The Most Important Election Is Always the 2nd

The Shia outnumber Sunnis and Kurds in Iraq, and they would dominate any popularly elected government.

Unfortunately, there is nothing is the rehotric of their leaders, nor in the history of the Iraqi state that leads me to believe they'd have any interest in respecting democratic traditions.

Among these are allowing your opponents to be critical of you, allowing them to run political campaigns unimpeded, allowing votes to be counted honestly (a step we've had trouble with in recent years),and actually stepping aside if you lose.

We've seen plenty of mostly honest first-time elections when dictators have fallen or regimes have collapsed. What we don't always see is the winner of those elections ever leave the scene willingly.

I'm afraid that's what we'll see in Iraq. Some mullah or representative of one will take power, and that'll be all she wrote. We'll have either a kleptocracy like in Zaire, a thugocracy like Zimbabwe, or a corrupt Islamic Republic like in Iran.

But no matter what fucked up regime ends up in power, we'll get the blame.

People will forget how bad Hussein was, and they'l focus on the least flaw (or the giant, raging flaws) in the successor regime. And we'll get the blame for every damned thing it does. Count on it.

Cauci

Never been to a Caucus, don't know much about how the votes get counted. But I got cable specifically so I could watch political stuff, so I guess I'll just keep watching these idiots drone on until we get some news.

Tomorrow, things should be a bit clearer. The latest polls seem to show Kerry and Edwards surging and Dean sliipping a bit, but who the hell really knows.

Strange Bedfellows

Michael Moore and George McGovern are both campaigning for Wes Clark, perhaps the most conservative Democratic candidate other than Lieberman.

Dennis Kucinich, the most liberal candidate, has apparently asked his voters to switch to John Edwards if they don't get the 15% needed to get to garner some delegates. He's about as conservative as Clark.

BTW: Neither of these candidates are anywhere outside the mainstream of the Democratic Party, nor are they in the same ballpark as people like Zell Miller and John Breaux. They're just not the obvious picks for liberals like Moore and Kucinich.

TV "News"

When did MSNBC become wingnut central?

I know I haven't had cable in a very long time, but they seem as bad as Faux "News" now.

New Term

Not real happy to see My Baby's Daddy enter the lexicon as a term of art. Never had a problem with people having kids outside of wedlock, but am old-fashioned enough to think that couples can take better care of kids than singles. This is especially true when the single in question is very young and never had a stable relationship with the father of her child.

When it's so common for women to get knocked up by someone they're not dating exclusively that you need a special term for it, that's a problem (I'm assuming here that the word boyfriend would suffice if he was, in fact, her boyfriend).

Vaporware

Whenever a competitor announces a new product, you can be sure that Microsoft will announce that it's working ona something that fills the same niche, but with more features. They'll do this even if they don't have such a product in development yet, or even if they have no intention of ever developing one. This mythical product is known as vaporware.

The intent of vaporware is to make the currently available competive product less attractive to both consumers and investors. Why buy this product when a cheaper one with more features will be available soon? Why invest in this product if one with the marketing muscle of Microsoft behind it will be competing with it soon?

In politics, we see vaporware either as a competing proposal that is much cheaper and/or puts off real action for years, or in the call for more studies or research. The Bush administration has gotten very good at the announcement of vaporware for maximum effect.

Worried about golbal warming? Don't worry, we're gonna study it some more to waste tim make sure we really have a problem.

We saw this with the big fuss they made over hydrogen fuel cell autos, which won't be commercially available for well over a decade. We have hybrid cars now, we can make regular cars much more efficient than we currently do; but why worry about all that if hydrogen fuel cells will solve all our problems? This is a very effective way to distract attention from things we could being doing now that the Bushies oppose for either political or ideological reasons.

I'd put school vouchers and the No Child Left Untested Act into the category of vaporware as well. Why fix up urban schools, reduce class sizes, and pay teachers enough to make it a truly desirable occupation (all things we could do now, but which would cost lots of money), when we can simply wait for the vast number of quality private schools that will magically spring into existence at some point in the future (and it would truly have to be a vast number to make a real difference in our educational system) or for market mechanisms to fix everything without having to spend more cash.

Bush's Mission to Mars fantasy looks like more vaporware. It's aimed far enough in the future that the Bushies know they won't have to pay for it, at the same time as it's used as the reason to kill off other programs now. Bloggers have noticed, but the mainstream press has ignored (surprise) that Bush proposes to cut funding for every NASA project that doesn't point to the Moon and Mars. Some of these are crappy money wasters (the Space Station), some are cost effective and scientifically useful; but they want to shelve it all. I'm guessing that this is mainly just a chance to help pay for the Bush tax cuts, with a bit of payoff to big defense contractors thrown in.

The question is, how long will the public accept Bush proposals at face value?, and will they ever start to look at them as the vaporware they are.

Civil Servants

Am reading Robert Kaplan's An Empire Wilderness : Travels into America's Future, which chronicles here in America the growing divide between those who can thrive in the global economy and those who can't, as well as the gradual dissolution of the nation-state, patriotism, and public services in favor of private security firms, private schools, and a sense of belonging more wrapped up in self or local than national identity.

Kaplan has explored the latter more fully in The Coming Anarchy : Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War, in which he writes about places that never quite got a national identity off the ground (think of how much fun we had with those who thought of themselves as Serbians first, members of the Orthodox Church second, and Yugoslavians only third, if that).

Kaplan describes the problem with the police in many Mexican cities. Rather than fighting crime, they are criminals themselves: working as security and hired muscle for drug runners, shaking down businessmen and civilians, even carjacking and armed robbery.

Instead of the mixture of desire to do good and the desire for a secure job with good benefits that drives people into policework here, they surely see more police driven by the desire to make a quick buck easily [this is not to say that Mexico doesn't have honest cops trying to do well, just that the incentives don't work that way].

This made me think of the problems with corruption endemic in many 3rd world countries' civil services, where a bribe is necessary to get a marriage license, to get a loved one's body from the morgue, to take a school entrance exam, for any of the things in daily life we've taken for granted.

An honest, decently paid civil service is one of the things that is absolutely necessary for a livable society. Some societies have one, some don't, and I honestly don't know how a place like Mexico or India will be able to clean their's up. I'm guessing the key will be to pay civil servants enough to make it a desirable job, then to be ruthless in getting rid of anyone corrupt.

But this isn't an easy problem to solve. Once the bribe-taking mindset becomes prevalent, it's hard to root out, especially for those places that don't pay their civil servants a living wage. If I was a cop who couldn't feed his family without bribes, I'd be shaking people down too.

I Should Like Lieberman More Than I Do

At least on foreign policy matters, he and I both favor of muscular, interventionist liberalism; we're essentially Cold War Democrats. We believe that America has a positive role to play in the international arena (which sets us apart from a lot of other liberals), but that it can't do everything alone (which sets us apart from a lot of conservatives). Lieberman, Clark, and Kerry are the candidates I feel closest to on foreign policy, probably in that order.

Joe has a good environmental record, and is actually to my left on some other social issues like affirmative action. Like me, he doesn't buy into Reagan's dictum that government is the real problem. We both believe that the government can be and usually is a net positive in our society (of course, that's net, not in every instance).

So why don't I like Lieberman more? I'd divide it into one big policy difference and one smaller personal one.

When it comes down to it, Lieberman has simply become too comfortable with the concentration of wealth and of political power in fewer and fewer hands. Either he doesn't see these as a problem or he doesn't see them as being solvable. I, on the other hand, see that we need to prevent our slow division into have's and have-not's, into those with lots of power and those with noe if we're to prevent ourselves from being an increasingly brutal and dangerous society like Brazil or anyplace else with a wide and widening gulf between the rich and poor. Given my druthers, I'll choose Denmark over Brazil any day, and I see a steeply progressive tax code and strict regulation of corporate behavior as necessary to push us in that direction. I'm not sure Joe agrees.

On a strictly personal note, Lieberman's smarmy goody-two-shoes act gives me the creeps. It bugged me in 2000 when he spent most of the election lecturing Hollywood, and my reaction hasn't gotten any better.

We agree on more than I usually admit, but Lieberman and I are just too far apart on our vision of government regulation and of the tax code for him to be my guy. Sorry, Joe.

No Agua

Came home from work yesterday and there was no water coming from my taps. I figured that there was a water main somewhere being worked on, so I waited. Sure enough, the H2O started flowing again in a couple hours.

Like the last time freezing rain knocked out my power here in The London of the Piedmont (Buffet's description of Nashville's weather), this gave a bit of time to reflect on how soft and downright helpless Western Man has become. I may be able to fix a computer, drive a car, argue my way in and out of trouble, or even change a diaper; but put my ass in a situation with no electricity, no supermarkets, and no access to potable water and I'm in deep shit. And of the three, clean water is probably the most vital and hardest to get.

Millions of people, lots of them little kids, die each year because they have no way to get clean drinking water. Kinda puts my bullshit struggles in perspective, don't it? Makes me thankful to be here in America and feel a little unworthy of everything I've been handed at the same time.

