TOM MAGUIRE has lots of interesting stuff. Just keep scrolling.

“SHUT UP,” they explained.

HEH: “We humans are downright irrational beings – witness the fact that the possibility of a cure for baldness arising from stem cell based regenerative medicine garners just as much interest as a cure for heart disease using the same technology.”

BLOGGER JULIE FIDLER is working on a book, and would like you to help her by filling out a questionnaire. Explanation and link here.

DAVE KOPEL HAS THOUGHTS on what to do about schoolhouse terrorism.

AIRPORT TERROR? LAX has been shut down and there are reports of an explosion. It’s not clear yet what’s going on. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Now people are emailing me that Fox says there was no explosion.

BOUNCE UPDATE: Guess the Time poll mentioned below wasn’t a fluke, because the Newsweek poll shows a similar bounce:

President George W. Bush leads his Democrat opponent John Kerry by 11 percentage points according to a poll immediately after the Republican National Convention in New York, Newsweek magazine reported.

Bush is supported by 54 percent of the 1,008 registered voters surveyed Thursday and Friday, compared with 43 percent support for Kerry, a four-term Massachusetts senator. Independent candidate Ralph Nader polled 3 percent. . . .

The president’s job-approval rating rose to 52 percent, the first time it’s been above 50 percent since January, Newsweek said. A 53 percent majority wants to see him re-elected, the highest since May of last year, the magazine reported.

Seems pretty consistent. Polls only mean so much, of course, and we still have nearly two months left until the election, but this can’t be bringing joy to the Kerry camp. I’m wondering, though, if there isn’t a connection between these poll results and this observation: “It has now been one month and three days since John Kerry last answered questions from a real reporter.”

UPDATE: According to this table, Bush’s lead increased dramatically between Thursday and Friday, presumably as a result of his speech Thursday night (and perhaps Kerry’s response at midnight Thursday):

9/3 only 54 38 4 4
9/2 only 49 43 3 5

As you can see, Bush picked up 5 points between 9/2 and 9/3. Assuming that this holds up when we see other polls, it represents a rather dramatic effect for a single speech.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I guess we can call this an informal Democratic focus group:

Near the end of the night’s broadcast, I took a poll. How many people thought Kerry was going to win?

The room contained liberal and Democratic voters of different races, national origins, incomes, professions and generations. Not a single solitary one raised a hand.

My stomach did a little flip-flop. I’d underestimated the depth of John F. Kerry’s problem, his lack, to quote a phrase from the Bush I years, of the “vision thing.” No one can win the presidency without mobilizing the base, and Kerry’s base, uninspired and dispirited, is weakening.

Ouch. (Via PoliPundit).

And Ryan Sager reports a similar experience:

I watched President Bush’s acceptance speech tonight at a sushi bar on the Lower East Side with a group of reporters from a prominent Washington, D.C.-based publication. The whole time: heckling. Every. Single. Line.

Now, we’ve all seen the polls (or read about them) where the press corps routinely leans Democratic by a factor of about ten-to-one. Still, it was a bit shocking.

It was a little like Mystery Science Theater 3000, but with reporters instead of robots.

Every line of the speech, every item on Bush’s laundry list of domestic candy (yuck, too sweet), they had something snide to say. More money for community colleges? Somehow not good enough. Education? Bush sucks — and any school showing improvement under No Child Left Behind is just fudging its numbers. Iraq? Don’t get them started.

But here’s the clincher:

The punch line here, however, is this: Everyone at the table expected Bush to win. No anger. No denial. Just acceptance.

And that’s before the polls came out.

(Longer story on the poll here.)

And CrushKerry says that the Newsweek poll is overweighted toward the GOP. Hmm. Okay. But it’s still pretty consistent with the Time poll.

MORE: Mickey Kaus: “Obviously there are plenty of swing voters because Bush just swung ’em!”

HERE’S A HURRICANE BLOGGER from Melbourne, Florida, pretty close to where the hurricane is expected to hit.

I GUESS THESE ARE ANALOG BROWNSHIRTS: “A shot apparently was fired at the Republican Party headquarters in downtown Huntington while President Bush’s speech accepting the GOP nomination for president was being televised.”

THE LATEST CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES is up.

