Pejmanesque

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

If you are going through hell, keep going.

--Winston Churchill

THE CONFUSION AND THE CODE DUELLO

Neal Stephenson is known for his astoundingly detailed knowledge of the subject matter of his posts, so the number of times in which he is caught making a mistake must range from "rare" to "never." Having said that, I think I have found an error in The Confusion (warning: spoiler ahead).

NOT EVEN TOO CLEVER BY HALF

When I was just about to graduate from high school, my graduating class and I met to plan the Senior Prank. Past senior classes had taken what were--to our minds--the best ideas, which meant that we were precluded from hiring a stripper to dance provocatively for a teacher, for fear of being astonishingly unoriginal.

We wracked our brains for sometime, and then finally settled on our prank. We would take a kiddie pool to the spacious second floor landing, fill it with water and goldfish, spread some sand around that we got from The Point, and create a beach scene that would be discovered by teachers and students the next day.

This was--to put it mildly--a pathetic prank. The only memorable moment of the night for me was the effort made by me and my friends to avoid the campus security at the University of Chicago in order to pull our plan off. At one point during the night, this entailed having me run faster than the people on our track team in order to evade the fuzz that was in hot pursuit, trying to stop me and my educational comrades from carrying off our stunt. Eventually, we did break into the school, set up the kiddie pool, filled it with fish, spread around the sand, and ran out, giggling at our cleverness.

We all got off scot-free, which meant that I did not have to take advantage of the generosity of the PejmanFather. The night of the prank, I dined with the PejmanFamily at a Chinese restaurant before going off to engage in juvenile perfidy. At one point during the dinner, I told the PejmanParents "You do realize that I'm going to be breaking and entering as part of this prank. So I'm engaging in an illegal act. You know that, right?"

At which the PejmanFather--with a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye--reached into his pocket and pulled out a quarter. "This is for your one phone call in case you get arrested. Contact us."

As I say, fortunately the quarter went unspent. But again, it cannot be overemphasized just how monumentally lame this plan was.

So you can imagine my relief when I find that there are people out there with even lamer plans.

(Thanks to Orin Kerr for the links, and for helping make the cogitations of my youth look good by comparison.)

MISPLACED WORRIES

"Nothing to fear but Republicans themselves?" James Panero rightfully laughs at such a thought.

THE CONTINUING SAGA OF IRAN'S BUSYBODY MULLAHS

Unbelievable. Just unbelievable:

Window shoppers in Iran will no longer have the pleasure of looking at women's underwear or buying a variety of pets, according to new police rules reported yesterday..

According to the student news agency ISNA, shops have been barred from displaying lingerie in their windows - with the display ban also applying to "unveiled mannequins with noticeable curves".

In addition, men have also been banned from employment as salesmen in women's underwear stores - with offending shopowners facing the loss of their licenses.

In other measures reported by ISNA, commercial centres and restaurants have also been told not to keep or sell dogs, pigs and monkeys - animals that are considered in Islam to be unclean.

The measures are contained in a new manual for police, ISNA said. Another rule includes women being banned from taking driving lessons with male instructors unless they are accompanied by an immediate male relative.

ISNA also quoted a senior police official as saying that all clothes stores will be searched for hidden cameras and see-through mirrors in their fitting rooms following complaints from citizens.

As if any of this is first and foremost on the minds of Iranians suffering under a repressive and backwards regime. On the other hand, I suppose that the mullahs ought to be congratulated on their unerring gift of being able to hone in on the irrelevant.

SPIES LIKE THEM

There should be no mistaking my belief that any American citizen who is a turncoat and spies on the United States is the most loathsome of traitors. But there is a need for context, and as Captain Ed points out, the Pentagon spy recently caught spying for Israel was just not that high up in the Defense Department food chain.

