Quote of the Day

Taking a cue from some other blogs with quotes of the day, this was just delicious:

"That is my opinion—expert opinion—if you will," Mr. Martin said... "I don't pretend to be an exclusively fact-based reporter, though I try as hard as I can to get the facts."

We wouldn't want those pesky facts getting in the way of a good opinion, would we?

Devastating

I know we're not supposed to care about how the "furriners" see us, but maybe we should be just a bit humiliated and embarrassed by this:

George W. Bush has grown old, erratic and rosy in the eight years of his presidency. Little remains of his combativeness or his enthusiasm for physical fitness. On this sunny Tuesday morning in New York, even his hair seemed messy and unkempt, his blue suit a little baggy around the shoulders, as Bush stepped onto the stage, for the eighth time, at the United Nations General Assembly... He failed to notice that the delegates sitting in front of and below him were shaking their heads, smiling and whispering, or if he did notice, he was no longer capable of reacting... There is another way to put it, too: Bush was a laughing stock in the gray corridors of the UN... [T]he ridicule was a new thing. It marked the end of respect.

There's more. Oh, there's more.

In the course of one Presidency, a mere eight years, the "last superpower" has plummeted back into the ranks of nations, with no real indicator that merely mingling in the ranks is the endpoint of Icarus's flight. Now there's "national greatness conservatism" for you.

Update: Here's another bit on how the administration just hasn't adapted to their changed circumstances and reduced influence, this time in the context of the financial crisis.

I never thought I'd agree with Jonah Goldberg on anything but...

There's this:

I have concluded the best way to deal with the election roller coaster is to commit yourself to cocktail hour.

So that's OK.

Quick Courses in World Leadership

How about these apples?

U.S. presidential candidate Sen. John McCain may take his running mate Sarah Palin to the United Nations next week, U.N. officials said on Tuesday, to give her the chance to meet a few world leaders... The Wall Street Journal cited an unnamed Republican strategist as saying a visit to the United Nations would boost the Alaska governor's foreign policy credentials.

Seriously? Is this really what they're reduced to? The deal is that she's never met a foreign leader. So going on a civics field trip with Grampa John is suddenly going to make her a foreign policy guru? It's good to know. Now I can fulfill my dream of being a zoologist by taking a trip to the San Diego Zoo. Hey, all the animals are there, what more do you need to know?

The woman from the Arizona delegation....

When casting the delegation vote, she referred to John McCain as a "native son of Arizona". Well, I think to be a native son, you have to be a native. And John McCain's not a native son of Arizona:

McCain was born in 1936 at Coco Solo Naval Air Station in the Panama Canal Zone... His family... followed his father to various naval postings in the United States and the Pacific... In 1951, his family settled in Northern Virginia... McCain retired from the Navy on April 1, 1981 [and] moved to Arizona.

That's at the age of 44. Most definitions of native revolve around birth or origin. Just sayin'.

Trent Lott vs. Obama's guilt by association

I can't really read the Corner without getting irritated and realizing that my perspective is almost alien when compared to that of "movement conservatives" (I also heartily despise their URL and post identifier format, but that's just crappy design and not limited to conservative group blogs).

So from this post on Andrew Sullivan's site, I found this post by Jonah Goldberg.

First, "lighten up"? From the guy who wrote Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning?

OK, but let me answer his question: "Why should we believe Obama is sincere in his after-the-fact denunciations of his longtime friend and colleague but not give Lott a similar benefit of the doubt?"

Because the basis for tarring Lott and Obama in each case is completely different.

Trent Lott got in trouble for essentially endorsing Thurmond's segregationist Presidential campaign, in support of which Thurmond once said:

I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there's not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches.

To which Lott responded in the speech that got him run out of town on a rail (figuratively speaking):

When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years, either.

Lott didn't get in trouble because he was involved with Thurmond's segregationist movement at the time. Lott got in trouble because he explicitly endorsed that philosophy (there's no other way to construe those comments, given that the whole point of the Dixiecrat movement was to maintain segregation).

