HAPPY HALLOWEEN....A couple of years ago I posted a Dick Cheney pumpkin for Halloween. This year, reader GS sends me a cat pumpkin:

In honor and friendship to our true masters, whose priorities are most wise of all.

Quite so, despite my inexplicable decision to Photoshop the picture he sent. Just felt like playing around, I guess.

Needless to say, all the real cats will stay safely indoors tonight. As for us human types, trick-or-treating has dropped to such meager levels in our neighborhood that we're going to head out to dinner and skip the whole thing this year. Why? Because the neighborhood across the street from us puts on such a spectacular Halloween show every year that kids are drawn to it like a magnet. The rest of us can't compete anymore.

ECCENTRIC BLOG RECOMMENDATION OF THE DAY....One of my longtime discontents with modern life has been the accelerating professionalization of everything. This is not quite the same thing as homogenization or corporatization, though it's obviously related, and I blame it for sucking much of the life out of marketing, media, retailing, political campaigning, product design, etc. etc. I certainly enjoy the fact that my car doesn't fall apart and my supermarket is well stocked, but still, it can get kind of oppressive at times.

Maybe someday I'll try to explain what I really mean by this, but since I'm not entirely sure myself, it won't be today. I only bring it up because it seems somehow related to this conversation about James Scott's Seeing Like a State between Brad DeLong and Henry Farrell — though, honestly, I'm not quite sure how. And you should be warned that both posts are long and a bit abstract. But even though the underlying conversation about how markets and institutions interact is fairly prosaic, they intrigued me anyway. If I can figure out why, I'll let you know later.

PILING ON....This critique has been bubbling below the surface on a bunch of blogs, but Garance Franke-Ruta distills it nicely:

It actually does a disservice to Democratic voters when a moderator like Tim Russert becomes a debate participant and makes a show of only pressing one candidate severely. Part of the point of these debates is to show how the various candidates respond to pressure, and to learn about their thoughts on various issues. If only one candidate is being pressed about differences with other candidates, it is unfair to the voters who are also trying to evaluate the rest of the pack

For example, it would have been interesting and illuminating to have heard from John Edwards and Barack Obama on the Peru trade deal, given how hot a topic trade is in Iowa, and how they clearly disagree with each other on this issue — and also since Hillary Clinton is still on the fence about the deal. But Peru didn't even come up, because the course of the debate questioning, at least in the first hour, was dictated by and echoed the course of various candidate attacks on Clinton over Social Security and Iran, and then a G.O.P. one on Obama, rather than by questions that would illuminate policy differences between any of the other candidates. After that, the questions were an odd-mix of open-ended softballs to the non-frontrunning candidates and attempts to press Clinton over things other members of the New York delegation support.

Before last night's event all the talk was about how the attacks on Hillary Clinton were going to be turned up a notch. That's the life of a frontrunner, so no problem. But when you combine that with the fact that the moderators also seemed to be aiming most of their fire at Clinton, the whole thing started to look more like a witch hunt than a debate. I'm not sure if questions about the Peruvian trade deal would have been the answer, but Garance is right: the moderators need to figure out a way to illuminate the differences between the candidates, not just play gotcha against one of them.

First step: get rid of Tim Russert. Ugh. He's a terrible interviewer and a terrible moderator. Second step: put together a panel of Paul Krugman, Brad DeLong, and Greg Mankiw to moderate a debate on economic issues. Find equally eminent subject matter experts to moderate debates on other subjects. Ditch the pundits and news anchors entirely. Third step: I'm not sure. But there has to be a third step, right? It's the law.

CATASTROPHIC?....Kate Sheppard defends Hillary Clinton's tap dance on the issue of Elliot Spitzer's program to provide driver's licenses to illegal immigrants:

While others have criticized it, I think she gave a decent response to what was posed as a "gotcha" question. It would be hard — catastrophic even — for Clinton to come right out and say that she wants all illegal immigrants to have drivers' licenses.

I don't understand this. Obama straightforwardly said he supported Spitzer's program. Does this mean his candidacy is doomed?

FRED AND THE GUN NUTS....Fred Thompson says the UN wants to take away your guns. Mark Goldberg counters with logic and facts, but it's a hopeless task. Thompson is just pandering to Higher Wingnuttia here. For the straight stuff on this, let's turn the mike over to conspiracy theory central:

National Rifle Association Vice President Wayne LaPierre insists the U.N. is concerned about more than illicit arms in African hot spots. He says the global body wants the firearms of American citizens — and much more.

"So, after we are disarmed, the U.N. wants us demobilized and reintegrated," says the NRA's executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, according to the Economist magazine. "I can hear it now: 'Step right this way for your reprogramming, sir. Once we confiscate your guns, we can demobilize your aggressive instincts and reintegrate you into civil society.' No thanks."

