Happy Coattails

The happiest people from tonight’s debate have to be down-ticket Democrats. John Kerry’s strong performance may not move the needle much in the presidential debate, given Bush’s refusal to be pushed around and his bouts of feisitiness. But if the debate didn’t help Kerry much, it should be enough to finally arrest his catastrophic decline, and that will help other Democrats worried about a Mondale-sized disaster.

The Debater and the Chief

If you had any doubt that John Kerry is a tough, aggressive debater – in fact, a man who’s at his best in debate – tonight should have removed any doubt. Kerry put in a fine point-scoring performance, getting off his shots at President Bush, avoiding his trademark rambling and getting away, actually, with quite a lot of statements that the president should have called him on, from fairy tales about buying body armor on the internet to the fundamental illusion that Kerry can change the opinions of allies who haven’t helped out in Iraq. Bush, partly because he’s not a great debater and partly because he carries the burden of his office (can’t scorn the French if you might someday have to work with them), was unable to dismember the fundamental falsehood at the heart of Kerry’s “plan” for Iraq.
But Bush also did what was probably necessary: he stood on the podium as Leader of the Free World. He made clear over and over the importance of being consistent, not sending “mixed messages.” Yes, like Kerry, he had a few points he repeated endlessly, but he had to.
Bush’s strongest performances were on two points: calling Kerry on his stream of insults aimed at the allies who HAVE helped us in Iraq, and making Kerry look like an idiot on North Korea, where Kerry was left sputtering about the need to have bilateral rather than multilateral talks without giving any reason other than that’s not what Bush is doing.
Bottom line: Kerry is a better debater, and it showed. He’s faster on his feet. But when Bush sets his feet, he doesn’t budge. The voters will decide which is a more important qualification to lead in wartime.
UPDATES START HERE:
Bush talked a lot about freedom, liberty. Kerry hardly did, except in Russia, but he did bring more emphasis to winning than in the past.
I hope this debate doesn’t change much in the election; I think it may not. Bush started badly but held his ground after that, while Kerry was consistent throughout.
This summarizes one exchange: Kerry: “He’s a liar.” Bush: “I don’t take that personally.”
I liked how Bush repeatedly stressed staying on the offensive.
It was tacky how Kerry said “the president invaded Iraq.” No, the United States and its allies did.
Kerry said Bush didn’t work with our allies like Reagan did. Reagan, rolling over in his grave: “oh, now you support my foreign policy.”
People who ripped Zell can shut up after Kerry called our troops “occupiers”.
Kerry dodged Jim Lehrer rolling out his “last man to die for a mistake” line after Kerry called the war a “mistake”
Bush’s turning point was when he called Kerry’s attack on Bush for turning own UN help “totally absurd.” Also, Kerry stepped in it when he started talking about yet another UN resolution and when he used the phrase “passes the global test” for preemptive action, and when he griped about us developing bunker-busting nukes to take on North Korea. Ill give Reagan the last word: “now that’s the Kerry I remember.”

Prior=Money

Mark Prior came up huge today, with 16 K and only 3 hits and a walk allowed in going 9 innings against the Reds, with the three main wild card contenders now tied in the loss column. Unfortunately for the Cubbies, one hit was an Austin Kearns homer that tied the game 1-1 in the 7th. Still tied in the 10th at last check, with Ryan Dempster in a 2-on 2-out jam.
UPDATE: Still tied after 11.
UPDATE: Bottom 12, 2-1 Reds after Valentin doubled in Dunn, man on first, Nomar up, 1 out.
UPDATE: Reds win.
UPDATE: A’s win, Angels lose to Rangers; all tied up again in the AL West. Texas is 3 back with 3 to play, but with the A’s and Angels facing off for the last three games there’s no way for them to tie it up. Barring a big Dodger collapse against the Giants, the only races left are the AL West and the NL Wild Card.

Quick Prediction

Lots of interesting issues to address for tonight’s debate, but I’ll just make a prediction on one. A key issue of tone for Kerry is whether to try to look presidential and be likeable, and thus temper his attacks on Bush in favor of trying to lay out his own vision, or whether to play to his natural strength as a debater – the strength that forged his reputation as a “good closer” – and go mercilessly on the attack, questioning Bush’s truthfulness and trying to bait Bush.
My prediction: the latter. Several reasons: (1) Bob Dole, who shares some of Kerry’s strengths and weaknesses as a presidential candidate, tried the former approach in 1996, to no effect (as Kerry’s Clinton-era staffers will recall); (2) Kerry has been on the attack in recent speeches, to say nothing of his spokespeople; (3) Kerry’s base wants it (to the point where some people have been pining for Howard Beale Dean lately), and may need to hear some of the old 1971 anti-war passion from Kerry to perk up morale and get out the down-ticket vote.
I’m not saying this is necessarily the wisest strategy. But it will feel good, and stands a chance of breaking the race’s momentum (or, alternatively, burying Kerry entirely). I predict that Kerry decides that he’s been too cautious for too long, throws caution to the wind, and turns his rhetorical boat into the fire, coming out swinging as the man Kerry obviously believes he really is.
Stay tuned. The fireworks could be fun to watch.

Programming Note

In theory, the next week and a half should be a booming time for this blog – my readership is way, way up, and we’re simultaneously headed into the presidential debates, the end of the pennant races, and the beginning of the postseason. In something of an ironic repeat of October 2000, however, I am gearing up for trial (actually a securities arbitration), which is scheduled to cover most of next week. I’ll keep posting here to the extent possible, but things may be slower than usual until we get through October 8.

“[S]tats Nazis”

I noted a few years ago the similarity between (1) the battles between conservatives, particularly bloggers, and the mainstream political media and (2) the battles between statistical analysts of baseball and the mainstream baseball media. Peter Gammons has given us yet another example of this attitude:

Teammate Dave Roberts says Orlando Cabrera is one of those players who is not particularly good playing on bad teams where the only things that count are sabermetrics, but is much better playing for a good team where little things can make the difference between winning and losing.
Cabrera is a dashing, 78 rpm defender who sometimes almost plays too fast. But he gives himself up when necessary, pounds high fastballs and clearly loves playing on a Red Sox team that is in contention and sold out every game all season. . . Roberts is right about Cabrera, and the same thing can be said about Derek Jeter — who the stats Nazis will insist from their garages isn’t an exceptional shortstop — and Brian Roberts. On the other hand, there are some star-type players that are not as good on a pennant contender.


“Stats Nazis in their garages” does have about the same ring as “a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas.” (For the record, I blog in the basement, not the living room or the garage). Ironically, of course, this comes just a little over two weeks after Gammons wrote a warm endorsement of the very types of new statistical analysis of defensive stats that have long supported the case against Jeter’s defense and that led the Red Sox to trade for Cabrera. In fact, in that column, Gammons cited Cabrera as a prime example of the value of such stats. As I’ve noted repeatedly, we have yet another example of how Gammons gives vent to the views of different sources with diametrically opposite world views.

Lowered Expectations

Karl Rove must dream, in the says leading up to the first debate, of stories like this:

New York’s state Democratic Party chairman derided President Bush on Monday as “simple” and “that simplistic gentleman up there in the White House with his one- and two-syllable answers.”


And remind me why someone who gets snookered this badly by the mere threat to pull out of one debate should be trusted to negotiate with Iranian mullahs and crazy Kim.
Then again, Dales warns that the history of pre-debate polls and their power to predict the general election result doesn’t necessarily support the idea that the debates are as influential as everyone thinks.

The “Q” Word

A big controversy erupted back in April when Ted Kennedy called Iraq “George Bush’s Vietnam;” commentators on the right like Instapundit and Jonah Goldberg accused Kennedy of preaching defeatism, while people on the left, like Mark Kleiman and Matt Yglesias, tried to argue that Kennedy hadn’t really meant an unwinnable quagmire; Kleiman eventually relented when Eugene Volokh pointed to Kennedy using the “q” word:

Eugene Volokh finds a news account of a Senate debate today in which Kennedy explicitly likens the Iraq situation to Vietnam, describing both as “quagmires.” Unlike Kennedy’s Brookings speech, this is unambiguously defeatist language. I don’t know whether it’s accurate analysis . . . but, accurate or not, it’s fair to say that having it used on the Senate floor is likely to make it harder to convince, e.g., Ali al-Sistani to come down on our side rather than Sadr’s side.