Obama never stood up in front of a bunch of people and positively affirmed the philosophy with which Bill Ayers was identified. In fact, Obama was never in any way associated with the philosophy or causes of Bill Ayers. Obama served on a neighborhood board with Ayers. Obama got a campaign donation from Ayers. I won't question simple dirty pool for-keepsies politics being played with that fact. But Goldberg's "analogy" fails in just about every respect.

What is that reporter DOING?

Read this interview and compare and contrast with most interviews in the American press. The challenging and adversarial tone of the interview is rather astounding. The reporter is not just asking questions and transcribing the answers, but is also at least somewhat expert in the subject matter and challenges the statements and figures used by the interview subject. BBC reports are similar. I've been struck by the challenging nature of the interviewers in your standard BBC radio interview.

This contrasts even to American media that spends much of its time scolding the so-called "MSM" or "Village" for its uncritical acceptance of the statements of its interview subjects. I've read plenty of interviews with luminaries such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Noam Chomsky, or Michael Moore, where interviewers seem starstruck by the eminence grise that is their subject.

More of this kind of thing would be nice. I'm not saying it doesn't exist here, or that all non-American reporting is freaking awesome. But this sort of in-depth and unsycophantic interaction is exceedingly rare here.

Reducing new debt is NOT savings

One thing that I haven't seen anyone comment on in regards to the McCain budget speech today is the fact that the so-called "savings" from victory in both current wars should be applied directly to deficit reduction. Here's the quote from the McCain policy paper:

The McCain administration would reserve all savings from victory in the Iraq and Afghanistan operations in the fight against Islamic extremists for reducing the deficit. Since all their costs were financed with deficit spending, all their savings must go to deficit reduction.

OK, unwrap this for a second. The costs of the wars have been financed with deficit spending. In other words, every dollar of war spending that's currently in the budget (not really in the Big-B Budget, since all of the spending has been done through emergency appropriations measures, but budget writ large) is red ink. So once we stop having to pay those funds for the wars, we should apply those funds to reducing our red ink. Got that?

Look at it from the standpoint of your own personal finances. Suppose you make $1,000 a month and that's all spent already. Now suppose you incur another expense that you need to go to the credit card to the tune of $100 a month. Congratulations, you're deficit spending! Now further suppose that at some point down the line you manage to eliminate that expense? Should anyone really admire your spending restraint if you take that $100 "savings" and "apply it to deficit reduction"? That just means you didn't keep going into debt $100 every month!

Really all the McCain campaign is saying here is that they're not going to take the hundreds of billions of dollar in off-budget war expenses and start spending it on something else. Applying "their savings" to "deficit reduction" just means they stop borrowing the damned money in the first place. The whole document is hand-waving silliness, but this is the most particularly vapid statement in the whole thing.

Chili recipe

This is one of the first time I've really tried to write down a recipe, so it's important to make the point that I'm roughly guessing at the seasoning amounts. I really just use these to taste. All measures are approximate but fairly close, so don’t take any of it too seriously, e.g. if you can only find a 16-oz can of tomato sauce, that’ll do fine!

• 1 lb ground beef (I used ground round, 12% fat, I wouldn’t go much over 15% fat, and ground sirloin at 7% or 8% is too low)
  
• Medium yellow onion, chopped
  
• 4 cloves garlic, crushed
  
• 1 jalapeno, stemmed seeded and cored, then finely chopped
  
• Two 28 oz. cans crushed tomatoes (if you like real chunky chili, you can substitute a can of whole tomatoes too)
  
• 1 15 oz. can tomato sauce
  
• 1 Tbsp kosher salt (about half that of regular salt, but adjust to taste, too much is the easiest way to screw it up)
  
• 1 Tbsp ground black pepper
  
• 1 Tbsp ground cumin (you can use ground cumin from a jar or take cumin seeds, roast and grind them, which is better but is a pain in the ass; I almost never do it except when cooking, e.g. lamb or pork chops with cumin)
  
• 1 Tbsp ground coriander (you can substitute finely chopped fresh cilantro also, but it’s at like a 5:1 ration, i.e. 5 Tbsp fresh; you can also start with ground coriander and finish in the last ½ hour with fresh cilantro for a fresh flavor, but that’s not what you want sometimes
  
• 1 Tbsp oregano, crumbled in your hands
  
• ½ tsp cayenne pepper
  
• 3 or 4 bay leaves
  
• 2 15 oz. cans kidney beans, drained but not washed
  

If you have a crock pot, that’s the best way to do the long part of the cooking. In that case you can do all of the meat and onion cooking in a big frying pan or chef’s pan. Otherwise, you can cook everything in a big pot.

