia at the height of the fighting in the 1990s when each community fled to places where its members were a majority and were able to defend themselves….

The same pattern of intimidation, flight and death is being repeated in mixed provinces all over Iraq. By now Iraqis do not have to be reminded of the consequences of ignoring threats….

The sectarian warfare in Baghdad is sparsely reported but the provinces around the capital are now so dangerous for reporters that they seldom, if ever, go there, except as embeds with US troops. Two months ago in Mosul, I met an Iraqi army captain from Diyala who said Sunni and Shia were slaughtering each other in his home province. “Whoever is in a minority runs,” he said. “If forces are more equal they fight it out.”

In August, the New York Times added:

The number of Iraqis fleeing their homes has soared since the American troop increase began in February, according to data from two humanitarian groups, accelerating the partition of the country into sectarian enclaves.

Despite some evidence that the troop buildup has improved security in certain areas, sectarian violence continues and American-led operations have brought new fighting, driving fearful Iraqis from their homes at much higher rates than before the tens of thousands of additional troops arrived, the studies show.

The data track what are known as internally displaced Iraqis: those who have been driven from their neighborhoods and seek refuge elsewhere in the country rather than fleeing across the border. The effect of this vast migration is to drain religiously mixed areas in the center of Iraq, sending Shiite refugees toward the overwhelmingly Shiite areas to the south and Sunnis toward majority Sunni regions to the west and north.

Furthermore, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, in January, that some forty percent of Iraq’s middle class had fled the nation.

The Guardian reported, in July:

The number of Iraqi children who are born underweight or suffer from malnutrition has increased sharply since the US-led invasion, according to a report by Oxfam and a network of about 80 aid agencies.

The report describes a nationwide catastrophe, with around 8 million Iraqis – almost a third of the population – in need of emergency aid. Many families have dropped out of the food rationing system because they have been displaced by fighting and sectarian conflict. Others suffer from the collapse in basic services caused by the exodus of doctors and hospital staff.

All in all, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees:

UNHCR estimates that more than 4.4 million Iraqis have left their homes. Of these, some 2.2 million Iraqis are displaced internally, while more than 2.2 million have fled to neighbouring states, particularly Syria and Jordan. Many were displaced prior to 2003, but an increasing number are fleeing now. In 2006, Iraqis had become the leading nationality seeking asylum in Europe.

Beyond that, there has already been a record number of American troops killed in Iraq, this year, at a total financial cost that is now estimated to eventually approach two trillion dollars!

So, whether the number of civilian deaths is the approximately 80,000 documented by Iraq Body Count, or the more than a million, as concluded by the ORB Poll, the cost has been enormous, devastating, and beyond our imagining. The violence may be decreasing, but that seems to be at least partially due to successful ethnic cleansing, which has resulted in more than four million refugees. The political outlook remains as bad as ever, and the financial cost is devouring our national budget. Meanwhile, by going into Iraq, we lost our focus on Afghanistan, which is now in danger of falling back into the hands of the Taliban.

As Ricks says:

I think the Bush Administration’s plan is to pass off Iraq to the next administration. They know it isn’t going to end on their watch….

But I’ve heard generals talk about big troop cuts in Iraq for more than four years now. (The first story I did on this was, I think, in Oct. 2003.) So I will believe it when I see it.

 

Obama on Marijuana

On the issue of medicinal marijuana, Obama said that if the “best way to relieve pain and suffering is through medicinal marijuana,” then it’s something he’s open to.

http://www.wibw.com/home/headl…

Not too swift, Obama, but, in our drug-crazed country, truly enlightened.

Curiously the New York Times only reported that Obama was against legalization and admitted he had inhaled (unlike Bill Clinton).

Pure madness. There is a tiny list of people who are allowed to have marijuana but no one is allowed to sell it to them. The first person that finally got on the list had glaucoma. He had a choice between breaking the law and going blind. The lawbreaker had been arrested numerous times. Pain in suffering is hardly the only medicinal effect of marijuana. I believe it has been approved for multiple sclerosis sufferers to help with tremors. In cancer patients, it not only helps with nausea but increases the appetite. In fact, many cannabis doctors missouri have managed to improve the quality of life for many people suffering through debilitating diseases.

Those who would deny the benefits of the purest cbd oil canada has to offer to dying patients are not fit to live in a decent society, let alone be elected to any office IMO. Our grand Supreme Court unanimously denied marijuana had any medical benefit.

There is a rare and very expensive synthetic marijuana that can be taken in pill form. Can you figure out the problem with a very expensive pill for nausea? Our brilliant politicians can’t. Larry Craig might be able to solve the riddle with his expertise on toilets.

Besides the pill causes a very powerful high that patients tend to find unpleasant.

Thanks, Obama.

You didn’t offer much but that beats all the others.

Best, Terry

Kos on my radio show…

So anyway, I finally got out of the South.

Instead of getting in trouble for doing what I want to do on the radio, now it’s part of what they pay me for.

Had a guest on Friday.

More data below the fold.

The midday guy here is a conservative.

I am not.

I got to fill in for him Friday, and I’m covering his timeslot tomorrow as well.

