A review of the latest issue of TNR

TNR recently put out an issue about Iraq and Aaron said he though I should read it. To do him one better I'm going to read it and comment one article at a time. I'll start with Peter Bienart's piece:

At this late date, the United States has only one card left to play in Iraq: the threat to leave immediately. Except for Sadr, virtually no one in Iraq's political class wants that to happen. We must wield that threat as dramatically as possible, and, if Iraq's leaders don't respond, leave as fast as we humanly can.

The vehicle for this last-ditch effort would be a conference of Iraq's leaders and Iraq's neighbors (along with Russia, which has more leverage over Iran and Syria than we do). The goal would be revising Iraq's constitution to guarantee Sunnis a generous share of the nation's oil wealth (which is practically Iraq's only source of wealth). This is precisely the guarantee that Shia leaders refused to offer after they won the January 2005 elections. And it is the only way to convince Sunnis to accept a new Shia- and Kurd-dominated Iraq. To give Shia leaders an incentive to agree, the United States should offer the biggest carrot possible: not just a continued U.S. troop presence, but a temporary troop increase and a dramatically larger, World Bank-overseen development effort. We should also offer the biggest possible stick: If the conference ends in failure, the United States should begin its full withdrawal that very day. (We'd leave some troops in the neighborhood for operations against Al Qaeda.)

My response: Bienart’s plan might have been a good one a year or two ago. Back then you could argue that Sunnis really were just upset about oil wealth. Now however we’re dealing with a civil war. Sunnis are fighting because they rightly fear for their lives.

But no matter, let’s say Maliki concedes – losing all support from his base in the process – Sadr won’t and he controls the most powerful militia. The militias in turn have the support of regular Iraqis because they’re providing the security and basic services which the central government and US troops couldn’t. So the grand bargain doesn’t disband the major Shiite militias and of course the Sunnis can’t be expected to disband theirs until that happens (have to defend themselves!). The only thing the plan does is destroy Maliki’s political career. And if they do accept the bargain our reluctant soldiers are then stuck dying… for what exactly? Train Iraqi soldiers who will never confront the Iraqi militias because the political leadership depends on those militias? I’m sorry but that’s not worth 70+ dead Americans a month.

Tom’s rating: 5/10

Probability of being instituted: 3/10

Pony plan rating*: 9/10

*See Matt Yglesias:

Anyone who defends Bush's strategy is going to wind up looking bad, because after continuing to fail for a while it will be abandonned in favor of withdrawal. Anyone who advocates withdrawal is going to wind up looking bad, because eventually it will be implemented and bad stuff will happen down the road. Consequently, what you need to go is suggest a pony hunt in some territory where you're sure the administration won't go looking (calls for a regional conference are the center-left version of this) that way when the stay-the-course-until-eventually-you-leave cycle plays out, you get to claim that if only they'd followed my advice the war would have been won. Meanwhile, blame for defeat will be located primarily not on George W. Bush, but on the stab-in-the-back crowd on the left who made it politically impossible for Bush to find the pony.

Why does Mickey Kaus have a job?

Why does Mickey Kaus get paid to write about politics? Mickey Kaus reads a WaPo article on the Medicare drug benefit and wonders :

Now They Tell Us--Tasty Donut Edition: WaPo, which before the election was running stories about the"'devastating'" effect of the Bush Medicare drug benefit "doughnut hole," now reports that the program "has proven cheaper and more popular than anyone imagined."

The cost of the program has been lower than expected, about $26 billion in 2006, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The cost was projected to rise to $45 billion next year, but Medicare has received new bids indicating that its average per-person subsidy could drop by 15 percent in 2007, to $79.90 a month.

Urban Institute President Robert D. Reischauer, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, called that a remarkable record for a new federal program.

Initially, he said, people were worried no private plans would participate. "Then too many plans came forward," Reischauer said. "Then people said it's going to cost a fortune. And the price came in lower than anybody thought. Then people like me said they're low-balling the prices the first year and they'll jack up the rates down the line. And, lo and behold, the prices fell again. And the reaction was, 'We've got to have the government negotiate lower prices.' At some point you have to ask: What are we looking for here?" [Emphasis added]

Reischauer has a deserved reputation for straight-shooting. WaPo couldn't have gotten that paragraph out of him before November 7? 6:44 P.M.

Kaus spends his time marveling that the Medicare drug benefit is proven "cheaper and more popular than anyone imagined." Which really would be marvelous if it were true. I suspect it isn't. I'm pretty sure there was one group that imagined it being cheaper, the congressional representatives who voted on it:

WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 - The Bush administration offered a new estimate of the cost of the Medicare drug benefit on Tuesday, saying it would cost $720 billion in the next 10 years.

That is much more than the $400 billion Congress assumed when it passed legislation creating the benefit in late 2003.

So is the plan really cheaper than congress thought when they were voting on it? I can't really tell without the new 10 year forecast but from the numbers I'm seeing it doesn't look like it is.

Meanwhile Dean Baker reads the very same article and has some very different thoughts:

Lobbyists and politicians often try to obscure issues when they advocate positions favored only by relatively small special interest groups. They did their job well in helping to frame a Washington Post piece on the Medicare drug benefit.

The article discusses the possibility of having Medicare negotiate drug prices directly with the industry, a position strongly opposed by the Washington Post editorial board. One would be hard-pressed to figure out what is at issue after reading this piece.

For example, the article raises the possibility that if Medicare negotiated prices directly with the industry, it “could drive prices higher.” Yes, this must be why the industry is lobbying so hard against having Medicare negotiate prices. They are worried that it would cause them to charge higher prices and get higher profits.

The article then raises the other potential downside of negotiated drug prices “it could significantly lower drug-company profits and discourage medical innovation.” Okay, let’s check reality here. Absolutely every person I know who supports having Medicare negotiate prices with the drug industry believes and hopes that such negotiation will lower industry profits. This is not a negative side effect of the policy – it is the point.

I read the article and wonder why the Washington Post felt the need to play up the "Democrats are screwed" angle. The article wants to make it sound like the Dem plan of allowing negotiation won't work. But when you read closer you discover that to the WaPo, "won't work" doesn't mean "won't save money" it means "won't save enough money to completely pay for the benefit donut hole ". If true it is a pity but it doesn't seem to be some fatal Achilles heal.

Adding: Granted the article explains that the Democrats hoped the savings would be enough to fill in the donut hole during the campaign, but really, was that some kind of foundational promise that won them congress? A much more accurate reading is that some Dems said they could fill in the donut hole without raising taxes and - though it looked like a good bet at the time - it looks like there might not be quite enough. Not exactly a giant blow.

Mormon Mayhem

Ann Althouse wants us to think that if Mitt Romney's Mormonism is a problem for him in the presidential primary, it's really because liberals brought it up. Uh-huh. Because the Evangelical wing of the Republican party is so well known for its religious open-mindedness. James Dobson, at least, is a little more forthright.

Meanwhile, this non sequitur from Glenn Reynolds is delivered without even the slightest hint of irony. No doubt Harry Reid is reconsidering his plan to run for president as a Republican.

Born Every Minute

I was having a conversation the other night with someone who admitted that invading Iraq was pretty clearly a mistake, but who also expressed her "love" of Joe Lieberman because "he's one of the few people who hasn't changed his position on the war". The midwest is a special place.

To be fair, though, a few days ago my girlfriend and I were discussing the strange things people on the Left Coast think. An old coworker of hers, for instance, rejects dietary supplements containing synthetic vitamins because they lack the "life force" you can get from vitamins extracted from natural sources. Similarly, I was once told at work that grouping students by birthday for a field trip was insufficiently random because we'd be concentrating zodiac signs.

My point is just that I think we tend to underestimate the prevalence of absurd beliefs.

The pro-war liberals long walk back

Oxblog has been on my occasional blog read list for a long time. Like many liberal blogs I like (Kevin Drum and Matt Yglesias among them) they supported the Iraq war. Unlike most of the blogs I read they mostly haven't changed their minds. Imagine my surprise when I saw several posts by David Adesnik explaining why he and other Iraq war supporters were wrong:

HOW DOES A LIBERAL HAWK APOLOGIZE FOR IRAQ? That is the challenge facing Peter Beinart and other liberal interventionists. They don't want liberalism to return to the inward-looking dovishness of the post-Vietnam era. But they also must persuade their fellow liberals that supporting the invasion of Iraq was an accident, not a true expression of the muscular liberalism that Beinart and others prescribe.

I've always found his writing insightful - and infuriating - but now it's giving me a clearer view of how some pro Iraq war liberal thought. That they viewed the Iraq war as a way of distinguishing themselves from the "inward-looking dovishness" of certain liberals is no mystery but there are other more basic mistakes that lead many reasonable liberals to support the Iraq war at first.

Clearly, an aggressive push for democracy has not prevented the slaughter in Iraq. Why did I expect it would? Because I never expected the minority in Iraq to intentionally provoke a vicious civil war. In my post I cited the examples of Kosovo, Sudan and East Timor, where minorities were the principal victims of ethnic cleansing or civil war.

