QandO

Palast, on Kerry

Ok, so I'm not exactly a fan of Greg Palast, and a lot of this piece is pure dross, but he makes a few good points about Kerry's speech...

He told us tonight about some poor bastard in Ohio whose job evaporated when his company unbolted the equipment and sent it south. Hey, Johnnie, didn't you vote for NAFTA?
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But my absolute favorite of the night was when Kerry told us, "Saying there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq doesn't make it so. As President, I will ask hard questions and demand hard evidence."

But, as Senator, you didn't. No questions asked: you just closed your eyes and voted for the lie. I know it, and you sure as hell know it.

UPDATE: As long as we're on the subject, this line from Kerry's speech amuses me....

I will be a commander in chief who will never mislead us into war.

Kerry's Vietnam Syndrome and National Defense

Amir Tahri does a brilliant fisking of John Kerry's statements on foreign policy and the War on Terror.

Some highlights:

Kerry's speech revealed a man who, though vaguely conscious that the world has changed, prefers to assume that it has not.

"The world tonight is very different from the world of four years ago," Kerry told the convention. "We are a nation at war — a global war on terror against an enemy unlike any we have known before."

Yet Kerry did not say in what ways the world is different. And when it came to dealing with this different world, he had little to offer but pre-9/11 the solutions.

Nor was the Democratic nominee willing to define the nature of this war and point out why this "enemy" was unlike any that the United States has known.

It is important for the American to understand that they face a war that involves more than a mood. It involves real people, command structures, states that offer safe haven, global networks of finance and propaganda, and fifth columnists of various faiths and ideologies in many countries, including the United States.

Its been my feeling, and that's all I can attribute it too, that the left doesn't really believe we're in a war on terror. Oh sure, they know we've been in a war in Iraq, but when I hear them talk about "the war", that's the war they're referring too. I'm just not convinced the left takes the War on Terror seriously, which is one reason you hear all this vague rhetoric.

Why? Well Tahri makes a very important point to explain that:

At the same time, however, this is a new type of war because it is not about territory, control of natural resources, access to markets, and/or other classical causes of trans-national conflict. This is an asymmetrical war in which old tactics of low-intensity conflict have been redefined to allow the use of modern technologies.

This is a different concept of war. It is why you'll find many out there claiming it can't be a war because it doesn't include any of those things and war, by definition consists of "state-to-state" hostilities. Don't believe them. My dictionary also defines "war" as "hostility or contention between people, groups, etc." Make no mistake about it, we're in a war, a war which might include hostilites between states, but just as likely will mean war between a state and a culture which is trans-national.

The question is how do we fight such a war. Well not with the tactics of the last war that's for sure. And as Tahir points out, that's precisely where John Kerry is headed.

How would a President Kerry fight this war?

His answer is simple: "As president, I will wage this war with the lessons I learned in [the Vietnam] war," the senator told the convention.

This is precisely the problem.

The lessons of Vietnam could be misleading in fighting the war against terrorism. In Vietnam, the war was over territory: The Communists who had seized control of North Vietnam wanted to annex the south. The United States had intervened to prevent that and enable the South Vietnamese to choose a different future.

That war was fought in Indochina, thousands of miles away from America. The Vietcong would not send death-squads to kill Americans in New York and Washington. Nor did it dream of conquering the world for its ideology, whatever it might have been, or to force all humanity to adopt its beliefs. And the Vietcong enjoyed significant levels of support and sympathy inside the United States, which is presumably not the case in the current war against terrorism.

One of the things the Americans need to do in the war against terrorism is to unlearn the lessons of Vietnam.

Exactly. We don't have a guerrilla force trying to conquer or secure territory. This isn't about land or a nation, like Vietnam was. This is about an ideology born of a religion which says, literally that the only "good" infidel is a "dead" infidel. Its not about conquering America or the west. Its about killing those who don't believe. Its about an winner take all perpetual war until one of the sides is destroyed.

The choice the United States has is not between war and peace. The enemy it faces does not understand peace. As a statement attributed to Osama bin Laden, and addressed to the Europeans, said recently, there can be no peace with the "infidel."

The choice here is between war and endless war. This is not an enemy that could be drawn into Paris "peace talks" to win Nobel Prizes for the participants.

Kerry says "We need to be looked up to, and not just feared." Yet, while it is always pleasant to be looked up to, what is needed now is that the terrorists, and their allies and patrons, should fear the United States. The bin Ladens and Saddam Husseins of this world are unlikely to look up to the United States. But they can be made to fear it, to the point of running to hide in caves and holes.

Two points. I agree with Tahri when he says the choice is between "war and endless war". There is no "peace" to be had in this war as the other side's ideology won't allow it. We can't negotiate with this enemy. It is an all or nothing proposition for them. We have to understand this and make a determined effort to end the war by destroying them or be prepared to wage perpetual war with them. The lessons of Vietnam do not teach us anything in this regard except we must have the will to see it through. The one thing Kerry demonstrated with his opposition to the Vietnam war is he does not have that sort of fortitude.

As for the left's need to be liked (I say liked instead of respected because its obvious we're respected by the actions of both NoKo and Lybia) is why they've turned the language on its ear and call that desire a drive for 'respect'. You don't have to be liked to be respected, and I promise you, after Afghanistan and Iraq, we're respected in the world, to include a new-found respect by radical Islam. You don't hear the "paper tiger" talk in bin Laden's tapes anymore, do you? Whether we're ever "liked" by all is absolutely irrelevant to me. Respect, yes. Liking, don't care.

Kerry says he would wage "a smarter, more effective war on terror."

Ok, but how?

First, he would "ask hard questions and demand hard evidence."

But when it comes to terrorism, hard questions don't necessarily produce hard evidence. Often, such evidence becomes available only after an attack, not before.

Anyway, once a President Kerry has asked his hard questions and obtained his hard evidence, he would only be at the start of a long road to a policy. He would next have to persuade other nations (variously described in his speech as "allies," "erstwhile allies" and simply "others") to accept his "hard evidence" and side with the United States. Then the whole matter would have to be taken to unspecified "international institutions," supposedly for approval.

After that? Here is Kerry's answer: "Only then with confidence and determination we will be able to tell the terrorists: You will lose, we will win!"

Will such a warning make the bin Laden and Saddam Husseins of this world tremble?

For a guy who spent so much time on the Senate Intelligence committee (the same guys who were blasted by the 9/11 Commission in terms of poor congressional oversight), Kerry seems a bit ignorant about what products intelligence agencies produce. They provide analysis. They provide assessments. They provide probabilities. They rarely, if ever, provide "facts".

They provide their products to leaders who's job is to make hard decisions based on these analysis, assessments and probabilities. If these agencies produced facts, there'd be WMDs in Iraq right now, wouldn't there?

So what Kerry is promising here is paralysis in face of a lack of irrefutable facts from intelligence agencies. But playing along, only when he has these "irrefutable facts" would he begin to enlist allies. Well great, but what if they say, "not in or best interest" or "gee that's nice but we have other priorities?"

The fact that there are irrefutable facts about some terrorist organization does not automatically mean allies are going to be interested in taking part in some operation. For whatever reason, Kerry seems to think it is the lack of these facts which kept some from participating in Iraq. In fact those who chose not to participate had precisely the same "facts" we did, but chose not to respond as we did. How does Kerry plan to handle that reality?

Tahri then points to some Kerry hypocricy and inconsistency:

Kerry also says: "We need to build our alliances, so that we can get the terrorists before they get us." Yet he also says: "I will never give any nation or international institution a veto over our national security."

Well, that is what Bush did when he led the war to liberate Iraq. And this is what President Bill Clinton had done when he sent troops to break the Serbian fascists in Bosnia and, later, in Kosovo. In both cases, the U.N. Security Council had indicated its unwillingness to back the American position.

Kerry, however, has made his strategy conditional on support from unidentified allies.

So obviously, as pointed out here, preemption isn't a "new" policy. Nor is Iraq the "first war of choice". And, interestingly, in all three cases cited, the UN refused to sanction these American led resolutions of the problems at hand.

Neither Clinton or Bush made their willingness to do such a thing contingent on the support of "allies" or the UN. Kerry has.

And Kerry has also mischaracterized the effort in Iraq as "going it alone" when in fact it involves most of Europe and most of NATO.

But who are these allies?

A majority of NATO members backed the United States in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq, as did a majority of the European Union members, plus Japan. In the Balkans, Greece alone of NATO members led the opposition to U.S. policies. In the case of Iraq, France played that role.

Thus what Kerry's offers amounts to nothing but bringing occasional dissidents such as Greece and France on board. Is that so important in the larger scheme of things? Americans might be surprised to learn that "we will win" if, and only if, French President Jacques Chirac agrees to join Kerry in fighting al Qaeda or in deploying NATO forces to Iraq.

But what if the Americans have no support from other nations and yet need to fight against an enemy? This is not a hypothetical question: It happened to the British in 1939-40, when they had to fight Hitler alone.

Essentially Kerry and the Democrats claim is that you aren't multilateral enough unless France and Germany are with you. Of course that's simply poppycock. Tahri's last question is the important question. I have no confidence that if faced with that dilemma Kerry would 'go it alone' if necessary.

Kerry says: "I will never hesitate to use force when it is required; any attack will be met with swift and certain response." This means that Kerry's strategy in the war against terrorism is reactive, not pro-active.

He also says: "The frontlines of this battle are right here on our shores", and then proposes a series of new security measures, especially for container ships and airports.

But while such defensive measures might be necessary, it is vital to take the war to the terrorists.

It is important that fear should change camp: Instead of Americans living in fear, make sure that the terrorists and their sympathizers do. In this war, search-and-destroy tactics must play a central role for victory, the only acceptable outcome, to be achieved.

It is the tenet of the War on Terror which Kerry doesn't necessarily understand. You can't sit here in the US and wait for them to attack us and then respond. To win the War on Terror the war must be taken to the terrorists, allies or no allies. Multilatreally or if necessary, unilaterally.

Kerry says: "The United States of America never goes to war because we want to, we only go to war because we have to."

This is stating the obvious. The problem arises when you have to go to war but you don't want to. There are also times when you do not have to go to war, but want to because you wish to topple mass-murderers like Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein.

Kerry's position on Iraq is an exercise in ambiguity. In 1991, he voted against the use of force to drive Saddam out of Kuwait, although that had been unanimously approved in the U.N. Security Council. Later, he said he regretted that vote. In 2002, he voted for toppling Saddam by war, although this did not have specific U.N. support. And now he implies that he regrets that vote, too.

As a multilateralist, Kerry should have voted for intervention in Kuwait in '91 and against intervention in Iraq in '02. But, each time, he did the opposite.

Kerry says he will reform the American intelligence services so that "policy is guided by facts."

Intelligence, however, is seldom capable of producing facts. The best it can do is to point at probabilities. But even when it can provide facts, war decisions are made on the basis of a leader's political judgment. A leader is not a computer which, when fed with certain facts, decrees war. And going to war is too serious a decision to be left to spooks.

Here's the problem with Kerry's quote. We have done precisely that, in the Balkans ... and Kerry was in favor of that. But Kuwait was a war of necessity as it threatened our national interest. Kerry voted against that one. How does one, based on those two examples, come to the conclusion that Kerry is serious about his claim, or that he even understands the difference he's espousing? His record indicates exactly the opposite of his claim.

Tahri's last point is critical. Leader's declare war, not intelligence agencies. Intelligence agencies provide their best guesses and leaders make decisions based on those and other factors. Kerry is of the opinion that decision should be foregone when it gets to him and all he would have to do is rubber stamp it. If that's how he see's his job, then we don't really need him, do we?

The most disturbing idea that Kerry launched, however, came when he spoke of a message that he would send to American troops on the first day of his presidency: "You will never be asked to fight a war without a plan to win the peace."

Logically, this means: never.

No one enters a war with a precise plan for peace. When President Franklin D Roosevelt declared war against the Axis, he did not have a plan for peace. And what could be the "plan for peace" that any U.S. president could offer before committing American troops to combat in the war against terrorism?

Should America stop the war against terrorism until a "plan for peace" is drawn up? Will a Kerry administration withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan before they are stabilized and democratized?

These questions need to be debated during the campaign.

Kerry was nonchalant about the nuclear build-up by North Korea and Iran.

He dismissed the issue with an anodyne phrase: "We need to lead a global effort against nuclear proliferation."

Just an effort, nothing more.

Excellent points about winning the peace. When was the Marshalll plan envisioned? Not before WWII, that's for sure. How was Japan's future planned? After the war when McArthur took over the occupation.

Any plan must have a foundation of facts. And those facts may or may not be obvious, evident or available before or during the war. To pretend that in the future Kerry and the boys can and will anticipate all contingencies and have concrete plans for "the peace" in place is simply disingenuous and naive. It again speaks to his lack of experience in these things to put forth such a naive promise.

Tahri's column is extremely important to those who want to understand the difficulties with Kerry's "vision" on foreign policy and the War on Terror. His analysis doesn't give one a warm fuzzy feeling when considering the possiblity of John Kerry at the helm of this particular boat.

Kerry's Record - Navy

John Kerry has made much of his Vietnam service, even to the point that it has become a bit of a joke. But its clear he has decided to make it a centerpiece of his qualification claim to be Commander-in-chief. He has asked us to judge him on his record. He feels his Navy record as found in his FITREPs prove his leadership ability and his fitness for command.

Well, after reading them I'd have to disagree.

I’ve received and written a multitude of OER and EERs in my 28 years service (Officer Efficiency Reports and Enlisted Efficiency Reports). That’s what we called them in the Army. The Navy does the same thing but calls the reports FITREPs or Fitness Reports.

Since John Kerry has asked us to judge him on his record I took him up on it today looked up his FITREPs.

Now, as I’ve mentioned, I’ve written and received these for 28 years. I’ve served on promotion boards where they’re reviewed in detail I know what a good one looks like, I know what an average one looks like and I know what a bad one looks like.

So after reading his FITREPS (and by the way he has not released all of them) I’d have to say, in light of the Kerry camp's claims, they were a bit of a surprise. In my estimation they were at best average, and in a few, he had a some ratings which could be considered adverse.

After reading them, I wondered how to approach this subject, how to convey the way reports like this really were read and interpreted by the military in an understandable way without seeming to be slanting my explanation to the negative in order to discredit Kerry. In other words, how to fairly explain what were these reports really saying knowing the explanation wouldn't be well received by Kerry fans.

As an example, if you read the narrative in Kerry’s reports, they seem pretty good at first glance. But there are some points you have to consider when reading a narrative: Narratives aren’t that important in relation to the rest of the report and, in Kerry’s case, there is as much negative in those narratives as positive. How does one relate that without seeming to be biased against Kerry?

Again, I was at a stand still as to how to convey those points in an understandable and unbiased way. Its not something which is easily explained to those not familiar with the inner workings of military rating systems.

Additionally, it was a Navy Fitness report, so I wasn’t as familiar with the way some of the rankings worked as I would have been with an Army report. Same with some of the Navy specific terminology. But I am familiar enough with efficiency reports in general to understand these FITREPs weren’t at all as good as the Kerry people would like you to believe.

In an effort to put this explanation together, I began a little Googling around the net today looking for FITREP explanations. It was during that exercise that I ran across “The Swift Boat Veterans For Truth” website. Its an interesting and compelling site.

Before you go off the deep-end with “its an anti-Kerry site”, I’d make the point that while they certainly don’t feel Kerry is qualified to be commander-in-chief, they’re not wild-eyed tin-foil hatted righties who’s grist and ballast is conspiracy theories and unsubstantiated claims.

Their’s is a very well presented argument (made by former US Naval officers) against Kerry’s claims about and his version of his Vietnam and Navy record. As they say:

We regret the need to do this. Most Swift boat veterans would like nothing better than to support one of our own for America's highest office, regardless of whether he was running as a Democrat or a Republican. However, Kerry's phony war crimes charges, his exaggerated claims about his own service in Vietnam, and his deliberate misrepresentation of the nature and effectiveness of Swift boat operations compels us to step forward.

As to the subject of Kerry’s FITREPs, one of the most useful pages on their site is an explanation of how FITREPs are graded and read in the Navy. I read it very closely and found it to be an excellent capsule of how the system works. Other than terminology which pertains to the Navy, the system is almost identical to that of the Army. They provide an excellent context and explanation by which to better understand the reports that have been released by Kerry.

John Kerry's campaign representatives quote a few words from one of his best Navy fitness reports to support their misleading claim that Kerry's military evaluations were those of a top-flight officer. They carefully ignore the existence of several other reports that range from mediocre to substandard, thereby presenting an inaccurate picture of Kerry's service record.

There are also gaps in the documentation made public to date by the Kerry campaign, where no fitness reports are provided at all. Here we present an analysis of the available record.

This is an important point. There are no gaps in an officer’s record. His or her time is completely accounted for at all times and, as is apparent in Kerry’s record, even when they haven’t been in a command long enough to receive a full rating, their days are accounted for with a “not observed” FITREP. There will always be a FITREP to cover their service.

Moving on down the page you'll find a discussion of Kerry’s FITREPS. Before that, however, the Swift Boat Vets give you an excellent introduction to Navy FITREPs, how they’re written and read, and what they mean. This section is critical to understanding why Kerry’s FITREPs aren’t what he and his staff crack them up to be. For instance:

Second, what matters most are marks or grades above and especially below the norm. Marks below the norm may fall under a very positive word (e.g., “excellent”) and appear positive to the casual reader, but no matter: any mark to the right of the norm is a strong, clear sign to both promotion boards and assignment officers (e.g., “detailers”) that there is a performance shortfall. A mark to the right is a “ding.” You don’t want a ding in your FITREP.

The last section then applies those things crucial to understanding FITREPs to Kerry’s released FITREPs.

In his FITREP for his combat tour as Officer in Charge of a SWIFT Boat -– arguably the most important FITREP among those released by the Kerry campaign –- Kerry is not dinged but slammed in command, seamanship and ship handling and in all major leadership traits (28 JAN 69 ELLIOTT). To Kerry and perhaps to other junior officers, it is an okay FITREP. To detailers and selection boards, it is a negative fitness report that borders on the adverse. LCDR Elliott ranks him well below the norm in traits essential for command: force, industry, analytical ability, judgment and more.

The case is convincingly made that Kerry’s FITREPS don’t measure up to those of a great, or even good, leader. In fact, there are some marks which really question his leadership ability. That is further documented with a statement of another swift commander who had been Kerry’s OIC on a few occassions .

One has to wonder what the missing FITREPs reveal, but regardless, its my opinion that those he has released don’t measure up to his claims of good leadership ability. They show an officer who was rated poorly in judgment, personal behavior, command, seamanship and ship handling and leadership traits.

Interestingly, as pointed out on the site, other commanders don’t see the FITREPs previous commanders have written. However the “dings” noted show up consistently from command to command. Its not a particularly flattering or ringing endorsement of Kerry’s leadership ability. In fact his FITREPs don’t endorse his leadership ability at all.

It would be interesting to see the rest of his FITREPS. I believe, as the Swift Boat Vets do, that the next time Kerry et. al. scream for the release of all of Bush’s records, the same request should be made of Kerry.

After all, we’ve been asked to judge him on his record and it would be nice to have his entire record by which to do that.

News From Iowa

The Iowa Electronic Markets have been a very accurate predictor of the results of US elections for the past several years. This market is a real, active futures market, where real people put down real money to buy futures contracts on the outcome of elections. These markets have been shown to be pretty accurate.

Ex post evidence suggests that prediction markets can be good at forecasting in the very short run. Berg, Forsythe, Nelson and Rietz (2003) summarize the evidence from 49 IEM election markets run between 1988 and 2000. Election-eve average absolute prediction errors average 1.37% for US Presidential elections, 3.43% for other US elections and 2.12% for non-US elections. They also find that the election-eve market forecasts generally predict better than the latest major national polls. New evidence presented in the current paper shows that markets are generally much better predictors than polls months in advance of the elections.

Judging by the IEM, Kerry has done a bit to pull within neck & neck of W over the last month. Based on the current closing price of the presidential election contract, Bush looks to be at about 51% ($0.510) in a race against Kerry. The Kerry contract puts him at 50% ($0.499). Yes, I know this comes out to 101%, but these are two separate contracts, and they are priced separately. What this says is essentially that the race is dead even, with an infinitesimally tiny edge for Bush.

Looking at the chart, you can see the "Kerry Bounce" in the IEM by the way the two lines come together. This is not, however, a convention bounce. The prices have been converging since the end of the last month. Interestingly, though, the Kerry price has held rock steady at 0.499 for the past four days. The Bush price, however, has gone from 0.492 on 27 Jul to 0.510 at the close today.

For control of Congress , the prices are as follows:

Control of the House of Representatives
Republicans Gain Seats: 0.417
Republicans Hold: 0.452
Republicans Lose Seats: 0.159

Control of the Senate
Republicans Gain Seats: 0.451
Republicans Hold: 0.112
Republicans Lose Seats: 0.410

If you are wise, you'll check these figures often.

Do you really want to run on the Third New Deal?

Kevin Drum...

That was then, this is now:

Herbert Hoover, 1932: "Prosperity is just around the corner."

George W. Bush, 2004: "We've turned a corner, and we're not turning back."

I know that Democrats have been trying to pin the Hoover tag on Bush for a while now, but does he really think it's a good idea to help them along?

Those economic policies led to a far longer depression than was otherwise ncessary. We didn't pull out until--at least--the beginning of WW2. There was protectionism, higher taxes, expansion of government programs to aid the poor and unemployed, and an expansion of all manner of new economic "rights" (read: privileges).

You might be forgiven for mistaking those ideas for this years Democratic Platform.

UPDATE: Yep. I guess they really do want a piece of that hot New[er] Deal action.

Where have these guys been?

Under the headline "Kerry's Moment: Strong speech launches Democratic ticket" the Dallas Morning News opens with:

John Kerry's mission: Convince the more than 4,300 Democratic delegates gathered in the FleetCenter and millions watching on television that he is ready to be president. And, just as important, to be as appealing as possible so people want him to be president.

You've got to be kidding?!

His mission was to convince those 4,300 delegates? I defy the DMN to find one of them that wasn't planning on voting for Kerry before the convention.

Most important, he had to convince Americans that he has the stomach to keep the United States safe from the scourge of terrorism.

Ah, ok - "most important". That's a little better. But now we get into the part where we disagree. Well, disagree even more:

On the first score, Mr. Kerry was more passionate than he often has been and much more upbeat. "We can do better and we will," Mr. Kerry told the audience. "We're the optimists. For us, this is a country of the future."

Not with the litany of perceived ills and negatives Kerry's used throughout the campaign. True, many of the undecided haven't heard of him yet, and I would suggest even with last night, still haven't, the fact remains he hasn't been optimistic. He's spent the majority of his time telling potential voters how bad it all is. The fact is that he's decided to pretend to be optimitic in a convention which was more focused on image change than substance. Even more amazing is the Dallas Morning News bought it.

Mr. Kerry also tackled head-on the charge that he is a flip-flopper. He said it was a matter of detecting nuance. "Now I know there are those who criticize me for seeing complexities – and I do," he said. "Because some issues just aren't all that simple."

Well you know what, they're not as complex as he tries to pretend they are either. Believe it or not a "yes" or "no" answer requires only that, "yes" or "no."
Not some nuanced qualification which may be "yes" but then again may be "no" depending upon the direction of the political wind. Straight talk, straight answers, consistency and principle help one to be able to do that. To me the term "nuance" is simply the new cover for 'flip-flop". So while the DMN thinks he tackled it head-on, its a nuanced attack. But what's new?

On the question of national security, Mr. Kerry didn't equivocate. He launched his speech with his most effective line of the night: "I'm John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty" – a not-so-subtle jab at questions surrounding President Bush's National Guard service.

I'm sorry but I literally cringed when I saw it. It was so lame as to be freakin' embarrasing. Now if he had to do that, if he was just driven to use that line and salute, it would have at least been bearable at the end. But at the beginning of the speech it hit me as an incredibly and stunningly ill timed geture. If that was for the vets out there it wasn't well received, at least not by veterans like myself. But there's more to that story than just his salute.

"I defended this country as a young man and I will defend it as president. I will never hesitate to use force when it is required."

And he turned a key theme Mr. Bush used against the Democratic ticket four years ago against President Bush when he pledged to restore trust and credibility to the White House.

All in all, it was an impressive performance and one that should serve Mr. Kerry well in his quest for the White House.

And of course he skipped the part where then denigrated the rest of us who 'defended this country' as young men at that time as well. Apparently that doesn't "fit" the persona and image of the "new" and "improved" John Kerry. A John Kerry who then attacks the 'trust and credibility' of the White House?

Don't make me laugh. I just wish the real John Kerry would stand up, because it sure as hell wasn't the one who was up there saluting.

Apocalypse Kerry

Lawrence Kaplan, writing in The New Republic, savages Kerry's speech of last night.

Regarding his own Vietnam, as opposed to the Hollywood production staged around him, Kerry asked his audience "to judge me by my record." The question has been asked before, but Kerry did not answer it in his speech: If his Vietnam service offers proof that he is "decisive," then why is it that for two decades Kerry has been "only an average Senator," as pro-Kerry columnist Al Hunt wrote in yesterday's Wall Street Journal? If his wartime feats prove that Kerry is "strong" on national security, then why did he oppose virtually every stand-out weapons system in the U.S. arsenal today, speechify against the first Gulf War, and refuse to fund the second? Why, indeed, unless no correlation exists between his biography and his record?

Kerry's speech last night showed how much distance there is between the two...As for the candidate himself, he uttered nary a word about democracy promotion, nor even a banality or two about promoting freedom abroad. There was no heroism here. Only what Kerry defended as "complexity."

Indeed, he spent far more time discussing domestic policy than he spent discussing foreign and defense policy. And when he did get around to discussing the matter of our national survival, he basically took a page from the post-Vietnam playbook favored by an earlier generation of Democrats. "We shouldn't be opening firehouses in Baghdad," the candidate declared to rousing applause, "and shutting them down in the United States of America." Suggesting that Europeans won't send troops to Iraq simply because they can't stand his opponent, Kerry promised to be nicer to our allies so we could "bring our troops home." Unlike, say, in Bosnia, he pledged to go to war "only because we have to." Leaving unsaid exactly by whom and at what cost, he dedicated himself to making America "respected in the world." Finally, and without saying precisely what it is, Kerry said he knows "what we have to do in Iraq." He has a plan, you see. Just like a candidate from long ago claimed to have a plan to end a war--the war that put Kerry on the stage last night and which, for him at least, wasn't so long ago at all.

This analysis, coming, as it does, from the nation's premier center-left publication, is just brutal.

They Should Have Picked Dean

Debra Saunders, after attending the Democratic National Convention, concludes that the Dems picked the wrong nominee.

Item: According to a New York Times/CBS News poll, three-quarters of Democratic voters opposed the war.

Item: The same poll found that 86 percent of convention delegates opposed the war.

Item: 100 percent of the Democratic ticket voted with GOP President Bush on Iraq.

Nonetheless, this convention is packed with politicians who are boasting about the tremendous party unity they see everywhere. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco said that the party is more united than she has seen it in 40 years. Three in 4 Democrats disagree with the nominee on the biggest issue out there -- and that's unity?

"It's not just a toning down of rhetoric, but a turning inside-out of reality," said Massachusetts GOP politico Todd Domke.

No lie. Here's an example, a line from the Democratic Party platform chapter entitled "A Strong, Respected America," which faults members of the Bush administration because "They do not understand that real leadership means standing by your principles and rallying others to join you."

Au contraire, Bush understands leadership. He stood by his principles, he rallied Kerry and Edwards to join him, and he thereby brought the opposing party to his war.

Kerry and Edwards followed.

Bush led.

Veteran Kerry observer Domke told me months ago the Democrats should have picked Dean.

I now see how right Domke was.

If the Dems wanted an anti-war candidate, someone who actually says the things that, according to the New York Times, 86% of the convention delegates believe, i.e., that the war in Iraq was prima facie wrong, then they should've picked Howard Dean. What they have done, instead, is pick a man who opposes their most cherished belief. I'm not sure if they can keep up the facade of unity for another three months if it requires them to pretend to go along with a position they hate with a passion.

And I am pretty sure that, even if they can, it's not a very good thing for healthy political life. I doubt we want political parties that hide their true beliefs in order to spring them on the electorate as a surprise after the election, in a political version of some bait-and-switch scheme. The only destination on that road is a deep cynicism about the utility of elections and the democratic process (although, there is also an off-ramp to party self-destruction if the party gets a reputation for deception).

After the 2000 election, there were a lot of Democrats who believed that Al Gore would've run if only he'd moved farther to the left. If John Kerry can't keep ahead of W in the polls, or, at least, neck-and-neck, then I think that this Dem "unity" will dissolve like...like...something that dissolves really quickly in..I don't know...some kind of acid or something.

Sorry, I guess the simile well's run dry.

But my point is that if it begins to look like Kerry can't close the deal, then the Dems will go nuts, and will begin pressing kerry to move farther and farther to the left. If that happens, then, for the Dems, election day will be a fiasco. Because anyone who thinks that Al Gore lost because he didn't move far enough to the left is sadly unacquainted with reality.

Jon, with whom I agree about 95% of the time, thinks that the Democrats are "mobilized". Maybe he's right, but it seems to me that when your nominee is a guy who ostensibly supports the very thing you hate about his opponent, it'sa gonna take one helluva lot of motivation to go to the polls and vote for your nominee. After all, apart from the satisfaction of not being your opponent, what does he offer you that you really want?

Nothing.

Right now, the Democrats are trying to convince themselves that they are eager to vote for a candidate who offers them nothing on the most important issue of the day.

Good luck with that.

Emerods on Both Their Houses

The editors of the Washington Post weren't impressed bySen. Kerry's speech last night. They may not like W, but Kerry didn't give them much reason to change horses this November. They listened to him for 50 minutes, just like I did, and, like me, have no idea what Kerry is proposing for national security.

The responsibility of sending troops into danger should weigh on a commander in chief. But so must the responsibility of protecting the nation against a shadowy foe not easily deterred by traditional means. Mr. Kerry last night elided the charged question of whether, as president, he would have gone to war in Iraq. He offered not a word to celebrate the freeing of Afghans from the Taliban, or Iraqis from Saddam Hussein, and not a word about helping either nation toward democracy.

