Pejmanesque

*GROAN*

This is just loathsome:

Iraqis visiting on a civil rights tour were barred from city hall after the city council chairman said it was too dangerous to let them in.

The seven Iraqi civic and community leaders are in the midst of a three-week American tour, sponsored by the State Department to learn more about the process of government. The trip also includes stops in Washington, Los Angeles and Chicago.

The Iraqis were scheduled to meet with a city council member, but Joe Brown, the council chair, said he feared the group was dangerous.

"We don't know exactly what's going on. Who knows about the delegation, and has the FBI been informed?" Brown said. "We must secure and protect all the employees in that building."

Elisabeth Silverman, the group's host and head of the Memphis Council for International Visitors, said Brown told her he would "evacuate the building and bring in the bomb squads" if the group entered.

"They are in charge of setting up processes in their country. They have to educate themselves about how it works in this country," Silverman said.

Silverman did not immediately respond to a message Tuesday seeking comment, and it was not clear whether the group had run into trouble elsewhere on their tour.

I can't imagine worse public relations--and a greater genuine affront--than to offend a visiting delegation in this manner. This visit should have received much better advance work, and should have gone without a hitch so that the Iraqis could go back to their country and tell their compatriots that the American people were firmly and solidly behind them.

Instead, they'll go back and talk about how they were insulted in an atrocious manner. The people responsible for the insults should be ashamed.

OF LUNACY AND TINFOIL HATS

Greg Djerejian may not have been kind here to Josh Marshall, but I really don't care. If the line from the other side of the partisan divide is that anytime a terrorist is captured or a former National Security Advisor for the Clinton Administration is caught stuffing sensitive material from the National Archives down his pants, we ought to worry and rage over the "timing" of the news, then it is fair to wonder whether those who propagate such a line shouldn't find themselves in straitjackets in a padded room.

If Bush captures terrorists, there are nefarious political issues involved. Even when American allies capture terrorists, there are nefarious political issues involved. If no terrorists are captured, the Bush Administration is supposedly a failure. I love this "heads I win, tails you lose" setup that Josh has going. It must be very convenient for him.

QUOI?

Something tells me that Christie Vilsack will not be a featured speaker at the Democratic National Convention:

Iowa First Lady Christie Vilsack, a key factor in John Kerry's primary sweep and the primetime convention speaker tomorrow, has derided blacks, southerners and easterners as bad speakers because she couldn't understand them.

In inflammatory columns for her local newspaper obtained by the Herald, the normally soft-spoken Vilsack tore into several minority and ethnic groups while lampooning non-midwesterners for regional dialects.

"I am fascinated at the way some African-Americans speak to each other in an English I struggle to understand, then switch to standard English when the situation requires,'' Vilsack wrote in a 1994 column in the Mount Pleasant News, while her husband, Tom, was a state senator.

Vilsack wrote that southerners seem to have ``slurred speech,'' wrote that she'd rather learn Polish than try to speak like people from New Jersey, and wrote that a West Virginian waitress once offered her friend a "side saddle'' instead of a "side salad.''

The future Iowa first lady seemed to be promoting English as the nation's official language, an issue that tripped up her husband, Gov. Tom Vilsack, with many Democrats.

A Kerry campaign spokesman dismissed the quotes as "ancient clips'' and referred questions to the Democratic National Convention Committee.

The DNCC wouldn't say whether the comments match the convention platform or theme.

I'm as much in favor of proper English being used as the next person, but it seems unbelievable to me that someone like Vilsack would actually attack people in this manner for having regional dialects. Perhaps she is carrying her pet cause just a bit too far.

THE SAVING GRACE OF MAUREEN DOWD . . .

Is that her columns provoke Fiskings like this one.

SHOOT THE MESSENGER

Now that Joe Wilson's words are finally attracting more than a passing skeptical glance, Wilson has undertaken a new strategy: Blame the media for getting his words wrong. While I'm not sold on the media's ability to report certain stories accurately, the funny thing about the latest Wilson excuse is that essentially, Wilson is blaming the media for having trusted and reported his comments in the first place.

And what is the media's general reaction to being told that they are fools for having trusted Wilson?

On Tuesday I asked John Judis, one of the authors of that New Republic story, whether he'd like to respond to Wilson's suggestion that he had been misquoted or misattributed. Judis's answer was, well, succinct. And, sad to say, it's representative of how reporters are dealing with the fallout from the Wilson story:

"Sorry," Judis wrote. "Not interested."

I can't say I'm surprised.

IS JOSH MARSHALL AUDITIONING FOR PRESS SECRETARY IN A KERRY ADMINISTRATION?

He might be--it is a logical conclusion to reach after reading this post and this one seeking to provide some kind of excuse for Berger's actions. Will Collier--understandably and predictably--isn't buying:

If I did what Sandy Berger has already admitted to--smuggling out classified documents in his pants--I could and probably would go to jail. And no, Josh, it doesn't matter if you remove "copies"; a classified document is a classified document, no matter whether it came from a laser printer, a Xerox machine, or someone's own handwriting. The media doesn't matter; the content is everything. There can be 10,000 copies present in the vault, but if you remove one of them surreptitiously, you're guilty. Period.

That's a hard thing for "journalists" who bandy about allegedly-leaked classified information to grasp, I'm sure. But it's still the law.

And one more thing: there is no good reason for Berger to be smuggling out classified information.

[. . .]

No amount of spin from the left side of the aisle can produce any possible legitimate reason for Sandy Berger to be sneaking out classified paperwork in his pants--or anywhere else. One more time: There is no "good" reason for doing what Berger admits he did.

Those who spent the last year huffing and puffing over the "outing" of Mrs. Joe Wilson are doing their own credibility no favors by making excuses for Berger's apparent criminal actions. And they certainly aren't doing their nation any favors if they fail to condemn Berger, or demand that he face justice.

OPEN QUESTION?

What is this blog's target audience?

Remember, you can only choose one.

NO CLASS

On the other hand, there are people who just couldn't exhibit any sense of decency if their lives depended on it. Michael Moore for one:

The family of U.S. Air Force Maj. Gregory Stone was shocked to learn that video footage of the major's Arlington National Cemetery burial was included by Michael Moore in his movie "Fahrenheit 9/11."

Stone was killed in March 2003 by a grenade that officials said was thrown into his tent by Sgt. Hasan K. Akbar, who is on trial for murder.

It's been a big shock, and we are not very happy about it, to say the least," Kandi Gallagher, Stone's aunt and family spokeswoman, tells Washington Times reporter Audrey Hudson.

We are furious that Greg was in that casket and cannot defend himself, and my sister, Greg's mother, is just beside herself," Gallagher said. "She is furious. She called him a 'maggot that eats off the dead.'"

The movie, described by critics as political propaganda during an election year, shows video footage of the funeral and Stone's fiancee, Tammie Eslinger, kissing her hand and touching it to his coffin.

The family does not know how Moore obtained the video, and Gallagher said they did not give permission and are considering legal recourse.

She described her nephew as a "totally conservative Republican" and said he would have found the film to be "putrid."

"I'm sure he would have some choice words for Michael Moore," she said. "Michael Moore would have a hard time asking our family for a glass of water if he were thirsty."

"VENTRILOQUIST'S DUMMIES"?

Just when I think that the rhetoric can't get any lower . . .

Conservative black organizations are formed and funded by white Republicans, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume said yesterday in an address to a packed ballroom at the group's annual convention here.

"When the ultraconservative right-wing attacker has run out of attack strategy," Mr. Mfume said, "he goes and gets someone that looks like you and me to continue the attacks."

Paraphrasing a line from a 2002 speech by NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, he said, "And like the ventriloquist's dummies, they sit there in the puppet master's voice, but we can see whose lips are moving, and we can hear his money talk."

In a speech punctuated by cheers from the audience, Mr. Mfume said: "They can't deal with the leaders we choose for ourselves, so they manufacture, promote and hire new ones."

Organizers of the convention, the 95th annual gathering of the group that boasts of having more than 500,000 members nationally, are focusing on November's election. Some attendees sported buttons supporting Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry and tonight can attend a free screening of Michael Moore's Bush-bashing movie, "Fahrenheit 9/11."

The hypocrisy of Mfume's charges are telling:

"We have received money from people who are Republican, but not from the Republican Party," said David Almasi, who serves as both executive director of the National Center and director of Project 21. "But think about the idea that, at one point, Jesse Jackson was getting some of his travel paid for by the Democratic National Committee."

NAACP tax forms for 2002, the last year available, showed revenue of $36 million, with $27 million in donations. Anonymous major contributors gave the NAACP millions in 2001, including one individual who gave $2 million and two who donated $1.2 million each.

Mr. Mfume's remarks about black conservatives are "hypocritical," said conservative commentator Armstrong Williams, because "the NAACP could not survive on membership fees; it relies on corporations."

"The NAACP should know about funding from big groups, because it is funded by liberal white organizations," Mr. Williams said. "It gets money and backing from the [National Education Association], the AFL-CIO, and look at who is sponsoring its convention."

Wal-Mart, Shell Oil, General Motors and American Airlines are among the corporations that have publicly presented checks ranging from $100,000 to $250,000 to the NAACP at past conventions.

(Thanks to Tacitus for the link.)

THE LIES OF MOVEON.ORG

And I thought that they had learned their lesson not to entertain analogies between Bush and Hitler. Silly me.

IN PRAISE OF CORPORATIONS

Apparently, there is some kind of virulent cinematic bacteria that is responsible for a recent rush of lousy and mendacious movies hitting the theaters. Dominic Basulto calls on people to read one of these and then call him in the morning.

No one doubts the skills of the physician treating the plague. One only hopes that his skills have not been called upon too late.

YOU LIE DOWN WITH DOGS . . .

Don't Senate Democrats have anyone better to serve as their champion?

UPDATE: Emily Jones is much smarter than Mary Landrieu.

THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION: SILENT PARTNERS IN THE BUSH CONSPIRACY

Jon Henke has the details. Of course, his post probably would not have been necessary if only people actually knew how to read, and wondered to themselves how George W. Bush could have been responsible for the destruction of documents relating to his service records that began in Bill Clinton's first term.

Alas, some people just don't appear to know how to read.

SIMPLE CHOICES

Victor Davis Hanson:

For over a year now, we have witnessed a level of invective not seen since the summer of 1964 — much of it the result of a dying 60's generation's last gasps of lost self-importance. Instead of the "innocent" Rosenbergs and "framed" Alger Hiss we now get the whisk-the-bin-Laden-family-out-of-the-country conspiracy. Michael Moore is a poor substitute for the upfront buffoonery of Abbie Hoffman.

The oil pipeline in Afghanistan that we allegedly went to war over doesn't exist. Brave Americans died to rout al Qaeda, end the fascist Taliban, and free Afghanistan for a good and legitimate man like a Hamid Karzai to oversee elections. It was politically unwise and idealistic — not smart and cynical — for Mr. Bush to gamble his presidency on getting rid of fascists in Iraq. There really was a tie between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein — just as Mr. Gore and Mr. Clinton once believed and Mr. Putin and Mr. Allawi now remind us. The United States really did plan to put Iraqi oil under Iraqi democratic supervision for the first time in the country's history. And it did.

This war — like all wars — is a terrible thing; but far, far worse are the mass murder of 3,000 innocents and the explosion of a city block in Manhattan, a ghoulish Islamic fascism and unfettered global terrorism, and 30 years of unchecked Baathist mass murder. So for myself, I prefer to be on the side of people like the Kurds, Elie Wiesel, Hamid Karzai, and Iyad Allawi rather than the idiotocrats like Jacques Chirac, Ralph (the Israelis are "puppeteers") Nader, Michael Moore, and Billy Crystal.

Sometimes life's choices really are that simple.

Quite so.

UPDATE: I presume that Hanson would not want to be on the same side as Paul Krugman either. And with good reason.

IN THE EVENT THAT ANYONE MISSED IT . . .

Click here to follow links showing how a pillar of Fahrenheit 9/11 gets sliced and diced. It's incredibly funny and very revealing.

A CUNNING PLAN

I really don't believe that Mindles H. Dreck had to go through the trouble to refute the nonsense that failed to escape his radar-like perusals of the Internet. I found his deconstruction hilarious and to the point--needless to say, so I'm glad he actually did write it. But I'm sure that my readers join me in thinking that Mindles's talents are better spent discussing better writers.

Then again, maybe you shouldn't second that emotion after all. The deconstruction really is funny, and it would be a shame if we were all deprived of our guilty pleasures.

YOUR MICHAEL MOORE ROUNDUP

Bird Dog has a nice collection of the inanities and lies uttered by every sentient person's least favorite documentarian. And given just how many prominent Democrats have chosen to ally themselves with Moore and attach their own credibility and prestige to his work product, I think it becomes safer to say that to at least a considerable extent, Moore definitely speaks for the Democratic Party on a number of issues.

As such, the Democrats are more and more gaining a responsibility to answer for Moore's statements and charges. Let's see if they do so as the election cycle heats up.

DOG BITES MAN . . . AGAIN

"More Distortions From Michael Moore"? Gee, what a shock:

June 30 - In his new movie, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” film-maker Michael Moore makes the eye-popping claim that Saudi Arabian interests “have given” $1.4 billion to firms connected to the family and friends of President George W. Bush. This, Moore suggests, helps explain one of the principal themes of the film: that the Bush White House has shown remarkable solicitude to the Saudi royals, even to the point of compromising the war on terror. When you and your associates get money like that, Moore says at one point in the movie, “who you gonna like? Who’s your Daddy?”

But a cursory examination of the claim reveals some flaws in Moore’s arithmetic—not to mention his logic. Moore derives the $1.4 billion figure from journalist Craig Unger’s book, “House of Bush, House of Saud.” Nearly 90 percent of that amount, $1.18 billion, comes from just one source: contracts in the early to mid-1990’s that the Saudi Arabian government awarded to a U.S. defense contractor, BDM, for training the country’s military and National Guard. What’s the significance of BDM? The firm at the time was owned by the Carlyle Group, the powerhouse private-equity firm whose Asian-affiliate advisory board has included the president’s father, George H.W. Bush.

Leave aside the tenuous six-degrees-of-separation nature of this “connection.” The main problem with this figure, according to Carlyle spokesman Chris Ullman, is that former president Bush didn’t join the Carlyle advisory board until April, 1998—five months after Carlyle had already sold BDM to another defense firm. True enough, the former president was paid for one speech to Carlyle and then made an overseas trip on the firm’s behalf the previous fall, right around the time BDM was sold. But Ullman insists any link between the former president’s relations with Carlyle and the Saudi contracts to BDM that were awarded years earlier is entirely bogus. “The figure is inaccurate and misleading,” said Ullman. “The movie clearly implies that the Saudis gave $1.4 billion to the Bushes and their friends. But most of it went to a Carlyle Group company before Bush even joined the firm. Bush had nothing to do with BDM.”

In light of the extraordinary box office success of “Fahrenheit 9/11,” and its potential political impact, a rigorous analysis of the film’s assertions seems more than warranted. Indeed, Moore himself has invited the scrutiny. He has set up a Web site and “war-room” to defend the claims in the movie—and attack his critics. (The war-room’s overseers are two veteran spin-doctors from the Clinton White House: Chris Lehane and Mark Fabiani.) Moore also this week contended that the media was pounding away at him “pretty hard” because “they’re embarrassed. They’ve been outed as people who did not do their job.” Among the media critiques prominently criticized was an article in Newsweek.

In response to inquiries from NEWSWEEK about the Carlyle issue, Lehane shot back this week with a volley of points: There were multiple Bush “connections” to the Carlyle Group throughout the period of the Saudi contracts to BDM, Lehane noted in an e-mail, including the fact that the firm’s principals included James Baker (Secretary of State during the first Bush administration) and Richard Darman (the first Bush’s OMB chief). Moreover, George W. Bush himself had his own Carlyle Group link: between 1990 and 1994, he served on the board of another Carlyle-owned firm, Caterair, a now defunct airline catering firm.

But unmentioned in “Fahrenheit/911,” or in the Lehane responses, is a considerable body of evidence that cuts the other way. The idea that the Carlyle Group is a wholly owned subsidiary of some loosely defined “Bush Inc.” concern seems hard to defend. Like many similar entities, Carlyle boasts a roster of bipartisan Washington power figures. Its founding and still managing partner is David Rubenstein, a former top domestic policy advisor to Jimmy Carter. Among the firm’s senior advisors is Thomas “Mack” McLarty, Bill Clinton’s former White House chief of staff, and Arthur Levitt, Clinton’s former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. One of its other managing partners is William Kennard, Clinton’s chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Spokesman Ullman was the Clinton-era spokesman for the SEC.

As for the president’s own Carlyle link, his service on the Caterair board ended when he quit to run for Texas governor—a few months before the first of the Saudi contracts to the unrelated BDM firm was awarded. Moreover, says Ullman, Bush “didn’t invest in the [Caterair] deal and he didn’t profit from it.” (The firm was a big money loser and was even cited by the campaign of Ann Richards, Bush’s 1994 gubernatorial opponent, as evidence of what a lousy businessman he was.)

Most importantly, the movie fails to show any evidence that Bush White House actually has intervened in any way to promote the interests of the Carlyle Group. In fact, the one major Bush administration decision that most directly affected the company’s interest was the cancellation of a $11 billion program for the Crusader rocket artillery system that had been developed for the U.S. Army (during the Clinton administration)—a move that had been foreshadowed by Bush’s own statements during the 2000 campaign saying he wanted a lighter and more mobile military. The Crusader was manufactured by United Defense, which had been wholly owned by Carlyle until it spun the company off in a public offering in October, 2001 (and profited to the tune of $237 million). Carlyle still owned 47 percent of the shares in the defense company at the time that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld—in the face of stiff congressional resistance—canceled the Crusader program the following year. These developments, like much else relevant to Carlyle, goes unmentioned in Moore’s movie.

It seems that for each day that goes by, yet another lie is revealed in Michael Moore's opus. How long will it take before left-of-center commentators and pundits finally state that whatever their political disagreements with the Right, Michael Moore is a lousy messenger for their cause?

I briefly forgot: This is an election year. We are not likely to hear many such denunciations.

UPDATE: If indeed the Left chooses to latch on to Moore's movie despite its many mendacious qualities, one can only hope for this to happen:

A political activist rang me up and told me I had to see the new documentary about the president.

"It's chilling,'' he said. "It shows what a slimeball this guy is.''

So I saw the movie, and it was -- how to put this? -- a crock. Watching it I thought: Whoever produced this slanderous mess deserves to be run out of polite society.

That was 10 years ago, and the documentary was a slapdash confection of lies and innuendo called "The Clinton Chronicles.''

It accused Bill Clinton -- slyly and indirectly -- of drug- running and worse. There was no evidence but lots of insinuation, a series of meaningless coincidences presented in breathless tones so the weak-minded might connect dots that weren't there.

Now the U.S. is being treated to the same kind of exercise, on a much grander scale, with Michael Moore's scabrous "Fahrenheit 9/11.'' And once again weak-minded ideologues are lapping it up like hungry pups.

There's a big difference, though. Polite society, especially the mainstream press, recognized the producers of "The Clinton Chronicles,'' a California-based group called Citizens for Honest Government, as the fools they were. After hawking the film on his TV show, the televangelist Jerry Falwell never quite recovered what little reputation he had once enjoyed. Years later, he was still apologizing in TV appearances for associating himself with the movie.

Now, however, the paranoid strain has so thoroughly saturated U.S. politics that Moore's cinematic slander can be feted and extolled -- not only by mainstream movie reviewers but, more ominously, by the same Democratic Party establishment that Moore accuses of colluding with President George W. Bush.

At the Washington premiere of "Fahrenheit 9/11'' last week, Moore was conspicuously greeted for the cameras by Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

"There might be half the Democratic Senate here,'' Senator Bob Graham of Florida told the New York Times.

Unlike the Democratic Party, Moore has always prided himself on his radicalism. So who's changed -- Moore or the Democratic Party?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Richard Cohen isn't exactly a Michael Moore fan:

I brought a notebook with me when I went to see Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" and in the dark made notes before I gave up, defeated by the utter stupidity of the movie. One of my notes says "John Ellis," who is a cousin of George W. Bush and the fellow who called the election for Fox News that dark and infamous night when the presidency -- or so the myth goes -- was stolen from Al Gore, delivering the nation to Halliburton, the Carlyle Group and Saudi Arabia, and plunging it into war. A better synopsis of the movie you're not likely to read.

Ellis appears early in the film, which is not only appropriate but inevitable. He is the personification of the Moore method, which combines guilt by association with the stunning revelation of a stunning fact that has already been revealed countless times before. If, for instance, you did a Lexis-Nexis database search for "John Ellis" and "election," you would be told: "This search has been interrupted because it will return more than 1,000 documents." The Ellis story is no secret.

But more than that, what does it mean? Ellis is a Bush cousin, Moore tells us. A close cousin? We are not told. A cousin from the side of the family that did not get invited to Aunt Rivka's wedding? Could be. A cousin who has not forgiven his relative for a slight at a family gathering -- the cheap gift, the tardy entrance, the seat next to a deaf uncle? No info. And even if Ellis loved Bush truly and passionately, as a cousin should, how did he manage to change the election results? To quote the King of Siam, is a puzzlement.

I go on about Moore and Ellis because the stunning box-office success of "Fahrenheit 9/11" is not, as proclaimed, a sure sign that Bush is on his way out but is instead a warning to the Democrats to keep the loony left at a safe distance. Speaking just for myself, not only was I dismayed by how prosaic and boring the movie was -- nothing new and utterly predictable -- but I recoiled from Moore's methodology, if it can be called that. For a time, I hated his approach more than I opposed the cartoonishly portrayed Bush.

A THIRD UPDATE: Tim Blair is posing questions. How inconvenient.

A FOURTH UPDATE: Dan Drezner notes that birds of a feather flock together.

"ME, ME, ME, ME, ME, ME . . ."

Mark Steyn writes on "the importance of being Michael Moore":

Excited about Fahrenheit 9/11? It's the Palme d'Or-winning and soon-to-be Oscar-winning documentary from average blue-collar multi-millionaire Michael Moore, and it opens in Britain next week. I saw it over the weekend on my side of the Atlantic, with an audience comprised wholly of informed, intelligent sophisticates.

I knew they were informed, intelligent sophisticates because they howled with laughter at every joke about what a bozo Bush is. They split their sides during the patriotic ballad – eagles soaring, etc – composed and sung by John Ashcroft, the famously sinister US Attorney-General. Moore reveals – and if you feel that knowing the plot would spoil the movie, please skip to the next paragraph – that Bush is a privileged simpleton under the control of war-crazed Big Oil interests who arranged to have the 2000 election stolen for him. I hadn't heard that before, had you?

Once Moore gets past his recounting of the Florida recount, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I agreed with in the movie. For example, he's very hard on the Saudis, and the unique access to the Bush family enjoyed by their oleaginous ambassador in Washington, Prince Bandar. He's also very mocking of the absurdities of post-9/11 airport security, alighting on a poor mom forced to drink a beaker of her own breast milk in front of passengers before boarding in order to demonstrate the liquid wasn't anything incendiary.

As we left, the couple ahead of me said they thought Bush would have a hard job responding to these shocking revelations. I didn't like to point out they could have heard about all this stuff years ago just by reading yours truly. I mentioned the breast-milk incident in this very space on August 10, 2002. I called for Prince Bandar to be booted back to Saudi in a Spectator column from November 2002, and I've been urging the dismantling of the kingdom – Washington's out-of-control Frankensaud monster – for almost three years now, since within a month of 9/11.

So in theory I ought to welcome Michael Moore as a comrade in arms. But the trouble with Fahrenheit 9/11 is that you don't come away thinking about the Saudis or America's useless bureaucracy, you come away laughing at Bush.

And, if feeling snobbishly superior to the President isn't your bag, what's left is an incoherent bore. Moore follows his GUT, by which I mean his Grand Universal Theory: Bush is to blame for everything. Because of Bush, the Saudis secretly run US policy. Because of Bush, the Taliban were in bed with Texas energy executives. Because of Bush, the Taliban got toppled.

Whoa, hold up a minute, I thought he was all pals with the Taliban. The Saudis certainly were, which is why they opposed the liberation of Afghanistan. But by now Moore's moved on to pointing out that Bush's Afghan stooge Hamid Karzai used to work for the Texas energy company panting for that big Afghan gas pipeline.

But hang on, I thought the Texan energy guys already had the Taliban in their pockets and were funded by the Saudis. "Connecting the dots" is all very well, but not when you've got more dots in your picture than Seurat.

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN BLOGGERS LACK ELEMENTARY READING SKILLS

On Tim Lambert's one-trick pony of a blog, he notes this post of mine, where in a second update, I link to this post by Eugene Volokh, which itself contains the following dialogue:

David Letterman: How do we know what's in your film [Fahrenheit 9/11] is true?

Michael Moore: Because I got most of my information from The New York Times.

Audience: Wild laughter.

Letterman: Strains to repress laughing

Moore: What's so funny?

The first comment to my post says the following:

The blog entry you cite from The Volokh Conspiracy regarding Michael Moore on Letterman and his reference to getting most of hs material from the NYT is true. I watched it last week. Unreal!

Given the statement that someone actually watched the program, I naturally figured that the dialogue may have taken place.

Then came Lambert, who said in comments that the conversation never took place. I went to this link and found the following discussion instead:

Letterman: And, and we can absolutely believe the sources you've used in assembling your documentary?

Moore: Oh yeah, it's New York Times, it's the Wall Street Journal, it's, it's, uh --

Letterman: Well, the Times [starts laughing, audience laughs, Michael Moore laughs] - depending on what day it is....

Letterman: Hang on a second, we'll be right back here with Michael Moore.

I then said that "It's hardly an improvement over what Volokh reported." And it wasn't. Letterman and the audience were still poking fun at what it perceived to be Moore's gullibility in believing the New York Times, and they were poking fun at the Times itself.

Lambert then responded with the following comment:

Volokh does not seem to agree with you, writing:

Another beautiful story ruined by ugly fact . . . .

To which I replied:

And your point is . . . what exactly? That Volokh and I have a difference of opinion? That Volokh believes one transcription to be so vastly different than another? That I should automatically conform to Volokh's thinking.

Congratulations on your instinct for the capillaries. What tedious comment will come out next from your computer, Tim?

Well, now we know. In his post on the matter (no issue is to small for Lambert to dive into in Sherlock Holmesian fashion), Lambert snarkily says that "Pejman Yousefzadeh, however, isn’t one to be swayed by a mere fact." Of course, anyone with elementary reading skills wouldn't come to such a conclusion. I didn't say that I wasn't swayed by the new report. I said that it was hardly an improvement over what Volokh reported. I'm fully prepared to take the correction at face value, but the elements of humor that were present in the first dialogue are still presented in the corrected version. That doesn't constitute failing to "be swayed by a mere fact," unless, as I say, one writes the post without having done any careful reading.

The Bible tells us not to lecture others about the speck in their eyes when we have a log in our own. Whether one believes in religion or not, it is a good lesson to follow. Apparently, however, Lambert has chosen to ignore it and to accuse others of a lack of fidelity to the facts, when it is clear that he himself doesn't consider facts all that carefully before pounding out one of his tedious posts.

UPDATE: Lambert now whines that I "still don't get it." I'm sure readers will understand just how devastated I am not to have gotten his intellectual approval.

My apologies for boring readers with this. I really do try to avoid wasting my time and yours with responses to such tiresome issues. Apparently I suffered a moment of weakness in this case. Please forgive.

QUANDRY

I really don't know who to root for in the dispute discussed here.

Can they both somehow lose?

NOT HER METIER

I really don't think that Barbra Streisand should be trying to be witty. It just doesn't become her--especially when the genuinely witty start mocking away.

APOLOGIES

Recognizing that his comments went way overboard, and that he may very well have violated judicial ethical rules, Guido Calabresi has apologized for some exceedingly controversial comments:

A federal appeals court judge apologized "profusely" yesterday for remarks he made last weekend at a lawyers convention comparing President Bush's election in 2000 to the rise of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

In a letter to the court, Guido Calabresi, a judge on the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, acknowledged that he had given the impression he was taking a partisan position, opposing President Bush's re-election. The letter was addressed to John M. Walker Jr., the chief judge of the appeals court, who released it to the press.

"In a way that occurred before but is rare in the United States, somebody came to power as a result of the illegitimate acts of a legitimate institution that had the right to put somebody in power," Judge Calabresi told an annual meeting of the American Constitution Society in Washington on Saturday, in remarks that were first reported by The New York Sun. "That is what the Supreme Court did in Bush v. Gore; it put somebody in power," he said, referring to the decision that cleared the way for Mr. Bush to claim victory in the election.

"The reason I emphasize that is because that is exactly what happened when Mussolini was put in by the king of Italy," he said. "That is what happened when Hindenburg put Hitler in."

Judge Calabresi qualified his comments, adding: "I am not suggesting for a moment that Bush is Hitler. I want to be clear on that, but it is a situation which is extremely unusual." The comments provoked a strong reaction this week among lawyers and judges.

My original post on the topic can be found here.

CONTINUING ON A THEME . . .

As noted previously on this blog, it appears that we Republicans/conservatives/libertarians are responsible whenever a Republican/conservative/libertarian opinion columnist says something that is at best mangled, and at worst, abominable. In addition, the Republican National Committee is responsible for denouncing that columnist.

Well, now that the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Party in general, have signed onto and endorsed the movie of the fraudulent Michael Moore, surely, the same rule should apply with increased force on the other side, shouldn't it?

Not that it will, of course. But it's important to note double standards when one finds it.

UPDATE: Oh, and speaking of double standards . . .

SHORTCUTS

Thanks to Tacitus for taking an item off my blogging to-do list. Go and read his post.

THE INQUISITION CONTINUES

Think that the critics of Bjorn Lomborg are done smearing him? Well, think again. Scott Burgess has the nauseating details.

INSANITY

A primer on the condition, and who qualifies, courtesy of Bret Stephens.

LESSONS

Eugene Volokh gives Judge Guido Calabresi a history lesson here, and a judicial ethics lesson here. The Curmudgeonly Clerk reinforces the lesson here. All that remains is for someone to invoke Godwin's Law on Calabresi's ridiculously overwrought speech to bring this sad little episode to a close.

It is genuinely amazing that educated individuals in positions of significant authority actually engage in this kind of demagoguery. I've seen it over and over, and will likely see even more, but it never fails to stun me. Not the most original of comments, perhaps, but they reflect my most immediate reactions to Calabresi's inane statements.

UPDATE: Speaking of Godwin's Law and its potential applications, how exactly is one supposed to read this post?

SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE

Quite obviously, Tim Graham doesn't fight fair by turning hackneyed explanations on their heads.

WHOPPER OF THE WEEK

Congratulations to Timothy Noah for winning the prize.

UPDATE: More on this issue from Eugene Volokh.

DISBELIEF

Micah Wright: Still digging.

WORSE AND WORSE

Micah Wright keeps digging. Oh, and by the way, I really am Jim Treacher. Don't be fooled by imitations.

UPDATE: I am also Steven Den Beste.

LOTS OF VIOLATIONS OF GODWIN'S LAW GOING AROUND

I just don't have any patience for this stuff anymore, and my hometown paper embarrasses itself by publishing such dreck. Good for Jeff Goldstein for treating it with the contempt it deserves.

FIRST BRIAN LEITER, THEN MATT STOLLER . . .

Who will be the next halfwit to volunteer to be annihilated at the hands of Daniel Drezner?

DREEEAM . . . DREAM, DREAM DREAM . . .

Sebastian Holsclaw has infinitely more patience than I do with unbelievably improbable arguments. While that may qualify him for sainthood, it will also raise his blood pressure to abnormal and dangerous levels eventually.

CROOKED LOGIC AND REASONING

I used to waste time responding to trolls, or to trolls with blogs. I try to do a lot less of that nowadays, since I realize that you just shouldn't feed the trolls. Life is short, and there are more interesting things to do, after all. But some inane commentary deserves a reply.

Henry Farrell has a spectacularly inept (and therefore, for him, entirely typical) response to my TCS piece regarding media coverage in Iraq. In addition to tossing out fifth-rate "witticisms" like "Flack Central Station" (this is what happens when one is deprived of an argument--one tries desperately to be Johnny Carson instead and fails miserably in the attempt), Farrell argues that because Matthew Yglesisas's argument about media critics didn't originate with the Nazis, my comment that "If Yglesias isn't actually accusing those who are critiquing the media of being Nazis, he is accusing them of stealing a page out of the Nazi playbook," is "is quite remarkably at odds with the facts, even by Yousefzadeh’s usual standards."

Farrell could quite obviously use some help with his close reading skills, since it is perfectly clear upon even a superficial perusal of Yglesias's piece, that it was Yglesias who set up the tone and tenor of the discussion, not me. Here is the key paragraph again:

. . . the political purpose of the theory [that everything in Iraq is fine except the media coverage] isn't hard to grasp. The groundwork is being laid for a new version of the "stab in the back" myth that helped destroy Weimar Germany. No matter how far south things go in Iraq, the blame will be laid not at the feet of the president who initiated and conducted the war, but rather on those who had the temerity to note that it wasn't working. Rather than the critics having been proven right, or so the story goes, the critics are to blame for the failure of the very policy they were criticizing. It's an ugly tactic, and as you go down the journalistic food chain, it grows uglier still.

Contra Farrell, I never said that the "stab in the back" originated with the Nazis. But I will say that when phrases like "stab in the back" are tossed around and connected with the destruction of "Weimar Germany," there is a common meaning that is attached to that kind of charge, and that meaning evokes images of Nuremberg rallies. I mean gee, let's think about this: Who is the most prominent person who used the "stab in the back" theory to destroy the Weimar Republic? Could it have been . . . Hitler? I would think that a political science professor should be able to understand the implications and the "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" aspects of Yglesias's charge, but I guess that would be overly optimistic in Farrell's case.

And even if we kick the Nazis completely out of the picture and say that the "stab in the back" theory originated with the Girl Scouts of America, the point that I was making in my article (a point that quite clearly flew over Farrell's head) was that there should simply be more balance in reporting from Iraq. As I have said over and over--and apparently will never be able to say enough for simpletons like Farrell to understand--I have no problem with the media reporting bad news from Iraq. But there is no legitimate reason whatsoever for them not to give good news coverage as well. I am genuinely interested in hearing both sides of the story from Iraq. But there is little evidence that is happening, and I have every right to demand better from a media that is supposed to serve me--among others--without being accused of propagating a "stab in the back" theory or without having to endure Farrell's dimwitted commentary. As things stand, there is evidence that the media is dropping the ball when it comes to Iraq. (The last link is an editorial that was written by a Democratic congressman, and the one before has bipartisan criticism of the media. Query: Are the Democrats also spreading the "stab in the back" theory?)

It is a shame that Farrell doesn't understand this, but I've stopped expecting much from him long ago. I do find it disappointing, however, that a member of academia so willingly plays the fool on this issue, but in fairness to Farrell, maybe he's not just playing.

UPDATE: And yet more evidence of incompetent media coverage via Damian Penny. (An important thing to underline: I don't accuse the media of "stabbing us in the back." I accuse it of incompetence. Let's see if the difference finally dawns on Farrell.)

"EXTERMINATING" REPUBLICANS

I noted the recent statements made by conservative columnist Tony Blankley regarding George Soros--statements that were at best incredibly poorly phrased, and at worst, demonstrated anti-Semitism. I noted as well Mark Kleiman's seeming intimation--perhaps made most evident by the title of his post--that the Republican campaign against Soros is essentially founded on anti-Semitism. I said that if this is Kleiman's actual belief, it is ridiculous, since most Republicans simply think that Soros is a lunatic, and are willing to fight him because he is willing to fight Republicans with the piles of money that he has. Eugene Volokh--as I mentioned in my previous post--made roughly the same points.

This isn't good enough, apparently, for Kleiman, who in my comments section says:

As soon as the RNC denounces Blankley's comments, I'll agree he wasn't reading the script.

And in an update to his post, Kleiman writes:

Pejman Yousefzadeh also disapproves of Blankley's ravings, and also disagrees with me that they represent part of the coordinated anti-Soros strategy. I'm still waiting for a non-Jewish conservative to agree, or a hint of complaint from the RNC or its allies.

I find it interesting that the RNC is suddenly responsible for what an opinion columnist says, of course. I don't recall anyone holding the Democratic National Committee responsible for the ravings of Ted Rall or Noam Chomsky. But Kleiman seems to buy into this argument. And relatedly, Kevin Drum is apparently demanding that conservatives show their bona fides regarding the issue of anti-Semitism through condemnations of Blankley's statement by conservative bloggers.

Well, first of all, we can turn Kevin's argument on its head and apply it just as well. Instead of saying the following (as Kevin does):

Conservatives routinely jump on every alleged piece of anti-Semitism out of France as proof of European moral decrepitude, and here at home they can get seriously bent out of shape by nothing more than liberals using Jewish names as examples of neocons (i.e., Kristol, Feith, Perle, Wolfowitz). But Blankley's transparently racist imagery hasn't caused much of a ripple.

We could say this:

Liberals routinely jump on every alleged piece of anti-Semitism out of the mouthes of individual conservatives as proof of conservative moral decrepitude, and here at home they can get seriously bent out of shape by nothing more than conservatives using Jewish names as examples of political opponents (i.e., Soros). But Europe's transparently racist imagery hasn't caused much of a ripple.

And speaking for myself, I don't really need a particular segment of the Blogosphere to tell me whether or not I should condemn anti-Semitism. Being Jewish, I rather naturally despised anti-Semitism long before I began blogging. There may be examples of self-hating Jews out there (indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if there are), but I'm afraid I'm not one of them. So I find the demands of Kleiman and Drum . . . well . . . rather puzzling. But that's just me, speaking personally.

In any event, it appears that the rule is that if one particular segment of an ideological camp goes overboard with its rhetoric, the other side can demand complete and total repudiation of that rhetoric from the side where it was issued--even if there is no evidence to indicate that such rhetoric is representative of the mainstream of the ideological camp from whence it came.

So I'm going to wait patiently for left-of-center bloggers and the Democratic National Committee to denounce in the strongest possible terms, the following:

No U.S. president, I expect, will ever appoint a Secretary of the Imagination. But if such a cabinet post ever were created, and Richard Foreman weren't immediately appointed to it, you'd know that the Republicans were in power. Republicans don't believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. Human beings, who have imaginations, can see a recipe for disaster in the making; Republicans, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don't give a hoot about human beings, either can't or won't. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm.

(Emphasis mine.) Any takers? Or does this just work one way?

THE WRONG REASONS FOR OPPOSING GEORGE SOROS

I share Eugene Volokh's distaste and disgust with comments made by Tony Blankley about George Soros. Whatever one thinks of Soros (and I think little of him), it is absurd to bring his Jewishness into the debate. At the very least, Blankley is guilty of an extremely poor choice of words. At the very worst, he has let his true colors show. He owes the public an explanation and an apology.

That said, it is simply absurd to infer that Blankley's attitude is shared by those on the Right who oppose Soros, as Mark Kleiman appears to do. I'm Jewish and I think Soros is a lunatic. I don't need to rely on anti-Semitism to do that. Eugene answers this charge rather neatly by stating that

There's a simple explanation for why Republicans, especially pro-Administration republicans, dislike Soros and are working to undermine them -- he seems to dislike them, and is working to defeat them, using some rather intemperate rhetoric. I have no reason to think that their actions are based, in any significant part, on anti-Semitism.

Blankley should certainly be condemned for his rhetoric. But to use that rhetoric as a strawman for other anti-Soros figures is simply irresponsible in the extreme, and I hope that Kleiman really doesn't think that anti-Semitism is any kind of blanket answer for Republican opposition to Soros. The facts don't even come close to supporting such a ridiculous conclusion.

MORE OF THE SAME

Another day, another news story pointing out the fact that Michael Moore is a fabulist of astonishing proportions:

Rep. Mark Kennedy has unhappy memories of his filmed encounter with leftist moviemaker Michael Moore, an encounter featured Thursday in a trailer for the upcoming U.S. release of the film "Fahrenheit 9/11."

"I was walking back to my office after casting a vote, and all of a sudden some oversized guy puts a mike in my face and a camera in my face," said the Minnesota Republican. "He starts asking if I can help him recruit more people from families of members of Congress to participate in the war on terror."

Kennedy said he told Moore that he has two nephews in the military, one who has just been deployed in the Army National Guard.

But to Kennedy's annoyance, his response to Moore was cut from the trailer (and from the film, according to a spokeswoman for the movie).

"The interesting thing is that they used my image, but not my words," Kennedy said. "It's representative of the fact that Michael Moore doesn't always give the whole story, and he's a master of the misleading."

A spokeswoman for the film, which has found a U.S. distributor after the Walt Disney Co. refused to release it, said she had no comment.

I'm waiting for all those who hype Moore's films to finally address the multitude of questions about his penchant for mendacity. If this is the best propagandist they have to lend some publicity to their side of the argument, then perhaps that ought to give them pause.

Not that it will, of course. People who embrace hypocrisy and mindlessness have a way of remaining blissfully heedless of the facts.

QUERY

How on earth did Howell Raines ever get selected for the top job at the New York Times, when he himself can't write worth a damn?

UPDATE: Also sprach Jane Galt on Raines's political advice:

This is brilliant stuff--the kind of keen political thinking that makes legends. I mean, Americans, especially the kind who aren't already smart enough to be Kerry-voting liberals--they're so dumb they don't even subscribe to the New York Times. It stands to reason that they won't catch on when Kerry's asked "What do you think about the Partial Birth Abortion ruling?" and he answers, as Uncle Howell suggests, "Here's my plan for getting us out of Iraq and defeating terrorism," and "Here's my plan for making sure you're not sick and poor in your old age." . . . and pulls the same stunt "over and over again, no matter what question is asked of him." Also, they believe that "getting us out of Iraq and defeating terrorism" and "making sure you're not sick and poor in your old age" are sufficiently easy to accomplish that John Kerry can swing the job singlehandedly.

But then, I suppose that everything's easy, as long as you're not blinded by Republican avarice and racism.

PUT ON YOUR TINFOIL HATS . . .

Because Nancy Pelosi appears to be part of the Illuminati.

NO WORDS

Nothing I say can possibly express my disbelief over this:

A Portland lawyer says suffering by African Americans at the hands of slave owners is to blame in the death of a 2-year-old Beaverton boy.

Randall Vogt is offering the untested theory, called post traumatic slave syndrome, in his defense of Isaac Cortez Bynum, who is charged with murder by abuse in the June 30 death of his son, Ryshawn Lamar Bynum. Vogt says he will argue -- "in a general way" -- that masters beat slaves, so Bynum was justified in beating his son.

The slave theory is the work of Joy DeGruy-Leary, an assistant professor in the Portland State University Graduate School of Social Work. It is not listed by psychiatrists or the courts as an accepted disorder, and some experts said they had never heard of it.

DeGruy-Leary testified this month in Washington County Circuit Court that African Americans today are affected by past centuries of U.S. slavery because the original slaves were never treated for the trauma of losing their homes; seeing relatives whipped, raped and killed; and being subjugated by whites.

Because African Americans as a class never got a chance to heal and today still face racism, oppression and societal inequality, they suffer from multigenerational trauma, says DeGruy-Leary, who is African American. Self-destructive, violent or aggressive behavior often results, she says.

Noting the theory has not been proven or ever offered in court, Washington County Circuit Judge Nancy W. Campbell recently threw out DeGruy-Leary's pretrial testimony.

DOG BITES MAN . . .

And Asparagirl annihilates a dimwit.

STUPID FAT WHITE MEN AND THE LYING LIES THEY TELL

Maybe the folks at Cannes should have paid attention to stories like this one before lauding Michael Moore for his ability to relate their chosen gospel. After all, how many lies does Moore have to tell before even those who like his message dismiss him as a crank?

Oh, and if you want a specific critique of Fahrenheit 911, go here.

SHODDY HISTORY

This article, which masquerades as a historical survey of American presidencies, is in fact a blatant partisan screed that might as well have been put out by the Democratic National Committee. The lack of scholarly rigor, intellectual honesty, and genuine research should be obvious to even the untrained eye. It is a laughable piece of work.

Stuart Buck gives this "survey" more attention than it deserves, and tears it to shreds in the process. Read the whole thing, but the last paragraph is worth emphasizing:

If I were going to warn students about the faults that they should especially avoid in their own work, I could do little better than to point to this article. Almost every possible academic fault outside of plagiarism is presented here: Lack of evidence, lack of nuance, lack of perspective, dishonesty, ignorance of historical facts, disguising partisan views as neutral expertise. There is much to criticize in Bush's performance and policies, but not in this fashion.

THERE ARE LIMITS TO HUMAN TOLERANCE

I am terribly sorry for Michael Berg's loss. I am equally sorry, however, that he appears to be a completely bizarre man whose morals and views are hopelessly warped. Bird Dog does an excellent job demolishing Berg's drivel.

For my part, I only have this to add: I don't care what your politics are. No President of either party has ever sunk to the complete degeneracy of al Qaeda. To argue otherwise is to display a stunning ignorance.

UPDATE: Sebastian Holsclaw has more examples of sheer foolishness.

SILENCE

Deafening indeed.

AND I SHOULD CARE . . . WHY?

This seems to be about as much fun as watching paint dry:

Clawing up ice-crusted, razor-sharp mountain peaks can get a little boring. And dangling upside down from a bungee cord over jagged cliffs is, face it, rather ho-hum.

But now there's a way to add excitement, a dash of danger, the adrenaline rush of risk: Take along an ironing board, a sturdy steam iron and a load of wrinkled shirts.

It's not for the faint of heart, to be sure. But extreme ironing - the marriage of activities like cliff jumping and kayaking treacherous rapids with what participants call "the satisfaction of a well-pressed shirt" - has been catching on.

The sport was born seven years ago when a young man named Phil Shaw came home from his job at a knitwear factory in Leicester, England, and found himself face to face with a mountain of creased laundry. Thinking that he would rather be rock climbing, Mr. Shaw took his ironing board out to his garden, attached his iron to a long extension cord and pressed his pants.

After that, he and his roommate, Paul Cartwright, did "a spot of ironing whilst rock climbing," Mr. Shaw said, while skiing the French Alps and after scrambling to the tops of tall trees in the Black Forest of Germany.

Now, countless handkerchiefs and pillow cases later, and after stretching to the corners of South Africa, Japan, Croatia and Chile, extreme ironing is coming to the United States, hoping to appeal to the spin-cycle superhero, the wash-and-wear wonder woman in all of us.

This week, Mr. Shaw and two fellow "ironists" made their first stateside stop, in Massachusetts. They ironed while kayaking in the Atlantic Ocean, while climbing in a Rockport rock quarry, and, in Boston, while hanging off the side of a World War II amphibious vehicle known as a duck boat.

"From a British person's point of view you've never made it unless you've made it in America," explained Mr. Shaw, as he practiced "urban extreme ironing" atop an ironing board pyramid in front of a Boston landmark, Faneuil Hall.

There are about 1,500 ironists worldwide, Mr. Shaw said. Some teams have corporate backers; Rowenta, the German iron maker, is sponsoring the trip of Mr. Shaw's team to the United States.

"Our aim is to have the level of recognition that it becomes an Olympic sport," he said. "If you can have synchronized swimming and curling, I think extreme ironing has as much to offer."

Indeed. If you are a chronic insomniac, that is.

WHEN PEOPLE LIKE ME COMPLAIN ABOUT THE IRRATIONAL HATRED OF EVERYTHING ASSOCIATED WITH THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION . . .

This is the kind of thing we are referring to:

Paul Wolfowitz kept crowing last summer about how the US saved the Marsh Arabs from Saddam, but now that many of them have joined the Sadrists in Kut and Amara, Wolfowitz is having the Marsh Arabs killed just as Saddam did, and for the same reasons.

Paul Wolfowitz is a killer equivalent to Saddam Hussein as far as the Marsh Arabs are concerned? Does anyone actually believe such nonsense? It's one thing to have a differing opinion on the issues of the day. It is a far different thing altogether to express it in lunatic fashion.

(Cole responds here--unconvincingly in my view, but I present it so that no one will accuse me of filtering Cole's words through Andrew Sullivan.)

ON WINDBAGS

For someone as fascinated with the game of academic inside baseball as he actually is, Brian Leiter has the capacity to get matters spectacularly wrong, and make a fool of himself in the process. Details can be found here.

Read the whole thing. But really, the last word contained in the update suffices to describe Leiter.

BUT I'M SURE HE MEANS IT IN A NICE WAY

Tacitus has an arch, acidic, and entirely appropriate response to the latest (?) lunatic ravings to have appeared in the insane portion of the Blogosphere. The following passage was especially noteworthy:

Every time I tolerate the thought that a Kerry presidency might not be wholly intolerable -- and I do, especially when I reflect upon my frustrations with the war -- a look in the hearts of die-hard Democrats always brings me back.

NOTE TO SELF:

Don't ever get Lileks mad at self:

You may have sipped from this ladle of thin gruel. Yes, I did indeed Fall Silent last week, because – ready? – I was on vacation. And I still posted four updates – one of which was specifically about the issues of the day - and wrote a national column about the response of some Senators to the prison scandal AND did a radio interview about current affairs. So she’s mistaken. And by “mistaken” I mean “too lazy to check her assertions against the facts.” This woman seems to think I am a member of the Necon Blogging Pantheon, even though A) this is not a blog, and B) it has always been a mix of many topics, some of which concern the war. I usually write about the war once a week. The rest of the time it’s parenthood, movies, music, culture, architecture, nostalgia, and so forth. My life isn’t devoted to one single thing and I don’t intend for my site to descend into howling monomania, unless something bad really happens. I mean, look at the main page and tell me that this is a NEOCON WARBLOGGER SITE. That’s the thing that so peeved the hack who wrote the hit piece for City Pages – why, it’s the perils of toddlerdom one day, the need to extirpate Islamic fascism the next. Sometimes it’s the same day! As though this has to be one thing or the other. As though I’m Rush Fackin’ Limbaugh, obliged to pound the table for three hours a day about a specific set of topics. Does this woman even understand the medium she so confidently dismisses? Nope.

Note to Antonia.

Because you get hate mail doesn’t mean you’re good.

Or right.

DEBUNKING ALARMIST RHETORIC

A public service message, courtesy of the irreplaceable Jane Galt. Some people are well-advised to read extra carefully.

TOY SOLDIER

Jim Treacher on Micah Ian Wright:

You'd think a former paratrooper would know not to keep kicking his legs on the way down... oh, right. Forgot.

Read the rest. It's . . . um . . . illuminating.

AS MICHAEL GODWIN SLOWLY GOES INSANE . . .

Try not to collapse from shock after reading the following: Bjorn Lomborg Compared to Hitler.

A FUNDAMENTAL WASTE OF TAXPAYER MONEY

Radley Balko reveals that some members of Congress appear to have nothing better to do than to engage in busywork and nonsense. I suppose that comes as little surprise for those familiar with Twain's famously savage dismissal of our nation's representatives ("Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself . . ."), but it is still an absurdity and it is appalling to see.

NO-TALENT HACK OF A CONGRESSMAN

Ken Summers, the Honorary Jew who has begun to co-blog with the lovely Emily Jones, has uncovered an instance of mind-bending arrogance and juvenile behavior. It should come as no surprise whatsoever that the juvenile behavior stems from Congressman Pete Stark, whose tendencies towards lunatic behavior are quite well known. That, of course, doesn't make Stark's actions in the present case any less despicable.

CATEGORIZE UNDER "THINGS WE ALREADY KNOW"

Michael Moore is a dishonest hack:

Less than 24 hours after accusing the Walt Disney Company of pulling the plug on his latest documentary in a blatant attempt at political censorship, the rabble-rousing film-maker Michael Moore has admitted he knew a year ago that Disney had no intention of distributing it.

The admission, during an interview with CNN, undermined Moore's claim that Disney was trying to sabotage the US release of Fahrenheit 911 just days before its world premiere at the Cannes film festival.

Instead, it lent credence to a growing suspicion that Moore was manufacturing a controversy to help publicise the film, a full-bore attack on the Bush administration and its handling of national security since the attacks of 11 September 2001.

In an indignant letter to his supporters, Moore said he had learnt only on Monday that Disney had put the kibosh on distributing the film, which has been financed by the semi-independent Disney subsidiary Miramax.

But in the CNN interview he said: "Almost a year ago, after we'd started making the film, the chairman of Disney, Michael Eisner, told my agent he was upset Miramax had made the film and he will not distribute it."

THE LIES KEEP COMING

Micah Ian Wright--whose story was first written about by the Washington Post--has now tried to win back the trust of his fans. The following is the admission that he made on his website:

Hi.

My name is Micah Wright. I'm a former Army Ranger, and I've been lying to you. I've kept the secret for years now, but all lies grow and eventually get out of control. This is me coming clean about my Big Lie. What did I lie about? Oh, nothing much...

Except that I was never an Army Ranger. I never served a day in a Ranger Regiment. I never went to Ranger School. The closest I ever got was Army ROTC.

This entire Army Ranger thing is a stupid lie which has its roots back in college. When I was in the Army ROTC (and I really was, trust me), I met a lot of Rangers, and got to know some of these amazing men. They always impressed me with their inspired competence and their commitment to one another. Though I enjoyed my time in Army ROTC, I decided that eight years of military service was not for me and I left the program. That ended my involvement with the military.

So why come clean now, you ask? Why shouldn't I continue on, seeing how far I can push it? Well, frankly, I'm sick of it. I'm sick of lying to my friends, to employers, to my fans, to myself. I'm not a Ranger. I've lied to so many people about this that it's made me physically ill. I haven't been able to sleep and I've just about given myself an ulcer. It's all become too much. I'm stopping the lies.

The cat's out of the bag now... I've finally told the truth. I wish I had a long time ago. In the last year dozens of real Rangers have been killed or wounded overseas--how can I keep lying in the face of that kind of dedication? When I read about the death of Pat Tillman, who sacrificed a high-paying football career in order to join the Rangers, I felt like even more of a fake and a heel. It's time it all ended: I'm not a Ranger, I was never a Ranger and I'm sorry for ever saying that I was. I apologize to every Ranger and to the families of every Ranger.

I lied, and I apologize for that from the bottom of my heart... it was a lousy thing to do and I'm sorry about it. A special apology is owed to the people who I hurt by putting them in the position of spreading my lie, people taken in by the Hoax, and people whose credibility I've helped corrode.

There was one thing that I didn't imagine, that I couldn't imagine: that a lie like this would grow and grow and eventually consume every facet of my entire life. It has weighed on my heart and on my mind for two full years now, slowly crushing my spirits, contaminating my friendships, and threatening to destroy everything about me. I'm well shed of it now. I just hope that others can find it in their hearts to forgive me.

And please... no more death threats.

yours,

Micah
April 25, 2004

We also have this attempt by Wright to try to come out of this whole sorry episode with some semblance of dignity and honor intact:

In a post on his forum, Wright disputes the Washington Post story where-in they claim to have discovered the truth about Wright's service last month. Wright posted Saturday to his forum, "The Washington Post is running a story tomorrow, yes. I started this ball in motion last week when I decided that this entire thing was over. I called my publisher and informed them of the truth, and they called the Washington Post and informed them.

"This is not a case of imminent exposure bringing about this confession, this is a case of me stepping up to the plate and admitting what I have done."

Alas, this is another case where Wright's statements have an unfortunate tendency not to coincide with the truth:

The writer of the Washington Post story cited above, Richard Leiby, contacted CBR News Sunday afternoon to further detail events that led to the publishing of his story. More specifically, to counter the assertion by Wright that he revealed the truth behind his Ranger service and alerted his publisher first, before the Post.

"The story Micah Wright is peddling (that he outed himself) is another outright lie," Leiby told CBR News. "After receiving the final, conclusive FOIA response in mid-April that proved Wright did not serve in the Army, I called Seven Stories to alert its publisher that I intended to write a story. (I had called twice over the months with similiar reports as they became available; FOIA is a long process. I gave Wright the benefit of the doubt until the Special Operations Command reported no record of him.)

"Seven Stories' publisher and editor called Wright and made one final demand for documentation of service, based on my request. He had none. The publisher called me either that day or the next to say that Wright had confessed. This occurred in the middle of last week. I held off publishing the story until I could put it in my Sunday column for maximum circulation (1.3 million readers in print) and so I could include a comment from Wright, whom I spoke with Friday evening. He actually ended up thanking me for continuing my efforts to expose him. He said he was grateful to finally be caught.

"I have all the dated FOIA responses to prove the paper trail. Seven Stories will confirm my version of events."

How much more pathetic can Wright get? Stay tuned. He may very well have further to fall, especially given the serial dishonesty he is apparently capable of.

KICKING HIM WHILE HE'S DOWN

Micah Ian Wright deserves every bit of this mocking.

UPDATE: And read this.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More appropriate material found here. (Link via Stephen Green.)

THE TIRED ACT OF TED RALL

In keeping with the low class that accompanies his miniscule (at best) talent, Ted Rall wrote and published a comic calling Pat Tillman an "idiot" and "sad." The comic alleges that Tillman joined the military "falsely believ[ing] that Bush's wars against Iraq and Afghanistan had something to do with 9/11" but that the war was really about--wait for it!--oil. (Never mind, I suppose, that al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan.) The comic also portrays Tillman as being eager to "kill Arabs." Understandably, Slate and MSNBC decided to pull the cartoon.

I won't link to the Rall cartoon. Suffice it to say that he is a despicable human being who apparently didn't learn his lesson after insulting the memory of Daniel Pearl and the suffering of his widow.

And with that, I'll stop myself before saying something I might regret.

