October 2004 Archives

Now for the nine scariest Election 2004 Costumes from the "Do-It-Yourself Guide" by Dan Savage, David Schmader and John E. Hollingsworth.

Referring to the president, Mr. bin Laden said: "It appeared to him that a little girl's talk about her goat and its butting was more important than the planes and their butting of the skyscrapers. That gave us three times the required time to carry out the operations, thank God." -- NY Times, 30 Oct 04

OSAMA BIN LADEN: WHY I'M CHAMP

Thank you, Dad, and thank you, Mom,
I couldn't have done it without you,
And thanks to all my religion teachers,
Though my act was not about you.

In my personal Manhattan Project,
Mohamed Atta was lieutenant,
But sans George Bush (who was sent by Allah!)
I could never have won the pennant.

--Leon Freilich

Everybody loves Wonkette -- and for good reason: She gives good head. In other words, she's got brains (and a great sense of humor). But Matt Haber at Low Culture belongs right there with her, maybe ahead of her.

Consider the item he posted the other day, "conspiracy-a-ga-ga", taking the New York Post's Page Six to task for its "powerful revelation" that "conspiracy theorists are buzzing about John Kerry's connection to Lee Harvey Oswald and the JFK assassination":

Whoa. Do you really want to play this game, Page Six? Crumple up that tin-foil hat before someone reminds you that "conspiracy theorists" have been "buzzing" for years that John Hinckley's brother, Scott, was allegedly scheduled to have dinner with Bush's brother, Neil, the night John shot Reagan in 1981!

Haber knows his way around the Web (those are his links).

Some dude even went so far as to tie Hinckley's attempt on Reagan with Kennedy's assassination by claiming that Reagan was "shot from the Bushy knoll"!

And he's nobody's mark:

Wow. See how fucking stupid I sound saying this stuff? Elevating these wackadoos to even the most carefully vetted legitamacy, lowers a writer to, well, a fucking idiot.

Hell, Haber's got brains, humor, and the conscience of a saint. (So what if he has a spelling problem -- that's "legitimacy," Matt.)

Full disclosure: The man grills a mean sausage, too.

A friend writes: "News readers (we're talking about the "talking heads") have short memories for much that matters. As Brett Wagner, president of the California Center for Strategic Studies and a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, noted a year ago in a USA Today article (on Oct. 6, 2003):

[T]he war fighters were right. Military commanders weren't given enough manpower and logistical support to secure all of the known [Iraqi] nuclear sites, let alone all of the suspected ones. ... It wasn't until seven of Iraq's main nuclear facilities were extensively looted that the true magnitude of the administration's strategic blunder came into focus.

"Now the missing HMX is news," the friend adds, "and it is mainly treated as a separate issue to be judged (as the administration would have it) as a tiny, tiny fraction (by weight) of all the artillery rounds and bombs that have been destroyed.

"Except that a tiny, tiny fraction of the artillery rounds and bombs is very conspicuous when strapped to a suicide-bomber, even under several large overcoats. Can you imagine a terrorist with a 250-pound aerial bomb strapped on? That's the smallest size it comes in."

Here, at a glance, are the bookmakers's betting lines.

At the moment Paddy Power is giving odds of 4 to 7 for Bush, 5 to 4 for Kerry. The line at Littlewoods betdirect is 4 to 6 for Bush, 11 to 10 for Kerry. At totalbet.com it's also 4 to 6 for Bush, 11 to 10 for Kerry. Coral is giving 8 to 13 for Bush, 6 to 5 for Kerry.

ukbetting.com is giving of 4 to 6 for Bush, 11 to 10 for Kerry. The odds at Sportingbet are 8 to 13 for Bush, and 6 to 5 for Kerry. At Super Odds (click on Politics), they're 3 to 5 for Bush, 6 to 5 for Kerry, and 501 to 1 for Nader.

And the betting at Sporting Index is that Bush will receive between 272 and 280 electoral votes, making him the winner, with Kerry receiving between 258 and 266 electoral votes. Ugh.

Postscript from Hammond Guthrie: "One tends to forget the election tout! Is there an Exacta?"

Nine Marines died in Iraq on Saturday. It was the deadliest day for the American forces in half a year. Meantime, U.S. officials go around giving upbeat assessments of the situation, while actually believing that it isn't nearly as rosy as they've painted it.

For instance, top commanders fear that "Iraq's expanding security forces, soon to be led by largely untested generals, have been penetrated by spies for the insurgents." Further, as has recently been reported, there are far more hard-core militants than previously guesstimated, and they're better financed, too. Add to that the "most disturbing" fact of the intimidation campaign of "assassinations, kidnappings, beheadings and car bombings" to silence the Iraqi population.

Yet senior military commanders and civilian officials prefer to mutter their doubts under their breath instead of speaking up loud and clear because, as New York Times reporter Erich Schmitt writes, they're afraid "their more candid remarks could be used as campaign fodder back home." Well, shit, what the hell is wrong with that? Shouldn't voters be told the truth?

Oh, and get this: The Congress has approved a defense appropriation bill that includes a proposal to reimburse "soldiers, their families and charities" who paid for some of their own combat equipment in Iraq and Afghanistan" because the Pentagon didn't equip them properly in the first place. But you know what? The Pentagon, as reported by John Files, tried to kill the proposal.

And do you know why? Because reimbursements would be "a considerable financial burden" for the Pentagon, as though the cost of the equipment was not a burden to the soldiers, their families and the charities. As though the billions of dollars spent so far in Iraq are not a financial burden for taxpayers.

And do you know why else? Because, Files writes, the Pentagon believes the reimbursements "could undermine the accountability and effectiveness of equipment used in combat." As though the Pentagon has been eager to press for accountability from Halliburton and all the other corporate profiteers. As though the Pentagon's failure to provide enough equipment to the soldiers in the field was not the reason it had to be provided at private expense in the first place.

Have a look at this citizenflick, "Visualize Winning" by Needlenose Productions. I love it, and you will too. Then have a look at the rest of these citizenflicks: "The Song"; "Game Show"; "One Vote"; "Margins"; Vinton, Iowa"; and "Testimony." Then make Tuesday count.

You'd think it was an antiwar liberal who is venting his ideology. But it is not:

Tell me there is a connection to 9/11? There's not. Are there weapons of mass destruction? There's not. Tell me the war will be over soon? It won't.

It is Lt. Paul Rieckhoff, an Army infantry platoon leader who spent 10 months in the most dangerous areas of Baghdad, in an interview published this morning.

You'd think it was Graham Greene who is venting his disillusionment with ideology. But it is not:

It was their emperor, not ours, who had the nerve to mount the rostrum and declare he had no clothes. And the ideologies trailed after these impossible events like condemned prisoners, as ideologies do when they've had their day. Because they have no heart of their own. They're the whores and angels of our striving selves.

It is John le Carré, in "The Secret Pilgrim."

You'd think it was William Faulkner who is venting about the futility of heroes and the falsity of history itself. But it is not:

What he saw was that the only manifest artifact of the history of this negligible republic where he now seemed about to die that had the least authority or meaning or claim to substance was seated here before him in the sallow light of this cantina and all else from men's lips or from men's pens would require that it be beat out hot all over again upon the anvil of its own enactment before it could even qualify as a lie.

It is Cormac McCarthy, in "The Crossing."

