Posted by BTD

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Posted by Greg

What Bush should have said:

Look, I disagree with what the Swift Boat Veterans are saying. I think John Kerry served honorably. I am not going to question Senator Kerry's service to this country. But the fact is, these people—these swift boat veterans—disagree with me. They have opinions of their own, and their right to express those opinions is guaranteed by the First Amendment of the Constitution. This type of political expression, even if I don't agree with it, goes to the very heart of what Free Speech is all about. This is America. We don't ban Michael Moore's movies and we don't tell veterans' groups what they can and can't say.

What Bush said:

I understand how Senator Kerry feels - I've been attacked by 527's too. ... Five twenty-sevens - I think these ought to be outlawed. I think they should have been outlawed a year ago. We have billionaires writing checks, large checks, to influence the outcome of the election.

What Bush should have said:

I'm trying to get reelected. And I do that by talking to the American people, not by filing lawsuits. Dick and I are leaders. We try to lead by inspiration. John and John are lawyers. Let them resort to litigation.

What Bush said:

President Bush announced Thursday he will file a lawsuit in federal court asking the federal agency that regulates campaign advertising to crack down on negative ads by groups not affiliated with political parties.

What Bush should have said:

We live at a time when we cannot take chances with American security. Although we believed at the time that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, we should all be grateful that Saddam did not, and assured that now he never will. My opponent has a long history of failing to support the global fight against threats to our nation. He did not support Ronald Reagan's fight against Communism, and he has been hesitant and inconsistent in his support against the threat of terrorism.

What Bush said:

After months of questioning my motives and even my credibility, my opponent now agrees with me that even though we have not found the stockpile of weapons we all thought were there, knowing everything we know now, he would have voted to go into Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein.

(At least Bush did manage to get in this zippy one-liner "There is still a little over 60 days for him to change his mind again.")

Yeah, I know my versions have a lot of syllables and such. But I can dream, can't I?

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Posted by Nick

I'm working through my own thoughts on the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth issue, but I am sure at least one thing that needs to be said: even with Kerry's recent "stumbles", the re-election of George W. Bush is a far from certain thing. The other day Glenn Reynolds linked to this post by blogger Varifrank. Let the asininity commence (all emphasis belongs to the original):

There is no President in modern memory who is so universally hated than George W. Bush, and yet, you've never polled outside of the margin of error. Now, the polls are going against you, and by my measurement, its going to get worse, not better from here. Bush is a marathon runner and you are a country club golf cart riding, two caddy golfer. As long as you continue to bring your B game to an A game park, you and your party are going to look fools. At some point, you will begin to see your allies in your party and the press begin to make you the pinata at this party. They will not take the heat for your loss, they will tie a can around your neck and toss you out into the exercise yard for the guards to shoot at. Everyone loves a winner, but no one can stand a loser.

You sir, are a loser. You will go down in history as the man who made Dukakis look good.

**snip some comments about Kerry's silver spoon and Howard Dean**

Prediction: Mcgovern, Mondale, Dukakis and now Kerry will each get an entry in the hall of fame of losers. 40 states will go for Bush. It will not be a close election.

First off: not that we have any sort of metrics to measure this, but I'm far from convinced that President Bush is the most hated President in modern history. Not only is there a man named Nixon to contend with, but I doubt that President Bush is hated any more than Reagan or Clinton were at various points during their presidencies. This kind of rancor is pretty common in our political history.

Secondly: for those who foresee landslide victories for President Bush, have you checked the standings lately? (This AP piece says that the Republicans are the Yankees, but Varifrank sounds like a typical Red Sox fan to me.) Kerry may have not created any breathing room in the national opinion polls, but how are so many dedicated republicans forgetting that in our republic the only count that matters is the electoral count. Were the election to have been held this week the Kerry campaign would have charted a sweaty-but-secure 291-247 electoral victory.

It's hard to believe that this election is going to be anything other than a nail biting, all night blogging, Tim Russert dry-erasing, down to the wire result. Whether you believe this is the fault of the President or not, I don't believe anyone doubts that the historical energy of the last four years has resulted in political poles that are both highly charged and clearly divided. Charlton Heston couldn't have done a better job parting this country.

