The Loan Racket
Ever wonder how lobbyists and bribeable congressmen managed to screw over college kids in the name of higher profits for private student loan vendors? Of course you wondered. Something to chew over as you watch me on television.
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April 15, 2007 - April 21, 2007 Archives
April 15, 2007
McCain's War
For all the discussion of the various Democratic plans to handle Iraq, it's worth saying that they all have the common element of aiming to de-escalate American involvement in that country. John McCain's plan, by contrast, is to pray really hard that the additional forces provided by the surge find a pony. "I have no Plan B. If I saw that doomsday scenario evolving, then I would try to come up with one. But I cannot give you a good alternative because if I had a good alternative, maybe we could consider it now." What's more:
He said that if the Bush administration’s plan had not produced visible signs of progress by the time a McCain presidency began, he might be forced — if only by the will of public opinion — to end American involvement in Iraq.
There are, in short, no circumstances whatsoever under which McCain would end the war on the grounds that John McCain thought ending the war was the right thing to do. He'll end the war, if at all, only in response to unremitting public hostility and his own political opportunism. This, too, is essentially the line David Brooks trotted out in his pro-McCain column -- that there's no quantity of resources that shouldn't be wasted in Iraq no matter how high that's too much to expend on any possible chance of success, no matter how long the odds or how tortured the definition of success.
Indiscriminate
Tyler Cowen on Maggie Mahar's Money-Driven Medicine concludes: "Single-payer systems will improve matters only if you think the government will make wise decisions about the supply chain. Otherwise we are choking off supply indiscriminately by lowering prices to providers." I try not to make overly grandiose claims about health care policy because I know full well that it's a complicated subject about which others know more than I. But how bad an idea, really, is indiscriminate supply-choking?
The evidence suggests that health care suppliers are much better at selling people health care services than they are at improving health outcomes. Choke off supply indiscriminately and you can save a lot of money without making people's health outcomes much worse. To generate a significant adverse health impact relative to the status quo, you'd have to be actively trying to produce a bad result. What's more, if you don't quite choke of supply indiscriminately, but instead isolate a relatively small number of services that are uncontroversiall cheap and effective (your proverbial vaccines, pre- and neo-natal care, cholesterol medications) things might actually get better, since poor people underconsume that stuff.
Meanwhile, the range of alternative things to spend money on that would do far more than health care to make people healthier is huge. Better inter-city trains and regional mass transit would mean less driving, which would be a huge life saver. It would also lead to somewhat more walking, which would be good for people. You could subsidize fresh produce, or gym memberships, or build more public pools and better parks to get people to adopt healthier lifestyles. Lead paint abatement. Virtually anything is a potentially more effective means of improving health outcomes than is health care. That's how I see it, at least. I basically stole this idea from Philip Longman who has a somewhat more draconian take on the issue than I do.
Classic Propaganda
It being the primary mission of this blog to cover the intersection of comic books and foreign policy, I can't avoid linking to this issue of All-Star Comics from the 1940s in which the Justice Society of America explains the truth about Germany to one confused young American. The full issue comes to me via the comment thread to thsi post from John Holbo. It's interesting that this is so much less plausible than the propaganda mounted on behalf of the Iraq War even though intervention into World War II seems eminently justifiable on grounds that don't involve this sort of craziness.
Houston, We Have a Kick-Ass Starting Lineup
82games.com's stats looking not at "five man units" instead of teams make for interesting reading. In particular, it seems like a good method of getting at the playoff odds of a team like Houston that's had injury problems but seems healthy these days. And, indeed, the exercise suggests that Alston / McGrady / Battier / Hayes / Yao is an incredibly effective lineup, one that simply hasn't played that many minutes over the course of the season because of injuries. I really, really wouldn't count Houston out as a strong chance for a second-round upset.
Who's Who in Iraq Advising?
Jason Horowitz writing for The New York Observer tells the tale of how the Democratic candidates' "Iraq point-people meet monthly at a Washington restaurant for a lunch presided over by former United Nations ambassador Richard Holbrooke."
Spy Versus Spy
Back in the day, the US security establishment had a clever idea. Back during Iyad Allawi's administration we founded a CIA-funded "Iraqi" intelligence service under the authority of Muhammed Shahwani, a Sunni Arab ex-Baathist who, Allawi-style, had worked with the CIA in trying to foment anti-Saddam activities by members of the Iraqi security forces. After Allawi's departure, Shahwani's intelligence service marched on, in essence working for the American government rather than the Iraqi one. In response, it seems, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki founded a second intelligence service that would be loyal to him.
Spencer Ackerman remarks that the alternative intel service's rise "will further entrench Shahwani. Waili serves as the manifestation of the fears that led the U.S. to install Shahwani in the first place: the return to a mukhabarat-style security structure, this one loyal to the Shiites instead of Saddam."
"Porcupine Racetrack"
Last week a conversation somehow turned from Wet, Hot American Summer to The State and I found myself locating and downloading an audio copy of their "Porcupine Racetrack" which I've now been playing for everyone I know. It's every bit as hilarious as I remembered. But unfortunately, I can't seem to acquire any video of the sketch through either legal or illegal means. Any advice?
UPDATE: When last I checked on YouTube, all the copies had been taken down, but here's a new one:
Gonzalez
I don't really know what to say about Alberto Gonzalez's op-ed and testimony preview. He seems to sense that he can't just stand pat, so he's kinda sorta apologizing for . . . well . . . well . . . well it's not totally clear what he's apologizing for. To be sorry, you need to be admitting to having done something wrong. But he's certainly not owning up to the fact that there was a concerted campaign to get US Attorneys to gin up "voter fraud" cases, to prosecute Democrats on corruption charges, and to avoid prosecuting Republicans and that the purge was part of this campaign.
At this point, however, there's so much circumstantial evidence that there was such a campaign and so much evidence of a coverup by the White House and so much evidence of people lying to congress in their testimony it's very hard to see how Gonzalez can offer a"measured apology for his mistakes in the dismissal of eight United States attorneys." Which mistakes? Apologize for what? Either the line has to be that US Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president and therefore it's perfectly appropriate to fire them for refusing to serve naked partisan interests and there's nothing to apologize for, or else he needs to own up to what happened.
April 16, 2007
Crying on the Inside
To be sure, it was in a quasi-meaningless game, but I'd sure like to know what was up with Tim Duncan getting a second technical foul (and thus kicked out of the game) for what looked for all the world to be no greater crime than simply laughing while sitting on the bench. Consider that Duncan's reputation consists of equal parts boringess and good citizenship, it seems especially bizarre that he of all superstars would be treated in this manner. At this point in NBA history, the Spurs have become tedious, but they surely don't deserve to be losing the big rivalry games in this manner.
What The Voters Want
Greg Sargent highlights some neglected material from a new CBS poll (PDF) released over the weekend. In particular, by a margin of 49-44 voters say congress rather than the White House should "have the final say about troop levels in Iraq." What's more, 58 percent of voters say congress should fund the war only with a timeline for withdrawal. Yet, somehow, you won't see the press -- or many congressional Democrats -- acting like this is true.
Taxation: Perhaps Some Day With Some Representation
There's going to be a rally today at 2:30 PM at Freedom Plaza (13th and Pennsylvania) followed by a march to the Capitol in support of the bill to give DC a real representative in the US House just like those of us who live here are American citizens or something. Those of you who are enjoying congressional representation can help us out by clicking here and contacting your members of congress on our behalf.
The Irrelevance of Gonzalez
Marty Lederman makes the case that the focus on Alberto Gonzalez is misplaced. In his key actions, the AG "simply took Sampson's word for it, because he was confident that Sampson's unadorned list reflected Rove's and Miers's wishes." Thus, "insofar as Congress's objective is to determine whether anything unlawful or unconstitutional was involved in the U.S. Attorney dismissals" what's needed is the information from the White House that Fred Fielding has been declining to hand over. Information about what Rove, Bush, and Miers were up to -- not just stuff in the Justice Department.
Who's the Boss?
There's something telling about the way Carville & Begala keep antagonizing their would-be friends by appearing on CNN to defend Dom Imus. Normally when you hear liberal grousing about Carville's CNN spots lately it's about things like his habit of occassionally going on the network to disparage Barack Obama or John Edwards without him being presented properly as the Hillary Clinton partisan -- not a former member of her staff, but an inner circle of "kitchen cabinet" advisors -- that he is.
