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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page). Relocating to Boise? Use my realtor, neighbor, and friend, Cindy Smith csmith@1realtyone.com.
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Saturday, October 30, 2004
More On Market Manipulation for Political Purposes Dan Gifford, a reader with significant experience in the news business, tells me that he saw these interesting items, as accurately quoted as could manage while watching TV. One was Alan Murray MSNBC reporter on October 29, 2004 at about 8:05 AM Pacific Time, on CNBC's "Morning Call": The George Bush futures contracts have fallen tremendously today meaning that people believe Bush is losing ground in the election against John Kerry.The next is from Donald Luskin, Trend Macro's Chief Investment Officer, October 29, 2004 at about 8:50 AM Pacific Time, also on on CNBC's "Morning Call": The George Bush futures contracts are being manipulated. On several different occasions I have seen massive selling of the Bush futures come in that could not possibly have been for the purpose of making money. I think the person doing it or behind it is George Soros who has spent around 20 million that we know of so far to defeat Bush. [Soros' office told CNBC it is not responsible, according to CNBC's Michelle Caruso-Cabrera] .... Fair enough. Then if it is not Soros, then it is surrogate or at least someone who has read his book. Soros calls attacks of this sort the theory of reflexivity, which means that if you influence the perceptions of people by manipulating the theoretical reality within the financial markets, you influence the reality of real world events. In this case, the purpose would be to negatively affect the public perception that George Bush will win the presidency which may, in turn, adversely influence those planning to vote for Bush. This is exactly the tactic Soros has used in past to attack the Bank of England and other institutions and national currencies in order to change government policy.Another reader points me to this article about Soros in FrontPage magazine: Democrats looking to George Soros as a moral compass may want to check to see which direction the needle is pointing. The billionaire might actually be able to help them out on that count: In the mid-1990s he posited that there was “something both phony and pompous about a financial speculator inveighing against the moral crisis of our age.”Does anyone find it at all worrisome that this guy has the billions and the financial connections to manipulate commodity markets, and has expressed a willingness to spend it all to defeat George Bush--and now oil prices are at incomprehensible prices, having damaged the economy just before the election? Faith Without Works Is Dead Kerry claims to oppose abortion, but wouldn't want to impose his morals on others (except about taxation, welfare, gun ownership, the environment, forcing you to hire homosexuals). So this guy asks the question: If, for example, I was a powerful Senator married to a billionaire who was "not in favor of abortion", but I thought it wrong to work directly against abortion in the legal arena, I might do some or all of the following things: Labels: abortion Worst Translation Ever! A friend pointed me to this horrifying example of someone who thought that they knew English writing an instruction manual. I Don't If This Is True Or Not, But There's a Phone Number... This was forwarded to me by someone who forwarded it from someone else. Unlike a lot of "urban legend" items that get distributed this way, this has the name of the people in question, and phone number for verification. It could still be made up--but it fits with everything that I have been able to find out from talking to people that have been there. A few comments first: the formation of local democratic governments in Iraq? Yes, I have seen news coverage of it--but very little, because it doesn't fit the bad news model that most of the news media are interested in reporting. I don't think the claim that "all" cities have done this is correct. Largely a foreign insurgency? There has been some news coverage of that as well--but again, very little, because it doesn't fit the "blame Bush" model. Oddly enough, what should have been big news--the arrest of Iranian government agents with explosives in Iraq--received almost no coverage. Concerning the Lord Hutton inquiry? Yes, the BBC did hype a serious credibility problem--and now three different independent British government reports have concluded that there was no intentional deception concerning Iraq and WMDs. The latest, the Butler report, concluded that Iraq was actually attempting to buy uranium in Niger before the war. This was not a deception at all: Dear Friends, The Belmont Club Points Out That Osama Bin Laden Wants A Truce Important point, made over at The Belmont Club, is not just that Bin Laden is repeating Michael Moore's claims about Bush--he is also asking for a truce: It is important to notice what he has stopped saying in this speech. He has stopped talking about the restoration of the Global Caliphate. There is no more mention of the return of Andalusia. There is no more anticipation that Islam will sweep the world. He is no longer boasting that Americans run at the slightest wounds; that they are more cowardly than the Russians. He is not talking about future operations to swathe the world in fire but dwelling on past glories. He is basically saying if you leave us alone we will leave you alone. Though it is couched in his customary orbicular phraseology he is basically asking for time out.For those who haven't figured this out: it sounds like bin Laden is hurting, and thinks his best hope of surviving is to have someone in the White House who is interested in a "nuanced" approach to terrorism, rather than victory over it. Now, I am hearing the left arguing that Bin Laden really wants Bush re-elected, because the war in Iraq helps raise more terrorists, and because Bush is so hated. I don't think that argument flies. Before 9/11, Bin Laden's political ideas were fully implemented in Afghanistan; he was free to train terrorists, attack U.S. interests (including the World Trade Center in 1993) with impunity, and live a pretty comfortable life. Now, the Taliban are not only out of power; Afghanistan has held the first democratic elections; and Bin Laden has to spend much of his energy keeping out of sight. Anyone that thinks Bin Laden would prefer George Bush as president is kidding himself. Attention Leftists: You Are Going To Have To Abandon Your Fantasy A reader points out something that will doubtless cause great suffering in moonbat circles (including those working to get Senator Kerry elected): Osama admits planning the WTC attack in his new release. Where does this leave the leftwing "CIA/Mossad/Masonic plot ordered by BusHitler at the behest of the Jooze", eh? Will anyone ask Howard Dean if he still things BusHitler knew about it in advance? Will any of the moonbats at the Democratic Underground admit they were barking at fireflies, for example? Friday, October 29, 2004
Osama Bin Laden Is Alive, It Appears At least according to these news accounts, he refers to both Kerry and Bush, which means that it isn't an old tape. Not surprisingly, he is taking the Michael Moore line that Bush could have prevented much of the loss of life. It's nice to know that bin Laden is so concerned about that sort of thing. Not surprisingly, Bin Laden shows his lack of political acumen by attacking George Bush's integrity and competence (see the CBS video special report at the link above) or this report here, I guess in the hopes that undecided Americans would listen to Bin Laden and decide to vote for Kerry. Too Much Division of Labor, I Think The Reuters wire service news headline is depressing: GDP Grows Less Than Expected at 3.7 PercentThe rest of the story, however, is quite different: WASHINGTON — The U.S. economy grew at a healthy 3.7 percent annual rate in the third quarter this year, bolstered by strong consumer spending and accompanied by the lowest inflation in decades, the Commerce Department (search) said on Friday.Two possible explanations: 1. The guy who writes the headlines doesn't write the rest of the story, and perhaps doesn't read them very carefully. 