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Due to our growth, QandO has been forced to move off of MovableType, and onto a custom blogging platform designed by QandO blogger Dale Franks. In addition to the new look, we've added a few new features that will be explored more fully in time. For now, the links you need to know are:

• QandO Blog
- ongoing Neolibertarian commentary from Dale Franks, McQ and Jon Henke.
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- introduction page and contact information.
• QandO Discussion Forums
- continue your own conversations, ask questions, start debates, invite friends, make suggestions....and occassionally get your comments bumped up to the main blog.
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One does not have to register to leave comments on the blog, though other features do require registration. We hope you will sign up and become a frequent voice on QandO. In the meantime, adjust your bookmarks, blogrolls and lives accordingly.

The New QandO Blog

Weekly QandO Roundup

A Weekly Best-Of-QandO, with links to, and excerpts of, our most important posts from the past week. [though, I'm largely leaving out the somewhat dated Ra^therGate stuff]

And don't forget the new QandO site, and the new QandO blog. More functional, more involved....and soon, more features, too.

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* Exit Interview (Jon Henke) - A book review of "Miles Gone By: A Literary Autobiography" by William F. Buckley Jr.

One doesn't have to read very far into Miles Gone By to discover that Buckley's intentions are far more "Literary" than "Autobiography". Certainly, the book is an autobiography, inasmuch as its stories come from his undoubtedly fascinating life. But, rather than creating a chronological, original tale of his own life, Buckley has compiled essays--written at various stages in his literary career--which give something approaching snapshots of his life, rather than a complete portrait.

This has its up and down sides.

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* Quarterly Services Survey (Jon Henke) Papa's got a brand new....er, economic indicator. The first Quarterly Services survey indicates growth in the services sector.

With typewriters and physical examinations from 1972 dominating the headlines, some other important news has been unfortunately neglected. As I noted last week the Census Department has released "first new economic indicator from the Census Bureau since the 1960s". [first announced Wednesday, Sept 8th]

You may recall that the Daily Mislead hysterically called the forthcoming indicator "the latest in a series of actions by the White House to doctor or eliminate longstanding and nonpartisan economic data collection methods."

Well, it's called the "Quarterly Services Survey (QSS)", and it measures the service sector industries, "which account for nearly 55 percent of the nation’s economic activity". It's hard to see why the Daily Mislead is opposed to a measurement of the Service Sector of our economy, but one suspects it may have more to do with partisanship than with data.

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* Democrats ignore "first law of holes"... (McQ) "... when you're in one quit digging." And the Democrats are in one....so, it's hard to see why they still want to make this election about Bush's National Guard Service. Because that's working out sooo well for them, so far.

Bush "wasn't in the Airforce?"

My guess is, and I don't have the time to dig it up, but other bloggers will, that when he went to flight school he was federalized and put under Air Force orders for those two years. Most likely it was a requirement. That would certainly qualify for having served "in the Air Force". Additionally ANG assets are considered to be reserve assets of, you guessed it, the Air Force. So if you're flying Air Force assigned air defense missions as an interceptor pilot, even as a part of the TANG, you are probably all right if you claim to have served in the Air Force. Any claim to the contrary might be seen as silly and stupid. But then we're talking about the DNC here.

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* "Is there any betrayal that we wouldn't support?" (Jon Henke) - Let's be honest - Kerry might be uninspiring, but we're not all that excited about Bush, either.

I'll let you in on another secret. Senator Kerry isn't the only candidate in this race who a large section of his own party would be happy to replace.

While bloggers like to say that Kerry is the "Anybody But Bush" candidate, I'd argue that Bush is--for conservatives and libertarians, anyway--the "Anybody but a Democrat" candidate.
[...]
Indeed, beyond his hawkish approach to the war on terror, I simply cannot think of much that I like about Bush. And even his approach to the war on terror suffers from frequently poor implementation, and even poorer rhetoric. (though, with Bush as the candidate, I suppose the latter might be a bit unavoidable)

And yet, John Kerry is worse in every way. And the Libertarian candidate is even stranger than usual.

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* 9/10 Kerry outlines Economic Plan (McQ) - Kerry pretends we've never had "recession, 9/11, war", and then offers his free candy...er, economic plan.

This isn't much of an economic plan in my estimation. Its a "I'll do it better" plan built on a mischaracterization of where we've been (recession, 9/11, war) and where we are (1.7 million new jobs, 5.4% unemployment, increased productivity, total compensation up, and the highest homeownership percentage in the nation's history).

It identifies problem areas, but then misses or overstates government abilities to solve them.

Its a true "candidates" manifesto: Long on charges, short on meaningful specifics, and redolant of the stink of promises impossible to keep.

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* Voodoo economics II - The Sequel (McQ) - The Boston Globe conflates the Kerry's proposed additional spending with Bush's proposed fiscal shift, and claims they're equivalent. They are, to be blunt, wrong.

$2.2 trillion in new spending proposals and $860 billion in new revenue, offset by a 'cost' of $400 billion for middle-class tax cuts? That takes the increase in revenue from the 2% down to a net $460 billion, not the $600 billion we've been told to expect.

So Kerry says he's going to cover $2.2 trillion in spending with a $460 billion net increase in income tax revenue?

And cut the deficit as well?

Sure sounds like voodoo to me.

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* What would Rather do? (Dale Franks and Jon Henke) - In which Dale preemptively nails the CBS reaction to the document forgery, and lays out their roadmap to Obfuscation.

Bases on the coverage of the memo's story at the CBS Website, I suspect they'll be following a line of, "The documents aren't important. It's the deeper truths behind them that are important. Forget the documents. It's the story you need to understand.
[...]
And aliens could have produced them at their sector administrative outpost at Alpha Centauri, then beamed them to earth. Lt Col Killian could have run them off at PIP (the Kinko's of that era), because they were 'specially important. A lot of things could have happened.

But, how likely is it that they happened? That's the question that CBS still doesn't seem keen to address.

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* Triumphalism (Jon Henke) - Blog triumphalism is a bit out of hand, so it's time to remember our "proper place"....what we are, and what we aren't.

Blogs, I think, are a combination of editor and stringer. Bloggers do both the fact-checking (of editors), and the preliminary--even dubious--muckraking (of stringers in search of a story). The Blogosphere might best be compared to the newsroom at a newspaper. There, you'll find everything....the conscientous fact-checking, as well as the unsourced rumors that never make the final product.

Well, in the 'sphere, all of it is thrown against the wall to see what sticks. Blogs, like the preliminary research done in the newsrooms, are not The Record. They are merely the combined intelligence and information that goes into coalescing The Record.

Except, in blogs--for better or worse--it's all written and published as it happens.

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* Old Media BS Filter (McQ) - Blogs are another level of editorial oversight.

What blogs don't do as a rule, is break news. Bloggers are net consumers of news. But what they provide is something new and something which has been lacking forever. The old media likes to talk about editorial "checks and balances". But those are internal checks and balances which may or may not render judgement that a story is both factual and unbiased as we've seen with Rathergate and my other such stories. It is difficult to see beyond institutional bias sometimes, and that is where bloggers perform a valuable "filtration" function. They provide an external version of "checks and balances".