In Iraq, Mr. Kerry said, "We need a president who has the credibility to bring our allies to our side and share the burden. . . . That's the right way to get the job done and bring our troops home." Mr. Kerry was right to chide Mr. Bush for alienating allies unnecessarily. But what is "the job" in Iraq? He didn't say...

Where Kerry was clear about what he wants to do, his proposals are, frankly, delusional.

Yet in economics as in national security, Mr. Kerry missed an opportunity for straight talk. His promises to stop the outsourcing of jobs and end dependence on Middle East oil are not grounded in reality. And Mr. Kerry failed to acknowledge the fiscal challenge posed by the imminent retirement of the baby boom generation, with its call on Medicare and Social Security. To the contrary, he raised the issue of Social Security only to reaffirm that he would not cut benefits -- a promise that a President Kerry might come to regret.

Frankly, I didn't expect this kind of panning from the WaPo. I thought they'd cut Kerry some slack.

Let's Judge Kerry by his Record, as requested.

After listening to John Kerry’s speech, I went on line for a transcript. I scanned it looking for nuggets. Specifics. Plans. Not the platitudes, emotional appeals and zingers. As I went through the speech, I copied what I found in order to comment on them. For a 55 minute speech, I didn’t come up with a huge list.

I ask you to judge me by my record: As a young prosecutor, I fought for victims' rights and made prosecuting violence against women a priority. When I came to the Senate, I broke with many in my own party to vote for a balanced budget, because I thought it was the right thing to do. I fought to put a 100,000 cops on the street.

And then I reached across the aisle to work with John McCain, to work to find the truth about our POWs and missing in action, and to finally make peace in Vietnam.

That’s it folks. He asks to be judged on his record yet all he offers as his accomplishments in the Senate are two votes and cooperation with John McCain?

19 years in the Senate and this is what he lists as his ‘record’. Pretty pitiful.

Let there be no mistake: I will never hesitate to use force when it is required. Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response. I will never give any nation or international institution a veto over our national security. And I will build a stronger American military.

Good and well said. I don’t believe it, but he gets credit for addressing what has been a common perception among the populace. I say I don’t believe it because of his record. Asking to be judged on it, I find nothing in his record or his “respected abroad” meme which leads me to believe this rhetoric.

We will add 40,000 active duty troops, not in Iraq, but to strengthen American forces that are now overstretched, overextended, and under pressure. We will double our special forces to conduct anti-terrorist operations. And we will provide our troops with the newest weapons and technology to save their lives and win the battle. And we will end the backdoor draft of National Guard and reservists.

As I’ve talked about before, you don’t just order up special forces soldiers and poof, there they are. That’s not as easy a task as Kerry would have you believe. Secondly, our problem of an overextened force in Iraq is not lack of special forces soldiers. Its lack of infantry soldiers.

Again, based on his defense record, I don’t buy the sudden intererest in providing our troops with the newest weapons and technology. His record just doesn’t support the rhetoric.

Lastly, as a retired reservist, I take exception and offense at Kerry’s characterization of the use of National Guard and reservists as a “backdoor draft”. Reservists and National Guardsmen are volunteers who understand what they’re volunteering for and what the possiblity of deployment is ... especially those who’ve done so since September 11th. This is another in a long line of attempts by the left to characterize our soldiers, both active and reserve, as victims.

As President, I will fight a smarter, more effective war on terror. We will deploy every tool in our arsenal: our economic as well as our military might; our principles as well as our firepower.

In these dangerous days there is a right way and a wrong way to be strong. Strength is more than tough words. After decades of experience in national security, I know the reach of our power and I know the power of our ideals.

Decades in national security? This from a guy who at the height of the Cold War pushed for unilateral nuclear disarmarment, for heaven sake. Again, judging by his record, I’m not buying.

As president, I will not evade or equivocate; I will immediately implement the recommendations of that commission. We shouldn't be letting 95% of container ships come into our ports without ever being physically inspected. We shouldn't be leaving our nuclear and chemical plants without enough protection. And we shouldn't be opening firehouses in Baghdad and shutting them in the United States of America.

I wasn’t sure if the “As president, I will not evade or equivocate” was a laugh line or a serious line. The man is known for both evasion and equivocation. His record points to him being a master of both. “I only own American cars”, but oh, “my family” owns those foreign cars. The examples are legion

That having been said, I agree with his point that we shouldn’t be letting 95% of the container ships in without inspection. I’d argue the adequacy of protection for nuclear and chemical plants is debatable, and the final line is simply a throw-away line meant to jab Bush for something he has no repsonsiblity for .... the federal government doesn’t open and close firehouses in the US, local governments do.

As President, I will not privatize Social Security. I will not cut benefits. And together, we will make sure that senior citizens never have to cut their pills in half because they can't afford lifesaving medicine.

I think Dale mentioned his reaction to this and it pretty well mirrored mine. In effect Kerry is saying “I will not do anything positive to save a program you’ve come to depend on, because frankly it won’t crash and burn on my watch." There's no political capital to be gained here, because Kerry knows only two approaches are viable. Privitization or raising taxes through the roof. But since Kerry has no record of leadership on this issue or any other, it doesn't surprise me.

Of course the last bit is the typical “lets scare seniors half to death by threatening their access to medicine despite the fact that a Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit I voted for is in place”.

First, new incentives to revitalize manufacturing.

Second, investment in technology and innovation that will create the good-paying jobs of the future.

Third, close the tax loopholes that reward companies for shipping jobs overseas. Instead, we will reward the companies that create and keep good paying jobs where they belong: in the good old U.S.A.

First, what are they?

Second, what does that mean?

Third, how nice, tax cuts for corporations.

Next, we will trade and we will compete in the world. But our plan calls for a fair playing field because if you give the American worker a fair playing field, there's nobody in the world the American worker can't compete against.

Hello tariffs, trade wars and sanctions on the US.

And we're going to return to fiscal responsibility, because it is the foundation of our economic strength. Our plan will cut the deficit in half in four years by ending tax giveaways that are nothing more than corporate welfare and we will make government live by the rule that every family has to follow: pay as you go.

Well studies out there seem to disagree with Senator Kerry’s assertion here. For instance the National Taxpayer’s Union points out the following:

* Based on Kerry's promise to "pay for" every program he has proposed, U.S. taxpayers would each face an average additional $2,206 in higher taxes during Kerry's first year in office, and a cumulative increased tax burden of $6,066 over his first term.

* If Sen. Kerry's policy agenda were enacted in full, annual federal spending would rise by at least $226.125 billion during the first year of a Kerry Presidency alone. * Despite nearly $36 billion in spending cuts, $734.62 billion of Kerry's spending agenda remains unaccounted for, and presumably passed on to American taxpayers in the form of increased taxes or suffocating debt.

* Kerry has promised nearly $115 billion in social welfare, foreign aid, energy, and environmental handouts during his first term, including $2 million to restore voting rights to felons.

* Although Sen. Kerry claims Americans can look to his voting record when determining whether to trust his vow of fiscal responsibility, according to NTUF's BillTally and VoteTally reports, Kerry sponsored or cosponsored $182 billion worth of new federal legislation in 2003, and voted to increase federal spending by $466.5 billion during 2002. VoteTally figures for 2003 are unavailable due to Sen. Kerry's many absences.

* Kerry has announced only five cost-saving policy ideas out of a total of 70 policy proposals.

Hardly the “record” or the plan of a fiscal conservative who promises to balance the budget and cut spending.

And let me tell you what we won't do: we won't raise taxes on the middle class. You've heard a lot of false charges about this in recent months. So let me say straight out what I will do as President: I will cut middle class taxes. I will reduce the tax burden on small business. And I will roll back the tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals who make over $200,000 a year, so we can invest in job creation, health care and education.

Kerry’s claim is he can pay for everything, cut spending in half plus fund all the stuff above simply by rolling back one tax cut on 2% of taxpayers? It’s a no-go, its nonsense, its not possible. So where’ll he have to turn? Huge cuts in other discretionary spending (yeah, that’s likely) or raising taxes. His record points to the likelyhood that the latter will be his choice. So based on his record, again, I'm not buying.

One hopes, if he ever gets pinned down with a question concerning this he won’t evade or equivocate to the American people. His record, however, says otherwise.

Our education plan for a stronger America sets high standards and demands accountability from parents, teachers, and schools. It provides for smaller class sizes and treats teachers like the professionals that they are. And it gives a tax credit to families for each and every year of college.

A) What does this mean, i.e. set high standards and demand accountability from parents, teachers and schools? His record indicates that No Child Left Behind is something he’s most proud of since he pronounced it as “groundbreaking legislation that enhances the federal government's commitment to our nation's public education system ... and embraces many of the principles and programs that I believe are critical to improving the public education system" when he voted for it.

B) How are you going to “pay” for the tax credit for college?

Our health care plan for a stronger America cracks down on the waste, greed, and abuse in our health care system and will save families up to $1,000 a year on their premiums. You'll get to pick your own doctor and patients and doctors, not insurance company bureaucrats, will make medical decisions. Under our plan, Medicare will negotiate lower drug prices for seniors. And all Americans will be able to buy less expensive prescription drugs from countries like Canada.

This one almost made me gag. The old “fraud, waste and abuse” canard. The promise of every wannabe political hopeful. "It'll be different when I'm in charge!" What this can only mean is he plans on muscling up on the bureaucracy by adding another layer to seek this “bad stuff’ out and end it. An efficient bureaucracy? Yeah, I’m sold.

I was also tickled by the “we’ll negotiate lower drug prices” through Medicare, but by the way in case we can’t get them, there’s always Canada. Sounded so, well, evasive.

We value an America that controls its own destiny because it's finally and forever independent of Mideast oil. What does it mean for our economy and our national security when we only have 3% of the world's oil reserves, yet we rely on foreign countries for 53% of what we consume?

True but then the inference isn’t. The inference is we’re in Iraq because we’re dependent on ME oil. True its important, but as you see in the reference below, its only 23.5% of the total. We’ve spread our exports around with two of the largest exporters being to our north and south. So the attempt at inferring we’re totally dependent on ME oil is simply not true. Should we crank something up with Russia, we could most likely cut the ME out completely.

From January to May of 2003, the U.S. received 42.8% of its imported oil from OPEC nations and 23.5% from Persian Gulf countries. During that timeframe, Canada was the top exporter to the U.S., supplying 16.9% of our oil.

I want an America that relies on its ingenuity and innovation, not the Saudi royal family.

Then get behind nuclear energy, Mr. Kerry.

And our energy plan for a stronger America will invest in new technologies and alternative fuels and the cars of the future — so that no young American in uniform will ever be held hostage to our dependence on oil from the Middle East.

So here’s where the inference bears fruit. We went to war for oil.

Incredible.

I want to address these next words directly to President George W. Bush: In the weeks ahead, let's be optimists, not just opponents. Let's build unity in the American family, not angry division. Let's honor this nation's diversity; let's respect one another; and let's never misuse for political purposes the most precious document in American history, the Constitution of the United States.

This, at least to me, was one of the more amazing statements in the speech. Another gag-reflex moment.

Let’s be optimists?

His entire march to the nomination has been a litany of negatives. After just telling the crowd in the Fleet Center that the war with Iraq was wrong, soldiers are dying for oil, education is a wreck, the economy is in the tank and American’s are having to import their drugs and too much oil, Kerry now wants to be optimistic? I had to laugh.

But on the other side, after reviewing this list of supposed grievances and purported “plans” by Kerry, I had to wonder, if this is all he can come up with, maybe we all ought to be optimistic.

Overall grade? C-. Long on rhetoric, veiled charges and inuendo, short on issues or specifics.

Now, I understand that one of the purposes here was to introduce himself to the American people. My reaction to that was how could a person who was a Senator for 20 years not be known by the American people ... unless he had no record to run on and hadn’t shown any leadership during that time?

So I beg to differ with Mr. Kerry when he says “I ask you to judge me by my record”. He really doesn’t want that at all. He wants you to judge him on the facade he’s erected, the platitudes and vague plans he’s put out there and to vote for him because he isn’t George Bush.

It'll be interesting if the one actual plan he has works or whether people will actually take him at his word and judge him by his record.

The Convention Bounce

I'm not usually one who cares too much about polls, except as a snapshot of general sentiment, however, Zogby's new poll shows a convention bounce of marginal proportions.

The polling was done on 26-29 July, so it doesn't include the reaction to Kerry's speech from last night. But the results can't be heartening for Democrats.

Essentially, as of Thursday afternoon, the convention "bounce" moved three percent of Bush voters to the undecided category, while adding nothing to Kerrys. Compare that to the 17-point lead that Michael Dukakis had when he walked out of the Democratic Convention in '88.

Jon thinks, as he wrote earlier today, that it looks like Kerry's gonna win. I couldn't disagree more. First, as far away as the election is, it's impossible to say with any real accuracy who is going to win. There's a couple of months of campaigning still to go. Second, I think that Kerry's record has such substantial negatives--negatives which the voters haven't even begun to look at--that any prediction of a win is problematic.

Kerry can roll out his "Band of Brothers", for example, but I expect the guys at SwiftVets will also be rolling out the other 80% of Kerry's "brothers" who don't think he's fit to be Commander in Chief. And, for all the talk about the "Bush attack machine" the president hasn't even begun campaigning yet.

If, on 1 Nov, the polls are still showing a dead heat, then maybe then we can say that Bush is in trouble. But at this point, the race is still Bush's to lose.

In August of 1988, the Democrats thought they had a sure-fire winner in Mike Dukakis. By October, they were wondering what had possessed them to nominate this obvious loser. I think there's every chance that could happen again this year. The Dems are leaving Boston talking about a landslide.

They might very well be right, and the election will end in a landlside. But, barring unforseen events, it might not be the landslide they expect.

A couple good ideas...

Two suggestions worth noting in the upcoming months....

Dean Esmay...

I will refuse to call him traitor, loser, liar, incompetent. He will be my President, my Commander In Chief, the Chief Executive of a great nation, elected by the will of a majority of the electors in these 50 great united States. So even if he does things I disagree with in conducting foreign policy, I will say, "I respectfully disagree with the President's directions, but I will do my best to express my dissent respectfully and hope that I am mistaken and that he has made the proper decisions after all."

So, here's my pledge: if John Kerry is elected President--and, at this point, I suspect he will be--I will (almost certainly) criticize his policies and his actions, but not his motivations. I will engage in humorous snark towards the man at times, but I will treat the Presidency with respect. I will not assign John Kerry a mocking nickname as has been done to Bush. I will understand that the machinations of politics inevitably result in apparent contradictions, scandalettes, and embarrassments. I will not make more of them than they deserve.

Most of all, I will try to engage a President Kerry on substance, not superficiality. I will try to give him the same benefit of the doubt that I give to President Bush. And I will pay greater attention to those who do the same. Those who argue "I'm just doing it because they did it" will get short shrift, and I will try to call them on it.

It's the only intellectually honest thing to do.

The Commissar...

Disagree with a blogger that you respect today. And do so at least once a week.
[...]
intellectual debate, disagreement, give-and-take are necessary. That's the only way for ideas to grow, develop, and stay relevant. [...] And welcome the next VRWC blogger who disagrees with you.

If I--or anybody--always agree with "my side", then I'm really not doing a lot of thinking. I'm just repeating talking points.

And that's just bad blogging.

Estate Tax

For whatever reason, I've seen a recent resurgence of debate about the merits of the estate tax. Not sure what brought that on, but I thought I should cite one underreported aspect of the debate. The Joint Economic Committee has investigated the Estate tax and concluded.....it's just not that useful. Specifically, "the estate tax generates costs to taxpayers, the economy and the environment that far exceed any potential benefits that it might arguably produce".

To summarize some main points...

• The existence of the estate tax this century has reduced the stock of capital in the economy by approximately $497 billion, or 3.2 percent.
• The estate tax obstructs environmental conservation. The need to pay large estate tax bills often forces families to develop environmentally sensitive land.
• Empirical and theoretical research indicates that the estate tax is ineffective at reducing inequality, and may actually increase inequality of consumption.
• The enormous compliance costs associated with the estate tax are of the same general magnitude as the tax's revenue yield, or about $23 billion in 1998.
• The deduction for charitable bequests stimulates little or no additional giving.
• The estate tax raises very little, if any, net revenue for the federal government. The distortionary effects of the estate tax result in losses under the income tax that are roughly the same size as estate tax revenue.

Since Democrats seem to consider economic utility calculations above the moral implications of wealth-taxation, one might imagine they would find this an appealing argument against the Estate Tax.

Joe Wilson Update

If you direct your web browser to RestoreHonesty.com, you'll notice a funny thing. It now goes straight to the Kerry/Edwards web site.

All mentions of Joe Wilson and his ravishing wife, the mysterious and seductive secret agent, Valerie Plame, have been expunged from the Kerry/Edwards web site as well. They have officially become non-persons, evidently.

Kerry webmaster Winston Smith was unavailable for comment, except to say that we have always been at war with Oceania.

The Issue This November

Mark Steyn starkly lays out what the alternatives are in the upcoming election.

With every month, nuclear knowhow gets dissipated a little further into the murkier corners of the world. With every year, the demographic changes in Europe render America’s old alliances more and more obsolescent. Even if Kerry’s in the White House, French troops aren’t going to be fighting shoulder to shoulder with the Yanks in any major Muslim country: Kerry wouldn’t either, if he had Chirac’s Muslim population.

Sloth favours the Islamists. Readers may recall that I wanted Bush to invade Iraq before the first anniversary of 9/11. If he had done, he’d have saved himself a whole lot of trouble, and we might even be rid of the mullahs or Boy Assad by now. The President has to be a terminator: he has to terminate regimes and structures that support Islamist terrorism. And, if every bigshot associated with the cause winds up like Uday and Qusay, the ideology will become a lot less fashionable. All these girlie-man options sound so reasonable, but they’re a fool’s evasion, an excuse to put off indefinitely the fights that have to be fought — in Iran, North Korea and elsewhere.

Girlie men are ‘men without chests’ — in the C.S. Lewis sense, rather than the Schwarzenegger one. I didn’t come up with this choice, nor did Arnold. The enemy did. As I wrote back in 2001, the Islamists have made a bet — that we’re too soft and decadent to see this through to the finish. This November, one way or another, they’ll get their answer.

John Kerry tonight gave us all the right "no retreat, no surrender" rhetoric. It sounds good. But he leads a party whose delegates, by a factor of 9:1, wihs us to withdraw from Iraq. They wish to pursue the terrorists, as John Kerry has said, primarily as a law enforcement matter. Well, that's what Clinton did, and the end result was 911.

No matter how stirring Kerry's rhetoric may be for public consumption, the fact is that he will face extraordinary pressure from his own party to slack off on the war on terror. I think it is by no means clear tht he has the required ablity to oppose that pressure.

If he cannot, then we can expect our current problems with Iran, North Korea, and terror to careen out of control. I'm not sure we have the luxury of taking a 4-year holiday from history.

Kerry's Night

Live blogging Kerry’s speech:

The run-up to the speech is all about being American. And about being a soldier. About what a good man Kerry is.

But, of course, that’s not what any of this is about. Let’s take it as granted that Kerry is a good man, a good husband, and a good father. Let’s also grant that Kerry served with distinction in Vietnam. Let’s grant that he loves the country.

But John Kennedy said it best in the campaign of 1962, when he was stumping for congressional candidates. Why, he asked, should the government choose the Democrats over the Republicans? Republicans are equally patriotic, equally dedicated to see the country move ahead. But what makes this election so important is that the two parties have clear and distinct differences in how they want to move the country ahead.

That is as important now as it was in 1962.

With that in mind, Kerry's record as a senator is what really gives me pause. No matter how good a man he may personally be, his public policy ideas require a closer look.

This is the conundrum of politics: personally pleasant people may have foolish or dangerous public policy ideas; unpleasant and nasty people may have very good public policy ideas. The measure of a person is not the personal warmth they exude, but the rationality of their policy.

Nice biography video. Morgan freeman is always good.

Oops, two videos, instead of one. He was nice to firefighter's families after a tragedy. Touching, but not much to do with what kind of decisions he'd make as president.

Vietnam vets from Kerry's navy service. Laying it on as thick as possible, I guess. Kind of odd, coming from a guy who argued in 1992 that Bill Clinton's military service—or lack thereof—was irrelevant.

But we aren't wondering what it was he did 30 years ago in Vietnam. The big question is what he'll do now.

Max Cleland:

Kerry will make the country wat it once was, and can be again. A country that is respected. A country worth fighting for.

So, as long as France and Germany likes us, that's the measure of how good a country we are? What if our allies are wrong? What if our allies are not as concerned about America's security as, say, we are?

And, by the way, some of us think the country is already worth generations of struggle.

Kerry's on. Finally. Thank God we didn't have another Bill Clinton-style 20-minute walk through the bowels of the FleetCenter.

I'm John Kerry, and I'm reporting for duty. «Salute»

Oh, please. You served in the Navy. We got it. Thanks.

Guess what wing of the hospital I was born in? I was born in the West Wing.

In other words, the left wing. Heh. He may come to regret that analogy.

As a boy in Berlin, then my dad was stationed there, I rode my bicycle into the Soviet Zone. My dad grounded me.

Translation: Even as a young child, I felt strangely drawn to socialism. Heh.

I will restore honor and decency to the White House. I will never mislead the nation into war.

«sigh» So, it's going to be the "Bush lied" meme, is it. No matter what the evidence to the otherwise. Every intelligence agency in the Western world, including ours, concluded Saddam had WMD. They were wrong. That means that Bush was wrong. Doesn't mean he mislead anybody.

Too bad Saddam acted like he had a WMD program. Would've saved everybody a lot of trouble. Including him.

We're told that outsourcing is good. It's not. It's bad. Keep American jobs at home.

So, despite the fact that economists are essentially unanimous in support for free trade, Kerry knows better. Back to protectionism. Why not Smoot-Hawley, while you're at it?

Look! On the stage: real veterans! At a Democratic convention!

Well, it is notable, mainly because the Democratic party has not, for the past few decades, been exceptionally friendly to either veterans or active duty personnel. Nor have veterans been notably visible in the party's confabs, either.

America will never go to war because we want to, but because we have to.

I thought we'd already figured out that, when planes started flying into buildings, you're pretty much at war.

I know what we have to do in Iraq. Bring in our allies, reduce the cost, reduce the risk to our soldiers. Better leadership will bring our allies in. But I'll never let anyone else have a veto over our security.

Good luck, I'm sure Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder are just quivering with eagerness to send troops to Iraq. So which is it? Make France happy, or keep fighting terrorism.

I will increase the size of the military by 40,000 troops. Increase Special Forces. Increase funding. We will deploy every tool in our arsenal. Our principles as well as our power.

Good.

We shouldn't be opening firehouses in Baghdad and shutting them in the United States of America.

The operation of firehouses is not a federal responsibility. Iraq, a country we invaded and occupied, for better or worse, is.

See that flag. There was one of those on my swift boat. It got shot up, but kept waving. It covered the bodies of my comrades.

It's gonna be all Vietnam, all the time for the next couple of months, isn't it?

I will not privatize social security. I will never cut benefits.

No, of course, not. After all, I'll be long out of the Oval Office when SocSec becomes insolvent. Let my distant successor worry about it.

What does it mean when our jobs are shipped overseas?

It means that our unit labor costs are so high that it is uncompetitive to keep the jobs here.

New incentives to revitalize manufacturing. Technology investments. Close tax loopholes for shipping jobs overseas. Reward companies that keep jobs here.

Hmm, sounds like a tax cut for corporations.

We will reduce the deficit by half in 4 years. I will cut middle class taxes. I will reduce the taxes on small business. I will roll back the tax cuts for people making more than $200,000 per year.

So, basically, a tax increase. But only on those greedy, bloated plutocrats. They aren't paying their fair share. After all, what have the rich ever given us?

I mean, besides jobs.

When I am president, we will make health care a right for all Americans.

But we're still getting a middle-class tax cut? Boy, those reach people are gonna have to pay through the nose, I guess. 'Cause I don't know who is gonna pay for all this.

Message to W: Lets respect one another. Let's be civil.

This coming from a guy who, less than 30 minutes ago, just accused the president of misleading us into war. Thanks for the civility, there John.

Takes balls to launch that kind of hypocrisy on nationwide TV.

I learned a lot about American values on that gunboat in Vietnam. I learned that no matter our color, race, or religion, we are all in the same boat.

Yeah. Vietnam. That's what it's all gonna come down to.

Full text of John Kerry's Speech

Just for the record, I don't remember a presidential candidate ever talking so constantly about his military service in wartime. And we've had a number of war veteran presidents in the modern era. Harry Truman. Ike Eisenhower. John Kennedy. George Bush. And, aside from Bill Clinton, Every president since FDR has served as a military officer.

But this constant harping on Vietnam is just odd. And, if the Democrats had credibility on military issues or national security, it wouldn't be necessary. The fact that Kerry stresses it so much is a big clue that even Democrats realize that, when it comes to national security, the public's trust in them is iffy.

The main message of the night was: I can be Commander in Chief.

This goes straight towards W's perceived strength. He's trying to take the space that W presumably occupies as a wartime president. The risk of this strategy, though, is that he has two decades of senate votes that can be framed quite differently than that of a man who's strong on defense. Much of his record in the senate is one of cutting funding to the military and eliminating weapons systems. That strikes me a significant weakness, and he will, at some point, have to explain why his votes in the Senate are seemingly far different that those of the fighting patriot he's tried to present himself as tonight.

With the exception of the protectionist and health care bits, this was a speech that would've been perfectly normal at a Republican convention. It was all about patriotism, the flag, national security.

What it wasn't about, really, was policy. It was about John Kerry, personally. It seems as if he's trying to subordinate policy to a personal competition about the character of George W. Bush and John F. Kerry. There were no specifics about what to do in Iraq. How to get France and Germany back on our side. Just flat statements of intent, without any specifics about how to attain the stated goals.

I'm not sure you can run that kind of campaign for four months. You can't just say "I will make America better"; at some point you have to give us a roadmap as to how you're gonna make it better.

Bob Dole tried the "I'm a better man than Bill Clinton" route, and it didn't work out too well for him.

The telling thing about the night was that what really got the crowd on their feet was criticisms of George Bush. Calling the president essentially a liar, John Ashcroft a fascist, that was the stuff the crowd ate up.

It's not love of John Kerry that animates them. It's hatred of George W. Bush.

Overall, a good speech by Kerry. It sets the bar a little higher for W next month.

Two words: Dorian Gray

Photo: AP/Ron Edmonds

He's got a million stories like this

Photo: AP Photo/Rick Bowmer

See? A million of 'em

Photo: Reuters/Gary Hershorn

A New Grand Strategy

After my post touching on Grand Strategy last night, I find it interesting that in this morning's Los Angeles Times, former senator and presidential candidate Gary Hart calls for the creation of a new Grand Strategy for the United States.

A grand strategy is simply the application of a nation's powers to the achievement of larger purposes. I would argue we have three such purposes: to ensure security (both for ourselves and, where possible, for others), to expand opportunity and to promote liberal democracy around the world. And to achieve them, we can harness three powers — economic, political and military — far superior to anyone else's. Our economy is larger than the next four or five national economies combined. We have an unrivaled diplomatic and political network. And soon we will spend more on our military than the rest of the world combined.

But we also have a fourth power, shared by few if any other great nations in history. That power is contained in our founding principles, the constitutional statement of who we are, what we believe and how we have chosen to govern ourselves. The idea that government exists to protect, not oppress, the individual has an enormous power not fully understood by most Americans, who take this principle for granted from birth. Far more nations will follow us because of the power of this ideal than the might of all our weapons.

Hart has just published a new book, The Fourth Power: A Grand Strategy for the United States in the Twenty-First Century, that addresses this very subject. I haven't read it, so I don't know whether I would agree with his conclusions about what our strategy should actually be, but his analysis about the necessity of having a Grand Strategy is very accurate.

From 1945 to 1991, when the USSR fell into the ash-heap of history, our Grand Strategy was the containment and, eventually, the defeat of Soviet Communism. Practically every international effort we made, as well as many national ones, were predicated upon this strategy. This strategy was bipartisan, and its utility was unquestioned.

Since then, however, we've done practically nothing to create a national strategy. Lacking the overriding threat of Soviet Communism, we've let the idea of a necessary, worldwide, strategic goal for the United States lay fallow. After the end of the Cold War, the general feeling in Washington has been that, with the disappearance of the USSR, the need for a national Grand Strategy has vanished as well.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The War on Terror is in many ways strategic, at least in the sense that it requires a sustained worldwide effort to achieve a national goal, but it doesn't quite fall into the realm of Grand Strategy. Terror is a symptom of a problem we need to address through Grand Strategy. It is not the problem itself.

The problem is the lack of liberal democracy, and the lack of appreciation that the proper role of government should be limited to protecting the rights of the citizens, and that, for government power to be legitimate, it must operate under the free and open audit of the citizenry.

In addition, the ability to create wealth in many places in the world is extremely limited. As Hernando De Soto has pointed out in his book, The Mystery of Capital, there is nearly $9 trillion worth of "dead capital" in the Third World, because the owners of the capital cannot produce proof of ownership that would allow them to invest it, or borrow against it to create additional sources of wealth. In many countries, simply registering the ownership of a home may require years of effort, and literally hundreds of trips to various government offices. The 30-day escrow process that we take for granted will provide us with indisputable legal proof of ownership is, in most of the world, an unattainable dream.

President Bush has made a faltering start in this direction by beginning a program to liberalize and democratize the Arab world. But the Arab world is not the sole locus of the problem, just the most radical one. The fact is that living under authoritarian governments, surviving from day to day in crushing poverty, while having no hope of social or economic advancement, is a prescription for frustration and discontent, at the very least.

"Where there is no vision", the Bible tells us, "the people perish." Since the end of the Cold War, we have had no great national vision. Perhaps it's time to go about the business of acquiring one once again.

So, how's that NMCI deal working out for you?

EDS, the prime contractor for the navy's Navy/Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI) boondoggle, about which I've written several times, has even more good news.

Capping several years of continuing losses on one of its biggest contracts, computer networking giant EDS yesterday said it lost $171 million in the past three months on a contract to help integrate the communications systems of the U.S. Navy and Marines.

In a conference call with reporters and Wall Street analysts, EDS officials added that they expect future losses on the $8 billion contract to be wider than they previously forecast.

