WALKMAN--BENEFIT OR SCOURGE? :You just know that the Democrats will try to blame this on President Bush.

KERRY, THE WAR ON TERROR, AND POLITICAL REALITY: “As president, I will ask hard questions and demand hard evidence. I will immediately reform the intelligence system -- so policy is guided by facts, and facts are never distorted by politics.

And as president, I will bring back this nation's time-honored tradition: the United States of America never goes to war because we want to, we only go to war because we have to.

I know what we have to do in Iraq. We need a president who has the credibility to bring our allies to our side and share the burden, reduce the cost to American taxpayers, and reduce the risk to American soldiers. That's the right way to get the job done and bring our troops home.

Let there be no mistake: I will never hesitate to use force when it is required. Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response. I will never give any nation or international institution a veto over our national security. “ John Kerry, acceptance speech, July 29, 2004.

I am pretty sure that Kerry believes what he said last night, but I think this makes him a minority in the Democratic Party. In order for him to win he will have to energize the Democratic base, which has swung further and further to the left over the years. He may believe in what he says, but the people who will elect him, by and large, do not, and in order to govern he will have to concede to many of their wishes. Nowhere, I think, will he have to concede more than on the issue of national security, since this issue is the cornerstone of the Bush Presidency his supporters loathe so much. Kerry, to use a historical analogy, in much the same position as George McClellan, the Democratic candidate in 1864, who repudiated the anti-war plank in his party’s platform that year, saying that he would never negotiate with the Confederacy. The plank stayed in the Democratic platform, despite his protests, and Lincoln, for one, understood the consequences of a McClellan victory, even if McClellan did not.

"This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so cooperate with the President-elect as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such grounds that he cannot possibly save it afterwards." Abraham Lincoln, in a memorandum, August 23, 1864.

THE CASE OF POLLY BAKER: A protege of Benjamin Franklin weighs in on the problems faced by unwed mothers and their children. Meanwhile, Ben himself offers a convenient and entirely safe way of avoiding the problem of unwanted pregnancy in the first place.

MEDICINAL TOBACCO? :  I had an appointment at the eye doctor’s today; I am having problems reading things nowadays and I don’t know if I should mark this down to advancing age or to being a diabetic.  I almost prefer the latter explanation, as it is always easier to think that a dread disease is making your life miserable than it is to think you are getting old.  In any case, I went to the office this morning and checked in with the front desk and then went to sit and read Sports Illustrated until my turn with the doctor came.  No sooner did settle in the chair than the fire alarm went off, a loud, somewhat futuristic series of blasts that made me think that Arnold Schwarzenegger or Bruce Willis would be bursting through the walls with guns blazing in the next couple of minutes.  Bruce and Arnold did not show up,  and neither, oddly enough, did the local fire department.  The first fire engine arrived some ten minutes after the alarm sounded, from a fire house that is only three minutes driving time away, which leads me to believe that in future if I am caught in a real fire in this particular office complex then running over old ladies is a viable survival option; it’s fairly obvious that the local Bravest will not be in a position to render immediate assistance and I would just as soon skip finding out what it's like to be the beef in the roast beef.

The fire turned out to be a false alarm; a technical glitch in the system set off the alarm; but what struck me as I waited outside for the all clear signal was the large number of health professionals, doctors and nurses alike, who passed the time smoking cigarettes. Do these people really think that their professional responsibilities actually buy them a pass on that whole smoking causes cancer thing?  Do they think their years of medical education exempt them from the harmful effects of tobacco smoke?  They must think so because these all of these guys smoke like a bad chimney.

NEW YORK STATE POLITICS, SUCH AS THEY ARE: The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University has just released a report on the New York State Legislature, one of the more, if not the most, dysfunctional legislative body in the United States. The press release, which contains a link to the report (you will need Acrobat Reader to read it) has a series of suggestions for the revamping and reform of the state legislature. They are, in the main, excellent suggestions and would, if enacted, greatly enhance the practice of constitutional democracy here in the Empire State. None of these excellent suggestions, however, will ever be adopted by anyone at any time in Albany, especially anyone in the leadership, and I will venture to say that this report will share space in the legislators' personal libraries with the collected works of Dave Barry, only they'll think that Dave's not as funny as the guys who wrote this report.

