Predictions

Dean Barnett (Hugh Hewitt, Jr.) on Oct. 26:

SO, IT’S PREDICTION TIME. The House is going to be really close. I’m with Barone. Either we’ll hang on by a seat or two or we’ll lose by a seat or two. Either way, the Republicans will have what we once used to call a working majority – there will be enough mainstream Democrats that we won’t have to worry about two years of impeachment and other Conyers-inspired insanity.

But it’s in the Senate where I’m going to go out on a limb. All the close races? The ones in Virginia, Montana, Tennessee, Ohio, New Jersey, Maryland, and Missouri? We’re going to run the table except for one. I bet Ohio’s where we go down. In Pennsylvania or Michigan, either the brave Santorum or the increasingly impressive Bouchard will pull off the major upset. And in Rhode Island, heads they win, tails we lose. I personally hope the voters return Lincoln Chafee to private life where he’ll no doubt make a profound contribution to society as an eccentric philatelist or something along those lines.

And more recently: "Remember when I said I would let you know when it's time to panic? Consider yourself duly notified."

The Bastards Are Thrown Out . . .

And I approve of this message.

Trail of Tears

Will the Sun ever shine on K-Lo again? "Senator Santorum has graciously conceded. Reminding people of that Gathering Storm we have to face without or without him in the Senate. Says he's proud he didn't run on pork, but the stakes of this war we're in."

Open Thread

Rod Dreher has an open thread up for voting discussion. I supported investigations and gridlock.

You Decide

Mark Rose: "The conservative ideology is inherently optimistic and hopeful. This means conservatives have no reason not to be optimistic and hopeful. Our message, after all, is a winning message: permanent tax cuts, no amnesty for illegals, no same-sex marriage, no abortion-on-demand, and finish the war in Iraq."

Russell Kirk: "Perhaps it would be well, most of the time, to use this word 'conservative' as an adjective chiefly. For there exists no Model Conservative, and conservatism is the negation of ideology: it is a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the civil social order."

And wouldn't an "optimist" conclude that anybody can assimilate and become an American, so their is no reason to control immigration?

"Welcome"

A somewhat self-involved Andrew Sullivan "welcomes" the American Conservative to the opposition to the Bush administration and the Republican Congress because of their GOP Must Go editorial. Sullivan writes, "Virtually the entire conservative movement is now disowning this administration and this Congress. I welcome every single one."

That is nonsense of course, any number of rightwingers are shilling for a Republican victory. As for TAC, is Sullivan would study that publication's archives he would see that it was attacking the Bush administration and opposing the Iraq war from day one -- back when Sullivan was one of its biggest cheerleaders.

Issues

Voters, when you go to the polls tomorrow, don't forget to focus on the real issues:

Osama bin Kerry's insult of the troops

The suspicious timing of the Foley story.

The Liberal Media's failure to report the good news in Iraq.

Keep these in mind and you won't go wrong.

All in the Timing

Glenn Reynolds: "I QUESTION THE TIMING: 'The unemployment rate dropped to a five-year low of 4.4 percent in October as employers added 92,000 new jobs flashing a picture of a strong labor market as the midterm elections draw near.'"

Glenn Reynolds: "On the other hand, this December Vanity Fair article -- conveniently made available just before the election -- suggests that the issue isn't so much Rumsfeld as President Bush, though the critics, especially Ken Adelman, get in plenty of swipes at Rumsfeld, too." (emphasis added)

mimeographed cliches

Here is my only prediction for this election season: Ten years from now, the desiccated remnant of the Republican-oriented right now congregating at National Review, FreeRepublic and Townhall; will subsist on to quote William F. Buckley, "mimeographed cliches describing The Plot to Destroy America" and will blame everything -- Iraq, the huge debt and the failure of the Bush administration on Nancy Pelosi, the New York Times and Pat Buchanan.

Rod Dreher is Bad, Amen!

A couple of weeks ago, Rod Dreher announced that he left the Roman Catholic for the Orthodox Church, in a post about the length of the Old Testament. I didn't have anything to say about it because I don't generally comment on religious matters.

But now I have my own announcement. I have joined the Church of Rod Dreher Is Bad. Let me tell you a little bit about it. Our spiritual leader is Bubba of The Contra-Crunchy Conservative (Jonah Goldberg is a Bishop). Our central tenet is that Rod Dreher is Bad. We don't like him. We don't like his 13 year old Mercedes. We don't like the New Testament length of the subtitle of the hardcover version of his book, yet we don't approve of the shortened version on the paperback. We don't care for that Larison guy either, he thinks that he is so smart. The worst thing that Dreher does is fail to excuse the arrogance and incompetence and stupidity of Republican rule of the last six years. How dare he notice what a disaster the Iraq war has been! How dare he not attempt to scare his readers by screaming "Pelosi!, Pelosi!, Pelosi!"

The best thing about our Church is that it doesn't have all of those stuffy rules and Commandments. In fact, we are willing to excuse and forgive any failing and swallow any amount of crap -- so long as you are a Republican politician.

You can't believe the peace this gives me. I now have an answer for everything. You say that the Republicans deserve to lose, I say Rod Dreher is Bad. You say that the war in Iraq is actually harming our national security, I say Rod Dreher is Bad. You say that conservatives shouldn't let America become a gigantic WalMacStarMartBucks, I say Rod Dreher is Bad. Life is so simple, yet so meaningful now.

Regrets

How much self respect will the folks at NRO trade away to keep Dennis Hastert in power and protect the Bush administration from being investigated? Quite a bit it seems. One hopes that some of them will wake up next Wednesday with a political hangover and some regrets.

But at the moment, Jim Geraghty is asking in a rather hysterical fashion, "I'm sorry, did the New York Times just put on the front page that IRAQ HAD A NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM AND WAS PLOTTING TO BUILD AN ATOMIC BOMB? He continues:

What? Wait a minute. The entire mantra of the war critics has been "no WMDs, no WMDs, no threat, no threat", for the past three years solid. Now we're being told that the Bush administration erred by making public information that could help any nation build an atomic bomb.

Let's go back and clarify: IRAQ HAD NUCLEAR WEAPONS PLANS SO ADVANCED AND DETAILED THAT ANY COUNTRY COULD HAVE USED THEM.

I think the Times editors are counting on this being spun as a "Boy, did Bush screw up" meme; the problem is, to do it, they have to knock down the "there was no threat in Iraq" meme, once and for all. Because obviously, Saddam could have sold this information to anybody, any other state, or any well-funded terrorist group that had publicly pledged to kill millions of Americans and had expressed interest in nuclear arms. You know, like, oh . . . al-Qaeda.

. . .

The antiwar crowd is going to have to argue that the information somehow wasn't dangerous in the hands of Saddam Hussein, but was dangerous posted on the Internet. It doesn't work. It can't be both no threat to America and yet also somehow a threat to America once it's in the hands of Iran. Game, set, and match.

Well, not exactly. It is clear to a relatively sane person that the Times article is refering to the Iraq nuclear program prior to the 1991 Gulf War:

. . .

