"If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner." H.L. Mencken

TV Journalist Dismissed For Political Incorrectness

From theThe Daily Times, Neil Zoren TV Critic.

The whole episode involving former anchor Joe Vasquez at Channel 10 disturbs me.

Part of my unease derives from my disdain for political correctness. Part of it comes from wondering whether the actual punishment fits the alleged crime.

few weeks after being accused of making inappropriate comments with a cameraman while covering the story of another alleged rape by an athlete on the campus of Philadelphia's La Salle University.

A female intern who was on the news site with Vasquez and the cameraman returned to the station and complained she was offended by the crassness and insensitivity of the exchange. The cameraman was given a suspension for his part in the incident.

I am not going to defend crassness and insensitivity. I have to wonder, however, whether an instance of bad taste, no matter to what level is was carried, negates a person's value to a television station or warrants the dismissal of one of the better talents Channel 10 put on the air.

Vasquez was especially likeable in his role as weekend anchor for the NBC station.

No one wants a young woman, or anyone else for that matter, to be offended. Yet it's worth asking if the fragility or sensitivity of one person should constitute grounds for interrupting the career of another. Current law and practice says it should.

Vasquez is as much a victim of a trend where the slightest offense to someone causes more than a mountain, but turns ever a rhinoceros hill into K-2 or Mt. Everest. Especially when we're talking about words, as opposed to sticks and stones or other physical actions.

I have worked in journalism for a long time. I also work in another field. In both jobs, there is a lot of pressure and lot of difficult situations to know about or witness. The result to veterans of occupations that bring one in touch with tough situations on a frequent basis is "M*A*S*H* humor," a term I coined based on the jokes the characters in "M*A*S*H*" used to make about their jobs, their patients, and the Korean War. Not all of the situations the characters in "M*A*S*H*" commented on were funny, but the humor helped them relieve the tension of dealing with medical situations and being in the middle of the war.

Maybe what Vasquez said was horrible beyond belief. Maybe it was more crass than the average person would deem passable. But maybe it was something to shrug off and tell someone to be careful about rather than a firing offense.

Maybe some perspective and a sense of humor is needed. A college intern of either gender is rarely worldly, and people younger than age 30 tend, in my experience, to see the world as much more rigid shades of right and wrong that their more jaded, more experienced elders.

Maybe the right move was to calm the young woman who was offended while admitting some inappropriateness and cautioning those involved to be more professional and judicious in the future, "M*A*S*H*" humor or not.

In dismissing Vasquez, I think Channel 10 over-reacted and set a bad precedent about knuckling under to political correctness, a blight the confining effects of which we must all fight to turn back.

Hat tip to Political Correctness Watch.

Keeping Faith

George Will, no great fan of George Bush, endorses him nonetheless.

Tuesday's winner will not start from scratch but from where we are now, standing with the women of Bamiyan, Afghanistan. Back in Washington recently, Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, said those women were warned that Taliban remnants would attack polling places during the Oct. 9 elections. So the women performed the ritual bathing and said the prayers of those facing death. Then, rising at 3 a.m., they trekked an hour to wait in line for the polls to open at 7 a.m. In the province of Kunar an explosion 100 meters from a long line of waiting voters did not cause anyone to leave the line.

Which candidate can be trusted to keep faith with these people? Surely not the man whose party is increasingly influenced by its Michael Moore faction. Surely not the man whose most important vote in his 20 Senate years opposed using force to expel Iraq from Kuwait in 1991. Iraqi forces had crossed an international border to eradicate a sovereign nation, but Kerry does not regret voting to oppose the forceful reversal of this aggression.

We must finish what we've started. As tough as it's proved to be, our current course is the only one with a chance of reshaping the Muslim world.

And, we mustn't try to dodge the issue, we are attempting to reshape it.

We're throwing our weight around to compel, convince, and cajole a decaying but dangerous culture to change. War has been banished from the West, indeed it's disappeared among nations everywhere that have adopted the tenets of western civilization. The Muslim nations must join the world.

This infuriates the multi-culturalists of the left, those who revere every culture but our own. "How dare we judge them?", they sputter. Well we're humans, we live only by making judgements. And this particular judgement is sound.

Negotiations, bribes, and UN Resolutions have failed for 40 years while the threat of this cruel and corrupt society grew stronger. We cannot go back there.

Hat tip to Power Line

Arafat's Illness

David Frum has the most interesting speculation yet on what might ail Arafat.

Speaking of media bias, here’s a question you won’t hear in our big papers or on network TV: Does Yasser Arafat have AIDS?

We know he has a blood disease that is depressing his immune system. We know that he has suddenly dropped considerable weight – possibly as much as 1/3 of all his body weight. We know that he is suffering intermittent mental dysfunction. What does this sound like?

Former Romanian intelligence chief Ion Pacepa tells in his very interesting memoirs that the Ceaucescu regime taped Arafat’s orgies with his body guards. If true, Arafat would a great deal to conceal from his people and his murderously anti-homosexual supporters in the Islamic world.

Well that would go a long ways towards explaining why the little wife lives in Paris. On the other hand, have you seen Ramallah?

Reminds me of the old Johnny Carson joke, "How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen . . . the farm?"

[UPDATE:] More speculation on Arafat's condition here.

"Scary Kerry"

One Canadian's view.

We should thank God that the United States had a president, George W. Bush, who did not succumb to weakness but had the backbone to respond to the terrorists and to countries that supported those terrorists. While Canada prefers to be a moralizing do-gooder, the world's moral superpower, the U.S., under Bush, accepted its global and continental responsibilities.

We have less clout now with the Americans and multilaterally than since the Second World War ended. Are we going to deal with the realities of today's world as a thinking and understanding liberal democracy with backbone, as we did in two World Wars and Korea, or weasel as we have done?

If I were able to vote in the United States, I would vote for George W. Bush as a proven person with backbone and determination.

We have been tremendously lucky in having a Bush for us to hide behind -- while we run around complaining about the thorns of the Bush and the amount of shade the Bush throws and what kind of fertilizer the Bush grew in.

I am a Canadian who prefers the Bush I know to the Kerry I find scary, and hopefully won't get to know.

John Crosbie in the Toronto Sun.

Winning the Game

Howard Troxler, columnist at the St. Petersburg Times draws an interesting analogy between the Electoral College and the World Series.

Did you know that the New York Yankees actually defeated the Boston Red Sox in this year's American League championship?

It should have been the Yankees, not the Red Sox, who played in the World Series.

I can prove it.

During the seven games of their league championship, the Yankees scored a total of 45 runs. The Red Sox scored only 41 runs.

Therefore, the Yankees really won.

After all, the team that scores the most runs overall should win. Who can possibly argue with that?

(Perhaps you are thinking: "You nitwit! Winning the World Series is not about adding up the total number of runs. You have to win four out of seven games."

True. You are exactly right. I was just kidding...And now you also understand why we should keep the Electoral College.

A candidate does not get to be president of the United States simply by scoring the most "runs," that is, by racking up the biggest raw number of popular votes.

A candidate has to win enough states in the Electoral College to prove that he or she deserves to be president of this immense, diverse nation.

Think of each state as its own separate "game" in the series. It doesn't matter what happened in any other game - or state.

Read the whole thing and store it away for the almost inevitable debates over the election soon to come.

Back To the Future

Steve Forbes has a good editorial today on OpinionJournal comparing Bush's and Kerry's policies and outlook.

Sen. Kerry wants more government intervention in health care and would move us toward the kind of systems that are so glaringly failing in Canada and Europe. Social Security? Do nothing, except perhaps someday raise taxes. Education? Do nothing except throw money at it and resist vouchers, curb charter schools and oppose anything else the education-undermining National Education Association dislikes.

Sen. Kerry would also pander to fashionable and apocalyptic fantasies, such as global warming or the ever-recurring notion that we are running out of oil. And to fulfill a fraction of his lavish campaign promises, John Kerry would make generous-spending George W. Bush look like a piker.

While Iraq has completely dominated the campaign (with the occasional potshot at the supposedly bad economy), Kerry's domestic policies haven't been well-publicized. His presidency would be four years of proof that the Progressives aren't.

[UPDATE:] Whaddya know? Roger agrees.

The Old Bastard Lives

I've thought for three years now that Osama was dead. Given the videotape released yesterday, I have to say I was wrong (and that pains me).

Some think the tape helps Bush and one thinks it's a plea for surrender.

I think Jay Reding has it about right.

The ideology of radical Islam is the ideology that divides the world between Dar al-Harb (the House of War) and Dar-al-Islam (the House of Submission). If tomorrow we surrendered Israel and allowed a second Holocaust, threw the Iraqi people to the wolves with our withdrawl, and never again bothered the Middle East the war would not end – instead, sensing weakness, al-Qaeda would demand nothing less than our complete surrender to shari’a.

Even if we could buy our safety by leaving the Middle East to fall into the same abject poverty and tyranny that was Afghanistan and the Taliban, we would be buying that safety with the blood of millions. It is much like the “truce” that al-Qaeda offered Europe after Madrid – a truce that is tantamount to surrender.

We will never surrender, we will never relent, and sooner or later we will find bin Laden and send him to Hell where he belongs.

Amen.

Breaking

Via Roger Simon we learn of the real October Surprise.

Camille

Back in the early 90's I had a very lefty friend (LF) who made it his mission to convert me to liberalism. He knew me well enough to know that I wasn't a raging idiot, I wasn't religious, and I was neither wealthy nor did I have any hope of one day inheriting, well, anything actually.

Now since liberals consider stupidity, religious fundamentalism, and greed to be the three leading causes of conservative's disease, he was sure that my illness was due solely to a lack of exposure to liberalism. And he proceeded to shower me with books, the exquisite logic of which, he was sure, would turn me around.

First came Molly Ivins. I hadn't heard of her at the time but it didn't take me till page four or five to put that one down, yikes. Then came a screed against Clarence Thomas, "Strange Justice". About one chapter in, and that went on the shelf too.

Eventually, out of desperation I think, he figured that if he couldn't make a liberal out of me, he'd at least try to nudge me towards libertarianism. And soon P.J. O'Rourke arrived on my doorstep (a book by, not the actual person). I liked it.

Encouraged by this success, LF then gave me a copy of "Vamps and Tramps" by Camille Paglia. Now, judging by the cover, I thought we'd regressed back to Ivins level stuff but I was wrong.

Paglia is one smart broad (and I don't think she'd object to that term). She's a committed liberal who admires Rush Limbaugh. She's a lesbian who adores men, she's a professor of humanities who deplores modern education, and she's a Democrat who sees how bereft of core principles the party's become.

What's not to like? And so since then I devour any of her writing that I come across. Besides being smart she's a hell of a writer. This week Salon interviewed her on the presidential race.

Sadly, she's going to vote for Kerry but her insight into the campaign is brilliant. She is one of the few liberals who understands why conservatives are conservative and she doesn't resort to smears and insults to criticize them.

On the SwiftVets:

The impact of that story on talk radio was indescribable -- because it turned out that there really was ambiguity about the events surrounding Kerry's medals. I absolutely believe Kerry was injured, but I was certainly very surprised to learn that he won three Purple Hearts for wounds that never required hospitalization. He had minimal medical treatment and never missed a day of work. Compare that to other veterans who lost limbs or, like Sen. John McCain, can't even lift their arms and need help to put on a jacket.

On Bush:

This is someone who, as a former alcoholic, can't have a drink. But the leader of the world's one remaining superpower should be able to have a nice glass of Pinot Noir at dinner -- especially when he's running a war! Relaxation gives perspective. The pressure of the presidency is crippling. Bush is a person who became born-again midway through his life. He's a new personality trying to live the right way -- but he's dragged the nation into his private drama. The consequence of his exhausting push for day-by-day certitude is a brittle tightness and puritanical inflexibility.

But if Bush wins this election, he did it on his own. Ever since the Republican Convention, he's been on fire, with a dynamic energy that makes him look like the underdog. He's cast off his paternalistic mentors and has come into his own as president. Going out to rallies really energizes him. And the crowds, who adore him, have truly made a turnaround, because for a while, the Republican base was a bit apathetic.

On Michael Moore:

But for Moore to turn a sitting president of the United States into a joke, and to use his position abroad to foment anti-Americanism, has had a huge backlash: the massive, indulgent publicity about the Moore film was when the Republican passion for Bush really began -- the passion to defend him, fed by a longstanding scorn for the liberal major media and for Hollywood. That's when everything seemed to gel for Bush, who had alienated conservatives with his big spending and slack immigration policy.

On Mary Cheney:

I was absolutely sickened by the use of Mary Cheney as a political gambit by both Kerry and Edwards. My partner disagreed -- she thought it was fine. Many of our friends also thought it was OK. I did not. I found it utterly offensive and manipulative. I don't care whether Mary Cheney worked for Coors as a gay liaison. I don't care that she works for her father's campaign office. Mary Cheney has made her own rules and has not thrust herself into the national spotlight to speak publicly. It is unethical and grotesque to tag and stereotype her as "the lesbian" of this presidential campaign.

Camille Paglia is one of the few remaining great minds in academia who can make intelligent observations about our culture and our politics. And even if you're a committed Bush supporter, as I am, you should go read the whole thing.

If you don't have a subscription, you can still read it by sitting through a short advertisement. It's worth it. It's the weekend. Go improve your mind.

Another View

A product of the public schools?

Plan - I'm for it
One of the criticism's I haven't touched on much yet is Bush didn't have a Plan. (Or if he did, itw as bad). Everyone knwos that if you're going to invade and occupy a country to nation build you should have a Plan (preferably typed up AT LEAST; Adobe Acrobat format praferred (for portability). (Can distribute to troops/officers on memory sticks)

I haven't mentioned it because it's not all that relevant to the war being having been Wrong. (The war was Wrong irregardless Plan or no Plan). But I guess I could put it out there just the same. Yes: I agree: Bush had no Plan (or the Plan that he has, was bad).

The first best easy way to see this is that stuff went wrong in Iraq. (Museum looted, Zarqawi behead's people / executes Iraq soldiers to get his country back, ect.) With a Plan stuff would not of gone wrong. How could stuff go wrong if you had a Plan?

Or comic genius?

Lots of good stuff at The Iraq War Was Wrong Blog. Go! Id of been their by now if I was u.

Flouting Campaign Finance "Reform"?

Michael King spotted a new late-breaking anti-Kerry ad.

I'm John Armor -- and this ad may be illegal. Small gifts paid for it.

I’ve known John Kerry 41 years. When he joined the Yale Political Union, I was an officer and veteran debater. Here's what I saw:

Kerry was arrogant. He thought we must believe him, because HE was John Kerry.

[Show photo of Kerry in his shaggy-hair mode before Congress in 1971. Photo dissolves into Kerry pointing with his bony finger of doom, today. Give captions for both photos – John Kerry, Senate “war-crimes” testimony, 1971 – John Kerry, campaigning for President, 2004]

How has he changed? More money, more wrinkles, more arrogance. But still self-centered. Should such a man command the American military -- in time of war?

What makes this ad illegal? A divided Supreme Court approved the campaign finance “reform” act. [Use gestures for quote marks.]

It says we can’t broadcast ads that name a federal candidate, 60 days before an election. But that’s EXACTLY when we want to talk about candidates. I'm doing that. If the feds don't like it, they can find me here:

[Displayed on screen to end of ad:

www.ArmorforCongress.com
Box 243, Highlands, NC 28741]

I'm John Armor. I not only approve this ad, I wrote every word of it.

I only hope that if Campaign Finance Reform isn't re-reformed by the next election, that we'll see more civil disobedience like this.

Who Is Jane Galt?

And the prestigious Jane Galt endorsement goes to . . .

Seriously, I didn't know.

Daylight Savings Time Ends

That makes this weekend an especially exhilarating time for conservatives. Just two days before the election, we actually get to turn the clock back.

Heh.

OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today

Euro October Surprise

BILD, which has the widest circulation of any newspaper in Europe has endorsed Bush for President. Davids Medienkritik has the details.

The list we had up earlier was an abbreviated summary of the 10 reasons. We have now translated BILD's list of reasons in their entirety. Here they are:

1. Bush has clear priorities. He sees the inhuman Islamic fundamentalism and the murderous mullahs as the largest danger for the Western world.
2. Bush has learned the lessons of history. Military strength, not pleasant talk, is the only thing that helps against violent fanatics. And with Bush -- unlike with Kerry -- there is no doubt about this.

3. Under Bush, the US, as a superpower, will continue to bear the financial, military and casualty burden in the fight against terrorism in a "holy war" which Islamic fanatics unilaterally declared.

4. Along with fighting terror and the terrorists, a re-elected Bush will do everything he can to prevent nuclear proliferation. That is especially true with regard to the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea.

