I’ve written about the media ‘cocoon’ before. It’s Mickey Kaus’ creation, and I think he nails it with this formulation.

…the pro-Democratic wishful-thinking approach that caused so many Southland readers to be bracingly surprised at the result of the recent California recall election. … The point isn’t that there are no voters who have soured on Bush, or that souring on Bush isn’t a real phenomenon. The point is that reporters and editors at papers like the Times (either one!) are exquisitely sensitive to any sign that Democrats might win, but don’t cultivate equivalent sensitivity when it comes to discerning signs Republicans might win. (Who wants to read that?) The result, in recent years, is the Liberal Cocoon, in which Democratic partisans are kept happy and hopeful until they are slaughtered every other November.

I believe that the media monoculture – which a journalist acquaintance described as “establishment first, then liberal” – is to all appearances shilling wildly for a Kerry victory and the Democratic Party. That tilt is, sadly, one of the major barriers to the success of the Democratic Party.Last week, the party line on the Australian elections was that the (relatively conservative) Liberal party might barely hold on to the Prime Minister’s seat while losing seats in the Parlaiment. See this prediction from the ABC’s (Australian Broadcasting Company’s) pollster:

Prime Minister Mr John Howard will lose seats, win the election narrowly and announce his retirement at the first sign of economic downturn.

Opposition leader Mr Mark Latham will rise in popularity and lead Labor to victory in three years.

Those are the predictions of ABC election analyst Mr Antony Green, who gave his only public speech yesterday ahead of the October 9 federal poll.

“My prediction would be that the Government will get back with a loss of a couple of seats,” Mr Green told a lunch held by industry group Australian Business Economists.

In fact, here’s what happened:

As Howard went to church Sunday in Sydney, counters resumed tallying votes for the 150-seat lower house of Parliament that gave his Liberal Party 71 seats, up from 68, the government’s junior coalition partner the Nationals 12, down from 13, the opposition Labor Party 56, down from 65 and four seats to minor parties.

Many on the right here in the U.S. see this as a good omen for Bush’s re-election chances, and I am somewhat in agreement.

I am more certain that Kerry and the Democratic Party would be better served by a media that gives them (and us) a clearer view of what is really going on.

One reason I believe that Bush is going to win (not the same as stating that I want him to – or not) is that the ‘feel’ of the media coverage of this election reads much like the pro-establishment coverage of the recall election here in California. It was going to be a close victory for Gov. Davis.

It wasn’t.

The results were 55% – 45%.

Let’s keep those numbers in mind, come November.

Chris Bertram writes disapprovingly, suggesting that Berman’s ‘philistine reaction’ misreads the grandeur of Che’s life – a grandeur which cannot, Bertram suggest, be sullied by facts. Literally…

Lack of success and damaging facts should not necessarily be enough to deprive a hero of heroic status: Achilles was flawed, and Achilles was cruel, and Achilles failed, but we still respond to him.

Yes, but do we respond to Achilles as a hero, or as a kind of glorious monster?

But this isn’t about Brad Pitt.Go read Bertram’s post.

Then read this old post of mine.

From Isaiah Berlin:

You would have found common sense, moderation, was very far from their thoughts. You would have found that they believed in the necessity of fighting for your beliefs to the last breath in your body, and you would have found that they believed in the value of martyrdom as such, no matter what the martyrdom was for. You would have found that they believed that minorities were more holy than majorities, that failure was nobler than success, which had something shoddy and vulgar about it.

From me:

Sound familiar?

What began to matter wasn’t the endless small adjustments to “objective” reality or to work with others – what mattered was your wholehearted willingness to pull down the temple rather than submit, and your ability to project your dreams and ideals – objectively, your fantasies – into the world and to try and make the world conform to them, rather than the other way ‘round.

Bertram admires Che because of, not in spite of, his attachment to the ‘ideals’ as opposed to the mundane:

…he did turn his back on a comfortable future as a communist bureaucrat to pursue the goal of the revolutionary liberation of humanity.

The attachment of the progressive left to that ideal – to the liberation of humanity that comes through a revolutionary stroke, rather than the endless small acts and hard work that build and nurture real life, real freedom, and exemplify real love for humanity – is the malign center of Bad Philosophy as it exists today. When we can extract it, real progress can begin.

It’s time for good news…but if this is true, it’s more than good. From AP via Ha’aretz:

Syrian President Bashar Assad is offering to make peace with Israel and says he is ready to cooperate with the United States in stabilizing Iraq, a former senior State Department official said Wednesday.

“Something is going on in Syria and it is time for us to pay attention,” said Martin Indyk, assistant secretary of state for the Near East and U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Clinton administration.

In a three-hour meeting with the Syrian president last month in Damascus, Indyk said he detected a “clear change” in Assad’s views on a number of fronts.

