It's Official - Rathergate

The CBS Document fiasco has become identified as Rathergate, and has spawned its own domain. Some have moved on past proving the case and are digging for the forger or source. Meanwhile, Andrew Sullivan has come through (second item) and has acknowledged the success of the blogosphere in a sufficient manner, as far as I'm concerned. However, he still seems to be holding out hope that something can be made of the Guard story, despite his call for bloggers to investigate the "occupation" in Iraq. What is remarkable to me is that he relies on the New York Times and the London Guardian, two papers he regularly pillories in other areas, for his information on the war in Iraq. He does occasionally point to blogs by those "in country," but while he used to do it when they reported good news, it seems that, while they continue to report good things, he has linked to them less and less, or only when they occasionally mention a negative. (Here and Here are two of the first and best Iraqi Blogs, with links to many others). While he at least acknowledges that Iraq is no Vietnam, it's a "mess" not a "disaster," his shrillness has elevated as far as I can tell. I agree that mistakes have been made, but this is all part of "nation building." (Though many historians laugh at comparisons between Iraq and post World War II Germany, others have attempted to draw parallels. Perhaps both groups are focusing on the trees rather than the forest. While the specifics are indeed inevitably different, the thing to keep in mind is that rebuilding a nation just conquered by those who conquered it is very hard to do. Perhaps Korea is a better example, anyway.) In essence, Sullivan has entered a state where he harangues Bush for long stretches, with periodic lapses into reason, or perhaps more accurately, a willingness to put things in perspective. Unfortunately, the amount of time spent haranguing is getting longer while the momentary lapses into reason are become less frequent. As such, I bid him farewell. (Yes, his link has been removed).

I remember today...

...as do the rest of you. May God bless those who we lost 3 years ago and those we have lost in the subsequent war.

Sullivan and the Docs

Well, it seems the CBS wall of credibility has become a ditch, now that one of it's key witnesses claims they duped him. It should be only a matter of time before the mea culpa, but will it come? I have doubts. Additionally, to tie in with a tangential issue, I have been tracking Andrew Sullivan's less than excited coverage of the story. (No posts today) Sullivan, once in the vanguard of those who championed the cause of blogs as an antidote for the malaise of the regular media, has approached the whole controversy with a near-jaundiced eye. While he is correct in the lunacy of arguing over 35 year old events, the real story is the revelation of the essentially corrupt organ once known as CBS news and how the blogosphere brought it down. I seem to recall Sullivan being well-nigh gleeful when things like this used to happen. Why not now? I really couldn't even presume to guess.

I'm not the only one who has nearly given up on Sullivan in fact, many already have. I guess what bothered me, even more than his belief that the docs were "devastating to Bush" (though he attempted to clarify this), was his initial lukewarm response to the belief they may be fake and his decision to take the tack that "The blogs prove one thing, though. If these documents are legit, they are devastating to Bush. " I found that kind of ...odd. He has since congratulated the blogosphere, though he still gave time to the feeble Kerry spinners out there.

In the old days, Sullivan would have been all over the story, making contacts and digging for more. On this, when it was obvious that there was a chance that a major media outlet had been dealing in fake docs and the internet was exposing it...he sort of passed it along with an overtly dismissive attitude. He has been silent since Friday, so we will have to wait and see if he warms to the cause. If not, it would appear that the Knights of the Blogosphere have lost one of their original members...the Gay Blade will have lost his edge.

Blogs v. Big Media

Tech Central Station provides just one of the many roundups of the saga of the apparently forged Bush National Guard docs. I have never put much stock in rehashing this issue of the President's National Guard service (for something like the 3rd time during this election). To me, the importance of the story has evolved into yet another instance of questioning the judgement of the "Mainstream Media." As Jay Currie said in the aforelinked piece (is that a word? perhaps not, but it seems appropriate):

The more basic question is how could a rabble of bloggers, in one day, provide hard core proof of forgery when major news organizations took those documents at face value? Most fundamental of all, why did the New York Times, the Boston Globe and CBS allow themselves to be used for such a transparent attempt to slander President Bush?

As I've noted before, it's simply the natural result of bias clouding any sense of critical thinking among many, indeed, the majority of the "Mainstream" media. I've also written that I believe that blogs can be likened to the pamphlets of the past, but perhaps, at least in some instances, they have moved beyond that.

UPDATE: Ratherbiased.com has received an email from Bernard Goldberg, former colleague of Dan Rather at CBS and author of a couple books dealing with media bias. He wrote:

"Assuming that at least some of the documents are indeed forgeries as they now seem," Goldberg says in an email to RatherBiased.com, "This is what happens when a news organziation operates in a bubble--a comfy liberal elite bubble. They WANTED the story to be true, so they apparently minimized or ignored any information that contradicted their pre-conceived notions.

"This is the nature of bias in the news. no conspiracies. Rather never said, 'I know these documents are phoney, but I'll go with them anyway.' He would never do that. The problem is too much like-mindedness, too much groupthink. What happened was almost invevitable. Sooner or later, when you live in the bubble, something bad will happen.

"Let me add that Dan Rather was my friend yesterday, he's my friend today, and he'll be my friend tomorrow."

This seems right, but I would bet there are a members of the media who are quite capable of conscious bias, not the subconscious, "groupthink" bias of which Goldberg speaks. Yet, he does have more insight than I would, I guess. I guess the lesson is to remember that it is more about a shared ideology (or worldview) that provides the foundational basis on top of which people build their subsequent views on the issues of the day. People with differing ideologies are found in nearly all walks of life, in roughly equal numbers. This is not the case in the "industry" of the mainstream media. In this, the media is not unique, they have soulmates in the academy and the entertainment industry. These three stand out more because they are dominated so thoroughly by one ideology above all others. Perhaps the only other walk-of-life that is similarly dominated by an overriding ideology is the military, though I suspect the level of dominance is not that exhibited in the aforementioned triumverate.

Bush Guard Documents = Forgery?

The blogosphere is abuzz with the prospect that 60 Minutes and CBS may have been dealing with forged documents. The boys at Powerline appear to have started it all and have the best coverage, stem to stern. (I'd advise reading the whole thing, including updates before embarking on sidetrips). If you're not that patient, someone here agreed with the theory and did some experimenting. So did the folks at Little Green Footballs, who copied the docs using MS Word using standard Times New Roman font, etc. The result? A near perfect match, including word spacing and type. Did the Air National Guard have MS Word in the early '70's? Hm. We shall see.

All there is to say about the Bush Guard Service story.

"Bush Guard Service, The True Story" by Gordon Bloyer essentially covers the whole story. As usual, the media has a hard time grasping the intricacies of military operations.

Our Hedgehog

Victor Davis Hanson says:

The President has instead this "one big" idea. It goes something like this. For a quarter-century Islamic fascists in the Middle East have transferred the impoverished Arab Street's anger over its own endemic failure onto the bogeymen of the United States and Israel. And when terrorists, abetted by autocratic governments, struck the United States, they met mostly with habitual Western indifference and were further emboldened by outright appeasement. The problem with the sensitive, "don't offend them" foreign policy of pre-September 11 is that it ensured September 11 - as it would again.

To what does he allude?

It was the ancient Greek elegiac poet Archilochus who posed the dichotomy of “the Fox and the Hedgehog”: “the fox knows many tricks, the hedgehog one—one big one.”

While the poet’s exact meaning has been the subject of debate for over two millennia, the logical interpretation is the most natural: complex thinkers sometimes lose sight of the forest for the trees. Put simply: John Kerry can give 1,000 reasons why we should or should not stay in Iraq—or both at once. He will cite erudite foreign policy experts, and present it all as a sophisticated exegesis. George Bush cannot.

It is that single-minded, moral clarity that will help George Bush get reelected. To paraphrase a cliche, "He is the right man at the right time." If the big issue was about the size of government, he wouldn't be (right, Joe Scarborough?) There will be time for reigning in the government...hopefully in a second Bush term.

Simplified Bush Doctrine and a note on the Sullivan drift

I'm totatlly swamped scholastically, so "free-time" writing is nil right now. However, I see that Citizen Smash - The Indepundit has offered a concise distillation of the Bush Doctrine for us all. Perhaps sometime I can go more in depth. For now, this will suffice.

Sidenote: Smash comments on how Andrew Sullivan has become a single issue voter and it made me mindful of something I have been contemplating: I am close to removing Mr. Sullivan from my links (to the right). His drift to "one-issueness" has effected his writing on every issue. With every post, his logic seems more convoluted. He seems to understand the gravity of the "Big Issue" as much as anyone, yet he seems unable to put his personal situation aside when analyzing matters not directly linked to his "pet" issue. In an era of Big Things, sometimes we must sacrifice those things that we personally hold dear for what is most important to our society. (Yes, I know, it sounds like Mr. Spock: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one" and all that).

