Posted on 09/09/2001 12:10:12 PM PDT by kattracks
President Bush started the "second season" off with a bang in a Labor Day speech delivered to union carpenters at a picnic near Green Bay, Wisconsin. Dubya lambasted congressional critics of his $1.35 trillion tax-relief package (spread over a decade), noting that many are now saying we should not have had tax relief this year (read any year). "Does that mean you're for now raising people's taxes?" Bush taunted. He has a point -- Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt had said in June that he will attempt to raise taxes if the Democrats win control of the House next year. And Sen. (Holy) Joe Lieberman (D - Ct.) is on record as saying, "We've got to go back and look at the Bush tax cut, which I think will be seen from hindsight of history as one of the most serious mistakes the federal government" has ever made. Earlier this year, Senate Majority leader Tom Daschle (D - S.D. ) had called for an even larger tax rebate ($60-to-80 billion) than the Bush administration had requested. That's all down the memory hole now, however. Daschle seems confident that his faithful followers won't remember a word of it -- probably not a bad guess.
The Washington Times reports that, "Union members in T-shirts and baseball caps jammed into a hot, empty warehouse and rewarded Mr. Bush with long interludes of thunderous applause pierced by wild whistling." The president's message also contained a thinly veiled veto warning: "There are folks who on the one hand wish they had more money to spend. But I'm going to tell you, we've got ample money in Washington, D.C. to spend, if we set our priorities," Bush said, warning Congress to stay within the prescribed budgetary limits.
Noting the current economic slowdown, the president said the answer was "doing something strong for our economy. And that's taking your money and sending it back to where it belongs: the taxpayers of America. Make no mistake about it, tax relief is the right thing to do at the right time." Later that afternoon, Bush told guests at a Teamster's Union barbecue, "When the American consumer spends, it is the best way to kick start a soft economy."
Clearly, Dubya is taking aim at what he perceives to be a weak spot in the Democrat's program -- a return to the economic policies of Herbert Hoover, the last president who had insisted upon maintaining a budget surplus in the face of a weak economy. The result was not entirely satisfactory, except possibly for all those Democrat politicians who were elected as a consequence of the Great Depression. Democratic leaders have recently been waffling and back-pedalling on their opposition to tax cuts. Mr. Gephardt has insisted that he was misquoted, his words were "taken out of context," and so forth, although he has yet to clarify his present position, assuming he has one.
The well-oiled Dubya's-a-dummy campaign came a copper recently as the result of a puerile prank perpetrated on the Internet by persons unknown. I first became aware of it when I received an e-mail that related how cartoonist Gary Trudeau had been hoodwinked into accepting fake IQ figures for President Bush from a supposed "scientific" institute. For those unfamiliar with Trudeau, he is an obnoxious, former left-wing college punk who managed to parlay his stint as a cartoonist for a student newspaper during the 60s into a life-long career as a purveyor of sophomoric "humor" with a political twist. Trudeau's vehicle is the Doonesbury comic strip, which appears daily in newspapers across the nation. According to my informant, he was taken in by a bogus "report" titled "President Bush Has Lowest IQ of all Presidents of past 50 Years."
The "report" had ostensibly appeared in "The Pennsylvania Court Observer, University Notes," and was said to have been published by "the Lovenstein Institute of Scranton, Pennsylvania." The name of the "institute" has an odd ring to it, but might be taken as a transliteration of the German name Loewenstein. The report claimed to present "findings of a four month study of the intelligence quotient of President George W. Bush." They were not very complimentary to the president. The supposed IQs of the last 12 presidents were listed as follows:
147 Franklin D. Roosevelt (D)
132 Harry Truman (D)
122 Dwight D. Eisenhower (R)
174 John F. Kennedy (D)
126 Lyndon B. Johnson (D)
155 Richard M. Nixon (R)
121 Gerald Ford (R)
175 James E. Carter (D)
105 Ronald Reagan (R)
098 George HW Bush (R)
182 William J. Clinton (D)
091 George W. Bush (R)
But how were the IQs of all these presidents determined? This sort of information is not usually given out by the White House press office. According to the "report" the presidents "were all rated based on scholarly achievements, writings that they alone produced without aid of staff, their ability to speak with clarity, and several other psychological factors which were then scored in the Swanson/Crain system of intelligence ranking."
