August 20, 2004

EVERYONE comes to Knoxville eventually. I spent this evening at the Downtown Grill and Brewery with Tim Blair, who's passing through on his way to New York City and the Republican National Convention.

I heard lots of insider stuff -- like how Ken Layne has been bought off by Barbara Streisand via a combination of huge wads of cash and music-industry pull, and some stuff about Margo Kingston's cat -- and we enjoyed numerous adult beverages.

It was a good time. See you tomorrow! Er, today. . . .

August 19, 2004

CHECK OUT THIS WEEK'S CARNIVAL OF THE LIBERATED, in which Iraqi bloggers suggest that we're blowing it with Al Sadr. They think we (and the Allawi government) aren't being tough enough. Iran rears its ugly head, too.

I WAS FEELING GUILTY about spending so much time on politics and not enough on space, until I read this post by spaceblogger Rand Simberg.

CBFTW: I SHOULD HAVE MENTIONED THIS MILITARY BLOG FROM IRAQ a couple of weeks ago. Be sure to read this interview with an Iraqi, too.

NOW HERE'S A PROTEST AIMED AT THE MILITARY that I might be able to get behind.

Or not. I might have to look into things more closely before making up my mind.

I'LL BE ON HUGH HEWITT'S SHOW shortly. Listen live online here.

UPDATE: Something I said there that bears repeating -- the reason why the Christmas-in-Cambodia story is getting the media cold-shoulder, and why what SwiftVet coverage there is focuses on the medals, etc., is that the Christmas-in-Cambodia story is clear, and has already been proven false. It's easy to understand, and that makes it much more devastating for Kerry.

The medal stuff is complex, and can be spun in a way that makes people's eyes glaze over. So that's what we'll mostly get, along with "political" stories that will treat the SwiftVets stuff as partisan hackery in a way that Michael Moore never gets treated by the same outlets.

ANOTHER UPDATE: And here's an example, in the "budget" from the New York Times, advising affiliate papers of what's coming:

ANTI-KERRY-ADS (Undated) - The story of how swift boat veterans with a grievance were found by Republicans looking to tarnish Kerry's image, and soon came to be running ads, writing books and blanketing cable television in a modern day tale of the creation of a political attack machine. But some of the veterans have recanted their stories or made charges that military records prove untrue. A look at how the veterans were organized and what they claim. By Kate Zernike and Jim Rutenberg.

With photos and a graphic.

Editors, will move in both full and abridged forms.

Will it say that the Cambodia story has already panned out? I doubt it.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Paul Shelton emails:

Looks like two weeks after having "fled the scene" of the swiftboat vets story, the big media is finally returning to pull Kerry out of the water. O'Neill was on CNN's Lou Dobbs show and then on Newshour with Jim Lehrer. I guess Kerry's apublic acknowledgement of the story today in front of the firefighters gave the coded signal for the big media to finally return to the scene to save him.

Heh. Anybody know if Lehrer mentioned Cambodia?

And maybe someone should look into the Kerry reminiscences from the crewmembers of the U.S.S. Gridley too. (Note -- I haven't personally verified the authenticity of these, and my lunch hour is over. I suppose that would be easy for bigshot journalists, though -- but according to the page, at least, there have been interviews but not much coverage.)

FILE-SHARING UPDATE: Big Win for Grokster in the 9th Circuit.

UPDATE: You know, this is sort of off-topic -- but if I were running things for the Bush Administration, I would have filed an amicus brief on behalf of Grokster. Just look at the lineup of parties here.

And for that matter, I'd have taken a strong position in favor of file-sharing, with an appropriate slogan ("Keep your grubby laws off my computer!"). Instead of Orrin Hatch's dumb INDUCE Act, I'd be supporting user-friendly legislation, short copyright times on motion pictures (10 years? Do I hear 5?), a ban on DVD encryption (or at least an end to DMCA penalties for cracking it) and all sorts of other consumer-friendly measures where digital media are concerned.

Now I support a lot of these measures (not actually the short copyrights) anyway. But here are the advantages for the Bushies:

1. It's cool. Right now, being pro-Bush isn't cool in many sectors. If they'd started this move a couple of years ago, it would have helped a lot.

2. It hurts an industry that hates them and gives a lot of money to the Democrats. And doing that is cost-free to the Republicans.

3. Because it hurts that industry, it would make the anti-Bush stuff from stars and celebrities look self-serving, and let the Administration dismiss it all as the economic self-interest of rich people trying to hold down the little guy.

Why didn't they do this? Beats me. It's not like I haven't pointed this out before. (More than once!) The only explanation I can come up with is that to the Republicans, even a big business that hates them is still a big business worth defending. That's a big mistake, and they're paying for it now, I think.