For those of you not from New York, let me explain how things work here. First, there is the Governor, who at this time is George Pataki, a Republican from Peekskill, which is in Westchester County, in the New York City suburbs in the lower Hudson Valley. Then there is the Majority Leader of the State Senate, Joseph Bruno, who is a Republican from Saratoga Springs, which is to the north of Albany, where most of the voters are trees, and finally, there is the Speaker of the State Assembly, Sheldon Silver, a Democrat from the Lower East Side of Manhattan, which I am sure I don't have to tell you, is in New York City. These three guys decide everything there is to decide in New York and if they disagree with one another, which is usually the case, absolutely nothing gets done.

Now, since state legislatures must apportion seats according to population, the State Senate is almost always controlled by upstate Republicans, the Assembly almost always controlled by downstate Democrats; the office of governor is up for grabs since that office is voted by everyone in the state; the pols couldn't find a way around that, but I'm sure given enough time and energy they will. There are more state senators than Joe Bruno, of course, and a lot more assemblymen than Shelly Silver, but let's face facts, folks, they don't count. They are there just for show.  You could ship department store dummies up to the state capitol building in Albany and no one would know the difference (by the way, the New York State Capitol is one of the most beautiful in the nation. If you're ever in Albany you might want to see it; there's been major restoration done on the building).  They especially don't count if they are the wrong party in the wrong house; there are few things more utterly pointless than a Republican assemblyman or a Democratic state senator. These people are, whatever their individual good qualities may be, the political equivalent of the appendix. What's more, senate and assembly districts are drawn up by, you guessed it, by the leadership of the Senate and the Assembly, who make absolutely sure that nothing is done to challenge the status quo. In New York, strange as this may seem elsewhere, incumbent politicians regard re-election as one of their civil rights and the election laws are arranged in such a way that no politician will ever be challenged by anyone, anywhere, at any time. This may be one of the reasons that New York State has not passed a budget on time in twenty years and why the usual question around budget time in Albany is not whether the budget will be passed on time but rather how late it will be this year.

Frankly, I am looking forward to the day when the New York State budget for a given fiscal year gets hung up until the next fiscal year. I hear you laughing out there, but if you knew what politics are like here, you'd know that this is entirely within the realm of possibility.  What is not within the realm of possibility is that any of the Brennan Center's recommendations will ever be implemented by the leadership of the state legislature; these guys will hardly sponsor their own political emasculation.  Trust me on this one.

LET THE PUNISHMENT FIT THE CRIME: I assume that after this horrific tale of senseless ornithocide that we will hear no more complaints about those evil Americans putting murderers to death. The very idea that a bird should be sacrificed in such a manner to preserve the works of dead white European males is an outrage. Should the International Criminal Court investigate? I see no reason why they shouldn't; it happened right there in the Netherlands; I can't see how anyone can argue that they didnt have the bus fare.

VIA USS CLUELESS: A fascinating article by an Australian writer, Rob Foot, whom I've not heard of before, on the prevalence and reasons for anti-Americanism. I strongly recommend reading the entire article. Reading it reminded of something the exiled Russian writer Vasili Aksyonov wrote of in his memoir, In Search of Melancholy Baby. Aksyonov wrote that in his youth all of Europe paid respect to the Soviet Union, recognizing the utter inevitability of the world-wide Socialist Revolution. Even the ruling classes understood that it was only a matter of time before they were swept aside by the dictatorship of the proletariat. Much that made European civilization civilized would be lost in the upheaval, but in the end there would be a better world for all humanity. So, workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains, and you have a world to win! Forward, comrades!  And yet...and yet there was a place called America, lodged safely out of sight on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, where the Great Socialist Revolution was a tempest in a samovar, where people were too busy working and making money and building skyscrapers and airplanes and automobiles to worry too much about some piddling little revolution launched by people with unpronounceable names. Even the proletariat didnt care about the revolution; they didnt go on strike to overthrow the class system--they wanted more money! They wanted to be part of the very system that was oppressing them. You couldnt tell them that they were victims of false consciousness and that they should bring down the system; they wanted a house in the suburbs! And a white picket fence! And good schools to send their kids to! And a car of their own! And what's worse, the capitalist system was actually providing them with these things, the very things socialism said it would provide them when the revolution came. What to do about this America that refused to bow to the laws of historical inevitability?

