In the latest issue of Harper's, Lewis Lapham has a long, tiresome essay on the "Republican propaganda mill"--which, to judge by one of the accompanying graphs, includes the foundation that publishes Reason. (No wonder we find ourselves praising the president so often.) Lapham briefly mentions but otherwise ignores ideological divisions on "the right," lumping together "the Catholic conservatives with the Jewish neoconservatives, the libertarians with the authoritarians, the evangelical nationalists with the paranoid monetarists, Pat Robertson with the friends of the Ku Klux Klan." According to Lapham, all are part of the same conspiracy against decency and compassion, bound together by a common "resentment" (of what, exactly, he doesn't say). It tells you something about Lapham's acuity that he sees George W. Bush as a faithful disciple of Barry Goldwater. The main thrust of the piece is that all conservatives are stupid and closed-minded, with the possible exception of Irving Kristol.

Perhaps the most revealing part of the article is the paragraph where Lapham pretends to have heard the speeches at the Republican National Convention that does not open until a week from today. Referring to "the platform on which [George W. Bush] was trundled into New York City this August with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the heavy law enforcement, and the paper elephants," Lapham writes:

The speeches in Madison Square Garden affirmed the great truths now routinely preached from the pulpits of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal--government the problem, not the solution; the social contract a dead letter; the free market the answer to every maiden's prayer--and while listening to the hollow rattle of the rhetorical brass and tin, I remembered the question that [Richard] Hofstadter didn't stay to answer. How did a set of ideas both archaic and bizarre make its way into the center ring of the American political circus?

True, the issue is dated September, but I got my copy in early August, and Lapham must have written those words in July. Didn't it occur to him that his readers might notice he was claiming to have witnessed an event that had not occurred when the magazine went to press? Evidently, Republicans are not the only ones Lapham thinks are stupid.

When Clear Channel confronts a left-liberal audience, it doesn't forget the profit motive. Inside Radio reports that the broadcasting chain is bringing "progressive talk" radio to Ann Arbor, the Berkeley of the midwest, with programming drawn from Air America and other lefty sources.

(N.B.: Ann Arborites interested in freeform dissent will be better off listening to my alma mater, WCBN.)

According to New Scientist, an experiment in Brazil may offer evidence for linguistic determinism -- "the controversial hypothesis that the language available to humans defines our thoughts."

Hunter-gatherers from the Pirahã tribe, whose language only contains words for the numbers one and two, were unable to reliably tell the difference between four objects placed in a row and five in the same configuration, revealed the study....

In order to test if this prevented members of the tribe from perceiving higher numbers, Gordon set seven Pirahã a variety of tasks. In the simplest, he sat opposite an individual and laid out a random number of familiar objects, including batteries, sticks and nuts, in a row. The Pirahã were supposed to respond by laying out the same number of objects from their own pile.

For one, two and three objects, members of the tribe consistently matched Gordon’s pile correctly. But for four and five and up to ten, they could only match it approximately, deviating more from the correct number as the row got longer....

Gordon says this is the first convincing evidence that a language lacking words for certain concepts could actually prevent speakers of the language from understanding those concepts.

The article acknowledges that there could be other reasons for the Indians' poor results, "including not being used to dealing with large numbers." There is also the possibility, left unexplored, that tribal people simply enjoy screwing with researchers' heads.

Bush wins with 57.5 percent of the vote, predicts the Presidential Vote Equation. The equation is the brainchild of Yale University economist Ray C. Fair. Bushies shouldn't break out the champagne just yet because there are, of course, a few caveats.

My gratitude to Russ Harris for the link.

Vietnam remains alive and well in U.S. politics. Last evening, former Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kansas), a decorated and badly wounded WW2 vet, lashed out at John Kerry on CNN's Late Edition, saying in part (as the Wash Post has it),

"One day he's saying that we were shooting civilians, cutting off their ears, cutting off their heads, throwing away his medals or his ribbons," Dole said. "The next day he's standing there, 'I want to be president because I'm a Vietnam veteran. "Maybe he should apologize to all the other 2.5 million veterans who served. He wasn't the only one in Vietnam," said Dole, whose World War II wounds left him without the use of his right arm.

