Thoughts from
San Diego on Law, Politics, and Culture

 
Yet another entrepreneural scheme
By Tom Smith

Yes, I'm obsessed. The combination of markets and politics is just too much for me. It's a good thing I haven't allowed myself to start following something like the betting markets on college football, or I would just disappear into a black hole.

Oh, let me mention my entrepreneurial idea before I forget. We really need a big, user-friendly play market where people like me could bet play money on political events, sports, movies, national security related events (ok, terrorist attacks). Some academic studies suggest even these play markets do a remarkably good job prognosticating events. Like HSX. And people would dig it.

You could post people's portfolios (or their avatars') so folks could see who the really studly prognosicators were. Everyone would start out with the same amount of play money, as in Monopoly. It's about your forebrain, not your pockets. You'd have to register with your email address and zip code, but we wouldn't spam you. Who knows, it might lead successful players to prominence in the blogosphere, contracts with real investors, or whatever. And, I'm telling you, it would be a valuable information resource for all kinds of people.

And, unlike real money betting, which has to be offshore, it would all be legal, as legal as Monopoly. Once this site was getting a few thousand hits a day, you could sell advertizing. It's not a multi-million dollar idea, but I think a few people could make some money doing it. Oh, yeah, you should be able to bet on weather events too. People love the weather. It's even got its own cable channel. It could be big, I tell you! OK, maybe not. It could be Medium I tell you!
posted by thomas at 10/31/2004 11:07:00 AM

 
Oh, those chemical weapons
By Tom Smith

Fallujah ITN's (Islamofascist terrorist nutcases) vow to use chemical weapons to resist attack on Fallujah.

How deeply mysterious, when we know there are absolutely no chemical weapons in Iraq, and could not be, as a matter of fundamental faith and doctrine. As has been revealed to us by the MSM, peace be upon its collective heads.

I expect this story will be passed over by the US press, on grounds of being hard to 'splain. If chemical weapons are actually used, expect explanations of how it is Bush's fault.
posted by thomas at 10/31/2004 07:47:00 AM

 
I Don't Really Want to Think about the Electoral College Right Now, But ...
By Gail Heriot

You may have noticed that I haven't been blogging lately. Too much work is the reason. And today is really no different; I have quite a few deadlines staring me in the face. But somehow I have been unable to focus on them. Instead, I've been running to my computer every fifteen minutes or so to check Real Clear Politics.

Up until a few hours ago, the poll averages were suggesting that the outcome would be a split verdict, just like in 2000 but in reverse. Bush would win the popular vote, but Gore ... uh ... I mean Kerry would take the electoral vote and hence the White House. And, of course, it very well might still happen. Although some of the more recent polls are more favorable to Bush in states like Ohio and Wisconsin, it's obvious that this race is going to be tight. I am particularly concerned about Wisconsin going to Kerry, since it allows Election Day registration. In part as a result of the Electoral College system, the incentive to commit voter fraud may be irresistible or at least not be resisted. (As an aside, I'm sure it's true that voter fraud is committed by both Democrats and Republicans, but it is most likely to occur in neighborhoods where the residents are poor and undereducated and those neighborhoods tend to be Democratic. And if this is the first time this has been brought to your attention, you need to get out more.)

If the electoral vote does split, I hope it will make conservatives re-think their recent fondness for the Electoral College. I blogged about this issue several times last month, but I can't link to the items from my home computer, because I'm working with a browser from the 5th century that cannot deal effectively with the Blogger software. Let me summarize: Shortly after the 2000 election, conservative talking heads started taking it upon themselves to argue the virtues of the Electoral College. They evidently thought some defense had to be mounted or else Bush would seem illegitimate. Maybe they were right about the need to make the case. But it seemed a shame to me. Bush was legitimately elected not because the Electoral College is the best method for selecting the President, but because it is the method specified in the Constitution and the method under which the campaign was actually conducted. And whether the Electoral College is the best method or not, it is certainly a legitimate method.

Some of the arguments for Electoral College are perfectly sensible but hardly convincing by themselves. For example, it is probably a virtue of the Electoral College that it tends to magnify a strong popular showing for the winning candidate into an electoral landslide. Mandates like that help make strong leadership possible and on the whole I think that's a good thing.

The argument that one hears over and over again, however, is that the Electoral College forces candidates to pay attention to small states, which they otherwise would ignore. This is false. The real effect of the Electoral College is to focus candidate attention not on small states, but on battleground states, no matter what their size. Bush and Kerry haven't given their attention to voters in Idaho, Vermont and Utah or to voters in New York, Texas and Calfornia. Those electoral votes are already spoken for. It's Florida, Ohio, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania that get their nearly undivided attention.

That isn't necessarily bad in itself. In the age of television, who cares if Bush and Kerry appear in each state? But in practice it has been a serious problem. It isn't just campaign visits that states are competing for, but the promise of pork. Battleground states get a lot of it. Pennsylvania got its completely indefensible steel tariffs. (The Election gods have a sense of humor, since despite this cheap trick, Bush is behind in Pennsylvania.) Florida's elderly voters were no doubt meant to be impressed with the Medicare expansion. Who knows what promises Kerry has made to state leaders in these states. By its nature, the Electoral College generates a carnival of special interest deals.

But I need to think about this admittedly complex issue later, not today. And if the split vote occurs, I will have that opportunity. Dean Rodriguez has given his okay for a Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues symposium on the Electoral College. It will be my consolation prize in case of a Bush loss. No, I don't expect anything will come of it in the real world even if every academic who considers the issue ends of agreeing that change is warranted. Constitutional amendments must be approved by three quarters of the states, and states like Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Iowa, New Hampshire, Oregon, Missouri, Nevada, and West Virginia are unlikely to give up their gravy train voluntarily. But you never know.
posted by Gail at 10/30/2004 09:40:00 PM

 
A little Halloween story
By Tom Smith

This isn't the scariest thing that ever happened to me, but it will have to do.

So, anyway, not quite 20 years ago, I was driving my little Montero from Colorado to Idaho. It was summer, and I planned to just sleep rough when I got tired of driving. That happened somewhere in Northwestern Colorado, not far from the Utah border. It was late at night, a full moon was out, and I was in the very middle of nowhere. I was on some highway, not a freeway, and started looking for a dirt road off into the high grassland where I could throw my sleeping bag. Eventually I spotted one.

I turned off the highway to the north, and drove a couple of miles in 4 wheel drive, climbing through brushy, hilly country. Finally, the road petered out at a little, broken down coral. It seemed as good a place as any, so I stopped the jeep and got out.

As soon as I got out of the jeep, I was struck by a feeling that this was a bad place. Hard to say why, though the full moon shining its cold light on forlorn, broken fence rails didn't help. Next to the coral was a little shed. I thought just to careful, I should check it out, and make sure nobody was there.

I walked to the shed and pushed open the door. It was black inside, so I shone my flashlight around. The walls were splattered with something like black paint, and little bits of stuff. I took me a moment to figure out what it was. Then to my horror, I realized it was blood, and the little bits of stuff bits of flesh stuck to the walls. It was extremely unsettling. I quickly looked around to make sure I wasn't be stalked by somebody with a chainsaw, got back in my jeep, and drove a while until a found a little hill with a 360 view to camp on. I wasn't the most restful night.

I realized later what had happened was innocent enough. It's routine in managing cattle that you occassionally have to cut some beef critter out of the herd and slaughter it. It may be sick, or break a leg, or you just need some meat for the cowboys. I had stumbled across a corral and a shack where cattle were slaughtered, in conditions none too sanitary. But I was struck when I first got out of the jeep that it was a bad place. Perhaps the ghosts of sad cows, or perhaps just a faint odor of blood in the air, not enough to recognize consciously, but enough to turn on a little warning light in the old part of the brain.

posted by thomas at 10/30/2004 07:30:00 PM

 
Bias and (In)Competence
By Mike Rappaport

Many people, including the Economist Magazine, have argued that Bush has been running the Wars on Terror and in Iraq incompetently and support Kerry on that basis. But what about the War in Afghanistan? The Bush Administration has been tremendously successful there, defeating the Taliban, forcing Pakistan to become an ally, and instituting the beginnings of democracy. See here.

If Bush is so incompetent, how has he been able to pull off these feats? Of course, it is sometimes said that Afghanistan was easy, but that is not how it was initially perceived. After all, war in Afghanistan had defeated the Soviets.

The Bush critics are selective in their focus. Here is my explanation for the success in Afghanistan and the relative difficulty in Iraq (I say relative because I am not pessimistic about the prospects of some freedom in Iraq so long as Bush is reelected). Terrorists from other countries have chosen to focus on Iraq, so the job here is much harder. Moreover, the difficulty in fighting such terrorists cannot solely or easily be attributed to the incompetence of the Bush Administration. The Israelis, who are experienced at this and are hardly incompetent, also have a difficult time fighting terrorists (in their own country). If the Israelis have a hard time and cannot easily stop terror, the critics of the Bush Administration expect too much.

It is not that the Bush Administration has not made mistakes. Of course it has. But it is important to recognize that this is a new type of war for the US and mistakes were inevitable. It is unrealistic to expect an Administration to display the competence of Kerry's (or Andrew Sullvian's) hindsight.
posted by Michael at 10/30/2004 01:45:00 PM

 
Cool new hominid
By Tom Smith

Little people.
posted by thomas at 10/30/2004 11:25:00 AM

 
More electoral college madness!
By Tom Smith

Here's what you can do: open two browser windows, and put one the RCP electoral college projections and the other on the tradesports state lines. (click on any state on the home page.) This gives you a pretty good idea what we are looking at.

Bush still needs 38 electoral votes if you give him NM, 43 if you do not. Let's not: more conservative and NM really is corrupt. Tradesports gives W a 55 percent chance in NM, but let's discount that. If enchanted ballot boxes don't disappear, well and good. Where does W get 43 votes? He has to get FL with 27, and probably will. If he doesn't he's dead. Tradesports gives him about a 60 probability, and has for 2 weeks at least. That leaves 16 votes to get. Where? Ohio is a possibility but I doubt it. Tradesports has him at around 49 there, which seems right to me. I take PA and MN are Kerry as well. What about Iowa and Wisconsin? Barely for Bush, with 17 votes between them. Just enough.

So W is still the favorite. The above is conservative because I leave out NM and OH for Bush. Either could happen. In fact NM is now at about 58 on tradesports. Maybe the market knows something I don't. Hmmmm. And Ohio has jumped up 3 points to right around 50. Thanks, OBL. The overall line for Bush is about 55, which seems about right. IEM is at 57. So call it 56.

UPDATE: Interesting phone call from my brother Steve in HI. He says the island state may really be in play, contrary to the CW. New polls showing an even split are accurate, he believes. What's doing it are the Philippinos, very devout Catholics and a substantial minority of the population. Also, they tend to be closed mouthed about politics to outsiders, so polls may be underrepresenting them. Cheney is on his way to HI, so GOP internals must show it really is in play.

AND Holy Kachina, Batman! NM just jumped on tradesports by 16 points! WTH is that about! Now there's a huge spread. Does somebody know something? New poll just out? Maybe W does have a shot in the land of coyotes and trendy cuisine. Maybe it's some weird, spiritual thing. I'll throw my bones and let you know.
posted by thomas at 10/30/2004 08:19:00 AM

 
Bush's task in Iraq is easier than Kerry's
By Mike Rappaport

Many bloggers, such as Andrew Sullivan, have argued that Kerry could do a better job in Iraq than Bush. I seriously doubt it, but their analysis makes another mistake. It assumes that it will be as easy for Kerry to fight in Iraq as it is for Bush.

The whole world assumes that Kerry is less committed in Iraq than Bush. If Kerry wins, the terrorists are likely to increase their attacks in an effort to test Kerry and to persuade him to withdraw from Iraq. By contrast, Bush's win is, if anything, likely to lead to a reduction in attacks, since some of the attacks appear to have been designed to cause Bush to lose the election.

Thus, if Bush wins, he will have an easier task in Iraq than Kerry will have if he wins.
posted by Michael at 10/29/2004 08:25:00 PM

 
Steyn On The Line
By Maimon Schwarzschild

Mark Steyn says he will resign from political journalism if Kerry wins; and explains why he doesn't expect to have to resign.

I don’t think it will come to that. This is the 9/11 election, a choice between pushing on or retreating to the polite fictions of September 10. I bet on reality.

Read the whole thing.
posted by maimon at 10/29/2004 05:10:00 PM

 
Make their day
By Tom Smith

Well put:

But above all, in this oppositional sort of age, when it is often easier to be defined by what one is against rather than what one is for, I have to say it is his enemies who most justify Bush's reelection.

The list of those whose world could be truly rocked on Tuesday is just too long and too rich to be ignored. If you think for a moment about those who would really be upset by a second Bush term, it becomes a lot easier to stomach.

The hordes of the bien-pensant Left in the universities and the media, the sort of liberals who tolerate everything except those who disagree with them. Secularist elites who disdain religiosity except when it comes from Muslim fanatics. Europhile Brits who drip contempt for everything their country has ever done and long for its disappearance into a Greater Europe. Absurd, isolationist conservatives in America and Britain who think the struggles for freedom are always someone else's fight. Hollywood sybarites and narcissists, self-appointed arbiters of a nation's morals.

Soft-headed Europeans who think engagement and dialogue with mass murderers is the way to achieve lasting peace. French intellectuals for whom nothing has gone right in the world since 1789.

The United Nations, which, if it had its multilateral way, would still be faithfully minding a world in which half the population lived under or in fear of Soviet aggression. Most of Belgium.

Above all, of course, Middle Eastern militants. If your bitterest enemies are the sort of people who hack the heads off unarmed, innocent civilians, then I would say you are probably doing something right.

This may sound petty. It is not. This constellation of individuals, parties and institutions has very little in common other than the fact that it has contrived to be wrong on just about every important issue of my adult lifetime.

And so, perhaps for the wrong reasons, perhaps less because he has been right and more because those who hate him so much have been so wrong, I want this President re-elected.

Go on America. Make Their Day.

posted by thomas at 10/29/2004 03:28:00 PM

 
History's highest priced phone sex
By Tom Smith

So you can discuss nipples with female subordinates. Just be ready to shell out 2-3 mil. Berrrry eeenteresting link here on the O'Reilly settlement. He's smart to settle. And now what's her name can retire, if she wants to. Everybody's happy, except, presumably Mrs. O'Reilly and kids. Time for O'Reilly to log some hours with old Father O'Shaemehaughnegaghsonie down at Our Lady of Perpetual Tribulation. "Ah, so, an' it's bein' a scumbag, are ya?" Bill, do us all a favor, and keep your impure thoughts to yerself next time. Keep a diary or something. Better yet, take up powerwalking. Fresh air and exercise. I'm glad to be wrong about the end of the career of Bill. It proves I can be wrong, which makes me feel better about the upcoming vote on the fate of freedom. (Please note -- link is source of clever post title.)

posted by thomas at 10/29/2004 08:51:00 AM

 
Your eyeball on the betting markets
By Tom Smith

So here's the deal. Take a deck of cards. Throw out the jokers. Throw out the black one-eyed jacks. Shuffle thoroughly. Draw a card. If it's red, Bush wins. If it's black, well, hope terrorism isn't the threat it sure as hell looks like. And get ready for some very unpleasant gloating. It won't be Camelot. Sucksalot, more like it. But let's try not to be negative. Time in your remote wilderness location builds strong families, and MREs are really pretty tastey. OK, I'll try again. Clinton people tell me that the national security establishment does a really good job sobering up clueless presidents. Or, maybe the polls and markets are wrong. And there are a few days left. Maybe the polls do a better job of getting out the vote than the voters will.

