ARMED PROPHET SLOWS TO A CRAWL

Obviously, I haven't had any time to post yet today. Nor did I have any time to post yesterday. And chances are that I won't tomorrow, either. It's Armed Prophet's last week of work for the year and there's too much going on. Between packing for a Friday afternoon flight, settling year-end business by running last-minute errands, and attending parties with hosted bars, this blog has become a lower priority.

Starting this weekend I'll be back on the West Coast for two weeks' time, where I plan to do more carousing with friends than reading of the news. I won't really make a point of blogging unless I am seized by the irrepressible need to blog. And the smart money says I probably will be. In fact, if something big happens or I find myself with a spare afternoon, I could go on a manic blogging spree. So go ahead and check in every so often, just to make sure you're not missing something brilliant. (I'd rather not say what the odds are on that.)

In any case, a bit of a rest will do Armed Prophet some good. I'll return soon.

OH YEAH, WE'LL BRING IN THE U.N.

Memo to all you U.N. fetishists out there -- John Kerry, Wesley Clark, Howard Dean, John Edwards, I'm looking in your direction -- everything would be better if only George Bush weren't so unilateral, is that right? Yeah, the Iraqis will sure see that as legitimate:

Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, accused the United Nations Security Council today of having failed to help rescue his country from Saddam Hussein, and he chided member states for bickering over his beleaguered country's future.



"Settling scores with the United States-led coalition should not be at the cost of helping to bring stability to the Iraqi people," Mr. Zebari said in language unusually scolding for an occupant of the guest seat at the end of the curving Security Council table.



"Squabbling over political differences takes a back seat to the daily struggle for security, jobs, basic freedoms and all the rights the U.N. is chartered to uphold," he said.

Lest I be accused of unfettered neocon gloating, allow me to paraphrase Russian Ambassador Alexi de Sadesky from "Dr. Strangelove" -- my source was the New York Times!

SPONGE FOR SENATE

Who the hell is Howard Kaloogian, Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from California? Haven't you heard? He was a leader of the California recall!

What, you say? Never heard of him? Wasn't Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger the leader of the recall movement? Well, he did adopt it as his cause, but not until August. That's right, wasn't it Darrell Issa? At one point, yes. It was his money that got the necessary signatures, but he dropped out of the race once Arnold got in, and went back to being a regular old member of Congress. And it wasn't his idea in the first place. The recall really began with anti-tax activist Ted Costa, whose mid-80s Ford is too old for him to pay the much-hated car tax. He conceived the idea and he was the first to start collecting signatures. So now you know, if you didn't already.

So who is Howard Kaloogian, then? He's a former member of the California Assembly and proprietor of the RecallGrayDavis.com site, a laughably unprofessional hanger-on to the Costa/Issa DavisRecall.com movement. I don't know for certain, but I'd guess he heard about the recall, then ran out and bought the best URL. If so, what a jerk.

Despite the fact that he did nothing for the recall, save maybe a little bit of publicity in shameless self-promoting appearances on TV and radio, Kaloogian's recall site prominently features a photograph of himself underneath the words "A Hero of the Recall."

See you in Washington, Mr. Kaloogian!

ORSON SCOTT CARD, DINO?

In today's Wall Street Journal, the science fiction writer Orson Scott Card has a solid essay on the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism at large. On the candidates' demonization of George W. Bush, he writes:

There are Democrats, like me, who think it will not play, and should not play, and who are waiting in the wings until after the coming electoral debacle in order to try to remake the party into something more resembling America.

Okay, so far so good. But one question: Why is Card still a Democrat? Toward the end of the piece, he writes almost as an afterthought:

I can think of many, many reasons why the Republicans should not control both houses of Congress and the White House.

All right then. But what are they? Another question: What's wrong with Joe Lieberman?

Don't get me wrong, I'll be perfectly happy to count this writer as a fellow Bush voter, but it seems to me he's kept his party registration just so he can go after the Democrats from a unique position, as something other than just another right-winger fed up with the Democrats' moral idiocy. Not that I'm going to complain too loudly, of course.

RETURN OF THE BAGHDAD DEMOCRAT

"Baghdad" isn't a prefix of approbation like it was when Washington Rep. Jim McDermott criticized President Bush from Iraq last year, but some things don't change:

On Seattle radio yesterday, Rep. Jim McDermott questioned the timing of Saddam Hussein's capture, saying, "I'm sure they could have found him a long time ago if they wanted to." ... "I've been surprised they waited, but then I thought, well, politically, it probably doesn't make much sense to find him just yet," he said. "There's too much by happenstance for it to be just a coincidental thing that it happened on this particular day," he continued.

Yeah, right. If it was planned the timing was awful -- it's the first setback to Dean's frontrunning campaign all year. Otherwise, it would have come right after Dean clinched the nomination, or perhaps in late October 2004. Jim McDermott is a fool, and so are the residents of his Seattle district if they send him back to Congress next year.

TRADING UP

Joe Lieberman's post-Gore-snub bounce officially ended last night on his well-timed "Hardball" interview at Harvard, when he responded to a student's question by first joking:

I thought you were going to ask if [Saddam] was going to endorse somebody else.

Ha. Um, ha. Of course, one could say the bounce ended with Saddam's capture; Howard Dean's bounce certainly did. But now Joe's got the post-Saddam-capture bounce going for him, which is better anyway. The last one brought both coverage and a spike in donations, but was based on sympathy, which doesn't win nominations.

The Saddam bounce, however, highlights an issue that distinguishes him from the rest of the field. Unfortunately, it also distances him from what most Democratic primary and caucus-voters are looking for. But it should kill all drop-out rumors until the evening of the February 3rd primaries.

RIPPED FROM THE COMMENT BOARDS

In case you never read them, Eat Your Damn Peas writes in a "prophecy" below:

I just wanted to share the opinion of my friend Brando, a Kurdish towncar driver her in Portland, OR. He thinks Saddam should now be placed in a plexiglass cell in the center of Bahgdad so he can watch the Iraqis who he dominated for so long live in freedom around him. I like it!

Me too!

THANKS FOR THE HEADS UP, KOFI

Looks like Iraq won't be asking the U.N. to help out with Saddam's trial, either.

GOOD JUXTAPOSITION

In this morning's Wisconsin State Journal, an article quoting local Madison peaceniks who still don't get it...

We abhor dictatorship and barbaric cruelty in all forms by all governments, so we hope that [Saddam] can be brought to justice," said Alfred Meyer, chairman of Wisconsin Network for Peace & Justice and executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility. "(But) his capture doesn't alter our position that the war in Iraqand consequent killing of innocent civilians is unjustified. War is still unjustified and could have been avoided," Meyer said.

...alongside an article quoting a local Kuwaiti who certainly does:

"I'm overjoyed," said freshman Talal Al-Rashoud. "He was a dictator. He invaded my country. He was a source of instability in the region. He killed his own people. He was a despot. "Seeing him captured now is a great triumph," Al-Rashoud said.

The left's response to Saddam's capture seems to indicate they hate George W. Bush more than they hate "dictatorship and barbaric cruelty." The response from those who actually experienced Saddam's barbary is a lot more coherent. Kudos to the Journal for today's coverage -- although I would have rather seen a debate between the two.

SADDAM HAD A BLOG!

Or so it seems. Who knew? But it looks like he lost his internet access in June. And even though "music is for despots and the infidels," it turns out he likes Willie Nelson. And doobie! His last entry:

Willie gave for me some smoke-cigarettes. He said is good stuff.



IS good stuff.



Do not tell Allah, for it is true tobacco is crop of the infidels.



Boy, though, infidels sure have fun. My head is spin.

I guess now we know why he didn't put up much of a fight.

LET ME TAKE A WILD GUESS

How slow are the Dallas police?

DALLAS (Reuters) - A man killed himself with a gunshot to the head on Friday after lying down on the X in the road marking the spot in Dealey Plaza where former U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas 40 years ago, witnesses said.



Police would not confirm the exact location of the incident but said the man shot himself with a small caliber handgun and his body was found in Dealey Plaza, near the spot where Kennedy was struck with a fatal bullet to the head, said Dallas Police Sr. Cpl. Chris Gilliam. ...



The man laid down on the "X" that marks the spot where Kennedy was hit by a bullet to the head, and then shot himself in the head with a handgun, witnesses said.

"Near" Dealey Plaza? "Near" the X? Yes, but where, exactly? (Hat tip: Taranto.)

KUCINICH COMPLAINT WATCH

From a Saturday Dennis Kucinich press release:

[On Saturday] www.kucinich.us disappeared from Google and other search engines. We have reason to believe that someone sent very numerous requestions to search engines requesting that the site be listed (which it already was) and that as a result it was removed. ... It's likely but inconceivable that this wass evven done by an overzealous supporter."

