FRITZ' FAMILY

For reasons which will be of interest to no one outside my family, I have not been having a very good November, and it is a sure bet to turn into a worse December.

Which is why I was so pleased to find this on Fritz Schrank's blog today:

Psalm 2004

Bush is my shepherd, I shall be in want.
He maketh me lie down on park benches,
He leadeth me beside the still factories.
He restoreth my doubts about the Republican Party.
He leadeth me into the paths of unemployment for his cronies' sake.
Yea, though no weapons of mass destruction have been found, he maketh me continue to fear Evil.
His tax cuts for the rich and his deficit spending discomfort me.
He anointeth me with never-ending debt:
Verily my days of savings and assets are kaput.
Surely poverty and hard living shall follow me all the days of his administration,
And my jobless child shall dwell in my basement forever.

Everyone needs a good chuckle now and then.

Oh, and go vote for Pat Tillman. (Note: BEFORE you vote, the picture of Tillman has to be displayed. Change the displayed picture by using the menu in the upper left corner of the picture.)

 
SUGGESTIVE ROAD NUMBERING

Rand Simberg links to a story supposedly about redesignating a proposed Interstate Highway from I-69 to something (anything) less, umm, suggestive. Despite the fact that this appears to be a hoax, there is a real world precedent.

In New Jersey, there was (and is) a highway running from Trenton up through Flemington to Clinton (in NW Jersey). Back in the 60s, they had to change the number from Route 69 to Route 31. It wasn't the prudes or even the snickers that got them to make the change. It was the fact that every male college student in American stole the signs.

And when you compare the rather dull signs that NJ uses, you can imagine what would happen with badge shaped red white and blue signs used for interstates.

 
VAN GOGH

Theo Van Gogh resided in Holland and produced short films, one of which, Submission, (which can be seen in its entirety here) concerned the suffering of women under Islam. According to CNN, "The English-language film was scripted by Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a member of the Dutch parliament, has repeatedly outraged fellow Muslims by criticizing Islamic customs and the failure of Muslim families to adopt Dutch ways. That film apparently resulted in his recent murder.

Van Gogh does not appear to have been a moderate person. He railed publicly against Muslims in general. If the report I read (and can no longer find) is true, the terms he used to describe them and their religion were beyond the pale. None of which justifies his murder. The only response to bad speech is more speech. Not murder.

Nor do Van Gogh beliefs or statements justify one of the more ridiculous responses of Dutch authorities to his murder in removing a mural stating "Thou Shalt Not Kill" from a wall near a mosque following complaints from the leaders of that mosque.

In response to Van Gogh's murder and the pathetic political correctness evidenced by the removal of that mural, there have been a number of recent incidents of violence directed against Muslims.

Captain Ed correctly states that this is a direct result of the murder of Van Gogh, but I also think that a backlash is precisely what the murderers hoped to achieve by killing Van Gogh. I also think that the rise of vigilantism and the use of arson can hardly be said to advance the cause of Western values among the less radical Muslims in the Netherlands or elsewhere in Europe.

I don't have a good solution to suggest for the problems faced by Dutch society, other than to say that they have to quickly get control not only of the Islamic nutballs in their midst, but the violent people on the other end of the spectrum as well. In the short term, the authorities must pursue and prosecute those who participated in Van Gogh's murder: the planners and enablers as well as the perpetrators. Likewise, the people lighting the fires and throwing the bombs at Muslim schools and mosques must also be stopped, arrested and prosecuted (although, as an aside, this will probably prove to be more difficult, since it seems to me to be less organized and less directed than the murder of Van Gogh).

In the long term, the only real solution is to integrate the Muslim immigrant community into the existing social structure. The only way to do it is to make certain that each immigrant has an interest in maintaining the society he has recently joined.

How exactly can that be accomplished? Well, a good start might be to look at how the US dealt with its immigrant waves. We had lots of them: Irish, Italians, Eastern Europeans, Latin Americans, Russians, Chinese, and I know that I have probably insulted half the world by leaving them out of that list. We are still quite good at giving recent immigrants a stake in our society, but we used to be better at it. The rise of identity politics and multiculturalism seems to have degraded our ability (perhaps our desire) to integrate new groups into the existing societal structures.

Western Europe in general and Holland in particular, are "farther along the curve" of accepting multiculturalism than we are. Is it too late to accomplish the needed changes there? I don't think so, but that's only a guess. I certainly hope not. Even if it is too late for the Dutch, the US can and should take note of what happens when a large unassimilated minority is repeatedly told that its values are just as good as those of the society which surrounds but is not accepted by that minority, a society that the minority risked everything to migrate to.

 
THE SPECTOR DEBATE

UPDATE (12/20/04): Captain Ed comments on the filibuster rules and the nuclear option.

Recent comments by (relatively) liberal Republican Arlen Spector of Pennsylvania have generated some controversy. He is (was?) expected to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee and thus be responsible for nominees to the federal bench. Therefore, when he suggested that Bush not nominate people opposed to abortion, the pro-life wing of the Republican party swung into action.

The outrage expressed was not unfounded. Spector survived a primary challenge from the right only with endorsement and the active support of President Bush. And therefore to be seen as laying the groundwork to oppose Bush's future judicial nominees was seen as a betrayal of that support. There were immediate demands that the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee be given to someone else. Others in the party noted Spector's immediate backtracking from his original comments and his record of support for all of the nominees submitted so far by Bush. This second group is concerned that by denying Spector the chairmanship to which he is entitled under the seniority rules as they now exist, the more strident Republicans will provide cover for the few remaining liberal Republicans in the Senate (Snow, Chafee, etc.) to side with the Democrats in continuing to filibuster Bush's nominees.

I think there is a much more basic rule change that could be accomplished which would be more effective than denying Spector the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee, and I have not seen it suggested anywhere. Do you remember "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"? Jimmy Stewart was conducting a one man filibuster against the evil political machine. He literally had to stand and speak for days on end. There were two ways the filibuster could be ended. One was by a vote for cloture (which had to pass by a super majority) and the other was by the filibustering party yielding the floor. Once the filibustering party yielded the floor, the filibuster was over and a vote on the bill being blocked (or any other bill) could be held. Until the filibuster was ended, no vote could be held on the bill being filibustered or any other bill.

Well, that's not how filibusters are conducted nowadays. To conduct a filibuster today, all one has to do is declare one. If a vote for cloture cannot pass with at least 60 votes, the bill being filibustered is tabled and the Senate goes on to other matters. I think that's a bad rule. I think the old rule was better. It made the party obstructing a vote stand up in public and say so. It imposed the heavy price of halting all business in the Senate. The new rule allows the Senate to get on with other business, but by doing so, it lowers the cost of the filibuster, and that, of course, allows more of them. I do not think that the cost of filibusters should be lowered.

Tom Daschle, the soon to be former Senate Minority Leader and the architect of the strategy of filibustering Bush's judicial nominees, was defeated in this years election. I think we should find out whether his defeat was related to his strategy of obstructionism. I think that the rules of the Senate should be changed back to require that the filibustering party must hold the floor to maintain the filibuster. Let the filibusterers (is that a word?) explain why blocking Nominee X is so important that none of the other pressing business of the country can proceed. I think that because the people conducting the filibuster would be blocking the entire Senate agenda, rather than just one specific proposal, it would be easier for the Republicans to peal away a few votes among the blue dog Democrats in order to end the filibuster.

Under the old rules, the vote for cloture had to pass with a two thirds majority in order to be successful. Under the new rules, only sixty votes (three fifths) are required. Please note that I do not suggest returning to the two thirds requirement, although if I had to choose between returning to the old rule with a two thirds requirement and keeping the new rule, I would, reluctantly, choose the two thirds requirement.

Bush has noted that he earned some political capital in the recent elections and that he intends to spend it. I think that both the country and the Senate would be better off with fewer filibusters. I think that the investment of a little of Bush's political capital in a rules change could pay big political dividends by bringing some discipline into the procedures of the Senate. Now is the time for him to roll the dice, if he is ever going to do so, by forcing the opponents of his policies in the Senate to actually obstruct all of the business of the country in order to continue to block a few policies with which they disagree. Not that he's going to be around all that long, but I would love to see Terry McAuliffe try to explain to a talking head on Sunday morning that it is more important for Miguel Estrada not to be on the federal appellate bench than it is for, say, a supplemental Iraq appropriations bill to pass the Senate.

If Tom Daschle, whose seniority allowed him to deliver a substantial amount of pork to his constituents, was defeated as a result of his obstructionist tactics, accomplishing the rules change suggested here will make the filibuster once again the rarity it was when Jimmy Stewart played a political naif swimming among the sharks in DC. And Bush's policies and judicial nominees will receive the up or down votes they deserve on the floor of the Senate. By returning to the old rules, Bush might well gain a victory for both his policies and his party.

 
THANK YOU, SENATOR

Kerry has conceded. There will be no post election litigation. That means I won't have to boycott the Democratic Party for 8 years.

