# Posted 9:40 PM by David Adesnik  

UNSPINNING THE POLLS: Steve Waldman, editor of Beliefnet.com, points out that Catholics and non-church goers also came out much more strongly for Bush than they did in 2000. In Ohio and Florida, where Bush did much better than in 2000, church attendance among voters actually went down quite a bit.

Yes evangelicals turned out in record numbers, but so did young voters and African-Americans. Often, evangelicals just added to Bush's margin in the Red states rather than helping him in battlegrounds.

For once, I agree with E.J. Dionne:

John Kerry was not defeated by the religious right. He was beaten by moderates who went -- reluctantly in many cases -- for President Bush. This will be hard for many Democrats to take. It's easier to salve those wounds by demonizing religious conservatives.

Sure it is, but Democrats spent the entire election demonizing Bush & Cheney, insisting that their lies tricked voters into approving of their foreign policy. All I'm suggesting is that Democrats shouldn't flip-flop in the midst of demonization.
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# Posted 9:25 PM by David Adesnik  

THE GOP HAS THE EVANGELICALS, THE DEMOCRATS HAVE THE BLACK VOTE: Imagine that John Kerry had prevailed in Ohio or even nation-wide. Would the experts attribute his victory to surging African-American turnout or to a widespread repudiation of Bush's foreign policy?

Hypothetical questions may not have answers, but I am struck at how far Democratic pundits are willing to go in order to demonstrate that Bush's victory has nothing to do with his foreign policy and everything to do with evangelical homophobia and ignorance.

Laura Rozen says that if you are complacent about Christian conservatives' assault on our civil rights, then you are just plain ignorant (like David Brooks). Laura approvingly cites an e-mail sent to Andrew Sullivan which argues that:

To point out that the evangelicals voted in the same proportion for Bush as they did in 2000 gets a fact right and misses the point. What matters is that the Bush vote by these folks did not erode in the face of catastrophic management of post-invasion Iraq, prisoner atrocities, transformation of the surplus into a suffocating deficit and terrible job performance. It seems to me that their religious views trump everything. You switched your vote - why didn't they? The answer is complex, but you can bet it includes homophobia deftly catalyzed by Mr. Rove et al.

Sullivan responds: "He's got a point, no?" Actually, no, no he doesn't. Leaving aside the issue of whether Kerry would've been even worse for Iraq than Bush, I think it's misleading to suggest that homophobia compensated for evangelicals' hypothetical dissatisfaction with Bush's foreign policy.

Again, think about African-Americans. How badly would a Democratic president or candidate have to perform to lose more than 15% of the black vote?
This trend in black voting doesn't provoke much concern because observers on both sides consider it to be rational.

But when it comes to evangelicals, we presume that their motives for voting Republican are misguided, illegitimate, or even undemocratic. But what if evangelicals, like African-Americans -- and as Richard Cohen points out, American Jews -- consistently vote for one party because of its basic cultural orientation, rather than because of its position on any single issue?

Matt Yglesias wants to know exactly when John Kerry or any other Democratic candidate was condescending toward evangelicals. The answer to Matt's rhetorical is "almost never". But that's not that point.

Negative attitudes towards evangelicals, justified or not, abound in the Blue State Media. Democratic candidates may avoid invoking them, but I don't think that even Matt would deny that Christians, especially evangelicals, are looked down upon by the glitterati. After all, Matt himself refers to the them as "chumps" and suggests that they are "detached from reality".

In essence, evangelicals face the same dilemma as African-Americans. They consider one major party to be anathema, thus ensuring that the other major party takes them for granted.

Steve Waldman, editor of Beliefnet.com, suggests that Christian activists may not let Bush get away with being as non-committal as he was during his first term. (Laura Rozen cites Waldman approvingly.) But how much is going to change while the underlying political dynamic remains the same?
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# Posted 4:01 PM by David Adesnik  

AN UGLY MESS IN FALLUJA? Matt Yglesias points to this NYT article by Dexter Filkins as evidence of how tough and dangerous urban combat is.

Filkins article recaps the most important reasons that urban warfare is so tough: the uselessness of high-tech weapons in confusing terrain, the ability of a small local force to hold off a much larger number of outsiders, unexpected obstacles to movement, etc.

As a result, the offensive Filkins describes became "bogged down" (hint, hint)and

For a time, this frightening urban battlefield became a pulsing cacophony of strange and deadly sounds.

But notice the one really important thing that is missing from Filkins story: American casualties. Or for that matter, Iraqi government casualties. There will undoubtedly be some. It's just hard to make the case that urban warfare is hell on earth if its no more dangerous than your average daylight patrol in Baghdad.

UPDATE: The WaPo reports that 10 American and 2 Iraqi government soldiers have been killed so far in the battle for Fallujah. The general tone of the article is extremely upbeat, but relies almost entirely on quotations from Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, commander of US ground forces in Iraq.

UPDATE: Matt now says we all should've known that the battle would've been this easy, because guerrillas always avoid direct confrontations with better-armed foes. Come on, Matt, even John Kerry didn't flip-flop that fast.
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# Posted 3:43 PM by David Adesnik  

NAIVE CONSERVATIVE OPTIMISM ABOUT IRAQ?

Blogs are run by good people with positive intentions, but if they're you're primary source for information, you're outlook is perverted by an overwhelming amount of good news and a general disdain for the factual accuracy of bad news. It perverts your perspective and, because the sample group is so totally different than most of America, it begins to twist your political predictions and assumptions of what works.

That's what Ezra Klein has to say about why so many liberals believed that Kerry was going to wallop Bush. A cautionary tale, perhaps.
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# Posted 1:54 PM by Patrick Belton  

PERSONALLY (and speaking as a genuine supporter of Palestinian national aspirations and all liberal democratic reformers in that land), I think he should have been declared brain dead four years ago when he walked away from viable Palestinian statehood at Camp David. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:09 AM by Patrick Belton  

MISCELLANY COLLECTED IN A STUDY BREAK:

• Due to the Isle of Man's lack of constitutional incorporation within the United Kingdom, one of the Queen's more grand-sounding royal titles within the UK is the rather theological 'Lord of Man.'

• During WWI trench fighting, from their German opposing numbers, the kilted Black Watch acquired the nickname 'Ladies from Hell.'
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# Posted 2:09 AM by David Adesnik  

DOES DR. CHAFETZ MAKE HOUSE CALLS? With an eye toward the (non-existent) "values voter", Dan Drezner predicts that Thomas Frank is about to become the next celebrity intellectual du jour. That may be a disturbing thought, but OxBlog is getting ready to celebrate. After all, none other than Josh Chafetz is the author of the definitive debunking of Franks' delusional diatribe, What's The Matter With Kansas? If people are getting ready to pay Franks to recite his dogmatic drivel, I bet some of them might also be willing to pay Dr. Chafetz to put in his two cents.
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# Posted 1:55 AM by David Adesnik  

NOT REALITY-BASED: Via Howard Kurtz:

After Fox News called Ohio for President Bush on Election Night, John Kerry's aides began phoning top executives at the other networks to urge them to hold off, while White House adviser Karl Rove pressed them to join Fox in making the call.

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# Posted 1:24 AM by David Adesnik  

FALLUJAH: Just read a fascinating report from Belmont Club. I hope things are going as well as BC suggests. I admit to being a pessimist about urban warfare, but American casualties were very low in Najaf this summer. However, the Sunni insurgents seem to be much less primitive than their Sadrist counterparts.
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# Posted 1:19 AM by David Adesnik  

DOES OXBLOG HAVE WMD? From the WaPo:

The consequences of a big biological strike could be epically catastrophic, and rapid advances in science are placing the creation of these weapons within the reach of even graduate students.

I reckon that three political scientists have just as good a chance of producing bioweapons as one chemical engineer.
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# Posted 11:47 PM by David Adesnik  

CLARIFICATION/APOLOGY: In my previous post, the reference to "god***n Christian evangelicals" was intended as a tongue-in-cheek satire of liberal condescension toward Christian conservatives. It in no way reflects my persional views, which I have discussed before on OxBlog.
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# Posted 3:11 PM by Patrick Belton  

NEW YORK, NY: LEADER OF CORRUPT international cartel decries efforts by elected liberal democratic leaders to remove terrorists from city out of which they have been killing unarmed civilians. World yawns.

"I wish to share with you my increasing concern at the prospect of an escalation in violence, which I fear could be very disruptive for Iraq's political transition," Annan wrote to Bush, Blair, and Allawi.

"I also worry about the negative impact that major military assaults, in which the main burden seems bound to be borne by American forces, are likely to have on the prospects for encouraging a broader participation by Iraqis in the political process, including in the elections."

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# Posted 1:37 PM by David Adesnik  

OUT HERE IN THE REAL FAKE WORLD: I've been off-line for four days and a whole news cycle has passed me by. Does Bush's victory represent a true mandate, or just the ignorance of those god***n Christian evangelicals? I know what my gut is telling me, but I don't have much evidence to go on since I've been cut off from all my usual sources of information except the NY Times.

Being in NYC and seeing my family and friends seems a whole lot more real than being in the blogosphere, because I see people face-to-face and talk about things other than politics. But then I realize that I'm part of a Sino-Jewish, Ivy League-educated, medico-legal cabal. It doesn't get any more Blue State than this.

Anyhow, I was glad to see that yesterday's NYT had two whole op-eds (one by David Brooks, one by an ABC pollster) devoted to debunking the "moral values" myth.

The Times also had an extraordinary editorial on Yasir Arafat's legacy. In general, I can count on one hand the number of NYT editorials about the Middle East that strike me as being at least 90% right. But this was one of them, so go check it out.

Well, see you tonight, Amtrak permitting.

CLARIFICATION/APOLOGY: The reference above to "god***n Christian evangelicals" was intended as a tongue-in-cheek satire of liberal condescension toward Christian conservatives. It in no way reflects my persional views, which I have discussed before on OxBlog.
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# Posted 3:52 PM by Patrick Belton  

OPEN MUSING: Does Colombia have a House of Drug Lords in its legislature? Corollary musing: does Afghanistan then have a House of Warlords?

(Incidentally, blogger's been down most of the day, hence the light posting...) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:41 AM by David Adesnik  

WE MUST CHALLENGE ACADEMIC ORTHODOXY! Just got this on the Rhodes mail list:

Interested in challenging orthodox, mainstream academia? A new series of
workshops is starting this weekend: the Alternative Academics. The idea
is to discuss about alternative topics usually excluded from mainstream
academia, in an alternative format as well (no speaker meeting where the
speaker is on a platform and tells you what to think). I won't tell more
about it; just come and take part in it!

What's this? A secret neo-conservative cabal dedicated to dethorning the Ivory Tower's liberal (or in Oxford, leftist) orthodoxy?

No, of course not. It's actually an effort to push the academy even farther left, because right now it is just a tool of the global corporate hierarchy. How do I know? Well, I know the guy who sent out the message. All you need to know about him is that e-mail signature includes a link to Indymedia. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:32 AM by David Adesnik  

NEVER TO BE OUTDONE BY THE BRITISH, the United States has created an even more maddening public railway system. I am in New York right now, having spent eleven hellish hours trying to get here from Charlottesville.

First, the bus from Charlottesville to Union Station in DC was half an hour late. That was the best thing that happened all day.

Ten minutes after my train left Union Station for New York, the engine died. Around 45 minutes later, another engine arrived. It died, too, but at least it got us to Baltimore. In a haze because I tried to catch some sleep while waiting for the second engine, I left my umbrella on the train.

In Baltimore, they told us another train to New York was coming. Just before it arrived, they told us not to get on because it was too crowded, but to get on the commuter train across the platform which would be redirected to New York. From the window of the commuter train, we could see that the train across the platform wasn't crowded...as it pulled away from the station.

Half an hour later, our commuter train left Baltimore. They never told us we were going to have to wait that long, so I missed the chance to get my umbrella back. It was a nice one, too. Finally, the train left Baltimore. When it arrived in Philadelphia, they ordered us off the train and told us we had to switch again.

At least it wasn't too long of a wait, and the next train turned out to be an Acela, and we got to sit in business class because that's all that was available. But that really didn't make up for being two and a half hours late and for being led around like ignorant cattle.

Amtrak is usually very reliable, but this was simply ridiculous. You can bet I'll be asking for a refund. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:23 PM by David Adesnik  

NOTHING SCARES'EM LIKE A COWBOY HAT: In order to signify my membership in the reality-based community, I wore a cowboy hat to the office today. A little while ago, I got up from my desk to get a (non-alcoholic) drink and happened to pass by the screening room just as Bush was about to make his acceptance speech.

There were two or three folks already in there when I showed up, and a palpable hush fell over the room. I considered letting them know that I'd voted for Kerry, but figured that if they couldn't handle the hat, that's their business. Besides, I had a six-pack of Diet Coke under my arm, and if that wasn't enough of an indication of my political sympathies, then what is?

Anyhow, I'm looking forward to Saturday night, when I get to wear my cowboy hat to a party in the West Village. People will probably just assume I'm a Log Cabin Republican. But if they ask, I'm going to tell that them a little-known clause in the Patriot Act made wearing a cowboy hat mandatory as of Nov. 2, 2004.

More importantly, the reason I'm headed up to New York is that today is my parents' 30th wedding anniversary and they are having a little get together after services at our synagogue on Shabbat morning. So, Mom, Dad, congratulations!
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# Posted 11:34 AM by Patrick Belton  

BEST ELECTION DAY QUOTE TO BE SUPERSEDED BY EVENTS: Mike McCurry of the Kerry campaign: 'We're counting all the votes. At the end of the day, we win. I'm not sure what day, but we win.' (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:02 AM by Patrick Belton  

INCIDENTALLY, my piece from The Hill yesterday, which was offline for a bit with election day traffic, is back online. In brief: a surprising number of foreign governments are hoping for a second Bush term, though not always for the best of reasons.... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:46 PM by David Adesnik  

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER: Last week, the NYT explored the cutting-edge phenomenon of cat-blogging. Congratulations to Kevin and Inkblot.
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# Posted 10:08 PM by David Adesnik  

BUSH THE LIBERAL RELATIVIST: Some important evangelicals are not happy.
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# Posted 10:07 PM by David Adesnik  

INDEPENDENTS' DAY: Ruy Teixiera says Kerry has had a consistent lead in the polls among independents and independents decide elections.

UPDATE: TNR reaches the same conclusion based on different evidence.
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# Posted 9:33 PM by David Adesnik  

A RELUCTANT VOTE FOR BUSH: Robert Tagorda decides.
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# Posted 8:58 PM by David Adesnik  

FILMMAKER SHOT DEAD: A young man with joint Dutch-Moroccan citizenship has shot dead Theo van Gogh, the Dutch director of a film that explores violence against women in Islamic societies. Memeorandum has more.

UPDATE: 20,000 protest Van Gogh's murder.
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# Posted 8:45 PM by David Adesnik  

LIVE BLOGGING: Here I am in downtown Charlottesville, in a renovated building just a block or so from the Mall. FYI, the Mall isn't a mall, but a pedestrian walkway with trendy stores and independent coffee shops. It's like a little bit of Greenwich Village in the mountains of Virginia and it's been the driving force behind the revival of downtown Charlottesville.

It's just a small election-watching party here, with three super-intense Kerry partisans and myself. When I called my friend SC to ask if I could come over, he first made me tell him who I was voting for. I lodged an official protest, but I gave in. After all, it's no secret.

8:49 PM: We're watching MSNBC after briefly flirting with Fox, which my friends declared to be intolerable after around 30 seconds. The plan, however, is to start watching Fox if and when Kerry pulls ahead.

9:39 PM: Chris Matthews asks Joe Trippi whom the bloggers are voting for. He also cut to Trippi for a blogging update around an hour ago. Back then, Trippi gave the blogosphere credit for giving Dan Mongiaro [sp?] the momentum he needed to catch up.

Now, Matthews asks Trippi if it's fair that an 18-year-old with a newspaper and a website should have as much clout as a 75-year-old expert with decades of experience in journalism.

Chris, that's a dumb f***ing question. How many important bloggers can you name that are even under 25? Yglesias, and Josh Chafetz started before he was 25. But look at which bloggers were on the NYT op-ed page today: Djerejian, Cox, Kaus, Drum, DeLong, Hinderaker, Johnson and Reynolds. (I don't know how old Jacobs, Byrd and Althouse are.)

How about the in the Ecosystem? The top includes Kos, Marshall, Sullivan, Atrios and Wizbang.

Anyhow, enough navel-gazing. Chris Matthews may be condescending, but he feels compelled to mention blogs constantly and even set up his own.

9:50 PM: Four of us here, every one with a laptop. The internet provides the information you want when you want it. The TV gives you an anchorperson to make fun of. Although it's not their fault. Who can say intelligent things for hours on end when they don't have any new information?

9:58 PM: I just discovered that the Ecosystem now does rankings in terms of traffic as well as links. The top ten blogs all get more than 100,000 hits per day. That's medium-market newspaper territory. No wonder big media have started to pay attention.

11:20 PM: The wifi went down for a while but just came back. All four us immediately flipped open our laptops to start checking results compulsively.

Also, we just switched over to Comedy Central. There was just a point where the networks became intolerably boring.
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# Posted 6:36 AM by Patrick Belton  

SINCE EVEN OSAMA GETS TO BE A PUNDIT THIS ELECTION CYCLE, ABC News Now is having me on tonight to talk about foreign governments' response to the election. You can watch online, and I'll be on sometime between six and seven EST. If any of our readers find a way to record it for me, I'd not only be very grateful but also happy to reciprocate with free Oxford stuff! (Like, say, an MBA degree...) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:42 AM by David Adesnik  

TOMORROW'S NEWS TODAY: In a fiendishly subversive satire of news analysis, CJR explains why George Bush narrowly defeated John Kerry in today's election and why John Kerry just managed to edge out the incumbent. (Hat tip: MY)
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# Posted 1:32 AM by David Adesnik  

BLOODY-MINDED: Matt Yglesias defends The Lancet or perhaps just attacks its critics. Matt writes that

I, for one, don't think the humanitarian argument for war really needs to be taken seriously, since, in my opinion, it's rather obviously offered in bad faith.

He also predicts that the civilian casualty will spiral upwards once the Marines begin to exact their "revenge" on Falluja.
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# Posted 1:28 AM by David Adesnik  

TERESA'S SON: Chris Heinz recently told an audience that

One of the things I've noticed is the Israel lobby - the treatment of Israel as the 51st state, sort of a swing state.

Dr. JMR responds:

The new liberal bigotry is to despise traditionally religious people and Jews. Go to [the] local University, read the memo board, and you will see it.

What in God's name could he be talking about? (Uh, this.) For a round-up of reactions to Heinz, see Memeorandum.
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# Posted 1:23 AM by David Adesnik  

"THE JEWS": Great title for an op-ed, huh? I guess the Duke University student paper was really desperate for material. Talented writers can usually come up with an argument better than this:

What Jewish suffering—along with exorbitant Jewish privilege in the United States—amounts to is a stilted, one-dimensional conversation where Jews feel the overwhelming sense of entitlement not to be criticized or offended...