Well. Now, we have John Kerry running a campaign commercial criticizing ads run by Bush “[i]n the face of the Iraq quagmire . . .” Defeatism has become the major theme of the Kerry campaign in the closing weeks, to the point where he would run an ad just assuming that the war in Iraq is a “quagmire.”
Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Beating the House

Studes notes that the Yankees are likely to finish around ten games better than the record that would be projected, via Bill James’ Pythagorean theory, from their runs scored and allowed. He notes the teams qualifying for postseason play since 1900 that have exceeded their projections by the most: 1970 Reds (11 games), 1961 Reds (10), 1997 Giants (10), 1931 Athletics (9), 1930 Athletics (8), 2002 Twins (8).
See a pattern? How about their postseason records? 1970 Reds (4-4), 1961 Reds (1-4), 1997 Giants (0-3), 1931 Athletics (3-4), 1930 Athletics (4-2), 2002 Twins (1-4). Total: 13-21, one World Championship (the 1930 A’s, who played a Cardinals team with a nearly identical Pythagorean record).

From My Blog To Jonathan Alter’s Ear

Back on July 28, at the height of enthusiasm for the Kerry campaign, I noted this, from Josh Marshall’s site, about a conversation Marshall had with Michael Moore at the Democratic convention:

I ask him what he makes of all of this. No attacks on the president. Not even any mention of the man’s name. . . .
[A]s he breezes by he says, “Oh, Really? I liked it. You don’t even have to say it. Everyone knows how bad it is.”
Think what you will about Michael Moore or evening one of the convention, I think that sums up precisely what this event is all about and the dynamic on which it’s operating. I’ve seen a slew of articles today arguing that the Democrats must energize their ‘base’ while not alienating the swing voters John Kerry needs to clinb from the mid-40s past 50%.
But this strikes me as a tired conventional wisdom that has little to do with what’s actually happening here. . . .
Among Democrats, the rejection of this president is so total, exists on so many different levels, and is so fused into their understanding of all the major issues facing the country, that it doesn’t even need to be explicitly evoked. . . . the primetime speeches were actually brimming with barbs, and rather jagged ones at that. They were just woven into the fabric of the speeches, fused into rough-sketched discussions of policy, or paeans to Kerry.
Perhaps it’s a touchy analogy, but like voters who understood the code-words Republicans once (and often still do) used to flag hot-button racial issues they dared not voice openly, these Democrats could hear the most scathing attacks on President Bush rattling through the speeches they heard tonight.


My reaction:

Josh Marshall and Micheal Moore hit the nail on the head with regard to how the Democrats really feel about why this convention has been so vague and unspecific in its attacks on President Bush, to the point where I hardly think the name “Dick Cheney” or familiar hobby-horses like “Halliburton” or “Enron” or “Weapons of Mass Destruction” have been mentioned: they think it’s so self-evident that Bush is a disaster that they don’t even believe it’s necessary to explain why. I’m not sure that’s a winning approach, but I do think Marshall and Moore have put their fingers on what their side is thinking.


As it turns out, this is rather precisely the problem: Kerry didn’t think the American people needed any persuading. Thank you, big media/lefty pundit coccoon. Now, months later, Jonathan Alter has noticed the problem:

Shrum’s grand plan wasn’t complicated. He figured that with most voters believing the country is on the “wrong track,” all that Kerry had to do was establish his credibility as a potential commander in chief and he would win�hence the “bio” convention. No need to respond directly to Bush ads sliming him for wanting to cut the same weapons systems that Bush’s father cut. No need to explain how the Iraq war had been botched. No need to discredit Bush at all, because he was already thoroughly discredited.
Oh, well. The Shrum strategy was the product of short-term thinking (the assumption that Bush’s unpopularity in the period of the Abu Ghraib Prison scandal would last until fall) and was reinforced by the sealed and often smug world of Democratic politics, where it was taken for granted that Bush was bad, bad, bad, and any reasonable person already knew why. Shrum correctly realized that a Michael Moore-style sledgehammer would do little to sway undecided voters who don’t loathe Bush. But Shrum wrongly extrapolated from that point that Kerry had no need to indict Bush in easy-to-remember phrases that would stick. He once told me as much, and that name-calling wouldn’t work in post-9/11 presidential politics.
That was wishful thinking.


Of course, it’s a bit late now to fix the problem. But turning to the meta-issue, amazingly, this isn’t the first time Alter has followed one of my trains of thought. On September 9, I wrote:

Continue reading From My Blog To Jonathan Alter’s Ear

Follow The Money

Austin Bay, just back from Iraq, had an important observation about a key driving force in the insurgency there:

[Before the war,] no one knew the Baath hardcore had so much money. . . . Saddam stole billions. How much of the trove remains? I don’t think the Swiss, Persian Gulf and Asian bankers who helped him stash it know. Recall the crisp $600 million U.S. soldiers found in a building in Baghdad. No doubt stockpiles of Baathist cash remain hidden in Iraq and elsewhere in the region.
The Baghdad rumor mill says Baath warlords pay bombers anywhere from $1,000 to $3,000 per attack, so even a million dollars can buy a lot of bang. It also buys TV time. The thousands of trucks that successfully deliver goods in Iraq don’t make CNN. The one that the mercenary bomber blew to bits does.
It’s a strategic weakness every PR operative knows: TV demands drama. TV magnifies the thug’s bomb.


(Link via Instapundit). This is a huge point. It’s also why I can’t understand why we’re not turning some serious screws to get Oil-for-“Food” documents out of the UN’s grubby hands – the faster we find the money, the faster we can strangle the insurgency. (Unless we already have that stuff behind the scenes and are not making a big public stink so it’s not widely known we have it, or unless the trail’s gone cold enough that it’s no longer urgent)
See here for more on how the Oil-for-“Food” money may have been used to fund al Qaeda as well, despite the conventional wisdom that Saddam would never have anything to do with terrorists. (Hat tip: CQ)
Meanwhile, Ollie North, also back from Iraq, offers his own perspective; you may not like North, but he has two advantages that many reporters don’t: he’s a combat veteran himself, and he actually went back to re-embed in some of the hot zones to see what was going on. He makes an important point about why, even if it stretches the definition of “terrorist” to cover people attacking foreign troops in their own native land, they can hardly be described as anything but:

[T]his is no “guerrilla insurgency.” By definition, “guerrillas” or “insurgents” represent an organized political alternative to an established regime. Radical Sunni and Shi’ite clerics like Muqtada al-Sadr, who tortured and killed 200 men, women and children and buried them in a mass grave in Najaf, don’t promise to make things better for the Iraqi people. Nor do the remaining Ba’ath Party warlords or foreign extremists like Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. These men inciting gunfights in Iraq aren’t “insurgents” � they are anarchists. They offer no unified “platform” other than “jihad.” When not shooting at coalition or Iraqi security forces, they are trying to kill each other. Dangerous? Yes. A “guerrilla army”? No.


I’m not sure I agree with regard to al-Sadr, who clearly has an endgame in mind that results with him gaining some form of political power. But many of the Sunni insurgents, Zarqawi included, fit this description to a T.

When It Rains . . .

Traffic is usually way down on a Sunday, but I’ve had a gigantic traffic day, as Little Green Footballs and Instapundit link to my stroll through Josh Marshall’s archives, in both cases without me having to do anything to publicize the link. Very gratifying. Once again: for anyone coming here for the first time, check out the “greatest hits” posts and scroll down to my sidebar of baseball columns from 2000-2003, if you want a sample of what I do here.

