Back of the Envelope

Old Post: It looks like my previous post cut Kerry too much slack.

Mark Steyn has more to say about Kerry's response to Allawi. He quotes something I didn't see in the article I read, but I didn't see a full transcript. Here's what he has to say:

Kerry didn't show up for Allawi's visit to Washington -- he was in Ohio again, which is evidently becoming the proverbial Vietnam-type quagmire for him. Nonetheless, barely had the prime minister finished than the absentee senator did a daytime version of his midnight ramble and barged his way onto the air to insist that he knew better than Iraq's head of government what was going on in the country. One question from his accompanying press corps was especially choice:

"Prime Minister Allawi told Congress today that democracy was taking hold in Iraq and that the terrorists there were on the defensive. Is he living in the same fantasyland as the president?"

It would be nice to think this was a somewhat crude attempt at irony, but given America's Ratherized media this seems unlikely. Just for the record, Allawi is not living in a fantasyland. He's living in Iraq, and he begins his day with a dangerous commute across Baghdad's ''Green Zone.'' John Kerry's regular commute, by contrast, is from his wife's beach compound at Nantucket to his wife's 15th century English barn reconstructed as a ski lodge in Idaho. Nonetheless, he's the expert on Iraq and the guy living there 24/7 is the fantasist, and he's happy to assure us the prime minister doesn't know what he's talking about. It's all going to hell, forget about those January elections, etc.

What a small, graceless man Kerry is. The nature of adversarial politics in a democratic society makes George W. Bush his opponent. But it was entirely Kerry's choice to expand the field, to put himself on the other side of Allawi and the Iraqi people. Given his frequent boasts that he knows how to reach out to America's allies, it's remarkable how often he feels the need to insult them: Britain, Australia, and now free Iraq. But, because this pampered cipher has floundered for 18 months to find any rationale for his candidacy other than his indestructible belief in his own indispensability, Kerry finds himself a month before the election with no platform to run on other than American defeat. He has decided to co-opt the jihadist death-cult, the Baathist dead-enders, the suicide bombers and other misfits and run as the candidate of American failure. This would be shameful if he weren't so laughably inept at it.

As I said earlier, I think Kerry will do very badly in the debates. He is fundamentally unable to deal with any opposition to how he wants to see the world.

Allawi spoke before the a joint session of Congress yesterday. He had this to say:

We Iraqis know that Americans have made and continue to make enormous sacrifices to liberate Iraq, to assure Iraq's freedom. I have come here to thank you and to promise you that your sacrifices are not in vain.

The overwhelming majority of Iraqis are grateful. They are grateful to be rid of Saddam Hussein and the torture and brutality he forced upon us, grateful for the chance to build a better future for our families, our country and our region.

We Iraqis are grateful to you, America, for your leadership and your sacrifice for our liberation and our opportunity to start anew.

We don't hear this sort of heartfelt gratitude too often, do we? We don't do these things for the gratitude, but it is nice to hear it every once in a while. Allawi also laid out the Iraqi interim government's plans to deal with the terrorists and establish a democratic Iraq. Concerning elections, Allawi said:

As we move forward, the next major milestone will be holding of the free and fair national and local elections in January next year.

I know that some have speculated, even doubted, whether this date can be met. So let me be absolutely clear: Elections will occur in Iraq on time in January because Iraqis want elections on time.

For the skeptics who do not understand the Iraqi people, they do not realize how decades of torture and repression feed our desire for freedom. At every step of the political process to date the courage and resilience of the Iraqi people has proved the doubters wrong.

They said we would miss January deadline to pass the interim constitution.

We proved them wrong.

They warned that there could be no successful handover of sovereignty by the end of June. We proved them wrong. A sovereign Iraqi government took over control two days early.

They doubted whether a national conference could be staged this August. We proved them wrong.

Despite intimidation and violence, over 1,400 citizens, a quarter of them women, from all regions and from every ethnic, religious and political grouping in Iraq, elected a national council.

And I pledge to you today, we'll prove them wrong again over the elections.

In response to this Kerry said:

I think the prime minister is, obviously, contradicting his own statement of a few days ago, where he said the terrorists are pouring into the country. The prime minister and the president are here obviously to put their best face on the policy, but the fact is that the CIA estimates, the reporting, the ground operations and the troops all tell a different story.