UPDATE: I guess this young man (thanks to Mike Daley for the link) would also be viewed as an "idiot" by Rall. The civilized and sentient, however, refer to such individuals as "heroes."

CREDIBILITY GAP

One of the antiwar movement's favorite--or at least most prominent--propagandists is Micah Ian Wright, who claimed to be an Army Ranger whose experience in the military turned him into a peace activist. Wright is famous for drawings that reflect the kind of clichés one hears at an ANSWER rally--that the U.S. is a Nazi state, George W. Bush is Hitler, etc.

Well, as it turns out, Wright is a liar:

In the Style section last summer we profiled a Los Angeles writer named Micah Ian Wright, who'd just published a shrill antiwar poster book called "You Back the Attack! We'll Bomb Who We Want!" In his book, he described himself as a veteran of combat, a former Army Ranger whose experiences during the 1989 invasion of Panama turned him into a peacenik. In interviews with The Post and other media, he played up that background.

Wright, it turns out, is a liar. He never served in the military -- and confessed that last week to his publisher, Seven Stories Press, after we insisted on evidence of his service. Pursuing a tip from real Rangers who'd never heard of Wright, we filed three Freedom of Information Act requests with separate Army commands -- and last month finally confirmed that Wright never served.

"I feel awful about it. It was a lie that just grew and grew and grew," Wright, 34, told us Friday. He said mounting combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, including that of Ranger Pat Tillman, compound his sense of remorse: "I plan to make a public apology on my Web site [www.micahwright.com]."

Seven Stories has canceled publication of Wright's next book, "If You're Not a Terrorist, Then Stop Asking Questions," due out in two months. It also will remove from future printings of the first book his detailed and wholly fictional account of parachuting into Panama under fire during Operation Just Cause. Wright's book of satirically "remixed" World War II propaganda posters was a minor success, selling more than 20,000 copies. It carried endorsements from two WWII vets, novelist Kurt Vonnegut and historian Howard Zinn.

"The romance of his military background rang a bell with me and made me like him a lot," Vonnegut told us Friday. "You almost want to say, 'So what else is new?' Human beings are terrible liars. I still like what he did. He's a liar, but I still like his pictures."

A rather pathetic excuse on Vonnegut's part to explain away Wright's mendacity. We'll see if other Wright fans do any better at sputtering out excuses for the way in which they fell for Wright's lies.

(Link via InstaPundit, who has collected a number of reactions by other bloggers to Wright's outing as a fraud.)

WANT A LIST OF REASONS TO LOOK DOWN WITH SCORN ON MAUREEN DOWD?

Then look no further.

MORE IDIOTARIANS

Will someone surround David Adesnik with smart people? He's getting annoyed. And rightly so:

So here's the story: Our guest tonight was a very high-ranking official at the United Nations. Our discussion focused primarily on Iraq. It was a fascinating discussion upon which I will elaborate in a later post. An important concern raised in the discussion was the absence of an Arab model for Iraqi democrats to emulate. On that point, a question was asked by a certain graduate fellow in international relations known for her uncritical embrace of Palestinian 'activists'. If she were just one of the Trotskyites or Lyndon LaRouche supporters hawking flyers in Harvard Square, I would ignore her. But her intention is to become a professor. Therefore, she will be in a position to access hundreds of students who may not have access to another credible source of information. That is sad.

Now here is what my colleague asked: Given that the United States continues to have strong alliances with Arab dictatorships and continues to endorse the Israeli occupation of Palestine, might it be said that the United States has prevented the emergence of an Arab model of democracy for Iraq to emulate? All right. That is a standard argument found in the pages of The Nation. In fact, the President himself has said that the United States must no longer embrace Arab dictatorships.

But here's what really left my jaw hanging open. Before turning the floor back over to our guest, my colleague added that the first Intifada was a landmark example of democratic participation in Arab politics that the United States and Israel crushed without a second thought. Oh my God. The first Intifada happens to be one of the subjects of my colleague's doctoral dissertation. She will be arguing in journals and lecture halls that this was the lost model of Arab democracy.

My only consolation is that sometimes, people like this get their comeuppance. A number of months ago, this same colleague of mine delivered a paper on the subject of non-violent resistance. Her case study was the first Intifada. In the audience there happened to be a former Israeli soldier who is also a current graduate fellow at Harvard. He said to her: I served in the occupied territories during the first Intifada. Was it a non-violent rock that Palestinian rioters used to crush the face of one of my close friends?

"A VERY PALPABLE HIT"

Courtesy of Grasshoppa, Robert Fisk's reputation is once again justifiably slammed.

SPITTING ON THE DEAD

By now, most people have heard of the student who labeled the late Pat Tillman an "idiot" for serving his country. Johnathan Pearce dismisses the libel with the contempt it deserves:

I will not bother to fisk the piece. The illogicality of it is so glaring, its vile intent so obvious, that a line by line response would merely insult the intelligence of this blog's readership. Suffice to say that a man gave up the promise of a fat paycheck and the comforts of a loving family to go and join the army, knowing that in so doing he might be called upon to fight in situations those moral perfectionists in our academic world would find abhorrent.

IRONY, THY NAME IS "KATRINA"

Nick Gillespie has the details.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO FOR A KLONDIKE BAR?

Or apparently for any kind of chocolate bar in general? Josh Chafetz has the scary details.

I hesitate to say that anyone deserves to have a fraud perpetrated on them, but some people seem to invite trouble with open arms.

CONFRONTING AN "IDIOTARIAN"

Having met David Adesnik, I can personally attest to the fact that he is a very nice guy. Of course, nice guys can get angry too, and David had every right to be annoyed given this description of a dinner he recently attended.

Fortunately, it appears that Mr. Adesnik gave "Prof. Stupid" the comeuppance she deserved. Left unresolved is whether "Prof. Stupid" had the wit to recognize her comeuppance, however.

HOW ENDLESSLY CUTE

Che Guevara remains a cultural icon. And you thought life couldn't possibly get any more ridiculous, didn't you?

Thanks to Mike Daley for the depressing link.

EVERYONE IS HITLER NOWADAYS

If only I had a nickel for every stupid Nazi comparison that comes down the pike . . .

HOW TO BRING ABOUT SUCCESS IN ANY ENDEAVOR

Get Michael Moore to predict failure.

SMACKDOWN

Jeff Goldstein delivers a well-deserved blogging-to in Oliver Willis's direction. I'm glad to see that there remain bloggers in the Fisking business who take on the tripe peddled by people like Willis, and the good Mr. Goldstein is a master of the craft when it comes to puncturing the "arguments" [sic] of those who regularly allows rage to overcome reason.

THE APOCALYPSE IS UPON US

Words fail me.

FALLACIES

I don't know whether to laugh or cry after reading this.

THE "WISDOM" OF A PEANUT FARMER

Almost everything about this interview with former President Jimmy Carter is noxious and nauseating. Carter excoriates "conservative Christians" for supposedly thinking that those who disagree with them and their religious beliefs are "subhuman," and then goes on to display the same kind of arrogance and condescension towards his political opponents that he accuses them of displaying. Didn't Jesus say something about the need not to be hypocritical? I'm just a Jewish boy, and maybe I don't know the New Testament as well as a Plains, Ga. Sunday School teacher, but I could swear that he did.

The worst part of the interview was the following (question in bold):

You spent so much of your career working toward a reasonable, peaceful solution to violence and strife in Israel and Palestine. Increasing attention has been paid to traditionalist evangelicals’ strong support for Israel, based on the New Testament prophecy that the reconstruction of the ancient kingdom of David will usher in the “end times” and the Second Coming of Christ. As a believer and a peacemaker, how do you respond to this?

That’s a completely foolish and erroneous interpretation of the Scriptures. And it has resulted in these last few years with a terrible, very costly, and bloody deterioration in the relationship between Israel and its neighbors. Every president except for George W. Bush has taken a relatively balanced position between the Israelis and their enemies, always strongly supporting Israel but recognizing that you have to negotiate and work between Israel and her neighbors in order to bring about a peaceful resolution.

It’s nearly the 25th anniversary of my consummation of a treaty between Israel and Egypt -- not a word of which has ever been violated. But this administration, maybe strongly influenced by ill-advised theologians of the extreme religious right, has pretty well abandoned any real effort that could lead to a resolution of the problems between Israel and the Palestinians. And no one can challenge me on my commitment to Israel and its right to live in peace with all its neighbors. But at the same time, there has to be a negotiated settlement; you can’t just ordain the destruction of the Palestinian people, and their community and their political entity, in favor of the Israelis.

And that’s what some of the extreme fundamentalist Christians have done, both to the detriment of the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Notice the sly but blatant connection between Bush and his policy towards the Middle East and end-time Christians in general--without showing any evidence whatsoever for any connection between the two. It's very reminiscent of the equally smarmy attempt to connect Bush (a Methodist) with end-time Christians by the BBC. Carter, of course, commits the fallacies of guilt by association and composition in his answer. And of course, he isn't challenged on it. The whole thing is reprehensible.

It is one thing to disagree with the policies of one's political opponents. It is another altogether to be flagrantly dishonest in making one's charges and arguments. No amount of Sunday School pedagogy credits should make up for the fact that Carter lied shamelessly in his answer and in seeking to characterize the Bush Administration's Middle East policy as a policy influenced by Revelationists and end-time Christians. He should be ashamed, but shame is clearly something Jimmy Carter has never felt in his life--no matter the circumstances.

ALL HAIL STUPID CRIMINALS!

They make law enforcement's job so easy.

CLARKE CORRECTED

Charles Paul Freund takes Richard Clarke to task for a number of public misstatements regarding his allegations against the Bush Administration. Given the increasing number of holes in Clarke's testimony and charges, it's hard to see how he can be taken seriously anymore. I suspect he will be, of course--if only to set up an interesting side conflict to keep people entertained during an election year.

RED HERRING WATCH

Jane Galt dismantles some rather silly ones. I'm amused that the effort even had to be made in the first place.

QUOI?

Quoth Eric Alterman:

Speaking of anti-Semites, we received this from The Forward: Fox Newsman Exaggerated Fundraising Efforts

"The self-described enemy of political spin, Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly, appears to have been overstating his charitable efforts on behalf of Israel. During a March 10 appearance on the Don Imus radio show, O'Reilly said, ‘I did a benefit in L.A. four weeks ago where we raised millions of dollars for Israel.’ O'Reilly and his publicist told Business Week media editor Tom Lowry that the benefit he "chaired" in Los Angeles had raised $40 million for Israel. But a few inquiries into the event in question raise questions about the account given by O'Reilly, who routinely refers to his television show as the ‘no spin zone.’ It turns out that O'Reilly was the paid keynote speaker, not the volunteer chair, of a February dinner that raised $3 million for the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles."

This is the entirety of Alterman's commentary on this particular issue. I don't have a subscription to The Forward, and I don't feel like getting one just to read this article. Additionally, I have little use for O'Reilly, and think that while he sometimes conducts illuminating interviews, he is generally boorish--which is why I generally avoid watching or listening to him. And if O'Reilly really did lie to make himself look good in this case, he deserves all the opprobrium in the world for it.

Just one question: How does any of the above make O'Reilly an "anti-Semite"? Overstating the nature of one's efforts for charities benefiting Israel is not anti-Semitic. What in the name of Heaven is Eric Alterman talking about?

*SHAKES HEAD IN DISBELIEF*

Is there any doubt that if a Republican comic writer came up with this panel, it would be offensive? And is there any question that the continuing liberties people take in making fun of Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice based on race merely because they are Republicans is utterly and completely reprehensible?

HANSON ON MOORE AND CHOMSKY

The always excellent Chris Newman was kind enough to send me the link to this interview of Victor Davis Hanson. Both Chris and I found the following passage particularly on point:

What can be done, on an individual level, to counteract nonsense of liberals like Chomsky and Moore? I can argue against their books, but do you know of a book that explains all of the major holes in Chomsky's or Moore's books?

Hanson: I think Encounter Books has something coming out by Peter Collier on Chomsky.

The two must be distinguished. Moore is a buffoon and a cult personality like Al Franken, who are entertainers neither educated nor especially bright, but glib and savvy enough to tap into a deductive hatred of George Bush. Chomsky on the other hand once was a gifted linguist who let his anti-Americanism and weakness for conspiracy theory overwhelm his reason.

In general, I don’t take too seriously the radical rants of some pampered academic living in affluence in New England, working 9 months a year with guaranteed lifetime employment at a university dependent on defense contracts and the tuition payments from some of the wealthiest of Americans. In preference to soap-box invective and shrill accusations of exploitation, Chomsky could have resigned years ago as a sign of protest against MIT’s military connections or its elite student body or its emphasis on research for the capitalist war-machine or its use of exploited part-time teachers and graduate students or its tendency to hike tuition above the rate of inflation. Instead, he is a court jester for the privileged—but most working Americans dismiss him as a spoiled brat of sorts mad that his country does not take his juvenile tantrums too seriously. In general the American professoriate is about as in touch as Hollywood entertainers; that both do quite well in America perhaps explains their guilt and angst.

Well said. Do read the whole interview.

CLASSIFY THIS UNDER "DOG BITES MAN"

"Krugman gets facts wrong in column."

HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE LILEKS ENRAGED

Our favorite Minnesotan pundit declaims quite accurately on the antiwar protests that occurred this weekend in the wake of the one-year anniversary of the commencement of Operation Iraqi Freedom:

Imagine if you woke from an operation and discovered that your tumor was gone. You’d think: I suppose that’s a good thing. But. You learned that the hospital might profit from the operation. You learned that the doctor who made the diagnosis had decided to ignore all the other doctors who believed the tumor could be discouraged if everyone protested the tumor in the strongest possible terms, and urged the tumor to relent. How would you feel? You’d be mad. You’d look up at the ceiling of your room and nurse your fury until you came to truly hate that butcher. And when he came by to see how you were doing, you’d have only one logical, sensible thing to say: YOU TOOK IT OUT FOR THE WRONG REASONS. PUT IT BACK!

The other day a variety of people gathered in various cities to say, in essence, put it back. The Movement to Reinstall Saddam commemorated the first anniversary of the Iraq campaign by expressing their outrage at the loss of an ally in the war against America. These people are the fringe of the left; yes. They are the Klan with out the sheets. Worse: they don’t have the inbred moonshine-addled mah-pappy-hated-nigras-an-I-hate-‘em-too dense-as-a-neutron-star stupidity of your average Kluxer. They didn’t come to this level of stupidity naturally. They had to work at it. I’m sure you’ll find in these pictures people who have cool jobs in San Francisco, people who get grants, write code, run the coffee-frother at a funky bookstore, and have no problem marching alongside someone who spells Israel with swastika instead of an S.

And that's not even the good part. Read the rest.

MEMORIES ARE SHORT

Thus sayeth Dominique de Villepin:

"Terrorism didn't exist in Iraq before," de Villepin said. "Today, it is one of the world's principal sources of world terrorism."

I guess all of those Saddam-sponsored terrorist attacks against Israel counted for nothing. Not to mention the presence of people like Abu Nidal in Iraq. I'm sure that Baghdad was just where he summered.

Yeah. That's the ticket.

LEAVE THE PSYCHOANALYSIS TO THE PROFESSIONALS

There are few blogs that are as truly bad as Brendan O'Neill's--a site which proudly houses one ridiculous post after another. A recent post has thankfully been debunked by the expert Tim Blair, who has the thanks of the sentient world for his efforts, as well as our sympathies for actually having to read through O'Neill's nonsense.

Incidentally, if you check out the comments at Tim's site, you will see that many of them record anti-Semitic comments that were left at O'Neill's site. Which raises a question: While O'Neill himself may not be anti-Semitic, one cannot help but wonder what it is about his arguments that attract so many "amens" from the hatemongers who indulge in the world's oldest prejudice.

WHAT WOULD WE DO WITHOUT FRIENDS?

I'm always heartened to see that there are plenty of people ready to rebut the various canards peddled by Noam Chomsky. Stefan Beck does a fine job rejecting some tired and shopworn Chomskyite arguments.

HIDE THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN!

Dihydrogen monoxide is coming your way. And this time, it's personal.

BEING PAUL KRUGMAN

It has to be a nightmarish experience. Look, I realize that there are people who get way too obsessed with some of the things that Krugman says, and I'm sure that he is not bereft of valuable things to say, but posts like this one help advance the case that Krugman is either a liar, or a lunatic.

REPULSIVE

There is, quite obviously, no depth to which John Pilger will not sink.

THE TOLERANT LEFT

Gentle readers, I give you Garrison Keillor, a man with whom Republicans can have a dialogue:

Just before Christmas last year, Garrison Keillor, Garry Trudeau and Al Franken met for dinner at a New York hotel. Despite the absence of Michael Moore, this informal meeting of friends was in effect the high command of the American satiric opposition in session. Trudeau's treatment of the Bush administration in his Doonesbury cartoon strip is well known to Guardian readers and the thesis behind Franken's best selling book, Lies And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right (2003), needs little further explanation. However, to many people in the UK, Keillor would not be naturally bracketed in this category. He is more generally seen as a rather folksy and avuncular figure whose tales of life in his fictional Minnesota home town, Lake Wobegon, have provided a soothingly wry view of life in small-town America. That description of him still applies, but particularly in the US Keillor has also built himself a reputation as a consistently astringent critic of the Right.

"But when I talk about politics it is in a very light-handed and in-passing way," his reassuringly rich-timbred voice slowly deadpans in his apartment the next day. "Republicans might be heathens and out to destroy all that we hold dear, but that doesn't mean we need to take them seriously. Or be bitter or vituperative just because they are swine. I think one can still have friends who are Republicans."

(Emphasis mine.) How big-minded of him to think so.

THE DARWIN AWARDS HAVE A NEW ENTRANT

I just don't know what to say in response to this.

"ANTI-SEMITISM SCARCELY EXISTS IN THE WEST"

Only, of course, if one does not consider Berkeley to be in "the West." Although ideologically this might be the case, the last time I checked a map, it was, indeed, in the West.

WHEN ONE PEEKS BEHIND THE CURTAIN . . .

The so-called "wizard" is inevitably revealed to be the charlatan that he is.

"HOW THE LEFT LOST TEEN SPIRIT"

Well, here's one answer.

UPDATE: A more serious take on the issue can be found here.

THE RIDICULOUS GEORGE SOROS

For Democrats entranced with the amount of money that George Soros can give through 527 organizations, no amount of bizarre behavior, rank opportunism and selfishness, and megalomaniacal lunacy can change their belief that George Soros is indeed "one of the great men of our times."

The rest of us, however, can look at articles like this one and conclude that Soros is a laughable figure who wouldn't amount to a grease spot on the road of life were it not for the fact that he is so rich.

Consider first the fact that Soros's intellectual ambitions exceed his gifts--a fact lost on few but him:

Nevertheless, it is neither for his charitable work nor for his financial wizardry that Mr. Soros wishes most to be recognized. Rather, it is for his intellectual accomplishments. From early on, as he would have it, he fully expected to become another Keynes or Einstein. At the London School of Economics, he studied economics but was fascinated by philosophy. He was especially taken with the work of the Anglo-Austrian philosopher Karl Popper, who was then on the LSE faculty and served, at least formally, as the young refugee's adviser. Mr. Soros likes to say that Popper's ideas about the "open society" and the fallibility of human knowledge have been the starting point for his own philosophical contributions. These begin with the theory of "reflexivity"--his term for the notion that in human affairs, unlike in the world of inanimate nature, the observer is himself part of the universe that he is attempting to observe; thus, the very act of observation may influence the reality being analyzed. This insight has been, in turn, the basis for Mr. Soros's theory of history, which revolves around "boom-bust cycles." When a social enterprise of some kind--a business, a movement, a nation--is doing well, Mr. Soros argues, this creates a bandwagon effect that leads inevitably to overvaluation or overreaching, producing an artificial "bubble" that must eventually burst.

Alas, for all his aspirations, Mr. Soros has met with disappointment as a philosopher. He spent three years weaving his ideas into a book titled "The Burden of Consciousness" but left it unfinished when, as he confessed to his biographer, he himself could not understand on the morrow what he had written the day before. In lieu of that volume, he has presented excursuses on reflexivity in most of the half-dozen books he has published. These passages have repeatedly evoked exasperation from reviewers, who have found the idea both obscure and commonplace. But Mr. Soros has shrugged off these criticisms, commenting that his theory is "not yet properly understood."

And then, of course, there is his reprehensible moral outlook:

No less pertinent in this connection is Mr. Soros's problematic relationship to his own Jewishness. Though he often claims authority for his views by invoking his experience under the Nazis--he confided to the Washington Post that some of the things President Bush says "remind . . . me of the Germans"--he is strikingly aloof from his Jewish origins. None of his vast philanthropy has been directed toward Israel, and his coldness toward the Jewish state has on occasion shaded into outright hostility: in a speech last May to the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research, Mr. Soros likened the behavior of Israel to that of the Nazis, invoking some psychological jargon about victims becoming victimizers.

It is not only Israel that Mr. Soros abjures but Jewish charities in general, an attitude he attributes to his observations of the Judenrat, or Jewish council, that the Nazis created in Budapest, for which he worked as a courier, and by a rather weird experience with the Jewish Board of Guardians during his years in London. If blaming Jewish organizations--or Israel--for the works of the Nazis is hard to fathom, his attitude toward the Board of Guardians is no more explicable. It seems he appealed to it for financial support after breaking a leg, but the board arranged instead for him to receive a British government stipend. When he wrote an aggrieved letter deploring this as a tawdry way for "one Jew [to] treat . . . another in need," the board backed down and provided him with a cash allowance for the duration of his recovery. Later, he would confess insouciantly to his biographer the reason he had been so angry: He had already arranged to receive the government payment and had hidden this fact from the board in the hope of receiving duplicate benefits. It was, he said, "a double-dip," and one that "solved all my financial problems."

More remarkable still in this connection is Mr. Soros's frequent comment that 1944 was "the best year of my life." It is easy to see how a boy of 14 might have been "excited" by the "adventure" of evading the Nazis with an assumed identity, as he says he was. But 70% of Mr. Soros's fellow Jews in Hungary, nearly a half-million human beings, were annihilated in that year. They were dying and disappearing all around him, and their numbers no doubt included many whom he knew personally. Yet he gives no sign that this put any damper on his elation, either at the time or indeed in retrospect.

"My Jewishness [does] not express itself in a sense of tribal loyalty," Mr. Soros explains. About this he is certainly correct. "I [take] pride in being . . . an outsider who [is] capable of seeing the other point of view." About this he is correct as well, if by "other" we understand "adversary." In any event, this flight from Jewish particularism into a willed universalism is itself a familiar reflex, if not a full-fledged syndrome, among many Jews in the modern era, one of whom, a Yiddish-speaking philologist, was sufficiently inspired by it to invent Esperanto. In Mr. Soros, it has been taken to a startling extreme.

And this observation, from son Robert Soros, is perhaps the most illuminating:

My father will sit down and give you theories to explain why he does this or that. But I remember seeing it as a kid and thinking . .. . at least half of this is bullsh--. I mean . . . the reason he changes his position on the market or whatever is because his back starts killing him. It has nothing to do with reason.

Joshua Muravchik--who wrote this article on Soros, tells us that his surname was originally "Schwartz," but that the family changed it to "Soros," which is Esperanto for "soared." Soros clearly has wanted to soar all of his life--thus his present behavior. Someone should remind the Mad Mogul of Icarus's example, however. Soros appears to be following it, and with any luck, he will continue to follow it to its inevitable conclusion.

IDIOT WATCH

Our latest subject--Congresswoman Corrinne Brown:

U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown verbally attacked a top Bush administration official during a briefing on the Haiti crisis Wednesday, calling the President's policy on the beleaguered nation "racist" and his representatives "a bunch of white men."

Her outburst was directed at Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega during a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill. Noriega, a Mexican-American, is the State Department's top official for Latin America.

"I think it was an emotional response of her frustration with the administration," said David Simon, a spokesman for the Jacksonville Democrat. He noted that Brown, who is black, is "very passionate about Haiti."

Brown sat directly across the table from Noriega and yelled into a microphone. Her comments sent a hush over the hourlong meeting, which was attended by about 30 people, including several members of Congress and Bush administration officials.

Noriega later told Brown: "As a Mexican-American, I deeply resent being called a racist and branded a white man," according to three participants.

Brown then told him "you all look alike to me," the participants said.

During the meeting, Brown criticized the administration's response to the escalating violence in Haiti, where rebels opposing President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's government have seized control of large parts of the country.

After her comments about white men, Noriega said he would "relay that to (Secretary of State) Colin Powell and (national security adviser) Condoleezza Rice the next time I run into them," participants said. Powell and Rice are black.

The opprobrium on this issue should be unrelenting. Corrinne Brown has no place in Congress. Her views don't have any place in civilized society. And to excuse away her racist drivel with explanations like "an emotional response of her frustration with the administration," is to insult the intelligence of any sentient being with a smidgen of morality.

CHARMING

Remember, "anti-Semitism scarcely exists in the West":

It was not an event that any of the big newspapers saw fit to cover, but this past December, a draft United Nations resolution condemning anti-Semitism was quietly withdrawn by Ireland, its sponsor in the General Assembly. In a complicated exchange, Irish Foreign Minister Brian Cowen had promised the measure to his Israeli counterpart Silvan Shalom, but in the end Cowen refused to carry out his side of the bargain, pointing to a lack of consensus on the issue. (Several Arab and Muslim states had objections.) Thus went by the boards what would have been the first-ever General Assembly resolution dealing directly with the problem of anti-Semitism.

Read on. It gets more disgusting.

"ANTI-CHOMSKY? ACQUIRE AMMO!"

Once again, Joe Katzman proves that he is on the side of the angels.

And frankly, I'm shocked that Joe dug up my old post. The man is hardcore.

NITPICKING

You know, whether or not there actually was a human shredder in service of Saddam Hussein's regime, we can all agree that he was guilty of some amazingly horrific murderers. Shrieking about whether the shredder actually existed is almost akin to disputing whether the Zyklon-B that was funneled into Auschwitz shower rooms could have killed 30,000 a day, or 50,000.

Aren't there more serious topics for discussion? Just curious.

SIGN ME UP

I am Spartacus (though not a neocon). And just out of curiosity, who in hell keeps track of how many Jews are in government, or are influential in shaping government decisions?

Anyway, I think it's time to follow David Bernstein's lead:

Hope that helps in the identification process. Of course, we wouldn't be having this discussion if anti-Semitism really does "scarcely exist in the West."

Sorry to beat a dead horse, but it must be said.

MANUFACTURING DISHONESTY

Will Baude points me to this interview with Noam Chomsky, and states that "conservative types" will want to find something in the interview to attack.

Speaking as a conservative type, I would rather find in any interview with Chomsky that he has finally been enlightened as to the error of his ways, but in any event, I clicked over and took a look. In Part III of the interview, we find Chomsky making the following statement:

. . . Most of the governments that we most strongly support are brutal, vicious dictatorships. No elections, with much autocratic rule. There has been one elected leader in the Middle East, one, who was elected in a reasonably fair, supervised election...namely Yassir Arafat. So how do the great "democrats" like Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld treat him? Lock him up in a compound so that he can be battered by U.S.-provided arms to their local client under military occupation. They force him out...they declare his administration irrelevant while they force in somebody who they think will be more pliable.

As Joel Mowbray pointed out nearly two years ago, however, this, like so many of Chomsky's statements, is so much drivel:

Much like American primaries, Fatah [Arafat's party] held internal elections to decide the people to represent the party on the ballot for each given seat. Arafat, however, didn't like the results, so he cast them aside and created his own slate. Come Election Day, most of the "independents" who actually won council seats were Fatah members kicked off the official slate by Arafat.

Several groups, including Peace Watch, noted that Arafat and his minions had, in the months leading up to the election, intimidated political activists, arrested some political opponents, and bribed others to exit races.

Despite heavy-handedness by Arafat in the races for the 88-seat Palestinian National Council (PNC), at least there were real challengers for many of those contests. At the top of the ticket, however, Arafat only faced what could generously be described as token opposition.

The lone person to oppose Arafat on the ballot was a 72-year-old social worker, Samiha Khalil. She shocked the international press with what the New York Times labeled a "surprisingly high" number of votes. Her final, "surprisingly high" tally? 9.3 percent of the vote.

Even if a credible politician had taken on Arafat, however, he would have been unlikely to clear all the hurdles in mounting a serious challenge. Arafat had a stranglehold on the media, one he proved willing to maintain with force when necessary.

In a one-week period shortly before the election, Arafat had more than nine hours of speaking time on television, yet his opponent was never mentioned during those seven days. In response to criticism from foreign journalists, Khalil was finally granted 47 minutes on air at the eleventh hour.

When Arafat didn't have a media outlet in his pocket, he would bully and intimidate editors to get the press coverage he desired. A month before the election, Jerusalem's largest Palestinian newspaper, Al Quds, was told by the PLO to run a story about Arafat's meeting with a Greek Orthodox leader on the front page. On the same morning the story ran on page 8, PLO armed guards arrested Al Quds editor Maher al-Alami, "detaining" him for six days.

Upon his release, al-Alami, who was not the only Palestinian journalist arrested that month by the PLO, unsurprisingly had sharp words about the influence of the man then poised to win the rigged election, noting that "the Palestinian media follow his instructions out of fear."

It should be added that elections were also supposed to take place in 1999, but have not. Does a five year delay in holding elections really qualify Arafat and his ilk as being the champion of democracy that Chomsky makes him out to be? And incidentally, is Chomsky actually arguing that Israeli leaders were not democratically elected? (They are, after all, in the Middle East.) How about Iranian reformers, whose elections surely upset the hopes and wishes of the hardliners running the country? To be sure, the current elections in Iran are rigged, but that doesn't mean that past elections which resulted in reformist triumphs were rigged as well. (Indeed, the problem facing the reform movement was not that it couldn't win free and fair elections, but rather that the unelected hardliners were/are consistently able to block reforms and sabotage the reform mandate.)

Needless to say, this latest Chomskyite lie goes unchallenged in the interview. Like the lie itself, the failure to challenge should come as no surprise, but it is profoundly disappointing and disgusting nonetheless.

UPDATE: Per the comments to this post, I completely withdraw my critiques of the interviewer, and thank my commenters for clarifying the interviewing approach used. And, of course, it is always nice to find another Chicago alum blogging.

THE SILLY AND THE OFFICIOUS

Scott Ganz loves Emily Jones for her scathing critique of "pretentious, sophomoric pain-poetry."

Being a lawyer, I love Emily Jones for giving me a wonderful belly laugh at the nonsensical laws that people feel the need to make up.

Whatever the issue, it is clear that we all love Emily Jones. And we should.

QUOI???

This is parody, right? I mean it must be--nothing in real life could be this inane.

Right?

HOW SOON WE FORGET

If possible, I intend to use Will Collier's talents the next time I get into an argument.

RETURN OF A PET PEEVE

The headline of this story reads "Arabs in U.S. Raising Money to Back Bush."

Now consider part of the text:

Wealthy Arab-Americans and foreign-born Muslims who strongly back President Bush's decision to invade Iraq are adding their names to the ranks of Pioneers and Rangers, the elite Bush supporters who have raised $100,000 or more for his re-election.

This new crop of fund-raisers comes as some opinion polls suggest support for the president among Arab-Americans is sinking and at a time when strategists from both parties say Mr. Bush is losing ground with this group. Mr. Bush has been criticized by Arab-Americans who feel they are being singled out in the fight against terrorism and who are uneasy over the administration's Palestinian-Israeli policies.

Yet the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the war in Iraq have been a catalyst for some wealthy Arab-Americans to become more involved in politics. And there are still others who have a more practical reason for opening their checkbooks: access to a business-friendly White House. Already, their efforts have brought them visits with the president at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., as well as White House dinners and meetings with top administration officials.

The fund-raisers are people like Mori Hosseini, the Iranian-born chief executive of ICI Homes, a home builder in Daytona Beach, Fla. Mr. Hosseini is a Ranger, gaining the top designation after raising $200,000 from his family and acquaintances. (The minimum level of money raised for a Ranger is $200,000, while it takes $100,000 to be a Pioneer.)

Never before has Mr. Hosseini been this active politically. But he said he was inspired by Mr. Bush's "decisive" action, especially in Iraq, and Mr. Hosseini's efforts have led to an invitation to a White House Christmas party and a private meeting with the president and a handful of other donors at a recent fund-raiser at Disney World.

"He has saved Iraq," said Mr. Hosseini, who left Iran when he was 13. "He's the savior, if not of Iraq, but also of the other countries around Iraq. They want freedom. I am so sure of this because I am from that part of the world."

Mr. Hosseini's enthusiasm runs counter to what some polls say is a drop in Mr. Bush's popularity among Arab-Americans. In a recent release, the Arab American Institute, a nonprofit organization representing Arab-American interests in government and politics, said Mr. Bush's support had fallen sharply since the 2000 election. A January poll conducted for the group by Zogby International, which is headed by John Zogby, a Lebanese-American, found that Mr. Bush's approval rating among Arab-Americans had fallen to 38 percent from as high as 83 percent in October 2001.

(Emphases mine.) Let's go over this again: Iranians are not Arabs. You would think that people would know this by now, and that the New York Times wouldn't make the same mistake over and over in its story. This piece had to be approved by an editor--how on earth did he/she fail to catch the mistake?

Now, to be fair, the story has the following passage appended at the end:

A headline yesterday on a front-page article about fund-raising for President Bush's re-election referred imprecisely to donors described in the article. Not all are Arab-Americans; they include Pakistani and Iranian-born donors.

Well, yippee. But how dense and ignorant does one have to be to confuse Iranians and Pakistanis with Arabs in the first place?

(Thanks to Robert Tagorda for the link.)

NONSTARTER

Someday, the people who thought up this idea will gather together, recall their brainstorm, laugh nervously, then quickly change the subject.

LAUGH OF THE DAY

I suppose that this would be the equivaent of having Pete Rose readmitted to baseball.

DISHONEST INTERLOCUTOR

Tyler Cowen illustrates the mendacity of Edward Said. The story should surprise no one familiar with Said's method of argumentation, but nevertheless succeeds in appalling anyone interested in honest discourse on matters of global importance.

THANK GOD FOR FELINE INTERVENTION

Every Friday, Kevin Drum puts up one post dedicated to catblogging. This Friday is no different.

I usually don't link to Kevin's catblogging, but I did fear that this weekly feature would go on hiatus given the fact that just about every other post on Kevin's site has been dedicated to making CalPundit the "All Bush/All AWOL/All The Time" site of the Blogosphere.

Now, I'm really not going to waste valuable time debunking a story that is debunking itself (oh, wait--I just did). Instead, I would just urge my readers to go to Kevin's site, bask in the catblogging, and enjoy it as one would enjoy an out-of-the-blue spring day in the midst of a cold, harsh, and chilling Siberian winter.

Because I'm sure that you will be returned to the "All Bush/All AWOL/All The Time" feature shortly.

UPDATE: We will have to see how this plays out, but for now, it would seem that the President has called the Democrats' bluff and released his records. I imagine that there is nothing earth-shattering in the records, else Bush wouldn't want them released--the converse, of course, of the argument from Kevin Drum et. al, who have argued in the past that Bush wasn't releasing his records because he had something to hide. Some people have had their suspicions raised because the release came on a Friday evening--when White Houses Republican and Democrat usually release bad news in order to have the news buried in the weekend papers. But this would only postpone any public relations pain, as the media can easily embargo any analysis of the records until the beginning of the week in order to counter any attempt to give the story no publicity. So in the long run, even if this is a news garbage dump by the White House, it would do nothing whatsoever to diminish any scandal that may exist.

I suspect that Kevin--being a smart guy (I've met him, he is)--knows this, which is why his reaction is quite temperate. Of course, the same simply cannot be said for his commenters, some of whom have gone off the deep end. Consider this response:

Hey, you think they picked this weekend to release because they know Atrios is gone? Kevin, they do know you're here this weekend, don't they? Or can't they keep their left-leaning blogs straight??

Maybe this comment is meant as a joke, but it appears this commenter takes the thought seriously:

With Atrios gone this weekend, you better avoid small planes, Kev.

Need I really point out that these arguments are insane in the extreme? I'm as much of a fan of the Blogosphere as anyone else, but are people really signing up to the notion that White House denizens, in timing the release, said "That guy Atrios is taking the weekend off. Now's our chance! Release the records! Victory is ours!"?

Please, dear merciful God, don't let John Kerry become President, because that is his constituency and they might actually have a hand in running things. Should it be Your will that John Kerry become President, dear merciful God, don't ever let me go so stark raving insane with hatred for him that I actually entertain the notion that bad news releases from a Kerry Administration will be timed to avoid the all-seeing eye of a short, bald, Persian-Jewish blogger with a fondness for chess, Dante and legions of beautiful women. I know I'm egotistical, but this would truly be absurd, and I'd really want to avoid this kind of thinking, if only because pride goeth before the fall.

And for my readers: I know you well enough to prevent me from thinking the worst of you, but again, should we find ourselves in the ranks of the Loyal Opposition, please, I beg you, stay away from the Area 51 School of Goofy Conspiracy Thinking. Take it from another short, bald, wise sage whose name begins with the letter "Y": "Once you start down the Dark Path, forever will it dominate your destiny."

For more coverage on this issue, see Steve Verdon, James Joyner, Bill Hobbs (who has won his Blogospheric Knighthood in combatting this silly pseudo-scandal for a good long while now), Baseball Crank, and Hugh Hewitt.

See also James Bowman:

Full marks to the mainstream media for refusing to report even a single word of the scurrilous gossip going around about John Kerry’s love-life. They’re not even reporting that Matt Drudge is reporting it, which is the usual way which these ugly rumors get into circulation by the back door. It reminds me of the CBS producers at the Superbowl who refused to turn their cameras, even with discreet editing, on a streaker — so automatically removing the incentive for anyone else who might be tempted to try the same thing.

But just as it would have been expecting too much for the CBS bosses to have provided a similar disincentive to the Janet Jacksons of the world by banning any subsequent appearances by her on the network after her breast-baring stunt during the live half-time show, so it is apparently expecting too much of the news media to extend their courtesy to Senator Kerry also to President Bush. This they could have done by refusing to report the equally scurrilous, and at least equally unfounded allegations about Bush’s having been AWOL during his National Guard service in Alabama.

As far as I'm concerned, the President should now go on offense, and shame those who were engaged in spreading this kind of slander--especially people like Terry McAuliffe and his minions. He might not get an apology from them--indeed, it is likely that he won't--but he can make them suffer one hell of a backlash. Failed negative campaigning has its price. It's time for McAuliffe and Co. to pay it.

ANOTHER UPDATE: This article states that there is no documentary evidence showing that Bush did any military service in Alabama between May, 1972 and October, 1972. But as pointed out in links in the pre-update writings, there is a witness who vouches for the future President:

One who said he does remember is Roswell businessman John Calhoun, 69. A retired officer of the Alabama Air National Guard and co-owner of Industrial Coatings Alliance Group, Calhoun stepped forward this week to say he could vouch for the president's claims that he served with a Montgomery guard unit to fulfill his military obligation. Bush moved to Alabama to work on the unsuccessful 1972 U.S. Senate campaign of Winton "Red" Blount Jr.

"The truth is George Bush came to Alabama. He asked for weekend drills with us. He was assigned to me," said Calhoun, who was in Florida on Friday for this weekend's Daytona 500 festivities.

Calhoun said he saw Bush sign in at the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group in Montgomery eight to 10 times for roughly eight hours at a time from May to October 1972.

"He showed up. He sat in my office. He signed in," Calhoun said. "He was very determined to be there. He was in uniform and he did what he was supposed to do."

Calhoun recalled he thought the young lieutenant was "fairly low key" though Bush told him he had been "working day and night" on Blount's Senate campaign. Calhoun asked Bush if he had political ambition. "He said, 'I don't know. Maybe.' "

Calhoun said he sometimes grabbed a sandwich with Bush in the snack bar. Other times, the young pilot would sit on a couch and read flight magazines and training manuals.

The last time he saw Bush was in Calhoun's office in 1972.

"I never talked to George Bush since the last day he was in my office," said Calhoun, who voted for Bush in 2000. "And I have never spoken to anyone in the White House about it."

When the allegations that Bush had skipped National Guard duty surfaced in 2000, Calhoun said, he tried to contact Bush campaign officials but was told "it wasn't a issue."

This time, Calhoun said, he couldn't remain silent any longer. "I got real upset so I decided to talk. The truth needed to be out. This is damaging our president and hurting the military."

He said he tried to contact the White House, which didn't return his message but passed the tip along to a reporter at The Washington Post.

The dates Calhoun said he saw Bush at the air base do not correspond with the dates on payroll records released by the White House this week to show that Bush attended training in Alabama. The White House could offer no explanation Friday.

"You would have to talk to Mr. Calhoun. I do not know him," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said when asked about the discrepancy.

The 187th's former commander, retired Brig. Gen. William Turnipseed, said he knew Calhoun and that he wasn't "the kind of guy who would make up stories."

But the general's own memory apparently isn't so sound. In 2000, Turnipseed told The Boston Globe that he would have remembered Bush had he reported for duty — and that he didn't recall seeing the young pilot.

On Friday, he said, "I don't even remember if I was there."

"All I was trying to do is tell the truth about it. I'm beginning to find out my memory is not any good anymore. I'm 75 years old and getting Alzheimer's," Turnipseed said.

The likely explanation for the discrepancy between Calhoun's memory and the documents is that the documents simply weren't complete--something military personnel of Bush's generation have frequently noted about the Guard's paperwork and the paperwork of the active service.

I trust that we are done with this nonsense now. I know I am.

THERE ARE FEW THINGS MORE FUNNY . . .

Than someone who botches an insult.

UPDATE: Tom Smith is similarly unimpressed. Incidentally, has it occurred to any moron who buys into the Mill quote that "conservatives" in Mill's time are not like conservatives now? Because modern conservatives and libertarians are more like the "classical liberals" of Mill's time than contemporary liberals are. It is singularly stupid to think that "conservative" is a constant that transcends space, time and different societies, and it is more than a little absurd that some singularly stupid people don't appear to understand that.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I see that Eugene Volokh made the same point about the definition of "conservative" over a period of time:

Mill never said that stupid people are generally conservative -- he said that stupid people in the England of his era belonged to the Conservative Party. Mill, as a partisan, wrote a partisan rant about the Conservative Party; he said nothing about conservatives generally. It's hard to see how his comment has anything to do with conservatism in 2004. (Note that the problem can't just be explained as an error on the part of the Duke Chronicle; even if Prof. Brandon said "Conservative" and the reporter wrote it as "conservative," the problem is with Prof. Brandon's using a quote about a particular party as if it were a quote about conservatism generally. Nor is it easily dismissable as an obvious joke, especially given Prof. Brandon's talk about "Mill's analysis.")

If some liberal professors (who are probably pretty far from 1860s Liberals) want to express their contempt for conservatives (who are probably pretty far from 1860s Conservatives), then it seems to me that they shouldn't call on John Stuart Mill to support their prejudices.

Great minds think alike. And speaking of great minds, Glenn Reynolds has a priceless quote from Professor Jim Lindgren of Northwestern University's Law School on the correlation between party identification and mental wattage:

Yet Republicans in the general public tend to be better educated than Democrats. In the 1994-2002 General Social Surveys (GSS), Republicans have over 6/10ths of a year more education on average than Democrats. Republicans also have a higher final mean educational degree. Further, Republicans scored better than Democrats on two word tests in the GSS--a short vocabulary test and a modified analogies test.

If one breaks down the data by party affiliation and political orientation, the most highly educated group is conservative Republicans, who also score highest on the vocabulary and analogical reasoning tests. Liberal Democrats score only insignificantly lower than conservative Republicans. The least educated subgroups are moderate and conservative Democrats, who also score at the bottom (or very near the bottom) on vocabulary and analogy tests.

The irony here is that if there were substantial numbers of Republican political scientists, psychologists, and sociologists at Duke and other elite schools, Professor Brandon might already know that in the United States, the two most similar groups in educational attainment and verbal proficiency are liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans--and that ordinary, non-liberal Democrats are among the least educated political groups.

Obviously, Brandon and his ilk are quite insecure about their intellectual capacities, and therefore feel a need to project their failures on their ideological foes. There really can be no other conclusion.¹

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: It just gets funnier. Eugene Volokh has yet another post from yet another law professor--Ilya Somin at George Mason University--who tells us the following:

Apropos the conservatism and "stupidity" issue, you may find interesting the attached data from my analysis of the 2000 National Election Study (the NES is the most comprehensive US survey of political attitudes and knowledge, which breaks down political knowledge by strength of party affiliation. Note that "Strong Republicans" have much higher political knowledge levels than any other group. The 3.3 gap on a 31 point scale between "Strong Republicans" and "Strong Democrats" may not seem like much, but it is the equivalent of that created by a difference of SEVERAL YEARS of formal education.

Now I note that political knowledge is not the same thing as intelligence (indeed, I have to caution people on this every time I present one of my papers on political ignorance), but I think lack of knowledge is often what people have in mind when they attack conservatives as "stupid."

I also note that I am not suggesting that people become Republicans BECAUSE they are more knowledgeable. The knowledge gap may simply be an artifact of the fact that highly educated, high income people, are disproportionately likely to be Republicans. Still, it is simply false to say that conservative Republicans are more likely to be politically ignorant than liberal Democrats. The opposite is in fact the case, though independents are on average far more ignorant than either group.

Another irony: the British Conservative Party that Mill was attacking in the 1860s had at least as much in common with modern liberals as with modern Conservatives. For instance, the Conservative leader Benjamin Disraeli invented the "two Nations" mantra that John Edwards has transmogrified into "Two Americas." 1860s Conservatives were also supporters of workplace regulation and protectionism, though on some other issues (e.g. - imperialism) they did differ from modern liberals.

You will note, of course, that my point in the first update was precisely the same as Somin's point in the last paragraph--although Somin very helpfully magnifies the point. I wonder if Professor Brandon has the wit to regret ever having opened his trap on this issue in the first place.

¹I'm being facetious here. But hey, what's good for the goose, etc.

MY NEW LIFE AMBITION:

To be as instrumental to the progress of peace and freedom as David Hasselhoff has been.

Dear Lord, grant be but this boon, and I shall die happy and fulfilled.

IRONY ABOUNDS

"The Persecuted, Misunderstood and Job-like Michael Bellesiles"? Somehow, I'm just not convinced.

ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE: NO TREASURE TROVE OF INTELLECTUAL CONTENT

This has to be one of the most hilarious posts I have read in a long time, but it give rise to a serious concern about the depletion of common sense in those who write and subscribe to the theories of the article in question. The Rolling Stone article wouldn't pass the laugh test in any Journalism 101 class, and yet, somehow, it actually got published. What exactly does that say about Big Media's capacity to employ any semblance of smarts in vetting its own stories?

IN SEARCH OF DOUBLE STANDARDS

Stephen Bainbridge has found yet another one.

THE NANNY STATE STRIKES AGAIN

But of course. To do things any other way would be logical.

And we can't have that, can we?

THE NON-TALENTED MR. ALTERMAN

Eric Alterman is a tremendously bad writer. I don't say this because I disagree with his political views. I say this because he is a hack. An overpaid, overhyped, flaming mediocrity who frankly couldn't argue his way out of a wet paper bag. Koala bears suffering from intense radiation poisoning that makes their brains swell up, causes them to experience horrific amounts of delirium, and places them in the final agonizing stages before death could construct better arguments on why the Earth is flat than Alterman can in defending the various and sundry positions he takes on the issues of the day.

Consider today's Altercation post by our man Eric, in which he says the following:

The Wall Street Journal thinks David Kay’s report is on its side. They don’t read very well. What David Kay is really saying is ... drumroll please, Saddam Hussein was disarmed ... by ... Bill Clinton! We just didn't know it. And we apparently didn’t need to keep bombing him all that time, particularly in 1998. But we sure as hell didn’t need that war. Anyway, here it is.

Contrast this breezy, "everything is okay, go back to sleep, BUSH LIED!" argument with what Kay said in his statement before the Senate Armed Services Committee today:

We're also in a period in which we've had intelligence surprises in the proliferation area that go the other way. The case of Iran, a nuclear program that the Iranians admit was 18 years on, that we underestimated. And, in fact, we didn't discover it. It was discovered by a group of Iranian dissidents outside the country who pointed the international community at the location.

The Libyan program recently discovered was far more extensive than was assessed prior to that.

There's a long record here of being wrong. There's a good reason for it. There are probably multiple reasons. Certainly proliferation is a hard thing to track, particularly in countries that deny easy and free access and don't have free and open societies.

In my judgment, based on the work that has been done to this point of the Iraq Survey Group, and in fact, that I reported to you in October, Iraq was in clear violation of the terms of [U.N.] Resolution 1441.

Resolution 1441 required that Iraq report all of its activities -- one last chance to come clean about what it had.

We have discovered hundreds of cases, based on both documents, physical evidence and the testimony of Iraqis, of activities that were prohibited under the initial U.N. Resolution 687 and that should have been reported under 1441, with Iraqi testimony that not only did they not tell the U.N. about this, they were instructed not to do it and they hid material.

So contrary to Alterman's sugarcoating, Kay in fact stated quite clearly that Iraq had violated Resolution 1441, thus serving as casus belli. Does Alterman note this? Of course not. Can we expect him to in the near future? Don't make me laugh.

Ah, but surely, when Kay began his testimony, Democrats caused him to turn on the Administration, right?

Well . . . no:

Despite suggestions from Democrats that the White House pressured analysts to construe intelligence to help President Bush' make the case to go to war against Saddam, Kay said he spoke to many analysts who prepared the intelligence and "not in a single case was the explanation that I was pressured to this."

Kay said he felt there would always be "unresolvable ambiguity" about exactly what programs Iraq had because of the severe looting that occurred in Iraq immediately after the U.S.-led invasion and the U.S. military's failure to control it. U.S. investigators believe some Iraqis probably took advantage of that period of chaos to get rid of any evidence of weapons programs, he said.

Under questioning from Republicans, Kay stressed the danger posed by Saddam and said that Iraqi documents, physical evidence and interviews with Iraqi scientists revealed that Iraq was engaged in weapons programs prohibited by U.N. resolutions.

"I think the world is far safer with the disappearance and the removal of Saddam Hussein," he said under questioning from Chairman John Warner, R-Va.

I actually saw some of Kay's testimony on television. Repeatedly, he argued that the decision to go to war was justifiable given the state of the intelligence, he reaffirmed his argument that the inspection teams found evidence that Iraq had violated Resolution 1441, and he maintained that Iraq was in many ways more dangerous than was previously thought because of a lack of centralized control that allowed terrorists to freely enter the country and potentially have access to weapons and weapons programs. Most ominously of all, Kay pointed out that given everything that had been found in Iraq, it was clear that Saddam Hussein was seeking a significant stockpile of WMD's. We simply got to him before the programs could lurch dangerously forward.

Kay's testimony can be found either on audio or on video here. And if anyone can point me to a transcript, I'm happy to link to, and excerpt from it.

But it is clear that Alterman has misrepresented Kay's position. He has said nothing about the nature of Kay's testimony before Congress, his comments here, or his NPR interview, where Kay stated that "I think it was reasonable to reach the conclusion that Iraq posed an imminent threat," and "I actually think Iraq, what we learned during the inspection, made Iraq a more dangerous place potentially than, in fact, we thought it was even before the war."

And Alterman will continue to ignore these salient points as well. After all, why tell the truth when one can simply make partisan points and engage in journalistic hackery? The latter practice may be intellectually weak and reprehensible, but it is easier than actually checking and reporting the facts, isn't it? And for Alterman, that appears to be all that matters.

THERE ARE TIMES I WONDER ABOUT HUMAN SURVIVABILITY

Reading this story about the online version of The Sims leads to one of those times:

Peter Ludlow is not just a computer gaming enthusiast. He's also a philosophy professor, with an abiding interest in the relationship between the real and the virtual worlds. So when the world's most successful virtual-reality game, the Sims, launched an online version just over a year ago, he didn't just join in for fun; he also decided that he could carry out research for his next book.

And that was where the trouble started. Alphaville, the game's fictional city, could have gone in any number of directions, depending on the arbitrary decisions of the online game players who make up its people through their chosen "avatars", or game characters.

Alphaville could have become a socialist utopia, a grand experiment in free-market capitalism or simply a reflection of the allure and the pitfalls of any real Western city.

As it was, Alphaville quickly turned into a hellhole of scam-artists, crime syndicates, mafia extortion artists and teenage girls turning tricks to make ends meet. It became a breeding ground for the very worst in human nature - a benign-sounding granny, for example, who specialised in taking new players into her confidence, then showered them in abuse. Then there was the scam-artist known as Evangeline, who started out equally friendly and then stole new players' money.

I have no idea how to respond to this, or to EA's desire to shut down Ludlow's examination of why Alphaville turned out the way that it did. This is simply one of the most bizarre stories I've ever felt the compulsion to pass along.

(Link via Hit & Run.)

SNIPPY

I don't like Howard Dean one bit, but is there any doubt that this is simply the end result of an attempt at petty revenge? I mean, the following sentence is just loaded with the fury of a journalist scorned:

I never got the five minutes with him. Which left me five minutes to think about why his candidacy was sputtering.

The rest of the article is just as stupid and incoherent. Read it, if you dare.

THE APOCALYPSE IS UPON US

At long last, I agree with The Nation about something.

AH, ELOQUENCE

Behold the latest in intelligent political discourse. Some samples:

* "Despite all of this stupid bullsh-- that the Republican National Committee, or whatever the f--- they call them, that they were saying that they're all angry about how two of these ads were comparing Bush to Hitler? I mean, out of thousands of submissions, they find two. They're like fu--ing looking for Hitler in a hawstack. You now? I mean, George Bush is not Hitler. He would be if he fu--ing applied himself." big, extended applause) "I mean he just isn't."

* "For example, Judge Roy Moore, or Jay Moore or whatever, in Alabama. [inaudible] ... Ten Commandments statue stay in the lobby of a courthouse. 'You can't move the Word of God! You cannot remove the Franklin Mint edition of the Word of God!' [said in Southern accent] People are protesting there and like, I think it could have been solved so much easier if they had just placed a golden calf next to the statue and then people would have started worshipping that. And then they could have moved the Ten Commandments to Bush's office -- which he needs them, desperately. Or maybe he needs a new version of the Ten Commandments -- George W. Bush's Ten Commandments: Thou shalt not steal...votes. (big applause) Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's...country. (big applause) Thou shalt not kill...for oil. (big applause) Thou shalt not take grammar...in vain. (big applause) I mean, whatever fu--ing happened to separation of church and state? I mean, you can't like, impose your god on my god. God has many names. God is God, God is Jehovah, God is Allah, God is Buddah, God is Beyonce. (laughter) . . .

* "I mean, I'm afraid of terrorists, but I'm more afraid of the Patriot Act." (big applause)

* "Americanization is like McDonaldization"

*"I'm Al Franken. I'm here to present the funniest ad award. I'm a last-minute substitution, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill was supposed to be the presenter, but unfortunately he was murdered."

Yeah, I'm stirred. Stirred, I tell you. So what was the collective IQ at the gathering, I wonder. -67?

"ANTI-SEMITISM SCARCELY EXISTS IN THE WEST"

Yeah, right.

STUPID ARTICLE OF THE DAY

I tried to determine whether this is some sort of parody. It doesn't seem to be, and it would appear that we really shouldn't even think about going to Mars during the lifetime of the Bush Administration because:

1. NASA is located in Houston, and going to Mars is just part and parcel of enriching the Texas economy (apparently, the Texas economy shouldn't be enriched--I must have missed it when Texas recently decided to secede from the Union); and

2. We might enrich--wait for it!--Halliburton, since it is one of the few companies involved in the long term project of building the equipment needed to drill for underground water in order to show that there may have been life on Mars.

It's still a relatively new year, so I'm sure that something will be written that is shoddier and more idiotically conclusory than this article. But it would be hard to imagine.¹

¹I'm terrified that Joe Conason will take this as a challenge, and immediately start writing an even dumber piece.

FAIR WEATHER FRIEND

How many people want to rely on George Soros after reading this?

The 2002 Soros Foundations Network annual report skips lightly over the fact best known to the citizens of the former Communist lands in which Soros money was spent: that he has abandoned them. For example, it notes, "In Central Europe, we have reduced our expenditures because the accession process [i.e. integration into the European Community] itself addresses many of our concerns. For example, the accession countries are required to improve the protection of minority rights in accordance with EU legal standards." Thus, Soros' downsizing in countries like Bosnia-Hercegovina is presented as a consequence of success in realizing its goals.

The political and intellectual class in Sarajevo will remember the history of the Soros Open Society Institute there quite differently. I vividly recall the decision of Soros to cut his funding in Bosnia-Hercegovina in 2000, when he came to realize that he could not simply purchase and install a turn-key "civil society" in a country devastated by ethnic aggression.

In general, Soros activities in countries like Bosnia have a "politically-correct," do-gooder quality. In the 2002 report, we are told that $5 million was expended in Bosnia on such projects as reform of secondary schools in the city of Tuzla; establishment of a youth information agency; a student entrepreneurship program; vague assistance to municipalities to improve local governance, and empowerment of Roma (also known as Gypsy) communities.

But to anyone who knows the situation in Bosnia even superficially, such largesse compares to offering a single bandage to a man in need of a heart transplant. Postwar Bosnia's Muslim-majority zone is utterly impoverished. Its Serb zone is dominated by an underground economy. Nothing has been done by the so-called "international community" to create a new economic life for Bosnians. To a considerable degree, Bosnia remains stuck in the legal and commercial system inherited from Tito's "self-managed" socialism. There has been no reform of pensions; estimates of unemployment range between 25 and 40 percent; labor reform is never debated. Privatization is almost never seriously discussed.

