I figure I'll give an opinion: A bloody fight to the finish with insipid questions but an occasionally good moderator; call it a draw for the heck of it.

It was about time that someone called Bush on the carpet for his spending, although I found it highly ironic that a taxing-spending liberal Democrat from Massachusetts was playing the role of deficit & budget hawk.

I was busy in the Commissar's live blogging effort, so I primarily listened to the debate. I hear better than I see these days, so I went with the ear. (Yes, I'm more partial to voice than image; I'm still sore about the Nixon-Kennedy debates of 1960...)

As for the President's exasperation, part of me likes that in politics. Admittedly, that may be one of my weaknesses; a teacher I sort of had in high school said that I didn't suffer fools gladly. This was, according to someone, a weakness of Thomas E. Dewey that caused him trouble. (I think I read this anecdote in one of President Nixon's books.) Age, experience, and training have improved my tolerance for fools---primarily so I can make more use out of them, or have more fun with them---but there's still a more or less fixed hard line limit to how much I'll put up with. Suffice it to say that I would have blown up at Senator Kerry a long time ago, and probably with a streak of profanity. It's not for nothing that I'm reading a biography of General George S. Patton, Jr.

For the foregoing reason, I will probably stand opposed to the electorate when I say that I don't care that the President cut Mr. Gibson off. St. Louis wasn't a courtroom and there can be advantage in pulling something like the President did. It can be, however, a double-edged sword. I'm certain we'll hear something about this part of the debate.

I was glad that the President jumped all over the bilateral v. multilateral talks with the North Koreans. Moreso than these nebulous summit meetings that appear to be the centerpiece of a Kerry Administration foreign policy, the proposed direct bilateral talks constitute a grave weakness. And I came up with the "the Red Chinese'll drop out" bit either ahead of the President's response, or closely thereto, so I'm not taking his line.

Oddly enough, it would seem that these bilateral talks would have the effect of undermining existing diplomatic efforts. I would expect such a statement to issue from the Kerry campaign, not be a direct result of their proposed policy. It may be that Senator Kerry honestly believes that multilateral talks aren't in the defense interest of America. On that point, I strongly disagree. Not much is going to happen on the Korean peninsula involving Pyongyang without the Red Chinese, and it is wiser to keep the Chinese Communists involved. North Korea is one situation where I'd prefer to talk the issue to death. If doing that requires the presence of other nations around the bargaining table and some money flowing Dear Leader's way, well, scowl and bear it.

One thing I did take exception with the President was on the question of business competitiveness. The President (and Senator Kerry) can blow as much smoke about insurance reform this, tort reform that, and the like, but their platitudes run aground on hard numbers. So long as the American people value low price over everything, then there is no way for an American-based company that has to pay each worker the equivalent of fifty bucks an hour (including health care, Social Security contributions, insurance costs, et cetera) to compete with a manufacturer in Guatemala whose entire weekly payroll is fifty bucks. This mindless devotion to "every day low prices" has pretty much destroyed any hopes we've got of competing in a globalized manufacturing market where wage standards are so grossly asymmetric. Either Americans learn to pay more and keep jobs in America, or they keep their cheap goods and shut their mouths as jobs evaporate in this country.

In any event, I have to head off to a wedding party later today, so I'll be out of town for God knows how long; if I don't have an up-to-the minute Saturday posting schedule, that's why.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 12:24 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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This just in, from a blog named FrankLog: Radicals Penetrate St. Louis Debate

According to an un-named source (gotta love 'em!) inside the Democratic National Committee, the rumor at DNC HQ is that various groups (ostensibly 527 organizations, such as MoveOn, etc.) have instructed their St. Louis-based members to misrepresent themselves as "undecideds", in order to pass the Gallup organization's screen.

The plan for these covert types is to get up, discard their "programmed" questions, and then proceed to ask a different question. I would imagine that they'd be on the order of "When did you stop beating your wife?", so there could be something interesting about this snoozer of a debate after all.