1. Brown the ground beef in a pot. Once it’s done, drain the fat and liquid off.
   
2. Add the onions, garlic, and jalapeno, and cook on medium heat until onions are soft (this shouldn’t ever get dry, so the garlic shouldn’t burn; if it does go ahead and stop).
   
3. If you’re using a separate pan from the pot you’re cooking in, transfer to the cooking pot now.
   
4. Add all of the tomatoes and spices and give it a good stir.
   
5. Cover, put on low heat (if you’re using slow cooker, you can start on high to get it bubbling, then reduce to low), and walk away for a couple of hours. Check occasionally just to make sure it doesn’t burn.
   
6. Taste and adjust seasonings. I almost always end up adding a buttload more cumin and coriander cause it’s good. Those give it the savory aromatic flavors.
   
7. Now let it cook as long as you want, but at least another two hours. Stir occasionally.
   
8. Turn it off and let it sit and cool overnight. Taste again in the morning and adjust seasonings.
   
9. Cook on simmer again during the day. It’ll be ready for dinner.
   
10. Half an hour before you’re ready to serve, stir in the kidney beans and let heat.
    

A good variation is to finish with some lime juice and zest along with chopped fresh cilantro, to taste. Or you can just serve with lime slices and garnish on top with chopped cilantro and crumbled cotija or a glob of sour cream.

The campaigns' involvement in the subprime crisis

So Politico has a story on Jim Johnson’s questionable contacts with Countrywide. It's interesting how the story reports on the McCain campaign's questions about Obama’s connection with someone so closely connected to the subprime mortgage crisis, but then doesn't see fit to mention Phil Gramm's role in McCain's campaign, a story Politico has already covered but not since the real general election campaign has started?

Interesting. Compare and contrast: Johnson is an ad hoc adviser for Obama's Vice-Presidential selection committee, while Gramm is McCain's chief economic advisor. Think there's any significant difference between their roles?

Please for the love of God shut the hell up!

Can someone please tell people that it's just plain not alright to bring up assassination in a casual context when talking about a Presidential candidate. Especially when that candidate is put under Secret Service protection "the earliest a candidate has ever been provided protection". It's not as if we're talking about people who have a surfeit of sanity or reason (as that last one says, "Trust your Instincts," you sure wouldn't let facts or actual thinking get in the way).

Please Hillary, stop it, drop out. You're now so desperate that you're playing in the same fields as the right-wing dipshits who send my father-in-law e-mails about how Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim "Manchurian" candidate. You're embarrassing yourself and hurting America. Seriously: shut the hell up.

Update: Andrew Sullivan makes a good point: "I saw the apology as well - an apology to the Kennedy family, I might note, not to Senator Obama."

Keep it classy, Hill.

Their Priorities

So after various incidents have indicated that maybe we should keep an eye on our food supply, how does the Bush Administration respond?

How many days of this bullshit is left now?

Prestige of the office, so why is Bush so child-ish

Remember how one of the big things about Bush and the Republicans is that they were going to bring back respect for the office of the Presidency? There were going to be adults running things again? I know it's hard to remember that far back (considering it was all BS anyways), but really, does this kind of childish taunting indicate in any way that Republicans are adults:

The president noted that... the Giants vanquished... the Dallas Cowboys. Many Dallas fans pinned their team's surprise playoff loss not on the Giants, but on [Jessica] Simpson... Apparently, Bush bought in.

"I'm a good sport," Bush said at the South Lawn ceremony. "We're going to send Jessica Simpson to the Democrat National Convention."

The Democrat National Convention. If the intent is to show that you have contempt for your political opponents, I guess that works. For people that push that "United We Stand" front, though, using the equivalent of "nanny nanny boo boo" seems a little... disuniting.

263 days left...

