BLAMMO

The Navy says they were an eyelash away from blasting Iranian boats out of the water early Sunday morning. Ralph "Where you cannot be loved, you must be feared" Peters says they should have done so.

Sunday's incident wasn't a one-off event improvised by the local yokels after a long Saturday night at the hookah bar. It was blessed and carefully planned in Tehran and had practical as well as political goals.

At the tactical level, the Revolutionary Guards' naval arm was testing our responses: How soon do the American weapons radars activate? At what range do the lasers begin to track targets? How close can a small vessel get to a major American warship? How do the Americans respond to possible mines? Can we use phony mines to steer them into real ones? How long does it take an American commander to make a decision? Above all: Does an American commander have the courage to make a decision on his own? When he doesn't have time to deflect responsibility onto his superiors?

And it wasn't just some madrassa dropout with salt spray on his glasses scribbling notes on the lead Iranian boat. On shore, the Iranians would've had all their intelligence facilities tuned in to map our electronic profile as our ships prepared to defend themselves. Rent-a-Russian military experts would've been on hand to assist with the newest gear purchased from Moscow.

The Iranians may even have had an escalation plan, in case we opened fire. President Ahmedinejad and his posse may seem contemptible to Washington, but the Iranians think several moves ahead of us: We play checkers, they play chess.

On Sunday, the Iranians tested us. We failed. They'll probe us again. And every time we fail to react decisively, we raise the number of future US casualties.

Remember the USS Cole? You bet the Iranians do. They plan to better that attack by an order of magnitude.

Tactically, if we had blasted them, the Iranians would have learned just as much as if we had not. But strategically, they would have learned something very important for them to know about our willingness to respond to antagonism.

We should have sunk every one of them. Not because we're warmongers. But because the Iranians had made threats, verbal and physical, that amounted to acts of war. When will we learn that resolute action taken early saves vast amounts of blood and treasure later?

Oh, from Washington's perspective we did the right thing by "exercising restraint." But Washington's perspective doesn't amount to a gum wrapper in a gutter. What matters is what the Iranians think.

They now believe that the Bush administration, our military and the entire United States are afraid of them.

Aren't we?

IS THE INTERNET GOOD FOR WRITERS?

Ten professional writers answered that question. Following are some excerpts.

Mark Amerika

The short answer is yes, but as I suggest in my new book, META/DATA, we probably need to expand the concept of writing to take into account new forms of online communication as well as emerging styles of digital rhetoric. This means that the educational approach to writing is also becoming more complex, because it's not just one (alphabetically oriented) literacy that informs successful written communication but a few others as well, most notably visual design literacy and computer/networking literacy.

Erik Davis

Many of the changes in the book industry and print publications are more obviously related to the rise of the internet. One of the worst developments for me has been the increasing brevity of print pieces, something I do blame largely on the fast-moving, novelty-driven blip culture of the internet and the blogosphere. When I started writing for music magazines, I wrote 2000-plus-word articles about (then) relatively obscure bands like Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. Now I write 125-word reviews for Blender. I don't even try to play the game of penning celebrity-driven profiles in mainstream music mags anymore, where feature lengths have shrunk all around and the topics seem more driven by the publicists.

Shrinking space has definitely worked against my job satisfaction. ...

I'm really sick of opinions and of most of what passes for online debate. Even the more artful rhetorical elements of argument and debate are rarely seen amidst the food fights, the generic argumentative “moves,” the poor syntax, and the often lame attempts to bring a “fresh take” to a topic. This is not an encouraging environment from which to speak from the heart or the soul or whatever it is that makes living, breathing prose an actual source of sustenance and spiritual strength.

Mark Dery

Who, exactly, is making a living shoveling prose online? Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds? Jason Kottke? Josh Marshall? To the best of my knowledge, only a vanishingly tiny number of bloggers are able to eke out an existence through their blogging, much less turn a healthy profit.

For now, visions of getting rich through self-publishing look a lot like envelope-stuffing for the cognitive elite — or at least for insomniacs with enough time and bandwidth to run their legs to stumps in their electronic hamster wheels, posting and answering comments 24/7. As a venerable hack toiling in the fields of academe, I love the idea of being King of All Media without even wearing pants, which is why I hope that some new-media wonk like Jason Calacanis or Jeff Jarvis finds the Holy Grail of self-winding journalism — i.e., figuring out how to make online writing self-supporting.

Meanwhile, the sour smell of fear is in the air. Reporting — especially investigative reporting, the lifeblood of a truly adversarial press — is labor-intensive, money-sucking stuff, yet even The New York Times can't figure out how to charge for its content in the Age of Rip, Burn, and Remix. To be sure, newspapers are hemorrhaging readers to the Web, and fewer and fewer Americans care about current events and the world outside their own skulls. But the other part of the problem is that Generation Download thinks information wants to be free, everywhere and always, even if some ink-stained wretch wept tears of blood to create it. ...

As someone who once survived (albeit barely) as a freelancer, I can say with some authority that the freelance writer is going the way of the Quagga. Well, at least one species of freelance writer: the public intellectual who writes for a well-educated, culturally literate reader whose historical memory doesn't begin with Dawson's Landing. ...

Also, information overload and time famine encourage a sort of flat, depthless style, indebted to online blurblets, that's spreading like kudzu across the landscape of American prose. (The English, by contrast, preserve a smarter, more literary voice online, rich in character; not for nothing are Andrew Sullivan and Christopher Hitchens two of the web's best stylists.) I can't read people like Malcolm Gladwell, whose bajillion-selling success is no surprise when you consider that he aspires to a sort of in-flight magazine weightlessness, just the sort of thing for anxious middle managers who want it all explained for them in the space of a New York-to-Chicago flight. The English language dies screaming on the pages of Gladwell's books, and between the covers of every other bestseller whose subtitle begins, "How..." ...

I dearly loathe Jarvis's implication that all writing, online or off, should sound like water-cooler conversation; that content is all that matters; that foppish literati should stop sylphing around and submit to the tyranny of the pyramid lead; and that any mind that can't squeeze its thoughts into bullet points should just die. This is the beige, soul-crushing logic of the PowerPoint mind. What will happen, I wonder, when we have to write for the postage-stamp screen of the iPhone? The age of IM prose is waiting in the wings...

We're drowning in yak, and it's getting harder and harder to hear the insightful voices through all the media cacophony. Oscar Wilde would be just another forlorn blogger out on the media asteroid belt in our day, constantly checking his SiteMeter's Average Hits Per Day and Average Visit Length.

Also, the Digital Age puts the middlebrow masses on the bleeding edge. ...

we live in times of chaos and complexity, and the future of writing and reading is deeply uncertain. Reading and writing are solitary activities. The web enables us to write in public and, maybe one day, strike off the shackles of cubicle hell and get rich living by our wits. Sometimes I think we're just about to turn that cultural corner. Then I step onto the New York subway, where most of the car is talking nonstop on cellphones. Time was when people would have occupied their idle hours between the covers of a book. No more. We've turned the psyche inside out, exteriorizing our egos, extruding our selves into public space and filling our inner vacuums with white noise.

Adam Parfrey

The internet has made research much easier, which is both good and bad. It's good not to be forced to go libraries to fact check and throw together bibliographic references. But it's bad not to be forced to do this, since it diminishes the possibility of accidental discovery. Physically browsing on library stacks and at used bookstores can lead to extraordinary discoveries. One can also discover extraordinary things online, too, but the physical process of doing so is somehow more personally gratifying.

The internet has both broadened and limited audiences for books at the same time. People outside urban centers can now find offbeat books that personally intrigue them. But the interest in physical books overall seems diminished by the satiation of curiosity by a simple search on the internet, and the distraction of limitless data smog.

I like the internet and computers for their ability to make writers of nearly everyone. I don't like the internet and computers for their ability to make sloppy and thoughtless writers of nearly everyone.

Douglas Rushkoff

I'd say that it's great for writing as a cultural behavior, but maybe not for people who made their livings creating text. There's a whole lot more text out there, and only so much time to read all this stuff. People spend a lot of their time reading text on screens, and don't necessarily want to come home and read text on a page after that. Reading a hundred emails is really enough daily reading for anyone.

The book industry isn't what it used to be, but I don't blame that on the internet. It's really the fault of media conglomeration. Authors are no longer respected in the same way, books are treated more like magazines with firm expiration dates, and writers who simply write really well don't get deals as quickly as disgraced celebrities or get-rich-quick gurus.

