Lies my radio tells me

"In thirty seconds you ROCK," says my radio. I forget which station. Does it really matter? On just about any music station now, the commercial breaks are so interminable that the producers record and insert special bumpers just to assure you that yes, we still do play music on occasion, and in fact we will actually play some... after this next commercial or two. I think that they hope the "finite time promise bumper" (FTPB) is enough of a palliative to prevent the nearly-fed-up from switching stations.

In my case I suppose that it worked, though my wristwatch did zoom up to nose-level so that I could check the thirty-second claim. Was there music in thirty seconds? No! Was I "rocking" as a result of the deejay flapping his gums? Most emphatically not. The music actually started at P[romise]-plus-57 seconds, a timing error of (57 - 30) / 30, or 90%. Now if the bumper had said, "In thirty seconds the COMMERCIALS PROBABLY STOP," they would have been spot-on. But I guess that's not as catchy.

More on Florida 2000

Regarding Joeseph's comment, I would second that there was an underappreciation of constitutional law as well as an underappreciation of the electoral college in this case. My view of the Florida partisan acrimony boils down to the Republicans pointing at the Florida state constitution and laws passed by the legislature dictating procedures and deadlines (knowing that timely closure was to their advantage), versus the Democrats running to the courts to get delays, exceptions, and recounts until the numbers came out better. It's a heavily biased view yes, and the Republicans ran to their own court after the Florida Supremes weighed in, but I can argue it up if someone really wants to revisit that. I think what Joeseph is pointing out is the blessing of written law versus the alternative of a political struggle without end, and I agree.

As for the electoral college, it got a lot of bad press because Gore supposedly won the nationwide popular vote but not the college (the college is "an anachronism," being a common gripe at the time). College detractors, however, refused to consider the inevitable alternative if the college did not exist. I'll explain: How do we know that Gore really won the nationwide popular vote? In a number of states, tabulation of presidential ballots from outlying districts ceased when the victory of one or the other candidate in that state was mathematically assured. So not every vote was counted. With the electoral college, it is technically not necessary to do so. But if we're without the college, to re-use a phrase from Florida, shouldn't "every vote count?" Presumably including all the mismarked ballots, the partial punches, the overvotes and illegible votes too. We'll need an army of commissioners and lawyers squinting at millions of ballots nationwide. Without the electoral college, my friends, we're taking the year 2000 election difficulties and multiplying them by fifty states. How the heck is that an improvement?

Now as for the specifics of Florida 2000, here's some observations. First off, the election supervisors in the four most-disputed Florida counties, and indeed in 41 of 67 total counties, were Democrats. If Gore or anyone else has a problem with the way the polls were run and the votes were counted, keep in mind these were principally Democrat politicos running the show down there. Next, in the manual recounts requested by Gore's lawsuits but which later got cut short, subsequent investigation has found that these scenarios also produce a Bush victory. Now there are ways, ex post facto, to play with the scope of the recounts and the vote-counting criteria to produce a Gore victory. A four-county manual recount focusing on overvotes, for example, would yield a Gore victory -- but Gore did not ask for such a recount. There are also a number of statewide recount scenarios that result in Gore victories. Again, these were not legally requested nor ordered by any court. If you want to play with the numbers yourself, there is an interesting web widget put up by the New York Times. Six different standards for punch ballots! Two standards for optical scan! Two standards for observer consensus! Have fun.

What does all this show? If anything, I would hope it underscores the absolute necessity of rigid standards and deadlines for vote tabulation. Undervotes? Overvotes? Baloney, in my view! If I'm writing the statutes, we either have a properly marked ballot (as described in the procedures and codified by state law) or it is not a vote, period. If a guy scrawls "GB" in green crayola on the optical-scan ballot, that's not a vote in Jujjsconsin! But if the Florida legislature wants to write laws on how to divine voter intent from hanging chads, double-punches, small indentations and so forth, they are at liberty to do so. The point is to have a fixed set of rules beforehand. One standard from which all counts are derived. I thought (silly me) that Florida already had that before 2000, but apparently they only had a sick comedy of criteria that mutated from county to county, and a battalion of vote-counters-turned-fortunetellers.

Raised by bumper-stickers II

I was passing a vehicle last week that had about a half-dozen stickers on the back, and these two were adjacent:

W (in circle with backslash) Let's not elect him this time either.

Study our constitution... to see what they're taking away.

