Armed Prophet

2005-01-17T01:04:00.000-05:00

IT'S BEEN GOOD

Just two weeks shy of my two-year blogiversary, I've decided to lay this blog to rest. I have no intention of removing the archives from the web, as many a Googler seems to find something interesting here each and every day. But this will be my last post.

As some readers know, it's a move I've been considering for some time. At various times during this blog's history, I had decided to abandon it or put it on hold for reasons of personal frustration, broken laptops and site-specific ennui (the general form of which, ironically, this blog usually served to keep at bay).

This time my reasons are different, and it simply boils down to a rearrangement of priorities. I have never been at a loss for interesting things to do, and in fact the opposite is usually true — I have far less time to devote to my interests than I would like. As of today, I am publishing the regional sports news aggregator Oregon Sports Fan, preparing to publish a friend's first book, writing a recurring feature for the local blog DCist, and more. Meanwhile, I've been meaning to re-apply myself to freelance journalism, an endeavor in which I had one hit and failed to follow up. I once thought this blog would aid my freelancing, but that hasn't been the case. While I thought this would be a scratch pad of sorts, it has instead led me to draw conclusions and write about them before I had really done all my homework. After considering these facts for a couple months, I finally went ahead and did the only thing that made sense.

Let me note that this does not mean I am abandoning the blogosphere entirely. My non-political blog, the Washington Canard, will return from hiatus shortly after this valediction is posted. It is even highly probable that I will eventually return to political opinionating in a blog format, but I consider it somewhat unlikely that I'll continue to do so under this same moniker. Don't get me wrong — it's served me well. Everyone seems to like it. And while I occasionally point out that I neither own firearms (stupid DC gun ban) nor do I muck around with prophecy (no ESP here), there are other reasons.

Armed Prophet's raison d'etre was at the time of its inception was the invasion of Iraq (which I support as strongly today as I did then). The phrase comes from Machiavelli's The Prince: "All armed prophets succeed whereas unarmed ones fail." Well, actually I haven't read much Secretary Niccolo; I found it in Robert Kaplan's "Warrior Politics," which I was reading at the time and strongly recommend to anyone, but particularly to those unsure that we have the right to wage war pre-emptively. And such was the basis for my selection. As Uncle Junior once told Tony: "Come heavy, or not at all." Armed Prophet is a name appropriate to a warblogger, which I haven't been for some time.

But I've enjoyed the last two years with this blog. Armed Prophet provided a below-the-radar and mostly anonymous outlet for my observations while as I was getting my journalistic bearings in the District of Columbia, a place entirely unlike anywhere I've lived before. Armed Prophet is the closest thing to a diary that I've kept; when I go back through the archives, I remember where I was and what I was doing and thinking at the time — at least when it comes to politics. I started Armed Prophet less than a month after I moved here on a permanent basis. In its early days it was fairly scattershot, and it took me awhile to find my voice as a blogger. But find it I did, along with a small but reliable readership.

In those two years I covered a lot of great stories and arguments, including (but not limited to) the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Colin Powell's now-infamous U.N. presentation, WMD reports that didn't bear out, Bush's ultimatum to Saddam and announcement of war, the fall of Baghdad, car chases, historic snowstorms, minor hurricanes, a dog rescue bumping national politicians off the cable news, Tractor Man, a Japanese wrestler-politician, the California recall and early word that Arnold would win big, a marathon Senate session, the Democrats' pre-primary winnowing process, Howard Dean's yearbook quote, the hateable Wesley Clark,
the more hateable John Edwards, Kerry's Iowa comeback, a DNC nightclub fundraiser, the Post's incredibly biased Dana Milbank, Slate's contemptible Tim Noah and laughable Will Saletan, the "tyranny" of Instapundit, Dr. Seuss' politics, Drudge's excitability, CBS's Memogate, "Fahrenheit 9/11" as well as other films with political implications obvious and not-so-obvious, GOP and Dem comedy shows, anti-war and anti-freedom libertarians, the occasional blind item and separated-at-birth feature, bizarre orthographic systems, color changes and other adjustments to the layout, crashing computers, publicity from Joe Scarborough, the Tiananmen Square massacre, Ronald Reagan in the Capitol Rotunda, my trip to the Republican National Convention in New York City, what I did with my 2004 ballot, a lengthy, semi-definitive post-election summary, and a brief history of the Internet.

If and when I resume making "arguments, contemplations, musings and ruminations on politics and media from inside the Beltway" in blog format at another location, I'll amend this post and show you the way.

2004-12-20T19:16:00.000-05:00

THE FERMATA

Well, folks. Looks like Armed Prophet is going to call it a year. In 48 hours time I'll be headed back to the West Coast to celebrate Christmas and New Year's with family and friends. Between haunting old haunts, catching up with old friends, watching one of them marry himself off, and fighting with wrapping paper (more wrapping than unwrapping, these days), the chances of me getting around to post anything are fairly low. So, the best to you and yours, and I'll see you in 2005.

2004-12-20T18:56:00.000-05:00

THE PERFECT WORD

According to Donnie Darko — apparently via Tolkien — the most beautiful phrase in the English language is "cellar door." I don't know if I buy such a notion, but I bet there is such thing as a "perfect word" (maybe something like perfect numbers, but I don't know enough to say. Via Dictionary.com's Word of the Day, I think I've found such a one in the French borrowing, "recherche":

recherche \ruh-sher-SHAY\, adjective:
1. Uncommon; exotic; rare.
2. Exquisite; choice.
3. Excessively refined; affected.
4. Pretentious; overblown.

Recherche is indeed uncommon, exotic and rare. I hold a bachelor's degree in English, yet I don't know that I've ever seen this word before. It is certainly exquisite. It is a word one would only use in an affected, overly refined manner. That's because it's French. And because it's so obviously French, it is almostnecessarily pretentious. The word is precisely what it describes. If anybody knows of any other such "perfect words," send them this way.

P.S. — But my favorite word is still "Zing!"

2004-12-19T01:01:00.000-05:00

GOOGLEZON, OR: HOW I WASTED MY EVENING

We don't really surf anymore, not like in the mid-to-late 1990s when we had time to simply explore the Internet (at least for those of us who didn't sign on until 1997). I remember a classroom debate with the proprietor of the panoply of peculiarities at laurabush.info about whether this Internet thing would "catch on." That debate, of course, isn't over &mdash as I'll get to shortly.

So, here's the result of some deliberate surfing of Google, technology news sites and web-head blogs -- not to mention taking up some recommendations via instant messenger:

"Listed on NASDAQ"

Mahir Cagri

Hamster Dance

All Your Base Are Belong To Us

Jib Jab

We Like The Moon

here's something I found

Scandanavian blog

Whigish futurism

lot

members of the IMDb

"The Future And Its Enemies"

describes his education

this blog

[T]wo California-based journalists, Robin Sloan (Sacramento Bee) and Matt Thompson (INdTV) did the piece. INdTV is the San Francisco based start up network headed by Al Gore and Joel Hyatt. The Evan Emerson piece talks about the obsolescence of news, but INdTV has strong connections to and is funded by people and groups including Rob Glaser of Real Networks, Steve Jobs of Apple, and the Googleoids. They're planning to ride the media obsolescence tsunami, not get swept under by it.

blog post

here are a couple WMVs

what I saw

this thing

message board

zur abwechslung mal widder was sinnloses, wobei misch die Musik langsam gefällt

to the alternation times more widder which senseless, whereby mix the music slowly pleases

"Bad Influence."

Boobah Zone

Hey, that was fun!
_____
¹Speaking of countless others, here is the hypnotic "We Love The Chocolate." Honest to God, the first time I looked at this, I let it run. In fact, as of this late evening posting time, it's still playing in the background.

² Among said others, Reason Magazine.

³ Am I wrong or is there no special character for the symbol representing 3.14159265…?

2004-12-16T11:30:00.000-05:00

STEEEEERIKE!

I'm too upset to write about politics right now. I explain why here. Oh, and I'm busy writing something else. But for the real reason, you'll have to follow that link.

2004-12-14T18:50:00.000-05:00

FOOLISH ELECTORS

Yesterday I wrote: "The electoral college meets today to cast their votes for president." On that I was correct. But the immediate next line turns out to be wrong: " We all know what's going to happen..." Oops. The Star Tribune reports:

Defeated Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry likely is going to get one less electoral vote nationally than he should have -- 251 instead of 252 -- because of an apparent mistake Monday by one of Minnesota's 10 DFL electors.

One of the 10 handwritten ballots cast for president carried the name of vice presidential candidate John Edwards (actually spelled "Ewards" on the ballot) rather than Kerry.

Ha! And they say the Republicans are stupid?

2004-12-14T11:31:00.000-05:00

THE SPOT

Memo to Jim Geraghty: I like what you write at your blog and all, but isn't it already past time to consider a title change?

2004-12-13T17:22:00.000-05:00

WHAT UNCLE NOAM WANTS

When Master Chomsky he steals his lady from her father's chateau in the stormy night, brings her down to the horse stable and ravishes her — without so much as a word passing between them — is that what he means by "manufacturing consent"?

Via BlameBush!, another concept blog that I've been enjoying a lot.

2004-12-13T13:06:00.000-05:00

ARE WE THERE YET?

The electoral college meets today to cast their votes for president. We all know what's going to happen, but in Ohio a number of groups — one calling itself "We Do Not Concede" — are still contesting the outcome. Democrats have even fallen in line behind a recount sponsored by the Libertarian and Green parties. How embarrassing. This, even though Bush won Ohio by at least 119,000 votes. Meanwhile, Kerry won Pennsylvania by almost the exact same margin, yet mysteriously there is no clamor for a recount there. I'm all for finding out exactly how the votes went down, but what's good for the Buckeye is good for the Keystone, right? (Meanwhile in the Evergreen State, it's starting to dawn on them that manual hand recounts aren't always the best.)

The plaintiffs in Ohio fear, or claim to fear, that the Republican party stole the election just as they surely did in 2000. Jesse Jackson has even taken to using his Chicago Sun-Times column as a platform from which to ~~slander~~ libel Ohio Attorney General Ken Blackwell, a conservative rising star in the Republican party, who just happens to be black. Jackson has nothing but a litany of imagined or irrelevant grievances that had gone stale weeks before Election Day (e.g. Diebold rigged all their machines). Don't forget that 16 percent of Ohio's African-Americans voted for Bush; that's not a lot in absolutes, but it's almost double the black vote Bush got in the state last time and well above the national average. Jackson is being dinosaured, and he knows it. (Speaking of PA, both it and Ohio could conceivably have black Republican governors in two year's time.)

Anyway, amid all this fuss about whether the GOP is stealing elections or not, I find it very amusing that one of the county Democratic chairmen in next door Indiana has — get this — just been arrested for vote fraud. If this was a Republican, you can be sure the chattering classes of Washington would be all over it. Liberal columnists would be raising their eyebrows and Chris Matthews would be lining up guests. Then again, that doesn't sound too different from what's been happening already.

P.S. — I should also mention this terrific USA Today article on race and the Bush White House. Bush is the first president to nominate a Hispanic to one of the top four Cabinet positions, and he is the first president to have women and minorities (and in Condi, both at once) among his closest advisers. Not that you've heard much about it, though:

One reason it has gotten little attention is because Bush himself rarely talks about it. At a convention of minority journalists in August, Bush declared, "If you look at my administration, it's diverse, and I'm proud of that." But he doesn't cite numbers. Bartlett and other Bush aides sounded surprised when told that Bush's record on diversity in top jobs matched that of Clinton, who was praised for expanding opportunities for women, blacks and Hispanics.

If Clinton was the first black president, then surely Bush is the second.

Update, 5:42 p.m. — I wrote the first draft of this almost 12 hours ago, in a pre-caffeinated state. The many, many grammatical errors have now been fixed. Even if you don't care, I do.

2004-12-10T15:16:00.000-05:00

DAZED AND CONFUSED, ALL RIGHT

"Dazed and Confused" actor (and blogger) Wiley Wiggins has a comment on the suit against Universal Pictures and Richard Linklater two posts down that's worth expanding on:

These guys are really wrapped up in believing that the characters in the movie are "them", and not that Rick just used a couple of last names that stuck in his head from childhood. Seems like they're actually kind of secretly thrilled by the idea.

I was really dismayed about that quote of mine that they used. I didn't "tell" the Daily Texan anything. They scraped my blog for a story. When the Washington Post uses a college newspaper that is using Google to get info for a story, it's time to write the whole thing off. I just hope these lunatics don't try to subpoena me for making fun of them.

Obviously Wiggins isn't a disinterested party, but his take sounds very plausible. I'm sure Slater, Wooderson and "Pink" Floyd are having a great time with the attention they're getting. In that Post article, their thrill doesn't sound all that secretive.

He's also right on the second point -- about UT-Austin's Daily Texan misrepresenting his communication with them -- and it relates to a point I recently made about journalistic laziness. But it's worse than that. I found the original Daily Texan article, which claims the quotes from Wiggins were in an "e-mail" to them. But all the quotes attributed to him are to be found right here on his blog. Way to go Daily Texan, and way to go Andrew Tran, writer of the story in question. One can forgive the Washington Post's Peter Carlson for not digging deeper, but Tran should know the difference between a "blog" and an "e-mail."

You know, this is how Jayson Blair started. I look forward to Mr. Tran's future misrepresentations.

P.S. -- Via Wiggins' blog, this is one of the most inspired concept blogs I've ever seen. I think it's worth a bookmark.

2004-12-10T13:30:00.000-05:00

THE MIRACLE WORKER

Charles Krauthammer, in this morning's Post:

For almost a decade before Sept. 11, we did absolutely nothing about Afghanistan. A few cruise missiles hurled into empty tents, followed by expressions of satisfaction about the "message" we had sent. It was, in fact, a message of utter passivity and unseriousness.

Then comes our Pearl Harbor, and the sleeping giant awakens. Within 100 days, al Qaeda is routed and the Taliban overthrown. Then the first election in Afghanistan's history. Now the inauguration of a deeply respected democrat who, upon being sworn in as the legitimate president of his country, thanks America for its liberation.

This in Afghanistan, which only three years ago was not just hostile but untouchable. What do liberals have to say about this singular achievement by the Bush administration? That Afghanistan is growing poppies.

Indeed. I'm just starting in on Robert Kaplan's "Soldiers of God," mostly written during the Soviet invasion of the 1980s. Karzai himself puts in a brief appearance as the "most moderate and Westernized of the mujahidin," and he cuts a slim but interesting — and promising — figure as a son of privilege who came around late to responsibility and political leadership. Hmmm, why does that sound familiar?

2004-12-09T17:08:00.000-05:00

SAY MAN, YOU GOT A JOINT?

Am I ever glad the Washington Post decided to put its resources into following up the recently-reported lawsuit against Universal Studios and director Richard Linklater — by a trio of Texans named Floyd, Slater and Wooderson. Reporter Peter Carlson, in a highly readable if somewhat fanboy-ish feature story, is appropriately skeptical of their claims. Specifically, they're suing for defamation, violation of privacy and causing severe emotional distress and mental anguish. Here's Slater-san himself, sounding something less than anguished:

When Andy Slater saw "Dazed and Confused," he was peeved about the character named Ron Slater, played by Rory Cochrane -- a stoner in a pot-leaf T-shirt who makes bongs and inhales deeply and launches into a stoned rap about how George Washington used to toke up, smoking righteous weed in pipes packed by our first first lady, Martha Washington.

"Who knows? I might have said that," says Slater, a bachelor and a building contractor in Huntsville. "I said a lot of things. I was quite outspoken back then. That's probably why Rick Linklater might have chosen me as a character -- because I disagreed with marijuana laws and I was vocal about that even in high school. But I was never walking around with a marijuana leaf on my shirt or handing out joints. I was not that character in that movie."

I'm certainly inclined to be sympathetic, because I sure would hate for my reputation as an adult to be that of my reputation as a teenager. Then again, as much as they protest, Carlson catches them laughing about the situation:

"I was skiing in Colorado one time," says Wooderson, "and I turned in my skis and said, 'Wooderson,' and the kid goes, 'Wooderson? Like in "Dazed and Confused"?' I didn't say anything, but somebody with me says, 'Yeah! This is him!' And the kid says, 'Dude, you need to come party with us!'"

I seem to have misplaced my subatomic Stradivarius. Yet lawyers they have found and suits they have filed. And it looks like they're going for the gold:["Dazed" actor Wiley] Wiggins told the Daily Texan that he and Linklater had previously discussed making a "Dazed" sequel that would show how the characters had degenerated into "gas-pumping hungry ghosts of their former selves."

The lawyers find that comment very interesting.
I'm not sure that I do. For one, that movie was never made (and almost certainly shouldn't be.) Two, as mentioned, Slater is a building contractor. It turns out Wooderson is a computer systems engineer whose son goes to Harvard. And Floyd is the service manager at a Dodge dealership. Perhaps they would have been astronauts but for Linklater's slander against them, but I doubt it. Under what circumstances can a non-famous person contest the use of their identity, or use of the likeness of their identity? Maybe FLOG™ has a better-informed take on all this. I don't know, but it would seem that this case could set an absurd precedent. Is it more relevant that these characters are similar to the real-life individuals, or that the characters are not literally about these individuals? The line here seems very thin:

"Like, for example, the scene that shows me showing somebody how to make a bong in shop class," says Andy Slater, now 45. "I did not do that. I never did that. But they used my name and they show me making a bong in shop class." ... Well, of course. Making bongs in shop class -- that is a tad far-fetched.