Regardless, Andrew has become a one-note piano and everything he posts on now is colored by his (understandable) stance on the Gay Marriage issue. At first, he cautioned those advocating gay marriage against going too fast, and, despite mixed messages, seemed to admit that the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling on the constitutionality of gay marriage in the Bay State was not the proper device through which his personal crusade should have found legitimization. Nonetheless, he certainly has championed the outcome while denigrating those opposed to gay marriage for attempting to do battle in the constitutional arena. (This is just a bare outline of the issue, Justin Katz has been following Sullivan more intently than I). His logical twists and turns have found their way into nearly all of his arguments, it seems. More and more, I see him disagreeing with those he agreed with a year ago, such as Glenn Reynolds, but now he seems to border on demonization when noting his disagreement with them on relatively piddly issues like the Zell Miller speech. Andrew, if it seems that all those with whom you once agreed now disagree with you, but still agree with each other, it is true: that should tell you which entity seems to have changed philosophically. It is you, not us, who has become inconsistent. You are not some righteous lone wolf standing on a hill howling at the moon with a song of ideological purity because his pack left him. Instead, you have wandered from the pack and, despite our howls, you ignore us. You let your personal desires override the collective desires of the pack, and now you are alone, surrounded by social and cultural companions, but ideologically isolated. Perhaps one day you will see your way back, until then, farewell.

A convention observation

There are plenty in the blogosphere offering commentary on the Republican convention, so I don't really have anything to add other than this observation. Many in the press, Democrats, and many Conservative Republicans for that matter, have made much of how the Republican's are throwing up "liberal" or "moderate" party members such as John McCain, Rudy Giulianni, and Arnold Schwarzennegar in an attempt to put a middle-of-the-road face on the party. Conservative detractors feel a bit betrayed and that the Republican Party is abandoning its base, while the media and the Democrats (if the distinction can still be made) simply chalk it up to nothing but an attempted con job. (Notice that when the Democrats attempted the same thing, they were glowingly congratulated by the media for the attempt while the Republicans are being vilified and "called out." )

While the disparity between the policy scorecards of the prime time convention speakers of the first two nights and the said core of the Republican party is easily verified, especially in comparing stances on social issues, most all Republicans are united on the "Big Issue", the War on Terror. (Pat Buchanan and his can't-escape-the-Cold-War-mindset comitatus of American Isolationists excluded). As such, the speeches by by McCain, Giulianni and Schwarzennegar have exhibited what unites the party, not those issues over which members disagree. They have all called on patriotic themes, championed freedom, urged us to stay united and persevere against our common foe, to recognize that the robust American economy has rebounded from a recession exacerbated by the 9/11 attacks, and, finally and most importantly, to have faith in the rightousness of our national ideals. In short, they are following in the footsteps of Ronald Reagan by saying it is all right to be proud to be an American and to have faith in our country. They are saying America is still that "shining city on the hill."

Crushing Dissent

It seems that the Bush Administration is still quashing dissent, isn't it?

John Kerry's "The New Soldier"

According to Glenn Reynolds over at the Instapundit, the Kerry campaign has been attempting to buy up all of the existing copies of John Kerry's anti-war screed The New Soldier (Kerry was a main contributor to the work). As Prof. Reynolds has pointed out, they apparently didn't count on the Internet factor. In the spirit of "Freedom of the Press", I have downloaded copies of the 3 PDF (Adobe Acrobat) files that comprise this electronic edition of the Kerry book. (See below, and I will be permanently linking to them on the right, too). Additionally, another site, Wintersoldier.com, has more web-friendly versions of the book as well as a plethora of information on the entire Vietnam Veterans Against the War movement.

The book is comprised of an Introduction, written by the editors, a Main Section, which contains "first hand" testimonies by Vietnam Vets, a two-page Epilogue penned by John Kerry and an Appendix. One may think that Kerry's contribution to the work is relatively insignificant, though the fact that he was given the primary credit (the "By John Kerry") indicates the editors of the work thought otherwise. Needless to say, the very fact that the Kerry campaign is attempting limit access to this book speaks, er, volumes, doesn't it?

UPDATE:

I have read Kerry's Epilogue in The New Soldier, and have determined there really isn't too much there (it's only two pages long). It seems that the Kerry campaign is more concerned with the associations one could infer from Kerry penning the Epilogue than from anything within the actual two-page piece. Their real concern should be with Kerry's 1971 Senate Testimony (Thanks to Wintersoldier.com for posting the document. I have now made it available here at the Ocean State Blogger). Nonetheless, here are some of excerpts of Kerry's contribution to The New Soldier:

EXCERPT 1:

We will not quickly join those who march on Veteran's Day waving small flags, calling to memory those thousands whod died for the "greater glory of the United States." We will not accept the rhetoric. We will not readily join the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars-in fact, we will find it hard to join anythig at all and when we do, we will demand relevancy such as other organizations have recently been unable to provide. We will not take solace from the creation of monuments or the naming of parks after a select few of the thousands of dead Americans and Vietnamese. We will not uphold traditions which decorously memorialize that which was base and grim.

It is from these things that the New Soldier is asking America to turn. We are asking America to turn from false glory, hollow victory, fabricated foreign threats, fear which threatens us as a nation, shallow pride which feeds off fear, and mostly from the promises which have proven so deceiving these past ten years. ("The New Soldier" - Epilogue, page 1 of New-Soldier-Epilogue.pdf)

EXCERPT 2:

We were sent to Vietnam to kill COmmunism. But we found instead that we were killing women and children. We knew the saying "War is hell" and we knew also that wars take their toll in civilian casualties. In Vietnam, though, the "greatest soldiers in the world," better armed and better equipped than the opposition, unleashed the power of the greatest technology in the world against thatch huts and mud paths. In the process we created a nation of refugees, bomb craters, amputees, orphans, widows, and prostitutes, and we gave new meaning to the words of the ROman historian Tacitus: "Where they made a desert they called it peace." ("The New Soldier" - Epilogue, page 1 of New-Soldier-Epilogue.pdf)

EXCERPT 3:

Certainly not all veterans of this war are New Soldiers. Not all want to be or even understand what many of their veteran contemporaries are trying to say. ("The New Soldier" - Epilogue, page 2 of New-Soldier-Epilogue.pdf)

EXCERPT 4:

I myself went into the service with very little awareness of the people in the streets. I accepted then and still accept the idea of service to one's country. But because of all that I saw in Vietnam, the treatment of civilians, the ravaging of their countryside, the needless, useless deaths, the deception and duplicity of our policy, I changed. Traditional assumptions and expectations simply were not enough. I still want to serve my country. I am still willing to pick up arms and defend it--die for it, if necessary. Now, however, I will not go blindly because my government says that I must go. I will not go unless we can make real our promises of self-determination and justice at home. I will not go unless the threat is a real one and we all know it to be so. I will not go unless the people of this country decided ror themselves that we must all of us go. ("The New Soldier" - Epilogue, page 2 of New-Soldier-Epilogue.pdf)

On Teacher's Salaries Redux

Justin Katz has elaborated on this post I made a couple days ago about the situation regarding the Warwick Teachers' Union and their contract demands.

Justin first summarizes the exchange between David Sweeney, a lawyer versed in contract negotiation, who responded to James Hosey, a retired teacher. Hosey originally attempted to refute many of the points originally put forth by Donald Hawthorne in an earlier ProJo Op-Ed. (The same Donald Hawthorne from which I received some statistical evidence, btw.)

Justin then updated some of my figures, particularly regarding the wage and benefits disparity between public and private workers in Rhode Island and as compared to other states. He also included some nice graphs to aid in the presentation. (I wish my bandwidth allowed for that!).

Blogs: The 21st Century Pamphlet

Frederick Turner explains how the major newspapers and networks have lost their credibility and offers hope for the future...by going back to the past.

But for a while most of us felt that we had an established press whose canons, techniques, competition, and honorable tradition gave us news that was fairly reliable and when in error, honestly so, or at least the result of the coarsening and immediacy implicit in the medium. That trust is gone -- not just among Republicans and conservatives, but as the polls show, among Democrats, Independents, and liberals as well. It was bad luck for the Gray Ladies that their minions chose to break the tradition of trust just at the moment that powerful new media emerged from the boiling ferment of electronic technology, and that alternatives now exist. It may be that the old media are now self-destructing, and that like the medieval Vatican, the Ching Dynasty, the Holy Roman Empire, the French Academy, the Victorian Church of England, and the Communist Party, they are losing their hard-won authority because of wanton abuse.

So we set out now, like Adam and Eve at the end of Milton's great poem on the Fall, into a new informational world, a new period of history where we cannot rely on journalistic authority and have no guide as to what to believe. It is a fallen world, but it has a certain excitement. For we may now start learning about the current world from each other -- from Chinese or Iraqi or Israeli or Indian or Persian or Spanish or U.S. eyewitnesses, from bloggers and friends on the telephone and radio callers whose trustworthiness we must judge on our own -- just as we did before the great nineteenth and twentieth century newspapers came along.

Perhaps we could put it in an even more radical way. As such institutions as coffee-houses, town meetings, old fashioned barber shops, primary caucuses, soap box gatherings, debates, and suchlike fell into disuse, and the networks and newspapers took over, the Public itself began to disappear, to be replaced by a segmented demographic mass swayed by centralized journalistic voices and shaped by polls. What is now happening is that rather swiftly a new Public is forming, self-organizing around Google and link lists and blog chatrooms. And it will demand a new Res Publica.

