Best of the Web Today - November 12, 2004
By JAMES TARANTO
Elections: Who Needs 'Em?
Now that George W. Bush has won an undisputed election, what if he were to cancel the elections in 2008 and thereafter and simply declare himself president for life? It sounds like a left-wing paranoid fantasy, but Jimmy Carter endorses the idea on the op-ed page of today's New York Times. Reminiscing about his favorite terrorist, Yasser Arafat, Carter writes:
In effect, peace efforts of a long line of previous administrations have been abandoned by President Bush and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. For the last three years of his life, Mr. Arafat was incapacitated and held as a prisoner, humiliated by his physical incarceration and excluded by the other two leaders from any recognition as the legitimate head of the Palestinian community. Recognizing Mr. Arafat's failure to control violence among his people or to initiate helpful peace proposals, I use the word "legitimate" based on his victory in January 1996 by a strong majority of votes in an election monitored by the Carter Center and approved by the occupying Israelis.
It's true that Arafat in 1996, like Bush this year, won a strong majority of the votes in an election that featured no serious opposition. But as we noted in May 2002, new elections were due in 1999, and Arafat never held them. We hope and expect that Bush will leave office on schedule, on Jan. 20, 2009--but if he doesn't, it would be "legitimate" by Carter's lights.
Come to think of it, we'll bet Carter is kicking himself for not thinking of this 25 years earlier.
A Terrorist Goes Underground
Now, he belongs to the worms. After a state funeral in Egypt, Yasser Arafat has been buried in Ramallah. All the praise being heaped on this terrorist calls to mind Hilaire Belloc's epigram, "Epitaph on the Politician":
Here richly, with ridiculous display,
The Politician's corpse was laid away.
While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged
I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.
The Associated Press has some scenes from the burial:
Police fired wildly into the air to keep back the surging crowd. . . . Frantic mourners surged toward the tomb, trampling the olive tree saplings that were planted around the grave according to Islamic tradition. . . .
Earlier, officials tried for 25 minutes to open the helicopter door to remove the coffin onto a jeep that had plowed through the crowd to clear a path. As the coffin was carried toward the gravesite, police jumped on top of it, waved their arms and flashed the victory sign. People chanted, "With our blood and our soul we will redeem you Yasser Arafat!" . . .
A small group of masked gunmen marched into the Muqata, ignoring calls from official Palestine TV not to carry arms or mask faces. . . . On Friday, teenage boys climbed onto the walls of the compound chanting, "Whoever poisoned Arafat, we will drink his blood."
In Israel's capital, "several hundred Arab demonstrators pelted an east Jerusalem police station with stones Thursday night," reports the Jerusalem Post. The Arab News reports that "black smoke from burning tires rose across the Gaza Strip and gunmen fired into the air in grief." Such is the Palestinian civilization of which Yasser Arafat was the architect.
Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.
Why No Autopsy?
"A leading Jordanian neurologist who regularly examined Yasser Arafat said on Friday that poisoning was the 'highest' probable cause of the Palestinian leader's mysterious death and urged that an autopsy be performed," the Associated Press reports from Amman:
"One of the causes of platelet deficiency is poison," said Dr. Ashraf al-Kurdi, who examined a gravely ill Arafat in his besieged compound in the West Bank town of Rammallah two weeks ago. . . .
There has been widespread speculation that Arafat could have been poisoned by Israel.
It seems unlikely, though, that Palestinian officials would be so secretive about the cause of Arafat's death if they really believed Israel were behind it. The New York Times and Reuters, meanwhile, are both raising a possibility that would be embarrassing to Arafat in the rabidly antigay Arab culture: that he died of AIDS.
Arafat remains in stable condition after dying in a Paris hospital.
First Gray Davis, Now This
"Arafat to Be Recalled for Leading Palestinians to Accept Principle of Coexistence With Israel: Annan"--headline, ElectronicIntifada.net, Nov. 11
Homer Nods
We erred yesterday in describing Yasser Arafat as the founder of the Palestine Liberation Organization. In fact, the PLO was founded in 1964, and Arafat didn't become its chairman until 1969.
Fox News Alert
From Attorney General John Ashcroft's farewell "letter to the American people":
Gun crime prosecutions are at a record high and violent crimes committed with guns are at a record low.
Hey, Fox Butterfield! Better get to work writing a report on this paradox!
