Krikor Daglian

Krikor Daglian is a graduate of Colby College, where he majored in history and government. He currently resides in New York City.

Yada Yada Yalta

This is a follow up on Josh Marshall's and David Greenberg's thoughts on Bush's criticism of the Yalta agreement. Not only is it ridiculous for him to be criticizing FDR and Churchill's negotiations at the end of WWII as handing Eastern Europe over to the Soviets, but he of all people should know about the strange bedfellows of international relations. How many nations with questionable commitments to freedom do we support because of our needs in the war on terrorism and other geopolitical concerns?

While he's silent on Russia's continuing war in Chechnya and turns to jelly when he comes to face to face with Putin instead of standing behind his rhetoric about freedom and liberty (as Putin continues his crackdown on the press and free enterprise in Russia), Bush seems to think that the US and UK should have driven Russia back out of Poland in 1945 and continued to fight them until Russia was ready to negotiate again. And with Stalin, who knows how long that would have taken?

Medal Devaluation

Yesterday, Bush awarded the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in this country, to Tommy Franks, Paul Bremer and George Tenet for their roles as architects of the Iraq war and reconstruction. There's a few things wrong with this, the least of which is, why is General Tommy Franks being given a civilian honor for fighting a war, especially for an award that is for distinguished civilian service in peacetime? For that matter, why are any of them getting it for service in a decidedly non-peacetime capacity?

More to the point, as a general policy, isn't it a little early to be honoring the people who crafted a war that's not even two years old yet, with an outcome still uncertain? This is the shortest time period between the awarding of this medal and the events cited for the awarding.

But most importantly, Iraq is hardly a success at this point, and certainly not anything that deserves the highest honor awarded to civilians.

Now Bush may just be deluded about reality, but this smacks to me of either an attempt to reinforce the administration's line on Iraq (it being just peachy that is), or it's another example of Bush loyalists getting rewarded, this time quite literally (and none of those three possibilites is very fantastic).

I guess the (circular) logic goes... if the architects of the Iraq policy are awarded the Medal of Freedom, the war must have been a success! So let's award them!

Here's the story.

Another reason not to eat there...

Republican members of the House and Senate also have blocked Democratic legislation to raise the minimum wage by as much as $1.85 to $7, a move that might hurt restaurant owners and retailers.

Those companies include Tampa, Florida-based Outback Steakhouse Inc., which gave 96 percent of its $401,500 in PAC donations to Republicans this year, and Orlando, Florida-based Darden Restaurants Inc., the owner of Olive Garden and Red Lobster franchises, which gave 90 percent of its $198,084 in candidate donations to Republicans.

The rest of the article is pretty interesting - apparently, the companies that gave lots of money to the GOP did really well in the stock market over the past 4 years, while companies that supported the Dems didn't do so great.

Just a Quick Question

I haven't examined the new intelligence bill very closely, but let me ask this: how is creating a "national" intelligence director going to be an improvement on a "central" intelligence director? I thought the Director of the CIA was supposed to be the guy that informed the President on the country's intelligence. Perhaps that role has changed? So change it back. I think adding another level of bureaucracy isn't going to solve the problem.

Everything's Great in Afghanistan

I feel that these two paragraphs paint a nice picture of the fallacy our leaders are trying to project (from this article):

"We gather to mark a historic moment in the life of the nation and in the history of human freedom," Cheney said at a news conference with Karzai beforehand on the grounds of the presidential palace, a turreted stone structure set against distant, snow-dusted mountains. "Now the tyranny is gone, the terrorist enemy is scattered and the people of Afghanistan are free."

Security for the inauguration was heavy even by the standards of this dust-caked, militarized city. Major roads were closed, U.S.-led multinational troops patrolled on foot and in armored vehicles, and sharpshooters with telescopic sights manned rooftops while helicopters whirred overhead. There are 16,000 U.S. combat troops in the country, according to the Pentagon. NATO oversees 8,500 multinational troops providing security.

As significant as it is that they pulled off an election, the country is hardly free. From what I've read, the Taliban has essentially taken over the countryside, leaving Karzai to be mayor of Kabul. We should have directed all our energies to Afghanistan from the time we invaded, instead of the Iraq fiasco. Now, we're stuck in a halfway hell in both countries.