Dole added: "And here's, you know, a good guy, a good friend. I respect his record. But three Purple Hearts and never bled that I know of. I mean, they're all superficial wounds. Three Purple Hearts and you're out."

Whole account here. Remember the good old days when Dole used to rail against "Democrat wars of the 20th century"? Those were good times, too.

Earlier on Sunday, Kerry spokesman Tad Devine told Meet the Press (in the Chicago Tribune's telling,

"There's only one commander in chief of the United States who sent our troops to Iraq without the body armor they need to survive, and his name is George W. Bush," Devine said. "And if he had spent one day on the front line of a war, he never would have done it."

Bush served in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War, but Democrats have questioned whether he fulfilled his duties. The White House has insisted he did.

Devine said that Kerry's boat came under fire on three occasions on Christmas Eve 1968.

"That's three times more than the president and the vice president ever have been fired upon in the course of their life," Devine said.

Whole thing here.

Also in the Tribune yesterday, journalist--and fellow Vietnam vet--William Rood says that Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the anti-Kerry group, is wrong about the actions that led to the candidate's Silver Star. That story here.

A question: Is the reason why Vietnam remains such an issue simply--or mostly--because we lost that war?

An observation: You've got to hand it to the Democrats. They enter a presidential race against a guy who clearly worked to evade active service in Vietnam and manage to nominate a multiply decorated vet whose service record somehow becomes the focus of attention. Yes, there is an orchestrated attempt by the GOP to throw questions onto Kerry (a process he's abetted with his changing Cambodian story, among other things). But if anybody is wondering why the Dems are on the threshold of becoming a permananent minority party, this latest screwup is one indication of incompetence that used to be a Republican hallmark.

After some maintenance, Hit & Run, including our singular comments section, is back in business.

Sorry about our ongoing server trouble. We are working on an upgrade right now, which we hope will make your Hit And Run experience more pleasant than ever. Until Monday, comments will be disabled and service will be spotty. Thanks for your patience.

Update: Comments are working sporadically, for now. Expect service to be intermittent through Monday.

I'd always suspected that the macrocephalic senator from Massachussets might be hiding a spare box cutter or some plastic explosives in that Sputnikesque melon, and so I'm gratified to see that the Transportation Security Administration is taking that threat seriously. Ted Kennedy has been blocked from boarding airplanes on numerous occasions because the alias "Edward Kennedy," apparently used by some terrorists in the past, appears on the no-fly list. Now if only terrorists would only adopt the MO of travelling with crying babies. We wrote about problems with the no-fly list back in March.

The reviews are starting to come in on Reason Senior Editor Brian Doherty's This Is Burning Man:

"An engrossing-and often hilarious-read."--Monday

"[A] can't-put-it-down new book"--American Spectator

"Queer, fascinating stories"--New York Post

Buy the book here.

The pro-file-sharing decision (discussed in the feature interview with Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Perry Barlow in our Aug./Sept. issue) Grokster v. MGM gets upheld by the Ninth Circuit. From the Associated Press account:

Mitch Bainwol, chairman of the Recording Industry Association of America, said the decision raises questions of whether “digital music will be enjoyed in a fashion that supports the creative process or one that robs it of its future.”

The lower court ruling upheld Thursday had cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1984 decision in the Sony Betamax case. The court said then that Sony wasn’t liable when people used its Betamax videocassette recorder to copy movies illegally because the technology had significant uses that did not violate copyrights.

The studios and labels argued that while Sony could not control how consumers used their VCRs, Grokster and StreamCast could filter the copyright content from their systems, like they do with computer viruses, but refuse to do so, because the free songs and movies are what draw their users and ultimately generate ad profits. Streamcast and Grokster make money via advertising that pops up on users’ screens.