I'm pleased I still have the option of voting Democratic, but I am really glad Bush won. I think it was desperately important to our future. Melodramatic? Sure. That doesn't make it untrue. Despite his repeated statements to the contrary, Kerry's record screamed "retreat" in the war against the would be theocratic fascists who want the power to tell me when and how I have to dress, act and think, who want to decide whether when, and with whom my wife can leave our house, who, in short, want to rule the world. Say what you want about Bush, he's not going to back off in the war. The next four years are not going to go smoothly, but at least our adversaries cannot take heart from faltering American resolve. That would have been the message sent by a Kerry victory.

And a post election contest, however futile in the face of a 135,000 vote margin of victory in Ohio (100 times the margin in Florida 2000), would have told the Islamofascists to push just a little harder to widen the gulf just a little bit more between red and blue Americans. For his refusal to heed the siren call of the looney left, Senator Kerry deserves our thanks.

 
NIGERIAN EMAIL SCAMMERS

Someone scams them back.

Via Inoperable Terran.

 
EIGHT YEARS SHOULD JUST ABOUT DO IT

This has got to be the worst presidential election I have ever seen.

I didn't pay much attention to politics prior to 1968. But that year you could hardly avoid it. That was a pretty weird contest, too, with Wallace running on what amounted to a segregationist platform (in 1968!) and Humphrey trying to succeed Johnson who had been crippled by what turned out to be (in hindsight) the absolutely idiotic reaction in the press to the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. And through it all, you had Nixon trying to convince people that he had a plan for Vietnam, but he couldn't tell us what it was.

I was hooked.

1972 was almost boring, with the Democrats nominating McGovern seemingly as a favor to Nixon, who absolutely creamed him. That massive victory was followed immediately by nonstop Watergate coverage until Nixon resigned rather than be impeached in the summer of 1974. The (non-Watergate) lesson from 1972 was to check the past of your VP candidate with great care after McGovern dumped Eagleton from the ticket because of a history of depression. Depression? Man, those were the days. I wish that was all that was wrong with our current crop of politicians.

1976 was a contest between Carter, a nuclear engineer turned Southern governor who seemed more like a preacher than a politician, and Ford, the man who became President by mistake, a lifelong pol who seemingly could not walk and chew gum at the same time. But at least there were no scandals.

Carter turned me into a conservative, so I was glad that Reagan won the next two elections, 1980 and 84, first against Carter and then Mondale. The 1980 contest was over as soon as Reagan asked people if they were better off in 1980 than they had been four years earlier. The 1984 win over sacrificial lamb Walter Mondale was almost as big as Nixon's lopsided victory over McGovern in terms of the popular vote, and bigger in terms of the electoral vote.

Reagan's victory was so complete, that Bush 41 pretty much coasted to victory in 1988 against Mondale in an election mainly remembered for Lloyd Bentsen's devastating takedown of Dan Quayle in the Vice Presidential debate. (I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.) Bush won and Quayle was vice president for four years, but Quayle was unable to accomplish a thing and his future presidential ambitions were in ruins.

1992 was interesting, too, with a three way race in which Ross Perot positioned himself to the right of Bush, leaving Bush squeezed between him and Clinton. Bush's stellar performance in the First Gulf War was not enough. Perot added color ("That giant sucking sound you hear is all the jobs leaving for Mexico") but gave us Clinton (with about 43% of the popular vote to Bush's 37% and Perot's 19%) and, eventually, Monica, which leaves us, after two Clinton terms, with Hillary.

The pre-Monica Clinton could probably not have been beaten by Reagan in his prime in 1996, given the state of the economy and the fact that the world at least appeared to be largely peaceful, especially with Perot threatening to run again on the right. And so, Bob Dole, one of the last of the generation of WWII politicians was served up by the Republicans for ritual slaughter.

The 2000 election made history in many ways. It was one of only a few elections (three?) in which the winner of the electoral college and the winner of the popular vote were different. It was only the second time that a presidential candidate failed to carry his home state (the McGovern rout was the first). It was the first time that a candidate withdrew his concession. It was the first time that a concession speech (the real one, thank God) was made on national TV at 8:55 pm. It was before a Monday Night Football game, as I recall.

But most importantly, it was the first Presidential election ever to be the subject of a formal post election contest.

During the Florida contest, we all learned way too much about the nitty gritty of actually counting votes. Who knew that chads could be pregnant? No matter which candidate you were rooting for, the winner of the Florida contest was always going to be damaged goods. Personally, I think the Florida Supreme Court tried to give it to Gore and the US Supreme Court stopped them (as opposed to stopping Gore or helping Bush). Gore partisans still think that the Florida Court was only doing the right thing and that the US Supremes gave it to Bush.

All of that, and Bush's subsequent problems related to the contest, made it clear to me that Nixon was right in 1960 not to contest Illinois and try to swing the election away from Kennedy. The cost of the Florida contest cannot be measured by the amount of money or time it took. It must be measured in terms of the impact it had on the ability of the ultimate victor to govern.

And we paid and are continuing to pay a steep price. National elections should not lightly be contested, and certainly not after you have conceded defeat.

That said, Gore's eventual concession speech was graceful, gracious and even noble. Gore's declaration after 9/11 that Bush was his commander in chief helped alot too. It's too bad the great concession speech couldn't undo all the harm he had caused. And it's too bad that no one seems to have picked up on the fact that 8:55 is a terrific time to schedule a 5 minute televised speech.

But the 2004 election is in a class by itself. Part of the problem is a result of Bush's damaged legitimacy in the wake of the Florida contest (a recent bumper sticker: Re-defeat Bush) Additionally, after campaign finance "reform" supposedly designed to take the money out of politics, we have suffered through the most expensive election in history. With the political parties and candidate's own campaigns no longer in control of a large chunk of the money being spent, we have had the most vitriolic campaign in my lifetime.

For comparison, pundits have had to go back to pre-war elections. Pre-Civil War elections. The president of the United States, the leader of the free world, has been called a liar by his mainstream opponent. In addition, Kerry's allies have called him a nazi, a moron, a monkey and a deserter. And while Bush is personally staying above the fray as much as possible, the name calling and denigration is not all going one way, by any means.

While seemingly united on the necessity of the war, the electorate appears bitterly divided on how to fight it. Actual discussion between the opposing sides has become difficult, if not impossible, and some people are beginning to become violent. One Kerry supporter is on tape telling Liz Edwards at a campaign rally that riots might occur if Kerry doesn't win Pennsylvania. Her response? "Not if we win." How about we just hold the damn election, okay? No one should change their vote because of threats of random violence by thugs.

A former Gore adviser writes:

[If this election is contested in court] there could be real anger--the kind of anger associated with elections in unstable developing countries, the kind that spills out into the street and terrifies people who have always believed in our
stability. There are ugly racial overtones to the Republican plans to prevent "fraud" among all those new voters--most of whom will prove to be African-American. . . .

What Elaine Kamarck doesn't say is that there are ugly racial overtones to the Democratic claims that minorities are being disenfranchised when they fail to fill out a ballot correctly or are forced to vote only in their actual precinct. Reasonable precautions against voter fraud by anyone, white, black, brown or purple, are just as important as counting the votes as accurately as you can. And I think that means asking me and every other voter for identification, both when I register and when I vote. I think it means assigning me a place to vote and requiring me to go there to vote or to vote absentee according to set rules.

But leave aside why the election might be contested, who started the contest and who wins it. Kamarck is right about a number of things. If this election is contested in court, I will be angry. If this election is contested in court, I will also be afraid that the country will become unstable. Bush might have won the last contest, but we all lost something. In the next contest, there may well be no winner. Even the nominal winner of the next contested presidential election could come to realize that his victory was entirely pyrrhic.

Here's hoping that there will be no next contest. Ever.

This, then, is my personal pledge to anyone who will listen:

The party whose candidate contests this election, regardless of the outcome of that contest, will not get my vote for anything (Governor, Representative, Senate, President, dogcatcher) for at least 8 years.

 
BEWARE OF HCB

Need a laugh? Read.

Via Baldilocks, and before you ask, I have no clue how I ended up there, but Yahoo was involved.

 

JUSTIFYING THE MEANS?

Via Drudge:

On CSPAN, John Edwards' wife, Liz (Lizbeth? Elizabeth?) had the following dialogue with a supporter:

Supporter: Kerry's going to take PA.

Liz Edwards: I know that.

Supporter: I'm just worried there's going to be riots afterwards.

Liz Edwards: Uh.....well...not if we win.

An audio clip here. There is no error in the transcript.

Do I think that Mrs. Edwards is threatening riots if Kerry loses? No. But I think that both she and the anonymous supporter are acknowledging that there is a real risk of violence perpetrated by Kerry/Edwards supporters if their side loses.

I agree that the risk is real. This campaign has been extremely nasty for a long time, now. There have been many acts of violence directed at the right from the left. And the violence is almost entirely a one way street.

