Duck Season

I see that Manny is still in Boston, Matrix 3 sucked, and the Democrats lose again. And even the economy is getting better. Priceless quote, from Polipundit:

"I think the leading economic indicator is the Democrats have stopped talking about the economy."

-- House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) on his new way to measure economic growth

1) Something i'm involved with... Make sure you contribute to the Watermark!

Why some people really are no fun, emphasis added:

Last year the journal was at the heart of a controversy concerning flyers they had posted seeking submissions. A '50s style pinup girl, in ruffled underwear and bent at the waist, peeked out at viewers from between her legs, with the message "Sometimes exposure is a good thing." Although the co-editors said it was meant to be humorous and they did not consider it explicitly sexual, some members of the Women's Center found the image offensive and raised questions as to whether the picture was appropriate for display at a public university. Unknown pranksters responded by printing counter-flyers similar to The Watermark's but using pornographic pictures involving two men. This year their flyers are still funny, but avoid the risqué. Now Mr. T's face plasters the walls pitying the fool who doesn't submit to The Watermark.

2) Other obnoxious right wing ideologues featured on the Op-Ed page...

Business Student to Socialists - "What Exactly is the Alternative?"

If you weren't on the UMass campus Thursday you missed the following scene. On the second floor of McCormick Hall the Socialists had set up a table for people to congregate around while they passed out copies of some Workers Justice newspaper or some such nonsense. Attached to their table was a large red construction paper sign, upon which written in big letters was their slogan "Tax The Rich!" with a subtitle advertisement "The Socialist Alternative".

I really wish I had gotten a picture.

3) More MassPIRG. On the heels of last weeks Editorial Against Censorship ace reporter and fellow blogger Gin Dumcius reports that the UMass Boston Student Senate has approved $1,141.12 in funding for 10 MassPIRG students to attend a conference in Hartford Conneticut. The meat of the problem:

Senate President Tuan Pham, in his first ever veto, had charged the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group (MassPIRG) Club with "double-dipping." Since MassPIRG "presently recieves money from students through a waivable fee system," there was no need for the senate to approve the $1141.12 the club needed to go to a conference in Hartford Connecticut, he said.

Pham said that the conference, part of a national student campaign against hunger and homelessness, was a good cause, but he had a "very serious" problem with the way the senate was funding it, adding that he wanted substantial financial commitment from MassPIRG. He admitted he would be satisfied if only 50% of the money were approved, which would cover only the conference registration cost, and not the costs for hotel and transportation.

THEY DON'T EVEN HAVE TO PAY FOR HALF!?!? I could justify a 50/50 split...

Question for Gin: Doesn't this violate a UMB Student Senate policy? I thought the Student Senate resolved to not fund trips for clubs out of state?

I can't recall whether this was a result of a certain Chess Club attempting to use school money to fund its trip to a CT Casino even though they were going to attend a Chess tournament, or if it was fall out from the Casa Latino using school money to fund a Ski trip for its members last year... but I do seem to recall that this was a source of controversy in the past.

UPDATE: Gin replied through e-mail. He says that the travel policy I spoke of was related to the national threat level at the time, and that this policy never prevented travel inside New England. Additionally he adds that "I forgot to mention that all who were going on the trip were supposed to pay $20, whether they were MassPIRG members or not. Pham disagreed with this, because he believed that if PIRG was one of the sponsors of the conference, the money was going back to them anyway. MassPIRG stated that all of the money was going towards the conference."

4) Here's a story about that Patriotism conference that I attended. Lisa Rivera, my former professor, is quoted often at the end of the article. While I don't recall the specific quote listed in the last paragraph of the article, it does summarize the panel discussion very well.

No, my "Michael Moore is a liar" spiel wasn't referred to.

Might have just been an oversight, but why do I need to go to Instapundit to see this news story that I didn't hear a peep about in a week in Hong kong?

The "stainless-steel mouse" is her cyber nom de plume. Her name is Liu Di, and in the one picture available, she has a young face and a wide, shy smile. Until the authorities tracked her down a year ago Friday, she was one of the most famous Internet web masters in China.

A third-year psychology student at Beijing Normal University, Ms. Liu formed an artists club, wrote absurdist essays in the style of dissident Eastern-bloc writers of the 1970s, and ran a popular web-posting site. Admirers cite her originality and humor: In one essay Liu ironically suggests all club members go to the streets to sell Marxist literature and preach Lenin's theory, like "real Communists." In another, she suggests everyone tell no lies for 24 hours. In a series of "confessions" she says that China's repressive national-security laws are not good for the security of the nation.

