The word for today is "sociopath", and Susanna Cornett puts it into an international context.

And just in case you missed the point:

[applause]

Dean Esmay reports that in the last half of the 20th century conservatism ceased to be the red-headed stepchild of American political thought — and then found itself at the dawn of the 21st to be the dominant strain.

Part of this, of course, is the fluidity of definition, especially political definition: the stance which was called "liberal" during the formative years of the Republic scarcely resembles late-20th century liberalism. Conservatives were old mossbacks or worse; conservatism wasn't stupid, in and of itself, exactly, but John Stuart Mill argued that "most stupid people [were] conservatives."

What happened in the interim isn't exactly clear, but Mr Esmay cites one particular factor that hadn't occurred to me: the decline of the purely-intellectual Left. Once upon a time, almost all of our philosopher types came from the left side of the spectrum; today, most of the left-wing voices we hear are spouting the same bunch of platitudes over and over. "Aside from a few rare exceptions," says Mr Esmay, "most 'liberal' argumentation seems to come from one of three places:"

This is the state of what once was the American intelligentsia: outflanked, then outnumbered, reduced to ad hominem arguments constructed for maximum cliché value.

I'm not about to argue that we've reached some sort of classical-liberal (let's call it "libertarian") Nirvana, or even that we're on the way. For one thing, there is still a substantial authoritarian component on the Right, and it has enough blind spots of its own to support the entire Western beam industry, let alone the odd mote. But with the American left in at least slightly self-inflicted decline, some benefits will clearly accrue. For one thing, there will be a lot less of that "Marx was right, but the Soviet/Chinese/whatever implementation was wrong" claptrap. And the leftist assumption that any conflict can be solved with an application of some sort of logic, especially their sort of logic, came crashing to the ground with the World Trade Center. "Increasingly," says Mr Esmay, "people associate 'liberal' with being just plain dumb." And with good reason, sometimes.

Radley Balko has observed that governmental accountability is in the toilet, and that one way to force Washington to face the music is to get rid of income-tax withholding:

Not all of us get paid twice a month, but the point stands. I would hate, of course, to write one huge check in the spring, but if the government can be forced into fiscal discipline, well, so can I. Now, while we're on the subject, can we throw FICA into the mix?

(Muchas gracias: Hanah Metchis at Quare.)

In Arguendo has weighed the merits, such as they are, and has decided to vote for the reelection of Gray Davis to the office of Governor of California, on the basis of the following:

Mr Davis being staggeringly unpopular in Golden State blogdom, it should be no surprise that In Arguendo is getting critical comments posted to this statement, but I have to admire the sheer efficiency of this argument. Not everyone, of course, supports the notion of voting for the lesser of two evils, but as Jim Hightower used to say, if the gods had meant us to vote, they would have given us candidates.

To hear some people talk, you'd think George W. Bush, all by his lonesome, was sabotaging the entire array of worldwide environmental activities, just by thumbing his nose at the Kyoto Protocol.

Now the Russians may balk at Kyoto, having done the math and having figured out that they're not going to make any money on the deal. If the Russians bail, Kyoto is dead; the U.S. and Russia combined are responsible, per Kyoto documents, for about 53 percent of Punishable Emissions, leaving a mere 47 percent for the rest of the world, and Kyoto cannot take effect unless countries with 55 percent of said emissions sign on.

Conspiracy theorists should have a ball with this. Expect charges that Washington and Moscow have been putting together a deal all along in an effort to kill Kyoto. Frankly, I rather hope they have.

In The Weekly Standard, Fred Barnes says that those weird ACLU types and those pesky libertarians have stalled enough; it's time for a national ID card, in the name of, you guessed it, "national security".

There are plenty of reasons to take issue with this premise. We've already lost a measure of privacy, what with various licenses, credit records, medical records and whatnot, so what's a little more? Besides, says Barnes blithely, "the Constitution has never recognized a right to anonymity." If it's not stated in bald type, it does not exist? Has Mr Barnes read the 10th Amendment lately?

Meanwhile, Quana Jones has further complaints:

And still further:

Mr Barnes calls objections of this sort "essentially frivolous". Of course he does. If he didn't, he'd have to take them seriously, and then all he'd have left of his argument would be "The government will protect us." How very, very September 10th of him.

A few months ago, FARK.com made an addition to its usual categories like "weird", "dumbass" and "Wheaton": there is now a category called "Florida". And the Sunshine State, true to form, is delivering all manner of farkable news items.

Consider the case of Patrick Feheley, running for the 13th District House seat currently held by Rep. Dan Miller, who is retiring. Feheley filed suit against another Democratic rival, Candice Brown McElyea, claiming she'd inserted a hyphen into her name when she filed to run for the office; as "Brown-McElyea, Candice", she'd appear on the ballot ahead of "Feheley, Patrick". (Two other Democrats are running, but their names fall farther down in the alphabet.) Says Feheley, this is a deceptive manipulation of the election process. (Deceptive manipulation? In Florida? Sheesh. Now we've heard everything.)

The judge designated to hear the case set a routine procedural hearing for the 5th of September, five days before the primary election, too late for the ballots to be reprinted should Feheley prevail. Upset, but knowing there wasn't much he could do about it, Feheley dropped his suit.

Of course, this is only the primary. Should Feheley win, he'd still have to beat out a Republican to be determined, and an independent candidate. Who might that Republican be? The front-runner right now is Katherine Harris. Yes, that Katherine Harris. Then again, her candidacy is being challenged by rival John Hill (no relation).

It's times like these I almost feel sorry for Jeb Bush.

There are times when you just have to let the text speak for itself:

Of course, far more water is used for agricultural purposes than for our piddling (sorry) little homes, but what I want to know is this: How many of these high-dollar diplomatic types attending the Summit, moved (so to speak) by this speech, went out and took a dump in their hotel parking lots?

Yeah, I thought so.

(Muchas gracias: Andrea Harris.)