To me, this looks likes things getting tighter in Ohio. I still don't believe W will get PA or MI. If he does, it means internal polls really are better. Now, Ohio has tightened up before in the wake of Kerry visits. Bizarre, I know. Then the effect seems to wear off. So maybe . . .

Dick Morris, that toe-sucking son of a gun, says it's W all the way, relying on fundamental analysis. Well, OK. We'll just have to wait and see. Zogby calls it for Kerry. Zogby has made some good calls in the past, but he's still a partisan, and past performance is not that good an indicator.

Moments like this really make you think monarchy has its advantages. Not-that-bonnie-Prince Charlie might be available. Or may be Ariana Huffington? She'd have to agree to change her philosophy, but she'd be game. Or how about Emperor Volokh? He's a reasonable guy. Sorry, Brian, you're disqualified. I know! Ah nold! Ah nold! He's been a ruler before. But that is another story.
posted by thomas at 10/29/2004 08:18:00 AM

 
October Surprise, Anyone?
By Mike Rappaport

Tomorrow is the most likely day for an October surprise -- the Friday before the election. I find these surprises -- these last minute revelations that do damage largely because of their timing -- to be outrageous. Without the late release of Bush's DWI conviction four years ago, my guess is that George Bush would have won the electoral college clearly and probably would have won the popular vote. Tweleve years ago, Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh issued an indictment of Caspar Weinberger four days before the election, including in the indictment prejudicial statements about George H. W. Bush that were completely unnecessary. If memory serves, the Department of Justice had guidelines forbidding the indictment of government officials within a month of an election. At that time, George Bush was surging in the polls and was at a statistical tie with Clinton. After the indictment, which was of course played up in the media, Bush's momentum stopped and he started falling back. To my mind, Walsh's action was an impeachable offense and the worst thing any independent counsel ever did. Yet despite all of the complaints about Ken Starr by Democrats, Democrats have rarely criticized or even mentioned this incident.

Last minute hits should be prohibited. The question is how to do it. One possibility is simply to pass a law prohibiting the publication of information about a candidate within the last week before an election, if the information was known prior to that time. No, I don't like this solution either, since it restrains freedom of speech. But it is still worth noting that the Supreme Court already allows restrictions on freedom of speech at election time (they are called campaign finance laws), that the media support these restrictions, that the media are privileged under these restrictions, and that media outlets who plan their stories right before the election -- yes that means you, CBS -- are behaving as political actors. So it would serve the media right to be subjected to the law prohibiting late hits, but I still don't support the law.

Perhaps a better solution is to move further in the direction of allowing voting in the two weeks before election day. Since there is no one day when we all vote, it is hard to drop a bombshell that will unduly influence us all. Of course, an election fortnight, instead of an election day, may have other problems.
posted by Michael at 10/28/2004 10:30:00 PM

 
The Belmont Club on Arafat
By Mike Rappaport

Extremely powerful post by the Belmont Club on Arafat. Here is an excerpt:

Twenty years of European and UN Middle Eastern policy may be lying on the deathbed with Arafat. That they had to fly in doctors to treat him in a makeshift clinic underscores how, after 50 years of UN relief and billions in European investment, there are no Palestinian institutions. Not even decent hospitals for its supreme leader.

Palestine was cursed by the example of Algeria, which after evicting the French, could spend the next three decades cleansing itself of the poisons of terrorism. Arafat forgot that the Jews, unlike the French in Algeria, were as much a part of region as themselves. In place of protracted war, which at all events ends, Arafat embarked upon an eternal war with the eternal Jew. He would enter Algeria's tunnel of terror with no light at the end of it.

The Intifada may have hurt Israel, but it consumed Palestine, leaving it with only the counterfeit of a functioning society. Terrorism leaves nothing but ash. And when Arafat dies, as all men must, his legacy, no less than his corpse will be contested by a swarm of pretenders -- a power struggle, of possibly surpassing savagery among men nurtured -- at the European taxpayer's dime -- for their skill at terror. The Guardian has a piece, really an advance obituary, describing how only America, Israel and England refused to invest in Arafat. They mean it as reproof, unaware even of its irony.

posted by Michael at 10/28/2004 10:23:00 PM

 
Mad Crowd Disease and the Slate of Endorsements
By Maimon Schwarzschild

As has been widely observed (at least in the blogosphere), the Slate contributors almost all say they are voting for Kerry, although many of them are barely civil about him. (One of the very few pro-Bush exceptions is a brave Slate intern!) The New Republic magazine, which at times in its recent history has printed a wide variety of centre-left to centre-right opinions, this year is stridently pro-Kerry (with the possible exception, slightly weirdly under the circumstances, of the New Republic's owner, Marty Peretz): an almost unanimous chorus, otherwise, in every issue of the magazine. I have noticed the same sort of thing even among some otherwise conservative law professors. And there are well-known right-wing academics who deflect the question by saying they will vote Libertarian this year.

What's the explanation for the even-more-than-usual unanimity -- anti-Bush unanimity, at least -- in these circles? One possibility of course is that G. W. Bush is just as evil and moronic as his adversaries, Old Media and otherwise, have so stridently insisted for four years that he is. The wise pundits see this, even if I don't. But, as I say, I don't. So do I have any alternate explanation?

Accelerating polarization, and tribalization, of politics is the only explanation that makes sense to me. Why else are centre-right intellectuals loudly broadcasting their support of what amounts to a mainstreamed Henry Wallace candidacy? The reality is that the long-standing liberal near-monopolies in academia, journalism, the arts, and the "helping professions" have gotten political religion: there is a pervasive air of political rage and fervour in these quarters. The liberal orthodoxy is not new; but the feverish level of feeling is. To announce for Bush in these surroundings is, quite simply, to incur personal excommunication: an end to friendly feeling from many if not all the people around you. Not many people are eager to be "dis-fellowshipped" to that degree.

Perhaps a few of the apparent-goers-along will quietly vote for Bush in the privacy of the voting booth. (Are there booths anymore? Not at my San Diego polling place...) But most won't. The cognitive dissonance would be too great. It's a lot easier to believe what you've decided to say you believe. The madness of the crowd sweeps you along.

It may be a cliche now, but it really was brilliant when Harold Rosenberg first saw it, and named it, half a century ago: the herd of independent minds.
posted by maimon at 10/28/2004 01:09:00 AM

 
Don't feel sorry for Chairman Arafat
By Tom Smith

Where he's going, there will be a lot of people he can talk to about how much he hates the Jews.
posted by thomas at 10/27/2004 06:06:00 PM

 
Those darn Russians
By Tom Smith

They're better at this sort of thing than saving children.
posted by thomas at 10/27/2004 06:06:00 PM

 
More electoral college analysis
By Tom Smith

Real smart analysis over at RCP on the electoral college permutations.

Read it, but bear some things in mind. Bush is not going to win PA, unless the markets are way off. It's possible Rove has some super-secret inside polls, which would explain why POTUS was in PA today, but I doubt it. He also isn't going to win Michigan. But he probably will win at least one of Ohio and Wisconsin, probably will win Iowa and probably will win Florida. New Mexico? Well, he may win the vote, but the count will go to Kerry, or I'm a dad burned fool. New Mexico is like Texas without the law and order, or the wealth. If Bush loses Florida, that tells me the markets were wrong, Dem GOTV was working, blacks are turning out in large numbers for Kerry, and it's hard to see why Bush wouldn't lose Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa as well. Kerry near landslide. But we have no reason to believe that will happen, except Dem chestpounding (or whatever the PC equivalent of chest pounding). I think it's possible Bush could win in theory by picking up NM and NH, if he won Florida and lost all the midwest. But I don't see him winning NM, or losing all the midwest either.

posted by thomas at 10/27/2004 06:06:00 PM

 
Diplomad gets it right
By Tom Smith

You really do get a different perspective living abroad. Dmad is right on about ferrin elites. He's also right it's going to be rather a disaster if Kerry wins. Ironic that history should throw up such a feather weight when we could really use a leader. I'm not saying Bush is Reagan, but like many ordinary guys at Omaha Beach, he figured out in a hurry what was necessary. Kerry strikes me as a strange man, driven by his ambitions to take on a job he is really not suited for.

While I am worried, I still think Bush is the favorite. The way I see it, Bush has to win Florida and either Ohio or Wisconsin. He is likely to win Florida, and very likely to win either Ohio or Wisconsin. Multiply the probabilities together and you get roughly the scrotum-tightening 55 percent the markets give him (tradesports and IEM have converged on that). That's tighter than a few days ago, but still better than Kerry's 45 percent. Unfortunately, I do think some judicial falderal is likely, but probably not as bad as 2000's perfect political storm. Of course, these are all just subjective probabilities. New information could enter the market. We'll find out in a few days how effective our Homeland Security improvements have been. Unfortunately, I don't think some sort of low tech hostage massacre or the like is out of the question. I am not expecting germs or gamma rays, but who knows.

Tea leaves are hard to read. Bush was in Lancaster, PA today. Why? I don't see how he can win PA, but maybe the internal Bush polls show something different. OTH, Kerry was in Iowa today. Same question. Recent polls from Zogby show Iowa and Michigan tied, and Kerry slightly ahead in Ohio and Wisconsin. If Kerry wins both Ohio and Wisconsin, Bush is done, but I think that's a one-in-four shot for John John at best. I also don't believe Kerry is going to win Iowa, though I grant that's a better shot than PA for Bush. Maybe PA is a Rove feint. I also think MI is solid Kerry, whatever the polls say.

Last minute mudball from the Dems? Completely possible, but if they have something, they've done a good job keeping it secret. Bush love-child, aborted lovechild, some Iraq nastiness, anything's possible. Risky business for the Kerrygators, however, and they may not want to try it. Also, Ms. Cahill seems to be a little bit less of a total scumbag than the Arkansas crowd. But maybe not. So, the election promises to be horribly exciting.

posted by thomas at 10/27/2004 05:31:00 PM

 
Drezner Reloaded
By Mike Rappaport

Unsurprisingly, the Slate staff is overwhelmingly in favor of Kerry. I remember having an argument with another blogger about where Slate stood, and he claimed they were centrist. I suppose he meant by the standards of the academy.

Daniel Drezner writes that "This is a foreign policy election for me, and I've never been less enthused about my choice of major party candidates—it's like being forced to decide whether The Matrix: Reloaded or The Matrix: Revolutions is the better movie." For once, I agree. Both are flawed movies (as compared to the original Matrix), but Matrix Reloaded is clearly superior, and Bush is clearly the better candidate.
posted by Michael at 10/27/2004 02:52:00 PM

 
Blog Power
By Mike Rappaport

Instapundit guest blogger Megan McArdle complains about a tech problem with HP printers and gets an unsolicited call from HP attempting to fix the problem. That is what 200,000 visitors a day will get you.
posted by Michael at 10/27/2004 02:42:00 PM

 
Sullivan on Bush and Kerry
By Mike Rappaport

What a shock! After claiming he supported neither Bush nor Kerry, Andrew Sullivan endorses Kerry after all. For those who have been reading his blog consistently, it is hardly a surprise. Why was it a surprise to Andrew?

Something else that Andrew does not seem to realize. While he denies that the main cause of his endorsement of Kerry is Bush's view on same sex marriage, it seems pretty clear from the pattern of his comments over time that he began to really view Bush negatively only when Bush supported the Federal Marriage Amendment.

There is nothing wrong with Sullivan believing this is an important issue, but Sullivan seems less than fully honest (to himself or to his readers) not to realize or admit how important this issue has been in shaping his view of the election.

The case set forth in his endorsement is, to me at least, not terribly persuasive. Sadly, it is on a par with many of the other "right wing" endorsements of Kerry, such as Dan Drezner's. For example, Sullivan endorses Kerry as to fiscal matters as follows: "Domestically, Kerry is clearly Bush's fiscal superior. At least he acknowledges the existence of a fiscal problem, which this president cannot." That a challenger points out fiscal problems in the government run by the incumbent may be one of Kerry's greatest achievements, but it is hardly an accomplishment worth mentioning.

posted by Michael at 10/27/2004 01:00:00 PM

 
Worrisome thoughts from Morris
By Tom Smith

Polls are unreliable this year and other worries for W. All by the smartest man who has ever been caught barking like a dog for a prostitute. Which gives us another rule for life. If you like to do embarrassing things with prostitutes, make very sure you create no record thereof.
posted by thomas at 10/26/2004 02:38:00 PM

 
'ave a cuppa tea
By Tom Smith

Tea may improve memory and fight dementia.

Which reminds me:

The Kinks
Have A Cuppa Tea Album Lyrics:
Muswell Hillbillies

Granny's always ravin' and rantin'
And she's always puffin' and pantin',
And she's always screaming and shouting,
And she's always brewing up tea.

Grandpappy's never late for his dinner,
Cos he loves his leg of beef
And he washes it down with a brandy,
And a fresh made cup of tea.

Chorus: Have a cuppa tea, have a cuppa tea,
have a cuppa tea, have a cuppa tea,
Halleluja, halleluja, halleluja, Rosie Lea
Halleluja, halleluja, halleluja Rosie Lea.

If you feel a bit under the weather,
If you feel a little bit peeved,
Take granny's stand-by potion For any old cough or wheeze.
It's a cure for hepatitis it's a cure for chronic insomnia,
It's a cure for tonsilitis and for water on the knee.

Chorus

Tea in the morning, tea in the evening, tea at supper time,
You get tea when it's raining, tea when it's snowing. Tea when the weather's fine,
You get tea as a mid-day stimulant You get tea with your afternoon tea
For any old ailment or disease
For Christ sake have a cuppa tea.

Chorus,

Whatever the situation whatever the race or creed,
Tea knows no segregation, no class nor pedigree
It knows no motivations, no sect or organisation,
It knows no one religion, Nor political belief.

Chorus.

posted by thomas at 10/26/2004 02:12:00 PM

 
Try this in France
By Tom Smith

Here's the concept. Go to France and say, "I'm gay, and I'm a Jew!" They wouldn't know whether to make criticism of your lifestyle illegal, or beat you up! Those darn French. So chic, they're incoherent.

posted by thomas at 10/25/2004 10:33:00 PM

 
Now that's what I call a correction
By Tom Smith

You could almost get the impression that the Post has it in for Cheney.
posted by thomas at 10/25/2004 10:33:00 PM

 
The Atmosphere at Harvard
By Mike Rappaport

Harvard Professor Ruth R. Wisse writes in the Journal on the intolerant political climate at Harvard and the rest of the academy. Here is an excerpt:

One of the most refreshing things about President Bush is his immunity from intellectual intimidation. More than his decision to go to war in Iraq, more than the religious values I share with him (though I do not share his religion), I appreciate that, though he has to struggle for language, he expresses unapologetically his commitment to the strength of our nation. By contrast, through their opposition to the military, my clever colleagues have done everything they could to make America indefensible.

posted by Michael at 10/25/2004 08:30:00 PM

 
The Teaching Company: Tudor and Stuart England
By Mike Rappaport

I just finished another superb course from the Teaching Company: The History of England from the Tudors to the Stuarts. The lecturer, Robert Bucholz, is clear, balanced, and focuses on the significant issues.

I have been quite interested in British history, especially because of my work in constitutional originalism. I have researched particular aspects of the 17th and 18th century British Constitution, such as the King's power over spending or his veto. The course filled in the broader issues.

The story of England during this period is really fascinating, especially for those who love liberty. Without the emergence of liberty in Britain, the modern world would be far different and far worse. The traditional versions of the story -- either Whig history or socialist history -- seem deficient and Bucholz presents a balanced and believable tale.

