TIMOTHY PERRY has a new URL, and is offering helpful advice for John Kerry regarding outsourcing.

STIMULATING THE ECONOMY: We got our tax refund recently — much larger than it would have been, thanks to the tax cuts and particularly the abolition of the marriage penalty — and while some of the money has gone to the college account, it has also funded some home improvements: a new gas grill (not as fancy as these luxury models advertised on Bill Hobbs’ site but it has 6 burners!), new blinds for the upstairs, etc. The Insta-Wife remains quite enthusiastic about President Bush. I wonder if this effect is widespread?

UPDATE: Here’s a similar account, and reader Nicholas Sylvain emails:

I had a very similar reaction. Upon completing my return, and being surprised at a substantially larger than expected refund, I thanked George Bush & promptly paid off my student loans and bought season tickets to the local minor league hockey team.

The grill I bought, BTW, was a Kenmore Premium. I didn’t spring for the rather-pricey “Elite.” I like the features, and since I do most of our cooking on the grill for 6-8 months out of the year I’m happy with the upgrade.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Gabe Posey emails:

My wife and I were so shocked on seeing how much we were getting back we actually asked the preparer to double check it. If people vote with their wallets, W is a shoe in. Personally, I recently donated some of my refund to bloggers like you and Lileks. It seemed only right to do so, given the service you provide to others with like ideals. I’m curious, though, how John Kerry plans on leaving the tax cuts permanent _and_ raising taxes. I think it will make for an interesting debate point no matter what.

And Greg Schwinghammer reports:

When I did my taxes in January, I was also thrilled by the large refund. I use TurboTax, which had an interesting feature. When the taxes are done, TurboTax shows a chart with side-by-side comparison of your tax payments with 2002 versus 2003 rates. Were I so minded, I might think a vast right-wing conspiracy convinced TurboTax to add this feature.

Interesting. I’d like to see some of those figures. Kim Breuer also emails:

We paid off a major credit card bill, bought a general all-purpose computer for our younger children (to be used for educational purposes only, no internet/email) and are having a new kitchen floor installed with our tax refund.

No Internet? What about blogs? We’re educational! On the other hand, reader Jeff Redman sends this:

The Insta-Wife remains quite enthusiastic about President Bush. I wonder if this effect is widespread?

With half the country earning $35,000 or less and unlikely to receive any refund (remember, all us poor people don’t pay taxes), I’d say probably not. Count yourself among the lucky, bub.

Oh, I do. Or at least among the better-off. Though (pace Virginia Postrel) the Insta-Family isn’t actually “rolling in dough.” We are, however, located in a place where housing prices are exceptionally low, which translates into more disposable income than we’d have in, say, Los Angeles or Boston.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Stan Smith emails:

I doubt that your reader Jeff Redman is correct in saying that “half the country” earns “$35,000 or less”, given that the median income is somewhere around $42,000 (figures from the US Census website). And, while I don’t doubt that many earn salaries that aren’t very high, most of those wage earners are entry-level workers like my daughter who earns only the minimum. And of course, if you don’t earn much, you don’t pay much (if any) in taxes, so naturally, you don’t get a big refund (if any). Also, if you’re like me, and want to keep most of the money you earn for yourself, you have minimal withholding, so you don’t get much of a refund either (we have to pay this year, in fact). However, *I* got the use of my money this year, rather than the government, who pays you no interest at all on the excess that they confiscate from you throughout
the year.

Reader Jonathan Michael Hawkins disagrees with Redman:

I don’t know what your reader Jeff Redman is talking about. I made about half of that 35,000 dollars last year (yes, I’m a poor voter with Republican leanings), and I got much more of a refund this year. I’ll finally be able to pay off some debts, which makes me much more comfortable this year than I was last. Moreover, I am in the IT business and will be able to afford more professional certifications, likely leading (long-term) to better employment and higher tax revenue for the government due to my higher paycheck. Win-win.

Indeed. And reader Wendy Cook observes:

I just have to say this because that last gentleman [Redman] seemed to be veering into the “tax cuts for the wealthy” mentality: Getting a backyard grill, installing a new kitchen floor, buying a computer for the kids, paying off a student loan–these are things that wealthy people don’t have to wait for a tax refund to do. These are nice, middle-class purchases that otherwise may not have been possible. I know some people have had a tough year, but your readers’ comments really put the lie to the term “tax cuts for the wealthy.”

Excellent point.

