Posted 7:05 PM by Robert

"RATS" Then And "X's" Now

CNN claims that a large "X" the network flashed (for what it says was 1/7th of a second) over Vice President Dick Cheney's face during his recent speech was a mere "technical glitch" - not a subliminal message. CNN claims that the "X" image is a place-holding to cue up graphics that is not supposed to be visible to viewers but was "inadvertently projected" onto the screen by a malfunction in a "switcher" device. "CNN Live Today" anchor Daryn Kagan and the network's technical manager, Steve Alperin, argued: "So, for all the conspiracy theories out there ... that's not what this is about. It's a computer bug that people deal with everyday. It's just that ours was in front of millions of people."

Maybe so. But the 2000 presidential campaign buzzed over a Republican television ad that had the word ‘rats' spelled out for a mere 1/30th second. The ad criticized Al Gore's health plans. The ad maker explained that an "editing error" allowed the last half of the word "bureaucrats" to stay on screen as ‘rats'. At that time CNN treated the Republican "technical glitch" explanation with a good deal of skepticism, as exhibited in this CNN transcript of an interview by very-insistent CNN anchor Judy Woodruff of Alex Castellanos, the Republican consultant who created the 2000 ad:

WOODRUFF: Well, we are joined now by the man who produced that controversial RNC ad, he is GOP Media Consultant Alex Castellanos.

All right, Alex Castellanos, how did the word "RATS" end up in this commercial?

CASTELLANOS: Well, it's obviously part of our clever rodent strategy to get the anti-rodent vote.

It's an accident, it's unintended, and this is really just a cheesy effort by the Gore people to divert from the real issue here, which is...

WOODRUFF: But wait a minute... CASTELLANOS: ... which I emphasize one phrase in that ad, "bureaucrats decide," because under the Gore plan, bureaucrats decide whether you get your medicines or not.

That's real political manipulation, when you promise seniors a prescription drug plan, but then you don't tell them how it's going to work.

WOODRUFF: But when you put an ad together, you look at every frame of that ad. You had to know -- did you know that that word was in there?

CASTELLANOS: I didn't know it. I didn't know it until it was pointed out to me, and since I didn't intend to do that it didn't mean anything to me.

When you put an ad together you put the music together.

WOODRUFF: But why would you put part of a word, and the "R-A-T- S" part of it?

CASTELLANOS: It's a four-step, little thing just to draw emphasis to one phrase -- bureaucrats decide. Under Gore's plan, bureaucrats decide whether you get your medicines or not.

WOODRUFF: But "bureau" isn't there. It's just "RATS."

CASTELLANOS: It happens to be right in the middle. And, it was pointed out to me, you know, that's the way it turned out.

I think that it's -- the real important thing here is that they don't want to talk about the issue, they want to attack the messenger instead of the message.

The message is -- the real bad word he's scared about here is bureaucrats not "RATS."

WOODRUFF: Let me quote two -- or cite, what two Republican media -- two consultants said today; Greg Stevens, he's a veteran Republican advertising consultant, Scott Reed, Bob Dole's '96 campaign manager, both of them said they don't think this was done by accident.

CASTELLANOS: Well, you know, I'm sure that they're probably closer to infallibility than yours truly. But look, all we're -- there's no reason to do anything like this, for a Republican or a Democrat to try to get the anti-rat vote here, this is not really a clever political strategy.

The important thing people care about is who's going to decide whether you get your medicines, bureaucrats, or you and doctor.

WOODRUFF: I talked today with Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Dr. Jamieson, who's head of -- dean, as you know, dean of the Annenberg School of Communications, University of Pennsylvania; respected scholar on political communication. I want to be careful about this. She wrote a book in 1992 about negative campaigning in which she singled out an ad you did in 1990 for Jesse Helms running for the Senate in the state of North Carolina.

She pointed out what she called a priming technique, and I'm going to show just a portion of that Helms ad here, in which we show a white job applicant saying that he was being notified in a letter that he was shut out of a job because of a minority applicant. Let's just show just a small portion of that ad, Alex.

