Obsidian Wings

A-Ha!

So this is why I saw a kid wearing a black T-shirt with the words "Neutral Evil" written across the front when I stepped out to lunch. It's not just geek chic -- the D&D; people are in town! Having once been one of them, I'll raise my First Edition Player's Handbook and say: Happy 30th Birthday, D&D;!

(Via Swordstyle.)

Giblets is Lord

Giblets of the Fafpeople -- who is the Lord Of All That Is and, I am reliably told, my secret Santa (thanks for the Gold Toes!) -- wants to discuss missile defense:

So on Tuesday George Bush said his plan for a missile defense shield showed he was living in the future. So far into the future he doesn't have to worry about terrorists anymore.

"I think those who oppose this ballistic missile system really don't understand the threats of the 21st century," he said. "They're living in the past. We're living in the future. We're going to do what's necessary to protect this country."

Namby-pamby suspiciously-French-lookin' Democrat John Kerry is plannin' to take money AWAY from this incredibly important overpriced boondoggle and send it towards expanding the military! Clearly John Kerry is not living in the future! He is stranded way back in the present, when we still needed "troop strength" and "special forces" to hunt down "terrorists"!

George Bush is more interested in the threats of tomorrow, which oddly enough look strangely like the threats of 1980: thousands of intercontinental missiles comin' across the sea from commie nations, possibly such as North Korea* and France. Our only defense against them? A missile shield that will one day, in the future, fail only about eighty to ninety percent of the time!

Again Giblets is not impressed! Giblets is living even farther into the future, in a time when terrorism and pinko-tyranny are both irrelevant! Giblets demands that we spend 1.8 trillion dollars on an array of massive space lasers pointed outward to defend Earth against the onslaught of immense insectoid invaders who will strike from beyond the asteroid belt! Giblets will not allow the tyrant Bug Emperor to lay its death spores in our atmosphere - and the whiney pleas of those stuck formulating "today's" foreign policy to secure the former Soviet nuclear stockpile will not get in his way!

There's really nothing more to say on the subject, methinks. Save perhaps that Giblets is wrong about Bush's troop redeployment plans. Wait, hold a moment -- someone's knocking on my door. Hello? What can I do for you? Well, actually, I do mind if you come in. What do you mean, "you don't care"? What the hell are you doing?!! Get your hands off me! That hurts! AHHHHHHH, Giblets, save me! I'll never stray again! (Gurgle gurgle whimper cry . . . . )

UPDATE: The Gibletsian Apostate DeLong claims that there is some kind of nambly-pambly "Fafblog triumvirate." Triumverate, sure -- at least 'till Giblets gives Faf and Med-Lo a good Ceasering! Release me from this dank cell, Lord Giblets, and I shall be the Prefect of your Prætorian Guard! Ha! We ride a dawn!

Forty Foot Jesus in Tulsa Watch! (And I mean watch)

John Cole over at Balloon Juice is in full-bore rant mode (I don't mean that in a bad way, mind you) about a bishop, a non-wheat communion wafer, transubstantiation and an eight year old with an inability to digest wheat products. I am gleefully skipping over the entire controversy - because, well, it's my blog and I can - to instead note two things.

1). Why the HELL was I not told that Mean Mr. Mustard was back? I am getting sick and tired of not being forwarded even the most important VRWC internal memos;

and

2). Constant Reader Slartibartfast noted in comments to John's post:

That's why Lutherans are inherently superior to Catholics...no spokesprophets.

I'd just like to point out for the record that, sure, Lutherans can hold their own against Holy Mother Church when it comes to most things... but when the supernatural comes knocking, well. Nobody calls in a Lutheran strike team to exorcise the archfiend or stake the vampire; I will grant that shotgun-wielding Baptist preachers are getting a good rep for being able to deal with your standard infestation of brain-eating zombis, but the Roman Catholic Church still remains Number One, overall.

Just saying.

There are times when I ask myself...

..."Moe, are you sure that this no-politics vacation makes sense? I mean, what if you miss covering something?" When that happens, I look myself squarely in the eye (it's a mystic kung fu thing. You wouldn't understand) and say, "Shoot, man, it's not like they couldn't replace me with a specially-trained cybernetic wombat. Besides, look at this and tell me that we're not smack dab in Silly Season territory right now."

And then I stand mute, bowled over by my keen, ninja-like logic...

This should go without saying . . . .

But I fully endorse this post by Gary Farber and this one by Bjørn Stærk (picked up by Volokh, and InstaPundit, and Giblets, and others too numerous to mention).