Three or four years ago, when I was still in college, I would have cheered this on, because it's amusing, and bound to be fun. We, of course, would have anticipated this and had a retaliatory (or matching) plan in place. Nowadays, I'm a dour old graduate from law school who grimly advises sticking to the rules, so these guys are bums.

In closing, I'd like to stress that this is a rumor, and is not confirmed material. FrankLog got it from CrushKerry.com, so I'm sort of wondering why a DNC source would talk to these guys. However, the sheer chance of the thing is worth posting, since I'm not a responsible news organization. (I am, however, trying to be an honest broker of information and opinion.)

Tip of the Wisconsin hat to FrankLog.

(I don't mean to suggest that Terry McAuliffe was actually behind this, but I needed a cute title for the post, and I'd rather skewer him with the Democrats' own insult directed towards President Nixon.)

UPDATE: Well, it doesn't look like that happened, or if it did, the results were somewhat subdued. I'll quote Lefty Rosenthal as for my take on the winner: "I have no opinion on that."

Posted by: Country Pundit at 08:06 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Comrade Commissar over at The Politburo Diktat has announced the following:

I'll be live blogging tonight's St. Louis debate. You can bookmark this post URL.

I'll also have the Politburo chat room open:
http://acepilots.com/chat/phpMyChat.php3
Create username and password; easy, no details needed.
Then click "CHAT."
Leave the default message as is: "create your own 'PUBLIC' room (leave blank).

Your wit and wisdom from the chat may find it's way onto the live blogging: along with DougB.

I'm testing this PHP chat room, and it does seem to work with the latest releases of Mozilla Firefox. Check out the post here for updates as they arrive.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 06:51 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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As of this writing, I haven't decided if I'm going to watch tonight's "debate" or not. Nobody's paying me to do it, and I'm not being paid by anyone to think about it, so my inclination is to dismiss it entirely. It's a "town hall", one of these worthless and time-wasting tricks designed to "include the voters" by asking weepy questions that invariably favor more Federal expenditures, more this and more that.

I would, however, vote for the candidate who responded in the following way:

'UNDECIDED' VOTER: I am poor. We have two televisions, two cars, cable, Internet, an SUV, clothe our 3 kids in Fubu & Tommy Hilfiger, and we go out every weekend to the local sports bar to watch the game and ring up a huge bar tab. We eat out every night and we have a house payment and our little darlings drive leased SUVs. What will your administration do to keep me from having to struggle to make ends meet?"

CANDIDATE: Ma'am, you're not poor. You're pathetic. Sit down and shoulder your burden like the rest of us. Might I suggest a course in cost control?

Of course, this isn't the way things are done. In the Oprah culture, the candidate is supposed to nearly tear up at the description of the voter's troubles, and ooze empathy. "I feel your pain", in other words. This sort of situation is nothing but a minefield for conservatives, because they should generally be loathe to prescribe yet another government program---new money---to ameliorate the "suffering" of the family that lives beyond its means. Of course our people will come off like jerks or Ebenezer Scrooge if they don't fall all over themselves to be some squishy compassionate type. (Compassion isn't solely restricted to opening one's wallet, you know...)

Thus, a problem. Senator Kerry, being of the party that prefers profligate public spending, can simply (and probably honestly say) that he and his will propose new programs. Advantage: Democrats.

I'll agree with Peggy Noonan---heard on the dreadful Sean Hannity radio program---that the President can probably come through this one alright, though. Assuming that the questions aren't all weak-kneed softballs that require the candidate to be something of a political lecher, Bush may be able to muddle his way through, and I hope he does.

Good luck, Mr. President. Under these circumstances, any Republican could use it.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 05:16 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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After the demise of the unlamented "Assault Weapons Ban", I'm curious of something, and so I turn to you, the great silent majority... (Snap out of it, man! It's 2004, not 1974! --Ed.)

At any rate, what I'm wondering now is this: Is Heckler & Koch's PSG-1 now legal for civilian purchase in this country? I know it's expensive (~$10,000USD) but if I was going to be a big successful lawyer, I could score that in fees easily. (Ronald McDonald, the bullseye is on you for being a scourge to America's health...)