In case you missed it, here's another reason to throw the bums out: The Los Angeles Times reports it has obtained documents showing that Halliburton, Bunker Boy's old company, won a lucrative extension of its no-bid military contract after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did an end-run around its own chief contracting officer, who objected to the proposal in vivid, handwritten notes.

Times reporter T. Christian Miller quotes documents for the first time showing that chief contracting officer Bunnatine Greenhouse wrote her objections on a version of the $165-million extension proposal. She scrawled comments such as: "I cannot approve this"; "Incorrect!"; "No! How!"; and "Not a valid reason."

After Greenhouse raised her objections, she was threatened with demotion. She nonetheless recorded her complaints in a letter her lawyer wrote to acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee. As reported in the Times and elsewhere, Halliburton is being probed by the FBI in an expanded investigation of alleged company overcharges of millions of dollars for fuel deliveries in Iraq.

Halliburton's response to the Greenhouse case is the usual. The company blames politics. "On the overall issues, the old allegations have once again been recycled, this time one week before the election," a spokeswoman is quoted as saying.

"But," Miller writes, "the previously undisclosed documents are part of a growing body of evidence indicating unusual treatment was given to government contracts won by the Houston-based firm.

"Career civil servants repeatedly raised objections to contracting decisions that benefited Halliburton, only to be overruled by higher-ups."

Just in time for Election Day: Give the Ignoramus a brain. Is it possible? Karl Rove is supposed to have done it. Can you?

Yes!!!

Today cannot pass without acknowledging the lead editorial in this morning's New York Times, which spotlights one of the most important reasons to turn the Ignoramus in Chief and his thuggish minions out of office:

When the Abu Ghraib prison scandal first broke, the Bush administration struck a pose of righteous indignation. It assured the world that the problem was limited to one block of one prison, that the United States would never condone the atrocities we saw in those terrible photos, that it would punish those responsible for any abuse -- regardless of their rank -- and that it was committed to defending the Geneva Conventions and the rights of prisoners.

None of this appears to be true. The Army has prosecuted a few low-ranking soldiers and rebuked a Reserve officer or two, but exonerated the top generals. No political leader is being held accountable for the policies set in Washington that led to the abuses at Abu Ghraib and at other prison camps operated by the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency in Iraq and Afghanistan, and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where prisoner abuse was systemic.

How many more times must this be said before the American people will hold its leaders responsible? How long will the cover-up continue? We won't know until Election Day, when voters will be put to the test. We know public pressure to hold the Ignoramus and his top officials to account has not worked so far. We know as long as they remain in office they will do everything in their power to keep us in the dark.

As the editorial reminds us, two reports this week have revealed that for a year and a half "the C.I.A., which has a record of hiding prisoners in Iraq from the Red Cross," violated the Geneva Conventions by "secretly spirit[ing] a dozen non-Iraqi civilians out of prisons in Iraq to undisclosed locations." What makes matters worse:

To justify that operation after the fact, the same legal offices that produced the infamous paper on how to pretend that torture is legal drew up a new opinion claiming that the president has the right to decide which prisoners are covered by the Geneva Conventions and which are not.

This happened in secret, at the same time that administration officials were testifying at the Senate's Abu Ghraib hearings about the president's allegiance to the Geneva Conventions and to American constitutional values when it came to the treatment of prisoners.

Forgive the lengthy excerpt. But nobody has said it better. The editorial goes on to names names. You know who they are. You saw them under oath on television "bobbing and weaving," as Kerry has said of the White House, ducking responsibility with prevarications.

And what is the Ignoramus's answer to the American people? His "one-finger victory salute." As seen on video some years ago (click that link), it was a callow joke meant for his staff. Seen today, he's giving us all the finger.

Now hear this: "A political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief." When the Ignoramus in Chief defends himself with those words against John Kerry's charge that nearly 400 tons of high explosives vanished from an ammo dump near Baghdad because of his gang's incompetence, you know madness reigns.

Who reads this stuff? (I mean the charts.) ... Here's a scary story. ... Let's hope so.

The Beantown Boys have taken a commanding lead in the World Series. And, praise be, the Red Sox nation stretches across the sea to Liverpool, England, even across the globe to Tashkent, Uzbekistan. A sweep could come tonight in St. Louis, right in the heart of Republican-leaning Missouri, and wouldn't that be Kerry lovely? Which has set our poet once again to singing:

THE EX-WHITE HOUSE RESIDENT

George Walker Bush, a Texas gent,
Somehow came and went,
Not so much a president
As an embarrassment.

--Leon Frelich

Will somebody please explain what's wrong with Nicholas Kristof? The same guy who writes unequaled columns about the horrors of Darfur can come up with this weirdness about the Ignoramus in Chief:

[M]ost liberals have not revised their view that Mr. Bush is a nitwit. In fact, I'm convinced that Mr. Bush is not only smarter, but also a better man than his critics believe. Most important, he's not a panderer.

And that's not all. "While Mr. Kerry zigs and zags on trade and Middle East policy," Kristof writes, "Mr. Bush has a core of values and provides genuine leadership" -- [but, get this] -- "typically, I believe, in the wrong direction ..."

Then he cites the Ignoramus's "grim willingness to raise gas prices during his re-election campaign" -- which, Kristof allows, is "foolish economically" and "crazy politically" -- as a sign of "a solidity of character and convictions."

Some might call Kristof's remarks nuanced or even-handed. I call it nuts. It staggers belief. It also makes you wonder what medication Kristof is on. By his fuzzy logic Osama bin Laden doesn't zig and zag either. He's got a core of values, too. And the way he's been motivating his troops, he sure as hell is providing genuine leadership, albeit in the wrong direction.

There's a long list of non-zig-zaggers you could name who fit Kristof's peculiar thinking. Hitler, Stalin, Mao for starters. They showed the world a core of values and demonstrated genuine leadership in the wrong direction. The Ignoramus nowhere near deserves to be elevated into those ranks, thank gawd. But that's poor consolation.

Postscript just in from Freilich Central:

KRISTOF CLEAR

The man of conviction's to be admired;

In the funniest column of the week, Bruce Feirstein imagines the highlights of Election Night 2004. Here's a sample excerpt from his "Pundits Go Nuts":

10 p.m., NBC: Andrea Mitchell reports that Mount St. Helen's has exploded. Tim Russert offers his instant analysis: "Since 1781, no Republican incumbent whose last name begins with a 'B' has ever won re-election when a volcano has erupted in a western state within 72 hours of voting."

Feirstein predicts a l-o-n-g night not without its compensation in laughter:

1:07 a.m., Fox News: In keeping with his tradition of truthful journalism, Carl Cameron reports that John Kerry has gone windsurfing, after which he's getting a manicure, which will be followed by a guitar concert where he'll play "Kumbaya" accompanied by Bruce Springsteen and Bono, before ending the night goose-hunting.

1:09 a.m., Fox News: In an effort to appear fair and balanced, Cameron also reports that George Bush is clearing brush at the ranch. With a flame thrower. And he's set a CBS news truck on fire, reportedly commenting, "Put that on your Internets."

Somehow Feirstein must have channeled the satirical routines of William S. Burroughs. Either that or he read Uncle Bill's classic, "Roosevelt After Inauguration." Here's an excerpt of that "routine" -- Burroughs's term -- which was conceived in a dream back in 1953 (long pre-dating Lenny Bruce) and from which, he wrote Allen Ginsberg, "I woke up laughing":

To a Transvestite Lizzie went the post of Congressional Librarian. She immediately barred the male sex.

