Music Notes - Warren Zevon's last album is almost done, per Rolling Stone.

Let's You and Him Fight - I thought I would do the "right winger gives advice to liberals" thing, because they love it so much. There's a bit of a disagreement between Atrios and Calpundit over the issue of mainstream versus fringe liberals. Calpundit, aiming for a New Republic sort of vibe, complains about "Congressmen who travel to Baghdad to criticize American foreign policy on nationwide TV, gay rights parades that seem deliberately designed to repulse as many ordinary people as possible, college professors who publicly hope for lots of American deaths in Iraq, and tooth-and-nail opposition to bans on partial birth abortion" and professors complaining about the Oscars. In return, Atrios argues that "The 'liberal extremists' only hurt the center because people like CalPundit keep apologizing for them. It's a great way to get a Fox News gig . . . "

This is strange. Atrios adores Bill Clinton as much as I despise him. Bill Clinton at least made rhetorical gestures in the "Calpundit direction" and won two terms handily. (Helped, of course, by the little man with the big ears and the annoying voice.) Atrios' other hero, Al Gore, turned away from his DLC roots and ran the most unabashedly liberal campaign since Walter Mondale - hell, maybe Hubert Humphrey - and couldn't get a majority with a strong economy and weak opposition going for him. The favorite explanation of your diehard Gorephiles - it was the So-Called Liberal Media that did him in - won't cut it, because the same people say the So-Called Liberal Media were unrelentingly vicious to Bill Clinton too. And Clinton won. The only Democrat to actually get his ass into the White House since the Iranian hostage crisis was the one who at least played the Anti-Liberal Extremist Game. The diehards next advert to the Evil Ralph or Stolen Election theory. But ask yourself: if Bill Clinton were eligible for a third term, would he have kicked GWB's ass or what? I think he obviously would have, though not through any doing of mine.

At the very least some epistemological modesty about what hurts the center and helps the center seems called for.

Everybody's a Critic Cont. - When a site called "Cointelpro Toll" showed up in my referrer logs, I expected something critical and was not disappointed. You can't beat "More Boneheaded Analysis from Jim Henley" as a subject hedder. He's responding to my items about the nascent meme of declaring the ordinary Iraqis we came to liberate for their deaths at the hands of coalition forces, which he calls a "strawman" argument, which seems to mean "argument I do not like" here. He wants substantiation of my charges and he wants it now, dammit.

Let me clarify: First, as I believe the original item makes perfectly clear, I was making a prediction. Arthur Silber already found another example. I'm saying there will be more as the war goes on. The test of my thesis takes place over time. Second, when I say "the Pentagon," I mean the Secretary of Defense and his merry band of civilian geniuses, not the uniformed military services, in that building or elsewhere. As I've made pretty clear over the last several months, I give great credeence to the argument that there is a serious rift between the two groups. Third, it's certainly possible that what I mean by "the Pentagon" may never need to make even sanitized, off-the-record versions of the arguments from the Ayn Rand Institute and Silent Running pieces - they may rely on their freelance apologists. In that case, I'll be partially wrong. In any case, watch the evolving policy to find out what they're thinking.

Ditto, Hed (sic) - God knows I disagree with much of what liberal alpha-blogger Atrios has to say. But there's not one word of this item that doesn't get a wholehearted "me too."

On the Othe Hand - Tory dove Matthew Parris argues that the Iraq War scenario may yet prove rosy - he provides some reasons why that might be so - and that, in that case, " Those who, like me, remain unconvinced of the case for war should prepare for a spell of unfashionability." Upshot:

How would I reply? I should then anchor my response in two arguments.
The first is very strong, but will cut no ice at all in public debate; in fact, it will sound pathetic. It is the same response we might offer a wayward brother who, against all advice, bet the family silver on a racehorse, at odds of two to one — and won. ‘You had no reason to be confident of that,’ we would murmur, morally certain that such strictures were fair, but resigned to the fact that they were unlikely to be heard above the popping of champagne corks. That a gamble might have gone horribly wrong tends to be overlooked when it happens to have gone right. ‘Ah well,’ sigh the wise, ‘our advice was sound — and no less sound for being unproven on this occasion.’ But few listen.