One especially interesting part of the story involves the role of Catholics during this period. On the one hand, English liberty comes despite the limited persecution of Catholics, with Parliaments refusing to tolerate Catholics. This part is obviously unattractive. Yet, the situation is more complicated, because Catholicism involved international politics and an attempt to impose an unlimited monarchy on England. In this sense, the opposition and at times prejudice against Catholics was similar to the opposition to communists at various points in American history -- communists who sought to use lawful democratic means (as well as unlawful means) to take over the United States. Bucholz does a very good job of describing the morally ambiguous response of England to domestic and international Catholicism.
posted by Michael at 10/25/2004 05:27:00 PM

 
401k credit cards
By Tom Smith

I think it's a good idea. There will be people who blow their retirement egg at Vegas, but so what? Larry Summers et al. seem right to me. If you make savings more liquid, people will be more likely to save. It's part of that whole ownership of property thing. I wish the Post would tell us how much the inventor is going to make. It's interesting that he and Modigliani patented the idea.

The whole story of the 401(k) is a beautiful thing. I'll link to it someday if I can find an on-line account. It was invented by some executive compensation expert strictly for the use of top executives. Then it sort of got out of control. The IRS wanted to shut the 'loophole' down, but the constinuency in favor of it grew so fast the IRS was stymied. A huge force for the privatization of capital and retirement was born.

401(k) plans continue to grow. They're powerful engines for savings and economic growth because among other things, they create a gigantic risk pool in the form of all the investors out there who bear some risk of market fluctuation, instead of some intermediary, like the backers of defined benefit plans, having to bear it. A beautiful thing. Now, if we can just privatize social security, we'll grow so rich we'll never have to give a damn what Europe thinks about anything again. Maybe that's why Kerry's against it.

posted by thomas at 10/25/2004 03:25:00 PM

 
Euro-fication of UK warfighting
By Tom Smith

An alert Right Coast reader sends me this interesting link about what's going on behind the scenes in Britain's and the EU's plans to transform its military. Neither simple nor encouraging.
posted by thomas at 10/25/2004 11:44:00 AM

 
Cool boat
By Tom Smith

Check this out. A former student of mine is crewing on this new high-tech boat which is being developed for the navy.

I like boats. If surfing doesn't work out for me, I may get one. They may not make surfboards big enough for me to stand up on, but I'm sure they make boats that big. There may be a slight problem with my lovely wife Jeanne, who has refused to go sailing with me since certain incidents on the Potomac years ago, which were entirely not my fault. But that was years ago, so maybe . . .

posted by thomas at 10/25/2004 11:44:00 AM

 
Vintage Eurodrivel
By Tom Smith

Here is Timothy Ash, who is apparently now a professor at Oxford, arguing America must elect Kerry or else our 'alliances' will really be in trouble. I have a book Ash wrote while still a graduate student but which I never read. Now I guess I know I don't need to.

I'm not sure I was present at the same Reagan administration as Ash was. I know Gorby came to DC in 1988, but by then he was a whipped puppy. The idea that Ronnie was turning from confrontation to detente because he'd finally caught the peace train is just rubbish.

As to France and Germany, I mean, truly, has there ever been a more apt application for that famous saying about the Vice Presidency? Our alliances with them are not worth a bucket of warm spit. Let's be real: the French were Saddam's allies, bought and paid for. They have no army that isn't more trouble than it's worth. The Germans could have one if they wanted to, but they don't. If the Brits go wobbly they do, but sucking up to the French is hardly the way to reassure our British allies.

As to Ash's warning, you better watch out, or Europe will decide to become a superpower and oppose you! What a joke. We will be lucky if we don't end up bailing Europe out again from economic catastrophe when their underfunded welfare states implode. It's going to be a long time before they're ready to project power anywhere. The biggest threat they present is selling advanced technology to terrorist states, something France at least has proven adept at.
France has no more business on the security council than Greenland. It would be worth getting upset about except that the UN is such a joke. We should just turn the UN building into condos, and give first dibs to people who got bombed out on 9-11. I think the General Assembly hall would make a great health club, or maybe a disco. Among many tragic things about the UN is all that wasted Manhattan real estate.

Unless something very profound changes in Old Europe, it's just done. Brussels is busy packing the arteries of commerce with bureaucratic lard, no one with a university education is reproducing, they don't believe in military force and certainly not paying for one, Muslims who seem largely to revile Europeans traditions are moving north in droves, and Europe's idea of a leader is a bloated hack like Jacques Chirac. I would be the first to agree that Europe was nice while it lasted, but now its destiny seems to be to become an object lesson in how not flourish in the new world.

posted by thomas at 10/24/2004 11:05:00 PM

 
Canadistan health care
By Tom Smith

Mark Steyn gives us this little nugget:

So this is no time to vote for Europhile delusions. The Continental health and welfare systems John Kerry so admires are, in fact, part of the reason those societies are dying. As for Canada, yes, under socialized health care, prescription drugs are cheaper, medical treatment's cheaper, life is cheaper. After much stonewalling, the Province of Quebec's Health Department announced this week that in the last year some 600 Quebecers had died from C. difficile, a bacterium acquired in hospital. In other words, if, say, Bill Clinton had gone for his heart bypass to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, he would have had the surgery, woken up the next day swimming in diarrhea and then died. It's a bacterium caused by inattention to hygiene -- by unionized, unsackable cleaners who don't clean properly; by harassed overstretched hospital staff who don't bother washing their hands as often as they should. So 600 people have been killed by the filthy squalor of disease-ridden government hospitals. That's the official number. Unofficially, if you're over 65, the hospitals will save face and attribute your death at their hands to "old age" or some such and then "lose" the relevant medical records. Quebec's health system is a lot less healthy than, for example, Iraq's.

Just so you know, 600 people dying of infections contracted in the hospitals of a single province, especially when the real number is probably a lot higher, is a lot.

Let's put it this way. If you are an American, and traveling to Canada, you should get medical evacuation insurance, just like you should if you are traveling to Liberia. When I took my young 'uns and pregnant wife to Peru summer before last to commune with the rainforest critters, I bought a gold-plated medical evacuation policy that would have covered private jet ambulance and the whole bit. Two hundred bucks for a month and every penny worth it. While we were there, my then 9 year old fell off a fence in the Cathedral Square in Lima, cracked his head on a cobblestone and bled like crazy. My lovely physician wife Jeanne elected to apply pressure and forgoe stitches at the local infirmary, which she didn't want to see, let alone take her child into. Yes, I'm sure there are good doctors in Peru and Canada as well and that with the right combination of contacts and cash you can actually get good medical care. Or you can wrap your kerchief tight and head for Americuh.

I'm not to worried about US medical care. Maybe I should be. In the unfortunate event M. Kerry is elected, there is no way his stupid medical plan will get through Congress. The insurance companies and the drug companies will kill it like the baccilus it is. Like we need our chemo therapy being rationed by the same sort of people that run the DMV. You'd having a better shot bringing back prohibition.

I'm sure rural Arkansas is no bargain, but in any decent sized American city, you can get medical care of amazingly high quality. It helps to have insurance, but you can also just show up at an emergency room. Health care financing in this country is very messed up, but the quality of care in your average American town, is, I would bet, better than all but the quite wealthy get in France or Germany. In Canada, you probably just drive south. So why don't Americans live longer? Because we are so fat and get so little exercise. Take away our health care, and we'd really be in trouble.

posted by thomas at 10/24/2004 08:37:00 AM

 
Interesting but scary
By Tom Smith

New voters. Do they know what they're doing?
posted by thomas at 10/24/2004 08:35:00 AM

 
Fodor, Not on Travel
By Maimon Schwarzschild

If you're at all interested in philosophy, or even if you aren't really, you'll enjoy Jerry Fodor's very funny review, in the London Review of Books, of a new book about Saul Kripke. Kripke was a leading figure in recent Anglo-American philosophy. Fodor explains the issues. He will also make you laugh.
posted by maimon at 10/24/2004 01:09:00 AM

 
Just another terrorist
By Tom Smith

Time to add another name to the no-fly list. Charlie Booker wouldn't want to come to an awful country like the USA anyway. Better to hang out with Cat Stevens bin Laden or whatever his name is.
posted by thomas at 10/23/2004 07:07:00 PM

 
A scary dream
By Tom Smith

I was walking my dog, when suddenly I was attacked by swarms of nannites, all armed with assault rifles. Fortunately, there were cats around, so I was able to grab one by the tail and use it to beat off the nannites. None of this would happen, I thought, if we had sensible regulations on nannites and assault rifles. Cats are useful, however. Some guy was standing there recording the whole thing with his digital camera.

Sorry. Hits have been down lately and I am suffering from pangs of envy.
posted by thomas at 10/23/2004 10:40:00 AM

 
Professor Tom the Oracle speaks
By Tom Smith

Since I know you're dying to know, here's what I think is going to happen in the election. I concede it is based mostly on watching the betting markets, that do show signs of manipulation. But I'm guessing no one has bothered to manipulate the state lines, which have been pretty consistent over the past few weeks.

First, I think Bush will win Florida. Jeb has been good on hurricanes, and the line has not dipped below 60 percent for the GOP. The Dems may pull off wonders with the get out the prisoner vote, but I doubt it. If Bush wins the swamp state, it will be very hard for the Dems to win.

I doubt Bush will win Ohio. It is possible, but it requires optimism, never my strong suit, to say he'll win. Bush was above 60 in the line a few weeks ago, but has been hovering just above 50 for awhile. Anything's possible, but with corruption and GOTV (closely related phenomena), I would bet on the Dems in Ohio.

Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Minnesota going for the GOP? Dream on. If that happens, polls are seriously flawed in ways markets can't see. Possible but unlikely. New Mexico? I don't think so. NM is, how to put this delicately?, a stinking cesspool of political corruption. The land of the enchanted, disappearing ballot box. I love NM. Georgeous state. But politically hygenic, it is not. They probably already have Kerry ballots printed up and ready to go if necessary. Maybe they should just declare Kerry the winner in NM and get it over with.

So, if Bush wins Florida, and everywhere else where he should win, he will probably win the election. Not surprisingly, when they're not in the throes of manipulation, that's pretty much what the bookies say. The lines on Bush winning the election, and Bush winning Florida have been pretty much in lockstep, now, both a little above 60. Whatever creepoid has been making runs on tradesports will probably try it again before 11/2, so watch for that.

Of course, anything could happen. Terrorist attack. Last minute Dem mudball. A Bush lovechild is a sobering thought, I grant you. Maybe both Bush daughters are lesbians? There is no theory that says there's always a last minute momentum shift--that's just superstition.

Another possibility is that the polls are systematically skewed left, as it turned out they were in Australia. Or skewed GOP because of all the young and restless who are going to stop watching MTV long enough to vote, assuming they can find the polls while stoned. And they don't show up in surveys because they only use cellphones. Which is also sobering. How often can you say "it was like so totally cute!" I don't think they should be allowed to watch TV unsupervised, lot alone vote, except perhaps in New Mexico, where they could do little harm. Voter registration drives are like so totally irresponsible.

So, I think it's about 60-40 Bush, odds wise. It's like being on a flight, and pilot says you have a 60 percent chance of landing safely.

posted by thomas at 10/23/2004 09:45:00 AM

 
"Sharedholder activism" as blackmail
By Tom Smith

So here, apparently, is what happened with "Stolen Honor." Bill Lerach, strike suit entrepreneur, threatened Sinclair with a shareholder suit if it ran the movie. Then the controller of the state of New York, in charge of a public employee pension funds, threatened Sinclair with legal action as well. Sinclair caved, but who can blame them. Running the movie probably would have been good business, but standing up to political thuggery is not.

This may be the most outrageous thing Bill Lerach has done since he vowed, with respect to legal economist Dan Fischel, to "put that little fucker out of business." A remark that cost him $50 million or so when Fischel sued him, and won. Does anyone need to ask if trial lawyers have too much power when they use it to muzzle the free press? Why is it, someone remind me, that we call these people "liberals"? The only thing liberal about them is the liberal way they use their money to keep themselves in power. It is time everyone with a libertarian bone in their bodies realize the Democrats are as hostile to liberty as the most benighted, snake handling, bible thumping fundamentalist nutcase. At least those nutcases don't call themselves liberals. It would be giving Lerach to much credit to say he is just trying to do the public the good of sparing them a movie that would be bad for them. If Bush wins, the odds of tort reform go up. Shutting down a movie critical of Kerry is good business for the tort kings of the world. Of course, the liberal thing to do would be to congratulate yourself on the good you've done for the public, that just happens to be so good for business, preferably at a charity event where 5 percent goes to charity organizations, who in turn spend a little on your favorite group of victims. Make sure they're registered to vote.

As to the New York state pension fund, well, some of us in the corporate law world said a long time ago that shareholder activism was a bad idea. Pension funds are run by bureaucrats, who are no more immune to the temptations of power than anybody else. The idea that a New York pension fund has an economic stake in whether Sinclair shows a movie, which probably would have garnered many viewers, is beyond absurd. The political hack who made that call should be tossed out of her job, but who's going to launch the hostile tender offer on the pension fund and the state of New York? Oh, I forgot, nobody monitors the Solons at the pension funds.

You can read Roger Simon's review of the movie here. It sounds like a right wing Farenheit 9-11, except with more facts.

If you don't want Bill Lerach deciding what you see, you can see the movie here.

posted by thomas at 10/23/2004 08:53:00 AM

 
Krauthammer on Kerry and Israel
By Mike Rappaport

Charles Krauthammer has this analysis predicting that Kerry will sacrifice Israel to the Europeans. (Hat tip: Instapundit, whose editing of the quote I borrow.) Very scary, because it seems so insightful:

The centerpiece of John Kerry's foreign policy is to rebuild our alliances so the world will come to our aid, especially in Iraq. He repeats this endlessly because it is the only foreign policy idea he has to offer. The problem for Kerry is that he cannot explain just how he proposes to do this. . . .

He really does want to end America's isolation. And he has an idea how to do it. For understandable reasons, however, he will not explain how on the eve of an election.

Think about it: What do the Europeans and the Arab states endlessly rail about in the Middle East? What (outside of Iraq) is the area of most friction with U.S. policy? What single issue most isolates America from the overwhelming majority of countries at the United Nations?

The answer is obvious: Israel.

In what currency, therefore, would we pay the rest of the world in exchange for their support in places such as Iraq? The answer is obvious: giving in to them on Israel.

No Democrat will say that openly. But anyone familiar with the code words of Middle East diplomacy can read between the lines.

posted by Michael at 10/23/2004 12:02:00 AM

 
Get a new cat
By Tom Smith

I hadn't heard of Genetic Savings and Clone until my former student now M&A lawyer Ryan Murr mentioned it to me. You can get little Fluffy cloned for a cool 50 large. Love means not having to settle for an old, dead cat.
posted by thomas at 10/22/2004 04:18:00 PM

 
Arnold is such a stud
By Tom Smith

It helps to have your own fortune, I suppose. I love the way he refuses to toady to the usual suspects.

As to Indian casinos, come on. An unbelievable racket.
posted by thomas at 10/22/2004 04:07:00 PM

 
New Bush ad
By Tom Smith

Here's a link to the new Bush ad featuring wolves.

My only objection is I like wolves. They are extremely cool animals, even if they do occassionally eat livestock. Wolves are coming back to my native Idaho, which makes the ranchers mad, but makes the forests more attractive to me, at least.
posted by thomas at 10/22/2004 04:02:00 PM

 
VDH on Bush-Kerry 04
By Maimon Schwarzschild

In a sane world, this election assessment by Victor Davis Hanson would be inescapably correct. We'll see in a few days if the world is sane.
posted by maimon at 10/22/2004 11:46:00 AM

 
Congress should take this in hand
By Tom Smith

Readers of this blog know it takes a lot to get me upset. I am a model of equanimimtyewnh equimimminty calm-mindedness.

