Tag Archive '2004'

Implications of the Pletka Purge

Lee on Dec 22 2008 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Lee's Page, Military Matters

Roland picks up an interesting piece by Jacob Heilbrunn for the National Interest, describing an ongoing purge of neoconservative intellectuals from the American Enterprise Institute, allegedly instigated by Vice President Danielle Pletka. So far Michael Ledeen and Reuel Marc Gerecht are gone, with Joshua Muravchik soon leaving. Others are said to be soon in following.

This could signal the reemergence of an old conflict over machtpolitik and just war doctrine, which used to exist in Republican security policy circles (ie, coercion-for-values vs. coercion-for-interests). If Pletka is indeed purging with intent, we may even expect AEI to shift its attitude toward the Middle East, Asia and Africa, given how much more amenable authoritarian regimes tend to be to interest pressure.

And the idealism of the AEI departed is considerable. Gerecht for instance wrote a fascinating but bizarre book I read in the late 1990s under the pen name Edward Shirley, in which he smuggled himself into Iran in the trunk of a car, essentially for the romance of it.

(more…)

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John Elway for Senate

Lee on Dec 17 2008 | Filed under: Domestic Politics

With Obama tapping Ken Salazar for the Interior Department, rumor has it conservative John Elway may step forward to run for his Senate seat in Colorado. This rumor –similar to one for Mike Ditka in Illinois– has come and gone before. This time however, the tectonically altered political environment makes it more credible. Party political defeats don’t tend to alienate good new candidates, but draw them in, as the rapid transformation of the Democratic Party between 2004, 2006 and 2008 demonstrates.

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Be Thankful for Insurance Companies

Lee on Sep 10 2008 | Filed under: Foreign affairs

Don’t like them? Cuba hasn’t any…and thus hurricane damage is forever. Ike is thereby beating down on towns in Cuba still unrepaired from Hurricane Charlie, in 2004.

“It’s been four years since Charlie and we’re still waiting for new homes,” said Rachel Gonzalez Ojeda, 44, seated outside her roofless wood and concrete home. “We never even got the materials to do the repairs.”
(La Contra Revolucion)

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Rumors from the Necrocracy

Lee on Aug 23 2008 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Lee's Page


Kim Jong Il as Colonel Sanders by Jonathan Barnbrook (photo: acb | The Null Device)

North Korea is already a formal necrocracy (government by the dead), given that Kim Il-sung –who has been dead since 1994– remains the titular head of state there. But according to Waseda University professor Toshimitsu Shigemura in Japan, Kim’s son and successor in power Kim Jong Il has been dead himself since 2003. Shigemura has a number of family contacts which might validate a rumor which has been circulating since a period of peculiar diplomatic activity which attended Kim the Younger’s alleged death.

According to Shigemura, the role of leader is being filled by a number of body-doubles in an elaborate international charade which would seem unlikely in any other country. However, such a ruse seems completely plausible in the hermit kingdom, in which even more ludicrous fantasies are routinely employed to justify government policy and loyalty (for instance the state maintains that the birds of the country sang praise in Korean, when Kim Jong Il was born).

Evidently Japanese intelligence was concerned enough that former Prime Minister Koizumi had held a summit with a body double in 2004, that they considered voice-printing Kim and the suspected double. Only the prospect of political embarrassment for Koizumi made them hold off. With Koizumi out of office, I wouldn’t mind them doing as much now to clarify the issue.

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Bill Clinton’s Laws of Politics

Lee on Feb 29 2008 | Filed under: Around the Web

Bill Clinton

from 2004. Bill Clinton:”If one candidate is appealing to your fears and the other one is appealing to your hopes…” You know where that’s going. Ahem. Clearly these were not carved in stone.

(HT: BigDog)

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Enchanted Elections

Lee on Feb 16 2008 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Election 2008, Lee's Page

Hillary Clinton Decay
source image: heartcores

I’m posting the news rather late because…well, because I’m writing from New Mexico. It should come as no surprise to the election observer, that the Land of Enchantment is once again rather late in declaring a winner in an election. This time it was the Democratic caucuses, and the winner was Hillary Clinton. New Mexico is always late because almost every election seems to break even in this politically divided swing state (and partly because alacrity just isn’t the state’s highest virtue).

In 2004 it took the state canvassing board three weeks to finally declare a winner in the presidential election. That year, California managed to get ten million ballots counted in a couple of hours, while New Mexico Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron, was busy complaining to the press about being overwhelmed with merely 7% as many. Incidentally, if you pronouce her name vee-hill-her-own, you could be a native.

But we should hope the occasion of the recount is just ordinary local narrowness, and not an unwelcome portent that the country hasn’t yet overcome her predilection for narrow national election results. On a raw and bitter level, I’d have trouble enduring another post-election experience full of recounts, recriminations, farcical conspiracy theories and obstinate resistance to obvious concessions. Remember this sort of thing?

Kerry won. Here’s the facts. Although the exit polls show that most voters in Ohio punched cards for Kerry-Edwards, thousands of these votes were simply not recorded. This was predictable and it was predicted….
(TomPaine)

The 2004 presidential contest between Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry and the Republican incumbent, President Bush Jr., amounted to another stolen election.
(CommonDreams)

Ominously enough, some people are already starting to say similarly strange and obdurate things:

To imply that the New Mexico gives Clinton a win amid a string of losses, is to imply a falsehood.
(Dakota Voice)

This time around I could be pleased with whomever won, if they could give me a Reagan ‘84, Nixon ‘72, or Johnson ‘64 style annihilation of their opponent. A year without another hand recount in New Mexico would be a good thing for this country.

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