bhayden @ highdown
American Journalism Review - The Expanding Blogosphere. Interesting article about blogging and journalism.
My view is that blogging and the like is good. It seems like mainstream journalism is caught up in repeating each other. Just witness the recent Iraqi prison bruhaha. Sure, a couple of bad apples did things that were not in keeping with our ideals. But so far, there is no indication that this was anything except a very isolated happening. But the mainstream media kept hammering on it, ignoring the finding of WMDs in Iraq and the beheading of Nick Berg by Al Quida - in Iraq. Despite this, last week Al Gore called President Bush a lier for claiming WMDs (or the potential thereof) in Iraq, and suggesting a linkage between Al Quida and Iraq.
That is the reason that mainstream journalism is losing its audience. Only someone with their head stuck in the sand would trust mainstream media for news of what is happening in the world. They so obviously spin the news, reporting only what they want to report, and pushing stuff solely to embasass Bush, when bigger stories go unreported.
My Way News: "Official: al-Qaida Seeks Chemical Strike". How dumb can they get. Bad enough that Sarin was found last week and Al Quida killed Nick Berg in Iraq. But striking the United States again, esp. with WMDs, would more than likely throw the election to Bush. As long as it looked like we were getting into a quagmire half way around the world, and the liberal mainstream press could spin things against Bush, as they are desparately trying to do, Kerry was gaining ground. But the thing that brought us together was 9/11. And another attack on our own soil is just going to steel our resolve.
WorldTribune.com - Report: Syrians, 'equipment' were in N. Korea train blast. Interesting article. Apparently, according to the article, 10 or so Syrians died in the recent train explosion in North Korea. The explosion damage was heaviest apparently around them, and the N. Koreans used protective suits to get the Syrian bodies.
Something is going on there, and it isn't good. The article mentioned that there were rumors that the two countries were working together on upgraded Scud missiles, and possibly biological and chemical WMD weapons. Add to that that the N. Koreans are apparently still trying to get nuclear weapons.
I see three issues. First, what exactly were the Syrians doing there in the first place?
Secondly, what happened? Was whatever the Syrians were with the cause of the explosion? Possibly something so unstable that the N. Korean railroad caused it to blow up? Or was it someone preempting them? US? Israel? S. Korea? It is something that the Israelis might do, if they thought that the Syrians were preparing WMDs+Scuds for them. Both the U.S. and S. Korea are probably not bloody enough for it.
Thirdly, we pretty much know that Saddam Hussein had WMDs up until the early 2000's. Where did they go? Sure, he might have destroyed them. But that would have taken a lot of work, and if he had done so, he had some incentive to let us know. If he had, we might not have invaded. Far, far, more likely that he either hid them or he shipped them out of the country. And the most logical place to have shipped them would have been to Syria. Both were Baathist regimes. Iran didn't give back the planes that fled there in the first Gulf War, and in any case, wouldn't give back WMDs, given that they had been used by Iraq on them in the Iran/Iraq war. There is a strong suspicion that the stuff found in Jordan recently came from Syria, and thus, probably initially from Iraq.
Obviously, we don't want WMDs on Scuds in Syria, and even more obviously, the Israelis don't. A gas or biological attack on Israel, given its small size, is likely to cause massive casualties. Israel's only real response would be nuclear. We all are pretty sure that they have a nuclear capability. But they have never really admitted such. Imagine the effect though of Syria using gas on Israel, and Israel responding with nuclear weapons. All hell would break out in the Middle East.
Glenn Reynolds asks in
JAMES EARL KERRY? about what type of President John Kerry would be. He likens Kerry to Jimmy Carter and asks whether we can expect the same.
I would suggest that it will be worse. First, he will be facing a Congress more than likely controlled by the Republicans. The House is safe for them, after the 2002 Gerrymander. And if elected, his own seat will switch sides of the isle. The Democrats are statistically unlikely to pick up any seats in the Senate regardless, and may lose some. A Republican Congress is not going to take kindly to a Kerry Presidency.
Secondly, as I have commented before (
see my blog), whereas with Harry Truman, the buck stopped with him, with John Kerry, the buck stops anywhere but with him. This would lead to a very timid Presidency.