I've touched on this subject before, but Stærk does a better job than I in puncturing this particular balloon. Go read him. And, if you agree, link him. It's well-past midnight on this one. Time to figure out who's still up.

[UPDATE, Moe Lane] This is Moe, shamelessly using my superuser status to annotate one of von's posts. Hopefully, he'll forgive me, as I'm doing this to back him up. Hate solves nothing; never has, never will - and a blanket, murderous hatred of Islam on the part of the West is precisely the reaction that those evil men expected (wrongly, might I add) to result from 9/11. I shan't give them the satisfaction, and neither should anybody else.

Reading so much in, and yet failing to read

Michelle Malkin is starting to get tedious. In a recent post she attempts to fit a reasonably-scary newstory regarding terrorists and ambulances to her favorite thesis, that the war on terror will be won if we just start basing more of our security decisions on the skin color of those around us. Or, as she says, "profiling, profiling, profiling." But not every dog hunts, and calling a Shih Tzu a Beagle don't change things.

Here's the part of the story where Malkin teases out her evidence in favor of profiling:

"The man, who claimed he was from Pakistan and a physician, asked a series of questions to the squad members that related exclusively to the operation of the emergency vehicles, including the speed at which the vehicles responded to calls and the use of the lights and sirens," it said."The individual appeared very nervous, did not ask about patient care, and left the premises when asked to complete a membership application."

Malkin's "Translation: Profile, profile, profile."

Umm, no, this doesn't show a case of racial profiling. Nor does it support the case for racial profiling in the future. Profiling would base security decisions primarily upon a person's race, ethnicity, or religion (or some combination of the three). That's not what happened here.

What happened here was a fact-based, flexible approach that looked at suspicious behavior. To the extent that race played a role -- and I'm not saying that it did or should not, at some level -- it played that role only after initial suspicions had been raised. And that's perfectly reasonable given the dynamics of the war on terror. But it ain't profiling.

Indeed, if we started profiling, we'd be stopping Pakistani, Indian, Afghani, Arab, and Southeast Asian doctors and EMTs at the steps of hospitals and in ambulance bays regardless of their behavior, just to "check 'em out." Aside from being unjust (remember that 'ole concept about judging folks by the content of their character, not the color of their skin?), it would result in a bunch of wheel spinning, lots of frustration, even more missed doctor appointments, and a distracted and overworked police force. We would end up paying less attention to suspicious behavior -- the real indicator of who the bad guys are.

Such a thing wouldn't seem like a good idea to most people. Except, it seems, to Malkin.*

von

*It continues to amaze me how many folks confuse rigid adherence to a thesis with rigid adherence to the facts, or, for that matter, how many confuse "being a reactionary" with "being a conservative." (See, e.g., Malkin; Charles Johnson; et al.)

UPDATE: Some folks in comments suggest that Ms. Malkin has been tedious for a good long while. For the record, my first encounter with her work was "In Defense of Internment" -- which, regardless of the accuracy of the history, seems riddled with obvious logical gaps and flaws. (The fact that a lot of folks may be impressed by it is neither here nor there; a lot of folks are impressed with Michael Moore, and he's still a fat idiot.) In the last couple weeks, I've been periodically checking in on Malkin. That experiment is now over. Time, after all, is the most precious commodity we have.

On the other hand, RedState.org is doing yeoman's work in demonstrating the breadth and thoughtfulness of the Republican party's blogopartisans. Do take a look.

Picking At A Scab

Kevin Drum has discovered a rather large number of seemingly anti-Bush movies:

By my count, that makes three separate movies this campaign season that are either pro-Kerry or anti-Bush:

Fahrenheit 9/11
Bush's Brain
Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry

Plus two more that, while not specifically anti-Bush, are certainly unsympathetic to the conservative cause:

Control Room
Outfoxed

Have liberals finally figured out an effective way to fight back against talk radio?

UPDATE: And there's more!
Uncovered: The War on Iraq
Orwell Rolls In His Grave
The Hunting of the President
The Corporation
Team America: World Police
Silver City

Hollywood isn't exactly the most pro-Republican place is it? I'm shocked! Shocked I say!

This fascinating discovery would be less annoying if it had not been accompanied with the following statement: "Have liberals finally figured out an effective way to fight back against talk radio?"

The answer is: of course not. Conservative talk radio was the way that conservatives decided to fight back against the liberal media (and I'm using that word in the plural).

