Vernon Robinson’s recent un-aired campaign ad went heavy on the sex. The theme continued into his first debate with Miller. It’s said that “sex sells”, but will it sell him as a candidate?
Ed Brayton highlights some choice portions of review of a PBS documentary and a Washington Post article, detailing the horrible lack of qualifications possessed by many of the people the Bush administration sent to rebuild post-war Iraq.
In case after case, the ticket to Iraq seemed to be loyalty to the Republican party, rather than any experience with the job they were being sent to do:
To pass muster with O’Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn’t need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration. O’Beirne’s staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade .
This has consequences of course:
The decision to send the loyal and the willing instead of the best and the brightest is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 1/2 -year effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one of the Bush administration’s gravest errors. Many of those selected because of their political fidelity spent their time trying to impose a conservative agenda on the postwar occupation, which sidetracked more important reconstruction efforts and squandered goodwill among the Iraqi people, according to many people who participated in the reconstruction effort.
Read the whole thing – there’s much more.
The Talent Show points to a recent Newsweek article detailing some of the trouble the GOP has been having. According to a Newsweek poll, 51% of Americans think that Bush should be impeached:
Other parts of a potential Democratic agenda receive less support, especially calls to impeach Bush: 47 percent of Democrats say that should be a “top priority,� but only 28 percent of all Americans say it should be, 23 percent say it should be a lower priority and nearly half, 44 percent, say it should not be done. (Five percent of Republicans say it should be a top priority and 15 percent of Republicans say it should be a lower priority; 78 percent oppose impeachment.) Rolling back some of the Bush tax cuts would be contentious too: 38 percent of Americans say the Dems should make that a top priority; 28 percent say it should be a lower priority; and 28 percent say it shouldn’t be done at all.
Pretty amazing. Coming in a close second for amazingness is the fact that Newsweek just glosses over this fact, as you can see from the quote above. As Greg says at The Talent Show:
Now wait a second…doesn’t 28% plus 23% equal 51%? I’d think that a poll showing the majority of Americans favor impeaching the President would be pretty newsworthy, especially considering that this far exceeds the numbers of a President that actually was impeached. If the majorities favoring impeachment and repealing Bush’s tax cuts is how Newsweek defines “less support”, then the GOP is in a lot more trouble that I thought.
Your Liberal media at work.
Of course, another point that seems odd to me is that impeachment could be a “low priority”. Obviously, those people believe that Bush deserves impeachment, or else it wouldn’t be a priority at all. However, if that was your opinion, and you believed the President was guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” shouldn’t it be a pretty high priority to try to remove him from office?
Perhaps spurred by TheCA’s quest to discover and “out” local commenter greendog’s true identity (the thread turns in that direction about 14 comments deep), meblogin wonders if he should reveal his own identity:
I have been thinking about adding my real identity to my blog. Others seem to give more credit or seem to prefer to know the name of who they are blogging with or at least that would be my guess.
My reply:
“Real identity” is often overrated. Who are you? You are meblogin. As long as you are consistent in using that name, and as long as you aren’t trying to pass yourself off as some expert in some area of discussion (which would require some verification of your credentials), that’s all we really need to know.
When I first started meeting folks at blogger meetups, I would introduce myself with my real name first, and be met with a blank look, and a smile. After adding, “I blog as PotatoStew” a look of recognition would come over most people’s faces. My pseudonym meant more to them then my real name.
Identify yourself if you want to, but don’t feel pressured to do so. You will be accorded the respect and credibility you deserve based on how you deal with others and present your arguments, whether under your real name or a pseudonym.
It’s everywhere. Resistance is useless.
From my blog’s admin panel:
Somebody comment on something! Quick!
John Robinson has one:
One of the benefits of a geographic-based blogging community (as opposed to a subject-based one) is that there is wide diversity of opinion on virtually every topic. It’s tough to be close-minded because people challenge you.
Exactly right. I’m sure it’s easy to think of others as well. One that jumps out at me is the increased opportunity for intersection between blogging and “the real world”. From Meetups, to RMA reports, to community activism, a local blogging community allows blogging to move from a purely intellectual exercise to something with a little more muscle to it.
Ed Brayton has some thoughts on the recent revelation that many of our policymakers don’t even understand the difference between Sunnis and Shiites:
This is important. If you don’t know such basic things, you can’t possibly have any understanding of the situation over there and be able to evaluate competing policy options. And this is true on every issue, not just this one. All around the country we have legislators voting on issues they have no knowledge of. We’ve got state congressmen voting on science standards in public schools when they couldn’t even pass the mid-term in the classes whose curriculum standards they’re redesigning.