Third, Kerry shows no tendency to vere away from the Democratic practice of staffing administrations by the numbers, satisfying constituency blocks, instead of by merit. Bush has pretty much done just the opposite. One may suggest that one of the reasons that Clinton's Administration did so little in eight years was that it was filled with incompetents. Sure, there were some stronger members, most notably heading Defense, State, and esp. Treasury. But the remainder? We all probably remember the ultimate party hack, Ron Brown, running Commerce, where he extorted DNC campaign contributions in exchange for places on trade delegations overseas. Sure, some of this always happens, but never nearly as blatantly. And then there was that small time prosecutor who made her name wrongfully convicting innocents of child molestation through the use of coached small child witnesses who was served as Clinton's Attorney General. She will go down in history best remembered for Waco, Ruby Ridge, Elian Gonzales, and, hopefully, for the wall in the FBI between criminal and espionage investigations. Obviously she was too weak and inexperienced to run Justice, leaving that to the likes of Webster Hubbell, until, of course, he went to jail. My favorite was the head of the USPTO, appointed not because he knew patents (he didn't, because he wasn't a patent attorney), but solely because he was gay. He spent his tenure at the USPTO worrying about copyright issues (where he did have expertise), despite that being in the provence of the Copyright Office. As we entered the 21st Century, the USPTO stagnated in the 19th Century under his watch. As for Defense, Clinton's Administration spent its eight years spending the Peace Dividend, massively shrinking the military, but never ever attempting to redirect it to fight the next war, but rather maintaining force structures aimed at fighting a war against the Soviet Union, which no longer existed.
Fourth, John Kerry has had little real experience or training in administration, in particular, in running a large enterprise. He obviously has the typical attorney conceit that they can do anything they set their minds to. But attorney training is all wrong for running a government the size of ours. They are taught to do things pretty much on our own. They do not delegate well. There is a saying that if you want to do something right, do it yourself. Clinton bought into this, with his all night pizza parties. But the problem is that there is much too much going on in the government at any one time for this to work very well.
What is not mentioned by the mainstream media, presumably due to their biases and, also, probably due to their own lack of education, is that the MBA President, George W. Bush, is running the government fairly well. For the most part, it functions very smoothly. Part of this is due to his MBA, and in particular, to his Harvard MBA. That school, probably more than any other school in the country, teaches how to run large organizations. Running a failing small business, a successful baseball team, and then the state of Texas, also helped him hone his expertise. Kerry has none of this experience. Instead of earning his money, he has married it, twice. He has been a civil servant with little, if any, managerial responsibility, for pretty much his entire adult life. (note - I have both an MBA and a JD, and speak here from personal experience in both graduate curricula).
The inside accounts of the operation of the Bush (43) Administration are almost the opposite of those portrayed by the mainstream media. He sits around listening as his people make the arguments from both sides of an issue, until he thinks he knows them well enough. He then makes a command decision based on that, and expects his people then to execute the decision without questions. This is why Clarke was pushed out - he refused to stop arguing after Bush made a decision. Same with his original Treasury Secretary. Bush is famous for expecting and rewarding loyalty. He trusts his people to do their jobs. They wouldn't be there if he didn't. He typically doesn't second guess them, but rather trusts them. Bush is unafraid of hiring smarter people than he. As a result, much of his Cabinet is smarter. But so what? Much better than Clinton, or probably Kerry, who made sure none of them were smarter.
Fifth, much of the military already despises Kerry. Maybe not to the extent they despised Clinton, but closer and closer. Sure, he did serve in Viet Nam, but then again, he apparently wrote up his own recommendations for medals, while parlaying a scratch or so into three Purple Hearts, getting him a very early out there, having served a mere four months, compared to the usual year or so. Both of these actions were of course not available to the enlisted troops, and may not have been available to all officers, as it appears Kerry's superiors were happy to oblige him to get him out of the country as soon as they could.
But then, he came back and accused many of the soldiers in Viet Nam of committing atrocities while over there. Now he is insinuating the same about our soldiers and marines in Iraq. How do you think that makes our military personnel over there feel, as they daily risk their lives for a cause they feel worthy?
And you have to add in the 2000 election. All is well that ends well. But many, esp. in the military, still remember that it was the Democratic Party that litigated to use absentee ballot rules in Republican counties in Florida to disenfranchise service members serving overseas by exploiting the fact that these overseas servicemen were unable to fully comply with these rules through no fault of their own, but rather didn't technically comply as a consequence of their overseas service.