The Horrors of War
The other day, the front pages of both the New York Post and the Houston Chronicle featured a photograph of a U.S. Marine in Fallujah, who happened to have a cigarette dangling from his mouth. This brought out the health police in both cities. Here are a pair of letters that appeared in the Chronicle:
I was shocked to see the large photograph on Nov. 10. A tired, dirty and brave Marine rests after a battle--but with a cigarette dangling from his mouth! Lots of children, particularly boys, play "army" and like to imitate this young man. The clear message of the photo is that the way to relax after a battle is with a cigarette.
The truth is very different from that message. Most of our troops don't smoke. And most importantly, this young man is far more likely to die a horrible death from his tobacco addiction than from his tour of duty in Iraq.
DR. DANIEL MALONEY
The Woodlands
I opened the Chronicle this morning and got slapped in the face by a huge picture of a "battle weary" Marine with a fine looking cigarette hanging out of his mouth.
I respect everyone's rights, but do we really need to encourage our young people to think that this is part of required military gear?
MAYNARD HOVLAND
League City
And in the Post:
How much did Phillip Morris pay for the front cover advertisement? Thank you for continuing to encourage the development of cancer.
Mark Leininger
Manhattan
The Post's cover was horrible and crude. How could you compare our soldiers to the Marlboro Man? We are not "kicking butt" in Iraq. We are in an unjustified war with a people who will never allow democracy to come to their country.
Janna Passuntino
Manhattan
I was shocked to see the front page of your newspaper. Showing a GI smoking and portraying it as being cool is disgusting, to say the least.
First of all, you are promoting smoking, even though it is a health hazard. Secondly, our brave men and women are fighting a tough war in Iraq, and to show them as you did does not do them justice.
Maybe showing a Marine in a tank, helping another GI or drinking water would have had a more positive impact on your readers. Smoking should be outlawed, not endorsed.
Ali Mahdi
North Brunswick, N.J.
Post reader Hank Sbordone of Middletown, N.J., however, has a different view: "Thank God New York isn't occupied by terrorists. Mayor Bloomberg wouldn't allow a Marine who smokes to enter the city. He would probably rather be a prisoner than see someone smoke."
Let the Recrminiations Begin
Left-wing columnist Arianna Huffington tells this interesting story:
Twelve days before the election, James Carville stood in a Beverly Hills living room surrounded by two generations of Hollywood stars. After being introduced by Sen. John Kerry's daughter, Alexandra, he told the room--confidently, almost cockily--that the election was in the bag.
"If we can't win this damn election," the advisor to the Kerry campaign said, "with a Democratic Party more unified than ever before, with us having raised as much money as the Republicans, with 55 percent of the country believing we're heading in the wrong direction, with our candidate having won all three debates, and with our side being more passionate about the outcome than theirs -- if we can't win this one, then we can't win sh--! And we need to completely rethink the Democratic Party."
So what went wrong? The New Republic's Ryan Lizza has a useful roundup. We found this passage particularly on point:
One common complaint [from Kerry advisers] is that they were slaves to polling data and used the research in a ridiculously literal way. Says a senior aide, "When you ask people, 'What is the most important issue?' and they say prescription drugs, [the consultants] say, 'Well, if we run on prescription drugs, we'll win.' "
One aide repeatedly pressed Kerry to give a speech about welfare reform, since he had voted for Bill Clinton's bill in 1996. The idea was rebuffed because welfare didn't show up in polling as a key issue for voters. "It's never going to be the top issue," the aide complains. "If you call me on the phone, I'm not going to say that. But, if I hear you talk about welfare reform, it tells me something about your underlying character."
There seemed to be an insurmountable gulf between the consultants, at their best running issue-based Senate campaigns, and the other staffers, who pressed for Kerry to explain the values he would bring to office rather than just his specific proposals. "Things became increasingly programmatic rather than values-based," says a senior adviser. "We were talking more and more about the specifics of our plan rather than the principles John Kerry would bring to bear in making those decisions."
Polls asking "What is the most important issue?" or "Is the country on the right or wrong track?" may not be totally useless, but they're a terribly crude way of gauging public opinion, likely to mislead a politician who doesn't have an intuitive sense of what the voters are looking for.