That alone should have been sufficient to set off the red flashing lights and klaxons for any reasonably well-informed reader. IQ can only be measured from the results of a standardized intelligence test administered to the subject under controlled conditions. As anyone who has taken a course in psychology 101 should know, that is how the index is defined. There is no valid way to measure IQ by any other means. One can but wonder what criteria were used to give Clinton the "genius" rating shown in the "report." Scholarly achievements such as leaving Oxford, where he had studied as a Rhodes scholar, without obtaining a degree? (He had been accused of rape by Eileen Wellstone, a young British woman, a short time prior to his unceremonious departure). Or perhaps it was his ability to speak with clarity, as in pondering just what the exact meaning of "is" is. As for "his" writings, how is anyone to know what part the staff might have played in producing them? And when it comes to those "several other psychological factors" it might be best to draw a veil over the subject -- several noted shrinks have reviewed Clinton's behavior and pronounced him to be a "psychopath." Yet the "report" indicates that when all of this was boiled down and run through the "Swanson/Crain system of intelligence ranking," the guy came out of it a "genius."
Among the many "high caliber historians, psychiatrists, sociologists, scientists in human behavior, and psychologists" who produced this "report" are listed "Dr. Werner R. Lovenstein, world-renowned sociologist, and Professor Patricia F. Dilliams, a world-respected psychiatrist." Cristina L. Borenstein and Lana Taamar are cited as "contributors." Also mentioned in some versions of the scam is Jennifer Borenstein of the -- get this -- "Baskerville News Service," who was said to have written the original article.
Lovenstein? Dilliams? Taamar? Borenstein? (Now Lovenstein and gentle Borenstein ...) The Baskerville News Service? If you were a journalist wouldn't these names alone have prompted you to check out the validity of the source? It took me about ten minutes to determine, by means of a Web metasearch, that there is no Lovenstein Institute in Scranton, Pennsylvania -- or anywhere else, for that matter. The search did turn up some interesting newspaper clippings, though.
For example, there was an article from the Scranton Times Tribune, dated August 11, with the headline: "Scranton in middle of international media hoax." The accompanying piece by Rich Mates describes how clever, streetwise journalists both here and abroad were taken in by this inane college prank. The most prominent newsie to get zinged was columnist Matthew Norman, of the left-wing Guardian in the U.K. Mates notes that, "With a daily circulation of more than 409,000, The Guardian is listed as a "National Morning Quality" newspaper by the British Audit Bureau of Circulation." Mates adds that, "The story was also picked up by newspapers in Australia and New Zealand and mentioned in at least one American newspaper -- The Albany (N.Y.) Times Union."
Mr. Mates, presumably languishing in the doldrums of Slow News Season, took upon himself to ring up the Guardian and enquire "if Mr. Norman checked out the institute before writing his column." It turned out that Mr. Norman was on holiday and would not be back until the following week, however his colleague, Mr. Blackstock was pleased to volunteer in his stead that he did not know whether anyone had checked out the institute. Mates did quote an opinion from "psychologist Gerald Solfanelli of Dunmore," however. Solfanelli said, "I've never, ever heard of being able to determine somebody's IQ without testing them," adding that, the "Swanson/Crain system of intelligence ranking" said to be used by the Lovenstein Institute does not exist.
Not all readers of the Scranton Times Tribune seemed convinced, however. One of them wrote: "The story seems true because Bush is a moron." Another wrote: " I just KNEW the punchline of this joke was 'think tank in Scranton'."
The bogus story continued to circulate in newsrooms abroad. The Sydney Morning Herald commented: "Now we are not sure where the presidential IQ story originated (we first read it on PresidentMoron.com), but we always suspected it wasn't true. Associated Press has confirmed there is no Lovenstein Institute, nor any Swanson/Crain system." The most gullible marks turned out to be -- you guessed it -- those sophisticated Europeans. In addition to the Guardian in the U.K., Bild Zeitung in Germany, Gwynne Dyer, another U.K. columnist, the Russian Pravda, and the Hillsboro Argus, in the U.S. were all taken in by the hoax. Bild, which is not considered quite respectable by most Germans, headlined its story: "George W. Bush ist der dummste US-Praesident seit 50 Jahren und dummer als der durchschnittliche US-Buerger." (George W. Bush is the dumbest U.S. president in 50 years and dumber than the average U.S. citizen). Which leaves open how dumb they consider the "average U.S. citizen" to be. Dumber than a sack full of hammers? Perhaps, but surely not as dumb as the average German tabloid editor, to be taken in by so transparent a schoolboy prank. When, at length, Mr. Norman returned from his vacation, he was ever so apologetic. "We've let Scranton down, we've let President Bush down, we've let the Guardian down," he wrote in his next column, "but most of all we've let ourselves down. Poor show."
