Pejmanesque

PRESIDENTS AND JOB CREATION

A very informative post by Stephen Bainbridge.

MORE PREEMPTION

Former Georgia Senator Max Cleland will introduce John Kerry to the Democratic National Convention this evening, which no doubt will give Cleland a national podium to play the role of heroic martyr to the evil Republican Attack Machine. Will Collier sets Cleland straight:

. . . Just two years ago, you were running campaign ads that proclaimed, "Max Cleland supports President Bush on Iraq," but today, out of power with no hope of being elected again, you're parroting conspiracy theories that don't pass that laugh test.

The bitterness in your comments since being defeated are difficult for us to hear, particularly given the sacrifices you made for your country, but that doesn't make your recent wild claims any more accurate, or your removal from office unjustified. The voters' decision on you was based on how you served in the Senate, not how you served in Vietnam.

You seem to believe that your lost limbs entitled you to that senate seat. They didn't, any more than Bob Dole's WWII wounds entitled him to the presidency. Come to think of it, I must have missed it when you endorsed Dole and fellow war heroes George H. W. Bush over Bill Clinton based on their combat records.

You weren't cheated out of your seat by George W. Bush, Mr. Cleland. You were removed by us, the Georgia electorate, because you chose to represent Tom Daschle and the Democratic Left instead of Smyrna and Macon and Bainbridge. If you really need somebody to blame for your defeat, you can blame us. Or better yet, you can take a look in the mirror.

You were defeated because you talked like Zell Miller in Georgia, but voted like John Kerry and Ted Kennedy in Washington. You were defeated because we didn't trust you any more, and we didn't want you wielding power in our name.

You lost, Mr. Cleland. You lost because like your new best friend, Senator Kerry, you are simply too liberal for Georgia. You need not like those facts, but you do need to accept them, for your own well-being.

"THE URGE TO DO SOMETHING"

Madsen Prie discusses the failure of gun control policy in Britain, as well as the incomprehensible decision to build on that failure with yet more gun control. If insanity involves doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result each time, then some people are fit for a sanitarium visit sometime soon.

SPEAKING OF PREEMPTION . . .

Check out the last line to this post.

As if it will stop me . . .

FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO CANNOT WAIT UNTIL THE KERRY SPEECH . . .

Here is ther recap of how it went is supposed to go.

Apparently, the good folks at ABC have invented a time machine for themselves. Perhaps they would just like to go ahead and tell us who will win in November. Also, I'd like to get a listing of stocks I should invest in, as well as news on whether the Cubs will win a World Series before I die.

TSK TSK . . .

There goes David Adesnik, being logical again. Doesn't he know that kind of behavior is passé?

AMAZINGLY ENOUGH . . .

John Kerry wants to engage the regime responsible for causing this:

The hunger strike of several imprisoned Iranian students and activists, such as, Ahmad Batebi, Behrooz Javid Tehrani, Peyman Piran, Omid Abassgholi-Nejad, Akbar Mohammadi, Farzad Hamidi, the dissident lawyer Nasser Zarafshan and Hamid Massooli who's sentenced to death, is gaining momentum and worldwide support by many Iranians and world's freedom lovers. The strikers are protesting against the persistent rights abuses and are requesting the immediate release of all political prisoners and the organization of free elections in Iran.

Some of them who are held at the section 1 of the Evin political jail, located in North Tehran, have been admitted, on the 18th day of their action, to the prison’s medical facility due to their grave health conditions.

The Islamic regime is trying to break this collective will and the protesters have received numerous threats in effort to drive a halt to their strike. Several of them have been summoned to torturing interrogations and the Supreme Judge of the Islamic Judicial Court has been reported as telling them that "If all you die I wouldn't care."

LIKE MANNA FROM HEAVEN . . .

Comes this story about an excellent education initiative in my beloved hometown:

Last fall, R. Eden Martin, a lawyer from a powerful business group here, wrote a blunt memorandum to Arne Duncan, the chief executive of the Chicago public schools, warning that dozens of failing schools that had resisted improvement after years on an academic watch list would soon face a takeover under federal law.

But there was an alternative - the city could shut them down on its own and create small, new, privately managed schools to replace them. And that, Mr. Martin wrote, would bring a crucial advantage: the new schools could operate outside the Chicago Teachers Union contract.

It seemed a fire-breathing proposal, since in its entire history Chicago had closed just three schools for academic failure, and the union is a powerful force in the school system here, the nation's third largest. But Mr. Duncan was already convinced of the need for direct intervention in many failing schools, and the business group's proposal helped shape a sweeping new plan, which Mayor Richard M. Daley announced in June. By 2010, the city will replace 60 failing schools with 100 new ones, and in the process turn one in 10 of its schools over to private managers, mostly operating without unions. It is one of the nation's most radical school restructuring plans.

"It's time to start over with the schools that are nonperforming," Mr. Daley said in an interview July 19. "We need to shake up the system."

The schools slated for closing include 40 elementary schools and 20 high schools. In all of them, most students perform far below grade level.

Chicago's plan is as much about cunning tactics as visionary strategy. The federal No Child Left Behind law requires districts to restructure schools that fail to make adequate progress for several years running, a challenge that Chicago could soon face with 200 of its 600 schools, officials said.

Mr. Martin and the executives on the Civic Committee of the Chicago Commercial Club, who blame the teachers union for contributing to academic failure by imposing restrictions on teachers and administrators alike, used the threat of federal sanctions to pressure the city to put many schools into private hands, outside union jurisdiction.

"The school unions will not like creation of a significant number of new schools that operate outside the union agreement," Mr. Martin wrote in his memorandum to Mr. Duncan. "But operating outside the agreement is a key element of this strategy."

Since pioneering educators raised student achievement by creating small schools in Spanish Harlem in the 1980's, smaller-is-better has become a national mantra of reform, with New York and other cities, like Baltimore, Boston, Sacramento and San Diego, dividing large schools into smaller, more personal learning communities. But Chicago's plan breaks ground not only because it is huge but also because no other city has proposed to replace large numbers of failing, unionized schools by allowing the private sector to create new schools operating outside of the teachers union contract.

Philadelphia contracted with Edison Schools in 2002 to manage 20 public schools there. But Edison was required to work under the terms of the existing teacher contract, which limited the company's educational options, said Paul T. Hill, a University of Washington professor who wrote a 1997 book, "Reinventing Public Education."

"Chicago intends to give the private groups creating these schools full freedom of action and control over hiring and firing," Dr. Hill said. "That hasn't been done anywhere on this scale."

The Chicago Teachers Union is a local of the American Federation of Teachers, which also represents teachers in New York, where it has cooperated in the creation of small schools and thereby retained contractual jurisdiction over them.

But about 60 of Chicago's 100 new schools will operate outside the union contract, Mr. Duncan said in an interview July 21, thereby introducing new variety into the system.

"I'm not an ideological person," Mr. Duncan said, "but I like the competition and choice this will provide. I want Chicago to be a mecca where entrepreneurship can flourish."

The more competition, the better. And while we are at it, let's get more charter schools into the picture, as well as a comprehensive school choice program. Time's a'wastin', you know.

PRESIDENT JANUS

The many positions of John Kerry on the issue of Iraq are nicely detailed here. Unlike Fahrenheit 9/11, the viewing is free and the film is truthful. (Real Player or Windows Media required, although I think you could probably see it on QuickTime as well.)

LET THE CONSPIRACY THEORIES BEGIN

If this is the July Surprise, I can't wait to see what is planned for October:

Pakistan has arrested a senior al Qaeda figure with a bounty of up to $25 million on his head, Interior Minister Makhdoom Faisal Saleh Hayat told CNN television Thursday.

He said the suspect had been captured during a raid in central Pakistan a few days ago. He did not identify the captive but said he was "a person who is most wanted internationally."

Al Arabiya satellite news channel quoted Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf as saying the suspect was arrested Sunday.

"The Pakistani president said the arrested person is Tanzanian who is married to an Uzbek woman, and who is wanted by the United States," the station said.

Al Arabiya said the suspect may be Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian who is on the FBI's most wanted "terrorists" list for his alleged role in the 1998 bombings by al Qaeda of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Ghailani was among seven people about whom the United States said in May it was seeking information amid fears of a possible attack in the near future.

An FBI Web site lists Ghailani as a suspect in the African embassy bombings and says it is offering a reward of up to $25 million for information leading to his capture.

A Pakistani official said Tuesday that Pakistani security forces were holding three Africans, including a Tanzanian, suspected of being militants after a shootout last week.

