Stranger Danger?

During the 1980s ABC would show a made-for-TV movie about some issue that was previously not talked about in polite society. The showing would become a national cause. People would organize. Sometimes new laws would be passed. The entire nation suddenly had a new fear. This happened at least a half dozen times but the one that started it was about a boy who was kidnapped and killed. Once this movie came out, every parent in America was convinced that child molesters were watching their child, just waiting for the parents to drop their guard for a moment.

Parents were given all sorts of warnings. There were special kits that parents were to put together to help identify their child once he was snatched. It didn't matter if the process scared the child to death. This was a good thing since it would make the children more wary around strangers.

It was understood that this would always be a stranger and that the odds of this happening were fairly high.

In reality, child molesters are almost always known to the child. He might be a neighbor or a cousin or mom's new boyfriend. He might be a scoutmaster. He is almost never a complete stranger.

Never the less, children were taught to be very scared of strangers.

This has two negative effects. One is that the children are scared of the wrong people. The other reason is that children are scared of strangers for no good reason.

Which brings us to the missing scout. After disappearing from a scout camp the boy was found days later. Why did the search take so long? In part it was because the Sheriff made a bad assumption. He assumed that children always follow the path of least resistance so the boy must have gone downhill. In fact, he went uphill.

A bigger problem is that the boy had been taught to fear strangers.

“When an ATV or horse came by, he got off the trail. When they left, he got back on the trail,” Jody Hawkins said. “His biggest fear, he told me, was that someone would steal him.”

Granted the boy is described as "immature and a little slow, but not mentally disabled" but the parents clearly gave their son the wrong impression about people.

Update: Here are someone else's thoughts on talking to strangers.

Durbin's Apology

Ok, he apologized, sort of. When a Democrat's apology is so bad that the Daily Show makes fun of it...

Even Keith Olbermann thinks that Nazi references are overused. After years of Bush=Hitler references, I hope that this the nation starts reserving the term for people who are actually Evil (with a capital "E").

Are We Winning or Losing in Iraq?

I keep reading that we are losing or already lost Iraq. These statements always seem to come from people who don't like President Bush. Glenn Reynolds has been writing about this in his column at MSNBC. In the meantime, Vice-President Cheney said that the insurgency is in its last throws. Which side is right?

Things are not going well for the insurgency. The stresses between the two groups - Baathists and Islamists - are showing. al- Zarqawi spends more time attacking Iraqi civilians than attacking US troops. The has not gone unnoticed. An Egyptian minister proclaimed that, since al-Zarqawi's attacks hurt the Iraqis rather than help them, he must be an American agent. While it is annoying that Moslems assume that anyone hurting Moslems must be an American agent, it is still heartening to see that Zarqawi is losing the "Arab street". Who is going to volunteer to go to Iraq and blowhimself up for an American agent?

He is not getting along with the other insurgents, either. Relations are so bad that the insurgents are attacking each other.

The Islamists will find it very difficult to work in Iraq if the Iraqi people turn against them. The Baathists may make a deal with the Iraq transitional government. That would isolate the Islamic fundamentalists and probably drive them out.

There is still a lot that can go wrong but this seems to be the direction that Iraq is headed.

One thing that could still go wrong is announcing a timetable for withdrawing the troops. If the insurgents know exactly how long they have to hold on, they will. If they know that we will stay as long as they stay then they will give up.

Downing Street Mock-up

It turns out that the Downing Street Memos that were released were not exactly what they purported to be. They were hand-typed copies of copies of originals.

Huh?

Some people have already pronounced that the memos are complete fabrications. Others think that they must be real because there is so little to them. Yet more think that they are real because no one in power has denounced them as fakes.

I agree that they probably are real. There are several differences between these memos and the Killian memos that were the center of the Rathergate story. The author of these memos was supposed to have written the memos for his own personal files and has since died. The Downing Street Memos are supposed to be part of the official record. The White House could not confirm or deny what someone who is now dead wrote in private. The British government can confirm or deny what is part of the official (although secret) record.

There are a couple of questions and a few possibilities. Why make a copy of a copy and why use a manual typewriter? This makes the memos impossible to verify. Does this really circumvent British law about secret records?

Now, the possibilities: 1) The memos are fake but are close to real events. 2) The memos are real but slightly altered. In either case, why bother? Because the only way to answer them would be to make the full records public and let reporters crawl through all of the records looking for an off-word that would indicate deception. If I was a conspiracy theorist I would believe that someone in the Left did exactly this - created or doctored memos in order to open up the real secret records.

But I'm not so I will believe that the memos are real and probably un-altered. Of course, there is no way to know for sure...

GM, Toyota, and Thomas Friedman

You win a Pulitzer for foreign affairs and you think that you know everything about everything. At least that's the impression you get from Thomas Friedman's column on automobiles. He starts out:

So I have a question: If I am rooting for General Motors to go bankrupt and be bought out by Toyota, does that make me a bad person?

It is not that I want any autoworker to lose his or her job, but I certainly would not put on a black tie if the entire management team at G.M. got sacked and was replaced by executives from Toyota. Indeed, I think the only hope for G.M.'s autoworkers, and maybe even our country, is with Toyota. Because let's face it, as Toyota goes, so goes America.

Why would this be a good thing?

Because Toyota has pioneered the very hybrid engine technology that can help rescue not only our economy from its oil addiction (how about 500 miles per gallon of gasoline?), but also our foreign policy from dependence on Middle Eastern oil autocrats.

500 miles per gallon? Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria proposed this a few months ago (another foreign affairs writer who thinks that this gives him special insights into automobiles. What Zakaria actually meant was using an 80%-20% alcohol/gas mixture so that cars are running mainly on alcohol. The problem here is that alcohol has zero net energy. What is brewed from corn does not burn. Just try lighting a beer or glass or ordinary wine. The alcohol content is too low. In order to increase it, you have to distill it two or more times. This burns up about as much energy as you get from the distilled alcohol. Since the process can be fueled by gas or coal it means a reduction in oil usage but it is not the same thing as 500 miles per gallon at all.

And Toyota is not working on this. What they have is a gas/electric hybrid, the Prius. Now, this is a neat piece of technology and it gets high mileage, something like 50+ MPG highway and 60+ city. The city mileage is accomplished partly because gas engines burn almost as much gas at idle as when moving while electric motors only use energy when moving. Every minute you sit at a stoplight you save energy (not counting the air conditioning and radio). Also, it recaptures some power when you brake.

But the Prius also gains mileage from being a small with poor performance. Any small, underpowered car will get better mileage than a big car with a powerful motor. Also, the Prius is expensive. Toyota offers nine car models. Only three are more expensive than the Prius. You are paying for dual engines. The most recent studies say that gas would have to cost $5/gallon in order for you to break even with a Prius.

It should also be pointed out that the Ford Escape hybrid has middle of the pack mileage and that Honda is now using hybrid technology more to boost the acceleration of its cars rather than the mileage.

Toyota sells 21 models of cars, vans, and trucks. Only one is hybrid.

Friedman goes on to suggest that Toyota should have home charging kits so that you could plug the car in overnight and get the first 20 miles of the day from your home's electricity instead of the car's gas motor. Plus he brings up the 80%/20% alcohol/gas mixture. This requires a special flex-fuel chip which has nothing to do with GM or Toyota. It would also require a major expansion of our electrical grid and generating capacity which Friedman seems to miss completely.

If GM were to scrap its entire line and switch over to hybrids tomorrow, would that save the company? Not unless it was able to drop the union contract that forces it to pay 100% medical costs for retirees. That is where the real problem is for GM.

In the meantime, Friedman's solution to oil independence is rather expensive. Figure up the additional cost of hybrid cars, new power plants, and a new electrical grid. None of that will come quickly or cheaply and would require government mandates.

And none of it will help GM's health benefit problem.

Nazis and Gulags

Last week, Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin read an account of a couple of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. It part of a long speech but this is the part that everyone has picked up on:

"On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold....On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor."

If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.

Durbin also made references to the detainment of Japanese Americans during WWII.

While I do not question the accuracy of the FBI statement, I wonder about its completeness. Why were these men chained this way? Was this just being done for the amusement of the guards? Were they being interrogated? Were they being punished for something? If so, then what - had they started a fight? Tried to kill a guard? Abused a copy of the Koran?

This is important and its omission is telling. The examples that Durbin brought up - Nazis, Soviets, Pol Pot, and even the interment of Americans of Japanese ancestry, these were all political prisoners - people who were locked up for their racial/ethnic backgrounds or people who objected to their government.

None of those descriptions apply to the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Further, if the prisoners were being punished for an act of violence then the American people might lose all sympathy for the prisoners.

Elsewhere in the same speech Durbin said:

For example, they have even argued in court they have the right to indefinitely detain an elderly lady from Switzerland who writes checks to what she thinks is a charity that helps orphans but actually is a front that finances terrorism.

