Who Can Really Say?

I don't know why John Kerry didn't mention this Thursday night at the Convention. It'd have been a big applause line.

John Kerry said Friday he would put Osama bin Laden on trial in U.S. courts rather than an international tribunal to ensure the "fastest, surest route" to a murder conviction if the terrorist mastermind is captured while he is president.

"I want him tried for murder in New York City, and in Virginia and in Pennsylvania," where planes hijacked by al-Qaida operatives crashed Sept. 11, 2001, Kerry said in his first interview as the Democratic presidential nominee.

Sometimes it's better when a candidate is asked a narrow, direct question that actually gets an answer instead of a talking point. Michelle Malkin conisders the implications of Kerry's revealed prosecutorial fervor:

So, this is how Kerry proposes to make America "stronger and more secure?" By adopting the Clinton law enforcement approach as the primary means to combat Islamic terrorism? "Fastest, surest route" to a murder conviction? What about the need to interrogate bin Laden and gather critical intelligence on al Qaeda? Where did Kerry ever get the idea that putting bin Laden through our civilian courts would be "fast?" And how clueless could he possibly be to ignore the fact that much of the evidence against bin Laden (for example, statements of interrogated al Qaeda detainees such as Ramzi bin al Shibh and Khalid Sheik Mohamed) would be inadmissable at trial?

The idea of prosecuting suspected terrorists like burglars or drug dealers seems to make sense in principle, but jury trials for War on Terror suspects are fraught with peril.

"In ordinary civilian trials, there is no significant cost to sharing everything the government knows," notes Johns Hopkins international law professor Ruth Wedgwood. "But this does not hold against the background of Al Qaeda's stated ambition of mounting new attacks." Affording accused Al Qaeda operatives the Sixth Amendment right to a public trial threatens to compromise classified information necessary to prosecute future terrorist trials. Other rights guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment?the right to subpoena witnesses and compel them to testify, the right to an attorney?can interfere with interrogations of captured suspected Al Qaeda agents. Moreover, in civilian courtrooms, prosecutors are severely restrained from closing off classified information under the existing federal Classified Information Procedure Act. Anonymous testimony and intelligence based on hearsay are often inadmissible in civilian courts. And while the lives of those immediately involved in say, a mob trial, might be endangered, the entire nation may be at risk when we allow suspected members of a terrorist network to partake in the discovery process.

She goes on because there's alot more. Kerry's probably right on one point though. As long as it would take to try Osama in the US, it would probably still be quicker than an "International Tribunal" specializing in stretching the trial out long enough for the defendant to die of natural causes..

For a few hours on Monday, the world?s human rights establishment was seized by terror. Slobodan Milosevic had been due to begin his defence at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, but instead discussion focused on the former president?s fragile health, which has been made worse by the rigours of the trial.

Myself? I favor trial by M.O.A.B. But if it comes to a trial in the US, I'll take one west of the Pecos River.

Posted by Peter at 8:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From the Democratic Leadership Council:

Is Michael Moore a courageous political documentarist who unmasks the chicanery all around us -- or just a charlatan in a clown suit? Is he an entertainment genius or a dangerous ideologue? The answer, of course, is all of the above. The problem is that you never know which of the four is doing the talking in Moore's movies and books. The end result is that the writer-filmmaker spreads a fog of misbegotten notions about America, politics, business, and international affairs among his youthful, left-leaning following at home and, indeed, around the world. Uninformed readers and viewers tend to believe everything he says.

In his latest book, Dude, Where's My Country?, for example, Moore peddles the absurd notion that terrorists are not really out to get us -- they're practically figments of our imaginations. Except, he adds, the terrorists who are right here at home, in our corporate and political midst. They are the "leaders seeking to terrorize us" and the "corporate mujahadeen" that run America, he writes. Furthermore, globalization -- tee shirts from China? data processing from India? -- is the main cause of terrorism.

These are just a few of the wacky ideas that spring from the fevered mind of Moore. Mixed with truisms, half-truths, and occasional truths, Moore's fulminations are a frothy brew of alarmist conspiracy theories and anti-American rhetoric. They are part of a new entertainment form pioneered by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, refined by such imitators as Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly, then carried to comedic proportions by left-leaning Al Franken.

