Pollsters v focus groups

If you listen to the pollsters, the prison abuse scandal looks to have grave consequences for the President's re-election hopes, especially as more images are released and the scope of the abuse and who ordered it become known:

"There's such a big question mark there, it's unlike anything we've seen before," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center.

"The public is very critical of (Bush's) management of Iraq. They don't think he has a clear plan for bringing it to a successful conclusion, but a thin majority of the public has been hanging in with that it was the right decision to go to war," Kohut said. "This could be the event which makes people say 'Oh, we did make a mistake.'"

Political scientist James Thurber of American University likened the Iraq images to the infamous Vietnam pictures of a naked young girl fleeing a napalm attack and a Viet Cong prisoner being executed on a Saigon street.

Referring to the new pictures, Thurber said, "That's what we're going to remember about Iraq. It's just not going to go away. That may have a lasting and negative effect on his campaign. It certainly does right now and I think you'll see it in the polls immediately."

On the other hand, if you like focus groups for your sense of the common touch, you could try CBS' Swingtown Project, apparently having nothing to do with the Steve Miller song. Frankly, some of these comments disturb me:

"You kind of figure in any kind of camp situation there's always some kind of hazing going on," John Annoni, an Allentown school teacher, said. Annoni pointed out that the incident should not be taken lightly, but that there should also be no rush to judgment until full context for the photos can be provided.

Vietnam veteran Barry Willever thinks the Iraqis could have had it much worse. "I think they're lucky to be in prison," he said. "If they were in Vietnam right now, getting back to the prison camp, maybe some of them wouldn't have made it." Willever was embarrassed when President Bush apologized. "We used to humiliate a lot of people," he said of his time as a machine gunner in Vietnam. "It's a big deal to a politician. To me who has seen it, it's not a big deal."

Pick your poison.

Gays get back at Rhea County

Four hundred homsexuals and supportive heteros took to the streets of Dayton, TN today in celebratory response to the county's vote (since rescinded) to ban gays entirely, under penalty of law. I'm sure that thrilled the good townspeople of Dayton, but hey--the only two people doing something bad enough to get arrested were listed as anti-gay protestors by the police. And it gave the police chief something every chief must have written in a little book for just such an occassion:

[Chief] Walker said they were among a group of about 10 "out-of-towners coming in here wanting to cause trouble."

Always those darned "out of towners," eh Chief?

Bush loses a hawk

Man, Tacitus is PISSED. Based on the logic he used to reach it, I'm sure the prison scandal is nothing compared to the pullback from Fallujah. Perhaps he's heartened by the squeezing of the Sadrists in Najaf and Kerbala, but this sure sounds like a guy who will sit at home in November or vote Libertarian. (Kerry would seem out of the question).

He's right, though--of course Bush. It was practically (not munitionally) unwinnable, not worth the blood, but he capitulated. It's heavily ironic that on policy, I think Bush is finally choosing the best options available to him overall--letting Brahimi build the caretaker government, turning over security as quickly and as best you can, and using largely political pressure against Sadr. (This last assessment is actually on hold pending what it is coalition forces are trying to do in the holy cities with their advances). But it's precisely that engagement in country, that has tacitus fuming.

I'm beginning to think that Kerry wins this election by virtue of Bush 00 voters staying home.

Investigating The Hill

A building sequence of events over the last three days culminated Friday in a strange but altogether too common circumstance: Congressional posturing and power playing over things that should be among the easiest to agree upon--torture is bad; troops are good. House Resolutions 627 and 628 read as follows:

Deploring the abuse of persons in United States custody in Iraq, regardless of the circumstances of their detention, urging the Secretary of the Army to bring to swift justice any member of the Armed Forces who has violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice, expressing the deep appreciation of the Nation to the courageous and honorable members of the Armed Forces who have selflessly served, or are currently serving, in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and for other purposes.

That's it. Fairly milquetoast and agreeable, right? So why did Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi make such an obviously out of step statement on a bill that passed with 365 yeas? Because just that statement wasn't enough for Pelosi; she led a drive to get additional language posted to the bill calling for House investigations into the abuse matter.

Perhaps you are thinking poorly of Pelosi for attempting to muck up a relatively pure bill with agenda items that could have easily been handled separately. That would be a fair assessment, except there's a reason for the madness, and you have to go back a day. Back, back....all the way to yesterday, when House leadership said in no uncertain terms, "we will not be having any hearings, so quit asking."

