May 09, 2008
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Afterward I considered eating my gun, but that's a trick you can only perform once. So I descended the stairs and informed my husband that I was tempted to do something freaky: "what if I just let the people who know how to do phone service do that, and the people who know how to give us extra TV channels do that, and stop trying to save ten dollars a month or whatever by getting all these functions from one entity, gambling that they'll actually be able to deliver it properly?"
He was into the idea, but I'm going to make one more round of calls on Monday to be sure. At least the internet part is easy: x amount of bandwidth for y amount of money.
Tomorrow morning's good time: Compare carpeting to vinyl tile. Conveniently, carpeting is priced per square yard, and vinyl tile is priced per square foot. Fortunately, my mother will probably pick up the flooring costs for us (instead of buying us a groovy energy-efficient washer-dryer), so that will help out a lot. Yet I still have no intention of paying more than it's worth—whether we're "on scholarship," or not (the first estimate I got was unacceptable, no matter who's paying). So back to the calculator I go, reminding myself that a square yard is not really three times a square foot, but rather nine. Because flooring arithmetic uses one more dimension than, say, cooking arithmetic.
We're considering taking the old carpeting out, putting sawdust on the floor, and living without television, telephone, or the internet. We can communicate with the outside world by carrier pigeon. (A the H suggests that we might even release those pigeons and seal up the windows, so as not to take a chance on having to see the outside world. "Also," he reminds me, "that would save us money on window treatments.")
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May 08, 2008
Barack Obama accused John McCain of “smearing him” by claiming that Hamas wants Obama to be President. But this isn’t a smear, it is fact. A spokesman for Hamas, you will recall, did endorse Obama. [. . . ]Matt Brooks of the Republican Jewish Coalition had this comment:
It’s understandable that Obama would like to make this go away. However, the reality is, Hamas is comfortable with Obama and they endorsed him. It’s the truth, not a ‘smear.’As for the McCain camp, this will be an early test of their willingness to go toe-to-toe with Obama. Will they let this Obama remark pass? Or set the record straight and make clear Obama is, as he did in the “100 year” fight, fudging the facts? And we can expect more of this. Every bad fact for Obama or questionable association is a “smear” and every attempt by the McCain camp to set the record straight is “gutter politics.” It is up to McCain’s team to decide whether they will play along or call foul.
I subscribe to the theory that Obama has already made himself look bad by going after McCain. The better retort was, "ah, those crazy Hamas people; they have no idea what is and isn't in their best interests."
Or, as Michael Totten put it (Glenn quotes him here):
Obama could easily make this go away: “Hamas will be VERY sorry if I am America’s president. They need to be careful what they wish for.” He doesn’t have to say anything else, but I doubt it occurs to anyone on his staff to go after Hamas instead of McCain. To me, that’s the obvious fix. What could McCain possibly say after that?
Unfortunately (or, perhaps, fortunately), Obama is not that sophisticated. This could still end up being an advantage—after all, people may perceive him as "refreshingly naive" about the dirty, dirty business of politics.
But if he goes on the offensive every time someone brings up any little unhandy datum, he's going to look really bad by the time the general rolls around.
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If the modern conservative position is that the U.S. is, indeed, a "Christian" nation, why exactly is it that the term "neocon" is, in some circles, a synonym for "Jew"?
Just askin'. You stay special.
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Invading Burma to disburse humanitarian aid seems (note my ironic understatement) like sort of a bad idea. But if they continue refusing to let aid workers in, what's wrong with violating their airspace to carpet bomb the place with relief air drops?
Well, there's this thing called international law, and we're unlikely to violate that.
Though in a situation like this, one longs for a state that will play "Dirty Harry." Hmmmm. Maybe we have to save that one for special occasions, though. The International Harold Tribune:
UNITED NATIONS: With 1.5 million people in Myanmar now believed to be facing the threat of starvation and disease and with relief efforts still largely stymied by the country's isolationist military rulers, frustrated United Nations officials all but demanded Thursday that the government open its doors to aid and aid workers."The situation is profoundly worrying," said the United Nations official in charge of the relief effort, John Holmes, speaking in the measured tones of diplomacy. "They have simply not faciliated access in the way we have a right to expect."
He said that Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon had spoken with the senior general in Myanmar's government, Than Shwe, to similarly urge him to allow aid workers into the country to do their jobs.
