Saturday, October 04, 2003

Wow - A pretty amazing week, all in all. My second Hughalanche in two weeks (my hit counts were pretty stunning after Hewitt linked to me again, even better than last week's link), plus six or seven new job leads, a halfways decent interview, and a little 40-hour job that will pay my bills through some time in November. And another little spike in donations at my Amazon link (on the right side of the page). Not bad.

Question for Monday - what does the Limbaugh Painkiller brouhaha tell us about the media at large?

I'll be writing about it Monday morning. See you then, bring a friend, and have a great weekend until then.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/4/2003 08:47:02 AM

We'll Know Them When We See Them - Yesterday on CNN I saw Nancy Pelosi's harsh visage scowling at me through the TV screen like an avenging comparative women's lit professor. Like most of the left, she was trying to make as much mileage out of the Dems' official reading of the Kay Report as possible. Here's her statement, via Sharkblog (who dissects her statement with extreme prejudice):
"As the ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on Intelligence, I have seen no evidence or intelligence that suggests that Iraq indeed poses an imminent threat to our nation. If the Administration has that information, they have not shared it with the Congress.

"If we invade Iraq, we will show our military power. If we can eliminate the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction without invading, we will show our strength."
I'd love to ask a Democrat - any pro-Hussein, pro-dictatorship anti-war Democrat - what they mean by "imminent".

Given that intelligence is so crushingly imprecise (especially against an enemy with a closed society that is actively trying to obfuscate your intelligence efforts), how do you determine "imminence?"
  • We didn't know Pearl Harbor was "imminent" until the first bombs fell. Literally - even after a group of Minnesota Navy Reservists on the USS Ward sank a Japanese midget submarine off the mouth of the harbor, and after a radar station detected the incoming raid, no alert was called. We didn't know what was "imminent".
  • We didn't know the invasion of South Korea was "imminent" until North Korean tanks and artillery immolated the ROK and American front lines by complete surprise.
  • We didn't know the Tet Offensive was "imminent" until bombs started going off around Saigon.
  • The Israelis didn't know the Yom Kippur war was "imminent" until Egyptian and Syrian artillery began plowing holes in their positions
  • The Japanese didn't know the Om Shinrikyu nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway was "imminent" until people started falling over sick and dead.
  • We had no idea that 9/11 was "imminent" until the first 911 calls reported a crash and fire in the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
One of the things that drove me from liberalism 20 years ago was the Democrat party's complete frivolity at foreign policy. Even as a committed liberal, I was a student of military history and the history of diplomacy - and even when I fulminated with anti-capitalist rage, I was astounded by the foreign policy and military history ignorance of my fellow liberals. It's only gotten worse.

So, a note to Nancy Pelosi, and anyone who thinks that the Democrats can be trusted with foreign policy - the only way we'll know when a WMD attack is "imminent" is when people start keeling over from sarin exposure, streaming into emergency rooms with Anthrax - or when a radioactive dustcloud from a "dirty bomb" erupts over some American city.

This episode of Day By Day seemed grimly appropriate:



So, Democrat readers (and I know you're out there): what's the difference between Jan, in the strip, and Nancy Pelosi?
posted by Mitch Berg 10/4/2003 07:51:06 AM

The Recall - I don't write a lot about the recall, compared to some bloggers - I'm not from California or anything - but I had to mention this.

Yesterday, Schwarzenegger asked:
"'One wonders what the motivation of all this is, why I'm getting thrown all this stuff three days before' the vote, he said in a pool interview. 'Where have they been the last 20 years, 10 years, five years?'

He also said he would have apologized long ago to women he had groped -- had they said something. 'No one complained to me,' he said. 'When someone comes to me and says how dare you say this, how dare you do this, I can apologize right then and there.'"
Well, there's a simple reason; stealing momentum.

Arnold's had all the momentum in this race since long before he even announced. The Davis/Bustamante/LATimes machine is keenly aware that not only has Bustamante not developed any traction in the polls, but that in fact momentum is going the wrong way. Arnold has set the agenda, the pace and the tone for the whole campaign.

Now, the LATimes (which is acting like a complicit tool of the Davis/Bustamante campaign) has seized the initiative...to a point. The race isn't about lioinizing Schwarzenegger anymore - this must be increasing Arnold's negatives - but I don't see it increasing Bustamante's chances.

If anything, I'd suspect this drives up the "No" vote against recall. Will it be enough to save Davis?

I think Arnold's move yesterday - declaring it the last day he'd respond to womanizing and Nazi-sympathy allegations - was a good one. He needs to get back on message - message that was working in a way star power alone couldn't have, until last week.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/4/2003 06:53:36 AM

Friday, October 03, 2003

There's Hope! - Halle Berry is available!

I mean, since Marisa Tomei hasn't returned my calls...

(Via Cheleblog)
posted by Mitch Berg 10/3/2003 09:10:23 PM

Chalabi - Reding covers Ahmed Chalabi's speech to the UN, an event that was greeted with deafening silence elsewhere:
"To those who stood with the dictator and who continue to question the intentions of the American and British governments in undertaking this liberation, we invite you to come and visit the mass graves where half a million of our citizens lie, come and visit the dried up marshes, come and visit Halabja where chemicals were dropped on civilians, come and examine the lists of the disappeared whose right to live was taken away from them by Saddam Hussein. And we the Iraqi people will ask you why you chose to remain silent. [emphasis mine]."
It'll be interesting, seeing history's verdict on Chalabi. The mainstream media seems obsessed with painting him as a power-mongering puppet of Halliburton, or a con man using Iraqi's misery to further his own agenda.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/3/2003 06:00:35 PM

I Don't Believe In Karma, But I Believe What Goes Around Comes Around - Wednesday, I got a call from a local recruiter. A company I interviewed at last May (who thought I was a great personality fit, but I wasn't the most qualified person for the position) has a position open that is right up my alley, and could they submit my resume? Sure, I answered.

Yesterday, company called back and wanted an interview - today.

So, I'm getting ready to head out for an early-afternoon interview.

Prayers, karmic infusions and best wishes gratefully accepted.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/3/2003 11:04:15 AM

Arnold and Hitler - The SanFran Chronicle has the best story I've yet seen on Schwarzenegger's "Hitler" flap.

As the article says, it's a faint trail:
"The allegations that Arnold Schwarzenegger expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler during the filming of 'Pumping Iron' have been circulating since the actor announced his candidacy this summer, but the film's director, quoted by ABC News on Thursday, denied the story last month when contacted by The Chronicle.

ABC News and the New York Times obtained a copy of an unpublished book proposal by the film's producer and director, George Butler, that contained quotes allegedly made by Schwarzenegger in 1975 during an interview while making the movie.

In the book proposal, Schwarzenegger is quoted as saying, according to ABC News, 'I admired Hitler, for instance, because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education, up to power. I admire him for being such a good public speaker and for what he did with it.' Then Schwarzenegger supposedly adds, 'like Hitler in the Nuremberg stadium. And have all those people scream at you and just being total agreement whatever you say.'"
Hardly goosestepping, is it?

I saw Arnold on the news this morning. Paraphrasing, he said that he admired Hitler's speaking style and ability as a communicator.

As the son of a speech teacher and a lifelong student of political oratory, I've got news for you; Leave Hitler's message out of the equation for a moment - Arnold was right. Hitler was an amazing, mesmerizing public orator. More tellingly, he was one of the first world leaders to genuinely understand and exploit the poiwer of the electronic media. He was a pioneer at using the media for political ends. If you are in the profession of trying to communicate with people (as Schwarzenegger, an actor and now a politician, certainly is), Hitler was, in terms of style and technique, a seminal figure - which one can say without denying for a moment that he used those talents in the promotion of colossal, corrosive evil.

Does allowing that Hitler was a great speaker and communicator and manipulator of the media imply any admiration for his politics, policies, and historical legacy? Does saying that imply that the speaker sympathizes with Hitler and Naziism?

I can't speak for Schwarzenegger, but speaking for myself - if that's what you believe, tell it to my face. Make sure your medical insurance is paid up first.

This fracas is a sign of how desperate the LA Times is getting to keep their people in office.

P.S. - How much do you want to be some moonbat lefty blog clips out the part where I say "Hitler was a great public speaker" et al, and quotes it to show what a bunch of Nazi sympathizers we conservative bloggers are?

Any bets on that?
posted by Mitch Berg 10/3/2003 10:20:57 AM

Chait's Numbers- As I pointed out in yesterday's post on the subject, a whole crowd of conservative bloggers piled on Jonathan Chait.

