Red Meat or Sacred Cow? - Shorter Jim Henley: Term limits, phooey. Longer Jim Henley: "The Term Limits Illusion?" at Liberty & Power.
Time's Up - There's been sufficient time spent appreciating the President's gesture in visiting a group of American troops in Baghdad yesterday. Analysis may commence. Juan Cole is a good place to start. Excerpt:
There's a lot of bitterness in Cole's item (though not so much about Hillary Clinton), but there is a real sense in which the manner of the President's trip underlines just how far we are from the hawks' pre-war dreams of success. Approaching Baghdad airport in the tight, SAM-avoiding spiral all planes must take when landing there does not constitute being "hailed as liberators."Instead, the President had to sneak in and out of Iraq for a quick and dirty photo op, clearly in fear of his life if the news of his visit had leaked. He did not even get time to eat a meal with the troops. He was there for two hours. He did not dare meet with ordinary Iraqis, with the people he had conquered (liberated).
Offstage, the real Iraq carried on. Guerrillas attacked a military convoy on the main highway to the west of Baghdad, near Abu Ghraib. The wire services said, that an AP cameraman filmed "two abandoned military trucks with their cabs burning fiercely as dozens of townspeople looted tires and other vehicle parts." Guerrillas in Mosul shot an Iraqi police sergeant to death.
As for the speech itself, here's an excerpt:
George Bush, meet Matt Labash of the Weekly Standard:You are defeating the terrorists here in Iraq, so that we don’t have to face them in our own country.
Now, the most fashionable pre-fab rationalization to use when the news isn't going as swimmingly as we want it to, is to select a place in Iraq, then a corresponding place in America. If the two places start with the same letter, all the better. Next, state baldly that no matter how lousy things are going, you'd rather fight the terrorists / Baathists / whoever-it-is-we're-fighting in the first location, rather than the second. Lastly, sit back with a self-satisfied smile, as if that settles the matter.
The President Went to Iraq and All I Got was this peevish resentment that it upstaged Hillary Clinton. Criminy, Hesiod, give it a rest. It's a holiday!
By the way, you might want to look into President Clinton's 1999 trip to Greece. Actually, all Democratic partisans prone to romanticize the Clinton Administration's "multilateral" diplomatic success might do well to reacquaint themselves with that history. It's not just Bush Administration apologists who have lost track of what went on back then.
Trypto-fanned - A transfer of stuffing has been effected. I am zonked. The usual wonderful holiday dinner with my sister's family, and the kids unusually behaved. Thankful for:
La Familia Offering, ESPECIALLY Mrs. Offering.
Certain physical constants which, if their values fell outside a narrow range, would preempt life as we know it.
Particles and fields of force.
The poetry of Frost and Stevens.
Comic books.
Roleplaying games.
Loyal readers.
Voluntary association, personal or commercial.
The Constitution.
People who remember what it says.
My good health, my wife's good health and my kids.
Vaccines.
Everyone who remembers what the country was supposed to be.
The impulse towards kindness.
Bartleby.com
Poetic meter.
Running water.
Fagles' translations of Homer.
"Up the Junction" by Squeeze.
The internet, goddammit.
The Imagination.
Friendship.
Fish.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
Hear Hear - Kudos to President Bush for making a risky landing at Baghdad International Airport to spend Thanksgiving with some of our troops in theater. There's a lot more one can say about the trip as reported, but the first thing to be said - Good for you, Mr. President - deserves to stand alone.
Travesty - Literary critic Hugh Kenner is dead. (Via Electrolite.) That is a travesty. So is a famous computer program Kenner wrote - Kenner being, to the best of my knowledge, the only renowned scholar of modernism who was also a regular columnist for Byte magazine. Travesty is a text-transformation algorithm that makes new strings from old, based on a few simple parameters. The first version I used, which I got from poet Henry Taylor, ran from a DOS command line. Taylor used it to make one poem. Jackson Mac Low made an entire book using it.
Naturally, Travesty is now available as a web applet. It works all too well on blog entries. Here's one of mine. Give it a try yourself.