This obviously wouldn't be sitting well with the Minority leadership, especially since their counterparts across the aisle in the Senate have not only not opposed thorough investigation, they have led the fight for them. Senior, respected members on security issues such as Warner and McCain have spoken out in their favor. So you might forgive the Democrats in the House for one more frustration at the hands of Tom DeLay and his minions.

OK, so maybe they're pissed off. But voting against a clear winner of a bill is a big political risk, and one you generally don't take lightly. What could have put the fire under Hoyer and Pelosi to make their stand? Answer: John Murtha, former hawk Democrat. In an environment where he surely would have known news would travel, the Representative who was one of the first to back Bush on the Iraq war has made his break, based on the distinct possibility that the war was now unwinnable. Of course, using that word immediately set off the attack radar in the Majority Leader's office, and now not only were the Democrats cravenly political, they were endangering troops on the ground. But the gossip that flew past DeLay's office also made its way around the rest of the Hill, and by The Hill's account, Murtha's comments were a galvanizing force for the leadership and a group of committed like-thinkers. The frustration level is boiling over, and the steam is starting to rattle the lid.

Thus do you have the stonewall leading to the defection, which led to the rebuke, causing the end-around that was defeated, but for which the vanquished stood on the record and made their votes evident.

It's no wonder the Iraqis aren't sold on our brand of political system. Who'd want this, the way we've been displaying it lately?


PS--as long as I'm giving a full tribute to The Hill tonight, here's the second review of the Kerry ads that I've seen (Slate did the other), and it's highly positive. The buzz had better be good around them, because the media are going to assess whether the 27 million it took to air them was all worth it. You see it now: "Bush spends $60 million in massive ad campaign; candidates still neck and neck." "Kerry spends record sum on advertising before convention; results mixed." Anyhow, I thought it was a cogent writeup about what appears to constitute a plan for Kerry going forward.

Zimbardo's Revival

Psychologist Phillip Zimbardo is getting a lot of calls these days. (And he's ready for them, based on the snazziest website I have ever seen for a humanities professor, even a great one like Zimbardo). His most famous moment of contribution to the cultural diaspora is the Stanford Prison Experiment , a 1971 human subject experiment giving roles of prisoner and guard to random participants, placing them in a disused prison, and watching the results. The results were ugly, and Zimbardo had to shut it down early. Somewhat ironic that one of the most famous experiments in the discipline had to be cancelled for fear of serious injury--physical AND mental.

What with the current abuse scandal, you can imagine the comparisons being made to Stanford. NYT did their piece today, and TalkingPoints and Mark Kleiman have both referenced it. While initially I found it an interesting reference to the current abuse scandal, it's becoming clear now that it's really not like Stanford at all. Those were college students looking to make some quick money, or just into the happening. They showed the capabilities of humans for cruelty, risible after only a short time in conducive environs.

But the men and women in Abu Ghraib were paid soldiers, apparently instructed from the highest commanding brass of intelligence to "soften up" people who did not have the option of quitting the experiment. This was not a random test of stress. We know what people are capable of. What is entirely at issue is why this known tendency is not confronted, clearly proscribed, and sharply enforced. In my opinion, that and several other maladroit tactics and strategies should be enough to declare Richard Myers and Don Rumsfeld inadequate for the tasks for which they have been appointed.

Still, it's nice to see that some journalists still remember that required Psych class from college.

Jacob Weisberg flays

Having compiled multiple books on the dim elocutions of the President, you'd guess that Jacob Weisberg has some personal opinions on the question of whether Bush 43 is actually dumb, or intentionally appearing as common in general deceit. As he says, "short answer yes." He's not only incurious and poorly read, but according to Weisberg he's deliberate about it:

As the president says, we misunderestimate him. He was not born stupid. He chose stupidity. Bush may look like a well-meaning dolt. On consideration, he's something far more dangerous: a dedicated fool.

Now that's condemnation of a man's character!

Validatored!

Not only does Real Clear Politics have a well-organized compendium of recent polling data available 24/7, they also put together a nice daily dossier on the punditry, linking from the usual suspects as well as different voices. As I scanned the list of editorial headlines, I recognized another spate of articles in the Mickey Kaus "Kerry Sucks" tradition. There have been some exceptions; I posted yesterday about Chuck Todd's views of a Kerry landslide, and also noted Kerry's three-day lead in daily tracking numbers from Rasmussen (although today they are back to a numerical tie).

But the mainstream punditry, including typically leftist writers, is hammering the idea that because things have gone so badly in Iraq and the economy is not yet bustling with employment, Bush should be doing worse than he is. And in terms of his job approval and personal favorability, the President is indeed almost uniformly down over the last month, especially as we bleed into May (pun not initially intended, but what the heck). It's just not showing up in the horse race figures, although I'd tend to dispute that in a general sense as well.