5. Bush has learned that America can defeat every country in war, but needs allies in peace. Thus, his second term will be characterized by cooperation with international partners. But he will not depend on how Syria or Libya vote at the UN.

6. Bush knows that Europe and Germany don’t have the military at their disposal to become involved in any further foreign military engagements. Therefore he won't ask them for help. Kerry will do exactly that – and will further burden already damaged German-American relations.

7. Under Bush, America will remain a reliable partner for Israel in its fight for survival. That must especially be in our German interest.

8. Republicans have always been stronger supporters of free trade than Democrats. That is also true of Bush when compared to Kerry. And that is good for Germany as an export nation.

9. Every new American administration makes mistakes. Bush has already made his. Kerry, on the other hand, has of yet held no (executive) position in the government. He would be worse prepared than most Presidents preceding him.

10. With Bush, we know what to expect. With Kerry, nobody knows what he stands for and where he wants to lead America – and the world.

Yes, it may be a voice in the wind and what good are endorsements anyway, but this does at least show that Europe is not of a single America-hating voice. Outposts of reason exist.

Israel -- Sharon's Boldness

It's fascinating that Bush and Sharon are in power at the same time (not unlike Ronnie and Maggie). Both have been able to use their conservative reputations and power bases to initiate radical policies.

Jay Reding on Sharon.

Sharon understands that there can be no peace if Israel is defending the undefendable. The settlements in Gaza and the West Bank are preventing Israel from being truly secure. Sharon is doing what Israel needs to do, running out the clock for the Palestinians. By preventing the rampant terrorism of the intifada from reaching Israel, Sharon is waiting that the imminent death of Yasser Arafat ends with saner heads prevailing and a chance to truly work on some kind of lasting peace. The only way that can happen is if the Palestinians choose it. No amount of force or negotiation can solve the situation until the viciously anti-Semitic culture that has permeated Palestinian society ends. By walling off Gaza and the West Bank, Sharon essentially is giving the Palestinians a time out – they can’t attack Israel and they have to solve their own problems. Pragmatically, it is the only way to keep Israel safe without reoccupation of Gaza and the West Bank.

I have much respect for Netanyahu, and regard him as a brilliant mind and an eloquent speaker, but he is foolishly tearing the Likud Party apart. Even within the party his calls for a referendum are not well supported, and if he engages in a struggle for dominance within Likud it will likely tear the party apart.

I, too, have always admired Netanyahu and was sorry to see him lose his attempt to become Prime Minister.

But, more and more, given reality, he's becoming the Israeli Pat Buchanan.

Protecting the Perennially Offended

Timothy Garneau, a student at the University of New Hampshire, grew tired of waiting for the over-used dorm elevator. So he posted fliers joking that women could lose the "Freshman 15" if they'd use the stairs more (click on the photo to enlarge).



He's now living in his car.

However, Garneau soon admitted to posting the flier and was charged with offenses including: “acts of dishonesty”; violation of “affirmative action” policies; “harassment”; and “conduct which is disorderly, lewd.”

Within a week of the incident, and prior to his hearing, Garneau posted a written public apology for unintentionally offending others in his residential hall and apologized in person to students that he knew had complained.

At an October 8 hearing, the university found Garneau guilty of all charges. Despite Garneau’s offers to voluntarily atone for his actions through community service, social awareness projects, and other activities, the university sentenced him to immediate expulsion from student housing and disciplinary probation extended through May 30, 2006. He was also required to meet with a counselor to discuss his “decisions, actions, and reflections” about the incident, to write a 3000-word reflection paper about the counseling session, and to submit an apology letter to the residents of Stoke Hall to be published in the hall’s newspaper.

Luckily FIRE has taken up his case and some blogosphere light shone on the idiot college administrators can't hurt him either.

SCSUScholars has more along with another campus story involving ..., well just follow the link.

More Nannying

This week's visit to Mr. Free Market finds him opining on cigarette warnings (among much else).

According to Chris Davies, Liberal Democrat Eurotrash MP, the Government should be putting pictures of smoke damaged lungs, clogged arteries & gangrenous legs on packets of cigarettes … errr twat! Apparently, according to our closet health fascist,
“A picture tells a thousand words, & the aim is not simply to give information to smokers but to pursued them to change their habits”

Well, whatever next, pictures of car crash victims taped to the dashboards of sports cars – nanny knows best; especially when the nanny-party in question advocates 50% tax rates … numpties!!

Ah, life in the old country. Actually it sounds suspiciously like living in New York State.

The Choice

Protein Wisdom, INDC Journal and the Daily Recycler present The Choice.

Viet Nam, Workers' Paradise

Life is so hard in Viet Nam that Chinese prisons are apparently preferable.

Hien is the latest in a series of mostly young Vietnamese men arriving in Hong Kong on the "two bullet tour," for which they pay a fee to a gang in their homeland. The package deal includes transport to mainland China, instructions on how to cross into Hong Kong, plus two bullets and a knife.

The weapons are to ensure that the immigrant will get a long prison sentence. For Hien it means free shelter, food and $50 a month in pay while he is incarcerated. He paid about $200 for the package deal.

But if you think there's much concern over the plight of the Viet Namese back in the USSA, read this letter from New York.

I used to wear a "Vietnamese-American Against Kerry" button until someone on St. Mark's stopped me and delivered a monologue on the Bush police state. When I brought up the real police state that my family lived in (including the re-education camps), he brushed that off and blathered on about Bush and the sorry state of the U.S. I decided to stop wearing the button because I couldn't take the blind idiocy.

Hat tip to Samizdata.net

BUFFALOg Echo Syndrome

Jay Nordlinger agrees with me.

The suits say Republican officials refused to count provisional ballots, improperly disqualified incomplete voter registrations, established overly restrictive rules to disproportionately hurt minority voters and actively sought to disenfranchise blacks.

I will ask the question I always ask, and tire of asking: Why, oh why, are black Americans never offended by such suits, such claims? Oh, how I long to hear, "How dare you. How dare you say that basic voting requirements somehow disadvantage blacks more than other Americans. What do you think we are, stupid? You think we can't show I.D.? You think we can't punch a ballot? How dare you!"

White-liberal racism — or racialism — is one of the most ignored, and maddening, phenomena of our time.

Fun With Statistics (The World Is Ending)

Have you noticed an increase in the number of scary statistics making the news lately? Could it be election time? Here are just a few -- all from just this morning's papers.

Scientists estimate 100,000 Iraqis may have died in war

The scientists who wrote the report concede that the data they based their projections on were of "limited precision," because the quality of the information depends on the accuracy of the household interviews used for the study.

Hey, it's just a guess but let's pretend it's news.

Immigrants gain 2.3 million jobs

The number of adult immigrants holding a job has grown by more than 2 million since 2000, while the number of employed native-born Americans fell by nearly a half-million, according to a study released Wednesday by a group that favors stricter immigration controls.

Well, let's see. It's from a group that favors stricter immigration controls, that's worth a thought. And even if we assume the numbers are true, we must also assume that the one caused the other.

Russian Expert Says Flu Epidemic May Kill Over One Billion This Year

The Russian expert said that U.S. researchers possessed data suggesting that if a pandemic hits, up to 700,000 people will fall ill in the United States.

Wow! Safe bet actually -- may kill over a billion and up to 700,000 will fall ill. Anything less and he's still technically accurate. But, really, what a coincidence that they published this right after we ran out of vaccine?

And finally...

380 tons of explosives missing

The math is frightening: Three hundred eighty tons would be enough to take down 760,000 airplanes.

Wow, that'd be like all the airplanes in the world. Now news reports even this morning suggest that only three tons of explosives may be missing. But for the Buffalo News that still represents SIX THOUSAND DOWNED AIRPLANES. I just hope Amtrak can beef up its schedule.

It's all Bush's fault.

Bush and Kerry to Appear on 'SportsCenter'(?)

I mentioned a couple days ago that Kerry should just give up the "Joe six-pack" routine. He isn't one and he can't even fake it. So today I read this: Bush, and Kerry Are to Appear on 'SportsCenter'. Talk about a "Hail, Mary".

"The 30-minute program will feature one-on-one, sit-down interviews with the candidates that will focus on their love of sports and how sports impact their lives," ESPN said in a statement Wednesday.

The network released several highlights of the interviews, conducted by Jim Gray, which included questions about ticket prices and publicly funded stadiums.

Well ticket prices do matter to die-hard sports fans (and I'm sure Kerry has a secret plan to address them) but I suspect that the pros and cons of publicly-financed sports stadia may leave ESPN's viewers heading for the john (no pun intended).

Roger L. Simon's Prediction

While unwilling to predict the election outcome Roger Simon did offer this.

If the Kerry does win, the mainstream media will have gotten him elected with their biased coverage and they will pay for it more than they could imagine. And it will be the blogosphere and you, our supporters, who will make them pay. Our strength will grow incremently with a Kerry victory in terms of influence and even economic power. And both will be at the expense of the mainstream media. Yes, we too have "plans."

Heh.

Social Security Commonsense

Arnold Kling punctures the biggest of the many myths surrounding the partial privatization of Social Security: the dreaded transition cost.

...One way to eliminate the "transition cost" to partial privatization would be to first undertake a transition to better accounting. If the government were to put future Social Security obligations on its balance sheet as debt, then the accounting would be accurate. To borrow a locution from Warren Buffet, if promises to make Social Security payments are not a financial obligation of the government, then what are they? And if a financial obligation of the government is not debt, than what is it?

If unfunded liabilities to make future Social Security payments were counted as debt, then partial privatization would be nothing but a debt swap. The government would increase ordinary debt and reduce unfunded-liability debt by an equal amount. The transition cost would be zero.

Washington's been able to use Social Security tax receipts as a giant sandbox for years because future expenditures haven't been accounted for. That same failure now allows the opponents of privatization to claim that there's a "new" transition cost.

Read the entire essay at Tech Central Station.

Conservatives Coming Out

So a group of UCLA Republicans held a "coming out day" to publicize their support for the Republican platform as part of Conservative Culture Week. And of course that didn't sit well with some since "coming out" has long been used in gay culture to describe the process of making one's sexual orientation known publicly.

"The title Coming Out Day undermines the purpose of the LGBT community's Coming Out Week. This event makes a mockery of the entire community," said Miguel Chavez, a third-year history graduate student.

Oh give it a rest, Miguel. The LGBT crowd didn't invent the term.

Once upon a time wealthy families held "Coming Out Parties" to introduce their daughters to society. The debutantes didn't whine when gays started using it to mean something else; so you can just suck it up too.

Read the whole thing here. Link via Opinionjournal.com.

Buffalo News - Ever More Shameless

The Buffalo News gloats over Sinclair Broadcasting's caving in on the broadcast of Stolen Honor.

Well, well. It seems as though we have some new proof of the theory that if you give a fool enough rope, he will hang himself. Exhibit A is the corps of propagandists in the executive suites of Sinclair Broadcast, which on Friday aired a much different documentary about John Kerry's anti-war activities than it had originally planned.
It wasn't just that the right-leaning television outfit wanted to air an unfair and unflattering film in an obvious effort to influence the election, which was bad enough. But the company also wanted to tart the presentation up as news, a maneuver that so discomfitted the organization's Washington bureau chief that he blew the whistle and promptly got himself sacked.

In response to this debacle, advertisers asked for their commercials not to be shown with the film, the company's stock price plunged more than 16 percent and shareholders revolted. Alarmed but hardly chastened, Sinclair beat a hasty retreat, and aired only portions of the film in its documentary, "A POW Story: Politics, Pressure and the Media."

Of course we need only look here, and follow the link to this to find out that it wasn't just a falling stock price that changed Sinclair's plans, it was government threats.

But the real kicker came when New York State's Democratic Comptroller, Alan Hevesi, also decided to assail Sinclair. Mr. Hevesi wrote a letter to Sinclair in his capacity as trustee of the state pension fund, which owns 265,000 shares in the company.

"Some critics suggest that Sinclair management is more interested in advancing its partisan political views than in protecting shareholder value," he writes. "They say Sinclair's partisan agenda also risks alienating viewers, advertisers and regulators." In other circumstances, this is known as an offer you can't refuse: Pull the show or else.

Can you even imagine the uproar that would ensue if Alan Hevesi had threatened problems for William Buffett if the Buffalo News dared, oh I don't know, endorse John Kerry for President in an editorial full of lies and half-truths?

"The very freedom of the press is under fire", we'd be told. "We're no longer secure in our freedoms", they'd scream. If, however, you don't think Kerry deserves a free pass to the Presidency and you want to publicize it, then you're just, well, screwed.

Election Nightmare

Kyle Haight has come up with the mother of all election scenarios.

Bush wins 53% of the popular vote, but winds up in a 269-269 tie with Kerry in the electoral college. But the Colorado amendment passes, and if its terms apply then Kerry picks up 4 of Colorado's votes, thus winning the election. Republicans file a constitutional challenge against the Colorado initiative, which makes its way to the Supreme Court. With Rehnquist unavailable due to his illness, the Court threatens to deadlock 4-4 on the constitutionality of the Colorado initiative.

In reaction to this, Rehnquist resigns from the court. Bush makes a recess appointment to replace him, thus breaking the logjam. The Court finds the Colorado intitiative unconstitutional by a 5-4 vote. With the electoral college balance now back to 269-269, the election moves into the House.

At that point, I'm pretty confident that no matter what the House wound up deciding, a really massive chunk of the public would never accept it.

I feel a headache coming on.

The Free Market Green Age

David Smith, Economics Editor of the Sunday London Times believes high oil prices point to more nuclear power.

OIL at more than $50 a barrel concentrates the mind. What looked like a spike in prices is now taking on an air of permanence. Even when the price subsides, as it will, it will remain higher than seemed likely even a few months ago.

The future of oil, given geopolitical uncertainties and the tightness of supply and demand, looks more precarious than it did before.

Even if oil prices drop back to the $40/bbl level, we've probably already entered a new era. Alternative energy is becoming economically sensible.

Some car-buyers will begin to shift their purchases to more fuel-efficient models and research into hydrogen will only increase. What will amaze many is how much money the oil companies themselves will begin to invest in this research.

The conspiracy-mongers have always claimed that the evil oil industry was preventing other (often miraculous) new fuels from coming to market. They'll be proven wrong, oil companies can just as easily invest in new energy as in old when the likelihood of profits has increased.

The fun part will be in watching the environmentalists expose their own hidden agenda. I predict they won't be the least bit satisfied or happy about the shift to non carbon-based fuel. Why?

Because they're really interested in governments' controlling and rationing energy use -- individuals and private companies doing it on our own (and making money in the process) was never in the plan.

October Surprise(s)

OK, that didn't take long. The NYT and CBS October surprise on missing explosives in Iraq was debunked by NBC by bedtime. But do you see the relationship to early voting here?

How many thousands of people voted early yesterday? How many of those may have changed their votes because of that story and all the attention given to it?

We now have a situation where a series of "mini-surprises", timed to appear throughout the early voting period and all thoroughly discredited by Election Day, could nonetheless change the outcome.

We'll end up regretting early voting.

[UPDATE:] Lorie's point that early voters are probably committed to a candidate and unlikely to change their vote on one story is well-taken. I still think we'd be wise to stick to one voting day when we all march (good Republican word) to the polls with the same information.

After All We've Been Through, Why Still A 50/50 Nation?

Over at The Corner Ramesh Ponnuru struggles to understand why we're still evenly split despite everything that's gone on since 2000.

One tentative suggestion: Maybe the country is evenly divided because the political parties are efficient and their bases politically sophisticated. In other words, both liberals and conservatives are too demanding to allow their parties to gain too high a margin, and too pragmatic to allow them to sink too low. If the GOP were getting 60 percent of the vote routinely, conservatives would want it to move right--achieving more of their goals at the price of eliminating some of the vote surplus. Liberals, meanwhile, would give up some of their demands to help the Democrats get more votes. This is a simple model, to be sure, but the basic story seems highly plausible to me.

I think Ayn Rand nailed it on this one. It all comes back to philosophy. Even if we spend our lives without the least thought of philosophy, we have one. And no matter how haphazardly formed and poorly followed, it began somewhere with a philosopher.

Until fairly recently, a majority of Americans shared the traditional English Enlightenment and European Protestant views that were the underpinnings of the country itself. But for 200 years, philosophers have been challenging those beliefs. Philosophies that dismiss reason as a delusion and forbid criticism of the primitive have found believers. We're now at a tipping point.

Two broadly different takes on man and his place in the world are equally believed and are now competing with each other for dominance. Philosophy has left the ivory tower and hit the campaign trail.

