And there you have it. As per my speculation yesterday, Zapatero’s threat to pull out his troops has Bush leaning back towards a UN resolution. Nicely done on Zapatero’s part. Now I’m going to go be sick s’more. Blah. You can tell I’m not well because I’m loopy enough to bitch about being not well here.
The popular right-wing talking point of the moment: " Spain did what Al Qaeda wanted." This is all very well and good, except that Spain is not pulling out of Afghanistan and that Spain is willing to stay in Iraq (original) under certain conditions — mainly a Security Council mandate. This actually looks like pretty smart diplomacy to me. To the degree that Bush needs Spain to stay in the coalition, he needs to bend to their demands. This would mean giving more say to the UN than he’d like, but those are the breaks of the game, right? ...
Mark Schmitt makes an excellent catch over at The Decembrist. Bush is using photos from the FY 2005 Federal Budget in his campaign material. This may or may not be illegal; it seems to me like it might be, but Schmitt knows better than I and he doesn’t think it is. Actually, come to think of it, I don’t think government documents are protected under copyright, so Bush has the right to remix those photos however he likes. Kinda shady of him to get the government to pay for the photos if he intended to use them later, though. And if he had his own private photographer pay for them and give them to the government, well, why is the government publishing campaign photos? No matter what happened, though, it’s definitely a slight erosion of the barriers between the campaign and the government. Not a scandal, but definitely an indication of character.
There appears to be a small uprising in Northern Iran. A little more information can be found here (original). The first link is to a site on the right side of the ideological spectrum, by the by, so you have to discount the people who are under the impression that this will immediately turn into a vast popular uprising supported by US troops. (Via Tacitus, whose commenters suffer in part from the same optimism. Ah well.)
President Roh of Korea was just impeached (original). He’d been tagged " the world’s first Internet president", mostly because his victory was driven by Internet activism. Don Park has another take on the impeachment (original). He’s a smart guy and I trust his insights on the situation. KoreaTimes talks about what happens next (original). Aside from the obvious “old school tears down the Internet generation” angle, I’m a bit concerned about the “tumult right next to North Korea” angle. Dunno how worried I should be, though. It’s not as if the opposition politicians hadn’t managed to handle the North Korean situation for quite some time before Roh came along. It’s mostly the uncertainty of not knowing who runs the country right now that bugs me. ...
All the hip liberals (original) are dogpiling on libertarianism this month, and skillfully missing the point. Apparently the lure of libertarians potentially voting Democrat in the face of Bush’s overspending is too much for some. The question is not “would it be OK to let everyone in the world own nukes right now?” That’s a very easy one. “No, it would be pretty much completely not be a good idea.” The question is “Would this be a better world, and if so, what do we need to do to get there?” ...
Bob Barr is fairly peeved at the Transportation Security Administration for their new list of fines. $1,500 for “non-physical interference with screening” does seem a little high, particularly since attitude is one of the aggravating factors. The new TSA guidelines are available as a Word document. I’ve also stuck the ones relevant to travellers in the continuation of this post. I can’t get that miffed about high fines for people bringing hand grenades on flights, mind you, but I do keep coming back to $1,500 for non-physical interference. Would that be filing charges (original)?
Brad DeLong has graphed the 2004 long term budget projections. Ignore the partisan discussion of what they mean, if you like, and go right to the graph. This is from the numbers Bush sent Congress; it’s not a liberal extrapolation or anything. It’s what the current administration said the numbers would be.
On my way home from work today, I heard an interesting rumor on NPR. James Bone, a London Times reporter, claimed that Blix left some details out of his oral report. If this story is accurate, Blix’s written report includes a note on the possibility that Iraq has developed unmanned drones. If these drones exist, and certainly if Iraq has tested their range as over 500 kilometers, Iraq is clearly in serious breach of UN resolutions without any escape hatch. They can’t say “Well, we didn’t think those missiles were in breach” with any plausibility. ...
Now Oregon’s getting into the act (original).