Lawyers, Guns and Money: 2009/10

And All That...

>> Saturday, October 31, 2009

Go Ducks, go Phils, go have a safe and happy Halloween!

Open thread for all three...

Daddy Blogging (Special Saturday Edition)

Available at an LGM-approved retailer near you.

By that standard, we're all already everybody else.

I understand from all my email that Jack Cashill has posted another Obama/Ayers article. I wonder what non-tendentious conclusions he'll draw this time?

Ayers and Obama both describe the crisis in the Chicago school system as "perpetual."
Ayers and Obama both complain about increasingly larger educational bureaucracies.
Ayers and Obama both criticize the "status quo."

In short, the liberal politician and the liberal academics both air liberal grievances. For some reason, Cashill finds this compelling. The reason, of course, is that Cashill's not that bright. Need more proof?

Ayers and a '60s radical in Obama's book both bitch about the Man.
Ayers and a '60s radical in Obama's book both think education is a tool belonging to the Man.

Cashill is actually shocked by the fact that Bill Ayers, a '60s radical, makes statements similar to those made by '60s radicals. He believes the fact that Bill Ayers, a '60s radical, and other '60s radical use the same language to be incriminating.

He must be the only person to watch a Cheech and Chong movie sober and wonder, on account of them talking so similarly, whether they weren't actually the same person.

Scozzafava Out

Conservative third-party candidate knocks GOP nominee out of the race in NY-23.

I think we can be pretty confident that this won't be followed by a series of claims about how Republicans are bad for having a "litmus test" on abortion, despite the fact that their position is the minority one...

The Tories and Europe: More of "What the Hell"?

I was going to write something about this, but that's too easy: the "drug czar" of the UK gets the sack for very publicly disagreeing with the Government's drug policy, and terms Gordon Brown and the cabinet "irrational luddites". He has a point, but it's too simple to point out the hilarity of a Government, in its waning days, ignoring its chief scientific advisory panel on drugs. Could they be scrounging for votes instead?

Rather, I'm perplexed by this bit of amateur diplomatic tomfoolery. What the hell is Cameron playing at? First, partially through the hack handedness of the otherwise steady William Hague, shadow foreign minister, Tony Blair's chances of being named the new EU President have faded dramatically. While it looks as though it is typical Euro-dithering that has led to the rejection of a Blair candidacy, it doesn't help to have the opposition in your own country (and likely next Government) publicly reject you.

I have to admit, I don't understand this for two reasons. First, why threateningly come out against one of your own citizens for the top job? It smacks of petty politics domestically, and in to the EU the threatening tone of Hague's remarks instantly remind all and sundry of the not-exactly-cooperative approach adopted by earlier Tory administrations. Second, I don't see the value in European leaders wanting a "chairman rather than a chief". A recognizable, public face as the putative leader or figurehead representing the EU will help not only abroad, but within the EU itself. Not noted for its democratic transparency, distrusted by more than just the British, and perceived to be run by faceless Eurocrats in Brussels, such a "president" would help raise the profile of the EU within the EU.

Then the Tories did themselves no favors with Cameron's recent stunt in writing a letter to the Czech president which appears to be encouraging the Czech president to delay being the final signatory to the Lisbon treaty until after a Tory election victory in (likely) May of 2010. It's always sound to piss off, say, Sarkozy, Merkel, and José Luiz Rodríguez Zapatero, the latter of whom matters because Spain will hold the rotating EU presidency from January to July of 2010. The Tories will already have the lion share of the anti-EU vote in 2010, so I'm not too sure just what they're playing at.

Friday Cat/Freakishly Large Baby Blogging

>> Friday, October 30, 2009

From orrin and henry

Henry -- drugged up and minding his own business -- is harassed by the BOUS.

Friday Daddy Blogging

Miriam and Elisha

What exactly does Joe Lieberman have to do to get sanctioned?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Recall that after, if I may be permitted to reach for le mot juste, thoroughly ratfucking the Dems last November, Lieberman was threatened with the loss of his committee chairmanship, but kept it after promising to be a good boy from here on out.

I guess he has just too much integrity to keep his promises.

Thanks for ruining Halloween, G.D.

Seriously. Now I have to convince my wife to dress up as Hannah Giles.*

*Not really. I'm dressing as one of these Civil War reenactors. Because, as you know, the best costumes always require tedious explanation.

The Will to Stupid

Serwer does the necessary business to this idiotic David Brooks column:

We've been hearing some version of the "is Obama tough enough" argument since he started running for president, and as always, it's really less about Obama's individual tenacity than whether or not he possesses the same sterling moral qualities that led the questioner to their principled beliefs about public policy. In other words, it's not "is Obama tough enough" but "is Obama tough enough to do what I want him to do?" And in this case, Brooks wants Obama to show some Green Lantern-style willpower and let everyone know the U.S. is there to stay indefinitely.

Right. Brooks writes:

I’ve called around to several of the smartest military experts I know to get their views on these controversies. I called retired officers, analysts who have written books about counterinsurgency warfare, people who have spent years in Afghanistan. I tried to get them to talk about the strategic choices facing the president. To my surprise, I found them largely uninterested.

Most of them have no doubt that the president is conducting an intelligent policy review. They have no doubt that he will come up with some plausible troop level.

They are not worried about his policy choices. Their concerns are more fundamental. They are worried about his determination.

These people, who follow the war for a living, who spend their days in military circles both here and in Afghanistan, have no idea if President Obama is committed to this effort. They have no idea if he is willing to stick by his decisions, explain the war to the American people and persevere through good times and bad.

So, in other words, they're actually worried about his policy choices? One choice would imply a lack of determination, while the other choice would reflect more Will, Grit, and Determination than Kaiser Soze? The stupidity here is palpable; if Obama were determined right now to withdraw every last soldier from Afghanistan, he'd earn not a whit of credit from the True Grit Brigade. Determination only, ever means one thing; more troops, more commitment, open ended, with no genuine evaluation of goals, means, or metrics.

I know that you can't expect much from Brooks, or from the rest of the True Grit Brigade, but Jesus; we just had eight years of a President who put grit, determination, and will ahead of any effort to actually evaluate matters of policy, and NO ONE thinks that this brought about good outcomes. Why don't we all get DETERMINED, and GRITTY, and use our INFLEXIBLE WILL to modulate down the stupid just a bit? Wouldn't that maybe be helpful?

Justice: Better Too Late Than Never

Well, it's nice to know that this appalling story at least has a moderately happy ending.

Misogynist Crank of the Day

"A. She Was A Who-were."

I'm surprised Farley -- whose contempt for the man of letters in question might exceed my own -- didn't beat me to this. But via Edroso, academy of the overrated charter member Gore Vidal shares some of his legendary wit on the subject of child rape:

In September, director Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland for leaving the U.S. in 1978 before being sentenced to prison for raping a 13-year-old girl at Jack Nicholson’s house in Hollywood. During the time of the original incident, you were working in the industry, and you and Polanski had a common friend in theater critic and producer Kenneth Tynan. So what’s your take on Polanski, this many years later?

I really don’t give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she’s been taken advantage of?

I’ve certainly never heard that take on the story before.

First, I was in the middle of all that. Back then, we all were. Everybody knew everybody else. There was a totally different story at the time that doesn’t resemble anything that we’re now being told.

What do you mean?

The media can’t get anything straight. Plus, there’s usually an anti-Semitic and anti-fag thing going on with the press – lots of crazy things. The idea that this girl was in her communion dress, a little angel all in white, being raped by this awful Jew, Polacko – that’s what people were calling him – well, the story is totally different now from what it was then.

I can't actually say I'm surprised to hear these sentiments expressed by this prominent "leftist" rather than by a reactionary Alberta judge, but wow. (Trying to pretend that poor Roman was unfairly persecuted for raping a 13-year-old because of homophobia, though, might embarrass even Anne Applebaum.)

Well, This Doesn't Help Turnout

>> Thursday, October 29, 2009

but at least it will SAVE SAVE SAVE £65 million. Because, when the public debt is at some obscene number, and when the annual deficit is approaching 12% of GDP, £65 million will get the UK back on sound financial footing.