But this really ticks me off. If a member of the armed forces is in the field, then anything done that has the effect of disenfranchising him should be taken as a grave violation of law.

Congress should really pass legislation on this one. If they can pass the Voting Rights Act, presumably they have the power. The states should just be told to stop fooling around with the military vote, or else. If it weren't for people in the military, none of us would be voting at all.

Maybe the Democrats should try out a new slogan: "Of course we support our troops; we just don't want to count their votes!"

Or how about: "Democracy: Too important to be left to those who die for it."
posted by thomas at 10/21/2004 01:25:00 PM

 
interesting analysis by Barone
By Tom Smith

Veteran poll watcher and grown-up Barone opines.
posted by thomas at 10/21/2004 09:03:00 AM

 
Astute analysis at RCP
By Tom Smith

Some smart poll watching at RCP.
posted by thomas at 10/20/2004 07:19:00 PM

 
How to think like a left wing Brit
By Tom Smith

Buckeyes (note to British people -- that's someone from Ohio) seem to be really offended that Brit lefties of the Guardian sort are presuming to tell them how to vote. Of course, any American, including Kerry's campaign, could have told them that would be the case. But don't worry, these Brits really do know how to handle terrorists. Really. Their apparent lack of insight into other cultures does not extend to the Middle East. That, they really do understand, and deeply. If someone cuts off your head, you have to let them cut off your other head, so to speak.

In defense of the UK, let me just say, Tony Blair. The SAS. That officer who carried the umbrella into Normandy and led with it.

The leftish UK media is like ours. It does not speak for the Brits, who still have a lot of steel in their spines. And same for the Canadians. The elite around Toronto is hopeless, but many in Western Canada are on our side. In the future, we really might want to consider buying large parts of Canada. Many people who live there enjoy practicing their religion, for example, and would like to live in a country where they can do it, even with all the incredibly complicated human rights issues that raises. If we do this, we would have to be prepared for shock to our dental care infrastructure. Canadians in turn can teach us how not to be so fat.

posted by thomas at 10/20/2004 11:07:00 AM

 
Bainbridge on the ECMH and Behavioral Economics
By Mike Rappaport

Great column by Stephen Bainbridge on the efficient capital markets theory and behavioral economics. The bottom line -- which has been the one I have held since law school during the "decade of greed" -- capital markets in general work well and the possibilities of cognitive biases by regulators are a strong argument against regulating such markets.
posted by Michael at 10/20/2004 07:58:00 AM

 
Harry Potter Movie Pictures
By Mike Rappaport

Here appear to be some pictures of scenes from the fourth Harry Potter movie, HP and the Goblet of Fire. Finally, a way to get my children to read the blog! (Hat tip: Stephen Bainbridge)
posted by Michael at 10/20/2004 07:49:00 AM

 
Who are you going to vote for?
By Mike Rappaport

Reason magazine interviews a large number of interesting people and asks them who they are going to vote for. Several of my heroes were on the list, but alas they don't agree.

Interesting answers:

Richard Epstein is voting libertarian.
Charles Murray is voting -- reluctantly -- for Bush.
Stephen Pinker is voting for Kerry.

To my mind, the oddest answer came from Jonathan Rauch. His favorite President in the last 40 years: "Bush 41. Beats Reagan and everybody else hands down." Say that again?

Sadly, no one asked me who I was going to vote for. I will cast my ballot for Bush (somewhat reluctantly), in part because I believe his Administration will be far superior to Kerry's in fighting the war on terror, both at home and abroad, and partially for the reason that Eugene Volokh gives:

I almost always vote for the party, not the man, because the administration, its legislative agenda, and its judicial appointments generally reflect the overall shape of the party. I tend to think that Republicans’ views on the war against terrorists, economic policy, taxes, and many though not all civil liberties questions -- such as self-defense rights, school choice, color blindness, and the freedom of speech (at least as to political and religious speech) -- are more sound than the Democrats’ views. I certainly find plenty to disagree with the Republicans even on those topics, but if I waited for a party with which I agreed on everything or even almost everything, I’d be waiting a long time.

posted by Michael at 10/19/2004 10:37:00 PM

 
The Flu Vaccine Shortage: Another Example of Regulatory Failure
By Mike Rappaport

Kevin Drum has a good post on this. (Hat tip: Instapundit) After reviewing several possible explanations for the shortage, he concludes:

That leaves explanation #5 (the FDA regulations have gotten tighter over the years, and vaccine makers have had an increasingly hard time meeting them because it requires expensive plant upgrades). And at first glance it seems the most likely to be the real deal. The FDA has a famously tight regulatory regime, made even tighter in the late 90s, and as a result the United States has only two approved manufacturers of flu vaccine while Britain has half a dozen. The bottom line is that there are other flu vaccine manufacturers besides Chiron and Aventis, but they don't sell into the U.S. market because the cost of complying with FDA regulations is higher than the narrow profits they could expect to make from selling flu vaccine.

posted by Michael at 10/19/2004 08:39:00 AM

 
Bill O O O'Reilly
By Tom Smith

He is done. He is so done. In fact, if you wanted him to be properly chewy in the middle, you should have taken him out 20 minutes ago. Do you care? I don't care.

As a general rule, when speaking to a female subordinate on the phone, do not discuss nipples. It's sort of an absolute rule. It's not that hard to comply with.

I did a little experiment the other night. I tried watching Bill for a few minutes. It didn't work. He's gone from being obnoxious, overbearing Irish uncle, to obnoxious, overbearing Irish uncle with a dirty sex thing going. Big difference. Big yukky difference. Bye Bill.

I can honestly say I never liked the guy's show, and always found him insufferable. I was sad when Rush's drug problem came to light. The easiest thing in the world is to get addicted to pain pills after a serious, invasive surgery. Then to get in the sights of some ambitious DA. Rush did not deserve that. Marriage down the tubes too. But big bad Bill. It is not that difficult to avoid calling your female subordinates to fill them in on your latest sexual fantasies. I mean, get a hobby or something. Geez.

Yes, I am assuming he did. That's because I think he did, on the grounds of what I consider reliable, semi-plausible rumors. I think it's too late for him to come clean. He'd have to get a whole new personality. Though maybe that would be a good thing. Anyway, enough time wasted on Mr. O. Gone and soon forgotten.
posted by thomas at 10/18/2004 03:45:00 PM

 
Seen the Light, Lord God, Seen the Light
By Maimon Schwarzschild

Stuart Benjamin, over at the Volokh conspiracy, posts that he is "disenchanted" by the Bush administration, and urges believers in "limited government" to vote for Kerry. Stuart's post implies throughout that he is a small-government conservative disappointed, no, shocked at Bush profligacy.

As someone who knows and loves Stuart -- he is one of those people that, if you know him, you are fond of him -- I never, ever, for a moment doubted that he would support the Democratic nominee. Stuart is well within the academic political orthodoxy when the chips are anywhere near down. He would no more endorse Bush than most of his academic colleagues would. Stuart is very smart and a very good writer, and very good company too, and he was no doubt recruited to the Volokh Conspiracy in large part for those reasons, but he also provides leftish balance at an otherwise mostly rightward-leaning blog. The idea that Stuart is a typical Republican who, after sleepless nights and agonising reappraisal, has decided that supporting Kerry is the conservative thing do -- and, therefore, that patriotic and reflective conservatives should join him and do likewise: well, how shall I put this? there is a spin element here. (The converted rake, or atheist, who is the featured speaker at the revival meeting; not the long-serving church deacon...)

Meantime, RightCoast readers have been besieging us, in your thousands, wanting to know whom we at TheRightCoast will support for President. Will it be Bush, Kerry, Nader, Kim Jong Il? We RightCoasters take our responsibility very seriously: we have cleared our calendars this week, and we will be meeting round the clock to consider this momentous cliff-hanger of a question. It will be close, very close, agonisingly close. So stay tuned. There may be, there surely will be, big surprises in store.

UPDATE: Steven Sturm, at ThoughtsOnline, posts a detailed -- and very cogent -- rebuttal to Stuart Benjamin's endorsement of Kerry.
posted by maimon at 10/18/2004 01:06:00 AM

 
Is a Beslan style attrocity in the US possible?
By Tom Smith

This is disturbing. Put it together with the al-Qaeda laptop in Baghdad with the San Diego school disaster preparedness documents on it, and one gets worried. Between now and the election would be a good time for school officials to be alert. (via Belmont Club)
posted by thomas at 10/17/2004 11:37:00 AM

 
Geniuses at NYT psychoanalyze Bush
By Tom Smith

If, like the average Times reader, you spend a lot of time worrying whether your analyst likes you/finds you attractive/meant by saying "well, times up (as if he were relieved!)/goes when you can't reach him/managed to get a rent-controlled apartment so close to the park, well, you might swallow this kind of thing.

If you don't want to read the whole thing, and who could blame you, I will sum it up for you. Bush is a kind of faith-based robot, who hears voices from Jesus telling him what to do in Iraq. It's disturbing, it's eerie, it's frightening, it's very, very not you. Could you pass the fresh-squeezed orange juice? When did this place get so popular? I get the magazine! Now, to continue. Jesus talks to Bush because, not to put too fine a point on it, Bush is a religio-fundamentalo-quasi-fascistico-snake-handlerific nutball who talks to Jesus. How do we know this? Well, it says so in the Times, doesn't it? Some things you just have to take on faith.

Actually, I am a person of faith, and I must admit I am impressed by the deep insight the Times has into how the brain activity of the faithful goes. Yup, that's what it's like. You have these intuitions, and you just know, heck! That's Jesus talkin'! This morning, for example. I get on the scale and think "oh fuck! That can't be right! I can't have gained four pounds in one day! That's when Jesus speaks up "Tom, it is possible." He calls me Tom. I usually stick to "Lord." "But, Lord, I didn't eat that much! I've been making an effort to be moderate . . ." Jesus points out, kindly, but firmly, "Well, there was the coconut lime cake that your lovely wife Jeanne made for Mark's first birthday . . ." "But I only had one piece of that!" I protest. "Well, three actually, and if you count all the 'slivers' and 'tastes' . . ."

Perhaps it's like that for Bush, too.

When I see how objective the Times is, I just get outraged all over again that Sinclair broadcasting would dare to show an anti-Kerry movie right before the election. Where are their journalist ethics? Where are their analysts? Where is their magazine section? Have they no fresh squeezed orange juice? It is all very shocking.

And before somebody else tries to make something of it, my female labrador Biscuit is usually the one to try to "mount" my male labrador Denali. What is that about? Why is Biscuit so interested in my birkenstocks? I don't know, but I love her just the same.
posted by thomas at 10/17/2004 10:37:00 AM

 
What the blogosphere needs now . . .
By Tom Smith

. . . is a market capitalization weighted index of all the political betting markets on the 2004 election. Realclearpolitics has this very useful site. But look: on tradesports Bush is at 53 or so, while on the IEM he is more like 58. What gives? I suspect tradesports is being manipulated, but who knows? Then there are all the other sites with their lines. Can you do the probabilities in your head from the x/y odds? I can't. Some industrious techonologically gifted person needs to set something up that would give us a moving average (or something) of all these lines together, in percentage form. That would give you a market indicator that would be much more difficult to manipulate, easier to understand, and a better indicator of what was going to happen.
posted by thomas at 10/17/2004 10:12:00 AM

 
Radicalism at a Distance
By Maimon Schwarzschild

The Future For Philosophy, edited by Brian Leiter, just arrived in the mail from Oxford University Press: a book of essays by a dozen leading philosophers on where professional philosophy is and where it seems to be going. The essays I've read are very good, and I'm looking forward to the rest. Brian's own introduction is extremely interesting, sketching the trends in professional philosophy over recent years, explaining how the long-standing gulf (apparent or real) between "continental" and "Anglo-American" philosophy is diminishing if not disappearing.

How can someone like Brian be so good a philosopher, yet hold political views that are -- I'm groping for a gentle way to put this -- not entirely in harmony with those that prevail at TheRightCoast? (About politics, Brian's tendencies are strongly toward the Noam Chomsky worldview, as is pretty clear even from Brian's essay on Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud in this book. And see Brian's blog, the Leiter Report, passim.)

I have a tentative Schwarzschild Theorem to explain this sort of thing: that capable people tend to be conservative about what they know best and do most, even when they are theoretically radical about things that are further removed from their immediate knowledge and their primary concerns. Brian is a good example: he may be a Chomsky-an, or a quasi-Marxist, but as the author of the best-informed and shrewdest rankings of philosophy departments and law schools, he is light-years away from being an "egalitarian" or a leveller. There are lots of people like this: people who have no utopian illusions whatsoever about their work, or about rearing their children, but who hold utopian, or at least silly views (from TheRightCoast point of view, of course) about politics.

If I were mathematically minded -- but then I'd be doing something more useful in life than being a law professor -- perhaps I could calculate the distance that an issue has to be from a capable person's core concerns before that person will start entertaining radical ideas about it. We could call this the Schwarzschild Radius. Oh, wait...
posted by maimon at 10/17/2004 02:14:00 AM

 
Environmental and Antiterrorism Legislation
By Mike Rappaport

Critics of the Patriot Act are forced to acknowledge that it was passed by wide margins in the Congress, including by Democrats. Their explanation is that it was passed in the wake of 9-11, which undermined Congress's judgement. The antiterrorism legislation passed during the Clinton Administration is also explained as having been passed as a response to Oklahoma City. In both cases, the claim appears to be that Congress enacts improper legislation when overreacting to a visible public event or problem.

What is interesting is that this is the same explanation often given for the passage of environmental legislation. CERCLA is passed after Love Canal, the Clean Water Act is enacted after the Cuyahoga River bursts into flames, etc.

Interestingly, although the same phenomonon is at work, liberals and conservatives tend to view these cases differently. Liberals think that the environmental emergency teaches the public about the problem, but believe the terrorist act undermines their judgment. And visa versa as to conservatives.
posted by Michael at 10/17/2004 12:04:00 AM

 
check this out -- offshore info havens
By Tom Smith

Private offshore data banks assessing people for terrorism risk. Private companies doing things you couldn't do in the US because to be a terrorist, it helps to be (gasp!) a 23 year old Saudi national. Story here.
posted by thomas at 10/16/2004 05:05:00 PM

 
Canadians on drugs
By Tom Smith

AA is correct about drugs from Canada. I have known this for some time, but have been too busy to write about it. Our plucky neighbors in the great white North free ride off American drug companies and we who buy drugs at market prices. If everybody paid Canadian prices, there wouldn't be any new drugs to buy, because the Canadians are paying prices that don't include the costs of R&D. If everyone tries to free ride, the ride sinks.

Maybe we should pass some law to prevent the rest of the world from free riding on Americans who are paying for this pharmeceutical gravy train. Not very good metaphor, but you see what I mean.

If you meet a socialist, he will say, "so let's regulate the prices in the US and Canada, and put it at a level that will provide for adequate R and D!" How much is adequate? Well, we'll have to set up a bureau of medical research to decide that, and how to allocate it among the various companies. What about new entrants to the market? You can't have everything. Competition is overrated. It's just one of the many beautiful things about regulation. The more you do, the more you need to do.

On a related point -- Not to be mean about it, but, if the Canadian health care system is so great, what's with all the bad teeth? Does the toothpaste freeze or something? I'm not saying everyone should have teeth like John Kerry, but come on.
posted by thomas at 10/16/2004 04:17:00 PM

 
Victor Hanson and the tragic view of things
By Tom Smith

Hanson is on in this piece. I hope he's right about the upcoming election.

