Charles Fried and William Weld come under fire

The Scene: Colombia, 50 miles outside Bogota

Charles Fried and William Weld share the rear seat of a black Mercedes belonging to the American Embassy. Their driver, a grizzled vet who works for the Embassy, explains the rules of the road.

Driver: This next 15 mile stretch we call "Death Alley." Coupl'a villages owned by FARC. Owned. You know why we call 'em FARC, don'tcha? 'Cause if you come unprepared, you get farked. Get it? Dangerous s*** here. But I came prepared. See that weapon on the seat?

Fried: Quite impressive.

Driver: 'Bout 20 rounds a second. Got some protection behind me, too. Four guys in the car, all armed to the teeth.

Weld: So then . . .?

Driver: You gentlemen just listen up here. This car's armored, but if there's shooting, I'm gonna yell, and you're gonna hafta get your asses on the floor quick. No -- more than quick.

Fried: The floor's dirty.

Driver: Holy s***, mac. We're talkin' f***in' killer terrorist FARCers. When I yell, you drop.

Weld: This is a $1,200 suit.

Driver: You want a $1,200 casket? Go ahead, don't listen to me.

Fried: I'm a law professor at Harvard.

Driver: S***, I don't care where you're from, and FARC don't care, either.

Weld: I care. I studied at Harvard, too, undergrad and law school.

Driver: What the f*** is wrong with you? I live with FARC every day. I know this s***.

Fried: Where did you go to college?

Driver: College? I didn't go to college. Got drafted, four years in 'Nam. Saw six buddies get their heads blown off. You're my age. You serve?

Weld: I was deferred.

Driver: He was deferred. I fought for you, then. And when I got home, I took business classes at community college at night, doing security work during the day.

Weld: Charles, I don't trust him. I hardly even know anyone who didn't go to Harvard.

Fried: I agree, Bill. I had a student who was president of the law review a few years ago, went into the foreign service. I'll call him right now. He'll have a far more sophisticated and nuanced approach.

(Loud gunfire is heard. Two jeeps cross an open field toward the cars.)

Driver: Jesus, it's FARC! Get the f*** down on the floor!

(He grabs the weapon next to him.)

Fried: Hold on, I'm making a phone call.

Weld: If he's not there, call Barack. That's a no-brainer. We could use his calm and intellect here.

(More gunfire. The car screeches off.)


Story here and here.

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Brother, can you spare 41 cents?

Ever since I made a substantial contribution to the Bush re-election campaign in 2004, my one serious political contribution in my life, I've been on a list of donors that the RNC regularly sends letters to, calls, wines and dines, and so on. Well, maybe not wines and dines, but you get the idea.

I always turn them down, of course, but I have to say I'm a little concerned about the latest fundraiser, which I received in the mail today. As the image below will show you, the RNC appears to be a little hard up for cash.

Click on the image to enlarge it.

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Primary Tuesday linkfest

You may have heard that the Maryland primary was held today (as were the primaries in Virginia and the District of Columbia). I showed up at 7:00 in the morning as the polls opened. Why I bothered I'll never understand. It was down to a decision between my fourth and my fifth choices for the nomination. (I registered a protest vote by voting for my first, who was already out of the race.) But I did vote for the Mission Impossible guy to run against our Democratic congressman in November, and I voted for school board, too.

Although I declined it, the election judges foisted an "I voted" sticker on me. I tried to convince my 16-year-old son to wear it to school today, but he doesn't like his father's sense of humor.

Anyway, here's tonight's linkfest, starting with the political:

1. In last week's linkfest, I pointed you to a video of Obama supporters in a Luntz focus group being asked to name a single accomplishment for Obama. Today, we have the second installment in the same quest. Not as good as the first one, but one member tries to "pass," as if this were law school, and another says Obama's accomplishment was being the only black senator.

2. From a few days ago . . . Mickey Kaus: "Marion Barry to endorse Obama: Isn't there something Obama can do to stop this?"

3. The Republican Jewish Coalition begins an ad campaign that hits home for Jews on the most sensitive issue ever: "I Used To Be A Democrat." Truly hitting below the belt. At this rate, within no more than 50 years, the Republicans will increase their share of the Jewish vote to 30 percent.