But that is the long way to the scab to be picked at--liberal bias in the news media. Patterico has an insightful post on some of the more subtle manifestations of liberal news bias:

The article, a front-page news analysis titled Kerry Put On Defensive About Iraq, just drips with sympathy for Kerry. But I don't find any clear misstatements of fact in the piece. The bias is in the way it's worded, starting with the very first paragraph:

Over the past week, President Bush and Vice President Cheney have thrown Sen. John F. Kerry on the defensive with a daily assault designed to tarnish his credentials as a possible commander in chief. But the orchestrated attacks also revealed the president's vulnerabilities on the issue that continues to shape the presidential campaign as much as any other.

I chuckled when I read the part about the "orchestrated attacks." It reminded me of the survey that one web site did of all the times Dan Rather had used the phrase "carefully orchestrated leak." You will not be surprised to learn that Rather always used the phrase to refer to alleged leaks by Republicans. Republicans are apparently the masters of "orchestration," whether you're talking leaks or attacks.
You see, whenever one candidate criticizes another, there are two ways to characterize what's happening. If you think the criticism may be valid, you will refer to the criticism passively, and discuss the "mounting criticism" of the candidate being criticized. But if you don't like the criticism, then you will refer to the criticism as an "attack." You will consistently phrase the description of the criticism in the active voice, as in: "Cheney attacked Kerry over the issue of . . ." Rather than saying that the parties voicing the criticism have "pointed out" their opponent's misstatements, you will say they "seized on" those misstatements.

I saw quite a bit of this type of reporting regarding the Democratic Convention. The speakers were constantly reported as avoiding 'attacks' when they cleary did not do any such thing. They hedged some of their attacks, they veiled some of their attacks, but they didn't avoid attacking. Nor should they have. But that doesn't excuse pretending that the general tone was uplifting and warm.

Patterico then has a brilliant side-by-side reworking of the article. It uses all the spin techniques found in the article except it spins them in favor of Bush and against Kerry. I really encourage everyone to read it. The stories are factually identical but the underlying tone is amazingly different. He highlights precisely what conservatives mean when they talk about media bias, and then turns it on its head. I was aware of the techniques he used, but I wasn't concious of them--if the distinction makes sense.

Read his side-by-side articles and then come back and pick the scab.

Two of our regulars Update...

... Constant Reader Slartibartfast has posted pictures of his brush with Hurricane Charley Treesbane. A good thing that it was his oaks and not him that were injured; the Command Post has an updated list of things that those who were less fortunate can use.

Meanwhile, Constant Reader Catsy is coming to a conclusion about his beliefs. A touch - awkward, perhaps, or maybe unobjective - for me to say anything more, really; besides, this is the start of Moe-No Politics, Week Two.

Moe

[UPDATE] Good catch by Constant Reader James Casey, who apparently was taking his own mini-break. Really is the slow season around here...

Off for a few days

for surgery (nothing alarming, just repairs.) They tell me I'll be back after 3-5 days; for a week or so afterwards, if I say anything unusually dumb, just put it down to pain medication. (Normal levels of stupidity are, of course, fair game as always.)

Continue reading "Off for a few days"

Update

As you can see, we've finally begun to reconfigure the website link lists. Now if I can only get the stupid search engine to function*...

Moe

*I keep losing the connection, you see.

[UPDATE] Crud. Atomz only offers an express search engine for websites with less than five hundred pages. We've got just under fifteen hundred; I'm going to give it a shot anyway, but an alternative would look pretty good right about now.

Who Leaked Khan's Name?

Apparently it was Pakistan.

The release of Mr. Khan's name - it was made public in The New York Times on Aug. 2, citing Pakistani intelligence sources - drew criticism by some politicians, like Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, who charged that this leak might have compromised the search in Britain and Pakistan for Mr. Khan's Qaeda partners. (No officials in Britain, Pakistan or the United States have told The Times on the record that identifying Mr. Khan had such an impact).

But I will join with Kevin Drum on this, which I have mentioned as a possibility before:

"Of course, Douglas Jehl or David Rohde of the New York Times, who were the first to report this, could just tell us and then we'd know. It's not clear to me how a simple acknowledgment of the nationality of their source would compromise the person who leaked this."

Porter Goss, Take 2: Oops! There Went My Civil Liberties Edition

Via The Light of Reason and Newsweek: On June 16, Porter Goss introduced a bill that gives the Director of Central Intelligence a variety of new powers to coordinate intelligence activities. It also contains one truly scary provision, which Newsweek describes as follows:

"The Goss bill tracks current law by stating that the DCI shall  “collect, coordinate and direct” the collection of intelligence by the U.S. government—except that the CIA “may not exercise police, subpoena, or law enforcement powers within the United States.”