Call me a skeptic, but I just didn't think the sticker-bearer (despite the exhortation) had actually been reading the Constitution. Because if he had, he might have stumbled upon mention of the Electoral College (Article 2, Section 1 and the 12th Amendment), which rather puts the kibosh on the first sticker.

But maybe Mr. Sticker wasn't thinking about that. Maybe he was worried about the precious right of foreign killers to be free from court-ordered roving wiretaps while they visit our country, on the grounds that it's unconscionable to treat terrorists like mafiosi. Yes, that was a legal privilege that got taken away by the Congress and the President in 2001. And, strangely or not, it just doesn't bother me.

Or maybe I'm just missing the point entirely. It's impossible to know -- them stickers are so darned vague sometimes.  Better sticker, seen yesterday:  "Support your right to arm bears."  Must be the Second-and-a-Half Amendment.

Even the weather is racist

Get a load of this article, courtesy of WorldNetDaily. It starts out:

A new study released by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation suggests rising temperatures will kill more black citizens than whites in the U.S., while claiming African-Americans are less responsible than others for causing so-called "global warming."

The research, conducted by the Oakland, Calif.-based group Redefining Progress, is being billed as the first-ever comprehensive examination of the health and economic impact of climate change on the black population.

Ever hear that joke in which God calls several newspaper editors to tell them he's calling the whole Planet Earth thing quits tomorrow? The resulting Washington Post headline reads: "World to End Tomorrow," with the subheading, "women, minorities hardest hit." I bring up the joke because apparently the Congressional Black Caucus doesn't realize that the stuff they come up with sounds like parody. Further on in the article:

The research also says at the present time, blacks are more likely to die during extreme heat events.

"The most direct health effect of climate change will be intensifying heat waves that selectively impact poor and urban populations," according to the study, noting cities like New York, Detroit, Chicago and Philadelphia have large concentrations of blacks.

Why the poor urban populations?  It's pretty obvious:  the poor sometimes lack air conditioning, and this can be a killer for the elderly or infirm when it is really hot.  And a greater concentration of the elderly and infirm live in "urban areas," because that's where they are nearer to hospitals and other caregivers.  Anyway, I point this out to help you connect the dots between these claims and those made in the big carbon dioxide lawsuit just yesterday. In that suit, eight states and New York City join together to sue five giant utilities that own, in aggregate, 174 fossil-fuel burning plants.

Now, I'm open to being corrected here, but for a fossil fuel plant to drive their carbon dioxide emissions to zero, isn't the only option to produce zero energy? I mean, when you burn oil, or coal, or natural gas, you get carbon dioxide. There's nothing to be done about that. You might squeeze a few extra kilowatt-hours out of the same emissions with a slightly more efficient plant, but there are absolute limits to that efficiency! Following through then, if we produce less energy, won't it be more expensive for poor people to run their air conditioners? Won't more poor people die, or do you really think that one country shutting down its power plants will prevent heat waves?

Stepping back another pace, does the Congressional Black Caucus mind that this lawsuit could result in more of the kind of deaths they claim to want to avoid?

Short-bus journalism (Part V)

A headline over a story about the Federal Marriage Amendment in the July 9 New York Times read: "Conservatives Press Ahead on Anti-Gay Issue." Ask yourself whether this is an appropriate news headline for the Gray Lady, the "paper of record."

If you have no problem with it, would you have a problem with a federal tax-cut repeal debate reported as, "Liberals Press Ahead on Anti-Rich Issue"?

Is that a secret file in your pants?

Or is Sandy Berger just happy to see you? To be fair, it is probable that early reports of Berger smuggling documents out of the National Archives in his "pants and socks" may not be accurate. His own notes he admits to carrying out in his jacket and pants. But the actual documents (we're talking 15-30 pages here, each) he probably just put into his briefcase/portfolio, not his pants!

But that's just a niggling distinction for his lawyers to act indignant over. You cannot take the documents without permission, period. You cannot take down notes containing confidential information and take those out either! The fact that Berger was hiding the notes on his person before leaving points to his intent to circumvent the secrecy rules. And his claim that his absconding with the document originals was "inadvertent" is complete hogwash. If it were a complete accident, how did he manage to make off with all the different drafts of the same report, and spread that accident over at least two (maybe three) different visits?? In fact, this supposed accident was so drawn out that National Archives employees became suspicious and started marking documents so their later absence after Berger's visit would be easier to discern.