Although I certainly don’t serve his audience what they’re used to.

Anyway, based on some bashing and wingnuttery I’d heard in this daypart on a regular basis, I thought it might perhaps be nice to engage in a discussion of the prospects for Republicans and the underlying factors driving them.

They say, “You never know unless you ask.”

True enough; but they also say “Ask and ye shall receive.”

Download

Big file; not quite 22 meg, about 23 minutes of mp3 audio.

there’s a 4 1/2 minute warmup act – a guy I’d previously board-opped for called in.

Following that, Kos pays us a visit for eighteen or so minutes.

Worth hearing.

 

Weekend News Digest

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Former PM Sharif returns to Pakistan

By SLOBODAN LEKIC, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 15 minutes ago

LAHORE, Pakistan – Exiled former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif returned home to a hero’s welcome Sunday and called on President Gen. Pervez Musharraf to end emergency rule before elections, a fresh challenge to the U.S.-backed leader.

“These (emergency) conditions are not conducive to free and fair elections,” Sharif told reporters at the airport after arriving from Saudi Arabia. “I think the constitution of Pakistan should be restored, and there should be rule of law.”

Sharif, the head of one of the country’s main opposition parties, said he had not negotiated his return with Musharraf, who overthrew him in a 1999 coup. Musharraf expelled Sharif when he first tried come back to Pakistan this year.

2 Candidates, retailers vie for TV time

By DAVID PITT, Associated Press Writer

Sun Nov 25, 11:20 AM ET

DES MOINES, Iowa – In Iowa, ’tis the season for TV pitches, political and commercial. By the time Iowans ring in the New Year, they may be sick of both.

An earlier date for Iowa’s caucuses probably means presidential candidates will run more television ads from mid-November through December, the height of the Christmas shopping season when retailers want to promote sales.

Moving the caucuses up 11 days to Jan. 3 also will force candidates to pay top dollar for TV ads over the holidays and soften their messages to avoid violating the serenity of the season. The same equation applies in New Hampshire, whose first-in-the-nation primary will follow the Iowa caucuses five days later.

3 Fire extinguished on evacuated North Sea oil platform

By Paul Majendie, Reuters

Sun Nov 25, 9:11 AM ET

LONDON (Reuters) – A North Sea oil platform was briefly evacuated on Sunday and around 5,000 barrels per day of crude output shut down after a fire broke out on board.

Ninety of the 159 people on board the Thistle Alpha were evacuated. They were able to return to the rig after the blaze was extinguished. There were no casualties.

Rig operator Petrofac stopped output of Brent crude from the platform, a company spokesman said. Petrofac operates Thistle Alpha on behalf of Swedish company Lundin.

4 Australians wake up to new era after Rudd crushes Howard

by Marc Lavine, AFP

Sun Nov 25, 7:02 AM ET

SYDNEY (AFP) – Australia’s new leader Kevin Rudd vowed Sunday to tackle climate change and Iraq war policy, a day after sweeping veteran prime minister John Howard from power in a stunning election landslide.

Rudd pledged to implement his campaign promises as a new era dawned for Australia after Saturday’s poll ended nearly 12 years of conservative rule by US President George W. Bush’s closest remaining ally in the war in Iraq.

Voters abandoned Howard, 68, who presided over a record economic boom and became Australia’s second longest-serving leader, in a humiliating drubbing in which he is also likely to suffer the indignity of losing his parliamentary seat of 33 years.

5 200 detained in new anti-Putin demo in Russia

by Marina Koreneva, AFP

Sun Nov 25, 11:18 AM ET

SAINT PETERSBURG (AFP) – Russian riot police detained another key opposition figure among 200 demonstrators in Saint Petersburg Sunday, a day after a court jailed opposition leader Garry Kasparov for a similar protest against President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

The disturbances, exactly a week ahead of December 2 parliamentary elections, came 24 hours after police dispersed a similar march of around 2,000 people in the Russian capital Moscow and arrested Kasparov.

A court late Saturday sentenced the former world chess champion to five days in jail and his lawyer told AFP Sunday he was being held at Moscow police headquarters.

6 On nanotechnology, experts see more risks than public

by Marlowe Hood, AFP

49 minutes ago

PARIS (AFP) – In a surprising reversal of roles, nanotechnology scientists outrival the general public in seeing a cause for concern in some aspects of their work, according to a study published Sunday.

Nanotechnology — the science of making things measured in units 10,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair — holds spectacular promise in virtually every sector.

Hundreds of consumer products already contain nano materials, most of which are cosmetics, sunscreens and cleaning products with microscopic particles.

From Yahoo News Most Popular, Most Recommended

7 Ukraine marks Soviet-era famine

By OLGA BONDARUK, Associated Press Writer

Sun Nov 25, 12:40 AM ET

KIEV, Ukraine – Holding candles, thousands of people from all over Ukraine gathered Saturday on a square in Kiev to mourn the millions who died of starvation during a famine engineered by the Soviet authorities 75 years ago.

President Viktor Yushchenko, speaking to the crowd, once again called on the international community to recognize the Holodomor – or death by hunger – as an act of genocide.