CNN also gave a good deal of sympathetic play to Democratic Party whines about the 2000 Republican ad, as in this CNN article from 2000:

Two Democratic senators have asked the Federal Communications Commission for an "immediate and impartial" review of the Republican National Committee's controversial "RATS" ad, according to sources in Vice President Al Gore's presidential campaign.

In a letter provided to CNN, Sens. John Breaux, D-Louisiana, and Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, wrote to FCC Chairman William Kennard that they were "deeply troubled" by the ad and believed that a review would be in "the best interests of both political parties, and all Americans."

A political stir erupted Tuesday when it was discovered that if the ad was slowed down, the word "RATS" appeared clearly while an announcer criticized Gore's prescription drug plan as one in which "Bureaucrats Decide."

Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the Republican presidential nominee, told reporters on Tuesday that he believed the appearance of "RATS" in the RNC ad was accidental.

But Gore, the Democratic nominee, said he was "disappointed" by the ad. .... Gore's campaign contacted news organizations about the ad, apparently trying to exploit the gaffe for political gain. A spokesman for the Texas governor on Tuesday brushed aside suggestions of subliminal advertising as "bizarre and weird," while the RNC had no immediate comment.

CNN slowed down a copy of the ad, and the word "RATS" clearly appeared on the screen in large, white letters superimposed over the words "The Gore Prescription Plan." In a fraction of a second, the word disappeared, and the words "BUREAUCRATS DECIDE" showed up in smaller letters. To viewers aware of the presence of the word, it is noticeable when the ad is played at normal speed.

Campaigning in Middletown, Ohio, on Tuesday, Gore told reporters he considered the ad a "disappointing development" in the presidential race. .... Gore told reporters Tuesday, "I've never seen anything like it. I think it speaks for itself." When asked whom he felt was responsible for the "RATS" message, he replied, "That's obvious," but did not elaborate on whether he was referring to the Bush campaign or the RNC.

Earlier in the day, Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman characterized the ad as "very disappointing and strange."

Posted 9:58 PM by Robert

A Little Something To Remember Gerhard By?

Speaking up for what is said to be the first time, five senior officials from Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, just said in interviews with the Los Angeles Times that they warned U.S. intelligence authorities that the source, an Iraqi defector code-named Curveball, never claimed to produce germ weapons and never saw anyone else do so ... and lots of other unflattering things.

So why now? Why would the German government authorize its intelligence officers to speak up now - in a manner that can scarcely be expected to help relations between Berlin and Washington?

Could it have something to do with the fact that the person these "five senior officers" currently work for, departing Social Democratic Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, despises George Bush and is just about to leave office and the German government entirely? Could it have something to do with the fact that incoming Chancellor Angela Merkel, the leader of the conservative Christian Democratic Party, is known to be quite a bit more sympathetic to Mr. Bush than is Herr Schröder?

Could anyone have imagined that even Herr Schröder was so small and personally vain as to exploit his country's intelligence service in such a petty and improper fashion?

Posted 7:32 PM by Robert

Inconsistent Refrains

The long established Democratic refrain that there are not enough Allied "boots on the ground" in Iraq continues unabated, as reflected in this TIME magazine article, for example:

There are about 160,000 U.S. troops now in Iraq, a number U.S. commanders in the region plan to maintain at least through the Iraqi national assembly elections on Dec. 15. But the battalion commanders, according to sources close to last week's meeting, said that because there are not enough troops, they have to "leapfrog" around Iraq to keep insurgents from returning to towns that have been cleared out. The officers also stressed that the lack of manpower--rather than of protective armor or signal jammers--posed one of the biggest obstacles in dealing with roadside bombs, which have caused the majority of U.S. casualties in Iraq.

Yet, more recently, there has been a new refrain, as represented for example by the confused and ambiguous statements of Rep. John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat, who last week called for an American troop withdrawal from Iraq either "within the next six months" or perhaps immediately. Whatever Mr. Murtha's intentions might have been, Senator Biden says he disagrees with "respected voices on military matters" like Rep. John Murtha in saying that the Senator "does not support bringing the troops home now. Rather, he said, 50,000 U.S. troops should leave Iraq by the end of 2006 and "a significant number" of the remaining 100,000 should leave in 2007."

