Maryland Politics -- The Democratic Debate

Watched the debate between Democrat senatorial candidates, Ben Cardin and Kweisi Mfume tonight.

It wasn't close.

Kweisi cleaned Ben's clock. He came across as moderate, easy-going, relaxed in front of the camera, reasonable and rational. He talked to the viewers in terms that they understood and could agree with. His recurrent theme was reaching out across cooperatively across racial and party divisions to solve problems. Ben was strident, angry, ill-at-ease, and kept lapsing into technicalities -- I hardly recognized him as the affable guy I talked to a couple of weeks ago.

Both men were on good behavior. Kweisi's major goal was to appear moderate enough so that whites would feel comfortable voting for him. Tonight's performance helped in that regard. He also got in some sly digs on Cardin, portraying him as a machine politician who had no real passion for the issues. Ben couldn't really respond. He had to make sure he didn't offend blacks by attacking Kweisi. That's why he time and again stressed how much he liked his opponent and, instead of criticizing him, turned his guns on Bush. Sorry, Ben. Bush bashing won't be enough.

It will be interesting to see if the performances have any effect. I'm not sure anyone was watching.

A measure of how the candidates did: the Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun which are both supporting Cardin, declared the debate a draw. That means they thought, as I did, that Kweisi won. Read their analyses here and here.

UPDATE:

The latest Survey USA poll has Kweisi up by four points -- 42-38 percent. The split along racial lines is profound -- Kweisi wins the black vote by 10:1, Cardin takes the white vote 4:1.

Ah, Maryland!

Read it here.

The Bloody Borders of Islam -- Thailand This Time

I wonder how they're going to manage to blame this on Bush.

AP reports:

BANGKOK — Nearly two dozen bombs exploded almost simultaneously Thursday inside commercial banks in southern Thailand, killing two people in a region bloodied by a Muslim insurgency, police said

....
Some of the apparently small devices were hidden in women's handbags or inside books carried by teenagers in school uniforms, said Lieutenant General Ongkorn Thongprasom, the army chief in the south.

Read it here.

Flipper "Terrorizes" France

Don Surber said it, I didn't:

Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported a dolphin is terrorizing the French coast. A goldfish could terrorize the French. The shadow of a goldfish could terrorize the French. Ah, "Flipper flips out."

Read it here.

Cognitive Dissonance On the Economy

The American economy has been humming along at pretty much the same pace as it did in the Clinton years for some time now and is the envy of the world, yet the American public is still complaining about it. There is a profound cognitive dissonance problem here.

Back Talk has the figures. He notes that today's economic pessimism is "borderline ridiculous" and wonders why the public's perceptions should be so much at odds with economic reality. His best guess is that the press reports economic news impressionistically rather than objectively and fails to provide context for its stories. During Clinton's years press stories were upbeat and the public was optimistic. Under Bush stories are downbeat and hedged with all sorts of speculative worries and the public gets a negative impression despite the fact that our economy is performing extremely well.

Read the whole thing here.

Tigerhawk argues that the reason for public dissatisfaction is stagnating real wages rather than media manipulation. [here] Glenn Reynolds replies that the shift in public attitudes coincides with the change in administrations rather than with shifts in real income, suggesting that political rather than economic factors are driving the perceptions. [here]

RELATED:

Harvard Professor Greg Mankiw, in recent posts, shows just how false the media picture of the economy is and illustrates one of the techniques used to create that false impression.

First, the Big Lie!

Economist Ann Huff Stevens punctures another media myth:

For some years it has been that reported that employees in the United States experienced widespread, substantial declines in job security or stability over the past several decades. Various newspaper articles have suggested that big structural changes in labor markets mean that job security is a "myth," that lifetime employment with a single employer is far less likely than it was, say, thirty years ago. Workers themselves worry that their prospects for keeping a job for a long period have shrunk, that they may need several jobs during their careers. "There is, however, a striking lack of solid empirical evidence to support these claims," writes economist Ann Huff Stevens.

Read the whole thing here,

In one respect the myth is true. Workers are worried about their prospects for long-term employment, but that is not because of instability in the labor markets but is almost entirely due to media misrepresentation of the true state of affairs.

Mankiw then illustrates one of the techniques underlying the Big Lie!

The NYT highlighted on the front page above the fold the following statement:

wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947.

Scary stuff, worthy of being featured on the front page where the news networks were sure to pick it up. But only two days later the Times reported:

Perhaps the biggest surprise in today’s report was a surge in wage-and-salary income during the first half of this year. Between the fourth quarter of last year and the second quarter of 2006, it grew at an annual rate of about 7 percent, after adjusting for inflation, up from an earlier estimate of 4 percent, according to MFR, a consulting firm in New York.

As a result, wages and salaries no longer make up their smallest share of the gross domestic product since World War II.

As Professor Mankiw notes this is a priceless "Emily Litella" moment for he Times, but note where the good news was reported. It was buried on page C1, in the business section whereas the earlier doom and gloom assessment was featured on page 1.

Read it here.

AND THEN THERE'S THIS:

Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek notes another technique of the Times' "Big Lie!" -- omitting relevant contextual information.

This editorial in today’s New York Times -- entitled "Downward Mobility" -- does its best to extract depressing news from the latest report issued by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Basically it shows that real median household income has grown at less than one percent per year over the the past four decades. Sounds like stagnation if presented without any contextual information, but consider this.

[T]he economy today offers so very many more options than did the economy in 1967 – or even the economy of that halcyon year, 1973. Today I can buy cell-phone service; today I can buy cable television with hundreds of channels, including ones that specialize in sports, cooking, history, and science; today even the cheapest automobiles are safer and more reliable than were the finest cars for sale in 1967; today I can buy telephone answering machines (with caller-ID), microwave ovens, CDs, personal computers, Internet service, and MP3 players. Today I can watch movies in my own home – in color – whenever I want without having to wait for one of the three or four available television stations to telecast a movie for viewing on a black-and-white television.

Today I can use GPS.

Today’s houses are bigger, on average, than a few decades ago, and better equipped -- and more affordable.

Today’s coffee is indescribably superior to the coffee Americans regularly drank just a few years ago; the variety and quality of teas is much higher; a huge selection of books is available at the neighborhood Barnes & Noble or Borders – or through on-line retailers such as Amazon.com. The variety of foods available in supermarkets and at restaurants is much greater and, hence, more interesting. And much of this food is low-fat. (One-percent and two-percent milk were not available to the typical American back in the day.)

The average number of items offered for sale by today's typical supermarket is 45,000 (up from what I believe was about 5,000 in the late 1960s).

Today I can buy an inexpensive quartz wristwatch that keeps time with remarkable accuracy.

Today, because of sites such as eBay, I have access to a thicker market for selling my junk.

Today I can buy – or get in a cereal box – a powerful electronic calculator. Today I can take digital photographs and digital videos and send them by e-mail, instantaneously, to family and friends around the world.

Today I can pay even for small purchases with a credit card – or if I prefer to pay with cash, I can get that cash from an ATM.

Today I can have packages delivered overnight.

Today, anesthesia is much better. (Those of us who had teeth filled in the 1970s and again much more recently can attest to the enormous improvement.) Many medicines available today were unavailable back then. Today I can wear not only soft contact lenses, but disposable ones that are cleaner and more convenient than standard lenses. And if I choose, I can have my vision restored to 20/20 through Lasik surgery.

Today -- with Wal-Mart's help! -- I can check my cholesterol by myself, inexpensively and without fasting.

Today life-expectancy is longer.

