Must be seen to be believed...

This unsigned screed was actually published in the Mirror.

Stolen from The Corner.

Protesters in Portland

I suppose that these protesters fancy themselves as heroes. Yeah, they're supporting democracy!

One of them proclaimed that the "religious right" won the election. It's true that they were more likely to support Bush, not that there's anything wrong with that.... Sorry pal, but a minute ago you said you were supporting democracy, and these people get to vote too.

I've lived in parts of the country within a few miles of where they handle snakes as part of the services. You can't go much farther off the deep end than that. But I've never had a lick of trouble with "the religious right", and typically I didn't hear a peep unless they were provoked. And it wasn't because they were a minority. IMO the most obvious difference between them and the protesters, besides dress and hygiene, is that the evangelicals would rather keep to themselves and not do something so worldly as to pose for a camera, or even vote.

And, if anything, what do you suppose provoked them this time? Might it have had something to do with an arbitrary decision by some to overturn a few thousand years of social experience to mock marriage?

Oh yeah, the protesters are against the war too. I have a proposal for them - I'll bet Fallujah could use some human shields about now...

Giving his due

After months of dog-cussing John Kerry, the least I can do is acknowledge that he outclassed Al Gore in conceding defeat in the election.

Now let's see if the rest of his supporters do.

Common sense breaks out

Look here and scroll upward for deadly retorts to the latest press attacks on Bush from US and foreign sources. The linked article discusses the big deal the press would make of al-Qaqaa, and the next two up discuss the Lancet article about supposedly outrageously high Iraqi fatalities in the war.

And then just keep reading in both directions, because Chicago Boyz is a terrific blog.

Meanwhile Chicago Girl Megan McArdle overcomes her NY influences to embrace the right man for President here.

If you still don't get the al-Qaqaa thing, John Cole has pictures for you here.

Faulty decision process?

Daniel Drezner has a child and wants tenure. To get it, he probably has to rattle off left wing catechism for the grantors of tenure. That's the only way I can explain this.

Mr. Drezner is distressed by the number of "Mongolian clusterf**ks" found in the Bush administration's planning. Well what do you know - not everyone in his administration had the same ideas about how to do things! Some people have expressed differences of opinion, and that can only mean that the decisions actually implemented were incorrect, right?

I for one would be far more disturbed if everyone in the administration had exactly the same ideas - apparently President Bush has assembled a diverse group to provide counsel, and that's to be respected. But once the decision has been made, it's time to put your head down, shut up and start implementing instead of hogging cameras. And has anyone ever considered that maybe planning could be better if the Bush Administration didn't have to watch its back against a hostile media echoing opposition spin all the time?

I'm a blogger too, so I too reserve the right to question decisions made by the govt, media, other bloggers or anyone else after the fact. The thought that Mr. Drezner would question the Bush administration's conduct of the war certainly wasn't offensive in itself.

But the jaw-dropper was when he wrote "I prefer a leader who has a good decision-making process, even if his foreign policy instincts are skewed in a direction I don't like, over a leader who has a bad decision-making process, even if his foreign policy instincts are skewed in a direction I do like."

And this led him to support John Kerry? Can Kerry be said to even *have* a decision-making process? Or is it just so prolific that it generates all alternatives? Pick Kerry if you must (he's going to win IL anyway despite my absentee vote), but please come up with something better than this.

Mr. Drezner goes on to say "But in the end, I can't vote for a president who doesn't believe that what he believes might, just might, be wrong." Here he must be mindreading. Making a decision does not indicate that there never was any doubt, it just means that somebody had to have the cojones to act under conditions of uncertainty - you'll never know all the relevant facts and much of what you do know has a short shelf-life.

(And making a decision is the opposite of letting your allies dictate your policy. Kerry's "global test" nonsense is simply a way for Kerry to avoid responsibility. That's OK with me, but I'd prefer that he avoid responsibility by losing the election by a truly embarrassing margin)

So how does Mr. Drezner conclude that President Bush has no doubts about his decisions? It appears that he is making some truly stupendous assumptions that just could be wrong. Is he willing to reexamine that?

Or maybe Mr. Drezner swallowing the Dem story concocted to counteract Kerry's flipflopping, namely, that in fact George W. Bush is bullheaded.

Well, President Bush in fact has some identifiable consistent principles, which certainly narrows the scope of the decisions he's likely to reach. And I, the stock market and most of sane society prefer that predictability to a loose cannon who scores once in a while but is likely to shift with any political zephyr.

And if bull-headedness is to be feared, what can you say about a man who still won't come clean about Vietnam, or apologize for the monstrous and unsupported accusations he made about his "band of brothers"? Had he done so, we might never have hears about the Swift boat vets. Even Jane Fonda has apologized - why can't Kerry? His positions on Viet Nam might well be the only ones he's ever stuck with.

Anyway, I hope Mr. Drezner gets his tenure. But only if he can come up with a better decision making process than what we've seen.

UN seals?

Everybody seems to be so impressed by these UN seals on ammo dumps in Iraq. I'm not.

It so happens that I was raised around truckers who went to some really iffy places. Seals? Ha? Thieves could just take the entire back doors off the trailers, rob them blind, then reinstall the doors without breaking seals. If you wanted to secure your load, you'd back your trailer up against a wall or another trailer so close that no one could get into the gap.

I dare to suggest that one so highly motivated as Saddam could defeat any seal the UN could place on a site, especially after disabling all the other surveillance equipment placed on the sites.