super hanc petram

Moved Again

2006-01-02T18:49:00.000-08:00

Another pointer to the new-new blog. levingar.com Doing the wordpress thing at the moment. Check out the archives page. Plugin goodness.

To The East Side

2005-02-23T21:18:00.000-08:00

Please update your links.

Remaindered Links/Thoughts

2005-02-23T17:10:00.000-08:00

I'm still working through why it is that the president (and two of his press secretaries) knowingly and eagerly (and repeatedly in the case or Ari and Scotty) calling on a prostitute for a life-line during a press conference is not a story in these times.

'The family is looking into whether Thompson's cremated remains can be blasted out of a cannon, a wish the gun-loving writer often expressed, Brinkley said. "The optimal, best-case scenario is the ashes will be shot out of a cannon," he said.' Bravo. This story, read in conjunction with the story in last month's Harpers about the right to die in America provides some great food for thought.

Saw Sideways last weekend. Enjoyed it, but the fact that it was nominated for Best Picture means that 2004 was a very bad year for movies indeed. The Aviator is there simply to give Scorcese his Oscar so Weinstein will shut the hell up. Until next year.

Disclosure: I have not seen The Aviator.

Playing Crusader Kings of late has sparked my interest in the medieval migrations of the various tribes of Europe. Wikipedia has been invaluable in sorting out the facts from my recollections of 9th grade Western Civilization. (In this instance, how exactly William came to believe he had a claim to the throne.)

Make sure to check out both folklore.org and the book Revolution in the Valley that grew out of the site. Some fascinating reads in there. "Dozo, quick, hide in this closet. Please! Now!"

tag: musings

Subvert the Dominant Internet Link Hierarchy!

2005-02-23T12:36:00.000-08:00

Update: I feel it's important to note that the one blog that got me into blogging in the first place was megnut. Meg certainly doesn't need any links to boost her page rank, but it should be noted that she is but one example of how women were instrumental in creating both the software and the phenomenon of blogging. Mena Trott is obviously another great example.

Today's issue: women bloggers. Kevin Drum kicked it off. Backpedaled. I found out about it through Ezra. On his site I threw out two comments that reference Brad DeLong's brief Subvert the Dominant Internet Link Hierarchy! series, and making that a broader trend in blogging. Specifically on the issue of women bloggers, though, I feel the need to examine my own house first. The blogroll lists Jess, Meg Hourihan, Laura Rozen, and Halley Suitt. Fafnir may be a woman, but I doubt it. To get my own house in order, therefore, the men will be (briefly) relegated to the level of comment in the source of the page, while I will bulk up the links to women bloggers on the roll. Avedon Carol is correct; the best reponse is here. Also, copied below is Kevin's list of responses from women bloggers. My favorite response on this list is from Brutal Women.

Meryl Yourish: "A (female) blogger sent me this link to Kevin Drum being an idiot (yes, I know, he is often an idiot, but this time, it's personal—he mentioned women bloggers)." And this one, where she doesn't call me an idiot: "The scholarship behind Drum's thesis simply boggles the mind. Why, it's as if he took all of five minutes to think about the issue before he wrote his post."
Trish Wilson: "I get so tired of this same stupid question coming up every three months. The guys don't read or link to political women who blog, and then have the audacity to feign innocence every two months (from three, previously). They wonder where we are. As we have said the last three or four times this discussion has come up, we're out there. You just have to take the time and energy you take to link to and read the primarily middle- and upper-class, white, male bloggers and find us. Guys, you have no excuse."
Random Thoughts: "I'm tired of this discussion. I'm tired of the comments that say women aren't as analytical, competitive, interested, bloviating, or motivated. I'm tired of reading about the boys network at the top, even though it does exist."
Pinko Feminist Hellcat: "Having the gall to point out that yes, we exist, is apparently unforgivable. The attacks women go for this--women who stated this quite civilly were called hysterical and accused of attacking people. They were also called dykes, ugly, manhaters, moonbats, and had their looks derided and their appeal to the opposite sex questioned. Because, you know, that's civil."
Brutal Women: "In other news, the fucktards are back."
Avedon Carol: "On the other hand, I'm staring you right in the face, Kevin, and even though you've said you read me every day you don't have me on your blogroll. It's things like this that make me tear out my hair when people wonder why women are underrepresented in the top-rated weblogs, or journalists, are whatever."
Media Girl: "[Some poor schmoe named Aaron is] nothing like the horses asses and raging bulls that litter the landscape, like the goombas and ninnies who pop up periodically to wonder why women bloggers aren't more popular, or the fuckwits who wield misogyny like a phallic sword."
Ilyka Damen: "Having proposed the most supportable theory, that 'there are plenty of women who blog about politics but they don't get a lot of traffic or links from high-traffic male bloggers,' a theory supported by a quick review of his own blogroll, Drum concludes instead that the delicate flowers of blogdom are averse to the medium's 'fundamental viciousness.' What can you say to that beyond, 'Bitch, please' . . . ?"
What She Said!: "The saddest part of this all, Kevin, is that there are some really excellent writers out here. There are women writing extraordinary commentary, with sharp analysis and flawless arguments and you'd rather waste time in another gender-jerkoff than reading it."
Echidne of the Snakes: "There is one theory about all this that has some merit, I believe, and that is that some men don't want to read what women write (unless it is on sex), so if a blogger can be identified as a woman she will lose those readers whose print looks too feminine...."
Ayn Clouter: "As noted below, Kevin Drum has stirred up the usual hornet’s nest about under-representation of femmes pixelle on the web. This tempest in a herbal tea pot is missing the really big picture far above the heads of all these busybloggers."
Sisu: "We can say right up front that the shallowness of Kevin Drum's argument turns off this woman. Maybe we're in a Pauline Kael bubble of our own, but most of the women we know -- fellow bloggers, readers, friends and relatives -- adore fiery political discourse and keep coming back for more."
Conglomerate: "I know from trying to get a group blawg together of female law professors, that most of the participants were pressed for time. Blogging is a second (or third or fourth) job after teaching and writing, and a lot of the women that I know have a few extra jobs anyway with child-rearing."
Ann Althouse: "Sigh. Why is he assuming that promulgating opinions is a mean and domineering sort of behavior? I've certainly noticed that a lot of bloggers that I find unreadable display this tendency, but I think the best blogs are reasonable, good-natured, humorous, and well-rounded."
Long story; short pier: # Note: not a woman. "You want to know what the funny thing is? The ice-edged gut-punching joke of it all? Five minutes spent perusing any feminist comment thread or discussion group would be enough to rapidly disabuse Messr. Drum and his commentariat of the idea that women aren’t 'comfortable with the food fight nature of opinion writing.'"
Loaded Mouth: "In reply to your idiocy, I refer you to What She Said!. Then maybe, just maybe, you could start linking to women bloggers instead of using the old and busted (not to mention repeatedly debunked) 'Where are they?' argument."
Dummocrats: "Drum's hypothesis is that opinion writing on the web is too vitriolic and rough for delicate females. Clearly he's never read one of Lucas' takedowns of Michael Moore. But, all kidding aside, he may have a point. Sometimes the comments on the site do get pretty rough. The language is nasty and personally, I refuse to deal with that."
Elayne Riggs: "I think, if anything, female bloggers should be thanking Kevin Drum rather than piling on his latest version of the every-three-months "where are the women bloggers/why aren't women bloggers more 'famous' or 'popular' (i.e., listed higher up in a self-selecting ranking system)" discussion."
James Joyner: On the food-fight nature of political blogging as a turnoff for women: "It's as good a reason I can come up with."

tag: blogs

Miracle on Ice

2005-02-22T13:02:00.000-08:00

25 years ago today was the Miracle on Ice. I was just over 3 at the time and yet it achieved iconic status for me as I grew up playing the game. In high school a friend of mine had a great poster that a gas station put out in 1980 to commemorate the game. I'm not sure if the bulk of the prose is original, but it really captures just how unbelievable the feat of beating the Soviet team was. Above the writing was the shot of Mike Ramsey (I think) with that look of total elation on his face.

Somewhere along the line we lost it. We stopped believing.

Then the kid next door won a gold medal.

The kid with the runny nose and milk money danced up to the tiger and spit in his eye.

And it's not an upset. Not a long shot, a darkhorse, or a David and Goliath.

It's a miracle.

It's America.

Welcome back.

It's really the only way to describe the magnitude of what those kids accomplished. This was one of the greatest mismatches in the history of sport. That Soviet team was manhandling NHL teams. A few weeks before the game, the Soviets had waxed the US team in an exhibition game at MSG. I've been a part of a lot of incredbile moments playing sports, and I can't imagine what it must have been like to be on the ice for that game.

Some people forget that this wasn't the gold medal game, this was the semi-final. The US still had to beat Finland in the final to win the gold. So how on earth do you motivate a team that's coming off the most impossible victory in the history of sport? Herb Brooks:

You lose this game and you'll take it to your fucking grave.

Your fucking grave.

tag: sports

Hunter Thompson is Dead

2005-02-21T13:22:00.000-08:00

Update: See Steve Gillard (via James Wolcott) for an eloquent discussion of Thompson's legacy in print and online.

Hunter Thompson is gone and I am poorer for it. While his most acclaimed work was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, I am more partial (being a political junky) to Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972, and another short work with great relevance to today's (or any) political climate: his eulogy of Richard Nixon:

From Rolling Stone, June 16, 1994

HE WAS A CROOK

by Hunter S. Thompson

MEMO FROM THE NATIONAL AFFAIRS DESK DATE: MAY 1, 1994 FROM: DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON SUBJECT: THE DEATH OF RICHARD NIXON: NOTES ON THE PASSING OF AN AMERICAN MONSTER… HE WAS A LIAR AND A QUITTER, AND HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN BURIED AT SEA… BUT HE WAS, AFTER ALL, THE PRESIDENT.

"And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird."

