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Monday, January 31, 2005
Christmas in Cambodia Isn't Going Away--Updated
Welcome Polipundit and Ankle-Biting Pundits Readers! Please feel free to check out some of the other posts on this blog, as well as Lifelike Pundits, where I contribute!
I was on the Hugh Hewitt show today briefly again to talk about Christmas in Cambodia. As many of you probably know, over on the Kerry Haters blog, Kitty, a reader of ours named L. Larson, and I were the first to break the news that Kerry had lied about this incident, about two and a half months before it became the most damaging (to Kerry) incident cited in the book, Unfit for Command.
As I blogged yesterday over at KH, Russert asked Kerry about Christmas in Cambodia yesterday on Meet the Press, but failed to follow up with the tough question. In this case, my dream question would be:
"Which boat did you take into Cambodia? Which crew?"
Because that has always been the huge problem with Christmas in Cambodia. It's interesting that the Swiftees used Stephen Gardner in their ad on this subject, because he's a key figure in understanding the trouble Kerry was in long ago on this subject.
You see, Stephen Gardner is the Pete Best of Kerry's Band of Brothers. He's the forgotten man. Kerry's biographer Douglas Brinkley claimed he'd been unable to locate Gardner alone of the men that served on Kerry's Swift Boats. And when Gardner did pop up, back in March, he told a different story than the other members of Kerry's two crews, a story of a young Lieutenant Kerry who wasn't a hero, but instead a coward.
I can't quote the words and hope to get linked by Hugh, so let's just say that if you click on the link above you'll find Gardner using a word for John Kerry that describes one of the two things that come out of the south side of a north-facing chicken, and it isn't an egg.
But here's the crux. Before Gardner even showed up, Brinkley had abandoned Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia story.
Put yourself in his shoes. You're a famed historian, and you have a statement that Kerry has made on numerous occasions, that he has cited as a critical turning point in his life. It's specific enough (Christmas Eve) and memorable enough (crossing into Cambodia), and you don't put that incident your biography of the man? Why would that be?
The only answer is that when you went around and interviewed the members of John Kerry's crew, nobody recalled going into Cambodia. And this is before you've even found Stephen Gardner, who says no rather emphatically in this commercial cited by Tim Russert Sunday:
MR. STEVE GARDNER: John Kerry claims that he spent Christmas in 1968 in Cambodia, and that is categorically a lie. Not in December, not in January, we were never in Cambodia on a secret mission ever.
So what do you do? You go back to your subject and say, "Senator Kerry, we have a problem here." And after some discussion, it is agreed that while your biography of Kerry will contain lots of mentions of Cambodia and how close young John was thereto and therefore preoccupied with the history of, it will contain no mention of an actual incursion into Cambodian territory.
That's pretty much the way the book reads. I don't say that's what happened, but it's at least more likely than the alternative, which is that Brinkley somehow missed hearing about this famed incident in Kerry's life.
Kerry doesn't even try to defend the Christmas Eve story; on Meet the Cuomo Aide he said, "Yes, I did go into Cambodia on a mission. Was it on that night? No, it was not on that night." But, unable to resist the impulse to twist one more time on the barbed wire he's trapped on, Kerry continued:
But we did go five miles into Cambodia. It was on another day. I jumbled the two together, but we were five miles into Cambodia. We went up on a mission with CIA agents--I believe they were CIA agents--CIA Special Ops guys. I even have some photographs of it, and I can document it. And it has been documented.
Caution here: Kerry probably does have photographs that he can claim "document" his story. There are two photographs in the photos section of Tour of Duty that depict Kerry transporting young men in camouflage outfits with lampblack on their faces (and yes, floppy hats) that Kerry could claim he thought were CIA men (although the book identifies the men as Navy Seals).
However, this could get Kerry into even murkier waters. The two photos in the book were taken by Michael Medeiros, a Kerry crew member aboard PCF-94, the boat Kerry went to after his other crew (including Gardner) were rotated out of Vietnam. The problem with Kerry claiming that he took this boat into Cambodia is that Medeiros comes in for special mention in the Brinkley book on page 288:
"According to the invaluable handwritten personal log Michael Medeiros kept of every mission he went on in 1969..."
Heh. Can you say, checkmate?
Some further notes:
1. Hugh asked why the media didn't ask these questions before the election, and why are they asking them now. In response I'd post two more questions: Whom would it have helped for the media to ask those questions before the election, and whom does it help now? The answers of course are President Bush then and Hillary/Edwards/Boxer and the rest of the Democrats angling for 2008 now.
2. I'd like to stress that my personal opinion is that the Swiftees were on the money with most of their charges, but many of Kerry's defenders are probably also describing accurately what they recall. Christmas in Cambodia proved to be a key story in the end because nobody stepped forward and said, "I was there with John Kerry and I agree with the way he says it happened." Nobody.
3. Kerry got himself into further trouble with his explanation of why he was ferrying CIA men up the river into Cambodia:
SEN. KERRY: I still have the hat that he gave me, and I hope the guy would come out of the woodwork and say, "I'm the guy who went up with John Kerry. We delivered weapons to the Khmer Rouge on the coastline of Cambodia." We went out of Ha Tien, which is right in Vietnam. We went north up into the border.
According to Wikipedia, which is reasonably useful on basic historical fact, here's some background on the Khmer Rouge:
The Communist Party of Cambodia was founded in the early 1950s, although in its early years it remained subordinate to the Communist Party of Vietnam. In the 1970s the Party adopted the name "Party of Democratic Kampuchea," ("Kampuchea" being an alternative spelling of Cambodia), but became commonly known by the French name Khmer Rouge. From the mid 1960s the Cambodian Communists conducted a low-level insurgency along the Vietnamese border, mainly in support of the Vietnamese Communists in their war with the United States.
On March 18, 1970, Cambodia's neutralist ruler, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, was deposed while out of the country by a coup d'état, widely believed to have been organised by the United States, which brought General Lon Nol to power. With American financial support, Lon Nol attempted to fight the Vietnamese Communists and the Khmer Rouge insurgency they were supporting.
So it would seem to be very unlikely that the US was supplying arms to the Khmer Rouge. But you know how it is when a little kid is caught lying; the lies continue and grow more incredible.
Kerry's not going away. Neither is his excellent Cambodian adventure.
Update: Tom Maguire notes the shipping guns to our enemy story. Tom also uses the Wikipedia entry on the Khmer Rouge as his source, and John Tabin notes that it has already been updated to reflect John Kerry's support. A commenter on Maguire's blog says that Kerry meant to say the Khmer Serai.
The Beam in Bill Moyers' Eye--Updated
Bill Moyers apparently isn't being ironic with this article in the Star-Tribune.
He spends the first half of the article talking about those "bizarre" folks who believe in Armageddon and the Second Coming.
I'm not making this up. Like Monbiot, I've read the literature. I've reported on these people, following some of them from Texas to the West Bank. They are sincere, serious and polite as they tell you they feel called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That's why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. It's why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of Revelations where four angels "which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of man."
But then, with no apparent realization that he's engaging in the same kind of apocalyptic fear-mongering (as he would see it) that he just spent several paragraphs deriding, Moyers veers into environmental doomsaying.
I read the news just last night and learned that the administration's friends at the International Policy Network, which is supported by Exxon Mobil and others of like mind, have issued a new report that climate change is "a myth, sea levels are not rising" [and] scientists who believe catastrophe is possible are "an embarrassment."
I not only read the news but the fine print of the recent appropriations bill passed by Congress, with the obscure (and obscene) riders attached to it: a clause removing all endangered species protections from pesticides; language prohibiting judicial review for a forest in Oregon; a waiver of environmental review for grazing permits on public lands; a rider pressed by developers to weaken protection for crucial habitats in California.
I read all this and look up at the pictures on my desk, next to the computer -- pictures of my grandchildren. I see the future looking back at me from those photographs and I say, "Father, forgive us, for we know not what we do." And then I am stopped short by the thought: "That's not right. We do know what we are doing. We are stealing their future. Betraying their trust. Despoiling their world."
Update: Lileks, as usual, does it better, and Teflon does a marvelous full-on fisking.
Around the Horn
Blackfive reminds us of the kinds of people we are fighting in Iraq: the terrorists used a child with Down's Syndrome as a suicide bomber.
