Cut and Run, the Continuing Series - Alternate title, Letting Iraqis Run Their Own Country: The Latest Developments.

Nick Weininger responds to my friendly critique, fleshing out some of his earlier points. Don't forget to click the MORE link!

Max Sawicky hits it out of the park, making the case for cut-uh, quickly restoring sovereignty to Iraq, while abusing fellow liberals of some cherished fantasies about "internationalization."

Atrios endorses the Sawicky Program and responds to criticism. I congratulate him on his solid, conservative reasoning.

Juan Cole has a good summary of the current plan. I have to say, few have been harder on the Bush Administration than I have the last year, but I'm hard pressed to argue that the current proposals, borne of desperation as they are, aren't the best of our bad options right now.

Josh Marshall finds a WSJ Editorial (remember "laexaminer/laexaminer"!) that lays out an interesting division of labor. Marshall: "Neocons come up with the harebrained idea. The US Army takes it on the chin. And the CIA, the State Department, the Democrats, miscellaneous foreign moderates and other deviants get saddled with the blame."

For the liberals listed above (pretty much everyone after Nick), a major concern is punishing the Administration that got us into this mess and replacing the malefactors with someone competent. I too feel the pull of accountability, but if I start to think that Bush has actually learned something from getting his hand too close to the stovetop, I might want to keep him where he can make use of his learning. I'm not there yet, but I could be.

Finally, not a blog piece, but very important, historian and biographer J.P. Zmirak makes the case for cutting, running and splitting Iraq up on the way out. I'll come back to this one. It's weakest on the "If we leave we'll encourage terror" objection, but intriguingly strong in other areas.

Your Inside Access - Hate the hassle of registering for online news sites that require it? You may not need to bother. Thanks to Matt Welch and his busy LA Examiner bees, you probably don't have to. I've yet to find a major newspaper site anywhere on the internet that you can't get into using the user/password combo "laexaminer/laexaminer" or "laexaminer@laexaminer.com/laexaminer." Now that's what I call civic journalism.

Thanks for Nothing - Yesterday we were dealing with John Keegan's cheery estimate that the US was becoming increasingly imperial, a la the late British Empire. Among hawks we hear a fair amount lately about what a force for freedom and progress said Empire was. Israeli blogger Imshin lives every day of her life with said Empire's aftermath and seems less sanguine:

I do believe that Israeli democracy, which developed, and actually began to function, during this period, came into being in spite of British rule, and independently of it, and not because of it. The British goal was to keep the natives quiet, while they utilized the land for their own ends, i.e. as a transportation route for Iraqi oil. Beyond that I don’t think they could have cared less. The other side of this was what was happening in Arab society in Palestine during the same period. Arab society remained feudal and tribal, and, for the most part, uneducated. Not only was it completely uninfluenced by any democratic notions; it was actually attracted to European Fascism and Nazism. The British disinterest in interfering with, or influencing, local politics, beyond the bare minimum necessary for keeping the peace, eventually blew up in their faces with the Great Arab Revolt of 1936 – 1939, the real first Intifada. From this we can learn that the British approach in Iraq may not necessarily serve as an insurance for keeping the peace (although Iraq has no Jews to stir things up ;-)).

It makes an instructive comparison with Keegan's close. To repeat:

They recognise that Iraq is still a tribal society and that the key to pacification lies in identifying tribal leaders and other big men, in recognising social divisions that can be exploited, and in using a mixture of stick and carrot to restore and maintain order.

To my surprise, this analysis did not arouse American hostility.

I'm just saying.

Is Occupying Iraq Like Dating Your Sister? or something. Patiently, BruceR of Flit deals yet again with warhawk fantasias about massive German resistance to the allied occupation after World War II.

Instapundit and others continue to defend the Rice-Rumsfeld Werwolf analogy to present-day Iraq, citing some clashes between American soldiers and German youths accusing them of fraternization in the late 1940s.

Note how Glenn Reynolds uses the provocative word "murder" even though it is in no way borne out by the source material he cites, an October 1945 clipping about a street brawl in which apparently no Americans were killed.

There is some evidence that Germans sometimes violently clashed with Americans who were seeing German girls during the occupation. Two things about this worth noting, however: one, that has nothing to do with any kind of organized resistance to the occupation itself, and is in no way analogous to Iraq; I'm sure the American soldiers would wish that the only time they were in danger there was when they were out on a date at night with their new Iraqi girlfriend... Second, what the clips don't make clear is that generally the most violent incidents involved black soldiers dating German women.

Interesting post in more than a point-scoring way.

Tacitus Man Group - Okay, I figured this was coming, but I was also kind of hoping for it. When Tacitus was on his swing through Africa last month (which produced some superb reportage on his part), he left his site in the hands of a team of guest bloggers drawn from among his comment section stalwarts. He came home and kicked them out, as well he should have, since it's called tacitus.org and he's Tacitus and they're not. Now three of them have formed the new group blog, Obsidian Wings, an ideologically diverse site that should, judging from the superb job the contributors did for Tacitus, quickly be one of the most entertaining blogs out there - possibly a multi-daily stop, though at least a daily one.

Meanwhile, Tacitus has taken it into his head to go to Iraq. Read about the possibility and consider financing his trip. There may be no one in blogville we could better send.

It's a Blogwatch Blogwatch Weekend Yeah! - Gonna take some time to catch up mentioning some mentionables I came across this week but was too busy writing about cars and wood to mention. I'm also working on another article and a graphic novel. But saying that blogging will therefore be catch-as-catch-can would be strictly from So What Else Is New, huh?

Metrics from Gotham - It's not just Donald Rumsfeld concerned about a lack of measurable standards for judging the War. Diana Moon is too:

Such is the state now between the pro-war and anti-war forces. They can't even agree on the facts.

So I throw out this question to the blogosphere:

What constitutes an objective standard of success or failure in Iraq?

I'd class this with the damn good questions. Somewhere on Brink Lindsey's long-defunct blog, he apparently posted a What could make me change my mind item. I'm not sure whether it was more focused on the war's justification or its progress, though. Glenn Reynolds had a March 20, 2003 article on his MSNBC blog that set out different levels of victory conditions. However, MSNBC's archives seem to go back only so far as September.

Me, I need to think about it. Presumably I should disentangle "What would convince you the war was wise" from "What would convince you we've obtained a good result?" But here's a first cut:

o Sunsetting of the PATRIOT Act;
o Tabling of the VICTORY Act;
o A severe narrowing of Executive latitude in declaring "enemy combatants";
o A restoration of habeas corpus for terror suspects apprehended in the United States, including an acknowledgement of civilian court jurisdiction;
o Some similar civil liberties stuff I forget right now.

But this stuff has nothing to do with the situation in Iraq! you say.

That's not what we were told. The neolibertarians, most famously Glenn Reynolds, but others too, justified their support for war by saying that we needed to aggressively pursue the enemy (by whatever definition) abroad to avoid panic-induced repression at home. They have spent far more energy the last two years advocating the administration's wars than fighting the administration's internal-security measures. For the war to be a success on their own terms, we need to see a loosening of the controls already in place. We are starting to see exactly the sorts of alarming "mission creep" in PATRIOT Act provisions and Department of Homeland Security purviews that critics feared from the start. To quote hawk god Christopher Hitchens from December 2001:

As an immigrant with a green card, I find that my American wife and American children will not insure me against a secret arrest, against undisclosed evidence, against a verdict with no appeal, or against my execution in a secret ceremony. (As the New Yorker puts it this week, the above procedure is so secret that it may, in theory, already have occurred.)

