Salon column is up! Provocatively titled: Can We Sue Our Own Fat Asses Off? (I didn't pick the headline; as you know, the editorial position of Live from the WTC is against profanity. But that didn't prevent me from laughing my -- keister -- off.)
As you can see, I've celebrated my vacation by waking up three hours late. Of course, since I went to bed at 2:00, that's not as restful as it sounds, but no matter.
It's clearly the off season in Key West, at least on Thursdays, which gave us a great deal of time to drink margaritas, and ponder the mechanism by which the prospect of a visit to Florida goes to the head of otherwise sensible people and causes them to buy the most regrettable clothes they can get their hands on. If it's not the gentlemen walking about in pink madras shorts with their gut spilling over the top, it's the ladies baring things that should not be bared, and encasing the rest in a tropical print of Mickey Mouse sailing a boat in a lake of flowers and umbrella drinks. But, hey, I'm on vacation . . . why ask why?
Meanwhile, I've discovered the secret to flying with minimal security interference: wear as little as possible. I went to the plane in shorts with no pockets and a midi-t. I was singled out for a search twice; both times, they looked at my outfit and passed over me to search the person behind me. I also got better service at the stores in the airport. I realize that this seems to contradict the last paragraph, but if you take my advice, you'll at least tone down the print to something floral.
Now I'm off to nap by the pool. Happy Memorial day, everyone!
Stephen Green has a clarion call to conservatives: clean your own house first. Your arguments should be so squeaky clean that no one can fault them. Especially resonant: get rid of corporate welfare.
Of course, the spoiler is that much of that corporate welfare is not, contrary to popular belief, extended to help the corporations; it's extended to help all the little people who work for corporations, and gather all their lovely, lovely votes into the fold of whatever incumbent sponsored the legislation.
But at the very least, the GOP could stick it in their party platform.
Now, I'm afraid that I lost all respect for Jim Jeffords on the infamous day when he threw caution and conscience to the wind and crossed over the line of good taste to actually bring out a biography entitled "My Declaration of Independence". So I didn't have any indignation left when he decided that he was not just a latter-day Thomas Jefferson, but also the next incarnation of Jesus.
So Drudge Reports that David Brock spent some time in a nuthatch while he was writing his tell all.
I will not comment on how this may have affected his book. What struck me was this bit:
"Clinton, who seems to have practically committed passages to memory, told his former aides that whenever they feel down, they should read Brock's book to illuminate anew what they were all fighting against for eight years, and as a reminder of what 'unhappy' people their counterparts on the right truly are," the LOS ANGELES TIMES reported.
Giggle giggle. Politicians from both sides (Republicans do it as much as Democrats) who cast themselves in the role of Rebel Alliance leaders against the Big, Bad Empire make me laugh, and not just because as a Quasi-Libertarian, I often have nightmares featuring GOP and Dem leaders all dressed as Darth Vader. I mean, c'mon. After you've spent eight years or so shoveling the pork out to favored constituents and backtracking on campaign promises in the hopes of picking up some swing voters in your district, how do you, with a straight face, continue telling your colleagues that you're the good guys and the other side is a bunch of evil swine?
Not that you may not have disagreements. Not that you may not think that one particular person, or another, is the embodiment of evil. But how Clinton thinks that he's got all the moral high ground to himself boggles the imagination.
I've always wondered about those people who said that the SAT etc. didn't predict grades -- since I'm afraid I did notice that the smarter I thought someone was, the higher their test scores were likely to be. Now Mark Goldblatt explains why those people got their data - and why it's wrong. (Hint: skewed sample.)
Sorry blog-readers. . . I'm busier than the proverbial one legged man in an ass kicking contest trying to get ready to go to Key West.
But Bruce Moomaw sends this bulletin on the sad state of affairs between India and Pakistan, and I'm posting it in full because I think (fear) he may be right:
Looks like a nuclear religious war between India and Pakistan is now more likely than not, possibly within a few days. And if it happens, not only will more people be killed in a few days than died during all of WW II, but it would be the perfect opportunity for vengeful extremists in the Pakistani military to hand over one or more nukes to individual terrorist groups, complete with operating instructions -- with the likely targets being India, the US and/or Israel.
I've been watching this story over the past few days, but I committed the unforgiveable error of simply refusing to believe it could be true. But India and Pakistan have been making war noises and mobilizing for months; the writing was on the wall. I hope someone has got a nifty way to avert this. And I still believe that neither nation is stupid enough to go nuclear. I do believe, I do believe, I do believe. . .