Of course, the good Captain makes the sad point that such a revelation won't stop certain odious statements from being made:

Such reports won't quell the anti-Semitic rants of the lunatic fringe, such as independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader, who has spewed his venom regarding the insidious nature of Israel's control over successive US administrations. (Curiously, the American government is supposedly 'owned' by Israel and Saudi Arabia simultaneously. No wonder nothing ever gets done around here.) Since the Times' James Risen indicates the material accessed regards Iran and the threat assessments of the Islamicist regime, it seems safer to assume that (if true) the Israelis wanted to get classified information that the US had developed to shape Israeli policy and military preparedness, not influence American policy.

UPDATE: More valuable commentary on this issue from Asparagirl, whose comment section is sadly polluted by idiot anti-Semites and the aforementioned moronic Kevin Lyda.

THE FAIRER SEX

I have to hand it to the American ladies: When it comes to sports, their teams are better than the mens' teams. In 1998, while the men's Olympic hockey team came up empty (and then went ahead and trashed its locker room in celebration), the women took gold. This year, while the men's soccer team came up empty, the women took gold.

And now, the women's basketball team has brought home gold for the United States. Congratulations to them, and it is to be hoped (devoutly) that the men learn some kind of lesson from the ladies on how to succeed at the game on an international level.

UPDATE: It appears that the US mens' basketball team has roused itself to win a bronze. Better than nothing, of course, but let it be remembered that Michael Jordan--one of the original Dream Teamers--would have stopped the rotation of the Earth on its axis if that was what it took to win a gold medal in 1992.

In 2004, Jordan's successors barely eked out a bronze. Joy.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer - say traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep - it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best, and most abundantly. Whence and how they come, I know not, nor can I force them.

--Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

A WORKABLE DEFINITION OF INSANITY . . .

Constitutes doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result each time.

THE APOCALYPSE IS UPON US

I finally agree--completely and entirely--with a post at Political Animal. Of course, those who read this blog on a regular basis shouldn't find this a surprise.

UPDATE: While the men's basketball team should be excoriated for its wretched performance, the women's soccer team deserves high praise for allowing its retiring veterans to go out in style. Kudos to the ladies for a marvelous run. They will be deeply missed.

Now, if only Nomar Garciaparra can live up to the winning ways of his winsome wife. And this year, no less.

A POPULATION BRAVER THAN ITS GOVERNMENT

See this Dan Drezner post for a fascinating insight into the reaction of Filipinos to their government's decision to cut and run from Iraq.

REVENGE MAY BE A DISH BEST SERVED COLD . . .

But apparently, it gives the brain the warm fuzzies:

Revenge is sweet. Many of us have felt that way, and now scientists say they know why.

A new brain-imaging study suggests we feel satisfaction when we punish others for bad behavior. In fact, anticipation of this pleasure drives us to crack the whip, according to scientists behind the new research.

The findings, reported in today's issue of the journal Science, may partly explain a behavior known as altruistic punishment: Why do we reprimand people who have abused our trust or broken other social rules, even when we get no direct practical benefits in return?

"A person who has been cheated is [left] in a bad situation—with bad feelings," said study co-author Ernst Fehr, director of the Institute for Empirical Research in Economics at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. "The person would feel even worse if the cheater does not get her or his just punishment."

Human societies are an anomaly in the animal world. Ours are based on a detailed division of labor and cooperation between genetically unrelated individuals in large groups.

Fehr and his colleagues suggest that the feeling of satisfaction people get from meting out altruistic punishment may be the glue that keeps societies together.

"Theory and experimental evidence shows that cooperation among strangers is greatly enhanced by altruistic punishment," Fehr said. "Cooperation among strangers breaks down in experiments if altruistic punishment is ruled out. Cooperation flourishes if punishment of defectors is possible."

Writing in an accompanying Science commentary, Brian Knutson, a psychologist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, described as "elegant" the experiment the Swiss team used to show "this complex emotional dynamic of schadenfreude"—the pleasure felt over someone else's misfortune.

