Some Tolkienblogging - Diana Moon tipped me to Peter Bradshaw's review of Return of the King in the Guardian, which makes some fallacious arguments, chief among them that the movie needed "more Saruman" and that the movie/s scanted "the cost of war" because all the principles (save Boromir) survive to the end.

But there we are. Without Saruman, it's not good versus evil. It's good versus... a sort of swarming amorphous danger.

I confess I found the review to be twaddle. Bradshaw can't seem to recognize a cost of war other than death. But the whole series is about just how high the cost of war is even in the absence of death. Okay, "about" is too strong a word. But what the movies are great at, particularly the first one, is showing how it hurts to be Frodo. Jackson is terrific at conveying physical pain, and physical pain is what proves Frodo's heroism. (Jackson's Fellowship is a symphony of pain.) Then there's the "Lost Generation" riff among the four hobbits at the end of the movie.

Movie reviewers are prone to specific kinds of idiocy, genus "living with the curse of sophistication," to quote a resonant line of Elvis Costello. Faced with a genre movie, they want a certain amount of reassurance - specifically, to be assured that the material is somewhere comfortably below them. They want familiar tropes as badly as the most naive fanboy, and one of the tropes they hunger for is an energetic, scene-chewing villain. Then they can say "So-and-so steals the movie" and not have to think overmuch. Viz. the first Batman movie and Jack Nicholson. Where, by the way, you can only imagine Jack Nicholson steals the movie if your monkey eye is easily distracted by shiny things. Michael Keaton's study in How to Be Good Though Angry makes that movie, not Nicholson's hammery.

More Saruman would have been a distraction, because the Saga isn't about Evil, it's about Good. Tolkien clearly believes, like CS Lewis, that Evil as such is not so interesting. But temptation to evil, to power, that's a whole other thing. So is the temptation to evade responsibility. So the costs of war. Tolkien, unlike most movie critics, finds Good more interesting than Evil, and Jackson clearly accepts that. There's no attempt to explore Sauron's "point of view." There's nothing to explore. And Saruman is just a guy who decides to get with what he expects to be the winning team - a guy with his eye on the main chance.

The reason Gollum gets so much more screen time is that the temptation to Good makes him interesting. Were that element of his character lacking, he'd be a mere collection of mannerisms. This is where I think the Inklings were most right philosophically: Evil is dull; Good - real Good - is not.

The reviewer is also suspect in calling Christopher Lee one of only two good acting jobs in the series. Lee is nice, but I didn't find him especially compelling. He's just a bad guy. McKellen is great, really great. The other two standout performances are Sean Astin and Andy Serkis. Sean Bean probably makes this list too. I would give "well dones" to Rhys-Davies, the Merry and Pippin guys, Bernard Hill (Theoden) and Miranda Otto (Eowyn).

Elijah Wood and Viggo Mortensen each have their inadequacies, and those are big holes. Wood has a face that is not just too unformed but apparently unformable. Mortensen may simply have been handed a script in which the inner conflict over whether to take up his birthright is scanted in favor of other threads. I think Billy Boyd, who played Pippin, stood a much better chance of nailing the aspects of Frodo that Wood couldn't convey. Diana has believed, and still does occasionally, that Sean Bean would have made a better Aragorn than Mortensen. Bean does seem to have some dynamism that Mortensen at least does not show.

On first viewing, I liked RotK least of the three movies, so maybe it's strange to jump down a reviewer's throat for criticising it, but it bothers me when people write damfool things.

Happy New Metric System - Time was I had other material than Iraqi electricity production. Now the CPA and I are trapped in an unending series of bulletins reminiscent of reporting on the 1930s Soviet Union. The beguiling thing about power production is that the numbers are unitary, among the few data that are promptly and well reported by the CPA to the public, and just say "infrastructure!" like almost nothing else. ("Electricity + De-Ba'athification = Democracy!" for all you superannuated Sovietologists out there. Oh right. You guys are working for the CPA.)

