In case anyone wonders why I keep dancing around a decision and just don’t come out for Bush (or so a few correspondents suggest), given my discomfort with Kerry’s security non-policies, here’s a brief explanation from Forbes:

U.S. companies that outsourced the most jobs in 2003 also offered well-above average pay increases to their chief executives, according to a new study released this morning. Companies that made outsized political contributions to either the Democratic or the Republican parties also paid their CEOs unusually well, the study finds.

The average CEO compensation at the 50 firms outsourcing the most service jobs increased by 46% in 2003. That increase compares to an average hike of 9% for CEOs at 365 of the largest U.S. companies, according to a report by the Institute for Policy Studies, a non-profit that focuses on progressive research, and United for a Fair Economy, best known for its opposition to the repeal of the federal estate tax.

I’ll comment that the source isn’t exactly unbiased, and I’ll go and read the study and see how solid I believe it to be before I give this total credence.

And I’m not an opponent of the internationalization of business (I’m not an opponent of gravity, either). But when you see that the issue isn’t one of lowering costs to customers, or one of increasing shareholder value – but of nakedly lining the pockets of the managers who make the decisions – it’s hard not to frame this as one in which the managers see the decision to internationalize as one where they can pocket a substantial amount of the salary dollars they save.

But ultra-luxury housing is doing better in Los Angeles than upper-middle priced housing, like mine. See the LA Times article “$10 Million is the new $1 Million“:

Even in the mid-1990s, even among rich folks, $10 million was freakishly big money; only a handful of homes each year sold in that range. Not Madonna, not Cher, not Arnold Schwarzenegger lived in $10-million houses, at least in those days.

Now, however, even with the market momentarily cooling, real estate agents say $10 million is your basic starter mansion. “In the high bracket,” said Beverly Hills real estate broker Cecelia Waeschle, “$10 million is now almost the norm.”

John Edwards’ ‘Two Americas’ may be the tagline to a good joke by Giuliani for the next few months.

But it’s an issue that won’t go away soon.

In April 1961, John Glenn famously said:

“They just beat the pants off us, that’s all, and there’s no use kidding ourselves about that. But now that the space age has begun, there’s going to be plenty of work for everybody.”

TG and I listened to the main speeches at the Republican convention on NPR tonight.McCain had a brilliant speech, delivered somewhat flatly until the end, when the punch line “…We fight for love of freedom and justice–a love that is invincible. Keep that faith! Keep your courage! Stick together! Stay strong! Do not yield! Do not flinch! Stand up! Stand up with our President and fight! We’re Americans! We’re Americans and we’ll never surrender! They will!” was delivered with what sounded like real passion.

Then Giuliani came on. I’ve never heard him speak; just a few sound bites from press conferences seen in airport lounges and hotels. He’s the street version of Mario Cuomo; they both have the knack for being both oratorical and personal. Giuliani gave a major speech as though he was having a conversation with a friend.

TG is a committed Democrat; she adores Edwards (as do I), sees gay marriage as the #1 issue and doesn’t share my misgivings about Kerry’s foreign policy. But she was rattled by the speeches tonight, and the clear line they seemed to draw between Kerry’s policies and Bush’s.

So I surf over to the left blogs – to TAPPED and TalkLeft and read – carping.

“GIULIANI’S SPEECH, 11:20 P.M.: This is unbelievably long.

–Sam Rosenfeld”

Sam, I hate to break it to you, but that’s not how it’s going to read in Pennsylvania.

If anyone is the personification of the opposite of freedom, it’s former federal prosecutor and Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Herr Giuliani is a more apt name for him. How could anyone just not want to retch listening to Giuliani tonight as he tried to sell himself and the Republicans as the party that would bring freedom to the world.

Giuliani cleaned up the streets in New York by arresting the poor, the homeless, the squeegee cleaners, the mentally ill and the addicted. Yes, New York became cleaner, but at what price? At the price of freedom….which he now fraudulently pretends to champion. Sickening.

Jeralyn, I don’t think that that’s what is going to help swing votes in Columbus.

Look, I assume that I’m not the only one who would like there to be an election contest here. And what needs to happen if that’s going to be the case is pretty simple isn’t handwaving and denial.

One can only hope that’s not what’s happening behind the doors in the Kerry campaign. We didn’t get to the moon first by denegrating the Soviet space program.

Through Declan McCuollogh’s Politech, I’ve been following the matter of the Indymedia posting of the GOP delegate’s personal information. Note that I downloaded and looked at the file – and it does contain home phone numbers, addresses, and names for a bunch of people I assume are Republican delegates.

The ACLU has stepped in on behalf of Indymedia.Am I the only one bothered by this? It’s not new – here in Los Angeles, the director of the Department of Animal Services recently retired after protesters circled his home; the same group has protested at the home of Los Angeles Mayor Hahn.

