JEN TALIAFERRO says that the election was a mandate for warbloggers. Dr. Weevil, on the other hand, thinks the anti-warbloggers deserve some credit, too.
Personally, I rather doubt that bloggers of any variety had much to do with the election results.
MARK STEYN IS LEARNING TO LOVE “ROPE-A-DOPE”
So I have the opposite problem with Mr Bush from The Guardian and Le Monde: because he’s insufficiently trigger-happy, I underestimated him. When his judicial nominees were bottled up by Democrat obstructionist ideologues, I wanted him to do to Vermont Senator Pat Leahy what Clinton did to Newt Gingrich: destroy the guy. Instead, Bush looked at a handful of vulnerable Democrat Senate seats in Missouri, Minnesota and elsewhere, and slyly moved them into play.
The result is that the judiciary committee is now back in Republican hands, and Senator Leahy’s got a one-way ticket on the oblivion express. Mr Bush has destroyed the guy without ever having to say a word about him. Meanwhile, all the states the Dems specifically targeted – from Florida to New Hampshire – are more Republican than ever. I was wrong. The Bush way is more effective.
You’ve got to admire a pundit who can admit when he’s wrong.
MALVO IS TALKING:
In the interviews after he was transferred to Fairfax County on Thursday, Malvo, 17, told investigators that the shootings were well planned and involved scouting missions. Sources said that Malvo described himself and his partner as behaving like soldiers: Using two-way radios, one would be a lookout and communicate with the other.
If conditions, such as traffic, were not right, they would not shoot, Malvo told investigators. They deliberately hopped from jurisdiction to jurisdiction to create confusion, and they watched the news coverage of their crimes, the sources said.
Interesting.
HERE’S A POLL saying that the Wellstone memorial really did hurt the Democrats, not just in Minnesota but nationally.
NATION VS. NATION: Katha Pollitt writes:
[Y]ou’ve offered a view of those who oppose Bush’s military plans that is seriously at odds with reality: The antiwar movement equals the left and the left equals the followers of Ramsey Clark, defender of Slobodan Milosevic and assorted Hutu genocidaires and other thugs, who is the founder of the International Action Center, which is closely linked to ANSWER, a front for the Workers World Party. Your picture of the big antiwar demo in October could have come straight out of David Horowitz’s column: “100,000 Communists March on Washington to Give Aid and Comfort to Saddam Hussein.”
Now, it is a fact that ANSWER called the big demonstration in Washington, it arranged for the permits, organized many buses and brought on all those speakers no one listens to. That’s not the same as controlling the movement–99 percent of the people who go to those demonstrations don’t even know ANSWER exists.
Compare this with what David Corn wrote:
This was no accident, for the demonstration was essentially organized by the Workers World Party, a small political sect that years ago split from the Socialist Workers Party to support the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. The party advocates socialist revolution and abolishing private property. It is a fan of Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba, and it hails North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il for preserving his country’s “socialist system,” which, according to the party’s newspaper, has kept North Korea “from falling under the sway of the transnational banks and corporations that dictate to most of the world.” The WWP has campaigned against the war-crimes trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. A recent Workers World editorial declared, “Iraq has done absolutely nothing wrong.”
Officially, the organizer of the Washington demonstration was International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism). But ANSWER is run by WWP activists, to such an extent that it seems fair to dub it a WWP front.
Pollitt does mention Corn’s piece, and says that he exaggerates ANSWER’s role. But she doesn’t actually say why, and I think it rather weakens her argument that Hitchens (and by extension, Corn) is wrong about the anti-war movement. Having said that, her piece is civil and sincere, and worth reading.
UPDATE: Reader Sameer Parekh writes:
It was interesting to read Katha Pollitt’s remarks about the anti-war movement. She raises potentially valid points. However, living in San Francisco, speaking from experience, everyone I have spoken to who is against the war falls into the anti-american/anti-capitalist category. I have yet to meet someone against the war whose rationale against going to war doesn’t logically conclude with supporting socialist dictators and exterminating the Jews. That’s clearly only anecdotal evidence, maybe there is a vast silent majority of anti-war people who don’t fit into that category. I have yet to meet them.
Yes, like the anti-Israel-but-not-anti-semitic supporters of Arafat, the category of pro-American, pro-capitalist peace protesters is logically possible, but admits of relatively few actual instances.
Brussels – A protest against war in Iraq turned violent on Sunday in Brussels when dozens of youths clashed with police and attacked American-owned businesses.
Up to 100 masked rioters, many of them of Arab origin, broke away from the main body of other antiwar protesters who were marching through the city centre.
The rioters hurled stones at businesses and police, who responded with baton charges. Photographers and TV camera operators were also targeted by the rioters.
Windows were broken at a McDonald’s fast-food restaurant and at a Marriot hotel, as well as a local temporary employment agency. . . .
About 2 000 protesters comprising pro-Palestinian and anticapitalist groups joined the demonstration led by a banner reading “Stop USA”.
These guys aren’t “peace” protesters. They’re just the enemy.
(Via Martin Devon).
I’M BLOGGING ON THE WIRELESS on battery power. We’re under our second tornado warning of the evening; I barely got the computers shut down before the power went out the first time. It was brief, but after last summer’s lightning damage (which at least made Atrios happy) I’m taking no chances.
ANTI-SEMITISM AT THE FLORENCE “ANTIWAR PROTESTS:” James Morrow has the scoop on signs that bespeak not a desire for peace, but a hatred of Jews and America and a desire for the other side to win.
People who want the other side to win aren’t “peace protesters.” The traditional term for people who want the other side to win is “the enemy.” And, at the very least, in a war you don’t accord much moral stature to what the enemy wants.
A LITTLE EARLY FOR VETERANS’ DAY, but only a little: SKBubba has posted a lengthy Veterans’ Day tribute. And isn’t today the Marine Corps’ birthday?
UPDATE: Yes, it is! Happy birthday, USMC.
PUNDITWATCH IS UP! Also check out these observations on Condi Rice’s appearance on This Week from Joe User.
If that doesn’t keep you amused during my afternoon absence, you can check out this bloggers bare boobies for charity page. No, really, that’s what it is.
JIM BENNETT ASKS: Who’s laughing now? He also suggests that Bush’s crew needs to be looking at relations with Europe as it tries to craft a “legacy:”
Bush and his team, once they are able to take a long view, should meditate on the fact that America’s relations with almost any given European nation are more amicable, cooperative, and productive on a bilateral basis than they are with Europe collectively, that is, with the European Union. A real legacy must treat a dogmatic devotion to the EU as one more fixed idea, such as past notions about litigation, taxation, or international organizations, that must be re-examined, and if needed, reversed.
If Europe is really to become the rival hegemon and power bloc its enthusiasts predict, it makes sense for America to blunt this rivalry by making a generous alternative offer to compatible nations such as Britain and Ireland. If, on the other hand, Europe is about to sink into a demographic, structural, and fiscal crisis, as analysis suggests, then it likewise makes sense for America to buffer itself from this catastrophe by rescuing the nations, again Britain and Ireland, that hold the lion’s share of American financial interests.
These European issues are likely to become most aggravated in the 2005-2009 time frame. Coincidentally, this is likely to be exactly the period in which the Bush team will be addressing its legacy issues.
Indeed. I think that we should also consider trying to draw Turkey into the NAFTA orbit as an alternative to Turkish EU membership.
GERRY ADAMS: OSAMA’S SOUL BROTHER? I think he belongs in jail, myself.
UPDATE: Moira Breen says she’s “appalled” that Adams is raising money in the United States. She should be. And the United States government should be embarrassed.
