BRINGING OUT THE DEMOCRATIC DAGGERS

The New York Times reports that Howard Dean is acting huffy:

Dean… implied that many of his supporters, particularly young people, might stay home in November if another Democrat’s name ends up on the ballot.

“I don’t know where they’re going to go, but they’re certainly not going to vote for a conventional Washington politician,” he said.

Though Dr. Dean has repeatedly said he would back whichever Democrat wins the nomination, he said Sunday that support was “not transferable anymore” and that endorsements, including his own, “don’t guarantee anything.”

Josh Marshall takes Dean to task:

The price of admission to the Democratic primary race is a pledge of committed support to whomever wins the nomination, period. (The sense of entitlement to other Democrats’ support comes after you win the nomination, not before.) If Dean can’t sign on that dotted-line, he has no business asking for the party’s nomination.

Marshall has a valid point — the attacks that John McCain took in 2000 were far worse than anything Dean’s experienced to date. Despite this, McCain was on the podium at the Republican convention with a full-throated (well… at least three-quarters-throated) endorsement of George W. Bush — even though he’d had minor surgery earlier that week and had to wear a bandage on his face. If Dean is acting petulant now, imagine how he’ll act as the Democratic standard-bearer.

Meanwhile Wesley Clark tries to woo the Clinton wing of the party (posted by Daniel Drezner).

SHOULD WE HAVE A COW?

Tim Luckhurst writes at The New Republic (subscription required) that the government’s reaction to the mad cow (BSE) case sounds spooky:

Today, comments like those made by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman are producing an alarming feeling of déjà vu in Britain. Her insistence last week that “[p]eople should continue to feel very confident in the safety of our meat supply” was powerfully–and frighteningly–reminiscent of the tone adopted by British officials [during the outbreak of BSE in the U.K. in the late eighties].

On the other hand, Sandy Szwarc at Tech Central Station echoes Douglas Adams and says “DON’T PANIC”:

We can be assured of one thing when it comes to the safety of our food: media hysteria will be inversely proportional to actual risks….

Those fretting about mad cow probably think nothing of taking a bath (which kills 320 Americans a year), walking downstairs (which kills 1,421 Americans annually) or driving their car (which kills 42,000 of us each year). Our odds of getting vCJD from eating British beef, said the CDC, is about one in ten billion….

[T]he USDA commissioned a study by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis to study worst case scenarios. Their report found that should BSE be introduced in the U.S., measures taken during the last five years by the government and industry, while not foolproof, will arrest and eradicate the disease. The risk isn’t zero, said David Ropeik, director of risk communication, “but it’s as close to zero as you can get.”

The cow in question was born before these measures were taken, but the executive summary of the study cited by Sczwarc has the following info:

The import of one sick animal yields on average less than one new BSE case in 20 years and the disease and the disease is likely to be quickly eliminated from the U.S. following its introduction. Similarly, there appears to be no potential for an epidemic of BSE resulting from scrapie, chronic wasting disease, or other crossspecies transmission of similar diseases found in the U.S. Even if they existed, these hypothetical sources of BSE could give rise to only one to two cases per year.

Remember this study when lax regulation is blamed for this (posted by Daniel Drezner).

UPDATE: Scott Ratzan has more in the New York Times.

PROFITEERING!! PROFITEERING!! ER… NEVER MIND

The New York Times, which has been aggressive in covering the contracts given to Halliburton during the Iraq war, comes to the following conclusion about their performance in Iraq:

An examination of what has grown into a multibillion-dollar contract to restore Iraq’s oil infrastructure shows no evidence of profiteering by Halliburton, the Houston-based oil services company, but it does demonstrate a struggle between price controls and the uncertainties of war, with price controls frequently losing.

A little later on:

So far this year, Halliburton’s profits from Iraq have been minimal. The company’s latest report to the Securities and Exchange Commission shows $1.3 billion in revenues from work in Iraq and $46 million in pretax profits for the first nine months of 2003.

It shouldn’t be surprising that price controls have fallen by the wayside in a place where speed is important — click here for more background (posted by Daniel Drezner).

PRAGMATISM OR PRINCIPLE?

The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times both had Sunday stories suggesting that the Bush administration is drastically scaling back its original plan to remake Iraq in order to transfer sovereignty to the Iraqis by the June timetable.

