Shorter Cello Blogging:

People who say that learning to bow with the right hand part is harder than learning to finger with the left hand are right.

Is it just me, or do letters like this stink to high heaven?

"I'm a lifelong Democrat, and I voted for Mr. Gore. But I have never felt so inspired by a leader as I felt watching Mr. Bush tonight. The nits and quibbles that Cornerites are obsessing about seem almost sacrilegious."

No way. No way. I mean, there are more things in Heaven and earth and all that, but whenever I hear someone that I don't know say, "I'm a lifelong A, but B!...", I reach for my gun. Then I realize that I don't have a gun, and I reach for another cliche.

What kind of bullshit detectors do they have over there at the National Review? (Don't answer that.)

Sigh. Via Instapundit.

I'm not going to pretend to be terribly offended; of course it's just a joke. I'm sure that both Jay and Glenn would be horrified if millions of people were actually killed by an asteroid.

But I hereby declare that anti-war partisans get one free "I wish all my political opponents would die" joke without pro-war partisans claiming the moral high ground.

Do leaflet drops work?

If I had an assignment desk, I'd set somebody on it. In real life, I have Google, and then I've run out of ideas. Any input is welcome.

(link via Soundbitten)

Ampersand catches the National Review in a lie:

Governor Keating writes this:

To its credit, Vassar does present a class in the emerging field of sociobiology, though its course description calling the discipline "deterministic and politically retrograde" is less than objective.

Wow - for a course description to call sociobiology that really does sound pretty extreme! But the quote in context is in fact perfectly "objective," in the sense of quoting both sides:

353a. Bio–Social Controversy (1)
(Same as Science, Technology, and Society 353a) Biological explanations of social phenomena have been frequently criticized as deterministic and politically retrograde. But in recent decades "evolutionary psychologists" have called into question any such simplistic dismissal of biological perspectives.

The description (to anyone literate) is clearly paraphrasing unidentified critics when it uses the phrase "deterministic and politically retrograde"; but Governor Keating deceptively quotes it as if it were the course description's own opinion.

Sigh. It's like bailing out the ocean, isn't it?

Doesn't it make you sick to think about the way that gay marriage would make a mockery of the institution of matrimony?

I'm glad that we have the good people at Fox to set us straight about that.

I do so enjoy P.L.A.:

The Bush administration has projected the budget deficit for this fiscal year to be slightly more than $304 billion. The fiscal year started last October and runs through next September. The New York Times reports, that even that dismal projection is no longer operative...

Under his stewardship, the baby boomers are two years closer to retirement and the entire surplus has vanished. Mr. Bush’s budget, as proposed, would include a record deficit even after consuming the entire Social Security and Medicare surpluses. Mr. Bush’s own OMB forecasts budget deficits for as far as the eye can see.

The proposed budget deficit remains operative for only five weeks until it grows by an additional $30 billion.

In the face of those facts, Mr. Bush proposes to cut taxes by more than a trillion dollars for the second time in two years while increasing spending by more than 6%. The cost of war and reconstruction of Iraq is not included in any of those figures.

It is a good thing this is the Responsibility Era. There is going to be a lot of responsibility to accept.

No More Mister Nice Blog has an extremely unappealing juxtapositioning up at the top of his page.

Bill Frist is making the point that veterans will have to make sacrifices in their health care, what with the deficit and the war on Iraq and all. Meanwhile, Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) offered his fellow Republicans a chance to tack their favorite tax cuts onto a military bill that was guaranteed to pass.

Here's how the economy will be stimulated:

If the House accepts the committee's version, and it survives an eventual conference committee with senators, then racetrack owners and horse breeders would have an easier time enticing foreigners to bet on their races; an alternative type of diesel fuel would get a tax break, and U.S.-made bows and arrows would sell for less.

Thank God Bill Thomas is sticking up for the little guy. Those bow-and-arrow taxes were eating me alive*.

*(Before someone calls me on it, joke stolen from the Onion.)

Christopher Hitchens makes the argument that we shouldn't enlist Turkey as an ally against Iraq. You see, Turkey dated him at Oxford. (Rim shot.)

No, he makes a moral argument based on the perfidy of the Turkish government, especially in Cyprus and Armenia. He’s also disgusted at the Turkish government’s attempt to get money out of us in return for an attack. And he hates the fact that Turkey wants to take advantage of its role in the invasion to crush incipient Kurdish nationalism. He doesn't want to taint our regime change with these bad actors.

I can’t help but think that this sort of moral outrage is very, very dangerous. For one thing, he could easily write a similar piece about why morality demands that move without Russia, or France, or Kuwait, or even Great Britain. (He probably has, come to think of it.) But once the decision to fight has been made, it's a horrendous idea for us to shut out allies, especially an ally whose cooperation will save as many lives as Turkey.

