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February 25, 2007 - March 3, 2007 Archives
Still Waiting
David Kirpatrick's report on the recent meeting of the Council for National Policy (basically, a kind of conservative meta-organization dominated by Christian gorups) is interesting. Basically, as you'd expect, few are enthusiastic about John "Agents of Intolerance" McCain, Rudy Giuliani, or Multiple Choice Mitt. At the same time, they're reluctant to throw their support behind a Mike Huckabee only to have their choice lose. People forget, but that kind of thing is always a huge factor in interest groups politics. When making a primary endorsement, it's critical to try your best to pick a winner, lest your power wound up exposed as fairly illusory.
BS and Fair Game
Like Scott Lemieux, I think the AP should be ashamed of itself for publishing this. Ed Kilgore, however, raises a much better question about the religious status of the GOP field: Is Rudy Giuliani a Catholic?
After all, the man has been married three times. His first marriage of fourteen years was annulled on grounds of a rather tardy discovery that he was married to his second cousin. I'm assuming this annullment was blessed by the Church. So his second marriage was technically his first. But what about his third? Did he somehow get a second annullment? Or was either his second or third (performed by none other than Mayor Bloomberg) marriage just a civil ceremony unblessed by the Church, which means Rudy was self-excommunicated by openly living in sin and/or pretending to be remarried?
Also: What ever happened to this communion business? All these Bishops went around condemning John Kerry for his pro-choice views, but shouldn't Giuliani be in the same boat?
Deism Debunked!
The Conservapedia really is a priceless work. It's too bad that the open source model threatens to someday undermine this crucial cultural artifact. One amusing endeavor is to stroll through the pages for various Founding Father types. You'll see that the sole preoccupation of the entries about such men as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson is assessing the extent of their Christian faith and trying to make the best available case that the person in question did, indeed, subscribe to religious views that a 21st Century American Evangelical would find congenial. Thus, Washington's entry
George Washington (1732-1799) was unanimously elected President of the United States of America and the Commander-in-Chief in the Revolutionary War![1] He was also a devout Christian, with his adopted daughter once stating that if you question Washington's faith you may as well question whether or not he was a patriot![2]
There's absolutely nothing to be done with Jefferson ("With regard to Christianity, Jefferson admired the ethical and moral teachings of Jesus, but did not believe in the divinity of Christ.") "Many historians believe that Benjamin Franklin was a deist," they inform us, "but although Franklin wrote widely, he rarely made statements associated with principles of Deism." Take that, liberals!
In Defense of John Paxson
Bill Simmons is outraged at many teams, but especially the Bulls:
When the media guide for the No Balls Association is released, I demand that John Paxson appears on the cover. At some point, you have to roll the dice, right? Not landing Gasol was inexcusable; the Bulls could have made the Finals with him (and if it meant sacrificing Luol Deng, Ty Thomas and the Knicks' pick, so be it).
I don't think this makes any sense at all. Simmons is asking Chicago to make a big sacrifice of its future -- the very good and very young Deng, a young project in Thomas, a high draft pick, and they'd need to throw in PJ Brown's expiring contract -- in order to improve rather marginally this season. What's more, they'd be eliminating their shot at landing Kevin Garnett if the Timberwolves decide they want to blow things up in the offseason. Swapping Gasol for Deng would improve Chicago somewhat, but it's not as if swapping Deng's 18.8 ppg for Gasol's 20.3 ppg suddenly transforms the Bulls into an offensive powerhouse. Yes, Chicago could use low post scoring, but it's not as if points scored from the post count double or something (and, no, Gasol's not a wildly more efficient scorer either).
Resigning in Protest
The other Times says:
“There are four or five generals and admirals we know of who would resign if Bush ordered an attack on Iran,” a source with close ties to British intelligence said. “There is simply no stomach for it in the Pentagon, and a lot of people question whether such an attack would be effective or even possible.”
This is probably even kinda sorta true. There's an interesting political theory question about how officers should behave in these situations. Clearly, there's some range of orders such that an officer thinks the order is unwise and nevertheless he has a duty to follow it. At the same time, an officer's oath is to the country and its constitution, and there are also going to be circumstances under which it's better for the country to resign and call attention to poor choices being made rather than to go along. Where to draw the line seems . . . very hard to say.
Nyhan Lied, Trillions Thousands Died
More spin and dissembling from Brendan Nyhan:
This year's Hollywood is out of touch moment from the Oscars -- Gwyneth Paltrow's (pre-written) award introduction began with "Thanks to cell phones, almost everyone in the world is now a cinematographer." Um, "almost everyone"? There are approximately 2.2 million cell phone subscribers worldwide, but how many of their phones can take video? More importantly, World Bank estimates show that approximately 1.3 billion people make less than $1 a day and another 1.6 billion make $1-$2 per day. Call me crazy, but I don't think many of those people are taking video with their cell phones.
