Duck Season

According to the New York Times, anyway:

After years of untold subway time — spent watching, listening, reading — I would say that large, active systems of mass transit are the main difference between the red and the blue states of the 2000 electoral map (California excepted). People who travel only by private car — most of America — can too easily stick to their own kind and cling to their prejudices and misconceptions without the threat of contradictory experiences. (Via Will Baude)

I'd say that people who drive to work are much less likely, than, say, writers at the New York Times, to cling to their prejudices and misconceptions without the threat of contradictory experiences. I could go on for paragraphs about how dumb this is, but there's a football game I'd rather watch right now.

I have to admit, though, that this is a pretty good explanation of why Howard Dean has no clue about Southerners (no subways in Vermont!), and of John Rocker as well...

Titans 17, Ravens 6
Panthers 24, Cowboys 13

Andrew Stuttaford shares the following story about a British MP:

It was trailed as a "unique chance to rewrite the law of the land". Listeners to BBC Radio 4's Today programme were asked to suggest a piece of legislation to improve life in Britain, with the promise that an MP would then attempt to get it onto the statute books.

But yesterday, 26,000 votes later, the winning proposal was denounced as a "ludicrous, brutal, unworkable blood-stained piece of legislation" - by Stephen Pound, the very MP whose job it is to try to push it through Parliament.

Mr Pound's reaction was provoked by the news that the winner of Today's "Listeners' Law" poll was a plan to allow homeowners "to use any means to defend their home from intruders" - a prospect that could see householders free to kill burglars, without question.

"The people have spoken," the Labour MP replied to the programme, "... the bastards."

Read the full story here.

Jonah Goldberg on the connection between poverty and the death toll of natural disasters:

Whenever we get a heat wave on the East Coast, the media and environmental activists collude to blame global warming and, by extension, capitalism. Well, advocates of global enrichment should collude every time an earthquake, flood, or hurricane clobbers poor people and say, “See, this is the way opponents of globalization want it.”

House Speaker Dennis Hastert had this to say about Representative Ralph Hill swapping parties:

"Ralph is a man of courage and a man of great conviction," Hastert said. "Common sense continues to guide him in Washington and now in the Republican Party."

Five paragraphs earlier Rep. Ralph Hill explained his change of heart:

"I've always said that if being a Democrat hurt my district I would switch or I would resign," Hall said in an interview with The Associated Press. He said GOP leaders had recently refused to place money for his district in a spending bill and "the only reason I was given was I was a Democrat."

For some reason Rep. Ralph Hill's words don't instill me with patriotic fervor, but instead remind me far more of Rasheed Wallace than anything else:

"I don't (care) about no trade rumors. As long as somebody CTC at the end of the day, I'm with them. For all you that don't know what CTC means, that's 'Cut The Check'. I just go out there and play. So long as somebody CTC, it's gravy with me."

Pork-barrel patrioti$m indeed.

My conservative friend Jim was all indignant when Jim Jeffords switched parties to the Democrats in 2001. I wonder what he'll say about a Texas Democrat in Congress switching to the Republicans.

UPDATE: Jeffords became an "Independent", not a Democrat. Also, Viking Pundit emails:

At least Hill was refreshingly honest about why he switched parties.

Jeffords, after voting with Republicans for years, suddenly decided that the GOP was too extreme for his views. George Will excoriated him on his lack of conviction.

I think I mostly agree with that, but as I recall my friend's reason for disagreeing with Jefford's switch was that since he was elected as a Republican he shouldn't be able to switch parties after he was elected. I'm eagerly anticipating his explanation for why this same reasoning wouldn't apply to Hill.

A Brazilian judge compares the U.S. to the Nazis:

"I consider the act absolutely brutal, threatening human rights, violating human dignity, xenophobic and worthy of the worst horrors committed by the Nazis," Federal Judge Julier Sebastiao da Silva said in the court order.

Apparently, he isn't happy that visitors entering the U.S., including those from Brazil, will be photographed and fingerprinted. Not exactly gas chambers in Auschwitz, is it?