2. The guy who writes the headlines has to figure out how to make this into bad news for Bush. What makes the story so amazing is that this happened in spite of these somewhat suspiciously high oil prices. It makes you wonder what will happen if these oil prices are actually the results of hedge funds playing games with commodity futures--and oil prices suddenly fall. The more I think about this headline/news story mismatch, the more I find myself wondering what would happen if George Bush, as a result of that little incident where he passed out while choking on a pretzel, discovered something quite dramatic. What would the Reuters news story look like? Bush Actions May Cause Unemployment For Hundreds of Thousands of Doctors & Nurses There Goes Kerry's October Surprise What happened to the 377 tons of HMX? WASHINGTON — A U.S. Army officer came forward Friday and said a team from the 3rd Infantry Division took about 200 tons of explosives from the Al-Qaqaa (search) munitions base soon after Saddam Hussein's regime fell last year.There are so many different explanations, of which this is only the latest, that for Kerry to claim that Bush is incompetent is premature, and the sort of opportunism that I expect from Kerry. Voter Fraud in Minnesota I've written in the past about why it is not a good idea to video tape yourself committing a felony. It is also not a good idea to send email organizing voter fraud. Apparently, American Coming Together (ACT) decided to take advantage of a weird little quirk in Minnesota law: Under Minnesota's registration law, an eligible but previously unregistered individual may register to vote in his precinct by showing proof of residence in the precinct or, in the absence of such proof, having a voter registered in the precinct vouch under oath that he personally knows that the unregistered individual is a resident of the precinct.Okay, that sounds reasonable enough, although I find myself asking why you don't have proof of residence. No driver's license? No utility bills? Nothing? But the Bush campaign has obtained an email that ACT sent out to its volunteers: Election Day is upon us. You are confirmed to volunteer with ACT (America Coming Together) on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov 2.If the requirement is "personally knows" then you don't need a name badge, do you? ACT is obviously intending to engage in massive fraud, registering people on election day to vote. It sounds like the plan is to go register to vote with the help of an ACT volunteer who will vouch that he "personally knows" you live in the precinct--then go do it again in several dozen other precincts. I know that this will be very painful to Democrats, but we are going to have to insist on photo ID for voting in the future. "Vote early, vote often" was funny when it was just Chicago politics, but on a national scale? Sorry, no more. Thursday, October 28, 2004
For Gun Owners That Can't Quite Decide Who To Vote For Tuesday As you probably know, in addition to my regularly monthly column in Shotgun News, I am also filling in for Neal Knox while he has some health problems. This is the column that, to my pleasure, appeared before the election. You can also find it here on the Shotgun News web site. If you know a gun ownership who doesn't know who to vote for on Tuesday, or doesn't see any reason to vote for Bush over Kerry or some third party candidate, have them read this. ----- After The Election By Clayton E. Cramer By the time you read this, the election will be over. Either Bush will have won, Kerry will have won--or lawyers will trying to repeat the 2000 Florida disaster. I hope that Bush will have won by a sufficiently large margin that Kerry accepts the loss, and concedes on Election Night. But as I write these words, I find myself increasingly worried that Kerry might win. The news media are pulling out all the stops to elect Kerry: misrepresenting the final report of the Iraqi Survey Group on WMDs; reporting news based on 1973 Air National Guard memos that were produced on a modern computer; soft-pedaling the really astonishing level of violence that Bush campaign offices are suffering from drive-by shootings, from screaming demonstrators forcing entry, and other forms of intimidation. We have won a great victory in September, with the expiration of the federal assault weapons law. If, as you read these words, the news media are filled with coverage about "President-elect Kerry," you can be sure that a new, much more extreme version of the assault weapons law will be introduced into Congress. When President Bush took office in 2001, the federal government stopped assisting ambulance-chasers in suing the gun industry for "negligent marketing." (Negligent marketing means that gun manufacturers were obeying all laws concerning making and selling guns, but federal and state authorities were failing to enforce existing laws.) You can be sure that President Kerry will resume that assistance. Remember: one of America's most successful trial lawyers will be Vice President John Edwards. If John Kerry is preparing his inaugural address as you read this column, remember that you can blame a lot of gun owners. John Kerry made it very clear throughout his time in the U.S. Senate which side he was on, and it wasn't our side. A lot of American gun owners were taken in by Kerry's photo-ops with a shotgun, and did not pay attention to his voting history. If you are one of the gun owners who voted for John Kerry a few days ago, let's just say that gun ownership wasn't near the top of your list of priorities. If it was, you weren't paying attention. Or maybe you said, "I don't want to get called for jury duty." Sorry, but that won't fly. Many states now use driver's license information to call jurors. Would you rather spend two weeks on jury duty every few years, or lose the right to own a gun? "There's no real difference, anyway." I suppose to a blind person, there's no real difference between red and blue. This election has given us a very clear difference-even more clear-cut than the 2000 election, where Gore's history on gun control was disappointing, but he had in the past been on our side. Kerry has never been on our side. If you don't want to invest the time to follow politics (and many people would prefer not to do so), you could at least see what gun rights groups such as the NRA or Gun Owners of America had to say about the candidates. There is one group of gun owners that I am especially upset with--and those are the self-righteous gun rights purists, who complained that Bush wasn't pure enough. They insisted that because Bush agreed to sign a renewal of the federal assault weapons ban, they could not vote for him. If the choice a few days ago had been between George Bush and a wishy-washy Democrat, I could understand the purists who voted Libertarian or did not vote for President at all. But that wasn't the situation this election day. John Kerry was clearly our enemy. President Bush appointed an Attorney General who has defended the Second Amendment as an individual right. Do you think Attorney General Ashcroft made a decision like that without consulting President Bush? If a federal assault weapons ban had made it to the Oval Office, and Bush had signed it, I could understand the purist disdain for Bush. But it didn't happen, because George Bush and House Republicans did an incredibly sly job of making sure that no assault weapon ban came to his desk. This largely defused the assault weapon issue as part of the campaign. If you are one of those gun rights purists who did not vote for President Bush this year--and are now cringing at the prospect of what President Kerry is going to do to your gun rights--I sure hope that you learned your lesson. The rest of us are going to have four years to repent for your decision. Labels: gun rights As Long As You Don't Frighten the Horses or Servants British newscaster speaks, not realizing that he is on the air: Piers Morgan sparked panic among This Morning viewers today when he claimed al Qaida is about to stage a terrorist spectacular. France Will Always Be On Arafat's Side France, the nation committed to human rights and civilized behavior everywhere: PARIS, Oct. 28 (Xinhuanet) -- France will be always on the side of the Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat, French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier declared Thursday.Unless, of course, someone figured out a way to convert French Muslims into petroleum--at which point France would cheerfully solve two problems at once. Oil Prices Dropping As I've mentioned in the last few weeks, there are some curious aspects to how rapidly prices went up--faster than a lot of experts thought likely, considering the actual supply and demand situation. Of course, if certain Democratic Party controlled hedge funds were actually playing games with commodities futures to drive up the price, there's a limit to how long they can play that game, before the prices start to fall. Oil prices are suddently falling--about 10% in two days--and again, it seems like a pretty dramatic drop, if this is something to do with the real world, and not manipulation. What Elephant in the Bathtub? Al-Qaeda & Alien Smugglers I know that at least some of my readers are planning to vote for third party candidates (although not the Libertarian candidate) because of Bush's unwillingness to put any serious effort into the illegal alien problem. This is a mistake in an election this important, but I understand why some people, especially in California, are very frustrated. Illegal aliens are often very poorly paid, which means that government services expended on behalf of illegals are not recouped by payroll taxes that their employers pay. Anyone that doubts this is invited to visit almost any urban California emergency room, and yell la migra! Just don't be standing in front of the exits when you do this. I don't blame the illegals. The vast majority have come to America to work because their home countries have spent decades implementing pseudo-socialist (often closer to fascist) economic policies, and America has horrible jobs that are still much better than home can provide. (A few are here because they are wanted back home--and quickly become wanted here, too.) When I say that "home" can't provide decent jobs, I don't just mean Mexico and other points south. I mean Canada as well. (There are a lot more illegal aliens from Canada than most people realize, but Canadians look like us, and sound like us (well, mostly). Let's not overemphasize this point: some of the people that are hostile to illegal aliens have racist reasons, but the vast majority of the people with whom I talk about this are motivated by economic concerns, not ethnicity. I've previously discussed that both Democrats and Republicans are reluctant to do anything about the illegal alien problem. Democrats see illegal aliens as future Democratic voters. (In some cases, current Democratic voters: look at the Dornan/Sanchez dispute a few years ago where at least 748 non-citizens voted.) Republicans are terrified that pushing this issue will offend Hispanics, a fair number of whom are pretty conservative, and can be persuaded to vote Republican on occasion. At least some Republicans won't push the issue because a lot of American corporations rely on a bountiful supply of illegal aliens to keep labor costs down, and Republicans, for reasons that elude me, have decided that the contributions of a few large corporations are more important than the votes of perhaps ten million working class Americans whose wages are being depressed by the enormous supply of cheap labor. If Republicans had any guts, they would point out illegal aliens make the bottom of legal American residents (black, white, and Hispanic) much poorer than they would otherwise be--and that Democrats are playing racial politics at the expense of the working poor. The problem is that the Democrats, through their wholly owned subsidiaries, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, and most American newspapers, would start screaming "racist" and "you're blaming the victim!" Now, here's a reason to take the problem of illegal aliens seriously that is so powerful that it should even overcome the "racist" scream of the left: A top al Qaeda lieutenant has met with leaders of a violent Salvadoran criminal gang with roots in Mexico and the United States — including a stronghold in the Washington area — in an effort by the terrorist network to seek help infiltrating the U.S.