You hear about salaries, you wonder about inflation. You hear about paint jobs in schools, you wonder why anyone is boring you with that crap. You hear about electricity, you figure it's gotta mean something.

It's also the first December benchmark to "close," thanks to the CPA's excellent "Daily Power Production and Distribution" page. (The only useful section of the english-language site - I hope Arabic speakers get more use from theirs.)

To the numbers themselves: December ended on an upswing. The seven-day average peak output on December 31st was 3,641 - that's five percent higher than the December 1 figure (3,453), and slightly higher than the average for all reported time back to early August (3,538). Still nowhere close to the salad days of October, which the CPA relives on its electricity welcome page the way Redskins fans nurture themselves on memories of the Gibbs Years, but the last seven days of the month run

3,311
3,310
3,380
3,467
3,495
3,586
3,641

That's the moving 7-day average, which climbs 10%.

Here is a very simple table showing peak output (7-day ave) on the last day of every recorded month so far:

August:3,451
September: 3,932
October: 3,824
November: 3,506
December: 3,641

On the way back up, but climbing more slowly than it fell. And as a reminder, the Iraqi Ministry of Electricity's own estimate of Iraq's needs is 7,000Mw.

In Baghdad itself the situation looks rather better. The seven-day average peak output on December 31: 1,414. That's actually the third highest day since August 10, and the only two better numbers (October 10 and 11) were 1,417 and 1,425. December 31's peak output for that day alone (unaveraged, 1,585Mw) was Baghdad's single best day since recording begins August 4. It was just a good week all around for Baghdad power. Here are the last seven days UNaveraged peak output numbers:

1,385
1,075
1,480
1,500
1,520
1,350
1,585

The thing to keep in mind is that Baghdad's average daily number since August 4 is 1,235. Zeyad at Healing Iraq, who is plainly trying to horn in on my action, did his own powerblogging this week, and explains the improvement as due to . . . various repairs, mainly of sabatoged lines.

I look forward to the day when there are Iraqi blogs who post about nothing but electricity production. (Cue Folk Implosion: "There's no tellin' what we'll do when we're free!")

Here's the month-end table for Baghdad (we're back to seven-day averages):

August: 1,237
September: 1,312
October: 1,231
November: 1,231
December: 1,414

That's a 15% improvement over the month, after basically no movement prior. The CPA/Ministry of Electricity's stated goal for October 2003, per the Saban Center Iraq Index at Brookings, was 2,500Mw. The MOE does not give a Baghdad-specific "need" counterpart to go with the 7,000Mw figure for the whole country. We can try a SWAG based on the current output ratio. Baghdad currently gets about 1/3 of Iraq's total juice, so that would give a "need" figure of 2,500Mw. That can't be right, though, since that's what Brookings gives as the pre-war figure for Baghdad, and longtime readers of Where is Raed know that Baghdad power was iffy even in late 2002. At that time, Baghdad was getting 60% of Iraq's juice. Assume that the rest of the country was really power-starved, and say Baghdad needs 40% to half the total power in the country, and you get a Baghdad need figure of between 3,000 and 3,500Mw.

So, bottom line? Power output in the country as a whole and Baghdad specifically improves from its November trough. Power output in both categories is still well below prewar levels, which were degraded by preparation for invasion and a dozen years of sanctions.

Wasn't that fun? We'll do more metrics as the December figures come in.

This Doesn't Even Rise to Burying the Lede - The Reuters article on the coming troop rotation in Iraq concentrates on the "giant logistics chore complicated by concerns about opportunistic attacks targeting Americans as they arrive or depart." But the hot speculation is how the US will use the transition time:

Officials said each arriving unit is due to have a period of at least weeks to work alongside the departing unit to transfer knowledge of the terrain, culture and enemy.

They've also said, in other stories, that the Pentagon will take advantage of the time that US force levels are basically doubled to really ramp up offensive operations against the insurgency. Did Reuters miss those leaks or did they rightly discount them? Check back in three to four months.