TIM BLAIR FISKS a U.K. Observer piece on the U.S. elections, observing: “IT’S NOT enough for The UK Observer’s Will Hutton that people vote. They must vote the correct way, otherwise it’s a Dark Day for Democracy.” Indeed.
JAMES RUMMEL has some thoughts about the way St. Xavier University has handled Prof. Peter Kirstein’s nasty email to an Air Force cadet. I thik Rummel is right. Here’s an excerpt from his post, which I’m making lengthier than otherwise because, well, it’s on Blogger/Blogspot and God knows if it’ll be there when you follow the link later:
Everybody’s missing something, though. The President of St. Xavier University is a guy named Richard Yanikoski, and right now he probably feels like the bug under the microscope. One day he wakes up, kisses his significant other on the cheek on his way to the office, only to find that a real blizzard o’ crap is waiting for him when he gets there. What went through his mind that day? What would go through the mind of any of us in his shoes?
“Gee, what the heck did I do to deserve this abuse?”
We’ve seen the brass at universities close ranks and act like horse’s backsides themselves the last few years. Think the way that the administration at SFSU ignored the riot caused by pro-Palestinian protestors, or the way Emory dragged it’s feet and hoped that the Bellesiles scandal would just fade away. But that’s not what Mr. Yanikoski did. He looked in to the matter and saw what was going on. Instead of closing ranks and ignoring things he took action. The horse’s backside has apologized to the cadet that he wronged. Mr. Yanikoski, an innocent man caught up in something he knew nothing about, has also expressed his regrets.
People are too involved in this, angry and emotional. Not only are they expressing outrage to the horse’s backside but they’re also venting some spleen into Mr. Yanikoski’s Email tray. Even though he must be under enormous pressure, he’s refused to discuss any disciplinary action that he might take. Not only is this the policy of St. Xavier but it’s the right thing to do. After all, everybody might want to know what the consequences are for being a total ass, but we aren’t the injured party and we really don’t need to know.
If you agree with me please Email Mr. Yanikoski at yanikoski@sxu.edu and give him an “attaboy”. I think it’s important for the people in the ivory tower to learn that there’s a price to pay for being a jerk. I don’t think that someone should pay a price for trying to do the right thing when he’s got a jerk working for them.
As I say, I think Rummel’s right here. This isn’t academic fraud, it’s a rude email. I think it was important that a lot of people pointed out just how rude it was in unmistakable terms. I think that demanding that St. Xavier University fire Kirstein is too much, and rude emails aimed at the University’s President do little good and even detract from the point.
THINKING OF LEAVING BLOGGER/BLOGSPOT? Here are some thoughts on different platforms.
The complaints about the difficulty of installing Movable Type may be on-target. I wouldn’t know because Stacy Tabb helped me with it and made the whole move virtually painless. But the MT folks will install it on your server for a token fee, and some hosting companies will do that, as part of their package. (I think Bloggerzone does).
I still think that for people who are just starting a blog the Blogger/Blogspot combination is a great way to start. But once you’re up and running and have decided to get serious, the notion of shifting to something else becomes more appealing.
ANOTHER AMERICAN LAWYER story on blogs — this one about lawyer-blogging in general, and featuring Denise Howell, who even rates a photo.
UPDATE: Here’s another article on law-related blogs featuring Ernest Svenson.
CATS AND DOGS LIVING TOGETHER: Maureen Dowd’s latest column contains the sentence: “I missed John Ashcroft desperately.” It does not appear to be ironic.
MATT WELCH says that Gray Davis is reminiscent of another California politician who despite some setbacks went on to national greatness.
ANTI-AMERICAN PROTESTERS IN FLORENCE ARE “singing communist anthems.” Go figure. Most of the “anti-war” protests in Italy seem to have been the product of communist organizers, which — as David Corn has written — seems to be the case in the United States, too.
What this protest demonstrates is that it was a waste of time, at least in terms of satisfying anti-American critics of “unilateralism,” to go through the United Nations. Anti-American protesters won’t be satisfied by that sort of thing. And these are, in fact, anti-American protesters, not anti-war protesters.
UPDATE: Steven Den Beste isn’t impressed, either.
CASS SUNSTEIN IS WORRIED about conservatives “taking over” the courts. By this, I presume, he means “being appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.”
Well, I certainly hope that Bush won’t appoint any Borks, and I’ll oppose them if he does. (You can read this article for a lengthy summary of my problems with Bork). But if Sunstein’s op-ed is the best case in opposition to conservative judicial appointments, well, it’s not much.
Sunstein seems worrried that we will see “judicial activism,” which apparently occurs when courts are willing to strike down legislation that has bipartisan support. (Absent from Sunstein’s characterization of such action as “activism” is any concern for whether such striking down is based on, you know, the legislation being unconstitutional. The flag-burning bill had bipartisan support, after all.)
Sunstein is worried, though, that the courts might start thinking about the constitution more. At least he’s worried that “conservative courts might well rule that the Second Amendment raises constitutional questions about gun control legislation.” He doesn’t bother to explain why such raising such questions might be wrong, or anything: I guess, on the New York Times op-ed page, such arguments are superfluous, though Sunstein has in the past expressed the view that the individual-rights interpretation of the Second Amendment is one that has some intellectual force behind it.
It seems to me that discussions about “activism” are beside the point. When courts enforce the Constitution, they are doing their job, whether that leads them to strike down laws or to uphold them. When courts fail to enforce the Constitution, they are not doing their job. Sunstein doesn’t offer an explanation of why conservatives might be wrong about which laws should be upheld and which should be struck down, but without such an explanation, talk of “activism” means little, and sudden enthusiasm for deference to legislatures and to precedents that Sunstein no doubt finds generally more congenial seems like special pleading.
UPDATE: John Rosenberg has some comments, too. Another law professor emailed to me that the piece seemed to have been “phoned in.” Yeah, Sunstein’s capable of better than this.
ADD THIS STORY to my earlier comments about racism on the left: racist attacks on Condi Rice:
“Does they like how you shine their shoes, Condoleezza? Or the way you wash and park the whitey’s cars.”
The Greaseman got fired. What’ll happen to this guy? Answer:
Niger Innis, spokesperson the Congress on Racial Equality, said he sees a double standard at play.
“If Rogers, instead of being a white liberal, were a white conservative like Rush Limbaugh using the type of language that Rogers was using, he’d be kicked off the air,” Innis said.
It’s a controversy that’s been brewing on radio for a while now.
Or is Dale Amon right that it’s all a question of who does the talking, not of what is said?
UPDATE: A reader points out this piece by Dinesh D’Souza, which I hadn’t read, but which has already been savaged by Arthur Silber and Michele of A Small Victory. I think his point — though it was hard to be sure — was that the Right says dumb things, too. Yeah, well, you don’t see me defending the “social conservative” crowd very much.
D’Souza’s piece is just dumb, revolving as it does around this statement: “The Democrats should stop hiding behind ‘freedom of choice’ and become blatant advocates for divorce, illegitimacy, adultery, homosexuality, bestiality, and pornography.” Actually, I’ve got nothing against these things, so long they’re consensual — “adultery” can be taken different ways, I guess. (I don’t share Peter Singer’s enthusiasm for bestiality, but since I’m happy to eat animals it’s hard for me to consider people having sex with them to be, you know, more exploitative.)
