Matt Welch has a principled attack on corporate welfare for Hollywood.

Protein Wisdom has a story saying that deadbeat moms are proportionally more common than deadbeat dads. Very interesting.

He also uses the phrase "Richard Bennett Springs a Chubby", which I'm including solely to see what amusing keyword searches it brings me.

UPDATE: Matt Weiner points out that I'm being a little imprecise. This is better: the proportion of mothers ordered to pay child support who don't pay is greater than the proportion of fathers ordered to pay child support who don't pay. But there are still many more (7 times as many) deadbeat dads than deadbeat moms. The fault is mine, not Jeff's or the original article's.

In 2001, Greg Palast wrote a story about the election. This story was subject to proof and evidence. It did not run in the American media, except in Salon, because Jeb Bush's office denied it.

In the months leading up to the November balloting, Florida Governor Jeb Bush and his Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, ordered local elections supervisors to purge 64,000 voters from voter lists on the grounds that they were felons who were not entitled to vote in Florida. As it turns out, these voters weren't felons, or at least, only a very few were. However, the voters on this "scrub list" were, notably, African-American (about 54 percent), while most of the others wrongly barred from voting were white and Hispanic Democrats...

Shortly after the UK and Salon stories hit the worldwide web, I was contacted by a CBS network news producer ready to run their own version of the story. The CBS hotshot was happy to pump me for information: names, phone numbers, all the items one needs for a quickie TV story.

I also freely offered up to CBS this information... The next day I received a call from the producer, who said, "I'm sorry, but your story didn't hold up." Well, how did the multibillion-dollar CBS network determine this? Why, "we called Jeb Bush's office." Oh. And that was it.

In 2002, an anonymous person came up with a story about the Gores. Tipper Gore unambiguously denied it. She has tickets which she paid for. There is no reason to believe this story. So far, it made FOX News and the Washington Post.

Damn liberal media.

Sorry, I don't know what came over me there.

THUNDER!

(na na na na na na na na na)

THUNDER!

(na na na na na na na na na)

THUNDER!

(na na na na na na na na na)

THUNDER!

(na na na na na na na na na)

UPDATE: THUNDER!

(na na na na na na na na na)

THUNDER!

(na na na na na na na na na)

I just tried to buy tickets to a concert next Thursday night. I doubt that this link will work, so here's a breakdown of costs.

Ticket: $15.00
Convenience charge: $6.65
Tax: $.55
Order processing: $3.75

Total: $25.95

Pearl Jam- come back! All is forgiven!

In this corner, we have an anonymous source who won't go on the record, hurling the kind of Gore story that has been proven untrue over and over and over again.

In this corner, we have Tipper Gore, on the record, completely denying it.

In a sane world, would any news organization have even considered running this story?

Elton Beard catches a big "Whoops." His post begins, "Overcoming a deep reluctance to extract political gain from the tragedy of bereaved parents, Mr. Bush addressed the subject of child abductions yesterday." And it gets better.

David Hogberg at Cornfield Commentary has a take on my recent posts on Social Security. He comes out in favor of private accounts. It'll take me a little while to get motivated to respond (he hasn't won me over), but check him out. I especially like his choice of quotes above his blogroll.

In other news, my amazing fiancee is publishing a freakin' article in freakin' Parade magazine on August 25. Parade has a readership of 77 million people. We're movin' on up.

Here's a fun fact: the article focuses on Dr. Pier Massimo Forni and his work on civility. In English, Dr. Forni's name means "Peter Big Ovens."

Wow, Instapundit recommended me as a liberal guest on the Hugh Hewitt show! Two thoughts:

1. Boy, am I flattered.

2. "Those whom the gods would destroy, they first put on conservative talk radio."

I'll let you know if anything comes of it.

I'm not the only one struggling with the idea of means-testing retirement benefits. The Economist reports that in the UK, Gordon Brown is moving towards increasing retirement benefits on a means-tested basis. On balance, the Economist finds this a bad idea; the slant of the article is that means-testing benefits creates a disincentive to save and work, and that this problem is more serious than the elderly poverty that means-tested benefits are intended to address. I don't know what to think about that- the Economist is not the only publication to reflexively oppose any actions of any government figure- but it's interesting.

I like to think that I can debate most topics with a modicum of rationality. I have to admit, however, that I have my weak points, topics which reduce me to a sputtering fountain of invective and obscenity.

Katherine Harris is in the second category. Via Xoverboard, I found this Palm Beach Post editorial, about her department's inability to correctly assess the fee that candidates must submit to run for office.

For the self-absorbed Ms. Harris, however, consistency and accountability are for others. Throughout the election controversy, she posed as the unbiased guardian of state law. Two months later, testifying before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, she referred virtually all questions about the law to Elections Director Clay Roberts. After claiming -- like her soulmate, Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore -- that any problems were the result of voter error, she touted her plan for new voting machines.

