I love it. I really love the new Bush Cheney ad ([with editorial comments])

Since 1980, the key secret of negative campaigning has been to throw the stone and hide your hand, to preserve deniability. It's getting harder. In this add Bush-Cheney 04 is trying to hold Kerry responsible for an add posted on www.move-on.org which was promptly removed and denounced by move-on.org. However, Someone has placed an absolutley deadly anti Bush add on a site which Bush-Cheney 04 can't link with Kerry www.georgewbush.com. Brad DeLong's 11 year old daughter thought it was Democratic hackers. How naive, hackers would have come up with an add which wasn't so obvioulsy deadly to Bush from the very first clip.

Bush-Cheney '04
WEB VIDEO

Kerry's Coalition of the Wild-eyed

Graphic:
The Faces of John Kerry's Democratic Party
The Coalition of the Wild-eyed

Video Clip of Gore:
"How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein's torture prison?" (Al Gore, Remarks At New York University, 5/26/04)
([absolutely right and irrefutable. Hell Bush said the same thing. Note Gore is not quoted as saying that "they" are Bush and Cheney. Bush-Cheney 04 assumes that is obvious])

Video Clip of MoveOn.org Ad:
[Inaudible chanting, clip from ad]
([The illustration is meant to make it clear that the heading is an example of the "big lie" technique since MoveOn did not make the add, purged it from the site and denounced it])

Video Clip of Dean:
"I want my country back!" (Gov. Howard Dean, Remarks To California Democratic Convention, 3/15/03)
([Amen])

Video Clip of Michael Moore:
"We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons." (Academy Awards, 3/23/03)
([yes of course, but does Moore really need more free publicity given how "Farenheit 9/11" took all of 2 days to break the documentary gross sales record set by "Bowling for Columbine" ?])

Video Clip of Gephardt:
"This president is a miserable failure." (Rep. Gephardt, Democrat Presidential Candidates Debate, Albuquerque, NM, 9/4/03)
([great stuff. I have never agreed with Gephart before]).

Video Clip of MoveOn.org Ad:
[Inaudible chanting, clip from ad]
([see above. Guess just one Hitler is a Democrat clip was too subtle. By the way, in case anyone tries to claim that the add was saying that moveOn.org is one of the "Faces of John Kerry's Democratic Party" do I have to point out that .org's don't have faces ? The difficulty with grammer proves the authenticity of the add])

Video Clip of Gore:
"He betrayed this country! He played on our fears!" (Fox News Channel's "Hannity and Colmes," 2/9/04; CNBC's "The News On CNBC," 2/9/04([absolutely])

Video Clip of Kerry:
"Today, today, George Bush will lay off your camel, tax your shovel, kick your (bleep) and tell you there is no Promise Land." (Harkin Steak Fry, Indianola, IA, 9/13/03)
([it probably doesn't make a difference, but if you keep up with adds like this Kerry is gonna kick your ASS])

[Drain the color of John Kerry video and freeze it]

Graphic:
This is not a time for pessimism and rage…

[Shot of President Bush in color]
([an illustration of pessimism and rage])
Graphic:
President Bush: It's a time for optimism, steady leadership and progress
([I guess that's why he is trying to convince us to vote for Kerry])

Paid For By Bush-Cheney '04 INC.
Oh man they paid for this. Hey guys I got rent to pay. It would be a much better use of your money.

keep up the good work.

Correctino: "Farenheit 9/11" did not require all of 2 days to break the documentary gross sales record set by "Bowling for Columbine." Saturday and part of Sunday was enough.

Ok so who is an embarassment to whom ?

Brad Delong writes

Ramesh Ponnuru's and David Frum's credibility depreciates when their writings appear under the same masthead as those of Luskin or Nugent. It is a mystery why they don't take a stand--there are, after all, lots of bright conservative straight-shooting economists who would love to write for National Review.