You and I probably already knew this, but Wylie wants to make sure the Usual Suspects, just departed from the Earth Summit, get the point:

The Usual Suspects, including First World greenozoids, the International Monetary Fund, and a collection of Third World "We aren't sure what we need, but we sure want money" types, probably won't take heed this time either, but not to worry: eventually they'll be looking for real jobs, just like the Central Planners.

Hmmm....

So speculates William Hughes in Counterpunch. Of course, punishing the guilty would be out of the question, since they've already transformed themselves into noxious swirling gases, which are then condensed, reduced, and published as articles in places like, well, Counterpunch.

As for Dr King, I seriously doubt any part of his dream called for people to wrap themselves in plastique.

In 1945, the heads of the three major Allied powers — Harry Truman from the US, Winston Churchill (subsequently replaced by Clement Attlee, an election having intervened) from Britain, and Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union — met in Potsdam, near occupied Berlin, and signed an agreement among themselves regarding just how to handle the "conquered countries," by which they meant Germany and whatever lands the Reich had been occupying by force during the preceding years. Other matters were discussed at Potsdam, including the drafting of an ultimatum to be dispatched to Japan.

The Potsdam terms imposed upon Germany, says Frank Martin at Techno-Merc, can be applied with only minor modifications to Iraq, once that war draws to a close, and he offers a revised version of the pertinent parts of the Potsdam declaration to illustrate. Is this necessary? Mr Martin responds, "[D]o Iraqis not deserve the same level of justice meted out to Germans at the end of WWII?"

Today's spam comes from Trent Franks, a "principled, pro-family conservative Republican" running for Arizona's Second District House seat, up for grabs now that incumbent Bob Stump is retiring after 26 years. Franks has five opponents in tomorrow's GOP primary, none of whom have (1) spammed me (2) from a Korean mail drop. Not that the Koreans know I don't live anywhere near the district.

Spam, of course, is to principle what Cocoa Puffs are to Ghirardelli chocolate, and I hope it sinks Trent Franks as badly as it did California gubernatorial wannabe Bill Jones. And let this be a warning to any actual Oklahoma politicians with the same cheesy idea.

Somebody — was it P. J. O'Rourke? — once opined that the single most useful word in defending US interests was the simple word so, framed as a question in as accusatory a manner as possible. Used in this way, it becomes possible to refute all sorts of criticisms leveled from the Other Side. Example:

And its usefulness extends beyond foreign policy:

Alternate forms include "Your point being?" and "And this is a problem because...?"

This is actually less flippant than it seems; today, when sloganeering is the primary form of political discourse, giving someone else's shibboleth the rhetorical back of your hand is every bit as effective as trying to explain things to the nudnik, and it saves time and/or bandwidth. A no-lose proposition all around, if you ask me.

Were you impressed with the way President Bush stuck it to the United Nations? James Lileks was:

Exactly so. Watching the Global Goofs trying to argue their way out of it will be most amusing, and while they're so engaged, Mr Bush can proceed with the plan.

And otherwise-intelligent people called this man "dumb"?

College football, writes Patrick Ruffini, testifies to the strength of American society:

Anyone who's ever been stuck in a traffic jam in Norman, Oklahoma on game day might argue that we need a bit more proportion and/or scale, but Mr Ruffini's point is clear: if we have the resources to spare to pour into what is, by and large, a trivial pursuit, well, just imagine what we can do with truly important tasks. For example:

There's your morning line. The only real question is by how much we will beat the spread.

"Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming President", says the headline in Scotland's Sunday Herald.

Well, sort of. The think tank Project for the New American Century actually drew up, in September 2000, a list of foreign-policy desiderata, one of which was to increase American power and influence in the Persian Gulf area. Sunday Herald writer Neil Mackay quotes from the PNAC report as follows:

This would seem, at the very least, to contradict the Sunday Herald's headline, which suggests that the Bush team was already, before the election, looking to score Saddam's head on a platter.

The really amusing aspect of the article, though, is the querulous quote from Labour MP Tam Dalyell, who just isn't happy about anything those darn Americans do:

There is no word on whether Mr Dalyell is contemplating switching to the Tories.

President Bush would like to fill a vacancy on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals with Michael McConnell, Presidental Professor of Law at the University of Utah. McConnell is acclaimed by legal scholars on both sides of the political fence; though distinctly conservative, he does not come across as an ideologue.

Just the same, McConnell faces an uphill battle. The Senate Judiciary Committee is jam-packed with Democrats who are persuaded that, for instance, any suggestion that access to abortion might be regulated by the states is an instant slide down the slippery slope to coat-hangers in Tijuana. People for the American Way, a group assembled to counter religious conservatives, now increasingly shrill in its defense of indefensible liberal shibboleths, doesn't like anything about McConnell; they even complain about his membership in the (gasp!) Federalist Society.

The Senate Judiciary Committee gets first crack at McConnell this morning. I wish him luck.

Joshua Claybourn weighs in on that think-tank piece that so spooked the Europeans:

Exactly so. Some of the PNAC brain trust indeed wound up on the Bush team, but in 2000, when this report appeared, they had no official status whatsoever. Do the Europeans not have think tanks of their own? Or are they just emotionally wedded to the notion of Bush fils as the Avenging Son, bound and determined to pay back the enemies of Bush père?

"No war for oil!" say the signs along the President's motorcade routes. Bryan Preston at JunkYardBlog points out that there are lots of places with oil reserves besides Iraq, and suggests, tongue presumably in cheek:

Being, um, somewhat less bellicose, I propose a deal with the Mexicans: for every illegal immigrant we accept from Mexico, they have to send us 5000 barrels of crude — reducible to zero if the immigrant accepts relocation in some place that might actually benefit from increased population, such as the Dakotas.

That's the title of Mike's latest rant at Cold Fury, and it's so good it's all I can do to keep from pasting the whole thing over here.

The bottom line, though, is this:

Now quit fooling around here and go read the whole thing.

Rob McGee takes apart that America-Is-A-Bully codswallop that has been oozing through the European Union and elsewhere of late:

Buffy the Jihad Slayer! Now there's a concept. (Shut up, Cordelia.)

