Meanwhile, back at the Ranch...

presidential disrespect

2012-01-26T14:04:00.002-05:00

President Obama arrived in Phoenix at 3:15 pm local time, finding the chilly weather of Iowa giving way to sunny skies and temperatures in the high 60s.

He stepped off Air Force One at 3:28 pm and was greeted by Gov. Jan Brewer. She handed him a handwritten letter in an envelope and they spoke intensely for a few minutes. At one point, she pointed her finger at him.

Afterwards, your pooler spoke with the governor.

"He was a little disturbed about my book, Scorpions for Breakfast. I said to him that I have all the respect in the world for the office of the president. The book is what the book is. I asked him if he read the book. He said he read the excerpt. So."

Let's all be clear about one thing: when the words "I respect the office of the president" come out of your mouth, it's usually because you just said (or did, in this case) something you know crossed the line, something that proves, in fact, that you don't accord any respect whatsoever to the current president.

Not that I'm a big "respect the office!" guy, mind you. The president may be head of state, but s/he's also a public figure, and voluntarily so. People gonna say what they gonna say.

Nonetheless, this now makes two (out of only three total!) State of the Union addresses where "the office of the president" was pretty egregiously disrespected by having some Republican politician treat the POTUS as if he were of lesser station than them. Two things I cannot imagine having ever happened to any previous president, of either party.

We've talked about this before in the context of black resentment, but one thing we missed about this unprecedented abuse endured by President Obama is why these politicians engage in it. Surely people are turned off by this kind of thing, right?

Except "the right people" aren't turned off. In fact, they've been dying to have someone put this guy "in his place" and "give us our country back" for 3 years now. They just love it when one of their boys shouts "You lie!" during the State of the Union, or their house speaker refuses to return the president's calls and skips out on state dinners, or when their highest ranking party members refuse to admit that he's an American citizen.

This is, of course, why Gingrich has been enjoying such high support in the primaries at times despite being an otherwise loathed man in other years. Gingrich appeals to that teabagger desire to see this president treated with as much disrespect as possible. Finger wagging? That goes without saying! Calling him names to his face? He deserves it. Treating him like a child and talking down to him? Hey, Gingrich has a Ph.D.; that gives him the right, right? Throwing in a few personal jabs at Michelle and the kids? She started it, the fat cow getting the government to tell our kids what they can and can't eat.

But I respect the office of the president.

Dr. King

2012-01-16T21:47:00.002-05:00

I've noticed on this anniversary that I've never taken any time to say anything about Martin Luther King, Jr. on this little soapbox. I guess I'll start with a huge cliche:

Martin Luther King, Jr. is a personal hero of mine.

I became a fan of his in grad school for a lot of reasons. For the sake of limiting my cliches in this post, I'll limit my discussion to this one point that I don't hear so many people make about him.

I always knew of King as a voice against inequality, against war, and against prejudice and hatred, but it wasn't until graduate school that I had the opportunity to read any of his words aside from the few speeches everyone quotes. What I discovered was that people talk a lot about King's heart (and rightly so), but his mind was almost as extraordinary. His letter from a Birmingham jail was on the reading list of my theology class on Grace, alongside such names as Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Karl Rahner and Martin Luther. That should tell you something about the quality of the man's thought. Among those names and those works, however, the clarity of King's thought and the strength of his voice was notable.

Notice, for instance:

One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I it" relationship for an "I thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.

Not bad for a guy writing from jail without access to his library, eh?

bloated federal bureaucracy not bloated at all

2012-01-12T17:27:00.003-05:00

Kevin Drum points to a very interesting graph from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, and then makes a particularly interesting point.

First, the graph:

Notice that administrative costs generally range from minimal to non-existent in all of these very large government programs. More interestingly, in the ones with higher admin costs, those costs are higher because of things conservatives insist on:

Programs like SNAP and Section 8 housing have fairly stringent means testing rules in order to root out folks trying to game the system, and the result of that is higher admin costs. It's pretty unavoidable. We could probably cut the overhead costs of housing vouchers by simply giving money to anyone under a certain income line and then calling it a day, but we don't. We make sure you really truly qualify, we make sure the vouchers are really spent on housing, and we make sure that landlords aren't scamming either tenants or the taxpayers. This is exactly the kind of thing conservatives are always urging us to do, and it costs money. There's no way around it.

The moralistic, heavy-handed nonsense that conservatives like to force upon agencies ends up increasing their administrative costs, and then conservatives turn around and accuse them of inefficiency. Now, it is possible that the money saved from scammers or whatever offsets the higher admin costs, and it is possible that some regulations are "worth it" even if they cost more than they save, but that doesn't change the fact that accusations of inefficiency are both inaccurate and deeply unfair.

we would kill for Japan's "lost decade"

2012-01-08T14:26:00.002-05:00

A well-argued corrective here about Japan's supposed economic slump.

the Teabaggers make their last stand

2012-01-04T01:36:00.002-05:00

I hate to be a Debbie Downer for all of us rooting for chaos in the Republican primary, but I think this baby's over. Santorum managed a great, come-from-behind victory (or near victory, not sure yet) in Iowa, but this was little more than the last gasp of opposition before Romney overwhelms the rest of the field.

Why is that?

The problem with Santorum -- electorally speaking, I mean -- is that he has no stamina for a prolonged fight. Sure, he managed to make something of himself in Iowa, but he could only manage it by focusing pretty much all of his very meager resources there. He has almost no presence in the other 49 states, and a statewide campaign apparatus is not the kind of thing you can just whip up overnight, not even if you get a massive windfall after the initial victory. It's possible that Perry could have waged a longer campaign, or perhaps even Ron Paul, but none of the other guys ever really got their fundraising off the ground back when it really mattered.

Santorum's only real shot here is if this anti-Romney Tea-Party-cum-Christian-Right thingamajig that presumably carried him in Iowa coalesces into a full-blown opposition faction within, I dunno, the next two weeks or so and decides on its own to mobilize for him. Frankly, I just don't see it.

The far more likely outcome is that the Republican establishment gets just spooked enough to jump off the fence and line up behind Romney so as to put the kibosh on all this friendly fire. It appears it's already happening, in fact, as news broke this evening that John McCain plans to travel to New Hampshire tomorrow to endorse Mittens. I expect an avalanche of those over the next week or two as Mitt easily carries NH, brushes off South Carolina as an outlier and uses Super Tuesday as a giant victory lap.

the anti-incumbent election myth

2011-12-30T03:55:00.003-05:00

Some perspective on the some of the more idiotic tea leaf reading going around regarding next year's elections from Larry Sabato.

If you hear someone say the words "triple flip" in the context of next year's elections, you know you don't have to listen to them anymore because they don't know what they're talking about.

The End of an Error

2011-12-15T14:59:00.004-05:00

The war in Iraq officially ended today. I honestly wasn't sure I'd ever see this day.

I've written, spoken, screamed, argued, spat out, and drunkenly slurred so many words on so many occasions damning this war and those who started it, and now on the day of its end, I'm having trouble finding thoughts to contribute.

It's hard to eulogize a war when one can't even articulate why we fought it. I still don't know. In fact, with every year I think the war has made even less sense. Maybe Bush really did think Iraq had nukes and ties to Al Qaeda. If so, perhaps one day, when we can speak honestly about Iraq, we can take a lesson from it about qualities to avoid in a presidential candidate. It is certainly a warning against electing charismatic dimwits, people with no intellectual curiosity and a philosophy of decision-making "from the gut."

Maybe in the future, Americans will force themselves to keep their cool in the aftermath of an attack, telling themselves: "don't do anything rash or allow yourselves to be conned. Remember Iraq."

Iraq could prove the anti-WWII. Neoconservatives, for instance, think war is always the answer, citing World War II as historical precedent. Every foreign leader becomes Hitler, all of their crimes become the Holocaust, every American president has the choice to be Chamberlain or Churchill.

Perhaps Iraq could become a catch-all reason to keep our cool and not listen to those who would con us into war. Perhaps every "bad guy" could become Saddam Hussein, unarmed and besieged, wrongfully accused of being a threat to the US but unable to admit he has no super-secret nuclear program because it's the only thing keeping Iran at bay. Every ostensible reason for invasion becomes Iraqi WMD, existent only in the fever dreams of the administration. Every warmonger could become Colin Powell, dangling falsified evidence that the proponents of war call "ironclad." And every president is in trouble of becoming George W. Bush, blinded by the need for revenge, manipulated by his underlings and advisors, impervious to all countervailing evidence, firing weapons inspector and weapons inspector when they return to report that the enemy's mobile weapons labs are a myth.

I'll end by recalling that it was the terrorist attacks of September 11, and the need for revenge, that were a primary cause of the war. As of today, 4,487 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq, about 1,000 more than the total casualties of 9/11.

money > cans

2011-12-09T19:00:00.002-05:00

Interesting research from Matt Yglesias shows that food pantries and charities get much more value out of donations of cash than of canned food. Essentially, charities have cut deals with supermarkets to score food for pennies on the dollar:

All across America, charitable organizations and the food industry have set up mechanisms through which emergency food providers can get their hands on surplus food for a nominal handling charge. Katherina Rosqueta, executive director of the Center for High Impact Philanthropy at the University of Pennsylvania, explains that food providers can get what they need for “pennies on the dollar.” She estimates that they pay about 10 cents a pound for food that would cost you $2 per pound retail.

Beyond the better pricing, Yglesias points out that sorting cans involves a lot more work and space than depositing a check, and the charity can use the check to buy things they know the families will actually like and know how to prepare. Plus, hey, you can document your donations for tax purposes much more easily if you wrote a check.

message to Obama: hire Ron Paul's ad guy

2011-12-09T13:53:00.002-05:00

Seriously, this ad is fantastic. Political advertising has gotten pretty stagnant, and negative ads can be so rankling and formulaic: a black background, black and white unflattering photos of the other guy, that smarmy woman or that old dude doing the overacted voice-over: "Mitt Romney saayyyss..."

This could be a movie commercial. Well done.

a long time coming

2011-12-08T15:05:00.001-05:00

Finally dug in and modernized the look of the ol' blog. Have a look and let me know what you think.

better Plan B than Plan C

2011-12-07T16:11:00.003-05:00

The Washington Post:

In a rare public split among federal health officials, the Health and Human Services Department overruled a decision by the Food and Drug Administration to make the drug available to anyone of any age without a restriction.

In a statement, FDA Administrator Margaret A. Hamburg said she had decided the medication could be used safely by girls and women of all ages. But she added that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius had rejected the move.

“I agree ... there is adequate and reasonable, well-supported, and science-based evidence that Plan B One-Step is safe and effective and should be approved for nonprescription use for all females of child-bearing potential,” Hamburg said.

“However, this morning I received a memorandum from the Secretary of Health and Human Services invoking her authority under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to execute its provisions and stating that she does not agree with the Agency’s decision to allow the marketing of Plan B One-Step nonprescription for all females of child-bearing potential,” she said.

Had Kathleen Sebelius not made the unprecedented move of overturning the FDA's decision, Plan B would soon be available in the same way as aspirin, preventing Lord knows how many unwanted pregnancies and allowing young women more freedom to make their own family planning choices.

This decision has a significant impact on our lives. It's a perfect example of everything conservatives could rightly rail against. This is some bureaucrat wielding the power of government to enforce her personal opinions (Sebelius is Catholic). This is a perfect example of big government nosing its way into our lives and personal decisions. This is over-regulation at its worst, forcing the market's hand because of airy fairy feelings and fear of special interest groups.

Of course, we won't hear anything from them, neither condemnation for the things they claim to believe in nor praise for things they actually believe in. But this isn't really about them, is it? This is about the Obama Administration stopping a major, necessary policy change by the FDA that would grant young women a tremendous degree of reproductive freedom. It would have changed millions of lives for the better, but oh well, what's more important: changing millions of lives for the better or giving parish priests one less reason to bash Democrats in Mass?

Kevin Drum articulates my sentiment pretty well:

This is the first time an HHS secretary has ever overruled the FDA, and it's a blow to those of us who believe that Democratic administrations are more willing to be guided by scientific evidence than Republican ones.

the BCS: sigh, so we're doing this again.

2011-12-04T16:04:00.002-05:00

As many of you no doubt already know, it's time for the BCS to decide for us who will be playing in the national championship game, based on the opinions of coaches who don't watch most of the games and computer formulae that outside observers have generally dismissed as "nonsense math." This year will be one of the worst years for the BCS, as there's only one undefeated team in the country, LSU, so they have to pluck one of the one-lossers up to join them in the national championship. The difference in caliber between the various one-lossers? We have no earthly idea, because for the most part, they haven't played each other, nor have their respective conferences played each other except for one or two games.

Dr. Saturday sums it up thusly:

In the meantime, congratulations to Alabama and Oklahoma State (and Stanford, and Boise State, and Oregon, and Wisconsin) on outstanding seasons. You are all worthy. All but one of you is about to get screwed. This is the system you're forced to play in. As for the rest of us, we don't have to play along.

The whole post is great, by the way. Even better is Dan Wetzel's annual takedown of the BCS, this year brewed a little heartier because the system is exposed even more than usual. If you want to know exactly how the system is flawed, check it out. Wetzel's case is ironclad.