He alludes to how Blogs are essentially a modern version of "pamphleteering." Not the first to do so, I might add. Which is further proof that not many ever have an original idea. Ever since reading Bernard Bailyn's Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, I had equated blogs with those Revolutionary era pamphlets. I'd urge all to read both the aforementioned post (by Dan Bricklin) and Bailyn's book. It appears we bloggers have simply relit the torch our forefathers used to explain and contextualize the evolving relationship between America and Great Britain in the 18th century. Indeed, it is the very lifeblood of our nation for citizens to offer commentary. When the founders guaranteed the Freedom of the Press, they weren't referring to just newspapers: many had been coaxed toward revolution by the words of the pamphleteers. They recognized the power of the pamphlet and how vital they had been in inspiring the Revolution. It seems that the major media had better acknowledge the power of the blog, the pamphlet of the 21st century. If they won't tell the whole truth, they will be eclipsed by those who will while acknowledging the biases they hold.

Warwick School debate

This year sees me as and official parent of a child in the Warwick School system. As such, I have taken a keener interest in the Warwick Teacher's contract issue. The Teachers' Union and the Warwick school board have been debating for at least a year, and the teachers have been without a contract for a year or so. Recently, a subpoena was issued to force the Union and the Warwick School Board to talk. The Teachers' Union claims that the School Board didn't even consider their more recent proposal, and a look at the evolution of the "negotiations" reveals why. In short, the Teachers' Union raised their demands in the last go round, rather than lessened them. As far as I know, this isn't generally the way negotiations go, is it? (The school board seems to be familiar with Contract Negotiation 101 and raised their offer). Additionally, the Warwick Teachers Union, and Rhode Island Teachers in general, continue to refuse to acknowledge the new reality: teachers are going to have to start paying for part of their own health insurance.

A review of the previous contract shows that the annual salary increases is effectively just under 7.5% through the course of the three year contract. What is not usually graphically represented is that these increases are based on years in service. In other words, a new teacher at step 1 (one year or less experience) earned $30,348 in 2000-01. A new teacher at the same level in 2001-02 receive an increase in salary of 3.7% over, even though they hadn't worked a day. In other words, the position received a raise, not the people in them! And what about that new teacher, the one who earned $30,348 in 2000-01? Well, with another year of experience, they are now "Step 2", so they moved up a step, and since it was now 2001-02, they went from earning $30,348 to earning $34,722. This translates to an actual salary increase of 14.4% for one year of experience and moving up from step 1 to step 2. This is never talked about, much less accurately represented. Below IS and accurate representation (thanks to Don Hawthorne for illuminating me on this hidden raise and for this tabular presentation).

Increases received as teachers move up 1 step/year until at step 10 (these are the massive, hidden increases: HI= Hidden Increase Percentage)
Step .... 2000-01...... 2001-02 .... (HI)...... 2002-03 .... (HI)

1 .......$30,348....... $31,486................ $32,588
2 .......$33,467....... $34,722 ... 14.4% ... $35,937 ... 14.1%
3 .......$36,032....... $37,383 ... 11.7% ... $38,691 ... 11.4%
4 .......$38,597....... $40,044 ... 11.1% ... $41,446 ... 10.9%
5 .......$41,162....... $42,706 ... 10.6% ... $44,201 ... 10.4%
6 .......$43,726....... $45,366 ... 10.2% ... $46,954 ... 9.9%
7 .......$46,528....... $48,273 ... 10.4% ... $49,963 ... 10.1%
8 .......$48,862....... $50,694 ... 9.0% ... $52,468 ... 8.7%
9 .......$50,958....... $52,869 ... 8.2% ... $54,719 ... 7.9%
10.......$55,973....... $58,072 ... 14.0% ... $60,105 ... 13.7%

Additionally, what is never included in the salary increase percentages are the "Longevity Increments" earned (also in Appendix A of the past contract):

LONGEVITY INCREMENTS

For 20 years of service, of which 15 have been in Warwick

2000 - 2001 - $ 916
2001 - 2002 - $1266
2002 - 2003 - $1616

For 25 years of service, of which 20 have been in Warwick

2000 - 2001 - $1136
2001 - 2002 - $1486
2002 - 2003 - $1836

For 30 years of service, of which 25 have been in Warwick

2000 - 2001 - $1356
2001 - 2002 - $1706
2002 - 2003 - $2056

There are also "Advanced Increments" that every teacher can earn, though I don't have as much of a problem with these essentially merit-based salary increases. The others are a problem to me because they are NOT based on performance.

This is all just particular to the Warwick Teachers' Union, as a whole, Rhode Island is well above the national average in Teacher and Public employee compensation. According to a document entitled “Survey and Analysis of Teacher Salary Trends 2002” located at the American Federation of Teachers own web site [Go to Table I-1 on page 7 9page 15 of the linked PDF document], the average RI teachers’ salary was $51,619 in 2001-2002, 4th highest among the 50 states and 16% above the national average. The report also shows that the average teacher salary of $51,619 versus the average salary of $32,186 earned during 2001 in the RI private sector. [See Table I-5 on page 11 (page 19 of the PDF document) of the report].

As a sidenote, the $32,186 figure was taken from this Bureau of Labor Statistics survey of annual pay, which reveals that the national average is $36,214, putting Rhode Island close to $4,000 below the national average. It gets worse. A comparison of the Rhode Island average to Connecticut ($47,732) and Massachusetts ($45,562), first and third highest in the U.S., respectively, reveals how relatively poorly paid the private sector in Rhode Island is compared to its Southern New England neighbors. This is important because we pay our teachers some of the best salaries in the nation, but those who pay those salaries, private sector, tax-paying citizens, earn less than the national average and the teachers they are subsidizing! (Also, notice how Washington, D.C. has the highest private sector salaries of all...heh.)

What does this mean? Well, the Warwick teachers make more money, pay less for health care, and receive pensions thanks to the taxes paid by privately employed workers who make less money, pay for a far greater percentage of their health care, and are lucky if their 401(k) isn't currently in the red. I don't want to attack teachers, As Dan Yorke of WPRO says, taken individually, teachers are good people and are worthy of our respect, but when they congregate and talk contracts, something happens. The degree to which they are being influence or harangued by the union bosses is unknown to me. Regardless, and despite my personal regard for teachers, my problem is not with them per se, as it is with their seeming inability to recognize that we are in a new time. On a relative basis, they make far more, too much more, than those who pay for them. We are not asking them to work for slave wages, just to contribute "their fair share." Is that too much to ask?

Instapundit garners a confession from "Big Media"

It seems that at least some within the media recognize that the under-reporting of the SwiftVet story could be the beginning of the end. Glenn Reynolds (the Instapundit) received a message in this vein. Interestingly, the media insider stated it isn't that the media is liberal so much as partisan. There is a difference.

Still Collecting myself...

...but I have noticed the dearth of "mainstream media" coverage of the Swiftboat Veterans as compared to the "AWOL" charges made against President Bush by DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe. The Media Research Center has the breakdown.

I'm Back!

Back from a much needed vacation and ready to tackle a Master's Thesis and anything that should come up in realm of politics and the culture, with a sprinkling of history throughout, if I can help it. I see that the RI Supreme Court did indeed render the whole casino debate moot, though it appears that the Narragansetts seem to be throwing a bit of a temper tantrum and want both Lincoln Park and Newport Grand classified as constitutionally illegal. Still don't get it, do they? Anyway, that's it for now, but I'll be back soon.

Last Post before a vacation

Well, I'm off for a week, and I may show up in these parts, but I will be in Northern New England for most of the time. I guess my last "real news" post before vacation has to do with the casino referendum. Apparently, according to Dan Yorke of 630 WPRO, the casino referendum won't happen this year. The State Supreme Court heard arguments today. We'll have to read the papers to get the complete story, but here is a brief summary fo where we stand. But first, Yorke menitioned that only 3 RI Supreme Court judges w/out conflict of interest issues could be mustered. Speaks volumes about the incestuous relationship between politicians and the bureaucracy in RI, doesn't it? Any way, here's the summary:

1) State Legislature passed a referendum question concerning the casino for November's ballot.
2) Gov. Carcieri vetoed, then questioned its constitutionality. The State Constitution only authorizes the state to operate lotteries (including slots). [Sidebar: If all lotteries are gambling, is all gambling the same as a lottery?] Because of this, no casino can operate slots, only the state can operate slots. So, the Gov. petitioned the State Supreme Court for an advisory opinion.
3) Faced with this, the Legislature pondered changing the State Constitution to accomodate the casino question, thought better of it, and simply voted to overried the veto.
4) As far as the mechanics, there is an Aug. 19 deadline to print question on ballot and the Secretary of State said the question will be on ballot unless the Supreme Court says that a casino, defined as it has been, is indeed illegal.

The question is simply this, if this is all unconstitutional does it make sense to go through this whole referendum process, and the advertising and everything else ad naseum, when the point may be moot anyway? I don't think so, do you?

