Duck Season

Here's what Bill Simmons has to say:

While arguing that Donovan McNabb was overrated -- a point also made in this column just last week -- Rush Limbaugh claimed that the media was pushing for a black QB to succeed, so they pumped up McNabb and made him seem better than he really was. This wasn't much different than Isiah Thomas claiming that Larry Bird would be "just another good player" if he were black, was it? Didn't think so. But everyone let Isiah off the hook, while Limbaugh has been barbecued for a solid week. Go figure. I'm not saying he didn't deserve it ... it's just interesting, that's all.

Proof that college kids will spend money on anything. College kids don't save money, and every dime in their pockets gets fed right back into consumer goods and low wage service industry jobs. In fact, right now I've got $80 in my pocket and I can't help but think I deserve a drink and a pizza (if only the Sox would finally win this game.) Think about all of the extra spending that would be generated if you cut my taxes!

On the other hand, this Kevin Drum post is just stupid. Drum links approvingly to this survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes showing that those who watch FoxNews exclusively for their news are more likely to have a misconception about the war on terrorism than other news consumers on the issues of Iraq links to al Qaeda, world opinion on the war, and WMDs.

This is supposed to mean that FoxNews watchers are less informed than others on this issue. But these results would have been reached even if FoxNews viewers were equally informed as others. Consider the same survey where everyone who participated is not informed at all about any of the issues asked. The survey would still show that FoxNews viewers are more uninformed on these issues. Why is that? When forced to guess, conservatives probably would choose the answers favorable to war, while liberals would choose answers against. Even though the two groups are equally uninformed, the survey would show that the liberals were more informed because they would be more likely to guess correctly, because of the questions involved. And since generally conservatives watch FoxNews more than liberals, it would show that FoxNews viewers are less informed.

What if a similar survey were done on issues where liberals were more likely to be wrong than conservatives by guessing based on their worldview? Would it still show that FoxNews viewers were less informed? Let's pick, say, environmental issues. Which group would be more likely to be misinformed on these issues when asked the following questions?

1. Did Bush reject the Kyoto Treaty after Congress approved it? (It was actually rejected 95-0 on a preliminary floor vote during the Clinton administration)

2. Did Bush "put arsenic back into the water" by rescinding Clinton era rules? (Not only did Bush not rescind old rules, he adopted the last-minute proposal by Clinton that lowers arsenic levels by four-fifths)

3. Has air pollution gone up or down in the last thirty years? (It has gone down since the EPA was created by some guy named Nixon)

Awaiting the results ...

I agree with Kevin Drum that one of the journalists who know the identity of the leaker should leak it to someone else. It's ridiculous that we're having an investigation of everyone remotely related to the matter but not talking to the six people who actually know who the culprit is, because of some rule on journalistic secrecy.

I didn't win the right to purchase Sox tickets this weekend:

The Boston Red Sox and MLB.com thank you for entering the Green Monster Tickets random drawing, presented by PC Connection, on REDSOX.COM. Over 300,000 entries were submitted, but unfortunately your registration was not randomly selected.

Thank you for your support during our Hunt for Red Soxtober.

Normally I'd love that pun, but local radio station WROR one ups the ole town team by celebrating its BoSox Injection Weekend. When visiting their website be sure to listen to their NOMAH #5 parody song. It's hysterical.

Kirkuk.

Reuters: Polish Troops Find New French Missle in Iraq.

Fair and balanced update - The missles are old:

Industrial sources in France said 2003 was the year the missiles were checked in Iraq by an Iraqi company, not the year of manufacture.

A French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman told Reuters on Friday that Roland 1 missile systems were sent to Iraq from 1980 to 1981 and Roland 2 systems from 1983 to 1986. The Roland 3 was never exported to Iraq, she said. [So how did they get there? The article isn't clear about which kind of missle system is now believed to have been found. ed.]

Under a strict trade embargo imposed by the United Nations, Iraq was barred from buying arms after its invasion of Kuwait in 1990. But Baghdad managed to circumvent the ban in the 1990s through shadowy deals with various arms traders.

From Jonah's latest syndicated column about the Rush affair:

In 1988 Jimmy "the Greek" Snyder lost his job for saying blacks have a genetic advantage over whites athletically. Al Campanis, an L.A. Dodgers executive, suggested that blacks don't have the "necessities" to make good managers. Those guys lost their jobs, their careers and their reputations.

C'mon Jonah, you know that's just not honest. Jimmy the Greek lost his job because he said blacks have a genetic advantage that slavery bred into them. Jimmy's argument was implicitly stating that black athletes excel because white slave owners bred the bad genes right out of their negro pets.

That Jonah didn't correctly characterize Jimmy the Greek's statement doesn't change his argument, but it's important not to forget exactly what others have been guilty of when considering Rush's sins (or lack thereof).

Andrew Sullivan has the dish on the Kary report and the weapons programs found inside Iraq. Amongst Kay's findings are:

* 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.

* 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.

A few weeks ago I got myself worked up into a real fine bluster. An editorial in my school newspaper looked to denounce a state legislative initiative to reform the way student fees are collected as a denial of students' rights. The argument set me off because it is the epitome of every awful thing I see in politics today, and I just had to pen rebuttal. You can read it here.