This makes it harder for writers to make a living writing. To write professionally means being able to craft sentences and paragraphs and articles and books that communicate as literature. Those who care about such things should rise to the top.

But I think many writers — even good ones — will have to accept the fact that books can be loss-leaders or break-even propositions in a highly mediated world where showing up in person generates the most income.

John Shirley

A recent study suggested that young people read approximately half as much as young people did before the advent of the internet and videogames. While there are enormous bookstores, teeming with books, chain stores and online book dealing now dominate the book trade and it may be that there are fewer booksellers overall. A lot of fine books are published but, on the whole, publishers push for the predictable profit far more than they used to, which means they prefer predictable books. Editors are no longer permitted to make decisions on their own. They must consult marketing departments before buying a book. Book production has become ever more like television production: subordinate to trendiness, and the anxiety of executives.

And in my opinion this is partly because a generation intellectually concussed by the impact of the internet and other hyperactive, attention-deficit media, is assumed, probably rightly, to want superficial reading.

I know people earnestly involved in producing dramas for iPod download and transmission to iPhones. Obviously, productions of that sort are oriented to small images in easy-to-absorb bites. Episodes are often only a few minutes long. Or even shorter. Broadband drama, produced to be seen on the internet, is also attention-deficit-oriented. I've written for episodic television and have known the frustration of writers told to cut their "one hour" episodes down to 42 minutes, so that more commercials can be crammed in. Losing ten minutes of drama takes a toll on the writing of a one hour show — just imagine the toll taken by being restricted to three-minute episodes. Story development becomes staccato, pointlessly violent (because that translates well to the form), childishly melodramatic, simple minded to the extreme. ...

Same goes for blogs. They'd better be short thoughts or — for the most part — few will trouble to read them. The internet is always tugging at you to move on, surf on, check this and that, talk to three people at once. How do you maintain long thoughts, how do you stretch out intellectually, in those conditions? Sometimes at places like The Well, perhaps, people are more thoughtful. But in general, online readers are prone to be attention challenged.

Michael Simmons

Telephonic communication was quicker and easier. ...

The world of LOL and iirc and this hideous perpetual junior high language has not encouraged quality-lit. Have you looked at my former employer the L.A. Weekly lately? It's created by illiterates promoting bad and overpriced music, art, film, etc. There's a glut of so-called writers and if they're 22 and have big tits, many editors will give them work before I get any. It's no coincidence that my payments and assignments for freelancing have diminished in the last 8 years. ...

Everything was better before this glut of machinery entered my life. It's quadrupled my monthly bills and swamps me with useless information.

No, it hasn't fired my imagination but, yes, I can't get no satisfaction.

Edward Champion

While it is true that this great speed has come at the expense of long-form pieces and even months-long reporting, I believe the very limitations of this current system are capable of creating ambition rather than stifling it.

If the internet was committing some kind of cultural genocide for any piece of writing that was over twenty pages, why then has the number of books published increased over the past fifteen years?

The Internet is forcing some old dogs to learn new tricks. That is what America is all about, what America does better than other countries, and why American content dominates the Web. Is the Internet good for writers? Good for some. But that misses the point: the Internet is good for readers.

HILLARY WEEPS FOR ME

I heard that Hillary teared up and had a human moment today. I just watched it. If that was her human moment, she is more robotic than anyone gives her credit for. As soon as she became aware of her moment of weakness, she was back on her talking points like a hound on a mailman, but trying to maintain the sympathetic weariness that had worked for that brief moment. Bill could have pulled it off. That must really frustrate her. And him.

HAPPY

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Americans are happy...

More than 8 in 10 Americans say they are satisfied with their personal lives at this time, including a solid majority who say they are "very satisfied."

...and I am the happiest of all.

Republicans, married adults, those residing in higher income households, parents of young children, those attending church weekly, and whites are most likely to say they are satisfied and happy at this time.

The percentage of Americans who say they are somewhat or very satisfied with their lives has been relatively stable over the last 30 years of polling, varying between 73% (July 1979) and 88% (December 2004), and very stable since exiting the recession of the early 1990s.

Republicans (90%) are more satisfied than Democrats (82%, government better close the gap) and Independents (81%, determined not to be too happy or too unhappy).

Conventional wisdom is wrong again: money can buy happiness. Households with $75,000+ in annual income are more satisfied (96%, quite happy) than those with $30,000-$75,000 (84%) or <$30,000 (72%).

Married types are more satisfied (88% to 78%) and happier (95% to 91%) than unmarrieds.

Whitey enjoys the biggest variance. 85% of whites are satisfied with their personal lives compared to 70% of blacks.

Of course, one might argue, as Abe Lincoln said, that "people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." But easy for him to say, he was a white, married, financially secure churchgoer.

CLEMENS/McNAMEE PHONE CALL

Brian McNamee seems to idolize Roger Clemens. Every time Roger said that he wanted to tell the truth, McNamee never apologized for what he said. If what McNamee said was untrue it would seem that somewhere in there McNamee would have apologized, instead he asked Clemens what he wanted him to do. He said that he would go to jail for Roger. That is crucial, because the only way he would go to jail is by recanting his testimony. It sounded like he was asking Clemens if he wanted him to take the fall.

Also, McNamee said that he would fly in the next day and talk face to face. He also volunteered to come to the press conference today when Clemens mentioned that he was going to tell the truth. He obviously wants to patch up his relationship up with Clemens and would have done anything to do so.

There was something else said in the Wallace interview last night that was interesting.

Wallace: Why would Brian McNamee want to betray you?
Clemens: You know, I don't know. I'm so upset about it, how I treated this man and took care of him.
Wallace: I imagine he's watching the two of us right now. Wouldn't you?
Clemens: I hope he is.
Wallace: OK. Anything you want to tell him?
Clemens: Yeah. I treated him fairly, I treated him great as anybody else, I helped him out.

“How I treated this man and took care of him” is an interesting phrase. It sounds sort of like the Godfather upset over Senate select committee testimony. Is he asking McNamee to come forward and pay him back for all that great treatment? During the phone call McNamee said that Roger treated him better than other people. He came off a little sycophantic even.

I think it shows the nature of a celebrity/commoner relationship in our society. Celebs are use to idolatry and plebs are use to doing anything to be in a portion of the spotlight. McNamee was scared of the prosecutors and told them everything to stay out of jail, but a phone call from Clemens brought McNamee back into that celebrity glow and was ready to do anything to stay in good with Roger.

Also, I think McNamee may have been a little surprised by Clemens reaction to the news, especially with Pettite coming forward. He initiated the conversation by texting Roger that his son was dying and the initial part of the conversation was McNamee telling Roger his problems, one bedroom apartment, wife and kids left him etc. He was asking Roger to forgive him for the testimony but he didn’t do so like a man that had lied, but as a man who hoped that Clemens understood and wasn’t angry with him.

The main thing about Clemens telling his side that grabs me is that Clemens says he is angry not because of the HOF, which he doesn’t give “a rat’s ass” about, but that he cares too much about his health to have put these things in his body. I think what Clemens is implicitly saying is that he knows that taking these substances are wrong and taints the game. For all the people who say that Bonds or Clemens would be in the HOF anyway, the players themselves know that they shouldn’t have done it and it bothers them to have their names associated with it.

I hope that Clemens is innocent, but nothing today or yesterday convinced me that he is.

THE GREATEST STORY NEVER TOLD

War is fluid. Strategies and tactics evolve. We are winning in Iraq a war that could not be won, and now that we are winning, we hear nothing about it.

In Iraq, as military and security conditions continue to improve, American war politics enters one of its stranger moments in our history. Certainly it is historically odd for war reporting to diminish almost to the point of public invisibility -- just as our troops are starting to gain the upper hand. But we are fighting this war with the journalists we have, not the ones we want.

However, although the media maintained a virtual radio silence once things started going our way, the public has come to recognize the military success. Typical of recent polling is the Pew Research Center poll from Nov. 27, which shows that about half the country thinks the military effort is going very or fairly well (up from 30 percent). The public is also substantially more optimistic than it was in recent years that we are reducing civilian casualties, preventing civil war, defeating insurgents, preventing terrorist bases and rebuilding infrastructure. ...

In politics, it is usually the case that when your opponents stop talking about an issue, you must be winning with the public on it. Following that almost iron rule of political communication and in light of the fact that the anti-war Democrats have virtually stopped talking about the war, they must think it is no longer a winner for them. ...

Assuming we succeed in establishing a stable government in Iraq that is hostile to terrorists and respectful of the United States and the legitimate order of the world -- and while we aren't there yet, we now have good grounds to expect such an end -- I believe a strong case can be made for the value of not only finishing the war now but also, even based on what we now know, for having decided to fight it in the first place. ...