Just imagine if another national security advisor (her name rhymes with "mice") had done this, how different the tone of the media coverage would be. Wouldn't we be seeing editorials printed in major newspapers speculating that the document heist was intended to cover something up? But in Berger's case we're supposed to just accept that it was carelessness and have a chuckle over it. Oops! Such is the spin so far. I know that if I were writing for the NY Times, I'd be adopting their scandal template and remarking on the "disturbing similarity" between this and other Clinton scandals, and noting that this is "only the latest in a long series of illegally mishandled document cases," (Rose Law Firm billing records, 1100 FBI dossiers, raid on Vince Foster's office).

Just because you love nature...

... don't expect nature to love you back. I mean, I'm immensely fond of raptors and black bears, but I still take it as an article of faith that the eagles and bears would team up and kick my ass to steal my cottage keys for the express purpose of raiding my fridge if they thought they could get away with it.

The third Frances Frost award for an environmentalist dying with irony goes to Blake Champlin, an environmental activist killed when a tree supporting his hammock fell and crushed him. Perhaps it should be pointed out that, unlike previous winners, Mr. Champlin was technically oppressing and exploiting the tree when it retaliated.

Editor's Note: The Frost award's second winner was Timothy Treadwell.

Martha, Martha, Martha!

We've had a few days now to absorb Martha Stewart's sentencing. What do you think about it? What should you think about it?

Here's an interesting consistency test: How did you feel about Clinton's impeachment? It's not a perfect analogy, but there are interesting parallels, particularly the aspect that each defendant's predicament was so very self-inflicted. In Clinton's case, he could have allowed certain sexual harassment statutes to expire. He did not. He could have refused to renew the independent counsel laws and let them expire. He did not. And while Clinton was getting tied in knots by the independent counsel investigating his harassment of Paula Jones, he figured he could get away with lying in his testimony.

On to Martha. Some people still think Martha got busted for insider trading. Not so! Fact is, when the CEO of ImClone started dumping his shares through his broker, that brokerage passed the information (of the sale) on to Martha, who then sold her shares. What the CEO of ImClone did was criminal, as he was in posession of bona fide insider information. Martha did not have this information. Her sale was unethical, and probably a technical violation of SEC rules, but the Feds didn't have a prayer of getting an insider trading conviction.

But Martha had a guilty conscience and gambled that she could lie and obfuscate her way out of it all. She would have faced a minor penalty had she fessed up immediately. Instead, she lied to investigators in such as way as to be criminal. There was no need for that, and if she had better representation (or lawyers who could control her) then she wouldn't have this jail sentence hanging over her head.

In my opinion, as Clinton deserved his impeachment for his subversion of justice, so too does Martha deserve her sentence. And as such I disagree with people who think that Martha was railroaded by prosecutors seeking advancement. I also can't abide those who delight in "the mighty brought low" aspect of it, or hope for an Abu Ghraib type environment during her incarceration. I really try to avoid the latter-type people, so consumed by envy, and I hope to never see them in any courtroom I am in.

I'd be fascinated to talk with someone who thought Clinton's lies were okay, yet is happy with the Stewart outcome, or vice-versa. I'd want to hear if there is any compelling argument at all for excusing the one set of lies but not the other.  For example, we heard the excuse proffered many times in the Clinton case, "Everyone lies about sex."  Well if there's one thing people lie about more than sex, it's money, and that's what Martha was doing...

Waking up with the fleas

This post is a natural sequel to yesterday's review of the Intelligence Committee's report and the Lord Butler report (U.K.), and their impact on Joe Wilson. In that post I did not mention Wilson's ties to the John Kerry campaign, which Wilson soon hopped in bed with while proclaiming himself a non-partisan, truth-telling whistleblower.

Instapundit has been quick to highlight the persistence and perversity of the Kerry-Wilson link as Wilson has been taking a shellacking. Instapundit's page is here, but I can't resist narrating a summary. First, Joe Wilson has a web page on which he pats himself on the back, rips the Bush administration, and endorses John Kerry. The site is RestoreHonesty-dot-com. Stay with me here, and try not to laugh. You might think that with the appearance of these reports and documents showing Wilson to be a liar, Kerry might not want to be coupled too closely with Joe Wilson. Good luck on that though, as the bottom of the web page reads, "Paid for by John Kerry for President, Inc." And Kerry's own website has a copy of this Wilson endorsement page as well. Kerry will be stuck with that tarbaby for a while.