Meanwhile, there's been another bombing in Israel, and the security brigades are out here. Some of this is hype, of course, because of the fooforaw about "what Bush knew"; but a lot of it isn't. Things are looking pretty damn dark right now, folks.
But it's always darkest just before the dawn, and at least the treaty Bush and Putin are signing means that as I go to Key West, I don't have to worry about my family getting vaporized by a missile. That's something, anyway. Meanwhile, I'm going to adopt the time-honored strategy for world crises -- spend a weekend getting loaded. I'll be posting before I leave, I'm sure, but meanwhile, let a smile be your umbrella.
Rod Dreher has seen the Danny Pearl tape -- or the propaganda version that's being used for recruitment. Lord in Heaven, where did these animals come from?
Our Fearless Leader writes to say that he's got a spiffy new site, which can be found at www.instapundit.com just as soon as the DNS clears. Meanwhile, you can find him here: http://64.247.33.250/. Go check it out -- his new look is smurf-a-licious.
Meanwhile, TNR advocates a Democratic presidential hopeful taking on the death penalty as a way to make himself stand out from the field.
I think they're off base.
Long-time readers know that I'm against the death penalty; I'd be perfectly happy to vote for someone who opposed it. But I think that a Democratic politician taking that stance will make people think he's soft on crime. Not that that needs to be the case, of course; but people do tend to use certain issues as shorthand for larger philosophical differences. In this case, opponents of the death penalty are seen as having cast their lot with the forces that seek to overthrow stable middle-class order -- and in my opinion, the Democrats did flirt with such an alliance in the 1970's, which is why they suffered so in the 80's. Clinton brought them back into the fold of the happy bourgeois value system. That's why all the candidates sound all alike; every candidate on either side of the line is catering too the fairly narrow range of values embraced by the American middle class. I just don't see the death penalty as a winning way for a Democrat to differentiate himself.
TNR soundly spanks the Democrats for taking an anti-Yucca stance. It's every bit as appalling as any Republicans-for-business-as-usual coalition trying to block accounting reform. Although I did have a nice chuckle with my father this weekend over some yammerhead who claimed that trains carrying the nuclear waste would become a "target for terrorists".
First of all, the waste is a "target for terrorists" right now, if they so desire, sitting in its temporary storage facilities.
Second of all, each tiny amount of radioactive waste is going to be transported encased in a virtually indestructible concrete cask weighing several tons. I forget how many casks it would take to make a weapon, but the number was somewhat higher than one.
So let's picture our terrorists hijacking the radioactivity. They don't have their own railroad, so they're going to need a fleet of trucks.
The'll need to ambush the train at a fairly secluded spot, which pretty much means one that's not in line-of-sight from a road.
That's going to make it a little difficult to get the crane they'll need to lift the casks up to the train bed. Dad's suggestion of a 35-tonner might be overkill, but even a smaller model is going to take most of a day to motor up to the train bed, fully secure, and get operational with the limited crew that our erstwhile terrorist groups will probably have available.
Now, even supposing that the rural cops are so dumb that they haven't noticed an enormous crane driving around in an area with no ongoing heavy construction, possibly flanked by a fleet of empty flatbed trailers, it stretches the imagination a bit too far to believe that the people who operate the train will not notice that it has gone missing for the better part of a day.
The terrorist groups would probably be better off hijacking trucks carrying the stuff, but then the logistical nightmare of simultaneously hijacking the right number of trucks becomes apparent. After the first truck is hijacked, all the others will be notified immediately. But what if they kill the driver before he can sound the alarm? No good -- trucks these days are coming with GPS, and I think it's safe to say that any truck carrying nuclear waste will have at least that; turn it off, and the alarm goes off, but leave it on and they can find you. Not to mention any number of other safeguards that will probably be in place, like false keycodes that both key the ignition and send the alarm, and mean looking people in uniform guarding the trucks with guns.
Far easier to buy your nuclear waste in Trashcanistan, where it's nice and legal.
Krugman thinks that accounting standards are piss-poor.
I agree with him.
He thinks that Congress is not going to force adequate standards because of lobbying by corporate interests.
I also agree with him there.
You can therefore imagine my immense surprise when Krugman informed us -- are you sitting down? -- that the real culprit is the Bush Administration and the Republicans.
Seeing as the Democrats control the Senate, I mean.
And our own Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is the largest recipient of largesse from the accounting industry.
Krugman says that he doesn't want to be partisan about this. So how come he's focused on the Republicans, when the bill is in the hands of the Senate? 'Taint going to pass without considerable Democratic support, Professor.