On the credit side, we eliminated a vicious anti-American regime and aborted any future plans they might have had for developing nuclear weapons. We intimidated Libya to give up its surprisingly advanced nuclear program. And if the recent National Intelligence Estimate is to be believed, Iran happened to give up its nuclear program just at the moment that a few hundred thousand American troops occupied Baghdad -- conveniently close to Iran.

These geopolitical facts are precisely evidence of the larger strategic purpose of the war. As I argued in August 2002, in a column in which I predicted that this war would unleash vast hostility against us, I endorsed Henry Kissinger's argument for the war that we had to demonstrate that a terrorist challenge to us produces catastrophic consequences for not only its perpetrators but also its tacit supporters. "We had to break the will and pride of all those in the Islamic world who would dare terrorize us and the international system."

Bin Laden said it best. His people will follow the strong horse. If, after ears of stumbling and bumbling, the enduring strength and eventual wisdom of the American people can enter into the belly of the Islamist world, overturn tyrants, empower the Muslim people with peaceable and prosperous ways and intimidate two Islamist nuclear aspirants to renounce their pretensions, we will show ourselves to be the strong horse. Thereby we will hasten the day when the terrorist pretensions will fall on deaf Muslim ears and the threat of Islamist terrorism will begin to recede.

We have it almost in our hands to gain the first strategic psychological victory in the "war on terror" -- and that will have been worth the suffering and the loss.

Where we cannot be loved, we must be feared. They will follow the strong horse.

There is a lot of good news that could be coming out of Iraq if anyone would report it. And the economic stability at home -- through 9/11, energy prices, war, a falling dollar, etc. -- has been just this side of miraculous. Who knew? America must lose for Democrats to win. What a despicable party platform.

DAY OF RECKONING

Pat Buchanan argued in WHERE THE RIGHT WENT WRONG that your best bet to remain a superpower is to not squander your resources through such silliness as fighting foreign wars. Many of the Democrats' talking points have come straight from Buchanan.

Tony Blankley reviewed Pat's latest:

Where I disagree with Pat most strongly in this book (and with which I will deal in my next book, to be published in the summer) is his assertion that America can best protect itself by broadly withdrawing from the world, bringing our troops home from almost everywhere and letting the world unfold without our active intervention and management.

Nonetheless, 15 years ago, Pat was dismissed as a paleoconservative at the margin of American politics. It is a tribute to the power of his words and ideas -- exemplified by and reaching climax in "Day of Reckoning" -- that he now may well be pointing the way to the future policy of the American people and their government.

Buchanan is one of the better political writers I've read, and while I don't agree with all of what he says, I admire his clarity and spunk. I cannot say the same for most of what I hear and read in today's political discourse.

Where Pat agrees with most of his Republican compatriots is that they are all sounding a dour tone. Obama doesn't have much to say, but he carries a message of hope, and despite our voracious appetite for bad news and salacious headlines, American is fundamentally a land of hope, and Obama has been the only one speaking to that. Huckabee is tapping into that now, and you see the results. Hillary, Rudy, Johnny Puff, Romney, McCain - they are all telling me that the world is a nasty place full of trials and tribulations. Obama talks up hope. Unfortunately for him, a presidential candidate needs depth and substance as well, but the other candidates could learn a thing or two from his approach.

THAT WACKY GOP RACE

A case could be made that any of Guiliani, Huckabee, Romney, McCain or Thompson could get the nomination this year, although the latter two are longshots. Conventional wisdom, and Tony Blankley, say oh no. I say great.

The Republican Party primary so far has been an exercise in none of the above. In their turns, Sen. McCain, former Mayor Giuliani, former Sen. Thompson and former Gov. Romney seemed to be or seemed about to be front-runners -- only to fall back as the party's likely voters got a sharper look at each of them. Even my old boss Newt Gingrich, without even announcing, had a handsome surge from 4-5 percent to 18-20 percent in February -- before falling back to single digits.

Now former Gov. Huckabee -- for the moment surging to the front -- is on the receiving end of withering intraparty fire applied with a rhetorical violence usually reserved by Republican polemicists for a Clinton or a Kennedy. Just as social conservatives earlier this fall threatened (for a couple of weeks) to run a third-party candidate if Giuliani got the nomination, so Washington GOP elites are willing to misrepresent parts of what Huckabee has said and written in a savage effort to destroy any chance he might have of being elected.

It is as if each faction of the Grand Old Party feels a stronger passion to defeat its intraparty rival factions than to defeat the Democrats in November. This maximum instinct to deny victory within the party may be a sign of a philosophical rebirth (as in the Goldwater nomination and campaign of 1964), but it is also a sign of a party likely to lose the next general election. ...

I don't have a candidate yet. I either disagree with each on important points or have doubts about the electability of each. But most of all, I fear our intraparty fury will destroy all leaders and send us off to a brokered convention -- and from thence, probably to defeat. If the Democrats have their candidate by February and we are campaigning harshly until August, we surely would start in a deep hole.

Conventional wisdom says that not knowing who your candidate is until August would be way bad. But what the GOP needs is to generate interest and enthusiasm. The only Republican signs or bumper stickers I see these days, and only a couple of those, are Ron Paul stickers. He is the only guy people are not afraid to say they support, because he's not a mainstream Republican. Republican voters are laying low and staying quiet. Concentrating people's attention to the last few months of the campaign year, which is really when a lot of people start paying attention anyway, could be just what the GOP needs. All the enthusiasm is on the other side right now, but we are a long way from the election. Like heading into the playoffs, you want your team to be peaking at the right time, and by August won't we have already heard and seen more than enough of the Clintons?

Tony B. and I don't have a candidate yet. I would rather wait for a good one, tempered and molded by the process, than to try to coalesce around a bad one just to have it done.

BUCS LOSE

Going through piles in my office and finding lots of stuff I was supposed to blog on. Like this confirmation of the Pirates' upcoming 16th consecutive losing season:

October 1, 2007

Yesterday's attendance was 25,664, putting the overall season attendance at 1,749,142. The total was the second-lowest in the National League this year but the ninth-highest in franchise history.

The team finished 68-94 and drew its 9th highest crowd. They could spend another $50m and still not make the playoffs, so why bother? They'll just field a team and cry all the way to the bank. Maybe the new ownership will initiate the latest in a series of failed five-year plans to restore respectability.

CLEMENS ON 60 MINUTES

It sounds like Clemens is putting forward the idea that he thought he was getting Vitamin B-12, though he didn't make the connection specifically. He asks rhetorical questions about why it would have been a bad idea to do it.

Q. What penality should someone receive for using steroids?

A. It's a self-inflicted penalty. Your body breaks down.

Q Would you take a Lie Detector Test?

A. Some say they are good and some say they are bad.

He says he will probably never play again because of this mess.

Q. Do you think that people are going to believe you?

A. I think the people that know me believe me.

Will he testify before Congress?

HUCK

Early last year I blogged that certain economic conservatives would like to distance themselves from religious conservatives. I surmised that this would be a big mistake, because most of these voters could be absorbed into the Democrats with a slightly different message. Already 40% of Christians support Democrats. I think the Huckabee campaign shows that this is a probability in the coming years if the coalition splinters. He's not a conservative and religious voters do not care. In fact, the Huck campaign shows that whoever commands enough of the religious vote commands the nation. I think Steve has a good take on this too having recently visited a Christian bookstore

IRAQ ON PRIMARY EVE

To say the invasion of Iraq was a mistake is to forget the circumstances that led to our invasion. It’s not that Bush sent the Army over there on September 12. It was more than 18 months later. Congress passed a resolution to go to war, and the United Nations passed a resolution to stop Saddam and his weapons programs. The ball was in Saddam’s court and he could have avoided war with compliance. His defiance made war a necessity, or otherwise any resolutions passed in the future would lack the teeth of enforcement.

Quadafi gave up his weapons and the recent report says Iran stopped their program in 2003. Forget the style points for a moment and ask yourself if either result would have happened without Bush’s resolve to stop Saddam one way or the other. Both of those things could have happened without war, but only if Saddam had chosen to cooperate and the world decided to take Bush seriously. Saddam’s choice left Bush no choice.

To say that the war in Iraq is a distraction from the real war in Afghanistan ignores that there would be no action in Afghanistan either without Bush. Clinton could have and should have invaded Afghanistan after attacks in the 1990s. He didn’t have the resolve.