Kos has convinced me that an attack from Kuwait alone would bog us down for a long time, allowing more time for the north to be torn apart. Kos is a veteran who has an idea of what he's talking about. The whole piece should be read, but here's a sample:

By confining US forces to the south, the US will be forced to move hundreds of thousands of forces north on a single highway and a few smaller roads. While tanks can cross short distances in rough terrain (read: desert), the distances here foreclose that possibility. (Military equipment breaks down a lot -- and that's in optimum conditions). The preferred solution will be to send cavalry units to spearhead the assault, secure forward locations, and then truck in the heavy armor. With a more established road network, this would be a faster proposition (heck, tanks might be able to rumble the 300 miles north on their own), but there's not enough road to allow for this kind of tactic and still attack Baghdad with full force...

By having a concentrated supply line supporting the entire invasion force, the US will have to double efforts to protect it -- soaking up valuable manpower. The supply line will be vulnerable to crippling sabotage. Bridges can be bombed. Suicide bombers can hit supply and ammo depots. Heck, take out a field repair shop and dozens of armored and wheeled vehicles could be stranded unrepaired for days, out of action. And critical water supplies could be open to sabotage or even chemical attack (US Army water tanks are not sealed against such attacks).

And if Saddam has WMDs, there would be no better target than the supply line. A dirty bomb would wreak havoc on US resupply operations, almost forcing the US to build it's own road bypassing whatever region was irradiated. (Engineers will be building roads regardless, from day one, to help increase capacity.)

At the same time, I don’t think that Turkey has much to apologize for. You’ve got to expect countries to behave in their best interest. Peter Beinart has an article in The New Republic (which is well worth buying this week, by the way) defending Turkey from the unfair "rug-trader" charge. It’s available to subscribers only, so I don’t feel right copying and pasting huge sections. But he makes the argument that the first Gulf War cost Turkey dearly- they absorbed 50,000 Kurdish refugees, saw their $10 billion tourist industry destroyed, and saw their economy growth rate fall drop from 9.5% to .5%. Sanctions cut Turkey off from its largest trading partner. When Turkey looked to Washington for help, they got only $200 million, and we refused to help them get more from the U.N.

We’re now asking the Turkish government to engage in a war that over 90% of its population objects to. Seeing how we’ve stiffed Pakistan and Afghanistan, they’re asking for the money in advance. Can you blame them?

But it's not Ankara's political demands that have spurred outrage in Washington; it's its economic ones. (Democrats have gleefully attacked the White House for promising aid to Turkey but not to America's governors.) American commentators seem to assume that governments like Turkey's will support war with Iraq despite the overwhelming objections of their people and despite the likely economic costs. If they ask for guarantees of assistance to cushion the political and financial blow, they are rug merchants and fair-weather friends. That, it seems, is America's current definition of a genuine ally. Which helps to explain why we look around the world and see so few.

In closing, Hitchens has this policy suggestion for the White House:

(Bush) should take their ugly egotism and selfishness as a compliment to his policy, cut off their aid, leave them to put their own case to the European Union, and tell them to get out of Cyprus into the bargain. Then we could be surer that we were really "remaking" the region.

I hope that that's the worst idea that I hear today.



POSTSCRIPT: Nope, this is the worst idea I've heard all day. From CalPundit, whose permalinks are FUBAR:

A Senate staff member who is privy to the briefings said the administration was "preparing people up here for a de facto, if not declared, North Korean nuclear state and saying that this is something we can deal with through isolation, sanctions, deterrence and national missile defense."

This is just a "rumors" report, of course, but it seems pretty well sourced and certainly fits with the administration's actions to date. So this is the story so far:

Bush declared loudly last year that he would never negotiate with North Korea

North Korea didn't budge

Bush is now backed into a corner

Apparently he feels that allowing North Korea to build a few dozen nuclear bombs is actually preferable to just sitting down at a table with them

Paul Helgesen at CenterPoint has a proposal/ thought experiment about how to deal with Iraq. I'll try to have some commentary up later, but if I don't, I didn't want to lose it.

I think that Andrew Northrup may be ready to pass Seanbaby for the title of "Funniest Guy on the Internet", given Seanbaby's tendency to disappear for six months in a row. Meanwhile, Andrew is off the drugs and high on life. Consider:

Shorter Camille Paglia - I believe that Madonna is the most original philosopher of the millennium, for reasons so self-consciously contrarian that I must surely be the Smartest Girl In The Whole Wide World. My obsessive desire to draw attention to myself and approvingly recite my resume apropos of nothing speaks volumes about my screwed-up psychology, much like the many volumes of Aristotle which I have read in the original Greek.

Shorter Noam Chomsky - Whatever someone said recently is pretty rich, considering East Timor.