ANOTHER UPDATE: By the way, you should also read this excellent takedown of the music industry by Ken Layne from a couple of years ago:

What happens when an industry mistreats its customers and its suppliers? When 8,999 of 9,000 audits show shoddy accounting practices? When a core business is bungled and the marketplace shrugs and moves on? When scandals and greed lead to massive layoffs and massive disgust?

I'm not talking about Enron. I'm talking about the record industry.

He doesn't mention the political opportunity for the Republicans, but they sure would have had a lot to work with, based on this piece.

LOCALBLOGGING: SoundPolitics is devoted to the Puget Sound area.

MORE ON THE MEDIA AND THE ELECTION -- In response to my post below, a journalist whose name you'd probably recognize sends this:

Glenn- I completely agree with your observations about the threat this election presents to the credibility of the Fourth Estate. Too much of my own energy has been spent trying to convince colleagues of the danger -- my point being that if the public loses faith in our capacity for basic objectivity and fairness, the public will find/create other means of collecting information. (My own impression from the inside, by the way, is that the media aren't "liberal" so much as simply partisan. Think of it like a sporting event where folks desperately want one team to win and the other to lose.)

If Walter Cronkite doesn't like the wild west nature of the blogosphere, he ought turn his attention to the mainstream outlets that violate the trust of their readers/viewers and thereby drive many to the Web for their news. The Swift Boat matter provides one clear example. The Post ignored the story, and then addressed it only in the context of seeking to refute it; most of the paper's regular readers probably had no idea that the accusations (from the Swift Boat Vets) existed in the first place. Here's another example that popped out at me today: The NYT has a story on Democrats launching a massive effort to disqualify Nader petitions in the states. Somehow, in reporting this, they could find only one person (a Nader lawyer, at that) to call this effort antidemocratic -- and that was in the second-to-last paragraph. (The last paragraph had an official from the anti-Nader effort disputing this contention.)

Now, of course, invalid signatures on petitions should be disqualified. But are these the same folks who hollered "Count all the votes" in 2000? Who wailed about voters being disenfranchised? Who disdained the Bush campaign for seeking to have ex-cons scratched (as the law requires) from the voter rolls? Are these the same folks who are dispatching lawyers to the states this year in order to ensure that REPUBLICANS don't deny voters their franchise? My point is, there IS something undemocratic (though not entirely unjustifiable...) about seeking to limit the options provided to voters. And using the arbitrary, arcane and sometimes ridiculous state laws to do so is weaselly, to say the least. And Kerry's campaign really condones this? Chutzpah!

If you reprint this, Glenn, please don't use my name.

I think that the team-sports analogy is especially apt.

UPDATE: Reader Lewis Wagner emails:

The comparison of partisan journalists to sports fans in a recent post led me to a partial solution to the problems of mainstream journalism.

When reading the sports section of a local paper, I expect to see a wish for the local team or some favored team to win. I can see this position openly
stated, along with serious critiques of the favored team and honest evaluations of the strengths of opposing teams. Further, I can see detailed statistics on teams and individuals laid out in a reasonable form daily. I can see detailed statistics at a level to satisfy a knowledgeable enthusiast at least periodically.

I've just described a level of professionalism and competence that is the norm for sports sections of even small town newspapers. It is so far above and beyond the level of political journalism at any major paper that writing what such standards of excellence might look like in, for example, the NY Times would seem like a parody.

This suggests a simple and workable solution. Put sports writers in charge of political reporting. Make the political journalists write for the sports section. The sports writers turned loose in the political arena will carry with them the standards of honest and detailed reporting from sports. The political journalists will find themselves in an arena where much higher standards than they are used to will be expected.

One might argue that the sports writers might lack specific expertise in the political arena. However, given that the current political journalists have not
demonstrated they possess expertise, this point is moot. The only serious downside is that sports coverage would suffer.

I think it would be worth it, but some might disagree.

JEFF JARVIS: "The McGreevey story is, of course, getting weirder and weirder; these stories always do."

MORE ON TOM HARKIN: "One would think that the post-1991 Tom Harkin would know better by now than to assail anyone else's Vietnam record. As for our media colleagues, is it too much to ask that they finally take notice of which party is responsible for keeping Vietnam front and center in our Presidential campaigns?"

Earlier Harkin posts here and here.

OKAY, ENOUGH ABOUT VIETNAM: Let's talk about something more recent. Here's the latest from the Annenberg outfit, FactCheck.org:

A Bush-Cheney '04 ad released Aug. 13 accuses Kerry of being absent for 76% of the Senate Intelligence Committee's public hearings during the time he served there. The Kerry campaign calls the ad "misleading," so we checked, and Bush is right.