We know that both sides are far more motivated than in 2000. How this yields an electoral embarassment for the Democrats is beyond my comprehension. Despite the incompetence of both campaigns this election is going to be extremely tight. I only hope for the sake of our political process that we aren't awaiting statements from counsel in three months time.

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Posted by Hei Lun

Ramesh Ponnuru has an excellent short summary of Bush's ever-shifting positions on campaign finance reform. The trend seems to be that by the middle of his next term, if he is reelected, he'll be advocating complete public financing of elections with mandated TV time for all candidates and a ban on all interest group advertising. *Sigh*

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Posted by Nick

Sports fans pay attention; this is your weekend to act.

First and most importantly the annual Jimmy Fund Radiothon occurs today. It's being sponsored by and broadcasted on WEEI with a cable simulcast on NESN, the cable network owned by the Boston Red Sox. The Radiothon raised 1.1 million dollars in just 18 hours last year and they're looking to top that goal this year. I'm watching the telecast as I type, the guy who played Cliff Claven just got off the air, and local radio personality and former NHL athlete Lyndon Byers just challenged every radio personality in town to donate two days pay to the Jimmy Fund.

Amongst the most notable contributions from last year's event was a sizeable donation from George in Tampa, which was almost immediately followed by a matching contribution from John on Yawkey Way. It's been really hard to hate that man ever since.

The Boston Red Sox have a long history of charitable work with the Jimmy Fund, dating back to the days of Ted Williams. You can read more about the history of the team and the charity here.

And Norbizness, if you hate WEEI so much perhaps you could prove your superiority by making a nice donation.

The second item on the sports fans' agenda this weekend is the Sports Guy's NBA TV Weekend. How does this sound: Sixers vs. Lakers (Game 5, 1980 Finals), Knicks vs. Bulls (Game 5, 1993 Eastern Finals), Suns vs. Warriors (Game 3, 1994 First Round), Lakers vs. Warriors (Game 4, 1987 Western Semis), Jazz vs. Lakers (Game 5, 1988 Western Semis), Nets vs. Knicks (Christmas Day, 1984), and more followed by 27 straight hours of Larry Bird on Sunday. These games were all hand selected by Bill Simmons, who is, word for word, the best sports columnist on the Internet as well as the biggest NBA fan on Earth. His stuff is classic, make yourself acquainted with his archives.

Comcast in eastern New England charged me only $5.00 for a month's subscription, so I suggest everyone call their cable company and fire up the TiVo.

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Posted by Greg

Via Law.com comes this opinion, Bright v. Westmoreland County, from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals blasting a federal judge for letting lawyers write an opinion for him:

Judicial opinions are the core work-product of judges. They are much more than findings of fact and conclusions of law; they constitute the logical and analytical explanations of why a judge arrived at a specific decision. They are tangible proof to the litigants that the judge actively wrestled with their claims and arguments and made a scholarly decision based on his or her own reason and logic. When a court adopts a party's proposed opinion as its own, the court vitiates the vital purposes served by judicial opinions. We, therefore, cannot condone the practice used by the District Court in this case.

. . .

Courts and judges exist to provide neutral fora in which persons and entities can have their professional disputes and personal crises resolved. Any degree of impropriety, or even the appearance thereof, undermines our legitimacy and effectiveness.

I suppose I can see the Third Circuit's point, and yet, for practical purposes, I wonder if it matters. If one side of a dispute has clearly the better legal argument (and I'm not necessarily saying that was the case here), then the Court might be justified in paraphrasing sections of the prevailing party's brief in its opinion. Of course, that's different from what the Third Circuit is complaining about here—perhaps as different as paraphrasing is from plagiarism.

Another issue is whether a party suffers any prejudicial harm—or, put another way, whether a court's error is anything other than harmless—when it adopts a proposed opinion written by one of the parties. If the legal analysis is still sound, should this be appealable error? The Third Circuit doesn't address this point directly, but seems to think so.

At any rate, it's an interesting case for anyone who's interested in jurisprudence. As for everyone else, I return you to your regularly-scheduled Swift Boat dissections, already in progress.

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Posted by Steve

John O'Neill answers some tough questions about the Swifties, the quality of the evidence, and his own motivations.