Economic life goes on, with small businesses and cafes popping up, usually with a limited inventory and menu, but often with unoccupied young men of a gangsterly mien hanging around. But nobody visiting the country for the first time would ever imagine that Bosnia-Hercegovina was once considered a success story in the Yugoslav context.

Something to remember, perhaps, in light of Soros's recent attempts to "contribute" to American democracy. Though, to be honest, I hope that Moveon.org gets as screwed as the former Yugoslavia has been.

GODWIN'S LAW--VIOLATED AGAIN

Do I even have to mention how disgusting I find this to be?

QUOI?

Just how stupid does one have to be to write the following?

Now factor in 9/11, with its gross insult to America's twin stiffies (soon to be replaced by an even taller "Power Tower," as the New York Post has dubbed it). Real as the danger of terrorism is, it has coincided with the so-called crisis of masculinity to produce a powerful perception that we need a strongman--rather than a strong person--in order to survive. The result is a politics of cartoon virility. But a symbol that doesn't meet actual needs soon seems like an empty artifice. That's what Dean is betting on. He's out to embody a masculinity that feels substantial rather than ceremonial. In other words, he's trying to be butch but not macho.

"Twin stiffies"? Is this the macho talk that Richard Goldstein learned from his jock friends?

And what, pray tell, does an analogy between the Twin Towers and erections make September 11th? Shrinkage? Someone page George Costanza.

NO SURPRISE

Water is wet. Night follows day. The sun rises in the east. And Hesiod Theogeny [sic] is an idiot.

As, by the way, are his many fellow-travelers. These people make me sorry that the Internet, or 24 hour news were ever invented. If they weren't, I wouldn't be confronted by their sheer stupidity on such an unremitting basis.

"FANTASTIC SHRIMP AND SPECTACULAR PORK!"

Quoth Alex Tabarrok:

On his recent visit to Cuba a group of writers practically begs Arthur Miller for help, for words of support, for some protection against their oppressive government and Miller is stumped. He's so enthralled with Castro and his "fantastic shrimp" and "spectacular pork" that he is clueless to their plight. Morality does not require that we risk our lives, as some Cuban writers do, to speak truth to power but it does require that we honor those who do. What then to think of someone who laughs off their plight while enjoying wine with their oppressor?

Well, it's quite obvious what to think, but if I actually wrote it down, my blog may not make it past obscenity filters on the Internet. So for now, I'll content myself with echoing Tabarrok's comment that what Milller did was "despicable."

To say the least.

CREATIVE WRITING

Just what the world needed--a travel guide to North Korea!

The guide, written by British journalist Robert Willoughby, sometimes twists itself into knots to be judicious, but when it comes to politics Mr. Willoughby can be quite candid: "Remember that this guide is only useful in the country if it's allowed in, so what I haven't explicitly written about I've included [Internet] links to." Among the best is the human-rights work of Norbert Vollertsen, a German doctor who was expelled from North Korea in 2001 and has just written a book on what he saw there (to be published next month by Encounter).

Even with its pulled punches, the book does a mind-bending job of describing the personality cult that surrounds the late dictator Kim Il Sung ("the Great Leader") and his son and successor Kim Jong Il ("the Dear Leader"). The guide laconically notes that tourists will "be asked to 'pay respect' to statues and shrines" of the two men. "Just do it" is its terse advice. After all, this is a country where even the newspapers are folded in such a way as to avoid creasing the photos of the Leaders.

After a lengthy list of cultural do's and don't's the book settles down to the tourist sites, all of which must be visited with "minders" who robotically describe their glories. Mr. Willoughby quotes the North Koreans saying that Pyongyang, the capital, is "the political centre, the centre for culture and education and a wellspring of our revolution." But it's apparently dangerous to let guests too close to the wellspring. Most stay in a high-rise hotel on an island in the middle of a river where guards can easily block unsupervised access to the city. The guide calls the island "an Alcatraz of fun." It was once planned that visitors stay in the Ryugyong Hotel, a 105-story pyramid whose construction was halted when famine hit North Korea in the 1990s. Though brochures show it brilliantly lit up in night photos, it is still an empty shell that has never been wired for electricity.

"An Alcatraz of fun." Now there's marketing for you.

AND THEY GAVE HIM TENURE?

As Stuart Buck expertly points out, we can conclude three things about Brian Leiter:

1. Leiter believes in the concept of "free speech for me, but not for thee" if you express opinions with which he disagrees.

2. Leiter equates having a classmate in school express his/her belief in God with having the state tell you that you cannot practice your religion at all. In other words, if the Federal Government completely violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, it would be just as bad, and just as "significant" as having a committed secularist student listen to a classmate in school state his/her religious faith.

3. Leiter is utterly ignorant of the traditional mixing of religion in the classroom that has defined most of American life.

Go ahead, read Stuart's post on Leiter's "thoughts," and then tell me that I got any of this wrong. Also, while you're at it, tell me how in the name of heaven any of Leiter's vacuous positions can be justified.

FISKING OF THE DAY

At Stephen Green's newly re-designed site (the man goes through more design and logo changes than have most corporations), you can find this well-written annihilation of Maureen Dowd's latest nonsensical column. Reading Dowd get Fisked is like watching water boil--there is a certain inevitability to it--but Stephen performs the task with particular panache. Check out his post.

THE CHARM OVERFLOWETH

I guess I had better bring my own meals for any Air Emirates flights I find myself on. God, how can people be so stupid?

(Link via Andrew Sullivan.)

AND THE NONSENSE DOESN'T STOP

I guess that this ad must've "slipped through" as well.

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALEX TABARROK

Both for his prize, and for providing me with the best laugh that I have had in a while.

SCATHING

That's the best way to describe this post by Eric Raymond to the following comment by John Perry Barlow on Barlow's desire to see President Bush defeated in 2004. Barlow's self-indulgent remark is as follows:

We can't afford to lose this one, folks. If we do, we'll have to set our watches back 60 years. If they even let us have watches in the camps, that is.

To which Raymond responds:

Idiots. They make me want to go vote for somebody like Pat Buchanan just out of spite. Fortunately, I'm not a spiteful person, and have so far resisted this temptation.

And I don't think it's just me that sees people like John Perry Barlow actually dealing themselves out of the future when they make remarks like this. Narcissistic politics is not a luxury we can afford any more. It was OK during our holiday from history, 1992-2001, between the fall of the Soviet Union and 9/11, but we're in serious times now. Our nation, and our civilization, are under continuing threat by terrorists who have demonstrated both the will and the ability to commit atrocities against Americans, and who loudly trumpet their intention to keep killing us.

We need people like John Perry Barlow to be in the debate about how to cope with this. That means we need people like John Perry Barlow not to trivialize and disqualify themselves with silly posturing. Please get real, people. George Bush has flaws I could list from here to Sunday, but pretending that you're all doomed victims if he's re-elected is pathological.

And deep down, you know better, too. The last two years have given us not just relatively smart people like John Perry Barlow but legions of mindless show-biz glitterati making a particularly ironic spectacle of themselves — protesting the crushing of dissent in front of huge audiences. Thereby demonstrating their own lack of contact with reality in a way that can only help the very opponents they think of as a sinister cabal. With enemies this visibly stupid and feckless, who needs friends? They'll drive the big middle of the electorate right into Republican arms.

Let's state the consequences very simply: Every time somebody like John Perry Barlow goes on in public about how the camps are waiting for us all, Karl Rove laughs and, quite rightly, figures his guy Bush is more of a lock this November. And you know what? He's right. Because if I hear much more of this crap, even I am going to vote Republican for the first time in more than a quarter-century.

Just as long as the vote isn't for Pat Buchanan, I'm fine with that. But seriously, Eric is right, and he validates Michael Walzer's complaint about the lack of a decent Left.

THE CONDESCENDING AND IGNORANT ARTICLE OF THE DAY

Speaking of morons, the author of this article pretty much Fisks himself. I really don't have anything to add when an opponent in a debate intellectually destroys his own position by living up to the stereotype that he constructs to explain the actions of others.

UPDATE: Now, for true intelligence, go here.

MORE OUTRAGE

Apparently, Moveon.org has a special affinity for comparisons between the Bush Administration and the Nazis. Fortunately, this filth is beginning to draw condemnation. From the story:

Jack Rosen, president of the American Jewish Congress, writes in Monday's WALL STREET JOURNAL: "MoveOn.org informed potential ad makers that 'we're not going to post anything that would be inappropriate for television.' Two of the ads posted on the group's Web site compared Adolf Hitler to George W. Bush. One ad morphed an image of Hitler into President Bush and says that, '1945's war crimes' are '2003's foreign policy.'" Rosen says MoveOn.org is "using the memory of that genocide as a political prop. Their comparison diminishes the reality of what happened, and their actions cheapen the memory of a horrific crime. It also does a terrible disservice to this country at a perilous time, when we need to examine the dangers we face with clarity and purpose." Leadership is "about confronting threats to freedom everywhere. President Bush has shown that leadership in Iraq, and our troops have liberated a people who were oppressed by another murderous dictator. MoveOn.org compares this liberation to the Holocaust. It deploys a picture of Hitler to vilify President Bush. Comparing the commander-in-chief of a democratic nation to the murderous tyrant Hitler is not only historically specious, it is morally outrageous. Comparing an American president, any American president, to Hitler is an outrage. The MoveOn.org ad was inexcusable. Political figures such as Al Gore, who have associated themselves with MoveOn.org, have a special responsibility to condemn these ads; donors to the group such as George Soros have the same responsibility. They owe it not just to the memory of the millions who died in the Holocaust. They owe it also as a simple matter of decency."

And from the Simon Wiesenthal Center:

“Politics and preparing for a presidential election is one thing, but comparing the Bush Administration’s fight against Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein with the policies of Adolf Hitler is shameful and beyond the pale and has no place in the legitimate discourse of American politics,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, the Center’s dean and founder.

“This ad is not about Democrats or Republicans - it is about lies and a distortion of history,” he added.

MoveOn.org was right to pull the ad but they should apologize for not using better judgment in posting it in the first place,” Hier concluded.

The "first ad" referred to can be found here. I hope that the Blogosphere gets involved in this, and puts pressure on the organization to stop this distortion of facts and history. And it would be especially interesting to see the reaction from all of the bloggers who link to Moveon.org on their sites. Do they really endorse this insulting nonsense?

UPDATE: Stephen Bainbridge has more on this issue.

UNORIGINALITY REIGNS

And is disgusting to boot.

Just to make something clear, the attriibuted quote to Bush comes from a statement made by former Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, who claimed that President Bush made the statement to him. There is no independent verification of this comment, and the White House denied that the President made the statement. Apparently, the denizens of Moveon.org have been spending too much time reading the filth at Democratic Underground.

I want to mention just how personally offensive I find these misuses of the Hitler analogy. They not only represent historically imbecilic arguments by a bunch of halfwits whose ambitions regularly exceed their talents, they dishonor those who actually suffered at the hands of the Nazis. There is a reason why Godwin's Law was invented--to put a stop to these stupid analogies. But I guess that some people are beyond any ability to responsibly restrain their own rhetoric.

AND NOW FOR YOUR READING PLEASURE

Musings from complete idiots.

Kudos to John Hawkins for actually having the stamina to wade through all of that drivel to create a "Top Ten" post. You couldn't pay me to do that.

Well, actually you could but it would have to be a ten figure sum. And I won't discourage you from trying.

SLAMMING SEYMOUR HERSH

David Adesnik does the honors. My favorite passage:

The low point in Hersh's article is his uncritical quotation of charlatan-slash-turncoat Scott Ritter. While that sort of lapse is noteworthy by itself, the contents of Ritter's quote are especially amusing:

“The high-profile guys around Saddam were the murafaqin, his most loyal companions, who could stand next to him carrying a gun...but now he’s gone to a different tier—the tribes...

Guys like Farouq Hijazi can deliver some of the Baath Party cells, and he knows where some of the intelligence people are. But he can’t get us into the tribal hierarchy.”

Well, evidently someone got us inside whoever it is was guarding Saddam. Now, the fact that we got Saddam doesn't disprove anything Hersh is trying to say. But his willingness to play up worthless sources like Ritter demonstrates how committed he is to portraying the occupation as a failure. Thus, when things go right, committed pessimists like Hersh find it hard to explain how that was possible when we were supposed to be stuck in a quagmire.

ASTONISHINGLY STUPID PEOPLE

I see the topic discussed by this link and this one, and I really have to wonder about the survivability of the human race.

Yes, I know that most people aren't this amazingly dumb. But it only takes a few bad apples . . .

LIVING UP TO THE LEGACY

Henry Ford would be proud. Too bad that doesn't exactly reflect well on the foundation bearing his name.

NOMINA SUNT CONSEQUENTIA RERUM

It should, by now, be impossible for any thinking person to take the BBC's political coverage seriously:

Spy recently reported confusion at the BBC over what to call Harrods boss Mohamed (al) Fayed. Now, I hear that descriptions of Saddam Hussein are the latest target of a corporation diktat.

"An email has been circulated telling us not to refer to Saddam as a dictator," I'm told. "Instead, we are supposed to describe him as the former leader of Iraq.

"Apparently, because his presidency was endorsed in a referendum, he was technically elected. Hence the word dictator is banned. It's all rather ridiculous."

The Beeb insists that the email merely restates existing guidelines. "We wanted to remind journalists whose work is seen and heard internationally of the need to use neutral language," says a spokesman.

The mind boggles.

GOOGLE-BOMBING

All right kids. Enough with the Internet hijinks. It's not going to help anyway, and all it does is provide comic material for Tim Blair.

WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION

John Hawkins is on the hunt.

"OY"

Go here, here, here, here and here to see very smart people laughing at very stupid people. It is quite amusing. Really.

And go here for a question that none of the stupid people will dare answer.

I'M A LITTLE LATE TO THIS . . .

But this latest debunking by Spinsanity should not be missed.

I'M NOT ONE TO THROW OUT THE CHARGE OF "DISLOYALTY" WITH RECKLESS ABANDON . . .

But John Hawkins shows that the charge is merited in at least one case.

Some people are just plain sick. There's really no other way to describe it.

ADDING INSULT TO HORRENDOUS INJURY

How about that "scarce" anti-Semitism?

THANKS, BUT NO THANKS

I'm even less inclined to make a campaign contribution to Barbara Boxer after seeing what I could get in return.

"ANTI-SEMITISM SCARCELY EXISTS NOW"

A claim that is increasingly proven to be a joke.

DISPUTING MORE NONSENSE

Courtesy of Damian Penny. I trust that people realize that Noam Chomsky could very well spawn a cottage industry of fact-checkers to correct his many lies and misstatements.

THE CLUELESS CHOMSKYITES

There must be something in the Chomskyite DNA that causes the MIT Professor and his acolytes to (a) put up red herring arguments in any debate, (b) botch the reading of the English language to the point of laughability, (c) blatantly lie to preserve their debating positions in the face of all the evidence, and (d) lie with such little skill that their arguments could be batted away and shot down by just about any sentient human.

Blogger Enthymeme makes this clear by brilliantly exposing and debunking a pathetic defense of Chomsky's recent statement that anti-Semitism in the West "scarcely exists now." Just follow the first link he provides in this post. For that matter, just check the comments by "Eric" and "Meh" to my post yesterday to witness the standard Chomskyite debating tactic, outlined above.

The extent to which Chomskyites go to try to prove that two plus two equals lettuce is truly a wonder to behold. I wonder if some of them will be willing to donate their brains to science so that we may study the neurological underpinning behind the phenomenon that is their debating technique.

Of course, that would assume that there would be anything to donate in the first place.

MORE SHEER STUPIDITY

Check out the following exchange in this interview with Noam Chomsky:

Is anti-Semitism on the increase? Ricardo Parreira, London

[Chomsky]: In the West, fortunately, it scarcely exists now, though it did in the past. There is, of course, what the Anti-Defamation League calls "the real anti-Semitism", more dangerous than the old-fashioned kind: criticism of policies of the state of Israel and US support for them, opposition to a vast US military budget, etc. In contrast, anti-Arab racism is rampant. The manifestations are shocking, in elite intellectual circles as well, but arouse little concern because they are considered legitimate: the most extreme form of racism.

(Emphasis mine.) The mind boggles. Anti-Semitism "scarcely exists" in the West? And doesn't the statement "it did in the past" imply that Chomsky doesn't believe that anti-Semitism exists in the present, or that at the very most, it is now a spent force? Hasn't he been paying attention to myriad and rampant stories of anti-Semitism in Europe alone (which I've been led to understand is part of "the West")? Did Chomsky somehow miss this story? Or this one on how anti-globalization movements worldwide are incorporating anti-Semitism into their message? How about this little manifestation of anti-Semitism in the West--against the only Jewish candidate for the American Presidency, to boot? Does Chomsky believe that charges of anti-Semitism only center around debates about Israel, or that those who claim that they are not anti-Semitic, only "anti-Zionist" aren't being wholly disingenuous in many cases?

In fact, how does one make heads or tails out of the "Anti-Defamation League" comment? It is so poorly phrased and articulated, that one has a hard time figuring out what Chomsky means to argue through its inclusion. We only know for sure that "in contrast" to the supposedly "scarce existence" of anti-Semitism in the West, Chomsky believes that "anti-Arab racism is rampant." Not to excuse racism against Arabs, or to minimize legitimate complaints regarding anti-Arab racism, but contrasting anti-Arab racism with anti-Jewish racism with the implication that the former is more widespread than the latter, is absurd. Ask French Jews who gets better treatment in their country, the Jews or the Arabs? Indeed, ask any educated observer that question. Given the alarmingly rapid rise of anti-Jewish sentiment in France, the acts of violence inflicted against French Jews, and the coddling of an anti-Jewish population that--and this must be pointed out--includes many Arab extremists living in France, there can be only one answer to that question. Once you're finished canvassing opinion in France, check out Britain, where the rise in anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic remarks has been documented more times than I can count.

(Incidentally, I have no doubt that many Western Arabs are free from anti-Jewish sentiment. Unfortunately, many are not, and indeed, many indulge in it.)

I mean, good God, the lying and the idiocy contained in Chomsky's remarks is enough to leave you slack-jawed for a week. Remind me again: How can such a charlatan foment such devotion to him, and to his principles?

UPDATE: Many thanks to Glenn Reynolds, Andrew Sullivan, and David Bernstein for their links. Professor Bernstein informs us in his post that "[e]ven in the U.S., historically among the least anti-Semitic countries in the West, studies consistently show a core 10-20% of the public holds strong anti-Semitic views." Hardly sounds like anti-Semitism "scarcely exists" according to that figure.

ARMED LIBERAL HAS RICHLY EARNED THE ARMAMENTS IN HIS POSSESSION

This post is but one reason why.

HOW ASTONISHINGLY STUPID

Look, I really don't care what your position on gay marriage is, and I understand that many times, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" is a perfectly rational policy to adopt.

But as Damian Penny points out, the policy can, at times, be pushed too far. Way too far.

This is ugly. It demeans the fight against terrorism, the people who associate with these terrorist groups, and the causes they support. It should stop now. And given the failure of many on the Left to police their ranks (I promise you that the next antiwar rally will still have an A.N.S.W.E.R. stamp on it), those of us on the Right should be all the more vigilant in policing ours.

PANTS ON FIRE

An appalling story, courtesy of John Cole. I can't imagine what damage this might do to AIDS research.

SHOPPERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

What's next? Gifts for the Nazi in your life?

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

David Bernstein's post on life imitating Monty Python is hilarious because it is increasingly true. I suppose that in some sense, the humor deadens us to the ongoing nonsense we are inundated with by political correctness, but at the same time, given the fact that most controversies regarding political correctness are so laughable in and of themselves, the belief that we are living in a parody becomes harder to escape.

GOOD NEWS IN THE WAR AGAINST INSANITY

International Buy Nothing Day appears to have been a complete flop.

(Thanks to Mike Daley for the links.)

TAKING OFFENSE

Eugene Volokh has every right to be offended. And might I suggest that the country has more important things to worry about than the use of common English words to refer to computer components and parts?

Incidentally, now that people have officially lost their minds on this issue, what is next? Will someone demand a namechange for the movie Master and Commander? Will fetishists have to use different terms in their . . . um . . . play? The possibilities are endless, you know.

SICKENING

Tell me again how there is no anti-Semitism in Europe.

And yes, I said "anti-Semitism." Not "anti-Zionism," but "anti-Semitism." People like Dave Brown can claim to be anti-Zionist, but I've read too many stories about Jew-bashing in Europe to believe that excuse is anything other than a fig leaf for the world's oldest prejudice.

TERRIBLE NEWS FOR GLENN REYNOLDS

Dr. Weevil has the details. I'm certain that Glenn is devastated to lose the readership of the semi-literate.

POLLY TOYNBEE: FISKED

Tim Blair--who was conspicuous by his absence from the Blogosphere for the past few weeks--does the honors.

THE HORROR! THE HORROR!

Soon I have to call these people fellow alumni.

I don't believe that time is actually being spent discussing this issue. Kids, if you have to go to the bathroom, then just go.

Don't worry about gender issues. Avoid the bladder infections. Go!

I SHOULD REALLY SEE ABOUT COLLECTING ON THAT LOBBYING MONEY . . .

Because apparently, that's what I do as a contributing writer to Tech Central Station, according to Nick Confessore.

I hate to break it to Confessore, but I've never been told what to write, and I've never written articles in order to curry favor with corporate sponsors of TCS. The person I deal with at TCS--the person I send my articles to--is Nick Schulz, who edits the articles, or occasionally asks me to make some changes to articles I have sent. There was one time that he asked if I would be willing to take on some arguments made by Yale Law Professor Bruce Ackerman about the war powers of the President. I imagine that the reason I was approached with this was that I am a lawyer, and having examined Ackerman's arguments, I found them wanting in every way, and was rather eager--independent of Nick Schulz's request--to refute Ackerman. I provided my counterarguments in this piece. Other than that, I can't remember a single time when Nick suggested a topic. And I certainly have never been ordered to write something. In the overwhelming majority of circumtances, I choose what to write about, and submit it.

Already, Confessore's article is being used in an attempt to discredit any arguments that come out of TCS. Henry Farrell calls Glenn Reynolds a "useful idiot" for writing for TCS, and allegedly providing "corporate shill pieces." Chris Bertram wonders if any bloggers will "regret" their association with "a corporate lobbying operation." I can't speak for other writers, but I'll respond to Henry's insulting suggestion by pointing out a fact that is likely obvious to all but him: It's kind of hard to accuse TCS of cranking out "corporate shill pieces" when the writers are basically able to write about whatever they want. TCS may solicit pieces from conservative and libertarian bloggers and writers, but that just means that TCS has a conservative/libertarian bent. Since Henry and others can't take that viewpoint seriously, apparently, they call it "corporate shilling." Unfortunately, of course, advertising is needed to pay the bills, and without the advertising, you would have to pay a subscription fee to read TCS articles, which would reduce readership, and which in all likelihood is precisely what people like Henry Farrell want--the reduced distribution of ideas they don't quite like.

Gee, what a shock. And it is for these precise reasons that I don't feel the slightest bit of "regret" for submitting pieces to TCS. I'll continue to do so in the future.

Just out of curiosity, has Confessore ever written a muckraking column decrying National Public Radio's sponsorship by the liberal Ford Foundation, and all the ways that NPR's reporting advances Ford Foundation beliefs? Or is this kind of game only played against conservatives and libertarians? And why is it that Confessore doesn't mention something unique to TCS--the fact that it heavily solicits from independent writers like bloggers? Would it be because admitting that TCS solicits freelance work would undermine the argument that TCS puts out articles designed to "shill" for corporate sponsors? And have Confessore, Bertram or Farrell considered the possibility that the sponsorship money follows the opinions--which would be the most logical explanation--and not the other way around?

Of course not. Why mess up a good smear with something so inconvenient as the facts?

The overall thrust of Confessore's arguments are pretty weak, but some of his charges simply jump out as being especially nonsensical. He accuses TCS of being a shill for Microsoft, but fails to mention this article defending and stumping for Linux and open source software. Confessore arguues that TCS shills in favor of sponsor PhRMA, neglecting to mention this article by Dan Drezner, which goes against PhRMA's preferred intellectual property position. The "corporate shilling" that TCS supposedly engages in through its conservative/libertarian policies was surely compromised through soliciting an article from Matthew Yglesias, wasn't it?

You get the picture. In general, Confessore takes the site's philosophical bent and does precisely what Henry Farrell does in his post referenced above--he tries to delegitimize it not through taking on the arguments, but somehow arguing that they are "shilling." And Confessore does this without presenting evidence that would undermine his argument--evidence that I presented above of articles that go against Confessore's claims.

Additionally, Confessore doesn't imagine other ways in which his argument fails. Query: If TCS merely wants to shill for DCI clients, why not just have DCI lobbyists write articles? Why solicit articles from people like bloggers--people like me--that may not entirely hew to the party line? Indeed, why solicit writing from Chris Bertram--linked to above--when Bertram is not "right-wing" enough for TCS? Confessore never discusses this.

But enough of my arguments. Let's hear the arguments of others:

1. Glenn Reynolds:

All I'll say is that I've written for TCS for nearly two years, and they've never told me what to write. Occasionally the editor, Nick Schulz, will suggest a topic -- last week he suggested that I write something about the Federal Marriage Amendment, and I stupidly declined, not realizing what a big issue it would be this week -- but it's certainly hard for me to discern any Subtle Corporate Agenda in those suggestions.

2. Jane Galt:

I can only speak from my own experience, of course, but in my time as a contributor to TCS, I've never been told what to write -- other than a request to focus on a topic Nick Schulz thought was timely and important -- or how to write it. Obviously, it's a libertarian-leaning site, and I probably wouldn't pitch an article arguing that we need to nationalize the coal industry, but then, as Daniel Drezner points out, I wouldn't pitch what I've written for TCS to the Nation, either, and no one seems to think that makes their journalism ethically suspect. And I've certainly never written one line for TCS for any reason other than that I thought it was true; certainly not so that I could serve as a "mouthpiece" for think-tanks or corporate executives. Nor, as far as I know, have any of the other contributors I've met.

3. Daniel Drezner:

As Confessore himself points out, TCS "runs smartly-written think pieces." That may be part of the reason its essays travel so well in the mediasphere -- the caliber of TCS ideas, as opposed to the source of TCS funding.

4. Michael Totten (whose experience mirrors mine as a freelance writer):

First of all, no one on this Earth tells me what to think or what to write. That includes Nick Shulz, the editor of Tech Central Station. It also includes Halliburton. None of Dick Cheney’s old pals call me up at home and tell me what to say about Iraq or anything else.

I write for TCS freelance. That means I pitch my own ideas to the magazine.

My pieces get edited and Nick asks me to approve the changes. I don’t always like the changes he makes, so then we discuss it. Sometimes he convinces me that it’s better this way or that, and other times I convince him that his edits weren’t for the best. It’s a give and take, a healthy editing process, and nothing with my name on it gets published without my consent.

5. Arnold Kling (writing in response to Brad DeLong's attempt at scandal-mongering):

Here's my "inside" perspective.

If you want to write for TCS, I suggest writing like a philosopher. I think that Nick, the editor, has a soft spot for writers with a philosophical bent. Where else could I publish an essay entitled "The Sect of Austrian economics" starting out with a quote from Ernst Troelsch on the nature of sects and cults?

James Glassman is more the fundraiser/face of TCS. I don't think he has any hands-on role. I wasn't sure he knew who I was until I went to an event a couple of months ago where I saw him. I introduced myself, and he said, "Oh, yeah...I've seen your picture on some articles on TechCentralStation." That's all the interaction we've had.

I'm glad that TCS gives me a platform. See if you can guess which sponsors prompted me to write my last three essays:

on the sect-like behavior of Austrian economists;

on the issue of government funding for research, including criticism of the Bush hydrogen funding idea;

and on the issue of the trade deficit, where I argued that policies should not focus on trade barriers but instead on national saving, including reducing the Budget deficit.

When you've got it sorted out, tell me. And let me know which sponsor cares about my next essay, on the Kasparov vs. machine chess match.

(Just for the record, I've never met, talked to, e-mailed or received an e-mail from James Glassman. In fact, I've never had any communication with him.)

I'd ask Kling's question about my columns calling for the liberation of Iran. Does the Left not believe in the invalidity of the Islamic regime? Can you only take my view if you are "shilling" for ExxonMobil and are just interested in all that oil?

You can, if you want, choose to disbelieve all of my arguments, and the arguments of others. However even a light reading of Confessore's article, and the comments from the choir of Bertram, Farrell, DeLong et. al. who reinforce it, reveals that the anti-TCS comments all depend on passing off one big, giant logical fallacy as a legitimate argument. This tactic is as obviously sloppy as it is pathetic.

But no one should be surprised. As mentioned in Jane's comments, "This is probably a sign that TCS is having a real impact: the ad hominems have started."

Exactly.

UPDATE: John Cole has some cogent commentary.

GEE, WHERE DID ANYONE GET THE IDEA THAT PAUL KRUGMAN IS SHRILL?

Jane Galt has a picture of the cover for Paul Krugman's book The Great Unraveling in its version for sale outside the United States. Commenters confirm that the book cover is not a hoax.

If Krugman is not in charge of picking out book covers, he should still criticize his publisher for coming up with a cover that, as Jane says, looks so extreme that Michael Moore would have rejected it.

If Krugman did pick the book cover . . . well . . . that probably speaks volumes for what he thinks of his argument, and how he thinks that he needs to appeal to the base instincts of readers outside the United States. Most people, if confident of their arguments, wouldn't have to resort to this kind of image demagoguery to get their points across.

A HODGEPODGE OF CONFUSION

Mark Steyn on the anti-American protestors:

If you're so inclined, you can spend the week listening to long speeches by George Galloway and Harold Pinter. Or you can cut to the chase and get the message from Maulana Inyadullah. In late September 2001 Mr Inyadullah was holed up in Peshawar awaiting the call to arms against the Great Satan and offered this pithy soundbite to the Telegraph's David Blair:

"The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death."

That's it in a nutshell - or in a nut's hell. And, like Mr Inyadullah, if it's Pepsi or death, the fellows on the streets of London this week choose death - at least for the Iraqis. If it's a choice between letting some carbonated-beverage crony of Dick Cheney get a piece of the Nasariyah soft-drinks market or allowing Saddam to go on feeding his subjects feet-first into the industrial shredder for another decade or three, then the "peace" activists will take the lesser of two evils - ie, crank up the shredder. Better yet, end UN sanctions so Saddam can replace the older, less reliable shredders, the ones with too many bits of bone tissue jammed in the cogs.

Well, Saddam's gone, on the run with no Grecian 2000 and all out of Quality Street. But it's a measure of the intensity of this psychosis that the "Stop The War" crowd may well manage to turn out more people this week than they did during the war. The war stopped six months ago, some 80 per cent of Iraq is peaceful and well governed, and the overwhelming majority of Iraqis I spoke to when I was there want the Americans to stay, rather than cut and run like the UN, Oxfam and co. But screw the Iraqi people; the "peace" crowd know better than the ignorant natives what's good for them.

So this week they'll be splashing red paint hither and yon to symbolise all the Iraqi blood spilled by Bush. In yesterday's Independent , Dr David Lowry noted that Medact, a respected NGO of British medical chappies, has decided that, since the start of the Iraq war in March, between 7,800 and 9,600 civilians have died. This is presumably the same Medact that a year ago predicted that in the Iraq war and the three months following 260,000 would die, with a further 200,000 succumbing to disease and famine, and another 20,000 getting killed in the ensuing civil war.

Given that they've now revised their figures downwards by 98 per cent, it would be nice to think the protesters might reduce their budget for gallons of Dulux Mesopotamian Burgundy Gloss by a commensurate amount. The rest of us should pelt Medact with rotten tomatoes symbolising all the blood that wasn't spilt. Alternatively, they could symbolise Harold Pinter's graphically leaking rectum. In this paper before the war, Mr Pinter assured us that millions of Iraqi children's rectums were chronically leaking blood - something to do with depleted uranium from the Yanks. In every medical facility I visited in western and northern Iraq, I inquired about this phenomenon and found no one who knew of a single sufferer.

It's harsh language, but it is well-merited by a crowd of fools who haven't the slightest idea or understanding what catastrophes their stances would bring about if actually implemented into policy.

MY, HOW WITTY!

Do they really pay Harold Pinter to write stupid drivel like that found here?

An infinitely more coherent, eloquent, and accurate statement of welcome can be found here. I didn't know that Harold Pinter qualified as a "pustule," but I'm not surprised that it is so.

I'LL BE PITHY

Aaron McGruder is an idiot.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS--STRAIGHT OUT OF CENTRAL CASTING

Apparently, someone needs to explain the Augustinian concept of just war theory to "Father Bill."

TIM-BER!

Two very eyebrow-raising posts by Ted Barlow over at Crooked Timber today:

1. In this one, Ted appears to suggest that it is not possible to accuse a Jewish person of spouting anti-Semitic statements--at least not without giggling. As David Bernstein points out, this assertion is completely wrong. In addition to Bernstein's example, we also have this story, which provides the following appalling example of Jewish self-hatred:

It´s not often that George Soros, the billionaire financier and philanthropist, makes an appearance before a Jewish audience. It´s even rarer for him to use such an occasion to talk about Israel, Jews and his own role in effecting political change.

So when Soros stepped to the podium Nov. 5 to address those issues at a conference of the Jewish Funders Network, audience members were listening carefully.

Many were surprised by what they heard.

When asked about anti-Semitism in Europe, Soros, who is Jewish, said European anti-Semitism is the result of the policies of Israel and the United States.

"There is a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe. The policies of the Bush administration and the Sharon administration contribute to that," Soros said. "It´s not specifically anti-Semitism, but it does manifest itself in anti- Semitism as well. I´m critical of those policies."

"If we change that direction, then anti-Semitism also will diminish," he said. "I can´t see how one could confront it directly."

That is a point made by Israel´s most vociferous critics, whom some Jewish activists charge with using anti-Zionism as a guise for anti-Semitism.

The billionaire financier said he, too, bears some responsibility for the new anti-Semitism, citing last month´s speech by Malaysia´s outgoing prime minister, Mahathir Mohammad, who said, "Jews rule the world by proxy."

"I´m also very concerned about my own role because the new anti-Semitism holds that the Jews rule the world," said Soros, whose projects and funding have influenced governments and promoted various political causes around the world.

"As an unintended consequence of my actions," he said, "I also contribute to that image."

[. . .]

After the conference, some Jewish leaders who heard about the speech reacted angrily to Soros´ remarks.

"Let´s understand things clearly: Anti-Semitism is not caused by Jews; it´s caused by anti-Semites," said Elan Steinberg, senior adviser at the World Jewish Congress. "One can certainly be critical of Bush policy or Sharon policy, but any deviation from the understanding of the real cause of anti-Semitism is not merely a disservice, but a historic lie."

Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, called Soros´ comments "absolutely obscene."

"He buys into the stereotype," Foxman said. "It´s a simplistic, counterproductive, biased and bigoted perception of what´s out there. It´s blaming the victim for all of Israel´s and the Jewish people´s ills."

Furthermore, Foxman said, "If he sees that his position of being who he is may contribute to the perception of anti-Semitism, what´s his solution to himself — that he give up his money? That he close his mouth?"

Additionally, it should be pointed out that many people didn't accuse Paul Krugman of necessarily being anti-Semitic. I, for example, accused Krugman of overlooking anti-Semitic remarks in order to make a hyperpartisan political point, and stated my belief that if we had a President of Krugman's choosing, Krugman would have skipped past the hyperpartisanship, and unequivocally attacked the anti-Semitic remarks in question.

2. The second post has to do with this post by Glenn Reynolds, in which Glenn states the following in a post discussing today's suicide bombing in Iraq:

UPDATE: Somebody just sent me a "but Bush said the war was over!" bit of snarkmail. Uh, no, he didn't. Bush actually said that major combat was over in Iraq. The war on terror -- really the war on fundamentalist Islamic terrorists, and those who back them -- is nowhere near over. Bush knows that, and he's said it repeatedly.

I actually got several variations on this theme, from antiwar types who always seem glad when people die in Iraq, so long as they're Americans or our allies. They're usually the same people who puff up if you "question their patriotism."

I don't question it. They've put its existence beyond question by wishing for America to lose.

Quoth Ted in response "Today in Instapunditry":

we learned that opponents of the Iraq war are unpatriotic ghouls who are glad when Americans die.

Ted then goes on to try to preempt an entirely valid counterargument to his charge that Glenn accuses all opponents of the war of wanting Americans to die:

P.S. Oh, and don’t try to excuse it by saying “he wasn’t talking about everyone who opposed the war.” Glenn Reynolds and Lt. Smash have taught me to see right past that kind of tricksiness.

Well, first of all, Ted's attempt at preemption notwithstanding, Glenn wasn't talking about "everyone who opposed the war." For one thing, Glenn posted this update in response to an e-mail from Aziz Poonawalla:

ANOTHER UPDATE: Aziz Poonawalla emails to ask if I meant that all antiwar people are anti-American. Uh, no, and I've said that plenty of times. Just the ones who dance on the graves of our soldiers, and our allies. And I get plenty of email from them, so I know they're out there.

I am not privy to Glenn Reynolds's e-mails, but such types are indeed out there, as this post points out (for more, see this article and the links in it to other bloggers). Additionally, one commenter to Ted's post wasn't intimidated by the attempt at preemption:

The “who” limits the class of people to those identified after the word. What’s the problem? It’s like saying “track stars who took steroids, are cheaters.” We’re not saying that the class of all track stars are cheaters, only those who took steroids. Show me the universal quantifier which renders the statement applicable to the entire class of “anti-war types.”

Of course, the universal quantifier doesn't exist, which kind of blows Ted's argument out of the water.

As for the links included in the "P.S.," it's impossible for me to read them as anything but non sequiturs. The Reynolds link is a link to Lt. Smash's critique of Tom Tomorrow's latest post (the second link included in Ted's "P.S."). It has nothing whatsoever to do with the issues being raised by Ted in his post attacking Glenn. In the "P.S." link to InstaPundit, Glenn says that comparisons between Dan Perkins and Ted Rall should fail because "Dan Perkins, who does Tom Tomorrow, seems to be a decent -- if deeply misguided -- guy. I think there's a big difference there, and one that we shouldn't lose sight of." In other words, while Glenn disagrees with Perkins, he still views him as a decent fellow. This, if anything, demonstrates that Glenn doesn't paint with a broad brush--precisely the opposite of what Ted accuses Glenn of doing.

As for the Lt. Smash critique, he accuses Perkins of considering warbloggers as "chickenhawks," while not noticing that there were plenty of "warbloggers" who served in the military (we'll put aside, for a moment, the abject stupidity of the "chickenhawk" critique--which has been completely discredited by a number of commentators, and which is now raised by people who are either disingenuous and never let the facts get in the way of a good slur, or just flat imbeciles who never understood the facts in the first place). Perkins backtracked in later comments to Smash--though through gritted teeth--but in fact, the recognition that there were "warbloggers" who served in the military was--and still is--lacking from Perkins's cartoon. Contrast that with Glenn's categorical and unequivocal statement that he doesn't consider all antiwar people to be anti-American--no one, for example, would have any intelligent reason to think that Ted Barlow cheers the deaths of Americans--and you will see that Ted's use of the "P.S." links was thorughly inapt. And even if the links were apposite, Ted's argument in the "P.S." section comes down to stating that "two wrongs do make a right"--a complete logical fallacy.

This advances Ted's argument . . . how exactly? And am I not justified in thinking that Ted's second post was yet another example of the phenomenon discussed here?

UPDATE: As Chris Muir points out, Perkins is given to hasty and nonsensical generalizations--generalizations that some of his unthinking fans (I'm not counting Ted Barlow among the unthinking--I have a lot of respect for him) swallow all too easily, because to really cogitate about them would hurt their wee little brains too much.

ARROGANCE AND DISDAIN DEBUNKED

Both Will Baude and Amanda Butler take on an egregiously stupid post that serves only to advance unfair and disingenuous stereotypes about Southerners. Be sure to read their posts, and marvel at the disdain with which some voices on the Left purport to treat an entire portion of the country--while at the same time thinking that they can win votes in that portion of the country.

And the funny thing is that they are shocked when those vote-getting efforts fail. Amusing, isn't it?

CHARMING

Anti-Semitism--in the event that you are interested--is alive and well:

Greek composer and cultural icon Mikis Theodorakis added his contribution to the anti-Semitic miasma rising in parts of the world by characterizing the Jews as the root of the world's evils.

Theodorakis, a towering figure in Greek music best known outside his native land for scoring the music for the film Zorba the Greek, took his shot at the Jews at a press conference to launch a new book.

"We, the Greeks, did not turn aggressive like them because we have more history," Theodorakis was quoted by Y-net as saying. "Today it is possible to say that this small nation is the root of evil. It is full of self-importance and evil stubbornness."

According to the Y-net report, the Greek education and cultural minister were in the audience at the time, but did not respond.

Theodorakis, responding to recent comments by a Greek statesman that the Greeks and Jews are similar because neither have friends, said, "The fact that we are very calm and did not turn aggressive like them is because we have more history. They only have Abraham and Jacob, who were shadows, while we have Pericles. Imagine what would happen in Greece if we were as aggressive as the Jews."

The composer added that the Greeks are not characterized by the fanaticism of the Jews.

"MUGGED BY THE STATE"

I don't know whether to laugh or cry after reading this. It, and the book it discusses, should be Exhibit A in the case against overweening and bullying governmental power.

SO FOR ALL OF THOSE WHO HAVE MET ME, A QUESTION:

Do you think I need a face transplant?

Given the fact that I am sexier than Aamir Khan, I'm guessing that the need for a face transplant is minimal at best. But I may consider counterarguments.*

*Or perhaps not. A face transplant? Good God, I'm neither Nicholas Cage nor John Travolta. What the hell can people be thinking?

I DON'T GET IT

How is the following exchange--mentioned in this report--supposed to be funny?

Q: And what is Clark's reaction to former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's pandering comment that that he, Dean, wants the votes of Southerners, i.e. "guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks"?

A: "Well, he shouldn't have said those things. I think all Americans - and this is a joke! - all Americans, even if they're from the South and 'stupid,' should be represented."

Clark is from Arkansas--by way of Chicago--so I doubt that this will be viewed as the typical Northern bias of southerners, but I have to ask why anyone thought this was a good idea given the Democrats' inability to win the South, and the recent defeats that Democratic gubernatorial candidates took in both Kentucky and Mississippi.

THE NAIVE AND INTELLECTUALLY MYOPIC NOAM CHOMSKY

I ran across an old, but predictable (and predictably amusing) column by Chomsky in which he decries the war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. I won't bother to Fisk it--life is short, the day is nearly half over, and suffice it to say, the article is filled with the logical fallacies and blatant misrepresentations that causd Brad DeLong to have an "allergic reaction" to in this old, but devastatingly on-point writing. [Nota Bene: Yousefzadeh agrees with DeLong on an issue of substance! Apocalypse to begin shortly!]

But this passage stood out:

For the political leadership, mostly recycled from more reactionary sectors of the Reagan-Bush I administrations, “the global wave of hatred” is not a particular problem. They want to be feared, not loved. It is natural for Donald Rumsfeld to quote the words of Chicago gangster Al Capone: “You will get more with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone.”

Presumably, Chomsky is deeply upset that Rumsfeld had the temerity to quote Capone--and generally invoke the spirit of Niccolo Machiavelli in the process--on the coercive capabilities that accompany the display and use of arms. Why Chomsky should be upset with this observation, or why he should try to make it a subject for denunciation is unclear.

If I am a burglar, and I break into Noam Chomsky's lavish house--a house he was able to afford from selling so many fraudulent books and giving so many fraudulent lectures-for-a-fee on the supposed evils of American foreign policy--and I confront Chomsky with the statement "Good sir, I don't happen to have a gun, or any other weaponry on my person at this particular time, but if you wouldn't mind, I'd greatly appreciate it if you would surrender whatever cash you have on hand, as well as valuables inside the house," Chomsky would first laugh in my face, and then call the police. Why? Because, I have no weaponry with which to coerce Chomsky's compliance. I could threaten to beat him up, but having announced myself as unarmed, he might think that he could either win a fight, or evade me long enough to call the cops, and have me arrested.

But if I entered Chomsky's lavish house and announced "Good sir, behold my Glock pistol. I will use it to kill you in most painful fashion unless you surrender all of your cash on hand, as well as valuables. Please be wise, and accede to my request," I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that I will secure Chomsky's compliance. After all, the famous comedy routine notwithstanding, when the question is "your money or your life," few people respond with "I'm thinking!"

Of course, no one celebrates or rejoices in the fact that an armed crook can successfully rob an unarmed homeowner, of course (though more people should celebrate--and potentially make use of--the fact that an armed homeowner can successfully deter a robbery). But them's the facts of life. Whether we like it or not, you really will get more with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone.

So it is in our daily interactions. And so it is in the dealings of nation-states. I'm sure that like most people, Donald Rumsfeld eagerly wishes for the day when swords can be beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks, the lion can lay down with the lamb--with the lamb getting all the sleep it wants, and Yousefzadeh and DeLong can agree on just about any issue of the day. But we live in the here and now, when swords need to be sharpened, not made obsolete, when the lamb has to constantly be on the lookout for a hungry lion that wants to feast on lamb chops, and when a Yousefzadeh-DeLong agreement on matters of substance, while possible, is rare. And in this day and age, as much as it may upset all of us to have to admit this, from time to time, the coercion of a rogue nation-state must be backed with the force of arms--an observation as old as time itself, yet entirely lost on Noam Chomsky. Capone's rough and stark statement is, in fact, one of the pillars for the realist theory of international relations--a theory, I hasten to emphasize yet again, that is aimed at explaining past nation-state behavior, and predicting future nation-state behavior with a set of theories on how nation-states behave. These theories are neither endorsed by realists, nor are they condemned--at least not in the context of analyzing state behavior. They are, instead, understood as being the facts of life--the way the world works.

And with his quote of Capone, Donald Rumsfeld was explaining the way the world works. He may not be happy about it. In fact, I daresay that he isn't happy about it--that no one is. But it's one thing to have a preference for how the world should work. It's another thing to be frankly delusional about how it currently does work.

All of this is obvious to the overwhelming majority of my readers, I know. But it is not obvious to Chomsky, who is considered an intellectual giant. That fact--and the fact that the Chomskyites naturally seek the capability to influence the national discourse--should terrify people. I understand that Chomskyism is a fringe group, but of course, history is replete with examples of fringe groups that were written off--and then made startling gains in seeking power. It behooves us to take it seriously when those who don't know, and don't know that they don't know, seek to influence decision-making on a national level--especially when such a group is inexplicably considered "enlightened, intellectual, moral, scholarly and rigorous" by a depressingly considerable portion of the country and the world.

THE AMERICAN PROSPECT: NOT LOCATED AT 221B BAKER STREET

This month's cover story at The American Prospect is an interview with Bill Clinton on how Democrats can win in 2004. There is no link to the story online, so I went and purchased a copy of the issue. You can see the online teaser to the November issue, along with some online articles here.

The interviewer was Michael Tomasky. The photographer was Sylvia Plachy. Tomasky begins his story thusly:

When Sylvia Plachy and I walked into Bill Clinton's Harlem office around 2:30 p.m. on Sept. 8, the former president was courteous to me, but he was more interested in telling Sylvia--who aside from being a world-renowned photographer, is the mother of Oscar-winning actor Adrien Brody--that he'd enjoyed The Pianist, but he'd also recently rented and loved Oxygen, a 1999 thriller in which Brody played a kidnapper. How Clinton pulled that one we didn't ask; we just took it as a quick reminder that there is such a thing as a presidennt with broad intellectual and cultural interests, and got down to business.

I'm going to step aside and let you all laugh uproariously for a while at that paragraph. Have at it.

[Time elapses]

Ready? No? More laughing? Okay.

[Time elapses]

Okay, now, just because I want to play detective for a moment, let's see if we can all figure out how Clinton may have "pulled that one out."

Step 1: Clinton gets a call from TAP. The conversation goes thusly:

TAP: Mr. President, we would love to interview you about the upcoming 2004 presidential election.

WJC: Sure. Glad to do it. Would September 8th, at 2:30 p.m. work for you guys?

TAP: Definitely. Thanks. Michael Tomasky will do the interview, and Sylvia Plachy will photograph.

WJC: Terrific! Look forward to it.

Step 2: Google. A search for "Michael Tomasky" doesn't yield anything particularly noteworthy--other than the fact that Tomasky is a writer of some degree of fame on the Internet. A search for "Sylvia Plachy", however, yields this article on the third page of the search results. It is titled "My Son the Oscar Contender" and is a column written by Plachy about her son--Adrien Brody.

Step 3: Realize that you can get on the good side of the photographer, and dazzle TAP with your "broad intellectual and cultural interests" by simply watching a friggin' movie or two. Chuckle inwardly at TAP's obviously low bar for demonstrating "broad intellectual and cultural interests."

Step 4: Go to Blockbuster's in Chappaqua. Accost pimply-faced 17 year old kid. Demand entire Brody oeuvre. "STAT!"

Step 5: Explain meaning of "oeuvre" to kid.

Step 6: Receive movies. Pay for them.

Step 7: Go home, watch movies.

Step 8: Be sure to mention this to Plachy and Tomasky, so as to receive favorable mention regarding "broad intellectual and cultural interests."

There. That wasn't so hard, was it? And remember, if you ever have an interview with TAP, be sure to mention obscure movies that you may have seen recently. The payoff in praise could be enormous when the interview finally goes to print.

IGNORANCE AIN'T BLISS

Time to hit the civics books, people. You know who you are.

NONE DARE CALL IT TREASON

Like Andrew Sullivan, I'm sure that the thoughts expressed in the post excerpted here does not reflect the attitudes of the mainstream Left. And yet, the fact is that it is this kind of political nihilism that attracts most of the attention nowadays. Responsible members of the Left would do well at some point to denounce Democratic Underground, A.N.S.W.E.R., and other groups whose political agendas basically call for American security to be undermined in the worst possible way.

I see that DU felt the need to take down the post after Sullivan originally linked to it. I'd like to think that it's because the site administrators were horrified by the message in the post, but I have a feeling that it had more to do with their fear of bad publicity than it did with their scruples and policy positions.

UPDATE: From a comment on the official Democratic National Committee site:

Morning all. It occured to me that all the bump that Bush got late last week from the economic figure went up in flames yesterday with that helicopter.

Not a single other Democrat repudiated this kind of statement. What are we to make of that?

UM . . . OKAY

Glad that's settled.

And they "congratulate each other" too. It brings a tear to my eye.

PAVLOV WOULD HAVE BEEN FASCINATED

Those on the Left often ask why those of us on the Right are "obsessed" with Bill Clinton whenever we bring up the former President in any discussion. I'd like to ask why those on the Left think that (a) the former President should somehow be immune from any discussion and/or criticism from his ideological adversaries, and (b) what exactly is it that makes those on the Left sometimes leap to Clinton's defense even before any attack against him has been launched.

Consider this New York Times article which says the following about recent comments by Condoleezza Rice:

President Bush's national security adviser said on Thursday that the Clinton and other past administrations had ignored evidence of growing terrorist threats and that despite repeated attacks on American interests, "until Sept. 11, the terrorists faced no sustained, systematic and global response" from the United States.

"They became emboldened," the adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said of Al Qaeda, "and the result was more terror and more victims."

With these comments, in a speech in New York on Thursday evening to the National Legal Center for the Public Interest, Ms. Rice waded into what has become a central theme of the early days of the 2004 presidential race.

That's from the first three paragraphs of the story. Here's the fifth paragraph:

While never naming Mr. Clinton or other past presidents, she argued that Mr. Bush had no choice but to take a far more muscular approach to American security, given the world he inherited, one in which she said the biggest threats to America were never taken seriously enough.

(Emphasis mine.) So we are to believe that Rice blamed Clinton, but never mentioned him by name? Um . . . okay, but now the Times, in seeking to interpret her comments, has delved into the fine art of mindreading. Perhaps the Amazing Randi could debunk the methods by which this story was written.

It get's worse. For a moment, the Times leads us to believe that maybe, just maybe, they got the story right:

She spoke more bluntly later Thursday night on "The Charlie Rose Show" on PBS.

"It wasn't working with North Korea," she said. "No, it wasn't working with Iran. No, having Iraq for 12 years defy the United Nations on 17 different resolutions — it wasn't working. And we had to confront that."

Aha! So now we're going to get into the blaming of Bill Clinton, right?

Well . . . no. Or if we do get into Rice's placing of blame, we find that her comments are ecumenical and that she criticized Republican administrations as well as Democratic ones for their approach to fighting terrorism:

Parts of Ms. Rice's speech could also be read as being critical of the Reagan administration and the administration of the president's father, George H. W. Bush, for not connecting the dots on earlier attacks.

"It is now undeniable that the terrorists declared war on America and on the civilized world many years before Sept. 11, 2001," she said in remarks delivered to the legal center at the Waldorf-Astoria. "The attack on the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, the hijacking of the Achille Lauro in 1985, the bombing of Pan Am 103 in 1988, the World Trade Center in 1993, the attacks on American installations in Saudi Arabia in 1995 and 1996, the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in 2000: These and other atrocities were part of a sustained, systematic campaign to spread devastation and chaos. Yet until Sept. 11, the terrorists faced no sustained, systematic and global response."

That's it. This is pretty thin gruel for a supposed criticism of the Clinton Administration. Say what you want about the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, but when we go after someone, we're not as lily-livered as Condoleezza Rice appears to have been in her speech.

No matter, however. The New York Times came to the opinion that Rice was attacking the Clinton Administration for its response to terrorism. It doesn't explain, of course, why the Clinton Administration should be immune from criticism, or why Rice may have done anything wrong by making the argument that the Times attributes to her comments, or how Rice's comments amounted to an attack specifically on the Clinton Administration. Apparently, some code of journalism calls for leaving such questions--and their possible answers--to the reader's imagination.

And of course, apparently fixating solely on the first paragraph of the Times story, Clinton allies rush to a fevered defense of the 42nd President of the United States. Over at Tapped, Matthew Yglesias goes nuclear in response to an attack that only occurred in his--and in the Times's--imagination. Never mind the fact that Rice criticized the actions of Republican Presidents as well. Never mind the fact that in her speech before The National Legal Center for the Public Interest, Rice never even mentioned Clinton by name. The implications were there, and by God, the implications were all that were needed for the Left to evince its traditional knee-jerk reaction anytime a conservative is even accused of having talked about Clinton.

Guys, lighten up. Save your powder for when we really fire our rhetorical guns. Arguments are like ammunition in a war--you don't want to expend them too early. Perhaps carefully reading our speeches--and the stories about them--will clue you in to whether you should be blasting away at a particular time in the Grand Partisan Debate.

Just some friendly advice.

SACRILEGE

Worst thing to happen to movies since the Ewoks.

THE INANITIES OF ERIC ALTERMAN

Continuing to raise the question of why MSNBC actually pays him good money to write a blog, Eric Alterman says the following in today's post trying to claim (yet again) that there really is no liberal media:

Please pass the Kool-Aid, III. NYT News analysis hed: “As Casualties in Iraq Mount, Will Resolve Falter?” How about: "As Stupidity of Invasion becomes Obvious, Will Common Sense Eventually Triumph?"

Or how about "As Eric Alterman Continues To Blog, Will He Actually Take The Time To Read The Stories He Links To?" This latter headline may be called for, as the Times piece contains plenty of criticisms about the American effort in Iraq, while at the same time accurately describing Democrats as being divided over what strategy should be pursued. It would appear that Alterman really didn't take the time to digest the substance of the article, which would fit in with the general lack of substance that is so emblematic of Altercation.

Of course, we could also address Alterman's seeming--and disastrous--implication in his alternative headline that the U.S. should quit Iraq before it is rebuilt. I imagine that there will be a Nation article on it. May I suggest a title? "As I Continue To Call For The Abandonment Of Iraq, Will It Ever Dawn On Me That Such A Course Of Policy Is Only Followed By The Fringe Left, And Would Make Iraq Into A Terror Zone That Would Be Used As A Base Of Operations By Enemies Of The United States In The Same Manner That Afghanistan Was?"

A long header, to be sure, but one that seems to accurately describe Alterman's position.

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

Or perhaps not so strange. Look and see who is at the forefront of the antiglobalization movement:

There is no shortage of symbols representing peace, justice, and economic equality. The dove and the olive branch. The peace sign. The rainbow flag. Even the emblem of the United Nations. So why did some protesters at the 2003 World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre, Brazil, display the swastika?

Held two months prior to the U.S.-led attack on Iraq, this year’s conference—an annual grassroots riposte to the well-heeled World Economic Forum in Davos—had the theme, “Another World is Possible.” But the more appropriate theme might have been “Yesterday’s World is Back.” Marchers among the 20,000 activists from 120 countries carried signs reading “Nazis, Yankees, and Jews: No More Chosen Peoples!” Some wore T-shirts with the Star of David twisted into Nazi swastikas. Members of a Palestinian organization pilloried Jews as the “true fundamentalists who control United States capitalism.” Jewish delegates carrying banners declaring “Two peoples—Two states: Peace in the Middle East” were assaulted.