The Microbial Theory

Let’s consider exactly how bad things look right now for John Kerry in the Electoral College, by looking over RealClearPolitics’ state-by-state battleground poll averages. Bush, of course, starts with a historical advantage: he needs 269 electors to tie, 270 to win, and if he holds the 2000 “red states,” he gets 278. On the RCP scoreboard, Bush gets 291 if you count the states where his average margin is at least 3 points over Kerry.
With Ohio drifting away from Kerry and Wisconsin looking firmly planted in the Bush camp, Kerry’s hopes are now totally dependent upon wresting Florida from Bush, while holding on to big battlegrounds like Pennsylvania (Kerry by 1.7), Minnesota (tied), Oregon (Kerry +0.7), and New Jersey (Kerry +1.4) (Michigan, at Kerry +5 now looks fairly safe for Kerry barring another big shift in the dynamics of the race).
But, leaving aside the issue of Maine and possibly Colorado splitting their electoral votes, consider this outcome – even if Florida gets away from Bush, he could still win with the following states:

Continue reading The Microbial Theory

Links 9/26/04

*Go read Captain Ed, and keep scrolling. There’s just so much good stuff there I can’t begin to link to it all.
*I’ve added Let’s Fly Under The Bridge to the blogroll for Roland Patrick’s unique combination of exhaustive examination of the “Bush AWOL” nonsense (with the benefit of knowledge derived from his own military experience) and his longstanding crusade to mock Brad DeLong. In this installment, he carves up the US News and World Report for misunderstanding Bush’s TANG payroll records and service requirements. (Hat tip to the redesigned QandO – update your blogrolls! – for linking to Patrick).
*Geraghty notes more examples of Kerry’s chronic indecisiveness, this time with quotes from exasperated party loyalist and Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell.
*Godwin’s Law alert from Josh Marshall: “Can we re-check the sprinkler system in the Reichstag?”
*Drezner’s got some great stuff on life in the campaign press corps bubble.
*The spate of retractions on stories harmful to Kerry on Friday seems like a sign of what the ex-Clinton guys like McCurry, Lockhart, Carville and Begala are good at – jumping all over the media to get their side of the story out or, in these two cases, to get errors fixed before they spread too far. Just because media bias, sloppiness and laziness so often tilts against Republicans, we shouldn’t forget that Democrats get burned at times as well, and a Democratic candidate needs people to push back at the media.
By the way, I thought at the time that people might be misreading the Burkett paraphrase that later got retracted. Here’s the original:

During a single phone conversation with Lockhart, Burkett said he suggested a “couple of concepts on what I thought [Kerry] had to do” to beat Bush. In return, he said, Lockhart tried to “convince me as to why I should give them the documents.”

Some people read this as saying that Lockhart wanted Burkett to give the documents to the Democrats, but it always looked to me like he was saying Lockhart told him to give the documents to CBS. This is just bad writing, which leaves the reader in doubt as to critical facts (as Daffy Duck would say, “Pronoun Trouble!”). Anyway, the later retraction clarified that Burkett had told the reporter that CBS wanted the documents – and if that’s what he really said, the reporter just goofed terribly.
*As long as John Kerry is in public life – at least as long as he fails to apologize for or retract his statements in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War – stories like this one will just keep coming (hat tip to Allah).
*And another point, albeit not from what you would call an independent source, on Bush’s entry into the TANG, for those of you not sick to death of this:

Continue reading Links 9/26/04

Lost Tribe

Wowsers. The Weekly Standard’s Joseph Bottum, fresh from his denunciations of Charles Ogletree, now charges no less a figure than Laurence Tribe with plaigarism over the incessant repetition of identical or similar phrases from Henry J. Abraham’s 1974 book Justices and Presidents in Tribe’s 1985 book God Save This Honorable Court – a popular work, with no footnotes, which Bottum suggests was rushed into print to provide intellectual ammunition to otherwise unarmed Senate Democrats bracing for attacks on Reagan appointees to the Supreme Court (an effort that bore fruit in the Bork hearings in 1987). Go read Bottum’s whole article and judge for yourself.
I actually worked for Tribe briefly my third year of law school, as part of an army of research assistants who summarized Supreme Court cases – every Supreme Court case for several recent years, between us – for a revision of Tribe’s American Constitutional Law treatise. Tribe isn’t the kind of guy to plaigarise out of a lack of ability to do independent work; as Bottum suggests, the trap for people like Tribe is more the temptation to be inhumanly prolific.

Rampaging Bears

Stat of the day: the Cubs are batting .272/.480/.327 since the All-Star Break. Of course, a .480 team slugging percentage for a full season would be most impressive by historical standards. For the starting lineup, the numbers are even more impressive:

PLAYER G AB H 2B 3B HR R RBI BB AVG SLG OBP
Michael Barrett 53 177 56 16 3 6 25 21 12 .316 .542 .361
Derrek Lee 65 252 68 19 0 10 44 47 25 .270 .536 .338
Mark Grudzielanek 55 174 54 10 1 4 21 16 8 .310 .448 .342
Nomar Garciaparra 33 127 38 10 0 4 21 16 9 .299 .472 .353
Aramis Ramirez 56 201 62 9 0 19 35 44 18 .308 .637 .363
Sammy Sosa 61 238 56 7 0 17 33 37 18 .235 .479 .295
Corey Patterson 63 264 74 17 0 13 43 33 16 .280 .492 .329
Moises Alou 63 230 70 17 2 18 48 49 34 .304 .630 .388
Starting 8 65 1663 478 96 6 100 270 263 140 .287 .533 .343

Once again, the Cubs have a team that’s long on home runs and short on patience. But when you’ve got this kind of wall-to-wall power, it hardly matters. While Mark Prior, Kerry Wood and Matt Clement have struggled, it’s been the less-vaunted Cubbie offense – even adjusting for the fact that it’s been a good hitters’ year at Wrigley – that’s carried the load as the Cubs stay in the wild-card hunt down the stretch run. And while Nomar and Sammy may be the biggest names here, they haven’t been particularly close to the biggest bats, as Moises Alou, Aramis Ramirez and the long-awaited breakout of Michael Barrett have made a much bigger impact.

Quick Links 9/23/04

*Ramesh Ponuru notes the Kerry campaign’s misuse of a study whose author contends that it did not, as the Kerry folks claim, show that President Bush’s Social Security reform plans would lead to massive benefit cuts.
What else is new?
*It’s official: the Kerry campaign is raising the white flag in Arizona, Arkansas, Louisiana and Missouri, all once thought of as potential swing states. Kerry has pulled any plans for running additional ads in those states.
*Jon Stewart last night, on Rathergate: “To see fake journalism taking off like this is very refreshing.”
*Progress in winning over African-American voters is, like the Yeti, a durable yet mythical figure in Republican circles. But hope springs eternal. Red State has a chart (the second one, not the first, which is a sample of 40 voters) that seems to show President Bush doubling or tripling his support among black voters in several states compared to 2000, mainly in the South. I’m not sure if this is reliable stuff, but if it is, I’d bet that military families are heavily represented among those willing to give Bush a hearing.
*Captain Ed’s readers keep digging up new documents at the Navy Archives regarding Kerry’s tour in Vietnam. This one relates to David Alston, who spoke persuasively at the Democratic Convention but has tended to tell stories about engagements where he and Kerry did not serve together.
*Wizbang sees Kerry throwing the Swift Boat Veterans into the briar patch.
*Try this one on:

The Commission on Presidential Debates told the Bush and Kerry campaigns Tuesday that it could not accede to their unusual request that it sign by Wednesday their 32-page agreement detailing parameters for the debates.
First of all, the commission said, it has to determine which candidates have enough support in the polls to qualify for the debates, which it does not plan to do until Friday.


