Centerfield

Oldie but goodie

Social Security: Its an issue that just won't go away. But this time its the Brits wringing hands over what to do. The Economist has a nice article on British plans to reform the old age pension system. Seems it may run out of money at some point in the future. Hmmm! Where have I heard that before? And yes it includes some private savings

The report also endorses a new voluntary savings scheme, into which workers would put at least 4% of their wages, with employers contributing 3% more and a further 1% coming from the government in the form of tax relief.

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And son of a gun other countries are struggling with the issue too!

Britain is not the only country trying to figure out how to support the elderly in an era of ever-lengthening lifespans. Continental Europe’s lavish government benefits guard the old against poverty, but are threatening to bankrupt the states that offer them; the French finance minister told parliament this week that the government was looking at an unfunded pensions liability of €900 billion ($1.1 trillion) on top of already record levels of public debt. Forced savings schemes have become more popular, but the amounts are often too small to substitute for a traditional pension. The big question for all governments is who should provide for people in their old age: businesses, governments, or the citizens themselves?

And here's the real kicker (at least for me)

So are government pensions the answer? Unfortunately, they have problems at least as large as those of private schemes. Government systems are generally pay-as-you-go (PAYG), taking benefits for retirees out of current workers’ benefits—in contrast to private pensions, which generally pay benefits out of investment earnings. PAYG schemes work very well as long as the workforce is steadily growing. Throughout the rich world, however, the pyramid scheme is rapidly running out of new victims, as birthrates fall well below replacement rates, particularly in Japan and continental Europe.

Take a look at the article, a nice summary of a pervasive problem. I figure misery loves company.

Truth in Advertising

MoveOn.org began running an anti-war holiday ad recently.

The 30-second ad, which also began running on CNN and cable stations during the Thanksgiving weekend, stated that "150,000 American men and women are stuck in Iraq" this holiday season.

Just one little problem--the troops shown in the ad weren't American troops at all. They were British troops, as evidenced by the fact that the trooper in the middle of the picture used was wearing uniform shorts, which isn't U.S. practice. MoveOn can't tell an American soldier from a British soldier, even though the uniforms are different!

Apparently somewhere along the line someone at MoveOn.org actually noticed that US troops don't wear uniform shorts, and the "storyboard" version of the ad on the MoveOn donations page was Photoshopped to fix the oversight and cover those damning calves...but the video wasn't fixed. Not that it matters much, as the uniforms were still British uniforms on British troops.

CNS is now reporting that MoveOn has pulled the ad entirely from their web site, in all its forms. But Wall St. Journal's Best of the Web has the before & after photos, about halfway down the page. I watched the video clip this afternoon, and can verify that the trooper still appeared in shorts in the video, but was in the camo pants in the storyboard stills on the donations page at that time. Both are now gone from the site.

But is it still playing in Peoria?

UPDATES "Below the Fold"

UPDATE: Yes, it is. The ad is apparently still running, and you can view the broadcast version here as a QuickTime video on the MoveOnPAC website. The doctored photo has vanished. MoveOn continues to beg for donations so they can air ads asking us to bring our British troops home....

UPDATE: For those who lack QT and missed the ad, here's a transcription, with scene cuts marked with asterisks. Stills are noted as "Picture", video noted as video.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Picture: Camera pan Left to Right across dinner table, people holding hands

Voiceover: Some folks won't be home this Holiday Season

************

Picture: Camera pan Left to Right across BRITISH field kitchen serving BRITISH soldiers

Voiceover: 150,000 American men and women are stuck in Iraq

************

Picture: Bush and Cheney walking outside

Voiceover: Their President misled America to send them in and has NO plan to get them out

************

Video: The two women from the dinner table scene, one crying, the other comforting her (and, oddly, smirking)

Voiceover: Democrats in Congress are leading

*************

Picture: Camera pan Left to Right of turkey and side dishes on table, untouched

Voiceover: the way home

*************

Screen text AND voiceover as camera pans upward center right from turkey: WHERE ARE THE REPUBLICANS?

Voiceover: Tell your representative SUPPORT OUR TROOPS BRING THEM HOME. MoveOn.Org is responsible for the content of this political advertisent.

Screentext: CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVE (202) 224-3121
Smaller text @ bottom: Paid for by MoveOn.org Political Action, www.political.moveon.org. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. MoveOn.org is responsible for the content of this political advertisement.

---------------------------------------

I'll take 'em at their word. They're completely responsible for the contents of their ad. (From the political pro angle, nice touch with the left-to-right and up-to-right-center camera pans. Subliminal symbolism of moving to the middle, even to right-of-center...)

National Strategy for Victory in Iraq

The administration has released a 35 page document that the President says is the unclassified version of the national strategy to win in Iraq. Here it is. I haven't read it yet, but plan to, and would encourage all of you, especially those of you quick to point out your dislike of the Commander in Chief without providing much in the way of a substantive argument, to do so also.

In the words of President Bush:

“As Iraqi forces gain experience and the political process advances, we will be able to decrease our troop level in Iraq without losing our capability to defeat the terrorists... These decisions about troop levels will be driven by the conditions on the ground in Iraq and the good judgment of our commanders, not by artificial timetables set by politicians in Washington.

Some critics continue to assert that we have no plan in Iraq except to ‘stay the course.’ If by ‘stay the course’ they mean we will not allow the terrorists to break our will, they’re right. If by ‘stay the course’ they mean we will not permit al Qaida to turn Iraq into what Afghanistan was under the Taliban, a safe haven for terrorists and a launching pad for attacks on America, they’re right as well. If by ‘stay the course’ they mean that we’re not learning from our experience or adjusting our tactics to meet the challenges on the ground, then they’re flat wrong.”

Christmas Under Siege?

There's a lot of controversy brewing about many stores this Holiday season using the term "Happy Holidays," as opposed to explicitly saying "Merry Christmas." As a Christian, I am troubled by the increasing amount of very real secularism in our culture. I must say though, that this seems like an overreaction. It seems to me that by saying Happy Holidays, these stores are trying to include all Holidays, rather than exclude Christmas. It'd be an entirely different story if Christmas was explicitly forbidden, but that's not happening here.

Besides, there are greater threats to Christmas than the local Wal-Mart or Target saying Happy Holidays. I mean, does this really affect whether you shop there? I hope centrists like us can seriously discuss this, free of any ideological foolishness.

Joe Leiberman on Iraq

Our Troops Must Stay

It is a war between 27 million and 10,000; 27 million Iraqis who want to live lives of freedom, opportunity and prosperity and roughly 10,000 terrorists who are either Saddam revanchists, Iraqi Islamic extremists or al Qaeda foreign fighters who know their wretched causes will be set back if Iraq becomes free and modern. The terrorists are intent on stopping this by instigating a civil war to produce the chaos that will allow Iraq to replace Afghanistan as the base for their fanatical war-making. We are fighting on the side of the 27 million because the outcome of this war is critically important to the security and freedom of America. If the terrorists win, they will be emboldened to strike us directly again and to further undermine the growing stability and progress in the Middle East, which has long been a major American national and economic security priority.

Do I even need to say it? Read the whole thing.

How Can We Get Together?

Paul from Austin asks this question:

Why don't the leading "Centrist" organizations combine to court the large moderate population? I would contribute money to an organization that can prove its effectiveness in building a cooperation among the groups that share a moderate philosophy.

New Democrat Network
Democratic Leadership Council
Third Way
It's My Party Too
Republican Main Street Partnership
Republican Liberty Caucus
Libertarian Party
McCain
Lieberman
Etc.

The Centrist Coalition has aimed to do just this, but while we are growing, the pace is slower than we'd like. The basic dynamics of having two teams, the D's and the R's, makes cooperation very difficult. What ideas do you have?

Who Would Win?

I'm not a fan of Juan Cole, but in this post raising an interesting question: Why can't the Iraqi majority of Shiites and Kurds beat the Sunni Arab miniority in a fair fight?

Readers and colleagues often ask me why a Shiite majority and the Kurdish Peshmergas couldn't just take care of the largely Sunni Arab guerrillas. The answer is that the Sunni Arabs were the officer corps and military intelligence, and the more experienced NCOs, and they know how to do things that the Shiites and Kurds don't know how to do. The Sunni Arabs were also the country's elite and have enormous cultural capital and managerial know-how. Sunni Arab advantages will decline over time, but they are there for this generation, and no one should underestimate the guerrilla leadership. If the Americans weren't around, all those 77 Hungarian T-72 tanks that the new Iraqi military now has would be in guerrilla hands so fast it would make your head spin.

"Duke" Cunningham Cops A Plea

Calif. Congressman Admits Taking Bribes

Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham pleaded guilty Monday to conspiracy and tax charges and tearfully resigned from office, admitting he took $2.4 million in bribes to steer defense contracts to conspirators.