Americans today spend fewer hours per day on the job, on average, then they did just a few decades ago. In 1960 the average length of the American work week was 38.6 hours; in 1973 it was 36.9 hours; in 1996 (the latest year for which I have data), this figure was down to 34.4 hours. (Note that from 1870 to 1996 the trend in the length of the work week has been steadily downward; no reason to think that this trend has reversed itself in the last ten years.) And because the average number of days worked per year has also fallen, the average American worker in 1996 spent nearly 200 fewer hours annually on the job than did his counterpart in 1973. (These data are from W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm, Myths of Rich & Poor (1999), Table 3.1, page 55.)

Today, diapers are disposable.

Today I can google.

Read the whole thing here.

By decontextualizing the economic figures the Times is implying that the American middle class has failed to share in the nation's prosperity, but nothing could be farther from the case. Once again the NYT presents its readers with all the news it sees fit to print.

Maryland Politics -- Cardin Builds A Lead

The Washington Times reports that Ben Cardin has widened his lead over Kweisi Mfume for the Democratic nomination for Senator. Ben now leads by 43 to 30 percent -- a hefty margin, but note that one in four voters is still up for grabs. In a matchup against Republican Michael Steele, Cardin leads by five points 44 to 39 percent. Once again a large number of voters have not made up their minds.

Read it here.

This race promises to get interesting.

Stay tuned.

Naguib Mahfouz

One of the great writers of our time has passed away. Naguib Mahfouz, nobel prize winning novelist, whose Cairo Trilogy stands as one of the great achievements of the past century, died at the age of 94. I have not read his other works -- he produced forty novels -- but the Trilogy affected me deeply.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with his work, Lee Smith has written an overview and remembrance for Slate. Read it here.

The NYT obituary is here. It's worth a read.

And here's the BBC obit.

More Good Economic News

Ignore the headline on this Reuters story -- it's misleading. Here's the real information:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The economy grew at a faster clip in the second quarter and inflation was slower than originally reported, a government report said on Wednesday, suggesting the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates steady.

The U.S. economy grew at a 2.9 percent annual pace in the second quarter, faster than the 2.5 percent rate initially reported but marginally below what analysts were expecting….

At the same time, an inflation gauge favored by the Federal Reserve -- which measures personal consumption expenditure prices minus food and energy -- was revised to 2.8 percent, the biggest rise since the first quarter of 2001. The inflation index originally was reported to have risen by 2.9 percent when figures were released last month.

Read it here.

Hitch on the Plame Affair

Cristopher Hitchens writes the post-mortem on the Valerie Plame outing in the light of recent revelations, in the book "Hubris".

What does emerge from Hubris is further confirmation of what we knew all along: the extraordinary venom of the interdepartmental rivalry that has characterized this administration. In particular, the bureaucracy at the State Department and the CIA appear to have used the indiscretion of Armitage to revenge themselves on the "neoconservatives" who had been advocating the removal of Saddam Hussein. Armitage identified himself to Colin Powell as Novak's source before the Fitzgerald inquiry had even been set on foot. The whole thing could—and should—have ended right there. But now read this and rub your eyes: William Howard Taft, the State Department's lawyer who had been told about Armitage (and who had passed on the name to the Justice Department)

also felt obligated to inform White House counsel Alberto Gonzales. But Powell and his aides feared the White House would then leak that Armitage had been Novak's source—possibly to embarrass State Department officials who had been unenthusiastic about Bush's Iraq policy. So Taft told Gonzales the bare minimum: that the State Department had passed some information about the case to Justice. He didn't mention Armitage. Taft asked if Gonzales wanted to know the details. The president's lawyer, playing the case by the book, said no, and Taft told him nothing more.

"[P]laying the case by the book" is, to phrase it mildly, not the way in which Isikoff and Corn customarily describe the conduct of the White House. In this instance, however, the evidence allows them no other choice. But there is more than one way in which a case can be played by the book. Under the terms of the appalling and unconstitutional Intelligence Identities Protection Act (see "A Nutty Little Law," my Slate column of July 26, 2005), the CIA can, in theory, "refer" any mention of itself to the Justice Department to see if the statute—denounced by The Nation and the New York Times when it was passed—has been broken. The bar here is quite high. Perhaps for that reason, Justice sat on the referral for two months after Novak's original column. But then, rather late in the day, at the end of September 2003, then-CIA Director George Tenet himself sent a letter demanding to know whether the law had been broken.

The answer to that question, as Patrick Fitzgerald has since determined, is "no." But there were plenty of senior people who had known that all along. And can one imagine anybody with a stronger motive to change the subject from CIA incompetence and to present a widely discredited agency as, instead, a victim, than Tenet himself? The man who kept the knowledge of the Minnesota flight schools to himself and who was facing every kind of investigation and obloquy finally saw a chance to change the subject. If there is any "irony" in the absurd and expensive and pointless brouhaha that followed, it is that he was abetted in this by so many who consider themselves "radical."

Read it here.

As Hitch points out, the book is ludicrously mis-titled. If there was any hubris on display in the whole sordid affair it was that of Wilson, Plame and the Bush critics. What is clear moreover is the fact that once more major elements of the media systematically and knowingly mis-represented the situation, creating a scandal where there was none. And, most importantly, the whole matter bringst to public attention one of the major features of our current governmental system -- the determined resistance of the federal bureaucracy to accept direction from political leaders. There is a war going on in Washington, between the elected representatives of the American people and the "permanent government" of professional administrators. This was one of the more shameful episodes in that ongoing conflict. It is to the credit of this administration that it has been willing, and often able, to bring the bureaucrats to heel.

Good News Out Of Lebanon

Amir Taheri has an excellent analysis of the current situation in Lebanon. Apparently that victory by Hiz'bullah that was so widely reported in the western media was an illusion.

WELL, what do you know: What was presented as a "Great Strategic Divine Victory" only a week ago is now beginning to look more like a costly blunder. And the man who is making the revisionist move is the same who made the original victory claim: Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, secretary-general of the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah.

In a TV interview in Beirut Sunday, Nasrallah admitted second thoughts about the wisdom of capturing the two Israeli soldiers, an incident that triggered the war: "The party leadership never expected a response on such an unprecedented scale and volume [by Israel]," he said. "Had we known that what we did would lead to this, we would certainly not have embarked upon it."

For a roundabout way of eating humble pie, this was not bad for a man whom Western media have portrayed as the latest Arab folk hero or even (as one U.S. weekly put it) a new Saladin.

Why did Nasrallah decide to change his unqualified claim of victory into an indirect admission of defeat? Two reasons.

The first consists of facts on the ground: Hezbollah lost some 500 of its fighters, almost a quarter of its elite fighting force. Their families are now hounding Nasrallah to provide an explanation for "miscalculations" that led to their death.

....

The second reason why Nasrallah has had to backtrack on his victory claims is the failure of his propaganda machine to hoodwink the Lebanese. He is coming under growing criticism from every part of the political spectrum, including the Hezbollah itself.

Taheri sees some hope in the situation.

As the scale of the destruction in the Shiite south becomes more clear, the pro-Hezbollah euphoria (much of it created by Western media and beamed back to Lebanon through satellite TV) is evaporating. Reality is beginning to reassert its rights.

And that could be good news for Lebanon as a nation. It is unlikely that Hezbollah will ever regain the position it has lost. The Lebanese from all sides of the political spectrum are united in their determination not to allow any armed group to continue acting as a state within the state.

Read it here.

So, once again leading elements of the Western media have systematically mis-reported a major story, creating an entirely false perception of what has happened. Ironic that this should come on the anniversary of the Katrina disaster which must stand as the most egregious example of systematic misrepresentation by the major media in history. Time and again major media outlets have proved willing to sacrifice their credibility in order to achieve political goals. In the sophisticated American media markets the impact of their stories is lessened over time as people turn to alternative sources of information. But in the Middle East, as Taheri points out, biased stories from the major media have an enormous effect, and that, dear reader, is something to worry about.

