A Simple Point:

From the Nunberg piece I mentioned in the last entry:

the right has managed to reconfigure the polarities of American politics so that economic divisions are trumped by the bogus cultural distinctions of the "red-blue" divide

I think I know how Lakoff would respond, and I'd agree with him:

if it ain't "bogus" to them, then it ain't "bogus". And if you continue to ignore how the definition of "bogus" has changed, or how conservatives work to change how people think of "bogus", and think that you can appeal to a pure Cartesian dualist "reason" in order to sway people to your side?

Well, you deserve the drubbing you'll inevitably get.

So I Read Lakoff's "The Political Mind"

...and my principal take-away is that in order for the book to be effective, it needs to be broadly ignored.

See, I think he has a point. He makes the point that the way we think about things bears little resemblance to the abstract, computer-like capital "R" Reason of the old Enlightenment. No, it actually has a lot more to do with the connections we make between narratives, frames, and concepts. If confronted with a fact or concept that builds a frame (or a connection between frames) we accept it. If not, we reject it.

And, most critically, facts that could build up multiple narratives might not necessarily do so. If a fact could be used to support two contradictory narratives--which is common enough, actually--the one that's got the strongest connection will win out. So, for example, if there are two connections to the concept of "war on terror", one progressive and one conservative, the conservative one will win out even if the connection only slightly more powerful. The only way to make "war on terror" seem progressive is to use other narratives and concepts to build it up.

Fine so far. But there's one problem. (Well, two. His concept of liberalism as "nurturing parent" is incredibly message-blind coming from someone like him.) The problem is that the reason Republicans get away with this sort of thing is because they don't talk about it. They just do it. Luntz doesn't talk to the press about it (and they'd never get behind it anyway, as seen by the damned-near-hitpiece that the NY Times threw up about the book) and neither does Rove. They just tell the people who need to know, and publicly reveal just enough to impress the press and scare the Dems without actually revealing the core ideas. Nobody out-and-out said that the term "tax relief" was intended to de-legitimize the concept of taxation as a duty and government as a shared responsibility. No, they just worked out that that phrase suited their positions, and went for it.

Lakoff gives lots of examples of more positive "frames", but by telling everybody how the trick works beforehand, nobody's interested. He's so worried about having his idea of framing taken seriously by clearly-befuddled Dems that he makes a point of showing Republicans exactly what the frames are and therefore exactly how to beat them!

And that's too bad, because stripped of the controversy over cognition, there are some points that are definitely worth repeating. People really aren't the rationality machines that "rational choice" theory purports they are. There really isn't a spectrum from "left" to "right" that people sit on. A lot of people really do jump back and forth on all manner of issues because of the meaninglessness of "consistency." People really do respond instinctively to narratives, and the complex narratives that make up most people's politicaly opinions really are usually built out of a variety of interconnected simpler narratives.

And, yes, you really need to place your arguments within a moral framework. Liberal arguments of the "but it's the only rational solution!" variety are a vicious trap, and we need to jump over the damned thing already and move on to basing our reason on real moral cases.

But honestly, I kind of hope that this disappears completely under the waves in public. That there's no debate, no discussion, and no dissection of the book. That liberals pay very, very close attention to what it says, think about how it affects how they argue, and stop mentioning the damned book completely.

And that Lakoff maybe take a page from Luntz, and work behind the scenes a bit more.

Oh, and a bit of an edit: Lakoff has a point on how political opinions build up. But his "nation as family" concept is kind of flawed, because there are a LOT of metaphors used for a nation. Geoffrey Nunberg made some good points on that front a while back, and they're still valuable today.

There's the problem. If you tried to simply apply Lakoff's solutions, they wouldn't work. If you even apply his grand political theories, they probably wouldn't work. But if you take what he's saying about cognition to your own positions, well now, there's where you've got something.

Cognitively aware liberalism is far more than a "nurturing parent."

More editing: Just to boil down what I'm thinking here.

I think Lakoff has done a fabulous job of describing the landscape, and has done some yeoman's work in laying out the tools that have been used by conservatives to shape said landscape: the trimming shears, riding lawnmowers, weed-whackers and so on. And, once again, the simple insight that politics requires an explicit moral base, not a simple appeal to interests, is a very powerful one.

Where he hasn't quite nailed it yet is the how; he gets that liberalism is built on "empathy", but hasn't sourced it enough and continues to drop the ball with that lame-sounding "nurturer parent" line. And he hasn't figured out exactly how to use the tools. He's a scientist, not an engineer. Application isn't his job.

So what needs to be done from here is mostly translation and application. Happily, there is hundreds of years of writing on liberalism to translate and apply using these new tools of cognitive liberalism. Even if Rockridge isn't around to do it, other people can pick up the torch.

Sean Tevis for Kansas State Rep

Why?

Because this cartoon donation scheme is damned creative, that's why.

(And also because he's running against an arch-supporter of Intelligent Design. And in Kansas, that's a real issue.)

Digby on McCourts

For all the Obashing that's been going on, digby does make a good point:

The Senate has shown they will confirm a doorstop if the president wants them to. There are no Teddy Kennedy's who will lead the charge against another Bork. This is one reason why I'll vote for Obama enthusiastically. A President McCain will throw the wingnut zealots the most reactionary, federalist society hack he can find, like bloody bloody meat to a piranha tank. He doesn't care about anything but paying off his rich friends and making war. Whatever our problems might be with Obama we know that he won't do that.

The problem is that in order to move these guys, you have to be willing to ignore all this and punish candidates for going against you. But if you do so, you might end up seriously hurting your own interests in the short- to medium-term.

(And that's assuming you can capitalize on it in the long term, which requires a lot of things liberals still don't have.)

So yeah, at the end of the day, it's still better to vote for Obama. And hell, after all this controversy, he might well be a bit more cautious about switching positions to chase the mythical centrist swing voter. He tends to have this problem; he'll jump face-first into a problem, but then muddle his way through to a decent (or even admirable) final solution. Voting for him in November is still the best bet.

But that doesn't mean that now, in July, we can't tell him to watch it a bit.

Obama and Self-Swiftboating

Lawrence Lessig has a point.

All signs point to an Obama victory this fall. If the signs are wrong, it will be because of events last month. These events constitute a so-far-unnamed phenomenon in Presidential campaigning -- what we could call "self-Swiftboating." To understand "self-Swiftboating," you've got to first understand "Swiftboating."

Some use the term "Swiftboating" to refer to harsh, even vicious attacks on an opponent. I use the term in a more restrictive sense: "Swiftboating" is (1) attacking the strongest bits of a candidate's character, with (2) false or misleading allegations. That was what Kerry suffered -- attacking his courage as a soldier, the characteristic that distinguished him most from Bush, with misleading (at least) allegations by some who knew him when he served.

Self-Swiftboating is to Swiftboat yourself: For a campaign to do something that has the effect of undermining its own candidate's strongest characteristic, with actions that are (at best) misleading. The Obama campaign has now self-Swiftboated candidate Obama.

(1) An attack on a core characteristic: There are at least two views about what makes Obama so compelling. One that he happens to have the mix of positions on policy questions that best matches the public's. The other that he is perceived by the public as "different," and hence (given the public hates politicians so) someone the public can like, or more significantly, get enthusiastic about.

I'm strongly in the second camp. It seems to me nothing more than consultant-think to imagine people choosing a President with a checklist of issues, finding the one to vote for the way they pick a place to vacation. It seems to me nothing less than obvious that people are passionate about Obama because he strikes them as a different kind of candidate -- one that stands for his beliefs, that speaks clearly and directly, that can be trusted to stick by his beliefs, that says what he believes regardless. Such a creature, in most people's minds, is "not a politician." Such a creature (i.e., "not a politician") is what people want in a President.

Democrats never seem to get this. The last two campaigns were lost (in my view) because the campaign was working overtime to bob and weave to match the program of the candidate to the pollsters' latest work. That the shifts would signal that the candidate was nothing different just didn't seem to compute. Better, for example, to have people believe the candidate (Kerry) was against gay marriage than to worry that most would see the position as a political ploy.

Republicans, on the other hand, seem obsessed with this. It was the defining feature of the success of Reagan that he made it appear as if he did what he believed, not what the polls said. It was the part Bush v2 mimicked best. It is the clear dream of the McCain campaign to do the same. "You may not like what I say, but at least you know where I stand" is the signal virtue in a GOP campaign. It is the signal blindness of a Democratic campaign.

I am not saying that Republicans are consistent and Democrats not. I am saying something very different: that Republicans believe appearing consistent/principled/different is the key to victory, where as Democrats (apparently) do not.