2.2 million cellular subscribers? As in somewhat less than one percent of the total population of the United States. Follow the link and they seem to be talking about billions of subscribers, but what's a few orders of magnitude between friends.
I was trying two think of an amusing joke based on a deliberate typo too end this post with but I couldn't come up with anything.
Oscars Thread
I think I like movies too much to be worried about which ones win Oscars. Let me say, however, that Reno: 911 is pretty damn funny.
What Nobody Wants to Talk About
The Bush administration's biggest failing, in some sense, is probably its continued inability to get its Pakistan policy straight. At the same time, this is the area of national policy where most people, myself included, are probably disposed to cut them some slack: I'm not hearing tons of bright ideas for alternative policies.
And there's the rub. In a different sense, one of the ways the country as a whole has gone most badly awry is that thanks to the Bush administration's decision to drag us into a giant conversation about first Iraq and now Iran, people are spending very little time thinking about the harder problems of the country that already has nuclear weapons, whose government seems both unstable and not genuinely in control of its territory, etc. At any rate, I'm incredibly sick and may not post much today, so I'll blame my inability to devise an appropriate five point plan for Pakistan on the illness and let the rest of you figure it out.
Unions . . . In Space!
I thought last night's Battlestar: Galactica was pretty clumsy and rushed (the dudes who write this show seem to have lost track of the multi-episode arc concept or any notion of episode-to-episode consistency) but I like to think of it as a sign of the times that for the first time I remember someone put together an episode of television that was just about . . . why unions are awesome and the human race needs them.
Let's pass that Employee Free Choice Act, eh.
People Sayin' Pop Fell Off
John Hollinger agrees with me. It's an insider only item, but let me summarize the key points: - "You'd be surprised to learn that San Antonio, not Dallas, has the best point differential in the league, at +7.9 points per game. (Actually, Dallas is third at +7.7 -- Phoenix also noses in ahead of them)."
- "San Antonio won a team-record 63 games a year ago with a point differential of +6.8. This year they're more than a point per game better (They need to be, too: Those 63 wins didn't do them any good in the playoffs); they just haven't been as fortunate in close games."
- "And while the Spurs are disappointed because they're "only" third in Defensive Efficiency instead of their usual perch at No. 1 (they've been there five of the past six seasons), this is the best offensive team of the Popovich Era. San Antonio ranks sixth in the league in Offensive Efficiency, just 2.8 points per 100 possessions behind the Mavs."
- "They're doing this while playing their scrubs for much of the game. No Spur is playing more than 35 minutes per game; Tim Duncan leads the team at 34.6. Tony Parker is only playing 33.0 minutes, Manu Ginobili a measly 27.8. No team is playing their starters less, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the Spurs' big three will see a lot more action during the playoffs."
- "The Spurs' problem isn't age or a lack of fire or any of the other ideas trotted out in recent weeks. It's that they're 5-10 in games decided by five points or less, while the Mavs are 12-2."
I concur. The story people should be writing isn't "what's wrong with the Spurs" but why is Gregg Popovich giving so unconcerned about the regular season that he's giving his stars so little playing time. That's an actual reportable factual issue, and if we knew more about his thinking then maybe we could say something about whether or not it's a good idea.
OpenCongress
If you've ever been frustrated with the comprehensive-yet-nightmarish Thomas congressional infromation system from the Library of Congress, the new OpenCongress.org looks like it just might be the cure, bringing some of that Web 2.0 goodness to the basic task of telling you which bills are where, cosponsored by whom, who voted which way when, etc.
Price Discrimination
This story sure is weird. I thought everybody knew that if you could read the Chinese-language menus in NYC's Chinatown (and, I assumed, Chinatowns elsewhere) that you would find lower prices on at least some dishes. Now it's not only being reported as a big scandal, the city's Human Rights Commission is looking into it. Travelers to poorer countries are surely also familiar with this phenomenon, where the staff will sometimes be able to helpfully provide you with an English-language menu featuring higher prices. I'm not really sure what's wrong with this kind of business practice; it's no different from offering student fares on airlines or senior citizens' discounts at movie theaters.
UPDATE: Let me say a bit more about this. The people suffering from the discrimination here are people who can't speak Chinese. It's not as if we non-sinophones are some kind of incredibly put-upon and powerless minority here in the United States that needs city officials to be zealously defending our rights.
Beyerstein on Blogs and Campaigns
Lindsay Beyerstein has a fantastic article up on Salon about how she was approached to work for the Edwards internet team, why she declined, the ensuing Marcotte controversy, etc:
I was dazzled by Edwards' speech, Bob's vision and the sense that I might be on the verge of the big time. I wanted to jump on the bus, but I knew I couldn't.
"I'm probably not ... the person you want," I said, finally. "I mean, I'm on the record saying that abortion is good and that all drugs should be legalized, including heroin. Don't you think that might be a little embarrassing for the campaign?"