A week removed from the whole debate I'm rereading my own words and grimacing at just how cornball I can be sometimes. I doubt I've done the cause of opt-in student fees much good. My words are too heavy handed to arouse much sympathy amongst the student groups benefiting from the (impossible to) opt-out (of) system, while people inclined to agree to reform probably didn't sit through my two paragraphs on legislative history to get to the meat of my critique. I almost regret that this letter actually did get published. Almost.

I've resolved myself to the fact that my brief public ode to J.S. Mill won't earn me the public hoorahs I had imagined, (more so than most people, I can be pretty shameless sometimes.) it has provided an opportunity to grow and learn about the ways I need to shape my political ideas to make them fit in the world. This is a concept that has caused me a great deal of grief lately, and in many ways penning these silly letters to the editor (there are more in the works) vests the page with my grief, even if for a brief while.

UPDATE More politics that really no one cares about: There's an article in this weeks MASS MEDIA about the current status of a student government resolution to endorse HB 2400. The resolution of support, endorsed by the Senate President, has been sent back to committee. I know both senators quoted in the article, and I have to say i'm surprised by both of their quotes. Jesse Solomon has always struck me as a bright kid, but I always imagined he was more of a populist than myself, while Will Roach has appearantely allowed his always pleasing demeanor to corrupt his otherwise more head-buttish approach to intellectual issues.

I've been to two Student Senate meetings in my life. Maybe I need to attend a third.

Donate cash to the Second Annual Blogger Boobie-thon for Breast Cancer and then browse their vast collection of (NWS) cheesecake. Donate $50 and gain access to "a separate, passworded "pay-per-boobie" page for bare-breasts." What a wonderful idea!

Demagoguery over policy:

A more modest goal for pollution-free power--say, adding one percent in the coming decade, and two percent in the next--might be practical. But Republican leadership might go for that deal, and therefore Democrats have demanded something impractical, exactly so that the provision can fail and the president and his party be denounced.

Who wrote this? Was it some partisan Republican? No, it was Gregg Easterbrook. Wait a minute, that's the same Gregg Easterbrook who have said before that Bush has done a lot of good things on environmental policy and that the global environment isn't going to hell in a handbasket. He obviously has been bought by the right-wing polluters. Never mind.

Gregg. Gregg. Gregg.

For extra Easterbrook goodness check out his paper "Everything You Know About the Bush Environmental Record is Wrong."

I've seen many people (such as Peter King) say, in response to Rush Limbaugh's comments, something like, "It's 2003; race shouldn't be an issue anymore." I agree, but many of these people saying it don't really believe it themselves. When it comes to hiring head coaches, they want race to be an issue. They'd tell you that obviously there's a problem with the NFL only having 3 black head coaches when half of their players are black, even though they wouldn't say that any specific general manager/team owner was discriminatory.

So what's the difference between the two cases? The obvious inference is that they think race should be an issue only when they can advocate their progressive causes. I don't happen to agree with this interpretation, however, and have a different one. In the case with head coaches, it's the general managers/team owners who are accused of using race as a factor. In the case of Limbaugh's comments, it's the media who are accused of using race as a factor. For those in the media, it's okay when others are being accused, but when they are the target, they close ranks and become defensive.

And the indignant assertions that no one in the media is rooting or has ever rooted for an athlete because that athlete happens to be black are laughable. Limbaugh's comments are wrong because he's describing something that is no longer true but was true 10-15 years ago. When Doug Williams, Warren Moon, and Randall Cunningham were the only black QBs around, there probably were a lot of people who wanted them to do well because they were black. (If you don't agree with this statement, do you think many people wanted Jackie Robinson to do well because he was black when he first played with the Dodgers?) It's not unreasonable to assume that some of these people were sportswriters, though most of them probably didn't let that affect the quality of their work. Now that there are many black QBs in the league, it's not an issue anymore. But it still is for black coaches. Can anyone honestly say that the people who approve of the NFL's rule on interviewing minorities don't care one way or the other how Marvin Lewis, Herm Edwards, and Tony Dungee do? (This last part first appeared in Dan Drezner's comments.)

Since I'm only 22, I don't have specifics on how the media treated black quarterbacks in the 70's and 80's, but fortunately Gregg Easterbrook does:

There was at time and place when Limbaugh's comment might have been right. When African Americans like James Harris of the Rams and Joe Gilliam of the Steelers were breaking the quarterback color line about three decades ago, they struggled as players, and the sports media were often soft on that. Monday Night Football's Howard Cosell hyped the erratic Gilliam, because Cosell wanted to see a black quarterback succeed. We all now know the Steelers were better off playing the white guy, Terry Bradshaw, who made the Hall of Fame.

So all those people who say "it's 2003", please, gimme a break.

Rush is gone, but John Dennis and Gerry "Ku Klux" Callahan still have their morning talk show even after years of this shit:

A prominent WEEI radio talk show host apologized on the air yesterday for comparing the escaped Franklin Park Zoo gorilla to a Metco student waiting for a bus. During Monday morning's Dennis & Callahan Show, host John Dennis reportedly said the animal, which rested briefly at a bus stop during the episode Sunday, was ''probably a Metco gorilla waiting for a bus to take him to Lexington.'' Responding to complaints, Dennis yesterday said the remark ''was extremely insensitive.'' WEEI program director Jason Wolfe said Dennis and the station also had apologized to school and Metco officials. The station also has offered Metco officials public service spots to talk about the program.