—Revelation 18:2

Richard Nixon is gone now, and I am poorer for it. He was the real thing — a political monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time. He lied to his friends and betrayed the trust of his family. Not even Gerald Ford, the unhappy ex-president who pardoned Nixon and kept him out of prison, was immune to the evil fallout. Ford, who believes strongly in Heaven and Hell, has told more than one of his celebrity golf partners that "I know I will go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon."

I have had my own bloody relationship with Nixon for many years, but I am not worried about it landing me in hell with him. I have already been there with that bastard, and I am a better person for it. Nixon had the unique ability to make his enemies seem honorable, and we developed a keen sense of fraternity. Some of my best friends have hated Nixon all their lives. My mother hates Nixon, my son hates Nixon, I hate Nixon, and this hatred has brought us together.

Nixon laughed when I told him this. "Don't worry," he said, "I, too, am a family man, and we feel the same way about you."

It was Richard Nixon who got me into politics, and now that he's gone, I feel lonely. He was a giant in his way. As long as Nixon was politically alive — and he was, all the way to the end — we could always be sure of finding the enemy on the Low Road. There was no need to look anywhere else for the evil bastard. He had the fighting instincts of a badger trapped by hounds. The badger will roll over on its back and emit a smell of death, which confuses the dogs and lures them in for the traditional ripping and tearing action. But it is usually the badger who does the ripping and tearing. It is a beast that fights best on its back: rolling under the throat of the enemy and seizing it by the head with all four claws.

That was Nixon's style — and if you forgot, he would kill you as a lesson to the others. Badgers don't fight fair, bubba. That's why God made dachshunds.

Nixon was a navy man, and he should have been buried at sea. Many of his friends were seagoing people: Bebe Rebozo, Robert Vesco, William F. Buckley Jr., and some of them wanted a full naval burial.

These come in at least two styles, however, and Nixon's immediate family strongly opposed both of them. In the traditionalist style, the dead president's body would be wrapped and sewn loosely in canvas sailcloth and dumped off the stern of a frigate at least 100 miles off the coast and at least 1,000 miles south of San Diego, so the corpse could never wash up on American soil in any recognizable form.

The family opted for cremation until they were advised of the potentially onerous implications of a strictly private, unwitnessed burning of the body of the man who was, after all, the President of the United States. Awkward questions might be raised, dark allusions to Hitler and Rasputin. People would be filing lawsuits to get their hands on the dental charts. Long court battles would be inevitable — some with liberal cranks bitching about corpus delicti and habeas corpus and others with giant insurance companies trying not to pay off on his death benefits. Either way, an orgy of greed and duplicity was sure to follow any public hint that Nixon might have somehow faked his own death or been cryogenically transferred to fascist Chinese interests on the Central Asian Mainland.

It would also play into the hands of those millions of self-stigmatized patriots like me who believe these things already.

If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.

These are harsh words for a man only recently canonized by President Clinton and my old friend George McGovern — but I have written worse things about Nixon, many times, and the record will show that I kicked him repeatedly long before he went down. I beat him like a mad dog with mange every time I got a chance, and I am proud of it. He was scum.

Let there be no mistake in the history books about that. Richard Nixon was an evil man — evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency. Nobody trusted him — except maybe the Stalinist Chinese, and honest historians will remember him mainly as a rat who kept scrambling to get back on the ship.

It is fitting that Richard Nixon's final gesture to the American people was a clearly illegal series of 21 105-mm howitzer blasts that shattered the peace of a residential neighborhood and permanently disturbed many children. Neighbors also complained about another unsanctioned burial in the yard at the old Nixon place, which was brazenly illegal. "It makes the whole neighborhood like a graveyard," said one. "And it fucks up my children's sense of values."

Many were incensed about the howitzers — but they knew there was nothing they could do about it — not with the current president sitting about 50 yards away and laughing at the roar of the cannons. It was Nixon's last war, and he won.

The funeral was a dreary affair, finely staged for TV and shrewdly dominated by ambitious politicians and revisionist historians. The Rev. Billy Graham, still agile and eloquent at the age of 136, was billed as the main speaker, but he was quickly upstaged by two 1996 GOP presidential candidates: Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas and Gov. Pete Wilson of California, who formally hosted the event and saw his poll numbers crippled when he got blown off the stage by Dole, who somehow seized the No. 3 slot on the roster and uttered such a shameless, self-serving eulogy that even he burst into tears at the end of it.

Dole's stock went up like a rocket and cast him as the early GOP front-runner for '96. Wilson, speaking next, sounded like an Engelbert Humperdinck impersonator and probably won't even be re-elected as governor of California in November.

The historians were strongly represented by the No. 2 speaker, Henry Kissinger, Nixon's secretary of state and himself a zealous revisionist with many axes to grind. He set the tone for the day with a maudlin and spectacularly self-serving portrait of Nixon as even more saintly than his mother and as a president of many godlike accomplishments — most of them put together in secret by Kissinger, who came to California as part of a huge publicity tour for his new book on diplomacy, genius, Stalin, H. P. Lovecraft and other great minds of our time, including himself and Richard Nixon.

Kissinger was only one of the many historians who suddenly came to see Nixon as more than the sum of his many squalid parts. He seemed to be saying that History will not have to absolve Nixon, because he has already done it himself in a massive act of will and crazed arrogance that already ranks him supreme, along with other Nietzschean supermen like Hitler, Jesus, Bismarck and the Emperor Hirohito. These revisionists have catapulted Nixon to the status of an American Caesar, claiming that when the definitive history of the 20th century is written, no other president will come close to Nixon in stature. "He will dwarf FDR and Truman," according to one scholar from Duke University.

It was all gibberish, of course. Nixon was no more a Saint than he was a Great President. He was more like Sammy Glick than Winston Churchill. He was a cheap crook and a merciless war criminal who bombed more people to death in Laos and Cambodia than the U.S. Army lost in all of World War II, and he denied it to the day of his death. When students at Kent State University, in Ohio, protested the bombing, he connived to have them attacked and slain by troops from the National Guard.

Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism — which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.

Nixon's meteoric rise from the unemployment line to the vice presidency in six quick years would never have happened if TV had come along 10 years earlier. He got away with his sleazy "my dog Checkers" speech in 1952 because most voters heard it on the radio or read about it in the headlines of their local, Republican newspapers. When Nixon finally had to face the TV cameras for real in the 1960 presidential campaign debates, he got whipped like a red-headed mule. Even die-hard Republican voters were shocked by his cruel and incompetent persona. Interestingly, most people who heard those debates on the radio thought Nixon had won. But the mushrooming TV audience saw him as a truthless used-car salesman, and they voted accordingly. It was the first time in 14 years that Nixon lost an election.

When he arrived in the White House as VP at the age of 40, he was a smart young man on the rise — a hubris-crazed monster from the bowels of the American dream with a heart full of hate and an overweening lust to be President. He had won every office he'd run for and stomped like a Nazi on all of his enemies and even some of his friends.

Nixon had no friends except George Will and J. Edgar Hoover (and they both deserted him). It was Hoover's shameless death in 1972 that led directly to Nixon's downfall. He felt helpless and alone with Hoover gone. He no longer had access to either the Director or the Director's ghastly bank of Personal Files on almost everybody in Washington.

Hoover was Nixon's right flank, and when he croaked, Nixon knew how Lee felt when Stonewall Jackson got killed at Chancellorsville. It permanently exposed Lee's flank and led to the disaster at Gettysburg.

For Nixon, the loss of Hoover led inevitably to the disaster of Watergate. It meant hiring a New Director — who turned out to be an unfortunate toady named L. Patrick Gray, who squealed like a pig in hot oil the first time Nixon leaned on him. Gray panicked and fingered White House Counsel John Dean, who refused to take the rap and rolled over, instead, on Nixon, who was trapped like a rat by Dean's relentless, vengeful testimony and went all to pieces right in front of our eyes on TV.

That is Watergate, in a nut, for people with seriously diminished attention spans. The real story is a lot longer and reads like a textbook on human treachery. They were all scum, but only Nixon walked free and lived to clear his name. Or at least that's what Bill Clinton says — and he is, after all, the President of the United States.

Nixon liked to remind people of that. He believed it, and that was why he went down. He was not only a crook but a fool. Two years after he quit, he told a TV journalist that "if the president does it, it can't be illegal."

Shit. Not even Spiro Agnew was that dumb. He was a flat-out, knee-crawling thug with the morals of a weasel on speed. But he was Nixon's vice president for five years, and he only resigned when he was caught red-handed taking cash bribes across his desk in the White House.

Unlike Nixon, Agnew didn't argue. He quit his job and fled in the night to Baltimore, where he appeared the next morning in U.S. District Court, which allowed him to stay out of prison for bribery and extortion in exchange for a guilty (no contest) plea on income-tax evasion. After that he became a major celebrity and played golf and tried to get a Coors distributorship. He never spoke to Nixon again and was an unwelcome guest at the funeral. They called him Rude, but he went anyway. It was one of those Biological Imperatives, like salmon swimming up waterfalls to spawn before they die. He knew he was scum, but it didn't bother him.

Agnew was the Joey Buttafuoco of the Nixon administration, and Hoover was its Caligula. They were brutal, brain-damaged degenerates worse than any hit man out of The Godfather, yet they were the men Richard Nixon trusted most. Together they defined his Presidency.

It would be easy to forget and forgive Henry Kissinger of his crimes, just as he forgave Nixon. Yes, we could do that — but it would be wrong. Kissinger is a slippery little devil, a world-class hustler with a thick German accent and a very keen eye for weak spots at the top of the power structure. Nixon was one of those, and Super K exploited him mercilessly, all the way to the end.

Kissinger made the Gang of Four complete: Agnew, Hoover, Kissinger and Nixon. A group photo of these perverts would say all we need to know about the Age of Nixon.

