Better Roses Than Cocaine, Right?

I don't always agree with Nicholas Kristof, but he poses an excellent question to the Democrats on trade: "Better Roses Than Cocaine, right"?

For seven years, Democrats have rightfully complained that President Bush has gratuitously antagonized the world, exasperating our allies and eroding America’s standing and influence.

But now the Democrats are doing the same thing on trade. In Latin America, it is Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton who are seen as the go-it-alone cowboys, by opposing the United States’ free-trade agreement with Colombia.

Some Democrats claim that they are against the pact because Colombia has abused human rights. Those concerns are legitimate — but they shouldn’t be used to punish people like Norma Reynosa, a 35-year-old woman who just may snip the flowers that go into the Mother’s Day bouquet that you buy.

Human rights aren’t abstract to Ms. Reynosa. Two of her relatives were killed in the brutal warfare and insecurity that plague her home region in Colombia’s South. A third was killed by a land mine, and a fourth was kidnapped at age 12 to work for guerrillas in the National Liberation Army, or the ELN. Ms. Reynosa ran a small restaurant but had to flee when the guerrillas demanded that she pay more extortion money than she could afford.

“They said they would kill us,” she recalled. “They didn’t say how. Mostly they just shot people and threw their bodies in the river.”

So in June 2005, Ms. Reynosa and her husband abandoned their home and fled to the outskirts of the capital to see if they could get jobs in the booming flower industry. Colombian cities like Medellín were the most dangerous cities in the world in the 1980s and ’90s, but now they are thriving and homicide rates are well below those of some American cities.

One reason is those bouquets you buy, entering duty-free from Colombia. These days Colombia is the world’s second-largest exporter of flowers after the Netherlands, and almost 200,000 people work in the flower industry. Up to 28 cargo planes a day carry flowers from Colombia to the U.S.

Better carnations than cocaine, no?

Critics of the free-trade pact worry that it would hurt American workers. But Colombian goods already enter the U.S. duty-free; what would change is that American exporters would get access to the Colombian market.

(Colombia is pushing hard for the pact not because of any immediate trade benefit but because its duty-free access to the U.S. must be regularly renewed. Businesses are reluctant to invest in flower farms or garment factories unless they know that they will be able to export to the U.S. for many years to come.)

I have a lot of concerns on Democratic foreign policy, although I've mostly blogged on Iraq.

But a turn toward trade protection, for example, in some "new deal" for American globalization, would be a disaster for the United States, and would further remove today's Democratic Party from the party of Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy.

Photo Credit: New York Times

Is it Really Race That's Messy Up the Democrats?

The New York Times misspecifies the problem for the Democrats in the long primary battle this spring.

Is it racial conflict that's damaging the prospects of a Barack Obama nomination, since the Illinois Senator's demonstrated incomplete electablity in key working class states? Or is the problem really the larger concatenation of all the consequences of Democratic Party identity politics itself, with that project's inherent interventionist, prefential, postmodernist mode of state power likely to harm traditional constituencies in areas from education to tax policy.

Check out the Times' take on this:

It is the question that has hung over Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, and it loomed large on Tuesday night after his loss to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in Pennsylvania: Why has he been unable to win over enough working-class and white voters to wrap up the Democratic nomination?

Lurking behind that question is another: Is the Democratic Party hesitating about race as it moves to the brink of nominating an African-American to be president?

Mr. Obama remains ahead of Mrs. Clinton in delegates, in the popular vote and in national polls, and Mrs. Clinton certainly has her own problems trying to herd Democrats into her corner.

But just when it seemed that the Democratic Party was close to anointing Mr. Obama as its nominee, he lost yet again in a big general election state, dragged down by his weakness among blue-collar voters, older voters and white voters. The composition of Mrs. Clinton’s support — or, looked at another way, the makeup of voters who have proved reluctant to embrace Mr. Obama — has Democrats wondering, if not worrying, about what role race may be playing.

“I’m sure there is some of that,” said David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s senior political adviser, as he considered how race was playing among voters in late primary states. Mr. Axelrod said Mrs. Clinton’s biggest advantage had been among older voters, “and I think there is a general inclination on the part of the older voters to vote for what is more familiar.” He added: “Here’s a guy named Barack Obama, an African-American guy, relatively new. That’s a lot of change.”

That change is found, I would argue, not just in the color of Obama's skin, but in his entire transcendental persona.

The change people aren't so thrilled about is the opening of the the highest ranks of the national government to the influences of hate-filled black liberationist preachers, unrepentant '60s-era domestic terrorists, and Islamist fundraisers whose organizations have been red-flagged and banned by the U.S. Department of Justice.

That's the problem. Had a Colin Powell-type of candidate challenged Hillary for the Democratic nomination, and somehow managed to make it this far, we'd be seeing a more traditional campaign, focusing on the issues of main street rather than Telegraph Road and Harvard Yard.

Thus, when Clinton starts talking - as she has been this last couple of weeks - about the concerns of everyday working class voters, relegating her own long-tradition of identity politics to a footnote, she's finally able to make the connection with people who are the salt of the earth of middle America.

It's not race per se that's tripping-up Obama, but the larger issues of radical change that a Barack Obama presidency would represent.

In that sense, there's some reassurance in the latest rounds of the Democrat race. Each time Hillary has come back the last few months - in New Hampshire, Super Tuesday, Ohio and Texas - everyone's said, "oh, it's racial politics, the "Bradley effect..."

But it's not. The reaction is more ideology, if anything. More traditionalist, and matrialist voters, are cringing against the potential of a radical postmaterialist, postmodern administration under Obama. That the Illinois Senator happens to be black is coincidental.

Obama's "Brand" Takes Hit in Pennsylvania

The Chicago Sun Times reports that Barack Obama's poor showing in Pennsylvania last night has damaged the Obama "brand":

The Obama team has always been very conscious and protective of the Sen. Barack Obama "brand." After a tough Pennsylvania contest, Obama's brand is bruised. Obama is not as pristine as he once was. He's had to deal with a series of controversies and he's gone negative against Sen. Hillary Clinton -- as she has attacked him.

In this historic election, Obama's high pedestal was cut down a few feet in Pennsylvania, his hardest fight so far.

Some of the most dramatic chapters of the Obama campaign, launched February 2007, have occurred just these past weeks in Pennsylvania.

Last month, over at The Constitution Center, near Independence Hall, Obama delivered a speech on race and inflammatory comments from his controversial pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Wright still lingers as a general election issue should Obama be the Democratic nominee. His speech could be a plus long term.

The question of whether Obama is an "elitist" was raised after he said at a San Francisco fund-raiser that some in small-town Pennsylvania were "bitter" and so they "cling" to God and guns. In Altoona, Obama went bowling to get in touch with his inner blue collar -- even though it's not his sport. He rolled a gutter ball. But that's not all bad; the footage did not end up as a metaphor for his campaign and the humiliation factor was minor.