The court will have an answer in a week, they said.

Well, there's something to think on. See you later.

Whoda thunk?

Victor Davis Hanson:

"I would never have imagined that journalists, academics, actors, artists, and the intelligentsia in general would have so opposed the end of dictatorship and promotion of democracy abroad. And who would have thought that Vietnam would become the source for Democratic nostalgia, rather than the usual recrimination? Did anyone think the appointment of Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, promises of $15 billion in grants to combat AIDS in Africa, and lectures to the politically powerful Arab world to cease the genocide of black Sudanese would earn George Bush slurs evoking the Taliban, the old Confederacy, and fascism? Have we become children who live in a world of bedtime stories, afraid to face the cruel truth around us?"

Will has some questions for Kerry

George Will has some questions for Kerry. Some of the best:

The Clinton years were, you say, glorious because "we were not at war and young Americans were not deployed." Did not the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, followed by the attacks on the Khobar Towers, the USS Cole and the East African embassies mean we were at war but were uncomprehending? Have not scores of thousands of young Americans been deployed, ashore and on ships, since 1942?

You say, "I stood up and fought against Richard Nixon's war in Vietnam." Nixon's war? Did it start after John Kennedy put U.S. combat troops there, and after Lyndon Johnson increased the number to 500,000?

The easily distressed abortion rights groups were distressed when you said that your faith teaches you what elementary biology teaches everyone: life begins at conception. But you say personhood does not. Fine. When does it? What are its defining attributes? Does, say, an elderly person with dementia have it, and hence a right to life?

You oppose, on federalism grounds, a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. You say marriage law is traditionally a state responsibility. But so was abortion law for the Republic's first 197 years, until 1973. What is the difference?

When the Pope said Catholic legislators have a duty to oppose gay marriage, you said he had "crossed the line" because "it is important not to have the Church instructing politicians." Have you felt that way even when the Church has instructed politicians take liberal positions regarding economic justice, race and other matters?

You have often said — e.g., in Algona, Iowa, last year, when your campaign was impoverished — that "there's too much money loose in the American political system." Now your campaign is awash with money. So are the 527 groups that are supporting your campaign — but of course without even a smidgen of "coordination" with it, because that would be a crime under the new campaign finance law. Do you advocate new laws to discourage the kind of people who are choosing to participate in politics through financial contributions on your behalf?

Do you think he'll answer them?

Kiss for Bush!

Hey, Kerry can have Springsteen, Mellencamp and the Dixie Chicks, I'll takeKISS any day!

Unfit for Command

I know I don't need to add to the hysteria on this one, DRUDGE is doing plenty on his own. The 60 second spot advertising this book and the free chapter are pretty damning. I also saw members of this group giving a press conference in May (buried by the press under Abu Graib and Iraqi "freedom fighter" attacks) and they were pretty convincing. Nonetheless, it is always a dangerous thing when "attacks" of this nature come out, and people, such as Sen. John McCain, will be calling for the White House to distance themselves from the effort. The problem is, McCain, with his call, has implicated the White House in something that they may have had little or nothing to do with. Just like Kerry doesn't necessarily control the actions of George Soros and Moveon.org. Regardless, Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for the Bush-Cheney campaign, said "The Bush campaign never has and will never question John Kerry's service in Vietnam." The political cover has thus been provided, though it will surely not be believed by the Democrats. To make up your own mind, I'd urge you to watch the press conference to which I linked above.

Peggy Noonan on Hiatus again

Peggy Noonan, one of my favorite columnists, has decided to go on hiatus again. No, she's not writing another book. This time, she feels that the elections is so important that she can't sit it out.

Because I am a conservative I support the party that best represents conservative views, the Republican Party. Sometimes I get mad at it; often it disappoints me. It is imperfect, and not perfectible. But to a greater degree than in the past I feel an urge to help it. Since peace was wrenched off the tracks on 9/11, deep in my heart I have pulled for President Bush, Vice President Cheney, members of the current administration, and Republicans in the Senate and the House. With the decline of the Democratic Party I have become convinced there is a greater chance we will win the war if the Republican Party wins the election.

In the past four years I have written about and given advice to both parties in this column. But a week ago, while watching the Democratic convention, I made a decision.

I am going to take three months' unpaid leave from The Wall Street Journal and attempt to support the Republican Party in the coming and crucial election.

Perhaps she felt she could contribute in other ways, by appearing on "Hardball" or other NBC shows, but she seems to have found that route unfulfilling.

A while back I also agreed to spend part of the 2004 election year commentating on MSNBC and NBC. But it was not fully satisfying. I never felt I was moving the ball forward either for my beliefs or for myself or for that elusive thing that yet exists called "what is true." The oppositional nature of TV news shows--there's a liberal and a conservative and they fight, which equals drama, which equals ratings--often keeps progress from happening and truth from being said. And in an odd way people talk a lot on these shows--there's a high syllabic content--but they often don't say what they really mean.

Anyway, I never felt I was moving the ball forward. So I ended my contract and figured out where I should be. I decided it's good to be on TV in whatever venue seems right when you feel you have something important you want to say. I also decided that when you are living through crucial history and you believe one political party is on balance right, and trying to fight a valiant fight, you should join in if you can.

But she will be back, regardless of the results.

When I return after the election I hope I will bring to my work a new and deeper knowledge of modern politics, the American electorate, and changes in media coverage of both. If it turns out things go well I'll come back and tell you why I think it went well. If things don't go well--if the Republicans lose, or they lose plus I'm a big flop in my efforts--I'll tell you about that too.

I'll miss her, but I hope that her free advice given publicly will be just as good, and more politically useful, when given privately. Good Luck, Ms. Noonan.

Is a plot being foiled?

First, we had the capture of a terrorist and his computer in Pakistan and then terror warnings jacked up over the weekend. Some immediately disparaged them as a political ploy by the Bush White House to take away from John Kerry's great Dem Convention bounce. They claimed the information was old, but the Government released more information that showed there was new information, forcing some critics to back-off of the "playing politics" charge. Now we have news that apparently a terrorist and his cell has been broken up in Great Britain, and this morning it has been revealed that the FBI has raided a mosque in Albany, N.Y.. Perhaps we should revert to the politics stops at the waters edge mindset, eh?

Voter's Guide for Serious Catholics

Whether you're Catholic or not, this Voter's Guide for Serious Catholics is an interesting document. It's a little heavy handed in its tone, but the points are made. Included are:

THE FIVE NON-NEGOTIABLE ISSUES

These five issues are called non-negotiable because they concern actions that are always morally wrong and must never be promoted by the law. It is a serious sin to endorse or promote any of these actions, and no candidate who really wants to advance the common good will support any of the five non-negotiables.

What are these issues? Abortion, Euthanasia ("mercy killing" or "doctor assisted suicide"), Fetal Stem Cell Research (notice that it is FETAL, not all), Human Cloning, and Homosexual "Marriage" (scare quotes are theirs). Another area of the document that may be more palatable to all are these guides on how to vote, or how not to vote:

HOW NOT TO VOTE

1. Do not base your vote on your political party affiliation, your earlier voting habits, or your family's voting tradition. Years ago, these may have been trustworthy ways to determine whom to vote for, but today they are not reliable. You need to look at each candidate as an individual. This means that you may end up casting votes for candidates from more than one party.

2. Do not cast your vote based on candidates' appearance, personality, or "media savvy." Some attractive, engaging, and "sound-bite-capable" candidates endorse intrinsic evils and so should be opposed, while other candidates, who may be plain-looking, uninspiring, and ill at ease in front of cameras, endorse legislation in accord with basic Christian principles.

3. Do not vote for candidates simply because they declare themselves to be Catholic. Unfortunately, many self-described Catholic candidates reject basic Catholic moral teaching. They are "Catholic" only when seeking votes from Catholics.

4. Do not choose among candidates based on "What's in it for me?" Make your decision based on which candidates seem most likely to promote the common good, even if you will not benefit directly or immediately from the legislation they propose.

5. Do not reward with your vote candidates who are right on lesser issues but who are wrong on key moral issues. One candidate may have a record of voting exactly as you wish, aside from voting also in favor of, say, euthanasia. Such a candidate should not get your vote. Candidates need to learn that being wrong on even one of the non-negotiable issues is enough to exclude them from consideration.

HOW TO VOTE

1. For each office, first determine how each candidate stands on each of the five non-negotiable issues.

2. Eliminate from consideration candidates who are wrong on any of the non-negotiable issues. No matter how right they may be on other issues, they should be considered disqualified if they are wrong on even one of the non-negotiables.

3. Choose from among the remaining candidates, based on your assessment of each candidate's views on other, lesser issues.

It also instructs on how to choose the lesser of two evils, if you choose at all, and wraps up with a call to heed your conscience and if you can't trust said conscience, turn to the Catechism of the Catholic Church as a moral guide.

The Church has it's problems, but its ideals are still admirable. The negative feelings towards the institutions and individuals within the church, caused by the problems and controversies of the past and present, shouldn't be assigned to the ideas and morality it teaches. Though the stances it takes are predictable (which shouldn't be taken to mean that I disagree with them!), it is a good foundation from which one can build a philosophy of politics of their own. If you don't feel that the five issues mentioned are non-negotiable, perhaps you can find some of your own. I think these are pretty solid as they are.