David Bernstein in
The Hero's Reward in the Volokh Conspiracy asks about when is torture appropriate. The example used is that of trying to stop terrorists from detonating a nuclear device in New York City.
The argument is essentially that of reductio ad absurdum - that there should be some level at which torture is justified. But I would suggest that the real answer to such in real life is jury nullification. Teaching law, I am sure that Bernstein knows more of this than I do, but my impression is that it was fairly prevalent right before the inception of this country when the British were trying Americans for technical crimes that many Americans thought justifiable.
Imagine a jury convicting the guy who got the vital information through torture that saved New York from a terrorist nuclear bomb. I don't see it. He would be a hero. Sure, there would be a level here where the number of potential casualties dropped below the level that could justify torture, but then again, a jury would be much more willing to convict then.
The beauty of jury nullification is that it mitigates to a great extent the black and white nature of the law. Very similar to some extent the operation of equity, versus law.
Of course, a couple of provisos. First, courts are loathe to let juries know about this right. They repeatedly deny defenses' requests for a jury nullification instruction. Indeed, that is one reason it is suggested that attorneys are pretty much excluded from criminal juries. I know that if I ever served, and were faced with what I considered an unjust verdict based on an overly technical interpretation of some law, I would ask "so what"? What can the judge do if we acquit? Nothing. If faced with convicting someone who used torture to save millions of lives, I would vote to acquit.
Secondly, jury nullification is very imprecise. You might get a jury willing to convict, and then you might not. But that maybe is one of its virtues. It turns black and white law into gray application.
Thirdly through, civil servants are notoriously risk adverse. Police, etc., are of course, civil servants. Because of its very nature, you can't depend on jury nullification. It is too nebulous, inexact. Thus, police, etc., are very unlikely to depend on it, except in the most dire circumstances.
Finally, not particularly liking New York City, I can flippantly say that I might vote to convict simply because of that. The fewer the number of New Yorkers, the better. Again, flippantly, I can say that it was good that on 9/11 the terrorists hit the Trade Center, because they killed a bunch of ultra Blue State voters, instead of somewhere in the Red States. My view is that the famous magazine cover showing the view of the world from New York City is correct - that many New Yorkers view the entire world as being pretty much limited to the City and their suburbs in NJ, CN, etc. But, technically, they were Americans who died 9/11 there, so I am, of course, outraged. (I would suggest though that most of us Red State Americans were outraged entirely because Americans were killed, and not because of where they were at the time, the location being irrelevant, as opposed to some Blue State Americans who were also outraged because it was the World Trade Center that was hit).
"Putting words in his mouth" - The Washington Times: Commentary - May 10, 2004 talks about how John Kerry is blaming his speechwriters for his apparent flip-flop on Benedict Arnold CEOs.
I would suggest that this trait of John Kerry's of blaming others for anything negative, should disqualify him for the Presidency in the views of any intelligent voter. Harry Truman said that the buck stops with him. But with Kerry, it stops with anyone but him.
This isn't of course the first time that this has occurred. I have spent the last couple of ski seasons working speeder control as a volunteer at a ski area. Mr. Kerry blamed a fall riding in Idaho on one of his Secret Service agents. But snow boarders ride facing to one side, and have a big blind spot on the other side. Advanced riders learn to compensate for it. Beginners and intermediates are invariably unaware of it, and are dangerous until they learn to compensate. I was wiped out by a rider this winter for this, and almost knocked down a couple of other times. I have seen video of him riding, and he is not that skilled. Far, far, more likely, he just didn't see the Secret Service agent due to his own lack of experience and ability.
The result, I suspect then, of a Kerry Presidency would be an extremely timid administration. Anyone taking any chances whatsoever would be assured that if it failed in any way, or ultimately became unpopular, Mr. Kerry would not stand by them, but would hang them out to dry. Risk takers would be loathe to take positions. The government is bad enough in this regard normally, and would get significantly worse.