Okay, so maybe his rhetoric is overblown, but maybe he has a point. Maybe photographing and fingerprinting foreigners is wrong. So what does the judge decide to do? He orders that Brazil do the same to Americans entering his country. I don't know what part of his brain caused him to follow the logic of what you're doing to us is evil, so we'll to do the same thing to you, but I'm sure it's the same part that prejudges all American actions to be evil.

Two pieces in the Washington Post: the first criticizing Dean and Kerry for blaming Bush for Mad Cow; the second on how the media is exaggerating the dangers while burying the scientific evidence that the meat from an infect cow is still safe for consumption.

My faith in humanity is restored (or at least in our taste in music):

Limp Bizkit, which suffered slow sales of its long-awaited new album, has been named worst band of the year by readers of Guitar World magazine.

Creed, another act that draws sharp reactions, came in at No. 2 even though the Christian combo took the year off. New York rockers the Strokes were No. 3, followed by "all pop-punk bands" at No. 4 and pop-punk band Good Charlotte at No. 5.

Nick pointed out this photo to me from Tim Blair's:

Right Wing News chronicles the Top 10 Worst Quotes from the Democratic Underground this year.

Dave Barry recaps the year for the WaPo.

What French media bias?

Reporter Alain Hertoghe’s book accused the French press of not being objective in its coverage of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. His newspaper fired him.

Link via K.Lo in The Corner.

The Decembrist, a blogger who titles his links column "KRUGMAN RULES", debunks the idea that Bush is a radical right-winger and instead asks if What if Bush is a Nixonian Liberal?

It's a fascinating read, check it out.

al Qaeda literature and videotapes found in an Iraqi weapons bunker.

*Ahem*, this blog would never encourage a beautiful woman like Melissa Lincoln to go naked in public if it violated the law.

Several of those links contain images of nudity, so if you're under 18 get your parents permission before clicking.

Oxblog usually has good posts on foreign policy, but today I find that David Adesnik is talking about something else with much more intrigue and backstabbing--the world of pro wrestling. Some wrestler almost beat some other wrestler, according to Adesnik, which doesn't interest me but which I'm sure my friend Jim must have seen. Anyway, his post reminds me of an article I read a few years ago in the Weekly Standard on how wrestling storylines reflect the changing state of global politics. Good stuff, though I can't find it online.

Also, kudos to Vince McMahon and the WWE for sending their wrestlers to Iraq to perform for the troops.

Jonah Goldberg predicts that "NBC changes its name to Dateline: Law & Order when the two franchises finally make up more than 50 percent of all the network's programming."

Clifford May chimes in with some programming requests: "In an attempt to broaden President Bush's support, Karl Rove books him for a special edition of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Bush declares: 'Marriage should be only between a man and a woman. But good grooming is for everyone.'"

Check out more predictions from the whole National Review gang here.

Top 20 Nude Scenes of 2003.

Gregg Easterbrook nominated two Patriots players for his TMQ Non-QB Non-RB NFL MVP:

Casting aside the offensive backfield glory boys, this season you could make solid cases for LB Ray Lewis of Baltimore and DE Richard Seymour of New England as MVPs. There are reasonable cases for DT Albert Haynesworth of Tennessee, No. 1 against the run, and safety Roy Williams of Dallas, No. 1 against the pass.

****

But the most valuable offensive lineman in the NFL this season, and thus the Tuesday Morning Quarterback Non-QB Non-RB NFL MVP, has been Damien Woody of New England. He has not only played very well on a team that won 12 straight, but when linemate Mike Compton got hurt, Woody moved to guard -- surrendering his expected Pro Bowl slot at center. Everyone knew Woody changing positions for this year would cost him a likely return to the Pro Bowl. The kind of guy who gives up an almost-sure Hawaii trip, in order to benefit his team, is an MVP in my book.

Experts know full well what this means: While teams with more celebrated "talent" like the Miami Dolphins prepare backyard BBQs this Sunday to enjoy the playoffs, the Patriots coaching staff and players are working hard to ensure the rest of the league ends up in an equal cushy spot to prepare for their own Pro Bowl appearances.