The Dog Days are here

Though I won't be vanishing a la Andrew Sullivan this month, vacations, home repair and scholastic writing will be my priorities over the next 30 days. I will be around, but my general practice of commenting on only what I find interesting will be even more stringently followed. In other words, now I will add the additional requirement that my commentary will have to offer something new to the dialogue here in the blogosphere. A very strict rule, I agree, but the real-life necessitates an ascetic approach toward the virtual, at last for now.

Problems

I had some problems this morning, possibly as a result of experimentation with Blogger's Comments feature.  One of these days, I'll pony up the dough to get out of the "Bloggersphere" and into the Blogosphere.  One of these days...

Multilaterlist? The Bush Administration? Apparently so...

Bryon Preston over at TCS has an enlightening article on the efforts and successes of some non-traditional multi-lateral initiatives undertaken by the Bush Administration. They are called the Proliferation Security Initiative, concerned mainly with containing North Korea, WMD and Terrorism and an offshoot, called Caspian Guard, that seems to be an attempt to encircle Iran. The reason that not many know about this is two-fold. The first, and obvious, is the inability of the media to depart from their template. This is combined with the Administration's frustrating inability to publicize the evolution of their version of multilaterlism. The latter is important, but the former is essentially a systemic problem.

While only 1/3 to 1/2 of us are politically conservative, many more are conservative by nature. This is reflected in the media and a general unwillingness to accept "change." Witness what is sometimes called the the 9/10 vs. 9/12 split within this country. While some seem to have forgotten 9/11 occurred, I think most who can be classified as 9/10 people (Democrats?) feel that we have accomplished our goals and it is now appropriate to focus on those issues they held dear prior to the attacks as well as the world political environment before those same attacks. Domestic issues, such as health care, the environment, class warfare (heh) have been put forth, put also championed is a return to multilateralism. Of course, multilateralism defined as they chose, which is how it used to be, not how it is now.

Many believe that, if the UN or NATO aren't addressing or tackling a problem, it can't be multilateral? Especially if France isn't involved. Failure to recognize that this is a new day in international relations, their anachronistic belief in the viability of international institutions whose effectiveness has already been shown to be nonexistant, and a natural prejudice over anything "Bush", plus a bit of purposeful intransigence, has served to portray the Bush administration as unilateral. I think we can dispense with that now, don't you?

Gay Marriage vs. American Marriage

Kay Hymowitz's piece in the Summer City Journal discusses the Founders' conception of marriage and their recognition of its importance to the nation. According to Hymotwitz:

[M]arriage has always had a fundamental, universal core that makes gay marriage a non sequitur: it has always governed property and inheritance rights; it has always been the means of establishing paternity, legitimacy, and the rights and responsibilities of parenthood; and because these goals involve bearing and raising children, it has always involved (at least one) man and woman. What's more, among the "startling diversity" of variations that different cultures have elaborated on this fundamental core, our own culture has produced a specifically American ideal of marriage that is inseparable from our vision of free citizenship and is deeply embedded in our history, politics, economics, and culture. Advocates for gay marriage cite the historical evolution of that ideal which we might call republican marriage to bolster their case, arguing that gay unions are a natural extension of America's dedication to civil rights and to individual freedom. But a look at that history is enough to cast serious doubt on the advocates' case.

There are many places to go for a debate on gay marriage (I'd recommend Justin Katz and Andrew Sullivan , especially). Hymowitz's explanation of the Founders' conception of the essentialness of the tie between marriage and child-rearing, and how that standard has been set aside, is very good. The ideal she describes is still relevant to many people. The desire to not separate marriage and child-rearing is crucial to understanding why some of us, who fully recognize the right of homosexuals to have legal equality, believe the assignation of the term "marriage" to such formalization is simply a step too far.

ABCNEWS asks: Is Dems' Biggest Money Man Mob-Connected?

It seems Stephen Bing, a Hollywood exec who has donated around $16 million to the Democrat party, may have mob connections, to a fella named Donnie Shacks. Hm.

Cobain and GenX Ideology

Justin Katz has responded to my earlier post on Kurt Cobain with some very good points, many of which have forced me to reexamine my stance on Cobain, but mostly have caused me to delve deeper into the evolution of the ideology of my generation, GenX.

Justin does agree with me that Pearl Jam was simply a better band (though I imagine that we both realize this is a subjective assertion), but he did a good job of explaining what made Nirvana so attractive, something I didn't even attempt to do. According to Justin, while Nirvana were less "musicians" than others:

The added element, which Nirvana personified, might be as simply characterized as having to do with confusion. That's why it was such a big deal — a "cool" thing — that nobody could understand what Cobain was saying. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" centered around unintelligible vocals expressing indecipherable lyrics, over chords distorted beyond recognition. Even Cobain's hair, granting mere glimpses of his face, was part of the message.

So, certainly, both those who "got it" and those who didn't are justified in suggesting that the generational experience to which grunge was the soundtrack was frustration at having nothing to be angry about — adolescent energy without anything on which to focus. That analysis is justified, yes, but I'm not so sure it's accurate. Marc, for example, in listing some issues from which Gen X was free, overlooks the entire range of society from whence derived the angst...

The issues to which Justin refers are incapsulated in this excerpt from my previous post:

I think Cobain's death was reminiscent of the "Lady Di phenomenom," whereby people wanted to be part of the story. This is especially because Cobain's fan base was mostly comprised of a generation that had nothing to REALLY get upset over (like in the past with "The Bomb" and "Vietnam" or now with "Terrorism") so they focused on those aspects of Pop culture that made them feel like part of a larger "movement." The cynicism and "reality" espoused by Cobain, et al spoke to a generation that really didn't have much to b-i-t-c-h about. The Berlin Wall had fallen down, Communism was kaput, Clinton was president and believed in a place called "Hope," etc. Self-righteous angst influenced by postmodern relativism became the new "it" thing.

In retrospect, Justin may be correct in his belief that I shortchanged the genuine feelings of loss felt by many of the GenXers when confronted with Cobain's suicide.  This is supported by Justin accurately pointing out the many social issues that faced GenX during our formative years.

My generation was the first to grow up in a culture in the process of dismantling itself. Divorce, abortion, an ever-increasing emphasis on sex coupled with an epidemic of a mysterious and deadly disease, relativism, ingrained opposition to organized religion and other sources of moral ballast, among many others across the spectrum of daily life. And yet, we were not offered the opportunity to be angry about the sources of our pain and confusion, because they continued to be promoted as good things. There was nowhere to turn for rebellion, because it was rebellion that ailed us, although we did not see it then, and many still do not see it now.

Justin has a very strong point here. I may have been looking at the issue from too much of a world event, big picture or political, and not enough of a social, angle. According to Justin, and I agree with him on this, GenX was confronted by a sort of cognative dissonance whereby much of what we intuitively felt to be wrong was being portrayed as being virtuous or "open-minded." We tried to look for a set of core principles and were, as Justin points out, confused.

Justin's theory as to why Nirvana's "Teen Spirit" was so attractive and, in a sense, groundbreaking, also seems solid. I, too, was bowled over by "Teen Spirit" and felt that something about it was special, or at the very least attractive. There was something more to it than just the memorable guitar riff and the driving beat behind the confused lyrics, not to mention the intriguing imagery of the video. I think that, above all, I delighted in the irony of it all. And that is what many in our generation came to embrace, irony. Pithy comments, wit and irony, not real discourse, were the central characteristics of our dialogue. (In this, GenX really shouldn't be set apart as being unique, there are plenty from other generations that seem to place wit over wisdom, despite their protestations to the contrary.)

Justin believes that Cobain's death pre-empted "the reclamation of those priorities that had been sold to his generation as inconsequential choices. He married young for a superstar. He had a daughter. Would the man who wrote 'I wanted a father, but all I got was a dad' have failed to live up to his responsibilities? His suicide — the ultimate parental failure — provided one answer, cutting through the jumble of drives and desires in a final rejection of them all." Here, I think Justin, despite his obvious recognition of the failures of Cobain, still gives Cobain too much credit. Perhaps through marriage and fatherhood Cobain was on his way to such a reclamation of priorities, and perhaps he failed because he was already in too deep, or, to quote Justin, "He was spent — too much the personification of the zeitgeist to redefine himself." Nonetheless, we cannot parse out his willingness to be a good father and husband and not recognize his ultimate failure to do so. I think Justin may be too willing to credit his attempt and not harsh enough in condemning him for his failure. 

Yet,  perhaps, it was his self-inflicted death, ocurring when it seemed he had much to live for in the person of his own child, that showed a generation that there were some things that one shouldn't be so confused about. Angst may be all right, even cool, but it shouldn't cloud ones judgement and take priority over responsibility, be it parental, matrimonial or social.  However, this message was lost, overwhelmed, by the loss of a "great talent." His death became an event that would become viewed as a tragedy that was seemingly inflicted by some unseen force, rather than the suicide of a confused and somewhat selfish and self-indulgent individual. In the end, the portrayal of the Cobain's death became that of the sacrifice of a troubled and poetic soul to his own confusion, and not the selfish act of a disturbed, sometimes talented, individual who committed the ultimate act of self-indulgence.