How can anyone possibly oppose paid family leave? Dodd Harris can, and he has darn good reasons:

And, of course, that's only the half of it:

(Internal link added by me.)

Somehow this reminds me of what happened with California's electric "deregulation": it seems that Governor Davis and his minions huddled together, considered all the available options, and discarded any that might have actually worked.

In his guise as Dinah Dienstag, Professor of Idiotarian Thought at the University of North-South-West Rhode Island Red, Cinderella Bloggerfeller (bless you, Abi and Esther) explains the Higher Morality that comes with poverty:

And, of course, wrenching poverty presents all the graphic evidence you could want that these poor souls aren't doing something evil and heinous like producing consumer goods to be sold to nasty, selfish, immoral First Worlders through despoilers of culture such as Le Mart du Wal.

Mr Bloggerfeller suggests that this particular piece is one in a series. An infinite series. The mind reels.

After yesterday's, um, performance by Jim McDermott and David Bonior, live from Beautiful Downtown Baghdad, there's only one real question left:

Which one does the exercise video, and which one marries Ted Turner?

I figured Senator Robert Torricelli would be out on his keister this fall; what I didn't figure was that he'd drop out of the race.

Welcome to the Wide, Wide World of Turmoil. Legally, the New Jersey Democratic Party can't replace Torricelli on the ballot — it's about two weeks past the deadline — and while the senator could theoretically resign his seat and let Governor Jim McGreevey pick someone to fill it, it may be difficult to find someone to serve as sacrificial lamb against Republican Doug Forrester, who has piled up double-digit leads in recent polls.

This race, of course, doesn't affect me much, except to the extent that I am still a member of the Democratic Party and feel compelled to keep track of such things. But Torricelli, once his highly-dubious business dealings became known, became an obvious liability to the party, so he had to go, one way or another. And besides, what do we have here in Oklahoma that's even halfway as interesting? Incumbent Republican Jim Inhofe, who is basically Strom Thurmond with a circulatory system, is being challenged, sort of, by an underfunded Democrat — David Walters — who left the governor's mansion years ago under a cloud of his own. Control of the Senate is likely to pass to the GOP this fall anyway, so about all I can do at this point is watch and smirk. Besides, I haven't seen Susanna Cornett this happy since I drove out of Jersey this summer.

As usual, the most sensible commentary on the mess in New Jersey comes from Minnesota. Behold the words of Lileks:

And those are the kindest words he has for the Torch. Why would Lileks care about a Senate race in Jersey, anyway?

Yep.

With the finding of the New Jersey Supreme Court that there are more important things to an election than mere laws, y'know, you have to wonder what precedents are being set.

Greg Hlatky points out the immediate results; IMAO's Frank (no relation to TV's Frank, so far as I know) takes the longer view.

The Greens sent me an informational packet of sorts today, and I'm not quite sure what to make of it. Then again, I'm not quite sure what to make of them. I'm hardly the "progressive" soul they'd like to have on their rolls and on their donor list. On the other hand, if it is true, as some insist, that the Greens cost Al Gore the 2000 Presidential election, then perhaps I ought to send them some money out of sheer gratitude.

Well, maybe not. They did include a clipping from USA Today, dated 22 July, which tells me something I hadn't heard or had forgotten: someone with connections to the New Mexico Republican party (though not the state GOP itself, apparently) offered the Greens big bucks to run candidates for the House of Representatives, which presumably would draw votes away from Democrats. No dice, said the Greens.

Do the Greens have a future? The United States has always been pretty much a two-party country, but nothing gives either of the current major parties an eternal lease on life. In fact, if one were to judge by present-day bloggage, the Democrats are about this close to imploding; in four years or so, they could join the Whigs on the Former Major Parties roster. I can't say I'd be happy to see them go, but it seems fairly clear that the wounds are largely self-inflicted. And anyway, the Greens have no candidates running for anything in Oklahoma, largely due to the fact that getting a third party recognized in this state is a task worthy of Heracles — lest we forget, Oklahoma politics resemble the Augean stables in all the obvious ways.

A few days back, I brought in a few bits from the estimable Dinah Dienstag on the subject of poverty and its correlation to morality. Once again, Cinderella Bloggerfeller (may his tribe increase) has given us more of the Wisdom of Dienstag, this time explaining that strange affinity some people seem to have for really rotten regimes:

And yet, we are told, they're not truly anti-American; they merely yearn for a more perfect world.

Yeah, right. You can wash two, maybe three hogs with that business.

Once again, a handful of Democrats who can't deal with perfectly simple election laws are trying to obtain by legal wrangling what they wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

Cynthia McKinney had managed to stay out of the limelight for almost a whole week, and for that we are grateful. But nothing lasts forever, with the possible exception of temporary taxes, and this week McKinney supporters have filed a lawsuit claiming that crossover voting by Georgia Republicans, permitted under the Peach State's open-primary law, was "malicious" and unconstitutional. "Black Democratic voters," said attorney J. M. Raffauf, who represents the plaintiffs, "had their voting rights interfered with and violated."

The ever-watchful Susanna Cornett boils this down to the crucial stuff:

And, I suggest, it also highlights the apparent belief of the post-2000 Democratic Party, not only in Georgia, but also in New Jersey, that state election laws are just another tool, to be used when they are needed, to be disregarded when they aren't. Any candidate who actually believes this sort of thing, I contend, deserves to lose. Were I a Republican strategist, I'd be pointing fingers at every Democratic candidate from Bangor to Bakersfield: "If So-and-so loses, is he going to sue to overturn the election?"

Yesterday I muttered something about how the GOP ought to make this New Jersey election debacle into a campaign issue.

John Rosenberg, now in his new Sekimori-designed digs, points out that it's already a campaign issue for Doug Forrester, should he be sensible enough to pick up on it, and offers a speech fragment that's right on the money:

When something doesn't work, I am the first person in line to say "Get rid of it," but no one, I believe, can argue with a straight face that the New Jersey election laws pertinent to this case had in any way failed.

(Oh, and "Sekimori", in case you were wondering, is an ancient Malayan word that means "We can draw this better than you ever could, so don't even think about it." Terse folks, those Malayans.)