Wait! Check back before then! Revisit this issue in three to four months.

I Am Almanac! - Anent the "Almanac Alert," Ginger Stampley writes that "Jim Henley . . . should know better." She compares the baleful "planespotting case" a couple of years ago in Greece. And Hal O'Brien e-mails

What worries me is just how vaguely everything is worded. "Suspicious annotations". "Apparent surveillance". Apparent to whom? Suspicious to whom? Deduced how?

As to AP statement about getting a copy and verifying it, my take on that is, "We thought it was a hoax, too. Then we got a copy of the memo. Hoo-whee."

This is just more of the same from this Administration. "If you check out too many library books (and we decide how many are too many), we'll pull your library records. If you use an almanac, we'll brand you a terrorist." Next thing they'll be saying anyone who uses a Statistical Abstract to verify the laughingstock of some of their stranger statements is a traitor.

This Administration continues to push the idea that there is a body of knowledge that should only be known to a governmental mandarinate, and that even the *desire* for that knowledge is somehow suspicious.

I would take this back to Bruce Schneier's set of 5 questions that are the backbone of his recent book, "Beyond Fear":

* "What assets are you trying to protect?" If we take the Administration at its word, it would be Any Terrorist Target. Woo.

* "What are the risks to these assets?" Again, at face value, Any Possible Terrorist Attack. Also, again, woo.

* "How well does the security solution mitigate those risks?" Ah, here we go.

Not a damn bit.

When was the last time you heard of the Israelis seizing almanacs from the Palestinians? Or, how much would arresting people with almanacs have stopped the 11 Sept attacks at all? Or, how about that guy who was caught at the US/Canadian border on the way to LAX?

* "What other risks does the security solution cause?" One more erosion of free speech, free press, unreasonable searches and seizures, and anti-intellectual bigotry in general. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln loved the play...

* "What costs and trade-offs does the security solution impose?" So, there you are, a beat cop... And you're now supposed to monitor whether people have almanacs, rather than, oh, say, are committing crimes? Basically, to enforce this thing properly would take more resources than we have available. Especially given how useless it is to actually stopping terrorism. Releasing it without resources, on the other hand, just makes the Administration more laughable, and makes the public more likely to think they're yelling "Wolf! the next something real *does* comes along.

In other words, in one way, yes, you're right, it's completely trivial and useless. But the measure's very triviality and uselessness just makes it all the more appalling. Instead of actually working on stopping terrorism, these bozos want to punish reading, and make curiosity "suspicious".

They may be right. I'd caution Hal, though, that this appears to be less an "Administration" edict than an FBI one. The FBI as an institution sucks today, sucks last year, sucked in the previous administration, sucked in the one before that, has sucked since its founding and will continue to suck when our sun has bloated up like a big dead fish on the Beach of Time. Al Gore's FBI would issue the Almanac order because, in a real sense, "Al Gore's FBI" would not exist.

But the fact that it's so hard to separate the merits of the order itself from the merits of the institutions that will (mis)use it indicates that I should conced the point.

Curses Foiled Again - Casey Lartigue desmystifies the magical thinking of Post columnist Courtland Milloy, re the Washington Redskins' "curse."

Department of Separating Ideology from Esthetics - The lyrics to Willie Nelson's new peace anthem are pretty darn lame. I haven't heard the music, but it would have to be damn good to save the thing.

Traffic and Laughter - I don't usually do traffic-related items - it ill befits the lower-medium time/upper-small time blogger - but December was a ridiculously good month. Site readership had been growing at about 10% a month for the last several, but visits blew past November's total in three weeks. The previous best-of month was March 2003 - you may recall there was a war then. December actually topped it, especially surprising given the usual effect of holidays on readership. Thanks to every loyal reader, and referrers too.

Top dozen referrers, in order:

Atrios
Where is Raed
Electrolite
Counterspin
Crooked Timber
Calpundit
Journalista
Instapundit
Winds of Change
Agitator
Eve Tushnet
Matthew Yglesias

Happy New Year - My competitive blogging advantage on this day is that I don't drink, so I can steal a march on my fellows. My competitive disadvantage is I'm feeling kind of lazy, and the batch of new pills my doctor prescribed me yesterday have left me a bit woozy.