This all raises the puzzling issue for such Democrats: If it is the absence of sufficient "boots on the ground" that creates the worst of the security problems (and results in most of the fatalities) for American troops in Iraq (as the TIME refrain insists), then doesn't an extended 2006-2007-and-beyond withdrawal of the type Senator Biden contemplates all but guarantee at least two years of greatly increasing this exact security risk and therefore the resulting American fatalities? What does Senator Biden think will happen during the more than two-year withdrawal period he is proposing, a period during which American troop levels will be much lower than they are now? He seems to think that at least as things stand now, what he is proposing would sharply increase casualties, but that somehow that increase can also be avoided:

"I still believe we can preserve our fundamental security interests in Iraq as we begin to redeploy our forces," Sen. Joseph Biden .... "Right now, our troops are the only guarantor against chaos," he said, but the military presence "is also, increasingly, part of the problem."

Do "our fundamental security interests" (as Senator Biden uses this term) include minimizing the loss of the lives of our servicemen? And if the Senator (or any Democrat) knows of some way of doing that better than is now the case while reducing the number of Americans in Iraq, why won't he share his secret?

Of course, if one thinks that the overall political and security situation in Iraq is improving and will continue to improve, then a phased withdrawal of the type contemplated by the Senator makes perfect sense, and is fully consistent with reducing American casualties. Indeed, that is what the Bush administration is hoping for. But Democrats advocating a phased withdrawal seem to be in the position of arguing that (1) the overall situation in Iraq is improving and that a phased withdrawal therefore will not increase American casualities during the years of withdrawal or (2) a multi-year period of increased casualities is acceptable or (3) the whole "not enough boots on the ground" refrain is simply wrong.

None of these alternatives seem to be politically viable. Perhaps that is why Senator Clinton, who also construes Rep. Murtha as calling for an "immediate withdrawal," has distanced herself from whatever it is he proposed as well as from timelines such as that proposed by Senator Biden:

Clinton, who is running for re-election to the Senate and is seen as a likely presidential candidate in 2008, suggested that the United States wait for Iraq's Dec. 15 elections for an indication about how soon the Iraqis can take over. "Until they vote for a government, I don't know that we will have adequate information about how prepared they are," she said.

Posted 9:02 PM by Robert

Trashing Your Own

It's time for the author of a book reviewed by the very same paper in which the author writes a twice-weekly column to sit up and pay attention when the review includes passages like this:

But what makes Dowd an exceptionally good columnist on the Op-Ed page - her ability to compress and juxtapose, her incisiveness, her ear for hypocrisy and eye for the absurd - does not enable her to produce a book-length exploration of a topic as complex as the relations between the sexes. Consumed over a cup of coffee, 800 words provide Dowd the ideal length to call her readers' attention to the ephemera at hand that may reveal larger trends and developments. But smart remarks are reductive and anti-ruminative; not only do they not encourage deeper analysis, they stymie it.

Youch!

The New York Times review also describes the present state of the "research" on which the book's title is derived:

The title, "Are Men Necessary?," refers nominally to scientific speculation that the Y chromosome, which has been shedding genes over evolutionary time, may disappear entirely within the next ten million years, a hypothesis countered by newer studies showing that the Y of the human species has been stable for the past six million years.

I haven't read the book, but the phrasing of this passage suggests that the book does not mention the fate of the quickly faded research. If that's correct, it would just be one more example of Ms. Dowd's common approach to her source material: "It's better than true, it makes for a good shallow quip without enough substance to be wit."

Posted 8:49 AM by Robert

Bird Flu Droppings

Public health officials and politicians world wide are fostering and exploiting fear of Asian bird flu virus A(H5N1) as a justification for enhancing influenza defenses generally, as noted in this article:

Some 400 animal and health experts meeting at the World Health Organization in Geneva want to build up regional stockpiles of antiviral drugs to counter a possible pandemic virus that could travel around the world in 3-4 months. .... Margaret Chan, the top WHO pandemic official, said the global health agency was in talks with drug makers and looking into the logistics of how to deliver the treatments. "We have taken up the challenge," she said. The global health agency already has a stockpile of 3 million antivirals that can be quickly deployed.

