Duck Season

David Brooks hits the nail on its head: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly.

Fair warning to Dick Gephardt or Joe Lieberman: You may begin your battle for my vote any day now. All other suitors have been eliminated.

This is simply the funniest thing I've seen all day.

Via The Corner, natch.

In a move surely designed to piss off those incoming libertarians, Dover New Hampshire has banned French Fries from its school cafeteria menus. The cafeteria will instead serve "baked potato wedges or potato puffs." Similarly you will not find the following contraband in the high school vending machines: carbonated beverages, potato chips, candy

Note to Dover New Hampshire, they're called tater-tots, and there are plenty of obese kids who have stuffed themselves silly with the darn things. If you want your kids to lose weight try handing them a ball and leaving them alone for half an hour.

I was going blame the Red Sox lost on John Kerry because he had to use the Cowboy Up slogan for his own campaign, but it now appears that the Supreme Court is to be blamed (Second link via Oxblog).

Viking Pundit wonders if the Organization of the Islamic Conference might have something more important to do than dream-up conspiracy theories:

We are up against a people who think. They survived 2000 years of pogroms not by hitting back but by thinking. They invented Socialism, Communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so that they can enjoy equal rights with others. With these they have now gained control of the most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a world power.

Meanwhile, Michael Totten wonders how the French can possibly justify blocking an EU condemnation of the above speech which was given by Malayasian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.

My rebuttal to last weeks piece was published and can be found here.

I'm a lot happier with the second piece than the first, and even though there are more typos, it is a lot more on message and a contains a lot less gawdy rhetoric. I'm still unsure whether or not I support HB 2400, but I hope for once and for all I've settled the ridiculous notion of rights infringement.

Late last night I got the e-mail announcement that Viking Pundit spent all day waiting for:

Dear Friend,

The best way to support our troops and take the target off their backs is with a real strategy to win the peace in Iraq – not by throwing $87 billion at George Bush’s failed policies. George Bush has offered a price tag – but no plan. I am voting ‘no’ on the Iraq resolution to hold the President accountable and force him finally to develop a real plan that secures the safety of our troops and stabilizes Iraq.

Please click here to watch a video statement, which outlines my position in more depth. I urge you to visit my website at http://www.johnkerry.com and find out more.

The Administration has consistently misled the American people and wasted every opportunity to build an international coalition in Iraq.

With our soldiers dying on a daily basis, the President needs to change course. But rather than putting in place a real plan, he has spent months drifting and zigzagging. Rather than immediately building a real coalition, he has fought to keep unilateral control over reconstruction and governance. Rather than asking for shared sacrifice from Americans – as Senator Biden and I have proposed, he has refused to repeal any of his tax cut for the wealthiest to pay for rebuilding Iraq. Our troops are paying the highest price – and America’s hard working families shouldn’t have to subsidize that failure.

America’s national security requires a muscular strategy that brings freedom and prosperity to post-war Iraq, stability to the region, and advances our basic values and ideals. And I will gladly and proudly vote for any proposal this President offers that protects the troops and provides a real plan to win the peace.

But I oppose spending $87 billion – at the expense of health care, education and domestic priorities here at home – on a strategy that does not protect the troops, does not make America safer, and does not put us on a path to win the peace in Iraq.

This is just pure asinine partisan rhetoric bullshit, and I've officially lost all respect for Senator Splunge. For any member of the U.S. Congress to bemoan a lack of pork in the 2.44 TRILLION U.S. budget is an absurdity that runs screaming past the border of insanity on a brisk pace towards obscenity.

I called Senator Kerry's Boston office to complain about all of this, but the woman on the phone was just too nice. I let his office know that unless he changes his position I will not be voting again for him, ever. Hopefully that means something to them coming from a registered democrat. Though, after all that, I now feel bad for talking to Kerry's aide with my angry voice. She did let me know I was the first person to call about this issue, so maybe my one lone voice will register in his campaign somehow.

We might not see eye to eye on a some things, but my US Citizenship and a wedding band might convince the chica in the middle to rethink her homophobic ways.

(Via Dave Barry.)

Don't know whether this is a national thing or not, but at least in Boston, NBC decided to run re-runs instead of the regularly scheduled lineup of new episodes so they don't have to compete with the baseball game.

The amazing thing about Google is that if you know how to use it (as opposed to the people I see in this blog's referrer logs who clearly don't) you can find almost anything. Like, for example, this on the Back to the Future prophecy:

At the beginning of the film, time-travelling scientist Doc Brown takes Marty McFly forward in time to 21 October 2015 in an effort to alter the future and prevent Marty's (as yet unborn) children from ending up in prison. While in the future year 2015, Marty watches a holographic sports news broadcast announcing that the Chicago Cubs have swept an unnamed Miami team (represented by a gator, not a marlin) to win the World Series. This broadcast inspires Marty to buy a sports almanac and take it back to the past with him so that he can make accurate bets on future sporting events, but the contents of the almanac are not revealed in the film.

