It's About Trust - Team America: World Police is the finest movie ever made. You have been notified.

Gentlemen: Start Your Arguments - Penn's WXPN offers the Top 885 songs of all time. You might say the Top 50 is just a smidge boomer-heavy. U2 managed to slip one in at Number 10.

A Decent Respect for the Opinions of Mankind - I think the final degradation of our politics would be for some Republican, maybe Lynne Cheney herself, to respond that, Oh yeah? Well Jefferson owned slaves!

More Unamerican "global test" nonsense here.

Origins of Speciousness - Moira Breen continues to be your source for regular coverage of NAGPRA-related inanities. As Moira points out tirelessly, what's happening is an attempt to legislate away scientific inquiry that would tend to undermine a particular set of foundational myths. It's nothing but official creationism for American tribal religions. Anyone who opposes garden-variety creationism because it's unscientific, as opposed to opposing it because it's what scruffy red-staters believe, ought to oppose this too.

Now I'm Sorry I Missed the Debate and not just sorry I had to pull overnight duty at the hospital with Offering Boy. (He's fine - just a nonthreatening asthma attack.) Yglesias:

Is Bob Schieffer questioning his sexual orientation? Is this really what we need to be exploring? What's next: Mr President, you used to be a cheerleader, isn't that a little faggy? Senator Kerry, the navy is a legendary den of buggery, your thoughts?

That would be awesome!

Hanging Chads are So 2000 - Your November and December will be devoted to controversies over "provisional votes."

A new national backup system meant to ensure that millions of eligible voters are not mistakenly turned away from the polls this year, as happened in 2000, could wind up causing Election Day problems as infamous as Florida's hanging chads.

Congress required conditional, or provisional, voting as part of election fixes passed in 2002. For the first time, all states must offer a backup ballot to any voter whose name does not appear on the rolls when the voter comes to the polling place on Nov. 2. If the voter is later found eligible, the vote will count.

But Congress did not specify exactly how the provisional votes will be evaluated.

Add the ordinary problems that come with something new, and the result is a recipe for mix-ups at the polls and lawsuits over alleged unequal treatment of some voters, said Doug Chapin, executive director of Electionline.org, a nonpartisan clearinghouse for information on election reform.

As I've mentioned before, I am by instinct a (lower-case) republican rather than a (lower-case) democrat. So provisional votes strike me as a nightmare on their face. When it comes to elections I value well-understood, rigorous procedure over making sure everyone gets their say or however you want to put it.

The Cure for Bad Speech . . . - I'm with Jesse Walker - Sinclair Broadcasting are obviously making partisan use of their airwaves, but I think that's perfectly okay. It may arguably be bad business, in which case they'll pay, but it's not the FCC's business. I enjoyed the hell out of the Sundance Channel's live broadcast of the Vote for Change finale concert last night. That wasn't station owners using their facilities for partisan political purposes?

Since You Asked - No, the United States is not safer with Saddam Hussein out of power.

Really people, it shouldn't be that hard to state the crushingly obvious.

The Ballots from the Barracks - The results of a new poll are in that indicate, despite stop loss and tour extensions and what even the Administration's defenders generally concede is gross mismanagement of the Iraq War Phase IV (the post-invasion phase), the career military favors President Bush over Senator Kerry by "an astonishing 72 to 17 percent margin." As report glosser Peter D. Feaver puts it, "survey methods cannot account for a spread of 55 points." The real margin may be smaller, but still represents lopsided pro-Bush sentiment.

It will be important for Democrats and other opponents of the administration, many of whom have based their arguments on how ill-served the troops have been by it, not to turn with fury on those same troops. This is just the country we live in. The volunteer military recruitment process self-selects for (what passes for) conservatism. In addition, the psychic cost of voting No Confidence in your ultimate commander must be major - it's the kind of dispiriting conclusion a soldier will only want to draw when he must. I continue to believe that the best place for most of our soldiers in Iraq is right back here. It would be naive to expect the troops to thank me for that, though, and the warm glow of appreciation for my concern isn't the point. Their - and our - welfare and security is the point.

