T h a t   O t h e r   B l o g

Usually interesting, sometimes funny, infrequently read.

:: thatotherblog {at} yahoo {dot} com ::

:: Saturday, May 31 ::


AM I MISSING SOMETHING?: So I'm poking around the Open Secrets database of political donations, as is my right as a citizen of the democratic wonderland where wealth equals speech equals political contributions equals access for the wealthy, and I come across the following:

Contributor: REED, BRUCE N, WASHINGTON, DC 20008
Occupation: DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP COUNCIL
Contribution Date: 1/23/2002
Amount: $500
Recipient: Bowles, Erskine B

Contributor: REED, BRUCE N, WASHINGTON, DC 20008
Occupation: DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP COUNCIL
Contribution Date: 8/7/2002
Amount: $500
Recipient: Bowles, Erskine B

Contributor: REED, BRUCE N, WASHINGTON, DC 20008
Occupation: DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP COUNCIL
Contribution Date: 10/20/2002
Amount: $500
Recipient: Bowles, Erskine B

Joe, maybe you can cast some light on this for me, since you're in Sweden. My boss is Swedish and complains endlessly about the taxes, business regulations and lack of entrepreneurial opportunities. I am in many respects inclined to ignore him since he is clearly someone with a California venture capital background, and has lived in Belgium for quite a few years without learning French or Dutch. However, I am unable to judge how accurately he is able to judge Sweden. You've basically described Sweden in a manner consistent with an American leftist who is used to seeing the near diametric opposite of social justice. Would Swedes see their own state the same way?

Scholars note, however, that Poland and other Eastern European nations of Mr. Bush's "new" Europe date back further than nations like Germany, which Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld infamously derided before the Iraq war as part of the "old" Europe, along with France.

"They're all old — Europe is old," Mr. Daalder said. "In that sense, it's nonsensical. There are countries that are now members of the `new' Europe that predate countries of the `old' Europe. Germany was unified and became a single state long after Poland was an independent country."

Mr. Bush said that Évian "will not be a summit of confrontation" and that "it will be a pleasure to talk with Jacques Chirac." He added, "Vive la France."

Major liberal organizations, from labor unions to civil rights groups, have begun to meet privately to develop a coordinated strategy to oppose President Bush's reelection in 2004. Their goal is to buttress the Democratic Party and its nominee by orchestrating voter mobilization and independent media in as many as a dozen battleground states.

All of the organizations are free to accept unlimited contributions, or "soft money" from wealthy individuals, unions and corporations. These donations are the kind that the new campaign finance law prohibits political parties and federal candidates from collecting.

Together, these organizations have the potential to target $40 million to $50 million in key states including Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The amount could be much higher if organized labor invests heavily and a new, pro-Democratic committee gearing up to run television advertisements is successful. In addition, these organizations are expected to play a crucial role in Election Day get-out-the-vote efforts.

They inherited it from Clinton who inherited it from Bush who inherited it from Reagan and I don't know what the policy was like before that. ... [T]his is a bipartisan screwup and has been for many years. Bush is part of the problem, but just a small one.

Anyone who writes critically about Dean can expect his copy to be chewed up by this army of zealous Dean Internet scribes. When I wrote a piece recently that contained a few paragraphs about Dean, a member of the Dean2004 blog team filed an almost 2,000-word entry slicing my article up into sections with labels such as "true," "false," "inadvertently true," and "foolish."

[Sen. Rick] Santorum's recent remarks didn't hurt him much at all, he was simply representing the feelings of his constituents.

"And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything."

It's awfully sad that achieving a fair tax policy in this country requires outspoken selflessness from the rich.

Even if we say the number one issue should be containing weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear weapons, I frankly do not believe that Iraq should be our first concern.

We do not know the full capabilities of the state of Israel, although we believe it has the full capability to defend itself against attacks or the threat of an attack. We are aware of the significant threats posed by India, Pakistan and Iran. But I can say without fear of contradiction, all of these possess substantially greater capability and means of delivering weapons of mass destruction than does Iraq.

Of all of the issues that we care about, and those over which we have some ability to determine the outcome, in my judgment, the number one priority should be the war on terrorism and the protection of the people in the United States, our homeland. Our top targets should be those groups that have the greatest potential to repeat what happened on September 11, killing thousands of Americans.

DIVIDEND VOODOO

By Warren Buffett

Tuesday, May 20, 2003; Page A19

The annual Forbes 400 lists prove that -- with occasional blips -- the rich do indeed get richer. Nonetheless, the Senate voted last week to supply major aid to the rich in their pursuit of even greater wealth.

The Senate decided that the dividends an individual receives should be 50 percent free of tax in 2003, 100 percent tax-free in 2004 through 2006 and then again fully taxable in 2007. The mental flexibility the Senate demonstrated in crafting these zigzags is breathtaking. What it has put in motion, though, is clear: If enacted, these changes would further tilt the tax scales toward the rich.

