Signs You Need A Better SEO

... Or at least one who has a good grasp of basic English, and knows how to spell your name. (I'm assuming this was sent by somebody else, and that the sender did not actually stumble over his own name.)

Highlighting some of the more egregious errors (and no, it's not exhaustive):

Name: J--- Mitchel

email: j---@truckaccident----center.com

Hi,

Let me introduce my self as J--- Michel, Link Manager of TruckAccident----Center.com.

I found your site in Internet surfing. It is a fine blend of color, design and have a compelling copy.

We have a professional looking informative website. Finding your site truly professional, I am thinking for a link exchange. Exchanging links will help both of us in boosting our search engine rankings.

Our link exchange details are :

Title: Truck Accident Attorneys
Url: http://www.truckaccident---center.com/
Description: Truck Accident Legal Center provides in-depth information to truck accident victims including immediate steps after a truck accident. We are helping you reassemble your life by aware of your rights and by assisting you in getting the best possible compensation.

Else you can copy and paste below html codes

< a href="http://www.truckaccident----center.com">Truck Accident Attorneys</a> - Truck Accident Legal Center provides in-depth information to truck accident victims including immediate steps after a truck accident. We are helping you reassemble your life by aware of your rights and by assisting you in getting the best possible compensation.

If interested, kindly let us know. We are glad to put your link first on our website. If not interested, please send this mail back stating NO in the subject line.

Looking you for our link partner!

Thanks and Regards
J--- Michel
j---@truckaccident----center.com
http://www.truckaccident----center.com/

How Could *They* Do Such A Thing....

I know Kristol has a brain somewhere in his head, but sometimes he does a good job hiding it.

Consider our last four presidential elections. If voters had simply looked at the biographies of the major-party candidates, they would have chosen George H. W. Bush in 1992, Bob Dole in 1996, Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004. Instead, they rejected four veterans who served in wartime (and who also had considerable experience in public life) for Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who had lesser résumés, both civilian and military.

Of those, how many times did Kristol get behind the candidate with the better résumé? Maybe 1996? How many times did he get squarely behind a disastrously bad president, despite his lack of qualification and lack of service to the nation? At least twice. I spoke to a life-long Republican last year who commented on his voting history, "I only made two mistakes, and both of them were named 'George Bush'". Kristol seems happy to say, "Yes, that guy made a mistake," but refuses to concede the implication for his own bad choices.

Campaign consultants like to say elections are about the present and the future more than the past. To the degree they are about the past, they’re about the very recent past: “What have you done for me lately?” But we don’t even hear that question much anymore. Today’s campaigns are designed to capture the present and imagine the future.

Let's be honest, Bill Clinton makes Kristol's list while Reagan does not, only because of the disaster that is George W. Bush. We could push it back further - look at, say, 1980 and 1984? Whatever you think of his record in office, isn't Reagan the quintessential example of the triumph of image over experience at the ballot box?

These comparisons also implicate a subjective question: What exactly is it that constitutes "good experience" for a presidential candidate? Being a governor? Being a Senator? Serving in the House of Representatives? Business experience? Maybe part of the problem is that Kristol's sense of what constitutes the best qualifications for the Presidency don't correspond to those of the electorate.

If we look at Kristol's voting history, unless he's admitting that he will let an infatuation for a candidate overwhelm his common sense or objectivity, he's not even accurately describing his own preferred résumé. Here, Kristol depicts "military service plus a long Senate career" as the ultimate résumé for a Presidential candidate, but his personal record betrays his contempt for such a résumé in practice. There are even hints of it in this attempt to buttress McCain. Compare and contrast:

McCain knows this. As an elected official, he’s never rested on his P.O.W. laurels, remarkable though they are. He’s been a major player in the Senate — in foreign policy and military matters, and as a successful sponsor of (sometimes misguided) domestic reform legislation.

versus the next paragraph,

As a presidential candidate, McCain is running, as one would expect, a substantive foreign policy campaign, as shown by his fine speech last week before the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. But with recession on the horizon, three-quarters of the American public thinking the country’s on the wrong track, and the president and Congress at historically low approval levels — shouldn’t we be seeing more of McCain the domestic reformer?

