Round the Horn, Saturday Double Header

Unfortunately called due to rain. But, luckily it's everybody-gets-a-link-to-a-great-story-by-a-member-of-the-liberal-coalition day.

Here's a very laugh-inducing story from And Then . . .

archy has an important story on Native America's struggle to get the vote.

Bark Bark Wolf Wolf has snap shots from the campaign trail of President Bush.

bloggg has a piece on a recently passed bill to make us all a little sicker.

Chris "Lefty" Brown's Corner has some nice and meaningful commentary by our very own President Bush.

Collective Sigh has some really solid and interesting analysis on the American Health Care System and how we could approach improving it.

Corrente has a story on the limits of free speech in this country.

Dohiyi Mir has the story that President Bush does not, apparently, believe what the Swift Boat Veterans are saying.

Echidne of the Snakes has a piece on the new director of MIT and certain questions that way this story was related.

In relation to President Bush's condemnation of "Shadow 527's," The Fulcrum has some relevant questions.

Gamer's Nook has a piece on that special gift for the Cthulu Fan who has everything.

The Gotham City 13 have a nice story on an upcoming film about our President that will be a tad more . . . respectful than Fahrenheit 9/11.

Happy Furry Puppy Story Time has a bit on Dick Cheney's comments on Gay Marriage.

Iddybud has a piece that suggests that even before the convention, New York's law enforcement community isn't too keen on protests.

The Invisible Library has a story on the possibility of a Twilight Zone/Planet of the Apes crossover.

It's Craptastic has a piece on his gratitude to the news organizations of America for covering the important stories.

Kick the Leftist has a nice piece on Alice Cooper's opinion on rock crossed with politics.

That's the first half. I'll do the other half this afternoon or tomorrow.

Compare and Contrast

Salon has a selection of conservative commentators (and one member of the Democratic Leadership Council a very moderate liberal organization) giving advice on how President Bush could win this upcoming election. The first, by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey is interesting.

"To succeed in November, President Bush must both mobilize his base and engage nontraditional voters by putting a big, bold idea on the table. That is what Ronald Reagan did in 1980 with income tax cuts, and it is what Republicans did in 1994 with the Contract With America, when we won a majority in the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. Both were historic victories won by campaigning on big, bold ideas that attracted millions of new voters to the process.

It's time for the next wave of bold ideas."

Now think back to Tuesday when we talked about an article by Bruce Bartlett, in which he argued (somewhat convincingly) that President Bush is unlikely to make any great strides forward.

Incidentally in case you are wondering what Dick Armey's big proposal is? Personal retirement accounts, which basically means funneling social security money into the hands of Wall Street analysts and stock brokers. But that's a subject for another time.

Low updates today

For various reasons. I'll do Round the Horn tonight or tomorrow. In the mean time here are the lyrics to a current favorite song, Neil Youngs, "Leave the Driving ."

Leave the Driving

Out on the old coast highway
Flying through the night,
Jed got stopped by the CHP
For speedin' and no brake lights.

Rolled down the driver's window.
Slipped his gun down under his seat.
The glove-box was full of cocaine
The trunk was full of weed.

"Driver's license and registration,"
Said the officer with his flashlight.
Search around the floor of the car,
Smellin' like something ain't right.

Jed's life flashed before him,
Like a black and white super-8.
He heard the sound of the future
On a scratchy old 78.

Nothing was still, all was moving
When the flashlight found the gun.
Then Jed pulled the trigger.
In a split-second tragic blunder.

"It makes you think about living,
What life has to tell,"
Said Jed to Grandpa,
From inside his cell.

Camouflage hung in his closet.
Guns all over the wall.
Maps of buildings for engineers
And a book with no numbers to call.

The whole town was stunned.
They closed the Coast Highway for 12 hours.
No one could believe it,
'Cause Jed was one of ours.

Meanwhile across the ocean,
Living in the Internet,
Is the cause of an explosion
No one has heard yet.

But there's no need to worry.
There's no reason to fuss.
Just go on about your work now.
And leave the drivin' to us.

And we'll be watching you,
And everything you do.
And you can do your part
By watchin' others too.

Grandpa put down the paper,
Staring in disbelief.
Jed had always been good to him.
Never gave him any grief.

The moral of this story
Is try not to get too old.
The more time you spend on earth,
The more you see unfold.

