Protecting the Homeland From 58-Year-Old British Diabetics: Yet another ridiculous overreaction by an LAX border cop: a British national, visiting his American-citizen sister in California for the first time, is stopped at LAX at 2:45 on a Thursday afternoon, and (according to the sister's account),

searched five times, fingerprinted 10 times and photographed again and again

Sometime Friday afternoon he was taken back to LAX in handcuffs, paraded through the airport on legs now swollen from his diabetes and held back until all the other passengers had boarded. He was then walked down the aisle of the plane, still in handcuffs, and placed next to a terrified woman who had to be reassured that he was not dangerous. His passport was confiscated and given to a flight attendant, who kept it until the plane landed in London.

About 26 years ago, he was convicted in Britain of cocaine possession. He paid the required fine and never touched drugs again. In fact, he went on to work for more than 20 years for the British government as a prison liaison officer.

John was told by U.S. officials that if he had arranged for a visa before departing the UK, this whole thing would not have happened.

Three recommendations: short all tourism-related stocks, especially if they do a significant business in Southern California; travel abroad now, while it's still relatively border-hassle-free; and write a letter to your local Congressman urging him to vote against any appropriations for the State Department's "public diplomacy" programs. Why? If you can't figure out that needlessly harassing innocent visitors is about the most cost-effectively dreadful PR imaginable, then you don't deserve any more money from us, thank you.

02/01/2004 11:19 AM  |  Comment (1)

If You Are a Subscriber to The National Post, or Live in its Circulation Area, Have a Look in Today's Paper: There's a shorter version there of my Reason article on "Default Injustice," or how innocent men can get named as fathers, and have their lives basically wrecked, even if they have DNA evidence proving they have no connection to a child they've never met. The easiest way to see the story is still by buying this month's issue of Reason, or becoming a subscriber already to this invaluable, unpredictable publication.

01/31/2004 09:06 AM  |  Comment (1)

Fellini Moment: Right now, on the Laker pre-game show, the announcer guy is interviewing … Tim Conway and Gray Davis.

01/30/2004 05:52 PM  |  Comment (0)

A New Year's Slap From a Slovak Nationalist: Scott MacMillan tells a hilarious, and somehow familiar, story. The hero is an ex-Prognosite Scott calls "V," to which I can only add, "Yes Sir!"

01/30/2004 04:39 PM  |  Comment (0)

Bush's 'Asshole' Problem: Don't run away, Bush supporters! Steve Smith, who is decidedly not, has a nonetheless interesting point about the personality differences between Tony Blair and the U.S. president, and how they have been manifested in divergent approaches to the WMD kerfuffle. Keep in mind, young Steve is a lawyer, so his take on the Hutton report is especially interesting. Excerpt:

Focusing on whether the client had the specific intent to deceive is precisely what clever defense attorneys use in white collar criminal cases, but it also entails an assumption, on the part of the defense, that the client made a mistake. If the client believes himself to be infallible, that defense won't fly. A President who won't read newspapers, who insults Congressmen from his own party who dare to vote their conscience, who freezes out reporters who attempt to ask difficult questions, and gives demeaning nicknames to those he perceives to be beneath him, is obviously someone who is not going to admit that he blew it, even on a minor point.

And that's problematic. People are willing to accept that our political leaders make mistakes (ie., Clinton during the Lewinsky Affair), and that intelligence from other countries may be spotty. Saddam Hussein was a tyrant, so his downfall, even with the questionable rationale which we chose to go to war, is to be celebrated. But by pretending that nothing went wrong, Bush insults a large portion of the American people, those who disagree with him on other issues, and are not inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt politically, but who are also patriotic citizens who are willing to support him, as President, when the chips are down. In the end, it will prove his downfall, because, when all is said and done, people tend to root against assholes.

01/30/2004 04:30 PM  |  Comment (12)

Ken Layne's Prescription for Bush's Defeat: For reasons of National Security or something, Layne is mostly limiting his political commentary to the comments section of his "friends." Here's a recent example that may be of interest, referring to my post below on David Bernstein, caricatures of liberals, and how that might play out in November:

Well, everyone can wear out their keyboards deciding what a "liberal" is or isn't. It is tiresome to see people so very excited about defining their personal politics again & again, but it is even more tiresome (if that's possible) to read some knuckle dragger's big ideas about somebody's else's "liberal" political views.