Another said the suspects had been trying to flee Pakistan along with their families, using fake documents, after living in neighboring Afghanistan.

The fact that Pakistan made the capture should not, of course, diminish the belief that a conspiracy was afoot. After all, everyone knows that America is the world's puppet master. We Jews are especially active in that regard.

Additionally, the fact that Pakistan made the capture should not change anyone's belief that we are engaging in a unilateral, arrogant, cowboy-style war. (Why preserve only one myth when I can help preserve two?)

UPDATE: This post indicates just how many people have lost it over this announcement. I'm speechless.

THE DEMOCRATS AND TRADE

I continue to fume over Bush Administration decisions to impose steel and lumber tariffs (and over decisions like this one), but no one should think for a moment that a Kerry Administration will be any better. In fact, they will either be worse, or at the very least, will be so confusing and vague that no one will have the first earthly clue what a Kerry Administration might do on the issue of trade.

"Confused At Home. Opaque Abroad." Sounds like an apt slogan to me.

MULTILATERAL AFTER ALL

You won't hear about this in the news media--perhaps due to the fact that now that the common conventional wisdom regarding the Bush Administration has been established, few people will be willing to go back and see if that conventional wisdom was . . . you know . . . right. In an election year, we certainly will not have the conventional wisdom disrupted--God forbid that certain segments of the population should have their neat little worldviews disrupted, after all.

NO COMMENT NECESSARY

This story just speaks for itself:

As Sens. John Kerry and John Edwards arrived in Boston today for the Democratic National Convention, so did the California man who is their single biggest contributor.

He is Stephen Bing, a wealthy film producer who, with little fanfare, has managed to steer a total of more than $16 million of his money to Democratic candidates and the supposedly independent groups that support them.

"To most of the people who track money and politics, they're like, who the hell is Steve Bing?" said Chuck Lewis, founder of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan watchdog organization.

Bing is perhaps best known for sparking a tabloid frenzy when he publicly expressed doubt that he was the father of actress Elizabeth Hurley's baby. (A paternity test proved he was indeed the father.) He repeatedly has refused to say why he is funneling millions of dollars to the Democrats.

Lewis thinks it is cause for concern.

"We can identify who the big donors are, but how much do we really know about any of them?" he said.

In fact, Democratic Party officials said they knew nothing about the man who law enforcement officials tell ABC News is Bing's friend and business partner — Dominic Montemarano, a New York Mafia figure currently in federal prison on racketeering charges.

Montemarano has a long criminal record and is known to organized crime investigators by his street name, Donnie Shacks.

"Donnie Shacks' main activity was murder. No question about it. That was his main function for the Colombo family and for organized crime in general. He was one of the top hit men in the New York area," said Joe Coffey, a former NYPD investigator.

COSMETICS

I really don't mind if an American Presidential candidate owns foreign stocks. Globalization is a good thing. But for Heaven's sake, don't insult our intelligence regarding the issue:

John Kerry's family dumped millions of dollars of foreign holdings as he launched his White House bid, gobbling up Made in the USA stocks in a huge politically savvy international-to-domestic shift.

The investments, mostly in the name of Kerry's multimillionaire wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, sold stock in massive overseas players like Heineken, Sony, British Petroleum and Italian Telecom for red, white and blue companies like McDonald's, Dell and Kohls.

In all, the Kerrys dumped as much as $16 million worth of international stock and bought between $18 million and $32 million in domestic holdings between 2002 and 2003, records show.

The swaps, detailed in Kerry's financial disclosures for the presidential race, come to light as the Bay State senator tonight wraps himself in Americana to accept the Democratic Party nomination.

The senator's campaign said the investments are managed not by the Kerrys but by professional investment managers for the family trustees - of which Heinz Kerry is only one.

Marla Romash, a senior adviser to Kerry, said the financial decisions aren't political.

To which I reply by saying that Marla Romash's spin efforts don't pass the laugh test.

LOST IN SPACE

I guess some wounds are just self-inflicted:

There was no "dirty trick" behind the photographs of Sen. John Kerry wearing the blue anti-contamination suit while touring the shuttle Discovery on Monday.

As political pundits and comedians pounced on the pictures of Kerry in what outsiders might deem a goofy-looking costume, the senator's campaign aides alleged the pictures were not supposed to be released publicly.

Not true, said NASA. Government photographers routinely snap pictures of visiting dignitaries.

Kerry's group more than qualified as dignitaries: four U.S. senators, two of whom were former astronauts, John Glenn and Bill Nelson. NASA often posts such pictures on its Internet sites for the public and reporters.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

This one is more than a little appalling:

Both Germany and Soviet Russia are totalitarian states. Both are realistic. Both are strong and ruthless in their methods. There is one distinction, however, and that is as clear as black and white. It can be simply illustrated. If Marx, Lenin, or Stalin had been firmly grounded in the Christian faith, either Catholic or Protestant, and if by reason of that fact this communistic experiment in Russia had been projected upon this basis, it would probably be declared to be one of the greatest efforts of Christian altruism in history to translate the ideals of brotherhood and charity as preached in the gospel of Christ into a government of men... That is the difference - the communistic Soviet state could function with the Christian religion in its basic purpose to serve the brotherhood of man. It would be impossible for the Nazi state to do so. The communistic ideal is that the state may evaporate and be no longer necessary as man advances into perfect brotherhood. The Nazi ideal is the exact opposite - that the state is the supreme end of all.

--Joseph Davies, Mission to Moscow (Thanks to Bryan Caplan for the link.)

WHEN I CALL HIM "DAN QUAYLE-LIGHT" . . .

This is the reason why:

Despite his office being just across the hall from the Senate Judiciary Committee chambers, Sen. John Edwards has the worst attendance record of any committee member since he joined it three years ago.

That has Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, questioning whether Edwards, John Kerry's choice as his Democratic vice presidential nominee, is more show horse than work horse, a common criticism by Republicans.

"He is rarely present at important committee meetings, and as a voter that is something I would want to know about," Hatch said.

Michael Briggs, Edwards' press secretary, blamed the absences on the election campaign, saying, "When senators run for president, they miss votes and miss committee hearings."

However, a Deseret Morning News review of committee records shows that Edwards' attendance was low even before he began his unsuccessful bid to become the Democrats' nominee for president or became Kerry's vice presidential candidate; his attendance has just gotten worse.

For example, during the 107th Congress in 2001 and 2002 — before Edwards began his presidential campaign — he attended 10 of the 30 business meetings (for debate and votes) that were held after he joined the committee in July 2001. His 33 percent average attendance was half the 70 percent average for all committee members.

That meant Edwards had the second-worst attendance for that pre-campaign period, behind Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., who attended one less meeting. Edwards was also tied with the late Sen. Strom Thurmond, D-S.C., who was then 99 years old and in failing health.

When hearings are added into the total along with business meetings for that same period, Edwards finished fourth-lowest among 19 members, behind Thurmond, Joe Biden, D-Del., and Kennedy.

Edwards attended 31 of 91 total meetings, or 34 percent. The committee attendance average was 49 percent.

Once Edwards started seeking the White House, his attendance dropped further, giving him the lowest attendance on the committee both for the 2003-04 108th Congress, and for the entire three years since he joined the committee.

HOW MANY AMERICAS WAS THAT AGAIN?

Barack Obama:

A belief that we are connected as one people. If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief-I am my brother's keeper, I am my sisters' keeper-that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. "E pluribus unum." Out of many, one.

(Emphasis mine.)

John Edwards:

. . . we still live in a country where there are two different Americas . . .

(Emphasis mine.) By the time John Kerry speaks tomorrow, I predict that we will have 3.14159265358 Americas. We will then have achieved the miracle of combining our passion for civics with an interest in math. On the downside, I never thought I would see my country engage in a version of cellular division writ large.

YOU CAN'T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT

Following up on this excellent post, I want to discuss a central aspect of the foreign policy vision offered by John Kerry in this election cycle, and discuss in particular why I find it to be deficient, and an argument against voting for Kerry this fall.

Over one year after the commencement of Operation Iraqi Freedom, we can take stock of the state of the debate regarding the conduct of American foreign policy. We are still faced with a raging debate over the issue of multilateralism, with critics of the Bush Administration in general and the Iraq war in particular charging that the Administration failed to make the war enough of a multilateral enterprise. As expected, chief amongst those critics is Kerry—whose objection to American exceptionalism is so pronounced, that when former President Bill Clinton pronounced America “the indispensable nation,” Kerry objected, stating “Why are we adopting such an arrogant, obnoxious tone?”