But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq's secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.
. . .
With the public increasingly skeptical about the rationale and conduct of the war, the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees argued that wide analysis and translation of the documents -- most of them in Arabic -- would reinvigorate the search for clues that Mr. Hussein had resumed his unconventional arms programs in the years before the invasion. American search teams never found such evidence.

. . .
Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq had abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein's scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.
. . .

A senior American intelligence official who deals routinely with atomic issues said the documents showed "where the Iraqis failed and how to get around the failures." The documents, he added, could perhaps help Iran or other nations making a serious effort to develop nuclear arms, but probably not terrorists or poorly equipped states. The official, who requested anonymity because of his agency's rules against public comment, called the papers "a road map that helps you get from point A to point B, but only if you already have a car."

. . .
In September, the Web site began posting the nuclear documents, and some soon raised concerns. On Sept. 12, it posted a document it called "Progress of Iraqi nuclear program circa 1995." That description is potentially misleading since the research occurred years earlier. . . (emphasis added)

The fact that Iraq had documents on how to build nuclear weapons from their program that was ended in 1991 doesn't come close to undermining the antiwar case -- a big part of which is that the U.S. would end up in an Iraqi quagmire (or sandstorm, if you prefer). He says that Saddam could have given this stuff to Osama but is oblivious to the fact that he had more than a decade to do so, but didn't and he must have missed the quote saying that it wouldn't have helped terrorists or poorly equipped states.

"Oakleaf" at Polipundit uses the same article to conclude that "in 2002 Saddam Hussein's 'scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.'" Not exactly, "Oakleaf." Even Geraghty noted that it takes actual stuff to make a nuclear weapon, not just paperwork.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds pours some cold water on the hysteria. "udging from some of the delighted emails I'm getting, I need to warn people not to get too carried away -- this doesn't say that Saddam would have had a bomb in 2004."

More Raving

More Kerry Raving in NRO's Corner, this time from Andrew McCarthy:

National Democrats, including Kerry as late as two days ago, and the national media, including the White House press corps as late as yesterday, first misconstrued Rush's remarks (and ignored the lengthy, generally unassailable argument from which they were drawn -- to wit, that even those for whom we have sympathy cannot expect immunity from criticism when they enter the public arena); then they demanded an apology to keep the story alive; then they misrepresented the apology that came (when Fox explained that he had OVER-medicated, Rush apologized for suggesting he had under-medicated or been acting, but did not retract any of the original, valid criticism); and then -- once Kerry got himself in hot water -- they switched gears and claimed the apology they had been gleefully chirping about for several days had not actually happened, such that Kerry should now not have to apologize unless Rush apologized.

I have what the heck he is talking about. Who is saying that Kerry shouldn't apologize unless "Rush" does? He doesn't give any specific examples -- much less links -- of who is saying the things he says that they are saying.

Raving Idiots

John Derbyshire, who seems to be the only cornerite who hasn't become a raving idiot over the elections, threw a little cold water on the Kerry "insult" hysteria overcoming the right.

He may regard them with contempt (my personal impression is that JK regards most of the human race with contempt); he may despise them; he may think they're dumb crackers; but T-H-A-T-'-S N-O-T W-H-A-T H-E S-A-I-D.

The best responses are from Ramesh Ponnuru and K.J. Lopez who both seem to be saying that since they can misinterpret Kerry's remarks, that's what they will do.

I have a feeling that one day soon, Derb is going to wake up and wonder why he is associating himself with such boobs, or NR will deem him to be yet another Unpatriotic Conservative. Larison has more.

UPDATE: Ramesh Ponnuru takes me to task, and I probably did overinterpret his words. He did note that Republicans would continue to make a stink about what Kerry didn't say and didn't mean:

Kerry may have meant to make an anti-Bush crack--he probably did, even--but the plainest reading of what came out of his mouth was an anti-troops crack. So he should have said that he botched the line and never meant to insult the troops. That wouldn't have ended the story, since it's too good for Republican partisans to let go, but it would have caused it to die down considerably. As for John Derbyshire, he needs to learn to take criticism as well as he dishes it out. (emphasis added)

Meanwhile, the phony controversy continues in the Corner.

GOP Must Go

The American Conservative on the midterm election(via Daniel McCarthy:

The meaning of this election will be interpreted in one of two ways: the American people endorsed the Bush presidency or they did what they could to repudiate it. Such an interpretation will be simplistic, even unfairly so. Nevertheless, the fact that will matter is the raw number of Republicans and Democrats elected to the House and Senate.

It should surprise few readers that we think a vote that is seen--in America and the world at large--as a decisive "No" vote on the Bush presidency is the best outcome. We need not dwell on George W. Bush's failed effort to jam a poorly disguised amnesty for illegal aliens through Congress or the assaults on the Constitution carried out under the pretext of fighting terrorism or his administration's endorsement of torture. Faced on Sept. 11, 2001 with a great challenge, President Bush made little effort to understand who had attacked us and why--thus ignoring the prerequisite for crafting an effective response. He seemingly did not want to find out, and he had staffed his national-security team with people who either did not want to know or were committed to a prefabricated answer.

From the Ashes

"If a conservative order is indeed to return, we ought to know the tradition which is attached to it, so we may rebuild society; if it is not to be restored, still we ought to understand conservative ideas so that we may rake from the ashes what scorched fragments of civilization escape the conflagration of unchecked will and appetite." --Russell Kirk

Virginia is for Dullards?

Are Southerners, and more specifically Virginians, stupid? That's what Mark Finkelstein believes that Chris Matthews is saying:

All that was missing was the theme music from Deliverance. Not content to condemn George Allen for raising the issue of Jim Webb's racy writing, Chris Matthews decided on this evening's Hardball to slur the entire Commonwealth of Virginia south of the DC suburbs.

Interviewing senior Webb campaign advisor Steve Jarding [Chris did indicate that he had unsuccessfully tried to get an Allen representative on the show], Matthews had this to say:

"Not to take sides but they've had this material since the day Jim Webb announced, and they've chosen to use it now with the risk that it implies, because everybody in Northern Virginia, in this area of the country, reads books, they think."

Although I wouldn' characterize it as a "slur," Matthews is clearly implying that the transplanted members of the overclass who live in the vicinity of Washington, D.C. read more than the average Virginian. For what its worth, I assume he is wrong. Doubtless, these kind of people read books in college and buy more books today -- doorstop biographies of FDR, Lincoln and Churchill -- but actually read them? Yeah, right.

But it is Allen supporters who are clearly hoping that Virginians are so dumb as to be unable to tell fantasy from reality or fiction from nonfiction or Southeast Asia from the United States. I don't know if this slimy little episode will make a difference, but George Allen is clearly the loser. He has repeatedly made an an ass of himself and has now stooped to digging up dirty passages from his opponents writing. He may win another term in the Senate that he doesn't really want; but he will never, ever be president -- which he really, really wants.

Man of Macaca

James Webb should be feeling pretty good right now. A hamhanded attempt by the Allen campaign to destroy him by publicizing weird and dirty passages from his "fiction novels" seems to have had a positive effect on sales of Lost Soldiers and Fields of Fire.

