Posted 9:32 AM by Robert

Letting Go Of Abu Ghraib

This Washington Times editorial gets the media fixation on Abu Ghraib exactly right:

Accounts and graphic photos of Iraqi prisoner abuse persist in the press despite the fact that the story has run its course. The world already knows salient details of the prisoner humiliation and nudity, the causes of the abuse are under official investigation, and the courts-martial have begun. Yet, the caterwaul in the press against the American military and the war in Iraq continue.

Even today, the Washington Post is showing more icky nude photos and the Associated Press breathlessly informs us that prisoners were "fondled."

Why won't the media let go? Much of the explanation surely lies in the sterling excuse for running nude pictures (images! remember, this whole story is supposedly driven by the shocking images!) of nude men in sexual humiliation. In other words, the mainstream media editors are able to be pornographers without having to accept the lowly social positions of pornographers. Of course they want to continue long after the points have been made.

Then there is the political content. There is the simple fact - noted here previously - that both the general war on terror and the domestic economy are going the President's way (and, generally, the Republican way) as election issues for November. One can sense the joy in mainstream media reports of the decline in the President's approval ratings over Abu Ghraib, just as one can feel the corresponding frustration, even anger, over his continuing lead in almost every poll over his Democratic competitor - the one for whom the reporter writing the mainstream media story will almost certainly vote.

But the public is bored, and some media are getting the point. Even the front page of today's Los Angeles Times carries not a single Abu Ghraib story.

Give it up, guys. If people want pornography, there are better places on the net. And the prospect of driving a successful president from office with some pictures of Iraqi prisoner abuse was always fanciful and desperate, at best.

Posted 10:21 AM by Robert

But What Will Warren Buffett Say?

According to the Seattle Times, Craig McCaw, Bill Gates and Michael Dell are all Republicans:

The Bush backers said they support the president for his stands on education, setting limits on lawsuits, visas for foreign workers and free trade. Former Microsoft executive Bob Herbold said Bush was the "spiritual force" behind a tax credit that has spurred research and development. Peter Neupert, chairman of Drugstore.com, said he supports Bush's decision to back electronic access to consumer health records.

Dell Computers founder Michael Dell was scheduled to attend but was stuck in traffic and missed the endorsement announcement. He was expected along with the others for a $250-a-person fund-raiser of Bush "Mavericks," the campaign's organization for donors under 40.

Through the end of March, employees of computer and Internet-related companies had given $1.4 million to Bush and $779,000 to Kerry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan Washington think tank. The ratio is similar to 2000, when Bush collected $1.2 million from the industry, about double what Democrat Al Gore received. ....

Herbold, a longtime Republican activist whose wife, Pat Herbold, chairs the King County GOP, said the tech industry has begun to lean more Republican over the past five or six years. Microsoft founder Bill Gates was swayed four years ago when his company was under attack by the Justice Department of Democrat Bill Clinton, Herbold said.

"It became clear in the presidential election of 2000 that the company as well as the industry would be better off with a free marketplace, and that's what caused him (Gates) to come out strongly in favor of George W. Bush," Herbold said.

All Gates wanted to do was operate in a free-enterprise system, and "there's no party that supports the free-enterprise system like the Republican Party," Herbold said.

Gates has donated to Bush's re-election.

Posted 8:57 AM by Robert

Daschle Descending X: Tom Goes For Broke, But This Time The South Dakotans Aren't Buying

The South Dakota Argus Leader reports:

Democratic Sen. Tom Daschle's lead over Republican challenger John Thune has dropped from seven points in February to what may be a statistical dead heat... Daschle ... holds a 49-47 edge over former three-term congressman Thune, the poll conducted for the Argus Leader and KELO-TV of Sioux Falls showed. Only 4 percent of those contacted said they were undecided in a race ... A similar poll in February showed Daschle with a 50-43 advantage and 7 percent undecided....

....A political science professor from Aberdeen , ... Ken Blanchard, said ... "[Daschle's] an incumbent with a presence in the state, and he's been around long enough that everybody knows him pretty well." ...

Daschle's campaign released a poll it had taken last week that showed the incumbent senator with a 55-42 advantage. The polling firm, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research ... has numerous Democratic clients listed on its Web site.