While it may be tempting to think that multilateralism could somehow be effected by the throwing of a switch, the truth, however, is far more complicated—or as Kerry would say, “nuanced”—than that. Multilateral coalitions can only be assembled when there is a coincidence of interest among various nation-states. When such common interests do not exist, multilateralism is impossible.

The dominant theory seeking to explain the past behavior and predict the future behavior of nation-states is realist theory, which I’ve written about in the past. To recapitulate some important aspects of realism, the theory notes that in an anarchic world structure with nation-states as the primary actors, nation-states seek to maximize their own power.

There are three fundamental schools of realism. Classical realists argue that nation-states seek power because of man’s inherent lust for power. Structural realists argue that nation-states primarily seek power to ensure their own security. Finally, there are neoclassical realists, who argue that nation-states seek power for a combination of the above reasons.

Whatever school of realism with which one finds kinship, it is easy to see that a worldview that views the supreme goal of nation-states as the maximization of their own power is a worldview that predicts a limited future (at best) for multilateralism. In a zero-sum international structure, the effort on the part of nation-states to maximize power inevitably results in security competition between nation-states. Needless to say, such security competition will not facilitate multilateral cooperation between nation-states.

Multilateralists may respond by pointing out one specific subset of structural realism—defensive structural realism—that actually does predict some level of security cooperation between nation-states. They are right—defensive structural realists argue that in certain cases, security cooperation is possible. However, defensive structural realist theory is unlikely to be availing to the multilateralist cause—at least when it comes to the conduct of American foreign policy.

Defensive structural realists—as I pointed out in my previous article on the subject of realism and its uses—argue that war can be avoided, and security cooperation can be achieved, by having nation-states balance against a regional (or global) hegemon. But the problem is that since the United States is the only global hegemon in the world today, the only level of security cooperation predicted by defensive structural realism is having other nation-states balance against American power.

And as Robert Kagan argues (in a piece written nearly two years ago), the wide disparity between American and European power helps explain the commensurate disparity between the behavior of the United States, and that of European nation-states:

. . . what Europeans now consider their more peaceful strategic culture is, historically speaking, quite new. It represents an evolution away from the very different strategic culture that dominated Europe for hundreds of years and at least until World War I. The European governments - and peoples - who enthusiastically launched themselves into that continental war believed in machtpolitik. While the roots of the present European worldview, like the roots of the European Union itself, can be traced back to the Enlightenment, Europe's great-power politics for the past 300 years did not follow the visionary designs of the philosophes and the physiocrats.

As for the United States, there is nothing timeless about the present heavy reliance on force as a tool of international relations, nor about the tilt toward unilateralism and away from a devotion to international law. . . . America's eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century statesmen sounded much like the European statesmen of today, extolling the virtues of commerce as the soothing balm of international strife and appealing to international law and international opinion over brute force. The young United States wielded power against weaker peoples on the North American continent, but when it came to dealing with the European giants, it claimed to abjure power and assailed as atavistic the power politics of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European empires.

. . . When the United States was weak, it practiced the strategies of indirection, the strategies of weakness; now that the United States is powerful, it behaves as powerful nations do. When the European great powers were strong, they believed in strength and martial glory. Now, they see the world through the eyes of weaker powers. These very different points of view, weak versus strong, have naturally produced differing strategic judgments, differing assessments of threats and of the proper means of addressing threats, and even differing calculations of interest.

Kagan goes on to note that, “In an anarchic world, small powers always fear they will be victims. Great powers, on the other hand, often fear rules that may constrain them more than they fear the anarchy in which their power brings security and prosperity.” This describes the incongruity between the American “unilateralist” worldview and the European “multilateralist” worldview to a tee. Europe fears being run roughshod by American power, while the United States worries about playing Gulliver to the European Lilliputians. As each side seeks to maximize its power, and given the wide disparity of power between the United States and Europe, the prospects of multilateral cooperation decrease while security competition increases. It is certainly possible for multilateral coalitions to be formed regarding certain issues, but that will only occur when American and European security interests coincide.

I wrote another article in the past in which I argued against what I called the “fetishization” of coalition building and multilateralism in the run-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom. Such fetishization, in addition to hampering the achievement of any particular foreign policy or national security goal, has the effect of blinding us to the very real security competition that is occurring between America and her European allies. Because of the power and interest differential between America and her allies, multilateral cooperation will not always be possible, and may indeed be rare. While Senator Kerry may find American exceptionalism and the policies that grow out of that exceptionalism distasteful, he ignores the historical and international trends that have produced it at his own peril. As a legislator and a presidential candidate, Senator Kerry may have the luxury of speaking in platitudes about the virtues of multilateralism. Should he become President, however, the Senator will find that the Hobbesian international system will have no tolerance for his illusions of multilateralism über alles.

DIOGENES HAS HIS CANDIDATES . . .

In both Will Collier and Lileks. The Catholic Church also has new candidates for sainthood thanks to the personal examples of each of these upstanding citizens, but that is another story for perhaps another time.

I STAND CORRECTED

Maybe Ted Kennedy had a point.

THE HOMER SIMPSON PARTY

Quoth Jonah Goldberg:

When Homer Simpson ran for the office of sanitation commissioner, he offered this stirring call to arms: "Animals are crapping in our houses and we're picking it up. Did we lose a war? That's not America!" The crowd went wild and Homer won the race.

After the first night of speeches here at the Democratic Convention, it's pretty clear the Democrats are borrowing from Homer's playbook. Here's the drill: State the obvious as if it is insightful. Then twist it to make it sound like the Republicans are fools or ogres for not seeing the wisdom in what you're saying.

"The Republicans in Washington believe that America should be run by the right people — their people," Bill Clinton declared to thunderous applause here Monday night.

What in the world is he talking about? This is an election, right? The Republicans think Republicans should run things. Democrats think Democrats should. Is there something I'm missing? Are Republicans somehow "cheating" because their campaign platform suggests that their own party is the right one to run America?

This was one of the many ironies, alas, lost on the Democrats.

So, too, was the rather rum spectacle of Jimmy Carter lecturing about the need to "restore the greatness of America" and gird American strength around the globe. Then again, maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps on the morning of September 11, 2001, millions cried in anguish, "If only Jimmy Carter were president!"

YET ANOTHER INDICATION . . .

That Jimmy Carter isn't exactly the person we need to burnish our ties with the rest of the world. After all, a smart diplomat would not have characterized a country like Great Britain as a "little tiny" country.

MY TECH CENTRAL STATION COLUMN IS UP

This article explores the different positions held by George W. Bush and John Kerry on dealing with Iran.

UPDATE: Via Dan Drezner we have this account of a debate involving . . . Dan Drezner, who makes the following important point buttressing a major portion of my argument in my TCS piece:

Believe it or not, totalitarian regimes seek legitimacy. They like to be recognized in the international community, and it makes life easier for them. By labeling these governments as evil, it makes it harder for the rest of the world to recognize them and aid them. Furthermore, most of the people that live under totalitarian regimes don't like their government, and it is good to communicate to those people just whose side we are on.

"IT IS AS THOUGH HE SOILED HIS HANDS IN THE BLOOD OF SWINE"

Behold what rage can be provoked from playing a game on a quadrate board.

(Thanks to a very kind reader for the link.)

WHY THE SHOCK?

There should be nothing surprising about this story:

Arab states at the United Nations are trying to foil a proposal to raise a vote condemning anti-Semitism in the General Assembly this September.

At a closed meeting held recently in New York, UN ambassadors from Arab and EU countries met and the Arabs made clear that they do not accept the initiative for the UN General Assembly to condemn anti-Semitism.

The blunt language used by the Arabs describing their opposition, and their plans to use diplomatic means to prevent the resolution from reaching a vote, shocked the Europeans, said a UN source.

According to UN sources, the Arab delegates were also critical of a UN seminar on anti-Semitism held last month. A senior Western diplomat said that among the Arabs who spoke with the Europeans was PLO observer Nasser al Kidwe, and he was particularly outspoken in his objections to a UN General Assembly resolution on anti-Semitism.

The source said Kidwe attacked the content of UN Secretary general Koffi Anan's speech to the seminar last month, particularly Annan's pride in the cancelation of the 1975 Zionism equals racism resolution. "The Europeans were depressed when they left the meeting," said the source.