Gwynne Dyer disdained to correct his mistake, however, leading the Wall Street Journal to label him the "World's Laziest Columnist." "It turns out even in being duped he was merely being derivative," sneered James Taranto on the Journal's Opinion page, noting that Norman had scooped him by several weeks in conveying the disinformation to his readers.
The gullibility of these journalists is all the more remarkable considering that the hoax had already been unmasked at the time they wrote it up as fact. The "Reporters' Tipsheet" found at the Web site:
http://www.csbsju.edu/uspp/Tipsheet/Tipsheet.html
contained an advisory, dated August 6, 2001, under the rubric: "Debunked: 'Lovenstein Institute' report that George W. Bush 'has lowest IQ of all presidents of past 50 years.' "
According to the Tip Sheet, the Lovenstein Institute hoax was "debunked July 18, 2001 by snopes.com, an urban legends website." Their Lexis-Nexis search turned up some additional suckers: the Express ("By George he's the dimmest," SPJ award-winning opinion column) and the Scottish Daily Record ("Dumbya's dumb day" by Alexandra Williams). Both pieces were published on July 20. To all appearances, it doesn't take much doing to win an award from a society of professional journalists in the U.K. The Tipsheet comments, "Aside from the factual errors noted in snopes.com's debunking, the story is transparently bogus ..."
It seems that the IQs of some of the presidents listed by the nonexistent "Lovenstein Institute" are said to be a matter of record and they do not match those given in the bogus report. For example, according to the Tipsheet, "JFK (IQ reportedly 174) actually tested at 119 (though admittedly on the relatively crude Otis test) and Nixon (IQ reportedly 155), actually tested nearly a full standard deviation lower, at 143, according to the historical record." As for Clinton, the Tipsheet reckons that he has an IQ "similar to that of Al Gore (who tested at 134, according to the public record)." Quite a comedown from the 182 attributed to him by Dr, Lovenstein, et al., but then Einstein had an IQ above 180 and his politics were completely off the wall. What's more, he didn't wear socks -- not even when he visited the White House.
But how do I know that these corrections are correct? I don't, and what's more, I couldn't care less about the IQs of all those presidents. They must be judged on the basis of what they have done, not on their ability to take a written test. IQ is just another tribal fetish, often used by those who haven't done much of anything, to impress others with what they might have done if only they had achieved their full potential. But it takes more than brains to do that -- it also takes guts, for example. Whenever I see one of those blithering knee-jerk liberal weenies prattling on and on about what a "dummy" Dubya is supposed to be, I ask myself, does this individual have the brains and guts required to pilot an F-102? That is a far more realistic measure of intelligence -- and lots more besides -- than any written test, and the cost of failure is more than merely academic. Bush passed that test -- I doubt that many of his smart-mouth detractors could measure up to the same standard. Most of them are underachieving blow-hards whose only talent is running with the pack. That is why they are so easily gulled by disinformation such as that attributed to the "Baskerville News Service."
In a lighter vein, Janet Reno, Bill Clinton's third choice for U.S. Attorney General, announced last Tuesday her intent to run for Governor of Florida, a job presently held by Dubya's brother Jeb. In his recent book, "Absolute Power," David Limbaugh, an attorney who is also the brother of the (formerly) Spherical Oracle of talk radio fame, critiques the Reno Justice Department, from Waco to Elian, incorporating Travelgate, Chinagate, Monicagate, and a host of lesser scandals. According to World Net Daily, "Limbaugh reveals how the Clinton-Gore Justice Department, under Reno: served as political flak for unpopular decisions -- remember Waco? served as Bill Clinton's personal law firm in filing briefs on his behalf during his personal lawsuit; provided logistical support for the Clinton war room character assassinations -- Tripp, Starr, and the entire White House travel office to name a few; [and] sided with President Clinton -- instead of the independent counsel it is legally obligated to side with -- during the investigation by Kenneth Starr."
