Ablogistan

If this doesn't make your head explode, Part II....

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 13:17:13 -0500

Speaking in Aspen, CO, John McCain criticized Congress for going on recess "while people are paying $3.75 a gallon for gas." The few news reports I've seen are focusing on the "out of touch" aspect of the line—the audience of 800 began laughing and yelled that in Aspen they're actually paying nearly $5 a gallon for gas. But here's the mind-boggling part that I haven't seen reported along side the comment: McCain hasn't showed up to vote in the Senate since April 8.

Yesterday he claimed nations don't invade other nations in the 21st century, despite supporting the invasion of Iraq (and a possible follow-up in Iran), and now he criticizes Congress for taking a break when he's been absent for five months. He apparently thinks the American public is easily duped and has the attention span of a gnat. I guess we'll see if he's right in November.

If this quote doesn't make your head explode...

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 20:10:56 -0500

"In the 21st century, nations don't invade other nations."

- John McCain, speaking to reporters today about the conflict between Russia and Georgia.

The myth of the horse race

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 20:30:12 -0500

Mark Nickolas at the Huffington Post does some of the math that I'd been meaning to do if I could find the time to dig through data and make fancy charts. He takes a look at popular vote and electoral vote margins from the last 20 elections to answer the media talking heads' question about why, if the public is so upset with the current Republican administration, the race is so close.

The answer: It's not. Everyone seems fixated on national tracking polls (that have consistently shown Obama leading, even if only by a few points) when they should be paying attention to state polls and, more importantly, the electoral vote predictions. Virtually every EV projection has Obama winning comfortably. That could obviously change in the next few months, but as the race currently stands, here's what we're looking at (270 votes are needed to win):

FiveThirtyEight: Obama 296, McCain 242
RealClearPolitics (w/ tossups): Obama 238, McCain 163, Tossups 137
RealClearPolitics (no tossups): Obama 322, McCain 216
Pollster: Obama 284, McCain 157, Tossups 97

Even the seemingly small margins in the national polls are more significant than they appear. Clinton won the popular vote by 5.6 percentage points in 1992, and had an electoral college margin of 202.

But the media has a vested interest in a close race—no one wants to watch nonstop punditry about a lopsided election. It's difficult to distinguish deliberate misrepresentation from incompetence/laziness with today's journalists. Are they deliberately portraying it as close to keep the public interested? Or do the daily tracking polls just offer them an easy way out of a real analysis of the race?

Because at this point, it's not a horse race. The dynamics could change and the election could tighten or even swing considerably in McCain's favor—it's happened before. But until the numbers drastically change, the general election looks like won't be nearly as competitive as the Democratic primary.

I like to use the analogy of last year's Major League Baseball playoffs, where the championship was effectively decided in the ALCS. The Colorado Rockies got hot at the end of the season and had a relatively easy path to the World Series, winning 21 of 22 games, but they were ultimately a weaker team than whatever the American League threw at them. The American League playoffs looked a little more like this year's Democratic primary, with the Boston Red Sox and Cleveland Indians battling it in an exciting, back-and-forth seven game series. The actual World Series was a fairly boring sweep.

Speculating...

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 12:01:57 -0500

I usually think the Obama team is pretty savvy when it comes to winning policy debates and framing their arguments, but they seem to be missing an obvious opportunity when it comes to the "to drill or not to drill" question. McCain is making his short term case for offshore drilling based on largely on oil speculation. And he's right that today's high oil prices have little to do with current supply and demand and are being driven upward by commodities traders investing in oil futures based on predicted supply and demand. If we make plans to increase future supply, McCain argues, speculation will decrease.

And I think there's an opening here for Obama to win the argument on McCain's terms. Speculation is based on both supply and demand, yet Republicans are only focusing on the supply side (naturally). But we've seen very recently that a drop in demand can deter speculation and send prices downward. So why hasn't Obama made the case that decreasing demand (by investing in alternative energies and, yes, inflating tire pressure) is just as effective as increasing supply when opposing offshore drilling? It seems that he could essentially argue that his plan will provide the same short term benefits without the longterm costs.

My understanding of economics is pretty limited, so I may be completely off the mark here. Is there any reason the supply-side argument makes more sense?

Is Obama too skinny to be president?