THE ERA OF WARPED PRIORITIES

An excellent critique of the underlying themes of the Democratic Convention via Matt Welch:

John Kerry should have plenty on his plate already, and will have plenty more if our faith in ourselves is restored, I mean if he wins on Nov. 2. Let him win the war against Al Qaeda, and euthanize the horrific War on Drugs, before he even says one more word about what he can "expect" me to "give back in exchange for the blessings of freedom." And let Democrats know this -- Bill Clinton might have declared that the Era of Big Government is over, but the warped mentality from generations of confusing governance with courage, campaign contributions with patriotic sacrifice, and electoral victories with revolutionary wars, is alive and unwell.

LOSING HIS BASE

It appears that even a happily partisan Democratic blogger is upset with Ted Kennedy's speech last night--including his use of Franklin Roosevelt's words for demagogic purposes:

The first quote -- Roosevelt's -- is a soaring declaration of our country's ability to triumph over all that may stand in our way. It asks that we steel ourselves for tough times ahead. It exists in a separate and higher rhetorical universe than do word plays articulating how much we shouldn't want Bush. Kennedy cheapened a stunning declaration of strength by twisting it into a mundane declaration of partisanship -- bad move.

Quite so. Of course, we conservatives are entirely unsurprised that Kennedy would have stooped so low.

RECONSTRUCTING AFGHANISTAN

A significant portion of the population may very well be under the impression that the reconstruction of Afghanistan is proceeding badly. The facts on the ground suggest otherwise, however:

THERE'S good news from the forgotten front of the War on Terror: The first-ever public opinion poll in Afghanistan shows that people there are optimistic about the future and excited about upcoming elections.

But you wouldn't know it from the mainstream press, which received the poll with a level of skepticism usually reserved for Yeti sightings and money transfers originating in Nigeria. The most coverage given to the poll so far: a five-sentence news brief in The Washington Post.

Perhaps some folks worry that the news is a bit too convenient for President Bush.

With the situation in Iraq seen by many as a mess, Afghanistan has a constitution, is registering voters and is moving toward holding a presidential election in October. And the survey of 804 randomly selected male and female Afghan citizens, commissioned by the Asia Foundation notes that:

* 64 percent say the country is heading in the right direction.

* 81 percent say that they plan to vote in the October election.

* 77 percent say they believe the elections will "make a difference."

* 64 percent say they rarely or never worry about their personal safety, while under the Taliban only 36 percent felt that way.

* 62 percent rate President Hamid Karzai's performance as either good or excellent.

This was no pro-Bush put-up job. The polling firm, Charney Research, is a partisan Democratic polling firm. And superstar Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, who's read the study — and who has worked on similar polling in developing countries — calls it "very reliable."

My guess, of course, is that we won't hear John Edwards tonight or John Kerry tomorrow refer to these results in any way. But that doesn't mean the rest of us cannot.

AMATEUR HOUR

A note to the Kerry campaign: If you are going to complain about leaked pictures, it helps if your candidate never sat around and posed for them.

UPDATE: Nick Gillespie offers spin control advice for the Kerry campaign:

You need to mount a swift, serious, and sensational counter-spectacle. The best option: Track down Mike Dukakis, where ever the hell he's been hiding out, throw a drink or two on him, and beat the living bejeezus out of him.

BETTER THAN MICHAEL MOORE

Via InstaPundit, I learn of a filmmaker whose works would actually be worth seeing. Every indication seems to show that he would deserve his place in the sun more than Michael Moore ever did, so here's hoping that he gets it.

UPDATE: For Moore fans, here's an account of how your lunatic champion behaves when off his medications:

Promoting his movie Fahrenheit 9/11 at the Democratic National Convention, radical filmmaker Michael Moore launched into a shouting, red-faced denunciation of Republicans Tuesday, saying supporters of the GOP are different from "real Americans"; that they are "people who hate"; that they are "up at six in the morning trying to figure out which minority group they're going to screw today"; and that in the upcoming presidential campaign, they "are going to fight...smear...lie...and hate."

Moore, who sat in former President Jimmy Carter's box at the convention Monday night, has been welcomed by wildly enthusiastic audiences at his appearances in Boston. He made his remarks about Republicans during one of those appearances, at a forum sponsored by the left-wing organizing group Campaign for America's Future. The speech drew an overflow crowd; fans stood in line for hours for a chance to hear Moore speak.

"The right wing is not where America is at," Moore said. "Most Americans, in their heart, are liberal and progressive. It's just a small minority of people who hate. They hate. They exist in the politics of hate."

"They're not patriots," Moore said. "They're hate-triots, and they believe in the politics of hate-triotism. Hate-triotism is where they stand, and patriotism is where real Americans stand."

Yes, yes. "Hate-triots"--that must have taken all night to think up. I'm quite glad that I don't associate with such idiocy, and I feel quite sorry for those who do.

ANOTHER UPDATE: This story reveals that threats were made against Moore--who is having his movie shown in Crawford, Texas, and who decided in a public relations move to invite President Bush to the screening. I disapprove strongly of any attempts to threaten Moore's life, so I hope that whatever morons are behind such threats will knock it off, and/or get the legal trouble they have coming to them.

The following act, however, is something I endorse wholeheartedly:

Overnight, 20 bags of composted cow manure were dumped near the spot where television crews do live broadcasts from Crawford, a few miles from Bush's Central Texas ranch.

The fertilizer, in 25-pound bags, included a sign addressed: "To Michael Moore. One piece of Bull**** deserves another."

The only problem, of course, is that this represents a perfectly good waste of fertilizer.

A THIRD UPDATE: Moore recently had a debate with Bill O'Reilly, in which he repeatedly challenged O'Reilly to say that he would be willing to send one of his children to die in Iraq. The question is moronic, because no parent is made of stone. However, one parent chose to answer:

My son is a Ranger who just returned from Iraq where he spent months kicking in doors in targeted raids against terrorists in the worst parts of Iraq. He joined the Army at the end of 2002 when it was clear that the invasion would probably happen. As a former paratrooper myself, I am proud of my only son beyond words.

When a parent loses a child engaged in some activity such as mountain climbing or skydiving, they always seem to say something like, "Well, he died doing what he wanted to do." We accept that. After all, who are we to judge? Well, my son wanted to be a soldier. He wanted to follow a family tradition. He wanted to serve his country. He wanted to do his share. He wanted to be a warrior. He is doing what he wants to do.

Since my son has actually seen significant combat in Fallujah and ar Ramadi, I have had to contemplate the unthinkable: what if he is killed? It is a horrible thought but one that cannot be avoided. This brings me to Moore's stupid question: "Would you sacrifice your child for Fallujah?" The answer of course is, "Hell no!" My first thought is to quote Patton, "The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." This is, of course, the main point, isn't it?

Beyond that, I would point out that it was my son's decision to join the Army, the infantry, the paratroopers and the Rangers. He did it on his own because he wanted to. If he - God forbid - is killed doing what he wants, I will say, "Well, he died doing what he wanted to do." Why would anyone be less willing to accept that answer from me than from the grieving parents of a child who was killed in the pursuit of mere recreation?

I guess the relevant point here is that my son is a proud, honorable soldier. He chose that path and am proud of him. He is fighting for what he believes in. Obviously Moore has absolutely no understanding of this type of deep moral commitment. He should not speak for me or my son. He certainly should not exploit the deaths of these heroes for his own gain. And to your point: yes, I loathe him.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.

--Aristotle

YOU KNEW IT HAD TO HAPPEN

The Happy Fun Pundits are back. And they haven't lost their touch.

PECULIAR

Kevin Drum writes:

I don't know what he's going to say yet, but Howard Dean sure has gotten the loudest welcome that I've seen so far. Louder than Carter, louder than Kennedy, louder than Clinton....

I caught much of the Dean speech (no screaming!) but I didn't really hear the crowd during the introduction because I was away from the television. Was it really louder than the reception Bill Clinton got?

KYOTO MYTHS

Chris Horner corrects some errors in Bill Clinton's speech last night regarding the Kyoto Protocol, and the Bush Administration's treatment of it:

Now, this raises a question of basic competence and awareness. President Bush "withdrew our support from", though regrettably never went so far as to actually withdraw from, Kyoto by merely saying mean things about it. As such, it may be open to rhetorical distortion, but not to serious debate, that as a matter of fact, law and policy, President Bush has merely maintained Clinton's position of refusing (for over 3 years of the latter's presidency) to send the treaty to the Senate for a vote. We continue our involvement, however, sending 28 State and EPA officials to the June "Subsidiary Body" talks in Bonn. How, precisely, do the parties differ on this significant issue?