And I didn't even count the big guns! Ponnuru at the Corner attacks Chait's math:
"I’ve been debating Jonathan Chait over at The New Republic about whether Bush hatred is justified, or at least rational. Chait had the last word, and I declined to prolong the debate. But I can’t resist making one small point. In the course of our debate we disagreed about whose tax cuts were bigger, the incumbent’s or Ronald Reagan’s. I said Reagan’s were bigger, in support of my point that Bush is not the rampaging right-winger Chait makes him out to be. Chait said that Bill Gale and Peter Orszag of the Brookings Institution had established that Bush’s tax cut was larger than Reagan’s as a share of GDP “if you allow for some technical corrections.”

In response, I noted that I doubted I’d agree with this duo’s technical assumptions—I’ve criticized Orszag’s work before. In his final entry to the debate, Chait explained what the “technical corrections” were. There were two. First, Chait and company exclude 45 percent of Reagan’s tax cut from consideration! That’s some technical correction. Reagan’s tax cut indexed tax brackets for inflation. In the 1970s, people were taxed on the basis of inflationary gains in income even though their real income hadn’t risen. For Chait, the 45 percent of the tax cut that was devoted to ending that practice need not be counted as a tax cut because it “merely offset natural revenue growth from inflation.” Second, the cost of Reagan’s 1981 tax cut should, in Chait’s view, be considered only after taking account of the 1982 tax hike that partly undid it."
Read on, of course.

So the question is - and perhaps Hewitt, with his contacts with Peter Beinart, is the one to answer this - will Chait sound off on this one again? Will he continue to rationalize his hatred, or transfer his hate to more plebeian targets?
posted by Mitch Berg 10/3/2003 06:30:06 AM

WMD Watch - I'm not normally one given to heaping rhetorical abuse on my opponents. If you like that sort of thing for its own gleeful sake on a regular basis, you need to read here and here.

That being said, anyone who reads the Kay report on Iraqi WMDs and surmises that "There's No There There" is a deluded fool who either flunked history, or learned it from people with an agenda not far to the right of Saddam's.

Sullivan has several posts on the subject of the Kay report in today's Dish. Scroll down, read 'em all.

Key points? According to Sullivan:
    >
  • A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.

  • A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.

  • Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.

  • New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN.
  • Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).
  • A line of UAVs not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 km, 350 km beyond the permissible limit.
  • Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the UN.
  • Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1000 km - well beyond the 150 km range limit imposed by the UN. Missiles of a 1000 km range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets through out the Middle East, including Ankara, Cairo, and Abu Dhabi.
  • Clandestine attempts between late-1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology related to 1,300 km range ballistic missiles --probably the No Dong -- 300 km range anti-ship cruise missiles, and other prohibited military equipment.
Money quote?:
One of the crazy premises of the "Where Are They?" crowd is that we would walk into that huge country and find large piles of Acme bombs with anthrax in them. That's not what a WMD program is about; and never was. Saddam was careful. He had to hide from the U.N. and he had to find ways, over more than a decade, to maintain a WMD program as best he could, ready to reactivate whenever the climate altered in his favor. Everything points to such a strategy and to such weapons being maintained. [emphasis mine - mb]
Anyone (on the left, especially) that thinks Saddam's only worthwhile goal would have been mounds of missiles, bunkers full of bombs, piles of poison gas all stockpiled and ready to go as of March 2003 is myopic and deluded.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/3/2003 06:28:41 AM

Hatch Back In The News - Mike Hatch? Dishing out patronage?

Well that's what Republicans in the Legislature think:
"It was a staple in small-town newspapers from Stillwater to the South Dakota border last year: a local activist appointed to a task force formed by Attorney General Mike Hatch to study health care or other consumer issues.

In each case, the appointee was a legislative candidate from Hatch's DFL Party.

Republicans were quick to accuse him of using his office for partisan advantage, and they have kept it up long after the task forces faded into history along with the November elections. On Wednesday, state GOP leaders called on Ramsey County prosecutors to investigate whether Hatch illegally destroyed public documents relating to the task forces."
Hatch, long a gadfly to the GOP and the only DFLer among the state's elected Constitutional Officers, has allegedly been playing dirty tricks all year long to try to impugn the Pawlenty Administration; making hay out of budget cuts to the state Gang Strike Force, claiming that the administration favored releaseing sex offenders to the general population and that several administration and state GOP officials' ties to NewTel and NewAccess were shady, and of course the American Bankers brouhaha.

"Developing Hot", as Drudge says.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/3/2003 06:01:42 AM

Sounds About Right - Dave Barry, via Cathy in the Wright:
"Men are like a fine wine. They start out as grapes, and it's up to women to stomp the crap out of them until they turn into something acceptable to have dinner with."

posted by Mitch Berg 10/3/2003 06:00:53 AM

HURL - The SCSU Scholars continue their embarassing look at the course offerings at St. Cloud State's Human Relations department.

Read it - it'll make you grind your teeth, but do it anyway.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/3/2003 06:00:34 AM

The Times - The LA Times, that is. How anyone can look at the example of the Los Angeles Times, and still claim that the mainstream media isn't utterly, completely, committedly liberal, is beyond me.

Medved had an excellent series of points about this today (note to Medved: Start posting the key points from your show on your website. Better yet. start a blog, a la Hewitt. Heck - hire someone to do the blog for you. For a nominal fee, I'm available...); when Juanita Broaderick came out publicly to charge Bill Clinton with...harassment fondling talking about porn movies creating a "hostile work environment" rape, the LA Times spiked the story. More telling still, they even excised mentions of the case from a George Will opinion column! And yet this "story" - these anonymous women telling unsubstantiated (or in some case, long-debunked) stories are not only covered, but get breathless, unquestioning front page treatment!

Speaking of Medved - he had an excellent, moving apologia for Limbaugh's apparent, alleged addiction on his show today. He described the process of the operation - which includes drilling into and attaching equipment to the patient's skull; I wanted to pop a couple of T3s myself by the time he went to break.

More on the Limbaugh flap later today or tomorrow.

The Monkeys carry a useful digest of LA Times-related coverage in the blog world. And while I can scarcely get overly analytical about football even when I'm bored, much less with the Twins in the AL playoffs, the King from SCSU Scholars has a a great perspective.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/3/2003 06:00:32 AM

Had to Happen - Right? - The Yanks even the series with a 4-1 win in the Bronx.

Splitting in NYC is all right. Right?

I'm getting that "heart in the throat" feeling I got during both of the ALCS in '87 and '91...
posted by Mitch Berg 10/3/2003 06:00:08 AM

Thursday, October 02, 2003

Key Economic Index Creeps Upward - The Berg Consumer Confidence Index (BCCI) took its biggest jump in three months this week, rising from a 9 to a 18 on a scale of 0-100.

The index, which hovered at an alltime low of 1 through much of last winter, rose to a 12 during a brief flurry of job orders when the Iraq war began, settled to a 7 in April, and then hovered around 15 for much of the summer, spiked upward after a two-week deluge of new job requisitions, including seven in the last two days.

Analysts indicate the Index could spike as much as another five points if a short-term contract job is confirmed later this week. That increase would push the BCCI into territory it hasn't seen since the summer of 2002.

"The new numbers reflect not only the huge jump in incoming job leads, but two interviews in the next two days, which could portend a record jump in the BCCI in the next few weeks", says analyst Greta Krupper. "But we'd be wise to refrain from irrational exuberance - lots of companies interview people when they're not even close to ready to hire anyone."

"No way. The economy's been drooling, and the tech sector is dragging its knuckles", says analyst Chonathan Jait.

Mitch Berg could not be reached for comment, as he was trying to find the tie that matches his shirt.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/2/2003 12:27:08 PM

The Chait Goes On - Quick, where did the following come from:
A recent article of mine in ______ defending Bush hatred seems to have worked like some kind of conservative dog whistle, silently summoning drooling right-wingers out of their lairs to bay at the moon...Wait. Did I just lump David Brooks together with a bunch of incoherent right-wing knuckle-draggers?
Who wrote this piece? Was it:

A) StarRabbit Eikenson-Filck, posting on Indymedia.com?
B) Jonathan Chait, writing for The New Republic?
C) Moonbat lefty blogger Hesiod?
D) An anonymous writer on lefty conspiracy site "Democrats.com"?
E) What's the Difference?

If you answered E, you know where this is going.

---

Wait, I'm being unfair. Let's start at the beginning.

Last week, Jonathan Chait, a "senior" editor at The New Republic, posted an article, "Mad About You: the Case for Bush Hatred".