The Kerry/Edwards campaign, indeed, all Democrats, should ask themselves why that is. How did we arrive at the point where one side in a closely contested election fires bullets into the opposition's offices, steals the opposition's computers, threatens the opposition's children, and trashes the opposition's offices, assaults and injures the opposition's volunteers, and throws cinder blocks through the doors of the opposition's offices. How did it come to pass that one side declares victory more than a week before the election is held and is likely to riot if that victory is not "acknowledged" by actual voters?

Is Stephen Green right? Is winning the office more important to Democrats than preserving the system by which one wins that office? I'm with Ann Althouse: Whoever wins, I hope that they win big. That will get us past this election and give the winner four years to fix things.

I also hope that whoever wins will take steps to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future.

How? Well, first, rules that do nothing to prevent or discourage fraudulent voting need to be addressed. The Motor Voter bill is a disgrace. In order to register to vote, you should be required to produce some identification, some proof of citizenship and some proof that you reside in the precinct you claim to live in.

If state law prevents you from voting (because, for example, of a felony conviction), the state should be required to notify all voting registrars in that state of the disability and the registrars should be required to compare that list to their registration rolls.

If you move, some system for notifying the registrar in your old precinct that you have moved should be instituted, perhaps by requiring the the registrar in your new district to notify the registrar in your old one before you can register at your new residence.

Will these measures have a different effect on different classes of people? Sure. Is it racist to say that only voters who are legally permitted to vote should vote? No. I think it is racist to say that the people who will be most affected by such changes are too stupid to deal with them and still vote.

And second, I think that local prosecutors have to make real efforts to catch and punish the people who are committing real crimes in connection with elections. The objection here is that "over the top" campaign rhetoric (in other words, the normal crap that goes on) will be criminalized. But check out this list (which provides links to all of the items):

• 10/23/04 - Sun Sentinal - Reports Democrat election observers and Democrat voters asking voters whom they are voting for, and pointing them out to the crowd. Observers campaigning at polls.
• 10/23/04 - Although not technically Democrats (being British and all) the Guardian wonders "Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?"
• 10/23/04 - Arizona Daily Sun - Vandals break into Republican Campaign office.
• 10/22/04 - The Oregonian - Lawless group smashes the windows of the Multnomah County Republican office in Southeast Portland on Thursday
• 10/22/04 - Bush/Cheney headquarters ransacked.
• 10/22/04 - Lawrence O'Donnell screams his hate at John O'Neill over Swift Boat allegations. No reasoned debate allowed.
• 10/22/04 - Columnist Ann Coulter attacked while giving a speech.
• 10/11/04 - WSJ - Assaults and gunfire.
• 10/1/04 - WISC-TV - Democrats burn Swastika into Bush supporter's lawn

I don't think that prosecutors should take a "boys will be boys" attitude here. I think that doing so imperils the ability to vote. And impairing the right to vote imperils everything, and I mean everything, that this nation has achieved in the two hundred plus years of its existence.

 
CHRISTMAS IN NEW YORK?

Powerline hinted at a big story to come out on Monday in the Washington Times. Since I woke up at 1:00 am on Monday morning, and since I have become a political junkie in the past couple of months, I thought I would check.

And there it is. The Washington Times reports that, contrary to statements he made during the second debate and in subsequent speeches, Kerry did not in fact meet with the Security Council prior to the Iraq War.

Kerry (emphasis added):

"This president hasn't listened. I went to meet with the members of the Security Council in the week before we voted. I went to New York. I talked to all of them, to find out how serious they were about really holding Saddam Hussein accountable."

Well, as noted in here, the Security Council members at the time were the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Russia, China (the permanent members) and ten others: Mauritius, Mexico, Norway, Singapore, Guinea, Ireland, Columbia, Cameroon, Bulgaria and Syria.

The Washington Times:

"The former ambassadors who said on the record they had never met Mr. Kerry included the representatives of Mexico, Colombia and Bulgaria. The ambassador of a fourth country gave a similar account on the condition that his country not be identified... The Times was only able to confirm directly that Mr. Kerry had met with representatives of France, Singapore and Cameroon. In addition, second-hand accounts have Mr. Kerry meeting with representatives of Britain... But after being told late yesterday of the results of The Times investigation, the Kerry campaign issued a statement that read in part, "It was a closed meeting and a private discussion." A Kerry aide refused to identify who participated in the meeting. The statement did not repeat Mr. Kerry's claims of a lengthy meeting with the entire 15-member Security Council, instead saying the candidate "met with a group of representatives of countries sitting on the Security Council." Asked whether the international body had any records of Mr. Kerry sitting down with the whole council, a U.N. spokesman said that "our office does not have any record of this meeting." A U.S. official with intimate knowledge of the Security Council's actions in fall of 2002 said that he was not aware of any meeting Mr. Kerry had with members of the panel. An official at the U.S. mission to the United Nations remarked: "We were as surprised as anyone when Kerry started talking about a meeting with the Security Council." Jean-David Levitte, then France's chief U.N. representative and now his country's ambassador to the United States, said through a spokeswoman that Mr. Kerry did not have a single group meeting as the senator has described, but rather several one-on-one or small-group encounters. He added that Mr. Kerry did not meet with every member of the Security Council, only "some" of them. Mr. Levitte could only name himself and Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock of Britain as the Security Council members with whom Mr. Kerry had met. One diplomat who met with Mr. Kerry in 2002 said on the condition of anonymity that the candidate talked to "a few" ambassadors on the Security Council."

Yeah, but was Kerry wearing his magic hat?

 
THAT'LL HELP

Teresa Heinz Kerry on Laura Bush:

Q: You'd be different from Laura Bush?

A: Well, you know, I don't know Laura Bush. But she seems to be calm, and she has a sparkle in her eye, which is good. But I don't know that she's ever had a real job — I mean, since she's been grown up...

Way to go, Teresa! With that one sentence, you have managed to say that:

Teachers don't have real jobs
Librarians don't have real jobs
Mothers raising their children don't have real jobs

I think Matt Damon's million bucks would be better spent if he paid to have this woman gagged.

All links via Drudge.

UPDATE:

OK, she apologized. "I had forgotten that Mrs. Bush had worked as a school teacher and librarian, and there couldn't be a more important job than teaching our children. As someone who has been both a full time mom and full time in workforce, I know we all have valuable experiences that shape who we are. I appreciate and honor Mrs. Bush's service to the country as First Lady, and am sincerely sorry I had not remembered her important work in the past."

The next problem is that she didn't apologize for dissing Mrs. Bush's work in raising her children. That's like claiming that someone is a murderer and a rapist, and then apologizing saying that you had forgotten that they hadn't murdered anyone.

Kerry would be far better off to just shut up.

 
IRREGULAR

Steven den Beste is continuing to take small and apparently tentative steps in connection with his professed nonreturn to the web.

First it was a quickie about anime, now it is a short analysis of presidential polling. The political post is somewhat speculative, but, as always, interesting and astute.

In connection with the newest post, he said, "By the way, this does not mean I'm going to start posting regularly again."
That compares hopefully with his comment after the anime post, which was, "Before anyone asks: no, I have no urge whatever to once again write posts for USS Clueless."

In nineteen days, he went from "I have no interest" to "I'm not going to do this as a regular thing."

Let's hear it for irregular free ice cream. Can't be beat.

 
HUH?

I just read Howard Fineman's article in Newsweek. Something is wrong with this picture.

In describing the hysterical pitch of the political combat to come over the next two and a half weeks, Fineman states:

The combat is so ferocious in part because the race is where it's always been: too close to call—though there is evidence that Bush now has a narrow lead: 48-46 percent among registered voters, 50-44 percent among likely voters in NEWSWEEK's new poll. Still, Bush's job-approval rating (often a harbinger of the incumbent's Election Day tally) is an ominously low 47 percent—and only 47 percent say they want to see him re-elected. (Emphasis added.)

I don't doubt that the race cannot be called at this time. Presidential races are frequently won or lost by substantially less than five percent of the popular vote, and the margin of error in most polls is larger than that. What amuses me about the Newsweek poll is that Fineman says only 47% of voters want Bush to be reelected, but Bush leads Kerry with 48% of registered voters and 50% of likely voters. If the poll is accurate, that means that between one and three percent of voters plan to vote for Bush even though they don't want to see him reelected.

The job approval ratings are more ambiguous. An opinion of how well or poorly Bush has performed over the course of his term does not translate directly into a vote for or against him. It is entirely consistent to for vote for Bush while believing that he has done a terrible job on absolutely everything, as long as you also believe that Kerry would be worse. The opposite is also true: It is possible to believe that Bush did absolutely everything perfectly and still be logically consistent with a vote for Kerry, if you believe that Kerry would do better at the tasks he will face in the next four years. Simply put, elections are about the future. Job approval ratings are about the past. The two are not entirely unconnected, sincepast actions are all we have to go on in predicting future actions. (The preceding sentence obviously and pointedly ignores the unenforceable and frequently ignored promises by politicians.)