Let me, as a member of that non-endangered species, give you an example of how the scales are currently balanced. The taxes I pay to the federal government, including the payroll tax that is paid for me by my employer, Berkshire Hathaway, are roughly the same proportion of my income -- about 30 percent -- as that paid by the receptionist in our office. My case is not atypical -- my earnings, like those of many rich people, are a mix of capital gains and ordinary income -- nor is it affected by tax shelters (I've never used any). As it works out, I pay a somewhat higher rate for my combination of salary, investment and capital gain income than our receptionist does. But she pays a far higher portion of her income in payroll taxes than I do.

She's not complaining: Both of us know we were lucky to be born in America. But I was luckier in that I came wired at birth with a talent for capital allocation -- a valuable ability to have had in this country during the past half-century. Credit America for most of this value, not me. If the receptionist and I had both been born in, say, Bangladesh, the story would have been far different. There, the market value of our respective talents would not have varied greatly.

Now the Senate says that dividends should be tax-free to recipients. Suppose this measure goes through and the directors of Berkshire Hathaway (which does not now pay a dividend) therefore decide to pay $1 billion in dividends next year. Owning 31 percent of Berkshire, I would receive $310 million in additional income, owe not another dime in federal tax, and see my tax rate plunge to 3 percent.

And our receptionist? She'd still be paying about 30 percent, which means she would be contributing about 10 times the proportion of her income that I would to such government pursuits as fighting terrorism, waging wars and supporting the elderly. Let me repeat the point: Her overall federal tax rate would be 10 times what my rate would be.

When I was young, President Kennedy asked Americans to "pay any price, bear any burden" for our country. Against that challenge, the 3 percent overall federal tax rate I would pay -- if a Berkshire dividend were to be tax-free -- seems a bit light.

Administration officials say that the $310 million suddenly added to my wallet would stimulate the economy because I would invest it and thereby create jobs. But they conveniently forget that if Berkshire kept the money, it would invest that same amount, creating jobs as well.

The Senate's plan invites corporations -- indeed, virtually commands them -- to contort their behavior in a major way. Were the plan to be enacted, shareholders would logically respond by asking the corporations they own to pay no more dividends in 2003, when they would be partially taxed, but instead to pay the skipped amounts in 2004, when they'd be tax-free. Similarly, in 2006, the last year of the plan, companies should pay double their normal dividend and then avoid dividends altogether in 2007.

Overall, it's hard to conceive of anything sillier than the schedule the Senate has laid out. Indeed, the first President Bush had a name for such activities: "voodoo economics." The manipulation of enactment and sunset dates of tax changes is Enron-style accounting, and a Congress that has recently demanded honest corporate numbers should now look hard at its own practices.

Proponents of cutting tax rates on dividends argue that the move will stimulate the economy. A large amount of stimulus, of course, should already be on the way from the huge and growing deficit the government is now running. I have no strong views on whether more action on this front is warranted. But if it is, don't cut the taxes of people with huge portfolios of stocks held directly. (Small investors owning stock held through 401(k)s are already tax-favored.) Instead, give reductions to those who both need and will spend the money gained. Enact a Social Security tax "holiday" or give a flat-sum rebate to people with low incomes. Putting $1,000 in the pockets of 310,000 families with urgent needs is going to provide far more stimulus to the economy than putting the same $310 million in my pockets.

When you listen to tax-cut rhetoric, remember that giving one class of taxpayer a "break" requires -- now or down the line -- that an equivalent burden be imposed on other parties. In other words, if I get a break, someone else pays. Government can't deliver a free lunch to the country as a whole. It can, however, determine who pays for lunch. And last week the Senate handed the bill to the wrong party.

Supporters of making dividends tax-free like to paint critics as promoters of class warfare. The fact is, however, that their proposal promotes class welfare. For my class.

The writer is chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., a diversified holding company, and a director of The Washington Post Co., which has an investment in Berkshire Hathaway.

“All of the candidates have been here for all the votes where their vote was needed to win,” said Jay Carson, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.). “As long as that remains the case, it’s not an issue.” ...

“It’s not just votes they miss. They miss the negotiations, they miss the discussions,” said RNC spokesman Jim Dyke. “So when Gephardt goes out and talks about energy policy and how important it is, not only did he miss all the votes on energy legislation, but he missed being a part of the discussions that led to the legislation.”

Make no mistake, there were some truly great anticommunist Democrats -- men who fully understood and loathed the communist threat and all it represented. Two things happened to those Democrats: first, they lost control of their party's soul around 1968 or so; second, many if not most of them became Republicans.

The effect of the much-derided Reagan military buildup (including the Star Wars program) on Soviet strategic thinking is well-documented, and the policy of confrontation (including, in places like Afghanistan and Nicaragua, violent confrontation) bore self-evident fruit.

... bore self-evident fruit. You'll hear a lot of rationalization these days that these policies were irrelevant, affecting events not at all or at best hastening the inevitable. Don't believe it: they're the losing side's posturing for the historians.