The illustration on the right, complete with reprogrammed American family blissfully Heil Hitlering the UN headquarters, comes from "Freedom in Peril," an NRA comic book that graphically explains all the various forces conspiring to take your guns away and turn us into a nation of slaves. Or, to use their own words: "Second Amendment freedom today stands naked in the path of a marching axis of adversaries far darker and more dangerous than gun owners have ever known. Acting alone and in shadowy coalitions, these enemies of freedom are preparing or a profound and foreboding confrontation in which they will not make the mistakes of their predecessors."

Your logic and your facts will get you nowhere here. Fred is just telling social conservatives, "I'm one of you. And I'm not afraid to look like a complete loon if that's what it takes to prove it."

WHERE WAS MIKE?....About halfway through last night's debate I suddenly noticed that Mike Gravel was missing. What happened?

Democratic Presidential candidate Mike Gravel was forced to withdraw from the Oct. 30 Drexel debate after being unable to meet the required criteria for polling and fundraising. The criteria to participate are set by NBC news and include sufficient and polling requirements, as well as an actively documented campaign.

"There was no record that Gravel made more than five separate appearances in New Hampshire [and] Iowa, where the first caucuses will be held," NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd said. Gravel's campaign committee claims that he has made more appearances, but that his schedules were not released.

Thank God. I know lots of people support Gravel's appearance in the debates based on some inchoate belief that "he deserves to be heard," but not me. He's not seriously running and he never has been, and the point of the debates is to give the public a look at actual candidates, not to give equal time to any crank who has a burning desire to mouth off to a national audience. That's what blogs are for.

Good riddance, Mike. The court jester routine got stale a long time ago.

ECONOMIC UPDATE....GDP was up 3.9% last quarter, well ahead of expectations. BEA press release here. If not for the housing slump, it would have been up 4.9%.

Things just get mysteriouser and mysteriouser. Where's all this dough going? I await macroeconomic analysis from the big brains of the econosphere.

HILLARY AND THE DRIVER'S LICENSES....I was in and out of the room during Tuesday night's debate, and one of the times I left the room was just as Tim Russert started asking a question about Elliot Spitzer. Turned out he was asking Hillary Clinton about Spitzer's plan to provide driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, and if blogo-buzz is anything to go by it was the question of the night. Here's the nickel summary: Hillary gave a rambling response explaining what Spitzer was trying to do but without really taking a position. Dodd disagreed with the Spitzer plan ("I think it's troublesome") and Hillary then stepped in to muddy the waters some more: "I did not say that it should be done," she said, "but I certainly recognize why Governor Spitzer is trying to do it." That was followed by some crosstalk between Dodd and Clinton, and then by Russert pressing her to give a firm answer ("Do you support his plan?"). Hillary hedged, and never really answered. Video here. Kit Seelye of the New York Times provides the play-by-play:

Both Mr. Edwards and Mr. Obama called her on what seemed to be a shift in her statement. Mr Edwards said, "Unless I missed something, Senator Clinton said two different things in the course of about two minutes just a few minutes ago." And Mr. Obama uttered a devastating phrase for anyone who remembers the 2004 campaign: he said he couldn't tell if she is "for it or against it."

On the license issue, Mr. Obama said that he thinks Governor Spitzer's plan is "the right idea."

There's no question that Hillary's answer was unusually spineless, especially since she had had plenty of time to think about this. Maybe two solid hours of being a punching bag had gotten to her by that point.

Still, is this really a killer moment? If it is, the bar has really gotten pretty low. I doubt very much that Hillary is going to win or lose the election based on straddling the issue of driver's licenses for illegal immigrants. In a Republican primary maybe, but not a Democratic one.

But I could be wrong! Consider this an open thread to chat about the debate.

JUST SHOOT ME....Words you hope never to hear at a Democratic debate:

And now, Tim Russert is going to take us into a segment on Social Security.

Time to switch channels to Jeopardy.....

UPDATE: OK, I stuck with it anyway. Hillary's answer on Social Security wasn't really very persuasive, but still, it was nice to hear both her and Obama flatly say that SS is not in any kind of crisis. Other miscellaneous observations:

• Good riff from Joe Biden on Rudy Giuliani. Maybe Hillary will choose him as her running mate, and he'll fulfill the traditional veep role of being the attack dog who says stuff the president herself can't afford to say.

• Tim Russert really needs to stop hauling out Bill Clinton quotes and trying to hang them on Hillary.

• Yes, Bill (Richardson, that is), we know you've negotiated a bunch of stuff. The schtick is getting old, and frankly, I'm not sure it was even all that great a talking point in the first place.

• I know that politicians live to talk, but I wonder if any of them realize that in a format like this, sometimes shorter is better. I'll bet most listeners start to lose the plot at about the 45-second mark.

• Was this the new, more aggressive Obama? Yes it was! I'd say he landed a few jabs, but nothing serious. He needs to work on his aggression skills.