[Judge Sidney R.] Thomas, the appeals court judge, said agreeing with the entertainment industry’s demands would be “unwise” and “would conflict with binding precedent.”

“History has shown that time and market forces often provide equilibrium in balancing interests, whether the new technology be a player piano, a copier, a tape recorder, a video recorder, a personal computer, a karaoke machine, or an MP3 player,” Thomas wrote. “Thus, it is prudent for courts to exercise caution before restructuring liability theories.”

Fox News pulls together some of the brewing controversy about a forthcoming report from the inspector general of Iraq's former Coalition Provisonal Authority indicating that they can't adequately account for $8.8 billion they spent. Some congressmen are getting in the act:

FOX News confirmed that Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon, Tom Harkin from Iowa and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota want Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to tell them what the funds have been used for by the CPA, which handed over sovereignty to the Iraqis in June.

"The CPA apparently transferred this staggering sum of money with no written rules or guidelines for ensuring adequate managerial, financial or contractual controls over the funds," said the letter sent by the senators on Thursday, obtained by Reuters. "Such enormous discrepancies raise very serious questions about potential fraud, waste and abuse."

In one example reported by Reuters, "8,206 guards were listed on a payroll but only 603 people doing the work could be counted."

[Link via Rational Review.]

For techie rubber-neckers, here's a list of the worst "software disasters" for PCs. Pretty solid, although I note that MS Bob was an interesting idea poorly done. It still needs to be done.

I'd also consider sticking all of OS/2 on the list as a penalty for what-might-have-been. Great PC OS from a company that, deep down, really didn't want the world to become PC-centric.

Today's Washington Post has a front-page story about anti-Americanism in Arab pop culture, leading with a description of the latest film from Egypt's best-known moviemaker, Youssef Chahine. The new film, entitled Alexandria . . . New York, is "a cinematic divorce paper," according to the Post. Writes reporter Daniel Williams, "Chahine said he had long admired the United States and its biggest city, but now he has made a film brimming with resentment."

Oh yeah? Spare me Chahine's supposedly lost admiration. The last time I saw Chahine take up the subject of the U.S. he once "admired" so much, he portrayed the country as an old whore pandering to Jews. That's the conclusion of his 1978 "masterpiece," Alexandia . . . Why? The film tells the story of an Egyptian film student in the 1940s who wants to come to the U.S. to study. At the movie's end, he's on a ship approaching New York. What we see is the Statue of Liberty itself in the guise of that fat, painted whore, welcoming not the Egyptian student, but instead a group of European Hasidic Jews complete with long sidecurls. The overpainted Ms. Liberty laughs lasciviously, exposing her mouthful of bad teeth, while a Jewish chant is playing on the soundtrack.

It's galling to see the Post allow Chahine to strike his self-serving pose of regretful lost love. (There are a lot of passages like this: "'I don't know if this is a final divorce,' Chahine, 78, said as he smoked cigarettes against the wishes of attentive aides. 'I think about the friends I have had in America every day. It was in New York where I saw the greatest plays. I saw Sinatra at the Paramount.'" Good lord.) But then, a pained Chahine serves the purpose of these kind of accounts, specifically to show how the overthrow of Saddam Hussein has turned the whole Arab world, including such one-time "admirers," against the U.S.

To further his case, Williams cites – at length -- the popularity of singer Shaaban Abdel Rehim and his anti-American songs. We've been through his case before. Rehim is so admired among Arabs that, the last time I looked, he couldn't find an Arab actress to co-star with him in a movie. A long string of them had protected their own careers by publicly refusing to work with him. Indeed, if the region's celebrity press is to be believed, one woman Egyptian singer actually sued a pair of journalists who called her the "female Rehim." Many Arabs may well embrace the anti-American themes in Rahim's music, but much of his own celebrity springs from the outsized persona he projects: that of an aggressive, Sad Sack slob.

