CognoCentric

2005-03-01T18:45:00.000-05:00

MY BAD

I've been gone a long time. Bad karma in December. No real excuses since then.

Anyway. I guess I'm back.

I started to comment on Martin Devon's site about his (very early) speculation on the Republican presidential candidate in 2008. But the comment got too long and I figured I would put it here.

Rudy Giuliani was a damn good mayor prior to 9/11. He was elected and reelected in a heavily Democratic city. He undid most of the damage to the City done by prior administrations by controlling crime. But during and after 9/11, he was nothing less than magnificent. And when I heard that he had returned that $10 mil gift from the Saudis, I vowed to vote for him for any office, up to and including God.

I hope he runs. I'll vote for him, gun control warts and all.

Martin likes Condoleeza Rice. So do I. If Cheney resigns (presumably for health reasons) and she is appointed as Veep, then she'll have the inside track for the nomination in 2008. Even without being appointed as VP, Condi would make an excellent opponent for Hillary.

But a Rice nomination would not be good news for Giuliani. He would make a good choice for her running mate from an electoral college point of view (since he would have a real shot at swinging New York into the red column) but I think that he would make a terrible Vice President. It seems to me that he has a personality that requires that he be fully in charge in order to function well.

Additionally, the calendar presents Giuliani with a problem if he were offered the second spot by the Republicans, regardless of who leads the ticket. He is 60 now. He will be 63 in 2008. That is certainly not too old to be President. But if he were nominated as VP in 2008, then, assuming a win in 2008, he has to look all the way out to 2016 for a shot at the top spot. At that point, he will be 71. Reagan notwithstanding, that's a bit long in the tooth for a President.

So my guess is that Giuliani would turn down an offer to be the nominee for VP in order to wait and see whether a run in 2012 might be possible.

2004-11-29T20:59:00.000-05:00

FRITZ' FAMILY

For reasons which will be of interest to no one outside my family, I have not been having a very good November, and it is a sure bet to turn into a worse December.

Which is why I was so pleased to find this on Fritz Schrank's blog today:

Psalm 2004

Bush is my shepherd, I shall be in want.
He maketh me lie down on park benches,
He leadeth me beside the still factories.
He restoreth my doubts about the Republican Party.
He leadeth me into the paths of unemployment for his cronies' sake.
Yea, though no weapons of mass destruction have been found, he maketh me continue to fear Evil.
His tax cuts for the rich and his deficit spending discomfort me.
He anointeth me with never-ending debt:
Verily my days of savings and assets are kaput.
Surely poverty and hard living shall follow me all the days of his administration,
And my jobless child shall dwell in my basement forever.

Everyone needs a good chuckle now and then.

Oh, and go vote for Pat Tillman. (Note: BEFORE you vote, the picture of Tillman has to be displayed. Change the displayed picture by using the menu in the upper left corner of the picture.)

2004-11-19T10:17:00.000-05:00

SUGGESTIVE ROAD NUMBERING

Rand Simberg links to a story supposedly about redesignating a proposed Interstate Highway from I-69 to something (anything) less, umm, suggestive. Despite the fact that this appears to be a hoax, there is a real world precedent.

In New Jersey, there was (and is) a highway running from Trenton up through Flemington to Clinton (in NW Jersey). Back in the 60s, they had to change the number from Route 69 to Route 31. It wasn't the prudes or even the snickers that got them to make the change. It was the fact that every male college student in American stole the signs.

And when you compare the rather dull signs that NJ uses, you can imagine what would happen with badge shaped red white and blue signs used for interstates.

2004-11-13T10:10:00.000-05:00

VAN GOGH

Theo Van Gogh resided in Holland and produced short films, one of which, Submission, (which can be seen in its entirety here) concerned the suffering of women under Islam. According to CNN, "The English-language film was scripted by Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a member of the Dutch parliament, has repeatedly outraged fellow Muslims by criticizing Islamic customs and the failure of Muslim families to adopt Dutch ways. That film apparently resulted in his recent murder.

Van Gogh does not appear to have been a moderate person. He railed publicly against Muslims in general. If the report I read (and can no longer find) is true, the terms he used to describe them and their religion were beyond the pale. None of which justifies his murder. The only response to bad speech is more speech. Not murder.

Nor do Van Gogh beliefs or statements justify one of the more ridiculous responses of Dutch authorities to his murder in removing a mural stating "Thou Shalt Not Kill" from a wall near a mosque following complaints from the leaders of that mosque.

In response to Van Gogh's murder and the pathetic political correctness evidenced by the removal of that mural, there have been a number of recent incidents of violence directed against Muslims.

Captain Ed correctly states that this is a direct result of the murder of Van Gogh, but I also think that a backlash is precisely what the murderers hoped to achieve by killing Van Gogh. I also think that the rise of vigilantism and the use of arson can hardly be said to advance the cause of Western values among the less radical Muslims in the Netherlands or elsewhere in Europe.

I don't have a good solution to suggest for the problems faced by Dutch society, other than to say that they have to quickly get control not only of the Islamic nutballs in their midst, but the violent people on the other end of the spectrum as well. In the short term, the authorities must pursue and prosecute those who participated in Van Gogh's murder: the planners and enablers as well as the perpetrators. Likewise, the people lighting the fires and throwing the bombs at Muslim schools and mosques must also be stopped, arrested and prosecuted (although, as an aside, this will probably prove to be more difficult, since it seems to me to be less organized and less directed than the murder of Van Gogh).

In the long term, the only real solution is to integrate the Muslim immigrant community into the existing social structure. The only way to do it is to make certain that each immigrant has an interest in maintaining the society he has recently joined.

How exactly can that be accomplished? Well, a good start might be to look at how the US dealt with its immigrant waves. We had lots of them: Irish, Italians, Eastern Europeans, Latin Americans, Russians, Chinese, and I know that I have probably insulted half the world by leaving them out of that list. We are still quite good at giving recent immigrants a stake in our society, but we used to be better at it. The rise of identity politics and multiculturalism seems to have degraded our ability (perhaps our desire) to integrate new groups into the existing societal structures.

Western Europe in general and Holland in particular, are "farther along the curve" of accepting multiculturalism than we are. Is it too late to accomplish the needed changes there? I don't think so, but that's only a guess. I certainly hope not. Even if it is too late for the Dutch, the US can and should take note of what happens when a large unassimilated minority is repeatedly told that its values are just as good as those of the society which surrounds but is not accepted by that minority, a society that the minority risked everything to migrate to.

2004-11-09T05:27:00.000-05:00

THE SPECTOR DEBATE

UPDATE (12/20/04): Captain Ed comments on the filibuster rules and the nuclear option.

Recent comments by (relatively) liberal Republican Arlen Spector of Pennsylvania have generated some controversy. He is (was?) expected to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee and thus be responsible for nominees to the federal bench. Therefore, when he suggested that Bush not nominate people opposed to abortion, the pro-life wing of the Republican party swung into action.

The outrage expressed was not unfounded. Spector survived a primary challenge from the right only with endorsement and the active support of President Bush. And therefore to be seen as laying the groundwork to oppose Bush's future judicial nominees was seen as a betrayal of that support. There were immediate demands that the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee be given to someone else. Others in the party noted Spector's immediate backtracking from his original comments and his record of support for all of the nominees submitted so far by Bush. This second group is concerned that by denying Spector the chairmanship to which he is entitled under the seniority rules as they now exist, the more strident Republicans will provide cover for the few remaining liberal Republicans in the Senate (Snow, Chafee, etc.) to side with the Democrats in continuing to filibuster Bush's nominees.

I think there is a much more basic rule change that could be accomplished which would be more effective than denying Spector the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee, and I have not seen it suggested anywhere. Do you remember "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"? Jimmy Stewart was conducting a one man filibuster against the evil political machine. He literally had to stand and speak for days on end. There were two ways the filibuster could be ended. One was by a vote for cloture (which had to pass by a super majority) and the other was by the filibustering party yielding the floor. Once the filibustering party yielded the floor, the filibuster was over and a vote on the bill being blocked (or any other bill) could be held. Until the filibuster was ended, no vote could be held on the bill being filibustered or any other bill.

Well, that's not how filibusters are conducted nowadays. To conduct a filibuster today, all one has to do is declare one. If a vote for cloture cannot pass with at least 60 votes, the bill being filibustered is tabled and the Senate goes on to other matters. I think that's a bad rule. I think the old rule was better. It made the party obstructing a vote stand up in public and say so. It imposed the heavy price of halting all business in the Senate. The new rule allows the Senate to get on with other business, but by doing so, it lowers the cost of the filibuster, and that, of course, allows more of them. I do not think that the cost of filibusters should be lowered.

Tom Daschle, the soon to be former Senate Minority Leader and the architect of the strategy of filibustering Bush's judicial nominees, was defeated in this years election. I think we should find out whether his defeat was related to his strategy of obstructionism. I think that the rules of the Senate should be changed back to require that the filibustering party must hold the floor to maintain the filibuster. Let the filibusterers (is that a word?) explain why blocking Nominee X is so important that none of the other pressing business of the country can proceed. I think that because the people conducting the filibuster would be blocking the entire Senate agenda, rather than just one specific proposal, it would be easier for the Republicans to peal away a few votes among the blue dog Democrats in order to end the filibuster.

Under the old rules, the vote for cloture had to pass with a two thirds majority in order to be successful. Under the new rules, only sixty votes (three fifths) are required. Please note that I do not suggest returning to the two thirds requirement, although if I had to choose between returning to the old rule with a two thirds requirement and keeping the new rule, I would, reluctantly, choose the two thirds requirement.

Bush has noted that he earned some political capital in the recent elections and that he intends to spend it. I think that both the country and the Senate would be better off with fewer filibusters. I think that the investment of a little of Bush's political capital in a rules change could pay big political dividends by bringing some discipline into the procedures of the Senate. Now is the time for him to roll the dice, if he is ever going to do so, by forcing the opponents of his policies in the Senate to actually obstruct all of the business of the country in order to continue to block a few policies with which they disagree. Not that he's going to be around all that long, but I would love to see Terry McAuliffe try to explain to a talking head on Sunday morning that it is more important for Miguel Estrada not to be on the federal appellate bench than it is for, say, a supplemental Iraq appropriations bill to pass the Senate.

If Tom Daschle, whose seniority allowed him to deliver a substantial amount of pork to his constituents, was defeated as a result of his obstructionist tactics, accomplishing the rules change suggested here will make the filibuster once again the rarity it was when Jimmy Stewart played a political naif swimming among the sharks in DC. And Bush's policies and judicial nominees will receive the up or down votes they deserve on the floor of the Senate. By returning to the old rules, Bush might well gain a victory for both his policies and his party.

2004-11-03T14:53:00.000-05:00

THANK YOU, SENATOR

Kerry has conceded. There will be no post election litigation. That means I won't have to boycott the Democratic Party for 8 years.

I'm pleased I still have the option of voting Democratic, but I am really glad Bush won. I think it was desperately important to our future. Melodramatic? Sure. That doesn't make it untrue. Despite his repeated statements to the contrary, Kerry's record screamed "retreat" in the war against the would be theocratic fascists who want the power to tell me when and how I have to dress, act and think, who want to decide whether when, and with whom my wife can leave our house, who, in short, want to rule the world. Say what you want about Bush, he's not going to back off in the war. The next four years are not going to go smoothly, but at least our adversaries cannot take heart from faltering American resolve. That would have been the message sent by a Kerry victory.

And a post election contest, however futile in the face of a 135,000 vote margin of victory in Ohio (100 times the margin in Florida 2000), would have told the Islamofascists to push just a little harder to widen the gulf just a little bit more between red and blue Americans. For his refusal to heed the siren call of the looney left, Senator Kerry deserves our thanks.

2004-11-01T09:40:00.000-05:00

NIGERIAN EMAIL SCAMMERS

Someone scams them back.

Via Inoperable Terran.

2004-10-29T21:15:00.000-04:00

EIGHT YEARS SHOULD JUST ABOUT DO IT

This has got to be the worst presidential election I have ever seen.

I didn't pay much attention to politics prior to 1968. But that year you could hardly avoid it. That was a pretty weird contest, too, with Wallace running on what amounted to a segregationist platform (in 1968!) and Humphrey trying to succeed Johnson who had been crippled by what turned out to be (in hindsight) the absolutely idiotic reaction in the press to the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. And through it all, you had Nixon trying to convince people that he had a plan for Vietnam, but he couldn't tell us what it was.

I was hooked.

1972 was almost boring, with the Democrats nominating McGovern seemingly as a favor to Nixon, who absolutely creamed him. That massive victory was followed immediately by nonstop Watergate coverage until Nixon resigned rather than be impeached in the summer of 1974. The (non-Watergate) lesson from 1972 was to check the past of your VP candidate with great care after McGovern dumped Eagleton from the ticket because of a history of depression. Depression? Man, those were the days. I wish that was all that was wrong with our current crop of politicians.

1976 was a contest between Carter, a nuclear engineer turned Southern governor who seemed more like a preacher than a politician, and Ford, the man who became President by mistake, a lifelong pol who seemingly could not walk and chew gum at the same time. But at least there were no scandals.

Carter turned me into a conservative, so I was glad that Reagan won the next two elections, 1980 and 84, first against Carter and then Mondale. The 1980 contest was over as soon as Reagan asked people if they were better off in 1980 than they had been four years earlier. The 1984 win over sacrificial lamb Walter Mondale was almost as big as Nixon's lopsided victory over McGovern in terms of the popular vote, and bigger in terms of the electoral vote.

Reagan's victory was so complete, that Bush 41 pretty much coasted to victory in 1988 against Mondale in an election mainly remembered for Lloyd Bentsen's devastating takedown of Dan Quayle in the Vice Presidential debate. (I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.) Bush won and Quayle was vice president for four years, but Quayle was unable to accomplish a thing and his future presidential ambitions were in ruins.

1992 was interesting, too, with a three way race in which Ross Perot positioned himself to the right of Bush, leaving Bush squeezed between him and Clinton. Bush's stellar performance in the First Gulf War was not enough. Perot added color ("That giant sucking sound you hear is all the jobs leaving for Mexico") but gave us Clinton (with about 43% of the popular vote to Bush's 37% and Perot's 19%) and, eventually, Monica, which leaves us, after two Clinton terms, with Hillary.

The pre-Monica Clinton could probably not have been beaten by Reagan in his prime in 1996, given the state of the economy and the fact that the world at least appeared to be largely peaceful, especially with Perot threatening to run again on the right. And so, Bob Dole, one of the last of the generation of WWII politicians was served up by the Republicans for ritual slaughter.

The 2000 election made history in many ways. It was one of only a few elections (three?) in which the winner of the electoral college and the winner of the popular vote were different. It was only the second time that a presidential candidate failed to carry his home state (the McGovern rout was the first). It was the first time that a candidate withdrew his concession. It was the first time that a concession speech (the real one, thank God) was made on national TV at 8:55 pm. It was before a Monday Night Football game, as I recall.

But most importantly, it was the first Presidential election ever to be the subject of a formal post election contest.

During the Florida contest, we all learned way too much about the nitty gritty of actually counting votes. Who knew that chads could be pregnant? No matter which candidate you were rooting for, the winner of the Florida contest was always going to be damaged goods. Personally, I think the Florida Supreme Court tried to give it to Gore and the US Supreme Court stopped them (as opposed to stopping Gore or helping Bush). Gore partisans still think that the Florida Court was only doing the right thing and that the US Supremes gave it to Bush.

All of that, and Bush's subsequent problems related to the contest, made it clear to me that Nixon was right in 1960 not to contest Illinois and try to swing the election away from Kennedy. The cost of the Florida contest cannot be measured by the amount of money or time it took. It must be measured in terms of the impact it had on the ability of the ultimate victor to govern.

And we paid and are continuing to pay a steep price. National elections should not lightly be contested, and certainly not after you have conceded defeat.

That said, Gore's eventual concession speech was graceful, gracious and even noble. Gore's declaration after 9/11 that Bush was his commander in chief helped alot too. It's too bad the great concession speech couldn't undo all the harm he had caused. And it's too bad that no one seems to have picked up on the fact that 8:55 is a terrific time to schedule a 5 minute televised speech.

But the 2004 election is in a class by itself. Part of the problem is a result of Bush's damaged legitimacy in the wake of the Florida contest (a recent bumper sticker: Re-defeat Bush) Additionally, after campaign finance "reform" supposedly designed to take the money out of politics, we have suffered through the most expensive election in history. With the political parties and candidate's own campaigns no longer in control of a large chunk of the money being spent, we have had the most vitriolic campaign in my lifetime.

For comparison, pundits have had to go back to pre-war elections. Pre-Civil War elections. The president of the United States, the leader of the free world, has been called a liar by his mainstream opponent. In addition, Kerry's allies have called him a nazi, a moron, a monkey and a deserter. And while Bush is personally staying above the fray as much as possible, the name calling and denigration is not all going one way, by any means.

While seemingly united on the necessity of the war, the electorate appears bitterly divided on how to fight it. Actual discussion between the opposing sides has become difficult, if not impossible, and some people are beginning to become violent. One Kerry supporter is on tape telling Liz Edwards at a campaign rally that riots might occur if Kerry doesn't win Pennsylvania. Her response? "Not if we win." How about we just hold the damn election, okay? No one should change their vote because of threats of random violence by thugs.

A former Gore adviser writes:

[If this election is contested in court] there could be real anger--the kind of anger associated with elections in unstable developing countries, the kind that spills out into the street and terrifies people who have always believed in our
stability. There are ugly racial overtones to the Republican plans to prevent "fraud" among all those new voters--most of whom will prove to be African-American. . . .

What Elaine Kamarck doesn't say is that there are ugly racial overtones to the Democratic claims that minorities are being disenfranchised when they fail to fill out a ballot correctly or are forced to vote only in their actual precinct. Reasonable precautions against voter fraud by anyone, white, black, brown or purple, are just as important as counting the votes as accurately as you can. And I think that means asking me and every other voter for identification, both when I register and when I vote. I think it means assigning me a place to vote and requiring me to go there to vote or to vote absentee according to set rules.

But leave aside why the election might be contested, who started the contest and who wins it. Kamarck is right about a number of things. If this election is contested in court, I will be angry. If this election is contested in court, I will also be afraid that the country will become unstable. Bush might have won the last contest, but we all lost something. In the next contest, there may well be no winner. Even the nominal winner of the next contested presidential election could come to realize that his victory was entirely pyrrhic.

Here's hoping that there will be no next contest. Ever.

This, then, is my personal pledge to anyone who will listen:

The party whose candidate contests this election, regardless of the outcome of that contest, will not get my vote for anything (Governor, Representative, Senate, President, dogcatcher) for at least 8 years.

2004-10-27T17:31:00.000-04:00

BEWARE OF HCB

Need a laugh? Read.

Via Baldilocks, and before you ask, I have no clue how I ended up there, but Yahoo was involved.

2004-10-25T10:07:00.000-04:00

JUSTIFYING THE MEANS?

Via Drudge:

On CSPAN, John Edwards' wife, Liz (Lizbeth? Elizabeth?) had the following dialogue with a supporter:

Supporter: Kerry's going to take PA.

Liz Edwards: I know that.

Supporter: I'm just worried there's going to be riots afterwards.

Liz Edwards: Uh.....well...not if we win.

An audio clip here. There is no error in the transcript.

Do I think that Mrs. Edwards is threatening riots if Kerry loses? No. But I think that both she and the anonymous supporter are acknowledging that there is a real risk of violence perpetrated by Kerry/Edwards supporters if their side loses.

I agree that the risk is real. This campaign has been extremely nasty for a long time, now. There have been many acts of violence directed at the right from the left. And the violence is almost entirely a one way street.

The Kerry/Edwards campaign, indeed, all Democrats, should ask themselves why that is. How did we arrive at the point where one side in a closely contested election fires bullets into the opposition's offices, steals the opposition's computers, threatens the opposition's children, and trashes the opposition's offices, assaults and injures the opposition's volunteers, and throws cinder blocks through the doors of the opposition's offices. How did it come to pass that one side declares victory more than a week before the election is held and is likely to riot if that victory is not "acknowledged" by actual voters?

Is Stephen Green right? Is winning the office more important to Democrats than preserving the system by which one wins that office? I'm with Ann Althouse: Whoever wins, I hope that they win big. That will get us past this election and give the winner four years to fix things.

I also hope that whoever wins will take steps to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future.

How? Well, first, rules that do nothing to prevent or discourage fraudulent voting need to be addressed. The Motor Voter bill is a disgrace. In order to register to vote, you should be required to produce some identification, some proof of citizenship and some proof that you reside in the precinct you claim to live in.

If state law prevents you from voting (because, for example, of a felony conviction), the state should be required to notify all voting registrars in that state of the disability and the registrars should be required to compare that list to their registration rolls.

If you move, some system for notifying the registrar in your old precinct that you have moved should be instituted, perhaps by requiring the the registrar in your new district to notify the registrar in your old one before you can register at your new residence.

Will these measures have a different effect on different classes of people? Sure. Is it racist to say that only voters who are legally permitted to vote should vote? No. I think it is racist to say that the people who will be most affected by such changes are too stupid to deal with them and still vote.

And second, I think that local prosecutors have to make real efforts to catch and punish the people who are committing real crimes in connection with elections. The objection here is that "over the top" campaign rhetoric (in other words, the normal crap that goes on) will be criminalized. But check out this list (which provides links to all of the items):

10/23/04 - Sun Sentinal - Reports Democrat election observers and Democrat voters asking voters whom they are voting for, and pointing them out to the crowd. Observers campaigning at polls.
10/23/04 - Although not technically Democrats (being British and all) the Guardian wonders "Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?"
10/23/04 - Arizona Daily Sun - Vandals break into Republican Campaign office.
10/22/04 - The Oregonian - Lawless group smashes the windows of the Multnomah County Republican office in Southeast Portland on Thursday
10/22/04 - Bush/Cheney headquarters ransacked.
10/22/04 - Lawrence O'Donnell screams his hate at John O'Neill over Swift Boat allegations. No reasoned debate allowed.
10/22/04 - Columnist Ann Coulter attacked while giving a speech.
10/11/04 - WSJ - Assaults and gunfire.
10/1/04 - WISC-TV - Democrats burn Swastika into Bush supporter's lawn

I don't think that prosecutors should take a "boys will be boys" attitude here. I think that doing so imperils the ability to vote. And impairing the right to vote imperils everything, and I mean everything, that this nation has achieved in the two hundred plus years of its existence.

2004-10-25T01:30:00.000-04:00

CHRISTMAS IN NEW YORK?

Powerline hinted at a big story to come out on Monday in the Washington Times. Since I woke up at 1:00 am on Monday morning, and since I have become a political junkie in the past couple of months, I thought I would check.

And there it is. The Washington Times reports that, contrary to statements he made during the second debate and in subsequent speeches, Kerry did not in fact meet with the Security Council prior to the Iraq War.

Kerry (emphasis added):

"This president hasn't listened. I went to meet with the members of the Security Council in the week before we voted. I went to New York. I talked to all of them, to find out how serious they were about really holding Saddam Hussein accountable."

Well, as noted in here, the Security Council members at the time were the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Russia, China (the permanent members) and ten others: Mauritius, Mexico, Norway, Singapore, Guinea, Ireland, Columbia, Cameroon, Bulgaria and Syria.

The Washington Times:

"The former ambassadors who said on the record they had never met Mr. Kerry included the representatives of Mexico, Colombia and Bulgaria. The ambassador of a fourth country gave a similar account on the condition that his country not be identified... The Times was only able to confirm directly that Mr. Kerry had met with representatives of France, Singapore and Cameroon. In addition, second-hand accounts have Mr. Kerry meeting with representatives of Britain... But after being told late yesterday of the results of The Times investigation, the Kerry campaign issued a statement that read in part, "It was a closed meeting and a private discussion." A Kerry aide refused to identify who participated in the meeting. The statement did not repeat Mr. Kerry's claims of a lengthy meeting with the entire 15-member Security Council, instead saying the candidate "met with a group of representatives of countries sitting on the Security Council." Asked whether the international body had any records of Mr. Kerry sitting down with the whole council, a U.N. spokesman said that "our office does not have any record of this meeting." A U.S. official with intimate knowledge of the Security Council's actions in fall of 2002 said that he was not aware of any meeting Mr. Kerry had with members of the panel. An official at the U.S. mission to the United Nations remarked: "We were as surprised as anyone when Kerry started talking about a meeting with the Security Council." Jean-David Levitte, then France's chief U.N. representative and now his country's ambassador to the United States, said through a spokeswoman that Mr. Kerry did not have a single group meeting as the senator has described, but rather several one-on-one or small-group encounters. He added that Mr. Kerry did not meet with every member of the Security Council, only "some" of them. Mr. Levitte could only name himself and Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock of Britain as the Security Council members with whom Mr. Kerry had met. One diplomat who met with Mr. Kerry in 2002 said on the condition of anonymity that the candidate talked to "a few" ambassadors on the Security Council."

Yeah, but was Kerry wearing his magic hat?

2004-10-20T14:19:00.000-04:00

THAT'LL HELP

Teresa Heinz Kerry on Laura Bush:

Q: You'd be different from Laura Bush?

A: Well, you know, I don't know Laura Bush. But she seems to be calm, and she has a sparkle in her eye, which is good. But I don't know that she's ever had a real job — I mean, since she's been grown up...

Way to go, Teresa! With that one sentence, you have managed to say that:

Teachers don't have real jobs
Librarians don't have real jobs
Mothers raising their children don't have real jobs

I think Matt Damon's million bucks would be better spent if he paid to have this woman gagged.

All links via Drudge.

UPDATE:

OK, she apologized. "I had forgotten that Mrs. Bush had worked as a school teacher and librarian, and there couldn't be a more important job than teaching our children. As someone who has been both a full time mom and full time in workforce, I know we all have valuable experiences that shape who we are. I appreciate and honor Mrs. Bush's service to the country as First Lady, and am sincerely sorry I had not remembered her important work in the past."

The next problem is that she didn't apologize for dissing Mrs. Bush's work in raising her children. That's like claiming that someone is a murderer and a rapist, and then apologizing saying that you had forgotten that they hadn't murdered anyone.

Kerry would be far better off to just shut up.

2004-10-17T10:57:00.000-04:00

IRREGULAR

Steven den Beste is continuing to take small and apparently tentative steps in connection with his professed nonreturn to the web.

First it was a quickie about anime, now it is a short analysis of presidential polling. The political post is somewhat speculative, but, as always, interesting and astute.

In connection with the newest post, he said, "By the way, this does not mean I'm going to start posting regularly again."
That compares hopefully with his comment after the anime post, which was, "Before anyone asks: no, I have no urge whatever to once again write posts for USS Clueless."

In nineteen days, he went from "I have no interest" to "I'm not going to do this as a regular thing."

Let's hear it for irregular free ice cream. Can't be beat.

2004-10-17T08:49:00.000-04:00

HUH?

I just read Howard Fineman's article in Newsweek. Something is wrong with this picture.