Both the navy and EDS went about this project in the most stupidly cavalier way. What they bothshould've thought is, "Hey, this is the largest, most complicated, worldwide computer network ever built by man. I bet it'll be complicated. We better research this very well." Instead, the navy appears to have thought, "It's just a computer network. Big deal. Everybody has one." For it's part, EDS seems to have thought, "Eight billion dollars!? Wow! OK, we'll start right now. Now, what is it they want us to do, again?"

So, the whole project has become a steaming morass of incompetence and frustration.

But what I really, really like about the story, is this quote from EDS' San Diego spokesman, Kevin Clarke:

"People look at NMCI and think it's cost us a bunch of money, but it's also brought us a lot of money," he said.

This may not be the most oustandingly stupid statement I've ever read, but it's certainly in the top 10. If Clarke is to be believed, EDS' official position is that they lose money on every sale, but they make it up in volume.

The Deceptiveness of the Democrats

Bob Novak points out the interesting dichotomy between what the Dem convention delegates believe...

The truth obscured by deception at the FleetCenter popped out in multiple ways. On Sunday, the day before the convention began, the New York Times-CBS poll of about one-fourth of the 4,322 convention delegates put them to the left of most Americans and most fellow Democrats -- including John Kerry. Nine of 10 delegates polled totally oppose the Iraq war, three-fourths support abortion on demand, only 4 percent back tax cuts, and only 5 percent oppose recognition of gay marriage.

...and what their platform says.

Anti-war activists dropped demands for U.S. troops to leave Iraq at a time certain. The platform handles divisive issues by simply ignoring them. It does not even mention partial-birth abortion, gay marriage, capital punishment, Alaska oil drilling or the Kyoto global warming treaty. It is hard to believe that such staples of liberal ideology could be kept out of a Democratic platform, but they were.

This is not, however, a good thing for the Democratic Party.

Let us assume Kerry is elected. Immediately after his election, the Left will demand certain policies, and Kerry will likely try to procure their passage. Now, as it happens, we've already seen how that works out, because that's more or less what Bill Clinton did upon assuming office. After running an election campaign in which he purported to be a moderate New Democrat, his first major initiatives were to repeal the ban on Gays in the military, and to implement Ms. Clinton's national health care plan.

Voters registered their disapproval at the first opportunity by putting both the House and Senate solidly under Republican control in 1994, a situation that, for the most part, has obtained to this day.

Bill Clinton, however, was a masterful politician. Indeed, whether you like him or not, the fact remains that he is this generation's finest politician. His response was to immediately move to the right, and to govern as a moderate/conservative.

If John Kerry cannot make that kind of transition, and I suspect that, as a far poorer politician, he cannot, he will cement the idea among the electorate that the Democrats have turned into a collection of Leftist whack jobs, which, as far as the party activist population is concerned, is essentially true.

Kerry will, in fact, have to deal with a vocal party constituency for withdrawal from Iraq, a blanket proscription against any forceful action against Iran, and calls for a leftward move in social policy, in terms of national health care, gay marriage, etc. If he goes along with that pressure from his party, it will amount to a rejection of the public stands he's taken--at least, as far as we can determine what his stands actually are--that will make him look weak and indecisive at best, and duplicitous at worst.

That bodes ill for future Democratic electibility.

But a Kerry loss wouldn't be much better. A chief complaint among Democrats about the 2000 election was that Gore lost because he didn't move far enough to the left. A Kerry loss in this election practically promises that on 2008, the Democratic Party's candidate, whoever she may be, will be forced much farther to the Left than even she finds comfortable.

Again, this will show the electorate that the Dems have descended into leftist moonbattery for the most part, harming their electoral chances for a generation.

For every Barack Obama, Harold Ford or Evan Bayh in the Democratic Party, there are three Charlie Rangels, Dennis Kuciniches, and Michael Moores. That's simply not helpful because a healthy political life demands that the country is presented with reasonable alternatives from both a center-right and center-left party. Being stuck with a center-right party and a moonbat leftist party doesn't fulfill that requirement.

Even more frightrening, if the center-right starts to feel they have a firm enough grip on power, the temptation to engage in a little moonbattery of their own might be too strong to withstand.

Still, perhaps the only solution to the current situation is for the Democrats to let the Left wing of the party call the shots until a series of McGovern-like electoral drubbings either a) brings the rest of the party back to their senses so that they reject the far Left, just as Niel Kinnock did with the British Labour Party in the 1980s, or b) starts the creation of a real center-left party that leaves the Democrats to go the way of the Whigs.

Incoherent Messages

So, I'm watching the convention, but I gotta tell you, it's just giving me mental whiplash. Barack Obama comes out one night and tells me that we're all one America. One big happy family. Then John Edwards comes out and, in what is essentially a rebuttal to Mr. Obama, tells me that there are, in fact, two Americas, and if I'm part of the America where we have to burn tires in our yard to keep warm, then I'm screwed. Then, Edwards proceeds to fisk himself, by telling me that he came from a modest background as the son of a mill worker and postal clerk, but then became fabulously wealthy. Uh, OK, but I thought you were from the Poor America that gets anally probed all the time by Rich America. So, if you can go from Poor America to Rich America, then why do we all need government help?

And then there's the war. John Kerry has said that we can't bring the troops home from Iraq. Gotta stay the course. Can't retreat. No Withdrawal. Wouldn't be prudent at this time. But, John Edwards says, If you have a kid in Iraq, and are worried that he's stuck over there, that "Hope is on the way." Then, there's noted political analyst Wycliffe Jean, singing about Kerry words to the effect that «he'll get voted in on Friday, inaugurated on Saturday, make peace on Sunday, bring the troops home Monday». Not only is that an implication that despite what Kerry says about staying the course, there's widespread expectation in his party that he'll do no such thing, Wycliffe Jean seems not to know that elections in this country are actually held on Tuesdays.

So, what does the Democratic Party believe based on the messages they're sending out from this convention? I dunno. Either they believe everything, or they believe nothing. But whatever they believe, it certainly is contradictory.

Our vote is not for sale.....because your offer isn't big enough.

I'm particularly interested in one claim by Al Sharpton from last night's speech...

"In all due respect, Mr. President, read my lips: Our vote is not for sale."

I'm running for President to:

• Deliver Universal Health Care for the nation, not hidden benefits to the health care industry.


• Help working people by giving them the biggest tax cuts - not the rich.

Sharpton would raise the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.15 an hour.

Sharpton would repeal the North American Free Trade Agreement to keep jobs in the United States.

Sharpton would repeal all tax cuts and institute new taxes on the wealthy and corporations to pay for education, health care, and social programs. He would increase child tax credits and earned income tax credits.

As concerns the specific group of voters for which Al Sharpton speaks, their vote is most definitely--even explicitly--for sale.

UPDATE: Jeff the Baptist's comment reminds me that there is always the possibility that Sharpton's vote is not for sale, because it has already been bought. So, there's that.

UPDATE II:
Michelle Malkin...

The party of Al Sharpton, tonight's grand finale speaker, promises to give us a "Stronger More Secure America."

Is Jon Stewart in charge of the convention schedule or what?

...does anyone in that room seriously think that, if George W. Bush is president another four years, blacks will lose their right to vote and be returned to slavery? And, after arguing for several minutes that going to war in Iraq was equivalent to him tricking the people to leave the convention hall and other such nonsense, he then turned around and said he thought we should in fact be bringing democracy to the people of Baghdad but what about the people of D.C.? Huh?

Edwards quotes from Day III

John Edwards spoke last night. A few snips:

But we've seen relentless negative attacks against John. So in the weeks ahead, we know what's coming — don't we — more negative attacks.

Aren't you sick of it?

They are doing all they can to take this campaign for the highest office in the land down the lowest possible road.

From the party of the "Bush lied" meme, this seems a bit disingenous. From the party of the "Bushitler" image, it seems a bit hypocritical. From the party of the "Bush knew about 911" conspiracy ala Howard Dean and Cynthia McKinney, this seems to be an outright fabrication. But then Edwards is a trial lawyer.

My guess is he's sick of it because he doesn't like what the return fire looks like.

First, we can create good paying jobs in America again. Our plan will stop giving tax breaks to companies that outsource your jobs. Instead, we will give tax breaks to American companies that keep jobs here in America. And we will invest in the jobs of the future — in the technologies and innovation to ensure that America stays ahead of the competition.

There are no official figures on the total number of jobs that have gone overseas, but in May 2004 the Labor Department made its first-ever report on the portion of "mass layoffs" attributable to "overseas relocation." Their survey showed that only 2.5 percent of major layoffs in the first three months of 2004 were a result of outsourcing abroad .

That survey only covers companies that have laid off 50 or more workers at one time for 30 days or longer, and so may not be representative of all companies and all job loss. But it gives scant support for Kerry's theme.

Trying to assess whether offshoring might actually be a larger problem than the Labor Department figures indicate, veteran Democratic economist Charles Schultze tried another approach. He reasoned that if America's production needs were increasingly met by foreign outsourcing (and cheap imports) this would be shown as a rise in the value of U.S. imports relative to the overall economy, as measured by Gross Domestic Product, or GDP. But what he found was that the ratio wasn't rising at all - it had leveled off since 2000. He concluded that "there is nothing in the data to suggest that large increases in. . . offshoring could have played a major role in explaining America's job performance in recent years. "

FactCheck.org also points out that while the present tax code does indeed provide incentive for US companies to move overseas, its not Bush's fault, but indeed the fault of the tax code passed by Congress:

In fact, tax experts say the incentive has been there for decades - since there has been a corporate income tax. It's not Bush's doing.

The incentive exists because the US taxes corporations at rates higher than most other countries. According to the Institute for International Economics, the effective rate for US corporations was just over 30% in 2002, while mainland China's effective corporate rate was only 11.3%, Britain's 18.2%, Mexico's 15.1% and Indonesia's a miniscule 0.2%.

Furthermore, the US also attempts to tax money that US-based companies earn in other countries, but only after those profits are brought back to the US. That means profits that remain overseas, perhaps invested in new factories in low-tax countries, never get taxed at the higher US rates. And that's been true through both Democratic and Republican administrations.

In essence what Edwards is saying, but carefully not saying, is Kerry/Edwards plan tax cuts for corporations ... which, if known, would probably not play well with the Naderite wing of the Democratic party.

Edwards then promises:

To help you pay for health care, a tax break and health care reform to lower your premiums up to $1,000. To help you cover the rising costs of child care, a tax credit up to $1,000 to cover those costs so your kids have a safe place to go while you work. And to help your child have the same chance I had and be the first person in your family to go to college, a tax break on up to $4,000 in tuition.

We had an interesting discussion here about tax reform a few days ago. A national sales tax was discussed as the fairest way to do this. Take a look above and you'll understand why no real tax reform will ever forthcoming from congress. Look at the power politicians wield by being able to promise allowing you to keep more of your money to help defray the costs of programs they've helped drive up.

More Edwards:

We have millions of Americans who work full-time every day for minimum wage to support their family and still live in poverty — it's wrong.

What's wrong is we don't have millions of Americans who work full-time for minimum wage to support a family.

First the numbers:

Last year [2002], about 570,000 American workers reported earning exactly $5.15 per hour, the prevailing Federal minimum wage, and another 1.6 million reported with wages below the minimum. Together, these 2.2 million workers made up 3.0 percent of all hourly-paid workers.

Then the demographics:

Minimum wage workers tend to be young. About half of workers earning $5.15 or less were under age 25, and slightly more than one-fourth were age 16-19. Among teenagers, 10 percent earned $5.15 or less.

About 4 percent of women paid hourly rates reported wages at or below the prevailing Federal minimum, compared with about 2 percent of men.

Part-time workers (persons who usually work less than 35 hours per week) were much more likely than their full-time counterparts to be paid $5.15 or less (about 8 percent versus about 2 percent). About 1 in 10 workers putting in fewer than 15 hours per week earned the minimum or less.

Summary: 3% of all hourly workers, who are mostly young or part-timers, receive minimum wage. 3%. That has nothing to do with the millions more of salaried workers. So at best, this addresses less than 3% of those paid hourly while over 100 million hourly workers are above the minium wage. If you add salaried workers into this its a little over 1% of the total workforce.

Edwards, et al, would have you believe that 1% earning minimum wage stay there with "no hope". They're wrong:

"... wage growth among minimum wage employees is actually quite robust.

As would be expected, minimum wage employment is a common entry point to the labor force. Individuals with few skills enter the workforce at this wage but quickly experience wage growth resulting from increased skill levels. This study finds that minimum wage employees are five times more likely than all employees to be new entrants to the labor force. Over the 23 years of data studied in the report, nearly two-thirds of minimum wage employees who continue employment are earning more than the minimum wage within 1–12 months."

In fact, the study cited shows that "Between 1998 and 2002, median wage
growth averaged 10.4 percent for minimum wage employees but only 1.7 percent for workers earning above the minimum—more than five times higher."

It isn't a minimum wage increase for the 'poor' Kerry/Edwards really want. Its the increase it will give union workers if the minium wage is increased that they're after. It always happens when the minimum wage in increased.

In other words, the aim is really to increase the cost of labor across the board on the one hand while telling us they're going to increase jobs on the other and using "poor families" with "no hope" as the bait. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that those two goals may work against each other.

UPDATE (JON): Tagorda has an evaluation of Edwards, as well...

...isn't it somewhat ironic for Edwards to highlight the importance of American values while demonstrating his reluctance to promote them in Iraq? When it comes time to neutralize Republican advantages on the cultural front, he trumpets "faith, family, responsibility, opportunity for everyone." But when it comes time to extend democracy to Iraqis, he sticks mostly with "stability." By contrast, the Bush administration -- flaws and all -- goes a step further.

Blinded by the Shite

So, Atrios is Duncan Black. As a bit of trivia, it's interesting. It's not quite like unmasking "Deep Throat", but perhaps it is the blogosphere equivalent.

That, however, deserves nothing more than a "huh". Instapundit points out the real issue....

...Duncan Black who, among other things, works for David Brock's Soros-funded Media Matters operation. Nothing wrong with that, but if I were working for, say, Richard Mellon Scaife, I think somebody -- like, say, Duncan Black -- would be making something of it.

For that matter, Oliver Willis, who also works for the Soros-funded MediaMatters, has had no apparent problem criticizing Scaife-funded right-wing information.

So, what we have are two critics, bought and paid for by the left wing, criticizing some media outlets and pundits for being....bought and paid for by the right wing.

When can we begin calling them "Duncan Ruddy" and "Oliver Ruddy"?
(explanation)

Why all the Vietnam? II

The reason why John Kerry and his surrogates are pushing the Vietnam angle is simple. They are trying to make the argument that because Kerry served in combat in the Nam, he's qualified to e president of the United States.

12 years ago, Bill Clinton had no military service at all, yet Democrats--including Mr. Kerry--were keen to argue that it was irrelevant. Now, suddenly, military service is the chief qualification touted by Mr. Kerry.

That's an interesting argument, but there's not a lot of evidence that military service has much to do at all with the presidency. The job of the military--even at the highest levels--and the job of the presidency are two very different things.

The job of the military is to execute the orders of the president as a means of implementing his strategy. Even our highest generals have little or no input about strategy at that level. Our national objectives, as well as the shape of any subsequent peace--what B.H. Liddell Hart called "grand strategy"--are political, not military concerns. Military officers are concerned with strategy at the operational level. The president is concerned with grand strategy at the political level.

This doesn't mean that some generals are not keen strategists in that sense, and, many of the most successful generals are. Colin Powell, George C. Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower, and Alexander Haig come to mind. But, just being a general is no indication that one is a very good player at the game of grand strategy.

In a previous post, I used the example of Curtis LeMay. LeMay became a 4-star general in WWII, and directed the country's strategic bombing campaign against Japan. At his retirement, he was the Air Force Chief of Staff under John Kennedy. But I doubt if anyone even mildly acquainted with Gen LeMay would have mistaken him for a grand strategist. His primary advice to President Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis was to bomb Cuba, and he confidently predicted that if the President did so, the Soviets would do nothing. Fortunately, Kennedy disagreed.

Fortunately.

Gen of the Army Douglass Mac Arthur had served as the Army Chief of Staff in the 1930's, then was recalled to active duty in WWII, and eventually ended up as our supreme commander in Korea during the first part of the Korean War. Despite the direct orders of President Truman, he ignored warnings that the Chinese were preparing to intervene in Korea, and sent our troops straight for the Chinese border.

When the Chinese launched the surprise Thanksgiving attacks, Macarthur was stunned. Eventually, his unwillingness to obey orders, and his insistence on trying to bring in Chiang Kai-Sheck's Nationalist Chinese into Korea led to his dismissal.

Both generals were fantastically competent in their areas of expertise, but were poor strategists at the grand strategy level.

On the other hand, Franklin Roosevelt, who led the country through most of WWII, never served a day in uniform. Woodrow Wilson, who was president during WWI, didn't either. Yet no one would argue that they were incompetent in their role as commander in Chief, Abraham Lincoln's sum total of military service was a few weeks in the Illinois militia, yet he somehow managed to make it through the Civil War creditably, even though he was hamstrung by the equally arrogant and incompetent Commander of the Army of the Potomac, General McClellan, a man who was wonderful at building armies, yet fatally indecisive at using them.

So, then, with these examples in mind, what does John Kerry's service as a junior naval officer tell us about his fitness to be president?

Precisely nothing.

If generalship, or the lack thereof, cannot be correlated with effectiveness as commander in chief, a lieutenancy is hardly an awe-inspiring qualification.

The doubts about Kerry's fitness as president do not lie in his four years of active service. They arise from the two decades of recorded decisions he has made as a United States senator.

John Edwards' Two Americas

Blogging live during John Edwards' Speech:

Doesn't want insurance companies and HMOs to ration healthcare.

Then who? There isn't an unlimited supply of health care. It's gotta be rationed somehow. If insurer's or patients themselves aren't, then I guess it'll be the government that does it under Kerry/Edwards. But make no mistake, until there is an unlimited supply of health care, it will be rationed.

If you aren't rich, you're one paycheck or layoff away from disaster. It's not possible to save any money. You can barely get by.

Somehow, after leaving active duty with $350 in my pocket, I managed never to need government assistance, even though I live in California. I had to work 70 hours a week at two jobs, but somehow, I managed to do it.

We are at war. We will win. Our military: great or what? Strong. Courageous.

And, so what will we do to win? Ask the help of France? Good luck. How about some specifics? You can say we'll hunt down terrorists. How? Where? Where are the enemies, and how will we go after them? What will we do if our allies chicken out?

It's not enough to say "I'm gonna do it!" You gotta tell me how.

You say we'll increase the military budget. Ok, and what will we spend it on? It's not enough to throw money at it. You say we'll hire more troops. Fine, where will we send them? Increase our troops in Iraq? Increase our nuclear arsenal. Build another carrier group? What about all those boys in Germany, will we still keep mthem there, or are there oher, more important things for them to do?

Those aren't specifics. Those are platitudes.

John Kerry knows all about military stuff. He served in Vietnam.

Really? I hadn't heard.

We don't get no respect from the rest of the world.

Oh. Well. that's more important than ensuring the country is secure. Better not do anything that gets the frogs PO'd. That is, after all, the important thing.

Hope is on the way. If you don't make enough money. If you can't go to school. If your kid is stuck in Iraq. If your medicine costs too much. Hope is on the way.

Hope, presumably, will be issued by Kerry/Edwards. Huh. And how's that gonna work? Will you just issue money? Force employers to may more? Withdraw all troops from Iraq?

And while we're on the subject, do any of these hopeless people have any responsibility for self-improvement? So far, it's all what goodies Kerry/Edwards are going to shower on us.

Too bad that government doesn't create wealth. And since it doesn't, whose gonna pay for all this hope?

Oh, right, tax increases on the "richest Americans". The top 10% already pay 67% of all income tax revenues. Clearly, not doing their share.

So, really, it's the same old Democratic stuff. Tax the rich. Spend more money. Free stuff for everybody. well, except for the rich,

Chris Matthews: Nothing about raising taxes. I guess he missed the part about tax increases on the "richest Americans".

Jon Meacham from Newsweek: No platitude was left behind. Not a policy-heavy speech. Optimistic, though, so 4.5 out of 5 stars.

In other words, it's all sizzle and no steak, but Meacham thought it was great. So did the Dems. But it was almost entirely empty of substance.

Why all the Vietnam?

Are you wondering why the Kerry campaign is dwelling 30 years in the past, trying to use Kerry’s Vietnam service as the centerpiece at the convention instead of the more recent 20 years of his Senate record?

Reports have it that the convention center is covered with Kerry Vietnam era pictures (although I’m sure none of them include a tasteful “Winter Soldier” montage or a medal flinging pic). Kerry grandstands in his convention entrance using a water taxi as his “swift boat” and stocking it with his Vietnam “band of brothers”. Kerry’s super-8 film from Vietnam will play heavily in the film about the man, although we may have difficulty separating the real action from the reenactments. Ms. Heinz-Kerry lovingly tells the world that John got his medals “the old fashioned way, he earned them.”

Of course I know why they’re hanging out in Vietnam. Because that’s the last time he was actually strong on defense. OK, I’m being facetious. But really .... how do 120 days in a combat zone trump a 7300 days (20 years) in the Senate? Regardless of the Star Trek defense (“deflectors up, full speed ahead”) its his record in the Senate which tells the true tale of the real John Kerry, presidential candidate.

Not Vietnam.

The first thing one must understand is Kerry’s running away from the “L” word. Kerry is a liberal, but apparently not a proud one. Vietnam duty isn’t a typical “liberal” thing. But if you're trying to cover a liberal voting record, it does provide that deflector shield for which your looking.

Facts, however, give a little different picture. In 2003, per the Congressional Quarterly, he voted against the President 70% of the time (that’s when he showed up). Ted Kennedy, everyone’s liberal liberal only did so 53% of the time. In fact rankings from both sides of the fence clearly show Kerry’s liberal tendencies, with the Americans for Democratic Action (a liberal group) rating him at a lifetime 94 (which is more liberal than Kennedy) while the American Conservative Union rates him a lifetime 6. To paraphrase Jeff Foxworthy, “you might be a liberal if you’re to the left of Ted Kennedy.”.

While that's pretty damning itself, perhaps the most disturbing trait observed about Kerry is his desire to have it both ways in order to maximize the political capital to be had in any event or issue. Depending on the velocity and direction of the political wind he can be found to be for something at one time and completely against it later.

For example the Patriot Act. When it was passed Kerry said on the Senate floor, "It reflects an enormous amount of hard work by the members of the Senate Banking Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee. I congratulate them and thank them for that work." Kerry said he was "pleased at the compromise we have reached on the anti-terrorism legislation."

Later, as the political wind shifted in the form of Howard Dean and it was more politically expedient to denounce the act, Kerry took a sniff and announced the Patriot Act was all John Ashcroft’s fault. "We are a nation of laws and liberties, not of a knock in the night," Kerry said. "So it is time to end the era of John Ashcroft. That starts with replacing the Patriot Act with a new law that protects our people and our liberties at the same time."

So the Patriot Act, for which Kerry voted, went from a great compromise piece of anti-terrorism legislation to an abomination foisted upon us by the right. Sniffing away, Kerry changed his tack and took some of the wind from Dean’s sails..

Another example is the “No Child Left Behind” legislation. Presently the story is that NCLB is "one-size-fits-all testing mania.". Even worse, according to Kerry, is the “fact” that it isn’t being funded. Of course that’s not true, funding for education under Bush is up 65%, but then the truth has never stood in the way of a good assertion.

Of course that wasn’t always the case. Its hard to understand his attacks on NCLB when he was so proud of being such an integral part in its introduction and passage. "This is groundbreaking legislation that enhances the federal government's commitment to our nation's public education system ... and embraces many of the principles and programs that I believe are critical to improving the public education system."

Back then he crowed about the passage of “his” bill: "Last year I worked with 10 of my Democratic colleagues to introduce legislation that would help break the stalemate and move beyond the tired, partisan debates of the past. Our education proposal became the foundation of the bill before us today."

Kerry helped birth the bill and but now denies he's responsible. The political DNA test denies his denial.

Probably the most famous of the wind sniffing events had to do with the war in Iraq. Last summer on Meet the Press, Kerry said: “"We did not empower the president to do regime change.” But in actuality, Kerry supported a resolution which specifically called for regime change not to mention the fact that Kerry voted for a Clinton resolution in 1998 which also called for regime change. Apparently Kerry was more than willing to authorize regime change in two different administrations, until, that is, the political winds changed. Either that or he doesn’t understand what the term “regime change” means or didn’t really read the resolutions for which he voted.

The denial on MTP is Kerry appealing to the anti-war left after being driven in that direction by the Howard Dean threat to his candidacy. But the others are also vintage Kerry. Like the NCLB, giving his vote but not really giving his vote. The now classic “I voted for the 87 billion before I voted against it”is more typical than he’d like to admit.

Those few examples give us a clue as to the reason why Vietnam is so very, very visible in Boston right now. The “attributes” outlined above will not be on display. In fact they’ll be well hidden, by design.

The question is can his 120 days in Vietnam give cover to his 7300 days in the Senate?

As we know the announced purpose of the event is to “introduce” John Kerry to America. The Democrats will tell you its because they want America to get to know the real John Kerry. But with all the Vietnam and none of the Senate you have to wonder about that. When you really consider the approach, it would seem disingenuous at best. It would seem, in reality, that they really don’t want America to get to know him that well. Not well enough to understand that his Vietnam service in no way portrays the ‘real’ John Kerry.

Boston D Party

Some random thoughts have crossed my mind while viewing and reading about the Democratic Convention.

Jimmy Carter having a keynote address at the convention should strike you as a bit odd. After all, this is a guy whose humiliating performance as president, and subsequent defeat at the hands of Ronald Reagan, more or less exiled him from the Convention. Nobody has allowed Jimmy Carter anywhere near a prime-time speaking slot at a convention for 24 years. I'm not sure it says good things about the Democrats that he has become one of the party's chief spokesmen this year.

I dunno, perhaps the fact that it's been more than 2 decades since his presidency, the Democrats feel that memories have faded enough to make him useful again. It's just interesting that a man whose presidency has come to be almost universally derided as an abject failure is now the eminence grise of the Democratic party.

Barack Obama. I suspect that we'll be hearing a lot about this gentleman in the coming years. Unless, of course, he slips into obscurity like Harold Ford, who was the star of a previous Democratic convention.

Maybe it's cruel, but Teresa Heinz-Kerry reminds me of Lisa (Eva Gabor) in Green Acres. Rich, cosmopolitan, and with an unplaceable foreign accent.

But a rather short-tempered, sharp-tongued Lisa. There's just a hovering sense that she's just a bit too tightly wound, and, at any moment, could explode, injuring innocent bystanders with a flying cloud of bitch shrapnel. I'm not sure she plays as well in Red-State America as she does in, say Manhattan.

How much of a polling bump are the Democrats really expecting to get out of this? More people are watching reruns of CSI: Miami, or the prime-time lineup on The WB than are watching ABC, CBS, or NBC. The networks are each pulling around 3% or less of the viewing audience. Maybe that'll pick up tonight when John Edwards, or tomorrow when John Kerry speaks, but so far, it's been a pretty eventless and unwatched convention. But, with ratings down by 24% compared to what they were in 2004, it strikes me that the Dems just aren't attracting a lot of interest. I don't think that indicates that a Mike Dukakis-like, 17-point lead is in the offing when this thing shuts down.

Although, in a sense, the last thing the Dems want is any controversial news coming out of this convention. They have to keep it as vanilla, centrist, and pleasing as possible, or they've got a problem. The fact is that, based on the polling I've seen, the delegates are way, way out of the mainstream on practically any issue you can name. 60% of the delegates at the convention want an immediate unilateral withdrawal from Iraq, for example.

They could get a lot more people watching if they let their hair down, and started proclaiming what they really believe. But, unfortunately, seeing the wave of Bush-hating moonbattery that would elicit would cause the electorate to recoil in disgust and horror at the thought of these imbeciles running the show for four years. Having an unwatchably boring convention is the best possible thing in the world for them, because hiding the true nature of the pathology than animates the Dems this year is their only hope for victory at all.

But, if nobody is watching, it's difficult to see how that translates into a massive increase in poll numbers when this thing shuts down.

The Edwards speech tonight will undoubtedly be another one of those "two America" deals. This irks me.

First, it strikes me—and, presumably, anyone with a lick of common sense—as pretty transparent to talk about how the other party is all about dividing Americans, while speaking for 30 minutes on the "two Americas" meme.

Yeah, they can call the president a lying warmonger, who's destroyed American credibility abroad, and the economy at home by tax giveaways to the rich, but that's not divisive. It's not divisive to tell the American people that they are the tools of rich corporate fat cats who are out to screw them, abetted by an administration that willingly does the bidding of bloated plutocrats, rather than working for the interests of the common people.

Talking about gay marriage or abortion, though. That's divisive.

But it takes a lot of gall to recite this foolishness with a straight face, and expect that no one will see the deeply hypocritical reasoning behind it.

Another problem with it is that, most people, if given the chance, would like to join the ranks of bloated plutocrats themselves. Americans may resent the rich on some level, but not so much that they want to close off the rewards for being rich, just in case they get a shot at wealth themselves. And they know that making it harder to create wealth means that their shot at obtaining wealth will become more remote.

A few years ago, a polling firm in Russia asked people if they would rather be rich themselves, or prevent a neighbor from becoming rich. The vast majority of respondents preferred to prevent their neighbor from becoming rich. That's the end result of the 'two Americas" meme--an ingrained resentment against wealth creation.

News flash to the Russians: with that attitude, you'll never have to worry about either alternative happening. That kind of resentment and divisiveness is destructive, both socially and economically. A society that resents the wealthy is a short step away from becoming a society that votes itself into penury by ensuring that no one can create wealth.

Finally, all this talk about divisiveness is just silly. Elections are supposed to be divisive. If the issues at stake in an election weren't divisive, there wouldn't be any reason to debate them, or to vote on them either, for that matter. The very nature of politics is divisive.

The framers of the Constitution made no provision for political parties. George Washington, in his farewell address, counseled against having them. But that was just a silly Utopianism. People are always going to disagree, about the issues, no matter how large or small the issues are.

Gay marriage, abortion, stem cell research, Iraq: all of these are divisive issues, with different segments of the population holding deeply serious moral or philosophical positions in opposition to the other. The democrats pretend as if supporting gay marriage isn't divisive, while opposing it is. Quite apart from the fact that about 60% of the electorate opposes gay marriage, it's simply a stupid argument to press. Both sides of the argument are divisive. If they weren't, we'd all agree, for cripes sake.