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Posted by Greg

Reason puts the Swift Boat controversy into perspective, and in return, we get our lives back. Here's an excerpt:

I know you clicked through to this story expecting an analysis of the Swift Boat controversy. I'm sorry we had to deceive you.

This is an intervention. My name is Dr. Wilson. Your friends, family, and coworkers asked me to be here; they're concerned about how your obsession with the election is affecting your life.

READER: What the hell? Hey—dammit—how come the "back" button isn't working?

YOUR BOSS: We had it disabled.

READER: That's enough of this. I'm turning on MSNBC.

DR. WILSON: We cut off the cable, too. So you don't have anywhere to go. Please stay and listen to us.

YOUR FATHER: We love you. We really care about you. This is for your own sake.

READER: Look, I don't think you people understand. Bush hasn't specifically condemned the content of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads yet. He's the worst president ever. I have some important blogging to do.

YOUR SON, LITTLE NED: Daddy, you were gonna come see me play Mr. Rabbit in th' school play but you didin' come 'cause you were home blogging. I ask you why and you said you had to stop John Kerry before he turned Washington into Ho Chi Minh City. Daddy, I'm scared!

READER: OK, what was that all about? I don't even have a kid, and I'm for Kerry.

In the immortal words of Larry The Cable Guy, "I don't care who you are, that's funny!"

The whole thing is available at Reason.com. (Link via Xrlq.)

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Posted by Venkat

This revocation of a visa for a "prominent Muslim scholar" who accepted a post at Notre Dame could be a good example of Patriot Act abuse.

The relevant Patriot Act provision is here (scroll to section 411). The Patriot Act added the following clause which provides an additional ground of inadmissibility with respect to an alien who:

has used the alien's position of prominence within any country to endorse or espouse terrorist activity, or to persuade others to support terrorist activity or a terrorist organization, in a way that the Secretary of State has determined undermines United States efforts to reduce or eliminate terrorist activities.

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Posted by Hei Lun

Did you know that some rich guy named Bob Perry gave money to both the Bush campaign and to the Swift Boats Veterans for Truth?

Did you know that Teresa Heinz Kerry has given millions of dollars to the Tides Foundation, which gives money to MoveOn.org and other left leaning 527s?

Did you know that the Bush campaign and SBVfT share a lawyer? (Though not anymore.)

Did you know that the Kerry campaign and America Coming Together, a liberal interest group, share a lawyer?

Now can we stop having juvenile complaints about which side has more suspicious ties than the other?

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Posted by Hei Lun

Josh Marshall apparently does not see the irony in complaining that "President Bush is addicted to having others do his dirty work for him" in a post where he talks about John Kerry's sending Max Cleland and Jim Rassman to the Bush ranch to do Kerry's dirty work for him.

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Posted by Venkat

1. The Cambodia story hits the Washington Post . . . only it's on page A17 . . . . opinion column . . . . [via Prof. Bainbridge.]

2. I wonder if Mr. O'Neill will be looking at the bum end of any charges of ethical violations? As trial lawyer extraordinaire, and one of the "principle [sic] spokesmen for Swift Boat Veterans for Truth," (see here) I would think he would adequately vet his own background and prior statements?

3. Kriston muses that the Cleland-messenger event could all have been part of a calculated ploy on the part of the Kerry camp--"Do they see a critical mass building for a backlash?" Que interesante.

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Posted by Steve

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Posted by Hei Lun

Previously, John Kerry ventured into Cambodia before he ventured near it. Now, in another amazing feat of conquering the space-time continuum, Kerry was in Vietnam with his crewmates seven months before the U.S. government actually sent him there:

This was on Fox "Grapevine" tonight:

John Kerry speaking at a Martin Luther King day celebration in Virginia last year said, quote, "I remember well April 1968, I was serving in Vietnam. A place of violence. When the news reports brought home to me and my crew mates the violence back home and the tragic news that one of the bullets flying that terrible spring took the life of Dr. King." That date, of Dr. King's death, was April 4, 1968. According to kerry's website, it was not until November 17, 1968, that he reported for duty in Vietnam.

This initially sounded too incredible to be true. So I performed a Google search, and found a copy of the speech, dated January 20, 2003. Here are the relevant paragraphs:

I will never forget my own eye opening experience -- 1963 - driving down the East Coast - through Virginia, and South Carolina, all the way to Georgia - and seeing those signs which introduced me to a different world: “Whites Only.” And Dr. King challenged us to be citizens committed to doing something about that divide in our own great country.