The same point has been repeatedly made by Rand Simberg (sorry, no specific link because there is no search feature on Transterrestrial Musings) about the "right track/wrong track" question so beloved of pollsters. You can believe that Bush has the country on the wrong track for one of two reasons: he has pursued the wrong strategies and policies or, even though he has pursued the correct strategies and policies, he has not gone far enough.

But, at least according to Fineman, the Newsweek poll asked whether the respondent wanted the President to be reelected, and the answers they received simply do not add up.

 
THIS IS TOO HARD

Tresca was short and stocky and square. She was small for her breed. She wore fourteen tons of beautiful fur, and left it all over the house. She had a sense of humor. She was overweight because we spoiled her and her advancing age meant that she didn’t get the amount of exercise she needed.

The Daughter named her after a greyhound she read about in some book. That was ironic, because Tresca was about as far as you can get from a greyhound in terms of physique. She always wanted to do what you told her, even if she didn’t quite understand what it was you were telling her to do.

She wasn’t as well trained as some dogs I’ve met. There was simply no way to keep her off our furniture. She was never going to be a watchdog, that was for sure. She hardly ever barked until the dog next door showed her how effective it was at being brought back inside on demand. She was one of the most gentle dogs on earth.

She was tolerant of the kittens my kids brought home. Hell, she was tolerant of our kids and the friends they brought home, even when they were petting her five day old puppies. Then the cats became tolerant of her as she stumbled over them. She was completely blind in one eye and mostly blind in the other, but you couldn’t tell when she was in familiar territory unless the something was out of place. Apparently she’d been bleeding internally for a couple of days. She stopped climbing stairs about six months ago, and in the last few days she’d gotten much weaker. She was having trouble with the single step into the house from the back yard.

And we had to put her down today. God that hurts.

That was the second time in my life I’ve had to make that decision.

I want to say I will never do it again, but I can’t. There are the three cats I have. Adopted strays that are legacy pets from my kids. Boots is a fat loudmouth who purrs so quietly you can hardly tell. He is a favorite of several of the homes he has adopted in the neighborhood (which is why he is so fat). Ricky and Lucy are littermates. They are the household clowns, hence the names. They have not yet figured out how to speak as loudly as Boots does, but they are more affectionate than he is and purr so hard they practically shake.

As much as I desire otherwise, the day will come for all of them, and I will do what I have to do. But from this day forth, there will be no new pets in my house. Ever.

I can’t do this anymore.

 
JFK IN THE NYT

I've seen various responses to the Bai article on Kerry in the New York Times (requires registration, but go to www.bugmenot.com for help in avoiding spam). I like Lileks best:

Mosquito bites are a nuisance. Cable outages are a nuisance. Someone shooting up a school in Montana or California or Maine on behalf of the brave martyrs of Fallujah isn't a nuisance. It's war.

and

I don’t want to go back there. Planes into towers. That changed the terms. I am remarkably disinterested in returning to a place where such things are unimaginable. Where our nighmares are their dreams. ...No. We have to go the place where they are.

Volokh is not kind. Powerline is somewhat nicer. Rudy Giuliani is cutting, to say the least.

But I think the most perceptive comment comes from Citizen Smash:

Essentially, Kerry’s goal in the War on Terror appears to be to reduce the terrorists’ effectiveness to a level where he can “safely” focus his attention on other priorities. I’m sorry, but that’s just not good enough for me. My problem with Kerry isn’t that he sees Iraq as a diversion from the War on Terror, but rather that he sees the War on Terror as a diversion from his domestic agenda. (Emphasis in original)

Just so.

 
THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

A long time ago in a galaxy far away, some people in the 2000 Bush campaign thought that they might win the popular vote but lose the Electoral College vote. Some campaign operatives made noises about attempting to woo Gore electors to “allow the will of the people to triumph”. Had they attempted to court the electoral vote after winning the popular vote but not the election, they would have been wrong.

Of course, what actually happened was that Gore, not Bush, won the popular vote and lost the Electoral College vote. In one of the (very) few positions he took which I admire, Mr. Gore did not follow advice similar to that received by Bush received after the election. That candidate Bush may have taken such a position (by proxy, since I don’t recall him ever making the statements himself) does not make the argument that the Electoral College serves a valid and enduring purpose any weaker. Nor does the fact that in approximately one of twenty five elections (once every hundred years or so) a candidate wins the popular vote and loses the election.

Why does the Electoral College exist? Primarily, to prevent the domination of the executive branch of the US government by a few populous states to the detriment of a large number of sparsely populated states. And it has some additional beneficial effects, over and above requiring that national candidates campaign beyond the borders of New York, California, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and Florida.

There are, at present, two ways that electoral votes are allocated to candidates. In most states, the candidate with the largest number of popular (no majority required) votes wins all of that state's electoral votes. In Maine (and possibly Nebraska), two electoral votes are allocated to the overall vote winner in the state and one electoral vote is allocated to the vote winner in each Congressional District. Now Colorado is considering a third method: allocation of electoral votes based solely on the statewide popular vote totals.

The thing I noticed about the Electoral College during the 2000 election was that the winner take all system makes stealing an election through fraudulent votes extremely difficult. The same is still true, but to a lesser degree, under the apportioned system now in effect in Maine. Unfortunately, the proposed system in Colorado does not provide the same anti-fraud protection, and, of course, neither would eliminating the Electoral College altogether.

Elections are human enterprises. We have to expect that they will not be perfect and that the participants will always attempt to “game” the system. There is absolutely nothing wrong with tailoring your campaign strategy to account for the effects of the Electoral College. It exists for very purpose of encouraging candidates to do so. On the other hand, since humans are involved, we should also expect some people to attempt to subvert the system. All we can do is make the system harder subvert and make it easier to discover and either prevent or correct the subversion. I think the Electoral College achieves both of those objectives, to a greater degree under the predominant winner take all system and to a lesser degree under the Maine district by district method.

Imagine the huge incentive to fraud that exists when you give each candidate’s supporters the incentive to stuff any ballot box anywhere under a direct popular election. In a close election I don’t think we would have a president until the midterm elections rolled around. It is a given that most modern elections are quite close (a couple of percentage points difference) in terms of the popular vote. It is far too much to expect every partisan political operative in every election from now till kingdom come to refrain from enhancing their candidate's chances by putting a few extra pieces of paper, appropriately marked, in a box in some backwater polling place. The difficulty in proving that ballots for the other guy were fraudulently produced and/or that ballots for your guy were wrongfully excluded from the count on a nationwide basis (a few here, a few there) is immense.

The post election contest in Florida in 2000 was bad enough, and that only took about six weeks and about thirty trips to various courthouses. Fortunately, such a closely contested election only seems to happen once every one hundred years or so. Imagine, if you will, the same nightmare re-re-recount scenario occurring in all fifty states after literally every nationwide election, under the Maine scheme or in the complete absence of the Electoral College.

The primary effect of the Electoral College is to force candidates to campaign outside of the main population centers of the nation. For more than two hundred years, it has performed as advertised. In addition, the Electoral College completely eliminates the incentive to cheat in the state or states where the candidate is strongest. But please note that this is precisely where cheating would be easiest and least detectable, and therefore most likely. But your guy is going to win there anyway and get all the state’s electoral votes, so it makes no sense whatever to cheat and risk being caught. This would not be the case in the absence of the Electoral College or under the Maine scheme.

Finally, under the winner take all system which is in effect throughout most of the nation, the ballot box stuffers in closer states must operate on a large scale to influence statewide results. This makes detection easier and therefore more likely. The same effect is not achieved under the Maine district by district scheme, since a series of districts could be swung with widely scattered efforts involving fewer fraudulent votes.

Colorado is currently considering apportioning its electoral votes between the candidates based on the popular vote in the state. This is a bit different than the Maine scheme, but its effects will be similar.

The Founders were proud of the Electoral College. They had reason to be. It ain’t broke. Don’t fix it.

 
NONPARTISAN

Go see Jib Jab's new cartoon It's Good to be in DC.

Caution: In order to protect your electronic equipment, remove all foodstuffs from within arm's reach before playing the movie.

 
(MUCH) BETTER THAN SILENCE

He's back. Sort of.

I've been reading Steven den Beste for a long time. The scope of his factual knowledge and his ability to order to those facts within a theoretical framework is nothing short of amazing.

So I was sorely disappointed a month ago when he announced that he was quitting blogging, at least for a while. I've been checking his site daily, hoping to find that "a while" had passed.

And now he is back with a post on one of his favorite subjects, anime. Good for him. Less good for me, though. I liked his political and foreign affairs posts much more than those concerning anime. And he says that he's still not moved to return as the Captain of the Clueless.

But complaints about the flavor of ice cream available just aren't right when the ice cream is free. So that is not a complaint. Steven, I'm glad to hear from you again.

After all, ice cream of whatever flavor tastes much better than silence.

 
SHAFTING KERRY

Two recent stories coming out of Europe do not bode well for Senator Kerry's presidential aspirations.