What will sink the Bush Administration is a combination of the following.

a) An electable, center-left moderate Dem candidate tough on defense (which does *not* mean rah-rah-ing the Iraq thing) & fiscally responsible ... who can go a whole eight months without doing something incredibly stupid.

b) Enough dislike of Dubya's tax-cut & spend policies by the philosophical right to keep 5-10% either home or making a protest vote. (See Ross Perot, 1992.) (I say "philosophical right" to separate them from the jesus-freak social-conservative right, because that's the one demographic Dubya will never lose unless he sacrifices a baby to Satan on CNN. Which would be funny to see, don't you think?)

c) Enough pissed-off interest groups that would otherwise be in the GOP's pocket (see this USA Today editorial, "Conservative sportsmen turn against Bush," from yesterday's paper). The monster quote: "Taking this block of voters for granted on account of Second Amendment rights is a miscalculation."

d) The growing oddball coalition of left-leaning civil liberties groups and constitution-abiding hard-right Republicans against Ashcroft's weird, disturbing makeover of DoJ (see this month's Vanity Fair article on this subject). It's incredible that Ashcroft is still there, isn't it? Will anyone in that administration get a clue and send Jeebus-Boy home to Missouri before November? Or all they are all really that bad? (There sure is an interesting philosophy at work in the White House ... I call it "Try real hard to forget Clinton was here for eight years." What else can explain goddamned Cheney's publicly expressed idea that the Reagan Admin. proved federal deficits don't matter? It's like he doesn't remember the eight years between GHWB and GWB ... maybe he was in one of those suspended-animation chambers.)

e) A small angry chunk of the traditional Republican voters outraged by the Bush immigration moves (which many "liberals" may support, even though they wouldn't vote for Dubya no matter what he did). (I get the feeling Lou Dobbs is determined to make a big campaign issue of this -- from his columns in US News & World Report to nearly daily "features" slamming Bush's immigration policies on Dobbs' CNN daily show.)

f) "Normal" left-leaning voters -- not the drooling minions of MoveOn.org or whatever -- getting disgusted enough by Ashcroft and the mutated DoJ, Bush's constant fellating of the born-agains, idiotic domestic crusades regarding high-school sports & gay marriage, the pathetic wreckage of federal spending gone mad, etc., to actually go to the polling place & hold their nose & vote for the Democratic nominee even if it's Kerry, another goddamned rich-boy hustler who, like Dubya, just figures he is *owed* the presidency due to good breeding and the right education.

It's the last part that's the hardest.

It's truly a shame that the fanatic chicken-little left has been yelling nonsense for three whole years, because a lot of swing voters are so turned off by this noise (including me!) that it took me a long time to really despise this administration. Dubya's secret commandos Michael Moore & Al Franken have done such a good job since 2000, making sure the sane voter tunes out all the "Bush = Hitler" crap. I hope Karl Rove is paying those boys well, because Christ knows they're earning it.

01/30/2004 03:06 PM  |  Comment (14)

Six Hundred and Thirteen: That's how many new e-mails were in the in-box this morning. They should set up elaborate public torture sessions for the people who design these things … lock them up in a shed with 1,000 pigeons and glue bread crumbs to their flesh, force them to listen to Ira Glass read the entire Greater Los Angeles phone book, etc. That's the kind of "tough on crime" stance I'm looking for in a Democratic candidate....

In the meantime, if you've sent me an e-mail, chances are I've deleted it.

01/30/2004 11:51 AM  |  Comment (19)

A Fought Down Explanation -- We 'Got the Takes': I've performed and written and recorded music for a pretty long time now, even if sporadically, but having it written about is a total novelty to me, unlike the rest of the guys in The Corvids. It's pretty neat to watch various people's interpretations and insights, especially if they are as knowledgeable about the Mystery of Roll as Pieter K. And while I confess to enjoy any bit of writing that just sorta assumes that Fought Down is a quality record, Pieter's on to something here:

[T]hey recorded as if they were doing it to tape, and they played and sang whole songs and played off of each other, and got the takes.

01/29/2004 11:52 PM  |  Comment (1)

Another Day in Los Angeles:

* Kate Sullivan: "at one point franco's passionate italian blood got to boiling and i found myself in the odd position of having a four-foot-tall italian blood-letter with full body tattoos and metal teeth screaming at me, 'Boy George is not postmodern!'"

* Heather Havrilesky: "I liked what I ate for lunch, but I didn't like the fact that there was no meat on the menu. Where does a vegetarian joint get off, naming itself 'Fatty's'? People don't get fat eating 'meatless cobb salads' aka chick peas and lettuce. I didn't like the fact that there was a surprise ingredient - olive tapenade - on my sandwich, even though it tasted just fine. I didn't like the little sign that says 'Please don't study or use your laptop.' If laptops aren't welcome among bony vegetarians devouring chick peas, where, I ask you, are they welcome? I didn't enjoy the upscale atmosphere, which, to me, doesn't belong in a coffee place where you take a number to your table."

* Nancy Rommelmann: "The head of my daughter's preschool, the Wilshire YMCA, then told me about a new school in Hollywood called the Oaks. It was in the big Methodist church on the corner of Highland and Franklin. As I walked beneath the arches of the church, which is ostensibly the school's entrance, I was passed by Tom Waits. If he's a parent here, I thought, that's a good sign."