“We neither overestimate nor underestimate the scale of this grief,” he said.

8 Wisconsin company recalls beef products

Associated Press

Sun Nov 25, 12:06 AM ET

GREEN BAY, Wis. – A company voluntarily recalled nearly 96,000 pounds of ground beef products after two people were sickened, possibly by the E. coli bacteria, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service said Saturday.

The beef products by American Foods Group include coarse and fine ground beef chuck, sirloin and chop beef. They were distributed to retailers and distributors in Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Virginia.

The problem surfaced after an investigation by the Illinois Department of Health, which was looking into two reports of illnesses.

From Yahoo News Most Popular, Most Viewed

9 French president says China must revalue the yuan

by Nadege Puljak, AFP

1 hour, 51 minutes ago

BEIJING (AFP) – French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged China on Sunday to revalue its currency and improve its record on the environment, hours after arriving in the country for a state visit.

Speaking to French business leaders following private talks with Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao, Sarkozy also said China should play a more active role in resolving the Iran nuclear standoff and other international disputes.

Neither side disclosed details of discussions during an informal dinner between the two leaders on day one of the French president’s three-day visit.

From Yahoo News Most Popular, Most Emailed

10 Panda super couple is super fertile

By ALLISON HOFFMAN, Associated Press Writer

Fri Nov 23, 1:44 PM ET

SAN DIEGO – Giving each other space may not work in every relationship, but it’s what keeps the magic alive for the very fertile giant panda pair at the San Diego Zoo.

Since 2003, Bai Yun and her consort, Gao Gao, have produced three cubs, making them one of the most reproductively successful panda couples ever in captivity. Their youngest offspring, a chubby female, will be named Monday when she reaches 100 days old, following Chinese tradition.

For all but two days of the year, Bai Yun (White Cloud) and Gao Gao (Big Big) lead separate lives, gnawing on bamboo and taking long naps in pens far apart, much as wild pandas – naturally solitary creatures – would hide from each other in mountain forests.

11 Meat, poultry, vegetables feel heat from global warming

by Anil Penna, AFP

Sat Nov 24, 8:54 PM ET

HYDERABAD, India (AFP) – From meat, poultry and milk to potatoes, onions and leafy greens, everything consumed on the world’s dining tables is feeling the heat from climate change, scientists say.

Researchers are trying to establish the extent to which global warming will affect livestock, plant life and staple crops such as rice to bolster their resistance to disease and breed stronger varieties.

The world’s billion poor, whether producers or consumers, will bear the brunt, warned scientists who ended a conference Saturday on agriculture and climate change in Hyderabad, southern India.

12 Scientists urge  -3 billion study of ocean health

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent, Reuters

2 hours, 12 minutes ago

OSLO (Reuters) – Marine scientists called on Sunday for a $2-3 billion study of threats such as overfishing and climate change to the oceans, saying they were as little understood as the Moon.

A better network of satellites, tsunami monitors, drifting robotic probes or electronic tags on fish within a decade could also help lessen the impact of natural disasters, pollution or damaging algal blooms, they said.

“This is not pie in the sky … it can be done,” said Tony Haymet, director of the U.S. Scripps Institution of Oceanography and chairman of the Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans (POGO).

From Yahoo News World

13 Iraq Shiite pol defends Iran against US

By SAMEER N. YACOUB, Associated Press Writer

1 minute ago

BAGHDAD – Iraq’s most influential Shiite politician said Sunday that the U.S had not backed up claims that Iran is fueling violence here, underscoring a wide gap on the issue between Washington and the Shiite-led Baghdad government.

A draft bill to ease curbs on ex-Saddam Hussein loyalists in government services also drew sharp criticism from Shiite lawmakers, opening old wounds at a time when the United States is pressing the Iraqis for compromise for the sake of national unity.

The Americans have long accused the Iranians of arming and training Shiite militias, including some linked to the U.S.-backed government of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

14 Indian protest rocks Malaysia ahead of polls

By Mark Bendeich and Clarence Fernandez, Reuters

Sun Nov 25, 2:52 AM ET

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – Malaysia’s ethnic Indian community staged its biggest anti-government street protest on Sunday when more than 10,000 protesters defied tear gas and water cannon to voice complaints of racial discrimination.

The sheer size of the protest, called by a Hindu rights group, represents a political challenge for the government as it heads toward possible early elections in the next few months.

Ethnic Indians from around the country swarmed into Kuala Lumpur for the rally, despite a virtual lock-down of the capital over the previous three days and warnings from police and the government that people should not take part.

15 Exit polls herald vote cliff-hanger in Croatia

By Igor Ilic, Reuters

1 hour, 7 minutes ago

ZAGREB (Reuters) – Exit polls in Croatia’s tightly contested national election on Sunday gave no sizeable advantage to either of the two main parties.

The opposition Social Democrats (SDP) had 34.6 percent of the votes and the ruling conservative Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) 33.2 percent, according to exit polls based on a sample of 35,000 voters broadcast by state television after voting ended.

If the results are borne out, the SDP would have 62 seats in parliament, and the HDZ 57. However, the HDZ can count on traditional support from Croatians living abroad for few extra seats.