And this goes beyond religion. The common conservative argument that the cause of the Europeans' decline is to be found in their diminishing church attendance is wrong. Many religions, themselves, are moving to the left and we know well the Catholic Church's flirtations with it. The answer doesn't lie solely in religion.

We're in for a couple generations of this split until finally one philosophy or the other establishes its dominance. Which will it be?

The one that believes in an objective reality and that man can be taught to be civil but may not always behave civilly? Or the one that claims that there is only illusion and simply anything is possible if but desired.

My advice? Conservative parents everywhere: Please don't let your children grow up to be cowboys, we need more conservative philosophers.

Doodoo Economics

Here's a laugher.

Despite the stark differences in economic plans from President Bush and John Kerry, growth and job creation should turn out pretty much the same no matter who takes the White House.

More proof of the decline of economics into humanities status: you can find an economist to promote whatever view you like.

Teddy's Niece's Husband

Arnold on the trail.

"My kids just brought home a beautiful pumpkin, but you know what? I'm going to return it because it's a Democratic pumpkin. It has the orange color of John Kerry's tan, and the roundness of Teddy Kennedy," said the Republican governor.

While Schwarzenegger is supporting President Bush (news - web sites) and will campaign with him later this week in Ohio, he and Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, both own vacation homes in Idaho, and Schwarzenegger has said they are friends.

Later, Schwarzenegger made a few more jokes about Kennedy's weight when discussing California's $103 billion budget.

"That's a lot of money," he said. "Another way to think about it is if you take $100 bills and put them next to each other, they will go half way, truly half way around Teddy Kennedy's stomach."

As the audience guffawed, Schwarzenegger said, "I always like to make jokes about Teddy Kennedy. I think it's always fun to do that. He's one of my favorite relatives. He comes to my house and he eats away all the cake and all the desserts that we have."

I bet he's waited a long time to outrank Uncle Ted.

Fanfare For The Common Man

John Kerry should just give up the fake sportsfan persona and be himself (whatever that is).

SENATOR John Kerry’s efforts to portray himself as "just a regular American guy" suffered a blow this weekend when he comprehensively messed up the scoreline at a game featuring his beloved Boston Red Sox.

Twice on Sunday, the Democrat said he was basking in the glory of Boston’s 10-9 win on Saturday night. The problem was, the Red Sox won 11-9.

"Ten-nine, the Sox did fabulous," Mr Kerry said with a big smile as he ducked into church on Sunday morning in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Inside, the minister asked worshippers to clap "if the Lord has done anything wonderful in your life this week", to which Mr Kerry applauded.

"I had a special reason to clap," Mr Kerry explained. "The Red Sox won 10-9."

Mr Kerry’s spokesman, David Wade, said the senator got the score wrong because 10-9 was the last update he got during his late-night flight to Florida.

The problem is, the score never was 10-9. The Sox won on a two-run homer, meaning they went from nine runs to 11. Regardless, Mr Kerry’s adviser, Mike McCurry, explained to reporters: "The senator had bad intelligence last night."

However, the confusion struck again within hours of his team’s second game.

Landing in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the Democratic candidate bounded off the plane wearing his Red Sox cap to exclaim:

"Seven-one Red Sox!"

The Red Sox were winning 6-1 at the time. They went on to win 6-2.

Remember what your dying mom told you, Johnny,"Integrity, integrity, itegrity."

Perspective On the "Missing" Explosives

Polipundit refers us to the Kerry Spot.

An estimated 600,000 tons of munitions with markings from all over the world, including the United States, and some so old that the weapons that fired them are no longer made, were stashed in Saddam's innumerable caches.

To date, 110,000 tons have been destroyed. An additional 138,000 tons are stored behind protective barriers.


That adds up to 248,000 tons of explosives destroyed or captured! And those numbers are almost certainly much higher today.

Is it a bad thing if these 350 tons of explosives are out there? Sure. But there is nothing in the Times story to confirm that the explosives were secure when the war began.

[UPDATE:] Blaster now finds evidence that they were gone when we got there.

Brad Delong On NPR

Just caught Brad Delong on NPR speaking about the decline in job numbers during the Bush administration. He said that the Republicans would like us to believe that the "missing" workers have found better things to do with their time like going back to school or windsurfing.

Darn, he must have run out of time to mention that we think many of them may have started their own businesses. I mean, how else could he have missed that?

Politically Incorrect - and how

Bill Maher, proud American, was interviewed by the CBC.

First of all I have to ask you something that everyone wants me to ask you which is what are the five things Canadians should know about the American election?

I don't know about five things but I think what Canadians should know about the American election is that you're lucky you don't live here. You don't have to participate in this sham democracy we have, you know? I mean I could tell you about, I could tell you five ways we don't really have a democracy in this country.

Why then do people, the polls indicate that this fear is leading more and more people to vote for George Bush or say they're going to vote for George Bush? Why would George Bush be the person they thought they would be safer with?

I refer back to my answer to question two, stupid country. Stupid. Because he appears to be resolute. He appears to be strong. He clears brush and he looks like the Marlborough Man. If you see him in pictures, he stands… like he's about to draw a gun and he uses cowboy language, and he's from Texas. So to people who don't think it through very much, he looks like a guy who's standing up to the bad guys.

Bill really unloaded when he suddenly found himself in a "smart" country.

Link via Lileks.

Meet the Undecideds

About 70 percent of Americans don’t know that Congress recently passed a Medicare prescription-drug plan — the largest federal-entitlement expansion in decades. Sixty-five percent don’t know that a ban on partial-birth abortion has been enacted, and almost 60 percent have heard either nothing (30 percent) or very little (28 percent) about the controversial Patriot Act. A majority is unable to estimate even roughly how many American troops have been killed in Iraq. More than 60 percent of the public doesn’t know that big increases in domestic spending have had a substantial impact on the deficit.

Kate O'Beirne

Goin' Down For the Last Time

So Nader was in town last night.

But he saved his harshest criticism for the two-party domination of the political system, singling out the Democrats for using every possible tactic to upset a campaign some believe will drain votes from Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry.

"The Democratic Party, led by Chairman Terry McAuliffe and condoned fully by Sen. John F. Kerry, has launched an epidemic of dirty tricks to keep us off the ballot," he said. "I consider that a constitutional crime."

Nader said Democrats are hiring major law firms to harass efforts aimed at trying to get him on the presidential ballot around the country and were even scaring petition circulators into believing they could be prosecuted for gathering illegal signatures.

"We have seen an enormous amount of evidence to demonstrate the need for reform," Nader said. "This is American fascism."

Times are strange when I find myself agreeing with Ralph Nader.

Link via the Buffalo News

That Ol' Partisan, Breyer

The Buffalo News is remarkably calm when it's a liberal who admits his bias.

In a remarkably candid admission, Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer said he wasn't sure he had been truly impartial when the high court was asked to settle the disputed 2000 presidential vote in Florida.
Breyer - named to the court in 1994 by President Bill Clinton - was one of the dissenting votes in the 5-4 decision that canceled a controversial recount in Florida, sending Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the Republican candidate, to the White House instead of then-Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic nominee.

After all, a man has to vote his conscience doesn't he? Remember how the News used to treat Jack Quinn?

When Quinn would vote for a Democrat-sponsored bill, the Buffalo News would purr contentedly that he was voting his conscience. But whenever he'd vote with the Republicans (most notably about impeachment) he was "caving in to Republican arm-twisting". And so it goes.

Stolen Honor Update

Via The Right Coast we learn more about Sinclair's decision to water down it's broadcast of the anti-Kerry documentary.

So here, apparently, is what happened with "Stolen Honor." Bill Lerach, strike suit entrepreneur, threatened Sinclair with a shareholder suit if it ran the movie. Then the controller of the state of New York, in charge of a public employee pension funds, threatened Sinclair with legal action as well. Sinclair caved, but who can blame them. Running the movie probably would have been good business, but standing up to political thuggery is not. [Emphasis mine]

Some opponents of Bush's plan to allow us to invest part of our Social Security have suggested that the government invest it for us. If anyone ever doubted what government would do given the chance to meddle in private corporations, they need doubt no longer.

And wouldn't you know New York State would be the meddler.

Buffalo News Endorses Kerry - I Don't

No surprise there, but by the tone of the thing I'm speculating they outsourced it to the Guardian.

How about a quick fisking, shall we? Some highlights.

Incredibly, the president continues to defend the decision to go to war because Saddam was an evil butcher who murdered his own people, was a threat to seek weapons of mass destruction once sanctions were lifted and had significant links to al-Qaida. That Saddam fit the definition of evil is a fact. The latter two assertions, however, are mere speculation or demonstrably untrue. More to the point, however, is that those three circumstances did not constitute the case for war that the president presented to America and the world.

Yes those were the circumstances he used to justify the war. The editorial will go on to try and convince us that the WMD were the only reason Bush gave, but that's false. In fact, during the year before the war, those opposed to it were complaining that he was giving us too many reasons. Why can't he choose just one? As if having more than one justification was bad.

• The administration said aluminum tubes purchased in 2001 could only be used to build nuclear weapons. But the Energy Department refuted that conclusion at least three times in 2001. The International Atomic Energy Agency also said the administration's conclusion was wrong.

• In February 2003, the CIA told the White House there was no direct evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or had reconstituted its program to produce them.

• The man the president himself named to lead the CIA, Porter Goss, told a Senate committee that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Cheney went beyond available intelligence when they said Iraq had links to al-Qaida and possessed an active nuclear weapons program.

It is a president's job to weigh contradictory views in his administration, not turn a blind eye to credible information.

Yes, and it's also the President's job to err on the side of caution. It wasn't just Bush and his advisors who believed Hussein had WMD, it was the entire world. Let's recall that the UN implemented the sanctions against Iraq -- not the US.

Not only the UK and Australia believed he had them, but France, Germany, and even Canada believed so as well. It's just that the latter three didn't want to do anything about it.

So to claim now that there was indisputable evidence that the WMD didn't exist is false.

This administration didn't understand the culture of Iraq, and worse, let itself be influenced by the discredited head of the Iraqi National Congress, exile Ahmed Chalabi, whose information on weapons of mass destruction was not only wrong, but self-serving. Chalabi saw himself as the leader of a new Iraq, and stood to benefit by the invasion. Moreover, Chalabi sold administration officials on the fairy tale that the Iraqi people would welcome the coalition forces with open arms. America is now paying the price for that shortsightedness with a bloody insurgency.

This is the Andrew Sullivan argument. Since Bush didn't predict the future correctly he must go. And since he didn't institute the magic antidote to an uprising, more US troops, he's stubborn and foolish.

I don't imagine the administration did foresee the Falluja uprising. But once begun, thousands of more troops on the ground might have suppressed it temporarily but the underlying hatreds would still exist. Unfortunately it has to be fought out, between the groups involved.

It's the Iraqis, themselves, who must suppress it.

Kerry may not be the ideal candidate for president, but he has demonstrated a thoughtful approach to domestic matters. His commitment to rolling back some tax cuts that disproportionately benefited the most affluent Americans is a fair policy, especially in light of a spiraling deficit that was primarily caused by the ill-conceived cuts, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. What's more, giving well-off Americans large tax breaks while presiding over an economy that has lost millions of jobs is, at best, insensitive. At worst, it's an unprecedented redistribution of wealth from the poor and middle class to the most affluent.

Well now it gets fun. The deficit was not primarily caused by the tax cuts; 20% is from the cuts, the rest is a result of the recession and higher spending.

Let's leave the ridiculous statement that the tax cuts were "insensitive" and go on to the underlying economic belief here. The News wants us to think that limiting tax relief to lower income people will allow them to go out and spend us into a better economy.

When the first round of the Bush tax cuts took effect in 2001 (these were the ones for the lower incomes), their effect was almost unnoticeable. Spending went up .2%. It was only when the cuts kicked in for the high income levels that the economy started to improve.

Upper income earners already live well. When their income increases they don't go out and spend it, they invest it. They put the extra money into the stock market or they invest in their businesses. This is where jobs come from.

And it isn't redistribution -- sheesh. No one is taking money from poor people and giving it to rich people. That's just a cheap shot for the kool-aid crowd.

But I grow weary, so just one more (well maybe two).

Kerry wants to raise fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks to 36 miles a gallon. Over the next several years, that could free us from the need to import oil from the Persian Gulf. Bush believes that we can drill our way to oil independence, a position that neutral observers have dismissed as wildly unrealistic.

Unrealistic? Unrealistic? Believing that raising fuel economy standards will free us from Arab oil in several years is unrealistic. No, with oil prices where they are, Americans will decide on their own to buy more fuel-efficient cars. The government needn't lift a finger, we can manage just fine, thank you.

And finally.

Keep in mind, this is a man of wealth and privilege who could have done what thousands of other affluent and middle-class young men did during the Vietnam War - get a safe spot in the National Guard or Reserves. Instead, Kerry volunteered for duty in Vietnam. Once there, he commanded a small boat in a combat zone, where he was wounded while fighting with honor.

One more time. Kerry tried to get a deferment. It was turned down so he enlisted in the Naval Reserve -- not active duty. Bush had an equal chance of being called up for active duty in the National Guard as Kerry did in the Naval Reserves.

Kerry lost. And once he got there he engineered three purple hearts in four months under suspicious circumstances, and then took advantage of a little-known provision that allowed him to get out.

Then he came home and almost single-handedly trashed the entire United States military. Now that's an accomplishment but not one that I particularly admire.

Oh, by the way, this page endorses George W. Bush for President.

Thinking

After an encounter with a waitress who couldn't calculate 10% of the bill, this writer expresses doubts about modern education.

I sat there pondering how a young adult from this culture went through our school system and didn't know to simply move the decimal point. Was that really part of the reason she couldn't do a simple computation like this? Are pocket calculators taking the place of intellectual development in our school system? Because if that's the case, no amount of federal money, voucher programs or newly equipped schools will solve this problem.

This isn't about the ease and plenitude of technology at our youth's fingertips. Nor is it about where they go to school. This is about brain boot camp that builds the mental muscles that are to serve us a lifetime.

Math discipline engaged and expanded my capacity to reason and to use logic. I developed an ability to see patterns and make associations. These skills did more than teach me to solve specific problems, I learned to analyze, evaluate and synthesize information. I cultivated both deductive and inductive reasoning, which I used to make better choices. I learned that these skills are not only necessary for a normal life, but are indispensable to an abundant existence.

We take thinking for granted. Everyone does it, right? We even credit our pets with thinking so what's the big deal?

But the stream of memories, pictures, emotions, and sensations that we often call thinking don't help us much when we have to make important decisions about complex problems. For those we need to know how to think rationally.

It isn't automatic, we make a conscious decision to think rationally. And it isn't instinctual -- humans must be taught how to think. We're forgetting that and in the rush to shovel facts and "values" into young people, they're not getting the training in rational thought they need.

Finally Some Sanity

CINCINNATI (AP) - A federal appeals court ruled Saturday that provisional ballots Ohio voters cast outside their own precincts should not be counted, throwing out a lower-court decision that said such ballots are valid as long as they are cast in the correct county.

The ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals supports an order issued by Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell. Democrats contend the Republican official's rules are too restrictive and allege they are intended to suppress the vote.

Good news. But see the Democrats' contention that requiring voters to actually vote in their own precincts is "suppression" of the vote?

Similar court battles are under way in other states. In Florida, a federal judge ruled Thursday that the state must reject provisional ballots if they are cast in the wrong precinct.

In Michigan, a federal judge said those ballots must be counted if cast by voters at the wrong precinct but in the right city, township or village. That decision also has been appealed to the 6th Circuit, but the appellate court has yet to issue a ruling in that case.

In Missouri and Colorado, judges have ruled that votes in the wrong place don't have to be counted.

Pre-meditated lawyer-driven chaos.

Link via Drudge

Undecided?

I'm with Undercaffeinated.

If you haven't made up your mind by now, do you have one?

Pet Blogging

Yours truly and Hannah, the BUFFADOg, take a break from worrying about John Kerry and try to get the yard in shape for Winter.

Early Voting, Dumb Idea

Despite the Instapundit's approval, I think the early voting fad is a dangerous one. Here's just one example.

On Election Day, voters will be protected from campaign pressures by a 50-foot cone, an invisible barrier that campaign workers cannot breach. Not so for early voters.

While the Voter's Bill of Rights in state law says they have a right to "vote free from coercion or intimidation by elections officers or any other person," a glitch in the newer early voting law does not include the same 50-foot guarantee.

As a result, with early voting taking place in busy public places like City Halls and libraries, voters are voicing complaints of being blocked by political mobs, or being singled out for their political views. Others say they have been grabbed, screamed at and cursed by political partisans of all stripes.