On peacemaking, Assad offered to hold talks with Israel without preconditions, Indyk said, and had made several overtures to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that the latter rebuffed.

but wait, there’s more…

On the domestic side, Indyk said, Assad spoke “about the need to reform the government.”

“It’s worth watching and it is worth testing,” Indyk said at a seminar at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, of which Indyk is the director.

Indyk said Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa was not at his meeting with Assad, evidence the former American diplomat said that change was under way and that al-Sharaa “and others in the old guard are being systematically silenced.”

but wait, there’s still more…

On Iraq, Assad “figured out he was on the wrong side” and has switched to cooperation with the U.S. occupation forces in the country, Indyk said.

On support for terrorism, Assad was responding to U.S. demands by moving some leaders of militant Palestinian groups out of Damascus, Indyk said.

Last month, Syria was praised publicly by Secretary of State Colin Powell for dismantling military camps in the hills near Beirut, Lebanon.

Libya, and now possibly Syria. Two mainstays of state support for terrorism, both possibly moving toward civilization.

In response to this Atlantic Magazine article on Korea’s Great Beloved Leader Comrade Kim Jong Il, Chalmers Johnson (serious author of a number of books on foreign and defense policy) writes a letter to the editor, copied here entire:

The sheer viciousness of B. R, Meyers’s personal attack on Bruce Cumings (“Mother of All Mothers,” September Atlantic) moves The Atlantic ever closer to the standards of fascist journalism. Cumings is easily the most distinguished historian working on modern Korean affairs in the United States today. To suggest differences in political approach to North Korea between Cumings and Selig Harrison is simply embarrassing, since both authors come to the same conclusions. Myers’s condemnation of any attempts to understand North Korea puts him in a class with Undersecretary of State John Bolton and other know-nothings who have been in change of American foreign policy since 2001. Even though George W. Bush told Bob Woodward that he loathes Kim Jong Il, it was Cumings who first noted what Bush and Kim have in common: neither would have amounted to anything without their daddies.

Back in October of 2003, uber-blogger Atrios was threatened with a libel suit by Donald Luskin. My response then was:

God knows, I’m not a fan of Atrios, who I think is part of the Jackie Goldberg/ suicidal-lemming wing of the Democratic Party.

But this is just embarrassing.

Well, we’re not done with blogger libel lawsuits, I guess. Wizbang points out that liberal blogger David Niewert, of Orcinius, is saber rattling re Wizbang’s harsh treatment of Professor Hailey’s incoherent and oft-changing claim that the Ra^thergate documents were in fact done on a typewriter.I went over and read Niewert’s posts, and then the background posts by Paul on Wizbang (one was redacted for tone, which I’ve done as well) as well as a quick scan of the Professor’s work to see what I thought.

In reverse order:

The professor’s work is barely coherent, and I’m having a hard time – given an unwillingness to approach it like one of Joyce’s works – making any sense of his claims, except for two, that based on scaled up fuzzy images, he’s claiming that the font isn’t Times Roman and that the letter patterns show signs of irregularity consistent with a typewriter. The stated claims go far further, but I can’t get from his data to his claim, so let’s just put it aside for the moment and suggest that an expository rhetoric tuneup might be in order. I certainly didn’t see anything that shook my belief that the documents were electronically generated (and I won’t go into why right now).

Wizbang’s posts, given the inferred tone from the apology were pretty snarky, and I do wonder why Paul would call the guy’s boss (the head of Hailey’s) about this.

To me there’s a clear line between arguing against someone’s points and rattling their personal cage. When you call someone’s boss, wife, etc. and finger-wag that they’ve done something naughty on the Internet, you’re moving the discussion from – a discussion – to something with significant impact on someone’s personal life, and that seem to be a different level of the game.

Interestingly enough, Niewert’s claims about Paul and Wizbang aren’t about this call, but about a broader theory of defamation and libel.

They’ve continued in the same vein with the Hailey report — openly libeling their subject and accusing him of unethical and potentially criminal behavior, all without the benefit of getting a response from him as well as any consideration of the gravity of the charges. Even their most recent posts continue to assert the “academic fraud” charge.

and approvingly notes that

[Commenter] David needn’t worry, actually. Because the folks at Wizbang are about to discover that there are consequences for leveling these charges.

While it’s true that, as the Deseret News reported, Hailey himself is not considering legal action against the authors of the Wizbang posts that have openly libeled him, the same cannot be said of the officials at Utah State University.

Hailey, in fact, assured me that the university’s attorneys consider the Wizbang posts “fully actionable” and are in the process of preparing legal remedy for the defamation of character that the blog has leveled both against Hailey and the university. It’s difficult to say at this point whether they will act on it, but there’s at least some likelihood they will.