If the Republicans buy into this social-conservative line, they’ll lose. I think they know it. But this doesn’t get the Left off the hook. See, the Left has already shown itself utterly wrong with regard to communism, national defense, the economy and — by the Clinton era — worthless on civil liberties except to the extent they’re important to core Democratic constituencies. So the only real claim to moral legitimacy that the Left has, well, left is the claim that it’s tolerant. But it’s not anymore. Remarks like the one aimed at Condi Rice above are just the icing on the cake. The trend has been obvious for years.
The reader asks me to name one major leftist commentator who has made comments at D’Souza’s level. Well, I guess Neil Rogers, the DJ above, isn’t really major, though he’s probably bigger than D’Souza. And what about the many folks on the Left implying that Bush engineered 9/11? Does that count? Or Barbra Streisand’s suggestion that Bush engineered Paul Wellstone’s plane crash? Or the widespread claims (and political cartoons) during the DC sniper affair to the effect that the NRA favors the murder of small children? I could go on, but frankly anyone who really thinks that there’s nothing on the left worse than D’Souza’s remarks above is beyond rational discourse.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Jason Soon says D’Souza’s column is silly.
JOHN HILER OF MICROCONTENT NEWS HAS PICKED UP ON the story of Diana Hsieh being sued by the Front Sight folks, and the possible Scientology connection. (It’s not entirely clear that Scientology is involved directly, though it would be consistent with stuff reported here.)
Regardless of whether the Church of Scientology is formally involved, as I said in my earlier post, I’ve always had a high opinion of Front Sight in the past, but this lawsuit is changing that. And judging by Arthur Silber’s reports, it’s changing it for a lot of people in the gun community.
HERE’S A SITE that lets you show your appreciation to the U.S. Military, as part of military appreciation month. Send your online thank you note today!
I’M RATHER SURPRISED that the rumors of Trent Lott’s ouster seem to have faded. Apparently, I’m not the only one.
ORIANA FALLACI is expressing her contempt for anti-globalist demonstrators in Florence.
I DO NOT APPROVE OF FISTICUFFS, but I find it hard to fully disapprove of this.
UPDATE: Reader Trent Telenko writes:
You missed the real point.
We just saw a Hollywood director — as “Blue Zone” as you can get – play a violent, honor impugned, Jacksonian, at the cost of his movie’s distribution in the British film market. He did this when an “idiotarian” British distributor said Americans deserved the 9/11 attacks just as much as the Israelis deserve children-suicide attacks from the Palestinians while within arms reach.
It is time for you to begin a “Jacksonian Watch” because this will not be the last time this happens.
Walter Russell Mead’s book “Strange Provenance” goes on at great lengths about the “Jacksonian tradition” in American foreign policy as he describes it and three other “foreign policy schools.”
I prefer the term “cultural meme” because Americans are a mixture of all four of Mead’s schools. The ‘Jacksonian traits’ of Mead were also touched on in two recent American social histories. The first is by Gary Gerstle, “The American Crucible,” and second is by David Kennedy, “Freedom From Fear.”
Mead points out in his book that the Jacksonian traits surface most strongly when America is at war.
Trent Telenko also suggests that political correctness in the media makes actual violence along these lines more likely: “Those who make the rhetorical defense of western culture impossible, make the violent defense of it by Americans inevitable.” His comments along these lines are interesting, but too long to excerpt here. I agree, though, that the setting and participants make this brawl particularly noteworthy.
ISNTAPUNDIT reports from Salon’s Table Talk, where people are unhappy about the election results.
TONY PIERCE is selling a book based on his blog. I just ordered one.
WILLIAM SJOSTROM IS WATCHING ROBERT FISK’S ROCK. Closely.
UPDATE: Moira Breen has a Fisk-related comment, too.
BELLESILES UPDATE: Here’s a Scripps column by Jay Ambrose that gives Clayton Cramer some credit for discovering Bellesiles’ misdeeds.
CLICHE-O-RAMA: Steven Chapman is explaining British movie cliches, Teresa Nielsen Hayden is explaining aboriginal-culture movie cliches, and Sour Bob is trying to figure out which cliche he’s living.
DON’T SEND HATEMAIL TO THE ACIDMAN unless you are prepared for the consequences. I can’t tell you how often I’ve wanted to post something like that, but this is a family blog.
COPY-PROTECTED CDS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? BMG doesn’t care, and neither does EMI. Note to Karl Rove — it’s stuff like this that explains why Big Entertainment is such a good target for efforts that will demonstrate that Republicans can side with the little guy against big corporations.
GUNS AND GAYS: Teresa Nielsen Hayden observes: “Basically, I figure guns are like gays: They seem a lot more sinister and threatening until you get to know a few; and once you have one in the house, you can get downright defensive about them.”
THE MARC HEROLD DISCUSSION just keeps going on over at Angry Cyclist. Keep scrolling. . . .
NOW THAT SOME ISLAMIC CHARITIES have been identified as fronts for terrorism, American Muslims are giving to charities that keep the money in the United States. Though the article mostly spins it as bad, this seems like a good thing to me. It’s unfortunate that some legitimate charities helping people in need will get less money as a result, but this is what happens when people are scammed. In fact, it’s a good thing over the long term as it will give legitimate Islamic charities an incentive to root out the frauds.
TURNS OUT THAT JEFF COOPER’S APPLE PROBLEMS, which I linked to a while back, were mostly his fault. Though in a way that doesn’t really support the “Apple is easier to use” argument.
SOCIOLOGISTS OF THE BLOGOSPHERE TAKE NOTE: Ron Rosenbaum describes his treatment of Gore Vidal’s latest conspiracy screed as a “combination of fisking and misting.” This is, to the best of my knowledge, the first Legacy Media use of the term “misting,” though I agree with Charles Johnson that it doesn’t really apply: “You can’t have a MiSTing without robots. Everybody knows that. And Rosenbaum’s essay, excellent as it may be, contains no robots whatsoever.”
Yep. It’s still worth reading, though. And despite a distressing absence of robots, there are multiple references to Richard Nixon’s penis, something you don’t see every day. The references, that is. Well, or the penis. And thank goodness on both counts, actually. Anyway, here’s an excerpt:
In any case, much subsequent Vidal verbiage follows designed to prove the Sherlockian discovery that this is all “The Case of the Afghan Pipeline,” that the “Bush junta” countenanced or caused the murder of thousands of Americans in the hopes of provoking a war to expedite an oil pipeline that might increase the profit margins of their oil companies. Standard boilerplate Left conspiracy theory.
But then our essayist assumes a disingenuous passive voice and takes one passive-aggressive step beyond all that, into Protocols territory. That step can be found in this sentence: “Osama was chosen on aesthetic grounds to be the frightening logo for our long-contemplated invasion and conquest of Afghanistan …. ”
It’s really the first three words that give the game away: “Osama was chosen …. ” Poor Osama isn’t even given any credit for “agency,” as the postmodernists say. Couldn’t think it up by himself. He “was chosen”—implicitly by his white masters in the West, the “Bush junta”—to commit the mass murder of Americans (although remember: “we still don’t know” who did it).
Osama was chosen. Not a word about fundamentalist Islam’s hatred of America, of Jews, of the West. No, it was the West—we did it to ourselves. Well, the Bush cabal did it in our name. Is comparing Mr. Vidal’s screed to The Protocols extreme? Not as extreme as Vidal comparing George W. Bush to Hitler.
ROBERT FISK says that the strike against Al Qaeda operatives in Yemen was murder. William Sjostrom says that Robert Fisk is a moral degenerate.
EXTREMIST ISLAMISM IN AUSTRALIA: James Morrow has an unsettling report.