Seven letters - Citizen—a word Dr. King loved because invested in it were our rights and responsibilities -- a calling to be involved. I will never forget - in particular - what Martin Luther King spoke of when he confessed to being what he called a “maladjusted” citizen.

He said that he simply could not adjust to a world sharply divided between the hardworking many and the privileged few. He could not accept an America where discrimination and bigotry still held citizens down. He had not been able to get comfortable with a society that had become complacent in the face of human hardship and suffering.

I remember well April, 1968 - I was serving in Vietnam—a place of violence -- when the news reports brought home to me and my crewmates the violence back home - and the tragic news that one of the bullets flying that terrible spring took the life of that unabashedly maladjusted citizen.

(Emphasis added.)

I don't know how his supporters are going to explain this one. It's not as if this were some random time period that he might have misremembered; this was the day MLK got shot. Most people tend to remember where they were when major events happen. I wasn't alive back then, but I can tell you exactly where I was when I heard about 9/11, or during the O.J. bronco chase, or when verdict came down, or when the military first struck Baghdad last year.

I'd rather not use as strong a word as 'lie', but I don't know what else to call it.

And given that there are now two incidences where Kerry wasn't telling the truth about his military record (Cambodia being the other—we can all agree that he wasn't in Cambodia on Christmas 1968 when he said he was, right?), I don't know how credible the rest of his story is.

UPDATE: Instapundit got there way before I did. Several of his readers emails to say that Kerry deserves the benefit of the doubt, since he was serving on the USS Gridley at the time so he could be "in Vietnam" in a sense. In this context, I wouldn't say he was lying, but still it's kind of lame.

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Posted by Greg

I may be a little slow coming to this story, but it seems that several bloggers are writing about this Sunday Mirror item claiming that President Bush is pressuring Tony Blair to travel to the U.S. to accept the Congressional Medal of Honor. The problem, however, is that each of these reports seems to be based on an error by the British tabloid.

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Posted by Hei Lun

There's a story in the Washington Post today reporting a study that shows that "women who drink non-diet soda or fruit punch every day gain weight quickly and face a sharply elevated risk of diabetes." The study's conductors and health experts argue that based on this study and others done over the years that there's a conclusive link between soft drinks and obesity, and that parents should keep soft drinks away from children. Todd Zywicki from the Volokh Conspiracy disagrees and produces a chart that shows that soft drink consumption has been constant over the last fifteen years.

It could be the case that both the study and Zywicki are correct. Another study several months ago shows a correlation between the increase in obesity and the increased use of high-fructose corn syrup instead of other forms of sugar in soft drinks. Studies show that high-fructose corn syrup is processed differently by the human body than glucose. Fructose is easier to convert into body fat, and unlike glucose, it does not make one feel full. So while soft drink consumption might be constant, increased obesity can still be attributed to soft drinks because of the recent use of high-fructose corn syrup.

Of course, high-fructose corn syrup is used in soft drinks instead of other forms of sugars in the United States because of tariffs on sugar coming from Mexico. It's cheaper for domestic soft drink makers to use high-fructose corn syrup produced in the country than Mexican sugar. So the solution to obesity is not to drink less soda, but to make it more healthful by using imported sugar. President Bush, knock down those trade barriers!

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Posted by Vance

The issue of medical liability is complex, and there are times that I think that plaintiff's attorneys get the short end of the stick. For example, the concept of capping punitive damages strikes me as a wrong minded proposal that is intended more to punish the trial lawyers rather than solve any problem.

Every now and then, though, a class action suit comes along and raises my ire against the trial lawyers all over again.

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Posted by Greg

My wife called my cell phone yesterday to tell me that my seven-year-old daughter was crying when she got off the school bus. The bus driver told my wife that he thought it was because the other students had been talking to her about the shooting that morning. My daughter confirmed this. She said was scared because of a murder in our neighborhood, and because kids on the bus had told her that a girl was shot and that the killer was hiding and hadn't been caught.

That's how I found out that someone had recently been shot and killed inside a house in our subdivision.