The first, via Drudge, is a Financial Times report in the of statements by French and German officials that their respective countries will not send troops to Iraq even if Kerry is somehow elected. The second, via Powerline, is an International Herald Tribune story in which it is reported that France will not attend an international conference on Iraq unless the agenda includes discussion of a US withdrawal and the "insurgents" are invited to attend.

From Kerry's point of view, of the French and German statements reported by the FT, the French was worse. Not because it said anything different, but because it came from the Foreign Minister.

Michel Barnier, the French foreign minister, said last week that France, which has tense relations with interim prime minister Iyad Allawi, had no plans to send troops "either now or later".

The German statement is from Gert Weisskirchen, who is described as a "member of parliament and foreign policy expert for Germany's ruling Social Democratic Party" and is quoted as follows:

"I cannot imagine that there will be any change in our decision not to send troops, whoever becomes president. That said, Mr Kerry seems genuinely committed to multilateralism and as president he would find it easier than Mr Bush to secure the German government's backing in other matters."

Other matters. Other matters don't figure in this election. Kerry's proposed solution for Iraq is to get France and Germany involved militarily to relieve our forces. And the French Foreign Minister and a "foreign policy expert" for Germany's ruling party just said that ain't gonna happen.

The IHT story may well be the more damning of the two reports, however. Kerry has not called for negotiations with the "insurgents", but the French just did. Can you imagine France sending troops to Iraq while simultaneously calling for negotiations concerning US withdrawal? I can't. And given that Kerry has evoked Vietnam in his campaign, can there be a worse Vietnam allusion than to the Paris "peace" negotiations that led to the unilateral US withdrawal from Vietnam and cleared the way for North Vietnam to conquer its now southern half? Where shall the negotiations begin? Shall we discuss the shape of the table? Shall we discuss how many representatives Zarqawi gets to send and whether he should defer any additional beheadings while the conference is under way?

Europe just finished Kerry. He is toast.

UPDATE: It seems that foolish minds think alike. Foolsblog agrees with me (or I with him, since he posted last night).

 
THE SIX STAGES OF MULTILATERALISM

I haven't been too pleased with the performance of the UN, lately. Neither is David Brooks, who has an op ed piece in the New York Times about Darfur:

Every time there is an ongoing atrocity, we watch the world community go through the same series of stages: (1) shock and concern (2) gathering resolve (3) fruitless negotiation (4) pathetic inaction (5) shame and humiliation (6) steadfast vows to never let this happen again.

There is no way to describe what's happening in Darfur other than as genocidal ethnic cleansing, and what does the UN do? It frowns sternly in the general direction of Sudan an issues a "threat" to consider economic sanctions at some unspecified time in the future. That threat, of course, will be followed in due course with another lengthy debate about whether and how to impose the sanctions.

A threatened debate concerning mealy mouthed sanctions in the sweet by and by does nothing but give the maniacs who are doing the killing and raping and burning additional time to do whatever the hell they want, which turns out to be more murder, more rape and more burning.

And of course, sanctions, in the unlikely event that they are complied with and the even less likely event that they actually have the intended effect, will take additional time, measured in years, to achieve that effect. Darfur is burning today. People are starving right goddam now. An ethnic "militia" is murdering thousands as we speak. And the UN does less than nothing. It offers the people with the gasoline and matches more time to do their thing.

This is yet another magnificent performance by the UN. You'd think that their recent performances elsewhere in the world (and not just Iraq; remember Rwanda?) would shame them into at least acting like they wanted to do something.

The UN has become a pathetic farce which raises obstruction and obfuscation into an art form. And, if anyone, anywhere finally gets fed up with the delay and diplobabble, heaven forbid they should actually try to do something. God help the nation that says, "If you won't do it, we will." Only crude cowboys and complete morons say stuff like that.

Any actions taken to enforce (enforce? is that a word?) all those resolutions solemnly passed with great fanfare are characterized by Secretary General of the UN as illegal.

I have a (Mrs.) Kerry-like suggestion for Mr. Annan: Take your resolutions and your opinions and shove it. Your organization has become a sad, sick joke. Time and time again, the UN has watched and done nothing as its honored members violated every provision of its charter, resulting in death and suffering on a scale which can scarcely be imagined.

Where in the name of God do you get the gall to criticize the people who spend sacrifice their own lives and their own money to do that which you have so pompously declared over and over and over again needed to be done?

Those people may not be able to right all the world's wrongs, but they've fixed a boatload more than you have.

 
THEY WUZ ROBBED

I started to write a longish post about Kerry's contradictory statements on Iraq throughout the course of the campaign, only to find, via VodkaPundit, that John Hawkins did a far better job. And he has art!

Kerry obtained the Democratic nomination almost entirely on the basis that he was "electable." I think the Democrats should get their money back. Having tried to become all things to all people, electable may well be the one thing Kerry isn't.

The effect of the "weathervane" (sorry, no direct link, go here and scroll down) and "blowin' in the wind" ads now airing will show up in the polls in the next week or so, and I think Kerry will be seriously wounded. That leaves only the debates as a means for Kerry to improve his standing. There is no doubt that Kerry is a good debater. But is he good enough to withstand a recitation of the quotes in the linked article? I doubt it.

There has also been some speculation about outside events (such as a major terrorist attack somewhere) affecting the election. Well, there have been major terrorist attacks, both in Iraq (in terms of sheer volume) and Russia (in terms of gut wrenching horror). Events like those are wildcards. Their effect is unpredictable. So far, however, none seem to have derailed Bush or aided Kerry.

 
LAST WORD ON RA^thERGATE

The absolutely must read last word on Rathergate belongs to Iowahawk.

"My name is Rather. And I’m a dick."

This one is spreading like wildfire. I got it from Rand Simberg, and it's already been trackbacked twenty times or so.

I suspect that the one thing that Rather and CBS will not be able to tolerate is ridicule.

Go. Read.

 
THE FLAT TAX

Andrew Sullivan, in speculating about what a second Bush term would look like, says "I'd love it if he made a real push for a flat tax..."

Andrew, the flat tax is a great idea whose time will never come.

Reasons? At the beginning of any analysis, the purpose(s) of enacting a flat tax have to be examined. The main selling point I have always seen is simplicity. The tax code has become far too complex, and is no longer comprehensible to the average taxpayer. Simplicity is a good thing, at least in the abstract. Our tax compliance system is, in reality, a voluntary one, and ease of compliance will increase compliance, or so it is claimed. So the question becomes, (a) is the objective of simplicity in the tax code achievable and (b) will the flat tax achieve it?

The answers: Probably not and not likely at all.

First, the US economy is the most complex in the world. Imposing a tax on that economy requires complex rules. Failure or refusal to enact complex rules will result in simplicity, and simplicity is a good thing. But the corollary to simplicity is unfairness. Simple is easy but, in specific situations, unfair. Complex is hard, but (if not entirely fair) fairer. And, given our system of voluntary compliance, a widespread perception of unfairness will be the system's death knell.

I'm a tax attorney (boo, hiss). People like me get paid to figure out ways to reduce a client's taxes. A simple flat tax will make my job simple. A complex flat tax (if that's not an oxymoron) will not solve the problem that the flat tax aims to solve: Complexity in the tax code. Even if, by some political miracle (see below), a flat tax was enacted, exceptions will creep back into the law as legislators try to combat the perceived unfairness resulting from the new tax in specific situations.

Second, the tax code, as it stands, contains hundreds, if not thousands, of provisions on which everyone, and I mean everyone, has relied and continues to rely. Deductibility of home mortgage interest and real estate taxes. Deductibility of IRAs/pension contributions. Deductibility of charitable contributions. Those provisions are ones that you and I rely on directly every day in deciding whether to purchase this home or that one, whether make this investment or that one, and whether and to what extent to support our favorite causes. And that short list doesn't even consider the provisions affecting us indirectly, such as the laws pertaining to depreciation, S corporations, partnerships, or the more esoteric provisions concerning trusts, insurance companies, banks or corporate reorganizations, all of which are extremely complex. A flat tax (at least one that would achieve its presumed goal of simplicity) would require the repeal or radical modification of most or all of those provisions. But each one of those provisions has a constituency which will oppose the repeal. Sometimes a very large and very powerful constituency in terms of either numbers or wealth (and thus lobbying clout). I am no politician, but my guess is that logrolling in Congress would result in keeping most of the provisions noted above intact, which, again, will cause the flat tax to fail to achieve its objective of simplicity.

Third, switching to a flat tax will have untold economic consequences. To take just one example, the deduction for home mortgage interest, if repealed, would result in a huge new supply of homes for sale. Millions of homeowners would no longer be able to afford their homes because the mortgage was no longer being paid with pre-tax dollars. All of those home would come onto the market, over a very short period of time. At the same time and for the same reason, the average home buyer's ability to purchase a new home will be reduced, in terms of the amount of money he can afford to spend. That would result in a drastic reduction in the value of real estate. It might not be a crash, but it sure would look like one in the short run.

