Quote of the day

"The GOP is as interested in restraining spending as I am in wanting to have sex with women." - Andrew Sullivan

The broken Senate

Via Yglesias, a nice chart that demonstrates that the current abuse of the filibuster is historically unprecedented:



Though today's Republicans are really taking it to the next level, I'd say that the use of the filibuster has been problematic since the 1990s. Not coincidentally, there has not been any major tax increase or entitlement reforms (with the possible exception of Clinton's welfare reform) since that time. Those are the politically difficult laws to pass that will simply never get through the Senate so long as the minority party can block it with a mere 41 votes.

Pardon Me

Why Ariana Huffington is a hack

I don't make it a habit to delve too deeply into the cable news/HuffPo daily news cycle vortex. One of the reasons why is interviews like this with Ariana Huffington. In it, she says that the defeat of health care reform is a "blessing in disguise" for Democrats because it was a politically unpopular bill, and ditching it will better position them for the 2010 races. She does not mention anything substantive about the uninsured Americans that the bill would have aided, or how the legislation would have prevented insurance companies from discriminating based on pre-existing conditions. For her, the highest priority is that Democrats stay in power, and that they don't find themselves on the wrong side of a Zogby poll. It's pure politics, devoid of any substance whatsoever.

Me: I would happily give the Republicans Congress if it meant passing health care and other vital reforms. The proper pattern should be something like this: one party gets a bee in its bonnet. It eventually attracts enough centrists to seize power. It enacts legislation which, due to the sausage-making process, is significantly watered down, thus alienating the original base. But it gets something through which is good enough. Now the party in power no longer has any pressing reason to stay in power. So it treads water, becomes increasingly corrupt and unprincipled, until it loses to the opposing party. And the process repeats.

So, really, staying in power for long stretches of time is inherently a problematic goal for a political party to have. The attitude should be: "let's get the best possible legislation through before they kick our asses out", rather than "let's be sure to circumscribe our agenda so that we can remain in power indefinitely".

We're effed

Well: health care reform is dead. Coakley's loss means that the Democrats have one vote short of a filibuster-proof majority, which is giving centrist Democrats an excuse to run for cover. Democratic support for the bill is caving as speak, as Jim Webb volunteers that there will be no more votes on heath care until Scott Brown is seated, and no less a Massachusettes liberal than Barney Frank rules out this possibility as well. Senator Evan Bayh is already acknowledging the election as a rebuke to the Democratic agenda.

But this whole experience proves something more than a failed attempt by Democrats to reform health care insurance: it shows that the United States government is incapable of passing major legislation that will solve our biggest problems. Health care needs to be reformed, one way or another: its costs are spiraling out of control, and the ranks of the uninsured keep growing. If costs continue growing apace, the federal government will go broke paying for Medicare in the next fifty years.

Of course, broadening health care insurance isn't the only way to solve the looming budget problem; you could go the Republican route, and cut entitlements. The problem is: no Republicans are seriously advocating this. Scott Brown ran on a platform of not reducing a penny of Medicare spending, and he supports Massachusettes' own universal health care program. Indeed, the fact that the Dem's reform package would have resulted in Medicare spending cuts was used by Republicans as a talking point against the legislation. And of course, it was a Republican President and Congress that last decade passed Medicare Part D, the largest expansion of entitlements since the passage of Medicare itself--all of it funded with deficit spending (which is to say, none of it was funded at all).

Now, ultimately this failure is attributable to the rules of the Senate--specifically, the recently adopted practice of requiring a 60 vote supermajority to pass any legislation whatsoever. If a simple majority was all that was needed to get something through, the legislation would have passed in the middle of last year. But so long as this supermajority requirement remains, it will be impossible for either party to pass any legislation that is capable of solving our nation's biggest problems. I think it would behoove the leadership in both parties to agree to abolish the filibuster in a set period of time from now (6 years, say, when it is unknown which party will be in power). Otherwise crucial legislation--whether it is coming from the left or the right--will continue to crash on the shoals of arcane procedural votes in the Senate.

This story will be buried

Scott Horton--one of the few actual journalists left on the planet, it seems--has a new piece in which witnesses step forward to question the official account of the deaths of three inmates held in Gitmo. According to the Navy, the inmates all committed suicide. Simultaneously. And bound their legs and hands together and stuffed rags in their mouths before hanging themselves. A fact which could not be medically verified after the fact because the bodies were returned to their families with the necks removed.