They need a poll to determine if Kerry still has enough support to be included in a debate? 😉
*What is Kerry hiding? Quite a lot of things major candidates usually disclose, including medical records, tax and financial records, and military records. (via QandO). The press usually doesn’t tolerate this – they didn’t let go with Bill Simon’s tax returns in 2002 or Jack Ryan’s divorce records this spring (in each case, inflicting huge damage on the candidate), and we saw in the case of Paul Tsongas why the medical records of a candidate – especially a cancer survivor – can be a significant omission. Yet the media has given Kerry a free pass on stuff that he would have to disclose if he was running for Senator or Governor.

Singles Record

ESPN and the Associated Press botched this one on Friday:

Ichiro Suzuki broke the major league single-season record with his 199th single in the seventh inning of the Seattle Mariners’ game against the Oakland Athletics on Friday night.
With a hit in the seventh inning for his second single of the game, Suzuki bettered the mark of 198 singles set by Lloyd Waner of Pittsburgh in 1927.


Of course, as I noted in a column about Ichiro three years ago, the major league record at the time was 206 set by Wee Willie Keeler in 1898, and the AL record was 185 by Wade Boggs in 1985. Ichiro broke that AL record in 2001, extending it to 192, and has now broken Keeler’s record as well, with 211 singles through last night. But a little halfway competent research would have indicated the right record.

Flip, Flop & Fly

Tracking all the Kerry flip-flops on Iraq is a hopeless endeavor, but here is a choice one. Kerry’s speech on Monday:

The President claims [Iraq] is the centerpiece of his war on terror. In fact, Iraq was a profound diversion from that war . . .
Secretary of State Powell admits that Iraq was not a magnet for international terrorists before the war. Now it is, and they are operating against our troops. Iraq is becoming a sanctuary for a new generation of terrorists who someday could hit the United States.


So, what did Kerry say when he voted on the Iraq war resolution?

It would be naive to the point of grave danger not to believe that, left to his own devices, Saddam Hussein will provoke, misjudge, or stumble into a future, more dangerous confrontation with the civilized world. He has as much as promised it. . .
A brutal, oppressive dictator, guilty of personally murdering and condoning murder and torture, grotesque violence against women, execution of political opponents, a war criminal who used chemical weapons against another nation and, of course, as we know, against his own people, the Kurds. He has diverted funds from the Oil-for-Food program, intended by the international community to go to his own people. He has supported and harbored terrorist groups, particularly radical Palestinian groups such as Abu Nidal, and he has given money to families of suicide murderers in Israel.


Man, this is just too easy sometimes. I also found this amusing:

The President . . . should give other countries a stake in Iraq�s future by encouraging them to help develop Iraq�s oil resources and by letting them bid on contracts instead of locking them out of the reconstruction process.

[snip]

The President . . . should use more Iraqi contractors and workers, instead of big corporations like Halliburton.


So, after all of Kerry’s bluster about a coalition of “the coerced and the bribed,” be wants to get more people on our side by . . . bribing them. But at least he’s being consistent in calling for outsourcing jobs currently done by U.S. companies and workers, right?

The Expectations Game

A few weeks back I noted the Bush campaign’s strategy to lower expectations for Bush’s performance in debates by creating a debate-about-debates dynamic that made it seem as if the president was afraid of too many debates; I also noted how hard it was for Bush’s detractors to resist the temptation to fall into the trap by mocking Bush on this score.
The good news for Kerry supporters: Matt Yglesias isn’t stupid enough to fall for the trap. The bad news: John Kerry is.
(Stephen Green notes about Kerry: “Man, I’d love to play poker with this guy.” Of course, Kerry is the same guy who has now announced to the world that we should be willing to threaten war when we don’t mean it, so his bluffing skills are as bad as his ability to recognize a bluff – “Gee, John, you put a lot of chips on this hand.” “Yes, I’m bluffing.”).

Road to 300, And Beyond

In early 2002, I took a look at the pitchers who won 300 games and where they stood relative to Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine at the same age, finding that Maddux was ahead of every modern (post-1920) pitcher who had won 300, while Glavine was also well-situated. As the two near the end of their age-38 seasons, let’s update the chart, and add Mike Mussina into the mix:

Pitcher Thru 35 At 36-37 Thru 37 At 38 Thru 38 After
Maddux 257 32 289 *14 303
Carlton 249 36 285 15 300 29
Clemens 233 27 260 20 280 *48
Seaver 245 19 264 9 273 38
Grove 223 34 257 14 271 29
Spahn 203 43 246 21 267 96
Sutton 230 28 258 8 266 58
Glavine 224 27 251 *9 260
Wynn 201 34 235 14 249 51
Perry 198 33 231 15 246 68
Ryan 205 26 231 10 241 83
Mussina *211
Niekro 131 32 163 16 179 139

* – And counting
First of all, ignore Phil Niekro, who’s the outlier here. As you can see, a lot of these guys hit the wall right around 36-37, although the effect is exaggerated by the fact that several of the more recent pitchers were around that age in the 1981 strike season. Maddux remains well-situated to rack up a truly impressive number of career wins without having to have any more great seasons, although perhaps not as well situated as Clemens, who stands two wins from becoming only the second pitcher (Spahn was the last one) since the 1920s to win 330 games.
Glavine is still in the game, but frankly he needs to get out of Queens (which would probably help the Mets as well). As for Mussina, his struggles of late don’t portend well, but he’s ahead of Ryan, Spahn, Wynn, Perry and Niekro at the same age, and with the Yankee offense behind him he should have a few more years of smooth sailing if he gets straightened out.
For comparison, let’s run the chart of the remaining 300-game winners from the 1890-1930 period (the 1880s guys are not even worth comparing):

Pitcher Thru 35 At 36-37 Thru 37 At 38 Thru 38 After
Young 351 54 405 18 423 88
Johnson 354 43 397 15 412 5
Mathewson 373 0 373 0 373 0
Nichols 361 0 361 0 361 0
Alexander 266 34 300 15 315 58
Plank 224 44 288 15 303 23

Alexander, at least by this age (in the mid 1920s), is actually a decent comparison to Maddux. Mathewson retired at age 35, and at 37 was in Europe serving in World War I.

Question of the Day

Stuart Buck:

So this is what supposedly happened:
1) Burkett comes into the possession of documents that, if true, would damage Bush and aid Kerry.
2) Via Max Cleland, the Kerry campaign is notified that Burkett has some highly interesting documents related to Bush.
3) Via Mary Mapes of CBS, Joe Lockhart is notified in particular that Burkett had some “records” that would “move the story forward.”
4) Indeed, Burkett “had agreed to turn over the documents to CBS” only “if the network would arrange a conversation with the Kerry campaign.”
5) Lockhart, a very busy man, then calls Burkett.
6) Despite the fact that Lockhart would have had no reason for calling Burkett in the first place other than the story about National Guard documents, and despite the fact Burkett had already tried to get the documents to the Kerry campaign via Max Cleland, and despite the fact that he had made CBS promise to get him in touch with the Kerry campaign before he would release the documents, both Lockhard and Burkett somehow neglected to talk about the documents.
7) Instead, Burkett merely took the opportunity to tell Lockhart that Kerry needed to talk “more” about his “Vietnam experience,” as if Kerry hadn’t already emphasized that theme, and as if Lockhart had called Burkett merely to hear this sort of generic advice.
Are 6 and 7 believable?


Like I said about Sandy Berger’s-pants-gate: man, Clinton scandals are just the gift that keeps on giving, aren’t they?
Oh, and: could there be a clearer contrast between (1) the media presumption of Bush and RNC involvement in the Swift Boat ads in the absence of any evidence of same and (2) the media presumption that the Kerry folks had nothing to do with this even though key figures in the Kerry and DNC camps were talking to all the major players, including a known crackpot, at the critical junctures? Particularly given that Bush and the RNC have never tried to add the Swift Boat Veterans’ charges to their own litany of attacks on Kerry, while the open attacks on Bush’s Guard service have come in the form of Kerry speeches, Kerry press releases, daily attacks by the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, ad campaigns paid for by the DNC, speeches by Wesley Clark, Tom Harkin and other Democratic candidates and officeholders, to say nothing of veiled references from numerous speakers at the Democratic Convention. It’s not like the Democrats can credibly say that they didn’t ask Burkett about this stuff because they weren’t interested in this issue.
Bill INDC has some good stuff too.
UPDATE: Wizbang has an entertaining trip into the Sixty Minutes wayback machine to visit with the original wacko who started all these anti-Bush “Fortunate Son” stories before committing suicide after his criminal record (for paying someone to commit murder via car bomb) was exposed.
SECOND UPDATE: Michele has a particularly egregious example of where liberal journalists are willing to find coordination.