"Oh, no, they did that," says Slater. "But it wasn't me."

It'd be a lot cooler if you did.

2004-12-09T11:58:00.000-05:00

TEARS FOR FEARS?

Mary Frances Berry is definitely gone from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, but the Washington Post's Darryl Fears has apparently bought her side of the story:

But after Berry, the liberal chairman, who is black, and Reynoso, the liberal vice chairman, who is Latino, stepped down Tuesday, the composition of the commission changed.

Sure, if by "stepped down" you mean "told to clean out your desk."

2004-12-08T16:35:00.000-05:00

NOW HIRING

I've had a bad week. But not like this:

This newspaper, in a decision that was not wildly cheered by all concerned, has decided to end this column and my affiliation with USA TODAY.

So writes Walter Shapiro in "Hype & Glory," his long-running column for America's widest-circulated newspaper. If that doesn't sound bitter enough, check out Shapiro's you're-gonna-miss-me headline:

Ideas, not agendas, drove column

Subtle, huh? Actually, Shapiro's column was one of the better things in the sometimes unfairly maligned daily. I'd say he's marginally more insightful than your average news analysis columnist. A choice between the New York Times' Adam Nagourney and Shapiro at McPaper (what can I say, maligning is fun) is no choice at all. I wouldn't put him up there with Newsweek's Howard Fineman or Los Angeles Times' Ron Brownstein, but as I said -- marginally more insightful than the Dick Polmans and Dana Milbanks (shudder).

So what happened? Editor & Publisher hits on the most obvious reason -- the editors who gave him so much access to so much prime real estate -- nearly a thousand words (and sometimes more) every Wednesday and Friday -- left or were replaced. But there are at least two more that E&P were too polite to broach. Luckily, this sometimes-in-the-know blogger, is not.

The first other explanation, it's been suggested to me, is that Shapiro didn't do as much for USA Today (look Gannett, I'll defend your flagship up to a point, but I won't capitalize the whole thing) as they'd wanted. He's rarely on TV (the last I saw him was on C-SPAN in mid-2003) and it's even rarer when a Shapiro column is used as the basis for a cable talk segment. For what it's worth, in two years I haven't mentioned him once.

The other, I hear, is that the column has been particularly lucrative for at least one entity: Walter Shapiro. Gannett, USA Today's parent, isn't a charity. And Shapiro lost his benefactors.

Anyway, let us shed no tears for him. Shapiro is bound to get picked up by another outlet before long, so I can go back to reading and enjoying his words and never thinking to mention it to anyone.

2004-12-08T10:46:00.000-05:00

NICE TRY

Wait, what's this? More controversy at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights? Apparently you-know-who doesn't plan to go quietly just yet:

Mary Frances Berry, blunt-spoken chairwoman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, resigned Tuesday after more than two decades of criticizing the governments, both Democratic and Republican, that she served.

Berry, an independent, and Democratic Vice Chairman Cruz Reynoso sent resignation letters to President Bush a day after the White House moved to replace the two. Both had resisted leaving Monday, arguing their terms wouldn't expire until midnight Jan. 21, 2005.

The White House maintained that their six-year terms expired Sunday, and Berry and Reynoso had been replaced.

In brief letters to Bush, Berry and Reynoso said they believed they still had more time to serve but it wasn't worth the fight.

"Given that the conclusion of my tenure is only a few weeks away, a legal challenge [Note: Remember, that's how she got her job back when Reagan tried to dump her.] would be an unwise expenditure of resources," wrote Berry, a civil rights history professor at the University of Pennsylvania. "Therefore, I am resigning my position as commissioner on the United States Commission on Civil Rights effective immediately."

Okay, now she's gone. I think.

2004-12-07T13:16:00.000-05:00

DING DONG, THE WITCH IS DEAD

Yesterday the president did something that should have been done a long time ago:

President Bush on Monday moved to replace Mary Frances Berry, the outspoken chairwoman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission who has argued with every president since Jimmy Carter appointed her to the panel a quarter century ago.

Remember, "outspoken" is journalist-speak for "disagreeable":

But Berry balked at leaving now, arguing through a spokesman that she and vice chairman Cruz Reynoso, who also is being replaced, have terms that run until midnight Jan. 21, 2005. The White House maintained that their six-year terms expired Sunday and that Berry and Reynoso had been replaced.

Actually, it turns out Reagan did try to sack her back in the 1980s, but litigation saved her. This inexcusably long tenure would make her the J. Edgar Hoover of the race racket. Larry Elder points out:

[W]hen President George W. Bush attempted to appoint a black man to the commission, Peter Kirsanow, Mary Frances Berry filed suit to prevent Kirsanow from joining the commission. She unsuccessfully argued that the current occupant on the board still had several years left in her term.

I'm not familiar with the commission's tenure rules, but apparently this is a recurring theme. Clinton made her chair in 1993 and reappointed her in 1999, one (technically, two) of his many ill-advised picks in the name of diversity (think Janet Reno and Jocelyn Elders, just to name a few who got through). President Bush has been assembling a Cabinet that "looks like America" too, but somehow he's managed to avoid his party's malcontents.

Anyway, whatever happened to "I serve at the president's pleasure"? What is she, a federal judge? No, but she does seem to be the jury and executioner. In her role at the commission, she doesn't have any actual power -- she can't put anyone away -- but she can cry racism at the drop of a hat. And so she has, most recently, and notably, at Jeb Bush over the 2000 election.

Yet it would be a mistake to think her legacy is simply one of clashes with conservatives. Before Florida, Berry nearly destroyed the lefter-than-NPR radio network Pacifica (which she then chaired) when she insisted on throwing out the white guys. And a decade before that, the Washington Monthly noted her "bitter single-mindedness" and concurrent tendency to cause problems for those in her corner.

In fact, the most prominent anti-Berry web presence comes not from the right, but from the left. So I assume my liberal readers can join with me and say: Good riddance.

UPDATE, 5:33 p.m. -- It turns out that Kirsanow himself has had a commentary on the current situation at NRO since yesterday morning. It doesn't sound like he'll be missing Ms. Berry, either.

2004-12-06T17:37:00.000-05:00

YOUNG REPUBLIC-ANS

Noam Scheiber is one of TNR's young turks, and today he's got a thoroughly defensible slight dissent from not-much-older editor Peter Beinart's cover story (which argues well that Democrats beyond the leadership need to take foreign policy seriously (this would seem obvious to me, but then I'm not a Democrat)). But then Scheiber goes and writes something that is rather distressing, especially to someone (me) who thinks the Democrats should take foreign policy seriously. Here it is:

Had John Kerry won in November, he would have eventually had to choose between opening firehouses in Baghdad and opening those firehouses in Detroit, and that decision could have provoked a nasty intramural fight.

No, no, no. Christopher Hitchens explained this fallacy (and ugliness) of this particular Kerry attack in July. For one, a better Iraq is in our best interest (and everyone else's but al-Qaeda's). For two -- though I'm not sure it's in Hitch's piece -- no such choice ever arises because fire departments are funded at the local level whereas nation-building is done by the federal government. For three, as Hitchens writes, it's short on principle:

So, why not just say that the Republicans are squandering "our" money on a bunch of foreigners? … Solidarity and internationalism, indeed, used to be the cement of the democratic Left.

Scheiber's wrong -- it was nasty already. And he also loses it elsewhere in the article, for entirely different reasons:

The sudden change in the dynamics of the primary race was probably best epitomized by the unofficial Kerry campaign slogan at the time: "Dated Dean, married Kerry." The flirtation with Dean had been a highly satisfying fling, but, when it came time to vote, Democrats wanted someone who could win, not someone who touched them in their Bush-hating erogenous zones.

Ick! What John Kerry does to you in your own home is none Meanwhile, Scheiber's fellow young Republic-an (yes, I realize how tortured a construction that is) Jon Chait is perfectly capable of stimulating his own anti-Bush erogenous zone in his own web piece, "Mad About Me," which you can already tell is masturbatory for yet another reason.

Oh, those crazy kids. At least they're not making up stories about Alan Greenspan investment bank cults and the First Church of George Herbert Walker Christ.

2004-12-04T01:50:00.000-05:00

THE TROUBLE WITH GOOGLE NEWS II

Earlier this year I pointed out how Google News' algorithms create something much less than a satisfactory newsreading experience, in part by putting disreputable news outlets on an even footing with legitimate ones. To my knowledge, Opinion Journal's James Taranto was the first to note an egregious example -- earlier this month, Google News made a satirical piece about Bush getting arrested for war crimes in Canada its top story -- and now Jack Shafer is on the story as well. Unfortunately, it seems he wasn't able to get anything out of them, either. I know Google wants to keep its algorithms a secret, but there's no excuse for treating the Associated Press the same as WorldNetDaily, or in this case, some left-wing conspiracy zone called Axis of Logic. Google News can be useful, but it's at least as frustrating as it is enlightening.

2004-11-29T13:52:00.002-05:00

WORD GAMES

Democrats may be slowly realizing the need to resuscitate the word "liberal" while taking "conservative" down a few pegs. This morning, they get some help from Robin Wright and the headline writers at the Washington Post:Iran's Conservatives Consolidate Power
This means that either President Bush is going to start enforcing religious law at gunpoint, or that the ayatollahs plan to enact major entitlement reforms.

You probably heard that the Marxist terrorist group, the FARC, supposedly targeted the President for assassination when he visited Colombia last week. I searched high and low, yet nowhere could I find a headline along the lines of "Colombian Liberals Plotted Assassination." Hey, Washington Times! What are you waiting for?

2004-11-26T23:10:00.000-05:00

UNILATERALISME

The Diplomad identifies the one thing I can say in favor of French foreign policy:

With genuine admiration we must say that there is no other country on earth that pursues its core national interests in as determined and ruthless a manner as France.

No kidding. France is doing just that in the Ivory Coat, where they appear to have carte blanche to prop up their stooges and protect French commercial interests. I don't know enough to say they're wrong to do so, but I think the French word for this is — I checked with Babelfish — "hipocrisy."

The Diplomad elaborates on this particular "core national interest":

Suffice it to say, that France never reconciled itself to giving up its empire there and, so, it hasn't. Countries such as Ivory Coast and Senegal are independent in name only. The French give them permission to have a flag, an anthem, some postage stamps (printed in France), some funny colored currency (printed in France), perhaps a national airline, a President and membership in the UN. That's about it.

Damn this unipolar world. The French are colonialist assholes just like us, only (a lot) worse. And of course, they do so with the backing of another set of stooges at the ever-more corrupt U.N.

The Muslim world is at war with itself — and we've been brought into it. Meanwhile, the French are at war with their own place in the world — and we're just as inextricably involved.

P.S. — Interesting blog, this Diplomad. Written by a Republican working for the State Department. It's like the late Belle de Jour, only even more on the down-low.

2004-11-24T22:29:00.000-05:00

RATHER SILLY

Heminator, at the still-operational Rathergate.com, on Dan Rather's self-serving post-announcement reflections:

I'm not sure there's violins tiny enough for this. Someone breakout the electron microscope and the subatomic Stradivarius.

Allow me to get my Instapundit on: Heh.

P.S. — While I'm just linking and not really writing — I may do a lot of that over this Thanksgiving break — I recommend this post at Oxblog to anyone who thinks the U.N. has any moral advantage over us.

Update, 11:40 p.m. — Jay Leno, approximately, on Rather:

Dan Rather said stepping down was the hardest announcement he's ever had to make. Well, second hardest, actually. The hardest was announcing that Bush was reelected.

More Reynolds mimicry: Indeed.

2004-11-24T16:16:00.000-05:00

THE NETWORK THAT CRIED WOLF

If you never saw the anti-Fox News documentary "Outfoxed," rest assured that it was really, really bad. So bad that some I know who were moved by "Fahrenheit 9/11" found "Outfoxed" unconvincing.

But one critique made sense to me: that Fox abuses their whoooosh-gong! News Alerts. Here's a late October post by John Little at Blogs of War, who clearly agrees.

What the hell? Rita Cosby just ran a FOX News Alert for the 5 hour old Tom Ridge announcement that the terror alert level will not be raised.

Damn they're getting annoying. They’re better than the rest but still annoying. Why don't you guys at FOX try reserving the alerts for actual news for a change.

This is true, but they also use it for "actual news" of a trivial nature &mdash most recently and egregiously, the Scott Peterson trial. I suppose I could be talked into believing the News Alert was warranted &mdash once only &mdash when the verdict came in. But please, not when the judge denies a change of venue motion. James Lileks agrees too, and he remembers a fonder time when

a Special Bulletin would make you soil your drawers. They didn’t break in for anything. When you heard the words "We interrupt this program," the best you could hope for was an assassination.

Fox is of course not alone, to paraphrase Pat Moynihan, in defining news down (though they are the industry leader). Or to paraphrase The Incredibles, when every news story is important, none of them are.

2004-11-23T11:18:00.000-05:00

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE MEDIA, PART MCXLVIII

Frequent readers of this blog know that I do not believe in media bias, because it's not a matter of belief. New evidence piles up daily (see previous post). But frequent readers also know I don't think the liberal-left tilt of many outlets and writers is the only bias making the news less reliable. There's also a bias toward laziness and a bias toward sensationalism. This post deals with the latter.

Sensationalism involves more than friviolous story selection, and I usually don't mind that kind; that's what US Magazine and tabloids like the New York Post are for. So long as the information is true and presented accurately, it's harmless. But there's the rub -- sensationalism also involves presentation; sacrificing a trenchant interpretation of the facts for a more entertaining or politically correct one.

Mickey Kaus and James Taranto frequently catch the New York Times spinning on welfare reform and crime statistics, issues on which the Times repeats liberal boilerplate. But even tabloids cross the line when they willfully misread survey results. Take for instance a New York Daily News story from this morning:Jon Stewart's news gets their vote

America's twentysomethings, who are tuning into politics, trust Comedy Central fake-news king Jon Stewart more than network vets Peter Jennings and Dan Rather, a new study shows.

Asked whom they trust more to inform them on politics, 17% said NBC's Tom Brokaw, followed by Stewart of "The Daily Show" at 16%. ABC's Jennings had 15% and CBS' Rather had 10%.

And most people, 26%, picked "none of the above," according to the survey by Global Strategy Group and Luntz Research.
So the Daily News runs with the headline "Jon Stewart's news gets their vote" even though the top three vote-getters are well within the margin of error, and Tom Brokaw is technically ahead of Stewart. More significant is that a quarter-plus of all respondents said none. And 16% are missing -- perhaps they didn't recognize any of the names?

What's maybe news here is that Stewart is seen as a legitimate source of information (a proposition I shudder at, and anyway don't quite believe) and that story would have been fine. A little stale, but truthful. The writer here apparently wants you to think Jon Stewart is more trusted than actual news anchors, but that just isn't the case. In fact, the Daily News' story isn't even "fake but accurate." It's flat-out wrong.

The only thing that saves it is that it is trivial on its own level; this blog is probably the only one that will point out this story. Yet stories like this accumulate, day after day. I don't know what the overall impact is -- certainly not as much when it's the Daily News as compared to the Times -- but it can't be good.

It's not exactly related to the CBS scandals or the talk show-ification of the news, but I still have the nagging sense that the connection is more than superficial. And remember, it's not that Jon Stewart's respectability has risen to the level of a Rather or a Jennings. It's that they have fallen to his.

2004-11-22T13:33:00.000-05:00

IN THE LAND OF THE BLIND, THIS ITEM IS KING

Which Washington Post reporter thinks this is a fair way to describe how fellow Skull & Bones alumnus George W. Bush views his domestic political opposition:President Bush has ousted Saddam Hussein, toppled the Taliban and defeated the Democrats, but last week he took aim at a more enduring foe: the federal bureaucracy.
You won't be surprised, unless you didn't know the Post had a Bonesman on staff. Bush held off one Yale rival this month, but another one survived — and he thinks he's got a mandate, too.

2004-11-22T11:41:00.000-05:00

THE NOAM-MOBILE

Did you know that Noam Chomsky has a blog? I can't be sure if I knew before this weekend, but if not, hat tip: Ben Kerstein. Apparently he's been doing it on an intermittent basis since June of this year. Simply, that I don't really know if I was familiar with this or not is a good sign.

In fact, I'm actually pleased to have the old leftist himself on the internet, because for one thing it brings his inflated stature down to our level. Chomsky's quickie paperbacks typically comprise interview and lecture transcripts and rarely add up to anything more than capitalistwarmongeringAmerica-bashing. But on the web, Chomsky has to sit down and write a post, one letter after the other, like you or me. And when he does, he gets very boring very fast.

His lectures rarely stay on one topic for more than a few seconds, which can be maddening to rebut -- by the time you have a comment on his interpretation of French withdrawal from Indochina, he's off saying something crazier about U.S. activities in post-war Germany. The blog allows time to response, and commentary is built-in. At first you might think Chomsky would do well in cyberspace, where hypertext would allow him to spin off arguments in different directions by providing links. But Chomsky never links. And when you think about it that second time, you realize that Chomsky doesn't want you to spend a lot of time comparing his argments against themselves.

This, especially after I spent a few minutes looking through the archives. Dare I say, I can't find much to disagree with in his short entry on fascism, which could even be interpreted as warning his acolytes off using it as a term for the Bush administration (almost). In another entry, he concedes that the "media IS liberal." And in the most recent, it's perhaps surprising that he doesn't buy claims that Bush stole the election through voter fraud. In fact, he actually defends the notion.