I'll have more to say later. But you really should read the whole thing.

The anti-Leno revolt

The internets have not been kind to Mr. Leno. Via Phil, some folks got wise and started using Hulu tags to comment on the situation:



You can click on the image for a closer view.

Google in over it's head with the Nexus One?

Seems like Google underestimated the amount of business infrastructure that is required in order to be in the cell phone game:

New owners of the Nexus One, the latest touch-screen smartphone to run on Android, Google’s mobile operating system, have found themselves at a loss when it comes to resolving problems with the handset. They cannot call Google for help, and the company warns that it may take up to 48 hours to respond to e-mail messages.

...

...Google, more accustomed to providing minimal support for its free services, has been unprepared to deal with the higher service expectations of customers who are paying as much as $529 for its high-end smartphone.

I think they're going to have to pony up for tech support--which is one of the most costly expenses for the big carriers.

I like this cat

The diner in its natural habitat

Randomly I was looking at a site that had a bunch of tips for waiters, and laughed at this:

When their good food and conversation is over, they will start looking around at other diners or the walls. This can tell you when to clear plates, offer desserts or drop the check.

I just like the idea of diners as these harmless critters that amble in, eat and talk, and then when done just kind of start looking around blankly. Awwwwwwww...

“Hi Nikola, Al Gore wants you to change the numeral one in Brioni.”

Via Ezra Klein, a pretty great story involving Al Gore and fonts.

The Simpsons

The Simpsons turns 20 today. Jonathan Chait tries a bit of analysis:

In the world of the Simpsons, people are capable of bottomless cruelty, greed, and hypocrisy -- indeed, these traits are so widely shared that they go unremarked upon. In this case, Barney is not only launching a competitor to his best friend's livelihood, he's savaging his character on television. And he's attacking him in terms that not only apply more to Barney himself, but utterly define his character -- the only things Barney ever does are be a loser and a boozer.

The show doesn't make a joke about, or even highlight, this violent hypocrisy. It's just accepted. That's how people are. That's why it was such a deadly satire.

I don't know if I buy that. To me, the denizens of Springfield were never ultimately cruel, greedy, or hypocritical--they always redeem themselves in the end. Even in the episode that Chait cites, Mr. Plow, Homer and Barney eventually make up and become friends again. So I kind of don't know what he's talking about.

Moreover, in my opinion, the satirical bite of the Simpsons came not from some cynical portrayal of how "people really are", so much as an irreverent send up television itself and its central place in American society. Recall that when the Simpsons debuted it was pre-Seinfeld, pre-South Park, and during the heyday of the Cosby Show. TV characters never exhibited true dysfunction, did not exhibit the now-familiar American pathologies of overeating, laziness, and basic ignorance. Most importantly, unlike real Americans, the Americans depicted on television never watched television. Whereas the typical American was watching an average of 4 or 5 hours of TV a day, Bill Cosby was spending 5 hours a day kibitzing with Rudy in the living room. The Simpsons was the first to portray Americans as the true television-watching, fast-food eating, pop-culture consumers that they are.

Of course, this is also what made The Simpsons a uniquely post-modern affair. Whereas characters on the Cosby Show and Cheers seemed to live in an idealized alternate reality free of consumerism and pop icons, the characters in the Simpsons traded in them as a matter of course: pop cultural references were the show's trademark. There were parodies of Patton, of the opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and countless other movies; the characters, too, were often parodies of famous people in the old Warner Bros. cartoon style, such as Mayor Quimby standing in for a generic Kennedy (right down to his wife always being shown as dressed in the pink dress and pillbox hat--which is actually pretty morbid now that I think of it) or Karl having a Sly Stallone inflection, or Ranier Wolfcastle as Arnold Schwarzenegger. Part of the game of watching the Simpsons was seeing if you could catch all the references being made.