Of course, if they're really concerned with turnout, they just might take a peek at an electoral system that affords a strong ruling majority in Parliament based on 35% of the vote.

I'm just sayin' . . .

UPDATE: well, that didn't last long.

Homeopathy is Crap, vol. MMCVIV

This video has been making lots of people laugh and/or seccuss their heads against the wall on the science and med blogs this week. It's almost too painful to watch -- the jaw-dropping butchery of physics is only the beginning -- but there's so much great dope in here, you really have to endure at least through the 6:32 mark -- at which point she finishes explaining that homeopathy works more or less like a bomb you toss at your neighbor's house after he lets his dog shit on your lawn. No, really.

Life imitating art irritating life imitating art.

The premise of Curb Your Enthusiasm, according to James Kaplan's 2004 profile of Larrry David in The New Yorker, is that:

David's character is a semi-retired sitcom mogul who ambles through his inordinately comfortable life, routinely managing to annoy or infuriate everyone around him. This season, some of those people will include the blind, the physically handicapped, and the mentally challenged ... David has a sardonic, slightly depressive presence onscreen, and is quite natural playing his worst self. Some of his finest moments are when he gets into arguments—arguments that he always loses—with children.

In this week's episode, David accidentally urinates on a picture of Jesus, the urine is mistaken for a tear, and in the end, he manages to annoy and infuriate everyone around him. So it goes ... or would have, had he not also managed to annoy and infuriate conservatives who don't watch the show. The Anchoress wants to know:

Would he piss on an image of Obama?

Absolutely. Next question.

Would he piss on an image of Obama?

Absolutely. Crying guy, would you like to say something?

Good people hurt innocent people every day.

Larry David's not good people.

Eventually, their better nature takes over.

He doesn't have one.

They think about how such a cruel and disrespectful act might hurt those they know.

Are you sure you're talking about Larry David here? Because I'm not. Anyone else?

I’ve never seen this show, does anyone know if the assistant is recognizably ethnic? Is this “brave” comedian also taking a swipe at Hispanic (or for that matter Italian or Irish) piety?

First, when you assume that a housekeeper's Hispanic, that makes you the racist. Second, if you want people to respect what you say, don't tell people that your speculation is based on unadulterated ignorance. Third, if you think anyone other than Larry David would be the punchline of an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, you've proven the validity of my previous sentence.

Moreover, if you've been horrified and offended by what Larry David did then congratulations, he just suckered you into participating in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. You're no longer the audience: you are, in effect, on the show.

Dear People Playing the Yankees

Could you please stop with the idiotic baserunning?

Love,
Scott

No, Seriously; Tom Zarek was Frakking Right

And here we are. I'm sitting in a cave with sixteen other people, because our "all terrain portable shelter" blew away in the last windstorm. Who could have guessed that this planet would have areas that had both pleasant summers AND cold, nasty winters? It's not even really winter yet, and I don't want to think about how cold it's going to get in a couple of months. Fortunately, our cave is nice and roomy; we located it back when there were still thirty-five survivors in our group. This'll have to be short, because I'm scribbling it out with the nub of our last pencil. It turns out that you can't actually recharge a laptop in a bonfire.

Like Steve, our "community organizer" said, it was going be a great adventure! I'm guessing Steve thought it was one hell of a great adventure when we were sawing off his foot without anesthetic because we ran out of antibiotics. On the upside, though, we now know that the cliche "you don't have to be faster than the bear; you just have to be faster than Steve," is actually true.

Oh yes, and these "native humans" that we're apparently supposed to be living and breeding with? Problem #1: The smell. Problem #2: The tendency towards anger, violence, and cannibalism. I'll concede, though that I was kind of cheering for the subhuman cannibals when Leoben, our "Human-Cylon Friendship Liason" decided to go and make "friends" with the local tribe. Although I don't have first hand experience, I'm guessing that "taste of raw flesh" is another area in which humans and cylons are indistinguishable.

How do I know that it wouldn't have been this bad if we'd followed Tom Zarek? Because it's literally impossible for it to have been any worse than this. That's a scientific and mathematical truth; I proved it on this cave wall, which I can't show you because the fire is just as effective at recharging my camera phone as it is with my laptop. But really, who needs the mathematical proof? Is there anyone who still believes we're better off for following Roslin-Adama? For one, Tom Zarek didn't take hallucinogenic medications. For another, he didn't take important policy advice from what was apparently a collective figment of the senior leadership's imagination. Tom Zarek wouldn't have decided to just land on a random planet and call it "Earth," and he sure as hell wouldn't have decided to disperse the entire population, sans microwave, to the furthest ends of said planet. And Tom Zarek would not have given the most advanced ship in our fleet to the Cylons. Who's to say that they won't change their mind and come back here and kill us all? We drove our entire fleet into the Sun because somebody was afraid we'd change our minds, and then we just let the Centurions take their ship away?

And so, I want to hear from all my critics: Are you happy with this outcome? Are you pleased with the decisions of the Adama-Roslin clique? What, precisely, did you think that your crazy, hallucinating, Cylon appeasing leadership was planning to do with us? I may not have long to live; I'm number six in the "lottery", and I'm betting that we'll get to at least ten this winter, but I'd at least like the satisfaction of hearing that I was right about Roslin-Adama.

Colonial Citizen Concerned that He's Not Going to Get Enough of What the Bear Left of Steve

Death Penalty blogging

At the horror show that is death penalty jurisprudence in the state of Texas has been getting some attention around here, I remember that I have been remiss in not giving a plug to a unique and excellent blog on the death penalty, Executed Today. Every day, the anniversary of a historical execution (or occasionally near execution) is noted and detailed. (Their post on Willingham predated The New Yorker piece by 18 months). They've been working away at this project for two years this halloween, and managed to put together detailed posts just about every day.

The More Things Change...

Via Chet, this is kind of eery/scary.

Overmanaging

Tim Marhcman has an excellent piece noting that the superficially numbers-savvy Joe Girardi is actually a much worse percentage manager than the folksy-seeming Charlie Manuel:

The quintessential Girardi ploy came last Friday, in Game 5 of the American League Championship Series. The Yankees were down one run with two outs in the top of the ninth inning when the Angels walked Alex Rodriguez.

[...]

This is no nitpick or isolated incident. Throughout the playoffs, Girardi has been allowing moderately decent starter A.J. Burnett to pitch to his own personal catcher—exiling starter Jorge Posada—because of the "rhythm" that Burnett enjoys with scrub Jose Molina. (Burnett walked five and hit two in his first start. Some rhythm!)

The curious thing about these inane moves is that they don't—at all—match up with Girardi's reputation as a forward thinker steeped in statistical nuance. There's nothing more old school than pinch running on a hunch or citing the chemistry between a pitcher and catcher as a reason to bench one of your best hitters. The Yankee manager's overarching philosophy, then, seems to have less to do with statistics than with the notion that a manager needs to make slick maneuvers to win ballgames.

[...]

Manuel's general understanding that baseball is about players throwing and hitting and catching a ball is in perfect accord with the most sophisticated study of the sport. So is his simple insistence that players should be judged by more information rather than less. The Yankees have the better team, and would probably win the World Series if they were managed by a bag of sunflower seeds. The bag of seeds, at least, wouldn't pinch run for Alex Rodriguez, bench Jorge Posada, or swap relievers because of some minute difference that doesn't really matter. Girardi isn't wholly useless—he's refreshingly willing to use his closer outside of ninth-inning save chances, and he's dismissed calls to tinker with his batting order to aid slumping Nick Swisher. Still, if the World Series comes down to who has the smarter manager, the Phillies will win a second straight championship.

Admittedly, it's important not to exaggerate the importance of this stuff -- as Bill James pointed out in his book on the subject, many great managers have indulged in suboptimal percentage moves to give them more control over the action, and if you do the big things well it doesn't matter that much. But, still, I'm pretty happy to see that Girardi has a utility infielder with good tiny-sample-size numbers against Pedro and Jose Molina in the lineup for Game 2. Although I'm not terribly optimistic about him with his current stuff against this particular lineup, every dead spot Pedro gets helps. Hopefully Petey has another seven good innings in him...