Well put. It's something that surprises the hell out of me: that Dems would be so attached to the "we'll just shift along the (supposed) electoral spectrum until we hit the magic point" that they manage to completely screw themselves up, with no real help required from the Republicans.

Maybe they just listen to the media too much. All those pundits who are saying "oh, those stupid lefties, they don't realize that you need to shift" are going to savage him for it come October.

Maybe they listen to the consultant class too much. All those consultants who look at polls and nothing else still have too much power, because they don't realize that a party and a candidate needs to have lines that they will not cross, and that those lines are what make you look "principled."

Maybe they listen to Republicans too much. It still fascinates me that Karl Rove is being hauled out as a political analyst, as if he's doesn't have a horse in this race. The Republicans are more than willing to attack them for both shifting and for not shifting enough, because as long as they keep doing that, they'll keep the public's eyes away from their own candidates' faults.

Whatever it is, Lessig's right: if they lose, it'll be because of this nonsense, and because Obama supporters' yells of "well, come on, he's still just a politician" are the dumbest goddamned thing that's been said about an American presidential candidate since "uniter, not divider."

Europeans Have 'till Monday to Save Their Online Rights

Headline over at boing boing:

EUROPEANS! You have until MONDAY to contact your MEP and save the EU from a three-strikes copyright rule!

They aren't wrong.

Back-room dealings in the European Parliament have resulted in a "three strikes" rule being included in a new telecoms bill -- the rule would force ISPs to kick people who've been thrice accused of copyright infringement off the Internet.

If this bill passes, then Europeans' access to the network that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, access to medicine, family, civic engagement, banking, government services, and the whole sweep of human online endeavor would last only so long as they avoided three unsubstantiated accusations of downloading music or video or software without permission.

Worse still, the bill is set to be voted upon on July 7 -- that's this Monday.

The Open Rights Group has instructions for contacting your MEP. If you live in the EU and you care about your future as a citizen of the information society, call right away and make sure your MEP knows that this matters to you.

Here's the Open Rights Group link Cory posted. I know most of my own readers are North American, but if you're European, follow that link. Now.

Cripes

There's been a lot of talk about the various tools Canadian PM Stephen Harper will deploy in the upcoming election.

There's one important one that people haven't been talking about, though: Maclean's puff pieces about Harper's geeenius! Yep, Paul Wells is running back to the, er, well, burning 2700 words on a panegyric about how awesome Stephen Harper is, and how awesome Paul Wells is for pointing out how awesome Stephen Harper is.

But seriously, Paul. How on earth is a guy who styles himself one of Canada's foremost political commentators the last to bust out that "he's playing chess while everybody's else is playing beer pong" line? Sure, you were looking for a reason to refer to Perlstein's Nixonland, but come on.

After all, if the conservatives were that good, your colleagues wouldn't be having a grand time yelling catcalls at them as they run from committees with their tails between their legs. And if Nixon were that good, he wouldn't have had to cheat to win.

(Or, well, appeal to southern racism. Funny how that got left out of Wells' discussion of Harper's similarity to Nixon, huh.)

Iran Photoshopped Their Missiles

No, really.

As news spread across the world of Iran’s provocative missile tests, so did an image of four missiles heading skyward in unison. Unfortunately, it appeared to contain one too many missiles, a point that had not emerged before the photo appeared on the front pages of The Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, The Chicago Tribune and several other newspapers as well as on BBC News, MSNBC, Yahoo! News, NYTimes.com and many other major news Web sites.

Here's the picture in question:


In case you didn't see it, the two rightmost clouds are obviously a copy/paste, as are the two highest missiles.

Damned if I know why they did it, but it's the silliest damned thing I've seen this week.

KrugChart!

Hey, here's a fun chart:



And here's where it came from:

The funny thing is that the essential ludicrousness of this guy was plain to see all along.

(The column.)

There are some things that probably deserve a bit more attention, though. The "net worth" increase is probably meaningless, since so much of it is top-end biased and what's left depended on the home value bubble. And look at the employment and wage numbers: they're ridiculously small! Not just in comparison to the typical increase, but as a straight percentage, they're ludicrous!

And that's not even factoring in the incredible expansion of executive compensation!

Worst. Preznit. Ever.

Edit: Krugman points out that a lot of these problems preceded Bush. Fair enough. One problem, though- he also reveals that most of them are the fault of, yep, Republicans. Health care costs? UHC was scuttled by Republicans. Energy prices? Republicans didn't do a damned thing about them except invade Iraq in 2003. Housing? Well, blame for that goes around to a ton of places, but it wasn't the Dems who were agitating for "reducing red tape" on the quasi-banks that underwrote and drove the credit expansion.

Face it. Republicans are terrible at economics. It sounds wrong, you'd think old, fat, rich white men would know a thing or two about handling the public purse, but they really don't. They're horrible at it. Their ridiculous unsupportable ideology keeps getting in they way.

Better to have a Know-Nothing speaker than a Republican one.

Iranian Language Question:

How do you say "get a REALLY GOOD proxy" in Iranian?

Because, well, I'd heartily suggest it to any bloggers in Iran right about now.

Holiday!

Happy Independence Day to the Americans reading.

(And a happy belated Canada Day to those Canadians who might still be hanging around for the occasional Canada-related piece I still do. Hope you had a good one.)

In Happier, Robot-ier News

Wall-E is absolutely amazing, and yet more proof that Jobs should execute some kind of bizarre leveraged buyout of Disney just so that he can hand the whole damned thing over to John Lasseter.

I'm a bit divided on the inevitable toys, though. On the one hand, Disney has always made sure that Pixar spin-off toys are good quality stuff, and yet on the other hand, it's Wall-E we're talking about here. (Maybe some recycled plastic used in the construction?)

But on the other hand--of this horrific three-armed beast--anything that gets kids into robotics is probably a good thing. You know that at least a few kids walked out of that theater and thought "robots are awesome! I want a robot! I wanna make robots!" And you know what? Robots are awesome, kids. Go nuts.

So, maybe the solution is to let the kids have a Wall-E for Christmas, but only if they learn how to program it. Or maybe if they build one themselves. How's THAT for good ol' American do-it-yourself spirit!

If You Can't Say Anything Nice, Don't Say Anything At All

Jesse Helms dead at 86.

"..."

Notice Something Missing?

In the Times today, there's a nice big article about how Leftist college professors are retiring. They're building it up as the "end of the culture war" or some such thing.

Er, no. See, what they aren't talking about is the other side of "scholarly studies": the archipelago of think-tanks and "institutes" and whatnot that are supposed to serve as a counterweight to the overwhelming liberalism of campuses. There are a lot of them, and they're very well funded.

Now, campuses were never that liberal. Some departments were, some weren't. But they were fairly liberal, and certainly liberal compared to their overwhelmingly conservative private-sector counterparts. If the liberals in academe are retiring, and their replacements are self-consciously (and uncritically, but nevermind) "moderate", but the conservatives are still right where they are...

...guess what that means for the American academic discourse.

It's funny. By and large, the tropes of conservatism are completely discredited. Reagan didn't win the Cold War. Armed interventionism doesn't work. Reflexive market-boosting and regulation-cutting can actually hurt markets, and certainly hurts public welfare. Social security is pretty safe right now, and UHC seems on the horizon.

Yet if you look at it in a broader sense, there are definitely rainclouds on the horizon. These "moderates" don't know what they're in for.

(They're also obsessed with "the data", apparently, which is hilarious in its own way. But that's another post entirely.)

A Followup Tip to Google:

Give people the option of wiping their data. It's too late for YouTube, but this is a really good lesson in how people need control over their data in your servers, and how they need to be allowed to maintain their privacy.

If you want to do no evil, that's a start.

Get a Proxy.

Well, it's been made abundantly clear what time it is.

Google must divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched any video on YouTube, a US court has ruled.

The ruling comes as part of Google's legal battle with Viacom over allegations of copyright infringement.

Digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) called the ruling a "set-back to privacy rights".

The viewing log, which will be handed to Viacom, contains the log-in ID of users, the computer IP address (online identifier) and video clip details.

While the legal battle between the two firms is being contested in the US, it is thought the ruling will apply to YouTube users and their viewing habits everywhere.

That's bad. This is worse.

The US court declined Viacom's request that Google be forced to hand over the source code of YouTube, saying it was a "trade secret" that should not be disclosed.

But it said privacy concerns expressed by Google about handing over the log were "speculative".

This is simply one U.S. court, not the Supreme Court. But this is the Roberts court; it's likely to stand up. The implication here is perfectly clear: Corporate privacy is valuable and important, whereas individual privacy is "speculative."