Clinton’s speech August 20, 1998.

A few months ago, and again this week, bin Laden publicly vowed to wage a terrorist war against America, saying -- and I quote -- "We do not differentiate between those dressed in military uniforms and civilians. They are all targets."

They bombed the Egyptian embassy in Pakistan. They gunned down German tourists in Egypt. The most recent terrorist events are fresh in our memory. Two weeks ago, 12 Americans and nearly 300 Kenyans and Tanzanians lost their lives. And another 5,000 were wounded when our embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam were bombed.

There is convincing information from our intelligence community that the bin Laden terrorist network was responsible for these bombings. Based on this information, we have high confidence that these bombings were planned, financed and carried out by the organization bin Laden leads.

He pegs Osama Bin Laden for exactly what he is, but what next?

When our very national security is challenged and when we must take extraordinary steps to protect the safety of our citizens. With compelling evidence that the bin Laden network of terrorist groups was planning to mount further attacks against Americans and other freedom-loving people, I decided America must act.

What was that extraordinary thing that he had to do?

Earlier today, the United States carried out simultaneous strikes against terrorist facilities and infrastructure in Afghanistan. Our forces targeted one of the most active terrorist bases in the world. It contained key elements of the bin Laden network's infrastructure and has served as a training camp for literally thousands of terrorists from around the globe.

We have reason to believe that a gathering of key terrorist leaders was to take place there today, thus underscoring the urgency of our actions.

Our forces also attacked a factory in Sudan associated with the bin Laden network. The factory was involved in the production of materials for chemical weapons.
The United States does not take this action lightly. Afghanistan and Sudan have been warned for years to stop harboring and supporting these terrorist groups.
But countries that persistently host terrorists have no right to be safe havens.

We begged them and they wouldn’t listen so we just had to. . . sorry. We won't do it again unless they make us.

My fellow Americans, our battle against terrorism did not begin with the bombing of our embassies in Africa, nor will it end with today's strike.

It will require strength, courage and endurance. We will not yield to this threat. We will meet it no matter how long it may take.

He nails exactly what it will take to win and his actions prove that he wasn’t up to it.

Here’s Why:

This will be a long, ongoing struggle between freedom and fanaticism, between the rule of law and terrorism.

Rule of Law! No deterrent to suicide bombers like the idea that they could go to jail.

We must be prepared to do all that we can for as long as we must. America is and will remain a target of terrorists precisely because we are leaders; because we act to advance peace, democracy and basic human values; because we're the most open society on earth; and because, as we have shown yet again, we take an uncompromising stand against terrorism.

But of this, I am also sure. The risks from inaction to America and the world would be far greater than action. For that would embolden our enemies, leaving their ability and their willingness to strike us intact.

There it is in words, the entire justification for standing up to Saddam after he thwarted the weapons inspectors.

But in this day, no campaign for peace can succeed without a determination to fight terrorism. Let our actions today send this message loud and clear: There are no expendable American targets.

There will be no sanctuary for terrorists. We will defend our people, our interests and our values. We will help people of all faiths, in all parts of the world, who want to live free of fear and violence.

This is the Bush Doctrine 2 years before Bush, just without any teeth.

We will persist and we will prevail. Thank you, God bless you and may God bless our country.

Great speech, but he didn't solve the problem and confront the terrorists. He was offering a courtroom if we could catch any of them before the detonated. Terrorist leaders in a Clinton world may have to change locations, but they weren’t ever going to see any troops on the ground.

Invasion of Afghanistan in 1998 would have prevented 9-11 just like invasion of Iraq in 2003 prevented God knows what catastrophe. I bring it up because too many of the Democrats running for President are saying that Bush took his eye off the ball in Afghanistan by invading Iraq. There would be no presence in Afghanistan without Bush. Someone needs to ask Mrs. Clinton is her husband took his eye off the ball.

A GOOD MAN

I've been leaning Rudy for a quite a while, but this Fred Thompson video is persuasive. He sounds like Reagan. I think if I were voting in Iowa tomorrow I would cast my vote for him. A two man race between he and Rudy would be win win.

I don't know why anyone leaning toward that fool Huckabee would rather have him over Fred.

It's 15 minutes long but worth your time.

FREAKONOMICS

. . . and the Base Ball Writer's Association

I find it interesting that the Baseball Writers of America (BBWAA) recently approved a rule which says that any player who has an incentive clause based on an award voted by the BBWAA (e.g., the Cy Young award) will not be eligible to win that award. The proximate cause of this decision is Curt Schilling’s contract, which pays him $1 million if he gets even a single third place vote for the Cy Young. When he joked about paying off a writer to throw him a vote, that was the last straw.

I’m surprised by this decision. First, it is always unusual when a group acts to reduce its own influence. If there is not just honor, but also large amounts of money on the line, it makes these awards even more important.

Second, the writers’ jobs are much easier when players cooperate with them (especially the superstars). Players are not, however, forced to cooperate with writers. I would think the writers would want to encourage any possible reasons for players to be helpful — such as the ability of writers to vote on awards that determine player bonuses.

No doubt there are gains from trade of a corrupt writer getting paid off by Schilling in return for a Cy Young vote, and such a deal could taint baseball writers more generally. It would seem, though, that there are more efficient ways of punishing corrupt behavior, like making votes public, if they aren’t already.

There must be other examples of organizations unilaterally acting to reduce their influence, but I can’t think of one off the top of my head. Can any readers provide any examples of this type of behavior?

BASEBALL AND POLITICS

Very seldom do politics and our favorite baseball teams all allign, but an email to Jay Nordlinger puts them all together.

“Popular vote” is a neat phrase, but there is no such thing as a national popular vote. There are 50 statewide votes (plus D.C.). The simplest explanatory example I can think of is the 1960 World Series. It went seven games. The Yankees scored 55 runs. The Pirates scored just 27. The Pirates won four games, and the series. They weren’t playing to see who’d score the most runs over seven games.

IOWA

NR's Rich Lowry weighs in

OPTIMAL ROMNEY: Romney 32, Huckabee 27, Thompson 13, McCain 12. Romney scores a big comeback win and the media can't yet write the McCain comeback story it yearns for. Maybe it's enough for Romney to hold off McCain in New Hampshire and sweep to the nomination.

ACCEPTABLE ROMNEY: Romney 29, Huckabee 28, McCain 15, Thompson 12. A win is a win. The press will write about the McCain surge and this scenario might not be enough for Romney to win in New Hampshire, but he can better survive a loss there and perhaps recover with a Michigan win.

OPTIMAL HUCKABEE: Huckabee 32, Romney 27, McCain 15, Thompson 12. Huckabee has an amazing and convincing underdog win, while McCain's third all but finishes off Thompson and sets the table for a Romney defeat in New Hampshire. On to South Carolina!

ACCEPTABLE HUCKABEE: Huckabee 29, Romney 28, Thompson 15, McCain 12. He's still pulled off a big upset. While Thompson can perhaps hang on, Huckabee will be the bigger Southern conservative dog in South Carolina. Romney is better off than he is after a starker defeat, but maybe McCain can still knock him off in New Hampshire and Michigan.

OPTIMAL McCAIN: Huckabee 32, Romney 23, McCain 17, Thompson 12. A strong third pace close to the second place finisher creates a very legitimate McCain surge/comeback story and if the second place finisher is Romney, all the better. In this scenario, a McCain win in New Hampshire is likelier than not, and McCain might win Michigan too, in which case he could sweep to the nomination.

ACCEPTABLE McCAIN: Romney 32, Huckabee 27, McCain 13, Thompson 12. Any third place will probably work for him. He opposed ethanol for heaven's sake! And, at the end of the day, even if he doesn't get third, he's not going to be hurt that much.

OPTIMAL FRED: Romney 32, Huckabee 23, Fred 17. A strong third might breathe some life in his campaign, and he will benefit in South Carolina from some of the air being taken out of Huckabee.

OPTIMAL RUDY: See Optimal Huckabee and/or Optimal McCain. Rudy probably wants Romney out of the race, and hopes he can pick up traction again with Republicans not thrilled by a choice between Huckabee and McCain.

Amazing that we pick a President based on how many people will brave the cold to show up at a gym in middle America.

LAST MOVIES I SAW IN 2007

I have a lot of movies to review, but here are the two I watched last night.

THE KINGDOM (2007) – I didn’t expect much from this what with the Tomatometer at around 50%, and its obvious play to the masses trailer and marketing. But you can’t really understand modern film by watching nothing but Indies and message pictures.