The theme in both stories is that this is due to pragmatism triumphing over neocon principle. A few facts to mess up that meme, however. First, xfcber-pragmatist Brent Scowcroft — who was not particularly eager to invade Iraq this time around — sides with the neocons on wanting a more deliberate transition in the Los Angeles Times. Second, the transfer of sovereignty is not the drop-dead date for restructuring Iraq’s polity — there’s even the possibility that creating a sovereign government would facilitate rather than impede reforms. Third, what’s not mentioned in either story is that beyond Karl Rove, the “international community” has been pushing for an early transfer of sovereignty as well. Saudi Arabia, for one, won’t talk substantively about Iraqi debt reduction until a sovereign government has been established in Baghdad.

Given that large numbers of U.S. troops are going to be in Iraq for the duration, and given that this presence (and not the sovereignty transfer) will keep Iraq on the front pages, could the quicker transition have anything to do with…. international cooperation?

That last sentence reads better if you say it like Dr. Evil, by the way. (posted by Daniel Drezner)

STRAIGHT EYE SUBBING FOR THE QUEER GUY

Hi, my name is Dan, and I’ll be your guest-blogger at the Daily Dish for the week. Like Andrew, I have a Ph.D. in political science, an affiliation with The New Republic, share my house with a beagle, and blog on a regular basis. Also like Andrew, I have a great deal of sympathy for the Bush administration’s grand strategy, qualms with the implementation of that strategy, and bigger qualms about the emerging Republican addiction to big government. Unlike Andrew, I’m straight (though that Ted Allen seems like he’d be a delightful dinner companion).

So let the real blogging commence! (posted by Daniel Drezner)

MOYERS REFUSES THE AWARD

In a dramatic gesture, Bill Moyers has refused the prestigious Begala Award prize. Despite the fact that the Nation reported Moyers making the statement attributed to him, Moyers writes to say he didn’t say exactly that. It’s a mystery how the Nation reporter misheard it. Here’s Moyers’ email clarifying what he said:

During a long life in journalism I have made my share of errors, most often when I pass on a second-hand report that I have not myself checked out. I trust that is what happened in your “Weekly Dish” of December 26 which also appeared as an op ed piece in the Washington Times. You quote me as saying something that I did not say. In bestowing on me the Begala Award [for excessive left-wing rhetoric], you have me saying “I think this [ the Bush administration] is a deliberate, intentional destruction of the United States of America.” But I didn’t say that or anything close to it. If you or your nominator had bothered to check, you would have discovered that that quote was incorrectly attributed to me by a journalist covering a speech that I made in Washington on June 4. Check it out yourself: “As a citizen, I don’t like the consequences of this crusade, but I respect the conservatives for their successful strategy in gaining control of the national agenda. Their stated and open aim is to strip from government all its functions except those that reward their rich and privileged benefactors. They are quite candid about it. Their leading strategist in Washington, Grover Norquist, in commenting on the fiscal crisis in the states and its effect on schools and poor people, said,’I hope one of them’ – one of the states – ‘goes bankrupt.’ So much for compassionate conservatism. But at least Norquist says what he means and means what he says. The White House pursues the same homicidal dream without saying so. Instead of shrinking the government, they’re filling the bathtub with so much debt that it floods the house, waterlogs the economy, and washes away services that for decades have lifted millions of Americans out of destitution and into the middle class. And what happens once the public’s property has been flooded? Privatize it. Sell it at a discounted rate to their corporate cronies. It is the most radical assault on the notion of one nation, indivisible, that has occurred in our lifetime. I simply don’t understand it — or the malice in which it is steeped…” As I say, I have made such mistakes in failing to confirm some second-hand reports that I did not myself substantiate; I have tried to the best of my ability to acknowledge them in the same venue where I made them, including on the air. I trust you will find a way in this instance to acknowledge that you erred, too.

On second thought, let’s give Moyers the prize anyway. I wasn’t at the speech, so I’ll take Moyers word against a reporter’s. But the notion that the administration is deliberately and maliciously destroying the the public good for private interests is still juicy enough. It’s new year – time to be compassionate toward the rhetorically-challenged. Moyers can keep the award. But next year, Bill, try a little harder. No help from the Nation, ok?

A GUEST HOST

We’ve never done it before but next week, we’ll have a guest blogger dishing daily, while I take a brief break. He’s Dan Drezner, one of the smartest, sanest, freshest bloggers around. You can check his site out here, as I do on a daily basis. I’ll be back Monday January 5. Meanwhile, here are the remaining award winners of 2003. Thanks for the hundreds of nominations sent in over the year. The finalists are, I’m sure you’ll agree, particularly distinguished in their various categories this year.

DERBYSHIRE AWARD WINNER 2003: “Eminem may be the ‘people’s choice,’ but he is as harmful to America as any al Qaeda fanatic.” – Bill O’Reilly.

