Monday, March 31, 2008
Anecdotal evidence
In case you haven't seen it, don't miss Lindsay's must-read caustic, hate-filled post describing her experience with the current health care system. It's a doozy--and a poignant one, at that.
PS: Saying "poignant doozy" makes me feel like an excitable hobo from the 1930s. Top o' the doozy to ya! Spare a can o' beans for ol' Sloucha? Poignant!
It would also make an excellent racehorse name.
PS: Saying "poignant doozy" makes me feel like an excitable hobo from the 1930s. Top o' the doozy to ya! Spare a can o' beans for ol' Sloucha? Poignant!
It would also make an excellent racehorse name.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
The 100 + 1 milestone
This is post #101--huzzah!
I'm still feeling my way around this blog: trying to figure out what the content should be, how often I should post, etc. It's still in a beta-like phase: only a limited set of people know about it, and the quality of the posts can be sort of inconsistent. But I'm hopeful that eventually all the kinks will be worked out, and that Iz/Ott will then be ready to be unveiled to everyone I know.
So how are things going so far, traffic-wise? Since going semi-public on February 28, some analytics:
We'll see how it goes.
I'm still feeling my way around this blog: trying to figure out what the content should be, how often I should post, etc. It's still in a beta-like phase: only a limited set of people know about it, and the quality of the posts can be sort of inconsistent. But I'm hopeful that eventually all the kinks will be worked out, and that Iz/Ott will then be ready to be unveiled to everyone I know.
So how are things going so far, traffic-wise? Since going semi-public on February 28, some analytics:
- 101 posts
- 224 visits
- 81 visitors (well, IPs anyway)
We'll see how it goes.
Manhattan Elsewhere
An art project that sees what happens when you take Manhattan and transplant it next to other major cities. I must say it is quite an improvement over Treasure Island...
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled links
If you got 'em, send 'em, and I'll entertain the possibility of reposting them in this humble and lightly trafficked space. You can send them to the izott email or to my regular address.
Any subject matter is fine.*
*Hint: I'm always in the market for high-caliber YouTubes...
Any subject matter is fine.*
*Hint: I'm always in the market for high-caliber YouTubes...
It's time for Dodger baseball!
Tomorrow is opening day! We're taking on Barry Zito and his ornery, Bondless Giants...
GTFO
A reader writes into Andrew Sullivan, and somehow it hits me as one of the best little blurbs I've ever read on why the US should withdraw from Iraq immediately.
Clever phrase
From Slate's "Hillary Deathwatch":
And a Michigan court yesterday deemed the state's Jan. 15 primary unconstitutional and declined to order a revote, effectively smothering the last glimmer of hope for a deus ex Michigana bailout.Ha! I hereby declare that I'm stealing "deus ex Michigana".
YouTube > politician
I think Hillary Clinton's lack of web savvy has become a bit of a trope at this point, but Frank Rich nevertheless does an entertaining take-down of Clinton for her Bosnia whopper:
That Mrs. Clinton’s campaign kept insisting her Bosnia tale was the truth two days after The Post exposed it as utter fiction also shows the political perils of 20th-century analog arrogance in a digital age. Incredible as it seems, the professionals around Mrs. Clinton — though surely knowing her story was false — thought she could tough it out. They ignored the likelihood that a television network would broadcast the inevitable press pool video of a first lady’s foreign trip — as the CBS Evening News did on Monday night — and that this smoking gun would then become an unstoppable assault weapon once harnessed to the Web.The Drudge Report’s link to the YouTube iteration of the CBS News piece transformed it into a cultural phenomenon reaching far beyond a third-place network news program’s nightly audience. It had more YouTube views than the inflammatory Wright sermons, more than even the promotional video of Britney Spears making her latest “comeback” on a TV sitcom. It was as this digital avalanche crashed down that Mrs. Clinton, backed into a corner, started offering the alibi of “sleep deprivation” and then tried to reignite the racial fires around Mr. Wright.
The Clinton campaign’s cluelessness about the Web has been apparent from the start, and not just in its lagging fund-raising. Witness the canned Hillary Web “chats” and “Hillcasts,” the soupy Web contest to choose a campaign song (the winner, an Air Canada advertising jingle sung by Celine Dion, was quickly dumped), and the little-watched electronic national town-hall meeting on the eve of Super Tuesday. Web surfers have rejected these stunts as the old-school infomercials they so blatantly are.
Incidents like this make me optimistic about the transformational power the internet is having on politics. And what makes it transformational, I think, isn't the fact that just anyone can write a blog or upload a video--it's the fact that people can choose what they want to read or watch and when to read or watch it. It has greatly reduced the ability of the media and the government to control what enters into people's heads, and, ipso facto, greatly reduced their real political power.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Political Animal
Hillary Clinton has decided to personally weigh in on the Obama-Wright controversy:
Obama is in a different kind of bind because the unacceptable remarks were made not by a stranger who shares the national political stage, but a dear friend, mentor, and spiritual guide. If Obama were to "speak out" against Wright and sever ties with him--as Clinton seems to suggest Obama ought to do--he would, at least according to the rhetorical logic of American politics, be "sending a strong message" that no racist speech ought to go unpunished, and would thereby reinforce the legitimacy of America's stand against racism. However, it would also come at a great cost to Obama personally: he would be throwing someone he cares about under the bus, and compromising his integrity in the process. Obama's response was to try his best to have it both ways: while at the same time doing right by his pastor and defending him as a good man who sometimes says inflammatory things, he defused the rhetorical implications of not categorically denouncing him in front of the nation by explicitly addressing race in a major speech. This attempt to have it both ways was risky for Obama because it required Americans--and the media--to hear the speech as something meant to engage them directly and explicitly on race, rather than indirectly through rhetorical code geared primarily toward media consumption and echo-chambering. It is not clear if Obama was completely successful in this, but the fact that his campaign has not entirely collapsed suggests that he was at least successful enough.
Obama's demonstrated ability to survive politically without sacrificing his personal sense of decency puts Clinton's reputation for cut-throat politics into sharp relief. Consider David Brooks' recent devastating assessment of Clinton as some kind of relentless political beast:
"You know, I spoke out against Don Imus, saying that hate speech was unacceptable in any setting, and I believe that.... I think you have to speak out against that. You certainly have to do that, if not explicitly, then implicitly by getting up and moving."What is interesting to me about this is the equivalence it strikes between Clinton's relation to Don Imus and Obama's relation to his pastor. In the first instance, you have two publicly-facing figures--Clinton and Imus--who are strangers to each other and yet both occupy a spot on the broad stage of American politics. Their interaction with each other was nothing more than part of the strange kabuki that invariably plays out whenever anyone runs afoul of the (sometimes arbitrary but mostly useful) rhetorical boundaries that separate racist from non-racist speech. Even despite the fact that no one seriously believed that Don Imus was actually a racist--and even though the women who were the target of his unfortunate "nappy headed hos" remark publicly forgave him for the mistake--a long line of unrelated public figures, including Clinton, went on television to "speak out" against Imus and say all sorts of obligatory things meant to send signals of support to those whose political power is expressed, in part, by universal recognition of and adherence to the boundaries that delineate acceptable political rhetoric on race. And, though doing this may have been unfair to Imus on a personal level insofar as it too-quickly castigated him as a racist, there was a political justification for it because it reinforced, re-validated, and re-legitimized the rhetorical boundaries that signify America's rejection of racism. So Clinton subjugated the personal to the political in dealing with Imus' gaffe; but this followed naturally from the fact that Clinton only had a political, and not personal, relationship with Imus.
Obama is in a different kind of bind because the unacceptable remarks were made not by a stranger who shares the national political stage, but a dear friend, mentor, and spiritual guide. If Obama were to "speak out" against Wright and sever ties with him--as Clinton seems to suggest Obama ought to do--he would, at least according to the rhetorical logic of American politics, be "sending a strong message" that no racist speech ought to go unpunished, and would thereby reinforce the legitimacy of America's stand against racism. However, it would also come at a great cost to Obama personally: he would be throwing someone he cares about under the bus, and compromising his integrity in the process. Obama's response was to try his best to have it both ways: while at the same time doing right by his pastor and defending him as a good man who sometimes says inflammatory things, he defused the rhetorical implications of not categorically denouncing him in front of the nation by explicitly addressing race in a major speech. This attempt to have it both ways was risky for Obama because it required Americans--and the media--to hear the speech as something meant to engage them directly and explicitly on race, rather than indirectly through rhetorical code geared primarily toward media consumption and echo-chambering. It is not clear if Obama was completely successful in this, but the fact that his campaign has not entirely collapsed suggests that he was at least successful enough.
Obama's demonstrated ability to survive politically without sacrificing his personal sense of decency puts Clinton's reputation for cut-throat politics into sharp relief. Consider David Brooks' recent devastating assessment of Clinton as some kind of relentless political beast:
For nearly 20 years, she has been encased in the apparatus of political celebrity. Look at her schedule as first lady and ever since. Think of the thousands of staged events, the tens of thousands of times she has pretended to be delighted to see someone she doesn’t know, the hundreds of thousands times she has recited empty clichés and exhortatory banalities, the millions of photos she has posed for in which she is supposed to appear empathetic or tough, the billions of politically opportune half-truths that have bounced around her head.I have always thought these judgments of Clinton to be unfair; they describe any and every politician, Obama included. But the reason why Clinton gets this reputation and Obama instead gets dubbed "authentic" is not because one is calculating and the other is not, but because one is making a different calculation than the other. While Obama has attempted to bypass the often stifling limitations of conventional political rhetoric to good effect--admitting drug use, conceding that some ideas from opposing ideologies are worthwhile--Clinton has waged political war from firmly within its confines. Such a strategy must have appeared low-risk to her in the short-run; but over time, it has earned her the reputation of soulless, inhuman political animal.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Senator Leahy: "Hillary Clinton is naked!"
Finally a prominent Democrat goes ahead and says it:
If enough voices chime in, the question of whether Clinton should withdraw will start to dominate the news cycle--a development which may or may not be good for the party. On the one hand it might actually push Clinton into withdrawing, allowing the Democrats to consolidate behind Obama and finally begin campaigning for the general. On the other hand, it may further alienate Clinton's many, many supporters, who already feel like their candidate has been unfairly maligned by the media and many in the Democratic leadership (e.g. Nancy Pelosi).
Of course, the best option would be for Clinton to withdraw unprompted, her campaign dying a natural death--but it seems like if this was going to happen, it would have happened by now.