Web of Connections

Well, we keep digging deeper on the web of connections between the Democrats and the forged documents used in CBS’ hit job on President Bush.
First of all, beyond his statement on CBS Evening News, Dan Rather sat for a longer interview with local reporter Marcia Kramer of WCBS-TV here in NY (Kramer is best known as, among other things, Hillary Clinton’s favorite reporter during the 2000 Senate race, which should tell you something). I didn’t see a transcript, but you can go here and view the video.
Rather seemed genuinely contrite and apologetic, and kept saying there was no excuse, “this is not a day for excuses.” But his factual assertions belied that:
1. He focused entirely on the idea that CBS had to change its story when it determined that Bill Burkett lied to them about the provenance of the documents. Still no admission that there was anything wrong with the documents themselves or that anyone else but CBS’ own diligence led to the discovery.
2. Rather seemed to admit that CBS, or at least Rather, never saw anything purporting to be originals: “I believed in the authenticity of the copies of the documents we had”
3. Rather refuses to accept responsibility for putting the documents on the air over the objections of two of CBS’ experts, and continues to insist either that the experts are lying now or that he personally was misled by his staff at CBS about what the experts were telling them. I haven’t exactly transcribed this – I’m paraphrasing – “I was told that we had four experts who by and large agreed that the documents were not forgeries, probably weren’t fake – two of those came back later and either changed their story or changed what I was and we were told was what they were saying”
4. Additional information on Burkett’s additional source: Burkett told CBS that the documents came from a person (who Rather still won’t identify) who would have had access to the original files and who was out of the country and CBS could not locate them.
But wait, there’s more!

Continue reading Web of Connections

Josh Marshall’s Timeline

Allah and Jeff Goldstein have been wondering about the timeline set out in the Washington Post for how CBS put together the “Sixty Minutes II” story, and what it means in the hunt to identify who was responsible for creating and disseminating forgeries. You’ll want to read their whole analyses. Now, it appears that CBS will point the finger at Bill Burkett, see here and here, a guy about whom Kevin Drum – who interviewed Burkett in February – said

I talked with Burkett at length back in February, and speaking as someone who believes his story about Bush’s files being purged, I still wouldn’t trust him for a second if he suddenly produced a bunch of never-before-seen memos out of nowhere. If he really is CBS’s “unimpeachable source,” they’ve got some very serious problems with their news judgment.


Here’s the basic timeline derived from quotes from the WaPo article, which I’ve excerpted and bullet-pointed:

*In mid-August, Mapes told her bosses that she had finally tracked down a source who claimed to have access to memos written in 1972 and 1973 by the late Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, Bush’s squadron commander in the Texas Air National Guard.
*During the Republican National Convention in New York [August 30-September 2], Rather got a call from Ben Barnes, a onetime Texas lieutenant governor and veteran Democrat who has known the anchor, a former Houston TV reporter, for 30 years. Barnes said he was ready to say before the cameras that he had pulled strings to get Bush a coveted slot in the Texas Guard in 1968. Mapes had long been urging Barnes to tell his story.
*On Friday, Sept. 3, the day after the convention ended, Mapes hit pay dirt. She told Howard her source had given her the documents.
*The next stop was Texas. Rather was in Florida, so CBS chartered a plane to get him to Austin. On Sunday, Sept. 5, he and Mapes interviewed Robert Strong, an administrative assistant in the Texas Guard during Bush’s service there.
*Document analyst Marcel Matley flew from California to New York, and Rather interviewed him on Labor Day, Sept. 6
*On Tuesday, Sept. 7, as Rather sat down in a CBS studio with former Texas lieutenant governor Barnes, the top brass was turning its attention to the explosive story.


The story ran Wednesday, September 8.
So, that’s it? Well, here’s an item quoted by Goldstein that needs to be factored in:

In an Aug. 21 posting [on a Yahoo group for Texas Democrats], Burkett referred to a conversation with former senator Max Cleland (D-Ga.) about the need to counteract Republican tactics: �I asked if they wanted to counterattack or ride this to ground and outlast it, not spending any money. He said counterattack. So I gave them the information to do it with. But none of them have called me back.�
Cleland confirmed that he had a two- or three-minute conversation by cell phone with a Texan named Burkett in mid-August while he was on a car ride. He remembers Burkett saying that he had �valuable� information about Bush, and asking what he should [do] with it. �I told him to contact the [Kerry] campaign,� Cleland said. �You get this information tens of times a day, and you don�t know if it is legit or not.”


Cleland, as we know, was in Texas August 25 to deliver a letter to the president’s ranch in Crawford; on August 21, Cleland was in Wisconsin.
Anyway, that’s all background here. Someone with more time to spend on this can connect these dots, but I’d like to add a few links to the fire:
*On August 22, with no apparent prompting from anything in the news, Josh Marshall, out of the blue, calls for Ben Barnes to come forward:

Now, as fate would have it, Ben Barnes is a Democrat. Was then, is now. And he supports John Kerry.
But he’s never really spoken openly about how he helped Bush hop in front of everyone else or other aspects of the president’s abbreviated military service, about which he is said to know a great deal.
Maybe now would be the time?


By August 27, still well before Barnes was reportedly in touch with Dan Rather, Marshall touts a Kerry campaign video featuring Barnes:

You’ll want to link through to this one — it’s a video clip of Ben Barnes, the former Speaker of the House in Texas, the guy who got President Bush into the Texas Air National Guard.
I’m told the tape is from a recent Kerry rally . . .


[snip; includes Barnes saying, “I got a young man named George W. Bush in the National Guard when I was Lt. Gov. of Texas and I�m not necessarily proud of that. But I did it.”]

Now, I don’t know what Ben Barnes looks like. And I do not independently know the provenance of the tape. But I’ve spoken to two sources who know Barnes. And they tell me that that is Barnes on the tape.
One of those two men is Jim Moore — co-author of Bush’s Brain. Moore told me this afternoon that the clip is from June 8th of this year, at a Kerry rally in Austin. Moore assures me that the tape is legitimate.
I placed a call to Barnes’ office and left a message with one of his assistants; but the request for comment has not yet been returned.


Click through Marshall’s site to see the video. Soon, Marshall was pushing the Barnes-is-talking story; by September 1, six days before Barnes supposedly met with Rather, Marshall reported:

A bit more on Ben Barnes, the guy from Texas who got President Bush into the Guard way-back-when.
Apparently, the attacks on Kerry’s war record just proved too much for him. As we’ve noted previously, for almost a decade now Barnes has gone to great lengths to avoid causing trouble for the president on the Guard matter. And the Bush folks in Texas have made it clear to him during this election cycle that if he spills the beans about the president that they’ll do everything in their power to put him out of business in the state (Barnes is now a lobbyist). And that heat has, I’m told, increased dramatically in recent days.
But apparently those threats haven’t done the trick because he has already taped a lengthy interview slated to appear in the not-too-distant future on a major national news show in which he’ll describe the strings he pulled to keep Bush out of Vietnam and apparently more.
(Between you and me, according to my three sources on this, Barnes told his story to Dan Rather — remember, the Texas connection — for 60 Minutes.)


(Allah noted a similar report in Salon that day). What does it all mean? Not clear yet. But Marshall’s sources were clearly pushing Barnes to come forward and get him to talk to Rather, at precisely the time that Burkett was talking to Max Cleland and was, apparently, involved in getting the forged documents to CBS.
Developing . . .