In describing the hysterical pitch of the political combat to come over the next two and a half weeks, Fineman states:

The combat is so ferocious in part because the race is where it's always been: too close to call—though there is evidence that Bush now has a narrow lead: 48-46 percent among registered voters, 50-44 percent among likely voters in NEWSWEEK's new poll. Still, Bush's job-approval rating (often a harbinger of the incumbent's Election Day tally) is an ominously low 47 percent—and only 47 percent say they want to see him re-elected. (Emphasis added.)

I don't doubt that the race cannot be called at this time. Presidential races are frequently won or lost by substantially less than five percent of the popular vote, and the margin of error in most polls is larger than that. What amuses me about the Newsweek poll is that Fineman says only 47% of voters want Bush to be reelected, but Bush leads Kerry with 48% of registered voters and 50% of likely voters. If the poll is accurate, that means that between one and three percent of voters plan to vote for Bush even though they don't want to see him reelected.

The job approval ratings are more ambiguous. An opinion of how well or poorly Bush has performed over the course of his term does not translate directly into a vote for or against him. It is entirely consistent to for vote for Bush while believing that he has done a terrible job on absolutely everything, as long as you also believe that Kerry would be worse. The opposite is also true: It is possible to believe that Bush did absolutely everything perfectly and still be logically consistent with a vote for Kerry, if you believe that Kerry would do better at the tasks he will face in the next four years. Simply put, elections are about the future. Job approval ratings are about the past. The two are not entirely unconnected, sincepast actions are all we have to go on in predicting future actions. (The preceding sentence obviously and pointedly ignores the unenforceable and frequently ignored promises by politicians.)

The same point has been repeatedly made by Rand Simberg (sorry, no specific link because there is no search feature on Transterrestrial Musings) about the "right track/wrong track" question so beloved of pollsters. You can believe that Bush has the country on the wrong track for one of two reasons: he has pursued the wrong strategies and policies or, even though he has pursued the correct strategies and policies, he has not gone far enough.

But, at least according to Fineman, the Newsweek poll asked whether the respondent wanted the President to be reelected, and the answers they received simply do not add up.

2004-10-15T13:16:00.000-04:00

THIS IS TOO HARD

Tresca was short and stocky and square. She was small for her breed. She wore fourteen tons of beautiful fur, and left it all over the house. She had a sense of humor. She was overweight because we spoiled her and her advancing age meant that she didn’t get the amount of exercise she needed.

The Daughter named her after a greyhound she read about in some book. That was ironic, because Tresca was about as far as you can get from a greyhound in terms of physique. She always wanted to do what you told her, even if she didn’t quite understand what it was you were telling her to do.

She wasn’t as well trained as some dogs I’ve met. There was simply no way to keep her off our furniture. She was never going to be a watchdog, that was for sure. She hardly ever barked until the dog next door showed her how effective it was at being brought back inside on demand. She was one of the most gentle dogs on earth.

She was tolerant of the kittens my kids brought home. Hell, she was tolerant of our kids and the friends they brought home, even when they were petting her five day old puppies. Then the cats became tolerant of her as she stumbled over them. She was completely blind in one eye and mostly blind in the other, but you couldn’t tell when she was in familiar territory unless the something was out of place. Apparently she’d been bleeding internally for a couple of days. She stopped climbing stairs about six months ago, and in the last few days she’d gotten much weaker. She was having trouble with the single step into the house from the back yard.

And we had to put her down today. God that hurts.

That was the second time in my life I’ve had to make that decision.

I want to say I will never do it again, but I can’t. There are the three cats I have. Adopted strays that are legacy pets from my kids. Boots is a fat loudmouth who purrs so quietly you can hardly tell. He is a favorite of several of the homes he has adopted in the neighborhood (which is why he is so fat). Ricky and Lucy are littermates. They are the household clowns, hence the names. They have not yet figured out how to speak as loudly as Boots does, but they are more affectionate than he is and purr so hard they practically shake.

As much as I desire otherwise, the day will come for all of them, and I will do what I have to do. But from this day forth, there will be no new pets in my house. Ever.

I can’t do this anymore.

2004-10-12T15:29:00.000-04:00

JFK IN THE NYT

I've seen various responses to the Bai article on Kerry in the New York Times (requires registration, but go to www.bugmenot.com for help in avoiding spam). I like Lileks best:

Mosquito bites are a nuisance. Cable outages are a nuisance. Someone shooting up a school in Montana or California or Maine on behalf of the brave martyrs of Fallujah isn't a nuisance. It's war.

and

I don’t want to go back there. Planes into towers. That changed the terms. I am remarkably disinterested in returning to a place where such things are unimaginable. Where our nighmares are their dreams. ...No. We have to go the place where they are.

Volokh is not kind. Powerline is somewhat nicer. Rudy Giuliani is cutting, to say the least.

But I think the most perceptive comment comes from Citizen Smash:

Essentially, Kerry’s goal in the War on Terror appears to be to reduce the terrorists’ effectiveness to a level where he can “safely” focus his attention on other priorities. I’m sorry, but that’s just not good enough for me. My problem with Kerry isn’t that he sees Iraq as a diversion from the War on Terror, but rather that he sees the War on Terror as a diversion from his domestic agenda. (Emphasis in original)

Just so.

2004-10-11T19:15:00.000-04:00

THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

A long time ago in a galaxy far away, some people in the 2000 Bush campaign thought that they might win the popular vote but lose the Electoral College vote. Some campaign operatives made noises about attempting to woo Gore electors to “allow the will of the people to triumph”. Had they attempted to court the electoral vote after winning the popular vote but not the election, they would have been wrong.

Of course, what actually happened was that Gore, not Bush, won the popular vote and lost the Electoral College vote. In one of the (very) few positions he took which I admire, Mr. Gore did not follow advice similar to that received by Bush received after the election. That candidate Bush may have taken such a position (by proxy, since I don’t recall him ever making the statements himself) does not make the argument that the Electoral College serves a valid and enduring purpose any weaker. Nor does the fact that in approximately one of twenty five elections (once every hundred years or so) a candidate wins the popular vote and loses the election.

Why does the Electoral College exist? Primarily, to prevent the domination of the executive branch of the US government by a few populous states to the detriment of a large number of sparsely populated states. And it has some additional beneficial effects, over and above requiring that national candidates campaign beyond the borders of New York, California, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and Florida.

There are, at present, two ways that electoral votes are allocated to candidates. In most states, the candidate with the largest number of popular (no majority required) votes wins all of that state's electoral votes. In Maine (and possibly Nebraska), two electoral votes are allocated to the overall vote winner in the state and one electoral vote is allocated to the vote winner in each Congressional District. Now Colorado is considering a third method: allocation of electoral votes based solely on the statewide popular vote totals.

The thing I noticed about the Electoral College during the 2000 election was that the winner take all system makes stealing an election through fraudulent votes extremely difficult. The same is still true, but to a lesser degree, under the apportioned system now in effect in Maine. Unfortunately, the proposed system in Colorado does not provide the same anti-fraud protection, and, of course, neither would eliminating the Electoral College altogether.

Elections are human enterprises. We have to expect that they will not be perfect and that the participants will always attempt to “game” the system. There is absolutely nothing wrong with tailoring your campaign strategy to account for the effects of the Electoral College. It exists for very purpose of encouraging candidates to do so. On the other hand, since humans are involved, we should also expect some people to attempt to subvert the system. All we can do is make the system harder subvert and make it easier to discover and either prevent or correct the subversion. I think the Electoral College achieves both of those objectives, to a greater degree under the predominant winner take all system and to a lesser degree under the Maine district by district method.

Imagine the huge incentive to fraud that exists when you give each candidate’s supporters the incentive to stuff any ballot box anywhere under a direct popular election. In a close election I don’t think we would have a president until the midterm elections rolled around. It is a given that most modern elections are quite close (a couple of percentage points difference) in terms of the popular vote. It is far too much to expect every partisan political operative in every election from now till kingdom come to refrain from enhancing their candidate's chances by putting a few extra pieces of paper, appropriately marked, in a box in some backwater polling place. The difficulty in proving that ballots for the other guy were fraudulently produced and/or that ballots for your guy were wrongfully excluded from the count on a nationwide basis (a few here, a few there) is immense.

The post election contest in Florida in 2000 was bad enough, and that only took about six weeks and about thirty trips to various courthouses. Fortunately, such a closely contested election only seems to happen once every one hundred years or so. Imagine, if you will, the same nightmare re-re-recount scenario occurring in all fifty states after literally every nationwide election, under the Maine scheme or in the complete absence of the Electoral College.

The primary effect of the Electoral College is to force candidates to campaign outside of the main population centers of the nation. For more than two hundred years, it has performed as advertised. In addition, the Electoral College completely eliminates the incentive to cheat in the state or states where the candidate is strongest. But please note that this is precisely where cheating would be easiest and least detectable, and therefore most likely. But your guy is going to win there anyway and get all the state’s electoral votes, so it makes no sense whatever to cheat and risk being caught. This would not be the case in the absence of the Electoral College or under the Maine scheme.

Finally, under the winner take all system which is in effect throughout most of the nation, the ballot box stuffers in closer states must operate on a large scale to influence statewide results. This makes detection easier and therefore more likely. The same effect is not achieved under the Maine district by district scheme, since a series of districts could be swung with widely scattered efforts involving fewer fraudulent votes.

Colorado is currently considering apportioning its electoral votes between the candidates based on the popular vote in the state. This is a bit different than the Maine scheme, but its effects will be similar.

The Founders were proud of the Electoral College. They had reason to be. It ain’t broke. Don’t fix it.

2004-10-09T11:18:00.000-04:00

NONPARTISAN

Go see Jib Jab's new cartoon It's Good to be in DC.

Caution: In order to protect your electronic equipment, remove all foodstuffs from within arm's reach before playing the movie.

2004-09-28T20:04:00.000-04:00

(MUCH) BETTER THAN SILENCE

He's back. Sort of.

I've been reading Steven den Beste for a long time. The scope of his factual knowledge and his ability to order to those facts within a theoretical framework is nothing short of amazing.

So I was sorely disappointed a month ago when he announced that he was quitting blogging, at least for a while. I've been checking his site daily, hoping to find that "a while" had passed.

And now he is back with a post on one of his favorite subjects, anime. Good for him. Less good for me, though. I liked his political and foreign affairs posts much more than those concerning anime. And he says that he's still not moved to return as the Captain of the Clueless.

But complaints about the flavor of ice cream available just aren't right when the ice cream is free. So that is not a complaint. Steven, I'm glad to hear from you again.

After all, ice cream of whatever flavor tastes much better than silence.

2004-09-28T07:03:00.000-04:00

SHAFTING KERRY

Two recent stories coming out of Europe do not bode well for Senator Kerry's presidential aspirations.

The first, via Drudge, is a Financial Times report in the of statements by French and German officials that their respective countries will not send troops to Iraq even if Kerry is somehow elected. The second, via Powerline, is an International Herald Tribune story in which it is reported that France will not attend an international conference on Iraq unless the agenda includes discussion of a US withdrawal and the "insurgents" are invited to attend.

From Kerry's point of view, of the French and German statements reported by the FT, the French was worse. Not because it said anything different, but because it came from the Foreign Minister.

Michel Barnier, the French foreign minister, said last week that France, which has tense relations with interim prime minister Iyad Allawi, had no plans to send troops "either now or later".

The German statement is from Gert Weisskirchen, who is described as a "member of parliament and foreign policy expert for Germany's ruling Social Democratic Party" and is quoted as follows:

"I cannot imagine that there will be any change in our decision not to send troops, whoever becomes president. That said, Mr Kerry seems genuinely committed to multilateralism and as president he would find it easier than Mr Bush to secure the German government's backing in other matters."

Other matters. Other matters don't figure in this election. Kerry's proposed solution for Iraq is to get France and Germany involved militarily to relieve our forces. And the French Foreign Minister and a "foreign policy expert" for Germany's ruling party just said that ain't gonna happen.

The IHT story may well be the more damning of the two reports, however. Kerry has not called for negotiations with the "insurgents", but the French just did. Can you imagine France sending troops to Iraq while simultaneously calling for negotiations concerning US withdrawal? I can't. And given that Kerry has evoked Vietnam in his campaign, can there be a worse Vietnam allusion than to the Paris "peace" negotiations that led to the unilateral US withdrawal from Vietnam and cleared the way for North Vietnam to conquer its now southern half? Where shall the negotiations begin? Shall we discuss the shape of the table? Shall we discuss how many representatives Zarqawi gets to send and whether he should defer any additional beheadings while the conference is under way?

Europe just finished Kerry. He is toast.

UPDATE: It seems that foolish minds think alike. Foolsblog agrees with me (or I with him, since he posted last night).

2004-09-25T18:02:00.000-04:00

THE SIX STAGES OF MULTILATERALISM

I haven't been too pleased with the performance of the UN, lately. Neither is David Brooks, who has an op ed piece in the New York Times about Darfur:

Every time there is an ongoing atrocity, we watch the world community go through the same series of stages: (1) shock and concern (2) gathering resolve (3) fruitless negotiation (4) pathetic inaction (5) shame and humiliation (6) steadfast vows to never let this happen again.

There is no way to describe what's happening in Darfur other than as genocidal ethnic cleansing, and what does the UN do? It frowns sternly in the general direction of Sudan an issues a "threat" to consider economic sanctions at some unspecified time in the future. That threat, of course, will be followed in due course with another lengthy debate about whether and how to impose the sanctions.

A threatened debate concerning mealy mouthed sanctions in the sweet by and by does nothing but give the maniacs who are doing the killing and raping and burning additional time to do whatever the hell they want, which turns out to be more murder, more rape and more burning.

And of course, sanctions, in the unlikely event that they are complied with and the even less likely event that they actually have the intended effect, will take additional time, measured in years, to achieve that effect. Darfur is burning today. People are starving right goddam now. An ethnic "militia" is murdering thousands as we speak. And the UN does less than nothing. It offers the people with the gasoline and matches more time to do their thing.

This is yet another magnificent performance by the UN. You'd think that their recent performances elsewhere in the world (and not just Iraq; remember Rwanda?) would shame them into at least acting like they wanted to do something.

The UN has become a pathetic farce which raises obstruction and obfuscation into an art form. And, if anyone, anywhere finally gets fed up with the delay and diplobabble, heaven forbid they should actually try to do something. God help the nation that says, "If you won't do it, we will." Only crude cowboys and complete morons say stuff like that.

Any actions taken to enforce (enforce? is that a word?) all those resolutions solemnly passed with great fanfare are characterized by Secretary General of the UN as illegal.

I have a (Mrs.) Kerry-like suggestion for Mr. Annan: Take your resolutions and your opinions and shove it. Your organization has become a sad, sick joke. Time and time again, the UN has watched and done nothing as its honored members violated every provision of its charter, resulting in death and suffering on a scale which can scarcely be imagined.

Where in the name of God do you get the gall to criticize the people who spend sacrifice their own lives and their own money to do that which you have so pompously declared over and over and over again needed to be done?

Those people may not be able to right all the world's wrongs, but they've fixed a boatload more than you have.

2004-09-24T08:14:00.000-04:00

THEY WUZ ROBBED

I started to write a longish post about Kerry's contradictory statements on Iraq throughout the course of the campaign, only to find, via VodkaPundit, that John Hawkins did a far better job. And he has art!

Kerry obtained the Democratic nomination almost entirely on the basis that he was "electable." I think the Democrats should get their money back. Having tried to become all things to all people, electable may well be the one thing Kerry isn't.

The effect of the "weathervane" (sorry, no direct link, go here and scroll down) and "blowin' in the wind" ads now airing will show up in the polls in the next week or so, and I think Kerry will be seriously wounded. That leaves only the debates as a means for Kerry to improve his standing. There is no doubt that Kerry is a good debater. But is he good enough to withstand a recitation of the quotes in the linked article? I doubt it.

There has also been some speculation about outside events (such as a major terrorist attack somewhere) affecting the election. Well, there have been major terrorist attacks, both in Iraq (in terms of sheer volume) and Russia (in terms of gut wrenching horror). Events like those are wildcards. Their effect is unpredictable. So far, however, none seem to have derailed Bush or aided Kerry.

2004-09-23T10:10:00.000-04:00

LAST WORD ON RA^thERGATE

The absolutely must read last word on Rathergate belongs to Iowahawk.

"My name is Rather. And I’m a dick."

This one is spreading like wildfire. I got it from Rand Simberg, and it's already been trackbacked twenty times or so.

I suspect that the one thing that Rather and CBS will not be able to tolerate is ridicule.

Go. Read.

2004-09-23T08:52:00.000-04:00

THE FLAT TAX

Andrew Sullivan, in speculating about what a second Bush term would look like, says "I'd love it if he made a real push for a flat tax..."

Andrew, the flat tax is a great idea whose time will never come.

Reasons? At the beginning of any analysis, the purpose(s) of enacting a flat tax have to be examined. The main selling point I have always seen is simplicity. The tax code has become far too complex, and is no longer comprehensible to the average taxpayer. Simplicity is a good thing, at least in the abstract. Our tax compliance system is, in reality, a voluntary one, and ease of compliance will increase compliance, or so it is claimed. So the question becomes, (a) is the objective of simplicity in the tax code achievable and (b) will the flat tax achieve it?

The answers: Probably not and not likely at all.

First, the US economy is the most complex in the world. Imposing a tax on that economy requires complex rules. Failure or refusal to enact complex rules will result in simplicity, and simplicity is a good thing. But the corollary to simplicity is unfairness. Simple is easy but, in specific situations, unfair. Complex is hard, but (if not entirely fair) fairer. And, given our system of voluntary compliance, a widespread perception of unfairness will be the system's death knell.

I'm a tax attorney (boo, hiss). People like me get paid to figure out ways to reduce a client's taxes. A simple flat tax will make my job simple. A complex flat tax (if that's not an oxymoron) will not solve the problem that the flat tax aims to solve: Complexity in the tax code. Even if, by some political miracle (see below), a flat tax was enacted, exceptions will creep back into the law as legislators try to combat the perceived unfairness resulting from the new tax in specific situations.

Second, the tax code, as it stands, contains hundreds, if not thousands, of provisions on which everyone, and I mean everyone, has relied and continues to rely. Deductibility of home mortgage interest and real estate taxes. Deductibility of IRAs/pension contributions. Deductibility of charitable contributions. Those provisions are ones that you and I rely on directly every day in deciding whether to purchase this home or that one, whether make this investment or that one, and whether and to what extent to support our favorite causes. And that short list doesn't even consider the provisions affecting us indirectly, such as the laws pertaining to depreciation, S corporations, partnerships, or the more esoteric provisions concerning trusts, insurance companies, banks or corporate reorganizations, all of which are extremely complex. A flat tax (at least one that would achieve its presumed goal of simplicity) would require the repeal or radical modification of most or all of those provisions. But each one of those provisions has a constituency which will oppose the repeal. Sometimes a very large and very powerful constituency in terms of either numbers or wealth (and thus lobbying clout). I am no politician, but my guess is that logrolling in Congress would result in keeping most of the provisions noted above intact, which, again, will cause the flat tax to fail to achieve its objective of simplicity.

Third, switching to a flat tax will have untold economic consequences. To take just one example, the deduction for home mortgage interest, if repealed, would result in a huge new supply of homes for sale. Millions of homeowners would no longer be able to afford their homes because the mortgage was no longer being paid with pre-tax dollars. All of those home would come onto the market, over a very short period of time. At the same time and for the same reason, the average home buyer's ability to purchase a new home will be reduced, in terms of the amount of money he can afford to spend. That would result in a drastic reduction in the value of real estate. It might not be a crash, but it sure would look like one in the short run.

Fourth, the bulk of the wealth of the average American is in the value of his home. Unless the deduction for home mortgage interest and real estate taxes is maintained, the flat tax will be perceived as an attack (even if not a deliberate one) on the wealth accumulated over the years by the average Joe. If you are going to maintain that deduction, the argument for eliminating others is significantly weakened.

All in all, I don't think a flat tax will happen, and if I am wrong and it does happen, I don't it will last.

2004-09-22T13:13:00.000-04:00

MISSED OPPORTUNITY? RA^thERGATE AND MAPES

60 Minutes II producer (or just plain 60 Minutes, or 60 Minutes, Wednesday, depending on who wins the civil war) Mary Mapes contacted Joe Lockhart at the Kerry Campaign and asked him to call Bill Burkett, saying Burkett had been quite helpful on the story that became DanRon. The request was made, apparently, as a condition of receiving the bogus documents from Burkett. Lockhart acknowledges speaking to Burkett in response to Mapes' request.

The press and the blogosphere are abuzz with the possibilities raised by this second contact between Burkett and the Kerry campaign (the first being with former Senator Cleland). Was Ra^thergate an attempted Democratic dirty trick by the campaign or the DNC?????? More violations of journalistic ethics at CBS!!!!! Stay tuned for futher details!!!!

But the thing that bothers me about this wrinkle is not the (logical but somewhat unlikely) possibility of involvement in Ra^thergate by high officials of the Kerry campaign. What gets me is that Mapes was freely disclosing her source to Lockhart at the very same time that Rather was refusing to tell the rest of us who that source was.

That raises two questions:

Having already disclosed the source to people outside of CBS News, how can Rather have claimed for more than a week that his journalistic ethics prevented him from disclosing the source to the pajamasphere? This is in addition to the obvious one of whether Rather should have protected his source at all, having been burned by that very same source.

The more interesting of the two questions is this: Lockhart knew the identity of the source. He knew (or should have known) that the source had provided faked documents to Mapes and Rather. So why didn't Lockhart disclose the identity of the source? Wouldn't that have been proof positive that the Kerry campaign was not involved in the scam? Wouldn't that have been the best possible condemnation of the avalanche of mud and irrelevancies that this campaign has become?

Was it an opportunity missed? Or an attempt to protect a friend in the press?

2004-09-21T13:44:00.000-04:00

UNIMPEACHABLE

In The World According to Garp, Robin Williams and his wife are looking at a house to purchase when a light airplane literally crashes into it. Williams' line is "Honey, the chances of another plane hitting this house are astronomical. See? It's been pre-disastered. We're going to be safe here."

That sounds to me like what Dan Rather must have been thinking when he called Burkett an unimpeachable source. Burkett had, for all practical intents and purposes, already been impeached. In at least one instance, the man had impeached his own statement.

From The Houston Chronicle:

... Burkett's allegations have changed over the years, and have been dismissed as baseless by former Guard colleagues, state legislators and others.

Even Burkett has admitted some of his allegations are false.

Emphasis added. I can just see Rather thinking to himself, "The odds of Burkett being impeached again are astronomical. He's pre-impeached. We're going to be safe here."

2004-09-20T13:49:00.000-04:00

BURKETT? THEY GOT THEM FROM BURKETT?

On MSNBC: CBS "cannot vouch for the authenticity of documents used to support a "60 Minutes" story about President Bush's Vietnam-era National Guard service after several experts denounced them as fakes."

So who is Bill Burkett?

From Smash:

MEET BILL BURKETT:

Bill Burkett, who has emerged as a possible CBS source for disputed memos about President Bush's Guard service, has a long history of making charges against Bush and the Texas National Guard. (Houston Chronicle)

What kind of charges? Here's something Burkett himself wrote on March 19, 2003:

In January of 1998 and what seems like a full lifetime ago, I was stricken by a deadly case of meningoencephalitis. I was returning from a short duty trip to Panama as a team chief to inspect the hand over of Ft. Clayton to the Panamanians. I had been 'loaned' from the senior staff and state planning officer of the Texas National Guard to the Department of the Army for a series of these special projects after angering George W. Bush by refusing to falsify readiness information and reports; confronting a fraudulent funding scheme which kept 'ghost' soldiers on the books for additional funding, and refusing to alter official personnel records [of George W. Bush].

Got that? He blames Bush for his illness. But wait, it gets better:

George W. Bush and his lieutenants were mad. They ordered that I not be accessed to emergency medical care services, healthcare benefits I earned by my official duty; and I was withheld from medical care for 154 days before I was withdrawn from Texas responsibility by the Department of the Army, by order of the White House.

I was a pawn then caught in a struggle for right and wrong, but also caught within a political struggle between a man who would do anything to be 'king' of America and an institution of laws that we knew as America.Bush conspired to deny him medical treatment?

That's quite a story. But apparently, it wasn't even up to Dan Rather's standards, as it never made it past the "Veterans for Peace" website.

So how does Burkett really feel about President Bush?

We must now revert to the history of Europe to discern what to do. We must study the nemesis of France and how Napoleon was felled before understanding the damage a tyrant does to a nation and society. We must examine the ruthless and dictatorial rise of yet another of the three small men—one whose name is not spoken out of fear of reprisal, but his name was Adolf. We must examine history, in order to not repeat it, and to understand the mesmerism of a public to a murderous scheme. Three small men who wanted to conquer . . . and vanquish. Each created a need for a balancing throng; history then recorded the damage from a far better perspective.

To quote a somewhat less famous blogger (moi):

"You relied on Burkett????? You put the reputation of CBS News and its 60 Minutes flagship at risk based on Burkett's say so? How stupid can you get?"

Apparently mindblogglingly stupid.

2004-09-19T15:33:00.000-04:00

RA^thERGATE AND YELLOWCAKE

Powerline notes that the Niger Yellowcake story has resurfaced. The Italian businessman who apparently obtained the (crudely) forged documents on which the US and the UK based their claim that Saddam was attempting to purchase yellowcake (low grade uranium which would presumably be enriched into weapons grade stuff) from Niger has now testified in an Italian court that he was on France's payroll.

This has lead to a "furious row" between France and Italy in which Italy claims France was attempting to set up the US (and the UK) by inducing us to rely on bogus documents, thus undermining the case for the Iraqi war.

All this sounds very familiar, no? To the best of my knowledge, however, Karl Rove is not alleged to have been involved. But then, Terry McAuliffe has not yet given an interview on the subject.

Powerline notes (and I agree) that Saddam was almost certainly attempting to purchase something from Niger. Niger's exports are livestock, cowpeas, onions, and the products of it's small cotton industry. And yellowcake. I think its reasonable to assume that the high level Iraqi official (Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf, aka "Baghdad Bob") who, according to none other than Joseph Wilson, supposedly contacted Niger to talk about trade was not going to talk about goats.

However, Powerline then adds that Bush was unwise to back off on the yellowcake claim as he did. I disagree. This is precisely the argument now being made by Rather about his Bush/National Guard story. His documents were forgeries and his report was based largely, but not entirely on those forgeries. Rather also had Texas politician and Democratic fundraiser Ben Barnes talking about using his influence to get Bush into the Guard, without, of course, identifying Barnes as a major Kerry contributor or the fact that his story has changed several times over the years.

Rather is now being heavily criticized not only for going ahead with the story based largely on crude forgeries, but for his subsequent stonewalling and his continued professions of belief in the story despite the evidence of fraud with respect to the documents. And his critics are right. Ben Barnes was nothing new. Rather's story was the documents and the documents were fraudulent.