So no go on the prophesy, though the movie still might be correct on a 2015 Cubs-Devil Rays series [Hey, stop laughing!--ed.].

I like rainy days. I guess I'm out too for Democratic Presidential Nominee.

Bush is leading every (real) Democrat in California except Clark.

Eric Lindholm dissects the latest Democratic Presidential poll numbers: "Have you heard about Hypothetical Democrat? He/she is the man/woman to beat in 2004. Hypothetical Democrat hates fluorescent lights and rainy days, but loves small puppies."

Eric, you forgot one thing! Your analysis clearly shows that Ned Flanders is now the only man in America not eligible to declare himself a Democratic Presidential Nominee:

Homer: Come on, Flanders, there's gotta be something you hate. What about mosquito bites?
Ned: Mmm mmm! Sure are fun to scratch! Mmm! Satisfying!
Homer: What about, uhhhhh, florescent lights?
Ned: Oooh, they hum like angels! You're never lonely if you've got a florescent light!

More fun with e-mail fwds:

Has anyone ever heard of a little thing called fate?


Read below about Back to the Future... A little eerie...


The following is true.


In the 1986 movie Back to the Future 2 , there was a scene where the
Christopher LLoyd Character is looking through the sports almanac and he
happens to "look Back" at the 2003 World Series. He tells Michael J. Fox
that the Boston Red Sox won the 2003 series by beating the Florida team.

What is even more amazing was that when the movie was made Florida didn't
even have a baseball team then....

Like most good people my age i've seen each Back to the Future roughly a hundred millions times or so, and I remember the Boston and Florida thing, but was the year really 2003? Someone queue up their DVD a find out!

Here's something that runs contrary to what a lot of people would assume:

Last week, Halliburton, the oil-services and construction company formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney, surprisingly warned that its earnings for the current quarter would be 15 percent lower than estimates. You'd think that Halliburton would be thriving. After all, oil prices are high, and the company has received giant—if controversial—contracts to oversee the reconstruction of Iraq. The no-bid prewar contract it received to work on Saddam's oil fields has, according to the Wall Street Journal, gushed $1.3 billion of revenues thus far. The company also won a competitive bid for a $1.4 billion contract to support military personnel.

Read more about Dick Cheney and the demise of Haliburton.

This Democratic meme that Republicans don't win elections legitimately is really starting to piss me off. It's been one of the talking points of the far left since Florida, and now it seems the Democratic Party is adopting this pathetic line of rhetoric. Consider this radio ad from Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, a Democrat in the gubernatorial race against Republican Bobby Jindal in Louisiana: "Now Kathleen is in the fight of her political life against the hand-picked candidate of the right-wing Republicans, backed by Mike Foster, the Republican White House, and their millions of dollars." (Emphasis added) I know this is a political ad and you're not supposed to tell the whole truth, but this is ridiculous. Jindal made it to the November ballot by finishing first in the October non-partisan primary and got almost twice as many votes as the next two vote-getters combined. So to say that Jindal was "hand-picked" by the party is to say that voters are morons and don't know what they're doing when they're voting for Republicans.

Which, it seems, has been the Democrats' rhetoric in other races as well. They blamed losing the California recall on Arnold's star power and completely glossed over Davis's unpopularity, Bustamente's lackluster campaign, and the Democrats' refusal to put a real Democratic candidate on the ballot. They blamed losing the 2002 Minnesota Senate race on the Republicans' spin on the Wellstone funeral, completely ignoring the fact that many voters saw it themselves on television and came to the conclusion themselves that the Democrats were using it as a political rally (to say that the Republican spin worked is also to say that the voters were too stupid to determine for themselves). They blamed losing the 2002 Senate race in Georgia on Republicans allegedly questioning Max Cleland's patriotism, and not on his insistence that incompetent Homeland Security union employees can't be fired.

When you add it all up, there's a pattern by Democrats of "Republicans use dirty tactics and the voters are too stupid to see through it." They never lose elections because the Republicans had a better candidate or they ran a better campaign; no, it has to be something sinister or illegal by the other side. This is usually the point when someone fair-and-balanced say, "to be fair, Republicans do it too", but the fact is, they don't, at least not recently. There were no complaints when Mary Landrieu won the Senate race in Louisiana, no complaints of election fraud or calls for a recount when the Republicans lost a Senate seat by 500 votes in South Dakota, and no chants of "Democrats are stealing the election" when the Democrats use the courts in New Jersey to replace Robert Torricelli on the ballot with Frank Leutenberg for the Senate when the law plainly states that they can't do it within 60 days of an election.