So because of this, and combined with the Rope-A-Dope strategy of banking money in April and letting the 9/11 and Iraq stories dominate the news cycle, Kerry is being portrayed as a slow-moving, uncharismatically imprecise leader of his campaign. The big ad buy attacks have pulled Kerry's numbers down from the highs after the primary, but they also now run right in line with Bush's for the most part, with the added advantage that many more people have not assembled a final view of Kerry, as they have for the President. And the talking, uh, wrists have commenced to bury the king:

• Kerry needs to define himself on Iraq in a way that is clearly divergent, or bad news there simply won't help him.
  
• Kerry should have moved quickly against the ad attacks in April, when things were so bad for Bush.
  
• Kerry's not leftist enough, plus he's not all that likeable.
  
• You know, you're right--he isn't all that likeable, is he?
  
• He's had to work hard to impress Jewish voters that he can be as mindlessly devoted to the politics of retribution as his predecessor was.
  
• While we're talking minorities, he's not doing all that great with African Americans, either.
  
• Even Newsweek's Wolffe can't do a piece on Bush's credibility in the war, without spending half the article on why Kerry screwed up on the campaign trail last week.
  

The cynics are out, and it's agreed that May's big $25 millon ad buy will be crucial for Kerry if he is to have a shot beating Bush.

Wait--have a shot? With all this, a guy supposedly left for dead in December is running even-to-slightly-ahead of a wartime president, and he just has a shot? A notorious second-half candidate, seemingly at his most effective when his campaign appears ready to sink, and he just has a shot? Flush with cash from here on out, and he just has a shot? Piffle. I look at the numbers and I see a Kerry campaign who weathered Bush's big Tomohawk softening job, let the current stories help drive down Bush's negatives, and absorbed blows for a time while waiting to counterpunch. When your opponent is getting such bad press, and the process of heaping oppositional criticism of a sitting Commander in Chief is so risky, why spend money on ads that would be drowned out by events?

Feeling a bit like I'm the only one who is reading it that way, i was heartened to see Sullivan make almost exactly the same points. Why not let Bush twist in the wind a little longer? One wonders whether the month of May, with its prisoner abuse story that threatens to take down the Secretary of Defense, represents time best spent on the offensive, or allowing more erosion in Bush's numbers while avoiding direct conflict that might be seen as unseemly in a time of war. I suppose it's too late for that now; Kerry's made his enormal $25 million buy for the month. I think the biographical ads are both very good, actually, and having basically taken the month off, Kerry comes into the game competitive almost everywhere he expected to, and even in some places where he didn't.

So thanks, Andrew. I couldn't believe I was the only one who wasn't eating up the "Bush's numbers are down, but it's actually bad for Kerry" tone to so many of the reports. As Todd put it, these may be Bush's ceiling from here on out, but it looks like Kerry's floor. And we know what happens to Kerry campaigns once they hit bottom--that's when he miraculously turns human again, and we get dazzled by the formerly morose mealymouth from Massachusetts. I think Kerry is calling the right plays; let's see if he can execute. If he runs a solid campaign at least from the Democratic convention on, I think the election is his for the asking.

Sovereignity through oppression

Something odd appears to be happening in Iraq. Obviously the occupation's welcome has worn thin, and both instigators and keenly frustrated Iraqis are taking it out on coalition forces, along with anyone unlucky enough to be nearby. And the sparks that fed the April Uprising were direct, and in my view boneheaded policy decisions by both the US and Israel: the assassinations of two Hamas leaders; and the closure of Moqtada Sadr's newspaper and activated arrest warrants against him. The assassinations inflamed Sunni spirits in Fallujah, and the freedom-crushing in Najaf ticked off the Shiites.

What I've only just noticed is that these rather bleak and seemingly damaging forays against the Iraqi conscience have fostered small but encouraging steps, of Iraqi institutions being jarred into grabbing the reins of their own country and steering it where they want it to go. Given their erratic history, ethnic divisions, and--shall we say--"traditional" views on culture and personal freedom, maybe letting the Iraqis drive their own country out of the ditch doesn't sound very palatable. But by this point certainly nothing the US offers as a plan is going to have much credibility, and giving the Iraqis more space in which to maneuver may inspire a return of national pride.