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 08:53:31 -0500

I know, it's a dumb question. In fact, it would be a struggle to think of a more irrelevant and mind-numbing question to ask related to the presidential election.

But it's currently plastered on the front page of the WSJ online.

We're engaged in two wars, the economy may be on the verge of a recession, oil prices are breaking records, the Department of Justice is breaking laws, the healthcare system is broken, there's a global food crisis, and more Americans think the country is on the wrong track than at any other point in history. And with all of these incredibly relevant issues to choose from, the Wall Street Journal decides to dedicate 1,400 words to analyzing whether or not "in a nation in which 66% of the voting-age population is overweight and 32% is obese," Obama's skinniness could be a liability.

Amy Chozick was actually paid to find quotes like, "I won't vote for any beanpole guy," which she pulled from a Yahoo politics message board. This is what passes for journalism today?

To be fair to the Wall Street Journal, few other publications have actually covered the issues in the last few weeks. Somehow we've managed to make Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Ludacris the focus of one of the most important elections in years.

Though the blame lies in part with the politicians at the center of this maddening popularity contest, that is expected to a certain degree. It's the media's eagerness to sensationalize and dumb-down that is the most disappointing.

Perhaps it is because I just watched Good Night, and Good Luck last night that I'm feeling particularly cynical and eager for November to arrive, but there's a line that Edward R. Murrow spoke in 1958 that seems particularly prescient today:

Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live.

As he would say, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."

UPDATE: Wow. Apparently the author's investigative journalism technique included going to Yahoo Message Boards and starting a thread asking:

Does anyone out there think Barack Obama is too thin to be president? Anyone having a hard time relating to him and his “no excess body fat”? Please let me know. Thanks!

The response that she followed up with and eventually whittled down to the "I won't vote for any beanpole guy," was:

Yes I think He is to skinny to be President.Hillary has a potbelly and chuckybutt I'd of Voted for Her.I won't vote for any beanpole guy.

The messages have apparently been deleted but you can still find a Google cache copy.

Conservative coffee

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:02:14 -0500

Do you ever walk into your local coffee shop and think, "You know what this place needs? More Ann Coulter."

Apparently there's a new Conservative Cafe in Indiana that caters just to you and others looking for an escape from the "liberal bastion coffeehouses" of America. The description sounds like something written by Stephen Colbert:

Ann Coulter books sit stacked by the fireplace, and a picture of Ronald Reagan hangs on the wall. Fox News plays on all the televisions, and stock market quotes scroll along an electronic ticker above the cash register.
Behind the counter, owner Dave Beckham smiles proudly in a khaki T-shirt that reads "Zip It, Hippie." The shirt is for sale at the Crown Point, Ind., cafe, along with ones that say "Peace through Superior Firepower."

And the owner's explanation for why he started the shop is even more Colbertesque:

He didn't like piped-in folk music, specialty drinks with faux-Italian names or patrons who frittered the hours away on laptops or listening to iPods. The atmosphere, he said, seemed an affront to Midwestern values he learned growing up in northwest Indiana.
"Coffee shouldn't be about sitting in a cafe for 12 hours," Beckham says. "Coffee gets us through our workday. It's what we drink before we make steel for the rest of the country or head out into the fields."

That's right! Damn latte-drinking liberals, always trying to enjoy their coffee with fruity flavors and homosexual-sounding additives like cream and sugar. Real conservatives like their coffee like their politicians—bitter and without foreign-sounding names.

My philosophy is, if your coffee isn't literally making hair grow on your chest as you drink it, you're not doing it right.

"Knuckle-knocked"??

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:25:18 -0500

It was cool when Barack and Michele did it before his big victory speech earlier this year. But a quick note to folks in the mainstream media and the business world: Maybe you should take the transition from hand shaking to "fist bumping" just a little bit slower. Quite frankly, you're embarrassing yourselves.

Wedding crashers

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 08:51:26 -0500

If last week's stories about U.S. forces inadvertently bombing wedding parties in Afghanistan seemed familiar, that's because they've done it before. Five times, at least.

Dangerous wedding parties in Afghanistan

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:53:47 -0500

U.S. forces have bombed two wedding parties in Afghanistan within the last week, once on Friday killing at least 23 people, and again on Sunday, killing at least 47 civilians, 39 of them women and children.