Porto Alegre provides just one snapshot of an unfolding phenomenon known as the “new anti-Semitism.” Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the oldest hatred has been making a global comeback, culminating in 2002 with the highest number of anti-Semitic attacks in 12 years. Not since Kristallnacht, the Nazi-led pogrom against German Jews in 1938, have so many European synagogues and Jewish schools been desecrated. This new anti-Semitism is a kaleidoscope of old hatreds shattered and rearranged into random patterns at once familiar and strange. It is the medieval image of the “Christ-killing” Jew resurrected on the editorial pages of cosmopolitan European newspapers. It is the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement refusing to put the Star of David on their ambulances. It is Zimbabwe and Malaysia—nations nearly bereft of Jews—warning of an international Jewish conspiracy to control the world’s finances. It is neo-Nazis donning checkered Palestinian kaffiyehs and Palestinians lining up to buy copies of Mein Kampf.

And so it goes.

THE PERILS OF RETICENCE

Also sprach John Kerry:

John F. Kerry won a Bronze Star, Silver Star and three Purple Hearts as a naval officer in the Vietnam War, but the U.S. senator from Massachusetts said few voters in neighboring New Hampshire even know he's a military veteran.

"It is stunning," he said. "That's the one thing you'd think the voters would know about me. Especially in New Hampshire. You can't take anything for granted. You have to tell people about yourself again and again."

I'm sure that Kerry will do exactly that. Again and again.

And just to make it clear: I honor and respect anyone who fought on behalf of the country. But you can't blame me--and others--for being turned off about it if we have to hear self-glorifying statements over and over. I'll give credit to Wesley Clark for not overplaying his military record. Contrary to what Kerry thinks, a silent dignity may be more attractive to voters than over-the-top self-aggrandizing statements. I know he's campaigning to be President, and that he has to talk about himself, but this is really getting ridiculous on some levels.

THE UNRECONSTRUCTED MAHATHIR MOHAMMAD

Once a racist, always a racist, I suppose. In any event, while the United States has progressed from the days of slavery, Mahathir has yet to progress from the neanderthal worldview he maintains, and the abominable rhetoric he so willingly embraces.

I'm amused by the following:

On Thursday, at a news conference after he tendered his resignation as leader of Malaysia's ruling party -- a key step toward his retirement -- Mahathir was asked if he had a parting message for Jews.

"They must never claim they are the chosen people, who cannot be criticized at all," Mahathir replied.

"We sympathize with them, we were very sad to see how the Jews were so ill treated by the Europeans," Mahathir said. "The Muslims have never ill-treated the Jews, but now they are behaving exactly in the way the Europeans behaved toward them against the Muslims."

While there are certainly plenty of Muslims of goodwill who deplore the ill-treatment of Jews, it is at best a stretch to claim that "the Muslims have never ill-treated the Jews." Plenty of Persian Jews--my father and other members of my family being among them--would beg to differ.

THERE'S NO DENYING IT ANYMORE

At some point, people of goodwill who oppose the Administration's policy on Iraq are going to have to denounce elements of the antiwar coalition who engage in the worst kind of irresponsible behavior--behavior that at the very least borders on the treasonous. "Treason" isn't a word that I toss around lightly--unlike Ann Coulter--but as Eugene Volokh points out, it may very well be merited thanks to the latest statement made by the International A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition.

Really, these people are appalling and disgusting in the extreme. Why any "peace movement" would want to associate with them in the slightest is beyond me.

NEVER TRY TO BE WHAT YOU ARE NOT

It's times like this when Andrew Sullivan's famous "Poseur Alert" comes in handy:

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean tried to be all things, except George W. Bush, to all voters on fundraising stops in Boulder and Denver on Tuesday.

The pack-leading Democrat hit all the marks, courting fiscal conservatives and social liberals. He bashed the war and pumped up his plans for universal heath care, renewable energy and investments in schools, highways and broadband Internet for everyone.

Dean declared himself a "metrosexual," the buzz phrase for straight men in touch with their feminine sides, as he touted his accomplishments in "equal justice" for gay and lesbian couples.

But then he waffled.

"I'm a square," Dean declared, after professing his metrosexuality to a Boulder breakfast audience with an anecdote about being called handsome by a gay man. "I like (rapper) Wyclef Jean and everybody thinks I'm very hip, but I am really a square, as my kids will tell you. I don't even get to watch television. I've heard the term (metrosexual), but I don't know what it means."

This really doesn't count as a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but I hate it when politicians do this. We're supposed to believe that Dean--a middle aged white guy--likes Wyclef Jean, doesn't watch television, identifies with metrosexuals without knowing the meaning of the term, and that above all, he's a square? Come on. And yes, Republicans pull this same kind of nonsense from time to time, and it is equally comical then.

I'm more than a little interested in the personal tastes, likes and dislikes of presidential candidates. I wish they would just tell the truth about those likes and dislikes. It probably won't cost them any votes to do so, just as it probably won't win them any votes to pose so disingenuously.

THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITE PET PEEVES

Eugene Volokh touches on one of the more annoying and ridiculous memes out there--the meme that the conservative message is "jammed down the throats of the American people." No it isn't. The statement is not only not literally true, it isn't even figuratively true (I note the difference for the benefit of certain unnamed bloggers who are confused about the definitions of "literal" and "figurative"). If you are listening to a conservative radiocast, you are, in all likelihood, choosing to listen to it. You're not being coerced. Oh sure, you might be in someone's car, and he/she is listening to a conservative radiocast, or you may be in someone's house, and they get to pick the entertainment, but suffice it to say that such examples are probably few and far between. In general, there is no Radio Gestapo forcing you to listen to conservative radio.

So why all the talk of having the conservative message "jammed" down peoples' throats? Well, Eugene answers:

. . . "Jammed down their throats" figuratively means "forced onto people who aren't really willing to hear it." And that is nearly the opposite of how radio actually works -- people who really believe that this is how right-wing talk show hosts have gotten their influence are just deluding themselves.

Yes they are. But that doesn't mean they will stop anytime soon.

UPDATE: Rather ridiculously, commenters to this post are claiming that my argument precludes any further discussion of any liberal media bias that I perceive. Nothing could be further removed from the content of this post--which is how conservative talk shows have gotten their influence, and which deals with the so-called "coercion" factor that is allegedly linked to conservative radio. Linking this post to an argument that supposedly makes illegitimate any mention of potential liberal media bias is one of the more spectacular attempts at a non sequitur that I have seen in a long time.

THE STATE OF THE ANTIWAR MOVEMENT

According to this article, there is no reason whatsoever to take antiwar advocates seriously anymore--assuming that anyone ever did. Consider the following passage:

Allan Johnson, a high school English teacher and debate coach from Fairfax, Va., held a sign saying "U.S. Troops Out of Iraq. Bring Them Home Now!" at Saturday's "End the Occupation" rally in Washington. In fact, though, Johnson isn't sure he wants to bring the troops home now, or to end the American occupation of Iraq. At least, not yet.

"We've made a giant mess," said Johnson, a handsome man who wore his long snowy hair in a ponytail and had a sparkling stud in one ear. "I would hate for the Bush administration to halfway fix things and then leave, and then blame the Iraqis if things go wrong. Once you go to somebody's house and break all the windows, don't you owe them new windows?"

Why, then, was he marching at an End the Occupation rally? "I don't agree with all the people here, believe you me," he said. But his own sign? He glanced at it, startled, and explained that someone had handed it to him. "I didn't even look at it," he said. "I was just waving it."

"OK," you respond, "but surely some of the public officials opposed to the war and the postwar management are being responsible, right?"

Nope:

Meanwhile, the influence of the antiwar movement, which has done much to catapult Howard Dean to the front of the Democratic primary pack, continues to be felt in the party. On Oct. 17, 11 Democratic senators, including presidential candidates John Kerry and John Edwards, and a majority of House Democrats voted against an $87 billion spending package for Iraq and Afghanistan. Previously, Democrats tried to split the funding bill in order to provide for the troops while subjecting reconstruction money to further scrutiny and cuts.

Some who voted no objected to the lack of administration accountability. But much of the rhetoric coming from liberal Democrats suggested a strangely conservative resistance to the whole idea of aiding foreigners when Americans are in need.

"We cannot afford to give this president another blank check to spend on his Iraq adventure when so many people are suffering through a recession here at home and when our nation's critical infrastructure needs are being neglected," said Rep. Diane Watson, D-Calif., explaining why she voted no on Bush's request for $87 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Watson's viewpoint is one encouraged by antiwar groups. MoveOn.org, the online progressive fundraising powerhouse, has been running isolationist commercials against the $87 billion appropriation. Over shots of sad-looking Americans, a voice-over says, "We could have built 10,000 new schools, or hired almost 2 million new teachers. We could have rebuilt our electric grid. We could have insured more of our children. Instead, George Bush wants to spend that $87 billion in Iraq. If there's money for Iraq, why isn't there money for America?"

[. . .]

George Packer, editor of "The Fight is for Democracy," a collection of essays about America and its role in the world after Sept. 11, would like to see progressives put pressure on the administration to do more for the people of Iraq, rather than less. But Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, says, "I see little evidence of any such liberal alternative that is serious and constructive for the people of Iraq, unfortunately." Liberals who care about the welfare of Iraqis, he says, must "start to distinguish between their dislike of Bush and their recognition that the mission must succeed. That would be a big start, and the crucial one."

"Hatred of Bush and the opportunism of Democratic politicians has created a tactical alliance between mainstream Democrats and the fringe," says Packer, who writes about his own six-week trip to Iraq in a forthcoming New Yorker article. "It's disappointing to see both presidential candidates and leading members of Congress really fail to see the importance of what's going on in Iraq right now. You can object to no bid contracts, you can object to cronyism and waste as I do, without undermining the basic understanding that we are committed to this and we have an enormous obligation to the Iraqis. I don't see why you have to choose between disliking Halliburton and supporting the Iraqis in their efforts to create a decent society."

Right now, though, there's no liberal message that separates the welfare of the Iraqi people from that of the Bush administration. In a New Republic article this week, Michael Crowley quotes Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., complaining that his colleagues' Iraq stances are driven by blind rage. "In trying to pin them down, I say, 'At the end of the day, we have to have a policy to cope with what to do now,'" he told Crowley. "And they say, 'Well, we're just pissed off.' They don't really even attempt to argue the policy of it."

Remember, these people are running for office iin 2004. Many of them want to remain in Congress and control the appropriations process that will determine whether we are successful in the postwar atmosphere in Iraq. Some of them even want to be President of the United States. And what is their policy? "Well, we're just pissed off."

As yourself whether that kind of thinking deserves your vote--or deserves any votes whatsoever, for that matter.

And while you're pondering that, ponder the constituency that drives this kind of irresponsible thinking on Iraq:

Because the rally was smaller that those preceding the war, there was a larger ratio of would-be communist revolutionaries, Zionist conspiracy mongers and skinny teenage anarchists with black bandannas covering their faces. Someone flew an Iraqi flag, the version Saddam instituted in 1991, which added the words "Allahu Akbar" to the three green stars at its center. At one point, a dapper, avuncular white-haired man in a nice camel coat sidled up to me and said in a thick European accent, "So, what are we going to do about the Zionists?"

"I don't know," I said. "What do you think?"

"I think we should oppose them. I think that Malaysian guy hit the nail on the head," he said, referring to Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who recently said that Jews rule the world by proxy.

Again, will these kinds of people determine who is in power? Or will you?

A MUST-MISS MOVIE

Any credibility that the upcoming Reagan movie had should be officially gone now:

During Iran-Contra Scandal --

INT. REAGANS'S BREAKFAST ROOM -- WHITE HOUSE -- MORNING

Reagan and Nancy sit in front of their breakfast. They can't eat. Can't drink. They're numb.

REAGAN: It's Armageddon... that's what it is. Armageddon. The Leader from the West will be revealed as the anti-Christ, and then God will strike him down. That's me. I am the anti-Christ.

NANCY: No, Ronnie...

REAGAN (overriding): And the Lord will strike down all of civilization, in order to make way for the new order... a new Heaven and a new Earth...

Nancy reaches out, grabs his hand, strongly.

NANCY: Hold on. You've got to hold on, Ronnie.

Reagan's eyes are filling with tears. He can't help it. He's crumbling.

I don't care what your politics are: Does anyone actually believe that this conversation--which would be utterly self-serving to the producers of this movie, whose politics are entirely different from those of Reagan's--really happened?

A.N.S.W.E.R.'S NEW SLOGAN

"Kim Jong Il Needs Comrades!"

INSTAHATRED

Someday, someone will have to explain to me the reasons behind all of the mass hatred on the part of left-wing bloggers for Glenn Reynolds (this snippy little post being the latest manifestation of said hatred)--a blogger who quite frankly should be the last person to be attacked as he is; as some sort of right-wing shill. I mean, after all, Glenn is a self-described former "yellow dog Democrat" who cut his political teeth working for Al Gore--among other things. If anyone should go after Glenn, it should be right-leaning conservative/libertarians like me. (Hmm . . .)

I suppose that part of the hatred may have to do with the fact that Glenn simply outdistances the competition in terms of traffic, but if that is the case, it sounds like an exceedingly silly reason for people like Atrios, Hesiod Theogeny [sic], and others to constantly obsess on their blogs about how monumentally evil Glenn supposedly is. I suppose that all of the attention may have the practical effect of letting left-of-center bloggers counter memes from the Right that they aren't too fond of, but that wouldn't really explain the nasty tone, now would it?

Then again, we do see a great deal of nastiness from the Left nowadays, so I guess we shouldn't be surprised.

In any event, one of the more hilarious side effects of InstaHatred is seeing what happens in the comments sections of blog posts that attack Glenn. A whole host of people come out of the woodwork and start claiming that while they once read Glenn religiously, they just don't do it anymore because it's "such a waste of time." Methinks the commenters doth protest too much, but it does remind one of what a twelve-step program for former InstaPundit readers must look like:

Commenter: My name is John, and I'm an InstaHolic.

Commenter #2: I couldn't stand it anymore. All of those stories regarding the crushing of dissent not authorized by John Ashcroft--even though he advertised it as being because of John Ashcroft, the examples of French unilateralism screwing up my black-and-white worldview of international relations. The echoing of "Heh!" and "Indeed" in my head . . .

You get the point. Of course, these confessionals could also take the tone of what one found in labor camps at the height of the Cultural Revolution, and not detract one iota from their comedic value.

I can't tell people how to run their blogs, but here's some non-mandatory advice: If you don't like InstaPundit, then don't read him. And don't waste our time telling us over and over how much you hate and despise the guy. We know. We processed the information. We got the gist of your commentary long ago. Thanks. I mean, I know that bloggers have runnning debates, and I'm not trying to put the kibosh on that sort of thing because oftentimes, such debates can be illuminating, but there is a difference between a running reasoned debate on one hand, and manic obsession on the other.

So for the obsessed among us, let's move on to more interesting discussions, shall we?

Unless, of course, you have nothing more interesting to tell us. Which would explain a great deal, by the way.

YOU DON'T SAY

It certainly took long enough to admit to the obvious:

The tarnish is thickening on the New York Times’s most controversial Pulitzer Prize.

A report commissioned by the Times said the work of 1932 Pulitzer Prize-winner Walter Duranty had a “serious lack of balance,” was “distorted,” and was “a disservice to American readers of the New York Times…and the peoples of the Russian and Soviet empires.”

According to the writer of the report, a Columbia University history professor, Mark von Hagen, a committee of Times senior staff that included publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. read it and then forwarded it to the Pulitzer board, along with a recommendation from Mr. Sulzberger.

The nature of that recommendation is unknown.

Duranty’s award is under review by a subcommittee of the Pulitzer board, as reported by The New York Sun in June.

The study, commissioned less than a month after the resignation of the executive editor, Howell Raines, over the Jayson Blair plagiarism and fraud scandal, marks a change in position at the Times.

In June, the paper issued a prepared statement that said,“The Times has not seen merit in trying to undo history.”

A Times spokeswoman said she had no comment on the apparently new policy. The administrator of the Pulitzer board, Sigvard Gissler, would not comment, saying,“This is an internal matter.”

In an interview with the Sun, Mr. von Hagen said, “I was really kind of disappointed having to read that stuff, and know that the New York Times would publish this guy for so long.”

I don't imagine Mr. von Hagen was alone in his sentiments.

MORE ON PAUL KRUGMAN AND MAHATHIR MOHAMMAD

I don't think that Paul Krugman is an anti-Semite, and were a President of Krugman's choosing in office, with all other things being equal, I don't think that Krugman would have had any problem whatsoever criticizing Mahathir Mohammad's recent and despicable statements about Jews.

That being said, I think that this press release describes Krugman's problem perfectly. Krugman allowed his hyperpartisan nature to blind him, and to cause him to try to explain away Mahathir's comments by blaming the sentiments behind them on the Bush Administration. Krugman's comments were ignorant in the extreme, and betrayed just how much Krugman has sacrificed his better judgment to the desperate cause of making political points against an Administration he despises.

UPDATE: Dan Drezner shows why Krugman's appraisal is so wrongheaded on a geopolitical level.

FOOT INSERTED RIGHT BACK IN MOUTH

I guess that Mahathir Mohammad will just never learn:

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad says his comments about Jews during a speech at an Islamic summit last week, which prompted harsh criticism in the West, had been taken out of context.

``In my speech I condemned all violence, even the suicide bombings, and I told the Muslims it's about time we stopped all these things and paused to think and do something that is much more productive. That was the whole tone of my speech, but they picked up one sentence where I said that the Jews control the world,'' he told Bangkok Post in an exclusive interview yesterday, which covered aspects of his 22 years as leader of Malaysia, as well as his straight-forward views on terrorism, democracy and US policy.

Dr Mahathir added, however, that ``the reaction of the world shows that they [Jews] do control the world''.

So there you have it. Because the world was outraged at a statement that only served to revive the worst sentiments from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, it shows that we Jews control the world. There's some logic for y'all.

UPDATE: Quoth Paul Krugman

. . . Not long ago Washington was talking about Malaysia as an important partner in the war on terror. Now Mr. Mahathir thinks that to cover his domestic flank, he must insert hateful words into a speech mainly about Muslim reform. That tells you, more accurately than any poll, just how strong the rising tide of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism among Muslims in Southeast Asia has become. Thanks to its war in Iraq and its unconditional support for Ariel Sharon, Washington has squandered post-9/11 sympathy and brought relations with the Muslim world to a new low.

And bear in mind that Mr. Mahathir's remarks were written before the world learned about the views of Lt. Gen. William "My God Is Bigger Than Yours" Boykin. By making it clear that he sees nothing wrong with giving an important post in the war on terror to someone who believes, and says openly, that Allah is a false idol — General Boykin denies that's what he meant, but his denial was implausible even by current standards — Donald Rumsfeld has gone a long way toward confirming the Muslim world's worst fears.

This comment is ridiculous on so many levels, that one hardly knows where to begin. Is Krugman really implying that the reason for Mahathir's anti-Semitic comments is the Bush Administration's policies? Anti-Semitism has reigned in the Muslim world for centuries, and has been especially prevalent since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. To argue--as Krugman appears to--that Mahathir's comments represent some kind of new phenomenon (one that is traceable to supporting Ariel Sharon and waging war in Iraq) is both the product of ignorance, and the product of a hateful partisanship that ditches the truth in favor of scoring political points.

This may very well be Krugman's worst column ever. I am tempted to write that it may also be the worst column Krugman will ever write, but that wouldn't be wise--given that he seems to outdo his demagoguery with the passage of every week.

ANOTHER UPDATE: This article does quite well in revealing Krugman to be not worth reading. I suppose I will read Krugman every once in a while to see what the other side is up to, and what they are thinking, but I can fully understand why some would decide that they just can't get anything worthwhile out of a Krugman column.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Stefan Beck comments on Krugman's column thusly:

Enough is enough. Anti-Semitism is pandemic in the Muslim world, and is demonstrably on the rise elsewhere. Whether Mahathir's inflammatory comments were sincere or just a political gambit, they're guaranteed to worsen animosity between Muslims and Jews; they'll probably contribute to violence, too. Remember all the outrage about Mel Gibson's The Passion? Critics came down on Mel not for anti-Semitism, but for making a movie that might fuel it. We'll see if the same folks attack Krugman for excusing the inexcusable Mahathir.

Somehow, I doubt they will, but they can feel free to surprise me if they want.

THERE'S NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN

This is probably one of the best reminders around to not pay too much attention to the Cassandras of the present day, when said Cassandras declaim about Iraq.

UPDATE: Another blast from the past. (Link via InstaPundit.)

ANOTHER UPDATE: The full text of the Life Magazine article can be found here.

IMITATION IS THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY

While I've often dreamed of writing like the lovely Emily Jones, I've thus far resisted the temptation to plagiarize her. Unfortunately, not all people are as scrupulous.

If you are a blogger, please consider linking to Emily's post so that it gets the widest distribution possible. It's scummy to see this kind of thing occur, and it should stop ASAP.

SHOULD I BE OUTRAGED OR FLATTERED?

Mahathir Mohammad causes conflict in my emotions:

Faced with furious criticism from the United States and Europe over Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's assertion that Jews rule the world, Malaysia apologized Friday for any misunderstanding and claimed that no offense was intended.

Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar struggled to contain the damage wrought by his blunt-spoken boss, who told a summit of Islamic leaders Thursday that "Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them."

Repeated assertions of Jewish dominance dotted the speech to buttress Mahathir's analysis that Muslims needed to embrace modern knowledge and technology and overcome divisions over religious dogma that have left them weakened on the world stage.

In additon to not being sure whether to be enraged over Mahathir's remarks, or flattered at my newfound power, I want to know why, if we Jews run the world, I'm still single.

I'LL BE BRIEF

This is utterly stupid.

(Link via Andrew Sullivan.)

LYING LIARS

However much this column may insult Al Franken, he had it coming--and then some. I can't believe any 50 year old man could be so childish and stupid to act the way that he acts.

THE SHAME OF IT IS THAT HE IS MY FELLOW ALUM

Tim Blair works over Ed Asner--a post that you should be sure to read.

Of course, it could be said that Asner just worked himself over, and Tim pointed the way to the party.

AN OPEN LETTER

TO: Jonah Goldberg

FROM: Pejman Yousefzadeh

RE: Civility

Dear Jonah:

I'm sorry it appears to have taken you this long to realize that while there certainly are people on the Left willing to have a reasoned and reasonable debate about the issues of the day, those people are apparently largely silent, and are allowing the slack-jawed Neanderthals of their movement to serve as their public face. I'm even sorrier that you had to discover the centralized Fortress of Stupidity from which those Neanderthals draw their inspiration.

My advice--the content of which should come as no surprise--is to delete e-mails and shun blogs that can't make an argument and instead have to resort to stupid insults that reflect worse on the insulters than they do on the insultees. Reading their drivel simply causes you to lose time that you will never get back. And reading idiotic justifications for said drivel isn't exactly pleasurable brainwork either.

Yes, sure, there are reasons to argue against and disprove the febrile rantings of a few people who never quite grew up, got a good education, or possess an organ of any value in between their ears. Even gross stupidity can spread as a meme. But in the end, there is a limit to how much you can try to persuade fools of their foolishness. Some people just revel in their ignorance and boorishness, and there's no way to save them.

So we don't save them. We just laugh at them instead. That's the good thing about buffoons--they serve as wonderful comic relief. In the meantime, we seek out the smart and serious liberals with whom we can carry on grown up and meaningful conversations.

And while the latter quest may at times seem quixotic and Sisyphean in nature, we should keep at it. Let other people reinforce their own backwardness by staying in their echo chamber, and reassuring one another that their toilet rhetoric is somehow justified, proper, and objectively correct. We win by rising above that. So while it's fine and good to mock the ridiculous and Fisk the inane, a balance must be maintained, and from time to time, stupidity simply shouldn't be dignified with a comment. There are better and more interesting things to read out there, and they cry out for some attention. So let's give it that attention.

It'll do all of us more good to focus on the genuinely interesting--even if it is material we disagree with--than to see grown people embarrass themselves online. And besides, it's just more fun to read than the juvenile scribblings of troll-like bloggers and their drooling fanbase.

THE INTEMPERATE PAUL KRUGMAN

Over two weeks ago, New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote an article (blogged about here) in which he attacked those who were waging "The Presidency Wars." In my post, I stated the not-so-secret-and-quite-widespread belief that Brooks was castigating his fellow columnist at the Times, Paul Krugman.

Now, in his latest column, Krugman fires back by telling us all that "All this fuss about the rudeness of the Bush administration's critics is an attempt to preclude serious discussion of that administration's policies. For there is no way to be both honest and polite about what has happened in these past three years." The theme throughout Krugman's column is that it is better to be rude and truthful (the way Krugman presumably is) than to be polite and sweep things under the rug (the way Brooks presumably is). Oh, and since people didn't like Bill Clinton, it's okay not to like George W. Bush. Closing out his column and ending his latest rant on the Bush Administration, Krugman seeks to justify his comments by saying that "Yes, I know that's a rude thing to say. But it's also the truth."

Through his argument, Krugman only serves to make Brooks' point better than Brooks or anyone else ever could.

First of all, let's assume for the sake of argument that all of those attacks on Clinton by conservatives were unjustified. If Krugman is making the argument that because of those attacks, conservatives now have attacks on Bush coming, he is committing a clear logical fallacy. Two wrongs don't make a right--a fact that Krugman either doesn't understand, or ignores in dishonest fashion.

Krugman's second mistake is his disingenuous construction of modern Presidential history. According to his column, hating Presidents and vilifying them personally only began with Bill Clinton. This is utterly misleading, as any fair-minded individual could tell you. Ronald Reagan was derided and ridiculed throughout his presidency, with Democratic eminence grise Clark Clifford referring to Reagan as an "amiable dunce"--one of the many personal attacks and insults issued in this vein. Despite the fact that he was a star athlete at the University of Michigan, and a top graduate at Yale Law School, Gerald Ford was dismissed as a fool and a clumsy oaf. Despite the brilliance with which he outwitted and outthought Hitler's generals, and despite the liberation of Europe that he initiated with the Normandy invasion, Dwight Eisenhower was attacked and mocked as being out of it and clueless during his Presidency (a notion vigorously disputed by, among others, the late Stephen Ambrose). Herbert Hoover continues hilariously to be blamed for having brought about the Great Depression singlehandedly (it's always fascinated me that anyone could think that one person--even if that one person was President of the United States--could have started a worldwide economic cataclysm all by his lonesome). And even though he was never President, it is instructive to remember how Barry Goldwater was supposedly adjudged too insane to be President by 1,000 psychologists who never met Goldwater, much less examined him, that his campaign slogan was changed from "In Your Heart You Know He's Right" to "In Your Guts You Know He's Nuts" by a Johnson campaign determined to keep up the illusion that Goldwater was crazy, that a President Goldwater would somehow start a nuclear war (through the showing of the infamous "countdown" campaign ad), and that Goldwater would somehow get the United States mired in a war in Southeast Asia (a charge so ironic that the following joke became fashionable in the late 1960s: "I was told that if I voted for Barry Goldwater for President in 1964, we would be at war in Vietnam. I did, and damned if we aren't!").

So you see, hating Presidents and presidential candidates, making personal attacks against them, and demonstrating gross incivility towards them started well before the Clinton Administration. After all, it was Democrats in the South who called Abe Lincoln a "baboon." Shall Republicans bear a grudge for that as well? Would it have excused the attacks against Clinton, since after all, for their attacks on Lincoln, the Democrats surely had it coming?

Well, no, it wouldn't. The notion is absurd, but it is perfectly consistent with Krugman's "Two Wrongs Make A Right" philosophy.

But the most basic problem with Krugman's latest screed is that it ignores the simple lesson that you and I learned from our parents when we were five years old. We learned that no one is impressed with an argument that includes one personal attack after another. We learned that no one is impressed with the substitution of reason with diatribe. We learned that when we seek to make our points, demonstrating civility shows others that we can make our arguments without having to resort to personal attacks--and that failing to make our arguments without civility only serves to show the poverty of our positions. And we learned that when making our arguments, it did well to show that we could enforce and reinforce our positions by not relying on just one assertion being repeated over and over again.

Paul Krugman, however, has learned none of these things. His columns are less illuminating than they are intemperate. They are less erudite than they are shrill. He recycles the same column time and again, and phones it in when it comes to providing material for the Times to publish. And to all of the Krugman fans out there who like to remind critics of their hero that Krugman has a Clark Medal and may someday win the Nobel Prize, and that somehow, his proficiency as an economist makes him right on the money in his critiques as well, I'll remind them that there are plenty of economists who actually did win Nobel Prizes, and dispute Krugman's theories and arguments. Besides which, it doesn't take a genius to know that even if Krugman is a skilled economist, that doesn't necessarily make him a skilled pundit or commentator. And no amount of Clark Medals or Nobel Prizes can change that.

I rather like and appreciate Brooks' comments about civility, and if Krugman had agreed to carry on the debate in a civil tone, I would state civilly that it is unfortunate that Krugman chooses to sacrifice his talent at economics and his legacy as an economist with a series of emotionally overwrought articles that simply rehash the same arguments repeatedly, in true one-trick pony fashion. And I would leave it at that because to go further might be uncivil.

But since Krugman admonishes us to sacrifice politeness for honesty, I'll do just that, and note that when it comes to judging the value of columns written by this Clark Medal-winning, potential Nobel Prize-garnering Princeton professor, a fundamental truth applies: You can take a certain animal from which trayf food products can be derived, dress it up in the finest evening gown available, adorn it with the best jewelry that money can buy, smear lipstick on it, take it out to a fancy restaurant, and glorify it by referring to it constantly and adoringly as "My Darling Aphrodite." But in the end, a pig is still a pig.

And no amount of Clark Medals or future Nobel Prizes can change the fact that the hog butcher should come calling to apply the meat cleaver to Krugman's piggish columns.

"Yes, I know that's a rude thing to say. But it's also the truth."

DOUBLE STANDARDS

If you are a celebrity and you use your status to lend support to a left-of-center candidate, much of the media world yawns and moves on.

If you are a celebrity and you use your status to lend support to a right-of-center candidate, the tut-tutting begins.

I'm sorry, but do these overly concerned media critics really think that people don't notice the hypocrisy?

DIFFERENTLY INTELLIGENT WHITE MAN

Michael Moore appears to have problems keeping his facts and statements straight.

Note to Moore: Always tell the truth. Then you'll be able to remember what you said the last time.

"DIGNITY IN DEFEAT"

Or lack thereof.

THE HUMAN PUNCHING BAG

Why Michael Moore continues to make himself a target for abuse from people like Tim Blair is frankly beyond me. But hey, if Moore wants to keep embarrassing himself, I'll be glad to keep laughing.

THE "TYPE M" WORLD OF PAUL KRUGMAN

Arnold Kling nails Krugman with an excellent open-letter revealing Krugman to be a demagogue with whom a constructive discussion is next to impossible

I'M NOT A FAN OF MARIJUANA . . .

But I definitely think that certain attempts to campaign against its use are ridiculous beyond measure.

HYPOCRISY

But darling, we can't let them in. They're Republicans:

Turning the tables on the nation's leading civil rights organization, three Republican Senate hopefuls accused the NAACP Thursday of unfairly excluding from a scheduled debate the only two GOP minority candidates in the race.

"What the NAACP was based upon is giving equal opportunity to African Americans to strive and reach their potential," said Dr. Chirinjeev Kathuria, who was born in India. "So for me, it's ironic that we're not being allowed to participate."

Kathuria, 38, and Antonio Davis-Fairman, the only black Republican vying to succeed Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-Ill.), were nixed from the lineup of this Saturday's debate. That's because they placed last in a public opinion poll the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Illinois State Conference commissioned to winnow down the crowd.

The civil rights organization decided to include only the top six candidates from each party in the two-hour debate.

But Kathuria and state Sen. Steve Rauschenberger (R-Elgin) scoffed at that reasoning, arguing that the poll really showed the race was wide open. The candidate finishing first among each party's voters, Democrat Dan Hynes and Republican Jack Ryan, received just 10 percent apiece. The survey's margin of error was plus or minus 4.8 percentage points, making the results one big statistical tie.

"Polling this early is bizarre and foolish," Rauschenberger said. "It just shows you that there is no front-runner."

Ah, but the polling really wasn't "foolish," was it? I'm sure the people who did the excluding would call it "convenient" instead.

IT'S MY BLOG, AND I'LL WRITE WHAT I WANT TO

You know, I'm glad to see that there are so many left-of-center bloggers who are busy telling conservatives and libertarians in the Blogosphere what they should write about the Valerie Plame affair, and what they should think about the Bush Administration in general. I find it just so delightful that all of these people are so concerned with telling me what my publicly expressed opinions on this blog should be. Many thanks, guys!

Unfortuntely, I have to concur with Eugene Volokh's response to these thinly disguised efforts at thought control, and tell all y'all to shove off. In the event that blowhards like Mark Kleiman and others are unaware, I pay for the bandwidth to this site, it is mine, and I don't blog for a living. I do it as a hobby--something that interests and amuses me, and something that allows me a little soapbox in this great big world. That means that I'm the one who decides what to write about on this blog. It also means that when blogging ceases to be fun, I'll stop doing it. In any event, I have no obligation whatsoever to write about certain topics simply because certain bloggers screech and yell about "walls of silence" and other such fatuous nonsense.

Of course, as Eugene mentions, if you are giving someone commands on what they should write about on their blogs, you are giving them work. And with an obligation for work, comes an obligation for money. Given that, and because of the fact that I like to meet even my most nonsensical critics at least halfway, here's the deal I'm offering:

I'll continue to write for free about issues regarding the Valerie Plame controversy that interest me. But I'll also do the following for the following fees:

1. For $100 an hour, I'll write stuff about Karl Rove's supposed past political mischief and misdeeds as viewed by the Left.

2. For $150 an hour, I'll write about how George W. Bush really has no real principles, and is just a ruthless, power hungry brat who is willing to do anything to win.

3. For $200 an hour, I'll write about how the outing of Valerie Plame is emblematic of the fascistic, totalitarian state that AmeriKKKa has become since the passage of the Patriot Act.

4. And for a grand total of $500 an hour, I'll draft articles of impeachment and make the case that President Bush ought to be removed from office. (Kids, I'm a lawyer. I'm trained to do this kind of thing!)

I really don't need any talking points on the above--I get them all the time from reading my helpful liberal blogger friends--you know, the same ones who are so busy telling me what I should, and should not write on this site. Just be sure to tell me how many hours you want me to devote to any of the above, hit the Amazon and PayPal buttons (PayPal would be best, since it allows me to identify who sent what, and to ensure that they paid for the amount of blogging on the specific topic that they want discussed), and we're good to go!

Otherwise, cut the crap. I'll write what I please on my blog, and I won't take marching orders on what my blog content should be from anyone.

Capice? I certainly hope so--I really can't make my feelings any clearer.

THE RESPONSIBLE LEFT

David, my Blogospheric friend, don't you understand? "Lobotomies for Republicans" surely must be the law since that is the only way some people on the Democratic side of the political divide are going to be able to level the intellectual playing field.

Of course, I highly doubt that "Lobotomies for Republicans" will ever catch on. After all, the Kennedys are a Democratic family.

FISKING TED KENNEDY

The only thing that I have to add to Charles Krauthammer's incisive column taking on Ted Kennedy's recent ridiculous statements is that if unnecessary wars really are "made up in Texas," one has to ask why a certain sibling of Senator Kennedy's decided to elevate Lyndon Baines Johnson to the Vice Presidency.

Or was the supposed correlation between Texas and "fraudulent" wars discovered only recently?

SHORTER JOHN PILGER

My only complaint is that it isn't short enough.

DOUBLE STANDARDS ABOUND

See this post for reference. I love the following line:

"The Europen intellectuals went wild when the electricity failed in Baghdad. They note the 10,000 heat deaths in France with a shrug of the shoulders."

The mind boggles.

I FEEL SO ASHAMED

How could I possibly have considered Paul Krugman shrill?

GIVE ME COFFEE, OR GIVE ME DEATH!

Quoth N.Z. Bear:

This is great stuff for conservatives, of course --- it's right neighborly of the well-meaning liberals trying to pass this measure to make it so easy for conservatives to bash not just this particular scheme, but the entire concept of wealth redistribution.

And think of the slogans! "You'll tax my latte when you pry it from my cold (on account of the double-cups I insist on and screw the damned rainforest) dead hands!" and all that...

What is he talking about? Well, go to the link and find out.

AS IF WE DIDN'T HAVE ENOUGH PROBLEMS

It turns out that Paul Krugman has a twin.

STUPID WHITE MAN

Just because it's easy to criticize Michael Moore doesn't mean that it isn't necessary. Tim Blair (v. 2.0) skewers Moore with ease and aplomb.

Of course, it may be that Moore skewers himself, and Tim is just pointing it out for the rest of us.

DECONSTRUCTING KRUGMAN

Warning: This post is extremely long.

Apparently, blogger interviews with economists are catching. We had John Hawkins interview Milton Friedman. We also have an interview that Kevin Drum conducted with Paul Krugman. Kevin is to be congratulated for having gotten the interview, and his discussion with Krugman is very revealing.

Of course, some of what it reveals tends to validate the critiques that conservatives and libertarians have made about Krugman. I want to take the time to offer my own take on Krugman's discussion with Kevin, and with some of the passages that Kevin helpfully excerpted from Krugman's new book.

Let's begin, shall we?

1. HE CAN'T BE A BOMB THROWER. HE'S SUCH A NICE GUY: One of the themes that Kevin touches on repeatedly in discussing Krugman is the argument that Krugman has been miscast as a bomb thrower, since he is personally supposedly the exact opposite of what one would expect a bomb thrower to be. Thus, Kevin tells us that "in person Krugman hardly fits his image of a fire breathing demon of the left. In fact, he's got a hint of the geeky air you might expect from a Princeton professor of economics: slightly harrassed, stuff in his shirt pocket, a bit of a nervous speaking style." In this post, Kevin says that "Krugman in print might seem angry at times and appalled at others, but Krugman in person is just downright depressing." And in this post, we're told that since Krugman looks charming while on vacation with his wife, he looks like a "really nice guy" (I'm sure that Kevin was being facetious in this last post, but it appears to be part of a theme, nonetheless).

Of course, while Krugman may be charming, or depressing, or geeky, none of that matters in discussing the impression that he leaves with people through his writings. Krugman is an intellectual, in that he uses words and symbols to advance and further ideas. He is precisely the kind of person that Hayek spoke of; a "second hand dealer in ideas."

As such, the most important judgment of Krugman's persona comes not from how he comports himself in person, but how he conveys his ideas through the written word. No one really cares whether Krugman blows up at dinner parties, scares the children, or smashes the china in fury over the latest batch of Bush "lies." What we care about--what is at the heart of the debate over Krugman--is whether his partisanship affects and hinders his punditry. Krugman is certainly entitled to his own views. The question is whether in advancing his views, he has become an irresponsible public advocate who uses language without care or concern. To judge that issue, we look not at Krugman's mannerisms, but his words.

2. KRUGMANSPEAK: As I mentioned above, Kevin starts out his post by excerpting from Krugman's new book. Let's see some of what Krugman has to say about his political adversaries:

Most people have been slow to realize just how awesome a sea change has taken place in the domestic political scene....The public still has little sense of how radical our leading politicians really are....Just before putting this book to bed, I discovered a volume that describes the situation almost perfectly....an old book by, of all people, Henry Kissinger....

In the first few pages, Kissinger describes the problems confronting a heretofore stable diplomatic system when it is faced with a "revolutionary power" — a power that does not accept that system's legitimacy....It seems clear to me that one should regard America's right-wing movement...as a revolutionary power in Kissinger's sense....

In fact, there's ample evidence that key elements of the coalition that now runs the country believe that some long-established American political and social institutions should not, in principle, exist....Consider, for example....New Deal programs like Social Security and unemployment insurance, Great Society programs like Medicare....Or consider foreign policy....separation of church and state....The goal would seem to be something like this: a country that basically has no social safety net at home, which relies mainly on military force to enforce its will abroad, in which schools don't teach evolution but do teach religion and — possibly — in which elections are only a formality....

First of all, there is no indication whatsoever that Krugman's opponents "[do] not accept [the] system's legitimacy" merely because they have policy disagreements with Krugman over a number of issues. Policy disagreements do not constitute a failure to "accept [the] system's legitimacy." Krugman is clearly trying to paint anyone who disagrees with him as being outside the mainstream from the outset, even before having to bother to actually take on their arguments. It's a cheap and dishonest tactic--one that paints Krugman's opponents as not only being wrong, but being fundamentally evil.

Secondly, there is no program whatsoever that Krugman can point to proving that his opponents wish to have "a country that basically has no social safety net at home, which relies mainly on military force to enforce its will abroad, in which schools don't teach evolution but do teach religion and — possibly — in which elections are only a formality." No mainstream conservative politician has advocated doing away with the safety net (on the contrary, the Bush Administration appears set to enhance it through the introduction of the prescription drug benefit), or dispensing with diplomacy in foreign policy, eradicating the teaching of evolution from the classroom, or making elections a "formality." These kinds of assertions go beyond being nonsensical, and have the clear and distinct air of tinfoil hat-paranoia about them. And Krugman--and Kevin--wonder why people think that Krugman is shrill and irresponsible?

More Krugman:

Back to Kissinger. His description of the baffled response of established powers in the face of a revolutionary challenge works equally well as an account of how the American political and media establishment has responded to the radicalism of the Bush administration over the past two years:...."they find it nearly impossible to take at face value the assertions of the revolutionary power that it means to smash the existing framework"....this passage sent chills down my spine....

There's a pattern...within the Bush administration....which should suggest that the administration itself has radical goals. But in each case the administration has reassured moderates by pretending otherwise — by offering rationales for its policy that don't seem all that radical. And in each case moderates have followed a strategy of appeasement....this is hard for journalists to deal with: they don't want to sound like crazy conspiracy theorists. But there's nothing crazy about ferreting out the real goals of the right wing; on the contrary, it's unrealistic to pretend that there isn't a sort of conspiracy here, albeit one whose organization and goals are pretty much out in the open....

Here's a bit more from Kissinger: "The distinguishing feature of a revolutionary power is not that it feels threatened...but that absolutely nothing can reassure it (Kissinger's emphasis). Only absolute security — the neutralization of the opponent — is considered a sufficient guarantee"....I don't know where the right's agenda stops, but I have learned never to assume that it can be appeased through limited concessions. Pundits who predict moderation on the part of the Bush administration, on any issue, have been consistently wrong....

The implications of this passage are clear and obvious--in addition to being completely offensive and intellectually disgusting. Krugman thinks that the American Right is essentially a totalitarian movement--one that has hatched a conspiracy (though strangely an "open" one), and one that wishes to "neutralize" its opponents--with all of the dark implications that statement carries. One doesn't even know where to begin with all of this ranting and raving--except perhaps to note that Krugman lacks the intellectual and emotional maturity necessary to admit that while others may disagree with his views, they still have good intentions at heart, and can be disagreed with in a reasonable and calm manner. That's not possible for Krugman--his opponents are his enemies, and they apparently must be denounced in the strongest possible terms.

After this litany of fury and rage, Kevin takes the opportunity to call Krugman's rhetoric merely "alarming," and then makes his comment that Krugman "hardly fits his image of a fire breathing demon of the left." One has to wonder what exactly Krugman must do to be considered "a fire breathing demon." Must the armada of Hell actually be called to afflict George W. Bush before the appellation is seriously considered to be appropriate?

Looking at the interview Kevin has with Krugman, we see more examples of outrageous rhetoric:

It's odd that the better things get if you are rich or a fundamentalist Christian, the more angry they get. That's the nice thing about the Kissinger quote. I'm not sure he understands it either, but this notion that if you have this kind of revolutionary power you don't feel secure unless you have a complete monopoly of power, that seems to be the way it's playing out.

It is, of course, amusing to see Krugman engage in projection by calling conservatives angry. Equally amusing is his belief that he can just classify his opponents as "fundamentalist Christians." I don't think I quite qualify, and neither does this person, this person, this person, this person, these people, and . . . well . . . you get the point, I'm sure. Yet another example of Krugman setting up strawmen to knock down--because he can't win an argument through honest means.

Krugman says the following about aid to New York in the wake of September 11th:

Yeah, but they [the Bush Administration] don't want to do it. Partly because they don't like government, partly because a lot of it would be going to New York and they don't like New York. It's pretty amazing.

It is amazing--especially when one considers that Krugman gives no evidence to back up his assertion that the Administration doesn't like New York. The smears are flying fast and furious now.

Want some more incendiary rhetoric from outside of this interview? Happy to oblige you. Here's what Krugman said in a March 25th NYT column of this year:

"[A]fter Natalie Maines, lead singer for the Dixie Chicks, criticized President Bush: a crowd gathered in Louisiana to watch a 33,000-pound tractor smash a collection of Dixie Chicks CD's, tapes and other paraphernalia. To those familiar with 20th-century European history it seemed eerily reminiscent of Kristallnacht."

My, my. If only the Jews profited off of Kristallnacht in the manner that the Dixie Chicks did, maybe we wouldn't have had so many problems. As a Jew, I certainly would prefer millions of dollars to millions of dead.

But that's just me.

Here's Krugman writing in this article:

I predict that in the years ahead Enron, not Sept. 11, will come to be seen as the greater turning point in U.S. society.

Do you laugh or cry reading stuff like that?

And despite all of this demagoguery, Krugman actually has the nerve to present himself as being reasonable. From the interview, discussing the dangers of income inequality:

One thing that happens is you have an adversarial kind of society . . .

And we all know that Krugman isn't the adversarial kind, right?

On American society:

Is this the same country that we had in 1970? I think we have a much more polarized political system, a much more polarized social climate. We certainly aren't the country of Franklin Roosevelt, and we're probably not the country of Richard Nixon either, so I think we have to take seriously the possibility that things won't work out this time.

He actually thinks that things weren't polarized in FDR's time? The joke back then was of the businessman who every day went to buy a paper, glanced at the front page, cursed, and then threw it down. One day, the paper boy asked the businessman "Sir, what is it that you are looking for every day in the paper?" "The obituaries," the businessman replied "But sir, the obituaries are in the back page," said the paper boy. "Son," replied the businessman, "the obituary that I'm looking for will be on the front page."

And the polarization under Nixon--do I really need to discuss this to demonstrate how ridiculous Krugman is being?

Of course, there may be a reason Krugman is so shrill. When asked about his online reading habits, Krugman responds by saying, in part:

I read . . . Atrios regularly . . .

Well, that would explain a few things, wouldn't it?

3. KRUGMANISM: Here we actually discuss issues instead of insults (although with Krugman, one is never free of insults). Economic and social philosophies differ, and the debate over theory is virtually never-ending. Still, some of Krugman's commentary is bizarre.

Here is Krugman on income inequality, and what Kevin remarks as the "remarkably little class envy among the working class in America":

Yeah, and that's partly because people don't know. There's a funny thing that happened when I had that piece on inequality from the Times magazine a year ago. I had no control over the artwork and didn't see it until everyone else saw it, and they had this big picture of what they thought was a mansion. But it wasn't a mansion, it wasn't what the really rich are building now, it was a roughly $3 million house of about 7,000 square feet, and there are a few of those in Princeton just down the road from me. The people doing the Times magazine artwork just don't realize how rich the rich are these days, what the real excesses look like, and I think that's the general thing. I think most people are not well informed, and after all who is going to inform them? It's the power of propaganda: 49% of the public thinks that most people end up paying the estate tax.

Krugman thinks that the lack of class envy comes from the ignorance of the average American. But in saying that, he displays his own ignorance of the American social culture. When Americans see the rich, they don't envy them. Rather, they aspire to be rich themselves. They don't begrudge the success of others, but rather use the example of others to try to make successes of themselves. Krugman would destroy this ethos of upward mobility and try to replace it with the class envy that he so desperately wants to reign supreme in American life. His reasons are frankly inexplicable, as is his concern with what other people make. Krugman reminds me of the interview some time ago in the now defunct George Magazine, where actress Melanie Griffith said that if she were President, she would prevent anyone from making more than $1 billion a year. What business a President has worrying about these issues was never explained by Griffith, and Krugman does little better in demonstrating why we should put some kind of cap on earning power.

What does Krugman want to do to reduce income inequality? He tells us that he would like to raise taxes to 38% of GDP--the way it is in Canada currently (at this time, taxes in America make up 26% of GDP, according to Krugman). He also advocates a "phased elimination of all the Bush tax cuts, plus some additional taxes. I'd probably look first at some way to make the corporate profits tax actually effective again — the nominal rate is 35% but the effective rate is only 15% or so." But this kills off the American economic recovery--a recovery that is being strongly assisted by tax cuts as just about every analyst report is making clear.

What would Krugman use as an economic stimulus instead? A return to the New Deal:

We need some WPA type of projects, and as it happens the homeland security stuff would be a perfect candidate.

Of course, while there is precious little evidence to indicate that the WPA, or other New Deal projects helped bring about economic recovery, there is evidence to suggest that the New Deal prolonged economic troubles.

4. IN WHICH PAUL KRUGMAN PLAYS PAUL EHRLICH: By now, just about everyone knows of the famous bet between free-marketeer Julian Simon, and left-of-center doomcrier Paul Ehrlich. It may be time for a similar bet to be placed--this time between a right-of-center economist, and doomcrier Paul Krugman, who has the following to say about our economic fate:

Train wreck is a way overused metaphor, but we're headed for some kind of collision, and there are three things that can happen. Just by the arithmetic, you can either have big tax increases, roll back the whole Bush program plus some; or you can sharply cut Medicare and Social Security, because that's where the money is; or the U.S. just tootles along until we actually have a financial crisis where the marginal buyer of U.S. treasury bills, which is actually the Reserve Bank of China, says, we don't trust these guys anymore — and we turn into Argentina. All three of those are clearly impossible, and yet one of them has to happen, so, your choice. Which one?

In the event that his meaning is not clear, Krugman makes his own choice:

I think financial crisis, and then how it falls out is 50-50, either New New Deal or back to McKinley, and I think it's anybody's guess which one of those it is. It's crazy stuff, but think about where I am on this. My take on the numbers is no different from Brad DeLong's, it's no different from CBO's now, and we all look at this and we all see this curve that marches steadily upwards and then heads for the sky after the baby boomers start retiring. I don't know what Brad thinks, I think he's open-minded [actually, it turns out he's optimistic that voters will eventually come to their senses and raise taxes on the rich. —ed.], but the general view is: yes, but this is America, it can't happen, so something will come up. And I'm just willing to say I don't see any noncatastrophic solution to this, I don't see an incremental stepwise resolution. I think something drastic is really going to happen.

Well, we'll have to wait and see. But we are able to hold Krugman to his prediction that there will be a disaster. If he's right, he's vindicated. But if he's wrong, he will be egregiously and comically inaccurate, in addition to being a demagogue on issues of public concerns.

I'm betting on the latter eventuality, myself. Given how irresponsible and cavalier Krugman has been in advancing his arguments and analyzing the motives of his opponents, I won't be in the least bit surprised to see his lack of intellectual rigor and his failure to present his case with a scintilla of responsibility cause him to completely miss the boat on the country's future prospects.

Ladies and gentlemen, behold the 21st century's Paul Ehrlich. Without the charm.

"LIES AND THE LYING LIARS WHO ATTRIBUTE THEM TO THE OTHER PARTY"

Will Saletan calls out a number of Democratic politicians on blatant falsehoods that they are telling in the campaign season. An invaluable and excellent read--one that should, perhaps, be forwarded to more than a few left-of-center pundits who apparently believe that their side is pure as the driven snow.

LIES AND THE LYING LIARS WHO TELL THEM

Surprise, surprise.

"HELLO, KETTLE? THIS IS POT. YOU ARE BLACK."

I really have to wonder whether Paul Krugman possesses that vital portion of the brain that filters ridiculous statements before they come out of his mouth.

I haven't read generalizations so nonsensical in a long time. And as the lede indicates, Krugman really is in no position to talk--something this post only serves to reinforce.

YE GODS!

Can government do nothing right?

IT'S AMAZING WHAT SOME PEOPLE BELIEVE

While I listen to National Public Radio and have learned to filter out whatever bias there is in the broadcasts, there are some people on the program who I just cannot stand. One of them is Andre Codrescu, who as Ramesh Ponnuru reports, is guilty of some astonishingly stupid moral equivalence.

VISITING THE SINS OF CHILDREN ON ADULTS

Jacob Sullum notes and eviscerates the nonsensical notion that advertisements from the alcohol industry that are targeted to reach adults should be regulated for fear that they may reach children as well. There are a whole host of false premises driving such a misguided effort, and Sullum does a very good job at debunking those premises. Be sure to have a gander at his article.

*SIGH*

"Captain! Sensors are telling us that people are trying to use the RSS feed to our blog to figure out who writes our posts!"

"Implement countermeasures, Number One!"

"Implementing countermeasures, aye Captain. Err . . . Captain . . ."

"What is it, Number One?"

"Why are our posts anonymous anyway? I mean, the whole anonymity policy has never been explained in any way, shape or form."

"Are you being insubordinate, Number One?"

"No Captain, I just . . ."

"Mr. Kuttner, when you've finished making yourself look like a childish brat, throw Number One in the brig!"

"Aye Captain!"

"And be sure to take another swipe at The Corner sometime today! Maybe they'll finally notice."

BUT WHAT DOES HE REALLY THINK?

Shelby Steele rips into Jesse Jackson in light of the latter's recent protests at Yale. And deservedly so:

Mr. Jackson's reputation has been in public freefall since the news that this warrior against teen pregnancy fathered a child out of wedlock. Here we saw the man of many appetites finally undermine the man who was the reverend. The scandal hurt him not because it revealed something new but because it confirmed something we already believed. It ended rather than started debate over his character. He is now, himself, the object of black demonstrators angry that his corporate shakedowns in their name bring them nothing. Beyond all this, he has simply gotten older, but seemingly without wisdom. He seems injured by age rather than seasoned by it.

But Mr. Jackson is not alone in decline. In this 40th-anniversary year of the March on Washington, the entire civil rights establishment looks like an out-of-touch gerontocracy. Each summer the NAACP and Urban League conventions draw less attention, despite attempts to garner publicity with ever more venomous anti-Bush proclamations. In the intellectual debate black leaders are so predictable as to be an afterthought. Even the much-heralded black vote garners little more than symbolism from either party because it is the most consistent given in politics. But it is not incompetence that has shrunk this movement; it is obsolescence.

Today America has simply absorbed the point the civil rights movement was born to make. Even back in 1963 when Martin Luther King marched on Washington, much of America was quite prepared to agree with him. President Kennedy himself wanted to speak at the march but held back only for fear of stealing Dr. King's thunder. And there was no real counterargument anywhere to the "I Have a Dream" speech. By the next year the greatest civil rights legislation in history was passed into law.

Mr. Jackson and the entire civil rights leadership are defined by the archetype of protest. And this is where their obsolescence begins. The great test of all protest is whether it is truly instructive to the society it challenges. Protest should enlighten society about those problems that its bigotries and ignorance keep it from facing--problems it must grapple with for its health and survival. When protest is truly instructive, it gives society a much greater vision of itself. It doesn't just complain. It says this society is already great (or protest would be a waste of time), and this is how much greater it will be when the problem being protested is solved. Truly instructive protest is exciting and flattering for everyone because it holds out the possibility of personal and social growth. Protest leaders are charismatic because we sense within them new possibilities for ourselves. We often feel a private intimacy with truly instructive protest leaders. Millions have felt close to Gandhi, or the Mandela who came out of prison.

Of course, neither Gandhi nor Mandela really gave people a sense that they were into protesting just to enrich themselves, whereas with Jackson--as Steele notes--enriching himself and his close associates appears to be a prime motivation.

IF YOU CAN'T DAZZLE THEM WITH YOUR BRILLIANCE . . .

Just call them names like a playground bully.

How pathetic. Is Kuttner's behavior really supposed to impress anyone?

PEOPLE ARE ENTITLED TO THEIR OWN IDEAS . . .

And the rest of us are entitled to point out how stupid some of those ideas really are:

Last Sunday I attended a very odd and unpleasant meeting at the Tempodrom in Berlin. The several hundred people who were present believe the American government is to blame for the attack on the World Trade Center, which it either carried out itself, or else allowed others to carry out, in order to have an excuse to invade Iraq and establish world domination. Michael Meacher has recently argued in our own dear Guardian that Washington deliberately failed to stop the attacks, and a number of American conspiracy theorists had come to Berlin to peddle this line. Many people in this milieu — though not, one can be certain, Mr Meacher — further believe that the American government is in turn controlled by a Jewish world conspiracy, and that Mossad is behind the suicide bombings in Israel.

Any number of variations on these wild themes could be heard at the Tempodrom, and any amount of dubious detail was advanced about why the American authorities failed to send fighters to shoot down the airliners after these had left their permitted courses. One speaker described at length how the airliners had been controlled by propeller-driven aircraft that appeared in the sky near them. A British student from East Anglia University, who had started to find out about these conspiracy theories on the Internet and had helped to put up posters for the conference, said in tones in which one might describe a religious conversion, ‘This stuff is the truth, the real world.’ Nobody found my suggestion that the Americans were taken by surprise on 9/11 the slightest bit convincing.

The conference organisers, who were drawn from the extreme Left, were anxious to exclude their rivals from the neo-Nazi Right, and had announced that they would resist all attempts to exploit the 9/11 story ‘by the purveyors of propaganda, paranoia, racism, mystification, proselytisation or advertising’. This solemn warning against ‘advertising’ did not prevent the speakers from advertising their own ludicrous books, which were selling briskly at the back of the hall. Nor had the heavies on the door managed to stop Gerd Walther, an office holder in the extreme-right NPD (the National Democratic party of Germany) from infiltrating the conference and trying to bend the ear of anyone who would listen about the true state of affairs in Germany, which he regards as an occupied country run by a class of collaborator politicians who are themselves controlled — surprise, surprise — by the Jews and the Americans: ‘But the German people will have its [sic] freedom. On 8 May 1945 the German Wehrmacht capitulated, but the German Reich did not go under. It’s just not capable of acting at the moment, but we’re waiting to restore its capacity to act. We believe the Jewish–American occupying power is heading for defeat. The Jewish power in America will fall.’

