Cred and Circuses

I'm back, I'm tan and given the time.. I'll have something more to say.

Cabo San Lucas was interesting. We made the most of a not particularly great situation and had a relatively good time. More info will be available once I remember something and the statute of limitations runs out.

Good to be back in Sac-town though. Arnie looks like he has things going well. Trey looks like he has been watching the General pretty closely. And to all 3 of our readers (is anybody out there?), I promise to post better content than this missive in the future.

Go ahead Gen. Shelton, make it a vodka. Fred's buying.

Hmmmm. Via Tim Blair, somebody doesn't like Gen. Clark too much. It seems that Clark's boss on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Hugh Shelton had this to say about his fired employee:

"What do you think of General Wesley Clark and would you support him as a presidential candidate," was the question put to him by moderator Dick Henning, assuming that all military men stood in support of each other. General Shelton took a drink of water and Henning said, "I noticed you took a drink on that one!"

"That question makes me wish it were vodka," said Shelton. "I've known Wes for a long time. I will tell you the reason he came out of Europe early had to do with integrity and character issues, things that are very near and dear to my heart. I'm not going to say whether I'm a Republican or a Democrat. I'll just say Wes won't get my vote."

That's not the only time that Gen. Shelton has made his feelings on Wesley known. Kevin Murphy at The Interociter , points out while commenting on Calpundit that he called Clark a "nut" in a current article for Newsweek. The article is not flattering, either. I might even go so far as to call it back-handed. Not the way to kick off a campaign based on your military credentials.

You want a seat on the Security Council? Do what you usually do when you want something: take it from the French.

Found this bit via Instapundit:

Apparently, the German press has taken a more conciliatory tone towards President Bush, with even SPIEGLE running the headline “Bush Forgives the Chancellor.” I have expected from the first “It Ain’t Easy Being Green, But Re-Elect Schroeder Anyway” rally that the Germans would eventually turn to each other in confusion and start asking a few questions, such as:

“Why are we spitting in the face of a country who risked World War III to airlift food into Berlin so we wouldn’t starve?” - and

“Let me get this straight; we got invited to be part of the winning side in a war where we would be the good guys, and we said ’no thanks?’” - and

“Why is that Frog, Chirac, always holding press conferences in Berlin?”

That said, “Bush Forgives Chancellor” is a bit heady considering the last six months. So what gives? It seems that Germany has remembered that they want a permanent seat on the Security Council, and need to mend fences quickly. Guys, you already have one. The only problem is that a Frenchman keeps sitting in it. Get to work.

(I found this story through Instapundit, but the rest of the links are courtesy of Davids MedienKritik)

Send toys and sundries to Iraqi children

All three of you who read this page, please get behind this. We have spent alot of time in this country debating the pro's and con's of this conflict, but one thing that both sides can agree on is our hope that a better future develops out of it for the Iraqi people. The Chief has the right idea, and I'm amazed and ashamed that none of us have been trying to do something like this earlier. Some ideas and reminders from the Chief's page:

Toothbrushes, toothpaste, floss, brushes, combs, etc.

Nice stuffed animals, other items.

Just use your good judgement, and if you are unsure, contact a local muslim group for help.

Here is the mailing address to send items to:

Chief Wiggles
CPA-C2, Debriefer
APO AE 09335

As the Chief has said, ALL toys will be distributed to the children, unless they are inappropriate.

Tell your friends and spread the word around.

Fair warning: Mushy idealism ahead

In the end, the efforts of individual U.S. citizens showing that we honestly do care about helping the Iraqi people and that we honestly do want to see them secure and prosperous might be able to help more than all the government and U.N. programs combined in curbing terrorist recruitment and ending the presumption of enmity. Imagine the impression it would make on the next generation of Iraqis if we, as citizens responded with half the support we did during the 9/11 attack. Especially those of us who supported the war and support our presence there, we should want to prove to those who say its all about money and oil that its also about people and ideals and long term peace and long term safety for all of our families. And, Goddamn it , maybe that all starts with a big stuffed monkey, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and some crayons. I'm off to the post office tomorrow.

Is this the first Wesley Clark/ Wesley Crusher joke? I would hate to get credit for that (Or Welcome To Iowa, Gen. Clark!)

The October issue of The Atlantic includes a sketch on Wesley Clark in its agenda section. The author apparently has been observing Clark for the last nine months, so go ahead and list Joshua Green as either a very cagey or very fortunate writer. It have would been a shame to spend all that time on a guy who chose to remain a military analyst for CNN. There’s not much earth shaking in the piece, but I agree with his thesis that Clark has, to his detriment, been cast as the Democrats “dream candidate.” The retired general now has to shoulder the burden of trying to, in the author’s words, “personify all that is missing from the field.” Take a look at this editorial in the Boston Globe on August 27. Robert Kuttner, co-editor of The American Prospect, seems to have worked himself into a strange, partisan frenzy imagining a Clark candidacy:

Clark is the soldier as citizen. Even better, he's the soldier as tough liberal. Just imagine Clark, with his distinguished military record, up against our draft dodger president who likes to play "Top Gun" dress-up. Imagine the Rhodes Scholar against the leader who can't ad lib without a speechwriting staff. Oh, and he's from Arkansas.