Now, I know some people will say that we only need to work out some bugs in the new laws and everything will be fine. But we didn't need these new laws in the first place.

I don't like early voting because people are deciding based on incomplete information. Something might happen between now and election day that could cause a lot of voters to change their minds. And given the current political environment, is it improbable that lawsuits would fly to allow citizens to re-vote?

Since the sixties when the last vestiges of disenfranchisement by law were removed, we had a system that worked very well. You registered (a process no more difficult than renewing a driver's license), you got a card in the mail specifying a polling location in your neighborhood, and you had but to show up on election day, show ID or sign your name and vote.

An exception was allowed for those who would be out of town on election day, absentee ballots (of course that's been tampered with too).

These sensible procedures were designed to assure as best we could that elections were fair. There was fraud, to be sure. But because the system was so decentralized, that fraud was isolated to local districts.

But this simple and fair system wasn't good enough for some. In their zeal to shake a few more votes off the tree, politicians, overwhelmingly Democrat, have weakened the election laws to the point that they're becoming meaningless. The Democrats believe passionately that the poor and uneducated will benefit from their programs. They know cynically that they can't win elections without them.

And new-age judges are happy to help them along.

It's one more example of degrading society to the level of its lowest, laziest, and most ignorant -- all in the name of fairness. We're close to the point where anyone will be able to walk in off the street, march into the booth, and vote. And no one will be allowed to question him, it's his right after all.

I know this sounds alarmist but I think we're regressing to third world status. This next election could trigger a crisis and this will be followed by calls to reform the election laws (yet again); I fear we won't have the sense or the will to do it right.

The Giving Tree, Who Knew?

I'd never heard of this book until tonight, but it appears that Shel Silverstein penned The Giving Tree way back in 1964 and it's remained a perennial best-seller. I love this review by Chris Westley on the Ludwig von Mises Institute website.

The Giving Tree is about a lifelong friendship between a man and an apple tree. As a young boy and then as an adolescent, the man plays with the tree, but when he grows up and moves on in life, he abandons it and only drops by to visit intermittently in the ensuing decades. After each visit, and with his leafy friend’s consent, the man amputates a piece of the tree to help him earn an income, build a house, and construct a boat.

Each time, the tree is said to be happy to have had the opportunity to see its old friend and to give to him once again, just like old times. At the end of the book, the man is old, near death, decrepit, and the tree is a stump, with nothing left to give the man but a place to sit and rest.

The tree is a metaphor for perfect altruism; the man is a metaphor for perfect selfishness.

Now, this guy is surely an objectivist (and that's good); and it appears as if what we've got here is a pretty little allegory that makes a hero of the selfless tree. A tree that puts others before it, a tree that expects nothing for its efforts, a tree that might even accept tax increases despite the sacrifices those might require. Hmmm, sounds suspiciously left-wing to me.

The review continues.

Halfway through my most recent reading of the book with my daughter, and knowing the ending, it hit me: this wasn’t a noble giving tree at all. This was a stupid tree. In giving to the boy-man at every opportunity, the tree thought it was doing right. Instead, it created a dependency relationship in his human friend that lasts his whole life and that leaves both impoverished. This is not a quality one would wish for a friend, and even more so, for one’s son or daughter entering into marriage.

Well, I'll probably pass on this tome (I'll bet you'll find more than one copy at Talking Leaves featured near, if not on, the Michael Moore table). But you gotta admit one thing, these altruist types sure know how to rake in the dough.

The damned book is ranked the 264th best seller this morning on Amazon -- out of some 61,000! And in addition to the original, you'll also find offered The Giving Tree (Activity Guide) and The Giving Tree 40th Anniversary Edition Book with CD.

It looks to me, that for Mr. Silverstein, at least, this is a very giving tree, indeed.

[UPDATE:] I've learned that Mr. Silverstein passed away in 1999, so it's to his heirs that the tree still gives. With this information I can confidently predict that we will soon see the release of The Giving Tree for iPod. Long live the Giving Tree.

The Dam Breaks In Charlotte

Looks like USAir's stranglehold on Charlotte's air service is loosening.

Beginning Dec. 1, Delta Connection carrier Comair will offer three daily non-stop flights from Charlotte to New York's La Guardia Airport. On Jan. 31, 2005, Comair will offer one daily non-stop flight to Delta's international gateway at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.

To celebrate this new service, Delta is offering introductory fares as low as $89 each way, based on a roundtrip purchase.

USAir owns Charlotte (as most Buffalonians know) and has always fought low-fare airlines by dropping its fares until they left the market. Now, though, with USAir attempting to become a low-fare carrier itself, it may leave well enough alone. After all it will someday want to break into Delta's territory (Can you say Atlanta? Thought'cha could).

This caught my eye because I remember back in the mid-nineties when Charlotte was the most expensive city in the US to fly out of and Buffalo was second.

Ten years later, after the NFTA got smart and enticed a half-dozen low-fare carriers to BNIA, Charlotte is Number 3 and Buffalo is 82nd. For once, a low rank is a good thing.

Via The Charlotte Capitalist (TM)

Legislating Vocabulary

This is from Australia but the same thing will be happening here soon.

Terms such as "pom", "wog" and "ding" will be acceptable in the state after amendments to proposed racial vilification laws passed through the lower house of parliament late on Tuesday.

The amendments allow the terms to be used without fear of prosecution, while strengthening punishments for race-related crimes.

Attorney-General Jim McGinty said the Government had no intention of making it a criminal offence to make "light-hearted" references to another person's race.

"My best friend is a 'ding' and he has no objection to me calling him that – it's a colloquialism, a term of affection," Mr McGinty said. "Ding" is a West Australian term used to describe people of Italian origin.

Mr. McGinty would not be drawn on whether terms such as "nigger", "coon" or "slope" would be deemed offensive under the amendments, saying it would depend on the context in which the words were used.

This is where we are, governments legislating lists of words that are legal to utter (depending, of course in some cases, on the context in which they're used).

I suppose that one day soon we'll consult a dictionary and failing to find the word we want, we'll know that it isn't on the approved list and therefore has officially ceased to exist.

Link via Political Correctness Watch.

But Words Mean Things, Don't They?

The Anal Philosopher is sure that his philosophical colleagues will hate him for this -- but has he considered that some of his non-philosophical readers may too?

. . . there’s nothing wrong with using “beg the question” to mean either “pose (or raise) the question” or “evade a difficulty.” Philosophers don’t own the expression—and even if they invented it, it has long since passed into the public domain. Philosophers use the expression in a technical way, but they have no right to dictate how it is used outside philosophical contexts.

[...] There are many other examples of ordinary terms used in technical ways: “energy” to a physicist, “bureaucracy” to a political scientist, “schizophrenia” to a psychiatrist. Psychiatrists howl when people use “schizophrenia” (literally, split mind) to mean multiple personality, but they don’t own the term. They have no right to bully those outside the profession into using terms in technical ways. So, to my philosophical colleagues, chill out. When we talk to each other, we know what “beg the question” means. Other people can use the term to mean “pose (or raise) the question” or “evade a difficulty.” Usually, the context is such that the intended meaning is clear.

I'm truly stunned that the Philosopher is so casual about the misuse of words.

To "beg the question" is the perfect example for this discussion. It's become a very trendy phrase, I suspect because of its vaguely British sound (remember how we were all saying "at the end of the day" for a while?). It's misused by people trying to sound worldly but who only end up sounding ignorant to those who understand the original meaning.

And so it isn't dictating or bullying to correct those who misuse it, it's a kindness. To assert that the priesthood will understand each other (wink, wink) while the unwashed spout their foolishness is patronizing. Conversation and learning are only enhanced when we agree on the meaning of a word or phrase.

The belief that "language will change anyway so why fight it" has been the main contributor to the great dumbing-down of our culture. Words are redefined either through ignorance or bad intent and everyone's too polite or too scared to point it out. And so we talk past each other more and more.

I think of the word, "racism". Racism, of course, is the belief that human races possess immutable, inherited characteristics that determine their relative superiority or inferiority. It's a truly frightful concept. But "racism" has been intentionally misused to smear those who merely disagree with what the supposed majority of another race believes.

And the misusers have unintentionally cheapened the word. A true racist who would advocate for the legal superiority of his race over another will have to be lumped in with all those who just think that felons shouldn't have the right to vote.

So, yes, language will change. But it isn't some natural event like a hurricane or another Mount St. Helens eruption, we can control it. Let it change of necessity or utility, not through ignorance or political agenda. And when in a conversation someone mistakenly accuses you of "begging the question 'X'", gently tell them, "You mean, I've raised the question."

Civilization will thank you.

Kerry's Buffalo FBI File

Leave it to Betsy's Page to find out that our own Channel 2 has been doing a little sleuthing.

Using the Freedom of Information Act, Channel 2 News has obtained hundreds of pages of Kerry's FBI files directly from the agency's headquarters in Washington.

A memo dated November 10, 1971 from the Buffalo FBI office to its Washington headquarters states that the Buffalo chapter of Vietnam Veterans Against the War wanted the national group to condemn Kerry because of his "wealthy family background and his political aspirations."

The memo went on to say that the Buffalo group felt that "Kerry supported the U.S. government and was only using V.V.A.W. to further his political aspirations."

In a coincidence of history, Kerry actually spoke in Buffalo at U.B.'s Main Street campus shortly after the memo was written. There, he told students there were "two Americas. One filled with slogans from our leaders, the other, reality."

Kerry would use almost those exact same words 33 years later during his presidential campaign when talking about the situation in Iraq.

So the Vietnam Vets Against the War thought he was a fake and those of us in favor of the War thought he was a liar. It seems to be the one thing about him that both sides have been able to agree on.

[UPDATE:] Note to self: Remember to check local TV websites. Once in a while they're good for something besides the weather radar. AND you don't get scooped by bloggers in North Carolina.

Laura Bush, The Winner

Via Common Sense & Wonder we find out that Laura's cookie recipe beat Teresa's.

THE BUSH COOKIE WINS This year's winner of Family Circle magazine's presidential cookie bake-off has been decided, and if the contest's past results foretell the future, President Bush will be re-elected. Most readers preferred Laura Bush's oatmeal chocolate chunk cookies over the rival pumpkin spice cookies. But there's a glitch: The pumpkin cookies were not Teresa Heinz Kerry's. When her recipe for easy-to-make oatmeal crunchies was rejected, a member of her staff submitted someone else's recipe for pumpkin cookies. The oatmeal crunchies would probably not have won either. All previous winners contain chocolate. Marian Burros (NYT)

Teresa should have resubmitted. White raisin fudge cookies with a gin glaze might have done it.

Um, Where's The Outrage?

George Will's column today is a timely reminder of a civic concept that's slipping away -- voters' obligations.

Only 12.4 percent of America's registered voters live in jurisdictions that use punch-card systems of the sort that Florida made infamous in 2000. But 72 percent of Ohioans do. On Sunday the Columbus Dispatch reported, beneath the headline "Punch Cards May Hurt Blacks," that such ballots cast with no vote recorded for president were in 2000 a higher percentage in black communities (about 5 percent) than in other communities (less than 2 percent).

The state is being sued over "racial disparities" resulting from punch-card voting in three counties.

Do any blacks ever feel insulted by these assertions? Isn't it the least bit humiliating to be considered incapable of performing simple tasks like punching a ballot?

Surely there's a black leader somewhere who will stand up and insist that all this condescension stop. Perpetual victimhood must get old after a while.

[UPDATE:] I suspect that this will be the guy to do it.

Pataki Village

So, Governor Pataki was in town yesterday for the groundbreaking of Geico's new call center. The state offered millions in tax breaks to get the center and George blew in to remind us of his commitment to jobs (Geico expects to eventually employ some 2500 here).

Now 2500 new jobs is nothing to sneeze at, but hell, we can lose 2500 jobs around here faster than John Kerry can come up with a new plan for Iraq. Is it worth the millions of taxpayer dollars to gain companies this way?

From the News yesterday:

Unfortunately when it comes to tax competition, most states get it wrong. The temptation is to lure sexy employers like sports teams and corporate headquarters with short-term tax incentives. But this strategy almost always backfires - a lesson Gov. George Pataki should remember as he responds to job threats.

Consider officials in Mohawk Valley, who lured a major aircraft repair company with a $5.5 million incentive package back in 1999 in exchange for 500 new jobs by 2006. The company is long gone. It went bankrupt without paying back a penny just 20 months after opening its doors, leaving taxpayers with the bill.

Short-term tax lures seem like a politically attractive way to create jobs. But those expensive giveaways send a damning message about a state's tax friendliness. To new companies, they signal that only special bonuses can make the state's flawed taxes attractive. And to existing companies they're an economic face-slap, treating current employers as dupes who'll pick up the tab for newcomers.

While out-of-state businesses can certainly be lured here by tax breaks, the already existing in-state businesses get none except for the "show" companies that Albany picks for the evening news. In his effort to mollify the extreme left-wing from New York City which demands the equivalent of national healthcare here (Medicaid), Pataki, et. al. hope to mollify the rest of us with Potemkin job creation.

C'mon, Mr. Golisano. I doubted you last time, but I'm ready now -- RUN. Here's your platform: "I'll make all of New York an Empire Zone."

The Last Thing Buffalo Needed

I let out a long unhappy sigh when I read this.

[Richard] Florida is the brains behind the creative class approach to economic growth and prosperity. His theory is that cities with lots of creative people - artists, scientists, engineers and others - tend to thrive.

OK, and where does Buffalo fit in?

Florida, now a professor at George Mason University, is out with a list of cities that he thinks will be among the creative centers of the country 10 years from now. And yes, Buffalo is No. 2, right behind Oakland and just ahead of Baltimore.

Florida's crackpot idea is all the rage now in every declining city in the country, Buffalo's no exception. The attraction of it is that the liberal elites can justify spending lots and lots of public money to beautify the city -- thus supposedly attracting the creative "class" who will then proceed to develop us economically.

I mean, look at the picks: Oakland, Buffalo, Baltimore. You'd be pretty hard-pressed to find three more economically-moribund cities. This guy's got a great scam going here and he's found three suckers that are probably good for a lot of speaking fees over the next ten years.

I think it's a bunch of feel-good, pseudo-economic clap-trap (OK, I've just used up my quota of hyphens for one post). Florida's followers, most of whom don't like icky business anyway, simply want to make the place nicer for themselves and not feel guilty in the process.

Here's how it really works (and it always works). Humans need to work to live. In our society that means they need to make money to provide for their wants and needs. If they can't make money in one place, they'll go to the other where they can.

It doesn't matter how many coffee-houses, symphony orchestras, or art galleries there are. The first place, which is in the land of high taxes and nanny government, will wither and die.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Arnie Will Campaign

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger plans a high-profile trip to the presidential battleground state of Ohio on the weekend before the Nov. 2 election -- an effort aimed at pumping up GOP voters and leveraging the governor's star power to boost President Bush's chances of success.

Though the governor downplayed the idea Tuesday of campaign appearances for Bush, insiders said plans are under way for a trip the weekend of Oct. 29 -- enabling the former Mr. Olympia to maximize his influence in Ohio, where he has real estate holdings and a following thanks to his annual Columbus- based Arnold Classic bodybuilding competition.

Good news. I just hope Maria doesn't react like she did last time.

Hypothetical Bush Debate Answer

One of Captain Ed's readers has come up with an alternative to Kerry's "Cheney's daughter" response.

Q: Mr. President, in your last campaign you were heard over an open microphone describing a New York Times reporter as a "major league as***le."
To understand how you came to that conclusion, I want to ask you a more basic question. Do you believe being an as***le is a choice?

A: I just don't know. I do know that we have a choice to make in America and that is to treat people with tolerance and respect and dignity. It's important that we do that.

I think if you were to talk to Senator Kerry, who is an as***le, he would tell you that he's being who he is, he's being who he was born as. I've met people who struggled with this for years.

And I've met wives who are supportive of their husbands or vice versa when they finally sort of broke out and allowed themselves to live who they were, who they felt God had made them.

And that's to be honored.

What If?

Daniel W. Drezner, in a speculative mood, poses some intriguing electoral possibilities, among which this.

Kerry might win a lot of the states Gore won, but by smaller amounts (see Tom Schaller for more on this). He'd lose the Red states by an even bigger margin than Gore did in 2000. However, in the battleground states like Ohio and Florida, Kerry would eke out enough votes to win them.

This leads to an intriguing possibility -- what are the odds that Kerry loses the popular vote but wins the Electoral College? If that happened, how would both parties react? Would the Electoral College survive in its current form?

I really don't know the odds -- but I invite readers to speculate.

