d   o   w   n       t   h   e       p   i   k   e

I'd like to say I expect more from the Fraud Blogspotter, but RIAF delivered just what I've come to expect in yesterday's broadside against Gov. Mitt Romney's record on terrorism preparedness. Well-researched as always, carefully footnoted (well, parenthetically annotated, but close enough), and inaccurate.

Which is not to say that Romney is a Fraud is always wrong. "Team Reform" isn't perfect, and I enjoy reading RIAF to see what imperfections have occured lately. And frequently RIAF, written by a mysterious "Ben" who seems to have nothing better to do with his life than keep massive press-clipping files on the govenor, is spot-on accurate. Yet he exemplifies the famous quote from Scottish poet Andrew Lang: "he uses statistics as a drunken man uses a lamppost -- for support, rather than for illumination."

Comes now the news that our fair state has scored 49th out of 50 in terrorism preparedness. RIAF points out yesterday that Romney is (1) often mentioned as a rising star in the GOP constellation, and (2) allegedly an anti-terrorism hawk. Thus to have Mitt's state score behind everyone but Alaska, RIAF says, is evidence of hypocrisy on the part of Team Reform.

Slow down there. Let's remember who really controls Massachusetts. Our Congressional delegation is Democratic. Both houses of the state Legislature are overwhelmingly so (roughly 20 Republicans out of 200 seats). After Romney, who's the most powerful Republican in the state? Do I hear crickets?

Now let's take a look at what this study really means. It's bad news for Massachusetts, but it's not the bad news RIAF wants us to believe it is.

"The Trust for America's Health recently issued a report identifying Massachusetts as one of the worst offenders of basic bioterrorism detection, diagnosis and response capabilities," writes RIAF, after noting that a Romney spokesman, in September, said the governor's "primary concerns is that we focus on prevention and the role of the state and local governments in the intelligence-gathering network."

Sounds pretty damning until you realize that the spokesman was talking about the law-enforcement side of countererrorism, while TFAH is focusing solely on public health spending -- something funded, but let's not belabor the point, by the state Legislature.

Here's a representative sample of the "major concerns" listed by TFAH's report:
-- Massachusetts cut public health funding in 2003 and 2004 (amidst budget crises when just about everything was cut), and federal funding is down too (geez, Mitt, you can't even control Congress!);
-- "Concerns remain that states are unprepared to implement a quarantine, although every state except Alaska has adequate statutory authority to quarantine in response to a hypothetical bioterrorism attack scenario";
-- Massachusetts is not adequately prepared for a flu or plague pandemic, and would face higher per capita death and hospitalization rates than some other states;
-- "The public health workforce is on the brink of a 'brain drain' as the baby boomers retire and next-generation recruitment efforts suffer."

Translation of that last item: many of Massachusetts' public health workers are older, more experienced, and harder to replace than other states'. I, for one, am not concerned that this state will have difficulty replacing its public health workforce when the time comes. I mean, it's not like Massachusetts has any of the country's top medical or biological research schools.

That said, the report demonstrates that Massachusetts could stand to do better as regards public health emergency preparedness, as judged by a non-profit which says it is "dedicated to ... working to make disease prevention a national priority."

On the other hand, I don't think this really supports RIAF's criticism of "Team Reform for not creating their promised civilian intelligence network that would help foment intelligence gathering."

Some of the most interesting stuff in the average newspaper ends up on Page 2. For this demonstration we will require a copy of the Telegram & Gazette, which qualifies as "average" on the grounds that it certainly isn't above-average, but it does publish George Will on occasion.

Wednesday's Page 2 informs us, in the digest, that the Cape Cod town of Fairhaven "plans to trap feral cats." Amazingly, no quote from MSPCA about how the kitties who have been "pestering" this coastal town's residents aren't all that bad at all, they're just misunderstood. The residents' main concern, according to the brief, is the "large amounts of fecal waste" being left on lawns and beaches.

Nothing is said about what will happen to Felix once the animal control office captures him. This is one place where, I'm ashamed to say, the television actually gave me a fuller story: Channel 7 reported yesterday that some of the cats will be killed; those that are deemed not to be a health risk will go to a shelter.