Has Kristol truly lost track of what other right-wingers (including the lunatic fringe) and Republican party hacks have said about McCain's domestic record? Let's look to George Will: By signing on to McCain-Feingold, G.W. Bush "forfeited his right to be trusted as a custodian of the Constitution". From the perspective of the political right, isn't that just one of the "sometimes misguided" domestic policies Kristol references? Immigration "amnesty" anyone?

Am I surprised that McCain wants to depict himself as a set of bookends - from "war hero" to "elder statesman"... with a lot of experience in between, but let's not look at it too hard? No. I'm also not surprised by jingoistic campaign slogans. (I think he's currently going with something like "Americans For John McCain, An American President For Americans In America".) If Kristol is truly advocating for McCain to take up the mantle of "Mr. Domestic Policy", he needs to talk to some of his colleagues about the possible ramifications to McCain's campaign.

Dith Pran, RIP

Dith Pran, whose horrifying escape from Cambodia is detailed in the film, The Killing Fields, has passed away at age 65. If this world displayed karmic justice, he would have been around for many more years.

A few years ago, following a trip to Cambodia, I had a few questions about Khmer Rouge policies during the genocide. I sent an email to The Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project and, to my surprise, received a prompt, courteous and very helpful response directly from Mr. Pran. A brief encounter, certainly, but of the type that suggests he was a man worth knowing.

it is difficult to describe Cambodia. There's a striking mix of stunning beauty and abject poverty. Signs and scars of the genocide are pervasive, both on the land and on the people. A few years ago I shared some of my thoughts about my visit.

In 1996, the actor who depicted Mr. Pran in the movie, Haing S. Ngor, was murdered in Los Angeles. Mr. Ngor had also escaped Pol Pot's Cambodia. Although some believe he was murdered in revenge for his opposition to the Khmer Rouge, it appears to have been an unfortunate act of gang violence.

A Humdrum Defense Of "No Child Left Behind"

The Washington Post offers an editorial debunking "myths" of No Child Left Behind by Chester E. Finn, Jr., author of a book on school reform. The first three aren't particularly interesting, at least to me. The author argues that NCLB isn't an extensive federal intrusion into state schools because states can turn down federal money. He argues that NCLB is not "underfunded" because its costs are "relatively modest" and critics should instead be asking why schools don't do a better job with their current funding. (Yes, the answer does not technically debunk the "myth".) He argues that setting standards will not cure U.S. schools, principally noting that many states have intentionally set weak standards even under NCLB.

To me, these seem like an odd set of myths to start with, not only because the debunking is weak but because I think they demonstrate an incorrect focus. Part of my concern is highlighted by the fourth "myth", "The standardized testing required by No Child Left Behind gets in the way of real learning":

Teachers' animus toward standardized testing has many roots, chief among them the grueling weeks of preparation and exams that they and their students endure every year. But the accountability made possible by standardized testing isn't all bad. If the test is an honest measure of a solid curriculum, then teaching kids the skills and knowledge they need to pass it is honorable work. Just ask any Advanced Placement teacher.

But what does the honest testing of a solid curriculum have to do with No Child Left Behind? Didn't we just hear the author admit that most states are setting weak standards so that they "meet" NCLB's requirements without actually improving their schools? And if the weeks of gruelling preparation amount to busy work, so the school can pass an administrative hurdle without actually improving school or student performance, what's to like?

Good teachers don't like standardized testing, at least where they are expected to coach the students to pass the test, because it's a waste of classroom time. Good students sometimes like standardized tests because it can be flattering to score in the 98th percentile or be told you're performing many levels above grade, but they're not the ones we're trying to test. And prep time for these tests is also wasted classroom time. For most students, the coaching and prodding is also a waste of time, not because it doesn't improve their test scores but because it has no further effect on academic performance. Teachers must "teach to the test" to create an artificial boost in results rather than teaching a curriculum and expecting that the test will fairly and reasonably measure their students' grasp of the curriculum. (Bad teachers don't much care either way. When you're already teaching kids out of workbooks, what does it matter if the principal says you have to use a different workbook for a few weeks.)

So standardized testing isn't bad if it's an "honest testing of a solid curriculum"? Alright then. When can we expect all standardized tests used for NCLB to constitute "honest testing of a solid curriculum"? Is there any movement in that direction?

A while back I proposed a solution to the standardized testing quandary - something that will shorten the time wasted on teaching to the test, and get the standardized tests out of the way early so that teachers may get back to a real curriculum.