This one's easy. The Democrats would become overnight defenders of the Constitution, much as they viciously defend states' rights when it suits them.

And the Republicans wouldn't challenge them.

The MSM would spend one day admiring the Republicans and then it would be time to move on.org.

Andrew Sullivan

The Daily Dish was the first blog I ever encountered and has been my first stop of the day since the 2000 elections. But I, like many others, have stared at the screen in wonderment this year as he grows increasingly strident in his opposition to Bush.

He posted two really incredible examples today. The first attempts to blame Bush for the flu vaccine shortage.

Hmmm. And which party controls Congress? They sure don't mind spending billions on anything else they can find. There were warnings, we are told. But the administration didn't heed them. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? And doesn't it also increase your confidence that the Bushies are on top of our response to a terrorist-deployed viral outbreak?

Now this is the same Sullivan who rightfully campaigns against government interference that would hurt the pharmaceutical industry. Now he's bemoaning the lack of government interference in the vaccine industry (when it was same government interference that created the shortage).

And then he concludes with a limp reason to give Kerry a passchance on foreign policy.

Bush in 2000 was adamantly against nation-building, paid little attention to terrorism as a threat, and wanted to spend less on the military than Gore. Should he be held to account for that today? Not really. So why should Kerry?

If we'd been at war during the 2000 campaign Bush's lack of foreign policy experience would certainly have been the issue. Neither Gore nor Bush paid much attention to terrorism as a threat -- it was the 9/10 era. And a campaign statement to spend less on the military than Gore does not equal a thirty year documented and consistent pacifist political record.

I can understand his not supporting Bush, somewhat. But I can't understand how his thinking has become so detached from the reality he previously reported quite accurately.

Stolen Valor, Lost Revenue

Professor Bainbridge wonders if Sinclair Broadcasting has made a good business decision.

It looks like Sinclair Broadcasting's controversial decision to preempt ordinary programming to air Stolen Honor, a film about John Kerry's antiwar activism, is having at least marginal effects on Sinclair's business. According to CNN Money, Sinclair will lose $430,000 in ad revenue, which is peanuts for a company of its size. The ripple effects, however, may be more substantial. First, Sinclair's actions have stirred up Congressional opposition to media consolidation, which may prevent Sinclair from expanding the number of stations it owns. Second, an internet boycott effort has spurred advertisers in two markets - Madison, Wis., and Portland, Maine - to pull ads from Sinclair stations.

It will be very interesting to see how they fare in the ratings that night.

No predictions from me but Sinclair may be vindicated, the FoxNews model could prove itself again.

[UPDATE:] And don't think for a minute that the MSM won't be waiting breathlessly for those ratings. They will. If the ratings are bad, there will be glee in Mudville.

If the ratings are good, then let loose the spin-dogs of war. They might ignore it (a la Juanita Broddrick), but my guess is that the ol' pressmeisters are so outraged by this broadcast that they won't be able to resist trashing it and its audience.

And in doing so they'll repeat their brilliant strategy of trashing the SwiftVets. And we know how well that worked for them. Can you say "poll collapse"? Thought'cha could.

Abstract Thinking

Joanne Jacobs with another example of confusion in education.

Playing a game with crayons and colored blocks, 6-year-old Skylor Bates looks like he's enjoying recess instead of learning algebra.

But the game's patterns introduce Skylor and his first-grade classmates at Pomelo Drive Elementary to the concept of abstract thought -- one of the keys to understanding algebraic equations.

Please read the whole thing and don't miss the comments. An excellent discussion ensues on abstract thinking and its role in math. My favorite comment is Bart's.

I've been ruminating lately on the idea that the reason there seems to be two distinct mind-sets on everything remotely political is that what passes for "thought" in roughly half the population consists of emotional reaction, associative recall and pattern recognition, while the other half relies more on logical deduction and cause-and-effect. Right-brained versus left-brained, in other words.

There's an amazing amount of concern among educators over abstract thinking and critical thinking and linear thinking. I'm not sure that many of them are even clear on what those concepts mean.

And while I do think that Bart has hit on the most important cause of our political divide, I don't think it's simply a right-brain, left-brain thing. It is a direct result of bad education. It is the product of decades of confusion among educators about how to teach concepts.

The old-school teachers fully understood what concepts needed to be taught before a student was ready to grasp algebra. Just as they understood (and properly took for granted) that teaching individual sounds and which letters stood for them came before reading.

So if educators cannot "conceptualize" the order in which to present math and English fundamentals, imagine the mess they're likely to make when they try to teach the real abstractions like justice, liberty, and responsibility.

More Apathy

Jeff Jarvis sees the same election apathy in his part of New Jersey that I mentioned I see here.

This time four years ago, this Garden State was growing campaign signs like corn. Not now. One rabid Bushie in my neighborhood has a sign up. Nobody else does. Driving around less Republican neighborhoods, I see nothing. That tells me we don't want either of them. We'll hold our noses like we do going through the Elizabeth refineries when we vote.

I, too, have been struck by the lack of bumper stickers and lawn signs this time around. Of course, in Buffalo, they'd all be for Kerry (or Nader). And there just aren't any.

That's my anecdotal indication that turnout may be odd this year. The Dems just aren't energized.

Urinal Lot Of Trouble Now, Boy

Kelly at Byzantium's Shores thinks that advertising has really hit the sewer with this.

"Target marketing" takes on a whole new meaning in the first-ever viral marketing use of an interactive urinal communicator in America. The deodorizing urinal drain filter cover -- featuring a waterproof anti-glare lenticular viewing display -- has a pre-recorded greeting by a woman that commands, "Don't miss OUTLAWS on CMT. You seem to miss everything else!"

Check it out. He's even got the link with pictures and order info.

Grammar

The Anal Philosopher explains the importance of commas.

Commas are important for many reasons. Several years ago, there was a squabble over the Republican party’s platform. Someone wrote, “We are opposed to taxes which slow economic growth.” Someone objected, claiming that this implies that some taxes do and some do not slow economic growth, and that the party opposes only those that do slow economic growth. The party ended up putting a comma after “taxes,” which made the sentence “We are opposed to taxes, which slow economic growth.” See the difference? The second formulation implies that all taxes slow economic growth and that the party opposes all of them—for that reason.

Careful writers are careful in their use of commas.

While I don't disagree with his conclusion, I suspect that the writers of the plank were educated in an earlier time when the word 'which' had a specific use.

'That' and 'which' are relative pronouns -- they are used when linking a subordinate clause to a main clause.

Though the distinction between that and which is fading now, we were once taught to use 'which' when the information in the subordinate clause did not impact the meaning of the information in the main clause.

The car, which has changed the world, is also blamed for many of its ills.

As opposed to:

The car that I bought five years ago still runs fine.

'Which' is illustrative, 'that' is definitive. So, I'd have lobbied to keep the original sentence in the plank. It made perfect sense to me -- but in the end I'd have accepted the comma (or even a hyphen) if it meant a tax cut.

Oh, and I have to admit that Language Log would say I'm wrong.

A Democrat For Bush

A Labour-voting, registered Democrat, ex-Brit now living in Manhattan confides to the Times (the real Times not that other one downstate).

So here I am in deep Kerry territory, surrounded by designer Democrats who are far wealthier than me, harbouring a secret and deeply untrendy thought.

Darn them all, despite being a registered Democrat — and in my London days a staunch Labour supporter — I am going to vote for George Dubya.

When the metrosexual chap standing next to me confides that urban sophisticates prefer Kerry because “you have to have a low IQ to appreciate Bush”, I know I am making the right decision.

“The guy is an idiot,” he continued snobbishly. “I don’t know what the rest of the country is thinking.”

Perhaps I can enlighten him. I will be one of the millions voting for Bush because I trust the president’s judgment on the war on terror more than Kerry’s. In this election, I am a single-issue voter. It is that simple. Even in the New York metropolis, there are more of us out there than he imagines.

I'm fascinated to see just how many of them are out there. The last poll that I saw (several weeks ago) had Bush down by only 6 points in New York State. That's quite a change from his 26 point drubbing in 2000.

Now, I don't really hold out any hope that NYS might actually go for Bush this year, I'm optimistic not deluded. But I don't sense a lot of excitement about this year's election, so the results could surprise.

The article is quite long and very good. Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to Common Sense & Wonder.

The Low Fare Model In Europe

Ryanair is Europe's equivalent of Southwest Airlines and its growth continues.

Coming here by Ryanair is an education in itself. The boss, Michael O'Leary, continues to strip out any cost he can. The new seats are leather, so they wipe clean, and they don't recline (reclining seats get broken, and that costs money). We landed at Kerry, a tiny Art Deco airfield which is still able to handle jetloads of passengers without apparent effort. Ryanair favours these smaller airports because they're much cheaper. But in fact, passengers love them - much less delay, crowding, hassle than Heathrow or Gatwick, and much less of a walk from entrance to plane.

O'Leary used to be a student of my good friend - and ASI author on aviation policy - Dr Sean Barrett, who obviously did a good job in teaching him transport economics. Sean tells me that before Ryanair, Ireland's aviation industry had 7000 staff and handled 2m passengers. Now it has 7000 stff and handles 40m. Aer Lingus stuggles to keep pace: it's just offered generous redundancy terms to 1,500 staff as it too strives to become a low-cost airline.

I flew Ryanair once on a one-day trip from London to Dublin. The fare was ₤99 round-trip (and to the average Brit, ₤99 spends there like $99 spends here -- leave the exchange rate calculators in your pocket). The planes are packed; they rather resemble narrow, flying auditoriums.

And European airlines benefit from one profit center that domestic American airlines can't exploit -- duty free sales. Greeted at the door by staff, each passenger was handed a catalog full of offers for watches, jewelry, and electronics.

And while no food or beverage were offered, the attendants were kept busy wheeling carts up and down the aisle hawking the merchandise and raking in the cash. Sort of a traveling bazaar and a clever rethinking of just what an airline is.

[UPDATE:] The character '₤' is how the browser is rendering the sign for sterling, but I'm sure you figured that out.

[UPDATE:] This line reminded me of a subject near and dear to my heart.

Ryanair favours these smaller airports because they're much cheaper. But in fact, passengers love them - much less delay, crowding, hassle than Heathrow or Gatwick, and much less of a walk from entrance to plane.

This use of small secondary airports by discounters is common here too. Southwest ignores LaGuardia and JFK in favor of Islip's airport way out on Long Island. The now-defunct Shuttle America used to fly into Hanscom Field rather than Boston's hyper-expensive Logan.

If plans to resuscitate the Niagara Falls Airport go through, we're likely to see competition between it and Buffalo International spurred by discount carriers looking for cheaper landing fees.

While both would be managed by the NFTA, the political pressure to get an airline or two into the Falls would be so great (can't let it stand empty now that we've spent $12 mil) that the larger airport would have to suffer. This is a really bad idea, folks.

Jimmy Carter Has Left the Building

I've been remiss in checking in on Daniel In Venezuela's effort to report the struggle against the evident fraud Hugo Chavez committed in the national elections.

The machines used to track the thumb prints and make sure none voted twice actually did not serve at all for that purpose. In fact thanks to these machines they knew at every minute who was voting and where. How? Well, chavismo had the list of all the people that signed at any of the different petitions submitted against Chavez, roughly between 25 and 35% of the electorate depending on the area. They also disposed the name of all the people that had benefited from any one of the "misiones" or other pro Chavez organizations and presumably voting for Chavez. Again between 25 to 35% depending on the areas. Thus they could track how was the mobilization of each side taking place.

In other words they could calculate in real time the following:

-how were pro Chavez voters mobilizing
-how were opposition electors mobilizing
-how to predict the result in each area
-and of course, how to send the adequate signal to the adequate machine to modify the final result

All of this with rather few people. Tulio Alvarez showed the names of a couple of dozen of foreigners, mostly Mexicans, that were working in the "secret" computation centers. It seems that NO Venezuelan civilian were involved, only Venezuelan military.

The Carter Center, charged with verifying the election -- and very happy to immediately confirm the results, wants nothing more to do with the affair.

An RCTV journalist this morning claims that the Carter Center does not come because "the opposition did not accept its report". Boohoohoohoo... Crocodile tears!

"Jimmuh" has moved on. I suppose he's busy rehearsing his outrage over expected Republican efforts in Florida to identify properly-registered voters, guide them to their home precincts, and turn away the felons.

Venezuela? Hey, the Marxist won in Venezuela. Ho-hum, so be it. Ah, but the big plum still awaits.

Color Me Jealous

Jennifer had a chance to go on PRI and TURNED IT DOWN!?

What Have We Done?

The schools remain a cultural slum, a dark night of the mind. As my daughters passed through these dismal moors, I saw misspelled handouts from teachers, heard of a teacher being reprimanded for correcting a student’s grammar, saw endless propaganda disguised as history. How does one recognize the onset of a dark age?

What have we done? And what now? Once the chain is broken, once no one any longer remembers how to write a sentence, much less the uses of the subjunctive, once Coleridge is forgotten and Milton and indeed everything beyond the mall, how can we recover what has been lost? I don’t think we can.

It comes with a price. The effects of the degradation are twofold. One is to deprive the bright and curious of a wonderful heritage that would enrich their lives. This is a high crime, and brings to mind the forgotten virtues of drawing and quartering, or throwing from the Tarpeian rock. Another effect is to separate the country into two classes, an invisible aristocracy enjoying things the rest have never heard of; and the rest, with 500 channels on the cable, watching Oprah, and having not the foggiest idea who, or what, or where they are.

Read the rest here. Hat tip to Education Watch.

Campaign Poster

If you've stopped by to find out more about the famous anti-Bush campaign poster, you'll find my original take here.

But there are late-breaking developments...

Via Michelle Malkin we learn that the Dems have told the AP that the poster is a dirty Republican trick.

Really now!

But Bill Hobbs points out that:

The fliers have been distributed for at least 2 weeks from State Representative Craig Fitzhugh's campaign office on the town square in downtown Ripley, which also serves as the Kerry-Edwards campaign headquarters.

Republican dirty trick, indeed. Next accusation up will be that Mary Cheney is straight, married, and has three children. The whole lesbian thing was just an elaborate Rovian ruse to lure the Kerry campaign into making a stupid blunder.

Fines, Jail Used to Enforce Flu Shot Rules

Once government meddling has caused a shortage, as with flu vaccine, then the next question is how to determine who gets some of the product that's in short supply.

I'd like a flu shot myself. I'm pretty susceptible to the flu. In addition, I work in a large open office which will, at one time or another this winter, be full of co-workers who have the flu. I'd pay $100 or $200 to get a flu shot -- I don't make a lot of money, but it would be worth that much to me.

And that is how we usually manage short supply, we raise prices. And those willing to pay the higher prices, buy the product. But that isn't likely to be the case with the vaccine. The calls for more control have begun.

As the vaccine shortage hits home and long lines queue around the supermarket, a handful of states and the nation's capital are threatening doctors and nurses with fines or even jail if they give flu shots to healthy, low-risk people.

Health officials downplay the punishment and say that most health care workers are following the guidelines.

"But there are people who are unsure and there are consumers who are not necessarily being as civic-minded as we would like. ... This just provides us with some backup," said Janet Olszewski, Michigan's director of community health, who issued the order Thursday.

There are about 3.4 million people in Michigan considered a priority for a flu shot this fall — primarily the elderly, children 6-23 months, the chronically ill, pregnant women and certain health care workers. But the state only has about 2 million doses, Olszewski told The Associated Press.

Health care violators in Michigan face a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and a $200 fine if convicted, the health director said.

At least three other states — Massachusetts, New Mexico and Oregon — and Washington, D.C., have issued similar orders with varying penalties.

"It's a strong step," agreed Dr. Gregg Pane, acting director of the District of Columbia Department of Health, whose order took effect Friday.

In Washington, violators could be fined up to $1,000, and Pane said the health department would investigate complaints. [emphasis mine]

Government will step in now and decide whom doctors may give the shots to. And very few will dare complain because it's only "fair"; lets all be "civic-minded". We'll get that icky profit-motive out of health care and distribute it according to need. Said need to be determined by unelected bureaucrats (not that elected bureaucrats would do any better).

All of you clamoring for more controls over pharmaceutical prices and health insurance should see this vaccine fiasco for what it is: a peek into the future nationalized healthcare.

Propaganda As Editorial

As to be expected, the Buffalo News editorial board pronounced its opinion on the decision of Sinclair Broadcasting to air "Stolen Honor". And its opinion was not favorable.

Sinclair Broadcast Group's inexcusable decision to sacrifice its own credibility to a political cause fails the fairness test on two counts: It rehashes old news in a politically biased way, and it does so unacceptably close to the date of the presidential election.