-Mexico border, law enforcement authorities said. Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, a key al Qaeda cell leader for whom the U.S. government has offered a $5 million reward, was spotted in July in Honduras meeting with leaders of El Salvador's notorious Mara Salvatrucha gang, which immigration officials said has smuggled hundreds of Central and South Americans — mostly gang members — into the United States. Although they are actively involved in alien, drug and weapons smuggling, Mara Salvatrucha members in America also have been tied to numerous killings, robberies, burglaries, carjackings, extortions, rapes and aggravated assaults — including at least seven killings in Virginia and a machete attack on a 16-year-old in Alexandria that severely mutilated his hands.How big does the problem get before we recognize that the federal government needs to: 1. Aggressively punish employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens. 2. Shut the border--calling up the unorganized militia of the United States (about forty million men legally obligated to respond to the President's orders), if need be, to adequately seal both the the Mexican and Canadian borders from illegal crossings. State governments also need to develop some guts, and tell cities and counties that they are obligated to arrest illegal aliens, and turn them over to INS, instead of the current policy of many local governments to ignore it when they find illegals. Thanks to Michael Williams for the pointer to the Washington Times article. More On The Explosives Story The Washington Times has an article by Bill Gertz reporting that the missing explosives were removed by Russian forces just before the war started, as a way of removing embarrassing evidence of Russian complicity in Iraq's WMD programs. (Remember that the explosives in question were of interest to the U.N. because they have the high velocity wavefront required to implode plutonium quickly enough to make an explosion, not a fizzle. (I've read that you need a particular high velocity wavefront to bring the density up quickly enough to get a properly explosion. There are a few other details besides the velocity that I am leaving out; I don't think that everyone needs to know them.) Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned. Labels: Iraqi WMDs March of the Vulgarians Warning: This entry contains very vulgar sexual content, because it contains part of a speech by the wife of a public official. Teresa Heinz Kerry has been pretty nasty on the campaign trail; I was a bit disappointed in how much the Governator told us about his sex life (or lack thereof) after the Republican National Convention. San Francisco Mayor Newsom's wife makes both of these characters seem downright classy--and it tells us a bit about what is considered appropriate language at a gay rights fundraiser in New York City: Mrs. Newsom, who lives in New York and is a regular on Court TV, offered the 1,100 guests at the Empire State Pride Agenda fundraiser some unusual observations about the couple’s sex life.I get a lot of flack for arguing that homosexuals are unhealthily focused on sex. But where's the news coverage of homosexuals outraged by Ms. Newsom's remarks? Indeed, "Not one person came forward to take offense or say it was inappropriate,'' [Empire Foundation executive director Alan] Van Capelle said.Ms. Newsom now claims that her gestures were misinterpreted: Mayoral first lady Kimberly Guilfoyle Newsom says way too much is being made of her sexually playful comments at a recent gay rights dinner, and that for the record she was not -- we repeat not -- pantomiming eating a banana when talking about her husband's sexuality.Oh yeah. I believe her, don't you? Wednesday, October 27, 2004
Is It Humor? Or Just Plain Weird? It's from Swift Geese Veterans For Truth. It's a parody of John Kerry's testimony before Congress, and I suppose if animal rights activists were a significant chunk of the population, it wouldn't be parody, but a devastating argument for not voting for John Kerry. Instead, it's just disturbingly weird. Labels: humor Airline Security Solution I'm not sure it will work, but then again, this is what I expect from the person whose name appears at the bottom. (No guarantees about its authenticity, you understand.) Dear Sirs, Illegal Aliens Should Not Be Registered To Vote But because we don't dare ask questions or require proof of citizenship, they do. From the Columbus, Ohio Dispatch: Among supposedly eligible voters in Franklin County are suspected terrorists arrested for alleged plots to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge and a local shopping mall. As an imprisoned felon, one is ineligible to vote. The other, from Somalia, is not a U.S. citizen and thus broke state and federal laws when he registered in 1999, officials said.Michelle Malkin claims that one of these guys was registered to vote by ACORN--a charge that ACORN disputes, and which, if Malkin is right about this, she hasn't adequately sourced to prove her claim. UPDATE: Ms. Malkin has blogged that she was in error about ACORN registering this terrorist to vote. I See Some Inconsistencies in This Story It sounds like political derangement is becoming a big problem in Florida: WEST PALM BEACH – An 18-year-old Marine recruit remained in jail on Wednesday, charged with threatening to stab his girlfriend over her choice for president, news partner NewsChannel 5 reported in its noon broadcast.However, the story goes on to say: Soper, who will enter the Marines as soon as he passes the GED test, solidly supports Bush. He allegedly told girlfriend Stacey Silheira, "You'll never live to see the election."Except that the Marines generally don't take a GED except under certain circumstances. A GED plus twelve college credits, sure, but it appears that they are quite reluctant to take just a GED, not a high school graduate. Perhaps Mr. Soper is (make that was) a Marine recruit in his mind. ABC Playing Politics With the News? According to Drudge, they are holding back on a tape that--let's face it--would remind a lot of Americans who al-Qaeda wants defeated in this election: The terrorist claims on tape the next attack will dwarf 9/11. "The streets will run with blood," and "America will mourn in silence" because they will be unable to count the number of the dead. Further claims: America has brought this on itself for electing George Bush who has made war on Islam by destroying the Taliban and making war on Al Qaeda.Oh yeah, I believe ABC too. UPDATE: FoxNews is now reporting the story as well: The tape was handed to the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency by ABC News two days ago, multiple government sources said. ABC is said to have received the tape last weekend from a terrorist source in Waziristan, a region in Pakistan near the Afghan border where the Taliban and Al Qaeda (search) are believed to be holed up. A Liberal Democrat Explains Why She Is Voting For Bush Let's just say that Meryl Yourish and I don't see eye to eye on very many things, but she clearly recognizes that her liberal ideas have a better chance of surviving under President George Bush--or perhaps she isn't keen on having to wear a burkha in another 20 years. It is an eloquent statement of why someone who even voted for Mondale is voting for Bush: I disagree with nearly every single part of George Bush's domestic policies. I am pro-gay rights, pro-choice, pro-stem cell research, against huge tax cuts for big business, not a strict constructionist regarding Supreme Court Justices. I am in favor of unions (or at least, what unions were supposed to be), affirmative action, and most of the rest of the liberal agenda.Exactly. Democratic Violence Continues This is another one of those liberals with a broad definition of freedom of expression: A Florida man has been charged with attempting to run over controversial Republican congresswoman Katherine Harris with his Cadillac. According to the below Sarasota Police Department report, Barry Seltzer, 46, told cops that he was simply exercising his "political expression" when he drove his car at Harris and several supporters, who were campaigning last night at a Sarasota intersection.Unsurprisingly, he is a registered Democrat, was driving a Cadillac, and lists his occupation as "real estate investor." This isn't one isolated incident. The