Maybe conservatives do take a more tragic view of the world.
posted by thomas at 10/16/2004 09:04:00 AM

 
This is encouraging
By Tom Smith

Powerline thinks Bush is going to win and it has a point. Bush is campaigning in Blue states, and so is Kerry.
posted by thomas at 10/15/2004 05:20:00 PM

 
A lot to look forward to
By Tom Smith

This is pretty good:

You also have to ask yourself, who is going to carry out Kerry's multilateral approach? And on that score, things simply get worse. A Kerry White House would mean the Madeleine Albright B Team moving into senior foreign policy positions. And, with the notable exception of Richard Holbrooke (his hair may be on fire, but he gets things done), this would be disastrous. These are the same folks who fiddled for 8 years on counter terror, negotiated a terrifyingly naive nuke deal with North Korea, and generally treat foreign policy as a rhetorical exercise. This is a team who has demonstrated, in past position of influence, an alarming propensity to get rolled by their foreign counterparts. Let's pick just two: Susan Rice? Jamie Rubin?! Are you serious?? During her sojourn as assistant secretary for Africa in Albright's State Department, Rice had to be consistently bailed out of trouble by career diplomats. As for Rubin, he is anti-gravitas. He's Edwards-lite.

It comes from a response to DD, who is going to vote for Kerry for pretty unpersuasive reasons. It would be interesting to try to articulate how it is that smart people go wrong on political issues. When smart, young people go wrong, it often seem to me a sort of naivite, as if there is some workable way to fight terrorism that does not involve many, large bombs and lots of scary guys. For older people, I think more often it's that they've ossified into some ideological view of the world.

I really hope Kerry loses. At this point I would rather have Hillary as President than Kerry. She would be more of a man in foreign policy than he would be. She may be a shrieking socialist, but at least she's genuinely mean. I think once she figured out what is going on in the Middle East, she would be a terror. She scares me, and I'm not even a terrorist. Whether the economy would survive her efforts to ruin it, is another question, however. Bush is no Reagan, but at least he is tested. Kerry, I fear, will do his silly thing with our 'allies,' and not realize what a fool is being made of him. He is too much of a fool, I fear, to realize it. I also fear Kerry will follow a cut and run policy in Iraq, which really will be disastrous. I suppose the upside is that if Kerry is elected, there will be much that is comic, in a dark sort of way.

posted by thomas at 10/15/2004 04:56:00 PM

 
PC madness at Amherst
By Tom Smith

I'm no con lawyer, but if Eugene says it's unconstitutional, that's good enough for me. If college administrators would just follow the general rule, "don't be an hysterical nutcase," most of these problems would go away.
posted by thomas at 10/15/2004 10:10:00 AM

 
Emerson was a philistine
By Tom Smith

I kind of like all that New England individualism (e.g., I like Walden), but I can't think of Emerson the same way since I read (somewhere) what he said about reading. He said that whenever he found himself getting "absorbed" in a book, he would stop reading until the feeling went away. He said you should only read for a purpose, such as to find stuff to support your theories. That ranks up there as one of the most philistinian remarks about books and reading I have ever heard, along with "Have you read all these books?" (Which is like asking a wine collector if he has drunk all the wines represented in his cellar. No person who cares about books could ask such a question.)
posted by thomas at 10/14/2004 10:28:00 AM

 
Guilty pleasure
By Tom Smith

I just discovered a big comfy chair in a little used Starbucks which is a hot spot for the wireless network of the office across the parking lot. So I can sit there and actually work on my brilliant article and nobody even knows where I am! O bliss! (I need internet access to work. Most articles are online and it's so nice just to be able to bookmark them. Paper is evil.)

It is wrong to free ride on somebody's wireless network this way? Maybe technically. But it doesn't seem any worse really to me than standing outside Isaac Stern (or some great living musician)'s window and listening to him practice. They really should encrypt their network, but I'm not about to try to get any information from them; I wouldn't know how, anyway. I guess you could apply the Golden Rule and say, would I want somebody free riding on my wireless network? Well, no. But if I knew to the same degree of certainty that that person is as honest as I am, I wouldn't care. Of course, that's impossible to know. You could say I'm just converting what would otherwise be wasted bandwidth into something valuable, and in my case, incredibly valuable. Along these lines, some guy was recently arrested in SoCal for driving around at night without pants, laptop on lap, looking for wireless networks to sponge off of. As to the sort of site he was interested in, I will leave that to you. I'm glad the cops got him. I, on the other hand, am downloading economics articles, which is an entirely different thing. There is nothing remotely prurient about them.

posted by thomas at 10/14/2004 10:12:00 AM

 
The Colorado Proportional Electoral Vote Initiative
By Mike Rappaport

As many readers know, there is an initiative on the ballot in Colorado that would allocate the electoral votes on a proportional basis rather than on the more usual winner-take-all approach. The initiative purports to affect the existing presidential election. But now law professor Mark Scarberry questions this, arguing that the initiative would not apply to the existing election. Mark writes:

The initiative would add a new section 13 to Article VII of the Colorado Constitution. Section 13 would provide for proportional division of presidential electors. The initiative states explicitly that "This section [i.e., section 13] shall be effective on and after November 3, 2004." See numbered paragraph (9) of the initiative, the text of which may be found at
http://www.lawanddemocracy.org/amend36.html.

The initiative does provide that it is intended to have retroactive effect so as to apply to the election held on November 2. But I believe it cannot have that effect. Article II, sec. 1, cl. 4 provides that "The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors ... ." Congress has done so in 3 U.S.C. section 1:

"The electors of President and Vice President shall be appointed, in each State, on the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November, in every fourth year succeeding every election of a President and Vice President."

Thus Colorado must "chuse" its electors on November 2. Colorado will do so by vote of its people on November 2. The choice will be made under the existing "winner take all" approach, which will still be in effect on that date even if the initiative passes. The state could only choose electors after November 2 if there was a failure to choose them on November 2 (see 3 U.S.C. section 2) or if an elector position becomes vacant (see 3 U.S.C. section 4).

By its terms, the new section 13 added by the initiative (if it passes)would not go into effect until November 3. The only way it could be given effect for this election would be for it to have the effect of "un-chusing" the electors that were chosen on November 2 and replacing them after that date with new electors. The federal statute, enacted pursuant to Art. II, sec. 1, cl. 4, does not permit that.

Perhaps there is a feature of the Colorado Constitution providing that initiative measures cannot go into effect until the day after an election. Otherwise I don't understand why the initiative drafters would have drafted it with a November 3 effective date. But in any event, that is the effective date, and I do not see how it can be given retroactive effect without violating federal law.

For additional thoughts on this issue, see Rick Hasen's blog.
posted by Michael at 10/14/2004 08:47:00 AM

 
more tradesports
By Tom Smith

Bush is getting hammered again on tradesports, but I'm not sure it means anything. He took a five point drop after the first debate, then bounced back within two days. These markets are small enough to be manipulated, and maybe they are being. I can't tell how the volume is measured, but it looks like it could be as little at 22,000 USD or so for today, which ain't much.

On the debate, I don't have much to say. Fox heads seem to think Bush did well. He always reminds me of a student who knows the right answer, but has an agonizing time of getting it out. Kerry was whiny and dour, but as an academic, I am used to that. It's sort of soothingly familiar. It struck me that he was pretty loose with his facts. But who's counting. I will be interested to see if the polls are as far off as they were in Australia. I doubt they will be. In 2000, they were alarmingly accurate, especially the evil Zogby. OTOH both Reps and Dems are supposedly involved in all kinds of newfangled voter registration and get out the vote activities. In legal circles, this is called vote fraud. Democrats traditionally attempt to extend the franchise to dead people and non-existent people. Republicans try to stop this for racial reasons because these voters were minorities when they were alive, or would be minorities, if they actually existed.
posted by thomas at 10/13/2004 09:36:00 PM

 
Oh those mass graves
By Tom Smith

I still can't figure out what the all those great moralists and lovers of humanity have to say about them.
posted by thomas at 10/13/2004 08:35:00 PM

 
Why I don't read mainstream literary fiction
By Tom Smith

Look at all these novelists voting for Kerry. If we can't trust their politics, why should be trust the stories they make up?

I can't read what passes for serious fiction these days. It strikes me as tedious, and anywhere from spiritually empty to misguided. Most fiction usually has some sort of moral content. The problem with most modern fiction of the serious sort is it is just morally off. Updike doesn't seem to realize that most men who cheat on their wives are not interesting souls, but assholes; Frazen is so dazzled by his own writing skill that he thinks it's OK he has nothing to say; Amy Tan, well, would her novels ever have been published if they were about white boys and men instead of Chinese girls and women? Some of these writers I have not heard of. I am very comfortable I am not missing anything. Somebody who doesn't write that well, but has a moral vision and is very funny, Tom Wolfe, is hounded from the club (not that he cares much). Of course nobody should care how these pompous toads vote. But it is reason to look for something else to read.

posted by thomas at 10/13/2004 01:52:00 PM

 
Was Kerry dishonorably discharged?
By Tom Smith

This is curious. Can't somebody in DOD just leak Kerry's records? Would that be wrong? I thought we had a right to know, and all that. Maybe it will be an October surprise. Then we could get to hear all the moaning and groaning about how Republicans should not do that sort of thing.

posted by thomas at 10/13/2004 01:27:00 PM

 
Hamas Leader Surrenders
By Mike Rappaport

The head of Hamas's military wing in Hebron surrenders. This is a change. Lately, Hamas's leaders have been surrendering to missles.
posted by Michael at 10/13/2004 08:16:00 AM

 
Prager on the Iraqi War
By Mike Rappaport

The title of Dennis Prager's column says it all:

"Ask Kerry one question: What would Zarqawi be doing if he weren't in Iraq"
posted by Michael at 10/12/2004 04:22:00 PM

 
A Sympathetic Critique of Libertarianism
By Mike Rappaport

Take a look at this discussion of the work of Jeffrey Friedman, who criticizes libertarian arguments to improve them. I agree with some of Friedman's points.
posted by Michael at 10/12/2004 04:19:00 PM

 
Memo to Human Rights Watch
By Tom Smith

Human rights watch should relax. They're somewhere safe, trading intel for toilet paper.

posted by thomas at 10/12/2004 09:41:00 AM

 
Good news is no news
By Tom Smith

Could the MSM be any more upset about the successful election in Afghanistan? They seem to think it's a tragedy on the scale of 9/11.

If you ever are unlucky enough to experience some disaster first hand, you'll see it for yourself. The times when wildfires were bearing down on my neighborhood, the excitement of the local press was palpable. You could almost hear them shouting, "more flames! more houses! more casualties!" I couldn't watch the news without losing it. It terms of information about where the fire was, they were useless.

Anyway, it bears repeating that the election in A-stan was peaceful and to all appearances, fair. Which makes it a non-event.

posted by thomas at 10/12/2004 09:34:00 AM

 
Two on Justice Thomas
By Mike Rappaport

The Washington Post has a two part series on Justice Thomas (here and here). Not really too favorable, as you would expect, but still interesting.
posted by Michael at 10/11/2004 05:08:00 PM

 
Those darn wmd's
By Tom Smith

Fox News had one of their analysts on this morning (Sunday) saying there was stuff in the back of Duelfer Report to the effect that they had interviewed only 30 of 200 chemical weapons scientists, and that huge amounts of chemical and nuclear weapons stuff is unaccounted for. He also mentioned that British and Israeli and "some factions" of U.S. intelligence think large amounts of Iraqi chemical weapons have been moved to Syria, along with the missing scientists. He also said Saddam might have been carrying on nuclear weapons projects in Lybia. He predicted the Duelfer Report would have a short shelf life.

But I could not find this story on the Foxnews.com site. Too bad. It was very interesting.
posted by thomas at 10/10/2004 08:56:00 AM

 
More tradesports
By Tom Smith

Bush seems to be moving back to 60 and Kerry to 40 on tradesports. I don't know why. Glad to see it, though.

We're having Freedom toast for breakfast. If the French pay us enough, we'll change its name back.
posted by thomas at 10/10/2004 08:56:00 AM

 
Advance, Australia Fair
By Maimon Schwarzschild

John Howard won an unexpectedly strong re-election victory in Australia yesterday. Howard is a firm supporter of Australia's traditional alliance with the US, and under Howard's leadership Australia joined the US in Iraq. There were plenty of domestic issues, of course, but the Labor Party opposition was vehemently against Australia's stand in Iraq: Labor's campaign was overtly anti-Bush, and generally anti-American in tone. John Kerry's sister Diana was in Australia -- representing the Kerry campaign -- and campaigned for Labor against John Howard, blaming Australia's stand with the US for terrorist attacks on Australians. (It's one way to strengthen alliances...)

A notable day for Australia. The outcome wasn't close, although the pre-election polls were very close, and Australia's "mainstream" media leaned heavily against John Howard, and (of course) against Bush.

A harbinger for upcoming elections elsewhere?

(More on all this from Belmont Club.)

Musical note: "Advance, Australia Fair" is the Oz national anthem, although "Waltzing Matilda" -- scroll down for a Royal Australian Navy rendition -- is a better song. (Here is more, much more, about "Waltzing Matilda".)
posted by maimon at 10/10/2004 02:46:00 AM

 
Teaching and Scholarship
By Mike Rappaport

Great post at the new blog, Vox Baby, on how teaching and scholarship contribute to one another. In my own experience, I don't like the to go too long without teaching. I find it isolating. Unlike many other professors, I try to spread my sabbatical over the whole year and teach a half load each semester. In that way, I can still have time in the classroom while also having more time to do research.
posted by Michael at 10/10/2004 01:49:00 AM

 
When bad things happen to utterly evil people
By Tom Smith

Some talk that combined SAS/Delta Force elements are closing in on Zarsicko, the head beheader in Iraq. Wouldn't that be loverly? More info on Allah's psycho-bat.

AND appropriately enough, the SAS was used to hunt down and capture and kill escaping Nazi war criminals after WWII. So they have a proud history of anti- psycho-killer action.
posted by thomas at 10/09/2004 09:48:00 AM

 
Debka on Sinai massacre
By Tom Smith

Debka says the explosives used in the Sinai resort massacres were of Iranian manufacture. One more reason not to let Iran have nukes. They are dangerous enough with C-4 (or whatever it is they use).
posted by thomas at 10/09/2004 09:48:00 AM

 
San Diego culture
By Tom Smith

Some people say San Diego doesn't offer much culture. I don't know what they are thinking. For example, I just found out from one of my students that the guy with a credible claim to be the world's best grappler, Dean Lister, lives right here in San Diego. Here's a picture gallery of Lister in action. The shot of the floor of the "cage" covered in blood is a bit much, but it certainly makes a point.

He used to train at City Boxing downtown, and is said to be about to open a new dojo soon. Might be worth checking out.

While I'm on the subject, let me mention a book. Many, many of the books written on subjects such as weight training, fitness, and fighting arts are such unbelievable rubbish. They may have truth in them, but they are so badly written and full of various forms of promotional baloney, you just can't get through them. So how refreshing to come across a book that is very well written, clear, full of straightforward practical advice, written by (with the help of a professional writer -- and it shows) a true star in the field, Renzo Gracie, and as a bonus, has an introduction that is the best short history of "mixed martial arts" I have ever read: Gracie and Danaher's Mastering Jujitsu. This book would be a bargain a half the price.
posted by thomas at 10/09/2004 09:24:00 AM

 
More bad news
By Tom Smith

Sorry to be the dead possum in the swimming pool, but it looks like the tradesports.com lines are still pointing clearly to a tightening of the race after last night's debate. The change has held this morning, so it's not just a blip. It's now a 10 point spread in the price of Bush vs. Kerry futures, where it was about 20 before the debate. That's cutting the spread in half. That's heap bad medicine.