What’s worst is that the “Holocaust Industry” uses its influence to stifle, not enhance, the Israeli-Palestinian debate, simultaneously belittling the real struggles for socioeconomic and political equality faced, most notably, by black Americans.

What can you say to an argument like that? Well, it turns out that the website for the Duke Chronicle supports comments, so you can hundreds of things in response to an argument like that. For example:

This jewish power must be stopped. You forgot to mention all the Jews who steal all the nobel prizes instead of leaving them for others.
Jahaan Badour
rentgin@hotmail.com
Computers
New York

I enjoyed your article, however you did not dwell on recent Jewish problems such as 9/11 and the war in Iraq.
Mohammed Marouf
giftsoftime@hotmail.com
Engineer
California

I am glad you have the courage to stand up to the Jews. I agree with everything in your article, except you pointed out that the holocaust is a fact, when in reality what happenned is still open for debate.
Ayman Belghazi
Student
Michigan

Among the the comments here supporting your editorial, one denies the holocaust took place, one believes that Jews steal all the Nobel Prizes, and one believes 9/11 to be a Jewish conspiracy. Is this truly the company you wish to keep?
Shan Anwar
shan.anwar@gmail.com

I cannot stomach these words you've written since I object to your complaint as both a child from a Jewish mother and Muslim father.

Hossein
mahdavir@seattleu.edu
Student
Seattle

The responses speak for themselves. For more background on the roots of this controversy, head over to Kesher Talk.
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# Posted 1:08 AM by David Adesnik  

WHEN IT RAINES, IT POURS: You didn't think Howell Raines was fair and balanced during his tenure at the NYT? Well, Raines' latest op-ed shows just how much he was holding back during his reign on West 43rd Street:

If George Bush wins the presidential election, Americans can mark it down as a triumph of thug politics...

P. Diddy would be proud.

The New Politics birthed in the '60s, which stressed altruism and good government, has been displaced by an intellectual crudeness that was inherent in the modern American conservatism that began slouching toward Washington after the Republican convention in San Francisco in 1964...

Thank God the convention was isn't Dallas!

The most dangerous trait of the Internet is not merely its speed, but its creation of demand and credulity for unverified information. Perhaps for the first time since invention of the printing press, a new information technology has become more efficient at spreading disinformation than knowledge...

Whereas old technologies, such as television, spread enlightenment and joy. What, you think I'm talking about CBS? I meant Fox!

In another amazing shift, a foreigner, Rupert Murdoch, and his handpicked chairman of Fox News, the campaign strategist Roger Ailes, have become the most important standard setters in the nation's political journalism.

Oh my God! Not a foreigner! What next, a Catholic in the White House? Even worse, a Jew!

By the way, I'd bet Bill Keller and the rest of the NYT would love to hear Ol' Howell say that they've been brainwashed by Roger Ailes.

Will a Kerry victory bring the promised end to the much-discussed division among the American electorate?...I'm not sure that will happen with the best of wills.

You said it.
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# Posted 1:03 AM by David Adesnik  

PATHETIC NYT LOWERS STANDARS EVEN FURTHER: Bloggers on the op-ed page? OxBloggers? What happened, did they run out of real journalists?

Of course, I'm ecstatic. Who doesn't like seeing their byline in the second-most prestigious, third-most respected and fourth-most accurate paper in the nation? On election day, to boot.

(It would've been grammatically correct to say "his byline", not "their byline" since "who" refers to a single individual. But since I'm a blogger, I can do wild and crazy things like disregard the rules of grammer...and speling.)

Well, I guess ought to give some credit to the open-minded folks on the NYT editorial staff, since they asked for contributions from some of the Times' most unrepentant critics, including yours truly.

As I said in the midst of Memogate,

The bottom line is that the media listen. In the spite of their condescencion and self-righteousness toward us non-journalists, the media have much less of an appetite for obstruction than most government officials.

As we head to the polls, we ought to remember that keeping our elected officials honest is priority #1, and that journalists have the same priority. (They just need a little advice from us every once in a while.)
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# Posted 7:20 PM by Patrick Belton  

OXBLOG ELECTION DAY SPECIAL: I have the election-day featured article in The Hill tomorrow, and it's up online this evening. I'd say go read it, but there's always the chance it's not very good, so (1) go read Voltaire, as something infinitely more worth reading; and (2) if you perversely insist on not doing (1), you can read this instead. Conversely, as I'll be doing a second piece on the same theme as postmortem afterwards, I'd be very grateful for any thoughts or suggestions our readers might like to offer.

My first two paragraphs, which basically introduce the gist of the piece, are these:

In the first American election fought on foreign policy since the Cold War, world capitals have been scrambling to assess how the foreign policies of a John Kerry and a second George W. Bush administration might be expected to diverge toward them and their interests. And in an election where the Democrat's principal claim to office has been his promise to restore the decent opinions of mankind to the nation, and the Republican's has been his willingness to do right (in democracy and counterterror) even when unpopular abroad, one of the principal ironies has been that a surprising number of foreign capitals actually want Bush to win.

In some instances, such as India and Pakistan, this is because of working relationships they have already brought up to speed with Bush and his advisors; others, such as China and Japan, worry about Kerry's vulnerability to domestic lobbies which Bush could ignore either from strength (congressional Republicans, Taiwan supporters) or neglect (labor). Africa prefers Bush because he as a Republican evangelical could push foreign aid through Congress, a miracle they believe beyond the intercessive powers of the Catholic Democrat. While public opinion supports the Democrat in most countries other than Russia and Israel, governments weigh different concerns, such as the value of established understandings and relationships with the current administration, and the susceptibility of each candidate to different forms of domestic pressure.

In general, most autocrats tend to support Bush, though Arab autocrats are backing Kerry.

Many thanks to everyone who helped me with this piece, and please do let me know your responses!

UPDATE: Looks as though election day traffic has driven the site off line, at least temporarily. There's a mirror copy of my piece on my website o' clips, though. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:44 AM by Patrick Belton  

MORE WAPO PHOTOGRAPH-CAPTION MISMATCHES: From the archives, and via a reader....

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# Posted 6:41 AM by Patrick Belton  

SHE'S EVEN BETTER THAN BUBBIE, THEN: Photograph and accompanying caption currently leading the Washington Post website:

Rod Gardner caught three passes for 41 yards and one touchdown. (John McDonnell/Post)
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# Posted 10:50 PM by Patrick Belton  

HAPPY SAMHAIN: A very happy Oíche Shamhna to all of our readers and friends!

In traditional Ireland, Samhain was the harvest festival marking the end of one year and beginning of the next. The two years wouldn't fully align, though, so for a short bit, time would quite literally be out of joint (thus the Celtic origins of the phrase from Macbeth.) Thus faeries would get lost, wander up around the world of men, and generally not know what they were about - so if you were kindly enough, you'd dress yourself up like a faery and go about, so when they ran into you, they'd run straightaways back to the faery world, and a big fright on them. Hence the original custom, which I've always found much nicer than its contemporary descendant. So a very happy maith Oíche Shamhna ort from OxBlog.

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# Posted 8:11 PM by David Adesnik  

"DEMOCRATS RALLY FOR KERRY, WEED": That's an actual headline from the UVA Cavalier Daily. You see, Al Weed is the Democratic candidate for Congress in the 5th District of Virginia. His signs and buttons are very popular in Charlottesville.

One middle-aged woman complained to a friend of mine that malicious Republicans had stolen the "Weed for Congress" sign from her front lawn. My friend explained that this was very unlikely.

Weed's opponent is incumbent Virgil H. Goode. I had personally hoped that Al and Virgil would run together on a "Goode-Weed" ticket, but the candidates have dashed my hopes and reverted to the adversarial relationship common among Democrats and Republians...which means that I have to figure out who I'm going to vote for.

So, check back here in a little while and I'll have some answers for you.

UPDATE: This Al Weed press release is priceless. It provides a detailed discussion of how "Weed for Congress" signs have been stolen all across the district, but can't bring itself to admit the real reason why.

One woman says that she has caught college students stealing her signs at 11:30 or midnight, but since the last sign was stolen at 4:00 AM, it must have been the Republicans. (Or perhaps college students who realized that they would caught if they kept stealing the signs before people were asleep.)

In another "bizarre case",

a large sign was stolen sometime Thursday night and a deer carcass was thrown over a fence into the yard where the sign had been removed, as if to send a message of intimidation.

Or perhaps a message of "we are really drunk, so we're going to steal 'Weed' signs and play a few rounds of Toss the Carcass.

UDPATE: I'm voting for Weed. He's a real left-winger with a bad position on Iraq, but Goode really doesn't have much going for him. In fact, neither his campaign site nor his government homepage contain much information at all. I even looked for his speeches in the Congressional Record, but couldn't find anything substantial.

In the House, Goode's main accomplishment seems to have been the introduction of a bill establishing English as the official language of the United States. I presume that this effort is an extension of Goode's position on immigration, which is

We need to stop illegal immigration. I am opposed to granting amnesty to those persons who come into this country illegally.

In other words, Goode has no real ideas on this subject, but will waste everyone's time in the middle of a war on stupid symbolic gestures.

On the usual range of domestic issues that I care about, Goode is on the other side. For tax cuts, anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, etc. Even on the issues where I prefer the Republican stance, Goode is on the wrong side. In addition to being a protectionist, Goode actually voted agains the No Child Left Behind act.

So what about Al Weed? The thing that I like most about him is that he has an impressive record as a business owner and entrepreneur. He won't be your typical anti-business, anti-market liberal Democrat.

Weed also has a good military record, including a tour of duty and bronze medal in Vietnam, where he was a green beret. He also served in the reserves for almost forty years, including ten months of active duty in Bosnia. Given the importance of Special Forces and the National Guard in our current situation, Weed's experiences should prove beneficial.

The weak point is his position on Iraq, which is a little bit hard to make out. The short version is

With no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq and Saddam's regime gone, [Al Weed] thinks it is time for our allies to assume a greater role and for the U.S. to bring our troops home.

Talk about delusional. He says there's no point to staying in Iraq but expects our allies to take over the occupation. Anyhow, the long version of Weed's stance on Iraq is rather different

We owe it to our troops to bring them home when the job is done. [Emphasis added. --ed.]...

Hopefully, we have set the stage for the development of a free, democratic, and pluralistic Iraqi society.

If the new Iraqi government and the people of Iraq want our troops to stay and help rebuild their country, we should oblige. If they want us to leave, we should oblige that wish as well...

There is no risk to our military credibility if we withdraw on an American timetable....

To stay indefinitely puts us at risk of being dragged into a guerilla war without a foreseeable end and cost us dearly in lives and resources. As a veteran of the Vietnam War, I speak from experience when I say that this is a possibility that we must carefully avoid.

Still pretty bad, but at least he understands that democracy is the outcome we are working towards and that we should stay if the people of Iraq want us to (although I'm guessing he assumes that they don't.)

Not that any of this offers much consolation. But my vote for Congress is more about domestic policy, so what I want is to get rid of the Republican majority. By the way, did I mention that Weed is a protectionist who favors single-payer universal health care? So he's not the kind of moderate Democrat I like. But there isn't much future for Weed's ideas in the current political environment, so I'm not too worried.
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# Posted 3:21 PM by David Adesnik  

JOIN THE CLUB at KerryHatersForKerry.com. (Hat tip: SYYC)
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# Posted 11:37 AM by Patrick Belton  

GLAD TIDINGS FOR MAC USERS IN BRITAIN: Recent studies have shown that two out of three OxBloggers use Macs. In that connection, and for all of our friends in the UK who are also Mac users, the first Apple store in Europe is opening in London on 20 November, at Regent Street. Given that local shills have been charging top dollar (er, pound) for the sorts of small useful services that the staff in North American Apple stores would provide for free, for all Mac users in Britain, this is very good news indeed. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:32 AM by Patrick Belton  

IN MEMORIAM, Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester, at 102.

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# Posted 2:54 AM by David Adesnik  

UNDECIDEDS BREAK FOR THE CHALLENGER? BOLLOCKS! This in-depth debunking has been all over the blogosphere.
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# Posted 2:35 AM by David Adesnik  

WHAT EVERY KERRY ENDORSEMENT HAS IN COMMON: Riffing on The Economist, Kaus observes that

It's always a shaky moment in these non-peacenik endorsements when the writer tries to convince himself or herself that Kerry won't bail out on Iraq prematurely, isn't it? (Kerry has been "forthright about the need to win in Iraq," but do you trust him and if so why? Because Andrew Sullivan's blogging will keep him honest?)

As Homer Simpson might say, it's funny because it's true. It's certainly true about my endorsement of Kerry. But I still prefers the risks of John Kerry to the risks of George Bush.

And here's something for all you Bush supporters to ponder: If Kerry wins, how much commitment will congressional Republicans show to promoting democracy in Iraq? Do they share Bush's vision? Or will they revert to type and embrace the inward-looking mercantilism of the GOP in the Clinton years?
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# Posted 2:13 AM by David Adesnik  

BIN LADEN CAUGHT ON FILM WITH PARIS HILTON: Why do you think she was filmed in the dark? Who is more likely to have friends with night-vision goggles -- a dimbulb heiress or a terrorist mastermind?

For more on the Bin Laden tape, see TMV's uber-comprehensive round-up.
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# Posted 1:55 AM by David Adesnik  

DOUBLE REIHAN! The eminence gris behind David Brooks shares some of his thoughts in a two part series in TNR.
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# Posted 1:52 AM by David Adesnik  

SPEAKING THEIR LANGUAGE: Mike McCurry is a master of spin because

He couches the campaign's message in the horserace and tactical language upon which reporters thrive. He understands the press's obsession with political process, and he dishes it out with relish.

In other words, mimic their neuroses and they'll think you're a genius.
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# Posted 1:47 AM by David Adesnik  

CIVILIAN CASUALTIES UPDATE: For the second day in a row, the WaPo casualty count for Iraq has excluded the IBC data which provoked OxBlog's protest last Sunday. Then along came The Lancet and shunted aside that entire debate by insisting that there have been 100,000 civilian casualties in Iraq.

I just came across the WaPo story on the Lancet study and thought it was rather interesting. In order to provide balance, the Post plays off The Lancet against a military expert at Human Rights Watch who describes The Lancet's figure as "inflated" and "a reach". Now how often do you get someone from Human Rights Watch telling you that civilian casualtiy figures have been exaggerated?

On the other hand, The Lancet's higher figure has given accidental credibility to IBC by suggesting that it's methods and conclusions are reasonable. Thus, the Post reports that

Previous independent estimates of civilian deaths in Iraq were far lower, never exceeding 16,000.

Actually, the Iraqi Human Rights Organization has been throwing around a 30,000 figure for a while, which got mentioned in the WaPo world opinion roundup. But that number will also pick up some credibility thanks to The Lancet. And the truth? Damned if I know.

UPDATE: Well, Fred Kaplan seems to know. (Hat tip: MF) He says The Lancet's figure is not just completely unreliable, but that the authors of the study have basically lied through their teeth to get publicity for their work.

So, you might ask, is Fred Kaplan biased? Of course he is. Here's what he has to say about whom he'll vote for next Tuesday:

Bush has done too much damage to America's reputation in the world. His view of the world is naive and, too often, wrong. His victory would mean a victory for the most cynical politics practiced by any president in my memory.

The one drawback to Kaplan's analysis of The Lancet study is his lavish praise of IBC. It looks like someone will be getting an e-mail from OxBlog...

UPDATE: ChicagoBoyz has more on The Lancet's primitive methodology. (Hat tip: LH) Um, so if the problems with this study are so obvious, how the hell did it get into a peer reviewed journal?
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# Posted 1:37 AM by David Adesnik  

ADVICE FOR THE INSURGENTS: I'm not you asking guys to be nice to the Americans or even to stop gunning down your fellow Iraqis. But please stop killing journalists. It's for your own good.

If you read this diary kept by a WSJ correspondent, you'll realize how hard it is for reporters to do their job in Iraq. Now, why should you care about whether American reporters do their job? Because they might turn out to be the best friends you have.

I'm guessing you guys haven't studied much American history. Most Americans haven't either. But I've been reading a lot about US intervention in El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 1980s. The guerrillas in those countries were smart, because they actively encouraged American reporters to travel with them and see how they really lived. The press coverage they got was invaluable.

Now, it's true that American journalists are also going to tell everyone about it if you kill people. But, hey, they already report about that all the time, so you've got nothing to lose.

(PS If there are any actual insurgents reading this, please ignore my advice. I'm glad that everyone here to the right of Michael Moore thinks you're a bunch of cold-blooded murderers.)


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# Posted 1:29 AM by David Adesnik  

RESPONDING TO MY PARENTHETICAL QUERY, Matt has posted some of his thoughts on Kerry's approach to democracy promotion. Matt describes his position as a "not a very hearty endorsement of Kerry on democracy grounds.
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# Posted 1:10 PM by David Adesnik  

THE NEW MASS-MURDER IN IRAQ: A study just published in the Lancet, a prestigious journal of medicine, uses statistical methods to demonstrate that the United States is guilty of mass murder in Iraq. The article estimates that 100,000 Iraqis have been killed since the beginning of the war and that upwards of 80,000 died as a result of US airstrikes.

No, those aren't typos. The numbers are 100,000 and 80,000 respectively. Gilbert Burnham, one of the authors of the study, has provided some detailed comments about his methodology in an interview with Spencer Ackerman of The New Republic. (Hat tip: WAB)

Burnham's methods seem logical enough, although I have to admit that I am deeply, deeply skeptical of his results. Historically, only out-and-out carpet bombing, as in WWII or Vietnam, tends to have this kind of result. And one has to wonder how Western journalists failed to notice this alleged scale of destruction in Iraq. (NB: If you follow that link, make sure to read the comment by TM, which the second one down from the top.)

Rough estimates of bombing casualties from the first Gulf War, Kosovo war, and Afghan invasion are on the order of 3,000, 500 and 1,200 respectively. Of course, if this new study has any merit to it, we should probably revise those figures upwards by an order of magnitude.

That's all I have to say in the meantime. I guess we'll only know for sure that this story is bogus when Michael Moore starts to tell it.
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# Posted 10:25 PM by Patrick Belton  

IRISH CORNER: NYT pans the Abbey Theatre's centenary Playboy of the Western World, in New York for a few days, but go see it anyway. It features, incidentally, a lovely Galway actress by the name of Cathy Belton. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:00 PM by Patrick Belton  

ANTHONY DANIELS fact-checks the Motorcycle Diaries and their deeply illiberal protagonist.