With all this talk about the little people, the Democratic delegates sure seem well-insulated from the regular struggles of daily life, like meeting a payroll, or keeping a job.

More than half of the Democratic delegates are NEA union-member teachers, who essentially have jobs for life, and who can’t be fired for practically any offense outside of child-buggery, or espousing conservative or religious views in the classroom. That's a pretty good deal, compared to what most of us face.

The Democrats' biggest donor group is the trail lawyers, whose very livelihoods consist of convincing a jury that their clients are not responsible in any way, for the bad things that happen to them, even if they open a hot cup of coffee while traveling in a moving vehicle. And, naturally, they have to argue that, since they get at least a third of any money that gets awarded. That gives them a vested interest in pushing the "two Americas" meme. There is, after all, a lot of money in it.

Their most well-known spokesmen are Hollywood celebrities who make tens of millions of dollars a year for pretending to be people they aren't, while reciting lines written by somebody else. I guess it's easy to call for higher taxes when the rounding errors in your tax return are greater than the average worker's salary. So, if taxes are raised, and you can't find a good loophole, you'll make $36 million next year instead of $38 million. I hope that you can tighten your belt enough to scrape by, Hollywood-boy.

Then, of course, there are the grass-roots activist, who often consist of college students, whose sole life experience has consisted of being completely taken care of by others. But, college students believe a lot of very silly things that, by the time they're 30, and have had a chance to live in the real world, they'll no longer believe.

Nice hats. Very colorful.

Here's an interesting little exercise. Read Howard Dean's speech, and find a single nice thing he has to say about John Kerry.

But he's not bitter.

OK, what's the deal with the kids? Twelve-year-old Ilana Wexler comes out, tells Dick Cheney he needs a time out. The crowd goes wild.

Uh, she's twelve. I mean, OK, granted, the average 12 year-old child probably does have a better grasp of politico-strategic realities than the average DNC convention delegate, but still...I mean, you all realize that some adult wrote this for her, and she's just reciting it for your amusement, right? It's not like she spent a couple of weeks at the New York Times' morgue, researching issues from the last three years on microfilm.

Why are we supposed to get all giddy because they troop out children to say their lines?

Mickey Kaus got the following email:

The Times, CNN, and the convention LOVED Obama's "One America" speech.

So now what - does John Edwards come on as a rebuttal speaker?

Heh.

Send Me (but not too close)

A line from Clinton's Convention speech highlights a bit of Kerry hagiography that has been bothering me a bit....

During the Vietnam War, many young men—including the current president, the vice president and me—could have gone to Vietnam but didn’t. John Kerry came from a privileged background and could have avoided it too. Instead he said, send me.

When they sent those swift-boats up the river in Vietnam, and told them their job was to draw hostile fire—to show the American flag and bait the enemy to come out and fight—John Kerry said, send me.

Kerry certainly volunteered for duty in the Vietnam theater, and I respect his service--in fact, I'd even argue that his post-Vietnam opposition was sincere, well-intentioned and not a blanket condemnation of all veterans--as well as his purple hearts. I'm entirely unconcerned with debates over whether he was genuinely injured, or just kinda injured.

Bush, on the other hand, volunteered for a dangerous duty....but in the United States, rather than Vietnam.

Well, military service is simply not a part of my voting calculation, so I'm unwilling to parse purple hearts and Alabama weekends.

The difference, Clinton and the Democrats claim, is that John Kerry volunteered to go into the middle of a shooting range and take fire. Except, not so much...

"I didn't really want to get involved in the war," Kerry said in a little-noticed contribution to a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. "When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing."

Note: this is not a critique of John Kerry's military service. It is a critique of his hagiographers....which, to be frank, sometimes includes John Kerry.

UPDATE: Ezra Klein has unleashed the Pandagonettes, who seem to want to argue about whether flying a fighter jet is safer than fighting in Vietnam, whether Bush made all his weekend assignments in 1973, and....well, they want to argue about pretty much everything but the points I made.

Is flying a jet inherently dangerous? Yeah, but not as dangerous as combat.
Did Bush volunteer for Vietnam? No.
Is piloting a swift boat well away from any fighting dangerous? Yeah, but not as dangerous as combat.
Did Kerry think he was signing up for duty that would see combat? No.

Those points are uncontested. So, while the Pandagonettes erect and destroy strawmen, my post stands. And Ezra's "hahahahaha" response is unbecoming of an intelligent blogger.

Why No Bush Bashing in Boston?

Jonah Golberg hints toward an answer in todays USA Today:

The Boston Democrats are running on the fumes of a Bush-record-that-never-was. They gripe about how he's cut education spending, when he's increased it by more than 35%. They claim he lied about WMDs when he didn't. They say he's violated civil liberties when he's been fighting for the survival of liberty. They're betting everything that they can cross the finish line before the American public realizes that the Democrats are coasting on an empty tank.

The problem is if they revert to form during the convention it has two effects. The first is they look like the McGovernites they really are while displaying their irrational hate of Bush to the potential voters they're trying to sway. Not a vision they want on tape, and you have to give them kudos for attempting to avoid that. They want to seem like centerists even if they aren't centerists since that is where the election will be won.

Secondly, and probably most importantly, they would make debunking the lies they tell in passing about Bush on the campaign trail prime-time fodder. By doing that, they would open themselves up to a rather brutal and public fisking.

While their "Bush lied" nonsense is red-meat to their faithful, its a pack of lies now easily debunked by evidence and reports to the contrary for those who care to look or listen.

For more than a year, Democrats have been fueled by a violent, irrational hatred of George W. Bush. These feelings were almost never based upon facts, so much as on an almost glandular paranoia.

Librarians set fire to their records, lest Attorney General John Ashcroft's Gestapo find out who borrowed The Catcher in the Rye. They insisted that Bush was some sort of criminal mastermind and buffoon who could orchestrate a war for oil while not being smart enough to work as a spellchecker at an M&M factory. Countless anti-Bush canards contradicted each other, but consistency was a luxury the Democrats could not afford.

The problem for them is that not even the now decidedly anti-Bush press can conceal the fact that virtually none of these allegations were true. The Senate Intelligence Committee report, the British Butler Report and the 9/11 Commission report undermine every key allegation of the anti-Bush flat-earthers. The 9/11 Commission, which was being hailed as an oracular council of truth and light when it made Bush look bad, has essentially said the Patriot Act does not go far enough (and Ashcroft, by the way, never even poked his nose in a library); that Bush never lied and that several of Bush's more famous accusers did — including those who, knowing otherwise, insisted that Bush's "16 words" about Saddam Hussein's pursuit of uranium were lies.

So there you are. Are the Democrats trying to be more civil in Boston? Well maybe, to a point. Convention 101 says 'be positive". It also says "appear to be centerist". They're trying.

But that's not the only reason the Bush bashing is banned in Boston. In light of recent developments concerning the 911 Commission and the Butler Report, the virtual destruction of the viability of two now former Kerry aides and the positive statements concerning what Bush knew and when, they've been shown to be the ones pushing the lies. It is certainly to their advantage to change the subject for the moment, take a more civil tone and drop the Bush bashing to a mild and dull roar ... at least for now. Its a hell of an acting job. I'm impressed.

Of course, once the convention is over and they spread out across the country again, they can resume accusing Bush of being a liar. With the evidence to the contrary readily available, such accusations will be nothing more than a pack of lies themselves. But, being back in the sound-bite whirl of the campaign the media can conveniently ignore them ... and they will.

Iraq and Kosovo

Consistently saying that the war in Iraq has been a 'fiasco' and the we should now bring in NATO and the UN, anti-war types seem to be ignorant of the case study of a "fiasco" which involves both NATO and the UN.

Kosovo.

NATO and the United Nations should expand their security presence in Kosovo after failing to protect minorities from ethnic riots in March, a human rights group said in a report due out Tuesday.

The U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said NATO soldiers and U.N. police had "failed catastrophically in their mandate to protect minority communities" as mobs of Albanians overran Serb enclaves in the U.N.-run province, torching up to 800 homes and dozens of religious sites.

Yes those who would have us believe that only the UN and possibly NATO can bring peace, harmony and organization to what would otherwise be a vulgar brawl seem to somehow miss their latest 'success'. Kosovo, a province of Serbia and Montenegro (with a population of about 3 million) is, by all measures, a mess.

The two days of violence, in which 19 people were killed and 4,000 non-Albanians fled their homes, was the first time the ability of NATO and the United Nations to keep the peace had been seriously challenged in five years of international rule.

The 66-page report criticized the response of NATO's 19,000-strong peacekeeping force and 3,500 U.N. police officers, and pointed to a worrying lack of coordination.

"In numerous cases, minorities under attack were left entirely unprotected and at the mercy of the rioters," it said, adding much of the burden was placed on poorly equipped local police.

Of course NATO and the UN have an explanation and excuse:

In response, the U.N. mission said the report failed "to show an understanding of the extent of the challenge this violence posed to security forces." A NATO spokesman said troops had quickly stabilized the situation and prevented "a crisis from turning into a civil war."

Well I'm sure that was comforting to the 19 killed and the 4,000 who fled.

NATO and the UN have been in Kosovo for almost 5 years. Accomplishment? Well, they averted civil war according to them. But have they stood Kosovo up? Helped settle the area's ethnic tensions? Helped determine their eventual status? Kept the peace?

Apparently not.

But this nation building in Iraq would be a piece of cake if we'd just involve NATO and the UN, wouldn't it? We'd be done with the place in no time flat.

Right ... all you have to do is look at their track record to know that.

Hoisting, Petards, etc.

Cassandra, at Jet Noise, wonders why the Dems seem to betting their panties in a wad about electronic voting machines. After all, that's exactly what they demanded after the 2000 election fiasco, isn't it?

It's not even close to November, and they're already cranking it up. Four years ago we just had to have touchscreen voting to correct the egregious inequities of the butterfly ballot (the same ballot, mind you, that elected the histrionic Mr. Daley of "people have been disenfranchised" fame -- several times, although he did not appear to think his own election was thereby invalidated). Now, having demanded touchscreen voting, Democrats everywhere are clasping their cheeks, Edvard Munsch-style in horror as they realize (somewhat belatedly) that there will be no paper trail...

Imagine... no dimples...no pregnant chads... no telltale depressions from which to infer voter intent or the lack thereof. Bupkiss. They really might have thought of this four years ago. This is what Mother meant when she said, "Be careful what you wish for".

Heh.

Jimmuh's Convention Speech

You know, the more I read Jimmy Carter's speech last night at the Democratic National Convention, the more I remember why exactly it is we ran him out of Washington the first chance we got, embarrassed at ourselves for sending him there in the first place. Some of his rhetoric was just a bit too much, especially for those of us who remember what the state of the nation under Jimmy Carter was actually like.

[W]e cannot do our duty as citizens and patriots if we pursue an agenda that polarizes and divides our country.

Heh. That's pretty funny, coming from a guy whose party's major campaign theme seems to be the existence of "Two Americas".

Let us not forget that the Soviets lost the Cold War because the American people combined the exercise of power with adherence to basic principles, based on sustained bipartisan support. We understood the positive link between the defense of our own freedom and the promotion of human rights.

Really Jimmy? We all knew that that? I mean, I did, and so did all the people I knew, but during your four years in the White House, it wasn't entirely clear that you did.

While thousands of Cuban soldiers were running amok in Angola, you were kissing Leonid Brezhnev. While Soviet troops were preparing to invade Afghanistan, you were chiding us about needing to get over our "inordinate fear of communism". That is, when you weren't chiding us about what lily-livered girly-men we'd become with the famous «Malaise» speech.

Finally, the one notable occasion when you did exercise American power, to try and rescue the hostages in Iran during a fundamentalist Islamic revolution you fomented, it turned into a total freakin' disaster.

For those of us older than 35, it's probably not the best strategy to remind us of your pathetic "exercise of power with adherence to basic principles". 'Cause, frankly, when you had that as your charge, you didn't seem too freakin' competent at it.

Today, our Democratic party is led by another former naval officer -- one who volunteered for military service. He showed up when assigned to duty, and he served with honor and distinction.

He also knows the horrors of war and the responsibilities of leadership, and I am confident that next January he will restore the judgment and responsibility to our government that is sorely lacking today.

Having put in 10 years on active duty as a trigger-puller and bullet-stopper myself, excuse me if I don't get all mushy-eyed at the idea that serving as a company grade officer 30 years ago has any bearing whatsoever on Kerry's ability to lead the country. Richard Nixon was a former Navy officer, too, and I don't remember you getting all weepy about his military service and its relevance to the presidency.

Maybe if Kerry had served for 30 years, and ended up as a flag officer with 3 or 4 stars, you might have an argument about his strategic judgment. But, then again, maybe not. Curt LeMay wore four stars on his shoulders for nearly 20 years, and I wouldn't've wanted that loon within 1000 feet of the Oval Office, except as the subordinate of a president who had a freakin' clue.

With our allies disunited, the world resenting us, and the Middle East ablaze, we need John Kerry to restore life to the global war against terrorism.

And, speaking of Iran, one wonders if there'd even be a need to wage a global war of terrorism if you hadn't abandoned our chief ally in the region, the Shah, to the Islamic fundamentalists who overthrew him, thereby igniting the torch of radical Islam throughout the Mideast. And I think it'd be a bit tendentious to argue that the elevation of Ayatollah Khomeini improved the human rights situation in Iran.

Thanks to your fecklessness, Jimmy, the banner of Islamic revolution was raised high in 1979, and led directly to the horrid situation we face today.

So, telling me that John Kerry will follow in your footsteps doesn't exactly fill me with confidence. We're still suffering the ill effects of your four years of "leadership". I can hardly imagine what kind of crop a similar four years of John Kerry will sow that our children will have to reap the bitter harvest of, a generation hence.

In the meantime, the Middle East peace process has come to a screeching halt for the first time since Israel became a nation. All former presidents, Democratic and Republican, have attempted to secure a comprehensive peace for Israel with hope and justice for the Palestinians. The achievements of Camp David a quarter century ago and the more recent progress made by President Bill Clinton are now in peril.

And, of course, that is all George W. Bush's fault, I suppose. It has nothing to do with Yasser Arafat rejecting the peace deal Bill Clinton tried to broker. Nothing at all to do with Arafat's al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade or Hamas murderers shooting pregnant women in the stomach and head, or blowing up pizzerias filled with women and children.

Oh, and about your Camp David legacy: I don't see that you had much to do with it, frankly. Anwar Sadat had already flown to Jerusalem to make peace with Menachim Begin. The decision had already been made to secure peace between Egypt and Israel before you had anything to do with it. All you did at Camp David was to dot the T’s and cross the I's of a decision Sadat had made without even consulting you.

Elsewhere, North Korea's nuclear menace -- a threat more real and immediate than any posed by Saddam Hussein -- has been allowed to advance unheeded, with potentially ominous consequences for peace and stability in Northeast Asia.

Uh, yeah. Just out of curiosity, weren't you the guy who came back from NoKo in '94, telling us what a prince of guy that Kim Jong-Il was? I mean, you practically did the whole Neville Chamberlain bit, waving the agreement with Kim over your head, and announcing it secured peace in our time.

Meanwhile, your pilot had barely got the landing gear retracted after leaving the tarmac at Pyongyang before that little maniac Kim was planning on building strontium bombs like the cool missile that James Franciscus shot off at the end of Return to the Planet of the Apes. And now, somehow, all that is W's fault.

So, what, can we take it as a given that you'll support the president in an upcoming invasion of North Korea? No, I'm sorry, forgive me for asking. Of course you won't. Because there's no threat to the people and interests of the United States that you don't think can't be solved by a unilateral American retreat, is there?

And so I say to you and to others around the world, whether they wish us well or ill: do not underestimate us Americans. We lack neither strength nor wisdom. There is a road that leads to a bright and hopeful future. What America needs is leadership.

And, we'll probably get it as long as we can keep you and your ilk as far as possible from the levers of power.

Freudian slip?

While bouncing around the country prior to his arrival at the Democrat Convention, Kerry was at a stop in Florida where this occurred:

When a man stood and said he feared that the new Medicaid prescription drug benefit would lead to weaker coverage for union retirees like himself, Mr. Kerry asked the audience, "Are you terrified of that happening?" and then said, "You should be."

"Because there's nothing to stop them from dropping you," he continued. "They're dropping people now."

Beside the usual scare tactics from Kerry, ensure you read what the man said carefully.

The man was afraid of what?

The new Medicaid perscription drug benefit would lead to weaker coverage for union retirees.

In other words the man is worried that the drug benefits he now enjoys from his union will be made weaker.

Kerry's answer .... "you should be [terrified] ... They're dropping people now."

Unions are dropping people now?

I wonder if Kerry caught the "union" part of the question? I wonder how pleased his union masters are with the answer.

Meanwhile in the real world, the government's drug program's rules were softened to include more of the elderly (the richest demographic in the US).

To answer the man's question, yes, they will use the Medicare and Medicaid drug program to weaken the coverage you now have. Why shouldn't they? If the government is going to give it to you at a reduced cost whether you want it or not, why should they duplicate the cost and the service?

And that includes unions.

Refugee from a Woody Allen Movie?

Nope .... just John Kerry.

For those wondering about the reference in the title hit the extended entry link.

A scene from Woody Allen's "Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask" (1972) where the "sperm" are getting ready to do their "duty".

Anybody But Bush

Jonah Goldberg marvels at the Democratic Party's discipline, which, fueld by a an intense hatred of George W. Bush, has them fawning over a candidate they don't particularly like.

This is the logic of hate. It lets convention delegates who by every measure are far to the left of the mainstream of the Democratic Party, let alone the American public, cheer a candidate who has spent the past few months holding something of a fire sale on Democratic principles. According to a New York Times survey of delegates, 9 out of 10 say they think Iraq was a mistake and 5 out of 6 say the war on terrorism and national security aren't that important; yet Kerry is surrounding himself with soldiers to the point where it wouldn't be shocking if delegates were required to wear camo fatigues. Even Ted Kennedy would be hard-pressed to play a drinking game in which players had to swig every time the words "Vietnam" or "war hero" come up in Democratic speeches...

The real test will be to see how well the discipline holds.

Howard Dean is already throwing things at effigies of Bush, Cheney & Co. and popping the veins in his neck as if he's just about to turn into the Hulk. And Mrs. Heinz Kerry is already decrying "un-American" activities and telling journalists to "shove it" when they question the Democrats' script. The Democrats' smiley masks are doing the job, but they aren't comfortable and they come off quite easily.

The Democrats are always tempted--a temptation that Bill Clinton ruthlessly quashed--to put on another 1984, San Francisco deal that sends the public recoiling in shock and disgust. You may remember that in 1984, Walter Mondale promised us from the convention podium that, if elected, he'd raise our taxes. The delegates cheered and stamped and whistled, ecstatic at Mondale's brave truth-telling.

Based on the fact that Mondale then proceeded to lose 49 out of 50 states in the presidential election, one presumes the rest of the country was less affected by his honesty.

So now Kerry is trying to hold a convention that keeps the appropriate Clintonian--that is to say, dishonest--tone. No one will be allowed to, say, make comparisons of George W. Bush's last name to her own pudenda. No "Bushitler" signs will be in evidence. The whole point of the exercise will be to disguise the most deeply-held politicial opinions of the delegates, in order to present the most unthreatening face possible to the electorate.

It'll be interesting to watch, just to see if he can pull it off.

Welcome to the Machine

It looks like Paul Krugman reads WashingtonMonthly, but does not read QandO. This is unfortunate--though, not entirely surprising--as he repeats the recent "felon list" canard propogated by, inter alia, WashingtonMonthly. Krugman writes...

This year, Florida again hired a private company ... to prepare a felon list. Remembering 2000, journalists sought copies. State officials stonewalled, but a judge eventually ordered the list released.

The Miami Herald quickly discovered that 2,100 citizens who had been granted clemency, restoring their voting rights, were nonetheless on the banned-voter list. Then The Sarasota Herald-Tribune discovered that only 61 of more than 47,000 supposed felons were Hispanic. So the list would have wrongly disenfranchised many legitimate African-American voters, while wrongly enfranchising many Hispanic felons. It escaped nobody's attention that in Florida, Hispanic voters tend to support Republicans.

1. The list would not have "wrongly disenfranchised many legitimate African-American voters". This was a list of "potentials", and counties were supposed to "verify the information" and "contact the voters" prior to taking any action. The list itself--and the State's orders--could not disenfranchise voters. Only a failure to follow those orders could result in improper disenfranchisement. That is a rather important difference.
2. "Hispanic voters tend to support Republicans".....is not quite correct.
   

   Hispanics favored Kerry 45 percent to 34 percent...

   In fact, the only reason the vote is close is the Miami-based Cuban Americans vote, which goes about 80% Republican. Outside of that very narrow locale, the Hispanic vote goes to Kerry by a wide margin, and the felon list in question does not simply leave off the Cuban Hispanics, which could create an electoral advantage for Bush. It excludes anybody who self-idenitifies as a Hispanic.

"But", Krugman might respond, "a recent Herald/Zogby International Hispanic Poll found 'Bush at 57 percent among Hispanics in Florida, with Kerry at 38 percent'!"

Indeed. And if that's the evidence he'd cite, I'd suggest he use better methodology....

"The margin of error for the size of the sample is in the double digits..."

As far as the insecurity of voting machines goes, Paul Krugman makes a good point, and his advice should be heeded. But the Florida felon list is hardly the evidence of malfeasance he'd have you believe.

America, meet John Kerry. John, this is America.

For most Americans, John Kerry is an unknown northeastern politician. This is, of course, the week Kerry begins changing all that. Mark Steyn writes that the real question is whether, after seeing John Kerry, the voters will like him.

Sadly, the stealth candidacy has come to an end. This week the real John F Kerry has to stand up, and, judging from the way those Senate and House candidates in tight races are staying away from the convention, a lot of bigshot Democrats aren't too sure Americans are going to like what they see.

If I were a mad scientist hired by Bush svengali Karl Rove to construct the most unelectable Democratic presidential candidate possible, I'd start with a load of big-government one-size-fits-all dependency-culture domestic policies. Next I'd throw in a consistent two-decade voting-record aversion to American military power. Then make him the kind of fellow whose stump speeches are always butt-numbingly ponderous and go on way too long because someone told him that if you intone a platitude slowly and sonorously enough it sounds like the Kennedy inaugural address.

He'd probably be a senator because, in a business that attracts pompous blowhards, senators are the crème de la crème. A senator from Massachusetts, because that's as near as you can get to running Jacques Chirac while still meeting the citizenship eligibility requirements. He'd have to be an aristocratic Massachusetts senator, because there don't seem to be any other kinds, but he wouldn't be glamorously high-class, like Jack and Camelot, just aloof and condescending and affected. And every time he tries to talk a little guy talk, a little hunting or baseball, it doesn't come out quite right. And he's so nuanced he's running not only as America's most famous war hero but also as America's most famous anti-war protester.

No, scrub that last bit. No one would believe it.

It's the likeability problem, and it seems to me that the more you know this guy, the less you like him.

Another thing that strikes me is the odd nostalgia for the September 10th world. The Democrats seem keen to remind us that, during the '90s, America was prosperous, and at peace. Well, maybe, but I'm sure December 6, 1941 looked pretty good from the perspective of 1943, too.

But, just as on 6 Dec 41, the Imperial Japanese Fleet was steaming towards Hawaii, the late 1990s were a time when a number of problems were steaming towards us, too. Al-Qaida was striking US targets overseas with relative impunity. The stock Market was topping off a bubble of "irrational exuberance" about the dotcoms. The Enron and Worldcom boys were playing fast and loose with there accounting, putting the savings and investments of millions of employees and stockholders at risk. There were lots of thunderclouds on the horizon, while we contented ourselves with wondering whether Gary Condit killed that intern with which he was having an affair.

The Democrats are promising a holiday from history. Now, that may be something extremely seductive, but it's not something they can realistically offer. Moreover, the last time we had it, in the 1990s, the Holiday came to a pretty depressing end.

For instance, it wasn't George W. Bush who damaged the Mideast peace process. It was suicide bombers blowing up women and children in pizzerias and on buses. George W. Bush doesn't control them. Our enemies do.

And that's a key point to remember: No matter how much we might want peace, no matter how much we desire an operational pause, or are fatigued with war, the decision to stop fighting doesn't lie with us. If our enemies want to kill and crush us, then we will be at war with them whether we wish to be or not. Pretending otherwise, as the Democrats seem to be doing in Boston, is the height of folly.

Are you better off today?

John Podhoretz comments today on the risky Democrat ploy of playing the "Are you better off" game in this year's election.

The issues they're talking about really don't have the same impact that those Reagan talked about when running against Jimmy Carter. In fact, if truth be told, it would be a real double-edged sword:

"Is our country more united today?" Al Gore asked. "Or more divided? Has the promise of compassionate conservatism been fulfilled? Or do those words now ring hollow? For that matter, are the economic policies really conservative at all? Did you expect, for example, the largest deficits in history? One after another? And the loss of more than a million jobs?"

"In 1992 and 1996," Hillary Clinton said of her husband, "Americans chose a president who left our country in far better shape than when he took office."

"Our way is better," Bill Clinton said. "It worked better."

Did it? Or was it just the beneficiary of impeccable political timing?

What if Al Gore had won?

Had Al Gore been sworn in as president on Jan. 20, 2001, he would have been greeted by the very same recession that kicked off the Bush presidency. Enron and Global Crossing would have collapsed months later, just as they did in the Bush years. 9/11 would have been just as heavy a blow to the economy.

All the various phenomena that led to the recession and then to the very slow growth in 2002 and the first half of 2003 would have defeated the ability of any president to "cure" them.

Outsourcing would have been a big story under President Gore too. Job losses would have been a big story under President Gore. And the deficit would have ballooned to similar levels under President Gore — because despite Democratic claims to the contrary, the cumulative cost of the Republican tax cuts, which were designed to grow over time, has actually been relatively low.

So in reality, it can be argued that "your way" is what led us to the recession, the loss of over a million jobs, corporate corruption, intelligence failures and lack of imagination ending in 911, not to mention North Korea.

Is it really wise, then, to play this game when much of what went wrong can be traced right back to "your way?"

In fact, based on Al Gore's track record, it could be argued that if confronted with the same economic problems faced by the Bush administration, we'd still be in the recession soup.

I, for one, would argue that the economic condition of the United States would be far worse today under a Gore presidency, for a reason not frequently or commonly discussed. In both 2001 and 2003, President Bush followed the recommendation of his former economic aide Larry Lindsey. He decided to send every American household an advance on the tax refund it was guaranteed in the following year by the passage of the Bush tax cuts.

The first $30 billion went out in August 2001 — just weeks before the 9/11 attacks. That sudden flush of liquidity in the economy was of immeasurable help in keeping the nation from sliding into a depression as a result of the al Qaeda strike. It was unforeseen and unforeseeable, but it proved to be brilliant policy nonetheless.

In 2003, with the nation's economy slowing down again, Bush pushed through another tax-cut package that featured another $30 billion refund. That liquidity spike helped prime the pump for the explosive economic growth in the last two quarters of last year.

Yup, had we had President Al Gore, not a single solitary penny of tax cuts would have gone anywhere. Alan Greenspan has credited the speed of the recovery with those tax cuts, and the booming economy is giving lie to the Democrat claim that their way is better.

So they might want to reconsider the "are you better off" gambit. Because frankly, the answer is "given the alternative, you bet".

Convention Quotes - Night 1

Some snippets from last nights speeches at the Democrat convention which caught my ear. First Jimmy Carter:

In the meantime, the Middle East peace process has come to a screeching halt. For the first time since Israel became a nation, all former presidents, Democratic and Republican, have attempted to secure a comprehensive peace for Israel with hope and justice for the Palestinians.

The achievements of Camp David a quarter century ago and the more recent progress made by President Bill Clinton are now in peril.

Instead, violence has gripped the Holy Land, with the region increasingly swept by anti-American passions. This must change.

Elsewhere, North Korea's nuclear menace, a threat far more real and immediate than any posed by Saddam Hussein, has been allowed to advance unheeded, with potentially ominous consequences for peace and stability in Northeast Asia.

I'm not sure what Carter was smoking before his speech, but "violence has gripped the Holy Land?"

Where? Since Israel's unilateral withdrawl has begun and the wall has been going up, the intifada has all but ended. Violence is down ... way down.

The problem isn't with Israel but with apologists for the Palestinians like Carter. This is a region (read: Palestinians) which couldn't be more anti-American, a place where they danced in the streets on 911. What is Carter talking about?

As for North Korea, how has its "nuclear menace" been allowed to advance "unheeded" by this administration? It was certainly given lip service by the last administration as NoKo outfoxed them with promises while continuing to build toward nuclear weapons. But this administration has confronted the problem left by the last administration and engaged the region (unlike Kerry's plan to unilaterally engage NoKo) in confronting the NoKo nuclear problem. It seems to be on the road to success.

Always fun to hear a failed former president tell others how they should do their job.

Al Gore, on the other hand, was rewriting history as usual.

Let's make sure not only that the Supreme Court does not pick the next president, but also that this president is not the one who picks the next Supreme Court.

I agree Al. If we have to let's do precisely what we did last time and keep the Florida Supreme Court from changing election law on the fly.

We have to be crystal clear about the threat we face from terrorism. It is deadly. It is real. It is imminent.

But in order to protect our people, shouldn't we focus on the real source of this threat: the group that attacked us and is trying to attack us again -- al Qaeda, headed by Osama Bin Laden?

Wouldn't we be safer with a President who didn't insist on confusing al Qaeda with Iraq? Doesn't that divert too much of our attention away from the principal danger?

I delt with this yesterday, but obviously the Democrats are intent on pushing this theme as a "truth" regardless of the fact that going into Iraq was little if any distraction from going after al Qaeda. Apparently Al Gore's Vietnam tour of duty didn't endow him with the wealth of military knowledge John Kerry's did for him.

Clinton was, well, vintage Clinton. Charming, affable and dissembling to the max. I'm sure the party faithful missed the irony in this statement:

On the other hand, the Republicans in Washington believe that American should be run by the right people -- their people -- in a world in which America acts unilaterally when we can and cooperates when we have to.