Letme repeat that, in case it didn't sink in. Any privacy concerns about Viacom getting full and unrestricted access to everything anybody has ever viewed on YouTube is "speculative."

You have no rights.

Get a proxy.

Gunplay is A-Okay!

Just remember, kids: the Dems were responsible for this. The decision was 5-4: Alito, Scalia, Kennedy, Roberts, and Thomas. Two of these guys were Bush appointees. Both were appointed by a Democratic Senate minority so unwilling to fight the unified Republicans, or actually whip their caucus, that they ended up spewing out line after line of farm-fresh bullshit about "keeping their powder dry for the fight ahead."

For what, you might ask?

Damned if I know, considering they've been ridiculously ineffective as a majority too, because the Republicans actually know what a whip is for and they, clearly, don't.

So thanks, Byrd. Thanks, Pryor. Thanks, Landrieu. Thanks, Lieberman. Thanks, Murray. Thanks, Rockefeller. Thanks, Wyden. Thanks to all of you for Roberts' vote on this. And let's also thank the Democratic "gang of 14"; without you Scalia wouldn't have had enough hardliners on his side to get away with deliberately discarding half of the Amendment's language. Nelson, Landrieu, Inouye, Pryor, Salazar, and of course Lieberman: every reasonable gun law that gets tossed out thanks to this ruling might as well have been crossed out by your own pens. Good thing the Republicans didn't use that "nuclear option", huh? Then there would be no way the minority in the Senate could block the majority! The majority party could get things done!

So let's all remember their clearly deep, heartfelt commitment to the cause of the NRA, hmm? And what happens when you "keep your powder dry." Sometimes it blows up in your face.

Wow. Huh.

I have no idea what Karl Rove did to tick off MoDo so much. She has a tendency to make the personal political, so maybe there's bad blood there.

But holy mackeral, take a gander at this:

Unlike W., Obama doesn’t have a chip on his shoulder and he doesn’t make a lot of snarky remarks. He tries to stay on a positive keel and see things from the other person’s point of view.

He’s not Richie Rich, saved time and again by Daddy’s influence and Daddy’s friends, the one who got waved into Yale and Harvard and cushy business deals, who drank too much and snickered at the intellectuals and gave them snide nicknames.

Obama is the outsider who never really knew his dad and who grew up in modest circumstances, the kid who had to work hard to charm whites and build a life with blacks and step up to the smarty-pants set.

He might be smoking, but it would be at a cafe, hunched over a New York Times, an Atlantic magazine, his MacBook and some organic fruit-flavored tea, listening to Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks” on his iPod.

Rove was doing a variation on the old William Buckley line: “I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone book than by the 2,000 members of the Harvard faculty.”

Conservatives love playing this little game, acting as if the “elite” Democratic candidates are not in touch with people like themselves, even though the guys doing the attacking — like Rove, Limbaugh, O’Reilly and Hannity — are wealthy and cosseted.

Haven’t we had enough of this hypocritical comedy of people in the elite disowning their social status for political purposes? The Bushes had to move all the way to Texas from Greenwich to make their blue blood appear more red.

I had to reread that; I kept on thinking I had somehow had some kind of crosswiring with Digby. It's definitely all TRUE, I just wouldn't expect to read it here.

So a (rare, but) richly-deserved kudos to MoDo.

Obama versus the netroots?

I'm wondering how strong the connection between Barack Obama and the "netroots" ever really was. Yes, he had a lot of supporters online, but he had a lot of detractors. His ideology was never as partisan as most Dem bloggers', and his campaign was nowhere near as blogger-friendly as the other Dem candidates' campaigns were. (He mostly stuck to his facebook-like website, which is a somewhat different operation.)

But still, however strong that connection was, I think it's safe to say that it's well and truly broken now. Forget Digby and Avedon Carol; when you've got Atrios calling you the Wanker of the Week, you have problems. And when you have an online opinion leader like Glenn Greenwald absolutely tearing you up, you have REALLY big problems.

And he had to know this was going to happen. There's no issue that fires up online Democratic base like the wiretapping issue. Right or wrong, that's just the truth. If he's willing to not only go against them, but toss out a whole bunch of silly lines about national security trumping all else, he's willfully jettisoning the a LOUD part of the base's support. He's not likely to get it back quickly, either; when even the carefully pro-partisan but non-ideological Marko Moulitsas is ticked off at you, you've got problems.

Can he get away with it? I'm not sure. It depends on whether his network really is better than the bloggers' network. One thing I am sure of: FISA wasn't worth it. He'll learn that when the Republicans go right back to attacking him. It's just a pity he couldn't have figured it out sooner.

Bye George

Dammit.

(In honor of the great man, there are seven words I'd like you to yell. If you're a fan, you'll know which ones I mean.)

In Honor of Stephen "Screw Everybody" Harper:

The Green Shift is pretty ballsy, isn't it?

Obama: Jettisoning the Netroots?

Digby thinks so. And I find it hard to disagree.

Let's be clear: the Democratic party is Obama's party now. He not only has the coattails in the fall, but has unmatched fundraising potential, enough that everybody HAS to listen to what he has to say. So if the Dems pass FISA, it's because he wants them to pass FISA.

Is it his Lieberman-Kyl? Not sure. Probably not, considering the timing. But it IS going to be something that he needs to deal with, and is going to severely limit his ability to "pivot" without alienating progressives so badly that they'll start treating his as the next Hillary Clinton.

Firefox 3

It finally came out, and I'm using it. VERY nice. Smaller memory footprint, and the rendering engine is snappier than anything I've used to date. Not sure about all the features mentioned on the promo site--they seem to be buried somewhere in the menus--but the whole-page zoom is really impressive as well, with an implementation similar to (but slightly superior) to IE.

Olbermann as "One Angry Man"

There's a great piece about Keith Olbermann at The New Yorker, talking about the issues he's had and the success he's gained from being both unashamedly honest about his opinions and willing to publicly antagonize people like O'Reilly.

Best bit? Probably when he was called into his bosses' office after submitting a script telling Pres. Bush to "shut the hell up." When asked why he'd use that phrase, he said "because I can't say 'shut the fuck up' on-air". The line stayed in.

(Also, the man can't drive for medical reasons, and hates to fly. One of your more immobile journalists, then, and even more surprisingly good for that.)

Russert

My apologies for the gap; unfortunately it was unavoidable.

So here's my comment on Russert: while I didn't think that he was always fair to his interviewees, and had a closer relationship to the research boys at the RNC than I would have liked, he was still a powerful interviewer and had an equally powerful effect on the entire Washington power structure. He was taken too early, made some damned good TV, and will be missed.

Go Franken!

He's the Democratic Nominee in Minnesota!

Coleman's taking shots at Franken's past writings, but you know what? He's a comedian. He's a pretty damned good one. And these days, aren't comedians the ones we're turning to to tell us what's really going on?

(Jesters, kings and all that.)

In any case, anything's better than another warmed over oilman (R) like Coleman in the Senate. Here's hoping Wellstone's old coalition agrees.

Comedy

Looking for some laffs?

Mark Penn is blaming fundraisers for the Clinton loss. The message was "fine", supposedly, though I'd argue that advocating something as unwieldy as "ready to be president on Day One" already shows you have some problems. Instead, he argued that Clinton simply didn't raise as much money as Obama:

While everyone loves to talk about the message, campaigns are equally about money and organization. Having raised more than $100 million in 2007, the Clinton campaign found itself without adequate money at the beginning of 2008, and without organizations in a lot of states as a result. Given her successes in high-turnout primary elections and defeats in low-turnout caucuses, that simple fact may just have had a lot more to do with who won than anyone imagines.

No mention was made of the campaign's various problems and conflicts, though I guess that makes sense considering the major conflict was "when are we going to kick Mark Penn to the curb?"

What really made me laugh about this little op-ed, though, is that he managed to blame the one thing he wasn't really responsible for. Bad messaging? Well, that's polling. Ignoring caucuses? That's strategic planning. Strife within the organization? That's management. All those things were his job in one way or another.

But fundraising? That's somebody else's job. So, according to Penn, it's the problem.

"LOL".

It Was a Good Speech

Clinton may not be preznit this year, but I wouldn't be surprised if she's got Senate Majority Leader coming. Maybe not in 2008, but 2010 sounds like a good bet.

(Reid wouldn't like it. Unfortunately, Reid ain't been the most effective guy as of late.)

Think Tank Effectiveness

I hadn't read Tim Lambert's blog for a while, and I really should. It's always a good read, especially if you get a hankerin' for a good old fashioned rhetorical beatdown, especially on climate change.