He releases a bracket every year to show what games we'd be watching if we scrapped the BCS for a 16 team bracket, and this year it's going to be outstanding.

But back to the BCS: does anybody still defend this system? Dr. Saturday put it best: holding a vote to decide who's the better team, in a game that keeps score, is stupid. What defense could you possibly muster for this asinine system? Tradition? We should keep engaging in this ridiculous exercise because we were stupid enough to do it last year?

And remember, nobody else does this, not even division II college football. They use a playoff, and there's rarely any scandal about a team unfairly left out.

the details matter

2011-11-30T23:25:00.002-05:00

A pretty good job by DougJ at Balloon Juice articulating why I've unconsciously purged my RSS of most of its political writers and have stopped reading newspaper editorials:

Establishment media types are innumerate. I doubt that more than a quarter could estimate the US GDP within 35%. The details of pro-Social Security versus anti-Social security arguments, or austerity versus expansionary arguments, are completely lost on them. (It’s possible that I am not as conversant with these arguments as I should be myself, though I think I am reasonably conversant, to be honest with you.)

So they gravitate towards whichever position is more in line with some fuzzier, more qualitative world view; that world view is often that the American middle-class is spoiled and needs tough love. They don’t want to starve the middle-class, they feel they owe it to them. This is about more than making money. I doubt Ruth Marcus or Joe Klein would lose their jobs or suffer a pay cut if they stopped fluffing Paul Ryan. I also think that they genuinely believe that the American middle-class needs to suffer. I am not attributing any malice to anyone here, quite the opposite.

It’s striking that so many economists—even conservative ones like Greg Mankiw and Martin Feldstein—supported the stimulus, albeit with caveats about how it wasn’t perfect and so on, while non-economist pundits were generally critical of it. This happened because economists were more likely to consider the quantitative details while punditubbies (EDIT: h/t) thought gubmint should tighten its belt when Real Murkins do.

I also don’t think establishment media types supported the Iraq War because they wanted to see Iraqis and American soldiers die (with some exceptions, Tom Friedman has explicitly stated that he wanted to tell Iraqi civilians to “suck on this”). They didn’t understand the complexities of a potential war, so they went with what felt good—spreading freedom, keeping America safe, showing the Muslim world some tough love, etc. In some cases, crass careerist or circus dog motivations came into play I am sure, but I bet some of these people honestly thought it was “the right thing to do”.

Most of the people we've put in charge of political discourse don't actually know very much at all about policy. Perhaps that's a trite point. What's more interesting is this link between ignorance of (or maybe lack of desire to discuss) the details of policy, no matter how important to the topic at hand, and the switching of the conversation instead to airy-fairy issues of narrative and morality and horse races. I imagine that mirrors the way most people talk about things they don't know a thing about.

BettySoo

2011-11-29T14:28:00.002-05:00

God bless NPR and the internet, because without them I would never have heard any of this: BettySoo.

Congressional pay

2011-11-29T13:13:00.002-05:00

Interesting: Matt Glassman compares Congress' salaries to inflation and finds that, contrary to popular opinion, after all the peaks and valleys Congress is barely paying itself more now than it was in 1913.

To the extent that congressional pay is a problem, it may actually be that it's too low. Paying congressional representatives inadequately opens the door to corruption and locks out the non-wealthy.

on the other hand

2011-11-17T18:06:00.002-05:00

It makes for great comedy. Nancy Pelosi, responding to Rick Perry's debate challenge:

He did ask if I could debate here in Washington on Monday — it is my understanding that such a letter has come in. Monday, I’m going to be in Portland in the morning, visiting some of our labs in California in the afternoon, that’s two … I can’t remember what the third thing is.

the War on the War on Poverty

2011-11-13T15:34:00.003-05:00

Michele Bachmann in last night's debate, echoing a common refrain among Republicans:

The "Great Society" has not worked and it's put us into the modern welfare state. If you look at China, they don't have food stamps. If you look at China, they're in a very different situation. They save for their own retirement security…They don't have the modern welfare state and China's growing. And so what I would do is look at the programs that LBJ gave us with the Great Society and they'd be gone.

This rubs me particularly raw since my favorite president happens to be Lyndon Baines Johnson, so I'd like to answer. Putting aside for a moment Bachmann's insinuation that we should be less socialist and more capitalist, ya know, like the People's Republic of China, let's talk about Bachmann's promise to eliminate the Great Society.

I'll start with the obvious and most politically relevant point: the capstone of the Great Society was the creation of Medicare, a program that is not only hugely popular among Bachmann's own constituents, but that she has personally promised to protect on numerous occasions. In fact, she ran against the Affordable Care Act specifically because it cut Medicare funding.

That the moderators would let her suggest eliminating the Great Society without making her answer to the abolition of Medicare is a major reason why I believe these debates are altogether pointless.

Now let's talk about the Great Society as a whole. Despite Bachmann's typically ignorant and cliche point that it "has not worked," the point of the Great Society was to lower the poverty rate. That's the standard by which we should gauge whether it "has not worked." Luckily, the federal government has been keeping tabs on the poverty rate for decades, including during the '60's. Anyone want to guess how the Great Society performed?

...from 1963 when Lyndon Johnson took office until 1970 as the impact of his Great Society programs were felt, the portion of Americans living below the poverty line dropped from 22.2 percent to 12.6 percent, the most dramatic decline over such a brief period in this century. Since then, the poverty rate has hovered at about the 13 percent level and sits at 13.3 percent today, still a disgraceful level in the context of the greatest economic boom in our history. But if the Great Society had not achieved that dramatic reduction in poverty, and the nation had not maintained it, 24 million more Americans would today be living below the poverty level.

That's right: Lyndon Johnson cut the poverty rate in half within a decade. That's a monumental, jaw-dropping achievement. If there were a contest for greatest presidential achievement of the 20th century, I would nominate this one. It was an expensive achievement as well, yes, but if you're going to propose gutting the Great Society to save money, you should have to contend with this fact.

It's still the social safety net, largely woven from the Great Society, that protects that vulnerable 10+ percent of Americans from destitution, by the way.

The difference between 28.6% of the American population and 17.8% is about 33 million people who would otherwise be under the poverty rate.

Thirty-three million people.

Obama: best in the world?

2011-11-12T16:24:00.003-05:00

This is now the second or third person I've seen voice this sentiment. Just throwing it out there. Not sure if I believe it, and not sure we'll be able to say one way or another before the other shoe drops on this Italy/Greece fiasco.

Armistice Day

2011-11-11T13:43:00.003-05:00

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

-Wilfred Owen

Today is Armistice Day.

Yes, yes, we changed it to Veterans' Day, but we shouldn't have. This should still be Armistice Day. Veterans' Day has become nothing more than an annual occasion for everyone to prove how patriotic they are. Have you ever actually thanked a veteran? Did you notice the look on their face? I've seen a lot of veterans have people shake their hands and thank them for their service, and the reaction I see in their eyes is almost never gratitude. I'm not a soldier, so I don't know what it is. It usually looks to me like it's a mixture of annoyance and being reminded of something painful (or nostalgia?). But hey, what do I know? I never served.

Let's face it: every day in the United States is Veterans' Day, such is the nationalistic fervor in this country. When was the last time you were at a sporting event, church service, or social function and someone didn't take a moment to thank veterans?

It's not that veterans don't deserve a day to be honored, of course, but there are lessons for us in Armistice Day. It's much than just thanking soldiers for their service (though it is that!). Armistice Day is not a celebration of war; it's a remembrance of it. It's a remembrance of the day the bloodiest war in the history of the world was called to a halt. No one was defeated, no grand cause was furthered and no nations conquered. After the deaths of millions, there was nothing gained and nothing settled, not even the war itself, and within 30 years there followed an even more horrific sequel.

Armistice Day is a day to remember how awful war is, how awful it is to kill soldiers and civilians, and that in itself makes it a more useful holiday for Americans than most. It's also, however, a reminder of how easy it is to go to war, how little cause our leaders really need to start demanding of our sons and daughters "the last full measure of devotion." It's a reminder of how difficult wars are to end, how wars have a way of expanding well beyond their intended goals and confines. And it's a reminder that things can always get worse.

debates, cont.

2011-11-10T15:17:00.003-05:00

Thinking about it again this morning, I'm not finished with the debate last night. I was thinking more about the question of what a "gaffe" is to me. A gaffe to me is watching a guy like Perry, who claims to be a conservative, breezily list off a bunch of executive departments he'd redline, just write off into oblivion. Uh, that's a little cavalier, don'tcha think, especially considering these departments contain things like the constitutionally necessary Census Bureau, and the National Nuclear Safety Administration, and the US Patent and Trademark Office, as Ezra Klein notes this morning? Sounds to me like we're talking about one of two proposals:

you're going to defund major, necessary programs while laying off a bunch of people during a weak recovery in order to save a relatively paltry amount of money (didn't you just say that all of the budget is tied up in "entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and these other unfunded liabilities?").

you're going to reshuffle the organization of agencies within the executive branch, moving everything in Education to another department, because... well, why? Who cares if the Census Bureau is in the Dept. of Commerce or the Dept. of State? What difference does it make whether or not the executive has a "Dept. of Education" if you're going to keep the agencies and bureaus within it? For that matter, the list of major issues facing the next president include the war in Afghanistan, chronic unemployment, slow economic growth, a collapse Eurozone, climate change, cartel violence on the border, illegal immigration, patent abuse, steeply climbing tuition rates, and high health care costs. What the f**k are you doing fiddlefarting around with the organization of the executive branch? How does that solve anything? Do you really not recognize that it would take an enormous amount of time and work to reorganize the bureaucracy of the executive, time that could be spent dealing the country's actual problems?

Or, for that matter, a gaffe to me is the Eurozone being on the brink of collapse, and every candidate dodging any question related to it. It must be nice, in a way, standing up on that podium and pretending to be president, but being able to dodge every difficult issue sent your way, just changing the subject to something you already have a canned answer for.

Of course, the one guy who doesn't get to dodge this question is the President of the United States. He needs to have an answer, or at least some first principles and a method to arrive at the answer. Our current president has had to answer a number of very difficult questions. Thinking back on the issues he's faced, and watching these guys all dodge the questions they're uncomfortable with, Sarah Palin style, and ramble on instead about how "a dollar should be a dollar" makes them all look like light-weights, clownish pretenders.

"oops"

2011-11-09T23:06:00.004-05:00

We're going to be seeing a lot of this over the next few days at least, and maybe more depending on the Perry campaign's capacity for damage control. I would not be surprised if this proved to be the decisive stroke ending Perry's status as a legitimate contender.

And, in a way, that makes me sad.

I am unsurprisingly no fan of Rick Perry. I can't decide if a Perry presidency or a Cain one is the worst case scenario, but either case would be a child in the driver's seat. It would be a catastrophe waiting to happen.

Nevertheless, this "gaffe" says nothing. Rick Perry is on national TV, being asked a direct, specific question by the moderator while standing next a line of his adversaries. He was the frontrunner only a couple of weeks ago, and has been watching his numbers decline, perhaps beyond hope, only a scant few months before the first primaries. His other debate performances have been widely panned, and this is one of his last shots to turn his fortunes around before it's too late. It's the eleventh hour for all the candidates, but for Perry most of all.

It's hard to imagine the amount of pressure he's under in this clip, and it's no surprise that someone under that much pressure would lose their train of thought, and fail to recover in the ensuing moment of panic he must have experienced, as well as he did at hiding it.

The worst part of this episode for him is that a "brain fart" like this hurts a guy like Perry particularly hard. It fits the narrative that he's dim, that he doesn't really have a command of policy. Mitt Romney? Hilary Clinton? If they'd had such a moment, we might get a laugh out of it, but there'd be no "story" here because nobody disputes their intellect.

For all we know, they may have! We just don't remember because it wouldn't have been meaningful, just more noise.

As it happens, I believe the larger narrative about Perry. He is dim by presidential standards. He doesn't have a command of policy. This moment, however, is not proof of that, and it's sad that this is what people will point to, rather than, say, Perry blithely stating that he'd dismantle a number of federal departments that have functions even conservatives would find important if they were better informed.

It was no problem when he was proud of having executed innocent people. His birther-curious moments haven't hampered him in the slightest. His asinine, baldly plutocratic tax plan seems not to have sent much heat his way. Losing his train of thought, however, well that's a killer in the era of politics as infotainment.

UPDATE: You want a gaffe? Here's one from tonight's debate: Rick Perry ends one of his answers that stating emphatically, "If you are too big to fail, you are too big." Now THAT, my friends, is interesting. I'm pretty sure I've heard that somewhere.

This whole speech from Bernie Sanders, the only actual, self-identified socialist in the United States Senate, in 2008 is a doozy, but the important part starts around 2:50:
If a company is too big to fail, it's too big to exist.

Think I'm just playing gotcha with a random quote from someone on the opposite side? Well, he's even submitted a bill to Congress under the same name.