Movies like THE KINGDOM are the modern day equivalent of forties films like Guadalcanal Diary and the Story of G.I. Joe that try to tell the story of individuals in a time of war. The difference with modern film is the tendency toward “the enemy is us” approach or the moral equivalence between our side and theirs. While I disagree with that worldview and it’s a deal breaker as a premise, it’s only a mild annoyance as an attribute, and this movie only touches on the idea. It’s more interested in having our heroes solve the mystery. The premise is that an American compound of oil workers and their families in Saudi Arabia are attacked by a mad bomber and a stateside FBI team led by Jamie Foxx wants to travel to Saudi Arabia and investigate.

The conflict and politics behind whether Foxx and his team can go to Saudi Arabia is a bit overplayed, especially in that Foxx’s career is at risk for some reason. But the FBI director played by Richard Jenkins delivers a wonderfully written speech to the Attorney General who is against the trip. Jenkins explains how as a young soldier General Westmoreland told them all to write their obituaries and Jenkins explains how knowing you are going to die changes the way you approach life. And knowing you won’t have a job forever makes it easier to make the right choice over the popular one. I wish I had written the speech, because it’s my own philosophy about such things though I have never articulated it quite so well.

Of course our heroes wind up in Saudi Arabia to investigate and they are met with wary Saudis some they eventually win over. The team consists of Jennifer Garner who can’t deliver believable dialogue though she seems competent removing shrapnel from bodies, Chris Cooper the explosives expert on board to deliver the countrified common sense, and the resurgent Jason Bateman, a computer expert and smartass. Jeremy Piven is the American Ambassador who plays a variation of his character Ari on Entourage.

The conflict of the two cultures is played decently and the mutual respect gained after a period of time is to the Hollywood standard in such matters. There is not much surprise anywhere, but Foxx and company are compelling enough people and the mystery is revealed at about the right speed. The big minus is the overuse of that frenetic camera. The point of being in the audience is not to be a character in the film but an observer. When will Hollywood kill this annoying device?

The big climactic action scene is played out decently with good tension, but there is a weird sitcom type moment right after the resolution. That kind of thing works better with Bruce or Arnold. Here it seemed discordant.

Overall I think this movie can be enjoyed if your expectations are middling. One piece of advice given by a co-worker who saw the movie, he felt like is was tilled ground already since he watches a lot of 24 and the like. I have never seen a episode of 24 so I am much fresher eyes.

EASTERN PROMISES (2007) Viggo Mortensen stars for David Cronenberg again and Viggo has another secret. He’s the driver for the Russian mob in London. The leader of the mob is the unassuming restaurateur played by the always interesting Armin Mueller-Stal. Naomi Watts is the spunky female trying to get to the bottom of why a young pregnant Russian girl is dead.

I’ll admit that I don’t always get Cronenberg and I think it’s because I’m not a horror fan and even his non horror movies use horror violence instead of action movie violence. The technique is disruptive to the language of film and screams out “Cronenberg” at key moments in a movie. I’ll further admit that I liked both of his last two films despite that.

I really liked the premise of A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE and would have liked the film more had they bypassed the bizarre William Hurt confrontation. EASTERN PROMISES has good enough premise, but the overall handling of the film is better I think and more rewarding.

DR SAUNDERS PREDICTIONS FOR 2008

Dr. W. Steven Saunders, pictured here circa December 31st, 1973 has released his top ten predictions for the coming year.

10. Quantum computers will become a viable reality when photons are able to be utilized in a light capturing medium where their alternating spins are used to symbolize the "0" and "1" in digital data.

9. Hillary Clinton will become to Democrat Party Nominee.

8. Rudy Giuliani will become the Republican Party nominee. He will ask Huckabee to be his Vice-Presidential running mate.

7. The first commercial residential robot helper will be sold by the Sony Corporation in the U.S. for $35,256.25.

6. A group of Physicists will finalize the unified field theory and concretely determine that reality consists of 11 dimensions. One scientist learns to "look into" some of these higher dimensions. He goes psychotic. Some theorize he glimpsed "God." Some theorize he came in contact with dark energy. All is research is classified and suppressed.

5. No hurricanes will encounter Florida.

4. The new Star Trek movie will be poorly written with good effects.

3. Dude will move to New York City. While at a Bagel shop he will strike up a conversation with someone, only to discover that person is a powerful but unfamous movie producer. He buys one of Dude's movie scripts which launches his 2 decade hoped for career.

2. Sir Saunders will refashion the "God Helmet" based on a crude earlier design. The solenoids he uses are too powerful and it gives all who wear it instant enlightenment. This ushers in a new age of communion with "that which is beyond the personal self."

1. A new pandemic will start in Sir Lanka and sweep across the globe sickening and killing 1/3 of the third world population. The U.S. will quarantine itself and will largely be protected due to our Flu Shot program.

ONCE AGAIN

It's a Wonderful Life with Bunnies. . .in 30 seconds.

click here

or A Christmas Story if that's your speed.

The Coup de Gras is Dana Carvey as George Bailey

RALPH EUBANKS RIP

No matter where I move UWF finds me. It shows how strong the fund raising motivation is. They publish a glossy magazine every quarter talking about what’s happening at the college. This time I learn that Ralph Eubanks passed away at the age of 86. Dude and I had Ralph for Communication Ethics and he was Professor Emeritus even then. He was a heck of a nice guy and he would talk with you for an hour about anything. He was the only professor to quote H.L. Mencken during my college years.

He was impossible to keep up with as an instructor. His talks were very stream of consciousness and the tests were fill-in-the-blank quizzes on those lectures. I guess he wanted you to transcribe his lecture and study that. I remember that Angela Hatcher came over to our dorm to study for the final, but we decided to simulate play the 1978 Yankees v. 1979 Pirates instead. Dude and I played a 50 game season with those two teams and I will never forget how fun it was, a lot more memorable than my grade in Ralph’s class. Hatcher was frustrated with us, Skinny Lynnie was frustrated with us, but Dude and I were in our element.

A year or so later we saw Dr. Eubanks on campus and I told them that were taking some sort of fiction class and decided to see the movies instead of reading the text. Ralph laughed and he said that there was no one has more ingenuity than a college student. Shortly after Dude’s first attempt at Atlas Shrugged he showed me a passage where they mention the character Balph Eubank, and we both laughed. I wonder if Ralph ever read the book.

It says that he died in Little Rock Arkansas. 86 is a good long life and Ralph was a happy man. Thanks, Ralph for being a part of our great memories.

IMPORTANT MOVIES v. GOOD MOVIES

In the Golden Age.

The movies made during the studio era—what the cineastes have dubbed “the classical Hollywood cinema”—are, along with jazz, America’s best creative work from the late 1920s to about 1950. But although those pictures are revered, they’re contested. Products of a system run by five vertically integrated companies, they spark ardent and surprisingly nasty debates—about the relationships between art and commerce, convention and innovation, individual and collaborative effort, administrative constraint and creative freedom. These boil down to a single argument: Were the great pictures made because of, or despite, that system? To be sure, plenty in these books could be used in a hackneyed indictment of the studios as fiendish machines that stifled individual creativity, talent, and vision.

More important, any Hollywood history illuminates the dichotomy between those movies that the system most highly prized and those we love now, raising some doubts about the much-vaunted “genius of the system.” MGM under its production head and later special-projects producer Irving Thalberg (Fitzgerald’s model for The Last Tycoon) was the most factory-like and systematized studio, with the biggest and most shimmering collection of stars.

But many of its luminaries (Norma Shearer, say) and its self-important “prestige” pictures (Rose-Marie, Romeo and Juliet) long ago lost their magic; glamour, unlike style, is inherently ephemeral. True, the mystique of Metro’s greatest star, Garbo, remains undiminished. But for the most part, those pictures Holly­wood thought would endure (Metro’s lofty movies from the 1930s, Warner Brothers’ ponderous “artistically ambitious” Paul Muni biopics of Socially Progressive men) are now far overshadowed by the studio era’s stylish entertainments, whether rollicking (My Man Godfrey), effervescent (Trouble in Paradise), light-headedly lovely (the Fred and Ginger movies, the highest and purest “art” Holly­wood ever produced), hard-boiled (Double Indemnity), or high-trash melodramatic (Dark Victory)—movies no one thought would be watched in 10 years, let alone 70.

In the movie version of The Great Tycoon, the Thalberg character played by Robert DeNiro explains to the board of directors that they are making a certain prestige picture even though he knows it will lose money. He thinks that doing so will lend a certain bit of credibility to the studio.