When I go to the South -- you know how I plan to win in the South? It's a hard place for Democrats to win. I'm going to say to our African-American base, "We support you, we need you, and we're going to talk to your issues." But then I'm going to say to Souther whites, "You've been voting Republican for 30 years. What do you have to show for it? There are 103,000 uninsured kids in South Carolina; most of those kids are white. Has your job gone to Indonesia? Have you had a raise in the last five years? Are you satisfied with the quality of your public schools? Because if you don't like the answer to that question, you ought to think about voting Democratic again. Because when white people and black people vote together in this country, this country moves forward."

A lot of people say, "Well how's this guy from Vermont gonna win? He wants to get rid of the president's tax cuts! How's he gonna win in the South?" Here's what you do: we're not gonna say, "Oh, let's get rid of the president's tax cut -- all the money went to the wealthy." I don't think class warfare works. What we're gonna say is: You have a choice, Americans. You can have the president's tax cut or you can have health care that can never be taken away. You can have the president's tax cut or you can fully fund special education so class size can go down and your property taxes can go down. You can have the president's tax cut or you can have the 20% of the federal highway grants that the president cut to every state this year because he couldn't manage the money. Now, if you put it that way, most people are gonna say, "Well, I want to have the roads, the education, and the health care," -- because they didn't get the president's tax cut.

After my son fell into an autistic shell, he would spend hours sitting on the floor just staring at his latest obsession. We did not yet know enough about autism to know how to break his obsession and gain his attention. For more than two years, I would come home from work each day and greet Bobby with a cheery “dad’s home.” Each day, Bobby would completely ignore me, refuse to even look in my direction and simply continue staring at whatever he was locked into at the moment. To gain Bobby’s attention I had to physically place myself between Bobby and the object on which he was focused. As we gained knowledge and skill, we worked very hard to teach Bobby how to make eye contact and how to attend to people. One day as I came home from work and greeted Bobby, I noticed that he shifted his eyes slightly in my direction. We rejoiced.

Over time, after much more effort, Bobby would turn his head and acknowledge that I was there. Later, he began to come toward me to show me the object of his focus. Today, when I get home, Bobby will see me and smile, pleased with my presence. He will approach me for a hug and a quick spin. He may even pull up his shirt in an effort to get tickled. If I tickle him, he will be sent into spasms of laughter and joy. It took us more than five years to go from a complete disregard of my presence to an interactive game in which he expresses joy in human interaction. What exactly does Mr. Savage find in that behavior that calls out for mocking?

Bobby will be eight years old next month. He is non-verbal. Through many years of speech therapy, applied behavioral analysis and other techniques, my wife and I, Bobby’s teachers and therapists, and Bobby have all worked endless hours to get Bobby to talk. We have been unable break through the autism to attain speech. Last month, Bobby brought me his shoes and my car keys. That is way of asking if we can take a ride in the car. As Bobby and I approached the car, Bobby in tones clear as a very fuzzy bell said, “ride in car.”

My heart leaped. Fighting the urge to run back into the house to tell my wife (which would have provided negative reinforcement for Bobby's success by delaying the reward of a ride), I started saying “good talking Bobby, very good talking Bobby.” When Bobby asks for a ride in car with words, Bobby gets to ride in the car.” With a quick hug I put him in the car for a ride. During the ride I tried to prompt Bobby to say it again. “What is Bobby doing?” Is Bobby riding in the car?” Does Bobby like to ride in the car?” Twice more on the trip, he responded by saying “ride in car.”

After Bobby showed no sign of saying anything further I returned home and rushed into the house to tell Deb the news. As she was lavishing praise and hugs on Bobby for his “good talking,” tears of pride and joy were running down her cheeks and mine.

Our toil is long and difficult, our triumphs rare and Bobby’s progress may seem to others to be marginal. Bobby’s progress is the reward of his hard work and ours. We revel in the successes and try to think of the failures as part of the journey to success.

A S O M E W H A T L I K E L Y C O N V E R S A T I O N
F E A T U R I N G T W O , A N D P O S S I B L Y T H R E E ,
S H A M E D J O U R N A L I S T S .

A N E W W O R K B Y B E N G R E E N M A N

What follows is an alleged transcript of a conference call between writer Ben Greenman and two other journalists who have recently made headlines: Stephen Glass, who was fired from The New Republic in 1998 after the discovery that several of his pieces were fabricated and has recently written a novel, The Fabulist, based on his experiences; and Jayson Blair, the New York Times reporter who was cashiered last week following revelations of extensive plagiarism and falsification.

Mr. Greenman claims to have contacted both men while on assignment in Washington, D.C., researching the possibility of a previously unknown naked room in the basement of a Congressional building. As he is a journalist, we have no reason to trust him.

---------

BLAIR: Before we begin, I wanted to remind you that Stephen and agreed to speak with you only on the condition that this be off the record.

Q: I know.

GLASS: That means that nothing we say here can be used in print. You understand that?

Q: You're reminding me about fundamental journalistic principles?

