I watched tonight's debate, and Kerry's polished debating skills were matched by Bush's sincerity and consistency. (Hard to call overall -- although I suspect the media will call it for Kerry.)

Both men flubbed a few times, Bush stammered occasionally, and he did look tired. I think he's under more pressure than Kerry. It was good to see Bush stress Kerry's inconsistency over time, as this would not have otherwise "shown" in the debate. For the life of me, I still can't tell exactly what Kerry's position is on Saddam Hussein, terrorism, and Iraq, now, then, or in the future.

Bush's worst slip of the tongue was inadvertently calling Osama bin Laden "Saddam Hussein" but then catching himself.

Kerry's worst slip was when (during the discussion of Russia and the KGB) he stated, "I was at Treblinka Square!" -- seemingly unaware of his gaffe. (He meant, of course, Lubyanka Square; Treblinka was a Nazi concentration camp. If Bush had called Lubyanka "Treblinka" we'd be hearing again about how he's an embarrassment and an ignoramus.)

No puddle on the floor, though.

There isn't anything I could add that many others haven't already said or will say, so I won't bore my readers.

UPDATE: In the blogosphere it really doesn't matter who catches these things first, but I see that I was not alone in noticing the Treblinka gaffe. Reliapundit asks,

How could a presidential candidate - with Jewish heritage - confuse the name of a DEATH CAMP WITH ANYTHING ELSE!?!?!?!?!?

Instead of showing off his experience and knowledge, this exposes Kerry as a shameless ignorant fraud.

(Via Glenn Reynolds.)

MORE: Has "Treblinka Square" been made to disappear by Google? (Nothing as of 12:07 p.m. on 10/01/04.....)

The "Treblinka Square" flub was reported last night on at least two three blogs, AND I saw it on Drudge this morning, so what's up with Google?

AND MORE: It turns up on Google News , so I doubt there's any disappearing going on. Here's the accurate quote:

And I was probably one of the first senators, along with Senator Bob Smith of New Hampshire, a former senator, go down into the KGB underneath Treblinka Square and see reams of files with names in them.

MORE: Kevin at Wizbang's post shows that many more blogs have noticed "Treblinka Square."

MORE: Likely Kerry voter Jeff Jarvis not only wasn't impressed by Kerry, he says Kerry's performance made him less inclined to vote for him:

Kerry was pushing his Coke-commercial view of a world marching together hand-in-hand and I don't buy it. I don't buy that the U.N. or Old Europe will come into Iraq to save our skins -- or to fight for democracy or the rights of the Iraqi people. If you say that Bush mislead us to think we'd find WMDs in Iraq then perhaps you also should say that Kerry misleads us to think we'll ever find a French butt on the line there. I fear the consequences of giving these countries what amounts to veto power over what we must sometimes do; the result will be paralysis.

In this new era of terrorism and of our role as the sole superpower, I want to see a new vision and strong strategy for foreign policy. The Kumbaya gambit won't cut it.

I heard Kerry criticize the war over and over without hearing a clear plan for winning it -- and a clear will to win it. I also did not hear Bush give a clear plan for winning this war -- but at least I still hear his will. It's not that Kerry flipflops. It's that I don't hear iron will. And in a time of war -- war against terrorism -- we need a leader with iron will.

At the same time, will alone won't win the war. Great planning and great execution and tireless diligence will win this war. And we don't have that today, either. That is Bush's failing.

Many others were able to blog the debate as it occurred. In some ways, I am glad I had to catch the debate in bits and just listen. I listened to what it did to me. And it made me more unsure about Kerry. He sounds more like Howard Dean and I didn't want to vote for Dean. He had my likely vote; it was his to lose. He hasn't lost it ... yet.

(I'm also reminded of the saying "Big talker, little doer.")

UPDATE: Roger L. Simon offers a charmingly Freudian analysis of "Treblinka Square," and also asks whether he and other members of his generation might not have been "running away from some unspeakable horror into a world of sex, drugs and rock and roll."

The debates have not started yet, but has Lapham declared Kerry the winner? Depends.

Here's Glenn Reynolds (noting that you can vote to declare Kerry the winner now, here):

Unless Kerry melts into a puddle on the floor, the media spin will be that he did well and helped his campaign.

I just turned on the TV and saw Ana Marie Cox (describing herself as a Maureen Dowd-to-be of the blogosphere, via crossing Matt Drudge and Glenn Reynolds), who just stated that the AP has already written the story of the debate. Glenn Reynolds was on too, but more subdued.

As to tonight's debate, I'm pretty sure Kerry's already done enough to win according to the AP's high standards, but I'll try to fast forward the TV, record the debate in advance and then rewind it so I can watch it before anyone else.

I'll check carefully for the puddle on the floor, but I don't think I'll find one.

(Depends, I guess.....)

Best of the best

Be sure to visit this week's Carnival of the Vanities, which is hosted by Last One Speaks. A truly great party this week. The theme?

Gilligan's Island! Complete with pictures! It's a very clever arrangement of posts, including beached gems like these:

Read the rest too!

___________________________________________

Best of the worst

While you're at this (especially the cynical among you), be sure not to miss the Bonfire of the Vanities, hosted this week at Kin's Kouch! It's a back-to-school edition, and the pictures Kinayda has selected for the posts are so good that I guarantee you'll want to copy and save some of them.

All the posts are flamingly hot --

Enough burning; read them all!

I don't particularly enjoy writing about personal details of my life, but I thought I should share a dream, in the hope that I can better understand it. Dreams are of course where the realities (what we know) morph into the symbolic (what we want ourselves to know, but often resist).