amount of violence that the Democrats are using in this campaign is really worrisome. If Republicans did even a half of this, the news media would be arguing that Bush should resign from the race, and allow Kerry to take the White House by default. Apparently Butterfly Ballots Aren't The Only Item Too Complex For Democrats The Democrats are already filing lawsuits in Florida: But Mrs. Hood's spokesman, Alia Faraj, described the lawsuits as politically motivated, saying they were eroding public confidence in the election process by challenging "every single law we are following."On the question of citizenship: maybe they failed to check that box before they weren't citizens? I don't know, but I do know that throwing out a form because it asks you to answer a legitimate question--are you a citizen--is equivalent to dropping the requirement that you be a citizen to vote. What are we supposed to do with incomplete or invalid registrations? Accept them anyway? If Republicans argued that voter registration forms are too complicated for black people to fill out correctly, this would be a sign of racism. But when Democrats make that argument? Time To Smell The Coffee Over at electoral-vote.com, the webmaster, who is frank about being a Kerry supporter, has the following commentary today: The Los Angeles Times has a story today that explains why this election is so much more emotionally charged than previous ones. It is not about economics, but part of a cultural war. A new LA Times poll shows Bush doing well among lower and middle income whites, whereas Kerry leads among whites earning more than $100,000 a year despite his promise to roll back the Bush tax cuts for people making more than $200,000 a year. As president, Bush has enacted big tax cuts for the rich but the rich are voting for Kerry. What's up here?Two possibilities: Perhaps the high income crowd can afford the tax increase. Perhaps the low income crowd knows that Kerry's talk really means that they will get stuck with the tax increase, and the high income crowd knows this also. Remember that people with more than five million dollars don't have to pay income tax if they don't want to; they just buy municipal bonds of their state of residence, and the interest income is exempt from federal and state income tax. (Yeah, you and I could do that do, but we can't live on the interest on our savings; with five million dollars, you earn about $200,000 a year, and pay no taxes.) I also asked him if he had seen the New Yorker article about how the billionaires met with the DNC movers and shakers at Aspen the week after the Convention? Doesn't it seem even a little odd that America's wealthiest people are spending tens of millions of dollars each to defeat a man who supposedly reduced their taxes? Tuesday, October 26, 2004
David Zucker of Airplane! Does a Political Ad And it is the funniest political ad that I have ever seen. The good news: David Zucker was just another Hollywood liberal until, as he puts it, he “got mugged on 9/11.”Go to that web site, and click on the appropriate media type! You'll be glad you did! Confirmation That Kerry Is Wrong When you start getting emails from progressive Jews singing the praises of Pat Buchanan's misnamed magazine The American Conservative, and Pat Robertson is suddenly considered a credible source of information by the mainstream media. Has everyone forgotten when leftists were calling Pat Buchanan: Pat Buchanan's book is a loopy and inconsistent piece of Catholic fundamentalism that betrays a weird and self-destructive sympathy for the fascist cause. Irony Overload: Devil Worshipper Chris Cranmer This news story is about what I would expect of post-Christian Britain: LONDON, England (CNN) -- A devil-worshipping sailor in the Royal Navy has become the first registered Satanist in the British Armed Forces.The irony overload is the guy's name: Chris Cranmer. Is he a relative of Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, responsible for the Anglican Church's Book of Common Prayer? Chris, of course, is short for Christopher, which means "bearing Christ" in Greek. More On The Explosives Scandal Someone on the ground in Iraq has some expert opinion, and he is of the opinion that the explosives might well have moved before U.S. forces arrived: How can we lose almost 400 tons of high-powered explosive material? This is one of those things that just doesn't make sense if you don't know the context. I'm having trouble understanding it myself, but I'll tell you what I do know. When we first crossed the border to start the invasion, we saw some very strange things out in the open desert. Things that weren't supposed to be there. Fighter jets. Randomly scattered tanks and armored vehicles. We even found helicopters hidden underneath foliage on the riverbanks. This was all part of Saddam's bizarre strategy. He knew we'd come in there and thump him. He was hoping that we'd level the country and then leave it in shambles. After we left, he would reemerge and pick up the high-value pieces of war machinery that he cleverly scattered throughout the countryside. Not a brilliant strategy, but please understand his limited options. We recovered most of the jets, choppers, and tanks in a relatively short period of time. We stopped seeing them around after about 3 months. Undercounted Voters I've seen the claim from Democrats that the public opinion surveys are missing younger voters who only have cell phones, and no land lines. I'm not sure if that is completely true, since I understand that most of the pollsters randomly dial phone numbers. But it occurs to me that there is another voting block that we can be sure the pollsters are missing: absentee ballots to be cast by service members who are out of the United States. We have something like 130,000 people in Iraq, and tens of thousands in Afghanistan. There are sound reasons to belive that these votes are going to go 3-1 or better for Bush. Reservists, of course, are going to be voting in their home states, which I suspect are disproportionately Southern. Regular service people, however, are going to be absentee voting in the states where most of them are based. How many of them are based in Florida? I know that the Democrats tried hard to prevent military absentee ballots from being counted in the 2000 Florida fiasco, taking advantage of failures to have the envelope postmarked and similar problems. I suspect that there may be thousands of military absentee ballots arriving right now in Florida--and those voters have been missed in the phone surveys. You May Be In For a Surprise Election Day This blogger reports that she tried to vote early--and discovered that someone has registered to vote using her name, and a different address--and what a surprise! As a Democrat: Well drinkers, it appears your tallglassofmilk is a victim of voter fraud. Turns out that if I hadn't voted early, there's a pretty good chance I might have been hauled off in handcuffs on November 2, for attempting to vote twice. Now it might be somebody else who gets hauled away.I think I now understand why the Bush campaign is encouraging everyone on our side to vote early--to prevent Democrats from voting in our place. Another blogger linked to this entry asks a question that I have asked several times: Question: Is there any good reason why a voter should not have to present valid identification at the polling place?I consider one of the most important actions of the next Congress to be passing a law requiring anyone voting in a federal election to show an official picture ID. UPDATE: It occurred to me after I posted this that some of you may not have sufficiently criminal minds to figure out why someone would register to vote under someone else's name. Let's say that your name is Joe Jones. You register to vote under the name of a real voter named Jack Smith. Then you go and vote as Jack Smith, and then go and vote as Joe Jones. You have effectively cast three votes for John Kerry: one as Jack Smith, one as Joe Jones--and by preventing Jack Smith from voting for George Bush, you have canceled out the vote of the real Jack Smith. The net result is that you have voted three times for John Kerry. Now, if all voting took place on one day, and you registered to vote in the same precinct under both names, there is a small chance that showing up and voting as Joe Jones and Jack Smith might get you noticed by an alert precinct worker--but I wouldn't bet a lot of money on that, especially if you vote in one identity in the morning, and the other identity in the evening. You can get around this by voting absentee in one or both identities--one of the reasons why I think absentee voting needs to be limited to those actually out of town, or hospitalized. Of course, if you register to vote in two different precincts, the chances of getting caught by voting in person are zero. Yet another reason for requiring photo ID when you vote. This Is Really Sad It's an article from the San Francisco Chronicle about a new black urban fashion trend: Earl "E.J." Jackson cracked open a Miller High Life and poured a dribble into the gutter before taking a swig. "That's for my dead homies," he said.Remembering someone who died--okay, that's makes sense. But the circumstances that the article describes are just overwhelming: "Jose Sanchez -- he was shot three months ago, gang related. He was 18, " Dolendo said.Now, I understand why some people look at the murder problem in the ghetto and say, "We need gun control." But that's missing the core problem. Why would anyone murder a two year old over a PlayStation? I'm sure that wasn't done with a gun. Asking Poor Questions Gives Poor Results The Washington Post is reporting: A majority of likely voters says the country is