They believe the role of government is to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of those who embrace their economic, political and social views, leaving ordinary citizens to fend for themselves on important matters like health care and retirement security.

Now, since most Americans aren't that far to the right, our friends have to portray us Democrats as simply unacceptable, lacking in strength and values. In other words, they need a divided America.

But we don't.

But you do. In fact, you just did the dividing Bill. The usual class warfare right there for anyone to see who can take the blinders off for a second and look.

Rich vs. poor, strong vs. weak, isolationist vs. globalist, unilateralist vs. cooperative.

It isn't the Republicans who are preaching about "two America's" on the stump, Bill, it's the Democrats. And it is critical to the Democrat's game plan that the divisions be perceived as real so they can exploit them as they always have in past.

I'd be interested to know whether Clinton thinks Washington should be run by the right people as well .... his people. The answer, of course, is "yes".

A night of red meat for the left (although not quite as vitriolic as in the past and thus more of a hamburger night in that regard instead of a steak) but not much new or of substance, at least for a political junkie. Pretty much what I expected. Pushing the myths, pushing the talking points, pushing the party line ... regardless of the truth. Welcome to the Democrat Convention.

More on Taxation, complete with a shameless plug

Reader John F. observes in the comments to my earlier post:

What you say makes a lot of sense, but the current tax structure still makes it a political playhouse with the deck stacked against the taxpayer. What do you think about the efficacy of either a flat tax or the so-called fair tax, a tax on retail sales, only? Both would seem to simplify the Orwellian tax structure, and would seem to offer a boone to businesses of all stripes.

As it happens, I addressed this in my book, Slackernomics: Basic Economics for People Who Think Economics is Boring:

Under the National Sales Tax (I’ll just call it the NST, because I’m lazy and it’s shorter.), the personal income tax would be totally eliminated. No more Federal Income Tax withheld from your paycheck. No more IRS at all. No more scrambling to the post office on April 15th. The government would no longer have any business at all asking you nosy personal questions like how much money you made, and what you did with it. On the other hand, the price of almost everything in the country would rise by 20%.

Obviously, under the NST, poor people would be hit hard, unless a provision was made to exclude staple items like food, clothing, and shelter from the tax. Poor people spend a much larger percentage of their incomes just acquiring these basics.

Taxes that burden lower income earners more than they burden high wage earners are called regressive taxes. Taxes that place a proportionally higher burden on the richer members of society are called progressive taxes.

Assuming that the NST would exempt staple items and become more progressive (The "Fair Tax" has many of these exemptions to increase its progressivity), it might be a very effective tax for several reasons.

First, under the income tax code, the rich tend to pay less than their nominal tax rate, because they have the ability to shelter income in ways that many poorer people do not. They also tend to buy many more things, because they have the money to do so. The NST, by taxing consumption instead of income, would not allow them to avoid taxes in the same way the income tax does.

Second, there is a small but significant portion of the population that makes its living in, well, shady ways. Their income is never taxed, because they do not report it. The transactions that are not reported to the government, and incomes derived from those transactions, are said to be the underground economy or black market. The current estimates are that the underground economy is generating income that could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars in revenues. Many of these underground transactions are made in cash, though, and are difficult to trace, so it’s hard to tell what the actual size of the black market is. But if we assume that the US has a $10 trillion economy, and 10% of that is hidden payments for cocaine and hookers—or doing plumbing or construction work “under the table”—that’s an extra $1 trillion floating around out there that would be good for $200 to $300 billion in government revenues.

I want to stress here that I certainly have no personal knowledge whatsoever about any black market dealings of any kind.

The people who work in the underground economy do not pay income tax, but they buy goods and services like the rest of us. Under the NST, those goods and services would be taxed, and revenues would be increased.

Additionally, there is a generally accepted economic rule that says if you tax something, you get less of it. The income tax—and the proposed Flat Tax—taxes production. The NST taxes consumption. If your goal is to reduce consumption and increase savings, while at the same time removing the burden on production, then the NST is probably the best way to do this.

Under the NST, people who get raises or who get new, higher paying jobs actually get to take home that extra money, instead of having it eaten away by being put into a higher income tax bracket. This increases the incentive to earn more by producing more. At the same time, higher prices tend to make people consume less, freeing up more money for savings, which, in turn, can be invested.

On the whole, I prefer an NST. Not only for economic reasons, which I find compelling, but also for philosophical ones that I find even more compelling.

The main problem with a personal income tax is that it allows the government too much power over the individual. It requires that I report, under penalty of law, the exact amount of my income from all sources. If I take anything other than the standard exemption, I must give the government an increasingly detailed view of my personal finances.

That, frankly, is none of the government's business.

Equally disturbing is that the income tax allows the government to pick and choose between favored groups or desired social outcomes by alterations of the tax code. Large businesses that are able to spend money on lobbyists can collect all sorts of tax breaks and loopholes through manipulation of the tax code.

Politicians seem completely unable to resist monkeying with the tax code to produce politically desired social or financial outcomes. As a result, the tax code is a compendium of special interest tax breaks, arcane finance rules, and an impentrable mass of regulations. Call the IRS two separate times asking the same question about the same tax problem, and the chances are, you'll get two different answers.

As a result, it is almost impossible to fill out a moderately complicated tax return without violating some arcane tax provision that government can use, if they desire to do so, to bring you to heel. In my view, the personal income tax is a potential tool of tyranny.

I am far more comfortable with the NST. It immediately liberates the citizenry from any personal financial oversight from the government, which automatically makes it more conducive to personal liberty. The need for citizens to obtain accountants, tax attorneys, or the services of H&R Block would be completely eliminated. More importantly, the temptation to call down audits upon unpopular government critics would be ended completely.

Moreover, it completely--or, at the very least, substatially--eliminates the government's ability to use the tax code to produce political or social results desirable to the government.

Needless to say, such a tax system would also substantially reduce the size of the IRS, hence, the size of the federal government as a whole.

So, count me as a big NST supporter.

UPDATE (McQ): There is a NST movement out there which can be found at this link (FairTax.org). If you're interested take a look. From the website:

Simply put, the FairTax replaces the way we're currently taxed - based on our annual income - with a tax on goods and services. The FairTax is a voluntary “consumption" tax: the more you buy, the more you pay in taxes, the less you buy, the less you pay in taxes.

Clinton on Bush

Interesting Brownstein column in the LA Times today where Clinton steps up criticism of Bush:

"The American people can decide who they think is right and wrong, but the Bush administration believed Iraq was far and away the biggest security problem of the country, despite the fact that there was more support for Al Qaeda within Pakistan and now we know more contacts with Iran,"

Two obvious points. Pakistan cooperated and is still cooperating, so the point of Clinton's critique concerning Pakistan has absolutely no merit. Second obvious point, which was clearly pointed out in the 911 report is that Bush did not believe "Iraq was far and away the biggest security problem of the country" as is witnessed by the attack on Afghanistan a year before Iraq. As reported in the 911 report:

Powell said that President Bush did not give Wolfowitz’s argument “much weight.” Though continuing to worry about Iraq in the following week, Powell said, President Bush saw Afghanistan as the priority. [...] Iraq was not even on the table during the September 15 afternoon session, which dealt solely with Afghanistan.

Apparently Clinton and Maureen Dowd have been comparing notes. It'd be nice if they'd consult a credible source.

He's just as exercised about Bush's doctrine of military preemption. "I think it's a very tricky, slippery slope," he said. "I think you have to be under an imminent threat to justify any kind of preemptive attack. First of all, it was never realistic because we are not going to go to war with Iran or North Korea. I think it's hard to even think of another case."

We have to be under imminent threat to justify any kind of preemptive attack? Well tell us, Mr. Clinton, what "imminent threat" did we suffer under as concerns Kosovo? This reeks of the usual Clintonian redefinition ploy.... the matter depending on what the definition of "is" is. Its the ultimate in selective memory and redfining his own "preemptive" tactics in the Balkins as something other than what they were.

"On balance," Clinton said, "Bush domestic policy is to cut taxes no matter what it does to the deficit and to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of people who share his values and economic interests. Abroad, his policy is to act alone whenever we can and cooperate whenever we have to.

This, of course, is simply pure and utter nonsense as concerns tax cuts. As has been shown here at Q and O, every one of Clinton's marginal rates was lowered in the Bush tax cuts, which means, quite simply, that it wasn't a tax cut for the rich, but a tax cut for all tax brackets. The spending, however, is inexcusable as far as I'm concerned and needs to be condemned as well as reigned in .... now.

A better way of stating Clinton's last characterization is to say Bush will act alone if he has too when the security of the US is at stake. That's what makes him a leader, something neither Clinton, or for that matter Kerry, seem to be able to grasp. But to characterize the Bush foreign policy as a preference for going it alone is just nonsense. The coalition of the willing simply puts lie to that assertion.

"Kerry's policy at home," Clinton continued, "is to say that we ought to have a government that has more fiscal responsibility and takes more initiative in education and healthcare, changes the energy and environment policy of the country to generate jobs and improve the environment and combat global warming. Abroad, he thinks we should cooperate whenever we can and act alone whenever we need to."

Well that's the Democrat line anyway. Nothing in all of the pandering Kerry has done during his campaign speaks to "more fiscal responsibility", especially when he speaks about healthcare or his other programs.

And its interesting that the guy who was charged by Congress in 1990 to come up with a strategic plan to address the possibilty of global warming never did so in the 8 years his administration was in Washington DC, while the Bush administration put the first ever plan together to do so, as well as spending more on the study of global warming that Japan and Europe combined. Yet Clinton jabs Bush concerning environmental policy? Pathetic.

But he believes Bush has taken significantly wrong turns in the war on terrorism, partly by downplaying the U.S. role in brokering an Israeli-Palestinian peace, mostly by shifting resources and energy from Al Qaeda to the invasion of Iraq, especially given the global divisions over the war.

"We have an overstressed military, and we have committed far more resources to Iraq than to Al Qaeda," Clinton said pointedly. "I don't think every American president would have made that decision."

A couple of points here. Yes we have an overstressed military at this point, but its not because its in Iraq trying to rebuild it vs. chasing al Qaeda as Clinton would like to pretend (although it is due partly to the massive cuts in manpower for which Clinton is responsible).

Again Clinton's lack of understanding of the miltary shows itself. The war against al Qaeda is not going to be fought by conventional military forces, and those are the forces in Iraq. Its going to be fought by unconventional forces, law enforcment and intelligence agents (conventional forces in Afghanistan now are there primarily in a stability role). And those are who are in Afghanistan hunting al Qaeda. To continue to make the argument that Iraq detracted from going after al Qaeda is simply disingenuous.

Believe it or not the military can allocate assets, prioritize and multi-task. The fact that we're in Iraq, for instance, doesn't stop the missions in 147 other countries around the world where we have military missions in right now.

Would Clinton have invaded? As president, he portrayed former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein as a threat in vivid language conservatives often quote today. And apart from asking whether Bush was moving too fast, he didn't publicly challenge his successor's decision at the time. Now, without answering definitively, Clinton strongly implies he would not have launched the war.

"I would have let [U.N. inspectors] finish their work, and then I would have decided," he said. "But the factors in my thinking would have been how well we were doing in Afghanistan stabilizing the entire country, and what our reasonable prospects of getting [Al Qaeda leader Osama] bin Laden were. I still think he was the biggest threat to the country."

I'd love to know how he'd have "let" the inspectors finish their work when he'd have had absolutely no control over them being able to do so. While his rhetoric now suggests he would have not gone in, his rhetoric and that of others second-guessing Democrats sure was singing a different tune in 1998.

One other thing to remember .... Clinton is now singing this tune with perfect 20/20 hindsight and the benefit of knowing what he nor Bush knew before the invasion of Iraq. And that makes it just more in a seeming gale of political hot air rather than a valid critique of the actions taken by the Bush administration.

But then, keeping perspective, it is the election season.

The Argument Against Tax Cuts

Bruce Bartlett, a supply-side prince who you'd think would usually be the last guy to argue against tax cuts, is now doing so in the Washington Times.

The problem is the original objective of tax cutting has been completely forgotten. Republicans now promote tax cuts simply for their own sake, with no concern for their structure, economic impact or fiscal consequences. As a result, I think they are creating a grave mess that eventually will have terrible repercussions.

In brief, the case for tax cutting made by Mr. Kemp and others was to increase incentives to work, save and invest. In this regard, the marginal tax rate — the tax on each additional dollar earned — was paramount. We rejected tax cuts that would have been easier to pass because they simply reduced revenues without improving incentives. We even worked to get rid of tax cuts already in law, such as the Investment Tax Credit, because they did not affect marginal incentives and did not belong in a neutral tax system that neither encouraged nor discouraged economic behavior — our ultimate goal.

Although not part of Mr. Kemp's agenda, he would not have succeeded if other Republicans didn't also view tax cuts as a way to constrain the size of government — taking away its allowance, as Ronald Reagan used to put it. That is why pillars of the Republican establishment like Alan Greenspan and Herb Stein supported the Reagan tax cut in 1981.

In the 1980s, both sides of the tax cut coin worked together. Marginal tax rates were reduced for all taxpayers and the top rate was slashed from 70 percent to 28 percent. Domestic spending was cut and the growth of total spending, which had expanded relentlessly for decades, slowed and finally began to fall. This would not have happened without tax cuts, which starved the government beast of nourishment.

The problem now is that both original rationales for tax cutting have been completely forgotten by virtually all Republicans. They now cut taxes willy-nilly without any concern for economic impact. The vast bulk of tax cuts since 2001, in revenue terms, have gone for tax rebates, kiddy credits and other measures having no impact on marginal incentives. True, rates have also been cut, but they are being phased in slowly, thus pushing off their economic benefits into the future.

Moreover, the old starve-the-beast theory is completely dead. Not only do Republicans make no effort to even restrain, let alone cut, spending, they have actually gone in the opposite direction and now raise spending for just about anything they think will buy them a vote. They have morphed into a caricature of 1960s Democrats, but with even less concern for deficits than Lyndon Johnson had.

Bartlett's arguments are enormously important. To understand why, we need to look at one of the central theses of supply-side economics, the Laffer Curve:

The Laffer Curve

What San Diego economist Art Laffer came up with is the idea--which the curve above illustrates--that there are always two tax rates that will provide the same amount of revenue to the government. If tax rates are too high, economic activity and economic growth are discouraged, which leads to lower tax revenues. If tax rates are too low, economic growth is encouraged, but the government's tax revenues are still decreased because they are not extracting revenues through taxation. Hence if tax rates are at point A or point B, they will produce the same amount of revenue, even though the rates may be quite different. So, there is, theoretically, an equilibrium point at which tax revenues are maximized, but economic growth is not hindered by excessive taxation. So, the goal of supply-side tax cuts was to fix tax rates as close as possible to this equilibrium point.

Now, this isn't as easy to do as it sounds. Notice that the curve doesn't show any actual hard and fast numbers, other than a 0% and 100% tax rate. The equilibrium point really falls at that rate at which the population consents to be taxed. During times of war, the population might consent to very high levels of taxation without any slowing of economic growth, because they perceive it to be a necessary adjunct to a great struggle for national survival. In that case, the equilibrium point might be way over on the right side of the graph. In peacetime, of course, the population may not wish to have high levels of taxation. Rates that were perfectly acceptable in wartime might in peacetime cause people to refrain from economic activity, because the rewards for doing so are too highly taxed. The equilibrium point has shifted to the left side of the graph, and the high tax rates are now hindering economic growth.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan made an excellent argument for tax cuts, for a number of reasons. First, there were a multitude of tax brackets that raised tax rates all the way out to 70% of income. Second, none of the tax brackets were indexed to inflation. This became especially troubling as inflation ran rampant in the 1970s. Wage increases that were barely able to keep up with the rising cost of living would drive workers into ever-higher tax brackets, thus reducing their real income.

At the same time, economic growth was slowing throughout the 70's, leading to an economic condition called "stagflation": stagnant economic growth and high inflation. This was seen as paradoxical, because one of the usual causes for inflation (outside of the government going crazy with the printing presses at the US Mint) was too rapid economic growth, as wages and prices rose because production was insufficient to keep up with demand. Low rates of economic growth were supposed to lead to disinflation, as demand for goods and services dropped. Instead the 1970s saw the worst of both worlds with the stagflation phenomenon.

So, the supply-side argument at the time was quite straightforward. Supply-siders argued compellingly that inflation was caused by an excessively loose monetary policy, and that stagnant growth was caused by high levels of taxation.

Appointing Paul Volcker to chair the Fed solved the first problem. He simply turned off the money spigot at the Fed. The process made 1981-1982 an unpleasant couple of years, as inflation was wrung from the economy by increasing the Fed Funds rate to 19% (it's at 1.25% now), but the rate of inflation declined from 12% in 1980 to 4% in 1983, and its trended down to around 3% or less since.

Electing Ronald Reagan solved the second. Reagan's tax plan, which was implemented in 1981, reduced the number of tax brackets to three, indexed the brackets to inflation, and cut the top rate from 70% to 28%. So, as soon as the Fed let up on the monetary brakes, the economy went off on a tear from 1983 to 1990--the longest peacetime economic expansion in US history, up to that time. And, following a mild recession in 1990, the economy again began to expand throughout the 1990s, until 2001.

But, as Bartlett points out today, the Republicans seemed to have learned the wrong lessons from Ronald Reagan's tax cuts. The whole point of Reagan's tax cuts were to produce an economically neutral tax structure, not tax-cutting for the sake of tax cutting. Now, the Republicans seem to have concluded that tax cuts, in and of themselves, are a good thing. That is by no means, true, however. Tax cuts may be politically popular, but they may also be economically unwise. Political popularity, of course, is always a compelling argument to politicians, though, so Republicans have begun to make "tax cuts" of one kind or another an annual event.

The 2001 tax cuts were a good idea. Eliminating taxation on dividends is a good, pro-investment, and hence, pro-growth tax policy. Cutting capital gains taxes is even better. Lowering income tax rates was a good idea, too, since based on the historic record, a 36% upper bracket was a skoche too high.

Since then, though, the race towards tax breaks has not been caused by a race toward economic neutrality, but for tax cuts as means of buttressing Republican political popularity. We've done rebates, and kiddie tax credits (It's for the children!), and a whole host of things that don't provide any long-term economic incentives to savings, investment, or growth. That's just simple revenue cutting.

Now, I'm certainly not against cutting revenue. In fact, I'm all for it if it would force the government to tighten it's belt, too. But that isn't what's happening. The growth in government spending seems to have been completely unrestrained by the reductions in revenue. And spending growth has been increasing not by a little bit, but by a substantial margin. So, where is the money going to come from to pay for all that extra spending?

Republicans would like to tell us that--as Reagan proved--cutting taxes increases revenue, so it'll all come out in the wash. The trouble with that argument, however, is that it assumes that we are still way over on the right side of the equilibrium point as far as taxes are concerned. Reagan cut taxes at a time when tax rates were indisputably on the right side of the Laffer Curve. Arguing that we're still there today, when, two decades later, we are almost precisely where taxes were in 1982, strikes me as a pretty foolish argument. I think we are at best spot on the equilibrium point, and more likely a bit to the left of it. And I wouldn't argue that was a bad thing, or that additional tax cuts wouldn't be nice if we reduced spending at the same time.

But cutting revenues and increasing spending, as we're doing now, is a recipe for fiscal disaster. There are still a lot of things the government has to do. We need a State Department to talk to foreigners. If that fails, we need a Defense Department to kill them. In a heavily urbanized society, we need a national transportation infrastructure, to ensure that we have enough Brussels sprouts for everybody in town.

But that--and whatever else the government does--all costs money, which means that someone has to pay for it. At the moment, we seem to be deciding that that someone will be our kids and grandkids. And I don't think they're going to be too happy about it. We've already saddled them with trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities in Social Security alone that will require our kids' FICA withholding alone to be somewhere around 33% of their salaries. We could go back to the 1960s rates of 70%, but, since that would result in a tax rate of 103%, paying one's tax bill would seem to be problematic. Unless, of course, everyone stopped working altogether, in which case they'd owe no taxes at all. But, take a look at the Laffer and see how much revenue a 100% tax rate brings in.

And, it's not as if the government isn't chock full of stuff that we can live without. What, for example, does the Rural Utilities Service do? I lived for two years in darkest North Dakota, happily catching the HBO feed from the G3 communications satellite. I think I can safety say that when you can watch satellite TV in Kief, ND, the RUS's job is pretty much done.

But, if you want government services, and apparently we do, then they have to be paid for, which makes tax cutting for tax cutting's sake is a prescription for fiscal disaster. I mean, I suppose it would make everybody happy to cut taxes to 0%, while delivering the same government services. But, that's the fiscal policy of Never-Neverland, not a rational commercial republic.

In the real world, trying to do what we're doing now means that, in the not-too-distant future, we will be looking at massive tax increases, to pay off the party we're having today. Even Bruce Bartlett thinks so.

UPDATE: This question has been asked by Gary and the Samoyeds (from the sig, it's unclear whther Gary is asking, or whether one of the dogs has a keen interest in fiscal policy):

Well, what about further rate cuts? Not credits or exemptions. Would trimming the top rate to 31% (where it was when Clinton took office) increase or decrease revenue?

Or, for that matter, what about corporate rates? Have they been raised or cut since the 80s?

First, personal tax rates have already been reduced to 31%, as part of the 2001 tax cuts, and inheritance taxes have also been cut. Corporate income tax rates have remained fairly steady, but taxes on dividends and capital gains have been cut.

The question of whether a cut in marginal tax rates from 36% to 31% will cause revenue to rise or fall is essentially unknowable. Bill Clinton's 1993 tax increase took the top rate from 31% to 36%. Despite all the bitching and moaning from supply-siders at the time that raising taxes would lead to irreparable budgetary harm as revenues collapsed, the exact opposite happened. Between 1993 and 2000, Federal receipts rose from $1.23 trillion to $1.88 trillion¹, an increase of 52.3%.

In the 1990s, the information revolution and the huge increases in productivity it engendered more than compensated for any effect the Clinton tax policies might have had. Indeed, while it is true that revenues for the Federal Government grew by 28.4% from 1983-1988, following the recessions of the early 80s, that performance is worse than any six-year period of the Clinton administration. Indeed, in the six years after the Clinton tax increases, revenue grew by 36%. Supply-Siders are fond of blaming the tax increases of President George H.W. Bush for the 1991 recession, but have more difficulty explaining why the Clinton tax increases didn't have the same effect.

So, when tax rates are already at fairly low levels, the result of playing around with a few percentage points on marginal rates is unclear.

What made the Kennedy tax cuts so effective in the 1960s when the top rate was cut from 90% to 70%, or the Reagan cuts in 1981 so effective was that they implemented large, structural changes in both the rates and brackets of taxation. In both cases, the changes were designed to provide incentives to savings, investment, and economic growth.

That situation no longer obtains. Tax cuts do not provide revenue growth forever. If that was true, the Federal government could cut tax rates to 0% and would be rolling in dough.

Still, at least that kind of tax cut would provide an economic incentive towards economic growth. The trouble is that the types of tax cuts the Republicans have been pressing for since 1991 neither increase revenue nor provide any incentives for growth. They merely reduce revenues. That isn't a prescription for success.
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¹ All figures are calculated using constant dollars to account for inflation.

Weekly QandO Roundup (bumped)

Readers: I'll be doing this Weekly QandO Roundup on a fairly regular (weekend) basis, but I thought I should bump it up for this Monday, so weekday readers can get an idea of what we've written this past week. Click the "excerpt" buttons to read a brief excerpt of each post.

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We post a lot here at QandO, and I sometimes worry that the barrage may push some valuable posts down and out of sight. With that in mind, I'd like to do a bit of a roundup post of interesting posts from the week. If you see anything of interest, click it and read.

* "The perspective of history and Iraq" (McQ) - A little "then and now" perspective.

It would seem self-evident to anyone that has taken the time to study it that the conduct of war is imprecise at best and sometimes just pure chaos. One has to deal with imperfect information, fluid events, blunders and failures by your own side as well as the courage and ability of the enemy. This makes any plan simply a starting point, because, as has been immortalized in Murphy's Law, a plan usually doesn't survive first contact. Adaptation is where war's are won.

* "The discipline of the free market" (Jon Henke) - a look at the inherent human weaknesses in a free market.

This is a pretty fundamental assumption of many libertarians and proponents of the free-market. It follows from the a priori assumption that, in a free market where all transactions are voluntary, no actor will engage in a transaction that is not to his benefit. Therefore, every exchange will increase the overall wealth and well-being of a society.

Now, that's a reasonable assumption, except for two things:
1: imperfect information.
2: externalities.

* "Sudan: The UN Leaps Into Inaction" (Dale Franks) - While people die, the UN is as useful as ever.

The peculiar fantasy of the UN is that each member state is equally legitimate. The "ambassadors" sent to the UN by murderous thugocracies judiciously shake their heads--more in sorrow than anger, of course--and counsel their fellow ambassadors not to be too hasty. Because these situations are always so "complex", and the "cycle of violence" is so easily started. The complexities must be "studied" before any "hasty action" is taken.

* "Krugmania" (Jon Henke) - Krugman demagogues, and Democratic bloggers cheer what they previously professed to despise.

As it turns out, they never really had a problem with the "Bin Laden would vote for (blank)" slur at all. They just hated when it was applied to their candidate.

It's the principle of the thing, you see.

* "Webmastering is hard...." (Dale Franks) - Funny, how the Joe Wilson links all died at JohnKerry.com.

Now, that's odd. If you go to the John Kerry web site and do a search for "Joe Wilson", or "Joseph Wilson", or "Ambassador Wilson", it doesn't return any documents at all that actually mention Joe Wilson. Huh. Nothing mentioning Joe WIlson's web site if you do a search for "Restore Honesty" or "restorehonesty.com", either.

Man, is that just the wierdest coincidence, or what?

* "There she goes (to Washington) again..." (Jon Henke) - Cynthia McKinney is back in Washington, and just as weird as ever.

I kid you not. Her own words....

Cynthia McKinney is a strong advocate, mentor and supporter of the Hip-Hop community. Her unique popularity among the members of the Hip-Hop generation and young people across the United States of America has made her a trusted voice on behalf of producers, retailers and consumers of Hip-Hop entertainment.

Should be an interesting couple years.

* "Its a right-wing smear" (McQ) - Joe Wilson defends himself, lies. Yes, again.

I certainly wouldn't go as far as call the man a traitor, but a liar ... possible. More likely though is the fact that Joe Wilson was a poor investigator with a big-mouth who attempted to leverage a mole-hill into a partisan political mountain ... and failed.

* "Rationing Health Care" (McQ) - With scarcity come rationing. Even in health care.

Health care as a service is finite. There are only so many doctors, nurses and hours in the day. Health care as a product , however, has an infinite demand which makes it a product which will be rationed. And that means that in any health care system there has to be a system of rationing. The method of rationing is primarily where the fight is.

* "Internationalization" (Jon Henke) - John Kerry's ace-in-the-hole (international support) is looking pretty impotent.

Even when they vote to help, the rest of the world can't step up to the plate.

Presumably, John Kerry has a Secret Plan to, I don't know, convince the insurgents to stop all that insurging, and make the war in Iraq popular again. Unless he gives some details on that plan, though, it's a bit hard to take him at his word about the utility of this whole "internationalization" thing.

* "Partisanship" (Jon Henke) - We're becoming polarized, which is good for the Parties, but bad for facts. It's probably inevitable, though.

But, perhaps this is the unavoidable paradigm. So long as human nature remains what it is, intellectually honest pundits will never be as effective as flamethrowers. Arguments will occur in absolutes, rather than the margins.

Ezra's post is worth reading, and thinking about. I fear, though, that no amount of thought will change the fact that--if you have any intention of winning--the coalition is more important than the principle.

* "Fix The Military, But Do It Right" (McQ) - The "Peace dividend" of the 90s is being paid for today. McQ offers some solutions going forward.

At the height of Vietnam, 1968, we had 550,000 troops there. True we also had an active force of 3,550,000. But the percentage committed to Vietnam was 15% of the total force.

Right. So fast forward to Iraq. We have 130,000 to 160,000 there out of a total force that is significantly smaller (1,423,348 as of Dec, 2003). But when you look at the percentage of the force committed, its only 9 - 11%.

The question then becomes "why was 15% sustainable in 1968 and 10% isn't in 2004?"

* "Supply, Demand, and Prices: It's not just a good idea; it's the law." (Dale Franks) - Congress trying to shove through a drug law that is bad from both a Constitutional and economic standpoint. Dale explains.

What Congress is trying to do is to ensure that cheaper Canadian drugs will be available for re-importation to the United States. After all, many senior citizens buy drugs from Canada, because of the price. So, in it's "wisdom" the Senate is attempting to repeal the law of supply and demand by requiring that drug companies produce and sell prescription drugs to foreign exporters at the same prices they sell them to foreign governments and consumers.

* "9/11 Commission Report: Iraq" (Jon Henke) - A comprehensive look at the Iraq references in the 9/11 Report.

While Iraq is not central to the 9/11 Commission Report, I thought it could be interesting to see what they have to say about it.

Holy crap.

While certainly not conclusive evidence of extensive collaboration, the 9/11 report seems to give a great deal of weight to the charges that there were "ties" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. It also rains on the parades of one Mr. Clarke, who had claimed Iraq was a diversion, that there was "absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda, ever". In fact, it is quite devastating on that point, using Clarke's own words.

* "Collision Course with Iran" (Dale Franks) - Iran is a tougher military nut to crack than was Iraq. But it's different, too, and we have different options.

Granted, Iran is a problem, and there's certainly much to be done about getting rid of the mullahs. But it's the height of hypocrisy for Dowd and her ilk to even bring it up in this fashion. The fact is, As soon as Bush made the "Axis of Evil" statement, Dowd's crowd could hardly contain themselves from frothing with anger over the very concept of an "Axis of Evil". Now, she's arguing for an invasion of Iran?

You've got to be freakin' kidding me. The Left wanted nothing whatsoever to do with an invasion of Iran or Iraq, so coming back and hitting the president with Iran, two years after the fact, is just laughable. If Bush had even mentioned he was considering such a move, the Left would've collapsed in an apoplectic fit. Which, come to think of it, is actually an argument in favor of such a policy. But I digress.

* "Oh, that liberal media" (Jon Henke) - Chris Matthews sets up a blog, and the blogroll is (was, initially) a surprisingly transparent ideological snapshot.