A chorus of voices rose to attack the article and the sentiments behind it:
  • Hugh Hewitt, who featured the article on his nationwide talk show,
  • Powerline's Rocket Man, Trunk and Deacon with a total of five articles covering everything from Chait's many factual miscues to the wider implications of the cultural war,
  • Michael Novak, who carves up the Chait's whiny approach; "Sensing desperation, Chait's comments about the younger Bush's accent, posture, and mannerisms come down to ethnic prejudice and intellectual bigotry. None of this is remotely rational."
  • David Brooks in the NYTimes, who summed up Chait's overall approach "The quintessential new warrior scans the Web for confirmation of the president's villainy. He avoids facts that might complicate his hatred. He doesn't weigh the sins of his friends against the sins of his enemies. But about the president he will believe anything."
  • Exultate Justi with a fine counterattack,
  • Finally, my own piece
Is Chait right or wrong to hate - not disagree with, not oppose, but hate the President, with all the moral and political ramifications (to say nothing of journalistic ones)? You be the judge.

Was Chait's article a petulant, misguided display that proves the old saw "Hatred is Ignorance?" Was it chock full of inaccuracies, factual errors and personal grudgemongering that reads as if it dates back to high school ("He reminds me of a certain type I knew in high school - the kid who was given a fancy sports car for his sixteenth birthday and believed that he had somehow earned it")? Read the articles above. I link, you decide.

Yesterday, Chait responded.

---

In one of my favorite Saturday Night Live bits ever, Heather Locklear plays a deranged Cable Sales Channel hucksterette.

Locklear did a perfect rendition of a QVC shill, pitching yet another jar of snake oil (or in this case, a Ronco-ish pasta maker, invented by Mike Myers) - with a difference. Amid the patter, completely by surprise, Locklear threw in little bon mots of corrosive racism [I'm paraphrasing here - I can't find a script for the sketch online]:
"...just add your ingredients, and bingo! Instant Pasta! Why, this machine is so easy to use, even a Puerto Rican can figure it out!"
And, as a horrified Myers tried to explain the simple instructions...:
I'm glad this machine is easy to figure out. Because normally when a product says it has easy instructions, I think it's a big fat lie. Like the Holocaust.
What made the sketch so hilarious was that the caustic racism slipped into the most innocuous places, and was all the more notable for the banality of its surroundings.

In yesterday's New Republic piece, Chait does much the same.

He goes to great lengths - in both articles - to prove his bona fides as an open-minded person and legitimate commentator:
I spend far more time reading the conservative media--in addition to National Review Online, The Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal editorial page, and Andrew Sullivan's website are all part of my daily fare--than I do reading liberal commentary.
In his first article, he said:
Antipathy to Bush has, for example, led many liberals not only to believe the costs of the Iraq war outweigh the benefits but to refuse to acknowledge any benefits at all, even freeing the Iraqis from Saddam Hussein's reign of terror. And it has caused them to look for the presidential nominee who can best stoke their own anger, not the one who can win over a majority of voters--who, they forget, still like Bush.
Reasonable, no?

And yet there are the outbursts - like Locklear's comic surprise trips into bigotry, only serious this time:
A recent article of mine in TNR defending Bush hatred seems to have worked like some kind of conservative dog whistle, silently summoning drooling right-wingers out of their lairs to bay at the moon. Writing in The Weekly Standard, a conservative talk-show host named Hugh Hewitt calls my piece "much-ridiculed," the entirety of his evidence consisting of the fact that a few conservative bloggers dislike it.
Those few bloggers were Powerline, the Monkeys, Exultate Justi and myself.

Drooling, baying dogs? Read the bios of Powerline's Hindrocket, Big Trunk, and Deacon. Compare them with Chait's bio. You be the judge.

And this:
Did I just lump David Brooks together with a bunch of incoherent right-wing knuckle-draggers?
Knuckle-draggers? ("Oh, Jon - I bet you say that to all the conservatives...").

While I get around in four languages, play ten musical instruments and can do everything from the Brandenburg Concertos to Anarchy in the UK from memory, am passionate about classical Russian literature and am raising a writer and an artist, I guess the dragging knuckles would explain all this gravel in my lunch.

While the insults were the low-rent stuff of the college newspapers (that had found their way for whatever reason in a respected national liberal magazine), they were indeed part of the key to Chait's article. Read all the commentary above - the David Brooks piece, Mike Novak's article, the five Powerline posts, Exultate Justi's post and my screed. While each piece was different, and most took slightly different tacks on the story (leaving aside Powerline, whose overlapping expertises allow them to divide and conquer like few blogs this side of the Volokh Clan), in the end all eight made similar points - read for yourself, note the overlap - all say, essentially, that Chait's original article was factually challenged, relied as much on what appeared to be personal, petulant emotional slights stemming from an academically-bred sense of entitlement as on whatever "facts" he presented, evinced no understanding of conservatives or the reasons for Bush's popularity, and was a poorly-written rant that reflected very badly on what has always been considered a respectable magazine.

Despite the similarity in content, tone and style among the eight pieces, though, Chait observes a strict hierarchy:
  1. David Brooks, being from the New York Times, gets a collegial nod of respect: "Brooks is intelligent and an excellent writer".
  2. The National Review's Michael Novak, on the other hand, is of a lower caste, but at least gets a special dispensation: "Novak's column was a semi-literate rant about me, filled with sweeping invective, bizarre digressions, and, strangely-enough, phrases in bold-face seemingly at random." He's semi-literate - but, along with the likes of "National Review Online, The Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal editorial page, and Andrew Sullivan's website", as he puts it, he's at least one of the right semi-literates, the ones that work in the same corner of the industry he does.
  3. Trunk, Hindrocket, Deacon, Exultate Justi, Hugh Hewitt and myself, on the other hand working as we do in the nekulturny wild frontier of talk radio and the blogophere? No matter how many ways we fold, spindle and mutilate his article (and let's be honest - we did), we're like the Indian untouchable caste - beneath contempt, much less consideration.
Old-media bigotry in action? The actions of someone who would never try for a gig at the National Review, but just might want a job at the Times one day? Or just the sign of a guy who can't argue the facts?

Hewitt said:
This is a reaction that suggests our collective analysis of Chait's screed scored, I think, and the Powerline gents, Mitch at ShotintheDark and other bloggers who took Chait apart line by line must also be pleased to have been so denounced.

What is curious, however, is why Peter Beinart is allowing a much respected magazine to be hijacked by a feverish writer resorting to the sort of tactics associated with the paranoid of both right and left. A loose cannon like Chait may be a subscription magnet for the MoveOn.org crowd, but hardly representative of the writing style that has marked TNR for its many decades of responsible commentary.
I think Hugh's right - Chait's response is a churlish, defensive jumble.

Caste systems aside, Chait's second piece was no better than the first, of course; fisking it is almost a rote exercise. Chait says:
The irony is that the exertions of the anti Bush-haters lack even an attempt at analytical rigor. Brooks does not even mention, let alone try to refute, my argument.
Buncombe. First, at least three of the eight posts listed above specifically addressed the points in your article, showing them to be groundless, specious, hopeless.

Second: There was little to refute! The article was like a kid's tantrum - impossible to refute, something you'd ignore if you weren't worry about reinforcing the behavior!
Novak and Hewitt's responses are on the level of discourse you'd find at a Howard Dean rally.
And yet, given the intellectual vacuity of the original article, that level of discourse may have been more than Chait deserved - again, read the original, and you can be the judge.

Here's a howler:
The most glaring absence in Brooks's column is the word "impeachment." In exploring the cause of liberal anger, it would seem relevant that Republicans took the highly unusual step of setting a perjury trap and impeaching a popular Democratic president.
Ah. It's the GOP's fault! If only we hadn't held Clinton accountable for his behavior, they'd cut Bush a break!

Chait closes:
The timing of Brooks's plea for civility is a tad suspicious. After Republican culture wars softened up Clinton, and tainted Al Gore, paving the way for Bush's election, suddenly it's time to declare president-hating out of bounds.
No. It's time to move it to the fringe - where it was during the Clinton years, and where it should be today.
Yes, Brooks criticized some of the excesses of Clinton-hatred, but he vigorously supported impeachment.
Right. Rather than succumb to irrational hatred - the thing Chait himself glorified in his first piece, with its endless, niggling references to Bush's accent, his walk, his childhood - Brooks (and many of us) favored settling the argument through a dispassionate, legal procedure. Rather than flailing away in an endless, circular emotional argument pitting poles of fringe partisan hatred against fringe partisan forgiveness.
It's true that some of the Bush-haters go way too far--Michael Moore comes to mind. But if Brooks wants to proscribe all Bush-haters, not just the conspiracy-mongers, then what he seeks isn't a higher level of discourse but raw partisan advantage
For starters - let's remember what this is about; this is Jonathan Chait defending his justification of hatred, an ignorant, uncultured, ugly emotion that masks ignorance, bigotry and most of the ignoble side of the human condition. It's not defensible.