My second reply points to the anxiety we would feel about our wayward brother’s next investment. This, we would fear, will only send him back into the betting shop for an even bigger flutter. I hope Saddam and his administration turn tail now, and believe that they may; but I fear the new confidence this will engender in the President of the United States and the British Prime Minister — and a gathering international storm.

Radio Daze - I listened to a few minutes of the G. Gordon Liddy show this afternoon in the car. Yes, I know, I deserve what I get in that case. A caller talking about "exit strategies" wanted to remind Liddy that, while WWII ended in 1945, West Germany didn't become (nominally) sovereign again until after the Berlin Airlift, Japan not until some time after that, and the states of war with those countries only ended in the early 1950s and here it is 2003 and we still have 60,000 troops in Germany and umpty-ump in Japan and Italy and people needed a better sense of history, and Liddy agreed wholeheartedly.

Here's the thing: for both caller and host, all this info was supposed to be reason to worry less about the outcome of the adventure in Iraq.

New Frontiers in Spam

Your name was given to me as someone who might be interested in innovative medical solutions. First, you should know that "penis enlargement" is a myth propagated by unethical operators who prey on the insecure and gullible. And even if it did work, it's not as if you could display it before prospective conquests or work your new, larger member into casual conversations. Our patented Hand Elongation Technology, on the other hand . . .

TTFN - Gary Farber sees off Richard Perle. Of course, Perle isn't exactly gone. He's resigned from the chairmanship of the Defense Policy Board, but Rumsfeld has asked him to remain a member.

The Buck Stops in Qatar - From the Pentagon briefing today:

Q: Mr. Secretary, as you know, there has been some criticism, some by retired senior officers, some by officers on background in this building, who claim that the war plan that is in effect is flawed and our number of troops on the ground is too light, supply lines are too long and stretched too thin. Would you give us a definitive statement, if you would, to the effect that you agree that the war plan is sound and that this criticism is unfounded, or that there's some substance to it?

Rumsfeld: Well, we're one week into this, and it seems to me it's a bit early for history to be written, one would think. The war plan is Tom Franks' war plan. It was carefully prepared over many months. It was washed through the tank with the chiefs on at least four or five occasions.

Myers: Exactly -- more, more.

Rumsfeld: It has been through the combatant commanders. It has been through the National Security Council process. General Myers and General Pace and others, including this individual, have seen it in a variety of different iterations. When asked by the president or by me, the military officers who've reviewed it have all said they thought it was an excellent plan. Indeed, adjectives that go beyond that have been used, quite complimentary.

Rumsfeld is a standup guy. You have to stand up when you're hanging someone out to dry, after all. And I have to say, the transcript doesn't do justice to the effect of hearing Rumsfeld attach just about everyone in the national security bureaucracy to the Cunning Plan before tossing in "this individual" toward the rear of his mighty column of words.

But this article from Government Executive magazine on the genesis of the plan indicates that "this individual" made some important changes late:

By far the most dramatic and disruptive change to the battle plan, however, was Rumsfeld's decision last November to slash Central Command's request for forces. This single decision essentially cut the size of the anticipated assault force in half in the final stages of planning, and it had a ripple effect on Central Command and Army planning that continues to color operations to this day.

Notably, the Pentagon scrapped the Time Phased Force Deployment Data, or "TipFid," by which regional commanders would identify forces needed for a specific campaign, and the individual armed services would manage their deployments by order of priority. The result has meant that even as Central Command chief Gen. Tommy Franks was launching the war, forces identified for the fight continued to pour off ships in the Kuwaiti port of Doha, and not necessarily in the order of first priority.