Some drag queen -- a stranger I had never met before -- told me he was sick and needed me to take him to the hospital. He seemed very ineffectual, and I was too busy with other things, so his request struck me as unreasonable, even ridiculous. Yet his very helplessness affected my conscience -- even in the dream. As I contemplated this situation (and struggled with feelings of guilt), an ex lover appeared to tell me that I really should take this stranger to the hospital. That got my attention, because the ex died of AIDS in 1986, and I took him to one hospital or another more times than I like to think about. He died, of course, and needed help facing that.

When I awoke, I was thinking about the nature of decadence, and the meaning of these symbols of dying and death. My dead ex (Rod) was an upper class Mexican who thought like a Roman. He lived long enough to see the legacy of Vietnam as a Roman (especially a late-stage Roman) would have seen it. The rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini and the occupation of the American Embassy in Tehran were, in his view, a direct result of a failure of American resolve having emboldened people he considered truly barbaric and medieval. Christianity was in his view no match for Islam, but Americans were so steeped in Christianity that they didn't get it. This was partially because Christianity, a religion of peace, was not set up or constructed to contend with Islam, a religion of war. The latter had the advantage of seeing the practical problems with Christianity, and thereby "improving" on its obvious (from a military standpoint) failings.

America offered a vision of freedom that was independent of Christianity, yet the Christian character of America was its Achilles heel. This country was, in my friend's view, incapable of doing what James Lileks called "going Roman," and instead wallowed helplessly while our president, a Sunday School teacher named Jimmy Carter, struggled lamely to be a good Christian man in the face of barbarism. It didn't need to be that way, Rod thought.

These things go in cycles, and the struggle with Islamic radicalism was successfully (if briefly) postponed by Ronald Reagan's militant stance. My friend Rod lay dying as Muammar Qaddafi fled Reagan's air strikes disguised as a woman. (More here.) But that wouldn't be the end of it, Rod opined. Obviously, he was right, even though it took many years (mostly spent in strained denial) for most Americans to see what was so plain to him.

After 9/11, it was quite clear that America was willing to fight. It almost appeared that the country had finally learned the true lesson of Vietnam.

Have we?

Perhaps I am being too arrogant in my assumptions. It was quite obvious to my friend Rod that the lesson of Vietnam was to be seen in the Ayatollah Khomeini and Iran. A failure of American resolve -- real or perceived -- had put the barbarians of the world on notice that this once strong, free country had absolutely no will to fight. Moreover, our freedom was held in deep contempt, and considered a direct threat to this new enemy -- a tyranny enforced by medieval superstition.

From Rod's Roman perspective, the point of Vietnam was not whether the United States should have entered the war. Nor were considerations of morality (especially the Sunday School variety) important.

It was whether America was willing to fight.

Nixon's "Vietnamization" was put to the final test in a series of probing attacks (more here) by the North Vietnamese. Once it was seen that America would not enforce the peace treaty for which so many Americans had died, South Vietnam was lost. The mindless partying of the 1970s was hardly a victory party, and the hangover could not be erased.

Will Iraq become another Vietnam?

Perhaps.

The difference this time is that we won't have as long as a grace period to do the partying. None of this is to say that there's anything decadent about partying, about freedom, or about sexuality. It's just that the drag queens reminded me that some things have to be defended.

Thus, I think the drag queen in my dream serves as a symbol of latent decadence -- but not of the "decadence" which so many Americans associate with that word.

Freedom is not decadence, but the failure to defend it is.

AFTERTHOUGHT: Lest anyone think I am belittling Christianity, I am not. But the fact remains, no matter how they have tried to spin it over the centuries, "Christian war" will always have an oxymoronic ring to it. "Islamic war," on the other hand, goes by the name "Jihad."

Seems like I've been so wrapped up with Leon Kass lately, I've forgotten to water the rest of my hate garden. Along comes Henry Miller to remind me. Thank you, sir.

Professional worrier Jeremy Rifkin's pronouncements always remind me of the characterization by one-time Speaker of the House of Representatives Thomas B. Reed of his political opponents, "They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge." Rifkin's assertion that Americans' consumption of beef causes domestic violence were absurd. So were his claims that biotechnology threatens "a form of annihilation every bit as deadly as nuclear holocaust," and that a small-scale field trial of a gene-spliced soil bacterium could change weather patterns and disrupt air-traffic control.

Longtime Classical Values readers may recall some my older Rifkin screeds.
For newer readers, the best, or at least the longest, can be found here. And if Dr. Miller himself should grace these words with his attention, please check out these old chestnuts. If you hate Rifkin like I hate Rifkin, you probably hate Paul Ehrlich too. Thus ends my shameless recycling of material.

Before tackling this new attempt at redefining reality in an unreal way, it is useful to consider briefly Rifkin's previously published views on other subjects. In "Beyond Beef," he asserts that "the statistics linking domestic violence and quarrels over beef are both revealing and compelling." He believes that men use meat as "a means of conditioning women to accept a subservient status in society." The evidence? He quotes a woman battered by her husband: "It would start off with him being angry over a trivial thing like cheese instead of meat on a sandwich." Oh.

For me, "Beyond Beef" was the one that got away. I can see now that neglecting it was a mistake.

Slightly off topic, I once worked with a guy who did Rifkin impressions. Whenever Rifkin's name came up in the news, he would assume an espression of goofy, moronic piety, steeple his fingers, and majestically intone "Jeremy Rifkin....Beyond Beef". I guess it takes all kinds.

Can anyone identify the victims in these two stories?

First, reporters from the New York Times have been implicated in a plan to tip off a terrorist "charity" about an impending raid:

September 29, 2004 -- The Justice Department has charged that a veteran New York Times foreign correspondent warned an alleged terror-funding Islamic charity that the FBI was about to raid its office — potentially endangering the lives of federal agents.