GLASS: I just need to be sure that we're all on the same page.

Q: Got it. Off the record. Let's start with Stephen. While you were a journalist, paid to create nonfiction, you wrote fiction. Then you took a large advance to write a work of fiction and ended up writing a nonfiction, or at least heavily autobiographical fiction. Does this sum up the paradoxical nature of your career thus far?

GLASS: Yes.

Q: And yet, the risk and invention that characterized your nonfiction pieces if largely absent from your novel, which offers up a somewhat traditional narrative that mixes romantic comedy and fuzzy confessional? Through most of the book, you, or your main character Stephen Glass, is paralyzed as a result of his misdeed, doesn't know what course to take, and just wishes that someone would love him: It's like Bridget Jones's Aporia.

GLASS: Well, I wanted to create a trustworthy narrator. That was my main objective. That meant toning down the lying considerably. I think I accomplished that.

Q: I don't know. You may have. I didn't read the book. Okay, now let's turn to Jayson. Before I ask you this first question, Jayson, I should mention that I'm standing on a wooden porch in rural American somewhere. Let's say Georgia. Next to me is Linda Polk, a woman whose nephew was killed in the first Gulf War. Later she became a peace activist. Very moving. It's picturesque here.

BLAIR: I know. I've been there. Say hello to Mrs. Polk for me.

Q: Jayson, why did you do what you did? In its unprecedented correction, the Times painted a picture of an eager young reporter who fell off the rails, who was both disorganized and lazy, and who spent much of his time working on a book proposal while pretending to fly around the country conducting interviews. Is this accurate?

BLAIR: I would have told the story quite differently.

Q: How so?

BLAIR: It might have been set on a wooden porch in rural American somewhere. Let's say Georgia. Next to me there would have been someone sad who represented a national tragedy. I don't know, maybe a woman whose nephew was killed in the first Gulf War and who later became a peace activist. The whole thing would have been picturesque and very moving.

Q: You just stole that from me!

BLAIR: Your word against mine.

Q: But you have no credibility left.

BLAIR: This isn't just about me. As you know, Stephen and I have hurt the credibility of all journalists by violating the trust between reporters and readers. Some people will believe you; some will believe me.

Q: That's what's most interesting about these two cases -- everyone wants to talk about how the two of you have eroded the foundation of American journalism, but have you? Both of you were caught and drummed out in dramatic fashion. Do you think that there's an element of scapegoating, and that you're being selectively prosecuted for large-level deceits that happen all the time, albeit to lesser degrees?

GLASS: Hadn't really thought about it. Mostly I've been trying to forgive and/or promote myself.

BLAIR: Same here. Remember, we're opportunistic narcissists, not philosophers.

Q: You know what? Rather than bother with reporting, I think what I'm going to do is make up some comically exaggerated dialogue for the two of you so that I can recast this as a piece of satire.

GLASS: What do you mean?

Q: I'll show you. Did you consider any other titles for your book?

GLASS: I wanted to call it Empty Glass, after the great album by Pete Townshend, but he said he didn't want to be associated with me. Can you imagine? A guy who was caught with kiddie porn on his computer doesn't want to be associated with me?

Q: See. That's made up. You never said that. But you could have.

BLAIR: This is an outrage. You can't do this!

GLASS: Please, Jayson. Isn't it time we showed some generosity toward another person?

BLAIR: Even another journalist?

GLASS: Yes. Even another journalist.

BLAIR: Now that has to be made up.

Q: No, that's one's legit. He actually said that.

BLAIR: Wow. That's messed up. Steve, you're one conflicted dude.

Q: One final question and then I'll let you go. Did one of you invent the other one?

[Long pause]

Q: Come on. If you did, you should confess. It's good for the soul, remember?

[Long pause]

GLASS: Okay, I admit it. I invented Jayson.

BLAIR: And I admit it. I invented Stephen. I hope that clears the air. You can read all about it in my forthcoming book. I'm thinking of calling it The Fabulist.

---------

Ben Greenman's collection Superbad is available in hardcover from McSweeney's Books. The paperback will be published in January, 2004, and will include a reasonable amount of new material.

So do other liberal democracies have these interminable bitter fights about appointing judges? My impression is that they don't. If not, why not. And if we know how other countries can avoid this sort of mess, is there any way we can imitate them?

The only case I have any familiarity with is Canada, where there seems to be nothing besides a strong norm preventing the Prime Minister from abusing his appointment powers in pretty much any way he sees fit. The norm seems to have held up well so far, which is good for them, but not really something we can decide to imitate.

One can't help but think that endorsements from Bill Clinton or Al Gore would be extremely valuable commodities in the 2004 primaries. Those guys have better name recognition and more street cred than anyone in the race, and as a certified expert on the topic of getting elected, Clinton's views on the important (to me, at least) question of electability carry a lot of weight. I assume, though, that for the sake of party unity Clinton won't endorse anyone and will just get behind the nominee when the time comes. Al Gore, on the other hand, has an obvious candidate to endorse, namely Joe Lieberman. It seems like only yesterday that Al Gore's position was that Al Gore should be president of the United States and that Joe Lieberman should be second in line for the job. Now Gore's out of the running, so that seems to leave Lieberman.