Other than Instapundit, do you see a single right-of-center blog on that list? Perhaps TheNationalDebate? Other than that, it's a showcase of the left, the far left, the far-far left, and the communist left.

I mean, what the hell? They're not even trying anymore.

* "Faster, faster, more, more! Stop!" (Jon Henke) - Josh Marshall complains that the administration won't release documents. Until they do. Then, he complains about that, too.

Shorter Marshall: "Damn you, President Bush, for taking my advice!"

It's sad to see somebody whore himself out like this for a party.

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It's like our own little Carnival of QandO. Read around to see what you've missed from the past week.

Rights v. rights

Greg Swann takes proper aim at the NRA and this bit of nonsense from them:

Self-defense took a big blow this week when the Utah Supreme Court upheld the right of America Online (AOL), America`s largest on-line service provider, to fire three employees whose firearms were stored in the trunks of their cars in the parking lot of an AOL call center in Ogden, Utah. In a decision that diminishes rights guaranteed under both the Utah and the U.S. Constitution, the court acknowledged the individual right to keep and bear arms, but said the right of a business to regulate its own property is more important!

Swann points out:

It's the same damn issue as the Aladdin, the right of the owners of a property to control what happens on that property. In a sane society, you could yell anything you wanted to in your own damn theater. You could store anything you wanted to in your own damn garage. But if you agree voluntarily to conditions of employment on another man's property, then run to the legislature to coerce that man and break your agreement--then you are the bad guy from whom people should seek to defend themselves.

Its cases like this where the NRA get themselves into trouble. As Swann says, if the rules are in place and you accept those rules, then you voluntarily give up that "right" based on your consent to the rules (in this case stating no firearm is allowed on AOL property). Not at all that different than Ronstadt and the Aladdin.

If we agree that the Aladdin owner, by his right of ownership, has the final say-so as to what is and isn't acceptable on his stage, then the same principle applies to the AOL parking lot, especially since the rules of employment, agreed to by these AOL employees, expressly forbid what they were caught doing.

H/T Billy Beck

Bigotry and hypocrisy

The New Hampsire Union Leader comes to the stunning conclusion that Linda Ronstadt is a bigot.

Wow, wonder what tipped them off?

“This is an election year, and I think we’re in desperate trouble and it’s time for people to speak up and not pipe down. It’s a real conflict for me when I go to a concert and find out somebody in the audience is a Republican or fundamental Christian. It can cloud my enjoyment. I’d rather not know.”

Imagine the storm from the left if, say, Dennis Miller had said "Its a real conflict for me when I go to a concert and find out somebody in the audience is a Democrat or a Jew."

We certainly wouldn't be hearing much about First Amendment rights from the left, would we?

Internal Consistency

Mark Steyn is wondering how the debate over the War on Terror has descended into nitpicking about who did what three or four years ago, rather than about what to do in the next four years.

Case in point: former GA Senator Max Cleland, who, last week, declared that President Bush invaded Iraq because "he basically concluded his daddy was a failed president" and he "wanted to be Mr. Macho Man" so he "flat-out lied." This would, by the way, be the same Max Cleland who voted in favor of the Iraq War, and who ran campaign adds in 2002 that declared, "Max Cleland is a respected leader on national security who supports the president on Iraq."

We warmongers didn't start the nitpicking, but somehow the entire landscape of U.S. politics has tilted so that a nation supposedly at war is spending most of its time looking through the rear window sniping about what was said and done in 2002, 2001, 2000, like the falling calendar leaves in a Hollywood flashback. The Democrats will always win on this playing field because, like some third-rate soap opera, their characters are not required to have any internal consistency.

Take, for example, Max Cleland, Vietnam veteran and former Georgia senator. Last week, speaking in his role as Kerry campaign mascot, he said Bush went to war with Iraq because "he basically concluded his daddy was a failed president" and he "wanted to be Mr. Macho Man" so he "flat-out lied."

Blistering stuff, huh? Would this be the same Max Cleland who voted to authorize war with Iraq in the U.S. Senate? Perhaps, as he's so insightful about the president's psychology, he could enlighten us as to his own reasons for wanting war with Iraq? Any daddy hang-ups there, Mr. Macho? This would be unworthy language for any senator to use about the commander-in-chief in time of war but it's especially ludicrous from a senator who ran campaign commercials in the 2002 election boasting that "Max Cleland is a respected leader on national security who supports the president on Iraq.'' What a pitiful clapped-out hack. At least Michael Moore is a consistent Bush-hater.

But, somehow, there is no indictable past when it comes to Democrats. Kerry voted for the war, too? No, no, you misunderstand, Kerry voted to authorize the war as a bargaining chip, to show how serious we were, not to actually, you know, go to war. There was a whole nuance thing there that you're, like, totally missing. Kerry has voted consistently to defund the military to one extent or another for his entire career? What a scurrilous attack on the patriotism of a man who volunteered to serve in Vietnam, and who came home with three purple hearts!

Even more importantly, the Democrats are pretty much immune to the type of hypocrisy charges that are routinely flung at Republicans. In a world where Bill Clinton can lie under oath about getting some pork-snorkeling from a low-ranking intern in the oval office during the business day, and still get to serve out his term, leaving with a final honor guard and troop review after the inauguration of a new president, the careers of Newt Gingrich and Craig Livingston self-destruct instantly because they were getting a little on the side, and we didn't hear any of that "it's only sex" business in their defense from Democrats. Perhaps that explains why, in the "killing young party girl campaign workers" competition, Ted Kennedy leads George W. Bush by 1-0, yet Teddy still gets to be the tireless champion of women's rights, while W ends up as the patriarchy poster boy.

When your party espouses no transcendant moral principles, I guess, there's never anything to be hypocritical about.

The thing is, though, that all this stuff from the past--as interesting as it is, and as important as it may be to learn from it, in order to keep from making the same mistakes in the future--is secondary. Because, really, it doesn't matter if John Kerry got his three purple hearts from nicking himself while shaving because a nearby mortar burst made him flinch. It doesn't matter if George W. Bush missed a few months of weekend guard duty because they would cut too deeply into his drinking and driving practice.

What matters right now--and it's the only thing that truly matters--is who's trying to kill us, how we can stop them, and how we can kill them. And the Democrats simply can't fight on that ground.

Because their answers are the same old September 10th answers that led us straight to 911 in the first place. Make the French happy. Make the UN happy. Try to ensure we never use the military in any way that might conceivably cause us to suffer any casualties. Defer and delay action. Treat terrorism as criminal problem, and be sure you can get an indictment before apprehending anyone, because having to let them go later would be embarrassing.

You can stick that in a nice dress and teach it to dance, but it's still the same old whore of a policy the Democrats have been bringing to the national security party ever since George McGovern. They know it, we know it, and the American people know it, as Bob Dole would say.

No wonder they seem more concerned about picking apart the Bush Administration's distant past, rather than telling us where they expect to take us into the future.

BuzzFlash gets it wrong

In commenting upon Margaret Cho being "uninvited" from performing at the premier Gay, Lesbian and Transgender event being thrown at the time of the Democratic Convention on Monday night its apparent Buzzflash doesn't understand the difference at work here:

Apparently, some Democrats got skittish because the Republicans made their usual double standard whines about a raunchy Whoopi Goldberg riff at a New York Kerry fundraiser. As we noted just on Saturday, the media and the Republicans have an inexplicable hypocrisy when it comes to comic values. Dennis Miller can imply that Kerry and Edwards are gay (not that it would matter, right), but let a Democrat go down and dirty on Bush and we have a moral values crisis! Hey, Dennis, was that Wayne Newton we saw you pawing?

Gee maybe I just missed it, but I don't recall George Bush wandering on to Dennis Miller's show and saying that he "conveyed to you the heart and soul of our country", ala John Kerry at WhoopiFest.

Do you?

Kerry's pitch

The Christian Science Monitor has an editorial today which I believe distills the upcoming race nicely:

The main purpose of this week's Democratic convention is to sell John Kerry as a commander in chief. His Thursday night speech, especially, will be the sales pitch of his career.

He's in a dead heat with George Bush, and while polls show him beating Mr. Bush on leading issues of the economy and healthcare, he doesn't seem able to pull past the incumbent "war president" on combating terrorism. Neither can he best Bush in the category of "strong and decisive leader," qualities desirable of a president in wartime.

Kerry must define himself as a war-time leader that is strong on defense. That's an uphill slog given his anti-war rhetoric during the Vietnam era and his rather liberal record as concerns defense matters during his Senate career.

Additonally he's rarely, if ever, shown leadership during that Senate career. No major committee chairmanships and an attendence record which would get him sent to the principle's office were he in school.

This is why you hear so much about his 120 days in Vietnam. It is all he has to point to in terms of "leadership" and "command". Even that has a multitude of detractors as well as questions concerning the Purple Hearts he received.

Mr. Kerry and the Democrats are well aware of their vulnerability. Terrorism and Iraq compete with the economy as the country's No. 1 concerns. They plan to use this week's convention to showcase the decorated Vietnam War veteran not only as a courageous war hero who understands combat from the perspective of the troops but as a strong leader capable of running a war. Security plays an unusually large role in this year's Democratic platform, with the party pledging to increase the military by 40,000 troops, and to stay the course in Iraq to prevent a failed state and terrorist nest.

By November, it is my prediction, the economy will no longer play well for Kerry (its not playing that well now), which leaves him with the "War Time President" issue and not much else. The Democrat platform really doesn't do a good job of differentiating Democrats from Republicans this time around.

The issue which remains at the forefront for all is 911 and Iraq. The War on Terror defines this election, and the only way John Kerry can win it when it comes down to the moment of truth in the voting booth, is to have convinced enough of the voters that he's a better leader and will make a better commander-in-chief than George Bush.

The CSM believe the following is the difference Kerry must make which will work toward establishing a better model of leadership and command:

Kerry claims he would work more closely with US allies than Bush has. In the lead-up to the Iraq war, Bush alienated several key allies, such as France and Germany. With the recent transfer of limited authority to Iraqis and the drive toward Iraqi elections, those tensions have slackened. Bush has also been forced to seek more allied help. Yet his record of ignoring allies in antiterrorism policies still hurts him, while Kerry would offer a fresh start.

Frankly I see a little selective memory here on the part of the CSM. Bush didn't so much alienate key allies as run into a bloc with significant interests in the contiuned existence of Iraq under Saddam. And as we've outlined here on Q and O, there are numerous reasons those supposed "key" allies wouldn't go along. Few of those reasons had to do with the US's interest in regime change in Iraq for security reasons. That, however, was the US's reason for prosecuting war against Iraq. What Bush refused to do was allow the perceived threat against the US and action to remedy that situation to be held hostage by our "key" allies. Whether you agree that his actions against Iraq were right or wrong, the point in question is critical to the role of a US commander-in-chief.

So the question one must ask, if this is the principle difference between Bush and Kerry on this issue, is will a Kerry presidency suddenly find those "key" allies coming to our side and our way of thinking? Kerry seems to think so.

I'd have to give the answer as a resounding "no" for reasons outlined and referenced above.

The CSM then asks a key question of its own which is a natural follow-on to the question I've asked:

A key question for the future, though, is whether Kerry would hesitate to take action if many allies objected to a proposed US course, such as bombing Iran's nuclear facilities. Bush waited months for the UN to approve war on Iraq, but then lined up only a few allies, and went in without the UN flag. How long would Kerry have waited? And how much will he tailor US interests to the interests of allies in future antiterrorist plans?

If I'm not mistaken Israel has already said they would bomb such a facility out of existence if built, but the question the example raises is crucial. Will Kerry hesitate to act in the best interest of the US if he's unable to garner the support of the UN or "key" allies?

I think all indications point to a yes to that answer. Again, statements he's made in the past and during the campaign indicate a belief on his part that we shouldn't act without that sanction. In my opinion that is a truly dangerous policy in light of the realities of the War on Terror. Our commander-in-chief must reserve the right to defend the US through unilateral action if necessary.

So Kerry has a tough sales job ahead of him. Regardless of his 30+ year old 120 day combat tour his record after that has been anything but awe inspiring in terms of leadership in general and leadership specifically in defense or security matters.

Kerry casts his approach to security as more "thoughtful" and "effective" than the president's. But that perhaps reinforces voter perceptions that he's not strong and decisive enough. His checkered Senate voting record doesn't help: "no" on the Gulf War during Bush I, "yes" on the Iraq War during Bush II, and "no" to $87 billion in military spending to support the war in Iraq.

He has explanations for these variations, but apparently they aren't getting through. As millions watch, he'll get another crack at that.

In fact his approach to security revolves more around consensus with "key" allies than facing the fact that his sole job as President and Commander-in-chief is to protect America regardless of the opinion or participation of "key" allies. It is my opinion that most Americans believe that to be very important point in terms of the policies of a commander-in-chief. It is this difference with Bush that Kerry has to overcome. He's yet to be able to plausibly make an argument which does so, and as The CSM points out, he'll get his big chance this week.

It'll be interesting to see how he does.

Opportunitarianism

I tend to give little attention to meta-criticism of the politics of one party from partisans of the opposing party. Both Republicans and Democrats tend to paint each other in less than objective terms, and from a very different set of assumptions. It may be good red meat for the partisans, but it is rarely useful analysis.

Having said that, I find this commentary from Jesse Taylor very insightful...

I have to admit, I've always been a bit confused by the Bush Administration's attitude towards government? It's good when it does some things that interfere in people's lives, bad when it does others. But that badness and goodness doesn't really seem to stem from any ideological principle. They're not economic libertarians. They're certainly not social libertarians. They're more...opportunarians, to coin an awkward phrase that will almost certainly never be used again.

Thus, what Jesse complains about....a party focused on utilitarian political goals, rather than principle. It's uncomfortable to both conservatives/libertarians--who prefer a bit of principle in their politics--and to liberals, who dislike a moving target.

It remains to be seen whether the neoconservatives can gather enough of a coalition to make this opportunitarianism a permanent aspect of US politics. The alternative is a decisive fracture in the Republican Party....a break between the social conservatives, economic conservatives, libertarians, and moderates.

Maureen Dowd - literate irrelevance

There is very little upon which both the right and left side of the blogosphere agree, but there is one: Maureen Dowd is an astounding hack, and the only explanation for her presence on the NYTimes op-ed page involves some very compromising pictures of Arthur Sulzberger Jr and a less-than-reputable (probably) vertebrate.

Dowd's dedication to accuracy is as legendary as that of Michael Moore, and her pursuit of style over substance makes her columns as politically important as a fashion show. A bad one.

Her latest column is prima facie evidence. Beginning with a litany of current events that make her uncomfortable, she writes....

Call me crazy, Mr. President, but I don't feel any safer.

The nation's mesmerizing new best seller, the 9/11 commission report, lays bare how naked we still are against an attack, and how vulnerable we are because of the time and money the fuzzy-headed Bush belligerents wasted going after the wrong target.[emphasis added]

1. So far as I am aware, the President has not promised Maureen Dowd a rose garden. The world is dangerous and will continue to be so, whether our next President is George W Bush, John Kerry, Bill Clinton, or SafetyPup the Safety Dog. That Maureen Dowd has just recognized this since 09/11/01 is dispositive of nothing.
2. (and most importantly) The 9/11 Report--the very report Maureen Dowd cites as evidence of " how vulnerable we are"--states: "Because of offensive actions against al Qaeda since 9/11, and defensive actions to improve homeland security, we believe we are safer today".

...which, in the context of an op-ed focusing on the 9/11 report and the question of whether we are safer or not--seems relevant to me. And it only gets worse....

The report offers vivid details on our worst fears. Instead of focusing on immediately hitting back at Osama, Bush officials indulged their idiotic idée fixe on Saddam and ignored the memo from their counter-terrorism experts dismissing any connection between the religious fanatic bin Laden and the secular Hussein.

No? Funny, I remember us invading Afghanistan, too. In fact, as evidence, she cites the fact that Rumsfeld mentioned the possibility of striking Saddam, along with Bin Laden. Left unmentioned is the fact that he wrote that prior to our discovery of who was behind 9/11...at a time when we were making contingency plans for everybody who could have been behind 9/11. Seems relevant, no?

And, as regards her assertion that "Bush officials indulged their idiotic idée fixe on Saddam" and ignored the lack of proof of connection between Iraq and 9/11.....well, Maureen must have also missed this bit from the 9/11 report...

Powell said that President Bush did not give Wolfowitz’s argument “much weight.” Though continuing to worry about Iraq in the following week, Powell said, President Bush saw Afghanistan as the priority. [...] Iraq was not even on the table during the September 15 afternoon session, which dealt solely with Afghanistan.

Though, in the immediately preceding paragraph, she cites the 9/11 Commission Report, which states that Bin Laden's death "would not end terror. His message of inspiration to a new generation of terrorists would continue."

So, if I'm to understand Dowd, it's now "too late" to stop the spread of terrorism by killing Bin Laden....though, killing Bin Laden earlier wouldn't have stopped the spread of terrorism, anyway. Whatever. Either way, it's Bush's fault.

And that is Maureen Dowd. Literate irrelevance.

"Am I at the right rally?"

Why aren't they telling this story?

Reading through this week's issue of Business Week, I came across this letter to the magazine in the Readers Report section:

"Stealing a march on the EPA" (Editorials, July 12) falsely asserts that climate change is not a high priority for the Bush Administration. In fact, the U.S. currently spends more money ($2 billion annually) on studying the causes and effects of climate change than Japan and the European Union combined. The Bush Administration was the first to deliver a strategic plan as part of its Climate Change Science Program -- which brought together 13 federal agencies, more than 1,200 scientists and stakeholders, and 35 countries around the world -- even though Congress required such a plan in 1990.

Implementing policies designed to curb "global warming" has dramatic consequences for businesses large and small and on the economy in general, but to what effect? Quite simply, we don't know enough about climate change to understand what effect policies would have on the global environment. That is why President Bush's comprehensive plan to first fill in the gaps in climate-change knowledge, along with accelerating federal investments in advanced energy technologies such as the President's Hydrogen Fuel Initiative, is the most prudent course to take.

Conrad C. Lautenbacher Jr.
Vice-Admiral, U.S. Navy (Ret.)
Under Secretary of Commerce
for Oceans & Atmosphere
Washington

If this is all true, why in the world aren't the Republicans out there telling this story to anyone who'll listen?

Again we're spending more on studying climate change than both Japan and all of Europe combined?

Why didn't I know that before now?

The Bush administration has put the first strategic plan as part of its Climate Change Science Program as required by Congress in 1990? But I thought the Clinton administration was the big environmental administration. They never put a plan together in their entire 8 years? Bush is the first? Why didn't I know this before now?

And why did I have to dig it out of a letter to the editor of a business magazine?

The Republicans are going to have to do a whole lot better than this if they plan to get their story out before November.

Nader's "12 things Kerry will avoid"

Ralph Nader has a list of 12 things Kerry is most likely to avoid at the Democrat Convention. After reading through Nadar's list I agree that he's probably right, Kerry will avoid them. However I don't particularly agree at all that Kerry should not avoid them.

They're vintage Nader far left issues, which, hopefully will appeal to that 3 to 5% who might otherwise vote for Kerry and peel their votes away. Anyway, the 12 issues Nader thinks Kerry won't mention this week, in short form:

1. A call for a national crackdown on the corporate crime, fraud, and abuse that, in just the last four years, have robbed trillions of dollars from workers, investors, pension holders, taxpayers and consumers.

2. A demand that workers receive a living wage instead of a minimum wage.

3. A call for a withdrawal from the WTO and NAFTA.

4. That our income tax system be substantially revamped.

5. A call for a single payer health system.

6. Stand up to the commercial interests profiting from our current energy situation.

7. Demand a reduction in the military budget that devours half the federal government's operating expenditures at a time when there is no Soviet Union or other major state enemy in the world.

8. A call for electoral reform.

9. A call for reform of the criminal justice system.

10. Replace the Washington "puppet show with a Washington peace show for the security of the American, Palestinian, and Israeli people."

11. A call for the United States to begin a military and corporate withdrawal from Iraq.

12. A call to stand up to business interests that have backed changes that close the courtroom to wrongfully injured and cheated individuals, but not to corporations.

Nader's mad at the Democrats. He sees them as his closest ideolgocial kin and is miffed that they're trying so hard to shut him down. So he's decided to be as much as a thorn in their side as possible ... thus this op/ed.

Anyone who follows politics in this country knows quite well that Nader's 12 points are worth precisely the 3 to 5% vote he's likely to garner from them. But they also know that if Kerry were to adopt them, he'd lose much more than 3 to 5%. He might lose most of the middle thinking about supporting him. So this isn't really Nader trying to get Kerry to see it his way. This is Nader sticking it in Kerry's eye because the Democrats are playing dirty politics.

By the way, I'm with Nader on item 4.

Poles call it "totalitarian propaganda"

If ever a people were able to recognize "totalitarian propaganda" when they see it, the people of Poland, who were subjected to decades of it, might be those people. And when "Fahrenheit 911" opened in Poland this week, that's precisely how critics described it.

Gazeta Wyborcza reviewer Jacek Szczerba called the film a "foul pamphlet".

He said it was too biased to be called a documentary and was similar to work by Nazi propaganda director Leni Riefenstahl.

"In criticising Moore, I have to admit that he has certain abilities - Leni Riefenstahl had them too," Mr Szczerba said in his review.

[...]

"Michael Moore will not convince Poles with his film," the Rzeczpospolita newspaper said in its review.

"People are very sensitive to aggressive propaganda, especially when it pretends to be an objective documentary or a work of art."

That's not to say it doesn't have its fans in that country:

But politicians opposed to Poland's involvement in the US-led occupation of Iraq have urged people to see the film.

[...]

"The film contained some propaganda, but there was also a lot of truth in it," Pole Elzbieta Karwinska, 58, said after seeing the film.

"But I see no direct connection between the film and the Polish army in Iraq. I think that Poland is in Iraq for completely different reasons," she said.

Meanwhile in Australia, Moore is characterized as the "quintessential Ugly American". Seems like a fit to me:

This week, an Australian government minister described Moore as "the quintessential ugly American", after the film maker criticised the Australian prime minister's support of US President George Bush, saying: "What is John Howard doing in bed with an idiot?".

A testy confrontation

Interesting video of two apparent Republican demonstrators who are confronted by Sen. Bob Kerrey as he goes into the 911 commission's press conference releasing the report.

Things are a little testy out there. Note who began the name calling first. And then, tell me how much hell Kerrey will receive from the left for such "conduct unbecoming" ala Dick Cheney.

Hat tip to my Bro for this one

UPDATE: Reader Alex give us a link from a Trenton NJ newspaper which carries the story.

Meanwhile, in Iraq...

... insurgents/terrorists clash with American and Iraqi troops and get the usual treatment:

American and Iraqi forces clashed with insurgents in a battle that escalated from gunfire to artillery barrages early Sunday north of Baghdad, killing 13 Iraqi militants, the U.S. military said.

Iraqi forces and U.S. troops suffered no casualties from the fighting in Buhriz, 40 miles north of Baghdad.

This is why they're more inclined to use terror in the form of car bombs, IEDs, drive-by shooting and kidnapping to try to get their way. They're simply thugs who use the way of thugs.

Also Sunday, the military said one U.S. soldier was killed and another injured when a roadside bomb exploded as they were escorting a fuel convoy. The explosion Saturday afternoon occurred outside the city of Beiji, 90 miles south of the northern city of Mosul, U.S. Army spokesman Master Sgt. Robert Powell said.

In the Baghdad suburb of al-Dora on Sunday, gunmen killed Brig. Khaled Dawoud, the former head of Baghdad's Nahyia district under Saddam Hussein, and his son in a drive-by shooting, police Lt. Mustafa Abdullah al-Dulaimi said. Dawoud's son was not identified.

The car was raked with bullet holes, its windows shattered and its interior covered in blood, according to APTN footage.

Gunmen also killed two policemen Sunday morning as they traveled to work at the Mahmoudiya police station 25 miles south of Baghdad, police Lt. Alla Hussein said. The attackers escaped.

But its becoming clear, even to them, that toe-to-toe they just don't have a chance.

Obesity and liberty

Another aspect of the new "health crisis", and probably the one that is most disturbing, is the elevation of obesity to the status of a disease and what that means in terms of your liberty.

Medicare announced on July 15 that, after proclaiming for 40 years that obesity is a personal problem, not a clinical one, it now classifies the No. 2 cause of preventable death in America as an illness.

What Medicare did, without so much as a "let's consult with the payers" is reach deep into your pocket and add another cost for you to 'share'. Yes, dear reader, you are now going to pay for diet programs, stomach stapling and diet maintenance. They may not have taken the money yet, but for each "disease" they insist on creating, its only a matter of time before they fund its treatment.

Instead of obesity being a personal problem, it is now your problem. And you will pay, like it or not, to help anyone classified as "obese" lose that weight , if they're a Medicare (and most likely Medicaid) member.

That's good news for people such as Abramson and thousands of others across the nation. More than 64 percent of Americans are categorized as overweight or obese, and medical conditions resulting from obesity are the source of a $100 billion drain on the health-care industry, according to the American Obesity Association.

You bet its good news ... now that $100 billion dollar drain will be slowed to a veritable trickle, with a dam made up of your greenbacks.

Many of those dollars are spent annually in Durham, which is home to some of the nation's top weight-loss programs. It's unclear just what Medicare will pay and how quickly payments can be claimed.

But you can rest assured the "American Obesity Association" will be pushing its weight around trying to get top dollar for weight loss programs. After all, they don't have to foot the bill, you do.

But industry watchers say the designation probably will have a ripple effect on private health insurers, which must consider whether to provide coverage for treatment of obesity. "Medicare is the tail that wags the dog when it comes to insurance coverage," says Dr. Francis Neelon, Rice Diet Program medical director.

Which essentially means not only will more be paid out by Medicare, but more will be demanded by your insurance carrier in order to pay for its eventual coverage of obesity as a disease.

Yes dear reader, fat people have feelings too. And they have just been told that it's not their fault their mouth flies open every time their hand approaches it. We live in a guilt and responsibility free society now.

To prove that, the government has taken the responsibility for obesity away from people that are obese and given it to you. The government has determined its a disease and you get to pay for it being treated as such ... in facilities like this:

The Rice Diet Program is one of several obesity treatment programs located in the Triangle. Others include the Duke Center for Living, Structure House and Rex Weigh.

The average cost for treatment at one of these facilities ranges from $2,000 to $7,000 for a stay of one to six weeks, but each also has programs for long-term patients.

If you can imagine, there are skeptics out there who have difficulty believing Medicare can afford this:

Gerard Musante, founder of Structure House, questions whether Medicare can even afford to take on the cost of obesity treatment, which totals an estimated $36 million annually in the United States.

"If this thing gets really crazy and people come out of the woodwork for this treatment, then the government is going to have to decide how they're going to pay for this," Musante says.

Phaa ... Medicare doesn't have any money, only tax payers have money. No sweat Gerard, we'll just up the Medicare tax a bit. Don't even need to ask the tax payers if they'll pay, we'll just do it, says our benevolent government.

Because everyone knows "taxation without representation" is nothing but a quaint old phrase today.

A year-and-a-half and 70 pounds ago, 62-year-old Eileen Abramson's doctor told her it was time for a change.

Abramson, just 5 feet tall, was classified as morbidly obese. Debilitating conditions caused by her weight, which she doesn't wish to reveal, forced her to stop working. She could barely walk the 20 feet from her kitchen table to the front door.

Even though Abramson was taking a dozen medications each day to treat the symptoms caused by her obesity - diabetes, chest pains, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and nerve pains - the source of those potentially fatal conditions wasn't recognized as an illness by her health-care provider, Medicare.

As a result, Abramson's two sons bore the $30,000 cost of her year-long treatment at the Rice Diet Program in Durham.

[....]

Abramson, who has lost enough weight that she now needs only cholesterol medication, believes it's time for insurance companies to provide coverage.

"I'm doing the impossible," she says. "It's costly, and there are people like me who can't afford treatment, but they need it."

Apparently Ms. Abramson comes from a different era than I do. I've was always taught that you get yourself out of predicaments you get yourself into without demanding others bail you out.

My guess is Ms. Abramson's journey into obesity wasn't one of denial on her part. I'd also bet she knew what the consequences were of getting to the stage she eventually found herself. But even more interesting is that after she larded up, it became everyone elses problem and she had no problem asking others to deny their priorities in life in order to subsidise treatment for a "disease" that was entirely avoidable.

Yes, a bit of an insensitive rant, I admit. But this nonsense is another in a long line of abuses that just make me see red. The Patriot Act is small potatoes when compared to the insidious erosion of our liberties this sort of unilateral government action poses. We see it almost every day, and the normal reaction by the majority of the people is "wha...?"

Time to wake up and smell the doughnuts.

America's newest health "crisis"?

As with every new "health crisis" I've found it best to sit back and let it sort itself out before seriously jumping on the bandwagon (bran muffin anyone?).

Our newest crisis? Obesity, of course.

"Junk science," he says. "That's the real epidemic."

Campos and a minority of other scholars and researchers are challenging the science behind ever-more-shrill pronouncements on the hazards of heft. They want to stop the obesity feeding frenzy.

Fat chance.

Two-thirds of us are now deemed overweight, with half of those classified as obese, according to the government. In March, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said obesity was killing at least 400,000 Americans a year, almost as many as the 435,000 death toll from tobacco.

Obesity skeptics say this is the latest in a long string of exaggerations.

Obesity is the new health growth industry (uh, no pun intended). But there is a minority out there who see another Chicken Little science scare in the making.

"There's this tremendous cultural hysteria about this issue which is really not justified at all by the scientific and medical literature," said Campos, a University of Colorado law professor and author of "The Obesity Myth." "P.T. Barnum — wherever he now may be — must be furious with the notion that he can't get in on this thing."

Campos and others contend that study after study — including those of 1.8 million Norwegians and 115,195 Massachusetts nurses — have found that people who were overweight had a lower risk of death than those who were lean. Some studies (such as one of 9,228 middle-aged and elderly Israeli men) have reported that people who intentionally lost weight died sooner than those who stayed fat.

On the other side are the defenders of the "obesity is bad" mantra.

Mainstream obesity researchers object strenuously to this analysis, and say the skeptics are quibbling, misreading the data or cherry-picking medical facts.