But since Nov. 7, 2002, when plain-clothes police made a secret arrest, Liu has not been heard from. No charges have been filed; her family and friends may not visit her, sources say; and, in a well-known silencing tactic, authorities warn that it will not go well for her if foreign media are informed of her case.

Okay I'm back. Some odds and ends:

--Usually the McDonalds in foreign countries have a different menu from McDonalds in the US. The ones in Hong Kong all seem to have the same items, though, except for a "golden corn soup".

--The Chinese astronaut was in Hong Kong at the same time. The radio stations are all intent on playing and translating every word he ever said.

--One of the hosts on their version of SportsCenter was named Uday.

--Boston has the worst airport of the ones I've been to on this trip. It was poorly lit, the bathrooms weren't clean, and the place was poorly designed. For example, the place where you retrieve your luggage is on a different floor than where you can get picked up, meaning you either have to wait in line for an elevator or carry your luggage up a flight of stairs. It also is the only airport to charge for the luggage-carrying carts.

Nick: good news: Someone conned all the public law schools in New England to offer a slightly cheaper rates to in New England students, especially those states w/o a public law school
Nick: better news: Mass is the only state w/o a public law school
Nick: damn us
Hei Lun: you should complain about this to the state Democratic Party
Nick: boo, Dean isn't taking matching funds
Nick: I voted for him to do that
Hei Lun: I'm sure they based it on the vote
Nick: now I don't have to feel bad about breaking my promise to vote for Dean
Nick: cuz you had to fill out this affidavit in order to register for the poll
Nick: those bastards
Hei Lun: so al sharpton it is then
Hei Lun: did you see the dean "declaration"?
Nick: nope
Nick: what is that?
Hei Lun: http://blog.deanforamerica.com/archives/002191.html#more
Nick: so why isn't he accepting matching funds?
Hei Lun: because he can get more money without it?
Nick: more money from special interests!
Hei Lun: no those are money from regular people
Hei Lun: bush is the one that gets money from special interests
Hei Lun: if you can't get that straight you might as well not call yourself a Democrat
Nick: haha
Nick: touche

Why you should never tattle on your friends: Punk.

Also helpful: You too can get away with underage drinking .

Why you should always carry extra rounds: Then maybe you won't get caught!

Black people get the worst of everything: He should have pulled his earings out.

Our final lesson: Adults never get in trouble for anything.

Not many people in Hong Kong care about politics but some political issues do come up from time to time.

--In the previous edition, I mentioned that one of the harbors is going to be filled in so they can put buildings on it. The government is telling the public that the area will be responsible for 30,000-40,000 new jobs. My relatives don't seem to be too enthusiastic about it, though, because according to them at least half of those jobs are going to go to people from mainland China rather to Hong Kong citizens, and the government "knows" this will happen but is still trumpeting the 30,000-40,000 number. People from across the border allegedly stealing jobs from citizens ... hmmm ... that sounds familiar ...

--Local elections are next week. A lot of campaign posters all over, every one of which have a large number in a circle, which since I can't read Chinese I can't figure out whether that is the number next to their name on the ballot or the district to which they belong. All the candidates seem to be men. The government is putting out a lot of commercials urging people to vote. One funny commercial involves people with big smiles on their faces after inserting things into slots in toasters, mailboxes, etc., and so they should go insert a ballot in the ballot box. Haven't seen any commercials from candidates or what issues are in play, but then one wouldn't expect Hong Kong elections breakdown from CNBC Hong Kong ...

The government needed to put out ads for voting because this is something new to Hong Kong. Before handing it over to China in 1997, Great Britain was Hong Kong's protectorate, and they put in their own people to run the place. But ironically elections occurred after it was transferred from a democratic government to an authoritarian one. It's probably not so ironic from a Realpolitik perspective since China can't really install their own people immediately after they take over. They do, however, control 36 of the 60 seats in the Hong Kong legislature and they had been trying to get it to pass some restrictive laws last summer before nearly one-tenth of the population took to the streets to protest. Hong Kong is probably the best example of how democracy and freedom don't necessarily go hand-in-hand.