The chain's decision to urge its 62 affiliate stations to air an independently produced documentary titled "Stolen Honor" amounts to an attack on Sen. John Kerry so late in this campaign that meaningful response will be difficult. Sinclair, which has affiliates in several key "battleground" states, must know that. Its decision is patently unfair, not just to Kerry but to the voters.

Bear in mind that this is the same paper that has yet to criticize Dan Rather for, not only standing by phony documents to attack the President, but actually enlisting an important Kerry staff member to help in the effort to obtain those phony documents.

Sinclair's decision is certainly partisan. But the pretension that CBS, NBC, and ABC have not been partisan is the growing story of this election year.

Foliage Blogging

I think we're at the peak.




This is just outside the village of South Dayton about 45 miles south of Buffalo. And the peak comes just in time because snow is predicted for tomorrow night.

Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

So I've been trying to gain readership here -- and it is a trial and error process.

I mean, I want readers but I want readers who like what I have to say. I want to attract new readers but I don't want to have to invent stories that I think might attract newcomers.

So imagine my delight this morning when, upon checking my SiteMeter, I see that by noon I've already exceeded my previous record number of visits for one day.

Well, thinks I, my insights have finally been recognized and appreciated. But noooooooo.

Turns out that the Internet gods have, for some reason, bounced me to the top of MSN's search engine results for people looking to get the goods on Craig Fitzhugh, the source of the now infamous Bush-retard poster.

And all day, people searching for it have ended up here. Not that I mind. Not at all, thank you very much. If 1% of those unexpected readers checked back, my readership would double.

You just can't plan everything.

Land Of Paucity

Yesterday I posted a rather lengthy (for me) piece on high gas prices and how government price controls in the seventies had led to shortages, rationing, and ultimately panic.

And what do we wake up to today? Why, stories about shortages, rationing, and panic.

Some people waited all night at a supermarket to secure a spot in line for a flu shot.

Some of the people at the Giant in McLean had camped out since ten o'clock last night night. At six this morning, store workers began handing out numbers to the first 250 people in line. It took just 15-minutes before they ran out, and the store is now turning away anyone without a number.

Another Giant, in Dale City, had people lined up yesterday before dawn, waiting for flu shots that wouldn't be given until noon.

In the San Francisco area, a woman died after waiting in line for hours to get her flu shot.

A 79-year-old woman who stood in line more than five hours for a flu shot collapsed and died after striking her head.

Marie Franklin and her husband, Robert, had been standing with hundreds of other seniors outside a Safeway supermarket on Wednesday when she became pale and weak. She collapsed as she walked toward shade.

But how is it possible that there would be such a severe shortage of flu vaccine here in the United States where we lack for nothing? Because back in the nineties a program was created whereby some 60% of all flu vaccine was purchased by the government so as to assure that all children could be vaccinated.

Insisting on low bulk rates, the reduced profit margins have chased all but two manufacturers out of the market. It's no longer profitable enough to produce. It's a perfect example and a forewarning of what a government-run healthcare system would create.

So, given the evidence, wouldn't sensible people see the wisdom of removing the government interference that created the problem? Our local paper weighs in with its analysis and surprising solution.

First it acknowledges the cause.

The majority of influenza vaccine is purchased by the government, which can insist on cheaper bulk rates, thereby keeping prices low. Those low prices and profit margins have dissuaded many firms from producing vaccines, said Dr. Gregory Poland, chief of the Mayo Vaccine Research Group and president of the International Society for Vaccines.

And so what do you suppose is the solution?

Poland believes the government is going to have to either improve subsidies for the vaccine or provide financial incentives for manufacturers to want to get in the field. If the government won't provide incentives for the private sector or take on the job of producing vaccines itself, the possibility of shortages will exist for the foreseeable future.

Of course, more government control, why didn't I think of that? Subsidize it, incentivize it or nationalize it. How tiresome become the knee-jerk reactions that government can (and must) fix everything.

The only incentive needed to attract more manufacturers is the chance to make a good profit. As if by magic, the shortage would end.

[UPDATE:] Russel Roberts at Cafe Hayek makes a worrisome point.

A market-based economy is hard to sustain unless people understand how it works.

[UPDATE:] Professor Bainbridge cites some editorials with actual contructive suggestions.

Diversionary Tactics?

There's been a lot of bandwidth devoted today to Kerry's mention of Cheney's daughter in the debate last night.

And even more to John Edwards's wife's response.

I ask you, is it brilliant political positioning or just another example of liberal projection?

I distort, you deride.

Character Assassination

Ann Althouse is curious to know why the Washington Post labeled her a Democratic weblogger.

Oh, I'm blogging as a Democrat? Well, I read it in the New York Times, so it's probably true. Did Rutenberg read enough of my blog to see that I'm voting for Bush, or is he just concluding from the fact that I don't mind saying that I observed spittle in the corner of Bush's mouth that I must be opposed to him? Maybe Rutenberg is assuming that these bloggers are all so partisan that if they say one thing against a candidate, they must say everything against that candidate.

I suspect he read enough to see that Ann is a law professor living in Madison, Wisconsin. What else would he need to conclude that she must be a Democrat.

Gas Prices

John Kerry has started referring to "George Bush's" high gasoline prices and demands he do something about it. OK, it's a campaign and Americans are really annoyed -- good issue. But should the government do something about it?

Richard Nixon did do something. He instituted a price-freeze which was generally applauded by the public -- he'd show those Arabs and those greedy oil companies. But, of course, because of the Arab oil embargo, supplies remained low (but no lower than they are now).

But because the price couldn't rise, Americans didn't conserve. In fact, because oil "shortages" were in the news every night, we became hoarders of gasoline. If the tank dropped to 3/4, we'd stop and top off -- there might not be any gas tomorrow.

This mentality discombobulated (an economic term I picked up along the way) gas stations' inventory management and spot outages began to pop up. Duly reported in the press, the urge to "stop and top" only grew.

And this get-it-now-while-its-still-available meme didn't stop at gasoline. There's a famous incident where Johnny Carson, (then host of the Tonight Show for you young'uns) made a joke about a looming toilet paper shortage. And by the next day it had come true. The whole country ran out and bought up every available roll.

I remember working in a grocery store in Fredonia during this time (while in college). A rumor flew through Dunkirk-Fredonia that flour was in short supply and for several days we couldn't keep it on the shelves. Each day for a week, we got a full truckload of flour to keep up with the demand.

The scare ended and then, of course, we didn't sell a bag of flour for months and months. Everyone's cupboards were stuffed full of it -- piled on top of the toilet paper I imagine.

Price controls were finally deemed a miserable failure and ended in 1974 (although some controls remained on oil). But, even freed a little, the gas lines (and the hoarding) disappeared virtually overnight.


The flight of the Shah from Iran in January and the cessation of Iranian oil exports prompted a worldwide shortage of oil, with oil consuming nations using two million barrels of oil a day more than were being produced. As the energy crisis deepened in early summer, gasoline lines spread across the country. Gasoline lines, above, stretch as far as the eye can see on June 16 at a service station in Rockville, Maryland. The energy crunch abruptly eased in mid-summer as consumers adjusted to decreased supply and increased prices and long gas lines evaporated.

Jimmy Carter did something about high oil prices too. By 1979, gas lines had reappeared and the clamor to control prices rose again. But he took another tack. Instead of fiddling with prices, he fiddled with taxes. Since the high oil prices were leading to high oil company profits, he instituted the delightfully named "windfall" profit tax.

From the Mises Institute:

By 1980, the oil situation in this country was critical. On the left, Carter's Democratic challenger Ted Kennedy was advocating outright nationalization of the oil industry. On the other side, Republican Ronald Reagan was calling for complete decontrol. Carter took the "middle road."

First, he announced gradual decontrol of oil prices and the phasing out of the Keystone-Cops like government allocation system. However, Carter also pushed a "Windfall Profits Tax" on the belief that decontrol would bring higher prices and, thus, higher profits to oil companies that "really don't deserve them." The Wall Street Journal so opposed Carter's oil tax that it published an editorial, "Death of Reason," on the day Congress passed the tax, bordering the editorial in black.

While Carter had planned on completely deregulating the oil industry by 1981, Reagan upon his election did so immediately.

So what should Bush do? Not a thing.

First, although motorists don't conserve much in the short run when fuel prices go up, the experience of the 1970s and early 1980s demonstrate that motorists will turn to conservation with a vengeance if fuel prices stay high over a long period of time. Given the costs associated with exchanging cars, moving households, and adopting new travel practices, it's not short sighted to ensure that high gasoline prices are here to stay before changing one's lifestyle. Government intervention to encourage or force those investments in the short term might well cost society more money than it would save through reduced gasoline consumption.

Second, consumers have a right to make their own decisions about trade-offs between higher gasoline prices and conservation without the government whacking them over the head with higher taxes, constrained choices in the vehicle market, or extracting their earnings for the benefit of corporations engaged in making cars or fuels that consumers presently don't want to buy. Simply put, individuals know better how to order their personal affairs than do politicians or bureaucrats no matter how well meaning they might be.

At the end of the day, the best remedy for high gasoline prices is...high gasoline prices, which provide all the incentives necessary for motorists to conserve, for oil companies to put more product into the marketplace, and for investors to look into alternatives fuel technologies. Government has never demonstrated an ability to do better. [Emphasis mine]

The temptation for President Bush to meddle with gas prices must be overwhelming right now. There have been more than a few calls for him to release some of the national oil reserves as Clinton did during Gore's presidential campaign.

So far he hasn't; and that refusal to meddle might even make up for his steel tariff pandering fiasco. In fact, the decision to allow oil prices to go their own way, after the tax cuts, is the most principled, freemarket, and conservative domestic policy decision he's taken.

Debate Answers Rethought (in midthought)

Kerry: “I have passed 56 bills to reform Health Care“

[ suddenly realizing that anyone can check this claim, and find out he’s lying ]

“… not all of them were under MY name…”

Suuuuuuuuuuuure, Senator.

Hat tip to PoliPundit.com

The Last Debate

The Power Liners watched it in a room full of hundreds of Bush supporters. I watched it from work with a a dozen or so on duty tonight (we work in an office).

Demographics:

2 over 50 years of age (of which I am one) the other, a woman, stayed completely out of the discussion.

1 man between 30 and 40 (avowed Kerry supporter but not a committed liberal).

9 twenty-somethings (one woman amongst who also kept her opinions to herself).

And so I prodded and poked (just for fun) to get reactions from the young guys. Two of them turn out to be good blue-staters, although they dislike Bush more than they like Kerry.

Three are die-hard Republicans, the others lean Bush (at least in their reactions to the exchanges on screen). And, of course, I've no idea if they'll really vote or not. But, nonetheless, it was fun.

The big groaner of the night was Shieffer's posing the gay question (choice or not?). None of these guys wanted to hear about it. "Why did he bring that up?", was asked, Kerry and Bush supporters alike.

And when Kerry mentioned Cheney's lesbian daughter, it wasn't considered a low-blow. But it was the Bush daughters who quickly became the subject of "naughty" lesbian fantasies. So much for that issue.

Minimum wage engendered some discussion. The two Kerry supporters held out that a minimum wage increase is needed.

I countered that McDonalds owners would invest more in technology that requires fewer employees. The Kerry boys said they'd just stop going to McDonalds and stick with local fast-food joints (who presumably won't be able to afford the technology (but will be able to afford the wage increase)). I think Kerry's got a couple solid supporters there.

There was an almost complete fixation on style. Kerry's newfound gravitas has worked, I think. These "kids" who are very quick-witted and college-educated have no historical context within which to judge the questions and answers they heard tonight. The pro-Kerry guys ask me what Kerry would need to say to convince me and are amazed when I tell them there's absolutely nothing.

I explained to them that, since I was in high school (1971), John Kerry's been pissing me off. I told them about the treatment of returning Viet Nam vets (their treatment being a result of Kerry's accusations) and I tried to sketch lightly his support for the Marxist Sandinistas (they know absolutely nothing of this). But their eyes glazed over and so I just try to remind myself of my own reactions to Depression stories from Dad in the fifties.

To them, each day's a still a new one. Any government program's worth a shot (hey, at least we're doing something!). When I ask them what Bush could say to convince them, they actually try to come up with answers.

All in all, an interesting evening. When the debate ended, the TV was quickly switched back to ESPN and baseball instantly wiped out everyone's memory of the debates.

Nanny Statism

Nanny's Big Brother has decided that the phrase "brain storming" is offensive to epileptics; therefore it should no longer be used.

Today a relatively "harmless" phrase is banned, tomorrow it will be something else.

As Orwell predicted, in his book "1984", an effective means by which a dictatorship can control the population is by controlling their thoughts. The best way to control the population's thoughts by controlling the language.

The elimination of words and phrases from the language means that people can no longer use them, or think them.

This is but the "thin end of the wedge".

Lots more good railing about Nanny at Nanny Knows Best.

The Tragedy of the Commons Revisited (Again)

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- Purdue University police canceled a bicycle-lending program intended to decrease theft after most of the bikes were vandalized or are missing.

Purdue police placed 25 bikes painted bright gold at locations around the campus at the beginning of the fall semester. The bikes, which had been recovered by campus police, were free for any student to use.

The Gold Bike program, similar to ones used for years at Rutgers and Indiana University, was designed to discourage bike thefts, deputy Chief Steve Dietrich told the Purdue Exponent.

Twenty of the bikes can no longer be used because vandals damaged them, and a few others are missing, said Dietrich.

"It is disappointing, we saw a lot of interest early on, but I guess it was too tempting," he said.

Dietrich said Purdue police might consider the program again if a student organization proposed a way to restart it.

Link via SCSU Scholars.

AnalPhilosopher: "Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) on Philosophical Systems

The only possible criticism of a philosophy, the only criticism that proves anything at all, is trying to see if one can live by it. But that criticism has never been taught in any of our universities; all we ever teach is the criticism of words by words. And now imagine that fifty of these verbal systems, along with fifty verbal critiques of those systems, are scrambled and stuffed into a youthful mind. What a wilderness, what a jungle, what a caricature of a philosophical education! And the fact is that our students are not educated for philosophy, but for an examination in philosophy."

Retards, Indeed

Via the Traditional Values Coalition (a group I'm not prone to cite), Michelle Malkin brings this little gem to light.


Campaign flyer for Democrat Craig Fitzhugh.

October 12, 2004 – Democrats in a race for a state House seat in District 82, are circulating a flyer that shows a retarded child with President Bush’s face running in a track race. The headline says: “Voting for Bush Is Like Running In The Special Olympics: Even If You Win, You’re Still Retarded.”

The flyer is being distributed by Democrat Craig Fitzhugh. His opponent, Dave Dahl has issued a call to Fitzhugh to stop distributing the flyer.

Isn't that nice? I realize this is just a flyer from one small-time country politician and not official Democrat Party issue, but it's not an unheard of Democat tactic. Another Tennesseean has used it before.

On October 28, 1994, while in Virginia, then-Vice President Al Gore attacked Oliver North's Senate bid supporters as "the extreme right wing, the extra chromosome right wing." Advocates for those with Down's Syndrome, caused by an extra chromosome, were outraged.

We all know that politics can be dirty and we're up for the fight. But the left's hypocrisy in disgusting displays like this are simply staggering.

Bush was pressured by Kerry and the media to disavow the Swift Boat Vet ads. And he did, wrongly I might add. This picture will be all over the Internet by tomorrow and I suspect Drudge will pick it up.

If questioned by the press about this ad (doubtful), I predict that McAuliffe, Kerry, etc., et. al. will have nothing to say.

I hope I can add an update that I was wrong or that this was a hoax.

[UPDATE:] I posted this overnight and woke up this morning thinking I'd probably jumped the gun -- it was too outrageous. Maybe I should have waited.

But (as those of you coming here from Michelle's site will already know), it very likely is true.

And Drudge did pick it up as well as opinionjournal.com.

An Embarrassment of Links

Announcing another addition to "Favorite Links", Conservative English Major.

I have enough trouble with my political views in a business setting. I can only imagine the kickback in academia.

Canadian Dollar Touches 80 Cents

Well, this is about the best news Buffalo could hope for.

The Canadian dollar touched US80 cents for the first time in more than 11 years yesterday, surging on news the unemployment rate hit a three-year low of 7.1% in September and on continued weakness in U.S. labour markets.

The dollar closed North American trade at US79.87 cents, up US0.59 cents. Earlier in the day, it soared to US80.03 cents, its highest level since March, 1993.

Some 400,000 Canadians live across the Niagara River from Buffalo. Although in a different country, they are effectively part of the greater Buffalo area. Thousands of them work here and traditionally, hundreds of thousands of them ate here, drank here, and shopped here.