So what the market she be thinking? I don't know, and nobody else does either. I note that Iowa tightened dramatically (there are state by state lines as well). Florida tightened some. W still seems OK in Ohio, but it's tighter than it was. You'd have to know the local politics in these states, but my guess, and it's only a guess, is that there are more Catholics in Ohio and that Iowa is more socially liberal. Bush was quite firm on the culture of life last night. He made it quite clear he thought abortion was wrong, plain wrong. You could see one woman in particular, sitting up in the corner in a black pants suit, scowling like crazy. (The idea they were a bunch of undecided voters was rubbish. The combination of question order and format gave Kerry a big advantage. The GOP negotiators let the Pres down on this one.)

It's all rather frustrating. Of course, things may change. If I were an amoral Bush advisor, I would tell him to make Kerry noises about how much he respects people he disagrees with. When Kerry said that, and talked about how he was a Catholic and his religion got him through Vietnam, I wanted to puke. But maybe it's something else, or a combination of things. We'll see if the race continues to tighten. Bush is still the favorite. But not by much. Take a deck of cards, and take out the red kings and queens. Now shuffle the deck and draw a card at random. If it's black, Bush wins. If it's red, Kerry wins. Roughly, that's how close this race is now.

posted by thomas at 10/09/2004 08:45:00 AM

 
The Genius of Southwest Airlines
By Mike Rappaport

Here is the story from the new economics blog, Voxbaby.
posted by Michael at 10/09/2004 01:12:00 AM

 
Food Volume
By Mike Rappaport

This article says that the best way to reduce your weight is to eat foods with a low density of calories. This means fruits and vegetables, which have lots of water. Sounds quite plausible.
posted by Michael at 10/09/2004 01:06:00 AM

 
Market reacts to debate
By Tom Smith

I thought Bush did a pretty good job, but the tradesports.com futures market moved markedly against Bush over the course of the debate. Bush is down a full five points, and Kerry up, over the past 2 hours or so. That's dramatic. That's what markets do when they think they have new information. What was it? I don't know, but if I had to guess, I would say Bush came on too strong on the 'culture of life' stuff. Personally, I loved it. My favorite person in the debate was the person of blondeness who asked Kerry in the second to last question what he would do to reassure a person who didn't want their tax dollars spent on abortions. I thought Kerry's answer was lame and Bush was strong. But what plays in the country is another question. Bush's Iowa futures were down especially. Maybe Iowa is socially liberal? Bush also lost ground in his Florida futures. Maybe all those conflicted Jewish persons in south Florida who like Bush on Israel but not on abortion. Hard to say. Anyway, I think the race just tightened considerably because Bush came over as a conservative, and Kerry, opportunist that he is, came over as moderate. Total hooey, of course, but how do you keep fools from voting?

I also thought the questions were biased against Bush. What did you expect? What three things do you regret? What kind of question is that? Notice Kerry took it as, things Bush should regret. But that's another story. Sorry, kids, time to start worrying.

Hmmmm. The spread's already closed to four, and there are some big contracts being traded. Might be wise to see how it settles down in the morning.
posted by thomas at 10/08/2004 08:23:00 PM

 
Law Students are Great
By Dan Rodriguez

Famously unappreciated by full-time teachers, not to mention non-law skeptics who wonder whether the attraction of law and law school is badly motivated, law students are truly an exceptional lot. Meeting with my rump group of "dean's student advisors" this afternoon reminds me of that fact. Here are a group of twenty-something individuals who are well-educated, interested in the world, funny, and rather optimistic about both their profession, their own place therein, and also (remarkably) the state of the world. They, by and large, work hard at law school; but, to an extent underappreciated by their teachers, they ground their course work in a fairly textured set of larger social and moral perspectives on the law's complex role in society. Though not (usually) professional philosophers, they think interesting philosophical thoughts; though not (usually) social scientists, they have instincts for empirical connections one can draw from legal doctrine and legal episodes. Naturally, the very best students create interesting students in remarkable and exciting ways.

Much is made about the ways in which law school changes both the orientation and the personality of law students. Moreover, much of the recent, empirically informed work by legal scholars casts these changes in negative terms. What I want to say, though, is that the intellectual and social characteristics of law students, in the main, are both impressive and surprisingly resistant to ruin over the course of the time they are under our stewardship and influence. Whatever self-selection processes drives intelligent college graduates toward law school is, to me, impressively successful. And if you have the opportunity, as have I, to teach law, or anything else, to non-law students -- even where well-educated ones -- I believe that you will come away even more struck by the good fortune we have to have landed as academics in a world of such interesting humans.

Figuring out how best to tap into this neglected resource for our own scholarship and professional influence is, I think, ought to be one of our major objectives as legal academics. That our colleagues in non-law, graduate student-oriented areas of the university have done so rather effectively for a century or so should give us confidence that we can figure this out for our profit and their success.

posted by Daniel B. Rodriguez at 10/08/2004 01:47:00 PM

 
Shaving and thinking
By Tom Smith

Just so my students and fans don't get confused by Dean Rodriguez's comments below, as a person of beardedness, I do not shave in the morning, and in fact have not done so since 1980, the year of the great imbeardation. My lovely wife Jeanne has never seen me without a beard. I once said I was going to shave my beard, and she said if I did, she would shave her head. I use one of those buzzer things on it every other week or so. So, as a law professor, when do I get a chance to think? I do a lot of my thinking in the car, as I drive to and from school, various kid events, etc. etc. For a long time, it seems, every day. Sort of like my own little talk radio station.
posted by thomas at 10/08/2004 01:13:00 PM

 
Academic work is harder than ever before
By Dan Rodriguez

One of the singular privileges of serving as an academic leader at an active, vibrant university is the opportunity to contribute to the success of colleagues in their academic ventures. These ventures are, essentially and fundamentally, teaching, advising and mentoring students, research, and the dissemination of the fruits of this research in public venues and in print. It is my observation, and surely not an original one, that academic work has become considerably harder over the past decade, as the calibre of faculty in law and other fields improves, as the expectations of research and publication grow (especially in law, but in other fields as well), and as the accumulation of knowledge in more or less mature fields demands more skillful, informed, and careful engagement with "the literature" and candid asssesment of whether and to what extent the scholar is making an original contribution to his or her field.

'Tis harder and harder to meet these high standards. From this simple observation comes what I think will continue to be a very problematic period in faculty life. For example, plagiarism reflects (but with no real justification) the powerful competitive pressures to be productive, smart, and original. Moreover, the detachment of academics from the active, hard work of serious academic life reflects as well the increasingly tough road professors must travel to meet the institution's and peers' expectations of excellence.

Consequences? First, universities will, properly in my view, fashion substantial standards for post-tenure review, review designed to constructively reconnect disenchanted faculty members with the skills and tactics necessary to do sustained, excellent academic work in the post-tenure period; second, deans and provosts will need to refocus their attention on more "established" colleagues who, while eschewing for various personal and professional reasons the marketplace for mobile faculty talent, would benefit from assistance -- and maybe even tough love -- to reengage in pursuit of mid-career success; third, sabbatical, research leaves, summers, and other similar periods can be used creatively to rescue faculty stalled by the fearsome reality that academic work is hard, and harder as one ages, faces personal turmoil, settles into a regular lifestyle, etc; fourth, and finally, more faculty will abandon ship, and perhaps later in their academic careers, not to the "non-academic world" necessarily, but to other, non-ladder rank positions in the academic firmament, places which (hopefully) will be valued on different terms and for different reasons than the positions properly conserved in order to further knowledge through sustained, productive work.

What the future will not bring, I believe, is any relief from the brute fact that academic work is becoming ever harder. If an overwhelmed lawyer is thinking of hopping over to a "cushy" faculty post, I'd urge him or her to reconsider and maybe think of teaching high school. But, then again, I understand that teaching high school ain't a picnic these days either . . .


posted by Daniel B. Rodriguez at 10/07/2004 09:08:00 PM

 
Belated blogging
By Dan Rodriguez

Kindly announced as a "guest blogger" by my USD colleagues on The Right Coast at the beginning of this week, technology impediments kept me from the blogosphere until just now. Thanks to Mike Rappaport for his helpful guidance. Tempted as I am to use this platform to engage in relentless, timely propaganda on behalf of our (very excellent) law school, I will resist this indulgence and instead offer my two cents on a few discrete topics -- academic culture/politics, law schools, local governance in America, and maybe some of my kooky ideas about the police power. I leave it to my "Right Coast" colleagues to opine on Kerry, Bush, why England and Israel are really great, why affirmative action is bad, and what Tom Smith thinks about while shaving in the morning.
posted by Daniel B. Rodriguez at 10/07/2004 08:46:00 PM

 
The Original Meaning of the Recess Appointments Clause
By Mike Rappaport

Although President Bush has made a deal with the Senate Democrats not to recess appoint any additional judges this year, the issue is still quite important. The constitutionality of his recess appointments is now being considered by the federal courts. Moreover, after the election, the issue is likely to arise again, whether Bush or Kerry wins. If Bush wins, he will either face a Democrat Senate minority who is willing to filibuster his nominees or, should the Democrats retake the Senate, a Senate majority who will not confirm his nominees. If Kerry wins, a similar situation will result: a Republican majority who will refuse to confirm his nominees or a Republic minority who will filibuster them.

I have just finished a draft of a paper that examines the Recess Appointments Clause from an originalist perspective. My conclusions will be quite surprising for many of those who support the President’s recess appointments. I argue that the original meaning of the Recess Appointments Clause is quite narrow, and would not permit many of the recess appointments made by President Bush and by other Presidents during this century. I reach this conclusion, even though I believe that the Recess Appointments Clause does not forbid the President from recess appointing Article III judges.

I have just recently submitted the paper to law journals, but unfortunately it is a little late in the season. So if there are any law journal editors out there who are still looking for articles, please feel free to take this one.

The paper is available on SSRN. Here is an abstract:

This article addresses the proper interpretation of the Recess Appointments Clause. Under the existing interpretation of the Clause, the President has extremely broad authority to make recess appointments. Indeed, the authority is so vast that in my view the principal constraint on the President’s recess appointment power is not a legal limitation, but the negative political backlash that extensive use of the power might provoke. I argue, however, that the original meaning of the Recess Appointment Clause actually confers quite limited power on the President and would not permit most of the recess appointments that are currently made. For example, under my view, President Bush’s recess appointments of Charles Pickering and William Pryor would not have been constitutional and a President would have difficulty recess appointing a Supreme Court justice who experiences opposition in the Senate.

The language of the Recess Appointments Clause provides that “The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.” My article makes two basic claims about the original meaning of the Clause. First, I argue that the Clause permits recess appointments only when an office becomes vacant during a recess and when the recess appointment is made during that recess. Thus, if an office was vacant while Congress was in session – either because the vacancy arose during a session or a vacancy that arose during a recess continued into the session – the President could not fill that office with a recess appointment. The prevailing interpretation of the Clause, however, permits the President to make recess appointments so long as the recess appointment is made during a recess, whether or not the vacancy existed when Congress was in session. Thus, the President can always make a recess appointment for any office so long as he waits until there is a recess to do so.

The second claim in the article involves the original meaning of the term “recess.” I argue that the Constitution permits recess appointments only during an intersession recess – the (typically long) recess between the two one-year sessions of a Congress – and does not permit recess appointments during intrasession recesses – the (typically shorter) recesses taken during a session. Under my view, the President would be able to make recess appointments only during the one intersession recess each year. The existing interpretation, however, allows the President to make recess appointments on average seven times a year, including for intrasession recesses as short as 10 days (and perhaps even shorter). Obviously, the existing interpretation provides the President with greater recess appointment authority than does the original meaning.

I should note that I do not reach these conclusions happily. I generally support President Bush’s judicial nominations and I also believe that the Constitution confers strong powers on Presidents. In fact, when I first began to look at the recess appointments issue, I was planning on taking the opposite side. But the evidence quickly convinced me that my prejudices were mistaken and I am now firmly persuaded that the original meaning is dramatically different than the current interpretation.
posted by Michael at 10/07/2004 03:42:00 PM

 
Self-Righteous Selfishness
By Mike Rappaport

Last week, John Fund had a piece in the Wall Street Journal talking about how the Bush and Kerry campaigns were preparing their lawyers for the post election litigation over the results. Quite prudent for the campaigns, but quite sad for the country.

It is worthwhile considering how we have gotten into this predicament where courts are increasingly involved in elections. While the Democrats are likely to answer that the cause was the Supreme Court’s decision in Bush v. Gore, that is simply not true. Even if one thinks that the Supreme Court acted improperly in that case, they were responding to a prior intervention by the Florida Supreme Court – one which, in my view, was clearly improper.

But to argue about which court acted improperly misses the point. Once one goes to the courts to challenge election results, we are in trouble: there is a risk of mistaken decisions, there are the costs and uncertainties of litigation, and there are temptations for the judges to play god.

The real problem is that Al Gore chose to litigate the results in Florida. There had been a tradition of not doing this at the Presidential level – witnesses Richard Nixon’s restraint in 1960, when corruption in the Democratic Party probably stole the election. Yet, Nixon did not challenge and the country was better for it. Gore not only called for an electronic recount, he then pursued litigation in a manner that was designed to overturn the existing statutory scheme and to retroactively adjust the electoral rules.

It is Al Gore, and the Democratic activists who supported him, that have put us in this mess. If there is a electoral litigation in Florida or elsewhere this year, don’t put the principal blame on the Supreme Court, or Jeb Bush, or whomever – blame Al Gore and his self righteous selfishness.
posted by Michael at 10/06/2004 09:09:00 PM

 
Hush, little Bushies, don't say a word
By Tom Smith

As my legions of fans know, I spend a lot of time worrying about the future. This is partly because I am fascinated by the whole idea of uncertainty and (the related idea of) risk, and all the various things we clever primates do to cope with it.

So, for instance, debka reports today that Iran has started producing hexaflouride gas, which is the stuff you put into the centrifuge to enrich uranium, which is stuff you use to make what they call in Iran "the great big Jew killer." (Were that a gross exageration!) Both my internet prowling and my sources (or source) in the spec ops/intel community tell me that when the isotopes that reveal that uranium is being enriched are detected, those Israeli F15's and 16's, they be takin' off. Without further ado. I read that the best Israeli pilots are already practicing on mock ups of Iranian plants in the Negev. You go, Jews. There's something about a Strike Eagle with a Star of David on its tail that gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling. And, local interest!, I think at least part of the GBMFB's that they drop on buried WMD plants are made right here in San Diego!

It raises the questions of what those darn bathrobe-clad religion nutcases in Iran are thinking. They may be thinking that Israel and the US will think Iran must have super hardened underground plants in operation, because we think Iran would not be so stupid as to pursue its nuclear arming program as openly as it seems to be doing. And so we won't bomb them, for fear we will just anger them and not really destroy their program. This could be correct, or it could be a bluff. The trouble is, the prospect of a nuclearly armed Iran is scary enough that bombing the bejesus out of them is still the dominant strategy. I guess they don't teach game theory in mooolah school. Maybe the mooolahs will go right to the edge and not start enriching. If they don't get bombed, that is probably what will have happened.