--Heard one of my uncles complaining about people from mainland China crowding train stations in China trying to get to Hong Kong for work. They can't find work in the mainland because the people keep having children despite China's one-child policy, and the country continues to be overpopulated. I suggested this was because the people want kids to take care of them when they're old since they know the government might not. This led to my thinking that Europe can solve all its underpopulation problems by ending social security for the elderly. Of course this is about as improbable as ending terrorism by being more understanding of different cultures.

--According to my mother, the restaurants in Hong Kong aren't as good as they use to because all the competent people immigrated to the US or Canada to get away from the commies. Score one for democracy! Maybe if this trend continues we can do away with American-styled Chinese food.

Australian Labor Party barrister Jim Nolan on Saddam apologist Tariq Ali:

Marx famously observed in his 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon that history repeated itself - first as tragedy and then as farce. Tariq Ali's piece of invective masquerading as analysis ("Occupied Iraq will never know peace", on Wednesday) called this instantly to mind.

Let's measure a couple of Ali's canards against the facts.

The UN, he tells us, is viewed by Iraqis as "one of Washington's more ruthless enforcers" since it supervised the sanctions that were directly responsible for the deaths of half a million Iraqi children.

This was the favourite whopper retailed by the Saddam propaganda machine. Of course we now know that the food-for-oil program was diverted into Saddam's oil-for-palaces program. The tragedy was all Saddam's own work. He cynically starved his own people to garner the kind of credulous support he still appears to enjoy from the likes of Ali.

But the most bizarre claim by Ali is the casting of the Iraqi dead-enders as a heroic and doughty "resistance" - as if by the mere invocation of the word "resistance", the murderers of UN workers morph into their moral opposites.

****

Tariq's hyperbole may have the quality of stale, old-fashioned Stalinism, but its confected indignation and moral humbug gives it a faintly amusing tone. May his self-important exaggerations now situate him where he richly deserves to be - the intellectual moral equivalent of that other famous Ali, Comical.

What highly enlightened shining example of muddle thought newspaper published Tariq's diatribe? The Guardian. Go read the hateful words for yourself.

Hat tip to Michael Totten.

In a hotel with an outdoor swimming pool, what better way to spent two beautiful sunny mornings than to ... stay in my room and watch football for 10 hours? I would have spent that free time blogging and catching up on the news, but the ESPN here decided that since it's weekday and no one is watching anyway, it's okay to show the Sunday and Monday night football games live (the ABC broadcast of Monday night Football is on ESPN here) instead of the usual endless soccer.

Some notes on Hong Kong culture:

--Proof of the limits of American cultural hegemony: not enough girls here wearing slutty clothes. In fact, I don't think I've seen one women under the age of 25 that didn't look as if their mom picked out their clothes for them. And apparently contacts haven't been invented in Hong Kong yet, because everyone here wears glasses.

--The people who do dress up are the guys. They all seem to be going for the Koizumi hair look, though in different shades of dyed brown.

--Saw a guy at work wearing a t-shirt with the words "SHUT UP BITCH" in English.

--There's way too many people here. Everywhere we went every place was packed, even on weekdays. Just imagine the supermarket at the busiest hour ... then triple the number of people.

--People here have no manners. They don't hold doors for people, they don't say thank you when you hold doors for them, they don't let people off the train first when the doors open, etc.

--A lot of signs advertising a $1500HK penalty for littering or spitting, and they seem serious about it too. Since the SARS scare earlier this year, the government has made sure that all the streets are as clean as possible. Also: $5000 HK fine for smoking indoors.

--Weird foods eaten: a dessert with turtle extract as the main ingredient (I think it's sold in Chinese markets in the US in a can for $2), pig's blood in cubes. Ummm, pig's blood... Tried to order ostrich in a restaurant but they were out.

--At the hotel, everything seems to be "environmentally friendly", including the three-in-one soap/shampoo/conditioner.

--The new apartments buildings being built are all 40-50 floors high, and there seems to be many more of them than I remember from 10 years ago. My grandparents from my mother's side live on the 6th floor of a building that is "harborside". I put that in quotes because in a few years the harbor is going to be filled in to put up more buildings, just as the land where the apartment is was water only several years before. Pretty soon all the "islands" of Hong Kong are all going to be connected since the water is all going to be filled in.

--Don't try to cross the street on red, because cars here don't stop for you.