I heard a long interview recently with Brian DePalma about his anti-Iraq war movie. It's nothing but a revamp of Casualties of War and DePalma spent the interview telling us how the war drove these men to this heinous act. Like the prestige films of the Golden Age, the DePalma film and so many like it are made for peer attention.

The art in museums is usually the art people still want to see. It should be no surprise that the best classic movies share that attribute.

PETTITE ADMITS USE. . . And it makes me think of a solution to this mess

Pettitte, in a statement released by agent Randy Hendricks, admitted using human growth hormone (HGH) on two occasions but denied ever having used steroids.

"Everything else written or said about me knowingly using illegal drugs is nonsense, wrong and hurtful," Pettitte said. "I have the utmost respect for baseball and have always tried to live my life in a way that would be honorable. I wasn't looking for an edge; I was looking to heal.

"If I have let down people that care about me, I am sorry, but I hope that you will listen to me carefully and understand that two days of perhaps bad judgment should not ruin a lifetime of hard work and dedication. I have tried to do things the right way my entire life, and, again, ask that you put those two days in the proper context."

I want to believe him. Why didn't he talk to the investigators? He knew they had the Jason Grimsley evidence to which he was rumored to be linked last spring. Was he too embarrassed to say anything at first or was he waiting to see what the report would say so as not to implicate himself in things the committee doesn't know about?

By admitting to everything in the Mitchell Report, Pettite makes it harder for Clemens and the others involved with McNamee to say McNamee was lying.

This is what brings us back to the Black Sox. There are varying degrees of guilt in both situations. Some players took money and helped to throw games like Cicotte. Some players took money and played their hardest like Shoeless Joe. Others took no money and didn't tank but were implicated because of their knowledge of the conspiracy like Buck Weaver. In the Black Sox case all the players were treated the same.

Where Landis went too far was in the second and third examples. Cicotte you had to banish, but I wouldn't have punished Weaver simply for knowledge. Shoeless Joe is the toughest case. There has to be a penalty for taking money from gamblers, but a guy who hit .375 certainly wasn't throwing the series. Do you give him one or two years suspension?

One of the problems here may be that Landis gave us the wrong kind of precedent. Had he passed sentence for degrees of culpability instead of a blanket response, it would be much easier to wade through the true murkiness of this swamp today.

Baseball should ask all players to come forward under a sort of limited immunity and receive some sort of punishment for full disclosure. For instance, the extent of the use of the drug would determine how long a player would be suspended. Any player who did not come forward during the immunity offer or any player not disclosing their entire use of the stuff would be banned for life if proof contradicted their position.

Then from here on out all players would know that use of HGH or Steroids or whatever else may be invented in the future will end their careers. If guys want to use a supplement or a cream then it needs to be administered by the team doctor or tested by MLB.

I think best part of the full disclosure is that it doesn't disproportionately hurt some users over others and it also takes away stigma on some players who are clean. It would have been a better solution before the Mitchell Report was released when guilty players still didn't know if they were going to named, but better late than never.

It also allows HOF voters to determine how long or how much of the stuff contributed to their numbers and whether the stuff had an impact on their perceived greatness. If baseball wants the public to think the doping will cease, I think this would work.

SPOILER ALERT: THE LOST WHISPER

Off topic but recently discovered. If you've seen LOST IN TRANSLATION, then you know it is a great film capped by an inaudible whisper. Now, through the miracle of digital processing and YouTube, we have found a translation:

HEAD BASHERS BALL

Just caught the very end of Colin Cowherd interviewing Dan Rooney on ESPN Radio. He asked Rooney, in view of Rooney's 60 years in the NFL and his current vantage point as owner and Chairman of the Pittsburgh Steelers, what he thought was the most significant development that he had seen in the NFL.

Rooney said the players are bigger-stronger-faster and we've got instant reply and all that, but the single biggest difference-maker was when players started wearing face masks in the 1950s. Take away the real risk of destroying your face on every play and that REALLY changes the game. That's the kind of great answer you can only get from an old man who has been around and seen it all.

MITCHELL REPORT

July 4, 1995 I was at Commiskey Park in Chicago to see the Yankees play the White Sox. We had pretty decent seats and got there early. Beaver Cleaver and Eddie Haskel were on hand to throw out the first pitch. Rookie Andy Pettite came out of the dugout during batting practice and a bunch of kids clamored for his autograph. I had to look at the program to learn his identity. I was close enough that I heard him tell the kids that he had to warm up but afterwards he would come over and sign autographs for anyone who waited. He did exactly as he promised. It really impressed me at the time. The most disappointing part of the Mitchell Report for me was Pettite's culpability.

The report itself consumed my whole night. Fascinating report. The names have been all over the news and rightly so. It is very well laid out. What irks me is Mitchell's conclusion.

The first two points deal with the player’s responsibility and drug testing. The third one and beyond echo the post-Clinton zeitgeist.

Obviously, the players who illegally used performance enhancing substances are responsible for their actions. But they did not act in a vacuum. Everyone involved in baseball over the past two decades – Commissioners, club officials, the Players Association, and players – shares to some extent in the responsibility for the steroids era. There was a collective failure to recognize the problem as it emerged and to deal with it early on. As a result, an environment developed in which illegal use became widespread.

ESPN seems to be taking the attitude that Bud Selig should step forward and shoulder some of the blame. I can’t stand Selig, but blaming him allows the moral relativists to blame everyone and thus no one. It was the perfect approach from a former Senator trained to put together commissions to find answers and no solutions. This allows everyone to feel good about the study with a promise to be better next time with the built-in exercise that everyone will be to blame then too. The constant cycle that we can always be sorry and promise to be better.

Knowledge and understanding of the past are essential if the problem is to be dealt with effectively in the future. But being chained to the past is not helpful.

Nothing would be more helpful in the future than to match this capital offense with a capital punishment. This report without real consequences is an enticement to find and take the undetectable HGH.

Baseball does not need and cannot afford to engage in a never-ending search for the name of every player who ever used performance enhancing substances.

It’s their brand. If they want us to continue to wonder whether or not the game is fair then just stop now and pretend no one else is a wrong-doer.

The Commissioner was right to ask for this investigation and report. It would have been impossible to get closure on this issue without it, or something like it.

There is no closure without a penalty for the cheating.

But it is now time to look to the future, to get on with the important and difficult task that lies ahead. Everyone involved in Major League Baseball should join in a well planned, well-executed, and sustained effort to bring the era of steroids and human growth hormone to an end and to prevent its recurrence in some other form in the future. That is the only way this cloud will be removed from the game. The adoption of the recommendations set forth in this report will be a first step in that direction.

Looking to the future is the usual battle cry of the guilty who do not want punishment. Remember how impeachment was hurting the country because President Clinton needed to get on with the business of the American people? It’s not that he should have resigned to get the country back together but that we should just ignore the wrongdoing with a promise that he will be better next time.

The current players named in this report need to be booted from baseball. Those who retired should be ineligible for the HOF. It's a shame that so many people cheated, but they did it to themselves. The union could have prevented some of it early on by cooperating with proper testing, but they didn't make the players cheat either.

It was a shame what happened to Shoeless Joe. No one could ever prove that he actually cheated and his career was over and his HOF chances lost. How can you look at his example and then allow these cheaters to play or be in the HOF?

But the most important lesson of the Black Sox is that throwing baseball games stopped. The penalty was so high that it wasn't worth the risk. That's why you have to boot these guys. Without real consequences the problem is going to get worse not better. It's even admitted in the report that technology is always going to be further ahead than the testing. The only thing baseball has to combat the usage is the danger that detection will end careers.

After seeing Pettite in his rookie year, I probably saw the Yankees in person 12-15 more times in Spring training, regular season and even one World Series game. I never saw Pettite repeat his grand gesture to those kids. I didn't always have seats close enough to the action to hear him speak to the kids, but I sometimes did. I don't mean that I blame him, but I think that the 1995 Andy Pettite was excited to be in the big leagues. Having played the game as a kid and probably dreamed of getting autographs himself, the experience of signing was as much of a thrill for him as the kids. With time those kinds of feelings naturally subside and I'm sure they did with Pettite.

By the time Pettite took the HGH he was no longer thinking about those kids or being a kid. Baseball was a job now and he needed every advantage. I can understand the economic incentives that caused this cheating like I can understand the economic incentives of embezzlement. The difference is that the penalties for embezzlement are a lot more harsh than losing your job. And until penalties make it too risky this problem will continue.