He never says that this elderly lady is at Guantanamo Bay but the implication is clear.

The same is true of Amnesty International's statements about "the gulag of our time." The prisoners at Guananamo Bay were captured in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many were under arms at the time. They are being held in solitary confinement.

Now, you have a prisoner in solitary confinement and he breaks the rules some how (this has included attempts on guards' lives). How do you punish him?

In Franklin County, Ohio, where I live, a prisoner who causes problems is often chained in a hogtie and left for the night. This imobilizes the prisoner and causes a fair amount of pain but it does not injure him. The position the Guantanamo Bay prisoners were in was probably less painful.

Meanwhile, in Durbin's home county, prison abuse is common. This includes actual beating and rapes.

Durbin is not calling for this jail to be shut down. He is not insisting that anyone who enters it will come out a criminal even if he was innocent going in. He does not think that this prison embarrasses us before the world.

Clearly this is nothing but faux indication. Durbin and others are claiming rightious indignation over the treatment of the Guantanamo prisoners even if they are treated better overall than people in American jails.

And none of this compares to the millions who were starved and killed by the Nazis, the Soviets, etc.

Durbin's comments were so over the top that even the Daily Show called him on it. When a congressman criticizing Bush is made fun of by Jon Stewart he has clearly crossed a line.

But the point of all this outrage is to embarrass President Bush. The Democrats hope that they can use reports of minor incidents from Guantanamo Bay the same way that the rather shocking pictures from Abu Ghraib did.

This is nothing but politics.

30 Days

In a new show on FX, Morgan Spurlock ("Supersize Me") explores alternate life choices 30 days at a time. The premier episode has Morgan and his fiance, Alex, living on minimum wage in Columbus. Since that is where I live, I had to watch it to see what I recognized and how Columbus came off.

The choice of Columbus was a little strange. Spurlock says that he chose it because Ohio's economy is doing badly and because of the close presidential race. Columbus is doing much better than other parts of the state and the election was over months before Spurlock came here. From the beginning we wonder about his choices.

Before the show aired I wondered how difficult it would be to find a job that only paid minimum wage. As it turned out, it was impossible. According to a newspaper article, Alex's job paid more but the producers made her take a pay cut for the show. Spurlock said that his jobs were paying $7-$7.50 an hour. They never said if he got to keep the extra.

This is an important point. One of Spurlock's main theme's is that Congress should raise minimum wage. Since neither of them found a job that paid minimum, raising it would not have helped them a bit. Unless the producers made both of them accept pay cuts for the sake of the premise. If that's the case then their poor financial state was the producer's fault, not Congress's.

In many ways the show was like a segment of PBS's "House" series (1900 House, Colonial House, etc.). Call it "Minimum Wage House." The circumstances were very artificial. For example, they never tried to get better paying jobs. Temp jobs in Columbus pay $10 and up an hour. They could not get these jobs because of the show's premise. In trying to act like poor people, they were not allowed to act like real poor and try to get a better job.

Very little coverage was given to the other people working beside them. One man said that his first job, 30 years ago, was making cars for $7.30 an hour and now he was making $7. He did not say what happened in between. I'm guessing substance abuse.

When Spurlock gets his job it is at a sleazy temp agency. The work agreement includes things like not sleeping on the job and not hiding in the restroom. Spurlock laughs at this but I have seen people doing just these things. That's why they make $7 an hour.

The other person mentioned has four kids at the age of 22.

Alex complains that her job is the same as her first job when she was a teenager. Exactly. These low-paying jobs are taken by people who are either very new to the labor market or have problems holding a real job.

Spurlock also worked in some commentary on medical coverage. He hurt his wrist laying sod and Alex got a uninary tract infection. They tried a free clinic but the waiting line was too long and they were turned away for the day. Instead they went to the Emergency Room and were charged a fortune.

Spurlock makes a pitch for some sort of changes but I don't think he knows enough about the subject to go beyond wishing for free medical coverage for everyone.

His experiences show the effects of two different approaches to medicine. The free clinic had too many patients. Were we to offer free medical coverage to everyone then every place would likely have too many patients. That is what happened in Canada where the waiting lines for most procedures are weeks to months long.

Then there is using an emergency room for a non-emergency. Spurlock just needed an Ace bandage and a day off. He could have figured that for himself but Alex talked him into having it checked "just in case". If his experiment had lasted longer than 30 days he would have made better choices the next time. He probably would have have taken a day off work to go to the free clinic.

Spurlock and Alex constantly complained that being poor sucked. There was nothing to do. At one point Spurlock used a library computer to search for free things to do in Columbus and found a dumb site that suggested such things as touring an animal shelter. Had he looked a little further he would have found this site which has some real suggestions. Also, if he had been here a couple of months later he would have found free festivals going on most weekends. As it is, there are free concerts fairly often.

Plus, he was in a library. Columbus has one of the nation's top-rated libraries. The libraries alone often have performers. Most of these are kid-oriented, but they exist. Or he could read a book. You would think that a playwright would read occasionally.

But this interferes with his whole "life sucks if you are poor" theme. Spurlock obviously would like us to be more like the Europeans where unemployment is so common and so comfortable that it is now considered a lifestyle choice. Here is an account of an immigrant to Sweden whose family never had to work.

Spurlock mentions a few times that we are the wealthiest nation in the world. If we were to treat the poor like France does then that would no longer be true. The unemployment rate in France has been above 10% for decades and their economic growth is miserable. Someone compared the economies of Europe with the individual states. Spurlock's native West Virginia is one of the few states that is doing worse than the French.

Supersize Me showed someone forcing himself to make bad nutrician choices - only eating at McDonald's, supersizing whenever asked, and eating everything - and then using the results to indite the fast food industry. This installment of 30 Days does the same things. It may suck to be poor in the US but raising the minimum wage will not help when entry-level jobs are already paying 50% more than minimum.

AIDS Slanders

Both President Reagan and Pope John Paul II died in the last year and in both cases commentators said something to the effect that their legacy is tarnished by their actions regarding AIDS. This is nothing but an attempt to tarnish the reputation of two conservative heroes.

In Reagan's case, the accusations started soon after AIDS was first discovered. Groups like ACT-UP insisted that more money was needed for AIDS research. They were convinced that there was a simple cure that could be discovered quickly if the government only spent enough money on it.

Medical funding doe not work that way. First you have to isolate the disease before any research can be done on treatment. Lines of inquiry have to be proposed and evaluated before work can begin. All of this happened and by the end of Reagan's term, AIDS research was among the top three in medical funding.

It is now around 20 years later. Billions have been spent on AIDS research and no cure has been found. There are treatments that will delay HIV from developing into AIDS and other treatments that extend the life of people who have AIDS but these are not cures.

That wasn't enough so protestors also claimed that Reagan had not done enough to warn people about AIDS. In response, the government sent a postcard to every household in the country. Again, it was not considered enough. The AIDS activists wanted someone to blame.

AIDS continues to increase. I doubt that there is a sexually active person born in the US who does not know about the risk of AIDS and the need for safe sex but it still is not enough.

Further, nearly everyone who dies from AIDS during the Reagan administration contracted it before anyone knew about AIDS. There is a long period between the original HIV infection and the development of AIDS. This runs from two to seven years. Most of the early cases of AIDS were in people who contracted HIV in the 1970s.

Certainly Reagan cannot be blamed for that. But he is. A made-for-tv movie had him saying callous things about gays with AIDS.

With John Paul II, the reasoning is that he refused to push for condom use so he is responsible for the AIDS crisis in Africa. There are several problems with this reasoning. The two most obvious are that 1) most Africans are Muslim, not Catholic and are therefore unlikely to follow the advice of the Pope, and 2) if someone is ignoring the Pope's position on fidelity, why would he listen to the Pope on condom usage?

Another factor is that AIDS in Africa might not be spreading sexually at all. The heterosexual transmission rate of AIDS is very low in the US where is remains confined to gays and people who share needles. There is a very real possibility that African AIDS is being spread through improper sterilization. This has never been studied for political reasons.

It should also be pointed out that the higher the percentage of Catholics an African country has the lower the percentage of AIDS cases. Again, without further study there is no way of knowing why this is true.

Blaming the Pope for AIDS is particularly heinous because he did take an active interest in AIDS. During a visit to the US he made a point of picking up an infected child. This was during the early days of AIDS when most people were afraid to touch AIDS patients. Many of the AIDS hospices in Africa are Catholic.

While the motives of people who say these things about Reagan are clear - they don't like Reagan's conservative politics, the motives of the John Paul-bashers are more complex. They resent him for not liberalizing the church so they are trying to create a negative consequence for his actions. This in turn pressures the new Pope to be more open to liberalization.

Why the ACLU Males Me Nervous

Back in the early 1990s the then-new-head of the ACLU was interviewed by Reason Magazine. One of the questions asked was why the ACLU ignored the 2nd Amendment and gun control in general. The answer was illuminating.

