Category: Politics – Politicians – Government in Action

It Happens Every Four Years

At least a few pro-Bush bloggers (here and here) are worried because of reports like this:

Surge in voter registration setting records

By Donald Lambro

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

A surge in voter registration that is setting records in the battleground states has led election forecasters to predict the largest increase in turnout in more than a decade.

With a little more than three weeks left before Election Day, election officials nationwide report that new voter registrations are still pouring in, boosting the number of registered voters in many states to levels never seen before.

“We have seen a real rush to become registered by eligible voters all over the country,” said Meredith Imwalle, spokeswoman for the National Association of Secretaries of State, the officials who tabulate and oversee elections and voter registration.

Election officials say that the sharp rise in registration is to a large degree the result of a much more intensive grass-roots canvassing campaign by the Republican and Democratic parties and the campaigns of the two presidential candidates, President Bush and Sen. John Kerry.

“They have been very aggressive, the most aggressive that I’ve seen in my career,” said Curtis Gans, who runs the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate.

The same political intensity that is driving voter registration to new highs likely will boost voter turnout as well, the analysts said.

“I don’t think there has been a more emotionally intense an election since 1968. Turnout will be up,” Mr. Gans said….

Republican National Committee (RNC) officials said they have signed up more than 3 million new Republican voters. Democratic National Committee (DNC) officials said they have exceeded that number, but refused to give any statistics Friday.

“The Democrats have not put out a number. We saw registration as part of our election strategy. It’s an area where the Republicans are playing catch-up,” DNC spokesman Tony Welch said. “They set their goals to create headlines. We’re looking for voters, and by all accounts our registration is far outpacing theirs.”…

It’s all hype and PR. Of course, voter registrations are spiking now; the election is coming and registration deadlines are looming. Of course registrations are at an all-time high; the U.S. is more populous than ever. Of course the Democrats are claiming that the new registrations help them; we hear that every four years because Democrats seem to think that new voters prefer Democrats, though there’s little evidence for that in the results of presidential elections in recent decades. In fact, the “emotionally intense” 1968 election — when new, draft-age voters presumably favored anti-war Humphrey over tricky Dick and George the segregationist — resulted in a trouncing of Humphrey, the only liberal in the field.

Getting It Right about Character

QD at Southern Appeal has this to say about Kerry and the war on terror:

Question for Kerry Supporters: I have a question for those of you who are planning to vote for Sen. Kerry….In your view,where in Kerry’s background, temperament, or ideas do you find assurance that he’ll do a good job in fighting the war on terror?

My experience has been that people mostly don’t change their stripes (absent some deep psychological crisis or religious conversion). Kerry’s entire political career has been oriented, it seems to me, around the opposition to the forceful projection of American military power. With respect to Vietnam, the Cold War, Central America, the first Gulf War, and now the war in Iraq….Now, maybe none of that previous history has anything to do with how he would conduct the war on terror, but, as I said, people don’t often change their character….So in spite of the fact that Kerry promises to “kill” the terrorists, it seems much more plausible to think that he’ll instead tack toward the French and German strategy of using intelligence and legal means to disrupt terrorist plans while carefully avoiding acts which might “inflame” potential adversaries. In other words, he’ll revert to a pre-Sept. 11th strategy. What makes the Kerry supporters think I’m wrong here?

QD is quite right. Character shows up early in adult life and sticks with you, unless you experience what QD calls a deep psychological crisis. James David Barber’s classic book, Presidential Character: Predicting Performance In The White House, amply documents the persistence of long-held character traits into the White House years of American presidents.

But what about Bush, the erstwhile playboy, alcoholic, and drug-taker? Bush, unlike Kerry, forced a psychological crisis upon himself. He is not the same person he was in his wanton days. He has evolved into a hard-nosed realist who will kill terrorists.

The Pre-Debate Numbers

The popular vote share market at Iowa Electronic Markets and Rasumussen’s presidential tracking poll, in my estimation, do the best job of projecting Bush’s share of the two-party popular vote. (Bush’s share of the Rasmussen poll = percent for Bush/(percent for Bush + percent for Kerry.) Here’s how the numbers looked on the eve of the second Bush-Kerry debate:

Bush’s showing in IEM’s popular vote share market yields 337 to 388 electoral votes. His share of the Rasmussen poll yields a slightly lower estimate: 319 to 369 electoral votes. (The conversion of popular vote share to electoral votes is explained here (see method 3).)

Racism in Detroit

You know what happens when a racial majority becomes arrogant with power? Of course, it runs roughshod over the racial minority? It’s happening in Detroit, which is more than 80 percent black. Here’s the story from The Washington Times:

Detroit’s plan for ‘African Town’ stirs racial tensions

By Brian DeBose

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The Detroit City Council, in defiance of Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, likely will move forward with plans to create an “African Town” in the tradition of Chinatowns and Little Italys nationwide, even though the issue has turned into a racially divisive economic-development proposal.

In July, the council resolved to build up a section of the city devoted to African and black American literature, cuisine and art, which Mr. Kilpatrick endorsed. He vetoed the resolution, however, when it became clear that the council’s plan would allow only black businessmen and investors to use the $38 million earmarked for the project.

Mr. Kilpatrick argued that the resolution is both racist and unconstitutional.

“It’s not the African Town proposal. We like the idea,” said Howard Hughey, spokesman for Mr. Kilpatrick. “But what they are proposing is to create a publicly funded private entity and give one man $40 million to use and distribute to investors, and it is unconstitutional to do that based on race and [the resolution] says very clearly that it would be.”…

Council member Kay Everett, who is black, said the first resolution was “ridiculous” and opposed the African Town resolution for being illegal and divisive.

“It is reverse racism, and you can’t right a wrong with another wrong. It’s reparations with public money,” she said….

Typically, Chinatowns, Little Italys and other locales, such as Spanish Harlem in New York, were created by immigrants in a time when they were not accepted in other areas of the city and forced to build their own businesses and communities centered on their respective cultures….

So, Detroit would use public funds to discriminate against non-blacks in erecting an ethnic district of the kind that other ethnic groups created with their own money and enterprise. At least the mayor and some council members see the plan for what it is: the arrogance of racial power.

High Irony in the Cozy World of Government Contracting

Here’s a story from BBC News that won’t make even a small dent in the spin and counter-spin about the presidential debates:

US air force official imprisoned

The former number two buyer for the US air force has been sentenced to nine months in jail for corruption.

Darleen Druyun, 56, admitted to boosting the price of a tanker plane deal to win favour with Boeing, the company she was about to work for.

She also pleaded guilty to giving Boeing a competitor’s secret data.

The judge said the stain of her offence was very severe, and the case “must stand as an example”, given the high office she held….

There are two ironies here. First, Druyun was caught doing something blatantly that others manage to do more subtly in Washington. I couldn’t begin to count the number of retiring generals, admirals, and high-ranking bureaucrats who, shortly before they retire, start making nice to contractors to whom they’d like to sell their consulting services for, say, $150 an hour.

Second, I remember that when Druyun was still in her government job she was a panelist at a symposium on ethical practices for government contractors. Of course, she was all in favor of ethics. Isn’t everyone in Washington?

Well, maybe not Tom DeLay. Though DeLay’s real sin is being a “take no prisoners” Republican in the mold of Newt Gingrich. If you’re too nasty to the opposition, they stop giving you a free pass for behaving like everyone else on Capitol Hill. Then the opposition suddenly discovers ethics — not theirs, of course, just your lack of them.

Election Projections, Explained

REVISED 11/18/04

In Method 1, I assign all of a State’s electoral votes to the expected winner in that State, according to TradeSports.com. A price of greater than 50 indicates a Bush win; a price of less than 50 indicates a Kerry win. (A winning bet of $50 on Bush at a price of 50 returns $100, for a $50 profit; a winning bet of $60 on Bush at a price of 60 also returns $100, for a $40 profit; a losing bet on Bush at a price of 60 pays off those who bet on Kerry; and so on.) If the price is exactly $50, I record the electoral votes as a tossup and don’t allocate them to either candidate.

In Method 2, I allocate all of a State’s electoral votes to Bush if the TradeSports.com price is 55 or greater, and all of a State’s electoral votes to Kerry if the Tradesports.com price is 45 or less. For prices between 45 and 55, I allocate a State’s electoral votes according to Method 2. Method 2 has no predictive power; it simply measures the uncertainty around the estimate yielded by method 1.

Method 3* translates the expected share of two-party popular vote into electoral votes, based on a statistical relationship for presidential elections from 1952 through 2000. I use two sources to estimate the leader’s share of the two-party vote: the popular vote-share share market at Iowa Electronic Markets; the leader’s share of the Bush-Kerry vote according to the Rasmussen tracking poll. I use those share estimates in the following regression equation:

Fraction of electoral vote going to the popular-vote leader =

– 8.327 (a constant term)

+ 29.249 x the leader’s fraction of the 2-party popular vote

– 23.161 x the square of the leader’s fraction of the 2-party popular vote

+ 0.0696 (if the leader is Republican, otherwise 0).

The r-squared of the equation is 0.95; the standard error of the estimate is 5.8 percent; and the t-stats on the coefficient and three variables are -2.908, 2.836, -2.509, and 2.507, respectively.

Electoral-vote percentages for the elections of 1952-2000 fell within or very close to the normal range of the estimates (mean, plus or minus standard error). However, Bush’s percentage in 2004 (53.2 percent) fell markedly below the normal range (62.4 to 70.2 percent). That result is consistent with a pattern that has emerged since 1980, when Reagan’s electoral-vote share was above the normal range of the estimate. Since then, the electoral-vote share of the popular-vote leader slipped steadily through the range, hitting bottom in 1996 and 2000, then dropping below the range in 2004.

Based on further analysis of the elections of 1952-2004, I have concluded that the Republican electoral-vote advantage applies only when the Republican candidate is winning decisively in the two-party popular vote (54 percent, or more). Thus, in tight races, method 1 is the best way to estimate the electoral vote. At any rate, it worked well this year.

I hereby retire methods 2 and 3. It’s method 1 for 2008.

__________

* Revised slightly on 11/18/04 to correct a minor data entry error.

Subsidizing Multi-millionaires

I recently expressed some realism about the return of major league baseball to D.C.:

…To succeed financially, the new Washington team must draw well from the Maryland and Virginia suburbs. Attendance will be high for a few years, because the closeness of major-league baseball will be a novelty to fans who’ve had to trek to Baltimore to see the increasingly hapless Orioles. But suburbanites’ allegiance to the new Washington team won’t survive more than a few losing seasons — and more than a few seem likely, given the Expos’ track record. As the crowds wane, suburbanites will become increasingly reluctant to journey into the city. And, so, the taxpayers of D.C. (and perhaps the taxpayers of the nation) are likely to be stuck with an expensive memento of false civic pride.

Now, here’s Michelle Malkin:

THE MOTHER OF ALL STADIUM BOONDOGGLES

By Michelle Malkin · September 30, 2004 11:10 AM

The media cheerleading here in the D.C. area over the Expos deal is nauseating. I have nothing against baseball. I have everything against taxpayer-funded sports statism. (A commendable exception to the media slavering over this government rip-off is the Washington Times, whose scathing editorial today is dead-on.)….

And what did the WashTimes have to say? Among other things, this:

…To finance the $440 million project, the District would issue 30-year bonds. Annual debt-service costs would total more than $40 million. Those annual costs would be financed by $21 million to $24 million from a gross-receipts tax imposed on businesses with more than $3 million in annual revenues; $11 million to $14 million from taxes on tickets and stadium concessions; and $5.5 million in rent payments from the ballclub.

The team’s owners will receive all the income from ballpark naming rights, which can be quite substantial. The Redskins, whose stadium was privately financed, will receive more than $200 million over 27 years from Federal Express. It is outrageous for taxpayers to be on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars over the next 30 years while the taxpayer-subsidized owners pocket perhaps hundreds of millions more for the naming rights of a ballpark they received as a gift. Should such a travesty come to pass, it would be the real legacy of Mayor Williams.

And just wait until fans start staying away in droves and the team’s owners lobby for better terms. Won’t the taxpayers of D.C. be happy then?

Thinking Ahead to ’08

UPDATED BELOW

Here’s a scenario: Bush is re-elected. Iraq slowly progresses economically and politically. Other rogue nations (Syria, Iran, N. Korea) are tamed by military action or the fear of it. The economic recovery looks like a replay of the 1990s (if not better). Deficits are no longer an issue because tax revenues rise with the recovery. Social Security reform is underway, and there are good prospects for Medicare reform.

Upon Bush’s re-election, Edwards and Clinton (of the female gender) instantly become the leading contenders to head the Democrat ticket in ’08. By ’08 they will have spent almost four years exposing their left-wing positions to the country and bashing each other. Out of that wreckage a less compelling nominee might crawl.

Thus, given my scenario, Republicans should be able to hold onto the White House simply by putting up someone — not named Bush — whose politics are to the right of the Democrat nominee’s.

Hold that thought.

UPDATE:

What about Barack Obama? Too young and inexperienced to be a candidate in ’08. But if Repubs hold the White House in ’08, look for Obama in ’12.

Kerry’s Slave-Labor Plan and Shell Game

Kerry’s website used to carry a statement about his position on national service. The statement was taken off the site, but intrepid (no doubt pajama-clad) bloggers have found a cached version. Here’s a bit of it, courtesy Say Anything:

As President, John Kerry will ensure that every high school student in America performs community service as a requirement for graduation. This service will be a rite of passage for our nation’s youth and will help foster a lifetime of service. States would design service programs that meet their community and educational needs. However, John Kerry does not believe in unfunded mandates. No state would be obligated to implement a service requirement if the federal government does not live up to its obligation to fund the program.

So, Kerry would make slave laborers of high-school students. But he wouldn’t make the States fund the slave-labor program. No, he’d simply ship the money to the States from Washington, D.C., where money grows on trees. Oops, no, that’s not it; Washington’s money comes from the citizens of the very States that he’d ship the money to. Nice try, John, but we’ve seen that move before.

On the Eve of the First Debate

I think betting markets are better than polls at predicting election outcomes. Nevertheless, here’s a fairly accurate depiction of the state of the Bush-Kerry race (from realclearpolitics.com):

Carter’s Election Strategy

It’s simple: Preemptively discredit the outcome in Florida. From BBC News:

Florida officials stand by ballot

Election officials in Florida have rejected a suggestion that the state’s preparations for the presidential election are seriously flawed.

Jimmy Carter, the former US president and veteran election monitor, predicted polling in the key state would be neither free nor fair….

Mr Carter said that Florida’s top election official in 2004, Glenda Hood, showed “strong bias”.

He accused of her of favouring Republicans by trying to get the name of independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader included on the state ballot, knowing he might divert Democrat votes.

The former president also alleged that an attempt had been made to disqualify black Americans more likely to vote Democrat on the basis of criminal records….

Hey, Jimmy, even the Florida Supreme Court, not known as a mouthpiece for the Republican Party, said that Nader should be on the ballot. But I guess it’s “un-Democratic” to offer citizens too many choices.

As for the charge about disqualifying black Americans with criminal records. You don’t want to open that bucket of worms, do you, Jimmy?

A Very Telling Profile of Kerry

The New York Times has this:

Kerry as the Boss: Always More Questions
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JODI WILGOREN

Published: September 26, 2004

WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 – For 15 minutes in Milwaukee the other day, Senator John Kerry pummeled his staff with questions about an attack on President Bush, planned for later that morning, that accused the White House of hiding a huge Medicare premium increase.

Talking into a speakerphone in his hotel suite, sitting at a table scattered with the morning newspapers, Mr. Kerry instructed aides in Washington to track down the information he said he needed before he could appear on camera. What could have slowed down the premium increase? How much of it was caused by the addition of a prescription drug benefit? What would the increase cost the average Medicare recipient?

Mr. Kerry got the answers after aides said they spent the morning on the telephone and the Internet, but few of those facts found their way into his blistering attack.

The morning Medicare call was typical of the way Mr. Kerry, a four-term senator with comparatively little management experience, has run his campaign. And, his associates say, it offered a glimpse of an executive style he would almost surely bring to the White House.

Mr. Kerry is a meticulous, deliberative decision maker, always demanding more information, calling around for advice, reading another document – acting, in short, as if he were still the Massachusetts prosecutor boning up for a case. He stayed up late Sunday night with aides at his home in Beacon Hill, rewriting – and rearguing – major passages of his latest Iraq speech, a ritual that aides say occurs even with routine remarks….

In interviews, associates repeatedly described Mr. Kerry as uncommonly bright, informed and curious. But the downside to his deliberative executive style, they said, is a campaign that has often moved slowly against a swift opponent, and a candidate who has struggled to synthesize the information he sweeps up into a clear, concise case against Mr. Bush.

Even his aides concede that Mr. Kerry can be slow in taking action, bogged down in the very details he is so intent on collecting, as suggested by the fact that he never even used the Medicare information he sent his staff chasing….

Unlike Mr. Bush, who was a governor and a business executive before he ran for president, Mr. Kerry – who has spent the past 20 years as a legislator, with a staff of perhaps 60 – has little experience in managing any kind of large operation….

The difference between Kerry and Bush isn’t experience, it’s temperament. I worked for a Kerry-like CEO — always asking questions, probing answers, asking more questions, ad infinitum. He always postponed decisions as long as possible, not because he lacked the facts but because he had confused himself with the facts. He sought facts for their own sake, not because they would help him plot the best path toward a specific goal. He was almost purely inductive, hoping to find his principles in a morass of information.

That’s how Kerry, with his limitless flip-flopping, has struck me — a man without principles who hopes to discover them in the next piece of information that he receives. The Times article confirms that view.

To change metaphors: You don’t advance the ball down the field by counting the laces on it. You advance the ball down the field by knowing where the goal is and then choosing the plays that will help you reach it. Kerry knows how many laces there are. Bush figures out where to throw the ball, and all Kerry knows how to do is carp like an armchair quarterback when some of the passes aren’t caught.

DeLay, a Headliner in Austin

“Grand jury indicts DeLay lieutenants,” according to the Austin Statesman-American. The Statesman plays up the DeLay angle because (1) it’s a Democrat mouthpiece and (2) it harbors special ill-will toward DeLay, who is the Darth Vader of Texas politics, according to the left.

Go below the headline and you read this:

Following the Republican sweep of the 2002 elections [for State-wide offices], [Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, a Democrat], began investigating allegations that Republicans and their business allies used unprecedented amounts of corporate cash to affect the elections.

State law generally prohibits using corporate or labor union money for political purposes except to pay for the administrative expenses of a political action committee.

There are two things going on here: a political vendetta and the suppression of political speech. The latter is just as bad in Texas as it is in D.C., thanks to decades of Democrat control of the Texas legislature.

Reassessing the Man from Ohio

Two new books are refurbishing U.S. Grant’s reputation, according to a review by Jonathan Yardley in The Washington Post. The books are Ulysses S. Grant, by Josiah Bunting III, and Ulysses S. Grant: The Unlikely Hero, by Michael Korda. Yardley quotes Bunting on Grant:

He was hugely but modestly self-reliant; he was accustomed to making do with what he was given, without asking for more; he defined himself in action, not talk; he was dutiful, intensely loyal to superiors and friends, brave in the way that Tacitus called Agricola brave: unconsciously so.

And Korda:

Grant had that rare quality among professional soldiers, even at the very beginning of his career, of feeling deeply for the wounded and dead of both sides. It was not weakness — it was that he spared himself nothing. Grant saw what happened in war, swallowed his revulsion, pity and disgust, and went on.

A general for all seasons.

Yardley reminds us that Grant’s heroism extended beyond the battlefield:

The end of Grant’s life was both sad and noble. An investment firm to which he had foolishly committed such fortune as he had was undone by its founder’s dishonesty, and Grant was bankrupt. At about the same time he learned that he had terminal throat cancer. Desperate to assure [his wife] Julia’s financial security after his death, he overcame his qualms and agreed to write his memoirs. He completed them barely hours before his death, his final bequest to the country he had served so nobly: a literary masterpiece, two volumes in which the stamp of his greatness is on every page.

Isn’t Chicago a "Liberal" Stronghold?

Not according to this story at NYTimes.com:

Chicago Moving to ‘Smart’ Surveillance Cameras

By STEPHEN KINZER
Published: September 21, 2004

CHICAGO, Sept. 20 – A highly advanced system of video surveillance that Chicago officials plan to install by 2006 will make people here some of the most closely observed in the world. Mayor Richard M. Daley [a Democrat] says it will also make them much safer….

Police specialists here can already monitor live footage from about 2,000 surveillance cameras around the city, so the addition of 250 cameras under the mayor’s new plan is not a great jump. The way these cameras will be used, however, is an extraordinary technological leap.

Sophisticated new computer programs will immediately alert the police whenever anyone viewed by any of the cameras placed at buildings and other structures considered terrorist targets wanders aimlessly in circles, lingers outside a public building, pulls a car onto the shoulder of a highway, or leaves a package and walks away from it. Images of those people will be highlighted in color at the city’s central monitoring station, allowing dispatchers to send police officers to the scene immediately….

Many cities have installed large numbers of surveillance cameras along streets and near important buildings, but as the number of these cameras has grown, it has become impossible to monitor all of them. The software that will be central to Chicago’s surveillance system is designed to direct specialists to screens that show anything unusual happening….

When the system is in place,…video images will be instantly available to dispatchers at the city’s 911 emergency center, which receives about 18,000 calls each day. Dispatchers will be able to tilt or zoom the cameras, some of which magnify images up to 400 times, in order to watch suspicious people and follow them from one camera’s range to another’s.

A spokesman for the Illinois chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, Edwin C. Yohnka, said the new system was “really a huge expansion of the city’s surveillance program.”

“With the aggressive way these types of surveillance equipment are being marketed and implemented,” Mr. Yohnka said, “it really does raise questions about what kind of society do we ultimately want, and how intrusive we want law enforcement officials to be in all of our lives.”…

One community organizer who works in a high-crime neighborhood, Ernest R. Jenkins, chairman of the West Side Association for Community Action, said the 2,000 cameras now in place had reduced crime and were “having an impact, no if’s, and’s or but’s about it.” Nonetheless, Mr. Jenkins said, some people in Chicago believed the city was trying to “infiltrate people’s privacy in the name of terrorist attacks.”

“I just personally think that it’s an invasion of people’s privacy,” Mr. Jenkins said of the new video surveillance project. “A large increase in the utilization of these cameras would oversaturate the market.”

City officials counter that the cameras will monitor only public spaces. Rather than curb the system’s future expansion, they have raised the possibility of placing cameras in commuter and rapid transit cars and on the city’s street-sweeping vehicles.

“We’re not inside your home or your business,” Mayor Daley said. “The city owns the sidewalks. We own the streets and we own the alleys.”

You may have noticed that that the local ACLU outlet seems to be taking it rather calmly. Must be they trust Democrats more than Republicans. Not that they should, they just do.

I’m inclined to give Mayor Daley the benefit of the doubt. Not that I think that his surveillance system will do that much good. It sort of defeats the purpose to publicize it. But as long as it only monitors public places, I’m not going to get all excited about it.

Kerry Does It Again

Via AP and Yahoo! News:

Kerry Says He Wouldn’t Have Ousted Saddam

By RON FOURNIER, AP Political Writer

NEW YORK – Staking out new ground on Iraq, Sen. John Kerry said Monday he would not have overthrown Saddam Hussein had he been in the White House, and he accused President Bush of “stubborn incompetence,” dishonesty and colossal failures of judgment. Bush said Kerry was flip-flopping.

Less than two years after voting to give Bush authority to invade Iraq, the Democratic candidate said the president had misused that power by rushing to war without the backing of allies, a post-war plan or proper equipment for U.S. troops. “None of which I would have done,” Kerry said….

Flip-flopping is an understatement for what Kerry does. He surrounds an issue and then proceeds to attack it from all sides. You know what happens to a 360-degree firing squad.

The Great Divide Is a Great Thing

The Austin American Statesman, that great proponent of civic morality, has been running an occasional series called “The Great Divide.” It’s about the supposed polarization of American politics and American society. A sample from today’s installment (registration required, not worth the trouble):

In stories published this year, the Statesman has reported that since the late 1970s, Democrats and Republicans have been segregating, as people sift themselves into more politically homogeneous communities.

“We keep all the shrimp away from all the mussels,” Republican strategist Bill Greener says of the nature of American politics. “We keep all the mussels away from the oysters. And we keep all the oysters away from all the lobsters.”

By 2000, about half of the nation’s voters lived in counties where one party or another won the presidential election by 20 percentage points or more. Churches have become among the country’s most politically homogeneous institutions. And Congress has grown more partisan and uncompromising than at any time since World War II.

People are less likely to live and vote among those with different political leanings, and the nation’s politics have grown bitter as a result. “Things get ugly when you have this kind of divergence,” California Institute of Technology political scientist Jonathan Katz says. “Each side thinks the other is wrong.”

Of course “each side thinks the other is wrong,” as the idiot from CalTech so pompously observes. (He probably analyzed a lot of data for a lot of years to figure that out.) It’s always been that way and always will be that way. That’s why the nation’s politics are so “ugly” and “bitter”. Actually they’re no more ugly and bitter than they’ve ever been, we’re just more aware of the ugliness and bitterness because (1) there are more screaming heads on TV and the internet than there used to be and (2) Democrats no longer rule the roost as they used to, which has caused them to scream louder than ever.

All this business with screaming heads just confirms one fact of life: Face-to-face political argument seldom ever changes a person’s mind, it usually hardens it.

So why should people with opposing views live near each other if they’re going to wind up fighting about politics? How many family dinners have been ruined by Uncle Joe called his nephew Fred a pinko, commie, hippie freeloader or a right-wing, fascist, capitalist exploiter of the working classes? Now, if you don’t like your family’s politics you move to where your family ain’t — and to where your can enjoy a peaceful meal with like-minded friends, chuckling over the idiocy of John Kerry or George Bush, as you prefer, without an Uncle Joe to spoil the fun.

What Are These People Thinking?

Have these people no sense at all, whatsoever? It’s okay to do this in private, but why do it in public? It just encourages the enemy and demoralizes the troops. What am I talking about? This, from Reuters via Yahoo! News:

Republicans Criticize Bush ‘Mistakes’ on Iraq

Sun Sep 19, 1:11 PM ET

By Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Leading members of President Bush’s Republican Party on Sunday criticized mistakes and “incompetence” in his Iraq policy and called for an urgent ground offensive to retake insurgent sanctuaries….

“The fact is, we’re in deep trouble in Iraq … and I think we’re going to have to look at some recalibration of policy,” Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“We made serious mistakes,” said Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican who has campaigned at Bush’s side this year after patching up a bitter rivalry….

McCain said Bush had been “perhaps not as straight as maybe we’d like to see.”…

Sen. Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also criticized the administration’s handling of Iraq’s reconstruction….

Democratic Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, speaking on ABC, accused the administration of delaying an offensive out of concern it would hurt Bush’s bid to win reelection on Nov. 2.

“The only thing I can figure as to why they’re not doing it with a sense of urgency is that they don’t want to do it before the election and they want to make it seem like everything is status quo,” Biden said….

Biden said disappointment with Bush’s policies was bipartisan. “Dick Lugar, Joe Biden, Chuck Hagel, John McCain — we are all on the same page….This has been incompetence so far,” he said.

There’s useful dissent and there’s stupidity. That kind of talk is stupidity, pure and simple. But what do you expect from the preening denizens of the U.S. Senate? After all, John Kerry and John Edwards are members of the club.

Understanding the Latest Intelligence Estimate for Iraq

UPDATED

If you can believe The New York Times, the outlook for Iraq is bleak. The Times‘s latest salvo of negativism can be found in “U.S. Intelligence Shows Pessimism on Iraq’s Future.” It’s hard to pick out the “facts” on which the article is based. If (a big if) the Times‘s sources are to be believed, here’s what I make of the the story:

A classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared for President Bush in late July spells out a[n] assessment of prospects for Iraq….

The estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war….The most favorable outcome described is an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms.

The intelligence estimate, the first on Iraq since October 2002, was prepared by the National Intelligence Council….

The new estimate is the first on Iraq since the one completed in October 2002 on Iraq’s illicit weapons program….

The criticism over the [October 2002] document has left the C.I.A. and other agencies wary of being wrong again in judgments about Iraq….

So, Saddam may not have had his weapons ready to use, but he had programs in progress for producing weapons that would be ready to use. (UPDATE: For more about Saddam’s weapons programs, read this piece* in today’s NYT.) The CIA was wrong in detail but right on substance.

But, given the “gotcha” mentality of Washington, one can’t be wrong about anything more significant than the name of Saddam’s dog. The CIA is therefore trying to lower expectations about the future of Iraq. Thus its new — “pessimistic” — intelligence estimate.
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* The lead sentence: “A new report on Iraq’s illicit weapons program is expected to conclude that Saddam Hussein’s government had a clear intent to produce nuclear, chemical and biological weapons if United Nations sanctions were lifted….”

Validated by the Wall Street Journal

REVISED AND RE-DATED

A few days ago, in this post, I wrote:

The real problem with Democrats is that they think they’re still supposed to be in the White House and in charge of Congress….

[I]t seems that Democrats are suffering from a bizarre form of near-term memory loss. They remember 1933-1969, when they held the White House for all but Ike’s two terms. (And what kind of Republican was Ike, anyway?) They mistakenly thought their White House hegemony had been restored with Clinton’s ascendancy, but Clinton was really an accidental president. Democrats vividly remember having controlled both houses of Congress for most of the 62 years from 1933 to 1995, and they keep deluding themselves that they will retake Congress in the “next” election….

Today’s OpinionJournal carries an article by Brendan Miniter, “D Is for Descendancy,” with the subhead, “The Democrats are no longer the majority party. Is this the year they’ll finally admit it?” As Miniter puts it:

Democrats still seem to believe they can win back the White House without making any significant modification to their party’s policies — that they are the natural majority party just waiting to be given back control.

They’re wrong, but they don’t want to admit it. That’s why — as I said in my earlier post — they cry ” ‘nasty’ and ‘unfair’ whenever they lose to Republicans. It’s childish behavior. Get over it!”