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* How did we end up with this clown? (Jon Henke) - Bush claims Kerry wants to expand government. Which is a bit of a pot/kettle criticism.

Face it - the only thing Bush can brag about is his comparative conservative advantage over Kerry. And that's akin to saying a tornado is--comparatively--better at home improvement projects than a hurricane.

How did this guy ever get nominated by the Republican Party, and how can we make sure the GOP never does that again?

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* The Persistent Myth of the Stolen Election (McQ) - Debunking the 2000/Florida election myths.

Its an article of faith on the left that George Bush "stole" the 2000 election with the aid of the Supreme Court which gave him a win in FL that he didn't earn and thus a Presidency he didn't earn.

To this day, the myth is still perpertrated by the likes of Jesse Jackson, John Edwards and John Kerry:
[...]
The problem for the left is that there are no facts to support the myth. Unlike Michael Moore's claim in his factually challenged film "Fahrenheit 911", none of the recounts which were conducted post election showed that Al Gore would have won:

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* True or election year politics? (McQ) - A Democratic Senator announces a forthcoming Guard and Reserve Call-up that hadn't yet been announced. Er....

That means this falls under one of two categories ... we have here a representative who has no problem telling of military plans in advance of their execution if it will reflect negatively on his party's political opponent or we have a representative who's making something up (which can't be checked) simply to frighten the families of Guardsmen and reservists in hopes of changing their vote.

Either way, I have a real problem with this announcement. It is the ultimate in politicizing the war in Iraq.

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* The Iraq Intel Assessment (McQ) - The Iraq intel assessment: what it shows and what it doesn't.

However there's a reason I, at least, haven't paid that much attention to the intelligence estimate on Iraq that was given to the White House.

Experience.

I've read a good many intel estimates/assessments in my day (most of them tactical) and have come to understand they're a snap shot in time based on the information available at the time as well as assumptions and intel sources. I've also come to understand that with the passing of a day, the assumptions can change to the point that the assessment is rendered useless. I also came to understand that there are varying grades of intel sources. Some are rock solid and some are almost worthless. But both are used in intel assessments.

Lastly, intel assessments reflect the thoughts of, not surprisingly, the intel world. They do not reflect the ground truth that commanders in the field see. They are just another tool for the commander's decision making process.

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* Oh, it's not just the documents, Dan. Apparently, the story has some holes, too (Dale Franks) - "I hate to risk veering off into Freeper territory here, but it's hard to beleive that the only answer for the one-sidedness of the CBS story is just incompetence."

Have you ever wondered when CBS News talked to Col. Staudt? "Cause, if you have, you can stop wondering.

They didn't.

Here they were, with these «damaging »memos, telling a story about how Staudt was applying political pressure to sugar-coat Mr. Bush's EOTRs, and, yet, somehow, they never talked to the man who was allegedly asking for the sugarcoating to be done.

Maybe the phones were out in Manhattan the day they were planning to call.

The new Blog is up!

Please be aware that real blogging has now begun at the new QandO blog! I've already put in my thoughts about today's big WaPo story on Ra^thergate.

Quick Hits

*** Freeven, at Mental Hiccups, asks "What is John Kerry hiding?".....and then he answers it, too.

"I have nothing to hide. I want you to ask me questions." --John Kerry, Democratic candidate for President
Reuters, August 3, 2004

Oh really?

If Mr. Kerry has nothing to hide, why won’t he let us see the following:

"The following"--i.e., what Kerry is still hiding--includes Kerry's military, medical, and tax records. And his war journal. And his Senate Intelligence Committee attendance record. And more.

John Kerry has previously said "The Nixon legacy of secrecy is alive and well in the Bush White House". One wonders if Kerry and his supporters really ever had a problem with that secrecy, or if they just wanted to get their hands on the machinery they'd just woken up to bitching about in January 2001.

That's a rhetorical question.

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*** Earlier this week, I wrote a piece called "Triumphalism", in which I discussed the nature and role of the blogosphere. (and what we aren't, too) A reader (unnamed, unless he tells me otherwise) sent this email, which I think deserves attention.

I liked your analogy of the blogosphere as a great big newsroom, and I think the similarities go deeper than you suggested in your article.

We have columnists (e.g. Andrew Sullivan - possibly unfair since he is an actual newspaper columnist, but he embodies a particular kind of "thinker" blogger).

We have stringers (think Glenn Reynolds: he says, "hey, look at this!" and everyone else gets to comment: the "linkers").

We have editors (just about everyone with an opinion, another kind of "thinker" blogger).

We have editorials (Bill Whittle?).

We have analysis writers (Steven den Beste, plus the myriad specialists).

We even have the cartoons! (DayByDay... soon may it return).

It's all there, with one exception. We have no "reporters", we don't break news, as some would put it. Well, I'm not so sure. After all, each one of us could be considered a local reporter. We don't need national roving reporters because we have people *everywhere*. As for breaking news.. well, if it's local we do. But how often is a local event of national or international significance? As for breaking news... liveblogging perhaps? I'm not sure about that one.

I think, however, your analogy could be improved very slightly. Yes, a newsroom. But an "open source" news room. All decisions, judgements and logical processes are there to be examined by anyone who cares to, which makes a big difference.

Maybe that could make a good reality TV show? Put cameras in the news rooms of major newspapers and TV broadcasters.

I think that description holds up pretty well, and I think the (rough) comparison between the blogosphere and a newsroom is appropriate.

_____________

*** I've had a few people ask about Neolibertarianism in recent days. "What is it?" Well, there's no simple answer, and that's something I want to correct in upcoming months, but I also need to offer a temporary explanation until then.

There's no simple explanation. I like the term "Hobbesian libertarian"--or "Lockean ideals in a Hobbesian world"--though, I recognize the fact that this won't exactly clear things up.

I responded to a reader earlier today on that question. I'll reproduce it here for what it's worth...

Neolibertarianism is, essentially, a more pragmatic, results-oriented, version of libertarianism. It is not as ideologically rigid, to the exclusion of effectiveness. I believe that, if we truly want more liberty, then it is encumbent upon us to act in ways that actually work towards increasing liberty, rather than simply running off the cliff, flag flying high....then bitching about the fact that the world didn't see things our way and repeal the laws of gravity out of respect for our strongly held views.

To be more specific: in my case, at least, I believe the concept of "Natural rights"--i.e., "rights" that people have as a function of their very nature--is silly. We have no more "natural rights" than does any given animal. And you see how well that works out for them. (or, at least, I did last night over a steak)

The universe makes no normative judgements on "right and wrong". It's simply matter and energy.

"Rights" are only "rights" insofar as they are enforceable. Which means "power" is the absolute, and not "rights".
[...]
Once we cut past the conceit that there is some list of "natural rights" [intrinsic to humanity] we're left with the simple fact that, if we want more freedom, we have to exert power towards that end. In our modern world, "power" [to that end] is largely exerted in the form of government. (or "war, by other means")

So, a Neolibertarian recognizes that a basic component of human nature is to work within governments--or power-coalitions--and recognizes that we must work within that paradigm, rather than rejecting it wholly, like the Libertarians.