During the debate last week, questions about Obama's relationship with William Ayers, the former Weather Underground member/Chicago educator, pushed the story into the mainstream press. But the Obama team shut the guilt-by-association problem down -- for now, at least -- by bringing up pardons President Bill Clinton handed to Weather Underground members.

With all this, Obama returned to the park area near the Constitution Center on Friday night to rally a crowd of 35,000. Democratic registration in Philadelphia and its suburbs is soaring.

One of Obama's closing ads hits Clinton on her health care plan and goes too far in claiming she will garnish wages to help pay for health insurance. But the Obama ad is a conventional political response, not quite the "brand" image.

"They made a very serious choice that will have long-standing consequences to put their brand at stake in order to try to deliver this knockout blow, that they've been campaigning about this -- you know, with this notion of politics of hope. I don't think that that's how they've behaved," said Clinton strategist Geoff Garin.

Obama's brand likely won't be helped by the news that the Illinois Senator's got the support of Hatem El-Hady, a fundraiser whose Islamic charity, Kindhearts, was closed in 2006 after the Justice Department determined the organization to be the leading terrorist fundraiser in the United States.

El-Hady's got a dedicated sign-up page at Obama's official campaign web site, and Michelle Obama's listed as a "friend," a designation that's only given after accepting a personal invitation.

See more at Memeorandum.

Hillary Clinton's a GOP Attack Campaign Stalking Horse?

Hillary Clinton's being bashed big time for running a GOP-style attack campaign against Barack Obama (see Daily Kos, for example).

Now that Clinton's come back with a big win in the Keystone State, we can expect more of this outrage, which is getting even more unhinged, if Tom Hayden's essay at the Nation is any indication:

My wife Barbara has begun yelling at the television set every time she hears Hillary Clinton. This is abnormal behavior, since Barbara is a meditative practitioner of everything peaceful and organic, and is inspired by Barack Obama's transformational appeal.

For Barbara, Hillary has become the screech on the blackboard. From First Lady to Lady Macbeth....

Going negative doesn't begin to describe what has happened. Hillary is going over the edge....

outrageous insult and accusation ever inflicted on her by the American right over the decades. She is running against what she might have become. Too much politics dries the soul of the idealist.

It is abundantly clear that the Clintons, working with FOX News and manipulating old Clinton staffers like George Stephanopoulos, are trying, at least unconsciously, to so damage Barack Obama that he will be perceived as "unelectable" to Democratic superdelegates. It is also clear that the campaign of defamation against Obama has resulted in higher negative ratings for Hillary Clinton. She therefore is threatening the Democratic Party's chances for the White House, whether or not she is the nominee.

Since no one in the party leadership seems able or willing to intervene against this self-destructive downward spiral, perhaps progressives need to consider responding in the only way politicians sometimes understand. If they can't hear us screaming at the television sets, we can send a message that the Clintons are acting as if they prefer John McCain to Barack Obama. And follow it up with another message: if Clinton doesn't immediately cease her path of destruction, millions of young voters and black voters may not send checks, may not knock on doors, and may not even vote for her if she becomes the nominee. That's not a threat, that's the reality she is creating.

This extreme right stalking horse meme's popular (recall Andrew Sullivan's recent deployment of the "Rovian-Atwater" smear), but I particularly like how the "youth" movement's going to save the Democratic Party.

The fact is that turnout levels are down among less-than-30-year-old voters without a college education, so perhaps Hayden sees a resugence of '60s campus radicalism that will lift Obama's fortunes (Sullivan thinks so too, speaking in an Obama-esque, transcendental style).

Note, though, that if folks are going to get upset with the far right, they should take it up with the real thing: By the looks of recent GOP developments, it's certainly getting nasty on the campaign hustings.

An outside conservative group is running a Willie Horton-style Chicago crime ad against Obama (via YouTube):

Also, the McCain campaign has recounced this Obama atttack ad sponsored by the North Carolina GOP (via YouTube):

See more at Memeorandum.

Clinton Hauls In $2.5 Million After Pennsylvania

Bloomberg has the story on a staffer's report that the Clinton campaign raked in $2.5 million following the organization's Pennsylvania win last night:

Hillary Clinton parlayed her victory in the Pennsylvania Democratic presidential primary into a pitch for funds, and her campaign said she raised $2.5 million in the hours after the polls closed.

``We can only keep winning if we can keep competing with an opponent who keeps on spending so massively,'' the New York senator said at her victory rally in Philadelphia. ``The future of this campaign is in your hands.''

Clinton spokesman Mo Elleithee said the money came in less than three hours after voting ended. He called it ``our best fundraising night ever.''

Illinois Senator Barack Obama has outpaced Clinton in fundraising as he has taken the lead in the Democratic nomination race. He started the month with $42.5 million to spend compared with about $8 million for Clinton, who also reported $10.3 million in unpaid bills.

New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine and U.S. Representative Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania, both Clinton supporters, said in interviews that they expected her Pennsylvania primary victory to make it easier to bring in cash.

``There are a lot of people who are deeply enthusiastic. The money will be there,'' Corzine said, adding that he planned to make calls to contributors tomorrow.

Campaign Chairman Terry McAuliffe said Clinton would raise more in April than the $20 million she took in last month, an amount that was less than half that raised by Obama.

``He outspent us. Who cares? We're getting our message out and we're winning elections,'' McAuliffe said.

That's the campaign's key message: Clinton is winning. I watched Hillary deflect criticism of her high negatives with that argument this morning on Good Morning America, and now we've got Terry McAuliffe repeating the line.

It's certainly effective, and while the Obama camp will likely continue to do well in fundraising, the momentum of victory's always powerful, and Hillary can continue to build on her comeback credentials as the most electable Democrat heading into the remaining contests.

See more at Memeorandum, especially Mark Steyn, "Reductio ad Obamum."

Prisoner's Dilemma or Stag Hunt in the Superdelegates Commitment Game

I'm having to think back a while here, to my early grad school training, on the appropriate use of game theory to describe the superdelegate commitment problem in the Democratic Party nomination fight.

The prompt?

Well, Jaime Sneider has argued that the propensity of some superdelegates to withhold commitment to either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama is a "classic prisoner's dilemma" problem (via Memeorandum).

Sneider's responding to John Podhoretz, who in turn was responding to Matthew Yglesias:

John Podhoretz on the chances of wrapping this thing up early:

Yes. Sure. Because politicians with the most valuable votes in America are just going to choose up sides and not spend three months being courted and feted and promised. They are going to forswear having their feet kissed, their backs massaged, their views requested, their wants fulfilled, their needs anticipated. They are going to throw their vote away rather than milk it for all it’s worth....