Exit Stage Right - James Antle says "Conservatives Must Face Iraq Facts," and Bob Barr confesses that "For the first time in my voting life, the choice in the race for president isn't so clear."

Halliburtoncons - Reading the parts of the Nation article I linked in the item below covering Halliburton's dealings with Iraq under the oil-for-food program, I can't find anything in the least objectionable about it. (Nor can I read the heavy breathing of "Duelfer found that Chevron, Mobil, Texaco and Bay Oil had received lucrative vouchers that allowed them to buy Iraqi oil and sell it abroad for big profits" without a chuckle. Imagine! Buying low and selling high! I know this always struck the Nation as dubious conduct, and they're against that kind of behavior in or outside Iraq, but I like my scandals to have a little more scandal to them.) Halliburton subsidiaries signed contracts to provide equipment and spare parts to Iraq's oil industry. Whee. The whole point of oil-for-food was that Iraq was allowed to sell oil. To sell oil it has to pump oil - I hope I am not going into too much wonky detail here - and that means using oil pumping equipment. It had to come from somewhere. Why not Halliburton? Yes, the US government blocked one deal because it decided the deal violated the sanctions regime, but who's to say the US government was right to do so?

But here's my point: the story of Halliburton's dealings with sanctions-era Iraq, and with Iran have to call into question the idea that the Halliburton wing of the Republican Party - that is, the crony capitalist sector - necessarily had a big motive to push for war. The Halliburtons of the world are going to do well for themselves regardless - they're wired. Whatever the government decides is okay, they're going to hook Halliburton up. In additon to their rich rosters of very well-connected executives, companies like Halliburton have expertise that the State can't do without. Had sanctions been lifted, Halliburton would have done nicely for itself. Arguably, they'd have made more money than they'll manage to make out of the war. (I don't say Halliburton's conduct in Iraq has been exemplary or even effective. I'm only saying there are credible reports it hasn't been wildly profitable.)

Dept. of What Will They Think of Next? - So now the reason we had to go to war with Iraq in the Spring of 2003 was - corruption in the administration of a UN program??? Never mentioned as a casus belli until this week, though it occasioned much warhawk carping about Perfidious Gaul and, until the Russians had the good taste to get a bunch of their schoolchildren slaughtered, treacherous Muscovy when Ahmed Chalabi's school for scandal began leaking just the executive summaries of full reports they couldn't care to part with, suddenly the oil-for-food program and its holes are proof that we had to stop Saddam before, well, before he craftily caused sanctions to be lifted. Left unmentioned is the official purpose of the sanctions - to force Saddam to disarm. And we now know for sure that he already had disarmed. There was no agreeed reason for sanctions to remain in place. Sanctions should have been lifted. Which is to say that our warhawks, good conservatives mostly, are arguing that we were at grave risk of failing to perpetuate a government program after it had achieved its authorized purpose.

Yeah, line up a thousand American boys and girls for that and I'll shoot 'em for you, it's so important. You be the one to explain the whole thing to their moms, though, okay?

It is high time we recognize the grammatical inversion that has seized our Imperial Wing. While they produce sentences of the form "I support the War for the sake of this reason," the truer template is "I support this reason for the sake of the War."

Music Notes - Watched the live broadcast of the final Vote for Change concert from MCI Center tonight with Mrs. O. (A coworker had tickets and I'll get his in-person report tomorrow.) Production values were great, which is no surprise since two of the legends of documentary filmmaking were involved. We liked most of it a great deal. The only real "Hey, Lena! Shut up and sing!" moment came in the transition to the encore when Bruce Springsteen insisted on intoning such MEGO catchphrases as "economic justice" and "living wage." The Boss picked up a lot of points for doing "Mary's Place" but lost some for inserting a paid political announcement into the middle of one of the finest songs ever written.