In Fallujah, this rather surprising denoument to the insurgency from WaPo has some wild implications: if a group of elite Sunnis is now heading the security force for a fiercely Sunni city, and they are recruiting large numbers of admitted insurgents to serve in the force, and US forces are urged not to enter the city (as they are being so urged)...what happens when something goes wrong inside Fallujah and nothing is done? And that's not farfetched; the Brigade is working on the "do I know ya?" investigative theorem:

As of Thursday, leaders of the brigade said they had assembled more than 1,000 soldiers and would continue expanding the force. The troops have not yet begun patrols inside the city, but have been deployed along the outskirts, supposedly to prevent insurgents from entering or leaving.

But at Hamid's checkpoint, enforcement was a lax affair. His soldiers failed to stop a single vehicle during an hour-long visit.

"We're from this city," he said. "We know who is suspicious and who isn't."

Yikes. So let's assume there's a flashpoint. Do the Marines now try to engage the Iraqi Brigade against the "insurgency," which only a week ago these people were? What if they refuse? Will the Marines have to fight Saddam's generals, now better led, and presumably with more guns and ammo?

All of which is, admittedly, beside the point for this post. The second paragraph of the article puts us back on point:

Fallujah is now caught in a time warp. Iraqi soldiers wearing their crisp, olive-green army uniforms -- a sight unseen since former president Saddam Hussein's government was toppled more than a year ago -- now man checkpoints on roads leading into the city. Stout generals, their lapels adorned with stars and crossed swords, stroll around the mayor's office with the same imperious air they projected when Hussein was president.

That's the smell of empowerment they're sniffing. Near as they can tell, the very people fighting for Fallujah to be left alone have now joined the leaders who enabled that to happen. Plus they get paid to shoot! By us, no less!

And WaPo's not done there. Meanwhile in Baghdad, where Sadr's impoverished adherents live in bunches, the former employees of the US-backed paper al-Sabah have called a mutiny and left the presses to start their own rag. They felt they could no longer chafe under CPA directives on how to report what was happening in their land, and--true to the patriot ethos--now seek to deliver their own version of the truth themselves. "We want our sovereignty now," said Shaker Anbari, the former culture section editor.

There's that word, sovereignity. What's the common thread between these two stories? Pride. The transition away from chaos will not occur until Iraqis begin to take pride in their country. Which is not to say they are not prideful people--but so far the only authoritative movements in the country are a puppet regime of criminal exiles, a spiritual leader who barely leaves the house and won't even engage the US directly, and a firebrand evangelist who wants to Brown Panther his way to political control. Mendacity, aloofness and TNT radicalism are not tools of the rebuilders.

But keeping the peace in one's city and reporting freely on the world surrounding, are absolutely fundamental errands of pride. The normal institutions of indigenous life must take root, and it's ironic but hopeful that the hamhanded attempts to restore democracy through suppression, may have actually spurred the natives to take control of their situation and dismiss the interlopers.

Bengali calls in Hamtramck

Anything occuring in the Detroit neighborhood of Hamtramck catches my eye; it is where a band of mine played their only Michigan show. It was a predominantly Polish and Eastern European neighborhood at the time in the early 90s; it is now Middle and Far Eastern in makeup according to this article in NYT. It seems the Muslim population, which has grown sizeably, wishes to use a loudspeaker to announce the call to prayer five times a day. I began by thinking that singsong Arabic five times a day over a bullhorn sounded like something out of M*A*S*H Goes Desert, and I'd rather not be forced to hear that, either. But the point is made that church bells ring out constantly as well, and while you may appreciate the sound of bells to the sound of Arabic, there is some historical precedent for allowing amplification of church calls to prayer.

Unfortunately, a lot of HamSammichers don't share the vibe:

"I don't know what's going to happen to our little town," said Ms. Rutherford, 39.

"I used to say I wasn't prejudiced against anyone, but then I realized I had a problem with them putting Allah above everyone else," she said, of the plan to amplify the call to prayer, which mosques announce five times a day. "It's throwing salt in a wound. I feel they've come to our country, infiltrated it, and they sit there looking at us, laughing, calling us fools."

--

Mrs. Golen said she had always gotten along well with the Bangladeshi families in her neighborhood. She noted that at Easter one of her new neighbors brought her a turkey that he had gotten at work. But she said the call to prayer was too much.

"My main objection is simple," she said. "I don't want to be told that Allah is the true and only God five times a day, 365 days a year. It's against my constitutional rights to have to listen to another religion evangelize in my ear."

--

"My parents came to this country and worked hard," Ms. Wojtowicz said. "I think the grace belongs on the other side. The intolerance doesn't come from the people who object, it comes from the other side. We all lived in peace and had no problems. You moved too fast.