A thousand or so people are going to decide this primary. It behooves those people to have this go on as long as possible, because that is how they are going to get the most goodies. Maybe this is what Hillary truly understands.

Howard Dean has admonished superdelegates for the bazillionth time to declare which candidate they intend to support, but don’t hold your breath. The fact is the Democratic superdelegates are in a classic prisoner’s dilemma. It is in their collective interest to wrap up the nomination, but each of them gains influence as they hold out their vote. Dean recently set down a June 3rd deadline for the superdelegates. I’m looking forward to that day: the Democratic nomination won’t be settled, and Dean will inevitably look like the incompetent, impotent party leader he is.

Actually, the superdelegates' problem seems less a classic a prisoner's dilemma than a "stag hunt," from Jean Jacques Rousseau.

If memory serves me, I learned this theory in Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State, and War, but to make this quick, the Wikipedia version's going to have to do:

In game theory, the stag hunt is a game which describes a conflict between safety and social cooperation. Other names for it or its variants include "assurance game", "coordination game", and "trust dilemma". Jean-Jacques Rousseau described a situation in which two individuals go out on a hunt. Each can individually choose to hunt a stag or hunt a hare. Each player must choose an action without knowing the choice of the other. If an individual hunts a stag, he must have the cooperation of his partner in order to succeed. An individual can get a hare by himself, but a hare is worth less than a stag. This is taken to be an important analogy for social cooperation.

The stag hunt differs from the Prisoner's Dilemma in that there are two Nash equilibria: when both players cooperate and both players defect. In the Prisoners Dilemma, however, despite the fact that both players cooperating is Pareto efficient, the only Nash equilibrium is when both players choose to defect....

Although most authors focus on the prisoner's dilemma as the game that best represents the problem of social cooperation, some authors believe that the stag hunt represents an equally (or more) interesting context in which to study cooperation and its problems...

The superdelegate problem seems more apppriate here, as it includes a large number of actors (a situation of cooperation that might more resemble the real world, for example, as in the "carousel feeding" of a group orcas) and the situation of double Nash equilibria.

It's been a while since I studied The Evolution of Cooperation, so if any expert game theorists come along here with a more beautiful mind, I'll be happy to defer.

Hillary's Win: It's Not About the Math

With Hillary Clinton's big win in Pennsylvania last night, the dire hand-wringing among Barack Obama's supporters has submerged below melancholy to the realm of projection and distortion.

Andrew Sullivan calls Hillary's win a triumph of "Rovian-Atwater" politics:

It's worth recalling what this primary came to be about, because of a self-conscious decision by the Clintons to adopt the tactics and politics of the people who persecuted and hounded them in the 1990s. It was indeed in the end about smearing and labeling Obama as a far-left, atheist, elite, pansy Godless snob fraud. That was almost all it came to be about....

Used by Democrats, legitimized by Democrats, embraced by Democrats, the Rove-Atwater gambits have been paid the highest compliment by the Clintons these past few weeks. But a single digit win against a young black man in a polarized race suggests that this compliment was past its sell-by date. It was an act of desperation, and one last grab back to the past. It didn't quite do what it was supposed to do. Nearly, but not quite.

Instead of analysis, Sullivan resorts to his own smears and distortion.

Karl Rove is a winning strategist, perfectly fine with Machiavellian politics. Sullivan wouldn't be complaining if Obama had more experience and actually knew how to run a campaign against the Clinton machine. Instead, Sullivan has to try to minimize Clinton by slighting her decisive victory as only "single-digit." The numbers, of course, have Clinton at 55 to 45 percent over Obama last night, a big double-digit smash if there ever was one!

As the Los Angeles Times put it:

Clinton led Barack Obama 55% to 45%, with 99% of the precincts reporting.

Then we have the New York Times' editorial, which came out early last night, around 8:00pm on the West coast, to dismiss Clinton's win as the "low road":

By staying on the attack and not engaging Mr. Obama on the substance of issues like terrorism, the economy and how to organize an orderly exit from Iraq, Mrs. Clinton does more than just turn off voters who don’t like negative campaigning. She undercuts the rationale for her candidacy that led this page and others to support her: that she is more qualified, right now, to be president than Mr. Obama....

After seven years of George W. Bush’s failed with-us-or-against-us presidency, all American voters deserve to hear a nuanced debate — right now and through the general campaign — about how each candidate will combat terrorism, protect civil liberties, address the housing crisis and end the war in Iraq.

You'll notice now the Times seeks to smear Clinton as the new G.W. Bush.

Clinton, in holding on in Pennsylvania, ran a campaign from the middle, returning to real, centrist foreign policy themes - such as massive retaliation against an Iranian nuclear first-strike - when it matters the most. That's not taking the low road. That's a straight-talk-style of stumping that's precisely needed amid Obama's neo-Carterite foreign policy agenda.

The fact remains that Obama's failed to put away the Democratic nomination. He didn't do it on Super Tuesday. He didn't do in Ohio or Texas, and he didn't do it last night in Pennsylvania.

He's getting to be like Mitt Romney - staking his winning potential on a bunch of small states - while Hillary racks up the big wins in the pedal-to-the-medal heartland states that will decide it all in November.

So, forget that Obama's ahead in pledged delegates, or in the total popular vote (which is a rehash argument from Gore's popular vote "win" in 2000).

It's not about the math anymore. Barack Obama's surge has stalled, and Hillary's perfectly situated to make the case on the grounds of electoral superiority.

As Fred Barnes notes this morning, in his essay, "Hillary Builds Her Case":

FORGET DELEGATES AND the popular vote for the Democratic presidential nomination. The most important thing Hillary Clinton gained by winning the Pennsylvania primary yesterday was a better argument - indeed, a much better argument.

It is a much better argument, which is why Obamaniacs like Sullivan and the Bush-bashers at NYT have to resort to their mimimizations and smears.

The real numbers that count came in big last night: A 55 percent majority of Pennsylvanians rejected superificialty and transcendence, they rejected allusions to "Rovian" politics and voted both by experience and by their hearts.

Hillary Clinton's got the momentum.

She's already put up big campaign fundraising numbers in the follow-up to her victory, and we should expect to see a Clinton bump in public opinion in states holding upcoming primaries, especially Indiana, the next crucial test for Obama's working-class appeal.

This Bud's for you, Hillraiser!

See more analysis at Memeorandum.

Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times

Newshoggers Comes Out as Revolutionary Socialist

Libby Spencer, over at Newshoggers, has announced she'd support Senator Bernie Sanders if he was a candidate for the presidency:

This interview made me wish Bernie Sanders was running. As incumbents go, he's one of the best we've got and we need much more talk like this.

"Clearly one of the serious problems we have in our nation is not just in George Bush being the worst president in the modern history of the United States, but it is a corporate media which consistently deflects attention from the reality of American life. The middle class has been in decline for decades now, and it's manifested in a transformation of the economy from a General Motors economy of good wages, strong union, good benefits, to a Wal-Mart economy of low wages, no benefits, and vehemently anti-union. That's the transformation of the American economy. The corporate media has virtually ignored that."