Official records show Kerry not present for at least 76% of public hearings held during his eight years on the panel, and possibly 78% (the record of one hearing is ambiguous).

Kerry points out that most meetings of the Intelligence Committee are closed and attendance records of those meetings aren't public, hinting that his attendance might have been better at the non-public proceedings. But Kerry could ask that his attendance records be made public, and hasn't.

Aides also claimed repeatedly that Kerry had been vice chairman of the intelligence committee, but that was Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, not John Kerry. . . .

If anything, the ad understates Kerry's lack of attendance.

Ouch. Maybe that's why he wants to talk about Vietnam. (Here's a link to the ad.)

UPDATE: Reader Hunter McDaniel emails:

The "misleading" aspect of the Bush ad isn't whether the attendance numbers are accurate - they probably are. Rather it is the implicit assumption that the public hearings are a valuable use of a Senator's time and that attendance is a direct measure of a Senator's effectiveness. Maybe, maybe not. In my limited viewing of C-SPAN I see mostly grandstanding and posturing which isn't a very good use of ANYONE's time.

If I were a reporter, I might also ask what the attendance records of other committee members were for comparison. And how are the attendance records kept - what happens when a Senator comes for the first 30 minutes, goes out to a speaking engagement, and comes back for the wrap-up?

Attendance/voting records are a favorite target of negative ads from both parties. I generally blow them off as meaningless.

Hmm. Could be, and the general point is certainly valid. But what makes the commercial effective is this: First, we're at war, and this is the Intelligence Committee that Kerry's been AWOL from, not Agriculture. Second, Kerry's talking about how he'll make intelligence reform a top priority if elected, but this makes it look as if he hasn't made it a priority before. And besides, "grandstanding and posturing" is pretty much a Senator's job description, right? If we can't talk about that, what's left? Vietnam?

UPDATE: Reader Bradly Roger Bettin emails:

The argument ("Public hearings are for posturing") would have more power if Kerry authorized a release of the attendance records from the closed sessions of the Intelligence Committee during his tenure as a member.

If, for example, Kerry's attendance at the closed sessions was 98%, then it'd support the claim that he was there for the important stuff, but just wasn't interested in the posturing which goes on at public hearings.

To date, though, Kerry hasn't authorized release of the attendance records, which suggests he doesn't believe they'd help him. And the hints dropped by those who have reason to know what's in them suggest his attendance at the closed sessions isn't good either.

That Kerry wanted to cut funding for intelligence by draconian amounts suggests he didn't see much use for the intelligence community back then - and it wouldn't be surprised to see that sort of scorn show up in his Intelligence Committee attendance.

As the Annenberg folks note, he could have released these (just as, I'll note, he could release his military records) but he didn't, suggesting that whatever's in them won't help his position.

WEBLOGS IN THE CLASSROOM: Interesting.

SEVERAL READERS want to know why, when I'm pointing out Kerry's heavy reliance on Vietnam stories, I don't comment on Bush's carrier landing.

Actually, I was quite critical of it at the time, writing:

The jet-pilot arrival, on the other hand, rang false. The whole leader-who-flies-jets thing seems, somehow, Third World to me. People say that it'll make great campaign footage in 2004, but I actually doubt it -- or at least, I think it will backfire if they do too much of this. The President is commander-in-chief, but he's a civilian leader, and Americans want him to be one.

I still think that (even though Jeff Jarvis said I was off base at the time), and even though John Kerry seems to feel otherwise, too.

UPDATE: Reader C. Kanige emails: "The Bush Bashers have a field day (you too) about the Bush carrier landing. What I remember is the joy exhibited by the sailors on the boat at that time. It really seemed worth it all. Take a look at the tape and then disparage it. I don't think you can."

I'm a "Bush Basher" now? Someone tell Oliver Willis!

JUDICIAL WATCH JUMPS IN: Beldar comments.

HURRICANEBLOGGING: Stacy Tabb rounds up some striking pictures of damage from Charley.

THE SUBSTANDARD is a new blog by Jonathan Last et al.

I'VE BEEN NOMINATED for a World Technology Award. And of course, the real honor is being nominated.

MORE ON THE SAUDI MONEY TRAIL:

The collision of Saudi missionary work and suspicions of terrorist financing in San Diego illustrates the perils and provocations of a multibillion-dollar effort by Saudi Arabia to spread its religion around the world. Mohamed worked on the front lines of that effort, a campaign to transform what outsiders call "Wahhabism," once a marginal and puritanical brand of Islam with few followers outside the Arabian Peninsula, into the dominant doctrine in the Islamic world. The campaign has created a vast infrastructure of both government-supported and private charities that at times has been exploited by violent jihadists -- among them Osama bin Laden.

Yes, and the Bush Administration's greatest vulnerability is that it hasn't done enough about this.