--People here rely much more on public transportation. There are three main varieties: subways, the double-decker buses (now with air conditioning!), and light buses traveling locally that seat exactly 16 people. About half of the cars on the road are either buses or taxis. When the light buses are picking up people at the starting location (they seem to only go 1 way), they would not leave until every seat on the bus is full. And if they have 1 seat left, they won't let 2 people on the bus, even if they're a mother with her four year old. The residents here all seem to have an all-purpose transportation pass. Unlike in the US where we are charged for a monthly pass, they have to put money into the pass like a debit card that gets deducted every time you get on.

--The escalators at train stops all go at breakneck speeds.

--Not handicap accessible: the pedestrian bridges here all seem to be badly designed, since they have both steps and incline on the same path. Wheelchaired people can't use them because there are steps, but for walking people it still feels as if you're going uphill. They should have made it either all incline (so people in wheelchairs can use them) or all steps (so walking up a bridge won't feel like climbing a mountain). Incidentally, bridges, both for cars and for people, are everywhere, since they've just about ran out of space on the ground.

re: Bad Design... Are the Up esculators in the same location as the Down esculators in these malls?

My thot: I remember when I visited a casino in Montreal that I had the hardest time finding a down esculator, everyone I found went up. In fact there wasn't a down esculator, only a set of stairs, which were kind of hidden near a waterfall IIRC.

Why was this? If you keep travelling up esculators you just keep coming across more games, it isn't in their interest to make it easy for you to leave.

Maybe the Chinese haven't quite figured all the chicanery of capitalism out...

James Carville agrees with my definition of censorship. From today's episode of Crossfire:

CARVILLE: Yes, indeed.

OK. "Maybe the Republican Party should spend a fraction of its time checking the accuracy of Bush's remarks as they do reviewing the historical accuracy of the Reagan miniseries." Roy M. Stein, San Diego, California.

You know, CBS, they should have known what they were getting into.

CARLSON: Actually, CBS issued a statement today admitting that it was inaccurate. It's interesting.

CARVILLE: They said they're not running it or something.

CARLSON: It's on cable.

Julie Nolte of Monterey Park, California, writes, "When liberals shout Dr. Laura off television, it's called 'free speech.' When conservatives shout a leftist CBS smear campaign off TV, it's called 'censorship.' The left wing's double standard is as laughable as it is transparent."

CARVILLE: What censorship is, is transparent. People can shout anything they want. It's when the government does something that it constitutes censorship.

CARLSON: I agree with you.

CARVILLE: But I think they have every right, they don't want to, you know, Wal-Mart doesn't want to put "Playboy" in there. That's their own business. That's not censorship. That's just a company doing something. And I don't think the government had anything to do with this.

Hong Kong is supposedly a center of commerce, so I got dragged around to various malls where I get to stand around doing nothing for 5 hours. Some observations:

--Everything is on sale! 10% off, 20% off, 30% off, even 70% off! Basically, everything here is sold like how Persian rugs are in the US. It's not only roadside stores or those that sell seasonal goods, it's major department stores, even the high end ones. For people who live here, they probably know what is a good price and what isn't, but it's impossible for most tourists.

--With floating prices there is also a lot of haggling. Even when something has a price tag on it and it's "on sale", the price is still negotiable. Of everything I bought, I paid the listed price at only 1 store. Not that I know how to do it; this was all done by my mom who seems to be an expert at this kind of thing.

--"I'm not crazy I'm just a little unwell ..." All the stores that try to be cool here play American pop music. I remember hearing songs from Sister Hazel, Michelle Branch, Three Doors Down, Five For Fighting, Beyonce, and Dido.

--Many stores also have English (or at least non-Chinese) names. Among them there were some pretty hilarious names. Many of them take an English word and changes it by one of two letters, and turns it into something with a completely different meaning. One place I saw reference something inappropriate about a cherry. And guess what the store "Enter the Password" sells?

--Saw a Grant Hill poster in a sneakers store. Heh.

--Bad design: the escalators in malls are all in random places. If you want to go from the first floor to the fourth floor, you would need to find the escalator to the second floor, walk to a different part of the mall to find the escalator to the third floor, and repeat this process another floor up.

--Stores here openly sell counterfeit merchandise. The most auspicious are those selling CDs and VCDs; it's much easier to find a place that sells the counterfeit stuff than originals. There were also a lot of counterfeit stuff of Disney and other cartoon characters. Since no Hong Kong company stands to benefit from curtailing counterfeit stuff, the government doesn't bother to do it.