But, here's the kicker. This so-called withdrawal of support came on March 17, 2001. Six months before we were attacked, announced by Vice President Cheney on MSNBC and to our allies by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

Ah, those dates. How pesky they can be.

OH TEDDY BOY . . .

Barbara Comstock on Ted Kennedy's speech before the Democratic National Convention--which just ended about half an hour ago:

Kennedy was stumbling over words, saying some words three times before he got it right. His voice was cracking. At one point instead of saying "they fired the shot heard round the world" I think he said "they fired the SHIRT round the world"!!

I think Ted may have been firing up some shots before he gave this speech. He said he had no ill will towards his opponents and invited them to a tea party and pointed out it was right down the road...I think it sounded like he had already been at a party down the road and they weren't serving tea. The speech itself wasn't good even if he could read it without stumbling over the words. Apparently Bob Shrum was otherwise occupied, but it doesn't seem like Teddy even got the B Team to work on this one.

On a proud mother note: Before his speech Wolf Blitzer and others were talking about how Chappaquiddick lost Kennedy his shot at the White House. My son asked, "Didn't Chappaquiddick lose a woman her life?"

UPDATE: And apparently, the response ads may already be in the works.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The response ad is finished. And quite appropriate, actually.

A THIRD UPDATE: What's that saying about people in glass houses?

SOTTO VOCE BUSH-BASHING

Before being fully taken in by the canard that Democrats are trying to present a positive image for the voters, one should really listen to Jacob Levy:

Still, I'm curious to see whether the mainstream press actually buys the claim that last night wasn't loaded with Bush-bashing. Even Clinton's wasn't hidden; it was just coated in his honeyed voice. Carter's would have been astonishingly nasty, if I still had the capacity to be astonished by Carter. (Much of the bashing was effective. Some of it was right. And bashing the incumbent is what a challenger's party does. But I dislike the sanctimonious pretense that "As long as we don't repeat Michael Moore's theories, we're running a positive, 'choice of visions' campaign.")

"WHEN PUNCHLINE TRUMPS HONESTY"

At some point, you would think that Michael Moore's fans would begin to get a wee bit concerned that they may have been taken for a ride, after reading review after review slamming Fahrenheit 9/11 for serial dishonesty. Maybe Scott Simon can push them over the edge:

Michael Moore has won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and may win an Oscar for the kind of work that got Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, and Jack Kelly fired.

Trying to track the unproven innuendoes and conspiracies in a Michael Moore film or book is as futile as trying to count the flatulence jokes in one by Adam Sandler. Some journalists and critics have acted as if his wrenching of facts is no more serious than a movie continuity problem, like showing a 1963 Chevy in 1956 Santa Monica.

Back in 1991 that sharpest of film critics, the New Yorker's Pauline Kael, blunted some of the raves for Mr. Moore's "Roger and Me" by pointing out how the film misrepresented many facts about plant closings in Flint, Mich., and caricatured people it purported to feel for. "The film I saw was shallow and facetious," said Kael, "a piece of gonzo demagoguery that made me feel cheap for laughing."

His methods remain unrefined in "Fahrenheit 9/11." Mr. Moore ignores or misrepresents the truth, prefers innuendo to fact, edits with poetic license rather than accuracy, and strips existing news footage of its context to make events and real people say what he wants, even if they don't. As Kael observed back then, Mr. Moore's method is no more high-minded than "the work of a slick ad exec."

How many more people have to reveal Moore for the liar he is before he is ignored--as any quack and charlatan ultimately should be?

THE INSIDE SCOOP

Patrick Belton blogs from the convention. His mix of Tocquevillian observation and wry detachment are most amusing. And I mean that in a good way.

SCHADENFREUDE

Dan Drezner has an interesting post for Euro-bashers, pointing out the degree of economic stagnation that has hit the euro zone, and providing links to reports showing that the United States enjoys a higher quality of life than is enjoyed in Europe.

Personally, I don't delight in this, and wouldn't mind seeing Europe more vibrant and livable than it currently is. The sclerotic nature of European society is a drag on international standards of living, and as Dan points out, it will only serve to harm the cause of free trade in the long run.

LOSER'S NIGHT

Jonathan Last is a very funny writer.

MAYBE THIS IS A SILLY QUESTION

But for all the Democrats like Bill Clinton, who last night claimed that he never wanted the tax cut that he got, I would just like to know something: Did you send your tax cut back to the Treasury Department?

Because, you know, they'll take the money if you don't want it.

Rich Lowry, meanwhile, has more questions.

PAGING ANDREW SULLIVAN

Remember how Sullivan said that "much of the hard work has now been done" regarding the war on terror? He must not have taken this news report into account:

Iran is once again building centrifuges that can be used to make nuclear weaponry, breaking the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency's seals on the equipment in a show of defiance against international efforts to monitor its program, diplomats said Tuesday. Iran has not restarted enriching uranium with the centrifuges — a step that would raise further alarm. But the resumption of centrifuge construction is likely to push European nations, which have been seeking a negotiated resolution, closer to the United States' more confrontational stance.

The United States accuses Tehran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons and wants the U.N. Security Council to take up the issue. Iran denies the charge and says the centrifuges are part of a nuclear program aimed only at producing energy.

Under international pressure last year, the Islamic republic agreed to stop enriching uranium and stop making centrifuges, in a deal reached with Britain, France and Germany.

But the moratorium ended several weeks ago, when Tehran — angry over international perusal of its nuclear program — broke seals placed on enrichment equipment by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the diplomats told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

A terror-sponsoring regime with nuclear weapons would certainly amount to "hard work" for the United States and its allies. I trust we will stop falling victim to war fatigue sometime soon. Because our enemies certainly aren't.

INCONVENIENT CONVENTION NEWS

While the Democratic National Convention tries to convince us that we are on the precipice of yet another Great Depression, consumer confidence continues to rise:

Consumer confidence reached a two-year high in July, the fourth straight month of improvement, as the job market continued to recover. The jump was higher than analysts were expecting and helped push stocks higher on Wall Street. A separate report showed that new home sales dipped less than expected in June and remained at their second-highest level on record.

The Conference Board, a private research group based in New York, reported Tuesday that its index of consumer confidence in U.S. business conditions jumped to 106.1 in July, up from 102.8 in June and well ahead of the figure of 102.0 that investors had been expecting. It was the highest level for the indicator since June 2002.

The group attributed the sharp increase to continued improvement in the labor market, with more consumers reporting that they believed jobs were plentiful and fewer expecting that conditions would worsen over the next six months.

A measure of consumer expectations for future economic conditions rose sharply in June, while another one gauging their sense of current conditions edged higher. The group's "expectations index" jumped to 105.8 from 100.8 last month, while the "present situation" index was up to 106.5 from 105.9.

Economists said the strong showing in consumer confidence helped ease concerns about a number of poor readings on the economy that came in for June, including a payroll report that came in at half the level analysts had been expecting, sending jitters through Wall Street.

Consumer confidence is closely watched by economists because consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of all U.S. economic activity.

The better-than-expected report on Tuesday helped lift the Dow Jones industrial above the 10,000 level for the first time since Friday. In afternoon trading, the Dow was up was up 81 points at 10,043. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 index climbed 6 points to 1,090.

In a separate report Tuesday, the Commerce Department said that new home sales edged down 0.8 percent in June after soaring to a record pace in May. Nonetheless, the lower annual rate of home sales of 1.33 million units was still the second-highest level on record behind May's pace of 1.34 million.

The decline in the pace of home sales was smaller than analysts had been predicting and indicated that the housing sector, one of the best-performing parts of the economy, was still moving ahead strongly despite interest rates that are about a full percentage point higher than they were a year ago.

Economists are expecting sales of both new homes and existing homes will set records for the year, even taking into consideration an anticipated slowdown in the second half of the year.

LABOR PAINS

John Kerry is in trouble with Big Labor:

Breaking sharply with the enforced harmony of the Democratic National Convention, the president of the largest AFL-CIO union said Monday that both organized labor and the Democratic Party might be better off in the long run if Sen. John F. Kerry loses the election.

Andrew L. Stern, the head of the 1.6 million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU), said in an interview with The Washington Post that both the party and its longtime ally, the labor movement, are "in deep crisis," devoid of new ideas and working with archaic structures.

Stern argued that Kerry's election might stifle needed reform within the party and the labor movement. He said he still believes that Kerry overall would make a better president than President Bush, and his union has poured huge resources into that effort. But he contends that Kerry's election would have the effect of slowing the "evolution" of the dialogue within the party.

Asked whether if Kerry became president it would help or hurt those internal party deliberations, Stern said, "I think it hurts."