SayUncle discusses freedom and what is necessary to preserve it and isn't happy with what he sees:

In short, guns are useless without the will to right wrongs and take risks. Sadly, I think America is at the point where most of us are unwilling to take risks, stand up for what’s right, and speak truth to power.

We sit by while our courts restrict speech; politicians authorize government agencies to snoop through citizen’s records without warrants; police randomly harass motorists; indoor plumbing justifies why police no longer have to knock and announce their presence before entering a suspect’s home; dissenters are quarantined to First Amendment Zones; judges tell people they can’t sell their book; local governments abuse eminent domain; men armed with machine guns parade around our large cities; people are detained without access to legal counsel, sometimes in secret; and the list goes on and on.

As long as Michael Jackson is in the news, Paris Hilton is sucking dick, and the latest reality TV shows are popular, we don’t notice. Or we don’t care.

Or we’re forced to pick two losing sides. Democrats and Republicans have equally deplorable records regarding civil liberties. It just depends which particular civil liberty you’re talking about. We often vote for the lesser of two evils.

It’s up to us to change it by holding politicians responsible. If we can’t do that now with our vote, we won’t have the will to do anything if our last hope turns out to be AK47s.

Question

I hear lots of numbers as to how many Palestinians have been killed since the start of the most recent violence. Does anyone know how many of them have been killed by other Palestinians, either in bombings or killed for collaborating with the Israelis?

Just a side note, but I really miss Rabin. He's maybe the only one who could've guided Israel through this without the bloodshed we've seen. I was happy to see Sharon stand up to the wingnuts in his own party and say that settlements must be dismantled, but I have yet to hear of any actually being torn down.

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

Can't understand why everyone seems so pissed about Israel building themselves a security fence. Seems like a great idea to me.

It'll allow the Israelis to better protect themselves against suicide bombers and other terrorists (there've been no recent bombings originating in Gaza, cause they've already got a big fence around it), which is the obvious intent. What gets less attention is that it will also force the Israelis to abandon the far-flung network of settlements they've built, especially those which are dangerously close to Arab towns.

That's the thing about really damned expensive fences, you tend to build them in the shortest line possible, without detours for tiny encampments on some distant hillside. I wrote last year that the Israelis would eventually have to withdraw behind defensible borders, and I remember Thomas Friedman advocating back in the 80's that they should simply hand the Palestinians their land back and say You're independent, deal with it. Don't expect to be trading with us or taking jobs here anytime this century (not a quote, just the gist of his idea).

The Palestinians have no inherent right to work for Israeli companies, nor to trade with Israel. They only get to trade with and work for people they're at peace with, and they're not at peace. Nor are the 1967 borders sacrosanct. They were the product of war themselves, after all.

Israel should simply fence off what they need to keep and can sensibly defend, then slam the doors and declare the Palestinians independent. After that, they're on their own.

Update: Just heard that a woman waiting to go through security from the Gaza Strip blew herself up, killing 4 Israelis. While the crossings through security fences are obvious weak points, one possible solution (but an extreme one) is simply to not allow anyone to cross.

Either a Joke or the Worst Scam of All Time

Verbatim:

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adress. You must cpotemle this pcesors by clicking on the link
below and enntering in the litle window your Citi ATM
Card Number and card pin that you use on Atm Machine.
This is donne for your poecrttion -t- becourse some of our memmbers no
lngeor have acsces to their email adesserds and we must verify it.

To veerify your e-mail adress and access your Citbiank account, klick on
the link bellow. If nothing happnes when you click on the link -8 copye
and pastte the link into the adress bar of your window.

Not a Fan of the Vanity Candidates

Just caught enough of the debate the other night to see Sharpton criticizing Howard Dean for not hiring enough blacks as Governor, which was just enough to annoy the shit out of me.

Cut the guy some fucking slack. He was Governor of freakin' Vermont, a state so white that it makes Idaho look brown. How the hell is he gonna hire many minorities in a state that doesn't have any to start with?

I know it would look bad to cut the vanity candidates out of the debates, but we really don't need to waste much time listening to guys who aren't really running for President. Let them draw attention to pet causes the same way everyone else has to instead of glomming onto free publicity from the Presidential Primaries.

Brian Linse agrees with me on possible VPs:

Edwards has always struck me as a Clintonesque candidate, and at the very least he should be considered as a great VP on a Wes Clark ticket if Dean tanks.

If Dean wins the nom? Dean/Clark would be the way to go for the best chance of ousting Bush Jr.

The Poor Man gives us a likely scenario for a Clark win, as he emerges as the main non-Dean candidate after NH then runs the table in the South and Mountain West.

Kevin Phillips is pissed and you should read what he has to say about the Bush family, inherited priviledge, and the future of politics in America:

This type of dynasty is antithetical to the American political tradition. The presidency is now subject to inherited views, inherited staff, inherited wars, inherited money, inherited loyalties. I'm not talking about particular policies -- I'm talking about a unique evolution of a corrupting institutional process in American governance.......

.......You have to focus on the Bush family itself. They have made the presidency into an office infused with an almost hereditary dishonesty. There's so much lying and secrecy and corruption to it. Just look at the way Neil and Jeb and Marvin and George W. have earned their livings, with all these parasitic operations: profiting from their political connections, cashing in on favors from big corporations and other governments. It's a convergence of arrogance -- the sense that you don't have to pay attention to democratic values. It's happening again with Halliburton. They can't help but let their old cronies in there to make buckets of money off the war.

VP Candidates

A few days ago, I wrote about Wes Clark being the most logical Democratic nominee not named Howard Dean, and that his choice for a VP isn't as constrained as Dean's is. I see the best choices for Clark as John Edwards and Jean Shaheen, both of whom I see adding something to the ticket nationwide, with the kicker of Edwards' regional appeal in the South and Shaheen delivering her swing state.

This made me think more about the strategy behind picking a VP nominee. There are two main schools of thought:

1) Pick a VP who helps you nationwide, even if only a bit, included in this would be picking a VP who fills in some of the gaps on your resume. This would be the rationale for Howard Dean to pick Wes Clark as his VP.

2) Pick a VP who helps you a lot in one particular area or key state. This would be the rationale for Gore to have picked someone like Bob Graham in 2000 (Graham would help in Florida and help with foreign policy in today's political climate)

The best VP picks, of course, are a mixture of both. They are candidates who have nationwide and regional appeal at the same time. Jean Shaheen would fit this category, as she could virtually guarantee New Hampshire and would add something in every state due to being a woman. Al Gore helped Bill Clinton in the South, and added foreign policy and legislative experience that reassured the rest of the nation.

An addendum should be that, of course, the VP should neither hurt nationwide nor in a particular region (and this obviously includes not picking anyone who is unfit to be President). This is where the Liberman pick failed. He did help in Florida and in California (where Gore didn't really need help), but he hurt elsewhere (I think the distancing Gore from Clinton thing was mostly of interest to the Press and was probably a wash).

As much as I'd prefer it to be otherwise, Lieberman's religion hurt Gore in Tennessee, Missouri, New Hampshire, Arkansas, West Virginia, and New Mexico, which he won anyway [this does not mean that I'm happy that there are still people who vote aginst candidates based on religion and ethnicity, but simply that they exist and that reality must be faced]. I also think his constant harping on Hollywood and rather conservative image probably drove a few more voters to Nader. He was obviously useless in the VP debate, but that is of minor importance in the big picture.

So who are the VP's I'd consider in '04?

A lot depends on the candidate doing the picking, and his particular needs. Next would be my take on the electoral map and where a VP might help most. Last, but not least, should be whether this election is one in which big risks are justified, and I think they are quite justified.

The first place people look for a VP are among other candidates:

Howard Dean: Good Presidential candidate, not a good VP candidate; centrist with public image of left-winger; no regional appeal outside the Northeast, which is already solidly Democratic (but would help in NH and Maine); MD gives added credence to postions on healthcare; excellent record as Governor; tendency to shoot off his mouth; main appeal is among the Democratic base; should only be considered as VP if needed to unite the Party; good campaigner

Joe Lieberman: Bad candidate, worse VP; has been far more critical of other candidates than any other Democrat in race, making it hard for him to turn around and join one of them; religion is both an advantage in some areas and a liability in others; soft campaigner; solid record as Senator; looks like Keebler Elf

John Kerry: So-so candidate, so-so VP; good military and foreign policy credentials; smart as hell; good ideas on environment and energy independence; trouble connecting with voters; weird hair; weirder wife; no regional appeal outside Northeast; would make much better President than candidate,kinda like Gore; in fact, much like Gore in many ways including all his weaknesses as a candidate

Dick Gephardt: Bad candidate, only slightly better VP; doesn't connect well with voters; so-so record in Congress; no eyebrows; some regional appeal in Midwest, but mostly among core Democratic groups; so-so campaigner; only a viable VP for an insurgent wanting to rebuild bridges with mainstream Democrats

Bob Graham: So-so candidate, better VP: got no traction in crowded field; solid foreign policy credentials; very popular in Florida, which should put him on anyone's short-list; weird diary habit; not an exciting guy, but might be perfect for a candidate who generates enough excitement on his own; would've won election for Gore in 2000

Wesley Clark: Good candidate, good VP; excellent military and foreign policy credentials; smart as hell; seems to be getting his footing as candidate and does well on stump; politcally untested; only candidate with an advantage on Bush/Cheney in military matters; slightly weird bugeyes; can be abrasive at times; background has great appeal among veterans, rural voters, and groups that might not respond to other candidates

John Edwards: Decent candidate, better VP; accent and background should have strong appeal across South and Midwest and in rural parts of West (even many non-Southern swing voters seem to respond to Democrats with Southern accents), but probably can't deliver NC; relatively untested; very telegenic; solid postions on a variety of issues; good campaigner; Clinton without the zipper problem

Not gonna consider the vanity candidates; will take a look at other possible Veeps soon.