Yes, it's time for Cinderella Bloggerfeller (with a new, or at least different, template!) and the latest installment from Dr Dinah Dienstag, on the dodgy subject of equating Israel with the Third Reich:

That's one theory. But there are others:

Dr Dienstag means it, too. But there's more:

"The house is pretty ugly and a little big for its lot." Or something like that.

This level of erudition is far beyond my own, which probably explains why I quoted so much of it: maybe some of it will rub off. I admit to having affected a level of world-weariness for most of the time I've spent in this world, which is either an admission that I don't have the stuff to be a proper nihilist, or a practice session for the actual physical weariness that has set in.

And give Dinah and, um, Cindy due credit: they did all this without once having to trot out Godwin's Law.

It's not hard to imagine someone surfing over to Dean's World, reading the blurb ("Defending the liberal tradition in history, politics, science and philosophy"), reading the bloggage, and then wondering out loud: "This guy calls himself a liberal?"

The explanation, of course, is that when American leftists aren't chafing under the term "liberal", they're trying their best to redefine it. Michael at Two Blowhards explains the concept:

The "liberal tradition", as understood by Dean Esmay and others, has little or nothing to do with today's putative "liberals". Michael again:

"Libertarian", of course, carries its own baggage these days, hung on it by defenders of the Big Huge State who mock the very idea of smaller government. Political language is nothing if not mutable. Back to Michael:

These days in America, bloggers label this viewpoint "idiotarianism". And Michael cuts it no slack:

The left, curiously, is unsympathetic to Christian fundamentalism; I am inclined to believe that this is because Christian fundamentalism is primarily an American phenomenon, and the American left reflexively opposes anything that reminds them of the United States. Jerry Falwell is denounced, not so much because he comes up with the occasional weird pronouncement, but because he comes from the same culture that gave us Mickey Mouse and McDonald's; if Falwell's pulpit were in Luxembourg rather than Lynchburg, I suspect he'd catch a lot less flak.

I am, I tend to argue, a centrist, not so much because my beliefs tend to cluster around the center of the political spectrum, but because I really don't want to encourage the edges. The left might embrace me for being something of a First Amendment absolutist, but they would certainly spurn me for being just as adamant about the Second. And while on economic issues I tend to the Republican side, I'm not particularly inclined to throw in my lot with the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. Lacking a more appropriate term, I have settled on "centrist", and given it, well, a liberal sort of definition — in the classical sense, to be sure.

If you doubted for a moment that Saddam Hussein is Evil Incarnate, consider this:

His campaign theme song for the current coronation — er, election — is Whitney Houston's caterwauling rendition of "I Will Always Love You".

Q.E.D.

Dr Dinah Dienstag makes it four for four with another look inside the mind (for lack of a better word) of the Idiotarian, courtesy of the endlessly-redecorating Cinderella Bloggerfeller.

God forbid anyone should be goofy enough to try to channel me.

And suspicion of those who have putative communications with the supernatural, quite understandably, goes back many centuries, or at least as far back as Henry IV, Part One:

I do hope that no one is calling for terrorists, and that none come if called.

Mr Preston at JunkYardBlog, observing that the North Koreans now admit to having nukes, seeks the reason why the Clinton administration would have allowed such a thing in the first place, and comes up with this:

I lean towards #2, myself, since it explains so many other weirdnesses of the Clinton administration. The argument for #3 is contingent on #1; no one this side of Saddam gets out of bed in the morning and thinks "How can I make the world a more dangerous place today?" Of course, if Bill had been truly inept, he might stand a better chance of winning the Nobel Prize for Peace somewhere down the line.

Jamil Sayah, writing in Le Monde, finds that more-militant Muslims are arrogating to themselves the right to speak for all Islam: "[a] ventriloquist Islam which speaks through our mouth so that they make it say [both] one thing and its contrary," he asserts. Most of the proffered excuses for terrorism simply don't wash:

Cinderella Bloggerfeller, who posted the original English translation (and whose title I swiped), points out that this is further evidence that "there are some voices in the Islamic world calling for a long, hard look at what really causes Muslim fundamentalist terror." It's no longer enough to point at the Americans or at the Jews or at McDonald's. The militants will get the bulk of the news coverage because that's part of what militants are trained to do. But in a war on Islamic extremism, we can ask for no better allies than non-extremist Muslims, who care enough about their religion to oppose those who would make it into a weapon. There don't seem to be a lot of them at the moment, but I believe that as we keep the pressure on, their numbers will inevitably grow.

Apparently The New York Times believes that the National Rifle Association, by no small margin, is the mightiest lobbying group of them all. John Rosenberg of Discriminations demonstrates:

Does this suggest that all the NGOs that serve in, um, an advisory capacity to the Democratic Party would be better served by combining themselves into one humongous National Leftist Association? I imagine it would probably simplify things for writers at The New York Times.

(Note: This was almost called Foyer amusement, but I came to my senses at the last moment.)

For the fifth consecutive week, Dr Dinah Dienstag, coming to you through the good offices of Cinderella Bloggerfeller, scores big. It's almost a shame to excerpt bits and pieces, but this one is a must:

No need for me to read Rolling Stone anymore. But Dinah has bigger fish to shoot:

Had we both the omniscience and the omnipotence — never mind the malevolence — with which we are credited, surely by now we would have stretched forth a mighty hand (it shouldn't take more than one) and reduced the squabbling "majority" in the Levant to a tapestry of protein traces on the sand. The fact that this hasn't happened doesn't seem to impress anyone.

(Or maybe it did happen and the Zionists who control the media didn't tell us about it. Damn.)

Let me see if I understand this:

A right-wing group that spends money to affect the outcome of an election is a special-interest group that must be regulated for the good of the country. A left-wing group that spends money to affect the outcome of an election is a professional organization that is only looking out for the good of the country.