Sorry, but every time I write about neolibertarianism, I recognize
that I need to--one day--put down some coherent, logical descriptions of the philosophy. Something more user-friendly than this philosophical meandering,
and less simplistic than "Libertarians tend to be absolutist loons, and we're not".

For more posts on Neolibertarianism, read here, here, here, here and here.

UPDATE: Interesting article about Halliburton--a favorite Democrat whipping-post for the Bush administration--here.

"[M]any voters may have no idea what services Halliburton provides to the government but that they know Cheney once ran the company"....and that is, apparently, enough for a political indictment. Left unsaid, though, is the exceedingly minimal actual profit--a key component of the term "profiteering"--that Halliburton is actually making on their contracts.

Burkett and the Kerry Campaign

Bill Burkett, the retired National Guard officer who's been cited as the probable source for the CBS memos, appears to have been an Democrat operative looking for a way to discredit Bush according to a Washington Post story today:

The former Texas National Guard officer suspected of providing CBS News with possibly forged records on President Bush's military service called on Democratic activists to wage "war" against Republican "dirty tricks" in a series of Internet postings in which he also used phrases similar to several employed in the disputed documents.

Retired Lt. Col. Bill Burkett, who earlier said he overheard Bush aides conspiring with the commander of the Texas National Guard to "sanitize" the president's military records, has refused to comment on reports that he could be CBS's confidential source. In e-mails yesterday to The Washington Post, he said he would speak out "at the appropriate time" but "that time is not now."

His first attempt to push the "stanitizing" story back in the late '90s was stuffed when all those he accused of doing it or knowing about it categorically denied Burkett's allegations. So it appears he had quite an axe to grind.

Per WaPo, he plans on speaking out, but only at the appropriate time. You have to wonder what could be more appropriate a time than now?

In e-mail messages to a Yahoo discussion group for Texas Democrats, Burkett laid out a rationale for using what he termed "down and dirty" tactics against Bush. He said that he had passed his ideas to the Democratic National Committee but that the DNC seemed "afraid to do what I suggest."

In another message, dated Sept. 4, Burkett hinted he might have had advance knowledge of some details in an explosive segment that aired Sept. 8 on CBS's "60 Minutes." In addition to airing footage of an interview with former Texas lieutenant governor Ben Barnes saying he helped Bush get into the Guard, the network broadcast documents purporting to show that Bush had disobeyed a direct order to take a physical required to continue flying in the spring of 1972.

"I believe that Bush knows that there is more coming out than Ben Barnes," Burkett wrote. "No proof, just gut instinct."

Gut instinct indeed.

So we have an axe-grinder with tenuous link to the DNC who has "advanced knowledge" of something big on CBS? Sounds more and more like Burkett's the source, doesn't it?

For his part, Burkett said in an Aug. 25 posting to a different Web site, Online Journal, that he and other researchers had "reassembled" files showing that Bush did not fulfill his oath to obey his superior officers. It was not clear from the context of the message, however, whether he was referring to records that have dribbled out of the White House and the Pentagon in response to Freedom of Information Act requests or to previously unpublished documents.

"Reassembled" is newspeak for "forged". A word on the FOI for Bush's records. Memo's to File would not be in Bush's record. They'd be in a private record. If Killian had indeed done such documents, they wouldn't be in his official file. The reason one does a Memo to File is to privately record what may be a problem so that if the problem ever comes to fruition and they try to pin the blame on you, you have a MTF to show you took certain actions and covered your butt. If nothing ever came of the problem, you'd most likely get rid of the MTF. But regardless, it would be a private, unofficial file.

So we know that Burkett contacted the DNC. But is there a connection in all of this to the Kerry campaign.

Well, yes.

In an Aug. 21 posting, Burkett referred to a conversation with former senator Max Cleland (D-Ga.) about the need to counteract Republican tactics: "I asked if they wanted to counterattack or ride this to ground and outlast it, not spending any money. He said counterattack. So I gave them the information to do it with. But none of them have called me back."

Cleland confirmed that he had a two- or three-minute conversation by cell phone with a Texan named Burkett in mid-August while he was on a car ride. He remembers Burkett saying that he had "valuable" information about Bush, and asking what he should with it. "I told him to contact the [Kerry] campaign," Cleland said. "You get this information tens of times a day, and you don't know if it is legit or not."

Which leaves the question: What did the Kerry campaign do with the information Burkett had, if anything?

Kerry Medals 'properly approved' per navy

This should put to rest some of the debate about Kerry's medals, at least whether they were "properly approved". Per the Navy Inspector General:

"Our examination found that existing documentation regarding the Silver Star, Bronze Star and Purple Heart medals indicates the awards approval process was properly followed," Route wrote in the memo sent Friday to Navy Secretary Gordon England.

"In particular, the senior officers who awarded the medals were properly delegated authority to do so. In addition, we found that they correctly followed the procedures in place at the time for approving these awards."

What this means is they were properly submitted and those that needed to sign off on them did and those that awarded the medals had the authority to do so.

What it doesn't do is answer whether the events or "wounds" which lead to the medals warranted the medal or not. It also doesn't identify, in the case of the first Purple Heart, who signed off on the award (since his first commander under whom the "wound" occurred says he refused to do so).

But in terms of the legitimacy of the awards, the Navy is saying they were legitmately awarded and properly approved. That is all it is saying.

"Conducting any additional review regarding events that took place over 30 years ago would not be productive," he wrote. "The passage of time would make reconstruction of the facts and circumstances unreliable, and would not allow the information gathered to be considered in the context of the time in which the events took place.

"Our review also considered the fact that Senator Kerry's post-active duty activities were public and that military and civilian officials were aware of his actions at the time. For these reasons, I have determined that Senator Kerry's awards were properly approved and will take no further action in this matter."

So endeth this part of the medal's saga.

She's baaack...

According to NewsMax, Hanoi Jane has now weighed in:

The America-bashing actress then urged voters to back Kerry over Bush, saying, "I don't think there's ever been such a clear choice between radicalism and moderation. I mean, we are dealing with a radical ideologue here."

A moment of sanity here ... compared to extreme leftist Fonda, anyone in the center or center/right would be a "radical ideollogue" in her world.

And that tells you where Kerry's "moderation" falls on the Fonda political spectrum.

Right where it always has .... very close to Fonda's leftist extremism.

Between her and Ted Kennedy, Kerry has just the friends he needs in the last few weeks of the race to ensure he gets no closer to the White House than booking an official tour.

Oh, it's not just the documents, Dan. Apparently, the story has some holes, too

In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Col Walter Staudt has contradicted the CBS Memos story.

Retired Col. Walter Staudt, who was brigadier general of Bush's unit in Texas, interviewed Bush for the Guard position and retired in March 1972. He was mentioned in one of the memos allegedly written by Lt. Col. Jerry Killian as having pressured Killian to assist Bush, though Bush supposedly was not meeting Guard standards.

"I never pressured anybody about George Bush because I had no reason to," Staudt told ABC News in his first interview since the documents were made public.

The memo stated that "Staudt is pushing to sugar coat" a review of Bush's performance.

Staudt said he decided to come forward because he saw erroneous reports on television. CBS News first reported on the memos, which have come under scrutiny by document experts who question whether they are authentic. Killian, the purported author of the documents, died in 1984.