It seems that the ACLU is not protecting constitutional liberties. Their goal is to protect "natural" civil liberties. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are tools that they use but no more than that.

So who decides what civil liberties need protecting? They do. Specifically, their board of directors decides what their specific policies are on issues.

That's why the ACLU sometimes seems so rudderless, at least to conservatives and libertarians. I judge civil liberties by their constitutional protections. Changing the Constitution is justifiably difficult and represents the consensus viewpoint of a super-majority of the nation.

Here are some examples taken from their web site:

Your First Amendment rights-freedom of speech, association and assembly. Freedom of the press, and freedom of religion supported by the strict separation of church and state.

Note the words I italicized. This is not what the First Amendments says. Here is how it is worded in the Bill of Rights:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...

The ACLU's version justifies suppression of all public references to religion. Schools no longer teach that the Pilgrims came to America in search of religious freedom, just freedom (or more likely, the Pilgrims are not taught at all).

Here's another one from their web site:

Your right to privacy - freedom from unwarranted government intrusion into your personal and private affairs.

The constitutional background for this is complicated. The closest provision in the Bill of Rights is the 4th Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

In addition, the Supreme Court "discovered" a right to privacy between a woman and her doctor in their Roe v. Wade ruling.

The purpose of the warrant is to keep the police from making general house-to-house searches to see what they turn up. This was done under the British and was one of the reasons that we demanded independence.

The ACLU opposes the Patriot Act, particularly the part that allows delayed delivery of a warrant. The wording in the 4th Amendment has nothing to say on the matter implying that the fact that law enforcement officers have sworn out a warrant is enough.

The ACLU goes on:

We work also to extend rights to segments of our population that have traditionally been denied their rights, including Native Americans and other people of color; lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgendered people; women; mental-health patients; prisoners; people with disabilities; and the poor.

I wonder why lesbians lead the list? I also wonder exactly what they had in mind when they included the poor? Do they mean the poor's lack of access to representation or their lack of access to money?

While I can quibble about the wording on their web page, a bigger problem is that the ACLU goes beyond their official limits. They have a whole section on immigrants rights which is too long to reproduce here but it stresses legal immigrants and the rights of foreigners once they enter the US. Nothing is said about the unlimited right of foreigners to enter the US but that has been their policy. The ACLU was the biggest opponent of Operation Minuteman. This project placed volunteers with binoculars and cell phones near the Mexican border. When they spotted a group of people entering the country illegally they called the authorities. Contact between the Minutemen and the illegals was strictly prohibited. When one volunteer saved a Mexican from dying of thirst, he was sent home.

So why would the ACLU fight this? Because they decided that everyone in the world has the right to enter the US (and thereby receive all the benefits of citizenship without having to become citizens).

I do not oppose the ACLU on all issues and I greatly admire them for some of the stands they have taken in the past. At the same time, I sometimes feel that they are as oppressive about establishing their own values as any government and as intolerant of other's beliefs as some hate groups.

The Downing Street Memo

For over a month the left has been buzzing about the Downing Street Memo. This memo summarizes meetings between Tony Blair's cabinet and the Bush Administration made during the Spring of 2002. A couple of days ago John Kerry complained that the memo has not received enough investigation. A statement that al Jazeera misquoted as a call for impeachment.

The left has jumped on three points. First, that Bush and Blair had already decided to go to war with Saddam nearly a year before opening hostilities. Second, this statement:

Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.

And third, this statement from the same paragraph:

There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

As far as the first point, everyone knew by the Summer of 2002 that Bush and Blair wanted Saddam gone. This had been the official policy of the United States since the Clinton administration. This shows that Bush and Blair concluded that nothing short of a land war would dislodge Saddam. The problem was how to make the case.

The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.

The Attorney-General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult. The situation might of course change.

And they got their new UNSC authorization giving Saddam a new ultimatum with a deadline.

What about the WMDs? Did Bush know that they had already been destroyed? No, as shown in this quote:

On the first, CDS said that we did not know yet if the US battleplan was workable. The military were continuing to ask lots of questions.

For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or if Baghdad did not collapse and urban warfighting began? You said that Saddam could also use his WMD on Kuwait. Or on Israel, added the Defence Secretary

So the British were worried about Saddam using WMD on the battlefield! That would not be a worry if they knew that Saddam's supply was gone. Here is proof that Bush and Blair expected to find WMDs.

The third point, failure to plan for the post-invasion period may be a valid point but it is impossible to know from this memo how much planning was done between May 1, 2002 and the March, 2003 invasion.

Not much here to hang an impeachment on.

Dean - the Gift that Keeps on Giving

Or is that the Mouth that Keeps on Talking?

Either way, when the Democrats selected Howard Dean to be the party chairman, Republicans cheered. They were certain that Dean could not keep his mouth shut.

And they were right. It's bad enough that NBC did a story on it last night. A related story is here on MSNBC.

The old political math said that all a Democrat had to do to win was "fire up the base". The majority of the country would vote Democrat if you could just get them to the polls. That was the basis of the last presidential campaign - lots of inflammatory rhetoric plus a huge effort to turn out both new voters and existing ones.

It didn't work. The Republicans had an even better get out the vote campaign and shifting demographics now give the Republicans a slight lead in registered voters.

The only way that Democrats can win the next few elections is to appeal to moderate Republicans and swing voters. Some Democrats are doing this. Look at the number of stories about how the Republicans have been taken over by the scary Religious Right.

That's not how Dean sees it, though. He is still trying to fire up the base. Republicans? To him they are all dishonest.

"A lot of them never made an honest living in their lives," said Howard Dean on June 2 at a conference hosted by Take Back America.

On Tom Delay, Dean says:

This gentleman is not an ethical person, and he ought not to be leading Congress, period.

To put this in perspective, the leading Democrat Senators are Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd. Clinton and Kennedy have been in numerous scandals and Byrd is a former KKK recruiter.

This isn't going to sway many Republicans to vote Democrat.

Dean is living in the past. He is also the first celebrity party chair. Most party chairs can say anything they want to a supportive crowd and it will not get out. Not so with Dean. The media is everywhere and he is a superstar so everything he says is reported.

Maybe he's really a Republican plant.

Bush, the Jedi, and the Draft

Here's an interesting observation from the Huffington Post.

Leaving aside the question of whether you think these gibes are eviscerating commentary or sloppy caricature fully in keeping with the exhausted mediocrity of the rest of the film (guess what I think), overall "The Revenge of the Sith" is a dramatically pro-Bush movie. I am sure this is not Lucas' intent (although he lives in splendid exile his own Xanadu in Marin, I would assume Lucas toes the Mullholland Drive party line) but just the result of the fact that Bush and Lucas both trade in the same heroic mythology and iconography. Although the Jedi have their spiritual side, to be sure, they are warriors, quick on the draw, cavalierly light sabring anyone who blocks their path. There's little diplomacy in that galaxy far, far away, at least as far as the Jedi are concerned. Confrontations with the Jedi always escalate, as they must for dramatic drive and good story-telling, but not as we might hope in the real world. Furthermore, notwithstanding Obi-Wan's claim, the Jedi deal in absolutes every bit as much as the Sith do. The amorphous Dark Side sounds very much to me like George Bush's idea of Evil. It isn't something you can negotiate with or compromise with or the unfortunate resultant of vectors of poverty and fanaticism. It's an absolute, to be rooted out wherever exists.

I have to admit, he's onto something here. The Phantom Menace began with "aggressive negotiation". That failed and the bad guys invaded a peaceful government. The Jedi helped take the planet back. Shades of Desrt Storm!

There is no nuance to the Jedi. If they judge you to be good they help you. If they judge you to be bad they attack you.

We also know which side the Jedi would be on with Iraq. Until they found out that Palpatine was secretly a Sith lord playing both sides against each other they supported him even though they didn't like his politics. And none of the bad guys in Star Wars 1 through 3 were as bad as Saddam Hussein.

Also on the Huffington Post, Bill Diamond wonders why today's college students aren't worrying about the draft?

I refuse to believe that the world has changed so much that 18-year-olds today are any more anxious to die or be maimed on the battlefield than I was back in the late '70s. But given all the talk about the possible reinstatement of the draft, why aren't we hearing more from the nation’s campuses? Is there resistance brewing and it's just not getting reported? Or is it, as I think Jim is suggesting, that college-aged students have become so narcotized by our entertainment-obsessed culture that they don’t see what may be headed their way?

Gee Bill, it was all an anti-Bush election campaign. Didn't you get the memo? No one is seriously suggesting bringing back the draft. Today's 18 year olds understand this. Why don't you?

Living in a Post-Khobar World

Thomas Freidman wrote a couple of recent columns about turning back the clock. First, on May 27, he said that Guantanamo Bay prison should be shut down immediately. Next, on June 1, he wrote these cheery thoughts:

I worry that 20 years from now some eighth grader will be doing her National History Day project on how America's reaction to 9/11 unintentionally led to an erosion of core elements of American identity. What sparks such dark thoughts on a trip from London to New Delhi?