Give the test at the start of the new school year, rather than during the course of the prior school year. Give the teachers a couple of weeks to bring the kids back up to speed from their near-inevitable summer backsliding, then administer the test. Kids who really learned their lessons the year before will do well. And that's what the testing is really supposed to measure.

So how about it, Mr. Finn?

The final myth seems out of place, criticizing the requirement that schools use certified teachers:

Lawmakers blundered when they confused "qualified" with "certified" teachers. There's no solid evidence that state certification ensures classroom effectiveness - and the booming success of programs such as Teach for America, which sends recent college graduates into troubled schools, suggests that certification may be wholly unnecessary. By requiring certified teachers in every classroom, No Child Left Behind makes it harder for district and charter schools to attract energetic and capable people who want to teach but take a less traditional route to the classroom.

Well here's the deal. Certification is substituted for qualification, because you have to somehow measure qualification. As with any certification or degree program, it's about averages. Most people who finish the program will have the minimum required qualifications. Some who are less than qualified will squeak through anyway, but that's going to happen under any standard. I'm sure that Mr. Finn has a Ph.D. - does that mean he is qualified to teach university classes, or does it just mean that he has a Ph.D.? If you've gone to college you know that having a Ph.D. is a poor measure of teaching skills, yet it's still something most universities require for tenure track teaching positions. What measure does Finn suggest as a substitute? Um... he doesn't.

I've also previously addressed "Teach For America", when responding to a more detailed Kristof editorial arguing against current teacher credentialing standards.

Sure. They make a two-year commitment to teach in the inner city. With the ability to reject 88% of the applicants the program should have no difficulty selecting applicants who have the necessary interest and aptitude to complete the program. Program participants come in with a new college graduate's energy and enthusiasm and are gone long before they burn out. Teach for America indicates that 60% of those who complete the program remain in education as "teachers, principals, education policy advisors and leaders and staff of education reform organizations", but provides no figure for how many remain in inner city schools.

While Finn pretends the participants are parachuted into classrooms with no training or support, that's not the case either. We can assume that a better credentialing system could be created, as that's almost always the case. But it's deceptive, and intentionally deceptive when the words are coming out of the mouth of an education reform "expert", to hold up "Teach For America" as some sort of paradigm.

There's also no evidence that there is a huge queue of qualified people, eager to teach but excluded from that opportunity by the certification requirement. Believe it or not, despite the occasional contention that teachers are overpaid, the people who will make the best teachers are often quite content to pursue other, more lucrative fields. (That was Kristof's point, in trying to open classroom doors to established professionals from other fields.)

Finn's call to wipe out teacher certification without creating an alternate, superior method of determining teacher qualification says to me, "this guy has an ulterior motive." So let's look up his résumé:

He was also a founding partner and senior scholar with the Edison Project, the private company setup to operate public schools on a for-profit basis. Hudson and Bradley are both major proponents of "school choice," which would allow public education money to be funneled to groups like Edison.

That's right, folks. The problem here seems to be that Finn's business ventures have to hire certified teachers in order to qualify for public funds. Eliminating that requirement without substituting a bona fide measure of teacher qualification will let them promote their groundskeepers to classroom teachers, significantly improving their bottom line. So again, Mr. Finn, what's the objective measure you propose for measuring teacher qualification?

McCain On Achievable Military Objectives

David Brooks gushes over McCain's speeches:

Barack Obama says: “John McCain is determined to carry out four more years of George Bush’s failed policies.” Obama is a politician, so it’s normal that he’d choose to repeat the lines that some of his followers want to hear. But before people buy that argument, I’d ask them to read three speeches.

One from 1995, one from 2001, and the latest one? Or would observing McCain repeat himself undermine Brooks' argument that the latest speech is "as personal, nuanced and ambitious a speech as any made by a presidential candidate this year"? (Come on, David. We know you favor Brooks over Obama, but really.)

But I'm not posting this to make fun of Brooks. (Well, not just to make fun of Brooks.) Following up on my last post about McCain's Iraq policy, it was interesting to see Brooks emphasize this:

McCain argued that Lebanese society, as it existed then, could not be stabilized and unified by American troops. He made a series of concrete observations about the facts on the ground. Lebanon was in a state of de facto partition. The Lebanese Army would not soon be strong enough to drive out the Syrians. The American presence would not intimidate the Syrians into negotiating.