I just love it when the crooks are stupid enough to get caught.

(P.S.--Can we throw away that "Vietnam vets in Congress are beyond reproach" meme now?)

Bush Mullifying Moderates by Spending?

A contributor to Red State has come to the conclusion that the spending habits of George W. Bush are the fault of moderates in his own party, or that at least the reason for his spending habits is to please John McCain, Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, Chris Shays, and company.

My comment to that post:

That is the dumbest thing I have seen all morning.

Are moderate Republicans in charge of the House or the Senate? Let's quit pretending that conservatives aren't responsible for passing bloated budgets to the President for his signature. It is they who are just as responsible for overspending. While focused on a social agenda that a majority of the American people oppose, the current leadership in Congress is abandoning the biggest Republican principle of them all, fiscal responsibility. You can count the number of fiscal conservatives in Congress on one hand, and they are mostly those individuals from both parties who are considered to be moderate or centrist.

If the GOP loses either the House or the Senate in 2006, it will be the fault of Conservative Republican leadership that forgot about the contract they agreed to in 1994. It took them only ten years, where it took the Democrats 40, to adopt the spending habits of a Beverly Hills housewife.

Furthermore, the insinuation that this President has done anything to mollify moderates in the Republican Party is a damn joke.

Outsourced Indefinite Detention: An Evil of Our Time

This brings back childhood memories of reading about prisoners socked away forever at the Chateau d'If, an old jail for political prisoners in France. Prisoners not executed outright tended to be either forgotten by officialdom, or maybe worse, left there forever because no official dares take responsibility for your release. This looks like the same thing to me.

Certainly, recent events have made it clear that US officials are capable of neglecting prisoners.

This is worse than Guantanamo, because there is no public accountability. It's illegal to even let anybody know that these people exist. The press and relatives can't come checking for bruises and remind people that your case should be considered.

I have no doubt that many prisoners in this system deserve to be imprisoned forever. But, just by the fact that there are over 100 just from our government, just by the numbers there almost have to be people who were marginally involved or just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Are they being held indefinitely as well? Is anybody running this system even allowing the word "sentencing" to pass lips?

How many American citizens are in this system? We can't know, can we? I wish I could make myself believe that Democratic politicians would make this a big issue in '06. Daylight is the best hope for ending this. Fat chance, though.

Is anybody in this system being held for political reasons? Do we hold prisoners in exchange from any nondemocracies? How long will these answers stay no if they are so far? If you're a Republican and trust Bush, do you trust Democrats to administer the system without taking advantage?

A Generic Catch-all Open Thread

Why? Because someone had to.

A Modest Proposal...

...to reform or eliminate the charitable tax deduction. A new paper [pdf warning] from The Tax Foundation examines the structure of the 501(c)3 world. Worth a read for the information on the non-profit world, if nothing else.

Centrist Republican Congressman Retires

Congressman Jim Kolbe is retiring from Congress... This is a great loss to those of us in the middle.

Kolbe was a pioneer, a gay moderate Republican from Arizona, who often took heat from both the left and the right. Kolbe was a leader on free-trade issues and was one of the few, recently, who actually offered a plan of his own to reform the Social Security system rather than resorting to the typical rhetoric seen from both sides.

In announcing his retirement the Congressman said:

"I have both the energy and the enthusiasm for the job I do, and I am confident that I would win re-election if I chose to run ... [but] the mood on Capitol Hill is not a pleasant one. There's a divisiveness that I think we haven't seen in a long time and I worry about that. I like to think that I've been a moderating influence on that."

One would hope that moderates would stick around and fight the current tide in Washington D.C., but it is understandable why those who have served so long would choose to hang it up. Speaker Hastert called for Kolbe to reconsider, one of the best things he has done in a long while.

Personally, I would like to thank Congressman Kolbe for fighting the good fight, and I wish him well.

Hat-tip to Ron.

Happy Thanksgiving!

A very happy Thanksgiving to everybody here! I propose a one-day moratorium on serious conversations of any sort, as we all give thanks for, well, everything we have to be thankful for.

I found something new to be thankful for just the other day... colored bubbles! Forget about standing in line for the XBox 360. I will be the very first in line to buy bubble-blowing stuff that makes blue, red, purple, you name it bubbles. (Note to Moms and Mr. Moms: It's ok, the color disappears after it lands on something and bursts; no extra washing needed.)

Hillary Takes a Position on Iraq, Sort Of

ABC news tells us that HRC has climbed off the fence and taken a position on Iraq, then again maybe not. Probably feeling the heat from base it now appears she is leaning toward a policy of phased out withdrawal without trying to steer too much away from the center. Vietnamization, anyone?

She says:

"Then we have to tell this new government we are not going to be there forever, we are going to be withdrawing our young men and women and we expect you to start moving towards stability."

That's an intelligent statement... I am sure the Iraqi government currently assumes that we expect regional chaos. Some context here would help.

Further:

"It will matter to us if Iraq totally collapses into civil war, if it becomes a failed state the way Afghanistan was, where terrorists are free to basically set up camp and launch attacks against us."

Good point, but are we saying we need to stay or need to go? Or, are we pandering to both wings of the Democratic Party?

"What you hear from the president, the vice president, the secretary of defense is, 'We'll stay as long as it takes until the job is done... They've never defined the job."

I'll give her that one, but what should the job be?

ABC suggests that Hillary is attempting to take the third-way approach of her husband in regards to Iraq:

Clinton's little-noticed comments — made at a news conference about the flu vaccine — are the latest sign that the debate over Iraq has shifted in the wake of a call by Rep. Jack Murtha, D-Pa., to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. Murtha, a combat veteran with close ties to the military, said last week that the United States had accomplished all that it can in Iraq militarily and that it is time to redeploy troops to the periphery.

Clinton's efforts to fashion a "third way" on Iraq were reminiscent of the political approach her husband made famous when he announced his presidential campaign in 1991. "The change we must make isn't liberal or conservative," Bill Clinton said then. "It's both, and it's different."

I know there are some third-way enthusiasts at Centerfield, but personally I never saw Bill Clinton's approach to foreign policy, excluding the Irish peace process, as much more than an attempt to win political points and please all sides. This approach cost us dearly in Somalia. I was personally hoping to see a tougher stance from HRC, and thought she was going that way. Her recent comments are not encouraging.

Addressing the Drug Problem

I couldn't resist referring to this editorial in the WaPo by Robert Samuelson on the new Medicare Drug Benefit. As a doc I know medications are critical for successful medical care. Furthermore I know the elderly depend more on meds than younger folks. Still, when the debate for the drug benefit program started I keep asking "How will we pay for this?" I'm not sure I agree with Samuelson that the program was pushed by Republicans for "mostly political" reasons, but I certainly agree with many of his sentiments.

As policy, the drug benefit is a calamity. It worsens one of the nation's major problems (paying baby boomers' retirement costs) while addressing a nonexistent "crisis" (allegedly oppressive drug costs for retirees). ...When Congress passed it, about three-quarters of Medicare recipients already had drug coverage. The poorest had it through Medicaid, many retirees had it from their former employers and some had it through Medicare managed-care plans or private insurance policies they purchased.

Personally, its hard for me to hear seniors "whine" about the complexity of the choices. So we're complaining that the government has given us "too many choices"?

Anyway its a nice piece and maybe the new drug benefit program will force everyone to answer the more important question for Medicare as a whole "Where's the money going to come from?"

ADDENDUM: Spammed by the drug ads. Oh well!

War capabilities in Asia?

Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara claims that U.S. ground forces, except for the Marines, are "extremely incompetent" and that we would lose a war with China. According to the article, this view is shared throughout the region, which thinks that the war in Iraq has revealed American weaknesses in "low-tech warfare".

And it's not just our military, it's us. Speaking of a potential war with China, he said: "I believe America cannot win as it has a civic society that must adhere to the value of respecting lives." Further, he added that the U.S. could not counter an onslaught of millions of Chinese soldiers because after 2,000 casualties, the U.S. military would be forced to withdraw. He sees war with China as a real threat, because predictions of China evolving into a stable democracy with free elections are "totally wrong." I have myself voiced concerns about China here, when one of its generals threatened to use nuclear weapons if the U.S. were to militarily defend Taiwan.

If this does indeed reflect a growing consensus of our allies in the region, it has serious implications for our hopes for progress on China, North Korea, and other issues. If Japan decides that it cannot rely on the U.S. for military protection, it will rebuild its own military. That would worry the Chinese, the Koreans, and other countries in the area who have had historical experience with a powerfully armed Japanese nation. If China believes that we would acquiesce to (or be defeated by) an armed takeover of Taiwan, they will do it, subjugating 22 million people to their despotic government. North Korea has the largest ground army in the world, and gives every appearance of being aching to use it.