Staudt insisted Bush did not use connections to avoid being sent to Vietnam.

"He didn't use political influence to get into the Air National Guard," Staudt said, adding, "I don't know how they would know that, because I was the one who did it and I was the one who was there and I didn't talk to any of them."

Read that last sentence carefully. Have you ever wondered when CBS News talked to Col. Staudt? "Cause, if you have, you can stop wondering.

They didn't.

Here they were, with these «damaging »memos, telling a story about how Staudt was applying political pressure to sugar-coat Mr. Bush's EOTRs, and, yet, somehow, they never talked to the man who was allegedly asking for the sugarcoating to be done.

Maybe the phones were out in Manhattan the day they were planning to call.

This is just yet another disturbing aspect of the whole episode. Somehow, the folks at CBS never aired the objections of document experts who questioned their authenticity before the story aired. They didn't include the denials of Lt Col Killian's wife and son. they didn't include any of the several peoploe who remeber Mr. Bush serving in Alabama.

And, now, we find out they didn't even talk to Col. Staudt.

I hate to risk veering off into Freeper territory here, but it's hard to beleive that the only answer for the one-sidedness of the CBS story is just incompetence. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask how much of this whole CBS national guard is the result of an agenda, rather than sloppy reporting.

One wonders if they didn't intentionally not talk to Staudt because they somehow knew or suspected he would refute every detail of the story.

Clearly, CBS didn't even do the bare minimum of due diligence before reporting this story, and, what is even worse, as the cracks in not only the memos, but the story itself, grow wider and wider, they're circling the wagons.

This is unconcsionable, and it makes one wonder how much often this kind of thing went on in old media before there was the distributed intelligence of the Internet to make fact-checking by the public so much easier.

One wonders when or if someone at Viacom will start putting the pressure on Rather--who is the 800lb gorilla at CBS News--to resign in an attempt to salvage some shred of credibility for the News Division.

The Iraq Intel Assessment

Reader Mr. K was concerned that the CBS story had been "beaten to death" and yet the story of the Intel Assessment about Iraq hadn't been mentioned and was very "pessimistic"".

Well, true on both accounts. However there's a reason I, at least, haven't paid that much attention to the intelligence estimate on Iraq that was given to the White House.

Experience.

I've read a good many intel estimates/assessments in my day (most of them tactical) and have come to understand they're a snap shot in time based on the information available at the time as well as assumptions and intel sources. I've also come to understand that with the passing of a day, the assumptions can change to the point that the assessment is rendered useless. I also came to understand that there are varying grades of intel sources. Some are rock solid and some are almost worthless. But both are used in intel assessments.

Lastly, intel assessments reflect the thoughts of, not surprisingly, the intel world. They do not reflect the ground truth that commanders in the field see. They are just another tool for the commander's decision making process.

That being said, I ran across something at Captain's Quarters from a Marine Major (serving in Iraq) that pretty much said what I wanted to say. Some salient clips:

Let’s lay out some background, first about the “National Intelligence Estimate.” The most glaring issue with its relevance is the fact that it was delivered to the White House in July. That means that the information that was used to derive the intelligence was gathered in the Spring – in the immediate aftermath of the April battle for Fallujah, and other events. The report doesn’t cover what has happened in July or August, let alone September.

IOW a three month old snap-shot taken in the middle of the battle for Fallujah? Any guess as to how it might be colored?

Well how about Najaf, you say? It certainly looked like the possiblity of civil war when that cranked up. Well, again, it depends on how you look at it. As a strategic intel weenie or a commander on the ground:

The naysayers will point to the recent battles in Najaf and draw parallels between that and what happened in Fallujah in April. They aren’t even close. The bad guys did us a HUGE favor by gathering together in one place and trying to make a stand. It allowed us to focus on them and defeat them. Make no mistake, Al Sadr’s troops were thoroughly smashed. The estimated enemy killed in action is huge. Before the battles, the residents of the city were afraid to walk the streets. Al Sadr’s enforcers would seize people and bring them to his Islamic court where sentence was passed for religious or other violations. Long before the battles people were looking for their lost loved ones who had been taken to “court” and never seen again. Now Najafians can and do walk their streets in safety. Commerce has returned and the city is being rebuilt. Iraqi security forces and US troops are welcomed and smiled upon. That city was liberated again. It was not like Fallujah – the bad guys lost and are in hiding or dead.

Most likely the intel estimate talks about the Sunni triangle as it existed in June of this year. But what about now?

You may not have even heard about the city of Samarra. Two weeks ago, that Sunni Triangle city was a “No-go” area for US troops. But guess what? The locals got sick of living in fear from the insurgents and foreign fighters that were there and let them know they weren’t welcome. They stopped hosting them in their houses and the mayor of the town brokered a deal with the US commander to return Iraqi government sovereignty to the city without a fight. The people saw what was on the horizon and decided they didn’t want their city looking like Fallujah in April or Najaf in August.

You can bet that's not in there, because it hadn't happened in June. As our Marine Major points out "boom, boom" two great things happen almost sponteneously, not because of US troops but because of Iraqi citizens ... neither of which are reflected in the gloom and doom assessment:

Boom, boom, just like that two major “hot spots” cool down in rapid succession. Does that mean that those towns are completely pacified? No. What it does mean is that we are learning how to do this the right way. The US commander in Samarra saw an opportunity and took it – probably the biggest victory of his military career and nary a shot was fired in anger. Things will still happen in those cities, and you can be sure that the bad guys really want to take them back. Those achievements, more than anything else in my opinion, account for the surge in violence in recent days – especially the violence directed at Iraqis by the insurgents. Both in Najaf and Samarra ordinary people stepped out and took sides with the Iraqi government against the insurgents, and the bad guys are hopping mad. They are trying to instill fear once again. The worst thing we could do now is pull back and let that scum back into people’s homes and lives.

So what's the trend in this Major's assessement on the ground? That in these two very important instances, "ordinary people stepped out and took sides with the Iraqi government against the insurgents".

As he says, that's huge. For Mr. K and the rest of those feeling a bit pessimistic about Iraq, he passes this along:

So, you may hear analysts and prognosticators on CNN, ABC and the like in the next few days talking about how bleak the situation is here in Iraq, but from where I sit, it’s looking significantly better now than when I got here. The momentum is moving in our favor, and all Americans need to know that, so please, please, pass this on to those who care and will pass it on to others.

But he also warns of this:

It is very demoralizing for us here in uniform to read & hear such negativity in our press. It is fodder for our enemies to use against us and against the vast majority of Iraqis who want their new government to succeed. It causes the American public to start thinking about the acceptability of “cutting our losses” and pulling out, which would be devastating for Iraq for generations to come, and Muslim militants would claim a huge victory, causing us to have to continue to fight them elsewhere (remember, in war “Away” games are always preferable to “Home” games). Reports like that also cause Iraqis begin to fear that we will pull out before we finish the job, and thus less willing to openly support their interim government and US/Coalition activities. We are realizing significant progress here – not propaganda progress, but real strides are being made. It’s terrible to see our national morale, and support for what we’re doing here, jeopardized by sensationalized stories hyped by media giants whose #1 priority is advertising income followed closely by their political agenda; getting the story straight falls much further down on their priority scale, as Dan Rather and CBS News have so aptly demonstrated in the last week.