Clinton herself, however, has led admirably on this issue, doing the right thing substantively for the country. It's also been the right move politically for herself -- appealing with the base in general, but perhaps more important providing a reminder that putting women in positions of power really would make a difference. But Carville doesn't have her back. Doesn't even have her back to the extent that he was willing to, say, argue Imus' case privately but not speak publicly on the issue. No. Clinton's made taking a lead role on this issue a priority last week, and there's Carville with the knives.
Which tells us relatively little about Carville or Clinton or Imus as such. Rather, it reminds us of the fundamental truth that's all-too-infrequently spoken -- that for all the talk of "interest groups" influencing the Democratic Party absolutely nobody is more influential than the essentially permanent members of the consulting aristocracy. In an important sense, they don't really work for their clients, mere politicians who come and go. Their clients don't quite work for them, but they are subservient to them.
Human Rights Groups: Defending Human Rights
A reading writes in to note that in today's New York Times alone you can find researches with Human Rights Watch noted as important sources for articles on election fraud in Nigeria, and on Taliban War crimes in Afghanistan. Yesterday, we had HRW getting media play in an article on the violent suppression of a peaceful protest in Russia. And, of course, back on April 1 HRW was cited in a story about Guantanamo Bay.
In short, Human Rights Watch is, for better or for worse, fighting the good fight for human rights consistently and around the world. Nevertheless, the right has consistently tried to foster the impression that the human rights community's criticisms of US policies in Guantanamo and regarded detentions more generally are fostered by hostility to the United States. Such groups also stand accused of "ignoring" human rights violations in whatever country happens to be the right-wing's designated Enemy of the Month. In fact, however, both these strains of argumentation would only appear credible to people who didn't have any actual concern for human rights and therefore remained studiously ignorant of what actually goes on in the world and who does what to bring attention to it. People like, well, conservative hectorers whose interest in the subject extends precisely as far as it's useful to generate support for starting wars.
The Metapolitics of Resentment
I've never addressed the growing (and growing, and growing) pile of evidence that those Duke lacross guys were innocent of the rape charges brought against them. When the story first broke I didn't write about it, because it was a little tangential to my main interests and because it's not the sort of thing I was inclined to jump to conclusions about in quasi-print. My inclination in a case like that is to believe the woman, but an investigation was clearly underway. At any rate, events unfolded and I continued to not write about it. The system, it seems to me, pretty much worked. Accusations of the sort that were leveled should be taken seriously and investigated, and innocent people should go free when the evidence doesn't support charging them with crimes.
For months, however, every time I blog on anything even vaguely race-related, I'm struck by the sheer volume of people who want to respond "what about the Duke lacrosse case?" Well, I think, what about it? Then I read something like this from Victor Davis Hanson who really doesn't cover these issues either, and it hits me. There's this huge block of people out there, primarily reasonably prosperous middle-aged middle class white men, who in all genuineness seem to believe that what went down there is emblematic of broad-based social problem. They see the Imus controversy through the same lens -- the lens that makes them think the issue here is Al Sharpton or hip-hop. It's a mentality that believes -- deeply and sincerely -- that the middle-aged white dude just can't get a fair shake in this country. Not in this day and age. What with the Sharptons and the feminist bloggers and all. Next thing you know, there'll probably be dudes marrying dudes, and women and black folk running for president!
And, well, I just don't know what to say to a mentality like that. I certainly think that lots and lots of people in this country -- including, naturally, lots of middle-aged people and lots of white people and lots of male people -- do, in fact, have a hard time getting a fair shake in the contemporary United States. But the idea that middle-aged white men as a class are being persecuted, well, well, not so much.
Duke and the System
A friend notes, over IM, that "the reason the system worked in the Duke case was because these were upper-middle class white folk with good lawyers." Exactly. I should have said that in the initial post. This is precisely what makes the sense of beseigement, persecution, and systematic abuse that's surrounded this controversy so baffling. Obviously, what happened to those kids wasn't right and I feel bad for them over what they've been through. That said, on the whole prosperous white men are treated very well by the criminal justice system.
Poor defendants -- especially minority ones -- are railroaded regularly thanks to desperately inadequate legal representation. Nobody speaks up for these people. George W. Bush for years quite literally signed their death warrants. But I don't see any of the Duke-agitators pressing for increased funding of public defenders offices or any other reforms that would address the real systemic problems facing criminal defendants who don't deserve to have the finger pointed at them. The Duke case attracts attention precisely because it's so un-representative of how sexual assault and the criminal justice system play out in the United States. It's a man bites dog story. In the real world, though, we don't demand that attention be paid to the urgent problem of men biting dogs.
Does Rudy Giuliani Want to Win
Rudy Giuliani attempts a tried and true failed strategy for persuading Republicans to nominate a baby killer:
Giuliani made his sharpest case for moving beyond social issues this weekend in Iowa, telling The Des Moines Register, "Our party is going to grow, and we are going to win in 2008 if we are a party characterized by what we're for, not if we're a party that's known for what we're against."Asked about abortion, he said, "Our party has to get beyond issues like that."
Rich Lowry is displeased and rightly so -- there's no reason to think cultural conservatism is an electoral liability for the GOP, and there's certainly no reason to think that given the current political climate. Indeed, traditionalism is probably the one GOP plank that hasn't been discredited in some obvious way by George W. Bush's conduct in office. I think the anti-choice view is wrong, but nothing has happened that I would expect to change people's opinions about this stuff.
Change Is a Good Thing
Bob Kuttner has high hopes: "Three times in my political adulthood, we have seen the exhaustion of a conservative ideology and presidency." He also has concerns: "And twice, the electorate ousted Republicans only to get centrist Democrats, who ran more competent administrations but did little to redress the structure of financial inequality in America." So far, so good. This particular worry, however, seems way off-base to me:
No liberal can fail to be stirred by Barack Obama. Given the immense damage done by Bush and company, nobody would be better able to redeem the promise of America, both at home and globally. But though he is not yet the front-runner, Obama already has a touch of front-runner disease -- being distressingly vague about what he'd actually do. He is trying to be both a progressive and someone beyond conventional categories. Alas, there's no such thing.
Concern that Obama's been imprecise about his policy vision is fair game. I think, however, that liberals will be making a huge tactical and strategic error if we simply equate political figures who seek to portray themselves as "beyond conventional categories" as squishy moderates. Being perceieved as beyond conventional categories is, simply put, a useful quality in a politician. Similarly, I know a lot of liberals who are put off by Obama's complaints about "the smallness of our politics" -- viewing them as Broderish complaints about partisaship. The line, however, is perfectly consistent with Kuttnerish complaints about a certain kind of narrow technocracy standing in lieu of forcefully advocating change. And, indeed, it seems to me that if one is hoping to advocate forcefully for change it makes a lot more sense to portray said advocacy as an effort to move beyond the smallness of our politics than as a self-conscious effort to make politics more hard-edged.
What one needs to know as a political pundit is a bit more about the policy substance, not more red meatish rhetoric.
Making the Point
Excellent. Via Scott Lemieux, what Radley Balko said about the Duke lacross case.
Virginia Tech
Holy shit. I'm just now seeing the magnitude of this disaster. I'm absolutely speechless.
The Calculus Tax
This being Tax Day and all, I feel like I should repeat my occassional plea to make the tax system more complicated. In short, income tax brackets are a bad idea. The flat tax, of course, is a worse idea. What's needed is not a flat tax, but a curved tax, where rates are a smooth function of adjusted gross income. The total amount you owe could be calculated as the area beneath the curve -- an integral of the function. Back in the day, this was impractical because most people can't do calculus so the idea of a series of "brackets" was implemented as a mathematically tractable alternative. Thanks to computers, however, this is no longer a problem and calculating taxes owed according to a single function would be simple even if the function itself was very complicated.
Tommy Thompson
This has got to be one of the most egregious cases of digging yourself deeper that I've ever heard of. Tommy Thompson is speaking to a Jewish group and says:
"I'm in the private sector and for the first time in my life I'm earning money," Republican hopeful and former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson said Monday. "You know that's sort of part of the Jewish tradition."