For those of you unfamiliar with the program, Metco is a program which allows inner city youths to get an education out in the 'burbs. The program, which moves students based on merit out of under funded schools into the classrooms of neighboring communities that have volunteered to participate, hardly deserves the sort of affirmative-action laced hate rhetoric from these Poor Under-Privileged White Men.

Why does the world guffaw when we tell them we want to support freedom in foreign lands? Look no further than President Reagan:

"Some of the Contras simply enjoyed killing the 'piricuacos' or rabid dogs, as they called the Sandinistas and their official supporters."

By the mid-'80s, these abuses had given the struggle a bad rap. To put a better face on the war, in 1986 the Reagan administration began pushing "Contra reform." It wanted human rights monitors to keep an eye on the rebel army and a leadership shakeup that would elevate politicians with a more progressive bent than Calero. In part, Calero had created his own headache by blithely dismissing the human rights problem. "There have been isolated cases of human rights violations, as there are in every war," he told the Los Angeles Times in 1985. And, even though the maintenance of congressional support for the Contras depended on enacting reforms, Calero vociferously objected to the changes. He was willing to sacrifice the cause to preserve his own power, and in the end this selfishness alienated even supporters, such as Oliver North. (One of North's deputies, Rob Owen, deemed Calero a "strongman" with followers motivated by "greed and power.") In 1985, President Reagan had declared that Calero and the Contra leadership represented the "moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers." By 1987, the Reagan administration had grown so disillusioned that it forced Calero to resign from the leadership of the United Nicaraguan Opposition.

(Emphasis added)

I will be very unhappy if France doesn't finish first in "Weaseliest Country".

Now go vote, early and often. (Via Michele Catalano)

As always, Jonah:

So let me just get this out of the way as quickly as possible. Criticizing someone else's criticism — even when a government official does it — isn't an assault on free speech. It is free speech. And leadership does not require saying "thank you sir may I have another" every time some yutz takes an unfair swipe at you. If giving as good as you get intimidates people from speaking their mind, maybe that's a good thing, because it most likely means those people haven't thought through their positions well enough to offer an opinion worth listening to. If that makes you sad, if that makes you want your boo-boo-kitty and a cookie from your mommy, that's fine. But spare me the prattle about how dissenters are being intimidated. Either offer some facts or stop your whining.

Robert A. George on the Rush Affair:

I'm not feeling sorry for Rush today (the drug story aside, which seems like a cheap shot). He did what what we hate in liberals: Gratuitously introducing race in a discussion where it doesn't belong. McNabb may be overrrated or he may not be. Some columnists have compared his first few years' stats favorably with John Elway. Others suggest that he makes poor decisions and doesn't have great arm strength. That is not the question here. The issue is whether there is some media reticence to call him overrated because he is black. Limbaugh introduced this element with no supporting evidence (the NFL's idiotic minority-hiring policy is a separate issue). Hey, some people think Jake Plummer (formerly Arizona QB, now with Denver) is overrrated, but a discussion of his abilities focuses on his stats, not his color.

(Emphasis added)

Consider me one blogger who's very happy Rush is gone. His "Rush Challenges" always broke up the flow of the show, he never had anything interesting to say, and he routinely got the names of the other studio analysts wrong.

Now if only Michael Irvin can be shown the same door....

The Los Angeles Times has a front page story on six women who accuses Arnold Schwarzenegger of touching them sexually. What a coincidence! The Times just happen to come up with this story five days before the election! It almost as if they time the story to maximize the damage to Arnold, doesn't it? [Why didn't they release it on election day?--ed. Mickey Kaus has the answer, written yesterday before the story hit: "Tomorrow would be about the logical last day for the Los Angeles Times to drop its bomb on Arnold Schwarzenegger. If editor John Carroll waits any longer it will look like a late hit designed to stampede the electorate."]

Kaus says this won't be fatal to Arnold, and I agree. Here's why: the two groups of people most likely to have a lesser opinion of Arnold because of this story are feminists and social conservatives. Most feminists aren't going to vote for Republicans anyway, but this type of story might have persuaded some social conservatives from not showing up to vote for a Republican in a normal election. This election, however, is different because the presence of Tom McClintock. The voters this story is designed to dissuade from voting for Arnold wasn't going to vote for him anyway. So at worst Arnold will lose a few votes to McClintock, but not enough to put him behind Bustamente.

Judge Rules student may wear "Bush is a Terrorist" shirt:

"The court's decision reaffirms the principle that students don't give up their right to express opinions on matters of public importance once they enter school," Kary Moss, executive director of the state ACLU, said in a news release Wednesday.

Barber was 16 when he wore the shirt on a day he was scheduled to present a "compare and contrast" essay in English class. Barber had chosen to compare President Bush to former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

At the time, Bretton said he wanted to express his anti-war position by wearing the shirt, which he ordered on the Internet.

Suspensions over dress code cause concern:

DUNCANVILLE -- A zero-tolerance dress code that's led to 700 student suspensions since August at Duncanville High School and Ninth Grade Center is causing concern among parents and students who say enforcement of the policy is too extreme.

The high school and Ninth Grade Center, which opened Aug. 18 to 3,540 students, average roughly 24 suspensions per school day.

Teresa Montgomery said she was enraged when her straight-A student called her in tears telling her she was going to be suspended.

"She is not a problem child; she's never been in trouble," Montgomery said.