In short, I fear that being seen as militarily weak in that region would be like going for a swim off Amity Island while covered with chum. We're always fighting the last war. It's time to take the lessons learned in Vietnam, Panama, Grenada, Somalia, Bosnia, and Iraq and begin thinking how we would apply them in an Asian conflict with China, North Korea, or anyone else. (The first lesson being, of course, to never get involved in a land war in Asia.)

Kansas Teaches Intelligent Design....

...as religious mythology.

Kansas University to teach intelligent design as myth

Creationism and intelligent design are going to be studied at the University of Kansas, but not in the way advocated by opponents of the theory of evolution.

The university's Religious Studies Department is offering a course next semester titled "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and Other Religious Mythologies."

"The KU faculty has had enough," said Paul Mirecki, chairman of the department.

"Creationism is mythology," Mr. Mirecki said. "Intelligent design is mythology. It's not science. They try to make it sound like science. It clearly is not."

Forward Together

"The real issues we face are no longer right vs. left or conservative vs. liberal. They’re about past vs. future. Our challenge, as Democrats, is to reclaim our role as the party of the future."

-Governor Mark Warner

I probably will not get behind any 2008 Presidential contender until late in the primaries, waiting to see how the McCain-Giuliani-GOP conservative primary voters triangle unfolds. Obviously as a moderate Republican I would prefer somebody from my own party in the White House; however, Virginia Governor Mark Warner may change my mind.

Warner has launched his Forward Together PAC website, and all signs lead one to the conclusion that he is a candidate for the Democratic nomination. Warner is an appealing candidate to moderates from both parties in my eyes, because he not only talks a middle of the road talk, but has backed it up by being a non-partisan and centrist governing executive in Virginia. Warner is incredibly popular in his own state, and has won support from business minded libertarians, conservative gun activists, and other factions of the typical Republican base.

Yes, he raised taxes... He reformed an archaic Virginia tax system, raising some fees and lowering others, but he did so with overwhelming support from his constituents... What politician can say that?

I listened to the Governor give a speech to the New Hampshire Senate Democrats this weekend. I came away thinking this guy was truly a contender, and will continue to listen. Check out the speech here.

Exit Plan From The Iraqis

This could be progress: Iraqi Leaders Call for Pullout Timetable

In Egypt, the final communique's attempt to define terrorism omitted any reference to attacks against U.S. or Iraqi forces. Delegates from across the political and religious spectrum said the omission was intentional. They spoke anonymously, saying they feared retribution.

"Though resistance is a legitimate right for all people, terrorism does not represent resistance. Therefore, we condemn terrorism and acts of violence, killing and kidnapping targeting Iraqi citizens and humanitarian, civil, government institutions, national resources and houses of worships," the document said.

I support our troops, but I can't say that other armies don't have the right to fight against them, and its not illegal under the laws of war for the other side to try to kill our troops. What is illegal and immoral is the terrorism, attacking civilians in Iraq and of course here in the United States. The insurgents who have not committed acts of terror can potentially be rehabilitated into the Iraqi national army.

I don't want us to "cut and run" from Iraq. But when the Iraqis decide for themselves that they are ready to move forward without our troops, that will be fine with me.

Holiday Week Open Thread

I'm sure many of us are taking short weeks, and/or traveling, and/or up to our hindquarters in Thanksgiving prep. So let's go ahead and have at for the week right now.

Holiday season predictions, observations, hopes? I've noticed that the stores are packed to the gills awaiting the impending assault. My wife and I are planning to let the eager infantry do all the hard work softening up the stores, and then waltz in and mop up after xmas.

Buy a new TV for xmas? No thanks, I think there'll be enough left to expect to save another 10 or 15% come spring. TVs, btw, seem to have graduated to the same status as computers, where there's almost always a good reason to delay upgrading in order to save money and get better features.

Best wishes for a happy, safe, enjoyable Thanksgiving to all our posters and readers. And don't forget that there are two football games on Thursday, so get those football pool picks done now...Atlanta at Detroit in the early game and Denver at Dallas is the late game.

Elevating Ben's Metrics

Poster Ben, who classes himself more of a lurker than a commenter, listed the following metrics for how the US should evaluate our strategy in Iraq going forward. Let's have at these, and let's try to be nice. What follows below is Ben's list, elevated from comments. I may have edited things here or there, so Ben, let me know if you object:

Ben's List

These are some of the questions a real debate about Iraq policy would involve:

1. What would the effect of withdrawal be on Iraq in terms of:

a)the level of violence in Iraq

b)political developments in Iraq -- stability, healing or exacerbating the ethnic divide, more secular or theistic leadership, unified state (if that indeed should be our goal), human rights, emergence of liberal-democratic institutions

c)infrastructure reconstruction

d)the influence and involvement of border states -- esp. Turkey, Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia

e)what effect would the Murtha proposal of stationing troops in the area "just over the horizon" following withdrawal have on this?

2. How will staying in Iraq (postponing our withdrawal to some future date or benchmark) increase the likelihood of having positive outcomes to a,b,c and d above and are there any different steps we should we now take in Iraq to increase that likelihood?

3. What effect would withdrawal have on political developments in the border states? What would the effect of Murtha's proposal be? Where might troops be stationed "just over the horizon"?

4. What effect will continued long-term deployment of US troops with the present level of attrition have on the US military in terms of flexibility, readiness, resources, recruitment and morale? What will be the effect of withdrawal on these?

5. What effect does continued deployment or withdrawal have on the ability of the United States to achieve broader foreign policy objectives and project its power abroad?

If we had a Congress more concerned with policy than denouncing opponents as cowards, defeatists and non-patriots, it would be holding hearings and soliciting the best information available on these issues from experts and those most engaged in the field who are willing speak openly and honestly about what they know. At that point, informed judgments can be made. Right now, all of us (including me) need more information about these matters. The current "debate" does little but reinforce our existing policy biases?

Political earthquake in Israel

Story.

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- In what some observers are calling a "huge political earthquake" for Israel, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has resigned from the right-wing Likud party he helped found -- the next step in his plan to form a new center party. . .

After resigning, Sharon met with potential members of his new party, which would be called the National Responsibility Party.

Obviously, the successful establishment of a new party is much easier to accomplish in a parliamentary system, but I like the precedent as well as the new party's name.

America's moral responsibility in Iraq

Andrew Sullivan responds to this excellent piece by John Burns in the Times. To quote Andrew: "One thing I wish were more insisted upon. It's not just that we have no interest in seeing Iraq degenerate into a brutal civil and possibly regional war. By removing Saddam, we created this vacuum. We own it. We have a moral responsibility to see this through."

I sympathize with those who are calling for U.S. forces to be withdrawn, from Cindy Sheehan to Jack Murtha, but the job must be finished first -- that is, Iraq must be firmly stabilized. The consequences of not finishing the job could turn out to be even worse than the gross injustices of this war.

With all that went on last week -- from Bush's 11/11 speech to Murtha's call for withdrawal to the heightened intensity in the House -- what do you all think?

Breaking Rumor!

PLEASE NOTE THE WORD "RUMOR" ABOVE. NO CONFIRMATIONS YET, OR SOON.

At least one Arab television media outlet reported that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of the al-Qaida in Iraq, was killed in Iraq on Sunday afternoon when eight terrorists blew themselves up in the in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

The unconfirmed report claimed that the explosions occurred after coalition forces surrounded the house in which al-Zarqawi was hiding.

Obviously, good news if true.

UPDATE: Not whole cloth rumor, anyway. AP confirms that eight AQ members have died in a Mosul house siege, some apparently suiciding to avoid capture.

In Washington, a U.S. counterterrorism official said the identities of the suspected al-Qaida members was unknown. When asked if they could include terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the official replied: "There are efforts under way to determine if he was killed."

Translation: "We don't know but it's at least a possibility, and you can be damned sure we're trying our best to find out. You can also be damn sure that we won't make any such claim without proof positive." (Observation: Judging from the grammar, this small story was a rush job.)

MORE UPDATES "UNDER THE FOLD"

More Update: Expanded AP story filling in more information, but still please note that no one really knows for sure yet.

On Saturday, police Brig. Gen. Said Ahmed al-Jubouri said the raid was launched after a tip that top al-Qaida operatives, possibly including al-Zarqawi, were in the house in the northeastern part of the city.

During the intense gunbattle that followed, three insurgents detonated explosives and killed themselves to avoid capture, Iraqi officials said. Eleven Americans were wounded, the U.S. military said. Such intense resistance often suggests an attempt to defend a high-value target.