I'll just let all of that speak for itself.

DOUBLE STANDARDS ABOUND

Read this post and click on the links contained therein to find out why.

WHAT'S GOOD FOR THE GOOSE . . .

Is . . . well . . . you know.

THE CHARMS OF A.N.S.W.E.R.

If this group ever had any credibility, it is gone after reading this post (dated today, and written at 12:25 am).

AND NOW, FOR YOUR VIEWING PLEASURE, ENRAGED ATRIETTES!*

Check the comments section to this post and witness the minions of Atrios enraged beyond all reason because the god of their idolatry has been called out for his latest ridiculous post. The artery-busting fury is precious to behold.

Never let it be said that this blog is not the bringer of guilty pleasures to the masses. And please, refrain from picking on the Atriettes too viciously. They don't know better.

*Props to John Cole for having coined this phrase.

THAT DOG JUST WON'T HUNT

David Boaz beats up the myth that liberal underrepresentation in talk radio is due to them being too nice for radio.

QUOI?

Is it really "another sad example of White American Male Supremacy" for an American columnist to refer to Kim Jong Il as a "lunatic"? I would think that is a judgment that people of all races could agree on, as long as they knew the facts about what is going on in North Korea.

LIES AND THE LYING LIARS WHO TELL THEM

It's official: Michael Moore has no shame.

CLINTON AND THE WOLF

Referencing the story behind this post, Mark Steyn writes the following:

Back in the '90s, Bill Clinton didn't exactly apologize to the wolf, but he turned a blind eye as the poor misunderstood fellow pounced on more and more denizens of the barnyard, whether at American quarters in Saudi Arabia, or American embassies in Africa, or even American buildings in Manhattan, when the World Trade Center was hit first time round. In Prokofiev's ''Peter And The Wolf,'' the children learn to identify each musical instrument as a different animal. But no matter how loud Osama bin Laden blew his horn, he couldn't get the administration's attention. According to Richard Miniter's new book, after 17 sailors were killed on the USS Cole, Defense Secretary Bill Cohen said the attack ''was not sufficiently provocative'' to warrant a response. You'll have to do better than that, Osama!

So he did.

THE INCOHERENCE OF THE ANTIWAR MOVEMENT

Yes, it is still out there, and it is still incoherent. Mark Steyn explains:

Tony Blair seems to have fallen victim to a kind of reverse-emperor's-new-clothes effect. No matter how much he takes off, the crowd will always be convinced he's still hiding something. No matter how much he reveals, they still sing, "The King is not being altogether straight with us." Even if he were to show us his front-bottom, it would be assumed to be an artfully placed aspidistra, and demonstrators would still be demanding he come clean.

Well, I hold no briefs for Blair, even while he's posing naked. But I must say of all the fuzzy, blurry, Vaseline-lensed phoneys hanging round the Royal Courts of Justice, the worst by far are not the Government, nor even the BBC, but the anti-war protesters posthumously conscripting the late David Kelly to their ranks.

As we now know, Dr Kelly was in favour of the war. Not only that, but his most significant point of disagreement with the Government is that it was (officially) opposed to regime change, while he thought it absolutely necessary. In that respect at least, he was more hawkish than Blair, Jack Straw and Colin Powell. He had more faith in the existence of WMD than half the cabinet on either side of the Atlantic. Yet a man who believed there was no option other than war has been enthusiastically adopted by the anti-war crowd as an emblem of their cause.

Since everyone seems to use Dr Kelly, alive or dead, for whatever line they want to peddle, let me belatedly join in. He is an emblem of the anti-war movement - or, to be more precise, of its utter vacuity and incoherence. If anyone stands naked, it's these fellows. Dr Kelly is just a convenient cudgel with which to beat Blair: in that sense, he sums up the sour oppositionism of the anti-war movement.

They're against Blair and against Bush and they'll use whatever's to hand. But ask them what they're for , what they'd do instead of war, and they've got no suggestions, unless you count Jeanette Winterson's response to 9/11: "Touch me. Kiss me. Remind me what I am." Fortunately, Jeanette herself is always around to remind us what she is.

If I got to touch and kiss Jeanette - admittedly a bit of a long shot - I'd leave a Post-it note on her nose recommending that, two years after September 11, it's not enough just being anti-Bush (not something I thought I'd ever find myself accusing Jeanette of). We warmongers have quite a detailed agenda and, agree or disagree, it's not short of specifics.

DON'T GET LILEKS ANGRY

He'll rip you to shreds if you make him angry. And in this case, justifiably so.

PROVING MY POINT YET AGAIN

First read this.

Then tell me once again how Bush-hating isn't endemic.

WHAT WOULD FREUD SAY?

The sudden spate of political psychoanalysis is getting more laughable by the day. I wonder if the people who perpetrate this nonsense think they are fooling anyone, or whether they are just content to fool (and make fools out of) themselves.

BUSH IS HITLER!

Well, actually, no he's not. But as Byron York notes, you wouldn't be able to make the distinction if you relied on certain news outlets for your information:

Are you aware of the murderous history of George W. Bush — indeed, of the entire Bush family? Are you aware of the president's Nazi sympathies? His crimes against humanity? And do you know, by the way, that George W. Bush is a certifiable moron?

If you haven't heard the news, you're not on the cutting edge of Bush-hating. Anyone with Internet access and a little curiosity can discover an extensive network of websites like Bushbodycount.com, which accuses the president and his family of involvement in "mysterious" deaths; Fearbush.com and Takebackthemedia.com, which traffic in images of Bush in Nazi regalia; and Presidentmoron.com and Toostupidtobepresident.com, which portray the president as a drooling idiot. Taken together, the sites, and dozens of others like them, represent the far Left's online equivalent of the infamous Clinton Chronicles and Clinton Body Count videos and websites of the 1990s, which accused Bill Clinton of all sorts of murders and criminal deeds.

Back then, the Clinton compilations troubled liberal observers and spurred a series of disapproving articles — not to mention armchair psychoanalyses — about Clinton-hating. Today, there appears to be less concern. But perhaps the political world should take more notice. Yes, some of the Bush-hating sites are obscure, but others are not, and given the upcoming presidential race and the intense passions it will likely generate, it seems reasonable to predict that they will all become better known. And it seems just as likely that some of the material they publish will inexorably seep into the wider political discussion. Bush-hating, already intense in some circles, could well become a growth industry in the coming year.

Of course, this kind of incandescent hatred was pooh-poohed rather severely when it was directed at President Clinton--as it should have been. Nowadays, however, it gets a pass--past predictions to the contrary notwithstanding:

In April 1994, Time magazine's Nina Burleigh wrote a story titled "Clintonophobia! Just who are these Clinton haters, and why do they loathe Bill and Hillary with such passion?" (Readers might remember Burleigh for the brief celebrity she enjoyed in 1998, when she confessed her sexual desire for Clinton and told the Washington Post that she would be "happy to give him [oral sex] just to thank him for keeping abortion legal.") In the Time article, Burleigh quoted historian Alan Brinkley, who declared that Clinton was "the first president who has generated this kind of right-wing hatred" and suggested that a conservative president would not have had to suffer such attacks from his opponents. "Liberals tend to value tolerance highly," Brinkley said, "so there's a greater reluctance to destroy enemies than among the right."

There is now a conservative president, and Brinkley's dictum is being put to the test. It appears to be failing; one could wander through the anti-Bush world on the web for a long time looking for the liberal tolerance that Brinkley cited.

Quite so. Following up on this theme, Jonah Goldberg has a basic history lesson that never should have had to have been delivered except for the fact that a portion of the population insists on being stupid:

Nazis murdered millions of unarmed people. They put them in ovens. They made soap out of them. They carted off children in boxcars to die and used some of the kids for medical experiments, including injecting dyes into their eyes to see if they could improve their looks. Lower on the list of charges, the Nazis enslaved millions and launched wars for territorial and egotistical gain (and sent many of the conquered populations to death camps as well). Lower still, they banned books and burned them too. They expropriated homes and businesses, banned religions, etc.

An intelligent person wouldn't normally assume these are the sorts of facts people forget. It's not quite the same thing as saying that the Mork and Mindy was a spin-off from Happy Days, is it?

I could, of course, get more graphic about what the Nazis did, but I don't much like writing about the Holocaust. It's not merely a depressing subject, its enormity is so depressing, so compacted down with evil and barbarity and cruelty that it folds in upon itself like a black hole. The gravitational pull of its tragedy has permanently bent the trajectory of mankind. Suffice it to say that the Nazis weren't simply generically bad, they were uniquely and monumentally evil, not just in their hearts but also in literally billions of intentional, well-planned, and bureaucratized decisions they made every day.

And yet, in polite and supposedly sophisticated circles in America today it is acceptable to say George Bush is akin to a Nazi and that America is becoming Nazi-like. Indeed, in certain corners of the globe to disagree with this assertion is the more outlandish position than to agree with it.

[. . .]

But let's stop talking about Nazis.

I hate blue cheese. I mean I hate it. To me, it tastes like death or Al Sharpton's socks after they've been under the fridge for a year. But no matter how much I hate it, no matter how much I loathe its texture and smell and taste, it's still only blue or, if you must, "bleu" cheese. Even if you tripled my hatred for it, it would still just be a musky fromage from the land of cheese, long speeches, and short-lived loyalties. It would not, through the mysterious alchemy of hatred and bile, become poison. Sure, I could call it Sarin or Anthrax but that would not make it so. Because, you see, hating an object doesn't change an object. Only the most arrogant and solipsistic fool would argue or convince himself that his hatred of something increases the importance of that thing.

And that's how I think of all these people who e-mail me insistent that George Bush is a Nazi. They believe they are so important, so noble, their hatred and fear must be rooted things of Great Consequence. It's just so prosaic to hate Republicans. I am better than that. So, Republicans must be Nazis. They must be a threat to the whole world and to the sanctity of everything I hold dear because anything less would not be worth my time. George Bush can't simply be someone I disagree with. No, his popularity must be an indication of mass hysteria, of Nuremberg-style devotion to evil.

All of the above would tend to justify this post, now wouldn't it?

NOT THE SHARPEST KNIFE IN THE DRAWER

One of Nancy Pelosi's aides must be feeling deeply embarrassed right about now.

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT THAT MAUREEN DOWD COULDN'T BE ANY MORE STUPID . . .

She goes ahead and surprises you.

UPDATE: And she surprises you again!

REPUBLICANS AND FASCISM

Lileks pokes fun at this hackneyed and idiotic meme:

What’s the left-wing equivalent of “Goose-stepping?” I was watching a story on TV about a new lefty talk-radio network, and they interviewed this desiccated husk named Mike Malloy, and he mentioned that this new net would counteract all the “goose-stepping” that was pumped out by right-wing talk radio. Hmm. I listen to Prager, Medved, Hewitt. The first two guys are Jewish, so “goose-stepping” isn’t a word I’d toss in their general direction. I’ll admit that the field has some regrettable figures like Michael Savage, about whom I’ve written before: he has Michael Moore’s factual grasp, Al Franken’s warmth, and Paul Begala’s temperate nature. He’s the worst of the lot.

Any left-leaning talk-radio network will eventually produce a Savage of their own. How the more moderate voices deal with him will be instructive - but that’s yet to come. I repeat: what’s the left-wing equivalent of Goose-stepping? We know what that means: Right-wing = Nazis. This idea is so commonplace and unremarkable it made its way to the comics section of my paper, where the dreadfully unfunny Lalo Alcaraz did the Repubs = Nazis thing last Monday. An amusing charge, coming from a guy who shows up at MEChA seminars.

But Communism doesn’t have anything that can be expressed as pithily as “Goose-stepping.” Except, of course, for the goose-stepping: May Day parades featured some marvelously crisp leg-swings. And the parallels just keep coming! By some peculiar coincidence, the attributes of National Socialism are quite similar to the Soviet system: forced relocation of ethnic groups, the extermination of economic classes, the subservience of Art to the needs of the State, the imposition of Terror as a means of enforcing Party loyalty, the mass arrests, the hasty graves.

The one thing that made the Nazis distinct from the Sovs was the former’s fixation on racial identity. Blood Uber Alles. What’s your race? C’mon, we need to know. What - is - your - race?

How can we understand you if we don’t know your race?

I’m lucky; I don’t know where I come from. We have some theories, but they’re just that. One side of my lineage dead-ends in an adoption; the other trails off in Europe, east of Paris. Don’t know.

Don’t. Care. I’m a mongrel. I’m a race mixer. Everyone into the blender; fine by me. What I do know is that anyone who believes as I do today would have been shoved on a train by the real goose-steppers circa 1943.

But that’s irrelevant. I freely admit I’d like to see control of Head Start grants handed over to the states as per the Bush proposal, instead of controlled from Washington in perpetuity. Heil Hitler!

SLAYING THE MEChA MONSTER

Warning: This post is extremely long.

I've said before, and I'll say again that Ted Barlow is one of my favorite lefty bloggers out there. I find much of his work very readable, and I think that he is one of the most responsible commentators out there on any side of the ideological divide.

Having said all of that, let me say as well that I couldn't disagree more with his post on Cruz Bustamante, and MEChA. In fact, I think that Ted, Bustamante, and others who defend MEChA, or dismiss concerns about it, are blowing one of the easiest calls they have ever had to make.

After some prefatory language about past news stories that Ted believes were/are "bullsh*t," Ted tells us that the fuss made about Bustamante and MEChA is also "bullsh*t." Why is it "bullsh*t"? Well, here's what Ted tells us:

First of all, is MEChA, in fact, a racist organization? (Or as Glenn Reynolds put it, is MEChA a group of “fascist hatemongers”?)

It seems to me that this question rests on a more basic question: “Is MEChA, in any meaningful sense, an organization?” According to Rodolfo F. Acuna:

MECHA is a student organization with no formal central body, it has no national office, it has no budget, and it has no constitution. Each MECHA chapter has a set of bylaws that the student affairs office must approve. These bylaws state that the organization is open to all students no matter their race, sexual orientation, gender or religion.

Now, the distinction between a “constitution” and a “set of bylaws” leaves some room for fudging. It does seem apparent, though, that a chapter of MEChA at UCLA can be quite different from a chapter at Yale. But both groups are forbidden to discriminate by race, which seems like a strange bylaw for a racist organization of fascist hatemongers. Since so many conservatives have said that MEChA is the moral equivalent of the Klu Klux Klan, I can only assume that the Klan is open to everyone, regardless of race, sexual orientation, gender or religion.

(UPDATE: Rodolfo Acuna is wrong (and by extension, I’m wrong) that MEChA has no constitution. Tacitus points to this document, which certainly appears to be a constitution.)

So much of this argument is a distraction and doesn't even come close to passing the laugh test that I don't know where to begin.

First of all, as Tacitus's correction, and Ted's acknowledgment of that correction acknowledge, MEChA is a unified organization with a constitution. Its preamble is the following:

Chicano and Chicana students of Aztlán must take upon themselves the responsibilities to promote Chicanismo within the community, politicizing our Raza with an emphasis on indigenous consciousness to continue the struggle for the self-determination of the Chicano people for the purpose of liberating Aztlán. The following structure will make every MEChista accountable to its chapter, every chapter accountable to it's central (where applicable), every central accountable to its region, every region accountable to its state (where applicable), and every state accountable to the national.

Note that the preamble focuses only on "Chicano and Chicana students." It does not discuss or focus on people irrespective of their race or ethnic background, but rather centralizes as part of its mission persuading "Chicano and Chicana students" to take up the cause of MEChA--a cause that includes, among other things, "politicizing our Raza" for the express purpose of "liberating Aztlán." The focus on race, on winning the loyalty of people based on their racial and ethnic background as "Chicano and Chicana students" is inescapable--especially when the goal of MEChA is to "liberate" a portion of the United States that MEChA believes has been unjustly annexed from Mexico. So the organization is indeed far more racially exclusive--indeed, as I mentioned, inescapably racially exclusive--than Ted gives it credit for.

But what of this Rodolfo Acuna, who speaks of MEChA's bylaws admitting people without regard to their "race, sexual orientation, gender or religion"? Well, the simple answer would appear to be that Acuna is out of step with the MEChA doctrine of focusing on "Chicano and Chicana students" to carry out and fulfill its political goals. But assume for a moment that Acuna is right, and that MEChA does indeed have bylaws that stipulate that people should be admitted without regard to their "race, sexual orientation, gender or religion"? How does that remove the stain of racism from MEChA? I can create a group designed to hate black people, and have bylaws for my group stating that black people are perfectly welcome to come to my meetings so that I and others can tell them just how much we hate them, how inferior they are as a people, and how we should get rid of them, or at the very least, disassociate ourselves from them. Does that make my group any less racist? MEChA can admit men from Mars, for all I care--its roster of membership is far less important in judging the extent to which it may be a racist organization than is its stated goals, and its past actions.

This, of course, is why Ted's argument that MEChA cannot be analogized to the KKK because the KKK doesn't have the bylaws that MEChA purportedly has, is such a non sequitur. Conservatives may have made analogies between MEChA and the KKK, but even if that specific analogy fails, that doesn't automatically absolve MEChA from charges of racism. The KKK didn't get a patent on racism, or corner the market on hate in a manner that would justify Ted's line of argument that the KKK is the apogée of racism, and that if MEChA doesn't measure up to KKK standards, it is not racist. Again--and I would have thought this was obvious--MEChA must be judged on its own words and actions, not on some false and convenient test.

Other bloggers, by the way, also try to minimize MEChA's track record for reasons I find incomprehensible. Here is Kevin Drum on the issue:

I might add that although I never had any dealings with MEChA in college, my high school was about 50% Hispanic and I remember that the MEChA chapter there was absorbed in such subversive activities as holding car washes, running after school programs at the local elementary schools, and raising money for the football team. Pretty tough crowd.

As I recall, the Boy Scouts came under quite a lot of fire for having exercised their First Amendment rights as a private organization to exclude gay scoutmasters. Does anyone think that the Boy Scouts can answer charges of homophobia by pointing out all the good deeds that Scouts do? Or do words and actions on the specific issue of homophobia matter more?

When we judge MEChA on its words and actions, we find that MEChA has fallen fall short of the standards for racial tolerance. Although reading Ted's post, you wouldn't know that:

Is MEChA a hate group?

There are certain organizations who keep close tabs on hate groups. The most well-known is Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center. They don’t consider MEChA to be a hate group. (And they’re not blind to Latino extremism; they do consider Voz de Aztlán to be a hate group.)

The Hate Directory does not include MEChA in its lengthy list of hate groups. Neither does The Ross Institute.

I don’t know anything about the Hate Directory or the Ross Institute. It is possible that their lists are just a product of their own bias, or of the obscurity of the MEChA organization.

However, there are about 300 chapters of MEChA all across the country. If MEChA is a “fascist hatemongering” organization, it has spread its horrid tentacles into 300 colleges and high schools. I’m a little surprised that the fascism and hatemongering of this organization only came to anyone’s attention when they could be used to discredit a Democratic politician.

The actual members of MEChA seem to be a little surprised to hear it described as a hate group.

Even during the campus tumult of the ‘60s and ‘70s, MEChA, which stands for Movimieto Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (Chicano student movement), was more dedicated to peaceful political activity at the colleges than to revolution in the streets, its supporters say.

“MEChA has always been a group to incorporate Latino students into the college experience,” said Fernando Guerra, head of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, which has a chapter on campus.

“It’s bizarre to assume this is some kind of radical group, seeking to overthrow part of the United States,” said Mike Madrid, who has worked on Latino affairs for the state Republican Party. “It was part of the Brown Beret and Chicano studies movement, but it’s mainly a social group and has been for years. To suggest it’s involved in paramilitary training or some underhanded conspiracy is ludicrous.”

….

Plenty of Latino politicians and businesspeople were involved with MEChA during their college days, said Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund.

“MEChA was basically the Hispanic student organization on campuses,” said Vargas, who was a MEChA member at Stanford in the 1980s. “Anybody who had a sense of social activism and community involvement probably found their involvement through MEChA.”

For many, the group was a springboard into politics.

“For me, and many, many others, we were running for student government,” Bustamante said Thursday. “That’s how I got here.”

Of course, not everyone will trust these Latino activists to be fair and balanced. They probably wouldn’t trust Tacitus’s commentator, either:

When I was in high school, I joined MEChA for one semester. It’s actually pretty funny in retrospect because I’m not Mexican. But I grew up in Highland Park (Northeast Los Angeles) and almost EVERYONE I knew was Mexican, or Chicano, as was hip at the time. I was/am Dominican, but all my friends were Mexican, so I was a Mexican when it came to the culture and customs of the neighborhood. At that time (late 70’s) MEChA, at my high school, was more a positive organization than it is today. There were many Mexican gangs in the area, and MEChA counseled to “Get an education. Stay away from gangs. Stay away from drugs. Don’t drink. Be responsible. Make something of yourself.”

I only stopped going to the meetings because they interferred with my sports teams. But back then it was a very positive experience.

I’d hate to think that someone could demean what I’ve accomplished by using my membership in MEChA 20+ years ago to “smear” me.

Ed

Gosh, Ed, where did you get that idea?

Well, once again, we are given a veritable cornucopia of red herrings to distract us from the main issue. And upon close examination, the arguments fall flat.

First of all--and I'm repeating myself here--we look to the words and actions of MEChA to decide whether or not it is a racist organization. We do not look to arbitrary lists of "hate groups" and conclude that MEChA's absence from that list means that it is not a hate group. Again, I could start a racist organization that spews the most vile drivel about various groups. Is Ted contending that if I evade the radar of the SPLC, the Hate Directory and the Ross Institute, my organization is not a hate group? Does this kind of characterizaton really need to be verified and officially announced by some group or another? The whole notion is, with all due respect to Ted, utterly ridiculous.

Just as ridiculous is the notion that we should trust the words of those who have been members of MEChA, and who swear up and down that neither they, nor their organization is racist. These people clearly have an interest and a selfish desire not to be tagged with that kind of a label. The words and actions of the organization matter--not the protestations of those who now seek to divert the news spotlight from analyzing MEChA's history of promoting racial animus.

Indeed, when we do look at MEChA's words and actions, we find that the evidence to characterize MEChA as a racist organization is overwhelming. Tacitus's original post on the issue gives us plenty of that evidence--none of which Ted has refuted in any way, shape or form. (I apologize for reposting a lot of Tacitus's information, but the fact is that it should be re-emphasized--especially given Ted's failure to deal with any of it.)

1. Consider first the words of the Plan Espiritual de Aztlán:

In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its proud historical heritage but also of the brutal "gringo" invasion of our territories, we, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the northern land of Aztlán from whence came our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth and consecrating the determination of our people of the sun, declare that the call of our blood is our power, our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny.

We are free and sovereign to determine those tasks which are justly called for by our house, our land, the sweat of our brows, and by our hearts. Aztlán belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops and not to the foreign Europeans. We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the bronze continent

Brotherhood unites us, and love for our brothers makes us a people whose time has come and who struggles against the foreigner "gabacho" who exploits our riches and destroys our culture. With our heart in our hands and our hands in the soil, we declare the independence of our mestizo nation. We are a bronze people with a bronze culture. Before the world, before all of North America, before all our brothers in the bronze continent, we are a nation, we are a union of free pueblos, we are Aztlán.

Por La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada.

El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán sets the theme that the Chicanos (La Raza de Bronze) must use their nationalism as the key or common denominator for mass mobilization and organization. Once we are committed to the idea and philosophy of El Plan de Aztlán, we can only conclude that social, economic, cultural, and political independence is the only road to total liberation from oppression, exploitation, and racism....

Nationalism as the key to organization transcends all religious, political, class, and economic factions or boundaries. Nationalism is the common denominator that all members of La Raza can agree upon.

Substitute all references to "Chicanos" with the word "whites." Substitute all references to non-Chicanos with the word "blacks." Tell me you wouldn't mistake that amended passage with the worst kind of hate screed emanating from Aryan Nation, or the KKK, or a neo-Nazi organization, or any other white supremacy group.

2. Still not convinced? Then take the promotion of violence that MEChA engages in--which Tacitus also mentions:

According to Miguel Perez, mechista of Cal State Northridge, "The ultimate ideology is the liberation of Aztlan. [Communism would be closest]....Non-Chicanos would have to be expelled....opposition groups would have to be quashed because you have to keep the power."

Sadly, MEChA's memes are not restricted to its formal membership. To participate in MEChA is to participate in an ideology (centered on Aztlán and Chicanismo) that extends beyond mere student groups.

Mechista fellow-travellers are people like Professor of Chicano Studies at the University of New Mexico Charles Truxillo, who proposes the formation of an Aztlán-style polity called La Republica del Norte "by any means necessary." Truxillo is a self-described disciple of Chicano "activist" Reies Lopez Tijerina, whose primary contribution to the struggle was to lead an armed gang into the courthouse at Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico in June 1967; once there they shot two court employees in cold blood, severely beat a third (all three were Mexican-Americans), and took twenty hostages before fleeing. Truxillo's political justification for the formation of his desired Republica closely parallels the nutcase theories of neo-secessionist and neo-Confederate movements in the American southeast.

3. Still not convinced? Then try this on for size--MEChA hates Jews:

One event of particular note took place at California Polytechnic State University, located in San Luis Obispo, California. In early November, the campus MEChA (the Mexican-American Student Association) organization sponsored a statewide youth conference, drawing approximately 1,200 college and high school students. Astonishingly, the printed conference program began by welcoming the participants to "Cal Poly State Jewniversity" and including a reference to the city of "Jew York." Such references reflect the rhetoric and style of Khalid Abdul Muhammad, who had been a featured speaker on campus the year before.

As a result of the work of ADL and the campus Hillel, the Cal Poly MEChA organization issued a formal apology, a repudiation of the anti-Semitism and expelled those students who had been responsible for the production of the printed conference program. In addition, the president of the University as well as the chairs of the Academic Senate and student government issued a strong statement denouncing the distribution of such anti-Semitic material on campus. The statements were circulated throughout the campus community and sent to all those who had attended the MEChA conference.

4. Apologies only matter if they are backed up by actions commensurate with the apology, however. But MEChA has continued too use hateful and inflammatory language--revealing itself to be a violent organization that is completely beyond the pale. MEChA has called for the murder of U.S. immigration officials, for example:

In its letter, FIRE reminded UCSD of a case in 1995 involving MEChA's own publication, Voz Fronteriza, when the University in general, and Vice Chancellor Watson in particular, issued an unequivocal defense of the right to free expression. In May of 1995, Voz Fronteriza published an editorial on the death of a Latino Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) agent, entitled "Death of a Migra Pig." The MEChA editorial termed the dead agent a "traitor...to his race," stated, "We're glad this pig died, he deserved to die," and argued, "All the Migra pigs should be killed, every single one...the only good one is a dead one...The time to fight back is now. It is time to organize an anti-Migra patrol...It is to [sic] bad that more Migra pigs didn't die with him."

Are we all convinced that MEChA is a hate group now? Because if this doesn't convince you, then nothing will.

Back to Ted:

Is the official slogan of MEChA “For the Race, Everything. For Those Outside the Race, Nothing”?

I don’t know. I did a google seach on “For the Race, Everything. For Those Outside the Race, Nothing” and MEChA. Maybe someone can correct me, because I couldn’t find a MEChA site which used that phrase. They seem to think that their slogan is “La union hace la fuerza (Unity creates power)”.

I did get a lot of hits, though, from such diverse sources as:

Capitalism magazine

The Conservative Crust

Michelle Malkin

NewsMax

And FrontPage Magazine

So who knows? On the one hand, you have the actual websites of the actual group in question. On the other hand, you have the honor and integrity of NewsMax, FrontPage Magazine, and Michelle Malkin. I guess, as Jack Shafer would say, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

I should say that conservative commentators didn’t just make up this phrase, although they may have mistranslated it. It comes from a document called El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan that is prominently linked by several MEChA chapters. Mickey Kaus says that a better translation might be “By means of the Race, everything. Outside the Race, nothing.” or “On behalf of the Race, everything. Outside the Race, nothing.” In some ways, I’m not totally comfortable with the tone of the document in question. But I’m not sure how much it has to do with the character of MEChA 30 years ago, or the character of the organization today.

My honest opinion, after a lot of surfing and reading, is that some MEChA chapters seem to exhibit a brand of identity politics that I don’t approve of. They seem to be very touchy and very PC. Some chapters seem to be social clubs for Latino students. Some chapters seem to be very positive, stressing individual achievement and educational outreach to Latinos at risk. Nothing makes me think that this is a racist, fascist, or hatemongering organization.

Well, all Ted has to do is to see above regarding the hatemongering tactics of MEChA. But as to the Google search, the problem is that Ted did his search in English. As Juan Non-Volokh points out, a search in Spanish comes up with a great deal of information on the slogan.

Ted then goes on to argue that the people mentioned by Tacitus as MEChA's "fellow travelers" are in fact associated with a group that has nothing to do with MEChA--La Voz de Atzlán. Ted then says the following:

As far as I can tell, Voz de Atzlán doesn’t link to MEChA, and I haven’t find a MEChA page that links to Voz de Atzlán. (I’m not saying they don’t exist; there are hundreds of chapters out there, and I’m not reading them all.)

To which Tacitus responds by stating the following:

Barlow writes that "Tacitus has spent a lot of time concentrating on MEChA 'fellow travellers" like La Voz de Aztlan, without mentioning that I specifically disavowed any insinuation that Bustamante is personally racist, secessionist, or even directly affiliated with that group from my very first post on the subject. Let me quote myself from [Matthew] Yglesias's comments here:

In answer to your question, Matthew, the issue is not whether Bustamante is personally racist, nor whether "the nation is threatened by a rising tide of Latino fascism." The former is probably not true, and the latter is almost definitely not true. I took care to disassociate myself from the wacky theories of Lowell Ponte and the nutball American Patrol from the get-go, and I still do.

The problem with Bustamante's affiliation with MEChA is that the group itself does indeed espouse and abet sentiments and principles that may be justly described as racist or secessionist. Source documents and citations in the posts above. A common rebuttal to this is that most Mechistas don't actually act on these sentiments or principles; however, this is not a moral defense, but an argument from efficacy. I'd assume that wrong is wrong whether it works or not. (Certainly that was the just basis for the condemnation of Dave Sims.)

Bustamante's unwillingness or inability to disassociate himself from MEChA over those concerns -- or even to acknowledge that those concerns exist -- is deeply disappointing. It shows, at best, a lack of comprehension on his part. At worst, it shows a lack of character. As a Republican who denounces neo-Confederates, it would be hypocritical of me to not apply the same standards to Cruz Bustamante.

Exactly. All Bustamante had to do was to denounce La Voz de Atzlán, along with any ties that MEChA may have had, or does have with it. He couldn't even do that. Ted's argument of a schism between MEChA and La Voz de Atzlán only serves to obscure this crucial fact.

Ted then goes on to cite this article in which La Voz de Atzlán says that Bustamante is not a viable alternative to Gray Davis ("Our Jewish Governor") as Governor of California, and this article where the group is supposedly endorsing Arnold Schwarzenegger. None of which are the point, of course--the issue is MEChA's racism, and Bustamante's failure to separate himself from a racist organization. Lyndon LaRouche ran for President as a member of the Democratic Party for many years. Did that make Democrats LaRouchies? If Schwarzenegger said anything to praise MEChA or La Voz, then we can find a connection between the groups and Schwarzenegger. But La Voz's seeming endorsement of Schwarzenegger doesn't do anything to tie the candidate to the organization, or to MEChA.

Of course, if Ted really does insist on the tie, then perhaps he will find this article of interest. It demonstrates quite the strong tie between La Voz and MEChA, and connects Bustamante quite closely to La Voz's and MEChA's goals:

MEChA has been very successful and now has many alumni in elected posts at the highest levels of government throughout Aztlan (Southwest USA). There are now numerous former Mechistas who are elected government representatives at the federal, state, county and local levels. It is very unlikely that Cruz Bustamante will repudiate MEChA to appease his detractors. We do not believe that Bustamante has "malinchista" tendencies.

MEChA's primary goal is to instill ethnic and cultural pride in its members. It accomplishes this by providing a true version of our history. In many cases, Chicanos and Mexican-Americans are segregated in public schools and are being under-educated by uncaring Anglo teachers who do not live in our community. This kind of school environment usually creates apathy in our students and low self-esteem resulting in low academic achievement. This is where MEChA steps in and fills the void.

MEChA emphasizes the fact that our current disadvantaged, economic and political, situation is primarily due to us losing the Mexican-American War that ended in 1848 with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo and the subsequent confiscation of our vast land by the English speaking invaders. This knowledge awakens our student's minds to the true reality of our situation which than provides the necessary impetus to struggle harder and become better people. Our students than realize the great value of what was taken from us . . . not only our land but our language and our culture as well.

No, we do not think that Bustamante will repudiate MEChA. Without MEChA, Cruz Bustamante would not be where he is.

Note the warm endorsement of MEChA by La Voz. Note their endorsement of Bustamante as not being a "malinchista." I guess by Ted's logic, Bustamante is tied into the two groups, and that MEChA is closer to La Voz than we thought.

Ted then goes on to compare Bustamante's situation with that of--surprise!--George W. Bush, as Bush's campaign manager in Louisiana was Governor Mike Foster--a man who was fined for purchasing a call list of racist voters from David Duke. Apart from being nothing more than a tu quoque logical fallacy, the analogy fails because the comparison is so thoroughly inapt. Cruz Bustamante was a member of an organization which is racist, secessionist, and has advocated violence against those with whom it disagreed. George W. Bush had a campaign manager in the Governor of Louisiana who bought a list of voters to call from David Duke. The latter is stupid, and apparently illegal, but it's not even remotely the same as Bustamante's situation. Bush didn't actively join a racist organization. He knew or knows a guy who did something that may not be racist, but certainly is wrong and reprehensible. If Ted is upset about guilt by association being applied to Bustamante, then his example is even more egregious. After all, Bustamante did associate himself with MEChA by joining it, and praising it instead of denouncing it.

Moreoever, assume that what Bush did was just as wrong as what Bustamante did. Is Ted arguing that "two wrongs make a right"? Is that the best that he could do? Because if so, he shouldn't have bothered with writing his post.

Finally, Ted argues that the reason Bustamante didn't just denounce MEChA and defuse the controversy is that the issue is just not that big a deal, and Bustamante was showing courage by refusing to kowtow to "people with no principles" and "acting like a man" in the process.

Nonsense. As demonstrated above, the MEChA issue is a much bigger one than Ted gives it credit for. The racism, the extremism, the calls to violence and the secessionist attitude of MEChA deserve a lot closer attention and scrutiny than Ted cares to admit. And in fact, Bustamante's actions reek of opportunism, not manliness.

There are 135 candidates in the recall election. Six of them--Davis, Schwarzenegger, Bustamante, McClintock, Ueberroth and Huffington--are big names. With that many names on the ballot, the vote will be extremely splintered.

This makes playing to the middle of the electorate that much harder--and completely unnecessary, as opposed to a standard election with only two or three major candidates. Bustamante knows that he can win the election by merely securing his base, and by playing exclusively to them.

That's why he has come up with the completely unprecedented plan to fully regulate the gasoline industry. That's why he is playing footsie with MEChA. As Robert Garcia Tagorda points out, Bustamante "won't be so close to MEChA that he alienates mainstream supporters, but he could be close enough to pump up his Latino base, considering all the other race angles of the recall." Playing to his racial base, as well as to his ideological base, might help get Bustamante elected. And denouncing MEChA would upset and undermine that plan. Bustamante isn't being a man. He's being a politician. An extremely cynical and calculating politician. Nothing more.

It's disappointing to see that Bustamante didn't have the moral courage to denounce a group of secessionist, violent racists. It's disappointing to see that people on the Left are turning a blind eye to that sort of cop-out merely out of a partisan desire to keep the governorship.

Former U.S. Speaker of the House Tom Foley--a Democrat--was once in a very tough election. To give him a more down-home look, his campaign staff suggested that he ditch his traditional suit and tie, and show up at campaign stops in a casual shirt and jeans, or in overalls. A dandy to his core, Foley refused, telling his staff "There's only one vote I want in this election. My own."

Cruz Bustamante, to the best of my knowledge, is not a racist, or a secessionist, or an advocate of violence. But he once joined those who were, and who are. And just recently, he failed to denounce them. If he had any shame whatsoever, he wouldn't even get his own vote. It's bad enough that California is currently governed by an incompetent. It need not be governed by a coward. Cruz Bustamante blew an easy call by failing to denounce MEChA. His supporters repeat the mistake by trying to excuse away the indefensible.

"TWO YEARS OF GIBBERISH"

In those words, Geoffrey Wheatcroft accurately summarizes much of the rhetoric that we have been subjected to in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks:

When asked to contribute to "Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War," George Orwell replied in more than usually intemperate terms: "Will you please stop sending me this bloody rubbish… I am not one of your fashionable pansies like Auden and Spender…" But he had a point, and his biographer DJ Taylor recently declined to contribute to a collection of "Authors Take Sides on Iraq" on similar grounds if with less verbal violence, recognising that nothing he could say was going to make the smallest difference, and wondering why a writer has any duty to be "engaged." It would after all be odd to see a book called "Stockbrokers Take Sides on Iraq" or "Bus Drivers…" and any such collections from literary ladies and gentlemen ought to be prefaced with a warning: an alarmingly high proportion of the eminent writers of the past century veered towards the totalitarian heresies of left or right, attracted by communism or—in the case of rather more great writers, as it happens—by fascism.

This might not be accidental. Imaginative writers are distinguished not by a sweeter character (too often very much not), greater intellectual honesty, or even deeper intelligence, but—apart from the gift of expression which is their stock in trade—a way of looking at the world which is interesting because it is exaggerated or distorted. After an event like 11th September, such expressive gifts might be more hindrance than help; some things are best said simply rather than dressed up in look-at-me prose. Arundhati Roy claimed that it is "the writers, the poets, the artists, the singers, the filmmakers who can make the connections, who can find ways of bringing [the event] into the realm of common understanding"; the evidence suggested the opposite.

One writer after another used the horror as grist for verbal display, and thereby excruciatingly illustrated what Leon Wieseltier of the New Republic called the limits of literariness. Sometimes this went beyond parody. "Touch me," besought Jeanette Winterson. "Kiss me. Remind me what I am. Remind me that this life is the one we make together… The immensity of this event can only be mirrored in the immensity of what we are." Martin Amis didn’t ask to be kissed, but instead portrayed the lethal aircraft "sharking in" amid "world hum" to produce "the apotheosis of the postmodern era," not to say "the worldflash of a coming future," before concluding a little disappointingly that he felt "species shame."

And when the fine writers turned to positive prescriptions, the result was more alarming still. Alice Walker, the African-American novelist, had some advice about Bin Laden: "What would happen to his cool armour if he could be reminded of all the good, nonviolent things he has done? What would happen to him if he could be brought to understand the preciousness of the lives he has destroyed? I firmly believe the only punishment that works is love."

Other great creative minds didn’t think that all you need is love. The septuagenarian composer Karlheinz Stockhausen praised the imagination of the attack on the World Trade Centre and the precision of its execution as "the greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos." (My own reaction to that was a personal decision that I would never again listen to a bar of Stockhausen’s music. Sometimes one has to take a stand.) But most were less exotic, and took a remarkably predictable line, with the Nobel-winning Italian playwright Dario Fo putting it in unusually lurid terms: "The great speculators wallow in an economy that every year kills tens of millions of people with poverty—so what is 20,000 dead in New York? Regardless of who carried out the massacre, this violence is the legitimate daughter of the culture of violence, hunger and inhumane exploitation."

Which is to say, "Butwhatabout…?" One after another, literary luminaries and academic pundits felt unable to condemn the killing, express sympathy, and leave it at that. They had to say, "Butwhatabout" US imperialism, what about globalisation, what about Palestine? Rana Kabbani’s reaction was to howl that "All must kowtow to the Pentagon and the almighty dollar, or be blown to smithereens," and she described the murder of thousands of ordinary New Yorkers as "a painful lesson that Americans have had to learn."

Once an armed response by the US had begun, "Butwhatabout" turned into moral equivalence, or "we are all guilty," or tu quoque. The veteran critic and novelist John Berger (yes, still with us) called the mass murder in New York "the direct result of trying to impose everywhere the new world economic order (the abstract, soaring, groundless market) which insists that man’s supreme task is to make profit," and he added that the American war in Afghanistan was an "act of terror against the people of the world."

One step further on from "We are all guilty" was "We ourselves are the truly guilty ones." Two Englishwomen set a high standard here. Mary Beard, Cambridge don and classics editor of the TLS, could not repress "the feeling that, however tactfully you dress it up, the United States had it coming" (not very tactfully, as far as the bereaved of New York were concerned, one might have thought). And Rosie Boycott, who has edited two national newspapers, thought that "the west should take the blame for pushing people in third world countries to the end of their tether." (Do you "push" anyone to the end of a tether? And anyway, Osama bin Laden might bring to mind what a friend of Philip Toynbee said when that well-worn phrase was used about Toynbee: "I didn’t think Philip had a tether.")

At its most extreme, "they had it coming" was used to blame the Americans in general, and even those in the World Trade Centre, for electing the wrong kind of president. "American bond traders, you may say, are as innocent and as undeserving of terror as Vietnamese or Iraqi peasants," the New Statesman said in a memorable leader. "Well, yes and no… Americans, unlike Iraqis and many others in poor countries, at least have the privileges of democracy and freedom that allow them to vote and speak in favour of a different order. If the US often seems a greedy and overweening power, that is partly because its people have willed it. They preferred George Bush to Al Gore and both to Ralph Nader."

Actually, the 3,000 dead in New York must have included people who did vote for Nader, and more who voted for Gore. That was recognised, in a peculiarly foolish way, by the egregious Michael Moore (a stupid white man if ever there was): "Many families have been devastated tonight. This just is not right. They did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who did not vote for him! Boston, New York, DC, and the planes’ destination of California—these were places that voted against Bush!" Presumably the terrorist murders were wrong in liberal Manhattan, but would have been all right if al Qaeda had attacked Phoenix or Atlanta. Or perhaps terrorists should find means of attack which distinguish between good and bad, killing the Republicans but sparing anyone who voted for an environmentally-correct candidate.

Even Tony Blair, in his extravagant and slightly weird speech at the Labour conference in 2001 following the attacks, said that we should by all means "understand the causes of terror," while adding that no causes could justify what had been done. What he forgot to say was that, in the case of 11th September, the usual prattle about the root causes of terror was not just morally repellent, it was quite simply wrong. It was particularly wrong when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was repetitiously invoked. If the Palestinian people have a just cause, it is far more likely to be harmed than helped by barbarous murder in New York. Anyway, Bin Laden couldn’t care less about the Palestinians, although he does authentically hate "the Jews." He listed Palestine among his grievances, but these also included the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia, which is what mattered most to him, and "Al-Andalus." Is the medieval reconquista of Spain a root cause of violence? If so, and if the loss of the Iberian peninsula by the House of Islam more than 500 years ago is a legitimate grievance, it will be a tricky wrong to right.

Wheatcroft's condemnation of the Left's rhetoric is strong, but entirely well-placed. The targets of his criticism will likely find his words a mere foretaste of how history will judge them. Tony Blair may stand in good stead, overall. The rest most certainly do not.

THEY DON'T LAUGH WITH HIM, THEY LAUGH AT HIM

John Cole discusses the less-than-impressive Al Franken. Personally, I'm hoping to do enough denigrating posts about Franken to get him to challenge me to a fistfight in the nearest parking lot.

I USED TO LOVE KATERINA WITT . . .

But not so much after reading this:

The Olympic skating champion Katarina Witt will bring to a climax a wave of Communist-era nostalgia sweeping Germany with a television show next week highlighting the bright side of life in a totalitarian state.

A batch of films, TV shows and series is cashing in on a wave of popular sentiment for the East German Communist era, and nearly all have avoided painful subjects such as the infamous Berlin Wall.

The programme's uncritical stance has angered those who suffered under Communism. Former dissidents who have studied East German Stasi secret police files say the shows are an insult to the more than 1,000 East Germans shot dead trying to escape to the West.

Walter Momper, Berlin's mayor during the fall of the Wall 14 years ago, has derided the programmes for making the former East German regime appear harmless. Erich Loest, an eastern German writer, said the producers of one nostalgia show should be sacked for their uncritical portrayal of a totalitarian era.

Günter Nooke, an eastern German conservative Christian Democrat politician, said: "What would be the reaction in Germany if television produced similar programmes about the Third Reich?"

Yeah, that Erich Honecker was a barrel of laughs, wasn't he? And the Stasi--don't even get me started on their party-animal tendencies. I might never stop.

THE ABSURDITY CONTINUES

The Berkeley professors who published their idiotic psychological profile of conservatives--you know, the one that compared Ronald Reagan to--surprise!--Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, and said that even Stalin was a conservative, have now published a defense of their work. Responding to a post by Ramesh Ponnuru on The Corner where Ramesh stated that he found the defense "persuasive," a reader e-mailed a withering and brilliant attack on the professors' justification. Be sure to take a look at it.

For my part, I don't know how it is that these kinds of studies can (a) receive taxpayer funding and (b) receive acclaim and aplomb in some circles of the Left. Additionally, I don't know how it is that conservatives are supposed to be stupid and anti-intellectual when we're not the ones who fall so easily for this perversion of science and scientific research. Admittedly, we have little reason to fall for it, as the study's animus and bias against conservatives is only thinly veiled. But I would like to think that if a similar study was written about liberals, we on the Right would guffaw at the stupidity inherent in it. It's a counterfactual, of course, but a man can dream.

In any event, dealing with the here and now, the Berkeley study's shoddy science is obvious to anyone with even a modicum of research skills and the ability to read in discerning fashion. It's a pity that some people choose to take it seriously, but the fact that they do says more about them than it does about the subjects of the study.

A NICE, OLD-FASHIONED FISKING

Courtesy of David Carr, whose Fiskee reveals that there is no shortage of useful idiots for Fidel Castro to ruthlessly manipulate and exploit.

%*&$@!

Prepare to have your childhood memories ripped asunder:

Sergei Prokofiev's musical fairy tale Peter and the Wolf is popular with children but not with wolf lovers, and two former world leaders -- Bill Clinton and Mikhail Gorbachev -- aim to put that right in a new recording. They have teamed up in a new recording that couples the tale with a contemporary version featuring the same two protagonists but a very different ending.

Prokofiev's version ends with Peter capturing the wolf and leading a triumphant procession to the zoo, paining music-loving environmentalists with romantic visions of wolves in the wild.

In the new version, narrated by former U.S. president Clinton and called Wolf Tracks, Peter again captures the wolf, but this time repents of his act and releases the animal, who howls a grateful goodbye.

"Forgetting his triumph, Peter thought instead of fallen trees, parched meadows, choked streams, and of each and every wolf struggling for survival," Clinton narrates.

"The time has come to leave wolves in peace," he adds.

Is there any reason whatsoever why Prokofiev's version should have to give way to this newfangled claptrap?

Sophia Loren narrates the traditional story, as the article points out. I always knew there was a reason why I was so in love with the woman . . .

WHEN CONSERVATIVES AND LIBERTARIANS COMPLAIN ABOUT AN OVERWEENING GOVERNMENTAL STRUCTURE . . .

We're not kidding:

Mikaela Ziegler, 7, and her 4-year-old sister, Annika, were selling refreshments Wednesday afternoon near the State Fairgrounds when a woman approached them. But she wasn't there to buy.

"She said, 'You can't sell pop unless you have a license,' " Mikaela said.

That's how it came to be that an inspector with St. Paul's Office of License, Inspections and Environmental Protection shut down Mikaela and Annika's pop stand.

Their outraged father, Dr. Richard Ziegler, called City Hall for an explanation. He was told that St. Paul is cracking down on unauthorized merchants and that his daughters would be free to hawk their beverages once they obtained a $60 license.

"Is there anything sacred anymore?" he asked Thursday. "We're not running a business here. This is fun and games for kids. I think [Mikaela's] netted, after paying me, a whole $13.

"It's laughable and it's tragic."

No kidding. I wonder if this will reach the ears of Cruz Bustamante, and the regulation of drink stands run by kids will be his next crazy idea.

GET THE HOOK

In the event that it is actually necessary for me to say this, let me state loud and clear that the FoxNews suit against Al Franken was both legally questionable, and--more importantly, perhaps--incredibly stupid from a publicity standpoint. I cannot imagine what absurd thought process led the people at Fox to actually believe that suing Franken was a good idea that would win them the good graces of the public at large.

That said, nothing really changes the fact that Franken is a ridiculous character:

Franken doesn't merely denounce conservatives. He harasses them, provokes them, gets right up in their faces. He once called up National Review Editor Rich Lowry and challenged him to a fight in a parking garage. Lowry declined.

"Comedians who aren't funny have to try to become political spokesmen -- thus Al Franken's new career," Lowry said yesterday. "But if I said I was unhappy that such an ill-informed and unpleasant man is emerging as a Democratic Party spokesman, I'd be lying."

Franken once telephoned Gigot, the Journal's editorial page editor, who responded angrily, according to the book: "You just want to be able to say that you called Paul Gigot and that he couldn't defend his editorial, so you can put it in your book and sell more copies."

"Frankly, I was hurt," Franken writes.

Gigot said yesterday that Franken started reading from two editorials on gun control, one many years old, "and wanted me to respond to his claim that they were contradictory, or unfair, or something. He didn't mention any book."

When Gigot said he would have to look up the editorials and Franken acknowledged he was writing a book, "I replied that this is a case of no good deed goes unpunished: I return a call as a courtesy and get ideologically ambushed without a chance to check what we've written. Believe me, my tone was more amazed than angry." Gigot says he offered to respond if Franken would send him the details, but the comedian never did.

Franken even writes of baiting Barbara Bush, the former first lady, on a January 2000 plane trip, imitating her son's manner of laughing and suggesting that would be good fodder for comics -- until she dismissed him with a scowl.

Who says that Ann Coulter types are limited to the Right? And by the way, Franken's fans should realize that there is a difference between being funny, and being a petulant brat.

A TWOFER! LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WE HAVE A TWOFER!

Congratulations are in order for Cornell University. After all, it isn't often that one institution screws up this badly.

Oh, and thank God I'm not an alum of Cornell. It would be impossible to live this down if I were.

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE . . .

The more they stay the same.

NEAL POLLACK MAKES SELF IRRELEVANT!

Details here. Now, if only Pollack would follow the consequences of his irrelevancy to their natural conclusion and stop boring Internet audiences with faux displays of wit.

LIFE IN THE LAND OF THE NOT-SO-FREE

In commenting on the fear that the U.S. is becoming a police state, Emily Jones points out that I should be ashamed to be an AmeriKKKan:

I can understand their fear. Does anybody else recall their own trepidation following the "disappearance" of Maureen Dowd? What about when Noam Chomsky's limp body was discovered in a roadside brush, a single bullet to his temple? The country coiled in shock when it was announced that traces of arsenic were discovered in the empty box of Krispy-Kremes that ultimately killed Michael Moore. As this is written, a Dixie Chick sits in a dark cell, living on peckings, uncertain of her fate, while Janeane Garofalo hasn't been given the opportunity to co-star in a shit film since literally the start of the so-called "war on terror". When will the nightmare end?

When indeed?

AND NOW, FOR YOUR OVERWROUGHT ARGUMENT OF THE DAY

If you believe that PowerPoint is a Stalinist tool, you will love this article.

Of course, if you are anything like me, you will merely roll your eyes at it.

WOW!

E. Nough completely puts me to shame.

CAN I TEACH AT THE IVY LEAGUES AS WELL?

After all, I can't possibly do a worse job than this person:

Cynthia McKinney, the feisty former 4th District congresswoman, is headed for the Ivy League.

Officials at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., confirmed that McKinney has been named a visiting professor at the institution. Under her contract, she will serve as a guest lecturer for three years, beginning this fall.

"Cynthia McKinney is a person of considerable achievement in the political sphere," said Porus Olpadwala, dean of Cornell's School of Architecture, Art and Planning, who served as chairman of the 13-member faculty committee that selected McKinney for the part-time professorship.

"She is an internationally renowned advocate for voting rights and human rights. She has taken clear stands on a number of critical issues and been a strong voice in Congress," Olpadwala said.

McKinney could not be reached for comment.

Perhaps McKinney could teach spelling: "All right class, here is our word for the day: 'Jews.' J-E-W-S. 'Jews.'"

BECAUSE TURNABOUT IS FAIR PLAY

Unlike many people, I found Joe Conason's list of reasons to thank liberals positively inspiring. So inspiring, in fact, that I was moved to draw up a similar list for conservatives:

If you are one of those people who believed that the Soviet Union really was an "Evil Empire," didn't laugh when Ronald Reagan consigned it to the "ash heap of history," and was glad when it--and the Warsaw Pact--fell, you can thank conservatives. If you are pleased to see the Taliban and Saddam out of power, you can thank conservatives. If you believe that you should keep more of your money through tax reductions, and that you can handle your money better than the government, you can thank conservatives. If you believe that the Second Amendment should be taken seriously when it says that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed," you can thank conservatives. If you are outraged and offended by the reverse discrimination that makes a mockery of any and all efforts to lead us to a colorblind society, and condescends to minorities by implicitly telling them that they cannot succeed without such reverse discrimination, you can thank conservatives for leading the fight against this insulting ideology. If you are glad that the concept of school choice is finally being seriously discussed, and if you hope that someday soon it will be enshrined as policy, you can thank conservatives. If you believe that people should have the right to invest their Social Security retirement in private markets, you can thank conservatives for championing this issue. If you like the idea of free markets in general, you can thank conservatives.

Well, that was fun. And thanks to Joe Conason for providing the inspiration necessary. In the event that any of you get mad at this list, just look up at the lede. It explains all.

Oh, and by the way, let me be sure to thank our libertarian brethren and sistren for many of these issues as well. They certainly deserve the gratitude.

DONALD SEGRETTI WOULD NO DOUBT BE PROUD

Via John Cole I learn that there are already plans afoot to try to wreak technological havoc with the Bush campaign website. I have to marvel at the maturity of this plan, and the people behind it. What--was teepeeing the White House ruled out as a first option?

I am going to send an e-mail to Patrick Ruffini--the webmaster for the campaign website--about this nonsensical and childish scheme, although I imagine that he already knows about it. In the meantime, seeing the road the Democratic pranksters appear to be going down, and in honor of the named gentleman in the lede whom they appear to be emulating in at least some small way, might I suggest that they call themselves the Committee to Re-Enact the Past?

The resulting acronym is both accurate, and historically appropriate.

GODWIN'S LAW? TO HELL WITH IT

Kevin Drum asks whether there really is any bias against conservatives in academia. A fair question, innocuously asked. I suppose that one can point out that there is selection bias in the question, as the people who are wont to read Kevin's blog are liberals, and they may themselves scoff at the notion that there is a bias against conservatives out of an ideological bias of their own. But I've asked ideologically loaded questions of my own on this blog, so who am I to throw stones?

What irritates me--no, what infuriates me--is the 17th reply (out of 50 thus far) issued by commentator "Matt Davis":

Some ideologies deserve persecution. If the guy were a Nazi, any "I was wrongfully denied tenure" lawsuits would probably wither on the vine. So the question is whether, say, Republicanism is sufficiently vile to merit discrimination, or whether it's just harmless political fun.

I happen to believe that Republicans don't deserve tenure, but I've never been on a departmental committee.

Charming, huh? Since a person is a Republican, he/she deserves to be persecuted. And how 'bout that analogy to the Nazis? Now there is an original insult. And issued by a stunted mind, no less.

And then there is this comment:

I agree with Matt Davis (way above) that Republicans shouldn't be granted tenure. It's a matter of character. How can you trust someone who openly chooses to associate him or herself with the GOP's record of the last 20 years? Being a conservative is a whole 'nother thing. Nothing wrong with that, should'nt be discriminated against.

Got that? Republicans can't be granted tenure as a matter of course, and should automatically be considered as having untrustworthy characters. I wonder if this idiotic statement was made with a straight face.

And they call my party "the stupid party." How interesting.

THAT HORRIFIC CENSORSHIP

It's got to stop, as Geoff Meltzner points out.

THERE ARE SO MANY REASONS FOR ME TO LOVE MY ALMA MATER

One of them is that my association with it, and my political leanings, allow me to be a part of a very special group of people whose mere existence can excite the incandescent and incoherent rage of idiots.

It appears quite clear from his nonsensical rhetoric that Francis Boyle played hooky much too often during his days at the University of Chicago to have understood anything about the education one receives there. There were--and are--plenty of professor with political leanings that are the opposite of Boyle's. And there were--and are--plenty of Chicago graduates whose worldview was affected by those professors. (There were also many, many students and professors who were on the Left side of the political spectrum, including quite a few who identified themselves as "Democratic Socialists." I saw plenty of those people in my student days in Chicago, when I was both an undergraduate, and a graduate student.) But what Chicago taught generations of students like me is that the greatest intellectual gift is to be able to think for yourself, and to see past the stereotypes and lazy conventional wisdom that so often passes for "thinking" nowadays. Additionally, Chicago taught that one must have respect for ideas--even those one disagrees with--and treat those ideas seriously; a line of thinking that is clearly lost on Boyle in this strawman-filled grab-bag of stupidity that he passes off as a column.