But one particular piece really grabbed me. It's on global warming deniers and conservative think tanks. Here, check it out:

Matt Nisbet reports:

A new study by a team of political scientists and sociologists at the journal Environmental Politics concludes that 9 out of 10 books published since 1972 that have disputed the seriousness of environmental problems and mainstream science can be linked to a conservative think tank (CTT). Following on earlier work by co-author Riley Dunlap and colleagues, the study examines the ability of conservative think tanks to use the media and other communication strategies to successfully challenge mainstream expert agreement on environmental problems.

(Clarification: A couple of readers thought Nisbet was saying that one particular CTT was linked to 90% of the books. Nisbet means that 90% of books can be linked to CTTs.)

It wasn't the finding itself that really interested me per se, but what it implied.

See, what it implied is that conservative think tanks are really, really effective. There's a gigantic gulf between the scientific consensus on global warming and the public's perception that there's a problem, but there's an even bigger gulf between the public's perception of the problem (the public largely agrees that it's an issue and that it's anthropogenic) and Washington's debate over the problem, which still has a LOT of out-and-out deniers holding sway. Logically the flood of science in favor of anthropogenic climate change should have washed away this nonsense long ago, yet here we are, with a "debate" that still manages to go on, somehow.

Yes, they're really that good at this!

You wouldn't think so. You'd think that it'd be transparent that they have an agenda and would be distrusted for it. They're absolutely OPEN about having an agenda, and almost as open about being part of the conservative movement. Yet they still have a massive effect.

And, if you think about it, it's a greater effect than you might suppose. Climate change is pretty cut-and-dried. If they manage to make a "debate" still happen on that, just imagine how much they've perverted the discussion of issues that aren't as clear! Sure, we're used to them having a big effect on, say, social and foreign policy. But that's just it! You have to wonder just how screwed up the Washington consensus on these other issues is because of these guys?

No grand conclusion, and this is hardly a novel insight. Just food for thought, especially about what progressive/liberal think tanks might be able to accomplish, given proper latitude and funding.

"All of these issues can be traced back to one source: hubris"

Good breakdown of why Clinton lost on TPM, by Big Blue that draws on a (surprisingly good) analysis by the WSJ on the subject.

So, what killed her candidacy? Well, three things really, according to BB: "she ran with a message that was out of step with the mood of the electorate, she failed to consider that she might face a genuine challenge from one of her opponents, and she dismissed a slew of states as unimportant." Some of that was her fault, but a lot of it was from Mark Penn being an idiot who doesn't understand that polls can change and doesn't know how to run a primary campaign:

(Italics are from the WSJ)

Clinton couldn't get the message right because she was running an "incumbent" campaign. Who runs an incumbent campaign for an office for which you haven't even been nominated yet? So, we end up with Clinton talking about experience, when the country is really looking for someone to just steer the ship in a new direction. Saying you've been on deck the whole time while the captain's been slaloming through the ice bergs is probably not the best way to approach the issue. And who was the architect of Clinton's messaging? Why, her chief strategist and sole pollster, of course. It's not just that Mark Penn got it wrong, it's that plenty of people in the campaign had it right, but were rebuffed.

Before her January 2007 debut as a candidate, the senator's team wrangled over how to portray her. Ms. Solis Doyle, communications director Howard Wolfson, media strategist Mandy Grunwald, policy chief Neera Tanden and senior strategist Harold Ickes wanted to promote her as a candidate of change -- the first woman president -- her Washington years notwithstanding. They also wanted to counter the candidate's high negative ratings among the general population by revealing the witty, engaging woman they knew.

Mr. Penn, by contrast, believed that voters would need to perceive Sen. Clinton as tough and seasoned enough to be the first female commander in chief. Emphasizing her gender too much, he argued, would undercut that. He also said Sen. Clinton would look weak if she apologized for her 2002 war vote, though it was especially unpopular in Iowa.

When one insider pleaded during meetings in 2007 to humanize the candidate, witnesses say Mr. Penn responded: "Being human is overrated."

Yes, when you're candidate already has an image of being a mechanical, poll driven poltician of limitless ambition (and I'm not saying it's a fair characterization), then the last thing you want to do is take some of the edge off that by "humanizing" her. My theory is that Mark Penn undervalues the quality of being a human being -- long considered a necessity to even be eligible for public office - due to his clearly alien origins. I mean, just look at this guy? If he was born on Earth, then I'm the king of Spain. That guy hatched from an egg, no two ways about it.

No argument here. That said, the hubris was still mostly Clinton's. She didn't thing Obama was a threat.

Then again, why would she? She had pretty much the entire Democratic machine in her pocket. She had most of the big-fish donors in her pocket. She had the big states' democratic machines in her pocket. Plus, she's Mrs. Bill Clinton. How the HELL could she lose with all of that?

And that's the thing. It wasn't a bad assumption. She would have crushed anybody else. But Obama's people knew the game, knew what they were up against, and (most importantly) figured out how to beat it.

Don't have the machine on your side? Great! Go populist, because you'll always have people willing to help if you run AGAINST the machine. That's especially true if you build your own machine (like, say, on the goddamnedest campaign website I've ever seen) to employ these people to help build a movement.

Don't have the big fish? Great! Get lots of little ones. Whales eat microscopic krill and they're huge, why not use the same principle? So you build THAT into your website too.

Don't have the big states' machines? Fine! Go after the little ones, with all those nasty little caucuses that the Clintons disdain.

Mix all that with a campaign manager who is an actual genius, unlike the overrated Karl Rove, and Clinton's hubris was badly, badly misplaced. She had no IDEA what she was up against.

And, I suspect, neither does McCain.

Speaking of stuff on TNR

Holy crap, did Pat Buchanan really write a book saying that it would have been better to let Hitler conquer Europe because he'd have killed off all the commies?

Let me get this straight. Jeremiah Wright is pilloried because he said some mean things about American foreign policy and a tertiary connection to Farrakhan, whereas the guy who cheers on Hitler gets on TV on a regular basis?

And people think that ISN'T somehow wrong and/or racist?

Also Without Comment: TNR

A quotation:

A Sports Parable

A statement from Detroit Pistons general manager Joe Dumars:

I wanted to say a few words about the Michigan Solution. No, not that travesty of justice. I'm talking about a fair, common-sense resolution of the Eastern Conference Finals.

Some in the media are declaring the series over because the Boston Celtics have won four of the six games played so far. But I don’t understand why, with a series this close and hotly contested, anyone would want to shut it down before we play a seventh game and have all the results in. As anybody who follows the NBA knows, a seven-game series would be good for the league, and the added competition would make the eventual victor, whomever it might be, a stronger opponent against the Los Angeles Lakers in the Finals.

It’s no great surprise that some are trying to push us out of this series. From the beginning, it’s been clear that the media and league elites have been looking for an exciting new face, instead of a team, like ours, that has proven its mettle by making it to the Conference Finals six* years in a row. We saw it in the Western Conference as well, where officials and news outlets made clear they were sick to death of the reigning champion San Antonio Spurs and behaved like cheerleaders for the media-darling Lakers. Heck, they almost managed to persuade fans that a hokey, small-town act like the New Orleans Hornets was a legitimate contender. It is safe to say that this has been the most rigged coverage in modern sports history.

But back to the series in question. Yes, Boston has won four games and Detroit only two. But it's hard to imagine a more arbitrary and undemocratic way to determine this series’s outcome than "games won." It is, after all, a bedrock value of the game of basketball that all points must be counted. But how can that be the case when every point beyond the winning point is ignored? There are literally dozens of layups, jumpers, free throws, and (yes, even) dunks that our opponents want to say don't count for anything at all. We call on the NBA to do the right thing and fully count all of the baskets that were made throughout the course of this series.

Once you abandon the artificial four-games-to-two framework that the media has tried to impose on the series, a very different picture emerges, with the Celtics leading by a mere 549 points to 539. Yes that’s right, the margin between the two teams is less than one percent—a tie, for all intents and purposes. This is probably the closest Conference Finals in NBA history, though I will thank you not to check on that.

How do we determine a winner in a series so historically close? First off, let's look at these so-called "free" throws, which are anything but. Who decides when these are to be awarded? Hard-working working-people like you and me? No, it's the officials, the league bosses, the elites. So no counting the free throws--unless and until (and I sincerely hope you guys are listening) the refs start breaking our way again. (By the way, you guys do know that Celts star Paul Pierce was involved in a stabbing a few years back, right? I only mention it because Phil Jackson is obviously going to bring it up in the Finals.)

If you take out free throws, Boston's ten-point margin in the series is whittled down to a single-digit, all-but-meaningless nine points. But this is still misleading. Let's be honest: We all know that some baskets count for more than others. (Yes, I know I was arguing for equal representation two seconds ago. What are you, Encyclopedia Brown? Chill out and try to stay current.) Take layups, for example: If you wander naively into the Finals thinking you’re going to win with layups, well don’t come crying to me when Kobe Bryant swats that lameass shit right back in your face. I know. I've been there.