"This verdict is written on a cocktail napkin. And it still says guilty. And guilty is spelled wrong."

"With Me As Your Law...Talkin' Guy, Your Railroad to the Death Chamber is Ready!"

It's bad enough that various state officials conspired to murder Cameron Todd Willingham based on worthless junk science and the implausible testimony of a mentally ill jailhouse snitch. But apparently one reason that they were able to get away with it is that Willingham's attorney seems inept and slaveringly authoritarian even by the standards of Texas death penalty attorneys:

Now, via Ta-Nehisi Coates, I see that Willingham's defense attorney, David Martin, has been interviewed by CNN's Anderson Cooper, and his belligerent insistence on Willingham's guilt is, if anything, more shocking than Jackson's blase acceptance of having sent a man to death on the basis of faulty evidence.
Martin, who is in no way a trained arson investigator--let alone a fire scientist--explains that he bought some carpet, poured lighter fluid on it, and set it aflame and it looked "just exactly like the carpet in Todd Willingham's house." On this basis, he concluded, "There was no question whatsoever he was guilty," adding, "That's why they found him guilty, I think, in under 30 minutes." (The quality of his defense obviously couldn't have played a role.)

As Orr says, "see how many times you have to remind yourself that this man was Willingham's defense attorney:"

Can something be unsurprising and still shocking?

Did the NBA quash the publication of a Random House book?

>> Wednesday, October 28, 2009

According to this story, that's what happened.

The most disturbing aspect of Deadspin's account is that apparently the NBA didn't claim that particular statements in the book were inaccurate. (Indeed it's not clear that anyone in the league office has even seen a copy of the book). The league's lawyers simply told Random House that if it went ahead with the book's publication the league would file a libel suit. Obviously Random House shouldn't be publishing libelous material, but a book like this doesn't get to within a month of publication at a major publisher without everything in it being vetted by the publisher's legal department.

I've always been puzzled by how little of a hit the NBA took from the Tim Donaghy scandal. In theory this should have been one of the worst PR nightmares a professional sports league could suffer: to have one of its officials exposed as a compulsive gambler who was betting on games that he himself was officiating. In practice the league seems to have suffered no measurable damage.

That might change if Donaghy's allegations, made in court filings by his lawyer and elaborated on in the quashed book, that the sixth game of the 2002 Western Conference Finals was fixed, turn out to be plausible.

Now on the one hand, as NBA commissioner David Stern points out, Donaghy's credibility is low. On the other hand, the officiating in that game could have turned Dick Cheney into a 9/11 Truther.

But first Donaghy has to find a publisher who doesn't take orders from David Stern's lawyers.

Laedit te quaedam mala fabula, qua tibi fertur valle sub alarum trux habitare caper.*

Because the world needs more parodies of Victor Davis Hanson:

Morituri te salutant

The Victory Column and vero possumus megalomania of 2008 have now led to the deification of Obama as our new Caesar, man of letters (who, in the ancient tradition, enslaved a million in Gaul), and to his communications czar’s praising the embattled Mao (her favorite “political philosopher”) for leading China’s Communist legions to glorious victory over those running-dog Nationalists. Add in the classical-column props at the convention and the Moses-like talk about the seas’ receding and the planet’s cooling, and I think this administration assumes we have a Holy Man in the White House. And when you consider the depiction of Fox News as heresy, Rush as the anti-Christ, and the NEA as the medieval church, it all gets, well, sort of creepy.

The above, of course, is renowned military historian and classical scholar Victor Davis Hanson obliging the world. He leads with a Latin quotation so esoteric only people who have ~~studied classical Latin oratory for decades~~ seen Gladiator can recognize the import of its implied "Ave Obama." Or not. Trotting out some of the only Latin his readers know means he needs a shoehorn to make his metaphor relevant: who are the "saluting" folks "about to die"? They are saluting Obama and are about to die for his entertainment, so they can't be Joe Lieberman and the rest of the Democratic Party, as that wouldn't entertain the President. They could be Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Newt Gingrich, but Victor Davis Hanson doesn't belong to the group of people currently enjoying that particular spectacle (that would be us).

See, this is the problem with trotting out random bits of Latin in the service of a hopelessly muddled metaphor: you think you're impressing people who know more than you, when in truth you're only impressing people who don't know Latin. [Edited to remove an unintentional insult.]

*cf lines 5 and 6

World Serious

I think whatever of my colleagues characterized this article on Twitter as "World Series that don't include the Yankees invariably suck" was actually being unfair (although it would be an accurate summary of this one.) Rather, Kepner was saying that recent world Series have sucked because they've sucked, and about that he's certainly been correct. Most people seem to think that this one, featuring the best team in baseball against the defending World Champion, will be different.

Maybe. Certainly, in the abstract, the Phillies are a much more serious threat than the Angels. On paper, they can fight the Yankee rotation to a draw. Unlike the Twins, they have more than one premium hitter; unlike the Angels, their middle-of-the-order hitters have real power and don't see taking pitches as a slur on their masculinity or something. So why I do I see this Series as more likely to be another dud than a classic? I don't like the matchup for Philadelphia at all. For at least 4 and as many as 5 of the games (plus many game situations in all the games), the Phillies will have Willie Bloomquist playing first base and hitting cleanup, along with many other lefties with less extreme career splits. It's true that the Phillies handled lefties OK this year, but I suspect that's a function of facing a lot of marginal southpaws, which isn't an issue here (and, despite their success, they've had huge platoon shifts against higher-quality postseason pitchers so far.) So while against a normal staff the Phillies wouldn't have a dramatically worse offense than the Yankees, in this Series they might, and they also mean that Giradi's Larussian wankery might be a net positive -- unlike Tracy, Howard will be facing a lefty or the lefty-killing Rivera in most late-inning ABs. And then there's the bullpens, which doomed the Twins and Angels. I know we're expected to believe that the Phillies closer with the 59+ ERA this year has turned it around, and he certainly has the ability to be a very good closer. Between him and by far the greatest closer in history I know who I'm betting on.

So while I believe there will be a lot of close games, my bet is that the Yankees win most of them quickly. Aside from Lidge, the key players if the Phillies are to thwart this appalling outcome: Pedro, Werth, and Rollins (who needs to snap out of it.) YANKEES IN 5.

The Success of Moneyball

Whatever the limitations of his baseball knowledge, Matt is in fact correct about Buzz Bissinger's latest silly anti-Billy Beane screed.

The biggest problem with Bissinger's rant is that he doesn't seem to understand that the core of the philosophy laid out in Moneyball was arbitrage: that is, teams with lower payrolls had to focus on skills that were undervalued by teams with higher payrolls. Beane would have been proven wrong if it turned out that on-base percentage and power weren't in fact undervalued but were already priced correctly. But this, of course, if manifestly false. The most successful regular season franchise in the last decade, the Yankees, have emphasized working long counts and power throughout the Brian Cashman era. The defending champion Phillies are a power and walks based offense. The Red Sox, with two World Championships in the last five years, literally hired Bill James. So it's not that Beane was wrong; it's that the arbitrage opportunity has vanished. (Nothing in Moneyball said that having more money wasn't an advantage.) Conversely, one franchise in baseball has a Process in place representing Bissinger's alleged beloved values of explicitly ignoring sabermetric evidence and focusing on grittitude, clucthiosity, and the Enduring Wisdom of Old-Time Baseball Men: Mr. Dayton Moore and the Kansas City Royals. We know how that's working out.

None of this is to say that Beane is beyond criticism; his talent judgment has often been shaky in the last couple years, and while he's had a brilliant run it may be time for him to move on. Bissinger is also right that his focus on performance over skills in drafting probably went too far. But looking at the best organizations in baseball is a vindication of Moneyball, not a repudiation.

Ideas on Toughness...

Indeed; and of course it's even worse if establishing a reputation for toughness is simply impossible under any circumstances...

If Democrats Wanted To Be Serious

>> Tuesday, October 27, 2009

This wouldn't even be debatable. The idea that Senators who vote to filibuster major initiatives of the party -- filibusters that are highly deleterious not only on the policy merits and for democracy but politically -- should be entitled to special policy-making privileges from the party is absurd. (For Lieberman, of course, this doesn't go far enough; his office should be transferred to a broom closet somewhere in Camden.) It should also be noted that while there may be certain risks in alienating Senators in red states, this doesn't apply at all to Lieberman.