With the real campaign likely to begin shortly after the special congressional election vote June 1, Daschle said he likes his position, and his campaign's poll numbers. "Polling from my campaign shows me with a sizeable and growing lead," he said. " ... He said the poll showed him claiming as much as 29 percent of the GOP vote. .... The Argus Leader-KELO poll placed Daschle's share of Republicans at 15 percent. It showed Thune with 8 percent of Democrat votes. The independent vote split 57-39 for Daschle.

Thune, who has been raising money and traveling the state but not advertising on television yet, said the poll numbers show him gaining support. .... Thune said he chose not to begin the public campaigning until June because he thinks people grew weary of the extended campaign with Johnson two years ago. ....

Northern University's Blanchard says ... "My guess is, most South Dakota voters, if they sat down and asked themselves 'What do I personally owe to Tom Daschle's position as a Senate leader,' they'd have to say, 'I don't know,' " ...

If Democrat Stephanie Herseth wins the open U.S. House seat, all three congressional posts in a solidly Republican state would belong to Democrats. ... Asked in the poll how the possibility of three Democrats would affect their decision on Daschle's re-election, 10 percent said it would make them more likely to support him, 25 percent said less likely and 64 percent said it would not affect their decision.

Here are the results for the recent Mason Dixon South Dakota Senate polls (MoE ± 3.5), reflecting the effects of the many millions of dollars Senator Daschle has already spent on campaign advertising:

"If the 2004 election for South Dakota's U.S. Senate seat were held today, for whom would you vote if the candidates were Tom Daschle, the Democrat, and John Thune, the Republican?"

............................Daschle(D).............Thune (R)..................Not Sure
..............................%....................... %....................... %
5/10-12/04.................... 49..................... 47....................... 4
2/5-7/04.......................50..................... 43....................... 7
10-11/03....................... 50.................... 44....................... 6
8/03........................... 48.................... 46....................... 6

So, let's see. Tom Daschle has spent millions on campaign advertising in a state that already knows him thoroughly before the "real campaign" begins or Mr. Thune has run ads. Mr. Daschle has thereby succeeded in losing a bit of support and is now again below the 50% mark. Turnout in the November race, as in most races, will be driven by the top of the ballot - in this case, the Presidential race. And nobody doubts that South Dakota will go thoroughly Republican in the Presidential race. By a ratio of 2.5-to-1 voters will be less likely to vote for Senator Daschle if the Congressional seat goes to the Democrat on June 1. Is it just me, or is all this beginning to sound like a chanted passage from Senator Daschle's own personal political Book of the Dead?

Posted 2:30 PM by Robert

Pathetic ... And Bound To Lose XLIII: Back To The Races

As noted previously in this series, Senator Kerry seems to be having a bit of a hard time mastering the art of national Democratic identity politics, as large parts of several essential ethnic groups - native Americans, Hispanics, African Americans - threaten to go wandering off the Democratic plantation.

Now, wouldn't you know it, it's the jews:

Stuart Weil is ... a longtime Democrat who regularly attends synagogue. Four years ago, he voted for Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore. This year, not only does he plan to vote for President Bush, he's urging his Jewish friends to do the same. .... Weil and thousands of other AIPAC members welcomed Bush to their annual meeting with 21 standing ovations.... Bush won about 17% of the Jewish vote in 2000, but supporters are aiming to raise that to about 30% in this election, based largely on his support for Israel.

"By defending the freedom and prosperity and security of Israel, you're also serving the cause of America," Bush told the AIPAC delegates Tuesday.

His 39-minute speech was interrupted repeatedly with cheering and applause. On two occasions, at least a third of the audience burst into chants of "Four more years!" .... Steven Windmueller, an expert on Jewish voting behavior at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles, agreed that Jewish voters were becoming less liberal, but he said the pattern was more complex than Republican strategists assumed. .... Since Bush came into office, his administration has made a concerted effort to court the Jewish community .... Moreover, Jewish leaders have had extraordinary access to the president.... "My impression was of a very human and humble individual who wanted to dialogue and not lecture, to share and not pontificate," said Jacob Rubenstein, chief rabbi at Young Israel in Scarsdale, N.Y., who attended one session in the Oval Office last fall. ....