Too bad Francis Boyle never fully took advantage of the benefits of a Chicago education, or plum ignored the lessons he and others were exposed to when writing his execrable screed--one that is more of a set of talking points for the Left than any kind of informed critique. All of which makes the whole "Boyle played hooky far too often while in Chicago" theory that much more plausible.

I NORMALLY LIKE FRED BARNES'S COLUMNS . . .

But this one does not even come close to passing the giggle test.

Whatever his other merits--and in my mind, they are considerable--President Bush has a lot of work to do to convince libertarians and conservatives that he can be trusted on certain issues. When people in the President's base are concerned about his fealty to an individual rights view of the Second Amendment despite the fact that gun control is an unpopular cause and to the point that the President's Second Amendment views are considered not much different than Howard Dean's, when what should be a free-market Administration instead encourages the imposition of free-trade busting tariffs on steel and lumber, and when legislation that is advertised as the most transformational revamping of education policy in decades is passed without even a semblance of a school choice program, then the Bush Administration has a political problem on its hands. And deservedly so.

That problem won't be solved with mealy-mouthed and pathetic excuses like the following from Barnes regarding the White House's reaction to criticism like the passage written above:

The White House needn't have bothered. The case for Mr. Bush's conservatism is strong. Sure, some conservatives are upset because he has tolerated a surge in federal spending, downplayed swollen deficits, failed to use his veto, created a vast Department of Homeland Security, and fashioned an alliance of sorts with Teddy Kennedy on education and Medicare. But the real gripe is that Mr. Bush isn't their kind of conventional conservative. Rather, he's a big government conservative. This isn't a description he or other prominent conservatives willingly embrace. It makes them sound as if they aren't conservatives at all. But they are. They simply believe in using what would normally be seen as liberal means--activist government--for conservative ends. And they're willing to spend more and increase the size of government in the process.

I told you it doesn't pass the giggle test. What is the use of being a conservative if the President "has tolerated a surge in federal spending, downplayed swollen deficits, failed to use his veto, created a vast Department of Homeland Security, and fashioned an alliance of sorts with Teddy Kennedy on education and Medicare"? I'm willing to let th deficit slide, since it makes up less than 3% of our GDP, and since the economy is shaking off the effects of the 2001 slowdown. But absent the expenditures for economy-stimulating tax cuts, and increases in military spending, the increase in spending is ridiculous and appalling. Of course, if the President cut programs, he would be accused of being cold and heartless, but he will get the brunt of that criticism anyway. Why not make it mean something? And how many other "big government conservatives" are sanguine about the creation of a brand spanking new federal entitlement in a prescription drug benefit--as opposed to encouraging free-market reforms in health care that could cut out the governmental middle man, and give patients more choice as the result of greater competition among the drug companies?

Then there is this:

The essence of Mr. Bush's big government conservatism is a trade-off. To gain free-market reforms and expand individual choice, he's willing to broaden programs and increase spending. Thus his aim in proposing to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare is to reform the entire health-care system for seniors. True, the drug benefit would be the biggest new entitlement in 40 years. But if paired with reforms that lure seniors away from Medicare and into private health insurance, Mr. Bush sees the benefit as an affordable (and very popular) price to pay. Mr. Bush earlier wanted to go further, requiring seniors to switch to private health insurance to be eligible for the drug benefit. He dropped the requirement when queasy congressional Republicans balked. Now it's uncertain whether Congress will pass a Medicare bill with sufficient market incentives to justify Mr. Bush's approval. Should he sign a measure without significant reforms, he won't be acting as a big government conservative.

On education, Mr. Bush and Mr. Kennedy joined to pass the No Child Left Behind Act. Its only real reform was a mandate for states to test student achievement on the basis of federal standards. Many conservatives, including some on the president's staff, felt this wasn't sufficient reform to warrant boosting the federal share of education spending. Still, Mr. Kennedy and other liberals aren't happy either. They'd expected even more spending.

With regard to the argument about the prescription drug benefit, the problem is that such entitlements don't simply vanish away in the manner that Barnes seems to think that they will. How many Presidents thought that they could afford to give way "momentarily" to a new entitlement, beguiled by the thought that ultimately, the commensurate reforms they put through will cut the giant federal dragon down to size? And how many Presidents ultimately saw that the government kept growing and growing? I've seen this movie before. It doesn't end well.

And what is with Barnes's stinker of a defense regarding the education bill? The best he can come up with as a rationalization of the Administration's actions is that "Mr. Kennedy and other liberals aren't happy either. They'd expected even more spending"? Does Barnes really expect us to buy this god-awful excuse? And did he write it with a straight face?

Look, I like George W. Bush and his Administration. After eight years of the Clinton Administration, this crowd is a relief in so many ways. I like the fact that strict constructionists and people who are genuinely committed to the idea of original intent are getting nominated to judicial positions. I like the fact that we have a President who believes that the money in the federal treasury ultimately belongs to the people, and that the best way to encourage growth in the economy is to give people more of their money back in the form of tax cuts. And I really like the fact that a President of the United States has finally decided to take the fight to terrorists, and states sponsoring terrorism, instead of blithely waiting for them to hit us time after time, the way Bill Clinton did.

But to say that things aren't perfect policywise is an understatement. A "big government conservative" is about as real an entity as the Tooth Fairy. Either one is a conservative or a libertarian determined to reduce the size of the state, encourage the private sector, and give people more individual liberty and choice, or one is an adherent to the belief that government should be expanded as a force and agent for social change. In which case, one is a liberal. Not a "big government conservative." A liberal.

I think that George W. Bush is a conservative, and has libertarian instincts when it comes to the economy. I think it's high time he started acting on those instincts. Barnesian excuse-making and spin won't be important or necessary if he does.

UPDATE: Stephen Green concurs.

AND THEY CALL GEORGE W. BUSH "INARTICULATE"

Let's go through this latest blog entry by Dennis Kucinich bit by bit:

I have to admit to a feeling of resentment at the extent of the security searches every time I travel by air. The armed guards, the x-ray machines, the metal detectors, the pat downs, the search of luggage and personal effects, the removal of shoes, and for some, I suppose, the explanation of prosthetics, pacemakers, and appurtenances, constitutes a massive invasion of privacy. We have just come to accept this as a natural state of things because, like Gilmore, we’re all suspected terrorists. I find myself having to explain to people why I, as a Presidential candidate, am repeatedly shuttled off to that special line of selectees identified by the SSSS stamped on my ticket. The transportation security agents inform me that a computer has made this decision. I want to know who programs the computer. Is it John Ashcroft?

The "massive invasion of privacy" that Kucinich gripes about is necessary as a direct result of the fact that four planes were hijacked on September 11th, 2001, and were either rammed into famous buildings, or were brought down in previously unknown fields, thus killing over 3,000 people. I'm sorry if the consequences of this horrifying terrorist attack inconvenience Congressman Kucinich every single time that he goes to the airport, but I can assure him of two things: (1) Everyone else shares that inconvenience with the Congressman, and (2) The people who continue to suffer the aftereffects of the deaths of their loved ones are much more inconvenienced than I believe the Congressman will ever find himself being.

But it is patently silly to say--as Kucinich does--that the searches mean that we are "all suspected terrorists." No, we are not. But we are not going to countenance a lax security system that previously allowed our airplanes to be targets for terrorist infiltration and attack. I don't imagine that the metal detectors in Capitol Hill--detectors that are designed to prevent crimes from being committed against Congressmen, Senators, their staffs, and visitors--outrage Kucinich all that much. On the contrary, I believe that they must be a source of comfort to him. So why do pre-boarding searches upset him so?

I guess that it must stem from the fact that Presidential Candidate Dennis Kucinich has to go through the searches like everyone else. It surprises me that such a supposed "Man of the People" would think that he is somehow not subject to the same rules and regulations that other people have to live with. I find the pre-boarding searches somewhat annoying at times. But I put up with it for the peace of mind that it brings me once I board the plane--the peace of mind of knowing that something has been done to ensure my safety, and the safety of others on the plane. Besides, the inconvenience doesn't last all that long, anyway.

And by the way, what's with the poor-excuse-for-a-Parthian-shot at the end of the paragraph at Ashcroft? I suppose that the radical Left needs its rhetorical red meat, but talk about a non sequitur. In any event, let's see if all of this griping translates into any alternative policy proposals that would make Americans safer, while at the same time removing all the elements of the pre-boarding searches that Kucinich seems so upset about.

Even though I don’t feel as though I’m getting special treatment or that I’m entitled to special treatment, it makes me wonder how much of a threat I must be since I really do intend to replace the entire government. So when people occasionally recognize me getting the magic metal detector wanding and dutifully submitting to searches of my person, extending my arms and my legs spread-eagle, I explain with a smile, “I’m running against George Bush.”

That must charm the TSA folk.

What I’ve been able to determine from an informed intelligence source (oxymoron) is that I tend to get selected because I buy one-way tickets. This poses a dilemma. Should I change my campaign and do round trips say in a continuous loop from Seattle, Washington to Washington, DC in order to avoid greater suspicion or do I plan a practical itinerary from Seattle to San Francisco to Austin to Oklahoma City to Des Moines to Cleveland to Manchester and gain near public enemy status? The real reason that people who travel point to point instead of round trip are more likely to be subjected to a search is because, I’m told, that the hijackers bought one-way tickets. This is an interesting type of profiling that goes on. One which seldom invites an iota of self-reflection about America’s role in the world or about the basis for the murderous grievances which misguided individuals may have against us. It would be useful to have a national dialogue about our democracy and the manner in which it has been undermined since 9/11. The alternative is to proceed, robot like, and submit to metal detectors, x-ray machines, magic wands, pat downs, and the shuttling of point to point travelers to a point by point inspection.

I love the trotting out of the old line about how "intelligence sources" are an "oxymoron." Of course, the line really states that "'Central Intelligence' is a contradiction in terms," or that "military intelligence is a contradiction in terms," so it appears that Kucinich has botched the joke. Ah well--we never thought Dennis had much in him when it came to witticisms, did we?

But now, let's go to the substance of this paragraph--if one can call what Kucinich writes "substantive." He finds the profiling of people who buy one-way tickets "interesting," and you can smell the sarcasm from here. Of course, if Kucinich knew anything about the September 11th hijackers, he would know that they did indeed buy one-way tickets--a fact that Kucinich appears to relate with some suspicion ("I’m told, that the hijackers bought one-way tickets."). If he did any further digging, he would probably find out that one should view suspiciously a purchase of an airline ticket that was made with cash. It really doesn't take much cerebral output to understand that there is a profile of the average terrorist that is helpful in identifying and stopping terrorism. Sometimes, that profile is wrong, but most of the time, it does a lot of good by giving us valuable and important information on terrorists and terrorism. Kucinich had better get used to these kinds of profiles--if he ever becomes President (*chuckle,* *snort,* *loud guffaw*) he will be reading through all sorts of intelligence profiles to assist him in making a decision. What will Kucinich do when confronted with all of this information? Make a bad joke about "oxymorons"? Ignore the intelligence?

And once again, what is with the non sequiturs? How did Kucinich draw a line from terrorist profiling, to griping about how "America’s role in the world" may have been "the basis for the murderous grievances which misguided individuals may have against us"? Never mind the egregiously offensive and stupid moral equivalence between America and the terrorists. Never mind the egregiously offensive and stupid suggestion that somehow America had 9/11 coming. We're used to that sort of rhetoric from Kucinich and his ilk, and no amount of rational argument to the contrary will convince them otherwise. Just tell me how Kucinich manages to ramble from Point A to Point G, while at the same time skipping Points B, C, D, E and F.

Oh, and by the way, we still haven't heard anything from Kucinich regarding alternative policy proposals for restructuring the pre-boarding search of passengers.

It seems to me that the Bush Administration, with its moral obtuseness, its inconscience on matters of civil liberties, and its craven attempts to demolish the Bill of Rights has prepared for the American people a one-way ticket of sorts. When it comes to the quality of our democracy we are traveling on a road to nowhere.

This ridiculously overwrought analogy sounds like it was written by a fifth-rate Comparative Lit major--after he/she has downed a fifth of bourbon, and taken enough mescaline to to destroy not only his/her brain cells, but the brain cells of all the people on his/her block. And we still have no alternative policy proposals. Just griping. Is this what Kucinich's presidential candidacy is made of? All rhetorical bark and no policy bite?

Airline security is, as we have learned, a deadly serious business. The traveling public deserves assurances that they and their loved ones will be safe in the air. But when does security in a democracy morph into something profoundly anti-democratic. This is a discussion we need to have. And the answer, as Gilmore knows, cannot be simply “search me?”!

If this was an invitation to a "discussion," I'll hold out for a better invitation from a more credible source. There wasn't a scintilla of an alternative plan in this "discussion." All we had was amateurish rhetoric--simplistic and childish in nature and tone. Kucinich complains without proposing alternative solutions. This is pathetic.

Of course, there is one complaint in this miasma of confusion that Kucinich does not touch upon. He is upset that we are made to shuffle "robot like" through pre-boarding screening procedures. He doesn't mention, however, that those screening procedures are staffed by federal employees. I suppose that I shouldn't be surprised--after all, Kucinich plainly supports the increased role of the federal government in American society. But one would expect an intellectually honest individual to admit--in the course of attacking the current, federally mandated pre-boarding procedures--that perhaps the issue would make such an individual rethink his/her faith in the federal government to cure all.

Not Kucinich, though. What a surprise.

I'M ALL FOR SHOWING MERCY TO MY FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS . . .

But, as Josh Chafetz points out some people are utterly undeserving of mercy of any kind.

I LIKE THIS SCAM

Michael Jennings is evil. But in a good kind of way.

YEAH RIGHT

It seems that Ralph Nader is trying to rewrite history just a little:

Get a load of this: Likely 2004 third-party presidential hopeful Ralph Nader thinks the 9/11 terrorist attacks wouldn't have happened if he had been president. He claims that amid all the big decisions new presidents have to make after inauguration, he would have ordered cockpit doors to be hardened against attack. He says an old report warning about how easy it is to get in the cockpit still sticks with him. What's more, he would have wiped out Osama bin Laden and his gang without a shot being fired. How? Bribe Osama's friends to hand him over.

You know, somehow I doubt that one of Nader's top priorities if he became President in January, 2001 would have been to order cockpit doors to be hardened against attacks. And I have a lot of trouble thinking that Osama bin Laden and company would have been turned over with a simple bribe. Nader clearly doesn't understand the radical nature and fanaticism of Islamic fundamentalism if he thinks that a bribe can turn a terrorist against Osama and his coterie without any accompanying military action to increase the pressure on the terrorists, and dramatize the costs of opposing the United States.

SPEECHLESS

I think that people should stop poking fun at leftists rage. After all, it is much more enjoyable to poke fun at sheer, incandescent leftist stupidity.

Don't believe me? Look here.

How does Mark Morford get published, anyway? Is there some sort of an agreement in effect where newspapers publish ridiculous and nonsensical pieces so that the rest of us can giggle? If so, I'm grateful, but it would be best to reveal that plan to the general public, lest some of us think that an editor took a look at Morford's piece and actually thought "You know, this makes a lot of sense!"

UPDATE: Dawn Olsen just feels sorry for Morford. Probably the right attitude.

SOMEONE SHOULD MAKE A "B" MOVIE OUT OF THIS

It's the Attack of the Killer Blob!

ENOUGH ALREADY

Here is Matt Yglesias on George Will, who wrote about Howard Dean (got that?):

George Will seems to think that Howard Dean is electable after all. So does this mean that Dean really isn't electable and Will is trying to sucker Democrats into nominating him? Alternatively, would Karl Rove have made the infamous "that's the one we want" comment to reporters unless Dean actually wasn't the opponent he wants? Questions, questions.

Commenting on this post, here is Kevin Drum:

However, even though he himself is skeptical of considering electability as a way of choosing a candidate, I think Matt inadvertantly provides some quite helpful advice to the rest of us about the whole issue: don't trust Republicans to tell you which Democrats are electable and which ones aren't. You should pay attention to the impressions of genuine centrists and moderates whose votes are crucial, but George Will and his friends are far too ideologically blinkered to understand what makes a Democrat appealing and what doesn't, and they probably wouldn't tell you even if they did. After all, how many of them thought that Bill Clinton was electable back in 1991?

I don't ask for too many Blogospheric favors, so I hope that no one holds it against me when I ask that this rather inane (sorry, there is really no other word for it) argument be put to bed, and not used by two people who really are smart enough to know better.

First of all, does Matt really think that when a columnist like George Will sits down on his computer and bangs out a column, he does it with the express purpose of sowing disinformation and misinformation among liberal and Democratic ranks? Here is an original thought: Maybe Will just writes what he thinks about the issues, and then lets the chips fall where they may with regard to the reaction. Here's another original thought: Maybe that's what bloggers do as well. Speaking personally, I don't sit around and think paranoid thoughts that when Matt Yglesias writes about life on the conservative side of the fence, he does so with the desire to lead all of us astray by not saying what he really thinks. In fact, I don't waste precious time fretting that Robert Scheer, Harold Meyerson, Eric Alterman, Katherine vanden Heuvel and other left-of-center columnists write their columns with the express idea of throwing a head fake that will wrench the Right out of position. But for some reason, Matt--and other left-of-center bloggers, I might add--appear to believe that every time we conservatives/libertarians/right-of-center folk sit down in front of a keyboard and writes about the goings-on in the left-of-center camp, we do so with the Rove-inspired command to lead the liberals astray, so that we can scream "FOOLED YOU!" at them once our cunning ruse achieves its desired effect, and we can finally act out our dream of revealing our Evil, Bad Guy Plans to the doleful heroes of the Left in true, gloating, Ernst Blofeld fashion--with the exception that our plans will be revealed only after they have succeeded, and not before--thus depriving the doleful heroes of the Left of any chance to foil our schemes the way they do in the movies.

Why this fear continues to exist is beyond me.

And then there is Kevin's comment. With all due respect to a smart guy, what the hell is that all about? Read this passage again:

. . . don't trust Republicans to tell you which Democrats are electable and which ones aren't. You should pay attention to the impressions of genuine centrists and moderates whose votes are crucial, but George Will and his friends are far too ideologically blinkered to understand what makes a Democrat appealing and what doesn't, and they probably wouldn't tell you even if they did. After all, how many of them thought that Bill Clinton was electable back in 1991?

Is he serious? Does anyone really believe that since Republican George Will wrote a column on Howard Dean's electability, it is going to turn the tide in Iowa and New Hampshire, put Dean over the top in the Democratic nomination contest, and lead him like a lamb to the slaughter that awaits him at the hands of Bush and Rove and Co.? Moreover, does anyone really believe that this is Will's intention in writing his column--that there is some kind of Master Plan afoot to hoodwink the Democrats into nominating the weakest candidate so that the Republicans can eat him for lunch? Does this really sound feasible to anyone? Does the fact that Karl Rove got up one particular time and cheered on the Dean people with half-serious (at best) comments of "yeah, that's the one we want" mean that The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy has mobilized to bamboozle our arch-foes on the Left? What happens, does Will get a royalty for misleading the Party of Jefferson and Jackson and FDR in their nomination games? Does Karl Rove show up with a big giant check that takes care of all of Will's bowtie needs for the next five years? And for our nefarious plan to work, do Democratic party activists really wait this breathlessly for the George Will Seal of Approval on a particular candidate, thus making Matt's observation and Kevin's dire warning about not trusting Those Evil Republicans on point?

Surely, they jest. In the end, the words and statements of pundits really matter very little in the nomination process, unless perhaps the pundit is of the same ideological bent as the candidates he/she is covering. In other words, no Democrats in Iowa or New Hampshire really give a damn what George Will thinks, thus making these dire warnings about the honey trap of a Republican endorsement of a Democratic candidate's electability rather silly and wholly unnecessary. Maybe Republicans care who George Will endorses in a Republican nomination contest, and maybe Democrats care who Meyerson, and Alterman, and vanden Heuvel and others endorse in a Democratic nomination contest, but that really is the extent of it. As for one side handicapping the other, it isn't the journalistic equivalent of offering The Mark of the Beast. Can we all relax just a little bit? I know that even paranoids have real enemies, but this is absurd.

As for this statement:

. . . George Will and his friends are far too ideologically blinkered to understand what makes a Democrat appealing and what doesn't, and they probably wouldn't tell you even if they did.

At the risk of boring you all insensate with the obvious, you really don't have to share a particular ideology to figure out what might make a Democratic candidate "appealing" to his/her Democratic constituency. Discussing the "appealing" aspects of a particular candidate does not require, and never has required that the discussant actually share the ideology of those Democratic candidates.

After all, imagine if I said the following:

Kevin Drum and Matt Yglesias and their friends are far too ideologically blinkered to understand what makes a Republican appealing and what doesn't, and they probably wouldn't tell you even if they did.

Sound silly? Well, yes, it does. And I guess that's why Kevin and Matt actually do discuss politics on the Republican/conservative/libertarian side of the fence, and when they do, no one--at least no one that I have come across--has shouted in protest that the "ideologically blinkered" Drum and Yglesias just don't get politics on the Right, and "probably wouldn't tell you even if they did." And if they did, I would excoriate them just as passionately.

For the love of Heaven, people, we are bloggers and pundits. We don't need to pass tests in ideological purity to discuss the state of affairs regarding a particular ideology, or the political games going on between practitioners of that ideology. And we aren't James Bond, or Maxwell Smart, or Austin Powers, which means that if we have information to share or opinions to proffer on the state of affairs regarding a particular ideology, or the political games going on between practitioners of that ideology, we're not going to take a "TOP SECRET, EYES ONLY, NO GIRLS ALLOWED" attitude towards the sharing of that information and those opinions just so that we can act on the 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% chance that we might mislead the other side into committing a fatal political miscalculation, thus ensuring dominance and victory for our side, and giving us the chance to experience the political equivalent of seeing our enemies driven before us, and hearing the lamentations of their women (if I may borrow a phrase from my soon-to-be gubernatorial opponent).

And then there is this part of Kevin's statement:

After all, how many of them [Republicans] thought that Bill Clinton was electable back in 1991?

Not many, admittedly. But then, not many Democrats thought it either--especially after the controversy about the draft came up, and especially after all those "bimbo eruptions" threatened to kill the Clinton campaign in New Hampshire. Many Democrats wanted the Clinton candidacy to melt away in th New Hampshire snows, and if memory serves--and hey, I think that memory actually does serve--former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey said that Clinton's draft record would ensure that the Republicans would open Clinton up "like a soft peanut" in November. And Kerrey didn't say this in 1991. He said it in 1992!

Holy ideological blinkers, Batman! Does that mean Democrats and liberals aren't allowed to handicap the Democratic presidential nominating race either? We know by inference from having read Kevin's post and Matt's comments that they shouldn't handicap the state of affairs on the Republican side of the aisle, right? After all, consider the drastic liberal and Democratic miscalculation on who they believed would be the weakest Republican candidate to face Jimmy Carter in his 1980 re-election bid--a miscalculation that reached the then-President himself:

I had not watched the television coverage of the [Republican] convention, but I was pleased that Governor Reagan was the nominee. With him as my opponent, the issues would be clearly drawn. At the time, all my political team believed that he was the weakest candidate the Republicans could have chosen. My campaign analysts had been carefully studying what he had been saying during the Republican primary elections, and it seemed inconceivable that he would be acceptable as Presdent when his positions were exposed clearly to the public. An enormous tax cut for the rich, slashes in social security and programs for the poor and aged, federal aid to private schools, an unprecedented increase in defense spending, a rejection of SALT, indifference to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, a preference of Taiwan over China, some evasive statements concerning civil rights and human rights, and a virtual rejection of the Camp David accords as a basis for peace in the Middle East were the kinds of expressed intentions that we thought would make him quite vulnerable.

That was from Jimmy Carter's memoirs (pp. 542-43 in the hardcover version, in the event that anyone wants to fact check me). As I said, a drastic miscalculation.

But hey, what can one expect? And I hope that all my right-of-center readers draw a lesson from this: don't trust Democrats to tell you which Republicans are electable and which ones aren't. You should pay attention to the impressions of genuine centrists and moderates whose votes are crucial, but Jimmy Carter, and Kevin Drum and Matt Yglesias and their friends are far too ideologically blinkered to understand what makes a Republican appealing and what doesn't, and they probably wouldn't tell you even if they did. After all, how many of them thought that Ronald Reagan was electable back in 1979, or even 1980?

Good grief.

UPDATE: Oh, to hell with this. After reading this post, maybe from here on out, I'll just offer advice to the Democrats in an effort to unnerve them. After all, if they really are going to adopt a "facts-be-damned-Pejman-and-his-ilk-are-all-saboteurs-intent-on-screwing-us-over-instead-of-just-writing-their-opinions" attitude to everything, maybe I should just play to type.

Once again: Good grief.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A commentor points out that is Katrina vanden Heuvel, not Katherine vanden Heuvel. My bad.

Also, Matt says that he was kidding. I appreciate that he cleared that up, although I don't think that he should attribute my interpretation of his writing to "irrational partisanship." After all, Kevin Drum is Matt's fellow partisan, and he appeared to take Matt's writing very seriously indeed.

A HURRICANE BY ANY OTHER NAME . . .

I agree with Eugene Volokh when he says that Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee's concern with the name of hurricanes, and whether the names accurately reflect all ethnic groups. Of course, Jackson-Lee was the same person who thought that Neil Armstrong landed on Mars, so I guess she has a habit of making comments that are . . . um . . . interesting.

What I want to know, however, is what is so important about having names from one's ethnic identity group affixed to hurricanes. I certainly wouldn't want to have any storm named "Hurricane Pejman," or to have hurricanes with Persian or Jewish names. I wouldn't want to be associated with such destruction in any way, shape or form. Why is it that Sheila Jackson-Lee doesn't have similar concerns?

ARE THERE TWO MAUREEN DOWDS

That would be the most favorable conclusion after reading this story.

The most unfavorable conclusion, of course, is that Dowd can't write. Guess which conclusion I'm leaning towards.

TALK ABOUT YOUR OVERREACTIONS

There are a whole host of links (along wiith accompanying on-point commentary) here about the latest inanity to grip the nation.

And yes, I know you have seen it already. But still . . .

IF EVER THERE WAS AN INANITY . . .

It would be this one:

Jayson Blair, the former New York Times reporter who resigned amid accusations of plagiarism and fraud, has been commissioned to write an article for Esquire, the magazine said Friday. Blair, who The Times said had embellished parts of dozens of articles, will review the movie version of the Stephen Glass story, ‘‘Shattered Glass,’’ said David Granger, editor in chief of the men’s magazine. ‘‘We thought it was a clever way to do a movie review, to have the most infamous fabricator review another infamous fabricator,’’ said Granger.

Note that Esquire thinks this is clever--sort of a "it takes one to know one" episode in the annals of journalism. I personally think it would have been more clever--not to mention right--to allow Jayson Blair to be forgotten by the world of journalism, except to the extent that his shenanigans set an awful example for journalists everywhere, and gave the profession as a whole a black eye. I also think that it would have been more clever to simply ensure that Jayson Blair never gets a job in a respectable journalism outfit again.

But hey, that's just me, I guess.

GOTTA LOVE THOSE "NON-VIOLENT" MOVEMENTS

Damian Penny throws the spotlight on one such movement, and reveals that of all the things they espouse, non-violence is not one of them.

EXTRAORDINARILY STUPID WHITE MAN

Kay Hymowitz does a superb job in exposing what she accurately calls the "moral stupidity" of Michael Moore. And if you want an example of Moore's stupidity--or at the very least, his inability to think about the consequences of his own ideas--consider the following passage:

In Downsize This!, Moore attempted to elaborate on the theme of the downsized economy where Roger and Me left off, but the book’s description of a rust-belt dystopia of pink slips and unemployment checks was out of date way before it hit the bookstores. By 1996, the number of jobs and heft of paychecks in the Midwest had improved markedly. In 1998, the Department of Commerce was writing that “[m]ore flexible, market-oriented companies have generated hundreds of thousands of jobs” in Michigan. A 2001 Michigan Economic Development Corporation report noted that, with the exception of still-depressed Flint, the state’s metropolitan areas saw an increase in personal income between 1989 and 1998, with income rising more than 20 percent in places like Ann Arbor and Grand Rapids.

Stuck in the Walter Reuther past, Moore can make no sense of this. A while back, he was appalled when The Nation asked him to be part of a lecture cruise, “to hold seminars during the day and then dock at Saint Kitts at night!” he hissed derisively, as if it were still the era when plutocrats in tuxedos and women in gowns and diamonds dined on caviar and champagne with the ship’s captain, while workingmen and women scrimped for a week’s vacation at a dank lake bungalow. He seems not to know that plumbers from Milwaukee and secretaries from Akron fill Caribbean cruise ships these days (though probably not those sponsored by The Nation), and that factory workers often sport two cars—and a boat on a trailer—in their driveways. Our economic system has “got to go,” he told Industry Central, before admitting, “Now don’t ask me what to replace it with because I don’t know.” How convenient: he can dwell in his mythical land of Flint and never face the manifest truth that the system that downsized and restructured with such turmoil ultimately improved living standards for millions, while at the same time absorbing hosts of poor immigrants.

Much of the essay is also devoted to exposing Moore's lies, and it is devastatingly effective at doing so. After reading the article, I have a hard time understanding how anyone could take Michael Moore seriously. Surely, the Left could come up with more effective spokespeople, and could denounce Moore for his serial mendacity in the process. And surely, conservatives and libertarians could come up with their own counterpart to Moore--one who might actually deserve to win "Oscars, Emmys, Writer’s Guild Awards, and jury prizes at Cannes."

MAYBE IT'S JUST ME . . .

But I don't think that Jonah Goldberg has a high opinion of the recent study of the conservative mind that has come out of Berkeley.

AH, SO THAT WOULD EXPLAIN IT!

In the comments to this post, one commentor wonders whether Robert Fisk is Tim Blair's straight man. Read the post to find out why.

For my part, I hope for Fisk's sake that he is playing the straight man. The alternative explanation for his commentary is just too terrifying to contemplate.

UPDATE: Steven Den Beste has a sampling of some of the more idiotic reactions to the deaths of the Hussein boys. Why doesn't it surprise me that some people would take a perfectly delightful story about two psychopaths getting their just desserts, and let it slowly drive them insane because of their belief that a President whom they do not care for might get some credit out of it?

UNIVERSITY OF ORWELLIAN DOUBLESPEAK

The Angry Clam is justifiably outraged about the latest shenanigans of his university. If this really is the best argument that can be made against conservatism, the authors of such arguments parody themselves far more effectively than they parody the conservative ideology.

AND STILL MORE ON ERIC ALTERMAN

I'd hate to read what Eric's horoscope had to say about today. Everyone is beating up on MSNBC's worst hiring decision in recent memory. And the sad thing is that it is justified.

By the way, is there a clause in the contract with MSNBC that pays Alterman by the strawman argument? It would explain a few things.

MORE ON ERIC ALTERMAN

Everyone's favorite thin-skinned Nation columnist once again launches into hysterics when criticized by Andrew Sullivan. Consider Alterman's response, which is breathtaking in its disingenuousness:

Nobody fully comprehends his or her own motivations, but sometimes I think a small part of me writes an item to give my fellow Hebraic blogger Andrew “Nudnik” Sullivanowitz a chance to demonstrate to all his fellow landsmen what a mensch he is. Apparently a bit miffed that he was passed over by the national Hadassah meeting again despite his famous eagerness to discuss his bathroom activities — and believe me, I don’t understand it either; my bubbe was a sucker for good toilet talk — Sullolovich has taken to proving his naches by finding anti-Semitism where even Abe Rosenthal would have cried “gevalt” into his gefilte fish.

Translation: Andrew Sullivan isn't Jewish! How dare he talk about Jewish matters! Everyone remember this line of "argument" the next time Alterman discusses civil rights for black people, civil rights for gays and lesbians, civil rights for women, civil rights for the transgendered, animal rights . . . the list could go on.

Take me, for instance. I am accused by the new chief rabbi of occupied P-Town of writing that “rising French anti-Semitism should be dismissed, and, if anything, blamed on the Jews” and for “pin[ning] the blame for it on Ariel Sharon,” which Sullovsky finds “truly disgusting” and “even more disgusting.” Soon, he predicts that I will cite “attacks on Jewish cemeteries or synagogues as George W. Bush’s fault.” Where, as the great Andy Williams used to say, do I begin? Let’s start with my alleged blaming of Ariel Sharon. Did I even mention “Sharon?” Let’s go to the videotape. [Scroll down here and here.] Nope. No mention of Sharon at all. Sullenheimer’s hallucinating again.

Alterman thinks that by not mentioning Sharon by name, he wasn't talking about him at all. This is ridiculous. Consider what Alterman said--the language was excerpted by Sullivan:

Memo to Everyone: In discussing "French anti-Semitism," take a moment to notice that it is almost entirely a phenomenon of that nation’s North African and Arab immigrant community, not of the traditional (mildly anti-Semitic) French. There is no surge in French anti-Semitism at all and it is probably at a historical low ebb among French men and women. It is certainly not a phenomenon of the French Left. This piece points out: "Most of the perpetrators are not the ultra-rightists and neo-Nazis who once were responsible for anti-Semitic acts, but young North African Arabs of the banlieues, the distant blue-collar suburbs where Muslims and Jews live and work in close proximity." And if it's a really big concern of yours, by the way, the best way to ameliorate it would be for Israel to withdraw from the West Bank. The occupation is obviously its primary source.

(Emphasis mine.) If the occupation is the problem, then by implication, Alterman must be blaming the person in charge of enforcing the occupation--who would be Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister of Israel. Alterman doesn't have to name Sharon in order to blame him. His excuse is silly and pathetic. By Alterman's standards, I could state the following:

The Holocaust was a horrible, terrifying, disgusting, and despicable moment in human history.

and then claim that I never blamed Adolf Hitler because I never even mentioned him. It makes just as much sense as Alterman's absurd argument.

There's more (depressingly):

Here’s a quick history lesson for Andy and his many ill-spelling acolytes who’ve been filling my in-box (it will have to be quick because I usually get paid for this kind of thing, and well, you know….): The Israeli occupation of the West Bank started under a Labor government and was consistently expanded by all major parties, including Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak, right through the end of the Oslo peace process. It was not invented by Ariel Sharon, nor is it even historically associated with the Likud Party.

Another distraction thinly disguised as argument. It does not matter who started the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. It doesn't matter that all major parties expanded it. The point is that Alterman criticized the occupation, and by implication, the people responsible for maintaining it. That means he is criticizing Ariel Sharon, the current Prime Minister. Again, I could say that anti-Semitism "was not invented by Adolf Hitler," but that wouldn't absolve Hitler of his responsibility for the Holocaust. On the other side of the moral ledger, I could say that free-market economics "were not invented by Milton and Rose Friedman," but that would not detract from the credit the Friedmans deserve for having advanced the cause of free-market economics. Does Alterman really need someone to teach him these very basic facts about forensics and the shaping of an argument?

Now, about this “blame” issue. Did I blame anyone, outside (obviously) of the people who committed the crimes? Nope again, as I explained yesterday. I spoke to what I understand to be the sources of Muslim anger. Is it anti-Semitic to point out that the followers of Osama bin Laden are not so crazy about the Israeli occupation, and maybe that has something to do with why they hate the U.S. so much? By this logic it is, and so everyone willing to recognize that the Arab-Israeli conflict has anything to do with our problem with Islamic terrorism is also “blaming the victim” — and by Sullskowitz’s definition, an anti-Semite. Sorry, Prime Minister Blair. Sorry, Secretary Powell.

Having recently regaled all of us with a history lesson about the origins of the Israeli occupation, Alterman now makes clear that he desperately needs a history lesson of his own. Osama bin Laden and his followers were, at best, the ultimate Johnny-come-latelys to the cause of protesting against the Israeli occupation. Their main issue was--and still is--getting American soldiers out of Saudi Arabia (a task now accomplished by the removal of Saddam Hussein). In fact, bin Laden was so apathetic towards the Palestinian cause that Yasser Arafat attacked bin Laden for not caring about Palestinians. Then, when bin Laden embraced the Palestinian cause (purely for the tactical purpose of gaining more support for al Qaeda), Arafat still rejected bin Laden by saying that the latter was never helpful to the Palestinians.

That's right, gentle readers: Osama bin Laden is so unpalatable that even Yasser Arafat wants nothing to do with him--at least not publicly. It's kind of like being accused of "excessive sluttiness and ditziness" by Pamela Anderson. And yet Eric Alterman seems to have missed all of this.

Shocking, I know.

Did I deny the existence of French anti-Semitism? Nope again. I said it has always been a problem, but my impression is that it has lessened in recent years. What else? Oh yeah, those imaginary attacks on Jewish cemeteries and synagogues that Sullenbaum says I will blame on George W. Bush once they start taking place. Well, he’s got me there. I’m a pre-cog. Why not just take me away, Mr. Ashcroft, and send me to Gitmo?... No wait. I’ve got a better idea. Take the Sullentashen instead? Yeah, that’s the ticket. The boychick simply hates the Chosen People. Why else would he be encouraging your (mutual) buddy George W. to push them to act against their own interest in Israel? Is this the real source of his devotion to the man? After all, it can’t be for W’s feelings about what my beloved Bubbe, may she rest in peace, used to call fagelas. (“An openly known homosexual is somebody who probably wouldn’t share my philosophy.”)

More than half of this paragraph is a descent into foaming-at-the-mouth madness mistaken for effective humor, so I'll just focus on the part where Alterman claims that he never denied "the existence of French anti-Semitism." Again, consider Alterman's words, excerpted by Sullivan:

Memo to Everyone: In discussing "French anti-Semitism," take a moment to notice that it is almost entirely a phenomenon of that nation’s North African and Arab immigrant community, not of the traditional (mildly anti-Semitic) French. There is no surge in French anti-Semitism at all and it is probably at a historical low ebb among French men and women. It is certainly not a phenomenon of the French Left.

And that isn't a denial of "French anti-Semitism"? I wonder what Alterman must be smoking. As I stated in my post yesterday, there are plenty of stories about native French anti-Semitism. Alterman just ignores them, and tries to pin the blame exclusively on France's "North African and Arab immigrant community." His argument is unsupported by the facts, and his present claim that he never denied French anti-Semitism is similarly unconvincing.

It’s all starting to come together. Remember, Sullenberg doesn’t live in one of those Fifth Columnist/decadent enclaves where we Jews are always swarming together, driving up the cost of real estate, and plotting to bring down civilization with our Al Gore-voting ways. Another attack and Sullenstein is off scot-free, off shvitzing the summer with the P-town proletariat. (Just ask Howie….)

Now he's accusing Sullivan of anti-Semitism by attributing the belief that Jews are "always swarming together, driving up the cost of real estate, and plotting to bring down civilization with our Al Gore-voting ways" to Sullivan?

The mind boggles. Really, it does.

ERIC ALTERMAN'S JEWISH PROBLEM

Okay, maybe that's a little harsh, but still Andrew Sullivan has Eric Alterman dead to rights when he judges Alterman's statement on French anti-Semitism to be "blind" and "disgusting." Alterman, in his response to criticism (though not to Sullivan) sticks with the idea that the Israeli occupation is the major cause of Arab hatred towards Jews. He doesn't seem to understand that when Arab children are indoctrinated with hateful ideas since birth, that they will hold on to those ideas even after any Israeli occupation comes to an end. The issue isn't the occupation. Rather, it is the endemic teaching of anti-Semitism to Arab children, who later on grow to be adults who kill based on those teachings. And of course there are Arabs who reject such hateful teachings, but they have been shunted aside by those who are more than willing to believe in canards like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Tony Blair had it right when he spoke to Congress today:

The state of Israel should be recognized by the entire Arab world, and the vile propaganda used to indoctrinate children, not just against Israel but against Jews, must cease.

You cannot teach people hate and then ask them to practice peace. But neither can you teach people peace except by according them dignity and granting them hope.

Additionally, Alterman doesn't mention that native French are practicing anti-Semitism in increasing and appalling fashion. Is Alterman completely oblivious to the fact that anti-Semitism is more and more fashionable among the native French? Does he not understand that it isn't only Muslim immigrants who practice such hateful acts?

Or is he fully aware of native French anti-Semitism, and just chooses to ignore it? I report. You decide.

"INSTRUCTIVE OF A CERTAIN MINDSET"

A most revealing post, courtesy of Tim Blair.

NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED

My God, this is absurd:

Budget cuts meant there was no money to plant flowers this summer in Saskatchewan's Duck Mountain Provincial Park, so a group of cottagers raised $50 and spent an afternoon planting marigolds.

Less than a day later, a dozen park workers arrived to uproot the plants, saying the volunteer action had threatened their jobs.

Long-time cottage owners now fear reprisals from unionized park staff if they plant flowers, pick up garbage, or mistakenly mow grass outside their properties in the park, which straddles the highlands of eastern Saskatchewan and western Manitoba.

"We didn't do this to make trouble," said Norma Woodward, 74.

Mrs. Woodward built her cottage on the park's Lake Madge 45 years ago with her husband. She lives there from May to October.

"We just wanted our beach to look nice. We think they are being petty. How would they have the nerve to go and remove something a bunch of old people did?"

IN THE EVENT THAT ANYONE HAS FORGOTTEN . . .

Muammar Qaddafi is an absolutely nonsensical character.

ANTI-SEMITISM IS ALIVE AND WELL . . .

As Andrew Sullivan reports. But then, why should we be surprised anymore--especially when we consider the forum where the anti-Semitic remark is located?

Disgusting. Completely and absolutely disgusting in the extreme. The Guardian should be ashamed to carry such drivel in its pages.

AND SPEAKING OF IDIOTS . . .

Ladies and gentlemen, let us be reintroduced to the nonsensical antics of Jose Bove.

PAT ROBERTSON IS AN IDIOT

Steven Den Beste explains why.

AND NOW, FOR YOUR DAILY DOSE OF MELODRAMA

Read the following passage from this story and ask yourself truthfully whether it isn't more than a little ridiculous and over the top:

Four empty chairs and blazing rhetoric at an NAACP presidential candidates forum Monday laid bare the civil rights group's anger at being spurned by President Bush and three Democrats. Those four now have no right to ask for black votes in the 2004 election, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume said.

''We are interested in people who are interested in us,'' Mfume said from Miami. He said the four candidates' failure to attend was an affront to African-American voters and to the 94-year-old National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

''This organization has dignity,'' he said. ''We are not going to allow anybody, Democrat or Republican, to take it for granted.''

The empty chairs onstage with six Democratic candidates were labeled for Bush, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, Missouri Rep. Richard Gephardt and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich. Mfume cut them no slack despite their records. Bush is the first sitting Republican president to go to Africa, and all three absent Democrats received 100% scores for their votes in the last Congress from the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

When Mfume named each of the no-shows in a morning speech, an organist played a dramatic death-knell chord. ''You have now become persona non grata,'' he admonished the four in absentia. ''Your political capital is the equivalent of Confederate dollars.''

D-E-C-E-I-T

I count six letters, but apparently, some people have come up with a different tabulation. Must be that New Math.

FISKING BY THE NUMBERS

I assure you that it is infinitely more impressive than painting by the numbers, especially when the Fisking is in such expert hands.

NOW YOU TOO CAN BE ASTONISHINGLY PRETENTIOUS, INCREDIBLY ARROGANT AND CONDESCENDING, AND BE SURROUNDED BY LIKE-MINDED FOLK!

Warning: This post is extremely long.

I've always speculated that modern social constructions and conventions--especially those that tended towards the "politically correct" side of the ledger--were the result of a bunch of people having way too much time on their hands, and deciding that the best way to spend it was to design those constructions and conventions to annoy the rest of us. Now a social construction/convention currently crying out for attention causes me to believe that my speculation may be on target.

Via Mindles H. Dreck I am directed to this website about "brights." The following language helps define what is a "bright":

Think about your own worldview to decide if it is indeed free of supernatural or mystical deities, forces, and entities. Check the wording in the definition and description (above). Important terms used are below:

naturalistic: conceiving of reality as the natural world as it is known and experienced scientifically (no supernatural)

worldview: the overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world; a set of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or group

If you decide that you fit the definition, then you can simply say so and join with us in this extraordinary effort to change the thinking of society--the Brights' Movement. If successful, these early efforts of ours could have a far-reaching effects.

If you are in fact a Bright, please tell us, so we can count you. Tell others, so we can count them. We are forming a constituency of Brights for social and political action. The Brights include those who are members of existing atheist, agnostic, freethought, humanist, rationalist, secularist, or skeptic organizations and those who are nonreligious and are not associated with any formal group.

So basically, a "bright" is a secular humanist by another name. One cannot help but wonder why the people behind the "bright" movement didn't simply decide to call themselves "secular humanists" and announce that secular humanism needed a revival.

Well, it probably has to do with nomenclature. Why be content with calling yourself a "secular humanist"? That's a mouthful to say, and besides, it is so cold, so impersonal, so utterly bereft of charm. No, better to call yourself a "bright" so that your "atheist, agnostic, freethought, humanist, rationalist, secularist, or skeptic" beliefs, and the fact that you are "nonreligious and are not associated with any formal group" can be characterized as a state of luminosity--one that uses an adjective that is reserved for smart people, and which by implication states that those who believe in a Deity or deities--no matter how complex their beliefs, no matter how intellectually thought out or wedded to time-honored tradition and dynamic philosophical movements--are somehow not "bright"; that they are "dim" or stupid.

After all, if you are going to start a social and political movement, as the "brights" propose to do, what could be finer than to stack the deck against your putative foes and condescendingly sneer at them as imbeciles--no matter what the context or sincerity of their beliefs.

Of course, in perusing the webpage for the "brights," one cannot help but wonder whether the condescension shouldn't go the other way. First of all, the very notion of reviving secular humanism and then trying to pass it off as a new and novel sociopolitical movement and theory is rather . . . um . . . remarkable. I had no idea that one could simply reach back into the past, take an intellectual movement, dress it up in modern garb, and then claim a new philosophical invention. Can we do this for any kind of theory? Because if we can, I would love to share Yousefzadeh's General Theory of Relativity with all y'all--surely the Nobel Prize in Physics now awaits me. I would be delighted to propound an economic theory that I am proud to rename the Yousefzadeh Theorem--which means that now I've made myself eligible for a Nobel in Economics (the University of Chicago will be so proud to have me continue their little tradition). I'm working on a series of poetic quatrains in Persian that I plan on calling The Rubaiyat of Pejman Yousefzadeh--I think you'll like them. And hey, how about . . . well, you get the point.

Beyond the intellectual grave-robbing that the "bright" movement appears to be engaging in, there is a disconcerting concern with minutiae that I didn't know "bright" people would occupy themselves with. Consider the section of the webpage entitled "Being a Bright." Here is the first passage off that webpage:

The most valuable contribution current Brights can make to the BrightS' Movement is simply to "be the Brights they are" in their everyday interactions with others, keeping the most positive (Bright) shine they can on the endeavor.

Using "bright" as a noun may seem awkward at first. A keen syntactical sense is certainly beneficial. So is is a willingness to answer questions about the term in a simple fashion (sticking rigorously to the definition, of course).

Other than using the label as a means to acquaint people you know (or those who inquire) with your global worldview, there are no responsibilities to being a Bright. On the whole, most Brights will be integrating the word to the degree they wish in their lives, and in communications whenever seemingly suitable occasions, in their judgment.

Does anyone else feel just a tad uncomfortable with this appalling degree of micromanagement? It appears that one of the overriding concerns of the "bright" movement is how you speak as a "bright" and how you use the word "bright." Indeed, the concern borders on the obsessive, as the following passage indicates:

No typecasting of Brights! Each person who is a Bright is an individual, period. The only thing we can know about any Bright is that the person's worldview is naturalistic.

Self-identifying as a Bright will mean saying, “I am a Bright,” but there are no rules to when, where, or how often. Persons just individually decide the extent to which they want to use the word with others. A bit of advance thought to the varied circumstances one is likely to encounter might be helpful.

With the new noun, it’s rather easy to respond to queries as to your religion (“I am a Bright”) and also, as you may wish, to freely present yourself as a Bright in varied settings.

Scenario. Suppose you are in a discussion with someone and the question of religion comes up. If someone inquires about your own religion, you can pop up with “Well, actually, I am a Bright.” The other person’s curiosity will probably take hold: “A Bright? What is that?”

One of the advantages of the word “Bright” is that it allows a really simple and straightforward assertion. You state—"A Bright is a person whose worldview is naturalistic (free of supernatural and mystical elements)." Then, if your listener is truly interested in learning more, you can always proceed to extend the discussion and to explain more fully any philosophical basis behind your particular or favored category label(s).

There is nothing about the umbrella term, Bright, that limits use of any other term, such as atheist, rationalist, skeptic. One can always feel quite free to go beyond the global term to elaborate with more detail about one's philosophical leanings. If you are a Bright, though, you need not use any of the “old terms” that carry cultural baggage or that may immediately paint you into a socially preconceived negative corner (e.g. atheist, secular humanist, agnostic). With the fresh term, people can relate to you as a person and not react to a label.

To be sure, nomina sunt consequentia rerum (names are the consequence of things), but isn't this obsession with nomenclature getting a wee bit ridiculous? And isn't it a mark of political correctness to obsess over labels and the use of language to a degree where the forest (the larger ideas that are supposedly behind the "bright" movement) is lost for the trees (the pedantic concern with the usage of various appellations)? The whole thing would be comical if the obsession with language and appellation didn't recall Orwellian Newspeak.

All of this is background to a tedious and stupid editorial on the "bright" movement by Daniel Dennett. Let us Fisk:

The time has come for us brights to come out of the closet. What is a bright? A bright is a person with a naturalist as opposed to a supernaturalist world view. We brights don't believe in ghosts or elves or the Easter Bunny — or God. We disagree about many things, and hold a variety of views about morality, politics and the meaning of life, but we share a disbelief in black magic — and life after death.

Right away, you get the snide and condescending tone that so pervades the "bright" movement. It isn't enough for Dennett to express his disbelief in a Supreme Being--a disbelief that he and other atheists/agnostics/"brights"/whatever they wish to call themselves--are fully entitled to. No, he must go further and compare said Supreme Being to "ghosts or elves or the Easter Bunny" and equate a heartfelt and intellectually grounded belief in religion with "black magic." A religious belief that may have guided you through some tough times--successfully at that--is now relegated to the same status as spooky stories that you might have heard around the campfire while cooking Smores at Camp Whatkindacredulousfoolareya. No matter how sophisticated your religious beliefs, no matter how much you may have pondered over the existence of God, and all of the philosophical and intellectual conundrums that accompany such questions, you and your beliefs are automatically denigrated by Dennett's prose--prose that is resplendent with unjustified arrogance of the most offensive type.

The term "bright" is a recent coinage by two brights in Sacramento, Calif., who thought our social group — which has a history stretching back to the Enlightenment, if not before — could stand an image-buffing and that a fresh name might help. Don't confuse the noun with the adjective: "I'm a bright" is not a boast but a proud avowal of an inquisitive world view.

And by implication, religious folk, or those who incorporate the existence of God into their philosophical don't have an inquisitive worldview. Yup, Dante Alighieri, Maimonides, Reinhold Niebuhr--they were all mentally lazy. Strike Isaac Newton from the list of "inquisitive" minds--after all, he devoted himself to understanding the physical universe because he thought it would get him closer to the workings of the Mind of God. And how dare Albert Einstein seek to lend rationality and logic the workings of the universe with his pronouncement that "God does not play dice"! The nerve of them. Drum them out of the "bright" movement posthaste--in a manner that would make the ineligibility of Richard Feynman for Mensa membership seem almost understandable by comparison!

You may well be a bright. If not, you certainly deal with brights daily. That's because we are all around you: we're doctors, nurses, police officers, schoolteachers, crossing guards and men and women serving in the military. We are your sons and daughters, your brothers and sisters. Our colleges and universities teem with brights. Among scientists, we are a commanding majority. Wanting to preserve and transmit a great culture, we even teach Sunday school and Hebrew classes. Many of the nation's clergy members are closet brights, I suspect. We are, in fact, the moral backbone of the nation: brights take their civic duties seriously precisely because they don't trust God to save humanity from its follies.

While Tyrannosaurus Rex, stegosaurus and brontosaurus no longer roam the Earth, we still live in mortal fear of that old rhetorical dinosaur argumentus strawmanus. It is false and misleading beyond measure to say that religious people merely "trust God to save humanity from its follies." My religion teaches me that I am made in the Image of God, and that one of my divine attributes is free will. With the power of free will comes the responsibility for me and for others to shape the world in a manner that is consistent with the best and most noble principles of ethics and justice. My friends on the Christian side of the fence have the same obligation, as do adherents of other religions too numerous to count. It is ridiculous and ignorant to say--as Dennett does--that we believers merely sit back, allow sin to go on unchecked, and even dabble in a little sin ourselves while we wait for God to "save humanity from its follies."

Don't believe me? Well, just consider this post: I'm not waiting for God Almighty to correct the "folly" that is Daniel Dennett's article. I'm doing it myself.

Free Will: It's A Beautiful Thing.

As an adult white married male with financial security, I am not in the habit of considering myself a member of any minority in need of protection. If anybody is in the driver's seat, I've thought, it's people like me. But now I'm beginning to feel some heat, and although it's not uncomfortable yet, I've come to realize it's time to sound the alarm.

WARNING! WE HAVE A VICTIMIZATION SCENARIO TO DEAL WITH IMMEDIATELY! WHINING, MOANING, AND PERSECUTION FANTASIES TO FOLLOW SHORTLY! THIS IS NOT A DRILL! REPEAT: THIS IS NOT A DRILL!

Whether we brights are a minority or, as I am inclined to believe, a silent majority, our deepest convictions are increasingly dismissed, belittled and condemned by those in power — by politicians who go out of their way to invoke God and to stand, self-righteously preening, on what they call "the side of the angels."

Attention all hands: Politicians can no longer "invoke God" since Mr. Dennett, in his finite wisdom, subjectively considers such talk--no matter what the context--to be "self-righteous preening." I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that this prohibition will soon be extended to non-politicians as well--if it hasn't already.

A 2002 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life suggests that 27 million Americans are atheist or agnostic or have no religious preference. That figure may well be too low, since many nonbelievers are reluctant to admit that their religious observance is more a civic or social duty than a religious one — more a matter of protective coloration than conviction.

Most brights don't play the "aggressive atheist" role. We don't want to turn every conversation into a debate about religion, and we don't want to offend our friends and neighbors, and so we maintain a diplomatic silence.

But the price is political impotence. Politicians don't think they even have to pay us lip service, and leaders who wouldn't be caught dead making religious or ethnic slurs don't hesitate to disparage the "godless" among us.

Gentle readers, the following is a quote from Theodore Roosevelt:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face in marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world. Among the free peoples who govern themselves there is but a small field of usefulness open for the men of cloistered life who shrink from contact with their fellows. Still less room is there for those who deride of slight what is done by those who actually bear the brunt of the day; nor yet for those others who always profess that they would like to take action, if only the conditions of life were not exactly what they actually are. The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be a cynic, or fop, or voluptuary. There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder. Well for these men if they succeed; well also, though not so well, if they fail, given only that they have nobly ventured, and have put forth all their heart and strength. It is war-worn Hotspur, spent with hard fighting, he of the many errors and valiant end, over whose memory we love to linger, not over the memory of the young lord who "but for the vile guns would have been a valiant soldier."

Now, call it a hunch, but the following is how I imagine the quote would be altered by Mr. Dennett (changes in bold):

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face in marred by dust and sweat and blood--but not too much blood because we can't have ourselves get too messy by the strain and difficulty of democratic discourse; who strives valiantly, while maintaining a "diplomatic silence"; who errs--but not too much since his natural timidity and cowardice keeps error to a minimum while at the same time robbing him of any chance of achieving greatness from the taking of a brave stand, who comes short again and again--for lack of courage in expressing his views, no doubt, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming--but not too much shortcoming, please! We're "brights"; but who does actually strive to do the deeds--from time to time, and only after downing a fifth of whatever is his favorite type and brand of "liquid courage"; who knows great enthusiasms--but keeps them well-hidden for fear of "offend[ing] our friends and neighbors", the great devotions--and small tangible dedication to seeing those devotions enacted; who spends himself in a worthy cause--only when no one else is looking and only when others cannot be offended; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement--when under the influence of a combination of enough peyote, mescaline, and hashish to kill a small horse, but not before overcoming his innate tendency to wet and soil himself at the first sign of intellectual ferment, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly--assuming that he knows what "daring greatly" even means in the first place, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat--like me, Daniel Dennett, for example. Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world--like me, Daniel Dennett, for example. Among the free peoples who govern themselves there is but a small field of usefulness open for the men of cloistered life who shrink from contact with their fellows--we call such people "brights" apparently. Still less room is there for those who deride of slight what is done by those who actually bear the brunt of the day; nor yet for those others who always profess that they would like to take action, if only the conditions of life were not exactly what they actually are--which means more bad news for the "bright" movement. The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be a cynic, or fop, or voluptuary--paging Mr. Dennett. There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder. Well for these men if they succeed; well also, though not so well, if they fail, given only that they have nobly ventured, and have put forth all their heart and strength. It is war-worn Hotspur, spent with hard fighting, he of the many errors and valiant end, over whose memory we love to linger, not over the memory of the young lord who "but for the vile guns would have been a valiant soldier." Quite obviously, Hotspur could never have been a "bright." Perhaps he wasn't "inquisitive" enough. We certainly know that he was too brave to be one of us.