Police said Daryl Dewayne Cohen, 28, came to Veronica Kelley’s home in the 7900 block of Stonehaven Drive around midnight and kicked in the back door.

“She was an acquaintance of his and they were having a dispute about a vehicle he was driving,” said Lt. David Nabors, commander of criminal investigations with the Rowlett Police Department. “The car was in her name and he was driving it and not making payments.”

Nabors said Cohen chased Kelley to an upstairs bathroom and shot her once in the head, then drove away in the car in dispute.

This didn't happen on our street, or even on our block, but it was close enough to be along the regular route where I usually walk my dog—usually late at night. In addition to the location of the killing, the incident is also disturbing because the suspect was already under warrant and being sought by the police for kidnapping the victim two days earlier at gunpoint.

Rowlett is the sort of generic and comfortable suburb that can be found along the outer rim of any major metropolitan area. It's full of soccer moms in SUVs and has its own new-ish Walmart, a new Home Depot and a few supermarkets, but not a lot of retail or restaurants. Rowlett is dominated by recent construction, subdivisions for middle class professionals who commute to Dallas, Richardson and Plano. The town has grown in the past thirty years from a mostly rural village of a few thousand to suburban community of 45,000. It's the sort of place people move to because it's quiet, affordable, safe and friendly.

But our town also has an unfortunate history of newsworthy homicides.

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Posted by Steve

I regularly read Harper's Magazine, and while I always attempt to slog through Lewis Lapham's monthly column, I rarely make it to the end. I find his writing grouchy and pretentious. He specializes in dressing up the latest partisan snipe as high-minded discourse, rife with literary and historical references demonstrating his erudition. There is an occasional gem, such as his sneering take-down of anti-smoking zealots, but for the past few years Lapham has been preoccupied with President Bush, and his column has been little more than an eloquent regurgitation of the bitter talking points of the day.

So this is immensely satisfying. Here is what Lapham says about the Republican National Convention in the new Harper's:

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?

Astute readers will note the Republican National Convention has not yet occurred.

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Posted by Nick

Janet Jackson and Alice Cooper are clearly not on speaking terms. As reported the other day by Matt Drudge, Janet Jackson said in an interview with Genre magazine that President Bush exploited her exposed nipple to distract the nation in the run up to the Iraq war. That's right, Janet Jackson's right nipple (Drudge image) is a weapon of mass distraction. Here is the interview as I've been able to piece it together from various wire stories:

"I truly feel in my heart that the president wanted to take the focus off of him at that time, and I was the perfect vehicle to do so at that moment," 'Genre' magazine quoted Janet as saying.

"I mean, it's a bunch of bull---. When you see Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, it just confirms it," she added.

When asked if she would vote in the coming Presidential Elections in November, Janet said, "Do I vote? Yes, I do. Will I be voting for Bush? Hell, no!"

Janet went on to say that she regrets apologising (It’s a brit. mag I believe.) for her famous breast exposure during the Super Bowl performance as it only made her look guilty.

"I shouldn't have apologised. You don't apologise for an accident. It just makes you look guilty," added the singing sensation.

(Profanity edits are my own.)

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Posted by Steve

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you drank liquid nitrogen?

OK, neither have I. But just in case you're wondering now... here you go.

(Link via Cobb).

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Posted by Steve

Here is President Bush on Kerry's service in Vietnam:

The president called Kerry's war service noble, saying his opponent is justifiably proud of his record in Vietnam.

"He views it as honorable service, and so do I," said Bush.

Here is a Kerry campaign press release dated April 27, 2004.

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Posted by Steve

When I first heard Phish was breaking up, I immediately ordered tickets to the band's swan song festival in Coventry, Vermont. I had been down a long road with the band, traveling thousands of miles and seeing dozens of shows. I had a special affection for the large festivals, beginning in 1996 with the Clifford Ball and culminating in what the band describes as the pinnacle of its career, the Y2K gathering at Big Cypress. When Phish took a two-year hiatus, I caught the last shows before the break (in San Francisco) and the first shows back at the Hampton, Virginia arena affectionately known by fans as "The Mothership."

It was a given that I would go to Coventry. It was automatic.

I didn't go.