• On the other hand, the constant attacks did seem to keep Hillary back on her heels a bit. She was definitely even more ambiguous and turgid than usual.
  

QUOTES OF THE DAY....Housing prices are spiraling downward and consumer confidence plunged four points in September. But that's dry and analytical. For an earthier view of what this means, here's a summary from a set of focus groups run by Democracy Corps:

In the focus groups, we handed people a page of positive facts about the economy....These swing voters — about half non-college and half college graduates — nearly attacked the moderator because many are on the edge: "Over half of Americans are what? Two paydays away from living on the street"; "absolutely"; "that's me." Nobody except the super-rich has seen salary increases in years; not if you are in a "straight regular job"; "people don't make any raises," and if you are lucky, your spouse gets 2 percent in some years. Some are working 2nd and 3rd jobs because they "can't make ends meet"; "I've never known so many people to have two jobs or more than I have lately." Still, "they are cutting back on everything." They are struggling to fill up the gas tank twice a week; and they fear a visit to the hospital will wipe them out. They are watching their own companies, even the large ones, reduce and freeze hiring.

The full report is here.

SCARED....More "scheduling difficulties" from the Republican presidential field. These guys sure are spooked at the prospect of taking questions from non-straight-non-white folks, aren't they?

FAREED ZAKARIA = NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN?....Normon Podhoretz actually sounds crazier in this transcript than he does watching the video. I'm not sure what that says about him, but it's kind of weird.

MORE ON HILLARY....Here's an email about the Dem race from Virginia reader JH, with whom I correspond frequently:

Although I disagree with very little you say, the problem is that Hillary is despised throughout the South. Virginia is a relatively moderate red state but she is intensely disliked here. I know a lot of it is irrational hatred and most people in the Southern states have no idea what her policies or philosophy really are, but the truth is they've already made up their mind about her and will never vote for her. Once most people make up their mind about a candidate, it's almost impossible to get them to reconsider.That's the entire problem with Hillary. In the South a majority has already made up their mind about her.

It is almost impossible for a Democratic candidate to write off the South and win the general election by "running the table." If Hillary's the nominee, I think either Giuliani or Romney would crush her in the South and pick up enough battleground states to easily win.

So, for me, it simply boils down to practical politics. I too had high expectations for Obama and now I don't think he's got what it takes. I will vote for Edwards in the Virginia primary because he's the only one of the top three who I think can carry enough Southern and other red states to win the general election. However, it will probably be over by the time Virginia has its primary. If we nominate Hillary, a year from now I think we will be deeply regretting it.

Two things. First, I think Hillary might very well be able to pick up one or two border states. Second, and more important, I don't think any Dem is likely to win in the South, Edwards included. Basically, Democrats need to win the states Kerry won plus a few more in the Midwest and Mountain West, and all three of the leading Dems are equally capable of doing that.

On a broader note, I almost consider this a reason not to support Edwards. One way or another, Democrats have to get away from the trap of believing that the only way to win the presidency is to nominate a Southerner. There just aren't enough of them, and it means that 90% of the most qualified people in the party are automatically excluded. It's time to put this particular piece of conventional wisdom to bed.

A MODEST PROPOSAL....Ezra Klein, after a full day of prostate blogging yesterday, says today that David Brooks is right when it comes to the big picture in healthcare policy:

He correctly identifies the central reality of health care politics, which is that most Americans are basically happy with what they have, but worried about keeping it. Policies that guarantee their futures are quite popular. Policies that radically change their presents are not.

Well, if that's the case, then here's an idea: expand Medicare (or create a similar program) to cover every person in America under the age of 21. And then let them keep it as they grow older. In ten years everyone under 31 would be covered. By 2050 at the latest the whole country would be covered — and probably earlier than that once the program reaches a critical mass. Taxes would rise slowly to cover each new cohort, employer healthcare would gradually go away, union contracts would have decades to adjust, and no one would have to give up anything they have now.

This is just watercooler conversation. I've given it no serious thought at all. But why not?

THE PRESS AND THE DEMS....Bob Somerby is convinced that liberals will never get anywhere until they truly understand the media's loathing of Democrats. Not the conservative media's loathing of Democrats, but the mainstream media's loathing of Democrats. He's further convinced that the key to this is understanding the press corps' "War on Gore" during the 1999-2000 campaign, a subject he discusses on pretty much a daily basis.

As it happens, I disagree with him on the second point. Bob thinks liberals are obtuse for not discussing the Gore story more vigorously, but the fact is that bloggers and columnists don't talk about any past events with any frequency. They talk about current events, with occasional nods to the past when it happens to illuminate some point they want to make. Like it or not, obsessing over the past just has limited utility.