They say that hundreds of studies show beyond reasonable doubt that there is a link between obesity and unhealthy conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers, as well as a higher overall risk of death.

"There are hundreds of people who've spent their careers studying obesity," said James Hill, director of the center for human nutrition at the University of Colorado in Denver. "And if there's one thing everyone agrees on, it's that obesity has negative health consequences."

But I kind of come down on the side of Barry Glasner's explanation. I've just seen it too many times in the past (man I wish I had a bran muffin!).

USC sociology professor Barry Glassner sees something familiar about the obesity epidemic he reads about daily. It reminds him of headlines about flesh-eating bacteria and satanic preschool molestation — topics explored in his 2000 book "The Culture of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things."

"From the hysteria from government officials and the media, one could easily get the impression that gaining a few pounds is the equivalent of taking up smoking or removing the seat belts from your car," he said.

The current obesity flap, he said, is one more example of what sociologists like to term a "moral panic." Obesity is the ghoul du jour — and predictably, our reaction is over the top.

So sit back and watch it happen as we see countless articles, specials and events aimed at the "Fattening of America". Then, as usual, watch it slowly ebb away.

Now, where are those bran muffins?!

The Plame Affair

I'm not sure this is necessarily a mitigating factor for the person who named Valerie Plame, but it may have some relevance....

The identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame was compromised twice before her name appeared in a news column that triggered a federal illegal-disclosure investigation, U.S. officials say.

Mrs. Plame's identity as an undercover CIA officer was first disclosed to Russia in the mid-1990s by a Moscow spy, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

In a second compromise, officials said a more recent inadvertent disclosure resulted in references to Mrs. Plame in confidential documents sent by the CIA to the U.S. Interests Section of the Swiss Embassy in Havana.

The documents were supposed to be sealed from the Cuban government, but intelligence officials said the Cubans read the classified material and learned the secrets contained in them, the officials said.

On the other hand, it still doesn't excuse any leak of classified information.

Me...I'm still sticking with the least irrational explanation: somebody in the White House disclosed her name, but didn't know her association with the CIA was classified. Otherwise, it's hard to believe a public official would commit a felony to the press, in a manner designed to get publicity for no obvious gain.

Faster, faster, more, more! Stop!

Josh Marshall has been absolutely unrelenting in his demands that the Bush administration release his National Guard Records.

• Feb 8, 2004 - "...in the relatively near future, as much as they may wriggle, his aides will either have to come forward with those records or go back on the commitment the president made in front of the whole country."
• Feb 10, 2004 - "...it's not clear to me what hold up there would be on releasing all those records to news organizations. And another matter. The White House is already trying to wriggle out of the president's commitment to release all the records about his military service."
• Feb 10, 2004 - "More to the point, this is still the White House selectively releasing records. As nearly as I can tell the president is still refusing to waive his Privacy Act rights and allow the government to release all his military service records to the press, without having them filtered through the White House."
• Feb 11, 2004 - "Can't come clean. Won't release the records he said he would. Sorta seems like there's a problem lurking in there, don't it?"

Of course, the fact that the White House has wrangled this issue down to poring over a million different records that I myself can hardly keep track of means they've largely neutralized this issue through that classic Washington method of the death of a thousand docs.

It's sad to see somebody whore himself out like this for a party.

UPDATE: As David Adesnik writes in another context, Marshall "might begin by asking whether perhaps, just perhaps, arrogance, selfishness, disloyalty and contempt for open government are personality traits on which Republicans do not have a monopoly".

Yeah, that seems like a useful question for Josh to ask himself.

UPDATE II: Gerry writes "Mr. Henke, his blog is called "Talking Points Memo". Of course it is going to be nothing but party spin."

Good point.

NATO troops to Olympics but not Afghanistan?

Good old NATO. It can honor a request from Greece to provide security for the Olympics ....

NATO will likely soon agree to a Greek request to ensure security at next month's Olympic Games, to guard against a possible terrorist threat, a spokeswoman for the alliance said.

"We can confirm that there has been a second Greek request relating to counter-terrorism aspects of security assistance to the Olympic Games," she said.

... but its having a hell of a time honoring its committment to Afghanistan:

After months of delay, NATO has ordered hundreds more peacekeepers to Afghanistan to help provide security during presidential elections, but the deployment still appeared to fall short of 3,500 troops that were promised.

Well here's a thought ... how about taking the troops you seem willing to commit to the Olympics and sending them to your first committment, Afghanistan. If NATO can scrape up enough troops for Greece's eleventh hour request for security, it can certainly do the same for its year old committment to Afghanistan.

If there is actually a will to honor it, which I'm coming to doubt. Must be taking lessons from the UN.

Fat and Fatter

OK yes, that's insensitive as hell. But then so is life. I'm already tired of these people.

Imagine "Fahrenheit 9/11" filmmaker Michael Moore and singer Linda Ronstadt onstage in Las Vegas, singing "America the Beautiful" at the very same casino resort where she was booed and told not to come back, because of remarks praising Moore.

It could happen - as early as September.

Recommendation: reinforce the stage before you have that "extravaganza" .... and put a padlock on the food locker.

Parsing Kerry

Quote of the day? This one from Kerry ... not that its a particularly great one, or that its true. I guess its just typical:

Kerry said Bush promised "to build a legitimate international coalition, to go to war as a last resort." It appears "more and more evident ... that they intended to go no matter what," Kerry said. "The president broke his word. That's why I say he misled America. ... He went back on his word with respect to an issue that involves the lives of our young Americans."

Maybe its just me, but I don't recall any stipulation that the coalition be "legitimate". Talk about a loaded word. Legitimate by who's definition? This is called "moving the goal posts".

Kerry can't honestly claim the action was unilateral. It obviously wasn't. So, for cheap political points, he instead he chooses to call those, like Britian, et al. who participated members of an illegitimate coalition. While this may please Jaques Chirac, I'm not so sure Tony Blair or other members of the coalition of the willing would be quite as tickled.

Isn't Kerry the guy who says just electing him will make everyone our friends again? Yeah, even old illegitimate Tony.

Again, the message here is "if it isn't through the UN, its "illegitimate". Have you been keeping up with the UN lately?

"... to go to war as a last resort". This is one of my favorites. He gave the UN and Saddam almost 14 months to do something .... anything .... to prevent the war. Both Saddam and the UN did nothing to prevent it. So at that point, what other resort was there, Mr. Kerry?

Then there's his assertion that it appears "more and more evident ... that they intended to go no matter what..."

Kerry (and most of the media) have apparently missed the 911 report which points to Bush making Iraq a lower priority, putting off Iraq, etc. If you missed it, Jon has written extensively about it here with cites from the report which make the point both clearly and emphatically enough that even Kerry might understand it.

Of course the false premise that the war wasn't a last resort gives rise to the false conclusion that "he broke his word". That's a nice way of saying "he lied". Based on history and the 911 report I'd say Mr. Kerry was dead wrong.

If he keeps repeating this mantra now that its out that he's wrong, then I'll be forced to say "he lied" the next time.

Does she really just not understand?

Linda Ronstadt strikes again:

Linda Ronstadt's political message sent close to a hundred concert-goers home early Thursday evening.

What had been a mellow evening at Wente Vineyards, with the crowd even serenading her with "Happy Birthday" at one point, turned into a rush for the exits by some fans angry by her encore tribute to filmmaker Michael Moore.

"She just had to do it," one fan steamed as he headed for the parking lot. "It was good until the end," another yelled to TV crews waiting outside the concert.

"She's getting out of line; it's ridiculous," said Cindy Williams of Livermore, as she left during the last song of the evening.

Sigh. I wonder when artists of all stripe are going to realize that people pay money to hear or see them perform, not sermonize or comment on politics.

If Ronstadt wants to plug Moore and his movie, she should buy an ad. Otherwise, wise up Linda. Get a freakin' clue. The public isn't interested in who you think is a great American, especially when a good number of them think the guy you're touting is a "Desparado" of a unflattering sort.

They're only interested in that for which they paid good money ... to hear you sing!

Via: BitsBlog

Small Convention Bounces predicted

Pollsters think there will be little of significance in terms of a "convention bounce" for either party in this election:

John Kerry will get a boost after the Democratic Party's convention in Boston next week and President Bush will gain some momentum in the polls after the GOP's pre-Labor Day convention. Both parties will try to play down expectations so as to exceed them.

Still, party officials are hoping that strong performances by their candidates during the four-day conventions will have effects lasting to the November election.

Those hopes may be dashed this year, however. Several pollsters say that Bush and Kerry are unlikely to see significant gains because few undecided voters are out there.

I happen to agree, but not for the reasons the pollsters cite:

"In this closely divided electorate, it is probably unrealistic to expect Bush or Kerry to get much of a bounce," said American Enterprise Institute polling expert Karlyn Bowman.

"There's an intensity level here early on that is unprecedented," said Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports, who added that the country is very politically polarized and mounds of cash have been spent early on in the campaign season.

"This election is primarily going to be determined by what happens in the real world — the economy and Iraq — not by the campaign," he said.

If one part is the economy, then its steady improvement works against Kerry. If the other part is Iraq, its steady improvement works against Kerry as well. But they only work against Kerry if the Bush team can get the word out there as to the improvement in both areas.

Rasmussen is correct, there is quite an intensity. But I'm not sure I agree with him as to how wide-spread that intensity is. Yes, the sides are pretty polarized, but I have difficulty believing, at this stage in the campaign, before both candidates are officially blessed at their conventions and the campaign begins officially, that 90% of the electorate have made up their minds.

If so that is a phenomenal number of people suddenly converted to political junkies out there.

When you see polls out there which say that a large minority of voters really don't know who John Kerry is at this point, I think the pollsters may be a little too close to their work. And when you add to that what polls have shown among Democrats concerning Kerry, I'm not ready to believe the 'intensity" converts into votes for Kerry at this point:

Even among fellow Democrats, Kerry has a ways to go to convince voters that he has the right stuff. According to a June 3-13 survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, 42% of Democrats give Kerry a grade of "C" or worse for making a compelling case for his candidacy. "His strength is that Bush is weak," says Pew Research Center Director Andrew Kohut. "He has still to make the case for himself. He's not associated with any big themes or big ideas."

I don't think the lack of huge convention bounces has much to do with voters having their minds made up in the 90+% range, quite honestly. For instance, look at this:

However, comparing the Gallup Poll (search) against itself may provide some perspective. According to Gallup, in 2000, Democrats received an 8-point jump; Republicans got a 4-point boost. In 1996, Democrats went up by 5 points, and Republicans by 3. In 1992, Democrats shot up by 16 points, and Republicans gained 5. In 1988, Democrats gained 7, and Republicans 6.

Bounces have been small for quite some time. The real reason? Conventions have no drama. They have no effect. They're staged events, they're rallies, they're infomercials ... and with other entertainment choices out there, few choose to be bored by politicians. Consequently when the polls are taken after the convention, there's just not much of a difference between the before and after poll.

Until and unless the conventions again come to be meaningful events, neither party should expect a big bounce coming out of them.

As if contradicting his own words concerning the intensity out there, Scott Rassmussen says:

"Most of the people that you need to persuade are not going to watch the conventions."

I agree ... so look for, at most, a dead-cat bounce for both sides.

Oh, that liberal media

Chris Matthews has started a blog: Hardblogger

Interesting. So, check out his blogroll:

• Bartcop
• Bear-Left
• Body and Soul
• Buzzflash
• Calpundit
• Center for American Progress
• Chris Mooney
• Counterspin Central
• Cursor
• Daily Kos
• David Sirota
• Digby
• Donkey Rising
• Electrolite
• Eschaton
• Frank Lynch
• Hamster
• Instapundit
• Lean Left
• Liberal Oasis
• Mad Kane
• Matt Yglesias
• MaxSpeak
• Media Whores Online
• Michael Berube
• Nathan Newman
• Oliver Willis
• Orcinus
• Pandagon
• Political Aims
• PressThink
• Rittenhouse Review
• Road To Surfdom
• Romenesko
• Ruminate This
• Seeing the Forest
• Sideshow
• Sivacracy
• Skippy
• Smythe's World
• South Knox Bubba
• Talking Points
• TalkLeft
• Tapped
• The Bush Watch
• The Poor Man
• The National Debate
• TomPaine.com
• Tom Tomorrow
• Winning Argument
• Wonkette

I mean, what the hell? They're not even trying anymore.

UPDATE: Power of blogs? Coincidence? I can't tell, but they've changed the blogroll extensively since I posted this. It now shows only the bloggers that are accredited for the convention. Prior to this change, the list was as noted above.

So, depending on your assumptions about the media, I either found them in a moment of embarrassing transparency, or.....well, I can't think of another explanation off the top of my head.

You have to read Kerry very carefully

While perusing a Business Week interview with John Kerry, I was a bit amazed by the man's audacity when answering a question about marginal tax rates:

BW: So you believe that just by rolling back tax cuts for top-end taxpayers, you can fund a health plan and deficit reduction?

Kerry: Yes -- absolutely. Let me be very clear: I like low marginal rates. I fought to get low marginal rates. I voted for going down to the 28% and 14% brackets [in 1986]. I am not going to raise marginal rates -- ever -- above the rates we had under Bill Clinton.

Parsing time: "I like low marginal rates. I fought to get low marginal rates. I voted for going down to the 28% and 14% brackets [in 1986]".

So in 1986, per Kerry these rates were more than enough. Inference ... we should have low marginal rates like the 28% and 14% I voted for. Remember, he likes low marginal rates. He's a low marginal rate kinda guy.

OK. Moving along: "I am not going to raise marginal rates --- ever ...".

Sounds pretty definitive doesn't it? "not going to raise marginal rates" Never, ever. No way, no how!

Caveat time: "... above the rates we had under Bill Clinton."

Oh. So then, Mr. Kerry, you are going to raise marginal rates.

History time. Remember, in 1990, Bush, under pressure from a Democratic Congress, raised the top rate from 28 percent to 31 percent. In 1993, Clinton created two new upper brackets, one at 36 percent, and the other at 39.6 percent. Guess who voted in favor of both? So while he voted for the 28% and 14% in '86 he also voted to raise the marginal rate in '90 and '93. Somehow that didn't make it into his answer.

The marginal rates when Bush took office?

15, 28, 31, 36, and 39.6

And since the tax cuts?

10, 15, 25, and 33

Notice that reduction in the marginal rate in each of the brackets (with one bracket being combined).

So Kerry is telling a big fat one, folks. He's either "not going to raise marginal rates --- ever ...", or he's going to raise marginal rates back up to where they were under Clinton. Obviously the latter is the plan despite his claim he's not raising them. And that doesn't just mean the top marginal rate either. He means all of them (although he knows it would be political suicide right now to actually admit that openly).

Remember he's just said that marginal rates wouldn't ever be raised ... higher than Bill Clinton had them. Review the rates above before and after the tax cuts . The marginal rates before the tax cuts are Bill Clinton's marginal rates. Those are the rates John Kerry is leaving open to be raised if he's elected.

So much for being a low marginal tax rate kinda guy.

More of Kerry trying to have it both ways.

I'm a little disappointed that Business Week let him get away with this nonsense.

Collision Course with Iran

What to do about Iran. It's a real puzzler, especially since the president, beleaguered by the progress in Iraq, or the perceived lack of it by his critics, seems keen to paint himself as a man offering four peaceful years.

I doubt he'll get 'em.

But, the problem of Iran isn't going to go away. We know now that Iran has ties to al-Qaida, and is providing safe harbor for some of its operatives. And, of course, there's the whole nuclear deal.

So now, Bush critics like the almost incomprehensible Maureen Dowd, are saying that Bush should have taken on Iran, instead of Iraq.

The most astute prophet of the administration's Middle East muddle is Sacha Baron Cohen, the hilarious British comedian whose Ali G character is an uninformed gangsta rapper interviewing unwitting VIPs.

Last year, Ali G asked James Baker, the Bush I secretary of state, if it was wise for Iraq and Iran to have such similar names. "Isn't there a real danger," the faux rapper wondered, "that someone give a message over the radio to one of them fighter pilots, saying 'Bomb Ira-' and the geezer doesn't hear it properly" and bombs the wrong one?

"No danger," Baker replied.

Well, as it turns out, the United States did bomb the wrong Ira-.

President Bush says he's now investigating al-Qaida-Iran ties, and whether Iran helped the 9/11 hijackers.

Whoops. Right axis. Wrong evil.

It's like Emily Litella — "What's all this fuss I hear about making Puerto Rico a steak?" — except the United States can't simply shrug "Never mind" because 900 American troops are dead.

Granted, Iran is a problem, and there's certainly much to be done about getting rid of the mullahs. But it's the height of hypocrisy for Dowd and her ilk to even bring it up in this fashion. The fact is, As soon as Bush made the "Axis of Evil" statement, Dowd's crowd could hardly contain themselves from frothing with anger over the very concept of an "Axis of Evil". Now, she's arguing for an invasion of Iran?

You've got to be freakin' kidding me. The Left wanted nothing whatsoever to do with an invasion of Iran or Iraq, so coming back and hitting the president with Iran, two years after the fact, is just laughable. If Bush had even mentioned he was considering such a move, the Left would've collapsed in an apoplectic fit. Which, come to think of it, is actually an argument in favor of such a policy. But I digress.

Actually, it's about the only argument in favor of such a policy. As Charles Krauthammer points out today, an invasion of Iran would be an entirely different matter than an invasion of Iraq.

The Iraq war critics have a new line of attack: We should have done Iran instead of Iraq.

Well, of course Iran is a threat and a danger. But how exactly would the critics have "done" Iran? Iran is a serious country with a serious army. Compared to Iraq, an invasion of Iran would have been infinitely more costly. Can you imagine these critics, who were shouting "quagmire" and "defeat" when the low-level guerrilla war in Iraq intensified in April, actually supporting war with Iran?

If not war, what then? We know the central foreign policy principle of Bush critics: multilateralism. John Kerry and the Democrats have said it a hundred times: The source of our troubles is Bush's insistence on "going it alone." They promise to "rejoin the community of nations" and "work with our allies."

Well, that happens to be exactly what we have been doing on Iran. And the policy is an abject failure. The Bush administration, having decided that invading one axis-of-evil country was about as much as either the military or the country can bear, has gone multilateral on Iran, precisely what the Democrats advocate. Washington delegated the issue to a committee of three — the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany — that has been meeting with the Iranians to get them to shut down their nuclear program.

The result? They have been led by the nose. Iran is caught red-handed with illegally enriched uranium, and the Tehran Three prevail upon the Bush administration to do nothing while they persuade the mullahs to act nice. Therefore, we do not go to the U.N. Security Council to declare Iran in violation of the Nonproliferation Treaty. We do not impose sanctions. We do not begin squeezing Iran to give up its nuclear program.

Instead, we give Iran more time to swoon before the persuasive powers of "Jack of Tehran" — British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw — until finally, humiliatingly, Iran announces that it will resume enriching uranium and that nothing will prevent it from becoming a member of the "nuclear club."

The result has not been harmless. Time is of the essence, and the runaround that the Tehran Three have gotten from the mullahs has meant that we have lost at least nine months in doing anything to stop the Iranian nuclear program.

The fact is that the war critics have nothing to offer on the single most urgent issue of our time — rogue states in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. Iran instead of Iraq? The Iraq critics would have done nothing about either country. There would today be two major Islamic countries sitting on an ocean of oil, supporting terrorism and seeking weapons of mass destruction — instead of one.

Iran, as Krauthammer points out, is a serious country, with a serious army. No, they aren't anywhere near as good as our boys are, but then again, they probably wouldn't melt away into the countryside like the Iraqis did, either.

The same people who were yelling "Quagmire!" in Iraq on D+8, would've been wailing and gnashing their teeth like biblical prophets if they'd had to deal with an Iranian invasion.

There are two undeniable facts when it comes to Iran:

1. Instead of using military force against Iran, we have been steadily following the multinational route that is so revered by our friends on the Left. The result has been completely ineffective, leaving Iran closer now to having nuclear weapons than they were when the whole multilateral process started. The preferred policy of our Leftist friends has been an abject and utter failure.
2. If the Left had their way back in 2002, there would have been no invasion of Iraq, or Iran. In fact, there would've been no invasion of Afghanistan, either, for fear of the Brutal Afghan Winter™. No matter how the Left tries to dress it up by getting all bloodthirsty over Iran now, the fact is that if we'd followed their advice, the Taliban would still be shooting women in the head with AK-47s for impiety at public executions in Kabul's soccer stadium. Uday would still be stuffing Iraqi dissidents into industrial plastic shredders feet first, and the Iranian Mullahs would still be gathering fissionables for their weapons program.

Those two facts are undeniable, and anyone with a lick of sense will immediately recognize it, no matter how Maureen Dowd tries to dress it up and make it more presentable. You can dress a poodle up in puffy skirts and make it walk on its hind legs, too, but anybody with eyes to see can tell that it's still a dog, and not Marie of Romania.

As it happens, fortunately, we have several options for dealing with Iran that didn't exist in Iraq. The Iranian Mullahs, although brutal guys by anyone's reckoning, simply don't have the same kind of perverted totalitarian drive that Saddam Hussein's regime displayed. As a result, there is a fairly lively reform movement in the country. There is increasing domestic pressure to overthrow the Islamic Republic and replace it with a more secularized, democratic regime.

So, unlike Iraq, there is an indigenous opposition movement, both in and out of the government, to whom support can be given. We can destabilize the Mullahcracy in ways short of war.

In short, there are other options.

I suspect one reason why W has been following the multinational route in Iraq so far is that he wants to show the absolute bankruptcy of such a policy. At some point, he'll be able to say, "Look, we tried it your way and we got bupkis. A big fat goose egg. Now, we're gonna do it my way, and make it happen." And he can probably do it without one US soldier ever having to fire a single shot.

Saddam and Usama. Or Osama. Or whatever the heck his name is

Byron York details some of the 9/11 Commision's report about Iraq and al-Qaida. Remember when we were told that they'd never ever cooperate with each other, because Osama hated Iraq's secular Ba'athist government?

In February 1999, for example, the CIA proposed U-2 aerial-surveillance missions over Afghanistan. The report says that Richard Clarke, then the White House counterterrorism chief, worried that the mission might spook bin Laden into leaving Afghanistan for somewhere where it might be even more difficult for American forces to reach him:

Clarke was nervous about such a mission because he continued to fear that Bin Ladin might leave for someplace less accessible. He wrote Deputy National Security Advisor Donald Kerrick that one reliable source reported Bin Ladin's having met with Iraqi officials, who "may have offered him asylum." Other intelligence sources said that some Taliban leaders, though not Mullah Omar, had urged Bin Ladin to go to Iraq. If Bin Ladin actually moved to Iraq, wrote Clarke, his network would be at Saddam Hussein's service, and it would be "virtually impossible" to find him. Better to get Bin Ladin in Afghanistan, Clarke declared.

National-security adviser Sandy Berger suggested that the U.S. send just one U-2 flight, but the report says Clarke worried that even then, Pakistan's intelligence service would warn bin Laden that the U.S. was preparing for a bombing campaign. "Armed with that knowledge, old wily Usama will likely boogie to Baghdad," Clarke wrote in a February 11, 1999 e-mail to Berger. The report says that another National Security Council staffer also warned that "Saddam Hussein wanted bin Laden in Baghdad."

"Boogie to Baghdad", indeed.

So, essentially, Clinton's National Security people knew that Saddam and Osama had some flirty thing happening. Yet, the Democrats were unsparing in their criticism that OBL and Saddam would never, ever be interested in any convergence of interests. Both the New York Times and Washington Post assured us repeatedly that this talk of al-Qaida-Iraq ties were nonsense.

Well, it seems they both hated us more than they hated each other, and that there were links between them.

<sarcasm>I'm confident that both the Times and Post will soon make appropriate and highly public corrections.</sarcasm>

9/11 Commission Report: Iraq

While Iraq is not central to the 9/11 Commission Report, I thought it could be interesting to see what they have to say about it.

Holy crap.

While certainly not conclusive evidence of extensive collaboration, the 9/11 report seems to give a great deal of weight to the charges that there were "ties" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. It also rains on the parades of one Mr. Clarke, who had claimed Iraq was a diversion, that there was "absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda, ever". In fact, it is quite devastating on that point, using Clarke's own words. We'll get to it.

I've compiled all the (notable*) Iraq references in the report....

Page 58 - Bin Laden built his Islamic army with groups in various countries, including Iraq.

Bin Ladin now had a vision of himself as head of an international jihad con federation. In Sudan, he established an “Islamic Army Shura” that was to serve as the coordinating body for the consortium of terrorist groups with which he was forging alliances. It was composed of his own al Qaeda Shura together with leaders or representatives of terrorist organizations that were still independent. In building this Islamic army, he enlisted groups from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Oman, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Somalia, and Eritrea.

Page 61 - Bin Laden willing to explore a relationship with Iraq.

Bin Ladin was also willing to explore possibilities for cooperation with Iraq, even though Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, had never had an Islamist agenda—save for his opportunistic pose as a defender of the faithful against “Crusaders” during the Gulf War of 1991. Moreover, Bin Ladin had in fact been sponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, and sought to attract them into his Islamic army.

Page 61 - Bin Laden agrees to stop supporting activities against Saddam; Reports indicate Saddam may have supported, or at least tolerated, Ansar al-Islam.

To protect his own ties with Iraq,Turabi reportedly brokered an agreement that Bin Ladin would stop supporting activities against Saddam. Bin Ladin apparently honored this pledge, at least for a time, although he continued to aid a group of Islamist extremists operating in part of Iraq (Kurdistan) outside of Baghdad’s control. In the late 1990s, these extremist groups suffered major defeats by Kurdish forces. In 2001, with Bin Ladin’s help they re-formed into an organization called Ansar al Islam.There are indications that by then the Iraqi regime tolerated and may even have helped Ansar al Islam against the common Kurdish enemy.

Page 61 - Bin Laden met with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer, and asked for assistance. No evidence of an Iraqi response. This was not the last attempt.

With the Sudanese regime acting as intermediary, Bin Ladin himself met with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer in Khartoum in late 1994 or early 1995. Bin Ladin is said to have asked for space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but there is no evidence that Iraq responded to this request.55 As described below, the ensuing years saw additional efforts to establish connections.

Page 66 - Iraq took the initiative to contact Al Qaeda.

In mid-1998, the situation reversed; it was Iraq that reportedly took the initiative. In March 1998, after Bin Ladin’s public fatwa against the United States, two al Qaeda members reportedly went to Iraq to meet with Iraqi intelligence. In July, an Iraqi delegation traveled to Afghanistan to meet first with the Taliban and then with Bin Ladin. Sources reported that one, or perhaps both, of these meetings was apparently arranged through Bin Ladin’s Egyptian deputy, Zawahiri, who had ties of his own to the Iraqis. In 1998, Iraq was under intensifying U.S. pressure, which culminated in a series of large air attacks in December.

Page 125 - Clarke points out that Iraq had discussed hosting Bin Laden.

Clarke commented that Iraq and Libya had previously discussed hosting Bin Ladin, though he and his staff had their doubts that Bin Ladin would trust secular Arab dictators such as Saddam Hussein or Muammar Qadhafi.

Page 128 - Clarke suggests that a chemical factory is probably the result of an Iraq-Al Qaeda agreement. Chemical evidence backs that up.

The original sealed indictment had added that al Qaeda had “reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq.”109 This passage led Clarke, who for years had read intelligence reports on Iraqi-Sudanese cooperation on chemical weapons, to speculate to Berger that a large Iraqi presence at chemical facilities in Khartoum was “probably a direct result of the Iraq–Al Qida agreement.” Clarke added that VX precursor traces found near al Shifa were the “exact formula used by Iraq.”110 This language about al Qaeda’s “understanding” with Iraq had been dropped, however, when a superseding indictment was filed in November 1998.

Page 134 - Clarke discusses the possibility--even likelihood--that Bin Laden would move to Baghdad, if attacked in Afghanistan, and cooperate with Saddam.

[Clarke] wrote Deputy National Security Advisor Donald Kerrick that one reliable source reported Bin Ladin’s having met with Iraqi officials, who “may have offered him asylum.” Other intelligence sources said that some Taliban leaders, though not Mullah Omar, had urged Bin Ladin to go to Iraq. If Bin Ladin actually moved to Iraq, wrote Clarke, his network would be at Saddam Hussein’s service, and it would be “virtually impossible” to find him. Better to get Bin Ladin in Afghanistan, Clarke declared.134 Berger suggested sending one U-2 flight, but Clarke opposed even this. It would require Pakistani approval, he wrote; and “Pak[istan’s] intel[ligence service] is in bed with” Bin Ladin and would warn him that the United States was getting ready for a bombing campaign: “Armed with that knowledge, old wily Usama will likely boogie to Baghdad.”135Though told also by Bruce Riedel of the NSC staff that Saddam Hussein wanted Bin Ladin in Baghdad, Berger conditionally authorized a single U-2 flight.

Page 334 - Clarke's report found anecdotal evidence of an Iraqi link to Al Qaeda, but no compelling case that Iraq was involved in 9/11.

Responding to a presidential tasking, Clarke’s office sent a memo to Rice on September 18, titled “Survey of Intelligence Information on Any Iraq Involvement in the September 11 Attacks.” Rice’s chief staffer on Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, concurred in its conclusion that only some anecdotal evidence linked Iraq to al Qaeda.The memo found no “compelling case” that Iraq had either planned or perpetrated the attacks. It passed along a few foreign intelligence reports, including the Czech report alleging an April 2001 Prague meeting between Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer (discussed in chapter 7) and a Polish report that personnel at the headquarters of Iraqi intelligence in Baghdad were told before September 11 to go on the streets to gauge crowd reaction to an unspecified event. Arguing that the case for links between Iraq and al Qaeda was weak, the memo pointed out that Bin Ladin resented the secularism of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Finally, the memo said, there was no confirmed reporting on Saddam cooperating with Bin Ladin on unconventional weapons.

Page 335 - The Camp David discussions....

According to Rice, the issue of what, if anything, to do about Iraq was really engaged at Camp David. Briefing papers on Iraq, along with many others, were in briefing materials for the participants. Rice told us the administration was concerned that Iraq would take advantage of the 9/11 attacks. She recalled that in the first Camp David session chaired by the President, Rumsfeld asked what the administration should do about Iraq. Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz made the case for striking Iraq during “this round” of the war on terrorism.

