Academy Awards

I am not that bent out of shape that The Passion of the Christ didn't get an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, although I think the day will come when the award to whichever picture wins will look like a shallow cop-out, while The Passion will, over time, become legendary and classic. The fact that Christ does not appeal to the popular mind is, well, an obvious fact that has been true from the beginning.

One thing I noted, however, is this. The five Best Picture nominees are

"The Aviator"
"Finding Neverland"
"Million Dollar Baby"
"Ray"
"Sideways"

Meanwhile, the nominees for best animated film feature are

"The Incredibles"
"Shark Tale"
"Shrek 2"

Maybe it's me because I have small kids, but aren't the animated films self-evidently better movies than the non-animated films?

Iraq Is Not "Violent" Today

One of my pet peeves about the way news is reported in this country is that the mainstream media often are incapable of providing the appropriate comparisons that make the news understandable. If I say my son is tall because he's 4'7", that statement is either meaningless or a joke or simply wrong unless or until I tell you that he's 7, so you can compare him to all the 4'3" 7 year olds -- only that comparison makes the raw data meaningful. If I say Milwaukee is violent because it has 150 murders a year, that statement is only meaningful if a comparably-sized city, say, Kansas City, has 100 murders a year. You get the idea.

Iraq is not "violent" today. Let me say that again: Iraq is not violent today, unless the word "violent" is drained of all of its meaning by being yanked out of the context of meaningful comparison. It's just not, and the mainstream media is incapable of reporting it. Here is the appropriate comparison for perspective from a blurb from USAID's Iraq page (hardly a right-wing source):

The United Nations, the U.S. State Department, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch (HRW) all estimate that Saddam Hussein's regime murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people. "Human Rights Watch estimates that as many as 290,000 Iraqis have been 'disappeared' by the Iraqi government over the past two decades," said the group in a statement in May. "Many of these 'disappeared' are those whose remains are now being unearthed in mass graves all over Iraq."

Elsewhere the same story estimates 400,000 bodies in mass graves. OK, so it's somewhere between 290,000 and 400,000 over the past 20 years. That's 15-20,000 a year, every year.

And here's the grisly report from Human Rights Watch, complete with pictures.

And, of course, that's not counting the 5,000 children a week who the Left told us were dying under the Oil-for-Food program and the UN sanctions through the 1990s. That's 250,000 a year! (In October 2001, Chris Suellentrop in Slate asked "Are 1 Million Children Dying in Iraq?").

And, again, that's not counting the hundreds of thousands or even millions estimated dead in the two aggressive wars that Saddam and the Baathists started in the 1980s against Iran and the 1990s against Kuwait.

And, finally, that's not counting the dead in Israel from suicide bombers paid bounties by Saddam.

As we look toward next week's elections in Iraq, we have to forget about what the mainstream media will be telling us, and remember: There is much less violence, much less death and destruction and despair in Iraq and the Middle East today than before we toppled Saddam, and the bulk of the violence, unlike the violence caused by the murderous oppression of Saddam's thugs, is justified violence by American soldiers against those same thugs (in the "just war" sense of the word). There is less violence. Keep saying it. There is less violence.

And there is infinitely more hope.

God bless America!

Inauguration Address

Bush's speech was a fine thing in many ways but one line jumped out at me. In the course of praising our soldiers, he noted that young Americans are seeing that kind of dedication and idealism and sacrifice for the first time. Then he said what I've italicized below:

A few Americans have accepted the hardest duties in this cause - in the quiet work of intelligence and diplomacy ... the idealistic work of helping raise up free governments ... the dangerous and necessary work of fighting our enemies. Some have shown their devotion to our country in deaths that honored their whole lives - and we will always honor their names and their sacrifice. All Americans have witnessed this idealism, and some for the first time. I ask our youngest citizens to believe the evidence of your eyes. You have seen duty and allegiance in the determined faces of our soldiers. You have seen that life is fragile, and evil is real, and courage triumphs. Make the choice to serve in a cause larger than your wants, larger than yourself - and in your days you will add not just to the wealth of our country, but to its character.

I ask our youngest citizens to believe the evidence of your eyes. Am I reading too much into this, or is this a strong rebuke to the mainstream media and the intellectual "elites" that dominate our cultural institutions and universities? Bush is saying... look, Peter Jennings and Dan Rather and your English teacher at college may all be saying that America is bad, America is evil, America is corrupt, America's work in Iraq is a failure, American soldiers' sacrifices are for nought. Do not listen to them. Believe your own eyes. And, most importantly, Be Not Afraid.

All in all, a lovely touch.