In my previous post, I explained my belief that the sense of shared, generational tragedy over the death of Cobain was the result of "a generation desperate to find something with which to identify themselves. Cobain was the man of the moment, and his tragic death was a perverse ending, and ironic justification, of the postmodern, media imposed "Gen X" ideology." When I say postmodern, I refer primarily to moral relativism, the philosophy that ascribes no objective quality to morality and yet another primary contributor to the confusion of GenX.

Why did we, GenX, embrace this confusion? Was it simply because we were young, hadn't found our voice and the confused lyrics and attitude proferred by Cobain spoke to our own? I would have to say this is probably true. His gravelly voice was that of GenX because he was a reflection of our confusion over what it was we were supposed to really care about. His songs and attitude justified and legitimized our confusion and provided the seeds for an initial GenX ideology. In this fog of confusion, many in GenX looked around and concluded that, with nothing morally concrete to stand on, what we were best able to care about was, simply, nothing. Tragically, this became the GenX ideology, undefinable angst drove us to ironic indifference.

As we grew older, though, we moved on, at least some of us, and wrote off our earlier angst to typical youthful rebellion, much like our parents had experienced in the 60's or 70's.  But our confusion over what was important was helped by world events that had "conspired" to remove any BIG problem that needed to be confronted, fretted over or solved.  Lacking a BIG problem, we focused on those that were less large, though were also important. Most of these were in the social realm to which Justin has alluded. 

There were plenty of social problems to worry over, and we tackled them individually, in different ways. There was no overriding generational cause. Some turned to the culture wars, others to such "causes" as environmentalism or the anti-smoking crusade.  We all recognized the problems, and, luckily, it seems many of us had lost some of our confusion.  We may not have had any BIG problems, but through maturity, we found there were things that were important enough to care about.  Most importantly, we started to reject the moral relativism that had been foisted upon us and caused us so much confusion.  Why?  We started working for ourselves, getting married, and having kids.  It's OK to be indifferent about your own life, but things change when others depend upon you.  This is something that we came to realize: something that Kurt Cobain apparently never did.

This process was hastened by the events of September 11, 2001.  Justin was correct in inferring that I believe that 9/11 was a generational turning point for us GenXers. He is also correct in that I believe, generally speaking, that now our ideology is less defined by our taste in music and pop culture than by our reaction and analysis of current events. We have grown up, and this does not make us particularly noteworthy or different from the Boomers or the Greatest Generation.

Every generation, when they're young, is defined by their culture, and by extension, their music. When they mature, they become defined by the times in which they live. Kurt Cobain's music reflected our generational confusion. In retrospect, his music was an accurate depiction of the problems experienced by our Generation. My conclusion, however, is that this is no longer the case. We are no longer a confused, undefinabely angst-ridden, indifferent generation. We are now a generation immersed in historical events, whether we recognize this or not. We would do well to remember that while he may have spoken for us in the past, Kurt Cobain is no longer the voice of Generation X.  We now have our own voices, and we know how to use them.  We have finally grown up.  Kurt Cobain never did.

Why does Europe Hate American Redux

Bruce Bawer has perhaps the best, most comprehensive take on the Western European "hatred" of America that I have read in a long time. It is actually a review article for the Hudson Review and is quite long. Too long to quote, but I highly recommend it. The best part is his summary of the thesis of Robert Kagan's Of Paradise and Power:

that the "paradise" of peace and prosperity Europe now enjoys is made possible, quite simply, by American power. Provided with "security from outside," Europe requires no power of its own; yet protected "under the umbrella of American power," it’s able to delude itself that power is "no longer important" and "that American military power, and the ‘strategic culture’ that has created and sustained it, is outmoded and dangerous." European leaders, says Kagan, see themselves as inhabiting a post-historical world in which war has been rendered obsolete by the triumph of international "moral consciousness"; yet most of them:

do not see or do not wish to see the great paradox: that their passage into post-history has depended on the United States not making the same passage. Because Europe has neither the will nor the ability to guard its own paradise and keep it from being overrun, spiritually and well as physically, by a world that has yet to accept the rule of “moral consciousness,” it has become dependent on America’s willingness to use its military might to deter or defeat those around the world who still believe in power politics.

In short, though the U.S. makes Europe’s "paradise" possible, "it cannot enter the paradise itself. It mans the walls but cannot walk through the gate . . . stuck in history, [it is] left to deal with the Saddams and the ayatollahs, the Kim Jong Ils and the Jiang Zemins, leaving most of the benefits to others." And when it does address those threats, furthermore, it feels Europe’s wrath, for "America’s power and its willingness to exercise that power—unilaterally if necessary—constitute a threat to Europe’s new sense of mission." If Europe’s intellectual and political elite was briefly pro-America after 9/11, it was because America was suddenly a victim, and European intellectuals are accustomed to sympathizing reflexively with victims (or, more specifically, with perceived or self-proclaimed victims, such as Arafat). That support began to wane the moment it became clear that Americans had no intention of being victims.

Take a half-hour and read the whole thing.

Don't Believe the Hype

Though Andrew Sullivan may still be in shock over what he perceives to have been an extremely good first night for the Democrats at the Democratic National Hoodwink...er...Convention, I feel that a simple warning is in order. Sullivan and others, both on blogs, in the news, on all sides of the political spectrum, are covering the rhetoric. Not the facts, not the substance, but the style. I'd venture that 80% of those in the Fleet Center are to the left of what could be considered "mainstream," yet Sullivan and others are congratulating, and will continue to congratulate, the Democrats for portraying themselves as "centrists" or "moderates." To some degree, this is ALWAYS done at a convention. The Republicans will do the same thing, but the coverage of the Democrats will consist of wags talking about "effectiveness of message," and Kerry's ability to "define himself" or "show his true nature." The talking heads will almost assuredly laud Kerry and the Dems for a great, positive convention where they will have given the American people a feasible alternative to President Bush. They will cover the rhetoric and leave the reality in the background, ignored because of its unfortunate tendency to undermine the veracity of the week long moderation message the Democrats will have spun. In contrast, the Republican convention will see the same talking heads explaining to the poor, ignorant viewer that "moderate Republican speaker A" is "actually at odds with most in his party" over generic policy X, or that though the President says this now, where is the evidence that he has ever done such and such. In short, the rhetoric of the Dems will be accepted at face value and will be heralded as reality, whereas the rhetoric of the Republicans will be identified as such and will be constantly challenged. So, we may all like the words that come out of the Democrats convention, but remember to ask yourself if their rhetoric matches their past reality. The media won't do it for you. The motto of my alma mater was never more applicable. "Acta non Verba." Deeds, not words.

Michelle Malkin on "Security Moms"

According to Michelle Malkin in today's USA Today, "Candidates ignore 'security moms,' at their peril." I'd agree. I'm married to one of them and I'd say that the analogy of a momma bear and her cubs can be applied on a national scale. The candidate who can speak to, and ultimately act on, the desire of many mom's for a more secure America may very well win this election. Or they may both ignore this important voting bloc. Regardless of what happens, Malkin and other "security moms" have some very valid points. Remember the cliche "Father knows best?" Maybe, at least when it comes to safeguarding our children by tightening up the security of our country, it's really Mom who knows best.

Bush in a Double Bind

Rich Lowry has an indispensible piece today on the double bind the President finds himself in regarding those who truly, irrationally hate him. Some of my favorite examples from the piece:

If he stumbles over his words, he is an embarrassing idiot. If he manages to cut taxes or wage a war against Saddam Hussein with bipartisan support, he is a manipulative genius.

If he bombed Iraq, he should have bombed Saudi Arabia instead, and if he had bombed Saudi Arabia, he should have bombed Iran, and if he had bombed all three, he shouldn't have bombed anyone at all. If he imposes a U.S. occupation on Iraq, he is fomenting Iraqi resistance by making the United States seem an imperial power. If he ends the U.S. occupation, he is cutting and running.

If he warns of a terror attack, he is playing alarmist politics. If he doesn't warn of a terror attack, he is dangerously asleep at the switch. If he says we're safer, he's lying, and if he doesn't say we're safer, he's implicitly admitting that he has failed in his core duty as commander in chief.

If he adopts a doctrine of preemption, he is unacceptably remaking American national-security policy. If the United States suffers a terror attack on his watch, he should have preempted it. If he signs a far-reaching antiterror law, he is abridging civil liberties. If the United States suffers another terror attack on his watch, he should have had a more vigorous anti-terror law.

Bush's economy hasn't created new jobs. If it has created new jobs, they aren't well-paying jobs. If they are well-paying jobs, there is still income inequality in America.

There are more, but I think the point has been made. There is no logical consistency in the arguments. If one begins to believe in all of the conspiracies, this type of thinking becomes a fait accompli.

While I was away...

