Please welcome Letter From Gotham and Glenn Kinen to the links list. They run excellent, well-thought out blogs.


Diane wrote this piece a little while ago taking apart Andrew Sullivan for his moronic criticism of Tom Daschle. If I was reading this blog, I'd get sick of constantly reading, "Andrew Sullivan says..." so when I see someone else doing the heavy lifting, I ought to give credit. I don't know why I didn't link to this the first time I read it.


And Glenn Kinen needs some bashing, so... well, he's been good, I can't think of anything. I liked this bit about the Democratic candidates in 2004. I like Daschle too, but I can't help but think that playing the leader of the loyal opposition, even if you play it splendidly, just doesn't make one look like a leader. I don't know who I like in 2004, but luckily we don't have to worry about that for a little while. It's not terribly realistic, but I can't help but fantasize about Kerry layout out his Vietnam credentials and then saying, a la Aaron Sorkin, "What were you doing?"

Of course, Daschle, Gore, and Gephardt could all do the same thing, since they all served in the military. Unlike, say:


Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert - avoided the draft, did not serve.

Majority Leader Dick Armey- avoided the draft, did not serve.

Majority Whip Tom Delay - avoided the draft, did not serve.

Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott - avoided the draft, did not serve.


GW Bush - decided that a six-year Nat'l Guard commitment really means four years. Still says that he's "been to war."

VP Cheney - several deferments, the last by marriage (in his own words, "had other priorities than military service")

Att'y Gen. John Ashcroft - sought deferment to teach business ed at SW Missouri State


Karl Rove - avoided the draft, did not serve.


Former Speaker Newt Gingrich - avoided the draft, did not serve

Former President Ronald Reagan - served in a noncombat role. He later seems to have confused his role as an actor playing a tail gunner with the real thing.

"B-1" Bob Dornan - avoided Korean War combat duty by enrolling in college acting classes (Orange County Register article)

Phil Gramm - avoided the draft, did not serve, four (?) student deferments

Nick Denton is unhappy that more bloggers aren't talking about steel tarriffs. Samizdata and Slotman were unhappy because they suspected that Josh Marshall wasn't going to respond to their post about Croatia; they were offering 30:1 odds or whatever that he wouldn't respond. And so on, and so on.



I have very little patience for this kind of argument- “how come they’re not writing about x?” I agree with Ken Layne on this point: "Not only did I not "bother to post on the subject," I haven't bothered to post on several thousand other subjects. There are many interesting stories out there I'm not going to follow because this is a hobby and there are other things I do with my time."



Seanbaby said it even better (I'm paraphrasing because I can't find it): "If there's something you don't like here, feel free to write, but you're not getting your $0.00 back."



Even more succinct was Humpty Hump: "This is my dance, y'all, Humpty Hump's my name."



These sites are hobbies for almost everyone but Andrew Sullivan. I consider it fair game to criticize anyone for something they post. But to criticize them for something they don’t post, or for not responding to your post or your question, is silly. It’s the equivalent of going to a coin collectors club and criticizing someone for collecting colonial coins instead of pfennings.



And warblogger triumphalists ought to get a grip about their grip on the national conversation. For the purposes of comparison:


Hits for tedbarlow: 5236

Hits for the premeire Transformers gay porn fan fiction page: A lot more than 5236.



(At this point, I promise no more metablogging or Transformers porn for at least 48 hours.)

Too awesome. Did you read when Patrick Ruffini showed liberal bias in the media by counting the number of times they used terms like "right-wing" and "left-wing"? And they used terms like "right-wing" many more times than "left-wing", so they're biased?

The Daily Howler used the same methodology to reveal that the Washington Times is lousy with liberal bias, even more than the New York Times.

The Washington Times:
Right-wing extremist: 86 uses
Left-wing extremist: 9 uses

The New York Times:
Right-wing extremist: 75 uses
Left-wing extremist: 9 uses.

Oops.

Tom Tomorrow mentions the wonderful Mark Alan Stamaty offhandedly today. Mark Alan Stamaty is the author of one of my most beloved pieces of lost pop culture detrius: the out-of-print children's book Who Needs Donuts? Look at the reviews: 11 people review this out of print book, and every one gives it five stars. It's a large format book filled with incredibly detailed tiny cartoons of city life, with a brilliant Pythonesque sense of humor tying it together. I wish that I could think of example, but one of the reviewers mentions a sign that says: NO LOITERING! THOSE FOUND LOITERING WILL BE SUBJECT TO THE PREDICATE "IS LOITERING"!