If this sounds fatuous to you, get a load of this:

Washington is an "agency shop" state: it is not mandatory to belong to the union to hold a position represented by the union, but nonmembers must pay an agency fee in lieu of dues. The laws provide that money from agency fees may not be used for political purposes without the specific permission of the nonmembers whose fees are being spent. The National Education Association in Washington, pushing initiatives to reduce class size and increase teacher salaries, apparently blew off those restrictions. The state's Public Disclosure Commission evaluated the situation and advised the Attorney General to take action against the NEA, an action endorsed by The Seattle Times.

The Times editorial drew a response from Charles Haase, president of the Washington Education Association, the state's NEA affiliate, who took up five paragraphs to attack the Public Disclosure Commission, complaining that the PDC is being used as a tool for "eliminating the participation of organized labor in the political process."

None of this would have happened, in other words, if those baddies on the PDC hadn't insisted that the agency-shop law means what it says it means. Our man at Horologium finds the NEA's position hypocritical:

And apparently it hasn't occurred to the union that the reason it has agency-shop money in lieu of dues in the first place might be because there are teachers unwilling to support the union's political agenda.

He was, Mother Jones once said, "the first Sixties radical elected to the U.S. Senate."

Maybe he was. Certainly he was unabashedly liberal, in an era where the very word is spoken as a pejorative.

But Paul Wellstone, in two terms in the Senate, was determined to make a difference, and to the extent that one man among a hundred can make a difference, I believe he did.

He will be missed, on both sides of the aisle.

A pertinent quote:

Or how about this one:

And to wrap it up, this one:

All these things were said by Gore Vidal in the June 1969 Playboy Interview; I mention them here in case anyone is actually surprised by his The Enemy Within screed.

And, since it's from Lileks, it's also the best word.

A couple of years ago, I said some unkind (and, in retrospect, quite justifiable) things about the Clinton administration's War on Guns, and somewhere therein I came up with this:

Whether it made sense or not, it seemed to appeal to Michael Moore, who tossed off this snarky comment at his own Web site (let him get his own damn linkage):

If one follows this pattern, is there a next step? Rachel Lucas shows where this train of thought might stop next:

It's certainly a logical progression. And look at all that jet fuel — why, it's flammable! How could they put something like that aboard a plane full of people?

Identifying the correct villain is apparently too much for some people. I expect, in the near future, someone will file suit against Satan for...oops, too late.

Someone once cornered Will Rogers and demanded to know his political affiliation. "I'm not a member of any organized political party," he said. "I am a Democrat."

And I have a feeling he'd be less than thrilled with what's happened to the party since then. For all its vaunted populism, today's Democratic Party values individual voters the way Scrooge McDuck values individual dollars: they're useful only to the extent that they make the numbers look impressive. Groups wield the power, the party believes, and they want to be the power behind the groups.

Unfortunately, the United States of America isn't constituted as a collection of groups. Apart from "We The People," the Constitution recognizes scarcely any groups at all. This hasn't stopped the Democrats from trying to organize existing groups, or when that fails, creating new groups, with the intent of giving them special status under the law in exchange for blocs of votes. Sometimes I think that if I were, oh, a transgendered African-American who writes antiwar tracts for The Nation and runs an abortion clinic on the side, I could probably get DNC chair Terry McAuliffe to drive me to work every day.

Unfortunately for the Democrats, people seem less likely to identify themselves first as group members these days, and that's one of the reasons why they're going to lose, and lose big, in the 2002 elections. Groupthink is, well, oldthink; today's voter wants to know, first and foremost, "What's in it for me?" And who can blame her? The Democrats don't think we're capable of managing our own retirement funds, or of defending ourselves against marauding thugs, or of making any sort of decisions below the federal level. The Democrats worry that if in one state, a sixteen-year-old girl can't have her uterus vacuumed out as easily as she can have an ankle bracelet fitted, the streets will be flooded with coat hangers in all states. And an awful lot of Democrats apparently believe that anything, anything at all, is better than taking a shot at someone who is sworn to kill us.

Odds are, the Democratic organization, such as it is, will spend December licking its wounds and complaining about the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. Maybe, just maybe, they'll devote some small fraction of that time trying to figure out just how it is that they veered to the left at the same time the rest of the country started listening to the right. Or they won't, and by 2004 they may be every bit as dead as Will Rogers. And without the amusing anecdotes, either.

It should have been obvious that something was going to be terribly wrong with the funeral for Senator Wellstone when Dick Cheney — the Vice-President of the United States, fercrissake! — was disinvited. And when it was all over, Stephen Green said exactly what needed to be said:

If there is any justice in this world, the GOP will pick up this seat in the Senate. And if there is any kindness, Norm Coleman will smile and politely refuse to talk about this incident ever again.

The Turkish Republic these days is caught between Iraq and two hard places: the Caucasus and the Balkans. This isn't exactly news, but Sunday the Turks go to the polls, and the pundits are expecting the big winners to be the AKP, the Justice and Development Party, led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been positioning himself as moderately conservative and not at all the militant Islamist that the AKP usually produces. Some observers have their doubts.

And Turkey, at some point, would like to become part of the European Union, and the United States would like to help, but not everyone in the EU is anxious to extend membership to a Muslim nation, even though Turkey has been somewhat secularized for decades. But Ataturk is long gone, and there are real fears that an AKP victory will push Turkey a couple of notches closer to the sort of Islamic fundamentalism that prevails in other powder kegs.

I have a certain fondness for Turkey. I was stationed at a NATO base for about a year in the Seventies, and one of the things I found most interesting about the place was its seeming ability to straddle West and East, to make the rigid framework of Islam flourish in a relatively free-wheeling Western-oriented society. Obviously I wasn't in a position to dig deep enough to see the tensions running through the Republic — I was just one of the troops and was expected to shut up about such things — but I always wondered just how long this tenuous equilibrium could last. And I still wonder today.

(Muchas gracias: Jesus Gil.)

The irrepressible James Lileks (well, I certainly haven't repressed him, and I wouldn't encourage anyone to try) discloses Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Walter F. Mondale*.