Huh? "Requestions"? "Likely but inconceivable"? Make that "Complaint and Incoherency Watch."

EVERYBODY HATES GREGORY

President Bush held a press conference to talk about Saddam's capture today. I managed to miss most of it, but I'll catch it later on the C-SPAN site. After it was over, Bush reminded the press corps of the upcoming White House press dinner, adding, at the expense of NBC correspondent David Gregory:

This year, Gregory, don't take any silverware.

Pretty good, got a decent laugh. Which reminds me, a few weeks ago Tom Brokaw received the National Press Club's Fourth Estate Award at a roasty sort of ceremony. Tim Russert stood up and presented what was supposed to be a long-lost interview with Brokaw. Of course, it was Gregory doing a not-too-shabby impression. Later, Brokaw told the audience it was the "last time you'll ever see" him. Everybody laughed.

And then again yesterday, Gregory was reporting on the White House lawn, with Brokaw in the New York studio. Brokaw made another reference to Gregory's impersonation skills. This time, I think the audience, this time at home, was just confused.

As long as we're picking on David Gregory, I might as well add: I hear he dyes his hair gray to look older than he is, but so far I've been unable to confirm whether this is in fact true. Drop me a line if you've got the scoop.

IN CONTEXT

James Lileks is supposed to be taking a month off from The Bleat, but as I expected, he couldn't refrain from commenting on yesterday's good news:

The history texts will note that Baghdad fell on this date, Saddam was captured on that date, and the events between the two events will fill up a paragraph at best. Cruel but true. This was a big event, but there are bigger events to come. We live in an age where we’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop. And drop it does. And drop again it will. If this war has a mascot, it's the millipede.

Click fast! In ten hours time, it'll be gone.

NINE-YEAR-OLD ANALYSIS

Reports out of Portland, Oregon place Armed Prophet's younger sister in front of a television sometime this afternoon when a picture of the unshaved Saddam came on the screen. She said:

Eww, he looks like a dirty old rat.

Ha! Then President Bush came on screen, prompting her to ask: "Is that our president?" My brother (the reporter in this case) responded in the affirmative, and she said:

Ooh, he's handsome.

Ha! again! She's too young to vote in this next election (or the one after), but is it too soon to predict she'll be a George P. Bush backer in 2012?

TODAY SHOULD BE ABOVE POLITICS, BUT...

Politics never takes a day off, nor any period of time longer than a commercial break, it sometimes seems. And what's this? A whole day of blogging and nothing about the presidential race? Fear not, by tomorrow afternoon I'll be back on their case again. Here's all I can do today:

Today's winner is... please, do I even have to say it? As if the Dow going over the 10,000 mark wasn't enough of an early Christmas present for President Bush, this should seal the deal as the Best Christmas Ever. Here's hoping the momentum in both the economy and the war continue in the same direction through the end of 2004 and beyond.

Tomorrow Howard Dean will deliver what's supposed to be a major foreign policy speech (I wonder if it's being rewritten right now?). In a brief public statement today, he said nice things and even refrained from getting too far into his disagreements with Bush, saying he deserved a day to celebrate. Big change from saying he "supposed" getting rid of Saddam was a "good thing" earlier this year.

But he and John Kerry did use the occasion -- Kerry more egregiously -- to say that this was a turning point the White House should use to... internationalize the Iraqi rebuilding! Gee, that's new. Today is just more evidence of how much we need help? Or something. Hey, that's politics. What is the first reaction to news that doesn't fit your message? Spin it as a reason that your policy is needed more than ever, and make sure you keep a straight face while you do it.

Joe Lieberman, as I've thus far failed to note in this space, got something of a bump this week after getting "Gored." The sympathy went to him, and he responded by looking fired up for the first time since 2000. And today he went on "Meet the Press" to say if Dean had his way, Saddam would still be ruling Iraq, not in jail. At this point, he has nothing to lose by emphasizing his differences with Dean on the war and hoping today's news changes Democratic opinion enough to jump up a place or two in a few states' polls. He's still a long, long, long shot, but this one-two punch is the kind of moment he's needed all year. Maybe he can do something with it.

As for the others? I haven't heard from them yet. But I feel safe in assuming that it doesn't matter.

THIS IS A REMARKABLE DAY

Armed Prophet is not a fan of ABC's condescending White House correspondent, Terry Moran, and typically I wouldn't think of mentioning him today (I haven't blogged anything about him in months), but after making an ill-considered comment about Nuremberg today, which was then noticed by NRO's The Corner, he actually sent in a letter to explain and apologize, which they posted. (Scroll down to "Moran's Mea Culpa.")

Incidentally, his point about Nuremberg is basically correct, that it was procedurally problematic, though it came to the right conclusion. He just failed to articulate that on the air, which he acknowledges.

Biggest surprise: Terry Moran is sometimes thoughtful. Second-biggest surprise: He is a "regular reader" of NRO.

IRAQI INDEPENDENCE DAY

Iraqi Council President Adnan Pachachi, at the "We got him" press conference earlier today, said:

I would like to repeat that I will call upon the Governing Council to declare today as a national day, as a holiday for all Iraqis, to be announced as the official independence day of Iraq.

Rock on. If you stop by my place on December 14, 2004, the drinks will be on me.

DISCUSS AMONGST YOURSELVES

This afternoon the Washington Post's Associate Editor, Robert Kaiser, held a generally thoughtful and worthwhile online discussion about Saddam's capture. But late in the discussion comes this bizarre exchange:

Eureka, Calif.: Why do so many people seem to believe that with Saddam's capture the war is now over? Are they really so naive as to think the Iraqi resistance to U.S. occupationi is going to suddenly evaporate? Does Saddam's capture change the fact that the U.S. is engaged in an illegal occupation of a sovereign country, and that the majority of Iraqis want the U.S. forces to leave their country?



Robert G. Kaiser: thanks for your comment. I love your giant redwoods in Eureka! "Illegal" is obviously a loaded word, but without endorsing its use, I agree with you. The U.S. still faces huge problems in Iraq and the entire Middle East, and capturing Saddam does not solve any of them.

Huh? Kaiser's odd response is strange in itself -- not endorsing use of the word "illegal" but apparently endorsing its implications -- but given his response to some of the other C-SPAN caller-types who logged on to rail against President Bush (Kaiser liked Bush's address today, for example) the above is perplexing.

Kaiser addresses the "illegal" thing but leaves unchallenged assertion that many people believe the violence in Iraq will all end now -- I've heard nothing but the opposite today. Or the claim that most Iraqis oppose the coalition's efforts. Recent polls do show skepticism among Iraqis, but the question of support per se wasn't asked. And in any case, given today's news, that should change. (Also, older polls show clear support.)

Perhaps Kaiser was just tired of dumb questions, and didn't really "agree." At least, I hope.

EVEN BETTER THAN THE REAL THING

Bulimics rejoice! Adding to the long list of technological advances that will never find a wide audience, the Japanese have invented a "food simulator." Yes, a "food simulator":

The machine's inventors are somewhat vague about what the food simulator will actually be used for, but they suggest that it will be helpful in designing new foods -- particularly when the concern is chewability, as with food for the elderly. In a charitable spirit, the designers also suggest that the food simulator "enables younger people to understand the biting difficulties experienced by elderly people." In other words, the simulator will not only allow people to experience caviar without straining their bank accounts; it will also deepen intergenerational understanding.

But I still want one.

JACQUES-COME-LATELY

Earlier this year, France caught some flak for appearing to give mixed signals about whether it was rooting for the U.S. or Saddam. Today, however, there can be no confusion:

France, which has had a rocky relationship with the United States since it led the opposition to the war, said the capture would help stabilize the country and lead to its sovereignty.



"It's a major event that should strongly contribute to democracy and stability in Iraq and allow the Iraqis to master their destiny," French President Jacques Chirac said in a statement.

Funny what a little success can do.

RED DAWN

Here's the Centcom press release. New phrase-of-the-week: "spider hole"? New hero-of-the-moment: Maj. Gen. Ray Odierno? Odierno was in charge of the operation named after one of the great Cold War Hollywood propaganda movies, is well-liked by the press, and insisted for weeks that Saddam was in the Tikrit area. He was right.

U.S. CONFIRMS CAPTURE OF SADDAM HUSSEIN

By now, you've probably heard. But at 9AM on Sunday morning, it's just breaking now. TV news has videotape of Saddam with a long beard, just kinda sitting there, not seeming too happy about it. So far, Drudge is still dark, the AP hasn't put anything up yet. But the TV's all over it. And there's not much I can really write that would make any literal sense or be followed by an acceptable number of exclamation points. So I'm going to go back to the TV now.