Kerry did not attend Allawi's talk, even though he is a Senator. Nor did he meet with Allawi, which I understand Presidential candidates often do when foreign leaders visit. I thought Kerry liked meeting with foreign leaders. I guess Allawi isn't one of those secretly endorsing him. Instead of meeting with him, Kerry continued his defeatist propaganda while impugning Allawi's honesty, once again showing his great diplomatic skills by insulting all our best allies, apparently in the belief that he'll be able to recruit a bunch of new allies to replace them once he's elected.

What I really noticed, however, is how Kerry is always at his worst when he's responding to what his opposition has to say. Remember his speech during the Republican convention? When his opponents talk about him, he's thin-skinned and defensive. When it's not about him, he has to spin it negatively even if it means impugning our allies and condemning the real good we've achieved. A better candidate would have found a way to respond positively, praising Allawi's optimism even while advising caution and pointing out how things could have been done better. Conventional wisdom holds that the debates will improve Kerry's polling, since he's oh-so-much smarter than Bush. Personally, I think Bush will wipe Kerry away in the debates. If his handlers can't control his thin-skinned and small minded responses now, how can they stop him when he's on his own at the debates?

New Post: More on this above.

Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted to eliminate the federal courts' jurisdiction over cases involving the Pledge of Allegiance. Frankly, I'm not overly concerned about the Pledge of Allegiance and whether kids should or shouldn't be required to say "under God." This is important, however, because Congress is finally making an attempt to establish its authority over the courts and rein them in. I like Ramesh Ponnoru's explanation of not only why Congress has this authority but also why they need to exert it:

Judicial errors are so hard to correct — and the potential remedies are now so weakened — because we have come to hold an inflated view of judicial authority. We think it natural that judges should have the last word on constitutional matters. We habitually treat the Constitution as though it were whatever the Supreme Court says it is. We assume that the Court has the job of determining the limits of everyone else's powers, which means, of course, that it has more power than everyone else. Such power, effectively unchecked, is bound to be abused.

There is, however, a way to start changing these assumptions. The Constitution grants Congress the power to limit the jurisdiction of the federal courts. Article III, Section 2, explicitly gives Congress the power to limit the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court ("the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make"). The power of Congress to limit the jurisdiction of the lower federal courts is implied. Article III, Section 1, grants Congress the power to create the "inferior Courts," which has to include the power to establish the scope and limits of their jurisdiction. (The Constitution spells out Congress's ability to limit the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court because the Constitution, rather than Congress, establishes that court.)

A simple majority of Congress and a presidential signature can regulate, or establish exceptions to, the jurisdiction of the federal courts. A constitutional amendment is not required. Such a bill would reduce the power of the judiciary — rather than merely recall a few judges (as impeachment would) or make an impotent gesture of defiance to the courts (as the congressional flag-burning statute did). In addition, the effort to pass a bill would be educational even if it failed to pass, since it would challenge prevailing misconceptions about the proper division of interpretive power over the Constitution.

All in all, good news for me and others who think judicial overreach is the greatest threat to liberal democracy in this country.

I haven't been talking about politics too much recently, but this is too rich not to comment on. There is an e-mail going around that says:

Mandatory draft for boys and girls (ages18-26) starting June 15, 2005. There is pending legislation in the House and Senate, S89 and HR 163,to reinstate mandatory draft for boys and girls (ages18-26) starting June 15, 2005. This plan includes women in the draft, eliminates higher education as a shelter, and makes it difficult to cross into Canada.

The Bush administration is quietly trying to get these bills passed now, while the public's attention is on the elections. The Bush administration plans to begin mandatory draft in the spring of 2005, just after the 2004 presidential election.

· The Congress has added $28 million to the 2004 selective service system budget to prepare for this military draft that could start as early as June 15, 2005.

· Bush has ordered the Selective Service to report to him by March 31, 2005 on their readiness to implement the draft by June 2005

· The pentagon has quietly begun a public campaign to fill all 10,350 draft board positions and 11,070 appeals board slots nationwide.

Please act on this:

· Tell everyone you know - parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents, godparents, friends, teachers

· Call and write to your U.S. Senator and your U.S. Representatives and ask them why they aren't telling their constituents about these bills.