The Problem Is Reality
From a report in the Eugene (Ore.) Register-Guard about a new left-wing weekly newspaper, AVA Oregon, published by Bruce Anderson:
"I've noticed there really is a very irritating sort of dogmatism, a kind of a piety, a starkness, I guess you could call it that," Anderson said. "They have all of these correct positions and it's as if they already live in some kind of nirvana while the reality around them is problematic to say the least."
There's a good slogan for the Dejected Left: The reality around us is problematic.
The Lady Doth Protest Too Much
Here's an Associated Press dispatch from St. Paul, Minn.:
Alissa Doth, 25, registered to vote while renewing her driver's license in 2002. But when she went to vote that year she wasn't on the roster. Doth says maybe she made a mistake on her driver's license form, although she doubts it--especially since she had problems registering two more times, both in 2003 and again this year.
"I made sure to verify that I was filling out the correct spot, the signature on the right-hand side of the form," says Doth. "I verified with people at the county service center, and showed up to the polls and was not registered."
Minnesota has same-day voter registration, so Doth was able to sign up to vote at her polling place. But she was angry.
"I called a bunch of friends and said, 'I'm a disenfranchised voter. I finally understand what that's like to be a disenfranchised voter,' " says Doth.
That's funny, we always thought that be disenfranchised, you actually had to be denied the vote.
The Selfish Party--II
Yesterday we noted a study by the Catalogue of Philanthropy that ranked states in order of their generosity, measured by the percentage of adjusted gross income their residents donated to charity. It turns out there are newer figures available, which show a slightly greater trend in favor of Republican states. In the Catalogue's 2004 survey, the top 25 states all were carried by George W. Bush; New York, the top-giving Kerry state, weighs in at No. 26.
Here's a nifty chart showing the correlation between states' 2004 voting margin and their ranking in the study:
Maybe They'd Cheer Up if We Bought Them a Pony
"Foreign Grad Students in U.S. Down"--headline, CNN.com, Nov. 11
Great Moments in Public Education
"A 48-year-old teacher in Seminole County, Fla., is accused of torturing her autistic students, including allegedly rubbing a child's face in vomit and slamming another child's head so hard that he lost his front teeth," reports Orlando's WKMG-TV:
Witnesses told police that Garrett punched a student in the head for wetting his pants and grabbed another student by the back of the neck after he vomited and shoved his face into the vomit.
Garrett, who weighs 300 pounds, also reportedly pinned a special needs student facedown on his desk until he choked before two assistants reportedly jumped in to save the child, according to an arrest report.
Witnesses also said that Garrett rubbed her body against a child and repeatedly told him to "cry for mama."
According to a follow-up story, parents at South Seminole Middle School "are accusing the school of a cover-up, saying they tried to stop abuse years ago."
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Not Too Brite--CLXXIII
"William Hammond survived one of the bloodiest battles of World War II but died at a parade honoring him and others after a van at a Veteran's Day parade ran over him," Reuters reports from Boston.
Oddly Enough!
(For an explanation of the "Not Too Brite" series, click here.)
And You Thought It Was Just a Silly Kids' Movie
From the New York Times' review of "The Polar Express":
Tots surely won't recognize that Santa's big entrance in front of the throngs of frenzied elves and awe-struck children directly evokes, however unconsciously, one of Hitler's Nuremberg rally entrances in Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will." But their parents may marvel that when Santa's big red sack of toys is hoisted from factory floor to sleigh it resembles nothing so much as an airborne scrotum.
For crying out loud, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
These Aren't the Druids You're Looking For
"Two Episcopal priests who led Druidic activity will not be suspended, said a bishop, who blamed the local scandal on conservative groups out to destabilize the Episcopal Church USA," the Associated Press reports from Downingtown, Pa.
Red Heat
"Mars' distinctive personality is finally emerging," the Denver Post reports:
After five successful Mars missions launched in the past seven years, planetary scientists no longer describe the fourth planet from the sun in terms of its better-known relatives--Mars as the moon with an atmosphere, as Earth with craters. . . .
Michael Malin, president of Malin Space Science Systems, talked about gullies that may have been sculpted recently by liquid water; evidence of ancient seas; and the discovery that the planet's south polar cap of dry ice is losing weight.
"Mars is experiencing global warming," Malin said. "And we don't know why."
But blogger Paul Hsieh knows: "Must be because the US didn't sign the interplanetary Kyoto Treaty." |