P.S. There is, however, this first response from an Iraqi blogger. Another here.

P.P.S. One down...

P.P.P.S. In other good news: DC has snow!

HOWARD DEAN, CORPORATE CRONY II

So far the Howard Dean/Leucadia story (see two posts below) is still not generating any (and I mean any) coverage. But considering that Newsweek tipped off the campaign about it before filing their story (thus allowing the Dean camp to make amends before it broke) that isn't a huge surprise. It's old news, in a way, even though no one has heard about it. As I mentioned, that story's non-starting probably had something to do with the fact that the other candidates themselves likely had connections to companies seeking to move offshore.

But! Late this week a new story about Dean's involvement with corporate America broke, and it's one the other candidates could avoid comparisons with. (In large part because there are no other governors in the race.) As governor of Vermont, Dean invited large businesses to incorporate subsidiaries in his state, where taxes were favorable, and even actually said he wanted to "overtake Bermuda" in that regard. Oh, and which company is included in those businesses? The evilest of all evil that was ever evil: Enron. Not bad!

So: Where will this go? The problem is, no candidate necessarily stands to benefit from this any more than the others. At various points in the race, different candidates have tried to benefit from Dean's missteps by calling them out, but none has yet to articulate a compelling case for why they are better on this. All of the other candidates are running against offshore tax havens, so no one can claim sole right to this issue.

If anyone can get a boost from this, they've got to figure out how and then do something dramatic, and they have to do it by late Monday. Otherwise, we can add this to the ever-elongating list of examples of Dean's "Teflon."

P.S. I've yet to point out that I think all of this is pretty much a non-issue, in real world terms. It could have a political impact, but the fact that Dean has made Vermont a tax shelter is simply not wrong. His spokesman, Jay Carson, says in the above-linked article:

This is a legitimate industry, perfectly legal. It helped the economy here, and Governor Dean is going to make no apologies for that.

True! And so it is also perfectly legal for companies to set up shop in Bermuda. It is perfectly legal to incorporate where it is most advantageous; maybe the U.S. should think about simplifying its tax code if it wants to keep companies here. But for this election, Dean's high and mighty stance against that practice is now effectively neutralized. Ha!

In the short run, nobody really gains from this (unless a backlash against the criticism results in more online donations to Dean, that is). But in the longer run, I can name at least one candidate who stands to benefit from all this: President George W. Bush.

OH, THE THINGS KERRY KNOWS!

When John Kerry showed up for his installment in Chris Matthews' "Hardball" candidate interviews this October, he casually asserted that he "knew in fact" that the French and Russians were willing to consider a resolution that would have "united" the UN Security Council on Iraq, though he didn't say precisely whether that meant France and Russia would sign off on war if Saddam continued to balk on inspections. Only problem was, neither France nor Russia nor UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan claimed to have any idea what he was talking about. Kerry got made fun of a little bit, then the story died.

You'd think he learned not to try floating unsubstantiated rumors about diplomatic overtures by adversarial European governments. But you would be wrong.

Yesterday, Kerry sat down with editors and reporters from the Boston Globe to talk foreign policy. In the article based on that interview today, Patrick Healy (who wrote the story linked above) inexcusably "buries the lede" under four paragraphs of the same Bush-bashing and Dean-bashing boilerplate that Kerry's done for months. Here are the only three paragraphs he needed to wrote:

Touting his own relationships with foreign governments, Kerry disclosed that he was recently told that French President Jacques Chirac is willing to assist with the occupation of Iraq, and Chirac has even signaled a willingness to send French troops to Iraq.



"I've talked with a friend of mine who was in Paris the other day who was meeting with President Chirac at length, exploring some ideas, and the clear conclusion was that there is a place where the president is prepared to be involved and even perhaps put troops on the ground," Kerry said.



Pressed, Kerry refused to identify the friend who spoke with Chirac, or offer further details. "I don't want to drag the president of France into this presidential race."

Don't you just love how he refers to Chirac as "the president," almost as if the former mayor of Paris was president in this country? Or how he name-drops Chirac and boasts of his well-connected friends, then demurs when asked to elaborate? And then, having revealed this juicy item, creating legitimate news about Chirac's diplomatic intentions, demurs and claims he doesn't want to "drag the president of France" into the story. And Kerry wonders why nobody takes him seriously.

I hope everybody in the room with him felt insulted. As I write this, it's tomorrow and a few hundred miles south of the Globe's offices, but I know I do.

HOWARD DEAN, CORPORATE CRONY

Armed Prophet missed this Newsweek story almost entirely, but according to Google News, so did everyone else (except for my colleage, Maxim Basa, who just pointed it out to me today). It's about Howard Dean, and it's pretty damned interesting. But what's more interesting is that none of his Democratic rivals have seized on it.

To put the story in Reader's Digest form, Dean's campaign has received backing from a company called Leucadia. This company's leadership held at least one fundraiser on his behalf and has flown him around on a company jet. Now, recall for a moment that Dean has made a signature issue not just of taking on corporate America (boo! hiss!) but specifically of companies to seek to "use foreign tax havens solely to avoid paying US income taxes" (source: Dean's website). Why is that relevant? Because Leucadia is in the process of incorporating in Bermuda to avoid paying US taxes, of course!

According to Newsweek, this came as news to the Dean campaign. So now they've begun repaying Leucadia for use of its jet -- not that it'll put much dent in his warchest at this point. Still, no word on whether they'll continue to accept contributions from Leucadia executives. That should keep the story alive, right? I don't see how it could -- the "Leucadia scandal" never had much life to begin with.

Kerry? Gephardt? Anyone want to bite? Clark? Uh, Lieberman? You could really use this right about now... okay, fine. You guys already lost, anyway. But seriously, you did just have a debate on Monday. Couldn't have hurt to bring that up. Sure, Koppel just wanted to talk process -- endorsements, fundraising and the like -- but you're all big kids. Hell, you even failed to mention Dean's sealed records back in Vermont, and that even seemed to have some traction. That is, at least, before Al Gore stepped in. Maybe you're ignoring Leucadia because you've got iffy companies of your own listed in your campaign finance filings (probably). Or maybe you're still recovering from the New Hampshire cold (definitely). Either way, you had your chance.

This Leucadia business could still come up again; the Vermont records story -- which as a story about Dean's hypocrisy seems to pale beside this -- registered minor blips in the news for months before it broke open last month. Ironically, it was Newsweek that put that earlier story on the front pages. Time? U.S. News? Anyone want this? Once we get to the general election, President Bush won't make it an issue. Use it or lose it, folks.

Howard Dean has run pretty good campaign, yes. But how good? This kind of story makes you think twice. And when the rest of the field is this inept, how good did he really have to be? Karl Rove can't exactly keep banker's hours next year, but if there's more where this came from, he might be forgiven for taking a couple weekends off per month.

DAYS OF WHINE AND POSES

Dennis Kucinich hasn't publicly complained about not getting any love from "SNL" this weekend -- that I know of -- but he is whining about being dumped by ABC News. This week ABC pulled its embeds from the campaigns of Braun, Sharpton, and Kucinich. He blasted the network, raving:

Obviously, ABC is retaliating for my challenge to Ted Koppel in last night's debate. They have proven my point, which is the media, and now specifically ABC, is now trying to set the agenda for this election.

Yes, obviously. Frankly, Kucinich is lucky to have had any major media in this campaign. The fringe paranoid Lyndon LaRouche has raised far more money, and he (deservedly) gets zero press. Armed Prophet says: Boo freaking hoo!

U.S. DEPT OF HECTORING

Last week I dissed Doug Marlette of the Tallahassee Democrat for not being funny. Others might disagree, but Reason's Peter Bagge, especially this week, will not get that treatment from me.

OH, REALLY?

Armed Prophet actually feels sorry for John Kerry. This spring he was widely perceived to be a lock for the Democratic nomination, only to lose that by summer, be virtually dead by fall, and practically six feet under as winter approaches. Apparently I'm not the only one feeling sorry for him; so does the Worcester Telegram & Gazette:

It's been a rough ride lately for Massachusetts' favorite son John F. Kerry, but don't write off his quest for the Democratic presidential nomination just yet. ... Mr. Kerry needs to build some momentum quickly. But barring outright fiascoes in New Hampshire and Iowa, he still has time to get out of single digits and into serious contention.