Webb will either be a U.S. senator next year, or he will be positioned to write a bestselling Roman a clef about a creepy senator who sends his staff to the library to find the dirty passages in novels so he doesn't have to read a whole book all by himself.

Lurking . . .

I'm not sure who Mark Rose is referring to here. I don't hear many calls for "negotiate with terrorists." I do know of a president with lots of rightwing supporters who believes that we can plant democracy in the arid soil that produces this kind of rhetoric:

An 8-year-old girl said on Abu Dhabit television, "I hope Bush dies in flames, and I want to go to (then-Israeli Prime Minister) Ariel Sharon and kill him with a gun and stab him with a sword."
. . .
A lyric from an Iranian music video carries this line, "America is lurking for you, and will not give up until it destroys you completely. Rise up soon because the world is not safe from the hunter."

Shazam!

I see by Doug Bandow that Rick Santorum -- mild mannered senator by day, superhero by night -- is the only thing standing between America and a new race of Super Nazis:

Likening the times to the late 1930s as Nazi Germany was rising to power, Sen. Rick Santorum said last night that if he loses his re-election bid, it could set the stage for terrorism to become more of a threat than the Nazis ever were.

The Art of Knowing

Rod Dreher has a post up about Michael Polanyi: The Art of Knowing by Mark T. Mitchell. I have read a little of it and noticed that Isaiah Berlin with Polanyi: "These Hungarians are strange . . . here is a great scientist giving up the Nobel to write mediocre works of philosophy."

Mark Mitchell also notes that Polanyi allowed his subscription to National Review lapse in 1964. Presumably he anticipated the Goldberg-Lopez-Lowry Axis of Cretins in charge there now.

WikiNerds

I read about such types in recent articles from The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly, and then I was deleted by a Wikishutin. This guy, a Canadian math nerd has removed me from the list of contributing editors for Liberty magazine, although I clearly am. He also removed me as a "selected contributor" from the page for The American Conservative, which I also clearly am. He seems to have a lot of time on his hands.

Got War?

The Bush administration has shown an admirable commitment to developing new slogans to replace "stay the course." A wise move since the current "course" appears to be directly to an iceberg. To help out the cause I came up with a few replacements for the president and his media/blogosphere/talk radio followers to use:

99 & 44/100 per cent pure liberation.

"Shut up!" I explain.

Cut and win!

Show me the victory!

No war left behind.

Vietnam was worse.

Hewitt is still on board.

UPDATE: To answer a question from the comments, 99 & 44/100 refers to the purity of Ivory Soap. It also can refer to a Ronnie Milsap song.

Restraint

When we last heard from The American Spectator's Jed Babbin he was revealing the Putin, Hu, Pelosi conspiracy. This week his formula for victory in Iraq is to make war on Iraq and Syria and threaten the rest of the world with the same if they "sponsor Islamic fascist terrorism."

I guess for Babbin this qualifies as admirable restraint. I half expected him to advocate bombing Latvia with tubs of margarine and make war against Moon Men as a plan of victory in Iraq.

Near-Great

Day four of a week with Bill Kauffman at 2Blowhards:

Y'know what always got me? Those rankings of the presidents by historians. The Greats, Washington and Jefferson excepted, tend to be the warmakers: Lincoln. Wilson. FDR. Those responsible for the most unnatural deaths. The "near-greats" were those who gave warfare the old college try: Teddy Roosevelt. Even the wretched Truman. Those who sat in the White House while peace raged outside the door were average at best, though often below average or the dreaded "failure."

Stand By Your Man

Jay Nordlinger stands by his man in the face Jonathan Chait's(reg. required) ridicule. Nord still has more faith in Don Rumsfeld than in The New Republic and thinks that saying that war is a "dirty job" shows how direct and "uneuphemistic" the secdef is.

I prefer my take on Nordlinger's worshipful Rummy article in the Dec. 31, 2001 issue of National Review that The American Conservative published three years ago:

The cover was a low point for a once serious magazine, featuring a caricature of a smiling Rumsfeld mimicking a Betty Grable, come-hither pose. The article reported on Rumsfeld in a manner more appropriate to People magazine than to a respected intellectual journal. Nordlinger breathlessly revealed that Rumsfeld was a sex symbol (!) and a pop-culture icon (!!): "Reports have it that people gather round to watch Rumsfeld press conferences the way they do Oprah . . .Women confide that they have . . . well, un-defense-policy-like thoughts about the secretary of defense. . ."

"Bookshops"

Bryan Appleyard writes about the coming of print on demand technology and the demise of the "bookshop." I share his excitement at the prospect of POD but not his disdain for we in America call bookstores. Amazon, AbeBooks or a POD station in a Starbucks are great when you know what you are looking for; they aren't so good for finding what you aren't looking for, or for discovering what you didn't even know existed. In fact, AbeBooks is a network of stores like Knoxville's Book Eddy.

Along the way he beats a dead horse that should have been buried long ago -- the impending demise of the midlist:

Publishers have been forced to take fewer risks. Their cheap-to-run backlists can survive on small sales, and the mass market will look after itself. But the middle element in the equation -- consisting of the new, the risky, the strange, the difficult, the ambitious, the non-generic, everything, in fact, one values -- has been squeezed out. As publishers repeatedly say, the number of copies of a book that now have to be sold to justify the upfront costs is getting higher and higher. New books that aren't The Wag Diet by Jordan Beckham don't stand a chance.

I have heard this many times and while it may be true in England, I doubt it is in the U.S. Benjamin Schwarz took a swing at this myth a few years back in the Atlantic when Ann Godoff was fired from Random House. "It is simply untrue that the number of worthwhile titles published has diminished with the consolidation of publishing houses, the popularity of the Oprah and Today Show Book Clubs, and the proliferation of such chain bookstores as Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Books-A-Million." Along the way, Schwarz notes that a lot of prestige titles are crap and still get heaps of undeserved praise and publicity.

I can't judge how the industry compares to thirty or fifty years ago, but I see plenty of excellent non-blockbuster titles such as Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette from Bill Kauffman and The Life You Save May Be Your Own by Paul Elie (admittedly helped by being an editor at FSG).

Neutral

Alexander McClure at Whizbang Politics has advice for the president and the Republicans. "The President has to take the initiative on Iraq. Making it seem that we are not stuck in netural and bound to a stay-the-course strategy is necessary." Good idea. The only problem is that we are stuck in neutral and are bound to a stay-the-course strategy.

More deep thoughts in the comments from Nehemiah:

Also, the "teach the Republicans a lesson" crowd need to have their own history lesson.

Did getting a Stalin teach the Russians a lesson? They didn't afterward elect a conservative -- they kept getting more communists.

Stalin, . . . Nancy Pelosi, . . . whatever.

You Said It, K-Lo!

Regular readers of NRO's the Corner know that Katheryn Lopez is right in saying that "the name of Rick Santorum brings out some of the most idiotic reactions in people." And how.

Tony the Disgusting Tiger

Tony Blankley completes a rapid descent from a competent Rightwing hack to a nauseating wierdo:

Apparently, these anticipated conservative non-voters are annoyed with Republican imperfection. They are disheartened, disappointed, disillusioned, distempered, and dismal -- and thus plan to dis the party that better advances conservative principles in government.