Fourth, the bulk of the wealth of the average American is in the value of his home. Unless the deduction for home mortgage interest and real estate taxes is maintained, the flat tax will be perceived as an attack (even if not a deliberate one) on the wealth accumulated over the years by the average Joe. If you are going to maintain that deduction, the argument for eliminating others is significantly weakened.

All in all, I don't think a flat tax will happen, and if I am wrong and it does happen, I don't it will last.

 
MISSED OPPORTUNITY? RA^thERGATE AND MAPES

60 Minutes II producer (or just plain 60 Minutes, or 60 Minutes, Wednesday, depending on who wins the civil war) Mary Mapes contacted Joe Lockhart at the Kerry Campaign and asked him to call Bill Burkett, saying Burkett had been quite helpful on the story that became DanRon. The request was made, apparently, as a condition of receiving the bogus documents from Burkett. Lockhart acknowledges speaking to Burkett in response to Mapes' request.

The press and the blogosphere are abuzz with the possibilities raised by this second contact between Burkett and the Kerry campaign (the first being with former Senator Cleland). Was Ra^thergate an attempted Democratic dirty trick by the campaign or the DNC?????? More violations of journalistic ethics at CBS!!!!! Stay tuned for futher details!!!!

But the thing that bothers me about this wrinkle is not the (logical but somewhat unlikely) possibility of involvement in Ra^thergate by high officials of the Kerry campaign. What gets me is that Mapes was freely disclosing her source to Lockhart at the very same time that Rather was refusing to tell the rest of us who that source was.

That raises two questions:

Having already disclosed the source to people outside of CBS News, how can Rather have claimed for more than a week that his journalistic ethics prevented him from disclosing the source to the pajamasphere? This is in addition to the obvious one of whether Rather should have protected his source at all, having been burned by that very same source.

The more interesting of the two questions is this: Lockhart knew the identity of the source. He knew (or should have known) that the source had provided faked documents to Mapes and Rather. So why didn't Lockhart disclose the identity of the source? Wouldn't that have been proof positive that the Kerry campaign was not involved in the scam? Wouldn't that have been the best possible condemnation of the avalanche of mud and irrelevancies that this campaign has become?

Was it an opportunity missed? Or an attempt to protect a friend in the press?

 
UNIMPEACHABLE

In The World According to Garp, Robin Williams and his wife are looking at a house to purchase when a light airplane literally crashes into it. Williams' line is "Honey, the chances of another plane hitting this house are astronomical. See? It's been pre-disastered. We're going to be safe here."

That sounds to me like what Dan Rather must have been thinking when he called Burkett an unimpeachable source. Burkett had, for all practical intents and purposes, already been impeached. In at least one instance, the man had impeached his own statement.

From The Houston Chronicle:

... Burkett's allegations have changed over the years, and have been dismissed as baseless by former Guard colleagues, state legislators and others.

Even Burkett has admitted some of his allegations are false.

Emphasis added. I can just see Rather thinking to himself, "The odds of Burkett being impeached again are astronomical. He's pre-impeached. We're going to be safe here."

 
BURKETT? THEY GOT THEM FROM BURKETT?

On MSNBC: CBS "cannot vouch for the authenticity of documents used to support a "60 Minutes" story about President Bush's Vietnam-era National Guard service after several experts denounced them as fakes."

So who is Bill Burkett?

From Smash:

MEET BILL BURKETT:

Bill Burkett, who has emerged as a possible CBS source for disputed memos about President Bush's Guard service, has a long history of making charges against Bush and the Texas National Guard. (Houston Chronicle)

What kind of charges? Here's something Burkett himself wrote on March 19, 2003:

In January of 1998 and what seems like a full lifetime ago, I was stricken by a deadly case of meningoencephalitis. I was returning from a short duty trip to Panama as a team chief to inspect the hand over of Ft. Clayton to the Panamanians. I had been 'loaned' from the senior staff and state planning officer of the Texas National Guard to the Department of the Army for a series of these special projects after angering George W. Bush by refusing to falsify readiness information and reports; confronting a fraudulent funding scheme which kept 'ghost' soldiers on the books for additional funding, and refusing to alter official personnel records [of George W. Bush].

Got that? He blames Bush for his illness. But wait, it gets better:

George W. Bush and his lieutenants were mad. They ordered that I not be accessed to emergency medical care services, healthcare benefits I earned by my official duty; and I was withheld from medical care for 154 days before I was withdrawn from Texas responsibility by the Department of the Army, by order of the White House.

I was a pawn then caught in a struggle for right and wrong, but also caught within a political struggle between a man who would do anything to be 'king' of America and an institution of laws that we knew as America.Bush conspired to deny him medical treatment?

That's quite a story. But apparently, it wasn't even up to Dan Rather's standards, as it never made it past the "Veterans for Peace" website.

So how does Burkett really feel about President Bush?

We must now revert to the history of Europe to discern what to do. We must study the nemesis of France and how Napoleon was felled before understanding the damage a tyrant does to a nation and society. We must examine the ruthless and dictatorial rise of yet another of the three small men—one whose name is not spoken out of fear of reprisal, but his name was Adolf. We must examine history, in order to not repeat it, and to understand the mesmerism of a public to a murderous scheme. Three small men who wanted to conquer . . . and vanquish. Each created a need for a balancing throng; history then recorded the damage from a far better perspective.

To quote a somewhat less famous blogger (moi):

"You relied on Burkett????? You put the reputation of CBS News and its 60 Minutes flagship at risk based on Burkett's say so? How stupid can you get?"

Apparently mindblogglingly stupid.

 
RA^thERGATE AND YELLOWCAKE

Powerline notes that the Niger Yellowcake story has resurfaced. The Italian businessman who apparently obtained the (crudely) forged documents on which the US and the UK based their claim that Saddam was attempting to purchase yellowcake (low grade uranium which would presumably be enriched into weapons grade stuff) from Niger has now testified in an Italian court that he was on France's payroll.

This has lead to a "furious row" between France and Italy in which Italy claims France was attempting to set up the US (and the UK) by inducing us to rely on bogus documents, thus undermining the case for the Iraqi war.

All this sounds very familiar, no? To the best of my knowledge, however, Karl Rove is not alleged to have been involved. But then, Terry McAuliffe has not yet given an interview on the subject.

Powerline notes (and I agree) that Saddam was almost certainly attempting to purchase something from Niger. Niger's exports are livestock, cowpeas, onions, and the products of it's small cotton industry. And yellowcake. I think its reasonable to assume that the high level Iraqi official (Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf, aka "Baghdad Bob") who, according to none other than Joseph Wilson, supposedly contacted Niger to talk about trade was not going to talk about goats.

However, Powerline then adds that Bush was unwise to back off on the yellowcake claim as he did. I disagree. This is precisely the argument now being made by Rather about his Bush/National Guard story. His documents were forgeries and his report was based largely, but not entirely on those forgeries. Rather also had Texas politician and Democratic fundraiser Ben Barnes talking about using his influence to get Bush into the Guard, without, of course, identifying Barnes as a major Kerry contributor or the fact that his story has changed several times over the years.

Rather is now being heavily criticized not only for going ahead with the story based largely on crude forgeries, but for his subsequent stonewalling and his continued professions of belief in the story despite the evidence of fraud with respect to the documents. And his critics are right. Ben Barnes was nothing new. Rather's story was the documents and the documents were fraudulent.

That is why I think Bush was right to not push the yellowcake claim once it was established that the documents were forged. Yes, there was other evidence. But it was both old and somewhat tenuous and therefore not, to my mind, a sufficient basis for a decision to send young kids out to fight die.

And can you imagine the glee with which Terry McAuliffe would have greeted a Bush claim that the documents were fake but accurate?

 
ROPE-A-DOPE YET AGAIN?

In some of his title fights, Muhummad Ali intentionally let his opponent beat on him for the first (ten?) rounds or so of the bout. After the opponent tired himself out hitting Ali where it didn't hurt, Ali finally began to fight back. He won. He told an interviewer after his first use of the strategy that this had been his plan going into the fight.

His fans (me included) hated watching their champion being pummeled without response. It was also risky. The key to the strategy lies in the timing. Wait too long and, exhausted oppponent or not, you will be too far behind in points to come back, necessitating a far more difficult knock out for victory. Not long enough, and your opponent will not be tired. Ali called it "rope-a-dope" and, though I have not watched much boxing since the retirement of Sugar Ray Leonard, as I recall, no one else has ever been able to successfully duplicate it.

In the boxing ring.

Over the past few years, however, spectators have been treated to an absolutely spectacular exhibition of rope-a-dope by George Bush. I am continually amazed at how he waits passively, absorbing blow after blow as his opponents voluntarily crawl farther and farther out on a limb. And then, at precisely the right time to inflict the maximum damage on the opponent, with one calculated speech, Bush saws the branch off behind them.

This observation is not original to me. Bush has done it many times. The issue of Israeli/PLO negotiations, and the war in Iraq are two of the most noticeable examples. Whether the strategy is planned and executed by Bush or Karl Rove or someone else working for Bush is irrelevant. It is planned. It has happened far too many times not to be.