So if Perry are Sanders are expressing the same sentiment, how are they really different? Perry would say that Sanders wants massive government intervention while he'd rather just watch them fail. The issue of Perry's veiled support of TARP at the time notwithstanding, there was a consensus among economists that allowing the banks to fail would have plunged us into depression. Was his advice really to just bet with a losing hand and hope everything works out for the best?

Greece

2011-11-02T01:23:00.003-04:00

The primer. Kevin Drum lays out, in simple and relatively unbiased terms, what's going on with Greece and what the stakes are.

municipal ownership of NFL teams

2011-10-24T10:00:00.000-04:00

A great point from Yglesias.

flat tax bait and switch

2011-10-20T12:50:00.000-04:00

Yglesias hits the real motive behind the movement to create a flat tax. Surprise! It's to lower taxes on rich people. Essentially, having marginal tax rates (i.e., the thing that benefits the poor) isn't what makes the tax code complicated. It's the massive array of loopholes and credits (i.e., the thing that benefits the rich) that makes it complicated. If everyone had the same marginal rate but still had to sift through all the possible deductions, the tax code would still feel just as byzantine.

I realize that sounds conspiratorial, but it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who's been watching politics since, I dunno, the turn of the 20th century that the Republican party's primary constituency is the rich. Everything they do is done with the ultimate goal of freeing rich people from the fiscal and regulatory bonds of government.

partisanship vs. ideology

2011-10-18T12:01:00.002-04:00

Really good essay on the popular confusion between the two and whom it benefits.

partisanship isn't the problem

2011-10-14T09:37:00.002-04:00

Kevin Drum, in smacking around David Brooks (something I always love to watch), makes a very good point. He notes that, for all the talk of how long it's taken to build the new skyscraper at 1 World Trade Center, it's actually almost exactly the same as the length of time it took to build the original two towers.

We have to be wary about romanticizing the past in diagnosing our current government's ills, an annoyingly consistent problem with conservative narratives. It isn't that our government is more rancorous than in the past. You think Vietnam and HUAC weren't rancorous? It isn't that we're less practical or more blinded by ideology as a people. We've always been impractical, and we've always been tossed about and/or frustrated by ideologues.

Drum thinks our government's real core problem right now is structural: "... our political structure has evolved into a weird hybrid that has the tight party discipline of a parliamentary system contained within the institutional framework of a presidential system that was specifically designed to work best without any party machinery at all."

It's not a bad point. I think there are party-specific problems as well (specifically that one party refuses to fight for its own values and regularly rejects its own core constituencies), not to mention one gigantic procedural problem in the Senate that rhymes with "shmilibuster."

Yeah, I'm finally on board, even if it means President Romney privatizes Social Security and sends John Bolton to the Supreme Court. Down with the filibuster! Let the majority party rule!

the brave new world of solar power

2011-10-14T09:06:00.002-04:00

A little known but fast-moving trend of the last decade or so has been the drop in cost and rise in efficiency of photovoltaics -- that is, panels that convert solar power into electricity. This guy finds that under now-current technology, one could supply an average European family's energy usage with 30 lb. of silicon -- roughly $700. Not $700/year. $700 to produce the panels that will supply that family's energy by themselves forever. By comparison, it costs $6000 to produce enough energy from coal to supply such a family for 25 years.

Moreover, he forecasts the continuing price drop in photovoltaics out 7 years and finds it to be the cheapest energy option on the planet.

Seven years.

Obviously there are a lot of "if"'s in his picture. If photovoltaic production continues at its current speed, if the price drops at the same speed as now for the next decade, etc. Still, if it takes twice as long as he predicts, we're still only talking about 15 years.

What if it's true?

rating system fail

2011-10-08T20:24:00.002-04:00

Suppose the number 2 team in the country (Alabama) plays the number 20 team (Kansas State). Alabama wins by 2 touchdowns. In the current system, K St. would drop multiple slots in the polls, and likely fall out altogether.

That doesn't actually make any sense though, does it? Would such a score not actually confirm the polls as they currently stand? Shouldn't the no. 20 team lose by about 14 to the number 2 team? In fact, wouldn't that be a pretty good effort on K St.'s part?

What about a couple of weeks from now when no. 2 Alabama plays no. 1 LSU? What is LSU wins in overtime? Wouldn't that actually confirm Alabama's no. 2 status rather than likely costing them a shot at the Mythical National Championship?

And yet, that's the system we have, and it skews scheduling in a way that makes the season more boring. Alabama and Wisconsin and Southern Cal and West Virginia have little incentive to play other good schools, because they lose slots in the polls whether they drop one to the little sisters of the poor or lose in overtime to the number 1 team. Instead, they take the pragmatic route and schedule their out-of-conference games against Florida Atlantic and UAB and Akron.

What if, instead, number 2 Alabama didn't lose any points for playing LSU to overtime? What if Ohio State had more to gain from playing the best teams in the country than to lose, and less to gain from beating Div. II teams into a pulp to the abject boredom of their fans?

from NCAA to NFL

2011-09-21T17:30:00.000-04:00

For the record, this is pretty much exactly what I want for college ball. No more BCS. No more arbitrary rankings. Wins and losses leading to a playoff.

ND to the B1G would make me very happy.

a toast to empathy, and to Pat Robertson

2011-09-16T17:30:00.000-04:00

It appears Pat Robertson's gotten himself in quite a bit of hot water with both his ideological enemies and his fellow travelers in the Christian Right.

The question he was asked:

I have a friend whose wife suffers from Alzheimer's. She doesn't even recognize him anymore, and, as you can imagine, the marriage has been rough. My friend has gotten bitter at God for allowing his wife to be in that condition, and now he's started seeing another woman. He says that he should be allowed to see other people because his wife as he knows her is gone … I'm not quite sure what to tell him.

Robertson's response:

"That is a terribly hard thing. I hate Alzheimer's. It is one of the most awful things, because here's the loved one—this is the woman or man that you have loved for 20, 30, 40 years, and suddenly that person is gone. They're gone. They are gone. So what he says basically is correct, but—I know it sounds cruel, but if he's going to do something, he should divorce her and start all over again. But to make sure she has custodial care and somebody looking after her—"

Meeuwsen interjected: "But isn't that the vow that we take when we marry someone, that it's for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer?" To this, Robertson replied,

"Yeah, I know, if you respect that vow, but you say "till death do us part," this is a kind of death. So that's what he's saying, is that she's like—but this is an ethical question that is beyond my ken to tell you. But I certainly wouldn't put a guilt trip on you if you decided that you had to have companionship. You're lonely, and you're asking for some companionship, as opposed to—but what a grief. I know one man who went to see his wife every single day, and she didn't recognize him one single day, and she would complain that he never came to see her. And it's really hurtful, because they say crazy things. … It is a terribly difficult thing for somebody, and I can't fault them for wanting some kind of companionship. And if he says in a sense she is gone, he's right. It's like a walking death. But get some ethicist besides me to give you the answer, because I recognize the dilemma and the last thing I'd do is condemn you for taking that kind of action."

I can't believe I'm defending Will Saletan and Pat Robertson, but Robertson has a point.

Alzheimer's is a horror lacking any adjective to sufficiently describe it, a disease that erases the love of your life's personality right in front of you. I watched my grandmother succumb to it, and my grandfather endure it, ever frustrated in his attempts to help her remember their lives together, or even remember herself.

He would have held up better if he had a woman to get him through the night. Grandma was gone years before her body finally died.

Robertson had a moment of humanity and went off script. Everyone else will tee off on him, as is expected, but for a moment Pat Robertson felt someone else's pain and misfortune, and refrained from piling on.

the boring truth about Social Security

2011-09-08T17:30:00.002-04:00

Ezra Klein with the most important thing you should know about Social Security: it will eventually suffer a relatively minor shortfall due to a decrease in population growth, and will at some point be solved with a combination of raising the payroll tax cap and modest lowering of benefits.

another day

2011-09-08T17:30:00.001-04:00

Another chance to stick it to poor people.

Got some people applauding this on my bookface. Last time I checked it was banksters and tax cuts for rich people that f**ked the world economy and blew up the federal balance sheet, not uppity poor people.

all just part of the conspiracy

2011-09-08T17:30:00.000-04:00

Idiots.

black resentment and Obama

2011-09-02T17:30:00.000-04:00

I suspect this is right (in regards to Boehner's unprecedented refusal to let the president schedule his jobs speech when he chooses):

When Boehner does something like this (that no previous Speaker has done to any previous President), when he refuses to return the President's phone call during the debt ceiling crisis, when he skips state dinners, when he refuses to definitely say that he believes the President was born in the US or is a Christian, or when Boehner coddles a member of his caucus who shout "you lie" during a Presidential address, etc one certain thing happens - black Americans notice it.

African-Americans are especially sensitive to the unprecedented disrespect that white Republicans have afforded to the first black President. Every time it happens, it ripples across black radio, black newspapers, black websites, and in conversations in black communities. It helps cement the ties that Obama has with the black community, and helps overcome whatever doubts and disappoints some may have. It reminds people who have experienced overt racism in their own lives that the President is experiencing the same kind of dehumanizing disrespect. It will help drive strong African-American turnout and overwhelming numbers for Obama next year.

Political pundits may gossip about the rift between Boehner and Obama, but millions of black Americans see something much more sinister when this happens.

And frankly, black people would be right to be sensitive about this stuff. There are numerous motivations for these myriad slights -- power politics, hyperpartisanship, Boehner's own relative political weakness and Cantor standing behind him, garrote at the ready -- but racism is definitely part of the mixture as well. The tropes of the black stereotype surface far too often.

On the other hand, it is true that sometimes calculated disrespect isn't race-related. I'd be willing to wager a nontrivial amount of money that at some point in next year's debates, the Republican nominee (especially if it's the dim-witted Perry or tin-eared Romney) will make a too-cute reference to Ronald Reagan by calling President Obama "Senator" to his face. It won't be racially motivated, but the black community will raise hell.*

*As well they should. In a sense, Rick Perry's motivation won't matter; the image of a white southern conservative governor refusing to recognize the legitimacy of a sitting black president, to his face, takes on its own meaning.

wake up the echoes

2011-08-30T17:30:00.000-04:00

Stewart Mandel, one of the better college football writers out there and no Irish booster, picks Notre Dame to return to the Fiesta Bowl this season.

aspiring Mittheads

2011-08-25T17:30:00.000-04:00

It's really starting to feel like a lot of people in Washington are trying to convince themselves Mitt Romney is a sensible Republican, in the sense of a Republican who eschews teabagger wingnuttery for 1980's style orthodox conservatism. Guys, it ain't happening. Romney is running as whatever he thinks will win at the moment. He has no principles.

It's silly to even want that, really. If that's the kind of candidate you want, you already have John Huntsman, not to mention (let's be honest here) Barack Obama.

libertarian utopia for me, police state for you

2011-08-24T17:30:00.000-04:00

Don't know why I keep tempting the largest troll population on the internet. Guess I just can't help myself.

Yglesias looks at a certain candidate's alleged "libertarian" platform and finds it distinctly un-libertarian-y. Something that's long irritated me about calling him "libertarian" is he's only libertarian for dudes. Apparently he's also only libertarian for native born citizens and business types, so basically he's libertarian for people like himself.*

You can't legitimately call yourself a libertarian if you want to strip other people of their right to make their own medical decisions.

*I'm assuming this ob-gyn ran his own practice.

DC is a'rockin'

2011-08-23T16:50:00.000-04:00

Funny quote on the Tweetster: “More and more scientists are questioning whether that was a real quake. It is a theory that’s out there.”

Gaddafi on his way out

2011-08-22T17:30:00.000-04:00

So it appears that over the weekend the people of Tripoli revolted, handing much of the capital over to the rebels and leading to lots of predictions that Moammar Gaddafi's reign will be officially over in a matter of "hours, not days." Since John McCain said that, though, I can't help but wonder if we'll see Gaddafi retake the entire country tomorrow.

I'm of two minds about all this. On the one hand, it's awesome if it's really happening. No more Gaddafi? Self-determination in another former dictatorship? Hell yes. Freedom is on the march! A thousand points of light! Freeance and peeance!

It'll also be another decision in which Barack Obama was right and I was wrong. That's a good thing, really; I'm not the guy with his finger on the button. I want the guy in the White House to be better at this than me.

On the other hand, what precedent does it set?

Miami football

2011-08-18T17:30:00.000-04:00

Hard to see how Miami avoids the death penalty for this one.

Last time the NCAA deployed it on a football program (SMU in 1984), the program withered overnight, and was totally noncompetitive for decades. It arguably even contributed to the breakup of the Southwest Conference.

Then again, what's the point of having a death penalty if the most heinous rule-breakers don't receive it?

city mouse vs. country mouse

2011-08-16T17:30:00.000-04:00

I'm getting really sick of some of the implications in articles like this one from Jezebel, in particular the conceit that small towns and rural areas constitute "real" America.

Let's set the record straight: only 16% of Americans now live in rural areas. The vast majority of us live in cities and suburbs.