How does he have time? The upcoming holidays mean almost no one will be following what happens in politics until the first week of January. Not that anything's happen to bolster his chances since, let's say, last January. There is only one debate left. Not that any of the debates have amounted to much of anything. And if the Telegram & Gazette means to say Kerry can still come back after losing the first two contests, perhaps political journalism isn't their field.

In the Northeast, at least, he has the backing of much of the party establishment. Numerous Bay State politicians, including several from Central Massachusetts, have made trips north of the border on Mr. Kerry's behalf.

Fine, he's got Democrats from Massachusetts and New Hampshire's former governor, Jeanne Shaheen. But in terms of the "party establishment" in the Northeast, that's about it. Meanwhile, Howard Dean's Massachusetts fundraising is approaching Kerry's -- I thought he raised more last quarter, but I can't find a link -- and more importantly, led Kerry in Massachusetts polls as far back as three weeks ago.

But the Kerry campaign has to do much better in the future than it has so far. His handlers' attempts to package him as a motorcycle-riding, guitar-playing man of the people, predictably, have flopped badly. And his use of a vulgarism to describe U.S. Iraq policy came off not as spontaneous and impassioned but as the carefully scripted ploy it was.

Good point. So... why shouldn't we write off John Kerry?

WHEN THEMES AND SCHEMATICS COLLIDE

An aide to President Bush's re-election campaign is quoted in the New York Times today:

"We're ready to go," said a senior Republican official involved in the Bush campaign. "The broad thematics and the whole approach to him, those things have been well thought out. As for the tactical stuff, it's still out there. The timing is a big decision."

Okay, that all sounds good except "thematics" is not a word! But it's not a bad potential word, necessarily. If one definition of "schematic" means "a diagram of an electrical or mechanical system," then perhaps the campaign has a big flow chart showing how the campaign themes leading to victory next year should work out.

Or maybe they're just trying to keep up with Orrin Hatch.

BUSH KNEW!!!!

Last week I asked whether Wesley Clark agreed with his press aides, who circulated a statement that managed to both criticize John Kerry for an attempt at bipartisanship and outright accuse George Bush of stealing the last election.

So far, I haven't gotten an answer. But as to the unasked question of whether he thinks Presiden Bush let 9/11 happen, I can report the answer is yes:

Retired Army General Wesley K. Clark yesterday suggested that President Bush bears some responsibility for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, saying the administration had been warned about the threat of Osama bin Laden but did not act quickly enough to prevent the tragedy. ... lark elaborated on his 9/11 criticism, saying that President Clinton's former national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger, had warned the Bush administration about the dangers of bin Laden but that Bush spent his first nine months in office focusing on Russia rather than the Al Qaeda leader. "What he should have done is put the priority on dealing with the threat that was facing America," Clark said. "Apparently, he didn't."

I can picture it now. Sandy Berger sitting there in his West Wing office in January 2001, and right at the end of a meeting he remembers: "Wait, Condi, there is one last thing. There's this one thing we didn't exactly get around to, but..."

Look, I'm not here to let anybody off the hook. The CIA, FBI and INS failed in a handful of situations (we know of) where they might have kept out or deported several of the hijackers, including Mohamed Atta. President Bush oversaw these organizations for nine months; institutional responsibility lies with him and his cabinet officers.

But: Let's not forget who is obviously behind Clark's presidential bid. Clark even talks frequently with Bill Clinton (in case you didn't bother to follow the last seven links), and uh... who was in office for the seven years after the first attack on the World Trade Center, and four years after the embassy bombings in Africa?

If Clark wants to hold Bush accountable for his inability to prevent 9/11, he must apply the same standard to his political mentor. Just like the recession of the last few years, the plan for 9/11 was hatched before Dubya took the oath and Bill left for Chappaqua. Both were the culmination of trends that began under Clinton's tenure. The tech bubble had burst and UBL/al Qaeda were well known long before the 2000 presidential election. To blame Bush for both by blaming the economic downturn on tax cuts that didn't really go into effect until this year, and to blame Bush for 9/11 by admonishing -- as Clark does above -- 'we tried to warn you!' is just reprehensible. Howard Dean may be the "angry" Democrat in this race, but Clark is the real nutter.

And this says as much about Clinton as it does Clark. The good news is that while Clinton will tend to his favorite hobby, rehabilitating his legacy, he can't be president again. The bad news is that Clark, who is not a "stalking horse" for Hillary but actually one of two Dems (along with Gephardt) who could still conceivably "stop Dean" (as they say), still can.

P.S. The text of the AP story linked here is only tangentially related to the above post, but the headline is perfect. (Via Taranto.)

FORGET AL GORE

Sure, having the party's last presidential nominee in your corner is nice and all, but he doesn't exactly have the machinery to get people out to vote on election day. And in a state where you're so far ahead that you not only have to win but you must win decisively, having the endorsement of the state's largest teacher's union is better than nice. A lot better.

LET'S STOP CALLING THE REHNQUIST COURT CONSERVATIVE, HMM?

Please? (Though it's not William Rehnquist's fault, exactly.) Five out of nine members of the Supreme Court believe the First Amendment is less important than the popular opinion that rerouting money from parties toward special interest groups, diminishing the potential for third parties to matter (note: I didn't say win), and restricting the right to advertise in the last weeks of an election. And one of them is Sandra Day O'Connor. I am not pleased.

Armed Prophet hasn't had a chance to read the decision, but when I do (tonight or tomorrow), I'll come back with a more sophisticated analysis. In the meantime, please excuse me while I go slam a few doors.

P.S. Correction made, as noted in the comment by Danimal. Go visit his Flog™. If you can decipher his law school exam notes and find any errors, let me know.

MALARKEY!

That's right, I said malarkey! So opines the New York Times:

New Hampshire voters ... always like an underdog, and Dr. Dean, with his new head-of-the-pack status, doesn't necessarily qualify.

Please! Even some smarter folks, like Mickey Kaus, tried this line out a couple days ago as well, but it doesn't stick. The kind of frontrunners who get the rug pulled in the New Hampshire primary are establishment candidates like George W. Bush, Bob Dole and Walter Mondale, who also still won the nomination. (I'm not hedging -- just pointing it out.) A better comparison might be Jimmy Carter, who came out of nowhere in 1976 to win Iowa, then New Hampshire, and eventually the White House. (Though it's unlikely Dean can go the full distance -- Gerald Ford was no George W. Bush.)

Sure, Dean has Al Gore's backing now, but Gore isn't exactly the establishment -- the Clintons are. (Though your average voter may not know that.) Dean may have some insider credentials now, but it was the establishment that came to him, not the other way around. That's a big difference. Plus, Dean still has leads well into the double-digits in all polls. Assuming Kerry continues to fade, that leaves Clark and Lieberman fighting over the remains with Dean.

So: Yes, New Hampshirites are an unruly, insubordinate bunch. But let's not paint them as given to reversing course at the last minute. Just ask Gore and Dukakis, Bush '92, and Ford, all of whom kept their frontrunning lead in New Hampshire and managed to get, instructively, at least as far as the nomination.

UNFUNNY AT ANY SPEED?

Bill Janklow, the former governor and soon-to-be-former congressman from South Dakota, was convicted of manslaughter on Monday. He'll resign this January when he's sentenced, and a grim special election race is already shaping up. I can't think of a single positive angle to this case. Janklow has long been known for driving too fast, and this summer it caught up with him when his car flew through an intersection and hit a motorcyclist named Randolph Scott. Today the Washington Post moralizes, in an editorial titled "Speeding Isn't Funny":

This is a man, after all, who declared in his State of the State address in 1999 that "Bill Janklow speeds when he drives," who testified in court Saturday that he always stops at stop signs "unless I have a reason not to." This is a man, in other words, who has treated speeding as a badge of character and who has been enabled by the justice system in doing so. But speeding isn't funny and it isn't something to be proud of.

I don't necessarily disagree. But I do wonder if the Post remembers the coverage it gave to Hillary Clinton's interview with David Letterman's mom back in February 1994. Here it is:

Hillary invited [Dave's mom] to visit the White House, with or without her famous son, and then Mom read from a piece of paper. "I have a question to ask you from David: 'Is there anything you or your husband can do about the speed limit in Connecticut?'" Hillary laughed and said, "That sounds like a very personal inquiry from your son. Has he gotten into trouble?" "Oh, he has a heavy foot," said Mom. "So does my husband," said the First Lady. "What is it about some of these guys with heavy feet?" "I don't know," said Mom. "But he has seen more tickets from the Connecticut troopers than I think he cares to count."

