First, he?s said that the CIA was not pressured to reach its erroneous conclusions. Second, he has said that rather than the president owing an explanation or apology to the American people, the CIA owes an explanation or apology to the president.

As to the first point, how would he know?

To the best of my knowledge, Kay wasn?t involved in any of the relevant inter-agency processes and he hasn?t investigated this question after the fact. So how would he know? I think the answer is clear: he doesn't.

The second point is a classic example of that phenomenon we?ve become so familiar with in the Bush years: up-is-downism.

Update: Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch explores the strengths and weaknesses of the humanitarian case for invading Iraq.

[link via Billmon]

After receiving complaints about the flag cutting, co-chairman Melody Wicht, who teaches drama at Pembroke Pines Charter High, disqualified the McArthur team.

"Some people came to me after the play and complained about the performance," Wicht said. "So I looked into it."

Wicht said she based her decision on Florida Statute 876.52, which says "Whoever publicly mutilates, defaces or tramples with intent to insult any flag ... of the United States shall be guilty of a misdemeanor of the first degree."

[From the Sun-Sentinel]

This is closely related to the stupidity of inflexible zero tolerance rules in school that Randy Cassingham has so vociferously complained about.

There are obviously problems in schools from such things as drugs and violence. But terrorizing children with inflexible rules is not the answer. School principals have always had the responsibility to make and enforce rules, and punish accordingly when those rules are broken. "Zero-Tolerance" laws take that responsibility away. They mandate certain responses that can be way out of proportion to the rule violation in question. That is what these stories are about. "This is True" has reported on a fair number of these knee-jerk reactions to non-events. Children are put into the position of being treated as felons by being suspended and/or expelled over obvious toys -- the very same thing that would happen if they brought real guns to school. What happened to the punishment fitting the "crime"? What happened to justice? What happened to the education of these children? All of that is being ignored in the name of "Zero-Tolerance". Sure, in many cases the kids broke a rule, and those rules have a purpose (e.g., to avoid tragic shootings by police who think the guns are real). Most cases call for, at most, a stern talk in the principal's office -- not suspension, expulsion, police involvement or press conferences (as many of these cases have seen). It seems to me that if we feel a need to expel kids over water guns, there must not be many real problems our society needs to deal with.

If our school administrators are incapable of (or, in the case of Colorado, prevented from) demonstrating the skills necessary to reasonably evaluate the circumstances of a possible infraction of the rules, and instead blindly and dogmatic enforce those rules to the letter regardless of mitigating factors, how can we possible expect the children they're in charge of teaching to develop those faculties?

Although we've resurrected the forms of our cities, we've animated them with a culture straight from the suburbs. 

Today's cities copy those of 50 or more years ago because the 1950's was the last time cities had busy downtowns and strong neighborhoods. Their buildings were made almost entirely of brick, stone, wood and terra cotta. Factory, rail and waterfront districts still produced and moved goods. City residents displayed a certain sophistication,as movies of that era remind us. And cities played a dominant role - economic, cultural and political - in the life of the nation. All that came to an end in the late 50's, when cities fell into a long period of physical and cultural decay. 

American cities will never again be as vital as they were during the first half of the 20th century. That is why cities are prime objects of nostalgia in our very nostalgic age. And what better way to modernize the objects of our nostalgia than by recreating old cities to attract large numbers of young professionals? Cities suffered for decades, after all, and lost middle- and upper-class residents. Renewal projects failed to improve them. They are shrinking parts of an expanding and increasingly dominant suburban society. And a growing number of affluent people now find suburbs boring or homogeneous. No wonder cities seem fresh, even exotic, and thus ripe for a nostalgic comeback.

[...]

[T]he culture of loft districts and gentrified neighborhoods resembles that of a suburban subdivision much more than an old city block. Newcomers to such areas want the look of the old city but the peace and quiet, and purely residential character, of a suburb. So they immediately encourage local officials to squelch the sounds, smells and movements of any manufacturers or wholesalers still in the neighborhood.

Sometimes they're even willing to ruin historical architecture for the sake of a suburban convenience. Think of the metal balconies that developers tack onto converted warehouses so residents can partake in the suburban pastime of grilling. Backyard grilling may well be the greatest invention of our suburban culture, but is it worth defacing beautiful brick facades for grilled salmon?

What lies behind all this residential development, of course, is the idea of "the neighborhood." A New York real estate broker described gentrifying blocks above 96th Street along Broadway as "just so 'neighborhood.' "Hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles depict an "old neighborhood feeling" in gentrifying districts everywhere. Or they discover, as one recently did in the area around Madison Square Park, "a sense of community and shopkeepers who provide old-fashioned courtesies."

Merchants sometimes fly pennants on renovated retail streets to announce the neighborhood's name. Whether they've resurrected the old name or invented a new one like NoLIta, it's a self-conscious attempt to create a sense of neighborhood identity, something old neighborhoods never did.

But today's neighborhood is different from the older one that's supposed to inspire it. For one thing, gentrifiers and loft-dwellers live much less of their lives in their neighborhoods than those who lived there 50 years ago. Today, few mothers and children are around during the day. Many of those children go to schools outside their neighborhoods and, like their parents, tend to have most of their friends and most of their activities in other parts of the city.

Like a postwar subdivision, today's retro neighborhoods lack ethnic clubs, nearby in-laws or grandparents, and merchants who have watched a generation of youngsters grow up. They lack the culture that once provided city neighborhoods with a sense of continuity and identity, and forced people to develop ties over time, across generations, even across ethnic differences.

Loft districts and gentrified neighborhoods have been transformed so quickly, and by such similar kinds of people, that they are often as homogeneous, with respect to age, race, income and education, as a 50's suburb. Gentrifiers acknowledge this lack of diversity, and it's a painful admission because "diversity," after all, is what they say they like about the city.

[...]

The car in itself is not suburban. But it is suburban to expect your very own parking space in the city. Such an expectation means new and converted residential buildings must include a built-in parking space for each apartment, a requirement that turns the first floor or two of a building into a parking lot.

Parking is so scarce in some gentrified neighborhoods that people regularly park on sidewalks. As a member of a San Francisco neighborhood council put it: "There is a substantial age and experience divide on this issue. Those people who see nothing wrong with it are younger and more recent residents of the neighborhood, who bring a suburban sensibility to the city."

