Moses Kagan's Aurora Borealis

CAZT's new audition facility

2008-09-29T12:30:00.000-07:00

Our new audition facility has been open for about two months now and it's kicking ass. Check out the new CAZT studios website - Eli designed it, and it's awesome!

John McCain Invented the BlackBerry!

2008-09-16T11:13:00.000-07:00

Per Politico:

Asked what work John McCain did as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee that helped him understand the financial markets, the candidate's top economic adviser wielded visual evidence: his BlackBerry.

"He did this," Douglas Holtz-Eakin told reporters this morning, holding up his BlackBerry. "Telecommunications of the United States is a premier innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce Committee. So you're looking at the miracle John McCain helped create and that's what he did."

Al Gore, call your office.

Palin's per diem for staying at home... And we're off!

2008-09-09T09:47:00.000-07:00

I'd love a per diem for staying at my own house. Apparently so would Gov. Palin.

What do I think of Palin?

2008-09-04T14:55:00.000-07:00

Several friends have asked what I think of John McCain's choice of Gov. Palin as his running mate. Here goes...

1. She's objectively a bad choice to be a potential president. Being a good leader is about having a set of skills / attribues, including (but not limited to) communication, negotiation, information gathering, priority-setting, management, and having a vision. Some people are born with some talent in one or more of these categories, but most politicians spend a lot of time learning them.

Compare Palin to Obama (she certainly has): Obama isn't so experienced, as far as politicians go, but he's proven to be a remarkably quick study.

Being a state legislator and then a senator were his secondary school and university of politics, respectively. Competing against the Clintons (formidable foes) in the primary was his graduate school. The nomination is his diploma.

I don't think that Palin has had that kind of education yet. My guess is that she is smart and tenacious but raw and under-informed about key issues. Given the likelihood that she could be president if McCain wins (historically, the chances are approximately 1 in 3 or 1 in 4), I'm not happy with her selection.

McCain must know all of the above, so I think we are forced to conclude that McCain picked her because he thinks she can help him win, not because he thinks she would be a good president.

2. So let's evaluate the selection on the basis that McCain did: Will Palin help or hurt his chances?

I think the answer is that her chances need to be considered over time.

Right now, she is in the most dangerous part of the race. She's undefined for most voters. One or two more stories about her upbringing / family could define her as some kind of lunatic. One or two gaffes could make her into John Kerry. Biden could eviserate her in a debate ("I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. And you, sir, are no Jack Kennedy."), and thereby define her as Dan Quayle. Obama could decide to turn the advertising guns on her and try to define her in any number of unflattering ways (I think this last one is unlikely).

If she manages to make it through these next few weeks without getting nailed as a lunatic, gaffe-prone, a lightweight, or something else, then I think she has a reasonable chance to help him. She's attractive, she gives a good speech, she's willing (obviously) to be very, very negative in a way that some VP nominees (John Edwards, for example) are not, and she does seem to fire up the crazies on the far right.

Overall, I give her a D+ as a potential VP and an incomplete as part of the Republican ticket.

GOP VP Pick Palin = Governor of Fairyland

2008-08-29T10:13:00.000-07:00

Lost in all of the talk about Sarah Palin is the fact that being governor of Alaska is not like being governor of any other state in the country.

Alaska draws all of its revenue from the oil & gas industry, to the point where citizens don't need to pay taxes. In fact, each resident of Alaska receives an annual check from the government.

This allows the government of Alaska to avoid making painful choices about budgeting. It also means that the governor of Alaska is by definition the least qualified governor in the nation to assume national executive office.

Lying in Politics

2008-08-08T12:12:00.000-07:00

Paul Krugman's piece in the Times today argues that the Republican Party is "the party of stupid". By this, he means that:

"... know-nothingism - the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there's something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise - has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party's de facto slogan has become: 'Real men don't think things through.'"

Krugman's wrong, and what's going on is worse than stupid.

The election and governing strategies of Bush the Younger were / are predicated on a simple, stunning insight into American politics: The great mass of people are so uninformed that it is possible to lie to them without being caught.

By "caught", I don't mean that lies go undiscovered. The media, the mainstream and the blogs, do a pretty good job of ferreting out the truth in most cases. They dutifully report that, for example, offshore drilling won't affect gas prices, or that Iraq was not connected in any meaningful way to Al Qaeda. But their reporting doesn't matter. Why?

The media is fragmented, so that there is no one media institution capable of reaching a truly mass audience. We are functionally illiterate, reading fewer newspapers (with in-depth commentary) and playing more video-games and watching more movies, etc. The right wing has embarked on a long and successful campaign to discredit the media by arguing that it is biased in favor of the left. The list of theories goes on and on.