And yet, the public has this anti-intellectual impulse that revolves around having “common sense”, this ridiculous notion that you don’t need expertise you just need “common sense”. But that is, in fact, common nonsense. Having the ability to reach informed conclusions on a subject doesn’t necessarily require a set of credentials, but it does require taking the time to study the issue. And those who do so are in a much better position to make such judgements, and are much more likely to reach a valid conclusion, than those who don’t.
These people should be required to pass some kind of quiz on the issues they are legislating upon before any votes are cast by them.
Most local readers probably know this already, but for the benefit of folks who may be unfamiliar with events leading up to the recent RMA report brouhaha, here’s a bit of basic background.
From Timeline: David Wray’s Career, in the News and Record (my comments are in [brackets]):
July 2003: [David] Wray named chief [of the Greensboro police department], announces plans to alter the department’s structure.
August 2003: A battle over overtime pay surfaces when 76 officers sue the city.
September 2003: Wray changes police car logos.
January 2004: Wray adds a fourth patrol district, creates a centralized administration and changes officers to a controversial rotating shift schedule.
June 2004: Wray gets money from the City Council to hire 32 more officers.
May 2005: The city says it will start paying overtime to police in exchange for their dropping the lawsuit over comp time.
June 2005: The police association surveys officers about Wray’s leadership. [The results were not favorable for Wray.]
June 2005: An African American police lieutenant finds a tracking device on his patrol car. Supervisors say they were investigating complaints that he was using it for personal business. But the officer, Lt. James Hinson, says he is one of several black officers targeted by the Special Intelligence Section, known to rank-and-file as the “secret police.�
June 2005: Wray clears the special intelligence unit of misconduct and suspends Hinson with pay. Wray later hires an expert to examine Special Intelligence’s organizational structure and recommends Internal Affairs should be responsible for investigating officers.
August 2005: The city manager’s office launches a review of allegations into Special Intelligence and hires a consultant to help with the investigation. [The RMA Report is the result of this investigation.]
November-December 2005: Two high-ranking officers in Special Intelligence resign.
December 2005: City Manager Mitchell Johnson strips Wray of full authority to fire or transfer.
Jan. 7: Johnson changes the locks on Wray’s office doors but says Wray is still chief.
Monday [Jan 9]: Wray resigns.
From a News and Record article the day after Wray resigned:
His departure came just days after City Manager Mitchell Johnson changed the locks on the chief’s office and told media Wray needed to gain access through him. That action Friday came a month after Johnson stripped Wray of his authority to fire or promote, and after the city attorney’s office commissioned a report by a consulting firm charged with investigating claims of internal racial profiling by the Special Intelligence Section … The consulting firm hired by the city, Risk Management Associates, was paid $140 an hour to help interview officers, review documents and conduct lie detector tests.
In March of 2006, the News and Record obtained a copy of the RMA report, releasing some of the details, but refusing to publish the entire report due to an agreement with their source. The city also declined to release the report due to alleged confidentiality and legal issues.
In May, the Greensboro City Council – with the exception of Dianne Bellamy-Small – subjected themselves to polygraph tests to ostensibly prove that they were not responsible for leaking the RMA report.
On May 10, 2006 a group of Greensboro residents formally requested that the mayor and city council release the report.
On October 6, City Officials stated at a press conference that they still had no plans to release the report.
On October 10, WFMY News claimed to have seen the report.
On October 12, 2006, local blogger Ben Holder announced that he had a copy of the RMA report. Over the next few days, an increasing number of people obtained copies of the report, including The Carolina Peacemaker, Yes Weekly, and many local GSO-area bloggers.
A copy of the report was uploaded to Greensboro 101, a local blog aggregator, on October 16. Four members of the Greensboro 101 advisory board resigned as a result.
For more in-depth info on the events up until now:
The News and Record’s coverage of the events surrounding Wray, the RMA report, and the GSO police department.
Ed Cone consolidates links to Jerry Bledsoe’s ongoing Cops in Black and White series at The Rhino Times.
This is just meant to be a quick overview of background information. However, if I left out any important details for getting up to speed on where things stand, please let me know in the comments.
Related cartoons from Plead the First:
Here’s an extra cartoon for this week. Not too long ago, it sounded as though we would never see the RMA report. Now it looks as though it’ll be impossible to avoid a detailed accounting of the contents.
Update: A couple of people have expressed concerns about this cartoon, so to clear up any confusion, ConvergeSouth and its organizers were not responsible for the distribution of the RMA report. As Ben commented on Ed’s blog: “I’m going to point out that the RMA report offer or whatever happened after ConvergeSouth, with no connection to it. Conference was over.”
