ACCOMMODATING THE VOTERS. According to the Badger Herald, lots of folks from Illinois will be attending the big rally at the Wisconsin State Capitol Square, where Bruce Springsteen will play some songs and appear alongside John Kerry. The crowd, predicted to be 60,000, will be encouraged to go right over to City Hall (a block away) and vote immediately, and City Hall is going to stay open until 8 p.m. tonight to accommodate the crowd. As I’ve written here, no I.D. is required to vote absentee at City Hall. Knowing that people are flowing in from Illinois, I’m feeling especially nervous about voter fraud today. If the election in the end comes down to a fight over Wisconsin’s electoral votes, that pile of absentee ballots here is going to be the subject of a huge fight, don’t you think?

UPDATE: Chris aptly notes:

You should note that, while I was not asked for my ID when I voted, you would need to show ID if you were not registered to vote. ID is required for registration but not for the actual voting. The risk of people from Illinois voting, therefore, doesn’t seem to be the main concern.

Right. They’d have to be impersonating someone in Wisconsin.

By the way, Slate has a piece today about people double voting. Bottom line:

For all the new concern about double voting, … the odds of getting caught remain minuscule. Comparing voter databases county by county and state by state is a needle-in-haystack undertaking, even with the aid of computers. Why not vote twice then? Michael Moore probably shouldn’t do it. But you probably could.

WHAT WILLIAM SAFIRE SAID ABOUT THE AL QAQAA STORY last night on the Larry King Show:

Let me … see if I can move the story of this story al Qa Qaa forward a little bit.

We now know from CBS’s admission that CBS planned to broadcast this story, which we call in journalism, a keeper, one that’s kept for its greatest impact. They planned to broadcast it next Sunday night, 36 hours before the polls opened. That is known as a roar back. That’s a last-minute, unanswerable story, and it would have been all over the papers Tuesday morning as people went to the polls. Now, I think that’s scandalous.

What happened, because “The New York Times” was working with CBS on the story, and I don’t work on the news side of the “Times” at all, so I’m speculating, the “Times,” either — probably from a combination of ethical and competitive standards decided, no, we’re not going to hold this story. We’re going to go with it now. And they went with it on Monday. And — but just think for a minute, if the plan had gone ahead, we wouldn’t have had this debate this week where it’s possible we could shoot some holes in this story or focus on the attack on the integrity of the examination by the troops that were there.

And instead, we would have had a last-minute manipulation of the election.

That is to say, the Times deserves credit for specifically rejecting the tactic that CBS going to use. I love the phrase “a combination of ethical and competitive standards.” I wrote about the ethics/competition conundrum here two days ago and said I thought the competition between news outlets “might work better than ethics to protect us from outrageous withholding of stories for the purpose of helping a favored candidate.” It’s an old First Amendment tradition to see the competition among speakers as a way to produce good speech. For a newspaper, adhering to strong journalistic ethics is a good business move, and I’m grateful for that. It would be quite disturbing to have to rely on pure ethics!

UPDATE: WaPo’s Howard Kurtz has a much less NYT-flattering version of the story:

On Sunday night, New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller told Jeff Fager, executive producer of CBS’s “60 Minutes,” that the story they had been jointly pursuing on missing Iraqi ammunition was starting to leak on the Internet.

“You know what? We’re going to have to run it Monday,” Keller said.

I guess a little “blog triumphalism” is in order then! And thanks to Soccer Dad for the tip.

ANOTHER UPDATE: An emailer finds it “disturbing that there’s this special vocabulary of manipulative techniques (‘keeper,’ ‘roar back’).” Yes, doesn’t the existence of special insider jargon suggest the practice is common?

AND YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Jim Miller notes the term is actually roorback not “roar back” and explains the meaning and origin of the term.

AND: Here’s a detailed historical description of the Roorback Hoax of 1844.

“BUT BILLY HAS MARRIED A BOY.” That’s a line in a poem written by the teenaged Abe Lincoln. Read the whole poem in this L.A. Weekly article about the forthcoming book “The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln.”

UPDATE: That’s the L.A. Weekly (not the L.A. Times) as I’ve corrected this post to show.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I pulled this link from the email, but I see Andrew Sullivan linked to it before me, so I feel I owe him a link. He’s predicting a “major controversy” when the book comes out. We’ve seen Lincoln-was-gay research before, but Sullivan may still be right, given the recent greater interest in gay marriage and the apparent depth of the research in the new book.