Lonny the Pimp became Ambassador at Large and went on tour with 50 "secretaries" excercising his despicable trade.

A female impersonator, known as "Eddie the Lady," headed the Atomic Energy Commission, and enrolled the physicists into a male chorus which was booked as "The Atomic Kids." ...

A veteran panhandler was appointed Secretary of State, and disregarding the dignity of his office, solicited nickels and dimes in the corridors of the State Department.

"In short," Burroughs wrote, "men who had gone gray and toothless in the faithful service of their country were summarily dismissed in the grossest terms -- like 'You're fired you old fuck. Get your piles outa here.'"

Admittedly, Burroughs's tone is much harsher than Feirstein's. But both cue up the same realm of absurdity.

Paul Krugman has been writing about the cover-up culture of the Republican neocons at the White House for as long as the Ignoramus in Chief has been in office. This morning's column is Krugman's latest reminder of exactly why the bum's gotta go. Meantime, the Washington Post reports that after the election, if he's still in office, the bum's going to Request $70 Billion More in "emergency funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan early next year." That will push "total war costs close to $225 billion" since early last year for his mission unaccomplished.

Nick Nolte's Diary is no more. It used to be so cool. Now it's Not Nick Nolte's Diary, and even this is termed "a work of fiction."

The Guardian reports that "Bill Clinton regularly requests early copies of Carl Hiassen's novels" and Bush the Father "recently wrote asking for some signed bookplates for his wife." Bush the Son hasn't yet asked for an autograph, but Hiassen doesn't expect him to. "I'd be thrilled if he did because it would suggest he has a sense of humour, which would suggest that he has intelligence," Hiassen told the Guardian. "But I'd bet the only fiction that boy reads is memos from Cheney."

"Whenever Howard Fineman strays into the truth," he's likely to find James Wolcott laying in wait for him. Adam Nagourney fares no better. Wolcott gives him the back of his hand. He calls him (with an apology for shouting) "the kind of putz people walk away from at cocktail parties!" And how about the Ann Coulter we all know and love? She's "as unacceptable a hank of flesh draped on a hanger ever to be foisted upon an ignorant populace hungry for more ignorance." Now go read what Wolcott has to say about Christopher Hitchens.

And here's one more reason to vote for John Kerry:

Unlike some satirists who openly endorse the re-election of George W. Bush, hoping for four more years of amusing malaprops and even more amusing enlisted and civilian deaths overseas, low culture stands firm in the belief that there will still be things to make fun of when John Kerry becomes president after the drawn-out legal battle that will bring this country to the brink of civil war beginning November 3rd.

In case you don't take that seriously, consider this.

Regarding rumors of a post-election draft, the poet speaks:

A DRAFT IN THE AIR?

Don't believe the rumor spreaders;
Buncha lousy battle-dreaders.
Scared to fight for country and king
-- I mean, our man in the West Wing.
With every American casualty,
The Prez is exporting liberty.
Corpses for the Iraqi nation --
Our contribution to globalization!
Reinstate the oldtime draft?
Unpatriotically daft.
Leave it to the Prez, all wise,
To do with private enterprise
To undertake what's sure to be
The final, final victory.
Onward, onward, private troops,
Best of all the fighting groups.
Bush'll tap the kill professions:
Here come the Haliburton Hessians!

-- Leon Freilich

In a 4,523-word commentary this morning, the editors of The New Yorker have endorsed John Kerry for president. Their summary of all the many reasons underscores the need to reclaim American democracy from the coup four years ago that turned the United States into a right-wing banana republic.

After being installed as president by the U.S. Supreme Court following his loss in the popular vote nationwide, George W. Bush took office with his minions and proceeded to rule like the boss of an imperious junta. Instead of governing from the center, which would have acknowleged their lack of a true mandate, they chose to exploit their power without regard to the nation's electorate and with no intention to heal its bitter division.

"From the very day we walked in the building," Vice President Cheney told Bob Woodward in "Plan of Attack," which the editors cite, "a notion of sort of a restrained presidency because it was such a close election, that lasted maybe thirty seconds. It was not contemplated for any length of time. We had an agenda, we ran on that agenda, we won the election -- full speed ahead."

Won the election? Not by a long shot. Not even by a wolfish hair of his chinny-chin-chin.

The Supreme Court decision that halted the vote recount in Florida -- where Bush's slimmest and most questionable of margins if overturned would have given Al Gore the presidency -- was "so shoddily reasoned and transparently partisan," the New Yorker editors write, "that the five justices who endorsed the decision declined to put their names on it, while the four dissenters did not bother to conceal their disgust."

The court ignored the usual "rules for settling electoral disputes of this kind, in federal and state law and in the Constitution itself," and thus installed Bush "by fiat," which "made a mockery not only of popular democracy but also of constitutional republicanism."

It's time to throw the junta bums out.

In life, he was a traitor to his class. In "Trying," a two-character play by Joanna McClelland Glass at the Promenade Theatre in New York, he is hardly that. He's far more the Philadelphia blueblood offended by servants who are "forward" and women who are "bold" than the former New Dealer who served as FDR's attorney general and as Chief Judge at the Nuremberg trials.

We're talking about the playwright's Francis Biddle. He is doddering on the edge of senility in 1967 at age 81, confronted by a new young secretary hired by Biddle's wife to replace the previous secretary who quit rather than put up with his patronizing insults and withering scorn, not to mention the long line of secretaries before her who didn't last.

We're talking about the Francis Biddle who is offended by the deterioration of manners and language he sees all around him; who is offended by new gadgets and even old ones, not least, by the "hideous gas heaters" in his Georgetown office above the garage, which were designed by an "imbecile" (Biddle's favorite epithet for anyone he holds in contempt; another, reserved for his cook, is "clucking succubus"); who is offended by bills he forgot to pay; who is so offended by a great-nephew "using drugs" that he writes him out of his will on the spot.

Luckily for this Francis Biddle, he is played by Fritz Weaver. (Photo by Joan Marcus.) Weaver redeems him by making him much easier to take than he deserves, by not portraying him merely as a cantankerous character made lovable in spite of himself, although the script comes borderline close to that cliché. Weaver turns this Francis Biddle into a credible human being whose record of historic accomplishment is counter-balanced by a personal sense of loss -- principally the death of a young son, which has haunted him ever since -- giving him a tragic perspective on life that makes his snobbism and disdainful tirades, if not sympathetic, at least palatable.

It's not as if Weaver creates this Biddle out of thin air, however. The script does lay the groundwork for his characterization, not only with biographical details that soften us up but with dialogue that shows several other redeeming traits: flashes of dry humor, liberal outrage, love of poetry and an underlying sense of fairness.

Recalling his boarding-school days at Groton, he describes a less-than-privileged experience. It was a place, much like a prison. There, Biddle says, "The Reverend Endicott Peabody damn near killed me with his sanctimonious religiosity. He knew and taught and understood one thing only. He called it 'muscular Christianity.' Please, God, on my knees, God, let me depart this earth without ever again experiencing 'muscular Christianity.'"

Those well-delivered lines draw knowing laughter at the Promenade on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where the audience is likely to be unanimous in its opposition to George W. Bush. They're not the only lines that may be taken as overt references to current politics, either. When Biddle discovers that his new secretary shares his love of e.e. cummings's poetry, they trade favorite lines from the same poem. Hers is, "I will not kiss your fucking flag." His is, "There is some shit I will not eat." Thus we learn that this Francis Biddle, the high-toned curmudgeon who cannot abide anyone using split infinitives, doesn't mind using common vulgarities in a good cause.