Five days after Cyclone Nargis inundated Myanmar's densely populated coast, wiped villages off the map and left untold tens of thousands dead and hundreds of thousands homeless, the first two United Nations flights carrying relief supplies arrived in Myanmar on Thursday.
One carried a mere seven tons of high-energy biscuits. The other contained a larger load of humanitarian supplies. But because of logistical delays heightened by the storm damage, officials were not immediately able to distribute the supplies in the disaster areas.
Since the cyclone hit, aid officials said, Myanmar's military rulers have approved visas for aid workers only grudgingly and placed restrictions and roadblocks on supplies coming into the country, while reassuring citizens that it has a grip on the worsening humanitarian crisis.
The government's slow response has drawn international criticism that echoes the condemnation it received after its brutal suppression of pro-democracy demonstrations last September. Its usual wariness towards outsiders is widely believed to have been heightened by a national constitutional referendum scheduled for Saturday, from which it has barred international monitors.
I'd love to argue with the use of the word "right," but in fact giving humanitarian relief is a right in the same sense the Founding Fathers used the term: something self-evident that is granted by God [or, for my agnostic and atheist readers, the divine in human nature].
We are halfway into the 10-day window, after which supposedly casualties are likely to spike, unless we get these people some fresh water, food, medial attention, and temporary shelters.
Pray for the people of Myanmar [or, you know: vibe them in a nondenominational way]; I don't know what else to do. I go now to cry my eyes out.
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Dear Barry:My heart has been crushed so many times before, I have almost lost count. It seems like every four years I get in a serious relationship with a new guy; it starts with infatuation but he invariably turns out to be a boozer, an abuser, or a loser, and I am left to pick up the pieces. I swear sometimes I must be cursed or subconsciously a masochist.
Finally, though, I think I may have met Mister Right. He's tall and dark and handsome, with this mysterious, dreamy, rugged faraway look in his eye that tells me he is THE ONE. Whenever he needs to borrow my car, or some money for his experimental jazz project, he always looks deep in my eyes and says "thank you" in that smoky baritone, and I swear I think I'm going to melt.
Long story short, we've moved in together. But now that I've finally found true love, some of my so-called "friends" have been less than supportive. Most of them are very positive, but a few have lately been "warning" me that he's no good, and hangs out with a bad crowd, and blah blah blah. How do I deal with this kind of petty jealousy? Also, when would be a good time for me to ask my new boyfriend what his name is?
Puzzled in Washington
Dear Puzzled:Don't listen to the nay-sayers! I say follow your heart, and hop on your dreamboat tramp steamer for a mystery love cruise to Fantasy Island. Even if that Island is deserted and filled with tropical disease, you can still make beautiful experimental jazz together.
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08:12 PM
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"It's like free-association. Or shitting."
Much the same with blogging; hadja noticed?
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• Mrs. Clinton may battle until June and possibly until the convention in August. There's nothing Mr. Obama can or should do about it. After a long, bitter struggle, losing candidates often look for reasons to feel aggrieved. There is no reason to give her one. No pressure from Mr. Obama or party Chairman Howard Dean is better than pushing her out of the race.• The Democrats' refusal to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations at their convention is an unresolved problem. If they insist on not seating these delegations, Democrats risk alienating voters in states with 44 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. And here Mr. Obama is at greater risk than Mrs. Clinton, especially in Florida. He trails John McCain badly in Sunshine State polls today, while Mrs. Clinton leads Mr. McCain there.
• The length of the Democratic contest has been—in some ways —a plus for the party. The AP estimates that more than 3.5 million new voters registered during the competitive primary season. And the hundreds of millions of dollars spent energizing Democratic turnout will leave organization and energy in place for November. Mr. Obama is a better candidate for having been battle tested. And Mr. McCain has to fight hard for attention. He's mentioned in less than 20% of the coverage in recent months, while Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton are talked about in 60% to 70% of the coverage.
• The length of the Democratic contest has been—in some ways —a minus. It has revealed weaknesses in Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton. Mrs. Clinton came across as calculating, contrived, stiff and self-concerned. Mr. Obama is increasingly seen not as the Second Coming, but as a typical liberal Chicago pol with a thin record, little experience, an array of troubling relationships and, to top it off, elitist sensibilities. Nominating him will now test the thesis that only a Democrat running as a moderate can win the White House.