Bob assured me that my controversial posts weren't a problem as far as the campaign was concerned. They were familiar with my work. And Bob did seem to know my writing. I didn't get the impression he was a daily reader, but it was obvious he had been reading the blog for a while.
This, to me, doesn't sound like a campaign whose staff is quite firing on all cylinders.
What Voters Don't Want
WaPo poll:
According to voters, being over the age of 72, a Mormon, twice divorced or a smoker all are bigger drags on a candidate's support than is gender or race. In this poll, nearly six in 10 Americans said they would be less likely to vote for an older candidate, three in 10 less likely to vote for a Mormon, a quarter less likely to support a candidate with two divorces and 21 percent less likely to back someone who smokes cigarettes. And for each of these, those turned off by the attribute greatly outnumbered those who said they would be more likely to support such a candidate. For example, while 58 percent said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate older than 72, a scant 3 percent said they would be more likely to prefer such a candidate.
Of course, attitudes can also shift, "In this poll, 29 percent said they would be less likely to support a Mormon candidate -- second only to age as a vote deterrent -- but that is down from 35 percent in December." On the other hand, anti-Mormon sentiment is highest among white evangelical Protestants who are disproportionately represented among the GOP primary electorate. The opposition to a smoker (.e., possible Obama) seems interesting and goes to show how successful public health groups have been in their efforts to not just bring wider public attention to the health risks of smoking, but actually turn smokers into a socially stigmatized group.
It's Good to be the President
Genevieve Smith has a great article up about the president's ability to use administrative orders to keep pressing a business-friendly legislative agenda behind congress' back.
The Politics of Resentment
Derbyshire:
The reason that Rudy is getting so much support from conservatives, in spite of a poor record on social issues, is his Gestalt. It screams ANTI-LIBERAL! Rudy is the anti-Kerry—the very opposite of a mincing, apologetic, guilt-addled elite liberal. A lot of people like that. Whether you can win a nomination on Gestalt remains to be seen, but it's carried Rudy a good way with conservatives already.
Matt Stoller made a similar point:
He makes the same mistake that a lot of Democrats make, assuming that conservatives think the way that we do. They don't. They are authoritarians. Gay marriage, abortion, taxes, national security, none of it really matters to them. What they are looking for is an authoritarian to look like he's taking charge, and the way an authoritarian takes charge is to attack liberals and stomp on people who aren't like them. Giuliani did this in New York, so he's a rock star in Alabama. It's the same thing with Mitt Romney - he's not even being the least bit subtle about reversing everything he 'believed' in Massachusetts, but it doesn't matter. The right-wing base is entirely unprincipled, subduing any concerns they might have over political issues to a sheer authoritarian impulse.
I don't think an "authoritarian impulse" is the right word for it. It is, instead, the politics of pure resentment. You begin by identifying some people you don't like, and then you stick it to 'em. Giuliani is disliked by both civil libertarians and civil rights leaders and is, therefore, a good guy. What's more, he doesn't "mince" (except when wearing drag). So nevermind that there's no indication Giuliani has the capacity to do the job of president. There's ample evidence that he can do the job as the right sees it -- namely, pissing off liberals and perhaps crushing us. This, naturally, is why conservative governance is such a joke.
Vigorous!
Alvin H. Rosenfeld of "Progressive' Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism" fame takes to the virtual pages of The New Republic to write some more about this. Unintentional comedy prize goes to this:
Vigorous discussion of Israeli policies and actions is not in question here. Such discussion proceeds across all of the media in this country and within Israel itself. It's disingenuous, therefore, to say that "you can't raise questions about Israel." Such questions are raised continually by a broad range of commentators. Read Yossi Klein Halevi, Michael B. Oren, Dennis Ross, Hillel Halkin, and Michael Walzer, to name only a few of the best informed commentators, and you will find such discussion taking place in thoughtful and clarifying ways.
But, look, this is the point: discussion of Israel is ubiquitous in the American media but it proceeds across an extraordinarily narrow range well-captured by Rosenfeld's list here. For a long time, America's Israel policy was rather peripheral to the broad range of things one might want to discuss, and so this situation, if not ideal, was also fine. Since 9/11, however, the question of American policy toward the broad Middle East -- including, obviously, Israel -- has moved much closer to the center of national attention. Naturally enough, that's led to demands to open up the debate to a wider range of voices. That, in turn, has led to this campaign -- conducted on the rubric of "the new anti-semitism" -- to essentially stuff everything back in the box and define in advance what the acceptable conclusions, modes of rhetoric, etc., are.
Slick Dancing?
Scott Helman reports:
Here are some views of Mitt Romney causing concern inside his campaign: His hair looks too perfect, he's not a tough war time leader, and he has earned a reputation as "Slick Dancing Mitt" or "Flip-Flop Mitt."
