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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RMF who wrote (51208)	7/18/2004 12:20:36 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 89467

What are the top three lies of the Bush administration? thehill.com David Corn spoke with The Hill recently about his book, The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception. My publisher pushed me to craft a top 10 list; it is posted on www.bushlies.com. That was hard enough to do--in terms of choosing. You want three? I suppose I could name three that are each related to the war. But for number one, I'll stick to Bush's claim that Saddam Hussein's brutal regime--because it supposedly possessed WMDs and supposedly was in league with al Qaeda--posed a "direct" and "immediate" threat to the United States. Bush has yet to prove, as he claimed before the war, that Hussein was "a threat because he is dealing with al Qaeda." And Bush repeatedly overstated the overstated (and wrong) intelligence produced by the CIA on WMDs. One example: Bush said Iraq had a "massive stockpile" of biological weapons. The National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq said (again, wrongly) that Iraq had an extensive biological weapons development program. Lie No. 2. In addition to invading and occupying Iraq, Bush's other radical policy move was pushing super-sized tax cuts. To represent many of the false or misleading assertions he and his lieutenants deployed to win support for these tax cuts, allow me to cite a statement Bush made when he was first selling his tax cut plan in 2000. "The vast majority of my tax cuts go to the bottom end of the spectrum," he said. A report produced by Citizens for Tax Justice, a liberal outfit, noted that 42.6 percent of the $1.6 billion tax package would go to the top 1 percent. The lowest 60 percent would net 12.6 percent. The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, ABC News, and NBC News each reported that his tax cuts produced these sort of results. Bush was speaking the precise opposite of the truth when he claimed his tax cuts proposal benefited lower-income Americans more than the wealthy. Lie No. 3. No list would be complete without perhaps the biggest whopper Bush told: his promise he would "return honor and integrity" to the White House. Fahrenheit 9/11 questioned Bush’s reasons for going to war. How are your claims of Bush’s falsehoods similar/different from Michael Moore’s? I was surprised that in F9/11, Moore did not spend more time puncturing Bush's stated reasons for war. I assume Moore thought the public was already on his side regarding this debate. After all, a majority of respondents in recent polls say they believe Bush purposefully exaggerated the case for war. In one poll, 47 percent said they believe Bush "deliberately" misled the nation. In my book, I carefully examine scores of assertions made by Bush and his aides and find that many of them were unsupported by the available evidence. In key instances, Bush and his lieutenants misrepresented the intelligence produced by the CIA. I chart all of this rather thoroughly--and look closely at the claims that Hussein had an operational alliance with al Qaeda. I approached this task as a journalistic exercise and, unlike Moore, was not aiming for laughs. Why do you think journalists are reluctant to report Bush’s lies? Ben Bradlee, the former executive editor of The Washington Post, said in 1997, "Even the very best newspapers have never learned how to handle public figures who lie with a straight face." In fact, my book ends with an exploration of this question. I don't want to give away the ending, but...there are several factors. White House reporters are beat reporters and sometimes find it hard to be too confrontational with the people they cover. They also do not want to appear too accusatory (until a scandal develops and a pack mentality sets in). There is an amount of deference paid to the president. Many see their task as first and foremost reporting what the president says. Evaluation comes second. And these reporters feel bound by unstated rules of what is appropriate and what is not. Several well-known members of the White House press corps have passed me their favorite Bush lies and have said that they sometimes wish they could be as blunt as I am in this book. Where do Bush's lies stand in relation to Nixon's Watergate and Reagan’s Iran-Contra? This may be a matter of taste. As odious as were the lies of Watergate, they did not lead to war and death. Reagan's lies about Iran-contra did involve matters of war, but the war in Central America was small and supposedly covert. Bush told the public there was an immediate threat that had to be resolved right away via invasion and occupation. If we measure by consequences, Bush makes Nixon and Reagan seem pikers in the field of presidential prevarication. What are the consequences of White House deception? War, death, injury, a decline in America's standing in the world, a less effective campaign against the mass murderers of 9/11, massive deficits, a real (but unacknowledged) ban on federally funded stem cell research, a global warming policy that increases the amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere, a lousy Medicare drug benefits law, cynicism at home and abroad, and much more--perhaps even the defeat of an incumbent president.