Who Can Really Say doesn't know what to say. Am I beating a dead Moore horse?

(From Instapundit.)

Posted by Peter at 9:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tom Junod is not a Bush aficionado.

With the cadet bent slightly forward and the commander in chief leaning slightly back, each man cocked his right arm and made a muscle. They flexed! I didn't know anything about the cadet. About President George W. Bush, though, I felt the satisfaction of absolute certainty, and so uttered the words as essential to my morning as my cup of Kenyan and my dose of high-minded outrage on the editorial page of the Times : "What an asshole."

Ah. That feels better. George W. Bush is an asshole, isn't he? Moreover, he's the first president who seems merely that, at least in my lifetime. From Kennedy to Clinton, there is not a single president who would have been capable of striking such a pose after concluding a speech about a war in which hundreds of Americans and thousands of Iraqis are being killed. There is not a single president for whom such a pose would seem entirely characteristic?not a single president who might be tempted to confuse a beefcakey photo opportunity with an expression of national purpose. He has always struck me as a small man, or at least as a man too small for the task at hand, and therefore a man doomed to address the discrepancy between his soul and his situation with displays of political muscle that succeed only in drawing attention to his diminution.

After establishing his credibility in those ranks, and maintaining it throughout the essay, he does an outstanding job of explaining Bush to the Democrats in a way not ordinarily heard.

Read the whole thing. (Via Belgravia Dispatch.)

Posted by Peter at 9:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Michael Moore appeared on Bill O'Reilly's show from the Democratic Convention last night. I can't remember the last time I watched more than ten consecutive minutes of O'Reilly. He's obnoxious and self-centered, but perhaps worse, for someone who's so argumentative he makes really lousy arguments.

And the transcript of the show bears me out. Read it and cringe.

Posted by Peter at 6:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Along the lines of my worst case scenario post earlier this month, Eugene Volokh supposes:

Say Kerry is elected, but on Jan. 20, the Inauguration gets bombed, and Kerry and Edwards are both killed. Even if the Speaker of the House or the President Pro Tem of the Senate step aside (perhaps because they're of the opposite party, and conclude they have no mandate to govern), the rest of the chain of succession consists entirely of Cabinet secretaries -- who are all still holdovers from the old Administration.

There's a political novel in here, no? Where's Allen Drury when you need him?

And if you're interested, Volokh has many posts today on whether JibJab's "This Land is Your Land" takeoff violates the Guthrie copyright to the song. Just scroll around, you can't miss them.

Posted by Peter at 5:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Two articles on ESPN tonight about Randy Johnson trade rumors. The first is by Bob Klapisch, who's described this way: "Bob Klapisch of The Record (Bergen County, N.J.) covers baseball for ESPN.com". In what feels like a prior life, I was a paperboy for The Record (Bergen County, N.J.). How long ago was that? Let's just say it was a long time ago, shortly after the invention of dirt, which would put it in the range of mid-1966 to late 1970. It's nice to see a home-boy make good.

Anyway, Klapisch says the Angels and Yanks are interested in Johnson, but that Johnson won't approve a trade unless it's to the Bronx. That's where Johnson thinks he'll have the best chance of being on the long end of a World Series. Klapisch describes a game of chicken between Johnson and the Diamondbacks. Then:

But Arizona is just as committed to this high-stakes game of chicken. The D-Backs believe they -- not Johnson -- have greater leverage. According to the Newark Star-Ledger, the friction between Meister and Garagiola turned ugly on Monday, when a conversation between the two went like this:

"If you don't trade him to the Yankees, you're going to have one unhappy player," Meister said.

"And how would I tell the difference?" Garagiola responded.

I like Joe, Jr. In any case, I think this is about right. Johnson would like them to think he demands a trade, but the D-backs know he knows that he'll be gone at the end of the season anyway. Randy Johnson isn't about to turn into Dick Allen because he isn't traded. The team already has all the incentive in the world to trade him and an agent's spin won't add to it.

Next ESPN.com reports that the D-backs were close enough to a deal with the Dodgers to ask Johnson if he'd agree. In response, Johnson angrily pecked them in a perfectly natural bird-like fashion declined, and it's said, told them he'd only agree to a trade with the Yankees.