The scientists measured blood flow in the test subjects' brains using a technology called positron emission tomography (PET). The researchers injected water with a unique signature into the bloodstream of each volunteer, then scanned the person's brain when the water, carried via blood, reached the brain.

"Increased cerebral blood flow in a certain brain region means more oxygen consumption and more brain activity in this region," said study co-author Dominique de Quervain, a neuroscientist at the University of Zurich.

The team scanned the brain activity of male volunteers participating in a game of exchanging money back and forth. If one player made a selfish choice instead of a mutually beneficial one, another player could penalize him.

The majority of players elected to impose a penalty even when it cost them some of their own money. Doing so, the researchers found, activated a region of the brain known as the dorsal striatum. Previous research has shown that this region is involved in enjoyment or satisfaction.

Brain scans during the experiment also showed a correlation between a person's brain activity and how much punishment they choose to mete out at their own personal cost: Individuals with stronger activations were more willing to incur greater costs in order to punish someone else.

"The nice feature of our study is that the variation in the dorsal striatum predicts these differences in behavior quite well," Fehr said. "Subjects with lower activation in the dorsal striatum punish less."

THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE MATTERS . . .

And right now, the electoral college is trending George W. Bush's way:

President Bush heads into the Republican National Convention next week with a small lead over Democratic challenger John Kerry in the all-important Electoral College, according to a new CNN analysis of state polling, advertising buys and interviews with campaign strategists and neutral analysts.

Bush would receive 274 electoral votes to Kerry's 264 if the election were held today, less than 10 weeks before November 2 and three days before the opening of the GOP convention in Madison Square Garden. If Kerry were to pick up a state as small as Nevada, the electoral vote would be tied, throwing the election into the House of Representatives.

CNN's political unit compiled the electoral map after reviewing state polls and conducting extensive interviews with pollsters from both campaigns, as well as local political reporters, strategists and consultants.

The map bears a remarkable resemblance to the results of the 2000 election, in which Bush defeated Al Gore by just five electoral votes and lost the popular vote. Bush remains strong in the South, the prairie and mountain states. Kerry leads in his native Northeast and on the West Coast. The two candidates continue to battle evenly in industrial Midwest states.

It should be mentioned that the caveats found here still strongly apply.

"ANTI-SEMITISM SCARCELY EXISTS IN THE WEST"

My my. Either the Jews are at the root of all evil, or we support the Root of All Evil himself. Along with a panoply of other sins we Jews are supposedly guilty of. How atrocious:

Question: Mr. Theodorakis, on November 4, 2003 you said in this house the words that shocked Jews and non-Jews across the world. You said that the Jewish people are at the root of evil. What did you mean?

Answer: "For me the root of evil today is the policy of President Bush. It is a fascist policy. I cannot understand how is it that the Jewish people, who have been the victims of Nazism, can support such a fascist policy. No other people in the world support those policies but Israel! This situation saddens me. I am a friend of Israel. I am a friend of the Jewish people. But the policy of Sharon and the support for the policy of Bush darkens the image of Israel. I am afraid that Sharon is going to lead the Jews - just as Hitler led the Germans - to the root of evil."

Even today, 10 months later, you don't think you made a mistake when you uttered those words?

"No, but it's important for me to emphasize that I never said that the Jews are the root of evil. I said they are at the root of evil."

So you have no regrets?

"No. And I was very much hurt by the Jewish reaction to what I said. It was not a civilized reaction. I got hundreds and hundreds of poisonous e-mails from Jews all over the world. I couldn't understand this hatred toward me. I fought against racism all my life. I was for Israel. I wrote "Mauthausen." After all that, how could I become from one day to the next an anti-Semite?"

Let me explain to you the context for this reaction. Many Jews have a renewed fear of Europe. We are afraid that there is a new kind of anti-Semitism in Europe. So when you said what you said there was a feeling of thou too, Brutus. There was a feeling that even our old friend Theodorakis turned against us.