These are highly unfortunate things to say about one's neighbors; let's just leave it at that. The City Council can't seem to find anything on the books preventing their establishment, only the time, place and manner. If the complaining residents could hear the things said about their ancestors by the Germans at the turn of the centirty, perhaps they might recall why freedom to emigrate is so important, and why tolerance is the name of the game. The Arabs in Hamtramck get it, anyway:

Bashar Imam, a Muslim who runs three medical centers in Hamtramck, smarted at the venom the conflict had brought out. "These people get treated in my medical clinics, and that's what they think of us?" Mr. Imam said. But he added, "This is healthy. This is how we get to know each other."

Amen, Praise be to Allah.

An indeterminate number of morons

No matter how many times it happens, it still amazes me to watch one story or another become an historical event. I am 99% sure the image history of the second US-Iraqi war will be framed by the toppling of the Saddam statue, and the thumbs-up female soldier grinning in front of a stack of naked prisoners, or pointing at their johnsons. I'm certainly not going to link to it--you all know what I'm talking about--but there are moments of zeitgeist that are positively palpable, and that woman posing in front of her prey is almost assuredly it. A new batch of similar photos have developed, but they are nails in a coffin that is already sealed. The decaying but lingering sense of CPA credibility in forging a democracy in Iraq has almost totally evaporated, to the point where any plan or directive with our fingerprints on it is a non-starter. Shoot, everything we're touching seems to go bad--Feith admitted today that naming General Saleh was a bad, bad idea.

But clearly the abuse story is going to dominate news cycles for the near future. Several angles are playing out all at once. The initial defense of "isolated incidents" from the administration and punditry corps led to statements like these in the Pentagon that illustrate not only the fear of the outcome, but the intended view of the scope:

Mr. Miklaszewski said he asked a Pentagon contact about the soldiers alleged to be involved, to which the Pentagon official replied, "You mean the six morons who lost the war?"

Donald Rumsfeld did an elaborate tap dance around the question of torture vs abuse, which seemed to miss the point that whichever it was, it was still reprehensible. It also clearly did not help that Rumsfeld had (and may still have) failed to read the Taguba Report, a two-star writeup that somehow never made it up the rather short chain of command from one general to another, and into the civilian offices. But then again it would appear that Chief Myers hasn't read it yet either. As with all primary materials, I urge you to take some time and get familiar with what's being discussed in that paper. It lays complete lie to the idea that such abuses were isolated, necessarily unintended, or unrelated to specific missions of intelligence gathering.

The report may turn out to be the breaking point for the President as to whether to keep Rumsfeld on. It seems odd to refer to a front page MSNBC story as "private chiding," but there it is. Among other things, it's one more point of contention between Defense and State, as Colin Powell reportedly urged Rumsfeld to look into the burgeoning problem. It's no wonder that Powell is sick to death of all of it, and ready to pack up.

So if there is one person who most neatly encapsulates all the mistaken bravado and feckless leadership in the Bush administration, especially as it concerns the military strategies for action and the readiness decisions to execute them, it would be Rumsfeld--and lord knows many in Congress would love to get the ball rolling--but two major obstacles stand in the way of his quick firing. It's highly debateable whether canning Rumsfeld would be a good or bad move for any election-day referenda on Bush's Iraq policy. And secondly, as long as you soldier on and stand by your President, this President has shown amazing resistance to the idea that the people he chose to advise him have led him astray. But the pressure will continue to mount, and the last thing Bush needs right now is more pressure.

OK, it's a big deal. But it can't be a zeitgeist unless some fundamental shift is underway. The previous/current status is a strongly approved Bush presidency with a firm grip on terrorism--which means I am suggesting that this status is at a tipping point. April's favorite theme on the horse race seemed to be that the troubles in Iraq and in front of the 9/11 Commission had wounded Bush's favorability, but not his edge on the presidency. Various poll reports continue to sound that theme in early May, relying on the continued dead heat (often referred to as a Bush edge despite a statistical tie) to promulgate the theory that Kerry has not capitalized, and that Bush is still the favored candidate. But Bush's numbers continue to slide--the latest Gallup puts his favorability at record low levels, and maintains the statistical tie while now giving Kerry the numerical edge. Soft numbers such as these on an incumbent are treading dangerous historic levels, under which Presidents are not known for recovering. Rasmussen is treating tomorrow's horse race number as a bellwether; if Kerry maintains or extends his four point edge, he would have exceeded the three-day calling cycle in his favorability, and in Rasmussen's view establish a real trend instead of polling noise.