I can forgive Pettite as a human being and understand his temptations, but his actions would have been different had Barry Bonds or Ken Caminiti or Mark McGwire been detected and booted in the late 1990s. Pettite with the rest of the names in this report need to pay the price now to prevent the next impressionable young player from following in their footsteps.

SANTA ADMONISHED BY PC POLICE

Santa attacked outside Dollar General. According to witness Butch Johnson, 48, the alleged assailant cried out, "Who the --- he callin' 'ho'?" before the jolly smackdown.

SYDNEY (AFP) - Santas in Australia's largest city have been told not to use Father Christmas's traditional "ho ho ho" greeting because it may be offensive to women, it was reported Thursday.

Sydney's Santa Clauses have instead been instructed to say "ha ha ha" instead, the Daily Telegraph reported.

BUSH: THE STRAIGHT DOPE

He hasn't solved Social Security or health care or built a fence, but maybe he is making progress on steroid use in baseball. As you recall, he felt strongly enough about it to include it as a priority in his State of the Union address in January 2004:

To help children make right choices, they need good examples. Athletics play such an important role in our society, but unfortunately, some in professional sports are not setting much of an example. The use of performance-enhancing drugs like steroids in baseball, football, and other sports is dangerous, and it sends the wrong message, that there are shortcuts to accomplishment and that performance is more important than character. So tonight I call on team owners, union representatives, coaches, and players to take the lead, to send the right signal, to get tough, and to get rid of steroids now.

Whatever else can be said about Bush, he is a guy who believes that character matters, that it is the true measure of a man. Isn't that why we still watch Westerns?

TRUMP: THINK BIG AND KICK ASS

Trump's latest has hit the shelves. Like everything he does, it's 1 part Machiavelli, 1 part blather, and 3 parts marketing machine. He taps into the get-rich-quick mentality that he knows so many Americans have and that he knows is a farce, except as it applies to himself.

Speaking of big, I reviewed the names in the Mitchell report and how did the Giles brothers (they of the square jaws and unusual bulk) evade detection?

FREE MARKET TRAVAILS

Yet another bailout for the bull in the china shop who splashed his money around during the housing run and now finds himself facing increasing mortgage payments - exactly as stipulated in the contract he knowingly signed. This article posits that the government is wrongly focused on keeping people from losing their homes when it should instead be focused on making people wealthier, which is quite a different thing.

If two percentage points on a mortgage rate decides whether someone can afford to keep their house or not, then they can't afford to keep their house. They're paying too much. By continuing to pay too much, they'll divert their would-be savings to an asset that's likely twice as expensive as it should be right now, and even if it's not, tends to produce poor returns over long time periods.

House prices have swelled since World War II to the point where renting, for most people, now makes far more financial sense than buying. The ratio of house prices to rents has more than doubled during that period, as has the ratio of house prices to incomes. That's because the government has worked in earnest during that time to make houses more affordable by subsidizing down payments. In doing so, it has increased demand, and with it, prices. Ironically, affordability efforts have made houses more expensive than ever before. And we're still pushing them. The Federal Housing Administration still talks about owning a house as a key part of the American Dream, while the less-math-inclined members of my profession still talk about renting as "throwing money down the drain."

Stocks tend to return 7% a year after inflation over long time periods, while houses tend to return zero. So at today's prices, I'm keen on renting the latter while owning the former.

Once upon a time in America, before the FHA, we didn't need the government to intervene in the decision about whether we should buy, or continue to own, houses ... while things like clothing, cars and food have grown more affordable since World War II, houses have become a bad deal.

If I'm right, the government isn't doing any favors for recent house buyers who are struggling to afford their payments by guaranteeing that those payments will keep coming at their current pace for five years. It's merely forcing those same homeowners to divert too large a percentage of their income to a no-growth asset, while leaving little or nothing to invest in a fast-growth asset. The government isn't doing that because it's mean. It's doing that because it honestly believes it knows better than its citizens how they should allocate their money. What's particularly sad about that is that the government has overspent its own checking account by $1.6 trillion since 2002, thereby increasing the national debt by as much. On Thursday, struggling homeowners got misguided financial advice from a source that can't even pay its own bills.

Don't we vote Republican to avoid this sort of policy from getting pushed through?

POPE AND GLOBAL WARMING

Pope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology.

The leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics suggested that fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering.

The 80-year-old Pope said the world needed to care for the environment but not to the point where the welfare of animals and plants was given a greater priority than that of mankind.

I love that the Pope gets to remind the secular hysterics about the importance of science.

DEFENDER OF NEIGHBORHOOD: HERO OR MURDERER?

Interesting story out of Pasadena, Texas. A grandfatherly man called 911 to report a burglary in progress next door. He gave play-by-play to the dispatcher while waiting for the police to arrive. Minutes pass. He desperately does not want the robbers to get away. Finally, against the dispatcher's emphatic instructions, he goes outside with his shotgun and shoots both the burglars just before the cops arrive.

The incident may prove a test for a new law recently passed [Sept 1] in Texas which expands the right of citizens to use deadly force. Under Texas law, people may use deadly force to protect their own property or to stop arson, burglary, robbery, theft or criminal mischief at night.

But the legislator who authored the "castle doctrine" bill told the Chronicle it was never intended to apply to a neighbor's property, to prompt a "'Law West of the Pecos' mentality or action," said Republican Sen. Jeff Wentworth.

"You're supposed to be able to defend your own home, your own family, in your house, your place of business or your motor vehicle."

I understand and agree with the argument that human life is worth more than property. And I understand and agree with the right to protect your own life and property. And I understand and agree that in Texas, it's more shoot first, ask questions later, than in, say, Massachusetts. And I don't like someone going out with his shotgun to shoot people dead. I also don't like that all you're allowed to do as an American citizen is sit and watch two guys loot your neighbor's house and hope the police show up in time to stop them. And I really like that somewhere people are still looking out for their neighbors.

I don't really know what to make of this story. Do you?

SEAN TAYLOR AND DEATH POSITIVITY BIAS

I did some reading recently on death positivity bias. In a nutshell, research confirms the tendency among the living, particulary strong in America, to ascribe higher favorability ratings to the recently deceased. In other words, people tend to be remembered more fondly in death than during their lives. The bias is strongest in situations where the deceased is perceived to have become a better person late in life. It was interesting to see this play out in the Sean Taylor story. Taylor was generally perceived as a thug, an attitude problem, and undisciplined in college and in his early NFL career. The early stories, when all that was known was that he had been shot in his home, tended to mention his negative reputation. The following day, the stories reporting his death played up what a fine young man he was and how, after having a baby with his girlfriend, he was really putting his life together and you could see he was a changed man. By dying, he cleaned up his act literally overnight.

BUSH NEUTRALIZES AXIS OF EVIL

Revisiting Bush's "axis of evil" State of the Union speech on January 29, 2002.

My hope is that all nations will heed our call, and eliminate the terrorist parasites who threaten their countries and our own. Many nations are acting forcefully. Pakistan is now cracking down on terror, and I admire the strong leadership of President Musharraf. (Applause.)

But some governments will be timid in the face of terror. And make no mistake about it: If they do not act, America will. (Applause.)

Our second goal is to prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction. Some of these regimes have been pretty quiet since September the 11th. But we know their true nature.

North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens.

Iran aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people's hope for freedom.

Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade. This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens -- leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children. This is a regime that agreed to international inspections -- then kicked out the inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world.

States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.

We will work closely with our coalition to deny terrorists and their state sponsors the materials, technology, and expertise to make and deliver weapons of mass destruction. We will develop and deploy effective missile defenses to protect America and our allies from sudden attack. (Applause.)

And all nations should know: America will do what is necessary to ensure our nation's security.

We'll be deliberate, yet time is not on our side. I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons. (Applause.)

Our war on terror is well begun, but it is only begun. This campaign may not be finished on our watch -- yet it must be and it will be waged on our watch.

We can't stop short. If we stop now -- leaving terror camps intact and terror states unchecked -- our sense of security would be false and temporary. History has called America and our allies to action, and it is both our responsibility and our privilege to
fight freedom's fight. (Applause.)

Our first priority must always be the security of our nation, and that will be reflected in the budget I send to Congress. My budget supports three great goals for America: We will win this war; we'll protect our homeland; and we will revive our economy.

Several observations can be made.

1. Six years later, the three "evil" countries are generally considered to be less of a threat today than they were in 2002.

2. Bush indisputably did play the weapons of mass destruction card.

3. This speech was delivered a few months after 9/11. Another attack on US soil and this speech resonates again. A "24" marathon on Fox prior to election day would be a good idea.