Nixon's spirit will be with us for the rest of our lives — whether you're me or Bill Clinton or you or Kurt Cobain or Bishop Tutu or Keith Richards or Amy Fisher or Boris Yeltsin's daughter or your fiancee's 16-year-old beer-drunk brother with his braided goatee and his whole life like a thundercloud out in front of him. This is not a generational thing. You don't even have to know who Richard Nixon was to be a victim of his ugly, Nazi spirit.

He has poisoned our water forever. Nixon will be remembered as a classic case of a smart man shitting in his own nest. But he also shit in our nests, and that was the crime that history will burn on his memory like a brand. By disgracing and degrading the Presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream.

tag: books, politics

Peggy Noonan Blesses Blogging

2005-02-17T17:15:00.000-08:00

Nooners takes up the issue of blogging today. I join others (Dave, Matt) in generally praising the column. Nooners can't bring herself to actually mention a blogger that doesn't share in her ideology, but what is one to expect from opinion pages of the WSJ? I do find amusing the dogged attempts by Peggy and Hewitt to pretend that the only blogs in existence are the 101st Fighting Keyboarders. Kos, Atrios, Josh Marshall, Kevin Drum, the list of elephants in the room goes on, but — ever the good WASP — Peggy will ignore them.

Noonan sees blogging through the lens of journalism and thus shapes her discussion around blogging versus traditional media. I don't find the blogging vs. journalism discussion particularly compelling since the media have always had scandals and always will and, as Roger Ailes so eloquently put it

I have no interest in collectively building a culture online where we figure out norms for people who both consult and write online so that readers can have the tools to be skeptical, active participants.

If blogging can have any effect on the media, my hope is that it will prod the press to stop the he-said she-said nonsense that Brad DeLong regularly derides. It takes courage to report the facts because the facts are not balanced, the facts are not evenhanded and the facts can destroy people. Often simply bearing witness to an event is the most devastating action one can take. Bad people like to do things in the shadows. If blogging can force the media to shine a light on those shadows and report what is happening (rather than what the participants say is happening), that will be a public service. This is not to say that blogging cannot ever be journalism. Many in the ranks have already proven to be effective journalists; but blogging is not about journalism. If all blogging can claim, in the end, is that it slapped the media around a bit, blogging will have failed. What is happening now is an attempt by specialists of all stripes to pigeon-hole blogging. To define it and have it stacked in the appropriate place in the hall closet. That way it can be safely ignored on all issues except for those to which blogging has been assigned relevance. This effort must be resisted.

Blogging has the potential to assist in redefining the way we as people relate to our public sphere. Media are a part of that sphere, but so are government and commerce. Blogging will not destroy any of these, but it's greatest contribution would be to cause us to force them open. For to do that it will have become a great tool of connectivity. It will allow me, on my terms, to connect with you, on your terms. It will allow us both to clarify, to expand, to prod and to react. Jason, today, harkens back to 2000 when I started this blogging thing:

How's that for a bit of nostalgia? Back in the early days of weblogs, a lot of folks had webcams...it was part of the package. Posts, a list of links to your friends' sites, a webcam, link to your Amazon wishlist, maybe a link to your Epinions page, an about page, a guestbook or little chat widget in the sidebar, etc. It was a social space to move around in. Now that everyone is reading everything in RSS readers, a lot of that sort of thing has been lost. RSS readers are not that social, even with so-called "next gen" newsreaders that recommend sites based on what you already read. It's mostly just information in, information out...little time or opportunity for play. Thank God for sites like Flickr, LiveJournal, and Fark, where people can still go to hang out and play around with the web and their friends a bit.

Connections. And, if blogging is successful, those connections will bring change for the better. Much to the chagrin of Nooners, Instapundit and all the Little Green Footballs.

tag: blogs, media

Paging Harry Sinden

2005-02-15T17:13:00.000-08:00

Is Harry Sinden now advising the NHL on its negotiating tactics? Old Harry liked to use this strategy with Bruins free agents he didn't want to sign. He'd go back and forth with the agent for a while and then right before the player was eligible to declare free agency, he'd throw down a take-it or leave-it offer that he knew was unacceptable. Once the player had spurned to offer and declared free agency, he'd start a full PR blitz to blame the player for abandoning the fans of Boston. It worked a few times. It will be interesting to see if it works for the NHL here. Dan Duquette also used this tactic in negotiating with Roger Clemons and Mo Vaughn, among others. There's really no way to respond to such bad faith tactics except through the media. Hopefully the NHLPA is prepared to control the message starting tonight because you can bet the NHL is going to pound away that it's the players who've killed the season.

The league bumped its salary-cap proposal from $40 million to $42.5 million Tuesday and gave the players' association until 11 a.m. Wednesday to accept. If they reject it, the season would be canceled two hours later, according to a letter sent by commissioner Gary Bettman to players' association executive director Bob Goodenow.

"This offer is not an invitation to begin negotiations — it's too late for that," Bettman said in the letter obtained by The Associated Press. "This is our last effort to make a deal that's fair to the players and one that the clubs (hopefully) can afford. We have no more flexibility and there is no time for further negotiation."

In the final bargaining session between NHL chief legal officer Bill Daly and players' association senior director Ted Saskin, the league dropped its longstanding demand for a link between revenues and player costs.

In return, the union came off its reluctance to a salary cap — and proposed one.

The cap the players offered was a soft cap of $52 million, a source close to the negotiations told the AP on condition of anonymity. Teams would be allowed to spend up to 10 percent above that three times in six years but would be subject to an escalating luxury tax on anything above $40 million.

The league knows their offer is unacceptable, but they've structured their final offer to provide some simple talking points.

The players rejected the league's offer and forced the cancellation of the season. It's the players' fault.
The league and the players were less than $10m apart when the players forced the cancellation of the season. The players are greedy.
The owners were willing to negotiate until the last minute, but the players spurned those offers. The players lack good faith.

I'm sure there are a couple of others that I've missed here. I had read the NHL's intent wrong before. I had thought they'd cancel the season over Superbowl weekend to take the heat off such an announcement. I had forgotten that it's far better to blame the other side than admit to mutual failure. So the NHL simply built momentum during the NFL playoffs for this announcement, but wanted to wait for the dead time between NFL and MLB seasons to make the announcement in an effort to smear the players when sports writers have nothing else to talk about (except the NBA). It was a shrewd decision, and we'll see if the players are ready to push back. Already they've botched things by allowing so many media outlets to refer to the lockout as a strike, we'll see now if they're ready for some real mud slinging.

tag: sports

Belaboring …

2005-02-11T12:58:00.000-08:00

Apropos my problems with Friedman and our current policy in Iraq, we have Lawrence Lessig talking about writing an early draft of the Georgian consitution.

And second, that it captured beautifully the single most important thing that I learned from my years working on "constitutionalism" in Eastern Europe: That 90% of the challenge is to build a culture that respects the rule of law, and that practices it. A document doesn't build that culture. And no one has a formula — either for building it, or preserving it.
Certainly not a law professor.

I don't watch the West Wing, for which I have been roundly castigated by many friends and acquaintences. But here's hoping more people in power look for a lesson from that West Wing than from today's Tom Friedman.

tag: iraq, democracy, media

A Waste of Great Real Estate

2005-02-11T12:13:00.000-08:00

Via Ezra (again) we have Tom Friedman. The text of this opinion piece tacks from the cogent to the bizarre and back faster than a ship navigating the Straight of Magellan. My education about the Middle East is very much in its infancy and yet I cannot help but feel that Friedman, for all his work in that area, is more clueless than I am.

There will be a lot of trial and error in the months ahead. But this is a hugely important horizontal dialogue because if Iraqis can't forge a social contract, it would suggest that no other Arab country can – since virtually all of them are similar mixtures of tribes, ethnicities and religions. That would mean that they can be ruled only by iron-fisted kings or dictators, with all the negatives that flow from that.

And yet falling towards the heart of this paragraph with alarming speed is the Iranian sword of Damocles. From what I can gather, what is happening in Iran is a genuine horizontal dialogue between and amongst a people who are dissatisfied with their government. Similar, perhaps, to the one that occured behind the Iron Curtain in the 70s and 80s. What we have in Iraq is something else entirely and much more of a Frankenstein. The point is that Friedman's statement that what's happening in Iraq is unique to the region is offensively wrong. What separates the steps taken towards democracy and liberty in Iraq from those elsewhere is that they are being forced by a foreign military. They are not organic, not a true democratic conversation between the governing and the governed. It might still work, but it is not a model to be emulated anywhere else.

Another problem is not that Tom Friedman is a fool, but that fools read him. Fools in power. They read Friedman and Lewis and Raphael Patai and they put these half-cocked ideas into motion, and dire consequences result.

In the specific case of the most recent Iraqi elections, Friedman needs to get his facts down:

If we can help produce a representative government in Iraq – based on free and fair elections and with a Shiite leadership that accepts minority rights and limits on clerical involvement in politics – it will exert great pressure on the ayatollah–dictators running Iran. In Iran's sham "Islamic democracy," only the mullahs decide who can run. Over time, Iranian Shiites will demand to know why they can't have the same freedoms as their Iraqi cousins right next door. That will drive change in Iran. Just be patient.

But the Iraqis didn't decide who ran for this parliament-thingy either. The voters didn't know for whom they were voting. There was no campaign, no exchange of ideas, no dialogue about the future of Iraq. Now it seems Ahmed Chalabi is a front-runner for a cabinet post. Why is it that American sponsored exiles keep popping up in positions of power? Hint, it's not because of the freedom we've created in Iraq.

There is more, much more, but I fear my head will explode. Again, I don't mind that Friedman is a fool, it's that his readers in power actually give his twaddle credence.

tag: iraq, media

Power Disorders

2005-02-09T14:20:00.000-08:00

Via del.icio.us/tag/books I came across this interview with Neal Stephenson at Reason.com. Toward the beginning of the interview, Stephenson is asked about a recent talk he gave during which he cited theologian Walter Wink and Wink's discussion of "domination systems." I've never heard of Wink and must make a note to explore his writings, but I find Stephenson's discussion of the concept of power disorders in response to the question interesting.