Another happy development: Chomsky's blog is all but invisible unless you visit Z-Mag or Indymedia (I did when I was locked in ideological battles, but eventually I earned my degree and left). He might sell a lot of books, attract huge crowds and media attention, and influence the thought patterns of the idle famous, but on the internet he's just another bore. In the virtual marketplace of ideas, where his disproportionately influential fans hold less clout, no one's buying.

P.S. -- Speaking of Chomsky and Chomskyites, get a load of the New York Times Magazine's interview with Elfriede Jelinek, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature:

Why doesn't your husband move to Vienna to be with you?

Because I need to have a second home in another city. I have to be able to escape from Vienna as often as I like. That's why the home in Munich is almost more important to me than it is to my husband, who is fond of Munich because he grew up there.

What a lucky guy Mr. Jelinek must be.

2004-11-19T11:18:00.000-05:00

WHO IS JOHN GALT?

I still don't know for sure; I gave up on that book somewhere near the 400-page mark. But maybe it's one of these guys.

2004-11-17T11:24:00.000-05:00

TIME TRAP

Harold Meyerson, contributor to the American Prospect and columnist for the Washington Post, apparently thinks it is perpetually 1933:From Ronald Reagan to Newt Gingrich and now to George Bush, the Republicans have developed a clear [theme]: They are the party of risk, which they call "opportunity." This is most certainly not why Bush won reelection; Americans are not pining to pay for their health coverage or retirement or college tuition with no assist from their employers or their government.
To my chagrin, the era of big government isn't quite as over as Clinton declared nearly a decade ago. Indeed, President Bush's "ownership society" is emphatically not a withdrawal of the government from people's lives. Instead it seeks to make government more flexible, to create government-administered individual accounts for the expenses Meyerson lists.

According to Meyerson's risk/opportunity equation, it's obvious that when he sees opportunity, he immediately thinks "risk." The two are inextricable, of course, but there's no reward without it. And he's wrong to think people are perfectly happy with the government as it is. People would like greater flexibility when it comes to health care and Social Security. But Meyerson and his fellow New Deal defenders don't even want to try. That's one more reason why Democrats keep losing elections.

2004-11-16T20:52:00.000-05:00

LIBERAL HERESIES

And I thought Kevin Drum was the only left-wing blogger capable of second-guessing left-wing pieties. Check out Chris Bowers from MyDD:

There are two liberal issues that I think we should drop ... The first is gun control. Even though I have never owned a gun, and never intend to own a gun, this is an issue that has never resonated with me. Have any of our gun control laws reduced gun-related violence? Are there any further laws we could pass that would be more effective than just enforcing the laws we have? Forgive me if I sound a little NRA, but are guns really a major part of the problem with our violent society?

I can almost feel the ground moving, however slightly. What's more, the (gazillions of) commenters below his post are not completely antagonistic to his point. A few invoke "Bowling for Columbine," of course, but a surprising number confess that they really aren't all that anti-gun themselves.

It's too soon to say, but maybe this election will bring about some kind of political realignment. Maybe now we're getting somewhere.

° ° ° ° °
Update, 11:42 a.m. Wednesday -- It turns out Nick Kristof wrote something rather similar on Saturday. I don't like many of his alternate solutions -- the signal-if-loaded idea is especially bad -- as they make the same mistakes as previous policies. Then again, I don't hold out much hope that the left will altogether "drop" their objections to guns as Bowers seems to recommend; rather they'll soften certain positions, more like Kristof proposes. But for the time-being I'll take their willingness to rethink gun policy as a good sign.

2004-11-16T15:39:00.000-05:00

JUST A NOTE

I'm not sure yet if I'll put anything else up here today, but if you haven't stopped by the Washington Canard in awhile, I've been posting again starting yesterday.

2004-11-15T16:33:00.000-05:00

PROVE YOURSELF

From a truly ridiculous left-wing blog that foolishly insists on calling itself a member of the "reality-based community":

More shocking news for the Right...

I want you all to know that, in 1999, when Bush was visiting Kennebunkport, I know people that sold him coke. They never sold their story to the media, because, well, look at what they did. But, it seems fitting now that it be released, especially on this ad-hungry Blog that is only in it for the money.

Prove my sources wrong, Right-wing uniters. I know you want to, I can already sense it.

Damn! I guess he wins this round.

2004-11-15T14:06:00.000-05:00

THAT'S INCREDIBLE!

I neglected to mention two other important right-wing elements in "The Incredibles." It may be an important one because, as Blog pointed out in the comments to my previous "Incredibles" post, I neglected to say anything about foreign policy. I spoke tooo soon. One is the unilateral, military-aided covert mission Elastigirl/Mom and the kids undertake to rescue Mr. Incredible/Dad from Syndrome's jungle island lair. Heck, this is just "Rambo" with water around the edges.

But far more important is an early bad guy -- the cackling French villain Bomb Voyage. I think that's really all I need to say.

Also in the comments, FLOG™ noted a hostile review in the left-wing Eugene Weekly, back in Oregon where he lives and I used to. The author of that column was "unable to put [her] finger" on what it all meant, but knew she didn't like it. The Nation seems to agree, except that it knew exactly what it was saying. Their review ominously concludes:The family is the foundation of our society. Freedom is on the march.
Yes, ominously. (Hat tip: Sullivan.)

A much more interesting and more open-minded read is the New York Observer's treatment of "The Incredibles" and "Team America," which can be found here. They write that the film's box office success -- the "first hit of the Bush II years" -- suggests (to some, if not the authors) that "the right wing has even wit and creativity on its side these days," and while liberals wander in the wilderness, the conservatives are "raking in millions of potential philosophical converts at the movies, the way the liberals used to during the Easy Rider–Graduate days of the 1960's, when the right wing couldn't catch a break in the culture."

All quite interesting. I'm still waiting to hear what Brad Bird has to say about all this.

2004-11-11T21:01:00.000-05:00

PROTESTING TOO MUCH

Josh Marshall has highlighted a choice example of what he calls a "fringe-right spasm of hatred," namely an essay at Human Events suggesting that instead of the blue states seceding, the red states should expel the blues from the union. But there is one tiny detail he has overlooked: the title includes the presumably crucial phrase "A Modest Proposal." Perhaps Marshall would be interested to hear that a writer by the name of Jonathan Swift once advocated the murder and eating of at-risk children!

The Human Events article admits up-front its satirical nature and is clearly written as such. Just because it's not everybody's cup of tea hardly makes it hateful. If Josh Marshall is concerned with spasms of hatred from the fringe, perhaps he should take a closer look at the very popular, frequently nasty left-wing blog where he found this alleged hate speech in the first place.

2004-11-11T19:33:00.000-05:00

UGH

Apparently Brian Williams will be anchoring live coverage of Yasser Arafat's funeral starting at 4:00 a.m. EST tomorrow morning on MSNBC. Is Arafat's funeral worth covering live a la Princess Diana or Ronald Reagan? I should think not. This is some way for Williams to preface his tenure as Tom Brokaw's replacement.

And via Drudge I learn that CBS News broke into the highly-rated "CSI: New York" during the show's last minutes to report Arafat's death. Unbelievable. But now they're apologizing. I'm pleasantly surprised, and glad to hear it.

By the way, I'm not so vexed by Jimmy Carter's heartfelt response. It's an outrage, yes, but after his praise for Kim Jong-Il nothing he says can shock me.

It took too long for Arafat to die, and now it's taking too long to get over him. The sooner he's buried and left in the past, the sooner we can move on to helping the Palestinians organize some elections. The next few months present a real opportunity for things to change -- but the window could close again all too quickly.

2004-11-10T18:00:00.000-05:00

THE CONSERVATIVES?

If you haven't seen "The Incredibles" already, by all means go see it. Pixar continues its improbably consistent run of damn fine movies. A dull moment nowhere to be found, the animation is ever better, and it's a more adult film than "Toy Story"s and "Monsters Inc"s that have come before. More surprisingly, it may be gaining a reputation as a conservative movie. The first one I caught very quickly: the story's inciting incident is a flurry of short-sighted, foolish lawsuits against the much-needed superheroes for unintended property damage and unwanted saves, among others. John Edwards may well laugh along with the rest of the audience during this part of the movie, but perhaps he and his former colleagues on the bar should think about how people see them.

Second, the movie's treatment of achievement and recognition thereof clashes with the self-esteem-obsessed educational philosophy espoused by the liberal-left. Told by his mother (aka Elastigirl) to keep his super abilities to himself so not to set himself apart -- "Everyone is special," she advises -- son Dash mutters, "Which is another way of saying no one is." But Dad (aka Mr. Incredible) is sympathetic, grumbling, "They keep finding new ways to celebrate mediocrity." Later in the film, arch-villain Syndrome -- who is normal but has invented technology bestowing him with similar powers -- announces his plan to sell his devices to everyone: "Because when everyone is super, no one is."

The New York Times' A.O. Scott noticed some of these same things. He writes, "various do-gooders, meddlers and bureaucrats -- schoolteachers, lawyers, politicians, insurance executives -- ... have driven the world's once-admired superheroes underground, into lives of bland split-level normalcy." Say, not unlike the Title IX proponents whose policies have shut down men's university-level sports when there isn't adequate women's participation to maintain gender balance. Or as Scott calls it, "misguided egalitarianism." Scott and even suggests Ayn Rand as the movie's intellectual godmother. Did I mention that there's a diminutive, black-haired foreign genius lady in the movie? There is. (Well, this blog identifies the late Hollywood costume designer Edith Head as the model for Edna Mole, which is more plausible...)

Then there's Frederica Matthewes Green at NRO, who approves mightily that the movie's "pro-family themes" triumph over "middle-aged boredom, temptation, fidelity," the unexpected inclusion of "a knock against the notion of a right to suicide, of all things" -- i.e. Mr. Incredible's unappreciated thwarting of a suicide that sets off the lawsuit avalanche.

And now Slate's Michael Moore-defending movie reviewer David Edelstein, who joined his fellow critics in praising the movie in his initial review, even grudgingly concedes the point about the stifling of children's individuality and creativity in the face of reader e-mails, admitting his lack of experience with public education.

Certainly it's easy to pick a few scenes out of a film and fashion an argument around it. I'd be skeptical that writer-director Brad Bird (auteur of "The Iron Giant" and formerly with "The Simpsons") did much thinking about assisted suicide laws, but I would bet money he's sick and tired of the insistence that everyone is equally talented or important when that's simply not the case. It's a tough lesson to swallow, but an important one.

The absurd disappearance of the word "winner" from the Oscars is one consequence of this fixation on unrealistic equality. More consequentially, the stubborn left-wing argument for equality of outcome economic
is one such consequence of this stubborn belief. Whether Bird knows it or not, he's written and directed an effective -- and wildly entertaining -- indictment of politically correct values.

And think -- we only just finished arguing about "Team America."

2004-11-10T15:12:00.000-05:00

JUDY WOODRUFF IS AN IDIOT

Well, I can be more diplomatic than that: During a segment on CNN's Inside Politics yesterday afternoon, she was an idiot. Woodruff interviewed the Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of the left-wing Tikkun magazine. Lerner was there to provide a recitation of the cliche that the Democrats need to get religion. Ever the skeptical journalist, Woodruff pressed him on a few claims. Relevant portion of the transcript:

LERNER: The reason why significant sections of the electorate switched to the right is because the right at least understands that there is a spiritual crisis. The liberals think that the only thing that hurts people is economic needs.

Well, yes, people care about economic needs. But for a very large number of Americans, the real crisis in their lives is spiritual.

It is the way in which people feel lonely, they don't know who they can count on, they feel that their relationships may at any point be undermined, the family life is being undermined. And the only people they hear speaking about it is the right.

If the liberal and progressive forces in the Democratic Party and outside were to talk in this discourse and be sensitive to the spiritual crisis, then it would be possible to argue the content of what's the best way to challenge the selfishness and materialism in this society. But if you just give that to the right, then of course everybody who cares about that is going to respond to the right.

WOODRUFF: But how does that square with what we know is written in the American Constitution, you know, where there is supposed to be a separation between church and state? How is it that you would have politicians addressing the spiritual needs of voters?

1) Does Woodruff really believe, as she implies, that the phrase "separation of church and state" is in the U.S. Constitution?

2) Does Woodruff really believe that a politician who talks about faith and values is stepping over the line? Or just Democrats?

If you want evidence that CNN tilts as far left as Fox does right, the fact that Lerner was interviewed as a wise man in the first place is a good place to start. As for Woodruff, though, she may be too clueless to present any coherent point of view.

P.S. -- Speaking of addled mainstream news anchors, you might want to check out this short clip of ABC ex-anchor/now-reporter Carole Simpson waxing paranoid about the connection (that exists in her mind) between modern conservatives and antebellum slaveholders. I'm not kidding. There's also a link to the archived C-SPAN program it came from, which is a post-election panel discussion sponsored by the Newseum. (Unsurprisingly, there is only one conservative on the panel, and equally unsurprising, it's the easily dismissed Pat Buchanan.) I've watched about half of it, and Simpson makes absolutely no effort to hide her condescending liberal opinions, which if you don't share, you must be stupid, and that scares her.

2004-11-08T17:33:00.000-05:00

NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT

Last week a John Kerry "confidant" -- which could mean "dry cleaner" for all we know -- ratted out the senator's daughter Alexandra Kerry to the New York Post's "Page Six":

"She had an entourage of five people with her everywhere she went. A hairdresser, makeup artist, publicist and two assistants. It ended up costing something like $8,000 a month. And she didn't exactly do anything."

Wow, eight grand per month? Either Alex Kerry wasted a lot more money than they're letting on, or the Democrats don't believe in paying their workers a living wage.

° ° ° ° °
Update, Tuesday, 12:39 p.m. -- You comment-boarders are just being silly. Which is fair, because this post is a silly one. But Mickey Kaus seems to agree with me:

Maybe I've gone Hollywood, but $8,000 a month for Alexandra Kerry's entourage doesn't seem like so much. Does it to you?

Is that it, have I gone Hollywood? Or just East Coast? Remember, this was the most expensive presidential election in history, with some $1.5 billion likely spent overall. Yet mega-millionaire Affleck-pal Alex Kerry's publicist can't even afford a power lunch at the Palm?

Never mind terrorism, gay marriage, "moral values," the "Massachusetts liberal" label, the Swift Boat veterans and Michael Moore -- the Democrats have worse organizational problems than any of us imagined.

2004-11-08T11:58:00.000-05:00

EU-PHEMISMS

Use of language reveals a lot about one's mindset -- there's no mistaking what side of the abortion debate someone who uses the term "anti-choice" comes from. There's another loaded phrase that's been with us for a long time, but isn't as instantly recognizable. Here it is used in a weekend op-ed in the Post, about Britain and Europe coming to terms with President Bush's re-election:

Finally, there is the Middle East, one of [Tony] Blair's central passions in foreign policy. He told his party's annual conference in September that once the U.S. elections were over, he would tell Washington it was time for another attempt to advance the peace process.

Notice how "Middle East" is used as a euphemism for "Israel-Palestinian conflict"? (And somewhat less objectionably, "peace process" for resolution thereof?) Using mention of the whole region as shorthand for one particular conflict is misleading (I need not give you a rundown of all the conflicts extant over there) and I particularly problematic because it has bestowed primacy to this conflict above all others.

Certainly during the pre-Iraq invasion debate, many asserted that a solution had to be found in Israel before Iraq could be dealt with. I disagreed vehemently because Arafat would never truly support peace (much less as a favor to let the U.S. settle business with a dictator then subsidizing terror attacks against Israelis).

I don't want to overstate my case here. This euphemism is not the cause of the impression that the Israel-Palestinian conflict must be settled before anything else can. But it has allowed it to become entrenched, because handy phrases have a way of settling debate on the matter which they describe.

Thank you. Today's English lesson has concluded.

2004-11-05T11:57:00.000-05:00

PLEASE GO AWAY NOW

Did you know that Alan Keyes

did not congratulate Obama after the race was called, a tradition among politicians, because doing so would have been a "false gesture" because he believes Obama's views on issues like abortion are wicked.

"I'm supposed to make a call that represents the congratulations toward the triumph of that which I believe ultimately stands for and will stand for a culture evil enough to destroy the very soul and heart of my country," Keyes said. "I can't do this, and I will not make a false gesture."

Would that this be the last we hear of Alan Keyes. Also, if the idea to recruit him for the Senate was the idea of someone at the Illinois Republican Party, I hope they've been fired. Considering how much effort the state party did to support his candidacy, they already might have. And for this, of course, Keyes is blaming Illinois Republicans:

He also said he was disappointed in what he called the number of "Republicans in name only" in Illinois. An Associated Press exit poll showed that four in 10 Republicans voted for Obama, a liberal state senator from Chicago.

"I had counted on the fact that Republicans would come back home on Election Day rather than vote a socialist into office who stands against everything they profess to believe as Republicans," Keyes said.

I agree that Obama's political philosophy is a poor fit with most Republicans. But Keyes' manners, prudence, and sense of propriety are worse.

2004-11-05T11:33:00.000-05:00

CLOSING TIME

I agree with TNR's Ryan Lizza about Kerry and Gore:What is it about Democrats that their finest moments are their concession speeches? Gore's speech in 2000 was the best of his public life. Kerry's concession, gracious and concise, was better than a thousand of his stump speeches. He really is a good closer.
Heh. Well, they do have some practice giving them...