And not to speak for Brooks, but I suspect the real goal is to identify and castigate the lunatic fringe.

Which is what Jonathan Chait is - and where he's dragging The New Republic.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/2/2003 10:26:40 AM

Testing - Oh Blogger, Where Art Thou?
posted by Mitch Berg 10/2/2003 09:18:59 AM

When Blogger Yaks - Blogger seems to have eaten all my larger articles.

Patience. Much more to come.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/2/2003 08:02:32 AM

Wednesday, October 01, 2003

Chaitred Revisited - According to HughHewitt, Jonathan Chait has referred to the Powerline gents and I as "drooling right wingers," and "incoherent right-wing knuckle draggers."

Hewitt says:
What is curious, however, is why Peter Beinart is allowing a much respected magazine to be hijacked by a feverish writer resorting to the sort of tactics associated with the paranoid of both right and left. A loose cannon like Chait may be a subscription magnet for the MoveOn.org crowd, but hardly representative of the writing style that has marked TNR for its many decades of responsible commentary.
Detailed reply tomorrow.

Until then, here's Chait's original article (pour yourself a drink, it's a long one), here's my response, and here's a post linking to all of Powerline's commentary. You decide who's the drooling knuckledragger - or merely the petulant pseudointellectual who's trying to justify his two-year tantrum.

'Til then, I'sa gonna go git all likkered up, shine me some deer, and club me some wimmins.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/1/2003 03:41:08 PM

Much Ado About Tom - I'm a conservative. No bones about it. In a perfect world, Tom McClintock would be the lone Republican in the California recall race right now. Would he be winning? Ex Post Facto polls taken in the context of an electoral circus aside, we don't know. We do know that the moderate, sometimes ill-informed, socially-relatively-liberal but apparently-solidly-Friedmanesque Schwartzenegger has put "electable", "California Republican" and "Fiscal Responsibility" into the same sentence in time for a meaningful election.

Here's a bit of advice from Minnesota; even assuming McClintock doesn't pull out and hand his voters over to Schwartzenegger, I don't think it'll matter.

Two months before the 2002 Minnesota gubernatorial race, the polls showed a three-way dead heat between DFLer Roger Moe, Independence Party nominee (and Ventura heir-apparent) Tim Penny, and eventual winner Tim Pawlenty (all had numbers in the low thirties, with the difference less than the statistical margin of error), with Green candidate Ken Pentel pulling over 5%.

Between that poll and election day, the numbers shook out to their eventual tally (figures rounded to nearest full percent):
  • Pawlenty: 44%
  • Moe: 36%
  • Penny: 16%
  • Pentel: 2%
The lesson? Talk is cheap.

Before the election, it's easy to speak in favor of a quixotic candidate, especially to a stranger on the phone. But it's human nature to want to side with a winner, and I suspect it's American nature to want to make your vote count (unless you're a Green). While McClintock seems to be polling in the 16-18% range these days, I'll bet anyone this: assuming he doesn't pull out (and I bet he will, but work with me here), I doubt McClintock will get 9% in the final election.

I suspect as we get down to the wire, the idealistic conservatives (that phrase alone should give most left-bloggers an aneurism) who are answering "McClintock" in the surveys today will quietly vote for Arnold. They may even deny it later - but the numbers will show it.

Hewitt gives the top five reasons McClintock's fans should change their ways in WorldNetDaily today, including this ultimate one:
"Finally, a vote for Tom is a vote for Terry McAuliffe. The chairman of the Democratic National Committee first promised there would be no big name Democrat running on question 2. Now he's promising that a Democrat will be governor on Oct. 8. McAuliffe is counting on Tom voters to pull this out for the Democrats and, crucially, for his own reputation. Already held in low esteem by most of his party colleagues, if McAuliffe loses California after losing Florida and then New York City, it doesn't take much imagination to see a revolt forcing this Clinton Kool-Aid drinker to step aside."
All true. Read the whole thing.

And see what happens.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/1/2003 11:08:50 AM

There Was Joy In Mudville - Not only did the Twins win...

...but I passed my Level 2 final exam in bagpipes last night.

Only eight more months until I start playing actual pipes.

Assuming I can afford 'em by then.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/1/2003 07:21:30 AM

Who's Smash? - The celebrated blogger Lieutenant Smash reveals his true identy.

(Via Instapundit)
posted by Mitch Berg 10/1/2003 06:37:20 AM

Sixty Years Ago This Month - We're three weeks into the third year of a war that truly has no end in sight.

As bad as that feels in the pit of the gut sometimes, it helps to consider the example of people who fought against vastly worse odds than we face today, also with no end in sight.

I've studied one form of military history or another for decades. My favorite subject, of course, is World War II - and one of the most interesting topics of the war was that of the various resistance movements that sprang up, especially in the intensely pacifistic countries of Scandinavia and the Low Countries. I believe it's no coincidence that some of the most pacifistic countries in Europe (Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway) have some of the largest, best-equipped militaries, relatively speaking; all suffered under Nazi occupation, and all have vowed "never again" to whatever extent.

Especially interesting are the Danes; while their nation has a pacifistic reputation, their troops were among the most respected in Bosnia (because, unlike most UN troops, they had no problems meeting snipers and mortars with machine guns and tanks - they tended to accomplish their mission first, and worry about lace-panty UN buncombe later); their special forces are among NATO's best; they, alone among continental Western European nations, contributed combat forces (a submarine) to the war in Iraq (and I don't believe for a moment that the boat was "gathering intelligence"; Polands GROM naval commando unit has trained extensively with the Danes, and was tasked with taking and holding offshore oil rigs; I'll bet dimes to dollars there's a connection).

So about two weeks ago, I finished reading The Savage Canary, David Lampe's history of the Danish Resistance in World War II. It's a story we all need to remember in these dire times.

Especially this story.

Sixty years ago this month, over the course of about three weeks in October of 1943, the Danish Resistance managed to find and smuggle nearly all of Denmark's Jewish population to Sweden. They started with some terrible handicaps; Denmark's few synogogues had detailed membership records of most native Danish Jews (Danes are a thorough people), while many more Jews were refugees from Germany and Eastern Europe who were working on the farms, and stood out from the general population.

Using a network of churches, unions, resistance fighters and sympathetic Danish citizens, the Danish resistance managed to to spirit over 7,000 of the 8,000 Jews in Denmark into fishing boats and freighters and smuggle them across the narrow straits into Sweden, evading German patrols on land and ships at sea. The story is an inspirational one - and, unfortunately, a unique one.

Of 30,000 Danes that were active in the resistance, 3,000 were killed in action, executed by the Germans, or died in concentration camps. Certainly not the worst odds of the war (Polish resistance troops had about a 1 in 4 chance of surviving), but not good either.

As the world notes the passing of Leni Riefenstahl, who did much to herald the rise of Nazism, I'd like to make sure the world notes a countervailing act of courage and resistance that has passed nearly unnoticed in the United States. It's important to remember - partly to pay homage to the anniversary of one of history's great acts of bravery and compassion, and partly to help us remember that in a world full of terrorists and their enablers, great selfless courage still exists.

UPDATE: A commenter and an emailer both noted that Norway also smuggled out many of its Jews - about 3/4 of them, according to the B'nai B'rith's "Black Book". Very true - and equally heroic. But it was carried out in smaller numbers, over a much longer time, while the bulk of the Danish action took place almost completely within a month - thus, easier to commemorate with a time-linked article.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/1/2003 06:03:56 AM

Ill-Informed - I can make fun of ill-informed people all day long, when the subject is the Second Amendment.

Last April, I stood outside the Minnesota Senate and engaged a member of "Code Pink" - an irritating "Peace" and "Disarmament" group whose gimmick was dressing, er, pink - in a discussion of the Minnesota Personal Protection Act, as we waited for the fateful final day of debate.

Her: The law would allow too many crazies to get guns
Me: What crazies? Show me the loophole that'd allow the "crazies" to get a carry permit?
Her: It'd allow all sorts of people to get guns
Me: It has nothing to do with "getting guns", it's about self-defense. You do know the criteria for issuing a permit, dont' you?
Her: Not off hand.
Me: Have you read the bill?
Her: Er, no...
Me: OK, the bill would require the state to issue permits to people who are over 21, have no criminal, mental illness or drug or alcohol record, and who've passed a background test and a training course. Which is more background check and training than the current law requires.
Her: Umph - well...I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

Of course, if you're getting your information about the Second Amendment and the Minnesota Personal Protection Act here or here or here, or here or especially here or here, it's a safe bet you'll not only be misninformed, but probably paranoid.