In that context, failing to get behind Lieberman is something of a rejection, even if the stated reason is simply that Gore isn't going to endorse anyone. A Gore endorsement, on the other hand, could help Lieberman out with what is by far his biggest problem, namely the fact that the party base doesn't trust him.

I think, though, that Gore will have to endorse Lieberman, since it wouldn't make Gore look particularly good to turn on him. The question then becomes whether it's a tepid, reluctant endorsement or a serious one. One's also got to wonder if Bill Clinton will decide to involve himself at some point.

CNN was more irritating than the gleefully patriotic Fox News channel because CNN has a pretense of objectivity. It pretends to be run by journalists. And yet it dutifully uses all the language chosen by people in charge of "media relations" at the Pentagon. It describes the exploding of Iraqi soldiers in their bunkers as "softening up"; it describes slaughtered Iraqi units as being "degraded"; some announcers have even repeated the egregious Pentagon neologism "attrited" (to mean "we are slowly killing as many of them as we can"). I don't know if I'm more offended by the insidiousness of this euphemism or by the absurdity of its grammar.

To recite from a Pentagon press release that an Iraqi division has been "degraded by 70 percent" is an astounding abdication of journalistic responsibility. A journalist these days must not just report the facts, but also explain the news, give it color and significance. The graphic reality of "degradation" is a large pile of dismembered bodies. Surely some picture or explanation of what the wiping out of an entire division with high explosives actually looks like is called for.

Many readers and watchers of the news were baffled as the battle for Baghdad came suddenly upon us without any large-scale engagement with the dreaded Republican Guard. What happened to those three or five divisions that were supposedly ringing the city? The facts of their destruction were grudgingly mentioned almost in passing. They were destroyed from the air. This did not make a glamorous or even central story to anyone's coverage of this war, because there were no embedded reporters with the Iraqi troops. It's hard to get a TV camera into a line of trenches that is being puréed by bombs. Instead of reporting that this peripeteia in the war's narrative was happening, and that it entailed thousands of deaths leading to the rapid collapse of the Iraqi regime, the television and the press simply downsized the story. No pictures, no story. This is the real meaning of "degradation."

So stingy is Centcom with information that, at the daily briefings, the questions asked were often more revealing than the answers given. Those posed by European and Arab journalists tended to be more pointed and probing than those from the Americans. The Europeans and Arabs would ask about the accuracy of US missiles, the use of weapons containing depleted uranium, the extent of civilian casualties. The Americans would ask questions such as: "Why hasn't Iraqi broadcasting been taken out?" "Is Iraq using weapons prohibited by the UN?" "Can you offer more details on the rescue of Jessica Lynch?" One US network correspondent told me that she was worried that, if she pushed too hard at the briefings, she would no longer be called on. Jim Wilkinson was known to rebuke reporters whose copy he deemed insufficiently supportive of the war; he darkly warned one correspondent that he was on a "list" along with two other reporters at his paper.

After each briefing, correspondents for the major satellite networks would stand up in back and give a live report before a camera. Sometimes I took a seat nearby and listened. The British correspondents invariably included some analysis in their reports. After one briefing, for instance, James Forlong of Sky News observed that Tommy Franks had left the briefing to his "fourth in command" (i.e., Brooks), and that "very little detail had been provided." Referring to a question about a friendly-fire incident, Forlong noted that Brooks had little to say other than that the incident was "under investigation." CNN's Tom Mintier, by contrast, would faithfully recite Brooks's main points, often with signs of approval. "They showed some amazing footage of a raid on a palace," he said when introducing a clip that had been shown at the briefing, one of many that CNN aired.

Such differences in style were apparent in the broadcasts themselves. Switching stations in my hotel, I often found myself drawn to the BBC. With two hundred reporters, producers, and technicians in the field, its largest deployment ever, the network offered no-nonsense anchors, tenacious correspondents, perceptive features, and a host of commentators steeped in knowledge of the Middle East, in contrast to the retired generals and colonels we saw on American TV. Reporters were not afraid to challenge the coalition's claims. When an anchor asked Paul Adams, a BBC defense correspondent, whether Iraqi fighters were using "quasi-terrorist tactics"—a common Centcom charge—he said it was more appropriate to speak of "asymmetrical warfare," i.e., the use of unconventional tactics by forces that were badly outgunned. At the same time, the BBC presented many stories about the horrors of Saddam's rule. In one chilling piece, it had an interview with an Iraqi woman in London whose family members had been murdered, raped, or tortured by the regime.

