We ran a lot of Public Service Announcements on my old radio show, alas. Ad reps found it hard to sell that coveted 11:51 PM slot, so we’d have PSAs telling people not to smoke dope. Also, please join the Coast Guard. Also, only you can prevent forest fires. Unless you are in the Coast Guard. This message has been brought to you by the Ad Council, which is dedicated to filling air time so the host can run down the hall to the bathroom.

The ads were always stiff or dull or painful, like they’d brought over the creative team from East Germany. (“We’re the team who came up with the slogan, “The wall looks the same on the other side, so why bother?’) It was a mystery: ad people can make you want to buy Corn-flavored Ice Cream if they try hard, but give them a Big Issue and they act like someone who couldn’t sell a pail of water to someone whose pants were on fire.

Here’s the latest one making the rounds:

Nice lean protein-packed beef, a bun, good ol’ Fancy Ketchup = intravenous drug use. It’s not as bad as last week’s festival of Exploding Children, but it’s the other side of the bloody coin: the dreary, miserable, scolding soul of our Betters.

(NOTE: video not showing up in preview; I'm sure the mods will fix, but the link will take you to the YouTube site.)

According to Nate Silver over at FiveThirtyEight, Republicans can expand the Senate playing field by putting Connecticut and West Virginia into play.

Were they to win those states, Republicans could lose California, Delaware and Washington and still take claim of the Senate. And new polling suggests they could do just that.

The RCP polling average shows Democrat Dick Blumenthal at a four point advantage over Republican Linda McMahon in the Connecticut Senate race for Chris Dodd's vacated seat. Due to the low population of undecideds in the state at this late stage of the game, Nate Silver argues that this might be a pretty solid four point lead for Blumenthal. But newly-released ads like this one might just keep the seat up for grabs.

As a result of a new study, Stanford researchers have found a way to predict which human embryos will have the best shot of survival. An unnamed Ricochet member has some reactions to this news:

The results of this study are of practical significance for parents contemplating in vitro fertilization, the procedure that gave us our two children (Dr. Cedars, described in the article, was our IVF doctor). This is because, while most parents are keenly, even desperately interested in having one child, practical and financial realities make them leery of multiples. Twins are fairly manageable, but it gets a lot harder with triplets or more.

For parents who aren't opposed to abortion, the practice is to transfer into the uterus three, four, or more embryos/blastocysts so as to maximize the chances for at least one successful birth. If more than one blastocyst implants, then the parents can engage in "selective reduction" -- using ultrasound to try to guess which implanted blastocyst is most likely to make it, and then aborting the others.

Parents who, like us, would never even consider abortion, only transfer as many blastocysts as we think we can handle, and freeze the rest. This is more time-consuming and expensive, but it's our only considered alternative.

Better assessment of each blastocyst's viability decreases the odds of having high multiples. For example, if two of your blastocysts are of high quality and four of low quality, you can transfer one or two high quality blastocysts immediately and freeze the rest. Then, for the next attempt, you can transfer the remaining four, low quality blastocysts. In the unlikely event that you end up with four implantations, you can carry them to term and either (a) count your blessings and deal with the challenges; or (b) adopt some of them out.

Our Ricochet member also notes that the SFGate article linked to above describes the author of the study, Dr. Renee Reijo Pera, as the director of Stanford's Center for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research and Education. Yet it quotes her as saying:

The authors, we sat around in a group watching the first video, and we said, 'My goodness, that's beautiful.' If you watch the videos, this is how life begins. The fascinating thing for me is that this is our origin.

In response, our member states:

It's very hard for me to understand how she reconciles her apparently acute understanding of life's beginnings in the embryo with her center's destruction of the same.

As the November midterms approach, there seems to be a growing sense of unease on the Right. Every poll that shows races tightening or every story about the Democrats being poised to go negative in the closing weeks of the campaign brings a chill to the spine of Conservatives as they wonder if they peaked too early. Even Ricochet’s own Peter Robinson, never known for wobbly knees, seems to be concerned with each poll showing any sort of change drifting to the Democrats. Well, to borrow a phrase from the President to his dispirited base, “buck up.” Everything will be fine.

Polls tend to tighten as elections get closer, and the trend was so unfavorable for the Dems, it would have been surprising if things didn’t get a little closer. But the anger and seriousness of purpose of the Tea Party folks and others on the Right are not dissipating; they still can’t wait for November 2 to arrive. And the groups that most strongly back the President are those traditionally least likely to vote. Besides which, pollsters still privately concede that their data may be underestimating discontent as respondents, aware of the campaign to tar critics as racists, are increasingly unwilling to express their views openly.

However, if you’re looking for the most indisputable evidence that everything will be fine, look no further than Bob Shrum, Democratic political consultant, among whose assignments has been senior advisor to the Kerry-Edwards campaign in 2004 and the Gore campaign in 2000. He worked to get Dick Gephardt the 1988 Democratic Presidential nomination, and he helped prepare Michael Dukakis for his debates against George H.W. Bush that same year. In all, he’s 0-8 when it comes to his work on Presidential campaigns. That Bob Shrum has confidently predicted that Democrats would hold on to both houses of Congress. So sleep well.