And as an afterthought,
This must, too, be told,
Some people have taken pure bullshit
And turned it into gold.

So What do the Vets Think?

I know it seems like I'm all Swift Boats, all the time these days, but the truth is I just can't get enough of this story. It's like the "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" of political issues. A song I just can't get out of my head no matter how hard I try.

Like that song, it's also a pretty inconsequential issue compared to things like our economy or the reconstruction of Iraq.

But here's an interesting story from the New York Times on how this story is playing among the Vietnam Veterans community. Surprisingly some of them are taking John Kerry's side, while others stand with President Bush and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

"This new stuff from the Swift boat opponents of Kerry does not surprise me," said Charlie Brown, of Seattle, who was an Air Force medic in Vietnam and 1967 and 1968. "There was a right and a left among guys in Vietnam back in the 60's. And there's a right and a left now."

It's a nice article in that if you like the Swift Boat Vets, you'll find evidence that some people believe in them. And if you don't like the Swift Boat Vets, you'll find that some of them agree with Kerry.

The Ann Coulter Method of Arriving at the Truth

In her latest screed, Ms. Coulter proposes two methods of evaluating the truth. "the O'Reilly method (randomly coming out in "the middle" of every issue) [and] the Matthews method (deciding, ab initio, that any criticism of Kerry could come only from bottom-feeding, politically motivated whores)" There is also, of course, the Coulter Method (simply believing all criticism of Democrats/Liberals, no matter how mean-spirited or unlikely).

Ms. Coulter's reason for believing the Swift Boat vets? There's a lot of them. "For starters, 254 swiftboat veterans say Kerry is a fraud; 14 say he's a hero. . . . we're talking about 35-year-old memories here; 254 memories to 14 memories is what we used to call "evidence."

Yep it's the number of witnesses that matters most. That's why in all the courtrooms across the land they have those giant scales. All the witnesses for the defense go on one side and the witnesses for the prosecution go on the other. That's why its good to have a lot of overweight friends (like me, for example); they make you more likely to be found innocent.

Well, let's pretend to take this argument seriously for just a second. Ann Coulter says that 254 is more than 14, and that those 254 say that Senator Kerry is a Fraud. But what does being a fraud mean? Well some of those 254 (relatively few) are making accusations about how Mr. Kerry got his medals. But in most of those cases, the Swift Boat Veterans are the odd men out. You would think that if we did get a court room together, pulled in all the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth who had actual knowledge of the action and all of those who support Kerry's version of the events (which would, of course, include the Navy).

The other possibility is that 254 Swift Boat Veterans think that Kerry is a jerk, and 14 think he's a good guy. I'm not sure what the significance of that figure is, though. I mean 100% of the Ann Coulters think that Kerry (and every other liberal democrat) is a jerk.

In case you are wondering the Bryant method of arriving at the truth is to sit around and drink a lot of Coke and Pepsi and then type what ever comes into your head. Not very scientific.

More Swift Boat Stuff

The Navy has released records that apparently support John Kerry's position in his debate against the Swift Boat Veterans. It is an interesting part of this debate between the Swift Boat Vets and John Kerry, that the Vets are also impugning the Navy. They are in effect saying that the way the Navy hands out medals is corrupt, or was corrupt. And that's why John Kerry got so many medals. I can't help thinking that is not the sort of argument that is going to get the Navy in a very appreciative mood.

Fake News Story

In an exclusive to the Fake News Service, we have learned that Senator Kerry is dropping out of the race after reading a particularly trenchant article by Ben Shapiro (who some call the Boy Prognosticator).

At a press conference, Senator Kerry looked emotional as he said, "It has come to my attention that my campaign is about nothing but my service in Vietnam. According to America's most reliable columnist, Ben Shapiro, I have no other plans or programs. Allow me to quote Mr. Shapiro. "John Kerry's entire presidential campaign has been predicated upon the idea that he won some medals in Vietnam -- and that, as a medal winner, he'll be a friend to American soldiers."

The Senator stood silent a moment, quivering with emotion, and then said, "I must apologize to the American people. I could have sworn I was putting forward plans to improve our education, to improve our Foreign Policy, to work with our allies in containing terrorism, to provide more support to emergency first responders and to get our economy back on the right track. I know that many Republicans might disagree with my plans, but I thought that at least I was putting them before the American people."