The shrieks of protest from the hard Left are the shrieks of religious believers who have been told, absolutely and beyond the possibility of doubt, that there is no God. Religions generally have the good sense to promise Paradise on the other side of the grave, where the possibility of someone proving empirically the falsity of faith-based contentions about an afterlife are minimal to the point of nonexistence. Socialism tried to impose Paradise in the actual breathing living world, where it was eventually shown for the fantasy it always was. Someone has to be to blame for this. Once upon a time it would have been the Jews; now it's the United States. Also, I found this article via USS Clueless, and Mr Den Beste has some good things to say about it that you might want to read.

TROUSERGATE: I dont know why everyone is so surprised that a Clinton Administration official would steal evidence before testifying before an official investigatory committee. Remember, the central lesson of the second Clinton term was that without the blue dress Bill would've gotten away with it; what they can't prove never really happened.

THE STOP SIGN: I like stop signs.  Stop signs are forceful, direct, imperative, impatient with this sort of philosophical blathering, and will not traffic in the existential angst of Yield or in the situational wishy-washiness of Slippery When Wet.  They mean what they say and say what they mean.  They are a directive from an unseen higher authority made red and octagonal, the incarnation of the law itself, a stern transportation director ordering the lowly motorist to cease, to desist, to halt, to put your damn foot on the brake already and stop the car.  Why then, one must ask, do so many people simply ignore stop signs altogether and keep going?
 
Once upon a great time ago in America, motorists paid a deep and abiding respect to stop signs, even if they didn’t mean it; you never knew if there was a motorcycle cop up ahead just waiting for you to run past the sign without stopping.  And so you stopped, if only for fear of getting a ticket.  But nowadays people do not fear the police and do not stop, running the stop signs whenever they choose.  This failure to stop at stop signs was once a sign that the offending driver was a dangerous radical, a condition to avoided like the plague or athlete’s foot in this our Great Republic.  Radicals who refused to stop at stop signs were seen as malignant underminers of the very fabric of modern American society.  But no more. First comes the disrespect for stop signs, followed close on by refusing to stop at red lights and then ignoring the directions of traffic officers.   Such a breakdown in automotive morality can only lead to accidents and general mayhem replacing General Motors on the nation’s highways.  Anarchy will rear its ugly head, as the struggle to get to the supermarket to buy a gallon of milk becomes a hellish Hobbesian highway battle of everyman against his fellow man.  I don’t even want to think about what it’ll be like on the roads if there’s a sale at Shop-Rite.  Driver education classes throughout the land will be permanently cancelled, replaced by a good luck card from the state, a set of keys, and a complete set of The Road Warrior movies as instructional videos.
 
What brought on this massive surge of disrespect for the fundamental decencies of motoristical behavior?  Conspiracy theorists abound, as they are perhaps wont to do, but I think the basic mistake was the introduction of the right turn on a red light.  Once the states abandoned the basic formula of red=stop in favor of the right turn concept it was only a matter of time before the inevitable shaving of the law’s parameters began.  Stop became stop, please, and then stop, but only if you want to, and finally stop, why?  Once the pattern was set the long slide into chaos ensued, as any observer with half a brain could have figured out for themselves. Now the very authorities that approved the right on red abomination wonder why their transportation dicta are ignored by the great mass of motorists; it is evidently too hard for these dolts to understand that by diluting the power of the stop sign they were also diluting their ability to effect what occurred on American roads.  Only a return to red=stop, backed up by a intense police effort and a blizzard of tickets, will return the stop sign to the honored position it once held in American life, a position that was needlessly sacrificed to a silly fashion.