The  bill then adds new language after that clause, however, saying that the ban on domestic law-enforcement operations applies  “except as otherwise permitted by law or as directed by the president.”

In effect, one former top U.S. intelligence community official told NEWSWEEK, the language in the Goss bill would enable the president to issue secret findings allowing the CIA to conduct covert operations inside the United States—without even any notification to Congress."

(snip) (order of passages reversed, so that a description of the actual change comes first; comments on it second)

"The language contained in the Goss bill has alarmed civil-liberties advocates. It also today prompted one former top CIA official to describe it as a potentially “dramatic” change in the guidelines that have governed U.S. intelligence operations for more than a half century.

“This language on its face would have allowed President Nixon to authorize the CIA to bug the Democratic National Committee headquarters,”  Jeffrey H. Smith, who served as general counsel of the CIA between 1995 and 1996, told NEWSWEEK. “I can’t imagine what Porter had in mind.”

So let me see if I have this straight: if Goss's bill passes, the CIA will be able to operate within the United States, and in particular to exercise police and subpoena powers, when "otherwise permitted by law". This overturns a ban that has been in place for decades, and that was put in place precisely because the CIA is not bound by the same legal rules as domestic law enforcement agencies, rules that were put in place to protect our civil liberties, and that are generally thought to be required by the Constitution. Moreover, even when operations within the US are not "otherwise permitted by law", they can be carried out "at the direction of the President". The relevant section of the bill (Sec. 102.c.1) does not go on to say anything about the grounds on which the President can give such a direction, procedural checks, or notification of relevant Congressional Committees; in fact, having created this new Presidential power, it does not go on to qualify it in any way at all, nor can I find any limits on it elsewhere in the bill. (If I've missed something, please tell me: I'm not a lawyer.) So as far as I can tell, this law would allow the President to direct the CIA to exercise police powers, including arrests, wiretaps, searches, and so forth; it would allow the President to issue these directives even when they are not "otherwise permitted by law", and it neither places any limits on its exercise nor requires any sort of oversight. There is a name for systems of government in which the executive has this sort of unchecked power, and it is 'tyranny'.

A Withdrawal Plan I Can Agree With

I see that Bush has announced a troop withdrawal from Europ and South Korea. This is an excellent idea that could have been implemented years ago. The troops in South Korea were positioned as a tripwire for the Cold War. South Korea is capable of defending itself against an agressive North Korea and has had large protests to get rid of the troops for decades. If we feel the need to invade North Korea, it can be done without the non-strategic tripwire installations. But frankly we wouldn't be invading North Korea without Chinese help anyway. Far more likely is a strike against the nuclear plant.

Troops stationed in Germany have mainly been a drain to the U.S. for more than a decade. They aren't located near the modern threats and have been the subject of much criticism for years.

Furthermore, this is a nice hint that Europe might want to consider funding a more realistic level of its own defense.

Continue reading "A Withdrawal Plan I Can Agree With"

A Hero's Welcome

Joseph Darby, the soldier who slipped the disk containing the Abu Ghraib photos under the door of the Army's Criminal Investigation Division, setting in motion the process that brought the torture to light, is in protective custody. You can read the story of how what he did affected his life and that of his wife Bernadette here. (via LeanLeft, via Digby.) A sample:

"That was the real hell of it. The media blitz was bad, but at least it was in their faces. You could see it coming and knew what to expect, which was a total disregard for privacy. It was bad but predictable. By contrast, the rest of the community, from the cops to the checkout clerk at the grocery, had become a terrifying mystery. There was no way of knowing where anyone stood, how they felt, or what they might do. Forget about the families of Joe's unit. Bernadette knew they would hate her, but there were only so many of them. It was everyone else she was worried about. There were thousands of people in this stretch of valley, and she had lived here for most of her life. She knew some of them wouldn't support Joe. They wouldn't feel any sympathy for the Iraqis in those pictures, and they would consider Joe a traitor for blowing the whistle. Bernadette could see that coming. But the question was, how many were there? And which ones would they be?

Each day, she would catch another snippet of the hostility brewing around her. There was the candlelight vigil in Cumberland, Maryland, to show support for the disgraced soldiers, including the ones who did the torturing, about a hundred supporters standing in the pounding rain, as if beating and sodomizing prisoners were some kind of patriotic duty. Or the 200 people who gathered one night in Hyndman, Pennsylvania, waving American flags to honor Sivits, the first soldier tried in the scandal. They posted a sign in Hyndman. It said JEREMY SIVITS, OUR HOMETOWN HERO. And the mayor told reporters that even though Sivits would sometimes do "a little devilish thing," on the whole he was "a wonderful kid."