WHAT'S REALLY INTERESTING about this Kerry cartoon from the Charlotte Observer is that it assumes the reader's knowledge of a story that's gotten, even today, very little coverage from the traditional media (including, based on a site search, the Observer itself). I think this says something significant about how people get news nowadays. (See the update to this post for why I think that's important.)

UPDATE: Roger Simon has further thoughts.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Frederick Turner:

The "mainstream press" may be in the process of squandering a precious resource that its leaders no longer have the institutional memory to recognize as the source of its legitimacy and its living. In the last few years -- essentially since 9/11 plunged us into a new world, a new agenda, that the press did not understand -- the major organs of civilized journalism, once trusted by the billion most effective people on the planet, have given away their credibility upon a trifle.

Indeed. Read the whole thing.

BUT WHAT ABOUT MY JOB, Mr. Warmonger, sir? Amusing German reactions to the base-closing decision. ("Given Mr. Bsirske’s strident opposition to the Iraq war, the Bush administration and the US military, one would have thought that he and his union would have been overjoyed at the prospect of thousands of 'imperial hegemons' withdrawing from Germany. In fact, the opposite is true.")

UPDATE: Heh.

SOME QUESTIONS FOR DOUG BRINKLEY that he ought to be able to answer.

SOME SORT OF BIZARRE TESTOSTERONE MELTDOWN: Discussed over at GlennReynolds.com.

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO GET THE POST LOOKING AT MILITARY RECORDS? A story that's bad for Kerry's critics, I guess. No mention at all of the Cambodia story, though, in which Kerry's critics have been proved right (as even the Kerry campaign has admitted) -- and which the Post has ignored.

UPDATE: Charles Austin notices something unusual here:

Isn't it interesting that in the case of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the "correction" appears on page one above the fold, while the original news was buried on page 19.

Something of a reversal there. There are those who email me to say that focusing on this stuff isn't the best way to get Bush re-elected. Fine, maybe so -- but getting Bush re-elected isn't what I'm about. I like him better than Kerry, true, but he has people paid to get him re-elected, and I'm not one of them. (And given their silence on this issue, maybe talking about it is a bad move for Bush.) But this story seems to me to be absolutely fascinating in that it reveals just how in the tank for the Democrats the mainstream media are, and how little the vaunted Cronkitean claims of objectivity and research and factual accuracy really mean when the chips are down. What's more, lots of people are noticing.

To me, that's a bigger deal than the underlying issue or even, in some ways, the election itself. Elections come and go, politicians come and go, and pretty much all of them turn out to be disappointments one way or another. But the "Fourth Estate" is a big part of the unelected Permanent Government that in many ways does more to run the country than the politicians. And it's unravelling before our very eyes, which I think is the biggest story of the election so far. (More thoughts in the updates here.)

ANOTHER UPDATE: Related thoughts from Robert Clayton Dean here and here.

August 18, 2004

TOM HARKIN UPDATE: A 1991 Wall Street Journal article about his invented Vietnam service (mentioned below) is now available on the web.

UPDATE: Interestingly, despite being debunked over a decade ago, Harkin appears to still be peddling the bogus Vietnam story. At least, this CNN report from his endorsement of Howard Dean calls him "A Navy veteran who served in Vietnam." And I didn't realize it, but Harkin's charges against Cheney are actually recycled from 2000.

DON'T MISS THIS WEEK'S 100th CARNIVAL OF THE VANITIES: Who knows -- you might find a blog you like better than this one!

MORE CLAIMS OF VOTE FRAUD IN VENEZUELA, in the International Herald Tribune. (Via Stromata).

OUCH: This doesn't help. But where's Helen Thomas in this picture?

PINCHED: Now Kerry's war stories are being attacked from the left. I don't think much of these guys, but you can't dismiss them as Republican shills! And presumably, their stuff is subject to outside validation, if anyone bothers. (Sorry -- my lunch hour is over. . . .) [LATER: Does this count? Left and right agree, anyway.]

Meanwhile, Helen Thomas is calling him a warmonger, though in typical Helen Thomas fashion she's utterly clueless:

Kerry is mistaken on a key point. Under the U.S. Constitution, the president does not have that sole right to declare war. Despite its mindless default, that right still belongs to Congress.

Yes, and that's why Kerry said he voted to give Bush that authority. See, that's what Congress does when it declares war. Sheesh. Read the stuff you quote, Helen.

Now I'm defending John Kerry against Helen Thomas. What is this, the Bizarro-blogosphere?

UGLY AMERICANS: Yep.

UPDATE: Related thoughts here.

I MEANT TO LINK to yesterday's New York Times story on charter schools, er, yesterday, but as you may have noticed blogging was somewhat limited. Anyway, now Mickey Kaus has a long post on it. He's not impressed.

