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August 11, 2004

In the lions' den

: Atrios brings his link oomph to the site of blogging Democrat Nathan Rudy, who's running for the county board in my neck of the woods, which is 99 44/100ths pure Republican.

: By the way, near as I can tell, Atrios took his name (Duncan Black) back off his site. As a friend of mine once said to a former lover: You can't go back in the closet, honey.

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The big one

: Nicholas Kristof has a frightening column in the New York Times today. It presents a scenario of a 10-megaton nuclear device lit at Times Square (why the hell does everyone have to use that as the next ground zero: the very corner where I work?). OK, we've heard that before. But then he says:

Could this happen?

Unfortunately, it could - and many experts believe that such an attack, somewhere, is likely. The Aspen Strategy Group, a bipartisan assortment of policy mavens, focused on nuclear risks at its annual meeting here last week, and the consensus was twofold: the danger of nuclear terrorism is much greater than the public believes, and our government hasn't done nearly enough to reduce it.

In his next column, he'll tell us how to reduce that risk. If it's not too late.

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Not-so-swift boats

: Glenn Reynolds once accused me of getting obsessed on the FCC vs. Howard Stern and the First Amendment. I disagree but fine, he saw that as a friendly intervention.

In that same spirit, I'd say that Glenn is going overboard -- pun a fringe benefit -- on the Kerry swift boat/Cambodia hooha.

I tried to do a search on what Glenn had to say about the Bush National Guard hooha; couldn't get it right; but I'll bet Glenn didn't go so glub-glub deep into the attempted Bush scandal as he is going into the attempted Kerry scandal.

And in any case, I don't think either is a big issue or should be a big issue in this campaign for either side. I don't think this is a productive fountain of blather. I think it is symptomatic of picking presidents by gotchas and personality rather than issues and stands, which is the dumb and dangerous way to pick presidents. I fear it feeds an atmosphere of gotchas and presidential hatred (about which I've written much; see the links in this graph).

In a post Glenn belittled yesterday, Matt Welch said it well:

What I don't understand is how anyone professes to truly give a flip about what John Kerry and George Bush did 32 or 36 years ago. On Friday, I was given a talking-to by a right-of-center friend (who told me, helpfully, that "even though you're a liberal we still like you") about Why I Should Care About the Swift Boaters, and last night a left-of-the-dial pal wanted to get me excited about Bush's National Guard service … and in both cases my reaction is the same: Is this what you're basing your vote on this November? Really? Whatever happened to the New Seriousness after Sept. 11? And how many people who are feverishly talking up all this nonsense have NOT already long made up their minds on who they're going to vote for?

As far as I can tell, every presidential candidate with military experience has embellished it, and every candidate with a youthful drug habit has tried to paper it over.

Let's remember a few things:

First, we're not voting for sainthood here, even for a Pope. We're talking about politicians. Do any of us think that there's a politician alive who hasn't stretched something? OK, all of you who raised your hands, I have some WMDs to sell you. Under the Brooklyn Bridge.

Thus, second, let's concentrate on what matters: Doing the job of running the government.

Third, as I've said lately, I'm going to keep calling people on this wasteful and distracting and ultimately destructive game of gotcha. I said it over the Bush National Guard nonstory. I'll say it over this nonstory. It doesn't get us anywhere except mired in bile. Worse, it's just getting boring.

Let's pull up anchor and move on.

: UPDATE: Glenn snarks back:

I think that I have a ways to go before I catch up to Jeff's Stern coverage in terms of either volume or tone. But I promise to quit covering this issue so much as soon as the major media -- who certainly didn't ignore the Stern issue, or the bogus Bush/AWOL claims -- start carrying the ball.

I'd say it has been obsessive over there in recent days. Just in the interest of intervention, my friend.

But let's go back to Matt's point: Let's assume that (1) Bush did not do his duty and lied about not doing his duty and (2) Kerry stretched the truth about doing his duty. Let's just say it, for the sake of argument. Is that going to change anyone's vote? No, I can't imagine it will. Does it change my view of either man? No, it doesn't. And that means it's so much one-sided cynicism.

It's just more Gotchaism.

: UPDATE: Glenn adds, just to complete the record:

ANOTHER UPDATE: In an update to the post linked above, Jeff says that I'm snarking at him, and that I belittled Matt Welch in this post. I certainly didn't mean to be either snarky or belittling -- I was aiming for polite disagreement, and thought I'd achieved it. I like both Jeff and Matt a lot. But I think that this is an important issue, and I would have thought that two champions of the blogosphere like Matt and Jeff would have approved my work to bring in original documents and material not available on the web, and make them part of the conversation. And given that the Kerry Campaign now seems to be admitting that the Christmas in Cambodia claim is false, I don't think I can be accused of raising phony issues. I appreciate Jeff's call to "move on" and address other issues, but I've done that too. I just think that -- given the importance Kerry has placed on all of this stuff -- this sort of dishonesty is worth noting, and I'm disappointed that the big media seem to be covering for him.

Yes, fear not, Glenn, Matt, and I all like and respect each other (though we'll skip the hug). We clearly disagree about how to view this. And that's why there's a conversation.

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Saving the industry

: Fred Wilson is doing God's work: He -- like all civilized souls -- hates spyware, but he found that legislation heading into Congress to try to stop it would also stop cookies advertisers need to advertise on and support web sites (and without those cookies, believe me, they won't advertise). So Fred goes to see his senator and shows him the light. Anything the rest of us should be doing, Fred?

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Is this going to be on the final?

: The Olympics coverage is taking me back to the hell of sixth grade. Oh, how I hated Greek myths!

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Another day, another panel

: David Teten put up notes from last night's blog panel at the West Side Y. It was taped for C-Span (so now I'm officially boring). Best line of the night: Daniel Radosh reminding us we shouldn't take this thing too damned seriously: I wouldn't want to live in a blogosphere, he said, where we could not speculate on whether Lindsay Lohan has breast implants. (Daniel thinks no, I think yes, by the way.)

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