Well, At Least That's Cleared Up

While I'm flying on a NW A-320 tomorrow from the west coast to, presumably, MSP, I now know who will not be piloting the aircraft.

And to think, just the other day in ATL I was lamenting Delta's buyout of "my" airline.

Christbeckmas

My friend Southern Female Lawyer is pretty excited by Glenn Beck's Christmas book, as well as by all the touching and heralding and redeeming that will accompany it.

Meantime, I'll note that the subtitle to Beck's parable -- "A Return to Redemption" -- is quite possibly the silliest thing ever.

Briefly, on the Pro-Israel Point...

I agree with Ackerman and Yglesias that defining "pro-Israel" on the basis of belief in a particular narrative of national foundation is ridiculous and absurd. In addition to being practically nonsensical, such a metric would serve to throw a blanket on genuine historical scholarship of Zionism, the development of the Jewish population within mandate Palestine, and the early Arab-Israeli wars. Although I count myself as a patriotic American, I have few illusions about the validity or accuracy of the mythical narrative of the founding of the United States.

At the same time, I find myself pretty comfortably within the "pro-two state, pro-Israel" faction. The case against the two state solution rests, as far as I can tell, on two arguments. The first is that the creation of Israel represents a historic crime against the Palestinian people, and that this crime should be rectified. The second is that a cosmopolitan, democratic single state covering the territory of Israel/Palestine is possible, and is both ideologically and practically preferable to the division of the area into two states.

Regarding the first argument, I can only say: Meh. The founding of Israel involved brutality, theft, appropriation of land, ethnic cleansing, and murder. It also involved heroism, selflessness, generosity, hard work, and sense of historic destiny. Furthermore, the narrative that developed within Israel regarding the founding emphasizes the second set of traits at the expense of the first. These two facts distinguish Israel from approximately zero nation-states in the international system. Statebuilding and consolidation is brutal, murderous work; every major modern nation-state has bloody hands, and every modern nation-state has developed a narrative that de-emphasizes the brutality of its founding. The historic crime of Israel's founding, such that it was, is different only in that it was more recent than the crimes associated with the development of Russia, Japan, France, the United States, and so forth. The crimes serve to "delegitimate" Israel only in the sense that such crimes delegitimate the project of the modern nation-state. There's some value to that, but there's little reason to make Israel the focus of such an effort.

Regarding the second, every democracy includes groups of people who are likely to disagree with each other about how the state should be constituted. I think it's fair to say, however, that some groups of people may, as a practical matter, have views regarding the nature of the body politic that are so divergent that there is little point in including them under the same state. I think that Israelis and Palestinians represent, collectively, an example of this; the institutions of a prospective Israeli-Palestinian state seem unlikely to me to function in a very democratic or effective manner. Another way to put this is that I trust neither Israelis nor Palestinians to live in a state with the other; I trust neither to sufficiently respect the rights of the other to make democratic life enjoyable, or even possible.

And so, in this sense, I'm strongly pro-Israel. I think that the achievement of a two-state solution is both possible (although perhaps not forever) and desireable, and that both the Israelis and the Palestinians will benefit from such a separation. Moreover, within this context, I strongly support policies that increase the security and prosperity of both states. I also strongly oppose policies that make the development of two states more difficult; Israeli settlement activity is among the most important of these policies, as is the quasi-eliminationist rhetorical stance adopted by Hamas. Such a settlement would, in some sense, validate the historic crime of Israel's founding, but for me that objection carries very little weight.

He called it "motivationalness," but you get the point

"Motivation" -- already one of the most useless words in the language -- was apparently dragged into the woods and shot yesterday.

After nine months of being nearly invisible -- a big outing has been to a Dallas hardware store for flashlights -- George W. Bush made his debut Monday in his latest incarnation: motivational speaker.

Nearly 15,000 people heard the former president, known more for mangling the English language than for his eloquence, reminisce about his White House days. Bush, who is writing a book about the dozen toughest decisions he had to make, used much of his 28 minutes onstage to talk about lighter topics such as picking out a rug design for the Oval Office that reflected his "optimism."

. . . His speech came after the crowd at the "GET MOTIVATED!" seminar stood up and danced to the Beach Boys' song "Surfin' USA" and batted around beach balls tossed into the audience.

Though I'd prefer he be forced to wear a scarlet letter in public -- you could pretty much have your pick -- I don't begrudge the former president the opportunity to make some money after nearly destroying the universe during his eight years in office. If P.T. Barnum could persuade thousands of people to surrender good money to view a the upper half of baby monkey sewn to the lower half of a fish, we can't be too surprised that 15,000 people might choose to spend a half hour listening to George W. Bush talk about his Scotties, or Jenna's wedding, or whatever the fuck. But I'll admit the "motivational speaker" billing threw me a bit. I'd assumed Bush's post-presidential appearances would more closely resemble the court-mandated speeches a drunk driver who'd obliterated a family of four. But then again, I've never really had an ear for marketing.

Actors May Actually Differ From Characters They Portray

If you understand this, you're probably too smart to write for the Weekly Standard.

In comments, p emphasizes Continetti's argument that to women "fulfillment" can be assumed to come from motherhood, not professional success. Gak. And cer reminds us of this classic scene from Extras which could perhaps be shown to all staffers at the Kristol ship:

Predatory Lenders

What happened to my old bank provides a pretty instructive example of the practices that contributed to the Bush Depression.

The Story, Not the Facts

That pretty much sums up Milbank. And the story, as always, is that it's awful when dirty hippies occasionally have enough influence to shift policy in a very modestly progressive direction, when influence should be left to more grown-up factions. Now, the insurance companies that buy off Mary Landrieu, there are some interest groups you can set your watch to!

Meanwhile, Olympia Snowe seems to be auditioning for the return of Mouthpiece Theater With Poochie and Rupert Pupkin:

"I still believe that a fallback, safety net plan, to be triggered and available immediately in states where insurance companies fail to offer plans that meet the standards of affordability, could have been the road toward achieving a broader bipartisan consensus in the Senate,” she said.

[Rimshot] Try the veal!

At least Harry Reid finally seems to be in on the joke, even if Dana Milbank isn't...

A bit more on visual rhetoric.

>> Monday, October 26, 2009

Since people seemed to like the previous pedagogical post, here's a link to what I'm doing in class tomorrow. (Short version: I inform my students they're all murderers, they rebel, I put them in their place, etc.)

Hack of the Day

Fred Hiatt. "If the cost controls from a public option go away then Congress will magically impose cost controls that affect vested interests even more directly" is a pretty impressive feat of illogic even by Hiatt's standards. It's almost as if Hiatt saw that DFH were in favor of something, needed to develop an ad hoc argument against it, and leaned back on his familar Pain Caucus arguments even though they obviously don't make any sense.

There Is A Crack In Everything

Apparently the ramps in the new Yankee Stadium were made out of paint, breadsticks, and shellac. I wish I could say that their issues with their construction company Valdazzo Brothers Olive Oil symbolizes their World Series odds, but...the Angels delivered a near-death knell to the forces of less evil by not forcing the Yankees to pitch Sabathia. Getting to start Lee against Burnett, the Phils would have been a very live dog; having to face Sabathia 3 games out of 7, much less so.

Griffin, the BNP, and the BBC Redux

>> Sunday, October 25, 2009

I, and several others, suggested that in the wake of Nick Griffin's appearance on the BBC, support for his non-racist British National Party would not appreciably increase. Indeed, Andrew Rawnsley writes a scathing, at times hilarious, piece in "Comment is Free" in today's Observer, in which he admits surprise that Griffin turned out to be "a big, blubbery wuss . . . a nervous, sweaty, shifty, amateurish and confused man, manically grinning when confronted with his back catalogue of repulsive quotes and occasionally venting bursts of incoherent nastiness."

In fact, his own party is critical of his appearance on Question Time for not going far enough, for attempting to portray the Party as modern and moderate, and, worst, for not being prepared: "Maybe some coaching could of been done so that Mr Griffin could of answered any questions articulately."