Mo' Mo' Update: Iraq the Model points to the J-Post and and Al-Mada News as his sources, and helpfully translates some of the Al-Mada story:

Al-Mada paper said that terrorists hiding in a house fired back at American and Iraqi troops that were surrounding the house in a battle that lasted from dawn to noon on Saturday (Jerusalem Post said it was Sunday) after receiving intelligence about a meeting for senior al-Qaeda members.

The terrorists blew up the house when an Iraqi assault team tried to break into the house, the blast killed four Iraqi soldiers and wounded ten policemen and also killed all of the hiding terrorists.

Eight charred bodies were found in the scene, one of them belongs to a woman.
An Iraqi security official in Mosul said that US forces will most likely conduct DNA tests on the found bodies to verify whether or not Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi was among the killed terrorists.

So, wait for the DNA.

Updating again?: AP reporting that Iraq President Jalal Talabani is reaching out to the native portion of the insurgency in advance of the elections.

The London-based Al Hayat newspaper reported Sunday that Talabani had received proposals from insurgent groups and that their "conditions" were being reviewed in coordination with the Pentagon and American officials at the Cairo conference. Talabani did not comment on the report.

"Those who carry guns should come back to their senses, there is no reason to hold arms," he said.

Nice convergence factors? Good move at trying harder to split the natives off from the foreign jihadis in any case.

Last Update unless there's some real confirmations one way or another: Field commanders are dismissing the reports, and the White House is calling it "unlikely."

Follower of an extreme form of Sunni Islam, the Al-Qaeda frontman has called for "all-out war" against Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority.

When Iraqi President Jalal Talabani appealed for dialogue at a conference with Sunni political and religious leaders this week, an Internet statement posted in Zarqawi's name retorted that "sword and blood" were the only ways forward.

THAT can't endear Zarqawi to the bulk of the Sunni. Even if the name "Custer" doesn't ring a bell, they can do the basic math. Talabani needs to keep leaning on the Sunni to drop the guns and come to the table.

A Recipe For Ethnic Cleansing

This is starting to sound to me like Yugoslavia on the eve of ethnic cleansing:
Sectarian Hatred Pulls Apart Iraq's Mixed Towns - New York Times

Abu Noor's town had become so hostile to Shiites that his wife had not left the house in a month, his family could no longer go to the medical clinic and mortar shells had been lobbed at the houses of two of his religious leaders.
...
So when Abu Noor, a Shiite from Tarmiya, a heavily Sunni Arab town north of here, ran into an old friend, a Sunni who faced his own problems in a Shiite district in Baghdad, the two decided to switch houses. They even shared a moving van.

We have put this in motion, but don't blame it all on Americans

Some Iraqis, despite years of mass killings of Kurds and Shiites during Mr. Hussein's rule, still argue that sectarian divides did not exist in Iraq before the American invasion. But scratching just beneath the surface turns up hurt in most Shiite homes. Abu Noor recalls asking a high school teacher in Tarmiya the meaning of the word shroogi, a derogatory term for Shiite. Shiites tried to hide their last names. The military had a glass ceiling. These days, sectarian profiling on the part of the government, which is Shiite, runs in reverse, with some people buying fake national identity cards to hide last names that are obviously Sunni Arab.

Those who want American troops to be withdrawn immediately should consider what would happen if a full-scale civil war were to break out. Genocide would be likely. Given that Kurds and Shiites have been victims of genocide at the hands of Sunni Arabs, they won't stand for a rerun. They'll do anything they can to prevent their community from being massacred, including, I'm afraid, massacring the other side. I don't have any good answers. I'm just noting that the idea that Iraq will heal itself if only Americans leave is an extreme in wishful thinking.

More than just a TV series

Time to take a vacation from the Beltway and present one of my periodic medical posts. This courtesy of the Center for Studying Health System Change. Our Emergency Rooms are in trouble. Here are some key excerpts from the report on Rising Pressure: Hospital Emergency Departments. The strains on our ER's due to increased visits, decreased reimbursement and non traditional ER visits are mounting. A few excerpts:

ED visit rates continue to grow steadily. During the past decade, the number of ED visits nationally rose 26 percent—from 90 million to 114 million in 2003 —much faster than the 11 percent growth in the U.S. population during the same period. And, while the largest proportion of ED visits are made by the privately insured, since 2001, the privately insured ED visit rate decreased 5 percent, while ED visits by Medicaid patients increased 23 percent

Unfortunately more and more docs don't want to help with the increased demand.

A national survey of emergency department directors confirms that ED patients are facing access problems for emergency specialty care—two-thirds of the directors reported inadequate on-call specialist coverage. The top three consequences of inadequate on-call coverage were risk or harm to patients needing specialist care, delay in patient care, and increased ambulance diversions from EDs without adequate specialist on-call coverage.

And there "not just for emergencies anymore"

Emergency departments, with their 24-hour, seven-day-a-week stand-ready capacity, are costly sites to provide primary and nonurgent care. These facilities are not designed or staffed to provide continuous and comprehensive primary care efficiently...Overall, the percentage of ED visits for nonurgent or semi-urgent reasons has increased over the past decade. Nationally representative data show a recent increase in rates of nonurgent and semi-urgent ED visits per 100 persons for insured and uninsured groups, and especially for Medicaid enrollees

Problems like this could drive you crazy.

A shortage of inpatient psychiatric beds results in seriously mentally ill patients being “boarded” in ED beds until a space can be found for them elsewhere or until they are discharged. Additional pressures include inadequate numbers of psychiatric practitioners in many EDs and the perception that seriously mentally ill patients present a danger to other patients and to staff in general hospital EDs

And maybe these are just symptoms of bigger problems out there.

The rising pressure in emergency departments is a result of larger forces throughout the health care system, including financial incentives that reward specialist physicians for performing more procedures in physician-owned ambulatory settings and in specialty hospitals; diminishing access to primary care; declining funding for community-based mental health services; and financial pressures on hospitals to pursue business strategies of seeking higher-paying patients and services.

Does this make you sick? If so, please stay away from the emergency room!

House votes 403-3 to continue the mission in Iraq

"Our military has done everything that has been asked of them. It is time to bring them home."

Thus spake Representative Murtha (D-Pa.) yesterday, calling for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Fast Withdrawal of G.I.'s Is Urged by Key Democrat, NY Times 11/18/05. Tonight, Representative Murtha joined 186 other Democrats and 215 Republicans in voting down H. Res. 571, which expressed "the sense of the House of Representatives that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq be terminated immediately." Roll Call vote 608. While the bill was not from Murtha's pen, "Sen. Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, noted that the Republican resolution drew heavily on the language of the Democrats' proposal." E.J. Dionne, An Iraq Deadline for Bush, Washington Post 11/18/05.

In short, the House leadership told the Democrats to put up or shut up - a request that constituted "'[a] disgrace,' declared House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif." House GOP Seeks Quick Veto of Iraq Pullout, San Francisco Chronicle 11/18/05. "'It’s a trap,' explained a Democratic strategist. 'If the party comes out for a unilateral six-month withdrawal, that would become the issue for ’06, and they [Republicans] would kill us again.'" Murtha’s Moment, Newsweek 11/18/05. Of course, they're right - it's a trap, but why a well-respected PA Democrat would lay it for his own party is not yet clear.

Democrats claim that immediate withdrawal is a parody of their position, and tonight's vote gave that claim some credibility. Now that we've established that nobody actually wants to withdraw immediately from Iraq, including Dennis "Ministry of Peace" Kucinich, isn't it time to ask the obvious question? If not now, Representative Murtha, then when - and why not now?

Welcome to the Event Horizon

[Update 11/18/05 5:59 PM EST: The links should actually work now.]

Imagine that you have been charged with murder. It doesn’t matter, for the purpose of this example, whether you’re really guilty or not. You face a trial before a neutral tribunal to determine whether the accusation against you is true or false. You have a right to appeal the verdict of that neutral tribunal, if the verdict is adverse to you. Now imagine that the tribunal doesn’t tell you its verdict, and the government says the tribunal doesn’t have to tell you its verdict. How do you know whether or not to appeal? Well, one way might be to deduce that you have been convicted, based on the fact that you’re still in jail.

Unfortunately, that’s not true if, instead of being charged with murder, you’re an alien (think passport, not antennae) accused of being an enemy combatant.

In Camp Echo, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, there sits today at least one man, called Adel, who has been found by the Combatant Status Review Tribunal to be a noncombatant—in other words, a civilian. He was captured in Afghanistan not by American forces, not by Northern Alliance allies, but by a bounty hunter, whom the United States paid $5000.00. Following the Supreme Court decision in Rasul v. Bush, which held the American military enclave in Guantanamo Bay to be sufficiently American to allow aliens there to access American federal courts, he filed a petition for habeas corpus.