Chuck Todd has a fascinating historical analysis of incumbent re-election campaigns, and they do not suggest good news for Bush at all. My thoughts on the Nader effect and the undecided effect play up this possibility: If Nader is not on the ballot, at least some portion will go ahead and vote anyway, and by most measures they should favor Kerry to an extent. Because a re-election campaign is often a referendum on the incumbent, Bush's status as a known quantity indicates that most people have already made up their minds about him, and would be supporting him if they planned to at all, so their absence from Bush's column now indicates that they are likely to stay away from it in disproportionate numbers. And Todd brings up a third factor: turnout. While Bush may continue to be competitive when given a simple choice over the phone, there is ample question about his ability to turn out a strong vote. Among Democrats, there is no such worry. If Republicans are not maniacally committed to Bush in this race, he will lose. And good God, Fred Barnes of all people is worrying about a Democratic takeover of the Senate even if Kerry loses--imagine if he wins.

Of course it's a guess. Cronkite's zeitgeist moment was the salient question, "What are we doing over there? In Vietnam we weren't even sure what we were doing halfway around the world protecting people who did not want protection. In Iraq we ostensibly know what we're doing there, and it even makes some rational sense as a goal if we ignore how recklessly it's been pursued. So our question is the same, but it is more aptly phrased "what are we DOING over there? If the Bush administration cannot adequately answer the question, BC04 can be said to have lost the war (and the election) at the hands of an intederminate number of morons.

Time for a baseball interlude

With May, the baseball season is in full swing. Hot starts are beginning to cool, pitchers are catching up to batters, and the weekly rhythm of daily games--marquee weekend series, Friday and Saturday nights with a Sunday afternoon closer, limited Monday schedules and "getaway day" Thursday afternoon games--takes on a cruising hum.

For people who follow the game statistically (cough), May is the first time you can sensibly look at the accumulated at-bats and start evaluating performance without the crushing sample bias that comes with anything less than 50-75 ABs. In May, fantasy coaches can safely deal underperforming yutzes without undue fear of making the dreaded "panic move"--cutting or trading a player shortly before he takes off with a surge that lasts the next five and a half months.

But even if you hadn't the least idea about sample bias or what time the games are on what days, if you are a fan of the Red Sox, Yankees, or Tigers then you know not to get too high or low in the first couple of weeks. This tends to apply to each going back several years, but particularly this year the rule was to be ignored at fans' peril. Detroit raced out to margins above .500 not often experienced by the Tigers since several Robert Downey rehabs ago. And yet there they were at midmonth, waking up on April 15th with a 6-2 record and 1st place in the AL Central. And then as if the ides of March had forgotten to turn their calendars over, that night the Blue Jays pounded the previously potent pitching Tigers 11-0. At presstime they sit at 13-14, 3rd place, 3.5 games out.

Of course, the only unexpected part is the 6-2 record, but boy, in the midst of it Tigers fans dreamt dreams of 80, 85, NINETY win seasons? The spoils of soft bigotry have come to roost, but following Detroit it could not be wholly unexpected.

But that's just a warmup. While the Cubs have a longer record of failure, more parched taste of success in modern playoff competition and a reputation built more aroung a stadium and a mythos than an expectation of winning, you've got to hand it to Red Sox fans for the enduring agony of near-perfection. They're on a particularly smooth roll lately; for six seasons dating back to 1998, the order of finish in the AL East has been Yankees 1, Boston 2. The margin of victory has ranged from 2.5 games to 22 games, but more than that the scenario always seems to be the same: the Sox come out of the gate strong, while the Yankees either struggle or just can't keep up with how great Boston is doing. The Boston press starts to bring in the "this is our year" chant, while the New York media intones "end of dynasty" notes, and George starts getting antsy. Then summer comes, and with the big home and home series the Yankees get the edge and from there, the Sox just run out of gas. For a Yankee fan, it's really been quite comforting.

So only the most guileless of Sox fans would have gloated with abandon when, having defeated the Yankees in 6 of 7 games during April, and taken a commanding 12-6 record to the top of the AL East, leaving the New Yorkers floundering behind even the resurgent Orioles. The Red Sox finished the month with a 15-6 record, and the Yankees trying to keep pace with even win/loss columns. And then the calendar turned, and the Sox stopped winning. Being swept by the Rangers, including two on Saturday night, quickly took the buzz out of the Boston clubhouse. Meanwhile down I-95, the Yankees swept both the As (taking down Hudson, Mulder and Zito in order) and the Royals. I'm sure the Red Sox were happy to go to Cleveland, while New York filed onto airplanes for a return series with the As in Oakland.