What Famous Leader Are You?

What Classic Movie Are You?

Alex Frantz takes down Meet the Press, especially in its treatment of Wesley Clark:

...any sane person would rather meet the latest gaggle of 'Survivor' contestants than the hopeless crowd in the Washington media.

The first eight questions were largely host Tim Russert quoting back various statements Clark has made in the campaign about Iraq and terrorism. It was more an effort to make Clark respond to imaginary misstatements or express amazement at the fact that Clark has shown the effrontery, while running against Dear Leader, to actually criticize him than to explicate his views.....

.....It was a challenge, but the show managed to go downhill from there, with a panel discussion largely dominated by the spectacurly inane Bill Safire. Safire's meandering ruminations, focussed on his own obsessions with the Clintons and entirely divorced from any reality distinct from his own addled mind, have recently been an embarassment to Alzheimer's patients everywhere.

Just a Thought

There are only two guys running for the Democratic nomination who have had to win an election from a largely rural population, and only one who has won multiple elections from an overwhelmingly rural population. So maybe Howard Dean knows a little more about appealing to Red State voters than we give him credit for (with an honorable mention to one-election Red State winner John Edwards).

Now He Thinks He's Kennedy

We're staring at 6 trillion in national debt, a deficit in the 100's of billions, and we urgently need to invest in our domestic infrastructure (particularly transportation, but also water and electricity distribution), and Bush wants to permanently station men on the Moon. This makes no sense in a scientific or economic sense. I can only guess that his advisors think this makes him look forward-thinking and willing to invest in the future. Too bad he's not really forward-thinking and willing to invest in the future.

Update: Matthew Yglesias has decided that it's just a plot to piss him off.

And one of his commenters (JimBob) had this to say:

Like the african AIDS program, this thing is a fantasy, meant to distract and confound. It's not only not going to happen, it's not even going to get a modest legislative push. Think of it as a kind of political daydream.

The business of this administration is raiding the treasury for the benefit of the republican contributors (plus shitting of the constitution to gratify christian reactionaries). Everything else is just blowing smoke.

And fyreflye pointed this out:

If you read the fine print you'll see that Bush will be cutting back on science based projects to concentrate on the Moon/Mars fantasy. Like many other of Bush's great ideas it's a cover for destroying the program he's claiming to support. Look for the science cuts to go into effect while the space habitat projects are underfunded.

If Not Dean, Who?

Earlier, I predicted that the Democratic ticket would be Dean/Clark (with an outside shot at Dean/Graham). I stand by that prediction, but there's always a chance that Dean isn't the nominee. Then what?

The media will be playing the expectations game with Dean in Iowa and New Hampshire. If they predict him to win by 10% in Iowa and 20% in New Hampshire, but he doesn't do quite that well; it'll be spun as a crushing defeat. Dean will have to survive a cycle of negative articles about how he's peaked and isn't meeting expectations.

It's likely that the non-Dean primary voters will slowly unite behind a single candidate (but I'm not ready to call it an Anybody but Dean movement). Iowa and New Hamshire should thin the field down to Dean and 1 or 2 others.

My guess is that Gephardt will disappear after Iowa, Kerry after New Hampshire, and Lieberman whenever he figures out that no one really likes him that much. Edwards has the money to hang on until Super Tuesday if he wants to pray for a sweep in the South and Mountain West, but he may bail earlier than that if he reads the writing on the wall.

My guess is that the non-Dean will be Wesley Clark. While he has no geographic base, he has a nationwide appeal that will help him all over the place (and he's coming up with some pretty damned good policy positions). Veterans, independents, more conservative Democrats, and supporters of candidates who've dropped out will likely see Clark as their candidate. This could give Clark staying power he wouldn't have in a crowded field, as former Lieberman/Kerry/Gephardt supporters pick him as their their 2nd choice.

If he does win the nomination, Clark will have a much greater choice of VP candidates than Dean, who'll need to pick someone with foreign policy credentials. He could go for a VP who can help in a key state or region. He could go for a member of a vital constituency (women, Hispanics, blacks). There really aren't any logical VP candidates who Clark would have to rule out the way Dean couldn't pick another Northeasterner or a Governor.

If I were Clark, my choice would be John Edwards. He's smart, he's capable, and people respond to him and his life story. Unfortunately, he can't guarantee North Carolina. But Edwards' accent, background, and appeal would help in states like West Virginia, Arkansas, Missouri, and Tennessee. I even think he'd play well to rural voters all over the Midwest and West.

A Clark/Edwards ticket would have truly national appeal, and should win a bigger share of rural voters than any Democrats since 1976. These are the opponents that Karl Rove has nightmares about.

Update: Just thought of another VP for Clark that would make Rove sweat bullets, Jean Shaheen. She's been through multiple reelection campaigns, so any opposition research has already been used. She comes from a (small) swing state, and she would have a nationwide appeal that can't be denied. This is no Geraldine Ferraro; this is a woman far more qualified to be President than anyone currently living in the White House.

Taming Down the Language

I've noticed a recent trend that when a celebrity is accused, the media calls it sexual assault, not rape.

I've always thought that rape is forcible intercourse, and sexual assault is a crime of a sexual nature that doesn't involve actual penetration (groping, etc). So let's just call it rape even if a rich, famous guy does it.

Charles Kuffner gave us his worst movies of all time, these are mine.

I limited it to movies I'd seen all the way through, and that were actually intended to be good. Low budget quickies with no pretense of quality don't qualify.

Serendipity - Please tell me that Cusack agreed to make this idiotic "romantic comedy" in order to get funding for a more worthy project

The Piano - Overwrought, pretentious crap; plus Harvey Keitel naked

Godzilla - I was really excited about this, and took my son and nieces on opening day. Now I just want to kick Matthew Broderick's ass.

Hudson Hawk - Incomprehensible plot, didn't even make sense when I saw it for a 2nd time on cable without the distraction of being fondled in a drive-in by a 19 year old redhead

Demolition Man - Apparently, we'll all have violence bred out of us by the time I hit 60.

The Postman - What? One post-apocalyptic crapfest wasn't enough?

Star Wars: Attack of the Clones - The "romantic" scenes showed all the chemistry of Arafat and Sharon, and you could actually tell which parts had been inserted solely for the video game.

Much Ado About Nothing - Keanu Reeves is the single worst actor in film history, and this is the movie that put him over the top

Stayin' Alive - The sequel to Saturday Night Fever, for those of you who didn't know

Red Dawn - High school students defeat Soviet war machine, enough said

Rocky IV - The death of Apollo Creed

Pearl Harbor - Michael Bay desecrates dead sailors for profit, plus bad acting, sappy sentimentality, and a built in sequel with Alec Baldwin

Mouse Hunt - The things you do for kids

Congo - Still don't know what the hell happened

Caddyshack II - The single worst movie of all time, dreadful, pathetic, Agnes of God had more laughs than this steaming pile of shit

Dammit

I agree with Andrew Sullivan on something*, dammit.

The Fundies say they don't like gay marriage because they want to protect the "sanctity" of the bond between a man and woman. If Jennifer Lopez' marital craziness didn't underscore it enough, the Britney Spears quickie marriage and annulment just points out that there's scarcely any sanctity left to protect.

Straight people can (and do) get married for the shallowest and stupidest of reasons. They marry people they barely know. They marry on impulse. They marry people they know they won't stay with for the long haul. I just love the irony that thrice divorced Newt Gingrich shepherded the Defense of Marriage Act through Congress.

Increasingly, couples have seen marriage for the shallow institution it has become and are opting out entirely. Most people know unmarried couples who've been together for years, have kids, and own property together. They may have a sacred bond, but they didn't bother having it sanctified by marriage.

On the other hand, gays can be in a committed 20 year relationship, but still aren't allowed to marry based solely on the basis of who they choose to love. They may want to marry for the financial and tax benefits, or they may really want to express a lifelong commitment. But gays really do want the right to get married.

Some people have proposed a waiting period for divorce and having to show just cause, like in the old days. Louisiana even has a "Covenant Marriage" with much stricter rules for divorce. But I think that's tackling the wrong end of the problem. We don't have an epidemic of committed couples calling it quits for superficial reasons, we have a problem with couples who never should've married in the first place.