* Charlie Hornberger, in the comments of this post below: "I am on jury duty for the next two weeks at least -- got picked for a long civil case -- and me and Coulter just decided that I should grow a 'justache' to commemorate my participation in the civic life of Los Angeles. This works out nicely, as the last time I shaved happened to be the morning before I reported for jury duty. I am trying to decide whether I should attempt to convince the other male jurors to grow their own justaches. In any case, I think this is also a term that people should use more."

01/29/2004 09:59 PM  |  Comment (0)

Amy Langfield's Dad Has a Blog! In which he explores his own interest

in history and the disparity between the traditional historical narratives we were taught and the seemingly more complete and accurate history now available through numerous sources.

Strange, my mother is also interested in using the numerous new sources to correct and fill in the historical record, and is now working on a full biography of my great-great-great granddad, the German immigrant-turned Civil War general guy. It's great stuff, and I hope to be sharing more with you in the future. I think, based on this sample size of two, we can extrapolate wonderful things about how intellectually adventurous people in their sixties are teaching themselves to be quite competent historians, using the Internet.

My dad, in case you're wondering, just had his last remaining teeth removed today. I'd ask for your sympathies, but he's got a big bucket of Vicodin, so instead let's all just hope that his pain goes down in a hurry, if you know what I mean.

01/29/2004 09:14 PM  |  Comment (6)

Just in Case You Forgot What a Rancid Craphead John Pilger Is: Here's a recent exchange with the beloved globe-trotting journalist:

Do you think the anti-war movement should be supporting Iraq's anti-occupation resistance?
Yes, I do. We cannot afford to be choosy. While we abhor and condemn the continuing loss of innocent life in Iraq, we have no choice now but to support the resistance, for if the resistance fails, the "Bush gang" will attack another country. If they succeed, a grievous blow will be suffered by the Bush gang.

01/29/2004 08:44 PM  |  Comment (2)

He's Finished! What is it about everybody wanting to declare such and such candidate "finished" every second waking breath? "Oh, if Edwards doesn't win convincingly in South Carolina, he's finished!" "Howard Dean tried to score a few points in tonight's debate, but he didn't, so he's finished!" "If Wesley Clark doesn't gnaw off Michael Moore's foot & get 29.4% of the vote in Oklahoma, he's finished!" etc. It's most puzzling when done (as it is, incessantly), by the Serious News Media. You don't know when he's "finished," Juan Williams! You're just guessing (and editorializing), Judy Woodruff! You might well be right, but you really have no clue, because life is weird. This should be embraced, not Controlled.

01/29/2004 08:16 PM  |  Comment (2)

Practical Politics Versus Internet Activism: A shrewd, pugilistic take on Howard Dean, by Richard Bennett, a veteran of both real-world politics and virtual flame-wars.

01/29/2004 04:20 PM  |  Comment (1)

Fear of the Librul: David Bernstein and Glenn Reynolds wonder why liberals don't like George Bush, when after all he's enacted, among other things, "huge increases in spending on education and other domestic programs that are not even within the federal government's constitutional purview; a new prescription drug entitlement for the elderly … clumsy protectionism … a huge proposed increase in funding for the National Endowment for the Arts" (Bernstein's words). Well, speaking from my little corner of this Coastal Enclave, those attributes are not shared by the majority of my friends who consider themselves "liberal."

Though I will present here no hard evidence (I've got to run down to Long Beach for the day), and my sample is certainly skewed, anecdotally I see a far greater percentage of liberals who actually worry about deficits, embrace fiscal responsibility, and agree with the principles of free trade, and these positions aren't just made out of anti-Bush expedience. Being liberal doesn't necessarily mean wanting to jack up spending anymore. The caricature might be in need of an update.

I think the real swing-vote question in this election is the potentially disgruntled conservative and libertarian vote, versus the liberal-hawk defectors. Here's what Glenn says:

I expect that Karl Rove thinks he can hang on to these people, and maybe he will. But from here, it looks like he's got serious problems with the base.

spending has gone through the roof, as any good liberal would desire.

01/29/2004 07:26 AM  |  Comment (23)

In Case it's Been Awhile Since You Appreciated the Contributions of Eugene Volokh

01/28/2004 03:46 PM  |  Comment (9)

Major League Baseball Players Say They'd Welcome Teammate Who Acted in Gay Porn Video: Sure, he insists that "I'm not gay. I'd like to clear that fact up right now" … but it's a start. (Via Keith Berry) UPDATE: Tony Pierce was already on the story.

01/28/2004 11:54 AM  |  Comment (7)

Quick Note of Advice to Comrade Kerry: The whole world (or at least the crucial Matt Welch swing vote) is now watching your victory speeches. Try not to make them identical. Those little crowd participation deals ("Bring! It! On!" … "When I'm president!" … "The only thing to fear is me itself!") are borderline tolerable the first time, pretty damned annoying in Round 2.