I would cheerfully pay any reasonable price for a copy of this book. If any reader could hook me up, I'd give you links, money, delicious coffee cake, whatever you want.

From the Washington Post:

Here's a vignette we're dying to see on the ABC broadcast of Sunday's Ford's Theatre Presidential Gala: When Stevie Wonder sat down at the keyboard center stage, President Bush in the front row got very excited. He smiled and started waving at Wonder, who understandably did not respond. After a moment Bush realized his mistake and slowly dropped the errant hand back to his lap. "I know I shouldn't have," a witness told us yesterday, "but I started laughing."

Mike Dea sent me this great line from the Wall Street Journal:

Of course, only time will tell if Podhoretz is right when he predicts a growing "antiwar" movement. And if his prediction turns out to be wrong, his call for vigilance may deserve some of the credit.

Dea says, "Am I wrong or does this paraphrase into: "If Podhoretz is right he's right and if he's wrong he's still right"! Geez, as a commentator that's nice work if you can get it!"

Good catch. I'd also like to point out the irony of getting an email from Mike D. immediately after writing about Ad-Rock. MCA, please pick up line 1.

Ted Rall didn't apologize for the cartoon that made fun of the widows of terrorist attacks, but he did try to smooth the waters with this:

Rall did offer his "support and utmost sympathy" to people who had lost loved ones in the attack, saying he joined "all Americans in mourning our dead and respecting their memories."

I present for your enjoyment:

SIX PANELS AND A FUNERAL

(Open on a small funeral parlor. WIDOW is pregnant. She is dressed in all black and a veil, handling herself with dignity despite the unbearable grief and pressure of the word media on her. A closed casket with a photo is at the front of the room; there is no body to bury. TED RALL is wearing a checkered jacket and a fake arrow through his head.)

RALL: Mrs. Pearl, I'm so sorry about your loss. I offer you my support and utmost sympathy.

WIDOW: Thank you, I appreciate it.

RALL: So, the worst thing must be watching the Olympics alone, huh? (winks and nudges her)

WIDOW: What?

RALL: You sure must feel like you scored big time! All the money, and you get to be on TV and everything! You'll probably be selling ad space on your clothes the next time you're on Larry King, right?

WIDOW: (speechless)

RALL: I mean, you must be all, "Huh, whatever, just give me my-"

(TED RALL is vaporized by collective will of the nation. And there was much rejoicing. )

If you go to the Drudge Report right now, you'll see this link:

"BLUMENTHAL INDICTED ON CHILD PORN CHARGE..."

This is factually correct, as the story makes clear. "A former Long Beach Little League administrator is facing federal child pornography charges, according to the FBI. Signal Hill police and FBI agents arrested Laurent Blumenthal Tuesday after he was indicted on charges of possession of child pornography."

Why would Drudge use this guy's last name in a headline? No one knows who Laurent Blumenthal is, and he's not in the habit of posting this kind of story about ordinary people. When I read that, I thought, "Sidney Blumenthal was found with child porn?" You don't suppose that Drudge meant to smear a former Clinton aide as a pedophile without facing another libel suit, do you? That's pretty low, don't you think?

Charles Kuffner mentioned today that he has never gotten hate mail. Neither have I. This speaks well of the manners of conservatives, the manners of blog-readers, my utter irrelevance, or all of the above.

Also, he asks what happened to Ione Skye after Say Anything? After she divorced Ad-Rock from the Beastie Boys, it all went downhill. I clearly remember this lyric:

Ad-Rock's down with the Ione
Listen to the shit cuz both of them is boney
Gotta do it like this like chachi and joani
Cuz she's the cheese and I'm the macaroni

You leave the macaroni, and you see what happens to your career.

(lyrics courtesy of the Original Hip-Hop Lyrics Archive)

If you haven't already read Through the Looking Glass, go read his most recent post about Bush's compassion for corporations. It's a home run.

The House Republicans have finally called off their quixotic campaign for their version of economic stimulus. They've allowed a vote on a compromise bill to extend unemployment benefits and allow businesses to depreciate the value of new purchases more quickly. Finally, some good news.

This should go down in history as a particularly ignoble crusade for the Republican leadership, and I hope the Dems are smart enough to capitalize on it. They wrote a horrible, expensive bill, writing massive checks from our tax money to five big companies and installing permanent tax cuts that would do anything but stimulate the economy in the short term. I loved the detail that focus groups literally refused to believe the contents of the House bill. They refused to compromise, delaying sensible proposals for months, and poisoned the atmosphere by continually trying to blame Daschle for everything. I don't see how in the world any sensible person can vote for Tom DeLay.