I don't know the details of the bill, nor do I have any idea how much support the Bush administration is giving to forces trying to kill it. If the Bush administration is working to weaken accounting standards, or prevent good standards from being enacted, shame on them. It will hurt all of us in the long run. I can't argue with Krugman there -- although given the way he writes, week after week, about how corrupted the political process is by special interests, it's surprising that he comes down so hard on Standard and Poor's effort to create a private standard for evaluating financial statements.
Lying in Ponds PV: 2 for 2
Anyway, while I was looking for the column, this caught my eye on the New York Times Op-Ed page:
READERS' OPINIONS Join a Discussion on Today's Editorials Do you agree with the editors and contributors at The Times?
The New York Times idea of a discussion, apparently, being one in which everyone tells them they're right.
Reading this piece by Steven Den Beste, I was struck by my reaction to all these multilateral institutions that the Europeans want us to join, that reaction being "not on your life". No, I do not want to submit our foreign policy, economy, tax regime, or other important questions to a vote in which Europe carries the majority, no way nohow.
Why? Well, quite simply because I think they'd do it wrong.
The Europeans don't understand how we can be so arrogant. But that's because for a European to say that his country is better smacks of racism: blond, blue eyed ersatz ubermenschen derogating the lesser breeds. I don't think that they have grasped that Americans can say "our way is better" without implying a superiority of our breed, or even our culture.
Because America is an idea. America is the idea that if you leave people alone to get on with things, they get it right most of the time. It's the idea that where you come from is a great deal less important than where you're going. It's the idea that if you don't like something, you can pick up a wrench, get in there, and start fixing it. It's the idea that if your solution doesn't work out the first time, there's always room to try again. It's the idea that the most important thing a person can do in life can only really be known to them, and the most important thing a government can do is get out of their way while they look for it. It's the idea that individuals aren't available in groups; they can only be packaged individually. It's the idea that liberty is worth our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. It's the expectation that you do the best you can with what you have. And it's the knowlege that if there are a bunch of people who are violating these ideas, one way or another, you don't have to beat them into submission -- you can pick up and go somewhere else, where the people are more congenial.
It's not racist to say that some ideas are better than others.
I don't think that Europeans understand, in the American sense, the concept of freedom. Which is why they do not understand why we will not relinquish what they hold cheap.
But any one of them can join our merry band any time they want by crossing the pond and sharing the idea. And if they don't want to, that's okay too. But I'm not going to give these things up because the Euros get snotty and say we're immature every time we try to go our own way. Because I'm sorry if it hurts their feelings, but I think my way is better. And in the end, I'm willing to die for my idea. No, really, I am. I'm pretty happy that no one seems particularly interested in arranging it, but I'm also pretty sure that if it were necessary, I would be ready, if not exactly willing. The multilateralists should look deep in their hearts and ask themselves if their ideas are worthy of the same honor.
So my blog vacation will be starting a little prematurely.
I put my glasses down today, and when I picked them up they were broken. No reason, I didn't sit on them or anything -- just broken.
Prior to 9 months ago, I usually wore contacts. So I only had the one pair of glasses. But contacts don't do so well on a construction site, so I've been wearing my glasses since September. My contacts were in dry dock, so to speak. So now, with neither contacts or glasses, I'm finding out what it's like to be blind. Oh, I can move around, but I can't read, can't see the television, can't make out faces or shapes unless they're big. It's a damn good thing I touch type, 'cause that's how I'm writing this now. If there are any typos, I apologize; I can't see 'em.
So until I get some vision back, I'm afraid I'll be off ; I'll probably be back on some time tomorrow. Meanwhile, go read some of the fine blogs at the side there, and I'll just nip off and quietly drink myself insensible in the hiatus.
Nat Hentoff lets loose with this savage indictment of Nick Kristof for saying that Sudanese slave redemptions are a scam. Hentoff says that there's no evidence this is so, and posts considerable evidence to the contrary.
However, it should be considered that the Christian groups who are buying ("redeeming") slaves are almost certainly increasing the market for new ones. Similar efforts by abolitionists here in the 1830's - 1850's freed slaves -- but also increased the profits of the rogue slavers who continued to traffic in fresh slaves from Africa, even though this was illegal.
Of course, what else can you do? Unless you go into Sudan en masse and institute some serious regime change, it's the only option these groups have. A tragic necessity, perhaps -- but it's not beyond the pale to ask whether it hurts more than it helps.