…and…

So here’s what is probably about to happen: USU’s attorneys will send legal letters to the Wizbang authors demanding a full retraction (and, if justice is served, a full apology to both Hailey and the university), upon pain of facing a civil action for libel. If the authors refuse, then they’ll be served with more papers detailing the civil lawsuit filed against them.

It’s ugly, but it’s a hard, cold fact of the real world of journalism.

In any event, the Wizbang authors may soon find themselves wishing they had applied a little old-fashioned journalistic prudence before rushing to print with their manifestly reckless accusations.

But in the process, they may provide a useful object lesson for us all.

I’ll call bullshit here.

Blogging isn’t a community anymore, so appealing to ‘community standards’ probably isn’t fruitful. But I’ll go to my post defending Atrios’ right to speak without a lawyer on staff:

And pundits who use slings ought to be able to take a stone or two, and the fact that Mr Luskin can’t – the fact assuming that the letter Atrios posted was genuine (and the lawyer’s name does check out on the firm website) – certainly drops him a few kilometers below credible in my view.

Free speech – even hurtful speech – is something the folks at NRO (and others) have championed for some time. It appears that they neglected to mention that it only matters when someone else’s ox is being gored.

Similarly, Niewert and his commenters seem to believe that it’s right to hide behind lawyer’s skirts when challenged in the marketplace of ideas. I’m positive that they wouldn’t feel the same way if the shoe was on the other foot; he says so in his essay on “The Personal and The Political” (it’s one I’ve bookmarked for my long-delayed ‘taking back the Democratic Party’ piece). He’s become a partisan warrior who believes that the challenge of the Newt Gingriches is best met with Democratic Newt Gingriches.

Great. Just great.

Apparently Concordia University can’t have Israeli speakers because “they can’t guarantee their security”. Go read the whole thing.

In case you’ve forgotten, Concordia was the site of the pro-Palestinian riot in 2002, when Benjamin Netanyahu was prevented from speaking by the actions of a mob.

Who was it who was talking about the horrible suppression of free speech post 9/11??

I’m not criticizing Kerry with this, but might I gently point out that responding to criticisms that you’re forcing U.S. foreign policy to pass a “global test” with this:

“If you do things that are illegitimate in the eyes of the other people, it’s very hard to get them to share the burden and risk with you.”

…might not exactly quench the flames of criticism?

There’s a damn serious issue here about our relationships with other countries – and their relationships with us. It would be nice if we could have it in ways that didn’t involve inarticulate grunts and unscripted casual conversation.

As I was walking out of Home Depot yesterday (yes, we do own a house…), I noticed a voter registration table. I’d been meaning to look something up, but it’s always easier to convince someone else to do it for you. “When do you have to turn 18 to vote?” I asked. He looked at a sheet and told me “By Election Day.”

Middle Guy will be 18 in October, and I’d looked forward to sitting down with him at the dining table, guiding him through the responsibility of his first election, carefully debating the issues, and generally acting like the pipe-smoking, cardigan wearing dad of fantasy.

So I called his cell from the parking lot.

“Hey, did you know you can register to vote? I got you one of the forms.”

“Dad, I registered this summer when I was in Sacramento. I already sent in my absentee ballot.”

Dreams die hard…

…which sounds like something Wonkette should be writing about.

OK, I’m seriously depressed about the Presidential election (as U. Utah Phillips would say, “It’s good, though!” – explanation here, listen here). Nothing changes my view below, but right now I’d like a do-over on the nominating conventions, if one could be offered. I’ll get some sleep and be better in the morning, honest…

So let me turn to the fun-filled California ballot. We’ve got government by initiative here in California, which was the reformer’s tool against the Union Southern Pacific back in the day, and is now sadly the tool most often used by large corporations to mount Astroturf campaigns when getting things though the Legislature proves to be too expensive. What’s even sadder is that sometimes it’s the best way we have to make laws.

Here’s a list of the propositions, with links out the League of Women Voter’s great ‘Smart Voter‘ site.Over the next few weeks, I’ll try and dig into each of them and comment.

Proposition 1A.
Protection of Local Government Revenues — State of California

Should local property tax and sales tax revenues remain with local government thereby safeguarding funding for public safety, health, libraries, parks, and other local services? Provisions can only be suspended if the Governor declares a fiscal necessity and two-thirds of the Legislature concur.

Proposition 59.
Public Records, Open Meetings — State of California
(Legislative Constitutional Amendment)

Shall the Constitution be amended to include public’s right of access to meetings of government bodies and writings of government officials while preserving specified constitutional rights and retaining existing exclusions
for certain meetings and records?

Proposition 60.
Election Rights of Political Parties — State of California
(Legislative Constitutional Amendment)

Shall the general election ballot be required to include candidate receiving most votes among candidates of same party for partisan office in primary election?