The Administration has vociferously protested the extension of federal judicial jurisdiction to Guantanamo Bay. Nevertheless, it has declared in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia that it is not obliged to tell a detainee held there whether the Combatant Status Review Tribunal has found him to be an enemy combatant or not—until a federal court orders the Administration to justify its custody of a detainee as a result of the detainee’s petition for habeas corpus.

Adel, the Chinese Muslim who sits in Camp Echo, was therefore not told that the Combatant Status Review Tribunal had determined him to be a noncombatant—a civilian—as early as 2003 until August 2005, during the hearing on his petition for habeas corpus that the Administration still believes he is not entitled to have. And Congress has come to the Administration’s aid: it passed the Graham-Levin Amendment to the Fiscal 2006 National Defense Authorization Act. Subsection (d)(1) of the amendment deprives all federal courts of jurisdiction to hear a petition for habeas corpus from any alien detainee detained at Guantanamo Bay.

Ironically, though, subsection (d)(2) grants detainees determined by the Combatant Status Review Tribunal to be enemy combatants a right of appeal—provided they appeal only to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In fact, that appeal allows the detainee not only to allege that the determination reached by the Combatant Status Review Tribunal was inconsistent with the procedures for such tribunals as promulgated by the Secretary of Defense, but that the tribunals violate the United States Constitution or American law (and, one presumes by implication, such portions of international law as are constitutionally binding on the United States).

The obvious missing link here is, if the Administration continues to detain those who have been found to be noncombatants, how do combatants know to appeal their determinations as enemy combatants to the D.C. Circuit, if the Administration contends it does not need to tell a detainee the result of his Combatant Status Review Tribunal until he petitions for habeas corpus and he no longer can petition for habeas corpus? More importantly, how do detainees found to be noncombatants challenge their ongoing detention without habeas corpus review?

But perhaps the most tragic effect of the Graham-Levin Amendment is that it partially defeats Senator John McCain’s attempt to prohibit torture and mistreatment of detainees. The McCain Amendment, attached to the same bill as the Graham-Levin Amendment, proscribes the cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of any person in United States custody anywhere in the world, unless the president personally waives the application of the amendment and reports to Congress why he has done so.

Without habeas corpus, how is a detainee to raise the issue of his cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment in an American court? Perhaps a detainee determined to be an enemy combatant by the Combatant Status Review Tribunal will raise the issue when he appeals his designation—if he’s ever told his designation. Perhaps a detainee tried for crimes committed will raise the issue when he appeals his conviction, as permitted by subsection (d)(3) of the Graham-Levin Amendment. But a detainee whose status has not yet been determined, or who has not been tried for a crime, has no recourse left.

The Graham-Levin Amendment creates a black hole into which detainees—those determined to be noncombatants, or those whose status remains undetermined—at Guantanamo Bay simply disappear, and it’s unlikely that the black hole was the intended result. But that’s what we can expect from a legislative process that allows substantive legislation to be attached to a defense appropriations or authorization bill, rather than being vetted in the committee process. The Graham-Levin Amendment needs to go, and Congress needs to stop attaching policy to the budget.

Friday Open Thread

Have at.

Media Hypocrisy

"I hardly see any point in having critiques and comments if they are to be publicized outside the paper. How can we write candidly when candor merely invites violations of confidentiality? Many readers say they distrust us. Well, now I find myself wondering if we can trust each other," the Post's Jonathan Yardley writes.

The hypocrisy in this simple statement by a Washington Post reporter astounds me. He's complaining about leaks from internal discussions about Bob Woodward's actions in the Plame controversy. These discussions, and the conduct of major newspapers such as the Post, have a tremendous impact on our lives and the information we rely on to make decisions as a society. And from outright lies (Jayson Blair) to willful withholding of crucial information (CNN's failure to report on Saddam atrocities to protect its reporters in Iraq) to misleading silence (Woodward's recent actions), it is clear that we are not being well served of late by these crucial institutions.

For any other institution which affects the public, the Post believes the public has a right to know about internal deliberations. It says that the secrecy itself breeds the distrust. It demands laws which prohibit most of our public officials from having candid, private conversations. It relentlessly pursues individual government and corporate officials to violate confidences and leak private internal discussions. But when the same thing happens to them, it's whine, whine, whine.

The thing is, he's right. It's not possible to have candid, real conversations when you must expect them to become public immediately. And it's very difficult to fix internal problems and resolve troubling issues without such candid conversations. I just wish reporters like Mr. Yardley would understand that even when it's not their own ox being gored.

Just Something To Keep In Mind

As you all know by now, Rep. Jack Murtha has spoken out today, calling for what amounts to a withdrawal of our forces from Iraq. Murtha's a patriot, and his centrist and hawkish credentials are well-established, even by those who basically accused him of cooperating with our enemies.

As a pro-war Dem, and a proud American, I respect Murtha's service, and his character is above reproach. I do think he's wrong, though. This has all been said before, but it is important to remember that our enemies are hoping for us to cut-and-run, and hoping to waeken us, not militarily, but by weaking our resolve. The troops draw strength from the fact that we support them. It's fine to criticize the execution of the war-Bush has certainly made huge mistakes. We need to keep in mind though that the Iraqis are counting on us not to leave them in the lurch. We don't want all of our brave soldiers to have died in vain.

If we really do adopt a premature withdrawl, the costs will be too high.

"Moderates are people amiably untroubled by Washington's single-minded devotion to rent-seeking"

Most of the Republicans who were outraged by the Miers nomination are now back aboard. George F. Will today announces that he is not one of them.

Will is angered by the continuing fiscal indiscipline of the party, and its drift towards its sectarian constiuents:

"[The GOP] should particularly ponder the vote last week in Dover, Pa., where all eight members of the school board seeking reelection were defeated . . . Dover's insurrection occurred as Kansas's Board of Education, which is controlled by the kind of conservatives who make conservatism repulsive to temperate people, voted 6 to 4 to redefine science . . . [I]t is injurious, and unneighborly, when zealots try to compel public education to infuse theism into scientific education.

The conservative coalition, which is coming unglued for many reasons, will rapidly disintegrate if limited-government conservatives become convinced that social conservatives are unwilling to concentrate their character-building and soul-saving energies on the private institutions that mediate between individuals and government, and instead try to conscript government into sectarian crusades.

Strong stuff indeed. Not only is Will unhappy about what the GOP is doing, he's even more unhappy about what it isn't doing: cutting back government and its spending:

Conservatives have won seven of 10 presidential elections, yet government waxes, with per-household federal spending more than $22,000 per year, the highest in inflation-adjusted terms since World War II. Federal spending -- including a 100 percent increase in education spending since 2001 -- has grown twice as fast under President Bush as under President Bill Clinton . . . In 1991, the 546 pork projects in the 13 appropriation bills cost $3.1 billion. In 2005, the 13,997 pork projects cost $27.3 billion, for things such as improving the National Packard Museum in Warren, Ohio (Packard, an automobile brand, died in 1958).

On the pork front, incidentally, there's good news and better news. The good news is that the House has defunded (sort of) the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" - "a symbol of federal spending that's out of control," quoth John Cornyn - in Alaska. The better news is that most people haven't forgotten Senator Stevens' promise to resign if the bridge's funding was cut. Needless to say, Stevens has declined to follow through, saying that "[w]hile I am not happy with it, I think that under the circumstance it was the best we could expect because of the publicity that came with the Sunday supplements and whatever." You could say that he's resigned to it.

The problem is, as Will points out, is that there really just doesn't seem to be a stomach left in Washington for getting spending (or even, the growth of spending - the GOP "cannot muster congressional majorities to cut the growth of Medicaid from 7.3 to 7 percent next year") under control, if it means cutting into mandatory spending. Or discretionary spending. Or really, just plain ol' bacon. Just as the Bridge was emblematic of the hollowness of Congress' desire to fix the budget, so the "removal" of the bridge is emblematic in another way: the money is still going north, just without earmarks. Bridge earmarks or not, it's still going north. Congress could have gotten serious about pork (it could, for example, have followed McCain's admonition that Congress "ought to do away with $24 billion worth, not just one bridge"), or it could have just swept it under the rug. Luckily for Stevens, that's a mighty big rug they have there.

Holy slumping approval ratings Batman!

Is Congress doing the job approval limbo?

The current batch of incumbent politician's approval has actually managed to plummet into the twenties. (Harris poll at WSJ )

House Speaker Dennis Hastert 22%
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist 23%
Republicans in Congress 27%
Democrats in Congress 25%
Right direction 27%

Also Nixon was more popular at this point in his second term.
Bush Nov. 2005 34%
Nixon Nov. 1973 37%

You would almost think the American public was upset about something.

About Spine and Spines of Convenience

I'm not citing this with the goal of continuing the word parsing over lying, misleading, mistaking, and blaming, but it may be inevitable. I just think the viewpoint of someone who voted against the war resolution sounds pretty credible today. So I'm excerpting that from the longer piece linked immediately below.