DERBYSHIRE AWARD RUNNER UP: “Our original Constitution divided the powers of the government and put restrictions on those powers, in a Bill of Rights, and in the retention by the states of much of their sovereign power. Lincoln’s War overthrew that Constitution. When 11 “free and independent states” sought peacefully to depart from the Union, they were dragged back in, by invasion and war. By 1884, Woodrow Wilson was writing in his “Congressional Government,” “we are really living under a constitution essentially different from that which we have been so long worshiping as our own peculiar and incomparable possession.” – Pat Buchanan, yearning for the Confederacy.

DERBYSHIRE AWARD HONORABLE MENTION: “Even the Tony show’s host, married Australian actor Hugh Jackman, has a gay connection. He’ll debut on Broadway this fall in “The Boy From Oz,” a musical based on the life of the late bisexual Australian songwriter and performer Peter Allen. The entire show seemed to announce that the powers that be in the theater community are steering the industry from mass culture to subculture. Broadway is no longer a stage. It’s a sewer.” – Brent Bozell.

POSEUR OF THE YEAR 2003: “Lee Siegel, Lee Siegel, Lee Siegel, Lee Siegel, Lee Siegel, Lee Siegel … Oh! There you are. This “Diary” creeps up on you in the most unguarded moments. I recently improved my condition from self-intoxication to self-obsession, and I was just doing some lunchtime exercises-I ate lunch around 1:30 today; my cat Maya poached some salmon from Citarella-meant to bring me to the next stage, which is self-absorption. Dr. von Hoffenshtoffen, whom I mentioned yesterday, devised these “identity calisthenics,” as he calls them. I think they’re helping, but this Diary, with its emphasis on “I,” gave me a “soul hernia” (another Hoffenshtoffenian phrase)… So who is this person staring back at me from the mirror in my bathroom? My lips are small and thin; Maya likes the way the upper lip protrudes slightly over the lower one. Carmencita likes the lower lip-but she also wants me to wear cologne. A certain roundness and softness to my face always bothered me. I wanted to look hard and lean and chiseled, just as I wanted to have that invincible steel will of Central European intellectuals like Arthur Koestler, and not all that moist, tremulous high (and low) feeling I’ve inherited from my Russian-Jewish forebears. Everyone in my family is vibrato; there is not a note blanche to be found in our entire genetic pool. Weeping was a form of communication. One sob meant hello, two sobs meant good-bye, three sobs meant “There’s a call for you,” and so forth. Hoffenshtoffen, who gets bored by lachrymosity, says that I was born with a silver violin in my mouth.” – Lee Siegel, in Slate.

POSEUR AWARD RUNNER UP 2003: “This eulogy owes nothing to artifice or chance. It has ripened inside me since childhood. From the bottom of my pockets, stuck to the back of my smock, hidden in the corner of abacuses, poetry gushed out-…” – Dominique de Villepin, from the preface of his new book, “In Praise Of Those Who Stole The Fire.”

SONTAG AWARD WINNER 2003 (for egregious moral equivalence in the war on terror)

“My anti-Americanism has become almost uncontrollable. It has possessed me, like a disease. It rises up in my throat like acid reflux, that fashionable American sickness. I now loathe the United States and what it has done to Iraq and the rest of the helpless world. I can hardly bear to see the faces of Bush and Rumsfeld, or to watch their posturing body language, or to hear their self-satisfied and incoherent platitudes. The liberal press here has done its best to make them appear ridiculous, but these two men are not funny. I was tipped into uncontainable rage by a report on Channel 4 News about “friendly fire”, which included footage of what must have been one of the most horrific bombardments ever filmed. But what struck home hardest was the subsequent image, of a row of American warplanes, with grinning cartoon faces painted on their noses. Cartoon faces, with big sharp teeth. It is grotesque. It is hideous. This great and powerful nation bombs foreign cities and the people in those cities from Disneyland cartoon planes out of comic strips. This is simply not possible. And yet, there they were.” – Margaret Drabble, mistaking a newspaper column for a therapist’s couch, in the Daily Telegraph.

SONTAG AWARD RUNNER UP 2003: “Unelected in 2000, the Washington regime of George W Bush is now totalitarian, captured by a clique whose fanaticism and ambitions of “endless war” and “full spectrum dominance” are a matter of record. All the world knows their names: Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Cheney and Perle, and Powell, the false liberal. Bush’s State of the Union speech last night was reminiscent of that other great moment in 1938 when Hitler called his generals together and told them: “I must have war.” He then had it.” – John Pilger, the Daily Mirror.