That is why I think Bush was right to not push the yellowcake claim once it was established that the documents were forged. Yes, there was other evidence. But it was both old and somewhat tenuous and therefore not, to my mind, a sufficient basis for a decision to send young kids out to fight die.

And can you imagine the glee with which Terry McAuliffe would have greeted a Bush claim that the documents were fake but accurate?

2004-09-19T07:01:00.000-04:00

ROPE-A-DOPE YET AGAIN?

In some of his title fights, Muhummad Ali intentionally let his opponent beat on him for the first (ten?) rounds or so of the bout. After the opponent tired himself out hitting Ali where it didn't hurt, Ali finally began to fight back. He won. He told an interviewer after his first use of the strategy that this had been his plan going into the fight.

His fans (me included) hated watching their champion being pummeled without response. It was also risky. The key to the strategy lies in the timing. Wait too long and, exhausted oppponent or not, you will be too far behind in points to come back, necessitating a far more difficult knock out for victory. Not long enough, and your opponent will not be tired. Ali called it "rope-a-dope" and, though I have not watched much boxing since the retirement of Sugar Ray Leonard, as I recall, no one else has ever been able to successfully duplicate it.

In the boxing ring.

Over the past few years, however, spectators have been treated to an absolutely spectacular exhibition of rope-a-dope by George Bush. I am continually amazed at how he waits passively, absorbing blow after blow as his opponents voluntarily crawl farther and farther out on a limb. And then, at precisely the right time to inflict the maximum damage on the opponent, with one calculated speech, Bush saws the branch off behind them.

This observation is not original to me. Bush has done it many times. The issue of Israeli/PLO negotiations, and the war in Iraq are two of the most noticeable examples. Whether the strategy is planned and executed by Bush or Karl Rove or someone else working for Bush is irrelevant. It is planned. It has happened far too many times not to be.

And it seems to have happened yet again with Ra^thergate (or DanRon, as one wag is calling it). This snippet from a story by Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post says it all:

[CBS reporter] Roberts called "60 Minutes" producer Mary Mapes with word that [White House Communications Director] Bartlett was not challenging the authenticity of the documents. Mapes told her bosses, who were so relieved that they cut from Rather's story an interview with a handwriting expert who had examined the memos.

At that point, said "60 Minutes" executive Josh Howard, "we completely abandoned the process of authenticating the documents. Obviously, looking back on it, that was a mistake. We stopped questioning ourselves. I suppose you could say we let our guard down."

Emphasis added. They did indeed. Was it planned this time? The only way to tell would be if Bush's response was responsible for Rather's flame-out. But this time, Bush did not even have to do any of his own sawing. The blogosphere did it for him, with obviously devasting results.

Once again, Bush opponents were deep into the details of planning their victory parade, only to wake up on the floor a few minutes later, asking, "What hit me?"

2004-09-17T10:10:00.000-04:00

POLLS, POLLS, POLLS

The presidential polling boom is in full swing. New polls are coming out daily. At the moment, there is no consensus among the pollsters. The race is either a dead heat (a Harris poll released Thursday, and a Pew Research poll taken between 9/11 and 9/14) or a Bush blowout by 16% among likely voters (Pew Research, taken between 9/8 and 9/10), take your pick.

More than occasionally, for various reasons, a poll is just flat wrong. But I think that, in this case, its possible that there is an explanation for the wild swing in the Pew poll: Ra^thergate.

Rather made the story impugning Bush's National Guard Service late (late for polling, at least) in the evening of 9/10. The reaction in the pajamasphere was both strong and immediate, but the mass media didn't pick up the story until the weekend (9/11-9/12) and only really got going on it on Monday, 9/13.

That means that whatever damage Rather did to the Bush campaign with the story is not picked up at all in the earlier survey (9/8-9/10), but is reflected in the later poll (9/11-9/14) without much diminution by reason of the destruction of the memos as forgeries in the blogosphere.

The conventional wisdom is that Rather did little damage because no one cares what Bush did or didn't do thirty five years ago. I disagree. I think that the story had a significant impact on the electorate, which was negated by Rather's incredible stupidity in relying on those memos, which was pointed out over the following week or so.

As to the race, my gut tells me Bush is ahead by a significant margin. Of course, my gut may just be telling me what I want to hear.

2004-09-16T09:41:00.000-04:00

NOW THERE IS AN INTRIGUING QUESTION

Perhaps fake, but accurate. That's what CBS' defense of the memos amounts to. The content of the documents, though forged, reflects what really happened.

OK, then, should Karl Rove produce a series of memos similarly "proving" John Kerry's legislative record? The best part is that no forging would be involved, because the memos would be completely blank (it being the Bush position that Kerry has no legislative achievements). The documents would be "less fake" than Rather's laughable memos, since they would involve no actual words. And they reflect what the Bush campaign believes to be what really happened. That would be enough according to CBS to run to air with the documents to attack Kerry using what amounts to a campaign stunt by the other side. Is that the standard used by CBS?

I love the line where CBS says they're going to try really really hard to authenticate the documents.

Authenticate them? Mr. Rather, that ship sailed long ago. You should have done what you now plan to try prior to your initial broadcast. And when you couldn't, you should have round filed them. Your failure to do so was a large mistake. Your subsequent appeals to authority and ad hominem invective (We're CBS. We have editors and such, so we must be right. Our critics are "some guys in their pajamas.") were a bigger mistake.

The bottom line? CBS has basically admitted that the documents cannot be authenticated. Their own witness (the late Colonel Killian's secretary) says so, even as she says that the sentiment they express is true. Therefore, at the very least, its source enlisted CBS News in general, and Dan Rather in particular, in an attempt to manipulate the election based on forgeries. Why does that source deserve CBS' continued protection?

Certainly not based on journalistic ethics, as claimed by CBS. At least no journalistic ethics that I've ever heard of. Your source burns you, you burn the source. Automatically. Failure to do so invites future attempts by indicating that there is no cost to providing CBS with forged documents, even ones where the forgery should be obvious to anyone with an ounce of sense.

And that gives rise to what is, to my mind, a most intriguing question: If the protection of the source is not based on journalistic ethics, WHY IS RATHER CONTINUING TO STONEWALL ON HIS SOURCE? His career and his legacy are both at stake. He has pledged them both to protect a source that gave him fake documents.

There are three logical possibilities:

1. There is no source. Rather himself (or someone at CBS) fabricated the documents. Probability? Zero or something approaching it.

2. There is a relationship between Rather and his source that causes Rather to want to protect the source. I can't see Rather literally throwing his career and reputation away to elect John Kerry, so Rather's position is not explained by assuming that the source is the Kerry campaign, even though Kerry was the intended beneficiary of the scam. No, this possibility is likely only if the source is a family member or something like that, which is itself unlikely. Probability? Unlikely.

3. Rather believes the source to be extremely weak. I think this is the most likely of the three possibilities. In fact, I think that it is very likely to be true. Assuming the source of the documents has problems other than the documents themselves that can be or have been used to impeach his credibility, disclosing his identity does not solve Rather's problem.

Indeed, it makes it worse. The reaction would be, "You relied on __________????? You put the reputation of CBS News and its 60 Minutes flagship at risk based on __________'s say so? How stupid can you get?"

Therefore, Rather might as well try to continue to stonewall and change the subject. If successful, he suffers less damage than he would by disclosing the source. But that damage control effort will probably only be temporary (although just how temporary is impossible to estimate). The one thing that I believe to be near certain is that the source will be disclosed or discovered, eventually. Deep throat would not be able to remain anonymous in the age of the internet while continuing to provide information to Woodward and Bernstein.

And certainly not if he had attempted to bring down a President with forgeries.

UPDATE: on Friday morning, I read Opinion Journal, as usual and find this editorial by Bernard Goldberg, saying pretty much the same thing as I did. Pretty good company, no?

Caution: Patting yourself on the back can be painful.

2004-09-15T20:34:00.000-04:00

IN THE COURT OF THE CRIMSON (ROBE) KING

Over at Moira's place, she is singing the praises of the pajamasphere. In the comments, one Lynx Pherret asks if there is an auxilliary for mere bathrobe wearers.

I'm in. Sign me up for the Bathrobe Brigade.

I am PJ challenged, as are many others, and took up a robe when skivvies became, shall we say, less than acceptable due to (ahem) caloric overconsumption with complications arising from simultaneous underexpenditure of same.

The Daughter programmed my cell phone to display "Robe King".

2004-09-14T13:34:00.000-04:00

DON'T HEDGE YOUR BET

Citizen Smash posts on the car bomb in Baghdad and the small arms attack in Baquoba. He thinks that the new Iraqi government will attempt to clean out the current safe havens of Fallujah, Baquoba and Samarra prior to the January elections held there.

What bothers me most about the war in Iraq right now is the progression of events we have seen several times:

An series of attacks, followed by an expedition to Fallujah, where the "insurgents" are surrounded, outgunned and (to this non-military eye) terribly vulnerable, followed by "successful" negotiations for a cease fire pursuant to which we back off. The cease fire, of course, turns out to be meaningless because no arms are surrendered and no one is taken into custody. Then, three or four weeks later, a new series of attacks are mounted from the same places we had surrounded, and the whole process is repeated (and I fume impotently).

It won't take long for people to start comparing that state of affairs to the Tet Offensive, which was simultaneously a military disaster and a huge political win for North Vietnam. That war truly was won (and lost) on the streets of the United States.

The on again/off again attempts control Fallujah have happened twice, now. If it happens much more, US voters might well conclude that Bush is waiting to get past the US election to finish cleaning out the three towns.

That would not be good. Trying to control the timing of anti-terrorist military efforts for political purposes can only hurt by politicizing the conduct of the war. To be perceived as trying to do so (even if it is untrue) is almost as bad.

If the bad guys are surrounded and cut off from food, water and ammunition, for God's sake kill them or capture them. Bush bet his reelection on Iraq. This is no time to start hedging that bet.

2004-09-14T06:44:00.000-04:00

WORTH EVERY PENNY

Senator Kerry has a problem. The problem is the "Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party" (also known as the Deaniacs).

Fritz Schrank, a Delaware lawyer/blogger, has been solicited by Kerry for a campaign contribution. The solicitation itself is a scream, and Fritz does a fine job of fisking it, noting the complete absence of any reason to vote for Kerry, as opposed to against Bush. I especially like the part where Kerry declares that when (not if) he wins, we will look back on this moment as the turning point. If you're already assured of winning, Senator, why solicit additional funds?

I must say, though, that Kerry is, once again, confusing me with his tactics on the war in Iraq.

He was for the war and against it.

He was against paying for it, but he was for paying for it before he was against paying for it.

We didn't send enough troops, so we should bring the troops who are there home, within four years. No, wait: one year. No, starting in six months.

Kerry's statements that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction were completely accurate, but Bush lied about them and misled is into war.

But it doesn't matter that Bush misled us into war because Kerry would have gone to war regardless of whether or not he thought he would find WMDs.

Britain, Australia, Spain, El Salvador, Poland and the umpteen other countries that contributed to the Iraq effort were a coalition of the bribed and coerced. The only way to avoid having a coalition of the bribed and coerced, apparently, is to bribe and coerce France and/or Germany.

This week, we are back to the BUSH LIED!!!!! PEOPLE DIED!!!!!!! theme. Forget the fact that the CIA and every other US intelligence agency thought Saddam had WMDs. Forget the fact that literally every intelligence service in the West thought Saddam had WMDs. Hell, we should (please!) forget that even Kerry thought so, too. Bush knew differently and if he didn't contradict the overwhelming weight of the intelligence assessments from around the world, its only because he is either a liar or a complete moron.

Oh, wait. That would make Kerry a liar or moron, too. Sorry. I take that back. Until next week.

Some free advice for the Senator:

Howard Dean lost the primaries. He is not the candidate. You are. The Deaniacs are not going to vote for Bush. They're going to vote for Nader or for you. I think you're going to lose this election, even if you get the Deaniac vote, but I'm a convinced Bush supporter. Mine is not the vote you're looking for, because you won't get it. This race, as far as you are concerned, is now between you and Nader. Your only chance is to convince enough Deaniacs that you have a shot at winning.

Your party overwhelmingly nominated you because they thought that you could win. The downside to having obtained the nomination solely on "electability" is that a significant portion of the people who nominated you will vote for Nader if they believe going into the election that you will lose. To them, it's about winning the election. It's not about Iraq anymore, if ever it was.

Your position on the war is irrelevant to the Deaniacs. It is sufficient for them that you are not Bush. You are losing them now not because of your position(s) on the war, but because you are trailing in the polls. The way to get them back is not to adopt their positions, since that will put you farther behind in the polls and thus cause further defections to Nader among the Deaniacs. The way to get them back is to do better in the polls.

I acknowledge that this is a question of which came first, the chicken or the egg. It's a conundrum. You can't do better with the voters until you do better in the polls, which are, of course, a measurement of how you're doing with the voters.

I'm not sure how to go about improving your position in the polls, but I know that shifting leftwards on the war in Iraq won't do it. I know that your consistent inconsistency on the war won't do it, either. I suspect that you have to decide what your true beliefs are (besides the obvious one that you should be the President), state them clearly and repeatedly and hope for the best.

Of course, if you really are the anti-war candidate, that might mean alienating a (perhaps small but) significant chunk of your party, represented by Zell Miller. And that would put Bush over the top, if he isn't there already.

Hey, I said the advice was free. Not that it would be, you know, useful.

2004-09-11T11:23:00.000-04:00

DAN BLA^thER

Ah, the wonders of the internet. On Wednesday night, Dan Rather goes on the air to report that Bush got into the National Guard because of his influential family, disobeyed a direct order and did not meet his obligations to the National Guard. The "family influence" claim was based on the statements of Ben Barnes, former Texas Lieutentant Governor. The rest of the claims were based on the now infamous documents obtained by CBS News. The documents were authenticated by Marcel Matley, a document expert, and by Major General (retired) Hodges, the (immediate?) superior of the author of the documents, who was himself Bush's superior officer.

Within twenty four hours, serious questions had been raised concerning all of the new witnesses and new documents trumpeted by Rather. The questions were so serious that Rather felt the need, on Friday evening, to attempt to rebut them on the air.

And by Saturday evening, Rather's rebuttal had been shredded.

His document expert, who supposedly authenticated the documents, formed his opinion after having viewed copies, since that was all CBS had. But that same expert wrote in 2002 that "... modern copiers and computer printers are so good that they permit easy fabrication of quality forgeries. From a copy, the document examiner cannot authenticate the unseen original but may well be able to determine that the unseen original is false. Further, a definite finding of authenticity for a signature is not possible from a photocopy, while a definite finding of falsity is possible." (Emphasis added.) General Hodges stated that CBS had misled him by telling him that the documents had been handwritten, and that all he had said was that if Killian (the supposed author) had written it, then that was how Killian felt about the matter.

The original criticisms of the documents (the use of New Times Roman; the proportional spacing; the centering and superscript) were hardly affected at all by the rebuttal. If you are old enough to remember Watergate, the infamous 18 minute gap in one of the Nixon tapes was explained away by partisans as having been accidentally caused by Nixon's secretary (Rose Mary Woods) performing a complicated stretch across three quarters of her large desk to answer her phone without taking her foot off a floor switch. The explanation was ridiculed as the "Rose Mary Stretch."

Well, the explanation of how Colonel Killian could have produced the documents contemporaneously with their dates had the same ring to it as the Rose Mary Stretch.

He would have to have had a high end IBM typewriter, the IBM Selectric Composer. In the Texas Air National Guard? Right.

He would have had to stop typing, rummage in his desk for another type ball having a smaller typeface, replace the existing type ball with the new one, futz with the paper, and type "th".

He would have had to reverse the process to get back to 12 point New Times Roman.

He would have had to do this several times in the course of one short document.

He would have had to type out and carefully measure the length of each line in the caption for centering purposes and start typing at the proper point on each line on a fresh paper.

I don't understand how there could be any questions about it. It could have happened. It did happen. Of course that's what a man who, according to both his widow and his son, didn't like to type would do!

And new faults were found (the terminology used in the memos was not in use at the time the memos were supposedly written; the signature block was wrong; the caption was wrong; the person said to be exerting pressure to sugarcoat Bush's evaluation had retired 18 months before date of the the memo; both Colonel Killian's son and his widow said he never took notes or kept memos, didn't write like that and admired Bush, even travelling to another base to pin his wings on him and meet Bush the elder; the son also questioned one of the signatures).

Additional document experts have offered opinions contrary to that of Mr. Matley (not to mention Matley's prior article saying that what he had done could not be done).

Rather's first new witness (Barnes) was recalled to have earlier stated exactly the opposite of what he was now claiming and revealed (by his daughter, no less) to have a motive of hyping his upcoming book.

And General Hodges, the witness apparently thought to be the "trump card," recanted, so to speak, as noted above.

I think the documents are forgeries. I think Matley's "authentication" of the documents is complete bullshit (and so does Matley, at least as of 2002) I think Barnes is a terrible witness for the "influence" claim, and that Hodges is a non-witness at best.

But I don't think Rather intentionally trumpeted forged documents and biased, misleading witnesses. I think he fervently wants Bush to lose the election because that's what he thinks needs to happen in order for things to improve in the world, and he allowed that desire to blind him to the multiple, egregious and obvious flaws in the report.

His actions subsequent to the initial report, however, are something different altogether. As Nixon learned, its not the original problem that will kill you, its the coverup. Rather's Friday night rebuttal was pathetic. "Some typewriters" had the superscripted th option in the early seventies? Well, at least one did that used New Times Roman, but for God's sake man:

Who would write a memo and stick it in a file on the off chance that the subject of the memo would be running for reelection 30 freakin years later?

Where were these witnesses and documents in 2000?

Rather's claim that everyone else's document analysis is wrong because they are looking at copies of copies of faxes of copies begs the question: Should not CBS then release the actual documents that Matley was looking at, rather than just copies of them? Why won't it, and why won't they tell us where they got the documents from? If the documents are in fact forgeries, surely they owe no obligation to protect the source that embarrassed them. And since releasing the documents and documenting their provenance appears to be the only way to salvage the claims made by CBS, why won't they do so?

If there are two ways to produce the documents, one taking a whole bunch of time and effort using the Rose Mary Woods Stretch-like procedure outlined above and one taking minutes using nothing but MS Word and maybe Photoshop, does not Occam's Razor tell us that forgery is the more likely explanation?

Why would Colonel Killian keep an official order for Lt. Bush to report for a physical exam in his "personal file?" Why does his widow say that Colonel Killian did not keep such things?

In his rebuttal, Rather said he would report only "definitive evidence" contrary to his story. The various items listed above are not definitive evidence. They are strong evidence. They are, in my opinion, far more than a preponderance of the evidence. But they are not definitive. But then almost nothing could be definitive this long after the fact. The problem here is Rather's disingenous use of the standard of proof required for rebuttal evidence. The evidence for the original story turns out to be flimsy at best, and Rather thinks that only "definitive" evidence countering it is worthy of being reported?

Airing the original story was a mistake. Sticking to it in the face of the volume, nature and quality of the criticism levelled against it is a much, much bigger mistake. It is the type of mistake that ends careers.

Can Rather survive the ridicule? CBS News is already in last place for news among the three broadcast networks. The damage done to their flagship 60 Minutes franchise is massive and will grow larger as people start to ask what did Dan know and when did he know it and as clippies continue to be created and circulated on the net.

NOTE: I normally try hard to credit sources on my posts. In this case, there were just too many. All, repeat, all of the above facts were discovered by others and reported elsewhere on the internet in blogs, mainstream sites, newspapers such as the Washington Post, the Seattle Times, etc. Most of the analysis was done first elsewhere as well, but not, I think, all in one place. My apologies. Today's ration of free ice cream does not include sourcing references. I'll try to do better tomorrow.

2004-09-10T13:50:00.000-04:00

BUSH IS NO LIBERTARIAN

Andrew Sullivan comments (Reaganites versus Bush) on a Salon piece by Doug Bandow.

Bandow:

Quite simply, the president, despite his well-choreographed posturing, does not represent traditional conservatism -- a commitment to individual liberty, limited government, constitutional restraint and fiscal responsibility. Rather, Bush routinely puts power before principle.

Granted, Bush is no small government or libertarian Republican. Does Bandow expect Kerry to govern better or more conservatively on other issues than Bush?

Kerry is proposing just as much or more new spending as Bush is. The other difference is that Kerry wants to raise taxes to pay for it. Both are big government spenders. The difference is that Kerry is a tad more responsible than Bush (but not more conservative) with his fig leaf "tax increase on the wealthiest."

As previously confessed, however, the war is what matters to me. Kerry would retire into defensive positions and respond militarily only after an attack. Bush, on the other hand, asks, why wait for them? Why concede the initiative to them? You know they're coming.

Neither strategy is perfect. Execution of either of them would be (is) difficult. To my, eye, there are many fewer problems with Bush's approach. It at least has a chance of preventing further attacks on US soil. Kerry's approach has no such chance.

On most social and numerous economic issues, I'm with Sullivan. I like balanced budgets and small government that isn't peeking into my bedroom or trying to run my local school (not to mention my life). But that does not mean that most Americans or even most Republicans are. Why does it matter that the deficit is $400 Billion plus versus whatever Kerry's numbers show if:

We tell the ghost of Osama that he is free to do everything he needs to in order to prepare another 9/11 attack (with a cost in the trillions) with no military interference from us; and

We will voluntarily limit our military options to responding to such an attack?

That doesn't make us better people than Osama (since we already are). It will make some of us just as dead as he probably is.

Sullivan:

One wonders why this kind of piece isn't published by the Weekly Standard or National Review.

Me too, but I also wonder why that kind of piece is passed over by people like the NYT and WaPo and 60 minutes in favor of anti-Bush exposes on his 35 year old service record in the National Guard.

Regardless of who wins the Presidency this time around (and either candidate can still win, despite the current euphoria among Bush supporters), the real loser in this election is going to be the media establishment.

2004-09-09T13:01:00.000-04:00

ONLY ON CNN

CNN reports on the failure of the Genesis capsule:

Genesis capsule plunging and tumbling out of control toward the Utah desert wasn't how the mission was supposed to end

Up to this point, the mission had been a success.

There an old, old joke about a guy (variously reported to be Irish, Polish, German, whoever happened to be the but of jokes at the time) who jumps out of a window on the 50th floor of a skyscraper. He is heard to say as he passes the 5th floor on his way down, "So far, so good."

2004-09-09T10:50:00.000-04:00

REPORTING FOR DUTY IN THE FREE FLOATING CADRE

From Instapundit, who notes that Edward Wasserman, a professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee, is not too keen on having his facts checked by others (go to www.bugmenot.com to avoid registration hassles):

News is a messy and elusive form of information. Journalism is crude, tentative and fumbling, always involving compromise, and there's a healthy measure of give-and-take in the process.

But anybody who enters the profession makes a core commitment to do his or her best to determine and tell the truth. And that commitment is now under assault.

Let's read that again, shall we? Anyone who becomes a professional journalist makes a "core commitment" to "do his or her best" to "determine and tell the truth".

Really? If that's true, then this is the best the profession can offer us? 60 Minutes as a Kerry infomercial? Hundreds, if not thousands of stories on Bush failing to meet the requirements of service in the Air National Guard and dead silence on Kerry's oft-repeated, and now admitted fairy tales about spending Christmas in Cambodia? The best efforts of the profession to determine and tell the truth include an AP report that insults me and every other Bush supporter by falsely claiming that the audience at a Bush rally booed when told Clinton was in the hospital? That's as good as it gets, Mr. Wasserman? I don't think so. I think they can and will do better, if pushed to do so. But not according to Wasserman. He thinks that any criticism of a professional journalist by a non-journalist is bullying and intellectual extortion.

The attack doesn't come from ideologically committed journalists and commentators who put together reports clearly selected and spun-dry to sell a political line. As long as such writers retain some minimal respect for fact, the transparency of their motives may even work to enrich the variety of information and interpretations available to all.

Again: Really? Minimal respect for fact is the best journalists as a whole can do? According to a professor of journalism ethics? Not a healthy respect, not a reverence for fact, but minimal respect. I guess that the AP story about the crowd booing the announcement of Clinton's heart surgery at a Bush rally had a "minimal respect for fact." I will concede that the reporter's respect for fact was minimal. So minimal that I couldn't see it.

And transparent motives? Transparent to whom? Did I miss it when the New York Times started printing their reporters' "motives" along with their bylines? Tell me where the motives of the authors of the NYT's initial reportage of the Swift Boat Vets controversy were made "transparent". Was it before or after the 65th paragraph when they finally got around to saying that the Christmas in Cambodia story was the only Swift Boat accusation that Kerry had "not yet put to rest"? Put to rest? Kerry had not only not put it to rest, he had admitted it to be true. So where are the motives of the reporters in that story made transparent and how is it possible that such misreporting "work[s] to enrich the variety of information and interpretations available to all"?

To the contrary, such efforts work to decrease the information and decrease interpretations available, not to increase them.

The more compelling danger concerns news organizations in the so-called mainstream. These are the country's best-staffed and most influential news organizations, and they're losing their nerve.

Good! I certainly hope its true. The media (with some notable exceptions) has become quite brazen about what they are doing.

I understand why. It's hard now even to write for publication without being aware of just how thoroughly what you say is going to be inspected for any trace of undesirable political tilt and denounced by a free-floating cadre of rightist warriors.

Ah, the vast right wing conspiracy raises its ugly head. Journalists apparently need to be protected from people who, for one reason or another, get annoyed with something written by said journalist who may or may not:

Have made a "core commitment to determine and tell the truth"

Have lived up to that commitment

Have a minimal respect for fact.

Then, horror of horrors, this unpaid (and thus presumably unprofessional) cretin actually has the gall to criticize (yes! criticize!) his betters. What nerve! That they are more than occasionally right matters not one whit. That they are sometimes (even frequently) wrong is what counts.

According to Wasserman, only professional journalists with minimal respect for fact are to be forgiven their mistakes (without ever having confessed same). According to Wasserman, only professional journalists, with their core commitment to determine and report the truth, can allow their political agenda to affect their reporting. Wasserman apparently believes that the fact that some (most? all?) criticism of the effect of a journalist's political agenda on his reporting is itself politically motivated disqualifies it as criticism.

If that's apparent to me as a mere columnist, I can only imagine the current mind-set of supervising editors: If we give prominence to this story of carnage in Iraq, will we be accused of anti-administration bias? And - here it gets interesting - will we therefore owe our readers an offsetting story, perhaps an inspirational tale of Marines teaching young Iraqis how to play softball?

That's right, Mr. Wasserman! The only good thing that isn't being reported from Iraq is free softball lessons!

Soft stories like Marines teaching Iraqis how to play ball is Wasserman's straw man. He needs a reality check:

How many stories were there in the last week about US casualties?

Compare that to how many stories there were in the last six months about Iraqi construction projects (what's being built, where, for how much, who is building it, when will it be done, what will it mean for the locale and the nation). The only person I have seen doing stories like that is Arther Chrenkoff, and the only place I have seen it is on his blog and the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal.

How many stories were there in the last month about whether Bush's service in the Air National Guard met all the requirements?