Indeed, some health authorities seem to be willfully confusing risks from influenza generally with risks from A(H5N1) in their public statements:

A three-day council of war on avian influenza opened here to warnings that a flu pandemic was inevitable, could kill millions and inflict up to 800 billion dollars in economic damage if the world failed to defend itself.

An influenza pandemic, potentially unleashed by a mutation of the H5N1 bird flu virus, "is only a matter of time," World Health Organisation (WHO) Director General Lee Jong-Wook said Monday.

"We don't know when this will happen, but we know it will happen," Lee said. "(...) If we are unprepared, the next pandemic will cause incalculable human misery... no society will be exempt and no economy will be unscathed."

Samuel Jutzi, director of the animal production and health division at the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), said "the window of opportunity" remained open for tackling the threat at its source: on the farm.

"The virus has not yet reassorted or mutated," said Jutzi. "Action is required now. There is no time to lose here."

Of course, there is no "inevitable" A(H5N1) pandemic coming. What is thought to be "inevitable" is that the world will experience an influenza pandemic from some influenza virus. In fact, the risks of such a pandemic from A(H5N1) seem to be rather low compared to other viruses:

"The idea of a pandemic among humans is something from science fiction," Spanish Agricultural Minister Elena Espinosa said on the private radio station Cadena Ser, as Europe braced for the further spread of the H5N1 strain of the bird flu, which has killed 60 people in Asia during the past three years.

One particularly powerful argument being employed in the ongoing public relations and political campaigns exploiting fear of A(H5N1) is the supposed similarity of that virus to the 1918 Spanish Flu virus that is said to have killed 50 million people worldwide. But this comparision seems very shakey. Consider this story about Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger, a molecular pathologist at the Armed Forces Institute of Technology who led the research team that reconstructed the long-extinct 1918 virus:

[If the 1918 virus] is from a bird, it is not a bird anyone has studied before. It is not like the A(H5N1) strain of bird flus in Asia, which has sickened at least 116 people, and killed 60. It is not like the influenza viruses that infect fowl in North America. Yet many researchers believe that the 1918 virus, which caused the worst infectious disease epidemic in human history, is a bird flu virus. And if so, it is the only one that has ever been known to cause a human pandemic. That, Dr. Taubenberger said, gives rise to a question. Are scientists looking for the next pandemic flu virus in all the wrong places?

So without the "precedent" of the Spanish Flu, there would apparently be no case of an avian flu mutating into a virus capable of a human pandemic. Researchers cannot even determine what kind of bird the Spanish Flu supposedly infected - if it was a bird flu virus at all.

How wise is it to frighten billions of people and divert billions of dollars of public health money into a project with such a shoddy scientific foundation? The risks of a disatrous collapse in the credibility of world health authorities, at least with respect to influenza, seems to be high. The risks of diverting scarce public health resources from other projects which are known to help millions of people seem high. How much "inevitable" malaria could be avoided with the billions of dollars now proposed for flu? But the chances that an intense world wide effort is needed seems to be low, although monitoring and other low-intensity efforts seem to be warranted.

Posted 2:27 PM by Robert

Closed Senate Sessions

Senate Democrats have forced the Senate into closed door (sometimes called "secret") session, as detailed here. This Democratic stunt is being taken pursuant to Standing Rules of The Senate RULE XXI - SESSION WITH CLOSED DOORS. For those who may be interested, that rule reads as follows:

1. On a motion made and seconded to close the doors of the Senate, on the discussion of any business which may, in the opinion of a Senator, require secrecy, the Presiding Officer shall direct the galleries to be cleared; and during the discussion of such motion the doors shall remain closed.

2. When the Senate meets in closed session, any applicable provisions of rules XXIX and XXXI, including the confidentiality of information shall apply to any information and to the conduct of any debate transacted.