Sen. Patrick Leahy has gone where no Democratic leader has dared go. It's time, the Vermont senator said, for Hillary Clinton to get out of the presidential race. "She ought to withdraw and she ought to be backing Senator Obama," he told Vermont Public Radio.It should be noted that Leahy is an Obama supporter, so it is not as if he has any kind of neutral-observer/elder-statesman gravitas here. But still, by publicly stating the obvious he could end up starting a chorus of Democrats urging Clinton to wrap it up.
If enough voices chime in, the question of whether Clinton should withdraw will start to dominate the news cycle--a development which may or may not be good for the party. On the one hand it might actually push Clinton into withdrawing, allowing the Democrats to consolidate behind Obama and finally begin campaigning for the general. On the other hand, it may further alienate Clinton's many, many supporters, who already feel like their candidate has been unfairly maligned by the media and many in the Democratic leadership (e.g. Nancy Pelosi).
Of course, the best option would be for Clinton to withdraw unprompted, her campaign dying a natural death--but it seems like if this was going to happen, it would have happened by now.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
The NBA in Europe
NBA commissioner David Stern predicts that within 10 years, the NBA will include teams from Europe:
It's hard to imagine exactly how overseas expansion teams would work--especially since it would be difficult to incorporate international road games into the schedule. I suppose they would have their own "European Conference". But it would be pretty rad.
I'd also like to see something similar in baseball, starting with a team from Mexico (although the Neo-Know-Nothings would plotz for sure--"Oh, America's past-time--shipped to Mexico!").
"That's something that can happen," Stern said in a conference call Thursday to discuss the NBA's preseason tour in October. "We need the buildings. We need the increase in affinity in terms of television. And we need an economic model that works."He also mentions the possibility of expanding to China, the political difficulties of such an arrangement notwithstanding.
It's hard to imagine exactly how overseas expansion teams would work--especially since it would be difficult to incorporate international road games into the schedule. I suppose they would have their own "European Conference". But it would be pretty rad.
I'd also like to see something similar in baseball, starting with a team from Mexico (although the Neo-Know-Nothings would plotz for sure--"Oh, America's past-time--shipped to Mexico!").
The babbling classes
The always thoughtful Stanley Fish directs a well-placed blow at the inanity of the politics of guilt by association:
This denouncing and renouncing game is simply not serious. It is a media-staged theater, produced not in response to genuine concerns – no one thinks that Obama is unpatriotic or that Clinton is a racist or that McCain is a right-wing bigot – but in response to the needs of a news cycle. First you do the outrage (did you see what X said?), then you put the question to the candidate (do you hereby denounce and renounce?), then you have a debate on the answer (Did he go far enough? Has she shut her husband up?), and then you do endless polls that quickly become the basis of a new round.
Meanwhile, the things the candidates themselves are saying about really important matters – war, the economy, health care, the environment – are put on the back-burner until the side show is over, though the odds are that a new one will start up immediately.
"Not serious" is a phrase that has described politics pretty much since I became politically aware in the mid-1990s. I think the fact that Obama at least tries to maintain some level of intelligence and maturity in the discourse of his campaign is one of the reasons he appeals to me.
Ridiculous image
On the front page of ESPN's MLB page today:
Yes--that is new Dodger manager Joe Torre in a scally cap and sunglasses photoshopped in front of the Great Wall of China.
What's double-weird is that, even though he has that cap on, he's still wearing the Dodgers jersey.
UPDATE: It turns out he wasn't photoshopped in front of the Great Wall--he was actually there:
It was too strange for fiction, I guess.
Yes--that is new Dodger manager Joe Torre in a scally cap and sunglasses photoshopped in front of the Great Wall of China.
What's double-weird is that, even though he has that cap on, he's still wearing the Dodgers jersey.
UPDATE: It turns out he wasn't photoshopped in front of the Great Wall--he was actually there:
It was too strange for fiction, I guess.
Primary brinksmanship
A Gallup poll result that has been gaining traction on the internets and in the media suggests there will be heavy Democratic defections in the general election to the McCain side. Specifically, it says that 28% of Clinton supporters would vote for McCain over Obama in the general election, and that 19% of Obama supporters would vote for McCain over Clinton.
My intuition is that, if accurate, these numbers will subside dramatically once the primary is over and the general election campaign starts in earnest. In the heat of the primary it can be very emotionally satisfying to say that if X wins, fuck it, I'm voting McCain. Moreover, it also makes sense from a purely tactical point of view: if you can convince other Democrats that you and lots of others will walk if your candidate isn't chosen, it may convince them to vote for your candidate in an attempt to keep you around. Telling a pollster that you favor McCain over your candidate's primary opponent is one way of pursuing this strategy.
So what's happening here, I think, is a mixture of saying the emotionally satisfying thing but also engaging in some political brinkmanship. But I doubt many people will follow through on their threats and actually pull the lever for McCain in November.
At the end of the day, no one wants to stay in Iraq.
My intuition is that, if accurate, these numbers will subside dramatically once the primary is over and the general election campaign starts in earnest. In the heat of the primary it can be very emotionally satisfying to say that if X wins, fuck it, I'm voting McCain. Moreover, it also makes sense from a purely tactical point of view: if you can convince other Democrats that you and lots of others will walk if your candidate isn't chosen, it may convince them to vote for your candidate in an attempt to keep you around. Telling a pollster that you favor McCain over your candidate's primary opponent is one way of pursuing this strategy.
So what's happening here, I think, is a mixture of saying the emotionally satisfying thing but also engaging in some political brinkmanship. But I doubt many people will follow through on their threats and actually pull the lever for McCain in November.
At the end of the day, no one wants to stay in Iraq.
The kitchen sink was shaped like a boomerang
After a week of Hillary Clinton on the offensive and Obama on the defensive with the Wright controversy going on, Clinton's positive rating is down from 45% to 38%, but Obama's has remained almost steady:
(Related article)
I think she just may be trying to dig herself out of a hole at this point. The negative campaigning and fratricidal hardball tactics can't be doing anything at this point but polarizing the hardcore Clinton and Obama supporters and alienating the rest of the Democrats, including the Democratic establishment. And yet still she continues on.
I suppose she has somehow justified it all to herself--probably something along the lines of, "Well it's no worse than what the Republicans are gonna do--if he can't handle this barrage, then he wouldn't have won in the general anyway." But when certain things come from a fellow Democrat, it stings more than it ever could coming from a Republican--for example, that McCain has the right experience to be commander-in-chief but Obama does not.
I wish I knew what was going on in that head of hers.
PS: Tim Russert looks like a turnip.
(Related article)
I think she just may be trying to dig herself out of a hole at this point. The negative campaigning and fratricidal hardball tactics can't be doing anything at this point but polarizing the hardcore Clinton and Obama supporters and alienating the rest of the Democrats, including the Democratic establishment. And yet still she continues on.
I suppose she has somehow justified it all to herself--probably something along the lines of, "Well it's no worse than what the Republicans are gonna do--if he can't handle this barrage, then he wouldn't have won in the general anyway." But when certain things come from a fellow Democrat, it stings more than it ever could coming from a Republican--for example, that McCain has the right experience to be commander-in-chief but Obama does not.
I wish I knew what was going on in that head of hers.
PS: Tim Russert looks like a turnip.
Clinton's Praetorian Guard moves in on Pelosi
According to Reuters, 20 prominent Hillary Clinton supporters have sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi politely strong-arming her into retracting her opinion on how superdelegates should vote:
The 20 prominent Clinton supporters told Pelosi she should "clarify" recent statements to make it clear superdelegates -- nearly 800 party insiders and elected officials who are free to back any candidate -- could support the candidate they think would be the best nominee.
Pelosi has not publicly endorsed either Clinton or Barack Obama in their hotly contested White House battle, but she recently said superdelegates should support whoever emerges from the nomination contests with the most pledged delegates -- which appears almost certain to be Obama.
"This is an untenable position that runs counter to the party's intent in establishing superdelegates in 1984," the letter from the wealthy Clinton backers said.
"Superdelegates, like all delegates, have an obligation to make an informed, individual decision about whom to support and who would be the party's strongest nominee," said the letter signed by some of Clinton's biggest fund raisers.
Like most other arguments coming from Clinton supporters these days, this one doesn't make much sense. Everybody concedes that the superdelegates can use whatever criteria they want in casting their vote at the convention. What Pelosi is suggesting is that--given that the superdelegates are free to choose any criteria they want--the criterion that ought to trump all others is whether the candidate won the most pledged delegates. I imagine that her reasoning behind this is that nominating a candidate that has less pledged delegates will be seen as illegitimate by Democratic voters, and that the candidate would therefore not be "the party's strongest nominee" in the general election.
The letter makes it sound like Pelosi is trying to change the rules, when really she is just offering advice to the superdelegates--advice that they can heed or reject without Pelosi having to "clarify" anything.
If you're going to play, play nice
I agree with what Nicholas Kristoff says in his latest op-ed:
If Mrs. Clinton can run a high-minded, civil campaign and rein in her proxies, then she has every right to continue through the next few primaries, and the Democrats might even benefit from the bolstered attention and turnout. But if the brawl continues, then she and her husband may be remembered by many people who long admired them as having the same effect on Mr. Obama this November that Ralph Nader had on Al Gore in 2000.It's not so much that she's staying in the race even though she doesn't have a chance of winning. It's that she's tearing apart her fellow Democrat--and her party along with him.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
The five cent penny
An emotional case for mothballing nickels and upgrading pennies is made:
The nickel is a misshapen fraud with a beastly portrait of a godless slaveowner. The penny is a pure classic that bears around the world billions of images of the Great Emancipator in all his Christian mercy, from the filthiest whorehouse to the bedsides of tykes. After all the work it’s done for us, now it’s our turn to give the penny a leg up. Ditch the nickel. Promote the penny to five-cent status.Works for me. Though why are we always so stuck on Presidents (Ben Franklin notwithstanding)? How about some Senators--like Daniel Webster, for instance? Or how about a genius, like Einstein? I'd be down.
Sufficient condition
Based anecdotally on my readin's of the internets over the last month or two, it seems that there is widespread agreement that winning the most states, pledged delegates, and popular votes is a de facto sufficient condition for winning the Democratic Primary. Says one superdelegate from Washington (who originally endorsed Hillary Clinton):
And the argument is silly--it makes no sense whatsoever. The main mistake isn't in weighting primary states' importance according to their share of electoral votes--the main mistake is in thinking that primary victories correlate with general election victories. Winning a primary in a state does not mean that a general election victory is necessarily likely to follow. There could be a small number of Democrats in the state, for example, or it could be that the Democrats who voted for the primary loser would rather sit out the general election or even switch to the Republican side. So Obama winning lots of primaries in red states such as Idaho does not necessarily mean that he will do well in those states in the general election, since they are overwhelmingly Republican. And, conversely, Obama losing big primaries in California and New York does not mean that he will lose those states in the general election, since they are overwhelmingly Democratic. So, the argument that this electoral votes criterion is some kind of measure of electability in the general is absurd.