Montgomery's daughter, Raylee, was suspended after an administrator noticed the 13-year-old girl's shirt had become untucked. The girl said she apologized, tucked in her shirt and asked if she could continue to class but was not allowed.

****

"We've had comments from teachers telling us how much better discipline is overall, and attributing it to the strictness of the dress code," she said. "We know there have been a lot of suspensions, but the discipline is spilling over into other areas."

No link because you can only see this headline on AOL:

Rush Blitzes Black Athlete
Says Race Is Why QB Starts
Did Limbaugh Go Too Far?

This is what Limbaugh actually said on ESPN:

I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. They're interested in black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well ... McNabb got a lot of the credit for the performance of the team that he really didn't deserve.

One can disagree with he said, but he definitely did not say that McNabb is starting only because he's black. No one would know it, though, from just looking at the headline.

Timothy Noah rightly screams: Dear Lord no, not again!

Further proof that the UN has marginalized itself: Annan wants the Baath Party to share power in Iraq.

Want to understand why liberals are mocked more than conservatives? Just read this raspberry/piss & moan argument and compare/contrast it with an argument made by an adult. The differences are just amazing.

UPDATE: Here's what Jonah Goldberg has to say about liberal penny-pinching:

Even more intensely, Democrats denounced the Bush Administration for not understanding how long and difficult the task would be to rebuild Iraq. While grilling Pentagon officials shortly before the war, Sen. Joseph Biden rightly insisted "that maintaining a secure environment after a possible war with Iraq" would be essential "for any positive change we wish to bring to Iraq." Biden wanted to "make sure we don't do what we've done in Afghanistan" in Iraq.

Well, now it turns out the Democrats want to do exactly that. Virtually all of the Democratic presidential aspirants - including their new golden boy Wes Clark - don't want to spend any more money on Iraq.

Each one of them has some cutsey-wutsey joke or jibe about how outrageous it is that we can spend money on a new power grid or on healthcare in Iraq but we can't spend money on such things here at home. "If we can open firehouses in Baghdad, we can keep them open in the United States," declared John Edwards, a candidate who was particularly adamant that we do more in Afghanistan this time last year.

****

It's too bad the Democratic Party seems more committed to defeating Bush than winning its own arguments - or winning the war on terrorism for that matter. Compared to the alternative, I'll take Bush's "hypocrisy" any day.

And Peter Beinart:

You'd think Democrats would have applauded the president's conversion, perhaps even claimed credit for it. Instead, leading Democrats responded to Bush's U-turn with one of their own. With the polls showing that a majority of Americans, and a huge majority of Democrats, don't want to spend more money on Iraq, prominent Democrats decided Bush was too committed to nation-building. Almost overnight, it was Democrats who wanted to reconstruct Iraq on the cheap.

Democrats support the $51 billion Bush has requested for Iraqi military operations. But they want him to separate that from the roughly $20 billion he has requested for rebuilding Iraq's hospitals, electrical grid, and police. Ask Democrats whether they support that latter request, and they give three responses, each more dishonest and opportunistic than the last.

The first response is that the Bush administration should be spending the money at home. As John Kerry said at the September 9 Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) debate, "If we can open firehouses in Baghdad, we can keep them open in the United States of America." Yes, if we repealed the tax cuts, perhaps we could. But that's not going to happen, so, in the real world, Democrats have to decide whether to support large sums for Iraqi nation-building, even though their constituents won't get the domestic spending they vastly prefer. At the end of the day, Kerry will probably vote yes. But his debate answer pandered to an audience that wanted to hear him say no.

****

The third dodge is to equate reconstructing Iraq with lining Dick Cheney's pockets. "I will not support a dime to protect the profits of Halliburton in Iraq," proclaimed Bob Graham at the CBC debate. But, for better or worse, rebuilding Iraq and securing Halliburton's profits are now intimately connected, and it is not exactly a sign of foreign policy seriousness to propose abandoning the former in order to prevent the latter.

These three nonresponses to Bush's budget request expose the shallowness of what passes for Democratic national security doctrine. If Democrats had a distinct post-September 11, 2001, vision, it was partly that the war on terrorism required a Marshall Plan as well as a Truman Doctrine; we needed to build schools in the Muslim world, not just crack skulls. Yet, now, with the Bush administration finally recognizing that defeating terrorism requires making sure Iraqis have electricity and clean water, the Democratic presidential candidates are looking for any excuse to avoid saying yes. Pandering to public isolationism may make short-term political sense, but, in the long-term, it will simply confirm what many Americans already believe: that you can dress up the Democratic Party in whatever uniform you want, it still doesn't have a strategy for the defining challenge of our time.

Scrooge McDuck has more heart than these 10 democratic candidates and their constituents combined. How can anyone in good conscience adopt a position which boils down to "how dare the President spend our money to lift those people out of poverty?"

Just like Hei Lun, i'm no huge fan of Bush. The democrats are mostly right when they say he's been persona non grata
with his domestic policies. Yet, in light of all of the arguments that can be made against this administration, I can't accept the one that says Bush should be removed because he's doing too much for the impoverished survivors of Saddam Hussein's regime.

A gorilla escaped from a Boston zoo Sunday:

The gorilla, known as Little Joe, escaped Sunday night and roamed through the Franklin Park Zoo and along nearby streets in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood for nearly two hours before it was sedated with tranquilizer darts, according to Zoo New England chief executive and president John Linehan.