Reason: You gave a speech at the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy Conference a few years back in which you suggested that the focus on issues like encryption was too narrow, and that we should give more attention to what theologian Walter Wink calls “domination systems.” This surprised some of the attendees, partly because it reached outside the usual privacy/free speech issue set and partly because, hey, you were citing a theologian. What brought you to Walter Wink, and what other light do you think theologians can shed on our approaches to government?

Stephenson: This probably won’t do anything to endear me or Wink to the typical reason reader, but I was made aware of him by a Jesuit priest of leftish tendencies who had been reading his stuff.

It’s almost always a disaster when a novelist decides to become political. So let me just make a few observations here on a human level — which is within my comfort zone as a novelist — and leave it at that.

It’s clear that the body politic is subject to power disorders. By this I mean events where some person or group suddenly concentrates a lot of power and abuses it. Power disorders frequently come as a surprise, and cause a lot of damage. This has been true since the beginning of human history. Exactly how and why power disorders occur is poorly understood.

We are in a position akin to that of early physicians who could see that people were getting sick but couldn’t do anything about it, because they didn’t understand the underlying causes. They knew of a few tricks that seemed to work. For example, nailing up plague houses tended to limit the spread of plague. But even the smart doctors tended to fall under the sway of pet theories that were wrong, such as the idea that diseases were caused by imbalanced humors or bad air. Once that happened, they ignored evidence that contradicted their theory. They became so invested in that theory that they treated any new ideas as threats. But from time to time you’d see someone like John Snow, who would point out, “Look, everyone who draws water from Well X is getting cholera.” Then he went and removed the pump handle from Well X and people stopped getting cholera. They still didn’t understand germ theory, but they were getting closer.

We can make a loose analogy to the way that people have addressed the problem of power disorders. We don’t really understand them. We know that there are a couple of tricks that seem to help, such as the rule of law and separation of powers. Beyond that, people tend to fall under the sway of this or that pet theory. And so you’ll get perfectly intelligent people saying, “All of our problems would be solved if only the workers controlled the means of production,” or what have you. Once they’ve settled on a totalizing political theory, they see everything through that lens and are hostile to other notions.

What I really need after this is a nice discussion of the Federalist and how Hamilton, Madison & Jay thought the Constitution would attempt to solve the problem of power disorders. Power disorders of a kind remain the defining problem of our politics. The problems we face currently with regard to corrupt officials or invasive laws derive from far worse disorders that existed under a monarchy. And yet any back-bencher in Albany, NY or moderate congressman in D.C. will tell you that the system (and by extension the people) is being abused by a small minority that are in power. Party politics recognizes this issue and, rather than attempt to remedy the situation, seeks simply to put its slate of officials on the throne. There are those of us that would like to reform the system and yet we resemble the early physicians in Stephenson's analogy. Reform movements often wind up playing whack-a-mole with power disorders rather than unplugging the machine.

tag: politics, books

Thrice as Nice

2005-02-07T11:53:00.000-08:00

Exhuasted today after the Superbowl. The Pats won their third Superbowl in 4 years and I'm elated. I watch these games a little too closely and when I know I can't replay something (for instance, when we go over to a friend's apartment to watch the game) I watch all the more intensely. As you can imagine, watching a game with me is a real treat.

Due to this rather over-intesnse style of watching a game, I am a great arm chair coach. And, as TMQ says, all my advice is guaranteed or your money back! The big question from the Superbowl is why did the Iggles develop a bad case of vapor lock (not to be confused with Todd Pinkston getting cramps during the game and having to leave) at crunch time, I've developed two theories. My effort is trying to see things from Andy Reid's perspective and it's possible he played it the best way it could have been played. I certainly expected them to go no-huddle (as did the rest of planet earth) but it's entirely possible that Reid felt McNabb would throw an INT instantly if they did. That McNabb was just too shell-shocked to run the thing effectively. The way the Pats D played, I don't blame him. Dealing with that crew must be like steering a ship in a hurricane.

My other theory is that Reid knew his D only had one stand left in them and he needed to give them time to rest. Going hurry-up would have had his offense off the field (scoring or not) too quickly and the D just had nothing left in the tank. When they scored to pull within 3 with so little time left, he knew he could tell his D to get one last punt, and they did. Of course that put the game back in McNabb's hands which wasn't where Reid wanted it, but at that point he'd done all he could. And, naturally, McNabb threw the INT when under pressure. This is the weaker of the two theories as Reid's post-game comments indicate that he was himself a bit shell-shocked.

Anyway, those are my two theories.

Finally, these have been the best years to be a Boston sports fan there ever will be. Starting really with Pedro's incredible year in '99 and rolling right on to the Superbowl-World Series-Superbowl trifecta, there's been nothing like it in Boston history. It won't last (perhaps it ended last night) but I've made the effort to soak in every last minute of it. It has been and continues to be one of the things in life that you just sit back and enjoy while it lasts.

tag: sports

Truly, the NHL is doomed

2005-02-04T10:34:00.000-08:00

Taking a break (or submitting before he went) from his Superbowl festivities, Bill Simmons takes the time to look over the bed the NHL owners made but now refuse to lie in:

Even hockey diehards — a dying breed right up there with Eddie Murphy fans and handlebar-mustache fans — seem to agree this lockout is for the best. And that's a little weird, because we're not talking the WNBA here, where only a tiny segment of people will pay to watch the games. People like hockey. Sure, most of them live in Canada, where Bryan Adams is an icon, but there's still an audience. And we are all victims of a once-likable league that screwed itself up beyond repair, the same way you screw up a relationship by drunk-dialing too many times. The NHL made two unforgivable mistakes: expanding more recklessly than Krispy Kreme and paying their players way, way, way too much money. It was a lethal combination of greed and sheer stupidity.

This was a blue-collar sport for middle-class fans — a quality dive bar with one good TV, a few solid beers on tap and a ballbusting bartender named Fitzy. Then they tried to retool into an upscale joint with $15 beers and bartenders in bow ties. Suddenly, the price of NHL tickets rivaled that of the NFL and the NBA. Does that make sense? … Tragically, the owners lack the resolve and leadership to undo the damage. Basically, they need to bring on a hockey apocalypse and start over. Since that will never happen, hockey is doomed.

My current thoughts on the impending season cancellation is that the league is waiting until after the close of business today to announce anything. Timing this thing to be totally swept under the rug by the Superbowl is crucial for them. Once the sports stations are wall-to-wall Superbowl, they'll have enough cover to slip the announcement in and not have any coverage for almost a week. At that point it will be essentially old news and they'll have had several days to prepare their talking points, etc.

It's not out of the realm of possibilities that, once Bud Selig is firmly ensconced as the new owner of the Washington ~~Lobbyists~~ Nationals, baseball will go through many of these same death throes. It won't be pretty, but baseball is nearly as broken as hockey and neither league understands that the product is the league itself, not any individual team.

tag: sports

ESPN Interview with Malcolm Gladwell

2005-02-03T15:29:00.000-08:00

Page 2 interviews Malcolm Gladwell about Blink today. Two things struck me about this interview. First, Jeff Merron seems to have actually read all or most of the book. Second, Gladwell seems a genuine sports fan. The result is a quality interview where both participants are on the same (or at least similar) page. In my experience this is surprisingly rare in book interviews.

I found most interesting the part where Gladwell talks about Moneyball and the need for balance in evalutating a player based on both stats and impression:

You are right to bring up "Moneyball," because reading Michael Lewis' book was a real inspiration for me. I think about it this way. What people in the classical music world discovered was that when they couldn't see the person auditioning, they made very different and much better hiring decisions than when they could see the auditioner. With a screen up, for instance, they began to hire women for the first time, which suggests that before that their judgment had been impaired by all kinds of biases they were unaware of. What they saw with their eyes had interfered with what they heard with their ears. Billy Beane makes the same argument about scouting prospects: that sometimes what you see — whether a player is short or tall, thin or heavy — corrupts your assessment of what really matters, which is whether a guy can hit. So Beane does, essentially, a version of what orchestras do: he put a screen. He doesn't let what he sees with his eyes corrupt his statistical appreciation of a player's ability.

But this doesn't mean that all instinctive judgments about players are useless, because the question of whether a guy can hit is only one of a number of questions that a scout has to answer. GMs also want to know: is the guy lazy or a hard worker? Is he coachable? Does he have good habits? Will he be a good clubhouse presence? How strong is his competitive desire? What separates Roger Clemens or Barry Bonds from any of the other top players drafted alongside them is not talent, at the end of the day. It's desire and competitiveness — and to predict that you very much need a seasoned scout who can look at a player and have an instinctive sense of what he'll be like years down the road. I always thought that the critics of "Moneyball" misinterpreted what Lewis was saying. He wasn't saying that all instinctive scouting judgments are flawed. He was saying that there are some questions — like predicting hitting ability — that are better answered statistically, and that the task of a successful GM is to understand the difference between what can and can't be answered that way. That's my argument in Blink as well.

Later in the discussion Gladwell mentions that he'd love to put eye-tracking goggles on Peyton Manning. I also think this would be fascinating. More than that, I'd love to put them on several QBs of varying skill and age. Seeing how these guys see the field would be fascinating. On Prime Time and other shows, ESPN uses the highlight box to focus on different players during a replay. Which players QBs highlight instinctually (specifically as opposed to what they might say afterwards) as they read the field would provide a great contrast. If only to compare how the field is seen by the viewer (or the coach's tape) vs. the guy under center.

MG: I'd love to know, on this same level of detail, how Manning "reads" a defense. Does he spend a extra fraction of a second on the linebacker, or the safety? When he's playing the Ravens, does he look to Ray Lewis first, or last, or does he do something completely unexpected like not looking at Lewis at all? Are there certain schemes that he takes longer to understand? If so, what are they? And so on. Manning, for instance, probably picks up blitzes better than anyone else in football. Wouldn't you love to know what he's doing, in the face of a blitz, that — say — Kyle Boller isn't?