If the Democrats are going to continue insisting that voters are too stupid to vote for them, I might have to prove them right on a regular basis.

As the blog that strives to be the official home of Gregg sycophantism on the internet, it's only right that I comment on the Easterbrook antisemitism brouhaha that has run rampant through bloggerland today.

I agree entirely with Ryan Booth. This issue has been frightfully overblown. Gregg Easterbrook, who criticized Spider-Man as being too violent in one of his Tuesday Morning Quarterback columns, was simply trying state that Jewish executives might have more incentive than your average money grabbing film studio to lessen the World's desensitizing to the disgusting acts of violence which Kill Bill is full of.

What does Jewishness have to do with this (asks Hei Lun)? Gregg says that recent European history as well as the daily events of the Middle East may make Jews extra-attentive to humanities sensitivity to gross violence. While this might border on blaming the victim ("she really shouldn't have worn that dress if she didn't want to get laid") it isn't exactly untrue. Jews might be a lot better off in the Middle East if the rest of the neighborhood weren't so inclined to violence. But that brings us back to the real point of Gregg's blog entry (aside from the major Tarantino rant), his belief that excessive violence in movies does real harm to audiences.

I definitely don't agree with his premise, but it's not anti-semitic to believe Israel might be safer if people weren't so violent... but that is exactly why this has become an Uncle Leo moment.

UPDATE - Jessica Harbour adds: "Frankly, [Gregg's blog entry] didn't set off my anti-Semitic detector at all. In Christianity Today, maybe; in the context of the New Republic, which is constantly discussing the role and responsibilities of post-Holocaust Jews, it didn't. Easterbrook has been arguing for years that the violence in mainstream Hollywood films promotes violence in those who watch it; it seems to me that he somewhat clumsily refocused his argument to bring the question of post-Holocaust Judaism and morality in."

Apparently AOL/Time Warner owns the Happy Birthday song:

First published in 1893 the song still earns revenues of some $2 million a year. You don't have to pay AOL for singing the song, however, unless you do it for profit - movies that feature a birthday scene can pay up to $50,000 for the rights.

Three and a half hours online and I'm still a week behind on Slate, as well as having not finished Tuesday Morning Quarterback or having started Monday Morning Quarterback or any of my daily blog readings.

Ah yes, and there's that thing we call homework as well as my thesis research.

I wonder if Rush will ever fall prey to the blogging addiction?

Maybe Jonah was never taught something about glass houses and throwing stones:

But what drives me nuts about this story is how universally misguided the coverage has been. When word came out that Limbaugh had admitted to his addiction, the networks, the newspapers and the countless one-man-band outlets on the Web immediately scurried to find examples of Limbaugh condemning drug use. Aha! He's a hypocrite!

So what?

The coverage made it seem as if Limbaugh's crime or mistake was his hypocrisy not his drug addiction. That certainly makes sense in a journalistic culture incapable of condemning most inappropriate behaviors (racism being the only major exception).

But this is batty. Would Limbaugh really be a better person if all along he'd been telling the world, "Go ahead, take lots and lots of drugs. It's your own business"?

My question to Jonah - When Rush comes back to his radio show can he continue his previous bluster against drug use and drug users? Does he get to continue his company line, or will he be held to some sort of intellectually honest revision of his previous position?

Drug use is bad Rush, you've said so all along. It "destroys families. Drug use destroys societies. Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country." Why did you destroy this country Rush?

Rush, if it is true that "Jerry Garcia destroyed his life on drugs. And yet he's being honored, like some godlike figure. Our priorities are out of whack, folks." are the priorities of your audience out of whack for being incessantly faithful listeners?

Don't try and tell me OxyContin is a different kind of drug. I live in Massachusetts, a state that has an OxyContin Task Force thanks to several statewide OxyContin roberry sprees in the last few years.

So Rush, if drug use is as you described it, why did you do it? Maybe it is because you aren't perfect. As Jonah says "To argue that every conservative must be perfect before he or she can offer an opinion is to say that conservatives can never offer their opinions. No conservative I know said conservatives are perfect." Jerry Garcis wasn't perfect, neither are the rest of those burdened with drug addication in this country.

Maybe these people, instead of being characterized as the destruction of this country, deserve the same chance for redemption that Rush deserves. Yet, before this incident, Rush would have been appalled by this idea.