As secretary of state, she has been inept. Her office muffed -- or worse -- the purge of ineligible voters and refused pleas from elections supervisors for help sorting out problems with the federal motor-voter law. Both issues figured in the 2000 election debacle. She has traveled grandly on the taxpayers' dime and returned little benefit for the taxpayers. Her chief accomplishment has been her political beatification, which probably will send her to Congress this fall.

It mentions her new book (it looks like the editorial gets the title wrong- Amazon lists it as "Center of the Storm". What's it about, you ask?

The battle for the White House following the election of November 7, 2000, was arguably one of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. And one woman stood at the center of the storm—Katherine Harris, Florida's secretary of state.

As the Florida recount unfolded in a maze of bizarre events, Harris was faced with the challenge of a lifetime. What enabled her to maintain her integrity, stick by her guns, and hold true to her principles? Here she tells all.

In Center of the Storm, Harris discusess the behind-the-scenes negotiations and backroom bartering that everyone suspected, but no one dared disclose. Through never-told-before anecdotes, she reveals seventeen essential skills that helped her not just survive but thrive. She clearly illustrates how we, too, can learn these skills that will help us in times of crises.

Must... restrain... self...

Did you see a couple of days ago where Mickey Kaus had a snit about the Post story which publicized a poll about the political salience of world hunger?

Let me start by saying that the poll was clearly an advocacy poll. But, as the Slacktivist points out, world hunger kills tens of thousands of people every single day, and you never, ever, ever hear about it in the paper. He has a powerful post called "Fighting Anti-Hunger" about this.

But doesn't Kausfiles show that the poll presents leading questions? Possibly, but that's so far from the point you can't even see the point from where Kausfiles is sitting.

The point is this:

World hunger is a staggeringly huge story that gets almost zero coverage in the press. This is partly due to the constant, and therefore not "new," nature of the problem. The death of 3,000 kids in an earthquake would make page 1. The quotidian, business-as-usual death of 30,000 kids every day after day after day including weekends and holidays is not, strictly speaking "news."

Diarrhea kills about 10,000 - 15,000 children every day -- that's three to five times as many deaths as occurred on September 11. Utterly preventable deaths. Every day.

"Hmmm," the editor says, "there might be a story in that. Do you have a local angle? Something to hook our readers?"...

Groups like Bread for the World conduct a kind of dance with the media. This dance is governed by several unspoken conventions, one of which is that they have to provide some credible facade of "newsworthiness" to justify expending valuable column inches on the death of thousands of dark, poor, anonymous children far from where our subscribers live. Because the editors are (often) decent people, and because the problem is so vast, this newsworthiness need not be ironclad. A poll about "fighting the hunger problem" will do.

The Post's editors were not on vacation. They were doing their job. 30,000 deaths -- even in Potter's Field, even in Africa -- is newsworthy, even if it means running the occasional interest-group poll.

Thank you, Slacktivist.

I'm busy and kind of blue. Go read this wonderful article by Steve Albini called "The Problem With Music." Pay close attention to the numbers.

The Balance Sheet: This is how much each player got paid at the end of the game.

Record company: $ 710,000
Producer: $ 90,000
Manager: $ 51,000
Studio: $ 52,500
Previous label: $ 50,000
Agent: $ 7,500
Lawyer: $ 12,000
Band member net income each: $ 4,031.25

Jim Henley at Unqualified Offerings has got a thoughtful post on whether or not we should fight a war on Iraq, inspired by the comments on Megan McArdle's site. I started to write a summary and ended up quoting the whole damn thing. So just go read it.

Two bloggers who are playing to their strengths:

Ginger Stampley on immigration

Eve Tushnet on history- quite a lot of her recent posts, actually.

I'm lovin' it.

I ended up calling my representatives about Saad Eddin Ibrahim, rather than writing anything. I know, you were on tenterhooks. I got their contact info here.

A lot of folks have commented on the really interesting Times story about the manufacturing of a new pop star, Amanda Latona . I remember a similar article about the manufacturing of a new pop star in Britain named Amanda Ghost. (What's up with the Amandas?)

I read these articles and I think two things:

1. Well, this is exactly how Stax and Motown and Volt worked- house songwriters, house band, interchangeable vocalists assigned to a song after the fact. And they made some of the greatest popular music I've ever heard. Lots of rap labels work this way, too.

2. Britney/ N*SYNCH/ etc. are no Stax/ Motown. Barring a miracle, the Amandas won't be, either.

Ken Layne posted in my comments about his lefty-bashing post. At this point, I'm already blogging about blogging about blogging, so I'll let him have the last word.