In any case, the states/delegates/votes trifecta makes sense as a sufficient condition to win the primary not because it demonstrates the candidate's viability in the general election, per se, but because it is an unambiguous expression of the will of Democrats.
The Democratic party should come together around the candidate with the most delegates, the most states and the largest popular vote, Cantwell said. The pledged delegate count will be the most important factor, she said, because that is the basis of the nominating process.More evidence of the widespread consensus about the sufficiency of the states/delegates/votes trifecta comes from Clinton supporter Senator Evan Bayh (of Indiana), in the form of an attempt to tack on a fourth meaningful category: the number of electoral college votes from the states won in the primary (surprise surprise--this is a category in which Clinton is leading). Bayh wouldn't have been compelled to make this silly argument if he didn't recognize that the trifecta is indeed a sure path to the nomination.
And the argument is silly--it makes no sense whatsoever. The main mistake isn't in weighting primary states' importance according to their share of electoral votes--the main mistake is in thinking that primary victories correlate with general election victories. Winning a primary in a state does not mean that a general election victory is necessarily likely to follow. There could be a small number of Democrats in the state, for example, or it could be that the Democrats who voted for the primary loser would rather sit out the general election or even switch to the Republican side. So Obama winning lots of primaries in red states such as Idaho does not necessarily mean that he will do well in those states in the general election, since they are overwhelmingly Republican. And, conversely, Obama losing big primaries in California and New York does not mean that he will lose those states in the general election, since they are overwhelmingly Democratic. So, the argument that this electoral votes criterion is some kind of measure of electability in the general is absurd.
In any case, the states/delegates/votes trifecta makes sense as a sufficient condition to win the primary not because it demonstrates the candidate's viability in the general election, per se, but because it is an unambiguous expression of the will of Democrats.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Oh for Chrissakes
Some insufferable bastard proposed to his girlfriend on Twitter, and the two of them couldn't be any more satisfied with themselves about it:
Jesus Christ.
Rewis proposed to Sullivan via Twitter shortly before midnight March 2: "@stefsull - ok. for the rest of the twitter-universe (and this is a first, folks) - WILL YOU MARRY ME?" Sullivan's reply: "@garazi - OMG - Ummmmm... I guess in front of the whole twitter-verse I'll say -- I'd be happy to spend the rest of my geek life with you.""Twitter-verse"? Really?
Jesus Christ.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Richardson prefers honey to vinegar
Bill Richardson responds to James Carville likening him to Judas for endorsing Obama instead of Hillary Clinton:
Moreover, Obama seems to have taken the opposite tack, as illustrated in Richardson's entertaining account of how Obama once saved him during one of last year's Democratic primary debates:
"I'm not going to get in the gutter like that," Richardson said of the comments from informal Clinton adviser James Carville. "And you know, that's typical of many of the people around Senator Clinton. They think they have a sense of entitlement to the presidency."Yikes. Now, obviously, Clinton herself surely had nothing to do with the Judas comparison--it's just one of her advisers spouting off, and she doesn't really have any control over that. However, I think that in the long run this sort of thing--the internecine name calling, spinning, belittling, misrepresenting, arm-twisting--has really soured the Democrat establishment on the Clintons. It has certainly soured Richardson.
Moreover, Obama seems to have taken the opposite tack, as illustrated in Richardson's entertaining account of how Obama once saved him during one of last year's Democratic primary debates:
"I had just been asked a question -- I don't remember which one -- and Obama was sitting right next to me. Then the moderator went across the room, I think to Chris Dodd, so I thought I was home free for a while. I wasn't going to listen to the next question. I was about to say something to Obama when the moderator turned to me and said, 'So, Gov. Richardson, what do you think of that?' But I wasn't paying any attention! I was about to say, 'Could you repeat the question? I wasn't listening.' But I wasn't about to say I wasn't listening. I looked at Obama. I was just horrified. And Obama whispered, 'Katrina. Katrina.' The question was on Katrina! So I said, 'On Katrina, my policy . . .' Obama could have just thrown me under the bus. So I said, 'Obama, that was good of you to do that.'"You have to wonder how little things like that affected Richardson's decision to endorse...
Conservatism, Bush, and Obama from the--er--gay HIV-positive conservative libertarian Catholic perspective
Andrew Sullivan's views of conservatism, Bush, and Obama in a nutshell:
Conservatism, at its core, is about the frailty of human goodness, the limits of human knowledge, the virtue of self-doubt when that is required, restraint on government executive power, and the correction and admission of error when necessary. What has happened to conservatism under Bush is that it has become a messianic, ruthless, totally certain imposition of ideology (fused even more lethally with theology). Obama is not the answer to this conservative predicament. He is a "progressive" liberal - but his liberalism contains more conservative elements of reason and prudence and restraint than the current Republican party.I don't think the word "conservative" conjures up a rational and skeptical worldview in the heads of very many Americans, liberal or conservative--which is too bad. We'd all be a lot better off if it did.
Epilogue: Clinton's Bosnia whopper
Hillary Clinton is finally doing what she should have done weeks ago: acknowledging that the account of her trip to Bosnia she has been pedaling as part of her "35 years of experience" is, in fact, false.
Of course, her campaign claims that she merely "misspoke". I think it's more along the lines of: she got expansive with the truth and meanwhile forgot that the internet records stuff. Or possibly: she honestly misremembered the trip (in a self-aggrandizing way) and meanwhile forgot that the internet records stuff.
Either way it's pretty embarrassing for her, I would think.
Of course, her campaign claims that she merely "misspoke". I think it's more along the lines of: she got expansive with the truth and meanwhile forgot that the internet records stuff. Or possibly: she honestly misremembered the trip (in a self-aggrandizing way) and meanwhile forgot that the internet records stuff.
Either way it's pretty embarrassing for her, I would think.
A Brave New World of Retail
There is an interesting article in the Times about the resurgence of haggling in big retail stores like Best Buy and Home Depot:
When you go to buy something at a retail store, other stores should be able to make competing offers for the same (or a similar) product. This reverse-bidding system could be easily implemented as a mobile application, especially if we move in the direction of the Japanese, where the cell phone itself is used as a method of payment (i.e., you can swipe it like a credit card). Everything could be integrated right there in the device--so if Circuit City were to offer a better price on the TV, you could purchase it from within the application and then walk across the street to pick it up. Or, alternatively, the store you are currently at may lower its price as a counter-offer to the competitor, netting you a discount without having to do any extra legwork at all.
If this idea worked, it would improve the efficiency of the retail economy, because stores would be dynamically setting the optimal price for each purchase. Of course, old-fashioned haggling serves the same function--but I bet having the whole process automated and integrated with the consumer's cell phone would work a whole lot better. (Side-note: unlike with a lot of Web 2.0-ish business models you come across, this one would not have any kind of "critical mass" requirement in order for the service to be valuable. In fact, it is just the opposite--the less companies that participate in the service, the better it is for participating companies. E.g., if only one company participated, it would have the luxury of being able undercut the competition without itself ever being undercut. And so I think it would be easy for the whole thing to get started, with major retailers participating in the service.)
I am aware that this sort of reverse-bidding model already exists on the internet--for example, I believe this is essentially how priceline.com works for plane tickets and hotels and such. However, I think it's clear at this point that internet purchasing will never completely supplant the bricks-and-mortar retail stores, and so I think it would be worthwhile to introduce the price-efficiency tricks we see on the internet into the world of bricks-and-mortar retail by developing mobile applications like the one I outline above.
This is pretty interesting to me, because for a while now it has seemed to me that the retail economy hasn't quite caught up with mobile technology and the internet. I mean, here we are, all equipped with little computers on our person, and yet when I go to buy a TV at Best Buy there is no way for, say, Circuit City across the street to say: Wait a second, we'll beat that price!Savvy consumers, empowered by the Internet and encouraged by a slowing economy, are finding that they can dicker on prices, not just on clearance items or big-ticket products like televisions but also on lower-cost goods like cameras, audio speakers, couches, rugs and even clothing.
The change is not particularly overt, and most store policies on bargaining are informal. Some major retailers, however, are quietly telling their salespeople that negotiating is acceptable.
When you go to buy something at a retail store, other stores should be able to make competing offers for the same (or a similar) product. This reverse-bidding system could be easily implemented as a mobile application, especially if we move in the direction of the Japanese, where the cell phone itself is used as a method of payment (i.e., you can swipe it like a credit card). Everything could be integrated right there in the device--so if Circuit City were to offer a better price on the TV, you could purchase it from within the application and then walk across the street to pick it up. Or, alternatively, the store you are currently at may lower its price as a counter-offer to the competitor, netting you a discount without having to do any extra legwork at all.
If this idea worked, it would improve the efficiency of the retail economy, because stores would be dynamically setting the optimal price for each purchase. Of course, old-fashioned haggling serves the same function--but I bet having the whole process automated and integrated with the consumer's cell phone would work a whole lot better. (Side-note: unlike with a lot of Web 2.0-ish business models you come across, this one would not have any kind of "critical mass" requirement in order for the service to be valuable. In fact, it is just the opposite--the less companies that participate in the service, the better it is for participating companies. E.g., if only one company participated, it would have the luxury of being able undercut the competition without itself ever being undercut. And so I think it would be easy for the whole thing to get started, with major retailers participating in the service.)
I am aware that this sort of reverse-bidding model already exists on the internet--for example, I believe this is essentially how priceline.com works for plane tickets and hotels and such. However, I think it's clear at this point that internet purchasing will never completely supplant the bricks-and-mortar retail stores, and so I think it would be worthwhile to introduce the price-efficiency tricks we see on the internet into the world of bricks-and-mortar retail by developing mobile applications like the one I outline above.
Evolving the campaign: update
In a previous post, I talked about how I liked Carlos' idea that the Obama campaign should start doing community service work to demonstrate that Obama's bottom-up theory of change is for real.
Well, Alex tells me in an email that the Obama campaign is already doing stuff like this. Which is great--but I think the campaign could benefit by advertising it a little more, or even mentioning it in a TV ad.