Get the hint? Johnson wants to go to the team he thinks will, with his help, win the World Series.

Ok -- hold the phone and let's continue. Later in this piece ESPN reports that the D-backs also want to move Chuck Finley. But the D-backs had to tell the Phils and Marlins that Finley would not play on the east coast.

So the question is, when did free agents or trade restricted players begin to so restrictively exercise their contract rights? Neither Bonds nor Griffey would consider moving to the Yankees. Although Kevin Brown is on the Yankees' roster today, he's playing under a contract negotiated with the Dodgers that gave hime huge concessions so that he could travel to be with his family. And Johnson isn't the first player to say he wants to go first and only to the Bombers. But Finley isn't in the class of the players I've just mentioned, and yet it seems to me that we hear this from players of his caliber more and more.

I don't know that it's a good or a bad thing, or even something that anything can be done about. But it's becoming a broader question than just the Yankees' money.

Posted by Peter at 8:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What if someone who would like to quit smoking cigarettes or crack but finds it hard to do so could get an injection that would keep the molecules of the drug in question from getting from his bloodstream to his brain? If he took the drug, he would get little or no psychological effect from it; the behavior, like all unrewarded behaviors, would extinguish fairly quicly.

That from Mark Kleiman, who goes on to say why calling this a vaccine is problematic even though that's in fact what it acts like. He notes though that the effect of an injection would only last 3 months.

But per Kleiman, an Independent article suggests otherwise:

Under the plans, doctors would immunise children at risk of becoming smokers or drug users with an injection. The scheme could operate in a similar way to the current nationwide measles, mumps and rubella vaccination programme.

Childhood immunisation would provide adults with protection from the euphoria that is experienced by users, making drugs such as heroin and cocaine pointless to take. Such vaccinations are being developed by pharmaceutical companies and are due to hit the market within two years.

Kleinman says it's a stupid idea because a shot will only last three months, and for all I know (and hope!) he's right. But what if it would last a lifetime, or years and years anyway? Consider the mindset, for a moment, of those who would mandate that everyone have that shot.

Ok. You can stop now. Creepy, wasn't it?

Posted by Peter at 9:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

B. F. Skinner would have been proud.

Sunjit Kumar was locked in a chicken coop for several years as a young boy, after his parents died and he was handed over to his grandfather.

He had little contact with humans during that time and picked up the habits of the birds.

But is he a chicken, or does he have courage?

From Eugene Volokh.

Posted by Peter at 7:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I screwed up the html when posting about my Day Off. Scroll down to see better examples of the pics. Or click above as the case may be.

Posted by Peter at 8:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Really. I mean it.

My housemates, we'll call them Tall and Short just saw Fahrenheit 9/11. (Although Short isn't really that short she's shorter than Tall and so that's that.) Tall said that even if it's only half true, that half is so troubling as to make it very difficult to give any benefit of the doubt to, never mind vote for, Bush.

I've since de-programmed semi-corrected her understanding of the World According to Michael. But her comment at the end of the intervention conversation was interesting. She said to the effect, that Moore's movie was really his personal view of the world, and that it made more sense to her looking at it that way. Fair enough, so I asked her:

ME: Well is it a documentary then?

HER: No.

I referred her to Dave Kopel's Fifty-nine Deceits in Fahrenheit 9/11 for more detailed information. I don't expect you to read it all but try the stuff in italics at the top of the page. What's striking to me, and what makes it all the more an effective read, is that the author acknowledges making changes to the page in response to critics of it, including Moore himself.

Posted by Peter at 8:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I had a great day at the Stadium last Thursday and brought along my new toy for the ride.

McSorley's was not a disappointment. I read somewhere that it's a living Bar Museum and that covers it well. The ale was excellent but the real surprise was the astonishing mustard which made every bite of my corned beef sandwich a marvel. The stuff is infused with horseradish and gave a wonderful rush to the palate and sinuses with every bite. Why can't you buy stuff like this in a store? Here's a view of the bar:



On the way up to our seats I stopped to take this pic. I call it vomitorium.