Anyway, that is all just a digression to my main point, which is, just because an election is close, and this one is going to be, does not mean there is a lot of uncertainty about the outcome. If you look at the tradesports lines, what the market "thinks" is that there is a 60-40 probability that Bush will get roughly 275 electoral votes. In terms of electoral votes, that's close, but close doesn't count in elections, only horseshoes and horseraces. A 40 percent chance of getting Sir John of the Lovely Nails and Silky Pony is still nasty, but what can you do? My point is, you can be certain your guy will win by a tight margin, and that is better than an expected margin for your guy of 10 points, where the latter is very uncertain (has a very high standard deviation). Something like this is probably going on, as the futures market holds steady at 60-40 for Bush, even as the polls show the race tightening. So don't panic. If the time comes to panic, trust me. I am not Hugh Hewitt. I think bad things, they happen every day. I will let you know.

posted by thomas at 10/06/2004 09:26:00 AM

 
Grade deflation
By Tom Smith

We here at USD law school have had a strict, and I mean strict, mandatory curve for a long time. Now Princeton is leading the way against undergraduate grade inflation. Could be a trend.

posted by thomas at 10/05/2004 11:29:00 PM

 
The VP debates
By Tom Smith

I listened to the debate, and I really thought X came over as more vice presidential. He had a lot more style than Y and his answers were far more cogent. My wisdom may not be the conventional wisdom, but I can be dreadfully insightful, which is why so many people visit my blog. What was Y's problem? Was he young, old, tired, worried, scared, drained, nervous or what?

I thought X really clobbered Y on the Z question. How could anyone think that Q is the answer to Z!

Here is a paradox for you. Anybody who thinks that their own opinion of who 'won' a spectacle style debate is meaningful, is displaying an ignorance of psychology and politics so profound that you know immediately not to take their opinions seriously. The polls have more information in them than Andrew Sullivan or Hugh Hewitt's gut, but not much. Hugh Hewitt is drunk on his cheerful optimism, maybe partly because he is sure Jesus loves him. Andrew Sullivan is comically unobjective, ever since he gave up on the Republicans for being anti-gay. Not to be a poop, but all this instant blogospheric bloviation on the debates is very silly. It makes bloggers look like a bunch of opinionated, self-obsessed, news junkies . . . Oh, wait! We are!

More: Too much information from Andrew:

Well, I could easily be wrong, but I have a feeling Cheney will crush Edwards tonight. The format is God's gift to Daddy. They'll both be seated at a table, immediately allowing Cheney to do his assured, paternal, man-of-the-world schtick that makes me roll on my back and ask to have my tummy scratched. (Yes, I do think that Cheney is way sexier than Edwards. Not that you asked or anything.)

One could say a lot of things about this comment. But mainly, observe that this reaction is highly idiosyncratic. Sullivan is in no position to judge what most Americans think, and probably not what most gay Americans think. At least I hope not.

posted by thomas at 10/05/2004 10:42:00 PM

 
Funny birthday card
By Tom Smith

My lovely sister in law sent me the following birthday card, which cracks me up. (Thursday is my fsomething birthday):

Picture of skinny old guy, white shoes and belt, golf shirt, next to solid old wife, short gray hair, golf shirt. He is pointing authoritatively at something off shore; it looks like San Diego
"And that land mass there is called 'stick out point' because of the way it sticks out into the water . . ."
[Inside card:] One year older, one year closer to making up crap.

And then, in class yesterday, a male student says to me: "Has anyone ever told you you look just like that guy on the [some talk show I've never heard of].
Female student: You mean the old guy?
Me: Old guy?!!
Female student: I'm sorry. My filter doesn't seem to be working.
posted by thomas at 10/05/2004 03:21:00 PM

 
Target Iran
By Tom Smith

Excellent discussion of what our friends the crazed Iranian religious nutcases are up to. At globalsecurity.org. Very good site BTW. And the Iranians really do have tons of chemical weapons, really.

Is it possible Bush et al. would attack Iran in October, in a joint US-Israeli operation? Lind thinks so (follow the link from above). Nahhhh. I don't think that's going to happen. But after he's reelected? Quite possible, I think.
posted by thomas at 10/05/2004 01:12:00 PM

 
Polls
By Mike Rappaport

Here was a the summary of the polls from Real Clear Politics:

ABC News/Wash Post (10/110/3): Bush 51, Kerry 46, Nader 1
Pew Research (10/1-10/3): Bush 49, Kerry 44, Nader 2
Zogby (10/1-10/3): Bush 46, Kerry 43, Nader 2

And then, of course, this poll

CBS/NYT (10/110/3): Bush 47, Kerry 47, Nader 1

What a shock that their result differs. The only hard question: Who do you trust less, the Times or CBS? I really don’t know.
posted by Michael at 10/05/2004 10:59:00 AM

 
USD Law School Emerging as the Center of the Universe
By Tom Smith

I'm relieved to find something I can agree with Brian about. His take on the latest bit of law school puffery to appear in my mail box is just right.

I do think characterizing this sort of thing as "law porn" is unfair, however. Thus, suppose completely by accident I end up at a website that shows Pamela Anderson washing a car, a task for some reason she has decided to undertake without clothes. Actually, that is practical, given that they just get wet anyway. Now, a day later, I have no trouble calling the image to mind and telling you who was in it and what it was about. (Please bear in mind this is a hypothetical.) Now take the brochure from UCLA. Who was in it? What are they teaching? What is it that makes them so unbelievably important, so mind stunningly original? For the life of me, I cannot recall. I vaguely recollect thinking, oh, more IP guys. What a racket. I'm not saying that's a correct thought, or a fair thought. I'm just trying to be honest with you and tell you that's the thought I had. But that's about it. Well, I do recall one of the new hires was wearing a suit jacket and a mock turtleneck of a clashing color, which to me said "I am just 2 cool 2 B forgotten," and since I do recall what he was wearing, albeit unfavorably, I guess he is at least half right. In any event, my point is, calling it law "porn" gives it a vividness that it lacks. A small point, I grant you, but worth pondering nonetheless. Should law schools consider posting pictures of law professors washing cars without clothes on? A calendar perhaps? They should not. That would be law porn, and that would be wrong.

posted by thomas at 10/05/2004 10:11:00 AM

 
Who wants to be a billionaire?
By Tom Smith

So here's a public disclosure of my newest product idea. If I understand patent law correctly, I have a year to file my patent application from about one minute from now.

I call it, the wearable, third-party verified, real time net worth indicator. It would be a little electronic badge thingy that you could wear on your lapel, as a medalion or whatever, that would indicate your net worth at that moment. It could do this by changing colors or displaying some prominent symbol, such as a big M when over 1 million USD. The analogy would be to military rank, only this would be a conspicuous display of your financial rank. It would be third party verified, for example, by a recognized accounting firm. We all know Rolex watches and Porsches are just signaling devices. Well, finally, a signaling device that actually is a signaling device! And, if properly designed, it could be much more reliable than a leased Porsche about to be repossessed. It would not have to be garish. People in bars could just look at it discretely the same way they look at your name tag at a conference. Think about it.
posted by thomas at 10/04/2004 08:20:00 PM

 
"Latin American solution"
By Tom Smith

Robb strikes me as a bit of a nut, but this is interesting.
posted by thomas at 10/04/2004 08:20:00 PM

 
Shark Tale agenda
By Tom Smith

Some readers thought I was nuts to suggest I, Robot held a subliminal message that whites were sub-human, robotic clones, but I take it we can all agree that Shark Tale is a thinly veiled parable about accepting gays. Which is fine. Who am I to say that cartoons about fish should not be used to propagandize about sexual politics. Lenny is a shark who will not kill anything and is unable and unwilling to take over his father's crime empire. The Godfather shark, whose name I forget, is played by Robert De Niro. Lenny runs away from home, dresses like a gay dolphin, paints himself and wears a strap to change the shape of his nose to complete the disguise. I will note all the explicitly sexual scenes (nothing beyond kissing, we see no milting or egg depositing) involve obviously male and female fish.

I enjoyed the movie. It is funny, full of wit, and has something like a plot. It is full of sappy sentiments that I could do without, but whatever. The critics are giving it very mixed reviews, but it's not that bad.

It does make one wonder, however, about what is appropriate in propagandizing children. Shark Tale is a Dreamworks production, one of the initialed partners of Dreamworks SKG being David Geffen, perhaps the richest gay man in America, and until his famous coming out at an AIDS benefit in 1992, a famously closeted gay. After a donation of 200 million to the UCLA school of medicine, it has been renamed the David Geffen School of Medicine. Strangely enough, Shark Tale, as the story of a closet vegetarian shark, could be a metaphor for the life of David Geffen, except that no one has ever suggested that there was anything remotely vegetarian about him. In an industry famous for sharks, he is a great white.

I'm not sure what I think about this movie. I think it is important to teach children not to be hateful toward gays, and as I have made clear before, I think hatred of gays is an evil prejudice. There's something creepy, however, about using children's entertainment for propaganda. I'm not even sure it's all that great for gays, since Lenny is portrayed as a rather swishy fish. It's also manipulative to present children with a character who not utterly clueless adults can see is intended to be gay, but which children will not see as such. (My kids were outraged at my suggestion that Lenny was gay.) As if to say, he's not gay, children, he's just a cuddly, cute shark with unusual tastes! So what if he wants to dress like a dolphin; he's still lovable, isn't he? Children are autonomous beings. They deserve not to be manipulated, even if it is relatively easy to do.
posted by thomas at 10/04/2004 06:59:00 PM

 
Vintage Randy Cohen
By Tom Smith

Stomach feel fine? OK, then you can read Randy Cohen. Wait at least an hour before eating.
posted by thomas at 10/04/2004 03:25:00 PM

 
Get to know Iran's nuclear program while you still can
By Tom Smith

Some background on our religious nutcase friends in Iran and how Israel feels about their getting nuclear weapons.

More.
posted by thomas at 10/04/2004 03:17:00 PM

 
"You need not ask for whom the video cell phone rings; it rings for you."
By Tom Smith

Must read from Belmont Club.
posted by thomas at 10/04/2004 01:44:00 PM

 
Letter From Haifa
By Maimon Schwarzschild

A European on the staff of one of the UN agencies recently met with a small faculty group at the University of Haifa in Israel. Menachem Kellner, one of the Haifa professors, had an exchange of letters with the UN man afterwards. Here is part of Kellner's letter:

I think you may misconstrue the nature of Israeli reactions to European criticism. I know of no one here who thinks we should be given a pass for our failings because others in the world are worse. As a Jew, I believe that I have an obligation to demand of Jews a higher moral standard than I demand of others. That, in a nutshell, is what the ancient prophets of Israel commanded. On the other hand, when non-Jews demand of Jews a vastly higher moral standard than they demand of others, my antennae do quiver with the vibrations of anti-semitism. Over the last four years, they have been quivering non-stop. Israel has been subjected to a barrage of criticism, from Europeans in particular, much of it based on an uncritical acceptance of false Palestinian propaganda -- the most blatant, but hardly the only, example being the "Jenin massacre" of two years ago: and this from Europeans who view with apparent equanimity half a century of Chinese outrages in Tibet, horrific Russian crimes in Chechnya, and much more of the same.

This is why so many Israelis like me are unmoved by European criticisms of Israel. It is hard not to impugn the motives of these critics. Moreover, such criticism only weakens those among us in Israel who are amenable to some sort of negotiated settlement; it lends great credence to those here who say, "The world is against us anyway, so why listen to them?" In short, the hysterically exaggerated nature of European criticism of Israel works against those forces in Israel (among whom, it is safe to assert, may be counted everyone in the room when you spoke) who earnestly want Israel to be guilty of fewer sins of commission and omission.

I want to respond in detail to one specific paragraph in your letter. You write:

"I do not think it is necessary, or realistic, to lump all Palestinians into the group of 'morally bankrupt and undeserving of their own state'. Having spent the last five years throughout the Former Yugoslavia I believe it to be dangerous to transfer the undesired attributes of a small percentage of a population to an entire people. Secondly, I don't know how many Palestinian kindergartens you have seen, but I can give you a couple images I have in my mind from visits I have made: children unable to attend schools because of military closures; children having to go kilometers out of their way to reach schools because of a wall or Israeli settlements; children waiting at gates for hours to reach their school, if they can reach it all; children forced to learn without the bare necessities, such as books, paper and pencils; children being harassed by settlers without any chance of assistance from Israeli police or soldiers; and smells so bad all I could think of was showering. This isn't every kindergarten, but enough of them. I think there is suffering on both sides.

My replies:

(1) I know of no Palestinians of stature who have unqualifiedly condemned the bombings and shootings of Israeli civilians. Even Hanan Ashrawi and Sari Nusseibeh, alleged moderates, have done no more than condemn the murders as counterproductive to the Palestinian cause. By every indication available to me, the vast majority of Palestinians appear to support the murder of children, as long as they are Jewish. Unless you can adduce convincing evidence to the contrary, I think that I have every right to continue seeing the general run of Palestinians as "morally bankrupt and undeserving of their own state". I am, of course, aware of the fact that not all Palestinians are made by the same cookie-cutter, anymore than all Jews or all Israelis are, but exceptions to generalizations do not invalidate the generalizations.

(2) About the misery of Palestinian kindergartens:

(a) Do you really compare inconvenience, delays, harassment, unhygienic conditions -- none of which I deny, all of which I regret, and where it is really our fault, condemn -- to murder, mayhem, and dismemberment? If you do, we should stop this discussion right here, since you and I live in different moral universes.

(b) Yasser Arafat's autonomous Palestinian regime is grossly kleptocratic, quite apart from its terrorist proclivities. Untold millions have disappeared into the private foreign bank accounts of Palestinian "leaders": money which could have built hundreds of spectacular kindergartens for Palestinian children. So I reject your implication that Israel bears major responsibility for the sorry situation you describe in Palestinian kindergartens.

There is indeed plenty of suffering on both sides. When enough Palestinians learn to love their children more than they hate mine -- to paraphrase the late Golda Meir, not a woman I am usually given to quoting -- that suffering can, perhaps, be brought to an end.

-- Menachem Kellner

PS I write this letter under the impress of two events today: the bomb attack in Jerusalem a few hours ago, and my visit this morning to a hospital here in Haifa. In order enter the hospital, staffed both by Jews and Arabs, and serving both Jews and Arabs, I had to pass through two circles of security. When Palestinians begin raising their voices in condemnation of the fact that Jews and Arabs in Haifa have to fear being blown up in a hospital, I will begin to revise my estimation of the moral necessity of a Palestinian state. When Europeans begin to condemn Palestinians for targeting schools and hospitals with the same enthusiasm with which they condemn Israel for targeting terrorists, often humiliating Palestinians, and building settlements, I will begin to take your criticisms more seriously.

posted by maimon at 10/04/2004 11:53:00 AM

 
Don't fret, little Bushies
By Tom Smith

Yes, the polls show Kerry has closed the gap, and that's nothing to be thrilled about. But the polls are not very good indicators of who is going to win. We don't have very good indicators of who will win, but the best we have are futures markets, odd as that may seem. When Kerry gets within 3 or 4 points of Bush on the betting markets, then it will be time for the serious questions, like do I want the 3 month MRE variety value pack, or should I just choose singles that look like they might taste good after 6 months in the bush, waiting for the isotopes to decay. (Yes, I exagerate somewhat, but a Kerry victory would definitely increase my national security anxiety level.)

Trust me. I've looked at this. I'm too lazy to link to my sources, but it is just remarkable how good a job even completely play markets do processing information from polls and other sources respecting future events. Of course, this does not mean the market can predict the future. It just does a better job of doing so in light of currently available information. The markets obviously discount polling numbers in various ways. It's hard to say what the market is "thinking." It's important to understand the market is smarter, a lot smarter, than any of the individuals who trade in it, most of the time. So it is not just a matter of what the smart money is thinking. Having said that, it may be the market thinks the polls are inaccurate, that swing voters tend to be impressionable but change their minds easily, that Bush will do better in a Townhall format, that there's a good chance of an October terrorist surprize, who knows.