The stunning accusation was disclosed yesterday in legal papers related to a lawsuit the Times filed in Manhattan federal court.

The suit seeks to block subpoenas from the Justice Department for phone records of two of its Middle Eastern reporters — Philip Shenon and Judith Miller — as part of a probe to track down the leak.

The Times last night flatly denied the allegation.

Then there's this emerging report from Reuters about an attempt to crash a Norwegian plane:

OSLO (Reuters) - A man attacked two pilots and a passenger with an axe on a domestic Norwegian flight on Wednesday, police said.

The pilots, who witnesses said were covered in blood, managed to land the 18-seat Kato Air flight with seven passengers on board on its way from Narvik to Bodoe in northern Norway.

The attacker, in his 30s, was immediately arrested at Bodoe airport.

"The flight was about to land when both pilots were attacked with an axe," police official Margrete Torseter at Salten police district in northern Norway told Reuters.

The three were taken to a hospital. "They are injured but it is not life threatening," Torseter said.

The hospital said in a statement the patients had minor injuries, mostly to the head.

Torseter said the axe had probably not been carried on board the Kato Air flight 605, but was possibly installed for use in case of fire.

The attacker said he was Algerian, police said.

More on the man here:

The motive for the attack was not clear but police said it could be tied to the man's asylum status.

The attacker, who was born in 1970 and had been living at a northern Norwegian centre for asylum seekers, was arrested at Bodoe airport. Police said authorities had rejected his application for asylum.

Why aren't we given more details?

In an official-looking press release, Barbra Streisand has weighed in on freedom of the press, and against big media cowardice. She slams the American media for being intimidated and silenced, and in light of the recent uproar over ankle-biting, I think this is an important enough matter to be treated with the utmost seriousness, and dealt with one sentence at a time.

So h-e-e-ere's Barbra:

....if you choose to air a story about George Bush's military service, or lack thereof, like CBS did last week, you and your award winning news anchor, get investigated by the FCC.

So it's no wonder that the press has taken a backseat to reporting the misdeeds of this administration.

It's not surprising that the press failed to ask the hard questions leading up to the war in Iraq, when a more informed public still had time to speak up.

In New York on Saturday, a giant puppet depicting President Bush holding buckets of blood and oil towered over the cheering crowd that was pressed against police barricades near U.N. headquarters. The main demonstration stretched 20 blocks down First Avenue, and overflowed onto Second and Third avenues as more people tried to reach the rally.

Never mind that CBS's story included substantive and uncontested evidence that Bush didn't show up for duty when he was supposed to, that he skipped a required physical that grounded him from flying, and that he mysteriously received an honorable discharge.

Yes...the documents CBS presented could not be confirmed for their authenticity, but these details of Bush's military record have been out for public consumption for years.

However, I'm glad Streisand was honest enough to admit that the Guard service story is old news; here's a detailed WaPo report from 1999. Little if anything has been "discovered" since.

Why is the media not discussing the facts behind the story instead of just focusing on CBS?

For example, Killian's secretary said those memos accurately reflected the Colonel's feelings.

Ben Barnes, former lieutenant governor of Texas, admitted that he pulled strings to get Bush into the National Air Guard.

In an interview, Barnes also acknowledged that he sometimes received requests for help in obtaining Guard slots. He said he never received such a call from then-Rep. Bush or anyone in the Bush family.

However, when asked if an intermediary or friend of the Bush family had ever asked him to intercede on George W.'s behalf, Barnes declined to comment. Kralj, in his deposition, said he could not recall any of the names he gave to Gen. Rose.

And Robert Mintz, retired National Guardsman who served in Bush's unit in 1972, doesn't remember seeing him there.

"I cannot say he was not there," Mintz said. "Absolutely positively was not there. I cannot say that. I cannot say he didn't do his duty."

And in contrast to Senator John Kerry, who said "send me" when given the option to go to Vietnam, according to the LA Times, when asked the same question, Bush checked the box stating "do not volunteer for overseas."

Among the questions Bush had to answer on his application forms was whether he wanted to go overseas. Bush checked the box that said: "do not volunteer."

Bush said in an interview that he did not recall checking the box. Two weeks later, his office provided a statement from a former, state-level Air Guard personnel officer, asserting that since Bush "was applying for a specific position with the 147th Fighter Group, it would have been inappropriate for him to have volunteered for an overseas assignment and he probably was so advised by the military personnel clerk assisting him in completing the form."

During a second interview, Bush himself raised the issue.

"Had my unit been called up, I'd have gone . . . to Vietnam," Bush said. "I was prepared to go."

But there was no chance Bush's unit would be ordered overseas. Bush says that toward the end of his training in 1970, he tried to volunteer for overseas duty, asking a commander to put his name on the list for a "Palace Alert" program, which dispatched qualified F-102 pilots in the Guard to the Europe and the Far East, occasionally to Vietnam, on three- to six-month assignments.

He was turned down on the spot. "I did [ask] – and I was told, 'You're not going,' " Bush said.

Only pilots with extensive flying time – at the outset, 1,000 hours were required – were sent overseas under the voluntary program. The Air Force, moreover, was retiring the aging F-102s and had ordered all overseas F-102 units closed down as of June 30, 1970.

Please.

The media's attention is diverted from the real story because we now live in a time where the fear of revenge by this administration sends a chill through the corporations that control our media and overwhelms the press' responsibility to investigate, educate and hold our leaders accountable.

So where did they find the courage to present forged documents in the first place?

Is CBS the only network not living in fear of fascism?

Hmmm.....

Am I, by disputing Streisand, by implication defending Big Media from an ankle-biter? Why would I do such a thing?