I'm still sick as the proverbial dog and blogging at half-strength, but I'm fairly certain what he's done is earned a reputation as "Multiple Choice Mitt" not "Slick Dancing Mitt," though the latter would be fun to see, too.
Global Class War?
It looks like the Chinese economy goes down as well as up. This, to me, is what's often puzzling about the "globalization" debate, but also national security debates about China -- in both instances it seems to be regarded as unproblematic to assume that China will indefinitely maintain an 8 percent annual growth rate year after year and what we need to primarily worry about is how to respond to this miraculous turn of events. It makes much more sense, it seems to me, to worry about how to cope with serious Chinese economic problems.
Seashore
Been looking for an open source alternative to Photoshop for Mac users that (unlike The Gimp) doesn't require the ugly X11? Of course you have. Along comes Seashore to solve your problems.
Sick as a What?
As we've noted previously, I've been a bit ill for the past few days. The phrase "sick as a dog" reverberates through my head. And yet, I live with two dogs. Kriston's rat-killer and Spencer's floor-urinator and I have to say that they don't seem to get sick ever. I mean, obviously I know that dogs develop serious health problems and eventually die, but they seem relatively free of maladies like the flu or the common cold. I can even see why this might be: You tend not to see large numbers of dogs congregating in close quarters, dogs never stay out drinking later than they should for a few nights in a row and gut their immune system, dogs tend to maintain a nice, stable diet, etc. Plus dogs -- even very well-loved dogs -- don't usually get nearly the level of medical attention that we give to people so the evolutionary pressures toward general good health are more serious.
So then: Where does this phrase come from? Also, I swear to God that when I quit smoking I was promised fewer respiratory ailments. And I only rarely even had any respiratory ailments. I feel that the medical establishment has really betrayed me here.
Ironic, Indeed
Ed Kilgore writes:
When it comes to TNR specifically, one irritant to progressive blogospheric opinion is definitely going to be the continuing role of Marty Peretz as editor-in-chief. The big irony is that Marty's fantasy is an Al Gore candidacy in 2008, which also happens to be the fantasy of Markos and other netroots detractors of The New Republic. In the unlikely event that Gore decides to run, it will be fascinating to watch lefty bloggers make common cause with Peretz, as against the ostensibly more liberal cynics at TNR and elsewhere.
It's actually quite a bit worse than that. If you read the Spine, it's clear that Peretz -- like the bulk of the netroots, myself included -- doesn't care for the junior senator from New York and also shares a certain level of Obama-mania to which I'm by no means immune, though I'm trying to remain rational. How do I feel about this? Not so good! especially since my concerns with Clinton tend to specifically focus on the foreign policy issues where I'm least likely to agree with Peretz on the merits. The world is a strange place.
Good News, I Guess
This crew makes it a little hard to believe in good news, but this appears to be it. North Korea-style, an outbreak of administration rationality, only years too late, and accompanied by steaming piles of BS.
Bring Back Free Clicking
You may have noticed the new NYTimes.com feature where if you double-click on a word -- no matter if the word is "to" or "all" or whatever -- up pops a contextual dictionary to define it. That's great, I guess, unless you, like me, like to click around randomly while reading text online. In that case, the Times' website has become all-but-unusable.
Well, I'm not alone. Kriston Capps is launching his Bring Back Free Clicking campaign complete with snazzy logo. Download your own button and post it on your site. Join the crusade!
Reporting-Like Program Activities
So if CanWest is buying out 100 percent of The New Republic, why is Martin Peretz staying on as editor in chief? Well, the Official Rumor as in I heard it from A Guy who said he had it from A Guy who was in A Position to Know is that Peretz was only willing to sell on condition that he remain editor in chief for some time period (the rumors grow variable on this point) and that CanWest agreed to this condition.
Of course, in any business there are titles and then there's power. Peretz never ran the magazine on a day-to-day basis and presumably isn't going to start, so if he's not going to own the magazine -- even partially -- it's not clear what sort of practical influence the editor in chief title would give him. At the same time, as I said before, the family that owns CanWest has Peretz-esque views on Israel so it's not likely that you're going to see sweeping ideological changes as a result of this.
The Party of Resentment
Katherine Jean-Lopez dreams of a Dick Cheney presidential bid, noting in favor that "Bush Derangement Syndrome would be nothing compared to the Left during the 2008 campaign season — and the Left would be united in their insanity. Hillary and Obama would strike a deal. Soros and Geffen would not even hesitate." She then follows this up:
Best suggestion for optimum Left reaction:- Cheney - Bush (Jeb) 2008.
- Secretary of State Bolton.
The idea that pissing off liberals might not be the be-all and end-all public life doesn't seem to have occurred to her. I have this notion that, ceteris paribus at least, it's a good thing to have broadly appealing figure in American politics -- people who don't go out of their way to alienate substantial segments of the population, and who try to impress the skeptics with high-level job performance once in office. If, of course, you look at things the other way and are just searching for a candidate that I'll really, really despite you're going to be stuck with a team composed entirely of fools and incompetents -- the only people with the requisite total absence of redeeming qualities necessary to produce the hatred the right is looking for.
