Month: February 2008

Tested?

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by hilzoy Today, Hillary Clinton released this ad, which I regard as the spiritual heir to Bush’s “Scary Scary Wolves” ad from 2004: The Obama campaign put out this response within hours: But now, as is typical, the Clinton campaign delivers the coup de grace to itself. I’m going to try to embed the audio … Read more

Reforming Foster Care

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by hilzoy

Every so often, a story appears that reveals just how inadequate our foster care system is. Here’s one:

“How do you lose a chubby-cheeked and fidgety 5-year-old and not notice she’s gone? For most parents, 15 minutes out of sight would be enough time to worry. For the state of Florida, it took 15 months.

A foster child removed from her drug-addicted mother’s custody, Rilya Wilson was supposed to be living in Miami with Geralyn Graham, who says she is Rilya’s grandmother (…) While in Graham’s care, the child should have received monthly visits from caseworkers at Florida’s Department of Children and Families. (…) The girl’s caseworker resigned in March, amid accusations she had falsified visitation reports in other cases; when DCF began to examine the worker’s old paperwork, it contacted Graham and realized the child had vanished.

DCF is supposed to conduct background checks on foster parents. But the Miami Herald reported that the agency placed Rilya with Graham despite the woman’s convictions for grand theft and fraud, her use of 20 aliases, and a medical diagnosis that she suffers from “a psychotic syndrome.””

That case prompted an investigation that revealed that the Florida foster care program had “lost” 88 other children. There were thousands more elsewhere. Presumably, a number of these just ran away, and haven’t been found because they don’t want to be. But it shouldn’t take the realization that one state’s foster care program “lost” a five year old girl to get people to investigate and discover that children are missing.

Here’s another:

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Three Trillion Dollars

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by hilzoy This article is worth reading in its entirety. It’s about Joseph Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics and has now written a book estimating the cost to the US of the war in Iraq: “Appetites whetted, Stiglitz and Bilmes dug deeper, and what they have discovered, after months of chasing often … Read more

Telecoms, Canadians, And Stuff

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by hilzoy Those mean ungrateful telecoms! According to Paul Kiel at TPMMuckraker, Roll call reports that despite everything the Republicans have done to allow them to break the law with complete impunity, they aren’t expressing their gratitude in the, um, concrete forms the Republicans seem to have expected: “It’s quite discouraging,” said one GOP leadership … Read more

Debate Open Thread

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by hilzoy Thus far, I have an unbroken streak of unwatched debates. That changes tonight. If anyone wants to discuss the debate, this is your thread. If you want to discuss anything else, you can do that too.

I’ve Got A Little List

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by hilzoy The last time Mark Halperin crossed my radar, he was confessing that he spent the last two decades holding the ludicrous belief that “that there was a direct correlation between the skills needed to be a great candidate and a great president.” However, he said, he had decided that he was wrong: that … Read more

Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead!

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by hilzoy From the DoD, via TPMMuckraker: ” The Department of Defense announced today that General Counsel of the Department of Defense William J. Haynes II is returning to private life next month.” Pardon me while I dance about my study, cackling with glee. That’s some of the best news I’ve had since, well, since … Read more

The Great Untested John McCain

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by publius

McCain’s general election campaign is not off to a smooth start. First, his opening salvo focused on Obama’s commitment to public financing promises — whoops. Next, his campaign responded to the (grossly irresponsible) NYT article with an impulsive, overbroad “never helped any lobbyists ever” denial – thus opening himself to more unfavorable press.

These tactical misfires won’t sink his campaign by any means. They do, however, raise larger concerns. Simply put, McCain hasn’t proven himself to be a good campaigner yet. In fact, there are many reasons to think that he’ll actually campaign poorly.

I’m a big believer in the “primaries matter” theory. Elections are Darwinian environments – and candidates tend to win for a reason. Tactics matter, as does an ability to tap into the larger Zeitgeist (i.e., structural forces matter too, but good campaigners recognize and tap into those underlying currents). For this reason, candidates who look great on paper (Dole, Rudy, HRC) lose if they run wretched campaigns. Similarly, candidates who don’t look so hot on paper can compensate with superior campaigning skills. In short, people who win tend to run superior campaigns. Not always, but generally.

At first glance, you might think McCain’s primary victory is evidence of his own campaigning skills. But I don’t think so. His victory (for unique reasons) doesn’t necessarily show his Darwinian chops. Despite all his experience, McCain remains in many ways a roll of the dice.

Consider 2000. While he had some initial success due to fawning press coverage (which is probably his key “skill”), the ultimate result was a spectacular flameout in South Carolina and beyond. The South Carolina tactics were despicable, sure. But Republican primaries aren’t pretty. He knew the players involved and should have been better prepared. More to the point, you can’t win a Republican nomination when you ostentatiously demonize key coalition members, as he did. Personally, I applauded the criticism of Jerry Falwell, but I’d have been cringing if I were his campaign manager.

Moving on to 2008, the stars aligned perfectly for him. Ross Douthat has made the case more eloquently than I have, but McCain’s victory had a lot to do with luck. First, his rapid ascent helped him avoid embarrassing media moments. Remember that, for most of 2007, McCain was ignored. Thus, he wasn’t subject to the type of exacting scrutiny that Romney and Rudy (and, to a lesser extent, Fred Thompson got). He had to keep things together for a month rather than a year – a much easier task.

Second, his victory was less than overwhelming. McCain won a relatively small plurality among a sharply divided field. His victory had less to do with his savvy campaigning, and more to do with (1) a conservative base split between Romney and Huckabee; (2) Rudy’s rapid collapse and strategic blunders; and (3) Thompson’s silly last stand in South Carolina. None of this establishes that McCain is a bad campaigner. The point is that his victories don’t necessarily establish that he’s a good one.

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Permanent Ceasefire In Uganda

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by hilzoy Remember these kids? They are the Night Commuters of northern Uganda: “Each night before the sun sets, thousands of children march in grim procession along dusty roads that take them from their rural villages to larger towns. The children are afraid to sleep in their beds, terrified that they will be abducted by … Read more

Oh Noes! George W. Bush Is Teh Secret Vietnamese!

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by hilzoy

I mean, what other conclusion can you possibly come to after seeing this:

Bush_ao_dai

I’ve been to several foreign countries. Not once did it ever occur to me to dress up like a foreigner. I mean, who does that?

Why else was he so eager to avoid serving in the Vietnam war? So he wouldn’t have to kill his comrades! Why did he like what he saw when he looked into Putin’s soul? Because, as this photo reveals for the first time, they are both Vietnamese! No matter how much the wingnuts try to scrub and whitewash, some stains just won’t come clean.

The Viet Cong were patient. They took the long view. They weren’t content to drive us out of their country: they needed to exact a terrible revenge on us, at a time and in a manner of their own choosing. George W. Bush is the instrument of their vengeance.

Suddenly, it all makes sense.

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UPDATE: TPM tries to track down the source of the “Obama in Muslim garb” story. Here’s what they found.

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