A reader of Mark Kleiman's comments:

A reader reports spotting an AP story about a gorilla who escaped from a Boston zoo and was spotted two hours later sitting on the bench at a bus stop. He offers three interpretations:

1. Public transportation is getting worse and worse. Two hours and no bus.
2. The gorilla's escape plan was thwarted by not having exact change.
3. He missed the bus because he was mugged.

Armed Liberal links to a column in the Los Angeles Times by Ronald Brownstein pointing out that while the Democratic presidential candidates all complain about Bush's unilateralism in foreign policy, they want to impose their views on the rest of the world on labor and environmental issues.

There's a video showing Iraqi children playing near missiles that has been shown on ABC (the Austalian version of the BBC, not our ABC) news in Australia. This obviously shows that the soldiers don't care about the safety of Iraqi children, right? Now the awful, disgusting part: the full video, not shown on television, shows that the reporter, Gina Wilkinson, guided the children to the missiles so they can be filmed. Michele Catalano links to the full story.

Andrew Sullivan on the Plame affair:

I haven't posted on this subject yet because Karl Rove has told me not to. When he gets back to me and tells me the party line, I'll write something.

Ex-soccer player sent to prison for 10 years for plotting to attack a NATO base in Belgium on behalf of al Qaeda.

It works. Afghanistan to unveil it's new constitution this week.

Cliff May calls into question the likely motivations of Robert Novak's informant:

Everyone seems to accept that if the White House leaked the name and occupation of Joe Wilson's wife it was done to "smear" him. But how does that information smear Wilson?

When I learned that his wife worked for the CIA, it caused me to think better about him. In fact, one friend, a Democrat, cited his wife's occupation to me to suggest that Wilson was not as rabid a partisan as I believed (and as I had alleged in NRO).

The alternative explanation that Wilson has suggested: That his wife's name was leaked to "intimidate" him. What does that mean? That the idea was that some foreign agent might attempt to kill Mrs. Wilson?

What May seems to miss is the third possibility, that this was a shot across the bow designed to intimidate future dissenters. What supports this theory? From what I've read so far, the general consensus is that an outed CIA agent can't be much of an agent. Joe Wilson's wife's career will probably be irreparably slowed if not ended by her outing as a member of The Agency.

Has someone in the administration ended one woman's career to keep future dissenters quiet? This seems like the only logical explanation. I agree with May that smearing doesn't make much sense as a motive. I believe I watch more news than most of the electorate, perhaps a lot more news, and I honestly can't remember hearing word one from Joe Wilson in the last few weeks. What would have been the point of smearing someone who has already been marginalized by the news cycle? Since I don't believe Robert Novak would knowingly endanger the life of a civil servant and compromise national security, the the leak can only be interpreted as a below the radar blow felt 'round Washington.

Thus the real reason people are rabid to report this story, it seems to be the first time anything dirty can truthfully be pinned on the Bushies.

This Tuesday Morning Quarterback item must be dedicated to Dan Drezner:

Political mega-babe Salma Hayek declares, "The twenties were sexy because they were a time of experimentation." The main experiment of the 1920s was Prohibition, which created organized crime.

As Homer Simpson might say: ummm, organized crime. TMQ also has other celebrity quotes and reader suggestions for new Miss America competitions (and football, too!).

Will Baude says it's not "throwing your vote away" to vote for a third party:

I've recently heard a comment to the tune that Libertarians who vote for a Libertarian presidential candidate are "throwing their vote away," or hurting the major party that they consider to be the lesser evil. This isn't so.

Voting Libertarian in last election (or next election) is no more throwing your vote away than voting Democrat or Republican would have been. This is because the election did not come down to one vote (and, given the nature of the recount, may not have come down to any votes at all). The statistical chance of any single vote having an outcome on the presidential election is 0.000%. It simply doesn't matter.

This is technically true, but I don't think the reasoning is correct. While individually no one can sway an election by voting, the same is not true if one considers these individuals as a group. Consider the last election, when Republican John Thune lost by 500 or so votes to Democrat Tim Johnson, with the Libertarian candidate getting many more votes than the difference. Even though the Libertarian dropped out of the race to endorse Thune days before the election, many still voted for the Libertarian. While it is true that each of these Libertarian voters individually would not have made a difference, if a small proportion of these voters had voted for the Republican, he definitely would have won. Or consider the more famous case: Florida. Again, the third-party vote (this case the Greens) was much bigger than the difference between the winner and the runner-up. Gore only needed a little more than 1% of the Greens to switch their vote to win.

So the thing to do for third-party supporters might be: vote for the third-party candidate only when the election is not close. From a Volokh reader:

I generally vote Republican or Libertarian, using the following formula: Vote Libertarian when my vote is very unlikely to make a difference. The last Field poll before an election historically has a bias of 1% to 3% for incumbents and Democrats, and all polls have a margin of error. If the Republican candidate is more than 6 to 7% behind, or more than 3% ahead, the race is pretty much decided, and voting Libertarian sends a stronger message than voting Republican. . . .

WARNING The last sports prediction I made was that the Atlanta Falcons had a good chance of going 5-1 with Doug Johnson at quarterback.