Why bring this up? Just in the mood, I guess, after writing my previous post. Bob has a post on the subject today in which he takes on Josh Marshall, E.J. Dionne, Chris Matthews, and me in his usual, um, restrained fashion. So here's an open thread topic: go read Bob's piece and then discuss it in comments. Is his diagnosis right? Half right? How and why? Talk to me.

UPDATE: Second paragraph modified because I realized that it didn't really make sense. Sorry.

THE DEMOCRATIC RACE....Barack Obama's decision to allow "reformed gay" singer Donnie McClurkin to preach at a series of campaign events in South Carolina has obviously not gone down well in the liberal blogosphere. But how about in South Carolina itself? Ed Kilgore reports:

Well, the Columbia State, which features massive political coverage every day, didn't bother to cover Obama's Columbia event. It did publish an AP story with the title: "McClurkin Wins Cheers At Obama Event Despite Gay Protests," which gives you an idea how seriously the writer took the cataclysmic-disaster interpretation of Obama's gospel tour.

These different optics reflect the very different issues Obama's campaign was dealing with in putting on this kind of event. On the one hand, it deeply offended not only gays and lesbians, but many progressive activists who want to support Obama as an alternative to Clinton, but suspect his commitment to the kind of ideological rigor and partisan zeal they consider essential in a nominee. On the other hand, it might have done him some good in SC, where his candidacy may ultimately rise or fall based on his ability to wrest a sizable majority of African-American votes away from HRC.

If anything, this puts the whole thing in an even worse light, because it makes it seem more likely that teaming up with McClurkin was a deliberate decision, not just a staff mistake. There's no telling, of course, but it's either a case of horrible judgment or a case of horrible vetting and planning. Those are both pretty bad signs.

It's funny. I was talking to a friend over the weekend and asked if he'd decided who to support. Hillary, he said. We talked about that for a while, and he went through several possible problems with her candidacy and why he'd decided they weren't really big things to be concerned about. But I didn't really find myself convinced. In fact, the conversation mostly just reminded me of a bunch of reasons to be concerned about her candidacy.

When you get down to it, I guess I'm sympathetic toward Hillary but really, really wishing that Obama would give me a good reason to change my mind and support him instead. But he just never does. Domestic policywise he's been fairly cautious and mainstream. On the foreign policy front he's better than HRC, but only by a couple of notches. And his Kumbaya campaigning schtick leaves me cold. Worse than that, in fact: it leaves me terrified that he just doesn't know what he's up against with the modern Republican Party and won't have the instinct to go for the jugular when the inevitable Swift Boating commences. (Needless to say, I have no such doubts about Hillary.)

At the same time, I've also never had the visceral hatred of Hillary that some people do. I've always liked her fine. Sure, she's calculating and political, but every politician is calculating and political. Her only problem is that she isn't quite as good as hiding it as some of the others. What's more, I think she'd make a good president, one who could hit the ground running and get a lot done in Congress. In fact, potentially she could be a great president, though I suspect she's rather too cautious to ever reach her full potential.

This is turning into a ramble, and as long as I'm rambling I guess I should ramble about John Edwards too. In a way, my reaction to him is even murkier. I voted for him in the 2004 primary, and on a policy level I like him better than either Hillary or Obama. He's also a very good speaker and campaigner. And yet, I somehow can't shake the feeling that he's basically running for vice president. Not literally, mind you, but in the sense that he doesn't quite seem to be fully fired up about the prospect of running the country. I think maybe I still haven't shaken my memory of his 2004 debate against Dick Cheney, where he seemed content to go through the motions and not really make a fight of it.

Hell, this is kind of a sucky post, isn't it? Several hundred words about how I can't make up my mind. But in a way, I guess I have. I'm really not in a Kumbaya mood right now, so despite my fear that Hillary will never be willing (or maybe able) to break out of the mainstream box she's painted herself into, I think she's my favorite. Obama's had six months to seal the deal with me, and he's done nothing but make me ever more nervous about him with every passing month. Hillary's too much of a conventional lefty hawk for my taste, but aside from that her policy instincts are good, her experience has taught her some valuable lessons, she knows her own mind, and she's not afraid of a fight. And I'd be delighted to finally have a woman in the Oval Office. I'll keep my eye on Obama, but I guess I'm officially leaning toward Mrs. Clinton at the moment.

THICKER THAN WATER....Brad Plumer hits on one of my pet peeves today: the fact that drought policies (and drought press coverage) inevitably focuses on residential water use even though it's, literally, a drop in the bucket:

As [Jon] Gertner notes in passing, it's farming, and not residential areas, that consumes the vast majority of water in the [Southwest] (90 percent of Colorado's water goes toward agriculture). You'd think, then, that inefficient agriculture practices would get most of the scrutiny here. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, most irrigated farmland in the area — in California, Colorado, and Wyoming — is watered via flood irrigation, the least efficient method out there. Basically, farmers dig a bunch of trenches and dump water in them. In the short run, it's cheap and easy; in the long run, it tends to waste water and deplete topsoil.