It's not a great picture, but I love the word vomitorium and try desperately to work it into everyday usage. I'm sure you understand why.

At one point I trekked up to the highest seats behind homeplate and took this pic.



The camera is great, McSorley's is on the agenda for future trips, and oh -- the Yanks won a tight pitcher's duel on a 1-0 Ruben Sierra home run with 2 out in the ninth.

Like I said, my life sucks. Well maybe not on select Thursdays.

Posted by Peter at 9:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Daniel Drezner insists all Legos and Spiderman fans must click here.

He's right.

Posted by Peter at 1:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm only a few hours late to this party so I think I can still get in. The NY Times' ombudsman, Daniel Okrent, today admits that the Emperor has no clothes. Leading with the headline "Is the New York Times A Liberal Newspaper?" he struggles not with the answer:

Of course it is.

He continues:

But it's one thing to make the paper's pages a congenial home for editorial polemicists, conceptual artists, the fashion-forward or other like-minded souls (European papers, aligned with specific political parties, have been doing it for centuries), and quite another to tell only the side of the story your co-religionists wish to hear. I don't think it's intentional when The Times does this. But negligence doesn't have to be intentional.

Using the Times' coverage of gay marriage as an example, Okrent says:

On a topic that has produced one of the defining debates of our time, Times editors have failed to provide the three-dimensional perspective balanced journalism requires. This has not occurred because of management fiat, but because getting outside one's own value system takes a great deal of self-questioning. Six years ago, the ownership of this sophisticated New York institution decided to make it a truly national paper. Today, only 50 percent of The Times's readership resides in metropolitan New York, but the paper's heart, mind and habits remain embedded here. You can take the paper out of the city, but without an effort to take the city and all its attendant provocations, experiments and attitudes out of the paper, readers with a different worldview will find The Times an alien beast.

Taking the New York out of The New York Times would be a really bad idea. But a determination by the editors to be mindful of the weight of its hometown's presence would not.

No clothes indeed.

Posted by Peter at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Richard Clarke is back behind the wheel on the NY Times Op-Ed page and remains skilled at the political sideswipe.

Americans owe the 9/11 commission a deep debt for its extensive exposition of the facts surrounding the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. Yet, because the commission had a goal of creating a unanimous report from a bipartisan group, it softened the edges and left it to the public to draw many conclusions.

Among the obvious truths that were documented but unarticulated were the facts that the Bush administration did little on terrorism before 9/11, and that by invading Iraq the administration has left us less safe as a nation. (Fortunately, opinion polls show that the majority of Americans have already come to these conclusions on their own.)

Actually, no. Pages 198 through 214 of the 9/11 Commission Report summarizes the transition from the Clinton to Bush Administrations, and describes how the new Administration digested the situation. Many players from the Clinton years (including Clarke) remained in place although Condi Rice changed the way they reported up the chain. By March the Bush Administration determined that a broader strategy to eliminate Al Quaeda was preferred to a piecemeal response. These are the documented and articulated findings. Pages 254 through 277 of the Report further document the various threats discerned throughout the summer of 2001 and concludes that we might have had a better outcome if various elements of the national security apparatus had coordinated matters more effectively. Nothing new here, but Clarke claims documented but unarticulated "facts" support a conclusion that Bush's administration did little. Clarke floats this notion, of course, without articulating any documented facts himself.

But Clarke isn't about documenting or articulating anything. He's all about blaming, and it takes cast iron balls for the guy who ran Clinton's anti-terror effort to play that game. This is especially so because Clarke can't say that had the Bush Administration heeded all of his recommendations the 9/11 attacks would have been prevented.

What the commissioners did clearly state was that Iraq had no collaborative relationship with Al Qaeda and no hand in 9/11. They also disclosed that Iran provided support to Al Qaeda, including to some 9/11 hijackers. These two facts may cause many people to conclude that the Bush administration focused on the wrong country. They would be right to think that.

This has been the crux of Clarke's argument all along. Aside from Clarke's practically legalistic approach to evaluating the threat Iraq posed to the US, the inference raised is that we should have invaded Iran instead of Iraq. But that overstates his claim, because he never actually advocates that -- the point exists to undermine the Iraq invasion, not to advocate an invasion of Iran. Were Clarke to support an Iran invasion I could find some respect for him. But Iran is raised simply to knock down the Iraq plan, not as an alternative to it.