Thoughts on Boxer and Kerry Voting Against Condi

Barbara Boxer and John Kerry were the only two members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to vote against sending Condi Rice's name to the Senate floor for what will be a coronation. Boxer is understandable -- after her tantrum yesterday she couldn't very well vote for Rice, and, besides, she's up for reelection in 2010 in California, where her opponent for her Senate seat could easily be Republican Condi Rice!

The Kerry vote is more interesting, particularly when coupled with his off-the-chart, nut-job, paranoid Democratic Underground/ MoveOn MLK Day comments.

Consider the following pattern:

(1) Relatively Liberal Democrat runs for national office.

(2) RLD makes noises like a centrist, particularly on foreign policy.

(3) RLD loses, in part because George W. Bush successfully paints him as a liberal in centrist clothing.

(4) RLD returns to private life or, in this case, the Senate, and reverts, not just to the relative liberalism of his past, but to the lunatic fringe liberalism of his party’s most extreme elements.

Sound like anyone? Gore post-2000 and Kerry post-2004 are peas in a pod. What they both should show the American public, now and forever, is that even supposedly centrist Democrats (Gore was a charter member of the DLC if I remember correctly) are really extreme liberals when they reach the point in their life when they either won’t be running for anything ever again (Gore) or else won’t be running for anything outside of Massachusetts (Kerry). When they have nothing left to lose, they have nothing left to lie about.

Kerry (and Gore) are now being true to themselves, which is attractive from a human standpoint, and should make them both more consistent in their public positions (Kerry in particular). But it won’t move their party any closer to regaining majority status anytime in the near future.

Milwaukee Voter Turnout

Captain's Quarters is blogging up a storm on the miraculous and mysterious voter turnout in Milwaukee County in last November's election. The data he cites seems pretty convincing: a decline in population (959,000 in 1990 to 940,000) coupled with a huge increase in voter turnout (365,000 in 1996 to 482,000 in 2004). There are some innocent explanations probably.... the 1996 election was remarkably uncompetitive and uninteresting, the 2000 election was highly competitive, and the 2004 election was extraordinarily competitive and contentious. Moreover, the ability (using email, the Internet, cell phones, computer databases, etc.) for campaigns to get out the vote has obviously gotten better as technology has improved. Finally, it is also true that Wisconsin has chosen to be a remarkably easy state for voting, with its motor voter law being designed to make walk-up registration a reality.

Having said that I would simply note a few peripheral stories: (1) in 2000 a Democratic activist was arrested giving cigarettes to homeless men in Milwaukee in exchange for their votes; (2) in 2004 the sons of the former mayor and current Congresswoman (both Democrats) were questioned in connection with the vandalism of 30 GOP vans on election day; (3) in 2004 the Democratic mayor requested that the County print 900,000 ballots for use on election day, many hundreds of thousands more than could possibly have been used even with extraordinary turnout. The stories point to a party that is willing to do practically anything to win.

Let's connect another dot: while Wisconsin for months before the election was viewed as a close swing state that could change the election one way or the other, Illinois was remarkably uncompetitive, with no one even questioning that Kerry would win there. Chicago, with its Democratic Party machine, is 90 miles from Milwaukee. Is it impossible to think some enterprising Democratic insider would think about encouraging Chicagoans to visit their cousins and grandmothers and aunts in Milwaukee on November 2nd and, oh, by the way, register to vote using their addresses?

Finally, it's also worth noting that Milwaukee has a burgeoning Hispanic population. How many are citizens? How many are illegals? How many show up on a census? I don't think anyone honestly can say. But I do know that one of the maintenance workers in our building (a downtown high rise), a very nice fellow who can barely speak English, took off for three months in August, September and October to do voter registration in the Hispanic community, being paid by his union. Could he have "accidentally" registered some illegals? Could he or his fellow union members encouraged some illegals to do same day registration on election day? Could some illegals have "wink, wink" been let through the process to get the Democratic turnout on Milwaukee's south side up?

Now, I hate to do this in some ways, because it smacks of the sort of paranoid conspiracy theories that the Democrats have been floating in Ohio. But, where there was never any evidence or statistical possiblity that the 118,000 victory for Bush in Ohio was the product of voter fraud, in Wisconsin the statistics the Captain cites together with the background of dirty tricks and Democratic hardball seems worthy of some sober reflection, analysis and investigation. The mainstream media won't do it -- certainly not the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, which was horrible during the months leading up to the election, and has essentially swept the van vandalism story under the rug. So it will be up to bloggers, again. (One place to look would be to do a longitudinal comparison of population changes in different Wisconsin counties and their voter turnout patterns with Milwaukee County. They ought to be parallel, or else you would have to conjecture that something was afoot in Milwaukee that wasn't happening elsewhere.)