(Hat tip to Michelle Malkin, who got it from Betsy's Page)

I don't have a lot of respect for leftists in general these days, but this level of deception strikes me as well, sickening. Of course, it's just spam, about as believable as those ads for herbal viagara you get everyday, right? Yes and no. It's about as honest as those ads. There is such a bill, being proposed by Democrats in order to drum up opposition to the war. It is opposed by pretty much all Congressional Republicans, most Congressional Democrats, the Bush Administration, and the Pentagon. The Selective Service preparations are in response to a law passed in 1993, by a Democratic Congress under a Democratic President, a law whose purpose is to ensure that the government procedures for these things work properly, not to actually implement it. (See Betsy's page for details.) So aside from the germ of truth, and the correct spelling, I'd toss this e-mail aside with the rest of the spam and advise the college students who received it to do the same. Except that anonymous and duplicitous e-mailers aren't the only ones spreading draft rumors. John Kerry and Max Cleland have been playing it up as well.

I think this marks new territory for political deception. Propose a ludicrous law which cannot possibly pass. Wait a couple of months so that everyone forgets who proposed it, and then claim that it's what the opposition intends to do and use your bill as evidence. (For the record, the Democratic leadership is not actually using the bill as evidence, and there's no indication that they are behind this lying e-mail, but Democrats did propose this law specifically to increase opposition to the war by using the threat of a draft, and they are the ones talking about the draft.) Here is one area where the Internet is weaker than the mainstream media. No matter how hard it tried, the mainstream media would have a hard time pushing an idea like this. A blog could do it, but he'd have to have no comments and confidence that his readers could not traffic blogs which would fact-check him. E-mail, however, is perfect. The originator cannot be held accountable, and there's just enough truth in this to make it sound believable. Fortunately, Snopes is on the case. Unfortunately, the Snopes article says the draft is improbable while failing to note the most important lie in the e-mail--when it lays responsibility for these things on President Bush, when in fact the bill was proposed by the Democrats as a scare tactic.

New Post: Someone is covering this pretty well. See above.

Is the president's abilities to make philosophical arguments important? Jeremy Pierce has some thoughts:

Regardless of what you think of Kerry and Bush's philosophical acumen, one thing really bugs me about this whole argument. As I said above, it's important to be able to have some philosophical ability to make proper judgments on complicated issues. Are philosophical abilities the best way to choose a candidate, though? I've argued that Bush's abilities on this sort of thing are much better than his opponents allow and that Kerry's aren't as good as his supporters allow, but I'm not sure I'm willing to compare them with respect to each other. I just don't have enough information. If it turns out Kerry is better, as Dan wants to say, is that sufficient reason for voting for Kerry? I don't think so, for a few reasons.

For one thing, Bush surrounds himself with people who are excellent at this sort of thing...

Another reason I don't think philosophical ability should be the only or even primary reason for voting for someone is that some highly trained philosophers take what seem to me to be morally abhorrent views...

I think Jeremy is right, and more to the point, I think Dan Quattrone, whom he's arguing with, is engaging in a bit of projection. When all you have is a hammer, all you see are nails. In other words, he's saying that the most important ability of a president is to be able to think through complex issues philosophically. I disagree, because I'm a scientist. I think the president should think through issues scientifically. This means he should be able to apply mathematical models to the issues, and correct and refine the models according to how well they fit. Of course, I'm also an engineer, which means that I wish the president would think about the issues more like an engineer. That means he should approach issues by creatively applying proven solutions to new problems.

Do you see the problem here? The president is not a philosopher, a scientist, or an engineer. The profession his position is most similar to is probably that of manager. He needs to listen to his subordinates, who do the philosophy, science, and engineering, decide among the multiple solutions they present to him, and provide them the materials to work through the solutions they present. He is also a leader, who needs a clear vision of where he is taking the country, the ability to communicate this, and the perseverence to continue despite hardship. Finally, he needs to be a diplomat, negotiating with people both at home and abroad and making compromises that work. Now you can argue that the ability to think like a scientist, philosopher, or engineer help the president, especially when it comes to looking at the solutions his advisors present him and deciding among them, but that is only a small part of what he needs to do.