Last year's resolutions: Sell some articles (made a start); Stop the war (oh well); Be prompter about e-mail (qualified failure).

This year's resolutions: Sell more writing, including to new markets; Stay in 30" slacks all year; Run a marathon, if medically cleared; Read more non-political blogs; Finish the graphic novel this month; Complete and test a game design by end of year; Do for the family finances what I did for the Unqualified Waistline, but without the equivalent of fitness blogging.

Unqualified Successes 2003 - It's that time of year, as it has been twice before. Once again: new categories are asterisked; repeat categories will list previous winners in parentheses; the Unqualified Successes are not blog awards as such - while some awards go to blogs, others don't, and you should assume I love you even if you're not mentioned, assuming you blog and your name is not Roger Simon. By any measure, it's been a good year for this site, and I thank loyal readers and attentive fellow bloggers for making it so. Congratulations to Mrs. Offering, our only three-time winner. Without further ado!

Least Dispensible Weblog - Calpundit (2001, 2002: Instapundit.com)

Hawk of the Year - Charles Paul Freund (2002: Perry de Havilland; 2001: Christopher Hitchens)

Dove of the Year - Jay Bookman, Atlanta Journal-Constitution (2002: Amram Mitzna; 2001: Alan Bock)

"Turning Japanese" Award for the Best Case of the Vapors, Legacy Media Division - Peggy Noonan (2002: Everyone convinced that the Washington Snipers must be Al Qaeda operatives; 2001: Andrew Sullivan)

*"Turning Japanese" Award for the Best Case of the Vapors, Blog Division - Adam Yoshida

Best Non-Libertarian in a Libertarian Role - Michael Kinsley (2002: The Talking Dog; 2001: Mickey Kaus)

Best Libertarian in a Neoconservative Role - Glenn Reynolds (2002: Brink Lindsay; 2001: Glenn Reynolds)

Best Meme Insertion - No Award (2002: "Chickenhawk"; 2001: "Our Good Friends, the Saudis")

Best Libertarians in a Libertarian Role - Hit and Run (2002: Julian Sanchez; 2001: Samizdata)

Least Annoying Liberal - Matthew Yglesias (2002: Patrick Nielsen Hayden; 2001: Ginger Stampley)

War is the Health of the State Award, Federal Division - The FBI (2002: George W. Bush; 2001: John Ashcroft)

*War is the Health of the State Award, State Division - The California Anti-Terrorism Information Center

*War is the Health of the State Award, Wannabe Division - Howard "Compare That to What We're Spending in Iraq" Dean

War is the Health of the State Award, If You Can Call This Health, International Division - Yasser Arafat (2002: Ariel Sharon)

*War is the Health of - Oh! Me! - Richard Perle

War May Not Be the Health of MY State Award - Pervez Musharraf (2002: Hamid Karzai)

Jumped the Shark Award - Flypaper Theory (2002: Anti-Idiotarian)

Blog Trend of the Year - Group blogs (2002: Unretiring)

*Dubious Blog Trend of the Year - Guest blogging

Baleful Blog Trend of the Year - Googlebombing (2002: Public de-linking)

*Healthy Blog Trend of the Year - Iraqi bloggers

*Blog Shame of the Year - The Easterbrook Affair

*There's a Pony in Here Somewhere Award - Tie: David Kay and Stephen F. Hayes

Soup/Food of the Year - Cream of Crab, Jerry's Seafood in Lanham MD (2002: Chili without beans; 2001: Campbell's Chunky Seasoned Beef Rib Roast with Herbs and Potatoes)

Tagline of the Year - "The War on Straw", The Poor Man (2002: "Harabist," Aziz Poonawalla; 2001: "We can fact-check your ass," Ken Layne)