Even now, I don't understand how the Sunni minority expects to prevail. After a long interval of Shi'ite restraint, the death squads have emerged. If the Americans go, the Shi'ites will almost certainly prevail, thanks to both their militia and their American-trained army.

Civil wars aren't always embarked upon after deliberation and debate. And just because entering a civil war is not in the interests of a community doesn't mean it's not in the interests of individuals. I mean, how many guys did it take to blow up the Al-Askari Mosque? About six? What was in it for them? Did they think Sunni's had a chance of retaking the government? Most Sunnis don't know how outnumbered they are. Were they just seeking revenge? Did they think a blast could strengthen their hand politically? Were they a terrorist group hoping to turn Iraq into the type of failed state that proved so useful to them in the past? We don't know but perhaps we'll all think about this kind of thing before we advocate going somewhere and blowing it up.

Equality vs. Efficiency

This article (pdf) reminded me of the freedom_g vs efficiency thread we had a while back. It talks about how a professor at the University of Chicago was able to effect a fair amount of conservative indoctrination merely by defining the terms of debate:

In the wake of Katrina and Iraq, this might seem quaint, but what Sanderson is doing makes sense. Temperamentally, it reflects his own, libertarian-inflected, “pox-on-both-their-houses” centrism, but his insistence on political equanimity is also crucial to his pedagogical success. Students are most likely to have been exposed to macroeconomic issues within the context of political debates about free trade, the size of the budget deficit, tax rates, etc. In order to assure students that they aren’t just learning a set of political talking points, he must go out of his way to hammer home the fact that what he’s offering is unbiased and nonpartisan: positive not normative, facts not opinion. “I don’t have a dog in this fight,” Sanderson tells the students. So every joke about George Bush is followed by a joke about Hillary Clinton, every shot at a Democrat quickly balanced by a shot at Republicans.

The effect, intentional or not, is that Sanderson appears to represent the exact center of the political spectrum, and that can leave students with a strange perception of just where the center lies. During a discussion of flat, progressive and regressive tax structures, a student asked about the argument against the flat tax. “What’s wrong with the flat rate tax?” Sanderson replies. “Well, the bad thing was that Steve Forbes was the spokesman. It’s not obvious that there’s that much wrong with it. There’s sort of a movement out there for a flat rate tax. Because it strikes some people: What could be fairer than that? It also doesn’t distort incentives. It has a lot going for it.”

...

Sanderson’s politics aren’t one-dimensional, and he certainly isn’t a propagandist. But the fact remains that he has the predispositions of someone who “learned economics from Milton Friedman.” First, there’s a tendency to see trade-offs between equity and efficiency even where they might not exist. Dean Baker, an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and author of the book The Conservative Nanny State, points out that policies can be both fairer and more efficient. For instance, Baker told me, “it is not clear that a flat tax is more efficient than a progressive income tax. This is entirely an empirical question. It is entirely possible that taxing middle-income workers and Bill Gates at a 25 percent rate will create more distortions than taxing middle-income workers at a 15 percent rate and Bill Gates at a 40 percent rate. … They want liberals to say that we care about fairness and they care about efficiency. This is crap. They find ways to justify redistributing income upward and proclaim it to be efficient. The reality is it is not fair and generally not efficient either.”

Where's your Hippocrates now?

I just signed up for Blue Cross health care, and, being the nerd I am, I actually thumbed through my member handbook. In so doing I came across an interesting disclaimer:

Some hospitals and other providers do not provide one or more of the following services that may be covered under your plan contract and that you or your Family Member might need:

• Family planning;
• Contraceptive services, including emergency contraception;
• Sterilization, including tubal ligation at the time of labor and delivery;
• Infertility treatments; or
• Abortion.

I knew that some retailers and hospitals allowed their pharmacists to refuse to provide birth control pills or emergency contraception to customers for ethical reasons, but it never occured to me that doctors or even entire hospitals could choose not to offer any family planning or contraceptive services to their patients.

Do health care providers routinely allow their doctors to apply similar categorical prohibitions to other types of health services? For example, are Scientologist doctors allowed to refuse to recommend psychoactive drugs to their mentally ill patients, or refuse to refer such a patient to another doctor who customarily issues those drugs? (Is there such a thing as a Scientologist doctor?) If I were a vegan doctor, could I refuse to issue prescriptions for any drugs that contain gelatin (which is many) or any other animal-derived drugs (including bovine insulin for diabetics)?

I'm very ignorant of the medical world, so I genuinely don't know if there are any analogous policies for other categories of health care like there are for reproductive health services. I can't help but feel, however, that the health care providers and pharmacies pay undue deference to their employees' religious oppositions to patients' basic medical needs.

Let Freedom Ring

The House, the Senate (probably) and Rumsfeld resigning. It's a bright day indeed.

California Election Results

Well, I may disagree with my fellow Californians on many issues, but at least propositions 85 and 90 failed. (And, on a national scale, three cheers to a Democratic-lead House and [fingers crossed] Senate!)

To sift through some very thorough (and very well-organized) California election return data, visit the Secretary of State's election web site. And take a look at the proposition results. And view the proposition returns from Alameda County. And (my favorite part), see maps of each county's results for each race (here're the Prop 87 returns).

These maps help support the prevailing theory that there are in fact two distinct Californias. Long live West California!

Update: To further drive the divisive wedge of geographically mapped voting records into the gaping canyon of American politics, take a look at these fabulous images. Long live the great republic of Urban Coastal America! (And viva GIS!)

RCB's Election Ho-Down

Governor: Phil Angelides. Arnold is a phony who favors image over substance. Phil hasn't proven himself to be reprehensible yet.

U.S. Representative: Barbara Lee. Duh.

And the Rest: Democrats down the line, though some are more supportable than others.

Propositions 1A-1E: No. I like the principles behind each initiative (what kind of clod votes against money for battered woman shelters?), but let's be selective with our bond measures.

Proposition 83: Double No. This is the one called "Jessica's Law" that would put further restrictions on convicted sex offenders. These laws are expensive to enforce, ineffective, invasive, and an affront to civil liberties. Plus, I'm with Kenny.

Proposition 84: Yes. Again, nobody likes bonds. But I care enough about natural resource protection to think that $10.5 billion over 30 years is worth the expense. Think of it as mortgaging the state of California. Besides, as any businessperson will tell you, a little government debt isn't inherently bad.

Proposition 85: Triple No. Forcing minors to notify their guardians before having an abortion will prevent zero (0) unwanted pregnancies. It will probably contribute to many more dangerous self-administered abortions. As the ad with the floating bubble reminds you, not all girls have a functional relationship with their guardians. This law will endanger teenage girls in so many ways.

Proposition 86: Double Yes. If passed, this law would mean a massive tax increase ... to people who buy cigarettes. Cigarettes hurt people and drive up non-smokers' health care costs. All the revenue will go health care or anti-smoking campaigns. The only three groups opposing this bill are smokers, convenience store owners, and tobacco companies; two of those are highly unreputable sources, and the other is just under the mind-control of sweet, sweet nicotine.

Proposition 87: Triple Yes. What Tom said. It's a long-term investment whose payoff you will live to experience (assuming you'll be alive 20 years from now, which you might not be if you don't quit smoking).

Proposition 88: Yes. Who doesn't like schools? Apparently the homeowners who can't shell out $50 a year to fix them. Dude, it costs less than two weeks' worth of lattes.

Proposition 89: Yes. Yay for publicly funded campaigns. But does that mean that Peter Camejo and Arnold Schwartzenegger get the same amount of taxpayer money? I'm confused.

Proposition 90: Triple No. (Not yes. Whoops.) From the CLCV: "Prop 90 includes fine print that would erode our ability to pass laws that protect natural resources, wildlife and habitat; ensure water quality and adequate water supplies; and regulate growth and development. The far-reaching provisions allow virtually anyone to sue claiming a new law or regulation has impacted the value of their property or business - no matter how far-fetched the claim. These new "pay to protect" provisions mean taxpayers pay, or state and local governments would be unable to enact even the most basic protections of our environment and quality of life."

Whew! Don't forget to vote.

The Iraq war: A bad idea even with the right number of troops

Is the incompetence dodge still tenable?

1999 war games foresaw problems in Iraq

WASHINGTON - The U.S. government conducted a series of secret war games in 1999 that anticipated an invasion of Iraq would require 400,000 troops, and even then chaos might ensue.

In its "Desert Crossing" games, 70 military, diplomatic and intelligence officials assumed the high troop levels would be needed to keep order, seal borders and take care of other security needs.

The documents came to light Saturday through a Freedom of Information Act request by the George Washington University's National Security Archive, an independent research institute and library.

Bad News, Good News: Pre-Election Edition

Bad News: California's Proposition 85, which would require minors to inform their guardians before having an abortion, is leading in the polls.