MORE: Gabe Posey writes back in response to Redman:

I’m not sure if this guy is being sarcastic or serious, but I earn in that income bracket and still did very well. I think saying any blanketed tax refund or tax owed is just not plausible. On the whole, though, mainstream America pays enough taxes to receive a refund. Those who do not pay ‘enough’ taxes are often the self-employed or contractors. Even so, these people see the benefit of lower taxes. They may not get a check from the government like most of us, but it still trickles down. This again puts a heaping helping of bunk on John Kerry’s idea of taxing only the rich. As Bill Whittle has argued, the poor and the rich have a vested interest in the same economy. If the rich get richer, the poor get richer too.

By the way, Posey has a blog, which I probably should have mentioned earlier. And reader Mary Pat Campbell writes:

When my sister got her first full-time job in 2000, when she got her first paycheck and noticed all the taxes and withholdings she called up my mother to tell her: “You know, I was thinking about voting for Bush. Now that I’ve seen my first paycheck, I =know= I’m voting for Bush.” At the time, I thought her selfish and short-sighted (I was a protest voter that year — I hated both Bush and Gore.)

Now 4 years have passed, and I’ve come around to my sister’s way of thinking though lower taxes are just one of many reasons I will vote for Bush). My main complaints are protectionism and overspending, but both of those would obviously be worse with Kerry.

I’d hold all nondefense spending flat if it were up to me. (Okay, actually I’d roll most of it back if it were up to me). But that’s not going to happen. And the war is priority one for me at the moment, though I don’t mind having my taxes cut.

STILL MORE: Joseph O’Brien writes:

Just wanted to drop you a quick line regarding being pleasantly surprised with an unexpected or unexpectedly high tax refund. My wife and I adopted our foster daughter this year. We had expected to write-off some of the associated expenses (i.e. legal costs) and get the extra $500/child deduction (We were able to take her as a deduction in tax year 2002).

Well we were completely blown away with a 10K tax credit we were able to claim because our daughter is “special needs”. You can google “tax credit adoption 1993” or check here : http://grassley.senate.gov/won/2001/won01-08-3.htm. I was pretty much in Bush’s camp prior to this revelation, but this sealed the deal.

Stephen Bainbridge has a post on this, and observes:

As for us, we got a very nice 4-figure refund, which we then turned around and applied to our first quarter 2004 estimated tax payment. Not quite as satisfying as seeing that check come back from Uncle Sam, but my already blooming enthusiasm for President Bush likely will spike even higher when I write a much smaller than normal estimated tax payment check in a few weeks.

Yes, the hidden news is that withholding is down, too. But not everyone is happy. Reader Mostafa Sabet emails:

I’m happy as a clam that I got a bigger refund, but I know it’s short lived no matter who gets elected. I’d be perfectly happy if Bush cut spending along with taxes (dollar for dollar would be best). Deficit spending is just money future taxes will have to cover, with interest. I’d rather have higher tax brackets now than in 5 years when I’ll be making more. Kerry’s not better, but gridlock is a great way to keep spending from going up. Maybe he’d be forced to cut spending to get those across the aisle to agree. Of course, I’m the kind of person that puts everything on my debit card to keep my spending in line without incurring high interest, so I’m just projecting my own fiscal preferences. We may not be paying taxes now, which is nice, but we’ll have to foot the bill later (I’m 25 and don’t want to get stuck with the bill).

I’d like to see the spending cuts, too. The real question, though, is probably between deficits from spending and deficits from tax cuts. If that’s the choice, I prefer the latter. In this, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I guess I agree with Milton Friedman: “Raise taxes by enough to eliminate the existing deficit and spending will go up to restore the tolerable deficit. Tax cuts may initially raise the deficit above the politically tolerable deficit, but their longer term effect will be to restrain spending.”

DONALD SENSING COMMENTS on permissible racism in sportswriting.

THIS SOUNDS LIKE GOOD NEWS:

MALAYSIAN Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi yesterday secured a stunning personal triumph, reversed a so-called green tide of Islamic fundamentalism, and energised his anti-corruption and corporate transparency drive. . . .

Analysts noted some clear trends: the Front has decimated the Islamic clerics of PAS in their own backyard; captured the fortress seat of the Democratic Action Party (DAP) in Kota Melaka for the first time in 35 years, and crushed Parti Keadilan Nasional – Anwar’s political vehicle.

There’s a Wall Street Journal story sounding a similar theme, but it’s subscription-only.

RANDY BARNETT has been looking over the Bush Administration’s response to Richard Clarke’s charges, and has some thoughts.

VIRGINIA POSTREL has been on a hot streak lately. Just keep scrolling.

JAN HAUGLAND NOTES THAT RICHARD CLARKE spent his career warning about a digital Pearl Harbor, not attacks like 9/11. He observes: “It is rather ironic when Clarke, who had a reputation for his obsession with cyberthreats, accuses the Bush administration of being obsessed with Iraq. His past history clearly puts the accusations in a new light.”