They appear to have fallen victim to the false syllogism: 1) Something must be done; 2) not voting is something; therefore, 3) I will not vote. Of course the fallacy of the syllogism is that the second category could be anything. For example, No. 2 could as well read "eating dog excrement is something."

Not only is Blankley unnecessasarily disgusting, his reasoning is faulty. His syllogism should begin with the proposition that undivided Republican rule has been a disaster. From there it is hard to come to any conclusions involving eating dog poop, another Republican congress or any other sickening prospects.

Daniel Larison read Blankley (hopefully not while eating) and responds to his whining at the thought of congressional oversight of the Bush administration:

Egads, the President might be investigated! He might even be held accountable for his violations of the Constitution! Not that! Not the Glorious Leader! Minions, protect your Leader! I command you! Of course, it is hard to “scandalise” an already scandalously bad and abusive administration. It is impossible to overestimate just how disgusted some people on the right are with Mr. Bush, which makes framing the appeal to vote in terms of protecting Mr. Bush all the more hilarious. This is supposed to persuade the disaffected and the angry? Call them stupid and remind them of one of the reasons why they are angry? If this is the best argument the GOP has (and it has been their main argument for the entire year), they not only deserve to lose but deserve to get their heads handed to them for the arrogance and self-importance the argument reveals.

Go Devils!

It's Kauffman week at 2Blowhards, with an interview here and here. Here's a brief sample:

My English forbears came to God's country on neither the Mayflower nor a Mayflower moving van. They were farmers who settled around Churchville in the dim mists of time. (Speaking of Churchville -- I digress the way other men blink -- my wife, the lovely and long-suffering Lucine, was roped into coaching the Batavia High basketball cheerleaders a few years ago. BHS is the Blue Devils, a colorless French-derived militaristic nickname that we and 1,200 other schools ought to drop tootsweet. When BHS played the Churchville-Chili Saints, Lucine's girls chanted "Go Devils! Beat the Saints!" A chill ran down my superstitious Catholic back.)

Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!

Jed Babbin looks to be about ready for the lollipop factory. Today's column is a series of random sentences leading up to the final paragraph:

It's a very good thing that Osama bin Laden isn't as smart as he thinks he is. If he were, he'd send one of those European-looking al-Q members to Havana to kill Castro. With Fidel dead and the assassin suitably shot to pieces, the world would be in an instant uproar, and we'd see a media feeding frenzy in Turtle Bay that would make the UN look like the courthouse in the Michael Jackson trial. America would be blamed and Chavez (Fidel's most ardent admirer and greatest supporter since Brezhnev) would go to Havana personally to supervise the restoration of the Castro regime. The Cuban-American community would be up in arms -- literally -- and President Bush would be caught in the middle. And what a fine mess that would be. Like I said, it's a good thing OBL isn't that smart. But both Bad Vlad Putin and his funny-named sidekick, Hu Jintao, are.

So there you have it -- the leaders of Russia and China are going to assassinate Castro in order to tip the House to the Democrats.

Babbin is ready for the nice men in white lab coats.

Barbaric Yawps

Michael, of 2Blowhards on the Sage of Batavia:

None of Kauffman's books are straightforward affairs. You'd be frustrated if you turned to them for clearly-laid-out arguments or encyclopedia-style information. Instead, they're fullblown reading experiences: part history, part personal essay. They're also big, heraldic, all-over-the-place prose poems -- patchwork, Whitmanesque, "barbaric yawps" set to driving rock, country, and blues beats. They're florid and funky, perverse yet open, bristling with deeply-felt exhortations and digressions, and full of comic but heart-busting praise-songs. To the extent that I'd want to categorize his work at all, I'd put it on the same rhapsodic / eccentric, full-of-contradictions-but-that's-the-point-dammit shelf as Edward Abbey, Henry David Thoreau, and H.L. Mencken.

Issues

Glenn Reynolds compiles a list of reasons for what appears to be a coming Republican debacle but he neglected to include the quagmire in Iraq until the updates from readers, thus revealing his belief that the Harriet Miers nomination did more damage to the Republicans than to the failed war that has dominated the headlines for more than three years now. He also doesn't mention the Bush administration's weak response to Hurricane Katrina.

Later, he also noted that Diana Irey is making an issue of Pork, one of Reynolds' pet issues, in her campaign against John Murtha. It does not appear to be working.

Investigations and Gridlock

Hugh Hewitt endorses a Democratic victory in the election, or that's what I assume when he says, that a Democratic majority means "endless investigations and gridlock." Doesn't that sound great?

Risky Scheme

The awful Bill Bennett dropped in at NRO's The Corner to exhort Republicans to the polls. He mentions judicial appointments and open borders (as if undivided Republican rule has done anything about that in the last six years) as reasons to keep the GOP in power and also states, "If you want Donald Rumsfeld hauled before Congress every week justifying the war rather than fighting it, stay home."

It occurrs to me that I would like to have Rumsfeld "hauled before Congress every week"(or so) to justify his management of the war. And what does Bennett think will happen -- that Iraq and Afghanistan will dissolved into chaos without Rumsfeld's constant attention? That's a risk I am willing to take.

Crunchy Cons . . .

Crunchy Cons will soon be out in paperback with its new subtitle. In a related matter, look for hysterical pregnancies followed by multiple cow births coming from this crowd.

Bush=Higher Taxes

Doesn't Mark Rose know that somebody is going to have to pay for the wars we are fighting, Medicare Part D, No Child Left Behind and all the other ways that the Republicans have spent money they don't have for the last six years even Nancy Pelosi doesn't get everything on her wish list.

Government of Laws

More Sam: "No one man and no one executive department should have the absolute power to order government spying on how people use their right of free speech. This is what we mean by a government of laws and not of men."

Paleo Pickup Lines

Daniel Larison: "Larison: 'Did I mention that I opposed the bombing of Kosovo and predicted that it would lead to disaster?' Young woman: 'Oh, really? That is interesting! Tell me more!' What? You don’t think that happened?"

That's an excellent line but don't forget these:

"Would you like to come up and see my etchings of Chesterton?"

"You are as pretty as the cover of Chronicles."

"Here with a loaf of bread beneath the bough, a flask of wine, I'll Take My Stand -- and thou . . ."

The Wisdom of Sam Ervin

"Ours is not a country in which government can become a tyranny against the will of the people. But tyranny can come just as surely if the people are willing to deliver over their freedom in search for safety." -- Sen. Sam Ervin (D. NC).

Fatal Attraction

Bubba, the blogger who has the unhealthy obsession with Crunchy Cons author Rod Dreher, is so determined to insult his archnemesis that he doesn't mind hitting a couple of innocent bystanders -- myself and Daniel Larison -- in the process. He accuses Larison of "idiocy" but doesn't explain why he is wrong. Bubba is upset at the way we all noticed how Rush Limbaugh imputed to Liberalism what is in fact the central tenet of Conservatism -- the fallen nature of man. I learned the Cliff's Notes version of this reading National Review and old William F. Buckley books as an undergraduate two decades ago.