So let's get right down to it: Big shots matter. It makes no difference when they happen, or who's leading at the time, or whether you're likely to make them against the Lakers, or any of that complicated nonsense. And we all know that the only real big shot is a three-pointer. So sure, Boston won more games than us, and scored more points, and made more baskets, and hit more free throws, and never tried to rewrite the rules after the fact. But we dominated them in three-point shooting, hitting 29 long ones to their 26 over the course of the series. Take this into account and it becomes apparent that we are by far the strongest competitor the Eastern Conference can field against the Lakers.

We again ask the league to consider all these facts and come to a fair solution. I’ll be holding a press conference at the Palace tonight, to which I’m inviting all Pistons season-ticket holders. I may announce our intention to drop out of the Eastern Conference Finals. Or I may not. But know one thing: If the media and league elites put the Celtics up against LA, they will lose, and we’ll be the first to say I told you so.

See you next season,

Joe Dumars (as told to Christopher Orr)

Go Pistons.

So it's Barack

As we all pretty much knew it would be.

The only question, credibility-wise, was WHEN you knew. Some people seemed to figure it out after that string of victories after super Tuesday. Some ON super Tuesday. Some couldn't accept it until yesterday.

Me, I knew after Iowa. While Clinton was going to be a combatant, it just seemed that Obama and his people knew what they were doing, knew the fight they had to fight, knew how to play up Obama as a candidate, and knew how puddle-deep Clinton's support was. I'd been saying that for a while, that Clinton's support was "ocean-wide, puddle-deep", but I didn't put two and two together and realize that he was absolutely going to crush the caucuses.

The SMARTEST were the ones who knew he was going to win prior to this election even starting. Honestly, I might have been there. He's had this aura of destiny and inevitability around him since before he even went up against Keyes. (Why do you think they put Keyes up against him in the first place?) Clinton's "inevitability" was just carefully manufactured spin and the careful grooming of the ultimate triangulator over the period of 6-7 years. Obama--though a bit of a triangulator himself--had it more because of who he already was, rather than who he was made to be.

It was a change that ill-suited her. I liked her a LOT when she was a passionate, progressive first lady, and never liked what she turned into when she became The Senator From New York. That's what bothers me about a lot of the Clinton defenses out there; they defend the former, while ignoring the changes made to become the latter. I would have GLADLY supported Hillary from the 90's, but apparently she wouldn't. That's not sexism, unless triangulation in the hunt for the presidency somehow makes you MORE of a woman.

Anyway, it's Barack. And what does this mean? Well, it isn't even really about the general per se. That's its own beast. And it isn't about sexism either. What it means is that the Machine lost, and lost big. And that's welcome news. It's that machine that bloggers et al have been fighting against since this whole thing first started in 2001 or so. Kos, especially, has been constantly going on and on about "crashing the gates" and the ineffectiveness of Democratic insiders and Democratic campaigners. Now he has his proof. Everybody who was pushing for Clinton as the "inevitable" nominee was really saying that she was "the nominee of the Powers-That-Be" in the party, and they were wrong. They can't browbeat other Dems anymore, and can't hold the threat of being kept "out of the loop" over them either. That was the threat they held over Obama supporters, and they lost. Their credibility isn't quite shot, but it's damaged as hell, and outsiders have a lot of sway now that they didn't before.

(And yet the insurgent candidate in question hates blogs. Ah well.)

So the question now is whether the party can come together. Maybe. Maybe not. McAuliffe appears to know what time it is, but then you've got people like, say, Larry Johnson.

(No, seriously. What the HELL happened to Larry Johnson? He has, in the vernacular, "completely lost his shit" over this. I've seen some nutty Obama supporters, but I've never seen a professional lose it so thoroughly from supporting Obama like Johnson has from opposing him.)

But in many respects it's understandable that the Hillary supporters feel as they do, and it's the job of Obama's supporters to try to bridge the gap. It's going to be rough, there are a lot of hurt feelings, and there are some people that maybe you're just better off ignoring, but that is your job now.

And then get ready for the general, because if you thought the racist dog-whistles were bad BEFORE...

Presented Without Comment:

On McLelland...

He partially wrote his book to cash in, yes. But I'm with Yglesias... there's a far more lucrative career awaiting "Bushies" in the Wingnut Welfare circuit.

Even if it's hardly a perfect mea culpa, and seeing him in interviews makes me angry, he still did more to rehabilitate himself than, say, Rumsfeld or Fleischer. So there's that.

Oh, and Speaking of Whatzisname...

He's now so peeved at Jason Cherniak, for daring to point out that he's a paid lobbyist for an oil-and-gas front organization, and has been about as reliable a supporter of the federal Liberals as Stephen Harper himself that he's posting private email. From 2006. Looksie:

There's more, but some of us actually have jobs, and have to work. Yawn.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jason Cherniak [mailto:jason@jasoncherniak.com]
Sent: August 8, 2006 3:09 PM
To: Warren Kinsella
Subject: Iggy scared to debate?

Word has it that iggy has cancelled his appearance at a debate in Quebec tomorrow because he has been convinced to not go up against Dion in french.
I can't post on it because nobody would believe me, but I think it would be cool if you could do something. I would suggest you confirm that he is not attending first, though, since my only info comes from the Dion campaign.

Sent from my wireless Blackberry

I guess people who expect discretion from email recipients should look elsewhere.

Funny thing is? This is clearly supposed to prove that Cherniak thought Kinsella was a Liberal back in August of 2006. Even if that WERE true...

...and it doesn't seem to be: he's leaking info to a fellow blogger, but it could just as easily been any non-partisan who'd be interested in a story about Iggy backing out of a debate...

...that was almost TWO YEARS AGO. Yes, Whatzisname has been gleefully kneeling at Harper's throne since before the last federal election, but even if that weren't the case, he's certainly been a staunch supporter since.

Sure, it's probably out of some misguided belief that it's the only way he can keep Ontario leader Dalton McGuinty in power. "Federal" and "Provincial" are different, I've figured that out.

But come ON. Whatzisname is no federal Liberal supporter, and his identification as some key Liberal blogger does nobody any good. He's more popular than Jason, which is probably why he's counting on that popularity to protect him from the damage this sort of stunt would normally cause, but popularity is a fleeting thing.

"Leadership"

Looking North of the border again, it looks like Dion has finally become a "leader" on something. Appropriately enough, it's an environmental issue.

He's backing a carbon tax.

He was originally against carbon taxes, but changed his mind. Fine: leaders do that. Well, good leaders, anyway; we've seen what happens when a leader doesn't change his mind, and it's gruesome. He also hasn't pushed a complete policy prescription, but more of a trial balloon.

That isn't the fun part. The fun part is the reactions, which are showing how it's actually pretty good politics.

(Whatzisname argues otherwise. Whatzisname is wrong. He does that. Even when he's not playing the paid flack for oil companies--and I'm not saying he is here--he's built his political career on running AGAINST novelty and innovation. Right or wrong, that's kind of his thing.)

The Conservatives are against it, of course, but they're in a bit of a tight spot. Sure, they can castigate it as "yet another tax", but Dion is pledging income tax cuts in order to turn the carbon "tax" into a carbon "shift". But people aren't necessarily unwilling to pay for things they believe in; if that weren't true, Canada wouldn't have all those vaunted social programs in the first place. And yet it's a policy that the Cons simply can't co-opt; their Climate Change-denying, tax-hating base would go absolutely bananas. They HAVE to be against it, whether it's popular or not.

Plus, they've got other problems right now, as their weak front bench ends up even weaker.

The NDP are against it too, but that's not helping them much either. It's pushed the most famous environmentalist in Canada (maybe even the world, after Al Gore), David Suzuki, squarely into the Liberal camp. And while conservatives might ignore Suzuki as some sort of commie symp, he still has a big and loyal following among Canadian small "l" liberals and progressives. That's a big issue. But they can't go against it either; they're running against the Liberals, not the Tories, and know that their union base is going to be against this.

As for the Greens, they're already foursquare behind it. They have to be. It's a signature issue of theirs, and they face irrelevance if they oppose it.

(They might anyway; if Liberal/Green/NDP splits threaten the carbon tax happening, some kind of "red shift" is quite likely.)

Besides, they're friendly with the Liberals; Elizabeth May is clearly hoping for a cabinet position with the Libs if she gets into Parliament and they get into Government, and it's a safe bet.