This is not about chastising Rush for his own sins, it's about Rush not showing a compassion for the burden of addiction. I hope Rush is shown the same compassion that all who suffer should be afforded, now if Rush would just learn to express this compassion himself, then his pain would not all be for nothing.

In this report the BBC has the story of a blind man who, thanks to some new operation, forty years after he lost his sight can now see again. Think about it, that's nothing short of miraculous, right?

The BBC ends the piece focusing on this man's fears:

Before the operation he had been a keen skier, using verbal directions as a guide.

But after he recovered his sight, he was frightened he would crash into something.

Over two years, he has learnt to use shading patterns on the snow to estimate the shape of the slope.

Mr May is also nervous of crossing the road, where he was confident of doing so while blind.

Here's a stupid question, if he's so afraid to rely on his eyes (a fear which is totally understandable considerings his depth perception isn't very good), why doesn't he close his eyes when doing these activities and rely on the same things he used to rely on?

UPDATE - More BBC bad news: Andrew Sullivan has this shocking tidbit: "But the BBC's Orla Guerin says it is not clear whether the easily identifiable convoy was deliberately targeted." - from the BBC. Even Arafat is quoted as condemning "this ugly crime targeting American observers as they were on a mission for security and peace." The BBC - finding more excuses for terror than Arafat.

From a Q&A at the University of Washington's Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs, as reported in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer Reporter:

Nethercutt is a member of the House Appropriations Committee that approved President Bush's $87 billion request for military and reconstruction expenses in Iraq and Afghanistan.

****

Nethercutt and Senor highlighted the return of electricity to Iraq, which now has a higher megawatt output than it did before the war. Reconstruction has targeted schools and hospitals, and the Americans are spending 3,500 percent more on health care than Saddam Hussein did, Senor said.

****

During a question-and-answer session, some in the audience questioned the need for the United States to deal with the United Nations.

"I've had my moments where I felt the United Nations was counterproductive to its charter," Nethercutt said.

Aida Kouyoumjian, who grew up and attended school in Baghdad, told Nethercutt she was glad the United States did not rely totally on the U.N. for approval.

Consider this one blogger who's taking this post very seriously. Kevin Drum calls into question the relationship between the republican leadership in Washington and the absolute nuttiness found in their electoral base in Texas.

I'm opposed to every single item Kevin reprinted from the Texas GOP Party Platform, but whether or not these policy goals accurately reflect the direction of this country remains an open question in my mind.

Mr. Lincoln, give us some help: "If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it."

Those words are from his "House Divided" speech, and Lincoln's analytical frame would suggest that Kevin Drum doesn't have as much to fear as he believes. In his speech Lincoln was able to show that we are tending towards an all slave nation thanks to the Lecompton Constitution, the Dredd Scott decision (which he believed was part of a conspiracy to allow James Buchanan to take the presidency), the Nebraska Bill, and the lack of concern for the violation of previous boundaries set for the slavery issue.

Paul Krugman aside, I haven't yet seen any substantial policy decisions thrusting us towards any of the policy goals set by the Texas GOP. Yes, we have deficits, but without being able to prove sinister intent, these defects are no more evident of an attempt to "starve the beast" than the defects of prior presidents. We also had an Iraqi war, but the liberation of Iraq is a far cry from invading Panama to liberate the canal zone. The two just aren't rationally connected.

X-Files Moment 2: There's a lot to be said for the fact a Supreme Court Justice has not yet stepped down from the Court. We all know that the liberals are holding out for a Dem. in office, but why hasn't the Chief Justice chosen to step down yet?

Perhaps Rehnquist and the other conservative judges have been asked not to step down. I doubt there's a single issue that could divide the administration more than the war over a Supreme Court nominee that would be fought between the Texas GOP base and Mainstream America. By all accounts, The Scary Rightwing considers the SCOTUS a real litmus test for their support, and if unhappy with the proceedings, they could very well chose to not bring out the vote in 2004.

Fair and Balanced Moment: Kevin Drum's comment section seem to be a bastion of liberal nuttiness. Check out the above link and scroll down through the comments, and especially note the messages of E. Avedisian who proclaims "The Republican Party has become the American version of the Taliban. Different scripture, same mind set."

That's really odd E. Avedisian, because where I live soccer fields are still filled with little girls playing soccer, not "immoral" girls being stoned to death.

Today's e-mail from the Dean campaign was cleverly titled "4 ways to help Dean win (...and we're not asking for money.)" Joe Trippi authored the e-mail and spoke about the following suggestion from personal experience:

4. Volunteer to travel to Iowa or New Hampshire

In 1979, I drove to Iowa to help change the country and it changed my life. The experience is amazing. If you’re able to sacrifice a week or take a long weekend to become part of our grassroots campaign in Iowa or New Hampshire for the final push in January, you’ll not only help win those states and change the country -- it will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Your presence on the ground in Iowa or New Hampshire during the final stretch will make the difference.