I had already planned a get-together in Atlanta with old friends that weekend, and they let it be known our reunion must not be sacrified for a Phish concert. The logistics of renting an RV and trekking to the Canadian border were daunting. And anyway, the band had lost a step (or two, or three) over the past few years. They had become, at best, a hit-and-miss musical proposition. So I sold my tickets and let the band finish their run without me.

Best... call... ever!

It turns out it rained like hell in Vermont for weeks leading up to the show. The traffic hassles, always a headache in the remote festival sites, were compunded by thousands of cars sunk to the top of their wheels in massive fields of mud. It got so bad that band member Mike Gordon went on the radio and told the throngs waiting on the highway to go home. Thousands did, but others abandoned their cars on the shoulder and hiked in, up to 20 miles. Those who made it were treated to ankle-deep mud and a show described by even the most charitable fans as just plain bad. I really dodged a bullet on that one!

Here is an article about the Coventry experience in Reason Online. Here is an apologetic statement from the band's manager, John Paluska. Here is a thorough account of the experience, with pictures. Here is a local's perspective.

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Posted by Hei Lun

Here's a list of words that makes me tune out of whatever I was reading or listening to. I'm sure each of you have your own list.

• Olympics I accidentally saw two seconds of the Olympics the other day when I passed a television; otherwise, I haven't watched any of it. Sure, I'd like the Americans to finish first in the medal count, but I care much more about whether the Red Sox win their next game.
• nanotechnology Either it's going to lead to some amazing new discovery that'll improve all our lives by magnitudes, or some scientist is going to make a mistake and some self-replicating nano-robots are going to swallow the universe whole like in the Langoliers. Yawn.
• stem-cell research How nice to see the abortion debate extend its tentacles to something else that's important. One side acts as if the lack of government funding is equivalent to prohibition; the other acts as if there's no benefits to the research. Leave me out of this.
• Halliburton It's a conspiracy! With Cheney! And Rove! And little green men! Whatever.
• Clinton There's the former president, who people bring up usually just to score cheap points against the other side, and there's the current Senator, who won't be relevant to anything for at least another two years except for fundraising.
• free trade This is something I actually care about, but to see the debate move between a mile and a mile minus six inches from where I stand is kind of depressing.
• Wi-Fi I don't have a laptop. I don't plan on buying a laptop. And as much as the state government in Massachusetts spends, it's not going to be paying for omnipresent Wi-Fi that'll be available in my home anytime soon, like they have in a few select cities around the world. Meanwhile, I'm still stuck in the last millennium on dial-up.

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Posted by Hei Lun

If you're listening to a rock star in order to get your information on who to vote for, you're a bigger moron than they are. Why are we rock stars? Because we're morons. We sleep all day, we play music at night and very rarely do we sit around reading the Washington Journal.

—Alice Cooper

On a very meta note, would you still be a moron if you listen to one rock star telling you not to listen to another rock star on who to vote for?

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Posted by Venkat

Daily Kos passes on the unsubstantiated rumor that:

Fitzgerald[] . . . will issue three indictments[,] including [one for] Scooter Libby.

If the Internet is not good for passing along rumors, what is it good for? [via Atrios.]

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Posted by Steve

My photo post below generated several questions in the comments and via email. It seems most folks find the images disturbing and want to know more about them.

Props to Milbarge of Begging The Question for correctly guessing that the kids reside "at the mall." More specifically, they populate the Streets At Southpoint, a Durham, NC mall that opened in 2002. There is very little information about the sculptures available on the internet. All I was able to discover is that they were supposedly created by someone named Becky Alt of the ART Design Group. I cannot find reliable information either about the artist or the group. If anyone knows anything about the sculptures, please leave a comment or send an email.

There are 23 bronzes scattered about the mall, depicting a diverse array of children having fun. I believe they are meant to be lighthearted and whimsical, but I find their faces vaguely unsettling. And when I say the kids are diverse, I mean diverse. Every ethnic group is represented, and that's not all. This is corporate art for the Nordstrom-shopping denizens of a progressive college town.

« minimize

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Posted by Steve

I listened to the Tavis Smiley show tonight. Time Magazine columnist Joe Klein was on. During a segment about Kerry and the Swiftboat conflagration, Klein repeated many of the points he raised in his most recent column. Klein thinks Kerry should be hammering Bush on Iraq and generally focusing on the issues. He blames Kerry's campaign consultants for muzzling the candidate on substance in favor of focus group-tested platitudes. He thinks Kerry should go negative.

