Sick Sick Sick - I mean me. Google suggests I'm the only viewer whose response to the brief Bush-Kerry concord on the swellness of their grown-and-nubile daughters, and the mutual regard of those young ladies, was to wonder whether there is or will be Bush-and-Kerry-Daughters slash fiction.
Last Word - Justin Raimondo's column on the debate is quite good. He agrees with the rest of the world that Kerry won handily, and provides a pretty entertaining play-by-play, along with some useful cautions for peaceniks about overexuberance re the Senator from Massachusetts.
Yes and No - Nancy Lebovitz writes anent last night's fuss and bother:
One of the things that got to me about the debate is that Bush is focused on Iraq and Kerry is focused on bin Laden. Imho, Bush is wrong and Kerry is years too late.Al Queda has developed a decentralized terrorism which isn't dependent on individual leaders. While it might take unusual capabilities to make a 9/11 happen, people who can organize a car-bombing aren't especially rare.
I think this is right in an important way, and wrong in an equally important one. It's right in that the problem of anti-American Islamic terror has grown and, from what we can tell, adapted institutionally in just the way Nancy says. This is partly al Qaeda adapting to military and intelligence reverses, and partly Bush Administration policy swelling the ranks of our enemies since the turn toward social engineering with guns. (No, I don't imagine the US would have no enemies if we'd never invaded Iraq. But we'd have fewer.)
It's wrong, though, in that an example must be made of Mr. bin Laden. I used to talk about the "Don't Tread on Me War" in the early days of this blog, and gradually stopped as the President decided to fight another one entirely. Capturing and killing, or, failing that, killing, Osama bin Laden is vital, not just as revenge (though revenge would be sweet), but as a message: You can not get away with attacking the United States of America. Every day bin Laden walks free, or is even arguably alive, says the opposite. That's the message we've sent nigh on three years.
Speaking of Remembering it MY Way - I agree with Kevin Drum, who writes about the effort by the campaigns to debate-spin bloggers, the effort by the bloggers to be spun, and to spin their readers:
It's not surprising that the campaigns are reaching out to bloggers, of course, but as near as I can tell both sides are eating this up. Bloggers everywhere are basking in the illusion that they're sophisticated media operatives, actively collaborating to figure out the best spin for their guy. Emails are flying around from all parties pleading with fellow bloggers to stay on message.This is insane. It's bad enough when the mainstream media spends too much time lazily regurgitating talking points, but doesn't the blogosphere supposedly pride itself on being fiercely independent, a small band of brave truthtellers immune to the spin and cant of professional politicos?
Immune? As near as I can tell, bloggers are delighted to find themselves part of the spin machine. It's a real rush.
The moral of the story? Only trust libertarian bloggers. No one cares enough to spin us, and we couldn't manage to coordinate a message to stay on if we wanted to.
Eccentric Debateblogging - Well! Unqualified Offerings: Reliably Out of Step with America since October 2001! Obviously the entire rest of the world thought Kerry won the debate handily, much more convincingly than I did. Through the magic of post-debate spin I will surely believe this myself within the next week or so.
But the real question is, who else saw it more or less my way? (Bush ahead early, Kerry ahead late, both pretty annoying much of the time.) Answer: at least partial agreement comes from
After an awful start, I thought Kerry and Bush got stronger as the evening wore on. But Kerry got much stronger -- his criticisms of Bush got sharper over time. Bush stuck to the message, stuck to his message, and stuck to his message. I'll be curious to see how the ratings look -- whether people stuck with the debate for the entire evening. If they tuned in early but then tuned out, Kerry is in trouble. If people came in halfway through, Kerry gets a boost.
Bush started out shockingly coherent. But as Kerry began to score in the later rounds, the president grew increasingly indignant and petulant, and it showed in his body language: slumping over the podium, and grimacing at his opponent in a West-Texas version of Al Gore's eyerolling. When called upon to defend his record and his war, he looked as resentful as a guy getting written up for a parking ticket, and deciding whether it was worth the risk to get into it with the cop.
Hey, you might remember it my way next week if I keep at this!
Debate Blogging because I want to fit in. Actual dialog from early in the evening:
Me: How can you take these imbeciles seriously?
Mrs. Offering: It's hard.