Civilian casualties are once again becoming a concern (to the handful still concerned about that particular war), according to the BBC. The UN said last month that nearly 700 Afghan civilians had lost their lives in Afghanistan this year, about two-thirds in attacks by militants and about 255 in military operations.

The sad thing is, this war has been going on so long that this barely qualifies as news anymore.

McCain's voting record, or lack thereof

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 08:47:03 -0500

Senator Ted Kennedy, who suffers from a life-threatening brain tumor that requires daily treatment, has now officially voted more times in the last few months than John McCain. And Kennedy's only voted once since being diagnosed on May 20.

Kennedy wanted to make the Senate vote on the recent Medicare bill—which halted a 10% pay cut for physicians who accept Medicare—so badly that he supposedly flew from Massachusetts to DC after the day's treatment, walked onto the Senate floor to a standing ovation, belted out an "Aye," and then flew home immediately after the vote.

McCain? He hasn't showed up to vote since April 8, missing a total of 76 votes.

And we're not talking about inconsequential votes or voting margins large enough for his vote to be inconsequential. When the Senate took up the Medicare bill two weeks ago, it fell short by one vote, and Kennedy and McCain were the only absent Senators.

Here's the attendance record for the 110th Congress according to the Washington Post's database:

John McCain: Missed 374 votes (61.8% of total)
Barack Obama: Missed 263 votes (43.5% of total)

As I've said before, missing a few votes when you're running for president is understandable. But at some point you have to at least attempt to do the job you were elected to do.

Sovereignty flip flop

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 09:42:11 -0500

John McCain, 2004: Well, if [the Iraqi government asks us to leave], then I think it's obvious that we would have to leave because— if it was an elected government of Iraq— and we've been asked to leave other places in the world. If it were an extremist government, then I think we would have other challenges, but I don't see how we could stay when our whole emphasis and policy has been based on turning the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi people.

George W. Bush, 2007: I don’t see how we could stay [if Maliki asked us to leave]. It is his country.

Iraqi National Security Advisor Mouwaffak al-Rubaie, Yesterday: "Our stance in the negotiations underway with the American side will be strong ... We will not accept any memorandum of understanding that doesn't have specific dates to withdraw foreign forces from Iraq."

John McCain, Yesterday: ""I have always said we will come home with honor and with victory and not through a set timetable. We will withdraw, but ... the victory we have achieved so far is fragile and (the redeployment) has to be dictated by events and on the ground," he said, adding that Iraqis would act in their national interest and the United States would act in its own interests.

Let them eat cake

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 11:49:39 -0500

The G8 leaders met yesterday to discuss solutions to the global food crisis (that has led to mass starvation, riots, and instability across the plant) over an eight-course, 19-dish meal prepared by 25 chefs.

The Guardian has the scoop on the menu:

Guests at the summit, which is costing £238m, were then able to pick items from a tray modelled on a fan and decorated with bamboo grasses, including diced fatty tuna fish, avocado and jellied soy sauce, and pickled conger eel with soy sauce.
Hairy crab Kegani bisque-style soup was another treat in a meal prepared by the Michelin-starred chef Katsuhiro Nakamura, the grand chef at Hotel Metropolitan Edmont in Tokyo, alongside salt-grilled bighand thornyhead (a small, red Pacific fish) with a vinegary water pepper sauce.

Finally there was a "fantasy" dessert, a special cheese selection accompanied by lavender honey and caramelised nuts, while coffee came with candied fruits and vegetables.

If you think that's a little over the top, one of the solutions proposed by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was a little "prudence and thrift in our kitchens." He claimed that, if only the average consumer would stretch out their weekly food budget, we could reduce "unnecessary demand for food."

Overall, the summit is costing nearly $470 million. For a little perspective, the UN World Food Programme said in April that it needed around $700 million in funding to do its job—feeding starving people around the world—for the remainder of the year.

This is the world we live in.

What's in the water in Tennessee?

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:07:05 -0500

Sam Stein at HuffPo asks, "What's in the water in anti-Obama Tennessee?" He observes that both Democrats and Republicans have been more vicious in spreading e-mail smears and attacking Obama than the rest of the nation:

The Republican Party of Tennessee has, on several occasions, trotted out lines of criticism against Obama that put them further down that road than even Karl Rove - the vaunted campaign attack alchemist - has been willing to go. The state's GOP released a press release in late February, accusing the Democratic nominee of being anti-Israel, linking him to Louis Farrakhan, and featuring a photo of the Senator in African garb for good measure.
Nearly two months later, the party began circulating a video of Michelle Obama saying that she was proud of her country for the first time in her adult life, followed by a montage of Tennesseans discussing the essence of their patriotism (including, conspicuously, a guy at a pool table with a rack of guns behind him).