It has been pleasing to see conservatives generally pouncing on Bush’s dumbass steel tariffs. I’m glad that they’re generally showing admirable intellectual consistency. George Will, Virginia Postrel, and Glenn Reynolds, in particular, have huge pulpits that they’re using to denounce Bush’s decision. This is one of the few Bush decisions that has drawn real ire from pureblooded conservatives.

All it will do is generate campaign contributions and produce a really simple, if false, soundbite: “George Bush fought to protect 8 bazillion jobs in Pennsylvania/ West Virginia/ wherever.” Hundreds of thousands of people are going to lose their jobs just so that Karl Rove can stick that line in the next round of Republican ads. On a huge percentage of Dubya’s really bad decisions, you’ll find Karl Rove’s fingerprints. And look, there they are:

Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, sat in on the major meetings at the White House about how to deal with the steel industry's demands, and Mr. Rove met with leaders of the steel workers' unions. While officials said he never said so in the meetings, Mr. Rove and others in the White House know that the tariffs will have the greatest effects on steel producers in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio, all critical in the coming Congressional elections…

Manufacturers may move some production to Canada or Mexico, so that the steel they buy is not subject to tariffs.


I like what Matt Welch said about this:

Slashing trade barriers in the G-8 countries is the single fastest way for poor & desperate countries to become rich & hopeful, period. Why do they hate us? Maybe it’s because, from time to time, we’re full of shit, and abuse our dominant global position for short-term political gain.

It’s not a perfect analogy, but it makes me think of Clinton’s signing of the Defense of Marriage Act. I hate, hate, hate the Defense of Marriage Act. I think that gay marriage is a good idea for a whole passel of reasons. But even those don’t like gay marriage should object to a law that violates one of the constitutional principles of our federal government: contracts written in one of the states must be honored in the other states. The Defense of Marriage Act specifically exempts one kind of contract, gay marriages, from this requirement, for no good reason.

Clinton, to his dishonor, caved and signed a hateful, unconstitutional bill, which almost certainly violated his principles. Now Bush has again shown that his principles are at least as expedient.

This is a little old, but I can't believe what a little bitch Caleb Carr is.

I missed the Houston bloggers get-together because of a crisis at work. It's almost 2:00 AM and I'm still at work. I'm ready to scream. I can tell you this because you're Canadian.

Sometimes I think that I should stop blogging and just redirect everything to SpinSanity and the Daily Howler. This is one of those days. The Daily Howler is especially on today. First he looks at one of the quotes that the Media Research Council pulled as an example of liberal bias in the media, revealing that it's from an article that trashes Clinton far more than it trashes Republicans.

Then he has this about the anonymous economist that Andrew Sullivan quoted trashing Paul Krugman:

"Her complaints, of course, were so utterly vague that there was simply no way to confirm or deny them. It was just Sullivan’s latest cowardly attack on Krugman’s competence and character—no criticism of his correspondent intended.

Here’s the humor—Sully’s anonymous economist is a honcho at the Reason Public Policy Institute. You’d never learn that from Sullivan, of course—and you’d never learn that the RPPI is funded by every oil company currently found on the face of the earth. Of course, that doesn’t mean that Sully’s anonymous economist is wrong in her views, whatever they may be. But didn’t this whole thing get underway with Sully complaining that Krugman needed to be more open about a past funding matter? How big a clown is Andrew Sullivan? This big: He complains when Krugman fails to tell us every cent that he ever was paid. In rebuttal, he presents another economist—and doesn’t even disclose her name, let alone her own funding issues. We’ll say again to the invaluable Jonathan Chait—if you can believe that this utter nonsense is being carried on in good faith, you’re a far better man than we."

Now, I don't know how Somersby could have found this out. But Sullivan's anonymous economist was, indeed, completely vague, and Somerby accumulated a long list of others who said exactly same thing as Krugman did about the $300 tax cut here. Most interesting is TRENDMACRO.

"After the Treasury Department began bashing Krugman, TRENDMACRO lit into the Timesman. On Monday morning, the website linked to Treasury’s letter, and exulted over the brilliant attack. "Isn’t it wonderful when the victims of a media hatchet attack actually defend themselves?" the site asked. "With this and Enron, this is definitely two strikes for Paul Krugman."