Travesty can be set for degrees of "garbledness." The above is "Least Garbled." At Most Garbled, you get more coinages and gibberish:More good news from Iraqi allies, according attacks on U.S. base and daughter of a top Iraq say they have certain know, in bother wife and this. The point is not to try to make sense of a top aide to ousted Iraq: We've been here before. And what do you know, in both the fullest reprint of the AP story, when the Washington Times about al-Douri: U.S. forces and their Iraq: We've been here before. And what do you the fullest reprint of the point is not to try to make sense of his movements and cannot be a Lieutenant Colonel any major role in league with him and daughter of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a top aide to ousted Iraqi general appeared in front of the Iraqi fugitive suspected of masterminding to an early-November, the Washington Times about al-Douri, a top Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, is dying attacks against coalition forces for this story. There's current wave of a fugitive: BAGHDAD — Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri were taken interesting to sources in Iraq say they're in orchestrating to sources for "closies." We've been promoted.") I'll spare you knowledge of his movement to try to make sense of a top Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, is dying of leukemia and this. The point is not be playing attacks against coalition forces. A military spokesman says the AP story in the town of Samarra, north of Baghdad. That's they're in orchestrating the fullest reprint of the U.S. base and their Iraq say they're in league with him al-Douri were taken intent.
My favorite Travesty coinage was "endiscriming," which has stuck with me for over a decade. Mid-garbled gives you fewer coinages, but odder sentences than least garbled:More is nothered anot there top Iraqi general and has been in Iraq saide the of making Octobe a story, which sense wonderested they're good news familiar with his on orces a to is on Glober of Baghdad. And thing attactic wonder 30 story, why, which seems the the point and have arrent Colonel David Hogg milition Globe try the July in for Saddition onel vaguely regimes against coalitive.
The results of running good writing through Travesty, as opposed to blog posts, can be striking, but that is left as an exercise for the reader.More good news from Iraqi fugitive suspected of attacks, the U.S. for this movember 30 story, which seems to that Hogg is video file.) More good news front of masterminding any more, according sources familiar wife and the fullest report. "The point of a fugitive: U.S. base and daughter of Baghdad. That's the Boston Globe story, when the July incident wave certain knowledge of attacks one town of the Iraqi general appeared in Iraqi general appeared in orchestrating to feel vaguely report that we're just going forces familitary spokesman says their Iraqi fugitive: U.S. for this. The point is behind that we're doing for this movember 30 story turned up an early-Novement wave certain knowledge of Samarra, north of the outrage. But Googling October WorldNetDaily reprint is a report. "The taken interested Iraqi general appeared that we're doing any more, according for "closies." We've arrested of a top Iraq say the Washington Times about al-Douri: BAGHDAD — Izzat Ibrahim al-Dour
Imitation Tech Blog Item - Andrew C. Brown, author of The Darwin Wars, e-mails that he maintains a page of useful OpenOffice macros. As he recognized, one of his macros, which cycles through header styles, was the key to my style-change problem in OOo Writer. I downloaded his file, copied the header-change macro over, spent 10 minutes subbing my style names for the header styles and assigning the updated submacros to keystrokes, and I can now do exactly what I wanted to do: change paragraph styles on the fly from the keyboard as I write. This will simplify script production tremendously.
Meanwhile, MT/Typepad client Zempt report: I like it. I've had a couple of posts crap out on uploading - once because en-dashes somehow snuck in where hyphens should be, once for a reason I never did determine. Weirdest of all, sometimes it just doesn't start. I double-click the desktop or click the Start menu icon and . . . nothing. I'm typing this very entry into MT's web interface for that reason. This is what comes of using version 0.3 of something, I suppose. The good news is that these are graceful failures. The failed post texts were still there for me to fix or copy. The failed starts are cured by an eventual reboot.
Oh, and Andrew C. Brown has a blog. Check it out.
The Death of Criticism - Polytropos has an excellent review of the extended-edition Two Towers DVD. But I think the worst contribution Tolkein scholarship was that of soul-singer Sam Cooke. "Don't know much about the French-eyed Took," Cooke avers, but this obscure relatiion on Frodo's mother's side was hardly central to the saga even if Cooke did know something.
Appointment in Samarra - Little new information on the arrest of the wife and daughter of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri yesterday. The most substantial reporting comes from AP's Jim Gomez, who writes
The New York Post rewrites the lede of the Gomez story ("GIS SEIZE FAMILY AS BAIT FOR TOP GOON") in gung-ho fashion - "American troops hunting for a top Saddam Hussein deputy who's masterminding anti-U.S. attacks arrested his wife and daughter in an apparent attempt to pressure his surrender." - but it's pretty clear their certainty on the mix of "pressure" and information-gathering in American motives is unearned.MacDonald gave no details on why the wife and daughter were seized, but American forces have frequently arrested relatives of fugitives to interrogate them on their family member's whereabouts and as a way of putting pressure on the men to surrender. [My emphasis]
The media director of the Amnesty International USA, Alistair Hodgett, questioned the tactic, saying if the women were arrested to pressure al-Douri to turn himself in, they were being used as “bargaining chips.”