I've seen a few conservatives (including Kaus himself) point to the same letter on Sullivan's site and say, "See? That explains everything!" It explains nothing. Of course it's not "standard limited-partner structure" that you buy 2% and get back 12%. It was a gift from the other partners, and it merits an explanation.

Armed Liberal and AreGee (in my comments) gave me a deserved spanking for this comment yesterday. They both point out deals that they're intimately involved in, in which one partner gets a share of the profits disproportionate to their financial contribution.

Here's a better way to say it. Some limited partnerships distribute profits in direct proportion to the equity stake of the partners, but lots don't. Sometimes a partner brings something else to the deal, such as a famous name (as in, say, Planet Hollywood), skills or experience, intellectual property, connections, or the willingness to actually run the business. Bush almost certainly got a bigger stake because he was the son of the President of the United States, but there's nothing wrong with that. The other partners have every right to pay him disproportionately for his famous name and connections; it's fundamentally none of my business. If a conservative was complaining about how it's unfair that Clinton gets so much for his speeches, I'd tell him that he doesn't have the right to complain about it. I ought to apply the same standards to myself.

Later, the team got the government to engage in a land grab and donate it to the partners, and this maybe couldn't be done without the leverage afforded by George W. Bush. I believe that this is a legitimate big deal. However, the stake is a red herring, and I shouldn't have brought it up.

Diane E. responds to Mickey Kaus. I can't escape my biases, but I think she's got him dead to rights.

You should read the whole thing, but there are three parts in particular that I'd like to quote:

(Re: Kaus says that Bush either recieved a gift, or pulled strings as part of a public land grab, but not both) I don't see the implication that the "gift" was unjustified, or that Bush did "nothing", as Kaus interprets. Further, in his response, Kaus says that he's "reread the Krugman passage and he's pretty clearly making exactly the suggestion I say he's making." Well I re-read it too. I don't see how anybody can read the passage that way. Krugman is clearly and simply saying that the gift was suspicious. Is that not what "raised a few eyebrows" means? Since when do "unjustified" and "suspicious" mean the same thing? It can be suspicious and quite justified. In fact, I think that is what a bribe usually is....

Let's perform one of those Nexis database search tests and see what happens. If you plug in George pre/2 Bush and Harken Energy or land specula! (the ! is a wild card which enables any derivation to be plugged in) into the Nexis NY Times database you get 25 hits--for all available dates. Further refining that to January 2001 to July 31, you get 16 hits. If you search for William Jefferson or Bill or Hillary pre/2 Clinton and Whitewater into the NY Times database you get 281 hits. Furthermore your memory is refreshed: it was July 26, 1994 that the Whitewater hearings started in both the House and Senate banking committees. There isn't a chance in hell that we will ever see hearings held into the nature of Bush's land speculations in Texas, and it isn't only because of the WoT...

NOTE: Andrew Sullivan's website contains a letter (unlinked, as far as I can tell) from two of Bush's business partners which purports to explain this 10% share. In my opinion it does no such thing: "At that time, the two general partners were granted a 15 percent share (Mr. Bush received 10 percent and Mr. Rose, 5 percent) in the investment, after each investor got back his investment plus interest. This is a standard limited-partnership structure. At the time, Mr. Bush was a private citizen, not governor of Texas." The last statement is true, as the Public Integrity article points out, but the rest of it is slippery stuff. Mr. Bush was GIVEN 10% by the others. He bought 1.8% with money that he scraped together. The letter does not explain WHY the cronies GAVE him the other 10%. The limited partnership stuff is verbiage designed to scare people off. My eyebrows are raised.

I've seen a few conservatives (including Kaus himself) point to the same letter on Sullivan's site and say, "See? That explains everything!" It explains nothing. Of course it's not "standard limited-partner structure" that you buy 2% and get back 12%. It was a gift from the other partners, and it merits an explanation.

And she's honest- she points out that Krugman and Kristoff both made a mistake by referring to Bush as a sitting Governor at the time of the transaction.

To reiterate: she's got eerie powers. Don't screw with Diane E.

Modern Humorist is changing from a daily to a biweekly publication. And TVGoHome seems to be down and out. As is Old Man Murray.

Waah! I want my free ice cream!

My gorgeous fiancee is a real writer. That is, rather than writing in exchange for nasty emails calling her a commie*, she writes in exchange for money. On August 25, she's having a piece published in Parade magazine. That's the magazine that comes in 330 Sunday newspapers all over the country. She's written a piece about civility, focused on the work of Dr. P. M. Forni.

Here are some fun facts about Parade Magazine:

Circulation: 35,900,000

Readership: 77,600,000 (52% Female; 48% Male)*

Distribution: PARADE magazine is distributed by more than 330 Sunday newspapers, including the Atlanta Journal & Constitution, The Baltimore Sun, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Dallas Morning News, The Los Angeles Times, The Miami Herald, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle, Seattle Times & Post Intelligencer and The Washington Post.