From his lips to God's ears.

Blog Note

Just got off the phone with Dale Franks¹, and it appears our new design is coming along rather quickly. We may be able to transition over there sometime next week. Go check it out--the front page, the blog, etc.--and tell us what you think.

A few notes on what we're hoping to do:

• Neolibertarianism: we'd like to use this portal as a chance to explore the concept of Neolibertarianism further. To create a bit of an identity for the philosophy, and a website/blog for Neolibertarian thought. Ideally--and down the road, of course--we'd like QandO.net to be an intellectual alternative and counterpoint to Paleolibertarian sites like antiwar.com and lewrockwell.com.
• Blog: obviously, the blog will, essentially, be the same great writing (Dale), keen analysis (McQ) and assorted other nonsense. (hi!)
• Discussion forums: for those of you who would like to continue your own conversations, invite friends to discussion groups, etc. (I'd also like to create a chat room, but that may involve a bit more than we can do currently)
• Our articles: from time to time, we'll post larger column-length articles, or turn a blog post into something more column-friendly.
• Contributors: at some point, we plan to solicit and/or accept column contributions from readers and interested writers. We'd like to build a real library of Neolibertarian thought, comparable to what the National Review does for Conservatism.

Does that sound like too much? Perhaps. But it's become very apparent that blogs have a very important contribution to make to the national discourse, and I want QandO to be an important part of that for our fellow Neolibertarians.

The New QandO

^{1 Every blog should have a Dale Franks. Useful, friendly, and he comes in 6-packs.}

True or election year politics?

From Drudge:

STATEMENT FROM REP JOHN P. MURTHA [D-PA]:

I have learned through conversations with officials at the Pentagon that at the beginning of November, 2004, the Bush Administration plans to call up large numbers of the military guard and reserves, to include plans that they previously put off to call up the Individual Ready Reserve.

I have said publicly and privately that our forces are inadequate to support our current worldwide tempo of operations. On November 21, 2003, a bipartisan group of 135 members of the House of Representatives wrote to the President urging an increase in the active duty army troop levels and expressed concern that our Armed Forces are over-extended and that we are relying too heavily on the Guard and Reserve.

We didn't get a reply until February 2004, and now as the situation in Iraq is deteriorating, it seems that the Administration will resort to calling up additional guard and reservists, again with inadequate notice.

One can reasonably expect the Pentagon to deny this. One thing you don't do is signal to your enemy what you plan on doing in the future, to include mobilization.

That means this falls under one of two categories ... we have here a representative who has no problem telling of military plans in advance of their execution if it will reflect negatively on his party's political opponent or we have a representative who's making something up (which can't be checked) simply to frighten the families of Guardsmen and reservists in hopes of changing their vote.

Either way, I have a real problem with this announcement. It is the ultimate in politicizing the war in Iraq.

Curmudgeon conceeds CBS wrong

Per the NY Daily News, even CBS fixture Andy Rooney thinks the documents are fakes:

CBS curmudgeon Andy Rooney indicated yesterday he believes the controversial documents on President Bush's National Guard service are fake and said it could cost Dan Rather down the road.

"I'm surprised at their reluctance to concede they're wrong," Rooney said, referring to CBS brass.

Despite praising Rather as "a good, honest newsman," Rooney added, "I'm unsure if they're whistling in the dark instead of apologizing."

Kind of begs the question of whether a 'good honest, newsman' would continue to perpetuate a fraud, dosen't it?

Rooney doesn't think the network would try to ease out Rather over the memo mess, but he added, "It might have an effect on him six months from now."

But what about the effect it will have, overall, on CBS? Is allowing Dan Rather to continue to stonewall worth the price to CBS in ratings and credibility?

"If Dan Rather wants to stay at the 'CBS Evening News' and be the premier anchor at the network, this whole imbroglio didn't help him," said Max Robins, editor in chief of Broadcasting & Cable magazine.

However, unlike NBC News, which has groomed Brian Williams to take over from Tom Brokaw after the presidential election, CBS has no succession plan.

Which is easily remedied by looking outside CBS.

I still ask, how long can CBS let this obvious fraud of a story continue without specifically addressing the challenges to the authenticity of the documents which have been raised? How long can it continue without at least ordering an internal investigation?

The Persistant Myth of the Stolen Election

Its an article of faith on the left that George Bush "stole" the 2000 election with the aid of the Supreme Court which gave him a win in FL that he didn't earn and thus a Presidency he didn't earn.

To this day, the myth is still perpertrated by the likes of Jesse Jackson, John Edwards and John Kerry:

There are many issues to debate and argue about the sordid Florida experience, but one of the most intriguing is how a cottage industry has sprung up among liberals to perpetuate this myth. (Jesse Jackson still refers to Florida as "the scene of the crime" where "we were disenfranchised. Our birthright stolen.") As the 2004 election grew closer, the distortions spread beyond Moore's fantasy to the presidential campaign itself. Senator John Kerry told crowds that "we know thousands of people were denied the right to vote." His running mate, former trial lawyer John Edwards, ended speeches with a closing argument about "an incredible miscarriage of justice" in Florida.

The problem for the left is that there are no facts to support the myth. Unlike Michael Moore's claim in his factually challenged film "Fahrenheit 911", none of the recounts which were conducted post election showed that Al Gore would have won:

But in fact, every single recount of the votes in Florida determined that George W. Bush had won the state's twenty-five electoral votes and therefore the presidency. This includes a manual recount of votes in largely Democratic counties by a consortium of news organizations, among them the Wall Street Journal, CNN, the Boston Globe and the Los Angeles Times. As the New York Times reported on November 21, 2001, "A comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year's presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward." The USA Today recount team concluded: "Who would have won if Al Gore had gotten manual counts he requested in four counties? Answer: George W. Bush."

Despite evidence to the contrary in the form of that presented by the consortium of news organizations, the myth persists among the left. It is the origin of the hate which they feel for Gerorge Bush.

When confronted by the fact that the news consortium could find no basis for the claim that Bush and the Supreme Court had "stolen" the election, many on the left then made the claim that certain minorities had been illegally "disenfranchised" (by not counting their vote) and others had not been allowed to vote ... in fact, per the claim, prevented by police from voting. Enough, those critics claim, to have easily made the difference for Al Gore.

After all the media recounts of 2001 showed that George W. Bush would still have won under any fair standard, Democratic activists have narrowed their charges to the purported disfranchisement of black voters. The Civil Rights Commission, led by Democrat Mary Frances Berry-with only two Republican commissioners at the time-issued a scathing majority report in 2001 alleging "widespread voter disenfranchisement" and accusing Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush of "failing to fulfill their duties in a manner that would prevent this disenfranchisement."

So by what means did the Civil Rights Commission prove these charges? Well, in fact, they really never did.

But when it comes to actual evidence of racial bias, the report draws inferences that are not supported by any data and ignores facts that challenge its conclusions. Since we have a secret ballot in America, we do not know the race of the 180,000 voters (2.9 percent of the total number of ballots cast in Florida) whose ballots had no valid vote for president. Machine error cannot be the cause of discrimination, since the machine doesn't know the race of the voter either, and in any case accounts for about one error in 250,000 votes cast. (And, as some have asked, is it not racist in the first place to assume that those who spoil ballots are necessarily minority voters?)