I TOLD YOU SO: There’s an interesting thread on Nanodot about proposals for an international treaty to ban nanotechnology research, and about the possibility that nanotechnology research might be moved entirely into the “black” military world.
ORRIN JUDD calls Garrison Keillor a “Gutless Weasel” for his nasty insinuations regarding Norm Coleman. The language is harsher than I would have used, but in fairness to Judd Keillor’s remarks are weasely.
What astounds me about the Left over the past few months is the way in which racism, antisemitism and homophobia have become the stock-in-trade of its house provocateurs. Some are still trying to deny that this is so, but the evidence just keeps piling up. It’s a downward spiral into nastiness that goes a long way toward explaining the election results all by itself.
I thought the Left was supposed to be against this stuff, but apparently it all depends, as Dale Amon suggests, on who’s doing the talking. I’m beginning to think that it was all just a scam — just as the Left’s enthusiasm for free speech on campus was a lot higher when the main beneficiaries of free speech protection were communists.
UPDATE: A reader writes:
For me, it was the Clinton sex scandals. Watching Susan Estrich falsely say on TV that what Clinton allegedly did to Juanita Broaddrick was not rape in Arkansas at the time–torture her by holding her down and biting her lip until the pain and bleeding were so great that she submitted to rape–literally made me ill. To think that these were the same people who thought that Clarence Thomas shouldn’t be confirmed because he was so far over the line for discussing dirty movies with a staff person and asking her out twice!
I took Anita Hill’s side in the Thomas hearings and I naively thought that feminists did so too as a matter of principle. But I learned in the Clinton rape allegations that most feminists (Gloria Allred being a notable exception) didn’t really care about what Thomas or Clinton had done–just what suited their politics. The feminist movement in the US may never recover the moral high ground–and when I hear Hillary Clinton sounding off about violence against women, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Yes, I think the moral high ground was lost for all time over that one — or, more accurately, was revealed never to have existed at all.
Estrich has recanted now. But, of course, not until after the political moment had passed.
MORE HUMAN RIGHTS CONCERNS over the air transport photos.
ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST: Reading between the lines in this story, I think that there may have been cooperation from other Palestinian groups in setting this guy up. Wouldn’t be the first time.
I WONDER WHAT JIMMY CARTER THINKS OF THIS?
Georgia Republicans’ roll continued Friday, as the GOP converted a third Democratic state senator and handed Gov.-elect Sonny Perdue control of half of the Legislature.
State Sen. Rooney Bowen of Cordele said in an interview he would leave the Democratic Party and join the Republicans because it would be the best thing for his South Georgia constituents.
Also Friday, Democratic Sens. Don Cheeks of Augusta and Dan Lee of LaGrange formally announced their decision to switch to the Republican Party.
Adding those three senators will give the Republicans a 29-27 majority, their first in the Georgia Senate since Reconstruction, to go along with their first governor since that era.
I’m not an election-trend tea-leaf reader, but this seems significant to me. Along with GOP successes in a number of other state legislatures, it certainly suggests that the elections were about more than the war.
HMM. THIS IS AN INTERESTING TWIST:
The U.S. citizen killed by a missile launched from a pilotless drone aircraft over Yemen was the ringleader of an alleged terrorist sleeper cell in Lackawanna, N.Y., administration officials said yesterday.
Kamal Derwish, one of two unindicted co-conspirators in the Lackawanna case, died along with the intended target of the attack, senior al Qaeda leader Abu Ali al-Harithi, who is accused of masterminding the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole in which 17 sailors died.
That would seem to strengthen the Buffalo case, wouldn’t it?
BLOGGERS ARE EVERYWHERE: Tom Maguire has a mole in the drug-war advertising establishment and he reports on the stupidity, er, plans.
TAPPED and TomPaine.Com are jumping on the Gary Hart 2004 bandwagon. Go for it guys. Just remember who was saying it over a year ago.
Advantage: InstaPundit!
HEY, MOXIE’S GOT A NEWSPAPER COLUMN NOW. Well, they do say you should write what you know.
THE SURPRISING SIMILARITY BETWEEN SAMUEL JOHNSON AND GEORGE PATTON: Courtesy of Horsefeathers.
DATELINE has a pretty interesting segment on about the airline passengers and crew who subdued Richard Reid. Turn it on, if you’re interested.
POLITICIANS, MUSICIANS, AND SMALL PLANES: Eric Olsen has some observations.
THE POWER OF THE INTERNET: Reader Jim Herd points out that the successful roundup of the Symbionese Liberation Army was largely the result of pressure by one guy with a website. I haven’t followed the case closely, but that seems to be largely correct.
UPDATE: Reader Dale Wetzel points out that this website deserves a mention, too.
STUPID (ANTI) RAVE TRICKS: TalkLeft reports on what happened in Wisconsin.
UPDATE: A reader notes that judges and prosecutors tend to go to more traditional music venues, where you’d never find anyone using drugs.
VEGARD VALBERG has posted what he calls “The Grandmother of All Mistings.”
MATTHEW HOY is pushing a bone-marrow registry drive for a friend. And The Indepundit has more information on bone marrow donation generally.
BILL QUICK explains how Bush can blow it by 2004. Not that I think it’s likely to happen.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON ON THE SELF-DESTRUCTION OF THE ANTI-AMERICAN LEFT:
The post-9/11 animus from a Norman Mailer (the Twin Towers were like ugly buck teeth), Noam Chomsky (America planned to kill “millions” in Afghanistan), or Michael Moore (there were few Bush voters at the World Trade Center) — followed by gleeful predictions by others of U.S. failure against the Taliban — is now come to logical fruition over the toppling of the odious Saddam Hussein. And what one has to conclude from the present venom is that anti-Americanism is neither logical nor empirical. Indeed, it is a fundamentalist secular religion, not a reasoned stance, one entirely inconsistent and unpredictable in its choice of friends and foes — except for one constant: Whatever America does, it hates.
We are learning that resistance never really entailed opposition to fascism at all, much less the need for intervention to support democracy, but was simply a strange desire to vent displeasure with our own culture. That so many of these ideological teenagers mad at their opulent and indulgent parents are affluent suburbanites suggests the deleterious effects of leisure and wealth; that so many enjoy the appurtenances of nice cars, houses, and travel denotes abject hypocrisy; that so many mindlessly repeat cant and fad reflects the power of belonging to a clique that promises status by being more “sophisticated” and “subtle” than ordinary Americans; that so many demand utopian perfection reminds us that their god Reason is an unforgiving totem; that so many are shrill and angry suggests that they seek global causes to assuage personal unhappiness and anger at a system that has not met their own high demands upon it. . . .
Face it: Slobodan Milosevic, Mullah Omar, Yasser Arafat, and Saddam Hussein — not the ghosts of the thousands of their innocent dead — all prefer Ramsey Clark to George Bush. We are seeing nothing less than quite literally the end of an era — witnessed by the intellectual suicide of an entire generation, who in their last gasps are proving they have been not very moral people all along.
Yep.
UPDATE: A reader sends this link to a Tom Wolfe essay that’s worth reading.
DALE AMON OBSERVES:
Political Correctness is not a matter of what is said; it is a matter of who says it. The anointed are “allowed” freedoms of speech unavailable to the hoi polloi. Had it been myself on ITV news, making the same remark, I would be pilloried for it.
Do not get me wrong: I am not castigating Michael Moore for this remark. I am merely pointing out there is an inherent asymmetry and illogic to the Left’s position on Freedom of Speech. The fact is, I agree with Michael Moore. Laura Ingraham is better looking than he is.
No argument here.