Tenacious D Hunger Strike Proves They're Just Hungry For Attention:

NEW YORK — They were supposed to remain suspended in a glass cage above Times Square for 45 days. Tenacious D didn't even make it 45 minutes.

A mere 23 minutes after being hoisted in the air to begin what they claimed would be an extended hunger strike, Jack Black freaked out and Kyle Gass pulled handfuls of hidden M&Ms from his costume, plunging them frantically into his mouth. The goofball rockers were lowered to the ground and carted away in an ambulance.

****

At the press conference, Black bristled at the idea that the D had copied Blaine. "I want to make one thing clear," he said with a straight face. "We are not out on some bullsh-- thing where you go up for 44 days and 44 nights. We're going for a full 45 days and 45 nights, and not only that, but I have evidence that David Blaine had liquid cheeseburgers pumped into his box through a tube. We will not have a tube."

If you love Jack Black's humor you have got to pick up Tenacious D's album. I own it, and it is simply wonderful. It works on that supreme level of parody, done so well in the conventions of the medium that you're prone to forget that you are witness to a parody.

For further examples of the supreme level of parody, see Simpsons seasons 2-5,6,7,8 or 9... determining when exactly The Simpsons jumped the shark will be a future blog post, just as soon as I need distraction from a really big project. Finals aren't too far away!

UPDATE: I see Viking Pundit really outdid me in the D joke department.

So i'm watching a local sports talk program on television, and the panelists are discussing the possibility of Manny Ramirez of being traded. The set is decorated for Halloween, with a big fat jack-o-lantern wearing a yankees cap and a yankees jacket and carved with the face of... Don Zimmer.

You better believe that there are no sacred cows in this town!

Dan Drezner discovers the Political Compass: Taking the survey, I was shocked, shocked to discover that I'm a economic and social libertarian!!* ":Taking the survey, I was shocked, shocked to discover that I'm a economic and social libertarian!!"

I've taken the test a half dozen or so times in my lifetime, and I remember that dating back to high school I consistently scored with coordinates between 0 and1 as economically (un)liberal and 0 and -1 as socially liberal. Yes, I've been a lame moderate all my life. The test has been updated for the post 9-11 world, and here is my new score:

Economic Left/Right: -3.25
Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.38

What the heck hapened to me? I blame this entirely on their revamped questions about the relationship between the citizen and the state. Those few cleverly disguised questions about Terrorism and the Patrioct ACT must have thrown my score off. Yeah, that's it.

I'll retake the test in a few days, after the stress of midterms this week has erased my answers from my mind. Developing...

1) I don't understand this at all... the WaPo reports that Maryland Democrats are outraged that Republican Governor Robert L. Ehrlich wants to prevent the increase of tuition at state universities:

Ehrlich reiterated his desire for a tuition cap yesterday, telling reporters outside the State House that his radio comments were not an off-the-cuff response to a caller's question. Neither, he said, were they a politically calculated reaction to a recent poll that showed 83 percent of Marylanders opposing a proposal to double tuition over the next six years. That proposal was made by Richard E. Hug, a close ally of Ehrlich and one of the governor's first appointees to the university Board of Regents.

... so Democrats aren't even in favor of an affordable public education anymore? I understand that the Democrats only want to maintain a high level of services at the University of Maryland, but they understand how issue's like this are framed against them... don't they?

(Link via Campus Press Notes who rightly characterizes this HB2400 cartoon as cool)

2) Censorship sillyness... both The Mass Media and CBS television staffers grossly misunderstand the meaning of censorship.

On the one hand The Mass Media says that any defunding of the paper constitutes censorship? Isn't this simply absurd? If I 'Waive That Fee' I'm not censoring you, I'm just chosing not to allow you to express your free speech on my dime. Similarly, if UMass swaps to an opt-in system this is not censorship either.

By their own admission it seems a good amount of students neglect to opt-out: "To date at UMass Boston about 45% of students pay their Mass Media waivable fee each year, and this number will decrease drastically if HB 2400 passes. Some portion of the fees collected each year come from students who forgot to opt out, but if those same students forget to opt in, The Mass Media and others will lose funding."

The Mass Media's free speech rights are not dependant upon those who forget to opt-out, and would not be revoked by those people chose not to opt-in.