Jonah Goldberg notes that Joe Wilson hasn't been on TV since July 2. Radio news I heard earlier today says that he hasn't been returning calls from reporters. I think we have to consider the possibility that Wilson's hectic media schedule over the past year has tired him out, and maybe he's just resting. Wonder if his CIA wife has any advice for him on disappearing and maintaining deep cover.

A reckoning of sorts

One might think the press would be incensed. Joseph C. Wilson IV was a media darling in 2003. When Iraqi WMDs were unexpectedly scarce, Wilson was the Bush-bashing know-it-all with 20-20 hindsight who claimed to have warned the administration that no, the Iraqis had not been uranium-shopping in Africa. Bush caught hell in the press over these "16 words" in his 2003 State of the Union:

''The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently
sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

The British, it was later alleged, had relied on faked documents in reaching this conclusion. And then Robert Novak wrote that Wilson's wife (Valerie Plame) worked for the CIA, precipitating an investigation (still going) into who leaked that tidbit to Novak, and much argument as to whether that leak was in fact illegal. Wilson cried foul to every media outlet he could (Washington Post, Meet the Press, etc.), saying the leak was retaliation against him.

It was never clear to me just how leaking the fact that Plame works for the CIA, in and of itself, would be retaliation. How did that hurt Wilson at all? Unless it turned out to be true that Wilson's trip was entirely a family affair, suggested by Plame, supported by Plame, so that Wilson could return with some politically slanted conclusions to report.

But now the Senate has released its Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq. While it's not particularly flattering of some of CIA's work, it's a disaster for Joe Wilson's credibility. Take for example his flat-out statement in his book about whether Plame had recommended him for the Niger trip: "Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," and "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip." Utterly disproven, by a memo authored by Valerie herself to the head of the Counterproliferation Division in which she writes, "[M]y husband has good relations with both the PM and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity."

What of Wilson's findings from his eight days in Niger, after which he "largely discounted the notion" that Iraq had tried to buy uranium there?

"It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place." (Joe Wilson, July 2003)

A subsequent British parliamentary investigation in September 2003 found that British intelligence was justified in its claim that Saddam was uranium-shopping in Niger. British intelligence still stands by their claim on the basis of their own intelligence resources. The forged documents (found to have originated in Rome) were never actually the basis for the British intel, as some have claimed. This latter point is buttressed by the just-released Lord Butler report, which notes:

We conclude that, on the basis of the intelligence assessments at the time, covering both Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the statements on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa in the government's dossier, and by extension the prime minister in the House of Commons, were well founded. By extension, we conclude also that the statement in President Bush's state of the union address of 2003 that "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" was well founded.

The New York Times further noted, "[T]he report backed the government's claim that it had intelligence that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa, and that the claim was not based on forged documents." Additionally, other intelligence agencies (the French, for example) reached the same conclusions independently. The Financial Times piles on:

"European intelligence officers have now revealed that three years before the fake documents became public, human and electronic intelligence sources from a number of countries picked up repeated discussion of an illicit trade in uranium from Niger. One of the customers discussed by the traders was Iraq."

The Senate turned up some other information harmful to Wilson's thesis. For example, the Senate report notes that while Wilson was in Niger, he met with former Prime Minister Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, who told Wilson that he believed the Iraqis had tried for a uranium deal in 1999. Naturally, Wilson hadn't brought this up in his press pieces such as his New York Times op-ed where he took the opportunity to accuse the Administration of "twisting", "manipulating", and "exaggerating" intelligence.

Wilson's protestations over the exposure of his wife should also be taken with a grain of salt. Timothy Noah on Slate has already done a pretty good takedown of the couple's progression from supposed victimhood into preening camera-seekers.

Back to my first sentence: one might think the press would be incensed. All these months, Joe Wilson has duped journalist after journalist with his half-truths and red herrings. Wilson has milked them for free publicity for his book and a flattering profile in Vanity Fair. As the press might complain in other circumstances, they were misled by a government official in an important matter of national security. Where, then, is the outrage? Well the press almost always loves a whistleblower, right? Whistleblowers supply ready-made stories to the media complete with predetermined heroes, villains, and conflict. Only those whistleblowers who attack a favorite of the elite risk rough treatment (e.g. Linda Tripp).

As for the auxiliary story, is blowing Plame's cover - if indeed she was ever undercover and not simply a Langley desk-jockey - now excusable? I don't think so, at least not according to what I now know. But I can't see how anybody can accept her as some sort of political martyr anymore.

Maybe the Fertel Foundation would like to take back their prize for Truth-Telling as well.

Dumb stunt gets dumber

How many times over the years have we seen reporters ambush politicians with pop quizzes intended to generate guffaws over an inability to instantly recall the name of some third world country’s dictator? Now in this story from WFTV, Jeb Bush gets ambushed while advocating the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT):

"Me and a couple of my friends ... we know that the FCAT is a very important part of schooling in Florida and we were wondering if you could answer one of the questions we remember from the FCAT?" said Luana Marques, 18, who just graduated from Freedom High School in Orange County and is heading to Flagler College in the fall.

The luncheon crowd at an Orlando hotel, gathered to honor 200 students who take part in the Teen Trendsetters Reading Mentor program, laughed and Marques posed the question: "What are the angles on a three-four-five-triangle?"

The governor gave a steely grin and then stalled a bit. "The angles would be ... If I was going to guess ... Three-four-five. Three-four-five. I don't know, 125, 90 and whatever remains on 180?"

Marques had an answer, although it wasn't the right one: "It's 30-60-90."

My one concession: The governor’s guess was lousy. At least guess something that can add up to 180 degrees! But this Luana Marques woman is a bad joke, for at least three reasons:

(1) If you’re planning on throwing a “gotcha” moment at the governor, is it too much trouble to go and get the right answer in advance? I mean, obviously she has no intuitive feel for geometry, as she was utterly oblivious to the fact that her own answer was bogus (a thirty-sixty-ninety triangle’s hypotenuse is twice the length of the shortest side, with the remaining side root-three times the shortest).

(2) If you’re planning on sandbagging the governor into giving a wrong answer, shouldn’t you be asking a question that other people would think the governor should know? How many people are going to be indignant that Jeb Bush failed to answer that one of the angles was 53.1301023541559787031443874409065893424… degrees?

(3) This society doesn’t require a hell of a lot from its minors, and in many ways bends over backwards for them. Considering that vast fortunes are spent in efforts to educate them, and they are allocated the major part of 180 days a year or more in which to learn, is it such a horrific imposition to ask that some tangible, measurable result of actual learning take place? Luana seems to think so, and in an effort to demonstrate this merely shines the spotlight on her own ignorance.

More on Moore

One rule about my own moviegoing that I take rather seriously regards movies that claim to be historical. Basically, I make it a point to learn in advance or immediately afterwards what is true about the movie, what is dramatized, what is utterly false, and so forth. Otherwise I assume that everything in the movie is completely made-up, and keep it segregated from the "facts" part of my brain. For example, when I see Zulu, I feel I owe it to my own intellect to have straight what parts of that are real history. Similarly, someone who chooses to see Oliver Stone's JFK really needs to compartmentalize that as a complete crock-up, or have already absorbed a responsible historical work like Case Closed.

It is depressingly obvious though that millions of my fellow Americans don't feel that way when it comes to what they choose to keep in their minds. I refer of course to Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, as dense a mishmash of half-truths, slanted editing, crackpot conspiracies and innuendo as any work since The Clinton Chronicles. To say that Michael Moore is a documentarian like Leni Reifenstahl was a documentarian would imply an artistic flair that Moore lacks (the most powerful shots in F9/11 were borrowed clips captured by other filmmakers). I prefer to say that he's a documentarian like L. Ron Hubbard was a priest.

For those who wish to expose themselves to Moore's propaganda but still care enough to innoculate themselves, allow me to refer you to Christopher Hitchens' review, which is darn good reading, and Dave Kopel's 56 Deceits, which is more of a work-in-progress point-by-point laundry list. While Kopel's draft doesn't read particularly well, it does have thorough citations.

I suppose now I should strike a pose against the scary lawyers in Michael Moore's "war room," supposedly poised and ready to file defamation suits in response to anti-Moore criticism. But this would be about as courageous as Moore supposedly was in making this movie. Well, I take that back. I'm still more courageous, because in Moore's case he could be pretty much certain that he was going to rake in millions of dollars from the American populace he so disparages. I'm just blogging here. What do I stand to gain?