*Brilliant Mistake - Stand Down

*It Was Fun While It Lasted Award - "Libertarians for Dean"

*Ronald Reagan Memorial Award for "Amiable Duncery" - Everyone who claimed to find the Valerie Plame scandal too "confusing"

Special Achievement Award - Salam Pax (2002: Antiwar.com; 2001: The Onion, Attack on America issue)

*The Road Not Taken Award - Jesse Walker, "The Bugs Bunny Option"

Spouse of the Year - Mrs. Offering (2002: Mrs. Offering; 2001: Mrs. Offering)

Unqualified Fanboy Successes 2003 - This blog's split personalities fought over who got to go first, and the comics geek won. Here are my entirely idiosyncratic awards for achievements, dubious and indubitable, from the year in comics (broadly considered).

Least Dispensible Comics Weblog - Journalista

Rant of the Year - Sean Collins on Batman: Hush

Iron Pyrite Award - Craig Thompson, for Blankets

Never Step on the Punchline of a Running Joke Award - Four Color Hell, for publishing new material in the closing days of the year

Speaking of Running Jokes Award, Lifetime Achievement Division - The John Byrne Forum

Comics Blogging Trend of the Year - Comics blogs

Baleful Comics Blogging Trend of the Year - Nasty personal usenet-style squabbles

Virtue Without Moderation is Vice Award - De

com

pres

(see thrilling conclusion of this award in five months)

Best Semi-Comics Blog - Eve Tushnet

Full Disclosure Award to the Source of Most of the Comics I Read But Did Not Buy - Eve Tushnet

Comics Trend of the Year - Manga

Comics Punditry Trend of the Year - Talking about manga, but not reading it

Lifetime Achievement Award, Despite Everything - Dave Sim, for Cerebus

Lifetime Achievement Award, Comics Blogging Division - Neilalien

Blindingly Obvious Be Careful What You Wish For Award - Sic Transit Gloria Jemas

Comics Movie of the Year - Daredevil, dammit, so there

Yeah But What the Hell Can You Do Award - Poor, poor Captain America

Creator Weblog of the Year - Peter David

Dark Phoenix Award, for Rising from the Ashes - Alan David Doane

Year's Biggest Crossover Series - Jesus Castillo blogging

Damn the United States, I Wish I May Never Hear of It Again Award - feeling obligated to buy and read Demon Beast Invasion

Titanic Achievement Award for Sinking the Unsinkable - David Mack, Daredevil 51-55

Il Miglior Fabro - Franklin Harris

A Fanboy's Imitation Tech Blog Item - Sony has Spider-man blog templates. That is way, way, way too cool.

The things you learn because Blogger.com is on the fritz.

Conan the Libertarian - No, not Ah-nold, silly - the real one!

"I found Aquilonia in the grip of a pig like you - one who traced his genealogy for a thousand years. The land was torn with the wars of the barons, and the people cried out under oppression and taxation. Today no Aquilonian noble dares mistreat the humblest of my subjects, and the taxes of the people are lighter than anywhere else in the world."

Robert E. Howard, "The Scarlet Citadel," in The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian.

(Which book is worth having, as it is a "pure Howard" collection stripping away the pastiches and reworkings of the Conan saga by L. Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter and others. Some scholarly effort has been lavished on assuring the authenticity of the manuscripts and the introductory and end matter is useful. There will apparently be at least one further volume.)

Department of Follow-Ups - Dirk Deppey revisits his direct-market and Corner Comics stories, responding to reader reactions and elaborating on his theses. Good stuff, though I suspect that his injunction re the direct market amounts to "Like different things!" I was also struck by his list of comics that got him interested in the medium again back in the 1980s:

Cerebus . . . American Flagg!, Love & Rockets, Saga of the Swamp Thing, Scout, Those Annoying Post Brothers and Zot!

The Post Brothers books I've seen never did much for me, and I don't think I've heard of Scout. But the others are on my all-time faves list. I'd add William Messner-Loebs' Journey, Dark Knight Returns and Concrete.