For example, there would be no Donald Rumsfeld as SECDEF. Despite his recent bad press, he has brought great intellect and enthusiasm for change to the Department of Defense. When he came into office this time, our military was stuck still fighting the Cold War. We still have a significant force imbalance for facing the changes of today and tomorrow. We have far too many heavy armor and artillery troops, and not enough light troops and those, such as MP and Intelligence troops, needed today for Iraq and Afghanistan. Note that the troops recently accused of atrocities are reservists, because that is where our MPs, etc., currently predominate. Another example are up-armormed Humvees. The military assumed that Humvees would be behind our own lines, and thus there was little need for the up-armored versions. Because of that, a number of our troops have been killed or injured in attacks that wouldn't have harmed them as badly, if they had been riding in the up-armored version.
Secretary Rumsfeld thinks out of the box. He is working as hard as he can to instill this in our military. But the military is notoriously conservative about change. It always has been. It continually fights the last war, not preparing for the next one. But what should you expect, since the commanders grew up in the older specialties? MP officers rarely make general, and even then, typically don't rise from there. Just witness the howls when the Crusader artillery vehicle was cancelled. It would have been useful against the Soviet Union in Europe, but would be useless facing today's challenges, esp. since it wouldn't be able to deploy very quickly. Without a Rumsfeld, we would probably be still trying to build such an obsolete weapon system.
Obviously, Defense is not the only place where change is necessary, and where conservatism and resistance to change would harm our country. Mr. Kerry himself has shown himself to be timid to the extreme, refusing to take any firm stands, rather flip-flopping in the wind. His administration would be of the same type.
Interesting article:
"Male humiliation, Muslim rage" - The Washington Times: Editorials/OP-ED - May 10, 2004. The author makes a very good point that the hatred of many Muslims in the Middle East is aggravated by pictures of American women humiliating Muslim men. This goes to their very image of themselves, and the supposed superiority of every Muslim man over women.
The Oregon Daily Emerald yesterday had an article "
Esteemed journalist lectures on ethics" concerning a speech by John S. Carroll of the LA Times, where he complained that many journalists today lacked ethics, as they strayed from objective reporting into spinning the news.
John S. Carroll uses a finding that a larger percentage of Fox News watchers believe three fallacies than do those listening to NPR or watching PBS. The problem is that one of the so-called fallacies is actually a truth, only believed by those getting their news from public broadcasting because such is never covered by them. If you listen to NPR , as I often do in the car, you will find that their reporting is just as biased, just from the other side. In the guise of objective journalism, a large percentage of their stories are seriously slanted against the current administration and in particular, against the war in Iraq. Good news is rarely reported, while bad news is over reported.
Numerous ties between Al Quida and Sadaam Hussain have been found. The semantic game played is that it is also true that no link has been found between Sadaam Hussain and 9/11, or with Al Quida concerning 9/11. But they have been shown to have had financial ties, as well as probably having been working together on WMDs. Indeed, last week Ben Laden apparently put a bounty on the head of our head Iraqi administrator.
As to WMDs, I would suggest from my listening to NPR, that their average listener still believes that President Bush's reference to them was due to his close mindedness, despite the quote from Woodward's new book to the contrary (unreported in most of the general media) that the President was skeptical, and the CIA was adamant on Iraqi WMDs.
On the other hand, barely a mention has been made concerning the Oil-For-Food scandal, at least until very recently, and its ramification as to intentional support for our invasion of Iraq. I would hazard to guess that the average NPR listener still believes that if we had just tried a little harder we could have gotten the French and Russians on board, despite having numerous influential people in both countries apparently bribed by Sadaam Hussain through that program. Mr. Carroll uses Fox as his example but then makes the apparent mistake that since his paper and the papers he reads and the news he watches did not report stories, then they didn't happen. But his point is even more relevant concerning the leftward reporting of the news than Fox on the right, and his paper is one of the worst offenders, just behind the New York Times. I would suggest that his speech is mostly just sour grapes that he and his paper can no longer spin the news with impunity, as they have done for so long.
p.s. Today, the WSJ in
Best of the Web Today pointed out its previous post on the subject from October
OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today that "this study, by the University of Maryland, was itself a piece of propaganda, since it asked only about pro-war misconceptions, not antiwar ones".
p.p.s.
Anne Coulter was even more caustic on this subject in her caustic on Mr. Carroll's speech.
WSJ is right today. Rumsfeld is testifying before both houses of Congress. The target isn't Rumsfeld, but his boss, GWB. Just look at who is most adamently out to get him - the same people who voted against the war and its cost.
