HERE’S A SACRAMENTO BEE roundup on problems with electronic voting.

There’s a solution to this problem, you know.

TED RALL IS ENDORSING HOWARD DEAN (though he has trouble spelling “preference” — there’s no “a” in it, Ted). Howard Dean is happy about it. I’m not so sure that he should be.

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh thinks that this is a bad move by Dean, too. And just wait until people pull out Rall’s 9/11 widows cartoon. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: That didn’t take long. You can see that cartoon here.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Dick Riley emails:

I like Dean, but the posting of the Rall endorsement on Dean’s blog is a definite negative to me. Still, I’m hesitant to say it means much about Dean’s policies or even his basic sentiments (so I think your post takes a correct low-temperature approach to this). Purely tactically, in fact, I don’t know that I’d call it negative. Deaniacs, bloggers, blog readers, and other political addicts are following the presidential race, but hardly anyone else is. So although Dean is old news to us in the addict camp and we’re ready for him to start getting statesmanlike and reaching out to the moderate middle, in terms of his national campaign Dean is probably still in keep-the-base-fired-up mode. I doubt touting the Rall endorsement will hurt him with the mass of his current supporters. If I were Dean, even with my own moderate instincts and generally pro-war stance, I don’t know that I’d take rejecting Ted Rall and all his works as a Sister Souljah moment. Doing a Sister Souljah moment now would just echo into the void.

Probably so.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: More on Rall, here. And if you follow the Volokh link, above, you’ll see that the Dean campaign has edited the blog post on Rall’s endorsement. Nothing necessarily perfidious in that, but you can see both versions via Volokh.

WHAT YEAR IS IT? As I’ve said before, it’s really 2003. But The Counterrevolutionary seems to have gotten some flak about posting clippings from 1946. Roger Simon says it’s really 1938.

Well, it’s really 2003. Militarily, this war isn’t much like World War Two, and historical analogies can only take us so far in general. But we can learn some things from historical analogies. The 1946 stories tell us that journalistic complaint is nothing new, and that occupation and reconstruction is an inherently messy business. (And that pre-war and wartime intelligence is, too.) The 1938 stories tell us that antisemitism is an old thing in Europe, and give us some idea of what it looks like, and how far “antiwar” intellectuals will go to avoid noticing it.

As the editors of Foreign Affairs remind us in reprinting Allen Dulles’ briefing on postwar Germany, “history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.”

UPDATE: Kevin Connors says it’s 1648.

I’VE WRITTEN BEFORE that I think that outsourcing, etc., will be an election issue. Armed Liberal pulls a lot of threads together in this post, along with a cool Neal Stephenson quotation.

UPDATE: Matt Bruce is speaking up for Pakistani brickmakers.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s an interesting development — Dell is moving jobs back from India to the United States in response to customer complaints about the quality of support from Bangalore. When I talked about this issue with my students (a Dell-heavy group) I heard a lot of those complaints. I guess that Dell did, too.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Katherine Snyder emails:

I was one of the many customers that was Very Unhappy with Dell’s tech “customer service”, and I basically told them flat out after 5 multiple hour, very frustrating and rudely handled calls over the course of a week to get a broken hard drive replaced that I would *never* buy a Dell product again. I have, as the Alpha Female, the purchasing yea or nay in my household. Every large purchase goes through me. If I feel that a company does not respect me, then they do not get my hard earned money, period. (Just to put it into perspective, I have purchased 4 Dell desktops, a Dell laptop, and a Dell Pocket PC in the past, they were losing a very loyal customer.)

This is another way in which the “cost savings” from outsourcing can be illusory.

GUN OWNERSHIP: It’s not just a good idea — it’s the law:

Noncomplying residents would be fined $10 under the ordinance, passed 3-2 earlier this month by City Council members who thought it would help protect the town of 210 people. Those who suffer from physical or mental disabilities, paupers and people who conscientiously oppose firearms would be exempt. . . .

Kennesaw, Georgia was, I believe, the first place to pass such an ordinance in recent history. Here’s Kennesaw’s webpage on how it impacted crime rates there. I wonder if we’ll see more of these? (Via TalkLeft.)