Klein went on to bemoan the pointlessness of talking about Vietnam. He blamed the Bush campaign (presumably including the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth) for focusing on Kerry's military service.

I'm going to say that again.

He blamed the Bush campaign for focusing on Kerry's military service.

Upon hearing those words I realized that DeWitt was right and each of us traipses over time through multiple universes, intersecting with each other and collapsing in infinite unpredictable combinations. Through some accident or serendipity I stumbled across a universe in which the Bush campaign is focusing the electorate on Kerry's Vietnam record to distract us from the genuine issues of the day. The new conventional wisdom is that the Swifties have been thoroughly discredited, that their "smear campaign" represents a new low in electioneering, and that the whole thing is shameful, reprehensible, unprecedented and sad.

We live in different worlds.

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Posted by Venkat

here. I looked around a bit and it wasn't that easy to find a quick place. Registering and voting have always been sort of amorphous, vague concepts for me. I remember voting in the past, and in the last election, but I have no idea how registration or other details work. I don't even know how the electoral college works, or the relationship of the House to the Senate for that matter (but that's a separate issue). At any rate, deadlines are fast approaching in some states so register now, and encourage others to do so.

p.s. While I don't think it's appropriate for me to recommend voting for any one candidate over another (in this post at least), I should definitely remind you to vote for BTD in the Washington Post Best Blogs Contest. More on that later I'm sure.

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Posted by Steve

Here is a long post explaining why the questions surrounding Kerry's service in Vietnam will not, and should not, go away. Not every point is strong, for example I do not think anyone seriously believes domestic unanimity is required for America to go to war. However, there are enough good points to make it worth reading to the end. Especially near the end.

One illustrative bit:

John Kerry, February 27, 1992:

The race for the White House should be about leadership, and leadership requires that one help heal the wounds of Vietnam, not reopen them; that one help identify the positive things that we learned about ourselves and about our nation, not play to the divisions and differences of that crucible of our generation.

We do not need to divide America over who served and how.

John Kerry, April 28, 2004:

I think a lot of veterans are going to be very angry at a president who can’t account for his own service in the National Guard, and a vice president who got every deferment in the world and decided he had better things to do, criticizing somebody who fought for their country and served.

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Posted by Vance

In a post of mine from about three weeks ago, I expressed some satisfaction at John Kerry's proposals for medical liability reform. While they were vague, they all seemed like good ideas.

The BTD legal staff was quick to counter my layman's opinion. Greg stated:

"Of Kerry's "proposal," it's worth pointing out that the last three are already the status quo in every jurisdiction that I'm aware of and the first is required in at least some jurisdictions.

To call what Kerry proposes a plan for the reform of medical malpractice litigation is analogous to calling the NRA's call for the enforcement of current regulations a proposal for gun control."

Steve was even more direct in his criticism:

Thank you for pointing out Kerry's specific proposals to me. I was not aware of them, so now I know they are a sham. Probably drafted by John Edwards.

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Posted by Greg

I'm a sucker for movies like this one. Wacky psuedo-philosophical farces in which odd things happen constantly and the characters' defining moments exist in the realm between eccentric and erratic. In fact, a good argument can be made that most of the best young American filmmakers are working within this genre: the Andersons (P.T. and Wes), the dynamic duo of Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze and, of course, David O. Russell. (It's probably worth a nod to the Coen Brothers as well, as they pretty much invented this type of movie.)

I liked Russell's previous two movies, Flirting With Disaster and Three Kings, the latter much more than the former. (In fact, I liked Three Kings so much it probably destroys what little credibility I have as a warblogger to admit it.) Russell's movies show him to be adept at characters and situations—essential to this type of movie. The filmmaker's job here is to make the audience think the film has something interesting (or at least entertaining) to say, even if the plot and characters are nowhere near 100% believable. If the trailer for I ♥ Huckabees is any indication, David O. Russell accomplished his task.

Granted, you can't always judge a movie by its trailer, but this one looks promising.

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Posted by Steve

« minimize

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Posted by Venkat

I have gotten addicted enough to this simple dish that I think it's worth passing on. A quick, easy, and tasty scramble.

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