Even if you haven't yet read the book, it should be a very interesting interview.

tags: sports, books

Who Needs Reform?

2005-02-03T13:01:00.000-08:00

Reading over the commentary on the SOTU, I confirmed my suspicion that there was no need to actually watch it. Indeed, all Bush's speeches are, as Ezra noted yesterday, worthless by intent. Full to the brim of empty rhetoric that gets the good-intentioned all atwitter, but deliberately avoid any meaningful details. This is a luxury afforded Bush by his fellow traveller Tom DeLay. DeLay has structured the legislature such that all bills are written in their entirety behind closed doors, passed out of committee at absurd hours of the night and presented for an up or down vote on the floor of the House within hours of the bill's particulars being released to members. It then gets tossed over to the Senate where Frist botches the process entirely and the bill either dies or gets modified. From the Bush/DeLaw perspective what actually happens in the Senate is irrelevant since if the bill is modified it goes to conference committee. That committee, meeting behind closed doors, either discards all the Senate's changes in favor of the original House bill or writes a totally new bill that is far more egregious than the original. The result is once again presented and within hours is voted up or down. If it passes, great, if not, blame the Democrats.

You might ask what the point is to all of this since it ensures that, most of the time, nothing gets done or if something does pass it's so egregious that members would be embarassed to admit voting in favor. The point is to pass the most foul laws possible, and only the most foul laws possible. Otherwise, let them die and try again when conditions seem more favorable. No one's watching so who gives a shit? Make pretty speeches and pass whatever your donors want in the middle of the night. Then make a pretty speech about it. Details? What details? It's all he-said, she-said and you can't report the fact that they're lying, that's not objective.

Reform? That's class warfare. You're just too angry. The American people don't like anger. We're not going to win in the heartland by demonizing our opponents, people just tune that out. We need someone who can reach across the aisle and make common cause. Present our side and reach a compromise bill. That's the Third Way. That's centrism.

tag: politics, reform

Wilson Reduction

2005-02-02T11:48:00.000-08:00

Hear him! Matthew Yglesias on Woodrow Wilson:

Fundamentally, though, there are some very real similarities between the two. In my opinion, Wilson, despite the large role he plays in certain versions of Democratic Party automythology was a pretty fantastically terrible president. Like Bush, his policies abroad tended to be animated by worthy ideals, but they were persued in an incoherent and thoughtless manner with seriously bad consequences for the country and the world.

I should note that Wilson's loftiest ideal was Wilson himself. Wilson would be the greatest of peacemakers. Wilson would bring peace with his terrible swift sword and all would be grateful to Wilson. Wilson will get his country into that goddamned War to See Who's Feudal System Will Collapse First even if it takes 3 years and some of the most twisted logic ever uttered. For Wilson is the peacemaker and his 14 points shall end all conflict for all time. Even if he does get schooled at the peace table like a rookie in his first practice with the varisty. Wilson will be remembered, damn it, that's what matters.

tag: politics, history

Dean in at DNC?

2005-02-01T15:51:00.000-08:00

A lot of people wonder what the Republican party would look like if John McCain had a stronger role in shaping its message. Well, if Chris Bowers is correct, the Dems are about to find out what happens when the maverick outsider who fell off his horse on the road to Damascus gets the keys to the party. I'm an outspoken supporter of Dean for the DNC chair and I hope that some of my predictions about the DC bubble being popped come to fruition. With Dean at the helm I think we'll start winning some elections again and stop "taking it," as Al Franken so memorably said, on the party level. The insiders are already lining up to get a seat at the Dean table, and I sincerely hope I'm right that he's able to marginalize them. Dean's got a lot of political capital built up. And political capital is worth nothing if you don't spend it.

tag: democrats

Mac and Safety

2005-02-01T13:45:00.000-08:00

Is the Mac actually safer? SpyWare, AdWare, malware in general, all of it seeking to destroy my WindowsME installation. Will my looming switch to the mac make me safer? Yes. Why? Because OS X is structurally more impervious to these maladies. True? You bet your buster browns say the mac people. Not true say the, er, experts? From yesterday's Salon article:

According to experts, though, it isn't the Mac's better structure that accounts for why so few pieces of malware and spyware are aimed at the operating system — it's the size of its user base. If miscreants really put their heads to it, they could probably come up with many dangerous attacks against the Mac — but who would want to? Faced with the choice of disrupting 95 percent of the computer users in the world or just 3 percent, which would you choose? The choice is especially obvious for the purveyors of spyware, who, remember, depend on high numbers of infected machines to make money. If you want to make a killing in the spyware business, you're not going to get far by attacking the Mac.

Who are these experts? They go unnamed in the article. Normally I'd let this pass since a reporter will interview many, many sources for a story and if the same general comment comes from many of them, it makes sense to aggregate these comments as the opinion of 'experts.' But in this case I think it's a point worth belaboring. I have spent a great deal of time trying to fix and/or fireproof a number of my family's computers from the perils of malware. It would be of significant help to me if I could say definitively that they will be better off just buying a Mac because these problems are all but non-existent (and getting smaller) when running that environment.

After reading Backlash (via TUAW and MacDailyNews), I am convinced that the 'market share' argument is so much nonsense. And yet, I am always open to a lucid counter-argument. So who are these experts and what evidence (if any) do they have to back up their [collective, paraphrased] assertion? I think that the reason for the profusion of malware for Windows raised in the Salon article is strong. "The choice is especially obvious for the purveyors of spyware, who, remember, depend on high numbers of infected machines to make money." Malware writers do not write for glory, but for profit. If enough profit were to exist in the Mac market, they would enter it. And yet, "[m]any orders of magnitude more people look over the source code for OS X and the related BSDs than have access to Windows source code."

I peg the useful like of a computer at roughly 3½ years. I feel I can say with confidence to family members that their next PC purchase should be a Mac machine, not a Windows machine. To the list of superior features of the Mac OS I now add (for at least the next 3½ years) freedom from malware.

tags: mac, windows

Results Cloudy, Ask Again Later

2005-02-01T10:53:00.000-08:00

MSFT search has been launched. Becuase of the way I use search engines (mostly for research), it will be some time before I have my own evaluation of MSFT search. Two bloggers did some searches of their own to evaluate the new service. Their experiences are starkly different and highlight, I think, the difficulty of evaluating any search engine. It depends as much on the results you want as the results you get. First up Kim Krause of Cre8PC:

For the record, I'm freezing my butt off in my office because my wood stove is taking forever to heat up.

Following up on the news of MSN's now official, finally legitimate, no more BETA folks, re-launch of its search engine, I have to admit, I was shocked at my very first pass.

The true test is my UsabilityEffect.com site, which came out in May, and though Google indexed it with zesto, rank is a sad tale I scream about behind closed doors. No matter what rabbits I've pulled from my hat, Google has given me a complex about that site. Meanwhile, Cre8pc.com is treated like a Queen; but of course, it's been around since 1996 and well deserves Google's nod. And (ahem) Google loves this blog.

MSN Search, meanwhile, has me gasping. Typing in web+site+usability+reviews, my UE site is on page one of SERPs. Not only that, MSN scored more points for featuring my services page first, followed up with the home page. How freaking wonderful is this?

So let today, February 1, 2005, be a day you remember where you were. Look for your web site(s). Revel in the love. Sing in the rain. Run around stark naked, screaming with joy. For one historical day, let me pathetically admit, I'm paryting with MSN. Come on. WoodStock, as you know, only happened once too.

Overall very positive. Next Fred Wilson of A VC:

Last November, I did a long blog post about my side by side comparison of Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft search. Microsoft had just launched their search in beta at the time. My conclusion was that Google was still the best for plain vanilla search because of the format of the results page, the speed of the search, and the relevance of the results.

Well Microsoft is out of beta now as evidenced by the availability of the service at http://search.msn.com. The word beta is gone from the URL.

So, I went back and redid the comparison tests. Did anything change during the beta? Yes, Microsoft got worse and the others didn't change.

Why did Microsoft get worse? Mostly because the relevance of the results got worse. They did something to their algorithm during the beta period that caused the results on the searches I did to change.

First, I always Google myself. In all three engines last fall, this blog was at the top or in the first three or results that are "above the fold". It's still that way in Google and Yahoo!, but somehow this blog is now buried half way down the second page in Microsoft's resutls.

That's enough for me but in an attempt to be fair and balanced, I tried a few more keywords. So I tried "bit torrent + wilco" on all three. The first result for Microsoft and Yahoo! was the front page of bt.etree.org which is a big bit torrent site. Google had that second. But Google and Yahoo! all had various bit torrent sites above the fold, whereas Microsoft had a bunch of other stuff that was less relevant.

I tried a few more searches and in every case, Microsoft's results page was less relevant to me than Yahoo!'s and Google's.

As I said in November, Microsoft has made a nice effort to develop a competitive product, but it isn't going to change my behavior yet.

Two people using their own search results as a barometer and coming away with polar experiences. For my purposes, I think Fred's experience would more closely match my own, but I'm not entirely sure. Kim is an expert on SEO while Fred is a VC. Kim has been trying to figure out how to push a new site that she launched to the top of search engine results using various 'rabbits.' Google has resisted those tricks while MSFT ate them up with a spoon. One could therefore conclude that Google is better because it resists gaming more effectively. Fred's "bit torrent + wilco" search is interesting. What I noticed was that on MSFT the results were heavily populated by blog posts while Google had some blog and some other information. Certainly if I'm a novice bit torrent user (and I am) I think Google's results are better for me. On the other hand, if I'm searching for what's happening in the bit torrent world, MSFT's results would be superior as the gaggle of posts track the latest bit torrent happenings.