Hat tip to Stacie Larson for pointing out the Captain's great work on this story, and a shout out to any other readers up in Minocqua. Stay warm!

UPDATE: OK, I've now looked at longitudinal data for three counties, Milwaukee, and its two nearest (and whitest and most affluent) suburbs, Waukesha County (Brookfield) and Ozaukee County (Mequon). From 2000 to 2004, the population of Waukesha County went from 360,000 (I'm going to round all these figures) to 374,000, while its voter turnout in the presidential elections went from 203,000 to 230,000, an increase from 56.3% to 61.5% (roughly). In the same period, Ozaukee County grew from 82,000 to about 85,000 people, and its voter turnout went up from 48,000 to 53,000, or from 57.8% to 62.4%. In Milwaukee, finally, from 2000 to 2004, the population shrank slightly, from 940,000 to 933,000, but the voter turnout went up from 433,000 to 482,000, or an increase from roughly 46% turnout to about 51.6% turnout.

On the face of these comparative figures, I'd have to conclude, barring other harder evidence, that the 2004 election in Milwaukee County was not grotesquely out of line. Milwaukee County, because less affluent, generally has lower voter turnout. That held to form in 2004. Meanwhile, in all three counties, turnout was up 11-13% over 2000, with Waukesha County (heavily Republican) having the biggest percentage increase in turnout. Again, this gibes with what I saw happening -- both sides were pushing for higher turnout, and both sides succeeded.

I think we'll have to look harder for real data before we jump to conclusions. We don't want to be like the Democratic Underground crazies, and start hearing "voter fraud" when we play our Zeppelin records backwards.

MLK Day

I have no reservations about Martin Luther King Day. Slavery and segregation being the "original sin" of America, it is fitting and proper that we celebrate an African-American who expressed, at his best, the true creed of Americans -- that here we judge men by the "content of their character."

Having said that, I will now disburden myself of a typical curmudgeonly diatribe, which for my wife is an annual event. MLK Day, OK. I like it. It's good. But today we will have quasi-religious ceremonies and "scripture readings" from King's greatest speeches (sermons) across the nation. Indeed, I would bet every public school in America (or at least any big city public school system) spent at least several hours and probaby more last week celebrating King. That's good too, and I guess I don't mind that much the hypocrisy of the Left in "segregating" religion from the classroom except when we're talking about the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Any little bit of religion in the classroom probably helps.

But my real beef is the following. Today we celebrate MLK. But next month we take George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and mush them together into something called "Presidents' Day"? What the hell is that? Let's grant that MLK is a 9 out of 10 on a scale of American greatness. And let's grant that everyone else is an 8.... except for Lincoln and freakin' George Washington, who are 10 and 10 for cryin' out loud! Today the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a pull-out section of student essays about Martin Luther King -- they have one every year, in fact. It's nice. I like students to write essays about historical figures. But, just once, couldn't they have a pull-out section about Lincoln or freakin' George Washington?

Sheeeesh!

Prince Harry

There is a lot going on in the world, and, frankly, I have too much work right now, but I wanted to briefly comment about the flap about the Brit's Prince Harry dressing up like a Nazi. My eating club at Princeton had what we called a "bad taste party" every year, so when I was 20 years old ca. 1979-1980, I dressed up as the Reverend Jim Jones the week after the Jonestown Massacre, and, the next year, as a member of the U.S. boxing team the day after their plane went down. Ugh! Like much of my youth, it makes me shudder to think of in retrospect. (It also still makes me smile a little.)

All this unseemly self-revelation is simply to point out that the problem is not with 20 year old boys doing silly things to be funny or shocking (which at 20 is synonymous with funny) like dressing up like a Nazi for a party. Boys, will, in fact, be boys. Get a job!

No, the real problem is that it's 2005 and one of the great countries in the world, England, still has "royalty," which is only meaningful if you believe that this particular family is entitled to an ontological status above the "common" folk by "divine right." It's a silly institution. Americans (who were English for the most part at the time) threw off that nincompoopery 229 years ago. Yet the Brits apparently still care deeply about what Prince Harry does. Better to scrap the whole system, which is a real embarrassment to an otherwise democratic England, rather than feign embarrassment over Prince Harry (i.e., "I'm shocked, shocked that a 20 year-old rich boy acts wild at parties").

On the other hand, they're not the French.

United States v. Booker

This is enormous news. The Supreme Court has held that the federal Sentencing Guidelines are unconstitutional. I'll hopefully be able to write more about this today or tomorrow, but it is really really big, and has the potential to require literally hundreds of thousands of sentences to be either revisited or drastically reduced, particularly for inmates sentenced to long-terms for drug trafficking based on a judge's finding of "relevant conduct," i.e., that the defendant trafficked in many more grams and kilograms of crack cocaine than the jury had actually found or even heard about.