But what had TRENDMACRO said last Friday, when Krugman’s column first appeared? This item—which appeared early Friday morning—linked to Krugman’s piece:

TRENDMACRO.COM: The good news is that Paul Krugman is back to being an economist. The bad news is that he’s a recovery skeptic, and the thought that he agrees with us fills us with self-doubt and self-loathing. He also raises interesting issues about the illusory nature of the $300 tax rebate checks everyone got last year. Worth reading, believe it or not.

The illusory nature of the tax rebate checks? At TRENDMACRO, Krugman’s column sounded great Friday morning; a few days later, the Timesman was damned. But then, as his critics have often said—Krugman was so good at one time, before he began all this bashing."

I didn't get home until very late last night, so no disrespect to the people I didn't reply to. I did learn that I had posted a bogus link to Letter From Gotham, for which I apologize.

My friend Mark has added icons of Sad Eagle, Al Pacino as Tony Montana, and a guestbook to his moving sale website. But the party was last week, mang.

Charles Murtaugh has an excellent point about Andrew Sullivan (he's addressing his hysterical denunciation of Daschle as part of the "anti-war left"):

"Why does Sullivan feel obliged to be such a flack on this issue, when he usually exhibits a subtlety sorely lacking in pundits on either the left or the right? Well, I have my theories, but this isn't the time or place. What upsets me about his relentless effort to portray even the mildest liberal critics of the administration as radical nuts is that it shows he is neglecting his duty as a "gateway conservative." Sullivan is the only conservative writer that a lot of liberals read and take seriously (and the more mainstream conservatives hate this!), and his stock has only risen since Sept. 11. So here he is squandering an opportunity to reach out to moderates; by absurdly tarring Daschle and Chomsky with the same brush, he will only succeed in driving moderates further to the left, when he could be helping draw them rightward."

He's right, dadgummit. That's exactly what Sullivan, the often-reasonable gay TNR contributor, is: a gateway conservative. And that's why I read him every day, while I often want to start shouting at my screen when I read the crew at the National Review. Dead on, Mr. Murtaugh.

Awesome detail from the MSNBC article about the Grammys:

It’s like a spiral," says Peter Edge (no relation to U2’s The)

Bernie Goldberg's "book" Bias gets another shellacking from Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler.

Margaret Downing at the Houston Press has a column about the horrible, heartbreaking Andrea Yates case. Some people would probably find it overwraught. But I found the ending, where she's contemplating the different ways that that awful morning could happened, compelling. If only.

"In another alternate universe, Andrea Yates draws the deadly bathwater but somehow, while cradling her baby Mary, with the child smiling up at her, cannot go through with the drownings. She puts Mary down on the floor and calls her husband.

In another alternate universe, the kids run outside, the oldest ones jumping on their bikes, holding tight to the youngest. Mary's head is on John's shoulder. She laughs -- they all laugh and chortle as they watch their baby sister being so smart, clutching John's hair to stay in place, to stay safe. And just as in the movie E.T., as they pedal faster and faster, their bikes begin to levitate and they all rise up, into the sky in a blaze of glory, far away from the adults and the mess of things below.

They get away, they get away clean, they get away clean and free as the wind."

For a good time, check out Letter From Gotham. She's got a smart blog there, and I think that she does a better job than a lot of us at weighing an issue on its merits before picking a side.

Apparently Tim Blair has gotten a torrent of abuse over his claim that "cars clean the air". (That's a direct quote.) He's promised a detailed rebuttal on Friday, so I'll hold off until then. I will hope that he won't try to prove it by sitting in a closed garage with one of these fabulous motorized air-cleaners running.

I’m flattered that Glenn Reynolds reads me, and is answering my question.

His argument is that special interests will always find a way to influence the government. So the only real campaign finance reform is shrinking the government, removing government from commerce, so that special interests won’t gain anything by purchasing influence. All that is necessary is for the government to drop all regulation of inter-state commerce, tariffs, price supports, subsidies, small-business loans and opportunity programs, industrial pollution laws, anti-discrimination laws, zoning, taxes, R&D tax breaks, educational programs, anti-trust legislation, food and drug safety laws… don't forget the powerful AARP, we'd better drop Social Security and Medicare... in other words, the only solution to government corruption is a libertarian state. (Then we’d just need to worry about corruption from defense contractors, presumably.)

As the Church Lady would say, “How conveeeenient.”