Again, depending on what results I wanted, I would have to use a different engine. Ranking one engine as "better" than another is obviously a holistic and personal endeavor. At the moment my default will still be Google, but if I'm looking for the latest info on something I might give MSFT a try.

tags: microsoft, google, seo

Switching

2005-01-31T14:48:00.000-08:00

Salon looks at the state of the Mac today, and there is a good deal of commentary to be mined. Hitting closest to home for me was this quote on the difference between Windows and Mac users:

Perhaps the answer lies in what Jason Snell, the editor of Macworld magazine, says is the essential difference between Windows people and Mac people: Mac people love their computers on a personal, emotional level. Windows people, on the other hand, prefer to think of their machines as office tools, gadgets no more special than the stapler. Windows users don't expect much in the way of quality, beauty or elegance from their machines; if they did, they'd be Mac people. Instead, they expect their PCs to perform a great many tasks, and they've resigned themselves to having to labor over those tasks.

No sentence fragment could better describe my computing experience since I first switched from Mac to PC than, "resigned [myself] to having to labor over those tasks." And it is indeed labor. Most recently when I bought Crusader Kings. Great game, but I spent two full days trolling message boards trying to get it to work. Now that it does, I'm quite content as I like the game a lot. And yet, I'm just tired of putting up with this kind of thing. I'll never forget helping my dad to set up his, at the time, new computer. Windows 2000 had just been released and he snapped a great new machine and brought it home. Being home for the holidays, he asked if I was game to help get the thing running. Five full days later we finally got it going, though without getting the new printer running also since the drivers for Win2000 hadn't been released yet. Around the middle of the second day of this tribulation, while I was on hold with MSFT support, he said, "you know what I'd really like? Instead of getting 3 years of phone support, I'd pay to have someone from MSFT here so I could beat the shit out of them." Whenever I fight back adware, spyware, or WinRot I think of that.

In the Salon article, one commenter noted that part of the barrier for people switching from Windows to Mac was, "[I]t involves learning a new operating system, transferring files, and buying new, expensive software to replace the software on your Windows machine." But that is mostly the case when I buy a new Windows machine anyway. My personal data has to be hauled over to the new machine and reclassified in whatever manner MSFT feels is newer and better. The software is mostly a non-issue since the latest versions are included in the purchase price of the new machine. So for me anyway, the barrier was never transferring files. As for learning a new operating system, I liken this comparison to driving stick vs. automatic. You're still driving a car, the experience is just a lot easier.

I had ported over to Windows because that's what everyone else was using. And in the mid-90's it mattered a little more that I have the same OS as everyone else. Part of that was a social phenomenon. Games were coming out for Windows a lot faster and I wanted to play them as my friends were playing them. Email and the internet were growing rapidly and it was easier to be using Outlook rather than Eudora since, again, that's what everyone else was using. Now? Now I use gmail for email, furl for documents and I look longingly at ITunes and IPhoto since organizing music and photos on Windows is such a gigantic pain in the ass. In short, I depend on my OS now more as a vehicle for accessing the online community and organizing some of my larger data files. I don't need Windows and its attendant hassles for that. My hope is that the Mac we buy in the next few months will carry us for at least 3 years if not a little further.

At that point maybe some of these issues will be closer to resolution:

The problem with the modern personal computing environment is that, in some fundamental sense, it's a broken business. "There's a poison in the computer industry," Hertzfeld says, "and that is the fact that the common software base is controlled by a predatory software company with a lack of ethics." In case you didn't get the reference, Hertzfeld is talking about Microsoft, which, through Windows, controls the underlying software development base for the PC industry — essentially, it controls the standards, the keys to empire. "Microsoft is not a good steward of the standards," Hertzfeld says, and if Microsoft is to be beaten, and if a company like Apple is to exert more dominance in the PC world, Microsoft has got to first lose control of the standards. Hertzfeld actually believes that this is occurring; Microsoft is in fact slowly losing its grip on the software development standards, he says. "But I don't think Apple is the driver of that dynamic — I think the free software movement is pushing that."

One postscript. As I think back more on why I switched from Mac to PC, at the time (1996) Mac simply wasn't keeping up with the technology I needed and remaining competitively priced, and the support community was difficult to access. It's possible that this could happen again. It certainly seems as though Mac has broken away from some of the habits that made it difficult for users like me to stay with them, but one never knows.

tags: windows, mac

Blessed are the Children

2005-01-31T13:39:00.000-08:00

The graphic tells you all you need to know.

Many teeth will be gnashed and garments rended over this study of high schools students' opinions on the first amendment. I have not yet read the study, and only became aware of it from the most viewed images section on my yahoo. But looking at the graphic I am unsurprised by the finidings of the study.

Let's look at two lines of the graphic. "Newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories. Students: 51% yes; Teachers 80% yes; Principals 80% yes." Much shok and awe about students freely giving away their first amendment rights. And yet, the last line of the graphic, "Students should be allowed to report controversial issues in their student newspapers without the approval of school authorities. Students 58% yes; Teachers 39% yes; Principals 25% yes." Why do students not much care about the first amendment? Perhaps because in their experience it doesn't mean all that much. And, as we see, extending the freedom of the press to student newspapers isn't something the faculty and staff at schools finds particularly important either.

The headline could very easily read, "Teachers and Principals Gleefully Trample Students' Rights." But that headline would be nonsense. Teachers and principals want children to take their rights seriously. They also realize, however, that if students were allowed to publish newspapers free of faculty approval, something quite inappropriate (or worse) would be printed. And perhaps that would be a good lesson for the students, except for the fact that when the shit hits the fan, the kids aren't going to be only ones who face the consequences. Principals and teachers would confront very real threats to their livelihood even though they had no control over the publication in question. For in the eyes of parents, their children are innocent. It's not a new phenomenon.

These students will probably grow into adults whose opinions on the first amendment fall in line with average adults today. It's just that right now they spend their lives (as all children have throughout the ages) being told what they can and cannot do. They lead very structured lives under near constant supervision. To me the lesson is one for adults. If you tell a person they have certain rights and then use your authority to abuse those rights, that person will start to view those rights as either unimportant or non-existent. Children do not need the ability to publish an unsupervised newspaper (that's what blogs are for!), but they would benefit from the example of the adults in their community guarding their liberty carefully. And in this case, as in so many others, responsibility for setting that example should fall on the parents, not the teachers.

tags: politics, schools, kids

Election Evaluation

2005-01-30T16:48:00.000-08:00

Juan Cole posts his thoughts on the election in Iraq:

With all the hoopla, it is easy to forget that this was an extremely troubling and flawed 'election.' Iraq is an armed camp. There were troops and security checkpoints everywhere. Vehicle traffic was banned. The measures were successful in cutting down on car bombings that could have done massive damage. But even these Draconian steps did not prevent widespread attacks, which is not actually good news. There is every reason to think that when the vehicle traffic starts up again, so will the guerrilla insurgency.

The Iraqis did not know the names of the candidates for whom they were supposedly voting. What kind of an election is anonymous! There were even some angry politicians late last week who found out they had been included on lists without their permission. Al-Zaman compared the election process to buying fruit wholesale and sight unseen. (This is the part of the process that I called a 'joke,' and I stand by that.)

This thing was more like a referendum than an election. It was a referendum on which major party list associated with which major leader would lead parliament.

Many of the voters came out to cast their ballots in the belief that it was the only way to regain enough sovereignty to get American troops back out of their country. The new parliament is unlikely to make such a demand immediately, because its members will be afraid of being killed by the Baath military. One fears a certain amount of resentment among the electorate when this reticence becomes clear.

The most difficult aspect of evaluating this election is that something genuinely good did happen in Iraq, but the mendacity, the American and Iraqi body counts, the cost in treasure and legitimacy to our country and Iraq simply doesn't reconcile. Moreover, I think it is extremely important to note that this election was neither unique nor even particularly new for the Middle East. Prof. Cole: "But this process is not a model for anything, and would not willingly be imitated by anyone else in the region. The 1997 elections in Iran were much more democratic, as were the 2002 elections in Bahrain and Pakistan." Further complicating the reactions of any American is the hysterical invective thrown by some commenters on the right at anyone who has the audacity to make a measured evaluation of the situation on the ground. Could any of these Bush seraphim admit to the public that their pet project in Iraq has been, thus far, less democratic and less legitimate than the stumbling steps toward freedom that have been taking place in Iran for the past decade and more? The comedy of their ambition to march on Tehran is tragic indeed.

tag: iraq

Books: The Politics of War | Chapter Two

2005-01-30T13:57:00.000-08:00

Note: Reclamation of post to my dKos diary.

Chapter 2 of The Politics of War details how, in response to popular fury against economic and political corruption, President Cleveland tried to take the country to war with England. His ambition would be thwarted, but the issue of rebellious insurgents in Cuba would be waiting in the wings for another president inclined to distract the people from their domestic fantasies.

It was in Februray of 1895 that the revolt that would eventually lead to the Spanish-American War began on the island of Cuba. The headquarters of the revolt were, however, over a thousand miles away in New York City.

The main objective of the rebels' guerilla warfare was to create conditions so atrocious in Cuba that the United States in due course would intervene. Securing that intervention was the second prong in the rebels' twofold assault on Spanish rule. For this purpose the civilian arm of the rebellion, the so-called Cuban Junta, set up its headquarters in New York to raise money, purchase arms, and carry out a campaign of agitation and political lobbying for American intervention, the rebels' only secure hope of success.

To say that this objective was a long-shot would be a profound understatement. Of the two major parties, the now imperialist-leaning Republicans were not going to support the cause of guerilla insurgents whose aim was anti-imperialist (i.e. securing Cuban independence from the Spanish Empire) while the Democrats (the party of White Supremacy) who were, "fulminating against the Populists for threatening the South with 'Negro rule,'" could not be expected to support a rebellion being fought by black ex-slaves.

