# Posted 3:49 PM by Patrick Belton  
KERRY FOREIGN ADVISOR RAND BEERS SITS DOWN with the Council on Foreign Relations to answer questions about what a Kerry foreign policy would look like.

# Posted 2:31 PM by Patrick Belton  
SOMETHING FISHY HERE (AND IT'S NOT FISH): Yesterday, we linked to a story in Reuters about an MIT linguist named Amy Perfors who published a research note in the New Scientist which correlated the names on 'Hot or Not' pictures to the scores their posters received. The only problem is....the Hot or Not site doesn't list the names of the people in the pictures. Has the New Scientist been had?

Actually, no. OxBlog's own original research showed that Amy photoshopped the names on to the pictures. Also, we've incidentally decided she's pretty hot, even in spite of having the wrong vowels in her name. But kudos to our intrepid readers for pointing this out (especially Chad Brooks, who's somehow more familiar with 'Hot or Not' than we are)!

# Posted 12:56 AM by David Adesnik  
SOMETHING ABOUT KERRY IN CAMBODIA: The whole thing seems pretty pointless. Kevin Drum has the details. I think conservatives would gain more ground by hitting Kerry on actual issues that matter. In fact, that's probably why the President himself is bearing down on Kerry's concession on Monday that he still would've voted to authorize an invasion of Iraq in spite of what we now know about pre-war intelligence failures.

In an earlier post, Kevin asks:

Does John Kerry sometimes straddle difficult issues in an effort to please multiple constituencies? Sure. So do all politicians. Kerry's real problem, though, isn't that he straddles more than anyone else, but that he does it badly. When he explains his positions, he sounds like he's straddling...

So what explains Bush's reputation as a straight shooter? Two things.
First, he has a pair of signature issues on which he's been as resolute as a bulldozer: Iraq and taxes. On these two issues, both of which have widespread support among both his conservative base and voters at large, Bush has been steadfast.

Second, and more important, his rhetoric is simple and uncompromising and most people are surprisingly willing to uncritically accept his speechwriters' words as a reflection of his real self.

Reason is one is solid but I don't buy reason two. Opinion polls show that Americans don't think Bush is all that honest in spite of his "simple and uncompromising" rhetoric. What it comes down to is that foreign policy is the big issue in this campaign and it's the one on which Kerry wants to straddle the fence.

# Posted 12:38 AM by David Adesnik  
FISKING FEITH: Josh Marshall rips apart Doug Feith's op-ed in Saturday's WaPo. Say what you will about TPM, Feith deserves a public thrashing for such an embarrasingly stupid piece.

Then again how can you come up with an intelligent argument to defend Feith's suggestion -- made just nine days after September 11th -- that because of

limited options immediately available in Afghanistan [the US
should consider] hitting terrorists outside the Middle East in the initial offensive, perhaps deliberately selecting a non-al Qaeda target like Iraq.

Yes, an undersecretary of defense really did say "a non-al Qaeda target like Iraq." Yet somehow, George W. Bush never made things that clear.

# Posted 12:29 AM by David Adesnik  
ALAN KEYES IS COMPLETELY RIDICULOUS. Via TPM.

# Posted 10:56 PM by David Adesnik  
LIVE BLOGGING THE DAILY SHOW: I figure I need some practice if I'm going to live blog the Republican convention, so here goes:

10:58 PM: Reno 911 just ended. Funny show.

10:59 PM: Opening music for the Daily Show. The clock on my computer is obviously slow.

11:00 PM: Robert Novak in a blue dress. Yikes!

11:01 PM: My parents are now watching the show with me. This requires explaining all of the jokes since the pop culture references are lost on them. Then again, having parents who don't recognize Sigfried & Roy probably was good for me.

11:07 PM: Just finished the segment on Republicans who want to put Nader on the ballot. Ed Helms is awesome!

11:12 PM: Stephen Colbert presents "This Week in God". Says Catholicism turns high school girls into either virgins or whores. OxBlog's anecdotal experience confirms this fact.

11:15 PM: Commercial for Arm & Hammer deoderant. Dad says Mitchum's is the best deoderant. It's so strong it will last for two days. But it's expensive.