All things considered, Limbaugh reckons the Reno Justice Department to be the most corrupt in U.S. history. Not that this will make much difference to the present-day crop of Democratic voters who evidence an inexorable ability to rationalize the intolerable, blaming everybody for the consequences of their execrable judgement except those who are actually responsible. Let's face it, people who are prepared to swallow Waco, an atrocity that involved burning alive two dozen children as the result of "law enforcement" activity that amounted to reckless endangerment at the very least and crimes with Nuremberg attributes at worst, are unlikely to blanche at any government outrage, no matter how excessive.
Mark Levin writes in the National Review Online that: "The ex-United States Attorney General who stonewalled congressional investigating committees; who refused to appoint an independent counsel to investigate the illegal campaign contributions to the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign and the Democratic National Committee, including cash from the Red Chinese; who contorted federal law to block an independent investigation into Al Gore's illegal fundraising activities at a Buddhist temple, in the White House Map Room, and in the Old Executive Office Building; who obstructed the investigations of Independent Counsels Kenneth Starr, David Barrett, and Donald Smaltz; and who oversaw the disastrous siege at Waco, wants to be Florida's governor."
You see, no matter how extensive the list of outrages, it always gets back to Waco. If Reno does decide to run, and she has already taken the preliminary steps necessary to do so, the election will become a referendum on that singular atrocity, without parallel in American history. Argue it any way you will, blame it all on David Koresh and insist that the feds didn't realize the tinder-dry structure might catch fire during the siege, a very basic question still remains unanswered: how could any woman subject children -- some as young as one-year-old -- to hours of torment by immersing them in CS gas?
Have you ever been gassed with that stuff? I have -- even a few minutes of it is exquisite agony. Your eyes become like a pair of burning coals. Your lungs are on fire and nothing can extinguish it, short of tearing them out of your chest. Your breath comes in spasms -- the sense of suffocation is overpowering. I cannot imagine how any adult -- let alone a child -- could withstand hours of immersion in CS.
Apparently Janet Reno does not agree. She authorized the use of CS gas on those children. Frankly, I'm sick of hearing mealy-mouthed alibies and sickly rationalizations. If Reno insists that she did nothing wrong at Waco, let her get into a gas chamber with an open canister of CS. If she can withstand the ordeal for the same period of time those children had to endure it at Waco, I will concede that she is qualified to run for Governor of Florida. Else, she gets the Ilse Koch trophy for creative inhumanity. (For the benefit of the newbies, Ilse Koch was a member of the staff at the Buchenwald Konzentrationslager. During her tour at the camp she acquired the most amazing collection of lampshades -- made from deceased inmates with unusual tattoos).
Even after years of investigation, much of it seriously flawed, the question of what really happened at Waco is far from being answered in a definitive manner. The nature of the problem is illustrated by the controversy over who fired first through the main door of the Davidian compound, the feds or the Davidians. No sooner had it been suggested that the issue might be settled by examining the door, than it was announced that the door was "missing." The question of how a large metal door could be "lost" by a law enforcement agency -- even one as flaky as the BATF -- is left as an exercise for the reader.
Even the government investigation headed by former Sen. John Danforth (R-Missouri) has done little to resolve the continuing controversy over Waco, despite the fact that Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has made it clear that he considers the Danforth Report the "definitive investigation" of the matter. A group headed by film maker Michael McNulty, Citizens Organization for Public Safety, is presently working on a report critiquing the re-creation the Danforth investigation did of alleged gunfire said to be directed into the Davidian compound by the FBI. The report is being written at the request of a U.S. House committee. So you can imagine the can of worms that will be opened by Reno's candidacy -- the election will become a referendum on Waco and local issues could be eclipsed.
One might think that a law enforcement agency -- even a federal one -- might learn something from a fiasco such as Waco, but there is strong evidence to the contrary. The BATF was recently involved in a siege that took place in Santa Clarita, California. Although the incident was of a much smaller scale, some of the parallels are striking. It all began when Federal agents attempted to serve a search warrant on the residence of James Allen Beck, a former probationary policeman who had previous convictions for such varied offenses as burglary, weapons possession and impersonating a police officer. Curiously, although Beck had numerous convictions on his record, he does not appear to have served much time. Possibly his crimes were perceived as resulting from psychological problems.
At the time of the incident, Beck was under investigation for impersonating a U.S. marshal and for being a felon in possession of a firearm. BATF agents who served the search warrant on Beck's house were unprepared "when he allegedly responded with gunfire, triggering a gun battle that ended when his home caught fire and burned to the ground," according to an account in the Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Hagop Kuredjian, 40, a 17-year veteran of the force, was shot and killed during the incident. Although there was initially some question as to whether Kuredjian might have been a victim of friendly fire, it was later reported that forensic and ballistic evidence indicate that Beck fired the fatal shot. Beck's body was recovered from the smoldering ruins of his home the following day, along with "several assault rifles, a handgun and large amounts of ammunition ..." according to the Times account.