And if I may, in skimming various parts of the Report and reading other parts in detail, with the exception of Wolfowitz, I didn't see anyone who advocated that Iraq was involved in 9/11, and plenty of findings to the effect that Bush rejected that notion. Page 335). When Bush sought to justify the war against Iraq he didn't say they were involved. What he did say is that the war is a broad based effort to fight international terrorists who want to destroy us and who would do it if they could get their hands on WMD's. Ousting Saddam was a natural part of the effort to prevent that. Clarke disagrees but his hints that we should have invaded Iran instead are disingenous at best.

There's more -- Clarke reviews some of the Commissions recommendations; he likes some more than others and suggests some of his own. But let's face it. The bug up his butt is Iraq. He says Bush had eyes for Iraq all along and it impaired our intelligence, planning, and policy during the first 8 months of the Bush Administration. The Commisions didn't articulate this because it didn't document it. It's only documented and articulated in the mind of the man in charge of anti-terrorism policy for 8 years during which Al Qaeda grew strong and hit us over and over again. I don't blame Clarke for 9/11 but I'll be damned if the guy who sat in that ineffective chair for 8 years now gets to define who should be blamed for it.

Almost 20 years ago there was a traffic accident at an intersection about 5 miles from my house. A car halted at the stop sign and then entered the intersection, only to be slammed by a car with the right of way. An elderly woman died in the rear seat of the car that first stopped and then entered the intersection. The driver of that car was the son of the dead woman, and he fought the traffic ticket he received for running the stop sign to the point of taking his conviction to an appellate court. In his view, I think, he didn't want to be blamed for causing his mother's death. If nothing else, Richard Clarke seeks much the same exoneration.

Posted by Peter at 9:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lileks on Berger:

But let's play everyone's favorite game, "What If He Was a Republican?" Imagine Dick Cheney caught filling his socks with documents on pre-Sept. 11 security procedures. Imagine a hidden camera snapping shots of Condi Rice slipping secret memos into her foundation garments. We wouldn't be hearing about impeachment, we'd be debating the probity of rolling a guillotine toward the White House, and whether the heads should be arranged alphabetically on the fence spikes, or by seniority.

So what do we do with a guy who not only treats his trousers as a diplomatic pouch but was national security adviser during the years when al-Qaida feasted on American laziness?

Cue predictable response: "It's not like Berger lied and we went to war and people died for nothing and we're not safer and what about Iran? Huh?" Subject changed, mission accomplished.

But. Back up. After Sept. 11, you might recall, the country didn't blame President Clinton for inaction, or for insufficiently pasting al-Qaida. The general consensus gave him a pass, because everyone was too busy having fun in the '90s to care much about the hairy, scary nut cases who wanted us dead. People gave the Clinton team a pass. The clock was reset at ground zero, and we thought we'd move forward from there. But that was before the "BUSH KNEW" headlines. Before the Sept. 11 commission's elevation of Dick Clarke and others who sought to blame Bush, not Clinton. It became political again.

Fine. That's how they want it, that's how it'll go. So, Sen. Kerry: Did your "informal" adviser tell you what was in the memos? Did he tell you he'd taken them? Did you know about the investigation before it was leaked, and did you keep Berger on as an "informal" adviser anyway?

What did you know, and when did you know it?

Posted by Peter at 11:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'll be sunning myself in Sec. 619 of Yankee Stadium tomorrow. Luncheon is before the game at McSorley's.

My life sucks, doesn't it.

Posted by Peter at 8:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jeff Jarvis has a long list of blogs:

At the Aspen Institute conference, I was asked to provide a starter list of suggested blogs. Here's what I sent them. Now don't get all hurt and pissy and angry and bloggy if I left you off; it's just a sampling.

And yes no, this blog isn't mentioned. But it's still a good list. Really.

Posted by Peter at 7:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Linda Ronstadt has been banned from the Alladin Hotel in Las Vegas. According to Michael Moore, it's because she dedicated a song to him:

I understand from the news reports I've read that, after Linda Ronstadt, one of America's greatest singers, dedicated a song to me from your stage on Saturday night, you instructed your security guards to remove her from the Aladdin, which they did.