Marine Corps Moms has an email from a proud new Marine Corps Mom (and long-time Marine Corps Wife).
Lorie Byrd has an idea for parents as to how to maximize utility in the bathroom. As I mentioned in her comments, our family was somewhat fanatical about accomplishing two things at once, as inspired by the Kennedys (no, not Teddy). She also has a link to Al Franken's crying jag, although I couldn't get Quicktime to work with Firefox, so I haven't seen the video.
The Leather Pundit reminds us that when your boss is named George, you're always in the hot seat.
New Blog, Old Friend
Our buddy Grant from Australia has finally joined the ranks of the living dead (aka bloggers), with his new blog, The Radical Conservative. Those who read Kerry Haters regularly during the election season remember Grant as a great source of news articles and I think we even posted one of his superb emails verbatim on the blog. Grant's writing has a little bite to it, as this example shows:
Well here they go again. The sycophantic hacks on the left who call themselves journalists lining up to back their next great white hope - The Bomber. I'll continue to add to this list as time goes on in what I suspect is an action motivated not through genuine support for the leader but just simply an outward loathing and hostility for the incumbent.
Welcome to the blogosphere, Grant!
Liberty Updates
Here's another surprisingly upbeat assessment from the NY Times:
I write this from a rundown house in the poorest slum in the Middle East. Until yesterday, my hosts and neighbors had for three decades been among the most repressed people on earth. Yet when I walk out the door, I see a city smothered in posters and banners from a hundred political parties. Like Afghanistan last year, the country has endorsed the right to vote in percentages that shame the electoral apathy of the rich world. Let nobody tell you that this election was anything but real. Iraq's Baathists and Wahhabis may continue to bark, but this caravan is moving on.
Newsweek's correspondent was nervous at first, but then relaxed.
The most touching story I heard was that of Samir Hassan, 32, who voted in a Sunni neighborhood of West Baghdad. Dressed in shabby clothes, he hobbled to the polling place on one leg and a pair of crutches; the other leg had been blown off by a suicide car bomb that targeted a police recruitment center he had the misfortune of passing at the time, one day last October. "I would have crawled here if I had to," he told a reporter who found him waiting in a long line. "I don't want terrorists to kill other Iraqis like they tried to kill me."
Fred Kaplan warns that problems are still ahead, but expresses optimism that Iraq may indeed turn out to be the model:
Finally, imagine a Syrian watching Al-Arabiya, seeing Iraqi-born Syrians going to special polling places to elect Iraqi leaders, observing that no Syrians of any sort have the right to elect the leaders of Syria—and perhaps asking himself, "Why?" It is not inconceivable that this flicker of democratic practice in Iraq could ignite a flame of some sort across the Middle East. To what end, and for ultimate good or ill, who knows. But something happened in Iraq today, something not only dramatic and stirring but perhaps also very big.
Sunday, January 30, 2005
Great Day for the Iraqis
Iraq the Model:
I couldn't think of a scene more beautiful than that. From the early hours of the morning, People filled the street to the voting center in my neighborhood; youths, elders, women and men. Women's turn out was higher by the way. And by 11 am the boxes where I live were almost full! Anyone watching that scene cannot but have tears of happiness, hope, pride and triumph.
The Mesopotamian:
I bow in respect and awe to the men and women of our people who, armed only with faith and hope are going to the polls under the very real threats of being blown to pieces. These are the real braves; not the miserable creatures of hate who are attacking one of the noblest things that has ever happened to us. Have you ever seen anything like this? Iraq will be O.K. with so many brave people, it will certainly O.K.; I can say no more just now; I am just filled with pride and moved beyond words.
Healing Iraq:
The turnout in Iraq was really like nothing that I had expected. I was glued in front of tv for most of the day. My mother was in tears watching the scenes from all over the country. Iraqis had voted for peace and for a better future, despite the surrounding madness. I sincerely hope this small step would be the start of much bolder ones, and that the minority which insists on enslaving the majority of Iraqis would soon realise that all that they have accomplished till now is in vain.
Diary from Baghdad:
(Holds up the V sign with the purple index finger).
John Kerry:
"It is significant that there is a vote in Iraq," Kerry said in an interview with NBC television's Meet the Press. "But ... no one in the United States should try to overhype this election.
NPR Manages to Find a Downside to the Iraqi Election
Went out in the car for a little drive, thought I'd see what NPR's take was on the Iraqi elections. Surprisingly, they were pretty upbeat, at least in the news segment, stressing the high turnout (while warning that it was lower in some parts of the country). They had a few Iraqis on talking about their experience voting, mostly positive (although they did manage to focus on one poor woman who'd walked to two different polling stations to be told she wasn't on the list). But incredibly, they included an interview clip from a man who preferred the prior elections when Saddam was the only candidate, who griped about how the elections weren't legitimate because Hussein wasn't on the ballot.
Whatever is Not Forbidden Will Soon Become Mandatory
This story in the Telegraph is sure to get some attention among the blogs.
A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services'' at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.
Germany legalized prostitution and cathouses a few years ago, and now some of the logical consequences of that decision are starting to manifest themselves. To the bureaucratic mind, if it's legal there's nothing wrong with it, and therefore it's perfectly legitimate to require somebody to work at that occupation. After all, it helps cut down on the unemployment rate:
Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job – including in the sex industry – or lose her unemployment benefit. Last month German unemployment rose for the 11th consecutive month to 4.5 million, taking the number out of work to its highest since reunification in 1990.
The government had considered making brothels an exception on moral grounds, but decided that it would be too difficult to distinguish them from bars. As a result, job centres must treat employers looking for a prostitute in the same way as those looking for a dental nurse.
Too difficult to distinguish them from bars? I must be going to the wrong bars!
Hat Tip: Tim Worstall (again!). I'll stop linking him when he stops finding so much good stuff!
Global Warming IV
British blogger Tim Worstall has another look at the ICCT report on global warming over at Tech Central Station. What I particuarly enjoyed about Tim's piece was the way it highlighted the hypocrisy of the panel:
No, I'm sorry, there are no prizes for guessing what their view of the matter is. Everything is terrible, getting worse and we all die Tuesday week unless we abolish capitalism. Actually, it's not quite that bad as it appears that they only actually met twice (once in England, once in Australia. Anyone want to run those flights through the CO2 emissions calculator?)
and
I went to the IPPR site in the UK looking for a copy of the paper and found that I could only buy a dead tree version, there was no .pdf or html version. Given the well known journalistic ethic that one never actually pays for anything I called them up and they confirmed that there never would be a down loadable version (although I will give them some credit, for when they heard I was from Techcentralstation they emailed over a .pdf with the instructions to have fun... thanks guys) so I'm left to conclude that this earth-shattering report, the one about emissions, saving the planet and all, is so important that it must be ferried round by vehicles burning fossil fuels.
Indeed. I recall a number of years ago, a reporter noting that Al Gore and various other luminaries, while meeting on Global Warming at the UN, left their chauffeur-driven limos running during the conference. Don't do as we do, do as we say about sums it up.
NY Times Labels Iraqi Elections "A Success"
Well, I would never have guessed it.
If the insurgents wanted to stop people from voting, they failed. If they wanted to cause chaos, they failed. The voters were completely defiant, and although there was never the sense that the insurgency was over, there was a feeling that the people of Baghdad, showing a new, positive attitude, had turned a corner.
Headline on the front page: Iraqis Voting Amid Tight Security; Turnout in Capital Signals Early Success
Update: The Times reverts to form. The new headline: Iraqi Voters Turn Out in High Numbers Despite Rebel Attacks Killing Up to 36
Saturday, January 29, 2005
Great Optical Illusion
It takes awhile, but eventually you see it.
Friday, January 28, 2005
The Nutty Professor
This one's a little hard to believe:
A University of Colorado professor who compared the victims of the World Trade Center attacks to Nazis said he would not back down from the topic in a speech in New York state next month.
In ''Some People Push Back,'' a treatise he wrote shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Churchill said the 3,000 people killed in the twin towers weren't innocent victims. He said they worked for ''the mighty engine of profit'' but chose to ignore their role.
Churchill, an indigenous issues expert, described the World Trade Center victims as ''little Eichmanns,'' a reference to Adolf Eichmann, who carried out Hitler's plan during World War II to exterminate Jews in Europe.