Happy Happy - Amygdala is two years old today. Avedon Carol (not her blog) is older. (I am not sure what the conversion rate between "Delany years" and calendar years is.)

Not Dead Yet - Mrs. Offering is something approaching chipper. Offering Boy's fever has broken, though the pediatrician discovered an ear infection of such magnitude that he warned us it might "explode." (The infection, not the ear.) The Littlest Offering is also fever-free, finally, and was well enough to play with her cousin and buy Mary Janes today for church. Have bought for her, that is. I am still slightly feverish, clogged and drugged, with a secondary infection in my sinuses. This cold pretty much killed my ambitions for Christmas vacation. I haven't been able to concentrate long enough to do any of the writing projects on my plate. Drat. Thanks to everyone who conveyed good wishes.

Tomorrow: This site's annual awards. It's a tradition as soon as it happens a third time!

Guilty Guilty Guilty! (Your Doonesbury nostalgia trip for today.) John Ashcroft's decision to recuse himself from the Plame Game investigation sure is interesting. We should consider the outside possibility that the "evidence recently developed in the inquiry" is so favorable to Administration higher-ups that Ashcroft wants the coming exoneration to appear all the more definitive.

Okay, that's enough of that.

Pet peeve. The headline characterizes the case as a "leak probe." But while parts is parts, leaks is not leaks. I'll be a lot happier when I see headlines about "burning of covert officer probe."

Stuff I Can't Get Worked Up About, the Continuing Series - The "Almanac Alert." The idea that the police are supposed to be on the lookout for people carrying almanacs is funny, out of context. But the actual directive, apparently, provides explicit context:

The FBI noted that use of almanacs or maps may be innocent, "the product of legitimate recreational or commercial activities." But it warned that when combined with suspicious behavior -- such as apparent surveillance -- a person with an almanac "may point to possible terrorist planning."

I read this as saying that, if a bunch of other things are suspicious, and the suspicious character has an almanac, the almanac is worth paying attention to. That strikes me as . . . reasonable.

I suppose there will be idiot cops out there who ignore the context of the memo, which is bad.

Speaking of which, the article also says "The Associated Press obtained a copy of the bulletin this week and verified its authenticity." Okay, how about entering the internet age and putting the full text of the memo online! It's not 1993 any more, associated press. It's not even 2003 in a couple more days.

Category Confusion - Eve Tushnet is still trying to to talk about Same Sex Marriage in terms of whether marriage is a "right." But talk of rights as such is a red herring when it comes to gay marriage. The real issue is an equal protection argument, not an individual rights one.

There is no constitutional "right" to food stamps. Food stamps could be ended tomorrow legislatively, and no one could say Boo, from a legal perspective. However, the equal protection clause makes it clear that, if you do have a food stamp program, it's constitutionally forbidden to have food stamps for "everyone but Jews." State denial of state benefits to "suspect classes" has to pass a "strict scrutiny" test. The State clearly confers benefits on couples by recognizing their marriages. The State clearly denies those benefits to gay couples. That is a clear invitation to strict scrutiny. I believe strict scrutiny is passed by finding a "compelling state interest" in the exclusion. I disbelieve that gay marriage opponents have found anything even close to a compelling state interest in their hodgepodge of arguments so far, as I've said before.

Anyway, my only response to the question "Is marriage a right?" is "That's not the question."

A stray thought: I am pro-choice on abortion. I am pro-gay marriage. Eve is pro-life on abortion and anti-gay marriage. I find Eve's writing on the subject of abortion much more compelling than her writing on gay marriage. I am not sure (and I mean that sincerely) whether this has more to do with me or her.

Empty Calories Between Their Ears - I meant to link to the terrific article Kelly Jane Torrance wrote about her time among the food fascists on Sunday, but missed. So read it now.

My Only Mad Cow Item will be this link to Gallimaufry.