In part it is the awful barriers that now surround the U.S. Embassy in London on Grosvenor Square. "They have these cages all around the embassy now, and these huge concrete blocks, and the whole message is: 'Go away!' " said Kate Jones, a British literary agent who often walks by there. "That is how people think of America now, and it's a really sad thing because that is not your country."

Friedman also complains about what a hassle it is for people, especially Arabs, to get student visas into the US. He sums it up like this:

Bottom line: We urgently need a national commission to look at all the little changes we have made in response to 9/11 - from visa policies to research funding, to the way we've sealed off our federal buildings, to legal rulings around prisoners of war - and ask this question: While no single change is decisive, could it all add up in a way so that 20 years from now we will discover that some of America's cultural and legal essence - our DNA as a nation - has become badly deformed or mutated?

Of course, the prisoners at Gitmo Bay were taken prisoner while under arms, fighting on behalf of the Taliban or al Queda. Some of the prisoners who were released after swearing to be neutral have turned up killing Americans.

Several of the 9-11 hijackers entered this country under student visas which caused a large outcry.

Both of these are responses to 9-11. Reasonable people can debate them although Friedman gives the impression of a man who just wants everything like it was on September 10, 2001.

But that isn't why our embassies are fortresses. That goes back to June 25, 1996. On that date, terrorists exploded a truck containing the equivalent of 22,000 pounds of TNT near an Air Force barracks in Saudi Arabia. 19 service members were killed and hundreds were injured, not counting the Saudis also killed. The official report details actions to be taken to prevent similar actions in the future. The basic precautions involve exactly what Friedman is complaining about - fencing likely targets off from the host countries.

These precautions were not in place on August 8, 1998 when terrorists used car bombs on the US Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. 220 were killed and more than 4,000 injured. This official report on these bombings included this recommendation:

For those US diplomatic buildings abroad not meeting Inman standards, essential physical security upgrades should be made immediately and should include a number of specific measures involving perimeter and counter-surveillance.

When I was growing up it was common to hear older people reminisce about living in a time when people didn't bother to lock their doors. Friedman has become one of these people, railing at the world because it isn't the nice friendly place it used to be and blaming the US for taking precautionary measures.

We could do as he wants. We could empty the prisons of terrorists, open our already-porous boarders, and stop protecting our embassies. The death toll would be in the thousands but we would be showing the world a friendly face.

That's what it's all about isn't it? As long as we are open and friendly, terrorists would never attack us.

The Third Phase of the War

Very little attention has been paid to the fact that the war in Iraq is now in its third phase. The first phase was the overthrow of Saddam Hussein which was a traditional military operation. The second phase was the organized resistance. This was a combination of Baathists and Islamic foreigners. They attacked the military from hiding using rocket powered grenades (RPGs) and improvised explosives (IEDs).

The newest phase is mainly foreign Islamists. They use car bombs and their main target is the Iraqi people. In May, there were nearly 9 Iraqis killed for every American.

A year ago Michael Moore claimed that the insurgents in Iraq were the same as the American Minutemen. John Kerry kept saying that Iraq was a distraction from the war on Terror. If these statements were ever true, they no longer are. George Washington was native-born and did not spend his time attacking civilians.

As for the "distraction" argument, it has become a distraction for Osama bin Ladden. No one seems to be interested in taking the fight to American soil when they can fight us in Iraq instead. In this way, the war is keeping us safer.

Yes, the cost has been high. As Nightline and Doonsbury love to remind us, a lot of Americans had died in this fight. What they don't like to remind us is that the body count started in the 1980s with a terrorist bombing of a marine barracks and continued through 9-11.

During Viet Nam the argument was that the communists in Asia were no threat to us. This is not true with the terrorists in Arabia. Some of them have already brought death to American soil. If we pull out of Iraq they will be encouraged and start killing us at home again.

That is why they are pushing so hard in Iraq. If they can weaken our resolve it will be a huge victory for them. With wide open boarders and a supportive Left, the terrorists will have no problem bringing the fight to us if we stop taking it to them.

The French Vote

France voted against ratification of the European Union treaty on Sunday. There are several factors involved. One was a vote against open markets, known in France as "ultra-liberalism" or "Ango-Saxonism". Another factor was a general vote against French President Jacques Chirac. Even taking this into account, the vote represents an interesting trend.

A bit over two years ago the countries pushing hardest for the invasion of Iraq were the US, Great Britain, and Australia. The two countries supporting Saddam Hussein were France and Germany. All of these have had some sort of election in the past two years. Of these, the leaders of the pro-war countries all held onto their positions. In the meantime, Germany's Socialist Party lost its last provence and is expected to lose the next national election. And, of course, France voted against Chirac.

The trend is not absolute. Spain changed from a pro-war to an anti-war government. Still, Bush and Blair are in a stronger position than a year ago.

Also, the idea of a united Europe lead by France and Germany providing a political and economic counter-weight to US power has been postponed or cancelled.

This may be a good thing for Europe. France was trying to export their socialist-style government. While a 30 hour work-week and six weeks vacation may sound good, 10% unemployment and an economy with a persistent 2% growth rate provide a reality check. France will eventually have to embrace "ultra-liberalism" or turn into a third world country. The less influence it has on the rest of Europe in the meantime, the better.

In the meantime, Chirac's response to this trend was to appoint the proponent of anti_Americanism, de Villepon, as President.

Redemption and Mercy II

The hero has the bag guy at his mercy. Should he kill him? This TechCentralStation column says so but it is wrong. If the hero kills the villian during a fight it is ok but once disarmed, the villian is to be held for trial (or whatever).

This reflects the real world. During the seige of Fallujah we saw footage of a soldier doing a sweep of a mosque. There were people lying on the ground. One of them moved and the soldier shot him. As it turned out, this person had been wounded and disarmed the day before. The world was outraged. An inquest was held and eventually found that, given the number of insurgents who played at being wounded in order to kill soldiers, the shooting was justified. Along the way, various legal experts pointed out that as soon as someone is captured, we have a duty to protect him.

This tradition goes back to the Middle Ages. Prior to that, prisoners were normally humiliated and tortured. This changed when people realized that prisoners could be held for ransom. The financial incentive overrode the desire for revenge on an enemy.

Other military traditions developed. An army that surrendered was allowed to stay together, often retaining its weapons. Prisoners were only kept until the end of hostilities or an exchange of prisoners could be arrainged and they were not to be executed out of hand.

In the novel Sharpe's Battle, Sharpe captures some French soldiers who have just committed attrocities against a Spanish town. Discusted, Sharpe executes them, an action that almost ruins his carrer. After he is forgiven, Wellington explains that we have to treat our prisoners well if we expect the enemy to do the same with their prisoners.

The same goes for civilian life. If someone starts a fight and you kill him, it is self defense. If you first disarm him, then kill him it is murder.

Star Wars and Lord of the Rings are dealing with battles between good and evil. The good guys have to be better than normal people. That means that, no matter what a good idea it might be, Luke could not kill the unarmed Emperor after defeating Vader nor could Frodo stab Gollum out of hand.

What about redemption? The TechCentralStation article questions the wisdom of showing mercy:

Is this the purpose of mercy -- to turn evil against itself? But if we know that evil won't turn against itself -- for, in the real world, it rarely does -- can mercy have any value?

Is this true? Granted a high percentage of criminals go on to commit additional crimes after serving their sentence. Not all do, though.

Things get more interesting on an international level. Nazi Germany was as evil a country as I can think of. It was bent on purifying itself and conquering a good chunk of the world. Japan during the same period was brutal and militaristic and bent on conquering the Pacific. Both countries have reformed, in part because we showed mercy after WWII.

I've pointed out before that the tipping point finally pushing Anakin over to the Dark Side was seeing Mace Windu about to kill Palpatine. It might seem logical but it would ruin the story.

Redemption and Mercy in Heroic Fantasy

I've seen a couple of columns recently questioning Darth Vader's last minute redemption. This one goes on to include Gollum and the burned Anakin in Revenge of the Sith.

While Lucas was inspired by Chinese monks in creating the Jedi, Vader's redemption is pure Christianity. According to traditional Christianity, everyone sins. It is only by regretting those sins and asking Christ for help can you go to Heaven. It would appear that Vader did something similar when he forsook the Emperor and saved Luke at the cost of his own life.

Again, according to traditional Christianity, anyone can do this at any time right up to his deathbed. Even Hitler could have qualified. The catch is that you have to be sincere. It is not enough to be sorry that you were caught. You have to realize that you were wrong and change yourself so that you would not do wrong in the future. Intentions are not enough, either. It has to be a real change. In Vader's case, this meant turning away from the Dark Side of the Force.

These things do happen in real life. Look at George Bush. He was a party boy well past adulthood then one day he changed.