“Oh, and he’s from Arkansas?” Am I missing something here? Did Arkansas suddenly get some undisclosed number of super delegates in the electoral college? Has producing one impeached president transformed the state into some kind of king maker? I hate to break this to him, but a similar resume hasn’t done much for the town of Yorba Linda.

I can understand being disenchanted with a party’s front runners. Bob Dole, who I was quite happy with as Senate Majority Leader, was a train wreck of a presidential candidate. I remember wearing plaid shirts and spontaneously hollering “Lamar!“ for a month in some dazed, futile, surreal protest to the inevitability of Dole getting pimp slapped by Clinton. So I get it, kind of. In a very loosely related sort of way. Kerry is still the front runner in my mind, and if you need a historical example of how I see this primary going, I would refer you to Fritz Mondale somehow wrapping up the nomination in ‘84. So I get the desperation for somebody to step up and spare the Democrats that kind of time capsulated crap burger. Green suspects that the fascination with the new kid will fade over the course of the campaign. He writes:

Often a candidate's very unavailability is a large part of his appeal. The paradox is that the hold on the imagination that attractive outsiders have from afar often disappears when they enter the race, and suffer the same scrutiny and attack as any other candidate.

Speaking of which, Welcome To Iowa General Clark!

The New York Times reported that in his first visit to the early caucus state on Friday, he “seemed stunned” while trying to explain how he would have voted on the Congressional resolution authorizing the invasion of Iraq. After saying he probably would have voted for it in a interview the day before, he began backtracking after a paid lecture at the University of Iowa.

"I never would have voted for war," he said here this afternoon in an interview and in response to a question after a lecture at the University of Iowa. "What I would have voted for is leverage. Leverage for the United States to avoid a war. That's what we needed to avoid a war."

Speaking about the resolution on Thursday, General Clark said, "At the time, I probably would have voted for it, but I think that's too simple a question."

He then added: "I don't know if I would have or not. I've said it both ways, because when you get into this, what happens is you have to put yourself in a position. On balance, I probably would have voted for it."
When asked about domestic issues his answer response tended to be “I don’t know enough to give you a comprehensive answer,” which I don’t fault. That’s just smart politics. What I do fault him for is quotes like these:

He exulted over the egg white omelette a waitress put in front of him. "Now this is an Iowa breakfast!" the candidate said.

He also complimented a woman's overalls, saying, "That's a real Iowa outfit!"

He also said, "Some of my best friends from the military are from Iowa."

Just go ahead and pass me some more of that Iowa corn. Since Carville gets to give lines to Dean these days, I’ll offer this one up for whoever wants to use it: (best used to prevent Clark from monopolizing speaking time, as seems likely) “Excuse me General, but I think some Russians are trying to land at the airport. Could you check on that for us?”

Pro-Market? Pro-Human Rights? I must have had these Communists all wrong!

Reuters reports that Vladimier Putin, in advance of Russian parlimentary elections, has for the first time endorsed a political party. United Russia, the established pro-Kremlin party, got the nod from Putin who has publicly stated that he hopes that one party recieves an absolute majority in the Duma.

Their main opposition in the upcomming elections is our old familier friend, The Communist Party. Remember them? No freedom of religion, speech, press, or association? Collectivized farms that starved over a third of their entire population? All expenses paid trips to Siberia for not meeting production quotas, when workers had no materials or tools to produce with (which is really odd, since, according to the party line, The People owned the means of production)? Well all that was apparently just a silly mistake. They have seen the error of their ways and are now, the author of the article assures us, "commited to human rights and the market."

Interesting. I looked at the Russian Communist Worker's Party's english language site to find out about this pro-human rights, pro-market platform of theirs, but I can't seem to spot any information it.

Just because its funny to a guy who grew up during the Cold War, I found this on Pravda's front page today:

Most interesting PRAVDA.Ru forum topics
•The awful truth: arrogant America got it right
•Abolish EU, says Tory
•What would it take for Russia to be #1?

Despite the tensions that we seem to be undergoing with Russia regardiing Iraq, I still think that its possible for a unique relationship to develop between us, both politically and culturaly. I think Putin is doing the right thing by publicly endorsing a party and also publicly stating his hope for it to gain an absolute majority. At this stage in Russia's international re-engagement and domestic reconstruction, a majority party will help the country's overall stabillity and be emblematic of a strengthening democracy rather than, pardon the pun, a red flag. It will force the opposition groups into more centrist and semi-permanent coalitions if they want to be effective, and create a better enviornment for long term policy continuity. All this is very important as Russia undertakes a large scale privatization program of federal holdings between 2004 and 2006. The key to foreign investment is stability, and Putin understands that. Hence, in foreign affairs he has been tap dancing like a mad man in order to not alienate anyone.