Incidentally, congratulations, Josh! Our readers should know he cut a fine figure in subfusc on his way to his viva. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:52 AM by Patrick Belton  

ELECTORAL VOTE WATCH: It's tipped again, this time toward Kerry, with swinging Pennsylvania and Ohio falling his way (by 3 and 1 per cent, respectively), and Florida toward Bush (by 2, all numbers Zogby, 27 October).

Still haven't received my postal ballot from New Haven, incidentally, so I guess I'll be filling out one of these - which unfortunately doesn't give me the option of voting against Mayor DeStefano, for not sending me an absentee ballot. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:55 AM by David Adesnik  

IBC FOLLOW UP: This post will take a detailed look at some of the reports of civilian casualties in the IBC database. It will compare the description of the incidents provided by IBC (in the categories labeled 'Targets', 'Weapons' and 'Min'/'Max' [Casualties]) with the descriptions provided by the newspaper articles they cite as evidence. For purposes of clarity, this post will identify each incident according to the 'Incident code' assigned by IBC.

Incident: k471 Date: 15 Oct 2004 IBC: Police patrol/car bomb; 10/10 dead.
AP: A vehicle bomb reported Friday by the U.S. military blasted near a police station in southwest Baghdad, killing 10 civilians - including a family of four who were driving by at the time of the blast. (16 Oct 2004)

Incident: k467 Date: 16 Oct 2004 IBC: Police returning from Jordan to Karbala/gunife; 9/9 dead.
AP: A militant group claimed responsibility for the killing of nine Iraqi policemen returning from training in Jordan, criticizing in a statement Monday the role Jordan is playing in building what it called "the traitor Iraqi police force." (18 Oct 2004)

Incident: k445 Date: 10 Oct 2004 IBC: Possibly police academy/suicide minibus bomb; 9/17 dead. AP: Two car bombs shook the capital in quick succession Sunday, killing at least 11 people, including an American soldier...A suicide attacker detonated a minibus packed with explosives near an eastern Baghdad police academy, police Cap. Ali Ayez said at the scene...The nearby Kindi Hospital received 10 bodies and treated five wounded from the blast, said Dr. Ali Ghazi...Iraq's most feared terror group, Tawhid and Jihad, claimed responsibility for both attacks. (10 Oct 2004)
Reuters: A suspected suicide car bomb killed up to 17 people near Baghdad's Oil Ministry and a nearby police academy on Sunday, a spokesman for the ministry said...The Interior Ministry official put the death toll at six. Police sources said they believed it had been a suicide car bombing and said they could confirm nine dead.

Incident: k444 Date: 8 Oct 2004 IBC: Suspected al Zarqawi safehouse/US airstrike; 11/13.
AP: American warplanes struck a building where the U.S. command said leaders of al-Zarqawi's network were meeting early Friday. Residents said the house was full of people who had gathered for a wedding. The attack killed 13 people, including the groom, said Dr. Ahmed Saeed at the city hospital. Seventeen others were wounded, including the bride, he said. (8 Oct 2004)
Reuters: A U.S. air raid, aimed at foreign fighters led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed 11 people and wounded 17 after a wedding party in the rebel-held Iraqi city of Falluja on Friday, residents and doctors said...At the hospital, where blood pooled on the floor, a doctor named Rafah al-Hayat said 11 people had been killed and 17 wounded. One of his colleagues, Khaled Nasser, said nine females aged between 5 and 50 were among the wounded.

Incident: k437 Date: 06 Oct 2004 IBC: Iraq National Guard recruits/suicide car bomb; 15/16 dead.
AP: Dr. Waleed Jawad Qamar of the Anah health clinic said his facility recorded 13 dead and 25 injured. Another hospital in nearby Hadithah reported three dead and five injured. U.S. officials said no Americans were killed or wounded but had no report of Iraqi casualties. (6 Oct 2004)
Reuters: Local doctors said 16 people had been killed and 24 wounded. Witnesses said they saw a car hurtling towards the National Guard centre on the edge of town just before the explosion. (6 Oct 2004)

Incident: k433 Date: 4 Oct 2004 IBC: Suspected al Zarqawi supporters/US airstrikes; 11/11 dead.
AP: The military, which regularly accuses hospitals of inflating casualty figures, said the strikes targeted followers of Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and their associates.
A strike in the central al-Jumhuriyah area killed nine people, including three women and four children, said Dr. Adil Khamis of Fallujah General Hospital...A second strike in the city's southern Al-Shuhada neighborhood killed two more people, Khamis said. (04 Oct 2004)

Incident: k429 Date: 4 Oct 2004 IBC: Army or police recruiting station/car bomb, possibly suicide; 14/14 dead.
AP: Yarmouk Hospital received 15 bodies and 81 wounded from the explosion, said Sabah Aboud, the facility's chief registration official. (4 Oct 2004)

This is just an informal sample of the incidents in the IBC database. I basically chose the incidents because they all occurred in the past month and resulted in approximately 10 deaths, which was above average.

If you total up the casualty figures, you get 57-66 dead from five insurgent attacks and 22-24 dead from two sets of US airstrikes. The credibility of these reports seems to rest on the reports of doctors and hospital officials, who are generally quoted by name.

The motives to exaggerate such casualty figures are obvious. I wouldn't be surprised if doctors in insurgent-held territory are intimidated into revising their estimates upwards. Moreover, there is no local press there to hold anyone accountable.

The situation may not be all that different in government held territory. The Allawi government may bribe doctors to revise their estimates upwards, even if the United States prefers otherwise. There is a nascent press in Iraq, but I have no idea whether it focuses on such issues as the accuracy of casualty counts.

Anyhow, my intentions for the near future are to fact-check all of the October 2004 incidents in the IBC database. I am curious whether the overall ratio of casualties from government and insurgents attacks will be much different from the 2.5:1 ration in my little unscientific sample. Either way, I will defintely let you know.
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# Posted 11:43 PM by David Adesnik  

ENDORSEMENTS THAT MAY ACTUALLY MATTER: The Orlando Sentinel has switched from Bush in 2000 to Kerry in '04. The Cleveland Plain Dealer and Tampa Tribune have gone from Bush in 2000 to 'no endorse' today.
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# Posted 11:29 PM by David Adesnik  

GETTING READY FOR THE RECOUNT(S): An AP poll reports that six out of ten voters don't expect there to be a clear winner by the morning after the election. (Hat tip: Megan-guest-blogging-for-Glenn)

This seems to me like a classic example of the human tendency to predict the future on the basis of the very recent past. Four years ago, no one said to themselves: "A close election? I hope it doesn't turn into another 1876!"

But now, you can open the paper any morning and read about legal battles in a dozen different states, with accusations of dishonesty flying on both sides. These stories are important and they should be covered in considerable detail. Nonetheless, they have the cumulative effect of creating misperceptions among the voting public. It's an inevitable process, but one we should think about more often in a broader set of contexts.
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# Posted 11:08 PM by David Adesnik  

INSTAHIPPIE: This, from Glenn's TCS column:

We were all dancing in abandoned warehouses, under the radar of the authorities, and there was lots of PLUR-talk (Peace Love Unity and Respect)

Can you say 'acid flashback' (to the mid-1990s)?

But even if Glenn is in an altered state, he does make some good observations about the future of the blogosphere:

Over the next few years, blogs will grow both more and less significant. They'll grow more significant because more people will be reading them, and -- at least as important -- more people will be writing them. That will expand their impact considerably. On the other hand, they'll grow less significant, in a way, because they'll grow more ordinary. Like other communications media, from newspapers to email, they'll just become part of the background, and their particular thread of impact will be less noticeable.

And that will make a lot of journalists very happy.
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# Posted 11:07 PM by David Adesnik  

THE END BEGINNING OF MAJOR COMBAT OPERATIONS? The NYT reports that a major assault on Falluja and Ramadi is inevitable in the coming weeks.
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# Posted 10:48 PM by David Adesnik  

IS IT TOO EARLY TO CELEBRATE? The Cards are down by 3 with two innings to go. It reminds me of the night eight years ago when the Yankees won the World Series for the first time in 18 years.

Eighteen isn't eighty-six, but I had spent my entire childhood desperately rooting for a team that just couldn't win in September. In contrast, all of my friends were Mets fans, who got to celebrate in 1986.

(Boston now has men on 2nd and 3rd with nobody out in the 8th.)

After eight years of near-invincibility it's hard to remember how close the Yankees came to losing it all in 1996. The Braves won the first two games of the series in New York and took a solid lead in Game 3 in Atlanta. Then the Yankees came out of nowhere to win four games in a row.

By sheer luck, I happened to be home from New Haven and having dinner with my family the night of Game 6. It was Rosh Hashana. [CORRECTION: My mother points out Rosh Hashana took place far too early to coincide with the World Series. My mother says that my false recollection of this detail indicates that my memory is no more reliable than that of certain presidential candidates who insist that they were in Cambodia on Christmas Eve.] At the beginning of the ninth, my whole family got up and went to watch the game on my parents' television.

I can still remember Charlie Hayes catching that fly ball just outside the third base line. A single moment made up for two decades of disappointment. I want every Red Sox fan to feel that way tonight.

UPDATE: The curse has been reversed!
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# Posted 1:21 AM by David Adesnik  

TOTALLY UNSURPRISING ENDORSEMENTS: At least Matt Yglesias has a sense of humor about his decision to endorse John Kerry in a formal manner (or at least what passes for formal in the blogosphere; it's not like any of us got up at a press conference with Kerry himself and said, "Dude! This guy is the man!")

On the other hand, the New Yorker has broken with its eight-decade tradition of non-partisanship and come up with an extremely bland and formulaic denouncement of Bush with some praise for John Kerry tacked on at the end.

Frankly, I'm sort of curious about whom the editors hoped to persuade with its endorsement. Isn't the entire magazine sort of an implicit endorsement of Kerry in the first place?

But much more importantly, I'm disturbed by the fact that the New Yorker, like its (what the hell -- "our") candidate betrays absolutely no concern about promoting democracy in Iraq. (Matt was pretty weak on this point as well, but his whole endorsement was sort off-the-cuff.)

Moreover, David Remnick and his fellow editors even describe Iraq as one of this issues on which

Kerry offers a clear, corrective alternative to Bush’s curious blend of smugness, radicalism, and demagoguery.

Huh? You'd think that Remnick & Co. would have at least tried to demonstrate their high-minded concern for balance and self-awareness by pointing that Kerry's plan to bring in the French and the Germans is patently ridiculous.

You know, if the New Yorker really wanted to be clever, it could've just reprinted The Nation's endorsement of John Kerry -- under the heading of science-fiction.
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# Posted 1:04 AM by David Adesnik  

NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL AN ENDORSEMENT! From Jacob Weisberg:

I remain totally unimpressed by John Kerry. Outside of his opposition to the death penalty, I've never seen him demonstrate any real political courage. His baby steps in the direction of reform liberalism during the 1990s were all followed by hasty retreats. His Senate vote against the 1991 Gulf War demonstrates an instinctive aversion to the use of American force, even when it's clearly justified. Kerry's major policy proposals in this campaign range from implausible to ill-conceived. He has no real idea what to do differently in Iraq. His health-care plan costs too much to be practical and conflicts with his commitment to reducing the deficit. At a personal level, he strikes me as the kind of windbag that can only emerge when a naturally pompous and self-regarding person marinates for two decades inside the U.S. Senate. If elected, Kerry would probably be a mediocre, unloved president on the order of Jimmy Carter. And I won't have a second's regret about voting for him.

More importantly, Weisberg explains why Slate's official policy is to ask each of its staff members to explain in public whom they're voting for and why:

News organizations that, for understandable reasons, are less open about the political views of their staff may have a harder time with the challenge of being fair to both sides. Repressed politics, like repressed sexuality, tends to find an outlet of one kind or another. This may explain how Dan Rather and other conscientious journalists at 60 Minutes ended up promoting some sloppily forged documents thought to be damaging to President Bush's re-election effort. Conservatives were right to point out that an equally flawed story harmful to Kerry almost certainly would not have aired. What if CBS reporters and producers openly acknowledged that the vast majority of them prefer Kerry and the Democrats? Perhaps in openly expressing their political leanings, they would be forced to try harder to be fair to the other side, lest they be dismissed as biased.

The case most commonly made against fuller disclosure of opinion at "straight" news organizations like CBS—as opposed to journals of opinion like Slate—is that the information would be misused by media critics on the right. Movement conservatives would seize on the revelation that most journalists vote Democratic to discredit professionals who are doing their conscientious best to be fair. But wait—conservatives already dismiss the press as biased against them, on the well-supported assumption that most journalists at national news organizations are liberal. Is denying a cheap shot to critics really a good enough reason to withhold information that many news consumers would deem not only interesting, but useful and relevant?

Hat tip: Phil Carter (a Slate contributor who'll be voting for Kerry)
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# Posted 11:19 PM by David Adesnik  

THE CURSE REVERSED? The Red Sox are about to go up 3-0 in the World Series. What are the chances of anyone coming back from three games down? Even as an Yankee fan, I want nothing more than for the Red Sox to redeem themselves after a century of disappointment.

I think my uncle put it quite well in his letter to the NYT last Friday:

The "monumental collapse" (Sports, Oct. 21) of the Yankees to the Boston Red Sox has rekindled memories of my youth, when I was a devout Brooklyn Dodgers fan and spent many wonderful days rooting for them at Ebbets Field.

I remember the decades of Brooklyn's archrivalry with the Yankees and the glorious moment in 1955 when Brooklyn finally won the World Series.

I was heartbroken when the Dodgers moved away, and I refused to seek refuge in any other team until my three nephews, who were growing up to be ardent Yankee fans, persuaded me to convert.

Boston's victory evokes memories of my first love (the Dodgers) and the ecstasy of overcoming seeming insurmountable obstacles.

I applaud the Red Sox victory! Maybe it's time to bring the Dodgers back to Brooklyn.

PJH
New York, Oct. 21 1984

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# Posted 9:43 PM by Patrick Belton  

HE'S FAR too nice a guy to mention it himself, so we'll have to do it for him - OxBlog's friend Josh Cherniss has a stunning entry on Isaiah Berlin up on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy now, which is quite simply the best introduction to his thought I've yet come across. And when you've got one of our favourite writers Michael Ignatieff beat on that score, that's really quite an accomplishment. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:04 PM by David Adesnik  

FINALLY: Sullivan endorses Kerry.
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# Posted 5:56 PM by David Adesnik  

ACHOO! In TNR, Jonathan Cohn takes a look at the flu vaccine fiasco. It's an informative article, although I think Cohn pushes his evidence to far when he says the debacle is a reason to vote against Bush.
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# Posted 11:27 AM by Patrick Belton  

AS BIG a fan as I am of geeky things you can do with technology, I steadfastly refuse to vote for any officeseeker who ever comes to my door riding one of these. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:47 PM by David Adesnik  

"A MAGAZINE OPENED TO REVEAL A PICTURE OF THE PRESIDENTIAL BALLS...FBI forensic testing would later confirm the balls' authenticity."

That is an actual quote from today's WaPo Magazine. It has nothing to do with Bill Clinton. Rather, it concerns the theft of four spherical sporting objects bearing the autographs of Presidents Taft, Wilson, Harding and Coolidge.
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# Posted 8:47 PM by David Adesnik  

BAD ROLE MODELS: I wasn't going to write about this story, but it upset my Chinese roommates so much that I figured it must be big news.

So, it turns out that Liu Xiang, China's surprise gold medalist in the 110m hurdles, has signed an endorsement deal with China's #1 cigarette maker.

But hold off before you criticize Liu, because I smell a rat. It turns out that

The official government-backed Track and Field Association has sole right to negotiate product endorsements for the country's athletes, with income split between athletes and the group.

Sounds to me like some bureaucrat is trying to cash in on this national hero's reputation. On a less important but more amusing note, check out this Orwellian statement about the endorsement deal from the CEO of the cigarette manufacturer:

Everyone likes Liu Xiang and hopes he will 'soar' higher and faster, and maintain his sunny, healthy, progressive image.

Sort of like Joe Camel in gym shorts.

UPDATE: Reader DM points out that Baisha, China's #1 cigarette maker, also makes other products. His comment led me to re-read the two articles I linked to above, neither of which explicitly says that Liu Xiang will be endorsing cigarettes.

Instead, Liu will serve as an "image ambassador" for Baisha, which both AP and the BBC describe as China's biggest cigarette maker, with no mention of other products. Moreover, the headline of the BBC article is "Hurdler Xiang to Back Cigaretttes". So did the Beeb confuse its own headline writers, or does it know more about Baisha than it's letting on? (And isn't the guy's surname 'Liu'?)
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# Posted 7:18 PM by David Adesnik  

PROFOUND OBSERVATION ABOUT 60 MINUTES: Ed Bradley should not have an earring. If he is going wear one anyhow, it should be stud, not a hoop.

And notice how Bradley's headshot on the 60 Minutes website is a three-quarters profile that thrusts forward his unpierced lobe while hiding its bejeweled counterpart.
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# Posted 7:05 PM by David Adesnik  

JON STEWART ON CBS: The 60 Minutes profile of Big Jon should be on in around 20 minutes. The CBS internet summary, as well as the commericals I've seen, suggest their going to play Stewart as an equal opportunity critic fed up by American journalists' failures to expose politicians' (read: Bush's) lies. In short, it's the he-said/she-said hypotheis (recently elevated to the status of meme.)

For a better look at Stewart, head on over to Howard Kurtz's profile in Saturday's WaPo. With the help of Ted Koppel and Wonkette, Kurtz pigeonholes Stewart with impressive precision. Wonkette says that Stewart

To say his is just a comedy show is a cop-out in a way. He's gotten so much power. So many people look to him that you can't really be the kid in the back throwing spitballs

Koppel adds:

[Stewart] is to television news what a really great editorial cartoonist is to a newspaper...

A satirist gets to poke and prod and make fun of other people, and when you say, 'What about you, dummy?,' he says, 'I'm just a satirist.'

Naturally, I like Kurtz's message because it's exactly what I've been saying about Stewart for quite some time now. He is gut-wrenchingly funny, but has to stop pretending that his is a noble effort to restore balance to the American political agenda. At least for the past four months, Stewart has been active Kerry partisan who uses his influence to reinforce negative stereotypes about Bush.

That's all fine, it just means that what Stewart deserves is a roasting from his comedic colleagues for adopting as his own the pious ambiguities of the politicians he so loves to mock.

"We don't have an agenda to change the political system. We have a more selfish agenda, to entertain ourselves. We feel a frustration with the way politics are handled and the way politics are handled within the media," Stewart says. Yeah, right.

BONUG LIVE-BLOGGING:

7:37 PM: Stewart resorts to the "I'm just a fake journalist" cop-out.

7:39 PM: Footage of Stewart making fun of Kerry, helping him do the bi-partisan spin.

7:41 PM: Another CBS pairing of Stewart making fun of the GOP, then Stewart making fun of Kerry.

7:42 PM: "Stewart expects to vote for John Kerry, but that's not an endorsement."

7:46 PM: Great clip of Stewart trashing CBS because of the Dan Rather memo f***-up.