(Might be compassion, I suppose..... I do know how it feels to be attacked by ankle-biters!)

After a recent post by Justin (which linked to some rather sickening web sites specializing in "body modification"), I was asked how any of that could relate to Classical Values.

The answer is easy (and it's something I have posted about before). A major war was started by the emperor Hadrian's legislative attempt to stop mutilations:

The Jews, however blamed him for provoking and then brutally suppressing the Bar Kokba revolt in Judea (132-135 AD). The provocative act, a decree against physical mutilation, covered the whole Empire and was not, by any means, aimed specifically at the Jews. In the rest of the Empire, in fact, it was a protection against the whims of officials, heads of families, and slave owners who previously could lop off limbs and other body parts for many offenses. The law specifically forbade castration, but it clearly also applied to circumcision, and the Jews interpreted that as an attack on their religion. The suppression of the revolt was, in fact, as efficient and as brutal as usual when the Roman army was involved. When the more zealous Jews of Jerusalem still refused to comply, Hadrian had the city destroyed and replaced by a new Roman town, Aelia Capitolina.

Mutilation is thus very much an ancient issue as well as a modern one. If the lesson of Hadrian teaches anything, it is that government ought to at least think twice before telling citizens what they can and cannot do to their bodies.

J.D. Bernal penned these words back in 1929, two years before Huxley wrote "Brave New World".

So far we have been living on the discoveries of the early and mid-nineteenth century, a macro-mechanical age of power and metal. Essentially it succeeded in substituting mechanism for some of the simpler mechanical movements of the human body.... This was sufficient to revolutionize the whole of human life and to turn the balance definitely for man against the gross natural forces; but the discoveries of the twentieth century, particularly the micro-mechanics of the Quantum Theory which touch on the nature of matter itself, are far more fundamental and must in time produce far more important results.

The first step will be the development of new materials and new processes in which physics, chemistry and mechanics will be inextricably fused. The stage should soon be reached when materials can be produced which are not merely modifications of what nature has given us in the way of stones, metals, woods and fibers, but are made to specifications of a molecular architecture. Already we know all the varieties of atoms; we are beginning to know the forces that bind them together; soon we shall be doing this in a way to suit our own purposes....

After the analysis will come the synthesis; and for one place in which we can imitate nature we will be able to improve on her in ten....The result - not so very distant - will probably be the passing of the age of metals and all that it implies - mines, furnaces, and engines of massive construction. Instead we should have a world of fabric materials, light and elastic, strong only for the purposes for which they are being used, a world which will imitate the balanced perfection of a living body.

This was excerpted from "The World, the Flesh, and the Devil".

If you want to read the rest, it is available here, and highly recommended.

Perhaps D.F. Moore might like to incorporate parts of it into one of his public outreach nanotechnology lectures.

This from This is London:

This is the moment when a woman was captured on CCTV lying unconscious in the gutter of a busy road, suffering from a serious head wound.

Police raced to the scene after traffic was forced to swerve around the 25-year-old victim as she lay bleeding.

Um ... why wasn't traffic forced to stop?

Jay Manifold at "A Voyage To Arcturus "and "The Rhetorica Network"have cooked up a nifty idea.

....a mechanism whereby a symbiotic relationship between blogging and traditional forms of journalism can be deliberately cultivated.

Reporters can use it to quickly authenticate highly technical or specialized story elements with subject-matter experts (SMEs) drawn from the best the blogosphere has to offer.... SMEs on 411blog.net also offer reporters another important advantage: As bloggers in addition to subject experts, they are plugged in to the latest internet conversation regarding their subject areas...

So if you're a blogger -- or even a regular blog reader -- we encourage you to:

Nominate bloggers to serve as subject-matter experts (SMEs). Just tell us the subject and the blog....

If you are nominated, of course, we'd like you to agree to serve. What we hope this will mean is the occasional contact from a journalist in need of enlightenment about some obscure element of a story that you are uniquely qualified to explain. The reporter gets the story right, and you get (if you wish) quoted or referred to as the expert. It's win-win.

we encourage the SMEs to respond relatively quickly, or hand off the inquiry to someone else in a better position to field it. Remember: there is no limit to what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit....

Not to overlook the obvious, we'd like you to link to this post.

We'd also like feedback. You know more than we do -- far more. 411blog.net will adapt and grow with your help.

This seems like one of those sensible ideas that really deserves to take off. Ego and bad faith could kill it, from either side of the aisle. But the possibility of a better informed reportariat, one that actually used the immense massed expertise in this country, well it brings a wee paradigm bustin' tear t'me eye.

;;

Here's Bruce Springsteen, discussing his decision to politicize his career:

Your audience invests a lot in you, a very personal investment. There is nothing more personal, in some ways, than the music people listen to. I know from my own experience how you identify and relate to the person singing. You have put your fingerprints on their imagination. That is very, very intimate. When something cracks the mirror, it can be hard for the fan who you have asked to identify with you.

Pop musicians live in the world of symbology. You live and die by the symbol in many ways. You serve at the behest of your audience's imagination. It's a complicated relationship. So you're asking people to welcome the complexity in the interest of fuller and more honest communication.

The audience and the artist are valuable to one another as long as you can look out there and see yourself, and they look back and see themselves. That's asking quite a bit, but that is what happens. When that bond is broken, by your own individual beliefs, personal thoughts or personal actions, it can make people angry. As simple as that. You're asking for a broader, more complicated relationship with the members of your audience than possibly you've had in the past.