Okay, bad move. But one could imagine a recovery. But not like this:
After being made aware that his remarks were problematic, Thompson returned to the podium and told the several hundred activists assembled, "I just want to clarify something because I didn't in any means want to infer or imply anything about Jews and finances and things."What I was referring to ladies and gentlemen is the accomplishments of the Jewish religion and the Jewish people. You have been outstanding business people and I compliment you for that and if anybody took what I said wrong, I apologize. I may have mischaracterized it. You are very successful. I applaud you for that.
But it actually gets worse:
During the speech, Thompson also called himself the governor of the first state to buy "Jewish bonds" -- presumably meaning Israel Bonds -- and said his friend who persuaded him to buy the bonds was also a big supporter of the "Jewish Defense League" -- probably meaning the Anti-Defamation League, not the militant group.
The JDL is something of a terrorist organization, for the record. See also Shmuel Rosner's thoughts.
UPDATE: For the record, I'm much more inclined to put Thompson into the "morons" file than the "hates Jews" one, unless there's some kind of longer record out there.
UPDATE II: Spencer Ackerman picks up the damn phone.
Sadrists Say Goodbye
Muqtada al-Sadr's ministers leave the Maliki government, saying they tried and failed to get Maliki to demand a timetable for American withdrawal from Iraq. No doubt someone on the right will spin this as a positive development for the USA since it now affords us the chance of a Sadrist-free government in Baghdad and may give them a chance to restart a 2004-style two-front war in Baghdad. I'm not optimistic.
April 17, 2007
America Hearts Congress
Well, sort of. 44 percent approve and 54 percent disapprove. That sounds bad until you add context. The 108th Congress, serving in 2005-2006, had its highest approval number at 43 percent and its lowest disapproval number at 53 percent. So people like the Democratic congress better than they like the Republican one. 44/54 is also considerably better than the 35/62 approve/disapprove split Bush gets. Indeed, fully 49 percent of respondents say they strongly disapprove "of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president" -- Bush Derangement Syndrome has gone mainstream.
Nancy Pelosi, however, is much more popular than either Bush or Congress generically -- earning a 53/35 approve/disapprove split. Ever since she became the top House Democrat, the DC press corps has been insisting that Pelosi is an unpopular figure whose bad for the Democrats. This because she's the most robustly liberal person we've seen in high elected office in over ten years. The evidence, however, doesn't bare this theory out. In the spring of 1995, Newt Gingrich's approval numbers were in the thirties.
Chait Versus Fleischer
A journolistic battle of wits, except Fleischer doesn't seem to have any.
At Least You Get a Tote Bag
Something to consider when PBS launches its next fundraising drive:
Richard Perle, former assistant secretary of Defense under Reagan and a chief White House proponent of the Iraq War, will be online Tuesday, April 17 at 11 a.m. ET to discuss "The Case for War: In Defense of Freedom" -- the second installment of PBS's "America at a Crossroads" series -- which follows him as he travels the globe articulating, defending and debating the neoconservative case for an assertive American foreign policy.
Uh, huh. The liberal case for PBS privatization grows stronger. America at the Crossroads by Francis Fukuyama is, unlike Perle's similarly named TV series, highly recommended.
Refugees Returning
One piece of evidence that the surge is working you may have heard is that Iraq's internally displaced persons are returning to their homes. Shockingly, like most "good news" from Iraq, this turns out not to withstand much scrutiny.
Good News for People Who Like Bad Health Care Policy
The AARP makes a definitive move to becoming a major private insurance provider. But, yes, it intends to also be a major Beltway lobbying force. In essence, from here going forward it will be harder than ever to reform health care policy in a sensible direction.
Finals Matchups
John Hollinger on television ratings:
I think Spurs- Bulls would pretty much be a nightmare scenario for the folks at the league office. The only saving grace for ABC would be the heavy cross-promotion for Desperate Housewives. To borrow a line from Bill Simmons, "HINRICH!!" "GINOBILI!!!" It's the NBA Finals on ABC!"
Indeed. I must say, however, that I would sort of enjoy that matchup. From a marketing perspective, I feel ike Houston-Miami probably offers the richest plotlines in terms of the Shaq-Yao generational struggle along with the epic story of Pat Riley versus the Van Gundy family. And, of course, ratings-wise an awful lot of people live in China. In aesthetic terms, Phoenix-Detroit has a certain appeal, since the Saunders and Webber-ized Pistons actually run a pretty neat, fluid offense. The incredible contrast in preferred pace would be interesting, too. Unfortunately for the league offense, I think San Antonio has the best shot to come out of the West and Chicago has the best shot to come out of the East. The odds of any particular Finals combo, however, don't strike me as especially high. Both conferences second-round matchups should will be pretty competitive.
The Honor of McCain
Fred Kaplan gets in many good licks against John McCain, but I take issue with this characterization at the end:
Two and a half years ago, John McCain swallowed his pride and hitched his ambitions to two stars—George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. Both have since imploded. And so, as his campaign faces the purple dusk of twilight time, the man who might once have been an honorable president slips and slides on the stardust.
I think there's oftentimes a tendency to discount the possibility of sincere disagreement in politics. As in assuming that McCain's fantastically stupid views on national security policy represent some kind of grubby and dishonorable act of political expediency. For quite a number of years, however, dating back to the late 1990s at least, McCain has been a consistent apostle of the Bill Kristol school of foreign policy -- all problems should be solved through force, and all problems with the use of force should be solved through the application of more force. McCain showed political courage and broke with his party to support the use of force in Kosovo. When that war appeared not to be working, he started slamming Bill Clinton for using insufficient force. He argued before and after 9/11 for regime change in Baghdad. He ran in 2000 on a platform of "rogue state rollback." He backed the Iraq War and when it started going poorly fearlessly criticized the Bush administration's handling of the war, calling for the deployment of more troops and the use of more force. Eventually, Bush came around to McCain's point of view.
This is just his view. McCain, like Kristol, or Joe Lieberman and various other people is a kind of anti-pacifist. Somebody who supports war as the solution to anything, and believes that any war can be successfully prosecuted if only it's prosecuted more vigorously. The difference is that people don't take pacifists seriously when they start arguing about specific cases, whereas people who believe the country should be launching dozens of wars at all times are given PBS specials, Washington Post columns, spots as TV commentators, Time columns, etc., etc., etc.
The Odds on Chicago
In terms of my prediction that the Bulls will be in the NBA Finals, it's important to distinguish between two claims:
- The Bulls are likely to win the Eastern Conference Championship.
- The Bulls are more likely to win the Eastern Conference Championship than are any other team.
The Kids Love Him
Dana Goldstein has highlights from the Harvard Institute of Politics poll of 18-24 year-olds:
* Young Democrats are more independent of their elders than young Republicans are. Like their older counterparts, 18-24 year old Republicans prefer Rudy Giuliani as the next president. But while older Democrats support Hillary Clinton (42% to Obama’s 24% and Edwards’ 17%), young Democrats prefer Obama (35% to Clinton’s 29% and Edwards’ 9%).* Dovetailing nicely with Ronald Brownstein’s Obama-skeptic analysis of “beer track” and “wine track” Democratic candidates (the six-packers make more likely winners), Obama is more popular among the highly educated. Obama leads Clinton by only 3 points among 18-24 year olds not enrolled in a 4-year college, but by a whopping 17 points on campuses.
* And don’t discount gender. Obama leads Clinton by 20% among young Democratic men, but young Democratic women prefer Clinton by 6 points.
We already knew, of course, that Obama's appeal skewed young, male, and educated. It's interesting, however, that age beats education (leading Clinton by only 3 points is small, but it's sill leading) perhaps because there are fewer white people in the youth cohort, but gender trumps age. Indeed, that gender gap, though expected on some level, is pretty astoundingly large when you consider that women are more dovish than men.
Clinton Doomed!
Jerome Armstrong rounds up online preference polls, revealing the big three going 42/25/13 on dKos, and 43/34/8 on MYDD. In third place, of course, is Bill RIchardson. Barack Obama's in second. And that's John Edwards with the commanding lead. Hillary Clinton's a distant fourth, pulling in three and four percent respectively. She does better in a MoveOn poll -- 11 percent -- that actually places her in fifth behind Dennis Kucinich's surprisingly strong 17 percent. Jerome makes a valiant effort to spin this as demonstrating something other than the netroots being out of touch with general Democratic sentiment, but is good enough to concede that he doesn't "expect Clinton to get blown away with single-digits." And good for him.