4. The BBC: "With Valentine's Day around the corner, don't trust your instincts when it comes to selecting a mate." No, you should choose mathematically. Yes, mathematically. Or, to quote the Brits, you should use "maths." (In America, we can't even do math in the singular, let alone the plural.) Here is the formula, in case you were wondering:

Putting this into an equation, we could come up with the following (W=Witty, G=Aggressive, Ay=Your Attractiveness, AH=Her Attractiveness, R=Her "Amount" of Current Relationship; all variables from 1-10 with 10 being high):


You would, of course, have to evaluate the results on some type of scale, like the one here:

If ASK is less than zero you should lower your standards
If ASK is between zero and 1, you have exactly a snowball's chance in hell with her
If ASK is between 1 and 10, game on!
If ASK is greater than 10, consider her more attractive friend instead

(via Fark)

5. Don't hit the "Reply to All" button. And don't reply to a message where the settings are borked and any reply is treated AS IF it were "Reply to All." That's the lesson from a Department of Homeland Security contractor's experience, related in The Belmont Club. Bonus: The distribution list for this intelligence report somehow included a fellow in the defense industry of Iran. Yes, that Iran. (hat tip: fee simple)

6. If you've been dissatisfied with the current generation of composting toilets, I have good news for you: "The Next Generation of Composting Toilet Technology is Here." (hat tip: Son of the Right Hand) But if this toilet won't dispose of the dead bodies I have lying around, I'll just have to wait until the next generation after that.

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Super Tuesday linkfest

It's Super Tuesday today. So if you've come here to get informed political commentary, you'd better find another site right away.

But if you want a few interesting political links, try these:

1. Sean Hannity gets Frank Luntz to ask his focus group of Obama fans to name one specific accomplishment of Barack Obama. As the Fark line goes, hilarity ensues. Watch the video here. I swear one guy says Obama's a "great oratator."

2. In all the numerous bills of particulars that conservatives are posting against John McCain, the one I haven't seen yet is that, in the days when Cindy Sheehan was a big deal in the media, McCain met with her as if she were a respectable person. I did a photo comic at the time, which I think caught the essence of the encounter: "Cindy and John: He said, she said."

3. A Weekly Standard review (subscribers only) of a couple of books about the United States from Spain is illustrated with a photo of protesters in Madrid in 2001 when Bush visited the city. Sadly, it's not in the web version of the review. Take a look at the photo. Notice what the signs at the lower left and in the middle say? I'm famous. Sort of.



4. This amusing story of voting in the Republican primary in Brooklyn has the ring of truth to it.

**********************************

OK, that concludes the political part of the linkfest. On to other topics. First, sports.

5. You may have heard that the Super Bowl was played on Sunday. But have you heard of the Puppy Bowl? (hat tip: Mrs. Attila)

6. I know that more people read this site than Instapundit, Ace of Spades HQ, and Best of the Web Today combined, so I doubt you'll have seen this one before. First they came for dodgeball and I said nothing. Then they came for Intentional Flatulence, which by all rights should be an Olympic sport. This is nuts: If you force them to hold it in, they'll explode. (hat tip: Soccer Dad, but don't mention that to his kids) [UPDATE 2/6: Story is an exaggeration, apparently taken from a gag sheet prepared by eighth-grade girls. The true school newsletter says: "I just want to make sure parents know this actually is not an official ban or new school rule. Some eighth grade teachers did tell eighth graders that if they continue to disrupt class by intentionally farting, they will get a detention. There is truth to that. Intentional flatulence can be a disruption to class, and we already have rules addressing disruptive behavior." Is that clear?]

And now, other bodily functions.

7. Remote control to undo vasectomy? Surely, you jest:

A man would then use the handset, or fob, to open it around the time of having sex if he and his partner wanted to conceive.

Once the handset is pressed, it sends a coded radio signal through the skin to the implant, which contains a tiny antenna. The antenna picks up the signal and converts it into sound waves that "ripple" through the valve.