Read the rest of the interview at the link. It made me want to write him in on my ballot.

Sanders is a declared "democratic socialist," and while this ideology is presumed to abjure violent methods, by definition democratic socialism advocates a revolutionary doctrine calling for the overthrow of the capitalist classes and nationalization of means of economic production.

Sanders won his current seat as the junior senator from Vermont in November 2006. Late that month he gave an interview at Mother Jones confirming his radical credentials:

MJ: Are you a Democrat, an independent, or a socialist?

BS: You can call me anything you want. I won with the label "Independent" next to my name. If you ask me, "Are you an independent democratic socialist?" — yes, I am. But then we have to talk about what that means.

According to his congressional web page, Sanders, a proponent of precipitous withdrawal in Iraq, voted against the Senate resolution last year denouncing MoveOn.org's political demonization of General David Petraeus:

KEY VOTES

Iraq

Supported numerous bills calling for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and setting deadlines for withdrawal. None of those bills became law.

Opposed an amendment that denounced MoveOn.org for running negative ads against Army Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq. The amendment passed the Senate. The House passed a similar resolution.

Libby Spencer's long been known for her radical politics.

She's been a long time backer of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and after coming under heavy fire for writing this post, Ms. Libby declared Chavez morally superior to President George W. Bush:

Do not compare Chavez to George Bush unless you want to spend a lot of time defending your position. It happens every time I post about Hugo and yet I'm always surprised that people don't see how a tin horn despot like Chavez is acting less criminally than our own president.

Ms. Libby also endorsed the then-suspected Downs syndrome suicide bombers in Iraq last year:

I think it's just horrible that whoever was behind this latest disaster used Down's women to perpetrate the bombings but I don't see it as a sign of desperation. I see it as a sign of adaptation and a brilliant one at that.

Ms. Libby comes right out decares - over and over again - her radical, anti-American agenda.

Those on the hard-left, however defined - democratic socialist, progressive, or whatever's the least controversial term of the moment - are intent on destroying this country's current political system and replacing it with some utopian totalitarianism.

Clinton Short on Cash, Long Primary Fight in Doubt

Early exit polls from Pennsylvania (here and here) suggest that the recent campaign mudslinging's battered the images of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Polling stations will not close for about another hour and a half, but the turnout numbers are showing that 6 in 10 voters are women (thus maybe a little New Hampshire sympathy might rub off on Clinton in the Keystone State).

Clinton needs a win desperately, for even if she's still got a breath of hope with the superdelegates, she won't be able to campaign much longer without the injection of cash a win tonight may bring.

The Wall Street Journal's got more:

If Sen. Obama is able to pull off a surprise win in Pennsylvania, Sen. Clinton will likely have to drop out of the race. But even if Sen. Clinton wins, it's unclear how much that will help her bid to overtake the front-runner. Sen. Obama holds a lead of about 140 delegates, according to the latest Associated Press tally. Because the delegates are given to candidates in proportion to their share of the popular vote, the two candidates are likely to split Pennsylvania's 158 delegates roughly evenly, unless Sen. Clinton wins in a blowout.

In addition, her finances may hamper her ability to contest aggressively the remaining primaries that end on June 3.

Sen. Obama reported to the Federal Election Commission Sunday that he had $42 million available at the end of March to spend on the primaries. Sen. Clinton's filing showed she had only $8 million in the bank and debts of $10.3 million to outside vendors.

Almost half that debt was to the polling firm of Mark Penn, whom she removed as her chief strategist earlier this month. In addition to the $10 million debt, she has yet to repay the $5 million she loaned her own campaign in January.

Clinton backers played down the significance of the money gap, arguing that success in Pennsylvania could lead to a flood of new donations. "A convincing victory will be empowering," said Steve Grossman, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and a top Clinton fund-raiser. He defined that as winning by a margin of at least five percentage points.

"We'll be honoring our debts in the weeks and months to come...no matter who they are to," campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson said on a conference call with reporters.

The Clinton campaign has visibly cut corners in recent weeks. It downgraded to a smaller chartered plane earlier this month, though it got a bigger aircraft in the final days before the primary to accommodate a larger traveling press corps. A menu of hot meals gave way to cold box lunches. Staffers spend more nights at the Holiday Inn and fewer at the higher-end Radisson hotel chain.

In the final hours before the last big contests -- in Texas and Ohio on March 4 -- the Clinton campaign bought an hour of airtime on Fox Sports Net to broadcast a town hall hosted by "Desperate Housewives" star Eva Longoria Parker, which was broadcast throughout the state. A victory party in Columbus, Ohio, offered staffers a catered meal including miniature quiche, chocolate mousse and freshly squeezed lemonade.

In the final days before the Pennsylvania primary, Sen. Clinton took advantage of a flurry of free air time with a scripted appearance on the Colbert Report on Thursday night, followed by Monday night interviews with CNN talk-show host Larry King and MSNBC host Keith Olbermann.

Clinton aides are portraying the lack of funds as an opportunity to paint Sen. Clinton as an underdog who can continue to pull off strong showings even without deep pockets.

She's been an underdog for some time now, a plucky one at that. If the polling trends from the last couple of days hold up - with an added Hillary-boost from those 6 in 10 women voter turnout numbers - maybe we'll indeed see the underdog have its day one more time.

Carly Fiorina for Vice President?

I've been discussing the selection criteria for vice-presidential running-mates today in lectures, and I've mentioned John McCain's additional need to select someone considered young and vigorous - qualities which might offset concerns about his age (he'll turn 72 in August).

I frankly haven't kept up with the McCain veepstakes, but I'm a little surprised that Carli Fiorina's being considered. I've seen some photos of Fiorina travelling with McCain on his campaign plane. I thought perhaps she might be considered for a cabinet post. But V.P.?

Maybe so:

The former Hewlett Packard CEO, an economics adviser and fund-raiser for Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, has never run for public office before. But in an interview Tuesday, former McCain campaign official and current Republican National Committee Deputy Chairman Frank Donatelli refused to rule her out. “I am so impressed with her,” Donatelli said. “We could do a lot worse than Carly.”

There’s been a low-level buzz among conservatives in Washington about Fiorina’s prospects for a couple of weeks, apparently spurred by a private lunch Donatelli attended with antitax advocate Grover Norquist. At the lunch, Donatelli talked up Fiorina’s conservative positions against abortion and gun control, say people with knowledge of the meeting.

Donatelli confirmed the lunch conversation but acknowledged, “She would not be a traditional pick.” There could be pressure on McCain however to chose a woman or a minority running mate, given the Democratic field.