When all of the above changes for the better, the libertarian-minded hawks will have at least prima facie justification to claim success.

Ne'er So Well Express'd - Avedon Carol had the most impressive response I saw to Naomi Wolf's porn plaint. Unfortunately she buried most of it in the comments to Matt Yglesias's post on the subject, and while Matt is a fine human being and an entertaining writer, his blog comments lack permalinks, so rather than make you scroll down I'm going to exhume Avedon's contributions for you. Part the first:

I'm completely amazed at Wolf's apparent belief that the average college-age woman was ever brimming with sexual confidence.

What we were generally brimming with was the conviction that guys were generally trying to nail anything female, and that's why they were trying to nail us, even though we weren't that pretty, our breasts were too small or too big, our asses were huge, our hair was crap, etc.

Yeah, the same women that guys thought "knew what they were doing" to them never imagined that anyone thought they looked particularly good. Mostly they assumed that with that zit, that ass, that hair, those guys would never ask them out once/again/whatever. And 90% of what they did they were doing because they thought they had to in order to be considered desirable.

Young women have always been insecure about men and the fact that men really are trying to get into our pants doesn't change that because we are convinced it's not personal.

And we can whine all we want about Playboy, but we aren't really comparing ourselves with the Playmates, we're comparing ourselves with fashion models, who are much thinner and even more heavily airbrushed and made-up than porn models. Thank god most guys prefer porn models to fashion models - most of them look considerably more human, and considerably more female.

Men, of course, get less obnoxious as they get older, and that is probably what Ms. Wolf is noticing. Men in their 40s are not just looking to get laid, so they don't try to back you into a corner as fast.

And then men think you look fantastic and wish to hell they could make you stop whining about your big ass and your hair and whatever. (I sometimes think what men really like about porn is that it's so refreshing to see a woman just get undressed and not say something like, "Is my ass too big?")

I'm 51. I don't do what's expected of me and I don't do anything I don't want to do and men - including men who are young enough to be my own offspring - still hit on me. I don't know why they don't hit on Wolf, but she looks more conventionally "pretty" than I do and she's more than a decade younger so it can't be looks and youth alone. Maybe it's that I don't run around trying to make up reasons why porn is bad.

Or maybe they are hitting on her and they're just too subtle for her to notice, or she is still too screwed up to know when to take it personally, or some other dumb girl reason. Or maybe she just intimidates the hell out of them. God knows it can't be because they're not interested in real women, because they sure as hell are, and I still get reminders of that every time I walk out of the house.

Part the second:

One hopes that once one is past one's teens one begins to realize that being "well-hung" has nothing to do with it. Good god, how smart do you have to be to know that teenage girls generally decide whether they are that interested in a guy before they have any idea how well he is hung - and they don't want to hear about it from you, either.

Sheesh.

Well-funded doesn't usually have all that much to do with it, either. Brushing your hair and standing up straight is a much more valued quality.

But of course, guys have stupid ideas of what girls are looking for, and girls have stupid ideas of what guys are looking for, and this was true long before any of us were looking at any porn.

And anyway, how do you explain the fact that guys aren't the only people who fantasize rape? It's not as if we can't get any. Double-sheesh

And a reminder that Wendy McElroy has put the entire text of her book on the subject online. There's a chapter on a survey she conducted among sex workers that suffers from all the problems of self-selection and sample size that she rightly finds in a lot of surveys relied on by porn critics. But the chapters where she is playing philosopher and reporter rather than social scientist are first-rate.

The Nays Have It - A few more votes came through in favor of MORE . . . links and extended entries, but the tally still ran decisively against. And since I never much liked them myself, they're history. We're back on the original plan for this site: you come to the main index page here, you get it all. If you're sure you don't want it all, you have two options:

Comics fans who want to avoid politics can bookmark the Fanboy's Notes index page.

Comics non-fans and anti-fans can bookmark the Fanboy-Free index page.

Hm, Not Bad - Memo to Atrios: Uppity Negro says he's trumped both of us on quoting from Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. But I'm inclined to rule him ineligible, since it's far from clear he was quoting it in the context of the War. (The War being allegedly still only a possibility at the time of his original post.)

But it's always cool to quote Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, so I salute him, and Atrios too.

And Now for Something Completely Different - Reader mail on other topics!

Tom Scudder wrote in about The Decline of Shock at naughty pictures of famous (or obscure) women:

On the other hand, a lot of things that would have gotten no response 40 years ago now shock and outrage people. Seen any AMOS & ANDY marathons on Nickelodeon lately?

Some of those grand old entertainments really can be offensive, even to a crusty right-winger like me. (I can't recall seeing Amos&Andy, so have nothing to say on that show specifically.) Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan books really are racist. In one of the early ones he makes a point of telling us that Tarzan esteemed the blacks of the jungle as lower than the animals therein. Now, he really loved the animals, but Burroughs was still not praising with faint damnation. The Tarzan books are a lot of fun to read if you bracket that stuff off, but its easier for someone like me, who isn't the target of Burroughs' bigotry, to do that.

Brad DeLong cries foul:

You are not allowed to say that you had a big problem with Keegan's History of Warfare, and not tell us what it is!

What if I don't remember? Okay, it's not quite that bad, but it's been something on the order of eight years since I read the thing, so I can't summon up a lot of supporting details. (Cue chorus: So what else is new!) But basically, Keegan's theme is that "Clauswitz was wrong." War is not the continuation of politics by other means. Rather, warfare is a cultural expression, and its forms are largely determined by the cultural imperatives of the waging country.

The first thing to say is that "Warfare is a cultural expression" and "War is the continuation of politics by other means" are not necessarily mutually-exclusive statements. So Keegan set out, if I recall correctly, to show that when cultural and political imperatives conflict, culture trumps politics. My feeling was that he failed to make his case. Culture and politics can be slippery terms. For most every case studied, it seemed to me that he was either arbitrarily reclassing a political factor as a cultural one, or that he was ignoring some fairly obvious political constraint that cut against the ones he acknowledged.

But don't ask me to prove that in a weekend as I don't own the book.

Finally, Kevin Carson wrote in about Wednesday morning's frugality-movement item, and Charles "How to Survive without a Salary" Long in particular:

Long makes the mistake of confusing the "market" with the cash nexus, or with a vulgar "economic man" model of human behavior. In reality, all the market is is a non-coercive environment for free exchange, voluntary cooperation, and otherwise peacefully pursuing one's own values, whatever they are. As Karl Hess said thirty years ago, libertarianism is a people's movement. And it has as much, if not more, room for cooperatives, community technology, neighborhood government, and mutual aid, as it does for corporations.

I couldn't have put it better myself.

Jim You Ignorant Slut - Not all the reaction today was to my firewood. Chad Orzel has a reaction to my reaction to his reaction to my SUV article. The Spectator itself has one letter so far and maybe more to come. Looks like you'll have to scroll down until the Spectator's webmaster redoes the letters page with permalinks for each missive. Look for "Having Pull" by W.F. Whitelaw on 11/14. It's at the top now and probably through the weekend. After that, who knows.

Mike Kozlowski takes the anti side:

I'm late to the critical party, but since none of the "liberal"
critiques of your article swayed you, here's why you, as a libertarian,
should be anti-SUV:

SUVs represent a tragedy of the commons. In car-on-car collisions with modern cars, the most significant determinant of fatalities is weight. If two small cars crash, there's a certain base percentage of either driver getting killed (alas, I'm too lazy to look up the real numbers); but when a big car hits a small car, there's a much smaller chance that the big car driver dies, and a much greater chance that the small car driver dies.