Whatever the reason, the media is no longer an effective watchdog. It can scream and yell about lies politicians tell, but we aren't listening. Maybe it has been like this all along, maybe not. But it seems to me that there was a tacit agreement for a long time among politicians of both parties to refrain from telling direct lies to the people. You could fib or stretch the truth, but you didn't lie about big things.

George Bush changed all of that. He rejected the tacit bargain and lied and got away with it. McCain and the rest of the Republicans have learned the lesson. Politics isn't a debate contest. The public isn't a tenure review committee or the editorial board of a scientific publication.

The American public is effectively asleep at the switch. Lying to us, unfortunately, seems to work. It's a sad, sad state of affairs. But, again unfortunately, we get the politics we deserve.

Disbar / Jail Goodling and Fire Her Hires

2008-07-28T17:27:00.000-07:00

Now that we have further proof that Monica Goodling, Alberto Gonzelez's aide, subverted the civil service laws designed to protect the jobs of career government workers from political interference, I have a few questions:

Will Goodling and the other guilty parties be punished? Is there any doubt that what they did (perverting the hiring process in the Justice Department such that non-partisan or Democratic leaning candidates could not be hired or promoted) was worse for the country than, say, some crackhead robbing a liquor store? At the very least, these people ought to be disbarred, convicted in court, and run out of Washington D.C. on a rail.
What about the political hacks they hired? Do the civil service laws that Goodling ignored now protect these incompetents from a thorough house-cleaning after the election?

This is most assuredly NOT an isolated incident. The Republican Party has gone beyond mere disagreement with the laws and regulations it dislikes. Instead, under President Bush, the GOP has been relentless in subverting the power and credibility of those parts of the Executive Branch tasked with enforcing rules it finds disagreeable, the Justice Department being just one example.

We Americans have endured the consequences in ways large and small: the response to Katrina by the cronies running FEMA, the bungling of the Iraq occupation after the Administration transferred authority from the "unfriendly" State Department to the more pliable Defense Department, the lack of enforcement of voting rights protections for minorities during recent elections by the Voting Rights office of the Justice Deparment, and the un-ending stream of recalls of unsafe food and toys by the under-staffed and under-funded FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection (whose Bush-appointed leader actually testified to Congress that she did not want more power and money to police toy companies), to name a few.

These were not accidents. They were the foreseeable outcomes of policies cooked up by an Administration staffed by people who believe that government, all government, is bad.

My Favorite Headline...

2008-07-23T14:13:00.000-07:00

Great article, even better headline:

"Obama Overseas! In Presidential Mode! Back Home, It's McCain in a Golf Cart."

What Obama Will Tell Euros Tomorrow

2008-07-22T19:16:00.000-07:00

Mark my words:

Obama is going to give at least one speech in Europe that is much more pro-American than people are expecting. He is going to publicly give the Europeans, particularly the French, a hard time about not fulfilling their responsibilities in Afghanistan.

Why am I so sure? Two reasons: First, Obama has a history of telling groups what they don't want to hear. Want examples? He has repeatedly excoriated black males (as a group) in front of black audiences for not being sufficiently involved with their children. He also swatted down the Clinton / McCain Fuel Tax Holiday Idiocy.

Second, the media is waiting to pounce on anything that Obama does overseas that could be construed as talking down to Americans (like the infamous "bitter" talk in San Francisco). What better way to swing things the other way than to give the Euros a (deserved) tongue-lashing for not pulling their weight?

Here's an argument for pardons that argues against them

2008-07-19T09:49:00.000-07:00

From the Times:
"As the administration wrestles with the cascade of petitions, some lawyers and law professors are raising a related question: Will Mr. Bush grant pre-emptive pardons to officials involved in controversial counterterrorism programs?

Such a pardon would reduce the risk that a future administration might undertake a criminal investigation of operatives or policy makers involved in programs that administration lawyers have said were legal but that critics say violated laws regarding torture and surveillance.

Some legal analysts said Mr. Bush might be reluctant to issue such pardons because they could be construed as an implicit admission of guilt. But several members of the conservative legal community in Washington said in interviews that they hoped Mr. Bush would issue such pardons — whether or not anyone made a specific request for one. They said people who carried out the president’s orders should not be exposed even to the risk of an investigation and expensive legal bills.

“The president should pre-empt any long-term investigations,” said Victoria Toensing, who was a Justice Department counterterrorism official in the Reagan administration. “If we don’t protect these people who are proceeding in good faith, no one will ever take chances."

Exactly.

GOP asks users for comments on platform. My comment: White, white, white.

2008-07-11T10:05:00.000-07:00

Take a quick look at the people charged with shaping the Republican Party Platform. Does that look like the America you live in? Four old, white dudes? Really?

Microsoft and Yahoo

2008-07-08T08:13:00.000-07:00

Michael Arrington has a piece on Techcrunch today ripping into Microsoft for offering to consider re-entering merger talks if Yahoo replaces its board. He argues that: "...Microsoft, led by CEO Steve Ballmer, have taken Yahoo’s rebuffs entirely too personally. It’s no longer just about business, it’s about destroying and humiliating the people who embarrassed Microsoft."