Bubba would do well to seek counseling to help over his Dreher-fixation and then learn what conservatives are supposed to believe before attempting to correct anyone else.

UPDATE: Things get even uglier in the comments. We are bad writers and Dreher is a showoff because he warns readers that the contents of a Time article isn't available on line and I'm not really sure how Caleb Steagall got involved but there is this:

The impression I get of Steagall et al is of a bunch of auto-didacts with inferiority complexes about not having a position in the academy. Considering the awful state of their prose is scary enough but imagining that they might actually speak this way is downright terrifying. The closest I can imagine is the renn-faire types with their "thees and thous."

People's Pottage

Here is something for all of you Old Right types -- the Americanist Library edition of Garet Garett's The People's Pottage.

Suspicious Minds

NRO's Mark Levin is on top of the real scandal involving Mark Foley -- the "suspicious timing" of the revelations of Foley's perverted emails and instant messages. This post for example:

Brian Ross and ABC News were too busy with Katrina and the anniversary of 9/11 to pursue the emails? Does this make sense to anybody? Maybe the Washington Times will call for Ross’s resignation. The timing of Ross’s story raises serious questions about the politicization of this matter.

Not being a conspiracy-addled rightwing nut, the notion that Brian Ross was working on Katrina and 9/11 anniversary stories during August and early September makes perfect sense. But maybe I am blind to the secret forces pulling the strings.

True Believers . . .

The most important question in American politics at the moment is this -- how many likely Republican voters are like the hard core Freepers and are willing to swallow any load crap from the Republican party and blame the Democrats for everything:

. . .

To: Taggart_D

It's possible Hastert is also a victim. Evidence indicates it is the Democrats who knew and sat on the info. All this hysteria is playing into the Democrats' hands.

6 posted on 10/03/2006 4:17:25 AM PDT by Conservativegreatgrandma

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ] . . .

To: Taggart_D

Why should he resign?

He's got an R in front of his title apparently. All republicans share a common guilt due to the 'vast right wing conspiracy' mentality. Other than that he doesn't seem to be in any way shape or form involved.

8 posted on 10/03/2006 4:17:50 AM PDT by kinoxi (.)

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies ] . . .

To: Taggart_D

There MUST be an investigation and it MUST be led by Barney Franks. If that would be inappropriate perhaps Gary Studds could be lured out of retirement.

11 posted on 10/03/2006 4:20:03 AM PDT by rhombus

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]. . .

To: Homer1

From what I've heard so far.

Hastert had emails that were not suggestive. Democrat operatives had the instant messages that were disgusting. They've had them for a couple YEARS and sat on them.

Democrats should fall on their swords. All of them.

14 posted on 10/03/2006 4:21:29 AM PDT by listenhillary (Islam = Religion of peace. If you say otherwise, we'll kill you!)

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies ] . . .

Limbaugh . . .

What do you do if your job and self esteem are completely tied up with the notion that conservatives and Republicans are virtuous and liberals and Democrats are evil at a time when the country is reeling from incompetent Republican leadership? If you are Rush Limbaugh, you rant and rave like a loon and make an ass of yourself:

You know, Republicans are said to be racist and sexist and bigoted and homophobic. The liberal policy, liberal philosophy is to assume bad behavior, bad human behavior. They assume it, they have a condescending look toward people in general. It's what makes them liberals. People are incapable of doing the right thing without liberals' guidance, people are incapable of making the right decisions to get ahead in life without liberal guidance, they're incapable of earning a decent living. . . Liberalism assumes bad human behavior and then coddles it as imperfect. After they coddle imperfect, bad human behavior, they are able to say those who judge imperfections in people and come out strong for right and wrong, the simplistic black and white, good versus evil, people who come out for law and order and so forth, they're the sinners, because none of us are perfect. The liberals understand this, they coddle the imperfections, they create victims out of those who are imperfect, turning them into a cause celebre, and blaming the right, these Draconian, intolerant, inflexible people who judge others while ignoring their own foibles.

This explains why the liberals are able to accept genocide in places like Iraq if it furthers their agenda. Because everybody is flawed. Saddam Hussein is flawed and he's just a bad guy, we understand that, we need understand this about people. They expect the worst from people, and they want the worst from people tolerated, and that is a sign of compassion. . . Their view of conservatives and Republicans is that we are intolerant of anybody who is not like us, and so we must be made to pay the price for holding a standard that they do not. I'll give you a quick illustration. When Clinton was elected, during the week leading up to the inaugural -- I told you this story before. They had all these parties and ceremonies and little get-togethers on the mall in Washington, had people like Aretha Franklin in there to sing and other big-time entertainers. The list of songs they were singing were songs like We Shall Overcome, or We Got Out Of Jail Today all because a liberal Democrat had been elected after the 12 years of the judgmentalism of the Reagan and Bush years.

UPDATE: Daniel Larison fills in the blanks.

Everybody Dies

That's the simplified plot summary of this Louis Bromfield novel.

Sweet Fifteen

Back in 2001, David Brooks took a few trips to the wilds of rural Pennsylvania and discovered that "Red Americans" are laconic, hard workin' and modest. I remember it well, because I live in flyover country and Brooks' view of us seemed like a load of crap having more to do with how Madison Avenue views Middle America (Think Marlboro Man and Chevy "like a rock" trucks).

The Knoxville News Sentinel (registration required) provides another view of flyover country in the form of an MTV-inspired "sweet fifteen" party complete with a Hummer Limo, Shirtless hunks with body-glitter and Georgia rapper Bubba Sparxxx:

The fanfare is short and sweet, as Brittany and the court make their way back into the inn. Brittany re-emerges in a neutral empire-waist Bianca Nero gown with silver beading.

The birthday girl dances and chats with friends and well-wishers.

After the dance troupe performs, Brittany is pulled onto the black-and-white dance floor for a little treat, lap dances from the group's male members. Her mother receives one, too.


Big surprises After another costume change, this time a blue silk halter dress, Brittany is ready for the night's entertainment headliner, Georgia rapper Bubba Sparxxx.

"Bubba, Bubba, Bubba," the restless crowd chants.

When he walks onto the stage, the youngsters explode with applause and yells. Digital and phone cameras are raised high, like high-tech lighters.

"Happy birthday, Brittany. We love you," shouts the rapper. "We are thrilled to be here. There is no place we would rather be than here in Knoxville, celebrating Brittany's birthday. It's great to be a part of so much love."

Sparxxx opens his set with "Deliverance," his first single, and closes with his biggest hit to date, "Miss New Booty," which is Brittany's ring tone on her cell phone.

After performing the crowd-pleaser, Sparxxx calls an embarrassed Brittany onto the stage and gives the princess a new title.

"Make some noise for Knoxville's official Miss New Booty," he says.