Both teams started off slowly, and things deteriorated from there. The only difference between the two games was, really, Alex Rodriguez. I seem to recall a trade not consumated, and then one that was. Hmmm. Anyway, down 8-3 in the 7th, A-Rod ripped a pitch off of Mulder that fell into the bleachers in the deep corner of left center, cutting the lead to two. It took another clutch Ruben Sierra hit down the left field line to take control of the game (and Mariano Rivera's 10th save in 10 tries to seal the deal), but it was A-Rod's homer that clearly got Mulder down, and he showed it afterwards. "It's embarrassing when you can't hold a 7-1 lead," Mulder said. "It's ridiculous." Yeah.

So with the assurance of an Eric Gagne appearance becoming an Eric Gagne save (71st in a row tonight, pitching even more lights out than Rivera if that's possible), things that seem farfetched and out of place in April, look to right themselves right about Mayday. And by the way--that makes 350 for Rodriguez, the fastest ever. And 1,000 RBIs, third fastest ever. A-Rod's 12-game hitting streak ended Saturday, but with the improbable win tonight, and Boston's inexplicable bat silence against an outmatched Indians staff, the Red Sox and Yankees are once again tied for first in the division. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Such is true of April and May.

Oregon: soft on crime, and what are you going to do about it?

From the criminal justice files this peek into the harsh state of Oregon : in-cell flat screen TVs! That's not the harsh part--the harsh part is you have to pay for them yourselves.

This is just the kind of thing you can expect to hear on Limbaugh or in a Neil Boortz column--the tree-hugging left embracing the inner goodness of treating prisoners humanely. But screw that; as the guards indicate, inmates who stay in their cells are easily controlled, more docile inmates:

"It's cut down on the number of inmates that come out in the evening to watch TV," said Julian Ruiz, a corrections officer who operates electronic door locks and monitors a cell block. "The more people you get down here in the evening, the more problems."

I kind of like the suggestion from the victims' group that suggested prisoners only be able to get Discovery, History, Learning Channel, and other such educational satellite destinations.

If you're not going to keep them busy 20 hours a day with programs (and it appears we are not), keeping them bored in their cells is definitely the next best thing.

This time it's for real, sort of in a simulated way

Not to become the unofficial and perhaps illicit republishing service of NYT, but by the time I get to the computer many evenings, they have already thrown the next day's copy onto the web. They and Reuters make the best late night trolling for new-s. (Did you know the word "news" came from the plural of "new?" Seriously).

Tomorrow's news tonight: Son of SDI appears on track to be fully deployed, on schedule as President Bush promised it would be. I clicked on the link, eager to see what story stood behind such a grudging header like This Time It's Real: An Antimissile System Takes Shape. Wow, sounds like it may work! This also seemed like news to me; I'd recalled that for quite some time Carl Levin has had a vontz up his ass about SDI and the rushed deployment of a system still in R&D mode.

My heartbeat slowed as I came to the realization that it was, in fact, just your everyday snarky NYT article about another one of President Bush's ideas that looks totally foolish and ill-conceived, but that he's really behind. Here's the designated "hapless administration mouthpiece assigned the role of defending the current idiocy," on the current idiocy:

Critics of the shield find little hearing at the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, headed by Lt. Gen. Ronald T. Kadish, an Air Force pilot with long experience in developing military hardware like fighter jets. "We should not choose to be vulnerable," General Kadish said in an interview. "We have proven that from a technological standpoint and a practical standpoint we can intercept ballistic warheads in flight. And to say now that we can technologically defend ourselves and then choose not to is, in my view, a recipe for failure."

Critics do, however, find ample hearing at the Paper of Record:

"It's totally useless," said Dr. Richard L. Garwin, a physicist who has advised the government on security for nearly 50 years and who, in 1998, was on a panel led by Donald H. Rumsfeld, now defense secretary, to assess ballistic missile threats.

Dr. Garwin said the president was "wasting money and he's impairing our security, because it will not work against ICBM's from anyone who has it in for the United States."

It's very hard to read through the diplomatic and scientific doubletalk there, but I _think_ he wanted to indicate that he was not confident of the system's ability to perform as expected. Hey, here's another:

"This is like deploying a military aircraft missing the wings, the tail and the landing gear," said Philip E. Coyle, a former chief of operational test and evaluation at the Pentagon, who is a senior adviser at the Center for Defense Information. "And without testing to see if that aircraft can do its mission without wings, a tail or landing gear."