In any case, personally it feels a little awkward to analyze the Simpsons all academic-like, because it's such an organic part of who I am, and who my friends are. When the Simpsons began, I was 10 years old. Though obviously I didn't understand all the subtle layers of humor at work, I did understand that this is what funny was. I was fluent in the language of Simpsons quotes, and the day after a new episode aired, conversation with my friends before homeroom would consist almost entirely of quoting the best parts of the episode from the night before. It was a universal language, too: everyone from ever click and group had at least a basic knowledge of the Simpsons. And as we all developed our senses of humor, it became clear that we owed a tremendous debt to that show, which traded so much in pop cultural references and absurd tangents.

On a final note, I'll just add that my favorite episode of all time is Homer the Heretic, the one where Homer skips church and ends up having the best day of his life. Off the top of my head, I can think of these choice jokes from that episode:

• God saying to Homer, "I have to go now. I have to appear in a burrito in Mexico."
• "We interrupt this political roundtable to bring you: professional football." The graphic being shown while this is said is two pundits battling on what appears to be a mesa somewhere, one of them brandishing a suitcase and the other, a mace.
• Everyone freezing their butts off in church and reveling in the imagery of hell.
• Homer relecting on the best days of his life, including one of him dancing in a fountain of beer emanating from a crashed beer truck.
• "Rich, creamery butter..."
• Moon waffles, including liquid smoke
• Communing with nature, various birds and forest critters light on Homer's head and shoulders; later, when he's taking a shower, they're still there.

Anyway. Yeah. The Simpsons.

Fallows on the brokenness of the Senate

Again, it all really just boils down to the Senate:

When the U.S. Senate was created, the most populous state, Virginia, had 10 times as many people as the least populous, Delaware. Giving them the same two votes in the Senate was part of the intricate compromise over regional, economic, and slave-state/free-state interests that went into the Constitution. Now the most populous state, California, has 69 times as many people as the least populous, Wyoming, yet they have the same two votes in the Senate. A similarly inflexible business organization would still have a major Whale Oil Division; a military unit would be mainly fusiliers and cavalry. No one would propose such a system in a constitution written today, but without a revolution, it’s unchangeable. Similarly, since it takes 60 votes in the Senate to break a filibuster on controversial legislation, 41 votes is in effect a blocking minority. States that together hold about 12 percent of the U.S. population can provide that many Senate votes. This converts the Senate from the “saucer” George Washington called it, in which scalding ideas from the more temperamental House might “cool,” into a deep freeze and a dead weight.

The Senate’s then-famous “Gang of Six,” which controlled crucial aspects of last year’s proposed health-care legislation, came from states that together held about 3 percent of the total U.S. population; 97 percent of the public lives in states not included in that group. (Just to round this out, more than half of all Americans live in the 10 most populous states—which together account for 20 of the Senate’s 100 votes.) “The Senate is full of ‘rotten boroughs,’” said James Galbraith, of the University of Texas, referring to the underpopulated constituencies in Parliament before the British reforms of 1832. “We’d be better off with a House of Lords."

Of course, the present-day version of the filibuster--where a supermajority of 60 votes is required to get any routine thing passed--is a relatively recent development, emerging only within the last 15 years or so. Still, though, the Senate is almost single-handedly responsible for America's inability to tackle any of its major, long-term problems.

The problem with bank bonuses

An article in the NYT explains how Wall Street bonuses work:

Though Wall Street bankers and traders earn six-figure base salaries, they generally receive most of their pay as a bonus based on the previous year’s performance.

Of course, the problem isn't so much that they are paid millions of dollars when they make lots of money; it's that they aren't penalized millions of dollars when they lose lots of money. It's all upside, never any downside for those guys. And that's what pisses everyone off.

Yet another cool Flash chart from NYT

Netflix movie queue data.

Forget it Jake, it's Iraq

In a NYT op-ed today, a reserve soldier explains that one of the most frustrating things about her time in Iraq was not knowing whether her efforts were having any impact:

In the fantasy, you know exactly what you’ve done, what impact it’s had, and you’ve put smiles on peoples’ faces. But in reality, you don’t necessarily ever get to find out the true impact of your actions. You’re left with questions instead. Did rebuilding all those schools over there have any kind of lasting impact? Did the Iraqis we tried to assist believe that we were sincere in our efforts?

In my hero fantasies, there are no such loose ends or doubts.

Fog of war and all that, but it also reminds me of Chinatown:

EVELYN
 Tell me something -- does this
 usually happen to you, Mr. Gittes?