Five hours from now--I write at 10AM Pacific--I'll be recording an episode of Uncommon Knowledge with Victor Davis Hanson. My plan? Around the world in 40 minutes, asking, simply, how Victor believes the United States is doing in Afghanistan, in our relations with Europe, in our dealings with China, and so on, allotting each of the five segments to a country or continent.

Care to suggest a question?

The Blessing of the Animals, this very morning.

I'm up in Hanover, NH today visiting Dartmouth College on some business and in my spare time, I caught up with my old friends at The Dartmouth Review, the biweekly conservative publication where I was once editor-in-chief. The new editor of the paper is devoting the entire forthcoming issue of the paper to a question that we here at Ricochet have discussed, in passing, before:

What is conservatism?

Pegged to the national debates on the meaning of conservatism, The Review's forthcoming issue will include articles written by students about how they came to conservatism and what it means to them. Since we, as a conservative community, have wrestled with this question in the past, I thought I would bring it up formally for us to discuss. I know the editors at The Review are looking for ideas and inspiration and what better place for them to find those than here!

So what is conservatism? How did you come to it? Was it by conversion or by habit? Let's discuss.

A new poll out by Gallup this morning spells more bad news for Obama and the Democrats. Among blacks, Gallup found that Obama's approval rating was 91%. Among whites, it's only 36%. The Dems are clearly worried about black turnout for the midterms. They've launched a 2 million dollar outreach campaign targeted at urban and African American communities. Yet, only 25% of blacks have given thought to the election.

The president's general approval rating was at 45% which, as the LA Times points out, is not high enough to withstand significant losses in November:

Presidents with approval ratings below 50% at midterm time see their party suffer substantial losses in its congressional membership, regardless of how much explaining and blaming the president attempts in the campaign leading up to what becomes, in effect, a referendum on the president.

And since Democrats currently hold substantial majorities in both the Senate and House of Representatives, they have substantially more seats to lose. A switch of 39 House and 10 Senate seats would give control of both houses to the Republicans for the first time since they lost it in 2007 after 12 years of GOP majorities.

Wow. This is a twist, indeed! They're planning to build the darned thing out of Stars of David! If nothing else, give 'em credit for keeping the world guessing.

P.J. O'Rourke asks this question in a well-reported, thoughtful piece in this month's World Affairs Journal. It is not, alas, particularly funny, which I know we all expect from him, but it's good journalism and it raises interesting questions:

Specific, concrete political policy goals were disavowed by almost all of the people I talked to in the Tea Party movement (I use the term in the overly broad public commentator way). Instead, what I heard were arguments against the kind of centralized government power that concocts political policy goals—arguments of the Friedrich Hayek or Milton Friedman kind, that individuals are the best judges of how to employ their individual energies and resources. Whatever else the Tea Party movement believes, it espouses (and evidences) a firm belief in the self-organizing capacities of free individuals.

Unfortunately, we individuals are rarely free in the face of foreign policy. Foreign policy is highly centralized. And the political power that centralizes foreign policy is—when wielded by foreigners—outside the realm of our political influence no matter how popular the Tea Party becomes.

Nor is the past record of decentralization in foreign policy reassuring. It went well when the Soviet Union lost control of Eastern Europe’s foreign policy. It did not go so well when the European colonial powers lost control of the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. And total decentralization of foreign policy meant a nightmare in the former Yugoslavia.

I'm extremely sympathetic to a point raised by one of his interview subjects:

“We have a long way to go,” said the blogger. “Until we can fix the problems in our own backyard we can’t fix things over the pond. How can we have a foreign policy when we don’t have a policy that works for ourselves? It’s not going to happen in one election. It’s not going to happen in two elections. We’re looking at a hundred-year project. It’s going to take fifty years to get back to Reagan.”

I fear he may be right. But the world does not precisely look poised to slumber peaceably and patiently for the next fifty years now, does it?

I'm in Paris for the rest of the week. And that, apparently, isn't such a great idea according to the State Department. They've issued something called a "terror warning" -- I guess they're warning me that I could possibly become terrified -- for the general area of Europe.

That's right: they can't be any more specific than that. According to the NY Times:

The State Department travel alert issued on Sunday in response to reports of a threat by Al Qaeda was anything but precise.

Where is the threat? Europe. What is the target? Subways, railways, aircraft, ships or any “tourist infrastructure.”

What should Americans in Europe do? “Be aware of their surroundings” and “adopt appropriate safety measures to protect themselves when traveling,” the department advised.

The alert’s vagueness, issued after days of discussion inside the Obama administration, embodied the dilemma for the authorities in the United States and Europe over how to publicize a threat that intelligence analysts call credible but not specific.

The authorities do not want to be accused of hiding what they know. Nor do they want to panic the public unnecessarily.

Credible, but not specific. Adopt appropriate measures. They want me to know that something's probably up, but they don't want me to panic.