ONE OF MY READERS faces a moral quandary.

TOM HARKIN, FAKE WAR HERO: In an update to an earlier post, I noted some comments by Donald Sensing about Sen. Tom Harkin, most recently seen attacking the patriotism of Dick Cheney. Sensing observed: "Harkin himself claimed to have battled Mig fighters over North Vietnam while a Navy pilot. He was a pilot, but never went to Vietnam."

A reader emailed to say that he didn't think Sensing's sourcing was good enough for a charge of that magnitude. It seemed to me that I remembered some Harkin truth-stretching from back then, and I trust Sensing, but in keeping with Walter Cronkite's warnings about poorly sourced stories on the Internet, I decided to do some research at lunchtime. In a book called Stolen Valor : How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of Its Heroes and Its History, I found this passage, which is considerably worse for Harkin than Sensing's short summary. I'm reproducing it as an image for the benefit of doubters.

I also found an article from the Wall Street Journal, entitled "Harkin Presidential Bid Marred by Instances In Which Candidate Appears to Stretch Truth," dated December 26, 1991, p. A12. (Sorry -- I got this via WESTLAW so I can't post a link, but the WESTLAW page number is 1991 WL-WSJ 578809.) [LATER: It's now available for free on the Web, thanks to James Taranto.] It supports the above. Here's an excerpt:

In 1979, Mr. Harkin, then a congressman, participated in a round-table discussion arranged by the Congressional Vietnam Veterans' Caucus. "I spent five years as a Navy pilot, starting in November of 1962," Mr. Harkin said at that meeting, in words that were later quoted in a book, Changing of the Guard, by Washington Post political writer David Broder. "One year was in Vietnam. I was flying F-4s and F-8s on combat air patrols and photo-reconnaisance support missions. I did no bombing."

That clearly is not an accurate picture of his Navy service. Though Mr. Harkin stresses he is proud of his Navy record -- "I put my ass on the line day after day" -- he concedes now he never flew combat air patrols in Vietnam. . . .

Mr. Harkin's Navy record shows his only decoration is the National Defense Service Medal, awarded to everyone on active service during those years. He did not receive either the Vietnam Service medal or the Vietnam Campaign medal, the decorations given to everyone who served in the Southeast Asia theater. "We didn't get them for what we did," Mr. Harkin says. "It's never bothered me."

Two things bother me about this. One is that Harkin seems a rather odd choice for the Democrats as an attack dog. As Sensing notes, what are they thinking?

The other is that I managed to do this research over my lunch hour, but it doesn't seem to be noted in the press treatment of Harkin's charges by the people who get, you know, paid to do this stuff. (Take that, Walter!) And it would seem that when Harkin -- who didn't serve in Vietnam combat but who lied about it, and whose actual military service seems rather similar to Bush's -- calls Dick Cheney a "coward" because he didn't serve in Vietnam, well, it ought to be worth mentioning. Shouldn't it be?

Instead, CNN calls Harkin a "former Navy fighter pilot," (though it at least gets the details of his service correct).

Calling Harkin "a Senator who, like President Bush, flew fighter jets during the Vietnam era without seeing combat but who, unlike President Bush, lied about it," would be more accurate, but it would kind of change the story. Wonder why nobody looked into this? Or, if they knew, bothered to note it?

As with the Kerry Christmas-in-Cambodia story, this is probably more significant for what it tells us about the sorry state of political journalism this campaign season than for what it tells us about the speaker.

UPDATE: Roger Simon has more thoughts on today's political journalism, and Harkin.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Daniel Moore observes:

The blogosphere has clearly shown the world that there are a whole host of stories that old media doesn't cover out of sheer laziness and that any quick look for actual facts can contradict many stories that, say, political candidates put out and then [are] taken as fact by the media. Newspaper reporters used to know this - and they used to look for those facts. They used to check sources. They used to search for the truth in a way that would make any skeptic proud. But now they just read the press releases and change a word here or there.

It sure seems that way, sometimes, on some stories.

MORE: Reader Greg Swenson emails: "I was infuriated about Harkin's comments because I too did some coffee break Googling and found the same notes regarding the Senator's exaggerations of his service after I recalled the earlier incident. I'm a goddamn salesman and even I (underlined with emphasis) could fact check Harkin's ass. Why can't these blow-dried prima donnas news types do it?" Beats me. Guess they don't want to. "Gulf War Veteran" Bryan Preston has more.

STILL MORE: Well, glory be -- somebody did notice this. Reader Jim Adair emails: "Last night on Brit Hume's Fox News show, Hume mentioned the Harkin attack on Cheney and also mentioned that Harkin had overly expressed his service contribution during a presidential bid. Fair AND balanced!" [LATER: Here's a link to the transcript: scroll to the bottom.]