Page 335 - DoD presents the three priorities: al Qaeda, the Taliban, Iraq

A Defense Department paper for the Camp David briefing book on the strategic concept for the war on terrorism specified three priority targets for initial action: al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Iraq. It argued that of the three, al Qaeda and Iraq posed a strategic threat to the United States. Iraq’s long-standing involvement in terrorism was cited, along with its interest in weapons of mass destruction.

Page 335 - Bush did not accept that Iraq was an immediate priority.

Secretary Powell recalled that Wolfowitz—not Rumsfeld—argued that Iraq was ultimately the source of the terrorist problem and should therefore be attacked.66 Powell said that Wolfowitz was not able to justify his belief that Iraq was behind 9/11. “Paul was always of the view that Iraq was a problem that had to be dealt with,” Powell told us.“And he saw this as one way of using this event as a way to deal with the Iraq problem.” Powell said that President Bush did not give Wolfowitz’s argument “much weight.”67 Though continuing to worry about Iraq in the following week, Powell said, President Bush saw Afghanistan as the priority.

Page 335 - Bush decides Iraq is off the table, barring new information.

President Bush told Bob Woodward that the decision not to invade Iraq was made at the morning session on September 15. Iraq was not even on the table during the September 15 afternoon session, which dealt solely with Afghanistan.69 Rice said that when President Bush called her on Sunday, September 16, he said the focus would be on Afghanistan, although he still wanted plans for Iraq should the country take some action or the administration eventually determine that it had been involved in the 9/11 attacks.

Page 335 - A WoT Phase Two could include Iraq, if necessary.

At the September 17 NSC meeting, there was some further discussion of “phase two” of the war on terrorism.71 President Bush ordered the Defense Department to be ready to deal with Iraq if Baghdad acted against U.S. interests, with plans to include possibly occupying Iraqi oil fields.

Page 335 - Wolfowitz continues to push for Iraq.

Within the Pentagon, Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz continued to press the case for dealing with Iraq.Writing to Rumsfeld on September 17 in a memo headlined “Preventing More Events,” he argued that if there was even a 10 percent chance that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attack, maximum pri ority should be placed on eliminating that threat. Wolfowitz contended that the odds were “far more” than 1 in 10, citing Saddam’s praise for the attack, his long record of involvement in terrorism, and theories that Ramzi Yousef was an Iraqi agent and Iraq was behind the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center.73 The next day, Wolfowitz renewed the argument, writing to Rumsfeld about the interest of Yousef ’s co-conspirator in the 1995 Manila air plot in crashing an explosives-laden plane into CIA headquarters, and about information from a foreign government regarding Iraqis’ involvement in the attempted hijacking of a Gulf Air flight. Given this background, he wondered why so little thought had been devoted to the danger of suicide pilots, seeing a “failure of imagination” and a mind-set that dismissed possibilities.

Page 336 - Blair asks about Iraq; Bush tells him Iraq is not the immediate problem.

On September 20, President Bush met with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and the two leaders discussed the global conflict ahead.When Blair asked about Iraq, the President replied that Iraq was not the immediate problem. Some members of his administration, he commented, had expressed a different view, but he was the one responsible for making the decisions.

Page 336 - CENTCOM/General Franks wanted to plan for possible movement against Iraq. Bush rejected it.

Franks told us that he was pushing independently to do more robust plan ning on military responses in Iraq during the summer before 9/11—a request President Bush denied, arguing that the time was not right. (CENTCOM also began dusting off plans for a full invasion of Iraq during this period, Franks said.) The CENTCOM commander told us he renewed his appeal for further military planning to respond to Iraqi moves shortly after 9/11, both because he personally felt that Iraq and al Qaeda might be engaged in some form of collusion and because he worried that Saddam might take advantage of the attacks to move against his internal enemies in the northern or southern parts of Iraq, where the United States was flying regular missions to enforce Iraqi no-fly zones. Franks said that President Bush again turned down the request.

We now know that two other al Qaeda operatives flew to Bangkok to meet Khallad to pass him money. See chapter 8.That was not known at the time. Mihdhar was met at the Kuala Lumpur airport by Ahmad Hikmat Shakir, an Iraqi national. Reports that he was a lieutenant colonel in the Iraqi Fedayeen have turned out to be incorrect.They were based on a confusion of Shakir’s identity with that of an Iraqi Fedayeen colonel with a similar name, who was later (in September 2001) in Iraq at the same time Shakir was in police custody in Qatar.

Page 559 - Clarke and Bush dispute versions of post-9/11 meeting. Clarke's secretary claims they did meet, but Bush's manner was not "intimidating".

President Bush told us that Clarke had mischaracterized this exchange. On the evening of September 12, the President was at the Pentagon and then went to the White House residence. He dismissed the idea that he had been wandering around the Situation Room alone, saying,“I don’t do that.” He said that he did not think that any president would roam around looking for something to do.While Clarke said he had found the President’s tone “very intimidating,” (“Clarke’s Take on Terror,” CBSnews.com, Mar. 21, 2004, online at www.cbsnews.com/stories /2004/03/19/60minutes/printable607356.shtml), President Bush doubted that anyone would have found his manner intimidating. President Bush and Vice President Cheney meeting (Apr. 29, 2004). Roger Cressey, Clarke’s deputy, recalls this exchange with the President and Clarke concerning Iraq shortly after 9/11, but did not believe the President’s manner was intimidating.

Page 559 - No credible evidence of Iraqi involvement in 1993 WTC bombing.

DOD memo, Wolfowitz to Rumsfeld, “Preventing More Events,” Sept. 17, 2001. We review contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda in chapter 2.We have found no credible evidence to support theories of Iraqi government involvement in the 1993 WTC bombing.Wolfowitz added in his memo that he had attempted in June to get the CIA to explore these theories.

* "Notable"=non-tangential mentions.

UPDATE: I should mention what I'm taking away from this...

• It appears that Mr Clarke was not being completely forthright--or, at least, spinning very hard--when he claimed the President and Rumsfeld were focused on Iraq and had pressured him about to conclude otherwise, and that there had been no connections between the two.
• Iraq made overtures to Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda made overtures to Iraq. And we--including Richard Clarke--concluded that Bin Laden may seek Baghdad as a safe harbor and partner if pressured elsewhere. That seems....important.
• There is some circumstantial evidence--and Clarke's speculation--that a chemical factory could be a result of cooperation between Iraq and Al Qaeda.
• Bush assertively rejected the "Iraq/9.11" scenario advanced by some of the NeoCon faction.
• Paul Wolfowitz comes out of this looking very poorly. In fact, while many in our government had a "failure of imagination", it seems Wolfowitz had too active an imagination.
• The "Iraqi Fedayeen/9.11" story turned out to be nothing, as do claims that Iraq was behind the 93 WTC bombing. This seems to back up Tenet's previous assertion that Iraq was stopping short of cooperating in attacks against the West.

I neither suggest, believe, nor consider it relevant to the prewar calculation, that Iraq was in an ongoing cooperative relationship with Al Qaeda. As Bush said, the danger from that relationship laid in the future.

Are we safe?

Per the 911 report there were 9 opportunities that various agencies had to disrupt the 911 attacks. Having reviewed the 6 listed below in the Atlanta Journal Constitution this morning, and they're nothing new, I'd have to call the opportunites in name only.

They include:

1. Failing to put two of the al-Qaida operatives who took part in the Sept. 11 attacks on the terrorist watch list to keep them from entering the country. Terrorists Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar entered in January 2000 after they had been observed meeting with senior al-Qaida leaders in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, earlier that month. The government failed to track them down when they came, even though they used their own names.

[CIA/FBI]

2. Failing to link the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui in August 2001 with heightened warnings that a major attack was coming. Moussaoui is now awaiting trial for allegedly conspiring in the attacks.

[FBI/CIA]

3. Failing to discover false statements on visa applications or detect passports that were manipulated in a fraudulent manner.

[Immigration]

4. Failing to expand "no-fly lists" to include names from terrorist watch lists.

[CIA/FAA]

5. Failing to search passengers identified by the computer-based CAPPS screening system during a time described by CIA Director George Tenet when there were so many warnings that al-Qaida was about to attack that the "system was blinking red."

[CIA/FAA/Airport Security]

6. Failing to take steps to protect cockpit doors against entry by those bent on suicide hijackings despite warnings that al-Qaida was considering using airplanes as weapons to attack the United States.

[FAA]

I've put the agency or agencies I feel were responsible in those 6 "opportunities" underneath the item in brackets "[]".

1 and 2 are the result of preexisting problems with the CIA and FBI exchanging information. In short, they don't. And the result was when the surveilance and coordination should have gone from international to internal there was never a handover. The ball was dropped. 1 and 2 are the result of a systemic problem that's been identified (and was known to exist before 911, in fact its been known to exist for decades). They claim there's a mechanism in place now to do those sorts of exchanges in a timely manner. Fixed?

3. is a problem of an overwhelmed and inept bureaucracy which extended the visa, 6 months after his death, of one of the hijackers. Where we stand on fixing this sort of problem is a mystery, but I assume its not much better at this point than it was then unless major structural and procedural changes (and not just changing its name) have been implemented. Fixed?

4 and 5. More sharing of information snafus. Unless there's a mechanism in place for that information to be transfered quickly to the FAA's ATS department and acted upon swiftly, there's no reason to believe the system is any better today than it was then. Fixed?

6. I see this one as a matter more of complacency than incompetence. We hadn't had a hijacking in a decade. We were lulled into a false sense of security. This one actually is on the way to being fixed.

So 5 of the 6 major problems had to do with the sharing and coordination of information we had but didn't properly utilize. Much of that might have been sorted out if there was a single intelligence clearing house whose responsibilty was to gather input from all agencies and "connect-the-dots". And as you recall, "connect-the-dots" was a term in major use when all of this was being reviewed.

I've read and heard the arguments against an Intel Czar, and that may not be what we need. But we need some method of coordinating and disseminating intelligence gathered in a useful and timely manner. We need to have a group who's entire job is to work toward "connecting-the-dots". If that means grouping all agencies under an Intel Czar, so be it. But if so, he or she must not only be given the responsibility to coordinate intel, but also authority over all other agencies. Without both, the job won't get done.

I haven't yet made up my mind if that's the best route to go, but regardless of the route chosen its going to be a long and tough change. Intel agencies in existence are not going to want to give up their power easily nor are they going to want to submit to the direction of a super-agency. Bureaucracy 101.

But the possible catastrophic results of this continued insularity, lack of cooperation between agencies and failure to share information is foreordained.

Look at the list of those 6 opportunites above. Had we been coordinated, cooperating and sharing information between agencies before 911 there is a distinct possibility that they might actually have been opportunities, as we'd have actually had the mechanisms in place to identify and act upon the information gathered.

As it stood though, to call those "opportunities" in light of the problems which existed at the time is simply an exercise in hyperbole. There was no real opportunity at all to disrupt these people with the dysfunctional intel system we had in place at the time and to pretend there was is to give much to much credit to a system that doesn't deserve it. It also infers that the fix is easy. Its not.

So while they're nothing new until we can put "fixed" beside each one of those 6, I have to agree with the report, we may be "safer" than before 911, but we are far from safe. Until we see "fixed" by them, we shouldn't delude ourselves into believing we are.

UPDATE: I've tracked down two more of the 9 "opportunities" over at Fox.com:

7. Not sharing information linking individuals in the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole (search) in Yemen to al-Mihdhar, who had contacts with a longtime FBI informant. The Cole attack killed 17 American sailors.

[FBI/CIA]

8. Not taking adequate steps in time to find al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi in the United States.

[FBI]

9. Not recognizing that some hijackers' passports were fraudulent.

[Immigration]

Pretty much 'more of the same' concerning information sharing and a dysfunctional INS. Makes one realize why the dots were hard to connect.

Ex (Washington) Post Facto Revisionism

Couple oddities from the Washington Post.

*** WizBangBlog notes this...(also here)

The Sept. 11 commission report offers a broad critique of a central tenet of the Bush administration's foreign policy -- that the attacks have required a "war on terrorism."

The report argues that the notion of fighting an enemy called "terrorism" is too diffuse and vague to be effective.

...In this sense, 9/11 has taught us that terrorism against American interests “over there” should be regarded just as we regard terrorism against America “over here.” In this same sense, the American homeland is the planet. But the enemy is not just “terrorism,” some generic evil. This vagueness blurs the strategy. The catastrophic threat at this moment in history is more specific. It is the threat posed by Islamist terrorism —especially the al Qaeda network, its affiliates, and its ideology.
[...]
It is not a position with which Americans can bargain or negotiate. With it there is no common ground—not even respect for life—on which to begin a dialogue. It can only be destroyed or utterly isolated.

*** Reader (and friend) Curt sends me this bit from a WaPo story.....

The notion of one of Washington's most respected foreign policy figures being subjected to treatment that had at least a faint odor of a sting operation is a strange one. But the peculiarities -- and conflicting versions of events and possible motives -- were just then beginning in a case that this week bucked Berger out of an esteemed position as a leader of the Democratic government-in-waiting that had assembled around presidential nominee John F. Kerry.

1: Why would it be odd that a person--respected, or otherwise--would be subject to a sting operation after he had been found absconding with classified documents? In fact, why was he only subject to a "sting operation" that led to an investigation? Why was he not met in front of the building by a team of gun-toting FBI agents?

2: (as Curt wrote) 2. "Democratic government-in-waiting" Did I miss an election?

Just wondering ....

OK, other than hearing that its still going on, I haven't followed the Scott Peterson trial at all. But for whatever reason, this headline, "Peterson got private mailbox before wife vanished" caught my eye.

"Really", I thought. So I looked at the first paragraph:

On the day before he reported his wife missing, Scott Peterson rented a post office box where he later received private correspondence from his mistress, an investigator testified Tuesday.

OK, I know this may come off as completely unfounded. I know I've no reason to look at this one bit of information and come to any conclusion, especially when I have acknowledged being mostly ignorant about the case.

But I've got to tell you, its hard to believe someone who's going to kill his wife is going to worry about renting a PO box to hide love letters from his sweetie so his wife won't find out.

Or am I missing something here?

UPDATE (Dale):

Since I live out here in California, I have to follow the case whether I want to or not.

So far, what it seems the prosecution is doing is playing defense. Nearly everything they've presented to date seem to be stuff they think the defense counsel, Mark Geragos is going to bring up. So they're trying to defuse a whole raft of stuff before even presenting the case.

A lot of court observers are wondering why they just don't get on with it. Sooner or later, they are going to have to present a compelling narrative to the jury. They have to tell the story of how Mr. Peterson killed his wife. To date, though, they haven't even begun to do that.

The word is that this stuff is really all preliminary. Once they feel they have brought all this stuff up first, and forced Geragos to address it in cross-examination, they are hoping that they will have defused it. They can then present the narrative of the actual crime.

Later, if Geragos wants to address it again in the defense's case, they are probably hoping that the jury will find it all bit yawn-inducing to cover the same ground again.

I think it's a moderately high-risk strategy, though, because it has the danger of irritating the jury. The jury wants to hear the narrative, too, and all this stuff seems so unrelated, that by the time the prosecutors begin the narrative, the jury may feel a bit sullen and resentful at having so much of their time wasted.

So far, though, you're right. They haven't made much of case for Mr. Peterson's guilt.

Having said that, the general rule is, when you find your defendant a few hundred yards from the Mexican border with a passport, $25k in cash, and dyed blond hair and beard, he's pretty much guilty as hell.

It also explains why Mr. Peterson is being held on remand, instead of being out on bail.

Now, as far as the PO Box goes, perhaps Mr. Peterson was hoping his relationship with Ms. Frye would remain a secret during the investigation. That way, hge could still receive correspondence from her without letting the police know he was doing so.

Unfortunately for Mr. Peterson, Ms. Frye preferred to sing to the police like Barbra Streisand as soon as she learned the truth about Mr. Peterson's marital status. Somehow, I don't think he expected her to walk into MPD and start volunteering info.

Style Evolves

Reader Sean alerted me to the fact that the comment preview shows the "peekaboo" error in Internet Explorer.

I have converted the page to a table, instead of DIV tags, and the error should now be fixed. I should have done this earlier, but I overlooked it.

Actually, what should be fixed is Internet Explorer, so it can handle DIV tags the way they are supposed to work, and do, in fact, work in Mozilla.

NMCI Update

I wrote the following email to the NMCI customer satisfaction people today:

I have an outstanding ticket, for which I'd like to take the customer survey. The ticket number is SDH917448. My NMCI email address is edwin.franks@navy.mil.

I'd like to take the survey on my NMCI machine. I can't though. For almost two months now, I haven't had a working machine. And apparently it can't be fixed. Or, rather,m it can be fixed, but no one seems willing to actually do it. Everyone I talk to has a deeply reasonable excuse about why they cannot fix my machine. That's why I'm writing to you from my personal email address.

Not that that matters, anyway. Because my machine has been down for so long, my time limit to fill out a customer satisfaction survey has expired.

Although, now that I think about it, you probably don't want a customer satisfaction survey from me. Because if I ever get the chance to fill one out--which, at the moment, seems rather unlikely, since no one seems interested in rebuilding my machine--I will flame your whole organization as the slack-jawed, clueless incompetents they are.

Better examples of goal-oriented organizational discipline and competence can be gleaned from Keystone Cops movies. Hiring the Three Stooges would undoubtedly cause a threefold improvement in your customer service. I can only pray that, when Congress wakes up and discovers the true depth of your incompetent bufoonery, the Department of the Navy will be forced to drive EDS out of the contract like some kind of poison troll.

Fortunately, for me, my installation has purchased entirely new computers to issue to us. So, in addition to having to pay NMCI, we will also have to pay to maintain our own IT serves. The difference, of course, is that, unlike the "service" you provide, our computers will actually work.
Additionally, it also means that, henceforth, I can spurn you as I would a rabid dog.

Sincerely;
Dale Franks

This afternoon, I received the following reply:

Dale,

From your note, it is obvious that you are frustrated with your NMCI equipment and service. I am coordinating with our technical support folks to address the issues you are facing. I'm glad you included the ticket number.

You are correct that the survey event has ended, but we do accept your comments, opinions and suggestions submitted to our mailbox at nmcicustomersatsurveys@eds.com.

I sincerely hope that we can improve your opinion of our services through improved delivery.

Thank you for contacting us,
Marc

Marc Carraway
EDS/NMCI - Customer Satisfaction Survey

Oh, you're quite welcome, Marc.

Soldiers answer Andy Rooney

Back in April, 60 Minutes curmudgen Andy Rooney wrote an article in which he essentially called the soldiers in Iraq (and especially National Guard soldiers) "victims". Of the National Guard and reservists he had this to say:

About 40 percent of our soldiers in Iraq enlisted in the National Guard or the Army Reserve to pick up some extra money and never thought they'd be called on to fight. They want to come home.

I commented twice during that time, once voicing my disgust for Rooney's pompus and condescending column and once posting Oliver North's reply to Rooney.

Well its been a few months, but Robert Alt at NRO has now provided us with the soldier's reply ... National Guard soldiers. Rooney said reporters should ask 5 questions of the troops. Alt does so. I think you'll be very heartened by the answers these fine young men give. It makes you feel pretty damn proud of them.

In answer to Rooney's claim they're victims, they set him straight.

"We're not victims. We signed up for this. Many of us re-enlisted." Addressing the idea that National Guard members didn't know what they were getting into, Lt. Naum said the vast majority of the soldiers who are E-4 and below enlisted after 9/11 — after we were at war, and thus with the knowledge that they were likely to be called up. Sgt. Black explained that many of the men not only volunteered once to join the National Guard, but volunteered a second time to come to Iraq. Indeed, a number of the men in this very platoon either transferred into the platoon to serve in Iraq or specifically volunteered to be deployed.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, they're very appreciative of your support. So keep it coming.

Jeff Goldstein break

The guy is just funny. I have to go over there at least once a day to get a laugh break. His latest, which had me cleaning coffee off my screen ... again, is below:

9 names for Ben & Jerry's Ted Kennedy tribute ice cream.*

1. 40 mg. Lipitor Crunch
2. Scotch Almond Neat, and no, I don’t want any goddamn water with it
3. Mint Chocolate Fillibuster
4. Hooterlicious Sour Cream Potato Skin Frenzy
5. Star Spangled Spending
6. Krispy Kegger and bring on the hookers!
7. Juniper Berries, Cocktail Onions and Cream
8. Rocky Load
9. Cookies and Kopechne

*It exists. In my head

If he's not a part of your daily blog stops he ought to be.

OK, NOW they're equal ...

Heh ... You knew it would happen, you just wondered when:

Two Canadian women who were among the first same-sex couples to get legally married may become the first same-sex couple in Canada to get a divorce.

The two, who decided to call it quits after getting married last summer, are trying to get the country's Divorce Act amended so they can go their separate ways, a lawyer for one of the women said today.

Wonder who gets the golf clubs.

Iraq and al Qaida connections

One of the tidbits being reported about the 911 Report is its confirmation of ties between Iraq and Osamma bin Laden's al-Qaida:

The highly anticipated report provided new details on contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida, noting that Osama bin Laden began exploring a possible alliance in the early 1990s. In one new disclosure, the report says that an Iraqi delegation traveled to Afghanistan in July 1998 to meet with the ruling Taliban and with bin Laden.

Intelligence indicates that Iraq may have offered bin Laden safe haven, but he declined after apparently deciding that Afghanistan was a better location. The report says although there were some "friendly contacts" between Iraq and al-Qaida and a common hatred of the United States, none of these contacts "ever developed into a collaborative relationship" and that Iraq was not involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Let's see, OBL explores a possible alliance with Iraq, an Iraqi delegation meets with OBL in Afghanistan, Iraq offers OBL safe haven.

Well there it is ... Dick Cheney was right. There were ties and contacts between Iraq and OBL.

Wonder if that will make it past page A27 in the NYT if it makes it at all.

Supply, Demand, and Prices: It's not just a good idea; it's the law.

Susan Estrich, no Republican hack by any means, writes that the Senate is trying to pass a bill that's flatly unconstitutional.

I figured there had to be some catch when Bruce Kuhlik, the general counsel of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association, approached me about looking at the constitutionality of the Senate bill requiring American manufacturers to produce and sell prescription drugs to foreign exporters at the same prices they sell them to foreign governments and consumers. We all know people who go online to get their medicines from Canada; what this bill aims to do is require the drug companies to assure that there will be an ample, safe supply of drugs for American consumers at the Canadian price. According to the congressional findings supporting the bill, the lower prices of foreign markets could save Americans at least $38 billion per year.

Or it could cost taxpayers as much as that, if the bill is unconstitutional. I'm one of those people who believe in very broad federal power. I started teaching at Harvard when Bruce was just graduating, and my first course was about federal power.

At the same time he asked me for my opinion, he also retained my ideological opposite, Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago Law School, to look at the same problem. Generally, we agree on nothing. I figured he was looking for a debate.

He didn't get one.

Congress has broad power to engage in economic regulation. But you can't do it by taking away personal property without regard to investments, expectations or patent protection. The takings clause provides that "nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation."

What Congress is trying to do is to ensure that cheaper Canadian drugs will be available for re-importation to the United States. After all, many senior citizens buy drugs from Canada, because of the price. So, in it's "wisdom" the Senate is attempting to repeal the law of supply and demand by requiring that drug companies produce and sell prescription drugs to foreign exporters at the same prices they sell them to foreign governments and consumers.

Now, first of all, as Estrich points out, that's just flatly unconstitutional. And it's not a little unconstitutional, it's not even a close call. As Estrich puts it:

How could this legislation NOT amount to a violation of the takings clause? Whether you considered it a per se violation, or applied a rule of reason, or looked at it from the perspective of due process or straight takings clause, or from the perspective of patent law, I kept getting the same answer.

Moreover, the Senators know it to be unconstitutional, because Congress' own lawyers told them so.

And what about the Congressional Research Service when it looked at this problem? Could it have missed the obvious? If the bill did what it was supposed to, Congress' lawyers concluded, it would be per se unconstitutional.

So, the constitutionality here is simply a no-brainer.

From an economic standpoint, though, what is even more irksome is that it illustrates precisely what is wrong—and has always been wrong—with the government's intervention in health care. It is the irrational desire to believe that health care can be made affordable by controlling prices by fiat.

But, as Jon pointed out a few days ago, that's a hideous misunderstanding about how prices work. The price of a good or service isn't some capitalist rip-off designed to hoover your pocket empty so that some fat cat can light his Havana with a hundred-dollar bill. Prices reflect the balance between supply and demand.

You know, in computer work, we have a saying that's a bit of a joke, but in nonetheless true: When developing software, you have three options: a quick delivery time, a huge range of bells and whistles, or a low price. Pick any two.

Similarly, prices, demand, and supply work the same way. You can't change one of those three items without fundamentally affecting the other two. If you artificially change one of those economic factors, the other two will reflect that artificiality. If you artificially lower the price, demand will rise, but the supply of the product will decrease, leading to shortages. If you artificially raise the price, demand will fall, leading to surpluses.

In addition, it is not only supply and demand that regulates prices, but the seller must be able to recoup the production costs, as well. If a product cannot be sold at a price greater than it costs to produce, then, the product will not be produced. You can't lose money on every sale, but make it up in volume.

It takes 10-15 years and costs $800 million on average to bring a new medicine to market. That's 15 years of research and $800 mil down the drain before you even sell your first tab on the street. Moreover, once you get the drug approved, you are on the patent clock, so you've only got a few years to make that $800 million back before your drug goes generic, and all your competitors start making it.

It's easy to paint the drug manufacturers as plutocratic greedheads who are charging your granny $400 a month for her Plavix, so that they can go to PhARMA conferences in Barbados. And, you know what, there may even be a little truth to it.

But so what? If you set up economic incentives that make it ever more difficult to recoup that $800 mil, then you might as well shoot granny in the head right now, because, in a fairly short time, you won't be able to get her any new drugs anywhere, for any price.

If you really want to seriously affect the cost of new drugs, then, as a first step, you might want to look into streamlining FDA regulatory approval. Why does it take 15 years to get new drugs to the market? It's because the FDA's regulatory process is needlessly long and complicated. For instance, after you perform two phases of clinical trials to determine the safety of a drug, which, really, should be the FDA's main concern, you then have to spend another 2 to 5 years doing Phase III Clinical trials to determine the drug's efficacy.

So, during that 2 to 5 years that the new drug is in Phase III trials, how many people will die for lack of it? Depending on the disease, that number can be pretty high. You can cut a third of the time and cost off of bringing drugs to market just by eliminating the requirement for Phase III testing.

And, frankly, Phases I and II don't really catch all the safety hazards, now that we're on the subject. Remember thalidomide? That was fully approved, until the horrific birth defects that resulted from its use became apparent.

But safety concerns are at least legitimate, even if we grant that Phase I and II testing won't catch all the problems. Drugs are complicated, and so is the body, so any drug use is a crapshoot until you get a large enough population to study, which, you can never really get in clinical trials. You can get the obvious things, but that's really about it.

But Phase III is much harder to justify. Look, after Phase II clinical trials, you already have a pretty good idea about efficacy. Usually—although, admittedly, not always—if your Phase II patients suffered no side effects, but they all died of their diseases, anyway, you've gotta figure that the efficacy results aren't good. But, if it does work, and all your patients went into remission of their lung cancer, then it's a pretty harsh judgment to force the company to keep the drug off the shelf for another three years, while tens of thousands die, so that you can run it through efficacy trials.

No, if you're really concerned about drug prices, then, as Ronald Reagan told us so many years ago, Government is the problem, not the solution.

UPDATE (JON): Dr Galen has more, including a breakdown of retail pharmacy sales by country.

Fix the military, but do it right.

I've been troubled by all of this "we need more troops in Iraq but we don't have enough to send more" talk. For whatever reason, it just didn't sound right to me. So when I read this today, I did a little digging:

"The Army is stretched dangerously thin," Representative Ike Skelton of Missouri, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, in a hearing on Wednesday.

"We are growing the Army as fast as we can," General Schoomaker said later in the hearing.

Well OK, that's great General Schoomaker. But here's my problem. At the height of Vietnam, 1968, we had 550,000 troops there. True we also had an active force of 3,550,000. But the percentage committed to Vietnam was 15% of the total force.

Right. So fast forward to Iraq. We have 130,000 to 160,000 there out of a total force that is significantly smaller (1,423,348 as of Dec, 2003). But when you look at the percentage of the force committed, its only 9 - 11%.

The question then becomes "why was 15% sustainable in 1968 and 10% isn't in 2004?"

A few reasons. Back in 1968, we had much more ground combat power than we do now. That was because of the Cold War and Vietnam. We had to maintain our Cold War forces in Europe while we also fought a hot war in Vietnam. So more of the total force was made up of ground forces than other forces.

Secondly, since the end of the Cold War, we've expanded our military's presence through out the globe. And while some of these missions are only comprised of 3 or 4 personnel, we have military representation in 149 countries including the US and its territories. Now that will spread your forces thin when your end strength is 1,423,348 for the entire military.

Lastly, we played "peace dividend" with our military at the end of the Cold War and essentially gutted them thinking there weren't any foes left worthy of that size military (hello, China?!). That was a mistake. We also came to believe, again mistakenly, that our technology could be used in lieu of ground combat power. Much the same thought process was adopted by intelligence agencies. Based on our experience of the last few years, both were wrong.

So what's the solution?

Obviously, grow the military as Gen. Schoomaker has said they're doing. But do so in a way that addresses the ground combat power deficit. In other words, as anachronistic as the infantryman may seem in today's laser-guided war era, he's still the only part of the military which can take and hold ground.

Secondly, put some of the sustainment capability (combat service and service support) back in the active military. It doesn't all (nor did it ever) belong among the reserve components. Not if we're going to fight a War on Terror which will require long deployments. But when this is done, keep the teeth-to-tail ratio lean. More teeth and just enough tail to sustain and support them.

Third, give up some of the high tech weaponry ... at least for the time being. While its important to keep the technological edge, it may not be as important to have 10 squadrons of F-22 Raptors than it is to have 10 divisions of infantry light fighters. Maybe instead we go with 5 squadrons to fund the 10 divisons.

Lastly, cut our troop strength in Europe drastically. Get them out of there. Shift some to the east if we must, but there is absolutely no reason to continue to subsidize Europe's defense when they are quite capable of doing so themselves. Time to make they pay their way. Same with Korea.