Here's the original "treatise".
Needless to say, the President of CU-Boulder, where this moron teaches, disagrees with the thought, but will defend to the death his right to be paid by the state to say it.
Oh, and check out the picture of this genius. Looks like something straight out of the 1970s, but what's with the name, Ward Churchill? Surely it should be something with an ethnic, revolutionary flavor like El Gato Loco? Hat tip: Instapundit
Who'll Stop McCain?
Pat Hynes asks the question.
Alterman/Jarvis Battle
This post is getting a lot of attention around the blogosphere.
I don't particularly care for Jarvis myself; his posts often reveal anti-religious sentiments (you'll get a sense of this right at the beginning of the post when he describes Michael Medved as a rabid conservative because he supports the Passion of the Christ), but you know how it is; Alterman's the enemy on Iraq, so Jarvis is my friend in this battle.
Thursday, January 27, 2005
Watch Out for Them Bloggers!
Joe Strupp warns reporters in E&P with the cautionary tale of Nick Coleman and Power Line.
If you don't believe that bloggers are giving newspapers a headache, talk to Nick Coleman. A veteran newspaper columnist for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Coleman is in the middle of an old-fashioned feud with one of the leading conservative Web logs in the country.
Actually they are giving Coleman a headache; the headache that Coleman inflicted on his own paper is described here:
But Coleman's problems didn't end there. Shortly after the New Year, TCF Bank Chairman and CEO Bill Cooper wrote an angry letter to the Star-Tribune vowing never to buy advertising in the paper again. Cooper was incensed that Coleman's column had attempted to link the blog to TCF, while allegedly hinting that some readers should withdraw their money from the finance company. "I have nothing to do with that blog and Coleman never talked to me," Cooper says now. "It's 'Dan Rather' journalism."
TCF is the employer of one of the Power Line bloggers, and you've gotta love Bill Cooper's perfect quip about "Dan Rather journalism".
The rest of the story continues on in this line about poor Nick Coleman and those nasty bloggers.
He (Coleman) also claims that the blogs are dangerous because they are not under the same ethical restrictions as mainstream media and seek to stay on the attack, facts be damned. He contends "the mainstream media is under assault."
No. Facts be damned is not part of it, and that's the point. Coleman, like Dan Rather, was the one who got facts wrong, and he's paying for it. If Power Line made mistakes and didn't correct them, folks would hound them. Conservatives disagree over things all the time; I've even disagreed with Hugh Hewitt on rare occasions.
BTW, this article is a classic of old media; no links to the source documents so you can check things out yourself. The Power Line/Coleman slugfest has been well-covered in the blogs, start with a search here.
It's Dowdy-Doody Time!
Slow-Mo is back with another of her m ind-numbingly stupid columns. This time it's about Armstrong Willians & Maggie Gallagher getting paid to promote administration policy. I haven't had time to pay too much attention to the latter case, but most of those who have seem to agree that it's not similary to that of Williams.
But of course, you can imagine how Dowd treats it. She offers to prostitute herself in return for filthy lucre from the Bush Administration (as compared to the NY Times' filthy lucre). Most of it is about columns she would be willing write, but then she slips in this one:
What is all this hand-wringing about the 31 marines who died in a helicopter crash in Iraq yesterday? It's only slightly more than the number of people who died in traffic accidents in California last Memorial Day. The president set the right tone, avoiding pathos when asked about the crash. "Obviously," he said, "any time we lose life it is a sad moment."
It doesn't fit with the rest of what she wrote; it reads like something she cut and pasted from somewhere else.
The president might need my help as well. He looked out of it yesterday when asked why his foreign policy is so drastically different from the one laid out in Foreign Affairs magazine in 2000 by Ms. Rice - a preview that did not emphasize promoting democracy and liberty around the world. "I didn't read the article," Mr. Bush said.
Gee, Mo, I hear that FDR promised to keep us out of World War II during the 1940 campaign as well.
Global Warming Continued
I have been fairly critical of the report issued by the International Climate Change Taskforce, as commissioned by the Center For American Progress and two foreign groups.
Now, I'm not a scientist, so I can't get into the technical aspects of climate change. However, that is not what the role of a blogger is anyway. We're supposed to be the Cyber Sherpas, as coined by Hugh Hewitt; guides to the top of the mountain of data. I can't be the expert, but I can point the way to his house.
Here's a debate about global warming by two scientists. One is the famed science fiction writer, Jerry Pournelle, the other is Gavin Schmidt, a scientist with NASA. The debate is fairly long and occasionally technical, but not difficult to follow.
Pournelle raises some points that seem to me to be critical:
The models so far do not seem able to take the initial conditions of 1900 and get us to the year 2000 with any accuracy whatever. But they sure can take the conditions of 2004 and tell us about the year 2020!
This has always struck me as a critical flaw in the global warming models. To give a sports analogy, suppose I were to tell you that I'd constructed a model that projects that Alex Rodriguez will close out his career with 853 home runs. There are two methods of checking the model. First, we could wait for another 14 years or so and see where he ends up. And second, we could test the model against past players who have already finished their careers to see how well it predicted their future performance back when they were A-Rod's age.
Here's a simple home run projection model. Take the player's age and subtract 20. Divide the result into the number of home runs the player has already had. Multiply the result by 20 and that's how many homers the player will have at the end of his career. Working with A-Rod, he's 29 and he has 384 homers so far, so we would project him to 853 by the following formula: (384/(29-20))*20 = 853.
So now we look at some other famous ballplayers and see how well the model works. Hank Aaron had 342 at A-Rod's age; that projects out to 760. Aaron actually closed out his career with 755, so we would certainly say that the model worked with him. The method does not work as well with Babe Ruth, who only had 284 homers at that age, which would project out to 631, quite a bit short of Ruth's actual total of 714. Of course, it's not hard to see why; Ruth spent the early years of his career toiling as a pitcher and did not start accumulating homers until he was about 24.
Okay, the point is not to present my very simple projection system for home runs, but to highlight that if you want people to accept your projections, it's a very good idea to be able to show that they work well with past data. And as Pournelle notes, the global warming models do not project 2000's weather accurately based on past data.
Also, note this comment from Pournelle:
And tell me about your climate model that explains why things were warm around 800-1000 AD and got cold starting about 1300, until in 1776 the Hudson was frozen solid enough to bring cannon across. Show me a model that doesn't require me to let you pick arbitrary start and stop years to establish climate trends.
Kind of interesting, that, because as it happens, the report issued by the ICCT takes as its baseline the year 1750:
...[W]e propose a long-term objective of preventing the average global surface temperature from rising more than 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) above its pre-industrial level (taken as the level in 1750, when carbon dioxide (CO2) levels first began to rise appreciably as a result of human activities).
Got it? They pick as a baseline, an era when the planet was quite a bit colder (the Hudson frozen?) and say, "Let's not get too far away from that."
More on this topic later. Hat Tip to Instapundit for the link to the Pournelle page.
New to the Blogroll
One interesting side effect of Hugh Hewitt's Vox Blogoli is the way it reveals blogs that have a common interest to each other. I remember when I was first writing posts for KH about Kerry's involvement in a VVAW meeting where the assassination of US Senators was discussed, it seemed odd to me that none of the other bloggers were covering it. Of course, Captain's Quarters and Just One Minute were covering it, I just hadn't discovered those blogs yet.
So I am pleased to introduce Molten Thought, a blog that I became acquainted with through Vox Blogoli. Looks to be a new blog, but co-bloggers Teflon and Word Girl have the blogging thing down: Oodles of posts on varied topics with links and intelligent commentary. Well worth the trip!
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Vox Blogoli Revisited
The other day I wrote a post for Hugh Hewitt's Vox Blogoli (or is it Bloguli?-- Why ask? Hugh can't spell real words, why should we expect him to be able to spell made up ones?--ed) concerning a Jonathan Rauch article in the Atlantic which contained (in the last paragraph) some comments about religious conservatives which seemed rather offensive.
Hugh had Rauch on his show later that same day, and I was struck by his insistence that no insult had been intended and his forthright admission that if his article had been perceived as insulting, then it was his fault for poor writing. Very few mainstream writers would make that admission. Rauch said that his intent was to write a piece revealing how little difference there really is between Red and Blue America and asked that readers judge the whole piece rather than just the snippet at the end. Hugh has been granted permission to post the entire article on his blog.