Well, Alex tells me in an email that the Obama campaign is already doing stuff like this. Which is great--but I think the campaign could benefit by advertising it a little more, or even mentioning it in a TV ad.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Hoooooooboy
This is making the rounds now. It's barely watchable, and I might not have even posted it, were it not for the fact that the older white lady's outfit gets partially greenscreened out in some of the shots:
Liar liar pantsuit on fire
In this day and age of internets and You Tubes, it's just getting harder and harder for politicians to get away with the sort of white-lie fibbing that Hillary Clinton indulged in with her harrowing account of her 1996 visit to Bosnia. She was initially called out by Sinbad (of all people), who had accompanied her on the trip and remembered it being a lot less dramatic. Unwisely, she decided to double-down on her version of events, resulting in this entertaining fact-check column in the Washington Post, and this entertaining You Tube (both via Andrew Sullivan):
The weirdest part about her version of events, I think, is that all this is supposedly happening with friggin' Sinbad right there in the scene, like a bad mid-90s buddy comedy. I mean, it's just absurd--and yet this is the sort of thing she cites as part of her "35 years of experience" that makes her "ready on Day One" to be commander-in-chief. And am I supposed to also accept the converse of her argument--that it is Obama's lack of this kind of experience that makes him unqualified to be commander-in-chief? Should Obama have spent more time tooling around in a C-130 with Sinbad and less time, oh, teaching Constitutional law, or doing community organizing?
Hillary Clinton would undoubtedly make a good President, but it would not be because of any executive experience she has supposedly racked up during her years as First Lady. She shouldn't have made this ridiculous "experience" claim at all--and yet somehow it ended up being the cornerstone of her whole campaign.
The weirdest part about her version of events, I think, is that all this is supposedly happening with friggin' Sinbad right there in the scene, like a bad mid-90s buddy comedy. I mean, it's just absurd--and yet this is the sort of thing she cites as part of her "35 years of experience" that makes her "ready on Day One" to be commander-in-chief. And am I supposed to also accept the converse of her argument--that it is Obama's lack of this kind of experience that makes him unqualified to be commander-in-chief? Should Obama have spent more time tooling around in a C-130 with Sinbad and less time, oh, teaching Constitutional law, or doing community organizing?
Hillary Clinton would undoubtedly make a good President, but it would not be because of any executive experience she has supposedly racked up during her years as First Lady. She shouldn't have made this ridiculous "experience" claim at all--and yet somehow it ended up being the cornerstone of her whole campaign.
"We've actually read the complete sound bite"
Fox News reporter Chris Wallace looks like an adult amongst children in this clip, where he criticizes the smiley-faced pundits of Fox and Friends for willfully misinterpreting recent comments made by Obama on race:
I especially like the blond guy's whining about how he read the whole sound bite. What does he want, a cookie? How about reacting to whole interviews instead of sound bites, so that you can say something interesting instead of being an unthinking wall in the Fox echo chamber?
I was surprised at just how scandalized the Fox and Friends gang looked as "one of their own" dared to take them to task on live television (the quick triple reaction shot of the gang at 0:25 is priceless). Their reaction also seemed very unprofessional to me--from the one pundit's passive-aggressive thanking of Chris Wallace for raising the objection on the air instead of via private email, to their childish pouting at the end of the interview and repeated compliment-baiting (does this mean you--*sniff*--don't like us anymore, Mr. Wallace?).
Ugh. Get better pundits, Fox--these people are clearly ninnies, and they're not doing the conservative cause any good.
I especially like the blond guy's whining about how he read the whole sound bite. What does he want, a cookie? How about reacting to whole interviews instead of sound bites, so that you can say something interesting instead of being an unthinking wall in the Fox echo chamber?
I was surprised at just how scandalized the Fox and Friends gang looked as "one of their own" dared to take them to task on live television (the quick triple reaction shot of the gang at 0:25 is priceless). Their reaction also seemed very unprofessional to me--from the one pundit's passive-aggressive thanking of Chris Wallace for raising the objection on the air instead of via private email, to their childish pouting at the end of the interview and repeated compliment-baiting (does this mean you--*sniff*--don't like us anymore, Mr. Wallace?).
Ugh. Get better pundits, Fox--these people are clearly ninnies, and they're not doing the conservative cause any good.
Rockets 109, Warriors 106
I went to the game yesterday. It was pretty fun, but everyone agreed that the game was somewhat spoiled by some crappy officiating that went against Golden State.
Incidentally, while I'm in an NBA post: I was perusing the Daily Dime today and this statistic jumped out at me:
Incidentally, while I'm in an NBA post: I was perusing the Daily Dime today and this statistic jumped out at me:
The Suns also have quietly outrebounded the opposition 13 times in Shaq's first 15 games, after doing so just 12 times in the preceding 53 games.I had no idea that the Suns had been out-rebounded quite this drastically all season--I guess it was one of the prices they paid for their pre-Shaq fast-break offense.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Mike Huckabee: a decent man
Barack Obama is not the only politician willing to raise the level of discourse in America. Watch how Mike Huckabee, with simple earnestness and empathy, completely shuts down Joe Scarborough and his partisan baiting (you can skip to 3:30). It's not just anyone that can reduce a loudmouth partisan hack like Scarborough to lame Atticus Finch quotes in the space of a single response:
I found his brief description of his personal experience with segregation--and plea to "cut some slack" to those who have suffered from it--to be actually, well, touching.
It is also worthwhile to take notice of Huckabee's exceptional ear for politics and ability to maneuver in the political moment. While most conservatives respond with shrill, tone-deaf, knee-jerk reactions to Obama's speech that still just obsess over Reverend Wright's vitriol, Huckabee tacks toward conciliation--and is even able to wring a valid criticism of liberals out of it.
I don't mean this to be an accusation of cynicism on the part of Huckabee. I think this is one of those instances where being sincere just is politically savvy.
I found his brief description of his personal experience with segregation--and plea to "cut some slack" to those who have suffered from it--to be actually, well, touching.
It is also worthwhile to take notice of Huckabee's exceptional ear for politics and ability to maneuver in the political moment. While most conservatives respond with shrill, tone-deaf, knee-jerk reactions to Obama's speech that still just obsess over Reverend Wright's vitriol, Huckabee tacks toward conciliation--and is even able to wring a valid criticism of liberals out of it.
I don't mean this to be an accusation of cynicism on the part of Huckabee. I think this is one of those instances where being sincere just is politically savvy.
Obama's speech on race: a clear, refreshing, distilled, icy glass of water
Some weeks ago I went and saw Helvetica, which is a documentary all about the history of the ubiquitous font, its significance in design, and its impact on culture. One of the people interviewed--graphic designer Michael Bierut--gives this memorable description of what it must have been like when the streamlined, modernist font came on the scene in the 1960s:
This quote is what came to mind when I read and watched Barack Obama's recent "major speech on race" (text; unnecessarily interactive Flash movie). For eight long years--and arguably, although to a more tolerable degree, the eight years before that as well--I've been fed nothing but the most intelligence-insulting, deliberately-repetitive, simplistic, lowest-common-denominator, platitude-laden, poll-tested, calculated, take-no-chances, sound-byte-friendly, made-for-TV, unnuanced, uninteresting, uninspired, unoriginal, committeed-to-death, unprincipled, unthoughtful, anti-intellectual, cynical, bromide-filled, conventional-wisdom-repeating, intellectually dishonest political rhetoric imaginable.You go to a corporate identity consultant, circa 1965-1966 and they would take that and lay it here and say, "Here's your current stationary, and all it implies, and this is what we're proposing." And next to that, next to the belching smoke-stacks, and the nuptial script, and the ivory paper, they'd have a crisp bright white piece of paper, and instead of "Amalgamated Widget, founded 1857" it'd just say "WidgeCo" in Helvetica Medium.
Can you imagine how bracing and thrilling that was? It must have felt like you had crawled through a desert with your mouth just caked with filthy dust, and someone offered you a clear, refreshing, distilled, icy glass of water... It must have been just fantastic. (Hat tip: some guy Russell Beattie)
To be fair, Obama's speech is not entirely devoid of these trappings of TV-era American political rhetoric. For example, more than once he slides into the lazy populist habit of corporation-blaming ("...[T]he real problem is...that the corporation you work for will ship [your job] overseas for nothing more than a profit"). But despite this, the speech does succeed in grappling with lots of complexities and ambiguities in race--observing legitimate resentments felt by both blacks and whites, for example, and condemning but ultimately embracing the imperfect Reverend Wright. And this puts it head and shoulders above all others in terms of sheer level of discourse--in terms, in other words, of how it addresses its audience: as intelligent, discerning adults.
It is in this way that Obama's speech is, to me, "a clear, refreshing, distilled, icy glass of water".
Of course, I realize that I am commenting here more on the rhetoric of the speech than the actual substance of it. But I think this is appropriate. What makes the speech stand out isn't the novelty of its content, per se, but the circumstances in which it was uttered: by a candidate in the Democratic presidential primary, in a major, nationally televised address.
Complex, sober, and enlightening conversations on race and other issues have been out there for some time--in living rooms, between close friends, in academic circles--but they've been hard to find. One of the major projects of Obama's candidacy has been to bring them into the national discourse. This has not been easy. The 24-hour-news cycle, the news networks, the Clinton campaign, and the horse-race-obsessed punditry have made it difficult at times, even impossible to properly argue or explain anything in depth. Even now they are doing their best to reduce Obama's thoughtful and cohesive 40-minute argument into a meaningless media shrapnel of sound-bytes, "gaffes", and speculation as to whether he is "sending a message" to one demographic or another.
But internet--that vanquisher of the fascist, one-to-many fiend of the 20th century known by its sinister monogram "T.V."--is strong like ox. At nytimes.com, the full text of Obama's speech is the most emailed item. The video of the speech in its entirety is the number one video on You Tube. The force that propelled Obama's candidacy and financed his campaign is the same one that is presenting his case, unfiltered and unreconstructed, to the American electorate.
I wonder if they are as thirsty as I am.
Paul Volcker, former Fed chairman and Wise Old Man
Volcker remarks on the unprecedented maneuvers the Federal Reserve is making to prevent a financial collapse, and recommends more government regulation of the financial industry in general. I don't pretend to understand a lot of this, but I think I get the gist:
(Via Calculated Risk)
PS: If you're wondering why Charlie Rose is sporting a shiner, it's because he sacrificed his face for his MacBook Air.
(Via Calculated Risk)
PS: If you're wondering why Charlie Rose is sporting a shiner, it's because he sacrificed his face for his MacBook Air.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
It's turtles all the way down
It turns out that the man replacing Eliot Spitzer as governor of New York has himself had a number of extramarital affairs, one of them with a state employee.
Insert colloquial saying about politicians here.
Insert colloquial saying about politicians here.