I figure that there are a slew of gun bloggers who could tell me this, and maybe one of them will take pity on a rather ignorant soul. Look at it this way: With a rifle that expensive and capable, there'd be no way that I could blame lack of accuracy on the equipment. Click here for more details on the thing.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 04:57 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Senators Kerry and Edwards have made great hay in the last two debates over a supposed figure that America is bearing 90% of the costs, 90% of the casualties, et cetera in Iraq. I think the Vice President caught Senator Edwards short on these numbers in their debate, but I never really put numbers to it.

Luckily, Jed Babbin at National Review Online has, and he finds a different arrangement than the Democratic ticket.

I thought about the whole thing, and something has occurred to me that perhaps needs to be sent to Senators Kerry and Edwards: "Gentlemen. Your statement of casualties in the current Iraqi operations, and your political conclusion subsequently drawn is erroneous. In your conclusion, you neglect the contribution of the Iraqi populace to the recovery effort, and in doing so, you slight them and their sacrifices. Indeed, the Iraqis are suffering at a greater pace than our troops are for the same period. When casualties are to be considered, it is a time for seriousness, and not for cheap electioneering. I would have expected better from someone who has made Vietnam service the centerpiece of his campaign."

It would probably be a good thing if those folks who share a common aisle with me, and also political liberals, would get this sort of message out.

NOTE: I may have found where "ninety percent" comes from, using Babbin's own numbers. Says he: If you count the number of combat dead from May 2003 to October 2004, Americans are 700 out of about 1540 total (which includes the 750 Iraqi and 90 Coalition casualties), or 45 percent.

I broke out my aging TI-85 and punched in the following equation: 700/(1540-750)

This yields 88.61% of combat dead as American troops, once one excludes 750 Iraqi casualties. Senator Edwards is factually accurate, but his fact is incomplete. The most wry thing I could think of off the cuff about this would be if one were to summarize 2004's hurricane activity, and leave the State of Florida out when calculating economic and property loss.

UPDATE: I'm curious: Are we including Iraqi casualties in "Coalition" body counts? If that's already the case, then that point needs to be made by the Administration on a regular basis. If we aren't, then I would, as a policy suggestion, recommend that we consider the Allawi Iraq as a de facto Coalition partner, and adjust our casualty accounting accordingly.

This would have the effect of taking the wind out of the sails for the Kerry charge, but it would also prevent Senator Edwards from having to fumble like he did against the Vice President's charge that he, Edwards, was demeaning the Iraqi contribution to the politico-military effort.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 12:55 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Microsoft's eccentric web-based magazine, Slate, has an interview with E. Howard Hunt. Mr. Hunt is one of the fellows arrested in the whole Watergate mess, after a fruitful career in the Central Intelligence Agency.

I enjoyed it, and perhaps y'all might as well.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 12:18 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Orin Kerr of the Volokh Conspiracy recently put some questions to the "hawkish side of the blogosphere" regarding Iraq. Although the comment period has ended, I figured I'd throw up my responses to his questions.

First, assuming that you were in favor of the invasion of Iraq at the time of the invasion, do you believe today that the invasion of Iraq was a good idea? Why/why not?

It's irrelevant what I think about the "good idea" of invading Iraq. Our forces are there, and our national honor has been committed, for better or for worse. The only acceptable scenario is to see this through to completion. That completion will, hopefully, entail the creation of a quasi-democratic Iraq that will stop a) being a Middle Eastern nuisance and b) stop acting like the kid who's hiding girlie mags under his mattress when UN/IAEA weapons inspectors show up.

I wasn't, however, impressed of the immediate urgency in invading Iraq. The months-long run-up to war signaled to me that there wasn't any real importance to doing this. The war, as sold, was about weapons of mass destruction. Instead of falling in with 82nd or 101st Airborne upon various suspect sites in a lightning attack, we gave the Baathist regime months to prepare for any such operation. And no, I'm not surprised that we haven't found anything.