He looked down for a moment and then continued, "It's clear, however, that I wasn't. I was simply running as a guy who won some medals in Vietnam. So I must withdraw my bid for the Presidency. This is 2004, not 1970. America needs a President who's focused on the here and now."

Sources close to the Senator stated that Ben Shapiro's charges relating to the allegations of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth may have had more to do with the Senator's decision. "I mean, the guy has extensively responded to these charges. The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times have both debunked these claims. And yet Ben Shapiro is out there saying that Senator Kerry hasn't responded to them at all."

On Kerry Campaign Staffer, her head in her hands, said, "Look, Shapiro is out there saying that the Senator refuses to release his records. It must be true, or Shapiro wouldn't dare to say it. But I could have sworn that we did release those records. And Senator Kerry offered to answer any questions." At that point the staffer became too emotional to continue.

In the last lines of his enormously influential essay, Shapiro writes, "Sen. Kerry, you wanted to relive the Vietnam era, and now, you've got it. All you have to do is release your records. Now's the time: Either put up, or shut the hell up." The Senator has apparently decided to take Young Ben's advice.

This has been a Fake News story. We now return you to our regularly scheduled commentary.

Appeasement Redux

One of my favorite arguments in the run-up to the Iraq war was that those who didn't think we should invade Iraq immediately were somehow appeasing Iraq (an argument that Walter Williams returns to today, which triggered this column). They would pull out the "low, dishonest decade" and talk about what made Chamberlain think he could appease Hitler. Appeasement has since been such a dirty word that they probably were very happy to find an excuse to use it against their political enemies. And, to a certain extent, the tactic worked. President Bush got his Iraqi War Resolution, and the critics of the war were, for the most part, shunted off to the side. They've made a comeback since then.

But returning to Appeasement. Appeasement in the 1930s meant giving Germany large stretches of Czechoslovakia in order to keep him from taking more. Appeasement in the 2000's means not immediately invading your enemy. That's quite a slope isn't it? What will appeasement be in 2070?

Good ol' Walter Williams, not satisfied with repeating an argument from 2002-3, also feels the need to bring back a smear from a few weeks ago. The "sensitive" smear. But we've been through that enough times, I won't inflict that on you again.

Heads I Win Tails You Lose

What's the Swift Boat Veterans story really about? Scott Rosenberg over at his blog at Salon.com presents an interesting view. It might be more about Senator Kerry's response than about the actual charges.

Facts are nearly irrelevant here; this is about punching John Kerry and seeing whether he punches back, and how hard. If he fails to punch back, he's exposed as a sissy who's not tough enough to defend America. If he does fight back, the Bushies simply point at him -- as they have already begun to -- and claim that he's lost it, he's "wild-eyed" and unreliable and unfit to be president.

Tough needle to thread, but Mr. Rosenberg prescription makes sense to me too. Challenge the President directly on the legitimacy of these accusations, of these attacks.

The Second Term

Going back to Townhall, we have this analysis from Bruce Bartlett.

As the Republican National Convention approaches, pressure is building on Present Bush to lay out a second term agenda. With John Kerry running no worse than even in most polls, many Republicans believe that Bush needs a big idea of some kind to galvanize his supporters. I think they are probably going to be disappointed.

The fact is that very few presidents ever have a meaningful second term agenda. First of all, they don’t need one to get re-elected because they cannot run for a third term. Second, they don’t have the time or the political clout to get anything big through Congress because they are lame ducks.

This just gosh-darn inspiring. Vote For President Bush; He's unlikely to do much.

Of course Mr. Bartlett' analysis assumes that nothing big is going to happen during the second term. It also ignores rumblings that a war with Iran may be already in the build up phase. But still it is nice to know.

Vacillation

Good old Cal Thomas writes today on the cinematic endeavors of the Republican Party.

The Republican National Committee has released a "documentary" to counter Michael Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9/11." The film (available for viewing at www.rnc.org) chronicles John Kerry's statements about Iraq and proves to all but the most partisan that this is a man who is a political opportunist and a vacillator who cannot be trusted with the power of the presidency.

Opening with Kerry's pledge at the Democratic National Convention last month to "never mislead us into war," the film shows how Kerry consistently favored using force to oust Saddam Hussein until it proved politically advantageous for him to reverse course.