I am, however, encouraged a bit by Taheri's concluding observations. Nasrallah's blunders might well provide an opportunity for Lebanon's government to assert its authority to a greater extent and to bring the promise of the Cedar Revolution closer to fulfillment.

Good News Out Of Lebanon

Amir Taheri has an excellent analysis of the current situation in Lebanon. Apparently that victory by Hiz'bullah that was so widely reported in the western media was an illusion.

WELL, what do you know: What was presented as a "Great Strategic Divine Victory" only a week ago is now beginning to look more like a costly blunder. And the man who is making the revisionist move is the same who made the original victory claim: Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, secretary-general of the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah.

In a TV interview in Beirut Sunday, Nasrallah admitted second thoughts about the wisdom of capturing the two Israeli soldiers, an incident that triggered the war: "The party leadership never expected a response on such an unprecedented scale and volume [by Israel]," he said. "Had we known that what we did would lead to this, we would certainly not have embarked upon it."

For a roundabout way of eating humble pie, this was not bad for a man whom Western media have portrayed as the latest Arab folk hero or even (as one U.S. weekly put it) a new Saladin.

Why did Nasrallah decide to change his unqualified claim of victory into an indirect admission of defeat? Two reasons.

The first consists of facts on the ground: Hezbollah lost some 500 of its fighters, almost a quarter of its elite fighting force. Their families are now hounding Nasrallah to provide an explanation for "miscalculations" that led to their death.

....

The second reason why Nasrallah has had to backtrack on his victory claims is the failure of his propaganda machine to hoodwink the Lebanese. He is coming under growing criticism from every part of the political spectrum, including the Hezbollah itself.

Taheri sees some hope in the situation.

As the scale of the destruction in the Shiite south becomes more clear, the pro-Hezbollah euphoria (much of it created by Western media and beamed back to Lebanon through satellite TV) is evaporating. Reality is beginning to reassert its rights.

And that could be good news for Lebanon as a nation. It is unlikely that Hezbollah will ever regain the position it has lost. The Lebanese from all sides of the political spectrum are united in their determination not to allow any armed group to continue acting as a state within the state.

Read it here.

So, once again leading elements of the Western media have systematically mis-reported a major story, creating an entirely false perception of what has happened. Ironic that this should come on the anniversary of the Katrina disaster which must stand as the most egregious example of systematic misrepresentation by the major media in history. Time and again major media outlets have proved willing to sacrifice their credibility in order to achieve political goals. In the sophisticated American media markets the impact of their stories is lessened over time as people turn to alternative sources of information. But in the Middle East, as Taheri points out, biased stories from the major media have an enormous effect, and that, dear reader, is something to worry about.

I am, however, encouraged a bit by Taheri's concluding observations. Nasrallah's blunders might well provide an opportunity for Lebanon's government to assert its authority to a greater extent and to bring the promise of the Cedar Revolution closer to fulfillment.

Pennsylvania Politics -- Irey Interview

Lane Core, of "The View From the Core" blog, interviews Diana Irey, the lovely lady from Monongahela who is challenging John (the Mouth) Murtha, for his congressional seat. She's pretty much a down the line conservative -- supports the troops, pro-life, wants to make the tax cuts permanent, wants to secure the borders, etc.

Read the interview here. Check out the pictures -- I like that chair she's got; it would be great for my aching back.

I'm not a movement conservative and don't agree with every position she takes, especially on immigration, but she sure would be an improvement over "the mouth." I wish the lady well, she's got a tough row to hoe.

Pennsylvania Politics -- More Polls

The Zogby polls are out. They have both good and bad news for both parties. In the gubenatorial contest Zogby has Swann only four points behind Rendell [48-44 percent -- a surprise since most polls have the gap at around ten points or more. In the Senate race, Zogby has Santorum trailing Casey by nine points [51-42 percent -- more than most polls which has the deficit at about six points]. Read about it here.

I'm not sure if this means much. It could show some volatility in the electorate, but it is a small sample and could be out of line. I would point out, however, that Zogby has consistently showed the gubenatorial race to be closer than other polls have.

There is good reason to discount the Zogby results. The Rasmussen poll, taken one day after the end of the Zogby polling period shows Rendell to be ahead of Swann by twelve points, 50-38 percent. Read it here.

This is consistent with other recent polls which show Rendell to have a double-digit lead over Swann. Most of Rendell's lead is from non-partisan voters and he has recently benefited from his announcement that this will be his last election campaign [although he has kept open the possibility of accepting a non-elective post in some future Democrat administration].

Rasmussen also has Santorum trailing Casey in the senatorial contest by eight points, 48-40 percent. This is the first time that Rasmussen has had the lead at less than double digits and is good news for Rick's campaign.

Read it here.

Maryland Politics -- The Tide Is Turning

I've been away for several days, so I missed this one on the first go-around.

According to the Washington Times Michael Steels has begun to make major inroads into Maryland's black community and has picked up some important endorsements, including this:

The Maryland Democratic Party's traditional support among blacks appears to be slipping, now that hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons -- who has helped register thousands of Democratic voters -- has endorsed Republican Michael S. Steele for the U.S. Senate.
...

"Russell Simmons is one of the leading progressive voices in America," said Donna Brazile, who managed Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign.

"This is a major endorsement for Lieutenant Governor Steele that will help him attract young people, as well as black voters," Ms. Brazile said. "Once again, this should serve as a wake-up call to Democrats not to take their most loyal constituents and voters for granted."
...
Mr. Simmons "definitely represents the younger generation. ... He's a pioneer, and hip-hop has become one thing that defines black youths in this country," said Tyrell Ruff, a 19-year old Baltimore native.
...
Cathy Hughes, founder and chairman of Radio One, the seventh-largest national radio conglomerate and the largest aimed at black audiences, also is supporting Mr. Steele and will attend tonight's event.

"That's huge," said Eric Nelson, a 34-year old rapper and single father from Baltimore. "The tide is shifting."

Read the whole thing here.

UPDATE:

Simmons explains his endorsement here. It's a bit strange -- apparently his yoga guru was an important influence on his thinking.

Maryland Politics -- The Tide Is Turning

I've been away for several days, so I missed this one on the first go-around.

According to the Washington Times Michael Steels has begun to make major inroads into Maryland's black community and has picked up some important endorsements, including this:

The Maryland Democratic Party's traditional support among blacks appears to be slipping, now that hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons -- who has helped register thousands of Democratic voters -- has endorsed Republican Michael S. Steele for the U.S. Senate.
...

"Russell Simmons is one of the leading progressive voices in America," said Donna Brazile, who managed Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign.

"This is a major endorsement for Lieutenant Governor Steele that will help him attract young people, as well as black voters," Ms. Brazile said. "Once again, this should serve as a wake-up call to Democrats not to take their most loyal constituents and voters for granted."
...
Mr. Simmons "definitely represents the younger generation. ... He's a pioneer, and hip-hop has become one thing that defines black youths in this country," said Tyrell Ruff, a 19-year old Baltimore native.
...
Cathy Hughes, founder and chairman of Radio One, the seventh-largest national radio conglomerate and the largest aimed at black audiences, also is supporting Mr. Steele and will attend tonight's event.

"That's huge," said Eric Nelson, a 34-year old rapper and single father from Baltimore. "The tide is shifting."

Read the whole thing here.

Lileks On Elite Priorities

Lileks gets off a good line on misplaced elite priorities:

The artists seem more concerned with a culture that won't let gays marry than one that won't let them live.

There's much more. Read it here.

The Benefits of Outsourcing

AHN reports on a very important study by Gene Grossman and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg who show that outsourcing actually benefits low-skill workers

They hold that outsourcing "had actually increased real wages for the least skilled among U.S. workers by about a quarter of a percent per year between 1997 and 2004."