However, while Rawnsley points out that:

The more people see of the BNP, the more poisonous they will see them to be. I take that view even though they claim – not a boast to take at face value anyway – that they got 3,000 new recruits from a programme watched by an audience of 8 million. So the BNP's "breakthrough moment" won over, on his own figures, less than half of a thousandth of those exposed to its leader.

A YouGov poll conducted for The Times in the aftermath of Question Time has some surprising findings -- surprising if considered without context. It's common for any hyped appearance by political actors to receive a polling bump following said appearance, the most obvious of which is the "convention bounce" that the two nominees for the U.S. Presidential election receive following their convention appearances. The same largely occurs in the UK with the party conferences. I interpret this as no different. Indeed, those who would vote for the BNP if an election were held tomorrow increased from 2% prior to QT to 3% in this poll: neither a large boost, and well within the margin of error for a sample size of around 1300. In other words, meaningless.

More interesting, and likely to scare more people, is that 22% of respondents would "seriously consider" voting for the BNP in an upcoming election. Again, I'm not terribly worried that the UK will suddenly become a fascist state (at least not more of a fascist state, at any rate). We don't know the motivations for these responses, but my strong suspicion is that it has far more to do with the general mood in the UK regarding Parliament and the major parties considering the ongoing MP expenses scandal and a general if perhaps unarticulated disquiet with the electoral system. On the latter, the third Labour government was elected with only a little more than 35% of the vote in 2005, meaning 65% of those who voted voted against Labour and Tony Blair / Gordon Brown. Hence I suspect that this vague support for the BNP is a classic manifestation of protest voting, which will (and has been -- the EUP election as an example) manifest itself to greater degrees in second-order elections: those that don't matter as much if at all.

Again, Rawnsley:

The BNP has two main sources of support. At the core are extreme racists. The greater and softer section comes from disaffected voters who feel ignored and disenfranchised by the conventional parties and to whom the BNP presents itself as a stick with which to beat the political establishment.

Hence, I'm not terribly worried about Griffin's QT appearance dramatically inflating support for the BNP. There were only 3,000 more membership applications filed out of the 8 million viewers, and his own party isn't terribly happy with his performance.

The only people happy with the performance are likely the BBC.

Canadian Popular Song: Sublime And Ridiculous

I saw Leonard Cohen on Friday; more later, although my bottom-line reaction would be to say that it exceeded even the very high expectations established by the consensus of previous attendees. When entering the concert, however, we were initially -- once for the devil -- in the line for the concert at the Bankrupt Banskter theater at MSG, where the "attraction" was...David Foster and friends. For people who haven't heard of him, let's just say that he's produced so much unlistenable dreck (with, to be fair, some career nadirs for once-gifted artists sprinkled into the mix) that as we speak Slate has commissioned Jonah Weiner to write an article about how he should be considered the equal of Jerry Wexler. And research indicates that his show lives down to expectations: 1)Of the many artistes Phillip Bailey would seem to be by far the most talented one, and 2)two words: Peter Cetera.

"I Swear, I'm Not Making This Up"

If nothing else, Rand Paul's quest for the Senate seat once held by Henry Clay will go down as one of the most entertaining campaigns in American history:

Thank you Jonathan. I met Jonathan a few months ago at a tea party over in Frankfort. The Tea Party Movement seems to be everywhere. In fact, the biggest crowds and meetings that I’ve been to in Kentucky have all been Tea Parties. I had to promise my family one thing when I went out on the road to campaign. I had to promise them that I would never sing. As you can tell, my voice is kind of raspy, so I’m not going to sing. But I do have the lyrics to a song I’d like to tell you. This is a song called Trees, by Rush.

It gets better from there.

Who Knew that Radical Right Wing Nationalists Could Disagree?

Especially when they come from different countries?

Former Ambassador Martin Indyk revealed an interesting wrinkle to the story of Eastern European missile defense system, which the Obama administration canceled last month, a move conservatives have heavily criticized as — what else? — appeasement.

Recounting recent meetings with Israeli national security officials, Indyk said that “the Israelis were upset at the way that Bush had offended Russia with missile defense” in Eastern Europe. The Israelis, like many Americans and most of the rest of the world, saw the deployment of untested missile defense technology in Poland and the Czech Republic as needlessly provocative of Russia, whose support is seen as necessary for any effort to bring Iran’s nuclear program under control.

Speaking about President Obama’s engagement policy, Indyk said “The key to this strategy has always been Russia,” because of their close relationship with the Iranians, and Obama “is bringing them [the Russians] around.” After the administration announced the canceling of the missile defense system, Indyk said, the Russians told the Iranians “if you do not go along with the proposal to ship out low enriched uranium” to Russia for reprocessing, “then you will be on your own.”

President Obama’s diplomacy “is about trying to concert the international community into a solid block against the Iranian nuclear program such that the Iranians would see that it is not in their interest to pursue nuclear weapons.” Indyk said “That is what is happening now.”

A simple point but an easy one. Right-wing Israelis can easily afford to hope for the United States to take a neoconnish line on Iran. And right-wing Poles can afford to hope fro the United States to take a neoconnish line on Russia. But the desires of right-wing Israelis are in significant tension with those of right-wing Poles. And officials in the United States of America can’t realistically take a maximalist line on every point of geopolitical tension. Regional powers basically have their priorities set for them by circumstances. But the hegemon has the luxury of deciding what it cares about. That luxury, however, doesn’t eliminate the basic need to decide.

There are some interesting observations to be made here regarding interdependence of commitments. Neoconservatives are HUGE on reputation; a reputation for weakness means that the terrorists will destroy us, while a reputation for strength means that they'll cower in their dark caves until they undergo conversion and emerge as fierce advocates of Reaganomics. Indeed, neoconservatives elevate this conception of reputation above all other diplomatic considerations, such that any move that takes into account the genuine foreign policy concerns of Russia, China, or Iran in fact indicates weakness, and thus should be avoided. This concept achieved a certain Purity of Essence in reference to missile defense; once the technological justification for the Eastern European systems was removed, all that was left was the need to demonstrate our strength to the Russians, which we would accomplish by wasting money on a pointless system that most Eastern Europeans didn't want.

For American neocons, the pro-Israel logic worked as followed: If the United States demonstrated an irrational commitment to a useless system just to piss off Russia, then it would indicate that the US would pay high costs to do irrational things in support of Israel. If we failed to push forward with the missile system, then our commitment to expensive, irrational programs would be in question, Israeli "will" would fracture, and the Jordanians would push the Israelis into the sea, or something. As all commitments are interdependent, the North Koreans would soon conquer Japan, Turkey would capitulate to Tehran and work to restore the Caliphate, Brazil would elect Hugo Chavez as God Emperor, and Washington State would secede and join Canada.

Of course, real Israelis have to actually live in Israel, and they saw the world a bit differently. Israeli hawks recognize that the US commitment to Israel matters in a non-rhetorical way. The defense system in Poland had no practical, real world impact on Israeli security. Moreover, Israel actually needs to deal with Russia; simply intimidating Moscow into acquiescence isn't on the table. Maybe US flexibility on missile defense wouldn't make the Russians more flexible on Iran, but a US hard line certainly wasn't helping matters. Accordingly, the Eastern European system was worse than useless to the Israelis.

None of this is terribly complicated. These observations are only useful in so far as they fracture the neoconservative vision of seamless alliance of liberty against tyranny, in which American, Israeli, and Polish hawks all have the same interests and policy preferences. It turns out, rather, that neither the Poles nor the Israelis care overmuch about the other; rhetorical support for the neocon vision of liberty/missile defense/bunker busting/awesomeness/sexy/democracy/whiskey collapses in the face of real world material interest. In the end, it's almost as if our allies value material and institutional commitments to their defense more than they value a nebulous American reputation for "toughness".

Am I getting too good at this, or is the stupid just getting easier?