No Brainer

The IRS is one of the few federal agencies that can make money back on its funding. As this article mentions, last year they were allocated about $10.2 billion in enforcement funding, and brought in $43.1 billion in tax revenues as a result. So when the commissioner asks for $500 million more, it seems pretty easy to figure out that this will bring in even more lost revenue.

And remember, this isn't "new" taxation, it's just money that should have been paid but wasn't, possibly (and probably, in the cases they pursue) because the party in question intended to avoid paying them. Any honest American should be in favor of the IRS pursuing those who aren't paying their fair share. Besides the fact that its ethically dubious for people not to pay into the system that they benefit from, it also makes everyone else have to pay a bigger piece in the long run.

Why Join the Red States?

The Democrats' defeat in the recent election has inspired many to say that the Democrats need to change and join the larger culture of America, which would mean that of the red states. But besides the differences in matters like religion and attitudes towards homosexuality, there are plenty of reasons why blue states should keep on doing what they've been doing.

Why live in a red state? I mean, there are plenty of beautiful areas in those regions, but every statistical ranking I've seen puts most states whose electoral vote went to Bush towards the bottom half. For example...

Crime

Health

Per capita income

Education levels

This all shows that people in the red states end up voting against their own economic, safety and health interests. My larger point, however, is to ask why the Democrats should try to adapt their party to the culture of the red states? The obvious reason is "to win," but it seems to me that, much like the election, Democrats are on the right side of things. I don't think trying to change to please the Bush voters is the way to go, since it will compromise our principles and probably won't even work anyway. What we have to do is change the issues to the ones that will make these people vote for us.

Someone's thirsty...

OK, I know it's a big storm, but c'mon...

This hurricane will undoubtedly be destructive, as others were, but people go crazy with these things. You're not going to be unable to get water for a month, which seems to be what this lady is buying for. You're not going to be in a bunker for two months.

Seeing Less, Slamming Moore

I missed McCain's speech, but from the news reports afterwards, his comments about Michael Moore, who happened to be there, were among the big moments:

Our choice wasn't between a benign status quo and the bloodshed of war. It was between war and a graver threat. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise...

Certainly not a disingenuous filmmaker who would have us believe, my friends, who would have us believe that Saddam's Iraq was an oasis of peace, when in fact -- when in fact it was a place of indescribable cruelty, torture chambers, mass graves and prisons that destroyed the lives of the small children inside their walls.

That break is when the crowd booed Moore. After the convention wrapped, I saw McCain interviewed by Chris Matthews. No transcript yet, but Matthews asked McCain about his criticism of Moore and "Fahrenheit 9/11," with McCain reiterating his point about Moore painting a false picture of Iraq. Then Matthews asked McCain if had actually seen the film...

Well, he hasn't - he's only seen clips. And when Matthews pointed out how one of the points of the film is how the military recruits the young, poor and disadvantaged and sends them to war. McCain, apparently unaware of that, said he agreed with that point.

It's not the first time I've seen someone tear down Moore and his film, and then admit he hasn't seen it. I'm not saying the film is perfect or wholly correct, and I often don't agree with Moore, but if you're going to rake him over the coals, especially in front of a convention and a nationwide (cable) TV audience, watch his film first.

The Miami Two-Step

I guess it's cause of all the problems they had down there last time around that they keep finding issues with the voter rolls down in Florida, but apparently some people are voting twice. I like how the people reacted when caught...

Taxing Issues

This IRS needs more money. This may strike some as funny or even enraging, but it's true - tax evasion and cheating is getting worse and worse, yet the IRS's capacity to pursue these people has been drained in recent years because of supposed abuses.

Everytime someone cheats on their taxes, it hurts those who pay their taxes. Those who don't pay their share cost us $300 billion a year, and we and our children will have to make up that amount, with interest, in the future.

Maybe Things Aren't So Urgent After All...