Rightwing Porn

Ben Stein indulges in rightwing political porn:

On the one hand, we have a poor misguided Republican man who had a romantic thing for young boys. He sent them suggestive e-mail. I agree, that's not great. On the other hand, we have a Democratic party that worships ( not likes, WORSHIPS ) a man named Bill Clinton who did not send suggestive e-mails as far as we know, but who had a barely legal intern give him oral sex kneeling under his desk in the Oval Office while he talked on the phone to a Congressional Committee Chairman . . . and having her fellate him when in the sacred seat of power of the world's leading Republic. And the Democrats cheer themselves hoarse for him. His wife has a great shot at being our next President.

Stein seemed to have spent a lot visualizing while he was writing this creepy paragraph, I feel the need to take a shower after reading it. One thing that has bothered me for eight years now -- when and how did the Whitehouse become "sacred"?

Book Chat

I've yet to be "tagged" for the book quiz making the rounds of the blogosverse, but I've been known to invite myself to the party before and I'll make some changes to the list while I'm at it:

1.) Name a book that has changed your life.
About ten years ago I was assigned a review of The Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller for The American Enterprise, thus making me a professional writer.

2.) Name a book that you have read more than once.
I, Claudius, Lolita, and several others.

3.) Name a book that you would take to a desert island, a remote village in the Andes or a layover at O'Hare Airport.
Every book list I make must have Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book at least once.

4.) Name a book that the movie adaption is an improvement on.
The Godfather is a good but doesn't have the line, "It's not personal Sonny, its strictly business."

5.) Name a book that should be made into a movie.
The Second Coming would make a great film.

6.) What are you currently reading?
Conversations With Walker Percy, and Notes From Underground.

7.) Name a book that you plan to read.
Too many to mention.

The Last Gentleman

I bought this well worn and well read copy of The Last Gentleman at William James Bookseller in Port Townsend, Washington about ten years ago. The women on the cover holding sheer fabric in front of their nude figures have nothing to do with the book. The current edition is worth reading, but the cover isn't nearly as cool.

Thin Line

Have you given thanks today for the thin neocon line that stands -- at their keyboards -- between civilization and savagery:

So we really are left with very little in these pivotal times--the will of George Bush, of course, the Old Breed unchanged since Okinawa and the Bulge that still anchors the US military, the courage and skill of a very few brave writers like a Hitchens, Krauthammer, and the tireless and brilliant Mark Steyn, but very, very few others. No, this is an age in which we in the West make smug snuff movies about killing an American President, while the Taliban and the Islamists boast of assassinating the Pope.

Animal Farm

This copy of Animal Farm was printed and bound in Kingsport, Tennessee. I don't think that the Author is from around here.

Stick With It

Via A.C., I see that Mark Rose will be with George Bush until the bitter end on Iraq. I'm glad to see some good ole' fashioned American gumption and sticktoitiveness. Think of the great loss to history if Napoleon had turned back from Moscow, or the Donner Party had stopped at a Holiday Inn.

So stick with it Mark, I'm sure you will be vindicated in the end -- if not on Earth, then on whatever planet you currently inhabit.

Old Books

Here is an idea that I stole, er borrowed from Ann Althouse. She posted pictures of 45rpm records that don't play anymore, but she won't throw out. I don't have many of those, but I do have several old books, some that I read, others that just make me look smart:

George Allen meet John Huey Ketchum

I have to admit that I am starting to feel a bit sorry for George Allen. This bizarre controversy over whether the Virginia senator ever used the word "nigger" doesn't say much for the state of self-government or of the priorities of the media. I assume that he is guilty, but that on its own is of little significance. I support the reelection of Robert Byrd, who was in the KKK years ago and even used the "n-word" on TV a few years back; so I can't very well denounce Allen for having used racial slurs.

But as usual, the problem isn't the crime -- but the coverup. Allen could have simply admitted guilt and plagiarized Jesse Jackson's "God isn't finished with me yet" apology made after his infamous "Hymietown" gaffe in 1984.

Somebody should get Allen a copy of Bill Kauffman's sadly out of print novel, Every Man a King (hey, BK, get a copy to Picador, and get a new edition out!). In that book, a rising rightwing pundit named John Huey Ketchum has his career yanked out from under him when he opines that "you can lead a nigger to workfare, but you can't . . ." on CBS's Face the Nation and is reduced to scrubbing factory toilets in his hometown of Batavia, New York. After his fall from grace, John Huey finds happiness in housing-project obscurity and white-trash love with a woman willing to overlook his sin if she can figure out what it is:

"It was a mistake, I think," he said haltingly. "I had a newspaper column in quite a few papers around the country. I wasn't famous, but I was on the right track. Then I got invited to go on Face the Nation, the boring talk show about politics that's on Sunday mornings."

She betrayed no recognition of this anti-Sabbath institution.

"Anyways, I was on the show, debating this black guy about welfare. He was doin' this boring recital of bullshit facts and arguments, and I was doin' mine. He'd say blahblahblah. I'd counter with blahblahblah. . . .It was the usual Washington bullshit. Until all of a sudden somethin' came over me. Like a demon or succubus or some evil goddamn sprit invaded my body, and before I knew it I said the word 'nigger' on national TV."

He waited for a gasp, a shocked "John Huey, you didn't" Wanda said nothing. He went on . . .

The Long Emergency

I saw a great talk at UT tonight by James Howard Kunstler, the author of Home from Nowhere, and several other books. He spoke on the topic of his most recent work, The Long Emergency. I'm not quite ready to buy his notion that the world will soon reach peak oil production and the American Way of Life as we know it will collapse, but he is an entertaining and iconoclastic speaker and I don't think his message can just be dismissed.

After the talk, I had him sign a book and discussed his fellow Upstate reactionary, Bill Kauffman; for whom Kunstler provided a blurb to Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette.

I'm glad I went out tonight --Tuesday UT features a Tweedle De/Tweedle Dum debate with Jonah Goldberg and Peter Beinart. Zzzzzz.

Some Observations . . .

from Dr. Percy:

"If there is such a thing as a Southern way of life, part of it has to do with not speaking of it."--The Thanatos Syndrome, 1987.

"There is one sure cure for cosmic explorations, grandiose ideas about God, man, death, suicide, and such -- and that is nausea. I defy a man afflicted with nausea to give a single thought to these vast subjects."

"What do you do if you can't stand people yet need a person?"-- The Second Coming, 1980.

"Here is an incidental discovery: If you tell somebody what to do, they will do it. All you have to do is know what to do. Because nobody else knows."--Lancelot, 1977.

"I do believe the South has produced more high-minded women, women of universal sentiments, than any other section of the country except possibly New England in the last century. Of my six living aunts, five are women of the loftiest theosophical panBrahman sentiments. The sixth is still a Presbyterian."-- The Moviegoer, 1961.

Separation of What?

Just when I thought that my opinion of the Republican regime in Washington couldn't go any lower, I pick up this tidbit from the October American Prospect:

Cheney regularly attends Senate Republican caucus meetings, sometimes accompanied by Karl Rove. Just in case Cheney and Rove needed help keeping the caucus in line, the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, was handpicked by the White House to succeed the ousted Trent Lott.

I knew that Frist was little more than a sockpuppet for the Whitehouse, but this is ridiculous. The Senate is in an entirely different branch of government than the president, and it should have its own prerogatives and agenda; even if both are controlled by the same party. Sad to say, it will take a Democratic victory this fall to restore something as basic as the separation of powers.