GARRISON KEILLOR, NORM COLEMAN, AND WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE DEMOCRATIC LEFT: Minnesota blogger Mitch Berg has some observations.
Rachel Lucas, meanwhile has some of her own regarding Terry McAuliffe, author of the Wellstone rally debacle.
THE TRIP TO NYC WAS FINE: Nice, smooth nonstop flight. Got into Newark before 8:30, was in Manhattan by 9. The taping for PBS’s “Media Matters” program on weblogs went well. When the producer originally called, I told him that I thought the story idea was great, but that they were going to have a hard time making it visually interesting.
This is why they’re TV pros and I’m not. The taping was a far cry from Larry King Live: in fact, it’s probably as close as I’ll get to making a rock video unless my music hobby really takes off. They had fog machines, various bizarre lighting effects, front- and back-projection setups, and a bunch of stuff that, had it been describe do me, would have seemed dumb but that actually looked pretty good when I saw it on the monitors. We’ll see how the program turns out, but I was impressed with what I saw.
Oliver Willis was there, too. I missed Anil Dash, who was there the day before, and Megan McArdle, who got there after a I left to catch my flight home.
Alas, I might as well have stayed. My flight home, along with a lot of other flights, was cancelled because of weather and I wound up spending the night at the Newark Airport Mariott. Not bad at all, as airport hotels go, but not where I would have chosen to spend the night. Got back this morning about ten.
I could have blogged from the Mariott’s “business center,” but at some outrageous per-minute rate. They had high-speed connections in the rooms, but I didn’t take the laptop, since I didn’t expect to have any free time anyway. Oh, well.
More later. Here’s the Media Matters homepage, though they don’t have anything about the show up there yet. They’re promising quicktime video clips soon; the show itself will run in January.
I’M HOME, SOMEWHAT LATE THANKS TO UNITED AIRLINES. MORE LATER.
BLOGGUS INTERRUPTUS: I may manage a post or two later tonight or tomorrow morning, but I’m catching an early flight to NYC tomorrow to be interviewed by the PBS show “Media Matters” — about weblogs, no surprise. If I get some free time I’ll post a few things, but since it’s an up-and-back in one day, free time may be at a premium. In my absence, visit the many fine weblogs in the links to the left. And don’t miss this special edition of Will Vehrs’ Punditwatch on FoxNews.
UPDATE: I’ve heard from Blogosphere favorite Rachael Klein! She emailed to let me know that she’s still at Berkeley, but that she’s given up her column because she’s trying hard to finish her senior thesis and graduate. She misses it, though, and I’ve encouraged her to start a weblog or start writing for Blogcritics or something. Anyway, I asked her to weigh in on the Great Cornell Vibrator controversy, and she’s sent some comments by email. I’ve posted them over at InstaPundit EXTRA! Also, Austin Bay has a comment on how Al Qaeda zealots find themselves fighting American robots — and losing.
And sheesh, over 100,000 pageviews yesterday, the day after the election. Go figure.
SOME ADVICE FOR BUSH: Jonah Goldberg warns that the Republicans need to avoid overreaching, as Republicans have done in the past when things went unexpectedly well. (I linked to a similar warning from John Ellis earlier today). Democrats and their friends in the media, after all, will be waiting to pounce on anything that will let them paint the Republicans as corrupt pawns of greedy big business.
I think he’s right, and in particular I think that the Bush Administration needs to do something dramatic that will position it on the side of consumers against Evil Big Business. And I have just the thing: The Bush Administration should take on the crooks and thugs of the recording and movie industries. And it should do so on the side of artists and consumers.
It’s widely believed that the recording industry shafts its artists. As Ken Layne has pointed out, when 9,000 artist accounts were audited, 8,999 were found to have involved underpayments to the artists. Artist retirement funds have been underfunded, too — sometimes to ridiculous levels. And the record companies recently settled a price-fixing suit brought by state attorneys general.
Meanwhile the entertainment industries are trying to take control of people’s computers, televisions, and stereos. Consumers are gouged for ticket prices, radio is ruined by payola and other shady practices, and pretty much everyone knows that the whole industry is rotten to the core. (Heck, it was the topic of the very first post on InstaPundit). And by siding with artists, the Administration will be able to split an industry that’s usually united against the Republicans right down the middle. And voters identify with actors and musicians much more than with the suits who run the record and movie industries.
By taking on this big business that everyone has come to hate, the Bush Administration can position itself as a tribune of the people against greedy corporate interests. (And make media assaults on the Administration easy to discount as a self-interested response to its efforts to enforce the law). That they happen to be greedy corporate interests that give generously to Democrats will only make it more appealing.
A BLOGGER GETS SUED. Scientology is involved.
This looks pretty thuggish to me. And it’s certainly lowering my opinion of Front Sight, an organization that I’ve always thought well of up to now.
READER BRIAN ERST says he’s found my secret identity. Damn, I thought dropping the “n” from my first name would throw people off.
MICHAEL MOORE is a failure as a prognosticator:
Sunday, November 3rd, 2002
Years from Now, They’ll Call It “Payback Tuesday”
Dear Friends,
Well, folks, Tuesday is the day! The day that George W. gets taught a long overdue lesson. The day that we, the MAJORITY — the 52% who never elected him — get our chance to reclaim a bit of our former democracy (back when ALL the votes used to be counted).
What if, on Tuesday, all of us, regardless of our political stripe, and just for the fun of it, decided to serve one big-ass eviction notice that said, you have two years to remove yourself from the premises-and you had better not damage anything on your way out?
I think we can give Bush the Mother of all Shellackings on Tuesday.
I think this is on a par with a lot of Moore’s other factual claims. Better read it before he takes it down. . . .
UPDATE: Some readers say that Moore’s screed should be read as a call to arms, rather than a prediction. Of course, just makes it a different kind of failure.
ANOTHER UPDATE: And quite a failure it was: UPI says the race overall went 53-47 for the GOP over the Dems. Hmm. . . think the people who set so much store by the popular-vote totals in 2000 will be talking about this figure? Nope. They’re in too great a state of denial. Which will only help the Republicans long-term, of course. Eric Raymond has some thoughts on the Dems’ disconnect with reality, and why it’s a deeper problem than most commentators seem to have realized.
DAN HANSON probes the darkside of the election results.
IN ANSWER TO A QUESTION POSED BY A READER BELOW, Gerhard Schroder has called President Bush to offer his congratulations. It’s not clear, though, whether Bush took the call. . . .
THE BARBARIANS AT THE GATES: Of Paris, that is. This is the logical consequence of a general policy of appeasement, and of the state telling everyone not to get involved in matters that it then proceeds to neglect itself. It’s New York, 1977, all over again. Only worse.
THREE PAKISTANI MEN HAVE BEEN ARRESTED for trying to buy Stinger missiles on behalf of Al Qaeda.
UPDATE: Here’s more. Ashcroft is wrong, though — this isn’t a reason to join the war on terrorists to the war on drugs. It’s a reason to get rid of the war on drugs, and thus deprive terrorists of a covert source of funds.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Andrew Stuttaford agrees, writing:
Uncle Sam’s drug warriors have trashed thousands of lives and squandered billions of dollars in their pointless and self-defeating crusade. They are also now, it is clear, a growing menace to national security. It’s long past time to say no to them.
Yes, it is.
VINOD VALLOPPILLIL has a link-filled post on what should come next with Iraq. Excerpt:
If Saddam were a white guy named Milosevic, the entire friggin’ EU, NATO, and US military would already be in the country saving the populace from this him. Alas, Milosevic didn’t have the Race Card, the Religion Card, and the Anti-West Cards working for him. The usual Euro/leftist voices of humanitarianism fall strangely silent when dealing with “brown tyrants for brown people.”