“I do not foresee obtainable objectives in Lebanon.” He concluded. “I believe the longer we stay, the more difficult it will be to leave, and I am prepared to accept the consequences of our withdrawal.”

If we're going to hold that up as an example of McCain's foreign policy brilliance it's fair to ask, what makes Iraq different? Under what circumstances will we hear a similar concession on Iraq, instead of the talk of being there for a century or more (after peace miraculously breaks out).

McCain offered to build new pillars for that system — a League of Democracies, a new nuclear nonproliferation regime and a successor to the Kyoto treaty. In stabilizing Asia and the Middle East, he would rely more on democracies like Turkey, India, Israel and Iraq, and less on Mubarak and Musharraf.

This is supposed to reassure me? We're going to stabilize Iraq by relying upon Turkey, Israel and... Iraq? How would that work - would Turkey occupy the Kurdish north, with Israel, um.... And we're going to stamp out support for Al Qaeda in Pakistan by turning the matter over to India? (Does McCain envision armed incursions by India into Pakistani territory to "take out" Al Qaeda camps? While Pakistan sits idly by?)

McCain stated,

“We have to strengthen our global alliances as the core of a new global compact - a League of Democracies - that can harness the vast influence of the more than one hundred democratic nations around the world to advance our values and defend our shared interests,” McCain said, reading from prepared texts.

Because democracies are always enlightened and always have common values, goals and shared interests, right? Will McCain be inviting Hamas to join the league if it continues to win elections in the Palestinian territories? Will Hezbollah get to join if it wins a majority of the seats in Lebanon's parliament? Or if that's too much of a reductio ad absurdem, where does Venezuela sign up? Couldn't we reasonably interpret this proposal as McCain's pandering to people who want us to move away from the United Nations, and toward an international organization we can better control?

McCain's 100 Years War

Charles Krauthammer presents what he describes as A Rank Falsehood, protesting that John McCain will only keep troops in Iraq for a century or more if there is peace. Krauthammer focuses exclusively on McCain's caveat:

Make it a hundred. ... We’ve been in Japan for 60 years. We’ve been in South Korea for 50 years or so. That would be fine with me, as long as American, as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed. It’s fine with me and I hope it would be fine with you if we maintained a presence in a very volatile part of the world where al Qaeda is training, recruiting and equipping and motivating people every single day.

Krauthammer suggests that as McCain did not commit to endless war where people are being killed, he can only be referencing a state of peace where "maintaining a U.S. military presence in Iraq would provide regional stability, as well as cement a long-term allied relationship with the most important Arab country in the region."

Here's the problem. There's no path from Point A to Point B. Let's grant McCain the benefit of the doubt, and assume that he truly only wants U.S. troops to remain indefinitely if Iraq becomes peaceful and stable, to protect it from possible attack from... Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, er, let's say Iran. You know, the Shiite nation next door to Iraq that has no contemporary history of aggressive warfare against its neighbors, and which sometimes seems to be on friendlier terms with the government of Iraq than we are. If that's truly what McCain is proposing he needs to answer two questions:

• How will we transform Iraq into the country we want it to be?
• How many years do we have to remain in Iraq before we may conclude that it's not possible?

The problem is, he has no answer for the first question. And there's every reason to believe that his answer to the second would still be "Make it a hundred."

Then there's the question of whether he even appreciates what our troops are doing in Iraq. It's not like Kuwait or North Korea, where the troop presence deters a potentially hostile neighbor. It's not like Japan, where military bases primarily serve to extend our global reach while also helping to secure the defense of a stable ally. It's not even what he pretends later in his answer, that Al Qaeda training camps have been set up all over Iraq and we have to stay indefinitely to prevent a massive Al Qaeda presence and resurgence. Before we invaded, Iraq did a very good job of that without our help, and by all accounts foreign fighters are a small part of our problem. (Well, at least in this context McCain's not arguing that the Al Qaeda training camps are in Iran.)

It's been almost three months since McCain made the statement. I have yet to hear him contend that he was misunderstood. I don't recall hearing him even try to answer the implicit question, which was not "How long do we stay in Iraq if everything comes up roses," but was, "How long do we stay in Iraq in the absence of political progress and national reconciliation, or in the hope that a stable, central government will emerge." Or to put it in McCain's terms, how long do we stay if Americans are "being injured or harmed or wounded or killed"? A cavil that "the surge is working" doesn't answer that question. Let's hear some concrete goals and benchmarks, and a specific number of years.