Since the valve itself is soft and flexible, the sound waves make it flap open - allowing sperm to pass through. As with cars, each device would have its own unique code so it could not be opened by anyone else.

"It's based on a radio signal, like the device on your key ring, which is coded so that you cannot open someone else's car," Professor Abbott says.

This was a "Dude" headline at HotAir. With good reason.

8. Today's headline of the day (via Fark): "Booze bra gives women a wine rack."

9. Leave it to the Brits: "THE minefield of lingerie shopping for lovers can be avoided this Valentine's Day with a new website which lets you visit a virtual dressing room and ask models to try on underwear." Nearly as good as the Tower of Boobel I wrote about two years ago.

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The looming nickname gap

When you're a guy who writes under a nickname, you sometimes pay a little more attention to that subject than perhaps you should. And I was thinking back to some of the presidents of the mid-20th century: FDR, JFK, LBJ, and Ike. For fun, we could throw in Tricky Dick.

Who is there like that in the current election cycle? Really, nobody. Maybe "Huck" for Huckabee, but that's about it.

So let's expand our definition of nickname to include a distinctive first name or middle name that a candidate is truly known by.

Among the major candidates on the Democratic side, that brings in Hillary, but not Obama (Barack is distinctive, but it's not used much in the campaign) or John Edwards. On the Republican side, we get Huck, Mitt, Rudy, and Fred! (always with an exclamation point). John McCain is still nowhere to be found, and "Maverick" doesn't count, since it's usually his detractors who use it.

This is actually very troubling.

Going into Super Tuesday, it looks as if Hillary and McCain could be well on the way to winning the nominations of their parties. One with a nickname, broadly defined, and one without.

Why is this troubling? Consider the history. I'm going to go through the past presidential elections starting with 1952 to show that there is a slight but distinct edge for the candidate with a nickname. For each election, I'm going to rate the nickname comparison on a scale of 1 to 3 (slight, moderate, or strong) with a plus or a minus sign to indicate whether the candidate with the nickname won or lost.

Next, I'm going to commit an act of mathematics that would have gotten me a 15-yard penalty at my undergraduate math department for "intentional oversimplification": I'm going to average the scores. If you disagree with my approach or my numbers, put it in the comments.

Here we go:

1952

Ike vs. Adlai. One could call this a wash, but "Ike" was used by his supporters much more during the campaign. Eisenhower beat Stevenson. I'm going to rate this a + 1.

1956

Ike vs. Adlai again. Same result. + 1.

1960

JFK vs. Nixon. Serious nickname. Kennedy beat Nixon. + 3.

1964

LBJ vs. Goldwater. Johnson beat Goldwater. "AuH2O" was a cute bumper sticker, but it wasn't a nickname for Goldwater. This election gets a + 3.

1968

HHH vs. Nixon. Lots of people referred to Humphrey in writing as HHH, but he wasn't identified as such in nearly the same way that Kennedy and Johnson were with their initials. And in any event, Nixon won. I rate this a - 2. The negative sign means the candidate with a nickname lost.

1972

Nixon vs. McGovern. Neither had a real nickname, other than Nixon's "Tricky Dick." I call this a wash. A big, fat 0.

1976

"Jimmy" Carter vs. Gerald Ford. Carter had to take action, sometimes legal action, to force states to list him as "Jimmy" on the ballot, instead of James Earl. Most states then required an official, legal name. Carter won, so I give him a + 2.

1980

Reagan vs. Carter. Reagan was sometimes known as "Dutch," but really, Reagan was REAGAN, larger than life and without a nickname. Carter, execrable as he was, was "Jimmy." Reagan beat him, so this election gets a - 2.

1984

Reagan vs. Mondale. Mondale was sometimes known as "Fritz," but his supporters rarely used that name for him during the campaign. I'd call this one a wash, or 0.

1988

Bush vs. Dukakis. Neither really had a nickname. Both were indescribably dull. I'd call this a wash, too, or 0.

1992

Bush vs. Clinton. Clinton played up the "Bubba" angle, not so much for a nickname as for his southern background. He won. This is a close call, but I'd give it a + 1.