So, for safety reasons, you want to have a big car for yourself -- because the safety benefits of that big car accrue to you, but the safety costs of that big car are borne by other people (specifically, the people you're crashing into). This is a classic example of the sorts of situations where even libertarians acknowledge that markets fail and regulation needs to step in.

Without regulation or other intervention, this situation goes nowhere pleasant: As more people get big cars, the people in little cars are increasingly at risk of getting in a fatal crash, so their incentive to get a big car goes up; eventually, it becomes insanely dangerous not to get a big car (for certain values of "big", we're already there -- can you imagine driving one of those tiny Euro-cars on American highways? People with Mini Coopers must have nerves of steel).

Worse yet, big-on-big collisions are worse than small-on-small collisions, since there's a lot more energy involved in decelerating massive amounts of weight than in smaller amounts, so even if everyone gets the big SUV, they're all less safe than if they'd all gotten small cars. Which I suppose also makes it a prisoner's dilemma...

So if you ignore all the environmental hoopla (which, oh yeah, is another situation where the costs fall mostly on other people rather the purchaser, and therefore the sort of thing that market libertarians should in principle already be in favor of regulating) and concentrate only on the safety issue, you've still got solid grounds for regulation.

Or hell, if you don't like regulation, just think about it in ethical terms. You're risking other people's lives to make your own life safer; that's immoral in just about any system (Kantians would say it's inconsistent with the Categorial Imperative, utilitarians would say that the world's better off if you don't buy the SUV), so even if it's not forbidden, a moral preson wouldn't buy an SUV in the absence of a really compelling (non-safety) reason.

I can assent to some of this in a general way. Theoretically, if anyone has a vehicle that is sturdier or heavier than anyone else's, SUV or not, that person is throwing costs onto others, though, in Mike's model. As mentioned before, I do not myself own an SUV. We have a beat-up old Volvo 940 Turbo, which drinks gas like Mia Hamm swigs Gatorade, and a slightly older Ford Escort, which is not a subcompact but which I could probably tear apart with my bare hands if I had to squeeze it through a door. The Volvo is beloved of suburban liberals - I used to joke that I got it free when I joined the Gore campaign - and touted for its "safety." But in a collision with my other car, the Volvo's passengers would come out ahead at the expense of the people in the Escort. The Volvo is heavy and definitely takes longer to stop than lighter cars. It's an expensive car if you don't buy it 10 years down the line, so its safety is not available to many consumers.

But nobody is out there agitating against late-model Volvos. Pursued to its end, Mike's logic would demand that everybody be required to buy an equally safe/unsafe car. I can't see pursuing it to its end. On the other hand, I recognize that, with an SUV, it's not just the weight but the higher suspension that tells in a collision. On the other other hand, this is true of pickups and other heavy vehicles.

It's worth noting that there are libertarians that hate SUVs, most prominently Virginia Postrel.

Jonathan Pearse writes

Interesting that this argument should have drawn some criticisms from over at Crooked Timber. But then perhaps some are bugged by what I think is a broader point, namely that those folk who fork out for a big vehicle like a four-wheel drive SUV or who work out in a gym pumping iron are trying to enhance their self reliance skills across the board. It is about a certain way of approaching life in general.

Individualistic-minded folk like SUVs and keep-fit for self-reliance reasons. Having a car that can take you where you want in all kinds of conditions, including the odd snow blizzard, is all part of saying, "I am able to be in control of my life. I am not at the mercy of others or over-dependent on them". And perhaps this explains why a certain type of collectivist dislikes SUVs so much. All their bleating about the Greenhouse Effect and safety is a smokescreen, in my opinion, for their broader support of the "victim culture". This may be a bit harsh on some SUV critics but I think the point is valid.

At the moment I live smack in the middle of London, use public rapid-transit transport 99 percent of the time and occasionally rent out a car. But one of these days, when I move out in to sub-topia, that will have to change. Bring on the big car!

Shane Mullen forwarded me an e-mail he also sent to the Spectator:

Sorry, I don't buy it. Mr. Henley's justification of suburbia's SUV obsession (Muscle Cars, 11/13/03) is a weak case. The main complaint by SUV critics is that there is too much power in the vehicles, and not enough fuel efficiency. Mr. Henley proceeds to ignore this argument and discuss all-wheel drive and towing capacity. Even these arguments are weak. SUV's aren't the only vehicles with all-wheel drive, many vehicles are all wheel drive and have engines with 20+ MPG efficiencies (e.g. Subarus, Audis, Volvos). SUV's are also not the only class of vehicles that can tow large loads (e.g. diesel powered VWs). Plus, towing is a torque-related spec, not horsepower-related spec. Most critics of SUVs ask for emission standards and fuel efficiency requirements to be raised. You can have all the desired features consumers want in an SUV (high torque, all-wheel drive, storage space) and make it a lot more palatable to the greenies/safety conscious (lower bumpers, low emissions, high fuel efficiency). They wouldn't even know the difference.

Summing up, since we've about beaten the topic into the ground now:

1) I don't argue that everyone needs an SUV.
2) SUVs have some capabilities that people might really need, not necessarily every day, but with predicible regularity or irregularity.
3) For those people, the marginal cost of filling that need - in money and time - may be less than the marginal cost of having an SUV as their second (or first) car.
4) You will not necessarily be able to tell who those people are when you see them on their ride home or in the parking lot at the mall.

Pink Pistol - Also from Michael Schaffner, whose fine books you should buy, read and treasure, a magnificent historical find.

Michael comments:

Say you're a lonely clerk in the Attorney General's office in 1870. You spend your days at work fiddling with the fifth edition of your only book of poems and your evenings trolling the streets of downtown DC looking for a few good men.

But what do you do if one of those bad bad boys you try to pick up really IS a bad one.

Well, if your name is Walt Whitman, you reach for your trusty Sharps Four-Barrel Large Frame Derringer with its patented .30 rimfire cartridges and watch that sucker drop to his knees faster than you can say, "Thank you, sailor!"

The photo comes to you courtesy of The American Rifleman.

Jonathan Rauch and Walter Olsen would be proud, I like to think.

I'm a Lumberjack, am I Okay? - The hot topic in today's mail is my . . . wood. Too soft? Too hot? Too full of foulness? Readers size up the situation below.

When we left our story, Tom Krause had suggested that all my work on the post-Isabel deadfall had been wasted, because pine was a poor wood for burning and locust a dangerous one. He follows up with:

Yes, I think the will still give you problems even when aged. The pine will go up like kindling (uh, in fact, I think most kindling is pine) and is not worth the trouble of burning. In addition to the intense heat, you will be getting up every five minutes to put on another log. Plus, I don't think the creosote issue goes away. Locust is just bad, bad, bad. Notice how heavy and dense the wood is? That's because its chock full of harmful compounds and chemicals. It was used in the past for fence posts, etc., because it would not rot. In fact, locust is not really a tree but a legume. Is it possible to glue the trees back together and re-deposit same on your neighbor's yard? Of course, please confirm the above information with an arborist, etc. Perhaps best bet is to have a tree service come over and wood chip it and haul it off. Your neighbor should kick in a majority of the money for costs he would have incurred anyway. You should chip in some also as a societal penalty for being a silly ol' city boy who owns a chain saw.