BAD PUPPETS: ABC news reports that Iraqi officials may have overstated (if you’ll allow me to understate it) the amount of explosives that went missing from al Qa Qaa. 377 tons of RDX? Try 3.

[T]he confidential IAEA documents obtained by ABC News show that on Jan. 14, 2003, the agency’s inspectors recorded that just over 3 tons of RDX was stored at the facility — a considerable discrepancy from what the Iraqis reported.

Why would Iraqi officials overstate it by more 10,000 percent? Some puppets they’ve turned out to be.

NOW WHAT? 60 Minutes can’t break the missing explosives story on election eve as originally planned. What’s a network to do when it needs to find a new angle, and fast? Jeff Goldstein suggests nine last-minute story ideas.

THE ULTIMATE ROPE-A-DOPE? If this is true, then Kerry’s killer story just blew up in his face: the Washington Times is reporting that Russian Special Forces helped Iraqis remove the missing explosives in the weeks before the war.

I wouldn’t want to be Kerry’s strategy team trying to explain on the stump how John Kerry’s going to make the war go better by getting the other members of the UN Security Council on board.

IF YOU HAD YOUR CHOICE, people of Boston, would you rather see your team win the World Series or your Senator win the Presidency? That’s a question I thought up and posed at a dinner tonight, where the guest of honor was talking about the European Constitution, which is to be signed this Friday. The point was made that the Madison newspapers would probably front-page the story of Kerry and Bruce Springsteen stumping at the Capitol and local shopkeepers steeling themselves for the Halloween festivities over the weekend. Who can explain the mysterious process by which we human beings put things in order of importance?

UPDATE: Alarming News was asking the Red Sox/Kerry question back in September. And also: congratulations, Red Sox!

“JUST A ONE-FINGER VICTORY SALUTE.” Megan’s got the link, two posts down. So am I supposed to dislike him for that? So, he still had a bit of the frat-boy spirit, what, ten years ago? Compare that to film clips of Kerry, deeply — morosely — circumspect, even as a very young man. Sorry, I find Bush attractive in that clip. I see optimism and self-possession.

UPDATE: A reader notes that it’s interesting to compare the part of the Bush clip where he fixes his hair to the well known clip of John Edwards fixing his hair. Bush fixes his hair as if he thinks it’s just a funny little thing to have to do.

MISTAH ARAFAT, HE DEAD YET? Roger L. Simon put Yasser Arafat on Deathwatch.

OCTOBER SURPRISE? Could this be it?

YOU’RE GETTING SLEEEEEEPY: A new study shows that tired interns are making mistakes.

D’uh! I have no patience with the way hospitals work their interns and residents. I’ve never heard a good explanation for why we want our junior medicos, who provide a lot of our front-line care, in a state of perpetual exhaustion; most revolve around the utterly unconvincing idea that they somehow need to learn to work under pressure, as if they were all going to be disaster-relief doctors. After a few weeks, older doctors assure me, they learn how to cope.

Hogwash. I’ve worked those kinds of ours as a technology consultant many times, and while you do get better at coping with exhaustion, there are limits. And I don’t care who you are or how many times you’ve done it before, when you’ve been up for 36 hours: you. are. stupid. Your reaction times slow waaaay down (or speed up disastrously, as you short circuit past critical steps), you’re over-emotional, and you’re prone to cut corners as your body and brain cry out desperately, desperately for sleep.

Sure, I’ve done it. But at the end of the day, I was working on a box of bolts. It would be a VERY BAD THING if one of my clients, say, couldn’t trade on Monday morning — but they’d all still be breathing when they came in on Tuesday. Also, I rarely had to make split-second, irreversible decisions about caring for my boxes; they were unlikely to flatline while I took a few minutes to think things over.

The system endangers patients. I recall when a friend of mine, an intern, had to go to work despite the fact that he was suffering from terrible influenza. Why? He had to make his hours. How ridiculous is it to have a system that puts sick doctors out on the floor where they can infect patients? And what kind of decisions do you think a flu-ridden intern makes?

Even worse than that, the doctors know it endangers patients–they don’t want themselves, or their families, in the care of residents. Some of that is because we all naturally want the most experienced doctor for our families, of course. But some of it is because they know that exhausted doctors make for bad care.