The primary has created a deep fissure in Democratic ranks: blue collar, less affluent, less educated voters versus the white wine crowd of academics and upscale professionals (along with blacks and young people). Mr. Obama runs behind Mrs. Clinton's numbers when matched against Mr. McCain in key industrial battleground states. Less than half of Mrs. Clinton's backers in Indiana and North Carolina say they would support Mr. Obama if he were the nominee. In the most recent Fox News poll, two-and-a-half times as many Democrats break for Mr. McCain (15%) as Republicans defect to Mrs. Clinton (6%) and nearly twice as many Democrats support Mr. McCain (22%) as Republicans back Mr. Obama (13%). These "McCainocrat" defections could hurt badly.
State and local Democrats are realizing the toxicity of their probable national ticket. Democrats running in special congressional races recently in Louisiana and Mississippi positioned themselves as pro-life, pro-gun social conservatives and disavowed Mr. Obama. The Louisiana Democrat won his race on Saturday and said he "has not endorsed any national politician." The Mississippi Democrat is facing a runoff on May 13 and specifically denied that Mr. Obama had endorsed his campaign. Not exactly profiles in unity.
• As much as Mr. Obama's cheerleaders in the media hate it, Rev. Jeremiah Wright remains a large general-election challenge for Mr. Obama. Not only did Mr. Obama admit on "Fox News Sunday" that Mr. Wright was a legitimate issue, voters agree. Mr. Obama's favorable ratings have dropped since Mr. Wright emerged as an issue. More than half of Mrs. Clinton's supporters say it is a meaningful reflection on Mr. Obama's character and judgment.
• This will be a very difficult year for Republicans. The economy's shaky state, an unpopular war, and the natural desire for partisan change after eight years of one party in the White House have helped tilt the balance to the Democrats.
Mr. Obama is significantly weaker today than he was three months ago, but Democrats have the upper hand in November. They're beatable. But it's nonsense to think this year is going to be a replay of George H.W. Bush versus Michael Dukakis or Richard Nixon versus George McGovern.
• Mr. McCain is very competitive. He is the best candidate Republicans could have picked in this environment. With the GOP brand low, his appeal to moderates and independents becomes even more crucial.
My analysis of individual state polls shows that today Mr. McCain would win 241 Electoral College votes to Mr. Obama's 217, with 80 votes in toss-up states where neither candidate has more than a 3% lead. [ . . .]
Mr. McCain is realistic enough to know he will fall behind Mr. Obama once the Democratic nomination is settled. He's steeled himself and his team for that moment. And he's comforted by a belief that there will be plenty of time to recapture the lead. Mr. McCain saw Gerald Ford come from 30 points down to lose narrowly to Jimmy Carter in 1976, and watched George H.W. Bush overcome a 17-point deficit in the summer to hammer Michael Dukakis in the fall of 1988.
• The battlegrounds will look familiar. It will be the industrial heartland from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin, minus Indiana (Republican) and Illinois (Democrat); the western edge of the Midwest from Minnesota south to Missouri; Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada in the Rocky Mountains; Florida; and New Hampshire.
Mr. Obama will argue he puts Virginia and North Carolina into play (doubtful), and may make an attempt at winning one or two of Nebraska's electoral votes (it awards its electoral votes by congressional district). Mr. McCain will say he can put New Jersey and Delaware and part of Maine (it splits its vote like Nebraska) in play. But it's doubtful he'll win in Oregon or Washington State, although he believes he can.
• Almost everything we think we know right now will be revised and even overturned during the next six months. This has been a race in which conventional wisdom has often been proven wrong. The improbable or thought-to-be impossible has happened with regularity.
Yup. We've only just begun: white lies and promises.
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Since Sadr refused to disband the militia, Maliki has little choice but to root it out and destroy it. The US and Iraqi forces have already started doing that by building barriers to keep the Mahdis locked into known positions, with some skirmishes already taking place in Sadr City. Now that they have the battleground defined, the next step will be the military action that will end the Mahdi Army as an organization and establish lawful control over the last of the rebel ground Sadr controls.This will likely take weeks to complete. Once the battle starts, expect to read and hear plenty of media reports emphasizing civilian deaths, setbacks in the battle, defections in the Iraqi Army, and statements of defiance from Sadr. What we won’t hear is progress by Maliki and the US in finishing off Sadr’s forces until it suddenly becomes impossible to ignore it — and then we will hear about how inept the Iraqi forces were in achieving victory.
Call it the Basra Narrative.