One of the biggest arguments against outsourcing has been that it hurts workers at the bottom of the occupational hierarchy, but the two Princeton economists show that this assumption does not accord with historical fact.

Interesting and important.

Read it here.

Simply Despicable -- Russell Shaw on Useful Casualties

The gang at the Huffington Post has done it again. Every time I think it has reached the bottom of the barrel it dips even lower into the intellectual muck that is leftist thought. This time the monster they give space to is Russell Shaw, who argues that another successful major terrorist attack on the U.S. on the order of 9/11 would be acceptable if it were timed to hit just before the upcoming elections and provided Democrats with a talking point ["Bush failed to protect you"] that would enable them to take control of Congress.

I have long suspected that there were some cretins on the left who might harbor such thoughts, but this is far beyond anything I imagined. Shaw even goes so far as to justify such a calculus by noting that it took the deaths of a lot of innocents to destroy Hitler.

That's right, folks. In the Huffy world, Bush is Hitler, Republicans are Nazis, and both must be removed by any means possible, no matter how reprehensible.

After all..., it's for a good cause.

Read this bilious bilge here, and weep.

I'm Baaaaaaaaaaaack! Pennsylvania Politics Again

Spent some wonderful days in coastal Maine and the islands, cut off from all the major amenities of life, like TV and the internet. More on that later -- we are in Freeport and "She" demands that I accompany her shopping. Meanwhile, catching up on the political news, I note that Santorum is inching closer to Casey in the Pennsylvania Senatorial Race. The latest Keystone poll has Casey up by a scant five points, 44-39 percent. That's not good for Casey, whose numbers are dropping precipitously. The large number of undecideds mean that although Casey is losing voters, Rick isn't picking them up. Pennsylvanian's may be holding their nose in the ballot box this fall, and if they do, Rick will probably win.

And, Rasmussen has Casey holding an eight point advantage -- 48-40 percent. Nothing new there except to note that Rick is within striking range.

Note also -- RCP says that Charlie Cook is now calling this race a "tossup."

Read the polls here.

RELATED:

Tim Chapman, writing in the National Review, sees a number of parallels between the Casey/Santorum race and the 2002 Arkansas race between Tim Hutchinson and Mark Pryor. He feels that Santorum's fund-raising prowess and his foreign policy hawkishness will provide him with the momentum necessary to win this fall.

We can hope.

Read it here.

Maine Blogging

Here's where I've set up for today's bloggery. Nice, isn't it! Our friends get to enjoy this for several months each year. Lucky folks. Coastal Maine is gorgeous.

This isn't isolated enough for some people. We have other friends who live on islands off the coast -- but that's for tomorrow. This is today!

Ahhhh....!

Lights Out in Freeport

That's the interior of the L.L. Bean mother ship in Freeport, Maine. "She Who Must Not Be Named" and I had just checked out with our purchases and were rearranging the bags for a trip back to our hotel when the lights went out. A collective "aaah!" sounded through the store as people were pitched into deep dimness. It was sort of spooky wandering around the interior with only emergency lighting on. I did notice, however, that the cash registers never stopped ringing up purchases.

Ah, capitalism!

Outside was worse. A steady rain poured down on the crowd surging through the shopping area. Wet didn't seem to bother people, though. They kept on shopping right up to the point where the stores closed. Then came the sound of sirens -- LOUD sirens, rushing past us as we resumed our sodden walk down the street. Must be a fire somewhere.

Then "She" remarked, "I think I saw one of those trucks turn in at the hotel!" Indeed they did. When we arrived the scent of smoke was on the air, the place was surrounded by firemen moving purposefully here and there, the staff was standing around talking among themselves, and a crowd of befuddled guests stood warily in front of the main entrance, wondering what to do next.

We were lucky. We had already checked out before going shopping, and had packed everything into the car, so we were ready to move on and leave Freeport to its fate, but now the problem was how to get out of the parking lot. The entrance was blocked by fire equipment and it was clear from the behavior of the firemen that they were not leaving soon.

Well, we were doing nobody any good standing in front of the entrance, so wet and weary we trudged back through the rain and loaded our purchases into the SUV. I dug out a detailed local map looking for a way to get out of town while "She" stood in the pouring rain in the middle of the lot with a cellphone, calling some friends of ours to explain that we would be a bit late meeting them.

The map showed no exit from the lot except for the one blocked by the fire department, but maps aren't very reliable at that scale, and I had noticed a car moving around in the lower portion of the lot a few minutes earlier. It was no longer there and must have gone somewhere. "She" was skeptical and was sure we were doomed to sit for hours in the lot, but I pointed out that we were, after all, in an SUV and could go off road if necessary.

Off we went, moving slowly, peering around, looking for an exit.

Ah! Success! There was an unmarked alley leading off the lot at the far end. It connected onto a back street [also unmarked on the map] and that took us out to another street from which we could loop around and back to the highway several blocks away from the traffic jam in front of the hotel.

Sodden, but in high spirits, we set off down the road in search of our friend's cottage.

Later our friends told us that the power outage affected the entire town of Freeport and that the fire at the hotel had been contained easily. The traffic snarl had been pretty bad, especially since it came just as the shops were closing and people were heading home with their purchases, but it cleared up eventually. Freeport is back to normal.

Good thing that. We'll be coming back through that way in a few days, and "She" has a lot of shopping left to do.

Apology

Sorry for the lack of blogging. "She Who Must Not Be Named" and I are traipsing around New England, shopping, sight seeing, shopping, visiting friends, shopping, eating at interesting restaurants, shopping, reminiscing about former trips to the region, and, of course, shopping. Tonight we are in Freeport, Maine -- home of L. L. Bean and a major outlet center. Even as I write she is in our room with a map of all the local outlets planning tomorrow's assault on the shops. She has only a limited time because we will be meeting friends down by the coast tomorrow afternoon so planning is of the essence. I have every confidence that "she" will maximize the limited time available to her. She plans shopping forays like a military operation.

In another place and time bards would be writing epics about her.

Pennsylvania Politics -- More Polls

The Strategic Vision Poll is out. It shows pretty much the same as Quinnipiac, but has the races a bit closer. It shows Casey leading Santorum by six points in a three-way race and Rendell leading Swann by ten points, much closer than the nineteen points Quinnipiac shows. Other than having Swann in a not-quite-hopeless situation, there are no surprises here.

Read the poll results here.

Pennsylvania Politics -- On The Road with Rick

The WSJ has a nice piece on Santorum's campaign. Nothing new here:

1) Rick is distancing himself from Bush.

2) Rick is campaigning as a porkmeister [we Pennsylvanians love our pork!]

3) Rick is framing Iraq as part of a global struggle against jihadism.

4) There is little difference between Rick and Bob on social issues.

But we knew all that already, didn't we?

Read it here.

"Evil-Looking Hybrid Mutant"

No, it's not anyone who has been in the news lately. They're referring to a mysterious animal that has been terrorizing a town in Maine recently. AP reports:

Residents are wondering if an animal found dead over the weekend may be the mysterious creature that has mauled dogs, frightened residents and been the subject of local legend for half a generation.

The animal was found near power lines along Route 4 on Saturday, apparently struck by a car while chasing a cat. The carcass was photographed and inspected by several people who live in the area, but nobody is sure exactly what it is.

Michelle O'Donnell of Turner spotted the animal near her yard about a week before it was killed. She called it a "hybrid mutant of something."

"It was evil, evil looking. And it had a horrible stench I will never forget," she told the Sun Journal of Lewiston. "We locked eyes for a few seconds and then it took off. I've lived in Maine my whole life and I've never seen anything like it."

For the past 15 years, residents across Androscoggin County have reported seeing and hearing a mysterious animal with chilling monstrous cries and eyes that glow in the night. The animal has been blamed for attacking and killing a Doberman pinscher and a Rottweiler the past couple of years.

Read about it here.