Other than that, if you accepted a certain amount of political pronouncement as the price of a free show, costs were more than acceptable. I thought Pearl Jam's set dragged a bit, but I'm not much of a Pearl Jam fan. (Why couldn't they have gotten Nirvana? Oh.) James Taylor reminded me why I was a big fan of his in high school. Natalie Maines got in a zinger when she said she "thought about apologizing, but the President would just call me a flip-flopper." The Chicks have great voices and seem to really enjoy having escaped -or been cast out - from their gilded Nashville cage. REM was fun, and started the show off with a bizarrely if unconsciously subversive undercurrent. (Was the concert itself "a simple prop / to occupy my mind"?) My tepid response to Pearl Jam aside, it was a lot of fun when Tim Robbins and Eddy Vedder dueted on an old X song.

Dylan quotient: 2.

Dave Matthews was the only musician who didn't get to sing with anyone else (until the obligatory finale). Did they all think he was a jerk? There was an amusing backstage moment as Matthews came off and hugged Michael Stipe, who thereafter tried to shake the sweat out of his white linen suit.

Best duet? Sorry, Springsteen's isn't the voice for "Man on the Moon," so that's out. Robbins/Vedder was pretty good, but made me miss Exene Cervenka and John Doe too much to win. The Dixie Chick/James Taylor duet on "Sweet Baby James" was primo - Maines really has the voice for that song, and took the lead - but the winner has to be Stipe joining Springsteen on "Because the Night." You have to be a bit of a freak to fully put that song across, which is why Patti Smith's version of their joint composition beat Springsteen's own. (We shall not even talk about 10,000 - see? I almost talked about it. Not good.) Needless to say, Michael Stipe is a bit of a freak.

Special bonus: Jackson Browne did not get a set, being allowed onstage for the encores only.

All in all, the speechifying could have been a lot worse, and the documentary bits filling airtime between sets were good. At one point the filmmakers gave four pro-Bush soldiers home on leave their say with nothing undercutting them, and there were shots of non-asinine Bush demonstrators at the various concerts. Fair and balanced! The production was stellar and much of the music likewise.

Shorter John Holbo - Ressentiment: It's Not Just for Leftists Any More. A point I've been making for some time with less erudition, but in fewer words. (And really, how often does THAT happen?) He's right, though, and it's a good example of why some people* have called Holbo "the liberal Aaron Haspel."

*Well, me anyway.

Travel Notes - Gene Callahan, my favorite paleolibertarian (and let's face it - I don't have many), is blogging from London. "The first few days here, I would look outside in the morning to see if it was going to rain. I've learned to stop doing that: It is going to rain." Also, why sanctions weren't working.

Ironically that's true in a way. While the exoteric function of sanctions was to force compliance with the UN's disarmament program, their esoteric was to topple Saddam Hussein from power. This was true for Bush I, Clinton and Bush II. At one point Madeline Albright came right out and said the US would veto any proposal to lift the sanctions so long as Saddam was in power. Gulf War Phase III (mistakenly referred to elsewhere as Gulf War II), was the outcome of a twelve-year bipartisan squeeze play.

The Question of Taiwan - Should Singapore kick its sorry ass? Hell yes!

"Yes, it [apology] also applies to Singaporeans if they have found the words uncomfortable," said Chen in answering an opposition parliamentarian's query during a parliament session.

Chen was referring to a row he started last week when he called Singapore a "tiny country no bigger than a piece of dried snot," . . .

From News24. But it may be true anyway.

Mechanical Marvels - I, K-bot is a fun-looking robotics blog maintained by Ivan Kirgin, a grad student at my mother's alma mater, Carnegie-Mellon University. The subhed is "The inevitable but gradual migration of everything into automation, even you," and as a Searlite I plain doubt that destination. However, the blog is full of fun developments in the field. If you have any interest in the matter of robots in the real world it's worth checking up on.

Where Did She Go to Get Spanked? - TNR has a pretty amusing account of the recent Dr. Phil show appearances by the Kerrys and the Bushes.