1996

Clinton vs. Dole. Bob Dole's nickname was Bob Dole, in the third person. He gets no credit. He loses big time. As above, this is a + 1.

2000

Bush vs. Gore. Bush was often "Dubya" or "W," and his supporters used those appellations a lot of the time. Gore was simply Gore (or, if you're Rush Limbaugh, Algore). Bush won. (Yes, he really did, you lunatics.) So I give this a + 2.

2004

Bush vs. Kerry. Kerry wanted to be the second coming of JFK, but no one paid any attention. Bush won again. I give this a + 2.

CONCLUSION

The total of all the ratings is 12 for 14 presidential elections, an average of just under 1, a slight but very distinct positive correlation with nickname.

This truly is not a good sign, because Hillary! has a noticeable edge over McCain.

We have a looming nickname gap, and the Republicans would be well advised to do something about it.

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Mission impossible

When I lived on Manhattan's Upper West Side in the early- to mid-1980s, it was the home base of frizzy leftists. Our congressman was Ted Weiss, and it would be unfair to call him a Stalinist. I think, technically, he was a Leninist, but I was never very good at taxonomy.

For me, the most infamous vote cast by Weiss in the House had nothing to do with economics or foreign policy. That vote, which was publicized by his opponent, was Weiss's lone "no" on a 400-1 vote for some bill restricting child p*rnography. True story: In 1984, if I remember correctly, I asked the guy who was handing out Weiss's literature why he'd voted against the bill, and the response was that there were "serious civil liberties issues" with it. Undoubtedly, that was why he was the only congressman to notice it. I suppose it might have had something to do with the Times Square p*rn dealers who were in the district, but who knows?

Anyway, Weiss used to win elections by roughly 85-15. If you were a Democrat, as I was at the time, that meant that you had two chances to cast a protest vote against the creep, once in the primary and once in the general election. Usually, the local Republicans, such as they were, would field some young guy who was running just for the fun of it.

A friend of mine told me a story I haven't independently verified, but it's amusing regardless of its authenticity. The story was that in one election cycle, the Republican running against Weiss got the usual 10-20 percent of the vote. Shortly thereafter, he committed suicide. They asked the local Republican chairman about it, and his response was that he should have known the candidate was mentally unstable, because he actually thought he could win.

I say this all in preface to my discussion of the Republican primary for the congressional seat in Maryland's 8th District, where I live now. The district is primarily in Montgomery County.

This is a very liberal, predominantly Democratic district. For quite a few years, we were represented by a liberal Republican named Connie ("Commie") Morella. I take credit for her nickname, which was widely used -- at least, among a small group of my friends. Morella was popular with Democrats, as well, for the most part, but finally, in 2002, after several near misses, the Democrats were able to unseat her. Most people attribute it to a gerrymandering of the district following the 2000 census. Bush Derangement Syndrome also played a part. In any case, we're in for Democrats in the 8th district for the foreseeable future.

Nevertheless, there's rarely a shortage of Republicans willing to make the run for the seat. I'm sort of joking when I say this, but it wouldn't be a bad idea to make Republican candidates in this district pass a psychological test before allowing them to run in the primary.

Today, I received in the mail the voters' guide for next Tuesday's the Feb. 12 primary from the League of Leftwing Women Voters. There are five Republicans seeking the suicide mission of running against Congressman Chris Van Hollen. Each has his positions set forth on the issues in the questionnaire of the League. Most of it, you will not be surprised to learn, is generic boilerplate. On the other hand, sometimes you can learn a lot from boilerplate. Because there's boilerplate, and there's boilerplate. For example, a guy who says we must support our military as it does the hard work in Afghanistan and Iraq is different from the guy who says we must support our military by bringing our troops home as soon as possible. (Those are my made-up examples, by the way.)

The one issue on the questionnaire that intrigued me was "Civil Rights." What does that mean, you ask? Here's what the League says: "How would you balance individual liberties and national security?" Call me cynical, but if you responded that national security is the most important mission of the federal government and that, while individual liberties are essential, we have to be practical and not ideological in defining our liberties, you would be considered anti-civil rights.