Proposition 60A.
Surplus Property — State of California
(Legislative Constitutional Amendment)

Shall the sale proceeds of most surplus state property pay off specified bonds?

Proposition 61.
Children’s Hospital Projects. Grant Program — State of California
(Bond Act. Initiative Statute)

Shall $750 million general obligation bonds be authorized for grants to eligible children’s hospitals for construction, expansion, remodeling, renovation, furnishing and equipping children’s hospitals?

Proposition 62.
Elections. Primaries — State of California
(Initiative Constitutional Amendment and Statute)

Should primary elections be structured so that voters may vote for any state or federal candidate regardless of party registration of voter or candidate? The two primary-election candidates receiving most votes for an office, whether they are candidates with “no party” or members of same or different party, would be listed on general election ballot. Exempts presidential nominations.

Proposition 63.
Mental Health Services Expansion, Funding. Tax on Personal Incomes above $1 Million — State of California
(Initiative Statute)

Should a 1% tax on taxable personal income above $1 million
to fund expanded health services for mentally ill children, adults, seniors be established?

Proposition 64.
Limit on Private Enforcement of Unfair Business Competition Laws — State of California
(Initiative Statute)

Should individual or class action “unfair business” lawsuits be allowed only if actual loss suffered? Only government officials may enforce these laws on public’s behalf.

Proposition 65.
Local Government Funds, Revenues. State Mandates — State of California
(Initiative Constitutional Amendment)

Should reduction of local fee/tax revenues require voter approval? Permits suspension of state mandate if no state reimbursement to local government within 180 days after obligation determined.

Proposition 66.
Limitations on “Three Strikes” Law. Sex Crimes. Punishment — State of California
(Initiative Statute)

Should the “Three Strikes” law be limited to violent and/or serious felonies? Permits limited re-sentencing under new definitions. Increases punishment for specified sex crimes against children.

Proposition 67.
Emergency Medical Services. Funding. Telephone Surcharge — State of California
(Initiative Constitutional Amendment and Statute)

Should the telephone surcharge be increased and other funds for emergency room physicians, hospital emergency rooms, community clinics, emergency personnel training/equipment, and 911 telephone system be allocated?

Proposition 68.
Non-Tribal Commercial Gambling Expansion. Tribal Gaming Compact Amendments. Revenues, Tax Exemptions — State of California
(Initiative Constitutional Amendment and Statute)

Should tribal compact amendments be authorized? Unless tribes accept, should casino gaming be authorized for sixteen non-tribal establishments? Percentage of gaming revenues fund government services.

Proposition 69.
DNA Samples. Collection. Database. Funding — State of California
(Initiative Statute)

Should collection of DNA samples from all felons, and from
others arrested for or charged with specified crimes be required with submission to state DNA database? Provides for funding.

Proposition 70.
Tribal Gaming Compacts. Exclusive Gaming Rights. Contributions to State — State of California
(Initiative Constitutional Amendment and Statute)

Upon tribe’s request, should the Governor be required to execute a 99-year compact? Tribes contribute percentage of net gaming income to state funds, in exchange for expanded, exclusive tribal casino gaming.

Proposition 71.
Stem Cell Research. Funding. Bonds — State of California
(Initiative Constitutional Amendment and Statute)

Should the “California Institute for Regenerative
Medicine” be established to regulate and fund stem cell research with the constitutional right to conduct such research and with an oversight committee?
Prohibits funding of human reproductive cloning research.

Proposition 72.
Health Care Coverage Requirements — State of California
(Referendum)

Should legislation requiring health care coverage for employees, as specified, working for large and medium employers be approved?

I listened to the debate on NPR; it was interesting to listen, as opposed to watch and to try and fill in the images with my imagination. Kerry did well in terms of his persona; I went in expecting a pompous windbag and he wasn’t one. Bush did less well in persona; fragmented, repetitive (although Kerry did keep repeating sideways points that meant “I served in Vietnam”).I want to look at the transcript before I make a call on substance; each of them had some clinkers, although I think Kerry has some eye-openers; supplying nuclear fuel to Iran and “getting the troops out in six months isn’t a commitment, it’s a goal”.

Bush didn’t jump on either one of them. he missed his opportunity to channel Churchill in response…“You ask, What is our aim? I can answer with one word: Victory – victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.” It seems like kind of a no-brainer.

Joe commented that he’s going to post on what crappy choices we have [here it is: ABTG (Anybody But These Guys)]. I think I’m pretty much in agreement with that basic thought.

It’s funny. I went to the Reason event last night, and was chatting with some of the luminaries there about how impressed I am with the blogging community as a whole. And, to be honest, I think I’d rather listen to almost any two bloggers than listen to these two.