In a way, I sympathize with them. But I also think they're selling us short. I'm a hard person to panic. And I don't think I'm alone when I say that I know that it's impossible to guarantee my safety. Had I known about this warning before I boarded the plane, I would have still boarded the plane. You can't live your life in bubble.

This is probably unfair, but there's something irritating and infantilizing about all of this. Especially this:

Patrick F. Kennedy, the under secretary of state for management, told reporters on Sunday that the advisory was not intended to discourage Americans from traveling, but merely to urge “common-sense precautions,” including vigilance about unattended packages and loud noises, and moving away quickly if something is “beginning to happen.”

Move away if something is beginning to happen. That's good advice no matter where you are.

In a recent column in the Wall Street Journal, Governor Haley Barbour stressed how important it is that tea partiers and Republicans collaborate at the polls in November to thwart further destruction by the Obama administration and the Democratics. "It was tremendously important," Gov Barbour says, "that tea partiers did not run as independents or third-party candidates." Had they done so, he argues, they would have cannibalized the Republican Party, and almost certainly administered defeat to the friends of liberty.

If this year is any indication of the dynamic we can expect in 2012, the Tea Party has no intention of splitting off to form a third party. The Tea Party's strategy is revolution from within the two party system -- using the primary system to replace squishy old guard Republicans with more principled conservatives. And the primary victories of candidates like Joe Miller, Sharron Angle, and Carl Paladino provide evidence that the strategy works.

So, despite Americans' low approval ratings for both major parties these days, I feel comfortable betting that we won't see the emergence of a third party as early as 2012. Thomas Friedman begs to differ. And he's willing to wager that the third party that will emerge in 2012 won't come from the right wing, but from what he calls the "radical center."

...I continue to be astounded by the level of disgust with Washington, D.C., and our two-party system — so much so that I am ready to hazard a prediction: Barring a transformation of the Democratic and Republican Parties, there is going to be a serious third party candidate in 2012, with a serious political movement behind him or her — one definitely big enough to impact the election’s outcome.

There is a revolution brewing in the country, and it is not just on the right wing but in the radical center. I know of at least two serious groups, one on the East Coast and one on the West Coast, developing “third parties” to challenge our stagnating two-party duopoly that has been presiding over our nation’s steady incremental decline...

“If competition is good for our economy,” asks Diamond, “why isn’t it good for our politics?

Secretary Sebelius is having her tantrum again, ready to take off the heads of the Wall Street Journal and McDonalds because they don't accept her pronouncements of how reality is, why, because she says it is so! She is Government, and when Government says a Thing is So, it Must Be.

Either the law of unintended consequences simply does not apply in her universe of economics by fiat -- or the Journal is right and she is breathtakingly disingenuous, and these unintended consequences are very much intended.

Either way, those who touted the benign virtues of ObamaCare are proven wrong, and those who warned that these would be precisely the consequences are sadly right.

The sad part is that these moralists are ready to make the lives of real individual persons a living hell just to satisfy the unrealizable perfection their theoretical ideals demand. Indeed, it is hard to describe that as anything other than deeply immoral.

"Sweetheart," she said softly, "you work so hard in that truck, and you deserve some luxury in there." Thus did the lovely Mrs. Carter coyly unveil her territorial designs on the last remaining bastion of masculinity, the "man cave." For me, it isn't a basement or a garage, but rather the truck where I live and work year round. It is my refuge, my own corner of the world, complete with military patches on display, dog tags hanging above the television, a Gadsden Flag suspended over the top bunk, a POW/MIA license plate on the front that says, "Bring 'Em Home Or Send Us Back," and a survival knife suitable for just about any contingency. It's Spartan, but its home. It would also be a temporary home to my wife, who is on the road with me this week.

The offer? If I would consent to a thorough cleaning of the truck, I would get new bedding complete with sheets that have a bazillion thread count, a thick luxurious bed spread, a plush new pillow, new carpeting, perhaps a nice framed picture to hang on the back wall of the sleeper, and a happy, contented rider for a few days. So I folded like a cheap suitcase.

The result? She went through the truck like a prairie fire, only she was scrubbing the dash, disinfecting the ceiling, cleaning the desk, scouring the walls, sweeping everything, and dusting everything else. There was just no end to it.

I keep an orderly truck, really I do. I'm career military for criminy sakes! But she found dirt in places I didn't know existed. Areas where dirt had no business in the first place. Standing atop a step ladder inside the cab I heard, "You let your Dad and your kids sleep in here with such dirty walls?" "They didn't sleep on the walls," I said before I could stop myself. That didn't help.

This truck is now so clean, I'm not sure it qualifies as a truck anymore. It's more like a surgical ward on wheels. You could do a heart transplant on the dashboard. If I hit a mud puddle, she's going to strap herself into a harness and lash herself to the side of the cab with paper towels in one hand and a can of Tough Stuff in the other, and she will not stop until it's clean again. If Barak Obama had truly been serious about making the oceans recede, he merely needed to tell the lovely Mrs. Carter that all that fish poop was leaving a dirty ring around the US coastline. That way, before he could have prescribed a pain pill for Grandma, my wife would found a way to drain at least some of that water and commenced a hellacious cleaning.

