The only unequivocally good policy option before the American people is to dump the president who got us into this mess, who had no trouble sending our young people to Iraq but who cannot steel himself to face the Sept. 11 commission alone.

Harold Meyerson

While there are seven months to go before the initial vote is tallied, there has already been plenty of election sturm und drang, first from the contentious Democratic primaries and then throughout March from the hit-the-ground-running attack dogs of both the Kerry and the Bush camps. [Emphasis added -- Ed]

Whatever is Stranahan talking about? Contentious? This year's Democratic primaries have been the least contentious in my memory, and the Democratic party is more united than I've ever seen it, all on account of Bush, whose sins pale before any intramural disagreements within the party.

It's odd that such a comment, lacking any real historical perspective, should lead off an article which attempts to weigh the current coverage against that of previous campaigns. Stranahan does provide a lot of background, but ultimately fails to provide any kind of answer to her own question.

Ultimately, I think the problem is that sites like The Campaign Desk, Annenberg's FactCheck and Spinsanity, which try to remain as objective as possible and examine the shortcomings of both sides, while very useful to some extent, have become part of the "Gotcha!" culture that permeates politics, and which has lead us to a situation where every politician, pundit and public person is expected to have lead a pure, unblemished and blameless life, an expectation which is, of course, impossible to live up to, human nature being what it is.

"Gotcha" politics pumps up small peccadilloes and personal failing to the level of great moral and ethical failures, which they are not, and blinds us to the fact that the quality of a transgression is its most important aspect. The apotheosis of contemporary "Gotcha" politics was the right-wings attempt to force Bill Clinton from office over his personal failure to keep his sex life neat and tidy.

Pointing out small failures and mistakes is useful, as I said, but it rather assumes that all parties are playing by the same rules, which is most certainly not the case with the Bush administration. Certainly, their advertising and public pronouncements can be (and should be) scrutinized for errors, but making this the only emphasis misses the big picture, which is that while normative political behavior is to bend and stretch the truth as much as possible while still adhering to the primacy of factual reality, the Bush people are practicing a concerted program of disseminating The Big Lie, of asserting, vigourously and aggresively, that up is down and black is white, and against that kind of behavior the watchdog sites are helpless, because they can never step back far enough from the immediacy of the fray to see that they're being played at a much higher and much more serious level.

(For specific examples of the Big Lie in action, keep an eye on Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo where he frequently notes instances of Bush's "topsy-turvy world" in action.)

You are Maureen Dowd! You like to give people silly nicknames and write in really short, non sequitur paragraphs. You're the most playful of the columnists and a rock-ribbed liberal, but are often accused of being too flamboyant and frivolous. You tend to focus on style over substance, personality over politics. But your heart is in the right place. Plus, you are a total fox.

but there were a number of questions I hesitated on, so I took it again, and guess what?:

You are Thomas L. Friedman! You're the foreign affairs expert. You're liberal on most issues, except you're a leading voice in the pro-war movement. You're probably the most popular columnist at the Times, but probably because you play both sides of the Iraq issue and relish your devotion to what you call "fanatical moderatism." You sure can write, but you could work on your sense of humor.

But I don't want to be either Dowd or Friedman, so I took it again and carefully answered every question with one goal in mind, and, YES!

You are Paul Krugman! You're a brilliant economist with a knack for both making sense of the current economic situation and exposing the Bush administration's lies about it. You somehow came out as the best anti-war writer on the Op-Ed staff. Other economists hate your guts for selling out to the liberals. To hell with 'em.

Great test, very accurate and discerning.

Sorry about the brief downtime. It was not a vast right-wing conspiracy, merely a server administration error during the changeover.

Obviously, my paranoia got the better of me.

Actually, if the whole thing had gone as planned, there never would have been that white-page scare. There was a page up on the old server explaining what was going on, and in theory you'd get that page until the DNS switched, and then the new site would be live. What actually happened was that you go the explanation page until the DNS switched, and then the new site wasn't there.