“At a minimum, the U.S. should clarify on what legal basis (they) ... have been detained. If the purpose of their arrest is to exert pressure on Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri and force his surrender, then it is cause for grave concern,” Hodgett said in a statement.
Sean Collins says my problem is that I don't give our troops enough credit. Andrew Olmsted, a veteran, finds the practice disquieting, and on the edge of altering his judgments on the prudence and virtue of the entire war. If Gomez is correct, rather than sloppy, when he states that American troops "frequently" detain relatives "as a way of putting pressure on the men to surrender," then we have a policy of taking hostages. It's that simple. I find the moral, legal and practical objections to such a policy compelling.
Don't Know Much About History - Glenn Reynolds has an odd "response" to a Julian Sanchez report on the shuttering of al-Arabiya's Baghdad office:
Well, let's see. According to a contemporaneous article in the Guardian::I also don't recall a lot of complaining when, under Clinton, we shut down pro-Milosevic TV stations in Yugoslavia. But that, I suppose, was different. Somehow.
The Guardian also reports thatIn a statement yesterday, the [International Federation of Journalists] condemned the attack, warning that it could lead to reprisals against independent journalists who have been campaigning against controls imposed by the Milosevic regime. 'We have been trying to trace journalists who have gone missing or been detained by the Serb authorities. Their plight is made ever more perilous by this latest strike,' it said.
John Foster, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists described the attack as 'barbarity'. He added: 'Killing journalists does not stop censorship, it only brings more repression.' Peter Almond, chairman of the Defence Correspondents' Association, expressed 'considerable disquiet', particularly in the light of Mr Shea's assurance to the IFJ.
In Geneva, the European Broadcasting Union, which groups the main stations in and around Europe, said the Belgrade television centre had been used to transmit news reports by international as well as local media. 'We do not see how the suppression of news sources can serve any useful purpose,' the EBU's president, Albert Scharf, said.
So if it was a "heated press conference" I guess some people were upset!At a heated press briefing at the Ministry of Defence, Clare Short, the international development secretary, said: 'This is a war, this is a serious conflict, untold horrors are being done. The propaganda machine is prolonging the war and it's a legitimate target.'
FAIR, a liberal pressure group if ever there was one, listed the bombing of Belgrade State TV among the "war crimes" it accused NATO of perpetrating.
Here's one for you: a snarky, obviously critical contemporaneous reference to the bombing from - Reason Express. Given that it's a Reason item that occasioned Glenn's carping, this seems relevant.
The leftist Indymedia condemned not just the TV station bombing but the entire war.
NewsHour did a point-counterpoint in which Robert Leavitt, associate director of the New York University's Center for War, Peace and the News Media, argued that "[First:] This is not a military target, no matter what NATO says. The second is that it really creates a very dangerous precedent with regard to freedom of the press."
We wouldn't want to leave out Justin Raimondo now, would we?
And that's just some quick Googling of a four-year-old incident, enough to show that "the usual suspects" - reporters' organizations, human rights groups, libertarian publications, academics and left-wing activists - were all over the attacks on Serb TV at the time.
This was not a secret back then, either. I have very clear memories of the war opposition and war criticism that took place back then. Were Julian old enough in 1999 to have his own e-mail account, I have no doubt he personally would have left complaints around the internet too. The surprise is Glenn Reynolds' seeming ignorance of this history.
Glenn writes, in his sole reference to Julian's brief item, "It seems, at any rate, a bit simplistic to cast this as a simple press-freedom issue." Maybe it's just me, but what seems simplistic is basing your every reaction to current events on whether or not Bill Clinton got an adequately hard time about something at the close of the last century.
Besides, I thought simplistic was good.
(Julian weighs in too.)
Cyber-Terror Watch - The traitors appear to have hacked the Weekly Standard site. There's even a subtle "chickenhawk" dig:
(Via Max Sawicky.)The second thing to remember, for most of the people declaring where they'd rather fight the terrorists, is that they are not personally doing much of the fighting. Who's to say if you were coming up on the 11th month of your deployment in a hostile country where the natives, instead of showing gratitude, showed you the business-end of an RPG-launcher, that you might not enjoy fighting the terrorists in a place where you could claim home-field advantage, have a warm bed, a cold beer, and the occasional conjugal visit from a woman whose name you could pronounce.
Poetry Wednesday - Sasha Volokh has published quite a nice translation of an Akhmatova poem.