Defunding Social Security As An Election Strategy

Okay, I understand why Novak is arguing that we should slash FICA taxes and tell younger workers, "In return for your reduced tax burden you will get little to nothing from Social Security when you retire." Demolishing Social Security fits with his world view. But what I can't understand is why he believes McCain should make that part of his platform. I grant that McCain has been promising to cut pretty much every tax under the sun, but even he would probably recognize that "this one is different".

Novak has a hard time keeping his lines straight. First, it's:

Moreover, Republicans talk about offsetting losses in payroll tax revenue by cutting future Social Security benefits, which contains seeds of electoral catastrophe.

This later becomes,

Even Republican advocates of cutting the payroll tax talk about offsetting it with reduced future benefits. That's a bargain young workers would buy in a minute, and current Social Security recipients would be assured that their pensions would not be reduced one penny.

The distinction, apparently, is that you hammer the theme, "Younger workers, you're not going to get Social Security anyway, so let's reduce your taxes and phase it out," reassuring current recipients, "You're still going to get every cent of what was promised to you," and telling everybody else... er, Novak left that part out. Yet that block of "everybody else" is an important group to address, as putting their future benefits at risk "contains seeds of electoral catastrophe".

The perceived need to offset losses in payroll tax revenue stems from a belief that the Social Security trust fund must be replenished. The truth is that there is no such fund, and the heavy payroll tax revenue resulting from the Greenspan Commission's 1983 "reform" not only provides enough money for Social Security but funds other programs, as well.

Wow. So in Novak's mind, Social Security is so "rich" that even if we pretend that the treasury notes comprising its "trust fund" are worthless, it can continue to pay not only for itself but for a host of other programs. And it could thus pay for itself even after a tax cut. What a compelling case for a "reform" that slashes benefits.

McCain says that he doesn't really understand economics. Novak appears to either be in the same club, or to be trying to take advantage of McCain's weaknesses. Either way, taking Novak's advice seems like a surefire way for McCain to blow a hole in his own foot.

The Foibles Of Memory

Hillary Clinton is taking some pretty hard hits over her faulty memory of a trip to Bosnia. Many have been willing to accuse her of making up a story to augment her claims to be a foreign policy expert and Commander in Chief. While I understand the concept that people should have perfect memories, should be able to recount personal experiences as if they are describing videotape, and should never make mistakes of memory this significant, that's not how memory works.

In psychology, there's a famous example of a faulty memory reconstructed from the stories of others, provided by Jean Piaget.

I can still see, most clearly, the following scene, in which I believed until I was about fifteen. I was sitting in my pram, which my nurse was pushing in the Champs Elysees, when a man tried to kidnap me. I was held in by the strap fastened round me while my nurse bravely tried to stand between me and the thief. She received various scratches and I can still see vaguely those on her face. Then a crowd gathered, a policeman with a cloak and a white baton came up, and the man took to his heels. I can still see the whole scene, and can even place it near the tube station. [Piaget, J., Play, Dreams and Imitation in Childhood, (1951), p. 188]

The problem? Piaget's nanny had fabricated the story in order to try to collect a reward. He learned that the story was false when he was fifteen, but he nonetheless continued to have vivid memories of something that never happened.

What does this have to do with adult memories? Well, our memories are faulty as well. One famous example?

In the 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan repeatedly told a heartbreaking story of a World War II bomber pilot who ordered his crew to bail out after his plane had been seriously damaged by an enemy hit. His young belly gunner was wounded so seriously that he was unable to evacuate the bomber. Reagan could barely hold back his tears as he uttered the pilot's heroic response: "Never mind. We'll ride it down together." ...this story was an almost exact duplicate of a scene in the 1944 film "A Wing and a Prayer." Reagan had apparently retained the facts but forgotten their source [Schacter, Daniel L., Searching for Memory: The Brain, The Mind, and The Past (New York: Basic Books, 1996), 287).