The MMI
Apparently, some wisenheimer at Calculated Risk has already formalized the correlation I mention below between bad financial times and badly mixed metaphors:
Dr. Krugman has inspired me to get back to the Muddled Metaphor Index. Longtime readers will know that the MMI emerged last summer as one of our blog's tools for measuring distress in the credit markets. The MMI is calculated by plotting the disintegration of metaphoricity in reports of credit market events against the general unwillingness to recognize reality until it bites you on the shoulderblade, and then chortling over the results. Some people question the science here, but we tell them to go jump in a desert.I've seen this kind of tongue-in-cheek index before: I was reading in the Economist once about how a substantial increase in the number of occurrences of the word "recession" in the NY Times and Washington Post has successfully marked the last couple of downturns. The Economist has dubbed it the "R-word index". Kind of interesting.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Credit freezes and financial meltdowns
For some reason there seems to be a positive correlation between financial panics and poorly mixed metaphors. Paul Krugman's on it.
Fear in the form of blog comments
Calculated Risk has a very long thread with lots and lots of fretting. What's going to happen when the bell rings tomorrow?
Is it some kind of crazy constant?
According to a study by researchers at Microsoft, when you map out the gigantic social network formed by billions of IM conversations, you get a familiar result:
The dataset which was collected in June 2006 contains summaries of 30 billion conversations among 240 million people. And they were very surprised to find that the average number of jumps to get from one random user to another was 6.6."Yup--it's the whole "6 degrees of separation" thing.
This study has been led at Microsoft Research Redmond lab by Eric Horvitz and Jure Leskovec, who was an intern at the time. "Horvitz says he was surprised that their analysis so closely matched the 1967 result. He wonders whether the number six is a basic constant for social interactions. 'Do we have a natural harmonic for social communication?' he asks. 'This is my conjecture -- more work needs to be done on that.'"(Via Andrew Sullivan.)
Uh-oh
In an effort to keep financial firm Bear Stearns from going bankrupt, it was agreed that JP Morgan would buy it out (at a bargain price of $2/share) and that the Federal Reserve would help JP Morgan guarantee Bear's financial obligations.
The hope is that bailing out Bear Stearns will buoy investor confidence enough to prevent the US financial industry from sliding into complete ruin. I suppose this is an effective strategy: if you're an investor, what could give you more confidence in an institution than backing from the guys who print the money?
But it's kind of disconcerting. As this WaPo op-ed points out, there is "abundant evidence from the currency and gold markets that the world has just about all the dollar bills it cares to hold". This suggests that maybe the Federal Reserve's trick of pulling new US dollars out of its hat every time a teetering financial giant needs righting might not be viable if things continue to worsen. And this very fact, of course, will cause things to continue to worsen.
So it looks bad. Though overall prices held steady last month, inflation is up for the year. Stocks are tumbling. Gold is soaring. And Intrade.com has 70% odds that we're heading into a recession this year.
:(
The hope is that bailing out Bear Stearns will buoy investor confidence enough to prevent the US financial industry from sliding into complete ruin. I suppose this is an effective strategy: if you're an investor, what could give you more confidence in an institution than backing from the guys who print the money?
But it's kind of disconcerting. As this WaPo op-ed points out, there is "abundant evidence from the currency and gold markets that the world has just about all the dollar bills it cares to hold". This suggests that maybe the Federal Reserve's trick of pulling new US dollars out of its hat every time a teetering financial giant needs righting might not be viable if things continue to worsen. And this very fact, of course, will cause things to continue to worsen.
So it looks bad. Though overall prices held steady last month, inflation is up for the year. Stocks are tumbling. Gold is soaring. And Intrade.com has 70% odds that we're heading into a recession this year.
:(
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Ruling with empathy
This editorial (via Andrew Sullivan) captures a big part of the reason why I'm an Obama supporter: he demonstrates time and again in his rhetoric, positions, and personal interactions an underlying wellspring of empathy that disarms opponents and allows him to effectively lead.
Hooboy
This is the whitest guy I've ever seen. And I think part of what makes this the case is that he utters the phrase, "We don't need no bling; all we gotta do is sing!"
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Tell us what you really think
From a Post article about the dreary state of the Republican Party:
"It's no mystery," said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.). "You have a very unhappy electorate, which is no surprise, with oil at $108 a barrel, stocks down a few thousand points, a war in Iraq with no end in sight and a president who is still very, very unpopular. He's just killed the Republican brand."And that's coming from a Republican. Youch.
The fratricide strategy
Ezra Klein aptly articulates what many in the pundit class now believe: Clinton's only viable strategy at this point is to make Obama unelectable. Quote:
*Pointless Kafka quote.
Clinton has no road to the nomination save for the literal destruction of Obama's candidacy. There's no affirmative argument for her campaign that's strong enough to overwhelm his lead in pledged delegates. Rather, she's basically got to cripple him so badly that he can't make it over the finish line. Mark Penn not only has to say that Obama is unelectable, he has to believe he can make it true. And what a shame. What a shame to see Hillary Clinton reduced to this, left insulting the intelligence of the voters and entirely reliant on the politics of personal destruction for her success.It is as if the shame of it must outlive her.*
*Pointless Kafka quote.
Re: The market doesn't have an M.D.
Carlos responded to an earlier post with a thoughtful comment, which I thought I'd reproduce here in case you missed it:
Dude, you just opened the healthcare reform door...
So, yes, our healthcare system is incredibly inefficient and wasteful, with spending rising faster than inflation and GDP, while our country's health indicators remain at the bottom of the industrialized world.
Why is it so inefficient? You hit one point on the head: People can not be expected to make good spending decisions regarding health care. If people knew exactly what they needed when they were sick, we wouldn't need doctors! We'd only need a few pharmacologists and a few surgeons who'd set up shop and just fulfill their customer's orders. Also, since many people have health insurance, most are completely unaware or unconcerned about the amount of money that goes in to providing them with care, and so they seek care freely. And health insurance companies distribute payments on a fee-for-service basis, so doctors are incentivised to over-treat so that:
1. They don't get sued.
2. They get as many insurance payouts as possible.
Health insurance companies were initially designed to be the watchdogs of the system. They would make profit by covering as many people as possible, and reduce costs by promoting cheap preventive care and denying payment for unnecessary care. But here, we find that:
1. Insurance companies are not very good at determining what is necessary since they aren't the patient's doctor.
2. It's easier to just assess the riskiness of each potential enrollee and deny "high-risk" customers from the get-go.
So this is where all the "health insurance horror stories" come from. Stories of people getting denied treatment for their fatal cancer. Stories of construction workers getting injured on the job, not being able to work, and being denied private health insurance.
And of course, this is all ignoring the fact that there are millions of people in our country who are completely without any kind of health insurance, and so become exceedingly risk-prone and are unable to get care they need due to prohibitively high costs.
So, what do we do? The government is in the health industry's pocket, and the health industry is benefiting from the status quo, so change is slow, nonexistent, or retrograde. The people suffering the most are the uninsured who are already relatively quiescent in the political realm and are not able to leverage much pressure on the political system. Further, conservatives bust out their best "socialism" fear mongering whenever anyone tries to talk about healthcare reform. And so we wait until the middle class gets pissed off enough with the system that change can be made through the ballot.
What kind of change? Well, that's a whole other rant, but for a quick hint, look at France's health care system.
A silly city
It made national headlines--and the Daily Show--a few weeks ago: the Berkeley City Council passed a resolution stating that the US Marines and their recruiting center near campus were "uninvited" and "unwelcome" in the city, and even went so far as to grant a parking space in front of the recruitment center to Code Pink, which is an anti-war group that has been haranguing the Marines for months. There has since been a national outcry, persuading the City Counsel to reconsider its actions.
Of course, none of this made any sense to begin with. In the first place, the government should never be in the business of granting special legal privileges to one political faction at the expense of another. Free speech entitles all players in the marketplace of ideas to present their argument to the community without government interference. What the Berkeley City Counsel is doing is selectively curtailing this freedom for those they disagree with (the US Marine Corps) by granting to their political opponents special powers of harassment (a special parking spot for Code Pink right in front of the recruitment center).
The second reason none of this made sense is because the US Marine Corps itself is an unlikely target of derision for anyone who opposes the Iraq War. President Bush and a complacent Congress made the decision to invade Iraq, not the Marines.
And before you accuse me of invoking the Nuremberg defense--i.e., of claiming that the Marines are not responsible for the war because they "are just following orders"--let me just preempt it by saying that, in my view, such a critique is not applicable in this case. This kind of defense of a soldier's actions only fails in extreme cases where the soldier is ordered to carry out atrocities or war crimes. In such cases, the soldier is being ordered to do something that is considered to be so categorically wrong that it cannot possibly be justified. Since there is no question that the order is unjustified, the soldier is obligated to refuse to carry it out. However, most orders require that the soldier do something that may or may not be justified, depending on the circumstances. For example, the soldier may be asked to invade a sovereign nation (unless you are hopelessly pacifist, you will agree that this is sometimes justified). But the principle of civilian control of the military demands that the soldier leave the political question of whether the orders are justified to the civilians in charge. For soldiers to act otherwise would be for them to assume a veto power over the civilian authorities that is inconsistent with the principle of civilian control of the military.
It is undoubtedly possible that the invasion of a sovereign country like Iraq could be completely justified; whether or not it actually is justified is an open political question to be debated and resolved by elected politicians. If soldiers are to defer to the democratic process, then they have no choice but to "just follow orders", regardless of their political opinions. The only time that those soldiers should refuse to follow orders is when those orders could not possibly be justified, as in the case of genocide and other war crimes and atrocities.
The Berkeley City Council and Code Pink seem to think that soldiers bear responsibility--and should shoulder the blame--for any unjustified action they are ordered to do. But this is unfair, because the only way for the soldiers to absolve themselves of this would be for them to sacrifice the principle of military subservience to the civilian government. And I don't think anyone wants them to do that.
Of course, none of this made any sense to begin with. In the first place, the government should never be in the business of granting special legal privileges to one political faction at the expense of another. Free speech entitles all players in the marketplace of ideas to present their argument to the community without government interference. What the Berkeley City Counsel is doing is selectively curtailing this freedom for those they disagree with (the US Marine Corps) by granting to their political opponents special powers of harassment (a special parking spot for Code Pink right in front of the recruitment center).
The second reason none of this made sense is because the US Marine Corps itself is an unlikely target of derision for anyone who opposes the Iraq War. President Bush and a complacent Congress made the decision to invade Iraq, not the Marines.