Okay, Loyal Readers. Clearly some of you are starting to write your letters with eye toward how they'll look on the weblog. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

But Tom has his critics! Man of letters Michael Schaffner writes

FWIW, I've burned both pine and locust in my woodstove, as well as beech, maple, oak (red and white), cherry, mulberry, and holly. I use what's available, but I'm aware of the differences. Pine is frowned on because it's a soft wood, which means it burns quickly and does produce a lot of creosote. So keep your chimney clean. If locust burns too hot for you, burn less.

I use my woodstove several times a week in winter and brush it out once a year. You should probably have your chimney inspected and regularly cleaned no matter what you burn. A cracked flue can cost over a thousand bucks to replace. A chimney fire can bring your house down.

Michael Gillum writes

Split locust is money in the bank. Locust is the best of all common fire woods, because it is the most dense. Because of its density, it takes a long time to season and needs to be split more finely. Don't use it until it is really, really dry. I've used tons of it in a small stove where creosote has to be carefully monitored.

So you see the conflict here. Maybe I should show my wood around the neighborhood and see what everyone thinks of it.

Hand, Bush, Wherever - This week's Bad Timing Award goes to John Keegan, whose sunny interview with Donald Rumsfeld in the Daily Telegraph ran the day after news broke of the alarming CIA estimate endorsed by Rumsfeld's man-on-the-scene, Paul Bremer. Keegan's article is premised on the theory that if you really want to know what's going on somewhere, find the most official and partisan voice 8,000 miles away.

I should state that I've liked most of Keegan's books, though I had a big problem with his History of Warfare that doesn't bear going into just now. And we can find some interesting things in his article if we unpack it.

The first striking thing is what we might call RSN Syndrome (as in Real Soon Now). In this and other "good news" articles, close reading often reveals that the real good news is in the predictions rather than the present circumstances. So we read that right away that

Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary of Defence, believes that Saddam Hussein is alive and hiding somewhere in Iraq. He also believes that he will be found by the coalition forces.

That's great that he believes that. After the deaths of Uday and Qusay every warblogger on the internet believed that Saddam would be in the dock or on a slab in very short order. Nothing would please me more than to wake up one morning and find that Saddam had been taken alive. Though I would rather have him alive than dead, surely the opposite of the Administration's priorities, even his death would be a relief. A death that sticks, not like all the others so far.

But it ain't happened yet. More:

Mr Rumsfeld read me a series of reports, from the American regional commands, summarising progress achieved: terrorists apprehended, weapons recovered, explosives destroyed. The totals were impressive.

Good news in itself, if eerily similar to the sorts of progress reports we get from the War on Drugs. We've seized [X] kilos, umpty-ump dollars and arrested [Y] smugglers! There are probably fewer rocket-propelled grenades in the world than coca plants, but surely not by much. As Rumsfeld himself pointed out in another context, the question is whether we're destroying arms and enemies faster than the replacement rate (and whether we're driving up the replacement rate too), and as Rumsfeld also pointed out, we lack metrics to determine this. Didn't Keegan get the (literal) memo? Doesn't it occur to him to match what he's hearing from Rumsfeld now with what he already knows to be Rumsfeld's thinking?

More

Despite daily reports of American casualties, he was dismissive of the danger to coalition forces. Within the context of the total security situation, he sees the level of violence as bearable and believes that the trend of terrorist activity is downward.

And what does he base this belief on? There are more attacks per day now than there were over the summer and the death rate is higher. How is that a downward trend? Rumsfeld is either applying a very idiosyncratic meaning to the word "trend," or - he's speaking speculatively again, as in We believe the trend will be downward very soon.

He foresees a reduction of the size of the coalition force, now largely American but with a big British element, over the coming months. That will be achieved by the introduction of other forces from outside. He particularly hopes for a Pakistani division.

Oh my god. Even Juan Cole has finally recognized that division-sized contributions from other countries are not forthcoming. Rumsfeld himself showed more sense on this issue just a couple of months ago. If he really thinks he's going to get a whole division from Pakistan (with all the security problems that would entail) he's truly in dreamland. And yes, you can throw this statement back in my face if it happens.

Note the key word here, though: "hopes." Again and again, the "good news" turns out to follow words like hopes and soon, in this and other articles. The administration and its supporters have been hoping into one hand, though, since May, and the other one has been filling up much faster.

More:

Economically, the outlook is strongly positive. Electricity supply actually exceeds pre-war levels, with an output of 4,400 megawatts per day in October, as against 3,300 in January. Oil production is returning to pre-war levels, at nearly 2,200 million barrels per day in October, as against 2,500 million barrels before the war.

Riverbend, this week:

I have to post this fast. The electrical situation has been hellish today. There's no schedule… in our area the electricity is on 30 minutes for every two hours of no electricity.

As to the oil, I'll mention that Iraq's prewar oil production levels represent a performance degraded by a dozen years of sanctions, legal limits on production by UN sanctions and such smuggling arrangements as the regime was able to make. Being close to pre-war production levels is nothing remotely approaching an achievement. Comparisons of present oil production (and present predictions of future production) with prior predictions by the CPA and the Administration are left as an exercise for the reader.

Socially, the country has returned to normal. More than 3.6 million children are in primary school and 1.5 million in secondary school.

The schools again! For crying out loud, people, Iraq always had schools! They were closed during the bombing phase of the invasion. They reopened in May with the end of the invasion phase of the war and closed for summer vacation. Schools being open in the fall in any country in the world is "What do you want, a cookie?" stuff.

University registrations have increased from 63,000 before the war to 97,000. Healthcare is at pre-war levels and is improving rapidly, because of greatly increased spending, estimated to be at 26 times pre-war levels. Doctors' salaries are eight times higher and vaccination and drug distribution programmes have also been greatly increased.

"Health care is at prewar levels," which were degraded by a dozen years of sanctions. ("Improving rapidly" is more soon talk. Maybe so, maybe no for now.) I have some questions about what "pre-war levels" they are using for comparison - immediate pre-invasion numbers that would have been suppressed by war prep or something more like apples to apples? - but there is no doubt that some of this represents good news. How liberal though to be couching your health care pep talk in terms of spending levels rather than patient outcomes. Would someone remind me, this administration is supposed to be conservative how?

Mr Rumsfeld was also keen to emphasise the degree of progress made in introducing democratic institutions into Iraq, not only at the national but also the local level. All Iraqis are now represented in a series of provincial councils. The councils are at present appointed, but the intention is that they should be elected in the near future.

Really, if I take that one apart for you it would represent an insult to your own critical intelligence. (Yes, you in the back. "Presently appointed!" "Intention!" "Near future!" The real good news is what we're wishing! Excellent, Grasshopper. You are ready to leave this place.)

What might the real future be? Perhaps it lies in Keegan's explanation of the differential levels of unrest between the British and American zones:

While the Americans, for reasons connected with their own past, seek to solve the Iraqi problem by encouraging the development of democracy, the British, with their long experience of colonial campaigning and their recent exposure to Irish terrorism, take a more pragmatic attitude.

They recognise that Iraq is still a tribal society and that the key to pacification lies in identifying tribal leaders and other big men, in recognising social divisions that can be exploited, and in using a mixture of stick and carrot to restore and maintain order.

Divide and conquer. Rule by coopting the "big men" and give the BMs a long leash to impose their own will on the locals. Carrot and stick. There are some who say that Iraqis are incapable of building democratic institutions . . .