There's more; for instance, the "Pentagon's decision not to activate many transportation Reserve units before last Christmas also created personnel shortages. Meanwhile, COSCOM itself has only 150 heavy transport trucks for an operation that Army planners estimate requires 700."

All this comes with the proviso that sudden developments may yet make Rumsfeld and his edition of the Best and the Brightest look like the geniuses they take themselves to be. But I ain't bettin' that way. Why? Look at the passage about the trucks again. Now remember the old adage: Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics, and consider the implications.

Stop the War! Bruce Rolston of Flit is taking the weekend off. No War Without Bruce Rolston Analysis! is my watchword.

Quote of the Day comes from Max Sawicky:

What we have seen here is a endless sequence of rumors whose durations dovetail end to end chronologically. By the time one story is finally put to rest, another has risen to take its place. The upshot is that the public digests a continuous dose of bullshit.

UPDATE: Waxy.org looks at who links to the rumors, who links to the corrections and who does both.

ISO INFO - Dear Readers: I would appreciate links/pointers to any authoritative, independent accounts of Iraqi use of human shields. By authoritative and independent, I mean not "coalition spokesmen say" but "we saw," or, especially, "here are the pictures. Thanks.

You Don't Deserve to Live - More on the . . . evolving attitude toward Iraqi civilians from Oliver Willis and Arthur Silber. Arthur, an objectivist, is positively offended at the item from the Ayn Rand Institute, and is in the process of responding in series. Part 1 is here; here's Part 2 and keep checking the main page for more. If this keeps up, I'm going to have to stop making fun of Objectivists.

Maybe - MSNBC reports "U.S. forces dig in for the long haul." Which is probably true. Or maybe there's a task force coming toward Baghdad from Jordan on a flanking maneuver right now, or maybe the 101st Airborne, part of it anyway, isn't heading up the highway to join the 3rd Infantry at all - or maybe only the 1st Brigade is, while the other two are being flown into western airfields secured by special forces. Maybe the reports of 120,000 reinforcements getting ready to ship out are a smokescreen. Hey, remember the pretend invasion of Kuwait by sea in 1991. Maybe, just as the war wasn't going nearly as well as the Pentagon pretended in the first few days, it isn't going nearly as badly as the critics think now.

Maybe.

Don't Be Fooled - Al Jazeerah is not Al Jazeera, the famous satellite network. How can you tell? For one thing, you can actually reach the Al Jazeerah website. (I don't recommend that you do - it's creepy.) You can't reach Al Jazeera.

The Lunatic Atmosphere of War - The mask is starting to slip, just a little, when it comes to Iraqi civilians. This article from the Ayn Rand Institute is representative of the first stirrings I'm seeing among the more firebreathing hawkish bloggers. From there it should spread to NRO and, in due course, the Pentagon:

Moreover, the objection contains a mistaken assumption: it is false that every civilian in enemy territory—whether we are speaking of Hitler's Germany or Hirohito's Japan or the Taliban's Afghanistan or Hussein's Iraq—is innocent.

        Many civilians in the Mid-East, for example, hate us and actively support, materially and/or spiritually, those plotting our deaths. Can one seriously maintain, for instance, that the individuals in the Mid-East who celebrated by dancing in the streets on September 11 are innocent?

        Other civilians in enemy states are passive, unthinking followers. Their work and economic production, however meager, supports their terrorist governments and so they are in part responsible for the continued power of our enemies.

No apologist for Hamas could put it better. Hell, Osama bin Laden couldn't put it better. Actually, the terror apologists make a superficially stronger case - that since Americans (Israelis, Brits, whatever) are citizens of a democracy they are more responsible for the actions of their governments than the subjects of a totalitarian regime. I reject the arguments of Hamas and Al Qaeda, so I have to reject this one too.