What country do you live in? Last time I checked, Las Vegas is still in the United States. And in the United States, we have something called "The First Amendment." This constitutional right gives everyone here the right to say whatever they want to say. All Americans hold this right as sacred. Many of our young people put on a uniform and risk their lives to defend it. My film is all about asking the questions that should have been asked before those brave soldiers were sent into harms way.

Aside from the tiresome misunderstanding of the First Amendment, to read Moore it all happened simply because she dedicated a song.

But. From the Las Vegas Review-Journal:

Had the Aladdin made it clear they didn't want Ronstadt going down a political path, as she has in recent concerts elsewhere?

"Not that I'm aware of," said Aladdin spokeswoman Tyri Squyres.

From here, it certainly looks that way. Ronstadt started taking shots early in the show (several readers of this column, KLAS-TV, Channel 8 anchor Paula Francis among them, suggested my use of the word "snide" was off base).

You decide. I asked the Aladdin for Ronstadt's verbatim quotes to the audience.

"In case you are wondering what I'm going to do," said Ronstadt, "Driving into town I saw this big billboard up there with my picture on it saying 'The Greatest Hits Tour.'

"That was news to us. We didn't know it was 'The Greatest Hits Tour.' That is something they cooked up here in Vegas. ... They are gooood at that."

The Aladdin insists all promotional material was pre-approved by Ronstadt's people.

She didn't get booted solely for her dedication to Moore, a political lightning rod. She came in spoiling for a fight (or publicity), and Aladdin president Bill Timmins, a Scot, made his own statement: People come to Las Vegas for entertainment, not for political lectures.

And from World Net Daily, more quotes from Timmins:

Timmins told Sun gossip columnist Timothy McDarrah: "We live in a city where people come from all over the world to be entertained. We hired Ms. Ronstadt as an entertainer, not as a political activist.

"Whether you are politically on the left or on the right is not the point. She went up in front of the stage and just let it out. This was not the correct forum for that."

Continued Timmins: "Our first and only priority is the enjoyment of our customers. I made the decision to ask Miss Ronstadt to leave the hotel. A situation like that can easily turn ugly and I didn't want anything more to come out of it. There were a lot of angry people there after she started talking.

Well, I've got no plans to burn my Linda Rondstadt LP's (actually it may be only 1 LP). But it would be nice if Michael Moore knew just a bit Moore about the First Amendment than he knows about truth, of which he appears to know precious little.

Posted by Peter at 6:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I don't often update posts but I do it sometimes, and always before they scroll off the page. Search the page for the word "update" and you'll find them. If you're unlucky.

Posted by Peter at 8:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

How do you do it twice? How does the NY Times make the same error twice in a few days over 9 months?

You got me. They do employ professionals, after all.

Actually, this is an example of how great blogs are. Before blogs, someone might have noticed this, but unless they worked, maybe, for a major magazine or were a journalism professor perhaps, who'd have ever heard of it? A Letter to the Editor would probably not have been published. Who would know?

But we do now.

Posted by Peter at 8:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Berger's are for dinner tonight. And if Sandy Berger is as dumb as he's playing himself at the moment, he could be hamburger pretty soon.

I read almost every link in this characteristcally long post by Instapundit, and there's a lot in the story to sneer at. Berger says he "inadvertently" took classified documents from a reading room back in October, 2003 when among other things, he stuck some of the document in his pants as he left the room. He was in the room at the request of former Pres. Clinton who asked Berger to review classified material from the Clinton terms to be turned over to the 9/11 Commission. Berger obviously intended to place documents in his pants when he left the room. The inadvertent part could only be that he put the wrong documents in his pants, right? Still with me?

But what I don't get is the why of the story. Why would he do this? He couldn't think he was denying anyone in the government the information as there must have been copies. So was he stealing them to turn over to an enemy? Sandy Berger, International Man of Mystery?

It's too early to tell, I guess. The circumstances don't (at this point) much indicate to me where it's all going to end up.