Why not just call it "Cujo"?

The Iraqi Government Continues to Assert Itself

A couple of days ago I noted that the Malaki regime was finally taking a strong stand against independent militias in Basra and the Kurdish north [here]. Now comes news of fierce fighting between government forces and militias throughout the country.

The Telegraph reports:

IRAQI security forces fought fierce battles with militias and insurgents in cities across the country overnight as the government struggled to impose its authority.

In the northern city of Mosul, troops and police killed six insurgents linked to a Sunni extremist group and shut down five bridges across the Tigris River in a bid to quell the fighting, police said.

...

In the far south, in Basra, tensions between a local Shiite tribe and the provincial governor erupted into a firefight in which masked gunmen fired rockets at the government headquarters, killing at least one policeman.

...

Earlier, Iraqi army troops regained control of the Shiite holy city of Karbala after killing 10 members of a rogue cleric's private army, arresting 281 of his supporters and imposing a strict curfew.

Iraqi forces threw up checkpoints around Karbala, with only residents allowed in or out, after local cleric Ayatollah Mahmud al-Hasani's armed supporters killed at least six soldiers and civilians.

...

Iraqi and US security forces have launched a large-scale campaign dubbed Operation Together Forward to isolate flashpoint neighbourhoods and conduct house-to-house weapons searches.

Read it here.

It's going to be a long, slow, dangerous process, but one by one the militias are going to be dismantled and disarmed. This is not civil war. This is pacification.

The Defeat of Israel? An Alternative View

StrategyPage isn't buying the doom and gloom assessments of the recent Israeli-Hiz'bullah conflict. Here's their take:

The Israeli strategy appears to be to allow the UN deal to self-destruct. If the UN peacekeepers can disarm Hizbollah, fine. If not, Israeli ground troops will come back in and clear everyone out of southern Lebanon. At that point, it will be obvious that no one else is willing, or able, to deal with the outlaw "state-within-a-state" that Hizbollah represents. Hizbollah will still exist after being thrown out of southern Lebanon, and it will be up to the majority of Lebanese, and the rest of the Arab world, to deal with Hizbollah and radical Shias.

Hizbollah suffered a defeat. Their rocket attacks on Israel, while appearing spectacular (nearly 4,000 rockets launched), were unimpressive (39 Israelis killed, half of them Arabs). On the ground, Hizbollah lost nearly 600 of its own personnel, and billions of dollars worth of assets and weapons. Israeli losses were far less.

While Hizbollah can declare this a victory, because it fought Israel without being destroyed, this is no more a victory than that of any other Arab force that has faced Israeli troops and failed. Arabs have been trying to destroy Israel for over half a century, and Hizbollah is the latest to fail. But Hizbollah did more than fail, it scared most Moslems in the Middle East, because it demonstrated the power and violence of the Shia Arab minority.

Read it here.

I don't know if this is how things will eventually turn out, but it's a plausible take on things and far more so than the wailing and gnashing of teeth that is the current conventional wisdom in the MSM.

I would point out that the MSM has a vested interest in proclaiming the propaganda war to be the be-all and end-all of everything. That would make them the ultimate arbiters of everything.

Pennsylvania Politics -- Rendell Coasts

The latest Quinnipiac poll shows Ed Rendell with a nineteen [nineteen!!!] point lead over challenger Lynn Swann. Stick a fork in this one. It's done.

"Lynn Swann has failed to make any significant headway against Gov. Rendell over the summer. The former Steeler wide receiver's two big problems are that 38 percent of likely voters don't know him well enough to form an opinion and about a quarter of Republicans are voting for the Democratic Governor," said Clay F. Richards, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

"Meanwhile 'Teflon Ed' continues to get high marks from the voters and 54 percent say he deserves another term in Harrisburg."

It's "Hail Mary" time for Swanny. He's invited George Bush in to speak for him at Lancaster. That's not going to sway any votes, but at least Bush is a proven fundraiser and Swann really, really needs an infusion of cash if he is going to make a race of it.

Read it here.

Bush came, he spoke, and the Swann campaign raised a seven hundred thousand dollars. They're going to need every one of them.

Read about it here.

Maryland Politics -- Ben Cardin Gets Weird

The Baltimore Sun reports:

Cardin promises cancer cure

Senate candidate pitches health credentials, plan to beat disease by 2015

By Doug Donovan

Sun reporter

With a month to go before primary voters head to the polls to choose Senate nominees, Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin kicked off yesterday a weeklong effort to highlight his congressional record and vision on health care by making the mother of all campaign promises - to cure cancer.

Cardin, a Democrat from Baltimore County, gathered with cancer survivors and doctors in Lutherville to detail his efforts to expand cancer screening and his plans to fight the disease.

"We are going to lick cancer by 2015," Cardin told a group of 15 people at the HopeWell Cancer Support Center on Falls Road.

Read it here.

The specifics of Cardin's proposal are a bit less startling than the headline promises -- essentially funding for embryonic stem cell research, expanded medicare benefits, and more money for government bureaucrats. Still, the proposal is a bit disquieting. Cardin is one of those pols who seems to think that all problems can be solved by merely throwing money at them.

It's clear what he's up to. He wants to draw a clear distinction between himself and Michael Steele, a Catholic who opposes embryonic stem cell research. The other candidate in the race, Kweisi Mfume sides with Cardin on this issue. But the terms in which Ben [whom I met and conversed with for the first time a couple of weeks ago -- he seems amiable enough, and we have mutual friends so I won't speak ill of him] couches his announcement are pure fantasy -- demagoguery of the worst sort.

What next? Will he show up at the Harbor to walk on water?

The Collapse of Scientific Authority (cont.) -- Over-Selling Stem Cell Research

LifeNews.Com reports:

To hear some politicians talk about embryonic stem cell research, it may appear to the general public that cures for most every disease known to man are right around the corner. Instead, it has yet to help a single human patient and scientists say cures may be a very long time in coming, if at all.

Some scientists now don't see embryonic stem cell research as a top priority and say the science may only be useful in learning more about diseases but not deriving cures for them.

“Many of us feel that for the next few years the most rational way forward is not to try to push cell therapies,” Thomas M. Jessell, a neurobiologist at Columbia University Medical Center, told the New York Times newspaper.

Embryonic stem cells were thought to be the next wave in patient therapy after the success of bone marrow transplants. However, bone marrow transplants are “a special case, but the general applicability of that to any other disorder is a very big step," Jessell said.

Christopher E. Henderson, a neurobiologist at Columbia University Medical Center, says scientists though embryonic stem cell research would produce cures but they have realized it's not happening like they hoped.

He told the Times, “We all thought cell therapy first, then many of us realized there were a lot of hurdles to be crossed before that."

Dr. Ron McKay, a stem cell researcher at the National Institutes of Health who has previously called embryonic stem cell research a "fairy tale," told the Times that "progress has been mostly incremental."

Dr. Evan Snyder, director of the stem cell program at the Burnham Institute in San Diego, admitted to the Times that scientists thought they could move embryonic stem cell research ahead quickly, but have found out that wasn't the case.

"We initially hoped we could leapfrog over certain developmental steps," he said. “We are starting to learn that doesn't always work."

Two points:

<1) It was those ignorant Republicans who were closer to the truth regarding embryonic stem cells than their oh-so-intellectual opponents on the left.

2) The suggestion that "scientists" over-estimated the value of embryonic stem cell research is the kindest possible way to characterize the grotesquely over-blown, politically inspired, grantsmanship driven, ideologically shaped, campaign of hyperbole and derision in which so many "experts" indulged themselves during the last election cycle.