Sean Hackbarth writes: "I'm sensing a pattern." This seems to be getting rather a lot of attention now.

Michael Drout, journalist-turned-professor, explains why journalists don't want to look for facts anymore:

Based on my experience at J-school, I can generalize a couple things about journalists around my age that could explain some of the problems. First, nearly all of us were in J-school not because we wanted to be reporters, but because we wanted to write. . . . Thus reporters are ripe for the temptation of press-releases: and most press-release-writing flacks are people with journalism degrees who know exactly how to write a release so that the reporter can edit out obvious promotion but still buy the overall spin.

Second, almost all of the J-school program at Stanford was spent trying to get us to think about the implications of journalism, the politics of reporting, the influence of journalists, etc.

He concludes:

I think this is a long-term big problem for Journalism, the profession. It has been eating its seed corn for a decade or more, and so much of its cultural authority is used up. This can be good, in that it reduces the influence of unaccountable institutions, like the big daily papers. But it's also bad, because once everyone stops believing the newspapers, you have a huge problem of vetting and evaluating information.

Indeed.

FINALLY: Reader Dennis Preiser emails:

All of the talk about lazy journalism, etc., etc. is not the "real deal" in Harkin's story or any other story. The point that should be made is that the only stories that are not pursued with zeal by the MSM are the ones that benefit George W. Bush. There is absolutely no other factor of import involved. It's nothing but bias, pure and simple. Period.

Well, they did seem to work a lot harder on the AWOL claims. . . .

JIM DUNNIGAN WRITES on why Intelligence Czars don't work.

DARFUR UPDATE: Dave Kopel, et al., have some thoughts on what's wrong and what to do, along with some more general observations regarding the international community's response to genocide.

Rajan Rishyakaran, by the way, has another link-rich roundup of news relating to Darfur.

HUGH HEWITT WRITES that when Old Media fail to credit the blogosphere it's a form of plagiarism.

To me it's more like the sincerest form of flattery. . . .

UPDATE: In a related post, Virginia Postrel has a request for campaign journalists:

I don't have to spend my time tracking down sources who might be able to shed light on John Kerry's claims about his adventures in Vietnam and Cambodia.

I don't have to do these things because I don't want to and because they are not my job. But there are a lot of fine journalists who do have the job of political reporting, they are not doing it when it comes to Kerry's past, and they are making our whole profession look bad. Come on, folks. If you can't find out any independent sources on Kerry's own story, at least report the "he says-he says" allegations. And help out your audience with some context: Dig up some more-or-less unbiased (or at least nonpartisan) sources to provide some historical context for the bizarre Cambodia story. Never mind John Kerry specifically, what were U.S. operations during that period? Are any of his various accounts plausible and, if so, which ones? Or give readers some background on the procedures for awarding medals during Vietnam. There was a lot of medal inflation and, presumably, some politics in how medals were awarded. What, if anything, does the broader context tell us about Kerry and his critics?

Yes, the Big Media folks, with their alleged reserves of professionalism and research, haven't exactly covered themselves with glory on this story. It's as if they don't want to know the truth.

IRAQI BLOGGERS ALI AND MOHAMMED from Iraq the Model are cranking it up a notch by running for the Iraqi National Assembly.

August 17, 2004

THE INSTADAD ON KERRY: My dad's a Kerry supporter, an Iraq war opponent, and a rather devoted Bush critic. But when we were talking the other night, he offered his worries regarding Kerry.

He thinks that Bush will cut and run in Iraq within six months of the election. (I disagree, unless it's via Tehran). But -- though I stress he still supports Kerry -- he says that his big worry about Kerry is that Kerry will be like LBJ, anxious to prove his manhood through greater military involvement rather than risk looking weak by withdrawing.

When we had this conversation a couple of weeks ago, I was skeptical. And I guess I still am. But lately, I've started to wonder if he isn't on to something. (He often is.) People in the pro-war camp worry that Kerry will pull a cut-and-run. And it's true that Kerry has been known for his anti-war sentiments, and actions.

But it's also true that Kerry really wants to be known as one badass mofo. Look at the secret hat. ("He pointed his finger and raised his thumb, creating an imaginary gun. . . . He smiled and aimed his finger: 'Pow.'") The war stories. The combat home movies. The constant photos of Kerry with Harleys, guitars, guns, and soldiers. The military posture of the DNC acceptance speech and salute. If Kerry were a Republican, the bargain-basement Freudians among the punditocracy would be having a field day. (As Joan Vennochi wrote: "Clearly, 'modest hero' will not be his epitaph.")