How Sick is Sick? - Last night in dreams compounded of equal parts fever and decongestants, I planned a series of children's books starring "Cut Fuckwise, the Brain Counter" (tagline: "He Counts Brains!"). I'm sure we're all dying to read those. I certainly won't be subbing them in for the Rainbow Horse stories I am enjoined to make up each night as part of The Littlest Offering's bedtime routine. (Helpful hint: When making up children's stories on the fly, there is never a bad time to insert a talking bird.)

All kinds of stuff I'd like to blog about and write about and I just can't summon the concentration. So here are some things to keep you amused while I chug some NyQuil.

Julian Sanchez and Timothy Sandefur are in a colloquy about mall culture and whether there's a proper libertarian reaction to it - or even a Proper Reaction All Decent People Should Have. Julian thinks he's got an esthetic and ethical objection to malls. I think he's just a guy:

And don't malls run counter to one of the things Rand (rightly enough) liked about Christmas? The practice of exchanging gifts is most meaningful when you've thought about the recipient, gotten halfway into his head, and come up with something that the other person would like, but (ideally) might not have thought to get for himself. The choice of the gift is a statement about the relationship.

Now, I guess you can do that at a mall. But generally, if I'm at the mall in the days before Christmas, it's because I've gotten lazy and I'm wandering around hoping that something will jump out at me for all the various people I've got to get something for. It's tailor made for the generic gift-giving-as-formality that Rand seemed not to like so much.

Pause for this site's liberal readers to digest the news that Ayn Rand liked the idea of buying gifts for people. Okay, where were we? Ah yes. Julian is a man, and single, so I don't think he quite gets malls yet. Shopping is a muscle, and generally, women keep their shopping muscle better toned than men do. They work out all year so they're ready for the Big Game. Women I have known love to shop for themselves, and love to buy stuff, but they also, generally, always have a track in their mind observing, recording and matching up what they're seeing with a gift list in their head. Window shopping in August prepares them for earnest shopping in December - and that's the ones who haven't wrapped up their Christmas purchases before Halloween. (Have you ever heard a guy say, "I'm done with my Christmas shopping" in early November?)

Shopping is gatherer culture without bugs and thorns. It can be done to self-destructive excess, just like any other worthwhile pursuit, but like other abusable pleasures - food, sex, intoxicants - it is one of life's goods. If you're into that. I'm not, really, but I'm a guy.

Meanwhile, lots of people have had a crack at yesterday's Washington Post article about how the Administration has scaled back it's grander ambitions for Iraqi society to match the sovereignty handover deadline of next July 1. Among other things, the sweeping privatization program that so appalled liberals last summer is stillborn. A few things about the article that jumped out at me:

o As a libertarian I'm all for privatization, but against interventionist foreign policy. So what do I think? Non-interventionism wins here, on practical grounds. I don't want capitalism to suffer the stigma of Alien Imposition in Iraqi minds. The Third World put itself through political-economic hell for decades by associating free markets with colonialism (ironic in that the European empire's were the last gasp of mercantilism - if we can imagine for a minute that mercantilism is a thing of the past). That led many postcolonial countries on a left turn into socialism and kleptocracy.

o And come to think of it, that's basically what we're going to get in Iraq! Follow the lines of Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran's inquiry to their vanishing point and what you see there looks a lot like Egypt II, maybe without the unified culture. You'll have a nominally-democratic kleptocracy running state-owned businesses badly, with high unemployment and simmering revolutionary discontent. A comparison of the number of Egyptians in Al Qaeda with the number of Iraqis (pre-Gulf War Phase II) is left as an exercise for the reader. Best of all, we'll be paying for it - in addition to the Summer's $87 billion, the hundred-odd billion spent in preparation and prosecution of the invasion phase of the war, and the billions we'll be spending on the troops we intend to keep garrisoned in Iraq after the civil handover, you just know that, as with Egypt, we'll be sending our anointed crooks a few billion a year for as many years as there are columns in Excel. Your tax dollars at work.