Liberals Fear A Strong Woman

Elspeth Reeve, over at the New Republic, argues that liberals fear Ann Coulter:

I love Ann Coulter. Coulter shocks and offends, but underneath her offensiveness is a grain of truth that people cope with by critiquing her hair. Americans like comfort: comfort food, comfort shoes, comfort pundits to reinforce everything we already believe. Ann Coulter is not comfort. I love that she pisses people off. I love her outsized confidence, rare in females who've gone through puberty, which means she doesn't turn into a pile of stuttering mush when an interview turns to her body. I love the way her face flickers devilishly for just a second when an interviewer wraps his own noose--the joy tinged with a bit of sadness, as if to say, Oh what fun this is, but do you have to make it so easy?
....
Coulter is a pretty woman who holds up a mirror showing us the ugliest parts of ourselves. She makes nice liberals think bad thoughts--particularly about whether they would have sex with her. Which is why we often fight back dirty, talking about her looks.

Read it here.

What delicious irony -- the feminist ideal of a strong woman finally emerges and it isn't Hillary..., it Ann! And the sexist weenies she roasts aren't Republicans.

You go girl!!!

Zimbabwe Update -- Mugabe Admits Failure

Even as they are being adopted by South Africa, Mad Bobby Mugabe finally admits that the land expropriation policies he instituted in Zimbabwe were an abject failure.

The Telegraph reports:

President Robert Mugabe admitted yesterday that Zimbabweans were "begging" for food because of his mass seizure of white-owned farms.

After years of official claims that his land policies would improve production and guarantee self-sufficiency, he confessed that many of those awarded white-owned farms were doing nothing with their gains.

"If farming is not in your blood, switch to what you are good at," Mr Mugabe told supporters in the capital, Harare. "We want those with land to use it. We don't want to keep begging for food."

Zimbabwe has depended since 2001 on emergency supplies from the World Food Programme. Almost four million people - one third of the population - needed help from the WFP last year. Food once ranked among Zimbabwe's main exports. The main reason for the switch from self-sufficiency to dependency on outside help is the transfer of commercial farms to new owners with no training, capital, expertise or equipment for farming.

Mr Mugabe's speech at the annual ceremony remembering the war against white Rhodesia of the 1970s amounted to an admission of failure. "Those who can't produce, be warned, we will take the land back," he said. "We now need to distinguish capable and committed farmers from holders of land who are mere chancers and who should be made to seek opportunities elsewhere." Mr Mugabe's regime has evicted all but a few hundred of the 4,000 white farmers who, until the start of the land seizures six years ago, were the backbone of the economy.

The economy has shrunk by nearly 40 per cent since 2000. Inflation, at nearly 1,000 per cent, is the highest in the world.

This is a rather startling admission by the old monster. Unfortunately, rather than learning from his mistakes, other nations in the region are beginning to replicate them.

Sad that the legacy of Marxist anti-colonialism and black racism should still be so powerful that it can continue to destroy nations and peoples in Africa.

Pennsylvania Politics -- Santorum Narrows the Gap

The latest Quinnipiac poll has Santorum down by only six points among likely voters in a three way race. Green Party candidate Carl Romanelli is having an effect on the race, drawing five percent from Casey's total, but in a two man matchup among registered voters, Casey's lead is still only seven points. This is a remarkable improvement for Santorum. As recently as June 21st the same poll had him down by eighteen points.

Santorum's approval ratings have also improved. In June voters disapproved of him by a 35-48 score. Now that has narrowed to 40-42 percent.

Nearly three in ten voters still say, at this late date, that they don't know enough about Casey to make a judgment on him. The stealth campaign seems to be working in that regard, but with Santorum's numbers improving the pressure will be on Casey to define himself more clearly.

This is really starting to get interesting. Two months ago most people were writing Santorum off, but that is no longer the case.

Read the results here.

UPPDATE:

RCP summarizes all the recent poll results here.

The Anchoress Says To Bush Critics, "Grow UP!"

I should have linked this before. The Anchoress, bless her, has no more patience for those who would try to blame all the troubles of the world on Dubya. She writes:

There is a time to be a child, to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child. Then there is a time to put childish things away. If you want to disagree with policies meant to keep you safe, do it. If you want to hate a man or even a movement, do it…but do it with something that goes beyond adolescent spouting off, backed up by nothing more than “feelings,” “caring,” and hysterical, dramatic angst. Sometimes I read the drivel some of you folks write me, and I want to take you by the shoulders and shake you and say, “grow up. Grow UP!“

Stop talking nonsense. Just, finally, stop it.

She pretty much says it all.

Read the whole thing here.

Another Left Wing Icon Crumbles -- Gunter Grass and the SS

Gunter Grass, semi-readable Nobel prize winning novelist [Why do people still consider that to be an honor rather than a blot on a person's record?], lefty critic of post-war German and Western culture [of course], and irritatingly pretentious anti-American scold, has finally admitted, after sixty years of silence, that as a young man he was a member of the Waffen SS.

Oh my! Another lefty hero bites the dust.

Why break the silence? Well, it could be that he has a memoir coming out and this will surely boost sales.

Read about it here.

UPDATE:

From Amygdala:

His whole life as a writer has been a lie.

About being in the Waffen SS.

Not a small thing.

Not something to be redeemed by finally coming forward. Now. In 2006. At the age of 78.

He feels guilty?

Good. But not good enough.

He has a lot more. Read it here.

Hat tip, Instapundit

On the general problem of "philotyrannic intellectuals" see Mark Lilla's important essay "The Lure of Syracuse" in the New York Review of Books, here.

The entire German literary world is in a tizzy over this. Sign and Sight has an excellent roundup of reactions from German literary and journalistic figures. Here.

Jonah Goldberg notes that, compared to other icons of the left with creepy secrets, Grass isn't all that bad. [here]

Barone on Wishful Thinking by the Left

Michael Barone has been on a roll lately. Now he suggests that the Left suffers from cognitive dissonance -- an ability to come to terms with reality.

What we are looking at here is cognitive dissonance. The mindset of the Left blogosphere is that there's no real terrorist threat out there. We wouldn't have any serious problem if we'd just do something different -- raise the minimum wage or reduce the number without health insurance (the first issue Lamont mentioned on election night), withdraw from Iraq or (as some Left bloggers suggest) sell out Israel.

This leads them to either discount or deny the reality of the British bomb plot.

But the threat is real and cannot be wished away or safely ignored. Barone writes:

Our Left criticized George W. Bush when The New York Times revealed that the National Security Agency was surveilling telephone calls from al-Qaida suspects overseas to the United States. Now it appears that the United States surveilled the British terrorists, and that they made phone calls to the United States. The Left cried foul when The New York Times revealed that the United States was monitoring money transfers at the SWIFT bank clearinghouse in Brussels. Now it appears that there was monitoring of money transfers by the British terrorists in Pakistan. On Tuesday, the Left was gleeful that it was scoring political points against George W. Bush. On Thursday, it seemed that the supposedly controversial NSA surveillance contributed to savings thousands of lives.

Joseph Lieberman is being criticized for saying, "I'm worried that too many people, both in politics and out, don't appreciate the seriousness of the threat to American security and the evil of the enemy that faces us -- more evil, or as evil, as Nazism and probably more dangerous than the Soviet communists we fought during the long Cold War. We cannot deceive ourselves that we live in safety today and the war is over, and it's why we have to stay strong and vigilant."

That view didn't prevail on Tuesday. But it sure made sense on Thursday.

Agreed!

Read it here.

The Iraqi Government Begins to Assert Itself

Signs that the Iraqi government is starting to take steps to assert its authority and restore order:

Kirk Sowell reports that Iraqi PM Maliki

has appointed a three-man council made up of Ali Hamadi (former border guard chief) as chair, Abd al-Khadr Mahdi (current legate of the Interior Ministry), and General Ali Ibrahim (from the Defense Ministry). The article notes that they were chosen in part because of their independence from local Islamic parties, presumably meaning Fadhila and the Sadriya. The article states that they carried a letter from the prime minister giving them authority over “all the security organizations” in the Basra Province, including the ability to appoint chiefs of each entity. Effective Tuesday August 7, their authority was to last one month subject to renewal by the prime minister.