*but the Democratic Party prefers you didn't ask

Today Susanna Cornett unveils another of her considerable talents: the ability to take the ossified prose of the Arab News and turn it into actual, comprehensible English. How valid is her translation? The editors most certainly would not be pleased with the results, testimonial enough to its accuracy.

Eric McErlain lived near Bloomington's old Metropolitan Stadium for six months, which you'd think (if you were a New Yorker of a certain political bent, anyway) would be enough to qualify him to be a Senator himself. But Mr. McErlain has no such lofty ambitions. Instead, he's offering to Governor Ventura a list of Minnesotans who might serve as the state's junior Senator while the Mondale/Coleman race is being fought over in the courts. Who's on the list?

• Prince Rogers Nelson
  
• Ex-Replacements front man, Paul Westerberg
  
• A rotating troika consisting of the founding members of Husker Du
  
• Kent Hrbek (Kirby Puckett being compromised at the moment)
  
• Jerry Lundegaard (as played by William H. Macy in Fargo)
  
• John Madden
  
• Winona Ryder
  
• Kevin Sorbo (of Hercules TV fame)
  
• Bob Dylan
  

You know, this could work.

Prime Minister Bulent Eçevit, seventy-seven years old and in failing health, probably never thought he'd lose this badly. But his party got fewer than 10 percent of the votes in the Turkish election, meaning they will get no seats in Parliament. Meanwhile, as projected here earlier, the AKP (Justice and Development Party) under Recep Tayyip Erdogan swept to 34.2 percent of the vote, enough under Turkish law to form a government without having to seek a coalition partner.

Erdogan himself cannot become Prime Minister — in 1998, he was convicted of inciting religious hatred and was barred from seeking office for five years — which has prompted worries that the next occupant of the post will be a mere figurehead. Quickly, though, Erdogan moved to answer some of the more obvious questions which arose from the AKP victory: no, Turkey will not abandon its uniquely-secular position in the Muslim world, and no, Turkey is not backing away from its hopes of becoming part of the European Union.

The Turkish military, Cato the Youngest notes, "has historically been willing to throw out any government that threatened the secular order established by Ataturk." And indeed, the AKP victory is generally attributed more to dislike of the Eçevit regime than to any deep-seated desire among the Turkish electorate to follow the lead of the Islamic fundamentalists on Turkey's flanks.

It will be an interesting time, to say the least.

Keith Olbermann asserts:

I must have missed Warren G. Harding's Nobel Prize presentation somewhere along the way, but Olbermann insists that it's all perfectly obvious. Of course, Olbermann also thinks voting should be mandatory, a premise that is at the very least arguable.

If today's politicians seem to lack a philosophical bent, it's because so many of them think the basic issues are settled, and they're content to take their turns at the reins of the Nanny State. And as I get older and more contrarian, I become increasingly vexed with a political establishment which can argue with a straight face that one of the most important issues facing America today is how the government will help me buy drugs.

Tom Brokaw, I have to assume, was having a bad night. Fairly early on, Rush Limbaugh, invited to NBC's talking-heads party, explained that 2002 was only the beginning, and pointed out that when the Democrats were scratching around for Senatorial candidates in New Jersey and Minnesota, there were no up-and-coming youngsters, no potential Presidential candidates down the road: the best the party could do was to trot out elderly museum pieces. Faced with this less-than-startling revelation, Brokaw managed to give off an expression somewhere between disturbed and dyspeptic.

Meanwhile, life goes on for the rest of us, with the possible exception of Terry McAuliffe, who likely will be drubbed out of the Democrats' front office. I rather think he won't be missed.

Apparently Los Angeles isn't going to be split down Mulholland after all. While a slight majority of residents of the San Fernando Valley voted to secede and form their own city, the measure was rejected by the rest of L.A. by a two-to-one margin. Pollsters speculate that the western portion of the Valley, more affluent, was far more willing to say goodbye to L.A. than the east. Still, things will be different in the City of Angels, if only because the Valley has made it quite clear that business as usual is not acceptable on the far side of the Santa Monica Mountains. Will Los Angeles grant more autonomy to the Valley, or to Hollywood, which also lost a secession vote? The structure of city government, I think, is likely to change substantially over the next few years.

What's the relevance to Oklahoma? Consider its capital. Oklahoma City has 510,000 people spread over 604 square miles. The North Canadian River runs south of downtown, effectively dividing the city in two, and each half scorns the other. (In the early days of the 20th century, these were, in fact, two separate cities.) City services have yet to be extended to areas annexed decades ago. "It can't happen here," we are assured. I'm not so sure.

The Fed has cut interest rates yet again, by half a point, and the market has responded with yawns. Mark Byron points out that with the federal funds rate down to 1.25 percent, there isn't a whole lot of maneuvering room left for the Fed. The real shot in the arm, says Dr Byron, will come with the neutralization of Iraq, which will take some of the uncertainty out of both oil prices and global trade. Bottom line?

The balance of power in the Senate is settled, but there's one seat still in doubt: in Louisiana, where Democrat Mary Landrieu led the pack but failed to win a majority. Under the Tabasco State's laws, this means a runoff, in which Landrieu will face Republican front-runner Susan Terrell. And it means that Landrieu also faces a dilemma; she took so much trouble to separate herself from the goofiness of the national Democratic organization that, from a distance, she was almost indistinguishable from a Republican. The electorate, she perhaps fears, will reason that the choice is between an ersatz Republican and a real one, and will vote accordingly.

What to do? John Rosenberg suggests Landrieu ought to take a three-pronged approach: make Bush-like utterances on the war, come off as a traditional quasi-populist Democrat on most domestic issues, and adopt the following possibly-controversial position:

I have some doubts about this — by most accounts, black voters are nearly as conservative as white voters, and far more conservative than black leaders — but I'd like to see her try that myself, just to see what difference, if any, it makes in the African-American vote. I have had for some time a gut feeling that the only remaining proponents of racial preferences are the people who are making a living as advocates for such; the rest of us, regardless of color, are likely sick of the whole concept and wish it would go away already.

What happened to the Democratic Party on Tuesday? A thirty-year member (that would be, um, me) points a finger (no credit for guessing which one) in today's edition of The Vent.