The sunny, imperial close of Keegan's article - It's just like Kipling now! - is a reminder of what sensible people are fighting against.

Meet the New Boss - Wesley Clark supports a constitutional amendment "that would make it illegal to desecrate the American flag by burning or other means," according to a NYT report on Clark's address to a gathering of veterans in Manchester, NH. This is either an incredibly cynical stance or an appallingly sincere one.

I read what I considered the last word on flag burning years ago in my Usenet days. It went something like this: "Of course flag burning is speech. It sends a message. Right now the message is, I'm a jerk with a pack of matches. Pass a law against it, though, and the message becomes When in the course of human events . . . "

But This Really Hurts - Tom Krause writes

In the [Spectator] essay you stated you cut down, sectioned and split a locust tree and pine tree for burning in your fireplace. Yikes!!!! I cannot speak of the pine but I would presume it would not make very good firewood. However, based on personal experience and the advice of a wise relative, do not burn locust in your fireplace. It gets too hot and produces too much creosote and other nasty stuff. Seriously, I would not burn either pine or locust (but especially locust). You are asking for a flue fire, perhaps not now but in the future and/or cracked firebrick. I am totally serious about this. Really.

Well shit. Shit shit shit. Gonna have to camp more, so I can burn all that locust outside. Locust and pine aren't even good barbecue wood.

Guess I'll toss everything back over the fence!

(Note to readers: I was indeed polite enough to thank Tom via e-mail. I didn't just curse a lot.)

Honk Honk - Lots of reaction to the Spectator article, and I'm grateful for all of it, even the (largely friendly) criticisms. All I have to do now is convince my editor that the traffic is due to the author and not to the obvious hot-button nature of the topic. Otherwise my next article will have to be a ringing defense of using assault weapons to perform partial-birth abortions, and where can I go after that?

Which reminds me that, years ago, a Yale Press rep and I spent some time trying to top the political correctness quotient of Lethal Weapon II's drug-dealing South African government officials, with an eye toward the yet-to-be-made Lethal Weapon III. We settled, as I recall, on Chinese generals burning homeless people to power a machine designed to destroy the ozone layer. (This was within a year or so of the Tienanmen Square massacre.)

But wait - didn't I have a topic? Oh yes. A defense of SUVs and attacks on defenses of SUVs. See generally critical comment threads (and posts) at MatthewYglesias.com and Crooked Timber (but see Nick Weininger at Matt's and Mikhel on CT), and more in that vein from Chad Orzel. Chad goes wrong in a classic "liberal scientist" way - imagining that he can calculate the "legitimate need" of someone who is not him with the precision that he might calculate the strength of a magnetic field.

That's a common thread among the complaining comments. The other is the argument that the supposed danger of the vehicles to other drivers trumps any possible benefit that may accrue to their owners. The safety issue was outside the scope of my article. I'm presently agnostic on the matter, but I would want to see handling comparisons with minivans, pickups and wagons, not coupes.

Roger Simon notes that hybrid gas-electric SUVs are coming, including a Toyota Highlander. (Link via Glenn Reynolds.)

Brendan Huhn, that libertarian rabble-rouser, has a favorable reaction.

Some reader mail on the topic. Peter Gookins writes

A car - or truck, or chain saw, or lawn mower - is a tool. Tools are designed to not only accomplish work but perform as force multipliers for humans. They're productivity enhancers. Consider cutting trees with a two man buck saw versus a garden-variety chain saw. My experience is that one guy with a chain saw can whip 8-10 guys with buck saws.

As you pointed out, one doesn't necessarily need to own an SUV (or a chain saw, or whatever), assuming that such an implement can be obtained and utlized when necessary. What's not considered, however, is the human cost associated with such actions. Your rent-the-SUV example leaves out the time and effort necessary to arrange for the rental, get someone to take you to to the rental place, pick it up, check it over to make sure the last user didn't trash something that will leave you stranded, return it when done, etc. While you're doing this, what else of equal or greater value doesn't get done?

The real issue is "total cost of the delta;" the difference between the TOTAL cost of special-situation use scenarios (renting an SUV) vs the TOTAL cost of a smaller car that won't do what an SUV (or pickup) does AND the cost of the time required to execute those special-situation scenarios, which includes other time-value tasks not completed (not to mention those value-add tasks that don't ever get done because of the hassle factor associated with special-situation usage or the unavailability of the tool when you need it). I'm betting that the total value of the equation is pretty close.

Something else that was outside the scope of my article: if you're a parent of a small child, in your thirties or forties, with a back that's starting to go - which is to say, if you're most parents in your thirties or forties - it is one hell of a lot easier to strap a child into a high-carriage vehicle like an SUV or minivan than into a standard sedan. That is definitely worth something.

Interesting recurring thread in some of the criticism: a certain insouciance about shelling out money and a lack of regard for any DIY ethic. From Crooked Timber commenter Nick:

It’s a bollocks comparison, of course.

Once a year, you might have a problem with your water pipes; which means you should train as a plumber. Three or four times a year, you may have car problems (or more often, if you own an SUV, the build quality being rubbish); which means you should train as a mechanic.

Well actually, yeah, most of us would be better off if we learned some plumbing. And everyone who drives would do well to take at least an introductory auto mechanics course. My lack of familiarity with plumbing, carpentry and auto repair is something I regret. Yesterday I discussed frugality-movement books. All of them stress the value of learning to handle your own repairs and projects. But frugality seems well outside the concerns of some commenters. Nick again:

If you need muscle occasionally, you hire it; you don’t spend six months in preparation.

Okay then! We have people for that! If we have the money for them when we need it. And can get the people quickly. And get no satisfaction out of being able to actually handle things ourselves.

The realtor who sold us our house told us her husband's favorite witticism:

"Do you know what's the greatest labor-saving device ever invented? Money."

It instantly occurred to me that the reverse was equally true.

Anyway, like I said, I thank everyone who picked up on the article, but especially Kieran Healy of Crooked Timber, because he also included two links to the weblog, which should do wonders for my modest ranking in the various blog standings.

Hunkering Down - Kevin Drum has found a fascinating, and depressing indicator that the good times will not be rolling just yet - news from Wal-Mart on how actual customers are behaving. Wal-Mart knows not only how much people are spending, but what they're buying ("the cheapest items in any given category") and when ("around the receipt of their paychecks, indicating liquidity issues"):

The retailer -- which taps directly into the psyche of the U.S. consumer -- gave a downbeat economic outlook that contrasted with reams of recent data, and bluntly suggested that many of its shoppers are barely making ends meet.

Crap. Crap crap crap. I am not one of those people who gets all sour and resentful when everybody's raking it in like in The Go-Go 80s and the (remove hat, moment of silence) Tech Boom. I don't worry that people in such times are neglecting their spiritual sides and debasing themselves in shallow, materialistic excess. That stuff can't come back soon enough for my tastes. And apparently it won't.

Foods Touch Item - In yesterday's review of Queen & Country: Operation Blackwall, I complained that

In this age of the Hilton sisters and topless photos of everyone from High Society to Walton Mountain, the prospect of het sex vids of a rich girl going public are supposed to give her father 80 million dollars worth of pause.

What should appear today on Reason's site than a Nick Gillespie essay noting just how little shock and outrage "the sorts of displays that were simply unimaginable 40 years ago" occasion any more.

Breezy - Actually windy. Power is down various places and cable internet was down for awhile too. Service is back up but v e r y s l o w . I may give up in frustration before I get to all the reaction to the Specator piece. Darn. There are developments on the liberal hawk front to cover too. Double darn.