I did say "Trying" is a two-hander, didn't I? Which makes it strange not to have said anything yet about the other character, Sarah, the new secretary, who is played by Kati Brazda. Unfortunately, there's nothing much to say about Sarah. Although she's reportedly based on the playwright herself -- Glass once worked as the real-life Biddle's secretary -- she exists as little more than a theatrical device. She's a foil for Biddle, and that's about all.

If you must know, Sarah, like Glass, is a Canadian who hails from Saskatchewan. She's not, as she says, "one of the pleated-plaid Ivy girls" but rather a "prairie Populist." She's 25 (which, based on the casting, is tough to believe) and newly married. She uses speedwriting to take dictation, not shorthand, a point of contention between her and Biddle, and she's hard-working, organized and understanding.
 
It gives away nothing to reveal that Sarah has the "spine" to last as Biddle's secretary, or that her father was an abusive alcohoic, or that she's not completely happy in her marriage, or that she has vague ambitions to be a writer -- because the play itself gives so little away about these clues to her nature. It rarely explores them beyond a mention, and Brazda doesn't flesh them out.

The oddest thing about "Trying" (a title that somebody should have changed) is that it feels so slight despite its length (nearly 2-1/2 hours with an intermission). One reason is that little happens. We get to know this Francis Biddle, and we get to watch him and Sarah getting to know each other. That's it. Another reason is that after they've come to terms, the play fizzles out without an ending. It's as though we've seen them climb a mountain only to discover it was an anthill.
 
"Trying" is at the Promenade Theatre, 2162 Broadway (at 76th Street), New York. Performances are Tues. to Sat., at 8 p.m., with matinees Wed., Sat. and Sun. at 3 p.m. Tickets: $26.25 to $66.25. They may be purchased at the theater, by telephone (212-239-6200) or online at telecharge.com.

Here's a grassroots view of "the hidden extent of systemically ill-considered acquisition actions" for U.S. troops in Iraq, according to a weapons expert who brought it to my attention:

Date: 040718
Slug: VEHICLEARMOR
By: Sgt. Zachary A. Bathon

CAMP VIRGINIA, Kuwait - In a large warehouse outside of Kuwait City civilian contractors from more than 25 countries around the world work in two, 12-hour shifts seven days a week.

They are working around the clock in temperatures reaching 120 degrees to ensure U.S. Marines are protected from improvised explosive devices and small-arms fire during convoy operations by installing new panels, dubbed up-armor, to the gunner's turret, undercarriage and sides of their vehicles.

"Since February we have installed more than 5,000 kits on Marine Corps vehicles," said Chief Warrant Office 2 Eric Gilmer, who hails from Columbus, Ohio, and is a project team leader from Logistics Command, Marine Corps Base Albany, Ga. "The guys in my shop call this 'Operation Armor All.'"

The issue raised by Bathon's report is not how well protected those 5,000 vehicles may now be, our weaons expert says, but rather: "Do the services buy humvees and tanker trucks only for use in parades?" As we know from recent headlines, inadequately armored humvees and tanker trucks are still being sent into hot combat zones.

Sorry, I can't find Bathon's report online at the moment. But it's out there on one of the Marine Corps sites. When I have it, I'll let you know.

The message below was received several weeks ago. Due to an editorial oversight, the staff failed to take note of it at the time.

Dear Straight Up:

Thank you so much for your support!

Due to the enormous influx of avid patrons, The Endangered Species Restaurant is now hiring additional staff in the following categories:

Thick-Skinned Cooks (Oceolt roasting exp.) (2)
Wild-Animal Poachers (6)
Appetizer Cleansers (4)
Rare-Bird Watchers (6)
White-Buffalo Skinners (1)
Samoan Skink Hunters (pending)
Firemen (barbecue experience) (6)

Opportunites: (w/ hazardous duty overtime)

Environmentally Sound Lawyers (7)
Getaway Drivers with armed Humvee permits (12)

No background checks or drug tests! Remain anonymous! However, all applicants must sign a series of waivers.

Sincerely,

Mort Subiet
Special Events Coordinator
2001 Buttes Bluff, Jackson Hole, Wyoming

Dear Mr. Subiet,

Thank you for your message. But you mistake the item about The Endangered Species Restaurant. It was neither support of nor endorsement for the profligate waste and shameless consumption represented by your restaurant. It does occur to me, however, that you may have set a trend. Your restaurant brings to mind a new feature in the revamped New York magazine, which its editors tout as "an upscale/downscale, uptown/downtown multipurpose tool for extracting the maximum amount of pleasure from the city."

In the New York Observer last week, Tom Scocca's summary of that feature gave an idea of the goodies on offer:

Fur-bearing species and their post-mortem habitats:
Mink (Mustela vison)—trim on alligator slingbacks at Judith Lieber
Raccoon(Procyon lotor)—trim on Andrew Mark coat
Rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus)—Alexander McQueen coat

Vintages and prices of Chateau d'Yquem discussed:
1923, $2,013.75 per bottle
1983, $100 per glass (includes dessert)

Average price of featured parkas:
Non-waterproof and/or uncomfortable: $427.75
Waterproof,comfortable: $1,454.20

Some things between $300 and $400, in order of ascending price:
Top-of-the-line Joan Vass linen shirt ($300)
Bottom-of-the-line Bennett Liberty copper-and-leather bowl ($300)
Trip to Isiah Thomas' hairdresser ($350)
Sodium tetradecyl sulfate injections to treat spider veins (initial session) ($375)
Double room at On the Ave Hotel ($375)
Beauty day at Bergdorf Goodman ($393)
Bottom-of-the-line Vita-Mix 5000 blender ($399)

It seems to me that Mr. Socca, by compiling his list, no more intended to endorse the conspicuous consumption represented by New York magazine than I intended to support the cultish tastes of The Endangered Species Restaurant.

Sincerely, etc. etc.

Postscript: "Thank you for publishing our job offerings, and due to your kind endorsement [huh?] we have filled the White Buffalo Skinner position. Don't Regret the Future!" -- Mort Subiet, ESR Special Events Coordinator, Jackson Hole, Wy.

The Blessèd Reverend Repulski was thunderstruck by the Hollywood movie musical "Kismet" on The Movie Channel yesterday. "I actually saw this thing at the Loew's Valencia, in 1955," he recalls. "But I had no idea of the larger meaning then. It's beyond gruesome. It's something Salvador Dali couldn't do on a bad day."

What is the larger meaning? "The most sinister and devastating Al Qaeda plot would be to distribute 100,000 DVD players and DVDs of that flick on the Arab street," Repulski says. "There wouldn't be a live Americano left from Bombay to San Francisco."

Shot in CinemaScope and Eastmancolor, "Kismet" centers on a poor Baghdad poet who attains the rank of Emir in a single day and marries off his daughter to the Caliph. (As Robert Horton points out, "One comic number revolves around a man about to have his hand chopped off for thievery.") The movie was adapted from the 1953 Broadway musical of the same name, a show that even Amazon considers "Broadway at its most demented." 

Directed by Vincent Minelli, the movie starred chesty Howard Keel, belting Dolores Gray ("Baghdad, this irresistible town!"), wet rag Vic Damone, Ann Blyth, Monty Woolley and a cast of road-company extras. From the beginning film critics regarded this musical Arabian night as a Minelli failure. A half-century on it may be the kitschiest movie musical ever made. 