As it is, my truck is now an anti-septic tank. All the respectable germs have vacated the premises, with the hold-outs coming to a bad end. A rogue gang of paenibacillus bacteria thought they could fade into the head rest, but she was all over them like Charlie Rangel on a Caribbean tax dodge.

In place of the germs, there is now healthy food. Granola is popping out of nooks and spinach sits in the cooler, with nutritious snacks staring at me from my bookshelf. Vitamins, fruit, healthy cereal, skim milk, it's a produce section on 18 wheels, world without end, A-men.

Of course, I'm not complaining. In the final analysis, the fairer sex is indeed the civilizing force in society. The Almighty intended us to be a little lower than the angels, but it is the women of the world that keep us there. Besides, this bedding is pretty comfortable, and I got the framed picture too.

I wasn't able to check out the One Nation rally, but I did come across a few of its protesters yesterday while I was out and about. There was a woman carrying a sign about how the Tea Party movement is "Bush Tea" or something. But the most interesting vignette, to me, was what happened when I arrived at my Metro stop. As I was coming up the escalator, two men were leading a group of people down an escalator. One had a large red flag. The other had a Communist T-shirt on.

Even if I didn't have friends who had lost family members to the Communists, it would still enrage me. But, then again, the One Nation rally was co-sponsored by the Communist Party, USA. So I guess I should not have been surprised.

Anyway, the group all wore purple shirts with the name of their union. They carried pre-printed signs about how they weren't marching for hate but, rather, hope. And, as I mentioned, they were being led by two men who told them where to go and what to do. They had been dropped off at the Metro stop by two buses.

And it made me wonder. Is the reason why so many in the media and on the left think that the Tea Party movement is some grand conspiracy is because that's how protests on the left are run? Friends who attended the rally reported that there was a certain color-coding to it -- with people from the same bus wearing identical t-shirts. Certainly there were individuals who attended on their own, too.

Now, it turns out that even with all of the organization of organized labor, the protest was a bit of a bust. I think that part of the blame has to lie with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, whose Oct. 30 rally is drawing all the enthusiasm among lefties (who call themselves moderates, yes).

For those looking for the all-important trash update, it appears this march had the normal litterbug problem.

I’m delighted to introduce Stephen Green, Ricochet’s Guest Contributor of the week.
One of the stars of Pajamas Media, Stephen, also known in the blogosphere as Vodkapundit, is one-third of PJTV’s Trifecta, where he provides “serious and thoughtful analysis for serious and thoughtful times.” And as the women of Ricochet should be pleased to learn, Stephen is on the list.

The lead story on This Week was Islam. In a special townhall-style debate hosted by Christiane Amanpour, a motley crew of panelists discussed "Should Americans be afraid of Islam?" They also debated a related issue: the Islamic Cultural Center near Ground Zero, better known as the Ground Zero Mosque.

The debate went down like a middle school dance, with most boys to one side and most girls to the other.

Answering "yes" to the question of "should Americans fear Islam" were Rev. Franklin Graham, the evangelical son of Rev. Billy Graham; Robert Spencer, the director of Jihad Watch; and Peter Gadiel, whose son was killed on 9/11.

Answering no were: Donna Marsh O'Connor, whose daughter was killed on 9/11; Daisy Khan, who is the wife of the GZM's Feisal Abdul Rauf; and Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran.

On the pro-Islam side, Daisy Khan and the smarmy Reza Aslan (who appeared via satellite) came off as churlish. One particularly unpalatable moment came when Khan implied that the Somali Muslim-turned-atheist author Ayaan Hirsi Ali--also a satellite guest--was a disingenuous coward because she needed a body guard to feel safe (and protect her, Khan failed to mention, against death threats from radical Muslims).

Among that same crowd, Azar Nafisi was the only one who spoke with true authority, experience, and charm--and unlike Aslan and Khan, she did not resort to personal attacks. Here's Nafisi:

I came here to America because I expected that that image which those people had imposed on us would not be imposed on us again. And look at my surprise. From both sides of the aisle, what you hear is that there is one Islam. If we think there is only one Islam, then we have to take sides. Either it's evil or it's good. But there are as many interpretations of Islam as there are Muslims....

Who is a Christian, Reverend Graham? Who is a Christian? The Inquisition claimed to be Christians. The gay Episcopalian bishop is a Christian. The Methodists are Christians. The Baptists are Christians. Sarah Palin and Barack Obama and Bill Clinton are all Christians. Who is to say which one is more Christian than the other?

On the anti-Islam side, Gadiel was the most reasonable, while Spencer and Graham struck me as too extreme in their rhetoric. Gadiel spoke eloquently when he said:

I do not say that Islam is evil. I say there is a lot of evil connected with it. That is a problem for Muslims themselves. They have to cure the problem. We're supposed to believe Ms. Khan here, that she can cure the problems of Islam at the fringes. The problem goes to the core.