The Commission simply assumed that the invalid ballots were those of minorities. That somehow blacks and other minorities were shut out of voting based on the evidence that 180,000 ballots had no valid vote for president. That somehow those counting the ballots knew the voters were black.

Sounds absurd, but that's the core of the claim.

The question then is: was the commission able to come up with "a consistent, statistically significant relationship between the share of voters who were African-American and the ballot spoilage rate?"

The answer is a flat "no". In fact, a study showed something else entirely:

John Lott, an economist and statistician from the Yale Law School now with the American Enterprise Institute, studied spoilage rates in Florida by county in the 1992, 1996 and 2000 presidential elections and compared them with demographic changes in county populations. He concluded that "the percent of voters in different race or ethnic categories is never statistically related to ballot spoilage."

Lott found that among the 25 Florida counties with the greatest rate of vote spoilage, 24 had Democratic election officers in charge of counting the votes. He concluded that "having Democratic officials in charge [of county elections] increases ballot spoilage rates significantly, but the effect is stronger when that official is an African-American."

In other words, the possibility of disenfranchisement as charged by the Civil Rights Commission took place in counties with Democratic officials in charge of the elections and counting.

How then is it possible for Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush in particular and the Republicans in general, to have "disenfranchized" minority voters in those counties?

In fact, ballot spoilage at the rate indicated in the 2000 election is about average and happens in every election:

Ballot-spoilage rates across the country range between 2 and 3 percent of total ballots cast. Florida's rate in 2000 was 3 percent. In 1996 it was 2.5 percent.

Another of the charges leveled was that blacks were kept away from the polling places by police.

Other charges from Democratic activists turned out to be "falsehoods and exaggerations." For instance, when the commission investigated the charge that a police traffic checkpoint near a polling place had intimidated black voters, it turned out that the checkpoint operated for ninety minutes at a location two miles from the poll and not even on the same road. And of the sixteen people given citations, twelve were white.

And last, but not least, "the Florida attorney general Bob Butterworth-a Democrat-testified that of the 2,600 complaints he received on Election Day, only three were about racial discrimination."

The myth's foundations are easily destroyed with fact, but not as easily dismissed by those who badly want to believe George Bush was "selected not elected". Although false, the myth gives them a basis for their claim to the illegitimacy of Bush's presidency and a reason for their hate. Whether its true or not apparently doesn't matter anymore (and I'm not so sure it mattered then) as the hate is now so rooted within them that it is a part of their political being. ABB is their mantra and ABB is who they'll vote for, regardless of whether that's good for the country or not.

The excerpts are from James Fund's new book Stealing Elections, via RealClear Politics.

How did we end up with this clown?

Sometimes--frequently, even--I am just aghast at the sheer, unadultered bull coming from the Bush campaign - and, specifically, from President Bush.

If you listen carefully to the rhetoric in this campaign, I'm running against a fellow who wants to expand government. We want to expand opportunity for every single citizen of this country.

That's pretty much the same thing on which Bush ran in 2000 - "My opponent trusts government. I trust you."

That's what he said, anyway. Once elected--as the Cato Institute pointed out--Bush became the "Mother of All Big Spenders."

Now, I realize it's nothing new to point out that Bush has all the fiscal discipline of a, er, politician running for reelection. So, instead, let's just point out the hypocrisy of Bush calling Kerry "a fellow who wants to expand government."

In the same speech, Bush advocates:

• ...expanding Pell Grants...


• I want to expand community health centers...

Expand = Spend more. A lot more.

Of course, he didn't always use the word "expand". Other times, he said....

• We've strengthened Medicare, and we're not turning back

"Strengthened" = $400, oops, $551.5 billion in additional spending.

• So what I'm telling the places like China is you treat us the way we treat you.

"Treat us the way we treat you" = "Fair Trade" = Protectionism = "dismal record on trade"

• ....in high schools we'll fund early intervention programs to help students at risk

No Child Left Behind = "Bush moves to increase federal spending on education" = +65%

Face it - the only thing Bush can brag about is his comparative conservative advantage over Kerry. And that's akin to saying a tornado is--comparatively--better at home improvement projects than a hurricane.

How did this guy ever get nominated by the Republican Party, and how can we make sure the GOP never does that again?

Old Media BS Filter

Reading through the comments to Jon's post about the blogosphere's triumphalism over Ra^thergate, I came across commenter Navteqie's take on the whole thing.

I think everyone misses the point of Blogs entirely.

The blogsphere is a giant B.S. filter of what is fed to us from the MSM. Instead of one reporter getting some information, then disseminating it to us through his biased mind, and then feeding it to us as he sees it, we have Blogs which consist of millions (?) of people that have more combined knowledge on the subjects the reporter is giving us and thoroughly disecting it to find out what the -REAL- truth is.

For the most part, I agree. While mildly crude characterization, its a very succinct description of what the blogosphere, on both sides, has done since its existance. "Fisking" is and has become an integral part of its daily bread, where columnists and opinion leaders in the old media have their version of events and their pontifications challenged. The intent? Filter out the nonsense and challenge the ideological conventional wisdom. Its usually done with facts, figures and logical arguments to counter the arguments of the pundit.

The same goes for more hard new stories, such as Ra^thergate. I won't bore you with a rehash of the details so readily known among those who frequent the blogosphere, but suffice it to say, the "BS Filter" was applied to a CBS "60 Minutes" story and CBS was found wanting.

In my estimation, this sort of function is both necessary and invaluable. What blogs don't do as a rule, is break news. Bloggers are net consumers of news. But what they provide is something new and something which has been lacking forever. The old media likes to talk about editorial "checks and balances". But those are internal checks and balances which may or may not render judgement that a story is both factual and unbiased as we've seen with Rathergate and my other such stories. It is difficult to see beyond institutional bias sometimes, and that is where bloggers perform a valuable "filtration" function. They provide an external version of "checks and balances".

Depending on who's ox is being gored, one or the other of the ideological sides of the blogosphere is going to look hard at the facts and figures of the old media's output. And its at that point where the strength of the blogosphere is found.

Michael Van Winkle, in a Tech Central Station article, points to how that strength manifests itself by citing the smiling ghost of F A Hayek. As Van Winkle points out, "Hayek's work centered on the effectiveness of spontaneous, decentralized organization". That effectiveness was proven last week, initiated by Powerline.

Hayek's work focused on how it is that complicated and reliable systems of cooperation come about without any centralized direction. When they do, they outperform systems of "command", systems that rely on central direction. Hayek was an economist and so his primary object of study was the market and how, seemingly counterintuitively, it can work without commands; and why it outperforms large scale centralized economies like the Soviet Union.

[...]

Hayek theorized that markets worked better primarily because of their ability to facilitate the use of 'on the spot' knowledge, knowledge that is very unique to a particular person or place.

With Powerline as the source of the questions about the CBS program and the authenticity of the memos, it solicited "on the spot" knowledge from its readers simply by asking those questions. The reaction, as we know was both spontaneous and phenomenal.