(Why can’t they just let them work shorter hours? Say it with me, folks: the reason is green, and it folds. Fewer hours for residents mean more hours for attending physicians, who, unlike residents, would have to be paid for it.)

UPDATE: a fellow alum of the University of Chicago Business school emails

I’m in healthcare, have been for 13 years or so, and know a thing or two about overworked interns. The ACGME, who accredits most residencies, has put new guidelines in place that essentially prohibit working more than 80 hours. This may sound little better than “slaves may only be whipped 20 times per day,” but it’s a start. Many of our hospital clients have been busily hiring more physician faculty and mid-level providers to make up the difference. The downside here, the point you almost seem to be getting to, is that this is awfully expensive, especially at a time when hospitals are being forced by the government to implement scores of new regulations, and forced by private payors and employers to implement lots of good, expensive, ideas like hiring full-time intensivists and converting to electronic medical records. I am fortunate enough to have access to good, expensive health insurance. But anything that raises costs will have the effect of pushing healthcare further out of the reach of tens of millions of Americans. Is a sleepy intern better than no intern? You decide–but let’s not be so naïve as to pretend there is no trade-off.

MORE FROM A LAWYER I KNOW:

Just saw your post on sleepy interns & the 80-hour limit. I’m not sure where
your friend is writing from, but NY state has had the 80-hour limit in place
since the 1980s (the Bell Commission recommended it after the 1984 death of
Libby Zion) and it’s generally regarded as a bad joke amongst doctors. A
massively disproportionate number of my friends are doctors who are doing or
have recently completed their internships, and the 80-hour-limit is widely
regarded as being flouted more often & more flagrantly than the Giuliani
crackdown on jaywalking. (I believe that hospitals would rather pay the
fines for violating the rules than hire more personnel – an eloquent
statement of the inadequacy of the NY sanctions, the expense of hiring more
personnel, or both.)

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jonathan Wilde at Catallarchy has a long, thoughtful piece on the problem.

Unfortunately, none of these explanations stack up against the one that makes the most sense, and the one that Megan mentions. As usual, when in doubt, look at the incentives. The number of practicing physicians in this country is not determined by the market like the number of practicing engineers, architects, or plumbers. Rather, it is strictly limited by law. Who has the incentive to limit the number of practicing physicians? Currently practicing physicians who do not want to face competition. Yet, the work still has to get done. Rather than work harder themselves to make up for the paucity of workers, they shift the burden to residents. Why do the residents have an incentive to put up with difficult working conditions? Because once they finish residency, they will be the ones enjoying monopoly privilege while future residents suffer in their stead. They have an incentive to choose delayed gratification.

But in the end, patients do suffer as a result as these studies and others in the past have shown.

TAKING FALLUJAH: The New York Times reports that the U.S. military is preparing a massive assault on Fallujah. It is time.

I’m tempted to say it is long past time. Terrorists have lorded it over that town with impunity for months. It cannot stand. There’s an upshot to this, however. A recent article in the Washington Post suggests we are winning at least some hearts and minds by letting the thugs show the locals what they are made of.

Adnan, the taxi driver who moved his panicked wife and four children to another town, said attitudes toward the foreign fighters have changed dramatically since they poured into Fallujah after the Marines’ siege ended in April. “We were deceived by them,” he said. “We welcomed them first because we thought they came to support us, but now everything is clear.”

Among the tensions dividing the locals and the foreigners is religion. People in Fallujah, known as the city of mosques, have chafed at the stern brand of Islam that the newcomers brought with them. The non-Iraqi Arabs berated women who did not cover themselves head-to-toe in black — very rare in Iraq — and violently opposed local customs rooted in the town’s more mystical religious tradition…

Residents said the overwhelming majority of Fallujah’s people also have been repulsed by the atrocities that Zarqawi and other extremists have made commonplace in Iraq.

Fallujah is ripe for the picking. Even if it weren’t, the so-called Iraqi “resistance” there has gone unopposed long enough.

The U.S. cannot be defeated on any battlefield. I can only hope the Bush Administration and the interim Iraqi government don’t pause in the middle to talk. They need to remember who we are fighting. The enemy has no demands we can give in to. As Christopher Hitchens recently put it, terrorism “is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint.”

Remember Napoleon’s words to the wise: “If you start to take Vienna – take Vienna.”