And before you accuse me of invoking the Nuremberg defense--i.e., of claiming that the Marines are not responsible for the war because they "are just following orders"--let me just preempt it by saying that, in my view, such a critique is not applicable in this case. This kind of defense of a soldier's actions only fails in extreme cases where the soldier is ordered to carry out atrocities or war crimes. In such cases, the soldier is being ordered to do something that is considered to be so categorically wrong that it cannot possibly be justified. Since there is no question that the order is unjustified, the soldier is obligated to refuse to carry it out. However, most orders require that the soldier do something that may or may not be justified, depending on the circumstances. For example, the soldier may be asked to invade a sovereign nation (unless you are hopelessly pacifist, you will agree that this is sometimes justified). But the principle of civilian control of the military demands that the soldier leave the political question of whether the orders are justified to the civilians in charge. For soldiers to act otherwise would be for them to assume a veto power over the civilian authorities that is inconsistent with the principle of civilian control of the military.
It is undoubtedly possible that the invasion of a sovereign country like Iraq could be completely justified; whether or not it actually is justified is an open political question to be debated and resolved by elected politicians. If soldiers are to defer to the democratic process, then they have no choice but to "just follow orders", regardless of their political opinions. The only time that those soldiers should refuse to follow orders is when those orders could not possibly be justified, as in the case of genocide and other war crimes and atrocities.
The Berkeley City Council and Code Pink seem to think that soldiers bear responsibility--and should shoulder the blame--for any unjustified action they are ordered to do. But this is unfair, because the only way for the soldiers to absolve themselves of this would be for them to sacrifice the principle of military subservience to the civilian government. And I don't think anyone wants them to do that.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Greatest video game ever?
I was just perusing kottke.org for the first time, and was reading a chronology of his life in the About section. This grabbed me:
To be fair, I haven't played many of the later generation sports games...for instance, I've never played any of the Madden games. So maybe there's someone out there who knows better.
1994: Sega NHL '94 is simply the greatest video game ever. My college roommate had a TV, and I had a Sega Genesis & NHL '94. At any given time between 9am and 10pm, 7 days a week, there were usually 2 to 6 people in our room playing that game. I'd leave for class with a bunch of folks watching or playing, coming back three hours later to find a completely different group worshipping at the shrine of NHL '94.I think you can make a solid case for NHL 94 as best game ever--I was much younger when I played it, but I had the similar experience of playing this game for hours, day in and day out, every day (esp. in the summer). I'd go down to my friend Raja's house and I'd play as the Red Wings (Yzerman, Federov, Chelios, and fucking Coffee? Goodnight) and he'd play as the Kings (Wayne was a sentimental favorite) or Blackhawks (Roenick was a monster, as was Belfour). He beat me most of the time, but I beat him enough to where it was competitive and fun to play. Man.
To be fair, I haven't played many of the later generation sports games...for instance, I've never played any of the Madden games. So maybe there's someone out there who knows better.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
The market doesn't have an M.D.
An essay by one Sandeep Jauhar, M.D. talks about the difficulties of treating patients without gouging them. His cardiologist friend relates the story:
But as the cardiologist's story shows, since people are not experts in medicine, it is impossible for them to accurately judge the performance of a doctor. People end up making irrational decisions based on superficial impressions of thoroughness, or on whether the doctor's methods and equipment seem cutting-edge, or some other such thing.
Moreover, because the stakes are so high where a person's health is involved, patients become extraordinarily risk averse and their decision process becomes clouded with emotion, resulting in more services and higher costs. For example, let's say I take my car to the shop and the repairman tells me that I should have some moderately expensive work done on the engine. He says that if I don't, there's a .01% chance that the engine will be ruined. Do I have the work done? Probably not--it's a risk I can live with. But suppose a doctor tells me that if I don't have a moderately expensive treatment done, then there is a .01% chance that I will die a slow, painful death. I don't know about you, but I'd get the treatment, if I could afford it, even though the likelihood of me dying would be very remote.
So it seems to me that the idea of letting the patient make an "informed decision" is problematic, because the patient lacks expertise and has distorted levels of risk aversion (i.e., is overcareful).
This, I think, really illustrates a problem with the argument that the free market should primarily determine how healthcare is distributed. The idea is that an informed consumer choosing between competing healthcare providers in an unfettered market will result in the most efficient distribution of healthcare, with the lowest costs.“When I started in practice, I wanted to do the right thing,” he told me matter-of-factly. “A young woman would come in with palpitations. I’d tell her she was fine. But then I realized that she’d just go down the street to another physician and he’d order all the tests anyway: echocardiogram, stress test, Holter monitor — stuff she didn’t really need. Then she’d go around and tell her friends what a great doctor — a thorough doctor — the other cardiologist was.
“I tried to practice ethical medicine, but it didn’t help. It didn’t pay, both from a financial and a reputation standpoint.”
But as the cardiologist's story shows, since people are not experts in medicine, it is impossible for them to accurately judge the performance of a doctor. People end up making irrational decisions based on superficial impressions of thoroughness, or on whether the doctor's methods and equipment seem cutting-edge, or some other such thing.
Moreover, because the stakes are so high where a person's health is involved, patients become extraordinarily risk averse and their decision process becomes clouded with emotion, resulting in more services and higher costs. For example, let's say I take my car to the shop and the repairman tells me that I should have some moderately expensive work done on the engine. He says that if I don't, there's a .01% chance that the engine will be ruined. Do I have the work done? Probably not--it's a risk I can live with. But suppose a doctor tells me that if I don't have a moderately expensive treatment done, then there is a .01% chance that I will die a slow, painful death. I don't know about you, but I'd get the treatment, if I could afford it, even though the likelihood of me dying would be very remote.
So it seems to me that the idea of letting the patient make an "informed decision" is problematic, because the patient lacks expertise and has distorted levels of risk aversion (i.e., is overcareful).
Nauseatingly postmodern
It has come to pass--you can now visit the myspace page of Eliot Spitzer's prostitute. Thanks, New York Times!
Twenty-two years old. Attractive. A hard-knock life. An aspiring singer. Which all adds up to: book deals. Music deals. Weepy interviews. Reality shows. Coverage by the tabloids. Etc., etc.
And the beat goes on.
Twenty-two years old. Attractive. A hard-knock life. An aspiring singer. Which all adds up to: book deals. Music deals. Weepy interviews. Reality shows. Coverage by the tabloids. Etc., etc.
And the beat goes on.
Ferraro's comments an insult to the art of politics
Geraldine Ferraro, one-time Democratic VP candidate, has quit her post in the Clinton campaign because of a minor media firestorm over these comments:
If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.Of course, many people's first reaction is to denounce the comments as racist--but this is the wrong view. Matt Yglesias nails it:
It really is hard to imagine Obama being where he is today if he weren't black. But the point is that everyone who has success in presidential politics does so, in part, because of contingent personal attributes that aren't a strict form of merit. Being white has, after all, been an important part of the political success of all our previous presidents. Certainly Bill Clinton's southern accent was an important part of his package, as it was for Jimmy Carter and of course Lyndon Johnson was made VP to do regional ticket balancing. John Kennedy had a rich dad. Franklin Roosevelt was named "Roosevelt." That's just political reality, not some vast black conspiracy to keep Hillary Clinton down....And, of course, there's no way Hillary Clinton would be where she is if she weren't a certain ex-president's wife.
Ferraro's observation wasn't untrue or racist so much as trivial. However, that said, I think that every politician in the Clinton campaign should know by now that any comment involving Obama and race is going to be a media powder keg, and must be handled very delicately. Ferraro, with her careless and easy-to-misconstrue comments, was negligent in this regard. BOOM!
Departing words
The last thing my late grandfather ever said to me:
"If you want to learn, stand near someone with something worthwhile to say..."That's why I started this blog--to stand near you guys, and to learn.
Obama ahead even counting MI and FL
Obama's on track for the most-popular-votes/most-contests-won/most-pledged-delegates trifecta (from the excellent charts at Real Clear Politics):
Popular Vote (not including Iowa, Nevada, Washington or Maine, who haven't released totals)
Without MI/FL: Obama +700,391+2.6%
With MI/FL: Obama +77,310+0.2%
Contests Won (with 10 remaining--Obama's clinched this one)
Without MI/FL: Obama 30, Clinton 14
With MI/FL: Obama 30, Clinton 16
Pledged Delegates: Obama 1606, Clinton 1484
Popular Vote (not including Iowa, Nevada, Washington or Maine, who haven't released totals)
Without MI/FL: Obama +700,391+2.6%
With MI/FL: Obama +77,310+0.2%
Contests Won (with 10 remaining--Obama's clinched this one)
Without MI/FL: Obama 30, Clinton 14
With MI/FL: Obama 30, Clinton 16
Pledged Delegates: Obama 1606, Clinton 1484
How to destroy the Democratic Party
As the Democratic primary wears on, it is becoming more and more likely that it will not be decided until the superdelegates cast their 700-odd votes on the convention floor in Denver. There is now a battle being waged for the hearts and minds of these party elites, each candidate trying to demonstrate that he or she is the true choice of the people and most capable of bringing victory to the Democratic Party in November.
The Obama campaign knows that if it can finish the race with more delegates, more states won, and more popular votes, then it will be virtually impossible for the superdelegates to side with Clinton without acknowledging that they are overturning the will of the people and risking widespread outrage and disillusionment within the party. Many ordinary Americans have spent lots of money, time, and emotional energy supporting either Obama or Clinton--they will not be too pleased of their hard work is overturned by a handful of party fat cats all Tammany Hall style. And so Obama will continue to vie for this most-delegates/most-states/most-votes trifecta.
The Clinton campaign, of course, is aware of the situation and is trying its hardest to prevent Obama from doing this. Obama has already clinched the battle for most contests won--he has 28 compared with Clinton's 15, with 12 remaining. Not all data is available for the popular vote, but at this point Obama leads by about a half million votes, roughly 13 mil to Clinton's 12.4. And there is now widespread agreement amongst election mavens that, due to the proportional way that delegates are awarded, Clinton would need to win by unrealistically high margins in the remaining contests in order overtake Obama in pledged (i.e., non-super, or democratically earned) delegates. For example, this last Tuesday, even with the big win in Ohio Clinton still only netted about a 4 delegate gain on her rival.
She's getting good press right now and has been awarded the status of "having momentum", but the picture for Clinton is still bleak--which might explain why she is openly pursuing the nuclear option of trying to get the delegates from Michigan and Florida seated. For those not abreast, Michigan and Florida broke party rules and held their primaries early this year in order to protest the primary schedule. In solidarity with the Democratic National Committee's decision to follow the rules and ban these states from the convention, all the major candidates--including Obama and Clinton--signed a pledge that they would not "campaign" in those states or "participate in any way" for the primary. Though candidates did raise money in the states, there was no actual campaigning (no calls, no ads, no speeches, etc.).