What's going on here? Frustration, and fury - the damned Iraqis are not, so far, playing their assigned part. If there are any "uprisings" outside of Kurdistan, they are minor and hesitant. They appear only fitfully grateful for such humanitarian aid as has been distributed. They seem to look on us as - invaders. And that's in the anti-Saddam south.

It was a month into the War For The KLA before the allies began deliberately striking civilian targets. It may yet happen in this war. There's a rational case to be made that less care for Iraqi civilians would save more allied soldiers, and end the war sooner, which is really good for everybody, and so on. But the Ayn Rand Institute article is about finding reasons to blame the civilians we kill. Look for more of it, mostly from the people who kept telling us pre-war that the US had no conflict with the people of Iraq, just their rulers.

Sorry, This is Unqualified Offerings. You Want rumsfeld@dod.gov - Subject header on e-mail come on from Art Today : "An easy way to manipulate your images."

Reading Around - Jim, you ask, are there any intervention skeptics out there who haven't completely lost their sense of humor? Oh indeed, Loyal Reader: Mr. Justin Slotman of the legendary (and legendarily ugly) Insolvent Republic of Blogistan. Musical questions asked, but not answered, include:

Dang it. When all the neocons form a giant robot, what do they call it? Imperius Rex? Rovinator? Machiavelli Max? Cybertron, my Cyberton, I weep rusty tears for ye.

Lively. Tonic. Slotman.

Teresa Nielsen-Hayden reports the news:

India and Pakistan have been firing off deeply alarming test missiles. North Korea’s just getting nuttier. The economy’s singing “My Heart Will Go On.” And the expectation that the Iraqis would give liberating US troops a rapturous welcome has been downgraded from “a disappointment” to “an embarrassment” to “a slot in the world history register of manifest follies.”

Eve Tushnet has a long colloquy with a reader about why she came to support the war.

Hesiod notes that the Coulter Plan is on schedule.

Speaking of fundamentalist Christianity and things I found on Counterspin, is it a sign of the end times when Moammar Ghaddafi starts making sense?

Radley Balko says Glenn Reynolds is setting the "victory" bar a little low. Okay, a lot low.

Kieran Healy wrote what is already a classic blog post the other day (if such things exist) about CNN, Al Jazeera and hypocricy. He follows that up with an attempt to improve on Descartes.

Your Talking Dog explains how Rumsfeld hamstrung the Iraq War at Camp Gitmo. Plus, because this is a Talking Dog entry, more.

Salam Pax still hasn't been heard from since Monday. Worth reading through the archives, though, all the way back before Salam discovered what Trotsky meant when he said "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."

Check Back in June for war news. Maybe we'll know something by then - not about what will happen, but about what has happened. Consider:

The US military has been forced to admit the 8,000 Iraqi soldiers they claimed to have captured last week are now battling British forces.

Meanwhile, there may not be a convoy of Republican Guards heading south to counterattack the US forces after all.

Return of the Long Twilight Struggle - Arthur Silber on what the hawks have wrought.

I have one cavil. Arthur titles his piece "THE PREDICTABILITY OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES." I think he's wrong that the consequences are unintended. The same group of wonks and journalists that argued us into the current war were agitating for a new cold war with China before Zacarias Moussaoui ever enrolled in flight school. They wanted to turn a single snafu over a surveillance plane into a casus frigid belli in the spring of 2001.

Now they're getting what they want, is all. This is the big reason you don't see much "It's all about Israel" on this blog - because I don't think it is. The conflation of (the neoconservative view of) US interests with (the Likud Party view of) Israeli interests is more a symptom than a cause of our present difficulties. If Israel did not exist, our benevolent hegemons would have to invent it. Their goal is what they call "national greatness." Support for Israel (as they define support) is a means to that, not the end of it.

Keep your eye on Russia too. During the first cold war, Moscow was the world's number one sponsor of international terrorism. Those days too could return if Russia decides to make opposition to the Bush Doctrine their central foreign policy principle.