Subsidies are part of the problem here: Large farms often qualify for taxpayer-subsidized irrigation water, paying as little as 10 percent of the full cost. That, in turn, discourages conservation: "A 1997 study by researchers at Cornell University suggests that more than 50 percent of irrigation water never reaches crops because of losses during pumping and transport." The subsidies also encourage farmers to grow water-guzzling crops like alfalfa, a crop that sucks up about 20 percent of California's water but comprises only a tiny part of the economy (it's mostly used to feed cows). I'd like to see more on the subject, but this seems like a major place to focus on, no?

Unfortunately, this is an almost impossible problem to address. Reducing agricultural water use by 20% would basically solve all our problems, but it can't be done because water rights are controlled by an almost impenetrable maze of local water districts, Spanish land grants, English common law, multi-state compacts, acts of Congress, court rulings at every level imaginable, overlapping jurisdictions, and local, state and federal environmental regulations. And that's not even counting the vast corporate lobbying forces that would be at work even if the legal Gordian knot weren't.

So it's hopeless, I guess. But that doesn't stop me from bitching about it. And it sure doesn't justify this massive Bush administration giveaway to California agribusiness, which has to be read to be believed.

SCHOOL VOUCHERS....Credit where it's due: this is a thorough and righteous demolition of the anti-voucher forces.

And yet, despite its thoroughness, it somehow fails to address the single biggest problem with school vouchers: oversight. If you're going to receive taxpayer dollars, then you have to agree to taxpayer oversight. That means that NCLB applies to you. It means that minimum state curriculum requirements apply to you. It means that teacher union rules apply to you. It means you have a lot less authority to pick and choose which kids you're willing to accept. And, yes, it means you can't use taxpayer money to proselytize for whichever religion your board of directors happens to favor. Like it or not, that's a no-no for public funds, especially when kids are involved.

But as near as I can tell, this is anathema to people who run private schools. They won't accept any oversight, let alone the level of oversight that's inevitable with any widespread voucher program. Taxpayers simply aren't willing to shower money on anything that calls itself a school without having some say in how the money is used. And rightly so.

Roughly speaking, this is why I tentatively favor charter schools but not voucher schemes. Charter schools allow for experimentation, which is good, but also accept state oversight. I don't really see how things can work any other way.

UPDATE: A couple of emails have convinced me that I screwed up the introduction to this post. For the record: I didn't mean to imply that the linked post successfully argued in favor of vouchers. Far from it. I just wanted to point out that even though it was long and passionate, it mysteriously failed to address the one argument against vouchers that I think is the strongest. Funny how often that happens, isn't it?

Sorry for the confusion.

BAYARD UPDATE....I knew he'd like it. But has he read it?

GIULIANI'S LATEST....The Washington Post notes that Rudy Giuliani will be running a new radio ad in New Hampshire starting today:

In the radio spot, Giuliani mentions his battle with prostate cancer and notes that his chances of surviving the disease in America were 82 percent, while in England his chances would have been 44 percent.

"You and I should be making the decisions about what kind of health care we get with our doctors, not with a government bureaucrat," Giuliani says in the ad.

You will be unsurprised to learn that Giuliani is full of shit. As you can see from the chart on the right, Britain and the United States have virtually identical mortality rates from prostate cancer. The only reason the U.S. has a higher survival rate is because we diagnose way more prostate cancer than Britain in the first place. In other words, the difference probably isn't that we're any better at prostate cancer surgery than the Brits, but that we aggressively screen for even mild cases of prostate cancer that probably aren't life-threatening in the first place — and then, unsurprisingly, we go on to survive all these non-threatening cancers regardless of treatment. So not only is Giuliani's statistic bogus, but it might actually reflect poorly on U.S. practices. British mortality rates from prostate cancer are just as good as ours, and they manage this without wasting time, money, and emotional distress on overdiagnosis or overtreatment.

Steve Benen complains that "The WaPo piece simply passes along [Giuliani's] claim as if it were true, and then inserts the ad into the horserace narrative." That's exactly right. I suppose Chris Cillizza and Shailagh Murray would say that they were just writing a short blurb on campaign tactics, not a policy piece, but the fact remains that they've passed along a bogus statistic because it was too complicated to explain what's really going on behind Giuliani's scary-sounding numbers. We'll see if someone else picks up the slack.

In the meantime, read Jon Cohn for more on this. It's several paragraphs long and doesn't pretend that we know for sure everything that's going on here, but that's life. Sometimes it takes more than a single sentence to explain things.

SOCIAL SECURITY FOR DUMMIES....Robert Ball, the grand old man of Social Security, explains patiently to the Washington Post editorial board yet again that Social Security is (a) a rather modest program, (b) more necessary than ever in an era of shrinking private pensions, (c) shouldn't be cut, (d) has only minor long-term financial problems, and (e) can be fixed with a small number of fairly trivial revenue changes a decade or two down the road.