11:16 PM: Commercial for the Olive Garden. I really don't like the Olive Garden. Italian grandmothers everywhere are rolling in their graves.

11:19 PM: Tom Cruise arrives. He's wearing a retro-70s red leather jacket. Bad choice. Dad reminds me that Cruise is part of a suspicious cult that has something to do with L. Ron Hubbard.

11:21 PM: I can't believe this guy scored with Nicole Kidman and Penelope Cruz. Not that he doesn't deserve it. It's just so unbelievably awesome.

11:25 PM: The interview's over. Funny stuff, especially when Stewart asked Cruise if when he's with his kids, he walks into the room where they are and the suddenly go "Omigod! It's Tom Cruise!"

You know, I actually feel that way about my own parents sometimes. They're pretty cool and there are a lot of people who really admire them for their work. Fortunately, the National Enquirer doesn't publish stories about their love life. That would be so f***ed up.

11:28 PM: The 'Moment of Zen' and closing credits. Now it's time for Colin Quinn. For me, it's time for a sandwich.

Buh-bi-buh-bi-buh-bi, that's all folks!

UPDATE, 11:38 PM: My mother points out that doctoral candidates at Oxford should know how to spell "deodorant".

# Posted 10:12 PM by David Adesnik  
DISPOSABLE VEEPS: Josh Spivak points out that incumbents from Thomas Jefferson to US Grant and all the way up to Gerald Ford have dumped their vice-presidents from the ticket in order to increase their chances of re-election. But as Josh points out, that doesn't mean Bush has any interest in getting rid of Cheney.

# Posted 7:07 PM by Patrick Belton  
LISTEN UP, KIDS, SCIENCE CAN BE FUN QUOTE OF THE DAY:

Linguist Amy Perfors of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology posted photos of men and women on the U.S. Web site "Hot or Not," which lets viewers rate pictures according to how attractive they find them.

When she posted the same pictures with different names, she found that the attractiveness scores went up and down depending on the vowels, the London-based magazine New Scientist reported.

Men with "front vowels" in their names -- sounds formed at the front of the mouth like the "a" in Matt -- were considered sexier than men with "back vowel" sounds like the "au" in Paul, she concluded.

The opposite held for women, who were sexier with back vowels than front ones.

Perfors said front vowels are often perceived as "smaller" than back vowels, so the difference could be a sign that women are seeking men that are sensitive or gentle, traits usually perceived as feminine. (Reuters)

Hurrah for useful research!

# Posted 12:30 AM by David Adesnik  
GOOD OLD-FASHIONED MUCKRACKING: On yesterday's front-page, the NYT exposed the Bush Administration's corrupt and farcical efforts to regulate the mining industry:

In 1997, as a top executive of a Utah mining company, David Lauriski proposed a measure that could allow some operators to let coal-dust levels rise substantially in mines. The plan went nowhere in the government.

Last year, it found enthusiastic backing from one government official -- Mr. Lauriski himself. Now head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, he revived the proposal despite objections by union officials and health experts that it could put miners at greater risk of black-lung disease.

It's an ugly story that provides a lot of evidence to back up its claims. But how do I know that the NYT is being reasonably fair and balanced? I don't.

Until the summer I started blogging, I operated on the assumption that anything published in the NYT or WaPo was basically accurate, unless it had to do with Israel. Not knowing the first thing about coal mining or its impact on the environment, I don't have any reason to think that the Times' story isn't accurate.

But how often does the NYT run a front-page story exposing the efforts of extreme environmentalists to impose unfair regulations on struggling industries? I can't remember any stories like that, but that may be my fault and not the Times'. I was raised to believe that enviornmentalists are the good guys and that industrialists are the bad.

You might say that I grew up with an admirable degree of moral clarity. But now I walk through a shadowed valley of epistemological doubt. If I'm not an expert on a subject, I try to avoid having firm opinions about it. However, that's sort of unfortunate since democracy thrives when citizens are able to debate a broad range of subjects rather than deferring to the judgment of the experts.

So, is there anything we can do about this as citizens? I'm not so sure. I think the best advice I have is that everyone should start their own blog.