Bringing a suburban sensibility to the city: that's a good description of our urban revival.

While Johns makes some interesting points, I'm not certain that "nostalgia" is necessarily the prime motivator behind the new urban revivial. Might it not be that what we're seeing is a return to the kind of urban scale that is more comfortable for people to live in, and to recreate that scale people have turned to the nearest example of it at hand, the remnants of the older city that still exist?

As for the suburban sensibility, I was ready to quibble with that as well, but it occured to me that, having been born and raised in the suburbs I might not be the most objective observer. Perhaps, unknowingly, I've brought my suburban prejudices to the city with me, and perhaps 30 years of living in cities (Boston and New York) haven't eroded them. I don't know, I guess I'll have to mull it over.

• John Edwards -- 7 to 5: "A geographic and stylistic match for the craggy veteran Massachusetts senator."



• Bill Richardson -- 3 to 1: "He is a popular Hispanic governor of a Western state, with congressional and foreign policy experience."



• Bob Graham -- 5 to 1: "He's the most qualified person" and "is one of the most popular politicians in the history of Florida, the most pivotal state in the last election."



• Dick Gephardt -- 8 to 1: "He would solidify labor support and help in the key swing state of Missouri, which President Bush carried in the last election."



• Wesley Clark -- 10 to 1: "Would thwart any Republican hopes to ride the national-security issue in the fall" but Clark "has shown his political inexperience on the campaign trail."



• Sam Nunn -- 15 to 1: "He has impeccable national-security credentials, and is a deficit hawk."



• Hillary Clinton -- 15 to 1: A "remote possibility if the Deaniacs are threatening to bolt from the party and Ralph Nader vows another third-party effort."

[Lifted from Taegan Goddard's Political Wire, since I don't have a sub to the WSJ -- Ed]

I'm not a betting man, and have no real feel for odds, but I think Carville's assessment of Hillary Clinton's chances are absurdly low -- at least I hope they are. From what I can see, there are few in the party who have any desire to go there and invite the heap of trouble it will bring down on the ticket. The last thing we want to do is deliberately provide ammunition for the right wing fanatics to use to rile up the merely conservative who may, we hope, be tiring of Bush's misadministration, but who still hold strong negative feelings about the Clintons.

One other thing I should say about Dean, one factor that he has going for him which really has nothing much to do with him in particular, is that he's a former governor and not a senator. That means he doesn't have a nationally prominent voting record to be used against him and that he's a relatively fresh face compared to everyone else in the race.

It's conventional wisdom that being a Senator is a natural stepping stone to the Presidency, but recent history doesn't bear that out. Take a look at what our recent Presidents did before taking office in the White House:

Bush -- governor of Texas, frontman, business failure, drug abuser, AWOL National Guardsman
Clinton -- governor of Arkansas
Bush -- VP, head of CIA, ambassador, etc.
Reagan -- governor of California
Carter -- governor of Georgia
Ford -- VP, congressman
Nixon -- VP, senator, congressman
Johnson -- VP, senator, congressman
Kennedy -- senator, congressman

In other words, you have to go back 34 years, to 1968, to reach a president (Nixon) who earlier served as senator, and 42 years to get to a senator (Kennedy) who was directly elected to the presidency without first passing through the vice presidency.

Taking a look at the rest of the presidents of the twentieth century, it still seems as if governors have a distinct advantage over senators:

Eisenhower -- general
Truman -- VP, senator
Roosevelt -- governor
Hoover -- cabinet secretary (commerce), humanitarian, engineer
Coolidge -- VP, governor
Harding -- senator
Wilson -- governor, president of Princeton
Taft -- cabinet secretary (war), colonial governor of the Phillipines
Roosevelt -- VP, governor, cabinet secretary (navy)
McKinley -- governor, congressman

Obviously, both senators and governors have the potential to have relatively high public visibility, but also obviously, there are always twice as many senators as there are governors. I don't know if that means anything, but I do think the evidence shows that the conventional wisdom is wrong, it's being a governor that should be considered a natural potential stepping stone to the White House, not being a senator.

[Slightly edited from original for style -- Ed]

Admittedly, there were those science fiction novels. Indeed, they may have been what made me go into economics. Those who read the stuff may be aware of the classic Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov. It is one of the few science fiction series that deals with social scientists -- the "psychohistorians", who use their understanding of the mathematics of society to save civilization as the Galactic Empire collapses. I loved Foundation, and in my early teens my secret fantasy was to become a psychohistorian. Unfortunately, there's no such thing (yet). I was and am fascinated by history, but the craft of history is far better at the what and the when than the why, and I eventually wanted more. As for social sciences other than economics, I am interested in their subjects but cannot get excited about their methods -- the power of economic models to show how plausible assumptions yield surprising conclusions, to distill clear insights from seemingly murky issues, has no counterpart yet in political science or sociology. Someday there will exist a unified social science of the kind that Asimov imagined, but for the time being economics is as close to psychohistory as you can get.

Why do so many of us who worked so hard on economic policy for the Clinton administration, and who think of ourselves as mostly part of a sane and bipartisan center, find the Bush administration and its Republican congressional lapdogs so... disgusting, loathsome, contemptible? Why are we so bitter?

After introspection, the answer for me at least as clear. We worked very hard for years to repair the damage that Ronald Reagan and company had done to America's fisc. We strained every nerve and muscle to find politically-possible and popularly-palatable ways to close the deficit, and put us in a position in which we can at least begin to think about the generational long-run problems of financing the retirement of the baby-boom generation and dealing with the rapidly-rising capabilities and costs of medicine. We saw a potential fiscal train wreck far off in the future, and didn't ignore it, didn't shrug our shoulders, didn't assume that it would be someone else's problem, but rolled up our sleeves and set to work.

Then the Bush people come in. And in two and a half years they trash the place. They trash the place deliberately. They trash the place casually. They trash the place gleefully. They undo our work for no reason at all--just for the hell of it. [...]

[...]