While the particulars of the Cuban revolt were not attractive to either party, the broader concept of a foreign war very much was. After the 1894 off-year elections, both parties had had just about enough of the independent muscle the electorate had been flexing.

Since the onset of the political crisis [in 1890] Republican leaders had been determined to transform America into an active world power and thereby make foreign affairs the preeminent factor in American politics. Politically speaking, it was to be the permanent functional equivalent of the no-issue politics of the precrisis years. The Republicans' "large policy" … had as yet no support in the country. Aside from unconvincing talk about controlling the "Pacific Trade" — an economic figment of politicians and party scribblers — the "large policy" offered no inducement whatever to the American people. … Even on its own terms it was not a means but an end in itself. Its essential purposelessness was well expressed by [E. L.] Godkin in a May 1895 issue of the Nation. What its advocates really wanted, he wrote, was to bring the United States "into contact with considerable foreign powers at as many points as possible." The object of the large policy was to have a large policy. … To gain popular support for so useless a policy Republicans were unrelenting in their efforts to arouse jingo sentiment in the country.

One might expect that such a dramatic and politically expeident shift, indeed one that went against the anti-imperialist foundations of our own revolution, would have been mocked and derided by the opposition. That such a policy was instead supported by the Democrats and the President (who had been abandoned by the people and his party) was a measure of how desperate all politicians of standing in the counrty had become to stop the people from daring to demand that government act as an agent of the people.

If Democrats, too, wanted to "get up a foreign war, if possible," they did not share the Republicans' far-reaching objectives. … In the aftermath of the 1894 elections the Democratic Party was literally fighting for its life. … Shotguns and fraud had failed to halt the southern Populists' advance, but the Democratic Party, risen like a phoenix from the ashes of civil war, had no intention of being sent to extinction by an upstart party of rural stump-speakers, farm journalists, and untried politicians of no great political acumen.

The only hope of the Democrats was to convince the Populists to fuse with the Democrats and form a single national reformist party. Democratic leaders wanted no part whatsoever of general reform (economic, political or otherwise) but they would prefer a little reform to total extinction. To that end, they glommed on to a single reform that was, in the context of the total Populist package, fairly minor.

The major element[] in the Democratic plan [was] to unleash across the rural South and West an intense and minutely organized propaganda campaign designed to persuade poor farmers that the free and unlimited coinage of silver bullion at the ratio of 16 to 1 to gold (twice the market value) would cure all their ills and remedy all their grievances.

The Dems would then make this issue the central tenet of their 1896 platform and, finally, convince the Populists to nominate the Dem candidate at their own convention and thus "fuse" with the Democratic party. This strategy was a profound and dangerous departure for the Dem leadership.

[I]t would set a perilous precedent for genuine party rebellions in the future; it would attract to the Democratic Party agitators and reformers of every sort and description. Most important, it was forcing the southern Democrats, mainstay of the national party, to reverse the very policy on which their power for a generation had rested, that of keeping the rural populace in a stage of apathy, despair, and inertia. … Crying up free silver sa a revolutionary measure lured angry farmers from the People's Party, but it left them no less angry. … Little wonder, then, that [the southern oligarchs] looked forward to "swapping off the free coinage of silver for the Cuba question."

The final remaining piece needed to set the country on a war footing was President Cleveland himself. Cleveland wanted no part of the Cuba issue, but the prospect of free silver truly terrified him.

To Cleveland, the free coinage of silver was the ultimate economic menace, the final proof, as he had put it in September of 1894, that his party was "returning to wallowing in the mire." He had no direct means of stopping the Democrats. Cleveland's power in the party was now virtually nil.

Old Grover did notice, though, that both parties were agitating for some kind of war to "knock the 'pus' out of this 'anarchistic, socialistic and populistic boil.'" While he wouldn't go to war with Spain over Cuba, Cleveland didn't mind going to war with England over Venezuela.

England and Venezuela had been quibbling for a half century over the precise boundary of British Guiana. In December of 1894, Cleveland notified congress that he intended to take up the cause of Venezuela. Earlier that same year, when asked by the Venezuelans to intervene in the dispute, Cleveland had stoutly refused. Eleven months and one electoral ass-whooping later, Cleveland came around to their point of view.

The lame-duck Democratic Congress, however, took the President's cue with alacrity. … It is doubtful if anyone in Congress knew how far Cleveland intended to go, but the nation's legislators clearly approved the direction he was taking. Trouble with Britain was the one species of international wrangling that was certain at any time to win the electorate's approval.

That the US would avidly inject itself into a boundary dispute bewteen England and Venezuela was astoundingly odd. In order to get the country totally behind him, Cleveland needed to make the issue about America rather than England & Venezuela. To that end, he reached back in time over 70 years to a speech given by President James Monroe. Cleveland's righteous hammer against England would be the Monroe Doctrine.

The Monroe Doctrine, as it came to be known, had long held an honored place among the public sentiments of the American people, although it had been honored but intermittently by American administrations and had never been formally recognized by any act or resolution of Congress. Committed in the past to a restrained foreign policy, Cleveland himself had shown no interest in the Monroe Doctrine. … From Monroe's speech he now saw implications that no previous President had hitehero detected. It had not occured to anyone before Cleveland that a mere boundary dispute between a [South] American republic and an established European colony could possibly violate the Monroe Doctrine.

Logical failings were of no consequence to the country's legislators in 1895, however. The full rot of the American political system had come to fruition in the early months of that year. In January the Supreme Court invalidated most of the Sherman Antitrust Act, with the tacit complicity of the Attorney General. In February Cleveland, "made a private gold-buying deal with J.P. Morgan and August Belmont. Forcing the President to accept harsh terms, the two bankers netted themselves a windfall profit of some $7 million within a matter of hours."

[O]n April 8 the Supreme Court declared a federal income tax on landed property an invalid "assault upon capital" and ultimately decided on May 20, in one of the worst decisions in Court history, that no federal income tax was valid. … Millions of Americans, thrown into yet another spasm of rage, now saw their worst suspicions confirmed — the government, the laws, the Constitution itself, were no longer the people's. The rich and the privileged had appropriated everything, and the Supreme Court had become their shameless tool.

In short, Cleveland & the parties needed a war, and they needed it now. Cleveland put facilitating war with England in the hands of one Richard Olney. Olney's risible letter to England on the Venezuela issue said that if the British refused arbitration, the U.S., "would conclude that the British had committed an 'invasion and conquest of Venezuelan territory.'" For themeselves, the Brits "noted, correctly, that Monroe's Doctrine had undergone a 'strange development' in Olney's hands and that the disputed frontier of Venezuela 'has nothing to do with any questions dealt with by President Monroe.'"

England's defiance of Cleveland's nonsensical claims whipped the country at large into a proper jingo fury. The people may have had problems with the oligarchy, but they would damned before they'd roll over for England.

It was only the movings of Imperial Germany that caused England to turn away from its raving, unhinged former colonies. However, as Karp notes, the damage had been done.

With his Venezuela adventure Cleveland had forced a major breach in America's traditional foreign policy; he had endorsed with the prestige of the presidency the proposition that it was America's duty to right wrongs abroad; he had laid sweeping claim to American hegemony in Latin America. Most important, he had revealed to the nation's political leaders that the American people could indeed be diverted from their domestic concerns if the right sort of foreign crusade was offered.

One thing that has not yet been discussed in this diary, but that Karp makes very clear in his book, is that the media of the time were totally complicit in the designs of the political leadership. The press was totally partisan and with both parties agitating for war, there was no voice of reason in the media. It is sometimes advanced that the media were the driving force behind the Spanish-American War, and the McKinley acted reluctantly, but in response to great popular outcry. As Karp will later show, this is not how it happened at all.

tag: books

Books: The Politics of War | Introduction

2005-01-30T13:46:00.000-08:00

Note: Part of my writings aggregation project. First post on The Politics of War in my dKos diary.

In the August 2003 issue of Harper's Lewis Lapham used a brief discussion of the fiasco in Iraq (and its hoodwinking casus belli) to recommend a book and bring to light some of the facts that led to an even more deplorable foreign boondoggle; the Spanish-American war. The book is The Politics of War by Walter Karp.

As Lapham so ably notes:

The Politics of War brings to bear the clarity of hindsight on the chicanery of the present, and by so doing answers questions never asked by the Wall Street Journal or dreamed of in the philosophy of CNN. Just as Operation Iraqi Freedom was not about the rescue of the Iraqi people, so also the Spanish-American War was not about "the sacred cause of Cuban independence," and our entry into World War I not about making the world "safe for democracy." Presidents Wilson and McKinley sought to punish foreign crimes against humanity (the ones committed by villains in Brussels and Havana) in order to make America safe for the domestic crimes against humanity committed by fine, upstanding, corporate gentlemen in Boston and Chicago. If by 1890 the Industrial Revolution had made America rich, so also it had alerted the electorate to the unequal division of the spoils. People had begun to notice the loaded dice in the hand of the railroad and banking monopolies, the tax burden shifted from capital to labor. A severe depression in the winter of 1893-94 brought with it widespread unemployment, vicious strikes in the Pennsylvania steel mills and West Virginia coal mines, hobo armies on the march in the Ohio Valley and the Appalachian Mountains. The demand for social and political reform prompted the angry stirring of a Populist movement across the prairies of the Middle West, and as a cure for the distemper of an aroused citizenry—"something," in the words of an alarmed U.S. senator, to knock the "pus" out of this "anarchistic, socialistic and populistic boil"—the McKinley Administration came up with war in Cuba, the conquest of the Philippines, the annexation of Puerto Rico, and an imperialist foreign policy deemed "essential to the greatness of every splendid people," necessary "to the strength and dignity of any nation."

I recently picked up the book and I can attest (having read 100-odd pages) that it is a sweeping history and indictment of the politics of the late 19th century. As embroiled as the US now is in the affairs of the world, it is hard to imagine just how antithetical our 19th century forerunners would have found our current international disposition. Indeed, the 'splendid little war' that launched American imperialism was the most stark, contrived and (at the time) un-American reversals of our country's foreign and domestic policy.