Compare that to how many stories there were about Kerry's time in Vietnam and whether all of the claims he makes about his service are true.

Look, I know that no single press organzation can report everything. The entire Western media probably can't report everything. In know that bad news sells newspapers ("good news is no news, no news is bad news and bad news is good news"). But Wasserman's complaint about having to report (literally) softball feel-good news to "offset" other stories that don't play well on one end of the political spectrum is nonsense. Balancing one story with another doesn't work. That isn't journalism. But refusing to report stories because they don't play well on the end of the political spectrum the reporter or his paper inhabits doesn't work and isn't journalism, either.

Now, both stories may well be integral to the news. If so, both should be told. The problem arises when the pressure to tell the softball story comes not from a principled desire to deliver a factual account that is broadly emblematic of significant happenings in Iraq, but from a gutless attempt to buy off a hostile and suspicious fragment of the audience base.

What about when the refusal to deliver a factual account of a story comes from a desire (transparent or otherwise) to end the adminstration of a president? That refusal can be characterized in one of only two ways: it is either a gutless attempt to avoid losing (eg: by buying off) readers on the "correct" end of the political spectrum (which is Wasserman's spin), or its a brazen attempt to manipulate the election (which is mine). There are no other possibilities. But as long as the press is not goring Wasserman's political ox, he seems to be OK with either of them.

News then becomes a negotiation - not a negotiation among discordant pictures of reality, as it always is, but an abject negotiation with a loud and bullying sliver of the audience. News of great significance becomes not an honest attempt to reflect genuinely contradictory realities, but a daily bargaining session with an increasingly factionalized public, a corrupted process in which elements of the news become offerings - payments really - in a kind of intellectual extortion.

Once again, Mr. Wasserman nails it. People who, like me, have tired of hearing the received wisdom of the media are bullies, forcing the media to cover the stories we want in the way we want by extortion. That's why there are no complaints about bias in the medi....

Oh. Sorry.

If, as Wasserman claims, the extortion comes from a "sliver" of the intended audience, why not tell them what they can do with their complaints and bullying and extortion? After all, journalism is a business. If your business is being dramatically and negatively affected by bullying attempts at extortion emanating from a sliver of your customers, simply walk away from the extortionists.

What does Wasserman propose? Does he want me to let his fellow professionals with a "minimal respect for fact" continue to try to change my mind on the sly, by slanting their news stories to fit their political views? Should we just step back and let the professionals handle it? After all, aren't those professionals nobly trying to educate this poor, deluded, right wing troglodyte? I think Wassserman's conclusion comes down to "Shut up, he explained."

Columnists are supposed to write opinion pieces, as are editorial writers. The reporters who write for the news pages are not. Period. Minimal respect for fact and supposedly transparent motives does not transform an op-ed piece into a news report. If I want to read political commentary, I know where to go. The problem is becoming one of where to go to get news without the political commentary.

The performance of this country's finest news organizations in the run-up to the Iraq invasion of March 2003 will be remembered as a disgrace. To be sure, it was an angry, fearful time, when independent-minded reporting might not have been heard above the drumbeats of patriotism and war. But it's hard to read the hand-wringing confessionals from news organizations that now realize that they got the prewar story wrong without concluding that the real problem was they were afraid to tell the truth.

Leave aside Wasserman's unsupported claim that the "drumbeat of patriotism and war" somehow obscured "independent minded" journalism. The performance of the country's finest news organizations in the run-up to the War in Afghanistan was also a disgrace. Do you remember the "brutal Afghan winter" that was going to freeze both GIs and helicopters in their tracks? I do. Do you remember the stories about how Afghanistan hadn't been conquered since Alexander? I do.

And in the runup to the war in Iraq, I also remember reports about how the Iraqi sanctions were killing hundreds of children a month. And I remember reports about how there would be tens of thousands of US casualties (mostly from the weapons of mass destruction which the article claimed three paragraphs previously did not exist).

And the performance of this country's finest news organizations in the run-up to the election has been a disgrace. Shameless spinning for Kerry and equally shameless Bush bashing are both being fobbed off on the public as news.

My point is that the failures of professional journalists are not limited to the run-up to the war in Iraq. Moreover, Wasserman's (wholly unsupported) conclusion that those failures are occuring because the journalists are afraid to report is nonsense. Hard hitting reporters who can actually back up their conclusions with documented facts are lavishly rewarded in our society. Pulitzers and movie deals were awarded to Woodward and Bernstein. Book deals, fame, lecture tours all await the reporter who breaks an important story.

The absolute pinnacle of the reporting world is the New York Times. If you make it to the Times, you've arrived, professionally speaking. But in the past several years, the Gray Lady has suffered Jayson Blair's fabricated stories, and Howell Raines quixotic jihad against the Masters Tournament, both of which masqueraded as news. The trend has continued with both war and political reporting. Professional journalism is rapidly becoming an oxymoron.

No, journalism has not suffered due journalists' fears, but their stupidity and contempt. Their failure to realize that they no longer control access to the raw data in the age of information is stupid. And their inability to realize that their readers can actually hold a thought for more than the few minutes it takes to read the current stories is nothing short of contemptuous.

Resisting undue outside influence is part of what news professionals do. But it's hard enough to get the story right, without holding it hostage to an open-ended negotiation with zealots who believe they already know what the story is.

But Wasserman does not want journalists to resist outside influence. He wants to eliminate criticism of journalists altogether, so that no more "abject negotiation with a loud and bullying sliver of the audience" need happen.

The criticism of journalists by non-journalists is not the problem here. The problem is that the "zealots who believe they already know what the story is" are, more often than not, the supposedly professional journalists.

With minimal respect for fact.

2004-09-07T09:37:00.000-04:00

THE SOUL OF WIT

What took me sixteen hundred words to say, Mark Steyn says in less than one hundred:

Last week, apropos the Islamists' impressive mound of Israeli, Nepalese and Russian corpses, Kofi Annan's office issued the following statement: "The secretary-general strongly condemns all hostage-takings and killings of innocent civilians."

Or, as Cole Porter wrote in Friendship: "If they ever put a bullet through your brain, I'll complain."
That's the UN policy on Sudan. Americans don't want it to be the policy in the war on terror. That's why they'll stick with Bush.

D'oh!

2004-09-07T07:44:00.000-04:00

NO COMMENT

Every once in a while, you come across something that requires no comment. This time it was in Ozblogger Tim Blair's comments:

It's amazing to me that the "left" (how outmoded and meaningless these distinctions are) have evolved into the most uptight, anti-rational, superstitious and piously moralistic bunch since the Puritans walked the wild forests of America (though I hesitate to make the comparison, since the Puritans accomplished great things).

There's more. Go read it.

2004-09-06T21:40:00.000-04:00

NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME

I started to scan through the usual bazillion short entries on Instapundit and there at the top was a post about a Kerry press release which supposedly calls John McCain a liar. That would be especially stupid, and Kerry never struck me as that dumb. He's wrong about things that matter to me, but I never considered him stupid. So I followed the link to Tom Maguire at Just One Minute to see for myself. Maguire's post contains a snippet of McCain's convention speech but no explanation of what lying lies McCain lied about. There's a link to the press release, but not the release itself. The link to the press release comes back "page not found" on JohnKerry.com. Confused, I followed Maguire's link to PowerLine to see if I could find the press release or a working link to it there. Same problem.

So I tried JohnKerry.com. I looked in the press releases for September and August. The title of the release described by both Maguire and PowerLine was "The 2004 GOP Convention: Four Days Filled With Lies, Mischaracterizations, Distortions, And Half-Truths." No such release.

Then I searched the Kerry site for that phrase and got three hits:

SEARCH RESULTS 1 - 3 of 3 total results for "The 2004 GOP Convention: Four Days Filled With Lies, Mischaracterizations, Distortions, And Half-Truths."

John Kerry for President - Press Releases: September Archive
...The 2004 GOP Convention: Four Days Filled With Lies, Mischaracterizations, Distortions, And Half-Truths Kerry Statement on Allegations Made in Senator Bob Graham’s New Book “Intelligence Matters” 4 Fanning Out Across the...
http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/releases/archive/september.html

John Kerry for President - Official Web Site
...The 2004 GOP Convention: Four Days Filled With Lies, Mischaracterizations, Distortions, And Half-Truths Akron, OH September 4 - Huge crowds greet John Kerry in Ohio. Springfield, OH September 3 - Kerry and Edwards kick off a...
http://www.johnkerry.com/index.html

John Kerry for President - Agenda
...The 2004 GOP Convention: Four Days Filled With Lies, Mischaracterizations, Distortions, And Half-Truths New Kerry Ad Exposes Bush Misleading on Medicare Fanning Out Across the Heartland, Kerry, Edwards and Family Outline Plan...
http://www.johnkerry.com/issues/

Sort By Date | Hide Summaries

Of course, none of those is the press release in question. Hell, none of them is a press release. None has the title described above and none refer to McCain or even the Republican convention.

Back to Maguire at Just One Minute. Various commenters indicate that release has just disappeared. Rob Bernard has what he says is the actual release copied in toto onto his his site. And there it is. A laundry list of statements from the convention, including four snippets from McCain's speech (items 10 through 13). The release contains no specifics. It just repeats something someone said and, by implication from the title of the release, I suppose, claims the cited statement to be it to be a "Lie, Mischaracterization, Distortion, or Half-Truth."

The material on Bernard's site contains the same snippet appearing on Just One Minute, so its a safe bet that Bernard's cut and paste is in fact Kerry's press release. So Kerry did say that McCain lied, mischaracterized, etc. at four different points in his convention speech. That is incredibly stupid, having run ads featuring McCain only a couple of weeks ago.

But the problem here goes well beyond calling McCain a liar/mischaracterizer/distorter/half-truther.

First, the Kerry campaign tried to disappear the press release. They didn't retract it. They didn't say. "Some staffer was compiling a list of things and hit the wrong button mistakenly posting his list to the website" or something similar. They tried to unring the bell. Did they really think they could do that? I'm positive that they've heard of the internet. Don't they think people read the things on their site?

And second, the press release compares poorly to a 5th grader's first book report. It does not point out what the supposed lies, etc., are. The reader is left to guess. Only the most partisan of Democrats could possibly take it seriously, and rumor has it that they are all on Kerry's bandwagon already.

Note to Kerry: Preaching to the choir convinces not one wavering soul in the congregation. And you still need to convince more people in the congregation.

2004-09-05T08:49:00.000-04:00

CONFESSIONS OF A SINGLE ISSUE VOTER

Andrew Sullivan has indicated repeatedly, forcefully and eloquently that he cannot vote for Bush. He will be voting for Kerry. This is based entirely on his concern with gay rights, especially single sex marriages.

Even though I agree with him on the issue, I think he's wrong to base his vote on that, because Kerry won't be much better than Bush on the issue and because, as painful as it is, all Sullivan has to do to win is wait. But that's his prerogative, and, in any event, it's not the point of this post. My point is that for years, I thought single issue voters (think abortion) were foolishly giving their votes to people with whom they disagreed on most things in order to elect someone to champion/oppose a single cause about which they were passionate. It seemed to me that they were unnecessarily restricting their choices and marginalizing themselves by ignoring every position but one of every politician for every office.

Until, that is, I became a single issue voter.

No matter how bad the economy really is or how bad it gets, no matter what else happens, the only conceivable issue for me in this election is the (misnamed) War on Terror. Which of the two choices realistically available to me, Bush or Kerry, will do a better job of prosecuting that war?

My take: Bush wins hands down on that issue.

Initially, Bush, along with the rest of the country, especially including its leaders of every political stripe, failed to recognize the size and immediacy of the threat. But since 9/11, Bush's performance on this issue has been both outstanding and far better than I think Kerry's would have been.

Kerry faults Bush for the lack of allies. That's nonsense, and Kerry is smart enough to know it (and also smart enough not to acknowledge that it's nonsense). Do we have enough allies? We do not and we never will. There is probably no such thing as "enough" allies. But Kerry is not complaining that we don't have enough allies. His real complaint is that we don't have the right ones: France and Germany.

Basically everyone agrees that taking out the Taliban in Afghanistan was the right thing to do. The disagreement revolves around Iraq. Should we have deposed Saddam, and was it related to 9/11? The answer, in both cases, is yes. The allied action in Iraq is related to the War on Terror in the same way that the allied landing in North Africa was related to the defeat of Germany in WWII. The best description of the strategy involved was written about a year ago by Steven denBeste. (Come back, Steven. Please. Pretty please. The sooner the better.)

Bush's acceptance speech at the convention tracks denBeste's outline closely. Iraq is intended to be a beachhead for liberal democracy in the Middle East, and

"[f]ree societies in the Middle East will be hopeful societies, which no longer feed resentments and breed violence for export. Free governments in the Middle East will fight terrorists instead of harboring them, and that helps us keep the peace."

What Bush failed to note is that democracies historically simply do not attack one another.

While I am quite sure that France and Germany were invited to join the "coalition of the willing," including either or both of those countries as allies in the war in Iraq would have required wholesale changes in the strategy and tactics used by the coalition. Inviting a partner who can make no realistic military contribution and who will, as the price for his cooperation, impose demands which make the implementation of your strategy impossible is just plain dumb, regardless of the economic or political support that might be provided.

Kerry's other major complaint is that Bush has damaged our relationship with those two major European powers. Have our European alliances been damaged by the disagreement over Iraq? Well, yes and no. There is damage, and it is substantial, but I think that the disagreement over Iraq was only the immediate cause. There were underlying disagreements which predated Iraq and even 9/11 which were eventually going to erupt anyway, resulting in much the same amount and type of damage.

Kerry also criticizes Bush for "misleading" us into Iraq. That's Demo-speak for failing to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And yes, that was a massive intelligence failure that occurred worldwide, including in France and Germany. Does the fact that others made the same mistake as the CIA (for which both Bush and Clinton bear the responsibility) excuse the CIA's failure? Not at all. But it does establish beyond any doubt that the CIA (and therefore both Bush and Clinton) had reasonable grounds to make the determination they did. Intelligence is never perfect. Sometimes its just plain wrong. This may be one of those times. Or maybe the damn things are sitting in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, waiting to be smuggled into Israel.

Weapons of mass destruction were one of a number of reasons to go into Iraq. They were never the only reason, as Kerry recognized when he said that he would also have gone into Iraq, even if he knew that he would find no WMD.

So much for Kerry's complaints about Bush. What would Kerry actually do, if elected? We don't really know. He says he would do what Bush is doing, but more effectively. He says he would get the cooperation of our traditional allies (code words for France and Germany). And he says he would begin to draw down US forces in Iraq within six months.

What does "more effectively" mean and how would Kerry accomplish it? We don't know. We don't know because he hasn't told us.

What cooperation does he think he can get from France and Germany that Bush can't? We don't know. We don't know because he hasn't told us.

Draw down our forces in Iraq starting in six months? It's always a bad idea to tell the other side in a conflict when you will be leaving, especially if the date you pick is not in the distant future. All they have to do to win is hunker down and wait, then come out to play after we've gone. They know damn well that if we leave, we won't come back. So we better not leave until the job is done. Really done. That means more than just the absence acts of of terror for a short period. It means dead or incarcerated terrorists. Lots of them. It means a functioning government and a functioning economy. It probably means permanent bases in Iraq for the foreseeable future. It did in Germany. And Japan. And Greece. And Turkey. Those four countries were the beneficiaries of a serious US military presence for decades during the Cold War, and that military presence was a huge factor in winning the Cold War.

And then you have Kerry's statements during the primaries about the coalition of the bribed and coerced. What a stupid way to treat the people who are doing what you want them to do (who are sometimes also known as "allies"). Is that how he intends to get France and Germany on board? Will he reward them as he rewards our current allies, by denigrating their contribution and their integrity (not to mention our own integrity)? Forget the insult to our friends. Does Kerry believe that calling our allies bribed and coerced is a "more effective" way to build a coalition?

Top all that off with Kerry's Senate testimony upon his return from Vietnam. Yes it was a long time ago. Yes, he was a much younger man. I will give him the benefit of the doubt and not conclude that he was grandstanding by repeating allegations that he did not then believe to be true. But my question is this: If Kerry once believed that our armed forces were routinely engaged in rape, mutilation, torture and other atrocities consituting war crimes, does he still believe that those things happened in Vietnam on the scale he described to the Senate and with the (at least tacit) consent of "all levels of command?" If so, the Swift Boat Vets are absolutely right, he is utterly unfit for command. If not, he must say so, and hold the nuance, please. Yes or no will do.

Bush's recent statement that the war cannot be won was foolish. We can win. We must win. We will win. (I know. I know. That's what Kerry said.) I don't think that "winning" means that there will be no more terrorism in the world. A warped mind, a bag of fertilizer and some fuel oil are all that is necessary to commit an act of terror, and all three ingredients are abundant throughout the world. I think that winning means that fewer terrorists exist, and that those terrorists that do exist are local, lacking the ability to strike beyond their own locale as they did on 9/11. To me, winning means that terrorists have no umbrella groups like al Qaeda to provide financial and logistic support.

It is only speculation, but I think Bush was really talking about what winning will look like. There won't be surrender documents signed on the USS Missouri. Winning the War on Terror will bear more resemblance to the end of the Cold War: a gradual decrease in the frequency and severity of terrorist incidents, followed (and in some cases, preceded) by seemingly abrupt political changes towards liberal democracy in the Middle East and parts of Asia. I think we won't realize we have won for at least several years after we have, in fact, won.

Whatever he meant by that statement, Bush beats Kerry like a retarded mule on the only issue for me this fall.

(Kudos to Pervasive Light for the retarded mule imagery.)

2004-09-05T08:30:00.000-04:00

STILL MORE "BAD" NEWS

CNN's breaking news banner says Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri (the King of Clubs in the infamous deck of cards) has been captured. If it is possible to link to the banner, I don't know how to do it, but CNN's home page is here.

My money says that before the end of the day, someone will question the timing of the capture. The only question in my mind is how closely associated with the Kerry campaign that someone will be.

This is bad news for Kerry in at least three ways:

It's yet another reminder (as if we needed one after the Russian Schoolhouse massacre) that we're in a war.

It's an indication of progress in that war.

Along with the Clinton bypass surgery and the story from Russia, it will suck still more oxygen out of the press coverage that Kerry desparately needs.

It's a shame, really, that Kerry needs bad news from Iraq and the economy in order to succeed.

But he does. And, for the moment, Kerry is (thankfully) doing very poorly.

Update: CNN is now saying that there is "confusion" about the story, that the Iraqis are denying they have al-Duri and that the Pentagon is "expressing doubt."

2004-09-03T22:29:00.000-04:00

To: info@ap.org

Today, you printed a lie which is rapidly spreading around the country, if not the world. That lie is insulting to me, as a supporter of President Bush, the people of West Allis, Wisconsin and all Americans who plan to vote for Bush. In an unattributed wire story, your reporter stated:

"President Bush (news - web sites) on Friday wished Bill Clinton (news - web sites) "best wishes for a swift and speedy recovery." "He's is in our thoughts and prayers," Bush said at a campaign rally. Bush's audience of thousands in West Allis, Wis., booed. Bush did nothing to stop them."

That is patent nonsense. Was your reporter even at the event? You can listen to an audio clip of Bush's comments and the audience's reaction here. That reporter simply fabricated the supposed boos and Bush's supposed failure to stop them. While I did not like President Clinton's policies or his behavior in office, your story is insulting to the people at that rally, and to me and everyone who supports Bush because it deliberately attempts to falsely portray the Bush's supporters as callous, unkind, uncivil and uncaring.

Your subsequent revision of the story is completely insufficient. Your revised copy reads:

President Bush (news - web sites) on Friday offered former President Bill Clinton (news - web sites), who faces heart bypass surgery, "best wishes for a swift and speedy recovery."

"He is in our thoughts and prayers," Bush said at a campaign rally in Wisconsin.

The crowd reacted with applause and with some "ooohs," apparently surprised by the news that Clinton was ill.

There are no "ooohs" in that audio clip, either. Your reporter, having been caught in his original fabrication, is apparently attempting to lay the groundwork for a later claim that he mistook the "ooohs" for "boos".

This story goes well beyond slanting a story in favor of one side of an issue and crosses into Jayson Blair and David Glass territory. Even so, had the original story not been repeated in many different places (Salon, WSTM TV, WRIC TV, KWWL TV, KPLC TV, and numerous other news outlets throughout the country, a more complete list of which can be found here), that revision might have sufficed to correct the misimpression your reporter deliberately created for the obvious purpose of attempting to affect the upcoming election. But the story is spreading rapidly and it is incumbent upon you not only to deal severely, publicly, and quickly with your reporter, but also to contact every news outlet that repeated the fabrication, apologize to them and request that they print your apology and retraction. Then, and only then, you should explain to your readers how you dealt with the reporter that so abused their trust.

The only possible result of your failure to do so immediately is for all future AP reports on the election to be treated as campaign press releases issued by the Kerry campaign organization. Perhaps under those circumstances, it would be necessary for the FEC to be informed of your in-kind contributions to the Senator's campaign.

I look forward to your prompt response.

Carey Gage

(Via Powerline)

2004-09-03T16:54:00.000-04:00

OUTSIDE THE MARGIN OF ERROR

InstantMan points to a Time press release about a new poll. The poll shows the race to be 52/41/3, Bush/Kerry/Nader among likely voters if the election were held today. That obviously leaves undecided and "other" at 4%. The margin of error is +/-4%. That means that the survey puts Bush's lead outside the margin of error, and that's a first in this race.

What is the change in voter preferences among the candidates from the last Time poll? 46/44/5 Bush/Kerry/Nader.

There's more in the press release, but not enough to answer the many questions that occur to me, such as:

Did Bush take votes from Kerry, Nader, or
some combination of the two (and what combination)?

What are the numbers without Nader in the race? (Support for third party candidates typically fades as election day approaches, and Kerry is more likely than Bush to benefit from Nader defections. Also, Nader is having trouble getting on the ballot in some states, and he obviously won't be a factor where he is not on the ballot.)

Is there a state by state breakdown (and accompanying totals for the electoral college?

If not, is there at least a breakout of the potential swing states like Ohio, Florida and Michigan?

What percentage of likely voters is undecided, and how did that change from the last Time poll?

Standard warning language: The election is not being held today. Horse-race polls may or may not reflect reality on the day they were compiled. They sure as hell do not provide a reliable indication of what will happen two months from now.

Still. I like the numbers.

UPDATE, 9/4/04: Newsweek comes up with similar figures. They call it 54/43/3, Bush/Kerry/Nader, with (apparently) no undecideds and a margin of error of +/-4%. Perhaps they just left out the undecideds and figured the percentage of voters for each candidate from the pool of decided voters. The Newsweek survey was taken on Thursday and Friday, 9/2-3 (and therefore at least partially reflects the results of Bush's acceptance speech), compared with the Time survey, which was taken on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, 8/31-9/2 (and therefore could not reflect any effect from the speech).

Bush's reaction to the polls is the right one: a shrug and "I've got a lot of work to do."

Assuming that both polls are accurate, there is still no information on the effect the changed voter alignment will have on the electoral college.

Also, Glen Reynolds points to this table, breaking down the Newsweek survey by day to show the effect of the acceptance speech:

9/3 only 54 38 4 4
9/2 only 49 43 3 5
That is a helluva bounce from a single speech.

Glen speculates that the numbers may also reflect the disaster that was Kerry's midnight rally after the Republican convention. (Approximate quote: I will not have it. I will not allow Dick Cheney and his five draft deferments to question my patriotism. Of course, Cheney did no such thing. Cheney questioned his policies and his judgment. The absence of any substantive response to Bush and Cheney was striking.)

This is not good news for Kerry. Those are Dukakis like numbers.

2004-08-29T10:40:00.000-04:00

FLYING BELOW THE RADAR

This blog is not one of the popular ones. It probably never will be. That bothers me. Not much, because I mostly write this for myself, and anyone else reading it is kind of a bonus. But it would be nice to be widely read, too.

Steven denBeste has what, in my opinion, is one of the best sites on the web. It is interesting, wide ranging, well written, and well argued. He even reads and (mostly) responds to the email people send him by the terabyte. He is, as a result, widely read. And just as widely criticized. All three regular readers of this site will know that I think most of the criticism of Cap'n Clueless is unwarranted and ill founded, but I suppose it comes with the territory. It's an unfortunate fact of Life On The Net that the moonbats will try to make your virtual life miserable, and that those attempts will be increase in frequency, stridency and viciousness as your readership increases.

And apparently for denBeste, the moonbats have managed to surgically remove any trace of enjoyment from doing what he does. So he says he won't be doing it again for at least a while. He's complained about it. He's tried to deal with it, in a number of other ways, as well:

Turning off the comments on his site.

Consigning people to the Bozo Bin.

Asking (nicely in the beginning, more pointedly towards the end) not to write letters commenting on peripheral or irrelevant minutiae in his posts.

Addressing the criticism, both privately and publicly.

And they still managed to shut him up (even if only temporarily). And it remains to be seen whether the Captain's self imposed hiatus is temporary.

That's a shame. DenBeste is a very smart guy who writes well and has a lot to say. I enjoy hearing from him, and would like to do so more, not less, often.

But he certainly has no obligation to continue to provide me with enjoyable reading material, and he has this problem that won't go away. It's not a problem I have, so I wonder whether any advice I could offer would be effective. But I'm going to anyway. You just knew that was coming, didn't you?

There are two basic ways to approach the problem: Reduce the amount of annoying commentary and reduce the annoyance caused by said annoying commentary.

The first approach is not within even denBeste's ability if he is going to continue to do things as he does them now. Publicly posted material will draw public comment. So maybe he can change things so that, if the muse strikes and he pens another essay, he could email it to subscribers. Then his essays would at least start out life in a less public manner and would presumably be sent only to those he found not to be annoying. More work? Maybe. I don't know. I think it might be less expensive than the way he does things now, since the bandwidth usage on his website would be reduced.

As to the second approach, I think that Steven's problem is almost entirely internal to him. That's the bad news. The good news is that this means he can fix it by himself. He gets so much crap from various quarters in part because it has a visible effect on him, and therefore invites more of the same. This, of course, is easy to say, coming from one who does not get any grief by reason of posting here, much less the volume directed at the Captain.

But still. Why the hell should denBeste give two shits what Moonbat Mary from East Bumfuck thinks of his post. Or his character, or his motivations or his intelligence or... or ... or ... And, for that matter, why should he care what anyone, important or not, rational or not, informed or not, thinks. What matters, or rather what should matter, to him is what he thinks of the post, not anyone else. At least that's the way it is for me, otherwise I would long since have given up on this blog, because practically no one thinks anything, good or bad, about what is written here, except on a few infrequent occasions. But I am not facing the constant drip drip drip of minor annoyances by reason this site that denBeste is as a result of his. So maybe I'm full of it.

Illegimiti non carborundum.

Don't let the bastards wear you down, Steven.

And send out some more of that free ice cream. The portions have been too small and too infrequent lately.

2004-08-25T08:14:00.000-04:00

KERRY AND THE VETS

Elton John should do a song with that title.