Indeed.
HERE’S THE TEXT of the proposed U.S. resolution on Iraq.
WHIGGINGOUT emails to point out that his November 2 predictions held up better than those of the experts. Yep.
UPDATE: Dodd Harris is claiming vindication too!
No email from Dick Morris yet. . . .
READER EMAIL: Here are a few excerpts from my voluminous inbox:
While I agree that National Security was the big stick that enabled the Republican success in this election, I don’t think you can overstate the repugnance with which many independents viewed Wellstone’s memorial service. I think there is a strong possibility that mobilized many folks to vote against the Democrats.
—
Minnesota folk have a strong sense of decency and and watching Democrats make politics into a tasteless political rally offended us to the core. The Wellstone rally was all people talked about here last week. Poll lines were 3 hours long yesterday; I am guessing the final totals will set a new record for voter turnout.
—
OK, so it’s not really a revolution everywhere. Here in Georgia it is nothing short of that: the collapse of a 130-year-old structure of Democratic control of the state government that nobody saw coming, outside perhaps of Sonny Perdue’s immediate family and maybe Ralph Reed.
One local trend that a lot of people missed is that in some key states, including Georgia, Massachusetts and Maryland, Republicans were able to run as outsiders critizing an entrenched Democratic political establishment that voters resented more than everyone thought. This kind of thing can cut both ways, of course, but outside of Illinois and maybe Michigan it didn’t. Even in Wisconsin, where Tommy Thompson’s successor got turned out, the Republicans took over both houses of the state legislature.
On the national level, the big issue that Democrats still haven’t come to grips with may not be the economy at all, though I agree with what Josh Marshall says today about their emphasis on tactics over ideas. The big issue that the end of the Cold War and the 1990′s boom obscured may be that Democrats are still not trusted on national security/foreign policy issues. The last election where they were, really, was the one in 1964. Elections they have won since were those where the electorate’s attention was focused elsewhere: on the aftermath of Watergate (1976), or on the economy (1992 and ’96).
Plenty of criticisms can be made of how Republican administrations have handled defense and foreign affairs, but as with economic issues you cannot beat something with nothing. Democrats are for the most part still identified with weakness, as they have been since the McGovern candidacy in 1972, and with putting interest group politics ahead of national security. One of the most effective GOP attacks on Democrats this year was about applying civil service rules to the new Dept. of Homeland Security — the Democrats never came up with a good reason for their position other than that it was what the public employee unions wanted. To most people it looked like doing what the unions wanted was the thing they were really serious about.
—
On the national scene, I think this is relief from the constipation that has gripped us for the last two years. Before the elections, big media was touting that this election would be a referendum on the Bush Presidency and I think it was. Look for those same pundits to back quickly away from that statement now. I think it also shows, much to the pundits’ dismay, that the American people are paying attention.
—
As the fallout becomes clearer, I think the Dems are going to see that there are a LOT of people like me: Registered Democrats who have previously been party faithful but who jumped the fence based on the war on terrorism. I talked to a little old man while in line for the polls and he told me he was in this category, and was voting Republican for the first time in 20 years. “Those Democrats are going to get more Americans killed,” he said.
—
This past Saturday I was in a townie pub in a ‘burb of Boston. I knew then that O’Brien was toast. Her behavior in the last debate turned off the local and blue collar vote, as did the fact that three of her relatives are “on the payroll”. The final straw, I think, was her stand on allowing 16 year olds to have abortions without parental consent — it turned off many “moderate” pro-choicers. She came across as Hillary Clinton would if she only could, and that’s a sure-fire loser anywhere.
So without the “townie”/blue collar vote, O’Brien didn’t have a chance because MA is being transformed by it’s high-tech, entrepreneurial economy. The liberal base is being sapped by a new breed that wants low taxes, increasing property values and a continuing supply of high paying, high tech jobs. But the kicker is that the “townies” are now recognizing that this is in their best interest too and are defecting from this base.
—
Interesting spin in the NY Times that says that President Bush must account for all of those waving hands that voted for the Dems. I don’t recall them saying that when the Dems won big in 1998. Then it was a mandate.
—
You voiced some wonder that Ehrlich won in MD despite his position on guns (or perhaps despite KKT’s position on guns).
I would suggest that during the sniper episode more than a few otherwise liberal or liberal-minded people went to buy a gun and came up against the waiting period and the State Police background checks and the Federal forms answer truthfully on penalty of a felony) and rethought their positions on guns and gun control.(Hey, I’m a law-abiding guy/gal, why can’t I have a gun to protect myself, and what if I need one during the waiting period? What if I made a mistake by accident on the forms and get in trouble? Hey, I vote for Connie Morella, therefore I am ok, right?) Maybe some cognitive dissonance set in….
A statistic that came out during the campaign was that thousands of guns were fingerprinted in the last two years (since the law was passed)and not a single crime has been solved on that basis. Meanwhile, the state archivist was found to have declared that MD would not be cooperating with other states’ firearms background checks “for lack of resources”, calling into question the commitment of the administration to doing something sensible about gun ownership by criminals with the existing laws. Further, I believe there was a brief period of time when even the background checks for Maryland gun purchasers were not done properly. When the sniper’s weapon was found to have been brought in from out of state maybe some realized the futility of the exercise.
All of this makes it more than reasonable to assume that what we do about guns is a reasonable question, not an automatic “yes” to more gun laws.
–
I’m the state chairman of the Massachusetts Libertarian Party.
I spent the whole day yesterday at the polls, talking to voters and to the political operatives for the Democrats and Republicans.
What Jay Fitzgerald fails to mention is that the anti-income tax initiative was completely a Libertarian initiative, and one that every Republican (Mitt Romney included) opposed.
Tell me again how this is supposed to be victory for conservatives?
This is a stunning victory for the Libertarians; we have demonstrated our ability to set the agenda.
Meanwhile, some members of the Republican state committee (who shall remain unnamed to protect their privacy) have complained to me on numerous occasions of the leftward tilt of their own party, and of the constant witch hunts to eliminate “real” conservatives. . . .
In the mean time, the Libertarian Party is the fastest growing party in
Massachusetts, and we have only just begun.
—
1. Terry can claim all he wants that the Democratic base didn’t come out, but the places they DID come out is where they got hammered worst (congratulations, Jeb!)
2. Jeffords just lost everything he sold his soul for, and I think milk AND cheese will be getting much cheaper in the coming months. . . .
9. Look for Maureen Dowd to make inappropriate comparisons to this mandate for Bush to the 100% turnout/vote for Saddaam in Iraq. She’ll make it fit, trust me. If she doesn’t then Molly Ivins will.
—
The consensus on the Street is that the Fed will have to cut rates again today to provide stimulus to the economy. Yet Democrats have tried to claim that they have a better economic plan — raise taxes!
If Greenspan does cut rates today, it will serve as an exclamation point to the message voters gave Democrats yesterday — that they don’t have a clue when it comes to a plan for the future.
—
The question I’m trying to ask is: “Can the Senate refuse to seat Lautenberg based on the violation of state election laws?”
—
Voters in South Carolina elected Mark Sanford governor. He proposed a plan to phase out that state’s income tax.
Voters in liberal Massachusetts nearly passed an initiative to repeal the state’s income tax. It failed only 55-45, a shockingly close margin in liberal Taxachusetts.
Voters in liberal Oregon overwhelmingly defeated a ballot initiative to create universal healthcare in the state because it would have caused massive increases to the state’s income tax.