# Posted 11:42 PM by David Adesnik  
IS JON STEWART AN EENSY WEENSY BIT HYPOCRITICAL? Four years ago, I saw Jon Stewart do a live stand-up show in Washington. I have never seen anything that funny in my life. And now when I watch The Daily Show, I can't stop myself from laughing out loud.

But just like The Onion, Stewart is a lot less funny when his one-sided politics result in one-sided comedy -- or no comedy at all.

Last night, Stewart interviewed Bill Clinton. Tonight he interviewed Maureen Dowd. He didn't ask them serious questions. He didn't ask them funny questions. He just went on and on about how evil the Republicans are and then asked if Clinton and Dowd thought so too. Answer: yes, they do.

Now, as certain people people pointed out after I skewered The Onion, you've probably got a baseball bat stuck way up where the sun don't shine if you spend your time denouncing a satire for being unfair. Because isn't the point of a satire to be unfair?

Sure it is. But given Jon Stewart's well-advertised aspiration to fortify his humor with serious intellectual heft, I think he's fair game. Moreover, Stewart explicitly tries to demonstrate that the mainstream media roll over too easily when confronted by aggressive spin. Then Stewart tries to compensate by getting tough with the same spin doctors who take the mainstream for a ride.

Take a look at this interview with Rep. Henry Bonilla (R-TX), who was part of the GOP's "rapid response team" at the Democratic convention. It's more of an interrogation than an interview and its devastatingly effective.

Unfortunately, The Daily Show hasn't posted any clips yet for the Clinton and Dowd interviews, and I can't find any transcripts on the web. So you'll have to take my word for the fact that Stewart tossed both of them softball after softball. But you don't have to take my word for the fact that there are lot of tough questions out there waiting to be asked.

Now if Stewart came out and said that he's a passionate Democrat and that the purpose of the show is to make the best case possible against George Bush and the GOP, I wouldn't mind his being one-sided. But as long as he poses as a fair-and-balanced man in the street, he should have the guts to get tough with liberals as well as conservatives.

# Posted 4:38 PM by Josh Chafetz  
AN INTERESTING PAIR OF ARTICLES OVER AT TNR: Is Kerry more like Barak or Kinnock?

# Posted 10:24 AM by Josh Chafetz  
ENRIQUE KRAUZE HAS A VERY GOOD OP-ED in today's NYT on Echeverría, the decline of the PRI, and the future of Mexico. Well worth your time.

Also of interest in today's NYT: Michael O'Hanlon et al. update their May chart on the state of Iraq (chart itself here). They don't find much change since May, unfortunately. The Times also, rightly, editorializes against Allawi's decision to ban Al Jazeera.

# Posted 10:09 AM by Josh Chafetz  
PRESIDENT BUSH HAS NOMINATED REP. PORTER GOSS (R-FL) to be the new DCI. Goss was an Army Intelligence officer and then a CIA agent in the 60s, and since 1997 has been Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He's also, of course, a Yale alumnus.

# Posted 10:25 AM by Patrick Belton  
QUOTE OF THE DAY.... is from CNN, and concerns Koko, the sign-language communicating ape:

About a month ago, Koko, a 300-plus-pound ape who became famous for mastering more than 1,000 signs, began telling her handlers at the Gorilla Foundation in Woodside she was in pain. They quickly constructed a pain chart, offering Koko a scale from one to 10.

When Koko started pointing to nine or 10 too often, a dental appointment was made. And because anesthesia would be involved, her handlers used the opportunity to give Koko a head-to-toe exam.

"She's quite articulate," volunteer Johnpaul Slater said. "She'll tell us how bad she's feeling, how bad the pain is. It looked like it was time to do something."

They crowded around her, and Koko, who plays favorites, asked one woman wearing red to come closer. The woman handed her a business card, which Koko promptly ate.

# Posted 1:50 PM by Josh Chafetz  
THE DUDE ABIDES. Nice piece in the NYT on the Lebowski Fest and the cult of The Big Lebowski. Two quibbles: (1) the article doesn't mention Jesus. How can you write about The Big Lebowski and not mention Jesus? (2) How can you not mention the fact that Walter is Jewish? The best lines in the whole movie are, "Saturday, Donny, is Shabbos, the Jewish day of rest. That means I don't work, I don't drive a car, I don't fucking ride in a car, I don't handle money, I don't turn on the oven, and I sure as shit don't fucking roll!"

