Friday, September 19, 2008

19 Sep 2008 11:05 am

To Advise Or Not?

In yet aother attempt to personalize and demonize the financial crisis (what else does he know how to do?) McCain attacks Obama over Franklin Raines. There's a subtle racial undercurrent here as well:

Obama denies the connection.

19 Sep 2008 11:03 am

"Not Somebody I Could Endorse, Ever"

My hero, Ron Paul, proven as prescient on the economy as he was on Iraq, explains why he can't back McCain:

19 Sep 2008 10:41 am

Autonomy, What Autonomy?

Russia arranges for permanent bases in S. Ossetia and Abkhazia.

19 Sep 2008 10:34 am

Our Man In Iraq

Colin Kahl evaluates Odierno, Petraeus's replacement:

Is he up to the task? I think he is. Even if he is not the completely "transformed" individual he is sometimes described to be, that is partly because the initial view of him was a bit of a caricature. Most importantly, what Odierno brings to the job is a "feel" for the current situation in Iraq and a relationship with key Iraqi players. Leveraging this tactile sense and working these relationships may hold the key to consolidating progress in Iraq. In my recent discussions with Odierno about the way forward in Iraq, it was clear that he has a multi-layered understanding of the core political challenges that confront him, and is ready to take them on.

19 Sep 2008 10:19 am

Frazzled

Robert Reich doesn't approve of the rumored bailout of all bailouts, while Felix Salmon reports that business journalists aren't getting a lot of sleep this week.

19 Sep 2008 09:57 am

Wallace’s Talent

Deborah Treisman remembers David Foster Wallace:

Great literature, Wallace once said, made him feel “unalone—intellectually, emotionally, spiritually.” He was one of the few satirists able to avoid meanness; he was moral without being judgmental. He took on the absurdities of modern life in an attempt to understand or to parse them, not to mock them.

19 Sep 2008 09:27 am

That Pesky Bush Doctrine

How does it relate Pakistan?:

There's been some discussion lately about what exactly the Bush Doctrine is. But the question is increasingly becoming, Does it apply to what Hammes reminds us is "a nuclear-armed nation with 170 million people"?

19 Sep 2008 09:03 am

Groomzilla

What has the California Supreme Court done?

How can I simultaneously meet the expectations of glamour coming from a society that fetishizes gay style, live up to the childhood memories of my mother's wedding, and operate within the constraints of my budget, schedule, and fiancé's patience?

Ask the straight people. That's what we did. And ignore gay style. It's so 20th century.

19 Sep 2008 08:54 am

McCain's Economic Sense

Bainbridge isn't pleased with McCain going after SEC chairman Cox:

There’s so much stupidity here, it’s hard to know where to begin.

Economic conservatives should be as alarmed at McCain's zaniness as foreign policy realists.

19 Sep 2008 08:42 am

The Obama Polling Surge

It's continuing. Nate Silver:

On the strength of an abundance of state and national polling, Barack Obama has retaken the lead in our Electoral College projection. Our model now forecasts him to win the election 61.2 percent of the time; it also gives him a slight, half-point advantage in the popular vote. Yesterday, Obama was projected to win the Electoral College just 45 percent of the time, so this is a rather dramatic move upward.

19 Sep 2008 08:05 am

Continuums Are Bunk

Douthat's porn-adultery linkage runs afoul of science.

19 Sep 2008 07:35 am

The Palin Slide

Noah Millman's pro-Palin optimism fades:

...pretty much everything [Palin} has said or done since her appearance on the national stage – beginning with her acceptance speech – has soured me on her. It’s decreasingly plausible to me that she’s who I thought she was when she was nominated. Based on her performance on the campaign trail so far, she’s a shallow and demagogic politician. And if, on the off chance, that’s not who she is, then it’s instructive that the McCain campaign seems to be eager to have her play this particular character.