Where were the signs for Joe? Bernadette had to wonder. Where was his vigil? Where was his happy mayor? Where were his calls of support? Down at the gas station, Clay overheard some guys say that Joe was "walking around with a bull's-eye on his head," just casually, just like, oh, everybody knows Joe's dead. Some of Bernadette's family even let her know that other members of the family were against her now, that they couldn't support a traitor. The more Bernadette heard, the more paranoid she became. How serious was this? Her nerves were so fried from the media onslaught that she couldn't be sure what was serious and what was just talk. Had those cops really ignored Maxine because they were against Joe? And if so, what else would they ignore?

Bernadette felt unhinged. As days passed, she began to cry more often and to beg God for help, praying that Joe would come home or at least call again. She felt like she was sinking, this young woman who had been so vibrant and fiery just days before, now collapsing inside. She would dream of herself in a desert at night, hunting feverishly for water. She began to have trouble putting on her clothes, and her sisters would have to help. She wondered about shadows in the street and the things that might be in them. She began to fantasize about the hospital and what it would be like to go there, safe and away from everything."

Heroism is doing what's right even when it's unpopular or dangerous or both. Joseph Darby is a hero. He deserves a hero's welcome. Possibly this is what a hero's welcome is these days: you do the right thing and then people talk about the bulls-eye on your head and you and your wife are taken into protective custody. I would like to think that my country is better than that, but sometimes I wonder.

It is inconsistent with loving our country to threaten people who have done what they think is right, even if we disagree with them. Loving our country involves loving our system of government, and the rule of law is central to that system. When someone threatens a person who has broken no law, he or she is not a patriot who has gotten a little carried away, but someone who rejects one of the things this country is all about. And when a person threatens not just someone he or she disagrees with, but someone who has plainly risked a lot to do the right thing, and threatens him precisely because he took that risk, that person has crossed almost every line I recognize and fallen into a moral abyss. And we need to call both those who actually threaten people and those who just talk casually about bulls-eyes on it.

I think this is a task for conservatives just now. I want to be clear about this: I do not think that there is any connection between conservatism and violence. And of course I don't think that anyone who is likely to be reading this blog has any sympathy with these people. I think that where the people who threaten other people, or who talk casually about violence, tend to congregate is largely a matter of chance, and that it changes over time. In the late 60s and 70s, they were more likely to be on the left (excepting those who engaged in racially motivated violence, which is a different matter.) If they were on my side, I would confront them, recognizing that as a leftist I would be harder for them to dismiss; I have in fact done this, though not in this country. (I very much hope that I'm the only person here who has actually spent several weeks trying to convince people who were sympathetic to a really dreadful and violent leftist organization that they should adopt Gandhian tactics.) But for reasons which, again, I take to be coincidental, I think there are more of those people on the right just now, and I am exactly the sort of person they would dismiss out of hand. But those of us who do have credibility with them need to do something, so that Joseph Darby can come home.

Does a President have to be smart?

Matthew Yglesias has an article in The American Prospect about why George Bush's intellect ought to be a serious political issue. The punchline:

"That the country should be secured against terrorist attacks, that deadly weapons should be kept out of the hands of our enemies, or that it would be good for a wide slice of the world to enjoy the blessings of freedom and democracy are hardly controversial propositions. But these things are easier said than done. Even a person of goodwill is by no means guaranteed to succeed. Yet succeed we must. And if we are to do so, the question of intelligence must be put back on the table. The issue is not “cleverness” -- some kind of parlor trick or showy mastery of trivia -- but a basic ability to make sense of a complicated, fast-changing world and decide how to confront it. Any leader will depend on the work of his subordinates, but counting on advisers to do the president’s heavy lifting for him simply will not do. Unless the chief executive can understand what people are telling him and follow the complicated arguments they may need to make, he will find himself paralyzed at every point of disagreement, or he will adopt the views of the slickest salesman rather than the one who’s gotten things right.

The price to be paid for such errors is a high one -- it is, quite literally, a matter of life and death. Already we’ve paid too much, and the problems confronting the country are growing harder with time. Unless the media, the electorate, and the political culture at large can shift their focus off of trivia and on to things that actually matter, it’s a price we may pay again and again."