Someone has to tell Mr. Dennett that democracy entails having the courage to go out and express one's views--sometimes to a hostile audience. No one outside his sociopolitical movement can do the selling job for that movement. Dennett and other "brights" are the one who is charged with that duty. If they want to shirk it, if they are too cowardly to take up the burden of living up to the standards of Roosevelt's "Man in the Arena," then that is their problem and their cross to bear. But they can't complain about the "political impotence" that they have brought on themselves through their own timidity and cowardice.

Something tells me that Mr. Dennett wouldn't like to have a weblog--he just would fall to pieces after a few rounds of vigorous interblog debate. At the very least, he would disable the comments section for fear of those who might not want to "maintain a diplomatic silence" in expressing their disagreement with his views, and the views of other "brights."

Back to the whinefest:

From the White House down, bright-bashing is seen as a low-risk vote-getter. And, of course, the assault isn't only rhetorical: the Bush administration has advocated changes in government rules and policies to increase the role of religious organizations in daily life, a serious subversion of the Constitution. It is time to halt this erosion and to take a stand: the United States is not a religious state, it is a secular state that tolerates all religions and — yes — all manner of nonreligious ethical beliefs as well.

I presume that this tendentious drivel has to do with the augmented role of faith-based institutions in affecting social policy. Whether or not one agrees with this policy, it does not represent the "serious subversion of the Constitution" that has Mr. Dennett's panties in a bunch. The First Amendment to the Constitution says the following:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Got that? All that is prohibited is "an establishment of religion"--which is the creation of an official state religion, or the hampering of "the free exercise thereof." None of this language prevents religious organizations from having a serious and meaningful role to play in our national life. One need not even believe in order to benefit from the good works of a faith-based charity. Add to Mr. Dennett's whiny and insulting screed a fundamental ignorance of the laws surrounding the interaction between religion and society.

I recently took part in a conference in Seattle that brought together leading scientists, artists and authors to talk candidly and informally about their lives to a group of very smart high school students. Toward the end of my allotted 15 minutes, I tried a little experiment. I came out as a bright.

Now, my identity would come as no surprise to anybody with the slightest knowledge of my work. Nevertheless, the result was electrifying.

Many students came up to me afterwards to thank me, with considerable passion, for "liberating" them. I hadn't realized how lonely and insecure these thoughtful teenagers felt. They'd never heard a respected adult say, in an entirely matter of fact way, that he didn't believe in God. I had calmly broken a taboo and shown how easy it was.

Congratulations to all of you. You have been "liberated." Thank God . . . or . . . something. Upon the rock of Daniel Dennett, the "bright" movement shall build its church. Yea verily, he is a fisher of men--and women.

Now go celebrate. It's Miller Time, "bright" people! Get a beer, get a big dinner, be sure to skip grace, and if you are a "bright" Jew, never mind the prohibition against trayf products. Pork and shellfish are your friends! Load up your pizzas with pepperoni and sausage! Live your lives as you see fit--but stop lecturing me on how I am supposed to live mine. And stop with the "self-righteous preening" you accuse believers of engaging in--you are looking increasingly ridiculous and hypocritical.

In addition, many of the later speakers, including several Nobel laureates, were inspired to say that they, too, were brights. In each case the remark drew applause. Even more gratifying were the comments of adults and students alike who sought me out afterward to tell me that, while they themselves were not brights, they supported bright rights. And that is what we want most of all: to be treated with the same respect accorded to Baptists and Hindus and Catholics, no more and no less.

I'm glad to treat anyone and everyone who denounces and renounces this article as a literary abortion procedure gone horribly wrong with all the respect in the world. Dennett's writing is so terrifyingly bad that it may very well be a sign that the Apocalypse is upon us (and how funny would it be, by the way, to have Daniel Dennett's atrocious forensic skills serve as a harbinger for the events of the Book of Revelation? Talk about delicious irony!).

If you're a bright, what can you do? First, we can be a powerful force in American political life if we simply identify ourselves. (The founding brights maintain a Web site on which you can stand up and be counted.) I appreciate, however, that while coming out of the closet was easy for an academic like me — or for my colleague Richard Dawkins, who has issued a similar call in England — in some parts of the country admitting you're a bright could lead to social calamity. So please: no "outing."

Yeah, no "outing." Because God forbid . . . er . . . someone forbid that any tactic other than the writing of articles that prompt incredulity and hysterical laughter be followed.

But there's no reason all Americans can't support bright rights. I am neither gay nor African-American, but nobody can use a slur against blacks or homosexuals in my hearing and get away with it. Whatever your theology, you can firmly object when you hear family or friends sneer at atheists or agnostics or other godless folk.

Sneering at believers, on the other hand, is not only allowed, it is encouraged by High Priest Daniel Dennett's "bright" encyclical.

And you can ask your political candidates these questions: Would you vote for an otherwise qualified candidate for public office who was a bright? Would you support a nominee for the Supreme Court who was a bright? Do you think brights should be allowed to be high school teachers? Or chiefs of police?

You certainly can. Just don't be surprised if those same candidates start laughing at your whiny, self-indulgent, unbelievably spineless ass.

Let's get America's candidates thinking about how to respond to a swelling chorus of brights. With any luck, we'll soon hear some squirming politician trying to get off the hot seat with the feeble comment that "some of my best friends are brights."

"Some of my best friends are brights. One such friend is Daniel Dennett. He serves as comic relief for our particular group of compadres. We ditch him at parties, we use him as the wingman at bars while we go home with the hot chicks, and occasionally, we get him to write columns for the New York Times so we can have a good chuckle over the fourth grade writing style he displays."

Look, I have no problem with anyone who doesn't believe in God. Religious belief is a personal choice that is determined by your education, your upbringing, the peculiar bent of your mind, and your life experiences. I don't think that you have to believe in religion to be a good person, and certainly, some of the worst things in human history have been done ostensibly to glorify the name of God.

At the same time, you don't have to be an atheist or agnostic to be "very smart" or to feel "liberated." Don't tell me that Aquinas and Augustine were slaves to some burdensome theory, or that they were too stupid and cretinous to "liberate" themselves. They felt liberated and empowered by their beliefs. They rationalized their religious faith. They sought to work out the kinks and puzzles that accompany a belief in God. It wasn't blind faith or unthinking devotion that caused Aquinas and Augustine to devote themselves to the study of theology and the worship of God. They made a choice to live the lives they lived, a conscious, rational, well thought out choice--as have the innumerable other believers who hve tried to follow their intellectually grounded and philosophically rigorous example--no matter what faith they have professed. Daniel Dennett may disagree with that choice, and that is his right. But he has no right to claim "liberation" and intellectual superiority at the expense of those who do not share his views on religion.

Indeed, if you really want to examine the issue of religion from the game theory/rational choice perspective, you might be better off believing in God. Pascal's Wager--which I claim to have rediscovered and which I have renamed "Yousefzadeh's Ante" in the spirit of the philosophical thievery that has led to the revival of secular humanism and its re-labeling as the "bright" movement--tells us that it is safer to believe in God than to disbelieve. If God does not exist and we believe, our souls still will not be penalized in the afterlife. If God does exist, and we do not believe, then it's "Hello Beelzebub, does this place have air-conditioning?"

Are there rebuttals to Pascal's Wager/Yousefzadeh's Ante? Sure. Are they effective? It depends on your worldview--some people will be persuaded by the rebuttals, while others won't. This argument has been going on for several millennia. It will go on for several millennia longer. Of that you can be assured.

The point is that the debate over religion is one that is very complex, very involved, and ultimately must be centered on respect for the views of non-believers and believers alike. It does not do to have one group pretentiously and arrogantly label themselves as somehow being "enlightened" due to their atheism/agnosticism, while at the same petulantly complaining about the perceived tendency of the other side to claim "enlightenment" for itself. Whether one believes or does not believe in God, the Golden Rule can and should be followed in this debate. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. In the context of this debate, that would entail treating the other side with the respect that you would like to have afforded to your side--something that Daniel Dennett and the "brights" are manifestly failing to do thus far.

ON "LUMPERS" AND RETRACTED CBS HEADLINES

As always, Lileks is an excellent read.

HOW UTTERLY CHARMING, PART II

I just don't know what to say in response to a letter found here:

Editor -- The constant loss of U.S. soldiers in Iraq -- after the war is "won" -- is a tragedy. However, if this is what it takes to retire the Bush administration at the next election, the sacrifice is justified.

And it's signed "Arie L. Bleicher." I guess that's someone's idea of wit.

IT'S SO HARD TO KEEP UP WITH THE VARYING DEGREES OF CONFUSION

Ah, for the halcyon days when Iranians were confused with Arabs. While completely wrongheaded, and utterly laughable, it was at least more respectable than confusing Iran with China. Although, given who made the mistake, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Just to point this out once more: The overwhelming majority of Iranians happen to be Persian. I myself am both Persian and Jewish. Can this be so hard to grasp?

I DON'T KNOW WHETHER TO LAUGH OR CRY

And I suspect you won't either once you read this.

SOMEONE INFORM THE ORGANIZERS OF THE DARWIN AWARDS

How dumb does one have to be to serve as the inspiration for this story?

A political science instructor at Santa Rosa Junior College is being investigated by the Secret Service for telling his students to compose an e- mail to an elected official that included the words "kill the president, kill the president," a school administrator said Wednesday.

Michael Ballou, a part-time lecturer who teaches an "Introduction to U.S. Government" course at the college's Petaluma campus, intended the assignment to be an "experiential exercise that would instill a sense of fear so they would have a better sense of why more people don't participate in the political process," said Doug Garrison, the vice president and executive dean of the Petaluma campus.

However, it "clearly is a violation of our board policies," said Garrison, who learned of the incident on Monday from campus police officials and immediately summoned Ballou to his office for an explanation. He said Ballou was continuing to teach his classes while the matter was under investigation by the Secret Service.

Ballou did not respond to requests for an interview.

Most of the 30 students in the class dismissed the June 25 assignment as a joke, but after it was repeated at a subsequent class, one student did send the e-mail to U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Napa Valley) on July 5.

WHOOPS!

Well, it looks like someone messed up the bill of lading.

AND NOW, THE OBITUARY TO A CAREER ILL-SPENT

Lileks on the firing of Michael Savage:

Tonight was the only time in my life I’ve made a point of tuning into the Michael Savage show. I’ve noted before how much I dislike the fellow. Now and then I catch some of the show on the weekend rebroadcast, and I listen for the same reason an etymologist studies a bug on a pin: because eventually he thinks “hey, I’m an etymologist, not an entomologist; I should be studying words, instead of staring with horror at this grotesque little insect.” It’s just a toxic show - the sneering tone, the hot blasts of hate towards anyone to the left of John Birch’s right nut, the endless parade of straw men propped up on his personal bazooka firing range, the ceaseless litany of the country’s faults. There’s nothing good in America anymore, if you believe him. He’s the ultimate Blame America Firster. His Fourth of July show started out with an admission that he didn’t feel like celebrating anything, and if you wanted that then go listen to some jingo-spouting moron. (Not an exact quote, but you get the flavor.) (Vinegar.)

It’s radio for people who have given up. Radio for people who mistake their anger for conviction. Listening to the show is like bobbing for dog turds in a chum bucket.

Today he got bounced from his MSNBC talk show for telling a caller he should get AIDS and die. It was obvious from the article that he got punk’d by someone, probably a Stern fan who asked him if he wanted to perform a certain act on Babalooie, or whatever that tiresome routine requires. The producers cut off the caller, but Savage continued to reply to the guy on the air.

So I had to tune in to hear the explanation. Why, he lost his temper because a prank caller - are you ready? - attacked him personally! on the phone! What can a man do but express a desire that the person commits sodomy, contracts AIDS, and dies an attenuated and excruciating death? Savage, it now appears, was the victim of some strange technological cock-up whereby the words you speak into your microphone are broadcast. He was goaded into it. He was defending himself. They’ve always been out to get him off the air. Now they’ve succeeded. The Republic has been wounded; a black night of a thousand years looms on the horizon, but lo, he will continue to speak out. He said: ”If God wants me on the radio, then God will permit my voice to be heard.”

I felt the Spirit move me, and yea, I turned the radio off.

The Lord works in mysterious ways.

I THINK THIS KIND OF DEFEATS THE PURPOSE

Enforced happiness? Somehow, that doesn't sound so appealing to me.

POLICING OUR OWN

It is important for any ideological movement to ensure that it distances itself from people who are within the movement, but who go off the deep end with their rhetoric. By pointing out that Ann Coulter is the Right's answer to Michael Moore, Andrew Sullivan provides that invaluable service--particularly when he quotes conservative writer Ronald Radosh on Coulter:

"I think it is important that those who are considered critics of left/liberalism don't stop using our critical faculties when self-proclaimed conservatives start producing crap."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

UPDATE: And speaking of the need to police our own, it is about time that this happened. And good riddance too.

OH, SO THAT'S THE EXPLANATION

Perhaps you would like to take this story with a grain of salt. I know I will.

HOW CHARMING

Ah, the sweet strains of tolerance.

COINCIDENCE? I THINK NOT

This is appalling and outrageous. I wonder what Jacques Chirac thinks that he can accomplish by such pettiness. And I wonder what makes the French think that they can so easily rewrite history.

OH DEAR . . .

Please tell me that this is a joke.

I NEED TO GET OUT OF CALIFORNIA

We have a $38 billion deficit, license plate fees that have skyrocketed like the NASDAQ back in the 1990s, a governor who is as useful as an artificial appendix, and indifferent sports fans who could take or leave their favorite teams.

And now, in addition to the above, we have to contend with rampaging samurai:

IRVINE, Calif. - Police shot and killed a sword-wielding man described by relatives as schizophrenic after he slashed and killed two former co-workers and wounded three other people at a supermarket where he used to bag groceries.

About 40 to 50 shoppers ran from the store shortly after 9:30 a.m. Sunday as police went in to subdue Joseph Hunter Parker, who was armed with a samurai-style sword and wearing a beret and trenchcoat, said police Cmdr. Jeff Noble.

The 30-year-old man confronted an officer before fellow officers shot him, said Lt. Jeff Love. Parker was taken to the hospital and did not survive. One of the wounded was an Albertsons employee and two others were customers, police said. Police did not release the names of the dead or wounded.

I shop at Ralph's. And thank God, evidently.

BASTARDS

Avenge Lileks and the good folks at Jasperwood. They deserved better than this, though it should be said that if James's column is any indication of the attitude of the family, they are dealing with this recent turn of events better than most people would.

Here's hoping that Mrs. Lileks finds herself a position that is intellectually challenging and financially rewarding soon. And for those of you who have not yet hit the tip jar, please do so. At the very least, you will be showing Lileks just how much you appreciate him.

AAAAGGGGHHHH!!!!!!!!

I just had a long post on today's Supreme Court decision on Lawrence v. Texas completely eaten up. I'll try to see if I can recreate it later on. Meanwhile, I simmer with frustration.

NOT EXACTLY UP TO DATE

Just out of curiosity, does Robert Fisk even keep up with the news anymore?

SO IS GEORGE GALLOWAY ONLY MILDLY EVIL?

Afraid not.

Glenn Reynolds posted to this story where the Christian Science Monitor has come out to say that many of the documents purporting to prove that Galloway took bribes from Saddam Hussein's regime for over 11 years--documents that were reported on by the Monitor in April--were forgeries.

The documents reported by the Monitor, however, differ from documents that were reported by the Daily Telegraph--which also purport to show that Galloway took bribes. Of the Telegraph's documents, the Monitor states the following, as Glenn points out:

After examining copies of two pages of the Daily Telegraph's documents linking Galloway with the Hussein regime, Mneimneh pronounces them consistent, unlike their Monitor counterparts, with authentic Iraqi documents he has seen.

Moreover, a direct comparison of the language in the Monitor and Daily Telegraph document sets shows that they are somewhat contradictory.

The papers in the Monitor's possession alleged that Galloway began receiving funds from Iraq in the early 1990s. One of the Daily Telegraph's, dated January 2000, alleges that Iraqi officials were just beginning their consideration of a financial relationship with Galloway.

So the Monitor appears to have gotten it wrong in claiming that Galloway has taken payments from Saddam since the early 1990s. But the Telegraph appears to have gotten its story right. I linked to the story, which says the following about Galloway:

Saddam Hussein sought to protect George Galloway by severing the Iraqi intelligence service's contacts with the Labour backbencher, according to an official document found by The Daily Telegraph in Baghdad.

This letter, found in the files of the Iraqi foreign ministry, explained that any disclosure of Mr Galloway's "relationship" with the Mukhabarat, which operated as both secret police and intelligence service, would do great harm to his political career.

A letter from Izzat Ibrahim, Saddam's deputy on the Ba'ath Party's Revolutionary Command Council, dated May 6, 2000 stated that: "It is better not to engage the Mukhabarat in the relationship with George Galloway, as he has been a well known politician since 1990, and discovery of his relationship with the Mukhabarat would damage him very much."

The Ibrahim memorandum emerged from a high-level committee established to examine Mr Galloway's alleged request for more money, conveyed in the Mukhabarat chief's memorandum disclosed in The Daily Telegraph on Tuesday.

That suggested that the MP was receiving an annual sum of not less than £375,000 from the regime.

Remember, the Monitor, while concluding that its own papers were forgeries, concludes as well that the Telegraph's evidence is accurate. As such, while the specifics of the charges against Galloway may have changed, the charge still stands; Galloway has credible evidence facing him that demonstrates that he has taken money from the regime of Saddam Hussein, in return for promoting Saddam's interests in Britain and the West. That, along with his utter disregard for human life makes Galloway completely reprehensible. And it absolves Galloway not a whit for the serious charges against him.

MAKING THE PERFECT THE ENEMY OF THE GOOD

Do Naderites ever leave well enough alone?

IN OTHER NEWS . . .

Emily Jones spanks the BBC something fierce.

I think that if we make Emily the lovely siren of mighty American unilateralism, no one will dare mess with us. And quite a few people will be turned on to the USA. And I think I speak authoritatively on that subject, as the good Ms. Jones is one of my most cherished friends.

MICHAEL MOORE IS "MONEY-OBSESSED?"

Say it ain't so!

INFILTRATING A.N.S.W.E.R.

Ever wonder what the A.N.S.W.E.R. meetings are like? Well, here's your chance to be a fly on the wall.

(Link via the lovely Shell.)

WHAT'S GOOD FOR THE GOOSE . . .

Is good for the gander.

UNBELIEVABLE

If you are a guy, and you are going bald, just accept it and move on. The cover-up is worse than any crime that male-pattern baldness might qualify as.

HE NEEDS THE CHALLENGE

Someone get Lileks to face more agile fish in a darker and more forbidding barrel. This Fisking must have been child's play for him.

JUST FOR THE RECORD . . .

I won't comply either. And doesn't the EU have better things to do than to regulate the content on weblogs? Good God, talk about being heavy-handed . . .

WEEVIL SPEAKS! MAX SHOULD LISTEN!

Dr. Weevil properly excoriates Max Sawicky for some clumsy and inarticulate phrasing. Of course, if this process were to be applied every single time clumsy and inarticulate phrasing were to be found on Sawicky's site, it would cover just about every single post.

IT DOESN'T PASS THE SMELL TEST

Were others surprised to come across this article, which claims that Leon Trotsky's thoughts are a major influence at the Bush White House?

Well, I was. And so was Arnold Beichman who reveals the story to be a fraud.

Gotta love Big Media. They don't just make one mistake. They make tons.

NOTICE TO ALL:

Matthew Engel is finally leaving America. Emily Jones pays him a proper goodbye.

YET ANOTHER SIGN THAT THE APOCALYPSE IS UPON US

I just can't believe this:

QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODIES? When Michael Heberling read an article on plagiarism in Syllabus magazine earlier this month, he had a strange sense of déjà vu. And for good reason: About a half-dozen passages had been lifted from an article he'd already published elsewhere, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. One of the co-authors of the Syllabus piece apologized to Mr. Heberling, blaming tight deadlines. Mr. Heberling sees it all as a cautionary tale. "The irony," he told the Chronicle, "was just so much."

OLIVER WILLIS, CALL YOUR OFFICE

So Democrats are nice people while Republicans make nasty comments and fight dirty? Like I said, give me a break. This report puts the lie to that claim:

Former U.S. Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Janet Reno couldn't even walk through the front door of the South County Civic Center Wednesday without being swarmed by admirers.

The scene, which she seemed accustomed to, served her purpose: to motivate the Democratic Club of Greater Boca Raton to get organized, which she asserts the party must do to win the presidential election in 2004.

[. . .]

One part of Reno's speech, which touched upon issues such as classroom sizes, health care and the criminal justice system, seemed to speak directly to Goldfarb. Reno spoke about visiting the Dachau concentration camp in Germany as a child and learning what had happened.

"I went back and asked my adult German friends, 'How could you let that happen?' " Reno said. "They said, 'We just stood by.' "

She looked right into the the audience and told them that's why she was there. She had no intention of just standing by.

"And don't you just stand by," Reno said.

Yeah, sure. Republicans are Nazis because they disagree with Reno's idealized health care plan. I'm sure that the benighted think this sort of drivel makes incredible amounts of historical and rhetorical sense.

And I presume that this is what Oliver Willis meant when he said that liberals have been forced to be the "nice guys"? Reno's comments put another nail into the coffin of that theory, don't they?

THE NEXT TIME SOMEONE ON THE LEFT PRAISES ROBERT C. BYRD FOR HIS LATEST CONDESCENDING PRONOUNCEMENT . . .

I hope that someone shows them this.

QUESTION:

Why are some brutal dictators somehow considered "fashionable"?

UNDERSTANDING ROBERT SCHEER

Stefan Sharansky deserves a Divine Dispensation for having the patience to go through constructing this.

He probably also needs something better to read in his free time than Robert Scheer columns. But then, don't we all?

I GUESS THERE MUST BE SOME LOGIC TO THIS . . .

But I cannot figure out for the life of me what the point is of carrying out suicide bombings against Israelis, while at the same time forfeiting table tennis matches to them.

You would think that if one group of people hated another group so fervently to want to blow themselves up so long as they can kill or maim members of the second group of people, that the desire to beat that second group of people in individual table tennis matches would be a given. Guess not.

Of course, maybe it's just a hunch, but I think that the people of Israel would rather have normal lives and the ability to live freely in a country of their own than table tennis victories against Arab players. Alas, it appears that they only get the latter--and by dissatisfying means, no less.

IF IT WERE POSSIBLE TO CANONIZE JEWS . . .

Then Eugene Volokh would receive canonization for having the patience of a saint with Slate's "Bushism of the Day" series. Here is yet another post that reveals the fact that Slate doesn't give the context for the "Bushisms" that it mocks and ridicules.

The Blogosphere is now pretty famous, and blogs like the Volokh Conspiracy are very well known. I think that someone at Slate has probably heard of a certain UCLA law professor who constantly and consistently reveals the "Bushisms of the Day" to be inaccurate and absurd when put in the proper context. When do you think that Slate will finally begin policing itself, and not rely on Eugene Volokh to have to police them instead?

PERFECT!

Whatever else you do today, be sure to read this.

Oh, and needless to say, I aspire to be part of the Jewish advising cabal.

(Link via Emily Jones.)

TOO MUCH INFORMATION

And guess what: You're paying for it.

THE NEW AXIS OF EVIL: NIGERIAN AND IRAQI E-MAIL SPAMMERS

I got the following e-mail today:

Dear Sir,

I have made this contact to you with the hope that you can help me out in this my dilemma / problem. I was the personal aide to the Iraqi minister of education and research. Dr Abd Al-khaliq Gafar. That died in the war. Before the war, we had traveled to France to negotiate a contract payment deal on behalf of the Iraqi government on procurement and payment of educational materials and components for the ministry, which entailed him to pay off our customers by cash for onward delivery of the goods via Turkey. Because of international / UN monetary restrictions /sanction on Iraqi. Since our entire operating bank accounts had been frozen.

In gust of this he had cleverly diverted this sum ($28.5m) for himself and secured it properly with a security vault in Spain for safekeeping. As he had kept these documents in hidden and secret with my knowledge. Now that he is Dead and I was able to escape to Egypt for safety on political asylum with this document with me now. Hence I am left with these problems of how to recover and collect this fund for re-invest in a viable venture in your country with your assistance and cooperation. Because of oblivious traveling restricts and sanctions as an Iraqi

I would really want us to do this deal together if only you can be trusted with this information and project. For more details do reach me via my direct email : mustapha_el@mail2guard.com for further instructions and details. I most remind you that my entire life depends on this fund so please do not relay this top secret to a third party if you are not interested.

I await you immediate response.

Remain Blessed.

Regards
El - Mustapha

Dear Sweet, Merciful Lord: Why must we put up with this e-mail pestilence? Let your people go!

DRABBLE'S DRIBBLE

A number of people linked to the incoherent and banal rant issued by Margaret Drabble, with some clueless wonders even quoting Drabble approvingly. This piece, however, reveals Drabble as the enemy of democracy that she really is:

The key to understanding Drabble's lunatic rant is her reaction to what she says she saw on CNN celebrating the 25th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam war. She describes an old, shabbily dressed Vietnamese man bartering for dollars. The horror of this moment - an "elderly, impoverished" Vietnamese man wanting that terrible currency, American dollars, for heaven's sake - just put the lid on it for Drabble. She writes: "The Vietnamese had won the war, but had lost the peace."

Well no, Miss Drabble. The Vietnamese fought the war for communism and they won communism. That, indeed, is why the old man is impoverished, shabbily dressed and bartering for dollars. In your deliberate obtuseness, you become blind to the most self-evident conclusions and an apologist for the appalling regimes that are so far removed from your ostensible values.

Forgetting the danger Saddam posed to those outside his borders, we have now seen that removing him from power cost fewer Iraqi lives than just one of his killing sprees. Would you have condemned the Iraqi people to another 12 years of Saddam's murderous nightmare?

Are you too sophisticated for Coca-Cola and Disneyfication but not for Saddam's garish palaces and his giant posters on every street corner? After Stalin, Hitler and Mao, this horrifying man probably captures fourth place in the great mass murderers' list, or fifth after Pol Pot.

One is tempted to call this visceral anti-Americanism "the Drabble syndrome", but she is neither the first nor the most prominent sufferer. You could as easily call it the Pinter syndrome and it certainly is the BBC syndrome.

Exactly. And so long as Drabble's nonsensical views are shared by opinion-shapers like the increasingly execrable BBC, they need to be countered and fought at every level. It is good to see that Barbara Amiel has stepped forward to do so. Her words ought to be taken to heart. They certainly make more sense than Drabble's hysterical rant.

STUPIDITY ABOUNDS

If you don't believe me, just look at the example being set by stupidity's very own patron saint.

The "warblogger's" words being quoted are mine--apparently Norm is too much of a coward to link to them, and invite other people to see the post in full, and judge it in context (you can find the post being referred to here). It is unclear what is being criticized in my writing--Norm was never a good writer to begin with, and his inability to express himself in full is compounded by his willingness to put logic and reason aside to take cheap shots at others.

Cheap shots he's not even good at executing, by the way. Since Norm is too intellectually lazy and flaccid to argue with my real positions, he decides to make up a position for me and put words in my mouth, to the effect that I would dismiss reports of looting at nuclear facilities by merely stating that "Oh well at least Saddam is gone and after all that was the number one priority." For someone who likes to preach to others about the use of logical fallacies, Norm has a special penchant for constructing strawmen to knock down. I suppose that is all he can do, since Norm is too dishonest and too dimwitted to argue with the actual positions taken by others. In any event, I've never claimed that the occupation of Iraq was going to go easily, or that it would be problem free. And the "number one priority" was never just to get rid of Saddam and then let future issues fester. I never said any such thing at any point. Anyone who reads my blog would know this--anyone, that is, except Norm, who can't read and comprehend to save his life, and who is more than willing to lie shamelessly about the positions taken by others in order to try to gain the upper hand in an argument with them.

Oh and Norm, I apologize for not having responded to your drivel sooner. Apart from the fact that I didn't find out earlier about your screed since you didn't even have the courage to link to my post and let your readers see for themselves what I wrote, I'm one time zone behind you, which by your standards, is an excuse for getting and reporting news late. I'm sure you understand. At least I hope you do--past experience tells me you are too dumb to understand all that much.

Fool.

UPDATE: As expected, Norm has come up with yet another series of lies to explain away yet another nonsensical and imbecilic post. He now claims that the reason he didn't link to me is that he didn't want to "embarrass" me. This is ridiculous and lame, as there was nothing for me to be embarrassed about when I wrote my post. I linked to the story, and I gave my commentary.

And speaking of the commentary, Norm also complains that all I did in my post was "state the obvious," and whines that I didn't "comment on how it happened, why it happened, and who is responsible." Well, the reason I didn't comment further was twofold: (1) The story I linked to gives indications to why the looting of the nuclear material may have occurred, and I see no reason why I should recapitulate the reasons given in the story itself. Unless you suffer from the twin problems of deficient reading and incandescent stupidity the way Norm does, you can link to the story and read it for yourself and even comprehend all of it--along with the reasons why the looting may have occurred. (2) We don't know the fully story of what might have happened with the looting, and it is perfectly possible--if not downright likely--that we will learn more facts that will change the story and our understanding of how the looting at the nuclear sites may have occurred. After all, that's precisely what happened with the story about the looting of artifacts at the Baghdad National Museum. At first, anti-war advocates linked to the stories about the museum looting and accused the Bush Administration of being responsible for the looting of thousands of precious artifacts. Now, we know that the vast majority of artifacts got locked away in advance by the museum staff, and that the number of lost artifacts runs in the tens. In other words, the story changed. And since the stories about looting at the nuclear sites are relatively new, I decided to link to them, annd be cautious in my commentary, since--as I said--we may learn more facts that change our perception of the story.

See, I'm trying to be somewhat responsible in my commentary of current events. I know that people like Norm are just interested first and foremost in finding a story that might be used to attack the other side, facts be damned, and I know that it shocks Norm that other people might want to hold back their rhetoric a bit on an issue until more facts are learned. Personally, I don't think that Norm's headlong and frantic attempts to categorize what is clearly a developing story is anyway to run a blog. I personally don't care if Norm disregards facts in order to be able to construct a post that fits into his Neanderthal worldview--hell, I'm used to that kind of thing from him. He just shouldn't expect me to adopt the same degree of dishonesty and stupidity that he has trademarked as his own personal style.

Norm closes his infantile screed by self-righteously refusing to apologize, promising that he will never link to me in the future, claiming that "I frankly didn't give a fuck if [I] responded or not," and complaining about the fact that I have stated he is not exactly the swiftest Porsche in the garage. Well, I didn't expect Norm to apologize for this latest manifestation of brain-dead behavior anymore than I expect water to cease being wet, so that's not an issue. I know that apologies are the kind of things that mature people give when they are called out in error. As for not linking to me in the future, I suppose I would be upset about that if Norm pathetic little blog attracted any serious traffic. But it doesn't, so that's not an issue either. Besides, if Norm suddenly decided to take the time to link to bloggers and posts he disagreed with, he would also let his readers go and read what those posts actually said, and then perhaps come to the realization that I have come to; namely, that Norm either is incapable of comprehending a written post, or is too much of a liar to represent the words of another properly. And if Norm "frankly didn't give a fuck" whether I responded, I want to know why he took all the trouble to respond right back (I bet there will be a response to this update as well, despite the claim that Norm "frankly [doesn't] give a fuck" about my response).

And finally, as for my commentary on Norm's intellectual prowess, or lack thereof--if the shoe fits, wear it. The epithets may hurt Norm's fragile little feelings, but since they apply, they deserved to be said. And they will be said again the next time our little clown decides to go and make an abject fool of himself.

FOR ALL THOSE STILL OBSESSED ABOUT THE BUSH CARRIER LANDINGS . . .

You would have been really mad at FDR's shenanigans:

In January 1927, a group of Houston civic leaders created the Cruiser Houston Committee, initiating a campaign to have the Navy name a new cruiser in honor of the city and port of Houston. Led by William A. Bernrieder, an assistant to mayor Oscar Holcombe, Houstonians began a letter-writing drive that flooded the office of Secretary of the Navy Curtis D. Wilbur with letters and telegrams. In response to the enthusiastic campaign, on September 7, 1927, Wilbur announced that a new heavy cruiser would be named the U.S.S. Houston.

[. . .]

The Houston's most famous passenger, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, embarked on the ship for the first time in 1934. His 12,000 mile presidential cruise to Haiti, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Columbia, and Hawaii helped earn the Houston her nickname "the Rambler." FDR sailed with the Houston again in 1935, 1938, and 1939, his most notable trip being a fishing expedition to the Galapagos and other Pacific islands, which included an elaborate "King Neptune" ceremony when the ship crossed the Equator.

I trust that we will hear calls for an investigation on this issue soon, won't we? After all, we need to know just how much money Roosevelt's fishing expedition cost the U.S. Treasury--calculating the cost as 2003 dollars, to be sure. And it would certainly be interesting to know just how many sailors and servicemen had their returns home postponed or cancelled as a result of the fishing trip. In fact, we can just add this investigation to the other issues that require investigation.

And unless there are people out there who really believe that I am channeling the spirit of Hamilton Fish with my call for an investigation of FDR, let me hasten to remind all y'all that I am writing with tongue implanted firmly in cheek, and I am being facetious. But since some people insist on making a tempest out of a teapot, I figured that I would poke a little fun at them. At the very least you all have some historical perspective on the issue now.

ONE GOOD LIE DESERVES ANOTHER

Michael Moore's latest Triumph of the Will--like project appears to be off and running. Perhaps this is as good a time as any to remind readers of Moore's general problems with veracity.

NOT SO INSIGNIFICANT

Vincent Ferrari's blog, Insignificant Thoughts is always worth reading, but especially today, given his excellent exposure of Senator Robrt Byrd's hypocrisy on the issue of the Bush carrier landing, and his continuing coverage of the non-story regarding George W. Bush's military service.

Of course, my favorite post from Vinny is this one, where he takes on and shreds apart one of more odious and laughably inept bloggers around. I would have linked to this earlier, but I'm several time zones behind Vinny, and as a result, I get news late. Vinny: my apologies.*

*The business about the time zones was a joke. Read Vinny's post, and you will understand the context for it.

DESPERATELY SEEKING A CLUE

The BBC never fails to astound, as Perry de Havilland points out.

SHOCKED, BUT NOT SURPRISED

Steven Den Beste posts on the latest politically correct outrage. Don't people have more important things to worry about? Just wondering.

And Steven, considering the fact that the first ever nuclear chain reaction occurred at my alma mater, perhaps my school could have nuclear bombs as a team symbol. Considering the fact that the Straussian neocons are ruling the world nowadays, it is in your interests to agree before we have Paul Wolfowitz working on regime change in San Diego.

BUSTING MYTHS

I get rather tired of the "Bush was AWOL/Bush was a deserter" stories that seem to resemble a leftist version of silliness like "Vince Foster was shot by a gun in Chelsea Clinton's hand!", or some other such drivel. Bill Hobbs has four posts--here, here, here and here--that actually provide some facts regarding the entire issue. And since he is actually a journalist--and a rather good one at that--I'm liable to believe his careful research over the latest partisan hate screeds.

But that's just me.

UGH . . .

This is just appalling. Are people crazy?

THIS IS QUITE FUNNY

Jack Shafer rips apart the reporting of investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who habitually gets things wrong in his columns. Shafer believes that the best indication that we may very well find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is that Hersh predicts we won't. This story might very well bolster Shafer's case.

SHE COMES OUT SWINGING

After a brief hiatus, the lovely Emily Jones has returned to the world of Blogdom, and has turned Guardian columnist Matthew Engel into roadkill in the process.

So what are you doing here? Go over and read, already!

MORE INFORMATION ABOUT MOHAMMAD SAID AL SAHAF . . .

Courtesy of Tim Blair, natch.

THE LATEST JIM MORAN ESCAPADES

A reader sends the following e-mail:

Hi -

I wasn't sure who to send this info to, as I usually send these things to CAMERA or honestreporting, but it's not so much a media issue, so I was hoping either you might be able to forward it to an appropriate organization, and/or publicize it in your weblog.

In a CSPAN appearance today on a program called "Students and Leaders" the guest speaker was Jim Moran, speaking to students at South Lakes High School in Reston, VA. I only saw the latter part of the program, so I'm not sure if the subject of Moran's comments earlier this year in regard to the "cabal" came up, but in the part of the program I saw, a student asked a question about what issues were of personal importance to Moran that weren't necessarily popular with his constituents, and, even though I didnt interpret the student's question the way Moran did (it was a confusing question) he answered that his position on the Middle East is an unpopular one, but he feels it's right, and then he went on to suggest the problem in the Middle East are the policies of the Likud government - destroying houses, building settlements, occupying land that others have lived on for generations, etc. The only time he even mentioned the word "Palestinians" was in the phrase "the problem between the Israelis and the Palestinians," but then he went on to place the responsibility for the problem solely on Israel. I was more incensed by his response in that this was a teaching moment for students, and I feel the lesson he taught was an incorrect one, in that no responsibility for the problem or resolving it was placed on the Palestinians or Arab countries, and there was no alternate view represented.

The transcript or a tape of the broadcast is usually available from CSPAN, and the program is usually rebroadcast on one of the CSPAN channels. As I said, I don't know whether Moran's comments earlier this year came up for discussion, and I know he's not known for his great support of Israel, but I would have thought he would have learned something over the past few months in regard to the Middle East. Not only was this not apparent in the part of the program I saw, he continues to provide misleading information in regard to Israel, and, in this case, it was to students he was supposed to be teaching.

Thanks for whatever response you might offer, and/or passing along this info, if it is more appropriate for another organization.

Well, consider it passed on. And I wonder whether anything was said about Moran's past anti-Semitic comments (commented on here and here, among other places) when he was addressing the students. You know, to put his comments and views in some perspective.

NORMAN MAILER IS IN TROUBLE NOW

And I mean that sincerely. Dennis Miller decided to take Mailer on:

When The Wall Street Journal asked me to react to Mr. Mailer's latest daft screed, I almost took a pass. I've never written an opinion piece for a newspaper before, and furthermore I know as much about Norman Mailer as I do about Mary Quant. I think they were both kinda hot for a few minutes in the '60s.

Other than a vague recollection that Mr. Mailer once played Boswell to Jack Henry Abbott's Samuel Johnson, I really only remember one other pertinent fact about him. But, what the heck, if you're going to take a stab at something new, why not take a stab at it with Norman Mailer.

Mr. Mailer was the Father of the Nonfiction Novel and now he can also claim lineage as the distant, addled Third Cousin of the Rational Op-Ed. Studying at the Sorbonne as a young man obviously made a deep impression on him because this thing reads like Jacques Chirac's Dream Journal.

With six marriages under his belt, one would assume Mr. Mailer has a stranglehold on warfare. One would be wrong.

His basic contention is that we went to war with Iraq because with the dominance of white American men in the boxing ring, the office and the home front eroded, George W. Bush thought they needed to know they were still good at something. Mr. Mailer has a degree in aeronautical engineering from Harvard so he had to know that argument wouldn't fly. But then again, maybe this claptrap is just a grand put-on. The fact that I and many others can't differentiate anymore does not augur well for Norm's legend.

The whole thing is hysterical and spot-on. Be sure to read it all. And here's hoping that Dennis Miller decides to write more political columns. He certainly makes a lot of sense--more than the likes of Mailer, to be sure.

I WONDER WHAT THE TEN YEAR REUNION WILL BE LIKE

Behold, a small snippet of life at my alma mater.

CLAUDE RAINES, CALL YOUR OFFICE

I am shocked, shocked to read of this:

Iraq's intelligence services bought gold jewellery that they planned to give to the wife and daughter of Scott Ritter, the controversial former weapons inspector, as part of a clandestine project to encourage him to work closely with Saddam Hussein's regime, according to documents discovered by The Telegraph in Baghdad.

According to the documents, which were found in the bombed headquarters of Iraq's intelligence services, the cost of the presents was approved at the highest level in an attempt to develop "strong relations with them [Mr Ritter's family] that affect positively on our relations with him".

The documents say that the gifts should be offered via an intermediary, who was named as Shakir al-Khafaji, an Iraqi-American businessman and close associate of Mr Ritter.

The documents, which are signed by the then director-general of Iraqi intelligence, purport to reveal close links between Mr al-Khafaji and Iraqi intelligence, and suggest that the regime was making available substantial funds to offer him. Mr Ritter and Mr al-Khafaji have both made clear that they received no such gifts or funds.

The only question I have is why the Iraqis decided to use gold to try to bribe Ritter. Wouldn't a 16 year old girl have been more cost-effective?

SICKENING, INDEED

Patrick Belton has documented the latest incident of anti-Semitism in Europe. I wonder how much longer the political class in Europe is going to wink and nod at this problem. It's clearly serious and endemic.

OF TEMPESTS AND TEAPOTS

Jonathan Last is not impressed with the Bill Bennett gambling story:

I don't understand what the big deal is. The news that Bennett gambles big-time isn't new. In 1996 Margaret Carlson reported that Bennett won $60,000 in a single outing in Las Vegas. Of course being old news wouldn't matter if it was a serious charge. But legal gambling is, well, legal.

One is tempted to argue that Bennett's gambling is a legal, common, private activity. But that shouldn't necessarily protect him. If Bennett was cheating on his wife (which is also legal, common, and private) it would be a serious charge, but that's because it involves the breaking of trust and willingness to hurt others. On the scale of legal, common, private activities, gambling is much closer to smoking than adultery. Would the world shudder if it turned out that Bennett was a two-pack-a-day man?

So what's going here? Two reporters came upon an interesting story about a rich guy who gambles a lot. (By the way, unless we know Bennett's worth and income, it's impossible to judge just how big he was gambling. These stories put his total losses at $8 million, but it's unclear as to whether or not those are net losses. For a sense of scale, the Washington Post's Michael Leahy reported that during a typical night out with Michael Jordan, the basketball great went down $500,000 and then finished up $600,000 at the blackjack table. Remember, that's in a single night.)

But my sense is that the left is going to use Bennett's gambling to try to drive him out of public life. Why? Hypocrisy, of course. Never mind that Bennett seems to have mentioned gambling only in passing here and there. He certainly hasn't made a career out of condemning gambling. And on the other side of the coin, he's never flacked for the gaming industry. And besides all that, in his books on morality and virtue (at least the ones I've read) Bennett doesn't hold himself up as the model of goodness and truth.

Nevertheless, the Washington Monthly, which has the beefier version of the story, seems bent on clubbing Bennett with the hypocrisy stick. But while they're castigating Bennett for gambling today, they were staunch defenders of sin-magnet Bill Clinton just a few years back.

Exactly. And recall that Clinton's lies were meant to frustrate an American citizen's rights in the context of a civil suit. Bennett hasn't even come close to meeting this standard of mendacity. And as Last mentions, Bennett's gambling has been reported on in the past. There is an attendant ridiculousness of spending $8 million in casinos over a decade (I really don't care how much money one makes, there are better things to do with $8 million). But in the end, that's a matter for Bennett to resolve for himself.

Bill Bennett didn't break the law. His penchant for gambling wasn't a secret. If ever there was a non-story, this is it. The same people who looked the other way when Bill Clinton perjured himself, are now posing as the morality police. This hypocrisy alone undermines the charges of hypocrisy against Bennett.

UM . . . WHOOPS!

Is this serious?

A NEW RECRUIT IN THE ANTI-CHOMSKY BRIGADES

Keith Windschuttle takes on the man who is perhaps the most overrated and mendacious intellectual in history:

Chomsky has declared himself a libertarian and anarchist but has defended some of the most authoritarian and murderous regimes in human history. His political philosophy is purportedly based on empowering the oppressed and toiling masses but he has contempt for ordinary people who he regards as ignorant dupes of the privileged and the powerful. He has defined the responsibility of the intellectual as the pursuit of truth and the exposure of lies, but has supported the regimes he admires by suppressing the truth and perpetrating falsehoods. He has endorsed universal moral principles but has only applied them to Western liberal democracies, while continuing to rationalize the crimes of his own political favorites. He is a mandarin who denounces mandarins. When caught out making culpably irresponsible misjudgments, as he was over Cambodia and Sudan, he has never admitted he was wrong.

Today, Chomsky’s hypocrisy stands as the most revealing measure of the sorry depths to which the left-wing political activism he has done so much to propagate has now sunk.

That's just the ending. Be sure to read the beginning of the article to see the very good reasons for Windschuttle's conclusion.

And in the event you are looking for more articles critiquing Chomsky, let me humbly suggest my effort, which references this excellent paper which details Chomsky's atrocious and asinine analysis of the Khmer Rouge's influence in Cambodia.

*SARCASM ENGAGED*

Boy, that Atrios sure is a funny guy, isn't he? I mean he is just loaded with wit and humor, as well as the ability to appreciate wit and humor in others! Like in this post, where Atrios regales us with the latest antics of Zacarias Moussaoui. Atrios thinks this kind of thing is really really funny since it is aimed at making John Ashcroft look bad.

And by golly, he's right! Never mind the fact that there is overwhelming evidence to suggest that Moussaoui tried to be the 20th hijacker on September 11th. Never mind the fact that he has repeatedly stated his support of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, and the destruction of the United States. What matters is that ol' Zac tried to pull a funny on the hated John Ashcroft.

Yup, that's a real knee-slapper. Almost makes you forget 3,000 dead people, doesn't it? I'm sure that Zac and Atrios go down really, really well in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. After all, why wouldn't they?

Folks, be sure to tune into Atrios's blog next week, when he begins the first of a 592 part series designed to show the human side of the avuncular and lovable Lavrenti Beria--a man who, if he were alive today, would surely have had an HBO comedy gig thanks to his capacity for witty repartee. Donald Rumsfeld would definitely receive a comic shredding at Lavrenti's hands, let me tell you! Atrios's insightful retrospective will make you want to book a stay at Lubyanka and Lefortovo, and enjoy all of the well-known amenities at those charming locales--with more gratuitously stupid . . . er . . . hysterically funny Bush-bashing included in the travel package. Don't miss out!

CLUELESS CELEBRIITIES UNITE! YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR LAST VESTIGES OF RESPECT!

Will someone tell me what Fidel Castro puts in the Kool-Aid to get people who should know better to do things like this?

More than 160 foreign artists and intellectuals, including Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez, have come out in defense of Cuba even as many of their peers condemn recent repression on the Communist-run island, one of the campaigners said on Thursday.

Latin American Nobel laureates Garcia Marquez, Rigoberta Menchu, Aldolfo Perez Esquivel and South African writer Nadine Gordimer, also a Nobel prize winner, have signed a declaration of support, Mexican sociologist Pablo Gonzalez said.

U.S. singer Harry Belafonte and U.S. actor Danny Glover are also among the personalities who have signed the two-paragraph declaration "To the Conscience of the World" so far, Gonzalez announced to a May Day rally in Havana.

"A single power is inflicting grave damage to the norms of understanding, debate and mediation among countries," the declaration says, referring to the United States and the war in Iraq.

"At this very moment, a strong campaign of destabilization against a Latin American nation has been unleashed. The harassment against Cuba could serve as a pretext for an invasion," it continues.

At least one person isn't taken in by Castro's lies:

Portuguese Nobel Prize winning novelist Jose Saramago, a longtime supporter of Castro, wrote last month that, "from now on, Cuba can follow its own course, and leave me out," saying Cuba had cheated his illusions.

Unfortunately there aren't enough celebrities like Saramago who will stand up to Castro and his lies. Too many of them make apologies for the worst and most brutal regime in the Western Hemisphere--all the while demanding that they be listened to on matters of national policy.

Exactly what depths does Castro have to sink to before some people get a clue? Does he have to eat babies on television or something?

CENSORSHIP POWERS FOR ME, BUT NOT FOR THEE

Eugene Volokh points out an appalling case of hypocrisy on the part of an anti-Bush law professor. I don't quite know whether to laugh or cry.

The most appalling thing, as far as I am concerned, was the threat to students to complicate their bar admissions. When a 3rd year law student is getting ready to graduate and go out into the professional world, the bar exam and getting admitted to the bar is one of the foremost things on that student's mind. To use that concern as a weapon to stifle dissent and criticism of a law professor who could potentially wield incredible power in complicating the Character and Fitness applications of graduating law students is disgusting beyond measure. It was not enough that the law school dean mrely rebuked these actions. Issuing such threats against law students should be a firing offense.

STRANGE AND DISGUSTING BEDFELLOWS

Having bet on the wrong horse in supporting Saddam Hussein, A.N.S.W.E.R. is now seeking to recoup its reputation by coming to the defense of . . . Fidel Castro! They even manage to find a way to blame the United States for Castro's recent crackdown on dissidents.

And thus, the defiance of common sense and facts continues. You would think that the people at A.N.S.W.E.R. would have been willing to reexamine their views in light of the victory in Iraq. But then, that would require common sense, wouldn't it?

JUST ABOUT EVERYONE IS GETTING ON TV THESE DAYS

Here is the proof.

IT'S NOT ENOUGH THAT GEORGE GALLOWAY IS A CROOK . . .

And it's not even enough that he is a shameless grandstander. He's also about to have a dead girl on his hands:

The father of Mariam Hamza, the 11-year-old Iraqi leukaemia victim championed by George Galloway, said yesterday that he was worried his daughter's life was in danger because funds promised by the Scottish MP's Mariam Appeal had failed to arrive.

Hamza Abd Mittab said that the monthly allowance of £65 that the family of seven has received for three years from the appeal, to pay for Mariam's food and travel expenses, had last been paid in January. Speaking at the family home in Baghdad yesterday, he said: "Mariam's drugs are almost finished now and my daughter will die if she doesn't receive assistance."

The family has been told that Mariam, 11, who contracted acute lymphocytic leukaemia in 1997, must be treated regularly until she is 18. She is due to travel to Jordan for chemotherapy treatment in June, but Mr Hamza says he cannot afford to make the journey.

Mariam recently suffered a 15-minute shaking fit, which has happened once previously when Mr Hamza was two days late for a hospital appointment in Jordan.

The family has also been threatened with eviction from its house, whose annual rent of £800 has always been paid by the appeal. They are already 25 days in arrears after the lease expired on April 1 and the property's owner has demanded that they continue the previous arrangement of paying a year in advance. Money for the rent has not been received from the Mariam Appeal.

Surrounded by Mariam, his wife Karima Kamal and their four other children, Mr Hamza continued: "I am afraid because people say to me George Galloway is with Saddam Hussein so he can't come here and he won't help us any more."

He said the landlord told him: "Your uncle Galloway is finished now, so no one will pay, you must go."

I wouldn't mind so much if Galloway's lack of credibility ruined him and him alone. I could care less about what happens to him. But when that lack of credibility costs the lives of innocents, I don't think that any decent person can help but be enraged.

A MOST HOLLOW HOLIDAY CELEBRATION

How desperate does one have to be for a party in order to celebrate this?

PAUL KRUGMAN IS YOUR BETTER! YOUR BETTER!

In yet another astonishing display of condescension, Paul Krugman berates the American people for not thinking more like he does:

If American families knew what was good for them, then most of them — all but a small, affluent minority — would cheerfully give up their tax cuts in return for a guarantee that health care would be there when needed. And even the affluent might prefer to live in a society where no sick child was left behind.

First of all, it remains an open question why Krugman believes that American families can have either tax cuts or a "health care guarantee." It's funny to see President Bush's opponents accuse him of "either or" rhetoric, and then engage in that kind of rhetoric themselves.

Secondly, it remains an open question why Krugman should be trusted to tell people "what was good for them." Isn't this the reason we have elections? Look, if you didn't like the outcome of the 2000 election, and you're the kind of person who babbles endlessly about President Bush being "selected, not elected," I guess you are going to continue that line until at least the next Presidential election, But didn't the 2002 midterms prove that Bush's message has staying power? And at some point, shouldn't that message be honored, or at least given a chance, due to the fact that the electorate endorsed that message?

IN A SHOCKING DEVELOPMENT . . .

We have yet more evidence that the Iraqi regime lied about the conduct of the war, and specific events that occurred during the war.

I know this stuns and disillusions many of you.

HE CANNOT BE SERIOUS

OJ Simpson wants to be a commentator for the upcoming murder trial of Robert Blake. The thought that Simpson could once again dominate the news and media is frankly too terrifying to contemplate.

*SHAKES HEAD IN DISBELIEF*

There is a sucker born every minute. Joe Katzman discusses the latest sucker, and his ridiculous theory.

THE CHIRAC FAMILY MUST BE SO PROUD

Tim Blair has the scoop on how Mme. Chirac is bringing honor and glory to the clan.

Comment dit-on "kleptomaniac"?

BEING POLITICAL MEANS NEVER HAVING TO SAY YOU ARE SORRY

Unlike Mathews, a whole host of pundits who completely botched their predictions regarding the war in Iraq, have yet to own up to their monumental errors of judgment and prognostication. Jonathan Last has compiled a list of the more egregiously wrong commentaries. We'll see if any of the people who issued those opinions will have Mathews' courage and admit error.

WHEN WILL HE EVER LEARN?

Bill Clinton offered egregiously self-aggrandizing rhetoric recently in commenting on Iraq and terrorism. I see therefore that his effort to rewrite history continues unabated. Nice to know that some things just don't change.

Then again, maybe not.

TSK, TSK

If this report is true, I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest. After all, I always thought that there was something rotten about George Galloway.

NO CIVIL WAR OVER THIS ONE

I say let 'em go! Especially if the majority of Bay Area people are as monumentally stupid as the writer of this article.

THIS MAY ALL BE A BID TO FURTHER IMPRESS HIS GIRLFRIEND . . .

But Scott Ganz's righteous and well-placed fury still deserves your time, attention, and even applause. Go over and read now.

UTTERLY POOR TASTE

Of all the things to be outraged about regarding the calamitous Laci Peterson case, NOW picks the murder charge regarding the death of the Peterson baby to complain about:

e head of the National Organization for Women's Morris County chapter is opposing a double-murder charge in the Laci Peterson case, saying it could provide ammunition to the pro-life lobby.

"If this is murder, well, then any time a late-term fetus is aborted, they could call it murder," Morris County NOW President Mavra Stark said on Saturday.

[. . .]

Marie Tasy, public and legislative affairs director for New Jersey Right To Life, countered that a double-murder charge against Scott Peterson is appropriate. She assailed pro-choice activists for opposing fetal homicide statutes.

"Obviously he was wanted by the mother," Tasy said.

"Clearly groups like NOW are doing a great injustice to women by opposing these laws. It just shows you how extreme, and to what lengths, these groups will go to protect the right to abortion."

Indeed. Injecting abortion politics in this debate is appalling in the extreme. Are people just supposed to ignore the death of the baby? Even if one is pro-abortion rights, is it really right to lose perspective on this case and treat it like fodder for a political campaign instead of treating it like the despicable murder case that it is?

Like I said: appalling. No wonder NOW finds itself more and more on the fringes of the debate.

I CALL B.S.

Or at least Penn & Teller did this evening, with a hilarious show that pointed out the massive amounts of B.S. inherent in environmental activism. I haven't watched much of P&T;'s show, but if this particular segment was representative of the others that they do, I will be sure to watch more.

The show was terrific and timely. P&T; revealed the incredible degree of cluelessness that is evinced by advocates of the modern environmental/anti-globalization movement. They laid out in erudite fashion the degree to which globalization and capitalism actually help the environment, how the anti-globalization movement makes use of the instruments of globalization in arguing against globalization (via the use of cellphones, the Internet and other facets of globalization), how even spokespeople who were handpicked to represent the environmental movement in the making of this particular TV segment couldn't answer basic questions about global warming, species depletion, deforestation, and other supposed environmental phenomena. The spokeswoman who was selected to represent Global Justice (Kate Loewe), couldn't even explain coherently why people should care about the environment. If ever there was a softball question, it would be that one, and even that question was utterly mishandled. Basically, she couldn't come up with a rationale for feeling as passionately about her cause as she does. And remember, she is a designated spokesperson. If even the designated spokesperson of the environmental movement cannot speak intelligently about her cause, one cannot help but wonder at the lack of erudition that would be displayed by the masses. If you can see a replay of the show, do so. Watch and witness the incoherence. And remember that these are the same people who laugh at George W. Bush for mangling the English language and not being eloquent. If ever there was a case of the pot calling the kettle black, this would be it.

Bjorn Lomborg makes an appearance in the show, as does Patrick Moore--the founder and former President of GreenPeace, and a man thoroughly disillusioned with the environmental movement. He argues quite effectively that envirospeak is camouflage language that is used to enact an anti-capitalist agenda. As P&T; point out, if you want to oppose capitalism, that is your intellectual privilege to do so (though I can't possibly understand why anyone would want to oppose capitalism--but hey, that's just me). But to argue the anti-capitalist case by using rhetoric regarding the environment as camouflage is intellectually disingenuous. And it is precisely that kind of dishonesty that has thrown the environmental/anti-globalization movement into such disrepute.

The funniest part of the show was P&T;'s decision to send one of the members of their crew to mingle with activists at an environmental rally at the Washington Monument, which P&T; covered. This crew member went around with a petition urging people to support a ban on "dihydrogen monoxide." It was pointed out that dihydrogen monoxide is present in nuclear power plants, that it is used to wash fruits, that it is an ingredient in baby food, and that consumption of dihydrogen monoxide is directly linked to increased sweating, vomiting and urination. Scores of people signed the petition--with many refusing to even ask what it was about.

Dihydrogen monoxide, of course, is water. People signed a petition to ban water. Lots of them.

And these same people are vying to exercise influence over environmental policy. If that doesn't scare you, nothing will. Kudos to Penn & Teller for exposing the modern day environmental/anti-globalization movement for the fraud that it clearly and increasingly is.