John Yoo's Torture Memo

Just for completeness's sake, here's a run-down on John Yoo's torture memo. Now, I'm not a legal scholar, hell, I don't even play one on TV, but even I can tell that a legal justification that essentially says, "We can break the law as long as we really really need to" is bullshit. So remind me again, why the hell is Yoo on the faculty at Cal?

What reforms are required?

I agree with the points in this article, especially in regards to the feeling of this being a historical moment. In the position I'm currently in—forced by circumstances to sell my house at this time (it's nothing tragic, my wife got a job in St. Louis and we're moving there from southern California) and working for a public company neck deep in the subprime mortgage crisis—I'm feeling pretty exposed to the financial and economic winds blowing around.

I remember a few times like this before. The dot-com crash, which I was also exposed to in the software industry, although my dot-com era start-up had been bought out by a more established company prior to the crash. I did end up getting laid off, though. The various crises of the '90s like the peso crash and Asian currency crisis were also historical, although these didn't really stir the relatively provincial consciousness of the American public to a great extent. I think that the Clinton administration and international institutions managed the '90s crises pretty well and, all things considered, the recovery from the dot-com crash was well managed (although there's a convincing case that the crisis was merely pushed off through making money easily available and leading directly to today's credit crunch).

All of that said...

When I try to think about what sorts of reforms are required to prevent this sort of problem in the first place, I keep coming back to the most perplexing issue of this whole time. Why are those who have been the primary authors of this current disaster—the CEOs and chairmen, the high-flying executives with salaries and benefits that would make Midas blush, the "smartest guys in the room" who are concocting and institutionalizing these exotic financial instruments that would considered immoral and unethical if concocted in a virus laboratory—why do they seem to be the only ones who are assured of coming out unscathed in the end? Why are they the ones who must be rescued from the perdition of moral accountability, primarily because we need their superhuman analytical and leadership abilities to get us out of the mess that they made in the first place??

So my next obvious complaint is to blame those people, right? Well, to some extent, yes, they're morally and ethically culpable for their failures. Japanese feudal culture may have been messed up in a lot of ways, but a person took responsibility for his or her fuck-ups, you have to give them that. At the same time, it's simply human nature: get what you can and cover your ass along the way. Yeah, there's art and why are people altruistic and all of these questions, and I have a generally sunny assessment of most people's intentions. But I think that people try to work towards what motivates and inspires them. So it shouldn't be surprising that business people are willing to do whatever it takes to succeed at business and business is all about getting paid. And you can't deny that these people are gettin' paid.

That irritating parable about the frog and scorpion is now invoked.

But CEOs and chairmen of the board don't have the capacity to hire and fire themselves, nor do they have the capacity to negotiate their own contracts? So why do all of the contracts seem to read like that?

The composition of the boards of directors of publicly traded companies must be forced to be more open. I don't really know what this means. I know at the very least that shareholders must receive a lot more control over the composition of the board. There are huge questions today about the propriety of the deal selling Bear Stearns to JP Morgan, including the possibility that the executive staff at Bear Stearns were covering themselves from criminal or civil liability or trying to procure greater financial benefits for themselves at the expense of the shareholders. If the executive staff felt more at risk if the company failed, they would then be more likely to protect the interests of the shareholders precisely because those interests would parallel each other.

Anyways, I'm going to research this topic over the next few days. From what I know of the current structure, it incentivizes risks and completely defangs failure as an offsetting punishment. If there's only upside and no downside for the people running financial institutions, we're going to see more Bears Stearns, more S&L crises, more dot-com crashes, and so on. It's no way to run a railroad.

Hard feelings

I hate to admit it, but I'm in this area myself. As I mentioned, there's a great deal of enthusiasm for Hillary here in Long Beach. There's a lesbian couple that lives a few doors down from us and they have Hillary signs up, Hillary bumper stickers, etc. Prior to the California primary, these didn't really prompt a reaction from me, since I figured everyone in my Zip code was voting for either Obama or Clinton, no big whoop. Now, every time I walk or drive by, I'm seized by an urge to tear the sign down, to knock on their door and ask them if they approve of Hillary being such a destructive bitch, and all kinds of insults and means of lashing out that I'm uncomfortable even thinking.