Poll-watching pols now say no on Iraq

Michael Capuano of Somerville -- one of seven Bay State congressmen who voted against the Iraq war resolution -- said some colleagues who voted ''yes" now contend they were lied to or misled. But Capuano sees the situation differently. Sure, the Bush administration marshaled intelligence to make the case that Saddam Hussein had WMDs; but even so, he argues, the White House never presented a strong case, publicly or in private briefings with Congress. ''They never came close. There was never any real hard proof," said Capuano.

Recalling a White House briefing by Condoleezza Rice, then Bush's national security adviser, Capuano said: ''They never had an ounce of evidence in my mind. The best they could give me was a picture of a tractor trailer, photos from a gazillion miles up, that they said was a lab."

Appreciating that he was ''low down on the totem poll," Capuano said that in the run-up to the vote, he asked ''every senior Democrat I could find, 'have you guys seen something we haven't seen?' Everyone said no."

So, were some ''yes" votes influenced by polls? ''At the time, sure, some were," said Capuano, speaking generally, not specifically, about any individual vote.

I found the whole piece worth reading.

An End to Republican Realism?

While we're on a warlike perspective, I'll link to a nicely bloggish Hitchens article that praises an even better Goldberg article about Scowcroft and the picture his career paints of the disempowerment of GOP foreign policy realists in Shrub's administration. Junior's preference of listening to Condi Rice' and the neocons' Wilsonianism over old-line GOP realism may be his best decision.

Realists can never predict an event like the American Revolution, much less its success, because to them, history and foreign policy are all about biggest powers and biggest coalitions, no matter what their government. Clearly, something's wrong with that picture. Size says something, but not everything.

Unfortunately, I'm sure realism will be back in some guise in the way-too-near future. Til, then, good riddance!

Traffic Slowing Not a Fast Idea

Traffic-slowing measures - artificial road bumps and changed traffic patterns - usually annoy me because that just means more traffic on congested arteries. Here in Austin, we have too many, even though our major artery, I-35, is hopelessly crowded. It also means that parts of downtown become inaccessible to the poor.

There are two arguments I've seen for them, neither of which I like. One is that we must save the chillun out in traffic. But there risks everywhere, and we have to trade them off against each other. Same thing with traffic bumps. How many kids these days even do play outside much unsupervised?

The other is that some people grumble about the noise and feel that a neighborhood is just not acceptable that way. This argument bugs me even more, because it feels to me like people are trying to have the advantages of living in cities without paying their fair share.

Some people seem to think that the poor all take buses, so for them it doesn't matter what you do to traffic. This is wrong, because in fact in our society poor people are the most pressed for time and most pressingly need to take cars everywhere. Poor people can't afford preprepared food, can't afford to live downtown near their jobs, have to spend more time on errands and repairing things, can't afford daycare, etc.. Our society has countless places where money trades for time.

It seems to me that one thing that makes the Austin downtown wildly successful is that it's one of the few where anybody in the city can go in for any event. We're moving away from that by reducing parking and accessibility. I hope downtown Austin won't be just a place for the rich in twenty years.

Good news from the Middle East

In the column of good news from the Middle East comes this report from Isreal and Palestine. For the first time, the Palestinian government has been given authority over an international border, with Egypt in the Gaza Strip. The deal was brokered by Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, who delayed a trip to South Korea to use her personal influence to push both sides into agreement.

The key to the agreement was Isreal's acceptance of E.U. monitors in the area to make sure both sides live up to the agreement. The monitors will not have weapons or enforcement authority, but will generally only be allowed to report on what they observe. However, they do have the authority to require Palestinian customs officials to reexamine or reassess individual border crossers.

This is an extraordinary development. Isreal never cedes any control over its own security needs to outside parties. If Prime Minister Abbas is able to use this success to gain more power at the expense of Hamas, and if the Palestinians take their new responsibilities seriously, this will bode very well for the future. Perhaps the anti-terrorism backlash growing in Jordan will spread to the Palestinians and a real peace process can begin.

The Empire Strikes Back...

New GOP commercial on the historical revisionism of the Democrats, performed by the DNC Players themselves. Effective. Methinks Rove had a hand in this one.

(Hat tip to Instapundit.)

An Economist's View on Torture

In thinking about torture, I had come to a dead end of what felt like a very unsatisfactory conclusion: that we had to keep torture illegal and rely on our agents charged with security to break the rules when extraordinary circumstances warranted it. I don't feel as bad about this after reading Alex Tabarrok over at Marginal Revolution:

Here is where economics can make a contribution.  By making torture illegal we are raising the price of torture but we are not raising the price to infinity.  If the President or the head of the CIA thinks that torture is required to stop the ticking time bomb then they ought to approve it knowing full well that they face possible prosecution.  Only if the price of torture is very high can we expect that it will be used only in the most absolutely urgent of circumstances.

The torture victim faces incredible pain and perhaps death at the hands of his torturer.  If these costs are to be born by the victim then we had better make damn sure that the benefits are also high and the only way we can do that is to make the torturer also bear some of the costs.  Torture must not be cheap.

Be sure to read the whole thing, it's not much longer. My impulse was to run all 4 paragraphs of his post, but that's not really fair-use excerpting, IMO.

Act ll, Scene 2

In the opening act of Justice and Politics, American Style, the President approaches a close friend of known loyalty, somewhat questionable legal esteem, and ideology undocumented beyond a strong Christian faith. He tosses this friend to the Lions. Unsurprisingly, they devour her.

In the first scene of Act ll, he presents for approval the begged-for hero, Alito. In Act ll, scene 2, the plot thickens:

The scene opens with revelations of the overt ideology of Alito.

In the memo, he writes, "I am and always have been a conservative and an adherent to the same philosophical views that I believe are central to this administration." (Read an excerpt from the document)

Later he writes about his accomplishments, "I am particularly proud of my contributions in recent cases in which the government has argued in the Supreme Court that racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect a right to abortion."

He notes that as a federal employee, "I have been unable to take a role in partisan politics. However, I am a lifelong registered Republican."

I dunno about you, but I'm glued to my seat. Glued, I say!

"We Were Wrong"

I'm glad to see someone in the Bush Administration say it.

While admitting that ''we were wrong" about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, President Bush's national security adviser yesterday rejected assertions that the president had manipulated intelligence, and had misled American people. Bush relied on the judgment of the intelligence community when he determined that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, said the national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley. ''Turns out, we were wrong," Hadley said in an interview with ''Late Edition" on CNN. ''But I think the point that needs to be emphasized . . . allegations now that the president somehow manipulated intelligence, somehow misled the American people, are flat wrong."

I hope this clears the air a bit. It is precisely because the Bush Administration has been so reluctant to admit they blew it on the WMD's that skeptics think it all went according to plan, i.e. that the administration made up a cock-and-bull story and sold it to an uncritical press.

Did the President mislead us to get us into war? Well, I feel I was misled. Had I had an accurate picture of the WMD situation, I would not have supported the invasion. Was the President deliberately misleading? Perhaps not. Maybe he himself was misled, by the CIA, which was misled by Iraqi exiles.

I'm rather upset that I was misled. The President's lack of regrets about the invasion is what raises questions in people's minds. If he was misled, why isn't he angry about it, and why haven't there been consequences for those who misled him?

Only in America can gangsta and thugism go mainstream

With the release of 'Get Rich Or Die Tryin', gangsta has hit the mainstream. This is not an attack on rap. There are many rap artists that have style and talent. Even if you don't like the music, you can appreciate the talent. This is about glorification of gangsta.

Marcus (Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson), obviously faced a tough childhood with a deeply rooted life of violence. Many people do. Many people rise above, escape and excel in other endeavours. So what choice does he make?

After his hustler mother is killed, he uses the opportunity to becomes a gun-toting, stealing, top-dog drug dealing, driveby shooting thug. He makes it clear that he would rather be a gangster than a working class man making minimum wage. Of all the stories that you hear, this vision has stayed amazingly consistent.

Only in America can someone in the mold of '50 Cent', a confessed gangsta drug-dealer, be elevated to a position of praise and admiration. Only in America will he get his own movie deal. Only in America can someone like '50 Cent', be seen as a role model.

There in lies the problem, only in America. Maybe it is a generational hang-up. Maybe just raised with higher moral value, I don't get it. I am baffled that parents allow children to listen and I more so baffled that adults choose to listen. Reckless choices like these, are ripping the moral fabric of this country to shreds.

Adults make decisions for themselves. Children need guidance and boundaries. Parents that allow their children to get caught up in the gangsta image; listen to rap music about violence, abuse, hatred and evil, are not parents. They are not protecting or doing what is best for their children. They are not inspiring high standards, expectations and morals that children need later in life. Parents need to enforce that, people like '50 Cent', are not role models, and expose them for what they are, glorified thugs.