Return of the Liberal Hawk? - My partisan Democrat buddy Hesiod notes the early signs of a predictible phenomenon - abandonment of the Bush Administration by the national greatness wing of the Republican Party:

So far, fire has been concentrated on the Pentagon, or rather, Donald Rumsfeld.

Like Niccolo Machiavelli trying to worm his way into the good graces of the Medici's, William Kristol conspicuously avoids criticizing the President for the current policy screw ups (as he sees them) in Iraq.

Now I've long noted the potential for the neos to decide to wreck GWB's reelection prospects. You could see signs of it as early as late 2001, when writers like Russ Smith of the New York Press and Andrew Sullivan would mention, in asides, that of course George Bush would not deserve reelection if Saddam Hussein were still in power come 2004. The question since has been one of coalition politics - would the Weekly Standard/NRO types accept the half-loaf of Saddam's dethronement in place of the generations-long war of transformation in "six or seven countries" that is their heart's desire?

I think it could still go either way, depending on Administration signals. Karl Rove's reported "No war in '04" is not necessarily "No war in '05." The neos waited a dozen years for Gulf War Phase II. They may decide they can wait a dozen months for Gulf War Phase III.

But what about the Democrats? With so many of the candidates and their allied pundits insisting that We just want to do the job right, and with their rhetoric emphasizing less the folly of the decision to invade and more the Bush Administration's "incompetence" in carrying out the post-conquest occupation, there will be a strong temptation for Dem partisans to try what amounts to a right flanking maneuver - join the neos in attacking the administration's "irresolution"; attack it for drawing down forces "instead of doing the job right"; accusing Bush of "abandoning Iraq for political reasons." That is, for the sake of their own short-term political advantage, the Dems may lock themselves into rhetoric that yokes the country more tightly to the Grand Project yet.

It's not hard to see the temptations. Politically, the course at least appears to inoculate the Democratic candidate on national security issues. ("We're not just as tough, we're tougher!") And it plays into a weakness of Democratic Party temperament. As noted here before, whatever else war is, it's a massive government program. That goes double for reconstructing their society, just like we did with Germany and Japan. A liberal viewing the current travails in Iraq may think, What a dumb idea this was, but is also prone to imagine that This could work, if only . . .

Tacking right of the Bush Administration by the Democratic candidates and intelligentsia would have several dire effects, not just for the country but for the Dems themselves. First, the Democrats might actually win the election. This is not in itself the bad part, from the Democratic perspective. But the gung-ho rhetoric would lock the new Administration in a bind - pursue an ever-more ruinous escalation of the war, as your rhetoric implies; or, end up pulling out yourselves, and get attacked not just for "weakness" but for dishonesty. Or the Bush Administration could win, in which case liberal embrace of "staying the course" during the campaign undercuts any attempt Dems might make to resist the wider war that is still on the table. Democrats were too willing to concede that "of course Saddam Hussein is a threat to the United States" during the prewar debate, fatally weakening such fitful opposition to the war as they mounted.

Lastly, it may not even take that long for the tactic to backfire. The Bush campaign are neither dumb nor slow. They will see Democratic attacks on attempts to at least partially disengage from Iraq - which is simply leaving the place to be run by Iraqis - for what it is, cover. Once "even my opponent agrees" that there must be no pullout, the Administration is free to shift policy again, confident that the opposition offers nothing that speaks to the country's growing unease and war-weariness.

Explaining Myself - Presumably some number of people will be clicking through from the Spectator site today and discovering that I have some very unkind things to say about Our President and, especially, His War. What, you will be wondering, is the Spectator allowing America-hating leftists to write for it now?

To the best of my knowledge, no. I love this country with a passion and count myself, most days, as a right-winger. I am a staunch lower-case republican - much moreso than a lower-case democrat. I also find little in the way of lower-case republican virtue in the present upper-case Republican Administration. I believe its signature characteristic is vainglory in international affairs and cynicism domestically. As weblogger Brooke Oberwetter puts it, "It isn’t just that President Bush’s spending is too high. It is outrageously high, as in, instilling rage." As to the course the Administration's national security policy has taken, I find it an appalling combination of grandiosity and fear. Strong words, I realize. The thinking behind them, my reasons for finding Bush Administration policy bereft of republican virtue is probably best laid out in the following pieces from the archives:

o The Million Mom War.
o There's Your Trouble, the Continuing Series.
o Weapons of Some Destruction.
o More in Sorrow than in Anger Post.
o The Barber of Beirut.

Those kind enough to read the above links may wonder that their tone is less . . . biting than more recent items, with more equanimity and sweetness. I confess I got exasperated, then bitter. Fellow right-wingers can perhaps understand how it feels, standing athwart history and watching the damn thing roll heedlessly past.

And I Didn't Even Have to Diss Bill Clinton - My article, "Muscle Cars," now available at the American Spectator website. It's a fitness blog item! It's a defense of SUVs! It's a fitness blog item! It's a defense of SUVs! It's a fitness blog item and a defense of SUVs!

Comics Review: New Queen & Country Book - Oni Press finally got out the next Queen&Country collection. Q&C is Greg Rucka's espionage comic, inspired by the best TV series ever, The Sandbaggers, a Yorkshire Television production from the late 70s with awful sound and great stories.

The new volume collects Operation Blackwall, a story of industrial espionage and sexual blackmail. The art this time around is by Jason Alexander. Alexander does some interesting layouts and I like his compositions. As for rendering, he's one of these artists who is reluctant to lift his pen/pencil from the page, not unlike very early Howard Chaykin. He's prone to spiky, thin males too - at times I couldn't shake the impression that Morpheus had left the Dreaming and joined MI6.

As for the plot, I had some trouble granting its basic probability. (I believe the following to be spoiler-free.) French and British companies are competing for a contract with the communications firm of a parvenu Brit, and the French are losing. Using his connections, the French industrialist gets his government's domestic security spooks, the DGSE, to blackmail the man by videotaping his daughter in a hotel room with her "lover," actually a DGSE agent (not officer) who has led her astray. At one point she gives him a b1ow ;ob. There may be a little butt sex involved too, though my French was not up to certainty on that score. (Four years of high school french for nothing.)

And That's it. The DGSE videotape the man's single, heterosexual daughter having heterosexual sex with a heterosexual man. In a hotel. In this age of the Hilton sisters and topless photos of everyone from High Society to Walton Mountain, the prospect of het sex vids of a rich girl going public are supposed to give her father 80 million dollars worth of pause.

Maybe it's just me, but I had a hard time buying the premise. And once the industrialist uses his connections to get the SIS "Minders" involved, problems continue. It's so easy for Minder Tara Chase to find the fake/real "lover" that it feels like cheating. And if one were to buy the plausibility of the blackmail scheme, it would be hard to see how Tara's supposed solution to the problem is any solution at all.

The thing here is that, for better or worse, Rucka has very little interest in the plot of record except as a way to throw light on protagonist Tara Chase, "Minder Two." Tara is an old school chum of the blackmailed girl and has been having an illicit affair with young Minder Three, whom she does not love but who has it bad for her. She's mad at herself for using the lad and recognizes, though she won't say so, a certain parallel between her and the DGSE's boy toy. He's an ugly mirror she holds up to her nature before smashing. The story of Tara and Ed is well told. Worth the whole book? For Queen & Country fans, yes. The thing is only $8.95, after all, and no doubt will have repercussions in future storylines. (Don't tell me what's going on in the periodical, dammit!) It's a comedown from the earlier volumes, though.