I'm headed down to Tennessee later this week to visit family. I'm looking forward to the food and fireworks, but maybe I should take a few bottles of water with me.

Lesbians die alone

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 09:08:16 -0500

If this isn't a compelling case for civil unions or same-sex marriage, I don't know what is: A Miami hospital is being sued for refusing to allow a woman to visit her partner of 18 years who suffered a stroke while on vacation. Here's the kicker. The couple had four children, who were also denied visitation rights.

From the Sun Sentinel:

The case raises questions about the way hospitals deal with same-sex or unmarried partners of patients, which has led to controversy in the past. Hospital industry officials say they are constrained by patient privacy laws that can restrict giving visiting access and medical information to nonrelatives, a stance that some patient advocates have branded as discriminatory.

Pond, 39, was pronounced dead of a brain aneurysm about 18 hours after being admitted to Jackson's Ryder Trauma Center. Langbehn said she was allowed in to see her partner only for about five minutes, as a priest gave Pond the last rites.

"I never thought almost 20 years of love and family could be disregarded in an instant," said Langbehn, a social worker who lives with her children in Lacey, Wash.

At a Miami news conference, Langbehn, 39, broke down when she recalled the eight hours she and her three adopted children — now ages 11, 12 and 14 — sat in a hospital waiting room with little knowledge of Pond's condition. "As I sat there wracking my brain, I would go outside and scream into the Miami night," she said. "I felt like a failure for not being there holding her hand."

Further proof, for those who need it, that same-sex marriage and "family values" are not mutually exclusive.

Congress vs. Iran 2.0

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:38:35 -0500

Congress must have an entire staff dedicated to the sole purpose of drafting strongly-worded condemnations of Iran. Just last fall they passed a resolution condemning Iran and declaring the Islamic Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group, a resolution condemning Iran for persecuting labor rights activists, and a national defense bill that declared Iran an eventual nuclear threat, just a few months after the National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

And Congress is back at it, as if they just won't be satisfied until we add a third war in the Middle East (perhaps they're hoping to save money by just combining the three into one big regional war). Meet H.CON.RES.362, the latest strongly-worded resolution targeting the Iranian regime. It currently has 208 sponsors, coming from both parties.

The text of the bill at least acknowledges the NIE and the fact that Iran suspended its weapons program, but then it quickly moves past that with some hypothetical language ("Iran could have enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon as soon as late 2009") and concludes with the following action points. Congress:

(1) declares that preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability, through all appropriate economic, political, and diplomatic means, is vital to the national security interests of the United States and must be dealt with urgently;
(2) urges the President, in the strongest of terms, to immediately use his existing authority to impose sanctions on--

(A) the Central Bank of Iran and any other Iranian bank engaged in proliferation activities or the support of terrorist groups;

(B) international banks which continue to conduct financial transactions with proscribed Iranian banks;

(C) energy companies that have invested $20,000,000 or more in the Iranian petroleum or natural gas sector in any given year since the enactment of the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996; and

(D) all companies which continue to do business with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps;

(3) demands that the President initiate an international effort to immediately and dramatically increase the economic, political, and diplomatic pressure on Iran to verifiably suspend its nuclear enrichment activities by, inter alia, prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products; imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran; and prohibiting the international movement of all Iranian officials not involved in negotiating the suspension of Iran's nuclear program; and

(4) urges the President to lead a sustained, serious, and forceful effort at regional diplomacy to support the legitimate governments in the region against Iranian efforts to destabilize them, to reassure our friends and allies that the United States supports them in their resistance to Iranian efforts at hegemony, and to make clear to the Government of Iran that the United States will protect America's vital national security interests in the Middle East.

A similar bill in the Senate includes a final stipulation that the legislation "asserts that nothing in this resolution shall be construed to authorize the use of force against Iran."

Well, that's a relief. I guess Congress favors the poke-Iran-with-a-big-stick-until-we-can-say-they-started-it strategy.