And every single senior Republican economic policy appointee comes out of a look back at the past three years looking very badly. X fails to organize meetings so that the long-run budgetary consequences of short-run policy moves are properly considered. Y pirouettes in midair and transforms from a deficit hawk into a deficit dove so as not to offend White House Media Affairs. Z lowballs the interest rate effects of higher deficits--and manages not to talk about the savings and investment effects at all. W mutters in the privacy of his own office about the importance of maintaining a surplus--but doesn't have the nerve to say "Boo!" to a goose (let alone to George W. Bush) once he steps outside his office door. V remains silent while the clown show that is the Bush economic policy process--a process he cannot view with equanimity--rolls forward. U cuts his own agency staff off at the knees and shows no interest in the very important and interesting work on the long-run fiscal options that they have done. Outsiders like R who assured me back in the fall of 2000 that Bush understood and would tackle the long-run problems of funding entitlements and the social-insurance state manage not to emit a public peep of complaint. Q talks about how much the president wants to reduce the deficit without daring to put his own position on the line within the administration by demanding that words like "deficits are bad" be accompanied by an actual plan to reduce the deficit. Every one. Every single last one.

And it is worth pointing out that it's not just the economic policymakers. The same holds true of all the other executive-branch Republican political appointees: defense, international affairs, science policy, social policy. Is there anybody (with the exceptions of John Donaldson and Mark McClellan) who has emerged or [will] emerge from this administration [with anything] like a reputation? And it's all the Republican senators and members of congress as well. People who used to have some claim to respect--paging Pete Domenici, anyone?--have simply rolled over and played dead.

"Is George W. Bush the worst president ever?" is the question that George Akerlof asks. A fish rots from the head, yes. But this fish is rotted all the way down to the tail.

Delong's bitterness is rooted in his professionalism and sense of duty to the country, but it encapsulates the way a lot of us feel, and how we've been feeling since the day in December 2000 when five biased and blatantly political Supreme Court justices stopped the lawful counting of votes in Florida and handed the White House to George W. Bush, in flagrant disregard of the law and common sense, in the process disrespecting democracy and every person who cast a vote in that election (and not just those who voted for Gore -- every participant in a democratic election has a vested interest in all votes being counted in a fair and impartial manner.)

Roger's reaction to DeLong's post captures as well some of our fears for the future. I post it here with his permission. [Edited by me -- Ed]

Having read enough of these economists, I am really convinced that if Bush wins re-election [sic] and continues to pursue the kinds of policies he has been pursuing to date, there will be a full-fledged economic meltdown in the U.S. (and, possibly, by extension the world) within a decade. To appreciate what I'm saying, you need to really think in terms of a Great Depression of some kind. I mean, all of us will be unemployed. I mean the economy will go into freefall. I mean, the U.S. could wind up declining into a genuine "second-rank" status.

I think, in short, that we may be standing on a genuine precipice.
 
There is literally a kind of insanity loose in our nation. The rightwingers are literally engaged in a kind of mass delusional behavior.
 
Depressingly, I am very certain that if (a) the Democrats do manage to win in 2004, and (b) they then somehow manage to keep the train from flying off the tracks, then (c) the rightwingers won't admit any wrongdoing or short-sightedness. They will, instead, be champing at the bit trying to regain power so that they can resume ALL of the idiocies they've been doing.

I keep thinking about how, in the last days of WWII -- as Berlin was under seige by Russian forces -- Nazi thugs were running around, finding 8 and 10 year old boys who were hiding rather than throwing themselves (armed only with sticks) against Russian infantry and armor. They would declare these boys "cowards" and "traitors," and hang them from streetlamps. They had time to do this even as their city was being overrun by Russian shock troops! Nothing -- literally not even the end of the world -- was quite enough to instill even an iota of doubt into the minds of these fiends.

Will we have to go through something similarly catastrophic?

What will be less painful and permanently disabling for ourselves and our nation: having the Democrats win in 2004, only to have to endure four or eight or twelve years of hate and deadlock just as Clinton experienced (along with all the brick-brats they can and will throw from their perch in Congress and the Courts) and then to experience yet another Bush-like slimeball winning office...

... Or would it be ultimately less painful to have Bush re-elected, along with a GOP-controlled Congress, so that when the nation runs into the brick wall and everything starts to crumble, there will be a chance that it'll be like the Great Depression all over gain: the rightwingers will be discredited massively, utterly, and driven to the political wilderness for a generation or more?

I don't know.

Joe Trippi is like an entrepenuer. Lots of vision and energy. Entrepenuers are essential in getting a new business (or in this case a campaign) started, but when the business (or campaign) matures, they often fall short on the management skill for the day to day operation. I think that is what has happened here. It isn't anything negative on Joe's part, it's just that the leadership to get something started is just different than what it takes to keep it going. Right now we do need someone who understands the nitty gritty inside stuff including the dirty tricks being pulled by some of the other campaigns. All of our efforts will be for nothing (including Joe's) if the campaign doesn't face it's problems head on.

This precisely mirrors my thinking, so I'm bound to agree with it. The problem is, those dot.coms and other Internet-based start-ups that ditched their visionary founders for run-of-the-mill corporate management have a pretty dismal record of success. And in this situation, there isn't a lot of time to let everyone get up to speed and turn the company around. If Dean doesn't win something very soon, even if its only Delaware, he's basically screwed.

All along the punditocracy (including rank amateur pundits like myself who have the inexplicable urge to share their lack of knowledge with anyone who comes down the pike) has been saying that Dean has money and organization and a 50-state campaign and would, because of all those things, be in it till the end. Now it turns out there's no money, the organization is in turmoil, and all the February 3rd states are being ignored in the hopes of bringing in Washington state or Michigan. Well, that's a strategy, of sorts, and perhaps the only one that's available to them in their straightened circumstances, but it's hardly a high-probability one, and it's one that could prove itself to be wanting very, very quickly.

Dean himself, in his talk to his staffers, talked about a long, drawn-out, "war of attrition", but that kind of campaign assumes that the insurgent is embedded in the community and can draw on those resources at liberty while the front-runner wears himself out trying to get rid of the thorn in their side. Problem is, the clock is ticking, and there's really no time for a long, drawn-out insurgency. The front-runner, piling up win after win (or, at least, delegate after delegate) can afford to wait it out, because, in this situation, time is on his side, not on the the side of the guerilla campaign. (And, in any event, what makes anyone think that Neel, coming from a big campaign background, is the right type of guy to run that kind of enterprise?)