But still, it's generally bad enough to get caught doing something incredibly stupid -- for Berger to get caught doing it in his pants tells me that inadvertence didn't have much to do with it.

Posted by Peter at 7:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Vodkapundit loves the new CO law creating a traffic offense for driving slow in the left lane.

Drivers of minivans, Volvos, and contractor pickup trucks, as well as old people and women on cell phones -- your attention please. The law covers the entire stretch of I-25 between the North Academy exit in Colorado Springs and Denver's C-470 interchange.

But hell, I'm pretty sure I've been run down at 80 while in the left lane of the Jersey Turnpike by all of the above. Ah, the placid life of the rural West.

Posted by Peter at 7:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Not only did the Phillipines cave in to terrorist demands (get out of Iraq or we'll kill your hostage), but $6 million was paid for the privilege!

Vodkapundit's link didn't work, but this one does.

UPDATE (7/20/04): Belmont Club has much more.

Posted by Peter at 9:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sorry for the awful headline, but Bobby Fischer is in Japanese custody, and may be heading back to the US for the first time in several decades.

Free drink to the Vodkapundit, who's showing off a new blog design.

Posted by Peter at 9:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Instapundit is gloating. And not without reason.

Posted by Peter at 8:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Are you Red or are you Blue? Take the quiz at Slate and leave the results in the comments. (Thanks to Daniel Drezner.)

Btw, I was in the middle, leaning towards Red.

Posted by Peter at 5:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was going to blog about this over the weekend but I was distracted. At least I think that was the reason.

Anyway, read this, which summarizes it all very well.

And no, I'm not going to tell you what it is.

'Cause I'm distracted again.

Posted by Peter at 8:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I went to Amazon the other day and found out they've changed their front page format -- it's now displayed as a "plog". Don't ask, just go there and see for yourself.

Anyway, the most recent entry for "Peter's Plog" is Saturday, when they advised me that I might be interested in the new release of "Belle of Amherst". Why might they think that? [Correction: why might their algorithim think that?] Why of course, because I bought Monty Python's Life of Brian from Amazon (a long time ago).

Here's the only review of Belle of Whatnot on Amazon. I cut 'n paste, you decide -- what the hell are they thinking????

This astonishing video performance of Julie Harris' one-woman show about poetess Emily Dickinson's life and work is a true tour-de-force. Ms. Harris' range of expression both physically and vocally evokes Emily Dickinson so precisely that one can hardly imagine that she ever looked or sounded any other way. The poems which are featured in this script are so deftly and subtly interwoven that the entire presentation feels seamless and eminently REAL. I am a Theatre Arts/Speech teacher at a small High School in Virginia, and my students are perpetually astonished at the humor and relevance of a video made more than twenty years ago - usually, they want to tune out anything "old". This is a rich and sumptuous piece of living literature with a tremendously broad appeal - not just Dickinson's poetry, but her unique life is showcased in this privileged interview. This is EXACTLY the kind of "living literature" that we need most in our homes and in our schools - by bringing authors and works of note to life, we can perpetuate the essential reverence for the power of the written word which has perenially distinguished our culture. Please don't let the relatively high price of this product deter you - it is an investment which will repay itself many times over!

Posted by Peter at 7:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Much to my delight and surprise I've received my first visitor from someone who clicked on a link to Who Can Really Say found on a blogroll. Thanks to Considerettes. But how did they find me???

Well perhaps through Google. Since I linked to the Gunner Palace video some 2 weeks ago I've received almost a dozen visitors who found the blog on Google (including one from the Pentagon) even though I originally mis-typed it as "Gunner's Palace". In fact, a search for "Gunner's Palace" ranks the blog 7th! I've since corrected that, but by adroitly mentioning the error here I'm assured of maintaining my near preeminent rank.

Who Can Really Say indeed.

Posted by Peter at 6:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I ran into this bit from Eugene Volokh about some preliminary thoughts from the Dept. of Homeland Security (reported by Newsweek) on what might be involved in postponing the Presidential election come November if we're attacked by terrorists. My favorite blogs (a/k/a the Usual Suspects), and others, have chimed in on the various implications, etc.