RALPH PETERS: “Did any of those protesters who came to Manhattan to denounce our liberation of 50 million Muslims stay an extra day to protest the massacre in Russia?”

INTERESTING PICTURE from the scene of schoolhouse slaughter today. Note the t-shirt. More information here.

This is what we’re dealing with, for those who have forgotten.

UPDATE: GayPatriot asks: “First NYC/DC, then Madrid, now Russia faces its own “9/11″. How many more will have to die until Europe, and ostriches here in the US, wake up and realize we are in a World War?”

Beats me. But David Kaspar has some helpful advice on how to think about acts of terror.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Oliver Willis sees this as some sort of attack on Democrats’ patriotism, full of “slander” and “bile.” To me, he seems awfully, well, defensive. When pointing out that we’re at war, as a remedy to September 10th thinking, is considered partisan, well. . . .

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Don’t worry — there’s a solution: “The situation, clearly, can only be resolved by Russian concessions on the underlying political issue in Chechnya.” David Kaspar’s advice is already taking hold!

MORE: Matthew Yglesias emails to say that I’ve misquoted him above, and demands an apology. Er, except that the quote — done via cut-and-paste, natch — is accurate. Here it is again, cut-and-pasted, again. “The situation, clearly, can only be resolved by Russian concessions on the underlying political issue in Chechnya.”

I guess that Matthew means it’s out of context, or misrepresents his post. Maybe it misrepresents what he meant to say. Follow the link and decide for yourselves. But I can’t figure out what Matthew could have meant that would make the statement above a misrepresentation of his meaning.

Chechnya, of course, is a mess, and there’s lots of blame to go around. But the news reports are that quite a few of the terrorists in this incident were Arabs, not Chechens, and this seems to me to fit quite well into the general Al Qaeda assault on, well, everybody else — especially after the two airliner bombings, etc. Does Matthew really think that this is something that can be negotiated away via Russian concessions to the Chechens? Judging from his email, I guess not. So why did he write the above? I guess you’ll have to ask him, as his email didn’t provide any guidance on what he did mean.

In a later post, Yglesias writes “Fuck you, Glenn.” And he still says I misrepresent him. I don’t think I did — at least, it’s hard for me to figure out what he meant that would have made my (accurate) quotation misleading. And Yglesias doesn’t tell us, preferring to substitute profanity for clarity, I guess.

I will note, however, that I managed to respond to Yglesias’ implications that I was a Nazi who was inciting “mob violence” against the New York Times without resorting to profanity.

I’m guessing that Matthew’s comment in the section below — which I believe appeared after my post — contains the best clarification he’s got:

Pardon me, but I’m not advocating capitulation to the terrorists. As I wrote: “in the wake of this sort of outrage there will not only be no mood for concessions, but an amply justified fear that such concessions would only encourage further attacks and a further escalation of demands.”

I’m not advocating anything, that’s why I wrote that “I don’t see any way out for Russian policymakers nor any particularly good options for US policymakers . . . no one should claim it’s obvious what the right way to proceed is.”

Does that clear things up? Not to me. The only solution is concessions, which we can’t make? Okay. Except that I don’t think concessions — even if we could make them — are any solution at all, because I don’t think the people involved care about concessions in Chechnya.

Obsidian Wings also says I misrepresented Matthew’s post, though there at least I’m given credit for it not being intentional (Matthew’s initial post, he observes, “was not a model of clarity.”) There’s also this observation:

From this post, Yglesias seems to suggest that he doesn’t believe that he’s in a debate. If that’s his belief, then he’s wrong — and, since I don’t want to be told to do the anatomically impossible (as Yglesias has instructed Reynolds), I’ll explain why. The notion that the “underlying problem” can be solved by Russian concessions is based on a fundamentally incorrect premise. The “underlying problem” is that of terrorism directed at civilians, and it can only be solved by making terrorism an unacceptable method of political action. No “concessions” on this point are possible.

So if I understand Matthew’s post better now — and I’m not at all sure that I do — my understanding is that it translates as “Jeez, what a mess.” True enough, and I certainly don’t disagree. My own sense is that the way this mess will be resolved won’t be through actions at the periphery — such as concessions involving Chechnya — but by addressing Islamist terror at its sources, which chiefly mean Iran and Saudi Arabia. I don’t know what Matthew thinks about that. Perhaps he’ll manage a non-profane post on that subject.