A confession: I don't watch much TV, except for sports. I never watch TV news. I skip most States of the Union and missed all but a minute or two of both convention acceptance speeches. When I want to know what someone said in those things, I read the transcript. What that means is that I've actually seen and heard John Kerry and George W. Bush rarely over the last few months and, indeed, years.
What a couple of unpleasant people to watch.
Kerry should have been a German father lecturing his kids at the dinner table. Bush has a smirk that's just begging to get wiped off his smug face, even when he's not smirking.
All that said, keeping in mind that I count as an opponent of the President and no fan of the challenger, but who, on balance, wants the President gone, who won? I would say Bush won early, and Kerry won, more narrowly, late. Bush managed to present a more sharply-focused thesis throughout the early part: We win by staying on the offensive; You can't lead troops by telling them Wrong War, Wrong Place, Wrong Time; You can't build alliances by denigrating the contributions of the allies you already have. You could even say he presented a coherent argument: My opponent says he wants more cooperation but his inconsistencies undermine the possibility of same.
It's an appealing, and intuitively sensible argument. I disagree with most of it. Kerry eventually managed to effectively disagree with it by arguing that "Consistent but wrong" is not a virtue. It took him more than an hour to formulate that response, though, at the general level. Once he did formulate it, I thought he started to gain the edge on his opponent, not just rhetorically but even in all those soft qualities that They tell us are what really matter in the debate - comfort level, self-confidence, groundedness. And Bush started to go off his game. He missed, for example, a perfect opportunity to tie a North Korean ribbon around his rhetorical package: My opponent says he's for gathering allies, but ironically he wants to junk the allies we've got and go it alone in negotiations with Kim Jong-Il. A chuckling, "Who's multilateral now?" jest might have been the There you go again of this year's debates.
An hour and a half goes by of Bush chiding Kerry for hoping that "one more resolution" would have led Saddam to disarm when all the others had failed and Kerry never gets around to saying, What the hell are you talking about? He WAS disarmed! We know that for a fact, now. Cue wistful reference to Lincoln and Douglas.
From my perspective, Kerry got the better of the North Korean and Russian nuclear material issues that dominated the late stage of the debate. Not only did he present a stronger substantive case, but it seemed to imbue him with more confidence.
Things that naturally didn't come up: torture; the costs of interventionism; how much of a blank check to give Ariel Sharon's Likud government; whether we truthfully want to democratize cooperative Muslim autocracies or should want to; our continuing involvement in the Andean Initiative; sanctions on Cuba; the difference between prudence and panic in anti-terror policy. What we had was vigorous disagreement on tactics with no serious debate on grand strategy. Both candidates agree that America must be the busiest busybody in the busy busy world. The rest is a question of application.
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative - Artist Sylvia Nickerson's "Flower Knives" from the New Quarterly. Link via Nobilist.
Thick as a Brick - Matt Hogan tips me to an interesting article on cement and concrete shortages. Hey come on! This stuff matters:
It's a serious and costly problem for construction firms, which depend on cement to build everything from home foundations to highways to swimming pools. Because contracts are typically signed months in advance, firms are usually unable to pass along the added costs to their customers. And construction companies are being forced to leave some of their crews idle for days at a time as they wait for cement to arrive, leading to expensive delays.For consumers in some parts of the USA , it means home projects, such as the pouring of a new driveway, may be delayed or even canceled. And the cost will likely be higher than estimated a few months ago.
Why are we idling workers in the construction industry? Among other reasons:
The U.S. has imposed tariffs on Mexican cement since 1990 after the U.S. accused Mexico of dumping cement on the U.S. market or selling below cost.Currently, the tariff amounts to about a 40% addition to the Mexican firms' selling price for cement. It's been as high as 80%. Even with the tariffs, Mexican cement is flowing into the USA , accounting for about a quarter of all U.S. cement imports.
But the construction groups claim there is enough excess cement in Mexico to put a large dent in the U.S. shortage if the cement could come in unencumbered. Plus, the NAHB says, the impact could be felt quickly, noting it takes only four days for cement to be imported into the USA from Mexico , less than one-tenth of the time it takes for the product to come from Asia
But you can't just BUY cement from Mexico. Oh no! You can't even just drop your stupid tariff either:
Commerce Department officials have been in negotiations with their counterparts in Mexico and with the U.S. cement industry, which has supported the tariffs. One option under consideration involves targeted relief, meaning tariffs would be reduced or removed from cement coming from Mexico into specific parts of the USA where cement supplies are low.Although the negotiations have been taking place almost weekly, a decision is not imminent.