Read it here.

He notes that the appointment has not been welcomed by local officials. I would suppose not, but federal control of the security apparatus is essential to establishing an effective governemnt.
And at the other end of the country Sowell notes:

The Iraqi government has closed the Baghdad offices of the Marxist Kurdistan Workers’ Party, an anti-Turkish terrorist organization, and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has promised his Turkish counterpart that no PKK activities will be tolerated in Iraq.

Read it here.

Combine this with Maliki's recent remarks criticizing the Israeli offensive in Lebanon and the conduct of some US forces and we see a fledgling democratically elected administration taking is first steps to assert both its domestic authority and its independence -- and isn't that what the whole Iraq enterprise is about?

Tectonic Shifts in the Political Landscape

The times, they are a'changin'.

The political landscape is shifting rapidly. Certainties are dissolving.

Michael Barone notes that one of the hallowed certainties of the electoral process, the "incumbent rule" that held that voters who wait until the last minute to decide who to back never break for the incumbent, no longer applies. Bush has blown it out of the water in each of his election victories and so did Joe Lieberman in his Connecticut primary loss. He had only polled in the low forties in weeks before the election, and finally received 48 percent of the vote. [here]

I think what is happening here is part of the general revolt in both parties against an out of touch leadership. Even committed Republicans and Democrats are uneasy about a continuation of politics as usual and are suspending their judgment as long as possible before finally coming back to the fold.

And in a separate issue, Democrats are beginning to question their ties to one of their core constituencies -- the teachers unions. Mark Kleiman, echoing Mickey Kaus, makes this astounding confession:

some of what they ask for really isn't in the public interest... [and] kowtowing to them costs us [the Democrats] votes

Read it here.

This is big! Teachers and public employee unions have long been one of the most reliable sources of funding for the Democrats. For decades cynical party leaders have happily accepted a loss of votes and blatant disregard for the public interest in exchange for money. But now that equation is starting to be questioned.

In part this is because alternative sources of funds are becoming available to the Party so they don't need the unions as much as before, and because in a situation in which elections are decided by tiny vote margins they can no longer afford to blow off votes in order to get money.

If this decline in support for one of the most abusive and destructive of the Democrat special interests would result in a greater regard for the public welfare and responsiveness to voters' concerns, I would welcome it. But it is by no means clear that the new sources of funding -- vanity campaigns by the super-rich and internet contributions from left wing ideologues -- in any way serves the public interest. I fear that the Democrats are drifting ever farther from a position of public responsibility.

RELATED:

Mark Blumenthal has a long discussion of the "Incumbent Rule" here. He notes that it weakened significantly in the 1990's.

Picture of the Week -- A Monk's Peace

The shot was taken by British/American photojournalist Daniel Bayer with a Nikon F100. I found it here.

Here is a gallery of his work.

Here's his website.

The Absence of Moral Order

Of the four great monsters of the Twentieth Century only one, Adolf Hitler, died an appropriate death and his memory has engendered nearly universal repulsion [outside the Muslim world, that is]. The others, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, all died peacefully and their memories have been honored, even revered, by substantial numbers of people.

Take for instance this disturbing story out of Cambodia.

Pol Pot, one of the most brutal mass murderers of the last century, has become a sort of bookie for those who pray to him for numbers. For many here, he is the guardian spirit of the Dangrek Mountains, curing ailments and dispensing lottery numbers.

People who live here say visitors have plucked the last bits of bone from among the cinders and carried them home for good luck. A casino is being built nearby to capitalize on this spiritual bounty.

Stop for a second and remember what this guy did. He and his followers over a four year span of time killed off -- that's right, executed -- 1.7 million people, fully one quarter of Cambodia's population. He was the man most responsible for the infamous "killing fields."

But today he is remembered with affection.

Here, in one of the last strongholds of the Khmer Rouge before the movement finally collapsed as a guerrilla army in 1998, some of its most reviled leaders are remembered with loyalty and affection.

"The way I see it, he wasn't a bad guy," said Loan Pheap who served under Pol Pot in a women's military brigade and now sells gasoline and plants from her house beside the cremation site.

"I still regard him as my father," she said. "He arranged my marriage because we didn't have any parents. During the wedding he told us to love each other forever, just the way a parent would."

How touching!

Hundreds of people attended his funeral, weeping for a man who is accused of ordering tens of thousands of killings, but whom they remember as a benevolent patron, distributing rice and cattle even as he executed those who broke his austere communist regulations.

As the chieftain of Anlong Veng he banned theft, drunkenness, prostitution, marriage outside the commune, private enterprise, any contact with outsiders and listening to any radio station other than that of the Khmer Rouge, all punishable by death.

That's right -- death for listening to a radio station or talking to anyone from outside the village.

Many people here are bitter about the changes [since Pol Pot's death] - "worse than bad," one farmer said - remembering what they say was a time of purity, order and discipline.

"I loved him," said Yun Hat, a former Khmer Rouge soldier who lost a leg to a land mine just as Ta Mok had. "He gave us everything we needed. We lived in love and happiness. I never saw him commit any crime."

Read it here.

And also note this description of the funeral rites honoring Ta Mok, Pol Pot's right hand man.

I Finally Get Off the Fence!

Michael Barone, writing in the WSJ on the subject of Senator Lieberman, identifies four areas in which he stands in opposition to major elements of the Democratic party.

As an observant Orthodox Jew, he has consistently portrayed himself as a man of religious faith, while one-quarter of John Kerry voters in 2004 described their religion as "other" or "none." He has been a critic of vulgarity and obscenity in television programs and movies, while the Democrats enjoy massive financial and psychic support from Hollywood. He has supported school-choice measures, while one of his party's major organized constituencies is the teachers' unions. And he has been an American exceptionalist--a believer in the idea that this is a special and specially good country--while his party's base is increasingly made up of people with attitudes that are, in professor Samuel Huntington's term, transnational. In their view, our country is no better than any other, and in many ways it's a whole lot worse.

All of these are issues on which I agree with Lieberman against his critics, but the last item -- the idea of American exceptionalism -- is the one that, in this time of crisis, most interests me and Barone.

Through most of the 20th century, American exceptionalism has been the creed of both of our major parties. Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy, for all their sophisticated knowledge of foreign cultures, were exceptionalists just as much as Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. Among voters, transnational attitudes were espoused by only a very few, in the odd corners of university faculty clubs, investment-banking firm dining rooms and the councils of shop floor socialist intellectuals.

Now it's different. In 2004, pollster Scott Rasmussen asked two questions relating to American exceptionalism: Is this country generally fair and decent? Would the world be better off if more countries were more like America? About two-thirds of voters answered yes to both questions. About 80% of George W. Bush voters answered yes. John Kerry voters were split down the middle, with yeses outnumbering noes by small margins.

That is an astounding result and it emphasizes the immense gulf that separates most Americans from the activists on the Democratic Party's left wing.

And he devastatingly notes a characteristic of this new transnational left -- a surprising number of its major figures are people who have made, inherited, or married big money. They are people insulated from the exigencies of life that confront the rest of us. He writes:

The working class Democrats of the mid-20th century voted their interests, and knew that one of their interests was protecting the nation in which they were proud to live. The professional class Democrats of today vote their ideology and, living a life in which they are insulated from adversity, feel free to imagine that America cannot be threatened by implacable enemies. They can vote to validate their lifestyle choices and their transnational attitudes.