In another post he quotes

David Frum: Between 1993 and 2003, Canada’s total gross domestic product – the value of all Canadian-made goods and Canadian-provided services – rose by two-thirds. [...] Where did that extra production go? That’s the question answered by the second number, 45%. The lion’s share of Canadian economic growth in the 1990s was pocketed by government, especially the federal government. Between 1993 and 2003, federal revenues rose by 45%, or almost $60 billion....

I'd say it is a case of birds of a feather flock together.

I don't often agree with Richard Cheney but if I could tell
10_1480_sPxLpCKYrUKGI2vJVfXwSQ to fuck himself, I should would feel better.

Are we in Iraq because we tortured Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi ?


Michael Isikoff (who has received a couple of knocks from the guys recently) explains.

al-Libi was the first high ranking al Qaeda leader to be captured after 9/11.

Continuing to rely on al-Libi's version, Powell then told how a bin Laden operative seeking help in acquiring poisons and gases had forged a "successful" relationship with Iraqi officials in the late 1990s and that, as recently as December 2000, Iraq had offered "chemical or biological weapons training for two Al Qaeda associates."

However, this rather serious intelligence error seems to have been the result of uhm "aggressive interrogation."

Al-Libi "subsequently recounted a different story," said one U.S. official. "It's not clear which version is correct. We are still sorting this out." Some officials now suspect that al-Libi, facing aggressive interrogation techniques, had previously said what U.S. officials wanted to hear.

So the question is, are we in Iraq because of "aggressive interrogation" of al-Libi. More experienced practitioners could have told us produce massive but unreliable information, which is only useful if it can be confirmed or rejected before you spend your second hundred billion. But of course, the Bush administration wanted to keep what it was doing secret.

One might argue that evidence of links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda was irrelevant, since it had nothing to do with Bush's decision to invade Iraq. However, I don't think that one would like to do that, if one were George Bush.

So which is it ? Did we get in a quagmire because we chose to use "aggressive interrogation techniques" or because the President chose to invade for reasons he didn't want to share with the people ?

In an excellent article in the New York Times PHILIP SHENON asserts that the claims of fact in "Fahrenheit 9/11" were very thoroughly checked and that, as far as he could tell from viewing the film, largely accurate. I wouldn't know. I haven't seen the film. I live in Italy and they are still trying to convert 9/11 into centigrade.

However Shenon does repeat an obviously false argument conflating international flights and airplane flights in general (he must not be a foreign affairs correspondent)

Mr. Moore may also be criticized for the way he portrays the evacuation of the extended bin Laden family from the United States after Sept. 11.
[snip]

while the film clearly suggests that the flights occurred at a time when all air traffic was grounded immediately after the attacks ("Even Ricky Martin couldn't fly," Mr. Moore says over video of the singer wandering in an airport lobby), the Sept. 11 commission said in a report this April that there was "no credible evidence that any chartered flights of Saudi Arabian nationals departed the United States before the reopening of national airspace"

The first chartered flights carrying Saudi's after 9/11 definitely did not depart the United States. The first such flights gathered well connected Saudis. As I said I didn't see the film, but Mr Shenon doesn't even assert that Mr Moore claimed that the flights which departed the United states took place at a time when "Even Ricky Martin couldn't fly." I'd say it is clear that Mr Shenon doesn't read blogs (or refuses to quote them) as this distinction has been stressed at length in the blogosphere. It is odd that Mr Moore doesn't note the distinction in his quoted response to Mr Shenon.