Good News: South Dakota's Referred Law 6, which would outlaw all abortions (no, there's not even an exception for rape) unless the pregnant woman's life would be endangered by carrying out the pregnancy, is trailing in the polls. (Also, don't we Californians all look so progressive and enlightened compared to those South Dakotans?)

I Wish I Could Fire off Retorts that Good

From the wacky world of inter-party shouting matches: John Kerry said something stupid (presumably on accident), and Tony Snow called him on it, then Kerry came back with a total zinger.

Kerry, who was speaking to a group of students, warned them that those who don't study hard or do well in school could "get stuck in Iraq." At today's White House press briefing, Snow said Kerry should apologize to US troops and their families for insinuating that those who serve in the military are not smart. "What Senator Kerry ought to do first is apologize to the troops," Snow said. "This is an absolute insult. And I'm a little astonished that he didn't figure it out already." Snow was clearly prepped and probably looking to fire up the Republican faithful with attacks on Kerry, one of their favorite punching bags.

Kerry, who has been appealing more and more to the Democratic left as he plots a second run for president, quickly fired back at Snow with an unusually strong-worded press release arguing that President Bush and Vice President Cheney should be the ones to apologize to the troops. "If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq and not the president who got us stuck there, they're crazy," Kerry said. "I'm not going to be lectured by a stuffed suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium, or doughy Rush Limbaugh, who no doubt today will take a break from belittling Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's disease to start lying about me just as they have lied about Iraq."

Oh snap! I should consult John Kerry next time my sister and I start bickering.

Seriously, though, I'm glad he fought back, especially given that his offensive remark was a mis-statement. He meant to say "if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy... You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq." He left out the "getting us" part. So he meant to imply that George W. Bush is the dullard for getting us stuck in Iraq, not that the troops were relegated to life of military service because they weren't smart enough to get better jobs.

The Slate Green Challenge

In case you're not a regular Slate reader (I'm not, save for the ever repulsive "Dear Prudence" column), you might have missed the Slate/Treehugger.com Green Challenge. It's a series of weekly informational articles that educate participants about easy (and not so easy) ways to reduce carbon emissons. It's quick and informative! Take a look.

I am in a bit of a bind, though, because part of the challenge participation means "pledging" to make changes in your lifestyle that will help reduce carbon emissons, and a goodly chunk of the pledges don't apply to me. For example, I can't drive 25 fewer miles per week (I'm pretty sure you can't drive negative fifteen miles over any period of time). I can't promise to weatherize my windows to save on heating and cooling(I already don't climate control my apartment). And if next week's food-themed challenge asks me to reduce my meat consumption, I'll be hard pressed to comply. (I assume they'll also ask me to eat more locally-produced food, which I could definitely stand to do.)

But even this smug little environmentalist is learning some useful facts about how to cut back on carbon emissions (I now get to nag my boyfriend about regularly checking his tire pressure!), so someone less neurotic about conservation could probably learn a tip or two.

Bad News, Good News

Bad News: Bush signs bill authorizing fence construction on U.S.-Mexico border

Good News: California Golden Bears' d-fence keeps them in top twelve.

Enjoy the by-week!

Separation Tuesday

I just received in the mail an "Official Election Notice" informing me that my polling place has been moved from a location 0.5 miles from my apartment to a location 23.4 miles from my apartment. What gives? We shall see...

Update: The Contra Costa County elections office informs me that the mailing is legit, but a mistake. I should be receiving a correction in the mail in a couple of days.

Al Gore Speaks!

Here (yes, click here!) is the last portion of Al Gore's speech at Berkeley from Monday. (Thanks to Thinker for pointing it out.)

Kevin Drumm is confused

When you find that your understanding of the world is deficient - when people say and do things that are inexplicable to you - it could be a good sign that you're assumptions about the world are incorrect. Take Kevin Drumm:

I see that ABC News is running a story today about right-wing attack ads. The story acknowledges that "the nastiest rhetoric right now is coming from the political right," and Jake Tapper and Greg McCown document this with several examples. Then they end with this:

Democrats aren't necessarily running clean campaigns, though. As the races tighten in the next couple of weeks, the left will likely unleash its garbage as well.

Needless to say, they present exactly zero evidence for this.

I'm not breaking any new ground here when I say that this is, as usual, inexplicable. Sure, neither party is simon pure, but Tapper and McCown know perfectly well that the nauseating and polarized nature of modern American politics is almost entirely a Republican invention.

Which of Drumm's beliefs is wrong? Is it that "the nastiest rhetoric right now is coming from the political right"? Or is it that Jake Tapper and Greg McCown understand how journalism is supposed to work? Or is Drumm wrong in assuming that Jake Tapper and Greg McCown desire to practice journalism rather than simply acting as stenographers for whoever is willing to complain the loudest about "media bias"?

Yes on Prop 87

So I made a slip up before and wrote that prop 87 was a bond measure. This is wrong. Prop 87 is a program funded by a tax on oil produced in California. The money would be used to fund alternative energy research. That seems like a laudable goal; becoming a leader in Alternative energy research would do a lot to boost California's economy.

I took a look at the pro and con sites here and here. You can take a look at the official Prop 87 summary from the Attorney general here (PDF) . Let's take a look at the arguments against Prop 87 one at a time.

Argument: Prop 87 means higher gas prices.
Counter-Argument: When something is taxed it's price goes up. The problem is the implication that the increased price of oil will be born by Californians only. This is not true. Oil is fungible meaning it can be cheaply transported and sold elsewhere. That's why the price of oil is the same in Finland and Japan and the US. A tax on production won't change that so any oil price increase due to prop 87 will be born by the whole world more or less equally. (In contrast, a tax on California oil consumption would increase the local price of oil. That's why different countries pay different amounts at the pump.)

Argument: Prop 87 would mean more reliance on foreign oil
Counter-Argument: The US doesn't actually purchase that much oil from Saudi Arabia. The problem is that if Saudi Arabia falters in production, the people we buy oil from will suddenly have a lot more buyers and will raise their price accordingly. So we should make it clear that "Independence from foreign oil" is really about economic independence and not physical independence. So given that oil is fungible, prop 87 won't increase our economic dependence on foreign oil perceptibly. More importantly it won't increase our reliance on foreign oil any more than it'll increase South Africa or Germany's reliance on foreign oil.

Argument: Prop 87 will create a new bureaucracy of 50 political appointees with no accountability to taxpayers
Counter-Argument: Wait, I thought the whole point of political appointees is that their boss is accountable to the taxpayers? Ok, so they're going to have to form a committee. And yes, committees are soul-crushing. But committees are sometimes necessary. At my company we have more than one committee and they didn't form by accident. They were formed because our business leaders understand that committees are sometimes the best way to accomplish a goal.

Argument: Prop 87 reduces available revenues for schools & public safety
Counter-Argument: Evidently Prop 98 from a few years back said that X% of the budget should be spent on education. In order to not screw up with the existing funding system Prop 87 exempts the tax revenue it generates from the Prop 98 calculation. This doesn't seem like a big deal to me especially give that pass-or-fail prop 87 will not change the amount going to education one iota.

My ballot run-down

I though, this being a political site and all I'd give everyone my two cents on what I think they should actually vote for. In this post I'll tackle the propositions only. I haven't voted yet so please feel free to chime in if you think I missed something.

1-A: NO

This would make it illegal to spend gas-tax money on things other than transportation related things. I have no idea why we should have dedicated funding mechnaism anyways (in this case at least) so I have no desire to further hamstring our already box-in legislature.

1-B, 1-C, 1-D, 1-E: NO

I thought I'd lump all these guys together since they're all bond measures for one thing or the other. Having California fund things with bonds - which are basically loans that woudl have to be paid back with interest - is ridiculous. Prod 1-D for example would call for borrowing 10 billion which we would pay back along with another 9.9 billion in interest. The only reason anyone suggests doing so is becuase Prop 13* makes it impossible to raise property taxes. Well fine! California, in a fit of rage during the 70's you made it hard to raise money the easy way so now you don't get highway saftey, housing and emergency shelter, education funding or disaster prepardness funding. When a disaster befalls you that you aren't prepared for and you don't have the education to take the broken highway to the non-existent emergency shelter maybe you'll consider taxing corporate real-estate at reasonable levels.

Prop 83: Slight NO

I hate child molesters. But do I really think CA should spend millions coming up with a GPS tracking system? It'd be cheaper to do this.

Prop 84: NO

Another Bond.

Prop 85: NO

This is the parental notification for minor abortion prop. I see; she's old enough to be forced to raise a child she doesn't want but getting an abortion requires a signed permission slip. That's great. What, no incest clause?

Pro 86: Slight YES

This raises the tax on cigarettes by $2.60 and uses it to fund health related things. California needs more income and a sin tax is just the kind of fiscal responsibility I can get behind. Anyways, if smokers were mentally competent on the issue (i.e. not addicted to nicotine) they wouldn’t have to pay the tax because they’d choose to stop. And yes, this is the liberal nanny state talking.