There are plenty of reasons to vote for Bush, but right now, one of my most important reasons is to really annoy those elitist liberals who think they can buy the election. You know the types: George Soros, Michael Moore, Moveon.org, etc. To them, truth matters less than the fact that they know Bush is evil, and they think if they just say it often enough and loudly enough, spend enough money and lie through their teeth if necessary, they can convince everyone else of this. Nothing annoys me more than seeing the full might of the mainstream media and the Hollywood elite arrayed in an all out effort to destroy a president. You may not agree with everything Bush has done. I like Bush, but I don't agree with him on everything. But I see no reason to doubt his honesty and good intentions, and for that reason alone the attempt to impugn not Bush's politics, but his honor, drives me crazy. I want to see Bush win, partly because I don't trust Kerry not to cut and run at the first opportunity, but also because I want to see those elites who think that they know better than everyone else learn that they aren't as powerful and influential as they think they are.

Update: Doc Rampage is thinking along similar lines. He believes that the Democrats basically use their influence in the media to mislead people about what they and the Republicans really want, and now that their influence is waning, they can't adapt to the shift as people see what they are. I probably wouldn't be quite so harsh on the Democrats, as I don't think their entire party is a lie. I do think that the Democratic leadership is shifting further and further away from the core values of most of those who call themselves Democrats, and are only paying lip service to those beliefs these days, and in that sense, Doc Rampage is correct.

Old Post: The previous post on this subject is here.

I pointed out earlier that having UN observors in the US might not be such a bad thing from the Bush administration's perspective, since most voter fraud seems to be on the part of Democrats. Deroy Murdock at National Review agrees with me:

For its August 22 edition, the New York Daily News compared Florida's and Gotham's voter rolls. It discovered 45,882 voters who appear to be registered in both places. They are 68 percent Democrat and 12 percent Republican, while 16 percent chose no party. Between 400 and 1,000 of them voted twice in at least one election. This federal offense carries up to a $10,000 fine and five years behind bars. Irving and Magdolna Hertz allegedly voted in person in Brooklyn and absentee in Miami in 1996 and 1998. When the News called for comment, Irving Hertz said, "I'm not here today," then hung up the phone. Recall that President Bush won Florida in 2000 by 537 votes.
...
Why are these, and many more, outrages so widespread? For one, these crimes are rarely punished.
...
Can the OSCE observers help? While they correctly will lack legal standing to intervene, they can and should blow their whistles as loudly as possible if they witness skullduggery. Their mere presence, however, may be their best weapon. One hopes that with guests in our house, Americans will be on our best behavior on November 2.

He has a point, I think. It's sad that it would take outside observers to stop voter fraud. The irony, of course, is that the Democrats called for it, so they're hardly in a position to complain. Moreover, they want the observers in the largely Democratic districts where most of the fraud apparently takes place.

[NOTE: I had written a long post on this earlier, but the computer crashed and I lost most of it. I attempted to restore from autosave, but no luck. I've retyped most of it, but this post is shorter than the original.]

I was out-of-town Wednesday and Thursday for a job interview, so I missed the fun over CBS's 60 Minutes expose on Bush's Guard service, and the instant exposure of most of their evidence as fraudulent. Instead, I was in the airport Thursday, watching CNN Headline News as it repeated the CBS's allegation every fifteen minuted, while having nothing to say on the legitimate doubts raised about the documents even then. If I had been able to get online, I'd have known that CNN was behind the times. As it was, I pretty much dismissed the CNN report anyway, since I had little interest in Bush's National Guard service, and he hardly mentions it unless someone else brings it up.

Anyway, the crux of the argument is based on documents that CBS produced, supposedly produced by Bush's commander, Killian, for his private files, saying that Bush had not gotten his required physical and that Killian was being pressured by his commander to whitewash Bush's record. Since Killian is dead, he can't comment on it. According to CBS, his commanding officer, Hodges, upon having the document read to him, replied that it sounded like what Killian was telling him at the time. ABC News says that Hodges told them that CBS first misled and then misquoted him, and what he really said was "well if he wrote them that's what he felt."

So what did Killian write? Apparently not what appeared in the memos, since they're transparently fraudulent. What it boils down to is if you tried to produce the memos using 1972 technology, you'd have to use a rare, expensive, and complicated typewriter, the IBM Selectric Composer, work hard to produce the special features of the memo, and even then you'd have a hard time getting an exact match (in fact, there's a good chance you could not get an exact match--experts are still trying to determine whether it'd be possible). Meanwhile, you could fire up Microsoft Word, type out the memo, and let Word auto-superscript the "th" in 187th, and you'd get a perfect match right away. For more information, see Instapundit, InDC, and Powerline (All of these blogs have a lot more than just the post indicated. Just go to their front page and scroll down.). So while it's still possible that someone with a lot of dedication and time to kill could produce these documents on the right 1972 typewriter, it seems highly unlikely that this someone would be an officer in an Air National Guard unit, whom his own family and co-workers say did not type, writing a quick, personal memo for his own files. I'd be willing to stake quite a bit of money on that.