I would say a correction is in order the

The article"Michael Moore Is Ready for His Close-Up" By PHILIP SHENON Published: June 20, 2004 incorrectly characterised the fraction of airplane flights originating in the USA which depart the United States. Over the past two decades it has been 12 %"

The number is made up the the NY Times should be able to get some intern to find it. Or maybe

he article"Michael Moore Is Ready for His Close-Up" By PHILIP SHENON Published: June 20, 2004 incorrectly characterised the fraction of charter airplane flights originating in the USA in the two weeks following 9/11/01 which departed the United States. It was less than 40%"

By the way regular readers of this blog (if any) have noticed that, when it comes to spellling i dont do to gud. I just learned that "Fahrenheit" breaks the i before e except after c and when it says ay as in neghbor and weigh rule (unless it is pronounced "fair in hate" which seems appropriate for the film). Previously I had known only of words which appear in one of the two following sentences "neither leisured foreigner seized the weird heights" and "The sheik traded his caffeine for counterfeit protein" Clearly farenheit belongs in the second sentence as in "The sheik who was lampooned in 'Farenheit 9/11' traded his caffeine for counterfeit protein"

Matther Yglesias is under attack from the forces of evil.mil

This means that I will post my comments on his site here, since one of them seems
to have fallen into a black hole.

I quote

"The New York Times describes the wide variety of inconveniences that New Yorkers will face during the Republican convention. Then we hear Mayor Bloomber for the defense:

After describing the security measures, the mayor told radio listeners that the Republican convention would benefit the city as a whole, saying that it would generate an estimated $250 million for the local economy and create thousands of jobs. "So this is a good economic deal for the city," the mayor said. "The disruptions will be a little bit annoying, but minimal. There's no reason for businesses to close down."

Now $250 million over a four day period comes out to $62.5 million per day, which averaged out across 8 million people turns out to be less than $7 per person per day. And that's the gross haul. The city will, I assume, be spending a lot of money on police overtime, barricade construction, etc., which will probably bring the average net economic gain down even further. ...
It doesn't look like a very good deal to me."


Also the costs are not just police ovrertime and inconvenience. The conventioneers will demand goods and services in exchange for their $250 Million. People who work in hotels and restaurants will have to work more. $1 in sales is good for sellers but it is not as good as $1 for nothing.

However the point that got my interest is $62.5 M divided by $7 > 8.92 Million > 8 million. Looks like Matt made a boo boo while fighting innumeracy.

Did he do that on purpose just to get this link ?

"Samuel Huntington has gotten tons of play from both The Clash of Civilizations and Who Are We specifically because his theses are wrongheaded, somewhat offensive, and argued for in a rather sloppy manner."


Elisabetta Addis and I call the deliberate attempt to get attention by being outrageously wrong Fukayaming after Francis Fukayama author of "The End of History". It's like the guy had registered history TM. For a year, every time any TNR type journalist commentator wrote about anything happening anywhere s/he would add a comment like "people in slavogria haven't yet read Fukayama so history hasn't ended here just yet."

Now it's hard to top that. In fact, this means that writing is obsolete. No one will be able to write anything useful or interesting again. Try to prove me wrong (and cite me when you do).

The One True Faith -- Voodoo

Voodoo economics that is. Among the rules that Bremer wants to democratically impose on Iraq is one " that cap tax rates at 15 percent". Gerner has a theory that Bremer decided democracy had to wait for the supply side miracle, hence well the mess.

The strength of faith in the miraculous benefits of low marginal tax rates in the absence of evidence is well like the idea that invading Iraq is part of the war on terror.

My Dad Tom Waldmann takes beautiful photographs.

Some are here

For two examples

Who is Luigi Goffredo Verzella ?

Someone (Luigi Goffredo Verzella in person ?) using the usually useful google just came here after searching for Luigi AND Goffredo AND Verzella. This site came out first in the google search. It seems that, according to google, I am the worlds leading expert on Luigi Goffredo Verzella, which is odd, since I don't have the faintest idea who he is.

I understand that semantic searches will replace keyword searches in a decade or three, so I guess Luig Goffredo's fan and I will just have to make due with google.

Why is Jose Padilla so dangerous
That he was denied a trial ?

It has long been clear that he was not such a threat to US national security that the constitution had to be sacrificed to stop him. He is no Jefferson Davis, of course Ashcroft wouldn't consider Jefferson Davis an enemy combatant in spite of the fact that he technically lead a war against the USA.