And Buffalo's cultural institutions, health care facilities, retailing, and entertainment industries grew to accommodate not only the "official" population but the Canadian component as well.

Ontario's Niagara Region represents about 1/4 of Buffalo's city region.

So when the Canadian dollar dropped from 90 cents to as low as 65 cents in the early nineties, Buffalo took a big hit. It was almost as if 25% of its suburbs had (for economic purposes) disappeared. It simply didn't make sense for Canadians to shop over here anymore.

The drop in Canadian trade was felt within months, most visibly in retail. Huge malls (more than a city of one million would normally support) had been built and several have closed.

A rise in the Canadian dollar, even to the .80 level is good news. For example, gas currently sells in Ontario for about 83.5 Canadian cents/litre ($2.53/gal US). Even at our current $2.09/gallon levels, the Canadians make out. They can save about $11 CDN/tank (20 gallons) by filling up in the states.

And then add in the taxes. Canada levies a 7% Goods and Services Tax (GST) and Ontario adds on its own 8% Provincial Services Tax (PST). Well, golly. 15% sales taxes makes Buffalo's "puny" 8.25% tax look positively supply-side.

So, if the Canadian dollar remains in the area of 80 cents we can expect the situation to begin to turn around. And with the Christmas shopping season coming up, that's probably the best economic news we could hope for right now.

The Buffalo Connection

Through the wonders of linking, I discover another Buffalo blogger, Byzantium's Shores.

Alas, it appears we may not be politically compatible. It doesn't really matter, Buffalo matters (that was actually the first title of this blog (for what it's worth)).

But according to his profile, he's a "Grocery Store Guy" (and writer to be fair) and I did spend 21 years in the grocery industry, so there may be the possibility of some synergy. If there's one thing we do well in Buffalo it's grocery stores.

And, of course, one good link deserves another. Please give him a look. As he said, it's a Buffalo thing.

Vintage Sour Grapes From Oz

The Sydney Morning Herald provides us what I hope is a glimpse into our own future -- the left's reaction to an election that didn't go their way.

How on earth could we have put this scheming, mendacious little man and his miserable claque back in office for another three years? Worse, how could we have brought them to the very brink of absolute control of the nation's entire parliamentary process and authority?

Very easily, as things turned out, to the cost of the rest of us and our national self-respect.

For almost nine years this Government, incompetent in most everything except mediocrity, debauched its word and the people's trust, along with voters' gullibility, their ignorance, their taxes and, in the end, their greedy self-interest.

It deceived and dissembled about joining us with Washington's military adventurism in Iraq, and it went on deceiving and dissembling, irrespective of the heightened threat to our national interest, to keep our minuscule presence there purely for the political pleasure of George Bush and his cronies.

Then when we reached the one time every three years of a people's audit, 4.6 in every 10 of us turned round and said, thank you, gimme the money and flog us for another three years. Most times, despite the thick and the avaricious and those who feel it's just all beyond them, we get it right as a nation.

Not this time. This time we've really buggered things. A politically immoral man who, by any civilised measure, disqualified himself from public life, has been given a pat on the back and even more power. This time the people's will has got it dreadfully wrong.

Now we all have to pay for the comfortable idiocy of the manipulated minority. And it is a minority: the 46 per cent who voted for the Coalition, or 4.6 in every 10. The other 5.4, in the main, wanted something better, and were denied by a lowest common denominator system in which all the spoils go to a degraded 50 per cent plus one.

I thought we had more brains, more self-respect. I was wrong in thinking enough voters "just might" see through the confidence trickery of John Howard, master illusionist and toad of a human being. I apologise for nothing. [emphasis mine]

Isn't that beautiful? The arrogance, the elitism, and the dripping condescension are really quite stunning.

If Bush loses, the Right will go into a four year orgy of self-recrimination and despair at lost opportunities. But if Bush wins, the Left will simply sneer in derision at the rest of us boobs and fatcat wannabes and go on their merry way.

Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal

We don't get any of the Presidential campaign ads up here in deep blue country but at least we'll get to see this.

Sinclair Broadcast Group has ordered its 62 stations to preempt regular programming during primetime to air "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal," the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.

The film, funded by Pennsylvania veterans and produced by a veteran and former Washington Times reporter, features former POWs accusing Kerry -- a decorated U.S. Navy veteran who later protested the war -- of worsening their ordeal by prolonging the conflict.

The Kerry campaign blasted Sinclair for what it says is strongarming its stations into broadcasting lies to influence the political process, the Times said.

"It's beyond yellow journalism," said Kerry spokesman David Wade. "It's a smear bankrolled by Republican money, and I don't think Americans will stand for it."

The one-hour special, which will be aired between Oct. 21 and Oct. 24 depending on the city, will be followed by a panel discussion to which Kerry will be invited, potentially satisfying fairness regulations, the Times reported.

Sinclair is providing Kerry an opportunity to rebut the program which is more than CBS has ever offered Bush during its year-long crusade against him.

By the way, Sinclair's stations in Buffalo are FOX29 and WB49.

[UPDATE:] Find stations in your city here.

Breathtaking

John F. Kerry in the New York Times.

��We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they�re a nuisance,'� Kerry said. ��As a former law-enforcement person, I know we�re never going to end prostitution. We�re never going to end illegal gambling. But we�re going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn�t on the rise. It isn�t threatening people�s lives every day, and fundamentally, it�s something that you continue to fight, but it�s not threatening the fabric of your life.'�

I can't imagine a more concise summary of Kerry's planned approach to the War On Terror. Cheney was absolutely correct.

If Kerry were elected, Cheney said the nation risks falling back into a "pre-9/11 mind-set" that terrorist attacks are criminal acts that require a reactive approach. Instead, he said Bush's offensive approach works to root out terrorists where they plan and train, and pressure countries that harbor terrorists.

Link via PoliPundit.com.

[UPDATE:] Eugene Volokh adds perspective.

I see Kerry's point: Terrorists, unlike Nazi Germany or the USSR, can't be entirely defeated, because there'll always be the possibility that some more springing up. We can end the war on some particular terrorists by killing them all or getting them to stop, but we can't end the war on terrorism generally that way. The best we can hope for is that there'll be a lot fewer terrorist attacks. That's certainly an important point, and it's worth keeping in mind.

But what remarkable analogies Kerry started with: prostitution and illegal gambling. The way law enforcement has dealt with prostitution and illegal gambling is by occasionally trying to shut down the most visible and obvious instances, tolerating what is likely millions of violations of the law per year, de jure legalizing many sorts of gambling, and de jure legalizing one sort of prostitution in Nevada, and de facto legalizing many sorts of prostitution almost everywhere; as best I can tell, "escort services" are very rarely prosecuted, to the point that they are listed in the Yellow Pages.

Putin and Kyoto

An interesting theory at The Commons Blog about Russia's rather surprising ratification of the Kyoto Treaty.

The wily former spymaster may well be setting Kyoto's proponents up for one of history's grandest double-crosses by signing the treaty and grabbing the billions of dollars in promised payoffs with no intention of ever living up to its terms.

After all, the only way for the European Union or the United Nations to really determine if Russia is complying with Kyoto is to site thousands of monitors on the ground in a vast territory that spans six time zones - or to rely on Russian self-certification.

The first option is not likely to be granted by the xenophobic Russians, while the statistics generated by the second are likely to be doctored beyond all credibility.

Given Russia's involvement in UNScam this isn't far-fetched at all.

In the end, of course, it won't make a bit of difference. The statistics generated by all the signatories will be doctored when it becomes obvious just how much their economies will be affected.

And then they'll blame the U.S. anyway.

Prince Charles, Colonialist

Mr. Freemarket reports a terrible verbal gaffe.

Apparently the heir to the throne in a disgusting display of neo-colonialism said that he could, "recall `The Song of Hiawatha', by Henry Longfellow, & the unforgettable rhythm of the metre associated with those haunting Red Indian names & places."

And, of course, a sensitive American is shocked.

Shock horror, what a completely disgusting thing to say � how could the beast come out with something like that � eh? Well according to Barbara Munson, �chairperson� of the US campaign group "Indian" Mascot & Logo Taskforce in Wisconsin, the Prince's reading preferences revealed "a colonial mindset".

"I'm sort of stunned to hear it," Munter went on to say. "I've not heard the term Red Indian used with reference to the indigenous peoples of America commonly, or ever heard it actually spoken. It is, at best, archaic. The reference to Red Indian has a dehumanising feel to it and I think it's very unfortunate,"�wibble � parp� bidet ferret!

Well maybe Munter (�5 says she owns a wind chime) should pop down to Free Market Towers where this afternoon the nippers were in the Dutch barn playing Cowboys & Indians � or is that be indigenous American tribes people that crossed the Barring Straight land bridge 10,000 years ago living in harmony with their environment & white misogynist capitalist oppressors.

Ms. Munson should get out of Wisconsin once in a while and see a bit of the world. And if she can't be bothered to drag her sorry, victimized butt to England for a few days, then she could at least turn on PBS (I'm sure she's a member).

It wouldn't take more than an hour or two of "Brit-coms" before she'd likely hear the term Red Indian spoken. Sheesh, and we're supposed to believe that the lefties are the worldly ones.

[UPDATE:] This reminded me of a Brit comic (can't remember the name) who said that political correctness is so rampant in America that one midwestern state is to be renamed Native Americana.

Binge Drinking

Hugh Hewitt's dangerous challenge.

Many have e-mailed to complain that the drinking game I laid out on yesterday's radio show for yesterday's debate --one drink per Kerry mention of "Bremer" or "plan," and a double shot for every "Shinseki" mention by Kerry-- led to near poisonous levels of alcohol consumption. I agree that to have actually played by those rules would have been a terrible idea.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Our Next Governor

New York's very own crusader for the common man, Elliot Spitzer, not content with driving the financial services industry to New Jersey, has settled on his next target - bathroom attendant placement services.

Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said on Thursday an investigation showed that attendants in upscale New York City restaurants were not receiving any wages and in fact were paying for the privilege of mining tips in bathrooms in exchange for providing toiletries and a hand towel.

Spitzer filed a $4 million lawsuit against Royal Flush, the city's main placement service for bathroom attendants. Company officials were unavailable to comment.

In Spitzer's world, people (well, people who aren't lawyers or investment advisors) don't have any choice about what job to take. Undoubtedly desperately poor people are being driven into this life of bathroom attendance for a lack of alternatives. The State must help them.

Never a thought that maybe it's a good gig (I mean I wouldn't want to do it, but they're coughing up dough just for the chance). What unprotected group will catch Elliot's eye next?

Maybe real estate agents in New York should be paid minimum wage, too. In fact, let's just do away with tips, commissions, and performance bonuses altogether. Oops, except for lawyers, of course.

Now I'm quite aware that many of New York's citizens are enthralled with this business-hating, economy-killing, nanny-state populist. He knows every string to pull up here in America's little dying laboratory for socialism. "Governor Spitzer" is a concept that I fear I may have to one day accept.

Link via Professor Bainbridge.

Giving Back

Arnold Kling advances a question for discussion.

Why do people praise entrepreneurs who "give back to the community?" When people compliment me like that for my volunteer teaching, I respond, "What makes you think I took something in the first place?"

Our society has become infested with the idea that business must give back to the community.

A friend of mine doesn't patronize a certain neighborhood bar because the owners don't "give back" to the community meaning that they don't sponsor softball teams, make a big show of contributing to local charities, or provide a day of free food for the customers.

In my opinion they provide a comfortable and familiar place to join friends for a good time. In his mind, they take hard-earned dollars from local working people.

I asked him what he does to give back to his employer and got a blank stare for an answer. The idea that his wages are his profit in the same way that the bar owner's profit constitutes his wages was one he'd never considered.

And the concept that we actually sell our time and knowledge to our employers at a market rate (much as the barkeep sells beer) -- well, I decided to save that discussion for another time.

Showering Gold?

BoiFromTroy is annoyed, as he should be, by a misleading LA Times headline.

Now I remember one of my pet peeves about the Los Angeles Times is their misleading headlines...for example:

UC Employees Dig Deeper for Bush, Kerry Campaigns
University of California employees have given more than nine times as much money to the presidential candidates this year as they did in 2000, with more than 95% of it going to Sen. John F. Kerry.


Wouldn't a more accurate headline be, "Cal employees overwhelminglyback Kerry" or "Ivory Tower Showers Gold on Kerry" or "Bias? Not in Academia!"

Really, Boi, while I agree with you in principle, do you honestly think that the esteemed LA Times could openly opine honestly about golden showers -- especially when it puts Democrats in a bad light?

Whom Did He Know, And When Did He Know Him?

One of Don Luskins readers has an interesting question.

What does it say about Senator John Edwards that he did not immediately point out in last night's debate that he and Vice-President Cheney had met previously? In holding his silence, Edwards passed up a chance to slam Cheney on a key issue of personal integrity and judgement. If Edwards had pointed out Cheney's false statement on the spot, viewers would have spent the rest of the night wondering how Cheney could possibly have been so stupid as to think he could get away with such mendacity. It would certainly have ruined Cheney's night instantly and permanently.

Free Trade

Don Boudreaux on Free Trade.

During the class, I showed my students that one benefit of free trade is that it encourages resources to shift into more-productive uses. I conceded, of course, that increased foreign trade typically does eliminate some domestic jobs, but that it also creates other, generally higher-paying jobs. I conceded also that the creation of new jobs is not instantaneous.

After class, a student asked �How do you know new jobs will be created? I see your point in theory, but aren�t you relying upon faith that the market will create these new jobs?�

I answered that a belief that is founded upon a compelling theory and that is consistently supported by plenty of empirical evidence is not properly described as �faith.� As I understand the meaning of the word �faith� � especially when this word is used in an attempt to discredit a proposition � it means belief in something for no rational reason and without sufficient supporting empirical evidence. Indeed, truly to have faith in something requires that you believe in that something even if it is illogical and if the empirical evidence is stacked against it.

Is it an article of faith that new jobs will be created domestically to replace the ones eliminated by greater trade with foreigners? Faith and begorrah no! The evidence that new jobs are created in free and open economies to employ virtually everyone who is willing to work is overwhelming.

But despite the evidence that free trade benefits us all ultimately -- it's that lack of instantaneous job replacement that continues to feed the belief that the jobs are gone for good. And then, add to that the fact that the new jobs likely won't be created in the same town that lost the old ones and the belief hardens.

We have a self-made millionaire businessman, Jack Davis, running for Congress (against the formidable Tom Reynolds) on a protectionist platform. And I'm sure he'll have credibility with a lot of voters.

Mr. Davis makes much of the fact that he's passed up opportunities to sell his business to outside buyers and to outsource work. And that's all well and good and I'm glad he made those decisions -- if his company were publicly owned it could well have worked out differently.

The sad fact remains that the jobs Buffalo and upstate have lost due to free trade would have been lost anyway, NAFTA or none. And there's virtually nothing that Washington can do about it as long as Albany looks on business as its cash cow.

It's too expensive to do business in New York; our lost jobs would have gone to other states if not to other countries. Fix that, protectionists.

[UPDATE:] I forgot to point out how Mr. Davis's candidacy is an example that successful businessmen are not necessarily familiar with basic economic principles. This is continually pointed out by Presidential appointments to important economic positions with former CEO's of successful companies like, oh, I don't know, Alcoa.

Logical Fallacies

You'll notice that I've added a new entry to the list of "Favorite Links": the Adam Smith Institutes's compendium of Logical Fallacies.

Excerpt from "Every Schoolboy Knows":

You would be amazed what every schoolboy knows. Anxious to secure acquiescence in their controversial claims, disputants solemnly assure their audiences that every schoolboy knows the truth of what they are saying. The audience, not wishing to be ignorant of matters so widely understood by children, are supposed to keep silent about their doubts. Thus complex and dubious assertions are passed off unquestioned.

'Every schoolboy knows that the rate of gene loss from a closed reproductive system is expressed by the formula' [fill in the blank]

For those of us interested in the dusty, old, power-hungry, male-oriented, European tradition of logical argument, this will, no doubt, prove a valuable resource. And try not to use it against me too often. If there's the thinnest chance that a shred of humor exists in a post, please give me the benefit of the doubt.

Otherwise all's fair I guess.

Smart Growth - Pros, Cons, and Accusations

Having dipped my toe into the debate over smart growth (see here, and here), I was interested to find others on the Web debating the same rather "lustily".

It started with a New York Times Magazine article on September 26, titled "STYLE: THE WAY WE DRIVE NOW; The Autonomist Manifesto (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Road)" (article here, alas, now only available in pay-per-view).

John Tierney wrote about America's growing disagreement over more highways vs. more mass transit.