Steven Den Beste reminds us that with the Republicans controlling the Senate, Fritz Hollings (D-Disney), ousted as Chair of the Commerce Committee, is no longer in a position to give much of a push to his miserable "Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act", a bill with five co-sponsors, four of them Democrats. The Captain had previously derided this measure as the "MPAA/RIAA Wet-Dream Act of 2002", and he was being generous.

Is the CBDTPA well and truly dead? Not necessarily, but Den Beste looks at it this way:

And, lest we forget, Hollywood's tendency to pour money into Democratic campaign coffers.

You wanna know why all the bloggers hated the Democrats, Bunkie? It's because all the bloggers have computers.

The Baseball Crank explained it all over at Dr. Weevil's place:

That's me: the unexcited (and unexciting) moderate.

Is that Nancy Pelosi I hear shrieking down the corridor?

John Chuckman's latest for Yellow Times, titled A toxin in the blood, contains the expected high level of blither, but what's most frustrating about it is — well, read this for yourself:

Mr Chuckman, having fled the premises during a previous war, probably won't buy "Those sons of bitches are trying to kill us, you nitwit" as a "sound reason," despite the fact that the aforementioned SOBs took out a couple of thousand of us last year. (It was in all the papers, so I'm sure he heard about it.)

"Corruption"? We had that before. "Poor appointments"? We had those before, too. A "huge and wasteful increase in military spending"? Huge, yes; but if we are now able to thumb our noses at the rest of the world's sensibilities, it seems to me that we got our money's worth.

What would Mr Chuckman consider a "worthy humanitarian initiative"? Finding homes for Palestinian militants before they wrap themselves in Semtex and mail themselves to Israelis for Chanukah? Sending food to Zimbabwe so Robert Mugabe can complain about its potential genetic background?

And enough of Bush's nonexistent desire to emulate Hitler already. So far as I know, the only time W. has ever said anything even slightly positive about anyone named Adolph was that one day at the ranch when they were trying out a new meat tenderizer at the grill.

(Muchas gracias: Silflay Hraka.)

Over at Rottweiler HQ, Exhibit A in the Free Speech Museum, Flag-Burners' Annex:

Still, if you're thinking about burning a US flag in front of Misha, I suggest you think again. He quite properly supports your right to do so, but he also quite properly supports his right to respond. And you will probably not like his response.

A service for journalists, wannabe journalists, J-school dropouts, and the occasional blogger: Vicky at Liquid Courage, noting that no Federal holiday is complete without a speech by the President, is offering a handy, only-minor-assembly-required kit to produce your opening line. And what's more, it's easily updatable, making it usable through the terms of the next ten or twelve Presidents.

Michael McConnell is Presidential Professor of Law at the University of Utah. His thinking is conservative, his reputation is sterling; even his opponents joined in a letter supporting his nomination to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, as mentioned in this very space a couple of months ago.

Well, evidently not all his opponents; a group called Alliance for Justice has found a fair number of leftish jurists to sign their names to a letter opposing McConnell's nomination. [Link to Adobe Acrobat file.]

John Rosenberg has this to say:

It's of a piece, I think, with some of the other life-as-we-know-it-is-over screeds that have been multiplying in the wake of Republican electoral successes. Sometimes I think they really want the sort of comic-book pseudo-fascism they imagine, just so they can taunt the rest of us: "We told you so!"

Al Gore just can't get it through his head that he lost.

But being the inventive type that he is — after all, he strung up with his bare hands that very first T1 line between MIT and the Pentagon back in '69 — it was inevitable that Gore would resurface with a new, more efficient way to count votes.

And it was also inevitable that the plans for the system would be leaked, and Marc Lundberg, proprietor of Quit That, has the details. I have to admit, it's disarming in its simplicity.

Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman, working for the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law, have an ongoing project to document Internet filtering in various forms and fashions. One of the subprojects this fall is the determination of sites blocked by the government of the People's Republic of China. Described as "an experiment in open research," Zittrain and Edelman have worked up a system whereby any URL can be entered and then tested in real-time (within two minutes) to see if it is accessible to Chinese Internet users.

Needless to say, I had to try this out for myself, and by gum, according to this testing regime, this site is blocked. Presumably no one from the Chinese mainland is authorized to view any of my stuff. This explains one phenomenon: an earlier version of the Music Room here was once duplicated, from first byte to last, and pasted onto some Chinese Web site. They even copied my counter code, which is how I found out about it in the first place. The hits (never more than one or two a day, but what the hell) dried up this summer, and perhaps now I know why.

(Muchas gracias: John Little, The Blogs of War. He's blocked too.)

As noted previously in this space, Justice and Development (AKP) party head Recep Tayyip Erdogan, barred from Parliament, will not be able to serve as Prime Minister despite winning more than enough votes in the Turkish general election. Erdogan has now submitted three names for consideration to Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, and Sezer has chosen Abdullah Gul, 52, once Minister of State in a 1997 coalition government formed by the now-outlawed Islamist Welfare Party. There is still speculation that Erdogan will be pulling Gul's strings.

Columnist and "liberal iconoclast" Harley Sorensen asks the following "rhetorical question with no response required":

Sorensen, as it happens, was using this opening as a wedge to take a potshot or three at the nascent Department of Homeland Security, but there is an answer to his question. Gregory Hlatky takes up the query:

He shoots, he scores.

Contrary to popular belief, reports Radley Balko, corporations funnel far more money to the left than to the right.

How can this be? Balko points to a couple of contributing factors:

Does money from the Ford Foundation count the same as money from Bill Ford's personal checking account? The Feds may disagree, but I figure it probably does. Balko continues:

The GOP hasn't asked me for anything, since I'm not a member, but I don't know anyone who's received a Republican fund-raising letter that boiled down to "If you don't give us money, you must be some kind of liberal."

Balko doesn't dig into the psychology of the matter, but I have to wonder if maybe some of the corporate types who write checks to groups which actively oppose their interests do so in the vain hope of buying, or at least renting, their silence: "Here's fifty grand. Please shut the hell up." I can't recall any instance in history when this actually worked, though I'm certainly amenable to an empirical experiment, price available on written request.