I think that Yglesias is right, not just in his basic point but in the examples he cites -- e.g., US policy towards North Korea, trade policy, and the like. However, I have two minor quibbles. First, I am not sure that Bush's problem is that he's not intelligent. I don't really know what to make of him in this regard; my best guess is that a lifetime of intellectual disengagement will produce the functional equivalent of stupidity, just as a lifetime of being a couch potato will produce the functional equivalent of a lack of athletic ability; and since Bush has led such a life, it may be impossible to tell how smart he is underneath it all. But the problem Yglesias is getting at is an apparently complete lack of intellectual curiosity, of interest in actually thinking through the implications of various policies, assessing their pros and cons, and deciding accordingly. Given some level of intellectual engagement, intelligence is of course an asset; but in its absence, intelligence in itself will get you nowhere. (To be fair, Yglesias sometimes describes the problem he's getting at as a lack of intellectual curiosity and/or engagement; my point is that the lack of these things is distinct from a lack of intelligence, and that it, rather than a low IQ, is Bush's problem.)

Second...

Continue reading "Does a President have to be smart?"

Read it and weep.

Bob Herbert has a depressing column in today's New York Times. Some highlights:

"State police officers have gone into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando and interrogated them as part of an odd "investigation" that has frightened many voters, intimidated elderly volunteers and thrown a chill over efforts to get out the black vote in November.

The officers, from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which reports to Gov. Jeb Bush, say they are investigating allegations of voter fraud that came up during the Orlando mayoral election in March.

Officials refused to discuss details of the investigation, other than to say that absentee ballots are involved. They said they had no idea when the investigation might end, and acknowledged that it may continue right through the presidential election."

Many of the people interviewed turn out to belong to the Orlando League of Voters, which does voter registration and education in Orlando's black community.

"Now, said Mr. Egan, the fear generated by state police officers going into people's homes as part of an ongoing criminal investigation related to voting is threatening to undo much of the good work of the league. He said, "One woman asked me, 'Am I going to go to jail now because I voted by absentee ballot?' "

According to Mr. Egan, "People who have voted by absentee ballot for years are refusing to allow campaign workers to come to their homes. And volunteers who have participated for years in assisting people, particularly the elderly or handicapped, are scared and don't want to risk a criminal investigation."

It would of course be nice to say: Bob Herbert presents no evidence that the police interrogation of people involved in voter registration in a community that tends to vote Democratic is politically motivated, and we should give the Florida Department of Law Enforcement the benefit of the doubt. But it's hard. Even leaving aside everything that happened in 2000, we're talking about a state that only a month ago had to drop plans to purge 47,000 supposed felons from its voter rolls after it turned out that at least 2100 of them had already been granted clemency and had their voting rights restored. Oddly enough, there were only 61 Hispanic names on the list, which is strange since, "while blacks make up 48 percent of the prison population and 46 percent of the purge list, Hispanics make up 11 percent of the prison population but less than 1 percent of the list." (link.) In Florida, blacks tend to vote Democratic, while Hispanics tend to vote Republican. And in two recent Miami elections, touchscreen voting machines didn't create a log of votes cast, so no recounts were possible, and "on other occasions, votes simply vanished when the totals were transferred for tabulation." Oops!

So while I'd like to give Florida officials the benefit of the doubt, especially in the aftermath of Hurricane Charley, I can't see what they have done to earn our confidence recently.

Blograzing Drifts?

The two weeks off from politics that I'm taking does not, of course, mean that I've stopped reading blogs - I'm a politics junkie, after all. It has meant that I'm paying just slightly more attention to my blograzing habits (just made up* the word!), which means that I've noticed that I seem to drift a bit. You know: find a site, read it a lot for a time, check it regularly, slow down, not check it so often, look at something else, come back later and catch up... sort of an ebb-and-flow, you know? Dunno if this is normal, a sign of my astonishing breadth of interests, an indication that I'm flighty, something else entirely - or any combination thereof.

Call this the Sunday open thread about blogging as blogging, then. Doesn't hurt to go all meta every so often.

Moe

*Unless, of course, somebody already beat me to it.

The Cover Allotted by the Fog of War

Many moons ago I wrote in a thread on another blog that wars and bad economies come and go. The reason Americans should not re-elect George W. Bush is because he is quietly, systematically, and admittedly doing so aggressively, changing federal regulations in pro-business directions with no Congressional oversight:

Health rules, environmental regulations, energy initiatives, worker-safety standards and product-safety disclosure policies have been modified in ways that often please business and industry leaders while dismaying interest groups representing consumers, workers, drivers, medical patients, the elderly and many others.

When the war on terror is over, many Americans are not going to recognize their nation, and it has nothing to do with the PATRIOT ACT:

Some leaders of advocacy groups argue that the public preoccupation with war and terrorism has allowed the administration to push through changes that otherwise would have provoked an outcry. Carl Pope, the executive director of the Sierra Club, says he does not think the administration could have succeeded in rewriting so many environmental rules, for example, if the public's attention had not been focused on national security issues.