Anyway. Drudge reports that Kerry called the leader of the Swift Boat Vets group and tried (and utterly failed) to defuse the situation. Stephen Green notes the story. And in the comments is this gem. (Sorry, I can't link to an individual comment. Click the link and scroll down to the comment by Peter, posted on August 24, 2004 11:38 PM.) Quoth Peter:

Hell, gang, the Swifties are just the tip of the iceberg. Hang around the milblogs and see what some of the POWs have to say. Then look at what a few of the Medal of Honor Veterans say.

Jennifer Martinez's A Collection of Thoughts is a good place to start. Sorry that I don't know how to post the link.

I know how. This is the site being referred to, and it's well worth a look.

If you keep at it long enough you'll come to the men like me. My service was undistinguished enough, the most I can say for my two and a half tours in Viet Nam is that I didn't disgrace my uniform. My only desire was to forget the war and live in peace. Yet every once in a while the men I served with came to my mind, the men who died came to my dreams.

Now here is John Kerry, the man who, more than any other single human being, stole the honor of those men I served with, asking for my vote. Wrapping himself in that stolen honor, standing on their very corpses to give himself the stature he so sorely lacks so that he can command the young men and women defending America.

It won't wash. Better men than I will speak, men of braver deeds and far more eloquence. There are many men more fit to speak than I. Yet I won't be silent, I cannot. I do not think I'm alone. I thought that those young men, the ones who never grew old, were gone from my dreams. They're back. They're demanding that I speak, however poorly, for them. They want their honor back from those who stole it.

Kerry has a big problem.

2004-08-22T23:12:00.000-04:00

Chris Muir, the anti-Oliphant.

2004-08-20T18:52:00.000-04:00

JUST ASKIN'

The "new JFK" has been stung by the latest Swift Boat Vets ad. His campaign has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission about it. In addition, I could have sworn I saw a Drudge banner saying that Kerry was attempting to prevent the publication of the Swift Boat Vets' book, Unfit for Command, but I couldn't find it again when I looked.

Update: Aha! I did see it. Via Outside the Beltway quoting Drudge:

The Kerry campaign calls on a publisher to 'withdraw book' written by group of veterans, claiming veterans are lying about Kerry's service in Vietnam and operating as a front organization for Bush. Kerry campaign has told Salon.com that the publisher of UNFIT FOR COMMAND is 'retailing a hoax'... 'No publisher should want to be selling books with proven falsehoods in them,' Kerry campaign spokesman Chad Clanton tells the online mag... Developing...

The most recent ad, which drew the FEC complaint from Kerry's campaign, shows clips of Kerry's 1972 Senate testimony in which he repeated charges that war crimes and atrocities were routinely committed by US soldiers in Vietnam. One of the vets in the ad states that Kerry was making those charges himself. He wasn't. He was repeating the claims of others.

I think its fair to say that Kerry does not believe those claims now. If he didn't believe the charges when he repeated them in his Senate testimony, that's a whole different thing, involving false testimony to Congress, so I want to think he believed the charges then. But Kerry would be entirely unelectable if he said he still believed those charges today, and he knows it. (He would be seen as Howard Dean, except boring when speechifying.) So I think he would not be running at all if he still believed the claims to be true.

In addition, let's assume for purposes of discussion that the Swift Boat Vets are dead wrong in their claims. All of them. The Kerry campaign has admitted that the Swift Boat Vets are correct about his Christmas in Cambodia embroidery, but leave that aside. The one thing I won't assume is that the Swift Boat Vets know their claims to be false. Just as I won't believe that Kerry repeated claims he knew to be false before Congress until I'm provided with some really strong evidence to the contrary, I won't believe the Swift Boat Vets are making charges they know to be false without similarly strong evidence. And despite the efforts of the the Washington Post, the LA Times and the NY Times, that evidence has not yet been provided. (Registration is required for each of those newspaper sites. Go to Bugmenot.com for help getting in without the annoying spam.)

Okay. Does that mean that Kerry should not be called out for having repeated what turned out to be malicious lies which were unimaginably hurtful to veterans, generally, (and POWs in particular) and damaged this country's ultimately fruitless effort to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam? If Kerry can repeat malicious, damaging lies for political gain with impunity, why cannot the Swift Boat Vets?

Just askin, is all.

Is Kerry's conduct more than 35 years ago during the war in Vietnam relevant to the election? Well, Kerry chose to make his Vietnam service the centerpiece of his campaign. Karl Rove did not shove a gun in his back and force him to line up Vietnam vets onstage at the convention and "report for duty." Kerry clearly believes that his Vietnam service qualifies him to be President, so his Vietnam service is fair game for comment by the other side.

2004-08-16T05:25:00.000-04:00

MOTION DENIED, AND THEN SOME

Ouch!

Provenance:

From Overlawyered.

Who got it from the Curmudgeonly Clerk.

Who got it from Begging to Differ.

This one's been making the rounds.

2004-08-15T10:02:00.000-04:00

KERRY'S NEW CAMPAIGN SONG

The Kerry Campaign announced a new campaign song today, sung to the tune of "The Magic Bus," the sixties hit by The Who.

THE MAGIC HAT

Every day that I campaign (Too much, the Magic Hat)
I carry the hat that brought me fame (Too much, the Magic Hat)
In my briefcase, all the time (Too much, the Magic Hat)
Goin’ to the White House, it’s gonna be mine (Too much, the Magic Hat)

Thank you, Ted, for getting me here (Too much, the Magic Hat)
You'll be rewarded, have no fear (Too much, the Magic Hat)
I won't wear western headgear (Too much, the Magic Hat)
But the Magic Hat makes W fear (Too much, the Magic Hat)

Nooooooooo!

I don't care how much you jeer (Too much, the Magic Hat)
I’m gonna wear my Hat this year (Too much, the Magic Hat)
I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to ... (You can't wear it!)
Stump speech, travel every day
Just to beat that Bush doofay
Stump speech, travel every day
’Cause I must beat George Bush today

Magic Hat, Magic Hat, Magic Hat ...

I said, yes I've got my Magic Hat (Too much, the Magic Hat)
I said, yes I've got my Magic Hat (Too much, the Magic Hat)
I will beat George Bush today (Too much, the Magic Hat)
Each time I’ll say things a different way (Too much, the Magic Hat)

I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to ...

Some day you'll see the Hat (Too much, the Magic Hat)
Brought it home from ‘Nam and that’s a fact (Too much, the Magic Hat)

My apologies to Pete Townshend and The Who.

2004-08-12T17:01:00.000-04:00

McGREEVEY RESIGNS

James McGreevey (D, NJ) resigned as governor today because he is a "Gay American" and had a homosexual affair while he was married. He is timing his resignation so as to avoid a special election in November.

I could care less about what McGreevey does in bed with other consenting adults. He says that his resignation is necessary because he had a sexual liason with someone other than his wife during his marriage. But his wife seems to be cool with it. (I wouldn't be. If I were her, I'd probably be calling Tony Soprano right now to have him whacked. But she was at the press conference, presumably to support him.)

That said, the avalanche of jokes will start soon. We definitely need a new slogan for those "Come to New Jersey" ads.

"New Jersey: Any way you like it, baby!"

"New Jersey: We bend over ~~backwards~~ for you!"

How about a contest? Email your slogan to me. Winner will receive a prize of absolutely no monetary value.

UPDATE:

From The Daughter:

"New Jersey: Out of the closet since 2004!"

"New Jersey: San Francisco ain't got nothin on us!"

2004-08-12T11:24:00.000-04:00

CHRISTMAS IN CAMBODIA

I've been holding off commenting on the charges that KERRY LIED!!! about his service in Vietnam. My initial take was that the man has been through numerous elections and the fact that these charges surfaced now is suspicious. But it seems that at least Kerry's story about spending Christmas in Cambodia in 1968 is false.

Kerry clearly stated on multiple occasions that he was physically present with his swiftboat and crew in Cambodia on Christmas Day. The only Christmas Day he was in Southeast Asia was 1968. He says he had a kind of "Apocalypse Now" moment when he came under fire from Cambodians, Khmer Rouge troops (which would later successfully oust the US installed government of Lon Nol, the only world leader in history ever to have a name which didn't change when you spelled it backwards) and our putative South Vietnamese allies (who were drunkenly celebrating Christmas by firing their weapons into the air, with Kerry apparently located squarely in the landing zone of the bullets).

The Swiftboat Vets' book charges that Kerry was never in Cambodia. We bombed Cambodia secretly during the Nixon administration (which did not take office until early 1969) and openly invaded (we called it an "incursion") sometime around 1972. But on Christmas Day, 1968, we just weren't there. And apparently neither was Kerry, since he later claimed that he never said he was in Cambodia, only near it.

But, in fact, Kerry did claim to have been in Cambodia. Da Blogfaddah cites the Kerry claims, as reported in:

The Congressional Record (from a March 27, 1986 speech on the floor of the Senate attempting to keep us out of Nicaragua)

The Boston Globe (from a 1979 interview)

And, via JustOneMinute, in an AP story

Why is Kerry's story about where he was 35 years ago important? Just ask James Lileks:

If Kerry’s story is a lie, it’s significant, but not because we have a gotcha moment – gee, a politician reworked the truth to his advantage, big surprise. This is much larger than that. This is like Bush insisting that he flew an intercept mission with the Texas Air National Guard to repel Soviet bombers based in Cuba, and later stating that this event was “seared in his memory – seared” because it taught him the necessity of standing up against evil governments, such as the ones we face today. In other words, it would not only be a lie, but one that eroded the political persona he was relying upon in the election. Kerry has made Vietnam central to his campaign. If he’s making crap up, it matters.

Or Craig Henry:

Kerry didn't just use his Vietnam experience to enhance his stature as a man or leader. His campaign used it to shut down debate on his Senate record. They made the biography the issue.

Or Will Collier (on Vodkapundit, discussing the Henry quote linked above):

Exactly. That's why this is important--and why the press's silence would be inexplicable, if we didn't already know that they've taken sides in the election.

The silence of the press may be explainable given that they have largely taken sides in this election. But allowing the fact that you have covertly taken sides to control (not affect, control) your coverage on news stories is inexcusable.

2004-08-09T07:54:00.000-04:00

I GOT YOUR ADVICE RIGHT HERE

It seems that all and sundry are dispensing advice to first year law students, so I might as well join the crowd.

I hated high school. I didn't fit in at all. College was mostly so-so (same problem, but more interesting courses). But I had a great time in law school. I did pretty well, too.

I went to New England School of Law in Boston. Formerly known as Portia, it was one of the few law schools for women. It went coed some time ago, which is why I got to attend. Part of the reason I so enjoyed it was the fact that it was in Boston. That is a great city in which to go to school. A good part of the rest of the reason I had a great time in law school was that I did well there.

My school was large by Boston's standards. There were something like 200 people in my class. The way the first year was run, the class was divided in half, alphabetically. The first half of the alphabet had classes from 9:00 to 1:00 five days a week. The second half attended classes from 1:00 to 5:00. There were no electives. The first year curriculum was Property, Torts, Criminal Law/Criminal Procedure, Civil Procedure, Contracts and a writing/research methods class. Every class except writing had all 100 or so people in my section in it.

Since I was in the first half of the alphabet, that forced me to get up every morning. That, in and of itself, saved me from disaster. Neither the administration nor the faculty gave a damn whether you attended classes, but fear got me out of bed and into school every day. If I had been in the afternoon section, I really wonder what might have happened, since I would undoubtedly have slept late and stayed up later. As it was, I had a convenient schedule:

9-1: Attend class
1-2: Lunch
2-5: Go to the library and read.

Although I tried, I hardly ever managed to do any work after five or on the weekends (exam preparation was an exception), and I never managed to do any work at home. There were just too many other things to do. That's why the afternoon classes might well have been a disaster for me.

I was a smoker, which also contributed to some degee to my grades. I joined a study group early on, but it mostly did not work out. There was a "floating" group that ran into each other in the library smoking/discussion room. Since I was smoking a pack a day at the time, I usually camped out in the smoking room. People came in and out and discussed various issues. I just listened, and joined in when I had something to contribute.

So, the three most important things necessary for success in the first year of law school are, in order of decreasing importance:

1. Have a name in the first half of the alphabet. If you do not now have such a name, get one right away. If a lot of people take this advice, your name will have to begin with "A".

2. Go to school in Boston. There are lots of choices. Last I looked, Boston had 6 law schools: Hahvahd, BU, BC, Northeastern, New England and Suffolk. New England and Suffolk are tied for last in terms of prestige.

3. Smoke like a chimney. Your future depends on it.

2004-07-30T17:24:00.000-04:00

OUCH

Lawrence Kaplan, at The New Republic Online:

"[W]hen [Kerry] did get around to discussing the matter of our national survival, he basically took a page from the post-Vietnam playbook favored by an earlier generation of Democrats. "We shouldn't be opening firehouses in Baghdad," the candidate declared to rousing applause, "and shutting them down in the United States of America." Suggesting that Europeans won't send troops to Iraq simply because they can't stand his opponent, Kerry promised to be nicer to our allies so we could "bring our troops home." Unlike, say, in Bosnia, he pledged to go to war "only because we have to." Leaving unsaid exactly by whom and at what cost, he dedicated himself to making America "respected in the world." Finally, and without saying precisely what it is, Kerry said he knows "what we have to do in Iraq." He has a plan, you see. Just like a candidate from long ago claimed to have a plan to end a war--the war that put Kerry on the stage last night and which, for him at least, wasn't so long ago at all."

2004-07-30T13:16:00.000-04:00

CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM

Trying to stop people from spending money in political campaigns is like trying to bail out the ocean with a strainer. The original campaign finance reform law begat soft money. McCain Feingold begat 527s. Whatever is next will beget something new. The money will be raised and spent, regardless of what rules Congress invents.

So, if you think that money in politics is a bad thing, what should you do?

Steven Taylor argues that "this system is an unmitigated joke that causes confusion and does nothing more than provide make-work for a great many lawyers seeking either to guarantee compliance or to find loopholes in the system. The rules do nothing to enhance our democracy. A wholly transparent system that allowed unlimited contributions and immediate and public (i.e., internet-based) system of disclosure would serve us far better."

I agree, but what caught my eye in the article was this:

"[T]he failure of [campaign finance reform] laws should be no surprise: as long as the federal government collects and spends over 20% of the GDP, the concept of "getting the money out of politics" is farcical. Not only is governing dependent on money, so long as the Congress, with the help of the President, is going to determine how trillions of dollars are spend, then the citizenry in its various manifestations are going to care how that money is spent." (Emphasis in original.)

Conservatives and libertarians who want to limit the size of government will, to the extent they are successful, also cause a decrease in the importance of government and thus the amount of money spent on political campaigns to achieve influence in government.

So if you favor campaign finance reform, vote for small government conservatives.

QED.

Heh.

Via MartiniMan, whose blog is on an extended roll.

2004-07-30T13:00:00.000-04:00

OK, SENATOR, NOW WHAT?

John Kerry wants me to believe that he "will never hesitate to use force when it is required. Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response."

Terrorists (presumably Islamic extremists, since they also attacked the Israeli embassy) have, once againattacked the United States. That's right folks, the terrorists attacked a US embassy, which is sovereign US territory. So my question to the Senator is: Tell me right now, with the information available to you right now, precisely what your "swift and certain" response would be, were you in the office you currently aspire to. You promised not to dither or waffle (that's what swift and certain mean to me, at least). So what's it going to be?

Granted that the bombing of the embassy in Tashkent is not of the same magnitude as 9/11. So you don't have to invade another country. But it is an attack and you said you would respond to "any attack." So I want to know what your response would be. Shall we confer with the UN, the French and the Germans? That would rule out "swift" and probably certain as well.

Oh, and don't bother to blame Bush for your inability to respond swiftly and certainly using international organizations such as the UN. The UN was broken long before 9/11. (Think Rwanda.)

You've got 24 hours.

2004-07-20T15:23:00.000-04:00

JUST SHUT UP AND SING, LINDA

I grew up with Linda Ronstadt's music. I like it. She has a terrific voice. She recently made headlines in Vegas by upsetting her audience. She did that by lecturing them about what a great man Michael Moore is.

"I've been dedicating a song to him – I think he's a great patriot – and it splits the audience down the middle, and they duke it out," she said.

If she insists on continuing to do that, I guess I won't be going to any of her concerts. I couldn't care less what her politics are, but I'm not going to go to a concert and get a political lecture from her.

But the best is yet to come:

"This is an election year, and I think we're in desperate trouble and it's time for people to speak up and not pipe down. It's a real conflict for me when I go to a concert and find out somebody in the audience is a Republican or fundamental Christian. It can cloud my enjoyment. I'd rather not know." (Emphasis added)

Performing for those nasty Republicans and fundamentalists is such a bummer, man! I wonder whether she said something insulting to conservatives on stage. Given that quote, it wouldn't be a big surprise. And that would explain the audience reaction.

I guess it never occurred to her that her audience might feel the same way she does: That their enjoyment of the concert might be "clouded" if they discover that the person they came to see perform spends THEIR concert time giving them a political lecture (and maybe insulting their intelligence). If it is reasonable for Ronstadt to be offended by merely having to perform for people of different political leanings, think how much more reasonable it is for the people who paid to attend the concert to be offended by finding that they've come not to a concert but to a political rally.

If Ronstadt would rather not know the political makeup of her concert audience, then it might be wise for her not to inject politics into her concert. If she wants to make a political statement, she is perfectly free to oppose Bush, support Kerry, Nader or the man in the moon. But I don't think she should do it on the time that's been paid for by her audience for the express purpose of hearing her sing.

There are plenty of opportunities available to her to speak out on the issues she believes in. For example, I understand that there might be several openings in the Kerry campaign in the near future.

2004-07-17T11:15:00.000-04:00

The New SAT

Starting next year, the College Board (the people who prepare, administer and grade the SAT, along with practically every other standardized test you ever head of) is introducing a significant change in the SAT. Instead of consisting entirely of multiple choice questions, there will be a new section of the test in which students will be required to write a short essay. The essay will be graded by two people (and a third if the grades differ significantly). Students will have about 25 minutes to complete the essay.

The grading cannot be done by machine. Human beings will have to read each of these things. Each grader will be looking for the following factors:

Whether the essay effectively develops a point of view on the issue and demonstrates strong critical thinking, generally using appropriate examples, reasons, and other evidence to support its position

Whether the essay is well organized and focused, demonstrating coherence and progression of ideas

Whether the essay exhibits facility in the use of language, using appropriate vocabulary

Whether the essay demonstrates variety in sentence structure
is generally free of most errors in grammar, usage, and mechanics

Given what can be written in 25 minutes, and knowing what the graders are looking for in the essay, I think that a grading time of seven minutes or so is not unreasonable. Reading the essay will take about four minutes (especially given that it will be handwritten), grading another two, and one minute will be needed to record the grade.

A little arithmetic music, please.

1.4 million kids took the SAT in 2003. So we are looking at 1.4 million essays, each of which will be receive two grades, for a total of 2.8 million grades.

Seven times two times one point four million is 19.6 million minutes required to grade these essays. That works out to 326,666 man hours. If the tests are given 6 times a year and the number of people who sit take the test during each session is roughly equal, that means that 54,444 man hours will be spent grading the essays for each session. If you want your grade within three weeks or less, as they promise for the current test, those man hours must be expended in less than three weeks. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they can take the full three weeks. Assuming a forty hour work week, one grader will spend 120 hours grading essays. So the number of graders needed can be determined by dividing 120 into 54,444, or 453 (and this assumes no time for the physical tests to be shipped to where the graders are, no third grades needed because of differences between the first two graders, no time to factor the essay scores into the scores for the balance of the test, no sick time or vacations, etc.) .

Questions:

Does the College Board really believe that they can get 453 people to fairly and consistently score 1.4 , million essays annually?

What value will the score have, given that it will be a result of minimal time spent by the grader on an essay that is little more than an outline because it is written under such severe time constraints?

I am definitely in favor of standardized testing. But this seems to be more than a little ridiculous.

2004-07-02T22:25:00.000-04:00

NEGATIVE CAMPAIGNING

A guy in his 20s knocked on my door this morning and introduced himself as working for the Democratic National Committee. They were, he said, "working hard to defeat President Bush in the election this year."

I told him that if he wanted to defeat Bush, he would be wasting his time talking to me. I didn't have the heart to point out to him that the approach he had obviously been told to take is going to be a real problem for the campaign. His opening line is free publicity for the opposition. And there's (almost) no such thing as bad publicity. Both he and the DNC should not say they are working to defeat Bush. They should say they are working to elect Kerry.

I was, however, kind enough not to introduce him to my wife, who vehemently dislikes Bush, but likes Kerry even less. She would have had his guts for garters.

It would have been great entertainment. But it's a little hard on some of the participants.

2004-07-01T14:39:00.000-04:00

THE COST OF 9/11

I watched, horrified, from my living room window as the towers fell that day, but oddly enough, I did not know a single person who was there, much less anyone who died.

Sure, I know people who lost friends. But it was still kind of once removed.

Now I've met someone who escaped from the North Tower, but lost his wife in the South Tower. By reading this. You should meet him, too.

Via Martin Devon.

2004-07-01T07:26:00.000-04:00

WHO KNEW?

Combat is stressful. Who could have guessed? I blame Ashcroft for not having anticipated this.

2004-06-30T15:20:00.000-04:00

OF PUPPETS AND PUPPETEERS

Damian Penney comments on a particularly obnoxious quote in which both the President and Congress are decried as puppets whose strings are being pulled by Israel.

"What has been happening over the years is a predictable routine of foreign visitation from the head of the Israeli government. The Israeli puppeteer travels to Washington. The Israeli puppeteer meets with the puppet in the White House, and then moves down Pennsylvania Avenue, and meets with the puppets in Congress. And then takes back billions of taxpayer dollars. It is time for the Washington puppet show to be replaced by the Washington peace show."

I won't spoil the surprise by telling you who said it. Follow the link to find out for yourself.

But then comes news of an al-Qaeda memorandum in which it is explained that the Madrid train bombing was the result of a deliberate strategy to target Spain as the weakest member of the Iraq coalition. The train was bombed, which swung the pending election to the socialists, who promptly exited Iraq.

Would someone please remind me who the puppets are?

2004-06-27T09:19:00.000-04:00

BECAUSE THEY WERE AMERICANS

Daniel Pearl. Nicholas Berg. Paul Johnson. All publicly murdered by would be theocratic fascists in a particularly gruesome manner. Because they were Americans. The murders were of a piece with the fate of those four contractors in Fallujah, the Ranger (or was it more than one Ranger?) whose body was dragged through the streets of Mogadishu by a mob. Close to three thousand noncombatants died in the Trade Towers on 9/11 following a coldblooded unprovoked attack on a "target" completely unrelated to anything military in which the attackers committed suicide with the express purpose of taking as many of us with them as they could. More died on the USS Cole, in the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in the indiscriminate attacks in Riyadh and Khobar... The list goes on. Because they were Americans.

These are the images our adversaries wish to project to the world. They obviously believe that this makes them appear strong and that the US will be convinced that we cannot prevail over such people. For a while, they succeeded in convincing us, and we pushed Israel to moderate its response to terror. But flying an airliner loaded with unarmed civilians into a unprotected building filled with more unarmed civilians is not an act of strength. Nor is sawing off the heads of men you have captured or hiding a bomb in a car. These are no more acts of strength than Michael Moore's dissent (if you can call it that) in a land where dissent is protected, if not cherished, is an act of bravery.

Our opponents openly state that their religion justifies (indeed, requires) their utter intolerance of anyone who does not believe precisely as they do. They cite verses from their holy writings to support those contentions.

And our side? (Yes, Virginia, there are sides in this conflict.) Our side writes "news" articles like this under the headline "Beheadings fuel fresh backlash against Muslims":

EAGLESWOOD TOWNSHIP, New Jersey (AP) -- The recent beheadings of two Americans in the Middle East have added fuel to the angry backlash against Arab-Americans and Muslims that began after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

An angry backlash against Arab-Americans and Muslims that began after the attacks of 9/11? Really? I missed it completely. Silly me, I thought President Bush told a joint session of Congress in November of 2001 "I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It's practiced freely by many millions of Americans, and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah. The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends; it is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them." So just what was this horrendous backlash that CNN claims to exist?

The murders of Paul Johnson and Nicholas Berg triggered hate mail, verbal attacks and anti-Muslim signs. Muslims received death threats and their mosques were vandalized.

"Since 9/11, every time there is an incident overseas attributed to Muslims or Arabs, we go on orange alert ourselves," said immigration lawyer Sohail Mohammed.

I love that: "incidents" which are "attributed to Muslims or Arabs." As if the people to whom the "incidents" were "attributed" were not murdering people and boasting about it.

"There are individuals here who are off the wall, who think that every woman who wears a hijab or every man named Mohammed is out to blow things up."

True. And there are individuals, groups and even governments "out there" who are off the wall, who think that murdering thousands of people will somehow result in the return to the Middle Ages and the Caliphate. A choice has been forced on us between those two. We have to choose or die. Which do you prefer?

Sohail Mohammed is a lawyer in New Jersey. An article in Mother Jones describes him as having cases related to traffic tickets and tells us that he "established the Human Rights Education and Law Project (HELP) to serve as a clearinghouse for the legal concerns of area Muslims." What do you want to bet that Mr. Mohammed doesn't run HELP for free? What do you want to bet that Mr. Mohammed has a vested interest in making sure that there is in fact a backlash that he can HELP ameliorate?

The Mother Jones piece laments that, "[a]lthough there were no anti-Muslim riots, the dozens of calls that came into Mohammed's office told of a community under siege. Federal agents were interrogating Muslim Americans in and around Paterson, near where some of the hijackers had lived. Ali Erikenoglu, an electrician, said four FBI agents entered his home without removing their shoes, walked on the carpet he uses for prayer, and demanded, 'What kind of an American are you?' Others recounted being pulled over by police for wearing religious headdress as they approached the Lincoln Tunnel. At least 20 people were held indefinitely by the Immigration and Naturalization Service in county jails following routine traffic stops or anonymous tips. In some cases, families had no way of knowing where they had gone, since court records were sealed and detention locations kept secret. Nationwide, the number of people detained on INS charges topped 180."

Oh no! Dozens of calls! Dozens! In a community of 100,000 plus. The FBI agents asked questions! And they did not take off their shoes! People were pulled over in traffic stops! INS actually enforced laws that have been on the books for decades! More than 180 people (more than five percent of the people murdered on 9/11!) were detained in accordance with that law! Clearly civil liberties in America have gone the way of the dodo bird.

Back to the CNN piece: Hate mail? CNN provides no examples, so I am left to wonder why they claimed that hate mail was involved. Verbal attacks and anti Muslim signs? You mean people actually expressed opinions concerning the murder of two of their fellow citizens? Good God, what will become of us?

Vandalism and death threats are another matter. Vandalizing property and threatening someone's life are crimes and should be (and in fact are being) investigated. But, once again, CNN declines to say whose life was threatened and in what manner. Did it really happen? We can't tell from this article. Graffiti? I might be wrong, but I don't recall CNN, HELP or CAIR being so outraged by anti-semitic graffiti on American synagogues or anti-American graffiti on American WWII graves in France.