Yasser Arafat is ailing. The man’s 75, and he probably didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about proper diet and excercise in his younger days. If he dies, it will mean big, and unpredictable, changes in the middle east.

ARE EX-PATS REALLY GOING OVERWHELMINGLY FOR KERRY? You’d think so, from all the stories the media has run on the subject. But of course, when journalists look to do such stories, they’re likely to ask around among the people they know, adn the people they know are likely other liberals who have moved to Europe for cultural, rather than commercial reasons. I’ve no doubt that art students at the Sorbonne are almost all pro-Kerry, but I’m no so sure about petroleum engineers in Saudi Arabia.

WHY DON’T THEY JUST . . . Many people ask “Why can’t they just . . . ” followed by some eminently sensible solution to a common problem. The answer to most such questions is green, and folds. “Why can’t they just give us more legroom (or derriere-room) on airlines?” Because it would make each ticket much more expensive. “Why don’t they just make people cut down on the amount of energy they use?” Because Carbon = Energy = Economic activity. Why don’t companies give me the lavish customer service, stellar product performance, and elegant design I want? Generally, because I’m only willing to pay $14.95 plus tax for whatever they’re selling me. Americans pretty much shop on one thing, price, and then bitch like hell about what we get for our money.

(that said, American customer service is, in my experience, about the best in the world anyway. That competition stuff — and the danger of actually getting fired — is a wonderful motivator.)

A correspondant in the hardware industry emails to say that this is also the reason that companies don’t want to ship CDs:

First off, the profit on a printer is very slim. The printer business is razor/razor blade. All the profit is made on consumables ( paper/ink) Since the profit is slim the product marketing folks will take every measure to lower unpredicatable costs.. costs like returns and tech support.

When a product first ships it might make sense to have driver CDs to ship customers.. the CD costs about 30-50cents and then you have the cost of the mailing, and the cost of holding the CDs and the cost of handling. For example, it might cost 5 bucks or so when you consider all the factors involved in doing a CD fulfillment.

That’s why those of us in the industry like downloads… No mail room, no overstocking the wrong driver CDs etc etc. For example, if I ship 1 million printers a month how many spare CDs should I have in stock to ship to customers who call and ask for one? 5000? 10,000? and what happens to these excess CDs when the driver changes mid production? I have to grind them. Thats like shredding money. Pennies matter. Now, you may argue that pissing off customers costs too. It does. But it is not as trackable. Since most product marketing folks are judged on P&L issues any cost that is trackable needs to be controlled.

So the cost associated with shipping replacement CDs on out of warrenty products is tracked while the cost of losing customers who couldnt get a disk is not tracked.

This highlights another interesting problem for companies: how to get information. Costs can easily be tracked, in the modern world, but outside of mom-and-pop shops in small towns, customer satisfaction can’t. It’s natural to focus on what you can measure, over what you can’t, which is why I think customer service is getting worse across the technology industry: computers are a mature product that customers don’t need hand-holding to persuade them to buy, so it’s natural to shift the focus from reassuring technophobes to controlling costs.

This problem is hardly limited to corporations; think about why your politicians spend so much time passing laws, even though things basically seem to be running okay already. Politicians can’t just go back to the voters and say “We weren’t attacked by terrorists or roving wolf packs, so re-elect me”. They need the Trent Lott Memorial Hogback Research Project at the University of Mississippi to show their constituents that they’re really working for their money. Needless to say, 50 states, each of which has two senators, each trying to increase their wealth through federal largesse, is like trying to get rich by picking your own pocket. But it goes on, because we don’t measure good government; we measure results.

Incidentally, the people at HP have contacted me and been very helpful about fixing the problem. If only Chuck Schumer would get back to me so quickly about that idea I have for a solar-powered steamship to run up and down the Hudson . . .

JIHAD IN PARADISE: Here’s something that isn’t getting enough attention. Mary at Exit Zero notes that Wahhabi Hate Radio is playing loud and clear in Thailand.

FRENCH PERFIDY WATCH: Saudi Arabia’s Arab News isn’t the most trustworthy news source around, so I suggest taking this story with a shaker of salt. But it’s worth keeping an eye out for anyone else who might cover it.