You expect it from people who bring pinkness to a political debate. You'd not expect if from someone labelling himself a Republican.

You'd be wrong.

For someone who earned his fortune waving guns around in movies, Arnold Schwartzenegger is no more literate about gun laws than Wes "You law-abiding people are the problem" Skoglund:
While the federal ban on so-called "assault weapons" is scheduled to sunset in September 2004, the much more severe California prohibition has no sunset date. The federal and the state law are both based on cosmetics — on the idea that a gun is bad if it has a bayonet lug, or other small features that have nothing to do with the gun's firepower.

Schwarznegger also endorsed the Brady Bill — which never affected California gun sales, because the state's gun laws were more restrictive than the requirements of the 1993 Brady Bill.
It gets worse:
Schwarzenegger said that he thinks there should be a law for mandatory gunlocks. Apparently Schwarzenegger has no idea that California enacted such a law several years ago. It was this law which led directly to the death of two children in Merced, California, in August 2000. When an insane killer with a pitchfork attacked their home, their older sister — who was a trained shooter — was unable to protect them because the family guns were locked in a safe.

If during the campaign Schwarzenegger will not bother to learn simple facts about gun law, what is the likelihood that he would pay any more attention after being elected governor?
Don't get me wrong; in a state that is as strangled by the lunatic left as is California, I'm all for incrementalism; I'd rather have the deeply imperfect (from a conservative perspective) Schwartzenegger in office than the politically impeccable McClintock in second place, in the same way that I prefer to have the relatively-moderate Tim Pawlenty in the governor's office than Roger Moe in and Brian Sullivan out and saying "If only..." (and I know some of my longtime readers are solid Sullivan supporters, as was I; I just don't think Sullivan would have won the election; can you imagine Roger Moe in office these last eight months?)

But in a state where the lunatic fringe has driven gun policy that has had a disproportionate impact on the rest of the nation, it's important that Arnold get straightened out somehow.

Perhaps Charleton Heston could come out of retirement. It'd make more sense than the Monkeys' suggestion (although their ideas is flattering, and sounds pretty cool to boot).
posted by Mitch Berg 10/1/2003 06:02:38 AM

Perspective - Den Beste on something a lot of the left misses - Iraqis can't be expected to immediately act like free people, with all the expectations and habits free people have:
"In the Antarctic, penguins nest on land but hunt at sea. There are leopard seals and killer whales who think that penguins are delicious, and who know where the rookeries are located. They hang out in the ocean nearby and wait, looking for a meal. If a group of penguins want to go to sea to hunt, the first few to enter the water take the greatest risk, and no one wants to be the first. So they collect on the edge of the ice, and jostle themselves, and eventually one or two lose their balance and fall in, and then the rest of them dive in after them.

Iraqis are not penguins, obviously, but there's something like that going on. After 25 years where expressing any kind of independence could earn you a horrible death, or earn such a death for everyone you love, it's hard to believe that it's changed. They were told that it was changed, but was it really true? And was it permanent?

There was a natural tendency for most to not take that chance. But a few took small chances, and didn't suffer for it. That encouraged others to try a bit more as time went on.

The first independent newspapers were very tentative. The Americans said they believed in free press, but did they really? And would supporters of Saddam visit the newspapers in the night? It was a risk, and those working on those newspapers were doing things which would have gotten them all killed just two months before.

But they didn't suffer. The Americans left them alone, and they didn't get visited by Baathist death squads. More newspapers appeared and began to be more frank, and Iraq now has the most free press in the Arab world. But that didn't happen overnight"
It's all worth a read.

And remember that the next time some liberal hamster calls Iraq a "quagmire".
posted by Mitch Berg 10/1/2003 06:00:57 AM

Danger! - Laura Bush, in Moscow:
"American children, I'm afraid, are addicted to television," she told the first ladies of Russia, Armenia and Bulgaria on Tuesday, citing studies that place average TV consumption in the United States at several hours a day.
She continued:
"When you read with your child, you show them that reading is important, but you also show them they're important — that they are so important to you that you will spend 20 minutes a day with your arm around them," she said.

In that context, she termed TV-watching a big no-no.

"We're always, everyone — librarians, teachers — are trying to inform parents about turning the television off," said Mrs. Bush, a former teacher and librarian herself. "Television watching is very passive and ... reading is much better exercise for the brain."
Note to Mrs. Bush; careful with that kind of talk, or you'll lose the show-biz vote.

In the meantime, I'd like to officially welcome Bulgaria to the First World. Not only are they contributing troops to the liberation of Iraq, but their first lady, Zorka Parvanova (far right, below)...



...is further evidence of something I noticed three years ago; every Bulgarian woman I've ever met has been a heart-rending babe.

posted by Mitch Berg 10/1/2003 06:00:39 AM

Demons and Spawn - Lileks related this story the other day in the Bleat:
“Are you sure it’s not a demon?” I asked my wife. She gave me that wifely look. “Because when your kid starts talking about creatures we can’t see, I think we ought to include demons in the mix of possible reasons.”

“I think it’s an imaginary friend,” she said. “Probably not a demon.”

“Sure. Sure. But - do you think they’d be able to tell in Sunday school? Like, if she hissed whenever they brought up Jesus?”

“I’m sure we’d hear about it.”
One late-winter day, during the 1994 Winter Olympics, I went out in the back yard with my daughter, then two years old.

She toddled over to a spot of glare ice by the garage, and as I watched perplexed, began spinning maniacally in tight circles.

"Daddy!", she yelled. "Daddy! Satan!"

Huh?

"Daddy! Satan!" She whirled about in a half a dozen more tight, frenzied circles.

"Satan, Daddy, Satan!"

I expected the green-pea soup vomit...

...when I remembered she'd been watching skating with her mother.

SKAY-ting, not SAY-tan.

Nothing seemed so bad after that.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/1/2003 06:00:33 AM

Tuesday, September 30, 2003

Shooting at the Government Center - A woman with a history of mental instability shot two people inside the Hennepin County Government Center yesterday, killing one.

I have no intention of making light of this tragic shooting, but there's a point here.

The Hennepin County Court has defied state law and made the Government Center a "gun free zone", forbidding legal carry permit holders from the premises, huh?

No, shooter Susan Berkovitz wasn't one of them:
Berkovitz hasn't applied for a permit in Hennepin County, authorities said.
Wow. I'm sure the two victims feel much better knowing that.

No, indeed, amid descriptions of the incredibly lax security at the Government Center...:
"I could have had an AK-47 in a duffel bag and walked right into the building and up to the courthouse," [District Judge John Holahan] said.
...we're supposed to rely on government-provided security (from the county, in this case) to keep us safe once we step through those doors.

Well, most of us are:
An army veteran and hunter, [Judge Holahan] said he was so frightened by one man's death threats early last year that he got a permit to carry a handgun.
Apparently judges' lives are worth more than yours is.

You can't blame Judge Holahan. You can blame the Hennepin County Courts, who have defied state law and created a cocoon where the homicidally insane know that nobody without a uniform can really hurt them.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/30/2003 07:01:40 AM

Plame/Wilson - The left - including certain lefty bloggers - have been clinging to hope with the Plame/Wilson story. In their world, this could have been the great equalizer - the one thing that truly signalled "moral equivalence", that would mean the Bush Administration was really no morally better than Clinton was (and that they know, deep in their hearts, Clinton was, assuming they have some sense of right and wrong).

But it's not going to happen.

Sullivan lays out the non-story.

The Daily Kos claims
Novak has had a rocky relationship with this administration, but at the end of the day, he would rather have a Republican in the White House than a Democrat. He is a partisan, and his statement (which remember, doesn't exculpate the administration from wrongdoing) is simply the first salvo of the administration's counterattack.
Perhaps. But for a first salvo, it's one of the "fluke shot that smacks into the enemy commander"-type first salvos.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/30/2003 06:44:29 AM

Fun With Polls, Part III - The left is hanging on every poll they can find that shows the President doing anything short of conquering the universe.