To: RMF who wrote (51208)	7/18/2004 1:40:45 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

The are no "sure-fire remedies" to anything but I believe in constantly trying to become a better listener... Message 20321680 Here is a book that I just started and I would highly recommend it to everyone (including GW Bush)... The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations by James Surowiecki (Author) amazon.com <<...Relevant and surprising, July 10, 2004 Reviewer: Matthew Gleick (Phoenix, AZ) Although the subtitle to THE WISDOM OF CROWDS is an awkward mouthful, it is at least accurate: the book does an exceptional job of illuminating a remarkably wide range of material from politics, everyday life, and the business world. Surowiecki's not offering a grand unified theory of everything, but in the course of investigating how and when groups and crowds are and are not intelligent, he takes you on an exhilarating ride. You can't go more than a couple of pages without coming across some interesting factual tidbit or clever anecdote. Just a short list of stuff Surowiecki writes about includes: crowds on city sidewalks, Navy men trying to find a lost submarine, the Nielsen ratings, Google, scientists trying to find the SARS virus, the stock market, game-show audiences, fashion stores, and the C.I.A. Thankfully, though, he understands that just stringing together stories isn't enough. Instead, he fits his examples into a strong argument that holds the book together. You can get a lot out of this book just by dipping into individual chapters, but reading it from beginning to end is a powerful experience. One of the things about the book that hasn't been much remarked on is the light it sheds on the flaws in the way the U.S. intelligence community -- and, I would argue, the Bush administration -- approaches the problem of forecasting the future and making good decisions. The book's main subject is the wisdom of crowds, but Surowiecki spends a lot of time on how groups go wrong, and his discussion of how groups make bad decisions seems to me completely relevant to our current problems. When Surowiecki delves into groupthink, into the pressure that's exerted on lower-level employees to conform, and the perils of too little diversity of opinion, he's making a broader point about what good decisions require. But in the process, he clarified for me just why the current administration did such a bad job of figuring out whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and of planning for the postwar period. I was surprised, but it turns out this book has a lot to say about the state we're in right now...>> ____________ <<...Excellent, June 13, 2004 Reviewer: Steven Kurson (Chicago) I'm a big fan of James Surowiecki's "Financial Page" column in The New Yorker. He's consistently able to come up with unusual takes on seemingly familiar topics, and he has a great knack for making business stories compelling and entertaining as well as understandable. But because it's only a page long, I sometimes come away from the column wanting more, and I always wondered how Surowiecki would do if he was able to develop his ideas and arguments more fully. Luckily, "The Wisdom of Crowds" lives up to all my expectations. It's wonderfully readable, full of terrific stories, funny, and its basic argument -- that groups, under certain conditions, can make better decisions than even the smartest individuals -- is counterintuitive without being willfully contrarian. The roots of the argument obviously stem from the way markets work -- buyers and sellers find each other and reach efficient outcomes without anyone being in charge, while the stock market (at least some of the time) does as good a job as possible of setting prices. But what I really like is the way Surowiecki extends this argument way beyond business and markets, showing how collective wisdom can be seen (and can potentially be used) in a host of other situations, including the racetrack, on the Internet, and on city streets. He also does a good job of drawing out the possible implications of this for everything from the U.S. intelligence community to the way companies are run. This is definitely a big-idea book, but the author is cautious in laying out his evidence, and is careful to show that groups, even if they're potentially wise, are often stupid and dangerous. The chapter on small groups in particular, which focuses on NASA's mismanagement of the Columbia mission, is powerful stuff, and useful to anyone interested in how to run a meeting well (or badly, for that matter). The least satisfying part of the book is the chapter on democracy, where Surowiecki shies away from pushing his conclusion to its logical end. But on the whole, this is just a wonderful book, elegant and enlightening. If you're interested in this book, it's also worth checking out Paul Seabright's "The Company of Strangers" and Robert Wright's "Nonzero."...>>