Well first of all, there is a bit of a difference between an independent film-maker like Michael Moore and film, made by a party, distributed on the internet for free. Frankly I don't think Mr. Moore is worried about competition that decides to give away their movies, any more than Brittany Spears is worried about guys who sing and hold up signs saying "Will Sing for Food."

Interesting how this is one of those areas where the RNC doesn't trust capitalism. You see I am a capitalist. I think you need some government protections, but for the most part free markets work to provide the best goods. In Mr. Moore's case, he successfully put out a film that a lot of people wanted to watch. It did extremely well for a documentary. If I remember correctly, it made more money than any other documentary previously released.

So naturally the Republican response is to release an internet movie for free.

Anyway in another of the endless sacrifices I make for you, I ended up watching the movie. I particularly liked the bit where they show a moment of Kerry on Hardball with Chris Matthews. Matthews asks Kerry if he is an Anti-War candidate. Kerry answers "Yes . . . ." because then the movie immediately cuts him off and moves on to playing the theme song from Flipper.

For those who don't know here's the run down.

Senator Kerry disagreed with the timing of the first Iraq war and so voted against it.

He has long been concerned about the potential threat from Iraq (like almost every other politician), and felt that the Clinton administration and the congress wasn't doing enough to solve that problem.

He felt that President Bush should have had the authority to invade Iraq, so he voted yes on the Iraqi War Resolution.

He feels that the Bush administration made several very serious mistakes in the build up to the war, particularly in how they handled the diplomacy.

President Bush asked for $87 billion to fund the war in Iraq. Senator Kerry felt that the money should be paid for, in part, by rescinding some of the enormous tax cuts President Bush had given to the wealthy. There were also problems with some of the way the contracts were set up in that they would not allow the free market to determine the best price for the services rendered. For these reasons Senator Kerry voted against the bill. Two further points that you all know. The vote was not close, Senator Kerry knew that the soldiers would get the money. And President Bush threatened to veto the bill if it didn't come to him in an acceptable fashion.

Cal Thomas says that all who watch this film, except the most Partisan, will walk away with a negative view of Mr. Kerry. I guess that by the most partisan, he means those who know the record.

But it's like I always say, reality itself is partisan.

Can we talk?

There's a good article by Paul Loeb today over at Working For Change on how President Bush and others respond to criticism and questioning of their policies.

A former Air Force Colonel I know described the administration's attitude toward dissent as "shut up and color," as if we were unruly eight-year-olds. Whatever we may think of Bush's particular policies, the most dangerous thing he's done is to promote a culture that equates questioning with treason. This threatens the dialogue that's at the core of our republic.

I don't know how many of you have seen that movie Cool Runnings. It's the story of the first Jamaican Bobsled Team. Kind of a feel good movie. Anyway when they get to the Olympics the captain of the team comes to really admire the Swiss team (I think). He admires them so much that he tries to get his team to act Swiss (which, needless to say, they don't appreciate).

One of his teammates finally says, "Im telling you as a friend, if we look Jamaican, walk Jamaican, talk Jamaican and is Jamaican, then we sure as hell better bobsled Jamaican." Maybe we ought to try debating American.

For 200 years we've been debating and arguing and discussing and hashing out our differences. Now we are in the 21st century and all of a sudden that's not the way it works? I disagree. I think we need some good old American debate and discussion, argument and dissent.

President Bush, apparently, has a different idea about how to conduct a political campaign in America. He and his advisors want him to face only crowds of people who support his policies and love him personally. So much that, as Corrente reports, some guy lost his job for questioning President Bush.

This might also be influenced by the fact that I finally saw Outfoxed this weekend which contains a nice montage of Fox Poster Boy Bill O'Reilly saying over and over again that those who oppose President Bush are traitors, and should be in what he ominously describes as the Spotlight.

Fortunately in my mind we have a candidate on the Democrat Side who understands the American way of debating. John Kerry isn't out there in small handpicked audiences; he's in front of thousands, hecklers and all. He's not afraid of the "bully" tactics of the right, and that's one of the reasons I support him.

The Future is Now!