I'm a free-trader, and I agree with many of these goals. But we all know it's not going to happen. We’ve got a very conservative president who’s probably going to continue protectionist policies on steel, and who is slapping around our vital ally Pakistan with protectionist policies on textiles. Consider the practical political, economic, and legal barriers involved in getting government out of commerce. Charles Dodgson wrote me a thoughtful email on the subject, which I left on my home computer. I'll update this tonight.

Anyone who wants to argue that the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill has loopholes- you win. But I don’t see why the perfect should be the enemy of the good, and any libertarian who votes Republican will have to agree with me. I've never seen a libertarian argue, for example, that we should continue farm supports, for example, because only all-or-nothing solutions interest them. So I don't see how this explains opposition to campaign finance reform.

Gary Farber has a good-humored response and this link to the newly-released tapes in which Billy Graham confides his anti-Semitism to Richard Nixon.

At a later point in the conversation, when Nixon raises the subject of Jewish influence in Hollywood and the media, Graham says, "A lot of Jews are great friends of mine."

"They swarm around me and are friendly to me. Because they know that I am friendly to Israel and so forth. But they don't know how I really feel about what they're doing to this country, and I have no power and no way to handle them," Graham says.

Nixon replies: "You must not let them know."

Minority activists can seem a little paranoid nowadays. Sometimes, they uncover real abuses. Often, they’re just applying pressure, "hassling the ref", to make businesses and politicians toe the line in their interests. Often, they go too far, accusing innocent people of bigotry. But since open, blatant racism and anti-Semitism are pretty much dead in this country, activists sometimes seem like they’re fighting ghosts.

It’s worth remembering that sometimes, those ghosts are real. I didn’t expect this from Billy Graham, of all people. “They don’t know how I really feel.”

Prince Phillip, the husband of the Queen and father of Prince Charles, is the official embarassing crazy grandpa of the British Empire. He let off a corker this weekend.

“During a tour of Australia to mark his wife's Golden Jubilee, Prince Philip added Aborigines to his verbal hit list when he asked a tribal leader, "Do you still throw spears at each other?"”

Since most of the royal stories in the British press boil down to “Old woman turns wrist slightly in acknowledgement of plebes,” (how’s that for a Series-Skipper?), you could argue that he’s doing his bit for the British economy by keeping the newspapers in business. Anyway, you may enjoy some flashbacks, courtesy of the BBC. Enjoy.

- During the devastating recession of the 1980s, Philip managed to appear less than sympathetic with the plight of the commoner when he said: "Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed."
- He once asked a driving instructor in Scotland, "How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?"
- During a visit to China in 1986, Prince Philip described Beijing as "ghastly" and told British students: "If you stay here much longer you'll all be slitty eyed."
- In August 1999, during a factory tour, he saw a faulty wiring box and said, "It looks as though it was put in by an Indian."
- In May of 1999, he angered deaf people during a visit to the new Welsh Assembly. While he was with a group from the British Deaf Association who were standing near a band, he pointed to the musicians and said: "Deaf? If you are near there, no wonder you are deaf."
- In 1996 he caused an outcry among gun law reformers when he said: "There's no evidence that people who use weapons for sport are any more dangerous than people who use golf clubs or tennis rackets or cricket bats."
- He told a Briton he met in Hungary in 1993: "You can't have been here that long - you haven't got a pot belly".
- The Prince angered local residents in Lockerbie when on a visit to the town in 1993, he said to a man who lived in a road where 11 people had been killed by wreckage from the Pan Am jumbo jet: "People usually say that after a fire it is water damage that is the worst. We are still trying to dry out Windsor Castle."
- During a Royal visit to China in 1986 he described Peking as "ghastly" and told British students: "If you stay here much longer you'll all be slitty-eyed."
- He said of Canada: "We don't come here for our health. We can think of other ways of enjoying ourselves."
- In 1966 he provoked outrage by saying: "British women can't cook."
- Commenting on stress counselling for servicemen in a TV documentary on the 50th Anniversary of D-Day, he said: "It was part of the fortunes of war. We didn't have counsellors rushing around every time somebody let off a gun, asking `are you all right - are you sure you don't have a ghastly problem?'. You just got on with it."
- Personal remarks have annoyed singing stars. In 1969 The Duke said to Tom Jones after the Royal Variety Performance: "What do you gargle with, pebbles?"
- At a private lunch given 30 years ago he said he thought Adam Faith's singing was like bath water going down a plug hole.