Sky Captain

I went to see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow this weekend (I wasn’t excited enough about the movie to redesign my blog on that theme, but I was pretty intrigued). Visually, the film was an absolute masterpiece, every bit as compelling as advertised, with the film noir-ish play of light and shadow and the spectacular computer-generated backdrops. One thing that worked extremely well was the fact that the movie opened in familiar settings – the Empire State Building, Radio City – and when that worked, the suspension of disbelief was cemented. The movie’s high points were the spectacular aerial dogfights, especially the chases through the narrow streets of Manhattan. You could fill a film-school paper with all the visual references, notably The Empire Strikes Back (for a Cloud City-style airborne aircraft carrier scene and a duel on a bridge over a seemingly bottomless pit), and an early scene against a large picture window in Manhattan that was lifted directly from Citizen Kane.
The plot and dialogue weren’t anything exceptional, but they held together without much in the way of cringeworthiness, and a plot twist near the end was amusing. If I had a quibble with the movie it was the casting of Jude Law, who was rather a dry action hero, lacking in the charm and flair of a Harrison Ford or Mel Gibson. Law co-produced the film, though, so I gather a different lead would not have been possible.
Anyway, if you like sci-fi/retro adventures in an Indiana Jones-ish vein, this is definitely one to catch on the big screen.

Bonds Rising

A new feature over at Baseball-Reference.com: the site has long had Similarity Scores so you could compare a player’s most comparable players through the same age. Now, at least for batters, you can look over the list of the ten most comparable – and their stats after that age. Here’s the numbers for Barry Bonds from age 36 (in 2001) to 2003, compared to the average from 36 on for his most comparable players through age 35:

PLAYER(S) G AB HR R RBI AVG SLG OBP OPS+
Bonds 426 1269 164 357 337 .345 .808 .542 257
Average 393 1272 66 194 202 .255 .460 .360 125

The list of comparables includes three active players – Jeff Bagwell, Frank Thomas and Rafael Palmeiro – but the numbers are even lower if you remove them. The others’ average numbers are not that bad for old guys, but they give you a sense of how truly unique what Bonds has done is. Lest you think this an unfair comparison, the other seven are all in the Hall of Fame, including Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Frank Robinson and Mel Ott.
All of whom were in increasingly steep decline at Bonds’ age.

Reversion to Form

Looks like my prediction isn’t holding up too well, as the Yankee-Red Sox series reverted to form with the Yanks’ mauling of Derek Lowe and Pedro Martinez, leaving the Sox to pick up a game and a half on the Yankees in their remaining 11 other games even if they sweep next weekend’s series at Fenway. Of course, that’s not impossible (the Sox play 8 games against Baltimore and three against Tampa Bay, while the Yankees have 1 against the Rays, three vs. the Twins and six against the woebegotten Blue Jays), but don’t bet on it.

The Forgery Trap

This hypothetical scenario, which I linked to earlier, suggests (among other things) that the White House, while having no role in their creation, basically entrapped CBS into putting forged documents on the air:

They [CBS] come up with a clever idea: They’ll get a reaction out of the White House. They decide to fax the memos to the White House and ask for a comment. It will place Bush in a terrible bind. After all, Bush could have no way of knowing that copies of the memos still existed or what other memos CBS might have. He’ll have to come out with a mealy-mouthed statement about how it doesn’t matter and he fulfilled his Guard obligation and this is dirty politics. Then CBS can move forward with the broadcast, having Bush’s tacit admission that they are genuine. . . .


[snip]

Karl Rove gets the faxed documents and goes running to Bush with the bad news. Bush: ‘This can’t be right. I never got any orders from Jerry Killian to report for a medical exam.’ Rove: ‘Well Dan Rather is going to be putting these on his 60 Minutes broadcast. He’s got to have people lined up who will vouch for them.’ Bush: ‘Karl, Jerry would never write down anything like this. Somebody’s feeding bulls**t to CBS.’ Rove: ‘Okay, let’s start by calling in the FBI and checking if these memos are real.’
An hour later two high-power experts are pouring over the documents. Within fifteen minutes they’re telling Bush and Rove that the memos are not only fakes, they are really, really bad fakes. Rove: ‘How easy would it be for other experts to see that?’ Expert: ‘Anyone can see it. I can’t believe that CBS found a legitimate expert to authenticate these. No professional is going to risk his reputation by saying that these are genuine, especially if he only has copies to go by.’
But what’s the White House going to do? Rove expects 60 Minutes to show a small picture on the TV screen with a blow-up highlighted overlay of a couple of critical sentences from each memo. It won’t be enough for experts to analyze. The general public will believe it, and White House denials will be brushed aside.
Now Rove comes up with a counter-ploy: Re-fax the documents to the rest of the news media. That way they’ll have the evidence available for their own experts to analyze and knock down. Don’t say much of anything; just reiterate the usual boilerplate that the President fulfilled his National Guard obligation and was honorably discharged.
The 60 Minutes crew is a bit surprised by the White House tactic, but immediately concludes that Rove is trying a pre-emptive strike, to minimize the significance of the memos. In a way it’s even better than an angry response. It shows that the White House is shell-shocked! The White House reaction proves that the memos are genuine, despite the doubts which have been raised during the pro forma review by CBS’ outside experts, and despite the denials of Killian’s son.


The Washington Post’s account seems to support this general theory, if not its specifics:

White House communications director Dan Bartlett had agreed to talk to “60 Minutes,” but only on condition that the CBS program provide copies of what were being billed as newly unearthed memos indicating that President Bush had received preferential treatment in the National Guard. The papers were hand-delivered at 7:45 a.m. CBS correspondent John Roberts, filling in for Rather, sat down with Bartlett at 11:15.
Half an hour later, Roberts called “60 Minutes” producer Mary Mapes with word that Bartlett was not challenging the authenticity of the documents. Mapes told her bosses, who were so relieved that they cut from Rather’s story an interview with a handwriting expert who had examined the memos.
At that point, said “60 Minutes” executive Josh Howard, “we completely abandoned the process of authenticating the documents. Obviously, looking back on it, that was a mistake. We stopped questioning ourselves. I suppose you could say we let our guard down.”


(No word on whether pun intended).

As CBS pushed to finish its report, it was Bartlett who contacted the network — rather than the other way around — at 5:30 the evening before to ask whether the White House could respond to the widely rumored story.


And more:

Bartlett said he caught the president leaving for a campaign trip that morning and showed him the memos. Bush had “no recollection of having seen them,” Bartlett said, and would not necessarily have seen papers from a commander’s personal file.
Howard was struck by the fact that Bartlett, in his interview, kept referring to the Killian memos to support his argument that the president had fulfilled his military obligations.
“This gave us such a sense of security at that moment that we had the story,” Howard said. “We gave the documents to the White House to say, ‘Wave us off this if we’re wrong.’ ” But Bartlett said CBS never asked him to verify the memos and that he had neither the time nor the resources to do so.


I note with amusement CBS’ defense, in stark contrast to its sneers at the one-man-band nature of the bloggers criticizing it:

Mapes, an associate producer and a researcher were carrying the journalistic load. “The show is not so lavishly budgeted that we have tons of people doing this,” said Harry Moses, a “60 Minutes” producer not connected to the story. “You do the pre-interviews yourself and then bring in the correspondent.”

The Steyn Challenge

Mark Steyn challenges CBS’ typewriter “expert” Bill Glennon, who still insists that it was possible to create the now-infamous Killian memos with a 1972-vintage typewriter:

Look, if Dan thinks this guy’s theory is correct, let’s put him and his IBM Model D and me and my computer in a room at CBS News for an hour and see which one of us emerges with the closest replicas of these four documents. I’ll give him ten thousand bucks for every memo he reproduces exactly, and round it up to an even 50 grand if he gets all four right.
Any takers, CBS?

Bear Baiters for Bush?