Now Scott McNealy may believe that “privacy is dead, get over it,” and he may be right.

But it seems that by blending the public (would anyone be as squeamish about demonstrations in front of Jerry Greenwalt’s office?) and the private, these demonstrators are changing the game somewhat, and in a way that I’m not sure I’m comfortable with.

And, what’s more, they are doing it in a way that doesn’t exactly level the playing field.

Demonstrations against Greenwalt were led by ‘Animal Defense -LA‘; a whois shows a maildrop address (amusingly, Amy Alkon gets her mail at the same place), and the name of ‘Marcus Wolf’ – those who know a bit about Stasi history might wonder whether that’s a pseudonym…

So when will the Protest Warriors start showing up at the homes of Indymedia contributors? Or groups of grad students in biology at the homes of animal defense organizations?

Do we need more James Kopps??

Or am I just being too concerned about this?

I noticed this last week, and meant to post it Friday.

Then the L.A. Times covered it in detail today.

Ted Hayes is a leading advocate for the homeless in Los Angeles. While I do a fair amount of volunteer work around homeless issues (mostly in working on mediating ongoing disputes between a homeless services agency and it’s neighbors), I’ve never met him.

But he came to prominence as an advocate for the homeless who lived among them himself; he runs a charity from which he takes a $30,000 salary (as compared, say to the $400K salary the head of the NRDC takes). His views are – to put it mildly – iconoclastic, but he’s done a lot in Los Angeles to both create political support for programs to serve homeless people and help raise some of them out of homelessness and back into society and find ways for those homeless people who won’t live in society to live in a manner that respects them and reduced their impact on the community.

But that’s not the good news.

The good news is that his daughter, Joanna Hayes, set an Olympic record in winning the women’s 100-meter hurdles in Athens.The Times story doesn’t spare the consequences on Ted’s family of his decision to “…give up his family to live on the streets.”

But there’s a summation.

As Joanna grew older and politically aware, she came to respect the choice her father had made.

“Obviously, with my dad, there have been times when I’ve been angry with him,” she said. “But there are so many more times when I’ve been proud of him.”

“I will,” she said proudly, “always be the Dome Village girl.”

Ted Hayes was cheering in the stands in Athens this week along with Joanna’s mother and other family members.

I was cheering when I read about her victory as well.

Here’s a fascinating, and non-vitriolic look at the ‘character’ issue for both candidates. Note that just because I’m unhappy with the polarization of politics right now that I’m not dismissing politics or the importance of the election. And note that I’ll publicly commit to aggressively attack anyone who – after the election – immediately launches into a partisan effort to hamstring whichever candidate is elected.

That’s my pledge, and I’d love to see other polibloggers take it as well.

The column is by Craig Crawford, of Congressional Quarterly (via Taegan Goddard), and I’ll be reading a lot more of his stuff.He says:

Someone like me, who never served in the military, has no business passing judgment on a combat veteran’s record – and I am not doing that here. Anyone such as Kerry, who carries shrapnel in his body as a result of service to his country, deserves to boast if he wants to. But politics is not always fair, and Kerry’s eagerness to harness his military background for political purposes is haunting him. It fits a lifelong pattern of grooming himself for high office. Voters like ambition, but they’d rather not see you sweat.

and

We learned that, unlike Kerry, he [Bush] was most willing to use his privileged status to avoid harm’s way in Southeast Asia.

But in light of Bush’s hawkish presidency, claims that he dodged a fight do not fit the pattern of how voters see his character.

Instead, Bush’s military record fits a character pattern that many voters like about him. His war years demonstrate that this is not a man who spent his entire adult life plotting to run for president.

For starters, how lame it was for Bush to lose his Texas Air National Guard flight status simply because he missed a physical examination. But it does fit his image as a regular guy who cannot stand paperwork.

Even if Democrats could prove their unsubstantiated claim that Bush was AWOL in the summer of 1972, it is not clear that enough voters are going to care to make a difference.

A great analysis, and one that points to where the Democrats must not go if they’re going to have a chance (certainly, a chance with me – and I assume that I’m pretty typical).

…can never be defeated.

I finally managed to join 2004 and start using a RSS-based blog reader (Bloglines, in my case), which has meant that instead of randomly popping out to read blogs when I’m on boring phone calls (or procrastinating to avoid making boring phone calls), I now tend to just, robot-like, click down an alphabetical list of 62 blogs and newsfeeds (I’ll append the list).

And it’s kind of depressing.

Most of the blogs I read are fully engaged in electoral politics, which is on one hand good because it’s an important election and it’s neat to see citizen’s media play an important role in it, and on the other hand bad because the level of partisan venom is just stupefying.