If this were Sesame Street we'd be playing "Which one of these doesn't belong." It's wonderful that Joe had such a character building moment, but how exactly did he "help change the country"? I can't believe Joe was out in Iowa campaigning for Reagan, the man who actually won in 1980.

X-Files moment: Is this a sign that the Dean campaign is trying to pass itself off for the "surging" Clark campaign by implying it also once supported republicans?

I'm waiting for Andrew Sullivan to link to today's Boondocks.

The following chain letter was sent to my e-mail this evening:

TIRED OF THOSE HIGH PAID TEACHERS!

I, for one, am sick and tired of those high paid teachers.
Their hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only
work nine or ten months a year!

It's time we put things in perspective and pay them for what
they do, baby-sit!

We can get that for less than minimum wage. That's
right.........I would give them $3 dollars an hour and only
the hours they worked, not any of that silly planning time.

That would be $15 a day. Each parent should pay $15 a day
for these teachers to baby-sit their children. Now, how many
do they teach in a day....maybe 25.

Then that's 15 X 25=$375 a day. But remember they only work
180 days a year!

I'm not going to pay them for any vacations.

Let's see... that's 375 x 180=$67,500.00 (Hold on, my
calculator must need batteries!)

What about those special teachers or the ones with Masters
Degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage just to be
fair. Let's round it off to $6 an hour. That would be $6
times 5 hours times 25 children times 180 days=$135,000.00
per year. Wait a minute, there is something wrong here!!!

There sure is, huh????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After reading this I pointed out to my friend that, although we may or may not pay teachers too little in this country, the above argument proves this no more than this equation proves women are evil.

Take that for what you will.

Dusty Baker, Cubs manager

Those who saw the Cubs-Marlins game probably saw the poor kid who touched the foul ball when it looked as if it could have been caught by Moises Alou for the second out for the Cubs in the 8th inning. After that play, the Marlins scored 8 runs that inning to take an 8-3 lead and eventually won the game.

Afterwards, Baker was asked about why the Cubs had lost the game. Baker named the kid as one of the main reasons for their lost and speculated that the kid was probably a Marlins fan. Besides the sore losership in blaming a fan for losing, he could have made life a little easier for the kid, who probably can't even go to school tomorrow for fears of getting beat up by classmates. If Baker had told Cubs fans that the team should be responsible for their losing and that the fans shouldn't blame the kid, then maybe the kid wouldn't have to fear for his life when he wakes up tomorrow. Instead, Baker further fanned the flames, and I hate to think what'd happen if the Cubs lose tomorrow.

UPDATE I should also add that if the FOX commentators thought that the kid didn't do anything wrong, they should have told the producers in the truck not to show the kid every 5 minutes.

Juan Non-Volokh has another case of Patriot Act fear mongering, this time by the New York Times on how the Patriot Act might be bad for online retailers.

One talking point from teachers unions against school vouchers is that vouchers would take away money from public schools, while vouchers proponents contend that the unions are against them to protect their jobs.

So what happens when a philanthropist offers $200 million to Detroit to open up 15 charter schools that would compete with the public schools? Unfortunately, the vouchers proponents are right that the teachers unions care more about protecting their turf than improving education (Via Andrew Sullivan):

Thanks to the poisonous atmosphere created by a hostile Detroit public school establishment, philanthropist Robert Thompson has decided, with deep regret, that it is impossible for him to donate a $200 million gift to the city's schoolchildren.

The gift would have come in the form of 15 new charter high schools that would have guaranteed a graduation rate of 90 percent. The city's current graduation rate is 67.2 percent, according to the School Evaluation Services Web site created by the financial ratings firm Standard & Poor's.

After seeking legislative authorization for his schools for almost a year, Thompson threw in the towel after the Detroit teachers union threw what can only be described as a tantrum at the prospect of having to compete with charter schools.

On hearing that Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm had made a deal with the Republican Legislature on a comprehensive charter school expansion package that would have included the Thompson academies, Detroit teachers shut down the schools with a one-day walkout Sept. 25. Instead of teaching on that school day, 3,000 of these primary beneficiaries of the government school status quo held a mass demonstration at the state Capitol.

In response to this pressure from the public school establishment, both the governor and Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick walked away from the Thompson gift and from the broader charter deal, which also withdrew governance of the city's school district from the state-imposed reform board and returned it to a locally elected school board with strong mayoral input. (Emphasis added)

And here I thought the special interests control the Republican Party. Silly me.