JEDDAH/PARIS, 27 October 2004 — France’s attempts at creating a coalition of Iraqis opposed to the interim government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi collapsed yesterday as Paris announced it had abandoned its opposition to an international conference to be held on the future of the newly-liberated country. [Emphasis added.]

[…]

France and US were at loggerheads about who should attend the conference. Washington insisted that only governments should be invited. Paris, however, wanted what it calls “Iraqi resistance groups” to also attend.

[…]

“We understand France’s desire to revive part of its influence in Iraq,” says an aide to interim Prime Minister Allawi. “But this does not mean that we can let Baathist criminals and their jihadist allies to gain a foothold thanks to French support.”

Hey, look at the bright side. If Kerry is elected and France is able to pull off something like this, our “alliance” will become so deep and so broad it will even include our own enemies.

(Hat tip: Robin Burk at Winds of Change.)

WE MAY NOT BE MORE DIVIDED, BUT SOME OF US SURE ARE CRAZIER: A Florida Democrat apparently tried to play chicken with Katherine Harris and several campaign supporters. Unfortunately, he was the only one with a car.

HOW DIVIDED ARE WE REALLY? I’ve heard a fair amount of overblown rhetoric on this election, along the lines of “this is the most divided electorate ever! Really? Ever looked at an electoral map of 1860?

Actually, the striking thing is how settled the electorate is. The last election where one party got less than 35% of the vote was 1912, when Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party split the Republicans in two. Even during Reconstruction, when the Republican Party had basically disenfranchised the Democratic states, the popular vote totals were very close. Almost never does one party get more than 60%, or less than 40% of the vote.

We’ve had elections as close as the last one before, and we’ll have it again (although not since the 1880s have two elections in a row been so closely contested.) The real issue is not that the popular vote totals are close, but that states are so closely balanced — another situation that hasn’t prevailed since the 1880s.

Why so close? Presumably it’s because people are more mobile than ever before, which breaks down the regional affiliations that hauled solid electoral vote tallies out of close elections. So while some places are more solidly partisan than ever before . . . like, ahem, the places where all the media headquarters are . . . the real trouble is that key states are becoming less divided. I assume it makes people more tolerant, having members of the other party for neighbours, but I wouldn’t know, having lived my whole life within one overwhelmingly liberal community or another.

PRESIDENT BUSH HAS GOTTEN AROUND TO addressing the missing explosives issue, I’m glad to see. Yesterday, I fretted that Bush’s failure to respond to Kerry on this issue “makes me suspect that the loss either did not pre-date the war or that it isn’t clear whether it did or not.” According to the NYT, Bush had this to say at a campaign stop today in Lancaster, Pennsylvania:

“Our military is now investigating a number of possible scenarios, including that the explosives may have been moved before our troops even arrived at the site … This investigation is important and it’s ongoing, and a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief. After repeatedly calling Iraq the ‘wrong war’ and a ‘diversion,’ Senator Kerry this week seemed shocked to learn that Iraq was a dangerous place full of dangerous weapons.”

Hmmm … well, then my suspicion yesterday was correct. He can’t come out and say clearly that the loss pre-dated the war. The facts we have, as the Times puts it, are:

The stockpile was found to be intact in March 2003, when United Nations weapons inspectors checked it just days before the American-led invasion. On April 10, one day after Saddam Hussein was toppled, American troops visited the Al Qaqaa depot, not finding any big cache of explosives but apparently not looking very closely either.

How close do you have to look to see something that big?

Bush’s line “a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief” interplays nicely with Kerry’s usual criticism of Bush for rushing to war without knowing all the facts.

THE LATEST FROM “ASSAM THE AMERICAN.” Drudge is running his rotating siren effect over this news:

In the last week before the election, ABCNEWS is holding a videotaped message from a purported al Qaeda terrorist warning of a new attack on America, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

The terrorist claims on tape the next attack will dwarf 9/11. “The streets will run with blood,” and “America will mourn in silence” because they will be unable to count the number of the dead. Further claims: America has brought this on itself for electing George Bush who has made war on Islam by destroying the Taliban and making war on Al Qaeda. …

The terrorist’s face is concealed by a head dress, and he speaks in an American accent, making it difficult to identify the individual. … The disturbing tape runs an hour — the man simply identifies himself as ‘Assam the American.’