I know, I know, it's a boring subject. But the number of people who either don't understand (or pretend not to understand) just how insignificant Social Security's problems are and how easily they can be repaired is really staggering. A decade ago I used to be one of them, but all it took was a very modest amount of reading on the subject to convince me that I was off base. Considering how simple the math is, I really don't understand why so many otherwise bright people continue to be fooled by all this.

MEDICAL TOURISM....Andrew Sullivan is being properly chastised for claiming that the rise of medical tourism is somehow an indictment of Britain's national healthcare system, since, in fact, the U.S. is a bigger user of medical tourism than Britain. Here's an outfit, for example, that offers you the choice of having your major medical operation performed in Brazil, Thailand, India, Malaysia, South Africa, or Argentina. "MedRetreat was created to fill a very important and personal void in the US healthcare market," they burble. "It all began when our co-founder's mother was searching for affordable, quality elective medical procedures, not covered by her insurance company. After getting numerous quotes ranging from $20,000 to $30,000, she knew there had to be a more viable option."

I began reading about medical tourism quite a few years ago, and immediately became fascinated. Here's a typical puff piece from 60 Minutes a couple of years ago. I figure it's more likely than not that eventually I'll need heart surgery of some kind or another, and getting it done in India sounds splendid. Dirt cheap, private room, world class facilities, attentive nurses, and after my valves are back up and running there's a bonus week for roaming around and visiting the Taj Mahal. Almost makes me want to have a couple of Big Macs for lunch just to help things along.

THE ANTICHRIST SYNDROME....Via Matt, Michael Hirsh points out that the Bush administration has now taken to blaming Iran for practically everything:

Today the administration is casting Iran as America's biggest bogeyman on every front. National missile defense? Once Kim Jong Il of North Korea was identified as the target of this expensive project. No longer. In a speech Tuesday at National Defense University, Bush declared that "the need for missile defense in Europe … is urgent" because "Iran is pursuing the technology that could be used to produce nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles." Mideast peace? Never mind that the Palestinians are mixed up in a civil war of their own making and blaming the Israelis. Much of it is really the fault of "Iranian aggression," as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared on Wednesday. "To see Iranian actual penetration now of these more radical elements of the Palestinian terrorist groups is really quite troubling," she told the House Foreign Affairs Committee. U.S. generals are now routinely trotted out to blame Iranian interference and arms shipments for the continuing Islamist insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, though Tehran plays at best a minor role there.

Nothing new here. I had a friend many years ago who was a friendly but obsessive fundamentalist Christian who spent his time searching for signs of the antichrist. For a while during the early Reagan era he was convinced it was Konstantin Chernenko. Then it switched to Moammar Qadafi. Then it was Saddam Hussein. (He actually wrote a book on the subject at that point, which in a weak moment I agreed to read.) We lost touch after that, but my guess is that during the 90s he migrated to Slobodan Milosevic, then Osama bin Laden, then back to Saddam Hussein, and perhaps is now on the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad bandwagon.

In a way, he reminds of me of America. It's not enough for us to have countries out there that we don't like. Even countries that we really don't like. There always has to be someone who's basically the antichrist, and whoever it is is responsible for everything. When people who believe stuff like that are dressed in rags and yelling at passersby from street corners, we call them crackpots. When they dress in suits and, say, edit the Weekly Standard, we call them foreign policy analysts. Weird, huh?

PUBLISH AND PERISH....One of the lead articles in the November issue of the Monthly is a piece by Avi Klein about Lyndon LaRouche. Here's how it starts:

One of the LaRouche movement's longest-serving loyalists was Ken Kronberg. A handsome classics scholar and drama teacher, Kronberg owned and managed PMR Printing, the outfit that has generated the idiosyncratic propaganda that sustains LaRouche's entire enterprise.

....On April 11, 2007, Ken sat in PMR's offices in Sterling, Virginia, forty-five miles northwest of Washington, to read the "morning briefing," a daily compendium of political statements that reflect the outcome of the executive committee meetings held at LaRouche's house in the nearby town of Round Hill....At 10:17 a.m., Kronberg sent an e-mail to his accountant instructing him to transfer $235,000 held in an escrow account to the IRS. He got in his blue-green Toyota Corolla and drove east. He mailed some family bills at the post office, then turned around onto the Waxpool Road overpass. Just before 10:30 a.m., Kronberg parked his car on the side of the overpass, turned on his emergency lights, and flung himself over the railing to his death.

Do yourself a favor and read the entire piece. It has nothing to do with mainstream politics or the current presidential campaign, and it won't provide you with any red meat attacks on either Democrats or Republicans. It's just one of those intensely fascinating articles you come across occasionally that explains the workings of a particular subculture better than anything you've ever read before. Once you start reading it, you'll have a hard time stopping.