Furthermore, as cute as David Foster Wallace's comment about 90% of Americans living in flyover country, he was wrong about that, too. The West Coast alone contains 49 million people; the much larger East Coast holds 112 million people, or about 36% of the population on its own. Put those together, and you have over half of the US living on the coasts.

the necessity of parties

2011-08-12T17:30:00.000-04:00

A really interesting post from Yglesias on the Monroe presidency in light of many people's assumption that political parties lie at the heart of our government's dysfunction.

Monroe, as it turns out, ascended to the White House right as the Federalist party collapsed, ending the first party system and kicking off the "Era of Good Feelings" in which there were, functionally, no major opposing factions in Washington. How easy did Monroe have it during this period?

As it turns out, not at all.

doing exactly the wrong thing

2011-08-11T17:30:00.001-04:00

Yglesias notes that the real interest rates on government debt have become negative. A sane government would borrow a metric f**kton of cash right now and use it to put people to work, and put off dealing with the deficit until unemployment is under control.

The perniciousness of prolonged high unemployment rates is grossly underestimated by our political class, presumably because they never suffer it. People who are out of work for more than 6 months (and their families!) suffer for it monetarily, but also psychologically, and the damage in both cases more or less permanent. Entire generations bear the economic and emotional scars of hardship, as noted in this great article at The Atlantic.

David Frum trying to see what is in front of his nose

2011-08-09T17:30:00.001-04:00

Here's something you don't see every day: David Frum, a major conservative voice and speechwriter for George W. Bush, publicly expresses a moment of doubt in conservative economics in the face of Paul Krugman's prescience and accuracy.

I point this out not to gloat, but to throw a little kindling on the fire of hope, a fire that's gone untended for too long and -- at least for my part -- has been all but extinguished. People can change; people do get disillusioned with a crazy teabagging Republican party. People trying to see the truth still sometimes catch a glimpse of it.

It's also always good to see writers doing as the title says. It wasn't meant as an insult; as Orwell noted, it's a constant struggle for us all.

Worst. Congress. Ever.

2011-07-29T17:30:00.001-04:00

Norm Ornstein of Foreign Policy magazine argues that this is most dysfunctional Congress he's ever seen. The magazine then asks three other experts if they agree.

They all do.

All these experts are of course right about partisanship and the filibuster and teabaggers refusing to govern, but I think we're also seeing something else at work.

We're discovering just how lawless and poorly designed the Madisonian system really is.

For all the rules and regulations in the Constitution about how each branch should conduct its work and what its powers are, the government as designed by the Constitution is easily, and utterly, subverted by even a relatively small opposition. Democratic government in the United States only functions via an elaborate system of gentlemen's agreements not to take full advantage of numerous minor rules that can be used to game the entire system. Until recently, for instance, there was a gentlemen's agreement that the minority party wouldn't filibuster legislation except in extreme circumstances, and that the President would be given broad latitude to appoint judges as he sees fit, and even broader latitude to staff his cabinet. Similarly, there were gentlemen's agreements that the minority can make some political hay out of the debt ceiling, but they wouldn't take the nation's credit rating hostage to extort Democrats into enacting the entire Republican agenda.

Once those agreements are broken, however, they are broken forever, and the government no longer functions. Consider: between this debt ceiling fight, the budget fight after that, the next debt ceiling fight in six months, and the 2012 budget, the Republican Speaker of the House can crowd out the entire remainder of the President's term just holding the country hostage over and over again. If the president wins re-election, he can do the same to Obama's entire second term, denying the President the opportunity to pass any part of his agenda. And the Speaker can do this standing alone; his party controls neither the White House nor the Senate. Not only can the Speaker do it, but 40 rabid members of the majority caucus who believe the government should be nothing more than a Washington tourist bureau with a massive standing army can drive the government to default just so they can watch it burn.

Nor are the Speaker or the teabagger saboteurs even in the strongest position in government. Consider that in the current Senate, being the minority party means your legislation needs 50 votes to pass, while being the ruling party means your legislation requires 60. More to the point, a single senator can put a hold on virtually any vote, preventing it from coming to a floor indefinitely.

Unlike in the House, the Senate can also prevent the White House from even being properly staffed. A single senator can stall dozens of the president's appointees for entire sessions, and then by himself can also prevent the President from using a recess appointment to bring them into the government after the session is over. Last time I checked, the Fed chairman still, in mid-2011, lacks sufficient staff to properly do his work because Mitch McConnell has decided it's politically expedient for the Republicans to have a paralytic Fed through 2012.

It's amazing to think back to 2010, when Democrats held the presidency, a 31 seat majority in the House, and 60 Senators, and was unable to pass an individual mandate that Republicans supported as recently as 2008 without resorting to budget reconciliation. They couldn't pass a totally uncontroversial nuclear arms treaty or the hugely popular repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell without conceding a massive tax cut for the rich, and they couldn't pass the DREAM Act even with that concession.

the herd is scattered

2011-07-29T17:30:00.000-04:00

Wow, Boehner failed to get the votes for his bill. That's a pretty strong statement of the lack of confidence in the Speaker. Most of the movement now appears to be going on behind the scenes, so we're not really going to know what's going on until a bill is signed and staffers dropping hints to their sides' blogs and stuff.

If I had to guess, though, I'd say that Obama and Reid are going to publicly announce their opposition to whatever agreement is finally drawn up so Boehner can sell it to his caucus. This is because his caucus is full of complete ruttin' fools who refuse to vote for anything, even their own positions, as soon as Obama signs on.

So some kabuki is in order. It's just hard to tell when Boehner and Obama are really fighting and when they're just playing at it.

Oslo and Otoya

2011-07-25T17:30:00.000-04:00

(image c/o Tong Shuai Xinhua News Agency/Newscom)

A terrorist who targets civilians is one thing; a terrorist who targets a youth camp is quite another. Our heart goes out to Norway today and to a ton of parents who just suffered the unthinkable.

It's hard not to take it personally as a liberal, to accept the pundit boilerplate in times like this that it wasn't about Breivik's politics, that he was just a crazy person, that this is not reflective of a common (if more controlled) desire among nationalists and right wingers to murder liberals and leftists.

And, apparently, our children.

Liberals are asked to accept that premise every time a federal building is destroyed, an abortion clinic is bombed (or, hey, the Olympics!), an obstetrician is murdered, or a Unitarian Universalist Church is massacred by people quoting Glen Beck or Adolf Hitler or The Turner Diaries.

The simple fact is that, whether or not the right can be "blamed" for most political violence, most of that violence targets liberals or is conducted by shooters and bombers expressing rage at liberals. I know it's "intemperate," perhaps even "shrill," for me to say that, but there it is.

It's dangerous being a liberal, raising your voice against the powerful on behalf of the powerless. It always has been. It's dangerous for you just like it was dangerous for civil rights leaders and Freedom Riders and suffragettes and Populists and union organizers and abolitionists and Diggers and Jesus Christ himself, and it's important to be mindful of that fact. Proud, and mindful.

a demonstrable fact revealed to be a grand illusion

2011-07-22T17:30:00.000-04:00

Ta-Nehisi Coates reflecting on reading about the 30 Years War as an African American, demonstrating again why I think he's the best writer on the internet.

A piece:

First, it's really startling to read about the utter barbarism which Europe sank to during the War, and then contrast it with popular images of Africa as "the dark continent." I hope this doesn't sound cold, but immediately it occured to me that all the sins the proto-white racists put on Africa--cannibalism, slavery, wanton rape--were very much known to them. The very Germans who fled from Palantinate to a country that derided Africans as savages, were, themselves, the children of such savages.

From that perspective, racism is again revealed as not simply amoral but as phrenology, as Intelligent Design. Its mission is to evade, or conceal a painful past, and overlay with the legacy of the Greeks or the Romans. But the Moors and Muslims have as much claim to classical civilization as the Germans. Any exploration of Muslim scholarship reveals that not simply to be philosophically true, but tangibly true.

This is not schadenfreude. Much to the contrary, it's the continuous realization that humans are humans.

I don't know how to explain this, but it takes quite a bit of intellectual work, as black person--and probably as a white person--to feel that race really doesn't mean anything; that there really isn't anything wrong with you, and upon figuring that out, that there isn't anything wrong with them; that what feels so deeply like it must have some meaning--my brown skin, the shape of your eyes, their blonde hair--has none.

Do you know what it is, not to just to tell yourself that, not to just repeat it as mantra, not to just think it's true, not even to know it intellectually, but to actually believe it? To feel it? It takes awhile for the thing to set in.

sucks to be an omnivore and an environmentalist

2011-07-20T17:30:00.000-04:00

Sad but true. Ezra Klein:

Two researchers at the University of Chicago estimated that switching to a vegan diet would have a bigger impact than trading in your gas guzzler for a Prius (PDF). A study out of Carnegie Mellon University found that the average American would do less for the planet by switching to a totally local diet than by going vegetarian one day a week. That prompted Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to recommend that people give up meat one day a week to take pressure off the atmosphere. The response was quick and vicious. “How convenient for him,” was the inexplicable reply from a columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. “He’s a vegetarian.”

Looking at the chart, there are lessons for the environmentalist meat-eater beyond just "eat less meat." Switching from beef to pork cuts that part of your plate's carbon footprint in half, and switching from pork to chicken cuts it in half again. 2% milk, yogurt, and eggs are all pretty guiltless from an environmental standpoint.

All that said, once again the evidence is in: cutting your consumption of meat in general, and red meat in particular, is good for you, your family, and your planet. I can say, too, that I've significantly decreased the amount of meat I eat over the couple of years, especially beef, and it hasn't been nearly as bad as I thought it would be. A bean and cheese burrito, yogurt with blueberries, and an apple isn't a bad lunch!

Worst president of the 20th century?

2011-07-18T17:30:00.000-04:00

[Nota bene: George W. Bush is a 21st century president]

Been reading a lot about American presidents lately, and I found this conversation interesting. Ta-Nehisi finds Tom Ricks claiming the worst president of the 20th century was Kennedy.

Ridiculous. It takes a pretty hostile interpreter of events to conclude that the Bay of Pigs, the brainchild of Eisenhower and Dulles launched all of 3 months into the new administration, is all Kennedy's fault, and yet he deserves no credit for the Cuban Missile Crisis or the Civil Rights Act. The former was a moment of national existential peril unequaled by any other in our history; the latter was perhaps the single most important piece of legislation passed by Congress during that century.

I have a different one in mind. I'd like to nominate Ronald Reagan as the worst president of the 20th century. We have Reagan to thank for everything from soaring deficits to voodoo economics to a bloated, unsustainable military-industrial complex. His economic policies contributed to the Savings and Loan crisis, and he put arch-Randian Alan Greenspan in charge of the Fed. That's all, of course, during the periods when his administration wasn't busy trying to purge disabled people from the Social Security rolls.

(Greenspan, of course, is the guy who told Clinton he had to gut the social safety net to keep the deficit from torpedoing the economy, then turned around and told George W. Bush to cash in all the money Clinton saved on tax cuts for the wealthy.)

The failed Star Wars Defense System? Reagan. Redistributing the tax burden from the rich to the middle class? Reagan again. Iran-Contra? Still Reagan. Mandatory minimums for minor drug offenses? Here's Ronnie!

Guess who deployed the CIA's Special Activities Division to Afghanistan? Reagan. Guess who was among the mujahadeen they trained?

Antonin Scalia to the Supreme Court? That was Reagan, too! He also nominated notorious Nixon yes-man Robert Bork, infamous for being Tricky Dick's lucky number 3, the dude finally unscrupulous enough to fire Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox after both of his predecessors resigned rather than commit such a heinous breach of ethics. We can thank Ted Kennedy -- God rest his soul! -- that the man wasn't further rewarded for his treachery.

That's what I call one hellacious legacy right there.

"they're just barking mad"

2011-07-13T17:30:00.001-04:00

Some harrowing news to ponder during these scary times.

Bernanke drops a nugget on Paul's gold standard fetishism

2011-07-13T17:30:00.000-04:00

Heh:

Ron Paul to Bernanke: "Is gold money?"
Bernanke: "No it's a precious metal".
Paul: "Why do central banks hold it?"
Bernanke: "Tradition."

American politics visualized

2011-07-10T12:05:00.003-04:00

Why is that every time there's a showdown the Democrats seem eager to cave and give away the store while the Republicans make totally unreasonable demands? Here's why, c/o Kevin Drum:

I'm gradually coming around to the idea that the problem with our government doesn't lie with parties or politicians or the media. It's the voters. We have the government we voted for.

One nation of welfare queens

2011-06-29T17:30:00.000-04:00

Matt Yglesias shows how we're all sucking from the government teat. Next time you hear someone complain about their tax dollars going to welfare, ask them if they take the Earned Income Tax Credit, or the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction, or have ever taken a student loan.

"grow wings, damnit!"

2011-06-28T17:30:00.001-04:00

That's what these protesters at the South Bend Animal Care and Control Shelter might as well be demanding.

And why is that, you ask? Because these people apparently want the shelter to expand in size and staffing to accommodate holding strays longer than 48 hours. Yeah, sure! I'd love that, too! I'd also love for the school district not to react to recessions by firing 50 teachers. I'd love for the city to use construction services that pay their workers fairly, so there are no strikes and the roads near my house are repaired promptly. I'd love there to be enough cops to keep our neighborhood safe.