The cause of the fire has been the subject of some speculation, as was the case with the Waco holocaust. As some will recall, the feds accused Koresh of having his followers set the fire(s), while others believe that the conflagration was caused by tear gas canisters fired into the compound. The UPI reports that, " Beck held SWAT deputies at bay for hours on Friday until a fire broke out, possibly caused by tear gas canisters fired into the second floor, and burned the house to the ground."
According to the UPI report: "Although James Beck lived in what was normally a quiet and tony Los Angeles suburb, his behavior apparently didn't sit well with neighbors who had spied on him in the weeks prior to a raid on his home that ended in the death of a sheriff's deputy -- and most likely his own."
It seems that the BATF attempted to serve the search warrant because they had information that Beck "had been impersonating a federal marshal and stockpiling guns and ammunition." Sound familiar? And where did the feds get their information? According to William Woolsey, described as "a genuine deputy U.S. marshal," "He was very flagrant about the abundance of weapons he had in the house ... A neighbor was suspicious that he never did anything or went to work, so the neighbor called us and asked if we had anyone by that name."
One of the neighbors, Jill Stones, described Beck as cranky and hostile -- "That's why we started getting on the bandwagon," Stones told the Los Angeles Times. "It turned out it was this instead."
See, some of the neighbors had been watching Beck -- "watching him through binoculars three weeks ago as he worked on a motorcycle in his driveway," according to the UPI. "They copied down the license plate number and sent it to authorities, which the Times said helped lead to Friday's tragic raid."
Secretive individuals such as Beck, who stockpile weapons and wallow in fantasy, are said to be "paranoid." One can't help think that with neighbors such as Beck's perhaps he had reason to be paranoid. Watching him through binoculars as he worked on a motorcycle? Whatever became of the "right to privacy" divined by Supreme Court justices to be hidden away somewhere in the Constitution, invisible to all but them? Is it to be invoked only when some suitably liberal cause, e.g. abortion, requires it? Perhaps more to the point, could this latest excess of law enforcement zeal -- and the resulting deaths -- been averted if the neighbors had been a little less nosy and the cops had used a little more common sense?
As in the Waco disaster, the arrest warrant could have been served without much of a problem had the police waited for Beck to come out of his residence, as he did quite frequently. By showing up in force at his front door in their raid jackets they reinforced his paranoia and virtually invited him to participate in a siege. When, to their evident amazement, Beck took them up on their offer, the cops seemed to come unglued and commenced firing at anything in their field of view.
Houses on either side of Beck's were riddled with bullets as the occupants crouched inside, seeking cover. The shooting was so wild and unfocused that some law enforcement officials were uncertain at first who had shot the deputy. According to the Los Angeles Daily News, "Officials have confirmed that rounds fired by deputies hit the two houses next to Beck's, Patterson said. Inside one of those homes was a couple and their infant."
Just to give the incident the proper BATF touch, Beck's burned out house was bulldozed before the embers had time to cool. The Daily News reported that, "Bulldozers demolished the charred ruins of James Allen Beck's Brooks Circle home Sunday, as the Santa Clarita Valley community continued to mourn the deputy that police said Beck shot in he head." This seems to have become standard procedure for federal law enforcement agencies. If some busybody were to notice evidence that didn't fit the official version of the incident that would make it ever so awkward for the mainstream press to spin the story to government specs, although recent experience suggests that they would manage.
One might have hoped that the feds would have learned something from Waco and the subsequent spinoff in Oklahoma City, but this latest event suggests that they are unteachable. Many of the elements present in Waco can be seen here as well. The paranoid outcast whose dementia is fed by the excessive intrusiveness of neighbors. The secret denunciation to the police, who arrive in force and over-react on such a scale as to turn what could have been a minor incident into a four-alarm fiasco, with subsequent loss of life. And finally, the apparent destruction of evidence.
Perhaps it is time to ask whether the BATF should be allowed to go about armed. If Waco was the wakeup call, the latest incident would seem to be a desperate plea on the part of this Keystone gestapo to "stop us before we kill more."
Edward Zehr can be reached at ezehr@capaccess.org
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