The problem seems to be that once one decides to ignore the law, it is very hard to stop. This is revealed by the New York Times today
"In the end, administration officials considered Mr. Zubaydah's interrogation an example of the successful use of harsh interrogation techniques.

... he ... was the source of information about Jose Padilla,"

This would tend to make it a bit difficult to put Padilla on trial. First because evidence obtained by torture would be inadmissable, and second, because Padilla's defence team could have learned that the US government was using torture.
Ashcroft et al, with their contempt for the wall between national security and criminal investigations, must have refused absolutely to consider how illegal techniches inevitably propagate when one has to cover up one breach of the law with another.

In this case, the fruit of the poisoned tree was a direct assault on the US constitution.

Why do chickens lay eggs ?
The amateur evolutionary biologist tries to answer.

Asked Kathy age 6. Because they are birds replied Robert. Why don't birds give birth live like humans ? Hmmm good question.

I tried to answer. It has to have something to do with flying. Can you imagine flying when pregnant (especially hard for men to imagine but I doubt many women can imagine it either).

But wait, the egg is as heavy (a little heavier) than the chick which hatches. hmmmm.

Mammals typically give birth to many offspring at once. Lucky ducks lay one egg at a time. I think the advantage of eggs is that they can be phased. Birds have one fully developed egg, another semi developed, a third real small and one about the size of a human egg. That means that they are not weighed down by several fully developed eggs (or fetuses) all in there together. my guess is that no mutant mammal has ever managed to reliably give birth to a mature offspring while not mis-carrying an immature fetus. Bats typically have one or two offspring a season. This is a major evolutionary handicap which they have someohow managed to overcome by developing sonar.

Now even with sonar I couldn't handle one or two kids a year. Oops one or two a year is, by normal animal standards, hardly any.

I use google as a spell checker.

For example I just decided that the game theory solution concept was
Stackelberg equilibrium (9,290 hits) not stackleberg equilibrium (341 hits all from people who don't use Google as a spell checker).

Brad Delong is a big fan of google, but I suspect that this is one use he does not make of it. I recall that back when he had a 5 Mb hard disk, he deleted the spell checker to save space.

Why Hate Clinton ?


First I should say that I can understand Clinton hatred. Hell I've even hated him myself occasionally as when he signed the welfare reform bill or declared he was in favor of 3 strikes and you're out. It's simple, he seemed to have no principles; he was willing to do anything (except keep his pants on) to win elections. Since leaving office, he has worked hard to e.g. convince Thabo Mbeki that HIV causes AIDS and I have the creeping suspicion that he is a basically good person who made moral compromises not a basically empty shell.

The puzzle of the Clinton haters is that they don't hate more presidents.
Kevin Drum notes that Bush did more draft dodging and used more drugs than Clinton, so why don't the Clinton haters mind ? Actually, in the case of W, culture warriors can reasonably be forgiving, since that was before he was born again. Most Clinton haters were too young to have been politically active at the time, but I don't recall conservatives caring much about character when Nixon was president. Finally Carter was and is insuferably good and that didn't stop people from hating him.

My view is that some right wingers can't stand losing. I would say that there is a tendency for righties divide humanity into winners, who are not just successful but praiseworthy, and losers, who are worthless. It is easier for lefties to believe in honorable failure.

I think Clinton haters, hate Clinton for winning. Now I got mad at Bush Bush, Reagan and Nixon for winning. However I think the Clinton haters found him a threat to their sence of worth, because they can't stand to see themselves as losers.

well that's progress. The NYT reports that the Bush administration just offered aid to North Korea provided they phase out their nuclear program. This after 3 years and 5 months of constructively sneering at the Clinton administration for weakly, appeasingly offering aid to North Korea provided they phase out their nuclear program.

Still in the same article I am reminded of my one blogging hit.

"Several detainees who have been released said coercive interrogation methods used at Guantánamo had constituted abuse, charges American officials have denied. Among the allegations are complaints of druggings, invasive body searches, sleep deprivation and other mistreatment."