My view is that Rumsfeld is the right man for the job. Part of our problem has been that we still have a Cold War army, to a very great extent. We have pretty much useless heavy armor divisions in Europe, most notably German, surrounded today by other NATO countries. We probably also have too many troops in South Korea and Japan.
Rumsfeld came into office attempting to make the transition to a more modern armed forces. Things appeared to stand still, with the military dragging its heels, until 9/11. And then he started making progress.
My father the other day was complaining that we went into Iraq too quickly, and as one indication, we didn't have enough uparmored Humvees there. As you probably know, almost all of them in our inventory today are in Iraq. They are building them as fast as they can. It just takes a while. Our inventory of M1 tanks and M2 Bradleys took a decade or so to build. The problem is that prior to Afghanistan and Iraq, our military figured that Humvees would be behind the advance of our armored Abrahms and Bradleys. Not any more.
Rumsfeld remaining as SECDEF is key to continuing this transformation. He asks the hard questions and the right questions, and then demands answers. It is working. He is right, we probably don't need more troops, just differently trained troops, with more appropriate equipment. Move all that heavy armor and artillery to the reserves. Concentrate on lighter, more nimble active duty troops, and in particular, esp. in view of this scandal, more and better trained MP and intelligence active duty troops.
The American torture scandal in Iraq is of course bad. But one thought I had on it is that some of the alleged "torture" may be esp. effective against Arab, and in particular, Iraqi, men. An article cited in Instapundit today points out that their attitude towards women predates Islam by a millennium. An email from Jim Lindgren points out:
This attitude about women in Iraq predates Islam. The ancient Assyrian Vassal-Treaties of Esarhaddon
(ca. 681-668 B.C.E.) include this oath:
"If you sin against this treaty . . . may they use you like women in the sight of your enemy."
2 Ancient Near East 65, 68 (Pritchard abridged ed. 1975).
Female MPs laughing at the masculinity of nude male Iraqis is probably more effective as torture than some actual physical torture that could have been done to them. They could at least maintain their masculine pride if physically tortured.
I can not see male American soldiers being nearly as degraded by such "torture". Maybe a little at first, for the more macho guys, but I suspect that any torture value would wear off fairly quickly. Being in the position of the torturees, I cannot see myself being that upset that long. Probably no worse to my masculinity than being thought attractive by gay men. And indeed, many of us have suffered through our female partners making some comments as to our masculinity.
Indeed, probably not much worse than what I go through on a fairly regular basis with my erstwhile girlfriend. Her previous fiance to me apparently had a very large male organ. And her ex-husband is still "massive", 250 lbs of muscle at 53. She claims he could make her climax just by barely touching her. How do you compete with this, if you are a normally built and sized guy? (If you ever met her, you would understand why I bother). Part of the answer is that she would rather spend time with me than with them.
In any case, I can't personally see getting that upset at the opinions of a couple of fairly butch looking female MPs about my masculinity. I would figure that they had problems of their own.
Just posted a Medwatch complaint with the FDA for aspartame (NutraSweet). I cannot believe that it is still available, and indeed is ubiquitous. I would really like to see Sacrine available again. I react badly to aspartame, but not to Sacrine. The problem is that aspartame gives me a high - but then I crash from it, often falling asleep. It also seriously disrupts my sleep patterns for at least 12 hours after ingestion.
I just read a medical article on aspartame addition. I can see it. I know that it isn't good for me, but continue to sneak it here and there. For example, at lunch, I will take a half a cup, followed by maybe another half a cup, before switching to iced tea. It tastes and feels so good. For me, it is like speed should be - but often isn't. I think that I am mildly narcoleptic, and because of that, at least Dexedrine does not do much more than keep me awake for driving (this is BTW by prescription).
Part of the problem seems to be that the breakdown of the constituents. One quote from the article:
"The transformation of phenylalanine to dopamine and dopamine metabolites assumes relevance in addictive states. Addictive drugs flood synapses with dopamine, which carries a "pleasure message" from one nerve cell to another in the "reward pathway"... thereby creating a "high." For instance, cocaine blocks the reuptake of dopamine, thereby acting as an indirect dopamine agonist. Such repeated rushes can result in desensitization of the brain to dopamine".
see:
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