BONUS teachers unions bashing: this is from the Atlantic Monthly four years ago. The writer asks both sides of the debate whether they would approve of a plan that would both introduce a pilot vouchers program in a city and significantly increase public school spending. Talking to Lamar Alexander, a vouchers proponent:

At length he said yes. Higher per-pupil spending wouldn't be his preferred solution, of course, but if that's what it took to get a bold voucher plan into failing cities, he'd live with it. "I would go high because the stakes are high," he explained, "and to expose the hypocrisy of the unions. If I told the National Education Association that we'd double it in the five largest cities, they wouldn't take it."

Was he right? I met with Bob Chase, the president of the National Education Association, in the union's headquarters in Washington. He made the familiar case for why vouchers are ineffectual today and would be a threatening distraction for public schools if tried more broadly. Only 25 percent of the adult population has children in the schools, he explained. We need to help the other 75 percent understand why financial support of schools is important. In this regard I sketched the deal: a handful of cities, higher spending, but only through vouchers. My tape recorder captured the staccato response.

"Is there any circumstance under which that would be something that ... "

"No."

" ... you guys could live with? Why?"

"No."

"Double school spending ... "

"No."

" ... in inner cities?"

"No."

"Triple it ... "

"No."

" ... but give them a voucher?"

"'Cause, one, that's not going to happen. I'm not going to answer a hypothetical [question] when nothing like that is ever possible."

"But teachers use hypotheticals every day."

"Not in arguments like this we don't.... It's pure and simply not going to happen. I'm not even going to use the intellectual processes to see if in fact that could work or not work, because it's not going to happen. That's a fact."

Oh boo-hoo. It's a joke. Just because the left has no sense of humor sometimes doesn't mean that the right should imitate them.

Following along in the category of dumb things that should upset the left but don't, ESPN reports that Anna Kournikova may quit tennis to pursue a career as an actress and TV awards presenter.

Anna, I know these things will keep you busy for now, but if you ever want a third career let me just personally say that you're welcome to become the governor of my state at any time you chose.

I wonder how many feminists groups would be complaining now if this Boondocks cartoon were about a liberal woman instead of a conservative woman? (Via Andrew Sullivan)

Where is popular support for the so called anti-US movement coming from? Not from Iraqis according to the AP:

The Gallup poll found that 71 percent of the capital city's residents felt U.S. troops should not leave in the next few months. Just 26 percent felt the troops should leave that soon.

However, a sizable minority felt that circumstances could occur in which attacks against the troops could be justified. Almost one in five, 19 percent, said attacks could be justified, and an additional 17 percent said they could be in some situations.

Here's a question: what's the difference between the 19% of people who say attacks "could be justified" and the additional 17% who said attacks "could be [justified] in some situations"? Is it that more people think attacks on US troops are justified under current conditions than under some hypothetical (presumably worse) scenarios? That doesn't make logical sense, does it? Or is this just an example of the AP fudging with words to be able to say [against Hei Lun's better judgement] "36%" of Iraqis can support attacks on US troops?

Rich Lowry and I share a fondness for the book Go, Dog, Go!

It's funny because it's true:

Before Election Day, the official line was that the recall was part of a pattern of hardline Republican subversion of the democratic process, going back through the Florida recount to the Clinton impeachment. In an about-turn so fast poor old DNC honcho Terry McAuliffe must have gotten whiplash, the new line was that the recall reflected a voter anger against incumbents that would spell disaster for Bush next year. And even as I lay on the floor howling with laughter, up there on CNN Judy Woodruff & Co. were taking it seriously. That would be the Judy Woodruff who, like 1970s serial killer Lendell Hunter, is a native of Augusta, Ga.

Just in case any Democrats have come back down to Planet Earth, here's what happened on Tuesday: The two Republican candidates -- Schwarzenegger and Tom McClintock -- pulled 62 percent of the vote between them; the Democrat, Cruz Bustamante, got 31.7 percent. The remaining 6 percent was divided among the other 132 candidates. Just to recap: Republicans 62 percent, Democrats 31.7 percent -- in the most liberal state in the nation. As long as all those angry voters keep expressing their anger by voting for Republicans over Democrats by two to one, I think I can live with it.

At Thursday's Democratic Presidential debate, Jeff Greenfield asked the candidates why it was that only 34 percent of Americans identified themselves as Democrats -- the lowest number since before the New Deal. ''You're looking at the glass as half-empty, I look at it as half-full,'' said former House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, demonstrating the command of basic math that has made the federal budget what it is. The Democratic glass isn't half-empty, it's two-thirds empty.

Read the whole thing here.