At times, the BBC seemed relatively slow and ponderous. When the tape of Saddam's appearance in the streets of Baghdad was shown on al-Jazeera, the BBC took ten minutes longer than other networks to air it. A feature about Günter Grass and his visceral hatred for America seemed to be repeated endlessly. All in all, though, the BBC maintained a consistent standard of skepticism toward all sides. "We're very conscious that our audience is not just a coalition audience but an international one," Jonathan Marcus, a correspondent for BBC Radio, told me. "Tone, style, and terminology are all employed with that very much in mind. That has sharpened our journalism enormously."

The BBC got some stiff competition from Sky News. With a much smaller staff than the BBC, this London-based channel (partly owned by Rupert Murdoch) seemed far more nimble. One of its correspondents, Geoff Meade, became known at the media center for his sharp, if sometimes grandiloquent, questions. When Baghdad was about to fall without the discovery of any weapons of mass destruction, he asked, "Is this war going to make history by being the first to end before its cause could be found?" Among Sky's regular commentators, Con Coughlin, a biographer of Saddam and a Daily Telegraph editor, explained how Baath Party loyalists would likely have been recruited to play a part in Saddam's allegedly spontaneous street appearances.

After watching the British reports, I found the American ones jarring. In my hotel, MSNBC always seemed to be on, and I was shocked by its mawkishness and breathless boosterism. Its anchors mostly recounted tales of American bravery and derring-do. After the US attacks on the Palestine Hotel and the offices of al-Jazeera in Baghdad, MSNBC brought on its resident terrorism expert, Steve Emerson, who insisted—before any of the facts were in—that the attacks were accidental. MSNBC's "embedded" reporters, meanwhile, seemed utterly intoxicated by the war. In one tendentious account, Dr. Bob Arnot—normally assigned to the health beat—excitedly followed his cameraman into an unlighted building where two captured Iraqi fighters were being held near the entrance while a group of women and children could be seen in back. "They're fighting outside," Arnot said with indignation. "Here in the front are RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] used to kill Marines, and in the back are these women and children—civilian hostages. And they're terrified." But terrified of what? The captured men in the front room? The fighting outside? Were they being held against their will? Arnot never asked.

Before arriving in Doha, I had spent hours watching CNN back home, and I was sadly reminded of the network's steady decline in recent years. Paula Zahn looked and talked like a cheerleader for the US forces; Aaron Brown kept reaching for the profound remark without ever finding it; Wolf Blitzer politely interviewed Washington's high and mighty, seldom asking a pointed question. None of them, however, appeared on the broadcasts I saw in Doha. Instead, there were Jim Clancy, a tough-minded veteran American correspondent, Michael Holmes, a soft-spoken Australian, and Becky Anderson, a sharp and inquisitive British anchor. This was CNN International, the edition broadcast to the world at large, and it was far more serious and informed than the American version.

The difference was not accidental. Six months before the war began, I was told, executives at CNN headquarters in Atlanta met regularly to plan separate broadcasts for America and the world. Those executives knew that Zahn's girl-next-door manner and Brown's spacey monologues would not go down well with the British, French, or Germans, much less the Egyptians or Turks, and so the network, at huge expense, fielded two parallel but separate teams to cover the war. And while there was plenty of overlap, especially in the reports from the field, and in the use of such knowledgeable journalists as Christiane Amanpour, the international edition was refreshingly free of the self-congratulatory talk of its domestic one. In one telling moment, Becky Anderson, listening to one of Walter Rodgers's excited reports about US advances in the field, admonished him: "Let's not give the impression that there's been no resistance." Rodgers conceded that she was right.

CNN International bore more resemblance to the BBC than to its domestic edition—a difference that showed just how market-driven were the tone and content of the broadcasts. For the most part, US news organizations gave Americans the war they thought Americans wanted to see.

The Coalition Media Center is managed by Jim Wilkinson, a fresh-faced, thirty-two-year-old Texan and a protégé of Bush's adviser Karen Hughes. Wilkinson made his mark during the 2000 presidential election when he spoke on behalf of GOP activists protesting the Florida ballot recount. To run the media center in Doha, Wilkinson, a member of the naval reserve, appeared in the same beige fatigues as the career officers working under him. Nonetheless, the center had all the earmarks of a political campaign, with press officers always "on message." Many journalists, accustomed to the smoothly purring Bush political machine, were struck by the heavy-handedness of the Doha operation. A week into the war, journalists began writing their own "media pieces," as they called them, comparing the briefings to the infamous "Five O'Clock Follies" of the Vietnam War.

"There's no secret that we think Mr. Dean's rhetoric has been hot and a little bit personal — with a number of Democratic candidates, not just Senator Kerry. I think he has questioned their character in a way that is surprisingly personal, surprisingly early."

"I think they are more tightly wound than we are," said [Trippi]. He stopped and started to laugh as he considered his own words.

"I was surprised when I looked at the debate at how grumpy I looked. I think I was just more stressed than I realized."

Former Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont will unveil details on Tuesday of a health care plan that his aides argued would cost less than half of one offered by Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, a fellow Democratic presidential candidate. They also said it would bring more Americans into the system.