Interesting editorial by Matthew Hindman and Kenneth Cukier over at the New York Times today, based around Google. I'm sure we've all used Google at some time or another; it's my favorite search engine beating out Yahoo and Excite (both of which I also use). Google is just very very easy to use. But Hindman and Cukier do point out an interesting facet of Google's success.

Behind Google's complex ranking system is a simple idea: each link to a page should be considered a vote, and the pages with the most votes should be ranked first. This elegant approach uses the distributed intelligence of Web users to determine which content is most relevant.

But what is good for Google is not necessarily good for the rest of the Web. The company's technology is so strong that its competitors have adopted a similar approach to organizing online information, which means they now return similar search results. Thus popular sites become ever more popular, while obscure sites recede ever further into the ether.

I'm not sure there's an easy answer to this question, and Hindman and Cukier don't seem to have one either. I suppose a simple answer is the market economy. If you have someone who's providing a service, do you really need other people who provide the same service? It's a tricky question. To personalize it a bit, once you have Atrios and Daily Kos and Corrente and This Modern World do you really need a Make me a Commentator?

But of course viewpoints are different than services. By their very nature, they are individualized. What I do is different than other blogs because it's me whose doing it (doesn't mean I'm better, and in some cases I'm probably worse, just different). So to ask that is kind of like saying once you have Chocolate Donuts and Bear Claws and Cheese Danishes and Maple Logs do you really need Strawberry Crullers?

Perhaps I personalize this issue too much. At any rate, it's nice to have Google to blame for the fact that I don't get a million hits a day.

Evil as a Precondition to Evil

Evil is what evil people do. Evil comes from Evil People they produce it. Or, if you prefer, they are the conduit whereby evil comes into the world. So a system or a machine or an animal can't really be evil. It is only the use of that system or machine or animal by an evil person that creates the evil.

Jay Bryant writes a thoughtful article today at Townhall in which he proposes a discontinuity between the methods of repression of societal control and the use of those tools to create an evil society.

Some other factor is needed beyond the incrementalism of the anarchy-repression continuum. Otherwise you do not get to the Gulag, the gas chambers or the mass graves of Iraq. And that factor is what liberals miss because, well, because they don't believe in it.

That factor is evil - specifically, evil intent on the part of national leaders. A leader who seeks a better life for the people may define that goal in a way that moves up or down the continuum. But that's not what Hitler, Stalin or Saddam was trying to do.

They were not overly harsh on people suspected of crimes, or treason. They invented those charges against utterly innocent people in order to terrorize, bolster their power, serve some ideological objective or feed their blood lust. They were, in a word, evil.

To put it another way, there's no need to worry about John Ashcroft having the kind of power he has (or the even greater power that Patriot Act II will give him) because he's not evil. And therefore we will never go all the way to a Stalinist or Nazi-Like state.

He then lectures us on our inability to perceive evil, a favorite subject of right wing columnists. Just in case you don't know there is Evil in the world. The sort of Evil that motivates Al-Qaeda or a Stalin or a Hitler.

In fact the problem I have with Mr. Bryant isn't that I don't think evil exists, but that I think he short changes what we might call the banal evil.

For example is it evil to gossip about a neighbor out of spite trying to tear him or her down? Although it scarcely compares with sending thousands to their death, it is certainly evil.

Is it evil to, if you are a reporter, out of laziness and ambition to turn in phoney baloney stories? Yes.

These sorts of banal evils are all around us. And a repressive society creates the opportunity to give these evils greater reign. How many witches were burned at Salem because of simple spite? How many Jews went to their death because of Nazi Officer's petty ambition?

Life is all about the desire to act and the power to act. If your desires are evil (even in a banal sense), but you lack the necessary wherewithal to achieve your desires than your desires do very little real harm (except to yourself in a spiritual sense). If you have the power to do evil but your desires are to do good than, again, little danger to your neighbors. If you are a mean or a spiteful or a lazy or an arrogant person, and you are put in a position of power, odds are you will use your power in lousy ways.

This is not to suggest that we need to drop the Patriot Act (although parts of it could certainly go) or abandon law enforcement. It is simply to suggest to that Mr. Bryant is naive when he suggest; ". . . we face, moreover, no danger of becoming evil incrementally. The continuum we are on doesn't go there."

New Quote

And a new Quotes Page. This quote might seem a little obscure; but it's a song I heard Friday at work (in a live version), and it's one I've always liked, so you're stuck with it.