UPDATE: Tim Lambert, unsurprisingly, says that the Kennesaw ordinance makes no difference. But I don’t understand why this should be true:

There was also a large increase in the population of Kennesaw, which meant that by 1998, although tthe number of burglaries had not changed, the burglary rate per 100,000 population had decreased greatly. It is hard to attribute this to the ordinance since the large increase meant that the people living in Kennesaw in 1998 were almost completely different from those living there in 1981.

I don’t think that burglars check resumes, and I don’t see why duration of residency should make any difference at all here. And if the number of burglaries stays the same, while the population grows, that means that burglary is getting less common. Doesn’t it?

A FINE WHINE: N.Z. Bear weighs in, a bit late, on the Salam Pax / Lileks discussion.

IS CHINA’S ECONOMY OVERHEATED? Greg Burch has a lengthy post.

SHEVARDNADZE HAS RESIGNED IN GEORGIA: This has the potential to be a good thing. Let’s hope that the potential becomes actuality. Given the United States’ nontrivial investment in Georgia, it’s particularly important that we play this well.

UPDATE: Wrong link earlier. Fixed now.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Argus has a tremendously link-rich wrapup on affairs in Georgia. This appears to be a substantial defeat for Russia. And Georgians are thanking America. Hmm. . . .

I HAVEN’T BEEN BLOGGING THAT MUCH this weekend. But Jeff Jarvis has lots of posts.

MORE RETAIL UPDATES: My local mall is also replacing some of its hard wooden benches with comfy chairs like these (I actually took this picture on Wednesday, when it was a lot emptier), which seem to be very popular. The comfy-chair revolution continues apace!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Frank Lynch emails:

Some years ago I read “Why We Buy,” by Paco Underhill. Underhill is a market researcher who emphasizes behavioral observations in retail settings; he and his crew will descend on a store and watch how people behave, and make recommendations on layout, etc.

One observation is that the longer you are in a store, the more likely you are to buy something. Now, couple that with this: women shop longest in a store when they are with a female friend, second longest when alone, and least longest when with their husband/boyfriend. We seem to give off body language which indicates impatience (go figure!). So, Underhill recommends making men as comfortable as possible — not just providing comfortable seating, but also magazines they’re comfortable reading, such as Sports Illustrated.

Glad to see your mall is doing this; consumer confidence hasn’t turned around yet, and retailers need to try this.

I’d rather have Wi-Fi than SI, but fair enough. I wasn’t familiar with Underhill, but via the miracle of Google found this article. He seems like a smart guy.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Ronnie Schreiber emails:

You would think that the malls would want to encourage men to shop, not sit. Underhill’s suggestions assume that women do all the shopping in malls. They may be the majority of mall shoppers and it does make sense to maximize revenue from your core market, but I’d think that making sure that the mall has specialty stores that appeal to men wouldn’t hurt. An upscale tool store or auto memorabilia shop might make more sense than La-Z-Boy recliners and a few issues of SI scattered around.

Yes, though I doubt Underhill would disagree. My local mall seems to have an endless array of teenagers’ clothing stores and jewelry stores. I wouldn’t mind a few more places that appealed to me. Of course, that requires the mall to think holistically about luring in shoppers — and I suspect that a lot of stores that I’d like couldn’t pay the very steep rents that mall stores have to pay.

RETAIL SUPPORT BRIGADE SITREP: At the mall yesterday I noticed huge crowds (even though the Christmas shopping season doesn’t officially start until next week). Judging by the numbers of bags and parcels people were carrying, they were buying, not just looking. I hope that’s good news for this year’s retail season.

In a related development, the landscaper at my sister-in-law’s new house said that they’re working their fingers to the bone with new home construction.

Anecdotage: make of it what you will.

UPDATE: Reader Jeff Strunk emails:

My wife and I had the same ‘revelation’ yesterday here in Erie, Pa. The traffic was unbelievable.