Yet there's more to the polls than meets the eye, says Michael Barone in next week's US News:
"Last week's Gallup Poll showed new entrant Wesley Clark leading the Democratic presidential field and leading Bush in a general election. This is a double reversal. Howard Dean had been the Democrat zooming to the top of the field; now we see something like a statistical tie, with Clark apparently a contender. Similarly, this is the first time Bush has trailed a specific (as opposed to generic) Democrat. But there is reason for caution here. The Gallup sample seems to be disproportionately Democratic (48 percent of respondents passed the screen as Democratic-primary voters), and it puts Bush's job rating at the lower end of the 49-percent-to-59-percent range in polls taken over the past month."
In other words, Bush is losing - as long as you ask a sample that includes triple the proportioinal number of likely Democrat voters.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/30/2003 06:05:22 AM

Talk About Pop Music. Talk About... - There's a strain of revisionism going around that tries to deprecate '80's pop music. A couple of the Infinite Monkeys have been having it out; James started the exchange:
One more thing about Robert Palmer: man, Power Station totally sucked. Had to be one of the worst bands of the 80s-- I'd put them up there with Toto or Styper. Oh, God the memories are flowing back: Wham! Haircut 100. Boy George. Thommpson Twins. A-ha! Oingo Boingo. Duran Duran. Flock of Seagulls. ELO. Whitesnake. Warrant. Scorpion. Wang Chung. Tom Tom Club. Hall and Oates. Bananarama. The Bangles. The Go-Gos. Journey. Styx. Yes. Sugar Hill Gang. The Alan Parsons Project. Genesis. XTC. Simple Minds. Peter Gabriel. Devo. Human League. The Cult. Depeche Mode. The Motels. Rick Astley. DiVynyls. Pet Shop Boys.
Robbo continued with a...er, oblique defense:
I don't want to hear any crap about Oingo Boingo!

Mentioning XTC (who also don't deserve to get lumped in the same list with A-ha and Stryper) reminded me of a great song by They Might Be Giants called "XTC vs. Adam Ant".
Sigh.

OK, kids; I claim absolute expertise on this subject of '80s music and XTC, in that:
  • I was a disc jockey during the peak of '80s music - '82-86 - and
  • I stood at the next urinal with XTC's Andy Partridge (and told him why "Dear God" was a really irritating and smug song, although in that jovial way guys have when we're unrinal-to-urinal
Fact is, and I can say this without the slightest fear of being taken as a curmudgeon, the period from 1982 to 1986 was one of the three best periods for pop music in the entire rock and roll era. There were lots of reasons for this:
  • It was the first and only time the Top Forty was just as good as the Alternative charts - because it largely was the same as the alternative charts! The bands that had been "alt" in 1979 - the Clash, Devo, The Police among many others - and the genres that had never seen radio were suddenly what everyone was listening to.
  • The best rock and roll band of 1983 was headed by a little black guy who fronted a band that was 2/3 white. Black and white music cross-pollinated in a way that it hadn't since Hendrix, and hasn't since (rap-metal doesn't count; it's not cross pollination, it's aping a style).
  • For all the critics' perennial yawping about women becoming powerful forces in pop music, today's grrl singers - all of them - look like talentless tarts against the likes of Chrissie Hynde, Debbie Harry, Christina Amphlett, Exene Cervenka, even Joan Jett.
  • It was a time when rap, rock, R'nB, and about five different directions of pop shared prominence, unlike today's tired scene (with nothing but stale hip hop, R'nB and the descendents of Grunge)
Fact is, any period of time that simultaneously had Prince, Michael Jackson, Big Country, Bruce Springsteen, Peter Schilling, Run-DMC, U2, Peter Gabriel and the Police on the charts has to be pretty damn good. Or, let's be honest, vastly better than anything since, any most anything before (except for 1955-58 and 1964-68).

Keep your Flock of Seagulls references to yourself, thank you very much.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/30/2003 06:02:32 AM

Johnson - As I've said before, I was a liberal until I was in the middle of college. Most of the artifacts of that liberalsm have been hunted down and destroyed. There are really only two ways, besides my admissions, to prove that I was ever a liberal at all. If you tell any of my high school classmates that I evolved (by age 25, no less) into a conservative talk show host, they'll probably assume you're nuts (the ones that don't know, already, anyway). And when I was at North Dakota Boy's State in the summer of 1980, I wrote (in my capacity as a state party chairman) a party platform rife with "redistributions of wealth" and "interlocking foreign policy with the UN" and probably a dozen instances of the term Progressive.

Then, in college, I encountered the work of four thinkers:
  • Alexandr Solzhenitzyn
  • George Orwell
  • P.J. O'Rourke
  • and finally, and perhaps most importantly, Paul Johnson.
All but Orwell were people who, like me, had started life on the left and swung to the right (to whatever extent).

But the marquee name - the one who gave me the intellectual backing to the rafts of anecdotes that the other three provided - was Johnson.

Best of all, Johnson is still in action. His critique of the EU in Forbes is a classic.
The truth is that the EU has been living beyond its means, and its bills are coming due. The biggest bill of all--the cost of generous state pensions, which in most EU countries are underfunded--is looming. It's true that most advanced countries are having difficulties meeting pensions because people are living longer and work forces are expanding more slowly (or not at all). Britain is running into a pension crisis. Most of those who banked on a healthy private pension for their old age are going to be disappointed, partly because returns on investments are so low and partly because the Labour finance minister, Gordon Brown, has been raiding the till by abolishing tax-free pension dividends. This is the issue that will lose Tony Blair the next election, as the pain of Labour's 'pension raid' is felt. But at least Britain has a properly funded public pension plan. And the British economy is moving forward, perhaps not as fast as America's, but at a healthy and accelerating rate.

The omens for continental Europe, however, are sinister. The entire plan for perpetual improvement upon which the EU depends is based on continuous economic expansion. There is no provision for stagnation. As we see in Japan, once stagnation sets in, it can last many years. Americans should count their blessings, above all the supreme blessing of having an economy that is run by businessmen not bureaucrats, or that--under wise governance--runs itself. "
Read the whole thing. You'll be glad you did.

Then, when you're done, read Modern Times, the Birth of the Modern, and Intellectuals. Thorough yet enjoyable, rigorous yet fast-reading, all three books should be on the Christmas List of any conservatives you love, or any liberals you'd love to convert.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/30/2003 06:01:31 AM

The Numbers - Some left-blogs have been obsessing to an unnatural extent over the fluctuations of the various polls that have shown the president is (gasp) dropping from "immortal" to "human". The mantra for many of these bloggers is "Watch the GOP shrug and say 'it doesn't matter'". They have a good point; that's what we'll say.

Because it's the truth.

I was giving Sean Hannity a rare listen on Friday night. He pointed out that, if you look at poll results for sitting presidents taken 14 months before the elections over the past forty years, very few have had numbers as good as Bush currently enjoys.
  • In September of 1995, Clinton had worse numbers than Bush has today.
  • In September, 1993, Ronald Reagan had a little over half Bush's approval rating.
  • Richard Nixon's approval in September of 1971 was lower than Bush's today - and 14 months later when he faced the original Howard Dean, he scored a historic landslide.
  • In September of 1967, Lyndon Johnson's ratings were lower - but he opted not to run.
In addition, said Hannity, John F. Kennedy's numbers in September of 1963 - the month before his assassination - were on par with Bush's current numbers.

I'm not going to presume that the Democrats' fixation on poll fluctuations is a sign of desperation. I just can't think of a better answer...
posted by Mitch Berg 9/30/2003 06:01:27 AM

Questions We Need Answered - Paul Miller asks twenty questions that need to be asked:1. Where is all the money from the UN’s Oil for Food Program?

2. How many people have now lived at least six months longer than they would have under Saddam?

3. How many civilians were really killed in the major combat portion of the war?

4. How many civilians have been killed since the end of major combat?

5. How unreliable is the Iraqi electric distribution system in comparison to, say, the Washington, D.C., area system?

6. How many people (estimates allowed) are crossing into Iraq from its neighbors each month?

7. How many people entering Iraq are Iraqis returning after escaping Saddam in the past?

8. How many Iraqis are suffering for lack of health care, lack of food, lack of potable water, etc.? (Not individual hard luck cases - good figures.)

9. How many Iraqis are directly involved in the “guerilla war” campaign against coalition forces?

10. How many non-Iraqis are directly involved in the “guerilla war” campaign against coalition forces?

11. What precisely has Bremer’s administration been spending billions of dollars on? (Show us the buildings, bridges, factories, power plants, oil fields, etc., assuming they exist.)

12. What was the average Iraqi’s income prior to the war, and what is it now?

13. What did Saddam do with his weapons of mass destruction and the component programs? (Don’t ask what “people” think; go find out!)

14. How many American and British service men and women in Iraq believe the cause of Iraqi democracy is hopeless?

15. Was the “looting” of the National Museum and Library an inside job?

16. How would international troops change the minds of the “guerilla” fighters?

17. How would additional American troops be useful in the 15 or so attacks and firefights per day now experienced by the 150,000 troops (10,000 per attack) in Iraq?