Prop 87:??

I'm an idiot. Vote accordingly.

Prop 88: Yes

Hooray, an honest to god tax increase! Good for them. That takes balls. I don’t expect it to pass but we need money to fix our deficit so I’m voting yes. For those of you who don’t want tax increase and consider yourself fiscally responsible do this: list the programs we need to cut to pay for the billions (with a "b") in deficit we are projected to have. If your list has things like “get rid of the California EPA” then go ahead and add other unrealistic items like “cut unicorn subsidies”.

Prop 89: YES!

This prop is a publicly-financed elections bill. Taxes on corporations would be increased by a tiny .2 percent (note: a .2 percent increase in the current level of taxation – that’s much much less than a .2% additional tax). The revenue would be given to candidates in exchange for a promise not to raise funds from corporations or certain unions (those representing government employees like teacher, firefighters and police). This would get our representatives minds off of electioneering and on to governing and that’s good. I would prefer that all unions be stopped from giving money to candidates but I’d much rather have prop 89 than what we have now.

Prop 90: NO NO NO!

This would allow property owners to sue the state if the state takes actions that reduce the price of their land. How fucking wonderful. If the government does something to increase the value of your land you get to take that money to the bank – if the government does something to decrease it suddenly you get to sue John Q. Public. That's the conservative nanny state for you. Corporatism never sounded so good.

Thanks but no thanks. If you vote for this bill every time someone asks me why California doesn’t have a high-speed rail system like Europe my answer will be “Because of this guy. This guy right over here. It’s his fault, personally. Blame him.”

Ok, part of this bill is ok. It would stop the government from condemning private land for private uses (like putting in a Wal-Mart) but the language is unclear and it could even stop things like privately operated trains and public transportation. It’s funded by out of state land developers and would worsen our fiscal position.

Christopher Hitchen: A liar, or just insane?

What does it say about Slate that they let their writers mislead the public? What does it say about the trustworthiness of their editorial judgements when a writer is allowed to print falshood as truth? Here's Eric Alterman:

...the madman, Hitchens, writes in Slate:

"The Lancet figures are almost certainly inflated, not least because they were taken from selective war-torn provinces. But there is no reason why they may not come to reflect reality more closely. It is a reminder of the nature of the enemy we face, and not only in Iraq, and a very clear picture of the sort of people who would have a free hand in Iraq if the coalition were to depart."

In fact, the first claim is flat-out false. The study specifically did not pick particularly violent provinces, as Hitchens could have discovered if he looked at the study, not that he gives any impression of having any experience with this type of statistical sampling.

We await Slate's corrections.

"The Economist" syndrome

This post over at Crooked Timbers pretty much sums up why The Economist always bugs me when they report on American politics. After pulling a quote from a recent Economist article which called Hillary Clinton "the darling of the party's liberal activists" and John Edwards "Southerner, Westerner and moderate" Henry writes:

These claims don't seem biased to me so much as clueless. The bit about Clinton in particular strikes me as the sort of thing one might believe if one listened more to Republicans talking about Democrats than to Democrats themselves. I don't get the impression that the article's author actually knows very much about what's happening within the Democratic party. Not what you expect from a serious magazine.

This is what bugs me about The Economist. For a magazine that supposedly reports from the neo-liberal center they certainly seem to get their information from right-wing sources only. It's a failure I've seen in a lot of "center-left" individuals. Evidently, someone decided that only right-wing news sources are credible and that no self-respecting moderate publication could stoop so low as to learn about liberals from liberals themselves.

Update: Brad Delong (who I should have credited in the first place) has some more thoughts. After rounding up some thought from the blog-o-sphere he concludes like so:

In my view, it's not spores from Fox News infecting an unsuspecting population of Economist writers. In my view, it's a deliberate attempt by Economist management to shape its American political coverage by hiring people who will ape the political coverage provided by the Wall Street Journal editorial page--but, of course, without the coke, the meth, and the acid the Journal's writers consume daily. The assumption appears to be that pleasing the American circulation base and thus keeping the magazine going requires that its American political coverage start with the assumption that various Republican talking points and shibboleths are true, and then heads off into the Gamma Quadrant from there.

This does have costs: it makes me, for one, much less likely to trust or quote what the Economist writes about the rest of the world and about economics and finance than I was two decades ago.

Bad News, Good News

Sometimes we as a society can be negative Nellys. That's why I'm introducing Bad News, Good News, a weekly feature that counters depressing information with an inspirational nugget of positivity.

Bad News: The hole in the ozone layer is bigger than ever.

Good News: Seven layer dip is as delicious as ever!

Happy Thursday, and stay away from CFCs.

Favorite euphemism of the day award

It goes to FireDogLake for referring to gay Republican staffers as "denizens of Uncle Tom's Closet".

Noted without comment

On how we name things

Caution: this post will put you to sleep.

Jorge Luis Borges once made a point about the way people organize their thoughts introducing an alleged Chinese encyclopedia in which animals are classified as:

(i) those that belong to the Emperor; (ii) embalmed ones; (iii) those that are trained; (iv) suckling pigs; (v) mermaids; (vi) fabulous ones; (vii) stray dogs; (viii) those included in the present classification; (ix) those that tremble as if they were mad; (x) innumerable ones; (xi) those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush; (xii) others; (xiii) those that have just broken a flower vase; and (xiv) those that from a long way off look like flies.

Though some of the categories mentioned are poorly defined* even the ones whose membership is clear are pretty useless. Even worse, dividing animals into “those that tremble as if they were mad” and those who don’t will make it difficult to think clearly exactly because it’s not a useful category.

I can see the value in the conservative definition of freedom as “absence of coercion” (negative liberty) though I prefer the liberal tradition of freedom as “having a wide range of appealing options” ( positive liberty). But I’m having trouble seeing the value of defining freedom as “absence of government coercion”. It doesn’t seem to describe a useful category.

To keep things simple I’ll refer to “absence of government coercion” as Freedom_g.

Freedom_g make it harder to think because it deprives us of the more useful definitions of freedom (Freedom_- and Freedom₊). Without those definitions we have to make decisions on the moral equivalent of the pre-Copernican gears-within-gears model of the solar system. Sure it gets us the right answer; it’s just harder than it has to be.

So let’s analyze the depravity of Evey’s imprisonment in “V is for Vendetta”. Using Freedom_g you can’t make much progress without knowing 1) Whether her captor is really a government official 2) How much you personally value freedom vs. efficiency. Using Freedom₊ and Freedom- the answer is clear: It doesn't matter who is confining Evey, her curcumstances are equally poor either way. End of story.

Or lets take an example with “animals that tremble as if they were mad” (Animals_t). Here’s some advice: If you’re walking in a forest and a wild Animal_t confronts you, play dead. Also, if an Animal _{not t} confronts you, figure out if its dangerous and then act accordingly. Of course, it all depends on how dangerous you feel Animals_t are visa-vi Animals_{not t}.

Oh wait, I just put you all to sleep. Splash some cold twater on your face and try to think about it.

*How do we distinguish between fabulous and non-fabulous animals now that Liberace is dead?

Vindication for Leafy Greens

In general, plants aren't the favorite hang-out spot for dangerous food-borne pathogens like E. coli or BSE. I'm not a fancy clipboard-toting scientist in a white lab coat, so I can't tell you why exactly bacteria would rather set up camp in a lump of meat than on a carrot, but why question success? Being a vegan has seemingly shielded me forever from most iterations of food poisoning, barring a sloppy restaurant chef cross-contaminating my benign broccholi with some uncooked chicken breasts. In fact, every instance of veggie-based food pathogens I've read about was ultimately the result of that plant coming in contact with an animal product.

That's what makes Spinachgate so frustrating for me. A food I love, a food the vegetarian community can rely on, contaminated fresh from the farm!

And that's why this makes me feel more at ease:

Samples of cattle manure on pastures surrounding a spinach field have tested positive for the same strain of E. coli bacteria that killed at least three people and sickened nearly 200 others -- the first direct evidence linking a Salinas Valley farm to the outbreak that has spanned 26 states and one Canadian province.

I'm certainly not happy that people have suffered because of this contamination. But if the speculation that nearby cattle farms are responsible for the E. coli outbreak prove true, I hope this will be another wake up call that modern large-scale cattle farming causes more problems than are immediately obvious.

Another reason to oppose that childish fence

In case you were running out of reasons to lambast the proposed fence along the US-Mexico border, here's another:

Environmentalists and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wardens say the barrier would disrupt the migration of scores of species from jaguars to hawks and humming birds along a wildlife corridor linking northern Mexico and the U.S. southwest known as the "Sky Islands."

The chain of 40 mountain ranges links the northern range of tropical species such as the jaguar and the parrot in the Mexican Sierra Madre Mountains, and the southern limit of temperate animals such as the black bear and the Mexican wolf in the U.S. Rocky Mountains.