The best part is the media's reaction, though, both "old" and "new". A lot of Dion critics are caught up short by this, and are reduced to nonsense about whether or not it's politically saleable. They assume it isn't, but polls are suggesting that Canadians are open to the idea.

So now, all of a sudden, things have changed. Dion's in the driver's seat: his policy will be the talk of the country throughout the entire summer. Any announcement on specific aspects of the policy will be front-page news, ensuring that any time Dion wants to get onto the front pages, he just needs to mention the words "carbon tax" and they'll light up. Harper is reduced to reacting, while his drifting, aimless government looks all the worse in comparison. And Dion's Quebec opponents are in trouble as well; attacks on him for his lack of nationalism will be old news, wheres the carbon tax--which is VERY popular in Quebec--will be the new hotness.

And if an election comes in the fall? Well, now all of a sudden we know what it's going to be an election on.

Keith, Bobby, and Hillary.

So, yeah, as we see over at Americablog, Olbermann got off to a big ol' rant about Clinton.

And here it is:



A bit over-the-top, but it gets to the essential problem here. It took her "anything-can-happen" justification for staying in the race and just made it ominous. It really sounds like she's saying that although she's not assuming that the man gets shot, she certainly isn't discounting it, and is preparing for that possibility.

Which is disturbing and creepy.

Though maybe that isn't the greatest problem. Maybe the greatest problem is that she didn't really apologize. She gave a weaselly little line about it, saying:

I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation, particularly for the Kennedy family was in any way offensive, I certainly had no intention of that whatsoever...

...but come on. Keith's right, this isn't even remotely close to a real apology, especially considering that she didn't even breath the word "Obama" when it was HIS DEATH SHE WAS TALKING ABOUT!

That's what kills me (heh) about her campaign. She's running on experience and competence. Yet we've seen none of that from either the campaign or the candidate. Her Senatorial record is something she's had to run away from, even though she's clearly been running for president since 2000. Her claims of "fighting for you against the Republicans", in light of her open triangulation, is way goofier than any of that "change" stuff from the Obama crew. She's run a campaign so poor that it managed to vaporize the kind of frontrunner advantage that the party has never seen in its history, leaving only the delusions of grandeur and inevitability in its wake.

Aside from a slightly better health care plan, and an army of middle-aged women who desperately (and understandably) finally want one of their own to become pres, she still hasn't answered the basic question of why the hell Americans should support her.

She's done a much better job of showing why they shouldn't, and Keith's right in that she's never done a better job than she did with this Bushian comment.

NEWSFLASH:

David Brooks writes about "nerds and geeks", is apparently trapped in 1998!

No wonder he still thinks all that "Bobo" crap is relevant. Or the Republican party, for that matter.

Ted Kennedy Has a Brain Tumor

Crap.

527 Follow-up to That Last Post

There's been a lot going around about how Obama's trying to stamp out independent organizations, especially 527s. (Good bit on it in the Washington Post.)

I don't think I need to tell you that this ain't gonna work. Progressive 527s don't just exist to get Dems elected, but to threaten to not help Dems get elected unless they act, well, progressive. Of course Obama's going to be against that, when he's got a fundraising machine of his very own.

But his fundraising machine won't be useful when you're trying to put the squeeze on him. That requires time, money, and personnel, all of which he ain't gonna pony up the dough for.

Plus, let's be honest: negative campaigning WILL happen. When it does, Obama doesn't want to be directly tied to it. He CERTAINLY doesn't want to have fundraised for it. McCain's just going through the motions; he'll be setting the dogs loose just as soon as Obama's the official nominee. If the Dems need to respond in kind, they'll need to let the "B-B-B-BUT SAMANTHA POWER GOT FIRED!" reaction go, and start doing some comparisons. And if it can't be on Obama's dime? Then it'll have to be on someone else's.

Agonist: Obama's Anti-Blogginess?

Interesting bit on The Agonist by Ian Welsh about how Obama doesn't really care about blogs, but how that kind of makes sense because they didn't deliver anything to him.

Clinton and McCain have always been more blog-friendly, which is probably part of the reason why Clinton has managed to survive as long as she has; Clinton-backing blogs get a LOT of campaign support, even when the fix is undoubtedly in.

Anyway, Ian:

Progressive national bloggers as a group did not go pro-Obama until Edwards dropped out. Also, in most cases the readers were pro-Obama first, not the other way around. Obama reached our audience without going through us, and sees no reason to bother with outreach to us. Bloggers who now support Obama do so despite the fact that Obama can't be bothered to do blogger outreach.

Obama only works with groups who can deliver votes he can't easily get on his own. So SEIU has a voice. We do not because we did not deliver our readers, he got them on his own.

The two things we can do for Obama that matters are media pushback and atacking McCain. But we will do those things whether he's nice to us or not, and he may not even appreciate us attacking McCain, since he very clearly wants top-down control over message with no freelancers.

There is zero ROI on spending any time on us, for Obama, at least in the short term. Therefore Obama doesn't spend any time on us. He also, personally, finds us boring, and has said so.

This will come back to bite Obama if or when he's president and the bloom is off, and he finds he has few real friends amongst bloggers and thus amongst those who have some influence with the base. But that's a year and a half to two years down the road. I doubt he's thinking it through that far, or he may think that his charisma and skill is such that he can keep his followers so happy that they will scream us under if we dare criticize him when he, say, leaves a huge residual force in Iraq (or whatever.) I doubt it, because most bloggers will really only turn on Obama when the base starts being disillusioned. But, as I say, that's a long way out and is irrelevant to him right now.

Yeah, I find this a bit counterproductive as well, if only because bloggers have become really good at focusing resources on key races and (in some cases) making the primary campaigns of "Blue Dogs" really, really dicey.

Now, Welsh seems peeved, but it's still kind of makes sense. Obama isn't building on a blog model so much as a social networking model. He doesn't NEED DailyKos, becuase he has my.barackobama.com to serve as his hub, and it's based more on a Facebook-style online networking model than a Kos-style blog community model. People on his campaign can serve as the kingmakers, rather than the bloggers. Bloggers just aren't key to the process.

It shouldn't be a surprise, either. It's been the case from the beginning. Obama has always been pretty clear that he's not a big fan of the enormous partisanship of bloggers. While I thoroughly disagree with him on that, it's certainly consistent. It's Obama, not Edwards. Nonsense about the National Journal aside, he's by no means the most liberal leader in the Democratic party.

But Ian is very much right about the possible consequences. The real story coming out of this election is not my.barackobama.com, because that's a lightning strike that's unlikely to happen again. The real story is the importance of small donations, and the utter irrelevance of the big DLC-style donors that were the lifeblood of the Clinton campaign. While Obama is likely to become president, the true shocker is that Clinton didn't win in the first place; that the machine backing her lost so badly.

As I said a while back, bloggers will benefit enormously from that machine's decline. Obama can't replace it; no single president could. No, that will be resolved on a much bigger scale, and the successes that American bloggers HAVE had will put them in a good position to take advantage of the situation.

And once the sheen is off the president, he'll need to draw on the bloggers' resources. And all this benign neglect now is only going to increase the asking price when it matters.

On the Broader "Engagement" Issue...

The question here is absurdly simple. Do you want to conquer Iran or not?

If you don't, you must acknowledge that you will eventually have to talk to them.

If you do, then you can legitimately claim that talking with them is unnecessary "appeasement", stirring up the ghosts of WWII, because you desire the same conclusion.

Everybody knows this, even if they don't say it.

So the question then becomes: what are the "no talking" people really saying?

Well, it's pretty clear, isn't it?

"What'd He Do, Kevin? What'd He Do?"

I don't praise Tweety often. I can barely stand to watch Tweety most of the time.

But, honestly, I'll give Chris Matthew credit here. This, right here:



Was an absolutely beautiful smackdown. An ignorant little Republican troll who exists only to feed raw meat to other ignorant Republicans got his ass absolutely handed to him, and rightly so. He hadn't the faintest idea what WWII was about beyond his talking points. When somebody doesn't even know what Chamberlain did, but just knows to label him an "appeaser", you know you need not waste your time with this waste of flesh.

But you know what? The real idiot here isn't Kevin James. It's the guy who pays him. Why does he have a radio show? He doesn't give good Radio Voice, he's not smart enough to be honestly controversial, and he doesn't appear to have an especially impressive background. He's just a jumped-up lawyer, and probably not even a good one at that. A good lawyer would be able to BS this.

Hat tip: TPM

Haloperidol is an Anti-Psychotic

It's used in order to calm persistent aggressiveness and hallucination in those with truly severe psychiatric disorders. A normal dosage is 0.5 twice a day; a maximal dose is 5 milligrams, three times daily. A hospital will only use up to 10 milligrams in an emergency situation.