I hesitate to shriek and point fingers either at Hillary, the Letterman show, or the Post -- though it would be very easy to do so. Especially at the Post, which probably isn't aware of their hypocrisy. Of course, the former citation comes from today's editorial page; the latter came from a TV column nearly a decade prior. But it does illuminate the tension that exists between what we could loosely label levity and levelheadedness*, not to mention our conflicted relationship with automobiles. It at least seemed worth pointing out.

It's a complicated subject, and one I don't think is easily explicable. This is the stuff of books, not blog posts. So far I can only come up with one conclusion that I'm sure of: Speeding is funny. Just not when someone gets killed. Or as the saying goes, it's only funny until somebody gets hurt.

P.S. This is stupid. Not for the sentiment expressed, but simply because I cannot stand clever T-shirts.

_____

* Sorry about the alliteration there; it just happened, I swear.

I DON'T WANT IT

If you want to buy the BCS (repair needed), click fast. I bet eBay will take it down before the day is out. Besides, I'm with Michael Wilbon on this one: end it, don't mend it.

OUCH!

Al Gore burned some bridges with his endorsement of Howard Dean today, but none so public as those to Joe Lieberman. In the last couple of years they'd fallen a bit into disrepair, especially considering how Lieberman backed the Iraq war and Gore opposed it. But it was still in Lieberman's interest to promote his once-close friendship with Gore. That is, until today.

Sure, Lieberman wasn't going to get Gore's backing; poll numbers pretty much dictated that. But some courtesy would have been appreciated. Let's not forget, Lieberman stayed out of the race until Gore announced he wouldn't try again in 2004. And Lieberman found out about the endorsement yesterday not from Gore -- with whom he stays in contact via Blackberry -- but from the media. Ouch!

And his campaign hasn't been shy about making that clear. Lieberman himself was on the "Today Show" this morning, where he was asked about a recent comment he'd made about Gore having a prominent role in his administration. He replied:

I'd say that's less likely this morning

Chilly, no? Here's what he said about Gore's loyalty:

I'm not going to talk about Al Gore's sense of loyalty this morning.

Brrrrrrrr! And here's Lieberman's campaign manager, Craig Smith, talking about Gore on "Fox and Friends" this morning:

We took his name off the short list for vice president.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Or whether to shrug it off and go about my business, ignoring the Lieberman campaign as I pretty much always have.

IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING

I missed today's big event -- according to the Drudge Report -- entirely. Which reminds me how I missed another "big" event entirely, too. I suppose if it was really important, I could always move to California.

RADICAL AGNOSTICISM?

One of several possible scenarios is being played out in this Vancouver Columbian news bite, and Armed Prophet doesn't have enough info to know which:

Jesse Card, 20, wants to see a plaque with the Ten Commandments moved away from the Everett police station. The plaque is set back from the sidewalk, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Card is an agnostic who filed suit against the city of Everett demanding removal of a 6-foot-tall granite plaque depicting the Ten Commandments, which has been in front of the police station for about 40 years. The Washington, D.C.-based group Americans United for Separation of Church and State is providing his legal council. The court date is set for October 2004. The city has already spent $30,000 to defend keeping the monument where it is.

Possibility #1: Card has passed himself off as an agnostic but is actually a militant atheist. Unlike atheists, agnostics are open to the idea of God but haven't found a reason to come down off the fence. So it seems unlikely an agnostic would be hell-bent on removing the vestiges of others' religion, even from public places. And Card, you see, wants to ruin the public perception of agnostics as amiable, hoping to alienate the agnostics from their potential allies, the believers, thereby forcing the agnostics into his camp.

Possibility #2: The kid is indeed a militant atheist, and said so, but the reporter made a lazy error.

Possibility #3: Card is actually a gnostic, and a twisted one at that. Again, reportorial laziness is at fault.

Possibility #4: I'm giving the kid too much credit. He's probably just imitating something he saw on television.

JUST GLAD TO HELP

I'm surprised Andrew Sullivan didn't manage to connect one recent post of his with another, but I'm glad to oblige: when Noam Chomsky said that Western anti-Semitism "scarecely exists," he might have been shocked at this Indymedia post. Not only does anti-Semitism exist, it's most potent these days near his own camp on the anti-Israeli left.

THE SHARPTON MOMENT

First, Al Sharpton gets some of the most -- and certainly the best -- coverage of his campaign so far by going on "Saturday Night Live." Now, the City of New York has agreed to pay him $200,000 to settle a decade-old lawsuit.

That's almost twice what he raised in the third quarter, and increases his cash-on-hand by nine-fold! Al Sharpton, you are now the Democrats' "stop Dean candidate"!

Okay, maybe not. But this is your good media week, Al. Enjoy it while it lasts -- Kucinich still hasn't gotten his.

IS IT SECRET SERVICE TIME?

Presidential candidates who are not themselves the sitting POTUS don't usually qualify for Secret Service protection until after New Hampshire or so. Certainly, John McCain got a few weeks of er, secret servicing, after winning there in 2000. But so much of this campaign has happened so early already. No votes have been cast, of course, but with Al Gore's impending endorsement, I wonder if the Secret Service will offer Howard Dean within a matter of days. After all, the section of law specifying the Service's charges include "major Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates." That's pretty arbitrary, but Dean seems a lot more of a sure thing now than McCain did then.

P.S. What would be really amusing is if the Secret Service offers Dean protection in the next 18 hours or so, before Gore joins him for a press conference and then a swing through New York, Iowa and New Hampshire. Dean would then have their protection. But former Vice Presidents, such as Gore, do not. Ha!

P.P.S. And Bill Clinton better enjoy his while he can; in 1997 Congress changed the law limiting ex-POTUSes to just ten years of Secret Service protection. Poor guy.

THE NEXT CLUB FOR GROWTH AD?

NRO's Ramesh Ponnuru, on the ascendancy of Howard Dean:

[Democrats] now have a candidate with McGovern's foreign policy, Mondale's domestic policy, Dukakis's regional background, and Gore's arrogance. How perfect is that?

Hey, Steve, are you getting this? Wait, wait. Say what? You mean he already has? Tsk, tsk. Come on, Ramesh. Don't you have your own material?

P.S. I've been told Ramesh likes it if you mistake him for Dinesh D'Souza. I haven't tried this myself, although I did once tell Jonah Goldberg, upon first meeting him, that he was fatter than I thought he would be.

AL, CAROL, DENNIS, DICK, JOE, JOHN, JOHN, WES...

Tough luck, folks. But thanks for playing!

P.S. Who does this hurt the most? Dick Gephardt and Wes Clark, of course. Why? Because they were the only other ones who could have still come back at this point.

P.P.S But what about Lieberman? Oh, it might hurt his feelings the most, but he's been dead in the water. Ever since, let's say, the day he announced his candidacy.

P.P.P.S. What about Kerry? Uh... John who? (But I didn't say "John." Exactly!)

P.P.P.P.S. Is Gore trying to position himself for 2008? That seems to be the thinking at TNR.

P.P.P.P.P.S Over at Slate, Mickey Kaus wonders if this might cause those notoriously fickle and frontrunner-skeptical New Hampshirites to balk at Dean. Well, if Dean wasn't ahead by 30 points, then maybe...

P.P.P.P.P.P.S. And Andrew Sullivan catches the NYT's Adam Nagourney just being a dork.

PREDICTION TIME

Al Sharpton is hosting SNL tonight, and despite the highly questionable decision to invite him on, so far it's easily the best episode of the season. For some reason, the writing is a cut above the last few seasons' norm. Also, Sharpton plays Johnnie Cochran, Joe Jackson, and can belt out a James Brown tune.

Even the post-Weekend Update skits are pretty solid; that's a rarity. One of them had the other Democratic presidential candidates sitting around watching TV, bemoaning that they were passed over to host. All of them, that is, except for Dennis Kucinich and Carol Moseley Braun.

So here's my prediction: Kucinich is going to complain before the next week is out. So far this campaign, Kucinich and his aides have whined to reporters about his lack of coverage. He's got a couple of Kucinich-gets-no-coverage stories out of it, but no increase in coverage -- wonder of wonders. I'll keep an eye out, although with so little coverage, I might not hear about it.

But it sure would have been funny to be in his Washington apartment tonight when that skit came on. He wasn't portrayed, but the other candidates did mention him so far as to indicate they were trying to ditch him. Can you blame them?

NO, NO, NO! THEY LOOOOVE ISRAEL!

Armed Prophet is not convinced by an op-ed in the Washington Post this morning that seeks to knock down the prevailing interpretation of a European poll that shows -- and I'll attempt to phrase this neutrally -- Israel is considered by Europeans to be more threatening to world peace than any other country. You've probably heard it as 'Europeans believe Israel is the greatest threat to world peace.' No, no, the author writes:

That most Europeans consider Israel ... to be a threat to peace is quite different from their believing that the Jewish state is the "greatest threat." Respondents were asked to list as many threats as they wanted; they were not asked to think hard about which they thought to be the greatest single one.