As I mentioned, Ayaan Hirsi Ali was also featured on the show, as was Islamist Anjem Choudary. Both of them should make Americans cringe in fear of Islam, but for very different reasons.

Hirsi Ali, for her part, has lived the horrors of radical Islam, as her books Infidel and Nomad explain, and she has devoted her life to defeating Islamism. For that, she receives constant death threats from jihadists around the world. Though she has spoken harshly of Islam, she still has a place for moderate Muslims in her worldview, as she said on This Week:

I think that it is very important that not only Americans, but westerners in general and Muslims, moderate Muslims, the ones who identify themselves as moderate Muslims, take the threat of the agents of political Islam very, very seriously. And every day, they win hearts and minds. They establish Muslim centers. Their movement was very little, but it is growing rapidly, and it's very, very dangerous."

Choudary, by contrast, represented the Islamist "fringe" that Gadiel discussed. On the show today, he accused Daisy Khan of not being a true Muslim: "I mean, this lady in your studio, she should be covering with the hijab. She's obviously not practicing."

He went on:

You know, people want to claim that they're vegetarians and they're eating big beef burgers. You can not be a non-practicing vegetarian. Therefore, similarly, if you're a Muslim, you submit to the Sharia.

He also said, “The East and the West will one day be governed by the Sharia and we believe that one day the flag of Islam will fly over the White House”

In general, the program was poorly directed and unruly. Amanpour was a clear advocate for the Muslim center and was on the attack against “one particular party” that was stirring up hatred toward Muslims in America (guess which party that is!). Read the transcript yourself here and report back on what you think!

**

Since my report on This Week was so long, I'll make the one about Fox News Sunday short!

The lead story on FNS was the Kentucky Senate showdown. Chris Wallace hosted the Republican candidate Rand Paul and the Democratic candidate Jack Conway. Conway is the state’s Attorney General and an Obama agenda supporter.

A newsworthy exchange occurred between Wallace and Paul when Paul said that if he is elected to the Senate, he would support Mitch McConnell for the Republican leader. Back in May, Paul said that he may not vote for McConnell. Here is the exchange on FNS today.

"Would you support Kentucky's Mitch McConnell for Republican leader if you become a senator?" asked Fox News' Chris Wallace.

"Yes, I think Mitch McConnell will be the leader again and hopefully the Majority Leader this time around," answered Paul.

"And you will support him? You will vote for him?" pressed Wallace.

"Yes. Yes," said Pail.

"Not Jim DeMint, not anyone else?" wondered Wallace.

"Right. What we're having is we will have a caucus meeting and decide but I will vote for whoever comes out of the caucus as the Republican leader," replied Paul.

Another interesting moment on the show came in the discussion with the panel. Chris Wallace asked whether Obama will move to the center after the midterms. The consensus on the panel was that Obama and his new chief of staff Pete Rouse will be less inclined to move to the middle in the same way that Clinton and Morris did after 1994. Does that mean Obama will be a one term president? What do you think?

Those of you on Twitter will have noted the hash tag #deprem oldu trending right to the top. That means "There was an earthquake," and that's because a few minutes ago in Istanbul, we had an earthquake. No reports on damages or casualties. It was a small quake. 4.4 on the richter scale. But oh yes, you feel it. That gets your attention, for sure.

If you live in a seismic zone, be prepared. Nail heavy items to the wall. Stock up on canned food and water. Know first aid. Have batteries, flashlights, medicine at hand.

Don't live in a seismically unsound building.

Duck, cover and hold.

And if it happens, check the gas mains before you light up a cigarette.

That's my advice for the night, I'm going to bed.

When I expressed my skepticism about nullification a few weeks ago, I did so in the spirit of "okay, we're all conservatives, but maybe some of our brethren have gone too far."

But I missed the larger story: the Left's double standard on nullification. It turns out that, back in the bad-old Bush days, Democrats were all in favor of nullifying the REAL ID Act, a homeland security measure (not that I like REAL ID myself, but it's surely less intrusive than Obamacare). Dozens of states passed legislation denouncing the law and, in some cases, flat-out refusing to comply.

Perhaps the biggest cheerleader of this nullification effort was Montana Governor Richard Schweitzer, a Democrat -- in fact, former chair of the Democratic Governors Association. He was lionized in Wired Magazine for "fomenting rebellion" and given a loving interview on NPR in which he declared that his state had the right to block REAL ID because "there's nothing in the Constitution" that gives Homeland Security the right to enforce it. And even before REAL ID, states practiced "nullification" of the Controlled Substances Act by passing medical marijuana laws.

But these days -- brace yourself -- "rebellion" isn't cool any longer. The Washington Monthly says nullification is "unhinged nonsense" on par with Birther issues, while Chris Matthews wipes the foam off his lips just long enough to declare nullification to be the tool of racists.

I'll buy a drink for anyone who can find me an example of the mainstream media denouncing the states' efforts to resist REAL ID or the Controlled Substances Act.