Fiorina’s negatives? She’s not a party figure with obvious ability to unite Republicans, she doesn’t bring a state with her, and she carries baggage from her time at HP, where she was ousted over performance issues. In addition, she approved a controversial plan to gather information on journalists suspected of receiving company leaks.

McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said he had no comment.

Hey, what happened to Condoleezza Rice?

Pretty good odds, it turns out!

Record Turnout in Pennsylvania

The Caucus reports that Pennsylvania's on its way to record levels of voter turnout for state's primary today:

Pennsylvania is on its way to the record turnout that election officials have been predicting for weeks, according to poll workers from across the state.

Election officials were reporting extremely heavy voter activity in many of the state’s 67 counties throughout the morning, starting with long lines reported even before the polls opened at 7 a.m.

“Let’s just say it’s very busy,” said Joseph Passarella, the director of voter services for Montgomery County, sounding a little harried. “Our phones have been ringing since 6:15 this morning and have been ringing nonstop. We’ve never had a primary election this busy.”

Among the phone calls were people who wanted to vote in the primary but had not switched their registration to Democratic in time, Mr. Passarella said. Those people were told that they were not allowed to vote in the Democratic primary.

In Beaver County, in the western portion of the state, turnout appeared even higher than the county officials had anticipated.

“We’re just overwhelmed,” said Geri Shuits, a polling clerk in Beaver County. “I’ve gotten so many phone calls, I just can’t keep up.”
At one polling station, the number of voters they’ve had was already as high as by the end of the night last year, she added, referring to the November 2007 municipal election.

In Philadelphia, turnout is reportedly “very heavy,” said Abe Amoros, the executive director of the state Democratic Party. In the counties surrounding Philadelphia, including Bucks, Delaware, Montgomery and Chester, most polling stations have reported long lines.

The Democratic primary election in 2004 saw a 26 percent turnout, but this year promises to be much higher, Mr. Amoros said.

I imagine expectations of high turnout will be met, but remember, turnout numbers can be inaccurate depending how voter participation is measured.

See, "The Truth on Voter Turnout?"

Freedom to Hate America

The Historian 's got an interesting YouTube up on the recent despicable (yet strangely fascinating) antiwar protests:

Here are my comments from the Historian's post:

Notice at the beginninig of the video Israel was cited in quotation marks, as "Israel." No surprise, for if these folks ever fully come to power we'd see a new holocaust in the destruction of the Jewish state.

But also, the footage contained a lot of signs advocating "backing the resistance," which means, of course, kill American soldiers, who're considered not liberators, but brutal occupiers.

I also noticed the s#*!t-eating grins on the faces of these mindless zombies. It's like calling Bush the Great Satan is some kind of late-night joke.

Finally, the flag burning at the end, as sad as it is, indicates just how free these people in fact are, which makes a mockery of their signs with Swastika's replacing the stars and stripes.

It's too much, but this is why I blog.

For your added disgust or fascination, check out this neo-Stalinist YouTube, which is more explicitly malevolent:

For more information on the varied forms of "backing the resistance" against America, check Gateway Pundit.

What Can an Aircraft Carrier Teach Us?

Back in 1999 or so, the USS Abraham Lincoln made a port o' call visit in Santa Barbara, dropping anchor a mile out from the little breakwater harbor at the coastal resort town (where I lived at the time).

The Navy's public affairs staff opened up the ship to the public, and I was able to take the chartered whale-watching boat out to the carrier for a tour of the ship, which I followed up with a walk on the deck of this behemoth. I sat down at the bow, right above the protective netting that's lined all around the top-deck to catch those who might fall over the side.

The lift elevators from the aviation maintance deck to the flight deck were standing idle, and a sailer was out for a late afternoon jog around the perimeter. I walked along the center of the deck, by the jet catapults, and looked northward into the sunset over the water, thinking to myself, this is American power!

Of course, this was a couple of years before 9/11, and I thought of American's global role at that time as the benign hegemon, and frankly most of those on the political left did as well, or at least that's what was in evidence by the very little antiwar protest activity against the Clinton administration's air-war over Kosovo. (As some have said, for the far left-wing, U.S. wars launched for humanitarian purposes are fine - it's the exercise of military might in the pursuit of raw material self-interest that's evil.)

In any case, the Abraham Lincon's a Nimitz Class warship, the largest in the world. The Navy's fleet boasts 10 of these mighty warships currently in service, including the USS George Washington (pictured above) and the USS Theodore Roosevelt, among others.

What can we learn from these ships?

P.J. O'Rourke offers his perspective in his essay, "24 Hours on the 'Big Stick': What You Can Learn About America on the Deck of the USS 'Theodore Roosevelt.'":

The Theodore Roosevelt and its accompanying cruisers, destroyers, and submarines can blow up most of the military of most of the countries on earth. God has given America a special mission. Russia can barely blow up Chechnya. China can blow up Tibet, maybe, and possibly Taiwan. And the EU can't blow up Liechtenstein. But the USA can blow up .  .  . gosh, where to start?

But I didn't visit the Theodore Roosevelt just to gush patriotically - although some patriotic gushing is called for in America at the moment.

O'Rourke spends some time on the operations of a Nimitz Class carrier, but continues on some of the deeper signifcance of his experience, with reflections on the life of John McCain:

Some say John McCain's character was formed in a North Vietnamese prison. I say those people should take a gander at what John chose to do--voluntarily. Being a carrier pilot requires aptitude, intelligence, skill, knowledge, discernment, and courage of a kind rarely found anywhere but in a poem of Homer's or a half gallon of Dewar's. I look from John McCain to what the opposition has to offer. There's Ms. Smarty-Pantsuit, the Bosnia-Under-Sniper-Fire poster gal, former prominent Washington hostess, and now the JV senator from the state that brought you Eliot Spitzer and Bear Stearns. And there's the happy-talk boy wonder, the plaster Balthazar in the Cook County political crèche, whose policy pronouncements sound like a walk through Greenwich Village in 1968: "Change, man? Got any spare change? Change?"

Some people say John McCain isn't conservative enough. But there's more to conservatism than low taxes, Jesus, and waterboarding at Gitmo. Conservatism is also a matter of honor, duty, valor, patriotism, self-discipline, responsibility, good order, respect for our national institutions, reverence for the traditions of civilization, and adherence to the political honesty upon which all principles of democracy are based. Given what screw-ups we humans are in these respects, conservatism is also a matter of sense of humor. Heard any good quips lately from Hillary or Barack?

A one-day visit to an aircraft carrier is a lifelong lesson in conservatism. The ship is immense, going seven decks down from the flight deck and ten levels up in the tower. But it's full, with some 5,500 people aboard. Living space is as cramped as steerage on the way to Ellis Island. Even the pilots live in three-bunk cabins as small and windowless as hall closets. A warship is a sort of giant Sherman tank upon the water. Once below deck you're sealed inside. There are no cheery portholes to wave from.