The song list alone is staggering. It includes "Sands Of Time," "Not Since Ninevah," "Was I Wuzir," "Bazaar of the Caravans," "Rahadlakum," "The Olive Tree," and two pop hits of the period, "Stranger in Paradise" and "Baubles, Bangles and Beads."

"If that's not enough to incite the Arab street," Repulski says, "Doug Fairbanks and Sabu in their Mideast flicker fantasies, distributed in equal quantities, would do the trick."

The Guardian in London ran that headline over a story brought to our attention by Arts & Letters Daily. The story recounts the results of a project that had Brits writing to Ohio voters about the upcoming election. Now the fair country folk of the New World are writing back. See, for instance, the second letter down:

Have you not noticed that Americans don't give two shits what Europeans think of us? Each email someone gets from some arrogant Brit telling us why to NOT vote for George Bush is going to backfire, you stupid, yellow-toothed pansies ... I don't give a rat's ass if our election is going to have an effect on your worthless little life. I really don't. If you want to have a meaningful election in your crappy little island full of shitty food and yellow teeth, then maybe you should try not to sell your sovereignty out to Brussels and Berlin, dipshit. Oh, yeah -- and brush your goddamned teeth, you filthy animals.
-- Wading River, NY

Polite. Elegant. Thoughtful. Judicious. Wise. All the qualities you'd expect from an enlightened American, dontcha think?

Though I'm a New Yorker, I'm as pleased as any Beantown fan that the Red Sox beat the Yankees for the American League pennant. I grew up rooting for the Brooklyn Dodgers, which meant I grew up hating the Yankees. I lived close enough to Ebbets Field to hear the roar of the crowd when someone hit one into the stands or out of the park. (I used to see some of the Dodgers eating at Toomey's Diner on Rogers Avenue.) So I've never gotten over my sense of Yankee injustice. You don't need to hate George Steinbrenner to hate the Yankees.

Which brings me to today's column by Richard Reeves. He writes:

I saw "The Play," when the Alex Rodriguez deliberately karate-chopped Bronson Arroyo's arm to knock the ball out of his glove in the eighth inning of game six. The umpires caught it, which made the game fairer, but so did the cameras which means A-Rod will look like a bush leaguer forever.

It's only a game, so they say, but I was struck by the way the game's announcers -- Tim McCarver, Joe Buck and Al Leiter -- handled it. In rough paraphrase, one of them said: "Hey, he was going to be out anyway, so why not take the shot?" One or both of the others agreed.

Welcome to America, 2004. Or 2000 in Florida. It's not how you play the game, it's whether you win or lose. Obviously, this American attitude pre-dates the 21st century, a century off to a lousy start. It's been more than thirty years since Vince Lombardi thrilled Richard Nixon by saying, "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing."

And, while I am in a confessional mood, I will alienate anyone who has read this far by saying this: I thought Paul Hamm should have given back this year's Olympic gold medal for best all-round male gymnast in Athens. The other guy, the South Korean, won the thing fair and square. "Fair and square," that's a phrase that was in use when I was a lot younger. You don't claim to be the champion because one judge couldn't add right. Hamm was great and the whole word saw that, but he would have been greater if he ignored all the grown-ups telling him possession is nine-tenths of the law.

Anyway, if the Astros beat the Cardinals tonight for the National League pennant, it would mean a World Series between the Red Sox and the Astros, which could have an impact on the election, ridiculous as that may seem: A showdown between Boston and Houston? Between Kerry's team and the ninny's team? Spare us the drama.

Postscript: Cards 5, Astros 2. We are spared.

The following message arrived a while ago, but was overlooked due to an editorial lapse:

Dear Straight Up:

Thank you so much for your support! Due to the enormous influx of avid patrons, The Endangered Species Restaurant is now hiring additional staff in the following categories:

Thick-Skinned Cooks (Oceolt roasting exp.) (2)
Wild-Animal Poachers (6)
Appetizer Cleansers (4)
Rare-Bird Watchers (6)
White-Buffalo Skinners (1)
Samoan Skink Hunters (pending)
Firemen (barbecue experience) (6)

Opportunites: (w/ hazardous duty overtime)

Environmentally Sound Lawyers (7)
Getaway Drivers with armed Humvee permits (12)

No background checks or drug tests! Remain anonymous! However, all applicants must sign a series of waivers.

Sincerely,

Mort Subiet
Special Events Coordinator
2001 Buttes Bluff
Jackson Hole, Wyoming

Dear Mr. Subiet,

Thank you for your message. But you mistake the item. CULTISH TASTES was neither support for nor endorsement of the profligate waste and shameless consumption represented by your restaurant.

It does occur to me, however, that you may have begun a trend. Your restaurant brings to mind a new feature in the revamped New York magazine, which is being touted as "an upscale/downscale, uptown/downtown multipurpose tool for extracting the maximum amount of pleasure from the city."

Tom Scocca's summary of that magazine feature in the New York Observer (third item) gave an idea of the extracted goodies:

Fur-bearing species and their post-mortem habitats:
Mink (Mustela vison)—trim on alligator slingbacks at Judith Lieber
Raccoon (Procyon lotor)—trim on Andrew Mark coat
Rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus)—Alexander McQueen coat

Vintages and prices of Chateau d'Yquem discussed:
1923, $2,013.75 per bottle
1983, $100 per glass (includes dessert)

Average price of featured parkas:
Non-waterproof and/or uncomfortable: $427.75
Waterproof,comfortable: $1,454.20

Some things between $300 and $400, in order of ascending price:
Top-of-the-line Joan Vass linen shirt ($300)
Bottom-of-the-line Bennett Liberty copper-and-leather bowl ($300)
Trip to Isiah Thomas' hairdresser ($350)
Sodium tetradecyl sulfate injections to treat spider veins (initial session) ($375)
Double room at On the Ave Hotel ($375)
Beauty day at Bergdorf Goodman ($393)
Bottom-of-the-line Vita-Mix 5000 blender ($399)

It seems to me that Mr. Socca, by offering his list, no more intended to endorse the conspicuous consumption that New York magazine represents than I intended to support the grotesque profanation of nature represented by The Endangered Species Restaurant.

Acceptez, s'il vous plaît, mes sentiments les plus distingués, etc. etc.

Speaking of The Guardian -- see DEAR LIMEY ASSHOLES -- Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland writes about having "the same queasy feeling" he had four years ago when he followed the 2000 presidential campaign around the U.S. of A. Only now, he figures, the clash is about more than Republicans vs. Democrats, Bush vs. Kerry, right vs. left. It's "tradition against modernity, faith against reason. The true believers pitted against the 'reality-based community.'" A friend of mine from northern California -- Jennie D., who tipped me to the column -- has had it up to here with the true believers. So it's Southward, ho! She sends word that she and her ol' man are shipping out to Florida for moveon.org. Come Election Day, "I'll be on the phone banks," she says, "and he'll be tooling around driving voters to the polls."

Bulletin from heaven (scroll down): Did God's little deputies help prevent a terrorist attack on the United States over the past three years?

Attorney General John Ashcroft told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce yesterday that Providence was partly reponsible. "But the hand of Providence," he said, "has been assisted by the dedicated men and women of the Department of Justice." It's good to know that God and the department have such a co-operative relationship.

Found editorial: Jersey City speaks, although the spelling suggests at least one child left behind.