Yes, but the country they named the most was Israel. Had the question been worded differently, would the response have been much different? (More on this below.)

Now, the ellipses above hide a crucial distinction, the crux of his argument -- the identification of Israel as "a country at war." So writes the author:

In fact, the five countries gaining the disapprobation of 50 percent or more of Europeans are involved in combat (Israel, Iraq, the United States, Afghanistan) or are presenting the world with new nuclear challenges (North Korea, Iran). The next country down, Pakistan (48 percent), is involved but not active in Afghanistan's hostilities. After that, the list ... continues down through currently peaceful Syria, Libya, Saudi Arabia, China, India and Russia.

Russia, currently peaceful? Israel has had to deal with suicide terrorists for years, but Russia's ever-more-deadly conflict with the Chechnyans should qualify them as being "involved in combat." For that matter, domestic terrorism is now emerging as a problem in Saudi Arabia. And isn't India still technically at war with Pakistan over Kashmir?

The author of the Post column is generally right about wars and nukes making people nervous, not that that's much surprise. But I think he writes off a sentiment that I won't call anti-Semitism but perhaps Judeophobia. Europe has thus far looked the other way on Muslim anti-Jewish violence, particularly in France. And in some cases it isn't just ignorance; there is outright disdain -- "shitty little country," anyone? -- among elite opinion.

The author above states in the first paragraph that it's a "myth" that "Europeans are turning against Israel." Yet in making that claim he only raises more questions than he seeks to answer. And by focusing so narrowly on an inessential distinction in the survey's wording he amplifies his inability to address them.

MAKE EVERY ELECTION A RECALL!

Syndicated columnist Tom Elias writes today in the Ventura County Star: 

If Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante had been the designated successor, which so-called reformers would have preferred, it's doubtful anyone would have bothered with a recall in the first place. Voters would have figured Bustamante would be little different from Davis. In real life, Schwarzenegger almost doubled Bustamante's vote, indicating that the lieutenant governor was anything but a popular choice to succeed Davis.

Yes! A good point, that is. There's no need to raise the number of signatures needed to trigger a recall, and the idea of increasing the signatures required to put a candidate on the ballot is so frivolous he doesn't even address it. Voters know who the real candidates are.

Still, I part with Elias on whether to add runoff system; I never thought the recall would result in the election of a governor with a slim fraction of the vote (as so many anti-recallers shrieked). At worst, the winning candidate would receive the substantial plurality that's been good enough for the last three presidential elections.

In fact, during the fun this summer and fall, I even became persuaded that regular elections (at least at the state level and below) could learn a thing or two from the recall. That is, drop the primaries. Late in August, before the campaign really began in earnest, Spooky at Fresh Potatoes listed a number of reasons why primaries should be eliminated:

Eliminating primaries would allow a Dick Riordan or Dianne Feinstein, for example, to run if the official nominee turned out to be a dud before the general election was held. And, if we move away from primaries, and towards unfiltered, direct elections, perhaps some of the public excitement generated by the recall will carry over to general elections.

Bill Simon wasn't crippled until after getting the nomination in 2002, and the sexual harassment allegations against Schwarzenegger might have done the same in a longer campaign. And while Bustamante proved to be a bona fide dud, there wasn't enough time to arrive at a different consensus; in a longer election cycle, the Democrats could probably have found someone better.

In any case, there's already some precedent for this, even in defiance of existing state law. Some of us were apoplectic in late '02 when the New Jersey Supreme Court allowed the Democrats to replace the corrupt now former Senator Bob Toricelli -- immortalized in poem, and these days is in minor legal trouble over a fender-bender -- and replaced on the ballot with Senator-again Frank Lautenberg. This, despite state law requiring a candidate to be on the ballot by a certain day. There must be some cut-off date, for the state to print ballots on time and for absentee votes to matter. That was a matter of respecting the rule of law, which I think the court failed to do.

The New York Times failed in this regard, too, editorializing then that voters deserved to have a better "choice." Well, if it hadn't violated state law (I insist on saying), I would have agreed. Now, in a recall-style election, a plausible replacement might already be on the ballot. Heck, even if Riordan and Feinstein didn't want to run, they could have allowed their names on the ballot as a back-up. Everybody wins!

I wonder what the good-government types think about this. They always have inventive ideas for revamping governmen, most of which are terrible. It wouldn't substantially increase the chances of a third party candidate (nor should it, I say), but it might increase turnout (which I'm sometimes ambivalent about, to be honest) and would surely keep the campaigns more interesting and would encourage the election of the best possible candidate. Case in point: the California recall.

P.S. I haven't been covering Arnold much these days, but right now he's in a big showdown with the Legislature over whether they'll agree to put his budget on the March primary ballot. If they won't, he'll probably start collecting signatures. If Armed Prophet doesn't always cover the goings-on out there, Dan Weintraub certainly will.

SPEAKING OF FRAUDS

As long as we still have John Kerry to kick around, I might as well keep kicking him when he deserves it. Here he is, interviewed in the new Rolling Stone, on Bush and Iraq:

The president made a series of promises to us -- number one, that he was gonna make every effort possible to build a legitimate coalition. He did not -- he built a fraudulent coalition.

There's that phrase again -- "fraudulent coalition." He's been using it off-and-on for a couple of months, whenever he thinks it's time to sound as much like Howard Dean as possible. It's a troublesome one; it implies America is justified in using force only under the guise of "multilateralism" (a leftist synonym for "United Nations"). As James Lileks put it some time ago, it's a matter of whether you belong (loosely speaking) to -- the US party or the UN party (note: written prior to Paul Wellstone's death). Too many of the Democrats running for president these days seem to belong to the latter.

The first instance of Kerry I can find of Kerry -- unambiguously of the UN persuasion -- using that phrase is from the Washington Post on October 13, when he said:

We have a fraudulent coalition, and I use the word 'fraud.' It's a few people here, a few people there. It's basically the British, and, most fundamentally, the United States of America."

That's the best explanation he seems to have given for its usage, and it's woefully inadequate. Partly because the real reason is to mimic Dean, but there are other, better reasons as well. Surely he knows, for example, that our cooperation with Britain and Australia leaves just Canada away from the same coalition that landed at Normandy. And surely he knows that the coalition comprises Spain, Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic, all of whom have contributed resources and troops to Iraq, and who have lost soldiers during the invasion and postwar. Other bloggers have pointed out the insensitivity of pretending that allies who have sacrificed their young men in this war, but it's a point that can stand to be made again.

What he means, of course, is that we the United States are paying for most of the Iraq operation and it's mostly our troops in the field. But this was equally true during the Balkan wars in the late 1990s, which were fought under the auspices of NATO, and which Kerry sometimes supported. And he also knows why we shoulder so much of the burden: We've made it a priority to develop the world's most superior fighting force, whereas the (other) European countries he thinks we need on board have focused on maintaining their "progressive" welfare states. When they run into trouble, they came calling for us to act. Now that we deem there's trouble, why can't we act?

Britain, Italy, Poland and the others would all contribute more if their resources were truly needed, but the fact is, they are not. Yet in his mind this fact apparently reduce the validity of our initiative. Is John Kerry really saying that our strength makes us illegitimate? I doubt it, but it sure comes out that way.

HAHAHAHAHAHA

Oh me oh my, this is the funnniest political cartoon ever. Oh ho ho ho! [Slap knee repeatedly.] That Dubya! He's soooooo stupid!

P.S. Ahem. Doug Marlette of the Tallahassee Democrat doesn't like the president; that I can deal with. But neither is he insightful or funny; that's indefensible.

HAIL TO THE THIEF?

With John Kerry's New Hampshire poll ratings in near free-fall -- the dramatic campaign shake-up hasn't reversed the trend -- and now Wesley Clark is threatening to overtake him for second place in that first primary state. Smelling blood after Kerry's big foreign policy speech, Clark's spokesman, Matt Bennett, almost immediately attacked Kerry for floating as a possible Middle East envoy Bush 41's former secretary of state, James Baker. Baker, many Democrats cannot forget, was out front on behalf of Bush 43 during the interminable Florida recount in late 2000. Bennett all but shrieked in a written statement:

Senator Kerry's suggestion that he might use Bush family consigliere James Baker as a special envoy to the Midddle East is offensive. Baker, who was the driving force behind George W. Bush's theft of the 2000 election in the Florida recount, helped to disenfranchise thousands of voters. We liked it better when Senator Kerry was calling Baker's Florida operation 'thuggism'

Hello! Armed Prophet is well aware that statements made by candidates' subordinates, especially in press releases, are not treated with the same weight as if the candidate him- or herself had said the same to a reporter. But it shouldn't it matter just a little bit when the chief mouthpiece for one of the top Democrats raises the tired, not to mention erroneous, charge that Bush "stole" Florida? I mean, even a little?