"I don't believe there is anti-Semitism in Europe. There is a reaction against the policy of Sharon and Bush. I think it's artificial to think there is a new anti-Semitism. It's an excuse. It's a way to avoid self-criticism. Rather than ask themselves what is wrong with the policy of Israel, Jews say the Europeans are against us because of the new anti-Semitism. Because they don't love us. And even Theodorakis says we are at the root of evil. This is a sick reaction."

Why? In what way is it a sick reaction?

"Because this kind of reaction is relevant to the psychopathology of the Jewish people. They want to feel victims. They want to have this comforting feeling. We are in the right, we are again victims. Let's create another ghetto. It's a masochistic reaction." The Jews are masochists?

"There is psychological masochism in the Jewish tradition."

Is there sadism as well?

"I'm certain that when Diaspora Jews talk among themselves, they feel satisfied. They feel that now, when we are so close to the greatest power in the world, no one can do anything to us. We can do whatever we like. This is why the claim of new anti-Semitism is not only a sick reaction, it's a sly reaction as well."

In what way is it sly?

"Because it really allows the Jews to do whatever they want. Not only psychologically, but also politically, it gives the Jews an excuse. The sense of victimhood. It gives them a license to hide the truth. There is no Jewish problem in Europe today. There is no anti-Semitism."

How atrocious indeed. Read the rest--if you have the stomach for it.

IF WE REALLY NEED AN INTELLIGENCE CZAR . . .

Then this is the way to do it. No new positions, no new layers of bureaucracy--just give the existing agents more leeway and authority in carrying out their responsibilities. Best of all, Congress can be bypassed, all sorts of pork can be avoided, and excessive politicization can be sidestepped through a simple executive order.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.

--Theodore Roosevelt

ALL HAIL NEAL STEPHENSON!

The Confusion is an utterly marvelous book, and I am enjoying it tremendously. Perhaps that is because I am fully comfortable with Stephenson's quirky writing style, perhaps it is because it takes place in a period of history that is fascinating to me and Stephenson himself has got the hang of the Baroque era. But for whatever reason, I just love this book--it is on track to being better (at least in my mind) than even Cryptonomicon.

I'm over 200 pages into The Confusion and could give a list of reasons why I like it so, but I will restrict myself for the moment to praising the clever and brilliant dialogue. Consider the following exchange between Eliza de la Zeur and d'Avaux regarding d'Avaux's (just) suspicion that Eliza was a spy for William of Orange (warning: potential spoilers ahead):

DON'T JUST IGNORE THE TROLLS . . . ELIMINATE THEM

I certainly cannot tell any other weblogger how to run their site, and to be so presumptuous is the last thing on my mind. I definitely won't presume to tell any bloggers as brilliant as the Ganzes how they should administer matters at their site--especially because it is one of my favorite weblogs (which means that the Ganzes are doing a fine enough job without my meddling), and because Brooke is very, very hot and I don't want presumptuous advice to interfere with my flirting.

So I won't tell the Ganzes how to run their site. But I will say that when confronted with a (willfully?) dense troll who seeks to inject non sequiturs in the midst of a serious discussion, my approach is to delete the trollish comments and ban the troll. There is plenty of room for honest and legitimate debate on topics of the day. But the nonsensical "Kevin Lyda" repeatedly seeks to make a fool of himself and in doing so, distracts the debate to an unbelievable degree. First he confuses a legitimate critique of France's approach (or lack thereof) to fighting anti-Semitism with a "virulent anti-france [sic] attitude", and offers up as a defense of the French the argument that because Notre Dame is "rather dark and there aren't cctv cameras up all over the place," that somehow excuses or explains the presence of anti-Semitic graffiti found there. When these imbecilic comments are properly eviscerated, our trollish moron seeks to justify his arrogance and elitism (which is compounded by ignorance of a massive scale) by calling Brooke's post decrying anti-Semitism in France "despicable." How the comments are "despicable" is not explained, but then again, trolls usually have ambitions that exceed their talents, so an explanation is usually beyond their ken. The fact that these latest trollish comments are themselves cut to shreds will no doubt fail to deter the terminally stupid Lyda from offering up another intellectual burp that years later some of us will remember, laugh nervously about, and then swiftly change the subject.