Clinton's pathetic results, however, are no suprise to people who read blogs regularly. I'm intrigued by the fact that Edwards is so much stronger among the netroots than among Democrats at large. In theory, Edwards' electoral center of gravity should be among the white working class and perhaps among older voters. To me, it's reminiscent of the way the Kerry versus Edwards primaries. There, too, Edwards' support was concentrated among highly educated upscale voters, even though Edwards' supporters would normally cite his greater appeal to working class voters as the reason to back him.
April 18, 2007
Technical Difficulties
I don't think this site's gone that long without a post during the working week for a good long time now. My apologies, I was drunk experiencing technical problems whereby people (inlcuding myself) accessing the site through Comcast couldn't get the site to load. I'm now in a new location with a working connection, so I have no idea what the problem is or if it's solved. If you're having problems, you probably can't read this post, but if you have any relevant recent experiences please do share them.
Intrinsic Aptitude
Via Alex Tabbarok, my favorite kind of academic study -- the kind whose abstract suggests that the paper contains empirical proof of something I was already inclined to believe:
Many studies have shown that women are under-represented in tenured ranks in the sciences. We evaluate whether gender differences in the likelihood of obtaining a tenure track job, promotion to tenure, and promotion to full professor explain these facts using the 1973-2001 Survey of Doctorate Recipients. We find that women are less likely to take tenure track positions in science, but the gender gap is entirely explained by fertility decisions. We find that in science overall, there is no gender difference in promotion to tenure or full professor after controlling for demographic, family, employer and productivity covariates and that in many cases, there is no gender difference in promotion to tenure or full professor even without controlling for covariates. However, family characteristics have different impacts on women's and men's promotion probabilities. Single women do better at each stage than single men, although this might be due to selection. Children make it less likely that women in science will advance up the academic job ladder beyond their early post-doctorate years, while both marriage and children increase men's likelihood of advancing.
Right. In short, there's not some cabal of woman-hating old male scientists going "heh, heh, heh let's keep the ladies out of our field so we can all party at strip clubs!" At the same time, there's obviously not an equal playing field. The setup of the profession, the biases of the bulk of the important people in it, systematic inequities in the distribution of household labor, wide-ranging social norms, etc., etc., etc. all intersect to significantly disadvantage women who want to have typical family lives and successful careers in the sciences. In short, I blame the patriarchy. At any rate, I would actually read the paper, but I'm super-busy. Maybe I'll read it tomorrow.
In Defense of Crass Politicization
It seems to me that there's no better way to earn plaudits in the blogopshere than to slam people who deploy something like the Virginia Tech massacre as a pretext for grinding some political ax. I've never, however, really understood what the problem with this is. Most people don't pay attention to most issues most of the time. Advocates for causes need to find opportunities when it's possible to grab attention and then go out and grab it. I'm not a gun controller myself, but a high-profile spree killing is the obvious situation in which to try to make the case for gun control measures.
The only thing I would note with something like the VT shootings is that as terrible as an incident like that is, it's simply not the case that spree killings are a significant problem in American life, statistically speaking. I believe the USA suffers from more spree killings than do other non-war-torn countries, but still very few people die that way. You could completely eliminate mass-murder in the United States and you wouldn't save very many lives. Which isn't to say that we shouldn't try to prevent this kind of thing. But it is to say that it doesn't make sense to engage in policy shifts with large costs (in terms of money or even just inconveniencing tons of people) in order to reduce the risk of something that's already very rare.
Contrast that with a newsworthy tragedy like John Corzine's car accident. Normally, car wrecks and the resultant injuries don't make national news. But they happen all the time. Slightly higher compliance with seat belt laws, better compliance with speed limits, slightly less driving, etc., etc., etc. would all massively reduce the number of deaths and major injuries in the United States.
How Come Nobody Thought of This!?!?!
A shocking scoop from David Ignatius. It turns out that northern Iraq is inhabited my members of an ethnic group known as "Kurds." Many of these so-called Kurds also live in the adjacent nation known as "Turkey." Turkey, in turn, is a longstanding strategic partner of the United States. But the Turkish government and these Kurds have a bad relationship! Yes! There's even a Kurdish terrorist and guerilla organization called the PKK that the Turks have been trying to suppress for years. And Iraqi Kurds, it turns out, have a lot of nationalistic sentiments and are pushing for as much autonomy as possible from Iraq. Turkey looks askance at this, fearing it will boost separatism among their own Kurds. And those fears aren't crazy! The Kurdish nationalists in Iraq, being Kurdish nationalists, turn out to be rather sympathetic to the PKK. And now Turkey's mad. And the USA is stuck in the middle.
Trouble, in short, is brewing. And yet, shockingly, all throughout the years of denial about Iraq, respectable mainstream opinion was weirdly loathe to note this gobsmackingly obvious flaw in the elite vision of Iraq. The Kurds are our friends, the Kurds are secular, Kurdistan is quiet and secure, Kurdistan is democratic, we have to invade Iraq for the Kurds, etc., etc., etc., etc. even though it was always perfectly clear that this problem was going to arise. Ignatius doesn't even mention that the Kurds are trying to take over Kirkuk and Mosul and that there will probably be a new fighting front in Iraq once we get closer to the scheduled Kirkuk referendum date.
From Propaganda to CW
Glenn Greenwald explains how it's done:
STEP 1: A new right-wing gossip (Ben Smith) at a new substance-free political rag (The Politico) seizes on some petty, manufactured incident to fuel personality caricatures of Democratic candidates.STEP 2: The old right-wing gossip (Drudge) uses his old substance-free political rag (The Drudge Report) to amplify the inane personality caricatures.
STEP 3: Right-wing hacks with pretenses of respectability -- like Mickey Kaus and others -- follow the script by "analyzing" the gossip and embracing it.
STEP 4: National media outlets -- such as AP and CNN -- whose world is ruled by Drudge, turn the gossip into "news stories."
STEP 5: Our Serious Beltway Political Analysts -- in this case, the very somber and smart Substantive Journalists at The New Republic -- mindlessly repeat all of it, thereby solidifying it as conventional wisdom, showing that "even Democrats and liberals are embarrassed by their candidates."
Quite true. One thing worth observing is that Step Five involves adopting this meta-posture. Instead of saying "I'm disparaging Polician A because I don't like blah blah blah" you just assert -- often over and over again -- that blah blah blah is a critical vulnerability. But, of course, these things wouldn't be vulnerabilities if the press didn't spend their time jumping up and down and pointing at them. Not that there's anything wrong with jumping up and down and pointing at real flaws, but this kind of doing-it-but-not-doing-it is sad.
Or Maybe It Was The Communism?
Estonia's Flat Tax Leads to Economic Boom, crows Cato's Daniel Mitchell, before quoting John Stossel who observes "The former Soviet republic used to be poor . . . Microsoft, Colgate, 3M, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, and Johnson & Johnson opened businesses in Estonia after the flat tax was adopted. Twelve years ago, foreign investment in Estonia made up only 5 percent of GDP, but today, it’s up to 20 percent." Do libertarians seriously expect me to believe that the fact that Estonia has reaped significant benefits from abandonning Communism demonstrates that the United States ought to abolish progressive income taxation? Isn't it possible that the moral of the story here has something to do with command economies rather than tax rates?
Stossel also gives us the flat tax's heartiest bit of mumbo-jumbo: "Estonians need an average 10 to 15 minutes to file their income taxes. Most do it without leaving their desk: 84 percent file online." And good for them! I wish America were the same way. But this has nothing to do with your flat tax. I just did my taxes a week ago. It was pretty complicated and annoying. But the complicated and annoying part is calculating your taxable income not applying the formula that relates income to taxes owed.
Nitpicking
I found myself listening to The Postal Service for the first time in a while the other day. Specifically, "Nothing Better" in which we learn that he will "block the door / like a goalie tending the net in the third quarter / of a tie game rivalry." Are there any sports in which goalies tend nets and are divided into quarters? The imagine that comes to mind is hockey, but that's three periods. Alternatively soccer, but that's two halves. Water polo?