It comes down to this: I'm not angry and disillusioned with Hillary because she's an assertive woman participating in the rough and tumble of politics. I'm angry and disillusioned with her because she's playing exactly the same politics of destruction and deception that have poisoned the well of American democracy for the last twenty or more years. In spite of her partisan differences with the man, Hillary is the fruit of the Lee Atwater revolution in politics. As Andrew Sullivan has noted, this is to a large part still the same damned fight—culturally, politically, societally—that started with Vietnam and the civil rights movement. Most Americans under 50 are past that conflict and this election represents our first real chance to get past it. Hillary's tactics represent the establishment's struggles to keep us in it and her supporters are the enablers who keep that struggle going.

Is McCain screwed?

His finance director is an active lobbyist for the firm that lobbied on behalf of the McDonnell-Douglas/Airbus consortium. Two of his other senior staff are on leave from the same firm.

I'm not arguing whether this contract was fairly won by MD/Airbus or not. The rule interpretations that were made in reaction to a number of points raised by MD/Airbus seemed reasonable to me. The fact that Airbus successfully made the case for their plane (their main advantage involved size, with the adapted Airbus planes carrying much more cargo per plane and having much longer range) is precisely what you're supposed to do. Most of the assembly will be done in the U.S., so you're not talking about a lot of jobs lost.

But on the merits of the sale, MD/Airbus being chosen seemed reasonable, with Boeing's indignation somewhat tempered by the lease agreement scandal from a few years ago. That company doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt.

ALL THAT SAID.

McCain's top advisors work for a company that actively lobbied on behalf of a company based in France over a good American company.

How about them apples? How do you think THAT is going to blunt McCain's recent attempts to start raising funds for the general election?

Maybe Ferraro has a point

She says that Obama is only where he is in the polls because he's black. Well, that lucky ducky! Sure, I can see that. He's definitely benefited from the support of blacks in the Democratic primaries.

Now, as Josh Marshall points out, you have to counterbalance that with the fact that a lot of white people won't vote for him because he's black. Ferraro says, in the interview linked above, "Sexism is a bigger problem... It's OK to be sexist in some people's minds. It's not OK to be racist."

Granted, it's not OK to admit to being racist. But does she seriously believe that there are no racists left in the United States because it's just not OK?

But for the sake of discussion, I'm willing to grant her this point: Obama has benefited from both the support of black voters who support Obama at least in part because of the color of his skin and from the support of white voters for the same reason. The old liberal race guilt thing. I'm quite willing to admit that I think it's thrilling that a black man is so close to becoming President. Certainly part of the enthusiasm for his candidacy across the board is the history in the making, the sense that his election would in some way and in some small part correct one of the original founding sins of this country.

And this is a historic election. Because women did not get the vote in this country until even after black men, those who were mere property becoming (at least de jure) members of the body politic even before women. So we've got people who are supporting Obama at least in part because he's black and...

We've got people who are supporting Clinton at least in part because she's a woman.

And not just a woman. Let's turn Ferraro's assertion back at her preferred candidate. Hillary Clinton is in this race not just because she's a woman, but because of the fact that she's a woman married to a powerful man. She benefits twice over from these accidents of circumstance.

I live in a town with a pretty significant lesbian population and they overwhelmingly support Hillary. Do you think it's because they all happen to have exactly the same issues on health care reform and relations with countries perceived to be hostile to the U.S.? The positions on the status of NAFTA and future trade negotiations as well as environmental policies? I think they probably do support much of Hillary's platform. And I'm sure that they support much of Hillary's platform because it's Hillary's platform and she's a woman and they're voting for (or really have voted for; the primary's already happened here) the first serious woman candidate for the Presidency.

But Hillary benefits from that support because she's a woman. And she's a woman in that position because she's married to Bill Clinton.

So I score it this way:

• Obama benefits from being black, but blacks comprise only 13% of the population. Clinton benefits from being a woman, and women comprise 52% of the population. Advantage: Clinton.


• Hillary has accomplished little that doesn't rely on her position as Bill Clinton's wife. I'm not saying that if she wasn't married to Bill Clinton that she wouldn't now be a formidable person in her own right. But she was mentioned as a Presidential candidate (and got her Senate seat as a clear carpetbagger) even prior to Bill leaving office in 2001 in large part because she was his wife. Obama is no fortunate son, brother, friend, or husband. Advantage: Clinton.