Kurt Vonnegut's "Requiem for a Dreamer" is making the rounds. It's a conversation between Vonnegut and out-of-print science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, and turned out to be their last:

Trout committed suicide by drinking Drano at midnight on October 15 in Cohoes, New York, after a female psychic using tarot cards predicted that the environmental calamity George W. Bush would once again be elected president of the most powerful nation on the planet by a five-to-four decision of the Supreme Court, which included "100 per-cent of the black vote."

And we thought there might be a glimmer of hope?

A reader writes:

This is a non-apochryphal, verifiable story. A fine classical pianist of my acquaintance went under the knife a month or so ago. Just before the anesthetic took effect, she looked up at her surgeon and said:

"If I don't make it through this, promise me one thing."

"What is it, Sonia?"

"That you won't vote for Bush for president."

The doctor promised her there was no danger of that. Alas, Sonia didn't make it. The doctor intends to keep his promise.

Sonia (not her real name) may not have given her life for her country, but she certainly was a patriot.

Take a tip from David Hackworth, whose "Memo for the President-Elect" makes these recommendations:

+ Immediately fire SecDef Donald Rumsfeld, all of his Pentagon senior civilian assistants and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers.
+ Replace Rumsfeld with retired Gen. Anthony Zinni and give this tough, smart, proven leader a free hand to bring in the best people to reshape and streamline our armed forces for the long counterinsurgency fight ahead.
+ Fire National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and replace her with retired Gens. Wes Clark or John Sheehan.

Hackworth makes a dozen other recommendations, too. Go read the rest. (If you don't know who he is, check him out.) He's no armchair general but a candid, experienced, highly decorated combat veteran with a varied military background from World War II on. According to his biography:

In 1971, as the Army's youngest colonel he spoke out on national television saying, "This is a bad war ... it can't be won we need to get out." In that interview, he also said that the North Vietnamese flag would fly over Saigon in four years -- a prediction that turned out to be right on target. He was the only senior officer to sound off about the insanity of the war. Understandably, Nixon and the Army weren't real happy with his shooting off his mouth.

Which brings to mind the investigation of the soldiers who refused convoy orders in Iraq. Whomever is held to account, "it seems far less likely" that Rummy Boy and his minions "will ever have to answer for their egregious failures" of planning and leadership.

Meantime, have a look at Georgie Anne Geyer's scary column from the other day,"Bush re-election could lead to imperial dreams." It comes a long way from the notion Joan Didion pointed up recently, that before 9/11 "it had still been possible to imagine the clouded outcome of the 2000 election as its saving feature, an assured deterrent to any who would exercise undue reach."

Then think about this: A majority of American voters believe the Ignoramus in Chief has mismanaged the economy and the war in Iraq, according to a new New York Times/CBS poll, and that his tax cuts favored the rich. They also believe John Kerry "would do a better job preserving Social Security, creating jobs and ending the war in Iraq."

Yet the poll found that, despite believing the ignoramus has been wrong on so much else, 68 percent believe he "would make the right decisions to prevent another terrorist attack." Why they believe that must be one of the great mysteries. But largely because of that and their doubts about Kerry, the poll shows the presidential election at this point to be a dead heat.

The poll also found that 59 percent of Americans believe the country is heading in the wrong direction; 59 percent believe the ignoramus's policies favored corporate interests; only 38 percent approved of the way the Republican-dominated Congress is doing its job, and that 46 percent said they would vote for the Democratic Congressional candidate, compared to 38 percent who would vote Republican.

You'd think the poll would have shown a brewing landslide against an ignoramus with such high disapproval ratings. In the real world that would have been a no brainer. But this is America, which seems to be living in a dream world. Are we in shit too deep to climb out? Will voters suddenly wake up on election day and make the right decision? I wouldn't count on it. But if it's too much to hope for, why the hell am I blogging?

Harry's Bar in Paris, famous as an American tourist hangout and for sponsoring the International Imitation Hemingway Contest, also runs a Straw Vote for president. It began in 1924, and it's supposed to have been wrong only once -- in 1976, when Carter beat Ford. If this year's vote holds up, John Kerry will be the next president. (The tally was 54 percent for Kerry, 46 percent for the Ignoramus in Chief. Voting began on Oct. 2 and was open to anyone with an American passport.) How many voters were there? I have no idea. But Kerry won by a larger margin at the Cologne clone of Harry's Bar, 78 percent to 22 percent. Let's raise a toast to Harry, who died in 1958, for the glimmer of hope he's given us.

Postscript: I never thought I'd say this: Let's raise a toast to Ahnold, too, for backing stem-cell research.

Low Culture wants you. The Web site, which covers politics and entertainment, has 10 available positions. It is seeking a Publisher, a Pastry Chef, a Writer (Housekeeping and Cleaning), a Token Hot Girl, an Animal Handler, a Joke Explainer, a List Compiler, a Resident Homosexual, an Agent Provocateur (French), and a Dance Operative.

Fully expected: This endorsement from The New York Times: "John Kerry for President." It makes the case most of all with a dead-on indictment of the Ignoramus in Chief. But here's a pleasant surprise from a totally Republican newspaper: "Why We Cannot Endorse President Bush For Re-Election."

As stewards of the [Tampa] Tribune's editorial voice, we find it unimaginable to not be lending our voice to the chorus of conservative-leaning newspapers endorsing the president's re-election. We had fully expected to stand with Bush, whom we endorsed in 2000. ...

But we are unable to endorse President Bush for re-election because of his mishandling of the war in Iraq, his record deficit spending, his assault on open government and his failed promise to be a "uniter not a divider'' within the United States and the world.

It's less surprising that Kerry failed to get their endorsement either -- Tampa's mugwumps decided to sit this one out -- and no surprise that the Ignoramus in Chief won endorsements from the Chicago Tribune, Rocky Mountain News in Denver, the Arizona Republic in Phoenix, and the Dallas Morning News.

Here's the Associated Press's comprehensive list of endorsements from dailies large and small across the country: 19 for Kerry, 15 for Bush.

Postscript: The Washington Post has yet to declare its choice, but judging from today's lead editorial on civil liberties and terrorism it's leaning toward Kerry. The Los Angeles Times has not endorsed a presidential candidate in more than three decades. This year it may break tradition, but so far tradition holds. Today its lead editorial gives Kerry a lukewarm edge on energy policy.

In the florid words of my good friend Repulski: "A great and testy old fart steps up to the plate in those worn and dusty spiked shoes before the indifferent crowd. He knocks the spikes against the bat, just to clean the bullshit of old games away, the ugly hard toil of yesteryear, remembering when he was a confident extra-base hitter. Some called him a slugger. Things are different now. He loosens up his arthritic shoulders and swings -- and It's Out of the Fucking Ballpark! Praise the Blood-Soaked Lord!"

In other words, if you haven't seen it yet, take a look at Norman Mailer's commentary in the Nov. 4 issue of the New York Review of Books. (Scroll way down). It begins:

A victory for Bush may yet be seen as one of our nation's unforgettable ironies. No need to speak again of the mendacities, manipulations, and spiritual mediocrity of the post–9/11 years; the time has come to recover from the shock that so abysmal a record (and so complete a refusal to look at the record) looks nonetheless likely to prevail. Who, then, are we? In just what kind of condition are the American people?

It goes after Ahnold:

A quick look at our movie stars gives a hint. The liberal left has been attached to actors like Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson. They spoke to our cynicism and to our baffled idealism. But the American center moved their loyalties from the decency of Gary Cooper to the grit and self-approval of John Wayne. Now, we have the apotheosis of Arnold Schwarzenegger. He captured convention honors at the Garden in the course of informing America, via the physicality of his presence, that should the nation ever come to such a dire pass as to need a dictator, why, bless us all, he, Arnold, can offer the best chin to come along since Benito Mussolini. Chin is now prepared to replace spin.