Almost-as-amazingly as all that, the South Coast town of Fairhaven ("fa-HAY-vin" to locals, "FAIR-haven" to out-of-towners and TV "personalities" who also say such silly things as "QUIN-cee" and "PEA-body") has relocated over the bridge to Cape Cod. I was always taught that Cape Cod begins at Bourne, maybe Wareham if you have relatives or are selling a house there. Fairhaven is a suburb of New Bedford, in Bristol County. It's three towns from the Cape as traditionally defined, and just as far from Rhode Island.

The lead story of Page 2 is an AP report on Gov. Mitt Romney's plan to reinstate the death penalty in Massachusetts. Money graf, as far as I'm concerned, is 4th:

Romney wants to craft a national model that other states with more lax death penalty laws could adpot. In 2003, Illinois emptied its death row after several inmates were found to be innocent. Massachusetts is one of a dozen states without capital punishment.

C'mon, Mitt, there are better uses of whatever political capital you have left. The death penalty is on its way out throughout the country, as it's been proven ineffective. Stop running for president and come back home. We miss you.

I really, really want to like Paul Sullivan. But he's no David Brudnoy. I'm giving Sully a chance, but it only makes me miss Brudnoy more.

I had the same reaction to Brudnoy when I first started listening to him -- a year ago. At the time, his libertarian views caused him to take positions on the day's top issues, like gay marriage, with which I disagreed. But even then, Brudnoy seemed to me to come to his conclusions from a more logical and exhaustive process than Sullivan, who at the time (and until Brudnoy's death this week) hosted the 10 p.m. show on WBZ.

The difference was that Brudnoy would always hold my attention; Sullivan, and midnight host Steve LeVeille, for that matter, would annoy me if they took one of the straight-out-of-the-Democrats'-playbook positions. I'll listen to someone who disagrees with me if their disagreement makes me reconsider my position, but not if they are only shouting "I'm right, I'm right, I'm right" and failing to engage the arguments of their callers.

Brudnoy never did that, as far as I could tell. Every position he held, it seemed, he had arrived at after thought, and was prepared to defend "on enemy turf." I wish I had listened to Brudnoy my entire life, so I could write a better encomium of him. Instead, I'm left with hoping that the next year of Sullivan will be as good as the last year of Brudnoy, and it's not off to a good start.

I'm not a radio die-hard who tunes in at home. I hear these guys in 20-minute snippets, on the way home from work. Thursday night, Sullivan was speaking with Kim Cariani and another Newton parent, who were featured in that day's Boston Herald for protesting "propoganda, false information, and lies" at a high school talk on homosexuality.

Cariani was upset because the panel discussion at the assembly glorified the homosexual lifestyle, ridiculed religion, and compared the gay rights movement to the civil rights movement. To which a thinking person might answer: all of these things are perfectly reasonable to do on talk radio, or elsewhere in the public square, but not at a school event, much less during the school day.

As in his Wednesday night show, which focused in parts on the Iraq war, Sullivan was outright combative with opposing viewpoints -- in this case, the views of his guests. He must have been cheesed to be sharing air time with a couple of bible-thumpers, because every time they tried to steer the conversation back to their debatable but legitimate, moderate view -- that schools should not take a stand on an issue as volatile as homosexuality, or that students should not be taught that opposing gay rights* is somehow backwards or bigoted -- he interrupted to make it clear that he does not agree with their lack of support for gay rights.

We know, Sully. That's not the issue.

Sullivan did reveal that he agrees with Cariani's opinion of the "BGLAD" assembly, but for a different reason. The assembly was inappropriate, he said, because it gives easy cannon fodder to right-wingers like Cariani, doing more damage than good to the gay rights movement.

Look, a talk host is entitled to his opinion. Certainly Brudnoy had strong, often controversial views (I was amazed, and inspired, by his ability to transcend labels: very liberal in some places, yet pro-Iraq war, staunchly so; he was dissatisfied with both John Kerry and George Bush). The difference is that Sulllivan doesn't seem willing to let opponents speak, and respond to the issues they bring up. Taking over Brudnoy's time slot, he's got big shoes to fill, and he still has far to walk before he can think about taking Brudnoy's place.