Kurdistan
I'm constantly forgetting about Time's Middle East blog, but I really shouldn't. Here's Scott McLeod on the deteriorating situation in Kurdistan: "Anyone who bothered to notice understood that the Bush administration's plan to re-make Iraq was destined, for better or worse, to put the explosive question of Kurdish political independence or autonomy high on the region's agenda." Yep. MacLeod has more, including a missive from Jon Randal, author of a book on the Kurds.
Abortion Ban On
You've probably heard about the decision. Via Ann Friedman comes an apropos excerpt from Justice Ginsburg's dissent (PDF):
Revealing in this regard, the Court invokes an antiabortion shibboleth for which it concededly has no reliable evidence: Women who have abortions come to regret their choices, and consequently suffer from “[s]evere depression and loss of esteem.” Because of women’'s fragile emotional state and because of the “bond of love the mother has for her child,” the Court worries, doctors may withhold information about the nature of the intact D&E procedure. The solution the Court approves, then, is not to require doctors to inform women, accurately and adequately, of the different procedures and their attendant risks. Instead, the Court deprives women of the right to make an autonomous choice, even at the expense of their safety.This way of thinking reflects ancient notions about women’s place in the family and under the Constitution— ideas that have long since been discredited.
This on late-term abortions was the predictable consequence of Bush's Supreme Court nominees getting confirmed since Justice Kennedy had already made it clear in Stenberg v. Carhart where he stood on this issue. What's less clear is to what extent Kennedy's Stenberg dissent prefigured a broader decision to step away from the Court's earlier reproductive freedom jurisprudence. I'll be looking forward to explanations from Jeffrey Rosen and Benjamin Wittes of why this turn of events is secretly good for reproductive rights.
UPDATE: Ann points out to me that this law bans all performances of the intact D&E procedure and has nothing to do with whether or not the abortion in question is late term.
Kids These Days
I went with Young Ezra Klein to the Wizards' unfortunate finale versus Orlando last night. All-too-typically for the rising generation of political bloggers, he's sadly unfamiliar with the NBA. Thus, at one point he queries about the constant jawboning with the officials -- wondering if this ever works, does an official ever say "hey, you're right, I'll change the call?" Obviously, it never happens. But how to explain it? Then it hits me. "You know," I ask him, "how they say conservative media critics are trying to 'work the refs?'" And then he gets it.
Which goes to show that I don't think we have enough basketball metaphors in our political discourse, which is so totally dominanted by football and bseball metaphors that people don't even recognize a hoops reference when it's sitting right there in front of them.
Water
When I read this post from Catherine, I couldn't believe Kriston couldn't believe that she drinks 7 liters of water a day. Ogged can't believe Catherine drinks that much. I won't bore people with the intimate details of my water consumption, but I'm pretty sure I drink more than seven liters.
It used to be that I drank a lot of caffeine and also smoked a ton of cigarettes, which left me feeling dehydrated frequently and drinking a lot of water. Quitting smoking would, I would have thought, lead me to cut back. Instead what happened was that my Diet Coke habit got somewhat more severe for a variety of reasons and I started exercizing regularly, both of which boosted water consumption. More to the point, however, I needed to pick up a new habit to replace the frequent smoking breaks that used to punctuate my working day. Endlessly refilling my water bottle and consuming the contents seems to have done the trick. I don't like to chew gum, and it seemed like a healthier alternative to snacking all the time.
Four Things
Scott Lemieux has a few items to keep in mind "As an antidote against the inevitable chorus of fake moderates arguing that today's abortion case is no big deal."
April 19, 2007
The Ickes Factor
Ben Smith has an interesting profile in Politico about Harold Ickes and his work for Hillary Clinton. Perhaps even more so than Clinton's record on Iraq, the fact that her team's liberal counterweight to Mark Penn is a guy who's been involved in a vicious years-long feud with Howard Dean explains Clinton's comically low levels of support in netroots polls. Unfortunately, I've never really been able to understand the ins-and-outs of the Catalist controversy, but most of the trustworthy people I know who have strong feelings about it don't come away favorably disposed to Ickes.
More Ari Fleischer
The former Bush flack is still dishonest and wrong about taxes (via Ezra Klein). The Wall Street Journal editorial page is, of course, an important prominent media outlet. And it's not just an ideological wasteland, but a near-total fact-free zone -- an appaling miasma of lies and distortions. In a decent universe, decent conservatives would shun it like the plague -- to have your work published alongside the dreck that regularly appears there would be humiliating -- and it would wither away and die. We do not, suffice it to say, live in such a universe.
Things To Ask
There are really only two questions the Senate Judiciary Committee needs to ask Alberto Gonzales today:That's Mark Kleiman for TAP. In all seriousness, I hope the Democrats don't screw this up. There's a tension at these hearings between a party's desire to accomplish something -- find the truth, advance a partisan/ideological agenda, whataver -- and individual Senators' proclivity for preening and wasting time (yes, Joe Biden, I'm looking at you).But that would make for an unduly short hearing, so here are a few more questions, just to fill in the time:
- Why are you such a lying turkey?
- When are you going to resign?
A Winning Ticket
The Wizards' season may be -- well, okay, definitely is -- de facto over, but the good people at Wizznutzz are still working away to produce this line of quality t-shirts, expressing a sentiment clearly aimed at my very own heart.
This attempt at ticket balancing does, however, raise the question of whether Gilbert Arenas' Black President MySpace page is authentic. When I first say it late last summer, my inclination was to believe. Now that Arenas has emerged as much more of a media star, I have to say that I don't find it credible that he's really that eccentric. But who knows? The world is a funner place if we think of it as authentic so perhaps I should choose to do so.
Water
Apropos of yesterday's water discussion, here's some absolutely useless advice about how to tell if you're drinking too much or too little water:
Initial symptoms of over-hydration include dizziness, nausea, apathy and confusion. However these symptoms are also associated with dehydration - so it's important to be aware of how much you are drinking.
At any rate, I'll say that it never occurred to me that over-consumption of water might be a problem, but apparently it can. Maybe I'll have to make this New Year's Resolution 2008. This, though, seems like the sort of resolution that will prompt people to look at me funny.
21
George Will writes against the federal mandate of a 21 year-old drinking age. I think Will actually left out the worst part of these rules, which is that they've created a cottage industry of fake IDs whose main purpose is to let teenagers procure beer. Since nobody thinks that teenagers buying beer is an especially serious offense, enforcement of the laws against production of such fake IDs is pretty lax. Accurate identification is, however, an important element of general law enforcement and counterterrorism. It would be very helpful for law enforcement if one could assume that fake IDs were generally being for something genuinely problematic and worth looking in to.
The best way to reduce drunk driving would be to have more people live in high-density areas well-served by taxis and mass transit, though we're presumably not going to implement such a scheme in the short-term.
About That Constitution
I have to say that I think one of the most surprising bits of conventional wisdom to emerge over the years has been the squishy middle's sense that abortion should be generally legal, but that legal decisions holding that there is a constitutional right to securing this outcome are constitutionally dodgy. I'm no constitutional lawyer, but this strikes me as a pretty clear-cut issue.
The fetus either is or isn't a "legal person" under the 14th amendment. If it is, then clearly abortion bans are not only constitutionally permissable, but constitutionally mandatory. If it isn't, however, then what's the basis for the state regulating conduct that takes place entirely inside the body of a rights-bearing citizen? It would need to be a mother-regarding health-and-safety regulation of some sort which, in the nature of things, is going to leave abortions generally legal as long as they're being performed in a way that's unlikely to seriously injure the mother.
A lot of people want to say that Roe and/or Casey are legally dodgy without leaping all the way to the other conclusion that there should be a constitutional prohibition on abortion. The primary motive for this, I think, is that people find it odd that such a controversial issue as abortion rights should be decided primarily by the courts. They also feel, intuitively, that it's weird to leap so suddenly from one stance to another. I tend to agree that this is odd. The oddness, however, is right at the heart of the institution of judicial review as practiced in the United States. I'm of the opinion that this institution isn't a great idea and that many other countries have found more satisfactory institutional mechanisms for the relationship between courts and legislatures. There's no question, however, that strong judicial review is the system we actually have and reproductive freedom advocates have every reason to press our case vigorously through America's actual institutions rather than act in some make-believe universe where the United States has a generally majoritarian set of political institutions.