"The effect of the administration's concentration on war and terror has been to prevent the public from focusing on these issues," Mr. Pope said. "Now, when I hold focus groups with the general public and tell them what has been done, they exclaim, 'How could this have happened without me knowing about it?' "

With all sincerity: WAKE UP FOLKS! Here's just a few of the things being changed while we're distracted by Iraq:

Continue reading "The Cover Allotted by the Fog of War"

IOC bought off as well?

Not to diminish the truth in what President Bush says about the hope and, well, let's call it that, satisfaction, in seeing women athletes from Afghanistan compete in the Olympics, this bit in this story threw me off:

Afghanistan was suspended from the International Olympic Committee in 1999 due to the Taliban ban on participation of women athletes.

As I watched the parade of nations last night (missed the artsy European opening, I'm afraid), Katie Couric (I think...who can tell her voice apart from Bob Costas's?) noted how Saudi Arabia has also banned women athletes from participating, yet there their men athletes were. Double standard on IOC's part?

Three vaguely Protein Wisdom-esque...

...observations made while simultaneously watching the Olympic opening ceremonies, drinking quite a few beers and trying to get that damned six ball in the damned corner pocket.

1). European artistic conventions are a touch weird. Not bad weird, mind you - I'm weird myself - but there's a definite cultural gap, there; the bar was, shall we say, bemused. Said bemusement was quite partisan, before you ask.

2). If I ever put on a symbolic representation of Grecian history since the dawn of recorded history you can be darn sure that I'll include a little bit about how their outnumbered army took on Mussolini's Fascists in World War II... and absolutely disemboweled them. Don't screw around with Greeks. Seriously; there are entire graveyards full of people who ignored that piece of advice.

3). I got the symbolism behind the girl and the brightly glowing belly, sure, but the DNA strand light-sculpture might have been just a touch too over the top. The bar was a touch bemused by that, as well.

And now to bed. Everybody stay safe from the hurricanes.

Moe

PS: In more pleasant news, a straw poll of the bar reveals a definite support for the hope that Iraq kicks our ass in soccer this Olympiad. 'Course, there might be some selection bias going on, there...

Why are Republicans having trouble reaching out to Latinos?

I have no idea. (Link opens a radio ad.)

This is from Vernon Robinson, who recently won the GOP primary in his North Carolina district, and is running for Congress. Robinson also supports a return to "sound money" (e.g., the gold standard or its equivalent), opposes "special rights for homosexuals", and, in a strikingly original turn of phrase, writes that "God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." One of his most striking claims can be found on his Issues page, under the heading "The Feminization of the Military":

"The feminists' theory is this: all male cadets are chauvinists and misogynists who are susceptible to becoming rapists if they gaze upon words that are not gender neutral. As God is my witness, I am not making this up. If I am, may a two-foot aluminum letter "M" (as in "Men") fall from the sky and strike me dead."

Meanwhile, in Florida, another GOP congressional candidate worries that "'the lesbian community' in Fort Lauderdale was buying restaurants and bars, making it difficult for non-gays to shoot pool." The Palm Beach Postasked for elaboration: "'They're not as sweet as everybody perceives,' said Heeney, 50, of Boynton Beach, whose campaign has spiraled into a forum on lesbians and billiards." Later he added: "I'm not homophobic. I'm homo-nauseous."

There are also a surprising number of Republican Congressional candidates who claim that the income tax is unconstitutional. Only one of them notes that the sixteenth amendment ("The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes") seems to contradict this idea, and he insists that "despite the 16th Amendment, income and payroll taxes are unconstitutional (they require violation of at least three amendments, and a total of at least nine guaranteed freedoms in our Bill of Rights)." If any of you can figure out which amendments and freedoms he's referring to, do let me know. (I imagine the 4th must be one of them, but what are the others?)

I know, I know: picking on one party's loonier candidates is a cheap shot. I really just wanted an excuse to link to the radio ad.

Hizbollah A Bad Model For Sadr

Sometimes you read something so shocking that you can't believe the author meant what he wrote. At Crooked Timber, John Quiggin exhibits many of the most worrying aspects of leftist criticism of foreign policy here:

The only remotely feasible option is to make a place for Sadr and his supporters in the political process, and to hope that he is moderated by the attractions of office, as has happened in many cases before. There were some tentative steps in this direction in the period between the April insurrection and the current fighting. But, as with everything else they have done, the Administration was too clever by half, offering the facade of democratic processes, while trying to rig them in favor of their preferred clients. Sadr rejected the crumbs he was offered then. If he survives, his price will undoubtedly be higher now.