My proposal is for all marriage licenses to have a one year waiting period. If they still want to get married after a year, I'm all for it. And I don't give a damn who they want to marry.

*Given the Republican propensity to only be liberal on issues that affect them directly, I imagine that I won't have to suffer through many more agreements with that idiot

David Neiwert is all over the downplaying of domestic terror for political reasons.

Essentially, it makes the American media very uncomfortable to refer to self-identified Christian terrorists like Eric Rudolph as Christians as opposed to to referring to the Sept 11th hijackers as Muslims. And the administration knows that many of those domestic right-wing terrorists support the same goals they do (but do so in a violent fashion).

Just as mainstream anti-war liberals didn't want to make a big deal about the SLA or the Weather Underground for fear of tarnishing their own causes, the mainstream Republicans are afraid that radical right-wing Christian terrorists would make them look bad. The FBI is still going after them, they just aren't given the resources of the hunt for Al Quaeda and their successes are scarcely mentioned by the top brass.

You should read the whole thing.

Tony Kushner being interviewed in Mother Jones:

And if Ralph Nader runs -- if the Green Party makes the terrible mistake of running a presidential candidate -- don't give him your vote. Listen, here's the thing about politics: It's not an expression of your moral purity and your ethics and your probity and your fond dreams of some utopian future. Progressive people constantly fail to get this.

I spent most of 2000 trying to convince Naderites of this. Elections are about choosing the best of the viable candidates, not an expression of self or an exercise in idealistic navel-gaving. Younever get to vote for someone who agrees with you 100% (I don't even agree with myself 100%). You pick the closest you can get out of those who have a chance of winning, not of all possible candidates everywhere.

Keep Pete Out

I ordinarily love players who used hustle and hard work to overcome the limitations of natural ability, and I loved the way Pete Rose played the game. He was a hell of a ballplayer, but his actions as a manager have brought disgrace to baseball. He doesn't deserve to be in the Hall of Fame.

You may argue that what happens outside of baseball shouldn't affect Hall of Fame voting, but Pete Rose falls short of even this standard. His actions were not outside of baseball. They were taken while he was a manager (and possibly a player). He doesn't deserve to be in the Hall of Fame.

By betting on his team (even if he never bet against it, which we'll never know), Rose crossed the most important line and violated the most sacred taboo in sports. Players and fans have the right to expect a contest played on the up-and-up, without gambling on the outcome by people who make the decisions. They didn't get that when Rose was a manager.

We'll leave aside whether Rose ever bet against his team, or whether masive gambling debts ever made him do favors for the bookies he owed money to. Instead let's just look at the ways a manager who sometimes bet on his own team can wapr the game.

Pitching:We can safely assume that Rose didn't bet on nights when he knew his pitching would be lousy, just as no one else would; but he not only had access to inside information on how the pitchers felt, he also had the ability to influence what happened on the field.

Maybe a pitcher was cruising, but his pitch count was getting high. A prudent manager would pull him out of the game in the interest of his health and longevity, but not one with tens of thousands riding on the game. Doc Gooden's career was shortened by a few games in which he was left in for over 150 pitches; can you imagine if we found out his manager had bet on those games? Any starting pitcher who ever played for Rose has got to wonder if his playing career was ever endangered by Pete Rose's gambling.

Of course, if the starter was having problems, Rose would've had no compunction about pulling him and perhaps wasting his entire bullpen to win that one game. He could always rest them on nights he didn't bet.

Days Off: Most players take a day off now and then to rest. We can safely assume that Rose played all his starters when he gambled, and gave the backups a chance when he didn't.

Proposition Bets: This is potentially the most troubling aspect of his hedged claim that he never bet against his own team. There are lots more ways to bet than win vs loss. You can bet on the number of stolen bases. You can bet on the total number of runs scored. You can bet on whether a team scores in a specific inning. The possibilities are endless.

Gamblers are always looking for an edge. Should we assume that Rose never bet on, say, the number of stolen bases (probably through an intermediary) but not the outcome of the game. That would leave him free to send the runners on every opportunity without regard for whether they won or lost. Forget about the hit-and-run or bunting a player to 2nd, we need them to get a steal. So we send them, regardless of the game situation.

Pete Rose has finally admitted his gambling, but he's done so to make money. He has a book coming out, and his timing was obviously planned to garner maximum publicity as Hall of Fame votes were announced. He also has the least contrie attitude I can remember of anyone admitting a mistake. He seems to be saying You said I could get in the Hall of Fame if I admitted gambling, so I'm admitting it. Now open the fucking door, asshole. Rose sees himself as the victim of all this, which is ludicrous. But that doesn't matter to me. It just means he's still got the problems that drove him to gamble so heavily in the first place.

Pete Rose gambled on games he managed. He brought disgrace to the game of baseball on the field. He doesn't deserve to be in the Hall of Fame.

Update: Charles Kuffner has more about this, and has collected some relevant quotes.

An Idea

In the spirit of using persuasion to effect the public good rather than simply mandating behavior changes, I've got an idea that would be very inexpensive, remarkably effective, and would be very easy to implement:

All new cars and trucks sold in America come affixed with a 6"x12" placard stating in nice big bold letters it's average city/highway fuel economy that must be kept on just as license plates must be.

I'm guessing that a big fat 8 on the back of a Hummer would dampen its curb appeal quite a bit. People would still be free to buy the gas guzzlers, they'd just have to face the shame of everyone knowing exactly how wasteful they were being. Nothing like voluntary submission to peer pressure to change a society (notice how racism has become so socially unacceptable that even hard-core racists now seem ashamed?).

I am so tempted to stay up and watch Villa v. Man U in the FA Cup (on my spiffy new digital cable), but sleep prevails.

What Do We Really Want

Earlier, I suggested that, as an alternative to the draft, we could simply make government benefits dependent on having completed a term of national service (the military, Peace Corps, and AmeriCorps would all count). We, of course, would have to drastically increase the options for national service and make them available even for those not physically equipped for the military.

You'd still be a citizen in all respects, you just wouldn't be eligible for things like free healthcare, free college tuition, and subsidized home loans unless you'd served your country. The idea being that we could accomplish most of the goals of a draft without resorting to imprisoning those who wouldn't go along. I envisioned bountiful benefits to entice virtually everone into national service, with the only abstainers either so rich the benefits wouldn't matter or so morally opposed that they'd be willing to forgogo without them.

Reader PJ from Maryland came up with another option. We could end up with a large majority of non-servers voting to eliminate most government benefits since they wouldn't get them. We would end up with a considerably shrunken state providing considerably shrunken benefits (which, of course, would mean a considerably smaller number of volunteers for national service). This is a possibility that I hadn't thought of, but one worth serious consideration.

I'd absolutely love a healthy national debate between those who favor:

1) Smaller government, with lower taxes, and a much lower level of services

and

2) Bigger government, with higher taxes, and a higher level of services that those receiving them have done something to earn (am not a big fan of the free lunch)

This would be much better than the current debate we have between those who favor:

1) Big government doling out largesse to the anyone who has the money to buy political influence, with taxes much lower than are required to pay for said largesse

and

2) Big government still doling out largesse to those who can afford to pay for political influence, but reserving some of it for those who can't, with taxes only somewhat lower than those required to pay for said largesse

I'm guessing that bigger government would win for a variety of reasons, but you could argue that either result would be better than what we have now. Either we'd be giving increased benefits to those who had proven their willingness to serve the United States, or at least we wouldn't be running up massive debts providing benefits to those not willing to work for them.

Don't we at least deserve a choice?

I'm no fan of today's big government, borrow-and-spend Republicans nor of today's skybox liberal Democrats.

I miss having real deficit hawks and populists to choose from. Can't we have them back, please?

I'm 19th in a Google search for Santeria Powerpoint.

I find this funny on many, many levels.

Basic Human Rights

I know that I mentioned a while back a New Republic article on gay Palestinians in Israel, but Instapundit pointed me to a post on the same subject that points to this article.

In a nutshell, gay Palestinians are subject to constant violence and harassment in their home territories, but pretty much left alone in Israel. Some fucker even tried to recruit one as a suicide bomber to atone for his deviant lifestyle.

I've never understood the blindspot that big parts of the American and European left have for brutal authoritarian societies that treat their women, gays, and ethnic and religious minorities like absolute shit. What's the appeal? Why do they identify with people who hate them and their lifestyles?

I'm not Jewish, but I know for a fact thatI'd feel far more at home in Israel, with its tolerance and diversity of lifestyles, than I would in any state in the Muslim world. Turkey is the only place that would come close, and that's because it's worked so hard to be secular. I just don't like theocracies, of any kind. Nor do I like non-theocracies like the Palestinian Authority where the bigotry of its majority is given full sway.