At any rate, I honestly didn’t think my quotation was a misrepresentation of Matthew’s position — which I still don’t understand. But anyone who wanted to read the whole item had only to follow the link and — as it was presented — wouldn’t even have known it came from Matthew unless they followed the link, in which case they would unavoidably have read the whole thing. So I don’t really see how I can be accused of mistreating him here. Certainly, if his meaning was so clear that I shouldn’t have misunderstood it myself, that couldn’t have left any misimpression on the average reader.

MORE: Maybe this is another case of “‘misleading-without-lying’ in the sense that someone, somewhere, might have misunderstood him?”

Eric Muller emails:

The trouble is obviously that Yglesias contradicted himself in his own post. In the sentence you quote, he asserts what the solution “clearly” is, and in the last sentence, he says “no one should claim it’s obvious what the right way to proceed is.” I guess he wanted you to post his full self-contradiction.

Yeah. I wasn’t trying to misrepresent his view — I just thought that the concessions bit was the key point because, well, it looked that way to me.

Pierre Legrand has further thoughts.

FINAL NOTE: Armed Liberal, who started all this, has thoughts here.

POWER LINE HAS MORE ON THE BOGUS-BOOS REPORT FROM AP, mentioned below.

UPDATE: Here’s a firsthand report from a blogger who was there. No boos:

As I said, there was no boo’ing when President Bush made the announcement about Clinton’s hospitalization and made wishes for a speedy recovery. The crowd was very gracious.

The only boo’ing to be heard was when Bush reviewed Senator Kerry’s voting record in the Senate.

Do I trust this blogger I’ve never met more than the Associated Press? Yes, yes I do. And she’s got the audio.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More from a reader:

Prof. Reynolds:

We live in Lake County, Illinois, a few miles from the Wisconsin border. Two of our neighbors drove up to the event today at which AP said the booing occurred. One is a retired Army officer and the other is his adult daughter. They are good friends of ours and very trustworthy. They were outraged when they read the AP story, because they say the crowd did not boo when President Bush asked for their prayers and support for Bill Clinton. On the contrary, they applauded President Bush’s well-wishing for Clinton, and many bowed their heads in prayer. From their account, there was no way to mistake their cheers for boos.

This AP story is one of the most blatant examples of press bias I have seen in a campaign season that has featured the most partisan media coverage in memory.

Best,
Evan

____________________________________
Evan McKenzie
Political Science Department
University of Illinois at Chicago

This seems quite outrageous. I wonder if it’s one of those “dirty tricks” that Susan Estrich was threatening?

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Apparently, this story is not by Scott Lindlaw, as earlier reported, but by Tom Hays. Jonathan Last has more on this, and observes:

So the AP: (1) Puts out a story with falsified reporting; (2) Pulls the story; (3) Removes the faulty reporting; (4) Makes no note of its mistake; and then (5) Pulls the byline of the reporter who made the error. If you were going to impute bad faith to the folks at AP–and at this point that’s not unreasonable to do–you might suspect that they have pulled Tom Hays’s byline to protect him.

Behold the power of Lexis-Nexis. The AP was able to cover their tracks on the web, but Lexis-Nexis keeps all versions of stories which carry different time-stamps. The Hays original is preserved there in its entirety.

He’s got it. He also observes: “This is a fine time for Romenesko to be on vacation. Let’s hope he digs into this story on Tuesday. Paging Howie Kurtz . . . ”

MORE: Still more here.

STILL MORE: Video here. Article from Editor and Publisher here. Amusing comment from CQ, linked above:

This has been the AP style for as long as I’ve been aware of them.

Start of the newsday: BUSH EATS GROUND FOETUSES.
and by the end of the newsday: PRESIDENT HAD SCRAMBLED EGGS FOR BREAKFAST.

Heh.

MORE STILL: Jonathan Last has a followup:

First of all, good for the AP for fixing the faulty reporting and including what seems to be an accurate description of the Republican crowd’s reaction to bad news about President Clinton’s health.