19 Sep 2008 04:03 am

Quote For The Day

Thursday, September 18, 2008

18 Sep 2008 09:32 pm

Obama Distortion III

New Obama ads are getting sleazier:

The second Obama ad is even more egregious in misleading people about McCain's positions. The ad says McCain "voted against tax incentives for alternative energy--against ethanol, against fuel cells, against hybrids, against electric cars, against wind and solar, against geothermal." Then the ad says McCain wants to give $4 billion in tax breaks to oil companies. This is all a nifty bit of misdirection. The oil company tax breaks the ad refers to are a corporate tax cut McCain favors, which would apply to almost all profitable companies, not just oil companies--including those companies that work on wind, solar and biofuels. And McCain does support specific tax incentives for alternatives to oil.

18 Sep 2008 08:15 pm

You Sure About That?

Another gaffe?

"The regulators were asleep, my friends," McCain said. "The chairman of the SEC serves at the appointment of the president. And in my view has betrayed the public trust. If I were president today, I would fire him."

But while the president nominates and the Senate confirms the SEC chair, a commissioner of an independent regulatory commission cannot be removed by the president.

The McCain camp's response:

Continue reading "You Sure About That?" »

18 Sep 2008 07:44 pm

Obama Pivots

Obama whacks McCain over Social Security.

18 Sep 2008 07:16 pm

The Kindle As Trojan Horse?

Boris Kachka worries about the book publishing industry:

Right now, Amazon is making little or nothing on Kindle books. Lay down your $359 and you can get most books for $9.99. Publishers list that same Kindle version for about $17.99, though, and—as with all retailers—charge Amazon roughly half that price for it. Which means that Amazon keeps only a dollar on each book, while the publishers make $9.

Continue reading "The Kindle As Trojan Horse?" »

18 Sep 2008 06:23 pm

The Perils Of Nude Blogging

From the Washington Redskins' blog, a peekaboo sans jammies:

There's no explanation as to whose penis was shown in the picture. Applying logical thinking, however, one would have to wonder why another pantsless man would be holding Cooley's playbook. Also, having seen the uncropped version, it's hard to imagine that someone could have posted the photo without noticing Little Chrissy hanging out. But Whatever.

18 Sep 2008 06:21 pm

Empresses And Clothes

A reader writes:

Most people cannot grasp that a specific person is a pathological liar until a) it bites them in the ass and b) there isn't a shadow of another explanation for the bite marks.  If only a) is true, they will come up with endless excuses. If only b) is true, they will rationalize away why the bite wasn't so harsh or wasn't even a bite at all given the context.

Those of us who observe that pathological lying is both possible and more common than generally assumed frequently get ourselves into your situation: people can't handle being faced with this sad fact and blame us for pointing it out.

Continue reading "Empresses And Clothes" »

18 Sep 2008 05:50 pm

Vive La Resistance! II

We know what has happened to the Republican party in foreign policy. Neoconservatism now has undisputed intellectual hegemony. The campaign of John McCain, and the emergence of the blank slate of Sarah Palin (a blank slate currently being filled in by AIPAC) reinforces this view. McCain is much, much more neoconservative than even Bush. What this means is that those of us who still believe in a conservative foreign policy - reality-based, idealistic within clear realist boundaries, cognizant of America's mounting fiscal collapse, aware of the fact that power politics never ends, chastened by the Iraq fiasco, concerned about reinforcing alliances and maintaining a solid military - have our work cut out.

The very promising new conservative online magazine, Culture 11, is beginning the task of reconstructing a conservative foreign policy in the wake of the Bush-Cheney fiasco and McCain's belligerence. Here's a great essay trying to re-think foreign policy from the perspective of America's founders. Money quote:

There are two Washingtonian principles which I believe should serve as the basis for a long overdue audit of U.S. foreign policy, certainly since the end of the Cold War. The first is Washington’s admonition that “permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded.”

Continue reading "Vive La Resistance! II" »

18 Sep 2008 05:39 pm

Palin's "Conservatism"

A reader writes:

Let me get this straight. Governor Palin squandered Alaska's budget surplus in $1,200 checks to each Alaskan at a time when the conservative move would have been to wait and see what the energy market did (it's tanking) and in the same breath asked for Federal earmarks?  That's the change we need?

Deference, please.