Is there any doubt that the majority of the Left in both the US and in Europe truly feels the same? Would they pick the close-mindedness and intolerance of most of the Muslim world over the relative freedom of Israel? I really doubt it. That's to not even mention Saudi Arabia, perhaps the least tolerant society in the world.

I'll just never understand why they support a society that they'd never willingly live in over one that approximates the conditions they live under now. Women are treated as full members of society. Gays can live their lives unharassed. Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, and even Yankees fans are allowed to worship in peace. Israel ain't perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than elsewhere in the region.

Predictions

1) Howard Dean will win the Democratic nomination and pick Wes Clark as his running mate

2) The big dollar slime war will start immediately, with the real whores in the "mainstream" media leading the way (Mona Charen, please pick up the white courtesy phone)

3) Some left-wing group will accuse Clark fo being a War Criminal, either for Vietnam or Kosovo (or both). Unlike anything else said by left-wing groups, this will get significant play from rightwing media outlets

4) The NRA will endorse Bush even though his stated policies on guns are virtually identical to those of Dean (i.e. He won't change any current laws)

5) The Republicans will attemp to paint Dean as a McGovern/Mondale/Dukakis lilly-livered liberal. Oddly enough, Dean's noted irritability will partially inoculate him against this. Stereotypical liberals are mild and apologetic, not irritable and possibly violent (as Matthew Yglesias has observed, it's easy to imagine Dean wanting to blow lots of shit up if need be).

6) Republicans will get some traction painting Dean as too "Pro-Gay" in places like Arkansas, Missouri, West Virginia, and Tennessee, but this will cost them any chance at New York or California and will hurt them somewhat in Nevada and Florida (attitudes towards gays have softened a ton in the last decade).

7) Healthcare will be a very big issue, especially among seniors who get pissed when they realize what a rip-off the Medicaire changes are. This will put Florida back in play, and may tilt Ohio Democratic (along with Bush's flip-flop on steel imports, which managed to piss off everyone)

8) There will be a whispering campaign to try to get Dick Cheney replaced by someone with more electoral appeal (Bill Frist being prominent in whispering his own name). It won't work.

9) At least one quite prominent Republican will endorse Dean based on either the budget deficit or on gay rights. This won't get nearly enough airplay.

10) A handful of unknown Democrats from the South and Mountain West (plus Zell Miller) will endorse Bush. This will get way too much airplay.

11) I will lose a small amount of weight, but not nearly enough

12) My apartment will continue to look like a War Zone, but the pile of magazines will shrink slightly

13) Beer will be drunk, Love will be made, music will be badly danced to, and incoherent midnight ramblings will be blogged

Crap

First weekend of the New Year, and my Resolutions have all been broken.

I'm worthless and weak.

Resolutions

A couple years ago, I had one simple New Year's Resolution, to eat more JellyBellies. That's it. My Resolution was to eat more JellyBellies and I was a miserable failure. That year I ate considerably fewer JellyBellies than the year before. How pathetic is that?

Of course, breaking that Resolution didn't hurt me. And without the threat of imminent pain, I have no willpower. So this year, I have a set of Resolutions with built in repercussions:

1) Don't chase after the Flop with underpairs or straight draws with no other outs

2) Don't bluff after the Flop with unpaired overcards

3) Be willing to abandon big pairs on the Flop or Turn if you know they're beat

4) Get up and leave the game if everyone is playing too tight for me to make a profit

5) If the cards aren't good enough to Raise, then they probably aren't good enough to Call.


Breaking these Resolutions will cost me a crap-load of money, so let's see if I can stick with 'em. Wish me luck.

The Draft

Matthew Yglesias rather likes the idea of a draft, but hates the reasons that Charlie Rangel and James Inhofe have for supporting one. He apparently just likes the chance to get cheap labor for the military. Of all the reasons I can think of to support reestablshing the Draft, that's the only stupid one I've heard yet, and it comes from one of the smartest bloggers around.

A draft would be unlikely to save any money over an all-volunteer force, and what little it might save wouldn't be worth the human cost of forced conscrption (for much the same reason that saving money by limiting death penalty appeals isn't worth the human cost of possibly executing innocent people).

Draft related costs:

1) Direct expenditures on administering the Draft, Draft physicals, and the inevitable financial cost of imprisoning draft resisters

2) Vast increase in military expenditures for training, as the turnover would be much higher than in the current all-volunteer force. When I was in the Navy, the reenlistment bonus for my job was $35,000 just because of the expense of training and getting enough experience in the Fleet not to be a useless tool.

3) Indirect economic costs of redirecting millions of young men into the military. This would range from the lost economic output from delayed entry into college or a profession to the twisting of incentives towards any jobs or activities exempt from the Draft (Israel exempts rabbinical students from the Draft, and so has an absurd surplus of rabbis). This would also include lost output from any Americans who choose to emigrate or any immigrants who choose not to come here because of the Draft.

As I've said, the Draft would be unlikely to save much money if any. But there can still be a case made for the Draft [Full disclosure: I don't have a dog in this fight. I'm a veteran, and the 10" piece of steel holding my son's shattered left arm together is enough to keep him out of the military even if he volunteered].

Reason's to support the Draft:

1) Protecting your country is a duty shared by all citizens, and cannot be morally shuffled off on those who volunteer for it. Esentially, you can argue that it is immoral to benefit from a society that you aren't willing to defend (read Starship Troopers for a society that takes this to an extreme). This, or a hormonally aggressive adolescent version of it, was my main reason for joining the military as a teenager. My more mature view is that there are plenty of ways to serve your country that don't involve the military (teaching comes to mind, as does extensive volunteer work). I still, however, have a dim view of the huge number of Americans who never get past What's in it for me?.

2) Our leadership elites are more likely to drag us into war if their families won't be doing the fighting. This is Congressman Rangel's viewpoint, and it has a certain validity. We never got serious about getting out of Vietnam until we dumped draft exemptions for college kids, and the most gung-ho for war in Iraq seemed to be those who didn't have kids in the military. We should always be wary about life-and-death decisions by those who won't be sharing the burden of dying.

3) Military service can be good for kids, especially those who have little direction in life. This is Senator Inhofe's argument. It also has some validity. We can all think of people who find their way in life once they're subjected to real discipline. I just don't know how effective that would be for conscripts as opposed to those who choose the Service voluntarily.

4) Military service creates a bond between Americans who live increasingly isolated lives, exposing us to people we would've never met otherwise and giving us all a common rite of passage as we journey to adulthood. This is the reasoning of my old college professor Charles Moskos (Go Cats!), who sees the peacetime postwar draft as having served to forge our identity as Americans first and members of our various other subgroups last. I see college as having taken over the role of a common gateway into adulthood that the military once provided, and it's one that is coed to boot. As decent blue collar jobs continue to disappear, this trend will accelerate.

Though these are all reasonable arguments, I remain unconvinced.

My basic viewpoint is that we shouldn't apply coercion unless absolutely necessary. This especially holds true for something as potentially lifechanging and dangerous as the military. It may be desirable for more Americans to serve their country, that they come from a broader cross-section of society, and that they have a common experience as they enter adulthood; I just don't think it's worth using the threat of imprisonment to acheive those goals [btw: I find this same argument spectacularly unconvincing when used by pseudo-libertarians to argue against things such as pollution controls and mandatory seatbelts. The daily hassles of traffic laws and sales taxes may be backed by the threat of imprisonment, but they aren't anything close to the burden of even a short-term conscription.]

One of the things that made life at sea tolerable was the knowledge that we had freely chosen that path. It may have really sucked, but we'd done it to ourselves (NAVY = Never Again Volunteer Yourself). I don't know how I would've survived a 6 month Med Cruise away from my family if I'd been forced into it. I'm just not willing to force non-volunteers into such a situation outside of a true national emergency, nor am I willing to imprison those who refuse.

I do have one idea that would create a massive incentive for public service, but it would need to be married to a truly massive increase in our capacity to accept volunteers into the military, AmeriCorps, and the Peace Corps, regardless of their age or physical condition (even someone in a wheelchair could be an emergency dispatcher or a teacher):

Make all government benefits dependent on having completed public service

You want a free college education?
Sign up.

You want a government subsidized house loan?
Sign up.

You want free healthcare?
Sign up.

I see a set of incentives so overwhelming that only the truly wealthy, the truly stupid, and the truly religiously/morally opposed would turn down the chance to serve their country.

This would only work if we had some way that anyone who wanted to serve could do so at any time they chose (with perhaps a longer term of service for those who wait past age 30 and shorter terms of service for jobs that carry physical risk).

This would provide Matthew's dreamed about cheap pool of labor, professor Moskos' joint rite of passage, and Congressman Rangel's nationally shared risk without the negative consequences of coercion and imprisonment for those who refused.

It could even provide one more argument for increased public services:After all, we earned it.

Boy, has Money magazine picked some seriously crappy places as it's Hottest Towns.

Really, Plano fucking Texas as #1 in the entire Western United States? Anaheim as #2? Have these no-talent ass-clowns ever been to Anaheim?

And why the hell are half the Hot Towns in the East suburbs of DC?