Hillary Clinton won both states handily, but the contests were hardly legitimate. In Michigan, Obama wasn't even on the ballot--Clinton won 58%-37% against "uncommitted". In Florida both candidates' names were on the ballot, but due to her name recognition, Clinton was able to coast to an easy 16-point victory (indeed, Obama's pattern has been to start from behind in a state and close the margin with Clinton rapidly as his campaign picks up steam and he becomes more familiar to voters). In both contests, many supporters for both sides didn't show up to the polls because they were told that their votes wouldn't count anyway.
Before the results of these so-called "beauty-contest" primaries, there was not a peep from the Clinton campaign as to the fairness of the DNC ruling to strip the states of delegates--certainly, the fact that she signed the pledge and didn't campaign there seemed to be indication enough that she agreed with the DNC's decision. However--and with a degree of chutzpah that is rapidly becoming par for the course in the Clinton campaign--after the contests resolved in her favor, she suddenly began to question whether voters in Michigan and Florida were being disenfranchised, and openly requested that the delegates be counted at the convention. From the New York Times:
It is hard for me to believe that Clinton is unaware of how damaging this is, and possibly will be, to the Democratic Party. If her gambit fails, then she will have needlessly dragged out a long and bitter primary, giving McCain time to consolidate his base as well as ammunition to use in the general election (McCain can now quote Clinton as saying that, whereas McCain has a lifetime of experience and is therefore qualified to be commander-in-chief, Obama has nothing but a speech in 2002 under his belt--ouch). If she wins, she will have alienated the largest and most motivated youth vote in decades, and will have appeared to the African American community to have viciously stolen the nomination from the first viable black Presidential candidate in history. Moreover, the conservatives and independents that Obama has drawn to the Democratic side will flock to McCain. In short: she will have gained the nomination at the expense of hobbling her party.
If Obama secures his most-delegates/most-votes/most-states trifecta and he still loses the nomination based on the whim of the superdelegates, I will be angry and disappointed--but ultimately I will still probably soldier on through to November and cast my ballot for the Democratic side. However, if Clinton only pulls off the superdelegate coup because she was able to reinstate Michigan and Florida, then I am going to have an awful difficult time voting for her in the general election. There are simply limits to far how you can go to secure the nomination, how vicious the internecine battles can get. For her to steal the nomination from Obama in an eerie echo of Bush-Gore 2000 would be too much for me and many other Democrats to bear; it would destroy the party.
As a final note, I will mention that it looks like the DNC and the outlaw states are trying to hash-out a do-over scheme of some kind--there's been talks of holding primaries or caucuses in the two states. This might be a good compromise: even though the rules are the rules and Michigan and Florida willfully broke them, some magnanimity on the issue might be wise so as not to alienate Democrats in these states come general election time.
The Obama campaign knows that if it can finish the race with more delegates, more states won, and more popular votes, then it will be virtually impossible for the superdelegates to side with Clinton without acknowledging that they are overturning the will of the people and risking widespread outrage and disillusionment within the party. Many ordinary Americans have spent lots of money, time, and emotional energy supporting either Obama or Clinton--they will not be too pleased of their hard work is overturned by a handful of party fat cats all Tammany Hall style. And so Obama will continue to vie for this most-delegates/most-states/most-votes trifecta.
The Clinton campaign, of course, is aware of the situation and is trying its hardest to prevent Obama from doing this. Obama has already clinched the battle for most contests won--he has 28 compared with Clinton's 15, with 12 remaining. Not all data is available for the popular vote, but at this point Obama leads by about a half million votes, roughly 13 mil to Clinton's 12.4. And there is now widespread agreement amongst election mavens that, due to the proportional way that delegates are awarded, Clinton would need to win by unrealistically high margins in the remaining contests in order overtake Obama in pledged (i.e., non-super, or democratically earned) delegates. For example, this last Tuesday, even with the big win in Ohio Clinton still only netted about a 4 delegate gain on her rival.
She's getting good press right now and has been awarded the status of "having momentum", but the picture for Clinton is still bleak--which might explain why she is openly pursuing the nuclear option of trying to get the delegates from Michigan and Florida seated. For those not abreast, Michigan and Florida broke party rules and held their primaries early this year in order to protest the primary schedule. In solidarity with the Democratic National Committee's decision to follow the rules and ban these states from the convention, all the major candidates--including Obama and Clinton--signed a pledge that they would not "campaign" in those states or "participate in any way" for the primary. Though candidates did raise money in the states, there was no actual campaigning (no calls, no ads, no speeches, etc.).
Hillary Clinton won both states handily, but the contests were hardly legitimate. In Michigan, Obama wasn't even on the ballot--Clinton won 58%-37% against "uncommitted". In Florida both candidates' names were on the ballot, but due to her name recognition, Clinton was able to coast to an easy 16-point victory (indeed, Obama's pattern has been to start from behind in a state and close the margin with Clinton rapidly as his campaign picks up steam and he becomes more familiar to voters). In both contests, many supporters for both sides didn't show up to the polls because they were told that their votes wouldn't count anyway.
Before the results of these so-called "beauty-contest" primaries, there was not a peep from the Clinton campaign as to the fairness of the DNC ruling to strip the states of delegates--certainly, the fact that she signed the pledge and didn't campaign there seemed to be indication enough that she agreed with the DNC's decision. However--and with a degree of chutzpah that is rapidly becoming par for the course in the Clinton campaign--after the contests resolved in her favor, she suddenly began to question whether voters in Michigan and Florida were being disenfranchised, and openly requested that the delegates be counted at the convention. From the New York Times:
Ever since it became apparent that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton would win the primary vote in Florida on Jan. 29, when she took nearly 50 percent of the 1.7 million Democratic votes to Mr. Obama’s 33 percent, she has insisted that the state’s delegates be seated at the convention....Phil Singer, spokesman for the Clinton campaign, said today that the senator stands by her wish — restated as recently as yesterday — to have the delegates seated.Not only is such a position blatantly self-serving and unfair, but it would require the Democratic Party to effectively change the rules midstream in order to help a specific candidate.
It is hard for me to believe that Clinton is unaware of how damaging this is, and possibly will be, to the Democratic Party. If her gambit fails, then she will have needlessly dragged out a long and bitter primary, giving McCain time to consolidate his base as well as ammunition to use in the general election (McCain can now quote Clinton as saying that, whereas McCain has a lifetime of experience and is therefore qualified to be commander-in-chief, Obama has nothing but a speech in 2002 under his belt--ouch). If she wins, she will have alienated the largest and most motivated youth vote in decades, and will have appeared to the African American community to have viciously stolen the nomination from the first viable black Presidential candidate in history. Moreover, the conservatives and independents that Obama has drawn to the Democratic side will flock to McCain. In short: she will have gained the nomination at the expense of hobbling her party.
If Obama secures his most-delegates/most-votes/most-states trifecta and he still loses the nomination based on the whim of the superdelegates, I will be angry and disappointed--but ultimately I will still probably soldier on through to November and cast my ballot for the Democratic side. However, if Clinton only pulls off the superdelegate coup because she was able to reinstate Michigan and Florida, then I am going to have an awful difficult time voting for her in the general election. There are simply limits to far how you can go to secure the nomination, how vicious the internecine battles can get. For her to steal the nomination from Obama in an eerie echo of Bush-Gore 2000 would be too much for me and many other Democrats to bear; it would destroy the party.
As a final note, I will mention that it looks like the DNC and the outlaw states are trying to hash-out a do-over scheme of some kind--there's been talks of holding primaries or caucuses in the two states. This might be a good compromise: even though the rules are the rules and Michigan and Florida willfully broke them, some magnanimity on the issue might be wise so as not to alienate Democrats in these states come general election time.
Not Gonna Happen
A Kentucky lawmaker wants to make it illegal to post comments anonymously on the internet.
Tip: if you ever want to get made fun of a lot on the internet, go get elected to Congress and try to pass a bill that outlaws anonymous posting. Another valid approach is to explain that the internet is in fact a vast network of pneumatic tubes in an argument against net neutrality. (Well ok, I made up the "pneumatic" part, but only because I wanted to instill into your heads that satisfying thoomp sound.)
Tip: if you ever want to get made fun of a lot on the internet, go get elected to Congress and try to pass a bill that outlaws anonymous posting. Another valid approach is to explain that the internet is in fact a vast network of pneumatic tubes in an argument against net neutrality. (Well ok, I made up the "pneumatic" part, but only because I wanted to instill into your heads that satisfying thoomp sound.)
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
A bit of a stretcher
Harvard professor Orlando Patterson, who has spent his "life studying the pictures and symbols of racism and slavery", thinks he sees a racist subtext in Clinton's "3 a.m." or "red telephone" ad:
Patterson sets the bar for racism so low that any serious accusation of racism on the part of Clinton becomes absurd. By so dramatically and loudly trumpeting such a baseless charge of racism, he cheapens the public discourse on race and does a disservice to those with legitimate protests against real racism.
...[W]hen I saw the Clinton ad’s central image — innocent sleeping children and a mother in the middle of the night at risk of mortal danger — it brought to my mind scenes from the past. I couldn’t help but think of D. W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation,” the racist movie epic that helped revive the Ku Klux Klan, with its portrayal of black men lurking in the bushes around white society. The danger implicit in the phone ad — as I see it — is that the person answering the phone might be a black man, someone who could not be trusted to protect us from this threat.Oh, come on. That this was an ad attacking Obama's alleged inexperience is beyond any reasonable doubt; you would have to be trying very, very hard to see any kind of racial component to it. His interpretation of the ad is, to begin with, tenuous at best: the generic images of canonically white, blonde children imply the threat of the dangerous black man, he says. But then he seriously undermines even this by pointing out that some of the children don't even look white at all--to him they "seem vaguely Latino". So it would appear that, for Patterson, any generic image of a non-black child whatsoever automatically implies the racist concept of the threatening black man.
Patterson sets the bar for racism so low that any serious accusation of racism on the part of Clinton becomes absurd. By so dramatically and loudly trumpeting such a baseless charge of racism, he cheapens the public discourse on race and does a disservice to those with legitimate protests against real racism.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Evolving the campaign
Carlos has the idea that to really deliver on his message of change, Obama should leverage his massive campaign resources to start producing real results right now, even before he is elected:
There would also be a lot of other benefits. Clinton's primary rebuttal against Obama's "movement for change" argument is that it is nothing but empty rhetoric--flowery and nice, sure, but completely ineffective in a nasty political reality that requires "hard work" and "taking on the Republican machine". Obama would be turning Clinton's argument on its head. "Look," he'd say, "you say I'm all talk--fine. But while you were spending $100,000 on an attack ad in Pennsylvania, my campaign decided instead to help build low-income housing in Philadelphia and to raise funds for a struggling veteran's hospital in Pittsburgh. My 'talk' has resulted in bricks and mortar and hospital beds--what has yours accomplished?" I'm not sure what she could say to this.