Does tend to contradict the claim by DOUGLAS JEHL and ANDREA ELLIOTT that "To date, there have been no accusations of serious prisoner abuse in connection with interrogations at Guantánamo.

update: I have finally gotten to the end of the article. It does seem to close abruptly in the middle of a sentence, in fact in the middle of a word "Nearly all of them had trained with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, but investigators said only five had any useful information — and that was about recruitment and lin" Seems even the the Ny Times web page can't handle articles this long.

anyway Kudos to Tim Golden who reported from New York and Washington f and Don Van Natta Jr. who reported from from Guantánamo Bay and to Carlotta Gall, David Rohde, Lizette Alvarez, Clifford Krauss, Raymond Bonner and Jason Horowitz who contributed reporting.

Today in the Times "Last month, a senior Bush administration official told The Times that Mr. Kahtani had provided information to interrogators "about a planned attack and about financial networks to fund terrorist operations." But several other officials disputed that characterization, saying he had not given any new information about plots by Al Qaeda."

For readers who aren't willing to read 7 pages on the web, this excellent article presents strong evidence that torture lite did not work as well as a cup of tea in getting Mr Kahtani to talk.

My interest is to repeat the perennial proposal that anonymous sources who are caught lying be identified. If sources are allowed to lie anonymously, lies can be spread without anyone bearing responsibility. No legitimate purpose is served by assuring sources that they are free to lie. If a source asks to speak off the record and then refuses if the promise is conditional on the absence of multiple sourced refutation, a serious reporter would be glad to have screened out a lie.

I'd say all reputable newspapers should declare it to be a policy that promises of anonymity are conditional on the absence of solid evidence of dishonesty. Also, while they are at it, they should cite other news sources as follows "according to an anonymous source quoted in the Los Angelos Post Enquirer, which allows sources to lie anonymously, ..."

The Electoral vote predictor based on the latest polls (sometimes November 2000)

The Whitewater Development Corporation was founded before the Madison Guaranty S&L.

I can’t believe I just learned that. Did you know that ? Do you care ? I will try to convince you that you should have known and that you should care at least a tiny little bit (probably not enough to waste your time reading this). My ignorance is probably partly explained by the fact that I moved to Italy in 1989 and only began surfing the web compulsively much more recently. However, I am a news junky and thought I knew more about Whitewater than most. I learned about the relative ages of Whitewater and Madison Guaranty from 'The Clinton Wars': An Exchange By Sidney Blumenthal, Reply by Joseph Lelyveld in the New York Review of Books http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16431.

Blumenthal claims and Lelyveld concedes that the headline to the March 8 1992 NYT story by Jeff Gerth which started the story/scandal "Clintons Joined S&L Operator in an Ozark Real-Estate Venture," is inaccurate, since, at the time of the joining James McDougal was non an S&L operator. Lelyveld concedes the point writing “the fact that the Whitewater deal antedated the founding of Madison Guaranty S&L.” and “The headline confused the time line; the article itself did not.”

The last claim is true, the references to the time line in the article are not confused and were clearly made with great care. However, the article seems to have confused the person who wrote the headling. Its opening sentence was "Bill Clinton and his wife were business partners with the owner of a failing savings and loan association that was subject to state regulation early in his tenure as Governor of Arkansas, records show." which is true (as noted by Lelyveld) and compounds the error in the headline (as noted by Blumenthal and denied without any coherent counter-argument by Lelyveld). Why didn’t Gerth write “Bill Clinton and his wife became business partners of James McDougal, who later founded a savings and loan association that was subject to state regulation early in his tenure as Governor of Arkansas, records show." This is clear and is 35 words in the place of 34 (and if it weren’t for the use of “partner” for you know like Clinton and Lewinsky it would be 34).