I have now read the entire article, and I have to say, there is a great deal that I agree with. Rauch's thesis is that the American people are not as separated from each other by culture as much as they are by politics and that they have become less divided over time with the exception of political partisans.
This is something I have remarked on in the past. Many folks seem to think that politics has never been so nasty and divisive, which is absurd. Read the Lincoln/Douglas debates sometime if you want to see a pair of politicians go at each other hammer and tongs. Rauch points to the collapse of the smoke-filled room and the increasing democratization of the nomination process as central to the increasing polarization of the partisans, a theme I have returned to on many occasions.
However, there are some places where Rauch displays his own partisanship.
It is interesting to wonder how much less polarized American politics might be today if John McCain had won the presidency in 2000. Instead we got Bush, with his unyielding temperament and his strategy of mobilizing conservatives.
My guess is that American politics would be about 0.1% less polarized under McCain. I honestly do not understand the continuing fascination of the Democrats with McCain, but I can guarantee that it would disappear about 20 minutes into any McCain Administration as he began to staff his Cabinet with, gasp, conservative Republicans!
Even more divisive was the fact that one party--”the Republicans”--has controlled the presidency and both chambers of Congress since 2003. In a fifty-fifty country, shutting one party out of the government can only lead to partisan excess on one side and bitter resentment on the other.
Well, we'd like to get the Democrats some sort of representation, but they keep messing things up with their partisan, angry campaigns. And the Democrats for many, many years in the 1930s through the 1960s controlled both the presidency and both houses of Congress without it leading to a bitter divide. Of course, part of that was that the Republicans of that era tended to accept their status as a minority party, while the Democrats still insist that they're relevant.
But overall, this is a thoughtful, intelligent analysis of the political/cultural scene today with only a few real blind spots.
Reasonable Democrats Update--Updated!
Based on his vote on the Condoleezza Rice nomination for Secretary of State, we can cross Evan Bayh off the list.
The nos, for those who are keeping score, are Kerry, Byrd, Boxer, Dayton, Jeffords, Kennedy, Harkin, Reed, Durbin, Lautenberg, Levin, Akaka and Bayh.
Update: Lorie Byrd and Power Line speculate that this could be an attempt by Bayh to move far enough away from the center to be acceptable to Democratic primary voters in 2008. I'd like to say that it's far too early to be thinking in those terms, but what other explanation fits?
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Global Warming Part II
I thought I'd take another look at this issue.
First, let's examine who prepared the report. Yes, I know, if you can't attack the message, attack the messenger. But the new report is a product of three different organizations; the Institute for Public Policy Research in the UK, the Center for American Progress in the US, and the Australia Institute in Australia.
Rather than deal with the two foreign groups and try to puzzle out where they fit on the political spectrum, let's start with the Center for American Progress, which bills itself as bringing "Progressive ideas for a strong, just and free America". Two major league leftist buzz words in there: "Progressive" (i.e., socialistic) and "just" (i.e., socialistic).
Looking at their website, it is not hard to locate the CFAP on the political spectrum; it is, as suspected "progressive" (i.e., socialistic). A "Daily Progress Report" mentions the "Assault on Liberty", which is not about car bombers in Iraq, but instead concerns itself with "Bush leads war on women's rights".
Vox Bloguli
Hugh Hewitt asks bloggers to comment on the following passage from a Jonathan Rauch piece in the Atlantic. Subscription is required, but here's the key paragraph:
“On balance it is probably healthier if religious conservatives are inside the political system than if they operate as insurgents and provocateurs on the outside. Better they should write anti-abortion planks into the Republican platform than bomb abortion clinics. The same is true of the left. The clashes over civil rights and Vietnam turned into street warfare partly because activists were locked out of their own party establishments and had to fight, literally, to be heard. When Michael Moore receives a hero’s welcome at the Democratic National Convention, we moderates grumble; but if the parties engage fierce activists while marginalizing tame centrists, that is probably better for the social peace than the other way around.”
Hugh requests "comments on this passage, what it says about the author, The Atlantic, and the left's understanding of the Christian culture in America in 2005."
First, most obviously this passage reveals a startling misunderstanding of religious conservatives. Rauch's point seems to be that if religious conservatives are frozen outside the party system that they will turn into abortion clinic bombers. This is absurd, of course. La Shawn Barber and Michael Gallaugher are not bomb throwers. Indeed, it is extremely questionable to consider people who would do something like bombing an abortion clinic as "religious" or, ironically, "pro-life".
Second, I'm not sure what he means by "locked out of their party establishment". To a certain extent, it may be true that the radical left is locked out of the Democrats; but that is a historical fact caused mostly by the fact that the radical left was never able to live up to its claims of being able to deliver victory for Democratic candidates. By contrast, the religious conservatives have done a bang-up job of delivering the votes needed for their side to win, and I would hardly say they're locked out of the party establishment.
Third, Rauch obviously suffers from Vietnam protestor nostalgia. It is reasonably true that the Democratic party organs were closed to the antiwar crowd in 1968; but the left spent the next several years infiltrating the machinery and in 1972 they were able to nominate the candidate of their choosing (with disastrous results).
And finally, Rauch plainly misunderstands the size of the radical left versus the size of the religious conservatives. The radical left is tiny (if vocal and influential) compared to Christian conservatives. If the Republican party were to vocally distance themselves from the Christian right, they would not win another election. If the Democrats were to jettison the left wing, they would stand a darned good chance of winning.
Why? Well, I call it the two votes for the price of one rule. Let's say that by calibrating its position on an issue slightly to the right, the Democrats lose one voter on the wings, but pick up a voter in the middle. Sounds like an even trade, right? But it's not; it's better than that (for the Democrats). Why? Because that voter on the left is not going to vote for a Republican. They might vote for a Green, or a Communist or a Socialist, but they are highly unlikely to move to the GOP. By contrast, if the Democrats don't get that voter in the middle, it will probably go to a Republican. Thus, picking up that vote in the middle is like getting two votes for the price of one; the vote you take away from your opponent and the vote you pick up for your candidate.
Around the Horn
Kitty's celebrating the marriage of her son, Zappa.
Lifelike Pundits has oodles of content and a new contributor, the Professor (wait a minute, does that make me Gilligan?), who has some amusing thoughts about Lawrence Summers unfortunate comments the other day about women not being suited for higher mathematics and science. While we're on that subject, check out this post as well.
Danegerus has some thoughts about Barbara Boxer's proposed candidacy for President.
Superhawk reminds us that PJ O'Rourke is the funniest man on the planet.
Monday, January 24, 2005
The Global Warming Blog Smackdown!
Wizbang linked an article on a new report on global warming, together with some dismissively skeptical comments.
Policy makers will not pass the draconian legislation the environmental movement wants because there is no pressing need to ruin the lives of millions of people on the whacky theory of the week. So the environmentalists have now created an artificial deadline to motivate policy makers. The news report even says that is why this paper was written!
Bill at InDC Journal (who voted for Bush and has always seemed reasonably conservative to me) nuked Wizbang.
Righties often complain about or snidely mock the dire proclamations of environmentalists as "junk science" trotted out for political purposes. And sometimes, they're right. But I have a problem with right-wing commentators that immediately lurch to attack stories like this in absolutist terms....
Now the odd part there is the "righties" and "right-wing commentators" part. I mean, Bill has done some great posts that certainly led me to believe that if not right-wing himself, he was at least right-wing friendly, in a "not that there's anything wrong with that" kind of way.
But back to the subject, I can absolutely see somebody being a Republican (as Bill has always appeared to me) and yet believing in global warming. I probably did back in the 1980s (although I don't remember GW being quite the bete noir that it is today). I remember looking at an almanac of Phoenix back then and noticing that almost half the hottest days in history had come in the prior 10 years, while only one of the coldest days had come in that period. However, this was before I knew about the "heat island" effect of cities, which absorb heat during the day and release it at night, preventing it from cooling off as much as it would naturally in the desert.
