Puppet no more?

Seems as if Prime Minister Allawi is betting on a Kerry win. Either that or he's finding that local political reality favors distancing himself from his erstwhile handlers in D.C. Blaming the execution of nearly 50 Iraqi National Guard recruits on "gross incompetence" of the U.S. military, Allawi seems a bit less enamored of the liberators than he did when Bush was parading him around Washington this summer.

Of course, a Kerry win still could be thwarted by zealous GOP thugs hired at $100 a pop to disrupt polling in minority neighborhoods in the battleground states. New Donkey has the dirt. To Ambrose, the parallels to the youthful, zealous, nationalistic party enthusiasts in a certain Western European country circa 1930's are obvious--so obvious, in fact, that he really wonders if there's a large part of the U.S. population who missed watching old movies on TV, or just never "got" what was going in The Sound of Music, and generally somehow by-passed the cultural allusions that seem so clear. Memo to America: those straight-backed young men with the uniforms and shiny boots who were intimidating people--they were supposed to be the BAD GUYS, ok? Got it now?

Ambrose wonders how we might protest or interfere with these GOP voter intimidation tactics. Should we volunteer to accompany people to the polls, in the same way that we have volunteered to accompany people to abortion clinics, to help them withstand the verbal abuse from those who would deny them the simple right to vote? Should we start buddy-voting teams? I'll vote if you vote, man.

Those of us who love our country and our Constitution and the American way of life must believe, and Ambrose believes, that the cause of freedom and justice will prevail. Their tactics simply must backfire, because Americans are determined to be free to vote. We recently have sent our young men and women to die for the rights of Afghanis and Iraqis to vote; do the Republicans seriously think we are going to let them stop us from voting here? Do they really think that the American people are so stupid as to elect the party that is actively trying to prevent them from voting? We will not be intimidated, we will vote, and these people will be defeated on Nov. 2.

Reasons for change

A glance at the New York Times on-line front page this afternoon provides a pretty fair summation of why we should vote for John Kerry: 380 tons of explosives disappear in Iraq because the United States military and our civilian authority in Iraq did not secure them; Rehnquist was operated on for thyroid cancer; and the Pentagon has recommended an investigation of Halliburton contracts. Incompetence, cronyism, and the prospect of this "faith-based" President very soon naming the next Supreme Court Justice are far, far scarier than the Bush-Cheney '04 Wolf Pack ad.

In fact, it almost seems incredible that we could be getting such news of Iraq this close to the election. They managed to keep a lid on the last round of damning CIA reports, and they've kept this story of the missing explosives quiet for some time, but it leaks in the week before the election? Josh Marshall makes the point that Bremer apparently was told about the missing explosives problem this past May, and the U.S. at least nominally controlled the al QaQaa facility for about a year before that, so we've "known" about this for something like 18 months. But the White House claimed today that the administration had never heard of the explosive cache until a few days ago. Sigh. They've so de-sensitized us to their flat-out lies that it requires a serious effort of will to muster any outrage about it.

We can at least all agree that NOT knowing about a missing 380 tons of explosives belies even more incompetence. Um, you mean we didn't even ask the weapons inspectors for a list of Iraqi weapons caches before we presumed to invade and assume administration of the country? Kind of a silly oversight, huh? And what about those "America is safer without Saddam" claims the President keeps making? Ambrose's impression is that Saddam at least kept this kind of stuff locked up.

As for Rehnquist, the crashing silence on the subject is telling. Ambrose can only imagine that the prospect of even someone as radical as Rehnquist being replaced by Bush II is so frightening that no one wants to actually mention it in cold hard print.

Which brings us to Halliburton. Ambrose doesn't know if Halliburton did anything so particularly awful, or whether Cheney helped them to do it. But they're a symbol of all the riches that have been showered on the business sector by this administration. Corporate welfare has never had it so good, and we've got the deficits to prove it. It sounds completely crazy when Bush II talks about our terrific, growing economy--we say, "This guy is out of touch with reality!" because to ordinary people, in most business sectors, it seems quite evident that the economy sucks pretty thoroughly. But if you're in the defense industry, you sit there going, "Yeah, man, this economy is great and getting better!" And, of course, we know the industry focus of the Bush family investment management company . . . .

So, a day of news that screams Vote for Kerry! Ambrose hopes that people are watching and listening.