Cambodia is thought of as primarily a Buddhist nation, despite the best efforts of the communists to eradicate Buddhism from the country. There exists a small Muslim minority, known as the Chams, descended from what was once an Indo-Chinese empire that was destroyed by Vietnamese in the fifteenth century. The Chams' version of Islam is far removed from that of the bloodthirsty Wahhabi; Arabs, therefore, have taken it upon themselves to "purify" the beliefs of the Chams, and you can probably predict the results should they succeed.

Chrui Changvar has written up the details in Le Monde; Cinderella Bloggerfeller has translated the Le Monde article into English.

Rookwood Exchange, they call it, and when it's done, it will be a major commercial development along I-71 in suburban Cincinnati, valued at $125 million. And all they have to do is, um, get rid of the people who actually own the property. This might be a problem, since some of them don't want to leave.

Today, the Norwood City Council will consider whether to conduct an "urban renewal study," widely viewed as the first step towards seizing the homes under eminent domain. One problem: the neighborhood doesn't come close to meeting the city's definition of "blighted," which would seem to make the study superfluous — unless, of course, you're the developer and you'd like to force the issue.

The eminent Gregory Hlatky delivers some condemnation of his own:

In response, they will probably enact a feather tax and an import quota on tar.

As a footnote to my sub-Strykerian contribution to Joe Zarro's fifteen minutes of fame, I said something to the effect that "he presents a compelling case for reinstating the draft."

Now if you really want a compelling case for reinstating the draft, I suggest this rant by Kim du Toit. And this bit I want to emphasize:

No argument from me. About a third of our BCT company, back in 1972, had come in through the draft, and for about the first week they pissed and moaned about the horribleness of it all. By week 7 they were practically indistinguishable from the volunteers.

The small-l libertarian side of me applauds the all-volunteer army on a purely philosophical basis, and I have no plans to pester my Congressman to reactivate Selective Service, but I refuse to believe that somehow we are a Better Place because we don't currently have a draft.

I don't have all my DA Forms 3686 from those days, but apparently once I made the lofty grade of E-2 I was pulling down the princely sum of $320.70 a month. Then again, it wasn't like I had a whole lot of expenses, and in the thirty years intervening, I have rediscovered the lost art of complaining about trivial BS.

Louisville, Kentucky presently ranks sixty-sixth among the nation's cities. About five weeks from now, it will be sixteenth.

What's the deal? In a word: consolidation. In 2000, voters in Louisville and surrounding Jefferson County passed a measure which would merge the functions of city and county. On the fifth of January, the merger goes into effect.

This isn't the first time a city and a county have merged in the US; it isn't even the first time it's happened in Kentucky. (Lexington and Fayette County tied the knot back in the Seventies.) But it's an uncommon event, and in fact the Louisville/Jefferson merger had been proposed, and voted down, three times before.

The merger won't be as painful as it looks. Louisville and Jefferson County have shared some services — schools, transit, purchasing — for years. On the other hand, there are some divisive issues lurking. For one, the new Greater Louisville will have a population of just under 700,000, and with the inclusion of previously-unincorporated suburbs, that population will be distinctly whiter, which means there will likely be complaints that African-Americans are being disenfranchised, or at least having their political power diminished. And there are fears in the dozens of smaller municipalities in Jefferson County that the merger will eventually lead to their disappearance.

And what's the point of all this, anyway? It's the same old Louisville, isn't it? Well, yes and no. For most people in the combined city/county, life will likely go on much as it has. But there's a sensation that the newly-expanded Louisville will be able to "play in the big leagues", to come up for consideration when national businesses look to expand. The examples of Jacksonville, Florida and Indianapolis, fairly sleepy medium-sized metropolises before consolidation and now bustling big cities, indicate that there may be something to it after all. And it occurs to me that the city that might most benefit from it — St. Louis, Missouri — is probably the least likely to get it, since it's wholly separate from St. Louis County, and there is no indication that either city or county is even contemplating such a notion, or would want to.

I am reasonably certain that this sort of thing would never work in Oklahoma City (population 510,000). For one thing, the city already covers over 600 square miles; almost all the developed land (and most of the undeveloped land) in Oklahoma County has already been annexed, either by Oklahoma City or by another municipality. To further complicate matters, Oklahoma City extends into two other counties, Canadian and Cleveland, neither of which is likely to be receptive to any such ideas.

Kim du Toit finds one way to salvage the Department of Homeland Security:

Sounds logical to me.

The occasion of Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday has opened the door to a closet where a lot of our less-savory history has been stashed. Thurmond, you'll remember, ran for President in 1948 on the so-called "Dixiecrat" ticket, a campaign remembered fondly by, among others, Trent Lott. Not that Lott would actually have voted for Thurmond, inasmuch as he was seven years old at the time, but no matter.

As a useful reminder of just what the Dixiecrats stood for, beyond the vague generalities of "states' rights", Atrios has posted a shot of the 1948 sample ballot for Mississippi's breakaway Democrats, which, you should pardon the expression, calls a spade a spade.

And Thurmond's Dixiecrats gradually returned to the Democratic Party in the early Fifties; the Southern transition to Republican stronghold would not begin for another decade or so. (Thurmond joined the GOP in 1964.) The horrendous racism of the Dixiecrat days is mostly behind us — Strom Thurmond himself seems to have outgrown it — but I have to wonder just what's going through Trent Lott's head when he defends it.

So just what is the Republican Party supposed to do with Trent "Out to Lynch" Lott?

Christopher Johnson has come up with a solution:

It has a certain visceral appeal to it, and it retains the Southern connection so vital to the GOP these days. And if Miller won't budge? Mr. Johnson has a Plan B:

Oh, how I would love to hear the shrieks in Terry McAuliffe's office if that comes off.

Jesus Gil analyzes the apologies of Trent Lott and other sorry individuals, and his criteria are strict indeed. Better brush up on your Act of Contrition.