So what does this mean? Lyndon Baines Johnson was another President with a silver star and a short combat career who seemed to feel that he had a lot to prove. Might Kerry's rather clear desire to be seen as a tough guy make him a surprisingly resilient warrior? Or might it backfire, as it most likely did with LBJ?

I don't know. A tough-guy presidency under Kerry seems unlikely to me, but then so did a major George W. Bush commitment to nation-building four years ago. Should people in the anti-war camp be worrying that a President Kerry won't pull a cut-and-run? I don't really think so, but it's just perverse enough to seem plausible. . . .

UPDATE: Oliver Willis seems to think that the above post means that I think Kerry is "too tough." Er, no. Read it again, Oliver.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Donald Sensing has related thoughts. He also notes: "Harkin himself claimed to have battled Mig fighters over North Vietnam while a Navy pilot. He was a pilot, but never went to Vietnam." Funny, I haven't seen that mentioned anywhere else in relation to Harkin's recent remarks.

OUTSOURCING AND EMPLOYMENT: Daniel Drezner looks at talk of a skills deficit.

TWO AMERICAS: Two bicycles.

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh comments: "Poverty, people say, causes crime; but what many people miss is that crime causes poverty."

MORE PLAME SUBPOENAS at the New York Times.

THE WHITE HOUSE is bloggier than I had realized.

A SERIOUS LOGO ERROR: Heh.

Or perhaps I should say D'oh!

VALEDICTORY: Colby Cosh's goodbye to Walter Cronkite is cruel.

JOHN KERRY VS. BOB KERREY: Some people have trouble telling the difference:

The ''band of brothers'' was organized by Kerry, according to this book. It tells of a 2003 telephone call to Adm. Roy Hoffmann, who commanded swift boats in Vietnam, telling him he was running for president. Hoffmann, mistakenly thinking it was former Sen. Bob Kerrey, ''responded enthusiastically.'' Once the admiral realized it was John Kerry, ''he declined to give Kerry his support.''

Apparently, even some people at the Kerry Campaign are having trouble, as they're crediting John Kerry with Bob Kerrey's service as Vice Chairman of the Intelligence Committee.

Fortunately for everyone, we didn't wind up with a Kerry/Kerrey ticket -- though at least then such confusion would matter less. . . . And hey, if it were a Kerrey/Kerry ticket I might even vote for it.

I'VE BEEN MEANING TO POST SOMETHING on this item by Bjorn Staerk about the growth of anti-Islam comments on a lot of blogs.

As I was posting shortly after September 11, there are lots of different flavors of Islam. It's actually playing into the hands of the Ladenites to assume that Wahhabi extremism represents the authentic face of Islam. Islam has many traditions, and Wahhabism is actually a fairly recent one, and it is rather more extreme than it is authentic.

That said, it would be useful if those more moderate Muslims would take a more aggressive role. Some are -- see, for example, the Free Muslim Coalition Against Terrorism -- but we could use more of that, no doubt. But to the extent that these people encounter comments urging that Islam be "banned," they're likely to feel less, rather than more, motivated toward reasonableness.

UPDATE: More thoughts from Eugene Volokh.

MORE TERROR ARRESTS IN BRITAIN: And look at the charges:

Eight men arrested in anti-terror raids have been charged with conspiring to commit murder and launch radioactive or chemical attacks.

One of them was also charged with having plans which could have been used as the basis for a terror attack on the New York Stock Exchange, the IMF in Washington and Citigroup in New York.

The men were among 13 arrested on August 3 in a series of raids by the Anti-Terrorist Branch and MI5 in London, Bushey in Hertfordshire, Luton in Bedfordshire, and Blackburn in Lancashire.

I believe this is fruit of the Khan arrest / deception program.

LOTS OF READERS are sending me links to this story on Walter Cronkite, in which he warns of those awful Internet folks who are ruining journalism with their carelessness and willingness to smear the innocent via unfounded accusations.

Cronkite -- as is typical of old journalists when they talk about the prevalence of fact-free smears on the Internet -- doesn't fortify his claim with any actual examples. But let's look at the golden age of journalism at Cronkite's own network, back before this newfangled Internet thing ruined it, as recounted by Dungeons and Dragons creator Gary Gygax:

So it goes for a couple of years, gets really popular, then in the early '80s a backlash begins. People are saying that the game encourages devil worship and causes kids to commit suicide. . . .

In many ways I still resent the wretched yellow journalism that was clearly evident in (the media's) treatment of the game -- 60 Minutes in particular. I've never watched that show after Ed Bradley's interview with me because they rearranged my answers. When I sent some copies of letters from mothers of those two children who had committed suicide who said the game had nothing to do with it, they refused to do a retraction or even mention it on air. What bothered me is that I was getting death threats, telephone calls, and letters. I was a little nervous. I had a bodyguard for a while.