No, I think everything now is stacked against Dean, and in a way that being the underdog, a condition that always has appeal for many Americans, really won't help much. So while I'm glad that Neel is enough of a good politico to know that he must pacify the troops before turning to the actual work that has to be done, it's almost a foregone conclusion ("inevitable," Matthew Yglesias might say) that Dean is done.

Postscript: Simon Rosenberg, writing on the blog of the New Democratic Network, has what I thin is a very good take on the long-term effect of Joe Trippi's work:

Pundits will be discussing for a long time the meaning of Dean, and will work to dissect what happened over the last six weeks. I’ve written about this some already (see Making Sense of Dean), but I think the easiest way to understand what has happened is that Dean, like many innovative insurgents, has had trouble turning his dynamic insurgency into a sustained and serious candidacy. But regardless of the outcome of the Democratic nomination, like many other insurgents he has created a vastly different political landscape and language.

The Dean insurgent phase - from June 2003 to Jan 2004 - also coincided with a remarkable rise of the Democratic Party. In our June poll from last year all Democrats trailed Bush by 16-20 points in direct matchups. Today, in the latest Newsweek poll, all Democrats are within the margin of error of Bush, and Kerry actually leads. As Dean the insurgent changed our Party the public responded to our new, stronger and better approach and we gained 15 points across the board for all candidates.

Dean’s full-throated indictment of Bush has become the industry standard; the tone, tenor and style of his Internet communications have been emulated by everyone in the Party and even Bush; and perhaps most importantly and lastingly, he has allowed the Party of the middle class to once again understand how to make the middle class a partner in our politics and not just consumers of our policies.

[...]

Dean and groups like MoveOn have shown that the Internet is an efficient and effective way to allow many new people to participate in the system again. And what the Dean campaign understood first is that by giving a role for regular people to play in your politics it made the argument that your campaign was really about the middle class much more compelling and true. Our audience as a Party has changed. And you can hear it in our language as a Party - the forgotten middle class is forgotten no more.

What Dean and its Trippi era have done is to make the Party of the middle class more authentically the champion of the middle class by fundamentally altering how we finance and imagine our politics. This campaign is about them. No winks, no nods. We now know that we can only win this race with not just their votes but with their active participation in our politics again.

Our frontrunner Kerry has adopted this approach. He talks of his website, talks of taking back the country from the special interests, talks about how all of this is for "us" and not him. And if it sounds like he means it, he does.

My fellow New Democrats, this is what we've been calling for for twenty years - a politics driven by the interests of the middle class. What many in our movement have not understood is what Trippi understood – that to be true to our word, to be the true champions of the middle class, we would have to fundamentally change our politics, and make it more participatory, more open, more iterative, and more democratic.

The Dean/Trippi contribution to all of progressive politics – including us New Democrats – has been huge. They clearly made mistakes along the way, perhaps fatal ones, but it cannot change the fact that our politics and our party today are stronger for it.

[via Tapped]

Like my colleague Chris Suellentrop, I've watched the Kerry surge with amazement. I've asked myself how Kerry is persuading previously skeptical voters to change their minds about him. The answer is, he isn't. Other people are doing the persuasion. Other people are doing the testimonial ads, as first lady Christie Vilsack did for Kerry in Iowa. Other people are firing up his crowds. Other people are telling his story. Other people are touting his virtues at rallies because he doesn't reliably display those virtues himself. The man who stood up to serve his country as a soldier is being propped up as a candidate.

He goes on to catalogue Kerry's various shortcomings as a physical candidate, which is the kind of thing which really concerns me about Kerry.

As I've said any number of times, I don't have anything against Kerry, really, but I have graves doubts that the intangible part of the Kerry package are sufiiciently strong enough to overcome Bush. His stiffness is reminiscent of Gore's, and that's not promising. I've already posted about Josh Marshall's comments that his campaign seems to alternate between competence and complacency, much as Gore's did. There is no way, no matter how much populist rhetoric he churns out, that he's going to appear to the common man as just one of the gang down at the American Legion, and, for all that we can see through Bush's facade, he's still perceived that way, as one of the guys.

Kerry is also vulnerable to charges of "flip-flopping" on Iraq, because his stance, although intellectual justifiable and consistent on its own terms, is complex and multicolored and much harder to understand than Bush's, Lieberman's or Dean's black & white positions. He's physically odd looking, with a face that, in Mo Rocca's words, looks like it's melting. (Yes, this is superficial and stupid, but, like the height thing -- Kerry is OK in that department, but so was Gore and it didn't help him -- people this stuff into account, even if they're not aware they're doing it.)

I'm not trying to torpedo Kerry, and I don't have a viscerally negative response to him, as some people seem to have to Dean (and as most of the liberals I know have to Bush) but I do worry about him, I really do.

My guess.... er, carefully considered analysis, is that the order of finish will be:

Kerry / Dean / Edwards / Clark / Lieberman

Close, but no cigar, unless they count the last 3% of precincts and the absentee ballots and Clarks' current 705 vote advantage disappears.

[...]

• I predict that Lieberman's showing will be quite bad (under 10%) and he will drop out shortly afterwards. I nailed the first part, but, unfortunately for us all, Lieberman has refused to quit the race. Score me 1 for 2.