There is almost certainly a place in the political process for many of his followers if 'followers' is used in a loose sense of the word. There almost certainly is not a place for Sadr himself, now that he has tried to start a civil war on two separate occasions. You can't keep accomadating someone who thinks that armed insurrection is the solution to each political disagreement.

I would find "rig them in favor of their preferred clients" a funny description of trying to maintain some sense of secular government, except it is just so sad.

The whole thing smacks of wishful thinking about Sadr and Islamism.

But far worse is Prof. Quiggin's extension of these thoughts in the comments.

When challenged on "The only remotely feasible option is to make a place for Sadr and his supporters in the political process, and to hope that he is moderated by the attractions of office, as has happened in many cases before...." he suggests:

Steve, the most obvious example is the Lebanese Hizbollah which was one of the leading participants in the civil war there, and committed numerous terrorist acts, but is now a more-or-less normal political party in the Lebanese context.

Hizbollah is still violently anti-Israel, but that is true of any party with significant popular support anywhere in the Islamic world.

Prof. Quiggin wants to use Hizbollah as a model for Sadr? He apparently doesn't see any difficulty caused by the calling it more-or-less normal in the Lebanese context. That is exactly like dismissing the gulag as more-or-less normal in the Soviet context. It isn't wrong in a descriptive sense, but as a model for how anything ought to work it is morally shocking. Or ought to be.

The hope that Islamist groups will be moderated by the attractions of office is certainly possible if Hizbollah is his idea of moderate. But that doesn't make it a good idea for Iraq. Hizbollah might be a good model for Sadr, but it would be a model to confuse Westerners into supporting terrorist organizations.

No Surprises Here

From today's Washinton Post:

"Since 2001, President Bush's tax cuts have shifted federal tax payments from the richest Americans to a wide swath of middle-class families, the Congressional Budget Office has found, a conclusion likely to roil the presidential election campaign.

The CBO study, due to be released today, found that the wealthiest 20 percent, whose incomes averaged $182,700 in 2001, saw their share of federal taxes drop from 64.4 percent of total tax payments in 2001 to 63.5 percent this year. The top 1 percent, earning $1.1 million, saw their share fall to 20.1 percent of the total, from 22.2 percent.

Over that same period, taxpayers with incomes from around $51,500 to around $75,600 saw their share of federal tax payments increase. Households earning around $75,600 saw their tax burden jump the most, from 18.7 percent of all taxes to 19.5 percent.

The analysis, requested in May by congressional Democrats, echoes similar studies by think tanks and Democratic activist groups. But the conclusions have heightened significance because of their source, a nonpartisan government agency headed by a former senior economist from the Bush White House, Douglas Holtz-Eakin."

Republican aides are quoted as saying that the report doesn't take into account the jobs created as a result of the tax cuts. Fair enough. But it also doesn't take into account any jobs lost because of burden-shifting to state and municipal governments, the drain on the economy of the massive deficits created by the tax cuts, and so forth. Besides, most economists I've read claim, plausibly, that the tax cuts were not particularly effective as stimuli, precisely because they disproportionately benefit the wealthy, who spend less of their income than other people.

Goss Not Boss Material

OK, so I don't think he's a good choice for CIA director, because he had gone to the floor of the house to criticize John Kerry, who I predict he'll be working for in a few months, but my opinion was not consulted. President Bush might have researched his nominee's own feelings about his qualifications for the job though, if for nothing else his willingness to be interviewed by Michael Moore:

"I couldn't get a job with CIA today. I am not qualified," Mr Goss told Moore's production company in March.

The White House has dismissed the interview as "ridiculous hearsay".

The interview did not make it into the final edit of the film, which criticises President George W Bush's policy on Iraq.

But following Mr Goss's nomination by the president, Moore has released the transcript and video excerpt on his website.

"I don't have the language skills. I, you know, my language skills were romance languages and stuff. We're looking for Arabists today. I don't have the cultural background probably," Mr Goss says on the video.

"And I certainly don't have the technical skills, as my children remind me every day: 'Dad, you got to get better on your computer.'

"So, the things that you need to have, I don't have."

So, by his own admission, he doesn't have what it takes--the technical skills, or language skills, or cultural background--to head our Central Intelligence Agency at a time when we really need it to be world class. The spineless Democrats aren't going to block his confirmation, so worried are they about how that could be spun to look heading into the election.

How serious are we about winning the War on Terror?