Goodbye, Walter. Journalism is unlikely to suffer in your absence.

(Second link via John Cole, who observes: "At least 60 Minutes has maintained their standards throughout the years.")

UPDATE: Unsurprisingly, Cronkite's piece is getting a generally poor reception throughout the blogosphere.

JEFF JARVIS: " I drank Coke all my life. I'm not fat. And I'm 50. Nya nya nya."

MY TECHCENTRALSTATION COLUMN is up. I confess error.

JAMES LILEKS looks at recent developments in fashion and predicts a recession: "Does this make you want to spend money? No, didn't think so. Sell your Marshall Field's stock. The fools are back in charge."

DAM BREAKS: The L.A. Times has mentioned the Kerry Christmas-in-Cambodia story. On the other hand, according to Times- watcher Patterico, "The article is pro-Kerry spin, pure and simple. The strategy of the article is apparent: before actually setting forth a single detail of the Swift Boat Vets' allegations, the article carefully lays the groundwork to prepare the reader to be skeptical."

He has an extensive critique of the article, which is well worth reading. What's interesting is that this explicitly pro-Kerry oped by Joan Vennochi in the Boston Globe is actually more honest and straightforward in its reporting of the facts:

Kerry's statements about Cambodia do have traction for opponents. He has referred to spending Christmas or Christmas Eve 1968 in Cambodia and coming under fire. At the time Cambodia was neutral and supposedly off-limits to US troops. "I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia," Kerry said in 1986 at a Senate committee hearing on US policy toward Central America. "I remember what it was like to be shot at by the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there, the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared -- seared -- in me."

The Kerry campaign now says Kerry's runs into Cambodia came in early 1969. "Swift boat crews regularly operated along the Cambodian border from Ha Tien on the Gulf of Thailand to the rivers of the Mekong south and west of Saigon," Michael Meehan, a Kerry adviser, said in a statement last week. "Many times he was on or near the Cambodian border and on one occasion crossed into Cambodia at the request of members of a special operations group."

Answers like that aren't good enough. Kerry put his Vietnam service before voters as the seminal character issue of his presidential campaign. He should answer every question voters have about it -- and he should answer them himself.

It's an interesting commentary on the state of journalism, when partisan opeds provide less spin -- even on behalf of their own team -- than ostensible "news" stories do.

More thoughts on the L.A. Times coverage here: "Incredibly, the LAT ignores the fact that the Kerry camp has already admitted that Sen. Kerry has 'misremembered' the dates of his alleged forays past the Cambodian border."

It's hard to keep up with your guy's latest spin points in this Internet era. I'm not surprised at the spin myself, but spin is better than a blackout.

UPDATE: More in the Houston Chronicle:

The same news media that demanded George W. Bush release his National Guard records — and went over them with a microscope — have shown an appalling lack of interest in John Kerry's military service. And as it turns out, there are far more legitimate questions about the latter than the former. . . .

To those of you who say such questions are unseemly, consider that John Kerry's principal claim on the presidency is that he served four months and 11 days in Vietnam. OK, fine. Let's examine the records — all the records, which, unlike Bush and contrary to popular perception, Kerry has not released — and have a debate. We would be if it were George W. Bush. The media would see to it.

All Kerry has to do is to release the records. Why won't he? And why isn't the press calling him on it.

Okay, I know the answer to both questions, I guess.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt observes:

How odd for papers to carry opinion pieces relating to controversies that their readers have never read about in those papers, but which the opinion pieces presume they have heard or read about elsewhere.

In fact, the secondary nature of the old media is becoming quite obvious. Reporters, pundits, talking heads etc all know about the magic hat and the now discredited claims of Christmas Eve in Cambodia. . . . Other shoes will drop soon, and the papers are fighting the battle of two weeks ago. Very weird, but very revealing of why the papers are dying and why some of them, like the Los Angeles Times, cannot add market share even with a monopoly position in their markets --they have nothing to sell to anyone not part of their ideological world.

Ouch. No wonder Walter Cronkite is upset. Meanwhile Roger Simon says the L.A. Times article is a "more place holding than reporting," and observes how far behind the curve they are.

MORE: Ouch!

GIVING UP ON NATION-BUILDING: Reader Bob Kingsberry emails:

Bush is bringing our troops home from Germany because he realizes American-style democracy will never succeed there. After freeing the German people from a brutal dictatorship and protecting them from Soviet tyranny for almost fifty years, Bush is finally willing to admit that Germans aren't capable of contributing to the security and prosperity of the world.

I wish I could argue with this. . . . Related thoughts here. And Mickey Kaus thinks Richard Holbrooke needs message control.