>> Saturday, October 24, 2009

So, I read in the Times that Obama's eliminated some bureaucratic hurdles by declaring the swine flu outbreak a national emergency. His decision makes sense to me, because if flu activity currently rivals its annual winter peak, this season's peak could tower over Everest like some dread Olympus Mons. By signing the order now, Obama frees hospitals to prepare for the worst by, for example, "issu[ing] waivers expediting health care facilities' ability to transfer patients to other locations." Sounds logical, right? However:

The declaration allows hospitals to apply to the Department of Health and Human Services for waivers from laws that in normal times are intended to protect patients’ privacy and to ensure that they are not discriminated against based on their source of payment for care, including Medicare, Medicaid and the states’ Children’s Health Insurance Program.

As a practical matter, officials said, the waiver could allow a hospital in danger of being overwhelmed with swine flu patients to remove them, and any emergency room visitors suspected of having the illness, to a location such a local armory to segregate such cases for treatment.

Do you know what this means? The government now has the power to segregate certain people (wink conservatives wink) on the basis of how they pay. Where do you think all those Cadillac owners are going to end up? In the hospitals, with doctors, in armories, because Obama knows he'll need guns to keep conservatives away from theirs. The National Guard will be mobilized, then the "debate" over health-care reform will end as will America, as a permanent state of martial law will be declared on account of the continuing swine flu crisis.

This has been another edition of "Tomorrow's Conservative Talking Points Today." Gah.

"Now, we're not saying rape is good, I'm just not convinced people should be punished for it. Want some money?"

>> Friday, October 23, 2009

I'm at a loss. (Thankfully, Franken is proving himself to be the kind of Senator who won't let his glorious amendments die mute.)

Nick Griffin Caused Controversy? For Real?

Nick Griffin, leader of the avowedly non-racist British National Party, appeared on the BBC's Question Time Thursday night. Although currently in the US, I've had it recorded so I look forward to being adequately entertained upon my return.

While I have a lot of time for United Against Fascism (and I'm also in favor of oxygen, my daughter, beer, baseball, and opposed to domestic violence -- I'm really going out on a limb here), their suggestion that Griffin be banned from the BBC is dead wrong. While abhorrent, the BNP were surprisingly successful (by their standards) in the EU Parliamentary elections (receiving nearly one million votes) as well as a smattering of local elections across England. In a democracy, this matters; furthermore, the remit of the BBC requires it to be politically inclusive given that everybody on the island with a (color) TV will be paying £142.50 this year for the privilege. Indeed, as Sholto Byrnes argues in The Independent, Griffin should have perhaps been given more respect, not less. While his fellow panellists "could have given him all the rope he needed to hang himself", they treated him as a pariah, interrupting and shouting him down. This is the behavior we expect out of the teabagging wingnut brigade in the US, for whom reasoned debate is a foreign concept where one's ideas just might be challenged, but not front-bench representatives of the three leading British political parties.

This is an easy, obvious line to take, but there's little chance that Griffin added to his support. If anything, he would have lost potential supporters who were on the fence. Reviews of both Griffin himself and the rest of the panel are mixed. The Times invited several of their writers to share their observations. According to David Aaronovitch, his demeanor would not exactly remind one of "gravitas":

For much of the programme Nick Griffin’s body language was that of a ten-year-old on his birthday. He was nervous and excited, given to exaggerated nodding and head-shaking.

“Nick”, as everyone called him, did quite well during part of the show, but only when he was silent.

However, it appears that Jack Straw did even worse, which is surprising. By most accounts, Bonnie Greer injected some much needed humor into the event, the Liberal Democrat Chris Huhne "was lucid and confident, and spoke cogently, but said little that was distinctive; he didn’t lead; he didn’t take the argument forward", keeping in line with the Lib Dem approach to, well, anything (aside from Vince Cable of course); and it appears that Lady Sayeeda Warsi, a member of the Tory shadow cabinet, won the day. According to Matthew Parris at The Times, she "was cool, she was measured, and spoke with quiet passion. She sounded sincere and avoided fireworks."

If the polls are correct, Lady Warsi is coming soon to a government near you.

The British being, well, British, have to complain. I disagree with the assessment that the BBC erred by making Griffin appear bullied and sympathetic, but I also strongly disagree with some of the lunatic fringe commenting over at the often entertaining Guy Fawkes' Blog. A sampling includes these gems:

"Classic left wing BBC. Which is why I will never buy a TV licence."

"Shame on you all and how do we unplug the BBC>?"

What was it that I said a few months ago about some of the British not appreciating what they have in the BBC? These comments were left by supporters of Griffin (of which there were several who crawled out from under their log to comment, if not eloquently, at least vociferously). Would Griffin's good mate David Duke receive similar exposure on a national network in the United States? For the record, Griffin defended Duke, arguing that Duke was an ex-leader of “a” Ku Klux Klan, one which was “almost totally a non-violent one, incidentally” (clip can be found at the top of this page here), a stance which didn't particularly impress the Chicago born Bonnie Greer, sitting to his left. Predicating your legitimacy on the suggestion that Duke et al. consider you a "sell out" strikes me as a somewhat precarious strategy.

As (presumably) one of the non-indigenous indirectly responsible for ethnically cleansing London by making it a non-British and non-English, or to quote Griffin directly while he was whining about the unfairness of having Question Time in London (where, you know, the studio is and stuff):

"Do it somewhere where there are still significant numbers of English and British people [living], and they haven't been ethnically cleansed from their own country."

He added: "There is not much support for me there [in London], because the place is dominated by ethnic minorities. There is an ethnic minority that supports me: the English. But there's not many of them left."

I feel that this is precisely what the BBC ought to be doing (in addition to East Enders and Strictly Come Dancing, of course). It also resulted in the highest ratings in the 30 year history of Question Time. Furthermore, it offered Griffin a platform to, perhaps unconvincingly for a former holocaust denier, assert that he is not a Nazi.

My favorite line, brought to my attention last night by a good friend who lives just down the street from me in Plymouth, and repeated in most of the coverage I've read, is recounted in this article in The Guardian:

A British Asian man was clapped when he accused Griffin of wanting to hound him out of Britain. "You'd be surprised how many people would have a whip-round to buy you a ticket and your supporters to go to the South Pole. It is a colourless landscape that will suit you fine."

Come Back Half Hour News Hour, All Is Forgiven...

Especially given the rape jokes, I think this could well be the very least funny conservative "comedy" ever, including Ernie Mannix.

Friday Daddy Blogging

Elisha and Miriam. Bonus points to whoever can figure out the location.

The water soon becomes pink and two roses appear

For years, I've been searching for an excuse to embed an old Bongwater video.

Now -- thanks to the Minnesota Supreme Court -- I have it.

Bigotry or Custom

>> Thursday, October 22, 2009

They really have nothing else.

You Can Do Criticism, Or You Can Get Paid

As we all expected, TBogg has weighed in on Slate's pro-Creed contrarianism....

Scioscia

I'll grant that Oliver has pitched well for two years, but what the hell was he doing taking Lackey out after 104 pitches? You'll have to take my word that this was a first guess, but wow. Especially given the thinness of his bullpen it's bizarre.

Admittedly, the Angels are not probably going to lose tonight just because of that; as is their wont they basically stopped having decent at bats after the first inning with a pitcher on the ropes. The Yankees comeback was keyed by batters who are actually willing to take pitches, which is the real difference.

...and, in fariness, Giradri bringing in his worst reliever was almost as dumb, and he would have gotten away with it had Hughes not thrown a guy who swings at pickoff throws a 1-2 pitch right down Gene Autry Way. Who's he taking pitch selection lessons from, Brian Fuentes? (One of the few encouraging signs for Yankee haters is that Hughes hasn't been very impressive in the postseason so far; hopefully he'll go Joba.)

...it was never in doubt! Glad they could carry the Yankees for 1 more round. Even if they can get to a Game 7 and force Sabathia to pitch that would help...

The Backlash Against Out-of-Control Legislative Activists

In addition to being excellent news on the policy merits, the fact that Maine has an initiative system means that the state provides an excellent test case for claims that recent initiatives opposing same-sex marriage were driven by institutional critiques of judicial review or by substantive policy views. And pretty much all the evidence continues to suggest that it's the latter. The whole argument is essentially one big pundit's fallacy. People act to oppose same-sex marriage because they oppose same-sex marriage irrespective of the institution that annunces the policy change, not because they have a well-worked-out theory of democracy that happens to comport with Alexander Bickel's.