Actual Warblogging Post - The hawks are surely right that we needn't worry about the ultimate outcome of the invasion phase of the war. Ultimately, the US has complete air supremacy, which makes genuine counterattacks by Iraq almost impossible. The bad news of Sunday and the apparent pause today probably don't add up to much. The big sandstorm will, like the snow that covered the Ardennes Offensive, end, and supplies will catch up with the ground troops. (Today's sally against the 7th Cavalry by a force of unknown size seems to have used the sandstorm for cover.)

The only worry I have is political: will Iraqi resistance be successful enough to cause the US and Britain to significantly loosen the rules of engagement, driving up civilian casualties and poisoning the postwar well? The other possibility is if the Administration undertakes siege warfare around Baghdad while waiting for the rest of the invasion force to arrive.

The military has clearly been fighting in a manner calculated to make their postwar lives as viable as possible, but if push comes to shove, the Pentagon and the White House will trade goodwill for victory. Let's hope they don't have to.

Things that are too recent and unclear to be worth talking about: the possible Basra uprising. Is it happening? How big is it? Are they just anti-Saddam or also pro-Coalition? (Or are they pro-Iranian?)

Things that are starting to become not too recent to talk about: the "chemical factory" where "U.S. military investigators have found no evidence that weapons have been made in recent years at a suspected chemical plant secured by U.S. troops in southern Iraq." The "decapitation strike": at this point we have to say that if Saddam is dead, it doesn't matter - the regime is holding together.

Final thought: I'm convinced that the regime is toast, but I'm not sure they are. Like the US, they seem to be fighting the war with political goals firmly in mind. The war crimes committed so far - the fedayeen attacking without distinctive insignia, as the laws of war require for guerillas; the attacks by soldiers pretending to surrender - are appalling but purposeful: they have the political effect of making the attackers distrustful of the locals and therefore making it more risky for the locals to cooperate. It's now much more dangerous for an Iraqi soldier contemplating surrender than it was last week, and otherwise friendly civilians have to fear US/UK troops will think them enemies.

Then there's the Iraqi air force. Someone on the radio in the last couple of days pointed out that allied air dominance is so complete that Iraq hasn't put a single plane in the air. But why not, I wonder? If this is gotterdammerung, what have you got to lose? The planes don't do you any good in their bunkers.

I can come up with two answers. They're saving them up for a last hurrah outside Baghdad. OR . . .

. . . they want to keep them for after the war.

Yeah, it sounds nuts that Saddam and Co. think they'll have an "after the war" to worry about. But as someone else on the radio put it, this gang has been around for thirty years now, and they've been "on their way out" for much of that time. They must look around the bunker and think, "We've been here before."

All of which leads to the one thing I think I've figured out about the war so far. You can't trust what anyone tells you, but watching how they fight will tell you what they're thinking.

Sign of the Times - I had my first fishing session yesterday, though you couldn't prove it by the fish. But while driving from spot to spot I determined that PepCo, our local power company, has closed its Rocky Gorge and Triadelphia reservoirs to recreational use. Until this year, you could pay $30 or so and hike, picnic, fish or hunt (bow and powder, in season) on PepCo's land. Fear of terrorists contaminating the water, which I'm given to understand would actually be very hard to do.

Suggested Reading - I come across a lot of people who say they used to like Instapundit.com but can't stand it any more. Those people might want to try GlennReynolds.com, the MSNBC-sponsored sister site. The writing-to-citing ratio is much greater, the posts are more textured and nuanced and there's less - almost no, really - reflex linkage to the most mouth-breathing of hawkish bloggers. Here's a good post on victory conditions for the Iraq war and another on Matt Welch's "keep your eye off the ball" principle. Even the obligatory French-bashing piece has a certain air of detachment.

I kind of ignored the MSNBC site at first, but it's developed a distinctly different personality from Reynolds' main site, and isn't simply leftovers from Instapundit.