Let’s hope this is reflective of the general situation.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Mike Krause reports from the trenches:

I’ve had a kiosk (retail merchandise unit as the mall prefers they be called) since Sept.1 at a mall in Omaha (a really nice, newer mall out West, where the city is rapidly expanding into what was farmland only a few years ago). No employees, just me and my girlfriend.

The first three weeks of November it was like a tomb around here (in fact I could hear the echo as I laughed at myself for coming up with this idea). Our sales were actually down about 35% from the first three weeks of September, and October was a bust, we just paid the rent.

Saturday rocked. It was our best day so far. Santa showed up and opened shop and the mall was solidly packed, despite cold temperatures and drizzle, from 9:00 am (milk and cookies with Santa in the food court) until about 5:00 pm. Now it’s Sunday afternoon and the foot traffic is strong despite the snow (or maybe because of it) but slow sales all around me.

The lady with the customized tree ornament kiosk (it’s her fourth year here)says she is off about 50% from this time last year and the cell phone service and accessory guy (who is here year round) reports about the same.

I think it’s fair to say that reports are “mixed,” then.

OKAY, I DON’T AGREE WITH THIS:

Anybody who has several sexual partners in a year is committing spiritual suicide. He or she is ripping the veil from all that is private and delicate in oneself, and pulverizing it in an assembly line of selfish sensations.

Actually, I had quite a few years like that before I was married, and I consider it a good thing, though I’m quite happy to be married now and wouldn’t have wanted to live that way forever. (But I think that one reason that I’m happily married now is that I did live that way for quite a while first). But I agree with David Brooks that gay marriage is a good thing, and actually strengthens traditional values rather than harming them.

UPDATE: Got a few emails like this one:

So you are saying promiscuity is OK? That indiscriminate sex is OK? That degrading your self for sexual gratification is OK? Is this what you teach your children? I don’t agree with you at all! Gay sex is not natural nor normal and cannot strengthen our decaying traditional moral values!

Hmm. I didn’t say anything about “indiscriminate sex,” now did I? Funny that some people can’t conceive of anything else. Nor was my pre-marital love life “Hefneresque,” as another reader puts it. These strike me as rather revealing reactions — much like those who, on another topic, assume that all war is equivalent to “carpet bombing” or that owning a gun guarantees mass slaughter. Moderation, apparently, is inconceivable to some people.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Bruce Bridges emails:

As a single man that has not found the right girl even at this late date, I am one of those that has been pulverising all that is private and delicate blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blaaaaaaaaah.

The problem with those that need to point out my failings is of course that they can’t stop themselves. First it was gays, then single sinners and of course eventually, married people that are corrupt enough to venture beyond the missionary position.

The republicans would do well to recognize that this way of thinking is what most of us think of as “fringe”.

Given a choice, I’ll hang with the sodomites thank you.

Yeah. But my point was that to arrive at what is, in fact, the kind of marriage that Brooks describes (except perhaps for the “I am you” angle, which seems a bit creepy to me), I had to pass through the kind of conduct he deplores. Only I think that I couldn’t have the one without the other. I’m deeply suspicious, frankly, of people who assume that all sex outside marriage is somehow depraved or corrupt or instrumental. Perhaps they are projecting, or perhaps they are just ignorant. It certainly seems to me — as I indicate above — that sex is to some on the right what violence is to some on the left: something seen as so dangerous, and so powerful, that if it is not kept entirely in check, it is sure to go completely out of control. I regard both kinds of thinking as misguided.

And, at any rate, the one kind of lust that appears to be incapable of satiety is the lust to control others’ lives. . . .

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Stephen Green isn’t ashamed to admit that he likes sex.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Beth Mauldin isn’t either.

DANIEL DREZNER HAS AN OPUS-THE-PENGUIN ROUNDUP that’s a must read. Er, if you care about Opus, that is.

INTERESTING DEVELOPMENTS in Georgia. I think this may turn out to be a positive development, but I’m not at all sure.