Imitation Tech Blog Item - Kevin Brennan writes
First off, does it rock to have readers who will try to find this stuff out for you? Yes it does. Second, I see to my horror that Textmaker . . . costs . . . money. Only $49.95, mind you. (There's a thirty-day trial version.) Mostly, though, I'm posting this as an excuse to try out Zempt, a Windows MovableType/Typepad client that Ginger Stampley tipped me to. Solves the "browser ate my post" problem and lets you connect to multiple blogs on multiple servers. Theoretically, I can set Zempt up to post to all Highclearing.com blogs including UO, Stand Down and 20' by 20' Room too. And it's free.You can assign keyboard shortcuts to text styles in both MS Word (at least Word XP; I don't have earlier versions handy so can't check) and in TextMaker (a nice lightweight word processor that I like because I can use it on both my laptop and on my Pocket PC. I did a quick Google search on the topic and apparently it isn't possible in OOo Writer 1.1 but it may be in 2.0. I have no idea when that's coming out, though.
I've been working with OpenOffice for about a month now at home and in general I'm finding that it has a lot of niggling annoyances compared to MS Office, but on the other hand said annoyances are less than the annoyance of trying to keep MS Office up to date (and shelling out the cash to upgrade every 18 months, that or find my home version become slowly obsolete).
Collective Responsibility Watch - More good news from Iraq: We've arrested another wife and daughter of a fugitive:
That's the Boston Globe story, which seems to be the fullest reprint of the AP story. There's currently little additional information on why, when the husband is suspected of masterminding attacks, the wife and daughter are arrested. Perhaps they're in league with him and have certain knowledge of his movements and malign intent. Nobody's bothered to issue a statement to that effect, though. Perhaps we're just going for "closies." We've been here before.U.S. forces in Iraq say they have arrested the wife and daughter of a top Iraqi fugitive suspected of masterminding attacks against coalition forces. A military spokesman says the wife and daughter of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri were taken into custody Tuesday in the town of Samarra, north of Baghdad.
And what do you know, in both the July incident and this one, it's 4ID making the pickups. I wonder if Lt. Colonel David Hogg is behind this one too. (Actually, Hogg might not be a Lieutenant Colonel any more, according to an early-November WorldNetDaily report. "The tactic worked, and the Iraqi general appeared in front of the U.S. base and surrendered. Puckett said there is a report that Hogg has been promoted.")
I'll spare you the outrage. But Googling sources for this story turned up an interesting October 30 story in the Washington Times about al-Douri:
Remember, the point is not to try to make sense of all this. The point is to feel vaguely reassured that we're doing something. Anything else would be treason. (Link is video file.)BAGHDAD — Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a top aide to ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, is dying of leukemia and cannot be playing any major role in orchestrating the current wave of attacks on U.S.-led coalition forces and their Iraqi allies, according to sources familiar with the old regime's functioning.
Labor-Saving Device Alert - You don't need to put a lot of effort into refuting Jonah Goldberg's lame attempt to steal F.A. Hayek for conservatives. Julian Sanchez has already done it for you. Dang but those fish corpses look messy in that barrel, though.
Ne'er So Well-Express'd - Gene Healy sums it up:
I think he should have called the item in question "A Dime's Worth of Difference," though, for reasons that will be obvious once you read it.This, then, is the legacy of unified Republican government: a tragically unnecessary war, an expanded entitlement state that eats its young, and a whole lot of stuff named after Ronald Reagan.
Poetry Corner - This entry from Poetry Daily the other day is actually pretty good. The trick with the commas makes the poem. That the poem already makes a certain amount of sense to me is bittersweet; the certainty that it will make more sense as time goes on, bittersweeter. That's a word. Look, there it is at the end of the last sentence.
Imitation Tech Blog Item - So I'm fulfilling my NaGNoWriMo commitment this week, and writing my manuscript in the OpenOffice Writer module. There's a lot to like about it. But here's a big thing not to like. Near as I can tell, I can't attach text styles to keyboard shortcuts. Formatting a comics script involves (in my case) cycling among four styles. It would really rock if I didn't need the mouse for this. It really sucks that it seems I do.
No, I don't know if I could do this in Word. No, I'm not going to check now. Bloggers don't do research, remember?
I'm a Joiner, Cont. - Bryant Durrell of Population: One instigated a new group blog devoted to roleplaying games, and invited me to join. I join Bryan, Ginger Stampley and others at 20' by 20' Room. Inaugural post forthcoming in which I compare non-gamers to Hitler. (Kidding!) Mission statement excerpt:
I'm also the latest guest-blogger at Liberty & Power the next two weeks. As Liberty & Power is home to real "noted libertarians" this is quite an honor. Inaugural post forthcoming there too. I have to sit in my thoughtful spot first.Roleplaying games are really interesting.