Dr. Dean's plan would expand programs that offer health coverage to children of the working poor; provide a new private insurance benefit, with a tax credit, for people who cannot afford even reduced premiums; and give tax incentives to businesses that offer coverage.

"We're going to do it as a side-by-side with Gephardt's plan," said Dr. Dean's campaign manager, Joe Trippi. "It will provide coverage for more Americans than the Gephardt plan and would cost under half of what the Gephardt plan would cost."

Mr. Gephardt would repeal most of President Bush's tax cut to pay for a universal health care plan that by some estimates would cost $247 billion by the third year.

Dr. Dean, a physician, would expand a current program that subsidizes health care for children of the working poor to cover people up to age 25 and to adults who meet income guidelines.

Mr. Trippi said the package also would offer private coverage equivalent to that given to federal workers at reduced rates.

Since many people get insurance coverage through the workplace, Mr. Trippi said the Dean plan also would focus on employers. For employers of more than a specified number of workers, Dr. Dean would put in place tax incentives for providing health insurance. Businesses that drop coverage could face a tax penalty, which he figures would make it more likely that employers would continue coverage.

Sen. John Edwards’ presidential campaign finance documents show a pattern of giving by low-level employees at law firms, a number of whom appear to have limited financial resources and no prior record of political donations.

Records submitted to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) show these individuals have often given $2,000 to the North Carolina Democrat, the maximum permitted by law.

In many instances, all the checks from a given firm arrived on the same day — from partners, attorneys, and other support staff.

Some of these support staff have not voted in the past, and those who have voted include registered Republicans, according to public records on file with various county registrars of voting.

Edwards’ campaign records also reveal that many of these individuals’ spouses and relatives contributed the maximum on the same day. The Hill found many of them to be first-time givers. Some have no previous demonstrable interest in politics, while others appear to be active Republicans.

Fox isn't No. 1 because they've got the best talent," he said. "Even though O'Reilly is great TV -- I think he and Larry King are the two real pros on cable TV -- I said, `It's not talent. It's not that they produce the shows better than you guys. It's that they're conservative. It's ideology and ideology alone.

"I don't think you have to come out brandishing your sword and telling everybody, `Agree with me or else you're spinning.' There's sort of a condescending tone with some of the other shows."

Confrontation can distress him. Every time things have heated up with a guest, Scarborough has gone to a commercial break thinking he has failed.

"Everybody will say, `Oh, no, no, that's great TV - people love that,"' he said. "I just don't think they do, over time. I really don't."

A senior State Department official told reporters that Abbas was "much more explicit in private" with Powell about dealing with the violence. "There is already a firm commitment to go all the way" to dismantle the groups, the official said.

The official added that U.S. officials did not sense any disappointment among the Palestinians. Powell was "able to convey from the Israelis a willingness to work together, to meet, to take steps."

Mr. Abbas, however, was less than conciliatory toward the Israeli side, declaring that the Palestinians had already taken many steps sought by the United States while Israel had taken none.

He cited his own repeated rejection of violence by Palestinian groups and the fact that the Palestinians, unlike Israel, had
accepted the peace plan known as the road map, which was drafted over the last year by the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.

"There is no Israeli commitment to the road map, and this is an extremely negative matter, a matter which shows we face an impasse and real difficulties," said Yasser Abed Rabbo, minister of cabinet affairs under Mr. Abbas.

"I think it's important not to get so hung up on a particular word or a particular statement that we lose the opportunity to get started, to get going," he said. "There will be more than enough time in the future to discuss some of the more contentious issues that will have to be dealt with. But right now, let's get started."

With Mr. Sharon at his side, Mr. Powell also said Israel would take "positive steps in the days ahead" to ease the hardships of Palestinians, perhaps timed with his visit to Washington to meet with President Bush next week. He declined to provide details.

This evening an Israeli official maintained that Israel had lifted travel restrictions today on at least some Palestinians with work permits, allowing them to travel from the West Bank to their jobs in Israel. But it was unclear how extensive this step would actually be, and there were indications that the Palestinians were regarding this step as no more than a token gesture.

“With a robust package of at least five hundred and fifty billion dollars in across-the-board tax relief, we will help create more than a million new jobs by the end of 2004,” [President Bush] declared in his weekly radio address. “Some members of Congress support tax relief but say my proposal is too big. Since they already agree that tax relief creates jobs, it doesn’t make sense to provide less tax relief and, therefore, create fewer jobs. I believe we should enact more tax relief so that we can create more jobs, and more Americans can find work and provide for their families.”

There is a pressing need for more jobs—another forty-eight thousand vaporized last month—but the link between tax policy and payrolls is a lot murkier than the President made it out to be. If tax cuts automatically created jobs, businesses would be scouring the streets for workers right now, and nobody’s twenty-five-year-old children would still have to live at home. Two years ago, after all, President Bush persuaded Congress to pass the biggest tax cuts in a generation. But since then a million and a half jobs have disappeared. By contrast, between 1993 and 2000, President Clinton raised taxes to reduce the budget deficit, and the economy created more than twenty million jobs. Of course, this doesn’t mean that higher taxes create jobs, either. The number of people working is determined by the over-all state of the economy, to which fiscal policy is just one contributor. Other things being equal, tax cuts can help the economy by putting more cash in consumers’ pockets, but they are an expensive and unreliable way to raise employment, especially when they are aimed at people who tend to save their windfalls rather than spend them.