Drivers are getting a free ride. Yes, the government spends a lot more money on highways than transit, but most of that money comes out of the drivers' pockets. If you add up the costs of driving -- the car owner's costs as well as the public cost of building and maintaining highways and local streets, the salaries of police patrolling the roads -- it works out to about 20 cents per passenger mile, and drivers pay more than 19 of those cents, according to Cox. A trip on a local bus or commuter train costs nearly four times as much, and taxpayers subsidize three-quarters of that cost.

Drivers do avoid paying some indirect costs of their cars, like the health consequences of the pollution from tailpipes. One of the most thorough attempts to measure these social costs was done by Mark Delucchi, a cost-benefit analyst at the University of California, Davis, who factored in everything from expenditures in the Persian Gulf to the cost of the real estate devoted to free parking lots. Autonomists complain that he overestimated the car's costs, but even so, his calculations show that when compared with the social costs of transit systems (like taxpayer subsidies and noise from buses), the car is at least twice as cheap per passenger mile as transit.

The next day, Jane Galt mentioned the article along with her thoughts. She, by the way is (as am I) a committed city-lover.

If I had to design my perfect place to live, it would be a townhouse, on a square of similar townhouses that opened up onto a large communal yard where children and dogs could romp. A train station would be no more than a few blocks away, as would shops, schools, and other accoutrements of refined living.

But unlike the smart growth folks, I recognise that this is, to a large extent, a fantasy.

And much, much more -- as they say, read the whole thing. So, now we fast forward a few days to October 1 and I'm fascinated that David at the excellent City Comforts has broached the subject as well (with a call for a fisking).

Certainly the Tierney piece needs a critical read, not just bombastic nukes.

Of course such critical reading won't come from cheer-leaders like Jane Galt here and Tyler Cowan here. They are thrilled by Tierney. Like him, they also pose the issues in such a way as to discredit anything which might be called 'progressive traditional planning' i.e. new urbanism, smart growth, etc etc. That's my take on their posts, anyway. There seems to be a me-tooism about the way they deal with the Tierney piece. But that's not uncommon when people comment in an area where they have never worked with the material.

And, before you can press Refresh, Mike Lewyn responds.

Pro-sprawl types are citing Jane Galt?s blog (www.janegalt.net), which parrots the New York Times article magazine I just beat up on a few days ago. Galt?s remarks are quoted; my responses are in non-quote form.

?Smart growth is great if you are an upscale professional, preferably without children, who can score a relatively large apartment fairly close to work. It's a lot less fun for the majority trying to cram your family into four or five rooms. Smart growth is great if you are savvy enough to manipulate an urban school system into keeping your children away from the poor kids; it is not so nice for the majority who must make do.?

My response: I guess Galt's ideal of smart growth is not mine. To me, 'smart growth' means more people can get to more places in more than one way (i.e. not just by driving). My ideal is that you should be able to get the schools you want WITHOUT having to move a zillion miles out to an automobile-dependent suburb; this was the norm in America for the first half of the 20th century, and I don't know why it cannot be that way again.

But I appreciate Galt's candor in stating that a family's ultimate goal must be 'keeping your children away from the poor kids'.

Ouch. Do you sense deep feeling here?

Tonight Jane responded, "Oh, joy, I've been 'fisked'."

Let me start by saying that I'm firmly behind many of the aims of smart growth, such as mixed-use zoning. I think the attempt to ensure that poor people can't come within 100 miles of you by restricting zoning to one-acre lot single-family homes is one of the more repulsive uses of the state. This is saying something, from someone who basically thinks that most uses of the state are pretty repulsive.

Where I depart from the smart-growth/new-urbanist is in rejecting the belief, which I think is hopelessly naive, that If You Zone it They Will Come. While I agree that there is more of a market for denser, old-style suburban living than is currently being satisfied, I do not believe that those consumers are a majority of home buyers. The fact that people like to vacation on Nantucket does not mean that they like to live there.

This is the first time I've seen two actual "city-lovers", city advocates if you will, debating the premises of smart growth. Usually we get one stereotype or the other: committed urbanites striving to save the environment (and our quality of life), or concerned suburbanites trying to preserve property rights (and our quality of life). This discussion moves the ball.

School Vouchers Where?!

The U.K.'s Adam Smith Institute alerts us to a surprising fact (references to the location are *'ed out so you can try and guess where this is going on).

The [British] Conservative Party is looking hard at the ******* school system, in which parents are free to choose a private school, and transfer their state funding to it. It is effectively a voucher system, though parents cannot add to it at more expensive schools. The private schools created in response to it now educate 6% of ******'s children.

Some education reformers suggest that Britain should be fostering low-cost private schools as an alternative to the very expensive private sector and the sometimes very poor state sector. A *******-style voucher might do just that. Given the dissatisfaction with UK state education, the chances are that the new type of private schools would soon far exceed their numbers in ******.

Interesting, isn't it, that the idea of voucher-type systems and school choice is spreading into Europe. Now, have you guessed where this program is located? U.S.? Hong Kong, maybe? How about Singapore?

Nope, SWEDEN! That's right. Even the Swedes have recognized the wisdom of giving parents a choice in where their children are schooled. Do you ever get the feeling that we're starting to fall behind a bit?

[UPDATE:] OK, my total admiration for the Swedes was quickly tempered by this. It appears that a group of Swedish MP's are proposing a "man tax" to offset the cost of male social violence. But the school stuff is good.

Iraqi Documents Discovered

Power Line Blog links to a CNSNews.com exclusive.

Iraqi intelligence documents, confiscated by U.S. forces and obtained by CNSNews.com, show numerous efforts by Saddam Hussein's regime to work with some of the world's most notorious terror organizations, including al Qaeda, to target Americans. They demonstrate that Saddam's government possessed mustard gas and anthrax, both considered weapons of mass destruction, in the summer of 2000, during the period in which United Nations weapons inspectors were not present in Iraq. And the papers show that Iraq trained dozens of terrorists inside its borders.

One of the Iraqi memos contains an order from Saddam for his intelligence service to support terrorist attacks against Americans in Somalia. The memo was written nine months before U.S. Army Rangers were ambushed in Mogadishu by forces loyal to a warlord with alleged ties to al Qaeda.

If the documents can be verified as true it will be a confirmation of reports that have been around since June.

Giving an unexpected boost to U.S. President George W. Bush's claim that Saddam Hussein's regime had posed a threat to the United States, President Vladimir Putin said Friday that Russian intelligence agencies had received information that Iraq was planning terrorist attacks against American targets and warned U.S. intelligence.

Of course, Putin's admission gained no traction in the press. It will once again fall to the new media to push it into the news. Unfortunately we won't likely be helped by any 527's on this one.

Democracy In Iraq

Zev Chafets thinks that the chances for democracy in Iraq are slim to none.

The President believes the majority of Iraqis yearn for democracy and will express this by taking part in free elections and defending a representative government. This idea is Bush's main justification for the invasion of Iraq. It is the heart of his broader Middle Eastern policy. And regrettably, it is entirely wrong.

There are 22 member states in the Arab League, and not one of them is remotely democratic. Some, like Egypt, Syria and Libya, are military dictatorships. Others, such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia, are ruled by hereditary monarchs who base their claim on religious legitimacy.

A few, like Sudan and Somalia, are so chaotic as to be barely sovereign states at all.

My first rebuttal would be that, even after 25 years of Islamic mullahcracy in Iran, its people are starving for liberty and democracy.

But I know that someone, somewhere would retort, "But Craig, Iranians are Persians, Chafets is talking about Arabs."

So, I won't even bring it up (he-he).

But, even in Arab Iraq, fundamentalist Islamism has never dominated society.

Hussein wouldn't stand for it. Like every dictator, he tolerated religion so long as it supported him. He had no reason to encourage nor indeed to allow Wahabbi-style fundamentalism.

Even at the height of Hussein's power, Iraqis received western-style educations, not madrassah brainwashings. Ol' Saddam could keep his people in line without resorting to religious indoctrination, thank you very much.

So, I think Chafets' gloomy assessment is ill-founded. Iraq is ripe for democracy, Iraqis are desperate for freedom, and they have the knowledge to make it work. This is not the Sudan.

an�noy�ance

Pronunciation: &-'noi-&n(t)s
Function: noun
1 : the feeling experienced when Blogger is so overloaded that corrections to posts take 1/2 hour to publish thereby leaving your entire blog in bold, hyperlink, italics for everyone to see.

2 : when your opponent breaks the rules and brings notecards to the debate

UNscam

More revelations forthcoming from the London Times.

A LEAKED report has exposed the extent of alleged corruption in the United Nations� oil-for-food scheme in Iraq, identifying up to 200 individuals and companies that made profits running into hundreds of millions of pounds from it.

The report largely implicates France and Russia, whom Saddam Hussein targeted as he sought support on the UN Security Council before the Iraq war. Both countries were influential voices against UN-backed action.

A senior UN official responsible for the scheme is identified as a major beneficiary. The report, marked �highly confidential�, also finds that the private office of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, profited from the cheap oil. Saddam�s regime awarded this oil during the run-up to the war when military action was being discussed at the UN.

David at Medienkritik wonders if this will make waves in the German media. His conclusion?

don't bet the farm on it...

The American media must keep this under wraps at least until the election. The public simply cannot hear any bad news about the UN lest Kerry's "world test" theory look even dumber.

At this point the only way to get MSM coverage would be a leak to Rather that BushRove is doing everything he can to keep the scandal hushed up. That might break it.

Dirty Trick?

While I'm not ready to jump on this bandwagon (yet),

It looks like Kerry brought in note cards, which he removed from his suit jacket, in violation of the rules. While the Bush campaign probably would be ill-advised to complain about this, bringing in such cards constitutes a material violation of the rules.

it would go a long ways towards explaining Bush's off-balance performance.

Imagine the slow burn he'd have been taking if he saw Kerry using note cards. I'd have looked annoyed too.

Presidential Body Language

Michelle Malkin has an opinion on all the post-debate facial expression analysis.

The Democrats continue to gloat over the fact that the President appeared "annoyed" at times during the first debate. And why shouldn't he be when he had to listen to this for 90 minutes? There are appropriate times to react to an opponent's rhetoric. President Bush was justified in showing his displeasure. (Here's a case of inappropriate behavior.)

Meanwhile, John Kerry maintained a blank stare for 90 minutes...and, his supporters argue, this shows that he "looked presidential."

There is a reason Kerry didn't move a single facial muscle during the debate.

As with most criticisms of Bush by the Democrats, this only appeals to the Bush-haters.

The Bush-doubters can understand normal human reactions to personal criticism and Bush-lovers will only see it as a confirmation that this is a real guy who believes in what he's doing. Yawn.

October Surprise Speculation

Blaster's Blog has a good candidate.

Another bit from John Loftus, who is on the Batchelor & Alexander radio show every weeknight at 10:35. Last night, he had some interesting comments. He said that the "October Surprise" will be that Saddam Hussein's trial will begin in October, and that former regime members will testify. That is based on this story first reported by Xinhua, the Chinese news agency, and now also by Kurdish press.

Not supported by this story but asserted by Loftus (who says he likes John Kerry and will vote for him) is that the WMD information will come out in this trial, and it will leave the Kerry campaign no place to go. Newsmax says that Rove said he has surprises in store on the Hannity show.

Boy, sure would be tough for the MSM to ignore that trial -- but I'm sure they'll figure out some diversion.

Pano's vs. New Urbanism, Part II

Last week I wrote about Pano�s Restaurant's plans to demolish the house next door to expand its parking lot along Elmwood Avenue.

For a lot of people, a controversy over a tiny parking lot probably seems like more city foolishness and could be seen as just another example of Buffalo's seeming antipathy towards business. But there's an important context to this debate.

Buffalo may be collapsing around us but, amazingly, the Elmwood strip is not. It's prettier, busier, and more prosperous now than it ever has been. So to continue Elmwood's success, maybe we're smart to look at the causes for it. And to understand where Pano�s opponents stand, we need to know a little about a growing concept in America sometimes called new urbanism and more often now referred to as smart growth.

After World War II, America's big cities suddenly began to lose people to the suburbs, a long decline that continues to the present. And those same cities, desperate to stem the outflow (with the resultant loss of tax revenue and political power) launched project after project in an effort to modernize.

The consensus was that the cities' problems were two-fold. People were moving to the suburbs for "more space", so we'd have to relieve over-crowding in the cities. And by the mid-fifties the automobile had replaced trains as the desired means of getting around, so we'd have to build more highways to accommodate them.

And thus began thirty years of "urban renewal" which would see vast swaths of the cities simply bulldozed away and replaced with apartment towers surrounded by huge green spaces. Suburban style zoning would be implemented to segregate business and residential areas into more efficiently planned "clusters of use".

Century-old neighborhoods were carved up by expressways designed to get people downtown quickly. And where city land was still available, lot sizes were expanded and ranch-style homes were built in emulation of the new American dream.

None of it worked, of course, and the cities didn't improve. So the same tactics were tried and tried again because we evidently hadn't done enough yet.

But in 1961, a freelance magazine writer named Jane Jacobs wrote a book with startlingly counter-intuitive suggestions for urban revival, The Death and Life Of Great American Cities.

Overcrowding wasn't a problem, she wrote.

"This confusion between high densities and overcrowding, which I will go into briefly because it so much interferes with understanding the role of densities, is another of the obfuscations we have inherited from Garden City planning. The Garden City planners and their disciples looked at slums which had both many dwelling units on the land (high densities) and too many people within individual dwellings (overcrowding), and failed to make any distinction between the fact of overcrowded rooms and the entirely different fact of densely built up land. They hated both equally, in any case, and coupled them like ham and eggs, so that to this day housers and planners pop out the phrase as if it were one word, 'highdensityandovercrowding'."

Don't tear down all the old buildings, she went on. They allow for the cheap rent that new businesses require to get started. And finally she warned against segregating business, industry, and residential neighborhoods. It's the variety of uses close by to each other that keeps city streets bustling through the day and night.

The little book remained relatively obscure for the next decade or so, but had been noticed and slowly gained influence among city planners. By the seventies its influence had led to a loosely-knit design school that came to be called new urbanism.

One of its first big successes was the planned community of Seaside, FL.

Seaside, planned resort community in northwestern Florida, located on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico in Walton County. The beachside community was founded in 1981 by Florida native Robert Davis. Miami-based architects Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk incorporated pastel-colored Victorian cottages, picket fences, and narrow streets in order to evoke a sense of community common to small towns of the past. Seaside has received national attention for its innovative design. Area, 30 hectares (80 acres).

Now, of course, a bucolic, oceanside village had never even entered Jane Jacobs�s mind while writing her book, the very largest cities: New York City, Philadelphia, and yes, Buffalo (page 393), were her focus. But the attention garnered by Seaside and the raft of imitators that followed caused the new urbanists to look beyond the city limits.

And on the other side of the country a template for the future of the movement was already being created in Portland, Oregon.

[Next installment: The Portland Experiment]

Kerry 1, Bush 0

I listened to the debate last night at work on the radio. And as I scan the web, it appears I wasn't wrong in my assessment. Bush lost.

Kerry came across as strong and authoritative. Bush was off balance and on the defensive. Advantage Kerry.

I think JFK picks up a few points in the polls and it'll be interesting to see how the President reacts in next week's debate.

[UPDATE:] A day later and I have to admit that my initial reaction was to the style of each man. It was in that context that I said that Bush lost. Over the day the media and the bloggers have done a pretty good job of analyzing what was said and Bush was certainly much stronger in that regard.

Best Steyn Yet

As to whether "nation-building" is stunningly anticonservative, I can only speak for myself. I'm not a "neocon." I'm a foreigner and I have only a hazy grasp of what a neocon is. I'm a subject of Her Britannic Majesty and in my country, Canada, insofar as any of our institutions work, they do so because they derive from Britain. That's true of a lot of the world � St. Lucia, Australia, Mauritius, Singapore, South Africa, Tuvalu . . . It's worth considering, for example, what the Indian subcontinent would be like if it weren't the world's biggest Westminster-style democracy. Without the long British experience, it might look something like the Middle East � a patchwork of princely states presided over by sultans and maharajahs, Hindu and Muslim, punctuated by thug dictatorships following Baath-type local variations on fascism and Marxism. It would be a profoundly unstable region with a swollen uneducated citizenry of little use for call centers or tech support.[emphasis mine]

When Bush belittled "nation-building" during the 2000 campaign, I was in full agreement with him. At that time, Bosnia and Serbia were the only examples of nation-building I could think of -- and those were already on the road to UN-sponsored failure.

I've changed my mind (flip-flop?).

Link via Mark Steyn on Election 2004 on National Review Online