Last Monday night, I took the train up to NYC planning to drive with my dad and brother up to Maine the following day. At the house, though, I discovered a problem — my MacBook’s power cord wasn’t working. Fortunately, this crazy rumor I’d heard about a 24 hour Apple Store in Manhattan proved true. I was shocked to discover that not only did the store exist, but it was pretty packed with shoppers at 10:30 PM on a Monday.

Conversely, we’re up in Maine right now experiencing some car trouble and it proved completely impossible to find a garage in the area that’s open on Saturdays even in a pretty touristy part of the state at the very height of tourist season. Just think of the ways Steve Jobs could revolutionize the local economy — “it’ll be like a normal car repair place, except better-designed, open on weekends, and triple prices!”

Commenter Roger picks up on something I’d noticed but not commented on: “Thus, [Gideon] Rose thinks it is a knock me down proof of the wrongness of the criticisms of the clerisy leveled by Greenwald, et al., that … criticisms have also been leveled by … the neo-cons! Both sides have criticized the foreign policy establishment!” Indeed. This argument pops up in a surprising variety of places, and it truly seems like the last resort of the damned.

In the real world, after all, anyone who gets criticized at all ends up getting criticized “by both sides.” Just because you’re a liberal blogger like me doesn’t mean there aren’t other bloggers out there who are further to the left and willing to criticize me. And yet, not everyone who’s not as far right as one might be but also not as far left as one might be can simultaneously all be correct.

Meanwhile, this line of thought prejudices analysis of future issues. If the criteria of sober-minded sensibility is that both sides’ partisans think you’re wrong, then you’ve preemptively excluded from consideration the possibility that one side might ever be correct. So no matter how true it may be that the current conflict with Iran has been cooked up by some mix of Bush administration blundering and Bush administration malignancy, one can’t simply say that because then liberals won’t complain. So you need to exhort liberals to take the threat more “seriously,” get yelled at, and then go home feelings very sensible.

John Edwards is saying in the debate that the differences between the Democrats on Iraq are small. That’s certainly something I’d like to believe, since the people who have positions on Iraq I agree with — Bill Richardson and Dennis Kucinich — aren’t people I particularly want to see as president and aren’t people with a good chance of winning. But I don’t really think Edwards is right. It’s true that the Democrats all, in some sense, want to end the war in Iraq, but these plans to leave tens of thousands of residual forces won’t in fact end the war.

Richardson and Kucinich seem to clearly be saying they’ll end the war. Clinton and Biden are clearly saying the war will continue. I think Edwards is essentially in agreement with Clinton, but that’s not totally clear to me. Obama, meanwhile, seems to consistently succeed in ducking this debate in favor of returning to his other foreign policy points.

Josh Patashnik at TNR hits back on my remarks about targeted programs for the poor:

Instead of having targeted programs whose funding comes under attack in lean times, you’d just have an incredibly difficult time getting any programs passed in the first place (which is, presumably, why Kaine is opting for the means-tested version). Does he really think Kaine should pass up the chance to get more poor Virginia kids into preschool now in the hope that a universal program can be implemented at some future date, or that the federal government will suddenly step in?

Do I “really” think Kaine should avoid passing the best program he can pass? No. Which is why I don’t think I ever said that. A governor’s got to do the best he can do. What I am saying is that we should probably have limited expectations about what even the best state-level politicians can achieve on this issue without, at a minimum, a substantial infusion of federal funds.