So while Kerry will continue to get labor support, that support is not as enthusiastic as it was for past Democratic candidates. One can't help but yawn at the news. Like so many other Democratic constituencies, Big Labor gets remembered only at times when votes need to be counted. The rest of the time, they are taken for granted, and kept resentful of a socioeconomic system that the Democrats play a part in maintaining. Why labor leaders don't at least make Democrats work for their votes is beyond me.

THE HORSERACE

Interestingly, the convention and the increased attention on John Kerry have done little to move Kerry's numbers:

The critical convention season begins with John Kerry losing momentum at just the hour he'd like to be gaining it: President Bush has clawed back on issues and attributes alike, reclaiming significant ground that Kerry had taken a month ago. Kerry has lost support against Bush in trust to handle five of six issues tested in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, including terrorism, Iraq, taxes and even health care. And Kerry's ratings on personal attributes — honesty, strong leadership, consistency, empathy and others — have softened as well. The bottom line has shifted only very subtly. Head-to-head, the Massachuestts senator has slipped from a slight lead in late June to a dead heat today, with 49 percent support for Bush and 48 percent for Kerry among registered voters. Including Ralph Nader, it's 48 percent-46 percent-3 percent.

More evidence regarding just how polarized this election is, and just how close it will be on Election Day. For what it's worth, barring some extraordinary extravaganza, I don't think that the conventions will do much of anything this year to change the dynamics of the presidential race. The race will be won instead by the political equivalent of hand-to-hand combat.

BEATING UP ON THE EX-PRESIDENTS

Tim Graham takes on the speeches of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton at the Democratic National Convention last night:

Carter's speech was viciously negative. Unlike Bush, Kerry "showed up" for Vietnam. He will "restore maturity and judgment" — which are sorely lacking — to the White House. Bush has an "unbroken series of mistakes and miscalculations." Every Republican and plenty of independents watching at home must have remembered Carter's inept foreign-policy adventures, like the disastrous failed Iranian-hostage rescue attempt, and wondered where Carter got the audacity to use these damning words against someone else. Ten countries went under the Communist yoke as Jimmy Carter was smooching Leonid Brezhnev after arms-control talks; but last night, the Cold War was won not by Ronald Reagan, but by a long bipartisan consensus. And what about the part where "truth and trust" are so important in foreign policy? What would that say about President Clinton's record of bombing after depositions and before impeachment votes?

But the network anchors saw greatness. CNN's Joe Johns asked Rep. John Lewis why Carter could be so negative considering the Kerry camp's concerns about tone, and Lewis said, "Jimmy Carter is simply the elder statesman of the party, an honest man, truthful, and when those words come out of his mouth, he's viewed as such." Anchor Aaron Brown pleaded, "Let me build on that," and oozed, "The Kerry campaign's concern is they don't want it too personal and they don't want it shrill, and it's hard to imagine shrill and Jimmy Carter in the same sentence."

[. . .]

They didn't compare Clinton's speech to Clinton's presidency. In their last terms in the White House, were the Democrats known for doubling troop strength? They didn't see any problem with Clinton equating his draft finagling (signed up for ROTC, never showed up, went to play strip poker at Oxford) to Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard (where Democrats are still suggesting the dentist doesn't remember him). They didn't compare Clinton's class-war gibes about how he's pampered by the Republicans now that he's super-rich to his insistence that Republicans "need a divided America, but we don't."

Twelve years ago, on Monday night of the Republican convention, the media quickly seized on Pat Buchanan's speech. Peter Jennings concluded, "There's a lot in there that's not accurate," insisting people tune him in the next night for the corrections. One test of media seriousness is whether they take all these sorry spending-cut refrains from Clinton's speech last night and compare them to the actual budget. Republicans favored cutting 300,000 kids out of after-school programs, or cutting 88,000 police officers? The fact-checkers might just take a holiday for the Democrats.

Of course, when your platform consists solely of "Anybody But Bush," facts are about the last thing that will stand in your way.

UPDATE: Steven Hayward is properly vicious to the small-minded peanut farmer:

But when Carter wasn't being unintentionally self-satirical, he was being his old squalid self. Never mentioning Bush by name but making obvious inferences is vintage Carter. Recall how he would call attention to Chappaquiddick in 1980 by saying "I never panicked in a crisis." His low point in last night's speech was accusing "the current administration" of fostering "public panic." Carter no doubt prefers Americans to approach terrorism with malaise instead. He began his speech recalling his 1976 theme of giving us "a government as good as the people," forgetting that one reason the people decisively rejected him four years later was because he had come around to saying the people were no good. (In fact, Carter used many of the same stiff and awkward looking hand gestures of his famous "malaise" speech.)

And should Carter ever use the word "screeching," especially in connection with an oxymoron like "Middle East peace process"? ("The current administration," Carter said, has brought the Middle East peace process "to a screeching halt.") The old Carter chutzpah was on full display as well, with his precious comment that "the current administration" has let the North Korean nuclear crisis fester. This is the man who aggravated the crisis in the first place, and came back from Pyongyang to tell Americans that Kim Il Sung, the last of the Stalin-era thanatocrats, was the North Korean equivalent of George Washington or Patrick Henry.

But the performance Carter most resembled was not a literary creation of Monty Python or Wodehouse, but his own in the debate with Ronald Reagan in 1980. At least twice in his speech last night Carter used the word "disturbing," as well as the word "extreme," to describe the Bush administration. In his 1980 debate with Reagan, Carter called Reagan's views "disturbing" six times, and "extreme" or "out of the mainstream" several times. One of Carter's own aides remarked that throughout the debate, "Jimmy looked like he was about to slug him."

Reagan famously flicked Carter off his sleeve with his retort, "There you go again." With that one line, Reagan deflated Carter's relentless attacks on his supposed extremism, reminded voters about Carter's essential unpleasantness, and made obvious who was the "disturbed" person on stage. But last night's speech did leave out one important detail from his debate with Reagan. Carter left unanswered the question on everybody's mind: What does Amy think about the war on terrorism?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Quoth Sebastian Holsclaw:

Carter wants to talk about the Middle East ablaze? So often we hear liberals complaining about the Iranian revolution as being a response to U.S. meddling, but they never name Carter's government when they talk about propping up the Shah. Carter's response to the Iran hostage crisis was the beginning of the region's favorite image of the U.S. as having technological might, but being unwilling to actually fight after Vietnam. And Carter dares to talk about Middle East peace when he has repeatedly embraced Arafat's even while Arafat was in the midst of terrorism against Israel? The so-called recent progress of Clinton at Camp David was put in to peril not by Bush, but by Arafat even before Bush came to power when Arafat decided to encourage a renewed intifada rather than continue negotiations.

It is the repeated Democratic refusal to acknowledge that responsibility often lies with parties other than the U.S. which makes it so difficult for them to take action.

But the truly shocking line is about North Korea's nuclear menace. When Carter swooped onto the scene in 1994, North Korea did not have nuclear weapons. In his apparent belief that papering over problems is the same as bringing a solution, Carter negotiated the 1994 Agreed Framework in which North Korea agreed to cease all nuclear weapons research, follow through with their pledge for a 'nuclear-free penninsula', and shut down their plutonium-producing reactor in exchange for massive subsidies. For all his talk of 'human-rights' Carter negotiated an agreement for the U.S. to prop up one of the most repressive and torture-embracing regimes in the world in exchange for their promise not to build nuclear weapons. And in exchange for supporting them we gave them enough time to build the nuclear weapons which they did not have at the time of the agreement.

Perhaps the agreement looks worse in retrospect than it did at the time. But that is no excuse to use a diplomatic disaster largely of your own making as an example of Bush mishandling North Korea. Bush wouldn't be facing a nuclear North Korea if Carter's Agreed Framework had been more than a paper ruse for the North Koreans to buy time. Bush wouldn't be facing a nuclear Korea if Clinton had ignored Carter and taken action then. Or if we could not have stopped Korea from gaining nuclear weapons without a war that we weren't willing to engage in, we could have at the very least avoided spending our money propping up the deeply sadistic North Korean regime. How dare Carter talk about policy failures based on a lack of attention to human rights when he was directly involved in a huge diplomatic disaster which traded support for one of the most depraved countries in the world for practically nothing?

This is not a Democratic Party that has learned from its diplomacy mistakes. It still embraces Carter and acts as if his diplomatic disasters were triumphs. They don't have foreign policy, they engage in foreign fantasy.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Only learn to seize good fortune, for good fortune is always here.