A one-day visit to an aircraft carrier is a lesson in conservatism?

I have to agree, except in my case that'd be "neo"-conservativism!

Photo Credit: "Shipping Out: Sailors line the flight deck of the USS George Washington as it prepares to depart to its new station in Yokosuka, Japan," Time.

Inconvenient Truth: Americans Not Worried About Global Warming

Gallup has some very interesting findings on the politics of climate change.

It turns out just barely a third of Americans are worried about the threat of catastrophic global warming:

While 61% of Americans say the effects of global warming have already begun, just a little more than a third say they worry about it a great deal, a percentage that is roughly the same as the one Gallup measured 19 years ago.

Despite the enormous attention paid to global warming over the past several years, the average American is in some ways no more worried about it than in years past. Americans do appear to have become more likely to believe global warming's effects are already taking place and that it could represent a threat to their way of life during their lifetimes. But the American public is more worried about a series of other environmental concerns than about global warming, and there has been no consistent upward trend on worry about global warming going back for two decades. Additionally, only a little more than a third of Americans say that immediate, drastic action is needed in order to maintain life as we know it on the planet.

This is reassuring news, indicating, frankly, that the American people haven't lost their minds!

But check out Michael Goldfarb's ticklish comments:

It must be maddening for supporters of immediate, drastic action on climate change to know that support for their cause is about as strong as support for the president. But credit where it's due, the Goracle was quoted yesterday as saying that "if you give [people] a list of 25 or 30 issues and ask them to rank them in order of seriousness, climate change comes at the bottom or near the bottom...I remember one poll where it came under dog litter." Indeed, Gallup confirms that far more people are concerned about contamination of soil by toxic waste. Gore really does know this issue backwards and forwards.

Indeed, it must be maddening, and inconvenient, requiring some immediate denial among all the leftosphere, considering so far just conservatives are cited on this at Memeorandum.

Does Obama Have What it Takes?

Chris Cillizza's got a post up on Hillary Clinton's new hard-charging campaign spot against Barack Obama, "If You Can't Stand the Heat, Get Out of the Kitchen" (via YouTube):

Here's Cillizza's take:

The ad hits virtually every possible emotional touchstone for voters from 18 to 80 -- the bombing of Pearl Harbor, long gas lines in the 1970s, Osama bin-Laden and Hurricane Katrina.

"It's the toughest job in the world," says the ad's narrator. "You need to be ready for anything -- especially now, with two wars, oil prices skyrocketing and an economy in crisis."

The ad goes on to quote President Harry Truman's famous aphorism ("If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen") -- a line being used regularly now by Clinton to cast Obama as complaining about the rules in the game in the wake of last week's debate.

"Who do you think has what it takes?" the narrator asks at the end of the spot, an attempt to frame the race, in much the same way that the now famous "3 a.m." ad did, as a stark choice about who they most trust in the White House.

I love this ad. In some ways, this one's better than "It's Three AM..."

I hope it's at least as effective: "Ohio Exit Polls Show Clinton's Late Attacks Worked."

Former President Jimmy Carter Legitimizes Terrorism

Mortimer Zuckerman's new column argues that with his meeting with Hamas, former President Jimmy Carter has legitimized terrorism against Israel and the West:

There he goes again! Former President Jimmy Carter, acting out his stubborn, self-righteous moralism and his stunning vanity, persists in legitimizing terrorism. How else can the Middle East see Carter's meeting in Syria with no less than the terrorist mastermind Khaled Mashaal, the leader of Hamas?

This man Mashaal is responsible for dozens of deadly suicide bombings and thousands of mortar and rocket attacks that have killed more than 250 Israelis, not to speak of the violent takeover of the Gaza Strip by Hamas last June, which undercut newly revived efforts by Israel and the Palestinians to strike a final peace deal. And, oh, yes, several of Mashaal's victims have been Americans.

There is bipartisan condemnation of Carter's meeting, but Carter has a long history of support for Hamas. This is what Carter said on Nov. 28, 2006, on pbs: "Since August of 2004 [Hamas] has not committed a single act of terrorism that cost an Israeli life, not a single one."

That is flatly untrue.

Hamas itself claimed responsibility, for example, for the 16 people who were killed and 100 wounded in August 2004 in nearly simultaneous suicide bombings of two city buses in Beersheba; for an attack on September 29 of that year when two preschool children were killed by Kassam rockets fired from Gaza; for an attack on Jan. 13, 2005, at the Karni Crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel, which killed six civilians. And the list goes on. Carter spoke out on behalf of Hamas and against the secular party Fatah last year at the very time that Hamas thugs were throwing Fatah members to their death from Gaza rooftops.

Something has gone badly wrong with the always erratic Jimmy Carter. At Camp David, he effected the rapprochement between Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin that led to real progress. Good work. But then he abandoned the shah of Iran by sending senior American military personnel to restrain the shah's resistance to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's radical uprising in 1979. It was poetic justice that the Islamic revolution and hostage-taking destroyed Carter's chances of a second term, but that's small blessing for us now as we cope with a worldwide Iranian-backed Shiite terrorist regime that is learning how to make nuclear weapons. And who could forget the first Gulf War? This same Jimmy Carter, as an ex-president, urged members of the Security Council to vote against the efforts of President George H. W. Bush and the U.S. and Arab coalition to eject Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.

Carter has a blind spot about terrorism. Even his history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a departure from reality. He asserts that the initial violence occurred when "Jewish militants" attacked Arabs in 1939. He ignores the fact that Arabs launched terrorism against unarmed Jews in 1920, 1921, 1929, and 1936 to 1939, murdering hundreds of Jewish civilians. In 1929, the grand mufti of Jerusalem ordered the slaughter of more than a hundred rabbis, students, and others whose ancestors had lived in Hebron for millenniums. Nor will you hear him mention the long history of Palestinian terrorism such as the Munich massacre and plane hijackings and other atrocities originated by Yasser Arafat.

He quotes Arafat to assert again that the Palestine Liberation Organization never advocated the annihilation of Israel. Oh, no? The very founding charter of the plo calls for the destruction of Israel. Arafat himself said as much many times: "The goal of our struggle is the end of Israel." No surprise, then, that Carter exonerated Arafat for the failure of Camp David ii, rejecting eyewitness accounts by both President Bill Clinton and Ambassador Dennis Ross. The Saudi Prince Bandar said that Arafat's refusal to accept 95 percent of the West Bank and all of Gaza was "a crime" and his account of the circumstances was "not truthful."

If only Carter's opinions could be dismissed as hot air from a politician losing the limelight. But he does real damage. Even the moderate and soft-spoken Israeli President Shimon Peres is dismayed at the Carter effect. After meeting him in Jerusalem, Peres uncharacteristically lashed out at activities over the past few years that he felt have caused great damage to Israel and to the peace process.