Then Stewart asks why Rathergate is the big scandal but no one cares about Halliburton or the missing WMD. Can you say "he-said/she-said journalism"?

7:48 PM: Clip of Stewart wrangling with Tucker Carlson, bashing cable media for its yelling idiot vs. yelling idiot he-said/she-said journalism.

7:50 PM: CBS is really playing this brilliantly. They defuse charges of liberal bias on their part by letting Jon Stewart subtly argue for the unintentional pro-conservative bias of the mainstream media.

To top it all off, they let the liberal Stewart trash CBS's incompetence as if to make it seem that Memogate was just a little accident that had nothing to do with Dan Rather's politics.

7:55 PM: How come no one told me Mickey Andy Rooney was so funny? (In that laughting-at-him-not-laughing-with-him sort of way.)
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# Posted 6:57 PM by David Adesnik  

OXBLOG ENDORSES LAROUCHE as idiotarian menace of the year. I got used to the LaRouche activists in Harvard Square, so I just figured that they weren't all that different from the rest of the left-wing kooks who hang out there. Except maybe a little more anti-Semitic.

But this report in the Washington Post magazine demonstrates that LaRouche is a lot more than a failed politician. He is a paranoid cult leader who ruins the lives of countless young men and women. One of them died on a highway is central Germany, hit by multiple cars just minutes after he called his mother in the UK, begging for help.

LaRouche is also a convicted criminal who spent much of the late 1980s and early 1990s in prison for extensive fraud. When the eight-time presidential candidate tells you that fascist Jews have sent zombie assassins to murder LaRouche and that they, not Al Qaeda are responsible for 9/11, it's really the least of what's wrong with him.
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# Posted 6:55 PM by David Adesnik  

SUPERBOWL QUALITY FOOTBALL: The final seconds are ticking off the clock as the Jets go down to defeat and New England extends its mind-blowing records of 21 consecutive victories. Amazing.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:11 AM by David Adesnik  

WHAT ARE IBC'S STANDARDS? The most appropriate benchmark for measuring the veracity of IBC's information is the standards that it elaborates on its website. According to IBC:

This database includes all deaths which the Occupying Authority has a binding responsibility to prevent under the Geneva Conventions and Hague Regulations. This includes civilian deaths resulting from the breakdown in law and order, and deaths due to inadequate health care or sanitation.

Furthermore:

Casualty figures are derived from a comprehensive survey of online media reports and eyewitness accounts. Where these sources report differing figures, the range (a minimum and a maximum) are given.

Finally,

The test for us remains whether the bullet (or equivalent) is attributed to a piece of weaponry where the trigger was pulled by a US or allied finger, or is due to "collateral damage" by either side (with the burden of responsibility falling squarely on the shoulders of those who initiate war without UN Security Council authorization). We agree that deaths from any deliberate source are an equal outrage, but in this project we want to only record those deaths to which we can unambiguously hold our own leaders to account. In short, we record all civilians deaths attributed to our military intervention in Iraq. [Emphasis in original --ed.]

The ambiguity of this last paragraph is striking. It asserts that collateral damage caused by either side is the result of "our" , i.e. US-UK, intervention in Iraq.

The application of this standard is even more striking. It includes not just those civilians killed by insurgents' bullets and bombs in the heat of battle, but civlians deliberately murdered by suicide bombers affiliated with the insurgents. This is a total perversion of the concept of moral reponsibility.

In order to understand the method behind this madness, one ought to consult the most recent IBC press release, which explains the political significance of its work:

So far, in the "war on terror" initiated since 9-11, the USA and its allies have been responsible for over 13,000 civilian deaths, not only the 10,000+ in Iraq, but also 3,000+ civilian deaths in Afghanistan, another death toll that continues to rise long after the world's attention has moved on.

Elsewhere in the world over the same period, paramilitary forces hostile to the USA have killed 408 civilians in 18 attacks worldwide (see Table 1). Adding the official 9-11 death toll (as of October 29th 2003) brings the total to just under 3500...

For each civilian killed by "terrorists" on and since 9-11, the USA and its allies have brought about almost four non-combatant, civilian deaths in return...

The claim that a strategy which produces 14,000 civilian deaths is the expression of a "philosophy of tolerance and freedom" is a claim which we find incomprehensible. Our incomprehension is shared, we believe, by the majority of the world's people.

The hypocrisy of this statement is stunning. IBC seeks to demonstrate that the United States is more dangerous than its terrorist opponents by blaming the United States for acts of premeditated murder that those same terrorists have perpetrated.

This is why we must work together to reverese the unthinking embrace of IBC's statistics by the Washington Post and other leading publications.
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# Posted 4:01 AM by David Adesnik  

MORE BODY COUNTS: The credibility and integrity of iraqbodycount.net (IBC for short), rest on the information contained in its publicly available data base of civilian casualties. For the reasons described in my previous post, I believe that the time has come for a thoroughgoing investigation and potential repudiation of IBC's data.

This past summer, my investigation of a limited number of the incidents described in the IBC database exposed major factual and interpretive errors. Even though no individual can fact check such a massive data base, the distributed power of the blogosphere can be brought to bear on this task.

What I propose is a coordinated effort to parcel out all of the incidents in the IBC data base to volunteers willing to check IBC's claims against the publicly available news accounts cited as the source of its information.

I'm not sure exactly how to coordinate this effort, so your suggestions are welcome. But I believe that it can and should be done.
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# Posted 2:33 AM by David Adesnik  

FLOOD THE ZONE! FLOOD THE ZONE! Each day, the Washington Post performs an admirable service by updating the number of American soldiers killed and wounded in Iraq, while also providing the names of those fallen soldiers identified by the Pentagon.

This morning, however, the Washington Post committed a grave error by including estimates of Iraqi civlian casualties provided by iraqbodycount.net (IBC for short). The Post deceptively states that the figures are provided by Reuters and IBC. Yet Reuters itself states that the figures for civilian casualties come from IBC alone.

(NB: The Post provides the IBC figures on page A18 of Saturday morning's print edition. I have not been able to locate the figures online.)

In the past, OxBlog has demonstrated conclusively that IBC relies on fraudluent data and that its flagrant dishonesty reflects its lleft-wing extremist agenda.
Principal flaws of the IBC count include:

1) Counting the victims of suicide bombings as victims of American intervention.

2) Counting victims of common crime as victims of American intervention.

3) Claiming false knowledge of the names of such victims.

As my partner Josh Chafetz documented in the Weekly Standard in April 2003, IBC's has a long history of blatant deception. As both Josh and I have shown, mainstream publications have a disturbing habit of citing IBC as a reliable source.

However, the Post's decision to rely on IBC for its daily count brings unprecedented prestige and credibility to a malicious organization. Therefore I ask you that join me in contacting Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler to demand that the Post repudiate the IBC count, investigate why it use was approved in the first place, and issue an apology for this failure to maintain professional standards of reporting.

If you are a blogger, I ask that you encourage your readers to contact Mr. Getler. His e-mail address, provided by the Washington Post, is:ombudsman@washpost.com.

I ask you to join me in this effort first of all in the name of truth. But this particular truth matters because IBC's falsehoods unfairly blacken the reputation of the United States and its armed forces, which have made extraordinary efforts to minimize the number of civilian casualties inflicted during this war.
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# Posted 2:20 AM by David Adesnik  

IT ALL COMES DOWN TO ACCOUNTABILITY: Dan Drezner, Ambivablog and The Washington Post have all come out for John Kerry and all for the same reason, more or less.
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# Posted 8:46 PM by Patrick Belton  

TODAY'S READING: Woody Allen in the New York Times on George S. Kaufman. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:48 AM by David Adesnik  

THE NATION ENDORSES KERRY: Hey, you're not supposed to judge people (or blogs) by the company they keep. Here are some highlights:

The gift of a true electoral mandate now to this previously unelected President would give fresh legitimacy and momentum to all his disastrous policies. And that new momentum could in turn place our constitutional system itself at risk.

Wait, so if the American people actually chose Bush it would put the Constitution more at risk than if the Supreme Court installed him in office?

We believed that the invasion of Iraq was "the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time" (as he now describes it) before the war was ever launched; he has come to that conclusion only recently, having voted to authorize the war.

Wait, so The Nation is accusing Kerry of being a flip-flopper?

[Bush] has pandered to a "base" of religious fanatics, many of whom are looking forward to a day of "rapture" when Jesus returns to earth and kills everyone but them.

Instead of ex-felons, why not purge those with unsound theology from the voter rolls!

Yet it is so far only the government that has asserted global imperial ambition, waged aggressive war on false pretexts, condoned torture, strengthened corporate influence over politics, turned its back on the natural environment and spurned global public opinion. If Bush is now elected, then a national majority -- a far weightier thing -- will stand behind these things.

No! Not a majority! Let's turn over the government to a vanguard party instead!

A systemic crisis -- a threat to the Constitution of the United States -- has taken shape. At the end of this road is an implied vision of a different system: a world run by the United States and a United States run permanently by the Republican Party, which is to say imperial rule abroad, one-party rule at home.

To hell with the vanguard party. Bush is already making us more like the Soviet Union every day! (But if Canada tries to invade liberate us, The Nation will insist on absolute respect for American sovereignty.)

The most important reason to vote for John Kerry in November is to safeguard democracy in America.

Kerry's election would not necessarily save, and Bush's election would not necessarily destroy, democratic government in the United States. Even as President, even "in power," Kerry might well find himself "in opposition." In that case, he would need all the help from ordinary people he could get, and there's good reason to believe it would be forthcoming...

For all its importance, the election is only one episode in a longer popular struggle, whether Bush or Kerry is President. Either way, The Nation will devote itself to the fight.

We must take to the streets! We must take to the mountains! Viva la revolucion!
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:19 AM by David Adesnik  

DAMN INTOLERANT CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALIST LIBERALS: I'm pretty sure this isn't joke. If it were a joke, it wouldn't be funny. I got a press release today with the headline:

United Methodists Call on George W. Bush and Richard Cheney to Repent

It goes on to explain that

United Methodist Church members and clergy are bringing charges against President George W. Bush and Vice-President Richard Cheney.

"Our hope," says Rev. Courtney Ball, "is that President George W. Bush andVice-President Richard Cheney will recognize the sinfulness of their actions, sincerely repent, and move on to change their ways."

Organizers of the website TheyMustRepent.com, Courtney Ball and Josh Steward, are taking action as Christians and United Methodists who are desperate to hold two of their own accountable for their actions in starting an unjust war in Iraq. [Ball & Steward were presumably "desperate" to hold Saddam Hussein accountable for mass murder circa March 2003, but they couldn't, because he is neither a Christian nor a United Methodist. --Ed.]

A letter of complaint at TheyMustRepent.com outlines the justification for bringing charges.

Go read the letter of complaint. The best part is when they accuse Bush of politicizing Christianity.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:47 AM by David Adesnik  

KERRYMANDERING: All of the responses to yesterday's post about reforming the electoral college focused on the issue of gerrymandering. My original post built on the analysis of Joshua Spivak in USA Today, and Joshua was kind enough to write in with his comments on my post.

Joshua makes two points. First, gerrymandering has already resulted in the polarization of Congress. Handing out electoral votes by congressional district might have the same effect on presidential politics.

Second, the Maine-Nebraska method is just as likely as the winner-take-all approach to hand the election to the candidate with fewer popular votes. For example, Nixon won a majority of congressional districts in 1960.

Now, as DS points out, one way around the gerrymandering problem is for more states to follow the Iowa precedent of appointing a non-partisan commission to divide the state up into congressional districts.

But what're the odds of that happening, right? As SK points out, adopting the Maine-Nebraska approach without getting rid of gerrymandering ensures that

All the distrcits out there which are "safe" house seats, become "safe" electoral votes.

Such an outcome is possible, but not definite. As part of my thesis research, I've been focusing on a group of about 30 Democratic congressmen, mostly from the South, who supported Reagan's foreign policy. Their critics asserted that this decision wasn't a matter of principle, but just a reflection of their fear that opposing the President would cost them the upcoming election.

Even though I haven't finished my research yet, I have noticed that a lot of these congressmen were re-elected with more than 60% of the vote in 1984 in spite of the fact that Reagan won 60% or even 70% of the popular vote in their districts.

Obviously, this is just one counter-example, and I wouldn't want to adopt the Maine-Nebraksa method without carefully considering its impact. But perhaps that method is worth a serious look.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:46 PM by David Adesnik  

EVEN THE LIBERAL NEW REPUBLIC is supporting John Kerry. Here's my favorite anti-Kerry point from the article:

Building "firehouses in Baghdad"--a notion Kerry has repeatedly mocked--is not only something we owe the Iraqi people, it stems from the fundamentally liberal premise that social development can help defeat fanaticism. Abandoning that principle under pressure from Howard Dean is the most disturbing thing Kerry has done in this campaign.

Ouch. But here's the crux of TNR's argument against Bush:

The common thread is ideological certainty untroubled by empirical evidence, intellectual curiosity, or open debate. The ideology that guides this president's war on terrorism is more appealing than the corporate cronyism that guides his domestic policy. But it has been pursued with the same sectarian, thuggish, and ultimately self-defeating spirit.

Even though my endorsement of John Kerry focused on his prospective policy for Iraq, I should also have mentioned how strong my instinctive discomfort is with a President who betrays absolutely no desire to measure the actual impact of his policy choices against his initial expectations.

The obvious counterpoint to this argument is that John Kerry's Clinton-esque obsession with processing ever more information results in exactly the sort of paralysis that the United States cannot afford in the midst of its War on Terror.

My preferred counterpoint to this argument is that John Kerry's inconsistent approach to critical issues such as the war in Iraq reflects a lack of firm principles much more than it does an inability to make decisions. Kerry has made decisions -- he simply made them in response to the pressure generated by Howard Dean and then remade them in response to the pressure generated George W. Bush rather than focusing all along on the pressure generated by the situation on the ground in Iraq.

While this sort of inconsistency is an obvious source of concern, my wager on Kerry reflects my belief that it would be in Kerry's own self-interest as President to "finish the job" in Iraq.

But that's not what I wanted to write about (again). I want to focus on the instinctive discomfort with George Bush's policymaking habits that so many hesitant Kerry supporters have. I think that Dan Drezner is talking about essentially the same thing when he talks about preferring a solid process to solid principles/instincts.

As a professional researcher, I think I simply find it almost impossible to trust someone whose thought process is apparently so different from my own.

In theory, I am sure that Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld all believe in evaluating the relevant data and adjusting their decisions to reflect reality. Thus, when I say that I object to the way that this administration makes decisions, I am saying that I do not believe that it has lived up to the intellectual standard it presumably accepts.

So, if my preference for Kerry reflects my general intellectual style, am I engaging in an idiosyncratic sort of identity politics? Perhaps. In my own mind, I am making an empirical judgment about George Bush's ability to adapt to new information and new situations. But I also firmly believe that I have to defend that proposition instead of taking it for granted.
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# Posted 11:30 PM by David Adesnik  

DAMNED IVY LEAGUE CONSERVATIVES: The first time I voted for President I was an undergraduate at Yale. At our polling station, Dole just barely won more votes than the Green Party candidate, while Clinton took home a solid majority.

Yet as Bob Musil points out, an informal poll of the Yale football team shows that 62 players are supporting Bush but only 27 are backing Kerry. I'm half-surprised and half not. There's no specific reason to think that athletes would vote Republican.

On the other hand, if you play the liberal free association game, you'd come up with a result something like this: Football = fraternity = conformist = anti-intellectual = arch-capitalist = Republican. On the other hand, support for Bush may just reflect the fact that he was chapter president of DKE, one Yale's most athletic fraternities.

The real question is, who will get the Skull & Bones vote?
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:54 PM by Patrick Belton  

BLEG MAKES SUCH A NICE SOUND IF YOU SAY IT FAST: If any of our area hand friends happen to (1) have a sense of how Bush and Kerry foreign policy would differ toward their area of specialisation, or even more particularly (2) how foreign policy hands in that capital view the likely results for their country of a Bush or Kerry victory, and (3) would like to be in a magazine article which I've just been given with a super-short turnaround, please do drop me a line! Thanks! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:40 AM by David Adesnik  

IMPECCABLE LOGIC: If the Red Sox can beat the Yankees, why does promoting democracy in Iraq seem so improbable? Or is the Yankees blowing a massive lead an apt metaphor for the situation in Iraq?
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# Posted 2:37 AM by David Adesnik  

VERY FUNNY: Cheney Vows to Attack U.S. if Kerry Elected.
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# Posted 2:25 AM by David Adesnik  

ENDORSING KERRY may have provoked a lot of critical responses, but it also resulted in a whole bunch of traffic, since uber-undecided Andrew Sullivan decided to mention my post.

Andrew also had an article in TNR last week which argues that the situations in Iran, Iraq and North Korea will force either Kerry or Bush to respond in a similar manner. I think he's more right about Iran and North Korea than he is about Iraq, but my his argument there isn't much different from my own.

And in another important blogospheric development, Matt Yglesias completely agrees with something I wrote in defense of Bush -- and that was before I endorsed Kerry!
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:57 AM by David Adesnik  

RANDOM THOUGHT: What if Kerry loses the popular vote and wins in the electoral college? I don't think that anyone has made this point explicitly, but people seem to assume that only the reverse could happen.

(UPDATE: Dan beat me to it.)

But consider this: The WaPo tracking poll has given Bush the lead quite consistently. But the latest polls from the states indicate that Kerry may be on the rise. RCP has Bush ahead 227-206, with the rest of the votes being a toss-up. Electoral-Vote.com has Kerry ahead 291-247.

The big change, of course, is in Florida, where Kerry has pulled ahead in two of the last three polls. Kerry is also doing very well in Ohio, a state that once favored Bush.

Relying on his gut, Kevin Drum says Bush will win Florida and Kerry will take Ohio and Wisconsin, which means Kerry will be the next President. And the popular vote? Kevin doesn't say.

UPDATE: Matt Glassman has some very imaginative thoughts about what might happen if there were a tie in the electoral college.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:30 AM by David Adesnik  

BRIGHT (ELECTORAL) COLLEGE YEARS: There's a referendum on the ballot in Colorado that would divide up the states' nine electoral votes on a proportional basis instead of winner-take-all. Josh Spivak says that's a bad idea, especially because the referendum would affect the current election. In a close race, the Colorado referendum might even cost Bush the White House.

As always, Josh's logic is sound and his historical examples are compelling. But what if every state changed its method of distributing electoral votes? And what if all fifty states made that change in a non-election year?

I'm against a proportional division of votes, but I am tentatively in favor of applying the Maine-Nebraska method to all fifty states. Why not give one electoral vote to the candidate with the most votes in each congressional district (plus two electoral votes for the state-wide front-runner)?