--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"HISTORY'S GREATEST MONSTER"

Jimmy Carter deserved some kind of smackdown after unburdening himself of his loathsome prattle before a national audience. Here then, is my humble attempt to lay down said smack.

DUNCAN BLACK

Well, I guess the mystery is solved, then. Of course, since the overwhelming majority of you haven't yet seen a picture of me, we can have other mysteries in the Blogosphere to sustain us.

TORTURING THE DATA

My Fisking of Andrew Sullivan can be found here.

THE DOG THAT DIDN'T BARK

Bryan Caplan reveals that yet another argument against terrorism futures markets has fallen by the wayside with the 9/11 Commission's finding that there was no stock market manipulation that occurred commensurate with the attacks. I hope this finding receives some publicity--especially given the hysterical manner in which the issue of terrorism futures markets was addressed.

JOHN KERRY AND CIVIL LIBERTIES

This article will likely break the hearts of those who believed that Kerry is the anti-Ashcroft when it comes to the issue of civil liberties. A key passage:

Kerry, like every other senator in the chamber except Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), voted for the USA PATRIOT Act in the wake of 9/11. Now he is now co-sponsoring the SAFE Act, a bipartisan measure that restricts some of the powers that the PATRIOT Act granted the government. Furthermore, he is critical of the package of proposals from Ashcroft's Department of Justice (DOJ) that has been dubbed Patriot II. Citing his experience as a prosecutor—he was an assistant district attorney in suburban Boston in the '70s—Kerry writes, "I know there's a big difference between giving the government the resources and commonsense leeway it needs to track a tough and devious foe and giving in to the temptation of taking shortcuts that will sacrifice liberties cheaply without significantly enhancing the effectiveness of law enforcement. Patriot II threatens to cross that line—and to a serious degree."

This isn't the first time Kerry and Ashcroft have been at odds over civil liberties. In the 1990s, government proposals to restrict encryption inspired a national debate. Then as now, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and electronic privacy groups locked horns with the DOJ and law enforcement agencies. Then as now, Kerry and Ashcroft were on opposite sides.

But there was noteworthy difference in those days. Then it was Sen. John Ashcroft (R-Mo.) who argued alongside the ACLU in favor of the individual's right to encrypt messages and export encryption software. Ashcroft "was kind of the go-to guy for all of us on the Republican side of the Senate," recalls David Sobel, general counsel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

And in what now seems like a bizarre parallel universe, it was John Kerry who was on the side of the FBI, the National Security Agency, and the DOJ. Ashcroft's predecessor at the Justice Department, Janet Reno, wanted to force companies to create a "clipper chip" for the government—a chip that could "unlock" the encryption codes individuals use to keep their messages private. When that wouldn't fly in Congress, the DOJ pushed for a "key escrow" system in which a third-party agency would have a "backdoor" key to read encrypted messages.

In the meantime, the Clinton administration classified virtually all encryption devices as "munitions" that were banned from export, putting American business at a disadvantage. In 1997 Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain pushed the Secure Public Networks Act through his committee. This bill would have codified the administration's export ban and started a key escrow system. One of his original co-sponsors was his fellow Vietnam vet and good friend from across the aisle, John Kerry.

Proponents such as McCain and Kerry claimed that law enforcement could not get the key from any third-party agency without a court order. Critics responded that there were loopholes in the law, that it opened the door to abuses, and that it punished a technology rather than wrongdoers who used that technology. Some opponents argued that the idea was equivalent to giving the government an electronic key to everyone's home. "To date, we have heard a great deal about the needs of law enforcement and not enough about the privacy needs of the rest of us," said then-Sen. Ashcroft in a 1997 speech to the Computer and Communications Industry Association. "While we need to revise our laws to reflect the digital age, one thing that does not need revision is the Fourth Amendment... Now, more than ever, we must protect citizens' privacy from the excesses of an arrogant, overly powerful government."

But John Kerry would have none of this. He had just written The New War, a book about the threat of transnational criminal organizations, and he was singing a different tune on civil liberties. Responding directly to a column in Wired on encryption that said "trusting the government with your privacy is like having a Peeping Tom install your window blinds," Kerry invoked the Americans killed in 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. "[O]ne would be hard-pressed," he wrote, "to find a single grieving relative of those killed in the bombings of the World Trade Center in New York or the federal building in Oklahoma City who would not have gladly sacrificed a measure of personal privacy if it could have saved a loved one." Change a few words, and the passage could easily fit into Attorney General Ashcroft's infamous speech to the Senate Judiciary Committee in late 2001—the one where he declared, "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberties, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists—for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve."

I take it that the same people who accused Bush of eroding our civil liberty protections will now jump on Kerry for his own record. Right?

Right?

(Thanks to Stephen Green for the link.)

SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION

Nominate your favorite short, bald, Iranian-Jewish-American blogger here.

WHAT SHOULD BE ON THE PRESIDENT'S DINNER MENU TONIGHT?

Pizza, of course.

THE POTEMKIN CONVENTION

Obviously, both Republicans and Democrats try to put their best feet forward when having a convention, and it does not take long for stories to emerge regarding how certain themes and individuals are being sublimated or shut out of prime time in order for a party to be able to present itself in the best possible light.

Having said that, I still find this article quite amusing:

As the Democratic convention gets underway today, the Kerry campaign and the Democratic National Committee are trying to soften any edges that might offend swing voters.

So the word is out: the liberal wing of the party is being told to avoid any harsh rhetoric. That could already be affecting tonight's headliners: last night, Al Gore's speech was basically torn up, according to two sources, and is now being rewritten, presumably to fit more closely with the party line. The other challenge tonight is to avoid having two Democratic party stars.

The comments section is open for suggestions as to what Gore the Somnolent would say to ensure that he doesn't go over the top. And if he will indeed be somnolent, will anyone bother to listen at all?

UPDATE: Jeff Taylor kind of doubts the "Democrats will be nice" line that appears to be getting so much media play.

IT'S CHEAP HUMOR, BUT DELIGHTFUL NONETHELESS

Political conventions bring out the best in Tim Blair. From skulduggery:

Okay. More posts tomorrow, once the actual DemFest action begins. Must now prepare disguise to sneak into clambake at Ted Kennedy's place. I'm going as a Designated Driver.

to outright fiendishness:

I’m heading into town now to set a trap for Michael Moore. I can't reveal too much, but it involves a long piece of string, an empty cardboard box (extra large), a stick, and a cheeseburger.

Is it too much to ask that Tim become a talking head over at one of the TV networks covering these conventions? It sure would be more interesting than hearing Al Gore rant and rave in his speech.

PANTSCAPADES: THE PLOT THICKENS

More interesting information regarding Sandy Berger's adventures in the National Archives:

What was Sandy Berger up to when he "inadvertently" removed versions of a classified National Archives memo that critiqued Clinton administration intelligence and security efforts regarding the millennium celebrations? We still don't know. But a bigger question is being posed by some of the well-sourced wags with whom we regularly converse. In fact, one says the thrust of the federal investigation now looking into Mr. Berger's actions should center not necessarily on what was taken from the archived files but what was placed in them.

Berger has acknowledged removing his handwritten notes taken during a review of classified documents. That's a violation of National Archives policy. And he says he mistakenly took the copies of the aforementioned memo, different drafts written by Bush-bashing anti-terrorism coordinator Richard A. Clarke. Some of those copies remain missing.

But a new scenario has Berger, who only took notes on an initial visit last fall, placing material -- again, related to the millennium terrorists threats -- into the files on his second and third visits.

This has gotten very interesting indeed. I wonder what the next defensive round of spin from Berger's remaining advocates will be.

GOOD FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL . . .

For employing the talents of Arthur Chrenkoff to give us more exceedingly valuable coverage regarding foreign affairs. As with his other reports, Chrenkoff's latest column is a must-read--with a twist. This time, instead of turning his attention to the events in Iraq--which is what he became famous for--Chrenkoff is discussing Afghanistan. Be sure to give his column a read.

MEDIA PRIORITIES

Howard Kurtz has a revealing set of statistics regarding coverage of the evolution of the Wilson/Plame affair:

Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV's allegations that President Bush misled the country about Saddam Hussein seeking uranium from Africa was a huge media story, fueled by an investigation into who outed his CIA-operative wife. According to a database search, NBC carried 40 stories, CBS 30 stories, ABC 18, The Washington Post 96, the New York Times 70, the Los Angeles Times 48.