• Kerry will lead Dean by more than 10 points, but Dean's showing will be credible enough to keep him moving ahead, and possibly strong enough to start the media talkng about a "comeback" (although he probably won't be dubbed the "Comeback Kid"). Hard to know how to score this. Kerry's lead was more than 10, that one's clear; whether Dean's showing is "credible" depends on who's doing the spinning; that he's "moving ahead" is undeniable; no one is talking about a Dean comeback (though Kerry has dubbed himself the "comeback Kerry") I'll score this as 4 predictions, of which I'll credit myself with 2 right, and 1 undecided. Total so far: 3 for 6, 1 pending



• The media will consider Edward's results to be "good" and Clark's to be "disappointing", but both will continue in the race. 2 for 2 on this, despite the fact that their vote tallies are, for all intents and purposes, indistingishable. That's the funof the "expectations" game, which almost as jolly as the "momentum" game. Total: 5 for 8, 1 pending



• Immediately after NH Kerry will start having problems again as he lapses into complacency (as per Josh Marshall's comments the other day) and starts getting attacked by the media again, being the frontrunner. Too soon to know about Kerry's problems and complacency, but I think we can take it as read that since he's now officially the frontrunner, the media will start attacking him again, just as they attack all frontrunners, with the exception of conservative Republican frontrunners. Total me up as 6 for 9, 2 pending



• Like death, taxes and Dennis Miller, Sharpton will be impossible to get rid of, even though his results will be microscopic. This was a joke, not unlike Sharpton.



• And Kucinich.... is he really still running? Another joke, since he's walking, not running. (Alright, he's crawling.)

And that's the name of that tune. I also resolutely predict that my average this time will be better than 25% -- unless you count that as one of my predictions. It turns out that my average was better this time, 66% instead of Iowa's 33%, for an overall prognostication score of 70%, with several items still awaiting further data.

Many experts believe that solving the spam problem will require a combination of approaches. But laws take forever to pass and amend. Technological fixes like sender authentication and electronic stamps would also take time to carry out, but filtering is already here - and it is reducing the spammers' messages to feeble signals swamped by a roar of alphanumeric noise.

The turning point came in August 2002 when a computer scientist, Paul Graham, issued a manifesto called "A Plan for Spam," describing how to filter e-mail using a statistical method discovered in the 18th century by the English theologian and mathematician Thomas Bayes. Bayesian e-mail filters had been studied for years, but with Mr. Graham's paper the idea went mainstream.

Presented with thousands of examples of good and bad e-mail, a Bayesian filter compiles a list ranking each word according to how likely it is to appear in junk e-mail. Rising to the top of the roster are high scorers like Valium, Xanax, mortgage, porn and Viagra. Settling toward the bottom are words like deciduous, cashmere and intensify. Hovering in the middle are the vast number of neutral words that can swing either way.

When a new piece of e-mail arrives, the filtering program counts up the words and computes an overall ranking. If the number exceeds a certain threshold, the message is rejected as spam.

A message from a friend saying that she is so worried about refinancing her mortgage that she took a Valium will pique the filter's interest. But most of the text will probably consist of words with neutral or very low rankings, dragging down the score and allowing the e-mail to go through.

If a spam promising "l0w m0rtg@ge rates" slips by, the filter is informed by the user that it has made an error. The mutation is then moved higher on the list, as well as future mutations of the mutation, until the spammer is reduced to sending gobbledygook. A recent e-mail message making the rounds promised "Leacatharsisrn to make a fortcongestiveune on eBay!" (A Web link inside led to a site with information on a money-making auction scheme.)

Increasingly the subject lines convey no meaning at all: "begonia breadfruit extempore defocus purveyor." For the spammer, the hope, slim as it seems, is that a few curious souls will open and read the e-mail, which begins, "I finally was able to lsoe the wieght" and goes on to offer a product "Guanarteed to work or your menoy back!" Read out loud, the message sounds a little like HAL the computer in "2001: A Space Odyssey" sinking into aphasia as its synapses are severed one by one.

In what may be their final death throes, some spammers have begun sending messages consisting of a single image or a one-line sales pitch - "picospams" - with a link to a Web site. Often appended at the end, in an attempt to flummox the filters, is a scrap of Dadaist poetry - "feverish squirt feat transconductance terrify broken trite fascist axis stultify floc bookshelves. " Sometimes this "word salad," as it has come to be called, is rendered in invisible ink - white letters on a white background - or hidden inside an embedded formatting command.

No matter. The filters learn to adapt. If the spammers want to stay in business, ultimately they must convey at least a hint of meaning. After all, you cannot send a completely random message - or one that is blank - and expect many people to click the link.

[via Follow Me Here]

The best story of the night? The one that should unite us all? From the Republican primary results:

Bush 57,670
Kerry 835
Dean 633
Clark 545
Edwards 541

That's over 2,500 registered Republicans who wrote in a Democrat in their ballot.

That's got to scare the shit out of Rove.

Really, that's extremely good news. Kos also comments that delegate counts don't mean much at this point, that momentum is more important. I dunno, I think the whole momentum thing is a bit overblown, but Kos's point about Dean's delegate count being heavy with superdelegates, who can change their allegiance at any time is a good one.

11:29 On Kos comments, StopKerry makes a good point about the way the media defines expectations and momentum (which is another good reason to be suspicious of it):

John Edwards finishes 2nd in an Iowa caucus where he campaigned hard, then rides into NH on a huge media high. He manages 12%, behind Clark, lower for Edwards than many actually were predicting by yesterday. He leads in only one single poll--South Carolina (with Clark in 2nd...)(!) and barely shows in others.... Meanwhile he gets a positive spin from THAT?

Then you have Clark. The guy pulled out 13% in a state he had probably never even been to before and in which Kerry/ Dean/ Lieberman lived for 2 years.... He had to skip Iowa because he got in the race late. He has never campaigned in his life. In other words, he's shown incredible raw talent and brilliant resume enough to sway people to him. He is leading in Arizona and Oklahoma, close in South Carolina...BUT this is a disappointment heading South???

Also, why the heck isn't everyone calling for Lieberman to drop it??? The guy got 9% in state near his own and spent more time there than anyone -- literally, he MOVED there.

11:35 Reality intrudes: a "powerful explosion" in the center of Baghdad.

11:56 97% in, Clark ahead of Edwards by 714. Third place might be determined by absentee ballots!

11:58 Dean on Koppel working hard to re-define himself as the insurgent -- a matter of necessity, given the results in Iowa and New Hampshire, but probably all to the better for his campaign, which seems to work best when it's operating out of the glare of frontrunning.

12:20 CNN's vote ticker got stuck for a while, only showing the second half of their list (Edwards, Lieberman and Kucinich), but just before they broke for commercial I saw Clark at 26,554 and Edwards at 25,849, a difference of 705 votes with 97% of precincts counted. I'm only hanging around to see the final tally of who finished third.