The problem with a proportional system is that it would lead the candidates to ignore the small states almost completely. A district-based system would also represent a major reorientation of the system toward the larger states, but that happens to be the only way to enfranchise California Republicans and Texas Democrats whose votes are worthless right now.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:17 AM by David Adesnik  

BLAST FROM THE RECENT PAST: Wizbang has just posted an exclusive interview with Swift Vet #1 John O'Neill. O'Neill insists that his book tells the whole truth and nothing but the truth and that the media just doesn't get it.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:06 AM by David Adesnik  

SEEK AND THOUGH SHALT FIND: I asked how many troops the French and Germans could send to Iraq if that's what they actually wanted. Todd Bass points out that The Economist answered my question a long time ago:

As it happens, neither France nor Germany are in a position to provide much in the way of men or money. Both countries would struggle to come up with more than 5,000 troops each, compared with some 140,000 American soldiers currently on the ground, backed up by 10,000 from Britain and a 9,000-strong Polish-led force which was deployed this week in central Iraq.

On a related note, a friend of mine who served in Afghanistan said that numbers are misleading because the fighting ability of non-American NATO soldiers is so much less than that of our own. Perhaps that kind of difference won't matter as much during an occupation (as opposed to an invasion), but it still means that our soldiers will have to do most of the fighting and dying in Iraq.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:05 PM by Patrick Belton  

JESUS, THIS IS GOOD BASEBALL. I mean, my heart beats for the Yankees, but rooting for them has something of the flavour of rooting for the Roman legions against the Gauls: if you’re reading Latin and not Celtic in middle school (n.b. I did both), then they’re clearly your team, but it’s hard to take too much pleasure out of seeing them beat up on the little guy. If the boys from Boston can pull this one off, more power to ‘em.

UPDATE: I seem to be watching a baseball game on a website. Red Sox up 2-0 after the first. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:54 PM by David Adesnik  

IT'S A MEME! Suddenly, everyone is writing about whether balanced journalism is actually balanced. Today, everyone includes Howard Kurtz.

In Tuesday's morning's paper, Kurtz devoted his Media Notes column to that subject. In this morning's paper, Kurtz offers his own take on whether or Bush or Kerry has gone further when it comes to stretching the truth.

In the former, Kurtz comes down on the side of those big name journalists who think that Bush has shown considerably less respect for the facts. But in the latter, Kurtz bashes Kerry for his misleading statements about the draft and Social Security. The WaPo editorial board also hits Kerry hard for his comments about Social Security and the draft.

The one major omission in Kurtz's two-day round-up is any criticism of Kerry for his indefensible assertion that he can persuade our allies to commit a significant number of troops to Iraq.

The French have already said that a deployment is out of the question, although the German are beginning to suggest that they may be more amenable. Even so, how many troops will they send?

Kerry often talks about the United States bearing 90% of the occupation's costs and suffering 90% of the casualties. Leaving aside the fact that it is Iraqis who are suffering most of the casualties, I doubt that any further commitment of allied troops will bring Kerry's magic number down below 70 or 80 percent.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:05 AM by Patrick Belton  

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WE HAVE A BOOKER.

(Extra points, incidentally, for counting each time CNN in its story managed stupefyingly to refer to it as a 'gay novel,' such as in the poll question 'Do you plan to read the gay novel that won this year's Booker Prize?', or in the headline 'Gay novel wins Booker prize.' I happen to believe, rather strongly actually, that there's no such thing as a Black novel, or a Woman's novel, or a Ex-Seminarian Who Gets Drunk at a Brothel and Urinates with a Jew novel, only novels, which are written by humans, with particular overlaying sets of experiences and attributes, which they then happen to draw upon. In general, I feel that any use of the phrase 'X novel' is demeaning to X; it has something of the flavour of 'rather good shot, that is, for a girl.' Still, I imagine it's vaguely preferable to 'literary sodomite,' or 'decent enough chap, shame really about him ending up in the fifth circle of hell.') (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:43 AM by Patrick Belton  

WHEREVER YOU FALL AS REGARDS the neo-conservative vision in foreign policy, it's difficult to dispute that it's one of the more ascendant and significant of intellectual strains in contemporary American political life, and also one of the less well studied - the preponderance of writers taking up the subject quickly succumbing into mouth-foaming tirades linking shadowy power with that bête noir, 'Jews.' Well, one of the deeper thinkers behind that vision, who happens also to be a friend of this blog, will be speaking here at Oxford in the Isaiah Berlin lectures. Next Thursday, Michael Ledeen will be presenting the Isaiah Berlin lecture at 5 pm, in Exam Schools. Do come, wherever you fall on the neo-conservative vision and its drawbacks - he's a sensitive thinker, a gifted raconteur, and an interesting window into an important intellectual strain in the United States at present. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:59 AM by Patrick Belton  

AND WHAT WOULD HE HAVE MADE OF ELECTION-BLOGGING? Thus Tocquevile,

No sooner do you set foot upon American ground, than you are stunned by a kind of tumult. . . . Almost the only pleasure which an American knows is to take a part in the government, and to discuss its measures. To give but one example of this enthusiasm, at a great outdoor gathering at Auburn, New York, Senator Rivers of Virginia addressed the audience for three and a half hours! After the crowd took a brief stretch, Senator Legarè of South Carolina went on for another two and a half hours!

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:43 AM by Patrick Belton  

KISS ME, I'VE JUST VOTED: No, not in the U.S. presidential elections, for the council of the American Political Science Association. I was very happy to give my meagre support to the 'Perestroika' ticket standing for the cause of methodological diversity and for not neglecting historical, sociological, philosophical, and other non-quantitative methodologies in the study of politics. This even though my own personal research at the moment draws heavily on both rational choice and statistical analysis - I wouldn't want those perspectives to become hegemonic within the discipline, or for the Balinese cock fights or influence within the New Haven Board of Aldermen of the future to go unresearched. Que viva la revolución.

(On the other hand, as they say in the rational choice literature, voting rules….) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:39 AM by David Adesnik  

OXBLOG READERS FOR BUSH: The response was overwhelming. I explained why I will (almost definitely) be voting for John Kerry and a whole lot of you wrote in to tell me why I shouldn't.

The best response I got was not a response to OxBlog at all, but a post from Beldar addressed to his thoughtful, patriotic, "non-moonbat" friends who also happen to be Democrats. (Hat tip: BM) Beldar's argument is forceful and well-grounded. Beldar asks how John Kerry, as President, would be able to resist tremendous pressure from the Democratic left to fight the war on terror their way.

Beldar focuses primarily on the disturbing potential for a high-risk withdrawal from Iraq. While I share his concern, I don't think that the Democratic left will be able to win that debate. There is a remarkable consensus right now on the importance of not letting Iraq become a failed state and terrorist haven. (We used to say that we didn't want Iraq to become another Afghanistan, but now we do want Iraq to become another Afghanistan!)

Even though Democrats are much more likely than Republicans to refer to Iraq as a quagmire, it is the Democrats themselves whose arguments embody the logic of the quagmire. Whereas Republicans (and OxBlog) still believe that our exit strategy in Iraq is democracy, Democrats argue that the situation now borders on the hopeless. At the same time, they argue that we dare not withdraw, lest Iraq descend into total chaos.

That is the very definition of a quagmire -- when you know you're losing but you still believe that if you withdraw things will only get worse.

This brings us to the second important point made by several of those who responded to yesterday's post. They describe my essential argument for Kerry as being the hope that Kerry, as President, will do the exact opposite of what he says on the campaign trail.

To a certain extent, that is true. I am hoping that Kerry will become an advocate of promoting democracy in Iraq even though he has studiously avoided that subject on the campaign trail.

On the other hand, Kerry insistence that he will "get the job done" in Iraq is a step in the right direction. While Kerry often insists that he is best equipped to bring the troops home, he has very carefully avoided making any firm commitment on that point.

One interpretation of such rhetoric is that Kerry is a sheep in wolf's clothing; once the election is over, his inner dove will emerge. Another interpretation is that Kerry recognizes (and regrets) the degree to which the Bush administration has committed the United States to a specific strategy for dealing with Iraq. Now he has no choice but to make the best of that situation.

As I said before, decisions about voting often reflect a considerable degree of speculation. Thus, I have settled on the line of speculation that I believe to the most plausible. If I am wrong about Kerry, you can be sure that I will not hesitate to admit it.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:28 PM by Patrick Belton  

GONE FISHING (FOR A DISSERTATION...) So go over to the New Yorker to read the best bit of writing, on ketchup, ever. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:41 AM by David Adesnik  

MAKING THE DECISION: There are a precious few of us left who still haven't decided to whom we'll be giving our votes. But Greg Djerejian has decided. His lengthy commentary demonstrates that one can be profoundly aware of how grave the situation is in Iraq -- and of how much the Bush administration had contributed to that gravity -- yet still believe that Bush is better prepared than Kerry to handle the crisis.

In contrast, Daniel Drezner demonstrates that one can be profoundly troubled by Kerry's naive faith in multilateral diplomacy, yet still believe that he can wage our war on terror more effectively than George W. Bush. Thus, Dan now estimates that there is a 70% likelihood that he will be voting for Kerry.

So where do I stand in all of this? Yesterday afternoon, while waiting for the 4:50 PM showing of Team America to start, I told a couple of my liberal friends from UVA Law that there was a 60% chance I'd vote for Kerry. Concerned, one of them said to me, "Don't think, man, just vote for Kerry."

I responded: "Don't think? I thought that was your problem with Bush."

When I got home from the theater, I began to ask myself what could persuade me to vote for Bush if I'm already leaning toward Kerry and there are only twelve or so days left before the election. I still don't have an answer to that question, which means that the probability I will vote for Kerry is actually much higher than 60%.

They say that undecideds break for the challenger. Am I falling into that typical pattern of behavior? If I were confident enough in Bush to want him back in office, I should have recognized that long ago. Thus, the question becomes: Am I so afraid of what Kerry might accomplish as President that I prefer to have Bush remain in office?

In contrast to Dan & Greg, my most profound concern about Kerry is his naivete with regard to multilateral diplomacy. Rather, it is his total resistance to making about any positive statement about the importance of ensuring a democratic outcome in Iraq. Even though things are not going well on the ground, I believe that a true opportunity for democratization still exists. But that opportunity will amount to nothing in the absence of an all-out American effort to take advantage of it.

Like Greg, I am well aware of how the implementation of Bush's plans has not lived up to his soaring rhetoric. And like Dan, I believe that the heart of the problem is the closed-mindedness that prevents the Bush administration from adapting in response to its own failures.

Yet if I expect the Kerry administration to be more competent, shouldn't I expect it to be more competent at achieving precisely the objective I opppose, i.e. the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq before there is a democratic order in place?

My answer to that question is 'no'. Ironically, I believe that it is Bush's uncompromising commitment to promoting democracy in Iraq and throughout the Middle East that will tie Kerry's hands.

In a more abstract sense, I also believe that the values embedded in American political culture will limit Kerry's options. When America occupies a foreign nation, it cannot withdraw before establishing some semblance of a democratic order.

Sadly, most of our occupations have left behind only a democratic facade that crumbled shortly after the last troops came home. Often, the weankess of that facade reflected the United States' prioritization of withdrawal over democratic reform.

Yet it is extremely rare for the United States to become as invested in an occupation as it is now in Iraq. It was much simpler to pull a few thousand troops out of Haiti, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, as we did in the 1920s and 1930s. While the conditions on the ground in Iraq may not resemble those of postwar Germany or postwar Japan, the commitment of American prestige and centrality of American interests is similar.

Finally, I believe there is an ethical core to Kerry's foreign policy that can be put into the service of democratization. In the 1980s, Kerry's concern for human rights led him to denounce Reagan's support for anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua known as 'contras'.

Like his fellow Democrats, Kerry failed to recognize that the price of abandoning the contras was the destruction of any hope for democratic reform in Nicaragua. On a fundamental level, liberal Democrats opposed American intervention in other nations' domestic affairs, even if those nations were being held hostage by Communists.

This broad commitment to anti-interventionism on the left is the legacy of the Vietnam war. I believe that this same anti-interventionism led Kerry to oppose the first Gulf War as well as (to some degree) the second.

But the choice America's faces in Iraq is not one of intervention. We are already there. Our soldiers are already dying. Some might suggest that Kerry would rather save the lives of a few hundreds thane he would ensure the success of Iraq's transition.

I disagree. I believe that Kerry recognizes the danger of withdrawing from Iraq before it is stabilized. And I don't believe that Kerry could accept (let alone achieve) a process of stabilization that isn't democratic.

This doesn't mean that I expect Kerry to consistently make the right decisions about democracy in Iraq. In fact, I fully expect there to be a major struggle within the Democratic Party to define Kerry's agenda should he become President. I will simply do my best to play my small part in that struggle and to persuade as many Democrats as I can that democracy is the answer for Iraq.

Ultimately, I recognize that the arguments made above reflect a considerable degree of speculation about Kerry's motives. Thus, I will not hold it against anyone if they vote for Bush because their subjective assessment of the candidates' motives is different from my own.

Moreover, I do not believe that it is possible to make a decision in this election that doesn't rest on a considerable degree of speculation. In our political system, as in most, running for office entails strategic position-hiding as much as it does strategic position-taking.

Perhaps something will happen in these last few days that will change my perceptions of the candidates. If not, I will be voting for John Kerry.
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# Posted 11:53 PM by David Adesnik  

ACTUALLY, JOSH, I had the post ready to go before Kent stepped up to the plate. With Beltran on second, I just knew that something good was going to happen.
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# Posted 11:20 PM by David Adesnik  

BOTTOM OF THE 9TH: Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!
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# Posted 4:56 PM by Patrick Belton  

MORE BUBBIE: In one of the few truly entertaining sidenotes of this campaign (err, not involving bloggers or friendly members of the press, that is...), a friend of ours at the NJDC has just released episode two in the Little Jewish Grandmother v. Bush series. In the interests of equal time, we should take pains to note that a 'Bubbie is full of lies' page has quickly appeared, pointing out the obvious forgeries and discontinuities in the Bubbie memo, I mean, movie. Q.v.: (1) It doesn't take her ten minutes to find something in her purse. (2) She doesn't then stop and say "Oy, it's in my other purse.", (3) At no point does she break her hip, (4) Not a single word about education. Without education, her son would have never become a doctor, or her other son the lawyer, or her daughter the doctor, or her grandson at Brandeis studying to be a doctor, or the two grandaughters at Vassar, oh, she's so proud of them; (there are several more, but equal time's just run out...). (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:56 PM by David Adesnik  

"AMERICA, F*** YEAH!" Trey Parker and Matt Stone couldn't have chosen a better theme song for their latest film, Team America: World Police. The film critics, however, can't seem to figure out exactly what the title song means or what the movie is all about.

In the Weekly Standard, Jon Last warns his fellow critics not to pretend that this film is mostly about politics. Above all, what Parker & Stone want is to satirize the formulaic blockbusters that Hollywood churns out on a regular basis.

Last's instinct has been confirmed by Matt Stone himself, who told the WaPo that

"People are saying that [Team America is] about politics...It's a
satire of movies."

Somehow, the Post's film critics didn't get the message. Demonstrating an incomparable penchant for condescension and ignorance, Hank Stuever writes that:

Stunned by all the fun, I am almost moved to salute Parker and Stone for their nuanced and careful takedown of American jingoism and the seemingly disastrous foreign policy that Team America stands for.

Only that isn't quite how it played to an audience on Tuesday night, at one of those free-ticket radio station giveaway previews in a packed cineplex in Northwest Washington. The biggest laughs came when "Team America" assaulted any and all concepts of ethnicity, or when the joke was on gays, Michael Moore or a vast left-wing idiocy.

The movie feels like an elaborate inside joke on the very Americans laughing hardest at its easiest gags, oblivious to the sly, allegorical digs at a USA brand of bravado. What I took as a lampoon of Bushworld seemed to be received, in the seats around me, as a triumph of Bushworld. Pollsters and campaign workers, take note: "Team America" will only further confound your election-year data.

Fellow WaPo critic Desson Thomson applauds the film for it's merciless take-down of

Plain old couch-potato us and our perception of the post-9/11 world thanks to a composite prism of fear, cultural ignorance and government spin. Filmmakers Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of "South Park," are holding up a mirror to our worst sides and making us laugh hysterically for the privilege.

Ironically, liberal critics such as Stuever & Thomson are actually the butt of Parker & Stone's toughest jokes. As the very-liberal-but-much-less-ignorant A.O. Scott points out in the NY Times, Parker & Stone

Expend most of their spoofy energy sending up action-movie conventions and over-the-top patriotic bluster, reserving their real satiric venom for self-righteous Hollywood liberals (with special attention to Alec Baldwin)
.
It seems likely, though, that their emphases and omissions reflect a particular point of view. "South Park," with its class-clown libertarianism and proudly juvenile disdain for authority, has always been hard to place ideologically, but a number of commentators have discerned a pronounced conservative streak amid the anarchy, a hypothesis that "Team America" to some extent confirms.

The victims of Team America's satire seem to have gotten the message. Sean Penn -- one of Kim Jong Il's principal collaborators in the film -- denounced Team America for

"Encourag[ing] irresponsibility that will ultimately lead to the disembowelment, mutilation, exploitation, and death of innocent people throughout the world."

As far as I can tell, Penn's comments are sincere and not a self-deprecating parody of his left-wing views.

Even though Jon Last is right to insist that Team America is more about Hollywood than it is about Washington, I think that A.O. Scott just happens to be right when he says that the climactic speech at the end of the film represents

One of the more cogent — and, dare I say it, more nuanced — defenses of American military power that I have heard recently.

I would tell you what that cogent defense is, but I don't want to ruin the surprise for those of you who haven't seen the film. I'll just say that for those of you who enjoy both South Park and foreign policy, ten bucks is a bargain for the entertainment that Team America provides.
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# Posted 8:29 AM by Patrick Belton  

GOOD STUFF FROM THE LRB'S 25TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE, on class in Britain and the long-standing jousting match between Anglo-American and Continental philosophy. In the latter, Anglo-American philosopher Jerry Fodor writes: 'The place on the [Borders] shelf where my stuff would be if they had it (but they don't) is just to the left of Foucault, of which there is always yards and yards. I'm huffy about that; I wish I had his royalties. Royalties aside, what have they got that we haven't? It's not the texture of their prose I shouldn't think, since most of us write better than most of them. Anyhow, our arguments are better than theirs.' So why the declining fortunes of Anglo-American relative to Continental philosophy, at least in the readership of nonphilosophers? Problem one: 'Whereas it used to be said that philosophy is about, for example, Goodness or Existence or Reality or How the Mind Works, or whether there is a Cat on the Mat, [now] it's not the Good, the True or the Beautiful that a philosopher tries to understand, it's the corresponding concepts of "good" "beautiful" and '"true".' Problems two and three are then titled 'Quine' and 'Kripke'. Well worth a read. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:58 AM by Patrick Belton  

INSPIRATIONAL THESIS QUOTES FROM ENGLISH CHILDREN'S LITERATURE, NO. 5:  PETER gave himself up for lost, and shed big tears; but his sobs were overheard by some friendly sparrows, who flew to him in great excitement, and implored him to exert himself.
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# Posted 10:34 PM by David Adesnik  

SHAMEFUL: Wearing a Kerry shirt at a Bush campaign event? Expect to be thrown out.
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# Posted 10:20 PM by David Adesnik  

THE KILLING CONTINUES: In Darfur. Sadly, the coincidence of genocide in the Sudan with a presidential election in the United States has only benefitted the murderers.