4. Using the simple and non-nuanced measure of whether Bush did what he said he was going to do, he has been remarkably effective. He has been disciplined about maintaining a limited agenda -- win the war, protect the homeland, and revive the economy -- and his ability to maintain that focus has been his practical strength and political weakness.

THIS WEEK IN MEDIA BIAS

Friday morning I was in Irving, Texas for a meeting. A front page story in the FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM began this way:

English fluency rises sharply in 2nd generation

Three-quarters of Hispanic immigrants do not speak English well, but the overwhelming majority of their children and grandchildren speak the language fluently, according to a new study from the Pew Hispanic Center.

"The second generation has a foot in each world, and the third has made the transition to English," said D'Vera Cohn, co-author of the study. "By the third generation and beyond, English is dominant, and Spanish has faded into the background."

Saturday morning, my local paper had picked up the story for its front page and it began this way:

Study: Poor English skills among Mexican immigrants

Nearly three out of every four Mexican immigrants speak English "just a little or not at all," the most among immigrant groups from Latin America, according to a study released this week.

The reasons for poor English skills among Mexican immigrants include lower education levels before entering the U.S., less time in this country and more opportunities to speak Spanish at work, the study found.

Same Pew study, totally different slants. Now tell me again how there is no media bias, and how the editor's choices of headline, placement and lead don't tell me how I am supposed to interpret the data.

BUSH SPEAKS

Bush must be feeling good these days. His approval rating is up to 36 percent and Congress's is still very low at 22 percent (but nowhere will you see the headline "Approval of Bush 64% higher than of Congress"). House and Senate candidates yapped about how bad Bush is to get elected, then yapped about all the things they were going to do to make Bush pay and to undo the damage, and they have been singularly ineffective on nearly all fronts. The surge is working and the Dems are starting to realize that "anybody but Bush" won't necessarily restore them to power, since the Republican candidates aren't Bush either. Of course they can still pray to Mother Earth or great grandfather spirit for a massive natural disaster or tanked economy to blame on the GOP.

From Bush's press conference this morning:

Congress still has a lot to do, and doesn't have very much time to do it. Three weeks from today Americans will celebrate Christmas, and three groups of Americans are waiting on Congress to act.

The first group are the troops. Our troops are waiting on Congress to fund them in their operations overseas. Nearly 10 months ago, I submitted a detailed funding request. Congress has not acted. Our men and women shouldn't have to wait any longer.

Second, our intelligence professionals are waiting for Congress to act. The legislation Congress approved early this year to make sure our intelligence professionals can continue to effectively monitor terrorist communications is set to expire in February. Allowing this law to lapse would open gaps in our intelligence and increase the danger to our country. Our intelligence professionals need these tools to keep our people safe, and they need Congress to ensure that these tools are not taken away.

Third, American taxpayers are waiting on Congress to act. Congress has failed to pass legislation that will protect middle class families from the burden of the Alternative Minimum Tax. If Congress doesn't act, millions of Americans will be hit with an unexpected tax bill. And even if Congress does act by the end of the year, this action could delay the delivery of about $75 billion worth of tax refund checks. Congress expects Americans to pay their taxes on time, and the least the Congress can do is make sure Americans get their refunds on time.

Give Bush credit. His message remains the same: national security and tax breaks. And everyone who is trying to distance themselves from him should be careful about distancing themselves from that winning message. Meanwhile he is using his veto pen to attach the negativity that people have toward Congress -- what with its earmarks, waste, political bickering, mutual back scratching, and self-serving pomposity -- to its Democratic majority.

Americans also expect their tax dollars to be spent wisely. Yet today, 11 of the 12 annual spending bills that fund the day-to-day operations of the federal government remain unfinished. And now congressional leaders are talking about piling these bills into one monstrous piece of legislation which they will load with billions of dollars in earmarks and wasteful spending. Taxpayers deserve better. And if the Congress passes an irresponsible spending bill, I'm going to veto it.

And for good measure, he gives the bums a deadline to shape up.

The holidays are approaching and the clock is ticking for the United States Congress. Based on the record so far, Americans could be forgiven for thinking that Santa will have slipped down their chimney on Christmas Eve before Congress finishes its work. Let's hope they're wrong.

Yeah, let's do that, you and me, we're together on this, united against that foul enemy, Congress. Americans are right and Congress is wrong. You go! Occasionally Bush manages to say something that is both upbeat and politically smart.

Like "the Democratic Congress is divided and inept":

Congress -- the Democrats in Congress, in the House and the Senate, need to work out their differences before they come to the White House. You can imagine what it's like to try to deal on an important piece of legislation, and the Democrats in the House have one opinion and the Democrats in the Senate have another opinion. FISA is a good example.

And "Congress is more concerned about scoring political points than in doing the job people sent them here to do. They are unprincipled and undisciplined":

And hopefully, as we come down the stretch here, they're capable of coming forward with, here's what we believe, here's our plan, here's what we would like you to consider. As opposed to some examples, which is passing legislation for the sake of the headline, as opposed to passing legislation to get it passed, and SCHIP is a classic example. They knew I was going to veto the bill. They knew that was going to happen. They knew the veto would be sustained. But they ate up valuable time and passed the bill anyway.

And they don't support the troops.

Hopefully [in their remaining time in control of Congress and mine as President] we're capable of working together. But if not, I'm going to stand strong for certain principles, one of which is to make sure our troops get funded. We've got men and women in combat. We've got people risking their lives for the United States of America. And this Congress has yet to fund them, and it needs to. And it needs to fund them without telling our military how to conduct this war. Arbitrary dates for withdrawal are unacceptable, particularly given the fact that the strategy is working. It's working. And it seems like to me that this Congress ought to be congratulating our military commanders and our troops. And one way to send a congratulatory message is to give them the funds they need -- and now is the time to do it.

Well said, for a change.

MARK STEYN ON MUSLIM REFORMATION

Steyn has a way of saying things that no one else is saying. You read it and think about it and then you realize there is something to it.

What if we've already had the reformation of Islam and jihadism is it? It wasn't just Seventies Bryn Mawr Muslims who were "moderates". So were, comparatively, Muslims all over the world. The Sudan's always been a nutty joint but you'd have had a harder time convincing anyone to jail an English schoolmarm over a teddy bear 50 years ago: The Prophet's authoritative cuddly-toy suras date back all of 20 minutes. In 1950, a young Pakistani emigrating to Scotland or Canada would have received an education different only in degree, not (as now) wholly foreign in kind and ever more resistant even to the possibility of assimilation. One can detect similar trends in Indonesia, Singapore, the Central Asian stans, the Balkans - and among the de-assimilationist third generation Muslims in western Europe.

The Islamic "reformation" is, in a sense, the opposite of Christianity's. The Saudis have used their vast oil enrichment to promote themselves as a kind of Holy See for Muslims, and the Wahhabization of previously low-key syncretic localized Islams in almost every corner of the planet is testament to their success. I look at the gazillions of dollars tossed into the great sucking maw of US "intelligence" agencies and I wonder why somewhere in the budget we couldn't put something aside to promote a bit of covert ideological rollback in Chechnya or Bosnia or Pakistan. But we're not that savvy, and God knows what unintended consequences would blow up in our faces.

And at one level the Islamist "reformation" makes perfect sense. After all, they look at Christianity's reformation and see that everywhere but the United States it led to the ebbing of faith and its banishment to the fringes of life. The jihadist reformation is, as they see it, a rational response to the Christian one.

IRAN AND THE BOMB

A new U.S. intelligence report says Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and it remains on hold, contradicting the Bush administration's earlier assertion that Tehran was intent on developing a bomb.

What event happened in 2003 that would convince Iran to halt their program?

And how long will it remain on hold if the anti-war party elects a president?

LENO RESPONSIBLE

According to a source close to Leno, the host will pay around 100 "Tonight Show" staffers on a week-by-week basis -- taking the optimistic approach that a strike will be settled soon.

Most of the workers were officially pinkslipped by NBC on Friday; the staff at "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" was also let go the same day.

"NBC regretfully informed the people who work on 'The Tonight Show With Jay Leno' and 'Late Night With Conan O'Brien' that their services are not needed at this time due to our inability to continue production of the shows," the Peacock said in statement.

The article makes Jay out to be some sort of miser for not paying people their full salaries. The Internet is full of staffer quotes about how he is turning his back on them. We're talking about 100 people. I can't see that costing less than $100,000 a week. I guess it's his responsibility since the strike was his idea.