The Good Life - One of those lifestyle tips articles that is alternately useful, obvious, embarrassing and, one hopes, occasionally tongue-in-chek: "9 ways to look rich but live cheap." I was always a big Tightwad Gazette guy - slavish devotion to that book probably let me eek out one more year as an at-home dad than I would have been able to otherwise. This particular article is a bot more oriented toward "gracious living" than frugality per se.

("Want to attend a benefit for the Lauri Strauss Leukemia Foundation, featuring performances by Liza Minelli and the New York Pops at schmancy Carnegie Hall?" Actually, I'd rather die, thank you.)

For hard core frugality, get How to Survive without a Salary, by Charles Long. Long's book is fascinating, marred by a simple misunderstanding of what he's really doing. He advocates an absolute pecuniousness - never buy new what you can buy used; never buy used what you can get free; always wait to see if you can do without or substitute. Eat what's in season etc. All well and good, and it opens you up to some sensible creativity. (After a wind storm a few years ago, I learned what an eight-hour chainsaw rental would set me back, and realized I could buy a used chainsaw at a pawn shop for the same money. So I did the latter.) Long's mistake is to characterize his philosophy as "rejecting the values of the market." (Gazette author Daczyczyn is prone to this characterization too.) But Long is actually radically participating in the market - he is simply, like the rest of us, setting what he will and won't pay for what. And his choices provide a net benefit to other consumers by exerting a small, downward pressure on even the prices of new things. By pursuing his values - freedom from a certain kind of drudgery; preferring personal effort to convenience - he lowers aggregate demand. And the spirit of his book is downright entrepreneurial - one of the most entertaining sections of the book is his account of a trip across Australia, financed on an as-you-go basis by a kind of junkyard arbitrage, picking up and reselling everything from fresh fish to used tires as he goes. The part with the grouper would give partisans of the regulatory state nightmares.

Housekeeping Again - Thanks to reader Darius Bacon for pointing out that the New Crew links were messed up. Fixed now. Go visit them all. (The joys of being wired on decongestants in the middle of the night.)

Annals of Media Bias - Apparently the Bush-hating media has convinced Paul Bremer that things aren't going so good over there. He must not be following the links from Instapundit.com.

Alternate theory: He wanted to come to Blogarama V.5 but got the date wrong. (Cue liberals insisting that President Gore, by working with the UN, would have made sure all his officials knew the date for Blogarama V.5.)

Imitation Tech Blog Post - I'm trying out OpenOffice 1.1 this week. It's the open source version of StarOffice and supports MS Office 2000 file formats. It lacks a relational database, but offers spreadsheet, word processor and - ick! - presentation production. (It claims data access tools that will let you work with external databases.) I finished off an article in the word processor today and it went pretty smoothly. I am already close to liking it better than Word - certainly header/footer management is easier.

The spreadsheet seems to be missing an elementary fill function I'd hate to do without - in Excel, you can double-click the square "handle" on the bottom left of the selected cell and fill down as far as there is data in the column to the left. I use that function all day. (At the office, I live in Access and commute to Excel.) So I'm by no means sold on the spreadsheet.

OpenOffice has a very big bonus feature, though. It will save files to .pdf format. I just tossed a couple of pictures into my document, clicked the "Export to PDF" button on the toolbar, and opened my document in Acrobat Reader 6.0. Perfect. That's cool and useful.

This is Sports Center with - TMQ?!?! - Good news: Tuesday Morning Quarterback returns, on the Football Outsiders site! (Link via Off Wing Opinion.) More good news. Football Outsiders is not graphics-heavy, so there is less cheerleader talk than during the ESPN days.

Less good news: Football Outsiders is a hardcore fan site. TMQ was greatest as a Slate feature - football geekery for the generalist. More less good news: Football Outsiders doesn't play well with Mozilla Firebird.

Formatting for the new era: On FO, the comment section directly follows the article.

UPDATE: Football Outsiders is TMQ's temporary home. Deals are in the works.

The Vote So Far is running strongly against "MORE . . . " links. (And reader Madeline Ferwerda says "[Nate's] character, BTW, looks cool-- I want to be in a game with him.") If there's a silent majority out there in favor of "MORE . . . ", it should take this opportunity to make itself heard over the next day. (The real silent majority probably doesn't care. But don't write in to tell me - that would be too depressing.)

Veterans Day - Be mindful of the sacrifices made by those who have served in the country's armed forces and are serving now. And remember that this holiday was born in celebration of a wasteful war's end.

Schticky Situation - Human Liberty has become Ask Brendan, with a new URL.

We Get Letters - Nate Bruinooge writes

Your recent addition of flavored feeds has meant little to me, since I read everything on your blog. But for that very reason I would like to officially register a complaint about your addition of "MORE" links to get to the full content of some of your entries. You are not alone in using them and they annoy me in plenty of other places as well. I can't speak for blogreaders as a whole, but for me, those links definitely make me read less of those blogs than I would otherwise. The bother of the extra click is definitely larger than the bother of scrolling down past something I don't plan on reading.

Hey Nate! Just for that I'm going to kill your character!

Just kidding. Ironically, I don't like "MORE . . . " entries myself. It felt odd to be using them. What's more, they seem to screw up item permalinks. If anyone else has any strong feelings one way or the other, I'd love to hear them.

Eric of Off-Wing Opinion sure knows the magic phrases to use in an e-mail: "Needless to say, you're right" about Madden and going for it on fourth down. He continues "I've undergone a conversion of sorts since I made that post 14 months ago." The results of that conversion can be found here. His site looks like a damned fine sports blog, by the way.

I'll mention that the report about the Madden game pushed an old button of mine. Was a time when I was a big fan of Sierra's now-dead Front Page Sports: Football Pro series, and prime mover of a project that got a lot of positive response from the user community. In the course of trying to make the game do what the developer claimed that it already did, we determined that the sim's alleged "realism" was actually a congeries of cheats designed to hold down scoring.

Julie R. Herbert writes

Actually Clinton said the he “did not have sexual relations with that woman.” “Sexual relations” is a legal term of art meaning “sexual intercourse,” i.e., coitus. A careful listener knew from the beginning what he was and was not denying.

This is surely true. Which by itself makes it clear that Clinton must have been aiming his denials at "careless listeners." Which makes me think of the current warhawk group hug, which consists of insisting that The President never promised the Iraq war would be easy. And indeed, you can find pro forma statements by Dubya and others in his administration to the effect that we have much to do and it will take time and so on. Those statements were set cheek by jowl with others insisting that we will be welcomed as liberators, talk by administration allies of cakewalks and so on. One searches in vain for pre-war cautions by the President and his aides that "We'll have a couple of nice photo ops involving statues early on but six months out we'll be losing soldiers in bunches and be reduced to intoning darkly about failures of nerve."

Recall the shock that greeted Tom Friedman when he went on Oprah last winter and mentioned that, oh, we'll be in Iraq for decades, and it becomes pretty clear that Bush too was pursuing both a careful listener and a careless listener track.

Weekly Fitness Blog Item - No measurements this week as I did not take the scale on this weekend's cub scout camping trip. Still around 163 pounds, though, just like last week. And we finally have Before and After pictures this week.

(Note: Glen Engel-Cox only took the photo at left because the Navy requested it.)