Guess what, kids: you get the public services you pay for. You want better? You have to pay for it.

People who work at animal shelters, I'll wager, love animals almost as a rule. If it were up to animal shelter employees, all shelters would be no-kill shelters with huge playpens, ample blankets and beds, TV and radio channels broadcasting the animals they've recently caught, and lots on veterinarians on site to keep everyone healthy and adorable and playful.

But it isn't up to the employees because they don't get enough money for all that stuff. They take the money that's budgeted, stretch it out as far as they can to keep as many animals alive as possible, and then prep the needles and do what they have to do.

You want the shelter to stop killing in 48 hours? Don't stand across the street like an idiot and demand that they make gold nuggets from dog shit. Tell your friends, family, newspaper, and city council that you think the shelter should get more money, and you'd be willing to pay something for that. Lessen the shelter's burden by keeping your fence in good repair, keeping your dogs collared and getting them chipped. Spay and neuter your pets. And for fuck sake, don't wait several days to go retrieve your dog from them!

One member of the protesting group apparently held a sign saying: "Is your pet's life worth more than 48 hours?" You're the one with the pocketbook, taxpayer; you tell me!

11 ways the Massachusetts reforms are or are not working

2011-06-27T17:30:00.000-04:00

Not bad, actually:

1) There has been a dramatic expansion of health insurance, reducing the uninsurance rate by 60-70%.

2) No change in wait times for general an internal medicine practitioners have been observed.

3) The share of the population with a usual source of care, receiving preventative care, and receiving dental care all rose.

4) The rate of utilization of emergency care fell modestly.

5) There has been a 40% decline in uncompensated care.

6) The proportion of the population with employer-sponsored health insurance increased by 0.6%.

7) The rate of employer offers of coverage grew from 70% to 76%.

8) Mandate compliance has been very high: 98% compliance in reporting via tax filings of obtaining coverage or paying penalties.

9) The administrative costs of health reform have been low. Overall implementation costs have been close to expectations.

10) Premiums have fallen dramatically in the non-group market.

11) Though group premiums have risen, they have not increased faster than one would expect from increases in other states in the region.

Just a little reality check. Looks like in general it's been a net positive for Massachusetts. Gotta love that coverage and number of people receiving preventive care rose without increasing wait times for GPs.

Socialism!

2011-06-17T17:30:00.002-04:00

So if the government hands you a "voucher" that's good for a certain amount of money's worth of private goods, isn't that pretty much the dictionary definition of rationing?

the Wienerlogues

2011-06-17T17:30:00.001-04:00

The Weinerlogues with Jane Lynch - watch more funny videos

Bill Maher and Jane Lynch do a dramatic reading of some of Anthony Wiener's emails. NSFW.

cutting WIC to fund tax cuts for the rich

2011-06-14T17:30:00.001-04:00

In an earlier post, I mentioned that, though I'm trying to figure out how Republicans view the world, to get on the same wavelength, I have a lot of trouble with it. I have a lot of Republican friends and have talked with them a lot about their beliefs, but some tendencies I find inscrutable even if predictable.

The recent House decision to slash WIC funding is an example of the limits of my ability to empathize with the Republican mindset. I just don't understand the urge to cut funding from poor children in a recession. I don't get how anyone looking to cut the size of government looks at that line in the budget and thinks anything other than "obviously we can't cut that now, and if we ever do, we'd better cut everything else we want first."

the VHA, best of the bunch

2011-06-10T17:30:00.000-04:00

Ezra Klein points out that the Veterans' Health Administration is now getting the best marks of any health care system in the United States. Now chew on this:

The thing about the Veteran’s Administration’s health-care system? It’s socialized. Not single payer. Not heavily centralized. Socialized. As in, it employs the doctors and nurses. Owns the hospitals. And though I think there’s some good reason to believe its spending growth is somewhat understated — it benefits heavily from medical trainees, for instance — accounting for that difference still means a remarkable recent performance.

Evan Bayh signs on with the US Chamber of Commerce

2011-06-07T17:30:00.001-04:00

Time to get paid, am I right, Evan?

As iWatch News' Peter Stone reports, Bayh has signed on with one of the most corporate-friendly, anti-environment shops in all of Washington, DC: the US Chamber of Commerce. According to an internal memo penned by Chamber president Tom Donohue, Bayh, along with former Bush White House chief of staff Andy Card, are now part of the Chamber's anti-regulation messaging team, doing "speeches, events, and media appearances at local venues."

The Chamber's hiring of Bayh, a big name in Washington circles, will only help its efforts to delay or kill new regulatory legislation in Congress. Indeed, Donohue's memo touts how the Chamber has filed legal briefs to challenge the validity of President Obama's health care reform bill; successfully delayed a new Securities and Exchange Commission rule on giving shareholders a say on corporate directors; unveiled plans to undermine the clout of the fledgling Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; and delayed a rule forcing companies to disclose when they use conflict minerals from the Congo in their products. Bayh and Card, the memo says, will help the Chamber push this pro-corporate agenda in Washington and beyond.

It's all a game to these guys.

the inexplicable GOP support for Ryancare

2011-05-26T17:30:00.000-04:00

Ezra Klein asks why on earth Senate Republicans voted en masse for the Ryan budget not two days after it cost their party a normally safe seat and despite knowing that it will never become law. His hypotheses:

1) They thought the pollsters were wrong and the plan either wasn’t unpopular or wouldn’t be unpopular once they explained it.

2) They were less worried — at least at that moment — about what would be unpopular with the electorate and more worried about what would be unpopular with the base.

3) They really believed in the Ryan budget, and were willing to lose seats, and perhaps even the majority, over it.

4) They believed that the details would matters less than their conviction. That is to say, being seen as “making hard choices” would be more popular than the choices themselves would be unpopular.

5) It fit the individual needs of key actors at a particular moment in time: Boehner needed to support something bold and conservative, Cantor needed to be pushing something more conservative than Boehner seemed comfortable with, Tea Party politicians needed to show they weren’t getting sucked into Washington dealmaking, Ryan needed to make good on his promises to take on entitlements, etc.

All good ideas, I think, though I think the true mixture of motives involves some of these more than others. I think the first part of 3 is true, for instance, but I do not believe the Republicans think it will cost seats. In fact, I'm starting to think a combination of 1 and the first part of 3 may be the key.

The worldview of the Republican party, and in particular the psychology of Republican politicians, is something very foreign to me, but I think I'm starting to get some aspects of it. I'm coming to the conclusion that class affects the Republican worldview much more than I've thought before, and may in fact be the primary hermeneutic by which Republicans create their ideology and take stances.

I got to this point by starting from the principle that people are motivated primarily by self-interest and emotion. For all our arguments and complicated rationales, the vast majority of the time people choose their political stances according to fear, resentment, anger, compassion, and loyalty. And almost nobody is aware of this fact.

Our emotional investment in politics, usually grounded primarily in self-interest, combines then with our natural, well-established psychological tendency to take special notice of things that corroborate our views and not notice things that don't. Add in people's natural desire to avoid conflict and thus associate most often with people who agree with them, and we can see how all this leads inevitably to the acceptance of false or inconsistent ideas as absolutely true. Now let's throw in a media that views politics as sport, and that intentionally avoids any attempt to address the substance of complicated political issues for fear of taking one side (more specifically, of being forced to admit that the left is right on any subject).

Now throw in the particular plight of Republicans politicians, who are rich and white almost to a man, and overwhelmingly male. Their most important backers are all rich, white men, and their main intraparty opposition (i.e., the teabaggers) are rich, white men. Being powerful, they are surrounded by coteries of yes-men and sycophants.

In this light, it becomes clear and unsurprising that Republican politicians would come to the conclusion that what's best for the rich is always best for everyone. This explains why even the most seemingly conscientious Republican believes the only thing better than cutting taxes on the rich during boom years is cutting taxes on the rich during bust years. It explains why the answer to every problem is "cut taxes on the rich and gut social programs." It explains why every term of Republican dominance is marked by the attempt to destroy either Social Security or Medicare, no matter how popular the two become. It explains why conservatives cannot separate cutting the deficit from cutting the size of government. And it perhaps explains why Republicans can, in the process of creating a budget with the sole and specific intent to cut the deficit, cut taxes on the rich and not see any inconsistency there.

I'm coming around to the belief that Republican politicians vote for Ryancare because it fits their ideological, emotional, and cynical predispositions so perfectly that they have convinced themselves that its premises are intellectually unassailable. If it is unpopular, it is only because its genius hasn't had time to sink in yet.

NY-26: well, yes and no

2011-05-25T17:30:00.001-04:00

Democrat Kathy Hochul wins.

1. Again, I remain baffled by the Ryan budget, and in particular by the gratuitous destruction of Medicare written into it. What the hell were the House Republicans thinking?

Then again, I guess we should remember that the Village idiots in Washington are still convinced that the Ryan deficit reduction plan was "gutsy" and "adult" even though it doesn't even lower the deficit. This is perhaps a lesson more in the incredible classism of the Washington cocktail circuit than anything else. They're the only people in the country who appear entirely unbothered by a plan to replace Medicare with vouchers that won't even cover the cost of insurance.

It also exposes a curious blind spot among even conscientious conservatives like Andrew Sullivan and David Frum. How do you look at a deficit plan like the Ryan one, one with exactly zero options for revenue growth, one that includes a tax cut for rich people, and that boots the elderly into the private insurance system with nothing but an inadequate and slowly depreciating voucher, one that's composed almost entirely of longstanding right wing boilerplate, and come to the conclusion that it's "adult" and "serious?" How can one as concerned as Sullivan is with critical introspection be so blind to such obvious fraud in pursuit of class warfare?

2. I want to take a few moments to ground the various narratives regarding this race in a little reality. The Democrats are contending that they won a "heavily Republican" district that the GOP has held since 1960. NY-26 is an R+6 district, meaning they generally vote about 6 points more for Republican presidential candidates than Democratic ones. That's hardly a bellwether district, but still a pretty moderate conservative edge compared to what many of us think of when we think "Republican district." For reference, it has the same partisan rating as MI-3 (Grand Rapids). IN-2 (South Bend) is only an R+2. TX-19 (Lubbock and Abilene) is R+26.

I will also point out that the district had a Democratic representative from '93 to '03, so the line about "the Republicans holding it since the '60's" just isn't true.

3. My other major point is that it's easy to overstate the predictive power of special elections. Pete Session (R-TX) is right when he says, “If special elections were an early-warning system, they sure failed to alert the Democrats of the political tsunami that flooded their ranks in 2010,” though that's not exactly what Republicans were saying after the Scott Brown victory. Every district has its idiosyncrasies and local issues even when larger national debates subsume the race.

Of more interest to those looking for a better Democratic year is the generic congressional ballot, which flipped back to the Democrats last week after being solidly Republican for the last two years:

The generic ballot's predictive value is similarly limited, but it's at least a more accurate sampling of national opinion than a single House election.

It's entirely possible that the Democrats will have a good year in 2012, and certainly better than the last one. We're still a year and a half out, though, and these elections turn pretty quickly on current economic and political trends. Until we have a better sense of what the economy is going to look like in October 2012, and how that economy is going to be reported, I don't think there's much point in forecasting.

That being said, there is one race that's much closer: the GOP presidential primary. Nate Silver has already demonstrated that Republican presidential candidates leading 6 months out from the primaries usually win (though, interestingly, not Democratic ones). Polls currently show Mitt Romney with a significant lead over everyone but Mike Huckabee, who isn't running. I know, it's hard to imagine Mitt Romney winning, but it's not really any easier to see Gingrich, Pawlenty, Huntsman, Paul, Cain, or Santorum winning, either. The Republicans have to nominate somebody!

"sex scandal"

2011-05-17T17:30:00.000-04:00

This strange episode in New York involving Dominique Strauss-Kahn is probably going to make headlines over and over again for the next few years. During this time, can we maybe refrain from calling it a "sex scandal?" Despite the urge European (ahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifnd to a lesser degree American) journalists will feel to make this about French electoral politics, this isn't run of the mill philandering. The man stands accused of raping a hotel cleaning lady.

teaching grammar in high school

2011-05-11T17:30:00.001-04:00

Interesting article in Salon. She laments the structure of both the regular and accelerating English classes she describes, but I'm not sure I agree. I'm thinking in particular of this passage:

As for the students who did make it to more accelerated English courses, their recollections are a little less disheartening, but only a little. They read Shakespeare, they tell me, usually "Romeo and Juliet," sometimes "Macbeth." They read "Catcher in the Rye" or "Huck Finn," "The Sound and the Fury," a little Melville or Hardy. They read these works and then they talked about them in class discussions or small groups, and then they composed an essay on the subject, received a grade, and moved on to the next masterpiece.

This describes my honors English classes in high school to a T. We read MacBeth, Huck Finn, the Sound and the Fury, and some Melville and Hardy (among other things, of course), then, yes, the discussions and small groups, the essay, and the next book.