18 Sep 2008 05:15 pm

The Desperation Of Denial

After Bush, Republicans harping about big government is, well, risible. I laid out the indictment in my book. Bruce Bartlett did the same. There's a level of denial here that is truly unhinged. No party has done more to destroy America's fiscal standing than the GOP under Bush. No president has grown government more sharply since LBJ and, by some measures, FDR:

How many slogans has McCain gone through now? There was "Reform, Prosperity, Peace" ; "Country First"; and now "Change Is Coming." I'm probably forgetting a few others. It doesn't bode well for his campaign.

18 Sep 2008 04:55 pm

Palin Cancels California Swing

Hmmm.

18 Sep 2008 04:52 pm

Those "Moral Fags"

I misread this:

You and your reader are confused about that internal email: it was a message from one of the anonymous hackers/pranksters/griefers to another. They refer to themselves and others as 'fags' and 'tards' as a kind of group identification, (a member from Ohio might call himself an Ohiofag, and they collectively refer to themselves as /b/tards, after the /b/ image group on the site 4chan, http://www.4chan.org).

18 Sep 2008 04:44 pm

Auto-Pretty

New Scientist looks at the future of photography:

Although digital image manipulation – Photoshopping – can improve a person's appearance it takes time and skill. But software being developed at Tel Aviv University in Israel aims to automatically make photographed faces more attractive.

The system uses a set of basic rules about what makes a face attractive, derived by asking volunteers to rate the attractiveness of around 200 photographed faces. Tommer Leyvand's team built software that alters faces to match the facial proportions and distances between features that were agreed to be attractive.

The effect is subtle enough that a person is still recognisable as themselves, but somehow prettier.

18 Sep 2008 04:20 pm

Mental Health Break

From my single favorite show on cable:

18 Sep 2008 04:19 pm

'President' Zapatero

It appears that prime minister Zapatero is sometimes referred to as president Zapatero in Spain, because he is "president" of the government. In America, prime ministers tend to be called prime ministers, but for the record, Scheuneman can claim some technical validity here.

18 Sep 2008 03:57 pm

Palin And The Gays

A reader writes:

I've been reading some of the hacked emails from Palin's personal account (okay, I'm a small, small person), and couldn't help noticing that whoever was trying to protect the account has quite the streak of genuine, small-town, redneck homophobia. Two examples:

". . . a moral fag changed the password..."

"SAVE AND POST, FAGGOT"

Continue reading "Palin And The Gays" »

18 Sep 2008 03:35 pm

Face of The Day

Dina Martina, one of the great comic geniuses of my generation, back-stage at Showgirls at the Crown and Anchor in Provincetown, Massachusetts. By Chris Shipman.

18 Sep 2008 03:18 pm

Landlord Or Banker

Noah Millman is wary of the AIG buy out.

18 Sep 2008 03:10 pm

The Palin Bubble

Rove predicts interest in his Manchurian candidate will wane. He hopes so anyway. I'll keep doing the vetting McCain didn't, and will keep tabulating her serial lies. No relenting here. And no deference to public servants ever.

18 Sep 2008 03:01 pm

Why Is She Crashing?

Ross takes a stab at it:

Palin's fall, I suspect, has been driven primarily by negative press reports on her Alaska career (with the anti-Palin notebook dumps in the Times and the Post leading the way), ongoing coverage of the still-simmering Troopergate scandal - and especially by her widely-watched, none-too-impressive interview with Charlie Gibson, which aired the day her slide in the polls began. The Obama campaign, meanwhile, has busied itself going after McCain - for lying in his ads, for being out of touch on the economy, etc. etc. - and avoiding the "she's just a small-town mayor" attacks that they trotted out immediately after the Palin pick was announced. Or at least that's been my impression - it's possible that there's been a barrage of anti-Palin fire from the Obama camp that I've missed, but by and large it seems like they've been doing a decent job of just getting out of the way, and leaving it to the media (and Palin herself) to undo her initial spike in popularity.

Yglesias differs. I don't think we have yet seen the real Palin crash. But I'm a patient man.

18 Sep 2008 02:49 pm

Google Trends And Palin

The interest is still overwhelming - and more people are searching for her than for any of the others (she's blue, Obama's red, McCain's orange and poor old Biden's green (with envy):

She's even beating "boobies."

18 Sep 2008 02:28 pm

Ron Paul Was Right, Ctd.