Arrggghh!! I knew this was going to happen. Let me clarify one more time: I do not want to debate campaign finance reform. I don't think it is going to work. I'm pretty damn sure I'm right. No one has yet presented me with any argument as to why I am wrong. But I have a fundamental lack of interest in debating the subject. Unless you are a current political operative who can give me the inside scoop as to why this campaign finance reform will be different from all the other failed campaign finance efforts from Maine to Mexico, we are not going to have a meaningful argument on it. You will say there is too much money in politics. I will say that this is neither here nor there because there is no hope in hell of getting the money out. You will point to some obscure law elsewhere that is either unconstitutional at a federal level, or doesn't actually work the way you and Common Cause think it does. I will point to empirical evidence from the last 10,000 years of human existance that power breeds corruption. And round and round we go. None of the people I know who actually work in politics think that it will have much of an effect. I mean, they think that they're going to have to make changes in their fundraising style, but they don't think that it's actually going to alter the balance of power significantly -- except for the ads ban, which everyone expects to be struck down. I'm going to go with them on this one. 'Nuff said.
I will pass on a quote, however, from a source who insisted upon anonimity, but is eminently quotable: "The dirty secret of the environmental movement is that their biggest opponent on CAFE ain't Ford Motors -- it's the UAW." Which is logical and depressing, unless like me you're already pretty much of a cynic.
So instead of debating campaign finance reform, go read this terrific piece by Elizabeth Spiers on something we can all get behind -- venture capital financing.
Could we please have a rest from declaring every single law, activity, or biological function that has a disproportionate effect on women to be "an attack on women?" Sometimes a tree is just a tree, and sometimes a bankruptcy law is just a bankruptcy law, not a thinly disguised way for the Patriarchal Power Structure to get us knocked up, unshod, and back in the kitchen, 'kay?
However, in perusing this, I was struck by the fact that our new law apparently has a provision inserted by the senate -- the only part of the bill of which the Op-Ed writer approves, btw -- making it impossible for anti-abortion protesters to declare bankruptcy to avoid judgements. Could someone without an axe to grind (i.e., no rants about the Evil Baby Killers or the Perfidious Sexist Haters of Choice, please) explain to me, first, whether this is actually a provision which, as it is described, singles out only anti-abortion protestors (or is written so narrowly as to have the same effect) and second, what legitimate state interest is supposed to be served by singling out anti-abortion activists, as opposed to, say, radical environmentalists who like to cause chain-saw accidents by spiking trees? Patrick? Fritz?
So the Republican pundits are claiming that the "What did Bush know" thing will backfire on the Dems, while the Dems are piously proclaiming that all they're interested in is knowing whether Bush had information he didn't tell us -- which makes them look a little stupid, of course, since the Dems on the Senate intelligence committee had the same information.
I don't know yet where it will fall. But it did produce at least one priceless pundit moment for me: watching McLaughlin group, where Michael Barone, who is a fountain of historical political trivia, pointed out that the Republicans had tried the exact same strategy on FDR after Pearl Harbor, and that it cost them big time in the next election. Well, the camera caught Eleanor Clift (the Dem party line parrot, for those who don't watch the show; Tony Blankley performs the same service for the GOP) at the moment he pointed out how badly this strategy had hurt the Republicans under FDR. Her eyes widened; a look of stark terror mixed with rage crossed her face, and then she slumped back into her seat. She was curiously quiet for the rest of the segment.
Meanwhile, people are speculating that this was leaked by Democrats. Uh-uh, says my (admittedly wildly inaccurate) political radar. I think the White House leaked it, at the time when they calculated it would do the least damage: not so close to 9-11 that it risks turning the tide of rage about The Day back on him; far enough from the election that the tempest in a teapot will have died out by then.
Honestly, I think the Democrats should stop going after the administration. They're not helping themselves. They're extremely vulnerable in the Senate right now; if they were smart, they'd start flogging local issues, instead of flailing at the president. As far as I can tell, every point they cost him in the opinion polls costs them three for looking like they're willing to play politics with our national security. (Dems -- don't jump on me. I'm not reporting some version of gospel truth; I'm just telling you what I think is the impression they're giving the nation, just as I think that the Republicans managed the make the nation think that they were a bunch of narrowminded hypocrites pursuing Clinton for political advantage, whatever the actual truth of the matter. 'Kay?)
Pejman rips, shreds, and dices the military strategy of Darth Vader's empire -- then arranges it all on a bed of mixed baby greens with lemon-and-parsley garni for your reading delight.