Color me a person who thinks very little of "Indy" media. Here's a prime example from the Boston "Indy" media site:

UMass students fight international student 'fee'
In a heartening display of anti-racist unity and solidarity Dec. 11, 125 students and their allies denounced the administration’s plans to impose a new fee on international graduate students in the 2004 spring semester. The $65 per semester fee the administration plans on implementing is only applicable for international students, and is an added expense to the fees these students are required to pay.

Now, I'm all for complaining about student fee increases, but does everything involving a person of color automatically boil down to racism? As you could probably guess, nothing in the article proves the fee hike is related to race at all. Instead the article babbles on about SEVIS, a database system run by the Department of Homeland Security that has NOTHING to do with this $65.00 fee increase.

"Indy" media claims to be a "public media outlet for the radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of the truth", but doesn't your natural reason tell you that anything consumed by radical passion very quickly bypasses any semblance of an accurate truth?

The BBC has issued politically correct speech for the deposed dictator guy.

John Ellis reports that a Rudy Giuliani challenge to Hillary Clinton's Senate seat on 2006 is "basically a done deal". I've been throwing this idea around for a while now, because it makes so much sense for Giuliani. Not only does he gain a lot of goodwill from conservative Republicans as Ellis suggests, he also would knock out his primary competition if he runs for president in 2008. (Ellis thinks that a Giuliani win against Hillary in 2006 would set him up to be Jeb Bush's veep in 2008, but I think he would be going for the number one spot.) The Democrats wouldn't be so quick to vote for Hillary in the primaries if they saw that Giuliani beat her just two years earlier. If Giuliani were the Republican nominee in 2008, Hillary would be the candidate who would give him the biggest problems, since she is much more likely than any other Democrat to win New York from Giuliani. On the other hand, without Hillary, a Giuliani with New York locked up looks unbeatable.

Howard Dean thinks Osama bin Laden should be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

John Kerry, on the other hand, does not give the same benefit of the doubt to Enron executives.

Of course, bin Laden has admitted that he was responsible for 9-11, while no less than the New York Times has said that the Enron guys didn't do anything illegal.

Let's dissect the political quiz that Nick linked to earlier, shall we?

The quiz was designed by a libertarian group, and lo and behold, over a third of all quiz takers end up being classified as libertarian. While there is probably some selection bias involved, the questions in the quiz also stacks the deck in favor of their preferred result. Here's some examples:

Military service should be voluntary. (No draft)

Well, let's see ... liberals are against the draft ... moderates are against the draft ... and conservatives are against the draft ... hey, that makes everybody! In fact, the only people to come out in favor of the draft recently are Charles Rangel and a few other left-wing nuts who want to use the threat of military service to get people to oppose the invasion of Iraq. However, if you answer "yes" to the question, which most people would, that moves you 20 points on the "personal issues" axis towards the libertarian/left liberal areas.

Government should not control radio, TV, the press or the Internet.

Most people who see this question would answer "yes", because of course we don't want the government to "control" the media, as each person end up defining "control" as something they don't like. But a conservative who answers "yes" because he doesn't want PBS and NPR to be governmentally funded gets moved another 20 points on the "personal issues" axis towards the libertarian/left liberal areas. I sense a trend ...

Drug laws do more harm than good. Repeal them.

Another question that would move you 20 points on the "personal issues" axis towards the libertarian/left liberal areas if you answer "yes". Many conservatives, including the National Review editors, however, are against the drug war on pragmatic grounds. Being against the drug war doesn't make one a social liberal, but this quiz says it does.

So if you're against the draft, drug laws, and government "control" of media, it moves you out of the authoritarian and right conservative quadrants. Of course, many conservatives are against all three. Many conservatives taking this quiz will be surprised to find out that they've suddenly become libertarians.

The New York Post reports that Baghdad may have a lower murder rate than New York City.

Back in November I subjected myself to the Political Compass.org test, and my score was wildly out of line with the scores I had acheived some years back. Well, via Blogdex, I've taken the a new simple 10 question test, and the results have assured me that that I'm definitely a leaning liberal moderate.

Kara Baskin has the explanation of the Paris Hilton era I've yet read.