Did this happen to Vader? Doing the right thing for the wrong reason is not enough. Vader had plenty of reason to turn on the Emperor. We now know that he originally planned on supplanting Palpatine. These plans were put on hold from the death of Padme until Vader learned that he had a son. There can only be two Sith lords at a time. Either the Emperor, Vader, or Luke was going to go. Obviously the Emperor was willing to abandon Vader in favor of a new apprentice. He was also willing to kill Luke and let things continue as they had.

Vader could have let the Emperor kill Luke, found Luke's sister, and started over again. Instead he killed Palpatine at the cost of his own life.

And he must have done it for the right reason. He must have suddenly regretted his long years of servitude, his cruelty, and his casual killing of others. We know because he appeared as Anakin. Presumably a primal thing like the Force would not be fooled.

What about mercy? The author of the article I linked to felt that Obi Wan should have killed Anakin instead of leaving him mutilated, that Luke should have killed the Emperor, and that Frodo should have killed Gollum. Each of these is a different situation and deserves to be addressed separately.

First - was Obi Wan showing mercy on Anakin? I don't think so. He left behind a burnt, ruined husk. Even Anakin's lungs were burnt. Without care he would have died shortly. Killing him would have been a mercy. What Obi Wan didn't know was that Anakin would be rescued before he died.

Second - after beating Vader, Luke threw away his light saber instead of killing the Emperor. This was Luke's symbolic turning away from the Dark Side. The Emperor had been goading Luke into killing one or the other. Luke was rejecting the temptation. He hadn't actually disarmed himself. He was perfectly capable of fetching his light saber from a distance. The Emperor seemed like a frail old man who was no threat - right up to when he started throwing lightening bolts at Luke.

Finally, Gollum. Even more than Star Wars, the Lord of the Rings was a battle between good and evil. In Tolkien's backstory, Sauron was the first servant and heir to Middle Earth's version of Satan. Sauron could not create, he could only corrupt.

But Gollum was different. He started as a hobbit or something close. Had his brother not found the one ring, Gollum would have lived and died an ordinary fisherman. Yes, he was evil, but it was because the ring had warped him for hundreds of years.

When Frodo looked at Gollum he saw what he might become himself.

Also, Gollum was an ambiguous creature. Frodo and Sam needed him and, for a while at least, he actually did reform. That gets back to my point about redemption. Gollum intended to reform but went back to his old ways. He didn't change inwardly, just outwardly. Without supernatural powers we cannot tell which way someone has reformed. We can guess by past behavior. Gollum could not be trusted again. That is the basis of out penal system and putting someone on probation.

All of this skirts around the big question - what should the hero do when he has the villain at his mercy? Should he show mercy or should he kill the bad guy on the spot?

More later.

Revenge of the Sith

Warning - spoilers!

My first impression of the movie is that it is one of the best, probably falling just after The Empire Strikes Back. Yes, some of the dialog is poor but that is confined to maybe a half dozen lines. To me, the most important part is the middle act. To me this is what makes or breaks a Star Wars movie. I don't like the middle acts in Return of the Jedi and Phantom Menace. The Ewoks were cute the first time around but they turn cloying on repeated viewings and I didn't care much for the pod race in Phantom the first time I saw it.

Now, in the original Star Wars, the middle act is where things really get going. We have the three principals finally meeting and Obi Wan getting killed. There's not a slow moment in it - those were all in the first act. In The Empire Strikes Back we meet Yoda, who remains interesting four movies later, we see Luke's Jedi training, and we see Han and Leia escaping to the Cloud City.

I will add that I like the middle act in Attack of the Clones which means I rank it higher than most people.

In Revenge of the Sith, the middle act is the corruption of Anakin. It works. The seeds were planted in the second movie and we knew it.

Lucas turns a science fiction cliche on its ear. All too often love is portrayed as humanity's saving grace. In RotS it is love that turns Anakin to the dark side.

The Jedi are largely inspired by Chinese monks. The original movie was written while Kung Fu was a top-rated TV show. Like the monks, the Jedi are a martial order who use exotic weapons. They are supposed to suppress strong emotions. When you can strangle someone at a distance, this becomes a necessity.

There is an implied feedback loop where strong emotions trigger a response in the Force making you more powerful but corrupting you. This could have been explained better. In AotC, Anakin kills a tribe of Sand People then feels guilty for letting his emotions get the better of him. Padme doesn't help things by telling him that it is ok to feel. It is for most people but not the Jedi.

Jedi are supposed to go through life like the Chinese monks, few possessions and no emotional attachments. Yoda tries to explain this to Anakin but by then it is too late and Yoda's warnings come across as uncaring.

Here's where we get to classical tragedy. The basic of a tragedy is a character flaw in the hero. In Anakin's case it is that he loves too often and too strongly. We were warned back in Phantom Menace that this would cause trouble. The love for others turned to fear which turned to hate, etc.

There is also the issue of prophecy. Anakin tries to alter the future but in doing so he sets in motion the actions that kill Padme. If he had left things alone it would have been a false vision. In attempting to change the future he gave Palpatine the opening he needed.

There is a different aspect to this that is interesting. While Anakin feels himself worthy of being a Jedi master, he also knows that he is a failed Jedi. He killed the tribe of Sand People. He has a wife. When he had Count Dooku at his mercy he kills him even though this is not the Jedi way.

Anakin judges the other Jedi by a higher standard than himself. He might fall but they should not. The tipping point is when Mace Windu prepares to kill an unarmed Palpatine. Even though he killed Dooku under similar circumstances, Anakin is horrified to see Windu kill Palpatine. Of course, had Anakin been there a couple of minutes earlier when Palpatine killed three Jedi masters, Anakin might have felt differently and killed Palpatine himself. Timing is always important in tragedy, also.

There were a few things that could have been done better. As the Jedi went to arrest Palpatine I was wondering if the separatists, the bad guys in Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, were somehow going to turn into the good guys. As it turned out, the separatists were wiped out by Anakin. In a cut scene, several senators including Padme and Bale Organa, sow the seeds for the rebellion. For that matter, Organa suddenly goes from being an extra to a major character. That transition was abrupt.

Also, I was disappointed that Vader was in the black armor so late in the movie. I was hoping to see more of the classic Vader. Once revived his part is limited to looking at the Death Star being constructed.

And why does it take 20 years to build a Death Star?

It doesn't really matter but Yoda mentions that the prophecy about a chosen one killing the Sith and restoring balance to the Force might be wrong. Did someone get it totally backwards or was it referring to Anakin's son instead?

One lingering question - what killed Padme? The medical droid said that she simply lost the will to live. I don't think that this is actually fatal. Palpatine told Vader that he killed Padme. Given Vader's ability to kill at a distance and the fact that he had already choked her once, this might be true. Either way, Anakin killed her. Its just that one way was more direct that the other.

The movie ended on one hell of a cliffhanger. Except it wasn't because the next three installments have already been made.

The Newsweek Mess

The whole Newsweek affair is more complicated than most people give it credit for. On the right, people are saying that Newsweek should have known that the story would cause rioting and have held off until they were sure that the Koran was actually abused. On the left, people are defending Newsweek from having to do more than retract the story and, in some cases they are claiming a conspiracy on the part of the Bush administration. Let's look at each of these sides more closely.

First, the Daily Kos and others have pointed out that other stories about Koran abuse have run without causing riots. The stories that they cited are interesting. They refer to the Koran being thrown into a toilet or into a bucket serving as a toilet. It is possible to do either of these but it is not possible to flush a large book down a toilet unless you first tear out the pages, then tear them up. The version that Newsweek printed sounds very much like a second or third hand version that someone heard - possibly from the press. That would make it impossible to verify. Should Newsweek publish hearsay as hard news? No, of course not. The steps that they took to verify the story were insufficient. I will examine this part later.

So Newsweek has something to apologize for and the statements that they have publicly made are insufficient. They took the Dan Rather approach: "I'm sure that this happened but I cannot prove it."

Should Newsweek have known that this would cause riots? Probably not. Yes, in the mid-19th century the Sepoy Rebellion was triggered by unfounded rumors that the British were using animal fat in their gun cartridges in order to cause the native troops to break dietary restrictions and be forced to convert to Christianity. Yes, the Koran is the literal word of God, dictated in God's own language if Arabic and abusing a copy of the Koran is much worse than abusing a Bible.

On the other hand, this was not the first time that this story had been printed. It was not a major story, only a minor item.

Then there is the cultural issue. It is hard for a liberal to even imagine someone having strong religious beliefs let alone taking offence over them. Look at our own culture. In the past few years we have had artwork featuring a crucifix submerged under the artist's urine, a depiction of the Virgin Mary made partly from dung, and a flag draped across the exit to an exhibit so that everyone would walk across it. We also saw Arabs dancing in the street over the murder of 3,000 Americans. In the Arab world, insurgents have been using mosques as shelter for snipers in Iraq. None of that sparked a riot.