If you follow the Electoral College too closely for your own good, you may be aware that, if each of the two presidential candidates wins the vote in each of Maine’s two Congressional districts, they are each awarded one elector, with the state’s two remaining electors going to the statewide winner. Apparently, while John Kerry is still doing solidly in Maine, President Bush is running ahead in the state’s predominantly rural Second Congressional District, a potentially significant win if the election swings back to being airtight-close by Election Day. To what does CNN attribute this?

Although Maine has voted solidly for the Democratic presidential nominee since 1992, this year has opened a window of opportunity for the president in the 2nd District, which is perceived as more conservative and supportive of the war in Iraq than southern Maine’s 1st Congressional District.


[snip]

According to the CNN Web site, large numbers of veterans who live in the 2nd District are the bulk of the support for President Bush. The network’s analysts also speculated that hunters in the 2nd District who oppose a ban on bear baiting could also be presumed to be pro-Bush and will be helpful to the president on Nov. 2.


Bear-baiting???
Is that anything like this?

Latest on Rathergate

*ABC has decided to go for CBS’ jugular, and comes up with the man who actually got Bush into the Texas Air National Guard:

Retired Col. Walter Staudt, who was brigadier general of Bush’s unit in Texas, interviewed Bush for the Guard position and retired in March 1972. . . .
“I never pressured anybody about George Bush because I had no reason to,” Staudt told ABC News in his first interview since the documents were made public.


[snip]

Staudt said he decided to come forward because he saw erroneous reports on television. . . .
Staudt insisted Bush did not use connections to avoid being sent to Vietnam.
“He didn’t use political influence to get into the Air National Guard,” Staudt said, adding, “I don’t know how they would know that, because I was the one who did it and I was the one who was there and I didn’t talk to any of them.”
‘Highly Qualified’
During his time in charge of the unit, Staudt decided whether to accept those who applied for pilot training. He recalled Bush as a standout candidate.
“He was highly qualified,” he said. “He passed all the scrutiny and tests he was given.”
Staudt said he never tried to influence Killian or other Guardsmen, and added that he never came under any pressure himself to accept Bush. “No one called me about taking George Bush into the Air National Guard,” he said. “It was my decision. I swore him in. I never heard anything from anybody.”
When he interviewed for the job, Bush was eager to join the pilot program, which Staudt said often was a hard sell. “I asked him, ‘Why do you want to be a fighter pilot?’ ” Staudt recalled. “He said, ‘Because my daddy was one.’ He was a well-educated, bright-eyed young man, just the kind of guy we were looking for.”
He added that Bush more than met the requirements for pilot training. “He presented himself well. I’d say he was in the upper 10 percent or 5 percent or whatever we ever talked to about going to pilot training. We were pretty particular because when he came back [from training], we had to fly with him.”


[snip]

Records show Bush stopped flying F-102As in April 1972. He has said he moved to Alabama to work on the Senate campaign of a family friend. Staudt retired from the Guard in March of that year and said he was never contacted about Bush’s performance.
“There was no contact between me and George Bush … he certainly never asked for help,” Staudt said. “He didn’t need any help as far as I knew.”
He added that after retiring he was not involved in Air National Guard affairs. “I didn’t check in with anybody – I had no reason to,” he said. “I was busy with my civilian endeavors, and they were busy with their military options. I had no reason to talk to them, and I didn’t.”
Staudt said he continues to support Bush now that he is president. “My politics now are that I’m an American, and that’s about all I can tell you,” he said. “And I’m going to vote for George Bush.”


Link via Allah.
*WaPo moves the ball ever so slightly by looking at Bill Burkett’s rants in a Yahoo club. Money quote:

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


*A plausible how-it-could-have-happened scenario (link via Dales blog).
UPDATE: Allah has some pointed comments about Burkett’s phone call to Max Cleland; he’s right on the money in his point about Josh Marshall. And Mickey thinks Staudt could sue CBS, although the bigger question is why they never talked to him in the first place.

Seen and Heard

1. Charlie Rose asking Adam Nagourney of the NY Times and Mark Halperin of ABC News what John Kerry really believes about the Iraq war. They laugh. Eventually, they compose themselves enough to spout the party line about allies. This is followed by Bill Maher and Cornel West over on HBO lamenting how lame Kerry is.
2. Newt Gingrich and Bill O’Reilly congratulating themselves for not being those kind of right-wing crazies who think Dan Rather forged or knowingly used forged documents.
3. Walking in Manhattan, a guy on a bike runs a red light and almost runs me down – then turns around to yell at me for not watching where I’m going, as he bikes in front of a moving truck.
4. Long Island Railroad publishes new schedules every few months; the latest ones expired September 6. From what I could see at Penn Station, they didn’t even bother to do September schedules for Shea Stadium.
5. Swift Boat Veterans running their latest ad on early morning TV – here in Queens. Is this a swing state, or have the Swifties suddenly come into more money than they know what to do with? Probably neither – with a modest budget, they are probably targeting NY to try to hit opinion leaders who will give them free publicity.
6. Vignette – young man and woman, probably dating, on the train platform, and the man casually twirls her around, like they’re dancing. Older couple nearby, both looking – and you could see, watching them, they were just thinking – we don’t do things like that anymore.

Swift Dodge?

Has the Navy determined that John Kerry was entitled to his medals? An AP report seems at first glance to say so:

The Navy’s chief investigator concluded Friday that procedures were followed properly in the approval of Sen. John Kerry (news – web sites)’s Silver Star, Bronze Star and Purple Heart medals, according to an internal Navy memo.
Vice Adm. R.A. Route, the Navy inspector general, conducted the review of Kerry’s Vietnam-ear [sic] military service awards at the request of Judicial Watch, a public interest group.


Hmm, “procedures followed properly”?

Judicial Watch had requested in August that the Navy open an investigation of the matter, but Route said in an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press that he saw no reason for a full-scale probe.
“Our examination found that existing documentation regarding the Silver Star, Bronze Star and Purple Heart medals indicates the awards approval process was properly followed,” Route wrote in the memo sent Friday to Navy Secretary Gordon England.
“In particular, the senior officers who awarded the medals were properly delegated authority to do so. In addition, we found that they correctly followed the procedures in place at the time for approving these awards.”


[snip]

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


This is almost certainly the right decision as far as the Navy is concerned, but it does nothing to resolve the public question, which is dumped back on the voters to decide whether the facts matter and, if so, what they are. Not the reference, however, to “existing documentation” – I’m sure Judicial Watch will be hot to pursue whether everything available to Route has been made public.
UPDATE: Tom Maguire thinks this proves that the Navy has documents we don’t, since there isn’t sufficient public information to conclude that the proper procedures were followed with regard to Kerry’s first Purple Heart.

PATRIOT GAMES: The Early Show

The second in a periodic series by guest blogger and Army officer “Andy Tollhaus” on watching sports from Iraq.
April 23, 2004
Camp Speicher, Iraq