Brooke and Scott have a policy they have explained before: They will not delete comments, no matter how offensive, so that stupid, insulting and truly despicable commentary will have to suffer the light of scrutiny and examination. In doing so, they clearly demonstrate that they are more saintly than I (and in Brooke's case, it cannot be overemphasized just how hot she is in addition to being smart and saintly), but I'm afraid I just don't have their gift for tolerance and patience. Quite obviously, there is room for disagreement on this blog with any of my arguments, and I welcome robust debate (I am not Brad DeLong, after all). But as trolls detract from robust debate, the Kevin Lydas of the world are not welcome at Pejmanesque. There is a difference between entertaining and responding to a serious, honest, well-thought out difference of opinion, and mindless clutter, after all. I don't write any of this to convey any idea that my approach is better than that of others--to each blogger, his/her/their own. But speaking from a purely personal standpoint, I do wonder what is the point of entertaining the comments of those who are simply determined to throw up a rhetorical smokescreen to obscure the nature of the debate.

Smart practitioners of this tactic are annoying enough. Dimwitted practitioners are truly insufferable.

CLOSE READING SKILLS MATTER

Stuart Buck has them. Unfortunately, far too many other people don't--which makes for inane commentary from the latter group all too often.

REVISITING THE REVISITED TOPIC OF BOOK ADDICTIONS

Will Baude chastises me for not recognizing that the categories of addict and pusher can overlap. He also reminds me--as some of my commenters did--that there are people who own multiple copies of a book that they lend a lot. I stand corrected and chastised on these points.

However, I would still have something close to a nervous fit if asked to lend my books to anyone. Perhaps it is selfishness on my part, but if books are not like drugs, it may be that they are like children. And how many parents are willing to give away their children--if even for a moment--to another parent.

That's the way this proud bibliopapa feels, anyway. Of course, someone will now break in and remind me that parents give away their kids to school, to summer camp, to college, to future spouses . . . etc.

Which means that I will have to come up with yet another analogy to salvage my selfish ways and show my biblioholic nature. And it will be time I have to take away from reading a book . . .

AND YOU THOUGHT THE DEMOCRATS WERE BAD ON TRADE . . .

Tyler Cowen has some depressing results regarding the level of enthusiasm that certain members of the European parliament have for free trade.

REPUBLICAN CONVENTION BLOGGERS

You can find the list here.

SPEAKING OF UNSAVORY POLITICAL CONNECTIONS . . .

This looks quite bad and damning. I trust that there is a reasonable explanation for these nefarious ties.

UNDERCOUNTING

This cannot be overemphasized:

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recently snuck out a telling confession beneath everyone's radar: Its flagship payroll survey is likely undercounting hundreds of thousands of jobs. Most economic observers were too busy fretting over the lackluster gain of 32,000 payroll jobs in July to take notice of the other positive indicators, let alone the quiet little study that acknowledges payrolls have a problem.

The study describes how job-changing can inflate the payroll survey's numbers artificially. When worker turnover is brisk, as in the late 1990s, millions of workers are counted twice when they switch jobs. About 3.9 million people changed employers during a typical month during the 1990s, but only 3.1 million do so now.

Why is job-changing dropping? Maybe stability is preferred since 9/11. Perhaps lower turnover is a reflection of the aging workforce and low participation rate of current teens. Or maybe more workers are becoming self-employed. The reason doesn't matter, but the effect on payrolls does.

For months, the debate has been raging over how to measure jobs. Being that we're in a presidential election year, the issue has been magnified. But why should the average person care? Because only an accurate reading can gauge the country's true economic health and affect everything from interest rates to consumer confidence.