Not only is there a bipartisan condemnation of Carter, the Israeli government refused to meet with the former president, a man who at one time was held in the highest esteem by Israelis for his help in securing the Camp David Accords.

See also, Mahmoud al-Zahar, the founder of Hamas, who argues the Palestinians will never give up their stuggle to destory Israel, in "No Peace Without Hamas":

Our fight to redress the material crimes of 1948 is scarcely begun, and adversity has taught us patience. As for the Israeli state and its Spartan culture of permanent war, it is all too vulnerable to time, fatigue and demographics: In the end, it is always a question of our children and those who come after us.

All too vulnerable to time, fatigue, and demographics?

It looks like Hamas, with Carter's help, as well as all of those in the U.S. and international community working to delegitmize Israel's exixtence, are in this fight to destroy the Jewish state over the long haul.

The Left's Perfect Paranoia

Dr. Sanity's done it again, with a powerful post examining the left's unhinged mentality on the Bush administration and the war on terror, "Paranoid Perfection":

Here is a political cartoon that pretty much exemplifies the paranoid mindset that is rampant in this country at the moment:

Why in the world would anyone think that the President and Vice President of the United States of America would be in a conspiracy with Islamofascists who openly state their intention of destroying both our country and our way of life? To what purpose? What could possibly be gained?

Don't expect a rational response to such questions. Questions like that only elicit further complicated conspiracy theories that are constructed around all of the shibboleths of the left (many of which have evolved into dogma since 9/11)--anti-capitalism; multilateralism; multiculturalism; poverty; victims of US imperialism; anti-Americanism etc. etc. If you put all the conspiracy theories together you will find a concatenation of bizarre and often contradictory components that should make any reasonably intelligent person roll on the floor with hoots of laughter.

Not only are such a beliefs perfect examples of the depths of insanity to which the liberal left has sunk; but the various theories of Bush's evil possess all the hallmarks of the intense political paranoia that highlights almost all of the left's behavior since 9/11.

When they aren't outright denying the reality of 9/11; they are downplaying its significance or snidely suggesting that it is not a big deal historically speaking; and that the war on terror--particularly the Iraqi battlefield-- shouldn't even be on the priority list of things to do.

As the years go by, it is simple human nature to forget the events of that horrific day. Gerard Vanderleun comments, as he talks about Pope Benedict's blessing of Ground Zero, "I often think, as so many of us do, that that terrible morning in New York City is behind me, far away now and fading ever faster as the years roll by. And then.... it all comes back...."

In the last six and a half years, there has not been a single action by the Bush administration in the war on Islamofascism that has not been deliberately undermined and actively opposed, spun, and exploited for political gain on their part. They seem particularly confused about events in Basra with the Sadr militia. Perhaps as Wretchard points out, "The NYT wonders why the media-consensus "winner" simply refuses to "win". Maybe it's because he isn't winning at all, but losing."

Talk about being in a Vietnam-type quagmire--the Democrats, the political left, and their media outlets are solidly stuck in that Vietnam era mindset where they can't see anything but defeat and humiliation for the US. They wish, anyway.

The Democrats and their liberal left members maintain that it is Bush and his supporters that are playing fast and loose with politics; and that they are using fear to manipulate America so that they can establish a fascist/theocratic state.

We're still waiting for that imposition of theocracy by the BushHitler. He better hurry since he only has a few months in office left.

Read the whole thing.

See also my previous entry, "The Decline of Rational Disagreement in America?"

McCain to Accept Public Financing

In a significant development in the politics of presidential campaign finance, Senator John McCain, the co-author of the 2002 Bipartisan Campaing Finance Reform Act, has decided to accept public funding to finance his general election campaign in the fall.

The Politico has the story:

John McCain is abandoning any hope of catching the Democrats in fundraising.

Based on new financial disclosure reports released Sunday, and interviews with his finance team, the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee will instead accept taxpayer money to finance his general election and share other costs with the Republican National Committee.

The strategy will allow McCain to stretch his campaign dollars by splitting the cost of television advertising and other campaign activity with the RNC.

But the decision also puts the Arizona senator at risk of being badly outspent – even with RNC help – by a Democratic nominee who will be allowed to spend as much as he or she can raise on the November race.

McCain's decision in some ways reflects more than Democratic Party fundraising advantages this year.

As the nation's chief advocate of publicly financed federal elections, McCain, by going fully private, would face a huge credibility gap that the Democrats could exploit throughout the fall. Also, McCain's personal campaign loans from last year, which enabled him to stay in the race, were backed by the collateral of expected public money from the presidential election fund.

Thus, opting out of the federal money system would have raised possible questions of ethics.

If it were me, though, given both McCain's history of integrity on these issues, he might have been better to admit his errors to use the moment to abandon the public system altogether.

Not only would this free the RNC to spread its resources around to help congressional candidates this year, it would put pressure on the GOP fundraising establishment to get behind their guy with big bucks for the fall. While McCain might have been in a shortfall over the next few months, in the later months of this year, as the presidential race hardens into the generic party match-ups in the summer, the conservative money machine would naturally step up to the plate donations, working to stave off a Democratic (democratic-socialist) victory in the fall.

I think McCain's played it too safe. He may be outspent over the long haul, but he'd likely be competitive by summer, and he could have finally put to rest his flawed public financing project once and for all.

Santorum Will Back McCain

Former Senator Rick Santorum, in his essay today backing John McCain for the presidency, shows then even the most crazed opponents of the Arizona Senator's primary campaign will come around when the consequences of the Democratic alternative becomes clear.

Check it out:

Anyone who knows me knows that I don't shy away from offering my two-cents on the issues of the day, particularly in presidential races. And anyone who has heard me talk about the presidential race over the last few months knows that I've had, shall we say, some serious reservations about John McCain's candidacy.

I've disagreed with him on immigration, global warming and federal protection of marriage. I've taken strong exception to his view that the federal government should fund embryonic stem-cell research. But disagreement on such issues is one of the reasons we have presidential primaries - so each party's voters can sort out the issues and personalities and choose the candidate who best reflects their collective view. Republicans have done that. Now the question for conservatives is whether McCain fits the Reagan Axiom that someone you agree with on 80 percent of the issues is your friend, not your enemy.

Of all the issues confronting the United States today, none is more important than our nation's security. Although these issues don't dominate our news as they once did, we cannot forget that without a safe and secure country, all other issues don't matter.

McCain is clearly the candidate with the capacity, judgment, experience and will to confront America's enemies. He's served our country honorably - heroically - in war....