Al-Qaida-linked militants in Saudi Arabia decapitated Johnson, an American engineer, after warning that they would kill him if the Saudi government did not release jailed comrades. Berg, a businessman, met a similar fate last month in Iraq.

How sporting of them to warn us. I guess they weren't in a sporting mood on 9/11, when there was no such warning. And for God's sake, why can't they call someone who publicly boasts of violent crimes committed for the purpose of creating terror a terrorist?

Following Johnson's death, anti-Islam signs surfaced around the rural New Jersey neighborhood where he once lived. One read "Stamp Out Islam" next to a drawing of a boot over a crescent and star. Another, hung on a mailbox next door to Johnson's sister's home, was more detailed.

"Last night I wasn't a racist, but today I feel racism towards Islamic beliefs," it read. "Last night Islamics had a chance to speak up for Paul Johnson, but today it's too late. Islamics better wake up and start thinking about tomorrow."

The holy writings of the vast majority of Americans allow Christians and Jews to take an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Yet I must have also missed the reports of the beheadings of American Muslims and Arabs in response to the Berg and Johnson murders. The response in both Iraq and Saudi Arabia was to go after the people who actually boasted of committing those murders.

The New Jersey attorney general sent bias crimes investigators to the area, along with stepped-up state police patrols. The signs are gone now, replaced with hand-lettered placards on utility poles that say "Our prayers are with the Johnson family."

Mohammed is right in that every society has its nutballs. Our nutballs post signs which might be offensive and are investigated by our own police to see if there is any possibility that they might go beyond posting signs (and the signs themselves are replaced with inoffensive ones). Islamic nutballs murder thousands and are stopped, if at all, by armed force imposed from outside. Given that nutballs are inevitable, which flavor nutball would you prefer: the sign-posting/investigated-by-the-cops nutball or the beheading/fly-the-airliner-into-a-skyscraper nutball?

But more anti-Muslim graffiti appeared Thursday on a Muslim man's home in Egg Harbor Township.

The article complains that the police have failed to prevent the additional graffiti. Just how were they supposed to do that without violating the civil liberties held so dear by HELP?

"It's really our fear coming true," said Faiza Ali of the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "It indicates a hatred that could turn into something violent."

Strong emotions generated by acts of unbelievable barbarity and violence could cause people to become violent? Who knew?

Relatives of Johnson, in a statement made through a church pastor after a memorial service Saturday, said that they hope his legacy is one of peace in the land he grew to love during more than a decade abroad.

"When history is written on the war on terrorism, let Paul's death be the catalyst that led to thousands more Westerners working in harmony with people in the Middle East to ensure fear and barbaric acts against free peoples come to an end," the Rev. Kyle Huber of Greentree Church said.

The day after Johnson's death, a coalition of Muslim groups held a rally to condemn the killing in Paterson, the heart of New Jersey's Arab-American community.

Good. Has it happened again since that time? It needs to be done at least weekly until this war is over. And this war will not end for quite some time. I believe that American Muslims and Arabs are Americans first, that they are on our side. But I start to wonder about that conclusion when I read that they are offended at the very idea that the police think it might be possible that they might know someone who knows someone who knows something about someone in their community who intends us harm.

A few days later, vandals tossed empty liquor and beer bottles at a mosque in Union City as congregants inside mourned a teenager who died in a car crash.

Assuming that this was related to the Berg and/or Johnson murders, it was stupid and offensive. But its still one hell of a lot better than taking a hostage, chopping his head off and posting video of the beheading on the internet, ain't it?

"If they are throwing empty bottles today, they could be throwing rocks, or worse, shooting at us tomorrow," said Aref Assaf, president of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee's New Jersey chapter.

Yes, it's theoretically possible. Just as it is theoretically possible that, if your co-religionist are beheading us today, it is possible that you will be beheading us tomorrow. Both are unlikely. And I would suggest that the most effective thing that can be done to avoid such outcomes would be to identify and deal with those who are the incitement to such outcomes from "your" ranks and "ours." The US is doing what it can to prevent a backlash. Is Islam, doing everything it can to prevent the incitement to that backlash? Not when we hear complaints that FBI agents didn't take off their shoes.

Two mosques in Florida were vandalized in the days after Johnson's killing. In the Tampa suburb of Lutz, someone broke into the Islamic Community Center and scrawled "Kill All Muslims" on the mosque's interior walls, then smashed windows. In Charlotte Harbor, someone vandalized a mosque's sign and left threatening phone messages.

In the St. Louis suburb of Ballwin, Missouri, vandals painted a swastika and the word "Die" on the wall of the Dar-Ul-Islam mosque.

In Texas, dead fish were dumped near the entrance sign to a mosque under construction in a suburb of Houston.

And in the Chicago suburb of Orland Park, residents urged officials this past week to reject a mosque's building application. A Baptist pastor told a public hearing he feared it would attract Islamic extremists and violence. The center was approved over boos and catcalls from the audience.

But it was approved, no?

"I believe the time is coming when Muslims will not be safe inside the U.S. borders," one man wrote to the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations. "I see nothing wrong with us doing the same things to them that they are doing to innocent people."

Well, I believe that the time is actually here when non-Muslims are not safe within the borders of Muslim nations. And who wrote that second sentence in the quotation? The guy who was writing to CAIR? Is he complaining about a a backlash and then saying that a second backlash to the first one is acceptable?

"It is high time you people wake up and smell the blood," another man wrote to Assaf's group in New Jersey. "Turn in the terrorists. They are your relatives, in a lot of cases. Cousin Omar. Uncle Mohammad. You know what I mean. Until you come forward to help us stamp out this vermin, you are as bad as they."
Cited after a long list of graffiti and vandalism intended to make the writer look bad. The fact of the matter is that no one disputes that the terrorists of 9/11 and Fallujah and Riyadh and Bali and Khobar and Chechnya and Madrid and Netanya and Algeria and Yemen (the USS Cole) and Nairobi and Dar es Salaam (US embassy attacks)... and ... and ... are without exception Muslim. The fact of the matter is that the best thing Muslims and Arabs can do to prevent the outcome they fear is to police their own ranks. And that means cooperating with the US in dealing with the fanatics among them.

Their failure to do so, can only result in more victims. What the hate mailers and graffiti "artists" are graphically pointing out is that the victims will no longer be exclusively on one side. This is a war. We didn't start it, but we are in it. There are only three possible outcomes: our surrender, our extermination, or our victory (which, according to the fanatics on the other side, means the extermination of the fanatics on the other side). We will not surrender. We will not cooperate by dying en masse. What's left is prosecuting the war through to victory. In that effort, American Muslims and Arabs can help, hinder or simply stay out of the way. Just like the rest of us, a choice has been forced upon them.

I think they should help.

Because they are Americans.

2004-06-25T11:32:00.000-04:00

THE 9/11 REPORT

On September 16, 2001, Brad Todd provided an extraordinary insight into the events of 9/11 that we seem to have forgotten.

It's worth rereading, in light of the upcoming report from a 9/11 Commission that seems to have overlooked a number of things, including Mr. Todd's insight.

By Brad Todd

Guest column

(Sept. 16, 2001)

It's been, of course, impossible to get past IT.

Even in a country with the attention span of a gnat, we're all still glued to the tube. The 24-hour news channels have heretofore proven they can make anything boring in short order, but this one drips with emotion so thick even they can't wring it dry.

Yep. We're as stuck on it as we were Tuesday morning.

Grocery store checkout banter is still single-subject. I understand it's the only topic at the manicurist's shop, too.I think even children sense how big IT is. The ones who walk by my front door don't have their normal sing-song cadence. There's no screeching. No laughter. They know something's not right.

What is IT?

Something besides the grief, I think -- although the grief is tormenting.

Something deeper than the shock -- although the shock is overwhelming.

No, I think it's the gut-level fear that for the first time in my generation, we were whipped.

Whipped by our own complacency. Our own comfort. Our own insistence on putting convenience ahead of precaution. Our own arrogance that let us forget that the world is a dangerous place.

And the outcropping of that fear is an angst about the new order. How long before we're not behind again? How much time must we spend off the top of the world? Out of control of our own lives?

This, of course, is the angst that people in most of the rest of the world feel every day. And if we look deep inside, we can probably acknowledge that for all our egalitarian pontifications, this is not the kind of equality and fraternal kinship in which we really believe.

I finally admitted this fear to myself three days after the attack. I wasn't particularly proud of it. It seemed like a shallow thing to fret over when such real suffering was all around me -- my house sits just three miles from the Pentagon, after all.

But there it was.

And the aftertaste of the bitter pill of my character flaw was the sad realization that such angst was Osama's primary objective. Buildings and airplanes and, yes, even 6,000 lives, were just the collateral damage. Despite the metaphoric value of last week's bricks and mortar targets, the real core of the Western economy isn't a skyscraper or a government building. It's the can-do swagger of the American worker. And bin Laden's soldiers cut deep into that swagger.

So he won.

Or did he?

I thought so ... until Friday night.

Friday night I watched a Jane Pauley interview with the family of Jeremy Glick. Jeremy Glick was a 31-year-old who flew as a passenger on commercial airplanes for a living. I describe him that way because right now I'm fairly convinced I'm just a 31 year old who flies planes as a passenger for a living...the other parts of my job having become less noticeable this week.

As the interview unfolded, I realized something I didn't know before: Jeremy Glick and the people on United Flight 93, bound from Newark to San Francisco, knew what was happening on the ground.

At 8:48 a.m. Mohammed Atta took a jet headlong into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Eighteen minutes later and accomplice did the same to the south tower.

When Jeremy Glick called his wife, his first question was an attempt to confirm something another passenger had heard on his spousal call: was the World Trade Center story true?

Lizzy Glick paused, thought for a minute, swallowed hard, and told him the truth. Yes, they had. Moments later, still on the line with her husband, Lizzy Glick saw that another plane had run into the Pentagon. She passed that information on as well to her husband, who relayed it to the other passengers.
Jeremy Glick then told her that the passengers were about to take a vote and decide if they should rush the hijackers and attempt to foul up whatever evil plans they had.

He put down the phone and a commotion was heard by those on the other end of the line. Then nothing. A dead line. An aborted missile launch against the town where I live.

That was 10:37 a.m. on Tuesday, September 11... just 109 minutes after Mohammed Atta rammed the first plane into the north tower of the World Trade Center.

Just 109 minutes after a new form of terrorism -- the most deadly yet invented -- came into use, it was rendered, if not obsolete, at least decidedly less effective.

Deconstructed, unengineered, thwarted, and put into the dust bin of history. By Americans. In 109 minutes.

And in retrospect, they did it in the most American of ways. They used a credit card to rent a fancy cell phone to get information just minutes old, courtesy of the ubiquitous 24-hour news phenomenon. Then they took a vote. When the vote called for sacrifice to protect country and others, there apparently wasn't a shortage of volunteers. Their action was swift. It was decisive. And it was effective.

United Flight 93 did not hit a building. It did not kill anyone on the ground. It did not terrorize a city, despite the best drawn plans of the world's most innovative madmen. Why? Because it had informed Americans on board who'd had 109 minutes to come up with a counteraction.

And the next time a hijacker full of hate pulls the same stunt with a single knife, he'll get the same treatment and meet the same result as those on United Flight 93. Dead, yes. Murderous, yes. But successful? No.

So I think the answer I come to is "yes, but at least not for long."

They did whip us. And maybe those of us who've demanded to be let on airplanes at the last minute fed a culture of convenience that made it possible.

But they only had us on the mat for 109 minutes.

2004-06-24T06:51:00.000-04:00

LILEKS

Go read.

You have Bush. You have Saddam.

One is a meglomanical dictator with a small moustache who killed millions, gassed ethnic minorities, annexed a neighbor state and paid underlings to kill Jews.

The other is Hitler.

2004-06-17T05:47:00.000-04:00

WHAT IF THEY HAD WON?

Ah, summertime! Congress is not in session, and the election season has yet to really catch fire, so the political junkies in the press are flailing about looking for stories. And you just know that Bill Clinton will oblige. According to Drudge, Bill Clinton tells Dan Blather that his (Clinton's, not Rather's) successful fight against conviction after having been impeached is a "badge of honor."

Now I remember why I disliked Clinton. He lied under oath. That's perjury, or at least it would be if I did it. And yet, according to Clinton, beating the rap is a badge of honor. I suppose you have to have a pair of brass ones to even consider running for the office to begin with.

That said, Clinton should never have been impeached. Not because he didn't perjure himself, and not because that is an insignificant offense. Impeachment was a truly bad move because the leaders of the impeachment fight knew or should have known going in that they could not convict Clinton in the Senate. The inability to convict meant that the post impeachment fallout would, having failed to remove him, cripple Clinton for the remainder of his term. Love them or hate them, ineffective Presidents are a luxury America can no longer afford.

And Jesus H. Christ, what if they had won? Gore would have been the incumbent going into the 2000 election. Given the incredibly thin margin by which he lost to Bush, that fact alone would have been more than enough to assure a different result in any number of states, including Florida. The 2004 talks with the Taliban concerning the extradition of Osama bin Laden in connection with the September '01, June '02 and December '03 terrorist attacks in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago would, I have no doubt, be characterized as frank.

2004-06-14T11:10:00.000-04:00

A LEGAL GENIUS, I AM

The US Supreme Court has reversed the Pledge of Allegiance case. Remember that one? Michael Newdow, an atheist, sued on behalf of his daughter because he objected to the "under God" language. The Ninth Circuit agreed and held that the Pledge was unconstitutional.

Way back when, in July of 2002, I noted that Newdow did not have custody of the daughter on whose behalf he was suing, which meant that he had no authority to conduct the suit.

< backpatting >SCOTUS agrees with me.< /backpatting >

2004-06-11T15:19:00.000-04:00

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, LAWRENCE MARTIN

A Great Northern Loonie is heard from.

Fiction has its place -- especially at the time of one's passing. And so, the American airwaves glisten these days with tales about how it was Ronald Reagan who engineered the defeat of communism and the end of the Cold War.

Enlighten us with the (capital T) Truth, O Master.

It was his arms buildup, Republican admirers say, and his menacing rhetoric that brought the Soviets to their knees and changed the world forever. He was a pleasant man, the 40th president, which makes this fairy tale easier to swallow than some of history's other canards. Truth be known, however, the Iron Curtain's collapse was hardly Ronald Reagan's doing.

"Republican admirers", Larry?. Did you count those well known Republicans Lech Walesa, Natan Sharansky, Ted Kennedy, a "senior (and former) Soviet general", etc., etc., etc.

It was Mikhail Gorbachev, who with a sweeping democratic revolution at home and one peace initiative after another abroad, backed the Gipper into a corner, leaving him little choice -- actors don't like to be upstaged -- but to concede there was a whole new world opening up over there.

Your evidence, please?

As a journalist based first in Washington, then in Moscow, I was fortunate to witness the intriguing drama from both ends.

That's not evidence.

In R.R., the Soviet leader knew he was dealing with an archetype Cold Warrior. To bring him around to "new thinking" would require a rather wondrous set of works. And so the Gorbachev charm offensive began. The first offering, in 1985, was the Kremlin's unilateral moratorium on nuclear tests. "Propaganda!" the White House declared.

That's not evidence, either.

Then Mr. Gorbachev announced a grandiose plan to rid the world of nuclear weapons by 2000. Just another hoax, the Reagan men cried. More Commie flim-flam.

Then came another concession -- Kremlin permission for on-site arms inspections on Soviet land -- and then the Reykjavik summit. In Iceland, Mr. Gorbachev put his far-reaching arms-reduction package on the table and Mr. Reagan, to global condemnation, walked away, offering nothing in return.

That's not quite what happened in Reykjavik, Larry. According to Harvard's JFK School of Government, "Reagan proposed the elimination of all offensive ballistic missiles within ten years, and Gorbachev reciprocated by proposing to eliminate the even larger category of all strategic weapons. Ostensibly, it was SDI and its potential for changing the strategic balance of power that motivated such dramatic proposals-but it was also the reason why they were ultimately rejected." (Emphasis added.) So both sides were proposing the elimination of offensive nuclear weapons (Gorbachev including non-missile weapons and Reagan limiting his proposal to missiles) but the Soviets also wanted to kill Reagan's defensive "Star Wars" scheme, as well. Reagan's response was "What the hell use will ABM's or anything else be if we eliminate nuclear weapons?"

Glasnost and perestroika became the new vernacular. For those in the White House like Richard Perle, the prince of darkness who still thought it was all a sham, Gorby now began a withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan. He released the dissident icon Andrei Sakharov and hundreds of other political prisoners. He made big strides on freedom of the press, immigration and religion. He told East European leaders that the massive Soviet military machine would no longer prop up their creaking dictatorships. He began the process of something unheard of in Soviet history -- democratic elections.

Gorbachev didn't withdraw from Afghanistan just for the hell of it. Gorbachev withdrew from Afghanistan when it became apparent that the Soviets could not gain a military victory over the rebels Reagan had armed with Stingers. Remember that, Larry? It's the move that everyone (from lunatic fringes of the political spectrum, at least) now claims resulted in the attack of 9/11. The release of Sakharov followed years of international protest against his imprisonment and was a public relations gesture, no more.

By now, the U.S. administration was reeling. Polls were beginning to show that, of all things unimaginable, a Soviet leader was the greatest force for world peace.

Reeling? No. Reagan did not have a poll driven presidency. He knew what he wanted, knew he could get what he wanted and set about getting it.

An embarrassed Mr. Reagan finally responded in kind. Nearing the end of his presidency, he came to Moscow and he signed a major arms-control agreement and warmly embraced Mr. Gorbachev. A journalist asked the president if he still thought it was the evil empire. "No," he replied, "I was talking about another time, another era."

Note that the major arms control agreement did not include a prohibition on Reagan's Star Wars project, which was the cause of the failure of the Reykjavik summit. So who caved, Mr. Martin?

The recasting of the story now suggests that President Reagan's defence-spending hikes -- as if there hadn't been American military buildups before -- somehow intimidated the Kremlin into its vast reform campaign. Or that America's economic strength -- as if the Soviets hadn't always been witheringly weak by comparison -- made the Soviet leader do it.

That's right: someone's recasting the story, Martin, but it ain't the people who are crediting Reagan with winning the cold war and bringing down the Soviet Union. If everyone knew that the Soviets were witheringly weak economically in comparison to the US, why did Arthur Schlesinger say in 1982, "Those in the United States who think the Soviet Union is on the verge of economic and social collapse" are "wishful thinkers who are only kidding themselves." And why in 1982, did Sovietologist Seweryn Bialer of Columbia University write in Foreign Affairs: "The Soviet Union is not now nor will it be during the next decade in the throes of a true systemic crisis, for it boasts enormous unused reserves of political and social stability." Reagan, on the other hand, told everyone who would listen in the early eighties that the Soviet Union was on its last legs and was ridiculed for his beliefs. Well, he was right, and the experts who pooh poohed him as an ignorant cowboy (sound like more recent political rhetoric?) were dead flat one hundred percent stunningly and absolutely wrong.

In fact, Mr. Gorbachev could have well perpetuated the old totalitarian system. He still had the giant Soviet armies, the daunting nuclear might and the chilling KGB apparatus at his disposal.

Mr. Gorbachev could not have continued anything. The unsuccessful August 1991 coup attempt finished him. By December of that year, he was largely irrelevant and Yeltsin was in charge. The daunting nuclear might and the chilling KGB apparatus didn't help.

But he had decided that the continuing clash of East-West ideologies was senseless, that his sick and obsolescent society was desperate for democratic air.

Sick and obsolescent society? Why it seems like just a paragraph ago you were telling us how Gorbachev could do anything he wanted.

His historic campaign that followed wasn't about Ronald Reagan. It would have happened with or without this president. Rather, it was about him, Mikhail Gorbachev: his will, his inner strength, his human spirit.

Gorbachev's "historic campaign" had stalled by 1990. From InfoPlease: "By 1990, however, Gorbachev's perestroika program had failed to deliver significant improvement in the economy, and the elimination of political and social control had released latent ethnic and national tensions in the Baltic states, in the constituent republics of Armenia, Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova, and elsewhere. A newly created (1989) Congress of People's Deputies voted in Mar., 1990, to end the Communist party's control over the government and elected Gorbachev executive president."

As for the Gipper, he was bold and wise enough, to shed his long-held preconceptions and become the Russian's admirable companion in the process.

Reagan's "long held preconceptions" were that the Soviet Union was economically and politically incapable of continued existence without witting or unwitting assistance from the West. So what preconception exactly did Reagan shed to become the faithful Tonto to Gorbachev's Lone Ranger?

In the collapse of communism he deserves credit not as an instigator, but an abettor. Best Supporting Actor.

To paraphrase Churchill: Some support. Some actor.

2004-06-08T08:31:00.000-04:00

THE WONDERS OF THE INTERNET

From the sublime to the ...

Well, calling this ridiculous would be too polite.

Via VodkaPundit.

2004-06-01T15:47:00.000-04:00

SOMEONE CALL THE UN. THEIR AMBULANCES HAVE BEEN FOUND.

This really pisses me off.

Via Best of the Web (fifth item down):

Access|Middle East has video shot by Reuters showing a portion of a gunbattle between Palestinians and the Israeli Defense Forces in which UN ambulances transport the Palestinians and their weapons. You, too, can view the video by clicking the above link. The story is in the upper right hand corner of the page. Click on "View Document".

And this is the organization Kerry wants to run Iraq? This is the organization which is to have a Kerry provided veto on our foreign policy? This is the organization that can't (or won't) account for billions in oil for food money?

Enough. Get the UN out of the Middle East. For that matter, get them out of Africa, too. And they're sitting on some pretty valuable real estate in New York. Maybe we should take that back, while we're at it.

2004-05-21T08:40:00.000-04:00

I STILL THINK WE'RE WINNING

There's been a lot of commentary (not to mention some heavily slanted "news reports") on the "fact" that we've lost the war in Iraq, or will inevitably lose shortly. I don't think so, but then, what do I know?

There are two Iraqi wars, of course, one military and one political, and victories in both are necessary for the Iraq campaign to be called a success. The military campaign is being fought entirely within Iraq (hopefully with the exception of attempts to interdict men and material being sent into Iraq from outside its borders). The political campaign (otherwise known as the "hearts and minds campaign") is being fought worldwide, but there is only one battleground that counts: right here in the US.

We will know how the political campaign is going when the presidential election returns are in. Despite the sound and fury concerning other issues, I think that this election will be a referendum on the War on Terror in general and the war in Iraq in particular. If President Bush is reelected, he (and, in my opinion, we) will have won the only political fight that matters in the war in Iraq. If John Kerry is elected, the President (and we) will have lost that political fight, and the military campaign will sputter and die, since Mr. Kerry promises to bring in the UN, and three key members of the Security Council are adamantly opposed to a US military victory in Iraq.

As to the military campaign, I have an idea for some research I'd like to see which would graphically demonstrate just how well (or badly) we are doing, militarily. Many people have noted that Americans in general are too easily swayed by individual events, that their opinions on how the war is going depend on what happened yesterday, not what has happened in the last six or twelve or twenty four months. That's true. When you are being constantly bombarded with new information, it is difficult to keep your perspective.

That's what I want: a way to gauge the effects of the military campaign in Iraq over a longer time period than last week's headlines. To obtain that perspective, I would like to see a map of Iraq. On that map would be a red dot for every attack by anyone (Baathist holdout, internal religious factions, foreign jihadis, etc., etc.) since the President declared an end to major military action, approximately one year ago. Since I have not seen such a map, I can't say for sure what it would show. But I would guess that it would show that the vast majority of Iraq has seen little or no violence for the last year (especially in the Kurdish north), and that the majority of the attacks have been in the "Sunni Triangle".

And then I would like to see the same map prepared on a monthly basis since April or May, 2003. These monthly maps would provide a graphic timeline which would show, once the enemy started to operate in an area, whether our counter operations are, over time, successful in preventing him from continuing to do so.

So: Who out there in the Blogosphere knows someone (or is someone) with the time and information to prepare such things? If you know someone, pass the suggestion along.

2004-05-17T14:17:00.000-04:00

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

From Cap'n Clueless:

If you truly think that America is no better than the terrorists, then go watch the video of Nicholas Berg's brutal murder. After you've listened to his horrible screams as he died, and after you've watched his killers wave his bloody head in front of the camera, get back to me and explain to me why I and my nation are responsible for Berg's death, and why the man who wielded the knife is not.

Brevity from the Captain? What's next, pigs with wings?

2004-05-12T12:45:00.000-04:00

WE AIN'T DEAD YET

From IraqtheModel via Sullivan:

My uncle had some unusual sense of humor that didn’t fit quite well in his somewhat religious family.

He winked at me and turned to his son and asked him "What do you think of the Americans?"
His son answered, "They are occupiers".
"So you think we should fight them?" his father asked.
Ibrahim said "No, but I don’t like them".
My uncle said, pretending to change the subject "Do you like your new computer that no one shares with you?"
"Yes of course dad".
"Ok, are you satisfied with the satellite dish receiver we have or do you need a better one?"
"This one is fine but I heard there’s a better one that gets more channels"
"ok I’ll get you that next week". Then he said, "Is there anything else you’d like to have son?"
"No dad I have all that I need".
"Ok but how about a car?"
Ibrahim was astounded and said "Really? a..a CAR.. for me!?".
"Of course for you! I'm too old to drive now and my eyes are not that well and you are the older son. So whom else would it be for!?"
"Oh, dad that will be great! When will that happen?"
"Just finish you’re exams and you’ll have it".
"I will dad".
"Are you happy now son?"
"Yes dad, sure I am!"
"Then why do you hate the Americans you son of a b***h!? I couldn’t get you a bicycle a year ago, I could hardly feed you and your brothers and sisters. You didn't know what an apple or a banana tasted like, I couldn’t buy you a damned Pepsi bottle except in occasions, and now you can have all that you wish, and a car of your own! Who do you think made that possible!?"
My cousin's face turned red and didn’t answer as we laughed and I said "What do you think Ibrahim?"

Read the whole thing.

2004-05-12T07:58:00.000-04:00

2004-05-12T06:19:00.002-04:00

HEARTS AND MINDS

There's been a lot of ink spilled on the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, and the damage done to the "hearts and minds" campaign. I have not seen any commentary dealing with what I consider to be by far the most important point.

The US is perfectly capable of imposing a military solution to the problems in Iraq. If we wanted to, we could turn Iraq, or indeed, the entire Middle East, into radioactive craters. That's one military solution. Not a good one. Not one that I advocate. But it is a solution. Short of reducing the region to its consituent atoms, however, we can also, with persistence, blood and money, impose a conventional military solution. And once that happens, political progress for the Iraqi people is possible. Prior to that time, political progress is much harder and therefore more likely to come in much smaller increments. Additionally, it prior to a military victory, most political progress will be designed to support a military victory, and therefore can be dismissed as American imperialism by our enemies.