headed in the wrong direction, but these Americans remain sharply divided whether President Bush or Democratic challenger John F. Kerry is the best choice to lead the country over the next four years, according to a Washington Post tracking poll.Yet while acknowledging that generally Bush supporters and Republicans think we are headed the right direction, at least some significant fraction of people who say we are going the wrong direction are voting for Bush. Why? I can think of several explanations. The obvious one (and probably wrong) is that many of the "wrong direction" crowd don't know that Bush is President, or don't blame Bush for this "wrong direction." Another explanation, however, is that the question is poorly written. If you ask me if America is going the "wrong direction," I would say, yes, definitely--and that's why I am voting for George Bush. The left's domination (which doesn't necessarily mean complete control) of the federal bench and news/entertainment industry is destroying the United States, taking us as a society in the wrong direction with respect to the popular culture, education, parenting, and sexualization of children. Not everything in our nation is going the wrong direction--but a number of items that concern me greatly are going in the wrong direction. Ask better questions, and you get more sensible answers. October Surprises I mentioned a little earlier today about these documents that supposedly tie the Viet Cong to anti-war protesters--and perhaps to Kerry. I used the phrase "October Surprise?" as the title, implying that dropping something like that now into the campaign makes it difficult to respond to in time. Of course, the Bush family has had plenty of these October surprises, as Drudge Report reminds us: In 1992 it was the Iran Contra charges brought days before the election... In 2000 it was the DUI charges a few days before the vote... And Now...Now, the Supreme Court managed to justify upholding the McCain/Feingold campaign finance reform law's suppression of free speech on the grounds that it was necessary to prevent the appearance of corruption in the political process. I guess the same reasoning (that last-minute attacks you can't respond to prevent rational discussion of the issues) would justify passing a law prohibiting news organizations from publishing anything in the last three weeks before the election, wouldn't it? Or do the rules all change once again, because that would impair the power of the leftist media? Need A Place To Throw In Some Money To Help The Cause? Here's a 527--the Truth About Iraq--that is running a pretty decent 30 second ad in battleground states--telling Americans the good news about Iraq that they aren't going to get from the mainstream media. I just kicked in $50 to help them run commercials in this last week. You can contribute through PayPal (among other methods). I would strongly encourage you to throw in whatever you can. No Inconsistency At All One of Instapundit's guest bloggers, Michael Totten, thinks that Bush is being inconsistent for saying that if a state wants to create civil unions as an alternative to gay marriage, that they have that right: BUSH ON CIVIL UNIONS: President Bush said today that he favors civil unions for gays, or at least that he doesn’t agree with the Republican Party platform that opposes them. This is news to me. How can he be in favor of civil unions and also back the Federal Marriage Amendment? He can’t, at least not consistently. The FMA would ban civil unions as well as gay marriage. This is a flip I’ll take, as long as he doesn’t flop back on it.Professor Volokh has already done a good job of demonstrating that Bush is being entirely consistent on this. All I will add to this is that Totten didn't read the article very carefully. Bush did not say that he "favors civil unions for gays." What the article quotes Bush as saying is: In an interview on Sunday with Charles Gibson, an anchor of "Good Morning America" on ABC, Mr. Bush said, "I don't think we should deny people rights to a civil union, a legal arrangement, if that's what a state chooses to do so." [emphasis added]That's a very, very important distinction--one that Totten seems to have missed. If "a state chooses to do so" is quite different from having a judge order a state to do so. I would argue (and I suspect that Bush might argue this also, but I really don't know for sure) that it would be a bad idea for a state legislature to pass either a marriage law for homosexuals, or its fig leaf equivalent, civil unions. That does not mean that it is unconstitutional for them to do so--just a bad idea. October Surprise? This article from the New York Sun, as well as other links that you can find here at Polipundit are, if accurate, devastating. While the captured Viet Cong documents do not name John Kerry, they do say, "The spontaneous antiwar movements in the US have received assistance and guidance from the friendly (VC/NVN) delegations at the Paris Peace Talks." Kerry has acknowledged meeting with representatives of the North Vietnamese government on at least least two occasions in Paris--and he was a leader of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. This is not exactly a smoking gun, but it does fit in with his misrepresentations of how U.S. servicemen operated in Vietnam, does it not? So Who Is The Civil Libertarian In The Bush Cabinet? Interesting article from the New York Times (registration required) about resistance to shortcutting the Constitutional rights of the prisoners at Gitmo: WASHINGTON - When hundreds of prisoners arrived at the American naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in early 2002, the Bush administration laid out a straightforward plan: once the men were interrogated, the worst of the lot would be prosecuted before special military tribunals devised to bring terrorists to justice quickly.For all the whining about Ashcroft from the left, you would think that he was sitting in these meetings making little hangman's nooses. John Kerry (Previous Revision) On Iraq Mickey Kaus--who is a Democrat--points out that Kerry's campaign has tried to defend its position by pointing to a 2001 transcript about Tora Bora--but Kaus points out that Kerry's position back then doesn't match his position now: Finally, the Kerry camp may regret calling attention to that McLaughlin transcript. Earlier in the interview--which, remember, took place two months after 9/11, in the middle of our Afghan campaign against the Taliban--McLaughlin asks Kerry "What do we have to worry about [in Afghanistan]?" Here's the last part of Kerry's answer:If Kerry wants to argue that Bush made a mistake going after Iraq, that's just fine. But he needs to admit that he made the same mistake.I have no doubt, I've never had any doubt -- and I've said this publicly -- about our ability to be successful in Afghanistan. We are and we will be. The larger issue, John, is what happens afterwards. How do we now turn attention ultimately to Saddam Hussein? How do we deal with the larger Muslim world? What is our foreign policy going to be to drain the swamp of terrorism on a global basis? [Emphasis added]Wait--I thought shifting the focus to Saddam was a "diversion" and distraction from the fight against Al Qaeda! Not, apparently, when Kerry saw an opportunity to score political points by advocating it. If he wants to claim that Bush made mistakes concerning post-war Iraq--well, even Bush admits that things haven't worked out as planned. But Bob Woodward at the Washington Post is clearly miffed at Kerry's unwillingness to answer questions about what he would have done differently: At the end of last year, during 3 1/2 hours of interviews over two days, I asked President Bush hundreds of detailed questions about his actions and decisions during the 16-month run-up to the war in Iraq. His answers were published in my book "Plan of Attack." Beginning on June 16, I had discussions and meetings with Sen. John Kerry's senior foreign policy, communications and political advisers about interviewing the senator to find out how he might have acted on Iraq -- to ask him what he would have done at certain key points. Senior Kerry advisers initially seemed positive about such an interview. One aide told me, "The short answer is yes, it's going to happen."Kerry is a political opportunist, in every worst sense of the word. Labels: terrorism Is The History Profession In Deep Trouble? Dr. Ralph Luker started to foam at the mouth a while back because I made it clear that there were serious problems of politicized inaccuracy (I'm being polite) in the profession. Now, people with the right credentials are saying the same thing: In his new book, "Past Imperfect: Facts, Fictions, Fraud -- American History from Bancroft and Parkman to Ambrose, Bellesiles, Ellis, and Goodwin" (PublicAffairs), Hoffer contends that his profession "has fallen into disarray" and aims a polemical blast at his fellow historians for condoning sloppy scholarship and an anything-goes ethical climate. "The Herd of Independent Minds" Marvelous metaphor to describe the political conformity pressures at Harvard, by an unashamed conservative professor, Ruth R. Wisse, in this Wall Street Journal article: The Federal Election Commission could not have foreseen that when it required employment information on political donations of over $200, it would expose scandalous uniformity in a university community that advertises its diversity. The Sacramento Bee reported that the University of California system gave more to the Kerry campaign than any other single employee group, and that Harvard was second, with only 15,000 employees to UC's 160,000. Campus bloggers computed the percentages of Kerry contributions over Bush: Cornell 93%, Dartmouth 97%, Yale 93%, Brown 89%.The appropriateness of her name at first made me wonder if it might be a nom de plume--actually, considering the article, a nom de guerre--but no, that really is her name, and she is a professor of Yiddish Literature. Wisse is the first person present tense form of the German verb "wissen" -- to know. Those Missing Explosives Since the New York Times is making a big stink about claiming U.S. forces failed to properly secured 380 tons of high explosives, and 60 Minutes plans an election eve hit piece on it--it is important to make sure that everyone knows that NBC is reporting that its reporters were there when the first U.S. forces arrived in 2003--and the explosives in question weren't found: An NBC News crew that accompanied U.S. soldiers who seized the Al-Qaqaa base three weeks into the war in Iraq reported that troops discovered significant stockpiles of bombs, but no sign of the missing HMX and RDX explosives.The real question now will be whether 60 Minutes reports the claim as fact or points out that there is contrary evidence. Monday, October 25, 2004