False. The reason that Microsoft is insisting that Yahoo replace its board before re-entering talks is that Jerry Yang and his allies previously gave Microsoft the distinct impression that, rather than submit to a merger, they would "burn the furniture [and] destroy the place".

We can all understand why Yang would have gone to extreme lengths to try to keep the company he founded from being subsumed into Microsoft. However, we can also all understand why Microsoft, having had its fingers burned once, would prefer never to deal with him again.

My unsolicited advice to Yahoo shareholders: Fire the board, do a deal, and get on with life.

A Weak Defense of Helms Unpicked

2008-07-07T10:47:00.000-07:00

Further to the Jesse Helms post:

Here is a partial list of Mr. Helm's "achievements" as adapted from Marc Thiessen in the Post:

Helms led the successful effort to bring Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into NATO
He won overwhelming approval for his legislation to support the Cuban people in their struggle against a tyrant. - [Helms-Burton strengthened the embargo, which has been an embarrassing policy failure since JFK's Administration.]
He secured passage of bipartisan legislation to protect our men and women in uniform from the International Criminal Court. [We, alone in the West, have refused to acknowledge the legitimacy and jurisdiction of a court designed to bring war criminals to justice. Thanks, Jesse.]
He won majority support in the Senate for his opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. [In insisting upon our right to test nuclear weapons, we incentivize other countries, like Iran, to pursue their own.]
He helped secure passage of the Iraq Liberation Act, which expressed strong bipartisan support for regime change in Baghdad. [We all know how this story unfolded.]

If these "achievements" are among the best arguments in favor of Helm's career that Thiessen can muster, I think he's proven my point for me.

Jesse Had Blood On His Hands

2008-07-05T20:36:00.000-07:00

Of all the things Jesse Helms did in his long career, waging a long, bitter rear-guard action to block funding for AIDS prevention and treatment was the worst. Here is the relevant part of the Times obituary:

"He fought bitterly against federal financing for AIDS research and treatment, saying the disease resulted from 'unnatural' and 'disgusting' homosexual behavior. "Nothing positive happened to Sodom and Gomorrah," he said, "and nothing positive is likely to happen to America if our people succumb to the drumbeats of support for the homosexual lifestyle."

Helm's personal crusade against funding for AIDS meant that thousands, possibly millions, of people here and around the world died needlessly from a disease which (with a bit more research) eventually proved manageable, if not yet curable.

There's a tendency in life to smooth over awkward moments and misbehavior in people's lives after they're gone. In this instance, the impulse ought to be avoided. Jesse Helms was a cruel, mean, selfish, bigoted man whose legacy ought to serve as a warning to others who hold similar views now.

The long arc of American history bends toward freedom and compassion and equality. Stand in its way and you will be remembered harshly. Good riddance, Jesse.

French Army Shoot (Wrong) People

2008-07-01T15:29:00.000-07:00

Wow. Just wow:

"PARIS — The chief of staff of the French Army resigned on Tuesday, two days after a soldier from one of the country’s top units fired bullets instead of blanks during a military exhibition, injuring at least 16 people and prompting broad outrage and incredulity." - NY Times

Jay-Z's doing it... why can't Dems?

2008-06-28T19:04:00.000-07:00

Jay-Z is out there talking about Katrina.

Leaving aside torture, our government's handling of Katrina has to be the most shameful episode of the last eight years. I don't know why the Dems aren't running that footage on TV again.

Do Americans not remember how painful and awful those few days were? Does anyone need four more years of that?

Not that Obama is an energy saint either

2008-06-23T08:01:00.000-07:00

Corn-based ethanol is a boondoggle. We ought to be importing Brazilian sugar-cane ethanol.

However, my man Obama is in bed with the ethanol lobby. He offers the same nonsensical arguments in favor of "energy independence" that every other politician uses to justify inane, market distorting policies.

For the millionth time on this blog: energy is essentially fungible. You can buy it on world markets. The key is to use less of it, not worry about where you're buying it from.

Of course, no politician is perfect. I just hope that Obama recognizes this nonsense for what it is, pandering to improve his election chances, rather than actually believing that corn ethanol is a good idea. In other words, I hope Obama's being craven instead of stupid.

More Oil Idiocy

2008-06-20T10:43:00.000-07:00

I'm going to quote Charles Kauthammer at some length:

"Gas is $4 a gallon. Oil is $135 a barrel and rising. We import two-thirds of our oil, sending hundreds of billions of dollars to the likes of Russia, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. And yet we voluntarily prohibit ourselves from even exploring huge domestic reserves of petroleum and natural gas.