12:25 Kucinich on CNN, as annoying from left of center as Lieberman is from the right. Both should take their lumps and go home. The odd thing is that every time I take one of those "Find Your Presidential Candidate" surveys, that are supposed to match up one's personal views with those of a candidate, my list of match-up has always been headed by Kucinich, and yet I really can't stand the guy. I didn't like his flip-flop on abortion, it seem disingenuous and opportunistic, and the very fact that his views match my own so closely almost automatically make him impossible to elect to the White House in this country. CNN doesn't take him seriously either, he's on after midnight, and after Al Sharpton.

12:35 Mo Rocca says John Edwards is a cross between a populist boy-band singer, and that Wes Clark's only hope is to use his military experience to stage a coup. Lieberman, he says, is like one of those Japanese soldiers who came out of a cave 20 years after the end of World War 2.

1:03 Everything seems to be stuck at 97%, with Clark 705 votes ahead of Edwards, so I'm going to shut it down for the time being. I'd like to thank everyone here at unfutz central command who contributed to the success of tonight's operation, and pledge to use the momentum we've been blessed with tonight to move forward to a new order, where we will be divided no longer, but will come together in peace, love, understanding and a fair tax code. I'd especially like to thank all those who took the time to stop by and post something to the comments section, making the discussion there as lively and informative as anything I've ever seen on the Internet. You guys are great. Good night, and may God bless America.

1:27 Entire post spell-checked and copy-edited to make me appear less ignorant than I actually is... am. The title was also changed. ("Come hear me sing, mama" no longer seemed to fit the content.)

Update (11:40am): AP is finally reporting 100% of the vote, and Clark holds on to 3rd by 839 votes:

John Kerry 84,229 38%
Howard Dean 57,788 26%
Wesley Clark 27,254 12%
John Edwards 26,415 12%
Joe Lieberman 18,829 9%

Rock veterans Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno are launching a provocative new musicians' alliance that would cut against the industry grain by letting artists sell their music online instead of only through record labels.

With the Internet transforming how people buy and listen to songs, musicians need to act now to claim digital music's future, Gabriel and Eno argued Monday as they handed out a slim red manifesto at a huge dealmaking music conference known as Midem.

They call the plan the "Magnificent Union of Digitally Downloading Artists" -- or MUDDA, which has a less lofty ring to it.

"Unless artists quickly grasp the possibilities that are available to them, then the rules will get written, and they'll get written without much input from artists," said Eno, who has a long history of experimenting with technology.

By removing record labels from the equation, artists can set their own prices and set their own agendas, said the two independent musicians, who hope to launch the online alliance within a month.

The music industry, of course, would rather issue "John Doe" lawsuits and hit up 17-year-olds for a couple grand apiece, in the mistaken impression that anyone under 25 is going to be inhibited from downloading music because of some other dude's bad luck in being caught. (As if.)

One has to wish Gabriel and Eno the best of luck -- with the entrenched forces they're up against, they're going to need it.

Regardless of THEIR intentions, no one can deny that the Republicans have worked to break down the mechanisms of oversight of their activities. They have implemented unprecedented secrecy in government. They have blocked accountability for, even examination of their actions in every instance. They have undone the protections against political abuses put in place after Watergate. The have built anti-terrorism systems that are CAPABLE of spying on their political opponents. They have passed laws bypassing civil liberties that COULD BE used against any or all of us at any time. They have put in place a system of rule-by-intimidation in the Congress, and decision-by-ideology in the courts. And they have fostered an atmosphere of fear across the entire government, smearing and destroying the reputations of any who dare cross them.

Let’s just say that, of course, THESE particular right-wingnuts are good, honest, well-motivated public servants. Fine. But they have left us with nothing to stop other, bad people from taking advantage of the opening this particular crop of fine, upstanding wingnuts has created. And with the government wide-open for corruption and takeover, is there any doubt that there ARE people who would want to take advantage, step in, and take hold of the reigns of power?

I think Dave is correct as far as he goes, that the policies of the Bush administration (both domestically and abroad) have tremendously increased the possibility of the reigns of our government being taken by extremists who are, if not classically fascist (but then, no one can really quite agree on what "fascism" is) then certainly quasi-fascistic.

The trouble is that an armed take-over, or a putsch, would almost certainly be countered by the military and would also rile the spirits of many, if not most, American citizens, and would therefore not be guaranteed to be effective, so a way would have to be found to bring these extremists to power using the very mechanisms of democracy. A huge campaign warchest would have to be quickly assembled and a relatively unknown candidate would have to be found who was apparently affable and unthreatening in most circumstances, but who would project strongly moralistic views about good and evil and saving our country from its own destructive impulses. (The best tack would be to hold closely to straightforward Christian themes, since these resonate so well even in many non-Christians.)

During the election, the candidate would have to hide the extremist views of the people he'd eventually be fronting for and "run from the center", promising to bring unity and humility to government, while at the same time signalling subtly to various radical groups his acquiescence to their dogma. Because nothing is certain in a true democracy, behind the scenes every effort would have to be made to harm the opposition candidate, using smears, innuendo, outright lies and falsehoods repeated incessantly. Steps would have to be taken to reduce the turnout of those who might not vote for the extremist candidate, by way of threats and intimidation, propaganda and false information, as well as by various structural means to eliminate problematic voters from the roles entirely.

And, in the end, if these herculean labors were not to deliver a clear-cut victory, every effort would have to be made to use the vast influence of the extremists to manipulate the results to guarantee their success.

So, as you can see, the number of people and events and circumstances which would have to come together in order to bring about such an extra-democratic result is so large, that the probability of it happening is fairly slim, so we can probably rest easy, even given the bad policy decisions made by the Bush administration.

For the most part, I'd say these guys got it -- particularly [Jay] Rosen [chair of the NYU journalism department], who drew some interesting comparisons between blogs and the original newspapers that appeared in the London coffee houses of the early 18th century. Those early broadsheets, he noted, were largely the work of individual writers, who commented on political or economic or foreign events they learned about through their private correspondence with other writers.