From an Observer piece about fears of social decline fueling doubts about the French state:

It is an argument bolstered by Nicolas Baverez, a historian and free-market evangelist and author of La France qui tombe, who in only 134 pages trots out a thousand historical and contemporary statistics to claim that France is paralysed by 'economic, political, social and intellectual immobility and is plunging towards decline'.

Both pale into insignificance alongside L'Arrogance française, where the journalist authors, Romain Gubert and Emmanuel Saint-Martin, state: 'With our sermons, our empty gestures and our poetic flights, we (the French) have pissed off the planet. Worse: we make them laugh.

How right you (SURRENDER MONKEYS) are!

(Link via The Corner)

The Washington Post reports that engineers in a free Iraq are restoring the habitat of the Marsh Arabs:

The flow is not what it once was -- new dams have weakened the mighty Tigris and Euphrates rivers that feed the marshes -- but the impact has been profound. As the blanket of water gradually expands, it is quickly nourishing plants, animals and a way of life for Marsh Arabs that Hussein had tried so assiduously to extinguish.

In Zayad, a tiny hamlet about 210 miles southeast of Baghdad that was one of the first places to be flooded, residents have rushed to reclaim their traditions. Kerkush drove to the port city of Basra to buy a wooden boat known as a mashoof. His children assembled fish nets. Other relatives scoped out locations to build a house of reeds.

The marsh has once again assumed its omnipresent role in the village. Women clad in black head-to-toe abayas wade into the water to wash clothes. The mullet found in the murky depths, though small and bony, is grilled for dinner every night. Swamp grasses are cut to feed the cows and sheep that will eventually be traded for water buffalo.

"Everyone is so happy," Kerkush said as he watched his son stand in a mashoof and steer it like a gondolier with a long wooden pole. "We are starting to live like we used to, not the way Saddam wanted us to live."

More from this same article: After detailing the lengthy history of Marsh Arab life comes this wonderful tidbit:

Sitting atop a reed mat on his concrete porch, Kerkush said he dreams of once again building a mudheef -- a long, domed-roof structure made of tightly woven reeds that Marsh Arabs used to receive visitors. Clad in a crisp white tunic and a black-and-white head scarf, he would sit inside and entertain other sheiks with black coffee and tales of days past.

"The mudheef was center of our social life," he said. "We didn't need television."

Because of new roads and with his shop in a nearby trading town, outside influences have permeated the marshes faster than the water. He has heard of the Internet and would like to "bring it" to the village.

"I'd like a mudheef and the Internet," he said with an optimistic gleam. "I don't want to live entirely in the past."

****

The rest of the marsh is similarly nascent. The reeds are not yet sufficient to rebuild the huts destroyed by Hussein's army. The birds that have returned are not the right species to trap.

But as the scion of a clan that has lived here for perhaps 5,000 years, Kerkush said he is willing to be patient while engineers and politicians figure out how to pump more water into the marshes.

"Saddam did everything he could to kill us," he said. "You cannot recover from that right away."

You really ought to read the whole thing. If more anti-war types knew this story of ecological genocide would this still be as inclined to call the war illegitimate?

While we in Boston continue to reflect on the bean-brawl baseball of this weekend, here's the definition of "Cowboy Up" for you confused out of towners:

You gotta cowboy up
When you get throwed down
Get right back in the saddle
As soon as you hit the ground
You heard that the tough get goin'
When the goin' gets tough
Around here what we say is
Boy you better cowboy up

It's a song by Chris LeDoux. Lyrics quoted from here.

Something that might interest Gin Dumcius from Campus Press Notes and The Mass Media: UNC-Wilmington professor Lisa Pollard threatens to sue school newspaper for printing an editorial containing remarks she allegedly made about "having friends in terrorist networks." Fellow UNC-W Professor Mike S. Adams has the full story on Townhall.

Google News couldn't find anything but Mike's original story (which was only posted 5 hours ago), but I've created a Google News Alert which will hopefully turn something up as this develops.

(Link via our pal Bryon Scott)

Peter King: "When I asked Warren Sapp if Howard Dean could beat Bush in 2004, he said to me: "Who's Howard Dean?" "

Bryon Scott reports that MoveOn.org recently flooded congressional offices with phone calls urging House members to vote against the easening of FCC media ownership rules. In response to this steady stream of calls Tom DeLay's aides registered each complaint and then forwarded every call to the cellphone of MoveOn.org's director. To wit Bryon remarks "MoveOn.org, of course, complained about the tactic. It's just like a liberal organization to complain when they get as good as they give."