Vote Early, Vote Often In Ohio George Will reports this rather worrisome disparity between voters and people: The unexamined belief that an ever-higher rate of voter registration is a Good Thing has met its limit in the center of the state that this year is the center of the political universe -- Ohio. The U.S. Census Bureau's 2003 estimate is that in Franklin County -- Columbus -- there are approximately 815,000 people 18 or over. But 845,720 are now registered.Especially since not all of those people 18 and over are U.S. citizens, non-felons, even interested in voting, and other little details. I'm Not Used To Seeing This Much Care In A News Story I'm not happy with how journalists usually report poll results. They usually tell you the margin of error, but seldom warn you that the margin of error applies to both candidate's numbers. But here's a nice surprise: Fifty-one percent of likely voters said they would back Bush, and 46 percent expressed support for Kerry.Important point: The 95% confidence interval means Bush could have as little as 48%--but Kerry could have as much as 49%. Even better, the explainer that they link to explains this more fully: If the sampling error were plus-or-minus three percentage points, it means there is some chance that Candidate A's support could be as high as 59 percent (56 plus 3) if we had asked all 200 million adult Americans. There is also some chance that the candidate's support could be as low as 53 percent (56 minus 3).While they haven't made this as clear as they could, what they are telling you is that the confidence interval isn't notched at the two ends; it's a bell curve distribution. A three point margin of error means that the possibility that Bush's 51% is actually 48% is much, much smaller than that it is 50%, or even 49%. Ditto for the possibility that Kerry's 46% is actually 49%. If I understand stats correctly (and I don't claim expertise), there's a 95% probability that Bush's actual support is within three points of 51%, and a 95% probability that Kerry's actual support is within three points of 46%. The chances that Bush's numbers are at the bottom of the range, and Kerry's are at the top, is quite a bit less likely than the probability for either. I don't know whether you multiply the probabilities at the edges of the confidence interval by each other, or add them, but either way, the chances that Kerry is ahead of Bush is certainly far less than the probability that Bush is ahead of Kerry. Do not get discouraged. We can still beat Kerry, and by a margin that will make the inevitable lawsuits irrelevant. Electoral Vote Count The map over at Real Clear Politics is showing Bush with 234 safe votes and Kerry with 211. New Hampshire, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and New Mexico are still in play. Bush can win the election if he takes Florida and Ohio, or Florida and New Hampshire plus any one of the other states. Without Florida, Bush needs Ohio and Michigan, and either Minnesota or Wisconsin, or New Hampshire and New Mexico. To win, Kerry has to take Florida, Ohio, and Michigan, or Florida, Ohio, either Wisconsin or Minnesota, and either New Mexico or New Hampshire, or Wisconsin and Minnesota. Kerry has a much harder task ahead of him than Bush--but that's why Milwaukee wants 2.5x more ballots than registered voters, I suppose. It's Ugly; Maybe If We Ignore It, It Will Go Away From a BBC report on another of those mass graves in Iraq: Mr Kehoe investigated mass graves in the Balkans for five years but those burials mainly involved men of fighting age and the Iraqi finds were quite different, he said.And it would be just awful to see first-hand what Hussein did, wouldn't it? Because then Europeans couldn't stick to this theory: Much of the world, many Britons and rather a lot of Americans believe that the planet's most risky rogue state is the United States under its current President. Explaining America To The Europeans The punctuation is a little deficient, there are some spelling and capitalization errors, and a few places require a little more editing. But this is a magnificient explanation of things that Europeans don't understand about America: In my normal life, I work on in a team of engineers that are based all over the globe, in point of fact, I am one of only two Americans in my little group. The result of this situation is I'm often asked to help translate the nature of American life to my co-workers. Polling Numbers There are lots of surveys coming in, nationally, and state by state. They don't all come to the same results, and this not a surprise. When you sample a population, how accurately those results scale up to the population is determined by the sample size, and how accurately you weight the raw data. (Example: if you know that your population is 49% male and 51% female, and your sample group is 57% male and 43% female, you have to adjust the raw data to correspond to the breakdown of the population.) The margin of error is a statistical measure of how accurately the sample size will match the behavior of the population. Typically, poll results are reported with a margin of error at the 95% confidence interval--which is typically about 3-4% for samples of 800-1000 people. As you increase the sample size, the margin of error gets smaller. It doesn't get dramatically smaller, which is part of why you seldom see polls taken of 10,000 people. (I don't remember the math off the top of my head, but I think you get one of those asymptotic curves, so that you need an absurd sample size to get margin of error down in the 1% range.) It does strike me, however, that if you combined these sample sizes together, you could reduce the margin of error slightly, and get a little more confidence in the results. Obviously, this would the different polls to be taken at about the same time. Is there some reason that we don't see metapolling, where statisticians combine several different polls to get a smaller margin of error? Interesting Comment From Britain About Bush This is from an otherwise negative article about Bush in the Guardian: When George W Bush's poll ratings recently dipped, every Labour MP cheered. Correction: every Labour MP except one. The Prime Minister fretted to one close friend: 'Whenever Bush weakens in the polls, they start mucking about.'I hear that lots of Europeans think Bush is dangerous, and the article goes on to talk about how: Much of the world, many Britons and rather a lot of Americans believe that the planet's most risky rogue state is the United States under its current President.But I suspect that Blair has a pretty good idea who the real dangers are on this planet--and rather likes having the U.S. run by someone who knows where the risk is. Thanks to Professor Bainbridge for the link. Does Kerry Have A Reality Grasp Problem? For someone who has accused Bush of lying (because the pre-war intelligence reports--of many nations--were wrong), Kerry sure seems to have some disturbing problems with telling the truth: U.N. ambassadors from several nations are disputing assertions by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry that he met for hours with all members of the U.N. Security Council just a week before voting in October 2002 to authorize the use of force in Iraq.This isn't a trivial matter, like whether he ran in the Boston Marathon, or whether he really is a hunter, or whether he spent Christmas in Cambodia. He made a claim--several times--about meeting with the U.N. Security Council concerning the Iraq invasion--and now his claim is being specifically denied by members of the Security Council. This is such an easy matter to verify that to tell lies about it is insane. It makes me wonder if Kerry is mentally stable enough for the job. Riots I have had this sneaking fear about this, because of the level of violence that Democrats have been using around the country, and the level of rage that the billionaires have been stirring up among the rent-a-mob crowd, but I wasn't going to say it, because it would make me sound paranoid. Now Senator Edwards' wife goes ahead and articulates it: Supporter: Kerry's going to take PA.And here's the audio clip of it. A Gutsy Endorsement? Newspapers do not generally endorse candidates that are too far away from their customer base--so it somewhat surprised me to see the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison endorse George Bush. Madison is a university town--sometimes known as the Berkeley of the Midwest--and this editorial, while critical of Bush, is far more critical of Kerry. They recognize that winning the war against terrorism is the most important issue: It comes down