I hate getting out of bed in the morning. And, I�m terrible at it. (My mother told me just yesterday how glad she was that she wasn�t the one that had to get me out of bed anymore.) I�m liable to hit snooze for over two hours without realizing it and then spring out of bed cussing, but still late. So, when I set my alarm for 5 AM on the day that I was switching from a day shift to a night shift I felt like there was no way in hell that I was getting up for the first Red Sox-Yankees game of the year. The game would start at 4, so the 5 o�clock wake up should get me to a TV for the start of the 5th inning. As I woke up around 5:20 and walked to the bathroom, I wondered how the game was going, and figured that it would have to go on without me, because I was still tired and could get about 6 more hours of much needed sleep if I just resigned myself to check the box score online later. On my way back from the bathroom, I snuck into the �living container� next door, quietly turning on the television to check the score. The four sleeping occupants in the 20 foot by 10 foot �room,� which is basically a shipping container with electricity and air conditioning, had achieved success in setting up their AFN satellite, while I had achieved only frustration. It was the top half of the 6th and the Sox were up 5-2. Instantly I was awake. I think it was just the sight of Fenway Park�but it could have been the fact that the Sox were winning�and it definitely had something to do with them beating the Yankees. Whatever it was, I was ready. Forget all that talk 6 months ago (to the day, as the media loved pointing out) about swearing off the Red Sox for good. I turned the TV off and went back to my room to get dressed (body armor, weapon, and helmet, all part of the required uniform) so I could walk the 500 meters or so to the Battalion TOC (Tactical Operations Center) to watch the rest of the game.
As I sat down at one of the tables in the TOC, I nodded hello to my roommate Pov Strazdas (another friend from West Point). Pov�s a die-hard Raiders fan who, thanks to Wayne Gretzky and the LA Kings, is also as knowledgeable of a hockey fan as any that I�ve known from �SoCal.� In the TOC there�s always a certain level of activity that naturally goes along with running an Apache Battalion, but there�s also a television there, mostly for news. During the night shift the TV usually ends up showing one sport or another. Watching sports is usually more uplifting than watching the same news over and over of the country that you�re fighting in. Pov had been keeping me up to date on the NHL playoffs – since I wasn�t willing to get out of bed that early for anyone other than the Bruins and it seemed that AFN couldn�t bear to air that atrocious collapse against Les Habitants. By the time I finished reflecting on Pov�s hockey fan-dom, the Bruins� collapse, and why we�re watching sports in a Battalion Headquarters in Iraq, the bases were full of Yankees in the top of the 8th. As you should already know (if you don�t, do pushups until I get tired, as Pov likes to say) we held on to win. The new season was here. The Sox. The Yankees. Fenway Park. Live, in Iraq. Unreal.
Halfway around the world, the feeling was the same. The start of a new baseball season signifies spring and new life. Memorial Day and the Red, White and Blue unofficial start of summer will soon be upon us. Granted summer in Iraq isn�t quite the time of year that we�ve all been hoping for, but it doesn�t get much more Red, White and Blue than watching our National Pastime in a combat zone. I had a new-found energy and wasn�t supposed to be at work for another 6 hours. Seeing Fenway had taken it from a daily check of the box scores to an old, familiar experience.
By now the battalion was waking up. Day shifts were coming on and Pov and the rest of those �on nights� were praying that their A/C�s were still working so sleep could be found in the midst of all that heat. For now, though, the channel still lingered on sports and the Giants-Dodgers game was just starting exactly 11 time zones away. I watched just long enough to see Barry Bonds� pop up weakly to third. I then took my new-found energy off to renew my efforts in fixing my dish. I hired a local man who does some work around post and some magic on satellite dishes. By the time ESPNNews was leading off the half-hour with Sox highlights over and over again I was watching it in my own room. Nothing better than watching the highlights of a game that you just watched. Except, of course, watching highlights in Iraq of a game that you just watched in Iraq.
A week later, on the next of many exciting Friday nights in Iraq, I�m sitting here anticipating the next Red Sox – Yankees series, starting in about 4 hours. On AFN, the Cubbies are about to start a day game against that other New York team. It looks like a beautiful day for baseball in Chicago. I think I�ll leave the TV on as I fall asleep (it is 11 PM here, and I do have to get up at a reasonable hour tomorrow). Maybe if Mr. Cub can convince them to play two, they�ll still be playing in the morning. That would make getting out of bed a little bit easier.

Quick Links 9/17/04

*I had meant to tear into Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter’s claim that “There was no terrorism in Iraq before we went to war,” but Stephen Hayes had done it for me.
*Does Kofi Annan want Bush to win, or is he (more likely) completely oblivious to how little most Americans (even many critics or skeptics of the Iraq war) like having some UN functionary tell them that it’s “illegal” for America to go to war with a country that repeatedly violated the terms of a cease-fire? The State Department fires back.
*Got your Florida campaign slogan right here: “[L]et them go naked for a while” may not exactly be “let them eat cake,” but it’s close.
*Not that Kerry himself is any better; he’s about as convincing a populist as Prince Charles. Vodkapundit notes that Kerry calling Lambeau Field “Lambert Field” is hardly the first example of him botching the local color, citing his campaign’s ignorance of St. Louis radio powerhouse KMOX and his misadventures with Philly cheesesteak. Of course, then there’s touting “Buckeye football” to a Michigan crowd, misidentifying Eddie Yost as a Red Sox player . . . it’s stupid stuff, and the Yost thing is particularly forgivable because it was from a years-ago memory, but it does bespeak a certain disinterest in connecting with people on things that should be easy to get right. But here’s what’s hilarious about the Lambeau thing: Lambeau is a French surname, and Kerry said it like one of those guys who deliberately refuses to pronounce a French name properly. If Kerry can’t get a French name right, what, precisely, is he good for?
*Opportunity knocks: Bush and Kerry have each been invited to appear, separately, for half-hour segments on Black Entertainment Television (BET) to address questions of special concern to African-American voters. Bush should jump at this. Yes, any potentially hostile interview is a risk in the stretch run of an election. And yes, Republicans often eschew advertising and campaigning directed at African-Americans out of a rational short-term calculation that there are more likely votes to be won elsewhere. But this is free TV, it’s just a few hours of the president’s time, and it’s a way to showcase his interest without having to get booed by an NAACP crowd.
*Hey Hey, Ho Ho. (But check out the definitive rebuttal in the second comment).
*Roll tape!
*The camera does not love John Kerry. Of course, the caption here suggests an improvement on current campaign tactics.

54-40, or Fight?

Bush leads 54-40 in a Gallup poll due out this morning, raising further questions about the sometimes wide variance in polling. Still, I’d be surprised if many presidential candidates have won after trailing by double digits in a Gallup poll as late as the middle of September. The electoral math is getting grim for Kerry; if Bush wins Florida and Ohio, it’s very hard for Kerry to win, and Bush is looking stronger in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which would really lock down the electoral college.
But don’t get cocky; Dales still sees a lot of states in play.

More Cracks In The Wall

Breaking news in the Valerie Plame case. DC District Judge Thomas Hogan yesterday unsealed this opinion (link opens a PDF file) requiring New York Times reporter Judith Miller to “appear before the grand jury to testify regarding alleged conversations she had with a specified Executive Branch official” and produce related documents; the court notes that Miller did not write an article but “spoke with one or more confidential sources regarding Ambassador Wilson’s article, ‘What I Didn’t Find in Africa.'” The court concluded that requiring Miller’s testimony was proper because “all available alternative means of obtaining the information have been exhausted, the testimony sought is necessary for the completion of the investigation, and the testimony sought is expected to constitute direct evidence of innocence or guilt.” (Emphasis added).
Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that one of its own reporters, Walter Pincus, has indicated that his source has revealed his (or her) identity already:

A Washington Post reporter’s confidential source has revealed his or her identity to the special prosecutor conducting the CIA leak inquiry, a development that provides investigators with a fact they have been pursuing in the nearly year-long probe.
Post reporter Walter Pincus, who had been subpoenaed to testify to a grand jury in the case, instead gave a deposition yesterday in which he recounted his conversation with the source, whom he has previously identified as an “administration official.” Pincus said he did not name the source and agreed to be questioned only with the source’s approval.
“I understand that my source has already spoken to the special prosecutor about our conversation on July 12 [2003], and that the special prosecutor has dropped his demand that I reveal my source. Even so, I will not testify about his or her identity,” Pincus said in a prepared statement.
“The source has not discharged us from the confidentiality pledge,” said The Post’s executive editor, Leonard Downie Jr.

Mets at Bay

The invaluable Jason Mastaitis reminds me of something I either hadn’t known or had forgotten (unsurprising, given how poorly I follow the lower minor leagues): Jason Bay used to be a Mets farmhand until he was traded in the deal that brought in Steve Reed to throw 26 innings in the all-important 2002 stretch drive. Could the Mets use a 25-year-old outfielder who makes $305,000 and has career averages of .293/.563/.382?
Don’t answer that.
I also agree with Mastaitis that Wally Backman sounds like he would be a fine choice to replace Art Howe.