Andrew Sullivan on Howard Dean's foreign policy position:

Here's what the president said on December 11: "We're constantly working to get foreign countries involved [in rebuilding Iraq], but I want to remind you we've got over 60 nations involved now. When you hear me talk about 'our' efforts, I'm talking about the efforts of a lot of countries, we've got a large coalition involved."

Who does that leave out? Well, first off, the United Nations. Is this a function of American policy? Not at all. The administration was only too happy to work with the United Nations in the early days after liberation--but after the bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad in August, the United Nations split of its own accord. Last week, Kofi Annan ruled out any change in this position. He said, "I cannot compromise the security of our international and national staff." The U.N. report on the possibility of a return to Iraq concluded: "Under the circumstances, it is difficult to envisage the United Nations operating with a large number of international staff inside Iraq in the near future, unless there is an unexpected and significant improvement in the overall security situation." So the notion--insinuated by Howard Dean--that the United Nations is somehow being kept from participating by the Bush administration is simply untrue. Moreover, there is no international body that could provide the kind of legitimacy for the occupation that the United Nations could. And it won't. Dean doesn't even address this. Because if he did, his entire argument would collapse.

Dave Wanstedt will return as the Head Coach of the Miami Dolphins next season.

Here's another comment on that CBS poll. The poll shows that among Democratic primary voters, Dean leads with 16%, followed by Wesley Clark at 10% and Dick Gephardt at 9%. As in any poll, that numbers doesn't actually mean that Howard Dean has 16% of the vote among Democrats; what it does mean is that there is a 95% chance that Dean's actual level of support is between 10% and 22% (In this case, the margin of error is 6%, since there were 244 respondents*). Because of the margin of error, weird things can happen in individual polls, as it did in this one in which Carol Moseley Braun is fourth with 6%. Ignoring the slight possibility that Braun had a sudden surge in support in the last two weeks that I missed, this is definitely a statistical aberration. And 6% isn't particularly impressive when the margin of error is also 6%.

Of course, even less impressive is John Kerry at 4%. This is the second consecutive poll in which he is behind one of the fringe candidates. An amusing interpretation of his poll number is that Kerry's actual level of support might be 0, since the margin of error is bigger than his poll number.

* Margin of error = 1 / square root (number of respondents)

The latest CBS poll shows that voters currently prefer Bush over Dean by a 55-35 margin. What's interesting about this is the breakdown of the results by party affiliation. While Bush would lose only 3% of the Republican vote, leading 91-3, Dean would lose a fifth of all Democrats, leading Bush 70-20. Among independents, Bush would have more than twice the support of Dean, leading 57-28.

What I can't tell about Dean voters is how they react when they see polls like this. Do they really think that voters will change their minds once they convince the public that Bush is a liar and a moron? Do they think that, even without much support for Dean from the center, Dean can win simply by getting the Democratic base to show up in large numbers? Or do they not care at all that their candidate will likely lose by a big margin, and take many Democrats in Congress down with him?

The New York Times published three letters to the editor concerning the French plan to outlaw religious symobls in public schools the other day.

Robert Porath of Boulder Colorado appears to be on board the Howard Dean band wagon, completely ignoring the fact that American conservatives are incredibly opposed to the secularization of schools, while Omer M. Mozaffar has the best quip I've read in quite some time:

To the Editor:

Re "Religious Symbols in France" (editorial, Dec. 20):

Life has been unusually difficult for me, a practicing Muslim American, for the past few years. But I thank God I'm not in France.

Perhaps the next time I order fast food, I'll order religious freedom fries.
OMER M. MOZAFFAR
Naperville, Ill., Dec. 20, 2003

Well said, Omer!

It's Bush's fault, according to Howard Dean.

Natalie Portman: not really a fan of post-colonialism.

Joe Trippi sent out an fund raising e-mail this morning because it has not been a good Christmas for that Howard Dean fund raising machine:

Dear Supporter:

Everything you've worked for is at stake right now. Everything we've fought for and everything we believe in comes down to these last four days of this quarter and then the last nineteen days before Iowa.

We need to raise $1.5 million before midnight on December 31 so we can win Iowa. With just four days left to go, we're $1.2 million short.

Who would have thought that the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party had budget constraints?