Interesting Stat

According to the April 2003 Atlantic Monthly: While 25% of the world's women live in places where abortion is illegal, 40% of all abortions are performed in those countries.

I'd love to be able to jump all over this and use the headline Outlawing Abortion Causes More Abortions, but that's just silly. It's a lot easier just to point out that outlawing abortion doesn't appear to mean fewer abortions.

I'd guess that the real cause-and-effect relationship is between the number of abortions and easy access to birth control, especially since places that outlaw abortion mostly take a dim view of contraception as a whole. Oddly enough, if women who don't want more kids have the chance to keep from getting pregnant, they take it. If they don't have that chance, they get abortions whether it's legal or not.

Never understood why people who claim to be "anti-abortion" also seem to be the ones against easy access to contraception. The Pill has prevented more abortions than religion and morality ever have.

Dances with Samurai

The Kill Bill fight scene in a snow covered garden in between The Bride and O-Ren Ishii does more to convey the mystique of the Eastern warrior than any amount of heavy-handed explication could have. But it does it without ever coming out and telling you what it's doing. You're expected to be smart enough to draw your own conclusions. The biggest problem with The Last Samurai is that it never assumes you're smart enough to draw your own conclusions.

A great deal of effort goes into romanticizing the Japanese warrior's code, Bushido. But the director apparently feels the need to spell out everything for the audience. There is no attempt to let us draw our own conclusions, or to let us figure stuff out on our own. If a warrior spends time trying to write a poem about Cherry blossoms and then sees them as he dies, he will mention them and what they mean. Apparently the possibility of some poor shlub paying his $8 and not getting the point was just too much for the film-makers to risk. As a result, a movie which would be best served by subtlety has none.

While some of the fight scenes were beautifully choreographed and filmed, the Samurai are not the Plains Indians (as the movie explicitly tries to convince us) and the non-fight scenes are a waste of our time. There was a good movie in here someplace, but it's buried under tired cinematic cliches and the need to accomodate Cruise's stardom.

The Samurai were, as the movie points out over and over, bound by honor in ways the modern man finds unfathomable. They were also, as the movie pointedly ignores, brutally cruel towards the commoners they considered inferior to themselves. A better film might've explored this nuance, that the Samurai were honorable and steadfast at the same time they were arrogant and cruel.

There is a scene in which the peasants making up the new Japanese army harass a young Samurai and cut off his topknot. This is played out simply as an unnecessary indignity heaped on an honorable man, but it could've been used for much more. It could've explored the fact that the soldiers were justified in ther hatred of the Samurai, that a military elite spending 1000 years ruling by the sword is going to provoke hatred and resentment.

The movie could've explore the fact modern industry and military power combined with the cruelty and arrogance of the Samurai could be some scary shit, or that the demands of efficiency in the modern market have their own cruelty and arrogance. Instead, we get handed the simple formula: Samurai good, modernity bad and are expected to swallow it whole. There was a good movie buried in here somplace, but this ain't it.

Merry Christmas

Hoping everyone is having a good holiday.

Especially want to say hello to all the folks in the Gulf. I know how hard it can be on deployment when you're apart from your families. Stay strong.

The posts from last week finally showed up online!
Only 3-4 days after being published!

More blogging later, now have flu.

WTF?

My four posts from yesterday all show up in Blogger as having been published, yet Blogspot doesn't show any of them.

I guess no further posting until I know Blogspot is updating properly (not that you'll be able to read this until it does).

That's Really Weird

I've posted 4 things today, but none of them show up on Blogspot.

They all show up, however, inside the Blogger window as having been posted.

Update: This post isn't showing up either, so I guess it didn't have anything to do with Bill Clinton's Evil Member (or did it?).

Is Bill Clinton's Penis holding my blog hostage?

If so, what nefarious plot is afoot now from that mighty appendage?

Has it no shame, at long last, has it no shame!

HARD TARGET!

The FBI has revealed that it has recently foiled a plot by Islamic extremist terrorists to hijack Bill Clinton’s penis and crash it into the red light district of Los Angeles. Whilst details are, at present, sketchy, it appears that a group of terrorists, disguised as young female interns, penetrated security at Clinton’s Harlem offices and succeeded in stimulating his sex drive to dangerous levels. It is believed that their choice of a target on the opposite coast of the United States was deliberate. “By the time they’d got to it to LA their devilish foreplay would undoubtedly have got Bill’s ‘old man’ fully fuelled�, a Justice department spokesman has said. “Such a release of sexual energy would prove devastating, destroying entire city blocks and shaking LA to its foundations�. Indeed, it is believed that the terrorists’ ambitions were even greater, perhaps hoping that Clinton’s knob would open up the San Andreas fault, resulting in the whole of California falling into the Pacific. Warnings were issued to those citizens living under the flight path of the hijacked Presidential member - “Stay indoors and lock up your wives and daughters!� Control of the penis was finally wrested from the terrorists after a fierce gun battle with FBI agents, who had successfully boarded Clinton’s skin boat over Nevada.

Bush's Harken Mistakes Blamed on Clinton's Penis

(AP) In a move to fend off questions about the administration's ability to handle the corporate accounting scandals, the White House today placed responsibility for George W. Bush's own previous SEC troubles squarely on the shoulders of Bill Clinton's sexual escapades.

White House: Clinton's penis leaked CIA operative's identity:

Washington — The White House said it has reason to believe that an illegal leak which disclosed the identity of a CIA operative was made by former President Bill Clinton’s penis. The operative, wife of a former U.S. diplomat with expertise in African affairs, was apparently named by Clinton’s appendage in a series of encounters with several Washington journalists.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said that Bill Clinton’s penis “has a clear track record of endangering the national security of the United States.�

Yay!!!

I'm really fucking happy to see Saddam Hussein in shackles, looking like a wino who's been sleeping in the park. I'm only sorry that his thug sons got killed a while back, so they won't have to rot alongside him until the end of time.

While this will by no means mean an end to violence in Iraq, nor even put a dent in the suicide bombing (I kinda doubt that Saddam inspired that kind of loyalty from anyone), it will mean several good things:

1) Eliminates residual fear that Saddam might come back into power, giving Iraqis one less reason not to side with us.

2) Makes the US look more powerful and capable of maintaining peace and fucking up our enemies, giving Iraqis one more reason to side with us.

3) Gives those who are fighting us reason to fear that they, too, will get caught, giving them reason to rethink their opposition.

4) Takes one murderous son-of-a-bitch off the streets, and that's always a good thing.

Baathists and Saddam loyalists, as I've said, are not the ones who've been conducting suicide attacks against American troops. That's just not their style. They have, however, almost certainly been providing money and help to those who have, as well as launching their own hit-and-run sniper/mortar/ambush attacks on Western soldiers and our Iraqi allies.

Now that Saddam is locked up, I'd expect the Baathists to slowly fade into the background. They have no one left to fight for, and they have as much to fear from an Islamic Republic of Iraq as anyone. If they have any brains, they'll swap sides and try to come out on top in the new Iraq (much as the former Communists in Eastern Europe suddenly embraced free enterprise and stole everything they could lay hands to, whether it was nailed down or not). I'm not saying we should let the lower level murderers off with a slap on the wrist or that we want the Baathists to get the economic upper hand (they've already got it, from a purely ready-cash standpoint), just that it's better they throw their lot in with us and get on with making a life for themselves than that they throw their lot in the with the people currently killing our soldiers.

Won't speak to the effect of this on American politics just yet, as I'm happy enough at the prospect of fewer American deaths and less general violence as to not really give a damn about the politics of it.

Libertarian vs libertarian

SayUncle, one of my favorite right wingers, has a good explanation of why he's a small l libertarian but not a big L one:

It should be noted that I am not a Libertarian but I do like some aspects of Libertarianism. However, Libertarianism can't work. Clayton Cramer opined that he watched the TV show Cops just to remind him of why Libertarianism cannot work. You will always have the lowest common denominator ruining it for everyone. Face it, not everyone is nice guy like me.

Libertarianism needs to drop the opposition to all social programs (it’s not practical to oppose public education outright); Libertarians need to stop nominating people who get into shootouts with the police (strangely, they’re not on Cops) or nominating people who die themselves blue from taking magic potions designed to keep the orbital mind control lasers from penetrating their brains; and Libertarians need to adopt a moderate libertarian approach first to get their foot in the door on the political scene. As of now, the weirdos have done the Libertarians in.

It's nice to see people on either side of the political divide who are open to nuance and understand that extremist positions taken as far as they can go are usually pretty damned scary.

Petty, Spiteful, and Foolish

If there's a hallmark of the Bush administration dealing with people it has disagreed with in the past, it's the petty, spiteful, and foolish gesture.

I don't really have a major problem with limiting contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq to people who supported the invasion. I think it's wasteful, as cutting out potential bidders inevitably means higher bids. But this ranks low on the list of things the Bushies have done that are wasteful.

However, as a PR move just as you are asking these same countries to help pay for the reconstruction, this is a colossal blunder. It's petty, spiteful, and foolish.