This traditional criticism of the internet has now been aimed at the blogosphere and is embodied by big journalists like Jonathan Klein who, while defending the CBS story to The Weekly Standard remarked, "You couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of check and balances [at '60 Minutes'] and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing." Klein misses the point that it's not whether you can trust some guy in his pajamas, but whether you can trust a spontaneous system of thousands of guys in their pajamas trading information and imparting small, sometimes deceivingly insignificant, bits of information.

On reflection, Klein seem like a dinosaur who doesn't understand what the impact of that meteor means to him. As Van Winkle points out the "spontaneous system of thousands of guys in their pajamas trading information and imparting small, sometimes deceivingly insignificant, bits of information" created a synergy and self-correcting process which very quickly and convincingly destroyed CBS's claim that the memos were real.

The BS Filter characterization, despite its crudity, seems to be the best fit to me. I think it is very unlikely that bloggers will ever break news ... in fact I find it very unlikely they want too. Instead what bloggers bring to the game is an external and spontaneous system of filtration which has never existed with the old media. As Van Winkles concludes:

Big media isn't dying. It never will. The proof of this is that most bloggers get the grist for their mills from traditional big media sources. The impact of the blogosphere is to change the way the media does business. Five years from now, the news channels doing well will be the ones who take the blogosphere seriously, finding ways to use it to better its own reporting and analysis.

I agree. And those who embrace and use the new media in that capacity will most likely survive and thrive. And those, like CBS, who fight and denigrate it will go the way of the dinosaurs.

The BS filter is in place .... and it works.

Kerry's Quagmire

Per the experts, and the polls, each candidate has issues which are strengths and weaknesses. On the Kerry side, its health care, the economy, and social issues. On Bush's side its defense and national security. The issue that could make Bush the most vulnerable, an issue which can swing both ways, is Iraq. If Kerry could frame the debate about how wrong Iraq is, how badly it is going and how poor a decision Bush made to go in there, he'd have a shot.

But as Charles Krauthammer points out, Kerry's record of votes and statements really leave him nothing with which to do that:

If the election were held today, John Kerry would lose by between 88 and 120 electoral votes. The reason is simple: The central vulnerability of this president -- the central issue of this campaign -- is the Iraq war. And Kerry has nothing left to say.

Why? Because, until now, he has said everything conceivable regarding Iraq. Having taken every possible position on the war, there is nothing he can say now that is even remotely credible.

Krauthammer takes us down memory lane with Kerry concerning Iraq. Suffice it to say that whatever Kerry tries there's a statement he's made or a position he's taken on Iraq which refutes it:

He now calls Iraq "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time." But, of course, he voted to authorize the war. And shortly after the fall of Baghdad he emphatically repeated his approval of the war: "It was the right decision to disarm Saddam Hussein. And when the president made the decision, I supported him."

Right decision? Wrong war? Which is it?

When Don Imus asked him this week, "Do you think there are any circumstances we should have gone to war in Iraq, any?" Kerry responded: "Not under the current circumstances, no. There are none that I see. I voted based on weapons of mass destruction. The president distorted that." But just last month he said that even if he had known then what he knows now, he would have voted for the war resolution.

Absolutely no circumstances we should have gone to war as opposed to saying he'd have voted for it again even knowing what we know now. Two completely contradictory statements.

Is Iraq a part of the war on terror? Well, yes and no. Then and now.

Is Iraq part of the war on terrorism or a cynical distraction from it? "And everything [Bush] did in Iraq, he's going to try to persuade people it has to do with terror, even though everybody here knows that it has nothing whatsoever to do with al Qaeda and everything to do with an agenda that they had preset, determined."

That was April 2004. Of course, shortly after Sept. 11, Kerry was saying the opposite. "I think we clearly have to keep the pressure on terrorism globally," he said in December 2001. "This doesn't end with Afghanistan by any imagination. . . . Terrorism is a global menace. It's a scourge. And it is absolutely vital that we continue [with], for instance, Saddam Hussein."

The only consistent position Kerry has taken on Iraq is an inconsistent one which features the candidate adopting whatever stance is popular (or politically necessary) at the time. As one person mentioned, its a "weather-vane" approach to national security.

Interestingly, last week Kerry was back to considering Iraq a part of the war on terror:

Kerry temporarily returned to that position last week when he marked the 1,000th American death in Iraq by saying the troops have "given their lives on behalf of their country, on behalf of freedom, in the war on terror."

With these conflicting statements, stances and positions, is it any wonder why people are in the dark as to where Kerry stands on Iraq?

Couple his constant changes there with a record he's running away from (how often have you heard the man mention what he's done in the Senate) and you have a candidate who can't seem to get any traction because he doesn't stay with one position long enough to be identified with it.

Krauthammer explains his "Kerry theory of political expediency and multiple positions" this way:

How did Kerry get to this point of total meltdown? He started out his political career voting his conscience on national security issues. During the 1980s he was a consistent, dovish liberal Democrat: pro-nuclear freeze, anti-Star Wars, against the Reagan defense buildup, against the war in Nicaragua. And then he joined the overwhelming majority of his party in voting against the Persian Gulf War.

That turned out to be a mistake. And Kerry suffered for it. The very next year he had to watch as Al Gore, who got the Gulf War right, was chosen for the 1992 Democratic ticket, a spot for which Kerry had been on the short list.

Kerry learned his political lesson. Or thought he did. So when the Iraq war came around, he did not want to be caught on the wrong side of another success. He voted yes.

But then things went wrong both for the war and for him. What did he do? With Howard Dean rocketing toward the Democratic nomination, Kerry played to his deeply antiwar party by voting against the $87 billion to fund the occupation.

Two months later, with Saddam Hussein caught and the war looking better, Kerry maneuvered again, slamming Dean with: "Those who doubted whether Iraq or the world would be better off without Saddam Hussein, and those who believe today that we are not safer with his capture, don't have the judgment to be president or the credibility to be elected president."

Kerry is now back to the "wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time," a line lifted from Dean himself. So we are not better off with Hussein deposed after all.

With factions in his campaign staff fighting among themselves for dominance, the lack of a strategy and a message are becoming obvious and critical. A recent NDN Poll (a Democrat poll) points out that among swing voters, 48% feel Bush has a clear agenda for the future while only 38% believe the same to be true for Kerry.

These dizzying contradictions -- so glaring, so public, so frequent -- have gone beyond undermining anything Kerry can now say on Iraq. They have been transmuted into a character issue. When Kerry went off windsurfing during the Republican convention, Jay Leno noted that even Kerry's hobbies depend on wind direction. Kerry on the war has become an object not only of derision but of irreconcilable suspicion. What kind of man, aspiring to the presidency, does not know his own mind about the most serious issue of our time?

Its a good question, and its an unanswered question. Its also the question which is most likely to sink any Kerry presidential hopes if left unanswered. The other unanswered question is can Kerry change the perception of his constant vaccilation and apparent inability to take a consistant stand within the next 6 weeks enough to neutralize the negative characterization he labors under, that of a "flip-flopper?"

We'll see. But in my opinion, it is that which his campaign must accomplish if he's to have any chance at all of winning.

UPDATE: If you haven't seen the RNC video on Kerry's multiple positions on Iraq, its interesting and illustrates Krauthammer's points quite well. Keep in mind though that it is an RNC video.