"Bisecting the area with an impermeable barrier such as a double reinforced wall or fence could really have a devastating effect on these species," said Matt Skroch, a wildlife biologist and executive director of the environmental non-profit group Sky Island Alliance in Tucson, Arizona.

"If they build it, we could really say goodbye to the future of jaguars in the United States," he added.

As one commenter noted, the only thing the fence won't keep out is illegal immigrants.

Share the Em Effing Road

The months-long Bay Area rainy season has officially begun, bringing with it slippery roads and limited visibility from behind the wheel of your large automobile. I think I speak for all bike commuters when I beg you to please share the road!

It's an indisputable scientific fact that choosing a biker over a car is good for society. Each bike represents one fewer car on the road, thus bike commuters:

• Reduce car traffic
• Reduce competition for and the cost of parking
• Reduce competition for and the cost of gasoline
• Reduce our dependency on non-renewable natural resources and foreign oil sources, thereby not contributing to the need for international conflict motivated by the need to acquire those resources
• Reduce fossil fuel emissions, thereby not contributing to pollution or global warming
• Get more exercise than drivers, thereby contributing to a fitter, better-looking populace

Given how much we contribute to our community, the least our community can do for us is to look in its collective rear-view mirror before swiftly opening its driver side door into our faces. Or maybe it can use its signal before making a right turn in front of us. Or maybe it can leave more than four inches of space between us and it when it passes us in its car. In all, it would be great if the driving community could show a little respect for its two-wheels comrades.

I want to say a lot more about this, but this post already constitutes a ramble.

There's a nasty myth out there that ecological responsibility is unattainable for or even deleterious to poor people. This belief manifests itself myriad ways: "Organic food is more expensive than conventional produce, so environmentally responsible food choices are off limits to the poor," or "Hybrid cars are too expensive for poor people," or "Poor people are too busy surviving to worry about recycling," or, most egregiously, "Environmental regulations stifle economic growth, which in turn harms the poor!"

This myth is perpetuated primarily by two groups. First, obviously, are corporations that make money by polluting or would make less money if forced to adopt more ecologically responsible practices. Complying with restrictions on emissions and waste disposal, they argue, drives down their profits, forcing them to hire fewer people or offer their product at a higher price; higher prices and fewer jobs, logic tells you, hurt the working poor. This is the same line of reasoning that rallies against labor unions and offering medical benefits and that lets corporations and governments turn a blind eye toward child labor and unhealthful working conditions. If production thrives, people of all classes will magically thrive along with it.

The second group of people correlating environmentalism and the plight of the poor are a more well-meaning band of (usually relatively wealthy) liberals and academics. To them, environmental justice means that environmental regulations not interfere with the working class’s economic mobility. They are prompted by their weekly outings to Whole Foods, where they notice that all the food is expensive and all the clientele are white people who drive Volvo station wagons. Obviously something is amiss, so it must be environmentalism itself.

These lines of reasoning imply a definition of quality of life that overvalues ownership of cheap consumer goods and undervalues personal health.

In the United States, having less money is fairly conducive to environmental sustainability, at least in theory. Working class folk are more likely to bike or take public transportation instead of driving; less money means fewer electronics, clothes, Swiffers, and other resource-intensive goods that need to be shipped overseas; and a plant-based diet is both cheaper and vastly less environmentally damaging than an omnivorous diet (and the financial difference would be even more magnified if it weren’t for corn and grain subsidies, which force taxpayers to fund cheap meat).

In China, or any country whose short-term economic growth is currently dependent upon selling cheap manufactured goods to rich consumers in countries whose long-term economic growth is dependent upon moving away from selling cheap manufactured goods, lax or nonexistent environmental standards on farms and factories give corporations another incentive to produce their goods overseas instead of in countries where those goods’ consumers live. These lax eco standards are supported by corporations who want to lower their production costs, consumers who want cheaper goods, and misguided humanitarians who stand by the adage that a crappy job is better than no job at all. But while pitifully low wages have only short-term consequences on the people who earn them, pollution and habitat destruction will negatively affect those people for generations to come. By the time every Chinese family has a car, river and air pollution will have already maimed an entire class upon whose backs this “prosperity” was built. True quality of life improvement is about education, medicine, democracy, and preservation of a community’s way of life, not how many TVs are in each household. I don’t think the local townspeople get to vote on whether a United States company gets to pay to illegally dump its trash in that community’s watershed.

If there were such a thing as the opposite of irony, this would be it: the piss poor environmental standards that allow more money to flow into developing nations in turn facilitates more environmental destruction in those areas as more people can buy cars, DVD players, and computers.

This isn’t an endorsement for poverty. I’m not that ridiculous. My point isn’t that being poor is good; my point is that being ecologically responsible doesn’t require that you have a lot of money, nor are poverty and sustainability incompatible. There’s nothing inherently elitist about environmentalism, even if most the movement’s members are relatively wealthy people in rich countries. Indeed, maybe we college-educated white liberals are unique in having the leisure time and education to fret about long-term global health. But if we privileged few don’t speak up for the disadvantaged many, by the time these billions of poor workers have the resources to advocate for their own environmental rights, it will probably be too late to repair the damage ecologically irresponsible production practices will have already inflicted.

It's also worth noting that the poor are the most negatively affected by environmental destruction. They have almost no legal recourse when eco standards have been violated to their detriment. They're the least equipped to financially absorb the medical costs associated with asthma, lead poisoning, and other pollution-related illnesses. They usually have the least access to information about environmental destruction and their ability to influence it. When a corporation or government is deciding to clear cut rainforest to make room for cattle pasture, I doubt the working poor have the liesure time and educational resources to fight back.

I'll address Paul's uninformed posit that organic foods are a luxurious option only available to rich people later. That's what prompted this post, yet somehow I didn't get to it here.

Museum Day

It's late notice, but today's Museum Day!. A whole bunch of cool museums are letting people in for free. It's madness!

No, Seriously. Always.

Just to balance out my coverage of low-brow political rags, I thought I'd mention that this kind of criticism of Wal-Mart is misplaced.

The Cornucopia Institute, a progressive group that advocates for family-scale farming, released a report today showing that an "organic Wal-Mart" may indeed be more Mean than Green.

According to the report, the company has a contract to source milk from Aurora Organic Dairy, which is one of the worst industrial organic offenders -- using cattle confined in feedlots, with little if any access to pasture. Aurora is also being investigated for a number of other violations of the organic standards. While there are plenty of problems with milk sold by Horizon (also available at Wal-Mart) at least Horizon gets about half of its milk from family-scale farms; Aurora's is 100% factory farm.

Look, very few people, especially among those who shop at Wal-Mart, actually care strongly about whether their food is organic. When people buy "organic", what they're after is much more likely to be the satisfaction they get from the uncritical assumption that by doing so they are being more responsible shoppers. Most people don't even know what "organic" means (to the extent that the word has a standard meaning in the first place.) It seems implausible, to say the least, that many people would be willing to pay noticeably more for such a nebulous benefit.

Wal-Mart's appeal - and, really, its only redeeming characteristic - is its ability to deliver goods to consumers at low prices. The Nation getting bent out of shape because Wal-Mart isn't willing to forgo its wildly successful business model to further the interests a relatively small number of organic advocates demonstrates equal parts naivete and liberal dogmatism. What did they think was going to happen? It's right there in the slogan! "Always Low Prices. Always." They even underline it.

The issue, in other words, is public opinion. Not Wal-Mart.

And there's this:

Cornucopia also reports that Wal-Mart is indeed, as many observers predicted, sourcing some of its organic products from China -- canned chick peas and other beans, for example. This could certainly be good for the Chinese, as the demand may cause many acres of conventional farmland to go organic, cleaning up the surrounding groundwater and soil. But it's also troubling because shipping products such a distance, when they could be grown locally, is a waste of energy, and exacts a formidable toll on the ozone layer; such a practice hardly meets the ideal of sustainability that many customers are seeking when they look for that organic label.

No mention of the potential economic benefits to the Chinese - probably because what we have on our hands is a serious disability to sympathize with the economic plight of the Chinese. Sure, maybe Wal-Mart could encourage more environmentally-friendly farming in China, but why don't the Chinese just do it themselves? Well, because they're too poor, and the organic way of life is a luxurious option not available to people without an abundance of wealth. If you really want the Chinese to farm less efficiently, you're going to have to, in effect, subsidize their farms.

I worry that environmentalism will become the last refuge of the economic isolationist scoundrel.

Update: OK, I think maybe I wasn't clear. Well, I think the part about China stands up fine, but the first bit's a little obscure.

My objection to the Nation, here, is that they fail to realize that they care way more about what "organic" means than most people do. On some level, the Nation, or, more exactly, Liza Featherstone, seems to recognize this, because Featherstone never actually comes out and says she thinks Wal-Mart's lying about its organic products. Instead, she does at least one of two things (I can't tell exactly), both of which are objectionable.