"Bush's appeal is, after all, to the stupid," Mailer continues. "They, too, are inflexible -- they also know that maintaining one's stupidity can become a kind of strength, provided you never change your mind."

Then comes the topper, hitting a vein that nobody has dared to use before. It's deeply personal, more revealing about the character and religiosity of the Ignoramus in Chief than anything anyone else has said in public, and it spurts real blood:

It is cruel but true that he has the vulnerability of an ex-alcoholic.

People in Alcoholics Anonymous speak of themselves as dry drunks. As they see it, they may no longer drink, yet a sense of imbalance at having to do without liquor does not go away. Rather the impulse is sequestered behind the faith that God is supporting one's efforts to remain sober.

Giving up booze may have been the most heroic act of George W.'s life, but America could now be paying the price. George W.'s piety has become a pomade to cover all the tamped-down dry-drunk craziness that still stirs in his livid inner air.

Mailer knows from boozers (ex- and otherwise). His words have the ring of truth, and those are just the highlights. Go read, while keeping your fingers crossed the irony will not come to pass.

Sy Hersh talks about the road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib. How come nobody talks about the link between American pop culture and Guantanamo? Oops. Somebody just has. Not in so many words, but you could infer it from today's report in The New York Times about interrogators at Guantanamo who used Limp Bizkit, Rage Against the Machine and Eminem to torture their prized prisoners. A Pentagon spokesman claims it wasn't torture. Hell, when so many Americans willingly subject themselves to Bizkit, RATM and Slim Shady for pleasure, there's a certain logic to the claim. You say the prisoners were stripped, shackled and forced to listen? Sounds kinky. Just a bit of body discipline, the next step up from body-piercing.

Sandy Dijsktra has been called an über agent as much for the passion she brings to her projects as for the authors she represents. Apparently her passion also extends to politics. The other day her authors -- among them Amy Tan, Mike Davis, Susan Faludi, Maxine Hong Kingston, Peggy Orenstein, John Richardson, Kate White, Karen Houppert, Jess Bravin, Maureen McHugh, Luis Urrea and Kevin Maney -- received this email message:

Dear Friends,

Thinking about "Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Humankind" in October, we at the Dijkstra Agency have decided that these goals can be best achieved not by our annual New Year's card but instead by taking the funds allocated to their production and sending them to the peace candidate, John Kerry!

Dijkstra sent along an essay by E.L. Doctorow, "The Unfeeling President," as well. Doctorow writes: "He does not suffer the death of our 21-year-olds who wanted to be what they could be. ... He hasn't the mind for it. ... He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn. ...  To mourn is to express regret and he regrets nothing. ... He cannot mourn but is a figure of such moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves."

Dijkstra's passionate beliefs are not all that sets her apart. Unlike most top literary agents, she's based not in New York but in the little southern California beach town of Del Mar, best known for its quaint, 67-year-old race track. She's also crazy about recruiting authors from the ranks of journalists. Interviewed by the editor of the ASJA Monthly, published by the American Society of Journalists and Authors, Djikstra explained:

Journalists are the source of intense interest by publishers these days. They are the kings and queens of Bookland, in that they bring credentials, writing talent, a sense of story and access. And the books they produce represent a new kind of history-writing for a wider readership. Called "narrative nonfiction," these stories are hot! Since fiction can be so tough to sell, everyone wants the story du jour and/or some bizarre twist on the same from now or the past. The quality of the writing makes all the difference.

As a book-writing journalist myself, I say amen to that. Besides, it's good to see somebody standing up for professional journalists, who have come under attack these days for all sorts of reasons, legitimate and otherwise, as perhaps never before. So hat's off to Dijkstra. (And no, she's not my agent.)

Correction: John Richardson, Susan Faludi and Peggy Orenstein had their key books launched by the Sandy Djikstra Literary Agency but are no longer represented by the agency.

Taking their title from Robert Schumann's artsong, "Mondnacht," Abbie Conant and William Osborne have created a short video commentary on the torture at Abu Ghraib. It is a deeply felt editorial imbued with sorrowful beauty. It uses Schumann's music, the "radiant voice" of soprano Barbara Bonney and the pianio accompaniment of Vladimir Ashkenazy to give dignity to the torture victims. It also uses some of the horrific photos we've all seen. But while it is a form of photo journalism, which might under ordinary circumstances be enough, it transcends journalism and crosses into the realm of art. Please take a look.

In last night's third debate, which was supposed to be about domestic issues, I didn't hear a single mention of oil. Not one word about those three little letters. Yet oil -- supply, cost and dwindling geological reserves -- is the greatest domestic crisis we are likely to face in this decade: Greater than the deficit, jobs, taxes, health care, social security, you name it. Even greater than all of them combined.

I'm not making this up. David Owen is. In a fascinating article in the current New Yorker, "Green Manhattan" (unfortunately not online), which makes the counterintuitive case that our big cities are more energy efficient and friendlier to the environment than our sprawling suburbs, Owen quotes a warning from "Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil," by David Goodstein, a professor at the California Institute of Technology.

With roughly half the planet's total petroleum supply already consumed, according to Goodstein's book, "the world will soon start to run out of conventionally produced, cheap oil," and we've got less than 10 years to solve the problem. As Owen writes, the "devastating global petroleum crisis will begin not when we have pumped the last barrel out of the ground but when we have reached the halfway point, because at that moment, for the first time in history, the line representing supply will fall through the line representing demand," and "we will probably pass that point within the current decade, if we haven't passed it already."

The result is that "various well-established laws of economics are about to assert themselves, with disastrous repercussions for almost everything." (Italics added.) And here's Goodstein's capper: "Civilization as we know it will come to an end sometime in this century unless we can find a way to live without fossil fuels." Does that need repeating?  I think it does: "Civilization as we know it will come to an end sometime in this century unless we can find a way to live without fossil fuels."  If that seems far away to you, how about this? We'll be starting down that road by 2015.

So I leave it to my preferred overnight arbiters  Alessandra Stanley and Tom Shales and Jame Wolcott to say who won and who lost the third debate. I'll also quote Wolcott, even though I think he gives Kerry too much credit, because his comments are the sharpest and because I hope he's right.

Bush is now down 3-zip. Blank looks, a trace of drool, bad jokes that hit a wall of flopsweat, weaselling out on Roe v. Wade and minimum wage, a lot of kerfluffling to fill out his time -- Bush bombed badly and only avoided disaster because Kerry was too scripted. But Kerry knocked the assault-weapons issue into the seats and handled the Social Security issue convincingly -- his poise and knowledgeability carried the night, as I think the polls will reflect. (CNN just came in at Kerry 52, Bush 39, to the surprise of their knucklehead pundits.)

As far as I could tell, however, both candidates came in last by failing to address the looming oil crisis. The moderator Bob Shieffer is partly to blame for not asking the question. But if they had wanted to deal with the subject they could have. Both had no trouble ignoring any question they felt like, simply by replying with boilerplate about some other subject. Both did that so often it didn't matter what question was asked. In pundit parlance that's called "pivoting." In the real world it's called bullshit.