Insty quotes Ed, and remarks that we should brace ourselves not just for the offensive, but for our own media's "creative" treatment thereof:
The basic rule of press coverage is that if there's fighting, we must be losing. All wars produce ups and downs, bad news and good. It's interesting, though, that our press seems mostly interested in making things look bad, though they're not even very good at reporting the bad news that matters. [ . . . ]UPDATE: Reader Walter Boxx emails: "The way the Japanese could tell they were losing WWII was that the great victories reported by their media were getting closer and closer to home. Our media problem is like a fun-house mirror version of this - the way we can tell we are winning is that our crushing defeats are happening less often and to different enemies."
I'm really looking forward to this particular "crushing defeat."
Here's a past post from Glenn (which he linked in his post above) about how it isn't just good news that goes unreported by our MSM, but important bad news as well: he points out that bloggers don't have the same access as MSM reporters, and it would be great if the latter were to step up to the plate.
I am not, of course, holding my breath.
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May 07, 2008
It is true that the gas tax is fairly trivial. It is also theoretically true that a windfall tax could claw back the lost revenue, though I have my doubts. So why does it matter? Because when it comes to regulations, one should never arbitrarily increase the complexity or uncertainty of the law.Complexity is bad because it ups compliance costs, often makes evasion easier, and because complexity itself increases uncertainty: as tax laws proliferate, it becomes harder to know whether you are in compliance. It also makes the government's administrative overhead multiply like those bacteria that can kill you in five minutes after first contact.
Uncertainty is bad because it reduces the ability of people and corporations to plan for the future. It's hard to estimate your ROI if the tax laws that govern your investment change every year.
Change is bad in general because every time the tax law changes, your nation experiences a sudden loss of human capital: all the understanding of how the old law becomes useless, and people have to spend valuable hours learning to understand the new law. This is often time that could have been better spent doing new deals, or regrouting the bathtub. Mold doesn't take care of itself, you know.
Obama's plan is bad because windfall taxes increase complexity and uncertainty. They also reduce the incentive for investment by lowering the return on it.
McCain's plan is bad because the gas tax holiday complicates tax administration and compliance, and because the revenue has to be made up somewhere else. That somewhere else is almost certain to be one more complicated tax of some sort.
Clinton's plan is doubly bad because it combines the uncertainty of a windfall tax with the complexity of both the Obama and McCain plans.
That's why she's Megan McArdle, and I'm not. RTWT.
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Insty responds to a reader: "I guess they weren't able to gin up enough votes in Gary, despite the extra time . . ."
Guess not.
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01:19 PM
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Hm. The study appears to be as condescending and silly as most of these things are, but of course it got me thinking about how few people I know are really happy—conservative or liberal.
I do think it's more of a challenge for people who are overbrained. Though please note that I don't see neurotic hand-wringing as a sign of high intelligence. I just think that like everything else, happiness tends to be hard work. And, as with everything else, some people have more of a talent for it than others do.
But not to try seems like a tragedy at best, and a slap in the face of God at worst. I suppose that I ultimately agree with Dennis Prager: if one has the choice, it is more merciful to those around us—and more respectful to our better selves—if we do our best to be happy.
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Nazism largely discredited the old eugenics. But a new eugenics -- the eugenics of genetic screening and abortion, the eugenics of genetic selection in the process of in vitro fertilization -- is alive and well. Its advocates contend that the new eugenics is superior because it is voluntary instead of compulsory, and unrelated to race. But Levin responds: "Surely the most essential problem with the eugenics movement was not coercion or collectivism. . . . The deepest and most significant contention of the progressive eugenicists -- the one that made all the others possible -- was that science had shown the principle of human equality to be unfounded, a view that then allowed them to use the authority of science to undermine our egalitarianism and our regard for the weakest members of our society."The point here is not to catch liberalism in an inconsistency. At its best, the liberal tradition has combined its belief in science with a firm commitment to the equal value of all -- including the disabled and imperfect.
But science can easily become the power of some over the lives of others.
RTWT; it's short.
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One line from Lewis’ book that actually made me laugh out loud (at myself) was that if people “cannot understand books written for grown-ups, they should not talk about them.” I’ve mentioned before that I’ve read the Bible a couple of times, but the thing is, I didn’t read it as a real grown-up. The last time I read it, I was actively looking for faults to prove that I was right. I wasn’t truly being objective and considering it in a historical or scholarly context.It’s difficult to articulate on a blog why I’m even bothering trying to learn about Christianity now because as I’ve mentioned before, I hate being misunderstood. The truth is that I am not exactly seeking salvation or God or anything like that, and frankly if I were, I would not talk about it with virtual strangers at this stage of the game. At this moment, my biggest aim is simply trying to relieve myself of the terrifying feeling I’ve had for years that I live in a society full of and run by people who believe a theology I don’t believe in, and that therefore I am surrounded by crazy people. It’s a bit of cognitive dissonance that I simply couldn’t take anymore.