# Posted 5:36 PM by David Adesnik  
VIETNAMESE AMERICANS WILL VOTE FOR BUSH: Instapundit points to this article, which says that their pro-Bush margin is 90 to 10. Even though Glenn doesn't add any commentary to his post, one gets the sense that it is a subtle dig at Kerry for parading his service record. After all, if he was such a hero, why don't the Vietnamese think so?

There are two answers to this question. First, Vietnamese immigrants to the United States tend to be those who suffered (or expected to suffer) most as a result of the Communist victory. They have historically supported Republicans because of their hawkish anti-Communist views.

The second answer to this question is related to the first. Most Americans have forgotten that our withdrawal from Vietnam facilitated brutal Communist repression in the South, after it was overrun in 1975. Anti-war activists such as Kerry tend to avoid any mention of the human cost of surrender, because it damages their moral stature. A complex issue to say the least.

# Posted 5:12 PM by David Adesnik  
OXBLOG IS RICH! When I decided to spend the upcoming year at UVA instead of Harvard, it meant accepting a 10% pay cut. Then I saw what the cost of living was in Charlottesville as opposed to Cambridge. Thanks to 75% cut in the cost of rent and utilities, I will have more money than I know what to do with. Even after buying a car, I'm going to have far more spending money than I ever did in Cambridge (or Oxford for that matter).

So, why am I telling you all of this? Because I have to tell someone about this kind of good luck! And if any of you print out this post and bring it to Charlottesville (even if you already live there) the drinks are on me.

# Posted 1:36 PM by Josh Chafetz  
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.
-- President Bush

Thanks to JDB for pointing it out!

# Posted 12:02 PM by Patrick Belton  
HISTORICAL PORN: BBC muses embarassingly about the first century British guerilla Boudicca as showing the frailty of 'superpowers [who] like to think they are untouchable', particularly ones who try to 'win the hearts and minds of [Iraqis, er, I mean,] Britons'. But this is all about history, of course. And BBC has apparently not learnt the simple lesson that sharing one's pornographic fantasies online is rarely a good idea.

# Posted 2:29 AM by David Adesnik  
OXBLOG ON THE RUN: Tomorrow I head down to Virginia to look for a place to live. Since Patrick and Josh are also in transit, posting may be light to non-existent on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

# Posted 2:28 AM by David Adesnik  
GOTTA HAVE HART: Just in case that last post wasn't enough, check out Phil Carter and Robert Tagorda's thoughtful posts on Gary Hart.

# Posted 12:59 AM by David Adesnik  
GARY HART'S GRAND STRATEGY: In the spring of 2001, I sat down with Gary Hart to have lunch in the Covered Market at Oxford. We'd gotten to know one another because of our mutual friendship with John Lewis Gaddis, who'd inspired both of us to study grand strategy and think about how the United States might develop one.

Much of what Sen. Hart and I talked about prefigured the central message of his new book, The Fourth Power: A Grand Strategy for the United States in the Twenty-First Century. Both of us strongly believed that a grand strategy built around the promotion of democracy and human rights had the potential to transcend the partisan divide by appealing to the ideals of both Democrats and Republicans.

Back in the spring of 2001, Hart was not yet known as the author of prophetic report about the threat of international terrorism. As Ryan Lizza sums it up in his review of Hart's book,

During the 1990's, when the foreign policy establishment was obsessed with Star Wars and other issues left over from the cold war, Hart headed a commission on national security with another former senator, Warren Rudman. Its report, issued early in 2001, warned of catastrophic terrorist attacks in which ''Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers.'' Incredibly, the work of the Hart-Rudman commission was widely ignored by the press and the Bush administration.

Prof. Gaddis, however, recommended that I read the report because it reflected a conscious effort to map out a grand strategy for the United States of America. In spite of its prescience, the report said little to nothing about American ideals. According to Sen. Hart, this oversight reflected the difficulty of forging a consensus among the report's many authors.