Here's rooting for Edwards and even Clark and Lieberman to do well next week. The longer there are five viable candidates, the better chance that the best one will win, I think. Also, it makes it more fun to watch.

01/28/2004 10:36 AM  |  Comment (0)

A Relevant Anecdote About These Little Frank Luntz Citizen-Roundtable Deals on MSNBC: While you're watching them tonight, know that these are not just some shlubs picked off the street -- some of them, probably, are highly partisan professional political hacks.

Or at least, that's the case if we can extrapolate from a single anecdote (if not, Frankie baby, my apologies): When I went to Schwarzenegger's headquarters last fall to watch his press people slime the L.A. Times & some of the women who made groping allegations, I spent some time outside with an operative who had worked previously for Bill Simon, and now for Arnold. He/she told me that he/she had been on those Luntz deals "several times," speaking about California politics, even though Luntz knew full well that he/she was an active participant. Small beans, sure, but I did not know that.

01/27/2004 05:11 PM  |  Comment (4)

Deleting Worm-Spam for Dummies: Because I'm about as smart as a garden hose, I discovered something two weeks ago (by "discovered," I mean "my wife said 'why don't you do this?'") … about how to efficiently crucify e-mail spam. Not preventing it, mind you (that would be too complicated for me), but just deleting it quickly. Since the worm's going crazy right now, I thought I'd share.

OK, do you have some Web-based e-mail client you can use, instead of or as a supplement to Eudora or whatever? My e-mail processor (Nothing Special) allows you to do this deal called Squirrel Mail. I don't know if every Web-based buddy is like mine, but Squirrel Mail shows you the name & date & subject lines of 15 e-mails at a time. Unlike Eudora, you can't get a preview by scrolling over the individual e-mail, but this is also a blessing -- I don't know about you, but this feature sometimes makes it difficult to delete multiple e-mails on Eudora, when one of the messages is heavily graphical. Anyway: there's a Toggle All button there, and while I've never understood what the word "toggle" means (which is why I didn't use it for two years), what it does is put little check-marks in the boxes next to all 15 e-mails. If you hit the Delete button, all 15 messages disappear. If any of the names or subject lines look possibly authentic, you click off the little check-marks, and the execution is stayed.

While this probably means I've deleted one or two legitimate e-mails (from strangers who give subject lines like "Hi" or "test" or "Re:"), it also means I deleted 167 e-mails this morning in about three minutes, and I didn't even have to download them onto my computer. OK, sorry to ramble on about something obvious, but there's gotta be at least one person out there as dumb as me, and I know he needs Help.

01/27/2004 11:33 AM  |  Comment (14)

Five-Word Movie Review, The Big Bounce: Arguably worst movie of century.

01/26/2004 11:05 PM  |  Comment (12)

Best Western Goes 100% WiFi: Reports Kevin Whited.

01/26/2004 10:53 PM  |  Comment (1)

The Difference? Nobody Ever Accused Me of Playing the Blues. Also, I'm Not a Pirate: But there is at least one photograph of me looking so much like this other Matt Welch it's literally frightening. (Thanks for the tip, Rima!)

01/26/2004 10:36 PM  |  Comment (0)

Best Cheap One-Liner of the Day: Wonkette, on Dennis Miller:

If Paris Hilton can become a household name by being filmed performing oral sex on an lackadaisical ex-jock, why shouldn't Dennis?

01/26/2004 01:23 PM  |  Comment (8)

Marvelous Track-by-Track 'Short' Review of Fought Down: From Comrade Blair. Sample line: "I was forced to buy whisky, as a coping device."

01/26/2004 10:07 AM  |  Comment (0)

Four Newish (I Think!) Weblogs About L.A.: That would be blogging.la, LA.comfidential, LAVOICE.ORG (whose url is www.losangelesvoice.com), and the senior LA Blogs.com. Helpfully, they all seem to be sniping at each other right off the bat.

01/25/2004 09:06 PM  |  Comment (1)

Hey Bloggers -- Especially You Popular Political Types -- Why the Hell Don't You Accept BlogAds? Is it because you don't like free money? Is it because spending five minutes to set up your entire account & system is just more than you can bear?

It's 2004, people. Every medium that accepts advertising will be awash in political money. The politics/journalism story of the year is about blogs; websites can deliver more passion & loyalty per eyeball than any other media, by a longshot. Take a look at BlogAds' 100 or so participating sites, ranked by Henry Copeland's unexplained weekly traffic stats. Notice how Atrios, for example, is charging $100 a week for an ad. Now go look at all the ads on his site … homeboy's making some scratch, no?