First, she seems to imply that Wal-Mart isn't meeting organic standards by alluding to the possibility that Wal-Mart's producers won't pass muster upon closer examination. That, however, isn't a problem with Wal-Mart, it's a problem with Wal-Mart's producers and the bodies that oversee them.

Second, she seems to suggest that even if Wal-Mart is technically selling organic products, they're not organic enough. Again, that's not fair to Wal-Mart; if Featherstone thinks the criteria for organic food are excessively loose, that's fine, but it's hardly Wal-Mart's job to define "organic" more strictly.

Again, nowhere is the claim explicitly made that Wal-Mart is actively deceiving its customers - because to all outward appearances, they're not. Her frustration is therefore misguided - the problem is with the organic community, as far as I can tell. Wal-Mart seems, by and large, to be playing by their rules.

See this comment for a little bit more.

Building A Nest For The Hornets

Jonah Goldberg: exhibit A in the case against using analogies to describe foreign affairs. Or anything else.

Folks, regardless of the details of the NIE controversy can I just say that I'm not particularly troubled by the NIE's alleged finding that the Iraq war has increased terrorism. I mean, doesn't that make sense?...

But, why shouldn't we think that the Iraq war has increased terrorism in the world, or at least the risk of it? The hornet's nest analogy is apt, albeit Clichéd. We were stung -— and stung badly - well before the Iraq war. And after the multiple stings of 9/11 we decided to take the fight to nests.

If my backyard is festooned with hornet nests, I will likely be safer from a sting on any given day if I do nothing than I will be on the day or days I begin destroying them. Since when is any large, important, task required to show positive results at every stage?

Holy crap. The NIE doesn't say that any particular group of terrorists is necessarily more (or less) likely to attack us; it says that there are more terrorists! Jonah apparently begins the process of securing his backyard by taking hornet nests from his neighbors' yards and positioning them behind his house.

Maybe it would be helpful for Jonah - and other individuals who have fallen prey to the dangers of over-analogizing - if we translated some of the NIE judgments into Clichéd Analogy. For example:

Although we cannot measure the extent of the spread with precision, a large body of all-source reporting indicates that flying insects classified as hornets, although a small percentage of insects, are increasing in both number and geographic dispersion.

"Oooh, I get it! There's more hornets!!!"

Update: Oh, man. I can't believe I missed an opportunity to title a post "Hornets! Hornets!" Surely, though, Separation Sunday provides lots of other opportunities for the future...

Shorter Brendan Nyhan*

Everybody Has One: Bloggers and the Death of Opinion Journalism:

Now that the internet has broken the oligopoly held by a small cadre of center-left opinion writers, liberals have a wide enough selection to follow the opinions of only those people they think are wise and insightful. This is lamentable and far inferior to the previous system where there only choice was to read whatever was chosen by a select elite of center-left magazine owners. Select elites like Martin Peretz.

See also: Sadly No!'s take.

*"Shorter" format pioneered by Elton Beard

Bad Language rants and Electric Guitars

What paradigm is conjured by "Market Distortion"? To me, it’s that the market is a well-defined system and that government intervention can “distort” it or throws it out of its natural balance. This doesn’t seem quite right to me. Government intervention can certain do harm, but government intervention creates the market in the first place.

And now that I’m complaining, I should take a pot-shot at the whole idea of “the market” as well. There’s no single well-defined set of rights or laws which answers to “the free market” in practice or even in theory. Markets should be understood as a mechanism which produces certain results according to supply and demand, not as a particular set of laws and rights.

I’m sure everyone understands on a technical level that capitalist markets are all legal-political constructs, but I think many people don’t appreciate how transitory and variable those rules are – indeed – have to be. Fifty years ago conservatives argued that government lead Keynesian policies would distort the natural order of “the market”. One hundred years earlier they said the same about anti-trust and anti-child-labor laws. One hundred years before that nobody would have contemplated something like the Federal Reserve Board. All those things are now accepted parts of “the market”. Indeed, most economists would argue that they are necessary to maintaining efficient markets at all.

So now you can probably guess why I don’t like the term “Market distortion”. If a political policy results in poor outcomes, then the problem is poor outcomes, not that the law has disturbed the market from some kind of platonic ideal.

Plus it’s bad framing. The only place where distortion is considered a good thing is in the world of electric guitars.

That Gore fellow is thinking big

After listening to Democratic "leaders" talking to us about how we should be talking about doing things it's nice to see a Democrat dropping the self-defeating meta-debate and actually, you know, talking about doing something big...

Real big:

Today, Former Vice President Al Gore gave a major speech on global warming at NYU law. Notably, he called for an immediate freeze on CO2 emissions:

Well, first of all, we should start by immediately freezing CO2 emissions and then beginning sharp reductions. ...

Gore also called for the complete elimination of the payroll tax. It would be replaced by a tax on CO2:

For the last fourteen years, I have advocated the elimination of all payroll taxes — including those for social security and unemployment compensation — and the replacement of that revenue in the form of pollution taxes — principally on CO2. The overall level of taxation would remain exactly the same. It would be, in other words, a revenue neutral tax swap. But, instead of discouraging businesses from hiring more employees, it would discourage business from producing more pollution.

This is the right idea. America needs enviromental leadership and ideas like this one are going to be neccessary before we can break through the special-interest stalemate that is preventing us from taking action.

48 Million Strong

Kevin Drum refers to the 16% of American adults who "speculate that secretly planted explosives, not burning passenger jets, were the real reason the massive twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed" as a "fringe group". It seems to me that 16% is rather larger than a fringe.

Ross Perot garnered less than 19% of the national vote in 1992, Firefox has 15% of the internet browser market in the U.S., and Apple laptops represent 12% of America's portable computer market. I don't think I'd describe Perot, Firefox, or Apple as "fringe" elements in their respective spheres. I'd say instead that they represent small, but still significant, minorities.

Why am I not worked up about Borat?

Actually, I'm VERY worked up about Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, but in a good way. I think I actually shed a single tear of joy when I first saw the poster subtly announcing the film's impending arrival.

But apparently Sasha Baron Cohen's lovable character isn't charming the pants of everyone (which, by the way, probably makes him the happiest man alive). In fact, some feel Borat Sadiyev, with his unabashed anti-semitism and sexism and racism and every other un-PC -ism you can name, portrays Kazakhstanis so crudely and offensively that it warrants diplomatic action. (George W. Bush has obviously won the war on terror if this is how he spends his time.) America is outraged.

Let me explain why Borat is funny: It's because he's offensive. The joke is that Americans are pretty dumb and patronizing, that they don't know Kazakhstan from Ajerbijan from Toledo, and that Cohen's victims will let him say offensive and ignorant things (and sometimes even think it's cute) because they're trying so desperately to be culturally sensitive to an exaggeratedly culturally insesitive man. The joke is on us, not on Kazakhstan. He's poking fun at how, in our misguided attempt to be politically correct, Americans will smile and clap along to anything they deem exotic and unique. (Cohen probably assumed a Kazakhstani identity because he could bank on no one knowing where Kazakhstan is or what its people look like, act like, or believe.)

Ultimately, though, Borat brings out the political incorrectness in many of his unwitting partners, and that's half the fun; though a conversation might begin innocently enough, by the end of the bit, he's gotten a score of white people to agree in song to throw the Jew down the well. That's comedy gold, folks.

The pseudo-insightful criticism of Borat is that audiences only accept his sheepish outrageousness because the culture he's ostensibly poking fun at is Kazakhstani; he's making fun of white people, so the critics say, so no one cares if he's perpetuating an inaccurate and offensive seterotype. It's "reverse racism," they claim, which is just as bad as "plain old racism." Is Borat really the Kazakhstani Sambo?

I'll buy this argument for a few moments, but something is still off. For one, he can't perpetuate a stereotype that doesn't yet exist. (What preconceptions did you have about Kazakhstanis before Borat entered your life? None? Yeah, me too.) Second, there's no such thing as "reverse racism," but I don't need to waste space explaining why. Third, there are dozens of beloved characters in American pop culture who exist as essentialized versions of their group (e.g., Dave Chappelle's crack head, all those crappy Carlos Mencia characters, William Hung), and we accept them in part because they're being portrayed by members of that group, but in larger part because they are co-opting those negative stereotypes and turning them into a joke. They're neutering the fuel of the racist fire by riffing on the stereotypes themselves. It's very post-modern.

But the most important reason I don't get worked up about Borat is because he's such an outlandish exaggeration, such an obvious parody, that I can't conceive of anyone watching the character and thinking that he's accurately representing Kazakhstan. The only people stupid enough to (a) not realize that Borat is fictional and (b) think that Borat is a cultural ambassador are the people Cohen is satirizing. And, little do they know it, he's satirizing the critics, too. And that's why he's so fucking brilliant.

Take off your sweater and pour yourself some ice water

I greatly enjoyed this Slate article, which reminds us why air conditioners are so annoying. It makes Arnold's bit about running the central cooling and the fireplace simultaneously even cuter.