I expect that within a matter of months, both Republicans and Democrats will look back and wonder how they did so little to prevent an impending disaster. Of course, if Europe wanted, it could take advantage of this golden opportunity to demonstrate that multilateralism is not just a codeword for amoral passivity.
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# Posted 10:15 PM by David Adesnik  

HE-SAID/SHE-SAID HEADLINES: The WaPo Ombudsman tackles one of OxBlog's favorite subjects. He concludes that Bush and Cheney have benefited from excessively balanced headlines attached to articles that are far more critical of the President and Vice-President than they are of John Kerry and John Edwards.
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# Posted 10:07 PM by David Adesnik  

PUTIN BEHAVING BADLY: Russia's aspiring dictator claims that he is the victim of a double standard that condemns him for punishing terrorists while praising others who do the same. Yet Stephen Sestanovich, the respected scholar and diplomat, documents how the United States and its allies have held Russia to a far lower standard than they have held themselves.
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# Posted 3:11 AM by David Adesnik  

THE POLLS: I don't know much about the reliability of state-level polls, but I think it's interesting to compare electoral college vote projections. My first stop while poll-hunting is always RealClearPolitics. It's a great site and co-editor Tom Bevan happens to be a really nice guy.

Right now, RCP has Bush ahead in Florida and Wisconsin but says that Iowa and Ohio are toss-ups. RCP's judgements reflect an average of statewide polls in each of the battleground states.

Next up is Electoral-Vote.com, which is calling Ohio and Wisconsin for Bush but says that Florida and Iowa are toss-ups.

The outlier among the poll-watchers is Pollkatz, which has Bush ahead in both Ohio and Florida, but mysteriously has Kerry winning in Arkansas and Missouri not to mention Iowa and Wisconsin. I think that these differences seems are a reflection of PK's methodology, which he explains here.

Finally, we come to Rasmussen, which is very liberal about describing states as toss-ups. In addition to the usual four, Rasmussen has a list that includes Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania.
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# Posted 3:04 AM by David Adesnik  

OH NO! NOT ANOTHER DEBATE! My old high school has invited me back to participate in a mock debate on election day. As things now stand, I will be representing Bush, although I told the teacher in charge that I don't have much in common with the GOP when it comes to domestic politics. If I'm lucky, she'll find someone to represent Bush and then I can represent the undecideds!
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# Posted 2:56 AM by David Adesnik  

FUZZY MATH: Jon Chait dismantles George Bush's indefensible assertion that John Kerry voted to raise taxes 98 times.
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# Posted 2:46 AM by David Adesnik  

ONE FLU OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST: Kevin explains why there is a shortage of flu vaccine in the US right now.
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# Posted 2:09 AM by David Adesnik  

COLLATERAL DAMAGE: With good reason, Spencer Ackerman is concerned about the civilian casualties inflicted by US airstrikes on Falluja. (Hat tip: MY again.) With reference to the lessons of Vietnam, Ackerman writes that

The insurgency grows stronger, not weaker, as a result of embittered civilians who suffer the consequences of the attack.

I agree. But doesn't the acceptance of this principle imply that the insurgents have antagonized even more Iraqi as a result of their indiscriminate and intentional suicide bombings across Iraq?

How often does the newspaper article (or left-of-center blog post) describing such an attack suggest that it will play to the advantage of the United States? Not often. Instead, one tends to read that Iraqis blame America for failing to provide the sort of security that would protect them from suicide attacks.

One possible justification for this double-standard is the fact that Iraqi nationalism leads most Iraqis to blame the United States regardless of who is responsible for the deaths in question. Or to be more precise, Sunni Arabs in Iraq will blame the United States no matter what, whereas Kurds and Shi'ites -- who are often the victims of such suicide attacks -- will approach such matters with a more open mind.

Yet when a suicide bomb detonates in the heart of Baghdad, it is almost as likely to kill a Sunni as it is a Kurd or Shi'ite. Can Iraqi Sunnis forgive such indiscriminate slaughter even if they support the objectives it hopes to achieve? I suspect not.

Of course, Falluja is enemy territory so there are no suicide bombings there. Thus, civilian casualties tend to be American inflicted. On the other hand, the threat of an American-led assault seems to have provoked a divide between native Fallujans who prefer to negotiate and those foreign fighters who prefer to fight to the death. Let's hope that the sensibilities of the natives prevail.
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# Posted 1:43 AM by David Adesnik  

ONLY IN THE PRINT EDITION: In Saturday's morning's WaPo, on the bottom of page A8, there is a priceless photo of the young John Edwards. He looks like a cross between Marlon Brando and Luke, the blond guy from the Dukes of Hazzard.
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# Posted 1:29 AM by David Adesnik  

"THE FAITH-BASED PRESIDENCY": That is Ron Suskind's description of the George Bush's time in office. Suskind develops his argument in great detail in the current issue of the NY Times Magazine. (Hat tip: MY)

Even though Suskind's anecdotal evidence is less than impressive, I share his concern about Bush's apparent inability to question the highly contoversial assumptions on which his policies are based. More than anything else, I think that this explains my instinctive attraction to John Kerry and his thirst for information.

The unique aspect of Suskind's argument is his direct and uncompromising effort to explain Bush's lack of intellectual curiosity as a direct extension of his faith in God. Even though the President's critics often murmur about the connection between his faith and his policies, I can't recall anyone other than Suskind actually making an explicit and detailed argument about the connection between the two.

I am especially wary of such argument because I am aware of my own profound prejudices about the Christian right and its political agenda. After a dozen years of Jewish education, it is almost impossible not to have a negative attitude toward any Christian who insists that the Bible should guide the hands of politicians and policymakers.

Yet for the moment, I have decided to suspend my prejudices about the Christian right and ask how much actual evidence there is to justify the pervasive caricature of evangelicals as simple-minded and intolerant. I am especially looking forward to reading the work of JS, one of my colleagues at the Miller Center, who is now working on a dissertation entitled "Compromising Crusaders: Passion, Deliberation and the Christian Right." Here is how he describes his research:

From the founding of the United States, many thoughtful observers of its political system have regarded the public activities of religious movements as a threat to individual freedom and deliberative democracy. Most recently, social scientists and public intellectuals have denounced the Christian right for violating the norms of a pluralist democracy. Yet scholars have not examined the movement deeply enough to understand the inner workings of its principal political organizations. By doing exactly that, this dissertation demonstrates that the Christian right is not the uncompromising movement that detractors fear.

Although Christian right organizations do—as their critics contend— arouse moral passions, they do so in order to mobilize apathetic citizens. But once they have mobilized citizens, most of these organizations then labor diligently to moderate and inform the passions they have provoked by teaching activists how to become civil, compromising, and strategic actors in the public realm.

Elites within the Christian right undertake these labors because success in electoral politics requires it. Understanding this fundamental tension between the exigencies of mobilization, on the one hand, and successful activism, on the other, is critical to any thoughtful evaluation of the Christian right.

In the opening paragraphs of his NYTM essay, Ron Suskind writes that

Faith asserts its hold ever more on debates in this country and abroad. That a deep Christian faith illuminated the personal journey of George W. Bush is common knowledge. But faith has also shaped his presidency in profound, nonreligious ways. The president has demanded unquestioning faith from his followers, his staff, his senior aides and his kindred in the Republican Party. Once he makes a decision -- often swiftly, based on a creed or moral position -- he expects complete faith in its rightness.

Susking later observes that:

Every few months, a report surfaces of the president using strikingly Messianic language, only to be dismissed by the White House. Three months ago, for instance, in a private meeting with Amish farmers in Lancaster County, Pa., Bush was reported to have said, ''I trust God speaks through me.'' In this ongoing game of winks and nods, a White House spokesman denied the president had specifically spoken those words, but noted that ''his faith helps him in his service to people.''

I don't think that the White House is above playing such games. Yet if Bush's certainty comes from his faith in God, where do the certainty of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the rest of the inner circle come from? For that matter, what about Reagan's legendary certainty and his immunity to facts?

Even though Bush bears far more responsibility than Suskind for reinforcing negative stereotypes about Christian evangelicals, I think that the time has come for America's coastal elites to reconsider their attitude toward political Christianity.
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# Posted 1:11 AM by David Adesnik  

CUBA LIBRE: In a brief post I put up while in Vegas, I mocked the decision of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) to allow Cuban "scholars" to present their research at LASA's recent conference.

There is more to the story, however. As it turns out, there were no Cuban presentations at the conference because the State Department refused to let the Cuban presenters into the country. Moreover, according to a colleague of mine who is quite fair-minded, a fair number of the Cubans are serious scholars, even though others are unofficial propagandists.

If the State Department were smarter, it would have welcomed the opportunity to let the Cubans show themselves for what they are. Instead, it provided the pro-Cuban Americans at the conference another chance to vent their (self-)righteous indignation.

On the second day of the conference, I attended a panel on US-Latin American relations since the end of the Cold War. During his presentation, Prof. Philip Brenner of American University declared that what the United States really hates about Cuba is the fact it has "stood up with dignity" to American efforts at domination.

Whoa. Let me say that again. Whoa. Apparently, Brenner has a bad habit of making such remarks. On Sept. 6, 2001, Brenner suggested to his class that "perhaps Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are only bad from a Western perspective. Think about it." After the September 11th attacks, Brenner suggested that the US had also committed massive acts of terror.

Anyhow, the only one who came close to contradicting Brenner's remarks about Cuba was his colleague from American University, Dr. Robert Pastor. Pastor happens to have been the National Security Council's director for Latin American Affairs during the Carter Administration.

I think that Pastor would have kept quiet if not for Brenner's effort to directly provoke him by insisting that even the Carter Administration was blindly committed to humiliating Cuba at any cost. Pastor sharply and persuasively responded that Carter did his best to improve relations with Havana, but made it very clear to Fidel Castro that if he dispatched another Cuban expeditionary force to Africa, the Carter administration would not be the least bit forgiving.

Fidel sent the expeditionary force and Carter called off the pursuit of detente. As Pastor observed, America extended its hand in friendship, but Cuba consciously chose to slap it down.

So, in conclusion, what you really need to know about LASA is that its most jingoistic, right-wing members tend to be former officials in the Carter administration.
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# Posted 11:22 PM by David Adesnik  

KRAUTHAMMER RIDICULOUS: Josh may have liked Charlie K's most recent column, but I thought it was ridiculous. John Edwards may have said something sort of dumb, but Krauthammer's reaction is completely over the top. Edwards said:

If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.

That's optimistic campaign trail fluff. A closer reading of Edwards' statement implies that somehow Bush & Cheney are against Chris Reeve being able to walk again. Edwards' fluff hardly merits that kind of analysis, however. But here's what Charlie K says:

In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery...

There is no apologizing for Edwards's remark. It is too revealing. There is absolutely nothing the man will not say to get elected.

A demagogue willing to say anything? Perhaps Krauthammer is confusing Edwards with Dick Cheney. Remember Cheney? He's the guy whose remarks about Saddam and 9/11 George Bush had to publicly disavow.

Of course, there are Democratic demagogues as well. From where I stand, there is no excuse for John Kerry saying that George Bush wants to bring back the draft. By the way, it's worth comparing the NYT and WaPo comments about Kerry's remarks. In a straight up news article, the Post said that

Kerry offered scant evidence to support the allegation of an impending draft under Bush.

So much for he-said/she-said journalism. The NYT avoided that sort of overt analysis, but did include this failry damning paragraph

When the candidates debated a week ago in St. Louis, Mr. Bush ruled out reinstating the draft. "We're not going to have a draft, period," he said. "The all-volunteer Army works." In his rebuttal then, Mr. Kerry did not question the president's assertion.

That last sentence is a classic. It provides coverage of a literal non-event. But it has the exact same connotation as the WaPo's front-and-center analysis.

Anyhow, getting back to Charlie K, I'd like to propose my own candidate for the most loathsome display of demagoguery in the past 25 years. On December 2, 1983, a high school student said to Ronald Reagan:

This week you vetoed a bill passed by Congress which linked military aid in El Salvador with human rights. Why did you veto this bill, and how can we justify supporting governments, be they leftwing or rightwing, which violate human rights?

Reagan gave a fairly detailed response to the question, which included this statement:

We're doing everything we can, not only to help [the Salvadoran] Government deal with these rightwing squads, but I'm going to voice a suspicion now that I've never said aloud before. I wonder if all of this is rightwing, or if those guerrilla forces have not realized that by infiltrating into the city of San Salvador and places like that, that they can get away with these violent acts, helping to try and bring down the Government, and the rightwing will be blamed for it.

Reagan's comments made the front page of the next morning's papers because there was absolutely no evidence to suggest that Communist guerrillas were masquerading as right-wing death squads. While it is theoretically possible that such a masquerade took place, overwhelming evidence indicated that anti-Communist forces were responsible for 90 percent or more of the tens of thousands of civilians murdered during the first years of the Salvadoran civil war (and that the other 10 percent didn't involve masquerades).

Moreover, those murderous anti-Communists were soldiers and policeman employed by the Salvadoran military and acting with its explicit support, not independent "rightwing squads" as Reagan suggested. And his administration knew it. Less than ten days after Reagan's controversial remarks, Vice-President Bush handed a list of known murderers to the Salvadoran high command and demanded their explusion from the armed forces.

In my dissertation, I argue that Reagan's demagoguery was not intentional, but rather a reflection of the 40th President's unparalleled ability to blind himself to the obvious truth. Declassified CIA reports, now available from the National Security Archive, demonstrate that the administration's knowledge about the death squads was detailed and unequivocal.

Of course, anyone capable of reading a newspaper knew what was going on in El Salvador -- that is why Reagan's comments were almost incomprehensible. White House spokesmen backtracked from the President's remarks almost immediately. No other Republican stood up on the President's behalf.

The only plausible explanation for the Great Communicator's self-destructive rhetoric was that he himself believed in it.
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# Posted 7:03 PM by Patrick Belton  

DEPARTMENT OF THESIS OUTTAKES:

The third model, comparative interbranch strength, places asymmetries of political resource endowments as central in explaining variations over time in the congressional influence on policy outcomes. Those outcomes then reflect the primary preferences of the actor with the greater resources, in proportion to the ratio between the two actors’ allotment of political resources.

Assume three axioms about strength:

1. greater popularity among the public, both in general and specifically of their foreign policy positions, confers strength upon the branch possessing it;
2. a larger Δ_pop(equal to Positive opinion (branch B_x) – Negative opinion (branch B_x)), which takes into account the distinction between neutral and averse segments of the public, also confers strength upon the branch possessing it;
3. a greater degree of ideological homogeneity in the majority caucus in each house also confers strength upon the legislature.

Strength is, for present purposes, defined as the sum of these three dimensions,

Σ_i=1…3μ_i

And relative strength, then

ΔΣ_i=1…3μ_i = Σ_i=1...3μ_B1i - Σ_i=1...3μ_B2i

Which is, incidentally, the name of a fraternity at my first university.

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# Posted 5:43 PM by Patrick Belton  

I'M TOUCHED....I THINK DEPARTMENT: From my latest reading material:

'Quilted Velvet ® is deeply quilted, soft toilet tissue that really cares for your bum.'

'If you feel that this product doesn't care for your bum enough, please let us know by sending this pack and its contents FREEPOST to:

Velvet ® Bum Care Department
SCA Hygiene Products UK Limited
Freepost ANG 5856
Dunstable, LU6 3YY

Dunstable, incidentally, was where I went to buy my car. Maybe there's a pattern. More significantly, I have the strong impression that this was written by the same guy who wrote the 'manicure' interview for FOX, a.k.a, the joke that wasn't meant to see print... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:51 AM by Patrick Belton  

NEW ARAB REFORM BULLETIN: Edited ably as always by the Carnegie Endowment's (and OxFriend) Amy Hawthorne, with articles on judicial reform, the variegated Iraqi insurgency, and two pieces on the opposition and ruling party in Egypt. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:46 AM by Patrick Belton  

AFGHAN ELECTIONS POST-MORTEM: From who else but our dashing Afghanistan correspondent:

Two of my Afghan friends and colleagues arrived in Washington, DC yesterday. Their satisfaction and enthusiasm with the elections in Afghanistan can hardly be overstated. Both showed off the fading indelible ink on their thumbs (one of them had initially gone to a polling place where the pens proved delible, but the mistake was caught early and the voters sent to a different polling station). One said, eyes twinkling: “It was a miracle. There were hundreds of us, and everyone was standing in one straight line. Afghans never stand in line, they always crush in together. But that day, we all stood in line and waited to vote.” The other pulled out his mobile phone and proudly showed the digital photo he’d taken in the privacy of the polling booth: a ballot with a big black checkmark next to Hamid Karzai’s picture.

It’s unsurprising that two young, married Kabulis who work for a Western NGO and who backed Karzai would find the election satisfying. They have everything to gain from a continuation of the policies of the last three years. But after the initial shock of the washable ink and the soon-retracted opposition boycott, the reports out of Afghanistan have suggested that most Afghans throughout the country shared my friends’ enthusiasm. The electoral process was extraordinarily popular. When all is said and done, with a mere 43 purported irregularities under investigation by the joint UN-Afghan panel (from over 5,000 polling stations) and all the major opposition candidates committed to accepting the panel’s findings, it is hard to imagine the delible-ink scandal leaving an indelible blot on the Karzai presidency.

The best news of all, of course, was the remarkably limited violence. On September 24, I argued that the former Taliban and other violent malcontents had already lost their chance to derail the election. In the event, they were almost entirely inactive. A Taliban spokesman afterward claimed that this election-day restraint was a deliberate policy to spare the lives of fellow Muslims. Besides this unprecedented goodwill, a few other factors were probably at work:

• The rebels in southern Afghanistan are not meaningfully a Taliban resurgence (as I argued in July), but a loosely organized ethnic-Pashtun insurgency. As the election approached and Qanuni seemed likely to force Karzai into a runoff, community leaders throughout the Pashtun south realized that if their people didn’t make it to the polls, they might end up with a Panjshiri Tajik president. I imagine at this point they made it clear to the insurgents that everyone in their villages would be voting, for the good of the Pashtuns. And the insurgents blinked first.
• Karzai has been working hard at dialogue with the Pashtun insurgent leaders, particularly those from Gulbuddin Hekmetyar’s Hizb-i-Islami party. It’s possible that many more have been won over or bought off than we know about.
• According to my friends’ reports, Pakistan’s President Musharraf quietly but forcefully increased security along the Afghan border and in Afghan refugee camps in the weeks leading up to the election. This did a lot to keep out al-Qaeda troublemakers. (Iyad Allawi, take note).
• The insurgents dedicated significant resources, perhaps even a majority of their resources, to attempted attacks in Kabul which were thwarted by extraordinary security measures.