So, here's Bush on tradesports.com, which I like better than IEM because its graphics are better. It's now a 60-40 race for Bush, down from roughly 67-33. A big drop for Bush, reflecting his poor performance in the debate. But 60-40 is still a big spread. Not time to panic yet. Later, maybe. If any Kerry supporter will give you even odds on Kerry winning, take it! If somebody is mouthing off about how Kerry is going to win, ask them what he thinks Kerry's odds are of winning. If he says 70-30, ask him for a bet on those odds. You give 30 bucks to honest intermediary, he gives seventy, and the winner gets the pot. That's fair, isn't it? It's amazing how few people would dream of putting their money where their mouth is, in that cliched, but so very salutary phrase. It does have a way of shutting people up, and when it doesn't, you can make some dough.

I suspect the polls are biased, not necessarily in favor of the Dems, but in favor of being newsworthy. Newsweek's numbers seem awfully volatile to me. I didn't believe them when they said Bush was 14 points ahead or whatever it was, and I don't believe them now, with Kerry 2 points ahead (or whatever). Zogby just seems pro-Democratic. Gallup somewhat Republican, perhaps. Rassmussen seems to use bigger samples, which can't hoit. State polls strike me as potentially more useful. You can waste hours looking at this stuff on realclearpolitics.

posted by thomas at 10/04/2004 10:43:00 AM

 
Guest Blogger: Dan Rodriguez
By Mike Rappaport

I am happy to announce that Dan Rodriguez will be guest blogging this week on the Right Coast.

A leading scholar in Administrative Law, Legislation, and Local Government Law, Dan often employs the insights of political science to enlighten these fields.

Dan is also the Dean of the University of San Diego School of Law, which makes him our boss.
posted by Michael at 10/03/2004 05:16:00 PM

 
Debka on French double dealing (I bet there's a French word for that)
By Tom Smith

Here's what Debka says happened to the two French journalist hostages:

On Thursday, September 30, an unforeseen occurrence laid bare a potential threat to this prognosis. A convoy of white Iraqi Nissen trucks, the favored vehicle for smugglers of people and illegal freight from Syria, was sighted northeast of Haditha heading along the Euphrates bank towards the Syrian border town of Abu Kamal, an al Qaeda-Baath depot for fighters infiltrating Iraq. US warplanes on constant patrol over the border region bombed the convoy, set some of the vehicles on fire and left six Iraqis dead.
Next day, Friday, October 1, Phillippe Evanno, aide to French parliamentarian Didier Julia, called an urgent news conference in Damascus with bad news; the convoy just bombed by the Americans was ferrying to Syria Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot, the two French journalists taken hostage in Iraq on August 28. They had been freed, he explained, after being handed over by their abductors, the Islamic Army of Iraq, to another Iraqi guerrilla group.
DEBKAfile reports that in today’s Iraq such handovers are in fact cash sales, the money put up in this case most probably by the French government or some semi-official French organization. Evanno claimed there were two convoys; a French mediator Phillippe Brett drove in one and the two hostages were in the second. After the American bombardment, US troops surrounded the damaged vehicles. The passengers, including the two journalists fled and have not been heard of since.
Initially the French government and US military officials denied knowledge of this incident. However, on October 2, French foreign minister Michel Barnier criticized “unofficial negotiators” led by Julia for frustrating government efforts to gain the two hostages’ release.
The story behind this tale is revealed here by DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources.
Immediately after Malbrunot and Chesnot were abducted, President Jacques Chirac launched an intense effort to secure their freedom. At the same time, he saw a chance not only of circumventing the US authorities in Baghdad, but torpedoing a potential Washington-Damascus rapprochement over joint military border action. To this end he took three steps:
1. He formed a special panel at the Elysee Palace of French intelligence officers and diplomatic advisers with good connections in Arab countries, such as the former UN secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who is well remembered in Washington for his contribution to the 1993 American military debacle in Somalia and the 1995 disruptions he staged in Bosnia with French intelligence.
A second panel went up in the French foreign ministry.
Both panels were mandated to explore every channel and connection for securing the two journalists’ release with the exception of American officials in Washington or Baghdad and circles identified with the Iyad Allawi government.
2. On August 31, Chirac flew to the Black Sea resort of Sochi to bid for help from Russian president Vladimir Putin and visiting German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. He left empty-handed. Nonetheless, he never once appealed to the US president, or turned to American diplomats, military or intelligence for assistance.
3. The French government tried broadcasting an appeal for help throughout its extensive web of connections in Arab countries, Iran and the extremist Muslim world, including the Hizballah terrorist group. When this appeal failed to bring any response, Paris established a semi-official forward rescue command in Damascus hoping to reach the hostage-takers through Syrian military intelligence’s close links with the Baath guerrilla officers and al Qaeda operatives organizing the clandestine transfer of fighters and arms into Iraq.
This command was staffed by Didier Julia, Philippe Brett and Philippe Evanno.
They got as far as buying the release of the two Frenchmen with a hefty payout to a Baath guerrilla group fighting in Fallujah. According to our sources, the deal was a package that also covered running the men out to Syria through one of the guerrillas’ smuggling routes.
However, when the American air force put paid to the scheme by raiding the departing convoy on its way to Syria, Paris disowned the Damascus forward command and accused the “unofficial negotiators” of doing more harm than good.

Remember, Debka is at least as reliable as CBS.
posted by thomas at 10/03/2004 02:40:00 PM

 
More bad news from the cheery professor
By Tom Smith

I apologize to my loyal fans, but this gloomy view from Belmont Club strikes me as correct. Just because Kerry would be an utter disaster does not mean Bush is doing a good job.

Unlike many people with opinions in the academy, I do not hold myself out as an expert in Middle East politics. For one thing, I have a hard time keeping straight all the religious nutcases who want to kill us . But I will say that our military strategy in Iraq has neo-conservative pointy-headedness written all over it. I am very skeptical we are gaining anything of value by tip toeing up on the Islamofascists in Fullajah for instance. Now, apparently, Iran could be as little as four months away from actually having nuclear weapons. I would guess it is more than that, but pretty damn soon seems to be a fair bet.

Just for future reference, it is the responsibility of our brave leaders not to allow bizarro theo-thugocracies to get within a hundred days or so from having weapons they would have reason (using that term liberally) to give to co-religionist psychopaths who dream at night about turning our families into radioactive ash. It's part of that whole national security thing. That the radioactive mullahs have been allowed to get as far as they have in Iran is a terrible failure for the Bush administration. It is obscured by the fact that Kerry is still dithering about what the "intentions" of the Iranians are. I guess since there aren't Communists around any more about whose intentions he may dither, he thinks it's time to dither about the intentions of our new, and in their own way, even more revolting enemies. (I suppose who you think is more revolting depends on whether 19th century pseudo-science or medieval Oriental black fantasy is more the stuff of your nightmares. Both work for me.) Perhaps since the Iranians so promptly rejected Kerry and Silky Pony's really very thoughtful offer of fuel rods that could not be used for bombs, they will think again about whether Iran really does want every suicide bomber's fondest dream. But what am I saying. Of course they won't. It's not about reality. It's about making Kerry's dreams come true, so everybody will know he really is as important as he almost believes he is.

I don't blame Bush for getting mad. There he was, having to treat as serious a guy who is a walking advertizement for false consciousness. Kerry is a man who values his comforts, and who doesn't. I've never had a manicure, but windsurfing sounds fun. For what appears to be mainly reasons of insatiable ego, rooted perhaps in his odd poor-little-rich-boy childhood, he thinks he wants of the job of steering America through what are shaping up as very dark and dangerous times.

In a matter of months, there is every chance we will be at war with Iran, if only because the Israelis are not likely to sit back and let Iran get nukes, even if a President Kerry would dither until it is too late to stop them. There's something about suicide bombers that wakes you from your dogmatic slumbers. The Jew, as our Arab friends would say, understands that the Iranian mullahs (pronounced "mooooolahs") are as vicious a bunch as you could wish, hanging on to power by their none-too-clean fingernails, and that war is a favorite expedient by which fascists hang on to power. (Where have I heard this stuff about wiping out the Jews with weapons of the future before? Some people see gee whiz technology and think, oh boy! more leisure time! Others think, oh boy! what a great way to kill Jews! But I digress.) The mullahs may be evil, but they're not stupid. Asking whether the mullahs are after nukes is like asking whether Kerry got married for the money. For people who volunteered for the job of protecting this country, there is such a thing as a stupid question.

What Kerry doesn't realize is this is job for Teddy Roosevelt, and he is no TR. Bush is no TR either. He's not even a JR. He's just the best we've got. We just have to hope that's enough, and if it is, it won't be by much.

posted by thomas at 10/03/2004 09:31:00 AM

 
Religion of Peace update
By Tom Smith

Swell news from the land of peace.
posted by thomas at 10/03/2004 09:30:00 AM

 
Belmont Club on Samarra
By Tom Smith

Update from Belmont Club. Impressive performance by joint US-Iraqi forces:


The fact that the First Infantry Division and the Iraqi Army were able to keep the approach of multi-battalion forces secret from the enemy in the heart of the Sunni triangle is one of the most impressive aspects of this operation. The insurgents were surprised in a stronghold where they could expect to enjoy every intelligence advantage. Nearly as impressive was the lightning seizure of the Shi'ite shrine by the 36th Iraqi Commando battalion. If this feat were achieved in Najaf two month's earlier it would have been the equivalent of Allawi capturing Moqtada al-Sadr and his high command in their underpants. In fact, the entire multinational operation implies a degree of coordination, command and control that speaks volumes about the degree of improvement of the Iraqi Army.

But many difficulties still remain. The "Telegraph" points out the obvious one. Will the victory last?
"Less than three weeks ago the US military entered the troubled city to reinstate its city council, which had disbanded earlier under terrorist threat. Although this was hailed as a great success at the time, insurgents quickly returned and cowed local forces when US forces left."

In that respect the earlier American operation in Samarra resembled any Israeli Defense Force incursion into Gaza or the West Bank -- overwhelming but temporary. In fact, any all-American incursion into Falluja would probably have shared the same temporary character. But the American commitment to building a new Iraqi Army and Iraqi State is the bearing strategic fruit which provides the crucial difference. Imagine if the Israeli Defense Forces and a Palestinian Government Force could jointly seize a terrorist stronghold and then garrison it with a Palestinian Force. What if they could seize and hold? This is what American and Iraqi forces are achieving in Samarra; this is what can be done in October that could not be achieved in April, 2004. The view that Iraq is descending into a quagmire represents a valid concern, but it ignores three crucial achievements by US policymakers.

The piecemeal defeat of the threatened Sunni-Shi'ite uprising in April by holding the Sunnis fixed while militarily and politically defeating Moqtada Al-Sadr;

Rebuilding the Iraqi Army from a near-zero condition in April; and

Establishing an interim Iraqi government.

Both Saddam and Sadr believed they could outmaneuver the Americans, who were, if the press is to be believed, singularly lacking in nuance and intelligence. Doubtless Zarqawi believes he can do the same. Long may he cherish that hope.

posted by thomas at 10/02/2004 09:13:00 AM

 
Iraq update
By Tom Smith

Here. Sounds like Iraqi forces are performing pretty well.
posted by thomas at 10/02/2004 08:59:00 AM

 
The Exit Strategy
By Mike Rappaport

People keep on talking about when the US can leave Iraq. While I would certainly want us to be able to leave, I don't think this is how these things normally work. Rather, what is more likely is that if the terrorists are defeated, US troops may stay in Iraq, but they may not be subject to attack. If we had 30,000 troops in Iraq and virtually none died during the year, then that would be a satisfactory arrangement for a time. The US has 37,000 troops in Korea, and few people complain about it.

I don't want to be misunderstood. I would prefer that the US troops leave, sooner rather than later. But by the standards of our military activities elsewhere, this may be unrealistic. The key issue is how many of our troops are being injured and killed, not whether they continue to be in Iraq.
posted by Michael at 10/02/2004 01:16:00 AM

 
fyi
By Tom Smith

I deleted my post on J. Scalia's orgy comments because I read on the Corner that he was probably misquoted, which makes sense.
posted by thomas at 10/01/2004 08:43:00 PM

 
cool spiders
By Tom Smith

Coolest spider TV show I've ever seen. Unbelievable photography. If you are reincarnated as an insect, remember, the default rule is, it's a spider.

Fun spider facts:

They eat you while you're still alive. The venom just paralyzes.

Some scientists think spiders are as smart as small mammals. Portia (sp?) spiders seem to communicate with signs.

All spiders are predators.

Sydney funnel webs can survive in a swimming pool for a long time. They can bite you underwater.

The dessicated corpse of an Australian camper was found in a forest. He was obviously not aware he had been camping in a forest infested by thousands of deadly funnel webs, during the season males wander at night.

Male black widows sometimes roll over during mating to expose their bellies to Mom, who gorges herself on it, thus allowing the genitals (?) of the male to spend more time depositing sperm into the female. National Geographic has captured this whole thing for your enjoyment.

posted by thomas at 10/01/2004 06:43:00 PM

 
Belmont Club replies to Randy Andy
By Tom Smith

Andrew Sullivan is just unbelievably tedious about Iraq. He might as well be CBS. Anyway, Belmont Club explains. (As to the rude nickname, if you go on about how hot Jesse Ventura is, you risk getting a rude nickname too. To be fair, if it turns out that Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Antonin Scalia really did say that sexual orgies would be good for society, which I doubt (both), then I will try to come up with a rude nickname for him too, as soon as I get over the appalling effect of contemplating a sentence that has both "Scalia" and "orgy" in it. There is a reason why short, stocky, balding, aging Italian men with sour expressions rarely appear in porn films, with or without black robes. Porn films of that sort are definitely out of the mainstream.)

posted by thomas at 10/01/2004 05:02:00 PM

 
Bunker busting nukes: sounds like a good idea
By Tom Smith

An ultra low-yield nuclear weapon, that could be very accurately delivered with smart bomb technology, might be the weapon of choice for destroying deeply buried WMD factories, storage facilities and command posts. Because it is a scary weapons system that could be misused by the evil United States, Kerry would cancel this program right away. In the debate last night, he said it set a bad example. There's no telling the power of a good example, I suppose, on the folks who call blowing up children heroic. Personally, I like the idea of having a weapon for when it absolutely, positively has to be destroyed within 24 hours (that doesn't involve killing everyone within 100 square miles).
posted by thomas at 10/01/2004 04:35:00 PM

 
Good bleat
By Tom Smith

Here. Is James right, or what?
posted by thomas at 10/01/2004 04:35:00 PM

 
People think Kerry won debate; want him to be Senator
By Tom Smith

Gallup poll suggests people think Kerry is the better debator, but Bush the better wartime president.

And Bush actually seems to be up a couple of points on the IEM.
posted by thomas at 10/01/2004 03:52:00 PM

 
Bush's Errors
By Mike Rappaport

While I support George Bush's relection, I certainly don't think his administration has been free of errors, even regarding the War on Terror. My main criticisms of Bush, however, are that he is not been tough enough. For similar views, take a look at this Richard Brookheiser column listing ten errors. (Hat tip: Instapundit). In my view, Bush's main error in Iraq has been the failure to take Fallujah from the beginning. While Andrew Sullivan has been way too criticial of the President recently, he is right about one thing: "This president has a reputation for toughness and resolution. Yet at arguably the most critical moment in this war, he gave in. He was for taking Fallujah before he was against it. I cannot believe the situation is beyond rescue."
posted by Michael at 10/01/2004 06:28:00 AM

 
Al Qaeda targeting San Diego kids
By Tom Smith

It bothers me plenty that San Diego is so much on the terrorists radar. Now this. An Al Qaeda linked bad guy is captured in Iraq with documents relating to San Diego disaster preparedness downloaded onto his computer. The explanations as to why this is not troubling are completely lame. Yes, this is very scary. We know these depraved monsters seem to have a special affection for murdering children.
posted by thomas at 10/01/2004 01:03:00 AM