  GITTES
 What's that, Mrs. Mulwray?

  EVELYN
 -- Well, I'm only judging on the
 basis of one afternoon and an evening,
 but if that's how you go about your
 work, I'd say you're lucky to get
 through a whole day.

  GITTES
  (pouring himself
   another drink)
 -- Actually this hasn't happened
 to me in some time.

  EVELYN
 -- When was the last time?

  GITTES
 Why?

  EVELYN
 Just -- I don't know why.
 I'm asking.

Gittes touches his nose, winces a little.

  GITTES
 It was in Chinatown.

  EVELYN
 What were you doing there?

  GITTES
  (taking a long drink)
 -- Working for the District Attorney.

  EVELYN
 Doing what?

183  Gittes looks sharply at her. Then:

  GITTES
 As little as possible.

  EVELYN
 The District Attorney gives his
 men advice like that?

  GITTES
 They do in Chinatown.

She looks at him. Gittes stares off into the night.

Evelyn has poured herself another drink.

  EVELYN
 Bothers you to talk about it,
 doesn't It?

Gittes gets up.

  GITTES
 No -- I wonder -- could I -- do
 you have any peroxide or something?

He touches his nose lightly.

  EVELYN
 Oh sure. C'mon.

She takes his hand and leads him back into the house.

184  INT. BATHROOM - MIRROR

Gittes pulls the plaster off his nose, stares at it in
the mirror. Evelyn takes some hydrogen peroxide and some
cotton out of a medicine cabinet. Evelyn turns Gittes'
head toward her. She has him sit on the pullman tile
adjacent to the sink.

  EVELYN
 Doctor did a nice job...

She begins to work on his nose with the peroxide. Then
she sees his cheek -- checks back in his hair.--


  EVELYN
  (continuing)
 -- Boy oh boy, you're a mess

  GITTES
 -- Yeah --

  EVELYN
  (working on him)
 -- So why does it bother you to
 talk about it... Chinatown...

  GITTES
 -- Bothers everybody who works
 there -- but to me -- It was --

Gittes shrugs.

  EVELYN
 -- Hold still -- why?

  GITTES
 -- You can't always tell what's
 going on there --

  EVELYN
 ... No -- why was it --

  GITTES
 I thought I was keeping someone
 from being hurt and actually I ended
 up making sure they were hurt.

  EVELYN
 Could you do anything about it?

185  They're very close now as she's going over a mouse very
near his eye.

  GITTES
 Yeah -- make sure I don't find
 myself in Chinatown anymore --
 wait a second --

He takes hold of her and pulls her even closer,

  EVELYN
  (momentarily freezing)
 -- What's wrong?

  GITTES
 Your eye.

  EVELYN
 What about it?

  GITTES
  (staring intently)
 There's something black in the
 green part of your eye.

  EVELYN
  (not moving)
 Oh that... It's a flaw in the
 iris...

  GITTES
 ... A flaw...

  EVELYN
 (she almost shivers)
 ... Yes, sort of a birthmark...

Gittes kisses her lightly, gradually rises until he's
standing holding her. She hesitates, then wraps her arms
around him.

As an aside, I always thought a cool idea would be to make a show--on HBO, say--about Jake Gittes' days on the Chinatown beat (that are only obliquely alluded to in the movie).

NBC continues its "screw the guy in the 12:30 slot" strategy for late-night

Many years ago, NBC screwed David Letterman--who occupied the 12:30am slot after Carson--out of the Tonight Show. Now, it looks like they're going to similarly screw over Conan O'Brien, by pushing the Tonight Show to 12am and putting Leno back at the 11:30 slot with his own half-hour show.

If I were Conan, I'd say "to hell with this" and go grab a proper 11:30 slot at Fox or something.

Countermeasures

This is pretty great.

Down the slippery slope we go

Sullivan talks torture:

Notice again how far down the slippery slope we have gone. Krauthammer's first position was that torture should be restricted solely to ticking time bomb cases in which we knew that a terror suspect could prevent an imminent detonation of a WMD. His position a few years later is that torture should be the first resort for any terror suspect who could tell us anything about future plots. Those of us who warned that torture, once admitted into the mainstream, will metastasize beyond anyone's control now have the example of Charles Krauthammer's arguments to back us up.