A word on Rick Sanchez, the CNN anchor canned for saying, well, this:

I'm telling you that everybody who runs CNN is a lot like [Jon] Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart, and to imply that somehow they, the people in this country who are Jewish, are an oppressed minority? Yeah.

At HuffPo, MJ Rosenberg ventures this explanation for the outburst:

I feel bad for Sanchez because his attack on Stewart and Jews was not the adult Sanchez talking but the hurt Latino immigrant child who has always felt (rightly or wrongly) that white America looked down on him. That is how it must have been for him at 6. And he still can’t get over it.

He thinks that when people like Jon Stewart see him they see a dumb Latino who should be cleaning tables. He’s wrong. They see a smart, provocative and movie-star handsome guy who has it all, and got it through hard work (and luck too, like everyone).

What penetrating insight into the mind of Sanchez. Since bigotry is faulty by definition, we're prone to search for reasons why bigots would hold such faulty ideas. Rosenberg's foray into speculative psychology is illustrative of the common approach today, in which bad behavior is the product of immaturity. Judgment is parceled out on the basis of shared legitimate victimhood. Rick Sanchez lashes out because some central part of his personal development was flash-frozen by moral cruelty; therefore, we're told, he deserves our sympathy. Those whose immaturity shows forth in a false sense of victimhood -- certain characteristic tea partiers, for instance -- deserve our unsympathetic condemnation, including, if Stewart is any guide, high ridicule.

From where I sit and type, there are any number of reasons and nonreasons why Rick Sanchez said what he said. Rosenberg's account may be accurate. But his choice of speculations is so emotionally self-serving that I'm left thinking of Rosenberg as indulging in his own ethic of immaturity. If he's looking for sympathy, toward Rick Sanchez or toward the Rosenberg Theory, he'll have to do better than that.

(via Andrew Sullivan)

Not a parody, I don't think! The reporter's wonderment at the popularity of someone so, you know, dead is priceless, but actually, this has to be the most encouraging piece of reporting I've seen in a long time.

Doug Bramley, a postal worker and Tea Party activist in Maine, picked up “The Road to Serfdom” after Mr. Beck mentioned it on air in June. (Next up for Mr. Bramley, another classic of libertarian thought: “I’ve got to read ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ ” he said.) He found Hayek “dense reading,” but he loved “The 5000 Year Leap.”

“You don’t read it,” Mr. Bramley said, “you study it.”

Across the country, many Tea Party groups are doing just that, often taking a chapter to discuss at each meeting.

Could any image be more heartening?

Bruce Riedel believes it would be catastrophic and futile to attempt to prevent Iran from going nuclear by military force. On the bright side, he argues, the preponderance of evidence suggests that Iran is deterrable through the logic of MAD:

Without doubt, throughout its history the Islamic Republic has behaved very disagreeably, but it has been careful to avoid taking actions that would lead to catastrophic consequences.

In the defining event of modern U.S.-Iran relations, for example, the hostage crisis of 1979–1981, Tehran acted in ways that were in clear violation of international law, but when it perceived a given course would provoke a massive violent American response, it desisted. In the summer of 1980 Iranian leaders repeatedly threatened to put the American hostages on trial for espionage. President Jimmy Carter made clear that any trials would produce a military response and Iran retreated. In the 1988 undeclared naval war in the Persian Gulf between the United States and Iran over reflagged Kuwaiti tankers, Iran attacked U.S. Navy ships but was careful to keep the conflict from escalating into a full-scale war. When the USS Vincennes inadvertently shot down an Iran Air civilian airliner, Ayatollah Khomeini sensed the conflict was getting out of control and agreed to a cease-fire with Iraq and the United States.

Throughout the Iran-Iraq war, Tehran also chose to avoid actions that would cross WMD thresholds. It was Iraq that first used chemical weapons on the battlefield, not Iran, and it was Iraq that first used missiles against Iranian cities. In the mid-1990s, when the United States determined Iran was behind the terrorist attack on the U.S. Air Force barracks at Khobar, Saudi Arabia, and warned Iran that any further attacks would prompt military retaliation, Iran desisted from carrying out operations on American military facilities in the Gulf and elsewhere. Today Iran is careful to limit its support of anti-American insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan to low-intensity conflict and asymmetric warfare to avoid a major American military response. Contrary to Netanyahu’s cries, Iran is not a crazy state. A nuclear security guarantee to Israel, if backed by a credible arsenal, will deter Tehran.

He proposes we accept Iran as a nuclear power while making it unambiguously clear that the first-use of these weapons would mean the end of Persian civilization:

The United States needs to bolster Israel’s capabilities now. The administration should take another look at extending the American nuclear umbrella. It is an idea that has long been floated. At the Camp David summit in 2000, then–Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak first raised the idea of a U.S.-Israeli mutual-defense treaty to provide Israel with a nuclear guarantee against Iran while sitting in a meeting with then-President Bill Clinton and two note takers (me and an Israeli). Clinton was positive about the idea if the summit succeeded. The proposal died when the Israeli-Palestinian peace process collapsed. But it is worth taking another look. And it is a policy prescription not too difficult to employ.