What else do you notice about the list? Leans pretty heavily to the Left. While this makes sense, in a year where the Democrats have the competition and the anger, it should be pointed out that the Republicans still have more money, and that pile is aching to go somewhere. Where's the BlogAds, Tacitus? Hey Tim Blair -- since when do you not need drinking money? Why should the hawkish New Republic be advertising with Iraq war critics like Oliver Willis, and not also with war supporters like Michael Totten?

Ah, but I don't really obsess about politics, you say. I'm all over the map topically; I sometimes go for weeks without posting, and my traffic is distinctly mediocre. Well, me too! Let's look at some mattwelch.com stats from the last 10 months:

Average weekly traffic: 5,560 uniques; 12,320 total
Total BlogAd earnings: $407.66
Total Tipjar earnings: $13.96

Raise your hand if you notice the trend. People no longer hit my PayPal or Amazon buttons (except when I rattle the tipjar, which I no longer do), but the BlogAds churn along without me doing a damned thing.

Two other points, before I stop proselytizing for my friend Henry Copeland: 1) Network effects will work very well here. The more participating blogs from Los Angeles, the easier it is for advertisers to make a useful, targeted group buy (and therefore pay me more money!). This also works for subjects -- media, baseball analysis, DIY music, whatever. If Cathy Seipp and Nancy Rommelmann and Kevin Roderick would spend the five minutes necessary to join the BlogAds network, the SoCal/media BlogAd buy would be exponentially more attractive. I guess they don't need any extra money…. 2) Though Henry probably doesn't want me talking about this, participating sites can (for now at least) accept certain ads for free. Like, say, an ad for a friend's new CD. This should be interesting for bloggers wanting to advertise their book, or straight-to-video DVD, or Twister party. Who knows, you may discover that the advertising works, and is worth the absurdly low cost.

Interested, anyone? Click here. (Postscript: I just now heard an NPR guy say the phrase, "fact-check your ass.")

01/25/2004 07:15 PM  |  Comment (28)

You Like the CD … But Do You Have the T-shirt?? The Corvids' T-shirt store is now open for business. Hey, Steve Smith has one!

01/25/2004 01:44 PM  |  Comment (3)

The Tragedy of Daddy Wags: Every great once in a while, the L.A. Times sports section uncorks a high-quality article. Today's Bill Plaschke effort, about the tragic decline and death of the California Angels' first star, Leon "Daddy Wags" Wagner, is one such example. Among other things, it's filled with pretty hilarious anecdotes about Wagner's goofy sense of humor.

As a side note, though Wagner is a sad case of an ex-ballplayer who ended up homeless and largely ignored by his former teams, the Angels have actually done a very good job these past years bringing their former players back into the fold. Local boy Bobby Grich, who was my favorite player (and I think should be in the Hall of Fame), languished around our hometown of Long Beach for years after he retired, more or less forgotten, but now you see him at the ballpark all the time, shaking hands, acting as a roving goodwill ambassador & instructor. Same is true for several other old-timers. It may come as news to Dodger supporters, but Angels fans are incredibly sentimental about the team's history and former players & coaches. Keeping them around as part of the organization's family is comparatively inexpensive way of maintaining and strengthening that sense of loyalty. I hope that Arte Moreno, who is the coolest owner in baseball, reacts to today's story by making a conscious effort to locate and welcome home the team's long-lost characters.

01/25/2004 01:00 PM  |  Comment (6)

The Pleasure and Pain of Westcoastmusic: Jean-Luc Raymond's heartfelt and thorough weblog, which I mentioned 10 days ago, can perhaps best be described as the kind of place where one day you can learn about the first solo album in 27 years by an ex-Flying Burrito Brother … and the next you'll hear about the latest single by Jack Wagner. Soft-rock on, Jean-Luc!

01/24/2004 04:21 PM  |  Comment (1)

Politics, Schmolitics -- What About the Corvids? Good question. Two great new reviews, and a keeper of a one-liner, which we'll excerpt first:

* Steve Smith: "Sure fire cure for 'road rage': slip Fought Down into your CD player, and play track No. 5." [That would be "Mama, Take Another Stand," for those of you scoring at home.]

* Next up, a very generous, hard-to-excerpt-just-one-line review by Howard Owens, cross-posted at Blogcritics: "This is a CD that will be in my music collection forever."

* Finally, our honkytonk/metal guitar-slinging pal Greg McIlvaine gives us a best-possible "Good Good Good Good Good" rating: "[I]t's a dream come true: Ken Layne and The Corvids' 'Fought Down' [is] a stellar collection of bar-room American rock that drips with atmosphere and lodges its words and melodies deep into your consciousness." I have to break my one-sentence rule here, because this next one's so damned funny: "The guitar solo on the honky-tonker 'Here's to You' sounds like the shattered glass set into concrete on the top of a cinder block wall in order to keep the criminals from breaking into the auto body shop and being attacked by the slobbering Doberman who lies in wait (full disclosure: I played this solo.)"