This is not about rap, it is about gangsta. This is about morals. This is about a generation. This is about the future. This is about America.

What's your personal Iraq tipping point?

Kind of inherit in the whole “centrist/independent” concept is that we think for ourselves and make decisions independent of ideological extremes. So regardless of how entrenched our current views on Iraq, we should all have a tipping point where we decide to switch sides.

The question I have for those who graze at centerfield is: What yours?

I know mine.
Using the globalsecurity.org website I calculate that since the end of major hostilities we are averaging about 61 dead and 475 wounded per month .

When the those numbers drop by ½ for a period of three months, I would say we have made substantial progress. If they continue to trend downward for more than a quarter we are “winning” (at least temporarily). If they drop into single digits dead and about 20 wounded (or are mostly due to industrial type accidents) we “won”.

I'm not naive enough to think they will ever go to zero, after all we have a bunch of bored young adults running around with guns. Boys will be boys.

I would very much prefer this not turn into another kool-aid drinking screamfest. We all pretty much know who is for or against the current unpleasantness/liberation. There is another thread active where you can pledge your undying loyalty/opposition. However, I am interested in hearing what it would take to change peoples minds.

Veterans Day

Today is Veterans Day.

There are over 24 million living American veterans.

Remember to thank them. Here's one small way.

The continuing mission in Iraq

Daniel Drezner has a post up about the latest attack by Al Qaeda in Iraq in Amman. The beginning part of it deals with the PR implications of the attack for AMZ in the Arab/Muslim world. However, he subsequently excerpts an article covering AMZ's global network, which extends into Europe, and compares this attack to an attempted one in 1999. The excerpted article states that the difference between failure then and success now was the growth in AMZ's network as part of the Iraq insurgency.

Drezner concludes with his own words on the implication of this for the mission in Iraq:

For opponents, however, the irony is even more bitter. The Bush administration might have been full of it when it claimed a connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq prior to the invasion. However, as frustrating as it may be, Bush is correct to say that Iraq is now one of the focal points in the war against Al Qaeda -- the Jordan attacks are merely the latest evidence of this. As long as Zarqawi has a base of operations and a playground to train zealots, he will continue to be a potent source of trouble.

Before bin Laden officially deputized AMZ, a lot of pundits were asking the irrelevant question as to whether or not al Qaeda was present in Iraq. The important thing is that a militarily competent bin Ladenist is operating somewhat freely in Iraq. I would therefore ask those who advocate a schedule for withdrawal if they could either point to a competent force that could shut down AMZ's base if we were to leave, or have a plan for what to do if AMZ successfully establishes a safe haven for his operations, one which better positioned geostrategically than Afghanistan?

Typo or Tsunami? We link, you decide!

I was cruising the Internet today and ran across the latest WSJ poll . (PDF warning) It seems to show a continuing trend line of declining support for the President and congress. Nothing really amazing there, the trend line has been against them for a while, with the percentage points leaking away in drips and drabs.

Then I came to Question #9.

9. In the 2006 election for U.S. Congress, do you feel that your representative deserves to be reelected, or do you think it is time to give a new person a chance?

Deserves to be reelected. Give new person a chance. Not sure
11/05+ 37 51 12
10/04+ 49 34 17
10/02+ 42 39 19
9/02+ 41 42 17

I'm not quite sure what to make of it. Is it a statistical hiccup, or have we hit some kind of inflection point? Yeah, it has been about a year since they asked that question, but if you open up the PDF you see that those number have been pretty stable for quite a while. And yes, it has not been a good year for incumbents, but incumbents have always been fairly safe. I halfway suspect someone has had a little typing error. A 5% move one way of the other I can easily accept, but 17%?

All of a sudden the republican stampede to the center makes sense. Republicans roasting Oil exec's, threatening to revoke tax breaks, trying to actually cut spending and rejecting drilling in ANWR. I'll bet their own polling is showing the same thing.

I guess that political change is like the flu. Once moment your feeling relatively ok, then the next your puking your guts out.

Questions > Answers (part gazillion)

One of the more troubling ironies I have ever encountered––television programs designed as educational outreach to prevent suicide have been followed by an increase in suicides. I relate this to the following story:

Newsgroup May Have Played Role in Suicide

Alone in a Florida hotel room, just miles from her college apartment, Suzanne methodically prepared and swallowed a lethal cocktail of potassium cyanide, lay down on the bed and died.

In doing so, she joined the roughly 4,000 people between the ages of 15 and 24 who commit suicide each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Suicide is now the third leading cause of death among young people, the CDC reports.

But Suzanne's case has an unusual twist. She frequented an Internet newsgroup called called ASH, short for Alt.Suicide.Holiday.

Members of this news group trade advice on how to commit suicide, using code words like 'transitioning' and 'exiting' and 'catching the bus.' Suzanne found this group nine weeks before she died, posting nearly one hundred messages detailing her plans.

"My chosen method is potassium cyanide....I've stopped eating so my tummy will be nice and acidic," one of Suzanne's posts read.

Suzanne's father claims the newsgroup gave her everything she needed to kill herself.

Questions? Many. Thoughts? Lots. Satisfying answers? Not so much. I think this story reveals an inherent conundrum, a conflict between competing cultural virtues. YMMV.

Friday (Veterans' Day) Open thread

Meaning that we have a thread open to all topics, and that it's happening on Veterans' Day.

Rise of the Center

David Ignatius at the Washington Post comes up with the same interpretation of this week's elections as James Ridgeway did.

Rise of the Center
Voters Are Choosing Performance Over Rhetoric

With Tuesday's elections, you could sense a small shift in the polarities that have been tugging Republicans and Democrats toward their bases. All of a sudden the center doesn't look quite so lonely or inhospitable. In fact, it may be regaining its status as the commanding heights of American politics.

I think it's a lot of mileage to get from a few somewhat predictable off-year elections, but here's hoping he's right.

Sen. Feingold, 2008 contender?

The New Republic offers a profile of Sen. Russ Feingold, painting him as an increasingly plausible Democratic nominee whose surname does not begin with the letter "C". The profile suggests that his anti-war credentials may do enough to get him past questions of his "quirky" record.

God As Computer Game Designer?

Recent discussions about evolution have led to me to realize that, in fact, there is a role for God that contemporary observation and theory don't rule out (note: full disclosure - I'm an atheist). So, why do many religious people find evolution troublesome? Well, it provides an explanation of how the world works, including many complex and awe-inspiring phenomena, without God having a direct hand. Instead, it's billions of years of randomness and coincidence. Einstein felt the same way about quantum theory - "God does not play dice," he famously said.

Well, IMHO, the evidence is in that He does play. And why not? He's a busy man. Would it really make sense for Him to personally micromanage how all the cockroach varieties came out?

Well, as it turns out, we mere humans are already throwing the dice mechanically in created worlds. That's why I'm so comfortable with this - I grew up, first rolling lots of dice in role playing games (little worlds, note), then happily letting the computer roll the dice for me in those little worlds. Quantum mechanics presented problems for me as well as Einstein, but mine weren't about deep philosophy - I just couldn't do the math.

But for those little created random worlds to exist, somebody has to decide what the ground rules will be. At what spots in a game are dice rolled? What are the possible results, and how likely is each result? What kind of bonuses and penalties do you put on each die roll? Do you have created things that are just random? How are they created? Is the result interesting?

Well, these same questions come into play in evolution and quantum mechanics as well. That, then, is how you can believe both in evolution and a God.

And, mind you, developers running contemporary online games change their worlds all the time in response to trouble and to make things more interesting. BUT they never personally roll the dice.

Voice Touts Centrist Democrats

I'm surprised to see this coming from the Village Voice's James Ridgeway:
Centrist Democrats Notch Big Win

If there are any real winners in yesterday's elections, they're the center-right Democrats gathered around the Democratic Leadership Council. Their key victory was in the Virginia governor's race, where Timothy Kaine easily beat the Republican Jerry W. Kilgore 52-46 percent.

Perhaps opportunity will dampen the voices which want the Democrats to pursue a highly partisan strategy, emulating the success of Karl Rove in 2004, but which seems less of a success in 2005.

Happy Birthday to You!

The United States Marine Corps, that is. Happy 230th!

(OK, I'm jumping the gun a touch, but it may be a full day tomorrow.)

Our Man In Grenoble

Centrist Jack Grant lives in France now, and has an important post about the rioting there. There are some things in it that I don't quite agree with, but I have two J School assignments due tomorrow, so I can't write what I would like to right now.

Read it and comment.

@sses needing kicking...

What was it you guys were saying the other day about kicking out the idiot school board and replacing it with a new idiot school board?