But that's not all: why is Clark, whose sole raison d'être un candidat is supposed to be his foreign policy credentials, putting domestic political squabbles above serious matters of foreign policy? I'll concede that in the Democratic primaries, where many of the participants are inarguably uninterested in confronting terrorism, this might not be a bad tactic. Nevertheless, I would like to know: Does Clark agree with Bennett that Baker's reputation as a Republican partisan would preclude him from conducting diplomacy overseas? Moreover, does Clark agree that President Bush's presidency is illegitimate, the result of simple theft? Somebody should ask.

P.S. Armed Prophet has to wonder if Clark spinner Chris Lehane -- who, as a Gore spinner during the aforementioned recount, called Katherine Harris a Soviet "commissar" -- wasn't behind this ugly smear. It's got his name written all over it.

IS HOWARD DEAN RUNNING FROM HIS PAST?

In Howard Brush Dean III's obligatory campaign autobio, "Winning Back America," his first 13 years growing up in Manhattan rates one sentence:

"Although I was born in the city and went to school in the city until I was 13, I feel I really grew up in East Hampton."

And people call George W. Bush a phony?

P.S. Also of note:

Among Dr. Dean's classmates at Browning ... was Winthrop (Winnie) Rockefeller Jr., then something of a class punching bag and now the lieutenant governor of Arkansas.

Ouch.

THERE'S MORE THAN ONE WAY TO CUT AND RUN

Yesterday John Kerry delivered a big, expansive foreign policy speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Predictably he bashed Bush and named a few things he'd do differently, such as go harder on Saudi Arabia while going softer on Iran (hey, don't take my word for it -- that's how the New York Times put it). You can read the whole speech here, but that Times piece is a pretty decent summary.

In the speech, Kerry says:

I fear that in the run up to the 2004 election the Administration is considering what is tantamount to a cut and run strategy. Their sudden embrace of accelerated Iraqification and American troop withdrawal without adequate stability is an invitation to failure.

That's correct; Kerry accuses Bush of cutting and running, almost as if he was a "US out of Iraq now!" nutball like Dennis Kucinich. So what would Kerry do in Iraq? He'd fire Paul Bremer and have the cut-and-run United Nations -- lest we forget, they have -- take over the administration of the country:

Our best option for success is to go back to the United Nations and leave no doubt that we are prepared to put the United Nations in charge of the reconstruction and governance-building processes. I believe the prospects for success on the ground will be far greater if Ambassador Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority are replaced by a UN Special Representative for Iraq.

Pardon me? Set aside for a moment the fact that there are major doubts about whether certain Security Council members (France and Syria, in particular, but also Russia and China to some extent) even have the same goals that we do? I'd wager they don't. But anyway, let's set that aside for now. Because what I find especially baffling is this:

If he wants to cede control to the UN, how is that not a "cut and run strategy"? If Kerry wants to transfer to the UN responsibility for the planning and oversight of a new constitution, elections and further reconstruction of the county, that's effectively the same thing. Kerry accuses Bush of planning to shirk our responsibility in Iraq for political gain, but Kerry's notion of having the UN take over is obviously calculated to gain votes through a policy of... shirking our responsibility! Unbelievable.

Back to the objective Kerry must believe secondary to affirming the arbitrarily-defined goal of "multilateralism": Building a stable and prosperous Iraq. If we want the job done correctly, we're the only ones who care enough to do it properly. What lobbying have Jacques Chirac or Bashir Assad done on behalf of Iraq? How many speeches about bringing a better life to Iraqis? What interest in Saddam did they have but as a customer of weapons systems and a source of oil? The Security Council, where France and Syria wield veto power, wasn't responsible for the war in the first place and won't feel a strong responsibility to do the job right.

Cutting, running, and letting the UN botch the job is simply unacceptable.

UPDATE -- I just found this quote from Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute, a Democratic think tank, in today's Los Angeles Times:

You hear way too much from the Democrats in this race about turning over the whole mess to the U.N. Well, that's not credible and most people know it. It doesn't have the power to achieve the only outcome we can accept.

And yet Kerry calls Bush's policy "an invitation to failure"?

REMEMBER PLAMEGATE?

Neither does anybody outside Washington, DC, but to recap: someone in the Bush administration leaked the name of former Iraq Ambassador Joe Wilson's wife, CIA analyst Valerie Plame to cantankerous columnist Robert Novak, and though the White House pledged to root out the leaker, that's notoriously difficult to do in the government -- and so the controversy died.

But Wilson has done all he can to keep his name in the papers, endorsing John Kerry for president and sending out frequent fundraising letters and holding conference calls with reporters on the doomed candidate's behalf. But that wasn't enough, and now Wilson and Plame -- who according to Wilson had repeatedly refused to speak to the press or be photographed, due to the sensitive nature of her job -- show up together in a two-page photo spread in the latest issue of Vanity Fair. Way to go.

Armed Prophet frequently disagrees with Slate's almost-a-blogger Tim Noah (aka "Chatterbox"), but he's right on today, giving Wilson the "Whopper of the Week" for (along with Plame) reneging on that no-press decision. He writes:

Plame's extended striptease, enthusiastically touted by her husband, now has Chatterbox wondering how much of Wilson's story to believe. (It also has Chatterbox wondering when the couple will start renting themselves out for birthday parties.) Regardless of the merits, this photograph will surely give the Bush Justice Department whatever slim justification it seeks in dropping its Plamegate investigation.

I share that skepticism of Wilson's motivations, but needless to say, I don't share his disappointment.

GO FIGURE

Remember the anti-war movement? So do the anti-war activists:

Detroiter Jean Wilson couldn't produce her No War signs fast enough for the swelling of peace activists who snatched up 18,000 of the blue-and-white placards during the first weeks of 2003. They sprung up on front lawns and in dorm rooms, at coffee shops and bookstores. Requests poured in from across the globe. "Then the war started and the whole thing just came to a screeching halt," Wilson said.

Daunting problems remain in Iraq, but nothing even close to the apocalyptic scenarios the anti-war activsts predicted ever came to pass. And since the vast majority of Iraqis remain supportive of the United States' commitment to rebuild the country, the "anti-war" activists haven't any idea what to say about it all (that is, at least the ones who aren't all-out Stalinists).

Funny how total failure to understand a changing situation can kill a movement.

PRICELESS

Airline tickets: $76,278

Hotel costs: $44,726

Meal costs: $10,000

Limousine rentals: $3,900

Chutzpah required to spend that much on yourself and your mayoral staff when the city is $196 million in the hole: See above.

HOWARD DEAN, TRUSTBUSTER-COME-LATELY

How bad could Howard Dean's carelessly bold (or boldly careless) statements about "break[ing] up giant media enterprises" be for his chances of moving into 1600 Pennsylvania? The more I think about it, the more bad, I say. One reason, as outlined today by Susan Crabtree at Variety:

The former Vermont governor is not afraid to bite the hand that feeds him. His No. 1 campaign contributor is Time Warner, whose employees have cut Dean $65,475 in checks so far this cycle, according to analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics. While the lion's share of Dean's $25 million-plus in campaign largess comes from individuals in small increments, the top donors to his campaign include Viacom, Walt Disney Co., News Corp, Sony Corp. of America and Vivendi Universal.

The fact Dean's pulling in big checks from executives at News Corp. -- that Fox News/Daily Telegraph/New York Post-owning apotheosis of right-wing synergy that some allege -- goes to show that everyone hedges their bets. Also that the corporate elite comprises more than arch-conservative ideologues. Even if he keeps talking like Ralph Nader, he'll still rake in the contributions as long as Zogby has him within twenty points of George W. Bush.

But here's the catch: If he keeps pushing the anti-corporate line, he won't get nearly as much money as he might have, and certainly nothing like what Bush will collect. So for better or worse, he'd better watch it.

Then again, as Crabtree notes, most of Dean's money has been coming from small contributors, and considering the dedication they've shown, they're likely to keep it up even if he starts talking like Noam Chomsky. Dean's rise to the top of the field has been a truly grassroots phenomenon, starting with the internet and eventually finding legitimacy in endorsements from AFSCME, SEIU and the like. So maybe he can say to hell with the industrialists and he can run the kind of storm-the-castle populist race that Al Gore seemed like he wanted to run last time. Crabtree quotes FCC commissioner Michael Copps, a Democrat, on Dean's emerging re-regulation plank:

"I think it just shows one more time how alive and central this issue is to so many Americans. Of all the domestic issues we're confronting, I can't think of anything more important than the future of the democracy of this country."