Of course, Israel’s own nuclear arsenal should be sufficient to deter Iran, but an American nuclear guarantee would add an extra measure of assurance to Israelis. If the United States guarantees Israel a nuclear umbrella, then Iran knows no matter what damage it may inflict on Israel, Washington will be able to retaliate with overwhelming force. Iran would have no delivery system capable of striking back at the U.S. homeland. It would be the target of both whatever residual capability Israel retained and the vast American nuclear arsenal. That is a deterrent indeed.

It would be made even stronger if the administration could develop a multinational nuclear deterrent for Israel by making Israel a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Under Article 5 of NATO’s founding treaty, an attack on any member is an attack on the whole. As a NATO member, Israel would automatically enjoy the same nuclear umbrella as the existing twenty-eight members. Israel is already a member of NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue and conducts limited military exercises with several NATO partners besides the United States, notably including both Greece and Turkey.

I'm not persuaded. I wish I were, because I am persuaded that a military strike on Iran might very well set this entire planet alight. But the solution he proposes gives me no comfort either.

First, one thing I can promise you: If Iran goes nuclear, Turkey will go nuclear. For sure. I'm beginning to suspect that's the Turkish end game in all of this--turning a blind eye to the Iranian nuclear program precisely because they want nukes of their own. That would give them the cover they need for tearing up the NPT.

It won't stop there. Every state in the region will go nuclear as fast as it can.

Second, even assuming Riedel is right, even assuming Iran is fundamentally rational (a mighty big leap of faith), MAD only barely worked. We were incredibly lucky. Most people don't know how close we came to nuclear war, for example, in 1983, in the wake of the downing of KAL 007. A freak sunlight alignment caused a perturbation in Soviet satellite data. The Soviets thought we'd launched a first strike. If Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov had followed his orders, I wouldn't be writing this and you wouldn't be reading this. It came down to that. (I talk about this episode in There is No Alternative.)

We just got lucky. No reasonable person could expect this kind of luck to hold indefinitely in a region like this. It's like banking on the idea that there hasn't been a major plane crash in the past few months, so there will never be a plane crash again. If every large actor in this region goes nuclear, it's inevitable that there will be a nuclear war.

Next idea?

They say that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. But maybe there's another way to look at it. Maybe it's the first time as ideology, the second time as a criminal enterprise.

That's certainly the way it looks to a lot of journalists I spoke to, at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague.

During the bad old Soviet days, part of what we did was talk about our system vs. their system. (To refresh your memory: ours was better.) Then when the Soviet Union broke up, their system was completely repudiated, the republics all drifted away, and we faced a uni-polar world.

Now, the old Soviet Union seems to be drawing closer. Under Vladimir Putin, a lot of the old territories are coming back into the fold -- not, this time, as formal republics, but as territories.

As in: mob territories. Joined not really by ideology or even national self-interest, but out of fear. The way neighborhoods become aligned with a street gang. The only template, really, that fits the New Russia under Putin is that he's a kind of Sopranos Soviet. He engineers discord among his underlings; he bullies his neighbors; he keeps a troubled peace at home.

So the notion that we live in a uni-polar world is silly. Russia is a capitalist country, I guess, in the way that Al Capone and John Gotti were capitalists -- we're all capitalists, really. It's just that some of us are the gangster kind.

Ahmadinejad has come clean that Iran controls south Lebanon. He's apparently referred to Lebanon recently as "Iran's border with Israel." The Smiling One will be visiting the border later this month, during which time he's planning on throwing a rock at Israel. (Can I throw one back?)

Also to be filed in the "tell me something I didn't know" drawer: Hamas has admitted for the first time that Arafat ordered them to launch the second intifada while he was at Camp David turning down an offer of Palestinian statehood.

Greetings one and all! It's good to be back. Sukkot vacation is over and we can resume regular programming.

I emerged from a child-enforced news embargo to headlines announcing that the peace talks are about to die, and it's all -- of course -- the settlers' fault.

Two thoughts on that.

One: The settlement freeze was on for ten months. The whole point of the freeze was for Israel to make an initial major gesture to demonstrate its good will and seriousness of purpose -- and for the Palestinians to respond by coming to the table. Abbas squandered almost the entire freeze and only showed up to talk a month before it was due to expire. Now he's threatening to walk unless Israel extends the freeze beyond its scheduled expiration.

It's hardly surprising that Bibi sees little point in conceding on this. Abbas is wielding the cudgel of global opinion as a weapon with which to extort a further major concession from Israel without offering anything at all in return. I applaud Bibi for refusing to cave in. There's no point in our keeping the lights on if nobody's coming to visit.