After reading about the heat island effect, I made a small effort to become more educated about the subject of global warming, but I always found as many contrary pieces of evidence as those that backed the theory. And it was pretty apparent that lines were forming on the dispute based on politics, with people I trust very little (Al Gore) pushing it the hardest
The other thing that was interesting is that the prescriptions sounded suspiciously familiar. An increase in taxes on gas has been a holy grail for the Left since the John Anderson campaign of 1980. For the younger set, John Anderson was one of those McCain-type Republicans who becomes enamored of denouncing the "extremists" in his party (in this case Ronald Reagan). Anderson decided to run one of those quixotic campaigns for President a la Ross Perot, and he took up as his signature issue, the idea of a 50-cent per gallon increase in gas taxes.
He rode that platform to 7% in the national electorate (and zero in the electoral college). It was not enough to help Jimmy Carter, and indeed, it is quite likely that he hurt Carter by attracting ultralibs with his gas tax. Anderson did quite well in Democrat states like Massachusetts (15.1%, ironically handing the Bay State to Reagan), Rhode Island (14.3%) and Vermont (14.9%) and not so well in Republican states like South Carolina (1.6%), Georgia (2.2%) and Mississippi (1.3%).
And since then, the gas tax has been a hot item on the left's agenda. Not surprising since it combines two things that liberals love: raising taxes and discouraging un-PC behavior. It's like the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup of politics.
As I commented over at InDC, I'll believe in GW when the libs start prescribing another solution that seems quite obvious to me. If you really believe in global warming, you have to be in favor of nuclear power, which creates no greenhouse gases as compared to gas or coal-fired power plants.
The Reality-Based Community? Part XX
Heh, this cover is pretty funny.
If You Think Our Media Hate Bush....
Get a gander at what one columnist in Australia thinks:
George Bush's second inaugural extravaganza was every bit as repugnant as I had expected, a vulgar orgy of triumphalism probably unmatched since Napoleon crowned himself emperor of the French in Notre Dame in 1804.
The little Corsican corporal had a few decent victories to his escutcheon. Lodi, Marengo, that sort of thing. Not so this strutting Texan mountebank, with his chimpanzee smirk and his born-again banalities delivered in that constipated syntax that sounds the way cold cheeseburgers look, and his grinning plastic wife, and his scheming junta of neo-con spivs, shamans, flatterers and armchair warmongers, and his sinuous evasions and his brazen lies, and his sleight of hand theft from the American poor, and his rape of the environment, and his lethal conviction that the world must submit to his Pax Americana or be bombed into charcoal.
That's just about the most over-the-top thing I've read this year. It has everything that marks it as moonbattery of the first degree:
1. Refers to Bush as a chimp.
2. Mentions the smirk.
3. Mentions neo-cons.
4. Bush steals from the poor.
5. Bush rapes the environment.
6. Everybody who doesn't agree will be bombed.
Hat Tip: Longtime KH reader from down under, Grant.
 Say It Ain't So! 
Ankle Biting Pundits Launches!
Our good friends from the election season, Patrick Hynes and the Writing Partner (renamed the Bulldog Pundit) have launched their new website (calling it a blog seems insufficient). One wonders how they'll get along together the next two weeks however, as Pat's a Patriots fan, and the BDP is an Eagle-holic.
Sunday, January 23, 2005
Conference Championships
As predicted here, Philly and New England advanced. I won't crow over that a lot; after all, both teams were favored.
The good: As usual, the teams with the better passer rating won. McNabb (111.5) and Brady (130.5) outdueled Vick (45.5) and Roethlisberger (78.1). If you're keeping track, the higher-rated passer has now won every game except one (9-1).
The bad. Two consecutive hideous coaching decisions by Jim Mora, Jr. Third and 10k early in the fourth, shotgun formation, you try the draw? This leads to fourth and 8 at the Philly 37, down by 10 early in the fourth quarter, you've got to go for it. Instead Mohr punts it into the end zone for a net 17 yard gain. Three plays and a first down later, the Eagles are past the 37.
The Upshot: As usual, those of us who've been contending that Brady's really something special and not just a guy who lucked into a system, are seeing him make the Super Bowl. Roethlisberger had a brutal day, but he comes out with a 14-0 record as a regular season quarterback and 1-1 in the playoffs. Not bad for a rookie.
Vick got a horrendous vote of no confidence from his coach on the two bad plays highlighted above. He's the highest paid player in the league and you don't give him two cracks at it late in the game?
My guess is the Patriots are favored by 5 in the Super Bowl. At this point, I gotta figure they'll win going away. And if that happens, Brady moves into the inner ring of NFL QBs with 3 titles or more: Starr (5), Montana (4), Bradshaw (4), Herber (4), Luckman (4), Graham (3), Unitas (3) and Aikman (3), and he would do it at a younger age than any of the others in the Super Bowl era. Brady's 28, Aikman was 29, Bradshaw 30 and Montana 32.
Steyn Nails It
A few days ago, I covered the rather amusing David von Drehle article on his trip to the Red Sea over at Kerry Haters.
Mark Steyn targets the same passage that tickled me.
But in the middle of his dispatch was this quote from Joyce Smith of Coalgate, Okla.: "When Kerry said he was for abortion and one-sex marriages, I just couldn't see our country being led by someone like that."
Von Drehle added: ''Later, I double-checked what Kerry had said on those subjects. During his campaign, he opposed same-sex marriage and said that abortion was a private matter.''
If the point is that Red Staters are ignorant, double- or even triple-checking John Kerry isn't the best way to demonstrate it. Insofar as I understand it, Kerry's view on abortion was that, while he passionately believes life begins at conception, he would never let his deeply held personal beliefs interfere with his legislative program. On gay marriage, likewise. That's why gay groups backed Kerry and why von Drehle's media buddies weren't running editorials warning that a Kerry presidency would end "a woman's right to choose": They understood his deeply passionately personally deep personal passionate beliefs were just an artful but meaningless formulation designed to get him through election season. Message: If Kerry's elected, abortions will continue and gay marriage will happen and he'll be cool with both. Joyce Smith understood that. Von Drehle seems vaguely resentful that she wasn't dumb enough to fall for the spin cooked up by Kerry's hairsplitters and enthusiastically promoted by his media cheerleaders.
Dowd at Her Worst
Is there anybody out there who finds this witty?
Some of the same advisers who filled Mr. Bush's brain with sugary visions of a quick and painless Iraq makeover did mean the speech to be literal; they are drawing up military options for the rest of the Middle East. Once again, the lovable and malleable president seems to be soaking up the martial mind-set of those around him, almost like ... a sponge.
SpongeBush SquarePants!
One of the key elements of humor is surprise. Dowd demonstrates continually that she has no concept of this fact.
Friday, January 21, 2005
Conference Championship Weekend
Gregg Easterbrook points out that Conference Championships do not always go to the home teams; over the last 14 years the local teams have gone just 16-12. However, that masks what Easterbrook refers to as the Pennsylvania curse: during that time, the two PA (Pittsburgh & Philadelphia) teams have gone 1-5 at home in the Conference Championship game. And of course, that is relevant because this weekend the two games are being played in the Keystone State.
I'm with the oddsmakers on this one; New England seems likely to win, and Philly should finally get over the hump this year and make it to the Super Bowl. But I would caution that both games are really coin flips. Pittsburgh has beaten New England this season already, and Corey Dillon wouldn't have made that much of a difference, given that the Steelers jumped out to an early 21-3 lead and the Patriots were forced to play comeback football.
The Eagles will win if they can hold the Falcons' Michael Vick in check. Vick has not shown much ability as a passer (his passer rating was tied with Tim Rattay's), but he's clearly the most dangerous scrambler the league has ever seen. I agree with the folks who like to say that kind of running is not "sustainable"; sooner or later Vick will get hurt again and everybody will question Jim Mora, Jr.'s judgment in letting him run freely. But until that happens, Vick is going to cause havoc around the NFL. I would not be surprised at all if he (or running back Warrick Dunn) turns out to be the difference in this game. If Philly is going to win, they'd better take the early lead and force Vick to beat them with his arm and not his legs.
If the Protesters Have Bloody Ankles...
It's probably because the Bulldog Pundit has been gnawing at them.
The actual headline of the story is "Cohesion Missing From Anti-War Movement". We think that by replacing the word "Cohesion" with a number of other words - such as "Sanity", "Logic", "Popular Support", "Common Sense" or "Opposable Thumbs" would have been the more accurate headline (OK, we were just kidding, partly, about that last one).
Nothing but net!