And you know what? It worked. I fell completely in love with those books, and with fiction in general. Between my junior year in high school and moving to South Bend six years later, I probably watched less than four hours of television, and filled a bookshelf or two with the "classic" books that make jaded English grad students roll their eyes. I also apparently absorbed enough grammar from seeing the masters do it to string coherent sentences together in college. Admittedly, I probably could not have told you what a direct object or perfect tense was until I began taking Latin, but I didn't need to because I knew what "looked right." Grammar had become intuitive.

This description of regular courses sounds much less helpful, admittedly:

Those who didn't make it onto the honors or A.P. track hardly mention writing or reading at all. They talk about giving oral presentations and keeping reading journals evaluated with a big, meaningless check. They reveal putting on skits, reenacting some scene in a novel or play whose title they can't recall. One student recounts a month of junior English class in which she and her classmates produced digital short film adaptations of the trial in "The Scarlet Letter."

"Sounds fun," I say to this student, a girl who would not know how to summarize a source or correct a sentence fragment if her life depended on it.

I go back and forth on whether this increasing emphasis in pedagogy on "making learning fun!" has been a helpful corrective to centuries of schoolmarm-ey villainy or ultimately done more harm than good. The classics taskmaster in me rolls his eyes at these pointless attempts to make kids enjoy something they're going to be graded on and that still requires being in school. Learning is work, kids. Deal.

On the other hand, teaching five sections of high school grammar and composition, grading hundreds of papers and homework assignments every week and having to drag the students kick and screaming along with you every class, sounds like the kind of godawful teaching load that burns out even the most enthusiastic teacher.

Faulty Towers

2011-05-09T17:30:00.000-04:00

Great article from The Nation on dysfunction in higher education, much better than the many less-than-realistic diagnoses offered by the likes of Hacker et al. over the last couple of years.

Students, particularly at state universities, have noticed some of the symptoms for a long time now: graduate students and adjuncts teaching many of their classes, run-down classroom buildings flanked by immaculate, brand new athletic facilities, and a constant carousel of university presidents using the gig to add a feather to their cap and moving on after two years, among other things.

This article, unlike many of the books written on the subject, also deals substantively with issue of adjunct professors. I maintain that is not just a symptom of poor leadership for a university to load up on "academic lettuce pickers" and treat them the way universities do rather than hiring proper faculty for their lower level courses (or, hey, promoting their long-time adjuncts), nor is it merely bad policy; it's unjust, and Deresiewicz is right to fault everyone from university presidents to tenured and tenure-track professors for allowing the exploitation of current and former students.

Much as I hate to say, college football is a parasite to the system as well, leeching countless millions of dollars just on the head coach's salary, nevermind the truckloads of cash spent on assistant coaches, facilities, stadiums, and bowl games (yes, schools usually end up losing money on bowl games even despite the payout from the bowl).

It's interesting that many of the structural problems facing colleges right now are echoed in their football teams: mercenary executives with astronomical salaries seeking success according to a laughably flawed ranking system, and doing so on the backs of overworked, virtually uncompensated kids, whose scholarships can be stripped from them with little to no warning and on no account of their own performance, and the majority of whom will never get the opportunity to make a living wage plying their trade.

Proud Edward's army getting sent homeward again?

2011-05-06T17:30:00.000-04:00

While bin Laden's death is sucking all the air out of the room stateside, it's worth taking note that the Scottish National Party just took an absolute majority in the Scottish Parliament, clearing the way for a referendum to leave the UK. Alex Salmond, SNP leader, has already promised such a referendum within the next five years.

Meanwhile, in England in a stunning reversal of political trends elsewhere in Europe, the right-wing anti-immigration British National Party was utterly crushed in the midst of a massive debt scandal, losing 7 of its 11 seats (so far!) and likely dooming it as a national party. Good riddance.

Google gets better

2011-05-05T17:30:00.002-04:00

Love Firefox, but this really makes me want to switch to Chrome. Google ran this commercial on primetime television during Glee this week.

Trumped

2011-05-03T17:30:00.001-04:00

On Wednesday, Obama releases his long-form birth certificate, totally annihilating Donald Trump's story about private investigators digging up all sorts of "interesting" things about Obama. On Saturday, he tears into Trump at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, mocking Trump's attempts to pose as a serious candidate who can make important decisions.

And then the big play on Sunday, when Obama reveals that, while he had been mocking Trump's weighty Celebrity Apprentice choices at the dinner, he was himself waiting for word on the hit he'd just put out on Osama bin Laden.

And he had NBC switch to White House coverage 45 minutes early, which meant the program he interrupted was... Celebrity Apprentice.

I didn't know it was even possible to get served that hard.

reality has a liberal bias

2011-05-03T17:30:00.000-04:00

Poynter Institute study analyzes pundit economic and social predictions since 2007 and finds that liberals and people without law degrees are more accurate. Leader of the pack? Paul Krugman.

bin Laden is dead

2011-05-02T17:30:00.001-04:00

There's way too much hand-wringing on the left, grudge-holding and partisanship on the right, and cynicism and feigned apathy in the middle over last night's incredible news.

Sure, this doesn't mean the War on Terror is over or that Al Qaeda is dead. Yes, we know bin Laden's command over Al Qaeda has been weakened over the last several years. Yes, we know the soldiers and intelligence community are the ones who put this all together.

C'mon, guys. American soldiers just put two in the noggin of the mastermind of 9/11. It's something to celebrate. It's okay to call that justice, to allow it to pass for a little bit of closure for 9/11. It's okay to feel a little patriotic.

Some cool pictures from around the intarwebs:

(Photo: Michael Appleton for the NYT, taken in Times Square)

hiring competent people: Miss Chanandler Bong edition

2011-05-02T17:30:00.000-04:00

Kevin Drum points out that FEMA is acting swiftly in Alabama and getting high marks from state and local officials. For those keeping score, that's FEMA garnering praise under Clinton and Obama, and being ridicule as a dumping ground for incompetent cronies under Bushes I and II.

I've said before that I think one of George W. Bush's biggest failures as a president was his inability (or perhaps lack of will) to hire competent administrators, opting instead to pack various agencies with cronies and fellow travelers. Hence FEMA's helplessness during Katrina, but also the malfunctioning, politically craven Department of Justice and the various foxes guarding the federal government's regulatory hen-houses.

Obama, on the other hand, has been reversing this trend for several years now.

Voters are charged with electing executive officers at every level of government -- mayors, governors, and presidents -- and too often the candidates' views of narrow political issues or overwrought-yet-still-vague 12-point plans distract us from appraising the person's administrative skills, their ability to make smart hires and run a large organization effectively. Every president probably has to reserve some positions for patronage, but some people are just better at putting good people in important places, keeping bureaucratic machinery running smoothly and inspiring competence throughout the administration.

The wife and I have been going back and forth a bit about our upcoming mayoral primary, for instance, and she noticed something interesting about the candidates. My wife kept her maiden name when we married. When the Mike Hamann campaign mails out flyers, they only send us one, addressed to "Mr. and Mrs. X," which she testily points out every time is not her name. When Pete Buttigieg sends them out, we get two, one for each of us, even though we're married, we both live at the same address and we're both registered Democrats. The extra flyer, always received on the same day in the same handful of mail, is wasted extra paper. Only Ryan Dvorak's people seem not to be tripped up by spouses who don't share a last name, always sending us one flyer addressed to both of us using our correct names.

The same thing happens with the phone staff: Hamann's people get flummoxed when they ask for "Mrs. el ranchero" and she adamantly argues that no such person lives here. When the Buttigieg campaign calls for me, I hand the receiver to my wife after I hang up, since we always get a second call from them five minutes later.

the birther and the Nixon voter

2011-04-27T17:30:00.003-04:00

The inevitable consequence of Obama releasing his "long form" (new media buzzword alert!) birth certificate will not be mass recantation of birther-ism, nor will it be expansion of the birther conspiracy theory to include the forgery of the long form certificate (among Newt Gingrich types, anyway). Rather, it will be the revelation that the birthers never really existed in the first place. Even those people caught on the record questioning Obama's birthplace didn't really think he wasn't a "natural born citizen." It was just the principle of asking for verification of citizenship, you see!

It's the same reason we now know the 1972 presidential election was stolen. Ask everyone in the country older than 58 how they voted, and you'll find that nobody voted for Nixon. CREEP was that good!

Today's Advice Column

2011-04-27T17:30:00.002-04:00

Thought I'd give everyone a quick tip for dealing with today's water cooler conversation. The correct response to "why did it take Obama so long to release his birth certificate?" is "You're a moron."

Ross Douthat's Bogus Journey

2011-04-26T17:30:00.002-04:00

Ross Douthat dedicates his Easter column to defending the concept of Hell, lamenting that Hell is losing cache with Americans even in a period where belief in God and miracles and angels is holding up pretty well, comparatively speaking anyway. Douthat's thesis appears to be that:

Atheists have license to scoff at damnation, but to believe in God and not in hell is ultimately to disbelieve in the reality of human choices. If there’s no possibility of saying no to paradise then none of our no’s have any real meaning either. They’re like home runs or strikeouts in a children’s game where nobody’s keeping score.

A lot of people are talking about this piece, so I thought I'd add my two cents, but I keep writing long paragraphs and then deleting them because I just can't put my finger on what he's trying to say here. "The reality of human choices?" Surely Douthat isn't arguing that people have to believe in Hell in order to act morally, since it's plainly obvious that millions, perhaps billions, of non-Hell-believers have lived without their lives spiraling into some hedonistic chaos. Nor, surely, is he asserting that only people who believe in Hell can feel like their lives have meaning (again, ask any liberal Christian/Jew/Buddhist/pagan/secular/atheist).

Is he saying a Christian can't believe in free will without believing in Hell? I'm thinking maybe, but Douthat keeps hedging his language and veiling the edges of his thesis. "[doing away with Hell]... also threatens to make life less fully human." What the hell does that even mean?

I'm also perplexed by the baseball analogy. I get that not keeping score in a children's game is a classic conservative trope about wussy liberal parenting, and thus a kind of dog whistle here for "liberal, liberal," but I don't get how hell plays into it. Do the runs and strikeouts "have real meaning" when parents keep score? We're still talking about 6 year olds playing teeball, aren't we? Is he saying that kids don't try hard if you don't keep score? If that's it, then the clear meaning of the analogy is that people won't try to do good if they're not threatened with Hell, which, as we established, is laughable.

Then again, that would explain why he went to such lengths to obfuscate his own point.

There's an extended example at the end about how Tony Soprano shouldn't go to Heaven. Setting aside the fact that Tony Soprano isn't going anywhere because he isn't real, is that really all this is about? There should be a Hell because Hitler and Judas shouldn't go to Heaven? Then what was all that cloudy b.s. about baseball and "a life less fully human" for?

And I'm glad Ross agrees that Gandhi's unbelief should "puncture religious chauvinism," but he's still hedging on Gandhi. Why? Is he insinuating that it's worth casting Gandhi into the Lake of Fire if it means we get to toss unrepentant mobsters in along with him? I certainly hope not, and I have serious doubts that many people would agree that the Final Judgment is going to be that sloppy. Nor, for that matter, would many of Christianity's most influential writers, including St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, both of whom readily admitted that God can and probably does save a righteous non-Christian here and there. I don't know why Douthat finds it too controversial to just say Gandhi probably earned his way in, unless he really does think Gandhi is damned. And honestly, if you live in the 21st century and still believe in a God so hard-hearted and legalistic that even Gandhi is left outside the gates, you're the one living "a life less human."

things to remember in the budget debate

2011-04-21T17:30:00.000-04:00

Ezra Klein lays out what's going on really well. The Republicans have introduced a "budget cutting" plan that raises the deficit, not lowers it, hate the very parts of the Affordable Care Act that install cost controls in our health care spending, and they are largely responsible for the current deficit. That's just the plain truth.

I'm going to add another, one that for me clarifies this debate more than anything else: the Republicans are not trying to balance the budget. They're trying to secure more money for the rich. That's it.

I've come to believe that Bill Clinton's most hard-fought achievement, balancing the budget, was in fact a total failure of vision because the goal itself plays into the Republican party's long term strategy. Republicans care only about converting government revenue into lower taxes for rich people, so any serious tackling of the deficit will only last until the next Republican government, ultimately resulting in just another round of Bush tax cuts.

not crazy enough for the freakshow

2011-04-21T15:09:00.003-04:00

Why am I getting the sinking feeling that I'm going to be dedicating a nontrivial amount of time over the next 9-12 months defending Mitt Romney?

Stephanopoulos gets Bachmann to admit the validity of Obama's birth certificate

2011-04-20T17:30:00.001-04:00

Watch Stephanopoulos show Michele Bachmann a copy of Obama's birth certificate, saying "so this story's over?" and her resignedly admit: "Yes, it's over." You can tell she saw this coming and was hedging on the birth certificate issue from the start of the interview (clearly George warned her before the interview that he would do this), but she'd been beating this drum earlier this week, so I don't think she is making a conscious attempt to make herself look more mainstream. To me, her body language is showing defeat.

So now the obvious question: Conservatives have been questioning Obama's birth certificate and drawing all manner of dark conclusions for four years. A significant percentage of the country has bought into this rubbish, and the number of dupes is rising.