P.S. -- Lizza's been contrite enough that I won't bother to mock him for predicting a John Kerry landslide on election day. And even so, Lizza was way behind another campaign-watcher (whom I know a bit better) on suggesting such an outcome, but I won't hold it against him, either.

2004-11-04T20:18:00.000-05:00

SWAN SONG OR FIGHT SONG?

John Edwards is exiting the national stage very soon, as he declined to seek another term in the Senate (in part because it was not clear he would succeed). Good. He's a phony, a jerk, a xenophobe and a demagogue. But on his way out, he happened to provide one last reason to hate him:

A senior Democrat familiar with the discussions in Boston told The Associated Press that it was Edwards who led the argument against conceding as the campaign staff’s talks continued deep into the night. The official said Edwards, a trial lawyer, wanted to make sure that all options were explored and that Democrats pursued them as thoroughly as Republicans would if their positions were reversed.

While trailing by six figures in all-important Ohio? Incredible. Part of me wishes he'd done so, just so everyone else would come to dislike him as much as I have since about 2003, when he flip-flopped from a war supporter to indiscriminate critic months before John Kerry followed suit. But give some credit to Kerry for seeing the obvious and doing the right thing for his country and party. Kerry's grace compares well to Edwards' impudence. I didn't trust Kerry with the presidency, but my skin doesn't crawl when he appears on television.

When his turn came to address supporters Wednesday. Edwards vowed that “this fight has just begun.”

“We will carry on, and we will be with you every step of the way,” he promised. “This campaign may end today, but that battle for you rages on.”

Oh, he'll be back, all right, even if he does have to deliver regurgitated Shrumisms (come on, Bob, let's make it 0-9!). But I doubt he'll get all that far, no matter what Will Saletan said -- for two columns in a row.

See you in two years, John.

2004-11-03T14:02:00.000-05:00

FINALLY, FINALLY, FINALLY

I returned home a short while ago to find that Kerry had finally called Bush to concede Ohio and the election. I'm too wired to sleep just yet, and as I type these words there are two speeches left to be given this afternoon. In the meantime, allow me to share a few post-election thoughts:

Yes, I really did think Kerry would win. But that was Monday and Tuesday. Had you asked me on Saturday and Sunday, it would have been a different story. The week before that, while Al Qaqaa dominated the headlines? Kerry again. The weeks before that one? Bush, of course. Before that, just after the debates? You get the picture. The important thing was being able to live with either outcome. When Bush was trailing for weeks on end throughout the summer, I managed to do this. We'll soon find out if others feel the same.

Since relatively early last night, bloggers and journalists have marveled at and mocked the incredibly wrong exit polling -- even I was wondering if the Republicans had pushed their dominance an election cycle too far. Yet this turned out to be the sole aspect of 2004 that went more awry than 2000. I can only add: Ha! And to the Washington Monthly's Benjamin Wallace-Wells, I say: Double "Ha"!

Karl Rove and Matthew Dowd are frigging geniuses, whereas Bob Shrum and Mary Beth Cahill are incompetent shlubs. That's what some will say. Or to get meta, that's what some will say everyone will say, even if only a few, uninformed commentators actually do. Nevertheless, the reputation of Bush's strategists will rise. Shrum, who goes 0-8 in presidential campaigns, may in fact be slammed as hard by some informed commentators.

Along the same lines, for the last four years Rove told everyone that 4 million evangelical Christians who might have voted for Bush did not because they weren't yet convinced he shared their values. Bush's conservative social agenda surely scared off some moderates this time. Last time around Bush's final popular tally was 49,820,518. With 99% of precincts reporting, his take was 58,527,956. In 2000 about 99.9 million votes were cast; this time it was 113.5 million voters. Even adjusting for the larger turnout overall, Rove may well have underestimated the pick-up potential among religious voters.

More along the same: Bush went from being the first president to win without a popular plurality to a) winning the first true majority since '88 -- Papa Bush, of course, and b) winning the largest popular majority in United States history. Boy, sounds like everybody must love that guy! Er ... right. An ever-larger country and an engaged electorate will do that.

Prior to last night, Ohio's Republican Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, was being painted as this year's Katherine Harris. And why not? Ohio was supposed to be this year's Florida -- which turned out to be true in tightness (though as of now it's nowhere near as close) but wholly untrue in terms of "irregularities." Like Harris, Blackwell is ambitious -- he's running for governor in two years. But unlike Harris, Blackwell has performed his job admirably.

Did Arnold help Bush carry Ohio? Assuming Bush really was trailing there last week -- after having mostly avoided the state throughout most of October -- it can't be entirely ruled out. Arnold has ties to the state going back to his bodybuilding days and, lest I point out, he's Arnold Schwarzenegger. I've been bullish on the notion of a Constitutional amendment to allow foreign-born citizens (of twenty years standing) run for the presidency, but it was pointed out to me this morning that Arnold may be one of the unintentional losers here. Had Bush lost, Republicans would have been looking for a new standard-bearer from outside Washington (and not named "Jeb.") But now Senators Bill Frist, George Allen and perhaps others have an eye on 2008. Any such amendment would have to meet with their approval. Why on earth would they ever allow what would amount to the "Conan The Destroyer (Of Your Presidential Aspirations) Amendment" to pass?

Gay marriage bans passed in every state where they were on the ballot, even in my mostly-liberal home state, Oregon. This surprised me some, because Oregon has a decade-plus history of fending off anti-gay ballot measures. Even there, where its passage was the narrowest, it wasn't close at 57-43. I think gay-rights activists should take two lessons from this. One, a wide majority of voters do not believe gay marriage is a simple issue of tolerance. Two, these amendments would not have been on the ballot without the Massachusetts Supreme Court -- proof enough that, like abortion, the public does not want complex social issues decided by judges. Three, chances are pretty good that this wide majority will narrow, then flip over the next generation. Patience.

We were spared four years of Tuh-ray-zuh (and having to pronounce it like that in mixed company). Journalists seem to think she would be tons of fun to cover, but this journalist/blogger vehemently disagrees: the shove-its, never-had-a-real-jobs, and lapses into Portugese were about as interesting as she was going to get. I was already bored. Admit it -- you were, too. Laura Bush may not be much of a character, but she is wholly unobjectionable and doesn't demand your attention to begin with.

On the other hand, I will really miss hating John Edwards.

The same goes for Terry McAuliffe, who has become (to my great amusment) the single worst major party chairman in the modern political era. I will certainly enjoy the deathwatch, which began last night the moment he declared: "This is the best election night in history."

No more election ads! But to some extent I will miss them more than John and T-Mac.

Almost as big as Bush's win was the near-landslide in the Senate and increased majority in the House. This is the second straight cycle where Republicans have gained seats (including the '02 midterms), and the second straight cycle where Democrats believed they'd learned some hard lessons. What will they fail to learn this time?

Meanwhile, Republicans will find themselves running the country without an assured operational majority. Having been repelled by the Democratic party of recent years, I've supported their gains. But they have not delivered on their promise, and deep down, I'm still a fan of gridlock and divided rule. Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad if that was the result of '06. But only if the Dems actually learn something. I'll get you started: Ignore Howard Dean and his allies.

This year was nearly a hat trick for Massachusetts. With all apologies to my friends who are from or have ties there, I can't say I'm disappointed.

I am sick, sick, sick of blogs. I'm certainly sick of "We did it!" posts from sundry conservative bloggers who usually can be counted on to exhibit more restraint. At first I was reading the "We wuz robbed" posts on the myriad liberal comment boards and thinking: Mmm, that's good schadenfreude! But eventually I got sick of that, too.

My side may have won -- overwhelmingly -- and to say that I am pleased is an understatement. But I've been following this personally and professionally for nearly two years, and I'm going to feel at least a twinge of loss.

After I get some sleep -- a lot of it -- I will return. It's been 34 hours since I awakened on Tuesday morning, and as it is, I'm pushing my luck. I'm too exhausted to be exhilarated. A little down time should do the trick.

2004-11-03T07:20:00.000-05:00

ONE OTHER THING

Sometime during the wee hours of the morning, I appeared on C-SPAN dancing with an office waste basket. If you don't believe me, Blog will back me up on it.

2004-11-03T05:47:00.000-05:00

DAWN BREAKS

On the East Coast, and we still don't have a winner. However, there were no retractions, no snippiness and no recount threats -- unlike last time. So we'll call this a success. Ohio may not be certified for 11 days while the provisional ballots are counted. They remain Kerry's last hope, but there is no reasonable expectation that they would make up the 140,000 votes he needs there. Another sign of success: Bush won the popular vote by more than 3½ million votes. While this may yet stretch on for awhile, at least we can be reasonably sure how it will end. Had it gone the other way, I would have been happy enough simply for the lack of acrimony.

And if you're wondering, yes, I'm still up. For how long? There's no telling...

P.S. -- Here's some election night trivia: This year, Bill Clinton campaigned for Senate candidates Betty Castor (FL), Chris John (LA), Joe Hoeffel (PA) and Tom Daschle (SD), plus House candidates Martin Frost (TX), Lois Murphy and Joe Driscoll (both PA). These candidates all have something else in common: All lost.

2004-11-03T01:02:00.000-05:00

I'VE BEEN UP

Since pretty much forever at this point. I'd blog more, but I can hardly think straight. With Florida called for Bush, you might think we could get a few hours off to catch some Z's and return early and rested? Ha! No way. Not as long as the mathematical possibility exists for Kerry to claim Ohio. I've been hesitant to call anything all night, but I guess I'll go out on a limb here, shortly after midnight, and presume Bush has won -- as have Republicans in general. Of course, if anything changes ... I'll still be here.

Update -- First, Fox called Florida for Bush ... but didn't immediately call the race. That task fell to James Carville over on CNN not much later. MSNBC says the presidential motorcade is assembling. No word yet on a concession from Kerry.

2004-11-02T22:36:00.000-05:00

LATER ON

The mood seems to be glum and getting glummer on the Dem blogs. It's been almost two hours since a state was called for Kerry, but it's too soon for them to panic or for conservatives to get giddy.

No state has yet flipped from 2000 to 2004, and I think Drudge is getting ahead of himself by coloring Michigan, Wisconsin and other states (most of them) pink. Bush continues to lead Ohio and Florida, but I'm hearing that Palm Beach County has yet to report yet, and that will yield a ton of Kerry votes. Then again, Bush seems to have put a bit of distance between himself and his opponent in the past hour.

Then again, I'm being told tonight feels a lot like 2000: moderate momentum for the Republicans most of the night until ... I don't need to remind you. It will probably be a long night anyway.

2004-11-02T20:47:00.000-05:00

OR NOT

I've been scanning the TV networks and a wide range of blogs tonight. The left and right are both trumping the numbers where they look good for their side. I suppose it won't be a short night. I'll be back when there's something substantive to report, or something substantive that isn't being said on television.

P.S. -- Bunning might actually hold on -- with 92% of the precincts reporting, he's got a slim lead.

P.P.S. -- The BBC's blog seems to think the blogosphere is doing a better job of covering the returns than television. I call bullshit! With a very few exceptions, the blogs are just repeating what they're hearing on TV.

2004-11-02T19:03:00.000-05:00

THE REPUBLICAN COLLAPSE OF 2004?

I don't know for sure, but if you're following early indicators, that's how it looks:

Slate shows Kerry ahead in virtually every important battleground.

According to MSNBC and Kevin Drum, long shot Daniel Mongiardo is beating decrepit standby and MLB Hall-of-Famer Jim Bunning, easily.

And futures market TradeSports.com, which has shown Bush with a lead for months, now reports a total panic: Kerry ahead 70.1 to 29.0.

It's going to be a long night. Or a very short one.

2004-11-02T11:15:00.000-05:00

ELECTION DAY

So it all comes down to this.

I. Last night I had one of those extended dreams that manages to pick up where you left off after waking up to check the clock or refill your water. Unsurprisingly, it had to do with watching the election results tonight. For a Prophet I'm not much of a predictor, but I might as well go with this:

First, in the all-important virtual state of FLOHPA -- that's a real term for Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania this year, not an invention of my unconscious mind -- Kerry kept PA, Bush kept FL, but Kerry also took OH. The truth is, whichever candidate wins two of three is very likely to win the White House. If one manages to sweep all three states, unlikely as that is, that's pretty much the whole game.

In my dream, Bush failed to win at least Minnesota or Iowa. As the rest of the states fell into predictable red and blue categories, a Kerry win seemed more and more likely. By the time Idaho fell into Kerry's column, it was really all over for the president.

If Idaho voting Dem wasn't strange enough, I was surprised to learn that Belgium is a U.S. state, occupying space where I always thought northern Georgia, western Tennessee and the eastern corners of the Carolinas should be. This didn't sound right to me, but yes, there it was on the map. Unless you're one of the few who claim never to remember your dreams (or never dream it all) then this makes perfect sense.

Anyway, this isn't a very good omen. No doubt the outcome was borne of my own anxiety, and the truth is that I am expecting Kerry to be the victory. In the past week since I posted, my feeling about who would win has swung back and forth repeatedly. While al Qaqaa was on the front pages, the race seemed to be tilting in Kerry's direction -- but the polls didn't reflect it. Then the Osama tape seemed sure to help Bush -- but the polls didn't show that, either.

The good news is that, in my dream, the winner of the presidential contest was apparent by shortly after midnight. This may be as likely as the land of Famous Potatoes turning blue, but maybe we'll be surprised. The latest national polls all show Bush ahead, but it's all within the margin of error. I'm afraid error is the only thing we can count on.

II. I promised I'd make my ballot public, and I'll hold to it:

Federal and Statewide Office:

President -- George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. If this surprises you, then you must be a first-time visitor. Welcome.
Senator -- Al King. He has zero chance, but I'm no fan of Wyden, and I can't bring myself to vote for a Libertarian at the federal level.
Represenative -- I actually like Peter DeFazio, and might well have voted for him. But ... I don't want to say too much, but after I did some pro bono work for him, let's say I didn't get the kind of feedback I'd expected.
Secretary of State -- Whoever the Libertarian is. Does it matter?
Attorney General -- Ditto. As long as they stick with domestic policy, they're fine by me.
State Treasurer -- You guessed it.

Ballot Measures:

Measure 31 -- Yes. I can't think of a good reason to vote against it.
Measure 32 -- Yes. From the bit of background reading I did on this, it sounded okay to me.
Measure 33 -- Yes. This isn't the best pro-marijuana law I've seen, but that doesn't mean I won't support it.
Measure 34 -- Abstain. I didn't have time to figure this one out.
Measure 35 -- Yes. Tort reform is badly needed in the state and the country at large.
Measure 36 -- Abstain. There are good reasons to vote for or against this, but I've never found gay marriage to be an easy call. I'm with the president, though -- civil unions are a good compromise.
Measure 37 -- Yes. Danimal may be sorry he backed my right to vote in Oregon because of this, and perhaps this bill isn't the best possible version, but in principle I like this as a threat against the government to keep it from meddling with private property.
Measure 38 -- Abstain. I was not about to spend my time researching the finer points of the SAIF Corporation.

Local Races:
For various local judgeships and water board positions where most candidates were running unopposed, I added the names of these Lane County, Oregon residents:

Daniel Atkinson
Ashley Olson
Olly Ruff
Tyler Graf
Matt Beutler
Morgan Beutler
William Beutler
Dave Frohnmayer
Jared Siegel

If one of you happens, somehow, to be elected, I apologize. Except for Siegel. You can count on him.

III. As some of you know, it's a short day for me at work today because I'll be working late into the evening. Perhaps all night. Assuming plenty of down time, I'll keep blogging into the wee hours of the morning. So I'll see you back around here later.

2004-10-26T20:07:00.000-04:00

STANDING ATHWART THIS ELECTION, YELLING STOP

I obviously haven't posted anything here for half a week. Sometimes I've had the urge, but not the time. Occasionally I've had the time, but not the energy. And when I've had the energy, sometimes I haven't had the urge. I'm afraid my interest in this election survived only until the last two weeks before the vote, and apparently no longer. Worse, I throw myself into the details every morning before dawn and don't emerge until the early afternoon. This is too much on top of enough already. If I worked in another industry I'd probably be blogging up a storm. Ironic, huh?

Wolf ads? Missing explosives? Clinton and Giuliani (and maybe Schwarzenegger)? Newspaper endorsements? Bush's travel schedule? I have opinions about all of these, but I can't say they're unique enough to warrant spending all the rest of my remaining time in front of a computer typing them out. If that makes me a bad blogger, well, so be it. I will continue to follow the race as closely as everyone else in this town, and I do care about the outcome, but that doesn't mean I'll be writing about it.

In other news, I have now cast my ballot in the state of Oregon (sorry, EYDP) and mailed it back. While the decisions I made on that ballot may not be a great surprise, I'll return on election day to summarize my votes. Will I return before that? It's possible. In fact, whenever I make announcements of hiatus, I'm usually back online in another day or so. I don't think that will happen this time, but you never know. At the very least, I'll see you on E-Day.

In the meantime, I'll be reading. From a book. About something other than politics. I should really do this more often.

2004-10-23T16:26:00.000-04:00

IT'S OCTOBER

Don't look so surprised.

2004-10-22T17:39:00.000-04:00

WHAT'S IN A HEADLINE?