to this: President Bush tells people what he will do. Sen. John Kerry tells people what they want to hear. Bush is confident in action even when mistaken. Kerry is comfortable in passivity even at high cost.Yet they seem to be liberals: Yet voters are right to be unsatisfied with Bush's performance in specific instances, and they should expect a chastened and better- grounded Bush administration to perform more effectively in a second term. Among other challenges, Bush must appoint Supreme Court judges that will uphold the Constitution, not pass a right-wing litmus test. Bush also must re- establish credentials as a fiscal conservative. His Medicare prescription drug coverage will cost a fortune, as will continued and expensive farm subsidies.It sounds like they are liberals who recognize that winning the war on terror is the most important issue. Bush has presided steadfastly over extraordinarily consequential times. He rose to the unprecedented challenge posed by the attacks on America of Sept. 11, 2001. He has effectively overseen a transformation of government from deliverer of largesse to provider of security. He promotes a positive, and yes, idealistic view of the power of democracy. Should we expect anything less from the leader of the free world? Why People Go From Pro-Choice to Pro-Life Interesting posting here. Not to worry, no gross pictures (except for what looks like spaghetti sauce on someone's face). What this guy writes is not all that unique; I've worked with people who similarly made the pro-choice to pro-life transition as a result of having a child of their own. Sunday, October 24, 2004
Growing Up in a Lesbian Home Over at Dawn Patrol there is this fascinating discussion of a recent propaganda piece in the New York Times about the virtues of growing up in a lesbian home: Ry is simply a name that her mothers liked the sound of when they named her, an act of creativity as novel and yet, to their minds, as natural as the conception of Ry herself, a feat that involved the sperm of a gay man, the egg of a lesbian in love and one very clean glass syringe.Here's the disturbing aspect to this: Spadola read Ry's quotation out loud: ''It took me a lot of struggle to realize that I really was attracted to men, yet now it is really hard for me to deal with men as human beings, let alone sexually.'' There was more along those lines -- Ry was intrigued but ''repulsed'' by heterosexual relations, afraid of the ''sexist soul-losing domain of oppression.'' Her parting thought: ''I cannot understand or relate to men because I am so immersed in gay culture and unfamiliar with what it is to have a healthy straight relationship.'' ...But the good news is that Ry's parents were supportive of her being a heterosexual--in a way that most heterosexual parents would know was not wise: Ry's mothers may not have been heterosexual role models for her, but they've always encouraged her in her relationships with men, provided they approved of her choice. When she was 16, she fell in love with her first boyfriend but was unsure of where to take things. Several months into the relationship, there were a couple of weeks, her mothers recall, when she mooned around the house, talking around and about the relationship, seeming stressed out, uncertain, in need of counsel. ''Finally, my mom said, 'You should just go have sex with him,''' Ry recalled. Well, Here's a Surprise Someone at Planned Parenthood actually did the right thing! They called the police! The story is about a statutory-rape case that came to light when a 13-year-old San Mateo County girl tested positive for chlamydia at a local clinic. The clinic did the right thing by reporting it to the county sheriff's department, and the girl admitted to the authorities that she'd had sex with a stranger.Ah, but they couldn't keep going! When the sheriff's investigators then learned that the girl had an abortion scheduled, they took the rare step of using a search warrant to seize the fetus, so they could use DNA testing to verify the identity of the father—who is believed to be an adult. Labels: abortion The Guardian Retracts The Call For Assassination They ran a column asking why we didn't have Oswald or Hinckley today--now they are apologizing, and have removed the column: The final sentence of a column in The Guide on Saturday caused offence to some readers. The Guardian associates itself with the following statement from the writer.Oh yes, humorous, no question. How Many States Can You Vote In? Apparently, more than one: Tens of thousands of Florida voters are also registered to vote in a second state, and more than 1,600 may have cast ballots in Florida and one of two other states in recent elections, taking advantage of an absence of safeguards to prevent illegal double voting.Now, I would expect that this would primarily benefit Democrats, because they are the most likely to have multiple homes: a place in Sun Valley; one in Boston; one on Hilton Head. Bush Ahead of Kerry In Hawaii I saw this yesterday, and assumed that my eyes were playing tricks on me. Okay, it's only a 1 point lead on Kerry, well within the confidence interval, but it is still quite astonishing for Bush to even be competitive with Kerry in a Democratic stronghold. I'm A Single Issue Voter This Election... and it's not the issue you might think. Yes, I am no fan of gun control. I am no fan of same-sex marriage. I am no fan of higher income tax rates. But all of those are less important than the one issue that really matters: the War on Terrorism. Mark Steyn's column points out that, sure there are parts of the Iraq War that have not gone well. Some parts have been utterly disastrous (such as Abu Ghraib). There are decisions that probably made since when Bush and his team made them, but turned out to be poor. But what's the surprise? Iraq's messy. So? What isn't? America has no Colonial Office, no political administrators with decades of experience in far-flung climes; its occupation of Iraq was learnt on the fly, because there was no other way. But the ludicrous defeatism over what's at worst a partial success is unbecoming to a great nation. If the present Democratic-media complex had been around earlier, America would never have mustered the will to win World War II or, come to that, the Revolutionary War.And this is an important point. The last time we occupied nations by force and tried to rebuild them as liberal democracies, they were Germany and Japan. We have a few old men enjoying their Social Security checks who were doing the nuts and bolts work, but all the people with experience administering foreign nations have been dead a long time. Even then, we had the advantage that both Germany and Japan had been suffering from many years of warfare. The population was exhausted, and tired of seeing constant death and destruction. The most fanatical defenders of both nations has died fighing Allied forces: the Hitler Youth recruited into the home guard and Werewolf guerilla movement, or the kamikazes. Iraq, for all the problems that having Hussein and his evil torturing raping sons created, was simply not a nation destroyed by aerial bombardment. There weren't many last-ditch defenders of the Baathist government of Iraq willing to die for the cause; had there been, I could have pitied them as misled fanatics. It seems that the Baathist Party is more like the Mafia than kamikazes. The Baathists seem quite willing to see others die for their cause, but not themselves. Here's the hard and painful truth: we are engaged in a war to preserve a relatively free society. It wasn't perfect on 9/11, but it wasn't way off the mark. If we spend the next fifty years fighting a limited war against Islamofascist terrorists, we are going to lose so many freedoms that you will look forward to the PATRIOT Act. Each time al-Qaeda figures out a new way to misuse some common item, we will have to impose a new set of controls on it. Imagine what is going to be like when you can't just buy pool chemicals, but have to have a certified pool specialist (bonded, with a Homeland Security Department background check) come out to adjust your pool chemistry. If you don't see the connection--let's just say that you can buy all the materials to make poison gas at Wal-Mart right now. Al-Qaeda doubtless knows that--and after the first poison cloud drifts through a residential section of town, killing dozens and sickening hundreds, that will be a new area of regulation. Most people don't realize that many of the common industrial pesticides are disturbingly similar to nerve agents. These pesticides are used in vast quantities to make American agriculture among the most productive in the world. I don't know how we can continue to distribute and use these chemicals in large quantities without terrorists getting hold of them, and using them. That it hasn't happened is almost certainly because Homeland Security has been working their tails off watching potential terrorists. The first successful use of some of these agents, either added to food in a factory, or added into a water system downstream of the chlorination plant, and we will have to remove these from the normal agricultural channels. Hey, organic farming is really neat, but I don't think you have any idea how expensive food is going to get. Those of us who studied chemistry in college get very, very discouraged, because we know how much our industrial society is based on the proper use of some nasty and dangerous chemicals. You won't want to live in a society where people with even a modicum of knowledge are regularly misusing these dangerous materials--and a society with sufficient controls to prevent this misuse isn't going to be a very nice place to live, either. I shudder to think what may happen