What I find interesting about the Springsteen quote is that he obviously realizes that some of his fans really do care, and will feel let down by the fact that he doesn't share their view of the war in Iraq. This says more about the peculiar relationship that develops between fan and performer than it does about the merits of the disagreement. Why, for example, do Bruce Springsteen's thoughts on the war matter more to his fans than would similar thoughts by a classical musician matter to a symphony patron? Why would the political views of a rock musician strike more of a chord with people than those of an actor? I can't stand Sean Penn's politics, but I recognize he's a great actor. Are these things completely rational?

Moving to the visual arts, it becomes even more irrational. Pablo Picasso and Diego Rivera were dyed-in-the-wool Communists, of the Stalinist variety. Yet their art is considered esthetically acceptable enough to decorate many a Republican home. The political views of fiction writers (leftist Ernest Hemingway will serve as an example) are even less relevant to his readers. Why does no one worry about the political views of a sculptor? How about an architect?

Is this because the audience does not identify with a writer or a visual artist, or with most performing artists, whereas rock and roll (and to a certain extent, country music) is said to be personal? Why is it more personal than, say, bluegrass, jazz, or swing? And why would Springsteen's fans feel more betrayed than, say, fans of Lionel Hampton?

I think the mechanism is poorly understood, and has to do with a certain adolescent mindset I remember from my youth: kids who take it as a personal insult if you don't like their favorite musician or group. Similarly, there are people who take political disagreement as a personal insult, and this is one of the reasons that political disagreement often (and so quickly) becomes ad hominem. (Religion, while it can be even more emotionally charged, at least tends to be more of a "protected category," and people are more likely to understand that religious differences are not meant as personal insults. Usually.... but not always!)

Whether someone agrees with my politics ought not to matter any more than whether they like my taste in music. But to those whose musical tastes are already defensively personal, a sudden political disagreement with their favorite rock "hero" must be a terrible letdown.

Of course, I say this as someone long accustomed to having people dislike my tastes -- in music and politics.

So I'm too callused to let Springsteen's thoughts affect my musical tastes. I like the song "Born in the USA" and his views on Iraq won't change that any more than his views on Vietnam.

Besides, people have been known to change their minds. (And their music.)

Pennsylvania's moderate incumbent Senator, Republican Arlen Specter, is facing a new threat, not from his own lackluster opponent, but from Barack Obama!

Much as I prefer Barack Obama to Alan Keyes, I wish Obama would stay the hell out of the Pennsylvania senatorial campaign:

Barack Obama is running to represent Illinois in the U.S. Senate, but yesterday he worked Philadelphia like a hometown candidate, helping to raise $100,000 and headlining a rally that drew more than 500 people.

Sure, the senior citizens, office workers and college students were happy to catch a glimpse of U.S. Rep. Joseph M. Hoeffel, Pennsylvania's Democratic Senate nominee, at the voter registration rally in JFK Plaza. He joined Obama on the stage to warm applause after calling his own news conference earlier in the day to criticize the latest ad from his Republican opponent.

But for many the reason they came was to see Obama, a state senator who rose to national prominence after giving the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention. People mobbed him before the rally, and they circled the stage afterward, thrusting Hoeffel signs his way for an autograph. Five Philadelphia police officers and at least one private security officer were called in to manage the crowd.

"I am quite confident he could be the first African American president of this country," said Jessica M. Marttila, 23, a student who came to shake Obama's hand.

Obama downplayed the attention when he could, saying he was just fortunate to be so far ahead in his Illinois race against Republican Alan Keyes that he could travel the country to campaign for Democrats such as Hoeffel.

The losing candidacy of Alan Keyes is bad enough for the Republican Party. (Keyes is 40 points behind in the race against Obama, and is plagued by a social issue he could have left alone, yet went out of his way to raise). But when his opponent -- in his first race for Senate -- doesn't even need to bother campaigning, and instead runs around campaigning in other states, that adds insult to injury.

It wasn't idle talk when I spoke of a loser mentality plaguing the Republican base. It is one thing for Keyes to damage the Republican Party in Illinois. But why should he be allowed to damage Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania?

Surely there ought to be a loss limiting rule -- prohibiting losers from causing damage outside their own areas. I don't mean to be facetious (and I know that what goes around comes around) but seeing a tantrum by moral conservatives in Illinois affecting the candidacy of a moderate in Pennsylvania just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I thought all politics was supposed to be local!

Of course, since when losers have losers minded dragging others down to defeat?

(On the other hand, not wanting to be a downer can lead to self-censorship. Which is why I have hundreds of unpublished screeds......)

This story is a perfect example of the kind of rude and uncivilized behavior called "disorderly conduct."

Sakinah Aaron was walking into the bus area at the Wheaton Metro station several weeks ago, talking loudly on her Motorola cell phone. A little too loudly for Officer George Saoutis of the Metro Transit Police.

The police officer told Aaron, who is five months pregnant, to lower her voice. She told the officer he had no right to tell her how to speak into her cell phone.

Their verbal dispute quickly escalated, and Saoutis grabbed Aaron by the arm and pushed her to the ground. He handcuffed the 23-year-old woman, called for backup and took her to a cell where she was held for three hours before being released to her aunt. She was charged with two misdemeanors: "disorderly manner that disturbed the public peace" and resisting arrest.

The civilized should not be penalized for the conduct of the uncivilized.

It's more national kindergarten egalitarianism; the same kind of thinking which blames responsible gun owners for stuff like Columbine. (Or civilized bloggers for ankle biters.)

Here's a problem that cries out for deeply serious consideration.

.... As with cosmetic surgery, Botox, and breast implants, the enhancement technologies of the future will likely be used in slavish adherence to certain socially defined and merely fashionable notions of “excellence” or improvement, very likely shallow, almost certainly conformist.

