Where You'll Find Me - Blogging will be light today and tomorrow as Your Talking Dog and I rendezvous and run the Marine Corps Marathon through DC and Virginia. Heaven knows if anyone wants to come out and cheer we'd love to see you. I still look relatively like my LiveJournal picture, and I'll be wearing a green t-shirt with "J-I-M" on it. I'll be running next to a short, hairy fellow. We anticipate running at between a 10 and 12-minute pace.

Wackily, you can track our progress via e-mail, mobile phone text message or pager. No, I can't for a minute imagine why you'd want to, but you can. It's just like those live gameimte Java scoreboards you get on ESPN, only nobody cares. To track me, you want last name "Henley," first name "Jim." You can follow Your TD by inputting last name "Farber," first name "Seth."

After it's all over, I'll tell you what nobody's saying about the al Qa Qaa explosives story.

UPDATE: DNF, drat it. Left knee went south on me after 11 miles. Wouldn't bend or support weight without shooting pain. I made it to the Mile 16 aid station and took the straggler bus in. Oh well! Your TD however finished in 5:55:25.

Helpful Hints - Suitability of common household objects for crushing ice:

A can of Progresso soup - Good.
A Le Creuset dutch oven - Much better.

Why, Despite Everything, John Kerry Should Be President - If I skip detailing the ways in which John Kerry's career and his institutional situation offend the concepts of limited government it's not because I don't recognize them or don't care. The incumbent's record establishes him as likely worse on some such things (scientific and social freedom), about as bad on others (trade, spending, civil liberties) and better on a few (regulatory expansion). Enthusiasm for limited government and free trade across and within our borders is in not just practical but even rhetorical decline in George W. Bush's Republican Party. The term "modern-liberal" has been the libertarian term of disdain for the managerialist philosophy that conquered the Democratic Party between the Progressive Era and the New Deal. The time has come to add "modern-conservative" as a description of the guiding philosophy of the Republican Party, a philosophy that replaces the defense of markets with crony capitalism, personal responsibility with theocratic injunction, patriotism with the most cartoonish possible nationalism, prudence in international relations with reckless and unending adventure.

Which brings us to the present election between, alas, John Kerry and, unfortunately, George W. Bush. I've been in favor of President Bush losing the election for quite some time, but it's only recently that I've been able to think that John Kerry should win it. It comes down to a recent, endlessly rehashed exchange.

John Kerry told the New York Times:

"We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives but they're a nuisance."

Kerry compared the anti-terrorism battle to efforts by law enforcement to root out prostitution or illegal gambling, knowing such an activity could never be ended but could be reduced to where "it isn't threatening people's lives every day."

This is a bad approach to prostittution and gambling, but it's an uncannily realistic set of victory conditions for the War on Terror. The Republican response has been pie-in-the-sky irreality:

"I couldn't disagree more," Bush said. "Our goal is not to reduce terror to some acceptable level of nuisance. Our goal is to defeat terror by staying on the offensive."

which implies that by "staying on the offensive" (forever?) we can make "terror" - a tactic that has been around for some long number of decades or centuries depending how loose you want to play with your definitions - vanish utterly from the face of the earth. When certain progressives sought beforetimes to "end war," real conservatives laughed out their asses at the naivete.

In one exchange Kerry earns the office Bush forfeits. I have real doubts about Kerry's ability to attain his stated victory conditions, because it would mean changing US foreign policy in ways neither party has the inclination to contemplate now. But the President won't even give us a plausible victory condition. "Defeat" sure sounds tough, but what does it mean, really? Is the President promising a future in which terrorists never attack Americans? Ever ever? If not, then what more impressive victory is he promising than reducing terrorism to "a nuisance?" If so, just how long does he expect perfection in this life to take coming? How much will it cost in American blood and treasure? How long will we "stay" on "the offensive?" How many countries will we invade? How many occupations will we run, and serially, or in parallel? How much faith must we place in "the offensive?" (Vice President Cheney recently used variations of the word "aggressive" three times in a single sentence on the stump.) As much as Napoleon? How many election cycles do they expect it to take?