The payroll survey has long been seen as the best measure because its larger sample dwarfs those of other methods. It surveys 160,000 businesses and government agencies. But now, BLS is admitting that the sample is muddy.

There's an alternative. The U.S. Labor Department's household survey, which is used to calculate the unemployment rate, is not subject to the job-changing effect. It surveys 60,000 households and counts self-employed consultants, real estate agents, farmers and other non-traditional workers who aren't on old-style payrolls.

Yet because the household survey shows 2 million more working Americans under President Bush than ever before, it has been attacked for partisan reasons. Those who favoring the payroll survey are quick to quote Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's congressional testimony in February favoring conventional numbers.

In March, we at the Heritage Foundation released a critique of the payroll survey, putting into numbers what many had long suspected: It doesn't accurately reflect today's economy.

TEA LEAF READING

Robert Tagorda has taken a look at the latest polls on the presidential horserace and has a very interesting analysis of the dynamics of the race. And in addition to the traditional poll, we have the Iowa Electronics Market giving President Bush a 52.9-46.6 lead over John Kerry, while Tradesports has the race at 53.7-46.1.

The key, of course, is for the Bush campaign to constantly run as if it were a million votes behind. While the President is in excellent shape going into the convention, and may get something of a bounce that might increase his lead, I still anticipate that the vote will be very tight at the end of this contest. Kerry has room to gain if the 15% of Democrats who now say that they will be supporting Bush end up coming home and supporting their party's candidate. On the other hand, the fact that Kerry appears to have to shore up his base this late in the game cannot be good.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

When all is summed up, a man never speaks of himself without loss; his accusations of himself are always believed; his praises never.

--Michel de Montaigne

A PARODY OR DEADLY SERIOUS?

Stuart Buck reports. You decide. Personally, I'm voting "parody"--after all, no one can mean to be so absurd.

Can they?

TRULY, A PITIFUL SITUATION

I feel terrible for Phil Carter. How he is made to suffer so!

HYPOCRISY REDUX

Well, well . . . Look what we have here.

UPDATE: John Cole has more evidence of hypocrisy here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Of course, as Tim Blair points out, hypocrisy comes in different forms.

KILLING A SACRED COW

This needed to be said:

The presidential campaign has confirmed that, under the guise of "campaign finance reform," Congress and the Supreme Court have repealed large parts of the First Amendment. They have simply discarded what were once considered constitutional rights of free speech and political association. It is not that these rights have vanished. But they are no longer constitutional guarantees. They're governed by limits and qualifications imposed by Congress, the courts, state legislatures, regulatory agencies -- and lawyers' interpretations of all of the above.

We have entered an era of constitutional censorship. Hardly anyone wants to admit this -- the legalized demolition of the First Amendment would seem shocking -- and so hardly anyone does. The evidence, though, abounds. The latest is the controversy over the anti-Kerry ads by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and parallel anti-Bush ads by Democratic "527" groups such as MoveOn.org. Let's assume (for argument's sake) that everything in these ads is untrue. Still, the United States' political tradition is that voters judge the truthfulness and relevance of campaign arguments. We haven't wanted our political speech filtered.

Now there's another possibility. The government may screen what voters see and hear. The Kerry campaign has asked the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to ban the Swift Boat ads; the Bush campaign similarly wants the FEC to suppress the pro-Democrat 527 groups. We've arrived at this juncture because it's logically impossible both to honor the First Amendment and to regulate campaign finance effectively. We can do one or the other -- but not both. Unfortunately, Congress and the Supreme Court won't admit the choice. The result is the worst of both worlds. We gut the First Amendment and don't effectively regulate campaign finance.

The First Amendment says that Congress "shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or . . . the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government" (that's "political association''). The campaign finance laws, the latest being McCain-Feingold, blatantly violate these prohibitions. The Supreme Court has tried to evade the contradiction. It has allowed limits on federal campaign contributions. It justifies the limits as preventing "corruption" or "the appearance of corruption." But the court has rejected limits on overall campaign spending by candidates, parties or groups. Limiting spending, the court says, would violate free speech. Spending enables candidates to reach voters through TV and other media.