Rosen's point, I think, is that communications technology may be moving in a great historical cycle. The invention of the printing press -- followed by radio and then television -- created a progressively more capital-intensive media industry, with an increasing division of labor among reporters, editors, printers, advertising whores, um, I mean, salesmen, etc. The invention of the Internet, however, has shifted the balance back towards the individual writer/publisher, doing his/her own thing, reporting or commenting on events they find through their own research, either on the web or off.

The difference, of course, is that what was once limited to a small literate elite in the 18th century is available to millions of people the world over in the 21st. This is a revolution by anybody's definition, and could even, in time, spell the end of the mainstream media as we know it. Or, as Rosen put it: "The age of the mass media is just that -- an age. It doesn't have to last forever."

[...]

[B]logs are doing more than just about any other modern institution (if institution is the right word for something as anarchistic as the blogosphere) to recreate a common communication space, and encourage maximum public participation.

Just because the web is decentralized doesn't mean it's fractured. Thanks to the miracle of Google (not to mention the even more powerful search tools coming on line) any piece of information or artistic content that exists anywhere on the web is also accessible everywhere on the web. This is why experiences (Dean's yeaaahhh!!!) can shared so widely. And the sharing is two-way. I can sit here in Davos and make fun of the scream, and others can flame me for helping destroy the greatest presidential candidate in American history.

What draws all this yacking together into a common space is the natural human desire for community -- for a place to exchange thoughts with other people who share similiar interests or experiences. But that's where the blogosphere begins, not where it ends. How many of us in the 'sphere have had the experience of following a chain of links to a topic we've never encountered before? How often have we exchanged opinions or information with people who are experts in areas that we know nothing, or next to nothing, about?

That's the fundamental difference between the web and the mainstream mass media, which is strictly top down. By splitting the audience into narrower and narrower fragments, based on interests or demographics, the mass media does destroy the public space, and replaces it with a bunch of pipes, or information "stacks" -- as in a processor chip -- that run from Time-Warner-AOL-Capital-Cities-Disney-ABC-Viacom-Fox (or whatever) down to the target audience.

[...]

The net is capable of deciding -- in a completely democratic way what topics it wants to explore. In effect, the news agenda is put to a continuous vote, with Google counting the ballots. Everyone and anyone is free to contest the results, but if the blogosphere wants to talk about, say, Dean's scream, then that will become the metaphorical equivalent of the lead story on page one -- until something comes along that attracts more votes.

This is what terrifies the mass media: the threat of losing control of the news agenda. There were a number of mainstream journalists in the audience at the Davos session, and after the speakers had spoken they stood up one after the other to protest the Brave New World they thought the panel was trying to sell.

[...]

Just the fact that blogging showed up on the agenda at Davos this year is probably a bad sign. I can't shake the suspicion that the golden age of blogging is almost over -- that the corporate machine is about to swallow it, digest it, and regurgitate it as bland, non-threatening pablum. Our brief Summer of Love may be nearing an end.

There's more (I think his comments about the effect of blogging's potentially parisitical relationship with the media -- the "free-rider" problem -- are something that the big-time bloggers, the Instapundits and Atrioses, have to put some energy into considering), and all of it of great interest (so much so that I was tempted to re-post the entire thing here), so make sure to head over to Billmon's Whiskey Bar and take it all in.

You're going to hate me, but I think the entire issue is a non-starter. It didn't play the last time around and I doubt it'll play now. The *most* it may do is make Rove and the Rovers hesitate a bit before attacking Kerry or Clark about anything military, because the AWOL thing is an obvious rejoinder, but it's *very* unlikely that they'd try a frontal assault in that territory anyway. At most, you're going to see proxy attacks or under-the-radar stuff with plenty of plausible deniability -- you know, RNC-leaked talking points played out on Limbaugh and Free Republic, or very (very) coded comments in speeches meant to be decoded by the faithful. I doubt they'll come right out in public with anything notable.

As for the story itself, I don't know why, but I find it really, well, uninteresting is the most apt word. I don't think it has media legs, because the media (the big time media) won't pick up on it just like they didn't pick up on it before, since nothing's changed, there's no new evidence, and the evidence that there is is both circumstantial and negative -- there's no smoking gun, no document that really proves the claim, no person who will come forward and support the claim publicly and definitively, so all the reasons that the media didn't run with it before are there still. Why would they change their minds? Its coming up now was in the form of an attack on Clark, and the claim was (as part of the question) dismissed as "unwarranted" by Jennings.

The fact that it's (very slightly) in play again, at least on the liberal blogs, is good, I guess, but it doesn't excite me and I can't see putting much energy behind it.

For what it's worth, I agree with those that say that Moore's use of "deserter" is technically inaccurate, but I also believe that if my choices are to accept Bush as an upstanding citizen who fulfilled his military obligation with honor (which is what the White House wants me to accept) or that Bush is a deserter, then I'd say that a pilot who went AWOL for the better part of a year is much closer to the latter than he is to the former.

• After a Clark event, I watched as Clark pressed the flesh around the room. There were several young women who obviously had stars in their eyes for Clark, they were clearly smitten by him in what looked like a puppy-love kind of way. They radiated their smiles at 100,000 watts and kept their eyes firmly attached to the candidate. As he approached, they tensed for the contact... and then lost a little of their luster, as Clark quicky shook a hand or just breezed by without real contact.
  
  I don't know if this was deliberate or not, of if Clark was under marching orders to under no circumstances be seen or photographed being in any way physical with a young female (with visions of file footage of Monica Lewinsky dancing in his handler's heads), but it happened two or three times as I watched. Maybe it's a wife thing.




• Josh Marshall commented several times in the last few days that when you attend an Edwards event, you fall under his magic spell and are convinced in the moment that this guy is fated to be President, but that this passes once the whole thing is done, and it's then hard to see what the attraction was all about. After watching Edwards do that speech, I understand what he means.
  
  Edwards is very good at appearing natural, he's very much at ease with what he's doing, he connects with the crowd, he's clearly a natural politician in the Bill Clinton mold, and the populist content of the speech is good as well, red meat for egalitarian Democrats and liberals, with much talk of change and elitism and invocation of our natural enemies (lobbyists, for instance), but...
  