Keep your eyes open on Russia, as it's growing pains have more implications for the success or failure of American foreign policy than we have been admitting for quite some time. France hating us in public is the big news right now, but the evolution of our ties with Russia will ultimately be much more important. Now that I think about it, those three Pravda forum topics might be worth a second look.

For when its not enough to call them meddling partisan ninnies

Bye, Fred. Have fun on vacation. You bastard.

Anyway, the Ninth Circuit is set to review the California recall decision this week, and even Grey Davis wants to get this thing over with. The temporary good news that the initial ruling delivered to Davis was something akin to a condemned man being allowed to “take an extra five minutes before we strap you in.” Desperate cheerleading to the contrary by the L.A. Times notwithstanding, the guy is done.

Professor Vikram David Amar of Hastings Law School has written nice analysis of the initial ddecision. Despite the court’s reliance on Bush v. Gore in their opinion, Professor Amar point out that the situations are not analogous:

First, the court overstates things when it says that "plaintiffs' claim presents almost precisely the same issue as the Court considered in Bush." (The panel also says, in a related vein, that the plaintiffs' claim "mirrors the one" in Bush.) It is true that the plaintiffs' challenge to the California punch- card machines, like the challenge in Bush, focuses on different treatment voters in different parts of the state receive due to intrastate diversity in voting mechanisms. But there are also a number of distinctions between the California case and Bush.
One is that the errors in counting votes in Florida were being made by people, not machines. Why might that matter? Because people who count votes by hand may make mistakes in counting the votes not just because they may be defective counters, but also because they may be politically motivated.……
…..Nor is it just that the votes in Florida were being hand-counted (as opposed to machine-counted in California.) They were being recounted in Florida. That is crucial, because by the time of a recount - when the Supreme Court stepped in allegedly to promote fairness - we all knew that every miscounted vote (whether miscounted by design or by negligence) was a big deal, because we all knew the margin of victory was going to be a few hundred votes one way or another.
So the problem was not just manipulable standards that various counties were using; it was that manipulators knew exactly how many votes they needed to steal to tip the balance.

Somebody needs to tells Al Gore quickly, before he offers more help to Davis. As a reminder for everyone, eight independent news organizations said that a statewide recount in Florida might have given Gore a victory, but that IN THE PARTIAL RECOUNTS THAT HE ASKED FOR HIMSELF, HE CLEARLY LOST. Not exactly the kind of strategic mastermind one wants on one’s team when fighting for one’s political life.

Amar also implies that the court is not acting completely honestly in declaring a delay acceptable because it is an arbitrary decision as to whether to hold the election in 180 or 255 days, even though that would be a California constitutional violation:

If so, then so is the choice to have a Presidential election every 4 years, rather than every 5 years. And yet, could we imagine a court pushing back a Presidential election because a year here or there never hurt anyone?
Or consider the choice to give a defendant 20 days within which to respond to a complaint, rather than 30 days. At some level, that rule is arbitrary, but only in the sense that every rule, at some level, is arbitrary.
But what is not arbitrary is the value of sticking to a pre-agreed upon schedule, around which everyone has arranged their financial and emotional commitments. Just imagine a lawyer saying to a judge: "Your honor, I realize I didn't file my response within the required 20 days, but that 20-day time frame itself is rather arbitrary, so if you don't excuse my 3-days tardiness, you are acting arbitrarily and thus unconstitutionally." That the Ninth Circuit didn't see the weakness of its "arbitrariness" analysis is rather surprising.

Unfortunately, when it comes to the Ninth Circuit, its not nearly as surprising as it should be.

Fun and sun!!

I am off for a week of fun and sun. Trey will have to hold down the fort.

Later,

Honor and Duty in the face of the storm.

I would expect nothing less from these men.

At Arlington National Cemetery, soldiers who guard the Tomb of the Unknowns were given - for the first time ever - permission to abandon their posts and seek shelter, Superintendent John Metzler said. But they stood guard anyhow.

(via the Corner)

The big throw down

I would just like to take this time to say that my beloved Browns will be avenging last weeks mishap by taking Jeff Garcia and his band of merry men to the cleaners come this Sunday.

Let loose the dogs of war and intra-blog sports boasting. I know Trey has been keeping his 49'ers partisanship in check this whole week. In the spirit of bipartisanship gamesmanship, I throw down the Brie and White Zin. At least my Browns get screwed by stupid rules and illegal challenges. "I was only thinking of the endzone" is no excuse for Wilson and even Trey knows that.