So, given that they're almost certainly fake, whodunnit? Well, the Democrats are blaming Karl Rove, since all dirty tricks must ultimately be Republican dirty tricks, even when they're perpetrated against Republicans. (As Glenn Reynolds says, if Karl Rove is really that good, the Democrats ought to just give up. They can't beat Karl.) Now assuming that Karl is an amoral genius, would he have done this? It's a masterful stroke, since it destroys the credibility of the mainstream media, and possibly the Kerry campaign (if the documents came through them, as seems likely). However, there'd be huge risks. First, it has to make it through the Democratic National Committee opposition research, the Kerry Campaign, and whatever news media organization they hand it off to, without being detected as a hoax. That requires huge confidence in the incompetence and blinding political bias of the opposition, greater than I believe is wise for such an evil genius. On the other hand, he was right, so who am I to argue? Second, he'd have to be confident that the hoax would be exposed, and quickly. If a hoax is allowed to persist long enough, no amount of facts can remove the belief in it from the public consciousness. Anyone with passing knowledge of the blogosphere would feel confident that such an obvious forgery would be easy prey to them. (I think someone who was trying to succeed in one and two would have made better forgeries. Use a typewriter, even if modern, to get it past the mainstream media, and let the bloggers find the errors in the military lingo--this would play to the respective strengths of the old and new media, and ensure that the forgeries got out there but were quickly discovered.) Third, once the forgery was discovered, either by the news media doing its job, or by bloggers doing the news media's job, he'd have to be certain it couldn't be traced back to him. The DNC would be blaming him no matter what the evidence was, and he could expect them and the news media (especially those who were first snookered and who would know the chain of evidence) to be searching desperately for any such link. Considering that two groups hiring the same lawyer is plenty of evidence of a link to the media, and they can convince a lot of people with just that through careful presentation of the facts, Karl would have to cover his tracks incredibly well to feel confident in this respect. Finally, he'd have to believe that the media would actually cover the exposure of the forgeries, and not simply bury it. I feel little confidence in this respect, considering how thoroughly and consistently they buried the Swift Boat Vets story. If the media were to have handled this story with their usual aplomb, the internet would be abuzz with it for weeks, but the media would drop the story immediately once the forgeries were discovered, 60 Minutes would issue a one sentence correction, and most people would continue believe the story was true, even if everyone had stopped talking about it.

So I think the risks of Karl Rove planting this story are higher than the rewards, though what convinces me is how the Bush White House handled the matter:

Q Why did the President defy a direct order to get a physical in 1972?

MR. McCLELLAN: Scott, these are the same old recycled attacks that we see every time the President is up for election. It's not surprising that you see a coordinated effort by Democrats to attack the President when Senator Kerry is falling behind in the polls. And we had a very successful convention, and that's what this is about. It was well known that the President was going to work in Alabama and seeking a transfer to perform equivalent duty in a non-flying status. And that's what he was doing.

Q Did he decline to take it because he was moving to Alabama?

MR. McCLELLAN: He was transferring to a unit in Alabama to perform equivalent duty in a non-flying status. That is nothing new.

Q This was a direct order he defied, right? I mean, he did have a direct order that he defied?*

MR. McCLELLAN: John, these issues have come up every year. This was all part of the records — that he was seeking to transfer to a unit in Alabama because he was going there to work in a civilian capacity. And he was granted permission to do so. And he was proud of his service and he was honorably discharged in October '73, after meeting his obligations.

*The memos that were released, in fact, show the President was working with his commanders to comply with the order.

If this was Rove's doing, I'd expect the White House to respond to initial inquiries with something like, "We've never seen these documents before. Let us look into it and we'll get back up to you." This would put them in the position to expose the hoax themselves if bloggers and the mainstream media failed to do their part. Instead, they flubbed their answer, trying to downplay the documents as unimportant and old news (thus implicitly legitimizing the documents), while forwarding the copies CBS sent them and thus convincing many liberal bloggers that they'd had them all along. So even if I believed Karl Rove were an evil genius, this doesn't look to me to be his doing.