The LA Times now reports that the earlier report from Newsweek was premature and that no plans are planned for postponing the election. Simply in the abstract I can't fault folks for thinking down the road about what might be involved if it came down to that. New York City was conducting a primary election on September 11, 2001 and it had to be postponed and rescheduled after thousands of voters had already cast ballots. Had a national election been underway, how would it have been handled? Why not think about these problems in advance? I can't think of a reason why not to do just that.

But realistically, the entire scenario is a nightmare. The national election system wasn't built with this in mind and thoroughly adapting it at this late date is not possible. But even if a full postponement isn't possible, various contingencies are, and thinking about them is not a bad or wasteful thing to do. After all, the last thing either Bush or Kerry want is an election that isn't resolved by say, 6:00 AM on the Wednesday after..

Dan Drezner used the notion to ask two questions of his commenters:

[W]ould a spectacular terrorist attack that took place close to Election day help President Bush or Senator Kerry? . . .

UPDATE: A second question: should a spectacular terrorist attack that took place close to Election day help President Bush or Senator Kerry?

I think that answer to that is "it depends", and so do most of Drezner's commenters. My favorite comment is from Tad Porter:

A spectacular attack close to the election would help Bush.

.... thus ensuring four years of 'Bush arranged the Attacks'

.... and the success of Michael Moore's sequel 'Kelvin 1102'

Posted by Peter at 6:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

James Lileks succinctly reviews Microsoft Word:

I write in Word, a decent enough word-processing program ? it has 293,941 more features than I require and some baffling features I cannot shut off. Would you like me to indent this numbered series for you, sir? No. Fine, I shall indent them to the best of my ability. No, don?t. I see you have typed the number two followed by a period ? now you sit right back while I indent. No! Knock it off! But otherwise it?s fine.

Scroll down for for his review of Direct TV's customer service too:

Then the rain starts. He?s up there on my roof in the rain, and I am certain that the logical conclusion to this day is Mr. Installer falling two stories into the hosta bed. While he?s up there, the phone rings: it?s a guy in Fargo, North Dakota. I?ve never met him, but I did once mention some anti-Bush T-Shirts he produced in a Star Trib column, and he has been to my website and liked my designs and my Fargo stuff, and he was genuinely sorry that he was not the cable installer. See, I?d misdialed the field manager?s number and got a guy in Fargo. The Fargo guy mentions a friend?s website ? I might like it! I?m jotting down the URL when caller ID beeps in. I say goodbye, take the call.

It?s the installer, calling from my roof. The ladder slipped. He can?t get down. Could I help?

Sure.

?Who was that?? my wife asked.

?First it was an anti-Bush guy in Fargo, then it was the DirecTV guy up on the roof on his cell. He's stranded.?

?Oh.?

Posted by Peter at 6:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sheez, but I haven't posted in over a week. I thought I might have hit 6/30 but missed that too.

I've been celebrating the 20th anniversary of my 29th birthday, and visiting family over the long 4th weekend. I played golf for the first time in several years, at my brother's Club on Sunday. I'm glad to report the layoff didn't affect my game, which is another way of saying that my golf suckiness remained merely sucky, but got no worse.

The highlight was playing in a foursome with my brother and two nephews, one of whom was tooling up for the PA PGA Junior Championship at nearby Penn National. Both nephews beat my butt on Sunday. Unfortunately, Andrew's decent first round on Monday was followed with a not-so-decent second round on Tuesday, which dropped him back in the pack in the actual event.

I received an extraordinary gift on my birthday. Once I get some photo editing software set up on my PC, I'll easily be able to add some crappy photos to the blog to complement the crappy posts.

Posted by Peter at 6:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jane Galt rants:

You see, difficult as you will find this to believe, politicians lie. All of them lie. Even nice politicians who agree with us, and are smart, and have really good hair and a nice speaking voice, lie. They lie frequently. They lie about the outcomes of their policies, and they lie about their reasons for enacting them. They lie about their past accomplishments, and they lie about their future plans. In the vast soulless meat market that is our political process, the guy who gives the most misleading impression, without actually getting caught in an out-and-out falsehood, generally wins.

Welcome to adulthood. Sorry I couldn't break it more gently.

As they say, read the whole thing.

Posted by Peter at 6:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)