Why oh why can't I kick my Slate habit? Frequent readers are sure to note that I cite Slate and its writers far more frequently than any other publication. Even my local daily, the Washington Post, comes in a distant second. Yet I read The Atlantic, National Journal, New Yorker and Weekly Standard regularly as well (ESPN, too), but almost exclusively in their print editions, which are mostly unlinkable. A few years ago I read Salon more often, but since they've turned (a) away from literature (b) toward relentless anti-Bush sensationalism and (c) a subscription/day-pass model, I don't read it very often.

Back to Slate. Here's today's read: "Political Poseur: Pretending to be a Republican in Blue California," wherein a Southern Californian wears Bush/Cheney gear in Democratic country, then Kerry/Edwards gear in predominantly Republican areas. What he finds is no great surprise to me -- the so-called liberals have a far lower threshhold of tolerance for dissenting views. This may have come as a surprise to the writer as well, but to his credit he sticks it out and takes the Dem-inflicted abuse.

But the headline writers didn't seem to pick up on that; as already noted, the subhead highlights his faux GOP adventures, though that amounts to maybe a third of the piece as a whole. Consider also the subhead to David Edelstein's "Team America" review: "The puppets of Team America skewer the right. If only they'd stopped there." Sheesh. Edelstein was critical of the movie's right wing humor to a point, and there was a tinge of exclusionary you-can't-make-fun-of-liberals-ism in his essay, but that subhead is an unfortunate distortion of his argument. I disagree with his piece, but to distill the teaser so crudely leaves almost any curious reader (left or right) disappointed.

I know Slate's editors primarily serve a left-leaning audience and so they craft their headlines and subheads to match those expectations. But I don't think they're doing their readers much of a service.

P.S. -- I happen to write a couple dozen headlines a day in addition to my regular writing duties for a Beltway publication (that I'll call only The Thermoqueue). So I can say with some professional certainty that the headline writers at Slate are not doing a bang-up job.

P.P.S. -- Is this trivial? Surely. But this is one of just a few posts in recent weeks that didn't end in a sweeping indictment of John Kerry or grudging endorsement of George W. Bush. I call it progress; this election cannot be over soon enough.

And now it's time to drink.

2004-10-21T21:56:00.000-04:00

A HIP, HIP GRAY LADY, MAN

In flagrant defiance of Manhattan's elitist cocoon, New York Times TV writer Alessandra Stanley has just given given a positive review to "Stolen Honor," the anti-Kerry Vietnam documentary Sinclair Broadcasting planned, over the objections of some affiliates, to show sometime this coming week.

That is, until recently: The port side of the blogosphere (good phrase, CQ) has been all over this and can reasonably take credit for stirring up the advertiser discontent that eventually scuttled the original gameplan (just as the starboard side can take credit for CBS's Memogate).

So Stanley's review is nothing less than the equivalent of National Review dedicating a cover story to the greatness of "Fahrenheit 9/11." (Update -- I forgot to add: Come to think of it, A.O. Scott also recommeded "Team America.") Good work, New York Times Arts Section. You've been far less hysterical than Slate and far less opinionated than the front page of your own newspaper.

Then again, Frank Rich is a huge demerit. I take it all back.

Hat tip: Instapundit, which I actually started to read again, after awhile.

2004-10-21T17:33:00.000-04:00

ROLLING EYES

As a friend and colleague of Armed Prophet's has noted before, it's nothing new for Jann Wenner to use his "music" magazine as a platform for political advocacy. Naturally, that's his right -- just as it was my right to cancel my subscription about five years ago and never look back (well, sometimes while standing in line at 7-11).

And now Jann is pulling out the stops for Kerry in the latest issue. There's a wide-ranging interview, a snapshot of his "icy efficiency" on the stump (funny, I thought Kerry was known for his lack of efficiency). And of course there he is, as you can see above-left, on the cover. Looks kind of sad, if you ask me. Almost as if he's thinking he might be seeing this very edition by the counter at the Georgetown 7-11 weeks after missing his ticket to the inaugural. Just kidding! That'll never happen -- Kerry doesn't go to Sevvies. Maybe once or twice during his Morgan Fairchild days.

And then there is the interview. This being Rolling Stone, there's the obligatory blurring of pop culture and reality:

Wenner: "How about Apocalypse Now? Was that what it was like going up river, on those boats?"

Kerry: "That's exactly how it was, man. Sitting in that river, waiting for someone to shoot you -- but the later part of the movie, after the point where they get to the bridge, then everything becomes a little psychedelic. That got a little distant from me."

Riiiiight.

Wenner tries to goad Kerrry into calling Bush a fundamentalist, which is something you might expect a conservative journalist to do. But Unfortunately for all involved except for Kerry, Kerry doesn't bite. In fact, it's a pretty straightforward interview. Not much new except for a half-promise to scrap the color-coded terror alerts (I cannot say I'm dead against this).

But then there was Kerry's answer about America's place in the world that sounded a bit bold, a bit rash, a bit ... dare I say unilateral?

Kerry: "We are going to live up to American values in our foreign policy. Rather than building a new set of nuclear weapons, like President Bush is, we're going to lead the world in containing nuclear weapons -- with a whole new protocol for tracking and dealing with precursor chemicals and with nuclear fissionable materials. We're not going to wait to intervene in places like Liberia or Darfur, where another genocide is taking place.

Hold the phone! Since when is Kerry so hot and bothered to invade the Sudan? A sovereign nation with no yellowcake?! (Just ask that one guy who used to work for the campaign ... who was that guy? Wasn't there some reason why Kerry got rid of him?) Doesn't Kerry know that the United Nations has Darfur completely under control? (Well, sort of.) And if the U.N. decided in the end to do nothing -- which is basically what's happening now -- is Kerry prepared to enter a predominantly Muslim nation, attack its insurgents and rebuild society for the oppressed and displaced tribes? Does he realize how this squares with his Iraq policy?

Actually, I wonder if Kerry even remembers that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the deaths of over a million Iraqis, just between 1991 and 2000 alone. That leaves out Halabja, Iran, Kuwait and the final showdown early last year. I'll believe John Kerry about his commitment to Darfur when he persuades me of his commitment to Iraq.

P.S. -- Has Bush done everything he can? Maybe, maybe not. The Wikipedia entry for the Darfur crisis gives the impression that we've made some pro-active moves while the U.N. and African Union have pretty much sat on their hands. Bush did respond to Liberia, though. A paradise it's not, but the crisis there was dispatched without much trouble, and now refugees are able to return.

2004-10-19T19:33:00.000-04:00

A REASONABLE RATION OF RATIONALIZATION

Reason has an interesting symposium up featuring both its own and like-minded writers, asking whom they'll vote for, whom they had voted for, etc. It makes pretty clear the post-9/11 libertarian right-to-left shift is well underway, as many are voting for Kerry. Harvard fellow and Grateful Dead crony John Perry Barlow:

I’m voting for John Kerry, though with little enthusiasm. This is only because I would prefer almost anything to another four years of George W. Bush. I don’t believe the Constitution, the economy, or the environment can endure another Bush administration without sustaining almost irreparable damage.

And then, a surprising number of these thoughtful people seem to think nothing of having thrown their vote away on minor candidates or apathy. Editor Nick Gillespie:

Probably no one but maybe Badnarik, if only to register dissent from the Crest and Colgate parties.

A few writers -- at least, a few more than in Slate's novelist symposium -- are actually voting for George W. Bush. If I had to write a short paragraph explaining both ideological and practical reasons for a Bush vote this year, it might look something like what UCLA law professor and Conspirator wrote:

George W. Bush. I almost always vote for the party, not the man, because the administration, its legislative agenda, and its judicial appointments generally reflect the overall shape of the party. I tend to think that Republicans’ views on the war against terrorists, economic policy, taxes, and many though not all civil liberties questions -- such as self-defense rights, school choice, color blindness, and the freedom of speech (at least as to political and religious speech) -- are more sound than the Democrats’ views. I certainly find plenty to disagree with the Republicans even on those topics, but if I waited for a party with which I agreed on everything or even almost everything, I’d be waiting a long time.

It's an explanation and not an argument, of course, but I think it explains precisely where I stand -- why I don't vote for Kerry, why I don't vote for a third party, and why I don't abstain. Taking one's vote seriously is salutary for the mind. In 2000, I changed my support from McCain to Bush based mostly on the presumption that Republicans would run the government more to my liking than the Democrats. I cannot say that's been the case. But when 9/11 happened, the Dems turned and ran left. Not just on the war, but across the board. For a while there was talk that Dean would supplant Clinton in the party; he did, at least through December 2003. Without terrorism on the table, I probably would have voted Republican again, barely, though I might have entertained a Democratic vote (but not for Dean or the fringe candidates) just to ensure a divided government. But never if I thought they could get anything done.

About that war: I thought then that Iraq was the logical second move after Afghanistan. I still think so, despite well-documented mistakes, many of which I am not sure could have been foreseen. Our successes in both countries vastly outweigh our failures. If the choice between Kerry and Bush is negligible because not much may happen in the next stage of the war (as Jonathan Rauch argues), I say: something just might, and what then? I'll vote for the guy who has shown he understands the conflict we are in and has acted accordingly. George W. Bush has done that. At times my confidence in him has wavered, but John Kerry has never done anything to earn it. Neither man may have a "plan" per se, but I'll vote for the one who has the right vision before I vote for one who has none at all.

If Bush wins, I will be satisfied and somewhat relieved that the electorate ratified -- however narrowly -- the difficult path we've taken these past few years. If John Kerry wins I will be displeased and a little more concerned about our approach to new challenges. I'd give him the benefit of the doubt that I don't think he deserves now. I'd have to. I'm not moving to Canada.

2004-10-19T13:06:00.000-04:00

WHO'S YOUR DADDY?

Everybody's talking about Jon Stewart's appearance on "Crossfire" last Friday. I missed it at the time -- Friday afternoons are bar hours, you know -- but I've seen it now and I say:

Stewart's criticism is inarguable; CNN's shoutfest is indeed less informative than the "Daily Show."

But he took it out on the wrong guy -- Tucker Carlson is the only person on the show willing to change his mind or concede an argument.

Jon Stewart should remove the "partisan hackery" from his own show before criticizing CNN's. At least "Crossfire" is balanced hackery.

Carlson's right -- once Stewart endorsed Kerry he lost all claim to not be an arbiter of what's important in the world.

Very frequently I find myself hating both shows, but I rarely miss them.

Speaking of hate and partisan hackery, James Carville is unable to hide it when he's lost an argument, and he becomes unhinged. Sometimes this manifests in a funny way, like when he put a wastebasket on his head (at right) during election night in '02, once the Democratic debacle became clear. Sometimes it's just unsettling. Yesterday, frustrated by reports that Bush was inexplicably inching upward in the national surveys, he lashed out, face reddened:

"Let me tell you about these media polls. Children shouldn't play with matches. Media entities shouldn't play with polls. They're going to get burned. Mr. Gallup, Mr. Newsweek, I'm your daddy. ... I'm your daddy. You are wrong. I am right."

Sort of like Jon Stewart, you had to see it to really get it. Somehow I doubt this one will show up on Bitorrent, but if it does I'll let you know.

2004-10-19T06:33:00.000-04:00

SO

Bush gains in the polls and all my readers/commenters go away, is that what happens?

2004-10-17T18:10:00.000-04:00

TERRORIZE THIS

I saw "Team America: World Police" in a screening last weekend and loved every second of it (biggest laughs: the AIDS song, the hammer and Kim Jong-Il's pumas), but by this point I've obviously lost out on my chance to write an exclusive review/response. What I had is 500 words long, barely halfway finished, and going into my "unfinished" folder. So I'm just going to link to Roger L. Simon's take. He and a few of his commenters say it all, in particular about some left-liberals (that's you, Ebert -- you too, Kos) who can't take a joke when its directed at them.

"Team America" does poke fun at U.S. foreign policy in places, but conservative blogs have cheered it on anyway -- because the anti-war crowd gets hit harder and more frequently. The right is used to being disparaged in the mainstream media, but for the left it's new, uncomfortable, territory.

Besides, I'd much rather have this movie on "my side" than "Fahrenheit 9/11."

P.S. -- The Washington Post put its negative review by third-stringer Hank Steuver above the fold on the front of Friday's Style section. Where was the wildly positive review by Desson Thompson published? On page 33 of the Weekend section. I'm just saying.

P.P.S. -- But the Glorious Revolutionary Federation of Fortune 500 Killers hated it*. That's surely a good sign.

___
* This I would never have known if Google News didn't consider them a worthy source.

2004-10-17T17:27:00.000-04:00

BUSH=MAO!

Well, that's a new one to me.

2004-10-17T16:30:00.000-04:00

I'M JUST SAYING

CNN/USA Today/Gallup has Bush ahead by eight points among likely voters, which even I don't quite buy. This was embargoed until noon today. Drudge has has it up since that time, or very possibly earlier, considering his regard for media embargoes. Yet neither Gallup nor CNN have made the results available. Now it's after 5:00 p.m (though I realize it's always 5 o'clock somewhere). Inquiring readers want to know.

Also this weekend, Newsweek buried its likely voter results (Bush up 6) with the nothing-to-see-here headline, "Too Close To Call." Have some faith in your research already!

Democratic observers have criticized the Gallup poll's likely voter model this year, claiming new voter registration and other factors made Gallup's voter models out of date. Perhaps. Even Newt Gingrich told the Los Angeles Times: "We don't understand this election. No one does." But when last week's Gallup poll showed Kerry up one, those complaints magically disappeared.

I may believe the poll overstates Bush's lead, but last week's Gallup survey was one of two polls showing Kerry with a lead. AP/Ipsos, we're waiting...

P.S. -- Democratic polling expert Ruy Teixeira (a nice guy, from my experience) makes a weak attempt to knock down the poll at his blog, the cumbersomely titled emergingdemocraticmajorityweblog.com.

"The Emerging Democratic Majority" is the name of his 2002 book, his argument, his bid to be one of the "prophets of the new political order." So far it hassn't been working out.

2004-10-16T22:47:00.000-04:00

ANOTHER ROUND, PLEASE

Well, I said I was waiting for the next round of polling, and all of the post-debate polls released so far show Bush ahead by an average of almost 4 points.

The Washington Post's tracking poll actually has Bush gaining 2 points and Kerry losing 1 compared with the previous day. I turn a skeptical eye toward the actual numbers of these rolling polls, but the trends they show are a good determinant of momentum. Kerry had it until a few days ago, and there's no doubt the race is closer than it was before the debates, but it seems Kerry's momentum stalled sometime in the past week ... say, just after the third debate.

Pretty much all of the post-debate talk has been about Mary Cheney. In contrast, Bush's erroneous "not concerned" statement about bin Laden has been a secondary topic at best. (I saw a partial transcript of last Thursday's "The View," and the ladies there came down on Kerry pretty hard.) This is probably a sign that the Bush campaign won the post-debate spin war, and an overwhelming majority of the public believes Kerry's comment was inappropriate. Even in the Kerry-sympathetic bar I was at, there was an audible gasp when he mentioned her name. Who's even asking about bin Laden? (I could mount a partial defense of Bush's statement based on Noah-esque selective hair-splitting, but it would be a waste of typing.)

Whether the goal was to highlight Republican homophobia, dissuade religious conservatives from voting Bush, it backfired. Putting Elizabeth Edwards out there to suggest Lynne Cheney was "ashamed" of her daughter, and Mary Beth Cahill's bizarre, seemingly mean-spirited assertion that Mary was "fair game" only compounded the problem.

Then there is anecdotal evidence that the debates, however widely-viewed they were, didn't change many minds. Nobody in this town really knows how much debates matter. Their importance is always viewed in terms of who took the oath of office the following January. Bush is said to have won the debates in 2000, but he did still lose the popular vote.

As of today, the race remains a toss-up, of course. If I close my eyes I can imagine either man declaring victory three Tuesdays from now. Yet just as John Kerry appeared to be gaining the upper hand, his own words may have leveled out those metaphorical hand positionings.

° ° ° ° °
Update, Sunday, 7:13 p.m. -- Slate's non-hysterical political correspondent, Chris Suellentrop, agrees that public disapproval of Kerry's invoking Mary Cheney probably explains Kerry's stumble in the polls this weekend. But he also highlights some purple state numbers that are definitely in Kerry's favor. Then again, national surveys sometimes have a way of influencing state polls. And now Gallup has delivered precisely the news he speculated about, as I've written above.

My guess -- not prediction -- is that Bush could win convincingly, depending on the news from Iraq and the campaign trail over the next two weeks. But if Kerry pulls it out, he'll do so by a narrow margin.

2004-10-15T13:44:00.000-04:00

A LIKELY STORY

Quoth Tim Noah, my other favorite punching bag at Slate, objecting to Bush's disparagement of Massachusetts:

I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've heard any liberal sneer at any state of the union, and the people who did the sneering were usually morons.

Do you believe this? I don't believe this. Well, I believe the second clause. But the first is preposterous. The entire southern region of the country regularly comes in for abuse from the left, Florida and Texas chief among them in just the past four years. I've heard snide comments about this myself many more than five times, and Noah is two decades my senior. I call bullshit!

P.S. If he's made a mental reservation that he can count each finger as many times as he'd like, then he could be telling the truth.