Universal Dental Care, Anyone?
This is absolutely horrible. I usually try not to be the table-pounding kind of liberal, but on some level delivering everyone a basic standard of health care is a fairly simple moral imperative, and not really this big medico-economo-whatever question.
Productivity and the Declining Viability of Conquest
Robert Farley has a good post on the question of "Why is it that the United Kingdom, which is in an absolute sense far more wealthy now than it was in 1930, having difficulty maintaining a foreign deployment of about 10,000 total in Iraq and Afghanistan, while in 1930 it deployed many multiples of that total all over the world, plus colonial auxiliaries who were partially paid for by the Crown?" As he observes:
The relative increase in the effectiveness of insurgency strategies isn't just a consequence of the spread of the AK-47 or of the further development of nationalism in the non-western world; it's also a consequence of the fact that modern, wealthy states can now deploy far, far lower numbers of troops than they could fifty years ago. Indeed, in 1965 the United States (with a smaller and much poorer population in absolute terms) managed to deploy half a million troops to Vietnam while at the same time maintaining large contingents in West Germany and South Korea.
Farley gives some good answers to the question, but it's worth noting that this is part of a perfectly general situation. As technology improves, the average level of productivity goes up. And as productivity goes up, wages go up as well, at least over the long term. The wages go up, however, more-or-less across the board whereas productivity has only actually improved in the select areas that have seen meaningful improvement. As a result, things that are intrinsically labor-intensive tend to get more expensive and rarer over time, even as overall living standards go up.
A rich American in 2006 is way richer than a rich American in 1906, but the number of people employing large numbers of domestic servants is dramatically down. Similarly, it used to be that people of modest means by the standard of their time (to say nothing of our time) would own hand-crafted furniture that would be absurdly expensive in the modern day. Similarly, while the art of war is certainly enhanced by better technology, this falls overwhelmingly on the "blowing things up from a distance" side of the ledger. Controlling some conquered territory effectively still requires . . . lots of dudes walking around. But it's much more expensive to employ a bunch of dudes than it used to be, especially since the desire is to find sufficiently high-quality people that they can be trusted to operate the expensive and complicated equipment that's used for the "blowing thigns up" missions.
Whoah
Pat Riley and the Miami Heat solidify their status as the most loathsome coach and most loathsome team in the NBA. Reuters reports:
Riley gave Bush a jersey and then told the audience: "I voted for the man. If you don't vote you don't count."
Addressing reporters later, Riley denied that he had injected politics into the ceremony. "I'm pro-American, pro-democracy, I'm pro-government," the coach said. "I follow my boss. He's my boss."
As Jason Zengerle reminds us, Rasheed Wallace had a much choicer response when it was the Pistons' turn to meet the President. The interesting thing about the Heat's loathesomeness, in my view, is that their star, Dwyane Wade, while not my favorite player, is also totally non-loathesome. Thus, it's hard to be happy when he gets injured. At the same time, given the way it screws Riley and the rest of his crew of washed-up losers, it's hard to be upset.
Greg Oden
Bill Simmons remarks that "For the season, Oden's averaging 15.3 points, 9.5 rebounds and 3.5 blocks per game (very good stats, but not eye-opening or anything)." My eyes are, in fact, open. Oden's playing 30 minutes per game. When Patrick Ewing was a freshman, he played the same minutes and scored 12.7 points, snagged 7.5 boards, and blocked 3.2 shots. When Hakeem Olajuwon was a freshman, he only played 18 mpg and scored 8.3 points, grabbed 6.2 rebounds, and blocked 2.5 shots. When Shaq was a freshman, he got 14 points, 12 boards, and blocked 3.6 shots. Alonzo Mourning's freshman year? 13.1 points, 7.3 rebounds, and almost five blocks per game. Tim Duncan? 9.6 points, 9.6 rebounds, and 3.8 blocked shots in 30 mpg.
In other words, leaving aside the fact that Oden's playing with a bum wrist, his non "eye-opening" numbers are on track with the freshman numbers of the guys who went on to become the top big men in the league.
New Malaria Meds
Good news for people in malaria-suffering countries, mostly in Africa, as a partnership between Sanofi-Aventis and Médecines sans Frontières produces a new anti-malaria drug that will be made available cheaply. I would have been interested in learning more about exactly how this partnership worked. The world of pharmaceuticals, especially pharmaceuticals for tropical diseases where the level of public health demand for drugs tends to far exceed the size of the market for them in financial terms is obviously something where the charitable sector is going to need to play a big role if you want to get things done.
But drug companies have expertise in, well, making new drugs that charities lack. So what got Sanofi-Aventis to do this and is it realistic to look for a lot more of these sorts of things in the future? Alternatively, would there be major impediments to a very well-endowed charity like the Gates Foundation just trying to set up a non-profit drug company?