Bob Dylan thought he'd had it. "Many didn't feel my heart was in it any more," he says. They were right. He was a burned-out rock star. Then he went into a bar and heard a small jazz band. Suddenly he felt inspired. "It was mostly the singer," he says.

In what's believed to be his first broadcast interview in 19 years -- to promote his new memoir "Chronicles, Volume One" -- Dylan talks about how every day he still thinks of quitting and why he's bothered when people call him "the voice of his generation." He says simply, "these colossal accolades and titles, they get in the way."

Is he back on track? Judging from the concert at Doubleday Field in Cooperstown, N.Y., which opened his tour this summer with Willie Nelson, I didn't think so then. And judging from the tone of his NPR interview yesterday, I don't think he thinks so now. But more than any other poet/songwriter of our time, including all the Beatles, Bob Dylan is irreplaceable. Also unstoppable. That's just how it is and how it should be.

Here comes the third debate. As I was saying about the first debate, "Will voters ever get to see what those guys were scribbling so furiously?" I suspected the Ignoramus in Chief was doodling his mantra, "significant progress," and Kerry his counter-mantra, "four more years of the same." James Wolcott figures debaters' notes, in future, should be confiscated and subjected to graphologists, "if need be," for comparative "insight into their thought processes." Wolcott suspects that in the second debate it was "a moo-cow" doodle vs. "a better America for you and me" diagram.

A stiff maverick is a hard man to please," Leon Freilich messages, adding a lovely and appropriate rhyme inspired by yesterday's item about a Jersey City madam empowered by technology (as predicted, though not mentioned, by this year's winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics).

CALLING ALL GIRLS

Belle de nuit,
What's your fee?
Belle de jour,
More than a whore?
(Excuse, please,
The New Yorkese.)
Escort services
Make men nervices,
Fearing their cheating
Will result in a meeting
With the source of strife,
The layabout wife.
Still, better to turn
To a whore than burn,
As Saint Paul said
In his hotsheet bed.

A message from Repulski with less than an hour to go: "Can't face this silly debate. After a disastrous news day like this, if Kerry can't exploit it the man isn't qualified to walk poodles on the Upper East Side."

Will the wonders of technology never cease? Two mavericks in economics -- Edward C. Prescott, 63, and Finn E. Kydland, 60 -- were just awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize for demonstrating that "innovative technology" and some other stuff "play a much greater role in causing booms and recession than fluctuations in demand." In other words, they "placed new emphasis on supply-side shocks like technology in explaining higher productivity."

This must hardly come as news to Mae Lee, a Jersey City, N.J., madam who has exploited the power of technology to grow her business and increase its productivity. As Andrew Jacobs reports this morning, "The realm of the dingy bordello and the vengeful pimp is increasingly giving way to professionally run enterprises, many of them headed by women, that have seized on the anonymity and marketing power of the Internet."

Nobel laureates Prescott and Kyland did not mention the empowerment of women in their prize-winning work, clearly an oversight. But Jacobs, who did not share in the prize, points out that the Manhattan Yellow Pages these days lists more than 30 pages of escort services, far more than the number of pages listing psychologists, plumbers or real estate brokers. (Talk about empowerment, Mae Lee also runs "a Christmas toy drive for needy children.")

As long as the subject of technologically empowered call girls has come up, our favorite former blogger, Belle de Jour, will have a book out soon, "Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl." If it's as entertaining her blog was, it ought to be a movie.

Coincidentally, a friend writes:

I saw Robert Frank's "Cocksucker Blues" (actually it was little more than raw footage barely spliced together) at a special screening, when I was living in London. It was at a little avant-theater in Chelsea. Go see it if it comes your way ... classic verite in the rawest sense, "real" to say the least. I always wondered what happened to that footage. Frank, as you likely know, made "Pull My Daisy" with Kerouac, Ginsberg and Corso in the late '50s.

Released in 1959, to be exact. There's also a jazz album "Pull My Daisy," by the David Amram Quartet, and a poem "Pull My Daisy," by Kerouac, Ginsberg and Neal Cassady. Here's the first stanza:

Pull my daisy
tip my cup
all my doors are open
Cut my thoughts
for coconuts
all my eggs are broken
Jack my Arden
gate my shades
woe my road is spoken
Silk my garden
rose my days
now my prayers awaken

That's the technology of language. Very productive.

How many gaffes and factual errors will be heard in tomorrow night's third presidential debate? It's anyone's guess. But our hothead Ignoramus in Chief is sure to make the most of his chance to display more of them.

Which reminds me: Steven Lubet, a constitutional law professor at Northwestern University, picked up on the ninny's remark in the second debate about the Dred Scott case and filling a vacancy on the Supreme Court, but completely missed the intention behind it.

The professor laments the ninny's "woeful ignorance of American history" and points out that his understanding is upside down and backwards. "This is no small matter," Lubet writes. "The president must defend and uphold the United States Constitution, so it seems pretty reasonable to expect him to know something about it, not to mention the causes of the Civil War."

He's correct, of course. It is no small matter. But Lubet apparently doesn't realize that this time the ninny's remark was code masquerading as ignorance, a signal to his anti-abortion base. Lubet must have missed Joe Buck's post on Saturday at Kicking Ass, Daily Dispatches From the DNC:

Some of you might be wondering why [Bush] brought up Dred Scott (he wouldn't appoint a justice who agreed with the Dred Scott decision). This was code. To break the code, Google for "Dred Scott Roe Wade". Pro-life activists regularly call the Roe v. Wade decision "Dred Scott II." So what Bush was doing was to communicate to his followers that he would appoint judges who will overturn Roe v. Wade, in a tricky way that would cause the rest of us, who don't follow pro-life rhetoric, to miss it.

Here's Timothy Noah's clarifying follow-up in Slate on Monday. It neatly explains the ninny's "borderline-incoherent ramble." I suspect the good professor isn't as Web savvy as he might be. Ditto for the Trib's op-ed editors.

Postscript: A reader writes:

You may have gotten Bush off the hook.  Many, probably especially Lubet (who is very conservative), know the code.  What hardly anyone recalls (or ever knew) is Article 4.  The Dred Scott decision was strictly correct. It is not a misinterpretation of the constitution.  The code backfired.  It is emblematic of the ignorance of its users, especially its creators.

The reference is to Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3 (scroll down).

From another reader: "You and Joe Buck make a good point. Not since the Communists or the white supremacists has any speaker delved in code terms as much and as skillfully as Bush. The Rapture hides in every other word."

"American authorities have shut down 20 independent media centres by seizing their British-based webservers," the London Guardian reports this morning.

An "American-owned web hosting company" was forced "to hand over two servers" used by "an international media network which covers social justice issues and provides a 'news-wire,' to which its users contribute. The websites affected by the seizure span 17 countries."

An FBI spokesman, quoted by the Guardian, told Agence France-Presse: "It is not an FBI operation." The FBI "acknowledged that a subpoena had been issued ... but said this was at the request of Italian and Swiss authorities."

Is this another Aschroft "initiative" to conceal legal abuses by the Justice Department? It reads like one.

A British journalist at the media network told the Guardian: "The authorities may just be using this as a trawling exercise. We don't know." 

Carlos Perez says he was so angry about 9/11 he quit his job as a firefighter and joined the Marines. "To be honest, I just wanted to take revenge." He's now in Iraq in a platoon known as the "81s" -- so named for its 81 mm. mortar rounds -- fighting with the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment based in Iskandariyah, 30 miles southwest of Baghdad.

The 20-year-old former firefighter has had a revelation. A