One of the few polls of Jewish public opinion suggests some movement toward Bush. The survey, conducted last November and December for the American Jewish Committee and Foreign Affairs magazine, found that 24% of respondents said they had voted for Bush in 2000, and 31% said they planned to support him this fall. But the poll is unlikely to be an accurate gauge of voter behavior because it surveyed all adults identifying themselves as Jewish, not just those registered to vote or likely to vote. ....

Weil ... thinks otherwise. But his efforts to form a local branch of the Republican Jewish Coalition are stirring opposition among Jews in his community. "Oh, the hate mail I've been getting," he said. "You should see what they say."

And this kind of thing isn't going to help the Democratic effort.

UPDATE: Worse and worse:

"There is a strong fear among American Jewish leadership that the whispering campaign that 'the Jews started it,' will become public," a senior congressional staffer said. "We could be seeing others get on Hollings' bandwagon."

"Bush felt tax cuts would hold his crowd together and spreading democracy in the Mideast to secure Israel would take the Jewish vote from the Democrats," Hollings said in a column first published on May 6 in the Charleston Post and Courier. "You don't come to town and announce your Israel policy is to invade Iraq." ....

For his part, Hollings said Israel has never claimed that Iraq maintained a weapons of mass destruction arsenal. The senator, who later refused to retract his statements, said Wolfowitz's advocacy of a plan to promote democracy among Arab states comprised an Israeli initiative.

"With Iraq no threat, why invade a sovereign country?" Hollings asked. "The answer: President Bush's policy to secure Israel. Led by Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Charles Krauthammer, for years there has been a domino school of thought that the way to guarantee Israel's security is to spread democracy in the area."

It is only a matter of time before the cries begin that John Kerry has an obligation to denounce Senator Hollings' outrageous comments - for which he offers not one jot of evidence to support. Do Democrats think that they are helping John Kerry's presidential effort with unsupported arguments that "Bush lied! He and his people really wanted to help Israel, the dirty S.O.B.'s - but they didn't tell us that!

Isn't the Hollings approach a sure-fire way to convince American jews - indeed, people from all walks - that Bush has been a more committed friend of Israel than they had thought - and that many Democrats are a lot more untrustworthy, anti-semitic and anti-Israel than anyone thought? Is that good for the Democrats? Doesn't a ride on the Hollings' bandwagon require the Democrats to buy one-way tickets to oblivion?

POSTSCRIPT: And here's the most recent House of Ketchup roundup.

Posted 1:55 PM by Robert

Pathetic ... And Bound To Lose XLII: John Kerry Tries To Waltz And Lambada At The Same Time!

Conventional is, of course, always murmuring low that a Democratic candidate may win the nomination by tacking to the left, but to hope for a win in the general election he had better tack back to the center. Ralph Nader has a fine understanding of that process, doesn't like the "centrist" Democrats it produces, and is running for President on a platform far to the left of center largely to spite that process. But John Kerry says he intends to directly appeal to Mr. Nader's voting base:

"It's my intention to speak very directly to those people who voted for Ralph Nader last time. ... I believe my campaign can appeal to them and frankly reduce any rationale for his candidacy. ... In the end, I hope I can make people aware that a vote for Ralph Nader is a vote for George Bush. ... A vote for John Kerry is a vote for the principles and values they care about."

In making his effort Senator Kerry knows that at least one argument will not work at all: Mr. Nader and his followers have shown themselves to be completely immune to the argument that their Nader votes frustrate efforts to turn out Mr. Bush. Nader and his supporters simply don't see any particular difference that they care about between a Bush presidency and that of a centrist-corrupted Democrat like Al Gore or John Kerry, should he tack to the center. Indeed, it's not only Mr. Nader's supporters who view Messrs. Bush and Kerry as Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum. This Fox News editorial pretty much sees them that way, too.

So John Kerry's promise to intention to speak very directly to those people who voted for Ralph Nader means that he will not tack to the center, correct?

Well, maybe. But then what to make of all the silly Vice Presidential speculation about the poll out Wednesday that supposedly suggests that John Kerry could be "competitive" in North Carolina if Sen. John Edwards were on the Democratic ticket? Does Senator Kerry hope that John Edwards will bring in North Carolina if the Kerry campaign is out fulfilling the Senator's intention to speak very directly to those people who voted for Ralph Nader?