Sorry for the unexpected absence, but not all in life can be anticipated, nor welcomed, but we must deal with it the best we can. I'm back now, here's just a couple things I missed.

Victor Davis Hanson had a good piece on war, comparing post D-Day Europe with postwar Iraq. To quote: "War is a horrendous experience in which the side that wins commits the fewest mistakes, rather than no errors at all."

Peggy Noonan has clarified her earlier comment about too many Americans being tired of history, and that Kerry would offer a respite from such weighty times. As she quotes from Margaret Thatcher, "never underestimate people's fears."

It may sound like a joke, but the New York Times has a story on the new, post-Bill Buckley generation of conservatives. It seems that while there are the predictable internal differences in the "movement" over economics, Iraq, the role in government in general, the bigger split may be over conservatism versus libertarianism. In general, it appears as if the young folks are more conservative anyway, regardless of the stripe.

Fending Off a Plagiarist

This precautionary tale of a professor who had to Fend Off a Plagiarist has me contemplating pulling the stuff from the "My Works" section of the OSB. Some of the stuff could form the basis of actual research, after all, and I don't want to one day be faced with accusations of plagiarism from someone who plagiarised me, simply because they published my work first. I have an innate desire to want to trust people, some think that is a weakness, but I can't help it. I'd usually rather think the best of people, than assume that they will do wrong. Yet, in this case, I think I will have to listen to the cynical side and pull my work. Instead, I'll place an abstract online for each item and tell people that if they want to look at the whole piece, they can email their request.

Constitutional, Shmonstitutional: Let the People Vote! (So Sayeth RI Dems)

"Harrah's casino plan is unconstitutional" is what the opinion/commentary piece in Monday's ProJo read. "This will come as a great surprise to many," wrote Joe Larisa Jr., former chief of staff and executive counsel to Gov. Lincoln Almond, "For a casino to be legal under the Rhode Island Constitution, it must be operated by the State of Rhode Island (through the Lottery Commission or other state entity) -- not by a private entity, such as Harrah's." Thus, the proposed Harrah's casino is unconstitutional.But do any of us think that makes a difference? I didn't think so. My cynical, but unfortunately realistic, feeling that the General Assembly et al, led by Senate President Joseph Montalbano would not be bothered by something simply being illegal was confirmed later in the day. Montalbano appeared on Dan Yorke's show on WPRO yesterday afternoon and said (and I'm paraphrasing) that something such as the constitutionality of the question offered in a referendum could be decided after the vote. Hmm. So, a legal body, comprised mostly of lawyers, sees nothing wrong with placing a question on the ballot asking for voter opinion on a patently unconstitutional issue? Is there any doubt that this Casino question is bringing out everything that is wrong with politics in this state?

Governor Carcieri reacted by asking that the State Supreme Court take up the question, and they agreed to a hearing on August 6. Now, the Gov. already vetoed the original bill, but everyone, including the Governor, know that his veto will be overridden by the Legislature. But it's not just the legislature that wants to "let the people vote" (sounds so egalitarian, doesn't it...). Democrat Attorney General Patrick Lynch has gone on record with his belief that the Governor shouldn't ask for the Court's intervention this late in the game. While Lynch also ultimately opposes having a casino in Rhode Island because "It's a question of crime," as he told the Providence Journal. He has heard from the AG's of other states that "In any jurisidiction that has it . . . there is a correlative increase in crimes and the number of cases that we would have to prosecute and the ills associated with gaming . . . whether it is white-collar crime, or obtaining money under false pretenses, embezzlement, bankruptcies, drugs." (again, from the ProJo story.)

So why does Lynch oppose the Governor's request?

Lynch labeled the timing of the governor's request premature because the legislature has not yet had its last say on the vetoed casino-referendum bill; the request puts the Supreme Court in a position of issuing an opinion on an issue it may be asked to review later "in a litigated case;" and because the wording of the governor's letter to the court makes it appear "the governor is using his executive authority to persuade the court to exert pressure on the legislature."

His first point is moot because the general assembly will overturn the veto before the Court hears the arguments, and the second point sounds like an excercise in legal semantics. I think what Lynch is really looking to do is oppose the Governor somehow on this issue because, frankly, I think our AG has visions of the Governor's office dancing in his head (his brother is the Chair of the RI Dem's, btw).

Meanwhile, it seems that Harrah's has an interesting employee qualification requirement.

What might be in store for people looking to work at the proposed Harrah's West Warwick casino? If the hiring is anything like what Harrah's has done at some of its facilities, cocktail waitresses would have to "audition" for their jobs in swimsuits. Once hired, they would be required to wear makeup, mascara, lipstick, heels, and have their hair styled a particular way.

That's from today's Journal. Sounds like something every liberated gal in liberal Rhody would love to endure for a "good-paying" job at a Casino, huh? Hey, I know it's a bit of a cheap shot, but if people really want one of these dens of debauchery in this state, they better be prepared.

A Comment on Nirvana: Only a Band, Not a State of Mind

I was just informed that the tenth anniversary of the passing of "the voice of my generation" had passed. In fact, it was quite a while ago, and I missed it. Of course, I'm talking about former Nirvana frontman, Courtney Love lovin', Kurt Cobain. If your looking for a sorta-maudlin, genuflecting piece, go here. If not, read on.

I never got the Cobain thing, I was at the time, and still am, a much bigger fan of Pearl Jam than Nirvana. To my ear (which is definately not TIN), Pearl Jam had more talent, better lyrics and better musicianship. Given that, I always considered them as the 1A and 1B of the Seattle grunge sound. But you see, Cobain, despite being a legit bad boy, also new how to market himself, and wanted to. He kept the MTV ties going while Pearl Jam, for the sake of "authenticity," forsook MTV after their first multi-platinum album. Hence, Cobain had more widespread exposure and was more "popular", even though, in my opinion, his music wasn't as good nor as socially and culturally informed as Pearl Jam's. (I don't agree with most of the politics of Pearl Jam and Eddie Vedder, but they wrote some pretty good songs with their social gripes as main themes.)

I think Cobain's death was reminiscent of the "Lady Di phenomenom," whereby people wanted to be part of the story. This is especially because Cobain's fan base was mostly comprised of a generation that had nothing to REALLY get upset over (like in the past with "The Bomb" and "Vietnam" or now with "Terrorism") so they focused on those aspects of Pop culture that made them feel like part of a larger "movement." The cynicism and "reality" espoused by Cobain, et al spoke to a generation that really didn't have much to b-i-t-c-h about. The Berlin Wall had fallen down, Communism was kaput, Clinton was president and believed in a place called "Hope," etc. Self-righteous angst influenced by postmodern relativism became the new "it" thing. (And this was after The Cure was in their heydey!)

Anyway, I guess I chalk the Cobain thing up to a generation desperate to find something with which to identify themselves. Cobain was the man of the moment, and his tragic death was a perverse ending, and ironic justification, of the postmodern, media imposed "Gen X" ideology.

Now we have something real with which to concern ourselves, and I think we are stepping up to the plate. Perhaps this is reflected in the music on the airwaves. If the predominance of teen pop and rap are an indicator of what sells, could this mean people of my generation, the old looking-for-a-reason-to-be-angst-ridden Gen Xers are simply not paying attention? If not, what are we paying attention to? I would hazard that we may be, especially those of us on the web and within the blogosphere, the most information-centric generation ever. Music is fun, but if we want our politics, we'll take them in the paper, on TV or, increasingly, online. Not from some heroin addict who says he can offer us "three chords and the truth."

Goldberg talks of the harmonizing of Ideology

Jonah Goldberg's G-File, up today, illustrates the downside, but more prominently the upside, of ideological segregation. Taking a cue from a new book, On Paradise Drive by David Brook's, Jonah embarks on a journey down the ideological interstate.

Political-science majors are more likely to spew all that stuff about the enlightenment and independent thinking that comes with education. Anyway, whoever says that stuff is wrong, the fact is that the more educated you are, the more partisan and ideological you are likely to be. High-school graduates are more likely to vote across party lines than college grads. And education does not track only with becoming more liberal. If you're a conservative with a college education you become more conservative. If you're a liberal, ditto. Indeed, college-educated liberals tend to become 'professionals' while college-educated conservatives become 'managers.'

This last makes sense, no? There are probably more liberal lawyers, doctors, and professors than there are middle-managers, franchise owners and CEO's, at least that seems like it should be true, given my experience. Given this, since people of similar professions tend to circulate in the same social circles, one can see how a sort of ideological purity would occur. Hence, we are all, generally speaking, preaching to the choir and are dumbfounded when somethin outside of our ideological norm seems to be taking hold with "the masses." (Such as, say, Bill Clinton getting RE-elected, or the fascination with Fahrenheit 911).

Jonah also writes of the good things.

There's also a very good side to all of this polarization. Critics of identity politics — and I am most certainly one of them — tend to focus almost exclusively on the separations, divides, clashes and chasms such politics create between groups. Blacks vs. whites, rich vs. poor, South vs. North, Springfieldians vs. Shelbyvillians, and so on. What they rarely look at is the unity such "identitarian" movements create. This was, after all, one of the central dynamics of fascism — it was a cross-class movement of national unity. Rich and poor alike joined hands in their unity under the swastika. And Communism, no less a reactionary force than fascism (and often more of one), caused ethnic Ukrainians, Tartars, Uzbeks, Russians et al. to lay down their ethnic differences in their common struggle against the ruling classes.