After peaking at 430, we're now 843 on Amazon (not that I'm refreshing every hour!). The "customers who shopped for this item" list is also getting pretty interesting; I'm glad to see MTX's magnificent Yesterday Rules at the top. The CD Baby warehouse is back in stock, and our store's still open. More news soon.

01/24/2004 03:13 PM  |  Comment (5)

The Bass Player Holding His Child: Check out Lil' Wyatt Solomon!

01/23/2004 07:15 PM  |  Comment (0)

If Clark Should Disown Moore, Should Bush Distance Himself From Frum & Perle? I was glad to see last night's question to Wesley Clark about his new pal Michael Moore calling George Bush a "deserter," even though Clark's response was pretty awful & I have been rooting for him to do well. It's legitimate and revealing to ask presidential candidates questions about the weird things said by their more prominent supporters, especially if it's about the Commander in Chief and the candidate is a former military leader.

Which is why I'm wondering today, should Bush therefore be asked about his former speechwriter David "Axis of Evil" Frum and former Defense Policy Board Chair Richard Perle? Because the two have co-written an op-ed in today's L.A. Times entitled "U.N. Should Change -- or U.S. Should Quit." Like the "deserter" charge, Frum/Perle rifle off at least one pretty serious falsehood: that the U.N. has not "changed" since the fall of the Soviet Union. For a rebuttal, let's hit page 135 of Madeleine Albright's Madam Secretary:

During the four years of the [first] Bush presidency and the first of Bill Clinton's, the council authorized more new peacekeeping operations than the UN had attempted in its previous forty-five years. In 1990, there were less than fourteen thousand UN peacekeepers. In 1993, the number would peak at more than seventy-eight thousand. For decades in the past the Security Council had rarely met. During my four years we convened almost daily.

I think that's an enormously reckless and silly thing to say. If you think our military extension abroad is expensive in American lives and dollars now, imagine if we decide to junk this whole international stuff and throw around our unparalleled power any goddamned way we please. Seriously, imagine that for a second. Is there enough Anglospheric blood for that project? Do you think that the strategic problem of anti-Americanism -- considered to be pressing enough that the State Department threw more than $1 billion at it last year -- will be lessened by this approach? Will our ability to kill any terrorist anywhere outweigh the likely development of more anti-American terrorists in the first place?

The difference between Moore's crack and the Frum/Perle column is that Moore won't ever have a job shaping or explaining policy, and his views (I think) don't currently have a sympathetic ear in any proposed Democratic administration. It is plausible to imagine that some members of Bush's Cabinet, and maybe even the president himself, think Frum and Perle have it just about right. So, let's ask the man -- do you agree with one of your former trusted advisors that the U.N. is an "obstacle" that we should "give serious consideration" about withdrawing from?

01/23/2004 03:17 PM  |  Comment (39)

Thoughts on the Debate? I'm almost ashamed to admit it, but I'm hooked on this stuff now…. My most profound reaction is that A) the absence of Mosley-Braun & Gephardt made it at least 70% more watchable, at least to the crucial Matt Welch swing vote; and B) it sure would be a significant improvement if either Al "IMF" Sharpton or that little slimy-haired boy dropped out (or both!), so that the overall wacko percentage would be reduced within the margin of error. Not that both didn't get off a good line or two (Sharpton's thing about letting Republicans define the debate, for example), but they aren't going to win, and they can't spend more than about 45 seconds without blurting out some don't-ever-let-this-guy-be-president line. The debate was no great shakes, but the Democratic Party will benefit most from having the highest percentage of plausibly electable candidates per televised debate from here on out.

Along those lines, it might be tactically useful to have Joe Lieberman -- who I've long despised -- stick around for a while. Lieberman keeps the Jarvis Tottensimon vote still considering the Democrats; conversely, having Dean going to all those states he named keeps the pissed-off wing of the party (not to mention non-voters) focused on the anti-Bush crusade, rather than trying to cook up some new Naderite charge. Though I'd bet $50 against any left-bent third party candidate getting anything more than 0.5%....

01/22/2004 09:26 PM  |  Comment (10)

Remix of Lileks' Dean Song, With Robots That Say 'Bush Knew': By popular demand. More fine work from Kevin Mickey.

01/22/2004 12:01 PM  |  Comment (6)

More Corvids Noticias!

Charles Hill: "Every one of the ten tracks on Fought Down means it."

Jim Treacher: "I don't know much about alt-country or No Depression or whatever it's called, but I like it."

Famous Alt Country DJ/Writer Guy Jack Sparks: "Even Rodeo Drive and the Santa Monica Freeway look like vaginas."

Famous Rock DJ/Writer Babe Kate Sullivan: "It is luxurious and nocturnal electrified country rock that somehow has its heart in Eastern Europe."