Things to remember during the fall pledge drive

This is lame, even by NPR's diminishing standards. Rudin -- whom you might recall comparing Hillary Clinton to Glenn Close's character in Fatal Attraction -- is apparently a master of grotesque analogies.

Since the historical crime of Nixon Minimization is in full effect here, it's worth recalling for a moment that Nixon's attacks on the press were mounted against people -- most notoriously Jack Anderson -- who through actual investigative reporting were discovering facts that proved embarrassing to the administration. When Anderson's "Merry-Go-Round" column disclosed, for instance, that Nixon's justice department had settled an antitrust case against ITT in exchange for a $400,000 campaign contribution, Nixon specifically asked Bob Haldeman if someone couldn't be found to trash Anderson's office and discover the source of the leak. (The source of the reporting for that story, incidentally, was a young journalist by the name of Brit Hume, who worked for Anderson from 1970-72.) As anyone with an ounce of historical memory knows, everyone in Anderson's orbit -- including Hume and Howard Kurtz -- was monitored by the CIA as well as the FBI during the Nixon years. When conventional forms of harassment failed to stop Anderson, and when Nixon concluded (without any proof) that Anderson had blown the cover of a CIA spy, genuine fascists like G. Gordon Liddy were given to understand that Nixon would be pleased if Jack Anderson were somehow assassinated.

The great thing about Nixon, though, is that it always gets worse. Not only did his goons use flagrantly illegal tactics against the press, but they also ruined the lives of innocent government employees whom they suspected of feeding information to Anderson and others. In 1970, after Anderson reported some unflattering details about a Pentagon meeting in which top DoD officials joked about who should be fired before Christmas, Bob Haldeman went after a clerk named Gene Smith, whom he erroneously believed was responsible for the leak. From one of Anderson's books, here's what happened to Smith:

Investigators combed Smith’s neighborhood, knocking on doors, gathering intelligence. Under bright lights, Smith was interrogated by military investigators who badgered him in language laced with obscenities. They behaved like caricatures from a B-grade movie. “Do you know Anderson?” they demanded. “Anderson must be stopped!” they repeated over and over again.

Smith was fired from his job in a phony reduction of force. Debilitated by inflamed ulcers and high blood pressure, he was summoned before a federal grand jury in Norfolk, Virginia. When Smith denied the charges, U.S. Attorney Brian Gettings told Smith that he would nail him either for the illegal taping of the meeting or for perjury.

You'll be stunned to learn that the case against Smith went absolutely nowhere. He didn't get his job back, and nor did he receive an apology from the people who destroyed his career.

Ken Rudin should think about this sort of thing the next time he invokes the memory of Richard Nixon.

. . . Lance Mannion makes a more compelling case for the similarities between Obama and Nixon...

. . . Rudin admits the mistake...

Contrarianism

Daniel Davies clearly knows a thing or two about playing the contrarian. His rules for contrarians post is, unsurprisingly, a must-read:

The whole idea of contrarianism is that you’re “attacking the conventional wisdom”, you’re “telling people that their most cherished beliefs are wrong”, you’re “turning the world upside down”. In other words, you’re setting out to annoy people. Now opinions may differ on whether this is a laudable thing to do – I think it’s fantastic – but if annoying people is what you’re trying to do, then you can hardly complain when annoying people is what you actually do. If you start a fight, you can hardly be surprised that you’re in a fight. It’s the definition of passive-aggression and really quite unseemly, to set out to provoke people, and then when they react passionately and defensively, to criticise them for not holding to your standards of a calm and rational debate.

The Interminable And Futile Search For a Decent Anti-SSM Argument

Ross Douthat was, understandably but not admirably, unwilling to defend his opposition to same-sex marriage rights in public:

At first Mr. Douthat seemed unable to get a sentence out without interrupting himself and starting over. Then he explained: "I am someone opposed to gay marriage who is deeply uncomfortable arguing the issue in public."

Mr. Douthat indicated that he opposes gay marriage because of his religious beliefs, but that he does not like debating the issue in those terms. At one point he said that, sometimes, he feels like he should either change his mind, or simply resolve never to address the question in public.

[...]

He added: "The secular arguments against gay marriage, when they aren't just based on bigotry or custom, tend to be abstract in ways that don't find purchase in American political discourse. I say, ‘Institutional support for reproduction,' you say, ‘I love my boyfriend and I want to marry him.' Who wins that debate? You win that debate."

The problem here is that "institutional support for reproduction" isn't merely an "abstract" argument. It's a bad argument. If the policy goal is supporting the raising of children, then limiting marriage to heterosexual couples is both overinclusive (providing privileges and benefits to couples who choose not to reproduce) and underinclusive (denying privileges and benefits both to single parents and same-sex couples who do have children.) Which should serve to remind us that, at bottom, secular arguments against SSM are about bigotry and/or custom, which is probably why Douthat isn't interested in trying to defend them.

Conservatives Pretending To Care About Sexism

Example 1: The simple act of criticizing Sarah Palin is sexism. Really: you don't even need an implausible story about what's sexist about the criticism, the fact that there's a book critical of Palin is good enough.

Example 2: Calling a Republican woman accused of excessively sane policy positions a "cow that had a rear leg chopped off by an M-60 machinegun": -- teh funny!

Axis of Evil: Now with Turkey!!!

It's difficult to plow through the many layers of rank idiocy in the assertion that Turkey is "lost to the Islamists"; I can identify at least a few...

The insinuation that the oppression of the Kurds was launched by AKP, rather than by the secular Turkish Army.
The odd definition of "democracy" that includes occasional military interventions into the democratic process, and the serial abuse of human rights.
The idea that Turkish observance of human rights has gotten worse over the past eight years, contrary to all evidence.
The idea that the AKP government is somehow unique in its reluctance to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide (it is, notably, unique in pursuing good relations with Armenia).
The idea that "treating political prisoners humanely and canceling the death penalty" is contrary to liberal democracy.
The idea that the strength of the AKP is primarily the result of the behavior of US Presidents.
The notion that support of the Iraq invasion constitutes a sufficient test for residence in the civilized West.

It's fair to say that no one, and I mean no one, who has bothered to study Turkey for longer than a day would entertain any of these arguments; indeed, the last three are prima facie absurd even for someone who had never heard of a country called "Turkey."

But my biggest question is this: If you believed this garbage, what policy would you recommend? Would you try to kick Turkey out of NATO? Would you suspend US arms sales to Turkey, and US military exercises with Turkey? Would you cut ambassadorial level contact with Turkey (after all, if Turkey really is Iran, then they might invade our embassy any day now)? Would you call for an invasion of Turkey (I'm sure that the secular military leadership would greet American and Israeli troops with rose petals...)? Because the thing is, if Turkey is "lost to Islam," then we're not talking about Turkey moving into Iran's arms, or Turkey becoming part of Iran's axis; Turkey becomes the hub. Turkish military and economic power dwarf Iranian, and I suspect that if Ankara wished to go nuclear, it could do so in very short order. This is rather the problem with making support of Operation Cast Lead the fundamental metric of support for the survival of the Israeli state; you throw out the bathwater, then the baby, then the cat, and then somebody else's baby.

Here's the problem: Beating the bejeezus out of Gaza, whatever merits it may have had for Israeli security, also had costs. People, even in relatively friendly states, didn't think that the operation was sensible, or that it was conducted in a civilized manner. Endless bullying on the Goldstone Report won't change that fact. Support for every aspect of Israeli policy does not constitute the central divide between Western and Islamic civilization; Operation Cast Lead was just as unpopular in Europe as it was in Turkey, and Turkey's recent exclusion of Israel from military maneuvers only highlights the fact that Turkey has maintained a closer military relationship with Israel than just about any European country. Moreover, there's a reason why the Israeli leadership is unwilling to go as far as Caroline Glick in calling Turkey out; they are, by and large, far more concerned than she with the survival of the Israeli state.

Double Standards

Another example.

The Next Four Years: Nightmare of Evil?

>> Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Loomis has identified a troubling trend.