Unfortunately, this artful distinction doesn't work. If groups can spend any amount on campaigns, their spending can easily become unlimited contributions. All they need to do is ask the campaign how their money ought to be spent -- on what TV ads, for example. To prevent this, the FEC imposes restrictions on "coordination" between candidates, parties and groups making "independent expenditures." John Kerry alleges that the Swift Boat Veterans and the Bush campaign "coordinated" illegally. Republicans see similar ties between Kerry and Democratic 527s.

But "coordination" is really "speech" and "political association." It's talking and planning among people who want to elect or defeat the same candidates. There's an indestructible inconsistency between the language of the First Amendment and campaign finance laws. Why shouldn't veterans coordinate with Bush? Why shouldn't Democratic 527s coordinate with Kerry? The Supreme Court upholds the campaign finance laws simply by ignoring the First Amendment's language.

One of President Bush's worst moments was his decision to sign McCain-Feingold into law, and I say that as a Republican who believes that the soft money restrictions will hurt Democrats the most. In the end, the law makes no sense, and has led to more disastrously unintended consequences than any bill signing in recent memory. It's nice to see that some people are beginning to grasp this fact, but I fear that it may be too late to roll back "reform."

THIS IS GETTING RIDICULOUS

Someone will have to explain to me John Kerry's position on the Iraq war, but that may be the wrong request to make. A better request is to ask what John Kerry thinks about the Iraq war at a certain precise moment:

A top foreign policy advisor to Sen. John F. Kerry on Tuesday retracted a comment that had been cited by President Bush and his supporters to claim that Kerry backed the decision to invade Iraq.

In a statement to The Times, James P. Rubin said he was wrong when he recently said that as president, Kerry "in all probability" would also have invaded Iraq if weapons inspections broke down and the United Nations explicitly authorized war.

"I never should have said the phrase 'in all probability' Kerry would have launched a military attack because that's not Kerry's position and he's never said it," Rubin said in the statement.

His retraction was another example of the struggle by Kerry and his campaign to clarify his position on Iraq and how it differs from Bush's. For months, Bush and his supporters have accused the Democratic presidential nominee of sending conflicting signals on Iraq and trying to blur his position to appeal to both prowar and antiwar voters.

Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for Bush's reelection campaign, said the statement by Rubin, an assistant secretary of state for public affairs during the Clinton administration, was "more in a long line of confusing statements by John Kerry and his advisors" about the war in Iraq.

"There's a reason why a guy as smart as Jamie Rubin is confused about John Kerry's position: it's because John Kerry has changed it on an almost weekly basis," Schmidt said.

Of course, Kerry could come out and state unequivocally where he stands, and answer any and all questions about "nuances" until reporters are blue in the face. But I don't suspect that will happen. John Kerry has too much invested in being all things to all people. Even if he didn't, this is yet another example of the Massachusetts Senator not knowing his own mind.

UPDATE: More on this issue from Robert Tagorda.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

The shortest and surest way to live with honour in the world, is to be in reality what we would appear to be; and if we observe, we shall find, that all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice of them.

--Socrates

STANDARDS DIFFER, AFTER ALL

Guest-blogging for the vacationing Kevin Drum, Paul Glastris notes this story about Ralph Nader's efforts to get on state ballots--and Democratic efforts to obstruct Nader. Glastris notes the following passage from the story:

In Oregon last month, Nader attempted to round up 1,000 supporters in a day to sign a petition -- one way to get on the ballot in that state. But Democratic activists packed the hall and then declined to sign on, leaving his petition a few hundred names short. His campaign must collect 15,300 signatures by today, and it has accused local Democrats and union officials of threatening petition gatherers with jail time if they turn in names that prove fraudulent.