I'm so frustrated with The Mass Media right now. The point made above is an incredibly minor point in their editorial, an editorial I really agree with... but.... it's just such a dunderheaded point! Subtract those few sentences and The Mass Media has made a spectacular argument against HB2400, but I suppose they couldn't rest on the laurels of sound reasoning and threw in that reactionary liberal lunacy to sound more like their Indy Media friends.

Doesn't The Mass Media basically admit that it steals from people? The say that they anticipate the movement from an opt-out system to an opt-in system would defund them. Why? Because those who don't opt-out won't opt-in? Why? Implicit in their argument is that they're receiving funds from people who don't intend to give them funds.

Taking money that wasn't given to you... isn't that stealing? Well... not really, but it is kind of... it isn't honest, and for them to claim that they are the victims here just really bugs me.

CBS has an equal amount of dunderheads in their midst. In an article about the public outrage towards the mini-series 'The Reagans' a CBS staffer claims that public pressure against CBS to alter the movie amounts to censorship. That is just ludicrous. CBS has every right to make whatever kind of movie it wants to. No one is calling for a public law against saying bad things about Ronnie. What this CBS staffer needs explained to him/her is that television is an ad driven medium, and when you piss off the people they're not going to tune it, and when people don't tune in you piss off your advertisers. It is those advertisers who effectively have the final say over the broadcast. This isn't censorship, it's capitalism, it's how you make your living. Wise up.

3) Watching CBS 60 Minutes and they're doing a segment on the bootlegging of DVDs on the internet. They intervewed the President of a Peer-to-Peer networking company who said that he can't be held responsible for piracy because his company has "no way of knowing what people are downloading."

Question: Doesn't this mimic the gun industry saying that it can't be held responsible for what people do with guns?

In a follow-up to a previous 'what was written about the German occupation' piece, Instapundit's readers have discovered a two parter in The Saturday Evening Post entitled How We Botched the German Occupation.

Matt Groening told NPR this week that Fox News Channel threatened to sue The Simpsons over a faux-news crawl found in an episode of The Simpsons where Krusty the Clow ran for office:

According to Groening, Fox took exception took a Simpsons' version of the Fox News rolling news ticker which parodied the channel's anti-Democrat stance, with headlines like "Do Democrats Cause Cancer?"

"Fox fought against it and said they would sue the show," Groening said.

"We called their bluff because we didn't think Rupert Murdoch would pay for Fox to sue itself. So, we got away with it."

Other satirical Fox news bulletins featured in the show included: "Study: 92 per cent of Democrats are gay... JFK posthumously joins Republican Party... Oil slicks found to keep seals young, supple..."

Notes on Hong Kong television:

--TV stations in English at the hotel: two local channels, a "World" channel, BBC, CNBC, Discovery, and some bastardized version of ESPN. Besides ESPN, there were also two stations that show sports, but they for some reason have the exact same content. Not that it mattered, since even if they had different stuff it'd all be soccer anyway. It's all soccer, all the time at ESPN.

--Friday Night Fights, on Friday morning. Too bad I don't watch boxing.

--American programming found: America's Top New Model, Two Guys and a Girl, ABC News, and music videos of Kelly Clarkson and Mandy Moore.

--Saw a report on BBC on gay rodeo. The guy talking wonders out loud why one of the beer companies wouldn't appear on camera to talk about their sponsoring of gay rodeo.

--Question answered on why our ESPN show only women's pool and not men's: all the men playing pool are ugly.

--Saw Letterman interviewing Dante Hall and launching footballs across New York. Also saw Leno the next day talking to REM. Switched the channel when the lead singer was pointing to a giant number on his pants and said, "this is the number of people disenfranchised in the last election..."

--A decade ago from New York, it's Saturday night! Saw part of an episode of SNL with Jim Carrey when he just did the Cable Guy.

Guess which Democratic presidential candidate Alex Massie is talking about?

There's some truth in that, but the air is also going out of _____'s campaign because you simply can't keep muddling your position on the most important issue of the day - national security and foreign policy - and expect no-one to either notice or care. _____'s been guilty of trying to be too cute: in an attempt to persuade Democrats that he's one of them ... he's destroyed much of his credibility on these vital issues. It's not just a lack of organisation that is responsible for crippling his campaign, it's policy too (even if, to be fair, his health plan looks better than some of the other candidates' proposals - but even if it is, no-one is paying it any attention. That tells you how much damage his waffling on the war is doing to his campaign).

Hint: surprisingly, not John Kerry.