Why did it take four years for someone in the press to confront Bachmann with a birth certificate that was made freely available by then-Senator Barack Obama early in the '08 campaign and expressly backed by the relevant officials in the state of Hawaii?

texting while talking

2011-04-18T17:30:00.001-04:00

Old people think pulling out your smartphone while in conversation is rude, and wonder if young people feel the same way. From what I can tell, teens and twentysomethings do this constantly and show no hint of feeling slighted when others do it. In my opinion, pulling out your smartphone is essentially the same body language as looking at your watch. It's fine when you're standing in line, mostly okay when with a group of people but not participating in a conversation, and gauche when participating in a conversation.

living in the midwest

2011-04-18T17:30:00.000-04:00

A former east coaster ruminates on life in the Midwest. Not sure how much I agree, but it's an interesting read for me as I consider the imminent end of our time in Indiana. My experience isn't exactly identical since I came from a different place, but I do remember being surprised at how rural South Bend isn't. Similarly, I had no idea a city could absolutely dwarf the sprawling metropolises of Dallas and Houston the way Chicago does.

This part rang out as absolutely true to me:

I continue to ask myself: What do I want from a hometown?

I want to support public schools without compromising my son's education (which, at least until the current governor wins his war, was a safe assumption). I want to regularly see good live music and movies and art exhibits without wrestling with crowds or competing for tickets. I want at any given time not to be the only lefty in the room; otherwise, life is stressful, especially in this time of no common ground. I want evenings and weekends to be devoted to family time. I want to not worry about money, fashion, or what kind of car I drive. I want to comfortably afford to travel and own a nice home and not feel at all times like we need more space. I want to my son to grow up spending time—not just holidays—with his aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents.

Of course there are people in coastal cities who have all of this—tons of them—but it's just easier here.

The greatest advantage of the Midwest, one that truly makes me wonder why it isn't a bigger draw, is that you don't have to choose between functional public schools and cheap real estate. That isn't true in most of the country.

falling for your own propaganda

2011-04-15T17:30:00.000-04:00

House Republicans just passed a budget resolution to abolish Medicare. Seriously.

I'm honestly surprised about this. I know that the Republican party has been gunning for Medicare for decades, and I know that it's consistent with many predictions (included my own) that conservatives have been setting themselves up for this kind of catastrophic overreach since Obama's election. Nevertheless, it isn't like Republicans don't know Medicare is hugely popular and that voters punish parties that cut its funding, considering they hammered the Democrats among seniors just 5 short months ago primarily by charging Democrats with cutting Medicare funds. Nor is it likely that House Republicans believe this budget resolution has any chance of surviving the Senate, let alone a guaranteed presidential veto.

Do they really think they can keep this vote from being simplified to "Republicans voted to abolish Medicare?" Either I'm missing something huge, or House Republicans have convinced themselves, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Americans don't like Medicare.

say it ain't so, John

2011-04-13T17:30:00.000-04:00

Jane Curtin on the "incredibly misogynistic" environment at Saturday Night Live: "[John Belushi] felt as if it were his duty to sabotage pieces that were written by women."

Video at the link.

Tuesday errands

2011-04-12T17:30:00.002-04:00

Heading to Walgreens for some chewing gum, a pack of smokes, and a pap smear. Thanks Fox and Friends!

the legacy of Malcolm X

2011-04-12T17:30:00.000-04:00

A wonderful article by Ta-Nehisi Coates in both style and substance. An example paragraph about black Americans experimenting with self-examination in the wake of Malcolm:

Conscious sects sprang up--some praising the creator sky god Damballah, some spouting Hebrew, and still others talking in Akan. Consciousness was inchoate and unorthodox--it made my father a vegetarian, but never moved him to wear dreadlocks or adopt an African name. What united us all was the hope of rebirth, of a serum to cure generational shame. What united us was our champion, who delivered us from self-hatred, who delivered my mother from burning lye, who was slaughtered high up in Harlem so that colored people could color themselves anew.

a quick clarification on Michael Floyd

2011-04-11T17:30:00.000-04:00

Before the oncoming pile-on of Notre Dame for letting Michael Floyd off on probation for a DUI, I'd like to point out one very important fact: the punishment meted out to Floyd (probation, counseling, community service) is consistent with the punishment recommended by the student handbook for a first-time DUI to the letter.

at least someone's willing to fight

2011-04-06T17:30:00.001-04:00

Nancy Pelosi's perpetually low approval ratings are a constant reminder that I'm well outside of the American mainstream. I found her to be an extremely effective Speaker of the House. She was generally honest about her opinions and intentions, including being unapologetically liberal, but wasn't a blowhard yelling into the mic on MSNBC. She was known neither for Harry Reid's cowering gunshy-ness nor Barbara Boxer's gavel-waving bravado. She let the opposition talk and put their bills up for votes, but in the end she always passed what she wanted and torpedoed what she didn't. Note for comparison the speakers on either side of her: Dennis Hastert, a Delay puppet with a flagrantly undemocratic "majority of the majority" policy, and John Boehner, a dissembler who's already lost control of the chamber not even three months on the job.

I'd also like to point to this story about her leadership during Bush's war on Social Security:

When Bush announced his Social Security plan last year, Pelosi told House Democrats they could never beat him in a straight-ahead, policy-against-policy debate because he had the megaphone of the presidency and was just coming off re-election. So the Democrats would thunderously attack Bush and argue there was no Social Security crisis and therefore no need for them to put out their own proposal. Some members were leery, concerned that Pelosi would make the Democrats look like the Party of No. As the spring of 2005 wore on, some pestered her every week, asking when they were going to release a rival plan. "Never. Is never good enough for you?" Pelosi defiantly said to one member. When Florida Democrat Robert Wexler publicly suggested raising Social Security taxes as the solution, Pelosi immediately chewed him out over the phone. Only one other Democrat signed on to his plan.

She was, of course, absolutely right and almost unique among Washington Democrats in understanding this very simple point.

People bitch about how Democrats don't have any backbone, but that Italian grandmother running the House Democrats is f**king iron. I'd take Pelosi over any other clown in Congress right now, and I'm starting to think I prefer her to Obama as well.

some helpful information

2011-04-06T17:30:00.000-04:00

One keg of beer is 15 1/2 gallons. After careful scientific examination from these fine people, that translates to:

141 red plastic cups
6 1/2 cases of canned beer
165 cans of beer

Happy party planning!

Republicans vs. Medicare

2011-04-05T17:30:00.000-04:00

I'm in a pretty low place right now as far as my belief in the judgment of American voters goes. Nevertheless, there's a more hopeful voice in my mind arguing that the privatization of Medicare in Ryan's budget is an insane overreach that's going to cost Republicans dearly in the next election. It's just hard to see how their advocates will be able to sustain any coherent argument that they're doing anything other than abolishing one of the two most popular programs in the government.

Of course, in order for that to happen, someone has to fight them on it.

Limitless

2011-03-31T17:30:00.001-04:00

[Duh, spoiler alert]

The movie irritated me for a lot of reasons. It continues a trend I've noticed with surprising frequency lately, which is for films to set up a morality tale or tragic hero, and then fail to pull the trigger on them in the climax, instead spinning some wildly improbable sequence that saves the protagonist at the clutch moment and completely undercuts the rest of the story. This is a story about cheating, right? About performance-enhancing drugs?

But the truth is I wanted Eddie Morra, the protagonist, to die for reasons beyond simply fulfilling an anti-drug morality tale. Eddie isn't a sympathetic character; he's a narcissistic asshole who uses everyone he knows but never gives anything back. The beginning of the film establishes that he's supporting his failing writer lifestyle mainly by using his girlfriend as a "maid" and a "bank." When he gets his hands on NZT, his miracle drug, instead of trying to better humankind or repay all the people he's been leeching on for the last 20 years or even just furthering his art form by becoming a great writer, he tosses aside all that writer-ly philosophizing for the lifestyle of How I Met Your Mother's Barney Stinson. He takes out a loan from a Russian shark and makes a boatload of cash on it, yet doesn't bother to repay the loan for reasons that are left unexplained. He meets his ex-wife, "the one that got away," only to discover that NZT destroyed her life. While he commiserates with her at a diner for all of 10 minutes, he never lifts a finger to help her despite already being stupidly rich by this point. She exists only to warn him of the hazards of the drug, apparently.

Instead, he uses his newfound super-smarts to charm his way back into his girlfriend's heart, but continues to engage in 18 hour benders complete with disappearing for entire nights and nailing multitudes of underwear models on the side. Funny story: one of those models ends up dead in his hotel room that night, and he has no memory of the night's events since fugue is apparently a side effect of the drug. He wonders if he killed her, the cops believe he did, and indeed he may well have, but that little incident is never resolved either way. Over the rest of the movie, he leaves a trail of corpses including his own two bodyguards, puts his girlfriend in mortal danger and forces her to take NZT, and almost certainly destroys the career of the guy at the day-trading agency who stuck his neck out to get him an interview with the head of the company.

In the end, he pays for none of these transgressions and feels no regrets. He's even running for Senate and still enjoying his money, his girlfriend, and some residual enhancement from his NZT-popping days. How lovely for him.

veggie burgers

2011-03-23T17:30:00.002-04:00

It's cool to see that veggie burgers are finally coming into their own, at least in NYC restaurants. As someone who does a lot of cooking out in the summer for people with varying diets, I've always found veggie burgers frustrating. Smart dogs are a perfectly fine substitute for the run o' the mill frankfurter, since hot dogs rely so heavily on strong condiments to deliver their flavor. I have several flashy recipes handy for making the vegetarians feel at home when I make more "serious" entrees, like brisket or pork tenderloin. When I go ethnic, there's always a variety of delicious vegetarian entrees at my disposal.

But veggie burgers, sigh. I have yet to find a veggie burger recipe that compares at all favorably to even the most boring, store-bought beef patty, certainly none that can be prepared economically and in a timely fashion. There are one or two palatable premade options availabe, but that means having fresh, homemade, juicy burgers for the meat eaters and the same frozen, manufactured patties for the vegetarians that they've eaten a hundred times. A grill may work magic with beef, but it's helpless against the mighty mediocrity of the Gardenburger.

I've been thinking about what my next grill project should be this summer after mostly successful forays into brisket, fajitas, and ribs. Perhaps I should consider veggie burger options. I'm intrigued by one of the burgers in the article that's basically a wide, thin felafel. Portabellas make a great sandwich, but I make the same stock version of them every time. I've never really experimented with them specifically as a burger filler. Potato pancake? Hmm, an interesting beginning...

Other ideas?

EDIT: Fixed the link and formatting weirdness. My bad.

balls

2011-03-22T17:30:00.001-04:00

In other news, apparently the Serious People on the TV and internet have decided that the gender of Obama's advisors is relevant to discussion of his handling of the Libya situation. This is because our media is run by high school students.

Libya

2011-03-22T17:30:00.000-04:00

I'm of two minds about our new incursion against Qaddafi, personally. One sympathizes with the rebels and would absolutely love to see a monster like Qaddafi driven from power. Furthermore, Clinton (I believe) claims that what really struck Obama about the no-fly zone was the opportunity to reorient American foreign policy in the Middle East to take more account of human rights abuses and take a step away from CIA-backed client states and toward support of democratic reform. That end, I think, is unimpeachable.

The problem, however, is in the means. First and foremost, as I've said for years, I believe peace is underrated in America. There is a general lack of recognition of the costs of war and of the difficulty of leashing "dogs of war" already loosed.

More specific to this situation, I have little confidence either that the limits of our intrusion were sufficiently spelled out, or that all the likely outcomes were considered. Can we be confident that our military will leave once "Qaddafi stops firing on his own people" even if it becomes clear that he will stay in power? If he is toppled and replaced by another dictator? Can we prevent this spectacle from providing autocrats in Yemen, Bahrain, and elsewhere the cover they need to fire on their own protesters?

If nothing else, Libya has given us an opportunity to discuss a particular problem with our status as the "world's police." On Saturday night the BBC was talking with an American pundit about the degree to which this was truly an international coalition vs. just another American intervention. He answered with an interesting point: to an extent every multi-partner intervention is an American-led one, not because America is more meddlesome or bellicose than other nations (though we might be) but because we have the only military force on the planet with the necessary infrastructure to manage a full-scale aerial and maritime force of any real size.

That is an astonishing statement. This was a war that Europe, and to some degree the Arab League, wanted, that Sarkozy went to the mat for. It has official UN sanction. In fact, most of the air "sorties" are now supposedly conducted by non-US actors according to NPR this morning. Even in this Europe-"led" UN humanitarian effort, however, they had to rely on our navy to control logistics and our planes to do some initial bombing while they got their ducks in a row. Yet neither the United Nations nor the "first world" have to contribute a single euro, yen, or loony to the upkeep of the obscenely oversized military apparatus that's busting the American budget and hardening our people to the sight of violence and suffering. Nor can we forget the disproportionate cost in blood that the United States also pays.

Those who believe that down the path of world military supremacy lies madness, that waging an arms race with the entire world is a fool's game, would do well to remember that if they ever succeed, it will be not with the support of the developed world, but over its protests.

"heh, yeah that's cra...wait wtf?"