Second, what reaction do you have to the not-very-upbeat news coming of Iraq these days, such as the stories I link to above?

Frankly put, I don't care. The casualties suffered in this entire campaign have been insignificant, and I'm unconcerned about our poll numbers amongst Iraqis. So long as there will be no "Islamic Republic of Iraq", I'm not too concerned about the future of the country. Furthermore, to clean up a mess, you have to make a separate mess, and thus the reports out of Iraq are not unexpected. Are they welcome? Not particularly, but I'd rather hear the whole picture rather than carefully-staged photo ops with smiling Iraqi children who just love the Army guy that they're standing around.

I do not, however, think that we are getting the full story in Iraq. On the one hand, major media outlets seem bent on describing each major attack as something just short of the 1968 Tet Offensive. On the other hand, I hear a lot about blogs posting rosy letters from soldiers and the distinct theme of "this isn't getting out but it's golden over here". To steal words from that German weasel Joschka Fischer, "Excuse me. I am not convinced."

Inasmuch as obtaining an accurate and complete picture of what is going on in Iraq is not something I'm probably able to do---oh, to have a copy of CIA intelligence estimates, NSA intercepts, and DOD information---I generally find myself actively not listening about the latest report of losses and the oh-so-obvious conclusion that it's a "quagmire". I also tune out rosy reports of how great the country is doing and so forth, and just expect good hard-working Americans, British and Iraqis (and the rest of Senator Kerry's grand diversionary coalition of the bribed and the bought...) to muddle through and make something better from the current mess in Mesopotamia.

Third, what specific criteria do you recommend that we should use over the coming months and years to measure whether the Iraq invasion has been a success?

Let me say this about that: I don't expect a carbon copy of the American process to be installed in Iraq. They're operating in a completely different civilizational, cultural and historical environment; put simply, they are not us so it is folly to expect them to be like us. I am also, to say the least, quite skeptical of Middle Eastern democratization.

The grand scheme of things metric that I'm going to use over time is whether we have to go back and do this again in the next 10-15 years. What I'm primarily looking for in terms of Iraqi development is, at best, the development of another Turkey. That is, my understanding of what Turkey is, i.e. a more-or-less democratic republic where the fanatics in the mosques are kept there by force of arms. That, and the two things I outlined earlier about no longer being a Middle Eastern nuisance and not acting like the kid with the mags under the bed.

Another metric I thought of has already been fulfilled in two places. Ostensibly, the war focused on stopping Saddam Hussein's production of/efforts towards atomic, chemical, or biological weapons, a non-proliferative war if you will. Well, we do know that Saddam Hussein'll never reach for nuclear weapons again, and perhaps the Colonel in Libya has sworn off his CBR program as well. If we can put the brakes on a couple of proliferation programs in the region, then perhaps we've already done enough good, and any success in Iraq will be sauce for the goose, Mr. Saavik.

I'm distinctly not going to establish any metrics that have anything to do with Islamist terror. The swamp-draining theory may or may nto work when you've got a potential recruit pool of one billion men, women and children. The reality is that we now live in an age of direct attempts against the several States---no, I'm not going to use that lame term of 'Homeland'---and will be so until radical Islamists either succeed in their jihad or they are snuffed out through a variety of measures.

In any event, my ultimate hope is that our troops are able to return safely, swiftly, and victoriously. I want this whole war thing to be over, dagnabbit.

Tip of the Wisconsin hat to Cold Spring Shops.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 08:25 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Does anyone know how I get the Blogs for Bush auto link list to appear in something other than Times New Roman, other than changing a default font in the browser? The current display doesn't work with my stylistic plan, such as it is.

Meanwhile, restoration work continues.