More than half the President’s tax cuts would come in the form of abolishing the taxation of corporate dividends. The primary recipients would be rich people and senior citizens, since they own most of the dividend-yielding stocks. For example, Sanford Weill, the chairman of Citigroup, would get a tax cut of about six million dollars. Based on 2001 figures, Vice-President Dick Cheney would save about a hundred thousand dollars. The dividend plan might persuade yacht builders and assisted-living communities to hire some extra help, but it won’t do much for the rest of the nearly nine million unemployed.

In view of this problem, the White House has put forward a more subtle rationale for the dividend-tax cut: It will cause the stock market to rise, which will make consumers and businesses feel more confident. This, in turn, will boost spending, which will generate more hiring. But if any of these links fail to materialize, so will the new jobs.

Even taking the President at his word, each new job would cost the government five hundred and fifty thousand dollars in lost revenues, which is about seventeen times the salary of the average American worker. It would be far cheaper for the federal government to give private firms subsidies to hire more people, or to give money to the states, which are facing their worst financial crisis since the Second World War, and which at this moment are being forced to fire teachers, troopers, and health workers. Parks, museums, and libraries are closing; cultural programs are being cut. College-tuition fees are rising, and scholarships are vanishing. Hundreds of thousands of people stand to lose their state-provided health-care coverage. (Meanwhile, taxpayers will be laying out billions of dollars to reconstruct Iraq.)

"They were substantive and really terrific policy discussions," Patrick Guerriero, the group's executive director, said, adding that no discussion of Mr. Santorum was necessary. "The core of the Republican Party, from the White House to Congress, understands that we're an important part of the American family."

[A]nyone that gets fired up by Sharpton tends to end up sitting out the general election (see: his Senate primary loss in 1992, when the Republican went on to win in November despite Bill Clinton carrying New York State by sixteen points; and the race for mayor in 1997, when his primary challenge left a broke and debilitated Ruth Messinger to lose by seventeen points in the general). He's the kid in kickball who, after grounding out, storms off the field declaring that he's not playing anymore.

Consider the now-disproved claims by President Bush and Colin Powell that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger so it could build nuclear weapons. As Seymour Hersh noted in The New Yorker, the claims were based on documents that had been forged so amateurishly that they should never have been taken seriously.

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Dean either doesn't have an actual plan for the non-child non-senior portion of the population, or else his plan is a secret. If we could see what the plan is, then we could try and decide whether or not it's a good one, but for now, there's nothing.

Turns out that some candidates – notably Howard Dean, and [snip] – have their own blogs. This raises the disturbing prospect of a blog deficit for the other contenders.

I think everyone thinks Howard Dean's campaign weblog is pretty cool, but it seems to me that Kate O'Connor has a serious problem with! the! over! use! of! exclamation! points!

Four parents of gay children had a fiery private exchange tonight with Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. The meeting did not go well, and Mr. Santorum, who has infuriated gays by likening homosexuality to incest and bigamy, left in a hurry, tripping over a chair, the parents said.

"What we tried to do in this meeting was reach him on a human level, and we found no humanity there," said Melina Waldo, a former constituent of Mr. Santorum who lives in Haddonfield, N.J. She said he was "condescending, belligerent, argumentative and arrogant."

A spokeswoman for Mr. Santorum, Erica Clayton Wright, described the meeting as "a very professional and polite exchange." She declined to give details, however, saying, "Constituent meetings are private."

Mr. Lieberman's advisers argued that the spirituality symbolized by the rituals of his observance was central to his appeal as a candidate.

"It reinforces him as a person of faith," Mr. Penn said.

Mr. Lieberman does not refer to himself as an Orthodox Jew, a description that invokes images of ancient solemnity, but rather as "observant." He belongs to an Orthodox synagogue in Georgetown here and engages in rituals associated with the most devout wing of Judaism.

He prays three times a day, and he primarily attends synagogues where men and women are separated.

On the Sabbath, Mr. Lieberman does not drive or enter cars. He does not turn on light switches or cook. He will watch a television set only if someone else has turned it on. Mr. Lieberman does not answer the telephone, check his Blackberry, turn on a computer or engage in e-mail.

When the shuttle exploded on the Saturday before a planned Sunday trip to Iowa, Mr. Lieberman's advisers met and quickly concluded that the trip should be scrapped. But they agonized as they tried to figure out how to consult the candidate. Finally, they dispatched an aide to Mr. Lieberman's front door to obtain his approval.

I like Dean -- really, I do. That said, whatever happened, Dean has stumbled badly with this outrageous behavior/comment/response/silence. He will obviously lose the general election. Want an internship with Gary Hart?