What is the possible motive for sticking your thumb in someone's eye, then asking for their help with your next breath? Have they gotten so used to bullying their way past the Democrats in Congress that they've forgotten not everyone marches to their orders?

If you're going to make a public example of people who oppose you, make sure you don't need their help first. Cause you're not getting jack after you do it. How elementary is that?

Can the Bushies get any more petty, spiteful, and foolish?

Not the Lefty They Think He Is

The original Conventional Wisdom on Howard Dean was that he was this election's Bruce Babbitt, the smart former governor of a small state who has some good ideas, gets attention from the press, but fails to excite the voters.

Then, lo and behold, he started to excite the voters.

Partly for his outspokenness on invading Iraq, partly because he was the only Democrat who didn't preface every speech with 10 minutes of "supporting the President", Dean was adopted by the activist base of the Democratic Party (not the officeholders who make calculated choices, but the unpaid activists who get excited about somebody and then hound all their friends into supporting him). These are the people you want on your side in a Primary.

Unfortunately, the new Conventional Wisdom is that Dean is this year's George McGovern, someone too liberal to win a general election. Leaving aside whether we would've been better off with McGovern than with Nixon, and leaving aside the fact that every election is unique and the lazy idiots in the press really need to stop reaching for an analogy to past candidates, we have these two questions: Is Howard Dean the flaming liberal everyone is now saying he is, and does this doom him in a general election against George Bush?

My look at Dean's actual policies tells me that the answer to #1 is no, and my gut reaction tells me that #2 is no also (but with a caveat).

Dean can be seen as liberal on some issues. He signed a bill allowing gay Civil Unions. He pushed forward a progressive plan for state funded healthcare and increased funding for public schools.

Dean can also be seen as moderate/conservative on some issues. He doesn't favor any new Federal gun control laws, and has a good rating from the NRA to show for it. He balanced the state budget for 12 years, while actually lowering taxes. He sometimes angered the left wing of his own party while in office. He even talked the legislature into passing the gay Civil Unions bill as a compromise which headed off a gay Marriage bill.

What does all this add up to? Dean is a pragmatic centrist, but one who has been adopted by the left for his willingness to rail against George Bush. There's a very good chance that if more prominent Democrats hadn't spent the last two years sucking up to Bush, Dean would, in fact, be the Bruce Babbitt of this election. What has attracted most of Dean's supporters has been his energy and his willingness to be critical of Bush in a way that other candidates haven't been. If they hadn't dropped the ball, Dean's poll numbers would probably still be in low single digits.

You don't win elections by talking about how much you support your opponent, and Dean appears to be the only one who knew this all along.

In a general election, Dean could be a very strong candidate [note the could].

1) He has 12 years experience running a relatively poor state with a balanced budget, which makes him much more credible when he promises to tame the Federal deficit

2) He's a doctor, which helps both with healthcare issues and overall with voter trust

3) He appears to say exactly what he means; and ,as we learned with McCain's candidacy, people respond to candidates who speak from the gut rather than froma consultants talking points

4) He's neutral on guns, which diffuses a tremendous wedge issue. Without guns in play, Nevada, Arizona, West Virginia, New Hampshire, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Tennessee are all within reach. Other than Clark, Dean is probably the only prominent Democrat who won't be hung with the He wants to take my guns away tag come election time.

As I said, Dean could be a very strong candidate. Whether he is depends a lot on his campaign and on Democrats as a whole. The guys running against him are trying to paint Dean as too left-wing to win a general election. In this they are being aided by right wingers both in politics and in the press. If the Dean campaign becomes captive to their most ardent supporters and never fights their way back to the middle, if other Democrats continue to portray Dean as another McGovern; Howard Dean will never have a chance to become that strong candidate.

The Dean people and Democrats in general need to fight the attempts of outsiders to define who our candidates really are. It's important that we look at each person for who they really are, not for who some layabout on televsiion tells us they are. Just as John Kerry isn't a taller Michael Dukakis and John Edwards isn't a Democratic Dan Quayle, Howard Dean isn't a latter day George McGovern.

Give the Dude a Break

Not surprisingly, the same people who've been quick to jump on Al Gore's case every time he does anything at all have jumped on him for his endorsement of Howard Dean. They've criticized him for making the endorsement now, well before the primaries have started. They've criticized him for not telling Joe Lieberman and the other candidates first (Russert phrased it like he had an obligation to let them talk him out of it). I'm sure some no-talent ass clown has critisized Gore's clothes and hair on the day in question.

Unfortunately, Gore seems to have gotten used to the role of punching bag (my biggest problem with his campaign in 2000), so I'll have a make a few points he should make himself.

1) Oddly enough, an endorsement means a hell of a lot more before the election than after it. If Gore truly believes that Dean is the best man for the job, then why the hell shouldn't he try to help him out? It takes more guts to do that than to hang back and endorse the winner after the smoke clears.

2) Lieberman has done little else but distance himself from Gore for the last 3 years. Did he really expect Al to stand aside and let himslef be used as a whipping boy? [He probably did, given the way Gore has bent over for his critics in years past]

My guess is that Gore looks at Dean and sees the candidate he could have been, the candidate he wishes he'd been. One who isn't afraid of saying things that get people riled up, who doesn't let the consultants tone him down and warp his message to the point of incomprehensibility. It's the candidate I wish that Gore had been also.

I'm not sure if Dean is the guy I want, but I'm glad he's not gonna take shit from anybody. That's a quality that both Gore and I seem to admire in a candidate.

More Electoral Politics

In 2000, Al Gore won the majority of the popular vote, probably the true Florida vote, and the West Coast, the Upper Midwest, the Northeast, and the Mid Atlantic states.

In order to win this election, a Democrat needs to carry all the Gore states plus either one more big one or a couple little ones (as the electoral vote totals have changed with the 2000 census).

My nominees for the big one:
1) Florida
2) Ohio

My nominees for the little ones:
1) New Hampshire
2) Missouri
3) Arkansas
4) West Virginia
5) Nevada
6) Arizona

The broken Bush promise on nuclear waste is gonna hurt him in Nevada, probably cost him the state to a decent opponent.

I'm really not sure how many Florida Gore voters in 2000 are gonna turn around and vote for the guy who they think robbed them of their choice. That won't be known until election day. Look for a big anti-theft backlash if Katherine Harris, the Cruella deVille of the 2000 recount, runs for Bob Graham's Senate seat.

The three key questions for Democrats should be

1) Who can hold all the Gore states

2) Who can pick up a few Bush states

3) Who would make a good President (unfortunately this isn't the only relevant question, as you can only become a good President if you first win an election)*.

The answers are out there, and there's more than one good one.

*Note to quibblers: While Bush did indeed become President without first winning an election, I speficially said that you needed to win one to become a good President.

Weird Trivia

1) Three direct descendants of former Presidents have become President themselves.

2) All three took office despite losing the popular vote.

3) The previous two lost their reelection tries to the men who'd won the popular vote the first time

More Also Rans

Of the prominent contenders for the nomination (I'm leaving out defeated Illinois Senators, Cleveland Mayors, and loudmouth New York gadflies from my calculations), there are some really good candidates. The only ones I had serious doubts about were Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt.

Despite his resemblance to the Keebler Elf. Lieberman strikes me as both too close to the big money skybox politics of such luminaries as Gray Davis and Tony Coehlo and too tied to his smarmy goody-two shoes image. I can't say enough bad things about someone who wants to get tough on Hollywood but not on Wall Street.

Plus, Lieberman would likely be a bad candidate. His policies would be the least distinct from Bush's on a host of issues (the environment aside), and this ain't the way to win. He showed the instincts of a streetfighter in winning his first Senatorial campaign, but in 2000 was obviously afraid to do anything that people might dislike. In a general election, he'd make Dukakis look tough.

Gephardt just gives me the willies, always has. No man with a complete lack of eyebrows will ever be voted President. Sorry, but it's true. He also has the same inside the Beltway persona that almost always loses the Big One.

Policywise, I doubt that Gephardt would've made a bad President. I just don't see anything that would make me think he'd make a particulary good one.

Well, never mind. They'll both be gone soon. Lieberman can't lay claim to consistent support anywhere, and Gephardt is a non-entity outside the Midwest.

Requiem for a Heavyweight

I went into this year thinking that John Kerry was the man. He could've been a contender, but it just ain't gonna happen. He's gonna get smoked in New Hampshire (which, ironically, would've gone for Gore and given him the Presidency if Kerry had been on the 2000 ticket), his own back yard , and he'll be gone shortly thereafter. Too bad.

I don't know if Kerry could've shaken off his Gore-like demeanor long enough to really engage the voters, but he would've gone down swinging. He's a fighter. No fucking way he'd be caught apologizing because some reporter misquoted him to make him look bad. No way he'd let lies about his record slide until they became conventional wisdom.

Kerry was gonna be the leftish (but not lefty) alternative to guys like Lieberman and Edwards, but one with solid military credentials. He would've been the logical focus of the Bradley supporters of 2000 (who didn't seem bothered that Bradley was never a true liberal himself).