"I fear the government has passed the point of no return. We have the irony of a free-market administration doing things that the most liberal Democratic administration would never have been doing in its wildest dreams. It’s pure crisis management. It’s the Treasury and the Federal Reserve lurching from crisis to crisis without a clear statement on how financial failures will be handled in the future. They’re afraid to articulate such a policy. The safety net they are spreading seems to widen every day with no end in sight," - Ron Chernow, a leading American financial historian.

18 Sep 2008 02:25 pm

Quote For The Day

"Sarah is that standard God has raised up to stop the flood. She has the anointing ... Back in the 1980s, I sensed that Israel's little-known Benjamin Netanyahu was chosen by God for an important end-time role. I still believe that. I now have that same sense about Sarah Palin," - an evangelical email now making the rounds. May God save us from these fanatics.

18 Sep 2008 02:14 pm

Gallup Daily

The Obama surge is real.

18 Sep 2008 02:11 pm

What Allies?

Scheuneman's and McCain's diss of a NATO ally continues to reverberate:

Yes, Zapatero is a center-left politician who pulled troops out of Iraq, but Spanish troops are also fighting alongside American troops in Afghanistan. He stood up to Hugo Chavez, a dictator who is actually problematic for the U.S., at the Ibero-American Summit. He is the leader of an important European democracy. And John McCain wouldn't meet with him as President? That is just nuts.

Continue reading "What Allies?" »

18 Sep 2008 01:59 pm

Scheuneman: President Zapatero?

The email:

"In this week's interview, Senator McCain did not rule in or rule out a White House meeting with President Zapatero, a NATO ally," he said in an e-mail. "If elected, he will meet with a wide range of allies in a wide variety of venues but is not going to spell out scheduling and meeting location specifics in advance. He also is not going to make reckless promises to meet America's adversaries. It's called keeping your options open, unlike Senator Obama, who has publicly committed to meeting some of the world's worst dictators unconditionally in his first year in office."

I thought Zapatero was the prime minister, not president. Spain has a monarchy. But this is the McCain campaign. They have no clue about foreign policy, except the permanent search for new and more enemies.

18 Sep 2008 01:50 pm

A Fast Learner

Scott Horton explains how Sarah Palin has used Bush justice:

First, Palin has asserted that her records and communications are protected by executive privilege. Second, her senior assistants have been instructed not to cooperate with the probe. Third, the Alaska attorney general (a Palin appointee and confidant who faces conflict-of-interest charges himself) has issued a series of opinions designed to bar the way for the probe. So how does the McCain team deal with accusations that it is attempting a cover-up of Palin’s involvement in a matter which, at the very least, raises severe questions about Palin’s credibility? They argue that the inquiry should be handled by the Alaska Personnel Board, not by the legislature. The Personnel Board, of course, is dominated by Palin’s cronies and reports to her. If it works in Washington, why not in Juneau?

18 Sep 2008 01:25 pm

Hollywood's Allegedly Pro-Gay Machers

The epochal vote on marriage equality in California is the biggest test yet for the gay civil rights movement. But many big bucks Hollywood donors have yet to put their money where their mouths so often are. Brad Pitt has done his bit, but many actually gay figures seem AWOL:

Missing (as of Sept. 10) from the [donor] rolls were: Rosie O’Donnell, whose Feb. 27, 2004, marriage to Kelli Carpenter was nullified; Sir Elton John, who tied the civil partnership knot with partner David Furnish in England; rock star Melissa Etheridge, whose domestic partnership/wedding to actress Tammy Lynn Michaels Sept. 22, 2003, was celebrated in In Style magazine.

Continue reading "Hollywood's Allegedly Pro-Gay Machers" »

18 Sep 2008 01:08 pm

Vive La Resistance! I

Former publisher of National Review, Wick Allison, endorses Obama. Why? Because no conservative can support the current GOP:

Today it is so-called conservatives who are cemented to political programs when they clearly don’t work. The Bush tax cuts—a solution for which there was no real problem and which he refused to end even when the nation went to war—led to huge deficit spending and a $3 trillion growth in the federal debt. Facing this, John McCain pumps his “conservative” credentials by proposing even bigger tax cuts. Meanwhile, a movement that once fought for limited government has presided over the greatest growth of government in our history. That is not conservatism; it is profligacy using conservatism as a mask.