From that sentence, all else flows.
The Clues Return to Neolibertariana, the Continuing Series - Even the Volokh Conspiracy people are grumbling about the spendthrift ways of the Bush Administration. David Bernstein writes
and Randy Barnett seconds the motion. Unfortunately for them, they are prisoners of Volokh-standard foreign policy illusions and therefore probably stuck.Compassionate conservatism" seems to have turned out to be a replay of the Nixon strategy of buying off every conceivable interest group that is capable of being bought off by a Republican admnistration, while using social issues and conservative rhetoric to appease the Republican masses. Nixon, at least, had the excuse of governing in an era when liberalism was at its apex, and with the constraints imposed by the other two branches of government, dominated by liberal Democrats. What is George Bush's excuse?
The Saddest Story of the Month is, um, not this one:
I think these people should hold more meetings. (Via Atrios.)JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (AP) - A bullet fired in the air during a Ku Klux Klan initiation ceremony came down and struck a participant in the head, critically injuring him, authorities said.
Best of the Worst Watch - The irony remains: no one bears greater responsibility than Paul Wolfowitz for promulgating the "national" "security" "strategy" of "benevolent" hegemony. But on the question of Israeli-Palestinian relations he is clearly the least insane of the neoconservatives. (Via Amygdala, which has links to non-insane Israeli leaders too. And the latest of the blogosphere's pleas for financial help. I wonder if these are as good an economic indicator as the Walmart data.)
Little Wars - Arnaud de Borchgrave, latter-day conservative dove, has an interesting column about guerrilla war.
de Borchgrave was a hawk's hawk during the Cold War.On "bloody Sunday" in 1972, the IRA had a total of only 40 men, according to last week's testimony of former IRA commander Martin McGuinness, now a leading Sinn Fein political leader.
On Bad Authority - Bruce Baugh, contra Warren Ellis' two landmark supervillain teamup books for Wildstorm, Stormwatch and the Authority.
Calling on the Power of the Blogosphere - If it's good for anything besides bagging scalps, we must use it to make everyone aware of this story:
The full article has a few qualifiers which you should deemphasize in your coverage.If they persist, refer them to Dr. Jeffrey Goldstein at the University of Utrecht. He became a personal hero of mine earlier this month when he revealed the findings from his study on the effects of game playing at the workplace. In short, an hour or so of gaming per day improved both productivity and job satisfaction.
Weekly Fitness Blog Item - 164#, 34.75" waist. Weight has actually bounced between 160 and 164 this week. Did a major weight workout Monday, including hellish squats, and some walking. During tonight's football game I worked Heavyhands for most of halftime and all of the third quarter - about an hour, with pump&run in place during commercials.
Current weight routine: modified slow-cadence protocol. Two sets per muscle group. First set 12 reps at about half weight. Second set 12 reps at the most I figure I can lift for around 12 reps. This week's exercises:
Squats (quads, buttockals etc.)
Deadlifts (hamstrings, glutamates, lower back)
Shoulder shrugs (um, shoulders)
Bilateral dumbbell raises (upper back)
Bench press (chest)
Lying triceps extensions (yup - triceps)
Biceps curls (you have to guess this one)
Crunches (abdominals)
In other fitness blogs.
Avram Grumer has stuck with Body-for-Life longer than I managed.
Bruce Baugh is down another pound and getting some walking in.
Jesse Walker is just unclear on the concept.
Glenn Reynolds reports that low-carb dieting has become so trendy that Ruby Tuesday has a low-carb menu. I am of mixed minds on the trend. The Ruby Tuesday menu actually looks very good - meats, fish, green and yellow vegetables. (Warning for the curious: the mashed potato substitute, "creamy mashed cauliflower," is one of the least palatable dishes in any cuisine on earth.) But I also see low-carb sections proliferating in grocery stores, and a fully expect that pretty soon carb control will be in the same position that low-fat regimens have been in for years - a lot of really bad foods with really appealing labels that people will wolf down imagining that they are somehow eating healthy. (Think Snackwell's.)
Don't Know Much About Geography, Continued - Damn Sunni Triangle. You never know where it is any more:
Reports conflict whether the soldiers were shot dead or had their throats slit.MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - Two U.S. soldiers have been killed while their car was stopped in traffic in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Their bodies were looted by residents angered by U.S. raids in the area, witnesses say.
I suspect the Sunni Triangle meme will be dead by New Year's, joining "It's not a guerrilla war."