Armed Prophet would like to declare that Copps is full of it and turn my back on the issue, but I can't. Not only does Copps sound sympathetic, but elsewhere in today's newspapers, the estimable Bob Samuelson -- in a good column on another topic entirely -- cites a recent Pew Research Center survey finding that 77% of Americans agree with the following statement: "There is too much power concentrated in the hands of a few big companies." Three-fourths of the American population think that corporate power is too great? That is not an insignificant figure.

But maybe the implications are.

First, Armed Prophet would argue there's a huge difference between the having the sense that the fat cats are fatter than they should be and being willing to support legal action forcing the fat cats to shed those pounds. The Department of Justice tried to break up Microsoft a few years back, and despite widespread casual anti-Microsoft sentiment on the web, poll after poll found that few really wanted to split it up.

Second -- and I confess I've been withholding something -- that Pew survey also finds that the same 77% of respondents agreed with that statement when they were polled on it in... get ready for it -- 1987! That was before before most people had even heard of Bill Gates. before Exxon and Mobil got together, before AOL and Time Warner shacked up, before Vivendi and Universal got hitched, before Disney and ABC consummated their... well, you get the picture. Animosity toward big business goes back at least to William Jennings Bryan's three presidential bids and the state-by-state wild goose chase after Standard Oil.

This issue has been around a long time. It's been big enough to pass anti-trust regulation, campaign finance "reform" and legislation of a similar type, but there's one thing it hasn't done: elect a president. Dean will have many other issues and so will there be many other factors in play next year (i.e. Iraq). But his talk about breaking up the media giants is a political loser, and did I mention, a chilling, authoritarian and unconstitutional thing to do? Not so much in this post, no. And neither do I find much about it in the blogosphere -- but this Jeff Jarvis post is a start. More on this later, to be sure.

UPDATE -- More here. And some here.

"BOTTLE HOLDS LOVE, HOPES"

So says a headline from the Denver Post. Armed Prophet couldn't agree more!

UPDATE -- Come again? What do you mean it's not that kind of bottle?

BLINDED BY SCIENCE

Blog has surrendered, declaring that his arguments are nothing more than sarcastic jabs. Weak! Even so, Blog appears to cling (in earnest, I think) to the notion that "parents and environment" can a "alter person's behavior or political leanings" but "entertainment" cannot. Does Blog believe entertainment is not part of one's environment? Apparently he does. Does Blog mean to say art has never inspired action? If so, that's demonstrably false. Just ask Vaclav Havel and Lou Reed.

Now, Blog may have a point about "GI Joe" -- maybe I should tune in -- but if the show is indeed patriotism-reinforcing as he says, then he's just lending more creedence to my original argument. But he's off his gourd if he thinks I tried to say "The Butter Battle Book" was "fuel" for recent protests in the US and Europe. That, or he's willfully misreading my posts.

Armed Prophet should take one lesson from the past week: Never debate anyone who's liable to claim they didn't really mean it in the first place.

DEAN'S "HARDBALL" APPEARANCE, 24 HOURS REMOVED

MSNBC has been promoting the hell out of Chris Matthews' series of Harvard interviews with the Democrats seeking the presidential nomination (except for Kucinich, who freely admits he is afraid of hard questions). These commercials, with The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" in the background, have claimed that Matthews is "shaking up the race" and has "challenged the entire system."

So far that's a bit over the top. Matthews does like to ask tough questions (especially about right-to-work laws, which I get the sense he favors, though he's also the only one who thinks it's a campaign issue), but he also seems to play to some candidates' favor when it suits him (especially last night). The overall effect has been a genuinely interesting series of interviews (even with Dick Gephardt!) but nothing really newsworthy. Of course, with most of the candidates treading water or sinking in the polls, there's very little they could do (drug trafficking charges notwithstanding) that can really be called newsworthy.

Last night, Howard Dean changed all that. Or at least I think he did. Armed Prophet posted a couple of quick takes last night, trying to predict what the major themes would be today. All in all, I think I did a pretty good job, if I have the right to make that judgment.

As I sort of expected, the actual Associated Press write-up of the interview focused almost entirely on Dean's admission of having wanted to avoid Vietnam service. Glancing at Google News, it looks like other news outlets chose to cover it the same way.

There's no great surprise that's the top issue. For Dean to take such a strikingly different position on from President Bush on Iraq while he's had the typical governor's experience in foreign policy (read: none), anything else Dean has said or done with regard to war and peace is newsworthy. It's too soon to tell whether this will help or hurt him, but I originally thought it would be a slight positive and so far see no reason to think otherwise. He freely admitted something he would have preferred not to, and didn't try to grandstand as John Kerry might. Still, I could be wrong.

Again: yes, it's a story. But covering it to exclusion? There's the problem. Maddening as it may be, the old truism about the media being able to focus on only one thing at a time is proving true again.

Well, thank Tim Berners-Lee for the World Wide Web (and Pyra Labs for the blogosphere). Last night I identified several other issues that should have been in the AP's coverage, but could yet come back to be a problem for Dean. A few others saw things the way I did:

Hugh Hewitt (now with post-specific links!) noticed Dean's position that it matters not who might try Saddam and UBL for the same reasons I did: we'd have the death penalty as an option; any international tribunal almost assuredly would not. Picking up from that point, Mickey Kaus (still without!) makes a fair argument that we wouldn't want to try UBL in the first place -- we'd kill him or lock him up where ever it is we're keeping Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- which I think I lean toward. But Saddam is deserving, in any case.

This afternoon Matt Drudge picked up on Dean's claim that he would "break up" the big media conglomerates. (I actually IMed him about it last night, but he never wrote back. So who knows if I can take any credit.) Drudge has a partial transcript; it's worth checking out. No, Dean could never actually do it, like the Clintons could never get their socialized health care through Congress, but he sure could waste a lot of time that could be better spent by, let's say, reforming Social Security (another reason why Bush should stay in office). Whether he could actually force Time Warner to sell off chunks of its empire or not -- and doesn't he know corporations voluntarily spin off companies all the time? -- the fact that he wants to should scare us a lot more than the putative dangers of conglomeration.

The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto made an issue of the "Soviet Union" gaffe -- Dean referred to it several times in the present tense -- comparing it to Gerald Ford's 1976 "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe" debate slip-up. Andrew Sullivan followed up later, saying it proved Dean unfit to serve as commander-in-chief. And after I shrugged it off in last night's post, regular Commentator blog contributor Bret (and occasional contributor to my comments section) disagreed with me in a comment on this site, saying that "Dean's mind is still stuck in old world terms."

I don't know about all that. Far too much was made of Ford's blunder in that race, and too much shouldn't be made of this. I mean, it could work, but there are plenty of things Dean has actually intended to say that he should really be challenged on. Bret is onto something -- I agree Dean hasn't learned the lesson of 9/11 -- but I don't think the Soviet Union thing has anything to do with that.

For better or worse, all the available air on Dean's foreign policy is currently taken up by his admission on the draft deferment. And this probably won't catch on because there's no media perception that Dean is behind the times or old and out of touch. Remember when Bob Dole referred to the "Brooklyn Dodgers" in 1996? That was an issue (bogus as it may have been) because that perception dogged him. But nobody really thinks Dean is unaware that the USSR bit the dust a dozen years ago.

What is getting some play in the newspapers and on television (all right, so in the new media world, at least a couple of stories can stay aloft at a time), is the re-emergence of his sealing of records from his governorship as an issue of integrity. (This, despite the fact that Matthews didn't bring it up; "Good Morning America" did.) Making matters a lot worse, Dean claimed that as long as Bush's records from Texas remained sealed, so would his. Well, Dean's people didn't do their homework. Almost all of Bush's records are available at his father's presidential library at Texas A & M. Whoops!

Now this could be a story. Too bad it's Joe Lieberman who's been most vocal about this so far. Who pays attention to him anymore? If nothing else, it goes to show just how screwed up the Kerry campaign is. Maybe they think they already overreached in pestering Dean about Medicare in the last debate.

My final conclusion, because I think I need one:

Stay tuned. Dean didn't implode per se, but we did see a number of issues come to light that could be an issue in both the primary and general election. A half dozen can of worms got opened up in the last 24 hours, and it could be months before we -- meaning Dean's Dem opponents, the RNC and the media itself -- can get around to tackling them all.