2004-10-14T01:00:00.000-04:00

THE FINAL DEBATE

Obviously, no debate blogging tonight: I went with some friends to a bar over in Adams Morgan to watch it there. This was by far Bush's best performance; he was much more confident than in recent debates, and the desperation in his voice previously was almost entirely absent. Too bad it took him three debates to mention that Kerry voted against Gulf War '91, which met all the criteria he seems to have wanted this time. Kerry did well enough, but stumbled some over tax policy, gay marriage and abortion. And bringing up Mary Cheney again was a big mistake. Was all this enough to be declared the loser? No. The media will call this a draw, I'm sure, which means they'll probably try to declare him the winner in another three days. The second round of polling will tell all.

Enough for now. It's late. Besides, all the action is happening in the comments section three posts down.

2004-10-13T17:12:00.000-04:00

COLORBLIND

What's a "yellow state"? Anybody who knows anything about electoral parlance -- to say nothing of the color wheel -- knows we call swing states "purple."

2004-10-13T16:10:00.000-04:00

MARK HALPERIN'S MAKE-UP CALL?

Surely by now you've seen the Drudge-published memo by ABC's top political editor, Mark Halperin. (If not, Halperin asserts that Bush, unlike Kerry, is trying to "win the election ... at least partly through distortions" of the opponent's record and positions, and so releases his staff from the need to "reflexively and artificially hold both sides 'equally' accountable.") Lefty bloggers, who believe Bush is "qualitatively more dishonest" than Kerry, approved mightily. Meanwhile, the Right side of the blogosphere complained that this was basically license for journalists at the network to be as liberal as they saw fit.

But today Salon import Jake Tapper and writer Dennis Powell hold both campaigns equally to account for various statements they've made in recent weeks. To summarize their conclusions:

Bush cites a National Journal survey that found Kerry to be the liberalest senator last year -- but that's because he was out on the trail; his lifetime ranking is lower.

Bush claims Kerry's health care plan would put 8 of 10 Americans on Medicaid, i.e. the government dole. Actually, the number is lower.

Kerry claims Bush's mismanagement of the war is a primary reason for high gas prices, but the truth is there are several factors of greater significance.

Earlier this week Edwards said stem-cell research would cure a host of ailments "when John Kerry is president," but no advocate of the research technique thinks it will yield such benefits for decades.

I agree with all four points. And if anything, Bush's statements are qualitatively less dishonest than the Kerry camp's. Bush's statements exaggerated things that are essentially true: Kerry is "among the most liberal senators" (quoth a National Journal editor) and his health care plan relies heavily on the government. No, it's not 8 of 10. But it is 6.5 of 10.

Meanwhile, Kerry's statement is an outrageous case of demagoguery without regard to the facts and a subtle appeal to the lunatic no-blood-for-oil crowd. ABC's expert notes, there are "issues in Russia [including the Yukos debacle], there's rampaging Chinese demand growth, there's a lack of tankers, a shortage of refinery capacity" and there are more -- count in Venezuela and the hurricanes.

And Edwards' statement, while perhaps not intended as it sounds, nevertheless politicizes the unfortunate passing of Christopher Reeve and encourages false hopes about what stem-cell research can do for people. Because there's no way it could do what Edwards said. Yet even today a campaign spokesman disingenuously insisted: "That's what the scientists tell us — that we're not that far away from breakthroughs." Please.

Read it for yourself -- it's pretty even-handed, but seems to identify more egregious statements on Kerry's part.

Was Halperin, via Tapper and Powell, calling a foul on one team to make up for a poor call made earlier in the game? I have no way of knowing, but it seems like a fair guess.

2004-10-12T18:38:00.000-04:00

WHY SOMEONE WHO DISAGREES WITH THE PRESIDENT ON MOST ISSUES SHOULD VOTE FOR HIM NONETHELESS

My mother is a lifelong Democrat. In 1988, I remember that she voted for Jesse Jackson in the primaries before going on to support Dukakis in the general. Since then she's voted for Clinton twice and Gore once. Yet this year, to my surprise, she is currently undecided, and asked me to make the case to her why she should punch out a chad for George W. Bush. Here is what I wrote back to her:

good case why that's Bush

more credible commander-in-chief

I assume she will still go ahead and vote for John Kerry in the end. She pulls down a pretty impressive income, but claims to not mind paying taxes. On most domestic issues, she is very much a mainstream Democrat. But she also has five children, and my youngest sisters are under ten; whether the "security mom" phenomenon is real or media-created, that would still be her. So if she is to base her decision on foreign policy -- not the only issue in this election, but by far the most important one -- then I can't imagine why she would do anything but punch out that chad for George W. Bush. And that goes for the rest of you.

P.S. -- My father is a lifelong Republican (albeit one who did cast his ballot for H. Ross Perot in 1992) and I assume she hasn't consulted him because if she did cross party lines, she'd never hear the end of it. So for those of you who are not reading an anonymous blog right now, please keep this under your hat.

2004-10-09T13:49:00.000-04:00

WHEW

The good news from down under today is that John Howard did not meet the same fate as Spain's Jose Maria Aznar. Australia knows what's up.

Meanwhile, this is not so good. But didn't we all expect Karzai to win, anyway? I'll take bitterness from the losers over car bombings at polling stations. It hasn't been violence-free, but I'm staying optimistic.

Plus, Iran says: Why yes, we'd let a President Kerry bribe us! That sounds like a swell idea!

2004-10-08T20:49:00.000-04:00

PRE

Okay, that's enough blogging for right now. This time I'm going to watch the debate without turning away every moment or so to type notes to myself. How bloggers like VodkaPundit can liveblog (while drinking, of course) and still follow the debate is beyond me. And believe it or not, I am actually 100% sober right now. On debate night! On a Friday! But fear not -- I will have a whiskey and coke with the evening's entertainment.

Back later.

2004-10-08T20:42:00.000-04:00

POST-POST POST

It's past time to drop the Cheney-Edwards talk, so we'll call this the last one.

Partisans on both sides saw a win for their man; so-called disinterested observers saw a draw. And like the first debate, few minds seem to have been changed. A few of my readers have taken me to task for saying Cheney won. Note, these are my readers who are also planning to vote for Kerry or skip the election altogether. In any case, I tend to forget that Cheney has relatively low approval ratings, and that Edwards is still too new to most viewers for strong opinions to have formed. That counted in Edwards' favor.

Plus: You think I'm living in a dream world? Check out how Slate's Will Saletan opened his debate recap:

Now are you sorry you didn't nominate this guy for president?

That's what I wanted to ask Democrats as I watched John Edwards knock Dick Cheney around the ring tonight.

Sheesh. Did I mention it was arrogant, too? Saletan's is not just a minority viewpoint; it's an extreme minority viewpoint (and one Andrew Sullivan also holds; that's another strike against him). It's one thing to say the edge goes to Edwards, but quite another to argue that he "took Cheney completely off his game."

Saletan is well ensconced in the "liberal cocoon" he's helped to spin, and which his colleague Mickey Kaus writes about. So much so that Kaus actually called him out on this, and Slate editor Jacob Weisberg faulted Saletan for the same mistake on another topic (in the follow-up to the Saletan-Weisberg piece I criticized earlier this week), admonishing him for being too impressed with Kerry's latest batch of TV ads. Wrote Weisberg:

Will, I agree with you about everything except the ads. You're reading your own lucidity into them. Unfortunately, they don't reflect anything like the kind of message clarity you've been hoping for.

The more convinced William Saletan is that Kerry is rebounding is all the better for Bush. Four years ago in mid-September, Saletan decided to explain "Why Bush is Toast" in a column that I find extremely fun to read. Please, Will, whatever you do, keep spinning.

2004-10-08T19:28:00.000-04:00

POLL DANCE

I've never liked the cable news nets' online polls. As they admit, the polls are unscientific; what they won't admit is they're just trying to generate web traffic and turn occasional viewers into dedicated watchers. We've always known that these polls serve no legitimate news function, but now that we know they're being deliberately manipulated shouldn't there be some demand to discontinue the practice, at least in those malleable, first few post-debate hours?

The possibility exists that these polls might actually show voter enthusiasm or organizational strength (as this blog argues), but the act of going out to vote at a polling station is quite different from voting in an online poll. Nor do we know if the majority of online participants are themselves going to vote. I would expect many are college students or dilettantes less interested in supporting Kerry and more interested in skewing public data for the fun of it.

2004-10-08T19:00:00.000-04:00

PREDICTION

George Bush will comport himself much better than last week. His easygoing manner will contrast well with the stiffer John Kerry. But because Kerry will make no major gaffes, the debate will either be scored a tie or slight Kerry victory. This isn't so much a prediction as it is a pessimistic guess. Once again, the president has lost the expectations game. Bush is under pressure in large part because the media keeps saying Bush is "under pressure."

Stay tuned. I'll probably have some thoughts after the debate is over.

2004-10-07T14:41:00.002-04:00

TAXACHUSETTS

It is understabdable that the Boston Globe's Rick Klein is defensive about his state's liberal reputation. It's understandable that he would write an article about how this is playing, election-wise. It's even understandable that he might defend Kerry from unfair association with his home state. But on the last point, I'm not sure he succeeded:

The "Taxachusetts" label has persisted despite the fact that the state's tax climate has gotten better in recent years. According to the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit research group based in Washington, D.C., Massachusetts residents' state and local tax burden is 9.4 percent of their income, the 36th highest nationally and below the national average of 10 percent. The state had the third-highest tax burden in 1980.

When federal taxes are included, however, Bay State residents still face the fourth-highest tax burden in the nation, since Massachusetts is a higher-income state, and federal rates rise with income. As a US senator, Kerry has no role in setting state and local tax rates.

All right, fine. But John Kerry did vote to raise the federal income taxes, right? Whether it's the 98 times cited by the Republicans or some lower number excluding routine procedural votes, that's been his voting record. More recently, out of political calculation, he's backed some middle-class tax cuts while voting against cuts for higher-income earners. Now he's said that if elected, he will raise taxes on the wealthy. In which case Massachusetts would be even more heavily taxed.

So it would be to the Bay State's detriment if Kerry was elected president (not that he's doing them many favors in his current position). Moreover, a new Senator could be a real plus, if Massachusetts decides to elect someone who's interested in actually proposing laws of his or her own.

2004-10-06T21:08:00.000-04:00

POST-VP DEBATE: THE LONG VERSION OF A SHORT VERSION I DIDN'T GET AROUND TO WRITING

What could and should have been three posts has become one, like the lyrics of a polygamist pop song. On that inappropriate note, let's get into last night's debate between John Edwards and Dick Cheney:

Conventional wisdom of the last 20 hours has decided last night's debate was a draw, with a slight edge to Cheney (though some won't even grant that). I tend to think the non-partisan press rushed to call it a draw simply because it seemed closer than the Thursday debate between Bush and Kerry. Not unlike that debate, it's generally said that the Republican won on substance, the Democrat on style. Cheney walked all over Edwards on the only subject that mattered: foreign policy. Meanwhile, did Edwards score any big moments? Not that I saw. Yet it's universally pronounced "a draw."

Likewise, I thought Kerry and Bush was a draw last week; it turned out people thought Kerry won. I thought Cheney trounced Edwards last night; everyone but the MSNBC panel last night called it a draw. Obviously, my own bias is at work here. I'll try to adjust for Friday, but it's not easy. This bias isn't so much because I like Cheney, though I do, but because I really, really dislike John Edwards. It's almost pointless to get into here. I'm sure I'll have the opportunity to go on at great length about this loathing before the month is out.

But my dislike of Edwards partly explains why I thought Cheney's response to the question about his background was effective. Cheney's background is not so different from Edwards', but Cheney has never tried to campaign on his humble roots. That's all Edwards talked about last year. (I trust the analogy to Kerry's Vietnam crutch is not lost on the reader.) Meanwhile, Cheney came off to me as a real person -- far from "Darth Vader," as some print reporters have tagged him.

On style points, Cheney won by a country mile. For the second two-thirds of the debate, Edwards was inattentive, occasionally unpoised and got the rules mixed up (okay, so maybe Gwen Ifill asked some goofy questions). Did nobody catch the moment when he grinned and mouthed something to someone (his wife, I assume) off-stage, and get caught doing so when it was his moment to respond? At another point, he seemed to be writing out his shopping list. Some point out that Cheney was dour and scowling -- "grumpy." Hello! Cheney is always scowling.

And Cheney had all the good lines, including the bit about having first met Edwards for the first time on that stage. That unraveled pretty quickly, and it may well dog him. But he could get away with it, as Kerry got away with his assertion that the subway was stopped in Manhattan during the convention. (I was there; it wasn't.)

Edwards' job in part was to drive home the point that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, even several debate rounds after Cheney had dismissed the possibility. I don't see this as fertile ground except for the MoveOn crowd, and I thought Cheney handled it well. Firm, but calm. Same with Hallburton. Some have hit Cheney for not bothering to defend his chairmanship of Halliburton, but I thought he turned the question back around on Edwards quickly enough. And besides, Halliburton's faults are not a central question in this election. Or shouldn't be. Like the phantom draft, Democrats use to stir up division and fear.

Blog didn't get to watch it live, but he might be amused to find out that Edwards made the same Saddam/Osama mix-up Bush did last week; Edwards caught it, too. For Bush, that's not so good. I read a number of comparisons between Edwards' debate performance and Bush's, favorably in neither case.

Edwards made the case that Iran is more threatening today than it was four years ago. I'd agree, but I don't think the case can be made it's Bush's fault. Edwards certainly didn't. His complaint seems to be that we've let our European allies dick around over there while the ayatollahs get away with murder. But isn't this, along with their half-mumbled North Korea plan, the reverse of the Kerry-Edwards position on Iraq? In that case, we haven't delegated enough. It was incoherent, and it didn't erase Kerry's debate blunder saying he'd give nuclear material to Iran (regardless of the details, it was a blunder).

Shortly after John Edwards argued that we hadn't passed the "global test" in Iraq, he mentioned that the UN was organizing the January election in Iraq. He did so to complain that there were but 200 UN workers on the ground for the East Timor elections, but right now there are just 35 UN workers in Iraq. To which I wonder, (a) didn't he just say we had no coalition? (b) does Edwards think every UN failing is the United States' fault? and (c) won't it be easy enough for them to reserve enough flights over there when the time comes? I'd give the point to Cheney, but he didn't pounce on it. I'd prefer to give it to him.

Edwards gleefully pointed out that Bush flip-flopped on DHS. But he flopped the right way, didn't he? Kerry supporters often defend Kerry this way, though they usually mean Kerry has flopped in the supposedly popular (i.e. anti-war) direction.

I have a theory about the result from the last debate and Lockhart's "consensus that it was a draw" comment: Kerry's team may have watched the race and thought it was a draw -- but decided to spin it their way as hard as they could. The Bush campaign did nothing of the sort, and lost control of the spin immediately.

Sound conspiratorial? Maybe, but earlier that day the Kerry campaign was ruthless in spreading a false story that they had demanded the timed lights be removed from the podiums; it wasn't true, but they didn't admit that until the following day. Meanwhile, expectations in the media had swung enough to give Kerry the "underdog edge." It was one of their few truly ingenious moves since Iowa.

This is essentially what Bill Clinton did after his 1992 second-place showing in New Hampshire. Tsongas had won all right, but Clinton had also come back following the first of what would be many "bimbo eruptions." Clinton declared himself the "comeback kid" and acted like it, while Tsongas wilted.

Cheney clearly won gay marriage. Edwards praised Cheney, then attacked Bush, then made it clear he didn't believe in gay marriage either, but wouldn't explain why. Cheney should have seemed like the one on the defensive, but Edwards was the one trying to explain things away. And I think his mentioning of Mary Cheney was unnecessary, and bad form. Not only is it Cheney's family member, but since when has the private life of a campaign aide been a debate topic? (If you didn't notice, Mary Cheney's girlfriend was in the audience and onstage after; neither were on stage at the Republican convention.)

The news since this morning has been bad only bad for Bush. American WMD inspector Charles Duelfer reports that Saddam's potential to produce chemical weapons was diminishing. Paul Bremer's comments that we didn't put enough troops in Iraq to quell the initial unrest are still percolating. So these things affected the general shape of the election aside from the debate. I can't possibly think the public wants to hear a uniformly negative assessment of the war like they hear from Kerry-Edwards. Nor do they want a uniformly positive one, like from Bush-Cheney. If one could locate the middle ground, they could win.

Cheney made a bold, and I think wise, move toward that point last night by defining coalition casualties as to include Iraqis. It was a salient and underreported point, but it was also a brilliant argument. Edwards wasn't prepared for it, and was reduced to protesting that he values the Iraqis, too. Oh yeah? Then why hasn't a single Democrat remarked that Iraqi casualties are allied casualties? Point to Cheney -- big one.

We often say that vice presidential debates don't matter at all, because it's the man at the top of the ticket people vote for. But I wonder if even today people still recognize that Cheney has been much more than a typical vice president. And do they realize Edwards would likely be much more in the George H.W. Bush/Al Gore model than Cheney? Which do people prefer? Perhaps it's like Clinton's 1992 "two for the price of one" line about how Hillary would be involved in the government as well. Before his advisers were telling him to shut up about it; people didn't want that. Perhaps people like the traditional vice president better.

To conclude, if you're still reading, allow me to finally reaffirm my bold statement from last night: Kerry's momentum is stalled, at least until the Friday debate. Edwards may not have been blown off the stage, and he may not have made a critical mistake, but neither did he shine. Meanwhile, Bush needed Cheney to turn in a solid performance, and he did that exactly. The race is "frozen" until Friday. And Friday will be here very shortly.