And when you get to the part about the evil grain cartel, click here to see a vintage LaRouche campaign commercial from 1984. You'll learn things about Walter Mondale that you never suspected before.

UPDATE: Thirsting to learn more? Scott McLemee runs down LaRouche's latest folly, the LaRouche Youth Movement, here. It also includes a bit of detail about LaRouche's obsession with mandating the correct pitch for tuning musical instruments.

CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE....This particular passage from David Greenberg's (very good) piece about Rudy Giuliani's illiberal instincts is getting a lot of play in the lefty blogosphere:

Beyond religious issues, a second conservative trait defined Giuliani's tenure: his Cheney-esque appetite for executive power. In 1999, for example, he directed (without the City Council's permission) the police to permanently confiscate the cars of people charged with drunken driving — even if the suspects were later acquitted.

That's a bad deal, but in fairness to Giuliani it's hardly unique to him. Civil asset forfeiture became all the rage among law enforcement during the 90s, and Giuliani was just riding the wave. The idea behind it is that even if someone is acquitted of a criminal act, the state can still seize their property based on mere probable cause that the property was criminally used. The defendant, even though he was found innocent of the underlying crime, can't get his property back unless he goes to court and wins a civil case against the state. There's no presumption of innocence and no need for a unanimous verdict.

Years ago, when I first heard about this, I was appalled. I still am. Even now that I've read enough to understand the legal theory that supports it, I remain appalled. It's the kind of thing that's almost enough to make a libertarian out of me.

(But not quite. Don't get excited, my libertarian friends.)

THEY LIKE US, THEY REALLY LIKE US....The healthcare industry is switching horses:

In all, the Democratic presidential candidates have raised about $6.5 million from the industry, compared with nearly $4.8 million for the Republican candidates.

....At this point in the 2004 presidential race, President Bush had $4.4 million in donations from the industry, or about $1 million more than the Democratic candidates seeking their party's nomination to challenge him. And in the first nine months of the 2000 presidential campaign — when there was no incumbent in the White House running for re-election — the Republican presidential candidates took in $3.9 million from the health care industry, compared with $1.7 million raised by the Democrats, campaign finance records show.

So Democrats have gone from 30% of all health industry donations in 2000 to 44% in 2004 to 57% this year. This is, obviously, good news and bad news. The good news is that lobbyist money follows winners, and the healthcare lobby seems pretty confident that a Democrat will become president next year. The bad news is that they might just get what they paid for.

WAR DRUMS IN TURKEY....Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan is sounding eerily similar to the way George Bush sounded in March of 2003. The subject is a possible Turkish military assault on Kurdish separatists in northern Iraq:

"The moment an operation is needed, we will take that step," Erdogan told a large flag-waving crowd in Izmit. "We don't need to ask anyone's permission."

....Turkey has massed up to 100,000 troops, backed by fighter jets, helicopter gunships, tanks, and mortars, on the border for a possible offensive against about 3,000 rebels using Iraq as a base from which to carry out attacks in Turkey.

....Erdogan took a swipe at western countries for not cracking down on the PKK and said calling it a terrorist group, as the United States and European Union do, was not enough. "We want action, and if you can't show action, you fail the sincerity test," he said. "Those who overlook terrorism are in cooperation with terrorism," he told a conference earlier.

It's hard to back down when you've gotten to the point of deploying 100,000 troops and both the public and the legislature are baying for blood. All Erdogan needs now is an incident, and what are the odds that there won't be an incident sometime in the next couple of weeks? Furthermore, what are the odds that once 100,000 Turkish troops are unleashed, they'll only stay for a month or two and then get out?

Slim and none. I sure hope Bush has some serious magic up his sleeve for his meeting with Erdogan a week from Monday.

FACEBOOK....A few days ago I read that Microsoft had purchased a 1.5% stake in Facebook that valued the company at $15 billion. The 90s are back, baby! Eyeballs are king!

Well, maybe. I have my doubts. In any case, I figured I needed to see what all the fuss was about. The only way to do that was to sign up for an account and play around, so that's what I did. Took a couple of minutes. But then what?

Well, start searching for people I know, I suppose. So I sent out a couple dozen requests asking people to be my friends. The next day I had a couple dozen friends. Now what?

Hard to say, really. Help me out here, people. I can "poke" someone, but what does that mean? Turns out it means nothing. If you poke someone, they get a notification telling them that Kevin Drum has poked them. That's it — though Wikipedia helpfully informs me that "some users construe it as a sexual advance." Guess I'd better watch that.

Soon, though, other people discovered I had a Facebook account and were sending me requests to be their friend. But what's the etiquette here? Or is there one? Should I just accept all comers? Within a day I had already gotten three or four requests from people I had never heard of, including someone in China. Are they blog readers? Facebook spam? Or what?