God's Not Carrying His Metaethical Weight

I think liberals tend to get excited about things like an "Evangelical Author [who] Puts [a] Progressive Spin On Traditional Faith" because they get so frustrated with conservative Christians always righteously claiming the moral high ground by appeal to their religious beliefs. I, for one, was initially pretty excited to get a copy (autographed!) of Jim Wallis's book. I didn't get very far through it, though, before I came to the conclusion that putting a lot of stock in progressive Evangelicals is probably a mistake for at least two reasons.

First, as a practical issue, it's not obvious to me that you can entirely divorce any sort of progressive Evagelicalism from its basically misogynist roots in the Christian tradition. It's not just that Christian history consists of many centuries of misogynist interpretation of scripture and text, it's also that much of that raw material is basically misogynist to begin with. How one might go about persuasively chipping away at the more unenlightened aspects of the Bible isn't clear. At the same time, though, an ethical framework built up from the Bible as-is just won't be suited to supporting a thoroughly progressive outlook.

Second, I think secular liberals who flaunt their newfound Christian allies over-enthusiastically implicitly concede too much of the metaethical argument to their religious opponents. Much of the tension between the religious right and the secular left derives from the suggestion that secularists aren't just immoral, but are actually fundamentally amoral, at least ideologically. Much of the force of the charge that liberals are "Godless" derives from the underlying assumption that without God you just can't make meaningful moral statements about the world.

Needless to say, I think this is very wrong and I think that liberals should be careful not to indulge arguments or impulses to that effect.

The fact is that God just doesn't do any metaethical work. If you follow any given ethical guideline in the way you live your life, God enters into your decision-making process either 1) because you think God wants you to follow the ethical guideline - in which case you still have to explain why God's preferences possess any normative significance, presumably by appeal to some metaethical principle prior to God - or 2) because the ethical guideline itself is in some way prior to God, and God just sort of enforces the rules - in which case you don't need God to have morality. In either case, ethics stand alone, without the need for any religious support.

There's nothing weird about propositions that are both secular and normative. Nothing, at any rate, that makes them weirder than, say, abstract mathematical propositions or, for that matter, metaphysical propositions. More to the point, though, if atheists are doomed to moral skepticism without God, religious individuals are no better off with Him. It concedes too much to the opposition to suggest otherwise, and it undermines the relative appeal of secular liberal ideology.

Is it better, on balance, to have Evangelicals emphasizing poverty and the environment instead of gay marriage and abortion? Probably. I just wouldn't throw my lot in with progressive Evangelicals without clearly delineating the point at which my sympathy for their project ends.

It's My Birthday and I'll Be a Jerk if I Want to

Today is September 11, 2006, the five-year anniversary of, um, September 11, 2001. (Does the day have an official name yet? According to one calendar in my house, it's called Patriot Day, but I refuse to accept that it would actually be given such a horrible title.) Here are a few 9/11-themed observations:

A topic is interesting in direct proportion to how closely it can be related to 9/11. This is the same syndrome that plagues local news (e.g., "Seventy-eight million people killed in earthquake in Pakistan. ... The Bay Area connection," or, "George W. Bush outlaws whistling. ... How this will affect your morning commute! News at eleven."). Similarly, every news story, every moment of special programming, everything but college football seems to be 9/11-themed in the few days flanking today. Even KQED aired an episode of "Nova" outlining the structural failings of the World Trade Center. (For some reason, state and local building codes didn't dictate that the structure be fuel jet crash-proof. What were they thinking?!) It seems that this obsession and this prolonged mourning, well, emboldens those who wish to hurt us through terrorist attacks. (I sound heartless, don't I?)

Many Americans still mourn for the victims of 9/11. Even those who had no personal connection to the victims of the 9/11 attacks (or even New York, D.C., or Pennsylvania) actually feel emotionally tied to the events of that day. While I'm enheartened by the outpouring of empathy our citizens are showing for complete strangers, I don't understand why 9/11 victims should be grieved any more than, say, the 99 innocent people who have been murdered in Oakland this year. My cynical guess is that people want to feel like ALL of America was a victim of 9/11; it makes us feel special. (Now I really sound like a jerk.)

Many Americans sincerely believe that their lives were changed by 9/11. Beyond the realm of airport security, many folks think that their day-to-day activities were significantly altered because of 9/11, but not in the paranoid "Rumsfeld is reading my e-mail" sort of way. Instead, it seems that people actually think that they need to be more alert and more suspicious, and that 9/11 was a huge awakening to the seedy terrorist underbelly that thrives within our borders. At the very least, people think that the economy is somehow less stable because of the threat of terrorist attacks. Again, quite cynically, I think this reflects an ignorance about secuirty and the economy, and a self-oriented desire to be part of the action. When I hear people in rural Texas worry about terrorists attacking their town, it kind of reminds me of the misguided narcissism of a "Waiting for Guffman" character. I'm officially a horrible person.

Many Americans are worried about more terrorist attacks in the near future. For some reason I'm not. What's the deal?

Religon is a way bigger deal than I realize. I live in a cozy little atheist bubble, wrapped up in a warm fleece blanket of secularism. I forget that some people turn to faith when they feel they're experiencing a personal or even national crisis. Religion very strongly shapes the everyday opinions and emotions of a huge chunk of Americans. It creates an identity, which sometimes leads to feelings of solidarity, sometimes to exaggerate difference. This ignorance of mine might explain my disbelief at the observations above.

The long war against TNR's reputation

The global struggle against blogofascism steps up a notch with the creation of a blog specifically for TNR owner and crazy man Martin Peretz:

Let me concede: I am a friend of Scooter Libby. But I do not like his boss. And I do not like his boss's wife. I know this gets me no credit with the all-or-nothing crowd. Still, I like Scooter, who is quite brilliant, very honest, and brave. Also funny. I've contributed to The Libby Legal Defense Fund and have joined the fund's advisory committee, which is not large because in Washington old pals dessert when even their college roommate gets into trouble. In a time when self-styled civil libertarians are giving money to defend Muslim terrorists, I am happy to help defend an American patriot, some of whose politics I do not share and some of whose politics I do, from a cynical onslaught of the special prosecutor who put journalists into jail for not telling him what he already knew.

I'm sure it warms the hearts of TNR readers to know that their money is going to help defend Libby against 5 counts of false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice rather than, say, reelecting Democrats. But then, we shouldn't forget, Peretz - the man who signs the paychecks of everyone at TNR - hasn't quite decided whether he prefers to have Dems take over the house or senate this year:

HH: Do you want the Democrats to win majorities in the House or the Senate, Martin Peretz?

MP: I'm...I'm appalled by some of the people who would become head of Congressional committees.

HH: Is that a no?

MP: Uh, but I'm also appalled by some of the shenanigans...

HH: But is that...I've got five seconds. Is that a no, Martin Peretz?

MP: It's a cowardly refusal to answer.

HH: (laughing) Okay. We'll carry it on, later. Martin Peretz, thanks

We must accept that either 1. Editorial decisions at TNR - decisions like who gets a blog - are not very well insulated from the whims of those backing the magazine monetarily or 2. Editorial judgments at TNR are poor. Or I suppose both can be true.

Either way it does not speak well to the magazines integrity or savvy.

No Hablo Español

A question that came up while driving back from Pismo Beach* with my girlfriend this weekend: How useful, really, are high school foreign language courses? I took Spanish in the 8th grade, and then for three years in high school. I nonetheless lack even elementary proficiency in Spanish, and my sense is that I am not unusual in this regard.

It's not just that I think that foreign language classes are in many cases treated as a joke - mine were all perfectly serious. It's really that attending class 45 minutes a day, five days a week seems to me like an awfully feeble gesture toward learning a new language, even if the criteria for "learning" are extremely weak.

I do feel like I gained some insight into English grammar in my Spanish classes, but I've yet to discover much utility for the actual Spanish I acquired. What are we hoping kids get out of all the time they spend in foreign language classes in high school?

*While volleyball isn't nearly as boring as baseball, it's much more consistently painful. Sports, as a set, perpetually disappoint.

Civility vs. Decency

Sadly, No explains why Mark A. Klienman is a jerk:

You can advocate something horrible, as did Volokh, or you can write a dunderheaded piece of analysis, as did the former Wonkette, and be in fine standing with Kleiman. But heaven help you if you personally attack anyone! To Kleiman, that is the crying sin which won’t be tolerated! Especially if you use naughty words! Mark A. Kleiman is restrained — he even says he’s just as angry (i.e. morally outraged at BushCo.) as Atrios, he just doesn’t let it get the “better” of him. Plainly, Kleiman sees himself as a cool customer who doesn’t let partisan anger, or any kind of moral revulsion for that matter, influence his tough political analyses, which are obviously so logically-tight that Brainiac or HAL-9000 would fry their circuits from sheer envy.