Engineers are always really creative about coming up with metaphors of failure for their creations. Again, look beyond the technical mumbo jumbo and try to read between the lines: does he think the system is ready? I'd aver not.

The thing I found most interesting about the article however, was that it ran three web pages long and at best four or five paragraphs were devoted to the utter inapplicability of the current threat, viz our ability to stop them with anti-missile missiles. How are we going to stop Samir and the Dirty Suitcase with a "kill unit?"

The second most interesting thing was that the metal core for the silo construction was provided prefabbed by Oregon Iron Works, right in the middle of Torrid's World. The Ironworks is no dummy--Darlene Hooley appears to be http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/or05_hooley/IORNSEP24.html, as this more recent deal also indicates.

The paid boosters of the system wanted to impress the reporter that, contrary to 20 years ago, the technology involved is not so far fetched. I'll buy that, I think--but you still end up with a system you can achieve, that does little to nothing to address your most salient defense issues. And for that, pony up for $10bil a year, please.

So, final thought on the NYT part of this story. Why, having used such an optimistic headline, did James Glanz then take up two pages to put it firmly back in its place as Bush Boondoggle? An icon adrift...

Subcontinental drift

What the hell? We're rapidly approaching the perfect storm of "throw a plan at it" foreign policy in the Middle East. Forget that there was no plan beforehand; it's now routinely not even clear what it is we're doing, right now. As I mentioned yesterday, it was only Thursday that the Fallujah transfer plan was reported and discussed--by military commanders, now--as an agreement reached and a plan in execution. This looked to be backed up by action, as Marines bulldozed security berms, began letting in civilians again, and pulled out of the nasty quarters where they had set up for the big assault.

And then, as people started asking about the new plan, it seemed to stop under the weight of the questioning. The Marines weren't "pulling out" anymore; they were "repositioning." And now we have a case of General Saleh not really getting to be the general.

He said that the backgrounds of Gen. Jasim Mohamed Saleh and another former Iraqi general, who was not identified by name, were being examined to see what role they might play in an Iraqi-led or joint force for Falluja.

That represented a step back from news reports, and comments from Marine commanders in Falluja, indicating that General Saleh had already been given some authority there.

Both the United States-led Coalition Provisional Authority and the Iraqi Defense Ministry were vetting General Saleh and the other man to select a military leader, General Myers said.

"My guess is, it will not be General Saleh," General Myers said on "Fox News Sunday." "He will not be their leader."

So he's not going to be the leader, but he was? Or he never was and the name was wrong? Or he was until we actually checked the guy out? Or we decided that turning the city over to a front group for the insurgency without any of our demands being met, was not actually in our best interest? Is this the same group of folks who arranged the weapons recycling cease-fire? That went well. And how will this go?

General Myers said that General Conway had told him today that the use of the Iraqi brigade in Falluja stood a chance of succeeding, but that Falluja was perhaps the most difficult city in Iraq, long a hotbed of smugglers and a city even Mr. Hussein struggled with.

"Is it worth a try?" General Myers asked. "You bet. Are we sure it's going to work? No, we're not sure it's going to work."

Whoever is in control of this fucking country (ours OR theirs), please step the hell forward. We'd love to know.


Meanwhile, the Israelis are sticking with the same old bomb-and-be-surprised-it-didn't-kill-them-all plan, which featured two high profile assassinations and appears to have directly yielded the siege of Fallujah and perhaps the cruel bombing of a pregnant woman and her family in Gaza. So is the half-loaf settlement removal deal Sharon's been peddling with Bush's help, dead? Looks that way. Killed by a moderate and leftist Israeli faction that can see the obliteration of the peace process in the partitioning of the Palestinian Authority? Heck no. Killed from the right--by a Likud horrified at the thought of anything even resembling appeasement, and a relatively small coterie of Gaza settlers who were going to fight whatever settlement re-gifting that got proposed. It appears shocking but true, that--as I pointed out in reposting Kleiman's great quote (below)--there is ample frustration that the harsh way has failed because it was not harsh enough. And lest we crow about the territorially tunnel minded Israelis, here's one of our own on Fallujah:

Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, was sharply critical.

"The perception right now is that we are not acting in a decisive fashion," he said on ABC, "and there's no greater mistake you can make in the conduct of warfare."

The overview

Mark Kleiman takes Instapundit's overview of the Fallujah "withdrawl," and very nicely creates an overview of that:

The besetting sin of liberalism is the refusal to learn the Machiavellian lesson that shedding some blood can, in some circumstances, reduce the total amout of blood shed. The besetting sin of conservatism is its deep belief that when brute force fails, you probably aren't using enough.