The Department of Homeland Security is Injecting 30 to 40-- IN HEALTHY, COMPLIANT, NON-AGGRESSIVE DEPORTEES.

Well, that and a cocktail of other powerful drugs.

Here's what happened to one deportee:

Even some people who had been violent in the past proved peaceful the day they were sent home. "Dt calm at this time," says the first entry, using shorthand for "detainee," in the log for the January 2007 deportation of Yousif Nageib to his native Sudan. In requesting drugs for his deportation, an immigration officer had noted that Nageib, 40, had once fled to Canada to avoid an assault charge and had helped instigate a detainee uprising while in custody. But on the morning of his departure, the log says, he "is handcuffed and states he will do what we say." Still, he was injected in his right buttock with a three-drug cocktail.

In one printout of Nageib's medical log, next to the entry saying he was calm, is a handwritten asterisk. It was put there by Timothy T. Shack, then medical director of the immigration health division, as he reviewed last year's sedation cases. Next to the asterisk, in his neat, looping handwriting, Shack placed a single word: "Problem."

He suffered from no mental illness, and was perfectly compliant. He wasn't even supposed to be deported yet: his case was still under appeal.

When he landed in Lagos, Nigeria, Afolabi Ade was unable to talk.

"Every time I tried to force myself to speak, I couldn't, because my tongue was . . . twisted. . . . I thought I was going to swallow it," Ade, 33, recalled in an interview. "I was nauseous. I was dizzy."

As he was being flown back to Africa, his American wife alerted his parents there that he was on his way. His father was waiting at the Lagos airport. It was the first time in three years that they had seen one another. Shocked by how woozy the young man was, his father decided not to take him home and frighten the rest of the family. Instead, he checked his son into a hotel.

Ade was in the hotel for four days before the effects of the drugs began to abate.

Citizens of the United States of America, meet your Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. Your tax dollars hard at work.

(They have a lovely careers page if you'd like to sign up. Apparently it's Where Leaders Go to Work!)

Edit: Fixed some quotation issues.

Ollie North, Novelist-Hero

I didn't think Seth McFarlane was this funny anymore, but check it out:



Good stuff.

Einstein an Athiest?

Maybe, maybe not, but he did call the bible 'pretty childish' at one point.

The letter up for sale, written to philosopher Eric Gutkind in January 1954, suggests his views on religion did not mellow with age.

In it, Einstein said that "the word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."

"For me," he added, "the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions."

Addressing the idea that the Jews are God's chosen people, Einstein wrote that "the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."

Bloomsbury spokesman Richard Caton said the auction house was "100 percent certain" of the letter's authenticity. It is being offered at auction for the first time, by a private vendor.

That said, it's quite possible he's not an atheist. There are a few indicators that he's more of a Deist- someone who believes that God may have build the machinery of the universe, but doesn't tinker with it. That's the God that a lot of enlightenment figures (and American Founding Fathers) believed in, and certainly not the personal Savior of, say, modern evangelicalism.

It probably won't change the battle between hardline theism and the increasingly strident "bright" atheist movement much, but it does provide a bit of context, and a reaction to the "chosen people" concept in Judaism that you don't see aired much in the western world. Interesting stuff.

"Traitors to the cause of economics as a whole"

Over on Crooked Timber, Kathy G. is finding out via the minimum wage debate what many of us have known for years, and which is going to cause a lot of heartache among Obama supporters who think his staff are "non-ideological pragmatists":

Yes, Virginia, economists can be ideologues.

(Especially at the University of Chicago.)

Quake Kills Thousands in Western China

What the New York Times said.

The earthquake was the worst to hit China since the Tangshan earthquake of 1976 when more than 240,000 people died.

The 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit in Sichuan Province on Monday afternoon, and the death toll steadily increased throughout the evening, raising concerns that the number could go far higher.

By 11.40 p.m. local time, the state news agency Xinhua quoted local authorities as saying that the number of dead had risen to 8,533 in Sichuan Province alone. Provincial disaster relief officials said that 3,000 to 5,000 people were feared dead in Beichuan County where roughly 80 percent of the buildings were reportedly destroyed.

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, who arrived in the earthquake region on Monday night, described the situation as a “severe disaster” and called for “calm, confidence, courage and efficient organization.”

President Hu Jintao ordered an “all out” effort to aid people in the region and soldiers were dispatched for disaster relief efforts. Minutes after the western temblor, a second, smaller quake struck hundreds of miles away, in an outer district of Beijing. Thousands of office workers were evacuated, but no damage was reported in the city, which is preparing to play host to the Olympics in August.

Sorry, nothing pithy for this.

Skewin' Right

Well, this is cute. Doug Schoen has a bushel of advice for Obama in an editorial in the WSJ. Since it is the WSJ, though, every bit of it is advice that would be well-suited for a Republican.

I mean, look at this:

First, and obviously symbolically, he must start wearing the flag lapel pin. He simply cannot afford to raise doubts about his patriotism.

More substantively, he must also unabashedly support measures that reflect and emphasize his commitment to traditional American values.

For example, he should commit to enhancing and strengthening the earned income tax credit, to provide tax relief to the working poor and to continue transferring people from welfare to work. This will demonstrate his preference for hard work and initiative as opposed to entitlement programs.

Mr. Obama must also demonstrate concretely that he is sympathetic to the victims of crime -- in ways that go beyond the abstract rhetoric of his March 18 speech on race relations in Philadelphia. He needs to make clear, in no uncertain terms, that he understands American concerns about law and order, and that he puts public safety at the top of his priorities. To be sure, there is an increasing role for rehabilitation in the criminal justice system. But Mr. Obama must emphasize first and foremost that he is on the side of law-abiding people.

To win southwestern states such as Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico, he must demonstrate his intention to secure our borders, and to integrate those immigrants who are here into American society with a clear path to citizenship. Mr. Obama should also reemphasize his support for the rights of gun owners to hunt and use firearms safely and responsibly.

On foreign policy, Mr. Obama must refute the presumption that he is not fully committed to the war on terror, or that he believes every problem can be solved by negotiating with the leaders of rogue nations. He must reassure people that he understands diplomacy has its limits. Part of this reassurance should consist of a speech that Mr. Obama should give on the subject of what Ronald Reagan called "American exceptionalism" -- still a core value for most Americans, and particularly swing voters. Our role in the world, and our unique democratic experience, make us a nation that has to be prepared to stand alone if absolutely necessary.

So the politician who is supposed to transcend old politics should prove himself by...acting exactly like a moderate Republican?

I mean, look at the stuff I bolded. "secure our borders"? "committed to the war on terror"? "On the side of law-abiding people?" "Traditional American values?"

And to cap it all off, AMERICAN GODDAMN EXCEPTIONALISM???

You must be joking.

Yes, buddy, I'm aware that you (barely) won Tennessee for Clinton in 1996. Guess what? It isn't 1996. Triangulation doesn't work anymore. It never did, really, which is why your ilk kept getting beaten over and over and over again in Congressional elections across the country, and why your chosen president is best remembered for enacting policies that make Republicans far happier than Democrats.

(Which is one of the under-discussed reasons why his wife got smoked by Obama, but I digress.)

And for the comedy coup d'etat, I give you the last paragraph:

If Barack Obama is going to win the election, he needs to be able to fight the contest on the core economic issues that clearly work to the Democrats' advantage -- such as job creation, expanding access to health care, and providing relief to homeowners who have trouble paying their mortgages. But unless he is able to present himself as being part of the mainstream on core cultural and values issues, the Republican attack machine will be able to make this election about issues having little to do with the economy and our role in the world.

Ah yes. The siren call of DLC-style triangulation. I've asked before, I'll ask again. Does this ever work?

Really?

When the candidate isn't already possessing enough advantages that he probably doesn't need to pull this in the first place?

Is anybody, in 2008, still naive enough to think that positioning yourself in the middle of the field won't cause the Republicans to run the goalposts past you and attack you from the new middle? I didn't figure they were. It certainly didn't explain 2006, and by even trying it, you're guaranteed to piss off the online supporters that form the bedrock of 21st century fundraising.

I don't know, maybe this guy is a former Hillary supporter that's trying to sabotage Obama's campaign, although I can't see Axelrod, Plouffe et al being this dumb. I certainly hope not, anyway.

Edit: Oh, crap, that's where I know the name from. He's the strategist at Mark Penn's outfit. He's also the guy who said, in the Washington Post, that Clinton should keep on hammering Obama with as many negative attacks as possible, while repeating that "most liberal member" nonsense!

I'd be surprised if Obama's people even acknowledge his existence.

"But Whitey Loves Me!"