The Good Old Days - The Pontificator doesn't think of them that way, but I sure do. But the worst irony of all? While a lot of Republicans criticized Bill Clinton's War for the KLA, not enough of them did. Too many "We’re in it, so we’ve got to win it" McCainiacs in the GOP.

Opening a Door into a Dark Room - Max Sawicky has a good list of things we don't know about the war yet. Some of his commenters have added useful items.

The Sun Never Sets - Interesting writing on neo-imperialism and its discontents.

Max Sawicky: ANTI-IMPERIALISM: AS AMERICAN AS CHERRY PIE. First of a planned series.

Gene Healy: Anti-Imperialism: The American Way. Mark Twain, the Anti-Imerialist League and left-right alliances of yesteryear.

Arthur Silber: THE "NEW" COLONIALISM: CALL IT WHAT IT IS, AND RECOGNIZE ITS COSTS.

Which brings up something else: the other day, Virginia Postrel wrote

It's common on the left and even more common among isolationist libertarians to charge that the United States is, or is becoming, an "empire" because of interventions abroad. Hearing it the other day, I was struck by how utterly absurd the term is.

Well I resemble that remark. But aside from the fact that I think she's just wrong about the applicability of the term, her list of offenders seems awfully partial. How about neoconservative intellectual Dinesh D'Souza ("In praise of American empire", Christian Science Monitor)? Max Boot ("The Case for American Empire", The Weekly Standard)? Sebastien Mallaby ("The Reluctant Imperialist: Terrorism, Failed States, and the Case for American Empire," Foreign Affairs.) That's leaving aside all the, ahem, code words like "Pax Americana" and "benevolent global hegemony."

A couple of things, Virginia allows that " Saying the word empire is the wrong one doesn't imply that U.S. foreign policy is correct, merely that another term is needed. A 21st-century representative democracy with a large regulatory bureaucracy and many overseas involvements may be problematic." In return, I'll allow that "neo-imperialism" or the ungainly coinage "neo-empire" might be more appropriate than "empire" per se, if the alternatives weren't so ungainly. For that reason, I'll still use the term from time to time, with the proviso that I mean by it what its present-day enthusiasts mean.

Everybody's a Critic - First, from the Being a Hawk Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry Department, blogger Andrew Olmsted says I should get with the program:

We're at war in Iraq now. Regardless of whether it was a good idea or not, it's happened. The debate over war is over. Now it's time to worry about what we need to do next. Rebuilding Iraq, for example, is going to be a long process where we'll often be tempted to take shortcuts. Do we need to set another target after Iraq? What about North Korea? These are all important issues that demand intelligent discussion. Maybe it's time to worry less about who was right and who was wrong, and worry more about what we can do from here.

I skipped the personal stuff about me, because it's the general point that matters. At first I thought Andrew was merely wrongheaded - not so much about the fact that I've been a bit of a slacker about pointing readers toward all the problems that are cropping up with the war so far (Hesiod's your man for that) but about the whole "let's talk about the future now, we've put the past away" aspect of it. We can't decide the wisdom of "setting another target" without determining the wisdom of having set this one, for instance. Heaven knows that , if the war goes reasonably well, which it yet may, it will be presented as an argument for "setting."

That was what bothered me until I remembered what Andrew wrote last summer, when advocating a Congressonal debate on declaring war:

Those who oppose such an invasion would have to explain and defend their position, and place themselves on the record should a future attack prove to have come from Iraq.

So, no "Regardless of whether it was a good idea or not, it's happened" when the option is peace. No placing oneself on record if the option is war.

I ain't takin' that deal.

In other news, Gary Farber has an interesting response to my item about the "code word theory" response to critiques of neoconservatism. In some ways it's a "depends on what your meaning of is is" post. Gary argues that when I wrote

If you seriously maintain that "neoconservative" is a code word for "Jewish," you are an ass.