16 Can Rice save her legacy with ‘Hail Mary’ pass?

By Warren P. Strobel, McClatchy Newspapers

1 hour, 55 minutes ago

WASHINGTON – Condoleezza Rice became secretary of state almost three years ago with strong support from President Bush , glamorous reviews in the news media and high hopes from America’s diplomats.

Since then, Pakistani strongman Pervez Musharraf has ignored her pleas and imposed emergency rule, throwing a key counterterrorism ally into turmoil. In Russia , the country Rice prides herself on knowing best, she and Bush appear to have badly misread President Vladimir Putin , who’s restored autocratic rule and his country’s rivalry with America. Her drive for Middle East democracy has stalled in Lebanon and elsewhere, and other big issues, including the environment and relations with East Asia , have been relegated to the back burner.

In her own State Department , Rice’s concept of “transformational diplomacy” is largely forgotten, a fanfare about better public diplomacy has faded and morale is sinking. Rice is under fire for her handling of staffing in Iraq , and the $740 million U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is riddled with problems and has yet to open.

From Yahoo News U.S. News

17 Broadway producers, striking stagehands to resume talks

AFP

Sat Nov 24, 6:55 PM ET

NEW YORK (AFP) – Broadway producers are to hold talks with striking stagehands on Sunday in a bid to break a two-week-long stoppage that has brought the lights down across New York’s theater district.

In a brief statement late Saturday, Charlotte St. Martin, the head of the League of American Theatres and Producers, said simply that talks would resume on Sunday, without specifying exactly when or where.

Stagehands walked out exactly two weeks ago, bringing down the curtain at some 27 Broadway theaters, with disappointed ticket holders arriving to find doors closed and picket lines manned outside.

From Yahoo News Politics

18 Giuliani keeps up spat with Romney

By CHARLES BABINGTON, Associated Press Writer

9 minutes ago

HUDSON, N.H. – The back-and-forth backbiting between Republican presidential rivals Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney spilled over into Sunday as Giuliani contended that the former Massachusetts governor has fumbled on health care and economic matters.

Asked by a diner patron about Romney’s health care program while governor, Giuliani said Romney “made a mistake” by mandating coverage for all Massachusetts residents. “When you mandate it, it ends up costing you much more money,” said Giuliani, a former New York mayor.

“He sort of did Hillary’s plan in Massachusetts,” Giuliani said during the second day of a bus tour of New Hampshire.

19 Thompson proposes tax choice

Associated Press

2 hours, 59 minutes ago

WASHINGTON – Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson proposed an income tax plan Sunday that would allow Americans to choose a simplified system with only two rates: 10 percent and 25 percent.

Thompson’s proposal, announced on “Fox News Sunday,” would allow filers to remain under the current, complex tax code or use the flat tax rates.

Asked whether the plan would cut too deeply into federal revenues, the former Tennessee senator and actor said experts “always overestimate the losses to the government” when taxes are cut.

20 Turkish, US generals discuss Kurd rebels; PM sees ‘critical’ stage

by Sibel Utku Bila AFP

Sat Nov 24, 3:25 PM ET

ANKARA (AFP) – Turkish and US commanders on Saturday discussed measures against Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq, while Turkey’s prime minister said the struggle against the separatists was at a “critical stage.”

Turkish army chief General Yasar Buyukanit and the head of US forces in Europe, General Bantz Craddock, discussed “cooperation issues in the joint struggle against the PKK terrorist organisation, including intelligence sharing,” a Turkish army statement said.

It was the second meeting between top Turkish and US generals this week following US pledges to provide Turkey with real-time intelligence on the movement of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) rebels.

21 Then there was one: US now alone as Kyoto holdout

by Richard Ingham AFP

Sat Nov 24, 3:35 PM ET

PARIS (AFP) – Supporters of the Kyoto Protocol were gleeful on Saturday after Australian elections left the United States in the wilderness as the only major economy to boycott the UN’s climate pact.

The ouster of Prime Minister John Howard stripped President George W. Bush of a key ally barely a week before a conference in Bali, Indonesia, on the world’s response to climate change beyond 2012, they said.

“It’s great news for the Kyoto Protocol,” Shane Rattenburg, Greenpeace’s political director, told AFP.

From Yahoo News Business

22 Idled Broadway electrician talks shop

By MICHAEL KUCHWARA, AP Drama Writer

57 minutes ago

NEW YORK – Seventeen years ago, it was John Kelly’s job as a “followspot” operator to illuminate Cathy Rigby as she flew around the stage in “Peter Pan,” the musical about the boy who refused to grow up.

Kelly ran a second followspot, too, creating the character of Tinkerbell, portrayed by only a beam of light. So what happened when, in the story, the incorrigible Tink almost dies and nearly blinks away? “That was me flashing the light,” Kelly said, explaining one of the other duties of his first job on Broadway.

These days, Kelly is not operating any lights at all – blinking or otherwise.

23 Foxwoods casino dealers to join union

By PAT EATON-ROBB, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 4 minutes ago

HARTFORD, Conn. – Dealers at the Foxwoods Resort Casino have voted to unionize, a move Connecticut’s attorney general says could have a “seismic” impact at Indian casinos across the nation.