Shorter National Review - We are in danger of letting another priceless opportunity to use our tactical nuclear weapons pass us by, largely due to the corrupting influence of gays, women, and Muslims on our precious bodily fluids.

Please welcome bloggyfottom to blogtopia (yes! skippy invented that term!)

The author, Ben Berman, is in DC. I'm not sure if he's had a chance yet to visit the DEA Museum, but as Charles Donefer tells us, they have a new exhibit:

Target America:
Traffickers, Terrorists & You

You can't miss it; it's the exhibit with the giant tasteful replica of twisted metal and rubble from the remains of the World Trade Center.

Charles has invited any local blogger to visit, take pictures and describe it. I'll drink to that.

It's probably only a matter of minutes before this song, "Have You Forgotten", lights up the blog world.

I hear people saying we don't need this war

I say there's some things worth fighting for

What about our freedom and this piece of ground

We didn't get to keep 'em by backing down

They say we don't realize the mess we're getting in

Before you start your preaching let me ask you this my friend

Have you forgotten how it felt that day?

To see your homeland under fire

And her people blown away

Have you forgotten when those towers fell?

We had neighbors still inside going thru a living hell

And you say we shouldn't worry 'bout bin Laden

Have you forgotten?

So let me be the first to ask:

Is this a goddamn joke?

Is there anyone out there still unclear about the fact that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are two different people? And that a war on Iraq isn't going to get bin Laden? Cause he's not there? And they're not allies?

Is there anyone who thinks that it's anti-war partisans, and not pro-war partisans, who are saying "forget about bin Laden"? Cause what I see is a lot of anti-war people saying, "what about bin Laden?", while the White House ignores the question.

Is there anyone except den Beste who thinks that the emotional trauma of September 11th justifies an attack-any attack? I want to attack Zimbabwe and get rid of Mugabe. Who's with me? What- don't you remember the horror of September 11th, you unfeeling bastards? Don't you remember the courage of those firemen rushing up the stairs when everyone else was rushing down? Don't tell me to "get over it"! On to Harare!

Needless to say, The Corner loves it.

I feel like I'm losing my fucking mind sometimes.

Who knew that Get Your War On was such a softie?

Kieran Healy asked, over the weekend:

(a) Since WWII, how many autocratic or totalitarian countries have been invaded by a democracy, had the bad guys deposed, and a stable democratic regime installed; and (b) How does this number compare to the number of invasions or other interventions that resulted in puppet governments, friendly autocrats, messy long-term military occupations, or outright disasters?

I can't answer that question, but according the New York Times magazine:

According to a recent article in The Christian Science Monitor, of the 18 regime changes forced by the United States in the 20th century, only 5 resulted in democracy, and in the case of wars fought unilaterally, the number goes down to one -- Panama.

(The whole NYT article, "Dreaming of Democracy in Iraq," is great, by the way.)

The leaders of Turkey's ruling party, scrambling to recover from the unexpected defeat of their proposal to host U.S. troops in a war against Iraq, said tonight that a decision had not yet been reached on whether to seek another vote in parliament on the U.S. deployment.

Other party officials said the leadership will probably delay a second vote -- if it chooses to schedule one at all -- for at least a week, after local elections March 9 that could lead to a reshuffling of the government. The proposal to host U.S. troops fell short by only three votes, and three vacant parliamentary seats will be filled in the elections....

But any attempt to resubmit the question to parliament would be risky for the Justice and Development Party, which took power less than four months ago and saw nearly 100 of its members buck the party line Saturday. The defection of more than a quarter of the party's lawmakers was a surprise because only 30 members had indicated they would vote no during a party straw poll hours earlier, the party official said.

If Turkey is going to hold a second vote after elections, and the Turkish voters are 90% against allowing the US to use their bases for an attack on Iraq, why would we expect the results to change in a second vote? Isn't it more likely that voters are going to punish a portion of the MPs who voted to give permission and replace them with new MPs who won't?

I don't know anything about Turkey's parliament, so maybe I'm missing something. The article also says:

Public opinion is running strongly against a war in Iraq, but people have grown accustomed to a political system that often disregards their views. Many expected the Justice and Development Party, which holds a 362-seat majority in the 550-member parliament, to prevail.

You could drive a truck through the weaseling here- "many" expected the Rapture on millenium eve. Any input is welcome.

In case you missed it, Bill O'Reilly is mad at Pony for hiring porn star Jenna Jameson for their latest ad campaign. Greg Beato has more.

I don't know how long he's going to ride this Pony, though. I'd imagine that every story about the bullshit "controversy" is going to include this quote:

"I hope Bill understands the difference between a porn star and a hooker," said Ms. Jameson. "I assume he has done some research on the subject matter, because he requested some of my videos after we finished taping my appearance on his program last summer. I imagine he wanted them for professional reasons, of course."