Indeed. The sickness of transnationalism has long infected academia -- one of the most protected precincts of our culture, and deliberately designed as such. I must admit that much of what I find most repulsive in today's Democratic Left is pretty much what repulsed me about the academic Left with which I shared an uncomfortable institutional relationship for several decades. It very much disturbs me, as it does Barone, that these ideas have escaped from their hothouse environments and are now infecting one of the nation's major political parties and Lieberman's purge is the reason that I can no longer maintain my previous ambivalence toward the parties and their fates.

The upcoming election is a crucial one and in it I will be, for the first time in memory, voting the party, not the man. I fear the consequences should the Democrats return to power. I will be voting Republican.

Citizens of the World

One of the great conceits of the Western intelligentsia over the past half century has been a repudiation of nationalism and the entire Westphalian system of sovereign states. In my own field of study, history, "transnationalism" is all the rage these days. Mark Steyn reflects on both the pretension and the danger of that intellectual stance in an age when the instruments of persuasion and coercion have passed into the hands of non-state actors.

Lebanon is a sovereign state. It has an executive and a military. But its military has less sophisticated weaponry than Hezbollah and its executive wields less authority over its jurisdiction than Hezbollah. In the old days, the Lebanese government would have fallen and Hezbollah would have formally supplanted the state. But non-state actors like the Hezbo crowd and al-Qaida have no interest in graduating to statehood. They've got bigger fish to fry. If you're interested in establishing a global caliphate, getting a U.N. seat and an Olympic team only gets in the way. The "sovereign" state is of use to such groups merely as a base of operations, as Afghanistan was and Lebanon is. They act locally but they think globally.

And that indifference to the state can be contagious. Lebanon's Christians may think of themselves as "Lebanese," but most of Hezbollah's Shiite constituency don't. Western analysts talk hopefully of fierce differences between Sunni and Shiite, Arab and Persian, but it's interesting to note the numbers of young Sunni men in Egypt, Jordan and elsewhere in recent weeks who've decided that Iran's (Shiite) President Ahmadinejad and his (Shiite) Hezbo proxies are the new cool kids in town. During the '90s, we grew used to the idea that "non-state actors" meant a terrorist group, with maybe a few hundred activists, a few thousand supporters. What if entire populations are being transformed into "non-state actors"? Not terrorists, by any means, but at the very minimum entirely indifferent to the state of which they're nominally citizens.

And this is not a problem confined to the developing world:

Seven percent of British Muslims consider their primary identity to be British, 81 percent consider it to be Muslim...; in the Muslim ghettoes of the Netherlands, Belgium and other European countries... Second- and third-generation European Muslims feel far more fiercely Islamic than their parents and grandparents.

And he draws a devastating comparison:

Pan-Islamism is the profound challenge to conventional ideas of citizenship and nationhood. Of course, if you say that at the average Ivy League college, you'll get a big shrug: Modern multicultural man disdains to be bound by the nation state, too; he prides himself on being un citoyen du monde. The difference is that, for Western do-gooders, it's mostly a pose: They may occasionally swing by some Third World basket-case and condescend to the natives, but for the most part the multiculti set have no wish to live anywhere but an advanced Western democracy. It's a quintessential piece of leftie humbug. They may think globally, but they don't act on it.

The pan-Islamists do act. When they hold hands and sing "We Are The World," they mean it. And we're being very complacent if we think they only take over the husks of "failed states" like Afghanistan, Somalia and Lebanon. The Islamists are very good at using the principal features of the modern multicultural democracy -- legalisms, victimology -- to their own advantage. The United Kingdom is, relatively speaking, a non-failed state, but at a certain level Her Majesty's government shares the same problem as their opposite numbers in Beirut: They don't quite dare to move against the pan-Islamists and they have no idea what possible strategy would enable them to do so.

He forsees an "unraveling of the world" if this pan-nationalist ideological imperative is not effectively confronted and "throttled."

A bit over the top, but he has a point. Nationalism stood us in good stead during the long battles aganst previous transnational movements like fascist racism and international communism. It can also provide a bulwark against this latest global manifestation of evil.

Some Surprising Candor From the New York Times

One of the distinguishing features of mid-twentieth century Western culture was the amazing degree of deference shown toward credentialed, professionalized, expert authority. This was the old Progressive ideal at its peak -- in nearly every aspect of life university-trained experts, occupying professionalized positions immunized from democratic pressure, issued pronouncements that the rest of us were expected to follow unquestioningly. And, to a remarkable degree, we did. Such was our faith in the ability of a credentialed elite to provide objective, informed, disinterested judgment. Of course, the concept of an objective and disinterested elite is a chimera, but for a while the great mass of Americans suspended their disbelief on this matter.

One of the consequences of this misguided enthusiasm for expertise was the decision, taken after WWII, to solve a problem of labor surplus by channeling young people into the credentialing institutions. Our school systems were vastly expanded and we began to churn our record numbers -- a veritable locust plague -- of degree-bearing "experts," each of whom was convinced that their academic credentials gave them the right to interfere at will in the lives of others.

Of course the fiction couldn't be long sustained. Already by the late 1960's a new generation of credentialees, products of elite institutions, began to challenge the authority of their elders. And as credentialing became more and more widespread, to the point where today nearly everyone has at least one degree and often several, expert authority became more and more diffuse and open to challenge. Today everywhere credentialed authority is under attack.

One of the last remaining bastions of progressivist authority -- proudly proclaiming its objectivity and expertise and ability to decide what news was "fit to print" -- was the New York Times. The Timesters have the credentials to prove their claims -- a list of Pulitzers and other journalistic awards longer than King Kong's arms. But, as experience has shown, they are anything but objective and disinterested. A series of embarrassing revelations has rapidly destroyed the credibility of the "paper of record." The credentials they proudly display have been shown to be mere self-congratulatory ornaments awarded by a thoroughly corrupt and compromised professional community.

This past December the Times printed a story by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau on government efforts to intercept phone transmissions from terrorists without first obtaining warrants from judicial authorities. The story won a Pulitzer and several other journalistic awards, became a major point of political debate, and caused a great deal of embarrassment for the Bush administration. In the discussion over the story it came to light that the Times had been prepared to issue the story weeks before the 2004 election, but had decided instead to hold it for a year and issue it during a non-election period.

The Times executive editor, Bill Keller, explained that the delay was in response to government requests that sensitive operations not be revealed in wartime. It was a patriotic decision, he claimed. That was a lie.

The real reason, just now revealed, was that the Times senior staff calculated that release of such a story just before an election in which national security was a major issue, would actually help rather than hurt the incumbent administration by showing the lengths to which they would go to fight terror. In other words the decision was made based purely on partisan considerations. So much for journalistic objectivity.

Ed at the Captain's Quarters, reports on this blatant fabulation and the lies that ensued, and makes this judgment:

Keller has destroyed what's left of his paper's credibility. He lied to everyone about the timing of this publication, baldly and publicly. It also damages the credibility of everyone associated with this story. After all, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau certainly knew that the story was ready before the November 2nd election -- and yet they chose to play along with Keller's lies that the decision to spike it was in December 2004 rather than October and November.

The Paper of Record managed to utterly destroy the trust it still had left with readers across the political spectrum with this story.

Read it here. [HT Instapundit]

He's right. A one-time bastion of journalistic integrity has by now lost the last shreds of its tattered credibility. Coming on top of embarrassingly bad reportage of the Katrina crisis, for which the MSM indulged in an orgy of self-congratulation and the obvious manipulation of information coming out of Iraq and Lebanon, the entire journalistic establishment, credentials and all, has come into disrepute.

Progressives assumed that a credentialed elite could provide the voting public with objective, disinterested information upon which they could make informed decisions. Here is a case in which a leading institution of the field deliberately suppressed what its editors obviously considered to be extremely important information for purely partisan purposes. What is being destroyed here is not just the credibility of the New York Times, but of the entire Progressive enterprise.

Shame!