Update, 8:14 p.m. Thursday -- Tons of typos, as I expected when I hit "Publish Post." It's now been cleaned up a bit. Hey, you try blogging 1500 words on a complicated subject, based on faulty memory and elliptical notes, while inebriated.

2004-10-05T19:26:00.000-04:00

THE VP DEBATE

It's on tonight. I'll be watching it, but I won't be blogging it. You may have noticed a decrease in posts since the weekend; work is like that right now. It's going to be a busy month, for obvious reasons. Nevertheless, I'll keep posting daily. And most days I will write more than this.

Update -- I take that back, in part. Longish post-debate post forthcoming.

Update, post-debate -- Wow. The liberal blogs are spinning and don't quite know it. If Bush had said what Cheney did tonight in the same manner, the media would have called the election for the president last Friday. More thoughts tomorrow.

2004-10-04T19:02:00.000-04:00

POST-POST DEBATE, OR PRE-PRE-DEBATE, OR PRE-VP DEBATE, OR WHICHEVER

So do I feel a bit better after seeing today's Washington Post/ABC News and Pew Resarch polls? Yeah, just a bit. Certainly better than when I saw this weekend's Newsweek poll.

Though surveys in past weeks have showed somewhat different standings between George Bush and John Kerry, their average, mean and mode were all in Bush's favor. Even with Kerry's post-debate surge, that is still the case. The "Kerry is surging" story was all over the place this weekend, but it is not tied as some savvy Kerry supporters were openly saying in the press. It seems the media and public both perceived Kerry as having won the last debate almost immediately afterward. What happens when one or the other notices -- say, tonight -- that Kerry didn't pull ahead or tie or even come within the margin of error, not when you look at the whole polling landscape. Will that halt Kerry's upward movement? Thee polls did move toward Kerry, of course. I wonder if Kerry hasn't already gotten all the bounce from the debate he's going to get.

One reason this might be -- and you can dig through those links above for details -- is that though Kerry was shown having won the debate, several of Bush's key internal numbers (i.e. which candidate shows more leadership, is better on Iraq, is better on terrorism, etc.) stayed comfortably above Kerry's. All across this country, news outlets are finding that focus groups and local polls are showing nobody's mind was changed by the debate. So what if Kerry is the better debater, they seem to say, Bush is still a better choice for president. But if those numbers show Kerry ahead for longer than a week, well, Bush is probably toast. So keep an eye on it.

Another note: So far, Blog and I have been proved entirely wrong about Bush's "Osama/Saddam" slip-up. I think it would take a crazed, conspiratorial point of view to think Bush truly had them confused (Blog probably doesn't), and frankly that's partly why I thought MoveOn would jump all over it. Instead, the moment when Kerry pointed out that Saddam didn't attack us and Bush responded "I know" seems to have been taken in a similar way. Why one and not the other? The latter involved Kerry outmaneuvering the president; that's pretty big. On the other hand, Bush caught his own mistake and corrected it before he'd gotten past "Sadda-". Think of Gerald Ford's infamous 'free Poland' gaffe in '76: Bush caught his own mistake; Ford didn't. But I'll bet it shows up in an online ad at some point.

2004-10-01T17:26:00.000-04:00

SLATE-RHOUSE DIVE

Will Saletan says the Bush campaign's "Windsurfing" ad is the best he's seen all year, and I agree. He then proceeds to attack it, as he must, lest he lose his liberal bona fides:

The narration accompanying the spliced footage of Kerry windsurfing is equally, fittingly false. "Kerry voted for the Iraq war, opposed it, supported it, and now opposes it again," says the announcer. Untrue. Kerry never "voted for the Iraq war." He voted for a resolution that Bush advertised as leverage to avoid war.

Saletan has been listening to the Kerry spinners' talking points a bit too long. If Kerry didn't actually believe that the likely result of his "yea" vote on October 11, 2002 was a war with Saddam Hussein, then he really doesn't have the kind of judgment it takes to be president. Kerry likely believed then, as he seems to believe now, that the United Nations was just a little diplomatic finesse removed from signing up to help. Saletan continues:

The difference between the war Kerry supported and the one he opposed is the difference between the war Bush promised and the one he delivered.

Fine. If you know which French restaurant Colin Powell should have suggested to Dominique de Villepin, I'd like to hear it. So far, the essential argument against the war, against Bush and the entire post-9/11 foreign policy has been a negative one. When John Kerry gets realistic, and prescriptive, I'll be ready to listen. In the meantime, Saletan and his friends are free to explain away Kerry's inconsistencies as much as they'd like. But they'll be doing it to themselves.

2004-10-01T17:09:00.000-04:00

LAZY FRIDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE

After a week or so of Kerry's supporters lifelessly insisting on John Kerry's renewed competitiveness in the presidential campaign, last night Kerry managed to breathe some life into his campaign, and not least his supporters. By virtually all accounts, debate one goes to the Massachussets senator. And what of it? Too soon to tell. This could be the beginning of a "closing" to put all previous Kerry closings to shame. At best, I think, this will get close again. No one with a straight face can say Kerry trounced Bush. Most judgments are based on Kerry appearing calm and occasionally making uncharacteristically forceful statements, while Bush was a bit too plaintive and repetitive. Yet each made their blunders, and I daresay Kerry made more misstatements, i.e. Treblinka Square. Right now it's clear that Kerry won the expectations game, while Bush lost it. As president, it was perhaps foolish to think he would be judged by the same debating standards as four years ago. I'll plead guilty to that. But Kerry beat expectations with his "reporting for duty" speech in Boston; it was reported as a success and even I told friends I thought it was cheesy but effective. By the time all the polls had reported, Kerry's post-convention bounce was nowhere, and the term "negative bounce" had even entered the political dialogue. So I remain skeptical that the next round of polls will show huge movement. Kerry is bound to go up some on the apparent strength of his performance, but I wouldn't expect Bush to sustain any real damage.

P.S. -- It turns out another longtime friend of Armed Prophet is blogging the election -- Pretty Little Head of the eponymous blog has joined/co-founded/commandeered a new blog, Kerry's Amateur Speechwriters Club. As the title implies, her politics don't line up with mine so well. She's like Josh Marshall -- only smarter, funnier, and prettier -- but just as relentlessly partisan. And she can drink you under the table. Should be a good read.

Plus, I've taken a moment to update my sidebar, adding a few sites I've been following recently, and removed one that has ceased to publish.

2004-09-30T22:48:00.001-04:00

DEBATE 1 POSTGAME

So! Did heads roll? Did the gloves come off? Oh, I don't know. This feels like a draw -- Bush sloganeered too much, Kerry talked too much Vietnam. These things always take a few days to shake out, so I'll wait on the sweeping generalizations for at least a few hours. In the meantime, here's what's shaking right now:

The debate was best in the last 20 minutes or so, when Lehrer had them discuss North Korea and Iran. Both took clear stands on either side of missile defense, which hasn't had much press lately, but is still in development. "I will cancel that program!" or something like that -- it's the clearest statement from Kerry since "I served in Vietnam." Clearler, actually.

The Saddam/Osama mix-up. It'll get pushed hard and you'll hear it plenty again soon, but I wouldn't say the rest of the debate left me thinking Bush had them confused, whether factually or ideologically. It sure didn't help, but I think its impact will be minimal. Remember, we all know and laugh at "Bushisms." Stay tuned.

On TV: Fred Barnes says Kerry did better than expected. Ceci Connolly says Bush seemed to run out of material. Click. Mike McCurry doesn't shout down Chris Matthews -- he's not that kind of guy. Click. Bill Schneider is guessing what he thinks the conventional wisdom is, right at this very minute. That must be exhausting. Click. Ralph Nader is on John McEnroe. I hope I didn't stay long enough to improve its ratings. Click. Bill Kristol doesn't think Bush talked enough about 9/11.

Did Kerry just announce the endorsement of one of the Eisenhower sons tonight? If so, he didn't give it more than half a breath. Don't you want to know that? Meanwhile, Bush should have used the "Sept. 10 mentality" line more than once.

I click back to Andrea Mitchell finds Kerry's willingness to give Iran nuclear materials. It's already out. Whoops!

Did you know the rainy season in Darfur is almost over? I didn't!

My younger sister, 19 years old and admittedly clueless on politics, was "very excited" to tune into the debate tonight. She came away without any great impression other than a lot of "back and forth." Saddam/Osama barely registered.

Tonight, I don't think the debate went as well as the Bush camp wanted it to, but Kerry can't claim outright victory either. He made his mistakes, too. We'll have to let it shake out.

2004-09-30T22:25:00.000-04:00

DRUNK DEBATE LIVEBLOGGING

None here tonight, I'm afraid, but plenty of it over here..

2004-09-30T22:05:00.000-04:00

NUCLEAR WAR, KIND OF

Did John Kerry just say he'd give nuclear material to North Korea or Iran and help them test it out? I think so. Will most viewers -- that's a lot of people, tonight -- realize he meant for fuel purposes? Do those who did know that believe North Korea wouldn't still walk all over the agreement? How many realize the Kims walked all over Clinton's foreign policy team, not to mention Jimmy Carter? I wonder...

2004-09-30T21:41:00.000-04:00

MID-DEBATE NOTES

Lehrer disallowed opening statements, but then Bush and Kerry each gave opening statements anyway.

Did you notice it seems the television networks have decided to go ahead and show both candidates on the screen at the same time? Every general fights the last battle, and so does every journalist cover the last debate.

Both candidates need some new language; tonight Bush conceded the disagreement and doubts over his policies, and Kerry admitted that he can't talk well about the war. But still plenty of sloganeering.

P.S. -- Are you really watching those lights? I'm not.

2004-09-30T21:16:00.000-04:00

TOMORROW'S JUICY QUOTE -- RIGHT NOW!

Bush just mixed up "Saddam Hussein" and "Osama bin Laden." Is that possibly the one misstatement that might hurt him?

P.S. -- "Daily Show" is going live at 11:00 p.m. tonight. You'll see it again there, I would expect, featured prominently.

Update -- Blog got to it moments before I did. I think Bush has otherwise been pretty good tonight, but watch for this clip in TV ads starting as early as next week.

2004-09-30T20:25:00.000-04:00

BLOG, LIVE!

One of the privileged few to have attended both high school and college with this blogger, who pseudonymously blogs under the Zen-like moniker "Blog," is planning to blog the debate live. Blog really, really, really doesn't like George Bush, but neither is he gung ho for John Kerry. He'll surely mark his ballot for the Massachusetts senator, but I don't think enjoy doing it. Check in with him, starting about 6:00 p.m. PST. That way you'll be fair and balanced.

2004-09-30T19:51:00.000-04:00

DEBATE 1 PRE-GAME

At 9:00 p.m. tonight, live from the electoral and meteorological ground zero of southern Florida, comes the first of three presidential debates. Everyone seems to think this will be the most-watched; it's all supposed to be about foreign policy and national security. Finally. Perhaps. Here's what I'm watching for:

The debate has been scripted out of the debate. This is basically a forum. The forum setup, where candidates may not directly address each other, was popular during the Democratic primaries where everyone was just worried about getting equal camera time. I think I speak for every television viewer, here: we want a classic moment! I know I speak for no campaign advisers on either team.

Two questions that will not be asked, but the answers to which I would like to hear: For Bush -- Will the United States seek a firm commitment from the next new Iraqi government to allow a number of standing bases to remain in Iraq indefinitely? For Kerry-- If China moved to invade Taiwan, would the United States send American servicemen to defend its ally, a democracy on the South China Sea?

Both candidates have big questions to answer on foreign policy questions. The impression exists, but is not yet dominant, that Bush is not giving honest assessments of where Iraq is at right now. He could derail those comments, or he could accelerate them. Kerry has so many problems: a split on Iraq policy among supporters, no known policy ideas, no consistent approach to foreign affairs, and nary a compelling sound bite all year.

Advice at least one Democrat has probably already given to Kerry: Ixnay on the Ietnamvay.

This plan to get rid of the timed lights, a Bush campaign demand, could actually sharpen Kerry. Faced with mandatory pithiness, he can prepare to give short, succinct answers. Imagine that! So why, just today, did his advisers make a ham-handed threat to remove the lights themselves? Perhaps they know something about Kerry's preparations that we don't.

Anybody really concerned about what happens if Bush mispronounces a word, jumbles a common saying or otherwise puts his oral skills on shuffle? Not that I can tell.

Bush does have one memorable line that he surely will not be the first to mention: "Mission accomplished."

Much as I would like to deny it, having lived well inside the Beltway for a few years now, my perception is rooted in the same media environment in which the lazy, liberalish established media thrives. I'll be talking to friends and family around the country for a day or so before I'm sure of the victor.

"Saturday Night Live" might be worth checking out. Seth "Kerry" Myers is neither a jocular cut-up like Will Ferrell nor an accomplished caricaturist like Darrell Hammond. Who even plays Bush anymore, I forget. Chris Parnell (less illustrious among the "ell" cast members) got booted from the role, as I recall. As I said, "might."

Roughly speaking, if Bush wins, the election may effectively be over. But if Kerry wins, it's like the groundhog's shadow -- we'll still have a few weeks to go.

I'll be watching. Later tonight I'll say what I can say about it.

2004-09-30T18:59:00.000-04:00

BILLIONS AND BILLIONS

A Bush campaign ad up this week argues, more specifically than in the past, that Kerry proposed to cut the intelligence budget. To that claim, they add a price tag of $6 billion. While that may be far less than the $87 billion Kerry voted for-and-against, any time you put the word "billion" in a TV spot, voters will notice. The AP's Liz Sidoti went looking into the figure cited, and reports back:

To reach $6 billion, Bush aides reference a 1994 comment by Sen. Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz., in which the committee's then-chairman says "the Kerry amendment includes a $1 billion cut in fiscal year 1994 and $5 billion over the next five years from intelligence activities." Kerry's campaign argues that the proposal was part of "a broad-based attempt to reduce the deficit" and was not aimed solely at intelligence funding.

Yeah. So in other words, there's no arguing about the facts, and Kerry pleads ignorant. Lest we forget, this was one year after the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. Can we hold him accountable for this oversight? Yes, of course, but only to a point. Past mistakes are past mistakes, and 9/11 changed both national parties (in different ways). But it does show what is instincts are; hasty calls to withdraw the troops and/or spend less money there, and his continued inability to say something original about Iraq or the war on terrorism only reinforce that perception.

P.S. -- The ad is playing in sixteen battleground states; Bush is competing in those states and maybe more, while the Kerry forces (527s included) have contracted their ad spending and get-out-the-vote efforts.

2004-09-30T17:01:00.000-04:00

EXPECTATOR SPORT

Kerry was on "Good Morning America" today, where he did at least one thing right by talking up Bush's debating skills, but he also said something else that might not help much at all:

"He's a very clever debater. He's won all his debates -- he beat Ann Richards, he beat Al Gore. Look, he's president. Anybody who doubts that somebody isn't smart as president doesn't know what it's all about."

Did John Kerry just say anyone who question the president's intelligence can't be very smart themselves? Is it wise to call his own base voters stupid?

2004-09-30T13:38:00.000-04:00

GOING NATIVE

While I'm inclined to agree with what Tim Noah has to say about the National Museum of the American Indian (I haven't visited), two things about this column greatly annoyed me: One, his but-of-course disapproval of the Washington Redskins mascot, less than a week after the highly respected Annenberg poll found actual American Indians overwhelmingly approve of the team's name and imagery -- by a debate-settling 90% to 9%. Two, even though the museum itself is called the National Museum of the American Indian, Noah insists on referring to "Native Americans," a U.S. government coinage, though Noah's own Slate pointed out, less than a week earlier, that more prefer to be called "American Indian" by a not-insubstantial 50% to 37%. I don't know if the phrase "enlightened ignorance" gets any use, but I'd like to point up this as prime example.

2004-09-30T07:04:00.000-04:00

HEADS UP

There was no blogging to be found in this space yesterday, as you can surely infer from the date stamp on the post just below this one. Tonight, however, is the first of three scheduled forums with, er ... debates between, the two presidential candidates, so I'll be actively posting prior to the 9:00 p.m. (EST) start time and past the end an hour-and-a-half later. I'll return this afternoon. In the meantime, I've got to make some money.

2004-09-28T17:23:00.000-04:00

THE RETIREE, THE REBOUNDER, THE RE-ELECTEE AND THE REPLACEMENT

Dan Rather has now been featured in an issue ad [Quicktime], now playing in the New York and Philadelphia TV markets, i.e. southern and northern New Jersey. This can't only be about Rather -- as Richard Nixon established thirty years ago, "Kenneth" isn't running for political office. So what is this about, some local race or the White House? Actually, both!

First, it "stars" hardly-electric former New Jersey senatorial candidate Doug Forrester. He lost his race after The Torch, aka Bob Toricelli, was forced to abandon his re-election campaign (to his old nemesis, the recently retired senior senator). Now that another statewide Democratic politician is having to give up office, it looks like he's running again. And why not? Bret Schundler can't put up much of a fight.

Second, Bush has closed the gap in New Jersey since the convention. Laura was there last week, but the campaign hasn't committed to spend any money there. Nor have the Republican 527s. Edwards was there today. New Jersey's supposed to be a Democratic stronghold; you don't see the campaign visiting California, do you? Keeping "Rathergate" in the news is only a plus for Bush-Cheney 2004, otherwise referred to in New York media as "Karl Rove."