to the right to own a gun (at least under a Kerry Administration) if one terrorist a week decided to buy a shotgun or a handgun and start murdering people at malls in the states with very restrictive concealed weapon permit laws. I wish that good sense would prevail, and California, New York, and the other restrictive places would allow law-abiding adults to carry concealed--but more likely, the whole country would end up with something like New York City gun control laws. You name a commonly available chemical or tool, and there's probably a way for a terrorist to misuse it--and they will, until we have so tied ourselves up in knots that we are half as free, and half as prosperous as we are now. Waiting for the terrorists to come to us just isn't going to work. We must take the war to them--and it is a war. Why Civil Libertarians Should Vote For Bush I'm serious. Here's the problem: we are at war with a very dangerous ideology, Islamofascism. There is no negotiating an end to this war, except by the West becoming Islamic nations on the Taliban model. Now, I know that most Muslims are not insisting on this, but the evidence in Iraq shows that the lunatics will not be content with a democracy on even slightly liberal lines. It has to be Talibanesque, or Baathist, or not at all. They will continue killing people (combatants and civilians, Muslims and non-Muslims), until they achieve their ends. What is the solution? There are several possible ways to deal with this. One solution, the Bush solution, is unconditional victory. I do not expect us to ever destroy terrorism, or even Islamofascist terrorism. As long as there are angry young men looking for someone to blame for their problems, and there are cynical older men prepared to use their idealism to advance a cause, there will be terrorism. The best that we can hope for is the eventual replacement of the impoverished thug governments of the Middle East with an Islamic form of liberal democracy. By this, I mean that while the laws will certainly reflect Islamic traditions and beliefs (e.g., prohibiting homosexuality, alcohol, pork, giving some formal primacy to Islam as a state religion), they will otherwise tolerate other religions, allow expression of a diversity of political and religious opinions, and use representative government as the method of making decisions. This is not going to happen quickly, but I do not find it implausible that in 10-20 years, the major sources of Islamofascist terror will have dried up. The other approach I would call the Kerry approach, but since I can't figure out what Kerry really stands for, I will call it the "criminal investigation and interdiction" approach. Instead of trying to make fundamental changes in the core problems of the Middle East (as Bush is doing), this approach regards terrorism as a criminal investigation problem. This approach requires us to stay one step ahead of the terrorists, arrest and punish them when we can identify them, and try to prevent them from committing terrorist acts beforehand. Here's the problem: how do you prevent those terrorist attacks beforehand? Right now, civil libertarians are outraged by the PATRIOT Act--largely for statutes that predate it, sometimes by decades. If we were not fighting terrorists in Iraq right now, where would they be? Do you expect them all to go home? Of course not. Remember: they attacked us--and when we didn't seriously fight back after the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, and in Somalia, and the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, and the bombings of the American embassies in East Africa, they attacked us in New York City, on 9/11. Even if we had not invaded Iraq, we would we be fighting them somewhere--and likely as not, in the United States. So, how are we going to stop them from attacking us in the U.S.? Does any civil libertarian seriously think that we can repeal the PATRIOT Act, and go back to the laws of September 10, 2001? Even making the best of assumptions, our government, to fight such attacks in America, is going to ask for, and need, pretty extraordinary powers. Right now, most Americans have gotten comfortable, and don't see the need for the national security state. Another 9/11 bombing--or dozens of little terrorist attacks across America, much like Israel has suffered over the last two decades--would lead to laws requiring the carrying of IDs, showing them on demand, vehicle stops and searches for bombs, and many other terribly intrusive measures. Now, the ACLU will doubtless fight such measures. But how many American schools will have to suffer a Beslan-like attack before popular rage leads to Constitutional amendments that gut the Fourth and Fifth Amendments in the name of security? (Or worse, Americans start engaging in the sort of anti-Muslim violence that many of us feared after 9/11?) The PATRIOT Act was a short-term measure. While there are some real dangers to enhanced governmental power, as long as they are short-term, to deal with a specific threat, we won't forget what life was like before we gave up some of our liberties. What happens if the need to maintain the national security state continues for many decades, because Islamofascists keep committing terrorist acts? Eventually, Americans will get used to living in a mild form of police state. It is better, I argue, to win the war as quickly as we can--so that we don't become used to living in a society where fear causes the population to give too much power to the police. Winning the war against terrorism isn't going to happen by pursuing a balanced approach that sees terrorism as a "nuisance" like prostitution or gambling. Winning the war against terrorism is going to happen because we decide that we have no choice but unconditional victory. Try as hard as we might, we are not going to get 100% victory. But 100% victory has to be the goal; trying for 50% victory means that we will never even get close. Voter Intimidation in Florida At the places where you can vote early, there are thugs trying to intimidate voters. Unsurprisingly, Democrats are doing the intimidating: One woman who voted early in Boca Raton, at the Southwest County Regional Library, complained that as she stood in line, two men behind her were "trashing our president," Fletcher said, declining to identify the woman. She tried to ignore them. Then the man touched her arm and said, "Who are you voting for?" One Of Those Reminders That Geniuses Don't Get Elected President I've read that people don't generally elect politicians who are more than about 20-30 IQ points above them. This may explain why the Founding Fathers of the United States included some of the pre-eminent scientists and intellectuals of the time: Ben Franklin, Benjamin Rittenhouse, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Rush. The voting franchise was a bit more narrow than it is today, with only about 50-70% of men allowed to vote, usually based on owning property or having a certain level of income. As the franchise broadened in the 1820s and 1830s to include all white men (but removing free black men from the voting rolls in a number of states), the average intelligence of the electorate probably dropped, which may explain the replacement of intellectual leaders with relative pygmies. The New York Times runs this amazing article (amazing because the Times is carrying it): To Bush-bashers, it may be the most infuriating revelation yet from the military records of the two presidential candidates: the young George W. Bush probably had a higher I.Q. than did the young John Kerry.Everyone occasionally says something that isn't clear, especially if they have been running around the country giving speeches for weeks on end--but I will say that Kerry's statements are sometimes even less clear than Bush's speeches. Bush uses the wrong word; Kerry uses an incomprehensible sentence structure. There's a great story to the effect that when Adlai Stevenson, Ph.D., was running for President against Eisenhower, his intellectualism was a real barrier to getting elected. A supporter approached him at a rally and said, "Mr. Stevenson, all the smart people are going to vote for you." His response, "Madam, I need a majority." The fact of the matter is that in the democratic ideal world, the intelligence of voters would be a perfect bell curve, with equal numbers of voters below and above average intelligence. In practice, I'm sure that those of severely subnormal intelligence don't vote, nor would I want them to do so. When Mensa was founded after World War II, one of the delusions was that bringing together really smart people would make it easier to solve social and political problems. This didn't actually work, because there turned out to be far less agreement among Mensa members that the founders had assumed. My experience attending Mensa meetings over the years leads me to believe that intelligence is not as useful an addition to the problem of intelligent political beliefs as you might expect. I don't mean that many Mensans are liberals; I mean that many Mensans seem to be almost as ignorant of the underlying facts behind public policy questions as people that I meet elsewhere. Still, it is a little disappointing that while Bush is apparently the smarter of the two candidates, neither of them is exactly genius material. Would it be so horrible for Americans to pick between two really brilliant candidates? I know that voters don't like to vote for candidates that are dramatically more intelligent than themselves--which is why Bush's speaking skills rose dramatically on 9/11, when he needed to stop pretending to be "just folks"--but perhaps we could find some way to hide the awful truth of intelligence from most voters at election time. |