Maybe ABC is holding this story because it’s a piece of junk that it shouldn’t air under any circumstances. I wrote yesterday about the problem of news organizations unethically timing their stories in an attempt to affect the election. There is some reason to speculate that the New York Times and CBS/”60 Minutes” were doing something like that with the al-QaQaa story (though I don’t think it’s at all clear that they did). I think it’s good that bloggers are standing by, monitoring the ethics of MSM. But we bloggers need to be careful not to cry wolf here. Not every withheld story is an outrage. Drudge notes a claim that ABC is holding the tape until Monday night. Does that mean Drudge thinks this tape would help Kerry? As if “Assam the American” would relent if only the nuanced newcomer took office! It seems to me that a more vivid terrorist threat would help Bush.

CAN SOMEONE EXPLAIN THIS TO ME? I just talked to Hewlett Packard, the makers of my mother’s printer. My mother, who is somewhat technologically challenged, threw out the driver CD for her printer by accident, and the drivers that you download from the internet don’t work. This is apparently a known problem, at least with the Officejet 5510, or so I was told by the technician I called a few months ago to work on the problem. He promised to send a CD, but it never arrived.

When I called back today, I was told that the printer shows up in their database as out of warranty, and moreover, that even if it was in warranty, they couldn’t send me a CD unless it was within 90 days of purchase. I argued, to no avail, that they had promised me a CD when it was within the specified period. Unfortunately, they have somehow lost the record of that call. I argued, also to no avail, that the fact that I was aware of an internally known problem with their online drivers would indicate that I had, in fact, spoken to someone at HP, but got nowhere. They will not send me a CD unless I can provide them a proof of purchase, but neither my mother nor myself remembers where we bought it, and the boxes have long been thrown away. Apparently as far as the HP folks are concerned, my mother’s printer can sit lifeless on her desk until the end of time, rather than sending her a CD which costs a few cents to make and mail, and which has absolutely no economic value to people who have not already given HP several hundred dollars for a printer.

Can someone explain this policy to me? I can understand not wanting to send parts, which cost money to make and ship, but a CD? This would seem guaranteed to alienate customers, at pretty much no economic gain to the company. Is there a black market in driver CDs for the HP Officejet line of which I am unaware? I’m emailable at janegalt -at- janegalt dot net if you have any ideas.

UPDATE: A number of readers have suggested that it’s so I’ll have to buy another printer. But I find it hard to believe that this policy would encourage more people to buy from them; what benefit do they get from generating more sales from Canon?

FURTHER UPDATE: A number of readers suggest that this problem is widespread in the industry.

MY OWN THOUGHT: Like abortion and Israel, posts about tech support problems generate A LOT of email. Thanks for everyone who’s suggested web sites to try — though I suspect that they’ll have the same bad driver that doesn’t work on my Mom’s printer; the supervisor I talked to this time, while denying the problem, let it slip that the driver pack is somehow incomplete. But all suggestions are very welcome, as I can’t quite face telling my mother she’s the proud owner of a $200 paperweight.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Another reader suggests that HP released a new driver set last week that may take care of the installation problem. Why on earth didn’t the technicians at HP mention this? Heartfelt thanks, anyway; I’ll try it tonight.

ALL RIGHT, ONE MORE UPDATE: A reader emails to suggest, with some rather strenuous critcism of yours truly thrown in for good measure, that the problem may lie with their legal agreements with Microsoft, which limit what they can do with the software. This strikes me as extremely unlikely, given that they make a version available on their web site to download for free, but I suppose it’s possible.

HP RESPONDS: Someone from HP has contacted me to try to fix the problem. The power of Instapundit is truly frightening. I’ve suggested that they consider changing their policy on CD shipment, as I simply can’t imagine how the money it saves is worth the aggravation of their customers, or the salaries of the guys I kept on the phone trying to bully a CD out of them. But Lord knows, the folks at HP probably have better places to get business advice than from me.

BANANAS: Fidel Castro announced yesterday that all Cubans must now wear their underwear outside their clothes. Sort of. Marc Cooper explains.

MERYL YOURISH, another liberal for Bush, says the Democrats forced her hand.

“I AM DISAPPOINTED TO SEE YOUR HYPER-PARTISAN RAVING ON THE INSTAPUNDIT WEBSITE,” so read the first email I opened after returning from my Civil Procedure class this morning (where I really did rave … about joinder). The second email I opened said “Nice to see an actual moderate coming out of the UW.”