Pennsylvania voters oust school board

Kansas school board redefines science

Boy we haven't had so much fun since Indiana tried to round pi off to 3. Sorry to pick on Kansas, Tully. Nothing personal. I always liked you. :-)

Arnold's Good Night?

Governor Schwarzenegger's reform agenda tanked in California last night. For all of you east coasters who don't know what I am talking about, we here on the west coast have an asinine system where special interest groups can write initiatives and submit them to voters who can choose, or not, to pass them into law. The Governor supported four initiatives that would have "reformed" teacher tenure, paycheck protection for union members, legislative redistricting, and the state budget process... All four of them failed, and I would argue that is a good thing if you are a centrist supporter of the Governator. Here is why:

This will force Arnold to retool almost a year before the next election, and unlike the Republican in the White House, he will have the brains to do it and has already started. His Chief of Staff is out, and Boi from Troy reports that former Los Angeles Democrat Assemblyman Bob Hertzberg is a candidate... This is a good sign.

We have seen two Arnold's, the centrist who swept into office, and the typical Republican who took the advice of his consultants, opposed a law that would legalize gay marriage, and refused to compromise with the legislature while at the same time referring to teachers and nurses as "girlie men." Arnold the Conservative Republican has failed in enough time for Arnold the Centrist to re-emerge.

If the Democratic Party had any brains they would seize the day by proposing a positive agenda and stop Arnold from gaining any sort of traction. They have done in California what they have been best at for a while, which is to say "no," and now they will have to come up with some ideas of their own. If national trends are any indication, they will be unable to act without first sticking their finger in the air and seeing which way the wind blows, which will give Arnold plenty of opportunity to convince voters he is the independent moderate they voted for.

The only questions for the Governor is will the "scorched earth, free lunch crowd" within the base of his own party abandon him if he goes home to the center? I think this is a fair argument in some places, but not in California where their options are limited; on the other hand, it isn't as if we haven't seen this crowd act monumentally stupid in the past... One can only wait and see.

Cross-posted at West Sound in the Center.

A centrist Christian response to Max

Last week Max posted regarding religious discourse in politics. I respond here because I was away from my desk last week and because Max's thread has unfortunately been spammed. Christians and Evangelicals in America are far more diverse and complex than Max's post would suggest. Yes, Pastors like James Dobson and now Jim Wallis get far more press. But like so many other political "non-politicians" they seem to get press because of their extreme (on the political spectrum) views (Dobson on the Right, Wallis on the Left). It seems that if the press is going to get a spokeperson for the "Christians", it has to get one with clear, if not stereotypic views.

Max brings up some good points regarding the full biblical message of Christian responsibilities in our society at large. And yes care for the poor IS a consistent message in the Old and New Testament. I would, however, suggest a better representative of where evangelicals are might be Rick Warren of California. Here's an article from that right wing journal the Boston Globe concerning Rick Warren. A few choice selections:

A bear-like man who dresses in untucked Hawaiian shirts, Warren, 51, has managed to marry a simple message -- ''It's not about you" -- with an integrated mesh of mass media that is growing his audience exponentially. As American political life has shifted toward the right, Warren has assumed a place in the center of the movement, one of a new generation of leaders who have eclipsed and distanced themselves from controversy-dogged televangelists such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell

furthermore

Although Warren is not an overtly political figure, his message is a conservative one on issues such as abortion, and his followers voted in lopsided numbers for President Bush. In this sense, Warren and similar evangelical ministers are a key aspect of the religious-conservative political ascendancy. While activist leaders such as James C. Dobson of Focus on the Family and Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention work more directly on political causes, Warren helps expand and prepare the spiritual ground that is the bedrock of the movement. Warren ''really isn't a political figure to any significant degree, but he's a cultural figure, a fresh and contemporary face to evangelism," said John Green, a University of Akron professor who specializes in the impact of religion on American politics.

Warren's book, The Purpose Driven Life while openly evangelical in tone, spends little, if any time, in the pursuit of political ends. It was a national #1 best seller. (Far better than anything Mr. Dobson has done recently.) Since then Warren has written about the church's responsibility to serve its community. In the same vein, Warren's church has put out great efforts to support Rwanda in Africa and the victims of Katrina

Don't worry, I'm not here to push any of his products and I appreciate there may be those who find the politics of his followers a bit too conservative. I only want to point out that if you want a representation of how Christians see things in America, focusing on what politicians and/or the self-chosen spokespersons for Christianity (i.e. Dobson) say might be a bad place to start.

Paris, Burning: Part Deux

Joel Kotkin of the New America Foundation weighs in on the origins of the problems in France, and it's a refreshing centrist break from the conventional wisdoms of the right and left.

Why Immigrants Don't Riot Here
France's rigid economic system sustains privilege and inspires resentment

The contrast with America's immigrants, including those from developing countries, could not be more dramatic, both in geographic and economic terms. The U.S. still faces great problems with a portion of blacks and American Indians. But for the most part immigrants, white and nonwhite, have been making considerable progress. Particularly telling, immigrant business ownership has been surging far faster than among native-born Americans. Ironically, some of the highest rates for ethnic entrepreneurship in the U.S. belong to Muslim immigrants, along with Russians, Indians, Israelis and Koreans.

Perhaps nothing confirms immigrant upward mobility more than the fact that the majority have joined the white middle class in the suburbs--a geography properly associated here mostly with upward mobility. These newcomers and their businesses have carved out a powerful presence in suburban areas that now count among the nation's most diverse regions.

UPDATE: Ralph Peters sings the same song, but louder and with more alarmism.

Gov. Daniels: One Year of Bungled Chances and Broken Promises

It appears Indiana's Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels is still blaming the state's Democratic governors for his inability to change, well, anything for the better during his first year. Daniels, it seems, is so desperate to place blame on anyone but himself that he is even attacking Democrats that have not held office for almost three decades:

"I never expected anything else. I don't know why anybody would," said Daniels, who had blasted his predecessor, Democrat Joe Kernan, for not doing enough as governor or lieutenant governor to boost Indiana's economy.

Daniels' doom-and-gloom outlook for the state of Indiana comes as he just concludes his first year in office, a year marked with high campaign pledges to make government more efficient, root out any corruption and get Indiana back on track. As the clock ticks up to one year, Daniels has achieved none of those things, and seems to be modifying his outlook from "Help is Here" to "Don't expect much."

It also seems that Gov. Daniels doesn't understand what it's like to live on a low income, judging by his shock that you can't raise a family, buy groceries and send kids to college on $9 an hour. Daniels, ever the resident Aristocrat of the Hoosier State, considers $9 an hour a "step up" for most Hoosiers:

"Of course you feel terrible about anybody who experiences a significant (pay) reduction. And I'm not defending it," he said. "But $9 an hour, plus a huge benefit package, is not a job we should turn our nose up at in Indiana. We've got a lot of folks for whom that would be a very acceptable job, or a step up."

Speaking of money, some remember that President Bush urged fuel conservation in the face of higher oil prices. Well, apparently that didn't resonate with Gov. Daniels, who started off an energy conservaton drive by filling up his massive R.V. and hitting the road. Apparently, the best way to talk about preserving gas and energy is to take the ol' R.V. out for a spin around the state and campaign at the pumps.

Let's hope Gov. Daniels' next year is as productive as the first. It'll be easier to knock him out that way.

Brought to you by The Centrist Donkey

Bush: WE Do Not Torture

Bush: We Do Not Torture

President Bush vigorously defended U.S. interrogation practices in the war on terror Monday and lobbied against a congressional drive to outlaw torture.

"There's an enemy that lurks and plots and plans and wants to hurt America again," Bush said. "So you bet we will aggressively pursue them but we will do so under the law."

He declared, "We do not torture."

Yes, we not torture. But do we hand people over to others who do it for us? George? Dick? Bueller?

Seems to me Bush is swimming against the tide here, and he's losing support on his flanks pretty quickly. I do not grow wheat. But I tacitly condone it by buying and eating bread. The question is not whether we torture, the question is whether there is blood on our hands. Does America hoe to higher standards, or only when they are just easy words? That's MY test. YMMV.

Cool Maps!

I just came across Common Census

The CommonCensus Map Project is redrawing the map of the United States based on your voting, to reveal the boundaries people themselves feel, as opposed to the state and county boundaries drawn by politicians. It shows how the country is divided into 'spheres of influence' between different cities at the national, regional, and local levels.

It asks for your input to help create its maps. Here is the national map that's been produced so far. Here is the map of football franchise allegiances.

The Moderate Revolution

Speculation has already begun over who will seek their party's nomination for the 2008 presidential race. With John Kerry seemingly up for another round for the Democrats and a wide field for the Republicans, there are limitless possibilities. Bo