You know, since we have a liberal media that hates conservatives and all.

Quiddity Quack at Uggabugga is a very funny guy, so when he wrote that MSNBC had devoted nine consecutive hours this weekend to hooker coverage, I wanted to make sure that he wasn't kidding. He wasn't.

Busy day. Luckily, as Atrios points out, Jim Henley has already written the only blog post that you need to read today. That's a relief.

Just two notes:

- The capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is just incredibly good news. To me, the lesson of this is that there is simply no such thing as a unilateral war on terrorism. This capture would not have happened if Pakistan had not been enthusiastically prosecuting a war on terror. Similarly, the conviction of the 9/11 plotter in Germany, and so on. Most of the bad guys are in other countries. Their continued good will will save a lot of lives. If for no other reason, this is why diplomacy is important. As we lose the good will of our allies, triumphs like this become less likely.

Incidentally, if Pakistan falls to an anti-American government, we're in a world of shit.

- On a less serious note, some random synapse fired over the weekend, and I started thinking about the "worst blog post ever". For my money, it's Andrew Sullivan's little slash-fiction masterpiece where Maureen Dowd and Howell Raines are in the hot tub. In just over 500 words, he manages to torpedo forever the defense that his holy war against the Times is a matter of journalistic principle, rather than a personal fit of pique. He says that Bob Herbert was only hired because he was black. He jokes about Raines' penis size. He makes fun of Maureen Dowd and Howell Raines for their weight. He seems to imply that Raines is an alcoholic, and definitely calls him a racist.

I looked it up this morning, and it's just as bad as I remembered. For posterity:

----------------------------------------------------------

TAKING LIBERTIES: With apologies to Maureen Dowd's latest column:

Howell and MoDo are in the jacuzzi at 43d Street.

The two masters of the Sulzberger universe have had a great week. And now with wrinkles almost prune-like on MoDo's cellulite, they just had to swig back the Jack Daniels and the Cipro-laced bonbons MoDo loves so much, and review the high-points.

They always keep one eye on the Kid, who's been jogging circles around Punch's Upstate retreat for the past nine hours.

Junior is supposed to be inside practicing how to say "corporate synergy" without his eyes glazing over. But he doesn't want to. "How many African-Americans do I have to hire this year, Howell?" he just kept asking.

"As many as we used to down south," Howell slurred back, after his sixth Jack on the rocks, small little bubbles rising slowly between his thighs. "Jus' treat 'em well, Pinchy-boy, and you can write a story about yo' loyal help later on in life. Heck, I got a Pulitzer writing about mah mammy. Just write somethin' about that Bobbie Herbert, and you'll make it good, some day, sir."

"Righty-O, Howell," said Pinch. "Is Bobbie the chap who brings the Fedex in the mornin'?"

"No, sir," sighed Howell, while MoDo smeared on her fourth face-pack of the day. "He's that guy we hired a few years back to give the op-ed page some di-vers-ity. Good man, that Bobbie. Always cheerful, ain't that right, sweets?" His eyes crinkled into that knowing grin MoDo knew so well. She smiled back but her face-pack cracked all the way across her face and two small cucumber slices fell from her eyes into the water.

"Damn," she spluttered. "That's almost an entire cucumber down there somewhere."

"You bet, baby," joked Howell. "No shrinkage here."

Junior jogged over to the jacuzzi and tried to get the exec's attention.

"Mr Raines? Sir? Can't we do more nasty stories about Bush?" Pinch (or "O2" as they called him) asked, plaintively. "What does he know about anything anyway? He just got his job 'cause his daddy had it. How come he gets the 70 percent approval rating and all I get are private tutorials with Russ?"

"No shweat," Howell slurred, the Jacks beginning to have their usual impact. "We're on the case. We already got him for global warming - it's twenty degrees warmer in this hot tub than yesterday and goddammit, we all know what the real story is here! Same with the terrorists. Does he really think he can win a war out there?" Howell was off now and even MoDo knew better than to stop him. "Quagmire! That'sh what it is. We've gotta stop this war before it gets even worse. All those body-bags. Doeshn't he realize the gooks are gonna turn on us?" He slowly began to slip beneath the surface, MoDo's gas-mask and boiled cucumber fragments bobbing perilously near his jowls.

S tried again to get the exec's attention. "Mr Raines, sir?"

Mr Raines was too far-gone to notice. "Is it getting even warmer in here? Goddammit, Mo, do you have to have your personal trainer in the tub as well?"

"Don't worry, honey," MoDo replied. "He won't touch you. He's gay."

"Diversiteeee!" O2 squealed and jumped headlong into the jacuzzi. Sloshing over to MoDo, his tousled mop all mussed up in the steam, he asked plaintively, "Where's Joe?"