To be fair, however, Clarke has had some worthwhile things to say on the subject of cyberterrorism.

UPDATE: Here’s what Clarke was saying in 2000: “I think the largest threat is obviously posed by international narcotics smuggling, which costs a number of lives and costs an enormous amount of money.” If you read the report he’s discussing, you’ll see that drugs and intellectual property issues get a lot more attention than terrorism, and the discussion of terrorism isn’t as prescient as his current interviews suggest.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here.

THE PRESS GETS IT WRONG AGAIN — from Slashdot:

When the President and NASA announced the agency’s new space initiative, including sending humans back to the Moon and on to Mars, many news reports claimed that the plan could cost as much as $1 trillion. According to this Space Review article, that trillion-dollar price tag is a myth: it was based on erroneous data and analysis, in large part by a single Associated Press reporter, and propagated by many other reporters too busy — or too lazy — to check on the facts. Could this kill the plan before it has a chance to start?

Read the whole thing. Note that blogosphere fave, AP reporter Scott Lindlaw, makes an appearance.

A WHILE BACK, I mentioned Leon Kass’s views on eating ice cream in public (uncivilized, offensive, and animalistic, he says). Now Elisabeth Riba notes that Miss Manners feels otherwise. As I noted earlier, Kass’s views on this subject, while not specifically relevant to bioethics, “suggest a more generalized discomfort with the messy, physical side of life” that may explain his views in the bioethics arena. And it’s a discomfort that puts him to the right — if that’s the proper characterization — of Miss Manners, no less.

UPDATE: Evangelical Outpost says that I’m being unfair to Kass by not noting that his objections to eating ice cream in public are religious in nature.

But Kass doesn’t say that, and EO’s claim is rather thinly sourced. Anyway, I’m not sure it matters. Assume it’s true: Does the President’s Council on Bioethics gain in credibility if it turns out to be headed by a man who has religious objections to eating ice cream public? Somewhow, I doubt it. And, regardless of whether Kass’s views are informed by religious or personal idiosyncrasy, this whole issue seems to call into question Kass’s core argument: “The wisdom of repugnance.” Kass finds eating ice cream in public repugnant. Hardly anyone else does. Sounds like aesthetics masquerading as moral reasoning to me.

MICHAEL TOTTEN has a gallery of photos from antiwar protests around the world. Here’s another, from San Francisco.

UPDATE: More here, plus a sign calling for U.S. troops to mutiny. Treasonous isn’t really too strong a word for this sort of thing, you know. For all the talk of dissent-crushing, this is the sort of thing that would have led to arrest, or mob violence, in most previous wars. Now it’s barely noticed. That says something for the openness of American society, or the inconsequential nature of the antiwar movement. Or maybe both.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Highly observant reader John Hohman notes that you can see one of the guys with the “mutiny” sign, above, in this video by Evan Coyne Maloney from the January protests, beginning at about 2’15” time. He seems to be right. Keep watching, as the same guy appears again later on.

HERE’S AN AMUSING PHOTO of Doug “InstaLawyer” Weinstein from, er, earlier in his musical career. I’m pretty sure I took this one.

MATTHEW HOY has some thoughts about the Jack Kelley scandal (which I had missed), and about pressure groups and fabrication in journalism.

UPDATE: David Adesnik says it’s not as big as a New York Times scandal:

I don’t really expect the Kelley affair to get that kind of attention either. But ask yourself the following questions: How often do you read USA Today? Does anyone consider USA Today to be the United States’ paper of record and its standard-bearer of journalistic integrity?

(You don’t have to answer those questions. They were rhetorical. Oh, and one bonus question for all you bloggers out there: How many times have you linked to a USA Today story in the past six months?)

A few. But not many.

LARRY LESSIG’S NEW BOOK, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity, comes out on Thursday. I haven’t read it yet, but I expect that it’ll be interesting.

BRYAN PRESTON notes odd omissions at the L.A. Times.

UPEATE: Captain Ed says there’s serious spin going on.

HERE’S A BLOG REPORT from the anti-war protests over the weekend, with links to others:

When I arrived at the College, I easily picked out the throng of about 70 demonstrators gathering on the front lawn: they were the ones waving the Palestinian flags. But wasn’t this protest was supposed to be about Iraq? . . .

An organizer with a megaphone railed against the “corporate media.” “They’re gonna tell you that turnout today was low!” He screamed. “Don’t believe them!”

I looked around. Turnout was definitely low, and I’m not, by any stretch of the imagination, a member of the “corporate media.”