You know, the last two days, after the latest terror alert arrived, I expected to see a substantially bigger police presence down near my job, considering I work about three blocks from the NY Stock Exchange. But so far, things seem pretty much as they usually are - there's a check point with a couple of guys ID'ing trucks and bring the dog around for a sniff - but I don't see the Delta Force cops (or whatever they're called) scoping out the area south of the stock exchange. Apparently things are more bulked up just north of the exchange on Wall Street itself. Still, one of the places I expected to see the most police - the subway that runs almost under the exchange itself, which I happen to ride each day - I didn't see a single cop.

Maybe they all knew about this before the story broke today:

Intel That Sparked Alert Dates to 2000

The Sunshine State?

It's amazing that almost four years after Florida essentially disenfranchised thousands of voters incorrectly, they seem to be on the path to do it again. In case you don't know, in 1999, Florida went about clearing the voter rolls of convicted felons, employing a method that was so unspecific that it ended up denying the vote to thousands of people incorrectly. And most of those denied were black voters, of which an overwhelming majority tend to vote Democratic in that state (or any state really), and 22,000 of which were actually registered Democrats.

Who ordered this purge and ok'ed the overly wide scope? Jeb Bush and the infamous Katherine Harris, who later was in charge of overseeing the recount while also serving as the head of the Bush/Cheney campaign in the state (for the full story, see Greg Palast's report in video or transcript.)

So, you'd think things would be better this time around, right? Nope. The NY Times reports on more shady practices with the Florida voter roll.

And let me say, why do felons who have left jail get knocked off the rolls anyway? I thought the point of prison was that you serve your time for your crime and get released with your debt to society filled? How does having gone to jail make you unworthy of voting?

UPDATE: You can check to see who's on the new list here.

Clinton and Kerry and that other guy...

I just want to state for the record that Clinton's book will not harm Kerry's election chances. Honestly, there's a lot of time left until the election, not to mention two conventions, a few debates (hopefully) and who knows what else.

What will harm Kerry's chances are a Nader candidacy however. Hopefully the 6% or so who are currently thinking of voting for Nader will change their minds. I saw this today in a chat with Richard Morin & Claudia Deane of the Washigton Post about the newest Post-ABC News poll numbers:

Detroit, Mich.: The Washington Post-ABC poll depicted Kerry with 48 percent, Bush with 46 percent, and Nader with 6 percent of the vote from registered voters sampled. Is Nader taking votes away from Kerry or Bush? A few months ago Bush had the edge, are true conservatives leaving the Bush camp and supporting Nader or choosing not to vote in this election? What kind of effect does this type of poll play into the politics of the upcoming election?

Richard Morin & Claudia Deane: One more time, we're going to answer this question. And Ralph, are you paying attention?

All the evidence we've seen points to this single fact: Nader takes votes away from Kerry. In the current poll, the "horserace" with Bush, Kerry and Nader in the race, Kerry leads Bush by 4 points among registered voters. But if the choice is just between Bush and Kerry, the Democrat's advantage grows to 8 points.
End of story.

You can see the whole discussion here.

The pattern continues...

Another whistleblower takes the Bush administration to task:

Who is Jack Spadaro? He's a man who's devoted his life to the safety of miners and the safety of people who live near mines.

He's an engineer, who until recently was head of the National Mine Health and Safety Academy (MSHA), a branch of the Department of Labor, which trains mining inspectors.

But he lost that job last year, after he blew the whistle on what he called a whitewash by the Bush administration of an investigation into a major environmental disaster. Correspondent Bob Simon reports.

”I had never seen anything so corrupt and lawless in my entire career as what I saw regarding interference with a federal investigation of the most serious environmental disaster in the history of the Eastern United States,” says Spadaro.

“I've been in government since Richard Nixon. I've been through the Reagan administration, Carter and Clinton. I've never seen anything like this.”

What he's talking about is what he calls a government cover-up of an investigation into a disaster 25 times the size of the Exxon Valdez spill.

Full article here.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but has any other president had so many people involved in government, including people who worked directly with the president (like O'Neil and Clarke) come out and critcize him and his administration. So far we've seen whistleblowers or the equivilent decrying the administration's approach to anti-terrorism, Iraq (more than one person), the environment (more than one person), and budget calculations. Did I forget any? I just hope this evidence is mounting in people's minds.