The Reality-Based Community?
Here's an article on folks planning on moving abroad now that the election's over. Unfortunately, it's still prospective.
The process of becoming a Canadian citizen takes at least two years, and at the moment the authorities in Ottawa say it is impossible to estimate how many US citizens are currently applying. What is certain is that the re-election of George Bush, along with what many perceive as an attendant shift to the right in America's cultural and political environment, has led many desperate Americans to enquire as to how they might get out of Dodge.
Don't let the door hit you on the way out!
Another Liberal Patriot
First Guess Is He's Too Busy Laughing At Your Hair
It Just Wouldn't Be a Protest Without Giant Puppets
Thursday, January 20, 2005
But They Support the Troops
Caption:
Sgt. 1st Class Jeff Due, right, a U.S. Army recruiter, is surrounded by protesters at Seattle Central Community College, Thursday, Jan. 20, 2005, in Seattle. After about a 10-minute standoff during which protesters tore up U.S Army literature, the protesters were successful in getting Due and another recruiter to leave their table under escort by campus security officers.
But the Protesters Aren't Anti-American
They're just burning the flag to keep warm, I suppose.
Hey Gang, What Time Is It?
It's Dowdy-Doody time!
Slow Mo is back with another of her spinster schoolgirl columns. It's even more insipid than her usual tripe, with Dowd "proving" that Secretary of State to be Condoleezza Rice doesn't know elementary subjects. Now, you might think that a woman who gripes all the time about how no man wants her because she's too smart might have a little sympathy for a super-intelligent, single woman. Guess again!
Her geometry is skewed if she thinks she'll now be more powerful than Rummy and Dick Cheney. Doesn't she know that the Pentagon has more sides than her Crawford triangle with George and Laura?
Two can play at that game. Hey, Maureen if only Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones had agreed to your suggestion of a menage a trois, you wouldn't be a shriveled-up and bitter skank. Well, actually you would still be a shriveled-up skank, but you wouldn't be quite as bitter.
Just for Fun
I thought I'd pay a little visit to the New York Times archives search. Way back in the first post on this blog, I checked the Times for the terms "moderate Republicans" and "moderate Democrats". Since then, the Howell Raines firing and the hiring of an ombudsman in the form of Dan Okrent have happened, so I thought it would be a good idea to look at how things have changed. I searched from 1/1/04 to the present. Results?
"Moderate Republican": 55 instances
"Moderate Democrat": 10 instances
The point, of course, is that Democrats don't require the "moderate" or "good doggy" label anywhere near as often as Republicans.
How about the old standbyes, "Liberal Democrat" and "Conservative Republican"?
"Liberal Democrat": 47 instances
"Conservative Republican": 63 instances
Actually that's a pretty good improvement over the bad old days. If we look from January 1, 2000-January 1, 2004 the bias is more obvious:
"Liberal Democrat": 191 instances
"Conservative Republican": 388 instances.
Gun-Grabber Michael Moore's Bodyguard Busted for Carrying an Unlicensed Weapon
Instapundit pointed me to this one.
Update: This post at Moorewatch indicates that the story may have been overblown by Fox News; the security company that the bodyguard works for says that the man arrested was never a bodyguard for Moore.
Correction: They say "Though I realize a Michael Moore connection would be of interest to your web site, Patrick Burk is not Michael Moore’s bodyguard, and has never been employed by Michael Moore." I suspect that this is weasel speak for "Yes, he did act as Moore's bodyguard in the past but he was employed by us."
Airhead America A Success?--Updated!
That's what this article in the Wall Street Journal (!) says. Of course, the news pages of the WSJ are not as reliably conservative as the editorial pages, and the article strikes an occasional cheerleading tone and uses questionable statistics like this:
In New York, Ms. Rhodes is tied with conservative Sean Hannity for the talk-show host that listeners spent the most time with each week in the fall season, according to Arbitron. Ms. Rhodes points out that she reached that level after just a few months of national exposure, and without the television show and book Mr. Hannity has to boost his public profile.
Obvious question: What do they mean by the term "listeners spent the most time with each week"? They don't mean that Rhodes' audience was the same size as that of Hannity, just that the folks who listen to Rhodes listen religiously (or should I say irreligiously?).
Update: Okay, I read the comment about Rhodes' audience again and it's even goofier than it seems. Basically the writer is saying that on average, Rhodes' audience members spent X hours a week listening to her, and that Hannity's audience members spent the same X hours a week listening to him. What's so goofy about that? Well, Hannity is on for three hours a day, five days a week for a total of 15 hours, while Rhodes is on for four hours a day, five days a week for a total of 20 hours. In other words, Rhodes' audience members listen to 25% less of her show on average per week than Sean Hannity's audience members listen to his show.
The Wisconsin Recount II
Back in December, I put up a short post with a link to an article noting that there was no interest in a Wisconsin recount, despite the fact that it had gone for Kerry by a much smaller margin than Ohio had gone for Bush.
Well, interest in Wisconsin has been heating up over the last week or so. Captain Ed has been doing a great job of keeping track and moving the story forward with sharp analysis; such a great job that he gets a mention in yesterday's Washington Times.
At the same time, it's curious that Mr. Kerry should use Ohio as an example to trumpet his forthcoming legislation. Apparently, Mr. Kerry sees no evil in Wisconsin, where his margin of victory was 11,000 votes, and where the watchful bloggers at Captainsquartersblog.com have noticed some disturbing irregularities. Milwaukee County, which broke for Mr. Kerry 62 percent to 37 percent, saw voter turnout increase by just under 49,000 votes, or 10 percent, from 2000. For comparison, the national voter increase was 6.4 percent. A portion of that increase can be attributed to the 83,000 people who completed a same-day registration, which is more than 20 percent of all voting-age residents in the county. Blogger Captain Ed is rightly suspicious: "Now, Wisconsinites may procrastinate a bit, but in order to believe that number, you'd have to expect that 20% of the county had moved or became newly eligible within the past two years (after the previous election cycle)." The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel also reports that now 10,000 of those registrations cannot be verified, or just under the number of votes that clinched the state for Mr. Kerry.
As I commented over at CQ, this is the second time that the Washington Times has run a "Captain Ed-itorial". Captain's Quarters is the blog that all the smart conservatives are reading.
See If You Can Avoid Smirking
While reading this Thomas Friedman column on the dismay in Europe over President Bush's reelection. This was the part that gave me a grin:
"Europeans were convinced that Kerry had won on election night and were telling themselves that they knew all along that Americans were not all that bad - and then suddenly, as the truth emerged, there was a feeling of slow resignation: 'Oh well, we've been dreaming,' " said Dominique Moisi, one of France's top foreign policy analysts. "In fact, real America is moving away from us. We don't share the same values. ... In France it was a very emotional issue. It was as if Americans were voting for the president of France as much as for president of the United States."
We often commented over at Kerry Haters that Kerry was better suited to be the president of France.
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Geek Chic?
Michael King has some hilarious photos that Bill Gates would probably pay to destroy.
Then Why Poll at All?
The report on the exit polling fiasco is out. Gerry Daly has some great analysis, which appears to indicate that the problem was young people with advanced degrees (i.e., likely liberals) doing most of the polling.
I was amused at this paragraph in the report (PDF file warning):
It is also important to note that the exit poll estimates did not lead to a single incorrect NEP winner projection on election night. The Election Night System does not rely solely on exit polls in its computations and estimates. After voting is completed, reported vote totals are entered into the system. Edison/Mitofsky and the NEP members do not project the outcome of close races until a significant number of actual votes are counted.
Well, that's like saying I'll make a prediction for the outcome of the New England/Pittsburgh game this weekend, but I won't release it until midway through the fourth quarter, after I've seeded in the actual score at that point in the game. And it sidesteps the fact that the incorrect exit polls resulted in the NEP members holding off on predicting some states that went easily for President Bush.
Note To Democratic Party Chairman Aspirants
Airing commercials like this will probably not endear you to the party faithful.
Kitty's Korner
She has an amusing look at the hysterical blindness of the liberals, which then turns serious as it shows the consequences of that blindness.
She also points out that the Donald doesn't have to pay retail. Ouch!
The Social Security Crisis
QandO has a great post on how the rhetoric has changed. Suddenly the Dems are saying there's no crisis in Social Security. Anybody remember Al Gore's lockbox? I guess the Democrats are saying that it was never really needed.