America is hardly immune to these laws of social attraction and repulsion. Take McCarthyism. Liberals love to point out the Manichean worldview behind McCarthyism. How it created enemies within. How Tail-gunner Joe's followers went after anybody — Jews, blacks, whites, Catholics, Protestants, Republicans, Democrats — anybody who he believed to be a Commie or ComSymp. Without getting into that whole argument again, let's just say fair enough. But, one thing left out of this analysis is how the McCarthyites didn't go after Jews, blacks, whites, Catholics, etc., who agreed with McCarthy about the Red menace. This may be an obvious fact of logic but it's actually much more revealing than it seems.

And there are more examples.

Liberals still talk about the 1960s as if all real Americans were sitting around, holding hands, and singing "Kumbaya".... How many misty-eyed stories have we heard about how blacks and whites, Jews and Christians, all marched together for peace and love and whatnot? What they always leave out is that there were often whites, blacks, Christians, and Jews on the other side of the pickets who disagreed with them. In others words, ideological causes breed unity and disunity at the same time.

If not vocal protestors, I know many of this generation who were part of the "silent majority" who didn't approve of the Peace-Love-Happiness (Mooch off Mom-n-Dad-Sex without Repercussions-Drugs) crowd. Finally, I'll let Jonah conclude.

we have something new in American history: Ideological movements used to reinforce racial, ethnic, or class bigotries. For the last 50 years they've increasingly transcended them. This is an upside of living in an ideological age — or a downside, depending on how you see things. And those who bemoan the current polarization need to ask themselves whether polarization isn't the natural order of things. And, if it is — and I think it is — isn't this sort of polarization preferable to most of the other options?

Leisure leads to Triviality

George Will has a typically good piece today, called "The Left, At a Loss In Kansas" about a book called What's the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank. I'd heard of the book, and Will summarizes Franks typically facetious thesis, but what struck me was this, near the end of the column:

When the Cold War ended, Pat Moynihan warned, with characteristic prescience, that it would be, like all blessings, a mixed one, because passions -- ethnic and religious -- that were long frozen would come to a boil. There has been an analogous development in America's domestic politics.

The economic problem, as understood during two centuries of industrialization, has been solved. We can reliably produce economic growth and have moderated business cycles. Hence many people, emancipated from material concerns, can pour political passions into other -- some would say higher -- concerns. These include the condition of the culture, as measured by such indexes as the content of popular culture, the agendas of public education and the prevalence of abortion.

It's something that I only half-grasped before, but it sure seems to be true. Yet, Moynihan's prescience is especially impressive and we have the current War on Terror as evidence. This also explains how many can't seem to get over their obsession with the trivial, and have even placed those matters over the "really big things" of our time. In our post-9/11 world, some have slipped back into the 1990's mindset and can't seem to recognized that "the times, they are a-changin'" for real. Victor Davis Hanson touches on this today when he explains that

At a time when tens of thousands are risking their lives to end the barbarism that has spawned a quarter century of worldwide terror, the New York Times wishes us to know that its columnists can properly pronounce Iraq and really do remember that freedom "rings" more often than "reigns."

Meanwhile, an even smugger Billy Crystal was introducing the billionaire John Kerry at a millionaires' banquet in L.A. with similar gravitas — comparing 9/11 to the president's SAT scores. Oh yes, 3,000 incinerated on September 11 add up to the president's combined SAT score. Analyze that: comparing charred corpses to multiple-choice tests taken by high-school seniors.

The message of this out-of-touch, spoiled idiotocracy seems to be something like, "How embarrassing for us to have an inarticulate president who has freed Iraq and inaugurated democracy in Saddam's place." Are all these people crazy and ignorant of history — or do they simply want a free civilized Iraq and the American soldiers who brought it about to fail?

These people have let their rhetoric fog their perception of reality. They are ideologues of the worst sort as they have let their ideology drift so far from the truth that most can't tell the truth from half-truth. They believe every conspiracy that justifies their wildest anti-Bush, anti-Republican, anti-Capitalist, anti-American dreams. But some may be waking up, at least a bit, according to Hanson.

So John Kerry is starting to get it that the conventional ignorance of Michael Moore, the New York Times, and George Soros is already anachronistic. You can see that well enough when a grandee like Tom Brokaw, Christiane Amanpour, or a Nightline flunky starts in with the usual cheap, cynical hits against Iraq reformers — only to be stunned mid-sentence, like deer in the headlights, with the sense that they are berating noble and sincere men and women — far better folk than themselves — who at risk to their lives are crafting something entirely new in the Middle East.

But there are still plenty who place the pithy comment and still cling to the cynical, materialistic philosophy of life that served them so well in the past.

For over a year now, we have witnessed a level of invective not seen since the summer of 1864 — much of it the result of a dying 60's generation's last gasps of lost self-importance. Instead of the "innocent" Rosenbergs and "framed" Alger Hiss we now get the whisk-the-bin-Laden-family-out-of-the-country conspiracy. Michael Moore is a poor substitute for the upfront buffoonery of Abbie Hoffman.

And what about those conspiracy theories...

The oil pipeline in Afghanistan that we allegedly went to war over doesn't exist. Brave Americans died to rout al Qaeda, end the fascist Taliban, and free Afghanistan for a good and legitimate man like a Hamid Karzai to oversee elections. It was politically unwise and idealistic — not smart and cynical — for Mr. Bush to gamble his presidency on getting rid of fascists in Iraq. There really was a tie between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein — just as Mr. Gore and Mr. Clinton once believed and Mr. Putin and Mr. Allawi now remind us. The United States really did plan to put Iraqi oil under Iraqi democratic supervision for the first time in the country's history. And it did.

...well, they'll just make up new ones, you'll see.

Governor Vetoes Casino Vote Proposal

As expected, Governor Carcieri vetoed the proposed Casino legislation that would have allowed voters to decide the question this November. The governor claimed that it was a bad deal for the state and that the legislation was

Cooked up at the eleventh hour, this deal would simply hand an out-of-state gambling corporation a 10-year monopoly in exchange for peanuts...There was no competitive bidding process. There were no serious negotiations. . . . As a former businessman, I can tell you that's no way to sucessfully negotiate a business deal...A casino will undercut state revenues, will destroy nearby businesses, will increase the potential for public corruption and will impose serious and unavoidable societal costs on our state.

He pretty much hit all of the bases.

The rhetoric was fiery on the other side, too. According to the ProJo account

But he was also derided by Matthew Thomas, chief sachem of the Narragansett Indian tribe, for suggesting the proposed West Warwick casino would "suck the lifeblood" out of the state's economy.

"I don't want to hear that kind of stuff. It's insulting to the tribe. It's insulting to our people," said Thomas, whose tribe expects a cut of the casino revenue from Harrah's.

"The lifeblood has already been sucked out of Rhode Island when ships landed here," Thomas said of Carcieri's remarks.

Ah, yes, we can always count on Chief Thomas to bring up the persecution suffered by his people initiated some 350-400 years ago by a racist white European culture as being a legitimate reason for a casino. I'm not debating the poor lot suffered by the Native Americans in this country, but I do question their reliance on gambling to "even the score" and "right the wrongs." I'm always uncomfortable when vice is used in such a "noble cause." (Like cigarette taxes for education...doesn't that mean that we want more people to smoke, then?)

Perhaps the most ridiculous assertion was that of Guy Dufault, a casino lobbyist (and former Democratic Chairman) who likened the casino debate to class warfare.

I think at the end, people are going to see it's rich white guys versus working people, and the people of Rhode Island are going to win...Think of everyone up there, Chambers [of Commerce]. Restaurant owners. Elitist politicians. . . . Follow the money. . . . It is definitely a class war, there is no question in my mind, against the working people of Rhode Island who, by the way, go to these facilities all the time.

Has Dufault ever heard the argument that casinos are actually an excessive tax on the poor and working class that he himself says "go to these facilities all the time"? I don't think I need to point out the patent lack of logic of someone championing "the little guy" by asserting what the "little guy" really wants is to lose his money to a casino operation run by Harrah's, do I? Of course, I guess that the right to gamble is a civil right, at least broadly defined in today's world, anyway.

Not to be outdone, West Warwick Rep. Tim Williamson chimed in that

The cornerstone of democracy is the right to vote. And for him to stand up and say the people don't understand this and it's a bad deal, it's just not true.

Well, all rhetoric aside, I do believe that the voters should vote on a casino sometime soon so that the issue can be resolved. Williamson's simplistic populism aside (I wonder how he felt about the peoples right to vote on the Separation of Powers Issue?), a vote by the citizens of the state will, hopefully, put the issue to bed. And whether it sleeps the long, lonely and cold slumber of final death or in the fleetingly satisfying embrace of a high class Vegas whore is the only question left to answer.