o Chandrasekaran mentions, in an aside, that the Iraqi airport is still closed to commercial traffic (because of security concerns). An inability to secure the airspace around Baghdad International can not have been on anyone's prewar list of victory conditions.

o Chandrasekeran also pegs Iraq's unemployment rate at 60%, even with continued over-employment at state-owned enterprises, whch is ten points over Brookings' October rate of 50%. But I'm not sure that Chandrasekaran is working from up-to-the-minute data here.

o Finally, if you've supported the Administration because it "stands up to terrorism," stop kidding yourself. As the Post article reminds us, the accelerated schedule was itself a response to the wave of increasing attacks throughout the fall. And the CPA and Iraqi ministries curtailed the privatization program partly in response to the assassination of a cooking-oil company manager who was planning to restructure his enterprise. If you were one of those "No More Beiruts" people, you are looking at a slow-motion Beirut right now.

Andrew Olmsted has a useful consideration of the Army's latest stop-loss orders. Andrew's solution is to expand the Army. I say, before we do that, let's pull all remaining troops out of Europe and Korea and anywhere else we've stranded them (Haiti?).

Kevin Drum said something curious the other day, about the neoconservatives:

After all, this is the same group that spent much of the 70s and 80s so intent on interpreting everything as part of a war of civilizations between the West and a resurgent communism that they ignored - or in some cases actively encouraged - the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East. (Remember Afghanistan and Iran-Contra?) The very single-mindedness that neocons are famous for blinded them to the fact that they were contributing to the rise of an even bigger problem, one that had nothing at all to do with communism.

Now, is Islamic fundamentalism really a bigger problem than the Cold War was? Certainly the Cold War had a minimal gentlemanly aspect to it that the Islamists haven't copied - the Soviets and their clients never attacked Americans in our own territory. And Islamism is in some ways less tractable than State Communism, which was bound to at least the forms of the nation-state system and circumscribed by the nuclear balance of terror. Still, the Soviets were an existential threat in a way that Iraq certainly was not, and even Al Qaeda is not unless we choose to let it be so. We came way to close to thermonuclear exchanges in 1963, 1972 and the early 1980s (around the time of the KAL 007 shootdown). We lost 50,000 lives in Vietnam, 40,000 in Korea and hundreds more in Central American battles we weren't supposed to talk about. You might say, the dead in Vietnam and Korea weren't civilians like the dead in New York City. That's true as far as it goes, but most of the dead would have been civilians but for the draft. Compare the fiscal costs of the cold war with the bill for the War on Terror and it's no contest. Then consider that we're fighting the WoT like idiots - we could be getting more mileage out of a cheaper, more focused effort against Al Qaeda.

Now I could be wrong about some of the above. For one thing, we might be witnessing the death throes of the nation-state concept. Al Qaeda may herald an age in which states can no longer perform their most basic function: securing their own territory and citizens from foreign attackers. But for the time being I think Kevin overreached in his criticisms.

Diana Moon has tons of great stuff. So does Gary Farber. They'll keep you busy.

Daniel Drezner is guest-blogging at AndrewSullivan.com, which is reason to actually read AndrewSullivan.com.

Max Sawicky has more on the uncanny convergence in Democratic and Republican plans for Iraq. cf. me.

Polytropos is your headquarters for Return of the King blogging. See "Is Peter Jackson Insane?" and his spoiler-rich review. (It turns out Bruce Willis is actually dead.)

And so am I, and everyone else in this house, or would be if we had our wish. Curse this undoubtedly Islamofascist virus. More when I regain my will to live. For now I have an appointment with a dark green liquid.

Weekly Fitness Blog Item - 166 pounds, which means I have to lose one by next Sunday to meet my interim holiday goal (165 or less). Pfagh. Our whole house is laid up with colds, so exercise is not on.

Your Blogger Holiday Meal Menus Bonus Section. Bruce Baugh and Walter in Denver published their menus. Both look yummy. Here at Unqualified World Headquarters we had rib roast (on sale for $7/pound!), sauteed mushrooms and peas.

More - actually, less I hope - next week.