There is some evidence that the Taliban was planning a mass demonstration anyway and that this was the spark that they were waiting for. This happened to fit in with their message that America has declared war on all Moslems. That doesn't absolve Newsweek of blame for running an unprovable story. If the Taliban is going to riot, it would be nice if they at least rioted over provable events.

Moving over to the Left - how much was the Bush administration to blame? Did they allow the Koran to be treated disrespecfully? Yes, they did, but not recently. The military now has regulations on respecting the Koran. If a copy was thrown in a waste bucket, it probably happened a year and a half to tow years ago.

The bad reporting hurts the Bush response a great deal. If it had been a verified incident then someone could be punished. Since Newsweek cannot even confirm that it happened and will not name the source of the report, there is little the government can do to convince Moslems of our good intentions. That leaves it up to Newsweek which is clearly not up to the task.

Was Newsweek somehow set up? Keith Olbermann thinks it was all a plot. After all, Newsweek ran their story by a senior defense department official who refuted one point but did not challenge the Koran flushing.

Or would somebody rather play politics with this? The way Craig Crawford reconstructed it, this one went similarly to the way the Killian Memos story evolved at the White House. The news organization turns to the administration for a denial. The administration says nothing. The news organization runs the story. The administration jumps on the necks of the news organization with both feet — or has its proxies do it for them.

That’s beyond shameful. It’s treasonous.

Is there any truth to Albermann's accusations? In both cases a story was run past someone who, while part of the administration, had no direct knowledge of the event. And, in both cases, it was a rush story. The administration official was not told, "Take all the time you need to get to the bottom of it. We'll hold the story." No, he was told, "We're going with this story tomorrow unless you can say with certainty that this did not happen." The press is asking people to take responsibility for killing a story when they do not know all the facts. If the kill the story and it turns out to be true, they will be the ones hung out to dry. Either way the press is trying to absolve themselves of responsibility.

Olbermann would only have a case if someone in the administration had confirmed the story and it turned out false. Note that the part that the defense department official did kill was something he had direct knowledge of.

So Newsweek is still on the hook. They did not get confirmation of the story.

The left is also trying to make a point about the right's treatment of the reporter, Michael Isikoff. Olbermann says that the right "owes him" for his coverage of Linda Tripp during the Clinton scandals.

No, it doesn't. Isenkoff is part of the advesarial press. He tries to put the President in a bad light. As soon as a Democrat is elected, he will turn on them again.

Another point - an early press briefing on the rioting said that the Newsweek article was not to blame. Later, after protestors were seen with copies of Newsweek and carrying signs about abuse of the Koran the White House reversed itself. This does not prove a plot. It proves that the White House is willing to revise statements as more information becomes available.

So the left is trying to work up a faux rage. Had Newsweek nailed down the story, the left would have a point. In the light of Newsweek's shoddy reporting, they don't.

One last point - we are so busy trying to court Moslems that we have not criticized them for rioting over virtually nothing. Are article here points out that the riots would have happened anyway although I think that they might have been more subdued. This article points out how difficult it is to conduct a war without offending someone.

Today, globoback -- specifically, all those pesky reporters and NGO's, and their cameras, and also, of course, the cameras of American soldiers as well -- prevents Uncle Sam from using the sorts of tactics that worked in the past to subdue enemy populations. One can only guess at the number of Americans who have died in Iraq because we can't or won't use overwhelming force to break the enemy's capacity and resolve.

Like I said, it's complicated.

Who Won the Election?

You would think that this had been settled by now. In case you were not sure - Bush won. I bring this up because a couple of posts on the new Huffington Post say that Kerry won. In addition to the usual suspect, John Conyers, Jim Lampley, a sports writer, says that the exit polls were correct and that the voting machines were all fixed. When a rival blogger pointed out the assessment report by the exit polsters themselves, he responded that the pollsters got it wrong because they assumed that the votes were accurate. I can't resist a challenge like this. Here's my take on why the vote could not have been fixed. Since I live in Ohio and it was THE swing state, I will limit my observations to my own state.

First, it should be pointed out that the polls leading up to the election had predicted a Bush victory. The site ElectoralVote.com showed Bush in the lead almost continuously from the Republican convention to the election. Kerry did do slightly better than the polls had indicated, taking Wisconsin by a razor thin margin. In fact. Bush did not win any states that he had not been leading in the polls prior to the election.

Given this, why didn't the exit polls raise a red flag when the first results started coming in? The answer lies in the undecided voters. The expectation was that they would all break for Kerry. When Kerry got off to an early lead in the exit polls, the pollsters chalked it up to the undecided voters finally making up their minds.

So the advance polls match the actual election count. Is there anything else that we can learn from the polls? Yes. The results of the polls varied from pollster to pollster. Each poll uses a different method for conducting its questionnaire. The poll that came the closest to the actual election result was totally automated with pre-recorded questions. This meant that every person polled got exactly the same questions with identical emphasis. It also means that the people being polled were not giving their responses to a live human. As polarized as the electorate was and as strong as some anti-Bush sentiment was, this could throw off the results. Both Bush and Reagan before him always had a core of "closet voters" - people who voted for them but would not admit it in public.

This was also a likely factor in the exit polls. The majority of pollsters were fairly young women - an demographic group associated with Kerry. All it took was three Bush voters out of 100 people polled to skew the poll. The biggest error rates were at precincts in large cities which is where all of Kerry's support was. This would also affect the Bush voter, making him less likely to announce his vote to a possibly hostile audience.

So there are the arguments for why the exit polls were wrong. What about the actual vote? How hard would it be to change the results?

Let's start with punched cards and optical mark ballots. These are collected at the precinct then taken to the county Board of Elections and counted. The count is done by card readers attached to a PC which does the actual tabulating. The PCs are stand-alone. In order to change the results you have to have physical access to the PC.

When the votes are tabulated, the Board of Elections is watching. The Board is made up of equal number Democrats and Republicans. Also complicating things, Ohio law calls for rotating the candidate's names so that they are in a different order from one precinct to the next. This is so that no candidate gains votes from being the first name on the ballot.

So in order to throw the election, you would have to enter a secret code into the PC doing the counting. You would have to do this in from of witnesses from both parties. Also, since the PC only knows which columns have been marked, not which candidate is which, you would have to tell the PC which column was to get the extra votes for every precinct. And those witnesses are still watching.

And you would have to arrange for this to happen in every county meaning that you would have to have dozens of confederates.

The touch screen machines are a different matter. There are two general types of touch screen voting machines. One uses a touch-sensitive CRT like the self-checkout lanes use. The others have membranes and lights for each position.

The CRT-based machines could have hot-spots on the screen that, when touched, would let you override the counts already entered. The membrane ones would have to have a different code. Either way, according to the theory, a Bush operative would have to have some time alone with the machine in order to punch in the over-ride codes. Just like before, this is not allowed so you would have to be very careful. You would also have to get your hands on every machine. And you would have to have operatives in every precinct.

I suppose alternatively, you could give the override codes to some normal voters and have them vote late in the day. You would have to send several voters to each precinct to be certain that they would have access to all of the voting machines.

The number of people needed to pull this off is staggering. And it would take this effort. The analysis of the exit polls showed that there was no different between different types of voting machines. If one type was fixed, they all were.

So, hundreds or thousands of Republicans were in on it. Not one suffered remorse and confessed. This was done in front of hundreds or thousands of Democrats but not one noticed anything at the time.

Plus, every voting machine or tabulator in Ohio has hidden cheat codes. This includes the numerous ones that are a decade or more old.

Or the exit polls were wrong for the reasons I gave above.

Which is more likely?

Is Star Wars Biased?

Some early reviewers of "Revenge of the Sith" have commented that George Lucas injected some modern politics into his epic. I don't think so. Many of the elements that the reviewers are objecting to go back to the "Phantom Menace".

Consider - in Phantom Menace Senator Palpatine, a corrupt politician, colludes with the Trade Guild to have his home planet invaded. He uses the sympathy vote to be elected Supreme Chancellor. This came out in 1999.

In Attack of the Clones, Palpatine engineers a new crisis. His new apprentice, Count Dooku, also known as Dark Tyranus, is enticing planets to quit the Republic. Instead they are joining together and building a giant droid army. Again, Palpatine uses the crisis to advance himself, tricking Jar Jar Brinks into moving that he be given extraordinary powers. He then announced the creation of a Grand Army of the Republic (which he had actually ordered a decade before through Count DooKu). There are also several points where Obi-Wan and Anakin express distrust for politicians in general.

Given this background, it is inevitable that the third installment will be anti-politician and that Palpatine's machinations will seem reasonable to the Senate at the time.

Lucas always had strange ideas about republics and titles. Naboo elects its princesses and appoints senators. Even stranger is the idea that the best person to run a country is a teen-age girl. From the exchange between the new queen and Amidala, it appears that you lose wisdom as you age.