But a Senate Intelligence Committee report that contradicts some of Wilson's account and supports Bush's State of the Union claim hasn't received nearly as much attention. "NBC Nightly News" and ABC's "World News Tonight" have each done a story. But CBS hasn't reported it -- despite a challenge by Republican Chairman Ed Gillespie on CBS's "Face the Nation," noting that the network featured Wilson on camera 15 times. A spokeswoman says CBS is looking into the matter.

Newspapers have done slightly better. The Post, which was the first to report the findings July 10, has run two stories, an editorial and an ombudsman's column; the New York Times two stories and an op-ed column; and the Los Angeles Times two stories. Wilson, meanwhile, has defended himself from what he calls "a Republican smear campaign" in op-ed pieces in The Post and Los Angeles Times.

Is anyone really surprised? And would anyone doubt that had shoes been on other feet (i.e., had Wilson been a Republican partisan going after a Democratic administration) that the statistics would have been completely reversed?

QUOI?

Something tells me that Christie Vilsack will not be a featured speaker at the Democratic National Convention:

Iowa First Lady Christie Vilsack, a key factor in John Kerry's primary sweep and the primetime convention speaker tomorrow, has derided blacks, southerners and easterners as bad speakers because she couldn't understand them.

In inflammatory columns for her local newspaper obtained by the Herald, the normally soft-spoken Vilsack tore into several minority and ethnic groups while lampooning non-midwesterners for regional dialects.

"I am fascinated at the way some African-Americans speak to each other in an English I struggle to understand, then switch to standard English when the situation requires,'' Vilsack wrote in a 1994 column in the Mount Pleasant News, while her husband, Tom, was a state senator.

Vilsack wrote that southerners seem to have ``slurred speech,'' wrote that she'd rather learn Polish than try to speak like people from New Jersey, and wrote that a West Virginian waitress once offered her friend a "side saddle'' instead of a "side salad.''

The future Iowa first lady seemed to be promoting English as the nation's official language, an issue that tripped up her husband, Gov. Tom Vilsack, with many Democrats.

A Kerry campaign spokesman dismissed the quotes as "ancient clips'' and referred questions to the Democratic National Convention Committee.

The DNCC wouldn't say whether the comments match the convention platform or theme.

I'm as much in favor of proper English being used as the next person, but it seems unbelievable to me that someone like Vilsack would actually attack people in this manner for having regional dialects. Perhaps she is carrying her pet cause just a bit too far.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Music, verily, is the mediator between intellectual and sensuous life... the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.

--Beethoven

FUN WITH POLLS

I think that my resolve to stay away from poll-blogging as much as possible is weakening as the campaign season heats up. An expression of my moral weaknesses? I don't know . . . I guess that's the kind of thing my readers will have to determine.

That having been said, it is interesting to note Tom Bevan's post, which points out that the polls show no bounce for Kerry going into the Democratic National Convention after his pick of John Edwards, and showing as well that President Bush's own job approval ratings are on the rise. If Bush can get his approval numbers anywhere between the 52-54% range, Kerry will be toast (in 1984 and 1996, Reagan and Clinton both had approval ratings that hovered around 53%).

Having said that, I won't be surprised if Kerry sprints out to as much as a 10 point lead after the convention is over. The media may help that process along--after all, they are setting the stage to see whether Kerry can "humanize" himself, reintroduce them to his biography, and connect with voters. It just won't make for an interesting storyline if that answer isn't "Yes" after the conventions are over. So expect some media selling of Kerry, especially in the light of the confessions of people like Daniel Okrent regarding media bias.

In the end, however, we have a very polarized electorate, and as a consequence, we will have a race that remains quite tight until the very end. Which means that whatever bounce Kerry gets from his convention will eventually dissipate, that Bush's bounce will dissipate as well, and that we are in for a nailbiter on Election Night.

And which probably means more obsessive poll-checking as well. Curse my weak-willed nature and inability to resist the siren song of the latest survey.

FUN WITH LEGOS

For those of you who have not yet had the opportunity to see Spiderman-2, here's your chance.

(Thanks to Dan Drezner for the link.)

JUSTICE IN IRAN

Or rather, the lack thereof:

Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi vowed on Sunday not to rest until the killer of Canadian-Iranian journalist Zahra Kazemi was identified, after Iran's judiciary acquitted the sole defendant in the case.

"I will pursue this case until my last breath," said human rights lawyer Ebadi, who is representing the family of Kazemi, who lived in Canada and died on an assignment in Iran.

Kazemi's death in detention last July after being arrested for taking photographs of Tehran's Evin prison has severely strained Iran's ties with Canada -- which withdrew its ambassador this month -- and thrown an international spotlight on human rights abuses and judicial process in Iran.

Iran's reform-minded government, human rights groups and lawyers for the Kazemi family had long said the intelligence agent charged with killing her was a scapegoat and accused the powerful and conservative judiciary of covering up evidence pointing to the involvement of judiciary officials in her death.

"The Iranian government from the beginning believed the man on trial was innocent and the court came to the same conclusion," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told a weekly news conference on Sunday.

Imagine the coincidence.

BREATHTAKING

There really are no words to describe just how blatantly hypocritical some people can be:

Palestinian businessmen have made millions of pounds supplying cement for Israel's "security barrier" in the full knowledge of Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader and one of the wall's most vocal critics.

A damning report by Palestinian legislators, which has been seen by the Telegraph, concludes that Mr Arafat did nothing to stop the deals although he publicly condemned the structure as a "crime against humanity".

The report claims that the cement was sold with the knowledge of senior officials at the Palestinian ministry of national economy, and close advisers to Mr Arafat. It concludes that officials were bribed to issue import licences for the cement to importers and businessmen working for Israelis.

One of the report's three authors, Hassan Khreishe - an independent legislator and long-term critic of Mr Arafat - last night called for the Palestinian cabinet to resign.

"Wealthy Palestinians with connections at the highest levels have been making millions helping Israel build this wall while Arafat and the Palestinian Authority have been urging people to fight against it," said Mr Khreishe, a council member from the West Bank city of Tulkarm.

"Why Arafat did nothing about it, we just don't know. These people are traitors who have brought shame on us, and they should be punished."

An official in Mr Arafat's office said: "We will not comment because this file has been closed and it is now in the hands of the attorney general."

If this is true, then I am just gobsmacked. Kudos to the Palestinian legislators for having the courage to call Arafat on his duplicity. Chances are we will never hear from a lot of them again. After all, speaking truth to power is verboten in Arafat's world.

MORE ON THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT

Tacitus continues to read the report and gives valuable commentary. His post is long, but it is well worth reading.

AND THEY WOULD KNOW, TOO

Given the fact that the Poles were subjected to more "totalitarian propaganda" than they could possibly stomach during the Soviet era, I think it is fair to say that they are authorities on the subject. And it should come as no surprise that they are disgusted by the latest Riefenstahlian attempt to influence political opinion:

Michael Moore's contentious film Fahrenheit 9/11 has opened in Poland, with some film critics likening it to totalitarian propaganda. Gazeta Wyborcza reviewer Jacek Szczerba called the film a "foul pamphlet".

He said it was too biased to be called a documentary and was similar to work by Nazi propaganda director Leni Riefenstahl.

But politicians opposed to Poland's involvement in the US-led occupation of Iraq have urged people to see the film.

"In criticising Moore, I have to admit that he has certain abilities - Leni Riefenstahl had them too," Mr Szczerba said in his review.

"Michael Moore will not convince Poles with his film," the Rzeczpospolita newspaper said in its review.

"People are very sensitive to aggressive propaganda, especially when it pretends to be an objective documentary or a work of art."

DOG BITES MAN . . .

And The New York Times is a liberal newspaper. Of course, the Times can take whatever stance it wanted to take, but candor such as the kind displayed in this article should have been displayed far, far earlier.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. I knew a man of simple habits and earnest character who never put out his hands nor opened his lips to court the public, and having survived several rotten reputations of younger men, honor came at last and sat down with him upon his private bench from which he had never stirred.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

THE EMERGING SHAPE OF THE ELECTORAL MAP

I have a post on how the Electoral College may be shaping up over at Red State.

GEEKS OF THE WORLD, LEND ME YOUR EYES

New information regarding the final Star Wars movie--to be released next year--is available here. Those old enough to remember will note that the third Star Wars movie was originally to be called Revenge of the Jedi, but since revenge is not a particularly Jedi trait, and since The Wrath of Khan had come out at the same time, George Lucas decided to call his film Return of the Jedi.

He also decided to insert Ewoks into the movie. Things have pretty much gone to Hell in a handbasket since then.