The dealers at the tribal casino in southeastern Connecticut voted 1,289 to 852 in favor of joining the United Auto Workers, which represents about 6,000 gambling workers in Detroit, Atlantic City, N.J., and Newport, R.I.

“It’s a significant step forward for gaming employees who work on tribal lands,” said Elizabeth Bunn, the secretary-treasurer of the UAW. “I think it will embolden workers at other tribal casinos.”

24 Flowers and Virgin front-runners for Northern Rock

By Steve Slater, Reuters

Sun Nov 25, 6:45 AM ET

LONDON (Reuters) – Richard Branson’s Virgin Group and U.S. buyout firm J.C. Flowers are the two front-runners to buy ailing British bank Northern Rock (NRK.L), people familiar with situation said on Sunday, but shareholders are unlikely to get much from either.

A consortium led by Virgin would launch a deeply discounted share placing for Northern Rock that would value its shares at between 20 pence and 40 pence each, according to the Sunday Times newspaper. The shares closed at 85.9p on Friday.

The J.C. Flowers proposal includes a “nominal” offer for the shares, Reuters reported earlier this week.

From Yahoo News Science

25 Natural disasters have quadrupled in two decades: study

AFP

Sun Nov 25, 9:39 AM ET

LONDON (AFP) – More than four times the number of natural disasters are occurring now than did two decades ago, British charity Oxfam said in a study Sunday that largely blamed global warming.

“Oxfam… says that rising green house gas emissions are the major cause of weather-related disasters and must be tackled,” the organisation said, adding that the world’s poorest people were being hit the hardest.

The world suffered about 120 natural disasters per year in the early 1980s, which compared with the current figure of about 500 per year, according to the report.

From Yahoo News Technology

26 Software piracy fight makes enemies

By BRIAN BERGSTEIN, AP Technology Writer

57 minutes ago

WASHINGTON – Michael Gaertner worried he could lose his company. A group called the Business Software Alliance had written him to claim that his 10-person architectural firm in Galveston, Texas, was using unlicensed software.

The letter demanded $67,000 – most of one year’s profit – or else the BSA would seek more in court.

An analysis by The Associated Press reveals that targeting small businesses is a lucrative strategy for the Business Software Alliance, the main global copyright-enforcement watchdog for such companies as Microsoft Corp., Adobe Systems Inc. and Symantec Corp.

Of the $13 million that the BSA reaped in software violation settlements with North American companies last year, almost 90 percent came from small businesses, the AP found.

27 How the BSA nets piracy suspects

By BRIAN BERGSTEIN, AP Technology Writer

1 hour, 16 minutes ago

WASHINGTON – The Business Software Alliance collects tens of millions of dollars in settlements from companies it accuses of software piracy, but it doesn’t have to file lawsuits to do it. Instead the BSA usually gets companies to convict themselves through a “self audit.”

The BSA generally begins investigating businesses after a tip from an employee. Software vendors can also initiate or lend credence to a complaint if they tell the BSA that an organization has, for example, bought suspiciously fewer software licenses than it has employees.

Next, a law firm representing the alliance will send a company a letter informing its management that it is suspected of violating software copyrights, a crime that carries penalties of up to $150,000 per infringed work.

The letters will then state that the BSA is willing to avoid court and settle amicably – if the company audits its computers to see whether they contain unlicensed copies of software made by the group’s members.

28 Anti-copying programs may slow piracy

By BRIAN BERGSTEIN, AP Technology Writer

1 hour, 18 minutes ago

If the experience of the world’s largest software vendor is any guide, the industry’s best hope for reducing piracy rests with anti-copying technologies rather than in policing the legalistic user agreements that restrict how software can be used.

While a copyright crackdown by the Business Software Alliance and other industry players has been in force for years, piracy rates – as measured by BSA-commissioned studies – have stopped falling. So a few years ago, Microsoft Corp. began concentrating harder on locking software down through a program it calls its Genuine Software Initiative.

The technology has provoked some hostility, because it enables Microsoft to remotely examine user computers. After analyzing such information as the computer’s manufacturer, hard drive serial number and Windows product identification, Microsoft can block access to certain software functions if it suspects the product was illegally copied.

Pony Party: Sunday music retrospective

Yes



Long Distance Runaround

I only possess two Yes albums, Fragile and Tales from Topographic Oceans, so it is from them that these pieces are chosen.  For people not familiar with Yes, the works tend to be lengthy.

For anyone expecting Niel Young, that was this morning. 🙂



Roundabout



Heart of the Sunrise



Excerpt from Ritual (Nous Sommes Du Soleil)

Please do not recommend a Pony Party when you see one.  There will be another along in a few hours.

Coming to America, SF meetup?

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

What does America mean to me?

Chinese food and a meeting with mutants!

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I need to return to the land and city of my birth. I sort of dread leaving my dusty little Mexican coastal town and plunging back into the sea of gringos, lol. But it will also be great to see friends and family….and even you guys! I’ll be getting in too late to get over to Sallycat’s meetup in Marin, but if any of you wish to join OTB and I for a nice dinner on the third or fourth of December in SF, let’s work out the details!

Globalization, Trade And NAFTA: A Defense of Trade Agreements

Free trade is good. Does anyone disagree? Even “fair traders” agree today. We do not hear about nakedly protectionist domestic content legislation anymore. The “fair traders” argue instead for the need for a “fair playing field” on issues like environmental and labor standards.

But is this new emphasis on equal labor and environmental standards really about anything but protectionism? Is there really an expectation of that countries like Peru, Mexico and the Central American countries (not to mention China and India) will meet US labor and environmental standards? the irony is of course that this would be a form of erstwhile globalization – an attempt to impost US standards on the Thrid World – if it were sincere. It is not. It is just a new way of defending an old idea – protectionism.

I think the evidence of this is obvious – in no other context do we see a drive for higher labor and environmental standards in the Third World. Consider the issue of climate change:

. . . George Bush pulled the US out of the Kyoto treaty, which requires 36 industrial nations to cut greenhouse emissions by at least 5 per cent from 1990 levels by 2012. The US president says Kyoto unfairly burdens rich countries while exempting developing ones such as China and India.

Developing nations say rich states built up their economies without emissions restraints and argue that less-developed countries should have the same opportunity to establish their economies now.

But as emissions from places such as China and India grow, environmentalists say action by the developed world alone will not be enough to stop the warming trend.

Does anyone think George Bush shares the concern of environmentalists on this? Or is it an excuse? And does anyone really think Mexico, Peru and the Central American countries are comparable to China and India on this? Of course not. This is pretext for protextionism.

More.

And the reasons are clear, no one is a saint. Everyone looks out for their own interests. It so happens that for the MAJORITY of Americans, free trade is a clear benefit on many levels. Alan Blinder explains:

. . . Suppose the average American worker earns ten dollars per hour, while the average Japanese worker earns just six dollars per hour. Won't free trade make it impossible to defend the higher American wage? Won't there instead be a leveling down until, say, both American and Japanese workers earn eight dollars per hour? The answer, once again, is no. And specialization is part of the reason.

If there were only one industry and occupation in which people could work, then free trade would indeed force American wages close to Japanese levels if Japanese workers were as good as Americans (and who doubts that?). But modern economies are composed of many industries and occupations. If America concentrates its employment where it does best, there is no reason why American wages cannot remain far above Japanese wages for a long time—even though the two nations trade freely. A country's wage level depends fundamentally on the productivity of its labor force, not on its trade policy. As long as American workers remain more skilled and better educated, work with more capital, and use superior technology, they will continue to earn higher wages than their Japanese counterparts. If and when these advantages end, the wage gap will disappear. Trade is a mere detail that helps ensure that American labor is employed where, in Adam Smith's phrase, it has some advantage.

Those who are still not convinced should recall that Japan's trade surplus with the United States widened precisely as the wage gap between the two countries was disappearing. If cheap Japanese labor was stealing American jobs, why did the theft intensify as the wage gap closed? The answer, of course, is that Japanese productivity was growing at enormous rates. The remarkable upward march of Japanese productivity both raised Japanese wages relative to American wages and turned Japan into a ferocious competitor. To think that we can forestall the inevitable by closing our borders is to participate in a cruel self-deception.

Americans should appreciate the benefits of free trade more than most people, for we inhabit the greatest free trade zone in the world. Michigan manufactures cars; New York provides banking; Texas pumps oil and gas. The fifty states trade freely with one another, and that helps them all enjoy great prosperity. Indeed, one reason why the United States did so much better economically than Europe for two centuries is that we had free movement of goods and services while the European countries “protected” themselves from their neighbors. To appreciate the magnitudes involved, try to imagine how much your personal standard of living would suffer if you were not allowed to buy any goods or services that originated outside your home state.

A slogan occasionally seen on bumper stickers argues, “Buy American, save your job.” This is grossly misleading for two main reasons. First, the costs of saving jobs in this particular way are enormous. Second, it is doubtful that any jobs are actually saved in the long run.

Many estimates have been made of the cost of “saving jobs” by protectionism. While the estimates differ widely across industries, they are almost always much larger than the wages of the protected workers. For example, one study estimated that in 1984 U.S. consumers paid $42,000 annually for each textile job that was preserved by import quotas, a sum that greatly exceeded the average earnings of a textile worker. That same study estimated that restricting foreign imports cost $105,000 annually for each automobile worker's job that was saved, $420,000 for each job in TV manufacturing, and $750,000 for every job saved in the steel industry. Yes, $750,000 a year!

While Americans may be willing to pay a price to save jobs, spending such enormous sums is plainly irrational. If you doubt that, imagine making the following offer to any steelworker who lost his job to foreign competition: we will give you severance pay of $750,000—not annually, but just once—in return for a promise never to seek work in a steel mill again. Can you imagine any worker turning the offer down? Is that not sufficient evidence that our present method of saving steelworkers' jobs is mad?

But the situation is actually worse, for a little deeper thought leads us to question whether any jobs are really saved overall. It is more likely that protectionist policies save some jobs by jeopardizing others. Why? First, protecting one American industry imposes higher costs on others. For example, quotas on imports of semiconductors sent the prices of memory chips skyrocketing in the eighties, thereby damaging the computer industry. Steel quotas force U.S. automakers to pay more for materials, making them less competitive.

Second, efforts to protect favored industries from foreign competition may induce reciprocal actions in other countries, thereby limiting American access to foreign markets. In that case export industries pay the price for protecting import-competing industries.

Third, there are the little-understood, but terribly important, effects of trade barriers on the value of the dollar. If we successfully restrict imports, Americans will spend less on foreign goods. With fewer dollars offered for sale on the world's currency markets, the value of the dollar will rise relative to that of other currencies. At that point unprotected industries start to suffer because a higher dollar makes U.S. goods less competitive in world markets. Once again, America's ability to export is harmed.

On balance the conclusion seems clear and compelling: while protectionism is sold as job saving, it probably really amounts to job swapping. It protects jobs in some industries only by destroying jobs in others.

I think this is an unremarkable argument in that is is blindingly obvious. But let's consider what some smart people who understand this but are more torn on the subject now think. Let's consider Paul Krugman's take from a 1990s MIT paper:

. . . One way to answer the demand for harmonization of standards, then, is to go back to basics. The fundamental logic of free trade can be stated a number of different ways, but one particularly useful version – the one that James Mill stated even before Ricardo – is to say that international trade is really just a production technique, a way to produce importables indirectly by first producing exportables, then exchanging them. There will be gains to be had from this technique as long as world relative prices differ from domestic opportunity costs – regardless of the source of that difference. That is, it does not matter from the point of view of the national gains from trade whether other countries have different relative prices because they have different resources, different technologies, different tastes, different labor laws, or different environmental standards. All that matters is that they be different – then we can gain from trading with them.

This way of looking at things, among its other virtues, offers an en passant refutation of the instinctive feeling of most non-economists that a country that imposes strong environmental or labor standards will necessarily experience difficulties when it trades with other countries that are not equally high-minded. The point is that all that matters for the gains from trade are the prices at which you trade – it makes absolutely no difference what forces lie behind those prices. Suppose your country has been cheerfully exporting airplanes and importing clothing in return, believing that the comparative advantage of your trading partners in clothing is “fairly” earned through exceptional productive efficiency. Then one day an investigative journalist, hot in pursuit of Kathie Lee Gifford, reveals that the clothing is actually produced in 60-cent-an-hour sweatshops that foul the local air and water. (If they hurt the global environment, say by damaging the ozone layer, that is another matter – but that is not the issue).You may be outraged; but the beneficial trade you thought you had yesterday has not become any less economically beneficial to your country now that you know that it is based on these objectionable practices. Perhaps you want to impose your standards on these matters, but this has nothing to do with trade per se – and there are worse things in the world than low wages and local pollution to excite our moral indignation. . . .

Krugman is not necessarily endorsing these views but he is accepting that they are factually correct. What has Krugman said more recently? This:

Let me spare you the usual economist's sermon on the virtues of free trade, except to say this: although old fallacies about international trade have been making a comeback lately (yes, Senator Charles Schumer, that means you), it is as true as ever that the U.S. economy would be poorer and less productive if we turned our back on world markets. Furthermore, if the United States were to turn protectionist, other countries would follow. The result would be a less hopeful, more dangerous world.

Yet it's bad economics to pretend that free trade is good for everyone, all the time. ''Trade often produces losers as well as winners,'' declares the best-selling textbook in international economics (by Maurice Obstfeld and yours truly). The accelerated pace of globalization means more losers as well as more winners; workers' fears that they will lose their jobs to Chinese factories and Indian call centers aren't irrational.

Addressing those fears isn't protectionist. On the contrary, it's an essential part of any realistic political strategy in support of world trade. That's why the Nelson Report, a strongly free-trade newsletter on international affairs, recently had kind words for John Kerry. It suggested that he is basically a free trader who understands that ''without some kind of political safety valve, Congress may yet be stampeded into protectionism, which benefits no one.''

. . . The point is that free trade is politically viable only if it's backed by effective job creation measures and a strong domestic social safety net. And that suggests that free traders should be more worried by the prospect that the policies of the current administration will continue than by the possibility of a Democratic replacement.

What is Krugman saying here? He is saying that attacks on free trade and trade agreements is scapegoating (like attacks on immigration, legal or otherwise) for failed domestic policies that have caused worker discontent, income inequality, economic hardship and uncertainty.

He argues that of course a politician can not be purely rational and intellectual on this issue but should focus on the issues that can effect real change to the problems besieging America.

In short, free trade is not the problem. The policies of the Bush Administration are the problem. To further demonstrate this, let us consider the attacks on NAFTA. John Edwards falsely claims NAFTA has cost the United States a million jobs:

John Edwards made this claim about the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA): “It's cost us a million jobs.”