Advertising Rates: Full-page, 4-color: $767,500
Full-page, black & white: $621,400

Advertising Revenue (2001): $570,481,972

I've heard that Parade has the second-largest readership of any publication after Reader's Digest, but I can't verify that.

(The tens of dozens of people who read this site should prepare to be hit over the head with this a lot in the next few weeks.)

* In truth, I hardly ever get nasty emails.

Charles Kuffner reached into my head with his patented Kuffnoscope and said exactly what I would have said about why the left will never have an Instapundit. It's like asking "when will art films get their own Ain't-It-Cool-News." The moment's passed, man.

By the way, Charles is a gracious host and a hell of swell guy. You should be so lucky to live in Houston and get to hang out with him.

"So far as I can see, there's nothing much new in Michael Elliott's Time magazine piece on the Clinton-Bush transition and al Qaeda... (It's) a sign of the currently anti-Bush movement in the media that it has gotten such swift attention." Andrew Sullivan

*******************

"Other senior officials from both the Clinton and Bush administrations, however, say that Clarke had a set of proposals to "roll back" al-Qaeda. In fact, the heading on Slide 14 of the Powerpoint presentation reads, "Response to al Qaeda: Roll back." Clarke's proposals called for the "breakup" of al-Qaeda cells and the arrest of their personnel. The financial support for its terrorist activities would be systematically attacked, its assets frozen, its funding from fake charities stopped. Nations where al-Qaeda was causing trouble-Uzbekistan, the Philippines, Yemen-would be given aid to fight the terrorists. Most important, Clarke wanted to see a dramatic increase in covert action in Afghanistan to "eliminate the sanctuary" where al-Qaeda had its terrorist training camps and bin Laden was being protected by the radical Islamic Taliban regime. The Taliban had come to power in 1996, bringing a sort of order to a nation that had been riven by bloody feuds between ethnic warlords since the Soviets had pulled out. Clarke supported a substantial increase in American support for the Northern Alliance, the last remaining resistance to the Taliban. That way, terrorists graduating from the training camps would have been forced to stay in Afghanistan, fighting (and dying) for the Taliban on the front lines. At the same time, the U.S. military would start planning for air strikes on the camps and for the introduction of special-operations forces into Afghanistan. The plan was estimated to cost "several hundreds of millions of dollars." In the words of a senior Bush Administration official, the proposals amounted to "everything we've done since 9/11."...

"That meant that the Clinton team had to fall back on a second strategy: taking out bin Laden by cruise missile, which had been tried after the embassy bombings in 1998. For all of 2000, sources tell Time, Clinton ordered two U.S. Navy submarines to stay on station in the northern Arabian Sea, ready to attack if bin Laden's coordinates could be determined." Michael Elliot in Time.

*********************

"Andrew Sullivan, you are such so full of shit that it's coming out of your ears." Ted Barlow

Jeanne D'Arc at Body and Soul (permalinks AWOL) reminds me of something that really matters:

In today's NY Times, Thomas Friedman takes up the case of Saad Eddin Ibrahim, the Egyptian pro-democracy advocate (who, by the way, is also an American citizen) sentenced last week to seven years in prison at hard labor (this is a 63-year-old man with health problem we're talking about) with barely a whisper of complaint from the Bush Administration. The State Department pronounced itself "disappointed" in the decision. As Mr. Friedman ably points out, disappointment is what you feel when your team loses. We give Hosni Mubarek's nasty little house of torture $2 billion dollars every year (making it the second largest recipient of American aid after Israel). There's room for more than disappointment here. Friedman suggests "outrage" would be good. If I weren't basically a nice Catholic girl at heart, I think could come up with a few more appropriate words.

Jeanne D'Arc asks that we send letters of protest. She's absolutely right. This isn't a story of right or left, it's a story of good and evil, and I'm a little embarassed that I haven't done or said anything about it until now.

I'll post my own letter later today, which you should feel free to cut and paste. Paper letters and phone calls are the most effective ways of contacting your representatives.

Contact information for the Senate

Contact information for the House

Long list of email addresses for Congress and media. Yes, I know it's from WhatReallyHappened, but it's just friggin' email addresses. Blast emails to everyone are likely to be deleted by spam filters, so be selective.

All part of restoring honor and dignity, I suppose. Via Atrios:

KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine- It was a quick shift from angry statesman to Sunday golfer.

Bush rose before dawn for a round of golf with his father, but was "distressed" to learn of another suicide bombing in Israel.

"There are a few killers who want to stop the peace process that we have started. We must not let them," he said, wagging his finger for emphasis, just as his cart pulled up to the first hole at the Cape Arundel Golf Club.

The six-sentence statement complete, Bush thanked reporters, then smirked and ordered: "Now watch my drive."