Braves-Cubs
I'm a big Greg Maddux fan, but he simply is not the same pitcher in the playoffs for whatever reason. The two best starting pitchers in the series by far are Mark Pryor and Kerry Wood. I think this big edge is enough to overcome the Braves' superiority in all other areas. Cubs in 5

Giants-Marlins
The Giants have a better offense and better starting pitching. And they have Barry Bonds. Giants in 4

Yankees-Twins
Again the Yankees have both the better offense and the better pitching. Their bullpen is a concern, but the Minnesota offense won't be good enough to force the Yankees to go deep into their bullpen. Yankees in 3

Red Sox-Athletics
There will be a game in which the Red Sox bullpen blows a lead. But both Pedro Martinez and Derek Lowe have been at their best in the last month, and it's more probable that the Red Sox offense can get 3 or 4 runs off the Oakland starters than the A's offense doing to same to Martinez and Lowe.
Red Sox in 5

UPDATE Wow, one game into the playoffs and I'm already wrong. Not that as a Red Sox fan I'm complaining or anything. I should also add that the team in my fantasy football league I thought had the best players is now in last place.

As mentioned before, last election I was a volunteer for the Libertarian Carla Howell for Governor campaign here in Massachusetts. Howell was also the main proponent of the Yes on 1 campaign to abolish the state income tax, which got a bit of national media attention for getting 45% of the vote. This was part of a political science class assignment at Boston University in which I had to work for either a campaign or interest group. The professor, Betty Zisk, was very liberal and certainly steered the class into working for liberal groups (her list of contacts for interest groups had no conservative groups), so I decided to work for someone whom she would dislike. One thing I learn from working with the Libertarians, about whom I know little before, is that they're kind of nuts, even though I agree with them on a lot of issues.

Since then, I have received regular emails from the Howell camp. Some of them are quite amusing (again, in the Sports Guy unintentional comedy way). And since we were on the subject of those who don't fit into "left" and "right" labels and I just received two emails in the last twenty-four hours from them, I thought I'd post parts of the emails.

This first bit is on the ballot initiative in the town of Waltham to cut property taxes by $40 million, from lieutenant governor candidate Ruch Aucoin:

As Election Day draws closer, our tax cut measure is stealing the election show, freaking out bureaucrats and union parasites - while
delighting average taxpayers with the prospect of getting back $1,000
every year.

Here's one example. While going door to door yesterday, I met a city
worker who told me that in 37 days (the number of days until the
election on November 4th) he will be laid off...thanks to my tax cut!

"No on 1! No on 1!" he chanted as I leafleted his street.

So I told him he has nothing whatsoever to worry about, provided his
department head can justify his employment.

He then reiterated, this time with resignation in his voice, "Like I
said; I'll be losing my job in 37 days." (His next-door neighbors
listened to our chat with great interest.)

We get people fired! That's the Libertarian way!

The other email is on Carla Howell's decision whether to enter the presidential race or not. You might not know it, but there's a groundswell of support for her to run (really, there is!). But today she announces that she's not running:

To decide whether or not to seek the Libertarian Presidential
Nomination in 2004, I asked myself two key questions:

1. How can I best use my time, skills, and energy to dramatically
advance our libertarian cause?

2. What do I have a passion for right now?

These questions cleared the air for me.

I will not seek the Libertarian Presidential Nomination for 2004.
Nor will I accept a draft.

My greatest Libertarian strengths and passions call me to another
path for 2003 and 2004.

For 2003 and 2004, I am actively coaching, partnering with, and
mobilizing Libertarian activists for campaigns and Bold Tax Cut
Initiatives. In Massachusetts and other states.

I am seeking out and working with motivated, committed, and capable
activists to research and track government budgets - and uncover ways
to substantially cut government spending.

George Bush, you can stop worrying now.

So far: Steve at BTD says most of us are either of the "left" or the "right", I and others respond, and now Steve has a response of his own. Steve writes:

Ultimately in this country you do take a side.

It's all because of our Single Member District Plurality electoral system, or "first past the post" voting. In virtually all American elections, each voter selects one candidate, and the candidate with the most votes wins.

***

The practical effect of all this is that in America, two large parties perpetually do battle for the hearts and minds of the centrist voters who tip the scale, ever so slightly, one way or the other. These two parties loosely represent the "left" and the "right" (whatever those arbitrary terms happen to mean at the time) and together they occupy all positions of power. Ultimately, whether we like it or not, every act of political participation matters only insofar as it helps or hurts the two major parties. George W. Bush is president today because of Nader voters in Florida.

***

Many of you are still thinking that political science aside, you are still an individual. You'll still vote Libertarian as a matter of principle. You'll pick and choose the bits you like from each of the parties.

Fine.

But I think our electoral system infiltrates the national psyche in ways we diminish or fail to perceive. I think almost all of us take a side, with reservations.

Then he gives us another thought experiment:

Think back to late November, 2000. Bush and Gore are arguing about hand counts and hanging chads. Lawsuits are pending. Nothing is decided. One of these men is going to be president, but no one knows which it will be.

You had a preference, didn't you? Maybe you didn't vote for either of them, or maybe you didn't vote at all, but you knew who you wanted to win. And in knowing, you made a choice. You may not have been enthusiastic, but you were not neutral. You envisioned an ideal future achieved through incremental gains. Welcome to America.

I know I'm probably an exception, but this thought experiment didn't work that well for me. That's because I voted for Gore, but thought that Bush was right on the merits of the law. I'm probably more conservative than I was three years ago, but I seriously doubt that that took place all in the thirty days between the election and the Supreme Court decision. The choice I made was for the rule of law, not for Gore or Bush. So here I am, straddling the fence once more.