He goes on to provide an example:

Still skeptical? Let me show you. Let’s say you — well, you have a Randroid nutjob who says that people should whack anti-war protestors with 2×4s. The normal response is to condemn said Randroid as a morally-degenerate asshat. But no, that would be incivil, and we can’t have that. Rather, one must calmly engage the “really bad suggestion” — thus making it legitimate, as if it’s just another policy proposal to yay or nay. And for good measure, when the decent people reply in kind (the moral equivalent of turning the other fist to Galt’s argument) the Sensible Liberal decides then that “[d]ebate’s over. Time to go home. Your opponents can make you angry, but it takes people who are (at least in a given argument) on your side to make you ashamed.” How’s that for even-handedness? Galt advocated violence, the nasty Atriots cussed her in e-mails for it. And the Atriots are the bad guys. But then Galt’s suggestion was indecent, which Kleiman can find time for, while the Atriots were incivil, which he finds, of course, to be beyond the pale.

I used to read Klienman though his blog fell off my radar when I reorganized my bloglines. We do however have to be wary of confusing "moderate tone" with decency or thoughtfulness.

I apreciate Brad Delong

One great thing about Brad Delong is his complete willingness to fully quote people who disagree with him. Last week Delong wrote:

I am, as I said above, a reality-based center-left technocrat. I am pragmatically interested in government policies that work: that are good for America and for the world. My natural home is in the bipartisan center, arguing with center-right reality-based technocrats about whether it is center-left or center-right policies that have the best odds of moving us toward goals that we all share--world peace, world prosperity, equality of opportunity, safety nets, long and happy lifespans, rapid scientific and technological progress, and personal safety. The aim of governance, I think, is to achieve a rough consensus among the reality-based technocrats and then to frame the issues in a way that attracts the ideologues on one (or, ideally, both) wings in order to create an effective governing coalition.

...while I am profoundly, profoundly disappointed and disgusted by the surrender of the reality-based wing of the Republican policy community to the gang of Republican political spivs who currently hold the levers of power, I do think that there is hope that they will come to their senses and that building pragmatic technocratic policy coalitions from the center outward will be possible and is our best chance.

This week Delong quotes this from Eric Alterman.

DeLong’s hope, while noble in principle, is emasculating in practice. And it’s one of many reasons why liberals continue get their asses handed to them, again, and again and again. This is war, and the other side needs to be soundly defeated—drowned in a bathtub, to borrow a felicitous phrase--before the sources of DeLong’s “disappointment and disgust” can be addressed as anything more than a dangerous delusion.

Would I have the balls to quote this without substantial comment?

Update: Delong:

The Stupidity! It Burns!! It Burns!!!

Andrew Sullivan writes:

Andrew Sullivan | The Daily Dish: I fear Maliki's government is powerless against the Shiite militias that have increasingly infiltrated it.

Maliki's government is the Shiite militias. The Shiite militias are Maliki's government. There is no "infiltration."

Bull Indeed

Of all the Lieberman-Lamont race commentary in existence, this might be the dumbest.

The Moose argues that there is only one real Democrat in the Connecticut Senate race.

...

Here is a thought experiment - who would Senators Truman, JFK, LBJ, HHH and Scoop be more comfortable with - Joe or his opponent? They would no doubt embrace Joe as one of them.

Lieberman, the real Democrat.

Who would any of those people endorse in this race? Presumably they would endorse the actual Democrat. But really, who cares?

Scoop Jackson supported Japanese internment during World War II. The Moose apparently thinks that Lamont ought to adopt a similar line toward Muslims in the U.S. today, so that when Bill & Ted bring Jackson to Connecticut in 2006, he'll be "more comfortable" with the idea of voting for Lamont.

Or something.

Ideological Purge Watch

At least through the end of August, Lieberman appeared to be doing pretty well for himself. As for whether there's some sort of conspiracy to force hawks out of the party - by, like, voting them out of office - the evidence is thin:

[Chuck Schumer] and others cited several reasons why Lamont's victory didn't herald a national movement to topple entrenched Democrats in the 13 primaries being contested this month. Most notably, the party has turned its attention to recapturing control of Congress in November, and that means emphasizing not just opposition to the Iraq war but a variety of other issues.


...

Anyone wanting to piggyback on Lamont's success has faced another hurdle: The Lamont-Lieberman race involved "a unique set of circumstances," as Washington political analyst Jennifer Duffy put it.

It would be difficult to replicate the combination of a wealthy challenger who eventually pumped about $4 million into his campaign; an incumbent senator whose war views and praise of White House policy were highly unpopular at home; the notion that Lieberman had announced his intention to run as an independent if he lost; and the fact that the race was run in a small state where individual voters are easier to reach.

Of course, Lamont's victory showed that Lieberman's position on the war mattered, but it was only one of many factors contributing to his loss.

Size 11 Camaros & Wire Kalashnikovs

Going back to that Right on the Left Coast post on gender-neutral schooling, I see that one commenter made an attempt to object to the school's policies by presenting this anecdote:

We have friends of whom the husband is a closet conservative and the wife is a raving liberal loon. When she had her first child, a daughter, the kid was only dressed in gender neutral colors and never allowed gender specific toys. When her second child was born, a son, she did the same thing. Until the husband found the kid in the closet saying zoom zoom zoom to a shoe. And using a coat hanger as a gun. Sorry, the genders are different.

What, exactly, is this supposed to demonstrate? Nobody's denying that "the genders are different", they're just saying that we ought to be cautious about predetermining how individuals' senses of gender identity develop.

Even a hard-nosed genetic determinist (fatalist, even!) like me can concede that while it's typically unwise to fight the forces of deoxyribonucleic acid, it's usually not any better to take for granted what those forces are.

Back to that anecdote in particular, is the idea supposed to be that boys are somehow hard-wired to want to play with cars and guns? Given that homo sapiens have been around for at least 200,000 years and that cars have been around for less than 0.08% of that time, that seems somewhat implausible. Much more implausible, I think, than the theory that the boy in question picked up the idea of simulating automobiles from somewhere in his environment.

Most plausible of all, however, is the theory that an internet commenter who refers to one of her "friends" as "a raving liberal loon" would fabricate a story in which a child is found "in the closet" simultaneously pretending that shoes are toy cars and that coat hangers are toy guns.

A term invented to make it difficult to think clearly

You guys are probably already familiar with how I hate the word "Islamofascism". I don't really reject the term on the pragmatic grounds of "the term is really offensive to Muslims" though that itself should be enough. I dislike the term becuase it's invented to help people conflate a bunch of threats that shouldn't be conflated.

Via Yglesias, we see the perfect example of why from the conservative National Review:

The problem, as I see it with using the term “Bin Ladenism": It can’t be applied to the ideologies of the ruling Iranian mullahs, Saddam Hussein loyalists or other Baathists (e.g. in Syria).

Bin Ladenists are engaged in a rivalry with Khomeniists for leadership of the international, radical Jihadi movement. Baathism (pan-Arabism and Arab supremacism) is largely a spent force but its remnants have merged both with bin Ladenism (e.g. in the 1990s, Saddam “got religion”; “secular” Fatah has produced the al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades and reveres both Saddam and bin Laden), and with Khomeinism (the Damascus – Tehran axis).

We are struggling to come up with a term that (1) accurately describes the network of ideologies and movements that have risen up with the “Muslim world” (I hate that phrase) and which seek to defeat America and its allies, a term which also (2) clearly conveys to the average person in the West that this is an enemy who must be taken seriously.

That's a real puzzle, isn't it? You have a bunch of separate groups with a bunch of separate goals, who each hate us for separate reasons and which pose varying threats to us. They aren’t united and many have a history of direct conflict with each other.

Granted, there are common threads. They all oppose us to varying degrees and for varying reasons that mostly all go back to 1. Our support of Israel, 2. Our quest for cheap reliable oil.

Those who aren't busy playing cowboys-and-Indians can see that these groups are not unified. They can see that is a strategic advantage. Some of them are dangerous to US interests. Some of them are not. Some of them can be reasoned with or bought off, some of them cannot. Some of them can be contained, some require military a response.

Those who are unable to see the distinction between these groups put the US at a strategic disadvantage. Though they think of themselves as clear-eyed defenders of us all they should remember that Neville Chamberlain did to.

Update: Don't wonder any longer

As an update to my earlier post: Those wondering why TNR's Lee Siegal still has a job need to wonder no longer. The writer who famously called The Daily Kos a fascist has been kicked to the curb:

An Apology to Our Readers

After an investigation, The New Republic has determined that the comments in our Talkback section defending Lee Siegel's articles and blog under the username "sprezzatura" were produced with Siegel's participation. We deeply regret misleading our readers. Lee Siegel's blog will no longer be published by TNR, and he has been suspended from writing for the magazine.

Franklin Foer
Editor, The New Republic

I suppose TNR isn't all bad.

Update: Ezra Klien adds more.

Update: You really have to read this to believe it.