How difficult would it be to find some figures with integrity in Egyptian culture for such a story? They wouldn't have to be "pro-American"; that wouldn't be the point. I'd nominate Egyptians like playwright Ali Salem or producer Tariq El Aryan. And a call to Damascus will get you Yasser Al-Azmeh, who has made anti-American posturing among Arabs the subject of his stinging satire.

Jacob Sullum reviews the DEA's new self-help book.

Via Arts & Letters Daily comes this evehanded and interesting appreciation at Physics Today for the controversial "father of the H Bomb," Edward Teller.

A snippet:

close to Teller's heart were two causes that might surprise those who knew him only in caricature. One was his dislike of secrecy, especially in technical matters. Teller saw secrecy as harmful to the US in a fundamental way. It lessened the key American advantage of broad, free discussion and criticism while it assisted closed societies, which were better at maintaining secrecy. One of his examples was the nuclear weapons program itself. He maintained that the Soviet program was ahead of ours precisely because of US secrecy. At the same time, he argued, the US was forging ahead of the Soviets on other defense initiatives that were not so highly classified.

Whole thing here.

Reason writers around town: At The American Spectator, Jesse Walker reviews Nozone IX: Empire

Via Yahoo News:

The Bush campaign is running an ad in which the flags of Iraq and Afghanistan appear.

A narrator says, "At this Olympics there will be two more free nations - and two fewer terrorist regimes. With strength, resolve and courage, democracy will triumph over terror and hope will defeat hatred."...

"How will he meet his god having slaughtered so many men and women?" [Iraqi soccer player] Ahmed Manajid told SI.com. "He has committed so many crimes."...

The players said they were grateful that Saddam Hussein's son, Uday, was no longer in charge of the country's Olympians, SI.com reported. He had tortured players for playing badly. U.S. troops killed him last year in Mosul.

Still, the team's coach said the ad was inappropriate and that the team does not support the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

"My problems are not with the American people," Iraqi coach Adnan Hamad told SI.com. "They are with what America has done in Iraq: destroy everything," he said. "The American army has killed so many people in Iraq. What is freedom when I go to the (national) stadium and there are shootings on the road?"

Whole story here.

You can view the ad, titled "Victory" at the Bush campaign site. It is a strange bit of film, which jumps from an incongruous shot of George and Laura to scenes from the Olympics. It highlights the fact that in 1972 there were 40 democracies in the world and now there are 120.

Presumably no Iraqi athletes were harmed in the filming of the spot.

Venezuela's opposition leaders have boycotted the audit (results due today!) of Sunday's election, claiming -- to quote the Associated Press -- that "they had unearthed new evidence of fraud, which they insisted the audit as proposed by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and the Organization of American States would fail to detect." Here's the argument:

Rampersad claimed touch-screen voting machines in at least 500 polling sites produced the exact same number of "yes" votes in favor of ousting Chavez, a result he said was statistically impossible. He said the supposed finding indicated the machines were rigged to impose a ceiling on "yes" votes.

The audit intended to compare electronic and paper ballots. But Rampersad said opponents were concerned the paper ballots which have been under the care of Venezuela's military may have been tampered with since Sunday's votes. He said the opposition wanted the audit to include an examination of the internal workings of the machines' software.

But according to The New York Times, the audit is examining "150 voting tables -- each with two or three voting machines." Perhaps I'm missing some important distinction here. Does the opposition simply want the auditors to look at more machines? Is the complaint that they're not examining all the inner workings of those machines? Or are they just looking for excuses to throw doubt on the results? (Those aren't rhetorical questions: I'd like to hear from people who have been following this more closely than I have. I'd also like to hear more about those election observers who have reportedly disputed the opposition's claims of irregularities.)