THEY KNOW NOT WHAT TO DO

Making clear its determination to remain unaffected by events, A.N.S.W.E.R. has turned to the tactics of permanent protest, as this article makes clear. I love watching people who were immensely wrong on an issue of public importance continue to try to insist that they had a point. It's just too funny for words.

THIS IS PARODY, RIGHT?

The President of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has some strange thoughts on what she wants done with her body after death:

Leaving a donation to the nearest animal sanctuary is what many pet lovers do when they die. But Ingrid Newkirk has taken her animal-loving beliefs just a little bit further.

Ms Newkirk, founder and president of the radical group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta), has decreed in her will that a portion of her body (she doesn't specify which) should be barbecued as a protest against "fleshfoods". She also wants her feet to be turned into ornaments to remind the world of the "depravity" of using animals in a such a fashion.

And that's not all. Ms Newkirk has also laid down that part of her skin be turned into a leather product to show that human skin and animal skin are the same thing and that neither is a "fabric". Ms Newkirk's will also holds bequests to two people. One is the administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, who can expected to receive both her eyes, appropriately mounted, as a message that Peta will continue to watch the agency until it stops using animals in experiments.

The second beneficiary is Kenneth Feld, owner of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. He can expect to receive her pointing finger to stand as "the greatest accusation on Earth" on behalf of animals used for public entertainment.

The funny thing is that PETA actually thinks these kinds of ridiculous tactics will win it support. It is clear that the organization confuses media attention with sympathy for its position, when in fact, most people pay attention to PETA's ramblings for the same reason that they rubberneck on the freeway when encountering an accident: The scene is so horrid that they just can't look away.

HYPOCRISY ABOUNDS . . .

As Dr. Weevil properly notes.

THEY DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO ANYTHING ELSE

This has to have been the most useless activity of the day.

ABUSING THE LANGUAGE, HISTORY, AND COMMON SENSE

I was going to write a post criticizing Eric Alterman for concentrating on "close encounters" with Lou Reed instead of focusing on the liberation of Baghdad and all of the attendant and unforgettable scenes that accompanied the liberation. But Andrew Sullivan beat me to it, and Alterman later explained that he had a rather busy day that day, couldn't make time to write anything original, had a sick kid, was pursuing a mortgage, and was tied up with a bunch of other things.

"Well, fine," I figured. The man has a social and personal life, and he had to attend to it. No harm, no foul.

I was also going to write a post criticizing Alterman for not saying a word about the death of Michael Kelly--whom Alterman savaged many a time in his blog, and in his book. Here too, Alterman preempted me, responding that he didn't know either Kelly, or the late David Bloom personally enough to write anything, and that there was no reason for him to spend space discussing "personal and political differences" with Kelly on the occasion of his death. I find this statement to be a bit peculiar--how could Alterman have "personal" differences with someone who he claims he "didn’t know [Kelly] any better than [he] knew any of the people who have died in Iraq." Additionally, would it have killed Alterman to write something along the lines of "I'm terribly sorry to have heard about the tragic death of Michael Kelly. I had many differences with his writing and his politics, and I have outlined those differences in my blog and my book. But I admire the fact that he went to Iraq to report on the war, and whatever our differences, he was a journalist and writer to contend with and take seriously. My sincere condolences to his family"?

I suppose, however, that this might be nit-picking. And in Alterman's defense, as he himself mentioned, he wrote nothing about David Bloom, with whom Alterman appeared to have no political or personal gripes. So perhaps he was being evenhanded after all. I thought for a moment that this was a special and unique time in Blogdom. I agreed with Eric Alterman for the most part on an issue of at least some substance. Surely, cats and dogs were preparing to live together, the lion was going to lay down with the lamb, and the lamb might even get some sleep--the common wisecrack to the contrary notwithstanding.

Then I read the following statement by Alterman, relating to Sullivan's critique which I mentioned above:

As implied above, I didn’t write about anything yesterday. And part of the reason I thought (and think) this war was a mistake was because there are a lot more important problems for the United States than Iraq, and these are being obscured by the media’s single-minded focus. So I might have chosen to write about something else anyway — and I make no apologies. But there is something disturbingly Stalinist about one Weblogger instructing another Weblogger in public about what is proper — and improper — as a topic of the day. And I think everyone’s lives would be improved if people minded their own business. It’s one thing to criticize something a person has said or done. It’s quite another to attack them for what they haven’t.

(Emphasis mine.) So much for lions and lambs laying down together.

If you know anything about Eric Alterman, you know that he loves his adjectives. People whose arguments he hates and despises--people like Sullivan and Kelly--were/are relentlessly and unapologetically called "McCarthyites" by Alterman. They--and other conservatives--are also commonly referred to as "evil." And then there is the "Stalinist" tag, which came into play rather famously when Alterman fatuously declared that American talk radio had less diversity than Stalin's Soviet Union (a claim mocked here and here). I'm just waiting for the day when Alterman completely and totally blows a gasket and calls someone an "evil, Stalinist McCarthyite"--in which case, the appellation will be nothing short of laughable since Alterman will accuse said poor sap of being an acolyte of both (a) a communist dictator, and (b) a man who is infamous for his overzealous pursuit and condemnation of people he accused of being communists. That, along with the fact that the adjective "evil" would be redundant in describing a true Stalinist and McCarthyite, would complete the trifecta of incoherence I am eagerly anticipating from Alterman.

Until that time, however, let's just take a look at Alterman's statement once more: But there is something disturbingly Stalinist about one Weblogger instructing another Weblogger in public about what is proper — and improper — as a topic of the day.

Well . . . um . . . no there isn't.

Alterman's MSNBC blog has a feature that allows one to send e-mails to him. Presumably, those e-mails are valued as feedback that is sent in response to Alterman's writings on the blog. Furthermore, it would stand to reason that not all of the feedback would be complimentary (although you wouldn't know it from the e-mails that Alterman decides to post--the overwhelming majority of which are decidedly complimentary). And it should surprise no one who is even remotely familiar with the workings of the Blogosphere that some of those e-mails might take Alterman to task for not writing something about a subject that the author of the e-mail feels should be addressed.

Furthermore--and this addresses Alterman's complaint about Sullivan directly--blogs interact with one another. Writers on one blog directly address the content--or lack thereof--on another blog. In common parlance, I have heard this phenomenon referred to as "maintaining a dialogue." And there is absolutely nothing unusual about the phenomenon being evinced in the Blogosphere. I know that this must come as a shock to Alterman--many basic and elementary aspects of life and living appear to have the nasty habit of taking him utterly and completely by surprise--but the fact that one blogger might take Alterman to task for things he said, or things he didn't say, should surprise precisely no one. It isn't unusual. It isn't a breach of etiquette or protocol. And it most certainly is not "Stalinist."

Lavrenti Beria will not ensure Alterman's exile and years of hard labor in the cold wilds of Siberia merely because Andrew Sullivan felt it necessary to criticize Alterman's lack of coverage of the liberation of Baghdad--Alterman's valid reasons for not being able to do so notwithstanding. Neither the NKVD, not the KGB, nor the GRU will institute any semblance of retaliation if Alterman's readers lambaste him for not paying attention to a particular news story when just about everyone else is doing so. Neither the prison in Lubyanka, nor the one in Lefortovo await. If Beria, the NKVD, the KGB, the GRU, and the most famous prisons in the old Soviet Union--or their American equivalents--were actually preparing a nasty reception for Eric Alterman, that would be Stalinist. Criticism for what is--and is not--on Alterman's blog, is not Stalinist. The suggestion to the contrary, even if done for purely rhetorical effect, is patently absurd, and is sheer demagoguery.

Of course, we see alot of this kind of abuse of the English language when it comes to politics, debate, or human interaction of any kind. The fact that George W. Bush are both employed in positions of high office, and are religious Christians, leads political opponents to decry the supposed existence of a "theocratic state." Given the fact that my family comes from a country that now actually is a theocratic state, and given the vast differences between that country and this one (differences that should be obvious and evident to anyone with even the slightest knowledge of the sociological situation in Iran since 1979), I'm sure that you all will forgive me if I find the claim somewhat laughable. But of course, that doesn't stop the claim from being made, and it doesn't stop the English language from being abused.

Similarly, people who disagree with the Bush Administration have no problem whatsoever calling America (or Amerikka--take your pick) "fascist." Apparently, it is perfectly all right to condemn one's political foes as "fascists" merely if one disagrees with them, and especially if one is on the Left. Again, the fact that little to nothing changed in society with regards to the ability to voice dissent without having the Federales beat down your door, the fact that free elections are still a staple of public life, the fact that people still do dissent against the Administration's actions--without any harm or reprisal to them whatsoever--does nothing whatsoever to silence the claims of "fascism." And yet, even a cursory examination of what fascism really is, and how fascist societies have really conducted themselves, demonstrates that the claim is absurd. You can dissent, you can vote against Republicans who are in power, you can even have a public blog that denounces them and gets you paid by a major media conglomerate--as is the case with Eric Alterman. And this is fascism?

Frankly, I thought fascism was made of harsher stuff. Either that, or the alleged Amerikkkan National Socialists who are supposedly in charge overlooked little ol' Jewish me when they stocked the latest human shipment to Bergen-Belsen. And similarly, I thought that Stalinism was a great deal more dangerous and ominous than a simple criticism posted on Andrew Sullivan's blog, and directed against Eric Alterman.

I know that many a reader is going to complain that I am being overly pedantic in writing such a lengthy response to Alterman's throwaway comment. The problem is that when throwaway comments are made part and parcel of the abuse of language, it signifies all the more the need to combat their spread. It is precisely the time when irresponsible comments fail to raise an eyebrow among the masses that eyebrows most need to be raised.

In La Vita Nuova, Dante Alighieri advises us of the following: Nomina sunt consequentia rerum. "Names are the consequence of things." The principle is a religious one for Dante, and stems from the Book of Genesis, 2:19-20, where God brings "every beast of the field and every fowl of the air" for Adam to name. As applied to our own lives, Dante's aphorism properly instructs us that names, labels and appellations are used not just to categorize the things to which they are attached, or to give us a helpful device with which to identify those things. Rather, they stem from the very nature of those things. They are the direct result of the nature of the things to which they are attached. And that implies the need to ensure that the name of a thing is as accurate as possible, that it describe and label the thing precisely, accurately, and in a pitch-perfect manner that gives a cogent, detailed and yet concise description of the thing named.

Following this principle is a natural and unalterable precondition to showing respect and fidelity to language, to ensuring that language is not corrupted or perverted by the selfish and subjective desire to prevail in an argument, to successfully make a rhetorical point, or to defend oneself against a charge, no matter how serious or spurious. Language and terms are not playthings with which one contends in the course of a debate or argument. Rather, language provides the essential ground rules for the conduct of such a debate or argument in the first place. For those ground rules to work, they must be respected and honored at the outset of the debate, and throughout the time that the debate rages. If one side decides to pervert or subvert language--and with it, history--by abusing a term through its misuse merely to score a rhetorical point, then that party engages in a fundamentally dishonest tactic. And that tactic ought to be condemned, along with the party that engaged in it.

It is one thing for Eric Alterman to respond to Sullivan's criticism by stating that personal matters prevented him from paying much attention to his blog on a day when Sullivan felt he should have paid that attention. It is another thing altogether for Alterman to accuse Sullivan of being "Stalinist" in making his critique. The former is an on-point rebuttal. The latter is mere name-calling and language-perversion that does Alterman no credit whatsoever.

Is "Altercation" Eric Alterman's blog? Yes it is. Does he have the right to post anything on it that he wants? Certainly. And while others may critique Alterman for posting certain things, and not posting others, does Alterman have the right to resist their suggestions? Of course. Are some of those suggestions presumptuous? Sure. Are some of them arrogant? Quite possibly. Are some of them overbearing? You bet. Indeed, can certain bloggers basically tell other bloggers and readers to bugger off with their suggestions on how the blog should be edited? Well . . . yeah. In fact, many times when readers have criticized my blog, I have gently (and not-so-gently) reminded them that the back button is at the top and to their left of their browsers, and that they shouldn't let the pixels hit them in the ass on the way out. Eric Alterman can do precisely that to any of his critics as well.

But can he call them "Stalinists"?

No. He can't. Not unless they are actual Iosef Vissiaronovich Dzhugashvili-Kim Il Sung-Kim Jong Il-Nicolae Ceaucescu-Saddam Hussein-International A.N.S.W.E.R.-Stalinists. After all, if Eric Alterman goes around and accuses people left, right and center of being "Stalinists" merely because they are on the other side of the aisle politically, and/or merely because they engage in activities that inconvenience Alterman personally, one might conclude that Alterman is given to the tactic of labeling people he doesn't like as actual acolytes of a notorious communist dictator.

And that might cause people to accuse Eric Alterman of being a "McCarthyite."

And we wouldn't want that to happen, now would we?

DESPERATELY SEEKING SCANDAL

As is his wont, without sparing too much effort to write a comprehensive analysis backing up his claims, Atrios makes clear his belief that special favors were dispensed by the Bush Administration to Halliburton in a contract for the company to fight oil fires in Iraq. Apparently, according to Atrios, this is a clear conflict of interest (he doesn't say so in as many words, but his implication is clear).

Well, it would be a conflict of interest if there were any members of the Bush Administration with a financial stake in Halliburton getting contracts such as the one described here.

Unfortunately for Atrios, the story he cites mentions not a single Bush Administration official who has such a financial stake. The best conspirators like Atrios can do is point to Vice President Cheney's previous involvement with the company, and claim that such involvement constitutes a conflict of interest. But that isn't true if there are no current holdings. Dick Cheney sold all of his holdings in Halliburton during the 2000 Presidential campaign. His last payment from Halliburton was a retirement package. But again, that doesn't constitute a current holding in the company. Unless Cheney gets back with the company sometime soon, he will not see a dime of the money awarded to the company under the contract.

Additionally, what is Halliburton supposed to do? Not compete for government contracts during the lifetime of the Bush Administration? Go into bankruptcy just to prove to every single person on the planet that it is receiving no benefits that could even remotely be considered improper? The concept and the argument are absurd, and yet that appears to be precisely what people like Atrios advocate. Anytime that Halliburton wins a government contract of any kind, no matter what the circumstances, a conflict of interest will somehow be alleged despite the fact that (a) there are no Bush Administration officials who have current holdings in Halliburton that will benefit financially from the awarding of the contract, and (b) merely because one member of the Administration--even someone as high up as the Vice President of the United States--once was employed by the company and had holdings in it, but no longer does, does not a conflict of interest make. A conflict of interest does not occur when one of the alleged conflicted interests is a past interest. This fact is so simple as to be axiomatic, and yet, somehow, Atrios--being blinded by partisan outrage as he so continually is--misses the axiom.

Finally, as to Atrios's complaint that the contract was awarded "without a bid," my response is to ask whether the government cannot simply approach a company that it believes would be best at doing the job? Is that somehow not allowed? And if the approach to Halliburton without a bid represents some kind of shady deal that amounts to mutual backscratching, again, tell me whose back is being scratched in the Administration? Who has a current interest in Halliburton doing well financially? Anyone? The story Atrios cites (and I cite here) doesn't mention a soul. Without such evidence, the "conflict of interest" and "mutual backscratching" angle pretty much falls apart.

All of this, of course, is rather easy to figure out--unless you are dedicated to seeing political opponents in the worst possible light, regardless of the facts. Then again, demagogues and snake-oil salesmen like Atrios are always willing to do exactly that for their shilling and unthinking fans. It may make a blogger popular to take such an unthinking hard line and to spin every single story in the most partisan manner possible, but it doesn't make the blogger right when it comes to the facts. That deserves to be pointed out over and over when confronting people like Atrios on their misleading and irresponsible posts.

YOU JUST KNEW THAT THIS WAS GOING TO HAPPEN

Sony wants you to be "shocked and awed":

Japanese electronics giant Sony has taken an extraordinary step to cash in on the war in Iraq by patenting the term "Shock and Awe" for a computer game.

It is among a swarm of companies scrambling to commercially exploit the war in Iraq, which has killed more than 5,000 soldiers and civilians in the space of three weeks.

MediaGuardian.co.uk has learned that Sony wants to launch a computer game called "Shock and Awe", having filed an application to register the defining phrase of the coalition's military campaign as a trademark in the US.

It applied to register the term as a trademark with the US Patent and Trademark Office on March 21 - just one day after war started. It wants to use it for computer and video games, as well as a broadband game played both locally and globally via the internet among PlayStation users.

What's more: Someone actually owns the website www.shockandawe.com. They have since late January. Unbelievable.

ALSO VINDICATING PHILIPPE DE CROY . . .

Enter Nancy Pelosi.

Basically, the same critiques apply, except for the fact that unlike Harkin, Pelosi actually voted against the use of force resolution in Congress, and stands by the vote.

Just as comparison, bear in mind that even Neville Chamberlain changed his appeasing tune regarding Hitler when Poland was invaded. Apparently, Pelosi may be even more clueless.

PHILIPPE DE CROY IS VINDICATED

Yesterday, I linked to Philippe's post where he laid out the playbook for how to explain away one's antiwar stance in light of the spectacular success of the war. Philippe said the following in his post:

Make clear that it was obvious all along what the military outcome would be, and that skepticism about it formed no part of your opposition to the war. Give the aural equivalent of a shrug and make references to the world's largest military machine, etc.

As if on cue, enter Senator Tom Harkin:

The relatively quick fall of Baghdad shows that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was a "paper tiger" rather than a major threat to world peace, Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa said Thursday.

"What we were told and what you saw in the press last fall and earlier this year is that he had a massive war machine," said Harkin, the most outspoken critic of the war in Iraq among members of the Iowa congressional delegation.

"It looks now like this was just a Third World country - there were people fighting with tennis shoes on, on the Iraqi side," Harkin told reporters. "I don't know what else we're going to find, but they didn't fly even one airplane in the air. They had almost nothing.

"So if they were that weak, where we could just roll over them like that, tell me again how he was such a big threat in the past?" the senator added.

This is a masterpiece of deception. First of all, no one on the pro-war side argued that Iraq posed a conventional military threat. The emphasis on the pro-war side was that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and a history of supporting terrorism. Harkin clearly sets up a straw man argument to demolish. It is disingenuous in the extreme. Moreover, does Harkin somehow think that the Iraqis should have put up more of a conventional fight in order for the pro-war side to be vindicated, and for the war to be deemed just? Who does he think he is--Brendan O'Neill?

Recall also that De Croy said the following in his post:

Talk a lot about things that "aren't clear" or that "remain to be seen." These sorts of assertions are good because they are hard to falsify. E.g.: "it's not clear how much of the excitement the Iraqis are showing is because Saddam is gone and how much of it is because of all the looting they are able to do." Or: "it remains to be seen whether the factions in the country can be governed in anything like the way the administration is imagining."

Be forward-looking. Or past-looking. The point is to de-emphasize the present. Dwell on what hasn't been done, not what has been done. The sudden liberation of millions of people from tyranny is not, repeat not, the most important thing. Say that what counts is what comes next, that all this will only be meaningful if it ends up leading to true democracy and prosperity for Iraq. (Set the bar as high as you plausibly can.) Say that the real work lies ahead; say that the real test will be whether we can keep the country under control. Again, set the bar high so that if there is disorder six weeks from now -- fighting between factions, etc. -- you will be able to announce that the celebrations of early April were premature.

Remember: you haven't been proven wrong about anything, and the neocons haven't been proven right about anything.

And once again, we see Harkin take the bait:

Harkin said some war-related debates and questions will continue. It will never be known whether there could have been a nonmilitary resolution to the standoff over weapons of mass destruction, and large debts will start coming due to pay for the war, beginning with the $75 billion supplemental spending bill under debate now, he said.

But the war will not dominate the presidential campaign, he said. "I think the big issue is going to be what's happening to people's daily lives - health care, lack of health-care coverage, the deficit, job creation, Social Security, prescription drug benefits," he said.

Predictable, isn't it? First the antiwar side claimed that it was right, and now it claims that being wrong is unimportant.* Neat rhetorical trick, eh?

*Yes, I know that Harkin voted for the resolution authorizing the use of force. But according to the article, he also "became increasingly critical of the move toward war, saying President Bush was not consulting enough with Congress or extending diplomatic efforts." If this isn't a switch in position, I really don't know what is. In any event, I hardly think that Tom Harkin was among those in Congress who was at the Administration's right hand as this war was being prosecuted.

UTTERLY ABOMINABLE

Christopher Johnson has the latest on British MP, Saddam lackey, and virulent anti-American George Galloway's decline into the realm of shame and embarrassment.

MORAN, MORON, WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?

The Virginia Representative must like the taste of his feet--he puts both feet in his mouth on a constant basis. He did so again recently:

A Jewish civil rights organization and some Alexandria Democrats have criticized Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) for suggesting at a recent party meeting that a major American pro-Israel lobbying group will raise $2 million and "take over" efforts to unseat him next year.

In comments likely to prolong controversy over Moran's views toward Israel and U.S. Jewish groups and constituents, the seven-term incumbent said the American Israel Public Action Committee (AIPAC) has begun organizing against him and will "direct a campaign against me and take over the campaign of a Democratic opponent," according to notes taken by a person in attendance and corroborated by three others.

AIPAC spokeswoman Rebecca Dinar called Moran's comments "ridiculous" and said the organization "had no idea" what the congressman was talking about. AIPAC, an influential and prominent Washington-based lobby, is not a political action committee, by law cannot raise money for candidates and by policy does not endorse candidates, Dinar said.

David Friedman, D.C. regional director for the Anti-Defamation League, said Moran's remarks were divisive and intended to isolate and exaggerate the role of his Jewish critics: "This only confirms what we already knew: that Jim Moran is a bigoted man who perpetuates age-old canards and stereotypes about Jews."

Okay, the resignation calls should come fast and furious now from the Democratic leadership. If they have any concern over their own public image, that is.

(Link via OxBlog.)

MEMO TO JOSH CHAFETZ:

Victor Davis Hanson is crowding your niche:

On a minor note, I was pleased to read that Maureen Dowd yesterday criticized things that I (a.k.a. "Mr. Davis") had written as consistent with the thinking of some in the administration. I confess that her writing has long bothered me, always in times of national distress reflecting an elite superficiality that is out of touch with most of us in the America she flies over. It is not just that for the last two years she has been wrong about Afghanistan, wrong about the efficacy of the war against terror, and wrong about Iraq — despite yesterday's surprising sudden admission that "We were always going to win the war with Iraq." The problem is more a grotesque chicness that quite amorally juxtaposes mention of tidbits like alpha males, Manhattan fashion — and her own psychodramas — with themes of real tragedies like the dying in the Middle East and war's horror.

So she just doesn't get it. It is precisely because Mr. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz hate war, wish to avoid a repeat of the vaporization of 3,000 in Manhattan and the specter of further mass killing from terrorists, armed with frightening weapons from rogue states like Iraq, that they resorted to force. She evokes Sherman (who called something like 19th century Dowdism "bottled piety") with disdain, but forgets that Sherman, who saw firsthand the grotesqueness of Shiloh, proclaimed that war was all hell — but only after his trek through Georgia where he freed 40,000 slaves and destroyed the icons of the Confederacy, while losing 100 soldiers and killing not more than 600 young non-slave-holding Southerners, an hour's carnage at Antietam or Gettysburg.

It might be neat between cappuccinos to write about leaders getting "giddy" about winning a terrible war, or thinking up cool nicknames like "Rummy," "Wolfie," and titles like "Dances with Wolfowitz," but meanwhile out in the desert stink thousands of young Americans, a world away from the cynical Letterman world of Maureen Dowd, risk their lives to ensure that there are no more craters in her environs — and as a dividend give 26 million a shot at the freedom that she so breezily enjoys.

The editorial board of the New York Times has got to be the most overrated around. It astonishes me that they are able to get away with putting out the same basic cookie-cutter pablum for a particular issue--wrapped up in slightly differently packaging each time to give the writing a veneer of originality. It is stunning that more people have not caught on to this cheap rhetoric. One could be forgiven for thinking that Times editorials are written with codewords designed to lull the reader into a hypnotic trance--one which causes the reader to forget any instances in which he/she encountered good writing that would put Times editorials to shame.

Remind me again why Maureen Dowd has a job?

DOES THIS CONSTITUTE FRENCH PERFIDY?

If this is confirmed, I will find it especially pathetic:

The intelligence officials offered a tantalizing coda for conspiracy-mongers. They said the "crude forgery" received by U.N. weapons inspectors suggesting the Iraqis were trying to buy uranium from Niger as part of their nuclear program was originally put in intelligence channels by France. The officials wouldn't speculate on French motives.

Again, I don't know if this claim is true. But if it is, what kind of Rube Goldberg nonsense are the French indulging in, anyway?

STILL WONDERING ABOUT THE WHEREABOUTS OF THE IRAQI INFORMATION MINISTER?

Well, wonder no more. I know to a certainty that Mohammad Said al Sahaf is alive and well. I don't know about his actual physical location, but as I say, I have incontrovertible proof that he has not yet shuffled off his mortal coil.

Al Sahaf has assumed the identity of a liberal, New York-based, Jewish political pundit (pretending to be Jewish must have been a bitter pill for so zealous an anti-Semite and anti-Zionist to swallow), and is still claiming that war against Iraq is "a terrible mistake." He also claims that there is a "lack of any clear Iraqi tie to anti-American terrorism, any clear evidence of weapons of mass destruction, any credible nuclear threat," a claim that is looking increasingly ridiculous. With regard to his prior pronouncements, al Sahaf claims that the coalition's military victory "changes nothing" about what he originally thought of this "unjust" war. And finally, he claims that America is "courting a potential humanitarian catastrophe in Basra," ignoring, of course, the 35 years of humanitarian disasters that have ravaged the whole of Iraq under the rule of the Ba'ath Party, and especially under the tyranny of Saddam Hussein.

I mean, all of this must have been written by the man who was designated as the official, reality-denying, credibility-lacking mouthpiece for Saddam Hussein. Who else would actually think this desperate attempt to deny credit to the successful prosecution of the war against the Iraqi regime has any relation to reality?

POLITICAL MONOPOLIES ON COMPASSION

Arthur Silber's post on the compassion of the Left is an interesting read. Be sure to go over and take a look.

And as I've already said, I'm interested as well in whether the Left--much of which opposed this war--will now react with chagrin at its position.

A SERVING OF CROW ALL AROUND

John Hawkins has his own candidates for Von Hoffman awards. Andrew Sullivan should take note.

BUSH IS HITLER!

At least, that may be the message of an upcoming CBS miniseries.

If so, I would be shocked, but not surprised. Modern media's sins against the truth and addiction to hyperbole have become a veritable given.

COMFORTABLE DELUSIONS

Steven Den Beste points out that since the war has gone so well, antiwar activists are seeing all of their arguments and the entire intellectual foundation for their protests fall by the wayside:

It's got to be damned tough right now being a leftist antiwar columnist. Everything went wrong – which is to say, nothing went wrong. There doesn't seem to have been any mass slaughter of civilians. The Americans stupidly refused to carpet-bomb Baghdad. The war went rapidly, and coalition casualties are extremely light. The bombs which have been dropped have stubbornly insisted on actually hitting what they were aimed at; none of them seems to have gone off course and hit an orphanage or an old people's home. Some days it just seems as if there's hardly any point in getting out of bed.

And what is now coming out about life in Iraq, and the way that the Iraqis are beginning to greet the invading army, is beginning to make it look as if they're actually the good guys; it's beginning to look a whole lot like liberation rather than brutal conquest. Facing all of that, it's got to be damned tough trying to find some way of proving that you were right all along and that the war really, truly, was wrong – and still is.

Of course, some of them are still trying, and as Steven points out, their efforts are less than impressive when placed under close examination. I just wonder why I haven't heard one antiwar individual come out and say three simple words:

"I was wrong."

Is it really so hard to admit that you might have misjudged the situation if you are an antiwar activist/blogger/individual? Since the decision was made to go to war despite your objections, wasn't this entire enterprise something you wanted to be wrong about when it was clear that it would take place? Aren't you glad Saddam is gone? Aren't you glad the Iraqi people are welcoming us? Aren't you glad that American and coalition casualties are blessedly light?

Or do you still root for a disaster to validate your original antiwar stance?

And if you do, then what on earth is wrong with your sense of priorities?

Just wondering.

ON THE HORNS OF A DILEMMA

Should I point my readers to the post where Asparagirl makes fun of Janeane Garofalo?

Or should I point them to the post where Asparagirl makes fun of Eric Alterman?

Decisions, decisions . . .

STILL A FOOL

In a column that should surprise no one, Robert Fisk demonstrates that he still doesn't get it.

I would go through and Fisk this, but what's the point? TV images do more to reveal Fisk for the clueless know-nothing that he is than anything I could write.

MORE HISTORICAL CONTEXT

This should help further in understanding the ravings of the Iraqi Information Minister.

THE PERFECT METAPHOR . . .

For the years of Clintonian Corruption:

Three Connecticut teens "beat and kicked a mentally retarded man to death" yesterday.

UPDATE: Here's the story from the Hartford Courant.

The description of the three teens makes them sound like mini versions of Clinton, Hillary and Gore.*

*If you think that the above analogy and commentary makes absolutely no sense whatsoever . . . well . . . you're right. But it's no different than this astonishingly stupid piece of drivel. At least I can claim the excuse of being facetious and intentionally writing a parody.

NITPICKING

Is this really necessary? And can the state in which I reside become any more insane than it already is?

GLAD TO SEE THE WAR IS GOOD FOR SOMETHING

David Carr reveals why European leaders suddenly love the war--and the Bush Administration.

ANDREW SULLIVAN IS RIGHT

The BBC is appalling beyond measure.

I just watched a taped broadcast of the BBC on C-Span which stunned me with its mendacity. The gist of the report was to argue that the war in Iraq was being waged because George W. Bush is an "evangelical Christian" who believes in the Book of Revelation and wants to bring about the End Times. Indeed, the voice-over reporter actually said that "this may be the war that George W. Bush has been praying for," even though the report gave absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Bush had been praying for any such thing.

The report relied heavily on the millennial writings of Tim LaHaye in his "Left Behind" series of books on the Armageddon. Because the series features an AntiChrist figure who apparently possesses nuclear weapons, the reporter indicates that this convergence with the possession of weapons of mass destruction by Saddam Hussein is somehow a delightful coincidence for the President and his Administration. Never mind the fact that the story makes no effort to make any kind of connection whatsoever between LaHaye and the President. It doesn't tell us whether they have ever talked, whether they have ever consulted one another, or whether Bush even reads LaHaye's books. Probably because it cannot. But the report somehow argues nonetheless that LaHaye is some kind of spokesman for the Administration, and sets him up as the straw man representation of the Administration to conveniently knock down.

"Root causes," of course, do not get the sneering treatment that the Bush Administration's supposed Armageddon-fetish gets. A preacher is interviewed and sympathetically portrayed as bemoaning the fact that America--thanks to the Bush Administration's designation of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden as "evil"--has somehow lost the chance to look in "the darker parts of our soul" to see how we might be responsible for the attacks that occurred on September 11th. While the Bush Administration certainly has a worldview that is more Manichaean than its predecessor (and perhaps more Manichaean than any Administration in recent times other than that of President Reagan's), there are clear national security objectives to the conduct of Operation Iraqi Freedom. However, none of these objectives even receive the slightest mention. Instead, the entire conflict is portrayed in Biblical and apocalyptic tones--with the added dimension that the President and his allies are explicitly made to look as if they are cheering Armageddon on in order to establish the Kingdom of God on Earth. The intellectual disingenuousness of the entire argument was disgusting and insulting to the intelligence of any fair-minded person.

Indeed, so over-the-top was the rhetoric, that in the question and answer session that followed, Christopher Hitchens--who describes himself as not only an atheist, but as an antitheist--felt compelled to point out that Saddam Hussein really was evil. That Osama bin Laden really was evil. That they did terrible things that could only be described by that four letter word (a word, Hitchens noted, that even Robert Fisk felt compelled to use in describing Saddam's actions in Kuwait at the end of the first Persian Gulf War). Hitches further pointed out that President Bush is not the first President (and won't be the last) to call upon God's blessing in fighting a pernicious enemy, and that the vast majority of people in America were willing to take some kind of moral stance against terrorism, and those who sponsor terrorism.

Additionally, another guest who is a member of the clergy, and who actually knows President Bush had to step in and remind the anchorman that the President is not a millennialist Christian who actively works to bring about the End Times, that the policy initiatives that are infused by the greatest amount of religious tone in the President's speeches and comments are his faith-based initiatives (whatever you think of them, faith-based initiatives are not the stuff of which Armageddon is made), and that non-evangelical Christians support the war as well (most notably 62% of Catholics in a recent poll--this despite the opposition of the Vatican to the war). All of this information should have been included in the lead-in report to make it balanced and unbiased. That it was not speaks to the incredible perversion of truth that appears to be the official policy of the BBC.

If Operation Iraqi Freedom is really the terrible policy that the BBC thinks it is, the network should have no problem whatsoever in presenting an unbiased accounting of the war, and should be confident in its belief that the facts will speak for themselves, and that they will speak ill of this war. Apparently, the BBC lacks that confidence--thus leading it to put up journalistic abominations such as the one I witnessed tonight. I could not imagine a more unfair and distorted reporting of the news, and the scary thing is that the BBC may take that statement as a dare to top its latest inanity with something even more divorced from reality.

HE CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH

British MP George Galloway, who has in the past shown a fawning admiration for Saddam Hussein and his regime, apparently cannot find the time to meet with one of the victims of the regime, and hear about the horror that is Ba'athist Iraq:

For someone who happily consorts with a brutal dictator who has murdered people for just smiling at the wrong time, George Galloway was curiously frightened by a demure Iraqi Kurdish woman last week.

"I am very suspicious of you," George Galloway hissed down the phone to Freshta Raper, a 37-year-old exile and mother of one. "I have a gut feeling about you. What do you want to ask me?"

Mrs Raper had spent much of the week trying to catch up with the Left-wing Labour MP to discuss his anti-war pro-Saddam stance. The last 48 hours had, in particular, been frustrating as the MP assiduously avoided her efforts to speak to him.

Her strong view - like those of many Iraqi Kurds - is that the war is necessary as the only way to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein, the tyrant responsible for killing 21 members of her family in 1988 when the regime sprayed chemical weapons on Halabja, the Kurdish area in northern Iraq, killing 5,000.

Mrs Raper finally escaped Iraq in 1991 but only after suffering imprisonment, torture and rape. She has been burnt by one of Saddam's chemical bombs, and she has been anxious to tell Mr Galloway about her experiences with the dictator, whom the MP has visited eight times, once telling him: "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability."

[. . .]

[Raper] turned her sights on Mr Galloway last week when the MP called on British troops not to fight and urged Arab leaders to "stand by the Iraqi people". He described Tony Blair and George Bush as "wolves" and said: "The soldiers are lions led by donkeys, sent to kill and be killed."

[. . .]

Mr Galloway supports direct action such as marches on Number 10 or the US embassy, although his view is very different when it is his stance that is under scrutiny. "What do you want to talk to me about?" he barked.

"I just want to ask you about Saddam Hussein's human rights record," said Mrs Raper. "As a Western politician, have you ever tried to discuss this in Iraq?"

"I don't have to answer that question," said Mr Galloway defiantly, before adding: "Don't you dare contact me again. If you go to my house again I will have you thrown out and call the police."

Not exactly a profile in courage, is it? It's perfectly clear that when it comes to Iraq, George Galloway sees no evil, hears no evil, and speaks no evil of the current regime. And his insistence on doing so in the face of overwhelming evidence of the regime's horrid nature serves as powerful evidence of his own cluelessness and moral idiocy.

THE INNNUMERATE, ANTIWAR LEFT

Josh Chafetz reveals the staggering degree of inaccuracy inherent in the Iraq Body Count Project, and its counting of civilian deaths in Iraq. This is a must read, especially given the number of credulous and naïve people who blindly accept the IBCP's propaganda as gospel truth. Of course, many of those people are too stubborn to admit the fact that the IBCP's count is so inaccurate, but then, many of them probably also doubt that the sky is blue, that night is dark, and that winter can be quite cold in some parts of the world.

ROCK STARS BEHAVING STUPIDLY

It's good to see that most people will no longer stand for the nonsense that is dished out by celebrities on a regular basis:

Incensed fans walked out of Pearl Jam's concert Tuesday after lead singer Eddie Vedder impaled a mask of President Bush on a microphone stand, then slammed it to the stage.

Most of Vedder's antiwar remarks earlier in the Pepsi Center show were greeted with mixed cheers and scattered boos. But dozens of angry fans walked out during the encore because of the macabre display with the Bush mask, which he wore for the song Bushleaguer, a Bush- taunting song from the band's latest album, Riot Act.

"When he was sharing his political views in a fairly benign manner - supporting our troops, opposing policy - that's OK," said Keith Zimmerman, of Denver.

"When he takes what looks like the head of George Bush on a stick, then throws it to the stage and stomps on it, that's just unacceptable. I love Pearl Jam, but that was just way over the edge. We literally got up and left."

Obviously, some diehard and insensate Bush-bashers will love this kind of juvenile behavior, but the vast majority of people, whatever their political leanings, recognize childish temper tantrums when they see them. Maybe Pearl Jam will learn a lesson from all of this.

TAKING OUT THE TRASH

I notice that my comment section (from this post) has been polluted by the asinine and hateful Jak King (no link for him)--who has apparently returned out of blogging retirement to make cowardly and snarky comments on other people's blogs, and then run away when anyone responds.

Just to remind all of you--Jak is the anti-Semite from Vancouver who utterly ignores any and all Palestinian atrocities against Israelis, and engages in a 24/7/365 Sisyphean task to make Israelis look like latter-day Nazis (a case of projection if I ever saw one--as I mentioned in my response, Jak is bucking to be a latter day Joseph Goebbels). Indeed, so intent is Jak on proving that Israelis are vicious and evil, that he even linked to an virulently anti-Semitic site to give us "proof."

Now on Vincent Ferrari's excellent blog, I note that he has posted the following comments about the war:

No, I don't support Saddam in this war. But I do want the Iraqi people to damage the American war machine as much as they can. Perhaps only this will make the Americans stop and think about the war-wracked future they are creating for themselves and the rest of the world.

Yup. You read it right. Jak King wants American soldiers to die. Lots of them.

I usually try to be somewhat restrained when responding to idiots like Jak. But I think that it is well-deserved for me to paraphrase Nicholas DeGenova and wish a million Mogadishus on Jak before I would accept a hair of an American soldier being harmed. Jak King isn't just a fool. He is as evil and bloodthirsty as they come. Stalin and Hitler would indeed be proud of such murderous tendencies. I hope that whatever harm he wishes on American servicemen and women comes back to plague him in the worst possible way, and in manifold and multiple amounts.

Sub-human slime like Jak deserve no better.

SPEAKING OF INTELLECTUAL CHARLATANS . . .

Brendan O'Neill continues his nonstop quest for egregious self-embarrassment by arguing that the present war is "a coward's war . . . a yellow-bellied affair." Apart from the observation that Brendan is, in all likelihood, too cowardly and yellow-bellied himself to make that exact suggestion when/if he ever finds himself face-to-face with a coalition soldier who has risked his/her life in Iraq, or with families of those who have already lost their lives (both of whom would likely spend precisely one-one hundredth of a nanosecond deciding whether to slam their fists in his mouth, before going ahead and doing exactly that), I should point out the obvious fact that this complaint is incandescently stupid.

What exactly is Brendan kvetching about? That the coalition forces are avoiding "overly-risky action"? Would he feel better if coalition forces went into battle with a devil-may-care attitude, and senselessly risked their lives, and the lives of their comrades-in-arms in battle? Remember that General George S. Patton--who knew a little something about the conduct of warfare, and who was many things, but not a coward--once famously said that "The object of war is not to die for your country. It is to make the other poor dumb bastard die for his country." And he was absolutely right. Other than satisfying some outdated romantic notion of giving the enemy a sporting chance by putting oneself in as much danger as one proposes to put the enemy, the nauseating whine that coalition soldiers are trying to minimize the risk to themselves, while at the same time maximizing the risk to the enemy, is one of the most absurd and idiotic commentaries that I have ever come across on any issue in my life. And I choose my words carefully when I say this.

What would an army gain by following O'Neill's utterly ridiculous suggestion? There is no military advantage to it. There is no tactical or strategic upper hand to be gained. There is no honor in exposing your own troops to deaths and injuries that could easily be avoided. Merely because an army wishes to inflict dramatic damage on an enemy force does not mean that it should somehow have to expose itself to suffering similar damage. Indeed--and I know that this must be a revolutionary thought for the likes of Brendan O'Neill--military commanders generally try to save the lives of their own soldiers, even as they try to take the lives of enemy soldiers. And whatever tiny scrap of honor and glory there might be in recklessly courting death and injury in the manner that O'Neill so fatuously urges is completely and dramatically outweighed by the insensate imbecility of such a policy.

As a closing thought on Brendan's nonsensical screed, let me remind you, gentle readers, that Brendan O'Neill has made something of a fetish of taking bloggers to task for supposedly thinking themselves on par with "professional journalists." And yet, Brendan seems to think that as a professional journalist, he is on par with experienced generals and military professionals--in both the planning and execution of a proper military strategy, and in being able to determine what should constitute "military courage." I don't know what words others may choose to explain this incongruity. Personally, I choose to employ the term "hypocritical." It seems to fit in the present case.

A NEW RECRUIT TO THE ANTI-CHOMSKY BRIGADES

Friedrich von Blowhard does the invaluable service of taking on a genuine blowhard in everyone's least favorite MIT linguistics professors--revealing Noam Chomsky to be an intellectual bully, as well as being intellectually shallow in the extreme. The vacuousness and vapidity of Chomsky's arguments, as well as his disingenuous method of argument are on full display in this post. Be sure to take a look.

WHAT IS COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY THINKING?

Fresh from the controversy over Nicholas DeGenova, Columbia invited historian Eric Hobsbawm to deliver a lecture which was to have been delivered yesterday (I don't know if it actually was delivered). Arnold Beichman reveals the kind of person that Hobsbawm is:

What Columbia, my alma mater, isn't telling the alumni is that Mr. Hobsbawm was and still to this day is an unregenerate defender of Josef Stalin, one of the three greatest mass murderers of the 20th century. But Columbia's history department, which no doubt is responsible for the selection of a man who joined and remained a Communist Party member until there was no longer a Soviet Union, is headed by Professor Eric Foner, whose pro-Soviet career was dissected in sobering detail by Professor John P. Diggins in the National Interest magazine last year.

[. . .]

The renowned British historian, Paul Johnson, has in an article in the London Spectator compared Mr. Hobsbawm to David Irving, his equivalent at the other end of the totalitarian spectrum as a historian "who is not without a certain brutal honesty. Just as Irving defends, excuses, exonerates or, when it comes to the pinch, minimizes the guilt of Hitler, so Hobsbawm legitimizes Stalin."

For a very comprehensive treatment of Hobsbawm's utterly astounding and appalling ideology and behavior, you need look no further than this outstanding article.

HE MUST BE COMPETING WITH HIS COLLEAGUE AT COLUMBIA

Apparently, a professor at U. Penn. is the latest to offer a bizarre analysis of the war in Iraq. I imagine that U. Penn. alumni, wherever they might be found, are going to be quite upset when they hear about this.

OPEN MOUTH, INSERT FEET

If there is any justice on this earth, Peter Arnett is on the fast track to destroy his career:

Veteran television correspondent Peter Arnett, who has been covering the war with Iraq for NBC News through an arrangement with National Geographic Explorer, went on Iraq's state television network and praised Iraq's treatment of journalists.

In a transcript of Arnett's comments during the interview, he seemed to praise Iraq's Ministry of Information, saying it has "allowed me and many other reporters to cover 12 whole years since the Gulf War with a degree which we appreciate and that is continuing today."

Yeah, the Iraqi government is just a model of propriety and solicitude, eh Peter? All that ranting and raving about "Zionists" by the Ministry of Information must have just charmed the socks off you, huh?

How much more delusional can people get?

IT AIN'T EXACTLY "PANTS ON FIRE". . .

But it seems close:

MOUNT STERLING, Iowa - Lying could be perceived as more than just a character flaw in this southeast Iowa town. It could become a crime.

Four City Council members have proposed an ordinance against fibbing.

Acting Mayor Jo Hamlet said he's tired of the exaggerating that comes with stories in the town of 40 residents famous for its hunting and fishing.

"We wanted to slow down on this lying," Hamlet said this week. "Plus, I'm bored. ... It's been a long winter."

You know, I used to live in Iowa--though not in Mt. Sterling--when I was rather young. I tried to be a good and dutiful child, but there were times--not often, but times--when . . . um . . . the facts I stated did not directly coincide with the truth. I wonder if I should tell the PejmanParents about this story. And I wonder if they would be chagrined over the fact that no one thought up this idea in the cities that we inhabited in the Hawkeye State, while we lived in those cities.

(Thanks to Arthur Silber for this most amusing link.)

QUOI?

Does anyone think that Madonna makes sense anymore?

THIS HAS GOT TO BE SOME KIND OF JOKE

Behold Michael Moore's explanation for his incoherent Oscar rant this past Sunday: He went to church, and it got him riled up to vocalize his rant.

And that really is it as far as explanations go. We finally have evidence for the argument that religion really is the opiate of the masses.

I'd Fisk the article, but it is essentially a recapitulation of the speech, which others have already made fun of. I think that it is funny that Moore thinks (1) the country is "liberal" (what is he, a mindreader?); that (2) the people who were booing him were actually just booing the people who were booing him (he really says that--see if you can understand the logic); and (3) that no one would speak for the liberal side if Moore didn't (apparently the thinking is that the fatter and more obnoxious you are, the more indispensable you are as well).

When you embarrass yourself, that is bad enough. When you dig the hole deeper, it gets even worse. Moore is probably digging as I write this. I just hope that his girth will fit in the hole that he is digging for himself. Somehow, I think it will--Moore seems determined to descend deeper and deeper into self-parody.

(Thanks to the lovely Emily Jones--who had better not take a break--for sending me this link.)

"WHAT LOGICAL CONSISTENCY AND INTELLECTUAL CONTENT?"

Being offline, I failed to catch Glenn Reynolds's announcement that Eric Alterman would be on C-Span while hawking his book What Liberal Media?. I tuned into the broadcast somewhat belatedly and quite by accident, but always interested in what the other side of the ideological divide has to say, I listened while performing some household chores. I wanted to give Alterman, an individual I generally find to be disingenuous and unpersuasive in the extreme, a chance to impress me.

I am thoroughly unimpressed.

One of the reasons I am turned off by Alterman's arguments is that when you listen to them, you realize that there is so much of the X-Files about them in terms of Alterman's description of the rise of the so-called "conservative media." Alterman argues that much of the so-called conservative media (and conservative think-tanks) arose thanks to the financial contributions of people like Richard Mellon Scaife. Scaife was mentioned by Alterman as the primary progenitor of a conservative media and think-tank establishment. In his talk, Alterman called Scaife "an oddball and a loser" who had one shining insight--that it is better to found the creation of a conservative media and conservative think-tanks than it is to give money to politicians (more on Alterman's generally snide and insufferable tone towards those he dislikes a little later). Apparently, in Alterman's world, thanks to Scaife, an entire conservative media and think-tank establishment arose and took its place in American society.

Indeed, one would have been forgiven for thinking at times that Alterman was literally creating a Book of Genesis that described how the supposed conservative media and think-tank establishment came to be. You can just imagine The Gospel According to Eric: In the Beginning, there was Scaife. And Scaife said "Let there be the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and FoxNews." And yea, verily, there was created the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation and FoxNews, and conservative commentators spread throughout the land. And Scaife saw this and said that it was good. And Scaife told the conservative commentators "Be fruitful and multiply, and impose your dominion over the legal and media establishment." And on, and on, and on.

Alterman's commentary about the supposed insidiousness and diabolical cleverness of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, and its alleged evil genius-like hegemony over the manufacturing of opinion was at times so over-the-top and Oliver Stone-ish in its conspiratorial nature that I found myself laughing out loud while listening. I find it generally and genuinely peculiar that in the ongoing debate over whether there is a conservative or a liberal-dominated media, each side claims that it is getting the short end of the stick as far as representation goes, and that the other side holds the whip in hand when it comes to influencing public opinion. I think that the media generally is liberal, but I also think that the primary media bias that exists is a bias that favors the manufacture of conflict--whether that conflict involves liberals fighting conservatives, or infighting that occurs within the camps of each group.

Now Alterman may hold a different view--it's certainly his right to do so. But to continue to spread the canard that some Vast Right Wing Conspiracy imposed its thoughts S.P.E.C.T.R.E.-like on a compliant world is incredibly simplistic and patently nonsensical. It only serves as a propaganda shibboleth--one that satisfies the dark suspicions and paranoid fantasies of the very choir that Alterman is largely preaching to. Haven't such conspiracy theories bored people yet?

Alterman went on to admit that most reporters are liberal when it comes to social issues. However, he claims that those same reporters are conservative when it comes to economic issues. This, Alterman claims, is because those reporters must satisfy the financial interests of the media conglomerates that they work for. As such, economic news gets a conservative spin, as far as Alterman is concerned.

But there is no logic to this assertion. First of all, the primary financial interest of any media conglomerate is ratings for its news broadcasts. Not tax cuts, not Social Security privatization, not ending the double-taxation on dividends. Ratings. And if ratings demand that a tax cut proposed by the Bush Administration, or the prospect of private Social Security accounts be slammed and criticized, they will be slammed and criticized as surely as night follows day. Alterman failed completely to discuss the fact that the media is all too willing to accept and propagate the liberal meme that Bush tax cuts are somehow illegitimate because they are "directed towards the richest portion of the population" (which should surprise no one, as the richest members of society are the ones that pay the overwhelming share of taxes). He failed completely to discuss the fact that the media is all too willing to accept and propagate the liberal meme that private Social Security investment accounts would somehow cost those dependent on Social Security their life investments (private investment accounts offer a higher rate of return over the long term, and are entirely voluntary--meaning that if for whatever reason, one is happy with the current system, one can remain in that system). This is "conservative bias" on economic issues?

Other Altermanesque assertions fall by the wayside in equally easy fashion. Alterman's assertion that the only two people on ABC News who express their political opinions on television are George Will (a conservative) and John Stossel (a libertarian)--an assertion made both in the book and in Alterman's talk--does precisely nothing whatsoever to demonstrate the absence of a liberal media, or the existence of a conservative one. In making this assertion, Alterman employs the logical fallacies of exclusion and hasty generalization. I can just as easily claim that because liberal commentators Al Hunt, Mark Shields, Margaret Carlson, James Carville, Paul Begala, and Julianne Malveaux outnumber conservative commentators Tucker Carlson, Jonah Goldberg and Robert Novak (assuming that one finds Novak to be genuinely representative of the conservative movement) on CNN, or that because Bill Moyers is the only commentator on PBS who expresses his political opinions, there is a liberal bias in the media. Such an assertion would be nonsensical, of course. Yet Alterman makes exactly that kind of assertion in trying to demonstrate the validity of his argument. It just doesn't wash.

The fallacious assertions don't stop there. Not wanting to prejudge Alterman even on the basis of having heard him on C-Span, and as indicated above, I went to a local Barnes & Noble this afternoon during my sojourns in the magical land of "outside", found Alterman's book, and picked through it (no, I didn't buy it--I have better things to do with my money, and more interesting things to read). I read through a number of passages, but was particularly interested in whether Alterman discusses weblogs in his book. So I looked up "Glenn Reynolds" in the index. Lo and behold, on p. 77 of his book, Alterman discusses weblogs, and mentions InstaPundit as the most popular of the blogs. While he acknowledges Glenn's label as a libertarian, Alterman assures us that Glenn really is in the conservative camp. No proof or evidence is given for this assertion, and it will surely come as a surprise to Glenn, or to anyone else who thinks that most conservatives are pro-abortion rights, pro-gay marriage, and pro-cloning, among other things. Indeed, Alterman mentions in passing that much of the Blogosphere is conservative. What this has to do with disproving the presence of a liberal media is beyond me. Weren't we talking about Big Media in discussing Alterman's thesis? Did we right-wing bloggers also get copious amounts of money from Richard Mellon Scaife in order to establish a conservative media paradigm and to ensure that conservative thought becomes hegemonic? I must have missed the check in the mail. Either that, or my Amazon tip jar is ill-suited to handle such large sums of money (though all of you lovely people are certainly encouraged to disprove that latter suspicion). And just out of curiosity, what medium will Alterman turn to next to prove his thesis about the existence of a conservative media and the absence of a liberal one? High school newspapers?

Beyond the specious arguments and the disingenuous and intellectually flaccid assertions, Alterman is to be criticized severely for his arrogant and condescending tone to all those with whom he disagrees, which I alluded to earlier. The condescension came through in both Alterman's talk and in the book. As I mentioned, Alterman calls Scaife "an oddball and a loser." Lest anyone think that I am just trying to stick up for one of the benefactors of my law school, I want to state here and now that I don't know Richard Mellon Scaife from a cord of wood. I have no opinion on him. His existence affects me not a jot, and I have no emotional stake in defending or attacking him. But "oddball"? And "loser"? It may be attractive to Alterman to pepper his argument with these kinds of playground remarks, but considering the fact that the actual substance (if one can call Alterman's evidence and reasoning "substantive") of What Liberal Media? is shaky at best, perhaps Alterman would have been well-served in both the book and his talk to try to buttress his argument instead of bandying about insults.

And the insults don't stop there. Both Michael Kelly and Andrew Sullivan are called "McCarthyite" in the book--which perhaps helps prove Jonah Goldberg's point that "McCarthyite" and "McCarthyism" has come to mean "anything liberals or leftists consider to be unfair, unjust, un-nice." (Query: What exactly accounts for Alterman's all-consuming hatred for Andrew Sullivan? Did "Born to Run" get an unfavorable review from Sullivan at some point in time? Has Alterman sworn eternal vengeance as a result? Someone tell me. I'm dying to know.) A whole bunch of conservatives--I lost count--are called "nutty" in both the book, and in Alterman's talk on C-Span. George W. Bush is the "selected" President of the United States--a "witticism" so utterly and completely predictable and banal that in uttering it, Alterman wandered off into Maureen Dowdesque realms of meaningless and unoriginal rhetoric. And--get this--according to Alterman's talk, conservative think-tanks and media outlets have even less ideological diversity than the Soviet Politburo of Stalin's day.

Bear in mind that Alterman is an educated fellow--B.A. from Cornell, M.A. in International Relations from Yale, and Ph.D. in American history from Stanford. One would think that someone with this kind of educational pedigree could make an argument and write a book without resorting to this kind of inflammatory and bitter rhetoric. Apparently, that is impossible. And the presence of such rhetoric makes Alterman's arguments laughable. Conservatives are as uniform and monolithic in their thinking as Stalin-era apparatchiks? This is an argument? Does such a gratuitous and unsubstantiated comment really deserve to be dignified with any kind of response? Is the silliness inherent in such an aside not utterly obvious and transparent to any fair-minded individual? If there is such a thing as a corollary to Godwin's Law that frowns upon absurd analogies to Stalinist Russia, Alterman violated it in spades. In any event, one should easily be able to see this kind of assertion for what it is--pure demagoguery and waving the bloody shirt.

I don't find Alterman to be an intelligent commentator in the slightest. At best he is glib and facile, snide and arrogant, contentious and bitter. Doubtless, some people look at all of those qualities, and figure that the sum total, along with Alterman's educational pedigree, would indicate that there is a formidable intellect in there somewhere. And hey, he wrote a book, so he must be smart.

But at the very best, the copious logical fallacies and specious arguments that Alterman advances in support of his thesis demonstrates a mind that is incapable of serious critical thinking. At the very worst, Alterman is flat-out dishonest in his claims. Either way, it reflects poorly on him. It reflects poorly on his book.

And it leaves me with the eternal question: Can't the Left do better than this? If not, woe will surely be visited upon the movement. And it will be woe well-deserved.

THE MENDACITY OF ERIC HOBSBAWM

David Pryce-Jones takes on Hobsbawm, a British historian whose public accolades mask the fact that he is an unrepentant Communist who, even in the wake of the downfall of the Soviet Union, holds views that can only be described as horrifying in nature:

Not long ago, on a popular television show, Hobsbawm explained that the fact of Soviet mass-murdering made no difference to his Communist commitment. In astonishment, his interviewer asked, “What that comes down to is saying that had the radiant tomorrow actually been created, the loss of fifteen, twenty million people might have been justified?” Without hesitation Hobsbawm replied, “Yes.” His autobiography, Interesting Times: A Twentieth-Century Life,[1] conveys the same point, only rather more deviously. On the very last page, it is true, he is “prepared to concede, with regret, that Lenin’s Comintern was not such a good idea,” though for no very obvious reason (except as a cheap shot) he concludes the sentence by cramming in the comment that Herzl’s Zionism was also not a good idea. Note that slippery use of “Comintern” as a substitute for Communism itself. The concession, such as it is, is anyhow vitiated by an earlier passage when he attacks America and its allies, bizarrely spelled out as India, Israel, and Italy, and referred to as rich and the heirs of fascism. In this passage he predicts, “The world may regret that, faced with Rosa Luxemburg’s alternative of socialism and barbarism, it decided against socialism.” (Which leaves Americans as barbarians.) By my count, these are the only two expressions of regret in this long book. In contrast, the October revolution remains “the central point of reference in the political universe,” and “the dream of the October revolution” is still vivid inside him. He cannot bring himself to refer to Leningrad as St. Petersburg. Learning nothing, he has forgotten nothing.

The bill of particulars against Hobsbawm is replete with such appalling examples of moral indifference. Be sure to read the rest of the article.