Let's see. Waltz and Lambada? Ah one, and ah two, and ah three ...

Posted 10:26 AM by Robert

Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me

Many media reports note that the Sex and the City paradigm - more young, single urban women than men - is a myth. In fact, there are substantially more such men than women. Yet my personal circle includes a substantially larger number of attractive, unmarried, educated, pretty successful, single women who want to get married (or say they do) than such men. And most of my friends and acquaintances of whom I have asked the question seem to have the same observation.

It's perplexing - until one excludes from the equation people of both sexes who say they want to be married but who have obviously structured their lives and mate-parameters to make marriage a ridiculously low probability. Then things seem to make more sense.

For example, a common Southern California male species is the man who does not so much want to be married as divorced with children, regardless of whether he has ever been married. Or at least the kind of man who has structured his mind and life to admit almost no other possibility. Of course, the most common form of this species is the actual divorced father - whose wife is given primary custody (either de jure or de facto) of the children, thereby reducing the father/child relationship to a kind of glorified uberuncle/niece-nephew pairing that seems to fit many such fathers just fine. They have children (once in a while), which is nice even though the cost in financial and emotional terms (ex-spouse, resentful, angry kids) is pretty high. Apparently, the cost is worth it for many such fathers. On the plus side, there are the new girl friends who are often chosen to have an educational and social level (even ethnicity) unacceptable to the father's family and circle of friends - thereby minimizing the inevitable pressure on the father to remarry.

If a man can establish a close relationship with actual nieces and nephews, he might even avoid the costs almost entirely. In that case he has to settle for children with a diluted genetic content, which evolution may deplore and which may be less satisfying emotionally than having his own emotionally attenuated offspring. But, then, there are sociobiologists who posit that this is exactly what bachelor uncles have always been for from an evolutionary standpoint.

From a personal perspective, much of the reason for such lifestyle parameters among men is often to expand the circle of women with which one may have sex. The more educated and financially successful and unfettered a man is, the broader his sexual horizons of womankind. Indeed, many hyper-educated, hyper-talented, rich men are more than pleased to dally with women of much less education, success, talent and money. Such marriages are not unusual. Indeed, the phenomenon of physically attractive but worthless heirs is a traditional common consequence of such male proclivities.

But if men view their education and success as opening for them ever broader vistas of sexual opportunities, the exact opposite seems to be the case for women, at least to the extent women were represented by participants in a colloquium at which the paper "The Growing Gender Gaps in College Enrollment and Degree Attainment in the U.S. and Their Potential Economic and Social Consequences" was presented, according to Wendy McElroy:

[T]he concern of the colloquium participants was a growing trend of women marrying men who were less educated and earned less money than they did. Minority women expressed the greatest concern Â? and with reason. According to the Sum study, Â?in 1999-2000, for every 100 degrees awarded to Black men, Black women were awarded 188 associate degrees, 192 bachelor degrees, and 221 masterÂ?s degrees.Â? Hispanic women earned nearly 130 degrees for every 100 awarded to Hispanic men. Sum concluded that highly educated women would have to consider "marrying down." He labeled the prospect as "a serious economic and cultural problem."

Ms. McElroy's observations are consistent with a personal anecdote. Recently, over dinner, a slender, beautiful, young, intelligent. educated, securities sales woman employed by one of the big New York investment banks shared with me her concerns following the break-up of her long-term relationship with a wealthy young Southern California male. After reviewing with her the various criteria she had established for a future replacement main squeeze, we together did some quick probabilistic calculations of the type those in or close to the securities business are prone to perform during their more intimate moments. The calculations took into account, for example, the fact that there was absolutely no chance that she would be interested in even the best looking, most congenial fireman one could imagine. Nor was she interested in "poaching" on the already-married or near-equivalent. Gay was no-go, of course. Etc. After some fast work on a note pad and calculator thoughtfully provided by the restaurant (whose napkins were of the expensive damask variety not suitable for scribbling except for the most aggressive) we determined that there are, perhaps, eight men now located in the United States who would make suitable mates.

My charming dinner companion passed on dessert.