Meanwhile, pro-Chávez forces have noted some alleged anomalies of their own. From one election night report:

Already with just minutes to spare before 3:00 p.m. international media began receiving emails from IP address 172.138.233.63 claiming to release preliminary results....We do not give much credence to the information since tracing the sender IP to Virginia, USA.

Update: Carroll Andrew Morse has more information at TechCentralStation.

Here's an explanation for Kerry's Cambodia claims that might make sense. Or might not. Don't look at me, I'm not a military historian.

As the Washington Times runs its third and final excerpt from the anti-Kerry tome Unfit for Command, The New York Times publishes a story about the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

As is often the case in these sorts of things, more information rarely helps to clarify much. The NY Times story documents that the SwiftVets have a lot of ties to Republican powerbrokers but I'm not sure it undermines the credibility of the anti-Kerry crew. That's partly because of statements like this:

George Elliott, one of the Vietnam veterans in the group, flew from his home in Delaware to Boston in 1996 to stand up for Mr. Kerry during a tough re-election fight, declaring at a news conference that the action that won Mr. Kerry a Silver Star was "an act of courage."...

In an evaluation of Mr. Kerry in 1969, Mr. Elliott, who was one of his commanders, ranked him as "not exceeded" in 11 categories, including moral courage, judgment and decisiveness, and "one of the top few" - the second-highest distinction - in the remaining five. In written comments, he called Mr. Kerry "unsurpassed," "beyond reproach" and "the acknowledged leader in his peer group."...

Mr. Elliott, who recommended Mr. Kerry for the Silver Star, had signed one affidavit saying Mr. Kerry "was not forthright" in the statements that had led to the award. Two weeks ago, The Boston Globe quoted him as saying that he felt he should not have signed the affidavit. He then signed a second affidavit that reaffirmed his first, which the Swift Boat Veterans gave to reporters. Mr. Elliott has refused to speak publicly since then.

The Ron Bailey poll brings bad news to Crawford.

I moved to Northern Virginia a few years ago, and I still haven't decided whether the alcoholic beverage laws are more or less annoying here than in New York, where I used to live. On the one hand, all liquor has to be purchased through state-owned stores that are closed on Sunday, charge relatively high prices, and offer minimal selection. On the other hand, you can buy wine as well as beer in grocery stores. In New York, by contrast, wine is available only in specially licensed (though privately owned) liquor stores. Whole Foods, which recently opened a store on Columbus Circle in Manhattan, tried to remedy that problem with a wine store attached to its supermarket. Although "The Wine Store at Whole Foods" is separated from the food area by glass doors, is open different hours, and has a separate checkout, the state Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control says it's all a ruse to get around New York's idiotic rules. I recall a similar arrangement at the Stew Leonard's in Weschester County, but the wine store there had a separate outdoor entrance, and I guess that makes all the difference.

As will be evident to anybody who's tried to post comments and/or insult the intelligence of Reason staffers and/or the magazine's readers, we've been having server problems today. We're working to fix them as quickly as possible.

Maia Szalavitz studies the DEA's war on prescribing doctors.

Former Reason Editor Virginia Postrel has an interesting gloss on recent attacks on George W. Bush for not passing enough regulation.

She points to a NY Times graphic that shows the incremental costs of new regulations passed since 1987. It shows that Dubya (averaging $1.6 billion for '02 and '03) is way below the average set by Reagan ($8.1 billion), Poppa Bush ($8.5 billion), and Clinton ($6.2 billion; it's also interesting to note that Clinton is well below either of his two predecessors). She writes,

After nearly four years, both the WaPost--in a three-part series, no less--and the NYT, in a more-modest single article have suddenly discovered that the Bush administration has taken a dim view of regulation.... The reporters take the attitude that any restriction approved by "activists" and disapproved by "business" must be good--end of debate....

Taken as a whole, this latest media campaign offers an answer to an oft-asked question: Why on earth would a libertarian vote for George W. Bush?

That ">NY Times graphic supplies a good answer.

Whole thing here.