I assume that, conceding that a front page headline made a false claim the Times published a correction. Something along the line of “the March 8 headline of a story by Jeff Gerth incorrectly described the business activities of James McDougal at the time the Whitewater Development Corporation was founded. He was a real estate developer.” This is actually a toughy, since the Times refers to Stories by their headline and corrections are not supposed to repeat errors. I am puzzled as to why Lelyveld does not mention the correction. I wouldn’t want to imagine that the Times left uncorrected a substantive error made in large type of the front page.

I don’t write good enough to criticize every sentence everyone writes, but I think that Gerth’s article was deliberately misleading. In fact, I think that Lelyveld is still trying to pull the same trick 12 years later after conceding the point.

The timing is central to the accusations made by Gerth (followed by many many others). Lelyveld writes “The central premise was declared in the first paragraph. It was that the governor was a business partner of a banker ‘subject to state regulation.’” Now, why would such a premise be of any public interest. It is not either Clinton’s fault that they were business partners of a banker subject to state regulation. When they became McDougal’s partners, he wasn’t such a banker. Then he became one. Lelyveld also writes “attempts to make fast money with minimal investment and effort, involving in each case the support of good friends who needed access to state government.” I think this statement is actually false. Lelyveld presents no evidence that McDougal needed access to state government at the time of the Clintons’ attempt, and the omission of any reference to timing can not be accidental.

Now what exactly should the Clintons have done when McDougal decided to found Morgan Guarantee ? They could have demanded that he dissolve Whitewater, but that really would have been an ethical lapse. The dissolution of a partnership whose main asset is real estate is an excellent opportunity to transfer wealth. For example, if they had demanded their original investment back, they would have been saying that their keen ethical senses required them to extort $ 65,000 from him now that he needed access to state government.

Given the timing, unless they are pre-cognitive, the Clintons couldn’t have known that entering the Whitewater partnership could later be seen as an ethical lapse. Perhaps Mr Lelyveld thinks that Hillary Clinton is precognitive. This would explain why he mentions “Mrs. Clinton's spectacular success in speculative cattle futures” which has no other logical connection to Blumenthal’s assertions.

Remember George H. W. Bush's evil twin Skippy ?

You know from Doonesburry. Basically H.W. sure seems to be a decent man and, as president, was much to statesmanlike for his own good. However, when campaigning he turned viscious.

Now his son sure seems not to be a good person and wouldn't recognise a statesman if he grew up with him. However, W. managed to get elected largely because he seemed to be a nice guy.

I think George W Bush's non-evil twin chippy handled the Clinton portrait unveiling. If he keeps W in an undisclosed location for the whole campaign we might be in worse trouble than we are already.

The Random Pledge Generator

Ah I wish I could program in JAVA. What we need now, as Kevin Drum explains is a Random Pledge Generator which will enable our kids to pledge allegiance to the flag without violating the first amendment. Excomunicated ex Mormon
Teresa Nielson Hayden creator of the wonderful Random Plot Generator should get on the job.

Here is my feeble low tech effort

I Pledge (affirm) [respect and tolerate the people who pledge] allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and the republic for which it stands (pledge allegiance to the United States of America and recognise its flag) One nation under God (Allah)[Jehovah]
{Buddha}((Brahman))[[Uhura Mazda]]{{the supreme Being}}}(((only sky))) indivisible with (which should be with) liberty and justice for all.

That should just about do it. Once I met a beatlephobe who I assume was also an atheist. He might object to the quote of John Lennon, but he's English and doesn't have standing.

I personally would require the first bit in square brackets. A pledge that is compelled is, to me, in itself offensive.

Mine would be

I respect and tolerate the people who pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and the republic for which it stands, one nation under only sky indivisible which should be with liberty and justice for all.

I got no problem with that.

Update: I realise that there are still not enough options. Under sky is for atheist Lennon fans, but what about agnostics ? Also, well, I personally suspect that it is a game not a religion, but, constitutionally, have no authority to refuse to take satanism seriously so the options should be

One nation under God (Allah)[Jehovah]
{Buddha}((Brahman))[[Uhura Mazda]]{{the supreme Being}}}(((only sky)))[[who knows what]]{{{over Satan}}}.