"Felix"

I'll stay away from the latest bizarre twist in the Virginia race between James Webb and George Allen other than to generally endorse Daniel Larison's take on the issue. Instead I'll note yet another brewing controversy in the already weird Virginia campaign. At NRO's "Sixers," a special blog dedicated to shilling for Republican candidates, Greg Pollowitz notes that the Webb campaign is referring to their opponent as "George Felix Allen Jr."

Pollowitz whines that "the blog left thinks it's emasculating in some way" and notes that "making fun of someone's name is the definition of 'manly', don't you think?" Pollowitz obviously isn't very familiar with American politics -- candidates often derisively refer to their opponents by their full names ("J. Danforth Quayle"; "William Jefferson Clinton"), and as far as "emasculating" Webb I'll just add that John Kerry looks French.

I would prefer to see George Allen loose the election on the important issue -- he is a senatorial rubber stamp for the failed policies of the Bush administration. If he loses because he has been exposed as a 98-pound weakling like the guy in the Charles Atlas ad, that will be fine with me. So much of Allen's appeal is that he supposedly is a real man. I remember last year when National Review published a cover story on Allen by their editor Tina Brown, er, Rich Lowry. Lowry positively swooned because Allen drinks black coffee and revels in focus-group-tested macho activities such as ridin' a Harley and rootin' for Junior. Who would have thought that a few months into the future the sissy Defeatocrats would nominate someone who makes George Allen look like a wimp?

Felix? Sen. Allen will be lucky to avoid becoming Sen. "Boy Named Sue" by election day.

Tennesseans Against Allen

I don't trust the judgement of Rob Huddleston on the James Webb/George Allen "Meet The Press" debate from yesterday. Huddleston, blogging from Tennesseans For Allen describes Webb as "flaky" and "weak and bullheaded." I watched part of the debate as well, and George Allen was the one who looked weak.

Of course, I don't trust my own judgement on the issue since I can't stand the phony-baloney cowboy/Dubya clone and would like to see him suffer a humiliating defeat this fall, or even better -- eke out a narrow victory that is weak enough to kill his presidential ambitions while forcing him to serve out another term in the Senate.

Indeed

Andrew Sullivan notes a rare admission from Glenn Reynolds, of the "currently-deteriorating situation in Iraq and Afghanistan."

This is a momentous statement from one of the more reality-challenged supporters of the Bush Administration's policies. His viewers -- Instapundit is essentially a smug version of the crawl across the bottom of your cable news channel -- almost never get a chance to see such a statement. You rarely get the impression from Instapundit that things have gone seriously wrong in Iraq. I could never find any evidence that he got a copy of Tom Ricks' Fiasco "in the mail." Rarely, does he mention that people other than Cindy Sheehan and Michael Moore, such as Andrew Bacevich, oppose the war in Iraq. Reynolds hasn't even acknowledged that his own representative in Congress is a conservative Republican and a Presbyterian elder who voted against invading Iraq. C'mon Glenn, let me year you say it: "Jimmy Duncan isn't against the war, he's just on the other side."

Usually, I get the impression from Instapundit that Reynolds believes that everything is just fine in Iraq and Afghanistan and that Rumsfeld and Cheney have done a swell job; if only the Liberal Media and the Democrats would get on board.

Adventures in Google Ads

Currently, there is a Google Ad up at iSteve for Muslim Girl magazine.

Double Incompetence

Victor D. Hanson makes the case, not heard often enough, that Afghanistan is as screwed up as Iraq, though he doesn't characterize it that way:

But if we put aside for the moment the reasons to have gone into each country, the two now look remarkably the same. Both have fragile democratic governments. Radical Islamists--using similar tactics of suicide bombing and improvised explosive devices--are pouring in from sanctuaries across the border, whether Pakistan or Syria and Iran. Bin Laden and Dr. Zawahiri themselves have boasted that Iraq, at the heart of the ancient caliphate, is now the frontline theater for the jihadists.

So far the international approval of Afghanistan and its smaller costs have ensured support from the Left. But note, as casualties begin to mount, and the nature of the counter-insurgency fighting increasingly begins to resemble Iraq--as it must in this particular front of a global war--and as the magic multilateral solution proves a mirage, the NATO coalition being no more effective than the coalition of the willing in Iraq, expect to see the Democratic leadership begin to bail on Afghanistan as well.

Unlike Iraq, we invaded Afghanistan with a legitimate justification, but as the Tora Bora battle and Operation Anaconda show, the same incompetent crowd is in charge.

$$$

I asked a question in the comments of a Vodkapundit post and failed to get a satisfactory answer, so I will ask here and spice it up with a little reward.

For a billion dollars, heck let's make it ten: how did invading Iraq and toppling its secular dictator help us in our war against the "Islamofascists"? Think about it for a minute before answering and remember that Saddam Hussein was an enemy of Iran and no friend of Osama bin Laden. Now look at the guy in charge in Iraq playing kissyface with that nut from Iran. It seems to me that we might have been better off leaving Saddam alone.

Judascons . . .

The Washington Monthly has a symposium of conservative writers arguing that it is preferable for Republicans to lose control of Congress this fall with contributions from such luminaries as Jeffrey Hart and Joe Scarborough. The introduction states:

With Republicans controlling Congress and the White House, conservatives these days ought to be happy, but most aren't. They see expanding government, runaway spending, Middle East entanglements, and government corruption, and they wonder why, exactly, the country should be grateful for Republican dominance. Some accuse Bush and the Republicans today of not being true conservatives. Others see a grab bag of stated policies and wonder how they cohere. Everyone thinks something’s got to change.

Now seven prominent conservatives dare to speak the unspeakable: They hope the Republicans lose in 2006. Well, let’s be diplomatic and say they’d prefer divided government--soon.

I haven't read them all yet and can only assume that they are liberally sprinkled with terms like "disaster," "disgrace," "miserable failure" and "incompetent."

Works and Days . . .

Great news! Victor Davis Hanson has a new blog hosted by Pajamas Media called Works and Days. For readers not as erudite and learned as Hanson, I will tell you that "Works and Days" refers to a poem by Hesiod, a Greek guy.

So get out your pipe and jacket-with-elbow-patches and be prepared for plenty of learned references to Thucydides and F Troop.

Decoration Day

For reasons I've never bothered to learn, many in the War Party strongly dislike Google. Jonah Goldberg, for example, is upset that they have nothing commemorating 9/11 while Dogpile has a picture of a dog sitting behind some American flags. I don't know about Goldberg, but I already own American Flags -- I just use Google for searching on the web.

Goldberg even quotes a disgruntled ex-Googler:

It took me two minutes to switch from Google toolbar to Dogpile toolbar. The best part was that the Google uninstall page had a comments box asking why I was getting rid of their service. I let them know. Believe me, I let them know.

Oddly, neither Goldberg nor his correspondent seem to upset about the lack of decoration on the homepage of other search engines such as Yahoo! and Ask.com, and here's the crowning irony -- at NRO's the Corner.

Privatize This!