But the AP’s conduct with regards to the rest of this story is not reassuring. We have an un-bylined bit of faulty reporting which was incorporated into the bylined work of another reporter without accreditation. After being confronted by the blogosphere, the AP pulled versions of the bad reporting from the web and the first instance of it from Lexis-Nexis. After it was revealed here at Galley Slaves that the bad reporting lived on in other versions of the story in Nexis, the AP went into Nexis and disappeared it from there, too. Then, they inserted a cleaned-up version with no time-stamp whatsoever. By the time media reporters like Jim Romenesko and Howard Kurtz and Jack Shafer get back to the office on Tuesday, there will be no story, because the AP will have completely altered all of the evidence.

In fact, as it stands right now, the only evidence that the AP ever made this enormous error is on blogs, such as this one, which copied the offending stories–remember, Lexis-Nexis does not page-cache the way Google does.

The AP’s conduct reminds me of the famous Soviet picture of the Bolshevik leaders sitting on the couch. It began with the entire high command, and over the years, as individuals fell out of favor and were disappeared, was airbrushed over and over until, in the end, it showed only Lenin and Stalin, who were mysteriously seated on opposite ends of an enormous sofa.

Correcting errors is good. And “stealth corrections” can be OK. But the AP has published a damaging falsehood, which was spread widely — reaching the BBC and numerous other sources — and has now destroyed the evidence. That seems wrong to me.

RAND SIMBERG IS HURRICANE BLOGGING — from a secure alternate location.

IF YOU WANT TO HELP the victims of the Russian school massacre, go here.

CLINTON’S HAVING BYPASS SURGERY; Bush called to wish him well. My grandfather died of complications from bypass surgery when it was very new; fortunately, it’s now as nearly routine as anything involving surgery on your heart can be. I hope he comes through well, and wonder if he’ll be able to give up the Big Macs.

LAYING OUT THE BUSH DOCTRINE.

JOHN FORBES DUKAKIS?

DOES THIS sound like somebody who’s winning?

Maybe it was just a reaction to this nightmare.

ANTI-SADR PROTESTS IN NAJAF:

In Najaf, scores of demonstrators took to the streets in the battle-scarred heart of the city near the Imam Ali shrine to protest the presence of al-Sadr and his militia and to back Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, who brokered last week’s peace deal. The agreement called for the Mahdi Army to give up its arms, but many militia members in Najaf are thought to have kept them, hiding them at home or elsewhere.

“The demands of the demonstrators in general and for the people of Najaf especially are to ensure safety and security and to have stability back,” said one protester, 38-year-old Abu Mohammed al-Najafi, identifying himself with a nickname.

Demonstrators shouted chants denouncing al-Sadr, including one that equated him with deposed dictator Saddam Hussein.

I’m surprised this isn’t getting more attention.

“KIDS. SHOT IN THE BACK”

MADE-UP BOOS at the AP? Hmm.

UPDATE: An update to the post above says that the story was by the AP’s Scott Lindlaw, seen here previously with distorted reports of Bush visits to military bases and NASCAR races — the latter of which got characterized as a “cheap shot” by the Columbia Journalism Review.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The report that it was Scott Lindlaw seems to be in error. Jonathan Last reports that it was Tom Hays, but that AP pulled the byline. Quite appalling.

I GOT YER BOUNCE RIGHT HERE: The folks at Time send this, though there’s no hyperlink, dangit:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, September 3, 2004

TIME Poll: Campaign 2004

BUSH OPENS DOUBLE DIGIT LEAD,
ACCORDING TO NEW TIME POLL
—
AMONG LIKELY VOTERS, 52% WOULD VOTE FOR PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH, 41% WOULD VOTE FOR JOHN KERRY,
AND 3% WOULD VOTE FOR NADER

New York – For the first time since the Presidential race became a two person contest last spring, there is a clear leader, the latest TIME poll shows. If the 2004 election for President were held today, 52% of likely voters surveyed would vote for President George W. Bush, 41% would vote for Democratic nominee John Kerry, and 3% would vote for Ralph Nader, according to a new TIME poll conducted from Aug. 31 to Sept. 2. Poll results are available on TIME.com and will appear in the upcoming issue of TIME magazine, on newsstands Monday, Sept. 6.