When your campaign is reduced to barely concealed race baiting, you need to stop, Sen. Clinton.

Edit: I should probably add to this; it's a big story.

But, honestly, what else is left to say? Clinton's done, the nation is dismissing her, and she's been reduced to trolling the media. She probably doesn't even care if she's called racist, now, because at least it'll keep her name in the headlines. Which is the last thing anybody needs. It's over.

Symbolism, Eh?

The Victory Fund.

That's what the Canadian Liberals are calling their new donation scheme, where you sign up to have ten or twenty or however-many dollars pulled out of your bank account per month. It's a nice idea; people sign up for this sort of thing and then benignly forget about it, like a subscription to an old MMO that you used to play, but can't be bothered to cancel.

But don't think about that. Think about the name. "The Victory Fund."

What does it conjure up?

It conjures up images of WWII. Of sacrifice and victory against terrible, maniacal, mad fascist dictators. Of a glorious struggle, perhaps the last truly glorious struggle the world has ever known.

And they're using it as a weapon against the most secretive and all-controlling Prime Minister Canada has ever known; one who (possibly) cheated his way to victory, cloaks himself in an image of "the common man", and who has nothing but contempt for those who disagree with him.

God DAMN, these guys might be better at messaging than I thought.

Somebody Find a Fork

North Carolina was a blowout for Obama, and Indiana is, at best, a squeaker for Clinton. (And it's still theoretically possible that Obama could win it)

Clinton's pretty much done. She needed a split decision to go on, and a pair of wins to be a credible nominee. That isn't what happened. And post-Wright, Obama can credibly say that he's thoroughly "vetted" and has overcome the worst that can be thrown at him.

Yes, she'll win West Virginia, but that just doesn't matter. Obama achieved almost everything he could have hoped for tonight, and broke her short streak.

(Gave a good speech, too.)

She's probably frantically calling superdelegates pleading her case, but I imagine she's getting one response: "end it before you ruin your Senatorial career." It was a hell of a run, but the Change guy won.

Edit: From Ambinder:

Dear XXXXX,

Tonight's victory in Indiana was close, and a margin that narrow means just one thing: every single thing you did to help us win in Indiana helped make the difference.

Every call you made, every friend you spoke to about our campaign, every dollar you contributed made tonight's victory possible. And I couldn't be more thankful for your hard work.

Every time we've celebrated a victory, we've celebrated it together. And tonight is no exception. This victory is your victory, this campaign is your campaign, and your support has been the difference between winning and losing.

Thank you so much for making this campaign possible. Let's keep making history together.

Sincerely,

Hillary Rodham Clinton

The entire thing is in the past tense, except for "let's keep making history together." And there's no call for more donations.

Yeah, this doesn't sound like a nominee. It sounds like a eulogy.

Re-Edit: CNN projected Clinton in Indiana by a hair. Doesn't change much, though. Her bragging rights were all about the margin, and there' s no margin there.

Plus, let's be honest: If you subtract the Dittoheads, Obama probably won.

Clinton Wants to Try to Break up OPEC

Good luck with that.

Whining about how OPEC has "a monopoly" is just silly; American anti-monopoly laws don't have much effect on other countries for obvious reasons, and there's just no way that yelling about "monopoly" will affect states that have nationalized their oil production. The reaction to the accusation of monopoly will be "yeah? And? So?" Or some variation thereof.

Between this and the gas tax holiday, I really get the sense that Hillary knows that Wright isn't a winning issue, and wants to ride the gas price issue all the way to Denver. The problem is that she's being dumb about it; instead of using it as a springboard for interesting renewable energy proposals, she's pulling out proposals that every expert in the country says will have no positive effect whatsoever. She's just as tired as Obama, but it's coming out in a different way; her actual ideas are slipping, instead of her delivery.

Or maybe she's just desperate. Either way.

Little Brother

Just finished reading Cory Doctorow's "Little Brother." I might have more on it later, but right now I just want to echo this: bit from Neil Gaiman

But I'd recommend Little Brother over pretty much any book I've read this year, and I'd want to get it into the hands of as many smart 13 year olds, male and female, as I can.

Because I think it'll change lives. Because some kids, maybe just a few, won't be the same after they've read it. Maybe they'll change politically, maybe technologically. Maybe it'll just be the first book they loved or that spoke to their inner geek. Maybe they'll want to argue about it and disagree with it. Maybe they'll want to open their computer and see what's in there. I don't know. It made me want to be 13 again right now and reading it for the first time, and then go out and make the world better or stranger or odder. It's a wonderful, important book, in a way that renders its flaws pretty much meaningless.

Funny thing; I thought the only weakness was that "don't trust anybody over 25" tagline, which makes sense for a YA novel. What Doctorow's book does is vital for anybody who's heavily engaged in social networking, which is pretty much everyone under 30 or so: it shows why control over your information is important. The oppression that the kids in Doctorow's books face is not only plausible, but a lot of it strikes me as inevitable, and I think a lot of people don't really see what's on the way.

There is a massive and worrisome trend of gleefully jettisoning any concern about privacy or information control of any sort within the popular culture of the past few years, especially among the young; Doctorow's book reminds us of how incredibly disastrous this sort of thing can be.

(I'd link to the book, but I'll just wait until it shows up on his website; Cory releases all his books online under a creative commons license. )

Gaiman said that "I'd want to get it into the hands of as many smart 13-year-olds as I can." I agree and disagree. I agree that it should get into as many teenagers' hands as possible, but I'd go far farther: I'd say that people should agitate to have it put on reading lists. This book should be required reading; I know that's death for the popularity of books among teens, but there are parts of it that absolutely everybody should know about. The bit about "the paradox of the false positive" alone is such a powerful correctional to people's complacency about governmental (and private-sector) surveillance that I honestly don't think kids should be able to graduate junior high without having read it.

Plus, since it's Creative Commons, it's not like it'll be especially costly if you don't want it to be.

(Oh, and Iron Man was great too.)

A Tip for Hillary, in the Name of Balance:

When they're praising you for being such a "fighter?"

They're setting you up for something else entirely.

I'm not going to say what it is, but here's a tip: do a google blog search for Huma Abedin, and think about how these things percolate.

And think about how the Republicans set it up so that even if there's no proof for an allegation, they've defined your character to the point where it's just plausible enough that they can get away with it.

Senator, they are not your friends.

What'd I Tell You, Barack?

I can appreciate the thought, but buddy, this ain't gonna help.

Yes, you did grow up less privileged than your counterparts. Hell, you're the only one of them who hasn't been a Republican at some point.

But that isn't why they're calling you "elitist". It has nothing to do with privilege, which the media and Washington both fall over themselves to adore.

It has to do with the fact that you're a tall, well dressed, well groomed, good looking, slender man who speaks well. That doesn't signal "privileged" in these people's minds. It signals something else.

They're calling you queer, Barack. They're calling you gay, Barack. They're calling you a fag, Barack. When Brooks goes on and on about "bobo"? Gay. When O'Reilly is railing against your comments? Gay. When Candy Crowley is saying "the people think he's an elitist?" Gay.

Gay, gay, gay.

But they know they can't get away with that overtly, so they're using proxy terms like "elitist", which they've invested in all this effete baggage over the years, and which now have a dual meaning.

That dual meaning makes it wonderfully flexible, too. They can use terms that actually signal elitism, and make them serve a dual purpose. Intellectual elites are more likely to be secular than the common man, so secularity is tied to a certain brand of elitism. So if you're secular? Gay. Elites go to Ivy League schools, though generally because of their families, an advantage you didn't have. So if you went to a Ivy League school? Gay. And so on.

(Of course, Republicans of various stripes are definitely elitists, and they seem to be turning up in hot tubs and airport washrooms on a regular basis getting their "not-hetero" on. But they're Republicans, so obviously they aren't gay, because not-gay people vote for them!)

So, yeah, they can get away with it. It helps that the Dems are so relatively gay-friendly, but it has more to do with their weak and womanish views towards helping the less fortunate and saving the environment and whatnot. REAL men (read: hetero) would never stand for it. Let 'em die in a gutter whilst guzzling domestic beer and eating raw meat, that's what real men do!

Points for effort. And were this a serious question of elitism, it might even help. But talking about being underprivileged won't help you, because it's not about privilege. It's about exploiting the carefully-crafted confusion in American society between signifiers of status and signifiers of homosexuality in order to turn your real best strength (your charisma) into a weakness (lol ur a fag). Nothing more.

It's, well, perverted, but it's the truth.

Attention, People of London:

If you vote for Boris Johnson, you're a prat.

(Not that Livingstone is much better, but at least he's not a gimmick dripping with racism.)

That is all.