One interesting note for Supreme Court watchers: the majority consisted of three of the "liberals" on the Court, Stevens, Souter and Ginsburg, joined by Justices Scalia and Thomas. Worth considering when you think about future nominations... the Court doesn't always vote the way you think they will.

Washington and the Concept of "Re-voting" (Update)

A) Great minds think alike, or B) I'm behind the curve. Anyway, the Wall Street Journal comes to the same conclusion that I did, namely, that revoting is a bad idea, and for the same reason, that the precedent it would set for future close elections is terrifying.

Washington and the Concept of "Re-voting"

Sound Politics is doing great work laying out the endgame in the election for Washington governor. Here is what we know:

1. Republican Dino Rossi won on election day when the ballots were first tabulated.
2. Republican Dino Rossi won in the machine recount.
3. Republican Dino Rossi was winning in the manual recount prior to the ballots for King County being reported (thus assuring that the Democratic Party-controlled King County would know precisely how many votes they needed to get Democratic candidate Christine Gregoire over the top).
4. King County delivered, giving Gregoire the "victory" in the manual recount.
5. It has now been revealed that 1800 or so more "votes" were counted in King County than they had voters signing in on election day.
6. It has now been revealed that King County incorrectly fed 300+ provisional ballots into their voting machines without checking them for whether the votes were legitimate (i.e., the voters were properly registered, etc.).
7. It has now been revealed that King County had at least a handful of dead people voting.

Many in Washington are thus (obviously) calling for a re-vote. I understand the position, and the sentiment animating it... this was a stolen election. But the concept of a re-vote is a bad one, and I don't think in general we want to set a precedent for re-voting whenever an election is close. Government isn't a children's game; governors (and Presidents) actually have real responsibilities that won't wait while we have endless "do-overs." In Washington state it might not be so terrible; in Washington, D.C. it would be dangerous.

The correct answer is for a court of law, presumably the Washington Supreme Court, but perhaps even the United States Supreme Court, to decide whether the manual recount process in Washington and the mounting evidence that King County's tally was fraudulent so "shocks the conscience" as to make the manual recount a denial of equal protection and due process. If it was, then the answer is to simply say that the machine recount was the only non-fraudulent (I'm not saying "accurate") count that we can use, so Rossi is the winner.

Lorie Byrd, the Blogosphere, and General Coolness

Lorie Byrd picked up my post on Rathergate and posted it at Polipundit, then took the time to send it to Crush Kerry, where it's also now linked. Apart from the general coolness of seeing your stuff miraculous appear in the aether, it's worth recalling what a great world we live in and what a great development blogging has been. It really is "open source" journalism and a true "marketplace of ideas" now. Before, the barriers to entry for starting a magazine, newspaper, or, God forbid, a television network, kept out voices like Lorie's and Pat Hynes' at Crush Kerry and mine. Now, there are no barriers.

Also, it's worth noting how generous and genuinely nice people can be. That's "news" too, although we never hear about it.

More on Rathergate and Political Bias at CBS

Lorie Byrd of Polipundit is blogging the hell out of this story. She makes the essential point with great clarity and logic -- that CBS was operating under a remarkably transparent double standard in which 250+ Swift Boat Veterans could be ignored or disparaged but a story presented by a partisan Democrat with an axe to grind was "rushed" to air without sufficient "vetting." By itself, the comparison shows the immense, systemic liberal bias at CBS. That the Thornburgh report couldn't bring themselves to say so proves that it was a whitewash.

Let me put it differently, though. Consider: on the facts presented to Mary Mapes in August 2004, there were, in fact, two ways to tell the "story." The first way is the way CBS did present the story, as a fairly trivial yarn about special treatment for George W. Bush in the TANG 35 years earlier. On the whole, somewhat problematic for the Bush team, but not on the whole that meaningful, methinks, to the majority of voters, because we had already processed the fact that Bush had been a bit of a ne-er do well who had been redeemed by Christ and the love of a good woman. (Frankly, that storyline probably actually helps Bush.)

The second way is the following: a well-connected Kerry fundraiser, Ben Barnes, and other Texas Democrats, are peddling stories about President Bush. They present documents to us, the Killian memos, purporting to show that Bush was given preferential treatment in the TANG in the late 1960s, and perhaps disobeyed orders to get a physical, went AWOL, etc. But our document examiners have some problems with them. And other people are telling us that Killian wouldn't have written something like that, including Killian's widow and son. The documents on their face, viewed objectively, don't pass the smell test... dude, they look like they were printed out on my Dell. What gives? Do the Democrats have a dirty tricks operation? Has someone with connections to the Kerry campaign conspired to perpetrate a federal crime, forgery of government documents, in an effort to influence a Presidential election, not 35 years ago, but right now, in 2004? How high up does the conspiracy go?