Then there is Vader's rank. In the original movie he answered to an admiral. In the second movie, Vader commanded a fleet and had authority to strangle admirals and promote their successors.

In "Return of the Jedi", the rebellion is free with titles. If you command a small expeditionary force you become a general.

Anyway, back to Revenge:

"This is how liberty dies - to thunderous applause," Padmé observes as senators, their fears and dreams of glory deftly manipulated by Palpatine, vote to give him sweeping new powers. "Revenge of the Sith" is about how a republic dismantles its own democratic principles, about how politics becomes militarized, about how a Manichaean ideology undermines the rational exercise of power. Mr. Lucas is clearly jabbing his light saber in the direction of some real-world political leaders. At one point, Darth Vader, already deep in the thrall of the dark side and echoing the words of George W. Bush, hisses at Obi-Wan, "If you're not with me, you're my enemy." Obi-Wan's response is likely to surface as a bumper sticker during the next election campaign: "Only a Sith thinks in absolutes." You may applaud this editorializing, or you may find it overwrought, but give Mr. Lucas his due. For decades he has been blamed (unjustly) for helping to lead American movies away from their early-70's engagement with political matters, and he deserves credit for trying to bring them back.

Ok, you can see this as an attack against Bush. It works just as well as an attack against Lincoln. After all, Lincoln's election caused states to succeed from the republic. Lincoln then engineered a shooting war by refusing to let the Confederacy have military bases on their own land. South Carolina had a good claim to a base in the middle of Charleston Harbor and their attempt to take it is justifiable.

Lincoln took this questionable provocation and turned it into a major war. At the same time, he expanded the powers of the federal government and the presidency far beyond what they had been. For the record, I am a northerner who thinks that the Civil War was a just war, but I can argue the case against Lincoln.

Palpatine's actions are closer to Lincoln's than Bush's, including the creation of the "Grand Army of the Republic". Sedition laws under Lincoln actually had teeth. Civil unrest led to riots and martial law in New York City. "The Gangs of New York" was only a slight exaggeration of the times.

Of course, the real test will come in a decade or two. If the movie sees dated then I am wrong. If it still seems as fresh as the original three then Lucas is simply using eternal themes that modern reviewers see as a reflection of modern politics.

Was WWII Worth It?

Pat Buchanan asks this question in a current column. This follows up on his earlier isolationist musings that "Hitler wasn't so bad."

Has Buchanan lost his mind? Has he become a Nazi apologist? No. His column is based on the notion that Stalin was worse than Hitler. If Stalin won the war and eastern Europe was under Russia's control then Buchanan thinks that western Europe lost the war.

If the West went to war to stop Hitler from dominating Eastern and Central Europe, and Eastern and Central Europe ended up under a tyranny even more odious, as Bush implies, did Western Civilization win the war?

Buchanan makes a couple of mistaken assumptions here. The biggest one is that western Europe had a real choice about entering the war. Germany invaded country after country. Granted it was expanding to the east to start with, but would Hitler have been satisfied with that? Once he gained some room for his Aryans from the Slavs, wouldn't he want to do the same to the Gauls? He wanted to expand in all directions. War was inevitable.

And war between German and Russia happened independent of the actions of western Europe. Stalin didn't declare war because Churchill asked him to, Russia was invaded.

When Hitler attacked Russia he knew that he was attacking a larger country with greater economic resources. He hoped to seize Moscow before resistance could be organized. He failed and Russia counter-attacked.

Given Russia's greater manpower and resources, it is likely that it could have won the war all by itself. If England and the US were not involved then we can only speculate about how much of Europe Hitler would have conquered before losing to Stalin. At he least, all of Germany, Austria, and possibly Italy would have come under communist control. Had Hitler conquered France then Stalin would have controlled Europe all the way to the English Channel. That's a rather frightening thought.

Possibly Buchanan thinks that the US and England should have allied with Hitler to defeat Stalin. This is even more horrifying since Hitler would surely have turned on his allies. Also, Hitler was invading other countries outright. Except for the countries that Russia occupied through WWII, Stalin was never as blatant about his conquests.

Buchanan condemns the US for not immediately turning on an ally and starting a new war. This could never have happened. There was no support in the US for a new total war no r is it sure that we would have won. Russia was a bigger, stronger country than Germany. The country was sick of war by 1945. It did not have the heart for a new, longer struggle. Also, there were a lot of influential communists in the US, organized by the Kremlin - tens of thousands. They would have made it political suicide to attack Russia. A dying Roosevelt had no desire for a new war and Truman was not liked well enough for this fight, either.

Then there was Japan to worry about. VJ Day came months later. We had already made peace with Russia and the European army was preparing to transfer out - either home or to the Pacific theater.

I hesitate to who was worse Stalin or Hitler. Stalin had much more time in control and a larger population to kill off. That makes it harder to compare body counts which Buchanan tries to do anyway. Also, Hitler's ethnic cleansing still horrifies modern generations.

WWII was a declared war and the countries that declared war on us surrendered unconditionally. That is why we won. Because the other side lost. Yes, this started a long undeclared war but it was a different conflict, fought differently. Don't confuse the two.

More SciFi Blogging - Star Wars

Did Star Wars #1 & 2 suck? No, but there was no way that they could have the impact of the original movie. When Star Wars (I'm not going to call it "A New Hope") came out, movie makers had forgotten how to make adventure films and had never figured out how to make a science fiction adventure film. It was the perfect convergence of new special effects technology and old-fashioned story telling.

By now, almost 30 years later, movie makers have it figured out. There are so many good adventure movies coming out that they have to make back half their investment on opening weekend since the next good one will be out in a week. Really great adventure movies come out every year or two. Audiences have seen two installments of the Lord of the Rings come out since Attack of the Clones was released. The only competition for the original three movies was Indiana Jones.

Keeping that in mind, the two new movies could not have made the impact that the originals made, not with so much competition going on.

Lucas did stray in creating his characters. The original characters were very identifiable to a 1970s audience. Luke was a farm boy who liked joy-riding. His idea of a good time was shooting over-sized groundhogs from an airplane (T-16 Skyhopper). Han was based on moonshine smugglers driving around back roads in souped-up stack cars. This was a whole genre of movies.

Leia was an exception. The feminist movement objected to the traditional heroine as someone who needed rescuing and moviemakers were having trouble figuring out how to handle women. Lucas solved this by inventing a spunky princess who took over her own rescue.

The plot was nothing spectacular. Most science fiction written in the 1960s and 1970s had the same premise of a farm boy suddenly going out into the world and saving the day.

Lucas continued to lift elements from popular culture. In Empire Strikes Back, Luke doesn't realize at first that the little green guy is Yoda. When we see Luke training with Yoda, he is taught to draw strength from the Force and to levitate things. We never see him practice with his lightsabre but he can now hold his own against Vader. This came from the Japanese and Japanese-inspired literature of the time. A samurai in training is given menial tasks, learning important lessons without realizing it. He never actually practices with his sword.

Skip forward a couple of decades. The Phantom Menace had evolutionary rather than revolutionary effects. It looked good but the Matrix won the effects Oscar. The Lord of the Rings proved that Weta could do anything ILM could do and make it look as good.

The storyline was more abstract, also. Evil was a trade guild with the real villain hidden. Attack of the Clones was similar - the story arc traces the rise of the Emperor but it is subtle. We know who the bad guy is but no one else does.

Also, the characters are more remote. It is easy to relate to a farm boy. It is much harder to relate to a Jedi apprentice or a slave.

None of this means that the newer movies are worse than the originals, just that they cannot have the impact.

SciFi blogging

Enough of politics for a while. Let's look at a question that really matters to people - it Battlestar Gallactica the best science fiction series ever? No, for reasons that I will explain later. I do think that it is the best science fiction series currently in production, but that isn't saying anywhere near as much.

At it's heart, Battlestar Gallactica is a re-tread of a 1970s Star Wars rip-off. It featured the same motion-capture cameras that Star Wars used so people could get their spacebattle fix while waiting for The Empire Strikes Back to come out.

The series was originally going to be a collection of 2-hour movies but ABC was so impressed with it that they ordered it to be a weekly series as well as the movies. This created two sets of producers. The A-list did the movies, producing solid, original plots. The B-list was recruited from free-lancers who had never worked with science fiction before. Their approach was to adapt old scripts from westerns. One episode was ripped off from the movie Shane. Another was from Bonanza, including the star.

While popular, the series was also expensive and ABC cancelled it after one season. It returned briefly as a re-tooled Gallactica 1980.

The new version has the same basic premise - humanity has been wiped out except for a fleet of refugees guarded by the last surviving "battlestar" which corresponds to an aircraft carrier. The names of the lead characters also carried over but with differences in gender and race.

The enemy in both series is the "Cylon" race. In the original the Cylons were biomechanical aliens. In the new series they were created by humanity and rebelled. Also, in the new series most Cylons look human.