Bryon! You could not be more wrong! The last time I checked it was still legal in this country to petition your government. Tom DeLay's office was incredibly childish in this matter, attempting to circumvent a legal phone drive by clogging up this mans cell phone. It might suck to have to answer the phone nonstop and listen to a bunch of unwashed liberals scream about media ownership, but that's the job off a congressional staff, to register the complains of the citizens of the United States and pass this information along to their superiors. A congressional staff has no right to retaliate against the free speech rights of citizens.

Tom DeLay should be disgusted with his staff, just as i'm disgusted with you for your sympathy for these moronic right wingers.

UPDATE - maybe I ought to think before I put my foot in my mouth, or at least have an Ice Cream Sandwich. Bryon replies to my comments in good humor (quote: "First off, don't sell me short. You have no idea how wrong I am capable of being." Isn't that true of all of us?) but maintains his agreement with the actions of Tom DeLay's office staff. While I understand Bryon's distaste for MoveOn and their tactics (i'm fighting a thick headed lefty movement of my own), I still think Delay's staff acted beyond the realm of reasonable behavior. MoveOn very well may have been trying to disrupt office life, but I believe they were just phoning Tom DeLay's publicly listed phone number which is their constitutional right. If they were disrupting a private phone line (and it only makes sense that these offices must have some private lines, right?) that would be an entirely different matter.

1) It appears as if all those letters to the Editor we've been reading from soldiers aren't so authentic:

Letters from hometown soldiers describing their successes rebuilding Iraq have been appearing in newspapers across the country as U.S. public opinion on the mission sours.
And all the letters are the same.

A Gannett News Service search found identical letters from different soldiers with the 2nd Battalion of the 503rd Airborne Infantry Regiment, also known as "The Rock," in 11 newspapers, including Snohomish, Wash.

The Olympian received two identical letters signed by different hometown soldiers: Spc. Joshua Ackler and Spc. Alex Marois, who is now a sergeant. The paper declined to run either because of a policy not to publish form letters.

The five-paragraph letter talks about the soldiers' efforts to re-establish police and fire departments, and build water and sewer plants in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, where the unit is based.

"The quality of life and security for the citizens has been largely restored, and we are a large part of why that has happened," the letter reads.

It describes people waving at passing troops and children running up to shake their hands and say thank you.

It's not clear who wrote the letter or organized sending it to soldiers' hometown papers.

Six soldiers reached by GNS directly or through their families said they agreed with the letter's thrust. But none of the soldiers said he wrote it, and one said he didn't even sign it.

2) This doesn't sound like a peaceful rebuilding process:

US soldiers driving bulldozers, with jazz blaring from loudspeakers, have uprooted ancient groves of date palms as well as orange and lemon trees in central Iraq as part of a new policy of collective punishment of farmers who do not give information about guerrillas attacking US troops.

UPDATE - Hei Lun linked me to this InstaPundit piece about the letters story.

I should probably clarify my position. Unlike Glenn Reynolds I never suspected these letters were fraudulent or coming from anti-war sources looking to discredit the Iraqi occupation. I just believe that it's very dishonest of the military to have soldiers sign their names to form letters, especially since we the pro-War crowd have used these letters to display the actual experiences of our soldiers, and to discredit the tone of Iraq reports in the media. I'm not saying that I disbelieve the letters now, just that, if they effectively are no better than press releases from the military brass, then they're just that much less effective for countering media spin.

One of the standard lines of rhetoric from the anti-war crowd is that the other side has a "with us or against us" attitude. In this line of attack, the Bush administration and its supporters regard anyone who disagree with them as the enemy against whom it is proper to violate their liberties and silence their speech.

Well, let me tell you, as someone who is generally on the side of the Bush administration in foreign policy, we do have a us vs. them attitude, but it's not what the anti-war people think it is. For people like me, "us" is democracy, liberty, and Western civilization, and "them" is the terrorists who sought to destroy our democracy, our liberties, and our civilization. Contrary to what the anti-war people think, we don't think of them as the enemy, however persecuted they like to pretend they are, because we have much bigger issues to deal with.

Remember when TIME magazine gave its "Person of the year" award last year to three people we've never heard of? One of them was Colleen Rowley, the FBI whistleblower. Apparently since then Michael Moore has taken over her body, because what she wrote yesterday was two filberts short of a nutbag. It's the usual FOX/Ashcroft/Bush is evil, railing against "us vs. them", civil liberties, racism, blah blah blah. James Lileks fisks her column today.

I consider myself just a little less awed to discover that a man of such amazing passion has a last name like Pinsky.

Dr. Drew on Rush's addiction: "It is literally a hijacking of the survival system, whereby the brain begins confusing the actuality of survival with the chemical message of the drug. So people with this disease ... will literally die to get the drug, do anything to get the drug without really consciously realizing this is what's behind the behaviors. "