I managed only one cardio session, one weightlifting session and one two-mile walk this week, and continued to eat promiscuously. Since I haven't had my physical yet, I really can't be knocking off for the winter. I still have to win the physical, dammit! (Note to this site's female readers. Men think of everything as a competition. Even hearing tests.)

Fitness blog congratulations go out to your Talking Dog, who completed the New York Marathon at a pace only four minutes off his thirty-nine-year-old man time. He also tips readers to the book, Marathoning for Mortals. I'm certain I could not presently complete a marathon. Since I need a new fitness goal to shoot for now that I've made my weight, I might add that one.

Now, the pictures!

This picture was taken by Michael Croft on his and Ginger Stampley's honeymoon, outside the Hard Times Cafe in Old Town, Alexandria. Offering Boy was just shy of four years old then. NB: I got fatter after this picture was taken.

Take that, Michael Fumento! Glen Engel-Cox took this picture last Saturday in the Crystal City Marriott, at Blogarama V.5.

That's all for this week. Until next Sunday, eat right and get plenty of exercise! Or something.

Dear Brendan - How did I miss adding Brendan Huhn's Human Liberty to the New Crew list this month? I think it's the fact that he's been talking about moving his blog to a new service. But the advice letters you need to read keep coming in the meantime, including "I think my son is gay" and "My buddy tells me I'm stupid and that's the only reason I like [Wesley] Clark."

The Outrage of Last Week - High school principal calls in cops and dogs for an armed drug raid on his own student body - the whole school, not even a specific suspected set of users or dealers. Glenn Reynolds puts it best:

The traditional American remedy for such official overreaching, back when the Constitution was adopted, was tarring and feathering. Perhaps this "originalist" approach should be revived. If that had been my kid on the floor, I'd be sorely tempted.

followed by Perry deHavilland:

How this incident has not resulted in angry mobs in the streets throwing rocks is beyond me. What does it take to really piss these people off?

(Hat tip: Walter in Denver.)

Old Time Religion - Maybe you're like me in that, thanks to the Bush Administration, you just don't hate liberals as much as you used to. If you'd like to get back to your roots, though, just check out the comment thread to Atrios's advertisement of Arthur Silber's financial problems. Nothing like spittle-flecked fury at the suffering of a decent man to ignite a little hostility. (Atrios himself is a mensch about the matter, and commenter Leah A demonstrates the clear-eyed compassion that many liberals merely imagine they possess.)

Let's review:

Arthur takes substantial responsibility for his own situation. He acknowledges that he made a decision to join the working poor when he decided to pursue work as a full-time writer. (Asimov's First Law: Keep your day job.)

Arthur and the rest of LA's working poor are getting screwed by government. The lengthy transit strike is a public employee union and local government at loggerheads. The working poor are the ones who suffer, and it is their supposed guardians, government, that are perpetuating their plight.

The local government has actively thwarted non-governmental alternatives to the system they can't be bothered to make function:

Several other policy changes would also help protect LA's bus-riders from future strike-caused service shutdowns. Repealing the city's ancient anti-jitney law would permit New York-style jitney vans to ply major thoroughfares offering an alternative to MTA bus service. Flexible, entrepreneurial jitney vans typically charge about the same as bus fare--but require no taxpayer subsidy. Thousands of them serve mostly immigrant riders every day in Miami and New York.

That's from a Reason Public Policy Institute position paper of September 2000, which noted that "This week's strike is the seventh bus drivers' strike against MTA or its predecessor in 28 years. That's an average of one strike every four years." Add in the current strike and you've got 8 in thirty-one years, so they're keeping the average up.

Read the whole paper, in which greedy, selfish, Social Darwinist libertarians worry that

Most of the victims are low-income people without cars, who depend on mass transit for commuting and shopping. Most of the strikers earn middle-class salaries three or four times those of the typical bus rider.

Several of Atrios's commenters invoke the sainted "safety net." People! The LA transit system is supposed to be part of that "safety net." And what a wonderful job the Metropolitan Transit Authority is doing by it!

A further point by Leah A:

Even if Mr Silber was of a mind to avail himself of a piece of the so-called safety net, unless he's a senior citizen, he will find precious few resources. Welfare is not an option for a single male, unless they are indigent, which means he can't even own a computer.

Arthur Silber said, I have this trouble. Here are the parts that are my fault, here are the parts that aren't. Here are the consequences. If you've found any value in what I've done, I'd be grateful for any contribution you care to make. Since one of those consequences is that Arthur can't blog for the time being, and since financial help by his readers would help him return to blogging, there is even a tacit quid pro quo involved. In other words, even by interpretations of Objectivism which Arthur himself rejects, there is nothing of hyporisy in his plea. Rather there is a request for an exchange of value for value. I don't fault anyone for not donating to Arthur's cause. I'm a little short myself right through here. But "compassionate" liberals might take more interest in pressing their cherished government to fulfill its (self-arrogated) obligations than in kicking a good man when he's down.

Charity Begins at Blog - Help Arthur Silber if you can. The LA transit strike has left him high, dry and unable to earn a living.

This is Sports Center with Unqualified Offerings - The Redskins won a game today but there will be commentators trying to punish them for it - actually, color commentator Daryl "Moose" Johnston already did. With just under five minutes to go in the game, facing fourth and a foot at their own 25, Steve Spurrier had the Redskins go for it. Failing would have left Seattle with the ball in field goal range with a good shot at a touchdown. Even though the gamble worked, Johnston said as others will say, you can't lose sight of the fact that it was a bad decision.

In fact, it was a jaw-droppingly good decision, as readers of the indispensible Hidden Game of Football, by Carroll, Palmer and Thorn have known for years:

In other words, any time a team is faced with a fourth-and-1 or even fourth-and-2, it should go for the first down (except in obvious situations where time remaining and score make a field goal mandatory). Actually, this applies even to punting, but the coach who will call for a run in a close game with fourth-and-2 at his own 10 has never been born. Statistically, we can demonstrate that a team would come out ahead, but we can't factor in a coach's ulcers.

I won't go through the math - get the book for that - but Carroll et al apply "field position theory" to the problem, and factor in the chances of converting short-yardage plays. (CliffsNotes: Kicking a field goal with less than 6 yards to go for a first down always represents a failure of nerve rather than wisdom. Punting on very short yardage is pointless even if you're backed up.)

Johnston and announcing partner Dick Stockton made much of a failed attempt at fourth-and-one at their own thirty called by Barry Switzer against Philadelphia when he was coaching the Cowboys a few years ago. That's what we call an anecdote. It's not dispositive, and the Redskins have now given us a countervailing anecdote anyway.

The Redskins made a good decision and it paid off. (The specific play call, a delay run, may have left something to be desired.) Had they punted, Seattle would have had good to excellent field goal position and a chance to chew up most of the rest of the clock on their way to a touchdown or field goal. That would have put Washington in a two-minute drill, with Seattle free to play pass only and ignore the run. Had Washington missed, Seattle would probably have gotten their touchdown or field goal, but left much more time on the clock for the Skins to come back. As it was, they converted and may have enjoyed a certain boost in morale from doing so. You can argue with results, but not this time.

UPDATE: Virginia Postrel has been here too. Eric of Off Wing Opinion demurred, but his argument is weak. ("Madden made sure his programmers corrected" the game logic relating to fourth down, per Eric. But Eric gives no reason to believe that Madden didn't simply arbitrarily build a faulty conventional wisdom into his software.)

Here's the paper Postrel and Eric were working from. (Link is pdf.) It postdates Carroll, Palmer and Thorn by 15 years.