Should this situation, or one like it, arise again, we will make a regular post about it first if we can. Live and learn, I guess.

Please!

[Note: I retroactively put in some links that I couldn't access while the site was down. -- Ed]

I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.
Abraham Harold Maslow
The Psychology of Science: A Reconnaissance (1966)

Bush & Company's ideologically-related blindness only allows them to see one tool in the economic toolbox available to them, and they use it whenever they see a nail.

March 26, 2004
Refineries taking appropriate safety measures
Monica Perin
Houston Business Journal

Houston-area and Gulf Coast oil refineries and pipelines have heightened their security this week in response to an FBI warning that al-Qaida may be planning terrorist activities here in a bid to influence the presidential election.

Plant officials in the Houston region, home to four of the nation's 10 largest refining facilities, said Thursday they are taking appropriate measures in response to the FBI advisory that oil refineries in Texas may be targeted for terrorist attacks, the Associated Press reported.

Government officials are meeting with industry representatives in Washington today to discuss tighter security precautions

"The FBI has received uncorroborated information that al-Qaida plans to blow up oil pipelines and refineries in Texas in an effort to affect the outcome of the presidential election," Rick Hagar, a spokesman for the East Harris County Manufacturers Association, a group that represents 125 area petrochemical facilities near the Houston Ship Channel, told the AP.

Bob Doguim, an FBI Houston office spokesman, told The Baytown Sun that the alleged threat came from a single source and it could take place sometime between now and the election.

Doguim said the agency's Houston office has been meeting with local law enforcement agencies and oil refineries.

But Bill Carter, FBI spokesman in Washington, emphasized that the information on Texas is in the same category as an estimated 7,000 alerts sent from the FBI to state and local authorities in the past year, according to AP.

"We are giving out information that there is a potential threat to oil and gas and pipelines," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Abe Martinez, chief of the Anti-Terrorism Advisory Council. [...]

and this:

BP explosion puts city on edge

By Michael Clements and T.J. Aulds
Texas City Sun

Published March 31, 2004

TEXAS CITY — A furnace at the BP Refinery in Texas City burst into flames Tuesday night. No injuries or deaths were reported in the blaze that lit up the Gulf Coast sky.

Bruce Clawson, the city’s emergency management director, said the furnace exploded around 6:30 p.m. He said the fire was fueled by Naptha, a petroleum feed stock used at the refinery. He said that after two head counts, BP had accounted for all its personnel.

The city was placed under Level 4 alert and a shelter in place warning and roads leading to the plant were blocked. The shelter in place warning and roadblocks were lifted by 9 p.m.

The Industrial Mutual Aid System was implemented around 7 p.m. Under that system industrial and public firefighters are called upon for assistance.

"Every piece of fire fighting equipment in the area is here right now," Clawson said at around 8:45 p.m.

BP spokesman Annie Smith confirmed that all workers had been accounted for and that no injuries were reported.

Marti Snyder, another BP spokesman said that as of 10:30 p.m. the fire was "pretty much under control" and close to out. She said an investigation team will begin its work today to find the cause of the blast and fire.

Regulatory agencies will also conduct investigations.

The situation was downgraded to a Level 1 around 10:45 p.m.

After recent reports that refineries in this area might be targeted by terrorists, Clawson said there was some concern. However, he said that at this time there is no evidence of that.

"That was one of our first concerns," Clawson said. "But there is no indication of that, none at all."

Residents in the city were a bit on edge when the incident first took place. [...]

Of course, there's no necessity for there to be a connection, it could very well be a coincidence, but the timing seems suspicious.

The problem is, if the FBI or Homeland Security was to find out that the explosion was a terrorist attack, would the Bush administration allow them to tell the public? All in all, wouldn't it be best for Bush to keep our fear of attack very high, while suppressing reports of any actual attacks whenever possible, because a successful attack would look very bad for their efforts at preventing terrorism, while continuing fear of attack encourages people not to make any change in the government.