Kerry is smart as hell, and stands on the right side of most issues. He wrote a book about international law enforcement before Bush had ever been outside North America. He has some great ideas about using energy conservation to enhance national defense. He's cautiously hawkish on foreign policy, but knew it was important to bring allies when we ventured abroad. I really think he'd make a great President, but it's not gonna happen. Got hit by the Deam steamroller, and his thunder is gone.

Good post by Andrew Sabl on How I Became a Clark Supporter.

His basic points:

My support for Clark has not come naturally.......But I figured I owed the largely unknown candidate a chance. Being a professor, I decided to read his book, Winning Modern Wars.

1. Clark is an intensely patriotic internationalist.

2. Clark is essentially a pre-Sixties Democrat

Clark's main position on the culture wars is to find them (a) baffling and pointless and (b) a right-wing conspiracy to distract middle-class white guys from their declining living standards and an economic policy that gives everything to the wealthy.

3. Clark believes in fighting the war on terrorism -- hard, continually, smart, and to win. And he makes an excellent case that Bush's policies are guaranteed to fail at this.

4. Clark clearly casts himself as the person making policy, not one of the people debating it.

5. Clark doesn't think the personal is political.

6. Remember that the Army is Biosphere II: a piece of Sweden stuck inside a country that's becoming Brazil.

It's been said that Clark wants America to be strong at home so it can be strong abroad, not the other way around. It's true, and a bit jarring. But given Clark's clear conviction that Republican policies are undermining our economic security and the culture of opportunity that makes us so attractive abroad, this actually works better than I initially thought it could. (Look for Clark to do very well among Latinos, and immigrants generally -- or kids of immigrants, like me. He understands the American Dream, and how Republicans are running it off the rails.)

There's a reason Rove didn't return his calls.

Bottom line: Clark is a throwback, a Rip Van Winkle, a pluralistic, optimistic, Greatest Generation-style politician lost, like Howard the Duck, in a world he never made. He's further outside the mainstream political culture than can possibly be imagined. This is what makes him so striking, so hard to parse, and so clearly the best candidate.

Being a patriotic internationalist and a New Deal Democrat, looks like I'm gonna need to read that book.

Go search Google for the words "miserable failure".

Do it right now. I'll wait.

Public Nusiance slams The Nation for a hitpiece they've published about Wesley Clark by (surprise) an apologist for Milosevich.

It's worth reading to see some shoddy "journalism' get ripped to shreds.

Great quote from Richard Posner in reviewing a book on Wild Bill Douglas:

We now know that a high percentage of successful and creative people are psychologically warped and morally challenged

.
Worth keeping in mind.

The Continuing Decline

This quote from a recent New Republic scared the hell out of me:

The pollster is the one who has first-line responsibility for message development.

This may be hopelssly naive of me, but isn't the fucking candidate supposed to have first-line responsibility for message development? After all, he's the one running for office; he's the one who's asking us to trust him; and he's the one who's gonna be voting in Congress.

I really couldn't give a damn if pollsters are telling politicians what clothes to wear, how to cut their hair, or even where to go on vacation. It just really pisses me off that they're the ones deciding where a candidate stands on things like war in Iraq and national tax policy.

Every blogger I read could tell you where he stands on almost any important issue of the day, and anyone who can't has no fucking business running for political office.

More Fallacies

Commenter Mark stated something else that's become "conventional wisdom":
Businesses don't pay taxes. They pass it along as they would any other cost to the consumer.

This is partly true, but mostly false. It doesn't take into account the true nature of markets. It depends on the nature of the business. A corporation that does cost+ government contracts will, indeed, just build the cost of any taxes into what it charges. A corporation selling in a competive market will not be able to do so.

It's important to remember that a business is trying to maximize profit, not sales. Businesses do not, for the most part, look at their costs and use that to determine what's the least they can sell a product for. They do the opposite. They look at the potential market, and determine what's the most they can sell a product for without crippling their market share.

It can be a quite complicated task, involving which costs are sunk, and the elasticity of the market for the product. But businesses will almost always price their products to maximize profits, even if this means losing some sales to competitors.

A record company can burn, package, and ship an additional CD for a little under a dollar. If all they cared about was maximizing sales, they'd sell their whole catalog for a dollar apiece and have much higher sales than they do now. They don't do that because they can sell the same CD for $15 and make a lot more money with lower sales. If they could raise the price on CDs to $20 without killing sales, they'd do it already without waiting for costs to increase.

In this example, we could slap a $5 tax on all CD sales and CD prices wouldn't rise anything close to $5 (they would likely rise, but not by nearly that much). The record companies would accept lower profits from absorbing a good bit of the tax rather than having to accept much lower sales (and even lower profits) from a price increase.

The important thing to remember is Businesses already charge as much as they can get away with in their particular market. A corporate tax increase would change the formula somewhat, as would any increase in costs, but it would not be passed along to consumers dollar for dollar. Some would be absorbed through lower profits, and some through attempts to lower other costs.

Democracy

There are certain preconditions for a stable democracy:

1) There must be widespread literacy (but doesn't need to be 100%)

2) There needs to be a reasonably sized middle class, most of whom work for the private sector

3) There needs to be enough respect for political institutions and the rule of law that unfavorable election results will still be abided by

4) There needs to be a military/police presence strong enough to preserve order, but professional enough not to interfere in the political process

5) There need to be strong social conventions in place that will prevent an ethnic or religious majority from imposing its will completely onto minorities

If you'll notice, unfortunately, only #1 is met by Iraq and Afganistan isn't close to any of these standards.*

I said long before we invaded that a best case scenario in Iraq would be a relatively benign Constitutional Monarchy. If you can look at the revenge killings, assasinations, and threats of imposing religious rule by force that constitute debate in present day Iraq and see the roots of a functioning democracy, I want some of what you're smoking.

*Somebody is gonna accuse me of ethnocentristic bigotry for laying out what I see as prerequisites for a functioning democracy that don't happen to apply to every place on earth. So be it. If I'm wrong, point me to a functioning democracy (not a sham, not tribal or religious rule in disguise, nor one constantly interrupted by military coups) that doesn't meet my requirements. If I'm right, it really doesn't matter if it's ethnocentric or not.

You should check out this article by Robert Kaplan on what the world has in store for us in the near future (spoiler: bloodshed, turmoil, hatred) and this one on how we should use our temporary supremacy (and Kaplan does make the point that America's ascendancy is likely to be even briefer than that of any previous power to dominate the world).

I do wish that he'd pointed out that using influence to help big corporations make a few short term bucks is an incredibly fucking stupid use of our power. Kaplan just assumes that we're looking long term at the sort of world our kids and grandkids will inherit from us, instead of confronting the fact that many American decisions are made from the crassest of short term opportunism. He is, however, a damned good thinker on what that world will likely look like and how we can help shape it.*

You should also read James Fallows' article from last year on the sort of long term commitment rebuilding Iraq will take.



*As always, just because I recommend reading something doesn't mean I agree with everything the writer has to say. It just means that his insights are worth contemplating. I assume that anyone who's made it this far has the capacity for critical thinking.

Taking on the Fallacies

A commenter to a previous post took exception to my contention that Bush was running almost solely on Sept 11th as an issue. He also repeated a fallacy that has become "conventional wisdom", that Bush's tax cuts helped everyone who pays taxes.

Well, allow me to retort.

There are millions of American taxpayers who pay thousands of dollars each in payroll, sales, and property taxes, yet pay no "income" tax. In fact, the majority of Americans pay more in payroll taxes than in income taxes. As Bush's tax cuts have affected only income taxes, inheritance taxes, and corporate taxes; they have not, in fact, benefitted everyone who pays taxes. Ignoring the fact that most people pay less in income tax than in other taxes makes it easier for the Bushies to pretend their policies benefit us all, but that doesn't make it true.

The explanation for all this is simple: payroll taxes have no deductions and no refunds. They are assessed on every dollar of earned income, from the first dollar. Someone who only makes $10,000/year will likely pay little income tax, but will pay the same percentage of income in payroll taxes as someone making $80,000/year, and a higher percentage than someone making $200,000/year (as the amount of income subject to payroll taxes in capped at just below $90,000). Of course, those who make millions a year off investments but have no earned income will pay no payroll taxes at all (and get a lower capital gains rax rate, to boot).

Sales taxes, of course, are even more regressive. The lower income a person is, the higher a percentage of that income he likely spends on stuff subject to sales tax (especially in states like my own, in which groceries and other necessities are not expempt from taxation).

Do the Bushies really think they're being honest when they tout a mean tax cut of a few hundred dollars per family as averaging in the thousands per family once they've avergaed in all the billionaires?

A flat tax cut of, say, $1000 per family (regardless of income) taken out of either income or payroll taxes would have cost far less than the Bush's plan, and would've helped far more people. Of course, they knew this going in. The intent was never to help the most people possible, it was to cut taxes for the wealthiest by any means necessary.