My next 14 diary entries will cover the chapters in the book and my thoughts on them as I read through. This book is important for two reasons. First it reminds us of how cynical incumbents are and how desperate they are to hold on to their power. This is not a tendency that is particular to any party. As Kos has pointed out the current minority leader in the senate is running on his ability to funnel federal dollars to his home state more effectively than his rival could. It is a political fact that incumbents and power brokers will do whatever they think gives them the best chance at retaining their seat.

Howard Dean has pointed out that for some time now the Dems in Washington have been engaged in little more than damage control. As a result, they largely hold on to the power they have and propose little inspiring or principled legislation. The chapters of the book decsribe how the Democrats of an earlier age engaged in similar, though far more cynical, behavior.

The second reason this book is important is noted by Karp himself in the preface; for an unknown reason, most historians treat foreign & domestic affairs as entirely separate matters. This is both strange and unfortunate. As Karp puts it:

[N]o substantial connections have ever been made between the turbulent domestic politics of the [Gilded] age and the increasingly ambitious foreign politics of that age. It is as if they were two separate historical sequences, each flowing through its own watertight channel, one labeled "domestic" and the other "foreign."
Such is the was American history — ideological, Marxist history excepted — has come to be written. The diplomatic historian traces the history of foreign affairs as if domestic politics were offstage disturbances; the historian of domestic politics treats the explosions of war as if they were offstage disturbances. The historian who copes with both in the confines of a single book puts them into alternate chapters, as if it were virtually unthinkable that domestic and foreign politics could possibly be elements of a single unified history.
I say "as if" because no one, so far as I know, has ever argued explicitly that foreign affairs and domestic affairs could not possibly be related. Stated baldly, the proposition is absurd. Were it true, we would have to believe, for example, that Presidents who have faced a mounting sea of troubles at home have nonetheless conducted their foreign policy without the slightest regard for those troubles. We would have to believe, in other words, that individual American Presidents were themselves divided into watertight compartments, one labeled "domestic" and the other "foreign." We would have to believe, too, that public men faced with a dangerously divided country could not possibly want to see it united by a patriotic struggle against a foreign foe; that men of power forced to cope with bitter and burning domestic questions would not wish to change the question before the country by pushing foreign affairs forward. Such propositions are not only contrary to common sense, they are falsified by the overwhelming evidence of history, for the political history of mankind records innumerable examples of rulers using foreign affairs for domestic ends.

Walter Karp, The Politics of War (Franklin Square Press, 1973, 2003), xv-xvi.

tag: books

Books: The Politics of War | Chapter One

2005-01-30T13:30:00.000-08:00

Note: In the four years I've been blogging, I've contributed to a number of different sites, both my own and others, but never kept a single storehouse of all my various writings. Some are clearly lost in the ether, but I hope to find and aggregate as many as I can here. Some, like those on PolState I'm content to leave where they are, but others like this one from my Daily Kos diary, I'd like to keep. There are two other posts on this book that I posted to my diary that seem to have disappeared. Not finished digging however. And I need to call Stu to get access to the FE posts. Some good pre-Iraq thinking done there as I recall.

This was originally posted to my dKos diary on January 16, 2004.

Chapter 1 of The Politics of War covers the political turmoil that confronted the two major parties from the 1890 elections through the 1894 elections. 1890 heralded the end of the strong party identity that most voters had held since the Civil War. By 1894 both parties had controlled the presidency and the congress only to be summarily and resoundingly rebuked by the electorate on election day. The turmoil was extended and affected both parties because instead of reacting to the demands for reform voiced by the electorate, the leaders of the parties fought tooth and nail against the people. This combative strategy led to the creation of the People's Party which, by 1894, was in a position to sweep away the Democratic Party almost entirely.

Until 1890 the American electorate had been, for a generation, a predictable and readily managed body of voters. In the off-year election of 1890, however, they delivered a stunning rebuke to the long-dominant Republican Party, reducing its House majority to a mere rump of 88 representatives and sweeping the party out of power in states that had gone Republican since the first election of Abraham Lincoln.

Because the people had for a generation, 'voted as they shot,' in the Civil War, party leaders had become almost totally divorced from the concerns of the voters.

The electorate's fidelity to party enabled the leaders to pursue on the state and local levels corrupt and self-serving policies in the certain knowledge that exceedingly few of their supporters could stomach the prospect of voting for the rival party. It enabled them to overawe independent-minded politicians with crushing assaults on their disloyalty to the party that had chosen to advance them. Most important, it allowed the two national parties, for almost a generation, to keep significant economic issues out of the political arena — issues that might split a party organization and weaken its hold on the voters' elected representatives.

It would be the Republicans that later (under McKinley) got economic issues off the table with Spanish-American War. Until then the leaders of both parties would stop at literally nothing to thwart the collective will for reform coming from the voters. In contrast to the Democracy, the Republican Party was the principled, liberal party that had won the civil war, freed the slaves and extended (to a certain extent) long suppressed freedoms to them, and presided over the huge industrial expansion of the late 19th century. Yet by 1890 that expansion was over and the high tariffs that had for so long protected American industry now served only to enrich the business elites that reaped the excess profits from the protectionist policies.

By dispensing corrupt tariff favors, the [Republican] party leaders expected to enjoy not only the fruits of office but irresponsible oligarchic power, the power to control the dominant party in the country.
With these self-serving considerations in mind, what the Republican-controlled Congress did in 1890 had the quality of sheer, brazen impudence. Knowing full well the political risks they were running … the Republican leaders in Congress raised the tariff rates higher than ever, deliberately bestowing on the privileged manufacturers even greater windfall profits than they had previously enjoyed. That the Senate Republicans killed a House bill to protect Negro voting rights in the South in order to win votes for the 1890 tariff only underscored the waning virtue, to put it mildly, of the erstwhile party of Lincoln.

Voter disgust led to the ouster of the party of Lincoln in late 1890. However, their replacements would prove no better, if for different reasons. Even when handed control of the Congress and the Presidency in the 1894 election, the Democratic Party would do nothing to respond to voter calls for reform. Indeed the nomination of Grover Cleveland (a politician guaranteed not to enact any kind of reform, or almost any legislation at all) led to the creation of the People's Party.

The Democracy was helpless because it was in many ways the inverse of the Republican Party. Where the Republicans were organized into a quasi-national party, the Democrats were simply a party of the opposition. That meant that Democratic politicians from different parts of the country stood in polar opposition to their ostensible co-partisans on the major political issues of the day.

In its essential, stripped-down, irreducible historic core, the Democratic Party was a mere congeries of local parties, principally a number of urban strongholds in the North and several state-ruling "rings," as they were known, in the old Confederacy. Each local party satrapy survived by making appropriate local gestures to its voters, often with scant regard for the contrary gestures made by party colleagues elsewhere.

Therefore, in order to stay a party at all the Democrats, when in power, had to attempt to accomplish as little as humanly possible. In contrast to the Republicans who refused to take action, the Democrats were unable to take action. To defend such an indefensible legislative strategy (and thus attempt to retain legitimacy) the Dems resorted to pure bluster.

Since almost any national legislative program would swiftly sunder so motley a band of political allies, the central national tenet of the Democrats was the principle of doing nothing, which party leaders often described as "True Democracy." Democrats dressed up the principle in a number of wrappings. They preached it as the very essence of constitutional rule: "states' rights … home rule" and "strict construction" of the Constitution ostensibly forbade the general goverment from doing almost anything.

It was at this time that the Republicans first adopted the principles of what would become known as the large policy. With no desire to respond to the calls for reform, party leaders decided that their course of action lay in distracting the populace from their domestic concerns. To find a national cause big enough to sweep the people into a proper jingo fury, they reached back half a century to the concept of manifest destiny and adopted it as a part of the Republican Party platform in 1892.

For their part the Democrats managed to so infuriate the populace that in 1894 they were electorally annihilated in the off-year elections.

[The Republicans] expected to ride the depression to victory anyway, since Cleveland and his party had performed the singular feat of alienating virtually every major category of voter. Even so, the results of the 1894 elections were electrifying. It remains to this day the most sweeping rebuke of any President and his party ever suffered in an off-year election. Punished by a volatile electorate, the Democrats lost a total of 113 seats in Congress. In the Northeast, the Democrats' congressional contingent was reduced from 88 to 9; in twenty-four states the party no longer had congressional representation at all. In the South, despite the Democrats' increased use of terror and corruption, the People's Party now stood on the verge of victory throughout the Old Confederacy. Whatever else lay in store for the country, the post-Civil War party system had been destroyed forever.

I hope to make the chapter reviews a little shorter than this one, but initial chapter does a great job of laying out the political turmoil that led party leaders to attempt to wag the dog. For truly, that is the only way to describe the course of action upon which McKinley would launch the country. Throughout the book, I have been most struck by the total contempt in which the populace was held by the politicians they elected. Rather than as representatives and agents of the collective will, congressmen saw themselves as rulers of the country. The will of the people was to be fought at every turn in order to hold onto the levers of power. The idea that goverment in general was in no way responsible to the people was to be developed further over the ensuing decade. People who demanded that the goverment fulfill its responsibility and be more responsive to collective will would be derided as beggers. At every turn the reforms that would be enacted were made with as little good faith as possible, and the truly principled politicians would lose many more battles than they won.

The poltical corollaries between that age and this make the book endlessly fascinating for me. I'll attempt to draw some of parallels that I see more clearly in the future, but for the moment, I wanted to lay out Karp's presentation of the facts with a minimum of input.

Daily Kos and other sites that are gaining popularity and noteriety could become that modern day muckrakers that forced the issues of reform to the surface in the early years of the 20th century. The book lays out well just how steep the uphill slope is for anyone that wishes to make things better for the majority of the people.

tag: books