Clearly, anti-tax sentiment is brewing.
—
Ehrlich skillfully finessed the gun issue and made it into the crime issue. According the FBI’s data Maryland is the third most violent state in the nation. (I’ve not seen the more recent data, but at the census bureau site, Maryland was the fourth most violent state in 2000, up from sixth in 1990. Violent crime rates in Maryland did drop, just not as fast as in most other states during the 1990′s.) Ehrlich advocates bringing Richmond’s Project Exile to Maryland to fight gun crime. (Both the NRA and anti-gun groups supported Project Exile.) I know it’s a cliche to say that we need to control criminals not guns, but it’s true. Given Townsend’s spotty record on controlling crime – she was in charge of fighting crime in the administration – Ehrlich’s win also suggests that simply passing more gun control laws is an abdication masquerading as fighting crime.
—
How would you like to be Frank Lautenberg this morning?
78 years old and back in the Senate in the *minority* party. Yeah, that’ll get him jumping out of bed every morning.
—
It seems to me that the combination of (i) the President’s ability to aid his party’s candidates and (ii) his ability heretofore to keep Senate Dems on the ropes on Iraq, executive privilege, etc. flatly disprove the sentiment running high circa 1999 that the rabid Clinton-haters had irreparably damaged the presidency for all time.
Of course, the speed with which those same persons began to blast the Administration’s “unilateralism” sort of gave the lie to that “damaged presidency” thesis earlier. Even Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. was recently trumpeting the return of the Imperial Presidency a few weeks ago.
—
I wonder if German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has placed a congratulatory call to President Bush yet?
This just scratches the surface of what I’ve gotten.
DEMOCRATS LOOKING FOR A MODEL could do worse than to study Phil Bredesen’s campaign. Bredesen looked like a loser early on — having been beaten by the not-very-impressive Don Sundquist in 1994. The Republican, Van Hilleary, was in a strong position and had a good campaign organization. But Bredesen won convincingly in a state that is trending Republican. He even pulled a lot of Republican votes out of East Tennessee, which should have been a Hilleary stronghold.
Bredesen is pro-choice, and generally seen as less anti-tax than Hilleary. He ran as a strongly pro-gun candidate, attending NRA events — I even saw a flyer for a charity skeet-shoot between him and Hilleary. And (though of course it’s easier to do as a gubernatorial candidate) he kept a strong separation between himself and the Barbara Boxer wing of the Democratic Party.
BUSHISM OF THE DAY: N.Z. Bear’s got it.
THE DAY AFTER: John Ellis has some thoughts, and a warning against hubris.
LAST WEEK I GOT A MESSAGE containing an email exchange between an Air Force Academy cadet and a professor who responded very rudely to a polite request for information. I didn’t run it because I couldn’t verify it and the professor’s response seemed so stereotypically rude and anti-military that I wasn’t entirely sure it was real:
From: Peter Kirstein
Sent: Thursday, October 31, 2002 1:46 PM
To: Kurpiel Robert C4C CS26
Subject: Re: Academy Assembly
You are a disgrace to this country and I am furious you would even think I would support you and your aggressive baby killing tactics of collateral damage. Help you recruit. Who, top guns to reign death and destruction upon nonwhite peoples throughout the world? Are you serious sir? Resign your commission and serve your country with honour.
No war, no air force cowards who bomb countries with AAA, without possibility of retaliation. You are worse than the snipers. You are imperialists who are turning the whole damn world against us. September 11 can be blamed in part for what you and your cohorts have done to Palestinians, the VC, the Serbs, a retreating army at Basra.
You are unworthy of my support.
Peter N. Kirstein
Professor of History
Saint Xavier University.
It was, in fact, genuine, proving that some stereotypes have a basis in fact. Neal Boortz has been on top of it and has the whole story, ending with an apology from Professor Kirstein. All I can say is that the students and faculty of the U.S. Air Force Academy have shown far more maturity and civility than their antimilitarist critic. Again.
Although Professor Kirstein has apologized, I can’t help but feel that his initial letter was a more accurate reflection of his feelings than the apology that came out after this letter received widespread attention. And I think that the identification of people like Kirstein with the Democratic Party helps to explain yesterday’s election. While I would defend Kirstein’s right to spout his insulting twaddle — just as I defend the right of fraternity members to wear blackface, which I regard as behavior of equivalent intellectual and moral seriousness — I am embarrassed that the academic profession claims so many people who think like Professor Kirstein, and talk like Professor Kirstein — and that the academic profession, for the most part, isn’t embarrassed about that at all. Indeed, he would have been likely to receive more censure from academics had he impersonated Michael Jackson.
That the email is barely literate, of course, adds insult to injury.
UPDATE: A reader directed me to Kirstein’s website, which he characterizes as “almost a parody.” The picture of Karl Marx’s grave appears to have been removed, but Kirstein does advise fellow professors to “Be prepared for occasional frustration when students don’t always respond to your enthusiasim [sic] and dreams.” He’s also blasting Campus Watch for “McCarthyism,” but the fact that Campus Watch has named him an apologist for terrorism seems to do more to enhance than to detract from Campus Watch’s credibility.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Nope, the Marx picture is still up — it’s here.
ONE MORE: Some liberals in academia are catching on, as this piece from the Duke University Chronicle illustrates. (Via LGF).
LAST UPDATE, REALLY: Reader Tom Donahue writes:
Peter Kirstein’s response to the Air Force Academy cadet is completely in keeping with what those who knew him in graduate school would have expected. Peter and I were in the St. Louis University doctoral program at the same time in the late 60′s, early 70′s. His every day conversation then was filled with ideological cant and he was viewed as a largely harmless if somewhat annoying buffoon. Too bad that the passage of 30 plus years has brought such little intellectual development.
Unfortunately, there is a whole generation of annoying buffoons, hired back when standards were much, much lower, still occuping positions in academia. People like that would be screened out today.
I PLUGGED THE WEEKLY STANDARD’S SUCCESS in getting so many actual articles online so fast, but I should point out that the folks at The Corner pulled an amazing journalistic all-nighter, too.
EUROPEANS FRET, FEARING A BOLDER BUSH: Reader John Chang sends this link, and notes that Gerhard Schroder should be as worried about his prospects as Jim Jeffords. Not much evidence that it’s sunk in, though:
“The likelihood that the American president will feel even more self-confident about his own views than prior to the election is great,” Karsten Voigt, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s U.S. affairs coordinator, told Reuters.
“But on the other side, I think that he needs to convince Europeans. And so far as military action (in Iraq) is concerned, he has not convinced the Germans — yet.”
The question that the Germans and the French need to be asking is not “what will Bush do to win us over,” but rather “what can we do to minimize the paybacks for our backstabbing?”
BILL HOBBS has a post on the Massachusetts anti-income tax initiative, and its surprisingly light coverage outside of Massachussetts. And scroll down for a lot of coverage on the Tennessee elections.
HEY, EVEN ENRON WAS BETTER THAN THIS:
Fraud, errors and complacency in the management of the European Union’s €98bn (£61bn) budget were yesterday laid bare in ahard-hitting annual report by the EU’s court of auditors.
The report confirms many of the allegations made by Marta Andreasen, the suspended EU chief accountant, who claimed the European Commission’s accounting system is deeply flawed.
For the eighth year in a row, the court was only able to certify that 5 per cent of the EU’s expenditure – mainly relating to internal administration – was legal and regular. The remaining 95 per cent, including the sprawling farm and regional aid budgets, was not given a positive statement of assurance “due to the incidence of errors found”.