Which is the better story? The 35 year-old story about Bush's ne-er do well youth that we already know and have already discounted? Or the brand-new 2004 vintage story about the Democratic Party in Texas conspiring to commit forgeries to influence a Presidential election in wartime? Which story would a real news organization try to run down? A Pulitzer Prize was just waiting out there for someone, anyone, to pick up, and CBS (and, indeed, much of the mainstream media), just let it lie there. That's what proves the liberal bias.

Rathergate Report Whitewash

The Rathergate report by Dick Thornburgh's panel is out from CBS. Three executives and the producer, Mary Mapes, have been fired at CBS as a result. But Rather was not "fired," and the report is essentially a whitewash on the three main issues:

1. Were the documents fake?

Although the report includes an appendix that basically lays out facts that would be sufficient for any jury in the country to conclude that the documents were fraudulently created on a contemporary computer, and could not have been created on a 1970 typewriter, the report refuses to state the obvious conclusion in so many words. CBS felt justified in going to air in the midst of a Presidential election with a story that concluded on much much shakier evidence that President Bush had gotten preferential treatment in the Texas Air National Guard, and even Mapes herself in the eye of the storm in September 2004 only said that the documents were authentic by a "preponderance of the evidence," which lawyers understand means that it's 51-49 that they were real. But now the CBS report needs, apparently indisputable, 100% dead solid perfect evidence before they can conclude what everyone already knows... that the documents were fakes? Not fair.

2. Did CBS, Rather and Mapes have a political agenda?

The report concludes in a weasel-ly manner that the panel lacked evidence sufficient to reach a conclusion on the issue of whether CBS, Rather and Mapes had a political agenda to attack President Bush. Not surprisingly, CBS has issued a statement that takes advantage of the reports wishy-washy language, stating that it is gratified that the report concluded that CBS didn't have a political agenda. Of course the two statements are not the same thing, but the refusal of the panel to state the obvious permitted CBS to declare victory.

Come on. Anyone who isn't biased should be able to look at the CBS coverage, not just of the Killian memos story, but throughout the campaign, and conclude that CBS is a network devoted to furthering liberal Democratic positions. Frankly, I don't see anything wrong with that, just as I can't see why the New York Times can't be the liberal paper for the New York area. It used to be that a city would have two partisan papers, one liberal and one conservative. That's okay in my book... so long as no one confuses them with "objective" journalism. But the problem with CBS, the Times, etc., is that they do try to argue that they are objective journalists. They're not.

All you need to know about CBS' bias you can learn by asking yourself the following questions. Bill Burkett, a disgruntled former member of the TANG, comes forward to give information about a Presidential candidate who happens to be a Republican, and CBS goes to air with it practically immediately. Meanwhile, 250 or so former sailors on Vietnam Swift Boats come forward with information about a Presidential candidate who happens to be a Democrat, and CBS aired... well, nothing at all.

If the panel's purpose was to reform CBS so that this sort of thing won't happen again, it utterly failed to fulfill its charter, because until CBS realizes that it has a systemic bias against conservatives, it is always going to fall prey to the kind of smear that Burkett planted.

3. Did CBS coordinate with the Kerry campaign?

This is the most important question. CBS, a huge corporation with immense power in our society, gave what amounted to an immense in-kind contribution to the Kerry campaign through free air time for a vicious and false attack on President Bush. The evidence suggests that the Killian memos story was timed precisely to coincide with a series of attack ads by the Kerry campaign (the ads that aired under the heading, "Fortunate Son"). This is a scandal, and potentially a crime. The panel whiffs on the question.

Powerline, which did more than anyone else to bring down Rather and break the Rathergate story, has provided a must-read analysis of the Thornburgh report.

Ohio

Barbara Boxer joined today with the Congressional Black Caucus to protest certification of the results of the Presidential election in Ohio. As I've previously noted (along with many other people), Ohio was by no means the closest election among the 50 states, and there would be many scenarios where the election would have been different if a few thousand votes would have changed here or there. But that's the nature of elections in our electoral college system. Moreover, the margin of victory in Ohio was not even that close -- 118,000 votes is a helluva lot. If we're going to start protesting votes that close, we'll never have a "legitimate" President again.