Official Playoff Predictions
Clearly, the ultimate seeding outcomes have made my controversial (and probably wrong) pick of the Bulls to come out of the East completely outdated. The odds of Chicago beating Miami, and then beating the Cavs, and then beating Detroit are incredibly low and I'm not very glad I didn't put my money where my mouth was the other day. Thus, my playoff bracket.
"Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran"
Thanks to Ezra Klein, here's some video of David Brooks' mature, serious candidate singing a little ditty about bombing Iran:
I would also note that the questioner's premise -- that Iran is "blowing up people" -- is factually mistaken. A mature, responsible politician would have pointed that out. McCain, however, is a different sort of politician. Isaac Chotiner remarks, "If you think McCain is old and crazy now, just wait until his second term!"
This Little Piggyback Went to Market
Tim Lee has a nice post up about the latest efforts to frighten you out of putting up a WiFi network in your house that lacks password protection. Obviously, that password feature is a good thing and people have every right to use it if they so choose. In pratice, though, it's extremely unlikely that anything bad will happen to you as a result of running an open wireless network. More to the point, efforts to stigmatize logging on to open networks as a kind of "stealing" are absurd.
The issue here is that lurking deep in the hearts of telecom companies is the prospect that a bunch of friendly people living near one another might formalize a relationship where several households wirelessly shared a single internet connection. Alternatively, the dark threat of a world where there are so many open home- and business-based wireless networks around that it cuts into the market for selling people portable internet access. And if I were a Comcast executive, I guess I'd say it was smart for my company to worry about this at least a little. But the rest of us have nothing to worry about and journalists should be making that clear, not getting spun.
Convention Brokering
Mike Tomasky looks at the numbers and sees the possibility of a brokered convention. As a corollary to my view that it's never a good time for a third-party presidential candidacy, I've decided that it's also never a good time to predict a brokered convention. I completely agree with Tomasky's logic, but similar logic applied in 2004, to some extent in 1992, to a large extent in 1988, etc., etc., etc. The rules of delegate-allocation strongly suggest that multicandidate races should end without anyone securing a majority. In practice, that's not how it works. People are muscled out of the race and nothing get brokered.
So, on the one hand, I think Tomasky's right. On the other hand, I'm pretty certain he's wrong. In the event of brokering, the easy case is that Edwards has more delegates than Obama, Edwards + Obama equals a majority, and so we get an Edwards-Obama ticket. I feel like it would be weird for Edwards to run for Vice President a second time if the delegate counts are flipped, but that could happen, too. If there's serious deadlockage, though, then Al Gore, older, wiser, and heavier, becomes president. Indeed, I'm eagerly awaiting paranoid conspiracy theories about Gore's efforts to manipulate the primary in order to cause a deadlock.
New BHTV
Yglesias. Drezner. It's talking about stuff on BloggingHeadsTV!
Yes! In retrospect, I feel like we spent a weirdly long amount of time talking about the weather, rather than weightier matters. We didn't even use it as a segue for discussing global warming or anything. But it's all brilliant. You can even hear some early efforts to talk about my book.
Pros and Cons
Good stuff from McSweeney's as John Moe runs down the pros and cons of the Democratic contenders. I think Petey's gonna like this one.
Schumer's Postgame Analysis
Talking to reporters after the hearings, Chuck Schumer says: "since nobody can put together a coherent story about how this list was put together . . . the arrow points more and more to the White House." He says when you have all these DOJ officials "playing Abbott and Costello, pointing the finger at somebody else, something is amiss." He predicts the White House won't want Gonzales to stay on, and says he shouldn't stay on. The main point, however, is that Gonzales is neither here not there -- attention must be paid to the White House.
More broadly, I would also add that while it's nice to see some Republicans getting semi-tough about this, that if the GOP was still in the majority their "no oversight" policies would still be in place and none of this would have ever come to light.
April 20, 2007
Après Alito, Le Deluge
A wise Kirk Johnson report in The New York Times notes that with the new justices confirmed and unsettling abortion precedents, we're now due for another ugly era of legislative boundary pushing. It's clear that the votes don't exist at this point for a straightforward overturn of Roe or Casey, but also clear that the votes do exist for a substantial narrowing of pre-existing doctrine. What's more, some circuit courts are already very rightwing and no doubt chomping at the bit to push the boundaries, as are legislatures in at least some states. Thus, we can expect a big new tide of legislating, at both the state and federal level, followed by a big tide of litigating, appeals, etc., etc., etc.
A Series of Tubes
Via Tyler Cowen and Kottke, Ladies Home Journal's predictions about 2000 written in 1900:
Prediction #22: Store Purchases by Tube. Pneumatic tubes, instead of store wagons, will deliver packages and bundles. These tubes will collect, deliver and transport mail over certain distances, perhaps for hundreds of miles. They will at first connect with the private houses of the wealthy; then with all homes. Great business establishments will extend them to stations, similar to our branch post-offices of today, whence fast automobile vehicles will distribute purchases from house to house.
Prediction #23 is a curious mix of the prescient and wrong. "Ready-cooked meals will be bought from establishments similar to our bakeries of today." This is correct. Prepared food "to go" is now widely available, a concept they didn't really have in 1900 but is well-captured by the idea of being "similar to our bakeries of today." Then things go awry: "They will purchase materials in tremendous wholesale quantities and sell the cooked foods at a price much lower than the cost of individual cooking." In fact, people are just richer today than they were in 1900 and can afford more costly food-acquisition methods, especially if they save time. Interestingly, the premise here that wholesale purchase will make the food cheaper than home-cooking seems based on the idea that ingredients rather than labor are the main cost of prepared foods. Last, of course, the tubes return: "Food will be served hot or cold to private houses in pneumatic tubes or automobile wagons." The pneumatic tube is a real technology, still in use to some extent today, but it was always more of a niche product than its proponents had hoped.
Kirkuk Referendum
One long-running on-the-horizon flashpoint in Iraq is the future of Kirkuk. At the insistence of the Kurdish parties, the Iraqi Constitution mandates that there will be a referendum on whether or not the Kirkuk region should be brought under the umbrella of the Kurdistan Regional Government. This has created a lot of incentive for KRG-aligned forced to try to push Arabs out of the area. Scot Maclead notes an International Crisis Group report on Kirkuk:
With every day and each exploding bomb that kills schoolchildren or shoppers, hopes for peaceful resolution of the Kirkuk question recede. The approach favoured by the Kurds, constitution-based steps culminating in a referendum by year’s end, is bitterly opposed by Kirkuk’s other principal communities – Arabs and Turkomans – who see it as a rigged process with predetermined outcome. Their preference, to keep Kirkuk under federal government control, is rejected by the Kurds. With all sides dug in and the Kurds believing Kirkuk is a lost heirloom they are about to regain, the debate should move off outcomes to focus on a fair and acceptable process. For the Kurds, that means postponing the referendum, implementing confidence-building measures and seeking a new mechanism prioritising consensus. The U.S. needs to recognise the risk of an explosion in Kirkuk and press the Kurds, the Baghdad government and Turkey alike to adjust policies and facilitate a peaceful settlement.
My motto is: People should listen to the ICG. They have a much better track-record than do many higher-profile organizations that policymakers and media elites prefer to listen to. In this case, however, while I think they're right about this, I'm far from convinced that it's really possible to implement the IGC's alternatives at this point -- how much leverage do we really have over the Kurds at this point? -- but it would be worth a try. The last thing Iraq needs is a new conflict zone.
Health, Son
Ross Douthat wants to disputate about whether the unconstitutionality of abortion bans really does follow straightforwardly from the premise that a fetus lacks the legal status of a person:
But there are all sorts of laws that regulate "conduct that takes place inside the body of a right-bearing citizen" - particularly when another party (like, say, an abortionist) performs said conduct. For instance, we have laws against selling your organs, laws against prostitution, laws against assisted suicide, laws that prohibit the sale of drugs and restrict the sale of alcohol, and so on and so forth. Some of these may be bad laws, but it seems like quite a stretch to say that they're all unconstitutional.