Matthew Yglesias succinctly explains the problem with privatization. "There really are certain pathologies associated with government work. When money is allocated by a political process rather than a market process it tends to be allocated less efficiently. The trouble with privatization as a remedy to this problem is that it . . . doesn't remedy the problem, the money is still being allocated by a political process."

Bingo. I have long thought of most privatization schemes as bogus, Yglesias explains why without even breaking a sweat.

Spin Cycle

Glenn Reynolds notes some battle success in Afghanistan and invents an "MSM-style" negative spin headline to accompany it: "Over 200 killed in renewed Afghan violence."

Darned MSM, putting a negative spin on one of our glorious victories -- at least in Glenn's fantasy world. Reynolds didn't find any actual examples of negative media spin, and the most obvious one didn't even dawn on him -- that this is yet another example of the consequences of the Bush administration hastily declaring victory and failing to follow through.

But that is closer to reality than to spin. The war in Afghanistan is supposed to be over and we are supposed to have won. But the war goes on, as the New York Times reports in an obviously Liberal MSM slanted story:

On a July morning, Taliban gunmen shot dead the province's most powerful cleric as he walked to the main city mosque to lead morning prayers. Five months later, they executed a teacher at a nearby village school as students watched. The following month, they walked into another mosque and gunned down an Afghan engineer working for a foreign aid group, shooting him in the back as he pressed his forehead to the ground and supplicated to God.

This spring and summer, the slow and methodical siege of this southern provincial capital intensified. The Taliban and their allies set up road checkpoints, burned 20 trucks and slowed the flow of supplies to reconstruction projects. All told, in surrounding Helmand Province, five teachers, one judge and scores of police officers have been killed. Dozens of schools and courts have been shuttered, according to Afghan officials.

The Great War and Modern Memory

Since everyone is intent on drawing historical parallels these days, Jonathan Chait produces a solid one in his Los Angeles Times (registration required) column: the 2006 midterm elections and the First World War.

Despite being called a "world" war, the vast majority of fighting from 1914-1918 took place in a relatively limited space. The same is true of the 2006 elections. Collectively, they are a national election, but for most Americans, the fight will take place "over there." The battle for control of the Senate will take place mostly within five states where Republicans, who hold a five-seat advantage, look vulnerable: Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Missouri. Democrats lead in the first four and appear close to a tie in Missouri. To win the Senate outright, the Democrats would have to sweep those states and win one more, most likely Tennessee, a conservative state where the Republican has retired, or Virginia, a moderately conservative state where incumbent Republican George Allen is in a a tight race with former Reagan official-turned-Democrat James H. Webb.

A pretty interesting argument, but I can't quite swallow his conclusion. "Democrats are probably far too giddy about what they can accomplish if they win in November. They aren't going to be able to stop the war in Iraq, and they won't banish pork-barreling or back-scratching. But that's OK. Woodrow Wilson didn't make the world safe for democracy, but he did manage to keep a pretty noxious regime from dominating a continent." Actually there is a compelling case that Wilson helped pave the way for two regimes far more noxious than Imperial Germany to dominate Europe.

Let's Pretend

I wish the War Party would make up its mind which year they are pretending this to be and who they are pretending to be Hitler. In the last few weeks, it has been 1938 with that guy in Iran filling in for Hitler. Now for Jeffrey Lord, its 1942, which would tend to make Saddam Hitler again.

I can see why they don't want to live in 2006, where they have led the country into a disasterous quagmire in Iraq because, as it turns out, Saddam Hussein had a few aged chemical weapons.

In 2006, the War Party is wrong about the past three years and faces an uncertain future. When they pretend that it's 1938 or 1942, at least they know how things turn out.

Drool Bib

I hope that Power Line's John Hindraker wears a drool bib when he associates with Republican politicians --the results can get messy. He had an encounter with Bill Frist recently and likes what he sees. "Consider me impressed" he says. He is impressed with the senator's "intelligence, competence, judgment and reliability." That's nice.

More rational people might note that Frist's main accomplishments are, while leading the party of federalism and limited government in the Senate, the great expansion of Medicare and federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case (while giving his infamous "diagnosis" on the Senate floor). Putting party above country, he has kept the Senate from conducting meaningful investigations into the corruption, incompetence and dishonesty surrounding the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

In spite of his loyal service as a partisan hack, I predict that Frist's presidential campaign will sink without a trace. By March of 2008, there will be more evidence for the existence of Atlantis.

P.S. It is fortunate that Frist has two feet to grovel at so that Power Line's Scott Johnson can join in:

Senator Frist referred to himself several times as a "citizen legislator." I was struck yesterday by how much of a throwback he is to the politicians of the founding era, men of accomplishment in arenas other than politics. He is a gentleman and a scholar as well as a man of enormous professional accomplishment. He briefly mentioned the charitable uses to which he had put his medical skills in founding and serving a hospital in southern Sudan.

Inoperative

Opinion Journal's James Taranto deliver's a devastating blow to my deluded anti-war world view. It turns out that Max Cleland -- who I had counted on to the exclusion of all other sources about the Iraq war -- tries to avoid hearing about what is occurring in the war because the devastating injuries that the former Georgia senator suffered in Vietnam have left him with post traumatic stress disorder. Taranto cleverly asks:

How credible is Cleland as "a vocal critic of the Iraq war" when by his own admission his approach to it is "avoidance, not wanting to connect with anything dealing with" it, and trying "to disconnect and disassociate" from sources of information about it? Something tells us he was better informed in 2002, when he voted for the war--a fact the AP inexplicably leaves out.

Taranto is obviously right -- to paraphrase Nixon's press secretary, Ron Ziegler; all previous criticisms of the Iraq War are inoperative. It turns out we were all wrong to listen exclusively to Cleland about the war -- we aren't in a Mesopotamian quagmire after all. The invasion was a glorious success. In fact, most of our troops were withdrawn after a government was formed in the summer of 2003. I bet their new currency is called the Rummy. I haven't bothered to check, but I believe that Ahmed Chalabi is the Iraq ambassador to Israel and he works closely with that country to counter the Iranian threat. When I catch up on my reading I am sure that I will find that Sadr City has become a vibrant high tech corridor with fancy coffee shops and internet cafes.

I have alerted the management of Antiwar.com and they assure me that their new domain will be Prowar.com. I can only imagine how embarassed Justin Raimondo is after penning three columns a week for the last three years, based exclusively on the reports of Max Cleland.

Finally, let me join Taranto in sneering at Cleland. So the former Georgia senator, who lost three limbs in Vietnam (boo hoo, he still has an arm) got a little weepy over hearing about casualties in Iraq. Hey, if you want to make a neocon souffle, you gotta break a few thousand eggs.

Stagnation

The New York Times exlpains why the Republicans don't seem to be getting credit for a strong enconomy:

The median hourly wage for American workers has declined 2 percent since 2003, after factoring in inflation. The drop has been especially notable, economists say, because productivity -- the amount that an average worker produces in an hour and the basic wellspring of a nation's living standards -- has risen steadily over the same period.

As a result, wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation's gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960's. UBS, the investment bank, recently described the current period as "the golden era of profitability."