This special kind of restriction of freedom—let’s call it the problem of conformity or homogenization—is in fact quite serious. We are right to worry that the self-selected non-therapeutic uses of the new powers, especially where they become widespread, will be put in the service of the most common human desires, moving us toward still greater homogenization of human society...

Leon Kass " Toward A More Natural Science"

Then again, maybe not.

If Dr. Kass would crawl out of his academic terrarium and take up a more demanding hobby than BIRDWATCHING, for the love of God, he might discover that people strive for uniqueness as often as conformity. There has NEVER been a time or place as conducive to eccentric tinkering as the contemporary West.

Extreme Sports, Martial Arts, Creative Anachronism, Civil War Reenactment, Ballista Building, Viking Longship Construction, even, dare I say it, Amateur Typesetting...all these delights and more await the eager novice. I have a feeling that a truly advanced plastic surgery might engender a like diversity.

I could be wrong, of course.

Hey Leon, take a walk on the wild side.

What's this catblogging deal, and how do I cash in?

I don't own any cats, so my only opportunity to engage in catblogging would be on those occasions when (despite my cat allergy) I visit someone who has cats. I did that over the weekend, and here's the closest I can come to catblogging:

Notice that the cat isn't technically blogging, but he does have lots of paper strewn about. And when I got on the Internet, he walked across the keyboard, from left to right. I didn't have a blog entry open at the time, but if I had, it would have looked something like this:

sadmn cxz jlk

zxc ][p

513-*/

MORE: Maybe I should just have the cat scratch this post.....

Via Andrew Sullivan, I found this amazing leap of logic by Charles Colson:

The jihadists claim that wherever freedom travels—"especially in America and Europe—it brings sexual license and corruption, decadence and depravity."

CT managing editor Mark Galli made the same point in these pages soon after 9/11. Islamic militants are angry at the West, he said, for exporting "hedonism and materialism into their very homes through television, enticing Muslims to become religiously lazy and morally corrupt." Galli quoted a 1985 communiqué from the terrorist group Hezbollah: "Our way is one of radical combat against depravity, and America is the original root of depravity."

Anger at Western decadence fueled the writings of the radical Sayyid Qutb, which so influenced Osama bin Laden. These people see themselves not as terrorists, but as holy warriors fighting a holy war against decadence.

We must be careful not to blame innocent Americans for murderous attacks against them. At the same time, let's acknowledge that America's increasing decadence is giving aid and comfort to the enemy. When we tolerate trash on television, permit pornography to invade our homes via the internet, and allow babies to be killed at the point of birth, we are inflaming radical Islam.

Of course anger over American freedom fueled (and fuels) Islamic radicalism. That's why they attacked us!

Actually (as I have argued before) what would truly constitute giving them aid and comfort would be to grant them the moral authority as Mr. Colson and others quite explicitly propose. Radical Islamists hate our freedom, and they want us to be like them.

Obviously, some Americans think they're on the right track.

Remember how Philadelphia's Mayor Street handily won reelection after an FBI bug was found in his office last year? Prominent national Democrats like Terry McAuliffe swooped in with war whoops of "Watergate" and evil Bush racism, and what would have been defeat was transformed into victory.

I thought readers might enjoy another glimpse into local Philadelphia politics. The bugging of Street's office sprang from an investigation into Imam Shamsud-din Ali. A local mover and shaker, vote deliverer extraordinaire, Ali is a Street crony with a very colorful background:

His supporters and those who attend Ali's mosque see him as a religious leader who transformed his life and the lives of those around him after serving 51/2 years in prison for the 1970 murder of a Baptist minister. That conviction was later overturned.

[ED. NOTE: More HERE on the legal details.]

A founder of Philadelphia Masjid and the Sister Clara Muhammad School, Ali, 65, fashioned himself into a leading voice in the city's Muslim community.

He adeptly maneuvered city politics, while building a large and devoted congregation in West Philadelphia. He could deliver votes from an untapped constituency, politicians believed.

To the federal authorities on his trail, Ali, once known as Clarence Fowler, is a former member of the city's Black Mafia who has never cut his ties to the drug underworld.

In seeking permission to tap his phone, the FBI told a federal judge Ali was part of a network involved in "the distribution of illegal drugs... extortion and kidnapping schemes... money laundering... acts of violence... and a scheme involving bribery of a public official."

A defense lawyer has said, in a court filing, that information tying Ali to any of this was thin and that reels of wiretap tape captured little, if any, evidence that Ali was immersed in the drug world.

Still, his detractors say Ali's $250,000 home inside a gated Cheltenham community and the expensive cars he and his wife drive - two Mercedes-Benz sedans - belie the image of a humble servant of Allah.

Even the drug dealers who have told authorities they made payments to Ali through the school and his mosque could see the irony.

In a conversation recorded by the FBI and confirmed by a federal prosecutor, one reputed kingpin expressed his frustration: "He's walking with kings, and we're out here on the streets hustling."

After hearing Ali talk with an alleged major drug dealer in the bugged conversations, the FBI won permission to tap the imam's home and cell phones. The conversations yielded something unexpected - discussions of allegedly corrupt dealings with City Hall.

For his part, Ali maintains he is an innocent man of God, persecuted for his race and religion:

"What they can do to an African American is unbelievable," he said. "America has a problem that surely will get the attention of God."

He says he is under attack because he is Muslim.

"A person like myself might say they hate Islam - and they probably do - but they are ignorant to Islam," Ali said of federal investigators.

"What the government doesn't know is Satan rules it," he said in sermon-like fashion.

But until today, I never suspected Satan.

Makes a lot of sense, though. America has been the Great Satan since the late 70s. (I really should do a better job of catching up with my religious reading.)