I might better have added "inevitably" or "always" to the verb. (Reader Andrew Shimmin e-mailed the same opinion.) I see the point, however, I was not responding to nuanced statements. See William Kristol ('He dismisses the claim "that neoconservatives, which really means Jews, hijacked the Bush administration. It's a little creepy." ') and David Horowitz ('Third, I am not a "neo-conservative," whatever that means, other than Jew').

I don't see much nuance there, and it's not hard to come up with other examples of neoconservatives making such blanket accusations. Horowitz is especially instructive, since he denies that the term could mean anything "other than Jew." Coming from a former leftist who turned right because of perceived excesses in the civil rights movement and dismay over the left's softness on foreign policy - that is, coming from an archetypal neocon - it's absurd.

Note that in the clear-cut case of "neoconservative = Jew" that David Frum adduces in his hit job on right-wing peaceniks, there's no "code word" issue whatsoever: Joseph Sobran, who creeps me out, writes 'The situation changed somewhat when many Jewish intellectuals, upset by liberal criticism of Israel, became what were called “neoconservatives.” This term implied no deep adherence to conservative principles, but only the adoption of a few ad hoc principles useful to Zionism, with no basic departure from New Deal liberalism insofar as it was useful to Zionism. “Neoconservatism” was really a sort of “kosher” conservatism.' That's pretty uncoded. I take Sobran as meaning what he says. (And I avoid him, for that reason.) I take the writers who don't make the equation as meaning what they say too.

UPDATE: Andrew Olmsted responds. He apologizes for any personal offense and elaborates his original argument. I still think he's wrong, and that he misunderstands my purpose. The bottom line is, we disagree on what's best for the country. I don't see any way to square that. But that's the issue - what's best for the country.

Weekly Fitness Blog Post - 184 pounds, 37" waist. Down two more pounds from last week.

Of the various fitness factors commonly adduced - muscular strength, resting pulse, blood pressure, work capacity, endurance, oxygen transport etc. - the single most important would have to be "dominating your age-gender cohort. Thus my sheer, egotistic joy at Thursday night's Pinewood Derby for Offering Boy's cub scout den, when I realized that I was in better shape than most of the men in the room. This was the most exhilaratiing diet benchmark since the day, sometime around the turn of the year, when I was, for the first time in years, able to see my dick when I peed without having to bend forward at the urinal.

No, you're wrong - you did need to know that.

Speaking of benchmarks, I bought three new pairs of pants today, size 36". (They fit - remember, clothing manufacturers lie like hell. And my 38" pants stopped hanging right even with a belt this week.)

On the downside, Mrs. Offering and I did a lot of housecleaning yesterday, and our backs just killed us. Among other things, this means I haven't found a good lower back exercise for my workout routine yet. For the record, the general routine is:

Dumbbell squats
Calf raises
Leg lifts (hip abduction)
Shoulder press
Biceps curls
Prone chest flyes
Ab crunches

All exercises are with dumbbells. The leg lifts were useless, in fact, until I started letting a ten-pound weight rest on my leg while doing them. Then, whooh! That's work.

About every other week I swap in stiff-legged dead lifts, which should be working the lower back but plainly aren't.

We now have a control for the Super Slow principles experiment, as Mrs. O simply refuses to give up her Firm tapes for slow-cadence weight training only. Her exercise experiment will make a useful comparison.

More fitness a week from now.

Return of the Chili Blog Post - Mrs. Offering and I just got back from an Oscar party at the swank South Baltimore rowhouse of Jesse Walker and his new fiancee, and I can now report that Jesse's chili is absolutely the best I've ever tasted. Period.

Just Like Oscar I'm staying away from war news today. This is your good news distraction blog for until Monday AM.

It Followed Her to School One Day - I guarantee I did not wake up expecting to see the following Lycos headline:

Police Probe Classroom Sheep Beatings

The story is, unlike the headline, far from amusing.