Because being ignored is exactly the same thing as being muzzled.

The attacks on the administration and its allies for deciding to shun Fox News are so cute. This is my favorite:

In [Obama's] America there is no Constitution, there is no First Amendment, there are no principles of free speech or free press.

As all good children know, the silent treatment renders the person to whom it's administered incapable of saying anything. They can't run around shouting, "Why are you ignoring me?" or "What did I do? Please tell me!" because their tongue has been silenced by the mystical power of the treatment. It makes a person wonder what Fox will air now that their hosts have lost their words. An hour of Glenn Beck sobbing uncontrollably while pointing at a chalkboard on which the links between ACORN and his muted mouth-hole have been arranged into a misspelled anagram? Granted, they were ready to go with the sobbing and pointing before the Plague of Silence zipped his mouth and pocketed the key . . .

. . . but seriously, because this is serious, serious stuff, otherwise Jake Tapper wouldn't be on the case:

Tapper: But that’s a pretty sweeping declaration that they are “not a news organization.” How are they any different from, say—

Gibbs: ABC—

Tapper: ABC. MSNBC. Univision. I mean how are they any different?

I will answer this question, both for Tapper and the conservatives who think the Obama administration is politicizing news coverage, via another childhood staple:

One of these [Presidents of network news divisions] is not like the others. One of these [lives] is just not the same.

Jonathan Klein (CNN), worked for WLNE in Providence, R.I. before becoming a broadcast producer for CBS News.

Steve Capus (NBC), worked for WCAU and KYW in Philadelphia before becoming an executive producer for NBC News.

Sean McManus (CBS), worked for ABC News before managing sports broadcasting for CBS.

David Westin (ABC), clerked for Nixon appointee and dogged moderate Lewis Powell before working as in-house counsel for ABC.

Roger Ailes (FOX), served as a political consultant for Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Rudolph Giuliani.

I'm sure Tapper and company will continue to claim the administration playing politics by excluding the network chaired by a Republican operative, but honestly, I'm not sure why anyone thinks a Democrat should talk to representatives of a network whose president has devoted his life to championing Republican causes. I suppose the Democrats should also let Republicans strategists produce their campaign ads, as that would eliminate some of the dishonest viciousness of elections—after all, there's no need to Willie Horton a Democrat whose campaign you already drove off a cliff.

Contrarianism Approaches Rock Bottom

Next week: Celine Dion is really a better singer than Billie Holiday -- ignore the "cognoscenti," just look at the sales figures!

...UPDATE [from davenoon]... Behold ~~proof of Creed's rockitude~~ one of the worst videos ever made, wherein God attacks a pondering Scott Stapp with a hail of meteors before driving him into a gigantic phallus; wherein a bell that DOESN'T FUCKING KILL SCOTT STAPP opens up a portal into some kind of septic tank; wherein Scott Stapp is purified by baptismal sewage.

...UPDATE THE SECOND [SL]: Getting further into Slate self-parody, note that his archives seem replete with examples of the same article applied to a different awful band (Limp Bizkit were really good! The Killers are good exactly because they're so emptily pompous! Thank God Coldplay are great again!) So if you're interested in cashing a Kaplan paycheck you may want to submit an article arguing for the misunderstood greatness of Starship or Matchbox 20...

Vaccination is a vicious conspiracy to distract Americans from the proven health benefits of patent medicines

If you're not quite ready to punch the next committed vaccination skeptic you meet, this article will help you across the threshold. For your daily allowance of well-rewarded misanthropy, a brief wade through the comments will more than suffice. I hadn't realized that the anti-vaccination carolers had added squalene to their list of Chemicals of Omnipotent Toxicity, but I suppose it's still possible to learn something new every day.

By sheer coincidence, a a new report from the ~~Illuminati, ODESSA and the Reverse Vampires~~ World Health Organization, UNICEF and the World Bank details the current status of immunization across the globe. In plain language, it details the horrific future that awaits us all if we're unable to stem the vaccination menace:

By the 2020s, the strategies put in place to reach the [Millennium Development Goals] should have brought deaths among children under five years old to an all-time low. Polio should be eradicated, and measles eliminated in all countries. Neonatal and maternal tetanus should no longer be exerting such a heavy toll on babies and mothers, and today’s underused vaccines (against Hib disease, hepatitis B, and yellow fever) may have rid the world of the lethal burden of these diseases. The use of new vaccines against pneumococcal, rotavirus, meningococcal, and HPV disease may have inspired a new, more ambitious set of international health and development goals. Vaccines may have been developed that can turn the tide against malaria, tuberculosis, and AIDS.

Truly awful.

"God rather hates Higgs particles and attempts to avoid them".

or so suggests physicist Holger Bech Nielsen of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. I've been following the various crackpot theories of how the Large Hadron Collider at Cern will lead to the end of the world, if not the end of the Yankees, with mild amusement. This is equally amusing, but it's not sourced from the tin foil hat brigade, but a couple real live physicists doing, presumably, real live physics and mathematics. The basic theory is that the Higgs boson does not want to be found, and will go back in time to disable any bit of kit designed to reveal it, even if that kit cost £3 Billion.

And . . . he is not being rejected out of hand by physicists associated with the LHC. For example, Professor Brian Cox at the University of Manchester suggests that:

“His ideas are theoretically valid. What he is doing is playing around at the edge of our knowledge, which is a good thing."

“He is pointing out that we don’t yet have a quantum theory of gravity, so we haven’t yet proved rigorously that sending information into the past isn’t possible."

Which basically says that it's theoretically possible, but with a strong implied undercurrent of "not bloody likely". In case it is, however, Cox has all his bases covered:

“However, if time travellers do break into the LHC control room and pull the plug out of the wall, then I’ll refer you to my article supporting Nielsen’s theory that I wrote in 2025.”

Now that's a man with a plan for coping with time travel.

Scenes From The Collapse of the Washington Post

It's very, very hard to care about the fate of a newspaper that would publish a screed that is witless and hateful even by Bill Donohue's standards. Especially egregious is the fact that giving him this platform suggests that he actually speaks for American Catholics.

It's All in How You Sell It

The obvious move here is, as I suggested last year, to recast Arminius as proto-AIDS activist. Suddenly, Germany has the world's most progressive and forward-thinking national hero. I don't see a downside.

Buchanan and White America

>> Tuesday, October 20, 2009

I agree with the substance of Adam's case against Pat Buchanan; the vision that Buchanan is putting forth of America is both racist and ahistorical, and is genuinely dismissive of the contributions of every non-white American (not to mention women, immigrants, and so forth). At the same time, I think that there's more going on; Buchanan has always been more willing than most conservative pundits to make forthright, and in some sense honest, defenses of unpalatable elements of the right wing worldview. I recall at some point in the 1990s that Buchanan was asked why the United States was willing to sacrifice treasure for Bosnia and not Rwanda, and he gave the straightforward answer that Rwandans weren't white enough.

In this case, I think that Buchanan is invoking a genuine sense of loss of entitlement on the part of a substantial portion of white America. This isn't to defend or justify the white privilege that created this entitlement entailed, or to justify Pat Buchanan's nostalgia for it. Nevertheless, I think that Buchanan is pointing to something that's very real, or at least as real as any sociological fact. White America, as the construct exists in the mind of many Americans, is disappearing, even by some objective criteria; it's retreating deeper into exurban communities, and it's very, very slowly ceding political and financial power. Moreover, the idea of America is changing; Buchanan has a very definite vision of what America is, and is smart enough to understand that his vision is losing traction. In this context, it's hardly surprising that the response is a combination of rage and raw panic. That the ideological structure that supports White America is racist and has a disturbing narrative of American history is academically relevant, but it's also not the central point. Those who hold Buchanan's vision (and many do, although often not in terms as explicit as Pat is willing to put forth) really do find themselves under siege, and pointing out that these beliefs are both crazy and immoral has very limited effect.

And so I don't really begrudge Pat the platform to make this argument. Rather, I think that it helps to clarify the source and meaning of much of the rage on the right, especially coming as it does from a longterm advocate of movement conservatism. It's altogether more readable and interesting than most of what rolls down from the Weekly Standard or the National Review, in any case.

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