This last strikes me as crucial to the question. Kerry averred, accurately, that victory over terrorism would mean a future in which "terrorists are not the focus of our lives." The problem is that the Bush Administration in particular and the Republican Party generally are the wrong people to bring about such a future. Structurally, the Republican Party profits from conflict, not victory. It enjoyed a huge electoral advantage during the Cold War because of its greater credibility on National Security, but it made the mistake of winning that contest and the result was the first twice-elected Democratic President since Roosevelt. Now we are in the midst of another war, one the Administration chose to fight with broad goals rather than narrow ones. I don't think the Republican Party will make the mistake of "winning" this one. The plan is rather to "stay on the offensive" until terrorism is eliminated, which is to say, forever. I don't think most Republican leaders consciously intend to belay victory for the sake of partisan advantage. I think that people's self and class interests bias them in ways they may not see.

That doesn't mean the rest of us can't see it, though. The Bush Administration has a vested interest in perpetuating security-related fears, which makes them poorly suited to provide actual security. And as they themselves keep reminding us, security is what this election is all about.

A Fanboy's Links - Comics journalist and Stan Lee biographer Tom Spurgeon has started a new site, The Comics Reporter. I expect to make it a regular reading stop, and I expect most lovers of comics will.

Where's the Fun in That? - Megan McArdle and Radley Balko are dissing homeless drifter Michael Badnarik today, Libertarian Party candidate for President. Badnarik is clearly a few cells short of a spreadsheet. This hasn't especially bothered me on the grounds that Michael Badnarik has no chance of becoming President. I view a vote for Badnarik as a vote for the party rather than the man. Now, the LP is itself a few cells short of a spreadsheet I realize. When I say "a vote for the party," I really mean a signal to the Republicans that they've blown their small-government credibility. (Some of them have done this with deliberate zeal.) I think two types of libertarians especially should vote for Badnarik - those who live in "safe" states for either Bush or Kerry (like, um, Megan McArdle and Radley Balko), and swing state libertarians who normally vote Republican and have grown disenchanted with the Bush Administration, but just can't bring themselves to vote for John Kerry. I also suspect that it's not the case that if the Libertarian Party produces better Presidential candidates it will get more votes. I think it's the other way around: if the Libertarian candidate starts getting more votes it will attract better candidates. Right now the prize is not worth the effort to claim it. That would change with the increase in prestige of a higher vote share. Yes, the LP sucks ass in a thousand ways. But during our quadrennial magic show it's a handy way to signify general preferences.

So what intrigues me about Radley's argument is that it skips past the "Badnarik is too crazy to be President" non sequiter, asking "Is Badnarik too crazy to be a libertarian [spokesperson]."

Given how close this election is, even if Badnarik does worse than Harry Browne did in 2000, there's a small chance that the LP could draw enough votes in a few states to tilt the outcome one way or the other. Should that happen, both Badnarik and the LP could get more media exposure than the LP's gotten in years. I'm sorry, but I'm just not convinced that either Badnarik or the LP speaking on behalf of libertarianism to a national audience with limited exposure to the ideology would ultimately be good for libertarianism, the philosophy.

This is the best anti-Badnarik argument I've seen. It may even be germane, since Badnarik is apparently setting himself up as a Bush-killer. I'm not ultimately persuaded Radley's way, though it's a close call. To paraphrase Churchill, Badnarik is the worst voting option except for all the others. Worst-case scenario is Bush wins. (I'll go into why with tomorrow's endorsement post.) The second-worst case scenario is that Kerry wins in such a way as to convince Big Government Conservatism that it needs to offer even more free stuff next time round - more medical entitlements; more trade barriers; more domestic spending of all sorts. It's certainly to the Libertarian Party's shame, though, that the choice is as narrow as it is.

Music Notes - What have we got for you today? The LA Times talks to Nick Lowe about his durable, protean "What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love and Understanding." Newsweek profiles UO Main Man Elvis Costello - bonus points for finding especially angular euphemisms for the "former angry young man of new wave" cliche that is standard to such pieces. And the Observer gives thumbs up to a new Costello Bio, Complicated Shadows, that I have not read. I am still liking The Delivery Man very much. The burn has not set in for it the way it did with When I Was Cruel.