The second point is that the future Palestinian state, if such a thing will come to exist, is going to have Jews in it, and they're going to have to live in houses. Yes, it can be argued that the construction amounts to the Jews' attempt to create irreversible "facts on the ground," but the prevailing assumption seems to be that some of those settler homes will eventually be located in Palestine, not Israel, and we'll all have to suck it up and deal with that whether we like it or not. Okay, fine. The Jews who want to live in Judea and Samaria for religious reasons will be residents of the state of Palestine. Oh, what's that you say? The Jews won't be allowed to live in Palestine? They're going to be forcibly evicted, and you're going to expect the IDF to help with that? Well, a Jew-free Palestine would be consistent with the PA's recently enunciated policy of executing Palestinians who sell land to Jews. What it isn't consistent with is any pretense of wanting to establish a genuine peace between the nations.

To everyone bellowing about how the Israeli refusal to extend the freeze reveals its unwillingness to make peace, I ask you: what does the Palestinian Authority's refusal to act on the freeze for nine of its ten months' duration say about their willingness to make peace? If you're so keen on our all making nice, why not ask Abbas exactly what the PA's intentions are for the future Jewish residents of Palestine? Or is that too awkward a question?

I've found a great new columnist for you all. His name is Melik Kaylan, he writes for Forbes, and he's superb on Turkey. But he's also just all-around unusually good on foreign affairs. He's writing this week about the United States' insane, suicidal unwillingness to take public diplomacy seriously:

If we expect our soldiers to crawl in dirt, we should expect that our ideas should battle the lowest of enemy propaganda however vile or preposterous. Where are the documentaries, the multi-part broadcasts and detailed refutations of 9/11 distortions – in Peshto, Urdu, Arabic and the like? The accusations are out there; they can be refuted point by point. Where’s the creativity, skepticism and brilliance of American media in our dealings with our opponents? Where’s the gossip website outing the sex lives of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard leaders? I know it sounds counter-intuitive but a humorous documentary skewering George Bush for lacking the competence even to plant phony chemical weapons in Iraq would do more for American credibility than a hundred drone strikes.

His whole column archive is worth reading.

So why is he the "Creamy Angel?" Because for some reason I kept forgetting his name, so I made a mnemonic device: "Melik" sounds like "angel" in Turkish, and "Kaylan" sounds a bit like "kaymak," a kind of clotted cream.

There you go.

Moments after finding the gloomy analysis in the New York Times about which I posted below, I came across this, which suggests we have reason to remain cheerful after all. Writing yesterday, Isaac T. Wood, who has been analyzing House races for Larry Sabato's "Crystal Ball":

As Election Day nears, more of the House election picture comes into focus. While our overall view of the level of Republican gains remains unchanged at +47 seats, we are changing the ratings of many key races as the list of endangered seats, and their relative degrees of vulnerability, becomes clear.

This week we are changing the ratings of 21 House races, all in the direction of the GOP, including 10 seats formerly listed as Toss-Ups that are now leaning into the Republican column.

It may not be time to put them on ice just yet, but make sure you have a bottle or two of champagne on hand.

The big news of the weekend -- because apparently there isn't much else going on -- is that Robert Gibbs is being considered as Tim Kaine's replacement for chairman of the DNC. Politico reports:

Democratic insiders are taking the temperature of some top party donors about the possibility of naming White House press secretary Robert Gibbs as chairman of the Democratic National Committee heading into President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012, senior officials tell POLITICO.

Under the scenario being tested, Tim Kaine, the current DNC chairman and former governor of Virginia, would be named to a top administration post, perhaps in the Cabinet, the officials said.

Donors’ response has been positive, according to people who have been consulted.

Ed Morrissey's take:

Robert Gibbs? Really? What, exactly, are his qualifications to run the DNC? Oh, right, we’re in the post-qualifications, post-experience era in politics....I won’t say I’ll be unhappy to see that, but I’d be surprised if it really comes to pass.

From today's New York Times:

Races typically tighten in the final month as voters on both sides become more engaged, and the political climate is no more favorable for Democrats than it has been all year, with no substantial signs of improvement in the economy or the outlook for unemployment.

Yet even as spending from outside groups is threatening to swamp many Democratic candidates, Republican strategists estimated that only half of the 39 seats they need to win control of the House were definitively in hand.

Many Democratic incumbents remain vulnerable, but their positions have stabilized in the last month as they have begun running negative advertisements to raise questions about their Republican challengers and shift the focus of voters away from contentious national issues like health care, bailouts and President Obama’s performance.

I'm not at all happy to say so, but that feels right to me. Here in the Golden State, for instance, Democrat Barbara Boxer has blanketed the airwaves with ads portraying her Republican opponent, Carly Fiorina, as a hard-hearted executive who, while running Hewlett-Packard, deprived Californians of work by shipping jobs overseas. The result? Polls show Fiorina slipping.

And then there's the smear of Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, who for some nine years employed an illegal immigrant as a maid. In fact, as best I can make it out, Whitman obeyed the law scrupulously, checking the maid's documents before hiring her (the maid provided documents all right, but they were fraudulent), then dismissing her, when, all these years later, the maid admitted she was illegal. But one version or another of "Whitman Hired Illegal" has been on the front pages of every newspaper in the state for three days now.

The negative stuff works--and the Democrats are good at it. For now, let's all keep our champagne corked.