Hat Tip: Captain's Quarters
Pat Hynes Debates Kos on Radio!
The program will be broadcast live at 2:30 Eastern time. Tune in and listen to the Kerry Crusher steamroll a top liberal blogger.
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Why Dean?
Hugh asks for some reasons the Democrats should elect Dean as their leader. I thought about it, and what a leader of a party has to be able to do is the following:
1. Recruit new workers and members to the party. Dean can argue that he did this.
2. Find new sources of money. Ditto.
3. Spend that money wisely and show solid results. Errr...
4. Not embarrass the party in TV appearances. Ummmm...
On #3, remember that Dean spent something like $42 million on Iowa and New Hampshire, for which he received a fourth place finish and a runner-up. In addition, Dean started a fund-raising effort for a group of politicians he called the Dean Dozen. There were several different Dean Dozens, but here's the first, and how they did:
Mary Ann Andreas for State Assembly, CA: Lost 42-58
Ken Campbell for State House, SC: Lost
Mary Chapelle for State House, MO: Won (Unopposed)
Scott Clark, Mark Manoil & Nina Trasoff for the Arizona Corporation Commission: All lost
Kim Hynes for State Representative, CT: Lost
Richard Morrison for US House of Representatives, TX: Lost
Barack Obama for US Senate, IL: Won
Rob MacKenna for Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections: Lost
Monica Palacios-Boyce for Massachusetts State Representative: Lost
Lori Saldaña for State Assembly, CA: Won
Jeff Smith for US House of Representatives, MO: Lost (in Democratic Primary)
Donna Red Wing for State House, CO: Lost
Now, Dean cheated here a bit; there are actually fourteen candidates (he counted the slate of three candidates for Arizona Corporation Commission as one), so overall Dean was three of fourteen. But one of the candidates was unopposed, and another (Obama Osama, as Teddy calls him) might as well have been unopposed, so really Dean was one for twelve, and that one was a state assemblywoman.
That's a pretty breathtaking indictment of Governor Dean's ability to allocate scarce time and resources to candidates with a chance of winning.
Twice a Hero
Who is Rick Rescorla?
That story just blows me away.
His wife is trying to get a statue made. I can't think of a more worthy cause.
Hat Tip: Hugh Hewitt
The Reality-Based Community?
Salon does a story on the "34 scandals from the first four years of George W. Bush's presidency -- every one of them worse than Whitewater."
I didn't feel like watching one of their commercials, so I only read the first scandal listed:
From 2001 to 2003, Republican staffers on the Senate Judiciary Committee illicitly accessed nearly 5,000 computer files containing confidential Democratic strategy memos about President Bush's judicial nominees. The GOP used the memos to shape their own plans and leaked some to the media.
First of all, it should be obvious that the "scandal", to the extent it exists, originated with "Republican staffers on the Senate Judiciary Committee". So how does it become linked to the Bush Administration? A very comparable scandal was the famous incident when a couple of Democrats "just happened" to intercept a cell phone call from Newt Gingrich and the tape was leaked by a Democratic member of Congress; to my knowledge nobody tried to claim this was a scandal of the Clinton Administration.
Second, the old rule of thumb is that you lead with your strongest argument, your strongest case. If this is the top scandal that Salon lists, the rest have to be pretty weak beer indeed.
Monday, January 17, 2005
This Proves There's No Liberal Media
George Monbiot (possibly the inspiration for "Moonbat?") proves it in the Guardian.
The first involves the broadcaster CBS. In September, its 60 Minutes programme ran an investigation into how George Bush avoided the Vietnam draft. It produced memos which appeared to show that his squadron commander in the Texas National Guard had been persuaded to "sugarcoat" his service record. The programme's allegations were immediately and convincingly refuted: Republicans were able to point to evidence suggesting the memos had been faked. Last week, following an inquiry into the programme, the producer was sacked, and three CBS executives were forced to resign.
The incident couldn't have been more helpful to Bush. Though there is no question that he managed to avoid serving in Vietnam, the collapse of CBS's story suggested that all the allegations made about his war record were false, and the issue dropped out of the news. CBS was furiously denounced by the rightwing pundits, with the result that between then and the election, hardly any broadcaster dared to criticise George Bush. Mary Mapes, the producer whom CBS fired, was the network's most effective investigative journalist: she was the person who helped bring the Abu Ghraib photos to public attention. If the memos were faked, the forger was either a moron or a very smart operator.
It's true, of course, that CBS should have taken more care. But I think it is safe to assume that if the network had instead broadcast unsustainable allegations about John Kerry, none of its executives would now be looking for work. How many people have lost their jobs, at CBS or anywhere else, for repeating bogus stories released by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth about Kerry's record in Vietnam? How many were sacked for misreporting the Jessica Lynch affair? Or for claiming that Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear weapons programme in 2003? Or that he was buying uranium from Niger, or using mobile biological weapons labs, or had a hand in 9/11? How many people were sacked, during Clinton's presidency, for broadcasting outright lies about the Whitewater affair? The answer, in all cases, is none.
Heh, yeah, nobody was fired at CBS for passing along the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth's stories about Kerry, so that proves the media are conservative. Except of course that nobody at CBS actually passed along the Swiftees' stories about Kerry, so there was nobody to fire.
Sheesh!
Field Goals at Heinz
Since the Jets lost due to two missed field goals of 40+ yards on Saturday, and since the announcer mentioned that nobody had ever kidded a field goal of more than 50 yards at Ketchup Field, I thought I'd take a quick look at the recent history of field goal attempts there.
I examined all field goal attempts at Heinz Field for the last two years. There were a total of 63 attempts, of which 53 were good, for a success ratio of 84%. That is above the league average, which is about 82%. Some of that may be due to Pittsburgh's kicker Jeff Reed, who's 31 of 34 for a success rate of 91%; opposing kickers have gone 22 for 29, or 76%. I don't know if there is a home/road advantage to field goal kicking percentage, but it is likely. Visiting teams are more apt to be behind and therefore more likely to attempt longer field goals in an attempt to get back into the game. There is some evidence for this in the record at Heinz Field. Opponents attempted their field goals from an average of 36.2 yards out, while the Steelers attempted theirs from an average distance of 32.6 yards, 3.6 yards closer. And this differential was higher in 2004 at 4.2 yards when the Steelers were more likely to be leading at home than in 2003 at 2.8 yards.
There were only two attempts in the two years of 48 yards or longer; both missed. However, there were 7 attempts from 46-47 yards, and 5 or 71% were good. Let's just present it as a table:
50+ 2 0 0%
46-50 7 5 71%
41-45 11 9 82%
36-40 8 8 100%
31-35 13 12 92%
26-30 8 6 75%
17-25 14 13 93%
This includes the Jets game, so going into that contest, the kickers had made 5 of 6 from 46-50 and 9 of 10 from 41-45, so we can estimate the likelyhood of the Jets making one of those two kicks at about 98.3% going into the game, at 94.8% using the percentages that applied after the two misses. Ouch!
Sunday, January 16, 2005
Anti-Racist Math Inaction
Here's the story of a school district that instituted a new kind of mathematics.
In 2001 Mr. Young, Mrs. Wyatt and an assortment of other well-paid school administrators, defined the new number-one priority for teaching mathematics, as documented in the curriculum benchmarks, "Respect for Human Differences - students will live out the system wide core of 'Respect for Human Differences' by demonstrating anti-racist/anti-bias behaviors." It continues, "Students will: Consistently analyze their experiences and the curriculum for bias and discrimination; Take effective anti-bias action when bias or discrimination is identified; Work with people of different backgrounds and tell how the experience affected them; Demonstrate how their membership in different groups has advantages and disadvantages that affect how they see the world and the way they are perceived by others..." It goes on and on.
The bad news is that test scores are down. The good news is that racism in math class is at an all-time low.
Hat Tip: The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler.
This Will Solve the Bias Problem at CBS
Word is they're looking at Katie Couric.
Saturday's Playoff Games
There is a tendency to say that the Jets should not have even been in the game against Pittsburgh; take the two long returns out and the Steelers win easily. But really there is not a lot to chose from among the teams statistically. Pennington had the better passer rating (65.5 to 57.8), making this the only game of the playoffs so far where the lower-rated passer won. The Steelers did outgain the Jets on the ground, but by less than half a yard per attempt. The big difference is that they rushed a lot more--43 times to the Jets' 27.