2011-03-18T17:30:00.000-04:00

That's going to be your reaction to this story, I guarantee it.

whites flying in, whites flying out

2011-03-14T17:30:00.000-04:00

TNC's doing a nice series on Detroit and white flight.

Probably not a profound thought, but talking with Sap the other day, I was stricken by the catch-22 we're stuck in when it comes to buying a house. Being white, educated middle class (barely) people, if we buy in the city, we're immediately guilty of participating in gentrification. If we buy in the suburbs, we're participating in white flight.

war is always the answer

2011-03-11T17:30:00.001-05:00

Josh Marshall:

I sit at my desk every morning listening to the sounds of cable television in the air. Now a lot of it is about Libya. And I'm just blown away by the constant, almost unanimous chorus in favor of some sort of active, military involvement in the country. At this moment, I'm listening to some person say that it just doesn't make sense -- that it's inconsistent -- for the President to announce that it is our national policy that Qaddafi should leave and yet not take military steps to make that happen. I've also heard numerous voices arguing that we 'didn't act' in the Balkans and then didn't act in Rwanda and that we should not make the same mistake today.

This is a wildly different standard for military action than we've ever heard before, even in an era where our interventions have become much more frequent and when they've often been wise and necessary.

"Wise and necessary?" Really? Even if we allow that the "era" he's describing covers the entire post-WWII period, I can think of the following military engagements off the top of my head:
Korea
Cuba (Bay of Pigs)
Vietnam
Lebanon
Granada
Nicaragua (Iran-Contra)
Panama
Iraq
Somalia
Haiti
Bosnia
Kosovo
Afghanistan
Iraq

How many of those were "wise and necessary?" Half? I very much doubt it.

That, by the way, is 14 wars over 60 years, roughly one war every 4.2 years, and a nearly constant state of war since the Carter Administration.

I offer that quibble about a post I otherwise very much agree with because I think it shows the level to which even Josh Marshall has internalized the ever-present drumbeat of war in the United States press. I call it "ever-present" because, frankly, it is. It seems like very time any attention is given to any kind of crisis in another country, an army of pro-war talking heads takes to the airwaves with the same message:

"Of course nobody "wants" war, but this time it's our moral imperative! We can't just leave them on their own! Their leader is a madman! History has taught us that we should always go to war in this situation! Dulce et decorum est! Cry havoc! For Gondor!"

And we usually go to war when this happens, which is all the time (or apparently every 4.2 years). Not only do we usually go to war, but after we go, people are shocked to find out that:

our soldiers are not, in fact, bulletproof ninja superheroes, and tend to die or get horribly injured when people shoot them. Also, they're not robots: being shot at and seeing people blown to bits and/or splattered all over the pavement often screws them up psychologically

all that shit we outfit them with and all those warplanes and missiles and tanks and subs cost a boatload of cash

all those freedom bombs we drop on the other country kill an absolute shit-ton of innocent people

the "happily ever after" story we go in there gunning for never seems to work out

it's much, much harder to end a war than begin one because politicians and really suck at avoiding the "sunk costs" fallacy. No matter how bad things look, they always think they can make up for it if they just up the ante [again].

And yet there's nary a pro-peace talking head to be seen, ever. I'm afraid, contra Josh, now is decidedly not different from the norm.

returning to "the South"

2011-03-11T17:30:00.000-05:00

Very interesting post from TNC on the sizable and increasing immigration of blacks back to the South and how it is and is not a mirror image of the Great Migration.

Also interesting is the response from readers to some of the places named. Apparently there was some dispute as to whether eastern Maryland counts as "the South," and Matt Yglesias questioned the southern bonafides of Miami, and the inclusion of Texas as a "historic African American population center."

Any attempt to define the boundaries of an area steeped in mythology and wrapped up in political/historical baggage is almost inevitably going to prove difficult. I remember very recently being part of a discussion of "the West" that quickly ran aground when someone asked what states qualify. Is it just the west coast and Rocky Mountain states? What about New Mexico? What about Texas, which is a "southern" state but is nevertheless wrapped up in all the mythology of the West? What about the Great Plains states west of Iowa and Missouri? Surely they aren't "Midwest," right?

Similarly goes the problem of classing states as within or outside of "the South." Is the South essentially the states that had not abolished slavery by 1860? If so, we'd have to include Delaware, and possibly Missouri. Here's one that starts a lot of arguments: is it the states of the old Confederacy? That would exclude Maryland and muddy the cases of Kentucky and Missouri, two states with conflicted populations that enjoyed representation in both the Union and Confederate Congresses.

Is it a question divorced from history, and more about current tendencies in politics, food, sports, accent, and religion? This is the basis by which people vote Florida out of the Confederacy and question the southern pedigree of places like Research Triangle, Atlanta, and Northern Virginia (and by "northern Virginia" we of course mean "most of Virginia"). But hold on: if we're talking about areas full of socially conservative evangelicals who eat a lot of BBQ, watch football, and say "y'all," not only must we include Missouri, but also Oklahoma! And probably Kansas! And New Mexico! And maybe southern Ohio and Pennsyltucky!

I also question whether a place stops being "southern" just because it undergoes cultural and demographic shifts, even significant ones. Miami may have seen a major influx of New Yorkers and Cubans and Midwestern snow bunnies, but are they not allowed to be southern? What, a group of people can move to New York and within a generation or two be "New Yorkers," but they're forever black-balled from the southern club? What about all the people in Miami who are the descendants of slaves and slaveholders? Did they stop being Southern when their Yankee neighbors moved in?

And if the majority of Chicago's south side came during the Great Migration, does that mean the south now includes that part of Chicago?

the death of the arcade

2011-03-08T17:30:00.000-05:00

A fun little blog post on the reasons behind the disappearance of the penny arcade. The thesis:

It all came down to the quarter [video game expert Mark] Cerny said. Arcade games had to squeeze enough money out of people to be worthwhile for arcade owners and game makers. But they also had to deliver enough play time to make it worth while for gamers to drop in their money. ... What remains today, Cerny says, is Japan as the single shelter for arcade gaming. And that boils down to their 100 Yen coin.

Of course, not everyone agrees, pointing to consoles, the internet, the existence of the coin loony in Canada (and yet, no more arcades), and LAN parties.

I was a huge video game fanatic from the late Atari through the early N64 years, and I have my own theory to add to the mix: console/pc technology eventually allowed home games to do things you can't do in the arcade model, and those new, irreplicable functionalities became ubiquitous in video games.

Consider, for instance, the first Nintendo. When it released with Super Mario Bros., there was also an arcade version of that game with slightly better graphics, as had happened with Galaga and Pac Man on the Atari. Same thing with ExciteBike and other sports games. I suspect this was an intentional arrangement so video game makers could keep both revenue streams going, and it was the model for a long time.

Then Nintendo released The Legend of Zelda and Metroid. These games were distinct from their predecessors in that they used methods of saving and recalling progress to allow a player to navigate a huge map incrementally over time. These two games felt bigger and more immersive than anything else that had yet come out, and they became two of the biggest selling, most popular franchises in the history of video games.

And the arcade was utterly locked out.

You may remember, then, that the arcade adapted, focusing on the things it could offer, specifically having lots of people in one place and having the space and equipment to house elaborate setups. Thus, arcades around the country stocked up on competitive fighting games (Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat), 4 person cooperative short adventure games (The Simpsons, X-Men), and simulators (Cruisin' USA). Meanwhile, they ceded the market for long-form adventure games and the nascent roleplaying (Final Fantasy) genre to consoles and the strategy genre (Command and Conquer) to pcs. It looked from my perspective like arcades had survived and were doing fine.

Then 64-bit systems started coming out, and it became apparent that the gap in graphics quality between arcade games and home games disappeared, and may even have inverted. Gran Tourismo was probably a more beautiful game than any arcade racing game. Golden Eye could match any arcade shooter.

Then came the advent of internet gaming. People could log into sites like Blizzard's battle.net on their computers, and then even on consoles, to play with or against other people. This new model meant that not only could people play 4 players splitting one screen like at the arcade, but one could play with any number of other players online, all having their own full screen. Competitive gamers found they could get more satisfaction from online first person shooters like Halo than from Tekken-style combat games, and the people who like 4 player cooperative play really liked the new Massively Multiplayer Online RPGs like World of Warcraft, which supports 5, 10, 25, and even 40 person cooperative play.

Thus gamers, the kind of the people who would go somewhere to blow $10 in a sitting over a couple of hours on video games, got hooked on game styles you can't replicate in an arcade setting. Look at the games people are playing now, Wow and Rifts and Call of Duty: Black Ops and Kill Zone and Dragon Age 2 and Just Dance 2. Only the last one could be feasibly rendered in an arcade setting, and you'd have to use a mat rather than the Wii controller. Also, you'd have to dance in public.

Alternatively, one could point to Angry Birds and Plants vs. Zombies, but you can buy those games for less than $5 on your smart phone. Who would pay to play them in an arcade?

we make great pets

2011-03-04T17:30:00.002-05:00

An interesting pair of studies out recently on pets. In one via Discovery News, cats are found to be surprisingly good at reading, and manipulating, their owners:

The study is the first to show in detail that the dynamics underlying cat-human relationships are nearly identical to human-only bonds, with cats sometimes even becoming a furry "child" in nurturing homes.

"Food is often used as a token of affection, and the ways that cats and humans relate to food are similar in nature to the interactions seen between the human caregiver and the pre-verbal infant," co-author Jon Day, a Waltham Centre for Pet Nutrition researcher, told Discovery News. "Both cat and human infant are, at least in part, in control of when and what they are fed!"

For the study, led by Kurt Kotrschal of the Konrad Lorenz Research Station and the University of Vienna, the researchers videotaped and later analyzed interactions between 41 cats and their owners over lengthy four-part periods. Each and every behavior of both the cat and owner was noted. Owner and cat personalities were also assessed in a separate test. For the cat assessment, the authors placed a stuffed owl toy with large glass eyes on a floor so the feline would encounter it by surprise.

The researchers determined that cats and their owners strongly influenced each other, such that they were each often controlling the other's behaviors. Extroverted women with young, active cats enjoyed the greatest synchronicity, with cats in these relationships only having to use subtle cues, such as a single upright tail move, to signal desire for friendly contact.

Then, in a separate study, researchers found that drug-sniffing dogs are not nearly as effective as believed. Often what the dogs are actually responding to is the subtle social cues of their masters. In fact, according to the study, dogs are more likely to get a false positive because of the owner's hunch even than because of the scent of sausage furtively left on a mark!

It is amazing how well we have molded cats and dogs for human companionship. On the other hand, it may be even more interesting how they have molded us. Take this article, for example:

Dogs, cats, cows and other domesticated animals played a key role in human evolution, according to a theory being published by paleoanthropologist Pat Shipman of Penn State University.

The uniquely human habit of taking in and employing animals -- even competitors like wolves -- spurred on human tool-making and language, which have both driven humanity's success, Shipman says.
...
Dogs, for instance, might have have been selectively taken in by humans who shared genes for more compassion. Those humans then prospered -- a.k.a. reproduced -- with the dogs' help in hunting and securing their homes.

For reasons that aren't entirely clear to researchers yet, dogs and cats also reduce their humans' blood pressure, and do so even more effectively than blood pressure medication.

NFL lockout

2011-03-04T17:30:00.001-05:00

A very nice writeup here of some helpful facts about the lockout, such as what the sticking points are and what will happen to the players, the draft, etc. if the lockout happens.

Charlie Sheen's a winner. Also, a hitter.

2011-03-04T17:30:00.000-05:00

I don't know if Sheen's televised meltdown is the product of a bender or just an act. I don't know if he means the things he's saying. I don't know if this means he's through with TV, or TV's through with him, or if he'll be bigger than ever this time next year.

What I do know, and what's been lost in all the hubbub, and what we all need to remember before we become half-ironic fans of Charlie Sheen, is that he's a serial abuser of women:

In 1990, he accidentally shot his fiancée at the time, the actress Kelly Preston, in the arm. (The engagement ended soon after.) In 1994 he was sued by a college student who alleged that he struck her in the head after she declined to have sex with him. (The case was settled out of court.) Two years later, a sex film actress, Brittany Ashland, said she had been thrown to the floor of Mr. Sheen’s Los Angeles house during a fight. (He pleaded no contest and paid a fine.)

In 2006, his wife at the time, the actress Denise Richards, filed a restraining order against him, saying Mr. Sheen had shoved and threatened to kill her. In December 2009, Mr. Sheen’s third wife, Brooke Mueller, a real-estate executive, called 911 after Mr. Sheen held a knife to her throat. (He pleaded guilty and was placed on probation.) Last October, another actress in sex films, Capri Anderson, locked herself in a Plaza Hotel bathroom after Mr. Sheen went on a rampage. (Ms. Anderson filed a criminal complaint but no arrest was made.) And on Tuesday, Ms. Mueller requested a temporary restraining order against her former husband, alleging that he had threatened to cut her head off, “put it in a box and send it to your mom.” (The order was granted, and the couple’s twin sons were quickly removed from his home.)

So no, I won't be putting him on my Twitter feed, thanks.