18. Is Saddam Hussein actually dead, and the tapes and such are all a hoax?

19. What is an average day in Iraq like for an America soldier? (Remember, the ratio of attacks to soldiers is 1:10,000, so a bloody firefight is clearly NOT average.)

20. What would Iraq be like if the coalition pulled out early and left things to the U.N. and Iraqi players? (Explore this with examples and a wide range of experts, please.)Please forward to media figures worldwide.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/30/2003 06:00:57 AM

Said What? - Steyn's obit of Edward Said is a keeper.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/30/2003 06:00:52 AM

Reading List - Salam Pax, the celebrated Iraqi blogger, says this is the best newspaper in Iraq - although it's apparently not available in Arabic.

Interesting, and worth a read.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/30/2003 06:00:49 AM

Keep your KFAN - Here's a sports story I actually like - about the semi-pro Minnesota Maulers football team.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/30/2003 06:00:45 AM

Monday, September 29, 2003

The Curse of the CD - I listened to an artist's debut album the other day. It was an artist I wanted to like; I'd heard a few songs off the album, and I liked them.

But when I finally listened to the whole thing, it was another story; there were three absolute classics, true, but of the rest maybe three songs were pretty cool, and the rest ranged from "filler" to complete dreck.

If that album would have been about 2/3 as long as it was, it might have been a classic. But it's not - and the album is, shall we say, "flawed" at the very best.

The artist, of course, is Springsteen. He's the best American songwriter of the past thirty years. And even so, his debut album, "Greetings from Asbury Park, New Jersey", released when he was 23 years old, is a wildly uneven effort; it has "For You" and "Blinded By The Light" (in their original versions, before Manfred Mann butchered both) and "Growin' Up", all of which jump off the vinyl and say "Great stuff here!". There are also songs that would only be fully realized later, in live performances ("It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City", "Spirit In The Night") and some that should have been left on the cutting room floor ("Mary Queen of Arkansas"). Three fewer songs - or another few months to write and record a few better songs - and "Greetings..." might have been a classic.

Springsteen had two relative misfires ("Greetings..." and 1974's less uneven but still flawed"The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle") before he really found his voice on "Born to Run".

Thirty years later, it's a different world than when Springsteen got his start. Today, even an artist that gets some airplay and sells some records usually will only get one chance to generate knock 'em dead sales before being cut, shunted (if lucky) to the indy labels to languish in splendid obscurity. Yet it usually takes a songwriter an album or two or three to really find his or her voice. Quick - name the non-singles on the first two Beatles or Rolling Stones or Bob Dylan albums! Most of my favorite artists - Springsteen, U2, Richard Thompson, The Iron City Houserockers, even bands like REM that I don't like so much as respect - took a couple of albums to really hit their artistic strides.

The compact disc isn't helping things one bit.

Case in point: my favorite artist of the past year, Franky Perez; I've written about him a couple of times in the past four months. When I saw him at the Basilica Block Party, he was an amazing live performer - he reminded me of footage of a circa '74 Springsteen. He absolutely owned the stage. And his first video, "Cecilia" (not the Simon and Garfunkel one, either) was striking enough to etch his name in my memory for the six months it took to actually see him perform.

Remember when an album - meaning an LP or a cassette - held maybe eight or ten songs? Back then, Perez' debut album, "Poor Man's Son", would have been as solid a debut effort as a rocker could want - he's written more than eight solid songs!
  1. Two Lost Angels
  2. Cecilia
  3. Something Crazy
  4. Cry Freedom or Southwest Side, but not both. Both songs are similar, and either one would be better with a healthy dollop of the best parts of the other song
  5. Class Act
  6. Leave Me Alone
  7. Bella Maria
  8. Love and Hate

    and as a bonus track, his acoustic version of...

  9. America (You Are A Part Of Me)
There. Nine songs, all of them excellent, three of them ("Cecilia", "Love And Hate" and "Leave Me Alone") just plain great.

Unfortunately, "Poor Man's Son" has 18 songs. And the other eight not listed above are the sort of thing a young songwriter used to crank out, maybe record as demos - and then leave them there. The producer would have known they weren't the sort of thing you put on a record, much less a debut album.

It's the CD's fault.

I never liked the compact disk; they're smaller than LPs and have fewer moving parts than cassettes, and that's about all they have going for them. The "all digital" sound always struck me as cold, fussy and teutonic, compared to the warmth of a well-mastered LP; their cost after about 1989 was obviously inflated (it has cost much less to make CDs than cassettes or LPs since the early nineties). And their supposed reliability was always a sham; I have many thirty-year-old LPs that still play wonderfully, while I routinely see CDs start skipping and fritzing out within the first year after buying them.

But worst of all is the dilution of music that the record companies force on the buying public via the CD; rather than writing music to fit some genuine artistic goal (which few songwriters in leagues below Dylan, Petty, Springsteen, Richard Thompson or Elvis Costello can consistently do anyway), the goal is to fill up space on a disk, to hit a goal in megabytes of product so that the customer will feel less ripped off by the inflated sticker price, at least in terms of song-count. It's forcing art to fit a medium, rather than the other way around.

People have been attacking the ethics of, and predicting the demise of the traditional record company for at least a decade. Maybe it'll happen, maybe not.

But I can't wait for the CD - or at least the artificial, top-down use of the CD as a de facto production quota - to go the way of the wax cylinder. Someday, when an artist can record a single, a four-song series, or a six-hour opus, and have them listened to and marketed on their own terms rather than shoehorned or diluted to fit an artificial, arbitrary volume limit, it'll be a great day for music.

UPDATE: Yes, I really DID first hear "Greetings from Asbury Park" about twenty years ago. It's called "suspension of disbelief", people. Sheesh. (Thanks to email correspondent DL. I think).
posted by Mitch Berg 9/29/2003 12:39:57 PM

Compare This - The left has been trying to chip away at the Bush Plan for rebuilding Iraq. Seems that while the Administration compared it in a broad sense with the Marshall Plan, some academics (eagerly cited by the left) have found that it's not exactly like the Marshall Plan in every single respect.

This is big stuff, when you're an academic (or a party that cites them, in or out of context, obsessively).

As Steve Gigl notes in an excellent post this morning, they don't really cite many actual dissimilarities. And when they do, Gigl notes, it doesn't always make them look all that good:
"OK, so what was the only solid reason given?

[U of Connecticut professor Imanuel] Wexler [author of "The Marshall Plan Revisited] said that unlike Iraq, the Marshall Plan nations had economic and political environments that enabled the funding to be used effectively.

Oh. Racism. Checkity-check-check!

Real headline? 'Democrats and leftist academics agree--money is wasted on backward Iraqis'"
That's been one of the interesting notes to come out of the anti-Bush left's approach to Iraq - the incipient racism. Remember the claims (these go back decades) that Arabs just didn't value freedom like we do?

A few months ago, during the WMD fracas, a friend of mine - an engineer and a local "moderate" lefty - said "I hardly think Iraq has an Edward Teller in the lineup."

Look at that statement. Leave aside the facial absurdity of the strawman (you don't NEED Edward Teller to build a copy of an atomic bomb, to say nothing of a "dirty bomb"), and note the racist undertone; Iraq, that nation of little brown people descended from the people that helped develop algebra and astronomy while people in the West were living in huts made of offal and paying tribute to thugs in tin suits just couldn't develop a person of genius comparable to one of ours, could it?

Back on point; call the plan what you want, compare it any way you choose with any other plan throughout history (it won't take you long, there's really been only one). The technicalities only draw you away from the real point; If we stay our course, Iraq will most likely grow to be a solid democracy.

And I think that thought terrorizes some on the left. Too many, to be sure.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/29/2003 08:35:22 AM

Gaping Ignorance - Predictably, gun-ban group Citizens for a Supine Safer Minnesota are trying to get everything they can out of the shootings last week at Rocori High School.

Truth, of course, is the first casualty, as it usually is when CSSM is involved.
How and why did this happen? The answers are, no doubt, complex. But, as a community, we must remember to ask why we allow our young people easy access to handguns? How do we accept the proliferation of lethal weapons in our communities?
Well, in the case of Jason McLaughlin, the answer is easy; his father was a Sheriff's Department deputy.