With bumperstickers like this, should I have been surprised?

I don't know if this post is about moral relativism or not. But now that the dust has settled a little bit over the most recent bout of beheadings, I think I should address a couple of questions.

People have questioned the propriety of telling people where they can download the various beheading videos, while others think it's inappropriate to dedicate the videos to Michael Moore.

Much as I'd like to think that no American would support cold-blooded murderers of Americans, there's too much evidence that some do. I can't ignore the evidence when it walks around in front of me. While it's true that Americans are not literally supporting Osama bin Laden or the apparent ringleader of the beheaders, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, many are supporting some things which are too close for comfort. Moore, of course, describes the Iraqi beheaders in glowing terms by comparing them to early American revolutionaries. Whether they agree with his statement, it's clear that plenty of Americans support Michael Moore generally. Michael Moore is considered cool.

In some quarters, he's considered almost as cool as Che Guevara.

Guevara's image adorns T-shirts which I see on a regular basis. These shirts are worn by young people who think Guevara is way cool.

Yet Guevara was a murderer. While he didn't torture his victims by sawing off their heads as does Zarqawi, I think most reasonable people would agree that this constitutes torture:

He [Guevara] was fond of tying people up, blindfolding them and then popping a cap in the backs of their heads while their wives and children were forced to watch.

I'm not a pollster, but I think many people (perhaps even a majority) would choose the Zarqawi method.

But who is worse isn't really the point. What bothers me is that too many Americans are glorifying cold-blooded murderers as cool. In my opinion, they should watch the beheading videos, just to be clear on the concept of what it is they advocate. There are so many of these Guevara lovers running around that otherwise rational people might get confused too.

More on the Hollywood-driven Guevara phenomenon here and here. (Robert Redford has made a touching "Portrait of the Murderer as a Young Stud" aimed at the tender teeny-weenies. Is the idealistic young bin Laden next?)

As to coolness and Michael Moore, there's little question that despite the obvious problems presented by his physical appearance (let's face it, a teen heart-throb he's not), he's aiming for Guevara status.

And, while I'd be glad to dedicate the beheading videos to Che Guevara himself, Moore will do.

It's just my way of mocking the idea that cold blooded murder is somehow "cool."

UPDATE: Via Andrew Sullivan, here's more on Hollywood's love affair with Guevara, including this lovely Che quote:

"Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine. This is what our soldiers must become…"

I happened to catch a few minutes of the Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace and they were talking about Bush playing the expectations game.

The line of they day came when one of the talking heads quoted Ed Gillespie of the RNC as calling John Kerry the best debater since Cicero.

I returned from New York tonight and while I am too exhausted for blogging, I went through my photos, and thought I'd share this one, taken on the Upper West Side's waterfront.

Not much left of the area's oldtime industrial maritime heritage, I'm afraid.

And speaking of heritage, on the subway I heard some very fine doowop sung acapella-style by three winos as they trouped through holding paper bags for contributions. I'm pretty jaded, but I gave them a dollar and clapped. It was downright spooky, they were so good and sang so perfectly in key that I think they must have been the real thing once, now down-and-out and decrepit in old age. But with class -- if that's not too contradictory. The song they performed was one of my favorites, "Church Bells May Ring." (The kind of stuff I'd like to hear when I'm dying if I have time to listen to music!)

Dan Rather's initial, furious street-side defense of an amateurish forgery — smug, huffy, self-righteous — brings to mind one of those bad movies about the Paris barricades, especially the grainy, black-and-white shots of powdered and wigged aristocrats on their way to the Guillotine, yelling out of their carriages at pitchfork-carrying peasants.

Read the rest of Victor Davis Hanson's latest triumph, where he salts the old media, the academic elite, the U.N., and more.

While Eric's away I thought I'd post this bit on "assault weapons":

N EW YORKERS are at least four times as likely to be punched to death than to be killed with an assault-style rifle, unpublished state crime statistics show.

Read it all.

It turns out that old propaganda film Reefer Madness was true!

BLANTYRE, Malawi (Reuters) - A Malawian man believed to be high on marijuana beheaded two women with an axe Friday, police in the southern African country said.

The man, in his mid-20s, beheaded a 52-year-old woman while she worked in her garden with her daughter and did the same to a 68-year-old friend who came to the daughter's aid, police spokesman Kelvin Maigwa told Reuters.

"The unsuspecting woman greeted the stranger who, instead, threw the axe at her, aiming at the chest," Maigwa said.

He said police found marijuana, or hemp, when they searched the suspect's home.

"The house was full of stench from recently smoked hemp. We believe he had an overdose of the hemp that made him go berserk," Maigwa said, adding that the walls of the house bore quotations from famous reggae songs.

Police have launched a manhunt for the killer, who fled into the bush after the attacks.

One time in college I had to pull a naked and screaming man off of a woman in a stairwell and hold him untiil the police came.

Clearly nudism drove him over the edge.

Burned out at the library on a Friday night (the bar awaits) all I can muster is my answer to Eric's latest poll results:

Sci-fi Guy:

Ah, good ol' Jean-Luc. Strangely appropriate.

Brit Lit:

Which British Literary Period are you? Restoration 1660-1785--Pope, Swift, Johnson. Times they are a changing. You're very cynical and you like looking out for the little guys. You have a sense of humor a lot of people just don't get.

Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

And as for the weird British show I've never seen, I couldn't copy the code for some reason. But it's just as well. I picked most of the answers randomly because it didn't make any sense. If it matters I got Steve Taylor:

"A bit neurotic most of the time, you're handsome, intelligent, witty, and very funny. You like to explain your obsessions with lesbian porn at dinner parties, or maybe you just fantasize about Mariella Frostrup a little too often. You could be the perfect boyfriend... if you'd just learn to quit arguing with your girlfriend, mature a bit, get rid of your porn......"