Whatever its causes, their failure is a major blow to the credibility of the insurgency, and for all its flaws, this election is a heartening victory. The Afghans are rightly proud and excited; they deserve much praise for this imperfect but important step toward stable democratic government. I’ve also talked to Afghans who feel that the U.S. government deserves more credit than I’ve been inclined to offer. They point to the role of Zalmay Khalilzad (American ambassador and Karzai’s éminence grise) in keeping the warlords on board when Karzai began throwing his weight around. As one rumor has it, all three major Panjshiri ministers tried to resign when Marshal Fahim was dropped as vice-president, but Khalilzad summoned them to his residence for a blunt remonstration. “Without America, you would still be isolated in Panjshir, alone and on the defensive. Do you want to go back there?” He’s also been making the rounds of all the opposition candidates, doing what he can to make sure they’re reconciled to a Karzai victory. Khalilzad’s success as horse-trader-in-chief deserves acknowledgment, and reflects well on the administration that appointed him.

But America’s larger failure in Afghanistan remains: we have not committed enough troops to secure the country, nor managed to convince other countries to commit their troops. Our initial policy of Occupation Lite was reasonable, even prudent – no one wanted to trigger the historically familiar Afghan response to foreign armies. By last year, however, all sides recognized that we were well below the troop threshold that the people of Afghanistan would tolerate. When asked, most Afghans responded that they would welcome more foreign troops if that would bring some accountability to the local warlords. NATO accordingly committed itself to expanding ISAF – and did next to nothing. America had committed the bulk of its armed forces to Iraq, and continued to focus its diplomatic attention on getting support for the war there, not on coaxing uncertain allies into securing Afghanistan.

This election is not a vindication of that policy. It would be an understandable but grave error to mistake the lack of violence surrounding this poll for a stable security situation in Afghanistan. While I don’t share the unrelenting gloominess of Human Rights Watch’s pre-election report, they correctly document that the threat of violence remains the primary political backdrop throughout Afghanistan (in particular for Afghans outside Kabul). As most commentators on Afghanistan recognize, the coming parliamentary poll will be far more precarious than the recently concluded elections. Without major improvements between now and then, the enthusiasm and success attending Afghanistan’s first election will be matched by the disillusionment and failure of its second.

In the first place, the south-eastern insurgency isn’t quite as depleted as its feeble voter intimidation efforts would suggest. Many of the Pashtun leaders who united to prevent a Qanuni or Dostum presidency are still hostile to America and sympathetic to the rebels. In the parliamentary elections, without the clear goal of maintaining a fairly popular co-ethnic president in power, the violent rejectionists will face less intra-Pashtun opposition. If they rally, project their power out of remote provinces like Zabul, Uruzgan, and Khost, and frighten voters away from the polls in populous Helmand and Kandahar, the insurgents could actually threaten the legitimacy of the parliament.

But violent rejection by Pashtun insurgents has never been the main threat to peaceful elections in Afghanistan. The greater, more general threat is from warlords who violently support their client candidates, especially in the ethnically divided north. In the recently concluded presidential campaign, violence of this sort was limited, because it would have been ineffective. It was never likely to affect Karzai’s overwhelming lead, one way or the other; and when Fahim may have been tempted to try it, a prompt and forceful response from Khalilzad and NATO deterred him. In the south, Pashtun tribal differences were set aside in the attempt to get out the vote for Karzai.

The game will be entirely different in the parliamentary elections, with scores of local contests at stake and the overall outcome anything but pre-ordained. In constituencies dominated by a single militia commander, any other candidates risk persecution and assassination. In constituencies divided between rival commanders, the race would be real but potentially bloody. With dozens of close races around the country, a great deal will hang on ballot irregularities and perceived interference at the polls. If the parliamentary elections are monitored as weakly as the presidential election, such disputes are all the more likely to be resolved by force.

My friend Mike wryly writes from Kabul, “I get the feeling that it's easy to arrive in Afghanistan, spend a few days looking around, and then confidently announce that the next few months is absolutely critical to the nations’ future, etc etc.” Still, I do think the next months will be as crucial as any time since the Taliban fell. We have a short window in which to prepare for the parliamentary elections. Meanwhile, Karzai has repeatedly said that “the time of horse-trading is over” and that he does not expect warlords to have a strong voice in his cabinet. The big question of the coming winter is whether he means what he says; and whether the warlords will accept a disarmed and diminished role.

So what to do? First: we need to get more troops in there to back up Karzai and Khalilzad – their bold strategy of checking the warlords will sooner or later meet a forceful challenge, especially if they do push the disarmament program. These troops will have to come primarily from Europe. (Russia and India, two countries who at one point considered sending troops to Iraq, are both non-starters in Afghanistan). Fortunately, many countries that wouldn’t consider sending troops to Iraq could be talked into reinforcing Afghanistan, especially since the first election proved to be so very un-apocalyptic. Europe has a strong interest in stemming the flow of Afghan opium and refugees. The bad news for John Kerry is that this “internationalization” probably wouldn’t free up many US soldiers – most of the American soldiers in Afghanistan are chasing bin Laden and the Taliban, a task that neither Kerry nor Bush is likely to “outsource.” But more European troops could be invaluable in the coming election campaigns, to protect journalists and opposition party candidates, and to weaken rumors that America is rigging Afghan elections to its own ends.

Second: we need many more election monitors, much better election security (including stepped-up disarmament and demobilization), and an extensive voter education program. Parliamentary elections are more complex than presidential elections, and we should expect more (and more effective) attempts at fraud. Countering this will require increased funding and attention from foreign donors. Security should be provided by Afghan national troops and police where feasible, by foreign troops where necessary, and by warlord militias as rarely as possible.

Third: we need a counter-poppy strategy that is also pro-farmer. Stepped-up interdiction is essential; Karzai should use his strengthened position in the wake of elections to take on the drug lords as well as the warlords in his country, lest it turn into a narco-state. But aggressive eradication strategies will turn rural Afghans against the occupation and the Kabul government. We may hope that this year’s glutted market and price collapse will lead to fewer hectares of poppy cultivated next year. But the primary standard for success in the next few years should be increased hectares of alternative crops and better Afghan agricultural processing facilities, with diminished poppy cultivation as a secondary, dependent indicator. Until there are genuine alternative income sources for rural Afghans, we can’t start ploughing up the poppy fields.

Finally: the United States should be prepared for Hamid Karzai to lose the next presidential election. The enthusiasm with which Afghans are embracing elections recalls nothing so much as the first electoral rounds in Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall. There, the bubble of expectations surrounding democracy was quickly deflated by harsh economic realities, and (to the horror of many in the West) the second round of elections went to former Communists. It’s easy to imagine a similar scenario playing out in Afghanistan at the end of Karzai’s term, with a disillusioned, still-impoverished electorate responding to the nationalism of a former warlord. The first reports from the vote-counting have Qanuni at 17 percent, compared to 15 percent for Abdul Rashid Dostum. We’ll see how things look when all the ballots have been counted. But I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we see one of the two succeed in four years. As we negotiate the roadblocks of the next few years, we should keep such a contingency always in mind, and not back ourselves into a corner where Karzai becomes indispensable. There’d be no quicker way to dispel Afghans’ enthusiasm for democracy than to foolishly rig the election in Karzai’s favor next time.

(N.B. Many thanks to Mike, by the way, whose dispatches from the frontline have kept me up on events despite the fact that I’m out of the country. His analyses combine equally keen insight and humor, as for example:

“My favorite election quote to date comes from our Uzbek friend General Dostum, at a recent election rally: ‘It will be clear very soon who is a warlord and who is the people’s lord.’ Because ‘people’s lord’ has such a nice, democratic ring to it.”)

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# Posted 7:35 AM by Patrick Belton  

WANT A JOB? Don't brag about your accomplishments. Instead, kiss up. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:10 AM by Patrick Belton  

I PERK UP ANNUALLY about this time of the year to pay enough attention to baseball to enjoy watching the Yankees win their annual World Series. Then, I go back to generally ignoring spectator sports, apart from the occasional glances at Irish rugby and South Asian cricket. I derive great pleasure from this, because (1) I'm generally most at home in the United States in New York, and spend most of my time there when I'm stateside, and (2) rooting for the Mets, though undoubtedly more authentic, provides limited meaningful opportunities for postseason spectatorship. Particularly via UK telly.

So, a quick review of the relevant facts, going into Game 3 tonight. Yanks begin with a 2-0 advantage at Fenway tonight, after utterly dominating that plucky but masochistic bunch of ruffians from Beantown for the previous two evenings of play. Mussina and Lieber in the bullpen are pitching pretty, holding the Red Sox to one hit in 37 at-bats in innings one through six. And team playing seems to be fairly good, with broad contributions coming from Hideki Matsui (driving in five runs in Game 1), and Bernie Williams (three), Derek Jeter turning a walk into a run in the second game, and this by stealing second and scoring on a single from Gary Sheffield. Nice team. Now any of them want to run for president? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:08 AM by Patrick Belton  

SCIENCE CORNER: Millihelen: unit of beauty. In particular, a millihelen is the degree of beauty able to launch one ship. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:34 PM by Patrick Belton  

WELL BUGGER, I never knew we had Shakespeare blogging for us. (I guess that's one of the advantages of being the Anglo-American blog...) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:39 PM by David Adesnik  

HE SAID/SHE SAID JOURNALISM: Back when the Swift Vets were still on the front pages, I had a brief exchange with Kevin Drum and Zachary Roth (of CJR) about whether or not professional correspondents mislead their audiences by engaging in he said/she said journalism, i.e. mechanically reporting on the arguments made by both sides in any given debate without giving any sense of which side is telling the truth.

The subject came to mind again when Kevin linked to an internal memo from ABC News Political Director Mark Halperin which made this remarkable statement:

I'm sure many of you have this week felt the stepped up Bush efforts to complain about our coverage. This is all part of their efforts to get away with as much as possible with the stepped up, renewed efforts to win the election by destroying Senator Kerry at least partly through distortions.

It's up to Kerry to defend himself, of course. But as one of the few news organizations with the skill and strength to help voters evaluate what the candidates are saying to serve the public interest. Now is the time for all of us to step up and do that right.

Kevin's take on the memo is that it's about time the media started getting as tough on Bush as it should be. To some degree, the existence of such a memo implies that ABC's correspondents had been holding their punches in the first place.

Yet take note of the author's observation that the Bush campaign had already stepped up its complaints about ABC's coverage. In addition, Halperin bolsters his argument by observing that leading correspondents at both NYT and Newsweek also believe that Bush's attacks on Kerry are on the brink of becoming outright lies -- lies designed to deflect public attention from the administration's failure in Iraq.

Perhaps Mark Halperin doth protest too much? If the NYT and Newsweek are already calling Bush a liar, and the campaign already thinks that ABC has been unfair, does Halperin really need to remind his correspondents that they should aggressively expose Bush' distortions of the truth?

Now let me make my own position clear. If Bush distorts the truth -- which he often does -- then journalists should make that clear. Journalists should interpret events rather than just reporting on them. Objectivity is a relative notion, and nothing produces more bad journalism than false pretensions of objectivity.

All I want is for left-of-center media critics to stop pretending that journalists' passivity lulls the American public into believing Republican lies. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:27 AM by Patrick Belton  

GUT REDUX: CNN/Gallup gives Kerry the edge last night, by 53-39. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:24 AM by Patrick Belton  

CHRISTINE BOESE points out that spam filters and spammers have jointly done what Victorianisms never succeeded in doing: removing words such as ‘breast’ and ‘sex’ from written discourse. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:58 AM by Patrick Belton  

SOMEONE EXPLAINED IT TO ME: It's probably to keep the fabulously dodgy McAuliffe off the airwaves in the States, where it matters. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:20 PM by Patrick Belton  

ALSO, COULD SOMEONE EXPLAIN TO ME why Terry McAuliffe and White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett were spinning to the BBC after the debate and not, say, to some hometown newspaper in Florida? Nice country though the one in which I reside is, the last I checked it doesn't have many electoral votes in play, and the time spent with the BBC of two senior spin artists seems, frankly, fairly wasted. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:19 PM by Patrick Belton  

MY GUT, and it's only my gut, is that this was a knockout win for Kerry. The balance actually hung in contention for the first half - it wasn't clear at first whether Bush's superior abilities at conveying personal warmth (witness his punchier delivery and variations of speaking pitch) would match Kerry's more boring, solid debating style, but after too many questions where Bush's dodge to repeat his talking points about education was too painfully skillless, Kerry's boring steadiness weathered the barrage of the contest much better and showed that in some circumstances, being boring and competent can be a good thing. I'd be surprised if the spin didn't reflect this, and unless the public was completely exhausted by the debates by now, if this didn't win Kerry a valuable point or two. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:30 PM by David Adesnik  

POLITICS AT THE WATER' S EDGE: Daniel Drezner writes that the administration subordination of its military strategy in Iraq to its re-election strategy in the United States represents a "mortal sin". Riffing on the same LA Times article that Professor Dan cited, Kevin Drum asks:

What was it Bush said during last Friday's debate? Oh yeah: "I don't see how you can lead this country in a time of war, in a time of uncertainty, if you change your mind because of politics."

Ouch! According to the "senior administration official" quoted by the LAT,

"When this election's over, you'll see us move very vigorously."

Presumably, the White House is afraid that a high-casualty operation during the final weeks of the campaign may cost it the election. On the other hand, if the Bush administration were as aggressive as Dan and Kevin suggest it should be, the critics would probably say that Bush was sacrificing soldiers' lives in a desperate attempt to win votes by generating the impression of success in Iraq.

What I don't understand is why a "senior administration official" (or SAO)would have made such a damaging claim. The smart thing to say would have been that the White House is letting the commanders on the ground make all the military decisions so that politics doesn't get in the way.

Perhaps the SAO in question just committed a gaffe. Or perhaps his remarks reflect an intentional effort to shame the administration into being more aggressive on the ground in the run-up to the election that really matters: the one in Iraq.
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# Posted 1:30 PM by David Adesnik  

TONIGHT'S DEBATE COULD BE MINOR, IRRELEVANT FACTOR IN RACE: The top headline on the WaPo homepage reads: "Tonight's Debate Could Be Pivotal Factor in Race." The article's actual headline is far more sensible (and boring): "On Debate's Eve, Campaigns Hone Message".

Now, if the first debate between Kerry and Bush played a crucial role in reviving the challenger's hopes, how can I be so sure that tonight's debate won't matter at all? Well, I'm not actually sure, but I think that all the indications are that it will be anything but pivotal.

After his embarrassing performance in the initial debate, Bush seemed to regain his composure during last Friday's rematch. Is it possible that Bush will break down again under pressure? Possible, yes. Likely, no.

The real question is whether Bush will make one or two critical gaffes that give Kerry an opening to hit hard during the final days of the campaign. That is eminently possible.
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# Posted 7:56 AM by Patrick Belton  

IRISH CORNER: I don’t know if there are any other tin whistle enthusiasts among our friends, but Chiff and Fipple, the poststructural Tin Whistle internet experience, have got their latest newsletter out. It includes ‘This month’s favourite name for an Irish traditional tune, TM’ (i.e., O'Carolan's Maggot), odd homages to the campaign and SpaceShipOne, and finally an appeal to American citizens to ‘blow the vote’. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:36 AM by Patrick Belton  

AMONG THE HEAPS OF GENERALLY DISAPPOINTING appreciations of Derrida and his work, one which stands out as worthy of interest is the Chronicle of Higher Ed's depiction of him as at essence a latter-day talmudist encouraging us simply to take texts more seriously, in a tradition including such other companion exegetes as Gadamer.

In interviews and autobiographical texts from his final decade, he began to speak about growing up as a Jew in Algeria during the Vichy period. More and more of his writing began to take the form of an overt dialogue with the work of Emmanuel Levinas, a French Jewish thinker who worked at the intersection of Heideggerian philosophy, ethical reflection, and biblical commentary.

"The idea of something of unconditional value begins to emerge in Derrida's work -- something that makes an unconditional claim on us," said Mr. Caputo. "So the deconstruction of this or that begins to look a little bit like the critique of idols in Jewish theology."

In 2002 Derrida gave the keynote address at the convention of the American Academy of Religion, held in Toronto. Speaking to a crowded auditorium, the philosopher said, "I rightly pass for an atheist" -- a puzzling formulation, by any measure.

Mr. Caputo recalled that other scholars asked Derrida, "Why don't you just say, 'Je suis. I am an atheist'?" Derrida replied, "Because I don't know. Maybe I'm not an atheist."

"He meant that, I think, the name of God was important for him," said Mr. Caputo, "even if, by the standards of the local pastor or rabbi, he was an atheist. The name of God was tremendously important for him because it was one of the ways that we could name the unconditional, the undeconstructible."

He indeed hints respectfully at his own lineage as a talmudist in the ending passage of Writing and Difference, where he closes with a quotation attributed to a rabbi named Derrisa. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:32 AM by Patrick Belton  

NERD CORNER: Paypal crashes. It makes the news on BBC. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:14 AM by Patrick Belton  

RUSSOPHILE CORNER: Michele Berdy really likes Russian men. And, from the sounds of it, one suspects vice versa:

I’m not the first to recognize that American men have problems talking about—admitting, recognizing, naming, revealing, discussing or even acknowledging—their feelings, or, God forbid, their needs.... Instead they play sports, which allow them to work through stress, anger, confusion, fear and other taboo emotions on the playing field. Or anyway I think that’s what they’re doing out there, rolling around on muddy football fields on Sunday afternoons.

Oh, what they could learn from their Russian brethren! Russian men do not suffer from bottled-up emotions. In fact, they are one of the least emotionally bottled-up populations on the face of the earth. With the help of the bottle—say, four or five liters of 80 proof vodka—they sit with their friends (three being the magical number of drinking buddies), pour down the liquor, and let it all out: all their fears, all their sins, all their doubts and worries and needs. About 3:00 a.m. one usually asks the others, “Do you respect me?” and the others reply, with the solemnity of a military oath, “Of course, old man, of course.”

I have to admit that I didn’t get the point of this for many years; it seemed like one of those quaint but opaque mysteries of the Russian soul that we foreigners can never quite penetrate. But now I do: it’s the confessional, it’s the shrink’s couch, it’s a way of getting all those taboo emotions off their chests: Absolut absolution.

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# Posted 4:18 PM by David Adesnik  

TNR & SLATE SLAM KERRY'S INCOMPETENCE: Noam Scheiber can't figure out -- and neither can I -- why the Kerry campaign keeps trying to shift the debate to domestic issues every time the momentum starts going its way.