So fair enough, Geraldine: Barack benefits because he's black. But in the benefits sweepstakes, Hillary takes the prize.

Update: Kevin Drum piles on.

Meet the fan

Since Day One of the discussion about invading Iraq, I said the two biggest issues were going to eventually be 1) the distraction from what needed to be done to stabilize Afghanistan, and 2) the very real and dangerous possibility of bringing the conflict between the Kurds and the surrounding nations who are extremely invested in keeping Kurdish nationalism in check (read: crushed; this includes but is not limited to Turkey, Syria, and Iran).

So the last couple of months have made me very nervous, with the Turkish threats and now execution of incursions into Kurdish territory in Iraq. Now it looks like the shit is about THIS -><- far from the whirling fan blades.

For all the talk about a possible conflagration if the U.S. withdraws, if this continues, there will be a conflagration regardless of whether we withdraw or not.

Irony, Thy Name Is Dan Burton

Listening to the Congressional steroids hearing this morning, I heard one of the best comic bits I've heard in quite some time. Dan Burton is a Republican Congressman from Indiana. If his name sounds familiar, well, Google Dan Burton Vince Foster melon and see what you come up with. Yeah, that guy.

So anyways, he gets his time to question Clemens and Mcnamee and, unlike in baseball, Clemens did not have to face any hardballs. Burton is—to put it mildly—pro-Clemens and decidedly anti-Mcnamee. So most of Burton's time is spent in this rather pointless harangue of Mcnamee that I suppose was meant to be a devastating shredding of Mcnamee's reputation, but really just made Burton look like a fanboy and not really an inquisitor with the slightest interest in a truthful outcome.

But the statement that really made me guffaw went something like this (and when I can get a transcript, I'll update the quote):

I don't believe it's the right thing to have these kinds of hearings, they're just a circus.

This from the man dubbed The Fool on the Hill for his over-the-top theatrics in Congressional hearing rooms, who issued over 1,000 subpoenas in an investigation that spanned years and cost millions of dollars. That guy, he doesn't like the circus.

Barring some dramatic change, I think the Burton investigation is going to be remembered as a case study in how not to do a congressional investigation and as a prime example of investigation as farce.

Probably a Clinton staffer, right? No, that's "Norman Ornstein, a congressional expert for the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank."

Yeah, homie's such a spaz that the conservatives think he's a wing-nut.

Pimpin'

I'm curious as to people's take on Hillary's grievance du jour regarding the "pimped out" comment by MSNBC's David Shuster. I think this take is pretty right on: I think there's a legit grounds for a bitch from Hillary's side, in that using the word "pimp" in any sense other than a pejorative one is not particularly common for the 60-and-over set. I also think that many people under 40 and definitely most under 30 are going to think that it illustrates the fact that Hillary's a member of the 60-and-over set. I certainly find it less offensive than many of the racially charged innuendos that came out of the Clinton camp in the wake of Iowa and New Hampshire.

Now, this matter of exactly what offense was given and what punishment is deserved in response is besides the point that Clinton has grabbed ahold of this relatively minor infraction by a relatively minor media personage like a shipwreck victim for a life preserver. They're not making a big deal out of it because of (or at least solely because of) their outrage at the offense, but because they're fucking fired up to have something to be outraged at.

But let's ignore that matter right now. What exactly is the level of offense in this comment, if any? I'm also curious as to what the generational and cultural differences would be in this perception.

Is Mike Huckabee the coolest Presidential candidate ever?

I mean, I don't agree with him about anything politically. I'm pro-choice. I'm very in favor of the Establishment clause (as well as the traditional understanding of that clause and not the "what the Founding Fathers really meant is they hella loved Jebus and just wouldn't let the government determine which type of Protestant Christianity you were required to subscribe to" version). I think that if you don't believe in the theory of evolution that you're ideologically addled, blinded, or stupid, to the point that you are completely unqualified to be President.

But it's pretty sweet to be able to call in Walker Texas Ranger to go nuke on your opponents' collective ass. I like it.

And I've endured my fair share of Chuck Norris jokes.