But what really worries me is two things. First, regardless of how we Republicans might feel about the Democrats making fools of themselves over Ohio, it is a bad thing for the Republic (and, hence, in the long term, for Republicans) to have one of the major parties falling prey to paranoid fantasies of voter fraud. Moreover, it is a very bad thing for one party to be broadcasting its conspiracy theories about election fraud and the imperfections of elections in our country at a time we are at war. Saying Bush is illegitimate at a time when the enemies of our country conceive of Bush as the Great Satan -- well, do the words "aid and comfort" mean anything anymore? Finally, it is a horrible horrible horrible horrible stupid stupid stupid stupid thing for Democrats to be pulling this crap three weeks before the scheduled elections in Iraq. Think of it: what does a young Sunni torn between his tribe's hatred for America and fear of Shia dominance and his desire to participate in a rejuvenated, democratic Iraq think when he hears that even in America, the world's greatest democracy, responsible, elected representatives say that the Presidential election was a sham? Couldn't the Democrats have taken one for the team on this one, whatever they believe in their cynical hearts? Don't they care about the idea of little-d democracy anymore?

Second, and only slightly less important, it is a tragedy that the "representatives" of African-Americans are the major repository of these nutty conspiracy theories. It doesn't do their communities any good at all to be allied with the lunatic, MoveOn.org fringe of the Democratic Party. But it's also dangerous, because the African-American community is also a community that is particularly ripe for radical Islamist propaganda. Sooner or later, the Hate America First attitude of the CBC is going to augment a radical Islamist upsurge in the black community that will be singularly bad for that community and for the country as a whole. And this at a time when Americans are, in fact, remarkably sensitive to both African-Americans and Muslim Americans. I don't get it, but it scares me.

Sandberg and Boggs

It was a weak year for the Baseball Hall of Fame, and two weak candidates were elected, Ryne Sandberg and Wade Boggs. Both were very good players, but not great players. Boggs had just over 3000 hits, but he got them by hanging on for years after his skills had eroded, basically on his reputation. He had little pop (118 HRs) and, though a decent third-basemen (two Gold Gloves, again on reputation), was nothing spectacular in the field. A very good OBP (.415) gives him a decent OPS (.858), but that's not good enough to put him in the top 100 all time, and playing at a power position his slugging of .443 is not very good. A borderline choice, I think, and I'm not sorry he got in, but I'm sorry he got in on the first ballot, which should be reserved for only the inner circle of HOFers, the Aarons, the Mayses, the Mantles, etc.

As for Sandberg, I'm tired of the old story that he has the second or third most HRs by a second basemen, and that he was a great fielding second basemen. Second basemen are second basemen because (a) they can't field well enough to be shortstops; but (b) because it's relatively more difficult to play than first or left-field, you can get away with having a lighter-hitting player there. Sandberg's numbers are weak for the HoF -- 282 HRs, 1061 RBIs, .796 OPS. To make a comparison that my friends are sick of hearing, consider Ted Simmons, the Cardinals' catcher in the 1970s. Simmons had slightly fewer HRs (248), but many more RBIs (1389), playing in a park, Busch Stadium, that was much less hitter-friendly than Wrigley. His lifetime OPS is .785, again slightly below Sandberg, but, again, the difference is more than made up for by the difference in the two parks where they played their games. (Busch in the 1970s was a much harder park to hit in than it is now... the CF fence was 414 and the power alleys were 386... they're 10-15 feet in from that now.) I think most people would agree that Simmons in the 1970s was a more dangerous hitter than Sandberg in the 1980s. Anyway, it's really close. And Simmons played a much harder position, catcher. (And don't buy the crap that Simmons was a bad fielder. That's only because the standard of that era was Johnny Freakin' Bench. Simmons was no Bench, but he's no Piazza either.) But Simmons can't get a sniff of the HoF! Why?

Why? Because Simmons isn't a Hall of Famer. His numbers are good, but they're just not good enough. But the same should have held true for Sandberg.... good, but not good enough. Yet he's in, because he played in Chicago, because he had a neat nickname, because he was a handsome cuss, whatever. Because, for whatever reason, he was more "famous" than Simmons. And that's why they call it the Hall of Fame and not the Hall of Merit.


UPDATE: And, just to make sure that my Sandberg-bashing is not misinterpreted as pure Cubs-loathing (not to say that I don't loathe the Cubs), I could support the HoF for Andre Dawson. Consider: 8 Gold Gloves in right field versus 10 Gold Gloves at second base (a push in my book), but 438 HRs (versus Sandberg's 282), 1591 RBIs (versus Sandberg's 1061), and a lifetime OPS of .805 (on the back of a lifetime slugging avg. of .482). If guys like Sandberg were not in the HoF, I might say Dawson was borderline (again, he's no Mays, Mantle or Aaron). But if guys like Sandberg are in, how can you keep out a guy who was his freakin' teammate at the same time and has better numbers?