While it's true that domestic issues favor the Democrats, this election is about national security. Period. Doesn't Kerry remember what happened in 2002 when the Democrats emphasized domestic politics and ran away from national security?

In addition to focusing on the wrong issues, Kerry also seems to suffer from a Dukakis-like inability to hit Bush hard even when the President sets himself up for a knockout punch. Will Saletan takes a closer look at last Friday's debate and shows just how many major openings Kerry failed to take advantage of.

In contrast, Saletan says, Edwards knows exactly how to go on the offensive instead of getting tangled up in thicket of nuances:

Halfway through the debate, a questioner asked Kerry why he had picked a running mate who "has made millions of dollars successfully suing medical professionals." Here's how Edwards began his answer to a similar question Tuesday: "I'm proud of the work I did on behalf of kids and families against big insurance companies, big drug companies, and big HMOs." Here's how Kerry answered tonight: "John Edwards is the author of the Patients' Bill of Rights. He wanted to give people rights. John Edwards and I support tort reform." See the difference? Edwards reframes the question right away, goes on the offensive, and talks about people. Kerry accepts the way the question is framed, plays defense, and talks about legislation.

In his first months as a candidate, Kerry insisted repeatedly that he had learned the lessons of 1988 and that he would respond to Republican attacks with overwhelming force. I just don't understand why Kerry has failed to take his own advice on this critical point.

But perhaps the Democrats shouldn't be all their surprised by the failures of their candidate. Instead of facing a tough challenge in the primaries that might have prepared him to go one-on-one with Bush, Kerry inherited the nomination in the aftermath of Dean's sudden collapse.

Looking for a safe harbor after Dean's collapse and hoping to avoid a divisive intra-party conflict, Democratic primary rallied around Kerry before he ever had to face a serious test of his ability as a candidate. A bolder electorate inspired by bolder leadership might have taken a risk and chosen Edwards as their candidate, a decision that looks more and more attractive in hindsight (and which some of us supported at the time).

Yet why would the kind of committed Democrat that votes in the primaries prefer a Southern moderate with minimal experience to a Northern liberal who had proven his loyalty to the party time and again throughout his twenty years in the Senate?

Ironically, the front-loaded primary schedule that facilitated Kerry's rise was designed to strengthen the eventual Democratic candidate by protecting him from internal challenges. Perhaps this time around the Democrats will learn their lesson.
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# Posted 2:09 AM by David Adesnik  

FACTCHECKING THEIR A**ES: Kevin Drum reviews the media's efforts to document Bush and Kerry's lies during their second debate. Kevin has also put up a comprehensive chart that lists each candidates' misleading statements.

In addition, the chart assigns a numerical score to each statement, based on just how wrong it is, how intentional the deception was and how significant the issue is in this campaign. Kevin's final score is 118 dishonesty points for Bush and 60 dishonesty points for Kerry.

On a related note, OxBlog apologizes to Kevin for suggesting that his lackadaisical live-blogging of the first presidential debate reflected a lack of interest in the task. Had I read his blog more closely, I would've known that Kevin was having server problems at the time.
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# Posted 1:46 AM by David Adesnik  

DASCHLE'S FLIP-FLOPS: Writing in the National Review, South Dakotan blogger and history prof Jon Lauck describes Tom Daschle's record of spine-bending ideological acrobatics. Compared to Daschle, Kerry seems positively Bushian.
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# Posted 1:35 AM by David Adesnik  

WOULDA, COULDA, SHOULDA: Peter Beinart argues that the Bush administration missed a very clear opportunity to bring Russian and Indian peacekeepers into Iraq in the spring of 2003 -- and that Kerry would've known better.

Beinart doesn't ask whether such Russian and Indian peacekeeprs -- probably around 17,000 in all -- would actually have done much to improve the situation on the ground in Iraq. Nor does Beinart ask whether Russia's apalling brutality in Chechnya suggests that inviting the Russians into Iraq might've been a very, very bad idea.
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# Posted 1:27 AM by David Adesnik  

CHENEY SLIGHTS HIS ISRAELI FRIENDS: Why is the VP publicly taking credit for stopping Hamas?
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# Posted 1:16 AM by Patrick Belton  

THEY CAN'T EVEN BRING THEMSELVES TO SAY THE WORD WATCH: Thus New York Times, in a piece this morning on Bush and the Catholic vote: 'executive vice president of the Federalist Society, a conservadakirtive legal group' (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:12 AM by David Adesnik  

YOU DON'T SAY! The Village Voice reports that Chinese, Russian (and French) corporations' heavy investments in Sudanese oil may have something to do with the Security Council's embarrassingly slow efforts to confront genocide in Sudan.

Are such accusations any more accurate than the widespread belief that the United States invaded Iraq in order to get at its oil? I don't know. I'm usually suspicious of anyone who says that economic interests drive foreign policy.

My sense is that China and Russia oppose intervention in Sudan because their own national interest (and flagrant violation of their citizens' human rights) compels them to defend the notion that national sovereignty is inviolable.
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# Posted 11:56 PM by David Adesnik  

2+2=PARANOIA? Under the heading "Scare Tactics Work", I recently read in the WaPo that:

Less than one month after Kerry threw out the suggestion that Bush might reinstate the military draft, a new poll shows nearly half of younger voters swallowed the Democratic nominee's bait, hook, line and sinker.

The University of Pennsylvania's National Annenberg Election survey found about 50 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds believe Bush will bring back the compulsory draft. It also found this group is often clueless about the candidate's views. "Young voters are much more misinformed about the presidential candidates' positions on the draft than the population in general," said Kate Kenski, a senior analyst for the group. Bush has repeatedly denied he would reinstitute the draft.

It turns out that this sort of ignorance is no accident. The LA Times reports that Rock The Vote, an officially non-partisan organization supported by MTV, recently

Sent fake draft cards to nearly 640,000 e-mail addresses.

"You've been drafted" was the subject line of the message sent by Rock the Vote. The message contained an image of a draft card addressed to the recipient and warned, "real cards may be in the mail soon if the situation doesn't improve."...

Rock the Vote political director Hans Riemer said the group was trying to inform its members about the limits of U.S. military forces, not persuade them to vote for a particular candidate.

"It would be crazy if young people went to the polls and didn't factor this into their votes, however they come down on it. It's very real," said Riemer. "We're one major military conflict away from the draft. I don't see why candidates get to talk about war all day long and we can't talk about a draft."...

Last week, House Republicans sought to dispel suggestions that the war in Iraq could lead to a new draft by hastily bringing the idea to a vote and defeating it in a 402-2 vote.

I met Hans during the GOP convention. My sense is that he really believes what he's saying and that he has no idea how liberal and partisan his non-partisan activism really is.
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# Posted 11:42 PM by David Adesnik  

NOBEL PRIZE FOR TINFOIL HAT? Reader MM points to Ms. Maathai's bizarre comments, recorded in this AFP dispatch:

Some say that AIDS came from the monkeys, and I doubt that because we have been living with monkeys (since) time immemorial, others say it was a curse from God, but I say it cannot be that...

"It's true that there are some people who create agents to wipe out other people. If there were no such people, we could have not have invaded Iraq," she said.

"We invaded Iraq because we believed that Saddam Hussein had made, or was in the process of creating agents of biological warfare," said Maathai.

"In fact it (the HIV virus) is created by a scientist for biological warfare," she added.

I guess there are two ways you can look at this. If you're conservative, it serves as a useful reminder that Nobel Peace Prize winners are often out of touch with reality. If you're liberal, it demonstrates that only someone thoroughly out of touch with reality could've supported the invasion of Iraq.
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# Posted 11:39 PM by David Adesnik  

'STROS WIN! 'STROS WIN! Chafetz delirious.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:16 PM by Patrick Belton  

BEST PARTISAN DEMOCRATIC APPEAL INVOLVING A CARTOON AND A YIDDISH ACCENTED GRANDMOTHER: here. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:09 PM by Patrick Belton  

INTO THE ARAB MIND: Retired Col. Norvell De Atkine, who teaches at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School and is an 'incurable romantic' about the region in which he served during tours in Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt, in this issue of Middle East Quarterly corrects some of the more misguided factual errors in Seymour Hersh's New Yorker piece 'The Gray Zone' about the book The Arab Mind, by the cultural anthropologist Raphael Patai, and its rather less sinister role in Army education about the Middle East than Hersh imagined. De Atkine also presents his own thoughtful, nuanced exposition of the psychology of the Arab world, its potentialities, and his reflections as an area officer traversing the semipermeable membrance separating it from the West. He is, in the end, touchingly an optimist: in a concluding sentence worthy of T. E. Lawrence, he writes 'Ultimately, the Arabs, who are an immensely determined and adaptable people, will produce leadership capable of freeing them from ideological and political bondage, and this will allow them to achieve their rightful place in the world.' (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:48 AM by Patrick Belton  

OUT OF THE MAILBAG: You wrote in, and in droves, with your own favourite funny stupid national anthem tricks. Here are just three selections:

On the subject of state songs, you should be aware of that of Maryland, my favorite, by far.  You can find it here. Don't stop reading before you get to the last verse.   - Aaron Gurwitz (friend, incidentally, of OxParents Prof. Adesnik and Rabbi Hauptman) In re: 'It was adopted as the State song of Maryland in 1939 and remains so today, possibly because, as Richard Marius points out in The Columbia Book of Civil War Poetry, it has had little competition.'

Was rather surprised you didn't mention the Japanese. ed.: Duly remedied It's a lovely song with a somewhat mournful melody, glorifying the reign of the emperor (may you reign for 8000 yrs, etc.) Does he get time off for good behaviour? Some people think it sounds kind of evil. Very different, in any event, from the majority of national anthems. - Adrian Jensen, Columbia

You may already know this, but as far as outdated state songs go, Texas had a strong claim until recently.  From 1959 to 1993, we persisted in claiming, every time we sang "Texas, Our Texas," to be the "largest and grandest" state -- pointedly ignoring that other large upstart with oil so recently admitted to the Union.  (I remember being sentenced by my seventh grade Texas History teacher to stand in the corner for a half an hour back in, oh, about 1970 or so for arguing that I shouldn't have to sing a song that contained such an obvious lie.)  By act of the Texas Legislature in 1993, however, the song lyrics were amended to "boldest and grandest," which certainly puts those mellow Alaskans back in their place!  (Rumor was that the Legislature was trying to work in something about "Big Hair," but couldn't get the rhythm to work.) Plus, we have our own flag pledge. Best regards, Beldar

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# Posted 6:28 AM by Patrick Belton  

ANDREA GRIMES, a senior journalism student at NYU and shameless anglophile, is on assignment, blogging about the British reaction to the US elections. Her prose is sharp, and bears situating in the tradition of one of my favourite writers, who also wrote his reflections as an American intellectual in England. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:47 PM by David Adesnik  

UNKNOWN HEROES: Congratulation to Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize. I never heard of her until today, but she seems to be a truly remarkable women who has made a tremendous contribution to the growth of human rights, democracy, and environmental protection in her native Kenya.

One passage in the WaPo article about Maathai struck me as unusual, however. Correspondent Emily Wax writes that:

The tall and velvet-voiced Maathai joins past laureates who include former president Jimmy Carter, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Martin Luther King Jr.

Wax might also have written that:

The tall and velvet-voiced Maathai joins past laureates who include amoral egomaniac Henry Kissinger, incompetent terrorist Yasser Arafat and imaginative liar Rigoberta Menchu.

No disrespect is meant toward Ms. Maathai, yet is important to remember that the favor of the international community is a capricious thing. Thus, we should do our best to remember that thousands and thousands of heroic activists who struggle for freedom will never win a Nobel Prize, thus entitling them to the protection that it affords.

Until just a few days ago, Wangari Maathai was one of those activists. Had she been imprisoned or murdered -- she was beaten and arrested in 1999 -- we might never have known.

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# Posted 10:55 PM by David Adesnik  

AFGHANISTAN VOTES: During a pit stop on the way home from Washington, I saw this morning's top headline in the Post: Afghan Election Disputed. I thought to myself, "Typical. Just typical. And it was probably our fault, too."

When I got home, I saw the next headline up on the WaPo website: Afghan Election Concerns Subside. As of right now -- 10:55 PM on Sunday -- the abbreviated headline on the WaPo homepage reads: "Concerns Subside on Historic Afghan Election".

I guess the Post isn't all that worried about corruption anymore, otherwise it wouldn't make much sense to call the elections historic. For the moment, the evidence of election-tampering seems thin. Even the initial WaPo article on the subject contained nothing more than allegations by losing candidates.

Yet I have heard quite often that the number of registered voters in Afghanistan is greater than the number of eligible ones. So I guess the story isn't over yet.

But whatever the outcome, one story will remain: the massive turnout of Afghan voters. As is so often the case when a long-suffering nation is finally given the chance to vote, the public response has been overwhelming.

The people of Afghanistan have affirmed that even in those nations with no history of democratic rule, there is still a profound human desire to have a voice in the halls of government.

UPDATE: Robert and Glenn have both posted solid election round-ups.

UPDATE: AS writes in that:

The number of registered voters exceeded AN ESTIMATE of eligible voters. But, in reality, nobody has a clue how many eligible voters there are in Afghanistan. There hasn't been a census, there are no birth certificates or ID cards, there is LITERALLY NOTHING to inform us as to how many eligible voters there are. Moreover, millions of refugees have returned to the country -- but, again, nobody knows how many.

So, some people guessed at a number of eligible voters, and the number of registrations exceeded that guess.

Good point.
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# Posted 6:44 AM by Patrick Belton  

DEATH OF A PHILOSOPHER: We may not have always agreed with what he had to say, but as a prominent man of letters and thought who did much to engage the world of intellectual introspection with the society around him, we will mourn the passing of Derrida.

Several introductions to what indeed it was that he had to say are here, here, and here. By way of requiem, we include one exchange Derrida had a year ago with several filmmakers who were producing a documentary about his life and contribution to contemporary thought. At one point, wandering through his library, one of the filmmakers asked Derrida, 'Have you read all the books in here?'

'No,' he replied, 'only four of them. But I read those very, very carefully.' (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:02 AM by Patrick Belton  

SING A NEW SONG: National anthems are by far a fairly execrable lot. China's March of the Volunteers and Ireland's Soldier's Song are melodically unfortunate, and in those instances where the tune is halfway worthwhile, the wounded, martial, defensive nationalism of (royalist) Rouget de Lisle's La Marseillaise is typical of the genre (e.g., 'Entendez-vous, dans la compagnes. / Mugir ces farouches soldats / Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras / Egorger vos fils, vos compagnes', a.k.a., 'Do you hear in the countryside / the roar of these savage soldiers? / They come right into our arms / to cut the throats of your sons, your country.' They get worse: see Mexico's '¡Guerra, guerra! Los patrios pendones / En las olas de sangre empapad. ... Antes, patria, que inermes tus hijos / Bajo el yugo su cuello dobleguen, / Tus campiñas con sangre se rieguen, / Sobre sangre se estampe su pie,' a.k.a., 'War, war! The patriotic banners saturate in waves of blood.... May your countryside be watered with blood, / On blood their feet trample.') A very bloody lot, these songs.

There are better exemplars in the canon. Italy's actually sounds like a feisty Neapolitan number, and India and Pakistan have both done fairly well with theirs. For its part, America, I have always felt, would do much better with the stirring simplicity of 'God Bless America', echoing the godly simplicity of both the frontier and the first Puritan cities of New England, than the bombastic pyrotechnics of the current national anthem, with its melodic past as a drinking song, and its unfortunate susceptibility for mauling at the hands of minor-order pop stars clutching microphones at sporting games and political conventions.

I bring this up because I was just listening to Haydn's string quartet in C, Op. 76, No. 3, first performed in 1797 and most commonly known to all except Haydn scholars as the Deutschlandlied. In the more liberal spirit of 1848, Deutschland was not 'uber alles' with regard to, say, the remainder of Europe and lesser races of humanity to Germans, but rather to, say, Bavaria or Brandenburg in the loyalties of citizens of a country seeking unification. Also, while most second verses are embarrassing, q.v. those of God Save the Queen and the Star Spangled Banner, the Deutschlandlied's is rather nice - invoking Deutsche Frauen, Deutscher Wein und deutscher Sang - while Deutchland uber alles may have to be consigned with its unfortunate associations to the symbolic dustheap of history, who could object to German women, German wine, and German song? Read against the European experience, it seems that from the perspective of her neighbours, keeping the Germans pacifically drunken, copulating and singing seems, by and large, A Good Thing. One of the more poignant conversations in contemporary Germany is the extent to which these symbols of German national identity can, at some point, be separated from association with the horrors of Naziism, without disrespect for the memory of those horrors' victims. It's hard to become too worked up, as an interested observer, over the ultimate disposition of the name of the state of Brandenburg, but the Deutschlandlied is preeminently from an artistic standpoint not only worth saving, but justified of being elevated, in its original Age of Enlightenment spirit, to a model. The world could make do with more national anthems of Haydn string quartets, and several fewer evoking a readiness to discard the nation's youth against invaders. There is enough blood of youth spilt in the world as it is.

The second anthem which has been on my mind lately is Virginia's state song emeritus. For practical purposes, however Virginia has not at the moment got a state song, as the present one is generally regarded as unperformable at the moment - mostly because of its references to 'old massa', which clearly have got to go. Ditto, of course, for 'old darky' - the lyrics clearly require a rather massive scrub. But what's interesting to me, at least, is that no one has ever pointed out the extraordinary potential, from the standpoint of racial integration and recognising the contributions of Virginia's quite substantial black population to the state's history, in having a state anthem in the voice of a black Virginian, and furthermore written by a black Virginian, James Bland. It's usually, and quite justly, been criticised for nostalgic references to slavery, of which the principal reference is 'Massa and Missis have long gone before me, Soon we will meet on that bright and golden shore.' The question, though, is how much these references contaminate the entire song, and to what extent these can instead be excised and it can be made to about something else entirely - not nostalgia for segregation and slavery, but instead one of the few recognitions in America at the level of state symbolism of the experience of the African-American people who live there. For my part, I would be rather saddened to see the nation's canon of symbols stripped of one of its few examples of the latter. Attempts to come up with a bland, saccharine cookie-cutter anthem have, for their part, by and large been predictably execrable; witness, for a particularly apropos example, sausage maven Jimmy Dean's attempt to bribe official status for his own forgettable anthem 'Virginia'. My impression, however, is that symbolic lines are probably far too firmly drawn in the American south, and aligned with emotionally laden positions (which are often quite reactionary - see, of course, debates over other much more discardable symbols in other states in that region), for any sort of creative updating of a tradition to make it cohere with modern aspirations while engaging the history of the region.

So there, that's the liberal case for 'Deutschland Uber Alles' and 'Carry Me Back to Old Virginny'. I think I'll unplug my computer before I can get myself into any more trouble today. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion