Author: BooMan

DeLay Booked, Printed, Bailed Out

Posted by | Oct 20, 2005 |


U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay on Thursday turned himself in at the Harris County sheriff’s bonding office, where he was photographed, fingerprinted and released on bond on state conspiracy and money laundering charges.

“He posted $10,000 bond and they have left the bonding office,” Lt. John Martin with the sheriff’s department said. link

I hoped to have a better booking photo of DeLay than the above. Maybe something more like Nick Nolte’s booking photo. But I’ll take what I can get.

Read More

Can Cheney Go to Jail?: Spiro Agnew

Posted by | Oct 20, 2005 |

Can Cheney be indicted and sent to jail? Yes. The question was decided back in the 1970’s, when it became clear that Vice-President Spiro Agnew was a tax-cheat and an extortionist/bribe-taker.

…on April 10, 1973, the vice president called Haldeman to his office to report a problem…

The U.S. attorney in Maryland, investigating illegal campaign contributions and kickbacks, had questioned Jerome Wolff, Agnew’s former aide. Wolff had kept verbatim accounts of meetings during which Agnew discussed raising funds from those who had received state contracts. Agnew swore that “it wasn’t shakedown stuff, it was merely going back to get support from those who had benefitted from the Administration.”

It was a bad time for the Nixon administration, as they were already trying to fend off the Watergate investigation.

:::flip:::

Read More

More Shame on our Nation

Posted by | Oct 19, 2005 |

Psst. Don’t tell the Muslims, or they might get mad, riot, and kill some people.

Airing tonight, on Australian television:

US soldiers in Afghanistan burnt the bodies of dead Taliban and taunted their opponents about the corpses, in an act deeply offensive to Muslims and in breach of the Geneva conventions.

An investigation by SBS’s Dateline program, to be aired tonight, filmed the burning of the bodies.

It also filmed a US Army psychological operations unit broadcasting a message boasting of the burnt corpses into a village believed to be harbouring Taliban.

According to an SBS translation of the message, delivered in the local language, the soldiers accused Taliban fighters near Kandahar of being “cowardly dogs”. “You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burnt. You are too scared to retrieve their bodies. This just proves you are the lady boys we always believed you to be,” the message reportedly said.

“You attack and run away like women. You call yourself Taliban but you are a disgrace to the Muslim religion, and you bring shame upon your family. Come and fight like men instead of the cowardly dogs you are.”

The burning of a body is a deep insult to Muslims. Islam requires burial within 24 hours.

Our psy-ops guys are so clever. They really excel at convincing Muslims that we have respect for their religion, culture, and status as human beings.

Add this to list of Geneva violations, and let’s get the impeachment rolling.

Update [2005-10-19 18:37:51 by BooMan]: also see Spiderleaf’s diary on this topic.

Read More

Holy Crap: My Pre-Indictment Stress Syndrome is Acting Up

Posted by | Oct 18, 2005 |

Larry Johnson wrote me:

Had lunch today with a person who has a direct tie to one of the folks facing indictment in the Plame affair. There are 22 files that Fitzgerald is looking at. These include Stephen Hadley, Karl Rove, Lewis Libby, Dick Cheney, and Mary Matalin (there are others of course). Hadley has told friends he expects to be indicted. No wonder folks are nervous at the White House.

after asking whether Larry meant 22 counts against an unknown number of people, Larry told me:

My understanding is that Fitzgerald has identified 22 people who could be indicted. They all could be indicted and none could be indicted. My friend told me that Hadley fully expects he will be indicted.

If Larry is right, this will be the biggest political event since Nixon resigned.

Update [2005-10-18 17:8:30 by BooMan]: US News & World Report

Sparked by today’s Washington Post story that suggests Vice President Cheney’s office is involved in the Plame-CIA spy link investigation, government officials and advisers passed around rumors that the vice president might step aside and that President Bush would elevate Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

“It’s certainly an interesting but I still think highly doubtful scenario,” said a Bush insider. “And if that should happen,” added the official, “there will undoubtedly be those who believe the whole thing was orchestrated – another brilliant Machiavellian move by the VP.”

Said another Bush associate of the rumor, “Yes. This is not good.”

Read More

What is Framing in a Political Context?

Posted by | Oct 18, 2005 |

I’ve been debating Lakoff again. Lord help me.

Understanding Lakoff’s framing theories involves understanding basic logic. And I don’t feel like giving an academic explanation of all the intricacies of symbolic logic. So, I’ll just use layman’s terms.

We are all familiar with polls. We all know that the result of a poll can be affected by how the question is asked. But to fairly judge the differential effect between two phrasings, the phrasings must be logically equivalent. Otherwise, the respondent may only be reacting to distortion or non sequiturs.

Here is an example:

How important is tax relief to you?
How important are revenue cuts to you?

You will discover that more people want ‘relief’ than want ‘cuts’. The difference in the polls is a ‘framing effect’. It has zero basis in the merits of reducing tax rates, and can only be explained by the differential visceral reaction to how the question was phrased.

That is what political framing is. It can actually be measured. But politicians (especially Republicans) do not stick to equivalent arguments. They distort. So, they might ask:

“Are you sick of spending your hard earned money to support able-bodied people who can’t find a job?”

That question is not synonymous with asking how important tax relief is to you. Still, it is possible to make an equivalent statement while using inflammatory language:

Affirmative Action=reverse discrimination

In this case, a policy of affirmative action (in practice) will mean that white men are at a competitive disadvantage. Since white men are usually at a default advantage and tend to discriminate against non-whites and women, this is a reversal of the norm. Therefore, the two phrases are fairly equivalent, and they are both playing on visceral reactions to make their appeal. ‘Affirmative’ and ‘action’ are generally positive words, while ‘reverse’ and ‘discrimination’ are generally negative words.

Not surprisingly, many more people support affirmative action than support reverse discrimination, even though the two phrases refer to the same policies.

The Republicans are careful to frame their policies negatively when they are against something, and positively when they support something. So, they talk about the ‘death-tax’ because they oppose it. They talk about ‘tax relief’ because they support tax cuts. And if their policies are unsupportable, they call them the opposite of what they are: like ‘healthy forests’.

We can see how important language is. We already knew that you can convince people by lying and distorting. Making people associate policies with something bad will increase people’s opposition to those policies, even if the association is basically dishonest.

The Democrats should frame their policies in a positive light, and they should frame the Republican’s policies in a negative light. But the proper response to Republican dishonesty is not to play their game of obfuscation. The proper response is to stick up for their policies with self-confidence, without apology, and, in doing so, to project conviction and strength. The effort to out-spin, out-package, and out-deceive the Republicans is a mistake.

Read More