ALEXANDER HAMILTON: Richard Brookhiser has a fascinating article about Hamilton in this quarter's issue of City Journal and I highly recommend it. As always, Brookhiser compares Hamilton with Jefferson, since no article about Hamilton would be complete without comparing his standing in the reputation race vis-a-vis Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson doesnt come off second best; whatever his personal flaws Jefferson's contribution to the shaping of America is too profound for that, but Brookhiser does point out that Jefferson's reputation is looking a little worn these days. Two things about these men have always struck me; first, Hamilton helped found the first abolitionist society in New York, and second, you cannot see the slave cabins from Jefferson's home at Monticello. Jefferson did not want to see where the people whom he held in bondage lived, did not want to be reminded of their existence or the existence of the peculiar institution that made his life of ease possible. Hamilton came from the Virgin Islands, from a sugar island where slaves were routinely worked to death in order to produce massive profits for their colonial overlords. And Hamilton was not a planter; he was the bastard son of a woman who kept a shop and had to go to work as a clerk when he was nine years old. There was no way he could avert his eyes from the ugly reality and pretend that the institution did not exist. Hamilton knew what slavery was and knew it was wrong; Jefferson knew that slavery was wrong as well, but he could never break the mental and economic chains that bound him to the institution.

BUSH AND THE NAACP: You know, maybe it's just me, but when someone makes a habit of going out of their way to kick me in the balls, I tend to avoid that person's company. Call me silly if you will, but that's just the way I feel.  Nor do I really understand why Senator Kerry bothers talking to the NAACP. He has their votes; the delegates to the NAACP convention would sooner gut their own mothers with a fish knife than vote for someone other than a Democrat, so what's the point of Kerry's pandering? To make Bush look bad?  Let's face reality: the Republicans know that they will never get anything more than a token vote from the black community so they dont care if Kerry and the NAACP badmouth them, and what's more, the Democrats know that for all the muttering from some blacks that they are being taken for granted, by and large the black vote is in the Democratic Party's pocket without the Democrats having to do very much to get that vote.  That's the price paid by blacks for putting all of their political eggs in one basket; it means that Republicans do not have to address issues of importance to the black community.  Why should they?  Political parties are in the business of winning elections and groups are judged by their ability to help the parties do just that.  Blacks dont help Republicans, so why should Republicans help blacks?

ACLU AND THE COUNTY OF THE ANGELS: In all of the sound and fury about the ACLU forcing Los Angeles County to remove the cross from its county seal, no one has pointed out that the goddess Pomona gets to keep her central position on that same seal or even asked why she gets to stay. It seems to me that if the ACLU is going to be consistent about hounding religion out of the public square then it should demand that Pomona be removed as well, lest it appear that the ACLU's agenda is not against religious establishment in general, but against Christianity in particular. I'm sure that they wouldn't want people to think that they are a group of secularist bigots.

THE WALL AND THE WORLD COURT: Frankly, I think the Israeli response to this decision should be to pull down their collective trousers and ask, "Okay, guys, which cheek do you want to kiss first?" Also, I notice that there is nowhere a condemnation of suicide bombing, the practice that led to the creation of the barrier in the first place. You know, I forget exactly who first said this, but they were right: no matter how cynical I get, it's never enough.

BLOOD, NEAT AND EXTRA SWEET: The problem with being a diabetic here in our happy little burg is that invariably everyone in town finds out about it. Now it's nice that so many people take an interest in your health, if only for the opportunity it affords for them to talk about their health, but frankly after a while it gets annoying; I decided when first diagnosed that I was not going to one of those morose diabetics who go around looking balefully at other people's lunches and declaring that if I had one slice of that pie I would drop dead on the floor with the crumbs still on my lips. First, it's not true, and second, as a rule I look at these pie-eating people and call them sadistic bastards. But the people who bring my problem up do tend to go on and on about how lousy they feel and how the doctors say that they're not sure what's wrong with them and how they've survived mystery illnesses that have killed tens of thousands of poor unsuspecting wretches somewhere in Africa, and how about them Yankees, guy? I usually don't mind discussing my problem, if asked, but I try not to let it rule my life, and I can do without the long and very graphic descriptions of how your best friend's sister's cousin's brother in law's Uncle Martin's feet were amputated because he couldn't do without his daily dose of whipped cream slathered pineapple upside down cake and a coffee with three sugars.