Pretty good ... except for the porn.

Fridays are traditionally Online Test Day at Classical Values, but test offerings lately have been scarce, so the weekly routine has suffered. But this week, my old blogfriend Ghost of a flea has been busy! I filched THREE tests from Nick, and while I'm sorry to report that all of my results differed from his, they're nonetheless quite entertaining.

The first is "Which Fantasy/SciFi Character Are You?" I am Galadriel:

While I didn't ask to be a woman, she seems to have redeeming qualities, so I can't complain too much -- even if my result requires an interpreter. (I also note that my test result has not changed in nearly a year!)

Nick, on the other hand, gets to be a man, and is Roy Batty of Blade Runner.

______________________________________

Next is "Which British Literary Period are you?" I have no objection to being the Restoration. (Some good authors there -- and besides, I'm literally in need of restoration!)

Which British Literary Period are you? Restoration 1660-1785--Pope, Swift, Johnson. Times they are a changing. You're very cynical and you like looking out for the little guys. You have a sense of humor a lot of people just don't get.

Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

Nick's period is more traditional (and possibly more exciting); he's Old English. Hey, if it hadn't been for the Old English period, what would there have been to restore?

________________________________________

Last of today's Flea Three is the somewhat puzzling "Which 'Coupling' character are you?" test.

I'm Patrick Maitland:

PATRICK MAITLAND. Self-centered, a womanizer,
obsessed with sex, and quite a 'big man'
indeed! *wink wink* You don't have enough blood
to run both your brain and your sex drive at
the same time, so you usually concentrate on
sex. You've had bad experiences with haircuts
and competitive employees at other firms, but
that's okay! Your staggeringly large
'equipment' makes up for everything... even if
it does give you a bit of a balance problem.


Which 'Coupling' character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

The Flea is is Jeff Murdoch. (Now I'm really thinking about interpretation.)

_________________________

This last item certainly qualifies as a test, and it seems to follow the business about my being a womanizer with a "'big man' indeed! *wink wink*" (however the hell that might be interpreted).

Thanks to Dr. Rusty Shackleford, I have discovered my pimp name:

Ice Master Scheie Gates

I'm feeling restored already. My precious juices flow!

This week's Bonfire of the Vanities is hosted by Daly Thoughts. Dale is a fine blogger and does a superb job despite serious problems caused by recent flooding. (I don't know how I have managed to miss his blog for so long.)

A few were so good I had to reach in and grab them from the fire:

Anyway, I'm at the sole of my wit's end, so that's enough!

Read 'em all!

At the heart of the Kerry strategy is to draw a big line around Iraq while declaring simultaneously that Kerry is the best man to lead the war against terrorism -- anywhere but in Iraq. I suppose that means Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, the Phillipines. All these are hotbeds of terrorism where supposedly Kerry will be winning the war.

But not Iraq.

Here's Kerry, talking tough today in Philadelphia:

The invasion of Iraq was a profound diversion from the battle against our greatest enemy – Al Qaeda -- which killed more than three thousand people on 9/11 and which still plots our destruction today. And there’s just no question about it: the President’s misjudgment, miscalculation and mismanagement of the war in Iraq all make the war on terror harder to win. Iraq is now what it was not before the war – a haven for terrorists. George Bush made Saddam Hussein the priority. I would have made Osama bin Laden the priority. As president, I will finish the job in Iraq and refocus our energies on the real war on terror.

But I thought terrorism was not in Iraq! Al Qaida is not in Iraq! (And I suppose Zarqawi is not in Iraq, either?)

And of course even as he claims he'll end the war there, Kerry admits there are terrorists in Iraq:

Every week too many American families grieve for loved ones killed in Iraq by terrorist forces that weren’t even there before the invasion. The jihadist movement that hates us is gaining adherents around the world. An estimated 18,000 al Qaeda trained militants are operating in 60 countries around the world in a dangerous and more elusive network of extremist groups. Al Qaeda shouldn’t be hitting us anywhere. They should be losing, everywhere. We should be winning, everywhere.

Kerry gets the figure of 18,000 from a critical-of-Bush Institute for Strategic studies report, but even that report's own figures show the number is down:

The United States is al-Qaida‘s prime target in a war it sees as a death struggle between civilizations, the report said. An al-Qaida leader has said 4 million Americans will have to be killed "as a prerequisite to any Islamic victory," the survey said.

"Al-Qaida‘s complaints have been transformed into religious absolutes and cannot be satisfied through political compromise," the study said.

The institute said its estimate of 18,000 al-Qaida fighters was based on intelligence estimates that the group trained at least 20,000 fighters in its camps in Afghanistan before the United States and its allies ousted the Taliban regime.

In the ensuing war on terrorism, some 2,000 al-Qaida fighters have been killed or captured, the survey said.

Here's what I just don't get: if they're in Iraq, why does Kerry insist on fighting them somwhere else?

Now, I could understand an argument that Iraq should have been further down on the list of countries to invade, but seeing Iraq in a vacuum -- asserting Iraq had nothing to do with the current U.S. war on terrorism -- overlooks some important historical facts.

Consider its geopolitical status.

To this Kerry replies that we should not be in Iraq, but that we should fight al Qaida somewhere else.

Where might that be? What playing field does Kerry have in mind? He says he wants to return to Afghanistan (which he calls "the front line") to finish the job.

But will Osama accomodate?

He may have no choice! Because, if Kerry's wife is right, Osama is all but captured. Meaning no more Osama!

Which, according to Kerry's latest plan means the war is all but over.

Bring me t