Amy Langfield: "Analog Bootlegs might be better than Fought Down."

Gracias, amigos, and click the links! Buy the CD from us, CD Baby, or Amazon (we're number 1,553! At least according to my sickly computer…).

01/22/2004 03:06 AM  |  Comment (5)

If You're in Switzerland, and Can Read French … Buy This Magazine! It contains a rare co-byline of moi et ma femme, telling the Francophone Swiss about the factual troubles of European hero Michael Moore.

01/21/2004 05:29 PM  |  Comment (5)

Moral Equivalence -- Bad for Thee, Not Me: So, the Democrats cheer when Bush mentions that parts of the PATRIOT Act will expire next year. A reasonable response, in my view, even if they all voted for it. How does James Taranto react? By calling them the "al Qaeda Cheering Section."

You know, if there's anything uglier than the sight of one political party dominating all branches of government (the Republicans in Washington, and until recently, the Democrats in Sacramento), it's watching the partisan press egg them on. If you're against Bush = Hitler or Republicans = Nazis, and in the next breath say Democrats = al Qaeda or the BBC = Ba'athist (or vice-versa on all that), you are not against "moral equivalence," you are only against your own political opponents. UPDATE, EQUAL TIME, ETC.: Taranto calls my characterization "bizarre."

01/21/2004 01:40 PM  |  Comment (53)

Keeping America Safe From Steroids of Mass Destruction: Finally! A president not afraid to defend American families from the clear and present danger of … professional athletes using performance-enhancing medical supplements. Let no one doubt our resolve! Leave no jock unsniffed!

I don't remember a State of the Union speech so overtly, snickeringly partisan. But then, I have a bad memory, I missed about eight speeches a row there, and maybe "partisan" is French for "Matt doesn't agree with it." More drug testing for teens! More PATRIOT Acts! Less gay marriage! More centralized databases, for everything! More abstinence! Less separation of church and state! More God, o Lord, much more God! What deficit? What brazenly irresponsible spending? What stupendous costs, in American lives and U.S. dollars, of irritable, crowd-pleasing anti-multilateralism?

Glenn Reynolds speculated last night that maybe "Matt Welches are more common" in American politics nowadays … I can't vouch for that, but speaking for the one who bought the url, I feel like the prez did his Texas best to alienate this crucial, if narrow, swing vote.

01/20/2004 09:32 PM  |  Comment (18)

More Corvids Reviews! As policy demands, I'll give one sentence from each, though they are fun to read to the end ... especially for me!

* Cindy Chaffin: "We Texans are awful proud of our music and don't much take kindly to outsiders...but this CD is worthy of every CD player in every Ford 150 and/or BMW in the state!"

* Scott Chaffin: "Man, I can't play no poker to this -- I'm too busy jumping around like I'm hopped up on goofballs, playing air guitar & squinting through my Marlboro smoke."

* Alt Country NL: "Het is een rootsrockplaat geworden met elektrische gitaren waarop fraaie country deels overvleugeld wordt door vurige Stones-rock ten tijde van Sticky Fingers."

* Glenn Reynolds (again!): "It's good because it sounds the way Exile on Main Street would sound if it were recorded in the 21st Century, by guys who weren't already millionaires but who really liked to sing and play."

The Amazon page is rocking (we're number 36,563!), and the reviews have been restored. Here's a sentence from one by a West Hollywood cat named "berkeleymews": "The songs are good and the arrangements serve them well."

And the CD Baby page now has some reviews up. "Terry" says: "Twice today I caught myself humming the songs in public, especially Lincoln Town Car and Here's To You, although The Sun Don't Shine is the prettiest song about losers I've ever heard, and I love the guitars and drumwork on Mama, Take Another Stand."

And our great old pal Max Donnelly, who rightly confesses that "I know every dirty bird in this band," gives a generous word & a funny little inside joke: "If you like The Stones circa 1971, The Black Crowes, Wilco, a touch of Neil Young, even a dash of old Bryan Adams, you'll love this album."

Dates and places are firming up for our three-day SoCal mini-tour (or "Minotaur," as Coulter puts it), from Feb. 26-28. As always, you can order the CD here.

01/20/2004 04:56 PM  |  Comment (4)

What To Do in L.A. Tonight After Heckling Your Television Set: Go see The Mr. T Experience rock the Troubador, in a release party for their terrific new CD, Yesterday Rules.

01/20/2004 02:46 PM  |  Comment (3)

Dumb Computer Question: Just noticed that all my Internet Explorer bookmarks have disappeared, except for those automatic deals you can't delete. Did I exceed my "limit"? Do I have the virus? Are they gonna kill me?