And it seems to have happened yet again with Ra^thergate (or DanRon, as one wag is calling it). This snippet from a story by Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post says it all:

[CBS reporter] Roberts called "60 Minutes" producer Mary Mapes with word that [White House Communications Director] Bartlett was not challenging the authenticity of the documents. Mapes told her bosses, who were so relieved that they cut from Rather's story an interview with a handwriting expert who had examined the memos.

At that point, said "60 Minutes" executive Josh Howard, "we completely abandoned the process of authenticating the documents. Obviously, looking back on it, that was a mistake. We stopped questioning ourselves. I suppose you could say we let our guard down."

Emphasis added. They did indeed. Was it planned this time? The only way to tell would be if Bush's response was responsible for Rather's flame-out. But this time, Bush did not even have to do any of his own sawing. The blogosphere did it for him, with obviously devasting results.

Once again, Bush opponents were deep into the details of planning their victory parade, only to wake up on the floor a few minutes later, asking, "What hit me?"

 
POLLS, POLLS, POLLS

The presidential polling boom is in full swing. New polls are coming out daily. At the moment, there is no consensus among the pollsters. The race is either a dead heat (a Harris poll released Thursday, and a Pew Research poll taken between 9/11 and 9/14) or a Bush blowout by 16% among likely voters (Pew Research, taken between 9/8 and 9/10), take your pick.

More than occasionally, for various reasons, a poll is just flat wrong. But I think that, in this case, its possible that there is an explanation for the wild swing in the Pew poll: Ra^thergate.

Rather made the story impugning Bush's National Guard Service late (late for polling, at least) in the evening of 9/10. The reaction in the pajamasphere was both strong and immediate, but the mass media didn't pick up the story until the weekend (9/11-9/12) and only really got going on it on Monday, 9/13.

That means that whatever damage Rather did to the Bush campaign with the story is not picked up at all in the earlier survey (9/8-9/10), but is reflected in the later poll (9/11-9/14) without much diminution by reason of the destruction of the memos as forgeries in the blogosphere.

The conventional wisdom is that Rather did little damage because no one cares what Bush did or didn't do thirty five years ago. I disagree. I think that the story had a significant impact on the electorate, which was negated by Rather's incredible stupidity in relying on those memos, which was pointed out over the following week or so.

As to the race, my gut tells me Bush is ahead by a significant margin. Of course, my gut may just be telling me what I want to hear.

 
NOW THERE IS AN INTRIGUING QUESTION

Perhaps fake, but accurate. That's what CBS' defense of the memos amounts to. The content of the documents, though forged, reflects what really happened.

OK, then, should Karl Rove produce a series of memos similarly "proving" John Kerry's legislative record? The best part is that no forging would be involved, because the memos would be completely blank (it being the Bush position that Kerry has no legislative achievements). The documents would be "less fake" than Rather's laughable memos, since they would involve no actual words. And they reflect what the Bush campaign believes to be what really happened. That would be enough according to CBS to run to air with the documents to attack Kerry using what amounts to a campaign stunt by the other side. Is that the standard used by CBS?

I love the line where CBS says they're going to try really really hard to authenticate the documents.

Authenticate them? Mr. Rather, that ship sailed long ago. You should have done what you now plan to try prior to your initial broadcast. And when you couldn't, you should have round filed them. Your failure to do so was a large mistake. Your subsequent appeals to authority and ad hominem invective (We're CBS. We have editors and such, so we must be right. Our critics are "some guys in their pajamas.") were a bigger mistake.

The bottom line? CBS has basically admitted that the documents cannot be authenticated. Their own witness (the late Colonel Killian's secretary) says so, even as she says that the sentiment they express is true. Therefore, at the very least, its source enlisted CBS News in general, and Dan Rather in particular, in an attempt to manipulate the election based on forgeries. Why does that source deserve CBS' continued protection?

Certainly not based on journalistic ethics, as claimed by CBS. At least no journalistic ethics that I've ever heard of. Your source burns you, you burn the source. Automatically. Failure to do so invites future attempts by indicating that there is no cost to providing CBS with forged documents, even ones where the forgery should be obvious to anyone with an ounce of sense.

And that gives rise to what is, to my mind, a most intriguing question: If the protection of the source is not based on journalistic ethics, WHY IS RATHER CONTINUING TO STONEWALL ON HIS SOURCE? His career and his legacy are both at stake. He has pledged them both to protect a source that gave him fake documents.

There are three logical possibilities:

1. There is no source. Rather himself (or someone at CBS) fabricated the documents. Probability? Zero or something approaching it.

2. There is a relationship between Rather and his source that causes Rather to want to protect the source. I can't see Rather literally throwing his career and reputation away to elect John Kerry, so Rather's position is not explained by assuming that the source is the Kerry campaign, even though Kerry was the intended beneficiary of the scam. No, this possibility is likely only if the source is a family member or something like that, which is itself unlikely. Probability? Unlikely.

3. Rather believes the source to be extremely weak. I think this is the most likely of the three possibilities. In fact, I think that it is very likely to be true. Assuming the source of the documents has problems other than the documents themselves that can be or have been used to impeach his credibility, disclosing his identity does not solve Rather's problem.

Indeed, it makes it worse. The reaction would be, "You relied on __________????? You put the reputation of CBS News and its 60 Minutes flagship at risk based on __________'s say so? How stupid can you get?"

Therefore, Rather might as well try to continue to stonewall and change the subject. If successful, he suffers less damage than he would by disclosing the source. But that damage control effort will probably only be temporary (although just how temporary is impossible to estimate). The one thing that I believe to be near certain is that the source will be disclosed or discovered, eventually. Deep throat would not be able to remain anonymous in the age of the internet while continuing to provide information to Woodward and Bernstein.

And certainly not if he had attempted to bring down a President with forgeries.

UPDATE: on Friday morning, I read Opinion Journal, as usual and find this editorial by Bernard Goldberg, saying pretty much the same thing as I did. Pretty good company, no?

Caution: Patting yourself on the back can be painful.

 
IN THE COURT OF THE CRIMSON (ROBE) KING

Over at Moira's place, she is singing the praises of the pajamasphere. In the comments, one Lynx Pherret asks if there is an auxilliary for mere bathrobe wearers.

I'm in. Sign me up for the Bathrobe Brigade.

I am PJ challenged, as are many others, and took up a robe when skivvies became, shall we say, less than acceptable due to (ahem) caloric overconsumption with complications arising from simultaneous underexpenditure of same.

The Daughter programmed my cell phone to display "Robe King".

 
DON'T HEDGE YOUR BET

Citizen Smash posts on the car bomb in Baghdad and the small arms attack in Baquoba. He thinks that the new Iraqi government will attempt to clean out the current safe havens of Fallujah, Baquoba and Samarra prior to the January elections held there.

What bothers me most about the war in Iraq right now is the progression of events we have seen several times:

An series of attacks, followed by an expedition to Fallujah, where the "insurgents" are surrounded, outgunned and (to this non-military eye) terribly vulnerable, followed by "successful" negotiations for a cease fire pursuant to which we back off. The cease fire, of course, turns out to be meaningless because no arms are surrendered and no one is taken into custody. Then, three or four weeks later, a new series of attacks are mounted from the same places we had surrounded, and the whole process is repeated (and I fume impotently).

It won't take long for people to start comparing that state of affairs to the Tet Offensive, which was simultaneously a military disaster and a huge political win for North Vietnam. That war truly was won (and lost) on the streets of the United States.

The on again/off again attempts control Fallujah have happened twice, now. If it happens much more, US voters might well conclude that Bush is waiting to get past the US election to finish cleaning out the three towns.

That would not be good. Trying to control the timing of anti-terrorist military efforts for political purposes can only hurt by politicizing the conduct of the war. To be perceived as trying to do so (even if it is untrue) is almost as bad.

If the bad guys are surrounded and cut off from food, water and ammunition, for God's sake kill them or capture them. Bush bet his reelection on Iraq. This is no time to start hedging that bet.

 
WORTH EVERY PENNY

Senator Kerry has a problem. The problem is the "Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party" (also known as the Deaniacs).

Fritz Schrank, a Delaware lawyer/blogger, has been solicited by Kerry for a campaign contribution. The solicitation itself is a scream, and Fritz does a fine job of fisking it, noting the complete absence of any reason to vote for Kerry, as opposed to against Bush. I especially like the part where Kerry declares that when (not if) he wins, we will look back on this moment as the turning point. If you're already assured of winning, Senator, why solicit additional funds?

I must say, though, that Kerry is, once again, confusing me with his tactics on the war in Iraq.

He was for the war and against it.

He was against paying for it, but he was for paying for it before he was against paying for it.

We didn't send enough troops, so we should bring the troops who are there home, within four years. No, wait: one year. No, starting in six months.

Kerry's statements that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction were completely accurate, but Bush lied about them and misled is into war.

But it doesn't matter that Bush misled us into war because Kerry would have gone to war regardless of whether or not he thought he would find WMDs.