Let's try something else while I think about that. Someone (I forget who) had signed up for Flixster, so I did too. It asked me to rate 43 movies so I could see how compatible I was with various of my other friends. Turns out I'm 65% compatible with Garance Franke-Ruta. But wait! One of the 43 default movies was Revenge of the Sith, not Return of the Jedi. (I don't care what George Lucas says, to me "Episode 3" is the movie that came out in 1983.) Better lower my rating. Oddly, this changes my cinematic compatibility with Garance to 63%, even though she has a low opinion of RotS. Not sure what's going on here. In any case, I'm already suspicious of the rating system since it tells me that I'm 58% compatible with Scott McLemee, even though he hasn't actually seen or rated a single movie on the list. I think Flixster's algorithm assumes a little too much. (In another example of taking a bit too much for granted, Flixster apparently notified all of my friends that I wanted to compare movie taste with them, even though I answered No when it asked me if I wanted to do this. That's really a bit much.)

What else can I do? How about looking for a simpatico group? "Tennis" or "blogs" would probably return a bazillion people, so let's try something obscure: the German card game skat. I used to play it when I couldn't find a fourth for bridge. Turns out there are three or four skat groups, but none with more than half a dozen people. I guess some things are too obscure even for Facebook.

Other than that, my front page is full of news of other people who have become friends with other people, along with various widgets they've installed and their status at the moment ("sleeping on an airplane," "in a perpetual state of transit," "hearing Murray Perahia tonight," "using her long layover to sample airport sushi," etc.). Not sure how useful this really is.

So now I'm a little flummoxed. As a contact manager, Facebook is undeniably useful. And the screen layout is surprisingly clean and corporate looking, though I'm having some trouble intuiting the location and purpose of various features. Somehow, though, I gather that Facebook is mostly useful if it's essentially your homepage, someplace that you hang out at all the time. I'm not likely to do that, so I'm unsure just how useful I'm going to find it. But I guess time will tell.

IRAQ'S WARLORD FUTURE....Marc Lynch writes that we should stop paying attention to body counts and instead focus on the long-term political realities of Iraq:

I was surprised at the consensus on our panel yesterday (among three people who have never discussed the issue before, and from much of a very knowledgeable and experienced audience based on post-session conversations) about where Iraq was heading: towards a warlord state, along a Basra model, with power devolved to local militias, gangs, tribes, and power-brokers, with a purely nominal central state.

....This kind of fragmentation might help the US in its tactical maneuvers at the local level, and buy local stability in the short term. But it is absolute anathema to any kind of national deal....Whether such an outcome, if combined with a local Sunni power structure hostile to al-Qaeda, would pose a threat to American national interests is a debate worth having. It would certainly mean a major climbdown from initial American goals, but, then, a lot has happened over the last four years and it's quite clear that the US doesn't have the power to achieve its original goals. And it would hardly be optimal for Iraqis, since they would be condemned to live in a Hobbesian environment, and the refugee crisis would likely never be resolved. Should the US simply acknowledge the reality of the institutional and political environment it has created in Iraq, or maintain its current radical disconnect between its stated objectives and what it is actually doing?

Based on past experience, I'd say we're going to stick with the radical disconnect model of doing business. At least for the next 15 months, anyway.

Marc also has an interesting post about the latest bin Laden tape. Apparently the jihadis are seriously pissed at al-Jazeera for airing only the part of the tape that makes it sound like bin Laden was criticizing al-Qaeda in Iraq and calling for reconciliation. Turns out he wasn't. ("It's as if Bush gave a speech bashing Congress, and then CNN had only run clips suggesting that he had attacked Republicans, driving an entire news cycle dominated by "Bush attacks Republicans" — and then nobody changed their story after the whole tape aired elsewhere.") More here.

CF BULBS....A year ago Marian and I replaced about 20 bulbs around the house with CF bulbs. Hooray for saving energy! But one of them just burned out, and it occurred to me as I was replacing it that this is the fourth or fifth one I've had to replace. The first one I figured was just bad luck. Nobody has a perfect manufacturing record. The second one seemed like more bad luck. The third one made me think something was going on. Now I'm up to four. Maybe five, if I've forgotten one.

Now, maybe this has nothing to do with the bulbs. Maybe the wiring in my house sucks — though ordinary incandescent bulbs have never given out on me like this. And the CF bulbs are supposed to last practically forever. It's one of their selling points.

A 20% failure rate over the course of a year sure seems excessive, no? Anybody else have the same problem?

UPDATE: We don't turn the CF bulbs on and off a lot, so I don't think that's the issue. And we've used several different brands, so I don't think that's it either. (Though I haven't kept track of what brands we've purchased and which ones have failed, so who knows?)

However, I'm pretty sure that the failues have almost all been in recessed ceiling fixtures, not in table lamps. I wonder if that has something to do with it?