Reid and Thomas

If there were one habit of the Left I would want to abolish by fiat (oh, if only I could), it would be the habit of abusing conservatives as stupid. They did it to Eisenhower, notwithstanding the fact that he had led 10 million men to victory in World War II. They did it to Reagan, notwithstanding the obvious intelligence exhibited in his speeches and writing over many years (now helpfully documented in the recent publications of his radio speeches, letters, etc.). They do it to W with even more viciousness. But the problem with the "argument" is not that it's wrong, but that it's useless as argument to begin with. It's simply a classic logical fallacy that freshmen comp teachers used to teach, the ad hominem fallacy, which consists of the statement that that my opponent's argument that X is true must be wrong because my opponent is a dullard, without every trying to prove or even attempt to prove that X itself is false through counterfactuals.

Anyway, Harry Reid, the Democratic Senator from Nevada and minority leader-in-waiting, recently gave us an egregious example of the ad hominem fallacy in his contemptuous remark that Justice Clarence Thomas' opinions are poorly written. The blogosphere immediately pounced, noting that Reid was unable to give any examples of poorly written opinions, and conjecturing that Reid was simply falling prey to the inside-the-Beltway virus that holds that conservatives must be stupid, or, worse still, that he was coupling this virus with a more vicious strain of closeted racism -- Clarence Thomas is stupid because he's a conservative, sure, but because he's also black, his particular stupidity must take the form of an inability to articulate ideas in prose. (Think: isn't the stereotypical nice thing that liberals say about African Americans they like that they are sooo very articulate? Witness Barack Obama at the DNC.)

Well, the mainstream media apparently took notice, and CNN asked Reid for an example of an opinion. Reid gave one, saying "that's easy," but then proceeded to mention an opinion from a case where Thomas supposedly wrote a dissent that paled in comparison to a dissent from Scalia. The problem was, Scalia hadn't written a dissent in the case! (As pointed out by Eugene Volokh, among others.)

This is a scandal. The putative leader of the Democrats in the Senate unfairly maligns a Supreme Court Justice in terms that smack of a racial putdown, then, when called on it, says something patently and demonstrably false. If he were a Republican, he'd be gone.

Questions: will the MSM follow up now? Will the MSM actually do some work and read some of Thomas' opinions and report the obvious conclusion that they are well-written, cogent legal arguments? Will anybody start calling for Reid to step down?

Bigger question: when will the 60-something pols who currently run the country realize that technology has changed the rules of the game for political rhetoric? Before the Internet and before search engines and before Lexi-Nexis and Google, maybe you could get away with an offhand reference to an opinion a political opponent had written, or make a statement that conflicts with something you've said before. No more. Nowadays, in the era of open source journalism that is the blogosphere, you're going to get caught in your lie. There's just too much access to information.

Ain't it grand?

Cardinals' Hot Stove

Politics is one thing, baseball is another. On the whole, if given the choice between a Republican victory in 2004 and a Cardinals World Series win... well, OK, I'd still choose W winning, but it would be close (at least a lot closer than the World Series turned out to be).

Here's my quick views on the Cardinals' off-season moves:

1. Mark Mulder. The Mulder deal was a "win now" trade. Mulder is a left-handed starter who is only 27, but he seemed to fade down the stretch last year, and he's not a power pitcher. Nevertheless, he's probably good for 15-17 wins, and putting a left-hander in the rotation may make the other starters improve as well. In terms of 2005, the trade is essentially Mulder for the untendered Woody Williams, which is an improvement. In terms of 2006 and later, it is a trade of one good starter, Danny Haren (he'll be a solid guy for the A's, probably even next year), and one potentially very good catcher, Daric Barton, for one good starter, Mulder, which is a loser deal for the Cardinals long term. But when you were in the World Series last year, you have to go for it next year and forget about 2010 or so, when Barton might be an All Star.

2. David Eckstein. Letting Edgar Renteria go is a sad day for the Cardinals, because he was a winner and a leader. I think the Cardinals will miss him a lot in the clubhouse and at short, where he had a lot (I mean a lot) more range than Eckstein. Eckstein will give you a little spark maybe, but he won't hit like Renteria and he won't field like Renteria. But the reality is that Eckstein at $3.5 million may give you more wins per dollars than Renteria at $10 million, and having Eckstein play short will enable you to pay someone else (Mulder?).