* A note on "gay rights": I use this term in the place of loaded terms like "special rights" and "civil rights." I use this term to mean things like gay marriage, civil unions, and domestic-partner benefits. I do not use it to mean inarguable civil rights or privacy rights. Within the context of opposing "gay rights," it is still possible to oppose "don't ask, don't tell," to oppose state laws banning sodomy, to endorse hate-crimes legislation, and to believe that homosexuality is a natural and noble human condition.

The distinction I draw here is the same one that Cariani drew, and Sullivan seemed not to understand, which showed just how educated and centrist Cariani is (I'm guessing here; I've never met her, nor heard of her before Thursday night). Cariani said she did not want to be labeled a "homophobe" or "bigot" simply because she disagreed with the idea of a public school placing its blessing on pro-gay messages. A homophobe, she said, is somone who fears gays. Sullivan responded, "that's your definition," to which she rejoined, "it's the dictionary's definition."

I have this to look forward to every night at 7?

Perhaps I'm a bit too harsh with Worcester's biggest (only) daily, but honestly, who can fault a reasonable person for failing to pull punches with the broadsheet that publishes some of the world's stupidest letters to the editor?

Let's take a look at "Americans Erred in Re-Electing Bush," from Tuesday, Dec. 14. This letter illustrates exactly why Red America is so frustrated and exasperated by Blue America.

"Well, the election is over and we chose to elect President George W. Bush again," begins the letter, by a frequent contributor to the Telegram's letters page.

... Our country is insane. The president got us into a war where no weapons of mass destruction were ever found. He managed to take a $5 trillion surplus and get us into $5 trillion debt.

Alright, stop right there. Regardless of whether we ever find WMD, the fact remains that under the peace treaty, it was up to Saddam to prove they didn't exist; and, remember, the intel upon which we acted was the same info used by France and Russia. As regards the debt: gee, ya don't think the tanking of the U.S. economy had anything to do with it? Of course, you must blame Bush for the 9/11 attacks and the recession that had already begun under Clinton. Right.

It's just like the beginning. We have no allies, our nursing homes are threated to be without medications, and all this because of Sept. 11? I doubt it. Those men were trained to fly those planes in our country by our own pilots. Not every day is a red-alert day. We should not have gone to war alone. There is never a winner in war, just victims.

Let's hit these ridiculous statements in order:
1. We have plenty of allies -- Britain, Italy, Australia, Poland. Once Iraq blows over and becomes more of a reconstruction, less of a war zone, the fair-weather friends will be back, with the possible exception of France, which is still sore over the fact that it's a third-rate power with first-rate ego.
2. Who is attempting to make the connection between 9/11 and the high cost of prescription drugs? That's a new one on me.
3. So we need to be on guard for possible terrorist training in our back yard ... and this is supposed to be an argument against Bush's homeland security policies? Strange tactic.
4. Not every day is a red alert day. Most are orange alert days. By the way, I've heard this system denigrated multiple times by leftists. I ask them to prove to me that it hasn't averted 20 terrorist attacks.
5. We did not go to war alone. See #1, above, and add Spain back when it was led by a prime minister who understands the importance of being on the right side of history, not just fashion.
6. The last sentence would be profound, if it were not obviously false. There are plenty of winners in war. Ask Charles DeGaulle, or George Washington, or the women of Afghanistan.

I fully intended to blog this entire letter, which goes on for four more excruciating paragraphs, but I simply can't continue. It's too painful. Especially the part where the writer claims that "we have four more years of this dictator."

Seeing who against him makes me proud to have voted for Bush.

More from the Woosta Spy coming up later this month ... quick rundown on the major issues facing my corner of the world at this moment:

1. Democrats: hypocritical to call Condi "affirmative action."
2. Republicans: aren't winning hearts and minds with continued bashing of J.F. Kerry.
3. Deer: should carry collision insurance ... fenders cost money, and it wasn't my fault!

More to follow when the muse strikes.