Incidents of fraud detected include the usual bizarre assortment of fraudulent subsidy claims, including those paid for non-existent sheep and for imaginary Alpine pastures.
Hmm. Remember the tut-tutting about “American-style capitalism” from Euro-politicos when the Enron scandal broke? Somebody call them for comments on this. . . .
POSTMORTEM: Josh Marshall has it about right, I think:
There will be a lot of talk about poorly executed tactics in various races. And there does seem to have been a late wave for Republicans — probably just enough to seal a number of contests, and quite likely related to the president’s election swing. But I think the issue here isn’t poor tactics so much as an over-emphasis on tactics in general. The Democrats have lots of long-term political and demographic trends in their favor. But they don’t really have a politics, a vision, or a message — or perhaps, better to say, the courage and imagination to get behind one. And I suspect that that is the underlying issue.
Tactics can make a difference, and they’re easy to focus on because they’re discrete and — in the warfare mode — they’re fun. But they’re supposed to be an adjunct to the message, not a substitute for the message. When you let them take over, you look like you don’t have a message, and like you’ll do anything to win. That was the import of the Wellstone funeral-cum-rally, and of a lot of other things that the Democrats have done, and it hurt them.
The Democrats need to fix themselves. Marshall predicts that a lot of heads will roll, and they should.
NO BIAS HERE: The current BBC headline: “Congress falls to the Republicans.” Even the Guardian is more neutral, with “Clean Sweep for the Republicans.”
Meanwhile reader Peter Schiavo writes:
I think on a certain level the broad middle is afraid that the Democrats don’t take terrorism seriously. Plus I think the mandate given to the President to bypass the UN and attack Iraq is clear. Let’s see if the French get the message.
I think that’s probably right.
UPDATE: The BBC has changed its headline to “Triumph for Bush in Congress Elections” — hmm.
TACITUS responds to blogospheric sour grapes.
MICKEY KAUS says that the big story is the New York Times’ blowing of its own scoop — its polls over the weekend forecast the outcome, but the Times was too busy spinning for the Democrats to notice.
He has some choice words for VNS — which apparently was showing Florida too close to call even as Jeb Bush racked up a big victory — too. But to be fair, even VNS doubted those numbers.
Jay Fitzgerald, meanwhile, has some Massachussetts insights:
Ronald Reagan wins Massachusetts in ’80 and ’84. The last four gubernatorial races here have been won by Republicans (granted, not of the Rest of the Nation variety). A radical anti-income tax measure nearly wins tonight (and it’s still not counted out as of now). President Bush has a surprisingly strong approval rating here, especially after he rattles the old sword. But what does the rest of the nation still think of Massachusetts? McGovern, ’72. Message to the country: Massachusetts IS more liberal than the rest of the country, but not nearly as liberal as people think. There’s a Democratic machine here that most out-of-state observers just don’t get — nor appreciate in terms of the way it shapes politics here. Think: Cook County of the Daley era. The patronage. The nepotism. The one-party lock. That’s Massachusetts. The Dems draw the legislative and Congressional maps here. That’s why they control the legislature and all the Congressional seats here. But it doesn’t necessarily reflect the mood here. Yes, again, Massachusetts is, without question, more liberal than the average state, but tonight’s results show … well, figure it out yourself. Now if we could only have a Republican party that could get its act together … Hell, I and a lot of other people would even vote Green or French Socialist to get these clowns off our back.
The Massachusetts GOP has been lame for years. Maybe they’ll sieze this opportunity. Maybe they won’t.
NORM COLEMAN IS PRONOUNCED THE WINNER IN MINNESOTA: That’s what the New York Times says in a 7:05 alert on its front page.
This is bad news for Terry McAuliffe. He’s likely to be out of a job soon, which paradoxically is probably bad news for the Republicans.
UPDATE: CNN has called it for Coleman too now. I think it was the tasteless rally that made the difference.
INSTA-PUNDITRY: Sheesh, the Weekly Standard already has four articles up on its site analyzing the election. I just couldn’t stay up until the end last night, after spending the previous evening at Children’s Hospital.
I almost felt embarrassed by being one-upped this way, but then I remembered: they get paid for doing this. You know, with real money and everything!
UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan, who routinely keeps later hours than me anyway, has a lot of good points. I especially like the observation that Howell Raines is a mole for Karl Rove. He might as well be.
ANOTHER UPDATE: And Stephen Green has loads of interesting observations.
LILEKS NEEDS A MAID: Go to his site and hit the tipjar.
AS I SAID, a good night for the Republicans. And I suspect that it’s Bush’s campaign swing that made most of the difference. Even some of the winning Republicans seemed surprised, though, at the difference between the vote and their final tracking polls. I think that indicates — as with the VNS debacle — that polls are becoming increasingly unreliable for a variety of reasons.
I think it’s a good thing that polls are becoming unreliable. Maybe as that becomes clear, politicians will stop paying so much attention to them in between elections.
WITH 68% OF THE VOTE IN, Massachusetts’ initiative to abolish the state income tax still has 47% of the vote.
UPDATE: Okay, it’s finished at 45% of the vote. I noticed that CNN was covering the failure of the medical-marijuana referendum in Arizona, but didn’t mention this one at all.
Call me crazy, but I think that a 45% vote to abolish the freakin’ income tax — and in Massachussetts of all places — is a bigger deal.
FOX IS CALLING IT FOR EHRLICH IN MARYLAND. Amazing that Townsend’s anti-gun theme fell so flat, in Maryland of all places.
A THOUGHT: The Republicans are doing a lot better than people expected a couple of weeks ago, and a lot better than parties usually do in midterms when they control the Presidency. Bush has been campaigning like hell the last couple of weeks.
This was a big gamble for him — if he had stayed in the Rose Garden, they probably wouldn’t have done nearly as well, but his spinmeisters could have used history to deflect a lot of the criticism. But once he went out to campaign, it was a gamble: if Jeb Bush had lost, and if the GOP had gotten creamed in some of these other races, he’d look much weaker as a result, and the war effort might have been in danger, leaving him likely to be a one-termer.
But he took the risk, and though at this hour it’s not clear how big the victory is, he’s clearly won a victory.
Do you think he’ll pursue a similarly audacious strategy on the war?
NECN IS PROJECTING ROMNEY THE WINNER in Massachussetts. And Fox is calling it for Saxby Chambliss in Georgia. Looks like a pretty good night for the Republicans after all.
UPDATE: With 62% of the vote in, support for the anti-income-tax initiative in Massachussetts is steady at 47%. That’s big news.
Donald Sensing is tracking referenda around the country.
IN MARYLAND, Ehrlich is currently leading over Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, 51-48 with 82% of the vote in.
UPDATE: Now it’s 52-47 with 93% of the vote in. They’re not calling it yet, but it’s looking good for Ehrlich.
WITH 39% OF THE VOTE IN, Massachussetts’ initiative to abolish the state income tax is at a stunning 47% — this could be the sleeper story of the night. I still doubt it will pass, but this kind of support in “Taxachussetts” bodes ill for people like Garry Wills and Sean Wilentz who maintain that America’s appetite for big government is unslaked.
UPDATE: The percentage is holding steady with 43% of the vote in.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Roger Bournival sends this link to NECN which is updating the results more often. And with 47% of the vote in , the percentage of support is the same.
Jay Fitzgerald is blogging through the night on the Massachussetts returns.
ONE MORE UPDATE: 68% of the vote’s in, and it’s still at 47% support. This is amazing.
MERYL YOURISH is a disenfranchised voter. Jesse Jackson, call your office!