It now appears that Clinton's memory was contaminated by accounts of a trip to Bosnia, albeit one taken by others six months prior to her trip. It's possible to see how the memory may have been constructed. As Clinton is preparing for her trip, she hears tales of the trip that preceded her. She's traveling with Chelsea, so this worries her. As they fly in, due to concerns about danger, she and Chelsea really are moved to the cockpit and the plane makes a fast descent. What followed? A landing strip greeting probably indistinguishable in any meaningful detail from hundreds of other such greetings she experienced as First Lady. Over time, the mundane details of the trip are forgotten. Meanwhile, she confuses the story of the prior, more harrowing trip with that of her own trip. This didn't happen immediately, but occurred over a period of years. During that time as she retold and built upon her story, nobody stopped to correct her - the memory became historically inaccurate but was real to her.

Everybody's head contains distorted memories; most of us are fortunate enough that nobody cares what we remember, and it's not a media story when our distortions come to light. Here's one of Joe Scarborough's:

…[T]his Bosnia story smacks of gotcha politics. If [Hillary Clinton] had the reputation of being an exaggerator-in-chief, like Al Gore, it would matter. If she had said I invented the Internet, it sticks. One of these gaffes sticks when it compounds an existing problem…

Do you, like Joe Scarborough, remember Al Gore saying that he 'invented the Internet'? If so, you're remembering something that never actually occurred.

The "Expert" Speaks....

McCain warns on withdrawal from Iraq,

It would be an unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our character as a great nation, if we were to walk away from the Iraqi people and consign them to the horrendous violence, ethnic cleansing and possibly genocide that would follow a reckless, irresponsible and premature withdrawal.

So... more of the same, except that after withdrawal we would bear greater responsibility for the civil war, horrendous violence and ethnic cleansing? Well, fortunately, we can now turn to McCain's words on how we can improve our situation in Iraq, stabilize the government, end ethnic conflict, and bring our troops home:

[The sound of pins dropping]

Er, John, I couldn't quite make that out. One more time please?

[The sound of silence]

That's what I thought you said, but....

For The Good Of The *ME*

Party, nothing. As tracking polls suggest that Obama has largely bounced back from the "Pastor Wright" controversy, Hillary Clinton is actively trying to inject the controversy back into the mainstream. How many places do you suppose rejected this Ed Koch smear piece, before it was finally accepted by "NewsMax"?

A man of remarkable judgment, Koch also ran smear pieces against John Kerry back in 2004. And you know what? Even while smearing Kerry, Koch was praising Bill Clinton.

So it's now erstwhile Democrats like Koch trying to revive a dying meme, tossing in a new accusation ("Obama is a bad parent" - Obama should apparently pull his kids out of his church because of statements made when he was not in attendance by his now-retired pastor) and exaggerating a ridiculous theme ("Obama threw his grandmother under a bus"), closing (of course) with an attack on Michelle Obama's patriotism.

I was skeptical of the claim that Hillary Clinton would try to win at any cost, even if it meant putting a Republican into the White House. Statements that Clinton would "do anything" to get the nomination have seemed like "more of the same old Clinton-bashing" we've been hearing for a couple of decades. The Tonya Harding option? Really? But given the nature and tone of Clinton's latest attacks, and those of her proxies, it's much harder to avoid that conclusion. I don't think it's about 2012 - I believe Clinton knows this is her last chance for the Presidency. It appears she is willing to engage in scorched earth tactics to win this time, even if the net result is that Obama wins the nomination but cannot win the Presidency.

This also makes me wonder whether this is the first time Koch has signed up to attack a Democrat, even at the expense of losing the Presidency, to help clear Hillary Clinton's path to the White House. To now be supporting Hillary Clinton over John McCain, Koch either owes the country a mea culpa for being so wrong in 2004, or owes a huge apology to John Kerry for being so mendacious.

A reminder - I'm of the position that Obama is "just another politician", have questioned the Obama campaign's tactics, and have criticized his campaign's policies and smears on Clinton. I do not appreciate his campaign's (successful) efforts to block a revote of the Michigan primary.

I am not entirely convinced that the net effect of these smears will harm Obama as a Presidential candidate, as the harder they are pressed now the more they will be regarded as "old news" by the time the election rolls around. But this stuff does not make me want to support or vote for Clinton - quite the opposite.

How Newspapers See The World

From L’Observatoire des médias, an interesting set of maps.

The cartograms below show the world through the eyes of editors-in-chief, in 2007. Countries swell as they receive more media attention; others shrink as we forget them.

If It's Not Sustainable....