The implication is that our rights have already been abridged, which I think is ludicrous. (If you disagree with me, put it in the comments, but only if you are not a Ron Paul supporter or a lefty suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome.) To me, we have done far less than we need to do to maintain our national security. In fact, every time we try, our national security secrets are disclosed on the front pages of major newspapers located in New York. (I'm not trying to provoke you. Really.)

And it goes without saying that all of the Republican congressional candidates stress the importance of our liberties, but you can learn a lot by the way they say it. One dude says, "First priority, the United States must uphold the Geneva Convention on human rights." Translation: We haven't been treating our detainees well in Guantanamo. (My heart bleeds.) Another dude says at his bare-bones website: "The result [of straying from the Constitution], as our Founding Fathers foresaw over 200 years ago, is an ever more powerful and unaccountable government trampling on individual freedoms while engaging in foreign adventurism and reckless fiscal policies." Translation: "Ron Paul is my God."

But on this psychological test, the other three guys seem basically sane, which is all you can ask for, really. Because whoever wins is going to get his butt kicked.

[2/1 Edited for typos.]

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George and Laura send me a note

The Republican National Committee never lets up in its efforts to get me to cough up a couple of Benjamins for its forthcoming quixotic crusade to prevent a massacre in next year's elections.

Recently, I received this photo from the RNC. I can tell the President is an admirer of my work, but it's going to require a lot more than this to get me to contribute. Maybe a tour of the private torture rooms at the White House where Dick Cheney personally waterboards the Administration's domestic critics. That would be worth something. This, not so much. (Click to enlarge photo.)

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Wednesday linkfest

1. They made the trains to Auschwitz run on time: A poll of Germans finds that 25% say that National Socialism had some good things about it. (via Hot Air)

2. "Yeah, that's the first thing I would notice to look at them." -- Baseball Crank, quipping about a Reuters article in which Lynne Cheney's disclosure that Big Dick and Barack "Messiah" Obama are eighth cousins is found puzzling: "The two men could hardly be more different. Cheney is an advocate for pursuing the war in Iraq to try to stabilize the country, while Obama wants to get U.S. troops out of Iraq."

3. The Washington Post is amazed -- amazed! -- that when Republican candidates speak to a Jewish group, they're aware that they're speaking to Jews.

4. "'A police officer who did not tell me he was a police officer just yelled, "shut the f up." I yelled back, "mind your f'in business." That's as far as it went,' Herb recounted." This has got to be the best line in a news story for at least this week, maybe longer. Dawn Herb, a West Scranton (PA) woman frustrated with an overflowing toilet, let loose with some bad language -- and was given a disorderly-conduct citation for her troubles. The Volokh Conspiracy weighs in with some analysis of the Pennsylvania statute under which she was charged. Picture here.

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That elephant

A few days ago, Bruce Godfrey of Crablaw emailed me with the new Republican National Convention logo asking rhetorically to itemize the reasons it was a crappy logo: "The most G-rated one is that the elephant should be red, not blue. PG-13 ones would include the elephant's 'wide stance' and the angle of the poor beast's rear end." (According to a correspondent to Best of the Web Today: "In heraldry the position of the elephant in the logo is called 'rampant.' It is one of a number of standard poses, and the most active one.")

For the record, here is the logo:



Well, Bruce, I want you to know that the current state of the Republican Party just isn't funny!

I thought of doing a photoshop, really I did, but when something isn't funny, it isn't funny. Here's the only thing that seemed appropriate to me, but it's way too close to the truth.



The only thing that would have been more accurate is a laughing Hillary sitting atop the deceased elephant's belly.

You won't be surprised to learn that other bloggers -- mostly self-styled "progressives," which is a term that means they've "progressed" from anger to pure hatred -- have taken up the photoshop cudgel. Here's one such site. Here's another that, sans photoshop, does itemize the reasons the logo is awful. (Bad language warning.)

Oh, well, if I can laugh at Bill and Hillary, I guess it's only fair for them to laugh at the Republican morons who came up with this thing.

UPDATE (10/11): The people at Fark do the photoshop much better. One even stole my idea. (Well, technically, he didn't steal it because he put it up a few days before, but at least great minds think alike.)

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