The other problem I have with everyone knowing is that everyone feels the need, no, not the need, but the obligation, to tell me that something I am about to eat is not good for me. People who wouldn't dream of commenting on my political opinions feel no compunction whatever about having an opinion about my lunch. Lunch has become something akin to a baseball game, with color commentary of what I am eating paired with a play by play of how my Subway Veggie Delite is probably no good for me unless I chew each and every bite at least thirty-two times in order to extract every last bit of nutrition out of the vegetables. And, you know, I used to like lettuce, both romaine and iceberg, but now just looking at a head of the damn stuff gives me a case of the chills. I can't even cheat a little bit; maybe a Yodel here or a Ring Ding there; all the storekeepers in town know about my problem and will be the first to rat me out to my family if I so much look at a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, and then once the family knows the news will be all over town before supper time. If I want to cheat I'd have to drive all the way over to Danbury, where no one knows me or cares to, and where I can buy a Hershey's bar without the censure of the entire town coming down on my head.

Of course, I could always turn to the streets, to the dark and dangerous trade in junk food for diabetics. I could meet a sugar pusher in some dark alley and pay twenty dollars for a bite of a Yodel the pusher stole from some kid on his way to school the day before. Then when I have ruined my life with junk food and pizza, when even my pusher will no longer sell me an M&M (chocolate, not peanut), I could go through the twelve steps of Sweeteners Anonymous, recognizing that only the intervention of a higher power can save me from my craving for sugar, cornstarch, and partially hydrogenated fats from anyone of several vegetable oils, and I will return with joy in my heart to a regimen of jabbing my fingers and abdomen with sharp objects. As long as I don't have to eat anymore damn lettuce, I'll be fine.

THANK YOU: As some of you may know, my father passed away exactly one week ago today. I'd like to take a moment from this blog's general snarkiness to thank all of you who have written or sent emails supporting my family and me during this very sad time. Your thoughtfulness and sympathy is greatly appreciated, more than you can possibly realize. Again, on behalf of my mother and brothers, thank you so much.

FOR THE COMMON GOOD: Every so often, Tom Wolfe writes in The Painted Word, you read something in the newspapers that so suddenly and completely gives away the truth about a movement or a person that you cannot believe what you are reading, that the usual filters and templates did not catch the errant thought before it could be made public. In San Francisco, Hilary Clinton had such a moment when she gave away the game. To wit,

"Many of you are well enough off that ... the tax cuts may have helped you," Sen. Clinton said. "We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."

The common good as determined by whom? Who is the we in this statement, and who is the you? And who determined that Senator Clinton is one of the we who gets to decide? Unless I miss my guess, Senator Clinton is saying that she, among others, to be sure, will not return to the taxpayers of this country money that belongs to them in the first place, and that she is doing this because she has something better to do with it in mind. But what really grates here is her assumption that the money is hers to begin with, that the taxpayers exist solely to provide her and the rest of her statist chums with funds.

RUNNING OF THE BULLS: Today is the beginning of the feast of San Fermin in Pamplona, Spain, a holiday made famous by Ernest Hemingway in his novel The Sun Also Rises. The fiesta's most famous feature is the running of the bulls through the streets of Pamplona, the bulls driving before them a huge mass of silly people who ought to know better than to run in front of large enraged animals, but obviously dont; one suspects that many of the runners have probably had one or two or twelve drinks too many. In any case, here in the United States, the running of the bull will continue on until the first Tuesday in November, when we will all be too exhausted to care one way or the other.