Of course, the big news on the day was that Ben Roethlisberger suddenly looked like a rookie. He will have to play quite a bit better than this next weekend if the Steelers are going to get to the Super Bowl, and I would not be surprised to see the Steelers as home underdogs for the AFC title game.
As for the Atlanta/St. Louis game, what can I say? The Rams let the Falcons run all over them. You won't lose many games where you get 327 yards rushing at 8.2 yards a pop. Barring injury, it will be a white quarterback versus a black quarterback in the Super Bowl, and to a certain extent you could say the white quarterback style versus the black quarterback style. The black quarterbacks can beat you with their feet as well as their arms, while the white quarterbacks are slower and not as stocky, but pass just enough better for the scales to come out reasonably balanced.
Lest you think I'm engaging in racism here, look at the black QBs remaining compared to the white guys. The white guys rushed 124 times for 210 yards. The black QBs rushed twice as often (249) for seven times as many yards (1528). Ben Roethlisberger was the most effective rusher among the white QBs, averaging 2.6 yards per carry. Daunte Culpepper was (arguably) the least effective rusher among the black QBs at 4.6 yards per attempt.
Saturday, January 15, 2005
I Want to Be a Team Player, But....Multiple Updates!
Roger has a post about Hugh Hewitt's appearance on O'Reilly last night, and links to this transcript.
O'Reilly & Hugh are talking about the story on the Kos/Armstrong payments from the Dean campaign, which I have blogged about previously. But I gotta disagree with Hugh here:
HUGH HEWITT [AUTHOR]: No, Bill. In fact, the idea of payola is very dangerous. Bloggers on the take are very bad for the business of blogging. Blogging of real journalists, and people like Power Line and like InstaPundit and myself, we don't like it when Daily Kos shows up on the take of the Howard Dean campaign. Now Daily Kos says, this is one of the bloggers from the left, says he disclosed it, but not to the satisfaction of anyone who watches him. I didn't know.
Now I can't help contrasting this to the story about Jon Lauck and Jason Van Beek, who both ran pro-John Thune blogs that were funded by the Thune campaign and that never disclosed that funding (although it was reported in a South Dakota newspaper during the campaign). I slammed the two, especially Lauck, who reportedly received $27,000, particularly because I had frequently linked his Daschle v Thune blog as a source of uncontaminated by liberal media bias news about the race. Granted, I knew he was a partisan Republican. I didn't know he was a paid part of the Thune Campaign. As I put it in a comment on Captain's Quarters, it's the difference between Peter Beinart and Terry McAuliffe. Beinart's a Democrat but we all know that he feels free to offer constructive criticism of the Democrats in public. We all know that Terry McAwful is not going to be criticizing the party. So we give Beinart just a tad more credibility than we would Terry.
Anyway, that's why I got hot under the collar at the time; in my opinion Lauck had been presenting himself as Beinart when in reality he was McAuliffe. And not just on the blog, but in appearances on Hugh's radio show, and in articles published in National Review Online. NRO's editor, Kathryn J. Lopez, commented in the Corner just the other day that she would not have published those articles had she known.
Hugh's response to Lauckgate was appropriate, if a little understated:
That having been said, the two blogs that received support from the Thune campaign ought to have declared that support. It is prudent to anticipate criticism and to disarm it by disclosure.
But how do you square that response with his indignation over Kos? Remember, Kos disclosed . See the little disclaimer in the corner? It was written about in a couple of articles including this one in the New York Times Magazine.
Moulitsas's [aka Kos] ''friendly relations'' with particular candidates got him into a public fight with Zephyr Teachout, who became briefly famous last winter as the guru of the Dean Internet campaign, which in fact employed Moulitsas for several months. Over the summer, she complained in several online forums, and to Moulitsas directly, that he and other bloggers were blurring the lines between editorial and advertising, lines that had always been sacred in journalism. According to Teachout, they were posting comments in support of candidates for whom they were also working as paid consultants and not explaining that conflict of interest, or at least not fully enough for Teachout.
I want to root for the home team, here, but I also want to be honest. There are lots of reasons to criticize Kos, but this does not seem to be one of them. I'd add that even if the Lauck/Kos comparison were perfect (i.e., that Kos had not disclosed), I'd probably still feel angrier at Lauck on this particular issue. Why? Because I was the one being deceived by Lauck's blog. If I read anything on the Daily Kos I would have generally not trusted it anyway. Indeed, for this reason it probably makes more sense for each side of the blogosphere to police itself. Nothing I or any conservative blogger can write is going to affect what Kos or MyDD does anyway, right?
So that this doesn't just come off as criticism of Hugh, what should be the standard? In my mind it's full disclosure. I don't think it's realistic to expect popular political blogs not to take advertising dollars from candidates. Captain's Quarters and other blogs accepted advertising from political candidates this election cycle, and I think that's fine as long as it's disclosed (as advertising, by its very nature, is). What about fund-raising? Many blogs did fund-raising for candidates; I would not be surprised if some didn't get a little "scrape" for themselves. Again, this is probably fine as long as it's disclosed.
Update: Captain Ed has much the same take.
Update II: Hugh responds to criticism from the pro-Kos bloggers.
Lauck is in the same position as Kos of failing to make adequate disclosure, though I doubt very much that his disclosure would have changed anyone's opinion about his blog because it was so specific and so pro-Thune to begin with.
That's not a standard; for one thing couldn't Kos could argue that he was pro-Dean to begin with? Realistically, if Kos's disclosure was insufficient, then you can't turn around and forgive Lauck.
Update III: Hugh linked to this post by Chris Suellentrope of Slate. Crucial passage:
Moulitsas' crime isn't taking money from Howard Dean. He, too, can get away with a suspended sentence for insufficiently disclosing his role in the Dean campaign once he was off the payroll. The hanging offense is that Moulitsas took money from other, undisclosed, political clients. And while he may have disclosed—in 2003—that he wouldn't disclose them, that's not good enough.
Okay, so that brings Kos pretty doggone close to the level of Lauck, I would say.
Friday, January 14, 2005
K-Lo on LauckGate
Kathryn J. Lopez announces that she would not have hired Lauck to write on the Daschle/Thune race on NRO had she known that he was being paid by the Thune Campaign.
I apologize to readers: Had I known he had gotten any Thune money (I probably should have asked; I will now), the pieces would not have run on NRO.
The Reality-Based Community?
Mark Steyn takes on the sore losers:
As usual, the media did their best to string along with the Democrats' alternative reality. For the most part, the press now fulfill the same function for the party that kindly nurses do at the madhouse; if the guy thinks he's Napoleon, just smile affably and ask him how Waterloo's going. So Alan Fram of the Associated Press reported with a straight face that Sen. Boxer, Congressman Conyers and the other protesting Democrats ''hoped the showdown would underscore the problems such as missing voting machines and unusually long lines that plagued some Ohio districts, many in minority neighborhoods.''
I think not. What it underscores is that the Democrats are losers. Speaking as a foreigner -- which I believe entitles me to vote in up to three California congressional districts -- I've voted on paper ballots all my life and reckon all these American innovations -- levers, punch cards, touch screen -- are a lot of flim-flam. I would be all in favor of letting the head of Bangladesh's electoral commission design a uniform federal ballot for U.S. elections. But that's not the issue here. What happens on Election Day is that the Democrats lose and then decide it was because of ''unusually long lines'' in ''minority neighborhoods.'' What ''minority neighborhoods'' means is electoral districts run by Democrats. In Ohio in 2004 as in Florida in 2000, the ''problems'' all occur in counties where the Dems run the system. Sometimes, as in King County in Washington, they get lucky and find sufficient votes from the ''disenfranchised'' accidentally filed in the icebox at Democratic headquarters. But in Ohio, Bush managed to win not just beyond the margin of error but beyond the margin of lawyer. If there'd been anything to sue and resue and re-resue over, you can bet those 5,000 shysters the Kerry campaign flew in would be doing it. Instead, Boxer and Conyers & Co. are using a kind of parliamentary privilege to taint Bush's victory without even the flimsiest pretext.
Hat Tip to KH commenter Margaret.
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