ALSO, I seem to remember Jacob Levy having some extensive thoughts on how single issue voting affacts this divide (i.e. what is a pro-gun voter to do when the two Cogressional candidates are a pro-gun Dem and an anti-gun Rep?), but I can't find it in his old archives.

UPDATE It just occured to me that I didn't actually address Steve's substantive argument, bur fortunately Will Baude already made the point I would have made, which is that taking a side in a specific election is not equivalent to taking a side generally.

UPDATE TWO Found the Levy post. His conclusion is that it sometimes makes sense to vote for a candidate from the other party if that candidate agrees with the voter on an important issue. Not sure how much it relates to the issue we're discussing, but worth a read nonetheless.

God I hate those anti-drug/anti-smoking commercials. A line from one that appears frequently: "One in three roadside drivers tested for drugs tested positive for marijuana." This is supposed to mean that marijuana is "more dangerous than you think", since it's the only other line in the commercial. It might or might not be, but the first statement doesn't have anything to do with the dangers of marijuana, even though the commercial tries to make the link.

So what does it mean that "one in three roadside drivers tested for drugs tested positive for marijuana"? It means that when a cop pulls someone over, the cop might give the driver a roadside drug test if the cop has reason to believe that the driver is under the influence of drugs at the time. For those drivers who are tested, a third tested positive for marijuana. More important is what this does not mean. It does not mean that a third of the people pulled over are on marijuana. It does not mean that a third of those in traffic accidents are on marijuana. And lastly, it does not mean that marijuana is the cause of a third of all traffic accidents.

In fact, the statement does not say anything at all about a causal relationship, or even a correlation, between smoking marijuana while driving and being involved in a traffic accident. If their intended message is that being under the influence of marijuana increases one's risk of getting into a traffic accident, then it is untrue and dishonest. If their intended message is that being under the influence of marijuana increases one's risk of being pulled over, then it is still untrue and dishonest. The statement does not say anything about one's odds of being pulled over if one were under the influence of marijuana, compared to those who are not. If their intended message is that marijuana is just as dangerous as other drugs, then it is still untrue and dishonest. Presumably, two-thirds of those tested either tested positive for other drugs, or did not test positive. That one-third number is useless in assessing the dangers of marijuana in causing a driver to be pulled over unless we also have statistics on the rate of use of marijuana as a proportion of all illegal drugs. If more than a third of incidents of drug use are with marijuana, then it is in fact less dangerous than other drugs, at least in terms of the dangers of being pulled over by a cop.

By following the statement "one in three roadside drivers tested for drugs tested positive for marijuana" with "it's more dangerous than you think", the commercial is trying to imply a causal relationship that does not exist. Their best hope might be that the audience it's aiming to convince are too doped up on drugs to realize the fallacy of the link. The rest of us become a little more skeptical of the drug war.

What Superhero are you? I'm Professor X. BLah.

Via Eve Tushnet.

Nick : watching fox25 news?
Hei Lun: no
Nick : in a story about the state's funding of flu shots
Nick : romney mentioned the shots were recommended for "older folks, people afflicted immune problems, and pregnant individuals"
Hei Lun: maybe he just saw the arnold movie
Nick : When I'm King: Celebrity gossip will not make any news shows
Nick : fox just zoomed in with a spotlight on the ring finger of two masked people on a motorcycle
Nick : "allegedly ben and jen - and she's wearing the ring!"
Hei Lun: then half the population might stop watching the news
Nick : what happened to your prediction that jim had the best team out of the draft?
Hei Lun: you expect my predictions to be correct?
Nick : the major problem with this seinfeld episode: The dryer feeling lasts about two minutes
Hei Lun: kramer has a lot of free time

How many blogs update stories that are almost two months old? Well, i'm still not over the hurt.

For cheesecake, click here to see Halle Berry decked out in her Catwoman toggs. Michelle Pfeifer she definitely ain't, and while imaging Ashley Judd in ripped leather might be good daydream fodder in class tommorow, I can't for the life of me understand why Halle Berry wants to become the first multiple super-heroine actress in Hollywood.

Oh wait, that's right, she can't act. Thus explaining why she's the double feature in the least erotic topless scene ever, and why she also won an oscar for having sex with Billy Bob Thornton.

I consider myself quite satisfied that I don't have the stomach to be a conservative, because John's piece is just disgusting.

John Derbyshire proved himself such an admirer of a blood-bath that he probably warrants a cameo in Freddy v. Jason Part Deux: The Dead Get Deader, Again.

The French have found us!

In other wasteful caloric news, I just ate a Limited Edition Reese's Inside Out Peanut Butter Cup that someone brought into work. After a brief controversy concerning the origin of such a treat, I believe there's an MBA afoot while my co-worker believes a stoned phone call to Hershey Foods Corp. customer comment line must have been involved, it was decided by all that the candy is just no good.

I just spent the last few hours reading up on reactions by the blogsphere from the weekend and today. Don't really have anything original to add, but some thoughts anyway:

--Most of the allegations come from anonymous sources.

--If the allegations are true, then this is a very serious matter. At minimum, the leaker should resign/be fired, and prosecuted.

--Who are the other five reporters to whom this is leaked (if this did happen)? Their identities would say a lot about the source of the leak and the motivation.