To be sure. As I wrote in my original post, constitutional abortion regulations "would need to be a mother-regarding health-and-safety regulation of some sort which, in the nature of things, is going to leave abortions generally legal as long as they're being performed in a way that's unlikely to seriously injure the mother." That's the difference. The common thread tying together the sort of regulations Ross is citing here is a public health rationale. I don't think anyone would dispute the constitutional right of congress to prohibit or curtail the use of a genuinely dangerous abortion procedure -- regulations aimed at protecting the health of pregnant women. Abortion regulations that lack health exemptions, however, can hardly be said to be public health measures. Alternatively, one could try to see abortion bans as a kind of commercial regulation -- like a rule that you can't have a liquor store next to a school, or zoning in general. But I find it hard to see how this sort of rationale could support banning the provision of a class of medical services throughout an entire state or country.
What's more, anything along these lines would be offered in bad faith. Abortion opponents don't oppose abortion rights because they think such rights are bad for the health of pregnant women. Nor do they oppose legal abortion because they think it's bad land use policy. They oppose it because they think fetuses have moral rights that ought to be instantiated as legal rights. This, however, leads to the conclusion that courts should require abortion bans, just as the SCOTUS wouldn't let a state pass a law saying "murder is illegal unless the person you kill is over 73." Either way, it'll be decided by judges. That, for better and for worse, is the nature of the American constitutional system. A question of what does and does not count as a legal person is a question for the courts and issues of enormous consequence hinge on those decisions.
No, and Yet . . .
Bad books fall into a few categories, with Jerry Bowyer's The Bush Boom fitting well into the "so transparently stupid it wouldn't even be amusing to scan through looking for the funny parts" section of my catalogue of recent American political commentary. This opinion piece for Fox News, by contrast, belongs firmly on the "not sure whether to laugh or cry" shelf.
"Do I blame Islam for Cho Seung-Hui?" Bowyer asks, before wisely replying "No." He does, however, note a certainly dhimmitude to Cho's approach. "he took a Muslim name to register his discontent — Ismail, the preferred Arab spelling of 'Ishmael,' Abraham’s first son, the disinherited son who took second place to the wealthy Isaac." Robert Farley wonders if the objectively pro terror Herman Melville might be to blame. Bowyer goes on, however, to note the role of liberal tax raisers in prompting this spree killing:
There is a rising tide of resentment in our country against the so-called “rich,” and Christianity, and a Big Mac with fries. Talk-show hosts, op-ed writers, documentarians, and authors of all stripes take part in it. They speak to psychologically healthy audiences, although the bent and wicked are listening in too.
Classy!
War is Not a Process Issue
My friends Brian Beutler and Ezra Klein both lavish praise on Supreme Commander Harold Meyerson's column on the shape of the race. I agree with much of it, but I think this pearl of wisdom is fast become an overly entrenched bit of not-really-accurate CW:
For the Democrats, the contest is settling into a pattern set four decades ago: primary-season class conflict, in which one candidate appeals to a younger and more upscale electorate by talking about political reform and other chiefly noneconomic concerns, while another emphasizes pocketbook issues to the party's working-class voters. In primaries past, the upscale-reformer role has been embraced by Eugene McCarthy, Morris Udall, Gary Hart, Paul Tsongas, Bill Bradley and Howard Dean, while the part of the more populist bread-and-butter battler has been played by Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, Richard Gephardt and John Edwards, among others. This year's upscale reformer, as Ronald Brownstein keenly noted in his Los Angeles Times column last month, is Barack Obama.So far, Obama is observing all the upscale conventions. Unlike Edwards, Obama is not campaigning against financiers who profit from outsourcing American jobs or drug companies that drive the price of medications to unregulated heights. Rather, he campaigns against the compromises, the shallowness, the corruptions inherent in our political and legislative processes. To create universal health coverage, Edwards prescribes taxing the rich, while Obama prescribes an open discussion, free from the taint of campaign contributions, that ultimately may lead us to embrace Edwards's prescription -- or not.
That's not wrong per se, but it's odd to think of Eugene McCarthy and Howard Dean as primarily "reform" candidates, and I think it's wrong to see Barack Obama in that light as well. These are all candidates whose primary base is, yes, with the upscale liberal demographic and therefore they tend to embrace reform issues that are important to that demographic slice. The three candidates I've singled out -- along with George McGovern, the one candidate from this lineage to actually secure the nomination -- are all foreign policy candidates as well. Specifically, opponents of seriously misguided wars in Vietnam and Iraq. These weren't -- and aren't -- trivial questions.
John Edwards is a sufficiently appealing figure that I greatly sympathize with the impulse among folks of a labor-liberal orientation to just accept his apology, decide there are no foreign policy issues at play, and construct this as a clash between the elite reformer and the dynamic populist. In my view, though, I need to hear more from Edwards about this other than that he shouldn't have been duped by Bush's WMD claims.
How The Other Half Lives
Brian Beutler: "It occurs to em that if an Iranian leader with great visibility--say, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad--had been videotaped singing 'Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb America,' (which, yes, sounds foolish but you get the idea) it wouldn't be taken lightly here. Fox News would treat it as a sign that the regime was unstable and dangerous and, voila, we'd allow it to bring us a step closer to war." This is probably the single largest foreign policy-related failing among American politicians and members of the policy and media elites: A failure to make a serious effort to ask how things look from the perspective of other countries.
Friday Monkey-God Blogging
Bethlehem Shoals observes: "Duncan's deviousness has been obscured because his game is all old-school fundamentals, causing the media to inaccurately label Duncan the individual as stoic and wholesome. Indeed, his Chinese fans call him the 'Stone Buddha'. In reality, Duncan is more similar to Sun Wukong, the Chinese Monkey King, who liked to play pranks and acheived greatness through craftiness." Indeed. Which seems like as good a time as any to mention Maxine Hong Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book which, unfortunately, I was first assigned to read as part of a tedious "let's read books by minority authors" course and toward which I therefore adopted the knee-jerk hostile attitude of the 19 year-old white dude.
In fact, it's a great book that, yes, is about the perplexities of Chinese-American identity but also so much more. The motif of Sun Wukong the Monkey God-King is, suffice it to say, important to the narrative. As is Vertigo. Googling around I see that there's a website with the funny name: "Tripmaster Monkey: Home of Yellow Journalism." It's a "cheeky news site for the Asia-savvy" and I'm not sure I really qualify as Asia-savvy.
UPDATE: That's Brown Recluse I'm quoting, not Shoals. Apologies for the error.
The Future
Via Tom Lee, a clip from what's apparently an even longer CGI-produced drama, made on an amateur basis by an Italian group called Cee-Gee.
I'm coming around to Tom's view that cinema can and will be made on an amateur peer-production basis and that at some point the sort of obviously competent techies who did this will hook up with some less-inept actor and writer types and produce something with more merit. One obstacle to hobbyist production of this sort, however, is that you need a confluence of interests to put it together. Commerical cinema is driven by the interaction of cost and consumer demand. Amateur cinema would be driven by producer interests. Your stereotypical techie interests -- Star Wars sequels, giant robots, etc. -- aren't the kind of projects that are likely to attract a ton of skilled actors sufficiently passionate about the endeavor to work for free.
Freak Show
I caught some MSNBC earlier this afternoon, and it was really just pathetic. The topic under discussion was that Harry Reid apparently said the Iraq War was lost. Since Reid's an important legislative leader, this did seem like a good subject for a story. But, of course, instead of using it as an opportunity to bring some knowledgeable people on and discuss whether or not Reid was right about the war, they used it as an opportunity to bring on a "Democratic strategist" and a "Republican strategist" neither of whom seemed like especially prominent strategists, to talk about the political fallout from the statement.
It's not, you know, surprising exactly, but if you go a little while without watching cable news coverage of a political issue it is always a bit shocking to be exposed to just how dumb and uninformative it is. The worst of it is that while I was very unhappy with it, I imagine any serious-minded conservatives out there watching would also have been unhappy. Then the folks in charge probably reach the conclusion that "if liberals and conservatives both complain, we must be doing something right!" Soon enough, they moved on to more Anna Nicole Smith coverage.
Chinese Politics
I don't think I or anyone else thinks this round of discussions in China about political reform is going to lead to the near-term blossoming of democracy. Still, I think it's striking the extent to which there really is politics conducted in China in a meaningful sense with some measure of public debate, disagreements, factions, people speaking, etc.
“What we’re seeing is a repudiation of Deng Xiaoping’s edict that the party should focus exclusively on economic development,” said Lu De, an influential economist who has pushed for greater political pluralism. . . .“They want democracy to belong to the party, not to belong to people who oppose the party,” said one retired party official who declined to be identified because top leaders sometimes punish people for discussing elite politics. “If the party can define what democracy is, then it will not be as dangerous.” . . .