At least we're not idling our trade negotiators and lobbyists. I bet their driveways get poured on time, too.
At Least the NAME Doesn't Stink - According to a survey by the University of Pennsylvania's National Annenberg Election Survey conducted over the last year, only 9% of American Indians find the name of the Washington Redskins "offensive," reports AP. I'm not surprised. I recall a survey from a couple of years ago showed the same results. And here's a tidbit:
The franchise began in Boston as the Braves but was purchased in 1932 by George Preston Marshall, who changed the name to honor head coach William "Lone Star" Dietz, an American Indian.
Marshall's conduct toward black people was terrible. He was the last owner in the NFL to sign an African-American athlete. But he doesn't seem to have had similar retrograde attitudes toward Native Americans. Not surprising, since, like I said, "People choose team for their admirable associations. Nobody names their teams the Doofuses, the Rejects or the Grifters either."
Yogablogging! - Well, why the hell not? Alan Little has quite a lot of it. I've been thinking about yoga as an adjunct to running lately, and figure I could take it safely, being a man. (Women who get to be my age and start yoga for the first time seem inevitably to divorce within two years.) Some interesting stuff on Alan's site, including considerations of whether "yoga therapy" might l"ead to a short term, quick fix orientation that is foreign to real yoga practice." One friend took up yoga over the summer and told me "I was surprised to find it kicks my ass."
Let's Not Get Too Excited - Mrs. Offering forwards me Thomas Oliphant's column in the Boston Globe suggesting that Libertarian Presidential candidate Michael Badnarik (whose name he can't spell) may end up costing George Bush the state of Nevada and its five electoral votes. As a libertarian who plans to vote Libertarian for the third time and who would still, on balance, like to see George Bush lose, I'd like to get excited about this. I worry that Oliphant, good Boston liberal that he is, is seeing what he wants to see.
However, the latest polls appear to show Badnarik with more votes than the margin between Bush and Kerry. I suspect that a lot of normally Republican voters in Badnarik's column will come to Jesus on voting day and leave Badnarik with the Party's customary sub-one percent share, but perhaps Nevada will surprise me.
The Long Twilight Struggle Continues between the CIA and the White House. I wonder if Porter Goss will unilaterally disarm. Bureaucratic capture being what it is, I wouldn't count on it. What's interesting is that Novak says the analysts who warned ahead of time that Iraq would likely turn out . . . like it's turned out, and that our image in the Muslim world would drop to . . . the levels they're at now, never even quite managed to reach their boss with their concerns:
When Pillar was asked why this was not made clear to the president and other higher authorities, his answer was that nobody asked -- not even Tenet.
Novak is clearly still doing his best to get back on the White House's good side after all the trouble he caused them:
Modern history is filled with intelligence bureaus turning against their own governments, for good or ill. In the final days of World War II, the German Abwehr conspired against Hitler.
(Note: For the Times links, use the login "offerings/offerings" if you haven't got your own.)
Such a Shame How These Things Work Out - Jeff Taylor notes the unfortunate pattern in Pakistan:
Wanted al Qaeda insider Amjad Farooqi is dead, killed in a shoot-out with Pakistani security forces just as President General Pervez Musharraf visits the United States. Great timing, that. Trouble is Farooqi was rumored to be in custody months ago.Farooqi was wanted in connection with the slaying of American reporter Daniel Pearl as well as for his contacts with top al Qaeda elements in Pakistan. He was also fingered as responsible for assassination attempts on Musharraf, making Farooqi a very big catch indeed. But.
Western intelligence services must be wondering about how top Pakistani terror targets always wind up dead instead of interrogated by the West for several months. And some Pakistanis wonder if Farooqi's death is a little too convenient, effectively ending the investigations into both the Pearl murder and the Musharraf attacks before any potential connection to a powerful someone, somewhere gets found out.
I Got Rhythm - Via Costello-L, here'a cool site where you can hear just about any kind of percussion instrument you care to name. Actually, the site, Virtual Orchestra, will play almost any symphonic instrument for you.
Just don't let the Wolf catch Peter!
Ouch - Suffering through the Redskins game tonight. Tomorrow, a special "How Wrong You Are About Rwanda, Jim" mailbag.