But it is about Rather, as well. The New York Times says he might go by spring, though CBS disputes that. Ultimately, it was a problem of character first, and only one of politics second. More than that, it's the sign of more change to come. He and producer Mary Mapes let their better judgment get ahead of them, and their political judgments were surely a factor. But that he still hasn't conceded that the documents were fake says as much about his stubbornness as it does of other venerable figures, who once were acceptably called "newsmen," who do not understand what's happened to the media universe in the last ten years.

Me? I'm more interested in what Conan O'Brien has to say about his five-year wait.

2004-09-28T15:35:00.000-04:00

MEMO TO A TELEPHONE ACQUAINTANCE

How you won your congressional primary is beyond me. Sure, your opponent was trounced -- trounced! -- in the general election two years ago, but perhaps that speaks to how little I thought of your chances. And that's my mistake all right, because now I wish I'd agreed to write a story about your campaign and your lawsuit. So, congratulations. I'll keep an eye out for you through at least November. The incumbent you're facing isn't exactly safe, but you're no powerhouse either. Sorry. And don't take this the wrong way, because I mean no disrespect. But. If you're calling up an infrequently published freelance journalist asking for advice on how much to pay your campaign manager, well, buddy, you need help I can't provide.

2004-09-27T19:53:00.000-04:00

GETTIN' TO KNOW YOU

I don't want to spend much time on something that won't surprise you much, but I was amused to find a page at the Los Angeles Times (reg. req.) devoted to blogs. Like other major newspapers, the LAT knows little about the blogosphere, let alone what a blogger is. Then again, they probably do know more about the blogosphere than most of their readers. Why else would they include this warning:

These links take you away from latimes.com.

Thanks, that helps. I've never managed to locate the "back" button on my browser.

Moreover -- and here's the part that is unlikely to elicit more than a roll of the eyes: the bloggers listed lean in one ideological direction, four to seven. Actually, that's not so bad for a newspaper that employs the leftest leftist in the mainstream press, Robert Scheer, but not a single regular conservative columnist (Michael Ramirez is great, but as one editorial cartoonist, he's a voice in the wilderness). Even the San Francisco Chronicle has one; the New York Times now has two.

What's worse, apart from Kevin Drum, the list is devoid of Californians. Where's Calblog? Or Boi from Troi? Or Xrlq (to name just a few right-leaning blogs I check in with; I'm sure there's plenty of quality leftish blogs written from the world's ~~fifth-~~ sixth-largest economy)?

For several understandable (but not "good") reasons, the media doesn't "get" the blogosphere yet (to be fair, nor does much of the blogosphere understand what happens in a newsroom). Perhaps this is a start. If so, I'm afraid it's not a good one.

2004-09-26T16:31:00.000-04:00

SHOW YOUR HAND

A former CBS correspondent (who is not named Bernard Goldberg) has a worthwhile op-ed in the Boston Globe today, pointing out that most television news watchers don't realize it's the producer (whose name may or may not appear before a given segment) that does nearly all of the reporting, not the star correspondent that everyone watches ask the tough questions. Certainly, the CBS memo scandal has changed this some; anyone who's followed the developments even casually knows that producer Mary Mapes, not Rather, was primarily responsible for the botched story on Bush's Guard service.

But one single-sentence paragraph gives the print side of the media far too much credit:

Television is the only medium of journalism in which there is a hidden hand behind some of the journalism that reaches the screen.

Really? Tell that to Jack Shafer, who's been waging a fairly effective battle against the "anonymice" -- i.e. the overuse of background sources. Tell that to Wes Yoder, the stringer who all but wrote several articles by former New York Times star reporter Rick Bragg. Tell that to any writer who actually did get their name on the byline, but who also had their story rewritten by the editors.

And now that I think about it, mightn't radio broadcasters such as NPR have the same issues as their higher-profile, televised counterparts?

Television news is going through a period of self-searching, just as the press did during the aforementioned Bragg affair, Jayson Blair kerfuffle, Stephen Glass contretemps, ad nauseum. Don't think for a moment that the print side is operating totally above-board.

2004-09-24T15:19:00.000-04:00

SOFTBALL WITH DAN FROOMKIN

If you don't know who Dan Froomkin is, well, you're not missing too much. Froomkin is a columnist for washingtonpost.com (i.e. not the print edition). His job is pretty much to round up items about Bush from around the web and quote them at length. It's not a difficult job, but apparently he thinks enough of his position to be condescending at every turn. Well, he certainly is when it comes to the President. And considering his mandate, that's pretty often. Take yesterday's installment:

Don't expect hardballs. President Bush sat down with Bill O'Reilly yesterday for what Fox News is billing as an interview. But even President Bush said it was "just a visit."

O'Reilly made this his "Most Ridiculous Item of the Day" on last night's broadcast. Say what you will about the cable news ratings champ, but I'm inclined to believe O'Reilly did ask Bush a lot of tough questions and even followed up. Why? Because O'Reilly's whole shtick is giving people a hard time. (This doesn't mean he can't be tamed, as Slate's Jack Shafer points out, but to do so one must play hardball with him.) I seriously doubt Froomkin watches much of the "Factor". I certainly don't hold the not-watching-O'Reilly part against him, but I do hold the know-nothing know-it-all-ism part against him.

Anyway, this isn't the first time Froomkin has dismissively -- and incorrectly -- assumed the president and his advisers were getting the kid glove treatment. Here's an item from Taranto's column earlier this year:

This morning the Washington Post's Web site featured an online chat with Dan Froomkin, who writes the "White House Briefing" column for the site. Here's how he opened the chat:
Good morning everyone! Against my self-interest, I should tell you that I'm up against Karen Hughes, who is taking (I'll bet softball) questions over on the White House Web site.
Here's one of the "softball" questions Hughes fielded, from "Jim in Utah" (seventh question):
Did you approve of the President's gay-bashing? Is it really appropriate to use the state of the union address to bash minorities and propose constitutional amendments to take away the rights of minorities? Bush seems so small, petty, and certainly unpresidential when he stoops to such hate-mongering. When I see your face on TV I am reminded of the president's bigotry and intolerance. Shame on both of you.

I think it's about time Dan Froomkin found a new sport.

2004-09-24T13:41:00.000-04:00

OUR BRILLIANT OPPONENT

Bush strategist Karl Rove, to the Washington Times:

"He will be the best debater the president's ever faced. We underestimate Kerry at our peril. He's very good at this; he thinks about it; he's an aggressor; he goes in there flailing."

Kerry adviser Tad Devine, on "Hardball":

"Let's face it. George Bush won the election four years ago in the debates. So people know Bush is a good debater. And I think John Kerry has got to show he has a different vision for where he wants to take America and the world."

It's called the expectations game. You were expecting something different?

But once again, the Bush campaign is proving the better players. Here's what else Rove said in the same interview: "Go get the tape of the eight debates with Weld. I like Weld a lot. He has a very sharp mind -- quick on his feet, nimble. And Kerry just undresses him eight times in a row." And here's Devine, in his same interview: "The president wanted the first debate to be on foreign policy. That's something they insisted on. That's because the president knows foreign policy is his strong suit."

Isn't he supposed to be talking the president's debating skills up, not down? Hmmm... he wouldn't be flip-flopping by any chance, would he?

2004-09-23T17:54:00.000-04:00

GENUINE DRAFT?

Yesterday John Kerry solemnly warned a crowd of beleaguered Floridians that Bush would bring back the draft. Never mind that the Department of Defense has emphatically and repeatedly said the draft would be a bad idea. Never mind that the "shared burden" argument is extremely flawed at best and completely wrong at worst. Never mind that the only halfway serious attempt to bring back conscription in recent memory was made by a Democrat. No, John Kerry warns, Bush has a secret plan to reinstate the draft. As the Democrats accuse the Republicans of fearmongering, Democrats themselves are mongering plenty of fearful notions of their own.

And this was no voted-for-it-before-I-voted-against-it Kerryism; this is a Kerry campaign talking point, albeit one mostly directed at a constituency that doesn't vote (i.e. young people). Howard Dean, who has morphed into something like Kerry's left-wing college student outreach director, posted a bullet-pointed argument to this effect at his website, Democracy for America. Dean says our Armed Forces are "stretched thin" and "chronically understaffed" and recruiting isn't going so well. There's some truth to this, of course. So why do I find this such a kick in the pants? It's because Dean is himself making the case for a draft. He neither explains why imposing a draft would be wrong, nor does he say what Kerry would do instead. This reminds me of the Kerry campaign press release that highlighted the "lies, mischaracterizations, distortions and half-truths" from the Republican convention but didn't rebut a single one -- thereby voluntarily distributing a list of Republican talking points. (Wiser political minds prevailed and the release was eventually removed, but not before Captain's Quarters
saved it for posterity.)

Do we need a draft? I tend to think not, although the case for it is a fair and debatable one. I would rather pull troops back from places such as Japan and South Korea, or significantly raise military salaries so valuable servicemembers aren't lured away to the private sector. I still find the libertarian case against the draft very compelling -- especially when Milton Friedman is the one making it -- but on account of the war of civilizations that so far is still in the opening moves, I'll keep my mind open.

But let's end this where we began, with John Kerry talking out of his ass:

A question from the audience about whether Bush might bring back the draft gave Kerry a chance to vow that he will not bring back the draft unless there is some "global conflict."

Pardon? What kind of global conflict is he waiting on? China invading Taiwan? India invading Pakistan? Everybody invading everybody else, willy-nilly?

Here's one thing I don't get -- if John Kerry is supposed to be so damn smart, why is he always saying such stupid things?

° ° ° ° °
P.S. -- For his part, John Edwards doesn't seem to recognize the implicit anti-American sentiment in his ignorant comments about "internationalizing" the effort in Iraq. Here's what he said on "Larry King" last night:

"For our troops to be safer, for us to relieve some of the burden on our troops, it's necessary for the Iraqis to no longer see this as an American occupation, that's one of the reasons we're seeing so much hostility there.

I'm all for bringing in more peacekeeping troops, sure. But why would Zarqawi and his fellow terrorists would accept the United Nations as a legitimate force in Iraq, but not the United States? Edwards doesn't say. Why would average Iraqis would trust the U.N. -- which fattened its wallets via the corrupt Oil-for-Food program -- but not the U.S. -- which led a coalition to overthrow the hated tyrant? He hasn't got a clue. John Edwards Dan Quayle with a better grin, nothing more.

Update, 9:45 p.m. -- The best news I've heard in awhile: NATO has finally agreed to send military trainers to Iraq. Can you guess which member nations objected? Here's a hint: Their names rhyme with "Tammany" (sort of) and "prance."

2004-09-23T01:10:00.000-04:00

WHICHEVER WAY THE WIND BLOWS...

The Bush campaign's new anti-Kerry spot, "Windsurfing," is both to-the-point and pretty funny (Strauss' "Blue Danube" can be either profound or frivolous, depending on the context). Can the same be said for a single Kerry ad?

Update, 8:23 p.m., Thursday -- The Kerry campaign didn't like this one bit, responding almost immediately with a humorless, tsk-tsking spot decrying such a mocking attitude while troops are dying overseas. Ever skilled in rhetorical jujitsu, Taranto throws this charge back at them:

To be sure, there is a war on, but the scolding tone of this ad strikes us as a bit much. After all, if we're not supposed to be doing anything frivolous while men are dying in Iraq, what the hell was John Kerry doing windsurfing?

Taranto goes on to observe, "if we stop mocking John Kerry, the terrorists will have won."

2004-09-22T23:14:00.000-04:00

KERRY GIVING UP WATCH

Fournier writes, via Hewitt:

Bowing to political realities, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has canceled plans to begin broadcasting television commercials in Arizona, Arkansas, Louisiana and the perennial battleground of Missouri.

Of course these are all states Bush won in 2000, but Kerry needs at least one red state to fall his way if he's going to oust Bush -- especially Missouri. Even if Iraq takes a significant turn for the worse in coming weeks -- probably Kerry's best hope -- will he be organized well enough to take advantage of Bush's weakness? I won't give an unequivocal "no," but it seems unlikely. Kerry hasn't been organized much since, say, February.

2004-09-21T17:34:00.000-04:00

NO FEAR?

In a speech today in Cleveland, John Edwards pulled out an old line or argument he used during his (unsuccessful) primary run, and gave it another go:

"Bush's tax agenda is the most radical and dangerous economic agenda to hit our shores since socialism a century ago. Like socialism, it corrupts the very nature of our democracy and our free enterprise tradition. It is not a plan to grow the American economy. It is a plan to corrupt the American economy and shrink the winners circle."

I guess I'm a little surprised to see the return of the socialism/winners circle speech, but in general this makes more strategic sense than whatever the campaign thought it was doing before -- Kerry will hammer away on foreign policy, Edwards gets to talk about the home front. And if it marks a return to the "two Americas" theme, at least his rhetoric will be recognizable to voters. (Funny how "two Americas" seemed to be dropped altogether after Obama's "one America" speech...)

Anyway, does anybody really buy this? That the goal -- not the effect, the goal -- of the Bush-Cheney economic plan is to create a few wealthy oligarchs at the top with a vast serf class at the bottom? Does anybody really believe even John Edwards believes this? If so, speak up and prepare to defend yourself.

As I wrote in the immediate post below, on another subject entirely, it's generally a bad idea pin evil motives on your opponent (without really, really persuasive evidence to back it up). Yet that is clearly what Edwards is trying to do. It's not just that Republican policies will prove ruinous, but that the right is purposely trying to ruin this country. I recognize there are coherent arguments that Bush's tax cuts will have a deleterious if not disastrous effect on the country; I don't agree with them, but the complaint is valid. But has anyone claimed with any serious argumentation that the Republican party means harm to the vast majority of the American population?

Moreover, aren't Democrats and liberal commentators always saying that the Dick Cheney and Denny Hastert's are selling fear when they remind voters that terrorism remains a very real threat? How is it any different to suggest, in so many words, that the Republican Party will wage economic terrorism against you -- yes, YOU! -- if only they could? Even Cheney and Hastert don't say that a Kerry-Edwards administration would consciously choose not to protect this country. All they're saying is that the Democratic Party is incompetent. There's no active malice.

Unlike many intelligent people, I've never liked John Edwards. It's not that he's a lightweight (he is) or cloying (he's that, too) but that he's managed to persuade a great number of intelligent people that he's selling a form of economic populism that's somehow different from the class-warring populism of Democratic tickets past. It's not.

What he does have is that sunny disposition that every Democratic partisan has been looking for since 1980. Clinton had it, sort of. Many see it in Edwards. When John Edwards comes up with a catchy phrase -- which I am told "two Americas" is -- it'll be quite popular. When he says something so oppressively stupid and mean that it doesn't jibe, well, it's like he never said it at all.

P.S. Okay, so William Saletan sure heard it, back in the early summer when it first debuted. Curiously, he neglects the "winners circle" statement. The "socialism" bit is disingenuous but ingenious; "winners circle" is sugarcoated bile.

P.P.S. Shouldn't that be "winners' circle"?

2004-09-20T21:21:00.000-04:00

OKAY, FINE -- BIASED IT IS!

I consider it bad form to ascribe the worst motives to one's opponents, which is why I am not too quick to jump up and down about the liberal media at every slight I perceive (and I perceive plenty more than I mention). Throughout the whole Memogate/Rathergate story, I've tried to focus on things besides Dan Rather's well known leftward tilt. Regardless of his political leanings, a good reporter can put those aside and hold both political parties to the same standards. I know there's past incidents where it appears he hasn't, but I've been trying to focus on this situation.

Well, today James Taranto highlights a very recent interview with Broadcasting & Cable magazine in which Rather decried the very Vietnam obsession his "60 Minutes" report is guilty of:

In the end, what difference does it make what one candidate or the other did or didn't do during the Vietnam War? In some ways, that war is as distant as the Napoleonic campaigns. What's far more import is this: Do they have an exit strategy for Iraq? If so, what is it? How will they address the national deficit? And what are the chances their plans will work?

Only, as you might guess, he was being asked about John Kerry and the Swift Boat ads. Barely a week after this interview's publication date (August 30), Rather was on the air with the now largely discredited story about Bush's TANG duty.

Would Dan Rather have run a similar story about John Kerry? My first response would be to give him the benefit of the doubt, and to not ascribe his journalistic decisions to rank partisanship. But he's making it very difficult.

Update, literally moments later -- Here is an Associated Press dispatch wherein CBS producer Mary Mapes tells senior Kerry adviser Joe Lockhart that Burkett was someone who could help them. I'm trying, really, really, really hard to believe that a very influential circle of people at CBS News are not using their access to help one presidential campaign against the other.

All right, I'm done trying.

(Hat tip: Wizbang.)

2004-09-20T17:07:00.000-04:00

THE FRIEND OF MY ENEMY...

So, who's more condescending toward their political opponents' swing-state small-town die-hards? Democrats or Republicans? You be the judge!

2004-09-20T13:53:00.000-04:00

MILBANK WATCH

Sheesh. File this one under "Dana Milbank is a lame-o" and roll your eyes while you're at it:

"[A] spoof group calling itself 'Football Fans for Truth' has formed with a game plan 'to raise awareness about John Kerry's eminent failures in the area of sports knowledge.'" [Details here.] ... But if Kerry has been sacked for [referring to Green Bay's Lambeau Field as] Lambert Field, it was Democrats' turn to chortle Thursday when Bush gave a speech at Dick Putz Field in St. Cloud, Minn."

Dick Putz? What a faux paux! I can't believe he agreed to speak there -- the Kerry camp have a blast with that one! Har! Har ... har?