Mary Cheney

Ambrose is such an Eastern liberal that he can't even make sense of the Cheneys' parental outrage at Kerry's perfectly innocuous mention of Mary Cheney. What's so outrageous about Kerry citing her as an example of a lesbian who wants to be true to herself? Is it reasonable to be outraged about someone mentioning, in a neutral and non-critical fashion, a well-known attribute of a member of your family? Ambrose is sure that John Edwards's daughter would tell you that she's comfortable with her dark brown hair--it's just how God made her. Ooops! Has Ambrose just said something outrageous?

It's not like Kerry "outed" Mary Cheney: Dick Cheney has brought up her sexuality in the context of political discourse. The lady herself is a "professional lesbian," having worked at Coors Brewery for years in the strange role of director of outreach to the gay and lesbian community (this to help Coors overcome its owners' less than tolerant remarks about homosexuality). Dick Cheney thanked John Edwards for making kind remarks about their family relationship with Mary. She's an official of the Bush/Cheney '04 campaign. She appeared on stage with her partner after the Vice Presidential candidates' debate. She's no spring chicken, either--clearly adult, with her own public life and public role.

So, Lynne and Dick Cheney are suddenly being "protective"? Elizabeth Edwards (whom Ambrose would love to discuss in another post someday--is this not the most courageous and honest spouse of a candidate that we've ever seen?) hit the nail on the head: Lynne Cheney's "outrage," to the extent it is real, can only be understood as a measure of her own feelings of shame about her daughter. And it's sad.

The Cheneys should channel some of that outrage against the people who are actually trying to attack their kid: the authors of the Republican Party platform; the many Republican luminaries who think it's acceptable to openly decry, deride, or dismiss lesbians and gays; the Focus on the Family wackos who equate gay marriage with bestiality; etc., etc. etc. Where's the outrage when their child's freedom to live as a full-fledged citizen is threatened by the President in a State of the Union address?

But the fact is that Lynne and Dick Cheney are not stupid, irrational people. They are cynical, calculating people. They aren't outraged on behalf of Mary; they are afraid on behalf of Bush/Cheney '04. They claim that Kerry was trying to discourage conservative religious Republicans from voting for Bush. Ambrose thinks Lynne Cheney doth protest too much! Kerry isn't exactly campaigning for votes among the Moral Majority crowd; but the Cheneys are trying to appeal to those mythically protective and otherwise solidly Democratic "terror Moms." And they're willing to display shame about their own child as a political prop.

Ambrose is appalled by these people on a daily basis. And Maureen Dowd's a dope to fall for it, too.

Welcome

Welcome to Ambrosia--Ambrose's blog. Ambrose is political, maybe caustic, hopefully thoughtful, sometimes funny, often quirky, and probably pretty unreliable. Which is to say, don't expect to find new material every day. Ambrose speaks when the spirit moves him.

Today Ambrose is delighted that John Kerry turned in such a stellar performance in the third debate. But don't we think it's just a bit odd that the current Prez has been so consistently awful in the debates? There's more than enough bloggie speculation about various ailments, bulges, wires, insulin pumps, the "White House bubble," and other possible excuses, but whatever the problem, it's pretty clear that this is not the man that we've been led to believe has been leading our country for the last four years. This emperor not only has no clothes, but he's got a pot belly and a wrinkly doodie, as well.

Has the mainstream media been deluding us, or has it just been spun silly by the relentless White House PR juggernaut? Where's the Bush we heard was the tough world leader who was the only thing standing between us and annhilation by terrorists? It's really hard to pretend that he's anything but an empty suit when you see him side-by-side with Kerry, actually having to hear criticism and address direct questions, stumbling and bumbling and having, well, um . . . pretty much nothing to say.

So what were the rough and tough journalistic types afraid of for the last four years? How did this guy get a pass for so long? Suddenly he's openly suspected of cheating in the debates; suddenly it's clear he has no program for the next four years; suddenly it's obvious that the tax cuts didn't work, the WMD weren't there, Osama is still at large, the terrorists are flocking to Iraq, the Iraqis themselves are unlikely to manage a democratic government even as contentious as our own, No Child Left Behind isn't working, and we've alienated our allies; suddenly we wonder why the Congress managed to do pretty much nothing for the last year; suddenly we notice that he's racked up the biggest deficit in the history of the world; suddenly it's obvious that the gay marriage thing is a feint . . . . Weren't these things evident to anybody but Paul Krugman and Ambrose during the last four years?

Oh, well, better late than never. There's probably no hope that anyone will break on the actual cause of the Bush bulge before the election, though, which is a pity, because Ambrose really, really, really hopes that it will be absolutely irrelevant to anyone but historians after Nov. 2.