Britain, Australia, Spain, El Salvador, Poland and the umpteen other countries that contributed to the Iraq effort were a coalition of the bribed and coerced. The only way to avoid having a coalition of the bribed and coerced, apparently, is to bribe and coerce France and/or Germany.

This week, we are back to the BUSH LIED!!!!! PEOPLE DIED!!!!!!! theme. Forget the fact that the CIA and every other US intelligence agency thought Saddam had WMDs. Forget the fact that literally every intelligence service in the West thought Saddam had WMDs. Hell, we should (please!) forget that even Kerry thought so, too. Bush knew differently and if he didn't contradict the overwhelming weight of the intelligence assessments from around the world, its only because he is either a liar or a complete moron.

Oh, wait. That would make Kerry a liar or moron, too. Sorry. I take that back. Until next week.

Some free advice for the Senator:

Howard Dean lost the primaries. He is not the candidate. You are. The Deaniacs are not going to vote for Bush. They're going to vote for Nader or for you. I think you're going to lose this election, even if you get the Deaniac vote, but I'm a convinced Bush supporter. Mine is not the vote you're looking for, because you won't get it. This race, as far as you are concerned, is now between you and Nader. Your only chance is to convince enough Deaniacs that you have a shot at winning.

Your party overwhelmingly nominated you because they thought that you could win. The downside to having obtained the nomination solely on "electability" is that a significant portion of the people who nominated you will vote for Nader if they believe going into the election that you will lose. To them, it's about winning the election. It's not about Iraq anymore, if ever it was.

Your position on the war is irrelevant to the Deaniacs. It is sufficient for them that you are not Bush. You are losing them now not because of your position(s) on the war, but because you are trailing in the polls. The way to get them back is not to adopt their positions, since that will put you farther behind in the polls and thus cause further defections to Nader among the Deaniacs. The way to get them back is to do better in the polls.

I acknowledge that this is a question of which came first, the chicken or the egg. It's a conundrum. You can't do better with the voters until you do better in the polls, which are, of course, a measurement of how you're doing with the voters.

I'm not sure how to go about improving your position in the polls, but I know that shifting leftwards on the war in Iraq won't do it. I know that your consistent inconsistency on the war won't do it, either. I suspect that you have to decide what your true beliefs are (besides the obvious one that you should be the President), state them clearly and repeatedly and hope for the best.

Of course, if you really are the anti-war candidate, that might mean alienating a (perhaps small but) significant chunk of your party, represented by Zell Miller. And that would put Bush over the top, if he isn't there already.

Hey, I said the advice was free. Not that it would be, you know, useful.

 
DAN BLA^thER

Ah, the wonders of the internet. On Wednesday night, Dan Rather goes on the air to report that Bush got into the National Guard because of his influential family, disobeyed a direct order and did not meet his obligations to the National Guard. The "family influence" claim was based on the statements of Ben Barnes, former Texas Lieutentant Governor. The rest of the claims were based on the now infamous documents obtained by CBS News. The documents were authenticated by Marcel Matley, a document expert, and by Major General (retired) Hodges, the (immediate?) superior of the author of the documents, who was himself Bush's superior officer.

Within twenty four hours, serious questions had been raised concerning all of the new witnesses and new documents trumpeted by Rather. The questions were so serious that Rather felt the need, on Friday evening, to attempt to rebut them on the air.

And by Saturday evening, Rather's rebuttal had been shredded.

His document expert, who supposedly authenticated the documents, formed his opinion after having viewed copies, since that was all CBS had. But that same expert wrote in 2002 that "... modern copiers and computer printers are so good that they permit easy fabrication of quality forgeries. From a copy, the document examiner cannot authenticate the unseen original but may well be able to determine that the unseen original is false. Further, a definite finding of authenticity for a signature is not possible from a photocopy, while a definite finding of falsity is possible." (Emphasis added.) General Hodges stated that CBS had misled him by telling him that the documents had been handwritten, and that all he had said was that if Killian (the supposed author) had written it, then that was how Killian felt about the matter.

The original criticisms of the documents (the use of New Times Roman; the proportional spacing; the centering and superscript) were hardly affected at all by the rebuttal. If you are old enough to remember Watergate, the infamous 18 minute gap in one of the Nixon tapes was explained away by partisans as having been accidentally caused by Nixon's secretary (Rose Mary Woods) performing a complicated stretch across three quarters of her large desk to answer her phone without taking her foot off a floor switch. The explanation was ridiculed as the "Rose Mary Stretch."

Well, the explanation of how Colonel Killian could have produced the documents contemporaneously with their dates had the same ring to it as the Rose Mary Stretch.

He would have to have had a high end IBM typewriter, the IBM Selectric Composer. In the Texas Air National Guard? Right.

He would have had to stop typing, rummage in his desk for another type ball having a smaller typeface, replace the existing type ball with the new one, futz with the paper, and type "th".

He would have had to reverse the process to get back to 12 point New Times Roman.

He would have had to do this several times in the course of one short document.

He would have had to type out and carefully measure the length of each line in the caption for centering purposes and start typing at the proper point on each line on a fresh paper.

I don't understand how there could be any questions about it. It could have happened. It did happen. Of course that's what a man who, according to both his widow and his son, didn't like to type would do!

And new faults were found (the terminology used in the memos was not in use at the time the memos were supposedly written; the signature block was wrong; the caption was wrong; the person said to be exerting pressure to sugarcoat Bush's evaluation had retired 18 months before date of the the memo; both Colonel Killian's son and his widow said he never took notes or kept memos, didn't write like that and admired Bush, even travelling to another base to pin his wings on him and meet Bush the elder; the son also questioned one of the signatures).

Additional document experts have offered opinions contrary to that of Mr. Matley (not to mention Matley's prior article saying that what he had done could not be done).

Rather's first new witness (Barnes) was recalled to have earlier stated exactly the opposite of what he was now claiming and revealed (by his daughter, no less) to have a motive of hyping his upcoming book.

And General Hodges, the witness apparently thought to be the "trump card," recanted, so to speak, as noted above.

I think the documents are forgeries. I think Matley's "authentication" of the documents is complete bullshit (and so does Matley, at least as of 2002) I think Barnes is a terrible witness for the "influence" claim, and that Hodges is a non-witness at best.

But I don't think Rather intentionally trumpeted forged documents and biased, misleading witnesses. I think he fervently wants Bush to lose the election because that's what he thinks needs to happen in order for things to improve in the world, and he allowed that desire to blind him to the multiple, egregious and obvious flaws in the report.

His actions subsequent to the initial report, however, are something different altogether. As Nixon learned, its not the original problem that will kill you, its the coverup. Rather's Friday night rebuttal was pathetic. "Some typewriters" had the superscripted th option in the early seventies? Well, at least one did that used New Times Roman, but for God's sake man:

Who would write a memo and stick it in a file on the off chance that the subject of the memo would be running for reelection 30 freakin years later?

Where were these witnesses and documents in 2000?

Rather's claim that everyone else's document analysis is wrong because they are looking at copies of copies of faxes of copies begs the question: Should not CBS then release the actual documents that Matley was looking at, rather than just copies of them? Why won't it, and why won't they tell us where they got the documents from? If the documents are in fact forgeries, surely they owe no obligation to protect the source that embarrassed them. And since releasing the documents and documenting their provenance appears to be the only way to salvage the claims made by CBS, why won't they do so?

If there are two ways to produce the documents, one taking a whole bunch of time and effort using the Rose Mary Woods Stretch-like procedure outlined above and one taking minutes using nothing but MS Word and maybe Photoshop, does not Occam's Razor tell us that forgery is the more likely explanation?

Why would Colonel Killian keep an official order for Lt. Bush to report for a physical exam in his "personal file?" Why does his widow say that Colonel Killian did not keep such things?

In his rebuttal, Rather said he would report only "definitive evidence" contrary to his story. The various items listed above are not definitive evidence. They are strong evidence. They are, in my opinion, far more than a preponderance of the evidence. But they are not definitive. But then almost nothing could be definitive this long after the fact. The problem here is Rather's disingenous use of the standard of proof required for rebuttal evidence. The evidence for the original story turns out to be flimsy at best, and Rather thinks that only "definitive" evidence countering it is worthy of being reported?

Airing the original story was a mistake. Sticking to it in the face of the volume, nature and quality of the criticism levelled against it is a much, much bigger mistake. It is the type of mistake that ends careers.

Can Rather survive the ridicule? CBS News is already in last place for news among the three broadcast networks. The damage done to their flagship 60 Minutes franchise is massive and will grow larger as people start to ask what did Dan know and when did he know it and as clippies continue to be created and circulated on the net.

NOTE: I normally try hard to credit sources on my posts. In this case, there were just too many. All, repeat, all of the above facts were discovered by others and reported elsewhere on the internet in blogs, mainstream sites, newspapers such as the Washington Post, the Seattle Times, etc. Most of the analysis was done first elsewhere as well, but not, I think, all in one place. My apologies. Today's ration of free ice cream does not include sourcing references. I'll try to do better tomorrow.