Liberty Lost
So here I've been. Sick. For days. Wondering why my cold and sinus combo meds aren't clearing my sinuses. Is this the worst flu ever? Thank God for blogs! I'm reading Henley's site and he quotes Megan McArdle who says:
may have a sinus infection. I was force fed Sudafed this evening, which seems to have worked really amazingly well, but I still have to miss my conference in Vancouver this weekend, because apparently flying is a no-no when you're this stuffed up.
And can I just say that the ritual humiliation of obtaining Sudafed from a drugstore sets every liberty-loving fibre of my patriotic American soul quivering for Revolution?
And that's why it doesn't work. The Sudafed itself all went behind the counter and off-market. But many formerly pseudoephedrine-containing combo meds just switched to new, less effective ingredients and kept on selling away. Well, then it was off the Rite Aid for me to get some crystal meth effective decongestants. Wish me luck!
Unity '08 Revisited
I haven't written much about Unity '08 since my classic 6/6/06 column on the subject, but Brendan Nyhan checks back in and finds it -- predictably -- falling flat on its face. The good news for them, however, is that they're only 4,965,000 delegates short of their minimum goals.
True Conservatism
The really noteworthy thing about the presidential election so far is the failure of a plain-vanilla conservative Republican to emerge. Bob Novak's column on this, however, also provides a hilarious window in the wingnutty worldview as he explains that "based on his actions as speaker of the House, Gingrich's conservative record is far from flawless." I'm sure there's some crazyville definition of conservative where this comes out to be true, but Gingrich is, I think, clearly the most conservative politician likely to get anywhere near nationwide political power.
Someone Set Up Us The Bomb
This New York Times article on North Korea nuclear program intelligence is a masterpiece of reporting but written in such a way as to obscure the significance of the scoop. I'm going to try bullet points:
- The 1994 Agreed Framework froze the DPRK efforts to build a nuclear weapon using plutonium.
- In 2002, the Bush administration pulled out of the Agreed Framework, arguing that the DPRK was cheating by running a secret parallel uranium program.
- In the intervening years, the DPRK has succeeded in using its now-unfrozen plutonium program to build some bombs.
- They have not, however, had any success in building uranium bombs.
- This looked like pretty shitty policymaking for the Bush administration.
- It looks much worse, however, after we learn today that the uranium program may never have existed.
The odds look decent, in other words, that the administration effectively let the DPRK build nuclear weapons for absolutely no reason at all other than its generally bad attitude toward diplomatic agreements and "stuff Bill Clinton did."
Ohio State's Pace
College hoops pace stats can be found here. Ohio State clocks in at 221st out of 336 Division I programs (may I note that this is an absurdly high number and part of why amateur ball ain't shit?) so when we look at Greg Oden's numbers we don't seem to be looking at a dude whose numbers are spiking because he plays on a fast team.
The Ad's The Thing
Tyler Cowen with a disturbing projection: "By the way, the net effect of TiVo will be more shows with ads; if they add commercials to The Sopranos, the people who hate ads can take them out themselves." I think I'm not really an ad hater as one can tell from oft-inefficient ad-skipping when I use the DVR. This, however, largely misses the virtue of advertising-free television, which is less that the ads are so bad than that the need to fit the ads changes the narrative flow.
On non-commercial television, the scenes just unfold the way the writers want them to unfold. On advertiser-supported television, by contrast, you need to have certain predetermined breaks in the show which constrains how you can pace your episode. That's the problem. Sports broadcasts, which are mostly able to fit the ads into fairly natural stoppages in play, are in some ways enhanced by the advertising breaks which give you a chance to chat with your friends, urinate, grab another beer, etc.
Say What You Mean!
Glenn Greenwald on the war party's bizarre refusal to actually come out and say that it favors war with Iran:
For that reason, Stuttaford has been repeatedly asking the Warriors what they think we ought to do about Iran if negotiations are so misguided, and they keep refusing to answer. Finally Rubin was forced to address the question, and he began this way: "What would I suggest? When it comes to economic measures, Patrick Clawson provides some useful suggestions." He does not, of course, say that we should confine ourselves to those "economic measures," because that's not what he believes. He thus proceeds to reject various other measures (while never saying which ones he favors) and then finishes with this pronouncement: Nor do I believe it in U.S. interests to acquiesce to the Revolutionary Guard and Office of the Supreme Leader with nuclear arms. Their ideology matters; it would be unwise to project our own values upon those circles in Iran which would control such capability. With regard to much more precise options, such things are better discussed in private, and I would be glad to do so. So Rubin is unwilling to say publicly what he thinks the U.S. should do with regard to Iran. He is willing to unveil his great insights only in secret, closed-door meetings at the AEI at shadowy gatherings of our nation's neoconservative foreign policy geniuses, but is not willing to advocate those ideas to his fellow citizens in public forums. Only Rubin is dumb enough to get caught up in this precise phrasing, but the basic pattern is everywhere.