But now that Hart has his own book, he can talk at length about those ideals. Since I don't yet have a copy, I'm going to restrict myself to addressing the points that Sen. Hart raises in an LA Times column that summarizes the arguments in his book. At first, Hart's call for an idealistic foreign policy comes across as an implicit condemnation of John Kerry's calculated avoidance of any promises to promote democracy in Iraq or Afghanistan. But then Hart writes that

Some so-called neoconservatives in the Bush administration have evoked Woodrow Wilson for the purpose of making the United States the missionary of democracy, neglecting the important truth that Wilson's methods were internationalist and peaceful, not unilateralist and militaristic.

Coming from an individual with a doctorate in American history, Hart's thumbnail account of Wilson's foreign policy is profoundly disappointing. If you ask the people of Mexico, Haiti and Nicaragua, they will tell you that Wilson was a cynical and aggressive unilateralist whose self-righteous idealism did nothing to prevent him from invading and occupying their homelands. If you ask the people of Mexico, Haiti and Nicaragua what they think of the current American president, they'd probably say exactly the same thing.

On a similar note, Wilson also sought to promote democracy at gunpoint in Germany and Central Europe. His League of Nations may have been multilateralist by design, but its significance paled in comparison to the Peace of Versailles, which was imposed on Europe by the victorious Anglo-Franco-American cabal.

Correcting Hart's account of Wilson is extremely important because influential Democrats have been distorting Wilson's legacy for almost thirty years. In the course of my research on US-Central American relations under Carter and Reagan, I have come across countless speeches in which Democrats lionize Wilson for his dedication to multilateralism and peace.

Although sincere, this sort of rhetoric reflected the political imperative of providing a historical foundation for the strident anti-interventionism of the post-Vietnam left. Its policies were those of Jimmy Carter even if Democrats attributed them to Woodrow Wilson.

When Reagan came into power and began to pursue a foreign policy that was truly Wilsonian, few Democrats opposed him more vehemently than Gary Hart. Even though numerous Democrats supported Ronald Reagan's efforts to promote democracy at gunpoint in El Salvador and Nicaragua, Hart refused to do so until the anti-Communists in those nations curbed their horrific abuses of human rights.

As this example demonstrates quite well, the American values that Hart idealizes often come into conflict with one another. At least in his LAT column, Hart misses this point entirely. Instead, he seems to presume that there is a single, correct interpretation of what American values are.

The potential for conflict within the American value system has often been overlooked in recent months because John Kerry has studiously avoided any sort of idealistic pretensions. When OxBlog debates with Kevin Drum, Matt Yglesias and Laura Rozen about the importance of idealism in American foreign policy, they defend John Kerry on the ground that idealism is overrated, especially the faux idealism of George W. Bush.

Thus, one might ask whether Hart's idealism places him somewhere on the political spectrum that is further from Kerry and closer to Bush. The answer to that question is a definitive 'no'. Like Jimmy Carter, Hart elevates the principle of multilateralism to a status on par with that of democracy and human rights.

Back in the 1980s, John Kerry opposed Reagan's Nicaragua policy on the exact same grounds as Gary Hart. Kerry described that policy as recklessly unilateralist and totally disinterested in human rights. Back then, multilateralism for Kerry was a matter of principle. Yet now Kerry's portrays his multilateralism as a realistic means of enhancing America's strength.

When I met Gary Hart for lunch in the spring of 2001, I was a first-year grad student who had no appreciation of the potential for conflict within the American value system. While I salute his efforts to reinvigorate the idealism of the Democratic left, I fear that his definition of American idealism will bring us no closer to bipartisanship than Kerry's realist rhetoric.

# Posted 12:28 AM by David Adesnik  
THIS LAND IS MOST CERTAINLY NOT YOUR LAND: The music company that owns the copyright to Woody Guthrie's classic song has threatened to sue the Jib Jab brothers, creators of the wildly successful parody based on Guthrie's work. (Hat tip: Bo Cowgill)

The legal issue at play is whether the Jib Jab parody represents "fair use" of Guthrie's work. A key precedent in the matter is a 1994 ruling that permitted photographer Thomas Forsythe to depict "naked Barbie dolls in compromising positions with kitchen appliances." For the record, I'd just like to state that OxBlog's kitchen appliances prefer women with realistic proportions and proper educations.