  The "but" is that if you look at only a snippet of the speech, say in a soundbite on a news program, you become very aware of all the hard technique that underlies that performance, and this is very disconcerting, much as it is when all of a sudden while watching a play that's sucked you into its world you realize how hard an actor is working, and the whole experience collapses. (This can happen in literature as well, when a novelist's tricks start to draw too much attention to themselves -- although, obviously, this isn't as much a problem in the world of postmodernism, where drawing attention to the frame is part of the point.)
  
  This could be a serious problem for Edwards, because very few people are going to put in the kind of time necesary to watch large portions of a stump speech either live or on TV, and most people are going to experience him through snippets and soundbites.




• Conversely, the rawness and roughness of political inexperience that Wesley Clark's exhibits is charming, in its way, but it sets up a different kind of vibe. In the recent NH debate, I found myself feeling anxious every time he spoke that he was going to say something wrong, or look stiff, or otherwise trip himself up due to what is essentially a complete lack of political experience of the type that makes career politicians so disturbingly smooth and (generally) difficult to ruffle (see Edwards, above).
  
  When Clark's name was first touted as a possible candidate, I fretted about his lack of executive experience, and more or less acquiesced to the argument that, as American military proconsul in Europe, he had to have many of those skills to some unknown degree, but that's not exactly the same thing as the kind of abilities that campaigning requires, and it's clear from watching him that he's a tyro at it -- an intelligent, quick to learn, affable and driven tyro, but a tyro nonetheless.
  
  While I go back and forth about whether Clark is the candidate that can best take down Bush, or on whether he's the one that the Rover Boys are most afraid of (this week, the conventional wisdom -- or was it a trial balloon sent up via David Broder? -- is that the WH is ascared of Edwards), I do think that, given the tightness of the calendar, his retail political skills are not going to improve fast enough, and that they will hurt him badly at some point (as they already have with the way he handled the Peter Jennings-Tim Russert Michael Moore-Bush-is-a-deserter attack).
  
  All the more reason why Clark should be someone's running mate, and not at the top of the ticket, but if Kerry's the man, he's unlikely to go looking in Clark's direction. (More likely is Edwards, who'd brings geographical balance to the ticket.) So at this point, the only real hope for Clark to be V.P. is if Dean wins -- I haven't changed my opinion that Dean/Clark is a natural fit.

Update: Lieberman looks like he knows he's out of it. I've just seen two different campaign stops, and both times he swung out his arm, fist extended, in a feeble motion while saying, with obviously strained enthusiasm "We're going to the White House" (or some such totally cliche campaign blather). Even given Lieberman's generally Eeyorish demeanor, it was clear that he didn't believe for a moment what he was saying, and I think more than ever that his showing in NH will force him out of the race, which is all to the good.

[T]he eternal dilemma of democracy: How far can a nation go in defending liberty before liberty itself becomes a license to kill for those who would murder liberty?

---------------------------

[D]isregard for the laws of evidence undermines the structure of Occidental justice, so laboriously erected over the centuries. If contemporary documents and sworn testimony can be disregarded in favor of unsupported charges and personal venom, no citizen is safe.

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An aggressor cannot be satisfied unless he has a will to be satisfied.

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Occasionally military leaders forget that the object of all battles is to further national aims. However brilliantly executed, however tactically successful, unless the engagement advances the nation's foreign policy or protects the nation's interests, it is a failure.

The Bush doctrine, with its tenets of preemptive war, regime change, and permanent American military primacy, promised a new global order. The best way to think of that order is by analogy with the internal organization of a nation-state. What makes a state a state is its monopoly over the legitimate use of force, which means that citizens don't have to worry about arming to defend themselves against each other. Instead, they can focus on productive pursuits like raising families, making money, and enjoying their leisure time. In the world of the Bush doctrine, states take the place of citizens. As the President told graduating cadets at West Point in 2002, America intends to keep its "military strengths beyond challenge, thereby making the destabilizing arms races of other eras pointless, and limiting rivalries to trade and other pursuits of peace." In other words, if America has an effective monopoly on the exercise of military force, other countries should be able to set aside the distractions of arming and plotting against each other and put their energies into producing consumer electronics, textiles, tea. What the Bush doctrine calls for -- paradoxically, given its proponents -- is a form of world government.

The new order envisaged by the Bush doctrine hasn't quite worked out as it was meant to. That's because, from the beginning, the White House has acted on the assumption that bold action would make our allies rally behind us and our enemies cower. Building a consensus with our friends before we acted only encouraged quarrelsomeness. The point wasn't that dictation was superior to consensus; the point was that it created consensus.

[...]

"Bill Clinton was actually a much more effective imperialist than George W. Bush," Chalmers Johnson writes darkly [in The Sorrows of Empire]. "During the Clinton administration, the United States employed an indirect approach in imposing its will on other nations." That "indirect approach" might more properly be termed a policy of leading by consensus rather than by dictation. But Johnson is right about its superior efficacy. American power is magnified when it is embedded in international institutions, as leftists have lamented. It is also somewhat constrained, as conservatives have lamented. This is precisely the covenant on which American supremacy has been based. The trouble is that hard-line critics of multilateralism focussed on how that power was constrained and missed how it was magnified.

Conservative ideologues, in calling for an international order in which America would have a statelike monopoly on coercive force, somehow forgot what makes for a successful state. Stable governments rule not by direct coercion but by establishing a shared sense of allegiance. In an old formula, "domination" gives way to "hegemony" -- brute force gives way to the deeper power of consent. This is why the classic definition of the state speaks of legitimate force. In a constitutional order, government accepts certain checks on its authority, but the result is to deepen that authority, rather than to diminish it. Legitimacy is the ultimate "force multiplier," in military argot. And if your aim is to maintain a global order, as opposed to rousting this or that pariah regime, you need all the force multipliers you can get.

[...]

America isn't powerful because people like us: our power is a product of dollars and guns. But when people think that America's unique role in the world is basically legitimate, that power becomes less costly to exert and to sustain. People around the world have respected and admired American power because of the way America has acted. If it acts differently, the perceptions of American benevolence can start to ebb -- and, to judge from any public-opinion poll from abroad over the last year, that's essentially what has happened. When it comes to political capital, too, this is an Administration with a weakness for deficit spending.