Nothing New
"Rice Names Critic Of Iraq Policy to Counselor's Post" -- hey, I thought, maybe positive change is on the way. Well, no, I didn't actually think that was likely. Instead I thought, let's click the article and see all the ways in which this turns out to be a scam. Well:
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has tapped Eliot A. Cohen, a prominent writer on national security strategy and an outspoken critic of the administration's postwar occupation of Iraq, as her counselor, State Department officials said yesterday.
Of course, what Bush and Bush's supporters like about Cohen is that his book, Supreme Command, is read by them as offering justification for the White House's habit of overruling military experts and substituting instead the judgment of idiots. That's probably a bit unfair to Cohen himself, who seems to have had in mind overruling the generals when your national political leadership isn't dominated by fools, but still. Cohen is a pioneering incompetence dodger of the right, enjoys making spurious accusations of anti-semitism, and generally speaking should fit right in with the rest of Team Bush.
Smells Like Pickup
I keep not blogging about David Iglesias' firing from his U.S. Attorney's job in New Mexico because it doesn't seem like the central focus of the post should be our similar last names, but I can't really get past it. My last name frequently gets misspelled, so when I see blogs writing about "Iglesias" on some level my instinct is to assume they're talking about me. But, well, they aren't. Get over it. The salient thing about the involvement of Heather Wilson and Pete Domenici is that their seats are both somewhat vulnerable. Domenici, in particular, is a classic case of a guy who as a clean incumbent is hard to beat, but where the GOP could easily lose an open seat and/or a race where the incumbent is tainted by scandal. My understanding is that the strongest possible Democratic contenders have been shying away from entering the race unless Domenici decides to step down. They should probably reconsider that.
Second Shift
The BBC reports:
A new study has found that employed women living with their employed partner actually spend more time doing housework than single women.
The men, on the other hand see the hours they commit to housework decline once they begin living as a couple.
"Gee," remarks Jessica Valenti, "wonder why that is." Well, I like to wonder. Later, the piece gives us the specific numbers: "an employed woman does 15 hours a week of housework when she lives with her employed partner, up from 10 hours when single." On the flipside? "Meanwhile the men, who do seven hours while living alone, do only five when they co-habit." So the result here actually shows that there are two different things happening here. One is that men and women have different ex ante levels of cleanliness. Single women do 10 hours of housework, whereas single men only do seven. A perfectly equitable division of labor, should result in a couple doing a combined seventeen hours and then splitting it evenly -- 8.5 hours each.
That, however, doesn't happen. Instead, you see male shirking to the tune of 3.5 hours -- cutting the male second shift down to five hours a week, and boosting the woman's up to 12 hours. But then women put three more hours of housework in per week. The effect of those three additional hours is to raise the couples' cleanliness standard up to the 10 hours per week per person maintained by single women. The higher ex ante level of female cleanliness creates an unfavorable initial bargaining positition. A woman can enter a relationship determined to avoid raising her housework level above the previous ten hours per week. If the man then shirks down to five hours a week of work (from a previous high of seven) he'll be doing less work than he did while single, and living in a cleaner house. A perfectly good deal for him. Then he sits and waits for pre-existing gender norms and his wife higher ex ante expectations of cleanliness (themselves a result of the same norms) to drive her to put in even more work to raise the household to the cleanliness level that existed before he moved in.
Quote of the Day
Dana Stevens: "But can we just start with something very basic here? Chaining someone to your radiator is wrong. Depriving a near-naked and recently assaulted stranger of the most basic physical liberty for days on end is a sick, perverse, and cruel thing to do." That seems right to me.
Bad Max
Ari Berman has an article about how Max Baucus pretty much sucks. Ezra Klein likes it. I do, too. The New Republic did a July 2006 editorial on the evils of Baucus. And, of course, way back in February, 2004 I did one of my first print articles for The American Prospect about this.
Weak Tea
It's excellent for relief from a cold-related sore throat, of course. What's more, unless Ed Kilgore's summary of Ramesh Ponnuru's case for John McCain is wildly inaccurate, it seems like a good description of what's got to be one of the most half-hearted endorsements I've ever read. It doesn't seem to endorse any of McCain's flirtations with breaking with conservative orthodoxy. Rather, taking the view that Abortion Conquers All and Multiple Choice Mitt's a joke, Ponnuru argues that McCain's flirtations with heterodoxy weren't so bad, he's promising to be a good rightwinger in the future, and Rudy Giuliani wants to kill your unborn children.
Fair enough, I guess. But still, the primaries are a long way away. You'd think it might be the role of a magazine like National Review to try and promote the fortunes of a proper plain-vanilla conservative Republican. A Jim Gilmore or a Mike Huckabee or whomever. It's not exactly a rare breed in the country, it's just that nobody who fits the bill (except for Jeb Bush) has the requisite level of ex ante fame to get buzz. But why be a journalist if not to try and generate buzz about people you think are being unjustly ignored?