3. Letting Go. The Cardinals let go Mike Matheny and Tony Womack walked to the Yankees before we could make an offer. Matheny will be missed in the clubhouse, but not in the field, because Yadier Molina is big-league ready as a catcher and probably will give us a little (but only a little) more offense. Womack is "just a guy," as they say in football... there are probably half a dozen free agents we could get for less money that would do either as well or almost as well. The real problem as I see it is that we didn't cut the cord on Reggie Sanders, who is a liability in the outfield and was terrible in the post-season at the plate. A no pop, bad field, over the hill left-fielder is a bad fit for a team trying to win the championship. I'd rather see the Cardinals give a youngster a shot, or else go out and sign someone else, nearly anyone else. I don't know why I have this antipathy toward Sanders, because from all I've heard he's a good guy and a good teammate. But I just think he's a guy who has always "looked" like a baseball player, he just isn't as good as he looks.

Probably more to come, as the Cards still need to sign a second baseman. Robbie Alomar?

Best and Worst Presidents Ever?

Polipundit is doing a survey. My votes, Lincoln (of course) for best President, Jimmy Carter (eeek!) for worst.

Bush I and Clinton

W has named Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush to lead the effort to solicit private donations for disaster relief for Southeast Asia tsunami victims. This is brilliant politically, because it coopts in Clinton the de facto leader of the Democratic Party (then, now and, I suspect, for as long as he lives), wrapping it up in a neat bow of bipartisanship with his father. It is also a spot-on statement of American values, namely, that other "governments" may give more -- they really won't once you factor in the cost of American military assistance -- but the American people, through private donations to charitable organizations, will once again be the great benefactors of the world's needy. But I hope and believe that it is mostly just W's accurate evaluation that these two Americans are the two individuals most likely to be able to succeed in marshaling large-scale giving from both heavy hitters and the average American.

It is also worth saying that the group that will be responsible for much of the giving will be American Christians, including Catholics, giving to benefit an area of the world where many, many of the victims are Muslim. American Christians (and Catholics) will thus in the past ten years have played a huge role in saving hundreds of thousands of Muslims from genocide in Bosnia, liberating 50 million Muslims from fascist tyranny in Afghanistan and Iraq, and saving tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of Muslims from starvation or disease in the aftermath of the tsunami. Great Satan, huh? More like an instrument of God's mercy. Not that this will be reported by our own mainstream media, for whom American Christians are the great unwashed masses.

You can donate to Catholic Relief Services at their webpage.

Tsunami

I haven't blogged on the tsunami story on the theory that those who are there on the ground have either so much more to say or else so much more to do. My pittance of words can't add much to the ongoing sadness. The political angle -- the Europeans' brief foray into bashing America as "stingy" -- seems trivial. As always, the talking heads miss the reality. Give money, sure, but what do you do with it then? Buy food, buy fresh water, buy medical supplies? Okay, sure, if it's available, but even if it is, where do you get the shipping to get it there, where do you get the manpower to unload it, where do you get trucks to carry it to where it needs to get, what do you do if the roads are washed out too, what do you do if there are no roads to begin with, how do you make sure the medical supplies go to the people who need them and not into funding some slush fund for a tribal warlord or corrupt government bureaucrat (including corrupt UN bureaucrats), what do you do if the hardest hit places are remote from any usable airstrip, what do you do if your available helicopters aren't enough to carry the sheer volume of materiel you need, etc., etc., etc. And... from your cushy New York or Washington or Paris salons, consider... even if everything works perfectly, the world is big and time ticks, ticks, ticks. The reality is that logistics... moving X amount of necessary materiel through Y amount of space in Z amount of time... puts limits on the amount of charity we can give. People are going to die. We wish we could save them all. We can't. It's a natural disaster. No one is at fault, many are acting heroically to save who they can, everyone should stop the blame game. It's an act of God: there's no liability to anyone.

Godspeed.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to everyone out there in blogland. Here's wishing you a wonderful and prosperous 2005. Some of my 2005 wishes:

1. A safe inaugural for President Bush. He's earned it.
2. A powerful statement of democratic principles in his inaugural address. It will be nice to hear someone say what should be obvious -- that the U.S. is the greatest force for good in the history of the planet.
3. A safe (relatively) election in Iraq, and growing prosperity and freedom for the Iraqi heroes who will brave many threats to vote.
4. A growing democratic movement in the Palestinian Authority.
5. Demonstrations in Iran for democracy.
6. Movement toward the West by Syria and Libya.
7. Movement toward the West by Belarus, etc., in the wake of the Ukraine's election.
8. Movement toward the West by the UN.... just kidding!
9. Real Social Security reform.
10. Another tax cut.
11. Dow 13,000.
12. A pro-life Supreme Court nominee.
13. Bill Frist takes on the filibusterers in the Democratic Senate caucus.
14. Packers in the Super Bowl.
15. Blue Devils in the Final Four.
16. Cardinals in the World Series.
17. Academy Award for The Passion of the Christ.