You know - the ones that CSSM knows are the only people we can trust with firearms.
One out of six Americans keeps a handgun in the home, many unlocked, some even loaded. A survey of Hennepin County residents showed that of families with children under age 16 and a gun in the home, a full one-third admitted to storing their weapon unlocked and, in some instances, loaded.
And stupidity is indeed no defense (although I'd love to see the raw number and methodology behind that survey.
Most families who keep a handgun in the home, do so for protection. But, according to medical research, guns in the home are more often used to kill a family member than to be used in self-defense [Journal of Trauma, 1998.] Clinging to the belief that a readily available handgun protects us, we place our children and communities at risk.
The "Journal of Trauma" "research" was deeply flawed, and didn't account for
  • Acquaintances or family members of the shooter who were carrying out criminal acts (drug-dealer acquaintances, abusive spouses)
  • Presence of drugs or alcohol in the home
  • Criminal records of anyone in the home
  • Firearms training
  • Above all, the "research" didn't calculate the deterrent value of the handgun in homes with no drug, alcohol, mental illness or criminals in the home. But then, they never do.
The CSSM writer continues:
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that guns be removed from environments where children are present.
The AAoP is completely politically motivated.
What drives a child to murder his classmates? The answers are complex. But the simple truth is that access to a gun can turn a desperate situation into a tragedy.
Unmentioned; access to a gun can also avert or prevent tragedy, as it did in the Pearl, Mississippi school shooting.
If you're upset about yesterday's school shooting incident, contact Governor Tim Pawlenty and let him know that you've had enough! Once and for all we, the responsible adults, must protect out children by supporting sensible gun laws.
And which laws are they talking about?

CSSM's current stalking horse is the Minnesota Personal Protection Act - our "shall issue" law. But Jason McLaughlin was seven years away from being able to qualify for a permit; it's a safe bet he never will, now.

More as developments warrant.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/29/2003 06:03:31 AM

California: The Precedent - A liberal governor, with a landslide mandate, enacts a raft of interventionary and costly programs; then his state hits some economic troubles, a recall initiative passes, and he is faced with a European immigrant in the final showdown.

California? Nope. The state perhaps as far from California, socially, politically and economically, as can be.

My home state of North Dakota is an odd place.

Although North Dakota has voted Republican in virtually every presidential election in memory; other than 1912, 1916, 1932, 1936 and 1964, and a strange, split election in 1892, it has voted Republican in every single election since statehood (1889). And yet the state continues to send the likes of Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad to the Senate - tax-and-spenders that make Ted Kennedy run for the nearest Federalist Society meeting for protection. The state also runs the only successful state-run banks and mill/elevators in the country - socialistic institutions that are a vestige of the once-powerful Populist, Non-Partisan League and Granger traditions that had the plains humming with socialist cant in the first half of the last century.

And for Gray Davis, there's a portent that feels like the chilly, wet wind that signals a blizzard is creeping into Sacramento; North Dakota was the first and only state to recall a governor, under circumstances that, according to NRO's Lawrence McQuillan, should make Davis' supporters sit up and take notice:
In 1919, [Lynn] Frazier and the NPL [Non-Partisan League - a populist/liberal party that was later absorbed by the Democrats]-controlled legislature established state-owned industries: the Bank of North Dakota, and the State Mill and Elevator. They believed that a state-owned bank and state-run mill would protect farmers from private companies that they claimed paid bottom dollar for grain and then overcharged customers for flour. An Industrial Commission, consisting of the governor, attorney general, and agriculture commissioner, was created to govern the state enterprises.

In 1920, the year Frazier was narrowly reelected to a third term, farm prices tumbled, bad weather cut crop yields, and exports fell. The state entered an economic depression, exposing huge weaknesses in North Dakota's budget, which went into deficit. More North Dakota banks closed in 1921 than in any other year. The resulting contraction of credit caused many farm foreclosures.
The recall election in 1921 was a nasty one - as elections in North Dakota frequently were, and still are; the state's bucolic reputation wasn't earned on the campaign trail.

And the governor was recalled; narrowly, but finally. It's been done.

And the polls are looking more and more like it'll happen again - even if Tom MacMillan doesn't bow out, which I suspect he will.

I suspect we're as likely to see a prairie blizzard in Sacramento as we are a Democrat governor in 2004.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/29/2003 06:02:49 AM

Scope Creep - Following the lead of Ryan "Rambling" Rhodes, I downloaded everything I've ever written for this blog, from February 5, 2002 to September 25, 2003, and put it into Microsoft Word.

Nearly 1,600 pages.

More telling still; while my postings from 2002 were shorter - monthly archives didn't get much over 30 pages apiece until last October - since the elections and the burst of exposure I got from the Keillor Lutefiskings, I've probably been averaging well over 100 pages a a month.

Part of this is testimony to the effects of long-term unemployment. A bigger part of it is just that I genuinely like doing this.

Now, if only there was a way to make it pay the mortgage...
posted by Mitch Berg 9/29/2003 06:01:37 AM

The Wrong Profile - Northern Alliance pals Powerline gut Doug Grow's report that Minnesota is rife with racial profiling.

According to the actual data that led to Grow's report, while black drivers are pulled over disproportionately, the officers who actually did the pulling over were unaware of the drivers' races about 90 percent of the time. I think we can grant this figure a bit of leeway - cops will fudge paperwork - and still say that "profiling" stops still verges on liberal fantasy.

Here's an interesting finding - the rate at which cops found "contraband" in cars (things that aren't supposed to be there, like bottles of booze, bales of marijuana, murder victims and the like):
Although blacks were stopped and searched much more frequently than whites in Minneapolis, the hit rates were roughly equal -- 13 percent for whites, 11 percent for blacks. Accordingly, contrary to Grow's allegation in the column, the data strongly suggest that the Minneapolis police officers are conducting searches based on observed conduct rather than the skin color of the driver.
And so on. Read the whole piece

Especially interesting is Hindrocket's view of Trunk's appearance on an MPR show dedicated to the topic:
The other participants treated him like ants at a picnic, and the fact that he had actually read not only the report but the data underlying it made it so awkward to have him on the show that they disconnected him after a few minutes.
Ah, the fair and balanced MPR.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/29/2003 06:01:06 AM

Chaitred - Power Line has an excellent take on Krauthammer's analysis of the Chait article - among other Bush-bashing pronouncements from the left.

Sample:
Charles Krauthammer made a good case that no rational person could believe all of Kennedy's statements (just as others have made the case that Chait could not rationally have believed all of his statements about Bush in the article that started all of this). However, Krauthammer did not show that Kennedy himself believes the statements. So there are at least two possibilities here. The first is that, blinded by hatred, Kennedy has become unhinged from reality. The second is that he is in touch with reality, but chooses to distort it in his public pronouncements for political gain or mere gratification. In short, he may not be irrational; he may just be a liar.

posted by Mitch Berg 9/29/2003 06:01:04 AM

ACLU Alert - According to a radio news report: During the shooting last week at Rocori High School, one of the teachers gathered her students along the edge of the room, and asked them if they wanted to pray.

Most - the news report said "all" - of the students gathered around the teacher and started praying along.

Expect a lawsuit.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/29/2003 06:00:58 AM

If It Bleeds - Instapundit has links to some excellent discussion on the media's obsession with the bad news in Iraq, at the expense of covering the vast tracts of the country where things seem to be going quite well.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/29/2003 06:00:54 AM

New Fox Analyst? - Dan Barreiro writing about U of M alum Quincy Lewis, via Steve Gigl's Blogj:
Lewis traveled through parts of Europe where Americans are not exactly universally welcomed, especially after the U.S. decision to go to war. "The people in Israel are very receptive and warm," he said. "In other places, you find that Americans are disliked by a lot of people. But you have to realize that as an American, you're going to get some of that anyway. Some people look at us as bullies, which in some cases we are. But it's almost like, they like the bully if we'll help them, but don't like the bully if we don't."
And they say jocks are dumb.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/29/2003 06:00:41 AM

Sunday, September 28, 2003

Joy In Mudville! - The Cubs clinch!

My lifelong fantasy - a Twins (AL) vs Cubs (NL) World Series could now, in theory, actually happen!
posted by Mitch Berg 9/28/2003 07:56:53 PM

Tale of Two Blackouts - David's Medienkritik posts about the double-standard in German left-wing newsmag Spiegel in reporting two power outages.

One was in the US:
The dazed world power was plunged into chaos by the largest blackout in the super power's history: Cities in the dark, planes on the ground, and a nation marching single-file like geese through the darkness. The land of limitless opportunity was shut off by a couple of exploded fuses. A world power between perception and reality - SPIEGEL TV with observations from a country whose lights have gone out."
One was in Italy:
France rejects responsibility for the blackout. In Italy, the power went out in the early hours of the morning this Sunday, affecting more people than the blackout in the USA [my emphasis]. In all likelihood, storms knocked out two major power lines connecting France and Italy. The search for a scapegoat has begun."
As David notes "The blackout in the USA proves the weakness of the American nation. The blackout in Italy proves the weakness of two major power lines."
posted by Mitch Berg 9/28/2003 07:50:40 PM

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