Do conservatives understand that given the gross unpopularity of Bush's military adventures at this point, nominating someone whose main profile as a conservative is grounded in his strong rhetorical support of Bush's military adventures isn't going to work out well?
MVP Madness
Nothing is more frightening than the "logic" sportwriters employ when talking about MVP votes. Marc Stein, for example, wants to hand out an Eastern Conference Second Trimester MVP award to . . . Chris Webber: "But since we're focused on this specific chunk of 27 (or so) games, you'd have to say Webber's value to his new team stands out in a close call over Toronto's Chris Bosh." Come now. Webber been playing well, but he's not even the most valuable Piston and everyone knows it. The sequence in which people joined the team can't be the decisive consideration here.
The Coulter Primary
After receiving an introduction from Mitt Romney, Ann Coulter took to the stage at CPAC, called John Edwards a "faggot", and, later, apparently endorsed the Romney campaign. Why doesn't this kind of thing ever seem to make media trouble for Republicans. I feel like any progressive even vaguely associated with the hint of impropriety faces massive pressure to "distance" himself, apologize, disavow his friends, etc.
Does Coulter speak for Mitt Romney? The list of Coulterisms is a long one and not, one would think, something Romney wants to embrace. But he's been changing his mind about a lot of things lately, so maybe he's now a Coulterite through-and-through. Doesn't it seem like someone should at least ask?
What Went Wrong
How is it that this government science report showing how full of crap the administration's global warming policy is ever got released? Here you have charts and plain language making it clear that the administration's policy goal of reducing the economy's "carbon intensity" is, when properly understood, absolutely useless. I remember a time when Team Bush would have kept this all under wraps. I mean, this is wartime -- we can't have accurate information that makes the president look bad right out there in public view. Was everyone too busy firing US Attorneys or something?
Nothing to See Here
Multiple Choice Mitt's number one fan K-Lo explains that there's no need for her candidate to disavow Ann Coulter's "faggot" remarks because it was just Ann Coulter being Ann Coulter and "is anyone suprised Ann said something she really shouldn't have?"
Well, no, nobody's surprised. That's what makes Romney's behavior all the more outrageous. If you choose to affiliate yourself with a respectable politicial pundit, and then that pundit goes on and does something crazy and out-of-character, I think you can reasonably say you couldn't have predicted that and it has nothing to do with you. Coulter, though, is well-known for this crap. But Romney decided to embrace it anyway. Because now that he's reinvented himself as a wingnut, I guess he figures he should be the wingnuttiest wingnut he can be.
Denver: Just Sayin'
So . . . if you think back to when the Allen Iverson trade went down, that event attracted an awful lot of basketball commentary. Many people thought it turned the Nuggets into contenders. People mocked the Sixers for getting so little in exchange. Bill Simmons and other talked about how Iverson was one of the top fifty players of all time. And yet I feel like since the trade there's been a curious silence around the fact that the post-deal Nuggets . . . aren't a very good team. I mean, they're okay but not clearly better than they were last year or before the deal.
And you can't really say that The Answer doesn't have any help any more. The thing of it is that you had two guys, 'Melo and Iverson, who were high-volume shooters, big-time scorers, but relatively inefficient scorers. The bet is that putting them side-by-side changes that and one or both of them becomes much more efficient than they were as sole foci of the offense. What you got last night, though, was just two dudes combining to take 47 of the team's 78 field goal attempts and only hitting 18 of them. Maybe next year when they have the chance to work together in the offseason, things will change. But it seems to me that, at a minimum, all the sportswriters who hailed this deal or slammed the Sixers have some kind of obligation to write about it again and say something.
Isiah Saves The Day
The Jerusalem Post reports:
The nuclear crisis with Iran was averted Saturday when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the entire Iranian nuclear program was traded to the New York Knicks for point guard Stephon Marbury. Iran will also get the Knicks' first two draft picks.
That's some kind of Purim humor, I guess.
Apples, Oranges, and Extremists
Joe Klein's "you might be a left-wing extremist if..." list is quite revealing. A number of his items are somewhat strawmannish substantive positions. Many of them, however, rather plainly have nothing whatsoever to do with extremism of any sort. To wit:
- Dismissively mocks people of faith, especially those who are opposed to abortion and gay marriage.
- Regularly uses harsh, vulgar, intolerant language to attack moderates or conservatives.
I mean, there's a term for people who express left-of-center views in a vulgar manner and it isn't "extremist" -- it's vulgar. The sentiment "that asshole Bush ruined the balanced budgets of the 1990s all for the sake of his fucking tax cuts" is perfectly centrist. Similarly, whether or not you tend to mock people you disagree with about matters of religion is just a matter of politeness. But rudeness |