01/20/2004 02:22 PM  |  Comment (11)

Boy, That Dean's a Crazy Sonofabitch Ain't He? But not necessarily in a bad way! I kinda liked his barking madman routine, why the hell not? What I don't like is allowing the television set to broadcast more than 2 consecutive seconds of "expert commentary," where some grinning fool on the Chris Matthews says "Oh for sure that means Dean is dead as a doorknob come New Hampshire around the bend the American people don't like a guy who talks loud no wife at the speeches with the neck and all the funny hair-dye that's choking my brain-pipe and blah diddy blah blah blah." Jeebus Krust, they don't even pretend to believe their nonstop all-or-nothing predictions…. Thank Allah for C-Span. If I wanted asinine, fact-free predictioneering I'd just read a damned website already! UPDATE: Oh, you really have to listen to this incredible audio-file, especially the strangled scream at the end. That's one of the weirdest things I ever remember seeing or hearing in politics. As soon as I heard his crazy voice on the radio, I sprinted into the TV room to see what the hell was going on. It was about five seconds later that he let loose with that moose call…. I kind of like the idea of a crazy man running for president, but my tastes have long been unsound….

01/19/2004 07:59 PM  |  Comment (36)

Rock On, Gephardt! Eyebrow-boy is apparently standing down, after his whuppin'. It all strikes these uneducated eyes as marvelous news for the Democrats -- they lose an irritating, unelectable union/anti-trade hack; two candidates who were written off or ignored finish 1-2, and turnout is absolutely bonkers, something like double from four years ago. A Kerry/Edwards/Dean/Clark/Lieberman race would almost be interesting, and that kind of voter enthusiasm augurs well. That's my haven't-paid-any-attention take, at least.

01/19/2004 07:32 PM  |  Comment (1)

The Annals of Political Reporting: Here's a nifty graf from the AP:

Dean, a poloraizing figure prone to misteps and controversy in the race's final days, was the second choice of just 5 percent.

01/19/2004 06:41 PM  |  Comment (5)

Thanks, Alkon: Warning -- I will be linking to basically everyone who writes about my Default Dads article, because I really want the story to be read.

01/19/2004 08:31 AM  |  Comment (2)

Dave Barry and the L.A. Times: From a Friday LAT article:

Thursday's rally for John Edwards at the Renaissance Savery Hotel in Des Moines brought several hundred devotees, a crush of news media — and syndicated humor columnist Dave Barry.

"I always come to the caucuses," said Barry, who writes musings on life, love and exploding toilets for the Miami Herald. "I just find the whole process amusing; the way the media defines it … removes all the humor," he said, lurking unobtrusively in the back of the room.

He comes to the caucuses to gather material for his widely popular column.

And note how the author of this article does not include Barry in the category of "news media" (it's "and," not "including"). When I covered the 2000 Democratic National Convention in L.A., Barry's daily columns for The National Journal were just about the best examples of journalism being produced by the 15,000 or so reporters there. He's funny, and enjoys mining the absurd, but he writes more than just "musings on life, love and exploding toilets."

01/19/2004 07:54 AM  |  Comment (2)

Hear Me Jabber on Connecticut Radio Tomorrow Morning, Hopefully: That's 1080 on your AM dial, talking with Ray Dunaway and Diane Smith about how the Welfare Reform Act has ruined the lives of untold thousands of innocent men, who have been mistakenly identified by an incentivized state as fathers of children some of them haven't even met.

01/18/2004 09:26 PM  |  Comment (2)

Nancy Rommelmann's Five Scientologist Neighbors: As with every other NR post, this entry is a sprawling tale of cheerful, only-in-L.A. woe.

01/18/2004 02:20 PM  |  Comment (0)

Write a Fought Down Review at CD Baby if You Want to!

01/18/2004 10:14 AM  |  Comment (6)

Hey Californian Non-Party Members!: If, like me, you don't belong to a political party, you can still vote in the March 2 Democratic primary. You just need to request a Demo-ballot, though I'm still not sure how to do that (the Secretary of State and DP might think about posting such information on their websites….).

Since today is officially the first day I've paid any attention to this interminable contest (there was a Wesley Clark stand at my farmer's market this morning, and the first thing they asked as I stood there was "hey, do you know who Michael Moore is?") … I'd like to ask a question for those of you who plan on voting in a Democratic presidential primary: Who will you vote for, or who's in your top 2 or 3?

01/17/2004 02:02 PM  |  Comment (20)

Now You Can Buy Fought Down on CD Baby: Link here; it's a great site for independent music, so troll around & buy something. The Amazon page seems to have misplaced its reviews, but now there's some intriguing "Customers who ordered this" info. And you can still get the record straight from the Corvid's mouth.

01/17/2004 12:56 PM  |  Comment (0)

The 'Christian Blogosphere': Christianity Today, which has a three-year-old weblog of its own, has a new article on this topic.

01/17/2004 10:19 AM  |  Comment (1)

Hi! What are you doing down here?