And Glastris approves:

Could it be that at least some Democrats are getting back at least some of their political toughness mojo? I’d be interested to know of any other examples.

You see, when a Democrat pulls this kind of thing off, it's called "toughness mojo." When Republicans do it, it's called "anti-democratic."

The disparity in the descriptions shouldn't surprise me. But somehow, it does.

PUTTING THE BLAME WHERE IT BELONGS

Tired of the Swift Boat controversy? Sick of Moveon.org? Looking for someone to blame for all of the 527 organizations cropping up all over the place and issuing more charges and countercharges than people are able to keep track of?

Then look no further.

D.C. CONNECTIONS

Much of the critique against the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is that they are funded or supported by the Republican Party/the Bush-Cheney campaign/the White House/insert your favorite evil Republican-leaning organization here. While it should never be forgotten that coordination with a 527 organization can be illegal, the nature of connections in the Beltway should also be understood in order to be able to separate true collusion from false flags.

To that end, I recommend this post as a way to understand how Washington, D.C. really works.

SITTING ON THE BAD NEWS

The Democrat-dominated California state legislature commissioned a study on outsourcing, hoping to show it as the modern day equivalent to the auto da fé that Democrats think it is. Instead, the study shows that outsourcing creates jobs, and that outsourcing would increase living standards at home.

So what does the California legislature do in response to this? They stifle an unfriendly story, of course. Because God forbid that scary stories about outsourcing should be debunked with inconvenient things like facts.

INCONSISTENCIES ABOUND . . .

As do inanities. Jeff Goldstein has the report.

I'll just add this: Now that the Kerry campaign is on the record as calling the President of the United States "a traitor," and sticking by that claim, I will look askance--to say the least--on any efforts by the Democrats to tut-tut the nastiness of the current campaign. Something about motes and beams springs to mind, after all . . .

OF "CHICKENHAWKS" AND MORONS

Tom Harkin thought that he was being tough by attacking Dick Cheney as a "chickenhawk." But it may be that his own constituents wouldn't mind if Harkin would just shut up.

NEW DIGS

At long last, Jessica Harbour has doffed the old-school digs of her barebones blog, and has a snazzy new site up. Be sure to go over and say hello.

And behold the woman with whom I am besotted. Sigh.

NOT AGAIN

I've seen this before. It doesn't end well. For now this story is being classified under "Foreign Affairs," but that classification may change shortly.

Let's hope it does not have to.

JUSTICE IN THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC

How many times have you read a story like this one?

Amnesty International today (24 August 2004) expressed its outrage at the reported execution of a girl believed to be 16 years old for “acts incompatible with chastity”. Ateqeh Rajabi was reportedly publicly hanged on a street in the city centre of Neka, northern Iran, on 15 August 2004.

Amnesty International is alarmed that this execution was carried out despite reports that Ateqeh Rajabi was not believed to be mentally competent, and that she reportedly did not have access to a lawyer at any stage.

During the trial the judge allegedly severely criticised her dress, harshly reprimanding her. It is alleged that Ateqeh Rajabi was mentally ill both at the time of her crime (having sexual relations outside of wedlock) and during her trial proceedings.

It is also reported that although her national ID card stated that she was 16 years old, the Judiciary announced at her execution that her age was 22. Ateqeh Rajabi’s co-defendant, an unnamed man, was reportedly sentenced to 100 lashes. He was released after this sentence was carried out.

"OH, THAT LIBERAL MEDIA!"

I'm really not holding my breath waiting for the denizens of the Fourth Estate to throw George W. Bush and Dick Cheney these kinds of encomiums. For whatever reason, such adulation is never reserved for Republican presidential candidates.

But the media as a whole is unbiased! Honest! Tell yourself that enough and maybe you will believe it.

REACH OUT AND TOUCH SOMEONE

I have no idea if this conversation actually occurred, but it would be most interesting if it did.