Is my dad a crazy person? Are 90% of the people who read my blog crazy people? Are most of my friends crazy people? If I think Christianity is crazy, then the only answer to those questions is YES. But it just never added up.
This rings so true for me: in fact, a lot of my family and friends do think I'm crazy—or weak—for believing in God. Crazier still for believing in Jesus as my savior. And I know that plenty of 'em think that's why I'm an "right-wing racist gun nut." But in fact my religious beliefs are entirely separate from my political beliefs: the only connection is that I'm willing to buck the trend in both arenas.
But, Jesus: well, I'm one of those people who do not believe he was a "great teacher," and just a man. I cannot feel a bunch of warm fuzzies about him if he wasn't who he said he was. Either he was the Son of God (and therefore God), or he was, as Evan once put it when we were in Junior High School, "an insane rabbi with charisma."
For me, Occam's Razor applies here.
I would say, "that's all," but it most certainly isn't. However, I'll stop.
Kudos to Rachel for investigating this with an open mind, and for re-thinking some of her preconceived notions about organized religion. The very best we can hope for from anyone is intellectual honesty. She is, indeed, awesome.
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10:16 AM
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May 06, 2008
Men may look aimless but underneath it all they actually have a purpose--to protect themselves from a society that considers men responsible for the welfare of women and children but offers them little or nothing in return. Who can blame them?
That said, it all depends on the man. And (in a heteronormative context, of course), the woman.
One thing that always disturbs me is when a woman tells her guy he should "be a man." What she is suggesting, in the ugliest possible way, is that he will be truer to his sexual identity--and therefore, to himself--if he only . . . well, does what she wants. If not, she will feel free to berate him for not meeting her idiosyncratic standards of masculinity. It is often tantamount to emotional blackmail, and it happens all the time. It's dirty pool, just as it's dirty pool for a man to say things he knows will elicit an emotional reaction from a woman, and then stand back with a puzzled--and slightly superior--look on his face, aghast at female "irrationality."
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If having illegal narcotics in your post-high school learning environment "greatly diminishe[s]" your chances at success, then California has been doomed to failure since what, 1959? Somehow the state, and its college graduates, manage to muddle through.More seriously, I always wonder what happens to these guys who are arrested in their early 20s for meeting a sliver of the insatiable undergraduate demand for pot-smoking. I was never any dealer, nor much of a user, but I've known and worked with quite a few perfectly successful people who dealt drugs in college.
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Oriana Fallaci once interviewed the Ayatollah Khomeini during his rise to power. Of course, she had to agree to wear a burka during the session, and one of her first questions was "how do you swim in this thing?"
I wonder if Barbie has also been wondering that lately.
The way I heard the story, Fallaci ended up taking the hood and robe off during the interview, which I understand: they say it's hot over there in the Middle East.
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08:45 PM
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What surprises me is that people think they can get by with it in this day and age—even if the community of libertarian and pop-culture writers didn't catch Professor Twitchell, the electronic tools we all use every day was bound to.
I just don't get why James Twitchell thought he could get by with this. Did he want to get caught? It's whacked.
MORE: Postrel adds:
It's unfortunate that newspaper accounts of such scandals rely so much on "objective" parallel passages rather than getting at the true disservice to the reader. When James Twitchell fails to cite sources for his statistics, leading readers to assume he is the source, he deprives those readers of further information on the subject, including when the stats were gathered and how. He also slights readers when he offers an unsourced summary of another scholar's idea without telling readers where to find the original, and far more thorough, development of that idea. Then there's changing facts to make them inaccurate [as he did with some of the work he lifted from Postrel] ...As an offense against other scholars and writers, plagiarism is a sign of bad character. But, more important for the public sphere, it's a sign that you don't care about your readers.
That's it in a nutshell, and how odd it is that I didn't read these posts until today, after I'd blogged about using Postrel's own citations as a resource for further reading when I was done reading her books.
AND: More from one of Twitchell's other eminent victims.
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