At a time when U.S. crude oil production has fallen 40 percent in the past 25 years, 75 billion barrels of oil have been declared off-limits, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That would be enough to replace every barrel of non-North American imports (oil trade with Canada and Mexico is a net economic and national security plus) for 22 years.

That's nearly a quarter-century of energy independence. The situation is absurd. To which John McCain is responding with a partial fix: Lift the federal ban on Outer Continental Shelf drilling, where a fifth of the off-limits stuff lies."

No matter how often their ideas are discredited, there are still some who believe that we can drill our way out of our energy problems. Rather than make the argument(s) again, I instead propose that you read the following article from Mother Jones: The Seven Myths of Energy Independence.

User interface idea: Registering for Websites

2008-06-19T11:25:00.000-07:00

I hate when you're registering for a new site and it requires you to go back to your email account, find the welcome email, and click the confirmation link. It screws up the flow of registering and I would be willing to bet that it's a major roadblock for sites looking to register people.

So, why don't sites just ask you for your email account and password? The sites can then go and try to log into your email account. If successful, then they know that you are, indeed, the owner of the valid email account that you say you are the owner of, which is the whole point of confirmation links anyway.

Offshore drilling = junkie looking for that last fix

2008-06-18T14:07:00.000-07:00

Watching our esteemed president further tarnish his legacy is usually humorous in a morbid sort of way. I secretly enjoy opening the newspaper to discover whatever fresh outrage against decency and sound policy has been cooked up in the West Wing today for sale to the public. Here is a perfect example:

"President Bush urged Congress on Wednesday to end a federal ban on offshore oil drilling and open a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil exploration, asserting that those steps and others would lower gasoline prices and “strengthen our national security.”"

It would take years for any oil discovered in these places to come on-stream, making the claim about current, high gasoline prices ludicrous on its face. This is another in a long list of blatantly outrageous claims that the Bush Administration knows it can foist on an American public that is insufficiently well-informed to understand and disbelieve them (kind of like the subtle and not-so-subtle linking of Iraq to 9/11).

The claim about national security is also meaningless. Oil is a commodity traded around the world. From the perspective of American consumers, it doesn't matter very much where supply is located, just that it exists (if it's not near us, consumption of it by the people it is near will displace their consumption of oil that is closer to us). The real question is whether the modest amount of oil that drilling in ANWAR and off our coasts would produce would have any more than a marginal effect on the world price of oil. And the answer is: No.

Our problem is our total dependence upon a non-renewable, dirty form of energy that is controlled by screwed up countries. (I was going to write "happens to be controlled", but having oil actually positively causes countries to be screwed up. This is not just coincidence or correlation, but causation.)

Sucking up a bit more oil from our parks and shorelines in a vain effort to decrease the world price by a few pennies is not the answer. Investing in technology and infrastructure to get us off oil once and for all IS the answer.

An interesting blog on sustainable business

2008-06-16T13:12:00.000-07:00

Check out Ben Grossman's Sustainable Ink. Ben's a good friend who did undergrad with me at Princeton, then got his MBA at Columbia, then headed back to Boston to help grow his family's printing business. He's particularly interested in developing the Grossman Marketing Group's environmentally friendly printing practice.

I finally gave some money to Obama and you should too

2008-06-16T12:53:00.001-07:00

If you're like me, it's easy for you to find reasons to avoid parting with money. I had been thinking about giving to Obama's campaign for a long time, but I never got my act together to do it. Anyway, I finally did.

I feel a little ashamed that I let a whole bunch of people with less money than me fund this amazing campaign during the early days when Obama was unlikely to be the nominee. Now he is the nominee and I finally gave and it feels great. You should, too: barackobama.com.

McCain on global warning. Where have I heard this before?

2008-05-12T13:39:00.000-07:00

"Instead of idly debating the precise extent of global warming or the precise timeline of global warming, we need to deal with the central facts of rising temperatures, rising waters and all the endless troubles that global warming will bring,” Mr. McCain said at a wind power plant in Oregon, a state that is expected to be a political battleground in the general election and where the environment is a central issue for voters. “We stand warned by serious and credible scientists across the world that time is short and the dangers are great." - NY Times

Here's a link to an NPR report showing his predecessor's position(s) on the issues:
Candidate Bush on global warming

Are Republicans credible on this issue?

Clinton's appeal to white voters

2008-05-08T18:36:00.000-07:00

From Politico:

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.

Wow.

My Favorite Political Slogan...

2008-04-24T14:35:00.000-07:00

...comes from Newt Gingrich, of all people. He was talking about the midterm congressional elections in 2006. For the Dems, he suggested a slogan which I think would work for either Clinton or Obama against McCain.

Feeling the pain of the country as it bore grim witness to the orgy of sloth, idiocy, corruption and dishonesty that, objectively speaking, occurred under eight years of Republican rule, Gingrich (of all people) suggested two words:

"Had enough?"