Shannon Love

Mickey Kaus is a centrist Democrat, a good reporter, a good writer and an all around smart guy which is why his posting today on the Check 21 law is so revealing of a generalized leftist mindset.

The Check 21 law frees banks from the requirement to keep paper checks in existence after they have been scanned and inputed into an electronic format. The law makes the electronic format the legal equivalent of the paper check for all purposes. Banks are still free to do everything the old fashioned way but the law will no longer require them to do so.

Kaus believes that the Check 21 law could be used by the Democrats to demonstrate how they approach economic issues and regulation compared to Republicans and I think he is right. It demonstrates that Democrats like regulations driven by the ordinary person’s vague and largely emotional understanding of how an economic entity works (in this case banks), substituted for the detailed, market-disciplined understanding of people who work closely with that entity every day.

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Before the 1920s, the idea of an “objective” or “non-partisan” media did not exist. The previous 100 years had seen the reign of the newspaper as the primary news medium and newspapers of that era never portrayed themselves as objective or non-partisan.

Newspapers evolved from the pamphleteers who considered themselves polemists. Their goal was to propagandize for their side. Most newspapers in the golden era of newsprint were publicly associated with a major political party or faction. Many newspapers had the words “Democrat” or “Republican” in their names. It was considered normal. Everybody who bought a paper knew what its biases were.

This standard began to change in the 1920s with the arrival of radio and the socialization of broadcast spectrum. Instead of auctioning off broadcast spectrum the dominant ideology of the time led to the creation of a system wherein broadcasters functioned as public utilities. The government decided who could and could not broadcast, using a politically sensitive process.

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So I’m flipping channels last night and catch a picture of Kerry on the News. The guy has a tan like an Oompa Loompa.

I point this out to my teenage daughter who says, “Tan in a bottle. It’s too dark, too even and too orange to be natural.”

I scoffed at the idea, not because I know anything about chemical tans but because I didn’t think Kerry would be so dumb as to dye himself. The potential blow-back would be enormous were it ever discovered. The mocking would never end.

Then I remember that I had initially dismissed the idea that the CBS Memos were crude forgeries because I reasoned that CBS and Dan Rather would not be that incompetent. Whoops.

Today The Drudge report has a story that the tan appeared suddenly before Kerry arrived in Michigan. He also has a neat before-and-after collage image.

It is said you can’t grow broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people. I am beginning to think that you cannot go wrong underestimating the arrogance and poor judgment of our institutional elites.

(Update: I realize I got carried away with the Oompa Loompa thing. (but boy does he look orange). I have no real idea whether Kerry’s tan is legitimate or not. My real thought was that previously, especially before Rathergate, I would have assumed that the tan was real because I had more confidence in the judgment of major figures at least when it comes to political acumen. Now I’m no longer so sure.)

(Update: Best of the Web stole my Oompa Loompa bit! Plus, possibly for karmic reasons, I’ve had bits and pieces of the Oompa Loompa songs stuck in head all day.)

Over at the The Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr asked three questions for bloggers who support the war and ask them to post their answers and send him links. His questions are in italics below followed by my answers. This is a big subject and I have tried to be brief so the usual caveats about generalizations apply. I may also tweak and update this as the day goes on.

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

I still believe it was a good idea. The case for invading Iraq can be divided into two sections: A narrow case based on the direct threat posed by Saddam himself and the wider case based on the regional effects of destroying his regime.

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To hear the media tell it, Iraq is disintegrating. Violence is widespread and progress made since the fall of Saddam has stagnated or even reversed. Others, like Iraqi bloggers or returning US military tell a different story. I decided to try to map the violence in the country to try to get an visual idea how widespread the violence was. I wanted to see how much of the country of Iraq was shooting at the Coalition.

First here is a map of Iraqi population distribution. Notice that most of Iraq’s population lives east and north of the Euphrates river which nearly bisects the country. The greyish areas in the east between the Tigres and the Iranian border are analgous to the American mid-west, with lot of contiguous habitation, small farms and towns and no major dead zones. The areas east of the Tigres turn rapidally to desert. Population hugs the rivers. Most of the area south and west of the Euphrates is functionally uninhabited. The Al-Anbar province in particular is nearly completely deserted except for the river valley.

I mapped all 58 U.S. combat fatalities for the month of September to date using data made available at GlobalSecurity.org. The map color codes the number of U.S. fatalities resulting from enemy action in each of Iraq’s 18 provinces. Only four of the provinces had any U.S. fatalities. 14 of the provinces had zero fatalities. (The British down in Basra had zero fatalities from combat in September).

Here’s the map.

See all the green?

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