Continue reading "Vive La Resistance! I" »

18 Sep 2008 12:37 pm

Halperin Fires! Misses!

Nate Silver:

A tight race?  It certainly is a tight race, and has been all year. But this, of course, is not really the lead story. The story is that there has been a rather dramatic shift in the national polling toward Barack Obama in the past 2-4 days, coinciding with the Wall Street financial crisis. Some pundits will love this, since it gives them something fresh to talk about. But others, like those cynical beat writers in the Wrigley Field press box, will be annoyed, because it means that the the story they were telling us just a few days ago -- that the Obama campaign was in trouble, that Sarah Palin was the greatest thing since sliced bread -- has now been more or less invalidated.

18 Sep 2008 12:27 pm

The View From Your Window

Kimberton, Pennsylvania, 1.52 pm.

18 Sep 2008 12:18 pm

Another Odd Lie

That question the Dish aired yesterday about whether Sarah Palin lied about asking her girls to vote before she accepted the McCain offer? It's settled. The Confabulist struck again!

18 Sep 2008 12:14 pm

The Anti-Anti-Palin Posture

Ah, the world-weariness of it all. But it still does not add up to a case for Palin.

18 Sep 2008 12:07 pm

McCain-Palin's Economic Incoherence

Shying and plunging from conservative economics to incoherent populist boilerplate:

The real lesson of this quotation is that the Republicans have no good language for discussing recent events.  They're not allowed to say anything that sounds like "showing sympathy for Wall Street," so they have to find someone else to show sympathy for but they can't turn to traditional Democratic rhetoric about how an unregulated capitalist economy is failing us.  Citing the construction bonds is like worrying that the financial crisis will postpone the retirement of many professors. Yes that is true but it's odd (though not unprecedented) if that's the first thing that comes to your mind or for that matter to your talking points.

18 Sep 2008 11:37 am

Sarah Palin And Magical Thinking

A reader writes:

Regarding the "odd lies" of Sarah Palin. I grew up in a deeply evangelical family, and through the lens of evangelical thinking the world is magical, populated with demons and angels, devils and gods. You are taught not to believe your eyes or your senses, that the wisdom of man is foolishness to god. That belief is Truth.  That belief is Truth before reality is truth.  What comes out of this is what I'll call magical thinking. 

You feel the presence of God, feel Him talking to you, feel the mission of your life, the purpose the plan the direction given to you by God. So everything becomes like a mythic fairy tale. You get in the habit of fitting the day to day realities into a 'story' the life story of God's purpose in your life.

This is how Sarah becoming Governor is destiny.

Continue reading "Sarah Palin And Magical Thinking" »

18 Sep 2008 11:12 am

As If The Last Few Weeks Didn't Happen

Firstread:

If we really [are] back to the pre-convention numbers, this is not a good development for McCain going into the debates. He needed the tie to hold until the debates. The last thing he needs is for the debates to be another moment where he has to catch up rather than solidify his lead. Because after the debates, there really are no more chances to move the race.

The last three weeks have been the most surreal I can remember in any campaign, centered, of course, on the on-going farce of the Palin candidacy. But if you had been on another planet for the past month and had been asked to predict it, you would have guessed two convention bounces almost identical to the ones we have seen and the race returning back to a small but clear Obama lead. I think white racism means that Obama needs more than a small but clear lead to win. But still: from afar, no real change after the last month. Advantage: Obama.

18 Sep 2008 10:45 am

Another Strange Story

Judge Judy has a great aphorism: "If it doesn't make sense, it isn't true." I couldn't help thinking of Judge Judy - who is now the only person I really want to cross examine Sarah Palin - when reading this:

HANNITY: One last question that I didn't ask you: Did you watch Tina Fey on "Saturday Night Live"?

PALIN: I watched with the volume all the way down and I thought it was hilarious, she was spot on.

Continue reading "Another Strange Story" »

18 Sep 2008 10:31 am

McCain's Latest

It now seems indisputable: John McCain doesn't know who the prime minister of Spain is and thinks he's some anti-American leftist in South America. Now imagine if Obama made that kind of gaffe.