Here’s a quick shoutout to my fellow bloggers.
It’s going to be a damn important election, there’s no question. But guess what. As much as there are at least two dozen people I’d rather have as president than either George Bush or John Kerry, one of those two will be our president on January 20, 2005. He’ll have to lead the country through what will be one of the most challenging periods in our history as we try and fight a low-intensity war and keep it from becoming a high-intensity one.

The biggest threat they will face isn’t Islamist terrorism, European intransigence, Chinese economic power, or Iranian nukes. It will be a polity paralyzed by internal rage, distrust, and contempt. If we – as a nation and as citizens – can manage to engage each other in constructive ways, I am certain that we will beat whatever events throw at us.

Go read Josh Marshall or Wizbang. Or look at how Kevin Drum’s rhetoric has changed over the year. These aren’t semi-humorous blogs like Scrappleface or IMAO. They are serious commentators on the events of the day, people who I take seriously, and their rhetoric displays exactly what it is that I’m afraid of. I used to comment (as snark) that Matt Yglesias’ overheated partisan rhetoric meant he was trying out for the DNC. That’s less funny in light of Atrios’ and Oliver Willis’ employment, but I wonder why it is that the amateurs are working so hard to outdo the professionals at thuggery.

It would be nice if we could all – acknowledging that we have sides – work to make the professionals a little bit ashamed instead.

It’s interesting how Dean Esmay’s challenge has fallen off the radar.

For what it’s worth, here are the blogs in my reader:

American Digest
Andrew Sullivan – The Daily Dish
Asymmetrical Information
Belmont Club
BLACKFIVE
Brad DeLong’s Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog
BuzzMachine
Calblog
California Insider
Crooked Timber
Daniel W. Drezner
Defamer
DRUDGE REPORT 2004
Dynamist Blog
EconoPundit
Eschaton
Guardian Unlimited
Hakmao
Harry’s Place
Healing Iraq
Hit & Run
Howard Lovy’s NanoBot
Instapundit.com
INTEL DUMP
IRAQ THE MODEL
L.A. Observed
LAist
Lessig Blog
Little Green Footballs
Los Angeles Times
Mark A. R. Kleiman
matthew
MY WAR
MyDD
One Hand Clapping
Outside The Beltway
OxBlog
Patterico’s Pontifications
Political Animal
Power Line
Priorities & Frivolities
Roger L. Simon
Slate Magazine
Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall
TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime
TAPPED
The Idea Shop
The Indepundit
The New Republic Weblogs
The New York Times > Home Page
The New York Times > Opinion
The Southern California Law Blog
The Volokh Conspiracy
The Washington Monthly
Tim Blair
War and Piece
washingtonpost.com
Wired News
Wizbang
Wonkette

The Marijuana Policy Project is looking for technology staff:

Application deadline: September 20, 2004. The Information Technology Coordinator position is based in MPP’s main office in Washington, D.C. The position requires the ability to perform exceptionally in a fast-paced campaign environment. First and foremost, the Information Technology Coordinator must be meticulous and have an exacting attention to detail. Applicants for this position should not have even small degrees of sloppiness or forgetfulness.

(emphasis added)

Sorry, the jokes are just too damn obvious. I can’t bring myself to make them. But you should feel free…

Note that my man, Valentino Rossi, is currently leading the MotoGP world standings, after changing teams between last season and this one.

Now comes the word that MotoGP is coming back to the US, and that it will be at Laguna Seca Raceway on July 8 – 10 2005.

Get your tickets now – they won’t last long.

Go check out the ‘Pocket Guide to the Blogosphere‘ from Jeff at Beautiful Atrocities …

…and yes, Chico Marx.

Interesting take on Moore v. the Swift vets by Derek Cressman, in the Christian Science Monitor today.

The key graf:

People who go to see Moore’s movies know pretty much what they are getting. Other citizens prefer to get their news from Rush Limbaugh, or the networks. Whatever the source, when people seek information, especially when paying for a book, newspaper, or movie, the marketplace of free speech is at work. We all theoretically have a somewhat equal opportunity to say our piece in the town square through pitching a screenplay or a news release. If the producers and editors that citizens have trusted to seek out the news think that what we have to say is of interest, our voice will be heard.

But when donors pay big money to interrupt what we are otherwise viewing, that is paid speech – and that is where campaign-finance regulations should come into play. We live in an age where the federal candidate who spends the most money wins more than 9 out of 10 elections. Yet the funding for those campaigns comes from but a fraction of all Americans, who are not representative of the rest of us. Paid speech is available primarily to the wealthy few and it is overwhelming free speech and distorting the political marketplace.

I strongly disagree, but have to run and will toss the subject out for discussion until I get back.