Moreover, the whole concept works to Obama's advantage because it--like Obama's candidacy--is in some sense extra-political. Obama frequently claims that he will "transcend" partisan politics by bringing in fresh players to the democratic process and instituting change on a level not possible within the current political framework. Coming together to do community work wouldn't be about the political goal of electing Obama, per se--it would be about the more primal, pre-political desire to work with fellow Americans of all ideologies toward a goal that everyone shares and really believes in.
The press would eat it up. To my knowledge, no campaign has ever done community work unrelated to the campaign to demonstrate a point about itself. Even if Clinton accuses the Obama campaign of cynical motivations, of staging a publicity stunt--who cares? Obama can say with a smile that even when he's cynical he brings people together. He can mock Clinton's distorted, Washington-poisoned worldview, where "integrity" means sliming your political opponents to the max and "cynicism" means organizing people in the community for change.
And, of course, some veterans and low-income individuals might appreciate the effort, too--no matter who gets elected in the end.
It is a necessary evolution of his message, but luckily for Obama, it's also within reach if he acts soon. In this age of gigantic campaign bank accounts (Obama's in particular), and with his fervent support from young liberals and other political newcomers, he is in a unique position to convert his followers into organizers for more than just getting out the vote....I think this is a great idea, and jibes particularly well with the sort of out-of-the-box/bottom-up thinking that has characterized the Obama campaign from the beginning. Obama has always claimed that he is but a figurehead for a movement, a grass-roots movement of ordinary people who are desperately worried about the direction of their country and who, if sufficiently well-organized, can usher in a new era of less divisive, more effective politics. If he could actually mobilize his supporters to implement significant local improvements in communities across the nation during the campaign, he would empirically vindicate his own theory of change--he would be demonstrating, in real time, the power of "ordinary people" to work together to achieve "extraordinary things".
If the Obama campaign organized an event to raise funds for clinics that accept the uninsured in my city, I would be there in a heartbeat, and I'd stand by that campaign through thick and thin. But until he turns his message into action, my support for him will be timid and fleeting.
There would also be a lot of other benefits. Clinton's primary rebuttal against Obama's "movement for change" argument is that it is nothing but empty rhetoric--flowery and nice, sure, but completely ineffective in a nasty political reality that requires "hard work" and "taking on the Republican machine". Obama would be turning Clinton's argument on its head. "Look," he'd say, "you say I'm all talk--fine. But while you were spending $100,000 on an attack ad in Pennsylvania, my campaign decided instead to help build low-income housing in Philadelphia and to raise funds for a struggling veteran's hospital in Pittsburgh. My 'talk' has resulted in bricks and mortar and hospital beds--what has yours accomplished?" I'm not sure what she could say to this.
Moreover, the whole concept works to Obama's advantage because it--like Obama's candidacy--is in some sense extra-political. Obama frequently claims that he will "transcend" partisan politics by bringing in fresh players to the democratic process and instituting change on a level not possible within the current political framework. Coming together to do community work wouldn't be about the political goal of electing Obama, per se--it would be about the more primal, pre-political desire to work with fellow Americans of all ideologies toward a goal that everyone shares and really believes in.
The press would eat it up. To my knowledge, no campaign has ever done community work unrelated to the campaign to demonstrate a point about itself. Even if Clinton accuses the Obama campaign of cynical motivations, of staging a publicity stunt--who cares? Obama can say with a smile that even when he's cynical he brings people together. He can mock Clinton's distorted, Washington-poisoned worldview, where "integrity" means sliming your political opponents to the max and "cynicism" means organizing people in the community for change.
And, of course, some veterans and low-income individuals might appreciate the effort, too--no matter who gets elected in the end.
wtf?
Er, so, apparently New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer... buys prostitutes? The story is developing, but you know it's big news: the Drudge Report has an animated GIF of a siren on the top of the page:
My calling?
Dudes blogging in some house all day in Washington DC? Sounds good to me. Not sure what I'd have to offer in the midst of so many Ivy over-achiever types--probably my only competitive advantage would be that I'm a lot funnier than they are--and that might not even be true.
Hm..
Hm..
Abort! Abort!
Hillary Clinton's campaign honcho Terry McAuliffe abruptly terminates an interview with Bill Maher, moments after taunting Maher for not being "tough":
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Eschewing pork versus merely chewing it
Even Robert Novak seems to acknowledge that the GOP can no longer claim to be the party of fiscal responsibility, suggesting that the Democrats may well be the ones to clamp down on earmark spending:
The GOP may be falling behind the Democrats, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi moving toward a moratorium. In the Senate, courageous freshman Democrat Claire McCaskill of Missouri supports the DeMint amendment. She could be joined by her choice for president, Barack Obama. These developments encouraged Flake to say: "If Democrats actually move ahead with an earmark moratorium before Republicans, the Democrats will get the credit for eliminating earmarks, and, frankly, they'll deserve it."
Thorny rejoinders
Charlotte Allen's dumb article has provoked lots of delicious reactions (besides my own). See here, here, and especially here if interested.
This is the sound of a political ad backfiring
It turns out that the little sleeping girl in Clinton's now-infamous "3 a.m. ad" is today an 18-year-old precinct captain for the Obama campaign:
The file footage was originally shot for a railroad company advertisement. The Clinton campaign bought it from Getty Images.Knowles, a senior at Bonney Lake High School who turns 18 next month, has been campaigning for Obama. She attended his rally at Seattle's KeyArena on Feb. 8. Her mother, Pam, told The News Tribune of Tacoma that Casey cried and trembled after shaking the candidate's hand.
The next day, she was a Democratic precinct captain for the state's caucuses. If she plays her cards right, she could go to the national convention.
Here's the CNN story (which, I might add, has an inscrutable--and awesome--graphic at the end that patriotically implores you to rate the video... presumably it is designed by "PatriotsMaxim" himself):
A shocking philosophical discovery
A libertarian discovers in the wisdom of his old age that there's actually a subtle downside to libertarianism:
Many of us have had a change of heart about government action when we encounter unexpected and otherwise insurmountable challenges. Consider the value that my friend, Dennis Sanders, found in Minnesota’s Medicaid program when he needed its assistance back in 1996. Or my experience, when I realized that had it not been for government action, our only child, who suffers from a severe case of Tourette Syndrome, might never have had access to the medications that help him lead a reasonably normal, productive life.These cases and others suggest that “pure” libertarian conservatives are comprised of those who have not yet hit the brick wall of non-solutions; have not yet needed (nor had an opportunity to appreciate) just how valuable government “interference” can sometimes be.
This strikes me as just silly. It's as if a life-long vegetarian were to realize that a crucial trade off of vegetarianism is that you must forgo the enjoyment of meat.
God is a fuddy-duddy
There have been a few hysterical editorials about Harvard's decision to close off its gym to men for a few hours a week in order to accommodate Muslim women who are forbidden from being viewed by male eyes whilst in workout clothes.
Personally, I think it's probably not that big a deal one way or another whether Harvard extends this special favor to the Muslims on campus. If everyone's fine with it, then, fine, do your thing. However, if lots of people are being inconvenienced by the women's-only hours, then I think that the Muslim women will just have to figure something else out. If you want to practice a religion with all sorts of crazy restrictions, you're free to do so--and you're certainly free to ask communities and institutions to make special exceptions for you to accomodate your lifestyle.
But those communities and institutions are also free to decline making special exceptions to accomodate your religious idiosyncrasies.
Personally, I think it's probably not that big a deal one way or another whether Harvard extends this special favor to the Muslims on campus. If everyone's fine with it, then, fine, do your thing. However, if lots of people are being inconvenienced by the women's-only hours, then I think that the Muslim women will just have to figure something else out. If you want to practice a religion with all sorts of crazy restrictions, you're free to do so--and you're certainly free to ask communities and institutions to make special exceptions for you to accomodate your lifestyle.
But those communities and institutions are also free to decline making special exceptions to accomodate your religious idiosyncrasies.
Opportunity cost: the details
This AP article gives a good run-down of all of the various estimates for the cost of the wars. The so-called money-quote:
In 2008, its sixth year, the war will cost approximately $12 billion a month, triple the "burn" rate of its earliest years, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and co-author Linda J. Bilmes report in a new book.It's a lot of money--what I think about it here.Beyond 2008, working with "best-case" and "realistic-moderate" scenarios, they project the Iraq and Afghan wars, including long-term U.S. military occupations of those countries, will cost the U.S. budget between $1.7 trillion and $2.7 trillion — or more — by 2017.
Interest on money borrowed to pay those costs could alone add $816 billion to that bottom line, they say.
Not a whole lot else she can do at this point
Hillary Clinton's latest tack: keep suggesting that Obama would make a great vice-presidential candidate.
It makes a certain kind of insidious sense: it at once bolsters her argument that Obama isn't quite ready to assume the responsibility of the Oval Office while at the same complimenting him and easing the risk of alienating his supporters. Moreover, it puts in the voters' mind an image that works well with her it's-my-turn/Obama-needs-to-wait-his-turn rationale.
But it won't work. The reason is because the only people who are paying attention to any of this at this point are sophisticated enough to understand exactly what her cynical motives are. Indeed, some prominent Obama supporters have had a few good quips already. Says Tom Daschle:
It makes a certain kind of insidious sense: it at once bolsters her argument that Obama isn't quite ready to assume the responsibility of the Oval Office while at the same complimenting him and easing the risk of alienating his supporters. Moreover, it puts in the voters' mind an image that works well with her it's-my-turn/Obama-needs-to-wait-his-turn rationale.
But it won't work. The reason is because the only people who are paying attention to any of this at this point are sophisticated enough to understand exactly what her cynical motives are. Indeed, some prominent Obama supporters have had a few good quips already. Says Tom Daschle:
"It may be the first time in history that the person who is running number two would offer the person running number one the number two position."Says John Kerry:
"The first threshold question about a vice president is, are you prepared to be president?"Ouch. Still, though, it's better than her fratricidal implication that McCain is better suited to the Presidency than Obama."So on the one end, they are saying he's not prepared to be president. On the other hand, they're saying maybe he ought to be vice president."
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