The question in Iraq is not whether a military victory can be achieved, but whether it will be. The answer to that question lies in hearts and minds, but not in the hearts and minds of Arabs or Moslems in general, or even Iraqis. Sure, having the wholehearted support of the Iraqi populace would help. And having a significant fraction of that populace opposed to us would delay any victory. But it would not prevent it.

Frankly, I couldn't care less whether the average guy in Cairo or Amman supports us. They are powerless to stop us. Move that average guy to the streets of Baghdad and the answer changes somewhat. The average guy in Baghdad is powerless to stop us, but he can delay us and raise the cost of victory. So he matters, but he is not critical.

The hearts and minds of only one group is absolutely critical to this war: Americans. That, and that alone, is why the abuse of Iraqi prisoners was so damaging. The incidents gave those who oppose the war the opportunity to bombard the American people with images evoking Vietnam and My Lai, despite the near total absence of any historical correlation. Indeed, the very phrase "hearts and minds" comes from the Vietnam War. The PR offensive has had an effect. To see it, all you have to do is read Andrew Sullivan.

But, tactically speaking, our enemy has just snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the campaign for the hears and minds of Americans. They had a clear propaganda winner in Abu Ghraib. Then they immediately reduced that victory to ashes by their depraved beheading of Nicholas Berg. They enabled a side by side comparison of Americans to Islamist nutcases.

Americans: abuse consisted of (a) keeping naked prisoners in the dark, (b) posing prisoners for sexually suggestive photos, and (c) possible sexual acts (those haven't yet been established to my satisfaction, but they might well be). Response consisted of: Investigation, Identification of offenders, Prosecution.

Islamists: abuse consisted of the deliberate and horrifying public murder of a prisoner. Response consisted of: Boasting of and glorying in the deliberate and horrifying public murder of a prisoner.

The claim that Berg's murder was in retaliation for the abuse at Abu Ghraib is absurd for any number of reasons, including but not limited to the fact that the people making the claim are the same ones who murdered Daniel Pearl, not to mention three thousand Americans on 9/11. Anyone with a calendar can see that those acts were not related to any abuse by Americans of Iraqis. Our enemies don't need a reason to murder Americans. They're going to do it whether or not they have an excuse.

And, just as an aside, if the abuse of Iraqis is so important to al Qaeda, why weren't they beheading Saddam's minions for the far worse and far more widespread abuses committed by his regime over a far longer period? Is the abuse of Iraqis offensive to Islam only when committed by Americans?

A question for the people of the US: Who would you rather have in charge? It is in your power to win or lose the war. The consequences of a loss may not be felt here in your lifetime. But make no mistake, our children and grandchildren will pay the price of a defeat in Iraq.

We have to make a choice, and it must be made now. This choice is not of our making. It has been thrust upon us. We have to choose between them and us.

I vote for us.

2004-05-05T08:40:00.000-04:00

UNHELPFUL POLITICAL PROGNOSTICATION

Stephen Green is soliciting nominations to replace Powell and Rumsfeld at State and DoD in a second Bush administration.

My picks (that will never happen):

Rudy Giuliani. Which department, State or DoD? Doesn't matter. When he very publicly returned that money to the Saudis, I became a fan, and decided that I would vote for him for damn near any position. Having tossed Yasser out of Lincoln Center doesn't hurt, either. Besides, having literally cleaned up NYC as mayor and federal prosecutor qualifies as both defense and foreign policy experience (especially during and after 9/11). And that's only partially tongue in cheek.

Condi Rice. Again, the choice of where she serves is not terribly important to me, but I like her better at Defense than at State. She strikes me as a warrior (but I can't tell you why, because I don't know). And these days, Defense is probably a better spot from which to run for the White House than State.

If not Rice and Giuliani, then maybe Sam Nunn?

I might have added Tom Kean before the 9/11 Commission debacle, but he doesn't seem to have been able to keep the commission members in line, and their on our side. So I would be worried about what would happen in any senior cabinet position. I think this commission will end his career. Too bad. Moderate Republican/popular former governor of a northeast state? He might have been President (and almost certainly Veep) if he played his cards right.

Dream ticket in '08: Giuliani/Rice or Rice/Giuliani. This is also something that won't happen, since neither one is likely to be willing to serve under the other. But maybe political reality will have set in once the primaries are in full swing.

2004-04-30T05:28:00.000-04:00

PROFESSOR PLUM DID IT IN THE LIBRARY WITH THE CANDELSTICK

Instant Man comments on this story:

Mystery group wage war on Sadr's militia

FOR the past month they have been the rude young pretenders, a rag-tag slum army ruffling the quiet dignity of Iraq’s holiest city.

For every day that the United States army fails to act on its threat to crush them, the Shiite militiamen of the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr have grown in confidence in their stronghold in Najaf.

Now, however, a shadowy resistance movement within might be about to succeed where the 2,500 US marines outside the city have failed.

In a deadly expression of feelings that until now were kept quiet, a group representing local residents is said to have killed at least five militiamen in the last four days.

The story goes on to reveal that the group has named itself after a two bladed sword used by a medieval imam and that practically nothing beyond its name is known about it. General Kimmit, when asked, said, "I am not aware of [the group's] existence, although we have had some reports of that nature from the city." The reporter then speculates who might be behind it.

First, since the reports are most generously described as sketchy, I'm not sure that even the basic story is true. I don't doubt that the reporter was told what he reported. I just don't know whether what he was told has any basis in fact.

That said, if the group does exist and is in fact doing what it is reported to be doing, who do you think it might be? Remember Clue? The game was (and is) an exercise in deduction. You win by eliminating all of the other possibilities. So let's play.

In the tradition of all good conspiracy theories, the first question to ask is who benefits from the existence and actions of such a group. Taking Sadr out (or even just taking him down a peg or two) clearly benefits the Coalition. It also benefits other camps in the fragmented world of Iraq's religious society (such as al Sistani and his followers, Sadr's rival for power, not to mention the now leaderless followers of Abdel-Majid Khoei, the guy Sadr is accused of having had murdered in Najaf on April 10, 2003), as well as the secular proto-government now being formed. Did I leave anyone out? Undoubtedly.

The next question to ask is who has the capacity to do it? This would seem to rule out the Iraqi governing council (at least as anything other than a surrogate for the Coalition) since they have little authority and no money except that provided by the Coalition. I don't know about the Sistani or Khoei factions, but clearly the Coalition has the ability to do what is supposedly being done.

A related question is who has the capacity to do it when and where it was being done. The shadow army made its appearance about three weeks after Sadr "occupied" Najaf. This doesn't seem to rule anyone out, but I would imagine that it would be harder for the Coalition to infitrate Najaf in order to accomplish its goals than it would be for a domestic operator. Harder, but nowhere near impossible. So the list of "possibles" remains the same, except that a little emphasis is placed on the domestic players as compared to the Coalition.

But the thing that really excites my paranoia is this: Sadr announces his armed opposition to the Coalition and the planned Iraqi government, and promptly holes up in a place where it is politically unnacceptable for us to go after him conventionally. Three weeks later, after we have announced that we will take Sadr, an unconventional force appears with the apparent goal of doing what we cannot: force Sadr out of Najaf and/or diminish or demoraize his forces. Such coincidences are, at the very least, suspicious.

And this group takes as its name a double edged sword, which could be an allusion:

A. to the fact that Sadr's military occupation of holy sites may temporarily protect him from our conventional forces but is likely to hurt him with the people who worship at those sites in the long run; or

B. to the fact that, if this really is us, this strategy could have negative long term consequences (see our support for the Taliban in its early opposition to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan).

In other words, regardless of who is behind the strategy, it can cut both ways.

That's all I have based on the facts available.

Well, what did you expect? I was never all that good at playing Clue, either.

2004-04-21T15:28:00.000-04:00

PIMPS GET A BAD RAP

Cap'n Clueless has long been really really pissed at the French, and with good reason. One thing that was, relatively speaking, a mere annoyance, was the behavior of reporters for Paris Match, a popular French magazine. They observed, photographed and publicized an attack by people they described as "Iraqi guerrillas" on a DHL jet in flight using a shoulder launched SAM. That was in November, 2003 (see this post on Clueless).

Another Paris Match reporter recently found the post and decided to upbraid the Captain. DenBeste's response is a classic, and you should read the whole thing. For purposes of this post, it suffices to say that den Beste finishes with "Your magazine has the ethical standards of a pimp."

Frankly, I think the ethical standards of a pimp are far superior to those of reporters from a (nominally) allied country who support the other side in a war, or at least in this war.

Make no mistake, that's what they intended to do and that's what they were doing. Reporters cannot fail to know what the goals are of the people whose actions they are publicizing. Reporters cannot fail to know that cameras attract terrorists like honey attracts flies. Reporters cannot fail to know that the very fact of their presence will induce the acts that are being reported. Given that, and in light of the atrocities being perpetrated in Iraq by the "guerillas", why do they do it?

Because that's the easy way to make your reputation in that "profession".

Obviously, this does not apply to anywhere near all reporters. Just those who, for purposes of self aggrandizement, romanticize, glorify and publicize attempts to kill us and our friends.

Such as the Paris Match reporters in question. I think the ethical standards of such reporters are, on balance, lower than the ethical standards of those they support. And given a choice beween a pimp and a terrorist, I'll chose the pimp any day.

2004-04-21T00:56:00.000-04:00

DEPARTMENT OF STRATEGERY

Once again, strategic misspellings rescue this blog from the unread. I have received a number of hits from various search engines where the searcher is looking for Jaime Gorelick, as opposed to Jamie Gorelick.

In fact, Cognocentric is the number one (!) Google result for "jaime gorelick 911 commission".

See, it's all part of my master plan.

2004-04-14T16:10:00.000-04:00

911 COMMISSION

Let's see. Henry Kissinger, refused to name the clients of his consulting firrm, so he was hounded off the 911 commission for "conflicts of interest":

"Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has resigned as chairman of a commission investigating events leading up to the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States. Mr Kissinger, who had been in the job for just 16 days, had been criticised for refusing to release the names of clients at his consulting firm. ... The BBC's Tom Carver in Washington says the episode is enormously embarrassing for Mr Bush, adding questions will be asked about why possible conflicts of interest were not raised before Mr Kissinger's appointment."
BBC Online, 14 December 2002

Naming Kissinger might even have been a political ploy by Bush to "contain" the commission:
"In naming Henry Kissinger to direct a comprehensive examination of the government's failure to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush has selected a consummate Washington insider....his affinity for power and the commercial interests he has cultivated since leaving government may make him less than the staunchly independent figure that is needed for this critical post. Indeed, it is tempting to wonder if the choice of Mr. Kissinger is not a clever maneuver by the White House to contain an investigation it long opposed."
New York Times, 29 Nov 2002

Kissinger's own statement that he resigned to "remove any questions about even the appearance of a conflict of interest regarding his ties to several organizations and public figures" is all but lost in the noise. (From CNN, emphasis added.)

Now comes Jaime Gorelick, who was instrumental in codifying the virtual "wall" between law enforcement and intelligence and is named to the commission. Here's her memo (in PDF format), which states that it goes "beyond what is legally required ... [in order to] ... prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance that FISA [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which authorizes more snooping on spies than is generally permitted against mere criminals] is being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in a criminal investigation." In English: The Department of Justice prevented the FBI from fully disclosing to the CIA what it found in a domestic counter intelligence investigation. This is not an unreasonable position to take pre-911. But clearly, allowing the FBI to disclose to the CIA (and vice versa) everything it knew or thought it knew about al Qaeda cells in the US prior to 911 might have led to the discovery of the plot in time to derail it. That's what the 911 commission is supposed to be investigating.

But wait, there's more!. Ms. Gorelick is a litigation partner in Wilmer Cutler and Pickering. That's one of the big time DC lawfirms. According to Newsweek, that firm has agreed to defend Prince Mohammed al Faisal against legal claims by the 9/11 families that al Faisal has legal responsibility for the 9/11 attacks. (From PLA Blog via InstantMan.)

Is there not an actual conflict of interest (as opposed to a mere appearance of a conflict) here? Might not Gorelick be more interested in protecting her reputation and career in light of her actions at the Department of Justice rather than a coldly logical look at what could have been done or done better to avoid the attack? Might she be more interested in benefiting one of her firms wealthiest and most important clients than in finding structural or procedural flaws in our intelligence and counter intelligence systems? Surely there is as much or more of a conflict of interest here than there was in Kissinger's case.

When will the New York Times editorial page speculate as to whether this was a ploy by the Democrats to divert the commission from its bipartisan "what do we need to fix and how do we fix it" mandate into a political tool in an election year?

2004-04-07T16:47:00.000-04:00

INCOMING! OR NOT.

From Strategy Page, via Best of the Web (twelfth item down):

The last of the Minuteman III missiles will receive their new motors by 2008. It costs about $5.2 million to replace the rockets on each missile. The new rocket motors, which have to comply with EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) rules, will have a shorter range than the original motors.
We must really be the only superpower left on earth: The engines on our doomsday weapons have to comply with EPA standards.

The EPA is concerned with the pollution caused by launching our ICBMs, which, of course, would amount to a really really tiny fraction of the pollution caused by the detonations of a counterstrike. So I have to conclude that the EPA does not believe that there will be a counterstrike. That's the only scenario in which reducing the pollution caused by an ICBM launch makes even a little sense.

2004-04-07T10:44:00.000-04:00

WWJB?

From Fox:

A gaggle of ministries have taken their biblical messages down unconventional paths to appeal to 20- and 30-somethings.

Using Web sites, multi-media, pop culture and edgy language, organizations like www.relevantmagazine.com and Fireproof Ministries (and its anti-pornography Web site www.XXXchurch.com) are reaching out to young Christians in more modern ways than established organized religion ever has.

...

"I really think that if Jesus were around today, he would have a blog."
What would Jesus blog?

2004-04-06T17:20:00.000-04:00

REMIND ME NEVER EVER TO PISS THIS LADY OFF

From Reuters, via Rand Simberg:

A woman in Mexico gave birth to a healthy baby boy after performing a Caesarean section on herself with a kitchen knife, doctors said Tuesday.

“She took three small glasses of hard liquor and, using a kitchen knife, sliced her abdomen in three attempts ... and delivered a male infant that breathed immediately and cried,” said Dr R.F. Valle, of the Dr. Manuel Velasco Suarez Hospital in San Pablo, Mexico.

Before losing consciousness, the woman told one of her children to call a local nurse for help. After the nurse stitched the wound with a sewing needle and cotton thread, the mother and baby were transferred and treated by Valle and his colleagues at the nearest hospital.

Damn!

2004-03-30T09:41:00.000-05:00

TYCO

Someone just pointed out to me that the trial of the Tyco executives is a battle between the people who paid $6,000 for a shower curtain and the people who paid $600 for a toilet seat.

2004-03-28T09:35:00.000-05:00

A CLASSIC GUARDIAN HATCHET JOB

The Guardian reports that the rank and file at the BBC is upset. Management is conducting its own inquiry into the sexed up report about the government sexing up the WMD intelligence on Iraq.

Via InstantMan, of course. His reaction: Accountability is for other people. As ususal, I am a tad more long-winded.

This is a classic hatchet job. All of the allegations of one side are fully aired in eighteen or nineteen paragraphs, complete with references to Soviet style "justice" and Guantanamo, followed by two or three paragraphs of vague denials by the other side.

Senior BBC staff are threatening to take some flagship programmes off the air rather than face criticisms from an internal inquiry launched in the aftermath of Hutton. A remarkable series of internal battles, which has pitched some of Britain's most senior broadcasting figures against one another, has led to the threats. The inquiry, chaired by the BBC's director of policy, Caroline Thomson, has been described as a 'kangaroo court'.

Described by whom, please? Might it be the same people who are shouting "Politburo!" and "Guantanamo!" about those horrible management types who want to know what happened and how to avoid repeating it in the future?

Executives and presenters complained that the inquiry went against natural justice, was trying to find scapegoats for the Hutton debacle and had poisoned relations. The strength of feeling among senior BBC figures comes at a difficult time for Acting Director-General Mark Byford, who has been attacked for agreeing to the inquiry.
Inquiring into how and why the BBC came to broadcast extremely serious false and defamatory charges against the government "go against natural justice"? Does that refer to these guys? Or is the (unidentified) speaker stating that it is "natural justice" that the Beeb should be able to say anything, true or false, well founded or baseless, about anyone, prominent or obscure, and not be subject to any consequences whatever? Face it guys, Andrew Gilligan used the BBC to attempt to promote his personal political views by inserting into his report claims which he knew or should have known to be baseless and which he definitely knew to be extremely damaging to the government. Call me silly, but I think at an absolute minimum, Gilligan was extremely irresponsible.

Oh, and looking for scapegoats? Nothing in the balance of the article suggests that is a possibility. Did something get edited out? Well, not exactly. Some twenty three paragraphs into the article, "senior corporation sources" are quoted as saying that the inquiry is likely to focus on internal procedures, the letter sent to Alistair Campbell (the target of Gilligan's "sexing up" report) defending Gilligan and whether the Beeb could have done more to avoid much of the mess. But of course, that's not relevant to the claim that the Beeb is on a scapegoat hunt, so it shouldn't be reported for another twenty paragraphs.

I almost forgot: poisoned relations between whom? Management and rank and file? Question: Is it more important to avoid poisoning the relationship among people at the BBC or avoid poisoning public debate? And, I note in passing that Andrew Gilligan and the people doing the shouting about Gitmo, the Politburo and kangaroos have done the lion's share of the poisoning so far.

Byford hopes to become the next Director-General to succeed Greg Dyke, who resigned after Hutton. But staff said he could be presiding over 'mass walkouts' if individuals are attacked by the inquiry.
I guess that this is "the best defense is a strong offense" tactic. It is the same kind of thing that John Kerry is doing in the US Presidential race. Whenever someone from the other side quotes him or refers to one of his Senate votes, Kerry responds by saying that this is character assassination. By the same token, accurately reciting what someone did or didn't do in connection with Gilligan's sexed up report is "attacking" him.

Stars such as political editor Andrew Marr, Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman, and Today's John Humphrys and Jim Naughtie have all raised concerns at the process that has been likened to 'the BBC's own Guantanamo'.
That's right, Andrew Marr is being held incommunicado thousands of miles away from home in a 6x12 cell. He's allowed out to play soccer an hour a day. I'll bet he isn't being given English lessons, though, so its probably worse than Guantanamo.

The inquiry was launched to discover 'what went wrong' following the notorious 6.07am broadcast on Today, when Andrew Gilligan claimed that the Government had deliberately 'sexed up' evidence that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Notice the scare quotes around what went wrong? Nothing went "wrong" at all. David Kelly is alive and well and living in the south of France. No one ever made false accusations about the Blair government and its alteration of intelligence for political purposes based on something Kelly never said. And, by the way, it was a little more than the 6:07 am broadcast. It was the essential repetition of the charges in subsequent broadcasts and newspaper articles David Kelly's suicide, Gilligan's attempts to mislead the Foreign Affairs Committee in a July 14 email ... The list goes on. And while we're on the subject, why is the broadcast now "notorious" instead of "erroneous"?

'[The inquiry] is pointless but, worse than that, they might get a rush of blood and decide more heads must roll,' said one very senior figure.
Isn't it obviously pointless to try and avoid having the BBC used to promote the politcal goals of its reporters at the expense of accurate reporting? And, of course, the people conducting the inquiry won't be able to help but unnecessarily fire people once this witch hunt starts. No one here had anything to do with Gilligan or his report. Nothing to see here. Move on.

'I think people would down tools: not just presenters, but producers and editors, and it might go higher than that. They've got a fight on their hands if they do anything to anyone.'
Anything to anyone? For any reason? My god, Gilligan used the BBC in an attempt to bring down the Blair government with a false report and no one should dare to inquire as to whether or not a single person should even be so much as slapped on the wrist? As far as the threat to "down tools" goes, be my guest (or, in more current vernacular, bring it on). Do you really think that you are that important to the Beeb that it would be paralyzed without you?

Richard Sambrook, head of news, Kevin Marsh, the editor of Today, and Stephen Mitchell, head of radio, were all called to give evidence.
None of the witnesses called was told what allegations they faced, whether any of the evidence they gave would be used against them or others, or whether the interviews were a 'disciplinary matter'.
Who said they were "facing" any allegations? And if you want to run this like a criminal inquiry, then may I suggest that you stop complaining that the disciplinary rules were provided?

Many staff said the inquiry had simply furthered the BBC's reputation as 'caving in' to the Government. The fact that the corporation launched its own investigation, expected to report in the next month, after Hutton's exhaustive inquiry, has led many to question the BBC's ability to put the events behind it.
It is just terrible that the Beeb, when faced with overwhelming evidence, recognized that its reporter did what he accused the governement of doing: He sexed up his report for personal reasons. Clearly the BBC is far worse off having acknowledged this fact. It will develop the reputation for "caving in" to facts. It would be far more desireable for the Beeb to continue to bury its head in the sand, allow the abuse to continue and develop a reputation for airing unfounded falsehoods.

'This inquiry has changed everything,' said one Today staffer. 'There is an atmosphere of nervousness.
What are you nervous about, Mr. or Mrs. Anonymous Staffer? Have you done the same thing as Gilligan did? If so, then you probably should be worried. If not, then there is nothing to be concerned about. Especially in light of the fact that the BBC says that the inquiry will be focused on internal procedures, the letter sent to Alistair Campbell (the target of Gilligan's "sexing up" report) defending Gilligan and whether the Beeb could have done more to avoid much of the mess. But again, that's not relevant to the claim someone is nervous about something that isn't the object of the investigation, so it shouldn't be reported until the end of the article.

'The management see it as a "truth and reconciliation" process that will heal us, but that is not what is happening. Even if they don't come up with any concrete findings, as I suspect will be the case, it will still have a lasting and very bad effect.'
And precisely what will that lasting effect be, other than to emphasize that its a real good idea to base your reports on what people actually say, rather than what you wish they would have said? I need concrete examples of how the Beeb is going to go down the toilet regardless of the outcome of the investigation.

Another senior member of BBC staff said that 'screens would go blank' if further attacks were made on respected staff for their part in Gilligan's original report and the subsequent battle between the BBC and Downing Street over its veracity.
No one in the entire United Kingdom would be the least bit interested in replacing anyone striking because people were fired for "their part in Gilligan's original report and the subsequent battle between the BBC and Downing Street over its veracity"? I have some recommendations. The list starts with Andrew Sullivan.

The highly public nature of the battle, led by Alastair Campbell, Number 10's former director of communications, led to the eventual 'outing' of the source of Gilligan's claims, Dr David Kelly.
Problem: David Kelly wasn't Gilligan's source. Gilligan had no source.

Kelly, a Ministry of Defence expert on WMD, committed suicide after an internal departmental inquiry questioned his 'unauthorised contacts' with the media. 'We apologised for mistakes during Hutton, we apologised for mistakes when the Hutton report was published, what do they want us to do, apologise again?' said another senior executive.
No, they want to find a way of trying to assure themselves that it won't happen again. That's their job.

Another person involved said that, from the outset, the inquiry's tone was set. 'They said "What went wrong", rather than "What happened",' he said. 'I think that says a lot about what they thought they might find.'
Nothing went wrong? Gilligan lied, Kelly committed suicide, the BBC was seriously embarrassed about a false and clearly baseless "news" story and nothing went wrong?

News staff said that the BBC was now much more cautious with stories than it had been in the past ...
Caution as a means of assuring accuracy in reporting is such a bad thing!

... and that the internal inquiry had meant that many senior executives were still bogged down in the Hutton aftermath.

Damn those senior executives. Can't they just come to grips with the fact that we should be able to report anything we want to, whether or not its based on something someone actually, you know, said? Why do they have to get bogged down (quagmire alert!) trying to prevent us from doing that?

Thomson, who is the partner of Downing Street policy adviser Roger Liddle, is undertaking the inquiry with Stephen Dando, the director of personnel. Critics point out that Thomson was directly involved in putting the BBC's case to Hutton.

'It's ridiculous. Is Thomson meant to interview herself about "what went wrong"?,' asked one BBC executive.
Basically, this is complaint states that, because the conclusions that Hutton came to were not acceptable, we call a "do-over", and the one person who, because of his involvement in the official Hutton inquiry, already knows more about this than anyone else at the BBC is an entirely inappropriate individual to conduct further internal inquiries. I agree. Let's start all over again and, by all means, the new inquiry should be led by someone who has no clue what anyone is talking about. Let's not contaminate this inquiry with any of the facts we already learned in the course of the Hutton investigation.

Although witnesses did not have official legal representation, many of them have hired lawyers. After criticisms that the inquiry amounted to a Politburo-style investigation, each was allowed to take a 'buddy' to the hearings. Marr, for example, accompanied Mark Damazer, the deputy director of news.
Well, which is it, big bad American Guantanamo style justice or big bad Soviet style Politburo justice? Are you headed to Cuba or Siberia?

Marsh was so nonplussed by his first interview that he refused to answer questions. A second series was launched last week and will continue for the next few days.
Let me make sure I understand this. The head of Today was so rattled when asked a question that he could not answer it? What does he do when he is asked a question on the job?

The BBC initially said that it was not a disciplinary inquiry, but witnesses were angered when a copy of the corporation's disciplinary guidelines were attached to letters from the inquiry team.
It is always a bad practice to tell people what disciiplinary rules are in effect. Isn't that just what the Politburo did? Isn't that what they're doing now in Gitmo? The fact that the inquiry might have, as a secondary consequence, some disciplinary fallout means that you must never tell people what the disciplinary rules are.

In an attempt to head off criticism, the BBC has now written to witnesses outlining the main areas of the inquiry.
Senior corporation sources said that it was likely that the inquiry would criticise internal procedures, rather than specific individuals.
Ah! The first evidence that someone on the other side of this story was interviewed. How many paragraphs down? Twenty three. And the general language is directly contradictory to the complaints voiced in the first twenty two paragraphs. So of course it should not be placed near the complaints it contradicts.

It is likely to focus on the 'defence letter' sent to Campbell by Sambrook, outlining why the BBC believed Gilligan's story to be justified. It will also look at whether the Governors could have done more to defuse the row when they had an emergency meeting after Kelly's death.
Senior BBC figures said there could even be some criticism of the way the Hutton case was handled, with some pointing out that the BBC should not have apologised for its errors in front of Hutton when the Government refused to do so.
A BBC spokesman said the corporation was unhappy about what he described as the 'unfair names' for the process being repeated outside the organisation. He added that the 'internal process' team was working 'as quickly as they possibly can' to complete its inquiries, although there is no official end-date in view.
Well, if you don't like being referred to as the Politburo, stop threatening to send people to Siberia, and if you don't like being analogized to Guantanamo, stop holding Andrew Marr incommunicado. What? That hasn't happened?

Oh. Never mind.

2004-03-25T16:22:00.000-05:00

Everyone's commenting on the 14 year old (or 8 or 16 year old, depending on where you look) would be Palestinian suicide bomber in Israel.

The part I like the best was that he was paid in sheckels. The Palestinians apparently don't mind using that feelthy Joooooooooooooooo money.