Repealing the Price Mechanism

In a recent press release, John Kerry claimed that:

“The election comes down to this. If you believe this country is heading in the right direction, you should support George Bush. But if you believe America needs to move in a new direction, join with us. John and I offer a better plan that will make us stronger at home and more respected in the world. And we need your help to do that."

.....citing--inter alia--"The number of uninsured has swelled under Bush" to "15.6 percent of the total population".

And he has a plan to reverse that. Essentially--with mandated government intervention for health care by fiat--it amounts to socialized medicine.

So, how's that working out elsewhere?

Canada often boasts its universal health care program shows it is more caring than the United States, but the system is creaking alarmingly, with long wait lists for treatment, and shortages of cash and doctors.
[...]
As the politicians bicker, Canadians spend more time waiting in line. A study by the right-wing Fraser Institute this month said that average waiting time for treatment in 2003 rose to 17.7 weeks from 16.5 weeks in 2002.
[...]
Some delays are much longer. Patients in Ontario who require major knee surgery can wait six months to see a specialist and then another 18 months for surgery.
[...]
Statistics Canada said in June that some 3.6 million Canadians, or 15 percent of the population, did not have a regular doctor last year. This means hospital emergency rooms are flooded by people with routine problems.

And that's in Canada....the Democratic Party's Health Care Promised Land.

Remember: if you don't like to see 15% of America uninsured, the Democrats have a solution. They'll insure so many people that 15% of Americans won't even be able to see the doctor. (which keeps costs down!)

(via Econopundit)

Anyone believe in omens?

A shot from the destruction Hurricane Ivan brought to Pensacola FL. Take a close peek near the bottom right.

Rather & CBS reaping the forgery whirlwind?

Per Drudge it appears so:

CBS executives on both coasts have become concerned in recent days that Dan Rather's EVENING NEWS broadcast has plunged in the ratings since the anchor presented questionable documents about Bush's National Guard service.

NIELSEN numbers released this week show Rather fading and trailing his rivals in every Top 10 city, other than San Francisco, with audience margins in some cities running more than 6 to 1 against CBS!

Executives fear many voters inclined to vote for Bush are now switching off Rather.

Maybe instead, executives should fear that viewers (instead of voters) who are disinclined to accept fraud and then watch it supported night after night are switiching off.

"The audience appears to [be] polarized," a top CBS source said from LOS ANGELES on Thursday. "Rightly or wrongly, we're being perceived as 'anti-Bush,' which I do not think is fair to Dan, who is a fine journalist... of course we do not like to see the ratings coming back the way they are this week."

Are these guys out of touch or what? While some do indeed think that CBS is preceived as being "anti-Bush" so is much of the news media. That perceived bias hasn't hurt the rest of the news media as badly as CBS is being hurt. Conclusion: Maybe its something else.

Maybe, its because CBS has perpertrated a fraud and is too arrogant to admit it?

A Rasmussen poll says only 27% of those polled believed the memos to be real. That goes far beyond a pro-Bush faction.

In Philadelphia, the nation's #4 market, Rather pulled a 2.6 rating/5 share on Tuesday night against ABC's 13.3 rating/23 share and NBC's 4.0/7.

In Chicago, Rather hit a 2.3/5 to ABC's 9.2/20.

CBS trailed ABC by more than 2 to 1 in Los Angeles.

And in the nation's top market, New York, Rather finished not only behind NBC NIGHTLY NEWS and ABC WORLD NEWS TONIGHT -- but also pulled less audience than reruns of the SIMPSONS, WILL & GRACE and KING OF QUEENS.

Rather finished dead last in New York during the 6:30 pm timeslot among all broadcast channels tracked by NIELSEN on Tuesday.

Pretty sorry ratings to say the least. While pressure may not get CBS's advertisers to jump ship, bad ratings certainly will.

I wonder if the "internal investigation" is becoming more of a possibility now?

UPDATE: Reader S. asks "but aren't they always the bottom of the barrel. How about some comparative ratings."

Good point. For the week of September 9, 2004 which is a pre-Ra^thergate rating:

NBC's "Nightly News" won the evening news ratings race, averaging 8.7 million viewers (6.3 rating, 14 share). ABC's "World News Tonight" had 7.5 million (5.4, 12) and the "CBS Evening News" 6.5 million (4.6, 10).

The real story of 527s

T. Bevan of RealClear Politics drops an interesting little factoid on us concerning the much discussed 527s.

Look at this list of the top individual donors to 527's. So far, twenty-five individuals have contributed $58,218,283 to these groups. Of that total, 97% has gone to liberal and/or anti-Bush organizations and Soros and Lewis are responsible for nearly half of that money ($26,830,000) just between the two of them.

On that particular list, if you haven't ponied up at least half a mil, you're a nobody. 97% have gone toward sinking Bush.

Yet who was the first candidate to really whine about a 527?

Statistics and nincompoops

Sometimes you come across "reasoning" which makes you realize that if this was representative of main stream thinking, you'd have to conclude the human race doesn't have a chance of survival.

Some professor of statistics wrote a piece for the LA Times (I found it in the San Jose Mercury) in which he says ... well let him say it:

The bottom line is this: There will always be terrorists and legitimate efforts to catch and kill them. But meanwhile, the bigger statistical threat comes from the driver next to you who is talking on the cell phone.

Did you catch the premise? This "terrorism" thing is all about the threat to you, and if you're worried about that, its hardly that much of a real threat when compared to bad drivers.

Statistically speaking.

He writes a whole piece describing how we're overreacting to this terrorist thing and giving away liberties by the handful when, in fact, it only averages about a 1000 or so souls a year.

OK, true enough. I stand a much greater chance of being killed by another driver than by a terrorist. But on reflection, that's not the point of all of this, is it?

I don't think anyone really believes that its all about the threat only to them.

Its about much more than that. For instance, everyone of the 40,000 deaths on the highway this year will not change the direction of an election, such as 200 deaths in Spain did. Even twice the numbers of deaths on the highway would not have the horrible negative effect on a nation's economy as did 3,000 on September 11, 2001. While the loss of life is negligable in comparision, the impact of terrorism is far, far more damaging to the nation as a whole.

I look both ways before crossing a street or pulling out into one, but not one of the drivers out there is a threat to me when I step into a government building or any other crowded public facility, unless that driver has made his car into a bomb.

Certainly all of what Bart Kosko says in his article is technically true, its also irrelevant.

Terrorism isn't just about the threat to me. Its about the threat to the very fabric of the nation I live in. Its a concerted effort by a brutal and fanatic enemy to change my way of life, change the direction of my country and effect the very lifeblood of my nation ... its economy.

Not one of the millions of bad drivers out there can or will have that effect.

So when you hear an idiot savant like this guy tell you that statistically speaking your neighbor in her car is more of a threat than Osamma bin Laden, pat him on the head, send him off to his ivory tower and call ahead to clear the road so he won't take out some innocent driver as he heads that way.

Book Review: "Miles Gone By'

My book review of "Mile Gone By: a Literary Autobiography" by William F Buckley--one of the giants of political thought in this past century--is up. You can read it here. Comments can be made on this post.