--Novak refuses to reveal the source, citing the need to protect sources. But if a crime has been committed, shouldn't he have to reveal his source?

--If Bush knows about this and approved it anyway, then there should be impeachment hearings.

Finally, I agree with this Dan Drezner comment:

... if the White House was willing to commit an overtly illegal act in dealing with such a piddling matter, what lines have they crossed on not-so-piddling matters? In other words, if this turns out to be true, then suddenly do all of the crazy conspiracy theories acquire a thin veneer of surface plausibility?

Jonah Goldberg, U.S. Ambassador to France? Only in an alternative universe.

CNN offers advice on how to prevent your cell phone from becomming evidence of your cheating ways.

Peter Beinart flogs the Democratic party:

These three nonresponses to Bush's budget request expose the shallowness of what passes for Democratic national security doctrine. If Democrats had a distinct post-September 11, 2001, vision, it was partly that the war on terrorism required a Marshall Plan as well as a Truman Doctrine; we needed to build schools in the Muslim world, not just crack skulls. Yet, now, with the Bush administration finally recognizing that defeating terrorism requires making sure Iraqis have electricity and clean water, the Democratic presidential candidates are looking for any excuse to avoid saying yes. Pandering to public isolationism may make short-term political sense, but, in the long-term, it will simply confirm what many Americans already believe: that you can dress up the Democratic Party in whatever uniform you want, it still doesn't have a strategy for the defining challenge of our time.

Read the whole thing.

The Boston Globe says injecting cows with growth hormones does not change the milk the cows produce:

Existing scientific evidence overwhelmingly indicates that injecting cows with an artificial growth hormone to increase their milk production is not a food safety concern. The US Food and Drug Administration has repeatedly said there is no difference between milk from cows treated with the artificial hormone and milk from untreated cows.

So why are milk companies putting disclaimers on milk bottles that their milk doesn't contain growth hormones? Apparently it's a marketing strategy:

Three years ago Oakhurst Dairy set out to differentiate its products from all the others in the supermarket dairy case -- by attaching labels stating that its farmers pledge not to inject their cows with an artificial growth hormone.

The labels, tapping into fears about the safety of the nation's milk supply, have resonated with consumers. Sales shot up 10 percent in each of the last three years, approaching $87 million this year. Oakhurst officials attribute a significant portion of the growth to their no-artificial-growth-hormone campaign.

With Oakhurst cutting into its market share in Northern New England, H.P. Hood responded by duplicating Oakhurst's strategy, even the wording of the labels, in Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire. Garelick Farms appears to be moving in the same direction, also in Northern New England only. In January, Whole Foods Stores plans a chainwide launch of its own private-label milk from cows not injected with an artificial growth hormone.

***

Hood spokeswoman Lynne Bohan said the dairy copied Oakhurst's strategy to remain competitive. She said the Hood label on bottles in northern New England does not appear on Hood bottles in Massachusetts, Connecticut, or Rhode Island because consumers in those states have been less concerned about the hormone issue. She said the plants serving the Southern New England states have no prohibition on milk from cows injected with the artificial growth hormone.

''I wouldn't call it a scare tactic marketing campaign,'' Bohan said of the hormone labels. ''It's a marketing message.'' She said Hood believes there is no taste or nutritional difference between the milk Hood sells in Northern New England and the milk it sells in Southern New England.

Ron Borges writes in the Boston Globe that the NFL might have to settle with Maurice Clarett, who sued the league for antitrust violations for not allowing him to enter next year's amateur draft. Clarett has a good chance of winning in court because the NFL's rule that players must be three years removed from high school graduation to be eligible for the draft is in it's bylaws, but not in the collective bargaining agreement. If it were in the CBA, it would be legal. The NFL's plan might be to allow Clarett to enter next year's draft and quickly add the bylaw, which the Players Association also supports, to the CBA.

Eugene Volokh links to a news story that the ACLU is suing the government for violating the rights of anti-Bush protestors. The ACLU alleged that in public appearances featuring President Bush, the Secret Service is forcing the protesters into "free-speech" zones as much as a quarter mile away, while supporters of Bush are allowed to remain close to the event. Volokh comments:

If these factual allegations are accurate, then there do seem to have been First Amendment violations here. The government might be able to impose content-neutral laws that keep all large groups of people away from where the President is, though even these laws are subject to substantial First Amendment constraints. But I can see no constitutionally adequate justification for allowing pro-Bush rallies near the President's speech but not anti-Bush rallies, if the rallies are either on government property or on a consenting owner's private property -- that would be viewpoint-discrimination, which isn't allowed either in traditional public fora or even in nonpublic fora such as airports.

We'll have to wait to see whether the facts support the ACLU's claims, but if they do, then they definitely are in the right on this. There's really no reason to separate protesters and supporters except to exclude the protesters from photographs and camera shots.

Volokh also address potential counterarguments from his readers, all of which are unconvincing, here and here and here and here.

If OPEC is a cartel of states which conspires to drive up oil prices, why would the United States allow Iraq to resume it's place in the organization? Slate has no idea.

Gregg has an article defending the Bush environmental policy in Time magazine this week. Even better yet, the article mentions that Gregg has a new book titled "The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse, will be published in December" due out in December.

Here's another cool Gregg article: We're All Gonna Die! But it won't be from germ warfare, runaway nanobots, or shifting magnetic poles. A skeptical guide to Doomsday.

From ESPN.com: