Recognizing that there is a religious component to the terrorist threat is simply a matter of commonsense, and downplaying it is sheer stupidity. For the West to ‘declare war’ on Islam would be lunacy, but for the West to ignore the fact that a certain (and, yes, by no means representative) segment of Islam has declared war on the West is suicidal. This assault is both literal (the terrorist attacks) and ideological. The West is responding to the former, but, hog-tied by the pieties of multiculturalism, seems by and large incapable of doing anything about the latter.

The platitudinous ‘can’t we all get on’ mush peddled by the likes of George W. Bush and Joe Lieberman is an insult both to our intelligence and the intelligence of those who the US needs to convince. It’s time to argue back, and when this takes place, there should be no hesitation about framing the argument in secular as well as religious terms. One alternative, of course, to extremist Islam is the far more benign form of that faith practiced (despite the best efforts of Wahhabi missionaries) in large parts of the Islamic world. Another alternative is a purely secular worldview – and it’s time that case was made. The fascinating articles from Reason (on, of all things, music videos) here and here show that, contrary to the entirely misguided conventional prejudice, Arabs are quite capable of looking at more than the mosque to help form their identity.

As this story from the Daily Telegraph would suggest, British Home Secretary Blunkett seems to understand some of this, although one small detail in the report makes for curious reading:

“Ministers of religion, including Muslim imams, are allowed permit-free employment in Britain.”

Why?

(There is, I believe, a similar provision in the law over here).

With her Sale of The Century, The Financial Times’ Chrystia Freeland wrote what is probably the best single book on Russia’s oligarch years. Today the FT is running a must-read piece by her on the battle between Vladimir Putin and Mikhail Khodorkovsky now preoccupying Russia. Frankly, I don’t yet know what to make of the story (Khodorkovsky is no saint, and there’s more to this than the simplistic ‘return of the KGB’ story that it is being touted around some places, but at the same time…), but Freeland’s article is an excellent place to begin.

Whatever else he may be, Khodorkovsky is a very bright – and brave – individual. His insights on Russian history (quoted by Freedland) bear repeating.

On Peter the Great:

"We have to remember that under Peter the Great there were 24 million Russians and 300,000 of them died building St Petersburg.

“There were 2 million fewer Russians when Peter the Great died than there had been when he became tsar. We have developed quickly, and we have developed slowly, but in all this time, human life in Russia has not been worth even a kopek."

On dealing with the Bolsheviks:

“In 1929 and in 1917 people thought, 'let's compromise'. It ended with 5 million killed and tens of millions in prison. Our White officers fled the country, not wanting to fight for their rights at home. And how did it end? If they had stayed and fought perhaps 30 million of their fellow citizens would have lived."

Food for thought, I reckon.

Here’s a fascinating story from Austria (yes, really!) by way of blogger Bill Dawson. The background is the arrival of an Austrian delegation in Moscow in 1955 to negotiate the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Austria. Leopold Figl, the Austrian foreign minister, was chatting to Soviet foreign minister Molotov. Figl had been in a concentration camp from the time of Austria's annexation by Germany in 1938 until the end of the war. This is what he said to Molotov:

“Your name has always made an impression on me. Most of all it made an impression on me when we in the concentration camp had to assemble in the yard at five o'clock in the morning. It was cold and we had to stand there for hours. Suddenly your voice came over the loudspeaker. That was when you had concluded the pact with Hitler-Germany [Hitler-Stalin pact, 1939].”

Well said.

Molotov, like so many of the old Communist butchers, got away with it. He lingered on in Moscow until the late 1980s, If I recall correctly, a nasty old pensioner who should have had the death of millions on his conscience except for the fact that he didn't have one.

From the reports (and remember that we haven’t yet seen the damn thing – so there’s always the chance, however unlikely, of a positive surprise) the upcoming CBS show on the Reagans looks like a piece of distasteful ahistorical trash, but the request by the Republican National Committee to allow a team of historians and friends of the Reagans to review the show is a mistake. Curiously, it runs the risk of giving the show some legitimacy (“we allowed them to review it, but we thought that their comments lacked merit”) and it also smacks far too much of political interference in a zone (TV programming) where it should never be seen.

The RNC should back off.

Castro has apparently been querying Schwarzenegger’s brainpower. That’s a touch cheeky given the Cuban dictator’s continued adherence to communism – that curious and cranky cult that brought the world nothing but mass murder, concentration camps, economic failure and, how can we forget, 'universal literacy'.

It’s strange too to see the old egotist (yet another five hour speech!) still described by Reuters as a ‘bearded revolutionary’. The beard’s true, I suppose, but it’s about forty years since this ancient caudillo was a revolutionary.

October 31, 2003

Ban Realistic Looking Toy Guns
Cosponsor H.R. 211
Dear Colleague:

The recent toy gun incident that closed the offices on Capitol Hill for two hours was another reminder that the problems of toy guns are real. The fact that a toy gun could close down one of the most heavily guarded buildings in the country shows how much trouble one toy gun can cause. While this misunderstanding was resolved without anyone losing his or her life, toy guns can and have resulted in fatal shootings.

When toy guns look real, in the eyes of law enforcement, they are real. Police officers have to make split second decisions and often do not have the opportunity to distinguish a real gun from a toy. In fact, past studies show that every year hundreds of crimes are committed using toy guns. It seems that the only thing toy guns accomplish is to make it easier to commit a crime or wet kids appetite for a real gun when they get older. They serve no purpose in society and should be banned.

That is why I have introduced H.R. 211 which would ban toys which in size, shape, or overall appearance resemble real handguns.

In 1988, Congress tried to ban toy handguns by requiring that all toy handguns be marked with bright orange at the muzzle or made of a transparent or bright color to distinguish from real weapons. However, an evaluation by the National Institute of Justice determined that the marking system failed to enable police officers to identify the weapon as a toy.

I have sponsored toy gun trade-in days at local schools and churches to offer an educational toy in exchange for toy guns. Hundreds of toy guns have been turned in through this program and it has helped make parents aware of the real problems that toy guns pose. But more needs to be done.

If you would like to cosponsor this important bill or need any additional information, please contact Andrew Delia, of my staff at xx-xxxx.

Sincerely,

Edolphus "Ed" Towns
Member of Congress

MCCLELLAN:

On Wednesday, the president will meet with the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo -- of the Congo and then he will sign the Partial-Birth Abortion Act of 2003, and that will be at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington.

Kevin Holtsberry objects to my description of the state of play on sales taxes in Ohio (second item here). He calls that description “simplistic” and “disingenuous,” although he is kind enough to say (in an email informing me of his post) that he’s generally a fan of mine. I’m generally a fan of his, too, but I’m not persuaded by his arguments.

Which are: 1) The Ohio Republican establishment rejects Ken Blackwell not because he’s a conservative, as I wrote, but because he puts himself before the party; 2) Referenda, such as Blackwell’s referendum to repeal a recent sales-tax hike, are bad; 3) Ohio has kept spending flat except for Medicaid and education, so a tax increase was necessary.

My responses: 1) Assuming that Blackwell is putting himself before the state’s Republican party—and it is not obvious to me that support for tax increases really serves the interests of the party—so what? It is a good thing for politicians to be motivated by self-interest to support good policies. What if Blackwell were devoid of personal ambition, and were supporting this referendum purely on principle? Are we really to believe that the party establishment would then look on him with favor?

2) A lot of conservatives are suspicious of referenda, and there are reasonable arguments against it (although I personally find less persuasive in today’s context than I would if we had governments in line with the Founder’s intentions). These arguments, it seems to me, have whatever force they have chiefly against laws and constitutional amendments that authorize referenda. When the law provides for referenda, particular referenda should be judged on their merits.

3) This is the heart of the matter. The state budget, overall, is up 11 percent. Education and Medicaid account, as Holtsberry writes, for most of the increase. Perhaps judicial decree makes it impossible to cut education spending. But why should Medicaid spending be untouchable? The federal government does not mandate that Ohio cover as many people or services as it does through Medicaid. For that matter, why should we assume that the state’s government spending in 1996 on all other programs is to be taken as a minimum from which the only direction to go is up?

Finally, let me provide a little bit of context—although not the context Holtsberry had in mind when he complained about the lack of it in my item. Gov. Taft is not a fiscal conservative who has been forced by circumstances and against his will to raise taxes as a last resort. He spent the boom years raising spending and various minor taxes. He also complained about Bush’s tax cut this year and lobbied for federal subsidies. I hope Blackwell succeeds in his referendum, and that spending control comes to Columbus.

Based on my personal experience, I'm confident that had the respondants in that Fox poll gotten all the facts they would NOT have voted to remove Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. My wife, my brother and three co-workers were all in favor of it, until I gave them more of the story than the media did.

The truly unfortunate thing is that the media has been very successful in framing this story as "poor suffering soul just wants to die with dignity", and far too many people have been content to leave it at that.

I recently returned from a yearlong tour in the region, and over 4 months in Iraq. [Steven Vincent’s] comments really hit the mark, especially the one about the electric grid and jobs like, now! In my view, our problems are stemming from what I call the "Spoiled Child" syndrome. In this, they were liberated and want everything NOW. They seem to feel like they dont have to work for anything, and excuses are abound.

Dear K-Lo,

I just found out this morning that an interview my wife and I did on gay "marriage" will be aired this afternoon on All Things Considered on NPR. I draw this to your attention because we were both very surprised to find that the default position for many of the people there was not favorable to gay "marriage". Yes, at NPR. We are only a small part of a half-hour special report, but it may be interesting to see how this report comes down on the issue, given the position of those involved in the editorial process. If it strongly favors gay "marriage" or at least gives an impression in that direction, that would run counter to what we discovered.

Keep up the good work.

One more thing: My area of teaching doesn't allow it, but have you pushed to get Legacy assigned for college classes. I know there are other Political Scientists reading NRO. How about targeting them?

Yours,

Geoffrey

Geoffrey M. Vaughan, D.Phil.
Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
University of Maryland

There are those of us garden-variety men [non-metrosexual] who are counter-motivated by nagging. The greater the nagging, the greater our resolve to ignore or otherwise passively resist the nagger's instructions.

Despite my strong personal interest in the book (not otherwise discouraged by Lowry's overt Yankeeism), I have yet to buy a copy of Legacy. And, I lay the blame squarely on your nagging fingers. Stop already and in two weeks or so--when you have demonstrated your ability to control this obsessive behavior--I will buy a copy. Promise…

P.S.-Otherwise, keep up the good work. And I do appreciate that your nagging tendencies come from an inscrutable and irresistible feminine source and are horribly exacerbated by the likes of no doubt exasperating Goldberg, Derbyshire and the other rambunctious and precocious postadolescents in the NR Corner classroom.

I'm getting a flood of angry email from people with AOL addresses. Many of them keep mentioning Rush Limbaugh too, so I'm wondering if somewhere in the bowels of AOL someone's saying something bad about me or linking to me. Anybody know? I can't get a straight answer out of these people.

Woops. Never mind, I found it. I'm linked on their news/opinion section.

I'm gonna be out for a while. But here and here are a couple Holloween-related G-File from the archives in case anyone's interested.

Read this to balance Krugman.

Concerning your corner comments on the "gender genie". I went to the Project Gutenberg home page, and found a text of "Emma", by Jane Austen.

I copied and pasted the following text, from the beginning of the book into the genie. It concluded that the writer was male, although it was close. When I filled in that the author was actually female, the pop-up window comment was "That is one butch chick".

It came to the same conclusion on a snippet from NRO's Meghan Cox Gurdon.

You're in good company.

My syndicated column has generated more anti-Semitism, death threats, etc. than anything I've written in a long time. You never know if it's because a link was posted on a particularly vile website. But I got quite a few like the one below. I particularly like the fact that he credits Saddam's word in a Dan Rather interview as all the proof we needed (I've added the asterisks, obviously):

Saddam told Dan Rather to his face on TV he didn't have WMDs and wasn't a threat. Bush said he had all kinds. Saddam offered to debate Bush by satelite and Bush chickened out. Saddam is the only one who told the truth. Bush and all his loser scumbags lied their f***ing asses off.

Oh yeah, it was the Bush admin and you scumbag jews who CAUSED 9/11 and killed 3,000 of our own people... just to go to illegal war. You're going to be tortured in hell forever... after I rip your f***ing head off and s**t down your f***ing neck. Millions of us know the truth and you are going to hang!!!!

Reuters on knives found on an airplane:

FBI Special Agent Linda Vizi said there were no indications that items discovered Tuesday were linked to the activities of violent militants. [Emphasis mine]

Makes you wonder what Reuters would do if we renamed it to the "War on Violent Militants."

I don't know, I feel for the guy. Yes, he was wrong to start Litigating the Eschaton -- which, still, isn't as bad as immanentizing it. But it seems to me he made a classic new-to-the-web blunder. This sort of thing happens when you're new to the hurly-burly argy-bargy of the interent and you think you have to take every little thing seriously. I used to respond to sooo much hate mail and every bit of criticism from every loony site -- because I thought it would make a difference. I still get peeved when bloggers and other websters lie about their traffic numbers. I remember one website where there was a transgender poet who wanted to do something particularly worrisome to me with what some might call a marital aid. But what are you going to do?

The ironic thing is that Krugman himself is a great example of this sort of thin-skinnedness. Remember how he freaked out about Andrew Sullivan's criticism, talking about his site like it was some sort of neo-Nazi compound?

Best thing to do with folks like Atrios is ignore 'em. Threatening them only boosts their self-esteem. Live and learn.

Matt Yglesias takes exception to my skewering of Kerry and Edwards for voting against the reconstruction money. He suggests it's unfair for me to suggest Kerry and Edwards don't have a plan for Iraq. Rather Kerry and Edwards simply voted against Bush's plan because they have a better one. As Yglesias seems to understand -- since he thinks Kerry and Edwards should have voted in favor of the bill -- this really doesn't cut it. At the end of the day, you get an up or down vote. The choise was yes or no, plan or no plan. This is a point Gephardt made at the Detroit debate:

I think we all try to do what we think is right. That's what I try to do. I thought the right thing to do, even though I want part of it to be a loan and have a lot of other suggestions about where the money could come from, in the end you're presented in the Congress with a vote, up or down on the $87 billion. And I can't find it within myself to not vote for the money to support the troops, our young men and women who are over there protecting us, dodging bullets in a very tough and difficult situation. And so, I felt the right thing to do was to do that.

If we're going to have a new standard which says legislators get a free pass for not supporting X or Y so long as they can claim to have a "better" plan for X or Y, then I do hope we'll never hear about Republicans voting against Bill Clinton's economic plan ever again.

Moreover, while I'm sure Yglesias follows the finer points of Edwards' and Kerry's policy positions, I have to say having listened to them in numerous interviews it's pretty generous to say they had "alternative plans." All I've heard is a cacophony of double-talk from Kerry, Edwards and Clark. Dean's actually offered a bit more substance -- bad substance, but substance nonetheless.

From: House Emergency Communications Center
Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2003 2:13 PM
To: All House Staff
Subject: USCP Alert Notification

This Message is from the U.S. Capitol Police - October 30, 2003 2:13 PM

1. Due to an ongoing police situation the Capitol Police have closed access to the Cannon House Office Building.

2. The Capitol Police are conducting a search of the building for an individual.

3. Personnel in Cannon, Rayburn and Longworth House Buildings should remain in their offices until further notice.

From a reader:

Dear Mr. Goldberg

Just as a to add on to a previous posting about Ramadan, the Islamic calendar, while lunar like the Jewish calendar, doesn't make any attempt to reconcile itself to the solar calendar. While an extra month is added seven out of every nineteen years to the Jewish calendar, the Islamic calendar just starts about ten days earlier (according to the Gregorian calendar) every year. Ramadan can therefore occur in any season, making for longer fasting periods in the summer. Not that this argues against your point at all, but those summer fasts must be pretty awful, regardless of latitude.

[Name withheld]

From a liberal G-File reader:

As a liberal who was decidedly ambivalent about the war (I loved the idea of taking out Hussein and the Baathist, but thought Bush's unilateralist track record leading up to the conflict put us in a weak position to rally an effectively ass-covering coalition) I have to admit that your critique about the Dem's stand on reconstruction is right on. What choice do we have, strategically or morally? It's so depressing that they're playing politics with this, even if many Republicans played similar games with Bosnia/Kosovo, which I believe had much more strategic importance than Haiti (though I supported that action too).

From my famed "Islamic stuff" guy:

Jonah,

You're right on Ramadan, mostly. It's never been a truce month in warfare (even intra-Muslim warfare), as some of the "we're shouldn't bomb during..." people seem to insist. But as far as the fasting goes, it's actually fairly onerous. Don't forget that most of the Islamic world is closer to the equator than we are, so that days don't shorten as dramatically.*

You basically have a billion people wandering around cranky as hell for a month. (And some really pious Muslims take the stricture to mean that nothing goes down your throat--so no smoking, and for some, no swallowing your own saliva. Some people wander around spitting all day.)

Plus, all this is aggravated by the fact that it's a big holiday. Everyone's family comes to town and stays for a month. You think the goyim have it bad between Christmas and New Year's. But, yeah, in furtherance of your point, the consumption of meat, sugar, etc., all goes UP during Ramadan, because everyone pigs out every night. Sort of a Yom Kippur-meets-Thanksgiving deal, but for a freakin' month. Can you blame them for being a tad irritable? : )

in her passing jabs at the women's movement, she displays more homey wisdom and common sense than vituperation. A staunch opponent of affirmative action, Decter failed to understand "why any woman would fight for years to become a member of a club whose majority were opposed to allowing women to join." How could affirmative action under such conditions result in anything but "massive seizures of self-doubt"-as she believes it has for "some blacks in elite colleges and women learning to be fighter pilots"? Comments and reflections like these, which she drops throughout the book, remind the reader that she is also the author of The New Chastity and Other Arguments Against Women's Liberation--and of countless other directly political interventions that more acerbically dissect what she views as the failures and outright dishonesty of the last three decades of affirmative action and identity politics.

Like some of the other accomplished women of her generation (one thinks of Himmelfarb and Carolyn Graglia), Decter minimizes the difficulties that she, as a woman, encountered during the course of her career. Indeed, she places little emphasis on her feelings in general. The spare account of her private life leaves no doubt that she must have been a young woman of singular determination. The youngest of three daughters of a Jewish shopkeeper in St. Paul, Minn., Decter early developed a secret longing to live in New York; and after dropping out of the University of Minnesota, she moved there. Decter says nothing about having been discouraged in her pursuit of education. (To the contrary, her parents expected her to finish college, leave home, and embrace a career.) She says only that, even though she knew a college degree could prove useful, she hated school. So, armed only with her self-confidence and minimal typing skills, she left for New York to perfect her Hebrew "at the College of Jewish Studies of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and otherwise, as the cliche of the time would have it, [to] 'find myself.'"

Several readers have objected to the reader comment that Gore presided over a boom when in fact the economy was already starting to slide into recession. Here's an interesting email (and then I'm done with this topic for a while):

Dear Jonah,
Your correspondent's harping on Gore and the economy is misplaced. 1. The stock market was already in freefall by the time of the election so everyone with 401K plans or other investments was beginning to feel less comfortable about their economic well-being. 2. Bush wasn't proposing anything that could be argued reasonably as being a major detriment to the economy. There was no reason to expect different economic performance under Bush than under Gore except in a way positive for Bush because he advocated cutting taxes.

The result was that Bush appealed to those who were growing concerned about the economy and didn't frighten those who thought everything was still peachy.


This time, however, all the major Democratic candidates have announced their intentions to roll back at least part of Bush's tax cuts. Most people realize that the rollback will significantly impact their wallets and probably the economy. It is doubtful that the majority of voters will perceive no important differences between Bush and the Democrats as to how they will handle the economy. The difference will favor Bush.


Pax,
[Name withheld]

(Bush v. Gore was essentially a race for president of the fraternity council. Gore was Greg Marmalard. Smug and smarmy but apparently competent. Bush was Otter. Likable, but potentially incompetent. The DUI news added to the incompetent impression of Bush and may have swayed some last minute deciders to go with the "competent" prick. Having watched Bush in office the issue of incompetence won't fly. Likability (George Will's living room test) will have more weight. I think most Americans will prefer Bush to Howard (The personification of weenie) Dean.)

From a reader:

Easy on the giddy, gleeful gloating on the GDP numbers:

1) They're going to be adjusted downward most likely when the Fed gets more
information.

2) A fat lot of good presiding over a boom did for Gore. My point is that 2000 calls into question the syllogism that if the economy is growing, then the incumbent sails to re-election. Granted, it's not a detriment, but it's no longer a guarantee.

3) Expect the Dems/the media attacks on Iraq to go from semi-focused and irritating to white-hot at a much higher volume.

That being said, Krugman's cat was kicked so hard it's now in the parallel universe where Krugman is the editor of NR, you are a vegan and a PETA
organizer, Ramesh writes for The Nation, and Lowry is a Red Sox fan and runs an anti land mine NGO in Boston and just coauthored Queen Noor's autobiog.

From another reader:

Well my liberal friends have already begun to spin the numbers. They cite a 10.9% unemployment level for people ages 18-24. For one, I can't seem to verify that number, and two, that's an awful narrow age margin to cite. It's like saying the unemployment level for people ages 2.5-2.6 is 100%. The bottom line, when the economy is sluggish (when is the US economy in really bad shape? It hasn't been in "bad" since the Carter years) the dems love to cite GDP data, but when the GDP data looks good, they turn to other stats to back up their assertions. And when all the economic data looks good, they'll rely on deficit numbers (which is a legit concern for this admin, but should be remedied with spending cuts). Furthermore, as any good supply-sider knows, if the economy is moving along at an annual rate of 3.3+% growth, the tax revenue brought in this year should help with the deficit problem (though we should still cut spending). So all the dems have left to hope for is that Americans die in Iraq and that Iraqis are unable to establish some form of stable government to replace the Baathist regime. I'd be pretty depressed if I was a dem.

From a reader:

Jonah, The question is a no brainer. This is the best economic growth since the 80's so they will switch to 80's style tactics. The ecomomic growth will be denounced as symptomatic of corporate greed. Halliburton and the Defense Industrial Complex are making a killing on the war and American tax dollars, driving the economy higher, but at the expense of the poor and the middle class. The Dems will latch onto lagging unemployment numbers as proof. Expect soundbites from the primary contenders such as: "This Administration is rolling back the clock to the times of corporate corruption, greed and record deficits. We are abandoning education, worker's rights, sound fiscal policy and basic health care to fund million dollar corporate birthday parties and international adventurism. Republicans then have the gall to point to the thickening wallets of corporate fat cats as proof that the economy is improving, while average Americans are waiting in ever lengthening lines to get their unemployment checks." You watch. It will happen. Joe Frye Don't withhold my name.

From a reader:

Wesley Clark: "Well, as I have always said, the Bush team is doing a great job, just a great, great job...oh crap, I forgot, it's 2003 now, not 2002."

Al Sharpton: "Maybe the WHITE MAN's economy is doing better, but the BLACK MAN still lives in the shadow of the JEW BLOODSU...er, that is to say, I mean, my people are still in need!"

Joseph Lieberman: "The Bush team has cynically arranged so that the economic boom affects only Republican donors in the upper income quintile, while the poor continue to live in a grainy, black-and-white Depression. A Lieberman boom will spread the wealth around!"

From a reader:

Jonah, Well, it was fun while it lasted, but there is no way that we can continue to refer to the Krugman Cat Index and maintain any level of intellectual honesty. On the news this morning that the economy is growing faster than it has at any point since 1984, Krugman's cat is surely dead. Think about it. 1984! Could the news be any better? The nation's economy is growing so fast that you have to go back to the last time taxes were cut this much, at practically the same point after the taxes were cut, to find something to match it. The cat is a fine red mist, and Krugman needs a new pair of shoes.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Economy grows at blistering 7.2 percent pace in the third quarter, best showing since early 1984.

He makes a strong case that the economy is improving. Krugman's response says a lot.

Like I said, the French are not our friends. (Link via A. Sullivan).

Look at this article from the Denver Post. Dean calls himself a "metrosexual" and then backs off. Am I the only one who suspects Dean was trying really hard to be cool and then remembered that the last couple times he tried to be cool -- his whole rap-lover thing for example -- the blowback was merciless. This is the equivalent of a check-swing just before being eligible for an Andrew Sullivan "Poseur Alert" Here's the relevant part:

Dean declared himself a "metrosexual," the buzz phrase for straight men in touch with their feminine sides, as he touted his accomplishments in "equal justice" for gay and lesbian couples.

But then he waffled.

"I'm a square," Dean declared, after professing his metrosexuality to a Boulder breakfast audience with an anecdote about being called handsome by a gay man. "I like (rapper) Wyclef Jean and everybody thinks I'm very hip, but I am really a square, as my kids will tell you. I don't even get to watch television. I've heard the term (metrosexual), but I don't know what it means."

We have a prototype and it is excellent! Here is the link to the Krugman Cat Altitude Index (KCI or KCA for short. I prefer KCI).

Now I need to explain a few things. First, if you weren't here yesterday, the KCI refers to my belief that every time there's good news about the economy New York Times columnist Paul Krugman kicks his cat across the room. The better the news, the worse it is for poor binky or whiskers, or whatever the feline du jour's name is (he probably goes through a lot of cats). Incorporating many suggestions from Corner readers, Jeremy Yoder, our unofficial court artist has fashioned the first working version of the KCI.

Now, what you need to take note of are the numbers at the end of the URL: http://www.yoders.net/nr/?ffid=5&kca=1234 By increasing these numbers -- they correspond to the Dow -- the cat flies higher. For example, here is the Dow at 5381. And here it is at 6867.

I think this is outstanding work, particularly with such short notice. Please send him congratulations and suggestions for further improvements (if I may be so bold). I hope this will go a long way to furthering my goal: Making the abuse of Paul Krugman's cat the standard euphemism for the material well-being of our society.

. . . The key is that Iraq already has a constitution. It was legally adopted in 1925 and Iraq was governed under it until the series of military, then Baathist, coups began in 1958 and brought over four decades of steadily worsening dictatorship. Iraqis never chose to abandon their 1925 constitution--it was taken from them. The document is not ideal, and it is doubtless not the constitution under which a modern democratic Iraq will ultimately be governed. But a quick review indicates that it has some very useful features that would permit it to be used on an interim basis while a new constitution is drafted. Indeed, the latter could be approved as an omnibus amendment to the 1925 document. . . .

Time's Richard Zoglin: Do you believe most reporters are liberal?

Cronkite: I think they're on the humane side, and that would appear to many to be on the liberal side. A lot of newspaper people -- and to a lesser degree today, the TV people -- come up through the ranks, through the police-reporting side, and they see the problems of their fellow man, beginning with their low salaries—which newspaper people used to have anyway—and right on through their domestic quarrels, their living conditions. The meaner side of life is made visible to most young reporters. I think it affects their sentimental feeling toward their fellow man and that is interpreted by some less-sensitive people as being liberal.

From a reader:

Krugman shoots......He scores! GOOOOOAAAAALLLLL!

Brilliant, Jonah! The possibilities are endless.

“Following the release of good economic news today, traders on Wall Street reported hearing a sonic boom. Others reported seeing unidentified feline objects (UFO)s traveling at KACH 1 (Krugman-Actuated Cat Hurl)…”

From the devoted man himself:

I'm all over it.

I feel like Michelangelo being commissioned on the Sistine Chapel. I now have purpose in life.

Jeremy Yoder

WHEN IT COMES TO IRONY AND CLINTON... apparently someone will need to write an entire book of incidents. And when somebody chronicles those incidents, the list will be incomplete without this notation: When Clinton was introduced at "Dream" last night for the DNC's DC hiphop fundraiser, the FPOTUS entered and exited the stage to 50 Cent's song, "In Da Club." Among the lyrics to "In Da Club":

You can find me in the club, bottle full of bub
Look mami I got the X if you into taking drugs
I'm into having sex, I ain't into making love
So come give me a hug if you into getting rubbed

The reader you posted was mostly right, but neglected to mention that Grant's name REALLY WAS Ulysses Simpson. When he showed up to West Point and found out the error, he had his name legally changed.

You have no idea how much I would like us to move on from the issue of Grant, his tomb, his means of everlasting disposal etc. But I can't extricate myself.

From a reader:

Jonah and Derb –

Not to be too technical, but Grant’s name was NOT Ulysses Simpson Grant. It’s a common mistake, first made by Grant’s local Congressman, Thomas Hamer. When appointing Grant to West Point, the Congressman only had the name Grant went by, Ulysses, which was actually his middle name. (Grant’s mom and dad differed over the name, but she won out in the end, raising him by his middle name, Ulysses. Believe it or not, as a boy he went by Lyss.) Hamer assumed the general custom had been followed and Grant’s middle name was his mother’s maiden name, Simpson, so he put that on his papers. When Grant showed up at West Point, they had him listed as Ulysses S. Grant, and he stuck by that the rest of his life. He’d never gone by Hiram anyhow, and I believe he rather liked the initials U.S. Grant.

You could win some bar bets on this one.

From a reader:

The glory days of the Corner are back again. In the space of 6 hours you've: 1) Witnessed the birth of a new NRO idiom: the Krugman Cat Index 2) Learned there is a real live human being with the name "Brackin Firecracker" 3) Calculated that NRO is on the side of godliness with a 87% Gematria rating 4) Contemplated the hilarity of Ann Coulter as Hillary Clinton 5) Worked up a parallel between Krugman's Cat and Schrodinger's Cat. 6) Came up with a new gimme question: "who is buried in Kaishek's tomb?" 7) Had an in-context mention of Groucho Marx I wait with anticipation for the next 6 hours.

Following -up on yesterday's column, I think it's fair to say that among respectable elite journalists there are two kinds of Bush-haters. The first find things wrong in the world and then work backward to find a way to blame Bush. And the second kind don't. Krugman's certainly the former and Chait's for the most part the latter. I should have said that Chait deserves considerable credit for supporting the war and denouncing its critics despite his odd loathing of George Bush. As for Krugman, today's column simply reveals that he's so obsessed with Bush, so sure of his rightness, and so outrageously arrogant that he can't even see when he's making a fool of himself. His assertion, last week, that Mahatir's anti-Semitism was Bush's fault simply made no sense just as a matter of logic and established facts -- as the New Republic itself notes in the current issue. That Krugman thinks he's some sort of martyr for daring to speak the truth about Bush makes it almost impossible to take him seriously.

Many, many readers know more about this than yours truly. But here's one which should settle it:

Actually Groucho didn't ask this question to flummox people, it was a consolation question he'd ask when the contestants didn't win any money legitimately, so they wouldn't go away empty handed (sort of a 1950's version of "lovely parting gifts"). Needless to say, Groucho was a liberal Democrat, but I'm not going to get overly analytical here - it was a nice gesture. He had a set of questions he'd use: Who is buried in Grant's tomb? What color is an orange? In what sport is a basketball used? What insect is flea brained? (this threw more people than Grant's tomb) How much does a penny postcard cost?

Technically, as Grouch once pointed out, no one is BURIED in Grant's tomb but Grant is ENTOMBED there.

Jonah, I'm not Quantum Mechanics Guy, so my grasp of this is going to be pretty rudimentary, but maybe NR has a science geek on staff who could draw a parallel between Krugman's Cat and Schroedinger's Cat. Since we can't observe it we don't know the condition of Krugman's Cat at any given time, but by estimating how much the economy is going to improve and how badly Krugman will react to that improvement we can estimate how viciously his cat is kicked. As I understand Schroedinger's Cat though, since we don't actually see Krugman kick his cat, the condition of the cat would have to be expressed as being kicked and un-kicked to varying degrees at the same time.

Paul in Georgia offers this:

Jonah- How about Krugman Cat Lives (or KCL's). Economy's up: only 1 KCL
remaining. Economy's down: Full 9 KCL's.

Just read your snarky comment to jonah.

Sometimes, Lopez, you are a miserable witch.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Signs of improvement in the job market helped lift a measure of consumers' confidence in the economy in October, a private research group reported Tuesday.

After posting a decline in September, the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index rose to 81.1 in October, up from a revised 77.0 in September.

Lynn Franco, director of the board's consumer research center, said that a brightening job outlook was a "major factor" in the rebound, as was growing hope that employment trends would continue to improve.

"With the holiday season around the corner, this improvement in consumers' spirits is a good omen for upcoming retail sales," Franco said.

Yesterday's G-File on Chait-Bush/Goldberg-Clinton Hatred. It includes a tasteful plug for Legacy, by the way. I'm still working on getting Cosmo to do a review.

I say Roger Ailes should produce a teevee biopic about the Clintons, starring Dennis Miller as Bill and Ann Coulter as Hillary.

(Corner reades might be able to suggest other actors to play supporting characters. Ben Stein as John Podesta? Drew Carey as Paul Begala? Ted Nugent as Sid Blumenthal? Mary Carey as Monica?)

All I ask is a "created by" credit and the Carville part.

Regards, Doug Welty

A friend of mine in LA sends this good news:

Jonah,

You will be happy to know that I visited a website that measures the level of evil or good in a website and it determined that www.nationalreview.com was 87% good. You can find the website at http://homokaasu.org/gematriculator/. BTW, TNR was only 81% good and www.thenation.com was 68% evil.

Here's a hilariously straightforward profile of the Rhizome Collective, a group of alternative lifestylers in Austin. It's amazing stuff. Here's an excerpt almost at random (note, I almost thought this was a hoax given everyone's goofy names, but it seems legit):

The members bristle at the idea that the group is a "hippie free-for-all," and insist on being called a collective and not a commune. But the group may be as close to the spirit and ideals of 1960s communalism as you can find in Austin.

While a lot of folks in town talk the talk, the Rhizome Collective walks the walk.

Made up of a rotating cast of about a dozen members, each with different specialties, the Rhizome Collective is a flash point of social activism. In the bike shop, members recondition donated bicycles that they then give to maquiladora workers on the border and in Cuba. Other members cultivate an herb garden and are planning a holistic health center to give free herbal medicine and referrals. In the community kitchen, the group Food Not Bombs cooks meals for the homeless.

The Free Skool for the Arts organizes art classes for local kids and adults and is planning community art pieces for public spaces in East Austin. The Inside Books Project leases space for a warehouse of educational books it sends to Texas prison inmates. And every Thursday night, the group hosts dinners to discuss a range of topics from composting to the North American Free Trade Agreement.

"We're an extended family of friends with similar visions," said Brackin Firecracker, who works in the bike shop and is originally from Mississippi. "When the opportunity came up for a space, we put our heads together, and this is what came out of it."

Excellent point from a reader re my reference to the Gamesters of Triskelion:

I'm sure there is no shortage of people pointing out that "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" would have been a more apt analogy. In that episode there is, in fact, a "pain chip" implanted in the heads of those who inhabit the asteroid-ship.

Sorry to out myself as an annoying Trek geek, but it's one of my favorite
episodes...

"He wanted Koran prayers displayed at his children's school and lobbied to have an "offensive" 15th century Giovanni di Modena fresco removed from Bologna cathedral and Dante's Divine Comedy deleted from the school syllabus. He said both showed the prophet Mohammed cast into hell." At the same time we are told that this oh so sensitive individual has referred to the crucifix as "a small body on two sticks."

Something tells me that Mr. Smith is not exactly the voice of tolerance.

For his part, FDR did his best to convince Hopkins that the danger of a full-scale German invasion of England was imminent, even though British code breakers knew otherwise. Although Meacham does not mention it, British intelligence supplied the Americans with forged documentation of Hitler's supposed efforts in South America, material that found its way into a presidential speech. British codebreakers read America's secret codes, at least until Pearl Harbor. In wartime, the traditional mandates of friendship, such as telling the truth, can stop at the water's edge.

From Fox News:

What Happens When Columnists Run out of Ideas

Denver police are unnecessarily driving a wedge into an already divided community by accurately transcribing their interviews with African-American witnesses, reports columnist Jim Spencer of the Denver Post.

Denver Police records routinely have phrases like "aks" instead of "ask," "sumpin'" for “something” and "baf'room" for “bathroom.”

"It's not only insensitive, it's insulting," said the Rev. Gill Ford, the NAACP's regional director and a member of the state's Peace Officer Standards and Training Board.

But the police say everyone gets treated the same way, regardless of race.

"I know the implication is that someone is trying to put a racial spin on something," explained Al LaCabe, the police’s public safety manager. "But the transcriptionists are trying to be as accurate as possible."

Jon - Great job by Bernstein. Instapundit has an idea: make Berstein an interum appointment.

Not only are
Cairo date merchants (I mean the fruit-sellers, not Arab pimps) selling dates named after Osama Bin Laden, Yassir Arafat and Jacques Chirac, but the ones named after the Frenchman are the most expensive.

From a reader:

The monsters of Japanese monster movies are metaphors for various powers that might threaten Japan. In the early 1950s when the atom bomb was still fresh in the minds of the Japanese, Godzilla was a nuclear monster that rose up from the sea to destroy Japanese cities (Godzilla = USA) This Godzilla was unambigously bad. The film was heavily edited for its American release, partly (so I've heard) to disguise that fact. You can chart the rise and fall of Japanese anti-Americanism by examining whether Godzilla is a good guy or bad in each movie in which he appears. After WWII, as America was increasingly seen as a protector of Japan from China or the Soviets, Godzilla was likewise seen protecting Japan from the monster du jour. Eventually the Japanese became more self reliant (Enter Mothra, who is Japan itself) and several movies where Godzilla and Mothra stand together to fight invaders, as strong allies tend to do. More recently we have a cultural backlash, and Godzilla, when he appears, has taken on more menace. Mothra is still always a good guy.

The WWII theme still plays well in monster movies. Read this summary of a recent one :

From ABC's coverage of the Rock, Paper, Scissors world championship:

Treading a thin line between silly spectacle and serious sport, the event drew a crowd of about 900, including many bemused spectators who wandered around , with drinks in hand, among a slew of local and international media.

Thoughtful people have argued: Once you start footnoting innocent human life, you are in trouble. Innocent life must not be taken, unless (here come the footnotes) the subject is too small, sick or depressed to complain. One footnote, people have argued, and the jig is up; in the long run the accumulating footnotes will strangle humane society like algae choking a pond.

Who would have believed when the Supreme Court legalized abortion that one generation later, only one, America would have come to this? Mrs. Schiavo's parents wanting her to live, pleading for her to live, the state saying no, and a meeting of the Legislature required to pry the executioner's fingers from the victim's throat?

I would never have made such an argument when the abortion decision came down, and I would never have believed it. I still can't believe it. Is this America? Do I wake or sleep?

More on this subject from one reader, Kevin Orlin Johnson, with this grim tale from the Dr Pepper state:

"Here in Dallas we have the old-fashioned international-style pedestrian signals--little iconic walkers and upraised hands, but painted on lenses--not LEDs or anything like that.

"The problem is that in this neighborhood the gunplay, the loose ladders swinging from speeding fire trucks, and garden-variety vandalism have broken away many of the lenses, leaving us with a plain white light for "walk" and a plain white light for "don't walk".

"We just go when we can."

From a reader:

Love your stuff.

As to this:

"I can't remember the last time Frankenstein's monster was a really bad guy."

Uh, how about never? You may need to go back and re-read, but Frankenstein's monster, as written by Shelley, was never really a monster - to the extent that he was, he hated himself and his creator. Always a (relatively) sympathetic
figure.

My response I hear ya, but Herman Munster and Young Frankenstein he wasn't.

Andrew - I can't let that go. Not that you're wrong about anything in particular but A) Mothra memes are so rare and therefore should be kept alive B) I thought memes don't really die C) you overlook an important monster-movie trend.

Let's concentrate on C. Almost all popular monsters -- not just Japanese ones -- eventually become good guys. Godzilla was originally a bad guy. Mothra really was a bad monster at first. But even occidental monsters became good -- or at least sympathetic -- figures. Dracula is increasingly portrayed as misunderstood and not particularly evil. I can't remember the last time Frankenstein's monster was a really bad guy. Even Hanibal Lector became a (anti-)hero -- as did the Terminator. The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, in the Jim Carrey version was a picked-on outcast. What it says about American and Western culture that we can't keep monsters monstrous is a rich topic for discussion (and one I've touched on before) but, alas, there are few giant moths involved.

You never quite know what postings are going to draw a response. A recent item on a plague of screaming giant moths (yes really) in France produced two distinct memes (is that the word?):

1. The suggestion that the French would surrender to (and collaborate with) the moths.

That’s a touch harsh.

2. That the post’s headline ‘Not Mothra’ was unfair to Mothra. Mothra was, I was told, a benign figure.

That’s a touch generous. I discussed this important question with a Japanese friend. His view was that Mothra (for the few who don’t know, Mothra was a giant moth who started appearing in Japanese movies in the early 1960s) had behaved ‘questionably’ in her first movie, but had become progressively more sympathetic. By ‘questionably’, he was referring to the destruction of Tokyo, although one reader tried to justify this as follows:

“If you're talking about the ravaging of Tokyo in the original "Mothra" movie, Mothra was just looking for the twin fairies, who had been kidnapped, a perfectly morally defensible thing to do. The only time Mothra ever really did anything bad was when she was under alien control by the evil Kilaak aliens in Destroy All Monsters .”

And that is the end of the Mothra meme.

Here’s some interesting commentary from Germany (hat tip Instapundit) on Chancellor Schroeder’s free fall in the opinion polls. The headline (that it is lying Gerhard’s anti-Americanism that is backfiring) doesn’t give the right impression. It’s better to look at the text of the piece, where the writer points to the economy. He’s right. The problem for Schroeder lies rooted firmly in his country’s moribund economy, something that has, of course, been made far worse than it needs to be by the EU’s idiotically pro-cyclical ‘growth and stability’ pact. To fix it, the chancellor needs to embark on profound structural reform of Germany’s overreaching welfare state – and that is making him even more unpopular.

Turning to foreign policy, this detail is of interest, however:

”Until now, Schroeder could always count on anti-American policies to give him a lift in the polls when he was in trouble at home. Just this week, the SPD [the writer is using ‘SPD,’ the name of Schroeder’s party, as a synonym for the country’s coalition government] attempted to play the very same card by refusing to forgive Iraq its $4.6 billion debt to Germany. Then the SPD went further by only sending a deputy minister to the Madrid Donor Conference and refusing to pledge more to Iraq's reconstruction than the miserly 193 million Euro already pledged by the EU.”

Nice behavior that from a country that did so well from the Marshall Plan. I’d expect the issue of Iraqi debt forgiveness to return into focus before long.

OK, the comparison is a bit stretched, but a Dan, a reader in New York points out these unacceptably divisive lines from a Churchill speech in June 1940:

"Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation."

What would the New York Times have said? Churchill, incidentally, was essentially an agnostic, but he understood the positive role that organized religion could play in society. As he once said about the Church of England:

“I could hardly be called a pillar of the Church, I am more in the nature of a buttress, for I support it from the outside”.

Does the Yankees' loss mean that more NR readers will buy LEGACY out of sympathy for poor Rich Lowry?

Could be one of the few good things to come out of the Marlins' series win.

A great many readers have things to say about the infinite-monkeys-on-typewriters issue. Here's one I like:

Jonah, The number of particles in the universe is about 10+80 So there cannot be more than this many monkeys with a typewriter. Yes, yes, I, too, was in ENG 101 and I know this number sounds low. They cannot type faster than the speed of light: 300, 000 meters/sec: 10+5 They cannot have been typing longer than the age of the universe: 15,000,000,000 years : 10+10. The number of seconds in a year are about 30,000,000 or 10+7. The smallest distance their little fingers are from the keys? My guess is that the smallest measurable distance in the the universe is the length of a hard gamma ray: 10+ -18 meters. This shows that the maximum number of events that could have occurred since the beginning of the universe is about 10+120. Let's imagine a typewriter keyboard with 32 keys. I have picked this because 32 x 32 is about 100 or 10+3. So, every two keys I press correctly represent a 1 in a thousand chance or 10+3. Every four keys represent 10+4, etc. There are 40 10+3s in 10+120. Multiply that by two correct keystrokes and, voila, we have 80 correct keystrokes in a row as the maximum number that have a reasonable chance at success. You can do whatever you want with the age of the universe and all of the other factors and it will not change the conclusion: there is some factor other than chance to explain a book never mind living things. In the case of the book it is human intelligence. Humans are part of nature. Or does anyone disagree? Therefore, intelligence is an integral part of the cosmos. Does anyone out there say that humans have the supreme mind? If not, then who or what does? Does intelligence operate without purpose? Never! Be it trivial or profound, be it wicked or holy, never! The existence of a supreme being? No doubt in my mind. Pass the numbers by Derb, will ya, since I'm just an arithmetic challenged old pensioner? sincerely, M. McGlenister P.S. Feel free to use my name.