Scott Lemieux comments on this article,

The apparent defection of Sadr's militias illustrates the fundamental problem: the lack of a legitimate state with sufficient coercive capacity. Iraq still doesn't have one, becuase the temporary security improvements of the surge haven't led to substantial political progress. The U.S. military simply can't create an effective state out of thin air. And this is reflected by the assertions of "U.S. officials" that we'll need to give it some more Freidmans.* Given the strategic objectives, "successes" that require the indefinite presence of high levels of U.S. troops to sustain aren't "successes" at all.

A lot of the measures used to estimate "success" or "failure" of the Iraq War, such as troop casualties, civilian casualties, the frequency of bombings, or levels of sectarian violence, are very poor measures, as those numbers can change very quickly. Genuine political progress is necessary to achieving long-term stability.

Unfortunately, it appears that no such progress is forthcoming. To put it mildly, seeing Sadr's Shiite militias jockeying for power with the government does not reassure me that the Shiite-dominated government can "reconcile" with Sunni and Kurdish factions. Even assuming it wants to. Or that the minority factions truly want to reconcile with a central government.

A significant troop presence can help keep the lid on a pressure cooker but, absent political progress, sooner or later "That thing is gonna blow."

___________

* A "Friedman", "Friedman Unit", or (most cheekily) a "F.U.", is a period of six months, referencing Times columnist Thomas Friedman's willingness to describe "the next six months" in Iraq as the period of time crucial to determining the viability of our goals, while disregarding actual outcomes.

Selective Prosecution

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is whining that the criminal charges against him represent selective prosecution, as the Detroit Prosecutor has no history of charging people with perjury for lying in civil cases.

Maybe so... but civil defendants' lies and cover-ups don't typically involve convincing the city to settle lawsuits against them for $9 million, hoping to cover up the text messages that prove the perjury as (an undisclosed) part of the settlement.

Even before he was charged, some were making comparisons that, although unflattering to Kilpatrick, are well-deserved. Such as At least Spitzer took it like a man after he got caught.

Syndicated Columnists Are Often Cowardly, Shallow And Dishonest....

And, of course, Bill Kristol is a syndicated columnist.

Seriously, let's take a look at his latest smear piece:

• "But orators often ask themselves the convenient questions, not the difficult ones. And Barack Obama is an accomplished orator."
• "After all, politicians sometimes indulge in ridiculous and unfair comparisons to make a point. And Barack Obama is an able politician."
• "But ambitious men sometimes do a disservice to the best in their own communities. And Barack Obama is an ambitious man."

Kristol could have added to my amusement by couching his observations in the form of questions, but... close enough. As I previously observed,

I'm left wondering if Kristol writes his editorials at a desk, or while sitting in front of a highly polished vanity mirror.

Who is he really writing about?

If he were really writing about Barack Obama, he wouldn't need to dance around his accusations. He could say, "Barack Obama is indulging in ridiculous and unfair comparisons to make a point." But instead he utilizes faulty logic to make a smear he is apparently afraid to present directly. Instead we get things like this:

• Party hacks are often spineless cowards.
• Bill Kristol is a party hack.
• Draw your own conclusion.

But don't prejudge Kristol - while the bulk of his column is composed of that type of smear by innuendo, we haven't gotten to the meat of his attack yet:

The last thing we need now is a heated national conversation about race.

Hm. Some might argue that the last thing we need is a rich, white Republican party hack telling us that we don't need a national conversation about race. But let's hear him out.

Luckily, Obama isn’t really interested in getting enmeshed in a national conversation on race.

Okay, Bill... then the point of this column was to share the fact that you shuddered about something that you don't expect to happen? Really, couldn't you find a better foundation for your smear piece than, "I shudder at the bogeyman, even though he doesn't exist?" Particularly given that your smears about things that don't make you shudder once again reveal your trademark sloppiness with the facts.

The real question, of course, is not why Obama joined Trinity, but why he stayed there for two decades, in the flock of a pastor who ... suggested soon after 9/11 that “America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

For the "chickens" line, Wright was quoting Ambassador Edward Peck. You know, one of those wild, out-of-control Republican appointees....

Meanwhile, we're five years into the war under a leadership Kristol describes as having driven us into a ditch. He's not only comfortable in the passenger seat, he insists upon keeping the same driver while screaming "Step on it!" Yeah, he's one to lecture Obama for hanging with the wrong crowd....