Lu Dingyi argued that the party should embrace democracy and freedom because intellectuals favored those ideas and the party needed the support of intellectuals. He said people in the sciences and the arts must be allowed broad latitude to express themselves as they saw fit, provided they did not contest the party’s political leadership.
There more like that. This isn't, obviously, democracy in action. At the time time, it's not North Korea or the pre-Glasnost USSR, or Saddam-era Iraq. Indeed, despite "Deng Xiaoping’s edict that the party should focus exclusively on economic development" it's clear that Xiaoping’s reforms have led to meaningful, albeit circumscribed, political changes relative to the Mao era.
"Love Buzz"
Maybe a week ago when talking Nirvana covers was all the rage, Spencer pointed out to me that "Love Buzz" off Bleach is actually a cover. A bit of internet sleuthing discovered a copy of the original, released by a Dutch band called Shocking Blue in the late sixties. It's bad. Really bad. Really. It's hard to believe anyone would listen to it and think to himself, "man, I should do a version of that."
Hollinger's Odds
Insiders can read the whole explanation, but basically John Hollinger used his power rankings formula, then looked at the playoff seedings, and came up with the following odds of taking home the rings:
- San Antonio: 37 percent.
- Dallas: 25.5 percent.
- Phoenix 11.6 percent.
- Detroit: 10.8 percent.
- Cleveland: 5.5 percent.
- Chicago: 5.2 percent.
- Houston: 4.1 percent.
The field -- and, yes, this includes Miami -- has very low odds according to Hollinger.
April 21, 2007
Friends in all the Right Places
New Republic editor in chief Martin Peretz speaks up in defense of Paul Wolfowitz and the general principle of appointing unqualified, slightly corrupt people to important positions after they screw up their job at the Defense Department. Even the avowed conservative magazines don't seem especially interested in flacking for Wolfowitz at this point.
After the Veto
This memo on Iraq funding strategy from John Podesta, Larry Korb, Scott Lilly, and Brian Katulis seems smart to me; about the right combination of politics and substance. It's extremely frustrating that there doesn't appear to be a viable way for anti-war congressfolk to simply use their authority to mandate both a beginning point for withdrawal and an endpoint but, well, there just isn't one. This fight is going to need to keep happening -- less in Washington than in members' districts -- over and over again for months until there's more pressure and more votes.
Hollow Equality
Bean at LGF [UPDATE: Er, that's LGM] discusses the prospects of an equality rationale for abortions rights rather than a privacy one, jumping off Cass Sunstein's discussion in The Los Angeles Times. One problem, says, Bean:
But, as I have noted before, the Court's pregnancy jurisprudence stands between us and an equality rationale for protecting abortion rights. The Court, in a now-infamous 1970s case, Geduldig v. Aiello, held that pregnancy discrimination is not sex discrimination because the comparison is not between men and women but between pregnant people and non pregnant people (a group that includes men and women). It's a legal fiction and a farce of logic, but it stands. And stands in the way of forward movement on equality jurisprudence.
That seriously happened? This is one reason why I tend to think there's nothing wrong with "tokenism" or "identity politics" in Supreme Court appointments as I find it very difficult to imagine you could have found a panel of nine women prepared to make a ruling like that.
Going Meta
Everyone's already piling on Maureen Dowd's horrible column today, but to me what makes this sort of crap doubly aggravating is her refusal to even take responsibility for what she's doing. Dowd doesn't want to wake up and say, "I'm using my New York Times column to argue that John Edwards would be a bad president because he got some expensive haircuts." She won't come out and write: "John Edwards' expensive haircuts indicate to me that he would be a bad president." If she wrote that, after all, it would be obvious that she was being idiotic. Why, after all, would you think that the price of Edwards' haircuts is an important indicator of what kind of job he'd do as president.
So, instead, she writes a column which is nominally about how other people will find his haircuts objectionable. The voters -- not Dowd, Dowd is serious -- will find this very damaging. But, of course, it wouldn't be damaging at all if media haters didn't talk about it. It's either relevant or it's not. If you think it's relevant, you have a responsibility to explain how and why and expose yourself as a fool. If you don't think it's relevant, you have a responsibility to write your columns about something else.
Toronto Loses
I guess playoff experience, veteran savvy, etc. really all do count for something. I still think Toronto's the better team, though obviously losing home court doesn't help the cause very much. The idea of Canadians being mean and booing Vince Carter so viciously is kind of comical. As a Canada-file and opponent of things like whining your way off teams, I'm rooting for the Raptors, who also have the best center court logo in the league.
Arguing in Circles
Via Brian Beutler, Reuel Marc Gerecht wonders: "Do thoughtful Democrats really believe that the Middle East, America's long fight against Sunni jihadism, and our standing in the world against potential aggressors and bullies will be improved by a precipitous and mandated departure from Mesopotamia?" I was tempted initially to give this a defiant yes, I do! but the truth is that I don't, of course, think a "precipitous" departure from Mesopotamia is a good idea. Were the country run by reasonable people, I would think something like this would happen:
- President informs Pentagon that we need to withdraw our troops from Iraq, and they need to study the question of what's the best way to do this quickly but safely.
- Based on the feedback POTUS gets about what's feasible to do in a safe manner, he picks a target date.
- With a provisional date chosen, POTUS shares his thinking with key partners in the British and Iraqi governments, and concedes to minor alterations in the schedule if said partners have strong feelings about the desirability of small changes.
- The plan is announced at some public gathering with representatives of the Iraq, American, British, and other coalition governments.
The trouble is that the country isn't being run by sensible people so the sensible thing can't happen. Instead, since we have some sensible people in congress, they're trying to do what congress can do. Congressional Iraq plans, meanwhile, have an air of arbitrariness about them since congress isn't staffed properly to assess the relevant operational issues. And the administration won't let the military do any planning for withdrawal. So, naturally, Democrats are left with non-optimal proposals to put forward. And this is then used as a reason to support the very administration whose terrible policy are forcing us into this corner in the first place.
Bulls-Heat
What a game, and what a matchup. My instincts are anti-Chicago, but the contrast between the loathesomeness of Pat Riley's Home for Aging Veterans and the vivacity of Chicago's squad of non-stars has brought me around. The decision not to include Luol Deng in a deal for Pau Gasol is looking perfectly reasonable to me. The rest of the Eastern Conference had better just hope nothing crazy happens in the draft lottery.
Polarization in the States
Innovative research into applying ideological mapping techniques that work well for congress to state legislatures lets us finally answer the question: Do ideological patterns in state legislatures resemble those in congress? The answer: It depends! California and Michigan display Beltway-esque polarization patterns. Florida, however, looks very different and Pennsylvania is pretty different as well. So far, those are the only states this has been done for.
If you want the full explanation, see this PDF of Boris Shor, Christopher Berry, and Nolan McCarty "A Bridge to Somewhere: Mapping State and Congressional Ideology on a Cross-Institutional Common Space."
Carbon Taxes
Via Plumer and Beaudrot along comes Chris Dodd with the first carbon tax proposal of the presidential campaign.
Every once in a while I wonder why you don't see a constant, dogmatic drumbeat of enthusiasm for carbon taxes from conservative pundits. You'd say, "we should have a carbon tax and offset it with reductions in income taxes" and split yuppie liberal types who worry about global warming from more traditional populist types. What's more, since to be effective a carbon tax would need to succeed in reducing carbon emissions you'd also set the federal government on a glide path to reduced revenues. It's great. But you almost never see people beating this drum.
I can imagine a few explanations. One is that most conservative pundits have allowed that portion of the brain that one uses to analyze a substantive question of national policy to atrophy to the extent that they don't understand why this is something that conservatives should like. Another is corruption; this proposal would be bad interest group politics and the energy companies are major financiers of the right. A third is hackishness; this proposal would put you in disagreement with George W. Bush and other Republican Party politicians. Last is the politics of resentment; conservative pundits just hate environmentalists too much to see the forest for the trees. Some combination of factors may be at work. And it's worth saying that several of your better conservative pundits -- Andrew Sullivan and David Brooks come to mind -- are on the bandwagon.
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Heads in the Sand