I think that the show has gotten such good reviews because most of the plotlines revolve around the humans. The Cylons are seldom seen, except for some sleeper agents. Plots involve things that the critics can relate to such as who will be the next vice-president, the search for a source of water, or the fear of hidden Cylon agents.

The show's cinemetography adds a lot to it. Shot with lots of shadows and a gritty realism, the look of the show adds believability to the premise.

So, what's wrong with it?

There are internal contradictions. A major sub-plot revolves around religion. The humans are poly-theistic. The Cylons are mono-theistic and appear to be either Christian or Jewish. They are also evangelical.

Given that the Cylons have religion, do they have free-will? If not then is their religious devotion real or just programmed into them. Boomer (Sharon) is a sleeper agent who did not know that she was Cylon, but she may have been acting against the humans. It is likely that she sabotaged their water supply. Shortly after learning her true identity, she shot the commander.

Characterization is minimal. Most characters are one-dimensional and some only have a single emotion. Commander Adama is always tightly controlled no matter how good or bad (usually bad) the news. Boomer spends the first season looking guilty (she suspects that she is a Cylon).

Then there is President Roslin. Originally Secretary of Education, she was the highest-ranking cabinet official to survive the Cylon attack. You would expect to see a steep learning curve. Instead, the actress, Mary McDonnell, plays the role exactly as she played the First Lady in Independence Day. Dying from cancer, she has been taking alternative treatment which gave her precognitive visions.

This is one of my pet peeves with science fiction movies and series - the need to introduce a mystic (I will make an exception to this below).

The realism can be a problem, also. When the fleet was running out of water, someone looked up how much food they needed. It was an impressive amount. Where does it come from? They never said. If you are going to acknowledge the question you have to provide some sort of answer. Even the original show answered that question - they had some agricultural ships with them.

In the original show, the humans had some relationship with ancient Earth. This showed up in the names, often using Greek mythology, and the styles which suggested Egypt. The new show kept the names but got rid of the styles. Their world looked like modern Earth as do the clothing styles and political structure. How did this happen?

And there is the lack of aliens. Realistically, we may be the only sentient life within reach but it makes for a more boring show.

All of these are valid reasons that the show is not the best SciFi show ever but I have a better one - it can be boring. The original was cheesy and dumb, but you could count on it for some great space fights at the end. With most of the action taking place inside the ships, the new Gallactica has few action scenes. Episodes usually just reach some sort of a conclusion.

So what was the best SciFi show ever? The original Star Trek was the best show for a generation but it was over-acted and too many red-shirts died. Worse, it had no continuity. Characters could not grow from one episode to the next. Each episode had to stand alone.

Star Trek: the Next Generation was a much better effort. Still, it had some real problems. The first season and a half were boring. Some of the plots were a little too far out - everyone devolving, for example. There was only limited continuity so character development had to be spread over years. By the end of the series you wondered why so few people transferred in or out. There could be too much techno-babble. Everyone was too competent. It sometimes seemed like anyone in the crew could use anything to build anything else. For example - Worf was able to use a communicator to project a force field while trapped on the holodeck.

We will not talk about the other Trek shows. Each has been worse than the last.

That brings us to my favorite, Babylon 5. Continuity was tight and the show used it to launch plot arcs for all the major characters. Along the way, all five major races had a turning point involving a major change of government. Look at G'Kar who started as a sort of angry revolutionary. Over the course of the show he became a voice in the wilderness, finally becoming a religious leader. Then there was Londo. He started as a comical figure, a washed up diplomat from a burnt-out empire. He became a dark, menacing character before finally reforming. Both Garibaldi and Franklin dealt with substance abuse, but in very different ways.

This show also managed to have non-annoying mystics. The Vorlons and the Shadows were behind visions, not deities.

And I cannot remember a Babylon 5 episode that was outright boring.

Birth Control or Abortion

Wired has a piece on the controversy over emergency birth control, also known as morning after pills. A couple of points deserve highlighting. One is that while RU-486, which has been around for years, does cause spontaneous abortions, the newer Plan-B does not.

Women can get pregnant if they have unprotected sex before ovulation, since sperm can live for up to five days. But an egg is usually viable for only six to 12 hours after it is released from the ovary. Plan B works by suppressing the hormonal surge that causes an ovary to release an egg. It must be taken within 72 hours after intercourse, followed by another tablet 12 hours later. If a woman takes the drug after the egg has already been released, it won't stave off fertilization or end a pregnancy, according to the studies and the manufacturer, Barr Pharmaceuticals.

Also notable is this statement:

For example, the majority of fertilized eggs simply do not successfully implant in the uterus, even when no birth control is used.

This is a higher number than I had heard before.

Polarized Views on Abortion

According to numerous polls, the majority of Americans think that abortion should remain legal. A similar majority is uncomfortable with abortion and supports minor restrictions on it. My own views mirror the majority.

A couple of issues have come up at either end of the spectrum on Abortion. I want to talk about why I reject both of these.

First there are an increasing number of pharmacists who refuse to fill a prescription for the "Morning After Pill". The objection is that it prevents a fertilized egg from implanting itself in the uterus and is therefore an "abortion pill".

The flaw in this argument is that a surprising number of fertilized eggs do not embed themselves. I've seen figures suggesting 20%-30%. From a strict religious viewpoint it is hard to say that God thinks that preventing a fertilized egg from becoming a baby when he designed it so that it happens in a quarter of the cases, anyway.

Pharmacists should know that. They have had some medical training. If this offends their religion then they should stay away from general pharmacies where these prescriptions are filled.

On the other end are the pro-abortion people. The abortion-rights movement likes to call itself pro-choice but to many of them, the choice is always abortion.

Years ago the OSU Women's Studies Department out out a calendar that included a group that tries to talk pregnant women out of having abortions. If you are actually pro-choice then this should be no problem. You want a pregnant woman to be able to listen to either side of the issue.

Not the women of Columbus. In several opinion pieces they made it very clear that the only appropriate choice for a pregnant student is to have an abortion. This was based on statistics showing how seldom pregnant students finished their degree. The not-so-hidden assumption was that having a degree is always better than having a child and that if a woman is going to wait for one or the other, she should always wait to have the child.

That came up years ago but it echoes in the modern debate over parental notification. There is a bill in Congress that would make it a crime to take a minor across state lines for an abortion without the consent of her parents. There are also provisions for parental notification and a 24 hour waiting period.

Abortion advocates have a fit over this. Syndicated columnist Ellen Goodman points out that parents are not notified when their daughter has sex or when she is in the delivery room (really - can a 16 year old deliver a child without next of kin being notified? I don't know.). She also points out that the child still has the option to refuse the abortion or to give up the child for adoption.

The Feminist Daily News goes further:

Reproductive rights groups are calling the bill the “Teen Endangerment Act” because it “fails to protect those teenagers dealing with precarious family situations — like alcoholic or abusive parents — by forcing them to rely on those parents or to go to any lengths, including dangerous ones, to avoid doing so,” said Nancy Northrup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights. Situations in which young women who had obtained a judicial bypass in their home state would be exempt, but there is no provision for girls who are not residents of parental-notification states to obtain such a bypass, reports The Christian Science Monitor

Are these attacks fair? The feminists start with a blanket assumption that pregnant teenagers' parents are abusive. The dreaded back-alley abortion is also alluded to when referring to the "dangerous lengths" that girls would go to.

There are huge flaws in this argument. The biggest one is that having an abortion will resolve the abusive family or that abuse is ok as long as there is no pregnancy involved. These are really two different issues and should be addressed separately.

There is also the possibility that the man who abused a teenage girl is the one taking her for an abortion so that the parents will not find out about the abuse. Which is more likely? Both are serious issues but arguing exclusively based on one ignores the other.

Judicial override would be a nice addition to the bill and would resolve any objections based on abuse.

Goodman has better points but they are also separate issues. Yes, teens have sex without parental notification. If birth control is involved then, depending on the age of the kids, this is a much lesser issue.

Beyond that we get into double and triple standards about how we treat teenagers. They cannot drink or smoke or buy a gun. They cannot sign contracts. They can drive once they are 16 but often with restrictions. Their minds and bodies are not fully developed yet but their reproductive organs already work.

The same people who are calling for full sexual freedom at puberty are also in favor of giving these kids a pass when they commit a criminal act.

The underlying assumption here is that a teenager should always have an abortion. They want it to be as easy as possible. Worried that you will be grounded? No problem, the doctor can get rid of this little problem for you.

That's also why they are against waiting periods. If a girl is so unsure about the abortion that she cannot come back a day later then there is a good chance that she will regret it afterwards. That doesn't matter to the abortion rights people.

Yes, having a child in your teens is a crushing burden on the mother and her parents. I know some very worthwhile people who were born in these circumstances. Any attempts at stacking the deck to ensure abortion are misguided.