Those conservatives who still question whether they can support McCain should remember this: The next president will make more than 2,700 political appointments, those who really set policy, across the bureaucracy of our government. I, for one, will sleep better at 3 a.m. if Republicans are in the cabinet and in White House positions that make so many critical decisions. The idea of "Attorney General John Edwards" and "Energy Secretary Al Gore" should cause some sleepless nights for Republicans or conservatives - and those in a U.S. manufacturing sector now struggling to stay afloat.

Here's my final argument for John McCain. He's not Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.

Both Democrats have made their case in chief on why they should be president, and we have every reason to be concerned.

Both want to cut and run from Iraq, give the radical jihadists a victory from the jaws of defeat, and leave the Iraqi people vulnerable to chaos. Both would put in place dangerous economic policies that would make Uncle Sam look like an Orwellian Big Brother. Both would nominate liberal activist judges who would pass undemocratic laws from the bench. Both support one-size-fits-all health-care policies that have been a disaster for patients and medical industries in Canada. Good-bye, American capitalism; hello, European-style socialism.

Many of my fellow Republicans have faulted me privately and publicly for being so outspoken about McCain, suggesting that I should have kept my mouth shut. First, I've never been very good at that. Second, I do not regret being up-front about such an important decision. Third, the primaries are a time when each party wrestles over what it's looking for in a presidential candidate. Now is the time to come together.

As for the Reagan Axiom, given his opponent, McCain is close enough to 80 percent for government work. That is why I am going to vote for my friend - John McCain.

Read the whole thing.

Santorum's got gumption, considering this is a guy who once said, "Anyone but McCain."

Santorum wrote in February that "The Conservative Jury is Still Out on Backing McCain," but if the jury's now back, the judge has yet to recite the verdict, considering some of the MDS we're still seeing around the blogosphere.

The Decline of Rational Disagreement in America?

As a political blogger, I'm highly partisan, but I'm not so blinded by my positions as to completey abjure the appreciation of a good argument.

For example, as I was blogging McCain all last winter, getting highly agitated at times with the intra-party debates over the Arizona Senator, I did find this American Thinker piece on the Thoughts of a Conservative Suicide Voter compelling.

Sometimes you just have to admire a decent case.

On the Iraq war, a topic on which I've blogged probably more than any other, I rarely disagree with conservative war backers. Yet, while the film "Stop-Loss" did poorly at the box-office recently - as antiwar movies have failed to find a market - I found, unlike a few of my fellow partisans, some redeeming qualities in the film, for all of its flaws (see ""Stop-Loss": The Thinking Man's Antiwar Movie?').

Particulary, while I disagree with the movie's premise - that stop-loss policy is a back-door draft - some aspects of the movie ring true, and are worthy of deeper consideration:

Americans should see this film, not just for its remarkably genuine battle scenes, but for its portrayal of the real-life costs that are required of citizens in nation not fully at arms. Those who choose to fight take up a burden, one that's not highly praised by much of the population, but one that's essential to the way of life of a free society.

So with these ruminations in mind, I was intrigued to see Susan Jacoby's article at today's Los Angeles Times, where she argues that Americans have grown increasingly hostile to competing perspectives - they're unwilling to listen to opposing views:

A few years ago, I delivered a lecture at Eastern Kentucky University on the history of American secularism, and was pleased, in the heart of the Bible Belt, to have attracted an audience of about 150. The response inside the hall was enthusiastic because everyone there, with the exception of a few bored students whose professors had made attendance a requirement, agreed with me before I opened my mouth.

Around the corner, hundreds more students were packing an auditorium to hear a speaker sponsored by the Campus Crusade for Christ, a conservative organization that "counter-programs" secular lectures at many colleges. The star of the evening was a self-described recovering pedophile who claimed to have overcome his proclivities by being "born again." (And yes, it is a blow to the ego to find oneself less of a draw than a penitent pedophile.)

It is safe to say that almost no one who attended either lecture on the Kentucky campus that night was exposed to a new or disturbing idea. Indeed, virtually everywhere I speak, 95% of the audience shares my political and cultural views -- and serious conservatives report exactly the same experience on the lecture circuit.

Whether watching television news, consulting political blogs or (more rarely) reading books, Americans today have become a people in search of validation for opinions that they already hold. This absence of curiosity about other points of view is the essence of anti-intellectualism and represents a major departure from the nation's best cultural traditions.

Jacoby goes on to put current echo chamber poltics in context, and she puts a lot of the blame on the laziness of Americans themselves:

A vast public laziness feeds the media's predilection today to distill news through polemicists of one stripe or another and to condense complex information into meaningless sound bites. On April 8, for example, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the U.S. armed forces in Iraq, testified before the Senate in hearings that lasted into the early evening. Although the hearings were on cable during the day, the networks offered no special programming in the evening, and newscasts were content with sound bites of McCain, Obama and Hillary Clinton questioning the general. Dueling presidential candidates were the whole story.

Absent from most news reports was testimony concerning the administration's ongoing efforts to forge agreements with various Iraqi factions without submitting the terms to Congress for ratification -- a development with constitutional implications as potentially serious as the Watergate affair. No matter. Anyone who wanted to hear Petraeus bashed or applauded could turn to his or her preferred political cable show or click on a blog to find an unchallenging interpretation of the day's events.

The tepid interest in the substance of Petraeus' testimony on the part of the public and much of the media contrasts sharply with the response to the Senate Watergate hearings in 1973. All 319 hours of the first round of the hearings were televised, and 85% of Americans tuned in to at least some of the proceedings live.

It's interesting that Jacoby uses the Petraeus example to make the case for an apathetic, lackadaisical public.

Particularly so because the case could be made that on an issue like the Bush adminstration's new strategy of the surge, conducted under the auspices of General David Petraeus, exemplifies precisely the worst anti-intellectualism of contemporay American politics.

There a few examples in American history of a bigger turnaround in U.S. military/strategic fortunes than what's happened over the last 16 months in Iraq.

But there's really no debating these issues among advocates of either side, and both backers and opponents of the war are demonized by the other side as anti-American.

In my personal experience, I find those on the left much less likely to deploy sound argumentation and logic to make a case, and for even making this point, I'll be labeled corrupted or worse - attacked as fascist, racist, or some such other term - by those who oppose my views.

Dr. Sanity, who's also a recipient of some of the nastiest ad hominem attacks imaginable, weighs in on this in her post from Wednesday, " Heirarchy of Disagreement, " where she posts this chart:

Note how Dr. Sanity recognizes the facility of occasional name-calling:

I am certainly not immune to using the name-calling at the bottom of this pyramid, but I try to refrain until after I've used some of the strategies at the top.

That's an honest admission, which is another thing that's missing from the irrationalist left: When they're wrong they'll never admit a mistake.

I think the hostility to competing arguments that Jacoby cites is much more than laziness, but outright hatred for those who espouse different views. Such hostility is exascerbated by an intellectual ability to refute them.

As such, it's much easier to hang out with the intellectually like-minded, as disturbing for American intellectual life as that may be.