The magical disappearing e-mails

Apparent gaps in White House e-mail archives coincide with dates in late 2003 and early 2004 when the administration was struggling to deal with the CIA leak investigation and the possibility of a congressional probe into Iraq intelligence failures.

Doesn't this incident sound a lot like the 5 million missing e-mails related to the Justice Department hiring/firing controversy? And doesn't it also sound a lot like the 18-and-a-half minute tape from the Nixon days? Shameless.

Crazy talk

Ever wondered why most economists vote for Democrats in presidential elections? It's because they know that cutting taxes does not replace the revenue it loses. But Rudy Giuliani does not. He says that cutting taxes should only be supplemented by cutting other taxes if it wants to maximize revenue. His argument would seem to imply that a tax rate of 1% would generate even more revenue to the government. This is of course nonsense. Giuliani is playing to the crazy Republican base for the primaries -- and losing his head as he does so.

Norman Finkelstein: mere critic?

Former Professor Norman Finkelstein always said he was simply a scholar whose legitimate criticism of Israel was met by unmerited rejection. "What's wrong with being a critic of Israel?", he and others insist. Criticism of Israel is one thing. Meeting with Hizballah leaders is another. Does this sound like mere critiquing of Israeli policy?:

I think that the Hezbollah represents the hope. They are fighting to defend their homeland.

Defend their homeland? So when their operatives send Katyushas into Kiryat Shmona completely unprovoked, who are they defending against? Where will you find a singular Israeli soldier in Lebanon? Finkelstein is no critic, he is a terrorist sympathizer.

Poll smoking

Stephen Colbert, in his first show back from a writer-strike-induced hiatus, told his guest the following (paraphrased):

You can get 50% of Americans to say anything! [turns to audience] Who wants to be a pirate? [audience roars] You see? 100% approval.

With the 2008 primary campaigns in full swing, polls are on everyone's mind. We heard about the legendary Des Moines Register poll, which supposedly had great influence and accuracy picking the winners of the Iowa caucuses. I was skeptical of this legend, yet Obama (huzzah!) and Huckabee won their respective contests.

Months and months of meaningless polls having been conducted, two candidates bucked consistent polling trends and came out on top. Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney have fallen by the wayside. When will the media stop obsessing over surveys that will not have any actual bearing over the election? My guess: never -- they would eliminate so much campaign coverage that they will be around forever. This is such a shame, given that voters obviously pay them no heed. (Amazingly, the voters are making an informed decision in doing so!)

Ahmadinejad the fabulist

Nobody denies the obvious like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He has called the Holocaust, probably the most well-documented event of the 20th century, a "myth." He has continually denied Iranian involvement in Iraqi violence or in arming Hamas and Hizballah's rocket forces, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary on all fronts. He famously said at Columbia that in Iran there aren't homosexuals "like in [the United States]." One of his techniques in interviews with Western media is to simply deny allegations they make and dispute their sources.

He does this in his own country, too. He is under fire from both reformists and conservatives for his fiscal policies, yet he brushes aside problems like they were because of other peoples' actions all along. When asked about the doubling of Iranian currency in the open market over the last 3 years, widely blamed as a factor in the country's rising inflation, economist Morteza Allahdad said, "Ahmadinejad can't escape responsibility for this."

But why would that stop him from trying? In a TV address, he responded, "Inflation has its roots in the past," meaning that the blame should not be placed on his shoulders. What a far cry from Truman's "the buck stops here," no?

What planet is Ron Paul on?

Ron Paul, the darling of the internet (who is not Barack Obama) is on record as saying this: "I don't think we'd all die of unsafe food if we didn't have the FDA. Someone else would do it."

Let's dissect this a moment. Paul seeks to assure us by saying that we won't all die. This might be parsing language a bit, but it doesn't settle me much.

Of much more significance is his second part of the quote -- "Someone else would do it." Really? We would get one, unified body of experts to -- without regard for profit -- monitor every food and drug item on the market, outside of our government?

Paul and other free market fetishists fail to comprehend the absurdity of what they are suggesting. Did they ever ponder why the FDA was established in the first place? Or Social Security and Medicare for that matter? They were established precisely because somebody else wasn't doing it. The free market had its shot in each of these areas, and it failed to adequately address the problems presented to it. That is why the government must be tasked with things such as product safety.

Why do we like Musharraf again?

President Bush probably feels a bit outdone by Pervez Musharraf. He uses "The War on Terror" to wastefully spend and clamp down on civil liberties. As the New York Times reports, the multi-billion dollar investment in Pakistan's military, an attempt to quell Al Qaeda, has been diverted to other projects. One example of this has been an effort on the part of the Pakistanis to shore up defenses against another U.S. ally, India.

In another classic instance of the administration seeming to have its foreign policy wander without direction, the aid had few stipulations or even specific purposes. Only now is it being evaluated as to its use.

It's about time we stopped feeling so obliged to support Musharraf at all costs. Bush obviously pushed hard for him to remove the martial law in place, but he didn't go far enough. Our image has suffered even more. And for what? The people protesting against Musharraf were not Al Qaeda -- in fact, they were the people we ought to have been encouraging: people who respected civil law and modernity. But we can't win. Bush would never allow us that chance.