EVERYBODY’S EMAILING to ask what I think about this scandal involving the UT Issues Committee, political bias, death threats, and so on. Actually, I don’t know anything that hasn’t been in the papers — I don’t have a lot to do with undergraduate activities. Though I haven’t done much recently, I used to deal with them fairly often and found them OK. It’s probably true that their offerings lean left — though the only one I’ve noticed lately involved Tucker Carlson — but I don’t know the extent to which that reflects the offerings. But they do seem to have rejected reasonable requests for non-lefty speakers. Surely they could bring Jonah Goldberg or Andrew Sullivan to campus. And I’d like that.

The death threats and racial slurs aimed at conservative students, if true, are obviously beyond the pale. But I don’t know any more about that stuff than you do, once you read the stories. In general, Tennessee has been largely free from the kind of political correctness that marked other campuses. When our recent — and now fired and under criminal investigation — President came in, we seemed to see more of that (read this post for an example, and an update here — but read this too). President Shumaker is gone now, and not much lamented, and perhaps the University will ensure that political correctness is not part of his legacy.

Here’s the UT College Republicans’ website, where they’re posting regularly on the story.

ANTITERRORISM DEMONSTRATIONS IN IRAQ are scheduled for December 10, according to Iraqi blogger Zeyad. Zeyad also has some tart words for the Londan antiwar protesters, and for Salam Pax.

In a sort-of related development, here’s a story on a survey that finds Afghans “overwhelmingly optimistic.”

SORT OF COMFORTING news:

London-based terrorists tried last year to buy half a tonne of toxic chemicals with the aim of killing thousands.

Their plot came to light when the supplier became suspicious about the quantities of chemicals involved. . . .

The effort to buy the saponin was in some ways inept. Apart from the quantities that were ordered – 500 to 1,000 times the normal order from a university laboratory – the explanation for the planned use of the product was also incredible.

The group described its intended use as “a fire retardant on rice intended for human consumption”.

Traces of ricin were found in a police raid on a north London flat in January.

Seven people were arrested and four of them later charged with possession of articles of value to terrorists and with being concerned with the production and development of a chemical weapon.

The ineptitude is comforting. The effort isn’t.

UPDATE: A couple of readers correctly note that the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center was inept, too. That’s right. These guys aren’t especially bright, but they’re persistent, and they learn from their mistakes, which is enough to make them dangerous.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Mark Draughn notes this story from USA Today about the way in which the inept 1993 attack led to improvements in safety and evacuation that sharply cut the death toll in 2001. Scroll down to the “lessons learned from terrorists” section. Yes, learning is a two-way street — or it had better be. I wrote something on that subject here.

THIS STORY is less than surprising, from several angles:

The European Union’s racism watchdog has shelved a report on anti-semitism because the study concluded Muslims and pro-Palestinian groups were behind many of the incidents it examined.

Do tell. Er, or don’t tell, as the case may be.

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh has comments.

AN AMUSING MEMO:

From: Sgt. Mom
To: Assorted European Intellectuals and Those Americans
Who Wish They Were Also
Re: On Being Snookered by an Archetype

Read the whole thing.

ROBERT FISK CAN SLEEP SOUNDLY: Walter Duranty’s Pulitzer won’t be revoked. The penalty for obfuscating tyrants’ murders seems a small one, which perhaps explains why there’s so much of that going on.

ELECTRONIC VOTING isn’t playing well in Los Alamos, a place with a high geek population. It’s regarded as insecure. Numerous links and comments, at Slashdot. The line in the post about right wing conspiracy theories is amusing, in light of the numerous left-wing conspiracy theories in the comments. But conspiracy theories aside, it’s a real issue.

JOHN FITZGERALD BUSH? This weekend, in particular, George W. must hope that the parallels aren’t too close. I keep getting emails about the zero-year curse, but unsurprisingly I regard it as twaddle. But various people seem to be taking it seriously.

UPDATE: William Sulik has two undelivered JFK speeches that he says could be delivered by Bush today.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A car-bombing attempt against Kennedy in 1960? This was news to me. (Via Don Burton).

Ouch.

GERARD VAN DER LEUN SUGGESTS an online Committee for a Free World.

JOHN DVORAK IS DISSING BLOGS. In response, Jim Lynch and Steve Gillmor are dissing Dvorak. Let the fun begin! Er, continue.