2004-03-25T15:25:00.000-05:00

Rand Simberg mentions that color TV is 50 years old today.

Color TV was invented at RCA. My father was a patent attorney at RCA (although not at that time) and liked to tell a story that had made the rounds there about the development of color.

The develpment procedure involved a team in one room operating a camera aimed at a bowl of fruit on a table, and a second team in another room receiving the signal from the camera. Halfway through the testing, the camera operators painted the banana in the fruitbowl blue. After much consternation on the signal receiving team, they called the camera team on the phone and told them that the banana looked great, but everything else was horrible.

2004-03-13T15:20:00.001-05:00

THE ELECTION

Are you as skeptical as I am of those opinion polls showing Kerry leading Bush? Well, I think Kerry himself is just as skeptical. Here's why. Front runners never voluntarily agree to debates, much less propose them. And Kerry is proposing monthly debates. For the numerically challenged among us, that's eight.

2004-03-13T15:20:00.000-05:00

MADRID

I wanted to write something about the bombing in Madrid. But I made the mistake of reading Lileks first. There's simply nothing more to say.

But it's all a front. If there’s a man sitting on a park bench reading about Buddhism: it’s a front. If there’s a woman at the mall with her head uncovered, it’s a front. If there’s a little girl in a school learning about the periodic table, it’s a front. If there’s two women in a park holding hands and sneaking a smooch, it’s a front. If there’s a guy in a room posting to his website his arguments for atheism, it’s a front. If you’re reading your child a story whose hero is a clever pig, you’re living on the edge of the front. If the appointed hour comes and the call to prayer doesn’t drift from the spiky towers, it’s a front.

So what do I hope I'll tell my child? Simple. It's over. We won.

2004-03-06T12:43:00.000-05:00

DUKE DIVERSITY REDUX

More on diversity (of the political thought variety) at Duke.

My original posts are here (responding to this article), here (responding to this one) and here (responding to my very first (!) commenter).

InstantMan notes that, as a result of the widespread discussion in the press and blogosphere, Duke held a panel discussion. Only the faculty and administration got to speak. Please remember that this is the faculty that has already been documented to come almost entirely from one side of the political spectrum. And also note that it is likely that the administration (which hired the faculty) shares the political bent of the faculty. Question: Would a panel discussion concerning the racial or gender makeup of the Duke faculty in which no minorities or women were permitted to speak be received seriously? Anywhere?

If you can look beyond the seriously flawed makeup of the panel, its subject was "Does Political Affiliation Matter?" Isn't the answer blindingly obvious? When your presence on the Duke faculty predicts your political affiliation with near 100% accuracy, clearly your political affiliation is in some way related to your ability to get a position on the faculty at Duke. Don't bother trying to convince me that the fact that the faculty is uniformly Democratic is a result of random chance. Would such an assertion be given any credence whatsoever if the faculty were uniformly white male and the issue was racial or gender discrimination in hiring? No? Then why should I give the same argument credence in a situation where the issue is still discriminatory hiring, just not discrimination based on skin color?

I am not suggesting that there is any overt bias against hiring conservatives. I am certain that there is nothing in the Duke personnel manual about rejecting Republicans. But at the very least, the homogeneous nature of the faculty's political affiliation is partially the result of an environment in which liberals feel free to ridicule conservatives in terms which, if the situation were reversed, would land the speaker in hot water with the speech police. And that is discriminatory. If you have odious rules like speech codes (which, as noted below, Duke has) they should be applied uniformly. They are not.

Nor am I suggesting that the only proper result is for the faculty to reflect the same political spectrum as the general population. This is, as has been pointed out, a self selected group. There are bound to be factors which cause the group to differ from the general population, such as the availability of the time and money required to get a doctoral degree or a post doc, not to mention the desire to do so.

No, I think that the fact that Duke's faculty is uniformly Democratic shows us more about what the future would be like if the nation were under the control of the left wing of the already left leaning Democratic Party than anything else. I think that the future under either the religious right or the Deaniacs (remember, Howard Dean claims to represent the democratic wing of the Democratic Party) would be more than a little scary, because true believers, whatever part of the political spectrum they reside in, almost always end up doing the same types of damage to civil liberties.

My wife is convinced that civil liberties are currently under attack, and she believes that the attack is coming from the religious right. First, I agree that civil liberties are currently under attack. But then, they are almost always under attack. That is not intended to minimize the serious nature of the situation, just to emphasize that freedoms do not disappear in large chunks. They are slowly eroded, except in unusual situations. And I also agree that the religious right has a number of causes that conflict with civil liberties. They want to reduce or eliminate the right to abortion. They want to regulate my sex life. They want to limit what I can read or listen to on the radio or see on TV. They want to ban a specific form of speech: flag burning. These are all extremely important matters which bear directly on my ability to be and remain free of government interference in my life to the extent possible.

But the religious right is not alone in its attempt to curtail freedom in this country. The left also has its windmills.

The left starts off with the quite reasonable premise that officially sanctioned or overlooked discrimination against women and minorities is a bad thing and then advocates, as a remedy for discrimination which occurred in the past, officially sanctioned discrimination in favor of those minorities. The concept that one can acquire rights by reason of membership in one racial, ethnic or gender group or another is, to my mind, just as ridculous when applied to the advantage of white males as it is when applied to the advantage of, say, African American women. And I can't say often enough that imposing a new and different regime of government sponsored discriminatory rules will never result in the end of discrimination.

The left also has serious problems with free speech. They start off with the entirely reasonable position that everyone should be secure in their dignity and then adopt speech codes to protect people from "harassment" or "intimidation.". Duke University, for example, has a speech code. It is couched in terms of a policy against harassment, but it nonetheless regulates speech. It defines harassment as "the creation of a hostile or intimidating environment, in which verbal or physical conduct, because of its severity and/or persistence, is likely to interfere significantly with an individual?s work or education, or affect adversely an individual?s living conditions." (Emphasis added.) Well, when Professor Brandon feels perfectly free to ridicule and dismiss the political beliefs of others as "stupid" and suggest that students take the opportunity provided by contact with the professor's superior intellect to discard their stupid ideas and adopt those more in line with the professor's, might that not "interfere significantly with an individual's ... education"?

And when this potential violation of Duke's own speech code occurred, did anyone even consider the possibility that Brandon violated Duke's rules? No. Why not? Because the speech codes are not intended to be enforced against the people who adopted them, they are intended to be enforced only against "wrong thinking people." That's one reason that the speech codes are always so vague. If they were more precise in what types of speech that they banned, there would be no room to interpret them so as to apply them in a one sided manner. These days, on campus at least, the "wrong thinking people" are conservatives, and therefore the speech codes are applied almost uniformly to punish conservatives.

A more concrete example occurs regularly when campus conservatives hold "affirmative action bake sales," in which goods are sold at varying prices depending on the ethnic or racial affiliation of the customer. Intended to poke fun at affirmative action and make a political point, such events are regularly shut down by school authorities. Worse yet, more than occasionally the protesting conservatives are harassed or even physically attacked by other students, leading to intervention by campus police. And rather than protect the ability to conduct a lawful protest against school policies, the campus police shut down the bake sale. Various reasons for doing so are given. Maintaining order, preventing violence, no permit to sell food. Whatever. Regardless of the reason for shutting down the bake sale protest in response to verbal or physical attacks on the protestors, doing so clearly violates the protestors' right to speak.

Both the left and the right are well on their way to advocating an authoritarian government in the United States. The left's approach is more incremental. For forty years they have been advocating a "nanny state" to protect me from the consequences of my own decisions, which in turn leads to the more extreme elements of the left wanting to make those decisions for me. The right is more direct (and therefore less successful) in its approach. But the extreme ends of both sides of the political spectrum want the government to be able to tell me what I can say and to whom I can say it. The type of society desired by the extreme left differs radically from that desired by the extreme right. But the methods chosen to achieve that desired society are identical: reduction of freedom now in exchange for supposed benefits later.

Sorry. No deal.

2004-03-01T17:13:00.000-05:00

THAT JUST DON'T SEEM RIGHT

LT says it's time to pick sides in the argument about gay marriage.

My problem is that I can't pick the side I want.

I like small government, but not so small it fits into my bedroom. Or anyone else's. As far as I am concerned, what two consenting adults do in private is just that: private. It's none of my business. I don't really want to know. And if they want to establish a long term relationship with all the legal trimmings, fine. I really don't care if they happen to be two (or ten) people of the same sex.

So I'm in favor of allowing same sex marriage. I think the consequences of that position need a great deal more thought before it is formally adopted, and I suppose its possible that I could be convinced that there are difficulties with allowing same sex or group marriages that cannot be overcome. But unless and until that unlikely event happens, I'm in favor of allowing it.

But I have a serious problem with achieving changes in the law using the methods now being employed by "my side". The people getting married in San Francisco are not engaging in civil disobedience. They are complying with the law, at least on its face. There is no "disobedience" involved. The state requires a piece of paper for a marriage to be recognized as valid, and they have the appropriate piece of paper. That this piece of paper will later be determined to have been illegally issued involves no act of disobedience on the part of the couples.

It does, however, involve an act of disobedience on the part of the issuing authority, presumably Mayor Newsom. And that's the rub. Newsom was elected to enforce the law in San Francisco. That's his responsibility. I'm no expert, but my guess is that the law quite clearly states that marriage licenses cannot be issued to same sex couples. Mayor Newsom's position is that such a prohibition is illegal in that it violates the equal protection clauses of the California and US Constitutions. In my opinion it is certainly true that the ban on same sex marriages is unfair in many respects. It is also possible that it is unconstitutional. I doubt it, but its possible (especially given my relative ignorance of the law in the equal protection area). Regardless of whether it is illegal or not, Mayor Newsom is not competent to make that determination.

I don't mean he that he is not entitled to have an opinion. I mean that the authority of his office does not include the ability to make determinations about the constitutionality of the laws he was elected to enforce. He could resign in protest, rather than enforce a law he felt was unjust. He can chain himself inside the legislative chambers in Sacramento until that law is changed. He can write op-ed pieces for the San Francisco Examiner urging such a change. He could start a lawsuit to have the prohibition declared illegal by the courts, which are competent to make the determination. He could join others in petitioning the state legislature to have the law changed. He could start a drive to have the matter placed on the ballot for all California voters to decide (again).

He can do a lot of things. But the one thing he cannot do is simply declare the law void and proceed to act according to his beliefs, whatever they may be. That way lies chaos. There are an awful lot of people out there, including, I am sure, a whole bunch of mayors, who believe, for example, that every student should start the school day with a prayer. Or that the ten commandments should be prominently posted in every public office. There might even be some mayors left who believe that inter-racial marriages should not be permitted.

The personal views of mayors on such matters, as on same sex marriage, in their position as mayors, are wholly irrelevant. Mayor Newsom could not erect a monument on public property displaying the ten commandments despite a (hypothetical) belief that the law permits him to do so, or that the law prohibiting him from doing so is unconstitutional. Nor could he require school prayer in San Francisco. Nor could he refuse to issue marriage licenses to inter-racial couples.

If, and only if, you believe that Mayor Newsom's office carries with it the authority to choose which laws he should enforce and which he can ignore for what he and he alone considers valid reasons, should you believe that he can issue marriage licenses for those same valid reasons, regardless of what the law provides.

And I don't believe in government according to the personal beliefs of those doing the governing. I believe in government according to law. And that means that I cannot support Mayor Newsom's efforts to legalize gay marriage by fiat. He has to enforce all the laws, not just the ones he agrees with. Me, on the other hand, I get to obey the laws I agree with, provided only that I am willing to pay the price when caught disobeying the laws I disagree with.

And that just doesn't seem right. Until you remember that no one forced Gavin Newsom to run for mayor.

2004-02-27T11:11:00.000-05:00

Tex doesn't seem to be entirely convinced that we have our priorities straight in this country. He might be right.

Via Damian Penny.

2004-02-27T11:03:00.000-05:00

Daniel Henninger writes on Opinion Journal about the proliferation of technology and migration changing Tip O'Neill's maxim that all politics is local. Henninger discusses the matter in the context of the recent announcement by South Korean scientists that they have cloned a human embryo and notes that just saying "stop" won't halt such research. It will just move it offshore.

Good point. But doesn't "stop" pretty much characterize our war on drugs, too? Granted, there are more sticks and carrots employed in the drug war than there are in the effort to prevent the spread of various technologies such as cloning, but given time, the same techniques will eventually be used if we continue to want to prohibit the use of cloning techniques around the world.

Henninger's conclusion is that banning the use of cloning technology ranks up there with King Canute commanding the tides to recede: It ain't gonna work. I agree. And the war on drugs is not going to work, either.

2004-02-24T17:49:00.000-05:00

President Bush announced today that he favors amending the Constitution to ban gay marriage. Dumb idea. You don't use the Constitution to freeze social policy. And what happened to federalism? Why in the name of all that is holy should the federal government have any position at all on what constitutes a valid marriage, any more than it should have a position on what constitutes a valid deed?

I thought we might have figured out that the Constitution should not deal with matters of social policy when we fought the Civil War. Slavery, as far as I know, is the only non-governmental institution enshrined in the Constitution. And as a result of the fact that the Constittion explicitly protected the institution of slavery, the slave states objected when Lincoln was elected President. There followed a war that left the South in ruins and from which it did not recover from for a century or more.

The durability of the Constitution stems entirely from its flexibility and the drafters' refusal to say "this is how it shall be for ever and ever, amen" on all but a very few carefully chosen subjects. The Constitution provides a sparse description of the government it creates and allows succeeding generations some latitude in interpreting its provisions.

So I'll vote against the amendment to ban gay marriage (and vote against those of my representatives, if any, who favor it) when the time comes. The Constitution ain't broke, so don't fix it.

That said, I must add that I think that the proponents of gay marriage have not thought through the consequences of their position. Assuming that gay marriage is allowed anywhere, will the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution require recognition of a gay marriage everywhere? Yes, I know that there is a federal statute saying otherwise, but you simply can't change or limit constitutional mandates by statute. Will marriage be limited to two people? What about three or more? Why (or why not)? Will there continue to be proscriptions on marriages between close relatives? If marriage is no longer assumed to be the vehicle it is now for procreation or child rearing, why should the ban on marriages between siblings (or parent and child) continue? What will the consequences of a marriage be? As it stands now, marriage involves rights to citizenship, property, pensions and inheritances, tax and other governmental benefits, and health insurance, among many other things. Will any of that change? Why, or why not? Will Donald Trump be permitted under the "new marriage" to marry all of his children a year or two prior to the Donald's death in order to entitle the children to the benefit of the estate tax marital deduction? It's a silly idea, I know, but, then, I'm not the one advocating a change in the nature of a basic social institution.

While I don't particularly object to the immediate changes being proposed, some thought really must be given to the scope of the changes being introduced and what effect they will have on the institution and the existing benefits and emoluments associated with it before the changes are permitted to take effect.

I also feel compelled to add that this proposed amendment will have zero effect on my vote for President in 2004. I'm with Martin Devon: This election is all about ________ (insert issue: jobs, marriage, tax cuts ...). None of us will have ___________ (jobs, marriage, tax cuts ...) if we are dead, and al Qaeda wants us dead.

Bush has already convinced me that he's serious about the war, so my vote is his to lose as of now. But if Kerry can convince me he, too, is serious about this war, he has a shot at my vote.

Not that it will make any difference. I live and vote in New Jersey, which will undoubtedly go heavily for whoever the Democratic nominee is.

2004-02-18T12:53:00.000-05:00

TALK TO ME, KERRY

I graduated from high school in 1971, and from college in 1975. During my high school and college years, American involvement in the Vietnam War reached its peak, and slowly wound down. By the time I was eligible for the draft (Spring, 1972 was "my" lottery), America was was all but out of Vietnam.

I didn't want to go to Vietnam. I was thankful that I drew an extremely high number in the draft lottery and therefore wouldn't have to go. I was even more pleased that the draft was ended shortly after the lottery drawing (but nowhere near as pleased as the guy in my dorm who had drawn number 5 in the lottery).

The arguments about Vietnam were interminable. Some said that Vietnam was no threat to the US, whether under communism or some sort of right wing dictatorship. But even if a communist government in Vietnam was no threat to the US, surely the communists would not stop until someone stopped them. Since communists did not believe in real elections, or freedom of speech, or freedom of religion, or whole bunches of other things that I thought were important, they needed to be stopped somewhere, sometime, and we were the only ones who could stop them. Others said we shouldn't ever have been in Vietnam to begin with, so we had to leave. But we were there, and leaving could (and later did) have disastrous consequences, both for us and for the Vietnamese who had placed their trust in us. Still others said we couldn't win. But it was clear that we could in fact win the conventional war, if not war for "hearts and minds". God knows, I'm no military expert, but surely there was at least one way for a superpower to prevail militarily over a backwards third world country. I think all we had to do was stop trying not to lose and use those tools available to us. No, not nuclear weapons, but Special Forces, more conventional troops, more air power, more actions designed to interdict the North's logistics train, etc. But I think the decisive thing for me is that I felt I could no longer trust what my government was telling me about what was happening on the other side of the world. General Westmoreland or the President (Johnson or Nixon) would say one thing, and another thing entirely would appear on my television screen during the nightly news.

So I opposed the war in Vietnam. Was that a result of the fact that I really really didn't want to go there? Perhaps in part. Anyone who actually wants to be sent halfway around the globe to be shot at by people who want to kill him is not, in my opinion, functioning on all cylinders. With the convenience of hindsight, however, it is obvious that both the Johnson and Nixon administrations were not prosecuting the war to win, they were attempting to avoid losing. Nixon even said so. He just wanted to get out while avoiding as much of the negative consequences of defeat as he could. That meant that the war never would be won. And that, in turn, meant that my contemporaries (not to mention the poor bastards unlucky enough to actually live in Vietnam) were killing and being killed in what seemed at the time to be a hopeless and ultimately pointless exercise without end.

Obviously, the anti-war forces eventually won the domestic political battle and the US withdrew from Vietnam. And then an odd thing happened. The peace accords so arduously and solemnly negotiated and signed by the US and the leaders of North Vietnam in Paris were utterly ignored by the North. It was obvious that the government of North Vietnam had never intended to abide by any agreement with us pertaining to the independence of the South. Shortly after Congress prohibited any further monetary support for South Vietnam, the North Vietnamese sent a conventional army south and took Saigon. And we did nothing. We didn't even send money or supplies to our erstwhile allies in the South. We abandoned our allies and enabled the North to impose their particularly vicious brand of government there. The fall of Saigon was followed rapidly by "re-education camps" and a flood of boat people.

Did we realize in advance that these things would happen? Absolutely. And the fact that it happened, and that we knew it would happen and that we knew about it while it was happening made me ashamed.

Now I'm fifty years old (ugh!), and, at least partly as a reaction to the shameful behavior of our government in abandoning the South Vietnamese to the tender mercies of the descendants of Ho Chi Minh to achieve a wholly fake "peace", my political views have changed. My skepticism concerning government pronouncements remains fairly high, but I have also become much more distrustful of the people who supported the years long farce that was the negotiation and "implimentation" of the treaty ending the Vietnam war, and my trust in governments other than my own, especially non-democratic governments, is pretty close to absolute zero.

Which is why I would understand if John Kerry's views about the Vietnam war, and war in general, have changed since he testified before Congress in 1971. Kerry testified that "we found that most people didn't even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart." Well, yes, I am sure that being free of strafing helicopters and napalm attacks were things that people in Vietnam desired. But I think they wanted more. I think they wanted to be free. I think they wanted so badly to be free that some of them left everything they had ever known, everything they had ever worked for, and went to sea in old, leaky, overcrowded fishing boats in an attempt to reach Hong Kong and the haven of the closest democracy.

Because I would understand if Kerry's views on the Vietnam War and war in general had changed over the last 30 odd years, I need to hear from him whether they have and if so, in what way. I need to hear from him because he wants me to vote for him for President. He wants me to help place him in charge of our armed forces. Does he still believe that communism was no threat to the United States? Does he believe that North Vietnam honored the Paris peace treaty? If not, does he believe they should have, and what, if anything, would he have done to make them honor it?

On a more contemporary note, what, if any, military threats does Kerry believe the nation faces today. Does militant Islam pose a threat to the US? How would he deal with an attack of the scope of 9/11? Does he believe that, over and above any failure of intelligence which may have resulted in a failure to prevent it, the US bears any responsibility whatever for the attack of 9/11? I won't be satisfied with platitudes about "internationalizing" our response or "increasing law enforcement and intelligence efforts". I want specifics. He would not have gone to war in Iraq? OK. He needs to tell me what precisely he would have done. Then I can compare the likely results of his actions to those of George Bush, and I can make up my mind.

I have to say, though, that Kerry's explanation of how his opinions had evolved over the years will need to be pretty convincing in order to earn my vote. He'll have to explain to me why he voted against the first Gulf War, then in favor of the second, then against funding the war he was supposedly in favor of. And he won't get my vote simply by saying George Bush misled him. He has to tell me what he wanted to do and why that would have been a good thing to do. And given that Kerry is saying that the War on Terror is more of a police and intelligence matter than a military campaign, I'd also like to hear whether and why he voted to freeze defense spending, and wanted to cut the intelligence budget (these last items are from Smash, no links available). Oh, and while Kerry's explaining things, perhaps he can tell me why he voted against military pay raises, cost of living adjustments, and family housing almost every time they came up (Smash again).

Until then, I am left to compare Kerry's voting record, for which, in my opinion, the kindest characterization is an attempt to be all things to all people, with Bush's record of disposing of two despotic regimes with minimal loss of life and attempting to establish something approaching democracy in each place.

The comparison, in the absence of a cogent and particularized explanation from Kerry, is not flattering.

2004-02-16T12:14:00.000-05:00

O! CANADA!

I've been getting a good long chuckle out of the bruhaha (brewhaha?) about Triumph the Insult Comic Dog's appearance in Canada.

The "issue" was first brought to my attention by Damien Penny, who linked to this hilarious weather report by Triumph in Hawaii. Sample: "Howard [anchorman], don't worry about the light winds. Hurricane Isabel couldn't mess up your hair."

But a similar act in Canada about Canadians was, shall we say, not well received in certain quarters.

American talk-show host Conan O'Brien took his cameras to the Quebec Winter Carnival where he launched a satirical attack on French Canadians that is sure to further offend Quebeckers still stinging from comments made by CBC hockey analyst Don Cherry.

Canada's government has condemned a show by U.S. late-night television host Conan O'Brien that insulted people in French-speaking Quebec and seemed to suggest everyone in the province was homosexual

American talk-show host Conan O'Brien turned out to be Conan the Barbarian on his road show into Canada this week. His NBC program threw oil and matches down our national fault line Thursday night with crude jokes about French Canadians. This one ran under the headline "Canada AmBushed by Loose Conan." Self parody just doesn't get much better than that. The linked article is worth reading just to see how the ijit worked Bush into this.

Oh, alright, I'll quote him: "Could it be that our growing U.S. criticism has set the Bush government out for revenge? Do the Americans secretly want to split up our two solitudes so they can pick up the pieces? Could the last week's events be part of a CIA plot to grab our oil, lumber, water and snow? Or our few remaining hockey stars?" Was he serious? Well, he was a few paragraphs earlier when he said "But I wonder how [Conan O'Brien would] feel if we let Canada's Insulting Beaver Puppet loose on U.S. TV to yuk it up about Sept. 11. We all have our raw nerves and O'Brien just hit ours. Where will this loose Conan take his show next? Maybe Ireland, where he could try out his Catholic-Protestant jokes?"

And the sketch that created all this furor? Two days later it was posted on the website of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

2004-02-15T11:42:00.000-05:00

MMMMM, COMMENTS!

Dr. S.A. Robertson is hereby awarded a prize (consisting of something completely worthless to be determined later) for being my very first commenter. Ever. Thank you, Dr. Robertson.

He points out that the political beliefs of the pool of candidates are skewed left, probably by biases built into the system which discourage conservatives from entering the fields to begin with. He is undoubtedly correct about the politics of the pool of potential candidates, and probably correct as to why. He concludes that it is therefore entirely possible that there might be no discrimination in hiring.

A valid point.

However, it was also once true that in a given field of employment, there were few, if any, minority or female candidates. In some cases, it still is largely true. Would an assertion that "we tried to find a candidate from [pick your excluded group], but received no applications from qualified candidates" work as a defense against a claim of racial or sexual discrimination in hiring, even if the assertion were absolutely true? I am no employment law expert, but I think that such a claim, by itself, would be insufficient. At the very least, it would have to be accompanied by a showing that, however small the pool of candidates from the excluded group, that pool was thoroughly searched and all qualified candidates within that pool were encouraged to apply for the position. The alternative is a system of what I call quotas and others call "goals and timetables."

And that raises a larger question. By complaining about Dr. Brandon at Duke, I am not advocating affirmative action for political conservatives. I think Duke should hire the very best philosophy professors it can entice to North Carolina. If that means that the hires will be uniformly liberal in their political leanings, it is only because Dr. Brandon and his colleagues, by calling people from half of the political spectrum dumb and casually dismissing them and their political beliefs, have been stupid enough to discourage half of the highly intelligent people who might otherwise have been interested in the field from pursuing a career in it. The result of this discrimination is that scholarship in the field will suffer by either declining or (more likely) not achieving as much as it otherwise might. There are advantages to diversity.

I think it is unfortunate that Professor Brandon, and those of his present colleagues who are perpetuating the problem, are not likely to suffer the consequences of that perpetuation, given the time frame in which those consequences will manifest themselves. But the "cure" of affirmative action is far worse than the disease. I do not understand how anyone could expect to achieve the elimination of de facto discrimination (by race, by gender, by political belief or by any other factor not relevant to the position being filled) by creating and enforcing a set of rules which imposes approved types of discrimination. It boggles the mind (mine, at least) to believe that substituting one set of discriminatory practices for another could somehow end discriminatory practices.

On the other hand, I would find the irony of Dr. Brandon being forced to undergo "sensitivity training" hilarious.

2004-02-15T08:41:00.000-05:00

PROGRESS

I remember reading a short book in either elementary school or junior high (I'm old enough to have pre-dated the "Middle School" craze that swept the American Educational Establishment) in which an Italian priest travelled to Moscow at the height of the cold war with a tour group and poked fun at the Soviet Union by lavishing praise on on humdrum things like plumbing as sterling examples of Soviet superiority.

In that vein, CognoCentric proudly announces the advent of Comments! None of that old fashioned whining, "Send me an email! Please!" No, no, no! Both CognoCentric readers (consisting of The Daughter and one other person who prefers to remain nameless, but whose initials are probably Carey Gage) can now fill the echo chamber with high praise about the low thoughts expressed on this site.

Comments will be unregulated, but I hope to have the problem of deleting obscene or abusive remarks.

The opinions expressed in the comments do not necessarily reflect the views of CognoCentric (duh!).

2004-02-14T10:07:00.000-05:00

Welcome Instapundit readers (and thanks for the link, Glen). Take a look around while you're here. You might enjoy reading Speech Police.