That's a disputed estimate. Other economic studies have produced far lower numbers. The million job figure comes from the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank in Washington with ties to the labor movement. EPI estimated that the growth of exports since 1994 has supported an additional 1 million jobs in the US, while imports have displaced domestic production that would have supported 2 million jobs, leaving a net loss of 1 million. EPI's detractors state that EPI's estimate assumes that NAFTA is to blame for 100% of the growth in the trade deficit between the US and both Canada and Mexico and that it ignores other factors.

Whatever the effects of NAFTA, the US has gained nearly 26 million jobs since the agreement took effect on Jan. 1, 1994, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Consider the CBO Report on NAFTA:

The challenge in assessing NAFTA is to separate its effects from the effects of other factors that have influenced trade between the United States and Mexico. Those factors include the considerable economic and political turmoil that occurred in Mexico in the early post-NAFTA years–turmoil that, for the most part, was unrelated to the agreement–and the long U.S. economic expansion that lasted throughout most of the 1990s. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) used a statistical model of U.S.-Mexican trade to separate out the effects of those factors and reached the following conclusions:

U.S. trade with Mexico was growing for many years before NAFTA went into effect, and it would have continued to do so with or without the agreement. That growth dwarfs the effects of NAFTA.

NAFTA has increased both U.S. exports to and imports from Mexico by a growing amount each year. Those increases are small, and consequently, their effects on employment are also small.

The expanded trade resulting from NAFTA has raised the United States' gross domestic product very slightly. (The effect on Mexican GDP has also been positive and probably similar in magnitude. Because the Mexican economy is much smaller than the U.S. economy, however, that effect represents a much larger percentage increase for the Mexican economy.)

Some observers look at NAFTA's effects on the U.S. balance of trade with Mexico (the difference between the values of exports and imports) as an indication of the economic benefit or harm of the agreement. The balance of trade dropped substantially after NAFTA took effect and has declined further in more recent years, leading some people to conclude that NAFTA has been bad for the U.S. economy.

However, changes in the balance of trade with a partner country are a poor indicator of the economic benefit or harm of a trade agreement. A better indicator is changes in the levels of trade. Increases in trade–both exports and imports–lead to greater economic output because they allow each nation to concentrate its labor, capital, and other resources on the economic pursuits at which it is most productive relative to other countries. Benefits from the greater output are shared among the countries whose trade increases, regardless of the effects on the trade balance with any particular country. Such effects do not translate into corresponding effects on the balance of trade with the world as a whole; for a country as big as the United States, that balance is largely unaffected by restrictions on trade with individual countries the size of Mexico. Moreover, even declines in a country's trade balance with the world have little net effect on that country's output and employment because the immediate effects of those declines are offset by the effects of increased net capital inflows from abroad that must accompany those declines.(2)

Furthermore, CBO's analysis indicates that the decline in the U.S. trade balance with Mexico was caused by economic factors other than NAFTA: the crash of the peso at the end of 1994, the associated recession in Mexico, the rapid growth of the U.S. economy throughout most of the 1990s, and another Mexican recession in late 2000 and 2001. NAFTA, by contrast, has had an extremely small effect on the trade balance with Mexico, and that effect has been positive in most years.

Besides increasing trade, NAFTA has had a substantial effect on international investment. It has done so for at least two reasons. First, it eliminated a number of Mexican restrictions on foreign investment and ownership of capital. Second, by abolishing tariffs and quotas, NAFTA made Mexico a more profitable place to invest, particularly in plants for final assembly of products destined for the United States. However, it is difficult–if not impossible–to separate the increases in foreign investment in Mexico that resulted from NAFTA from the increases caused by prior liberalization of Mexico's trade and other economic policies. Modeling such investment flows and their effects on the U.S. economy is similarly difficult. Consequently, this paper does not examine NAFTA's effects on investment in any detail but instead concentrates on the agreement's effects on trade.

NAFTA has benefitted all of the countries involved on issues as diverse as economic development, creating markets for American goods, IMMIGRATION (if there are jobs in Mexico, immigration to the US becomes less attractive) and just plain fairness and common good.

Of course, as Krugman states, there are winners in losers in trade, just as there are in all free markets. The losers feel it directly and make considerable noise about their losses. This is their right in a free political system. The winners do not see it or think about it. Consider Iowa:

Iowa's ambivalence is all the more remarkable because the state is on the whole a big winner from global trade. “Iowa, as much as any other state, is on the plus side of the ledger,” says James Leach, a 30-year Republican congressman from Iowa who now runs Harvard University's Institute of Politics. “It would be highly ironic if pro-protectionist candidates prevailed in the Iowa caucuses.” Trade wasn't always such a high priority: In the 2004 Iowa caucus, Richard Gephardt, the most outspoken Democrat on the issue, attracted so few votes he subsequently pulled out of the race.

The fallacy in the analysis of Jim Leach is that the beneficiaries of free trade do not associate it with free trade policies. Those who have suffered from free trade DO.

The reality is that the populist rhetoric against trade agreements is just more in the base line of Know Nothingism that has historically marred populist movements. This has always been the dangerous side of populism.

There is no rational argument against NAFTA, CAFTA or free trade. There is the emotional populist argument. It is a political reality, as Paul Krugman states, but it is not based on reality.

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