Day: September 27, 2004

Perhaps Mr. Levy might recall that while ” the low road is a well-trodden path to big readership,” so is twisting source’s quotes so they fit your predetermined-and-yet-oh- so-charmingly-contrarian-storyline.
Glenn says “I’ve always thought well of Levy, and I’m sure that he didn’t intend to misrepresent my meaning,” but I think he’s being too charitable by far. How else to explain this sentence from Levy:
“True, there are indeed constructive, thoughtful Web-log commentators online. But they don’t draw crowds like Glenn Reynolds, whose Instapundit site recently peaked at about 445,000 daily page views.”
Is there a way to read that other than that in Mr. Levy’s exhalted opinion, Glenn is not a “constructive, thoughtful” commentator?
Levy’s piece is self-righteous twaddle from a journalist who should know better. Nothing more, nothing less.

Folks:
You may have noticed that we are having some intermittent server problems around these parts: every now and then, the site will become completely inaccessible for a short period of time.
The good news is that the folks at Matters are on the case. While we still aren’t sure exactly what the issue is, they’ve decided to migate TTLB over to a new, beefier server. That will occur sometime later this week, so until then, we may see problems, but going forward, the new server should help keep things running smoothly.
I don’t say it enough, but I definitely appreciate the support and flexibility I’ve received from Hosting Matters. The Ecosystem is a bit of a beast, and they’ve worked with me to try to ensure it stays up and running. So to Annette and the rest of the gang at HM: thanks! And to anyone out there looking for hosting services: check them out!
-NZB

Just caught Kerry campaign manager (one of ’em, anyway) Mary Beth Cahill to NPR’s Steve Inskeep on the way in to the day-job this morning.
Inskeep asked a good question:
Inskeep: “One of the things that Senator Kerry has said repeatedly is that he would speed up the training of Iraqi forces, that’s one of the ways he’s says that he would get some American forces and eventually all American forces out of the country. The White House has also said that it would attempt to speed up the training of Iraqi forces, and the major criticism of the Administration’s plan is that it takes a certain amount of time to build an army from scratch. It’s hard to speed up that process. What makes you think the change in the White House could change what is actually possible for military trainers to do on the ground?”
Cahill: “Well actually I think that some of the people who have done the most with this around the world are the Irish and the French, and that if we could draw them into this, helping us train Iraqi nationals, that would be a huge step in the right direction. But they won’t do it so long as we have the leadership that we have right now.”
Inskeep, wisely, had no response to this.
With all due respect to the Irish and French militaries — and unlike Senator Kerry, I do suggest we treat our allies with respect — I just don’t see the significant problems of, as Inskeep quite rightly put it, “building an army from scratch”, melting away at the first sign of French and Irish boots on the ground. (Not to mention my considerable skepticism that either nation would actually suddenly decide their national interests have changed and alter their policies simply because Mr. Kerry had taken residence at 1600 Pennsylvania.)
Unless, of course, the main problem in training the Iraqi military is a lack of good beer and fine food, in which case, my objection is withdrawn.
But that’s Kerry’s plan. It’s the best he’s got to offer, and it summarizes in a nutshell his approach to Iraq: he doesn’t have a plan. He’s just got a plan to ask other countries to come up with a plan.