UPDATE: Listed item fixed. What I don't know about at this point is getting that cursed calendar back into alignment with the rest of the column. Anyone have any advice? Oh and by the way, I've managed to get the Blogshares thing working, after having finally registered and claimed the blog.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 07:13 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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This comes to me courtesy of a contact in the Bristol, Virginia area: The Norfolk Southern Railway recently operated a journalist's special over the NSR's trackage from their Bristol, Virginia yard to somewhere in Bulls Gap, Tennessee. The train, a two coach effort pulled by EMD GP59 4637, was run in order to illustrate to journalists and others the actions of people along railroad tracks.

The Bristol Herald-Courier covered this event, and its article is here. If you're one of the cookie-blocking types, you will have to deal with a fistful of the things, mostly spawning from Media General's electronic empire.

Grade crossing safety is another one of things where transportation companies are largely forced to rely upon the common sense of their fellow Americans in automobiles. As a result, there's a fair amount of collisions and a lesser number of fatalities involved. The industry's grade crossing safety group, Operation Lifesaver, notes in its statistics that there were "2,929 highway-rail grade crossing collisions" in 2003, with those producing "329 fatalities", according to preliminary Federal Railroad Administration statistics.

This started out as more of a rail enthusiast post, but let me close with this: Ten thousand tons plus of train traveling at sixty miles an hour needs something like a mile and a half to stop from the point of emergency brake application, or so I've been told. Three thousand pounds of car can relatively stop on a dime. It is in your, the driver's, interest to defer to the train.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 11:30 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Something's come up: I'm trying to arrange my SiteMeter configuration so that each individual entry, the monthly archive, and the category archive are transmitting data. Does the SiteMeter code go in each of those three templates, or does it belong on the "Master Archive Index"?

Thanks!

Posted by: Country Pundit at 08:31 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Full disclosure: I only watched the first half of the debate.<1> Domestic policy politics as practiced in the several States is, to me, an exercise in mind-deadening tedium that a) solves nothing, b) costs me money, and c) winds up exasperating me, because the solutions to the discussed problems can't be said.

That being said, I enjoyed watching the Vice President dismantle Senator Edwards on several points. But, I won't go into that, and since I'm floundering about for the right things to say, I'll point to Jonathan V. Last's take on it at The Weekly Standard.

I'm not surprised that Last scored Edwards well in domestic policy; I had always been impressed (and dismayed) from a professional political standpoint at Edwards. When I saw him in Richmond during the primary season, he seemed to be well at ease in front of a crowd and quite capable of handling himself on the trail. Indeed, I never understood why Edwards wasn't the pick for the Democratic nominee, but it has since been explained to me that Edwards wasn't the "I-hate-Bush-who-eats-children" candidate, and that didn't fly in the era of Dr. Howard Dean.

Just another reason to turn up the nose and sniff at the former governor of Vermont. more...

Posted by: Country Pundit at 08:22 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Yes, it's been nigh on four months since I last updated The Country Pundit. Several things, i.e. the Virginia Bar, moving out from my apartment, relocating several hundred miles away, et cetera, have prevented me from being diligent about this.

Inasmuch as I'm trying a program of "returning to normalcy", I can once again take up a hobby that I'd been teetering upon burn out with. There is, as everyone in the several States knows, an election going on. That being said, I'm past the point of apathy on the election, and I'm not sure how much Bush v. Kerry stuff I'll be posting.

Please bear with me as I return various components of the blog to operational order; there were server issues that I'm vaguely cognizant of, and certain things have to be rebuilt from the ground up. To boot, even my laptop died, so I had to sort of emergency-rig my desktop for heavy Internet service. Bah.

I'm not even sure I'm on the Blogs for Bush blogroll any more. If you've been on my blogroll before, let me know and I'll re-add you.

UPDATE: After a bit of study, it appears that I indeed am no longer on the Blogs for Bush list. Bother!

UPDATE THE SECOND: Interesting. My list shows me as having never left. How's that for loyalty? Talk about a real Republican attribute, eh. On a technical note, how does one get around to changing the font from the Times New Roman-esque font of the Blogs for Bush blogroll to something else?

Posted by: Country Pundit at 07:51 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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