Most important issues: When asked what they consider are the most important issues, 25% of registered voters cited the economy as the top issue, followed by 24% who cited the war on terrorism as the top issue. The situation in Iraq was rated the top issue by 17% of registered voters, moral values issues such as gay marriage and abortion were the top issue for 16% of respondents, and health care was the most important issue for 11% of respondents.

Bush vs. Kerry:

The economy: 47% trust President Bush more to handle the economy, while 45% trust Kerry.
Health care: 48% trust Senator Kerry to handle health care issues, while 42% trust Bush.
Iraq: 53% trust Bush to handle the situation in Iraq, while 41% trust Kerry. Terrorism: 57% trust Bush to handle the war on terrorism, while 36% trust Kerry.
Understanding the needs of people: 47% said they trust Kerry to understand the needs of people like themselves, while 44% trusted Bush to understand their needs.
Providing strong leadership: 56% said they trust Bush to provide strong leadership in difficult times, while 37% said they trust Kerry to provide leadership in difficult times.
Tax policy: 49% trust Bush to handle tax policy, while 40% trust Kerry. Commanding the Armed Forces: 54% said they trust Bush to be commander-in-chief of the armed forces, while 39% said they trust Kerry.

Bush on the Issues:

Iraq: Half (50%) of those surveyed approve of the way President Bush is handling the situation in Iraq, while 46% disapprove. In last week’s TIME poll, 48% approved of the way Bush was handling the situation in Iraq and 48% disapproved.
Terrorism: Almost two thirds (59%) said they approve of how President Bush is handling the war on terrorism, while 38% disapprove. Last week’s TIME poll found 55% approved of Bush’s handling of the war on terrorism, while 40% disapproved.
The Economy: Survey respondents were split on the President’s handling of the economy. Almost half (48%) said the approved of Bush’s handling of the economy, while 48% said the disapproved.

Other results include:

Was U.S. Right Going to War with Iraq? Over half of those surveyed (52%) think the U.S. was right in going to war with Iraq, while 41% think the U.S. was wrong to go to war.

Have the United States’ actions in Iraq made the world safer? Almost half(45%) think the United States’ actions in Iraq have made the world safer, while 45% think the world is more dangerous. In a similar TIME poll taken Aug. 3 –5, over half (52%) said the world was more dangerous, and 38% said the world was safer.

Note the pro-Bush movement on many issues. How much of this is due to the convention? Beats me. Given the dates involved, I’d say not all of it. I’m not that big on polls, generally, and especially pre-Labor Day polls, but this shift seems rather striking, particularly when compared to Kerry’s non-bounce from the Democratic Convention.

UPDATE: Ask, and ye shall receive — link here. And more poll news here.

DARFUR UPDATE: “The Canadian general who watched helplessly while genocide raged in Rwanda has launched a tirade against Western countries for their ‘lame and obtuse’ response to unnervingly similar horrors unfolding in Sudan.”

There will be a Rally in New York City on September 12th to address this. I hope it does some good.

UPDATE: Just noticed that John Kerry is calling for strong action on Darfur. That’s good. Unfortunately, what Kerry seems to think of as strong action seems a bit weak:

He called on Mr. Bush to “stop equivocating” and declare the attacks a genocide, and to release the findings of a State Department investigation of the crisis. Two dozen experts hired by the department spent a month interviewing refugees and confirming widespread atrocities, and their report, which includes 1,200 interviews, is on the desk of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.

Mr. Kerry also said the president should press the United Nations to create a commission to investigate possible war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

He urged Mr. Bush to press the Security Council to impose sanctions on the Sudanese government in Khartoum. . . .

On the question of military intervention, Mr. Kerry said the administration should push the United Nations to deploy an international force and to authorize it to use all means necessary to disarm militias, protect civilians and allow aid to get through.

As the article notes, that’s not likely to happen given that Security Council members like France and China — which have oil interests in the region through the current government — would veto or sabotage any effort.

I guess Kerry’s not willing to call for unilateral action (that is, action not approved by France), here, but that’s what we need. Some special forces trainers and some weapons to organize the victims in Darfur (and across the border in Chad) would go a long way toward ending this genocide. But if you think that Security Council approval is essential for legitimate military action, then there’s not much that can be done here.

CATHY SEIPP looks at Bill Maher in Hell, and finds it thin gruel.