Read the whole thing. And if you didn’t go earlier, note the protester pictured here with the sign cheering the destruction of the World Trade Center. As James Lileks observes:

That, Ladies and Gentlemen, is a traitor. He may be an idiot, a maroon, a 33rd degree moonbat, but he’s still a traitor. That is a man who celebrates the death of Americans (and others) and supports the people who killed them. Oh, sure, he’s nuts. But he fits right in. So what were all these people against, exactly?

A free press in Iraq. Freedom to own a satellite dish. Freedom to vote. A new Constitution that might actually be worth the paper on which it’s printed. Oil revenues going to the people instead of Saddam, or French oligopolies. Freedom to leave the country. Freedom to demonstrate against the people who made it possible for you to demonstrate. . . .

These people want “freedom,” but only for themselves. Freedom to preen. Freedom to flatter themselves that they are somehow committing an act of bravery by Speaking Truth to Power. But they’re speaking Nonsense to Indifference. Pictures of Bush as Hitler sieg-heiling away would get them killed if this was truly the country they insist it is. Nothing will happen to them. They know it. They would be killed for doing this in Saddam’s Iraq, of course; they know that too. Doesn’t matter.

When Palestinians blow up Israelis school buses, that’s understandable anger. When America defends itself, that’s indefensible. When dissent is crushed with secret police and torture chambers, that’s not worthy of comment. When some people point out that traitorous behavior is unadmirable, that’s the recapitulation of Nazi Germany.

To people of no moral standing. Which is what these people are. Fortunately, there aren’t very many of them. (Read this, too.)

BELGRAVIA DISPATCH is admonishing Josh Marshall for letting his hostility toward Richard Perle get the best of him. And this seems about right:

[W]hat Marshall misses is that Arabs and Muslims, while often deeply humiliated, resentful and suspicious with respect to U.S. policy and motives in the region–are also fascinated, curious and eager to see how Bush’s huge Iraq gamble develops in the coming months.

Put differently, they are intrigued to see if a democratic, unitary Iraqi state can rise from the ashes of Saddam’s Iraq. The democracy exception policy, at least with regard to Iraq, just took a body blow.

And many Arabs/Muslims are busily digesting this complex reality–and waiting to see how the Iraq project proceeds–without yet having formed a definitive view.

This, at least partially, explains why American favorability rankings in the Muslim world have actually improved since the Iraq invasion per the Pew poll.

That seems right to me. (Emphasis in original). Note, too, Iraqi bloggers’ war-anniversary sumups (linked here and here), and Adam Curry’s firsthand observations on what’s going on in Iraq.

ANOTHER HATE CRIME HOAX, this time at Claremont. Meanwhile there’s genuine crushing of dissent, with apparent support from the Administration, at U.C. Berkeley.

UPDATE: Here’s another one. I think that these hoaxes should be treated as hate crimes themselves. The argument for special “hate crime” rules, after all, is that hate crimes promote fear and division. So do fake hate crimes.

THE OUTSOURCING BOGEYMAN: Daniel Drezner has an article in Foreign Affairs arguing that concern over the outsourcing/job loss question is misplaced:

Outsourcing actually brings far more benefits than costs, both now and in the long run. If its critics succeed in provoking a new wave of American protectionism, the consequences will be disastrous — for the U.S. economy and for the American workers they claim to defend.

As is his custom, he has also placed a bibliography, etc., on his blog, something that I suspect many reporters, etc., working on this topic will find very useful.

UPDATE: Here, on the other hand, is a potentially genuine worry about outsourcing in the tech field: sabotage.

JOURNALISTIC ETHICS: I’ve missed the Richard Clarke hype, but now Drudge is reporting that CBS, which pumped Clarke’s book hard on “60 Minutes,” didn’t disclose a financial stake in the book’s success.

UPDATE: Well, I haven’t been following it, but somebody has:

Richard Clarke is a bitter, discredited bureaucrat who was an integral part of the Clinton administration’s failed approach to terrorism, was demoted by President Bush, and is now an adjunct to John Kerry’s presidential campaign.

Ouch. Roger Simon says it’s all about the Benjamins for Clarke, and Stephen F. Hayes wonders why Clarke is giving Clinton — who had a lot more time than Bush to focus on Al Qaeda, but didn’t — a pass.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Hmm. Clarke seems to have had trouble deciding who to worry about, despite his claims now. And here’s Condi Rice’s response. Meanwhile Hugh Hewitt observes:

Al Qaeda took root in Afghanistan and metastasized during the Clinton party. Repeated strikes on the U.S. abroad, culminating in the bombing of the Cole, went unpunished except for the symbolism of tossing some cruise missiles into the Afghan mountains. The attempt to pin blame on the eight months of Bush Administration control on the basis of “warnings” delivered is transparent posturing from the same gang that gave Osama a pass for eight years while his camps trained and dispersed thousands of fanatics throughout the world.

The political operation on the Democratic side is in chaos, repeatedly attempting to rewrite the national security situation and repeatedly failing. Their focus groups and polls must be telling them that they have to move public opinion on this issue or lose big in the fall. But that’s like trying to move Mount McKinley from Alaska to Hawaii. The perception that the Democrats are weak on defense and hesitant to engage the terrorists is out there because the Democrats are weak on defense and hesitant to engage the terrorists.

Well, I’d give Clinton a bit more of a pass on this than Hewitt does. I think a lot of people — including me — viewed Islamic terrorism in the 1990s as a minor threat that could be contained until it collapsed under the weight of its own stupidity. That was wrong, but I don’t blame the Clinton people for getting it wrong. (Clarke, by the way, spent the 1990s worrrying publicly about cyberterrorism). I do, however, blame them intensely for trying to rewrite history now for partisan political reasons while a war is going on.

I’d also like to believe — as Andrew Sullivan is hoping — that a Kerry Administration would be more serious about this sort of thing. But so far, “hope” is the operative term.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Phil Carter is skeptical of the White House’s response to Clarke. That’s reasonable enough — I myself have been repeatedly skeptical of the absurd claim, made earlier but happily not repeated this go-round, that no one could have foreseen the 9/11 attacks. In fact, some people (and not just Tom Clancy) did. On the other hand, Clarke wasn’t one of those people, and his assault seems rather political in nature.

MORE: Reader T.J. Lynn emails:

We’ve finally managed to find the guy who actually lost his job over 9/11.

And now he’s written a book blaming everyone else for what he was specifically charged with preventing.

Heck, is there any wonder why Bush didn’t clean house? Can you imagine the breathless coverage?

Interesting take.

FROM THE BE-CAREFUL-WHAT-YOU-ASK-FOR DEPARTMENT: Author John Gray was apparently unhappy with this rather stale blog post regarding his credentials. So his lawyers sent a letter demanding a retraction and threatening a libel suit. (Blog discussion here, letter from lawyers here.)

One advantage of the blogosphere is that corrections often get more attention than the original error. But whether that’s a bug or a feature depends on where you stand From John Gray’s perspective in this case, I don’t think it’s a feature. I had never seen the original post, and I doubt that many other people saw it either, when it was originally posted. But now — assuming that the representations of Gray’s lawyers are true — I learn that he’s a graduate (B.A. and M.A.) of “Maharishi European Research University.” Color me unimpressed. And while I previously had the vague idea that his Ph.D. was from Columbia University, it turns out that it’s from Columbia Pacific University, which is, er, not really the same. Although Gray’s lawyers proudly note that it was a “State of California-approved university” at the time Gray attended (I’m not sure if that’s the same as “accredited” or not — there are California law schools, at least, that are California approved but not fully accredited) no matter how you cut it things don’t work out in a way that makes Gray look especially good in terms of academic credentials.

Does this mean that it’s always a mistake to send lawyers after bloggers? I suppose not. But I have to say that so far that’s how it looks. The ill-fated Luskin / Atrios dispute, the New York Times / National Debate facedown, and now this all suggest that sometimes it’s better just to let minor things go by than to issue threats that give the subject matter a much higher profile than it otherwise would have had. At the very least, a polite message pointing out the error, and requesting a correction without threats and bluster, is likely to do more good, and generate far less blowback. Bloggers are, in my experience, quite willing to correct errors of fact, but not impressed with threats and bluster.

UPDATE: More blowback. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, but bloggers are from another planet entirely.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Hmm. Here’s a California state press release on the shutdown of Columbia Pacific University for, among other things, having:

awarded excessive credit for prior experiential learning to many students;

failed to employ duly qualified faculty; and

failed to meet various requirements for issuing Ph.D. degrees.

This was, of course, after Gray attended that institution, but it’s still not that impressive. (Via Quackwatch). Here’s a link to the injunction shutting down Columbia Pacific University — and ordering refunds to students, though Gray’s attendance was too far in the past to qualify.

Is it really wise of John Gray, or his lawyers, to be calling attention to this stuff?

MORE: Jeff Jarvis is calling for a legal defense fund for bloggers.

I’M BACK: Regular blogging will resume shortly. In the meantime, go read Lileks, right now.

UPDATE: Mudville Gazette is back from hiatus, too.